Bonaparte's Retreat

Print made by Charles Williams "Boney forsaken by his guardian genius." (hand colored etching) 1814 "The Devil hovers above Napoleon, who kneels on one knee, looking up in horror; he snatches the crown from the Emperor's head; in his left hand he holds up a second crown. He is dark, hairy, and muscular, with webbed wings and barbed tail. Napoleon, who wears uniform with a sash and a very large sword, with Hessian boots, leans back with arms extended protestingly; he says: "My Guardian Angel—my Protector, do not desert me in the hour of Danger." The Devil: "Poh! Poh! you cannot expect to reign for ever, besides I want you at home to teach some of the young imps wickedness." Great clouds of smoke rise from distant flames, where 'Paris' (right) is blazing."

link: MONSTER BRAINS

CIA, Congress, Lies

John Nichols writes:

No matter what anyone thinks of Pelosi or waterboarding, there is a clear case for dramatically expanding congressional oversight of the CIA. Of course, more House and Senate members should have access to briefings -- and should have the authority to hold CIA officials (and their White House overseers) to account for deliberate deceptions. But that ought not be the first response to the latest news.

Step one must be to get to the bottom of exactly what the CIA was lying about.

Did it have anything to do with the case for invading and occupying Iraq? Afghanistan? Torture?

CIA defenders will claim that some secrets must be kept. Perhaps. But the Congress and the American people have a right to know the broad outlines of the deception -- and the extent to which it may have warped, and may continue to warp, U.S. policy.

link: CIA: We Lied to Congress

Bono on Africa and Obama

Bono writes:

No one’s leaked me a copy of the president’s speech in Ghana, but it’s pretty clear he’s going to focus not on the problems that afflict the continent but on the opportunities of an Africa on the rise. If that’s what he does, the biggest cheers will come from members of the growing African middle class, who are fed up with being patronized and hearing the song of their majestic continent in a minor key.

I’ve played that tune. I’ve talked of tragedy, of emergency. And it is an emergency when almost 2,000 children in Africa a day die of a mosquito bite; this kind of hemorrhaging of human capital is not something we can accept as normal.

But as the example of Ghana makes clear, that’s only one chord. Amid poverty and disease are opportunities for investment and growth — investment and growth that won’t eliminate overnight the need for assistance, much as we and Africans yearn for it to end, but that in time can build roads, schools and power grids and propel commerce to the point where aid is replaced by trade pacts, business deals and home-grown income.

President Obama can hasten that day. He knows change won’t come easily. Corruption stalks Africa’s reformers. “If you fight corruption, it fights you back,” a former Nigerian anti-corruption official has said.

link: Op-Ed Guest Columnist - Rebranding Africa - NYTimes.com

Krugman Asks for Fiscal Straight Talk

Paul Krugman writes:

It’s perfectly O.K. for the administration to defend what it’s done so far. It’s fine to have Vice President Joseph Biden touring the country, highlighting the many good things the stimulus money is doing.

It’s also reasonable for administration economists to call for patience, and point out, correctly, that the stimulus was never expected to have its full impact this summer, or even this year.

But there’s a difference between defending what you’ve done so far and being defensive. It was disturbing when President Obama walked back Mr. Biden’s admission that the administration “misread” the economy, declaring that “there’s nothing we would have done differently.” There was a whiff of the Bush infallibility complex in that remark, a hint that the current administration might share some of its predecessor’s inability to admit mistakes. And that’s an attitude neither Mr. Obama nor the country can afford.

What Mr. Obama needs to do is level with the American people. He needs to admit that he may not have done enough on the first try. He needs to remind the country that he’s trying to steer the country through a severe economic storm, and that some course adjustments — including, quite possibly, another round of stimulus — may be necessary.

What he needs, in short, is to do for economic policy what he’s already done for race relations and foreign policy — talk to Americans like adults.

link: Op-Ed Columnist - The Stimulus Trap - NYTimes.com

Nobody Ever Said Life was Fair

Salt Gone: Contraband Pretzels Baking?

The Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department wants to know who made off with more than 200 tons of road salt. The Ann Arbor News reported that the salt, valued at $10,000, was stolen in the past week from a county road commission storage depot in Salem Township. The police discovered Monday that the salt was missing. Sgt. Lisa King told a Detroit television station that those responsible must have needed at least a dozen dump trucks or loads to haul away the salt.

link: National Briefing - Midwest - Michigan - Road Salt Is Stolen - NYTimes.com

Paradise Shuttered

Starting Friday, most California government offices will begin closing three days a month to save money. The shutdowns are part of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s order to furlough state employees, effectively reducing their pay about 14 percent. The closings are intended to aid the state as it wrestles with a steep decline in tax revenue. Among the closings Friday will be 169 Department of Motor Vehicle offices. Prisons, hospitals, the California Highway Patrol and state firefighters will continue to operate around the clock, and people can still go to state parks and wildlife areas. In addition, more than half the Employment Development Department’s 9,000 employees will be working Friday to help unemployed people file for jobless benefits by telephone and online. About 200 one-stop career centers will stay open to help with job searches and training. The state Department of Personnel Administration plans to post a list of the few available services on its Web site.

link: National Briefing - West - California - Sorry, State Is Closed - NYTimes.com

Key Keyring: Careful, You'll Put Out an Eye

Devin Coldewey writes:

I favor simplicity in all things, and while sometimes combining devices results in greater complexity, in this case it seems to simplify things. It’s possible, however, that the reason nobody has made one of these before is that something about it doesn’t work.

Even if that’s true, however, this thing also triples as a weapon. That’s three devices in one!

It only costs $7 and you can get it cut by any key-cutting-type person. If you’re really intrigued, you can buy a 30% interest in the Split Ring Key if you’re the investing type.

link: Best idea of all time: a key that is also a keyring

Book Review: Nothing

Nothing: A Very Short Introduction. By Frank Close. Oxford University Press; 157 pages; £7.99. To be published by OUP in America next month.

DOES anything remain when everything is taken away? This question has perplexed philosophers for thousands of years. In a new treatment, Frank Close, a physicist, examines the latest scientific thinking on the subject.

link: The Economist

In Case of Archery Accident. . . .

Arrow Remover (1500s)

Not much is known about this tool, but it is hypothesized that it was inserted into the wound in a contracted position, with the central shaft used to grasp the arrow. The blades, which appear to have their sharp edges facing outward, were then expanded using the scissor-like handles, thus expanding the flesh around the arrow to prevent the arrowhead from ripping through the meat as it was pulled out.

link: 20 Scary Old School Surgical Tools - Surgical Technologist

Hat tip: Coilhouse

And They Taste Terrific: Tires Made from Orange Oil

Tire manufacturer Yokohama is now selling a model made with 80 percent non-petroleum material, substituting orange oil as the primary ingredient to make vulcanized rubber.

The new tire is called the Super E-spec™ and has already received the Popular Mechanics Editor’s Choice Award in 2008. Yokohama will initially market the tire for hybrid car models such as the Toyota Prius.

“The eco-focused dB Super E-spec mixes sustainable orange oil and natural rubber to drastically cut the use of petroleum, without compromising performance,” Yokohama vice president of sales Dan King said. “It also helps consumers save money at the gas pump by improving fuel efficiency via a 20-percent reduction in rolling resistance.”

link: New Tires Made of Oil from Orange Peels - Earth911.com

Top Ten Most Humane Grocery Stores

Grocery Store Rankings Rank Chain/Corporation 2009 Score 2008 Score % Difference

1 Whole Foods Market 83 76 +9%

2 Shaw's Supermarket, Inc. (Supervalu, Inc.) 42 44 -5%

3 Publix Super Markets 42 36 +35%

4 Hy-Vee Inc. 36 29 +24%

5 Ralphs (Kroger, Co.) 33 ---* ---

6 Trader Joe's Co. 32 23 +39%

7 Kroger Co. 32 25 +28%

8 Giant Food Stores (Ahold USA, Inc.) 31 22 +41%

9 Stop & Shop (Ahold USA, Inc.) 30 24 +25% 10 Vons (Safeway, Inc.) 29 13 +123%

10 Safeway Inc. 25 24

link: Grocery Store Rankings - World Society for the Protection of Animals

O Arizona: Dept. of Beeing Obvious

Although there are more bee swarms, bee attacks apparently have not increased that much, fire officials said.

However, Russ Braden, interim deputy chief of operations with the Goodyear Fire Department, said people are stung all the time but don't call the fire department.

link: Buzz in Valley: Bee-ware of more swarms

Annotated Toad: 2 New Reissues of "The Wind in the Willows"

The years between 1900 and the outbreak of World War I, it has often been remarked, were a golden age in Britain for the writing of children’s books. Among the books published then are most of what we remember of Beatrix Potter; several of E. Nesbit’s novels; Kipling’s “Jungle Book” and “Just So” stories, J. M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens,” which became the basis for the stage play; Kenneth Grahame’s “Wind in the Willows”; and “A Little Princess” and “The Secret Garden,” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, who eventually became an American citizen but was born in Manchester, England. In hindsight these books seem to reflect the long, sunny afternoon of Edwardian England, a moment of arrested innocence before the outbreak of the Great War. Many of them also yearn for a rural, preindustrial England that was already vanishing. Part of their appeal is that they’re nostalgic, as we are, for childhood itself, or for a simpler past that seems to embody childhood virtue.

Of all these books “The Wind in the Willows” may be the oddest and most endearing. Too late for the centennial of its original publication in 1908, but a century and a half after the birth of the author, it has been reissued in two large-format annotated editions — one edited by Seth Lerer and published by the Belknap imprint of Harvard University Press, the other edited by Annie Gauger and published by Norton as part of its well-established series that already includes “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and three volumes of Sherlock Holmes.

link: A Second Wind for Kenneth Grahame’s ‘Wind in the Willows’ - NYTimes.com

Buzz and Todd Eat Your Hearts Out: #1 Corvette Sold

This 1960 Corvette with serial #00001 was finally sold by Mecum Auction. The Corvette was part of the huge Corvette sale at Bloomington Gold.

The Corvette did not meet the minimum price set by the owner while on the block, but Mecum allows the sale to continue out of the glare and spotlight of the huge crowds.

The first Corvette of the Sixties was Ermine White with white convertible top. The standard red interior marked this highly desireable Corvette.

The car finally sold for less than the price reached while on the block. It reached a high bid of $290,000, but after this offer was rejected by the seller, the Corvette sold for $275,000.

link: First Corvette of the '60s finally sells at $25,000 discount

O Arizona: Thumbs Up (*ahem*) For Nekkid Record

Two naturist clubs in Arizona will host skinny-dipping swimmers trying for a Guiness world record Saturday. One nude swimming event is scheduled for noon at New River's Shangri La Ranch.

link: Saturday is Nude Swimming Day as Arizona nudists try for Guiness world record

Georgia Unveils New Salamander

University of Georgia researchers discovered a two inch long salamander near Toccoa, Georgia. It is reportedly the first discovery of a new four-footed species in the US in fifty years.

It was in the spring of 2007 that the salamander was first discovered, but the details have not been published until this year, in the Journal of Zoology. The first one to be spotted was a female, and later the researchers returned to the creek area of the first discovery, and found a male.

link: New Salamander Species Discovered in US : Planetsave

Al Qaeda in North Africa

Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa has carried out a string of slayings, bombings and other lethal attacks against Westerners and African security forces in recent weeks that have raised fears the terrorist group may be turning a more deadly corner.

American and European security counterterrorism officials say that the attacks may signal the return of foreign fighters from the battlefields of Iraq, where they honed their bomb-making skills. The attacks also reflect Al Qaeda’s growing tentacles in the northern tier of Africa, outside the group’s main sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the officials say.

link: Fears in the West About a Qaeda Affiliate’s Boldness in Africa - NYTimes.com

Peter Gric: Network III

PETER GRIC / Netzwerk III

Alistair Crowley

Кара-Баас — «crowley.jpg» на Яндекс.Фотках

The Astounding Life of Death: Joaquin Bolanos

The ever-fascinating Morbid Anatomy blog reports:

The Astounding Life of Death La Portentosa Vida de la Muerte (The Astounding Life of Death) is an 18th Century Mexican book written by Joaquin Bolaños. In it, Bolaños recounts the many adventures of Death, from her beginnings in the Garden of Eden, where she is said to have been born from Adam’s Sin (Death’s father) and Eve’s Guilt (her mother; see image 1 above), to her dramatic destruction in Judgment Day (image 8), with copious quotations from the Bible and the Church Fathers to back up his facts. The protagonist of the story is referred to as “The Empress of the Sepulchers, The Avenger, and The Very Lady of All Humanity”. Muerte (death) is a female noun in Spanish; this fact allows Bolaños to create a female heroine, a very peculiar one.

link: Morbid Anatomy

Book Review: "Tatlin's Tower: Monument to Revolution"

Vladimir Tatlin, the artist whose work is the subject of Norbert Lynton's last - and posthumous - book, was a dreamer in that great utopian age. Born in 1885, Tatlin grew up in Kharkov, a major industrial city but also a centre of revolutionary thought in the Romanov Empire. At the age of fourteen or fifteen, he ran away to sea, and though he later trained at a succession of art schools, the freedom of travel (and the appeal of boats, rigging and masts) remained central to his later work. What mattered to him most, however, was art's creative potential to explore, embody and inspire the optimism of an experimental age. His two most famous projects - neither of which, fittingly, was ever realised - reflect his faith in liberation and harmony. One was to be a massive tower, a working building as well as a monument; the other was a series of prototypes intended to allow individual human flight, an airborne bicycle whose purpose (apart from acting as a form of transport) was to take humans upwards into a better future.

link: Literary Review - Catherine Merridale on Taitlin's Tower by Norbert Lynton

County by County Interactive Map of US Job Losses

David Leonhardt writes:

What does the worst recession in a generation look like?

It is both deep and broad. Every state in the country, with the exception of a band stretching from the Dakotas down to Texas, is now shedding jobs at a rapid pace. And even that band has recently begun to suffer, because of the sharp fall in both oil and crop prices. Unlike the last two recessions — earlier this decade and in the early 1990s — this one is causing much more job loss among the less educated than among college graduates. Those earlier recessions introduced the country to the concept of mass white-collar layoffs. The brunt of the layoffs in this recession is falling on construction workers, hotel workers, retail workers and others without a four-year degree.

link: Economic Scene - Job Losses Show Breadth of Recession - NYTimes.com

US Torture Policy Destroys US Credibility

Many Mexican human rights activists do not support the [human rights] conditions, noting that they were imposed by a U.S government widely accused of torturing prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“It really takes a lot of cynicism, a lot of hypocrisy, for the United States to say, ‘We will give you money to fight drug trafficking as long as you respect human rights,’” said José Raymundo Díaz Taboada, director of the Acapulco office of the Collective Against Torture and Impunity, which documents abuses in Guerrero.

link: Think Progress » Home Page

Shortcomings of the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill

James Hansen writes:

With a workable climate bill in his pocket, President Obama might have been able to begin building that global consensus in Italy. Instead, it looks as if the delegates from other nations may have done what 219 U.S. House members who voted up Waxman-Markey last month did not: critically read the 1,400-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 and deduce that it's no more fit to rescue our climate than a V-2 rocket was to land a man on the moon.

I share that conclusion, and have explained why to members of Congress before and will again at a Capitol Hill briefing on July 13. Science has exposed the climate threat and revealed this inconvenient truth: If we burn even half of Earth's remaining fossil fuels we will destroy the planet as humanity knows it. The added emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will set our Earth irreversibly onto a course toward an ice-free state, a course that will initiate a chain reaction of irreversible and catastrophic climate changes.

link: Dr. James Hansen: G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change

Amnesty International Condemns Use of Force in Iran

Amnesty International condemns “excessive use of force”

“Once again today, the authorities have demonstrated their intolerance of dissent in a manner all too reminiscent of the ruthless methods they used in 1999,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International Deputy Program Director for Middle East and North Africa. “It is high time that they stop using strong arm tactics to crush protest and abide by their obligations under human rights law.”

The National Iranian American Council has also repeatedly condemned the violence and called for an end to both the violence and a release of all political prisoners.

link: niacINsight

Call Your Insurance Company: Two Black Holes = Trouble Coming

Galaxy 0402+379 is kind of an unimposing name for the greatest unexploded bomb in existence. It doesn't have one supermassive black hole - it has two, and is thought to be the result of a truly massive collision between two galaxies, each with only the standard "one mega-ultra-huge black hole per galaxy". A galactic collision is the second most amazingly violent event you can think of - the first will be when those two black holes eventually hit each other. The resulting merger will release energy on an utterly unprecedented scale, and emit gravity waves which will bend spacetime itself.

link: The Odd Case of "0402+379": A Galaxy With Two Supermassive Black Holes

Life "Hardwired in the Universe"?

A recent mathematical analysis says that life as we know it is written into the laws of reality. DNA is built from a set of twenty amino acids - the first ten of those can create simple prebiotic life, and now it seems that those ten are thermodynamically destined to occur wherever they can.

For those unfamiliar with thermodynamics, it's the Big Brother of all energy equations and science itself. You can apply quantum mechanics at certain scales, and Newtonian mechanics work at the right speeds, but if Thermodynamics says something then everyone listens. An energy analysis by Professors Pudritz and Higgs of McMaster University shows that the first ten amino acids are likely to form at relatively low temperatures and pressures, and the calculated odds of formation match the concentrations of these life-chemicals found in meteorite samples.

link: "The DNA Code" - New Research Shows Life Hardwired in the Universe

Crisis in Kenya over Drought

An acute shortage of water resources has hit Kenya pushing the country into a crisis as water sources dry up in what experts say is a looming ecological disaster. The shortage has been complicated by drying up of water sources including rivers, lakes , dams ,wells and springs and worsened by a an ongoing 10 month drought.

The result is that, households in cities and villages are going without water for days as pastoralists clash and kill each other over few remaining water points in arid parts of the country.

link: AfricaNews - Kenya: Crisis looms as water sources dry up - Maina

Lynching in Nigeria Follows Castration

Two Cameroonians and a Nigerian have been lynched in Taraba State in Nigeria for allegedly engaging in acts that causes people to lose their genital organs.

The State Commissioner of Police, Musa Aliyu is quoted as saying the victims, Thomas Nchotu, Fosting Joseph, a driver attached to Cameroon Embassy in Lagos and the Nigerian friend, Avea Torhinbo were said to have been passing through Kurmi Local Government area to Cameroon when they were burnt to death.

He disclosed that the trouble started when one Moses Umaru from Marraraba Donga raised an alarm that the three people who were driving a Toyota Jeep marked BV 802 AGL have removed his genital organ.

The police chief added that sympathizers joined Umaru in chasing the victims, adding that the three suspects, in sensing danger, fled to Kurmi Divisional Police Headquarters for safety.

He said that the mob followed them to the station and threatened to set the station ablaze if the three suspects were not released to them. According to the Police the mob later over powered the policemen on duty, seized the suspects and set them ablaze along with their Jeep.

link: AfricaNews - Two Cameroonians lynched in Nigeria - Solomon Mforgham weblog

Indonesia-Australia Asylum Seekers Misplaced at Sea

AUSTRALIAN officials were last night frantically trying to ascertain the fate of up to 74 asylum-seekers aboard a stricken fishing boat, after Foreign Minister Stephen Smith conceded reports that the Indonesian navy had rescued the boat were wrong.

Mr Smith's admission came as Indonesian officials expressed frustration over what they described as "inaccurate" information from the Australian Federal Police regarding the boat's supposed sinking.

In a statement released late last night, Mr Smith said an assurance he offered on the ABC's Lateline program 24 hours earlier -- that the boat had been rescued after the AFP tipped off Indonesian authorities -- was wrong.

Mr Smith said his advice was based on reports conveyed by the Indonesians to Australian officials in Jakarta.

He conceded that Australian officials had no idea what had become of the Australia-bound vessel, understood to contain a number of women and children.

Mr Smith's comments mark the latest chapter in an extraordinary rescue attempt, which began with a text message sent by one of the boat's passengers to a contact in Pakistan.

link: Frantic quest for asylum-seekers | The Australian

Threat of Executions in China

As the desert region of Xinjiang in northwest China settled into tense stillness after three days of deadly ethnic violence, a Communist Party leader from the region said that those directly responsible for the killings of 156 people in the initial rioting on Sunday would be punished with the death penalty.

link: China Warns of Executions as Riots Ebb - NYTimes.com

DustCart Garbage Robot Has Uncertain Future in Italy

DustCart is part of a project called “DustBot,” a $3.9 million research program that started in 2006 to implement robotics in society in useful ways, such as cleaning the streets. It was given a friendly look to encourage interaction with humans.

But for some Italians, who believe in drying their shirts on clothes lines even in December and still look at microwaves with suspicion, the idea of handing their trash to robots seems a little too advanced — or odd.

link: Italy's Trash Robot is a Real-Life Wall-E : TreeHugger

Photo Archive: 100 Abandoned Houses in Detroit

100 Abandoned Houses

"Recycling" Graves in Chicago

Four Chicago-area cemetery workers have been charged with allegedly digging up graves and dumping the remains so the burial plots could be resold, prosecutors said on Thursday.

The Burr Oak Cemetery in suburban Alsip is the burial site for several prominent black Americans, including blues singer Dinah Washington, boxing champion Ezzard Charles, and Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy whose brutal 1955 slaying in Mississippi stoked the civil rights movement.

Till's grave was not disturbed but Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said it was not immediately clear whose plots had been dug up.

link: Chicago cemetery graves dug up and resold | U.S. | Reuters

Iran: Demonstration in Tehran

Iranian police fired in the air to disperse pro-reform demonstrators in central Tehran on Thursday, nearly four weeks after a disputed election triggered mass protests in the capital, a witness said.

The witness also said he saw police detaining several people among about 250 protesters who had gathered near Tehran University in defiance of a ban on gatherings for the anniversary of violent student demonstrations in 1999.

It appeared to be the worst outbreak of unrest in Tehran since security forces last month quelled days of opposition protests over the June 12 election, which moderate opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad say was rigged in his favor.

link: Iran police fire in air to disperse protesters | International | Reuters

Cheetahs to be Reintroduced to the Indian Subcontinent

The Mogul emperor Akbar was said to own a thousand of the beasts as part of his 16th-century hunting retinue. Since then, however, India’s cheetahs have turned from hunter to quarry — the last three known were shot by the Maharajah of Surguja in 1947.

That may now change, with plans revealed by the Indian Government to reintroduce the world’s fastest land animal to the sub-continent.

link: Cheetahs to return to India's grasslands under multimillion-pound plan - Times Online

Uighur Defiance

It was an act of bravery and defiance that was spread around the world at lightning speed by journalists visiting the riot zone: the lone woman hobbling on her crutch towards ranks of paramilitary police, their armoured vehicles retreating as she approached, shaking her fist.

In her tiny basement home in a filthy, crowded tenement yesterday, the mother of two wiped away a tear with the brown and cream headscarf that she was wearing when she faced down China’s security forces.

All she wanted, she told The Times, was the return of her husband and four brothers, who had been rounded up by the authorities and taken away to a detention centre.

link: Tursun Gul, symbol of Uighur defiance: I just want my husband back - Times Online

Chocolate Death: Smothers Brothers Prophesy Fulfilled

An American factory worker has died after falling into a vat of hot melted chocolate in New Jersey.

The man, identified as temporary worker Vincent Smith Jr, 29, was working on a platform above an 8-foot deep vat with four other workers when the fatal accident occurred at the Cocoa Services Inc. plant in Camden, New Jersey, on Wednesday morning.

The men were dumping pieces of chocolate into the enormous pot to be melted down when Mr Smith fell into the vat and hit his head on the blade of a piece of equipment known as an agitator, which stirs the chocolate before it is mixed by another company at the plant and shipped elsewhere to make sweets.

Jason Laughlin, spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office, said it is believed that Mr Smith died instantly from the blow to his head.

"He somehow slipped and fell into the vat," Mr Laughlin said. "Inside the vat, he was hit by a piece of equipment called the agitator that's used to stir, and that killed him.

"At this point there's no suggestion of foul play.”

link: Man dies after falling into vat of chocolate - Times Online

Doctors Have Second Opinion: Revisionism in Sri Lanka

Five Sri Lankan doctors who witnessed the bloody climax of the country's civil war in May and made claims of mass civilian deaths as a result of government shelling have recanted much of their testimony.

The men, who have been in police custody for nearly two months for allegedly spreading Tamil Tiger propaganda, were presented by officials at a press conference in Colombo, where they said the rebels had forced them to exaggerate the number of civilian deaths.

The doctors said that only up to 750 civilians were killed between January and mid-May in the final battles of the war, a number far below the estimated 7,000 released by the United Nations.

An investigation by The Times uncovered evidence that more than 20,000 civilians were killed in the final stages of the war — mostly by the Army.

link: Scepticism as Sri Lankan doctors backtrack over mass deaths by army shelling - Times Online

Saxophone Mentioned in News Story!--Soggy Set

On Monday night at around 9:30, water began pouring through the ceiling at Smoke, a jazz club at Broadway and 106th Street.

It was right in the middle of a set by John Farnsworth, a saxophonist, and the damage — caused by a sprinkler system that had been set off by smoke or fire six floors up — was bad enough that the club had to be shut down, said Paul Stache, one of its owners.

link: Arts, Briefly - Deluge at Jazz Club Stops the Music - NYTimes.com

Surgery and the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

She used to run away from epileptic seizures. Since brain surgery, she just runs, uninhibited by the drudgery of time and distance, undeterred by an inability to remember exactly where she is going or how to get back.

link: Surgery for Seizures Frees Athlete to Run Far, at a Cost of Remembering Little - NYTimes.com