Sacha van Loo, 36, is not your typical cop. He wields a white cane instead of a gun. And from the purr of an engine on a wiretap, he can discern whether a suspect is driving a Peugeot, a Honda or a Mercedes.

Van Loo is one of Europe's newest weapons in the global fight against terrorism and organized crime: a blind Sherlock Holmes, whose disability allows him to spot clues sighted detectives don't see.

"Being blind has forced me to develop my other senses, and my power as a detective rests in my ears," he said from his office at the Belgian Federal Police, where a bullet-riddled piece of paper from a recent target-shooting session was proudly displayed on the wall. "Being blind also requires recognizing your limitations," he added with a smile, noting that a sighted trainer guided his hands during target practice "to make sure no one got wounded."

Van Loo, a slight man who has been blind since birth, is one of six blind police officers in a pioneering unit specializing in transcribing and analyzing wiretap recordings in criminal investigations. An accomplished linguist who taught himself Serb Croat for fun, he laments that he is not entitled to carry a gun on the job or make arrests. But such is his acute sense of hearing that Paul van Thielen, a director at the Belgian Federal Police, compares his powers of observation to those of a "superhero."

A blind Sherlock Holmes: Fighting crime with acute listening

President George W. Bush vetoed a major spending measure on Tuesday that would have funded education, health care and job training programs, saying it contained too many special projects, even as he signed a $459 billion bill to increase the Pentagon's non-war funding.

The veto, of a measure providing $150.7 billion in discretionary spending for the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services, was announced as Bush was en route to southern Indiana to deliver an economics speech at which, his spokeswoman said, he would criticize Congress for its "wasteful spending."

This is total bullshit! He is truly trying to take this country down... Really? What is his logic ... ?

Bush vetoes domestic spending bill on health, education and jobs

CHOICE IS GOOD. And the more choices, the better.

This simple American credo lines the shelves of grocery stores with 162 varieties of breakfast cereal, turns ordering a cup of coffee at Starbucks into an Olympic challenge, makes selecting a phone company an enterprise requiring a business degree and supplies dating services with an endless stream of hopeful customers.

It also underlies the way many economists think about human behavior. Human beings, according to traditional economic theory, are rational creatures who, faced with a choice, weigh the costs and benefits of each option and pick the one they prefer. And the more options people are given, the theory goes, the more satisfied they will be.

Yet in an article published last month in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, two social psychologists dispute this view, arguing that at some point, multiplying the number of alternatives people are given becomes counter productive.

In a series of studies, Dr. Sheena S. Iyengar, an assistant professor at Columbia's business school, and Dr. Mark R. Lepper, chairman of Stanford's psychology department, have demonstrated that providing too many options— particularly when the differences between them are small — can make people feel overwhelmed and overloaded, and as a result, less likely to buy or pursue any of the options available.

Choice is good.... Amd the more the better...

What's the number one issue to voters right now?

James Carville made the phrase "It's the economy, stupid" famous during Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run.

"It's the economy, stupid" -- a phrase Clinton advisor James Carville made famous during President Clinton's successful 1992 presidential race.

It's possible that the top issue in next year's election will not be Iraq or terrorism.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation's poll conducted November 2-4, the economy now tops the list of the issues voters now rate as most important in their vote for president, with 82 percent of those surveyed saying it was extremely or very important. That's just ahead of the war in Iraq, which 80 percent said was an extremely or very important factor in how they will decide to vote.

Could it be 'the economy, stupid' again?

Stephen Colbert’s presidential candidacy may have been a joke to many, but apparently some in South Carolina took it seriously enough to lobby Democratic officials in the early primary state to deny him a spot on the state’s ballot.

The lobbying was pretty intense, according to several people, with most of it against allowing Mr. Colbert, the comedian on Comedy Central and native son of the state, on the ballot. They included prominent supporters of Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, although another prominent supporter lobbied in favor of Mr. Colbert. The Obama campaign said that it had no connection to the vote.

The party’s executive council voted 13-3 last week to reject Mr. Colbert’s ballot application. Mr. Colbert formally acknowledged yesterday that he was dropping his candidacy but the party’s vote has drawn fierce criticism on the Internet, saying the move was undemocratic, and continues to roil the party.

Those lobbying against Mr. Colbert included Don Fowler, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the husband of Carol Fowler, the current chairwoman of the state party.

Mr. Fowler distributed a letter to council members saying that Mr. Colbert “seeks to make a travesty of our primary.” In his letter, he raised the specter of the 2000 presidential campaign, saying that if Ralph Nader had not drained votes from Al Gore, Mr. Gore could have been president.

Mr. Fowler said in an interview that he had heard some concerns expressed by Obama supporters that Mr. Colbert might siphon young voters away from Mr. Colbert, but that was not his motive in urging the council to say no to Mr. Colbert.

“I am conscious of the fact that the Obama people are concerned about the potential effect, but that in no sense was the reason that I wrote that letter,” he said. Rather, he said, he wanted an orderly process. “For somebody to make light of that process as if it were his own little play toy, that is offensive,” he said. “We would be the laughing stock of America. Electing the president is serious business.”

Lumus Byrd, a member of the council — and one of the three who voted to allow Mr. Colbert’s name to appear on the ballot — said he had been lobbied by three other members of the council who argued that Mr. Colbert would expose South Carolina to ridicule.

“South Carolina has been the butt of so many jokes, and the folk here are a little sensitive about anything that a comedian who’s got that much airtime might say,” Mr. Byrd said. “They were afraid he was going to talk about some of our dirty little linen,” he said, citing the Confederate flag, which flies on the grounds of the statehouse, the “corridor of shame” of dilapidated schools and the state’s racial history.

Another call to council members came from Inez Tenenbaum, the state’s former superintendent of education, who supports Mr. Obama. Ms. Tenenbaum... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Colbert vs. Obama vs. S.C. - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog

A hobby historian has discovered the oldest known recipe for German sausage, a list of ingredients for Thuringian bratwurst nearly 600 years old.

According to the 1432 guidelines, Thuringian sausage makers had to use only the purest, unspoiled meat and were threatened with a fine of 24 pfennigs -- a day's wages -- if they did not, a spokesman for the German Bratwurst Museum said Wednesday.

Medieval town markets in Germany had committees charged with monitoring the quality of produce. Thuringian bratwursts, which are made of beef and pork, are symbols of Germany's cultural heritage and ubiquitous snacks at football matches.

Historian Hubert Erzmann, 75, found the ancient recipe, inscribed with pen and ink in a heavy tome of parchment, earlier this year while doing research in an archive in the eastern town of Weimar, museum spokesman Thomas Maeuer said.

"The discovery shows that there were already consumer protection laws in the Middle Ages," he said.

The instructions go on display Thursday in the Bratwurst Museum near the eastern city of Erfurt, Thuringia's capital.

Historian finds oldest recipe for bratwurst...

This fall, Nashville Public Library becomes only the second institution in the nation to host for a full year, “StoryBooth,” an outpost of StoryCorps, the acclaimed national project that encourages Americans to listen to each other by sharing the stories of their lives in sound.

Cool! :)

StoryCorps in Nashville

It can be a lonely feeling when the phone doesn't ring.
And even though, yes, you could pick up the phone and call someone, sometimes you just need someone else to reach out first.

Ryan Paulson knows that feeling. Even though he's busy with classes at Dakota State University and a part-time job at Daktronics in Brookings, even though his parents only live a few miles away in Colman, even though he has - as of Saturday - a fianc� by the name of Cassie Moeller, sometimes he would look at his cell phone lifeline and just wish it would ring more often.

That's why a postcard posted Sept. 23 on PostSecret.com resonated deep within Paulson.

It said, "I bought the coolest phone on the planet - but it still only rings as often as my old phone did."

PostSecret is a Web site that bills itself as an art project. People are invited to send in homemade postcards that reveal a secret they've never shared before.

A man named Frank Warren started the site in 2005. About 20 postcards are put on the Web site each Sunday, and Warren's fourth book of postcards will be released next week.

Earlier this year he began accepting reader comments on the week's postcards.

Paulson's response was put online the same day the postcard appeared.

Paulson wrote, "I feel the same way. I often wonder why I even have a phone because I rarely receive calls."

Then he offered a metaphorical ear.

"If there was a way we could contact each other, that would be cool. My phone number is 605-212-7787."

A few hours later, his phone rang. It was Warren, checking to see if Paulson had submitted a real phone number and truly was willing to talk with a stranger.

Paulson said yes, and his response was on line by 7:30 p.m.

Then his cell phone started ringing.

"Within five, 10 minutes of putting it up, I'd already had a couple phone calls," Paulson says. "I was like, OK, a few people will call and maybe the one person who put it up there."

Little did he know.

Within the first couple of days, Paulson received 250 calls, so many that his voicemail told countless other callers that it could accept no more messages.

He has talked to people in almost every state, along with calls from Colombia, Scotland, England and Australia. He's talked with soldiers stationed in Iraq.

Paulson spoke for more than two hours with cousins conducting a conference call from North Carolina and Georgia. He spoke to a 45-year-old nontraditional student who shares his interest in art. He talked with a woman who had just put her children to bed.

And he learned he's not the only one out there who sometimes just wants to feel like someone out there cares.

Paulson, unknowingly, tapped into fears that many of us share: that in a busy, crammed-full life, no one remembers us; that our answering machines never flash because we simply don't matter to anyone; that in an era when communication with ot... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Reach Out and Touch Someone...

(CNN) -- A federal jury in Baltimore, Maryland, Wednesday awarded $10.9 million to a father of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by members of a fundamentalist church carrying signs blaming soldiers' deaths on America's tolerance of homosexuals.

The family of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder -- who was killed in a vehicle accident in Iraq's Anbar province in 2006 -- sued the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and its leaders for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Church members showed up at Snyder's funeral chanting derogatory slogans and holding picket signs with messages including "God Hates Fags."

I am all for free speech but some people take $4!7 too far!

Good!

Church ordered to pay $10.9 million for funeral protest - CNN.com

Anymore, criticizing the Bush administration is like having an unproductive cough- the stuff is so deep in there that you can’t hack up the obstructing mass. And so it is with the current president and appointees, who are insinuated into the deep recesses of power like a resistant strain of waxy mycobacterium.

Serial government haters all, the Bush II krewe has privatized large chunks of gov’t service work and handed it on a no-bid platter to loyal backers like Halliburton who are largely registered in tax haven countries.

Unwilling to make the ultimate commitment to the USA (or wanting cover its tracks), Halliburton moved its headquarters to the United Arab Emirates. Presumably to take advantage of the tax-free business environment and the lack of a troublesome extradition treaty with the USA. The status of Halliburton as a foreign contractor needs to be examined in public.

Yes, this is old news, but Americans should not forget this outrage. According to HalliburtonWatch, Cheney himself increased the number of foreign tax haven subsidiaries from 9 to 44 during his time there as CEO.

There is nothing illegal about taking advantage of tax law. But at some point a company has to decide what country they support and what side of history they want to be on. That which is possible is not necessarily manditory. When money is the only scorecard, ethics fly out the window. Stockholders bear as much responsibility for this craven behaviour as do the officers. [*crunching* noise as I step off the soapbox]

Halliburton became a successful company in part through it’s use of resources provided by the US taxpayer. Halliburton used US government funded highways to get its goods and services moved around the US. Their security was provided by the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Marines. Halliburton staff and stockholders are protected from epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control. Sewage from Halliburton office buildings goes into local municipal waste treatment plants. Physicians trained in publically subsidized medical institutions lance their boils and treat their childrens ear infections. The list of benefits from public infrastructure is substantial.

Now these greedy corporate ex-patriots want to shelter their earnings from tax liability. They don’t want to contribute to the upkeep of the very system that facilitated their ascent to wealth.

This entire thing is so dirty and so extensive, it will take a generation to understand it and legislate corrective action. The whole fetid, reeking mess is offensive.

organized crime?

Halliburton and the Bush II Krewe « Lamentations on Chemistry