THE dollar has embarked on a big decline that will see it fall against all leading currencies, according to analysts.

The plunge is being prompted by America’s $800 billion (£438 billion) current-account deficit, they say.

The dollar has been under pressure following last weekend’s meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bankers, which emphasised “global imbalances” and said currencies should reflect economic fundamentals. Then China raised its key interest rate to 5.85%, its first hike for months, and Ben Bernanke, the new Federal Reserve chairman, hinted that American rates would pause at 5% after a rise in May.

Analysts say that without interest-rate support, the dollar will be weighed down heavily by America’s imbalances.

“I think this is it,” said Tony Norfield, global head of currency strategy at ABN Amro. “The dollar has been supported by high yields but markets are saying that is no longer enough. The question for policymakers is going to be how to manage the dollar’s decline. It won’t be a one-way street but the fall is likely to be biggest against Asian currencies.”

The euro has already risen to an 11-month high of more than $1.26, while the dollar is at a three-month low of 113.70 against the yen. The Canadian dollar, known by traders as the “loonie”, rose to a 28-year high on Friday, boosted by a hike in Canadian interest rates.

Sterling climbed back above $1.80, closing above $1.82 in New York on Friday.

The Bank of England’s monetary policy committee is set to leave rates unchanged at 4.5%, despite a call from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research for a pre-emptive rise.

The “shadow” MPC, which meets under the auspices of the Institute of Economic Affairs, has voted 7-2 to leave rates unchanged.

Those who follow a buy-and-hold strategy but want to buffer their holdings against currency shifts may be interested in a small but growing category of investments: foreign currency mutual funds.

Until last year, there was only one: the Franklin Templeton Hard Currency fund, which has been around since 1989. But in the wake of the dollar's big decline in 2004, a few more foreign currency funds began trading last year, and mutual fund analysts predict that more are likely to follow.

Franklin Templeton Hard Currency is the largest in the field, with $214 million in assets. It essentially bets against the dollar, with holdings in short-term foreign-denominated fixed-income securities from a variety of countries. It is generally designed to rise sharply when the dollar takes a big fall — but it is likely to decline in periods when the dollar is surging. At other times, it should return money market rates. So far this year, it has gained about 6.4 percent.

A fund with a similar strategy, the Merk Hard Currency fund, began trading last May and has garnered about $11 million in assets. It has returned 6.6 percent this year.

While these returns are substantial for just four months, some mutual fund analysts say that the main reason to invest in the funds would be for diversification in portfolios that don't already have a big stake in foreign stock or bond funds. "Someone with most of their investments in domestic assets has a lot of their risk concentrated in the dollar," said Jeet Dutta, a fund analyst at Morningstar, who likened investing in foreign currency funds to buying insurance against a big decline in the dollar.

HONG KONG, April 30 — Despite objections from the Vatican, the state-controlled Catholic church in China installed as a bishop today a senior official who has been involved in the government's political control of the church...

The official, Father Ma Yinglin, was consecrated as bishop of Kunming in southwestern China despite a strong warning on Saturday from Joseph Cardinal Zen Zi-kiun of Hong Kong. Cardinal Zen said in a statement then that, "to conduct the ordination without the Holy See's approval is to sabotage intentionally Sino-Vatican relations."...


Liu Bainian, the secretary general of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, said in a telephone interview this evening that the consecration of Bishop Ma could improve relations with the Vatican, because the diocese of Kunming had been vacant for 11 years.

"Without a bishop, there is no church," Mr. Liu said.


Mr. Liu also asserted that it was inappropriate for Cardinal Zen, as the bishop of Hong Kong, to make statements regarding activities in another diocese.

"Father Ma was chosen by 100 percent of the votes by local fathers, church representatives and members," Mr. Liu said. "The government did not participate in the whole election process."

Communist countries often describe winners of rigged elections as having received all or nearly all of the votes.

The Long Island landscaper peeked out the door. It was another visitor arriving with a notebook, a press pass and the H-word on his lips, another journalist asking about his great-uncle Adolf.

The visitor asked the landscaper about his father, who was born William Patrick Hitler, son of Alois Hitler Jr., who was Adolf Hitler's half-brother (they shared the same father). Alois called his son Willy. The Führer called Willy "my loathsome nephew."

Willy Hitler was born in 1911 in Liverpool, and in his early years occasionally sought to take advantage of his last name, in England, Germany and then America, where he moved in 1939. After World War II, though, he decided to change the name and moved from New York City out to Patchogue on Long Island. He raised four sons — Alexander, Louis, Howard and Brian — before he died in 1987 at age 76.

WASHINGTON, April 20 — The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that "no sound scientific studies" supported the medical use of marijuana, contradicting a 1999 review by a panel of highly regarded scientists...

The Food and Drug Administration statement directly contradicts a 1999 review by the Institute of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's most prestigious scientific advisory agency. That review found marijuana to be "moderately well suited for particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting."

Dr. John Benson, co-chairman of the Institute of Medicine committee that examined the research into marijuana's effects, said in an interview that the statement on Thursday and the combined review by other agencies were wrong.

The federal government "loves to ignore our report," said Dr. Benson, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. "They would rather it never happened."

Some scientists and legislators said the agency's statement about marijuana demonstrated that politics had trumped science.

"Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the F.D.A. making pronouncements that seem to be driven more by ideology than by science," said Dr. Jerry Avorn, a medical professor at Harvard Medical School.

But his admirers see the collapse of our civilization as a good thing, because they tend to have low-level jobs in retail or food service and the leveling of the Western standard of living would presumably force the fancy people to give up their SUVs and join them on the streets on bicycles.

ome hedge funds and other global investors in the last several months have been concerned that the economy has overheated, and so they have withdrawn money from Icelandic markets. This pullback has caused the main stock index, the Icex 15, to fall 18 percent, and the currency, the krona, to weaken by about the same amount.

These declines, some analysts say, run the risk of driving away other investors, who had been lured by Iceland's attractive interest rates. This could prompt a downward spiral with larger repercussions. If nothing else, the analysts say, Iceland's own economy could be in for a rough patch, serving as a cautionary tale for other emerging markets.

With a population on a par with a midsize American city and a gross domestic product of around $10.3 billion, or just below that of Rwanda, Iceland would not seem to be on the radar screen of many financial experts. But analysts from Merrill Lynch, Danske Bank, Fitch, Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investors Service and many economists have weighed in with concern. Others say fears of an Icelandic meltdown are overblown.

Nicolas Bouzou, the chief economist of Institut Xerfi, a research concern in Paris, feels that Iceland could be the "butterfly's wing" that sets off serious ripples in capital markets elsewhere in the world.

Mr. Bouzou said that "many countries have the same macroeconomic configuration of Iceland," and if investors lose a great deal more money in Iceland, they could also pull out of other countries with similar economic structures. That configuration, he said, included a "real estate bubble, very strong credit expansion and a very high commercial deficit." The same could be said of New Zealand, Australia and even the United States, he said.

Mr. Rumsfeld still enjoys support in many Republican circles. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his resignation would be a mistake.

"If this were to happen," Mr. Cornyn said, "it would encourage demands for other members of the cabinet or other people close to the president to resign." Echoing administration officials, he said some good news out of Iraq could go a long way toward quieting critics.

Richard Myers, who retired as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff last autumn, defended Mr Rumsfeld on Sunday, saying it was “inappropriate for the military to sit in judgment of their civilian bosses”. “What I am hearing now I never heard when I was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.”

While he had great respect for the colleagues who had criticised Mr Rumsfeld, such criticism was “bad for civil military relations”, the former general said...

In his own defence, Mr Rumsfeld on Friday told al- Arabiya television: “Out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed, we changed the secretary of defense of the United States, it would be like a merry-go-round.”

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, said that the war in Iraq has been an "extremely successful undertaking" and that hopefully, the elected government in Iraq would choose a leadership, allowing troops to be drawn down.

"With regard to Rumsfeld, I think he's been a spectacular secretary of defense, one of the best in American history," Mr. McConnell said on "Fox News Sunday."

"And I certainly do not think he ought to resign."

A roshi is a person who has actualized that perfect freedom which is the potentiality for all human beings. He exists freely in the fullness of his whole being. The flow of his consciousness is not the fixed repetitive patterns of our usual self-centered consciousness, but rather arises spontaneously and naturally from the actual circumstances of the present. The results of this in terms of the quality of his life are extraordinary-buoyancy, vigor, straightforwardness, simplicity, humility, security, joyousness, uncanny perspicacity and unfathomable compassion. His whole being testifies to what it means to live in the reality of the present. Without anything said or done, just the impact of meeting a personality so developed can be enough to change another's whole way of life. But in the end it is not the extraordinariness of the teacher that perplexes, intrigues, and deepens the student, it is the teacher's utter ordinariness.

Most students will understand the term Dharma transmission as a sort of USDA seal of approval guaranteeing that the Master/roshi is fully enlightened, and that his or her every gesture therefore manifests the Absolute. This attitude is well illustrated by one of the responses to my questionnaire: "a Zen Master is a person who has been certifiedas existing in fully awakened mind..."

To begin with, whenever a person deliberately misrepresents anything, he must inevitably misrepresenting his own state of mind. It is possible, of course, for a person to misrepresent that alone — for instance, by pretending to have a desire or a feeling which he does not actually have. But suppose that a person, whether by telling a lie or in another way, misrepresents something else. Then he necessarily misrepresents at least two things. He misrepresents whatever he is talking about — i.e., the state of affairs that is the topic or referent of his discourse — and in doing this he cannot avoid misrepresenting his own mind as well. Thus, someone who lies about how much money he has in his pocket both gives an account of the amount of money in his pocket and conveys that he believes this account. If the lie works, then its victim is twice deceived, having one false belief about what is in the liar’s pocket and another false belief about what is in the liar’s mind.

Donald Rumsfeld needs to wear iced underwear because of some medical condition, and he has his secret service detail hold his spares. He was recently getting uncontrollable long-term erections and had to change up his medical treatments. The underwear and the erections is why he uses a standing desk, not because he is some super-man. He also wears nylon stockings, not because he's gay, but to control some vascular problem with his legs which causes him intense pain.

President Bush uses anti-depressant medication, a lot of it, at a stupendous dosage, and he is hiding it from the American public. This is the real reason he stopped drinking. Because of the dosage, he is also impotent.

Tom Ridge carries 20 credit cards with him at all times, each one with a very low limit. I have never heard of him using one, ever, but he has them. He also wears his socks inside-out, and will flip the fuck out and walk strangely if he is forced to wear them properly, because it drives him crazy. All of his socks must be laundered right side in and then turned inside out before they are returned to him. He gave specific instructions about handling his food, and not allowing his vegetables to touch any other food item on the plate. His utensils must be steamed over boiling water. He will not eat soup which hasn't been boiled within the past 20 minutes or which he has not prepared himself. If any of these rules are violated, he flies into a rage, turns beet red, and will not eat a single thing. He has his personal attendants confirm over and over that the food is as he likes it. He also shaves his forearms and hands because he can't stand the idea of body hair on his arms. He demands that his bedsheets are bleach white and changed fresh every night and he sleeps in a separate bed in a big, tight, body-length nylon sleeve, with a fan blowing over him at full power. He is terrified of animals which have fur or hair longer than one inch, and will not go near curly hair of any kind, even on people. At one time he ran from his office and demanded that someone look under everything for a rodent which did not and could not exist, then he had the entire place wiped down with disinfectant and vacuumed twice. While this was done he couldn't even bear to look at the door, or come within 20 feet of his office. He was in hysterics.

President Bush, when dining at the white-house, does not eat any item of food which has not been first sniffed by a trained dog before being prepared. Think about that.

Word among the staff is that Cheney was drunk when he shot that lawyer, and secluded himself for a day to sober up and avoid felony firearms charges. I don't have any direct information on this because the guys with him at the time are not talking. This is totally unconfirmed, but I think it is plausible.

Dick Cheney has chronic gum problems and his breath smells like shit as a result. He is also a CLOSE TALKER. He keeps a small bottle of diluted hydrogen peroxide which he rinses with every hour on the hour, and he swallows it instead of spitting. He also picks his nose vigorously (violently) and hums loudly and tunelessly to himself while taking shits...

BHANUPRATAPUR FOREST RESERVE, India — The gray light of dawn broke over the bamboo forest as the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army prepared for a new day...

The company commander, Gopanna Markam, patiently shaved.

"We have made the people aware of how to change your life through armed struggle, not the ballot," said Mr. Markam, who is in his mid-40's, describing his troops' accomplishments. "This is a people's war, a protracted people's war."

Mr. Markam's ragtag forces, who hew to Mao's script for a peasant revolution, fought a seemingly lost cause for so long, they were barely taken seriously beyond India's desperately wanting forest belt. But not anymore.

Today the fighting that Mr. Markam has quietly nurtured for 25 years looks increasingly like a civil war, one claiming more and more lives and slowing the industrial growth of a country hungry for the coal, iron and other riches buried in these isolated realms bypassed by India's economic boom.

While the far more powerful Maoist insurgency in neighboring Nepal has received greater attention, the conflict in India, though largely separate, has gained momentum, too. In the last year, it has cost nearly a thousand lives.

Here in central Chhattisgarh State, the deadliest theater of the war, government-aided village defense forces have lately taken to hunting Maoists in the forests. Hand in hand with the insurgency, the militias have dragged the region into ever more deadly conflict.

Villagers, caught in between, have seen their hamlets burned. Nearly 50,000 are now displaced, living in flimsy tent camps, as the counterinsurgency tries to cleanse the countryside of Maoist support.

The insurgents blow up railway tracks, seize land and chase away forest guards. They have made it virtually impossible for government officials, whose presence here in the hinterland is already patchy, to function. Police posts, government offices and industrial plants are favored targets. Their ultimate goal is to overthrow the state.

Today the Communist Party of India (Maoist), which exists solely as an underground armed movement with no political representation, is a rigidly hierarchical outfit with toeholds in 13 of 28 Indian states. It stretches from the tip of India through this east-central state to the northern border with Nepal, where the Maoists have set off full-scale civil war.

Tennessee Congressman John Duncan wants to commemorate the event with a resolution reaffirming the motto and calling on Americans to reflect on the blessing of God on our nation. Amanda Banks of Focus on the Family Action says while resolutions are not law, Congress uses them express its opinion.

“Resolutions are important. They do go into the Congressional Record, obviously, and they show congressional support.”

The support might be needed as the motto is under attack in a federal court by atheist Michael Newdow.

“I hope he gets it passed. He won’t, but it’s just like the best evidence I have for my case.”

He’s optimistic because the resolution lists 16 historical findings including, “This American trust in the Christian Deity dates from the earliest colonial days…” Attorney Jay Sekulow concedes that might cross the line.

“Part of the resolution’s absolutely fine that talks about the religious heritage of America but the reference to a specific religion in the resolution probably would cause some problems.”

But he thinks a legal challenge is unlikely. Constitutionality notwithstanding, historian David Barton says all the findings are historically accurate and it’s appropriate to commemorate the anniversary.

“A great way to conserve and commemorate the national motto would be simply to read this resolution.”

Roger Williams was banished from the Colony because he challenged Winthrop's idea that America was a "new Israel." At the beginning of his Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience (1644), Williams explained one of the theses of his book: "The state of the land of Israel, the kings and people thereof, in peace and war, is proved figurative and ceremonial, and no pattern nor precedent for any kingdom or civil state in the world to follow." (p. 3)

Roger Williams founded the colony of Rhode Island and established the first Baptist church in America.
Williams was not the only Baptist to suffer such persecution. John Clarke, pastor of the Baptist Church at Newport, Rhode Island published an account of religious persecution in New England in his Ill News from New-England(1652). In it he told how in the summer of 1651, Obadiah Holmes, John Crandall, and John Clarke -- all members of the Baptist Church at Newport, Rhode Island -- were arrested and imprisoned for holding an unauthorized worship service in the home of a blind Baptist named William Witter who lived at Lynn, Massachusetts outside Boston. They were sentenced to be fined or whipped. Fines for Clarke and Crandall were paid by friends. Holmes refused to let friends pay his fine and was publicly whipped on the streets of Boston on September 6, 1651.

A year after Clarke's book was published, Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard University, was forced to resign from his position and banished from Cambridge, Massachusetts. His crime: refusing to have his fourth child baptized as an infant and proclaiming that only believers should be baptized.

And these are just a few examples of what life was like in Massachusetts during the days of the pilgrims.

When Baptists begin holding up colonial Massachusetts as a model for modern society it demonstrates something about the transvaluation of beliefs and convictions that modern fundamentalists have brought about in Baptist life. They truly have more in common with colonial theocratic Puritans than they do with their Baptist ancestors....

As bad as it was for Baptists, it was worse for Quakers.

Sydney Ahlstrom records some of the ways that the authorities dealt with Quakers, "In July 1656 the ship Swallow anchored in Boston Harbor. It became known quickly that on board were two Quaker women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, who had shipped from Barbados. The authorities moved swiftly. The women were kept on ship while their belongings were searched and more than one hundred books confiscated. Although there was as yet no law against Quakers in Massachusetts, the two were hurried off to jail, stripped of all their clothing, and inspected for tokens of witchcraft. After five weeks, the captain of the Swallow was placed under a 100 pound bond to carry them back to Barbados." A Religious History of the American People, p. 178.

When these efforts failed to keep Quakers out of the colony, they resorted to more drastic measures. William Robinson, Marmaduke Stephenson, and William Leddra are listed among the Quaker martyrs in Massachusetts. The last Quaker martyr in Massachusetts, Mary Dyer, was hanged in the Boston Common on June 1, 1660. All died in defiance of a law banning Quakers from Massachusetts Bay Colony.

A statue of Mary Dyer now stands in front of the State Capitol in Massachusetts as a constant reminder of the Colony's shameful legacy of religious intolerance.

The Bush myth was given a powerful boost yesterday when a modest west Texas house, once home to two US presidents, was formally declared open to the public. 1412 West Ohio Avenue in Midland was George W Bush's childhood home and the scene of many of the happy scenes recalled in the biography A Charge to Keep, published at the time of his 2000 election campaign...

"To get to a friend's house, you would walk down a couple doors, climb someone's fence, cut through a yard, only crossing the street when you absolutely had to," Mr Bush recalled, in words reproduced on a sign outside the building, restored at a cost of $1.9m (£1m).

"Midland was a small town, with small-town values. We learned to respect our elders, to do what they said, and to be good neighbours. We went to church," Mr Bush wrote. "No one locked their doors, because you could trust your friends and neighbours. It was a happy childhood."...

However, it was a relatively brief snapshot in a young life that told another story. After attending Midland schools, the young "Dubya" Bush was dispatched to an expensive boarding school back east, and then attended Yale and Harvard.

He was born, not in Texas, but in Connecticut into a wealthy dynasty of financiers and politicians. His grandfather was a senator, and his father, the first President Bush, went to west Texas in 1948 with the aim of using family business connections to profit from the oil boom.

According to the National Center for Immigration Law, one in ten U.S. soliders who have DIED in Iraq have been immigrants. Five percent of those serving in our military are illegal immigrants.

The first soldier to die for the United States in the current war in Iraq was Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala.

He died for you.

You are not in Iraq fighting for anyone. You are home, sending lie-riddled missives to strangers at 3 a.m. on your computer.

Enough said.

One such complex structure is a hormone and its receptor. Just as a keyhole has no use without a key and vice versa, a hormone is useless without a receptor that lets it dock with a cell, and a receptor serves no purpose without hormones. Catch-22: Neither component could survive without the other, yet it strains credulity to suppose that both structures popped onto the evolutionary scene simultaneously.

To investigate this puzzle, biologists led by Joseph Thornton of the University of Oregon reconstructed an ancestral receptor. They first analyzed receptors for steroid hormones in 59 species, including primitive jawless fish and skates. Then, in a process called gene resurrection, they worked backward to infer what the gene for the ancestral receptor was, and actually made the receptor in the lab: a molecule that last existed on earth 450 million years ago.

Testing various hormones on the ancestral receptor, the scientists found that both aldosterone and another one fit. The ancestral receptor, therefore, was fully employed acting as the keyhole for this second hormone. When aldosterone appeared on the scene by random mutation, it co-opted the existing receptor, the researchers conclude in today's issue of Science.

The findings, says Christoph Adami of the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences, Claremont, Calif., "solidly refute" ID.

But refutation is in the eye of the beholder. No scientific discovery will end the evolution wars. For one thing, adherents of ID call the fact that scientists are studying reducible-complexity at all a victory for their side. "We're delighted they're engaging in a debate that they say doesn't exist," says Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which pushes ID. Moreover, he says, the hormone-receptor system is not really irreducibly complex.

The trouble for ID is that this isn't the first study to show, step by step, how complex structures could have evolved. Recent experiments have shown how irreducibly complex structures such as bacterial flagella and the lens of an eye could have evolved by co-opting existing structures just as the hormone did. More such research is in the pipeline.

WASHINGTON — Two weeks ago on Sunday, Condoleezza Rice got up at 4 a.m. so she could fit in her daily exercise regimen — weights and the treadmill — and still have time to prepare for interviews on three morning news programs. Just a few hours later, on "Meet the Press," Tim Russert confronted her with recent reports that shortly after the invasion of Iraq, the Russians had given intelligence on American troop movements to the Iraqis. Even on the normally sympathetic "Fox News Sunday," Chris Wallace asked her why Americans should not be outraged that United States troops continue to fight and die while Iraqi politicians haggle over jobs...

But late that afternoon, Ms. Rice was back home in her comfortable apartment in the Watergate complex for one of her frequent sessions of chamber music with four friends, lawyers by profession and dedicated amateur string players...

Ms. Rice is an accomplished pianist. At 15 she performed Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor with the Denver Symphony Orchestra, her prize for winning a student competition. Until college she intended to pursue music professionally. Now 51, she plays as often as every other week with this group, which convened three years ago. Until now it was a realm of her very public life that she kept private.

People often ask her, Ms. Rice said that day, whether playing chamber music is relaxing. "It's not exactly relaxing if you are struggling to play Brahms," she explained. "But it is transporting. When you're playing there is only room for Brahms or Shostakovich. It's the time I'm most away from myself, and I treasure it."

On another note, I seem to remember testifying opposite Hillis before the Texas State Board of Education regarding misrepresentations of the evidence for evolutionary theory in high school biology textbooks. It just seems we can’t see eye to eye on anything — first evolution and now Ebola.

But to the academy, the message behind Pianka’s presentation is inconsequential. President David Marsh said the organization selects the DTS honoree based solely upon the individual’s credentials and contributions to science. He said TAS places no constraints on its speakers, nor will it ever.

“Whether or not we as a body agree with the statements that Dr. Pianka made in his presentation is irrelevant,” he said. “We are an academy of individuals, and as such, each is free to make his or her alignments.”...

Students at St. Edward’s University also got a look into Pianka’s philosophy Friday, when the professor accepted an invitation to share his talk with one of the university’s science classes. Pianka extended that invitation to the Gazette-Enterprise, where the publication made a digital recording of Pianka’s lecture. A full transcript of that lecture will be available on the newspaper’s Web site later this week.

Pianka told the classroom packed with silent listeners that decades of ignoring population control would lead to deadly effects — a fact he says is too late to change. Referencing the Biblical story of the Apocalypse, he revealed a slide depicting the “Four Horsemen” — war, famine, disease and death. If humanity doesn’t take steps to solve the problem of overpopulation, “the Four Horsemen will do it for us.”

Pianka went on to describe his vision of humanity’s crash and its aftermath.

“What I’m waiting for is the day you go to the supermarket and there are no Triscuits on the shelves,” Pianka warned the class, advising they begin packing a survival kit in preparation for the coming disaster. “We’re going to be hunters and gatherers again soon.”

The professor’s university Web site features an extensive list of items survivors will need when “civilization grinds to a halt.”

“When you’re out in the wilderness, you’re going to have to take things out with your hands,” Pianka said, telling students they’d best hone their survival skills.

While some have described Pianka’s words as hyperbole, the governor’s office’s distaste was plainspoken.

"Cross Country," John Edward's new show on WE, the Women's Entertainment network. Mr. Edward, a stage medium who used to channel spirits in the safety of a TV studio on his syndicated show "Crossing Over," is now adding the pathos of shows like "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" by traveling to remote areas to commune with the survivors. ("Closure has no map," he says.)..."Queer Eye for the Dead Guy."...cable's Sci Fi Channel showed the debut of an even more down-market new series, "Psychic at Large," in which Char Margolis, a self-described "spiritual-intuitive," roams around in her car, using her special powers for fun and high jinks. Ms. Margolis may have an inside advantage: she looks a bit like Agnes Moorehead in her "Bewitched" days...She haggles for a used car by demanding $1,000 off the list price for every relative of the car lot manager she can intuit correctly. "Apple?" Ms. Margolis ventures. "Akbah. Very close!" the woman replies...Gail Porter, a Scottish-born celebrity/skeptic, and Chris Fleming, an even less famous "sensitive"... travel the country trying to make contact with dead celebrities like Bing Crosby and Rita Hayworth, but mostly turn breathless in dark basements while being filmed by an infrared camera...The spookiest element, however, is Ms. Porter, a former television presenter and nude model for men's magazines, who serves as a harbinger of celebrity derailed: drug abuse and eating disorders ravaged her health, and she now wears a head scarf because alopecia left her bald...

eLay is quitting for the same reason that Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright quit after Republican Newt Gingrich helped expose his sleazy book deal.

And he's quitting for the same reason Gingrich quit after coming under attack from DeLay and others in the wake of Gingrich's own sleazy book deal and other controversies.

If humans do not control their own population (and we seem unwilling and unable to do so), then other forces will certainly act to control our population. The four horseman of the apocalypse (conquest, war, famine, and death) are all candidates. Most likely, lethal virulent microbes like HIV and Ebola zaire will set limits on the growth of human populations. HIV, by allowing infected hosts to survive years while they spread the virus and infect new hosts, has already become a pandemic, but it will be years before it decimates the human population. Although Ebola kills 9 out of 10 people, outbreaks have so far been unable to become epidemics because they are currently spread only by direct physical contact with infected blood. However, a closely related virus that kills monkeys, Ebola reston, is airborne, and it is only a matter of time until Ebola zaire evolves the capacity to be airborne.

Dr. Pianka was named the 2006 Distinguished Scientist by the Texas Academy of Science. He's an ecologist, a "doomsday ecologist" as he puts it, with a CV several pages long and results that have changed the way ecologists think, forever. And damn is he ever entertaining to listen to.

Dr. Pianka's talk at the TAS meeting was mostly of the problems humans are causing as we rapidly proliferate around the globe. While what he had to say is way too vast to remember it all, moreover to relay it here in this blog, the bulk of his talk was that he's waiting for the virus that will eventually arise and kill off 90% of human population. In fact, his hope, if you can call it that, is that the ebola virus which attacks humans currently (but only through blood transmission) will mutate with the ebola virus that attacks monkeys airborne to create an airborne ebola virus that attacks humans. He's a radical thinker, that one! I mean, he's basically advocating for the death of all but 10% of the current population! And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he's right.

Mr. Delay told the Galveston County paper that he decided last week after speaking to the Christian group Vision America that he could be more effective pushing the conservative cause if he left Congress.

"I can continue to be a leader of the conservative cause," he said. "I can do more to grow the Republican majority, rather than spend the next eight months locked down in running a campaign."

One DeLay ally said that the lawmaker had been considering leaving Congress since he gave up his leadership post in January and that he had been persuaded to make the break last week, when his former deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, pleaded guilty to corruption charges....

With Mr. Rudy's guilty plea last Friday, he became the second former DeLay aide to admit wrongdoing in the corruption investigation centered on Mr. Abramoff, who has also pleaded guilty to conspiring to corrupt public officials, including members of Congress.

Mr. Abramoff, Mr. Rudy and the other aide, Michael Scanlon, who had been Mr. DeLay's press secretary in the House, are all cooperating with the Justice Department, which is investigating whether Mr. DeLay and other members of Congress accepted travel, gifts or money from Mr. Abramoff and his associates in return for legislative favors.

Mr. Rudy's plea agreement, which covers actions he took on Mr. Abramoff's behalf both while on Mr. DeLay's staff and after leaving the House to work as a lobbyist, did not allege any wrongdoing by Mr. DeLay or say that Mr. DeLay knew of any criminal activities by Mr. Rudy.