Most Popular Entries on HuffingtonPost.comwebmaster@huffingtonpost.comCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.Most Popular Entries on HuffingtonPost.comGood old fashioned elbow grease.Michelle Obama In Rome On Wednesday (PHOTOS)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/thenewswire//2.2275572009-07-08 07:47:452009-07-08 15:27:12Anya Strzemienhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Anya Strzemien/After a three-night stay in Moscow, the Obamas touched down in Rome on Wednesday so Papa President could attend the G-8 Summit in L'Aquila July 8th to July 10th.
Upon arrival, the first couple was greeted by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and his wife Clio Napolitano at Rome's Quirinale Palace. Mrs. Obama looked resplendent in a yellow frock, offset by a green ceramic flower brooch, and two-tone pumps. When the Obamas departed Moscow earlier in the day, the first lady and her daughters all wore red.
Later on, Mrs. Obama gathered with the other G8 wives toured the Capitoline Museum in Rome while Sasha and Malia ventured out for gelato with First Granny Marian Robinson. Later on, all the Obama women visited the Colosseum. Photos below.
(Photos by AP and Getty)
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]]>Michelle Obama In Italy On Thursday (PHOTOS)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/thenewswire//2.2284842009-07-09 08:40:592009-07-09 16:04:41Anya Strzemienhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Anya Strzemien/On Thursday, the first ladies of the G8 were given a tour of earthquake damage in L'Aquila by Italian Equal Opportunities Minister (and total hottie) Mara Carfagna.
Michelle Obama wore yellow for the second day in a row, layering a floral print cardigan by Liz Claiborne (last seen May 23rd en route to Camp David) over a daffodil-colored tank and skirt by J. Crew. Later that day,the first lady changed into all-black for a visit to the Pantheon with daughters Sasha and Malia.
(PHOTOS by AP and Getty)
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]]>Michael Jackson's Kids Prince Michael, Paris And Blanket At Memorial (PHOTOS)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/thenewswire//2.2272102009-07-07 23:04:442009-07-07 23:42:07Katherine Thomsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Katherine Thomson/UPDATE: Paris Jackson also spoke. Watch her moving tribute here.
PREVIOUSLY:
Michael Jackson's three children - Prince Michael, Paris and Prince Michael II (Blanket) were front row at their father's memorial service Tuesday and joined their family onstage at the end. The trio have rarely been seen in public before now and sat with their grandmother Katherine.
]]>Man of the Peopletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2283482009-07-08 22:12:532009-07-09 11:25:03Alec Baldwinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Alec Baldwin/I was sorry to watch, live on CNN, Edward R. Murrow and Emmy Award-winning broadcaster and all around "Man of the People" Jack Cafferty spit on me on his broadcast today.
After decrying the notion of "actors and comedians" running for public office, Cafferty stated, "Baldwin's credentials are questionable... but Franken is no slouch. He's Harvard educated."
So Franken fits the mold for Cafferty because he went to Harvard? What other schools does Cafferty approve of as breeding grounds for office holders in America? What other professions does Cafferty believe should be excluded from holding office?
The material I received from a contingent in Ohio was back in 1996, but Playboy omitted that fact in editing the piece. As for running for office in the future, who knows? I always felt that doing so was a way to serve one's country. But, now that I think about what Cafferty has on his mind, maybe it's a lousy idea. Heck, I only have a BFA in drama from NYU. Perhaps New York University should print on its undergraduate drama degrees "Warning: the bestowing of this degree precludes you from seeking any public office per Jack Cafferty of CNN."
I would like to make a deal with Cafferty. Jack, you don't tell people that a career in the performing arts disqualifies them from seeking elected office, and I won't say publicly that your being convicted of leaving the scene of an accident in which you struck a cyclist and then ran two red lights while you were pursued by the police and were subsequently ordered to serve 70 hours of community service back in May of 2003 disqualifies you from posing as a "Man of the People" on a major cable news network.
Fair enough?
]]>Read the Never-Before-Published Letter From LSD-Inventor Albert Hofmann to Apple CEO Steve Jobstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2278872009-07-08 15:23:282009-07-08 16:49:10Ryan Grimhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Ryan Grim/The following post is adapted from the new book "This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America." The letter is published with the permission of the estate of LSD-inventor Albert Hofmann. For more on events related to the book, see the Facebook page or follow Ryan Grim on Twitter.
* * * * *
Steve Jobs has never been shy about his use of psychedelics, famously calling his LSD experience "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." So, toward the end of his life, LSD inventor Albert Hofmann decided to write to the iPhone creator to see if he'd be interested in putting some money where the tip of his tongue had been.
Hofmann penned a never-before-disclosed letter in 2007 to Jobs at the behest of his friend Rick Doblin, who runs an organization dedicated to studying the medical and psychiatric benefits of psychedelic drugs. Hofmann, a Swiss chemist, died in April 2008 at the age of 102.
Written just after his 101st birthday, the letter's penmanship is impressive for a man of his years. I showed it to my grandmother, Ruth Grim, who was 8 years Hofmann's junior and did amateur handwriting analysis as long as Hofmann had been tripping. Without knowing who he was, she said in an e-mail that "something happened early in his life that made him twisted about things. Maybe he felt threatened. Also--creative with his hands, hard on himself, thinks a lot, stubborn, careful with the way he expresses himself, not influenced by other's thinking."
Doblin says Hofmann often said he had a happy childhood and wouldn't characterize him as twisted. Hofmann, for his own part, often referred to LSD as his own "problem child" and in his letter he asks Jobs to "help in the transformation of my problem child into a wonderchild."
He specifically asks Jobs to fund research being proposed by Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser and directs Jobs to Doblin's Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
Doblin and Hofmann were close; Doblin gave the doctor his first tab of ecstasy in the '80s when it was still legal, he says, and Hofmann loved it, saying that finally he'd found a drug he could enjoy with his wife, no fan of LSD.
Doblin provided a copy of the letter to me; Hofmann's son, Andreas Hofmann, executor of his father's estate, authorized its publication.
The letter led to a roughly 30-minute conversation between Doblin and Jobs, says Doblin, but no contribution to the cause. "He was still thinking, 'Let's put it in the water supply and turn everybody on,'" recalls a disappointed Doblin, who says he still hasn't given up hope that Jobs will come around and contribute.
That Jobs used LSD and values the contribution it made to his thinking is far from unusual in the world of computer technology. Psychedelic drugs have influenced some of America's foremost computer scientists. The history of this connection is well documented in a number of books, the best probably being What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer, by New York Times technology reporter John Markoff.
Psychedelic drugs, Markoff argues, pushed the computer and Internet revolutions forward by showing folks that reality can be profoundly altered through unconventional, highly intuitive thinking. Douglas Engelbart is one example of a psychonaut who did just that: he helped invent the mouse. Apple's Jobs has said that Microsoft's Bill Gates, would "be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." In a 1994 interview with Playboy, however, Gates coyly didn't deny having dosed as a young man.
Thinking differently--or learning to Think Different, as a Jobs slogan has it--is a hallmark of the acid experience. "When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me to another world and into anther brain state where I've stopped thinking and started knowing," Kevin Herbert told Wired magazine at a symposium commemorating Hofmann's one hundredth birthday. Herbert, an early employee of Cisco Systems who successfully banned drug testing of technologists at the company, reportedly "solved his toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful Dead."
"It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain," said Herbert. "Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used."
Burning Man, founded in 1986 by San Francisco techies, has always been an attempt to make a large number of people use different parts of their brains toward some nonspecific but ostensibly enlightening and communally beneficial end. The event was quickly moved to the desert of Nevada as it became too big for the city. Today, it's more likely to be attended by a software engineer than a dropped-out hippie. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, are longtime Burners, and the influence of San Francisco and Seattle tech culture is everywhere in the camps and exhibits built for the eight-day festival. Its Web site suggests, in fluent acidese, that "[t]rying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind."
At the 2007 event, I set up my tent at Camp Shift--as in "Shift your consciousness"--next to four RVs rented by Alexander and Ann Shulgin and their septu- and octagenarian friends from northern California. The honored elders, the spiritual mothers and fathers of Burning Man, they spent the nights sitting on plastic chairs and giggling until sunrise. Near us, a guy I knew from the Eastern Shore--an elected county official, actually--had set up a nine-and-half-hole miniature golf course. Why nine and a half? "Because it's Burning Man," he explained. Our camp featured lectures on psychedelics and a "ride" called "Dance, Dance, Immolation." Players would don a flame-retardant suit and try to dance to the flashing lights. Make a mistake, and you would be engulfed in flames. The first entry on the FAQ sign read, "Is this safe? A: Probably not."
John Gilmore was the fifth employee at Sun Microsystems and registered the domain name Toad.com in 1987. A Burner and well-known psychonaut, he's certainly one of the mind-blown rich. Today a civil-liberties activist, he's perhaps best known for Gilmore's Law, his observation that "[t]he Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." He told me that most of his colleagues in the sixties and seventies used psychedelic drugs. "What psychedelics taught me is that life is not rational. IBM was a very rational company," he said, explaining why the corporate behemoth was overtaken by upstarts such as Apple. Mark Pesce, the coinventor of virtual reality's coding language, VRML, and a dedicated Burner, agreed that there's some relationship between chemical mind expansion and advances in computer technology: "To a man and a woman, the people behind [virtual reality] were acidheads," he said.
Gilmore doubts, however, that a strict cause-and-effect relationship between drugs and the Internet can be proved. The type of person who's inspired by the possibility of creating new ways of storing and sharing knowledge, he said, is often the same kind interested in consciousness exploration. At a basic level, both endeavors are a search for something outside of everyday reality--but so are many creative and spiritual undertakings, many of them strictly drug-free. But it's true, Gilmore noted, that people do come to conclusions and experience revelations while tripping. Perhaps some of those revelations have turned up in programming code.
And perhaps in other scientific areas, too. According to Gilmore, the maverick surfer/chemist Kary Mullis, a well-known LSD enthusiast, told him that acid helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction, a crucial breakthrough for biochemistry. The advance won him the Nobel Prize in 1993. And according to reporter Alun Reese, Francis Crick, who discovered DNA along with James Watson, told friends that he first saw the double-helix structure while tripping on LSD.
It's no secret that Crick took acid; he also publicly advocated the legalization of marijuana. Reese, who reported the story for a British wire service after Crick's death, said that when he spoke with Crick about what he'd heard from the scientist's friends, he "listened with rapt, amused attention" and "gave no intimation of surprise. When I had finished, he said, 'Print a word of it and I'll sue.'"
The letter from Hofmann to Jobs, transcribed below if you have difficulty viewing:
Hello from Albert Hofmann. I understand from media accounts that you feel LSD helped you creatively in your development of Apple computers and your personal spiritual quest. I'm interested in learning more about how LSD was useful to you.
I'm writing now, shortly after my 101st birthday, to request that you support Swiss psychiatrist Dr. Peter Gasser's proposed study of LSD-assisted psychotherapy in subjects with anxiety associated with life-threatening illness. This will become the first LSD-assisted psychotherapy study in over 35 years.
I hope you will help in the transformation of my problem child into a wonder child.
Sincerely,
A. Hofmann
* * * * *
Dear Rick,
Thank you for all you do for my problem child. I am pleased to add whatever I can do from my part.
I learned much from your great letter, to do things after waiting for the right moment, how clever and careful you organize and do your work.
I do hope that my letter to Steve Jobs corresponds to your expectation, especially what regards the choice of the writing paper. [Doblin had asked Hofmann to use his personal letterhead. It's not what you're thinking.] I believe that I followed your prescription.
Hopefully Dr. Gasser will be successful with his request.
Cordially -
Albert
]]>Vitamin D and Mental Healthtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2116362009-07-08 08:27:212009-07-10 15:50:09Therese Borchardhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Therese Borchard/
As a board certified internist, I have chosen, for the last 30 years, to take a personalized approach in my practice of integrative medicine. I have worked with literally hundreds of herbs, vitamins and dietary supplements, to help my patients, often when drugs did not work. In all this time, I have not seen one nutritional supplement that has the power to affect human health as much as vitamin D. This is because Vitamin D is not actually a vitamin -- it is a hormone that has the ability to interact and affect more than 2,000 genes in the body.
Over my 30 years of practicing medicine, countless times I have had to deliver or discuss with a patient their sad and possibly terminal diagnosis. Diseases like cancer and heart disease are at best life altering, and most times life threatening. When I have this kind of difficult conversation with a patient, I often reflect that if their vitamin D level had been normal for the previous many years, maybe they would never have developed this disease.
Ideally, your health care provider is your partner in exploring your vitamin D status, but patients usually do not want to visit their doctor just to ask for a vitamin D level, and many doctors are not yet up to date on the importance of vitamin D. If you use the at-home test kit and your blood level of vitamin D is low, I would encourage you to discuss this information with your physician.
I found this particularly interesting because a few weeks ago, I spoke to a highly-recommended internist about my overall health. She had me get all kinds of blood work done, and in her summary, she wrote that most of my levels looked good with exception to my vitamin D. I had a substantial deficiency that she suspected could explain my symptoms of fatigue and sluggishness.
She gave me a prescription for a potent vitamin D tablet that I'm supposed to take weekly for 10 weeks, and get my blood retested at that point. If my levels look okay, she told me to take a supplement of at least 2000 IU daily. This is my third week taking the super loaded vitamin D and I do feel more energetic and a tad less irritable (not that any family members would agree with me).
My internist and I talked about vitamin D for about 10 minutes in her office. She said that most of her patients had deficiencies lately, especially her female patients. She advised me that the best way to get it, of course, was sunlight, and that sunscreen actually blocks it from your system. And she's not totally pro-vitamin, either. She thinks that you are much better off eating healthy foods than taking supplements, that your body can't process the high levels of vitamins and minerals that are sold in health food aisles.
But vitamin D isn't found in any food, she explained, so that's why it's essential to take a supplement.
I've been wondering how vitamin D and mental illness are related, so I did a search and found that vitamin D does, indeed, play a role in mental illness based on these reasons from the Vitamin D Council's website:
Epidemiological evidence shows an association between reduced sun exposure and mental illness.
Mental illness is associated with low 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels.
Mental illness shows a significant comorbidity with illnesses thought to be associated with vitamin D deficiency.
Theoretical models (in vitro or animal evidence) exist to explain how vitamin D deficiency may play a causative role in mental illness.
Studies indicate vitamin D improves mental illness.
Here's even more details, according to the Vitamin D Council:
Mental illness has increased as humans have migrated out of the sun.
There is epidemiological evidence that associates vitamin D deficiency with mental illness. Two small reports studied the association of low 25(OH)D levels with mental illness and both were positive.
Depression has significant co-morbidity with illnesses associated with hypovitaminosis D such as osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis.
Vitamin D has a significant biochemistry in the brain. Nuclear receptors for vitamin D exist in the brain and vitamin D is involved in the biosynthesis of neurotrophic factors, synthesis of nitric oxide synthase, and increased glutathione levels -- all suggesting an important role for vitamin D in brain function. Rats born to severely vitamin D deficient dams have profound brain abnormalities.
]]>ADN Confirms: Palin's Story Doesn't Hold Uptag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/thenewswire//2.2286832009-07-09 11:53:182009-07-09 17:10:50Rachel Weinerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Rachel Weiner/Yesterday evening, Greg Sargent reported on The Plum Line that one of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's key reasons for resigning -- that ethics complaints against her were draining the state of money -- appeared to be false.
In response to our questions, the Governor's office provided us with a detailed breakdown of the millions Palin has claimed has gone to defending against ethics complaints. It does list roughly $1.9 million in expenditures.
But Murrow, the spokesperson, acknowledged to our reporter, Amanda Erickson, that this total was arrived at by adding up attorney hours spent on fending off complaints -- based on the fixed salaries of lawyers in the governor's office and the Department of Law. The money would have gone to the lawyers no matter what they were doing. The complaints are "just distracting them from other duties," Murrow said.
In other words, while these lawyers might have been free to do other legal work for the state, the ethics complaints have apparently not had the real world impact Palin has claimed, and didn't drain money away from cops, teachers, roads and other things.
The Anchorage Daily News did a thorough analysis and backed up the spokesperson. The ethics complaints took up time that staff could have spent doing other work, but they did not cost Alaska any money.
"Is it a check that we wrote, no, but is it staff hours, yes," Sharon Leighow, spokeswoman for Palin, said of the expenses related to state employee work.
Those state employees would have been paid regardless.
A large chunk of that work went into the state personnel board's "Troopergate" investigation, which Palin herself initiated on the grounds that a legislative probe was politicized. Only three of the ethics complaints are still pending, a fact that makes Palin's explanation seem even less sensible.
]]>Fox News Host: Americans "Keep Marrying Other Species" (VIDEO)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/thenewswire//2.2282092009-07-08 17:38:492009-07-08 22:25:14Jason Linkinshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Jason Linkins/OH NOES! What happened on Fox and Friends today, people? According to Gawker, the bright and shiny lights have once again dazzled Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade (the Brown-Haired Guy) into pure befuddlement, and this subsequently caused a series of idiot words to pour forth from his cakehole. And no one thought to stop him or force his head into a bucket of water because this is exactly how Roger Ailes drew it up on the whiteboard! I suppose it must be said: Maybe Morning Joe's Starbucks sponsorship should be accepted as a reward for having some sort of social conscience.
Jesus, this Brown-Haired Guy. He is like a murder of idiot crows, stuffed into an anthropomorphic flesh bag, that somehow successfully filled out a W-4 form and wandered onto a soundstage where he was adopted as a pet. From time to time, he produces words, and today, as his colleagues attempted to discuss a study that suggested that couples who enjoy long marriages showed a reduced tendency to develop Alzheimer's disease, he came up with these insane, vaguely racial ramblings:
BROWN HAIRED GUY: We keep marrying other species and other ethnics--
GRETCHEN CARLSON: Are you sure you are not suffering from some of the causes of dementia right now?
BROWN HAIRED GUY: The problem is the Swedes have pure genes. They marry other Swedes, that's the rule. Finns marry other Finns; they have a pure society. In America we marry everybody. We will marry Italians and Irish.
]]>Emma Watson On Wardrobe Malfunction: "At Least I Was Wearing Underwear" (VIDEO)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/thenewswire//2.2285212009-07-09 18:45:252009-07-09 18:36:21Katherine Thomsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Katherine Thomson/Hermione herself, Emma Watson, charmed David Letterman and everyone watching when she sat down to push the new Harry Potter movie Wednesday night.
The potter movie premiered Tuesday in London in the pouring rain, and her vintage dress at one point needed a little readjusting and she accidentally showed a flash of underwear.
'Tell us what's going on here,' said Letterman as he held up a picture of the incident.
'This was a small wardrobe malfunction, it happens,' Emma laughed, adding, 'At least I'm wearing underwear.'
She added, head in hands, 'I'm still learning, I'm still learning!'
Watson also confirmed to Dave that she will be starting college in the US this fall, although the institution of higher learning went unnamed.
]]>Top Ten Messages On Sarah Palin's Answering Machine (VIDEO)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/thenewswire//2.2275832009-07-08 08:22:142009-07-08 10:39:53Alex Leohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Alex Leo/As our own Jason Linkins pointed out, Letterman is one of the few comedians who needn't mourn Sarah Palin's passing off stage. After their feud this year, Letterman ended up apologizing (twice) and Palin became a touchy subject on his show for the weeks after. Now that she's resigned Dave is back in full Palin-joke form.
Monday night he spent the bulk of his monologue mocking her and last night he did a Sarah Palin top ten (without calling her a slutty flight attendant). In last night's list he managed to mock John McCain, George Bush, and himself all the while lancing Palin and her decision to step down.
For more on Palin's resignation click here, for more on the Palin-Letterman feud click here.
Iran Uprising Blogging (Thursday July 9)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/thenewswire//2.2284542009-07-09 08:00:422009-07-10 09:37:17Nico Pitneyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Nico Pitney/I'm liveblogging the latest Iran election fallout. Email me with any news or thoughts, or follow me on Twitter. Send me instant messages at nico.pitney@gmail.com or njpitney on AIM. Scroll down for news related to the front-page headlines. Local Iran time is 8 1/2 hours ahead of Eastern time. Support this post on Digg here.
10:55 PM ET -- The dangers for citizen journalists in Iran. For another reminder of why we're so lucky to get as much citizen-produced video from Iran as we do, watch the end of this clip. Via reader Marc:
8:46 PM ET -- U2 does it again. The band again plays "Sunday Bloody Sunday" with the stage covered in green light and Farsi lyrics streaming on the screen above them, during a concert in Milan.
8:36 PM ET -- Journalist explains time in Iranian prison. From Al Jazeera:
At least 35 Iranian journalists have been arrested since protests against the result of recent elections began.
Some foreign journalists were also detained. Iason Athanasiadis, a Greek-British reporter, was held for three weeks in Tehran's Evin prison.
He's now back home in Athens, where Al Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips asked him to describe what happened after his arrest.
8:11 PM ET -- No propaganda too ironic. State-run media: Iran "voices concern" over China's crackdown on protesters.
8:04 PM ET -- Good news. On June 17, the site TehranLive.org -- which had been posting incredible photos of Iran's huge demonstrations -- suddenly stopped updating. Family members of its publisher, Amir, said he had gone out one night and hadn't returned.
7:30 PM ET -- "Russia, Iran will never forgive you." From a reader, "Just wanted to say that one of the photos you linked to says 'Russia, Iran will never forgive you'.
Iranians care a lot about how other countries respond to this crisis."
Russia, as readers know, has celebrated Ahmadinejad's election "victory" and said little about the subsequent violence.
7:27 PM ET -- Allah-o Akbar! Earlier today, the NYT reported:
An Iranian blogger wrote on Twitter about one hour ago that in the Amirabad district of Tehran, "people are all on the roofs" to resume the nightly ritual of shouting "Allahu Akbar!" ("God is Great!") -- a form of protest turned against the Shah in the 1970s.
A young woman, her clothing covered in blood, ran up Kagar Street, paused for a minute and said, "I am not scared because we are in this together." [...]
A man in a business suit pulled out a collapsible baton and beat a person with a camera until the baton broke. A middle-aged woman ran through the crowd, her coat covered with blood stains. Protesters hurled rocks at security officers. Two men held a huge floral arrangement of yellow and purple flowers on green leaves in commemoration of those killed last month and in 1999, a witness said.
But still, no matter who stopped to talk, witnesses said, there was a sense of mission and unity that seemed almost validated by the brutal government response. A 55-year-old woman on the streets in support of the marchers said: "This is Iran. We are all together."
6:17 PM ET -- Professor estimates 25,000 demonstrated in Tehran. Prof. Scott Lucas, who's been blogging Iran here, is interviewed by Fintan Dunne.
5:22 PM ET -- Jubilation. It's striking, after the last few weeks of fear and anger and frustration we've heard from people in Tehran, just how joyful people seem to be in returning to the streets and being together again.
4:30 PM ET -- What is going on with BBC Persia? I've received multiple reports that BBC Persia has had practically zero coverage of the demonstrations today. What is going on over there?
4:09 PM ET -- Inspiring. More videos showing very large crowds out in Tehran. This one comes from the friend of a reader -- here is the friend's note:
This video shows the time when protesters arrived at the intersection of Taleghani and Valiasr ave, heading toward Valiasr Square.
The duration of this rally was about 25 minutes and before arriving at Taleghani intersection, riot forces were not interfering but closed behind the crowd to block the accumulation of people. After arriving at the intersection of Taleghani and Valiasr ave, people continued toward Valiasr Square, as shown in this video. At this time, the anti riot forces shot teargas and followed people on motorcycles forcing the crowd to Taleghani ave.
I continued toward Chahar-rah Valiasr where people were blocked from going to Enghelab Square. The revolutionary guards on motorbikes hit pedestrians with batons. On my way to the subway station I saw a lot of military cars full of anti riot guard heading west, apparently to help their forces stationed at Enghelab square.
3:28 PM ET -- Teargas. Via reader Chas, an apparent victim of the teargas used in Tehran today. The person next to her smoking a cigarette is trying to use the smoke to alleviate some of the burning (we've seen this several times in videos from Iran).
3:19 PM ET -- "Today they sounded very different..." Via reader Allie, Tehran Bureau has accounts from all over the city. Here's one: "All the friends I spoke to today have been relatively depressed for the past few days. But today they sounded very different. They said while the security forces were trying their best to separate the demonstrators, the city overall was alive and filled with peaceful protests. Their voice sounded excited, and much more confident and determined than in recent days."
3:13 PM ET -- From a friendly reader: "They are chanting: political prisons must be freed. You can also see a women is helping to set fire to the trash dumpster."
3:08 PM ET -- Major AP dispatch. Worth reading all of it:
Thousands of protesters streamed down avenues of the capital Thursday, chanting "death to the dictator" and defying security forces who fired tear gas and charged with batons, witnesses said. The first opposition foray into the streets in 11 days aimed to revive mass demonstrations that were crushed in Iran's postelection turmoil.
Iranian authorities had promised tough action to prevent the marches, which supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have been planning for days in Internet messages. Heavy police forces deployed at key points in the city ahead of the marches, and Tehran's governor vowed to "smash" anyone who heeded the demonstration calls.
In some places, police struck hard. Security forces chased after protesters, beating them with clubs on Valiasr Street, Tehran's biggest north-south avenue, witnesses said.
Women in headscarves and young men dashed away, rubbing their eyes as police fired tear gas, in footage aired on state-run Press TV. In a photo from Thursday's events in Tehran obtained by The Associated Press outside Iran, a woman with her black headscarf looped over her face raised a fist in front of a garbage bin that had been set on fire.
But the clampdown was not total. At Tehran University, a line of police blocked a crowd from reaching the gates of the campus, but then did not move to disperse them as the protesters chanted "Mir Hossein" and "death to the dictator" and waved their hands in the air, witnesses said. The crowd grew to nearly 1,000 people, the witnesses said.
"Police, protect us," some of the demonstrators chanted, asking the forces not to move against them.
The protesters appeared to reach several thousand, but their full numbers were difficult to determine, since marches took place in several parts of the city at once and mingled with passers-by. There was no immediate word on arrests or injuries.
It did not compare to the hundreds of thousands who joined the marches that erupted after the June 12 presidential election, protesting what the opposition said were fraudulent results. But it was a show of determination despite a crackdown that has cowed protesters for nearly two weeks.
Onlookers and pedestrians often gave their support. In side streets near the university, police were chasing young activists, and when they caught one, passers-by chanted "let him go, let him go," until the policemen released him. Elsewhere, residents let fleeing demonstrators slip into their homes to elude police, witnesses said.
All witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisals. Iranian authorities have imposed restrictions that ban reporters from leaving their offices to cover demonstrations.
Many of the marchers were young men and women, some wearing green surgical masks, the color of Mousavi's movement, but older people joined them in some places. Vehicles caught in traffic honked their horns in support of the marchers, witnesses said. Police were seen with a pile of license plates, apparently pried off honking cars in order to investigate the drivers later, the witnesses said.
3:05 PM ET -- Hats off to CNN. Its coverage of Iran today is blowing every other media outlet out of the water, including Al Jazeera and BBC Persia.
Rick Sanchez just said, "It's our responsibility, here at CNN, to share these peoples' stories with the rest of the world."
2:15 PM ET -- Scenes from today. The NYT's Lede blog has returned to Iran coverage for the demonstrations today -- check it out here. Robert Mackey just published this note from today:
Just off the phone with Teheran with several people who were out on the streets. One of them is an Iran/Iraq war veteran from the volunteer forces. People are out all over the city, there is not a single march, but protesters gather in groups of 200-300, and do not move when attacked. The basijis are trying to prevent large groups to form, but people are not forming such large groups, however there is so much protest that it cannot be contained.
Until my contacts had returned home there was no shooting, but lots of tear gas. They marched in Karegar, Vali Asr, and tried to get to Teheran University. People of all ages are out, but the young are more present. All the garbage cans in major streets are on fire. People are honking their horns. The sense is that this is the beginning of the end.
The regime assumed that with Khameni's speech last week forgiving the protesters, and arresting all the reporters and heads of reformist movement, the issue of unrest was resolved. Today's marches and protests are not supported by Mousavi, Khatami, and Karoubi. It is a grassroot uprising meant to let the Islamic regime know the people will not be silenced.
1:37 PM ET -- Really large crowds. Wow.
1:31 PM ET -- Scenes from today. From a reliable Iranian on Twitter: "One guard was running after us holding his hand up with a baton but he kept saying don't be afraid i wont hit u!"
This post in Farsi claims tear gas was thrown into a bus with passengers inside of it.
Here's a better view of the Basij out in force today:
1:17 PM ET -- The world is watching. Footage from a rooftop, reportedly from today, in which clashes are seen. Riot police seem to beat two girls and then hit a passing car.
A friend writes, "The phrase you hear -- 'begeer...begeer' means capture it, as in capture the scene."
12:51 PM ET -- The Basij lined up. More video from today (this one's a bit choppy)...
12:37 PM ET -- Changes. This blog is now paginated -- at the bottom of the screen you'll see the text "« First Prev 1 2 Next Last »" -- you can use that to click to early entries from today. It's an effort to keep the page loading faster.
If you'd like to support this post on Digg,click here.
12:28 PM ET -- Scenes from today. Via reader Leyla, from the Guardian:
According to one witness, police fired shots in the air above the crowd and swooped to arrest at least 10 protesters at one location in Tehran. One elderly man was pushed to the ground, handcuffed and put in a police bus after he shouted: "Death to the dictator." Another witness reported clashes in another part of the city.
The police stopped the cars of those supporting the protest and confiscated driver licences, a second witness said.
Click on the page numbers below to read earlier updates from today.
12:21 PM ET -- More video reportedly from today.
In this video, via reader Chas, demonstrators are chanting, "Mojtabah, die, so we will not see you become the leader," referencing Khamenei's son (who reportedly is now leading the Basij).
12:01 PM ET -- "The screams of women being beaten..."Los Angeles Times:
Violent clashes erupted today in downtown Tehran between more than a thousand determined young men and women chanting, "Death to the dictator" and "God is great" and security forces wielding truncheons.
The screams of a woman being beaten could be heard from nearby buildings, a witness said. Business owners could be seen hustling protesters into their buildings to shield them from plainclothes officers and anti-riot police who fired tear gas canisters.
Passing drivers and motorcyclists honked their horns and flashed the "V" sign in support of the clumps of demonstrators. At least one trash bin was set afire, a witness said, sending a plume of black smoke rising as dusk approached.
11:55 AM ET -- MSNBC fail. Almost noon ET and still zero mention of the demonstrations today, as far as I can tell via transcript searches and my own viewing.
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.
"Police are shooting in the air and they have arrested several people," the witness said.
Another witness at the scene in downtown Tehran said: "Police used tear gas twice to disperse the crowd. There were also many Basij militia on motorbikes patrolling the area."
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Police urged passers-by through loudspeakers to leave the area, the witnesses said.
11:38 AM ET -- Some images from today. A description from a friendly reader: "Enghelab circle or square, 26 sec in you can see the police force they have. You can also here a phone conversation in background, the person saying to the caller he is talking to: 'there is a big police force and they are not letting people loiter.'"
Here's a picture reportedly from today near Tehran University:
11:10 AM ET -- Shootings reported. "Tweets passing around that there are heavy clashes near Azadi Square.. Word is out that 3 people have been shot by security forces."
10:47 AM ET -- MSNBC fail. As far as I can tell, there has been zero mention of the events in Iran thus far on MSNBC. CNN has been doing updates roughly every 30 minutes.
10:45 AM ET -- Another Ayatollah turns? Has anyone seen news reports on this?
Ayatollah Mousavi Tabrizi, an Attorney General in the Khomeini era, declares :
- Janati's remarks at Friday sermon are against religious and Iranian law
- announcing that "confessions" are being "taken" is a serious breach of law
- not allowing peaceful protests is unconstitutional
- keeping prisoners without warrants after 24 hours is illegal
He warns all judges that any such warrants would be criminal, baseless, and directly conflict "Leader's Differentiation of Friends & Foes" declarations. He also announces that "Confrontation" or "dispersement" of peaceful gatherings and demonstrations is a direct violation of constitutional rights, "No matter who orders it."
10:43 AM ET -- More unconfirmed accounts from Iran: "Hundreds of Protesters chanting against the regime infron of Ploytechnic University, Near Azadi Sq. . . . Police used Teargas against people trying to push them back at Vanak Sq . . . Police arresting seemingly at random, throwing tear gas into buses . . . people are joining the demonstration from Imam Hossein Sq. towards Enghelab Sq . . . Clashes infront of Tehran Universi and VankSq . . ."
10:12 AM ET -- Tweets from Iran. Some unconfirmed reports from reliable Iranians on Twitter...
People are being arrested brutally in Enghelab, and tear gass is used in Vanak // Enghelab square being packed with people coming from side streets // Clashes infront of Tehran Universi and VankSq. unconf. // very heavy Basiji presence. Almost all have handguns.
One girl harshly arrested as she was dragged on the ground and thrown into a van... many others arrested
Apparently HUGE turnout, Basij desperately trying to block enghelab
6:29pm in Tehran right now, Reports of Moussavi showing might pop up as he had stated he would attend earlier
10:00 AM ET -- Context for today's rallies. TheRealNews.com features an interview with Babak Yektafar, Editor-in-Chief of Washington Prism.
9:56 AM ET -- CNN reports thousands in the streets, armed clashes. The transcript of a report on CNN from about 20 minutes ago:
Heidi, things are really heating up in the streets of Tehran. The crowds were in the hundreds according to our observers about a couple of hours ago. Now they say between 2,000 or 3,000 people, and we can confirm at least five clashes between security forces and protesters.
This is happening in revolution square...very close to Tehran University. This is a protest to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of another protest ten years ago, a crack down that killed several students... The government had said don't come out or there will be a crackdown and that's exactly what's happening. Of course, we don't have the ability to show you pictures from there because the international media is banned, but a lot of the things that we're confirming from observers on the ground coincide with what we're seeing on Twitter. Here you see a bunch of activity on Twitter, here's one person saying helicopters and armored persons are making things worse. Here's another thing, people moving towards or Revolution Square.
So we hadn't seen these types of clashes about a week and a half right now because of the government crackdown, there was a lot of Internet chatter that because of this ten-year anniversary, people would use this opportunity to come out and protest the elections. It looks like it's happening again, at least five clashes we can confirm between security forces and protesters, Heidi.
I've expanded the Twitter module at the bottom of this page to include 15 entries, so you can follow along more easily.
9:40 AM ET -- If you're interested... here's my interview yesterday with Juan Cole put together by Brave New Studio. Sincerely appreciate all the questions you sent in.
9:27 AM ET -- Demonstrations today in Iran. Getting information out of Iran is tougher than ever, so If you see or receive any news, let me know.
Update: Saeed Valadbaygi is blogging fron Iran with updates -- lots of gatherings reported. Here's a photo apparently from today:
8:44 AM ET -- U.S. releases Iran detainees to Iraq.
Five Iranian diplomats held by the US military in Iraq since January 2007 were freed on Thursday, the official IRNA news agency said, quoting Tehran's ambassador to Baghdad.
"The five Iranian diplomats abducted in Iraq were handed over by the occupying US forces to the Iraqi prime minister (Nuri al-Maliki)," the ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi said.
He said the five men would be handed over to the Iranian embassy in Baghdad after meeting Maliki.
Their detention has long been a source of additional friction in the hostile relations between Iran and its archfoe the United States.
The New York Times notes, "The reasoning behind the timing of the release was unclear. American military officials have been gradually releasing thousands of Iraqis from detention camps under the terms of the security agreement between the United States and Iraq, but thousands of prisoners for now remain in American custody."
8:20 AM ET -- Mousavi external spokesman addresses EU. The video of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, speaking in Persian, is below. A reader offers an overview:
He starts with making a parody: if there is a flight with hostages, are you going to say this issue is internal between hostages and passengers? The people are Iran are like passengers hostage to Khamenei and Ahmadinejad. He ends with two requests: 1) Not endorsing the election results, that's his main request; 2) try to prevent the regime from squashing the protesters.
]]>Oscar Mayer Deadtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/thenewswire//2.2279322009-07-08 13:17:152009-07-08 14:45:34Nico Pitneyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Nico Pitney/MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Oscar G. Mayer, retired chairman of the Wisconsin-based meat processing company that bears his name, has died at the age of 95.
Mayer's wife, Geraldine, said he died of old age Monday age at Hospice Care in Fitchburg.
He was the third Oscar Mayer in the family that founded Oscar Mayer Foods, which was once the largest private employer in Madison. His grandfather, Oscar F. Mayer, died in 1955 and his father, Oscar G. Mayer Sr., died in 1965.
Mayer retired as chairman of the board in 1977 at age 62 soon after the company recorded its first $1 billion year. The company was later sold to General Foods and is now a business unit of Kraft.
Mayer's first wife, Rosalie, died in 1998. He married Geraldine Fitzpatrick in 1999.
]]>Wedding Proposals Gone Wrong (VIDEO)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/thenewswire//2.2283442009-07-08 21:25:432009-07-09 14:06:24Nick Grahamhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Nick Graham/It's summer, the time for weddings! A few of my friends are getting married this summer and fall, so lately I've been thinking about this time-honored tradition. However, it wasn't until I ran across this compilation on Buzzfeed that I realized the plan does not always go perfectly, the ending is not always happy. So, for those of you thinking about popping the big question, I urge you to check out the videos below, which chronicle the terrible moments when that huge decision you've made turns out to be poorly planned or the wrong decision entirely. Make sure you don't up like these poor souls.
Man proposes on live TV and does not receive the response he's looking for.
This is not the player's fault; this reporter is just an idiot.
This one had such potential! Alas.
The silence at the end of this is almost too painful.
I don't want to totally bring you down, so let's end on one that's just a huge success.
]]>Australians Ban Bottled Watertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/thenewswire//2.2286782009-07-09 11:58:482009-07-09 13:00:26Susan Ryanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Susan Ryan/SYDNEY — Residents of a rural Australian town hoping to protect the earth and their wallets have voted to ban the sale of bottled water, the first community in the country _ and possibly the world _ to take such a drastic step in the growing backlash against the industry.
Residents of Bundanoon cheered after their near-unanimous approval of the measure at a town meeting Wednesday. It was the second blow to Australia's beverage industry in one day: Hours earlier, the New South Wales state premier banned all state departments and agencies from buying bottled water, calling it a waste of money and natural resources.
"I have never seen 350 Australians in the same room all agreeing to something," said Jon Dee, who helped spearhead the "Bundy on Tap" campaign in Bundanoon, a town of 2,500 about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Sydney. "It's time for people to realize they're being conned by the bottled water industry."
First popularized in the 1980s as a convenient, healthy alternative to sugary drinks, bottled water today is often criticized as an environmental menace, with bottles cluttering landfills and requiring large amounts of energy to produce and transport.
Over the past few years, at least 60 cities in the United States and a handful of others in Canada and the United Kingdom have agreed to stop spending taxpayer dollars on bottled water, which is often consumed during city meetings, said Deborah Lapidus, organizer of Corporate Accountability International's "Think Outside the Bottle" campaign in the U.S.
But the Boston-based nonprofit corporate watchdog has never heard of a community banning the sale of bottled water, she said.
"I think what this town is doing is taking it one step further and recognizing that there's safe drinking water coming out of our taps," she said.
Bundanoon's battle against the bottle has been brewing for years, ever since a Sydney-based beverage company announced plans to build a water extraction plant in the town. Residents were furious over the prospect of an outsider taking their water, trucking it up to Sydney for processing and then selling it back to them. The town is still fighting the company's proposal in court.
Then in March, Huw Kingston, who owns the town's combination cafe and bike shop, had a thought: If the town was so against hosting a water bottling company, why not ban the end product?
To prevent lost profit in the 10-or-so town businesses that sell bottled water, Kingston suggested they instead sell reusable bottles for about the same price. Residents will be able to fill the bottles for free at public water fountains, or pay a small fee to fill them with filtered water kept in the stores.
The measure will not impose penalties on those who don't comply when it goes into effect in September. Still, all the business owners voluntarily agreed to follow it, recognizing the financial and environmental drawbacks of bottled water, Kingston said.
On Wednesday, 356 people turned up for a vote _ the biggest turnout ever at a town meeting.
Only two people voted no. One said he was worried banning bottled water would encourage people to drink sugary drinks. The other was Geoff Parker, director of the Australasian Bottled Water Institute _ which represents the bottled water industry.
Australians spent 500 million Australian dollars ($390 million) on bottled water in 2008 _ a hefty sum for a country of just under 22 million people.
On Thursday, Parker blasted the ban as unfair, misguided and ineffective.
He said the bottled water industry is a leader in researching ways to minimize bottled beverage impact on the environment. Plus, he said, the ban removes consumer choice.
"To take away someone's right to choose possibly the healthiest option in a shop fridge or a vending machine we think doesn't embrace common sense," he said.
But tap water is just as good as the stuff you find encased in plastic, said campaign organizer Dee, who also serves as director of the Australian environment group Do Something!
"We're hoping it will act as a catalyst to people's memories to remember the days when we did not have bottled water," he said. "What is 'Evian' spelled backwards? 'Naive.'"
]]>The Tao of Dating: 5 Principles to Overcome Any Challenge in Your Love Lifetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2279822009-07-08 15:21:482009-07-10 12:54:43Dr. Alex Benzerhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/Dr. Alex Benzer/I get many letters like this from readers (both male and female):
"I met this guy, and he took me to dinner, and it was really romantic, but he did/didn't try to kiss me, then he called/didn't call back, then he asked/didn't ask me out again, and what does it all mean is he interested what should I do help help help."
Now, many of you think I have magical powers. And it's absolutely true. For example, I can make whole plates of pasta vanish in seconds and order beer in 12 languages.
However, reading the minds of your dates whom I have never seen nor met is not one of those powers. I missed that boat of psychic ability.
Additionally, trying to parse each individual situation for an ultimate answer doesn't work so well, because there are millions of situations and often no ultimate answer.
However, just a few reliable principles can solve a whole bunch of problems. I've found the following five principles pretty handy. They form the backbone of the Tao of Dating book for women and men, and here they are:
1. Abundance, or wealth-consciousness.
Anaїs Nin once said, "We do not see the world as it is; we see the world as we are." Thus you have the choice to see the world with a lens of wealth-consciousness or poverty-consciousness. Do you see scarcity, lack and limitation around you, or wealth, possibility and abundance?
The mindset you choose bears directly upon the success of your love life (and your success in general). Scarcity-consciousness - e.g. "all the good ones are taken" - begets neediness, and neediness is not attractive.
Big-heartedness and self-sufficiency, on the other hand, work much better. Even the Bible has something to say about that: "For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath."
Seems kind of mean, but it's just the way of the world: wealth begets wealth. So even if you don't have a companion, act as if there is an unlimited supply of what you want available to you already.
And you know what? There is. Because even if only one thousandth of one percent of the 6.5 billion people in this world are cool enough to be eligible for your companionship, that's, oh, 65,000 folks. That's enough dates to tide you over for a whole month.
2. Enlightened self-interest.
This one has three words in it. 'Enlightened' means that you make decisions by considering the long-term consequences of your actions. Short-sighted decisions - e.g. "I know he's a bad boy, but it'll be so much fun" - usually end in tears and/or heartbreak.
'Self' means that your welfare takes priority, just like in the pre-flight announcement where they say put on your own oxygen mask first, then help others in the case of an emergency. To be able to take care of anyone else, you need to take care of you first. Simple, totally non-negotiable, and often neglected.
'Interest' means that you're signing up for your fulfillment and joy, not your pain. If a relationship is making you miserable and unhappy - like that of my friend Holly who was being put down and punched up by the man she was supporting financially - consider ending it. Because fulfillment is a feeling, not a person. So if you're not getting fulfilling feelings in a relationship, chances are you're with the wrong person.
3. The Be-Do-Have paradigm (vs. Have-Do-Be).
Many people think like this: "If I have a great partner, then I can do the things that people with partners do, and then I can be happy." That's actually the tail wagging the dog. The proper sequence is: "If I am a happy, self-sufficient, generous and charming person, then I will have a great life and do things that feel good and make me attractive, and then, as a pleasant side-effect, will have fabulous companions who are naturally attracted to my life."
Successful change begins at the level of identity and belief, so first, be the kind of person you want to be. From the right beliefs will flow the right actions, or te (the middle word from Tao Te Ching) naturally and effortlessly, from which will come right results.
4. Yin-Yang (Feminine-Masculine) Polarity
The Taoists say that two poles are necessary for energy to flow: the receptive or feminine yin and the projecting or masculine yang. We see this in nature: water runs from high to low; electricity flows between cathode and anode; magnetic force goes between north and south poles.
This is especially true of human relations. Without polarity, relationships fall flat, whether in heterosexual or same-sex couples: someone has to wear the pants.
As a man, if you take on too much yin, you risk turning into an indecisive wimp, which is not necessarily appealing to women. Having an open heart is great; just remember to keep your spine also.
As a woman, if you take on too much yang, you risk turning into a facsimile of a guy, which may be admirable but not necessarily attractive. Strength is great, but remember that femininity is what draws in the masculine.
5. Get out of your own way.
Recently a very intelligent woman wrote to tell me she couldn't date guys who were less smart than her, because they bored her. And when she finally found a guy who was smarter than her, she found herself competing with him and putting him down out of insecurity, thereby driving him away. Basically, she could not win.
So much pain in dating is self-inflicted and has to do with upholding our own importance or appeasing the ego.
Therefore I will state here without proof that there is no greater waste of your energy than upholding your own importance. Get used to the idea that it just doesn't matter.
The Buddhists have this nifty concept called anatta, or no-self. It basically means that nothing in the universe has a fixed identity - especially you. If you're breathing and have a heartbeat and just read this phrase, billions of things changed in your mind and body right now. So you're fundamentally not the same you were five seconds ago, let alone five years ago. So quit trying to defend something that essentially isn't there.
Whether or not you fully buy into this concept, it's a handy notion: with no ego to be rejected, insulted or hurt, you're much more likely to have an open heart and take risks in love. You're also more likely to be kind, compassionate, and fun to be around.
When you practice anatta, all the energy that was used for judgment, competition and defensiveness can now be used for a better purpose: practicing the loving.
Waiting for the world to arrange its circumstances perfectly to allow you to start loving, to paraphrase Ramana Maharshi, is like wanting to cover the world in leather so you can walk barefoot. It is much simpler to wear shoes. The time to love is always now.
So if your best thinking got you here, perhaps it's time to start something new: practice abundance; take the long view; be the change you want to see; and open into even greater loving.
