http://www.smashingames.com/games/spaceinvaders.html (Space Invaders)

Obesity Ages Men By 10 Years

A new study examining the links between obesity and testosterone has
discovered that men who gained just 30 pounds (13.6kg) lost as much
testosterone as if they'd aged 10 years, Reuters reported this week.

Scientists from the New England Research Institute tracked 1,667 men
during their study and published their findings as Australian doctors
warned that exploding obesity levels are creating an epidemic of teenagers
with man-boobs, prompting increasing numbers of Australian boys to seek
reduction surgery.

"We are getting a lot more requests for surgery for young people, and
we are refusing to do it in some cases," said Dr Rod Cooter, spokesman
for the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons Adelaide.

"Some of the expectations are unrealistic, some think they can go out
and eat whatever they like, and we'll fix it," he added (Adelaide
Advertiser).

http://www.springfrog.com/games/asteroids (Classic asteroids)

http://www.flashteroids.com (Flash asteroids)


http://samvak.tripod.com/abuse8.html (Identifying abusers: "Haughty"
body language – The abuser adopts a physical posture which implies and
exudes an air of superiority, seniority, hidden powers, mysteriousness,
amused indifference, etc. Though the abuser usually maintains sustained
and piercing eye contact, he often refrains from physical proximity (he
maintains his personal territory) . .)

http://www.bemyastrologer.com/body_language_plus.html (Limp-Wrist
Shake: 'A person who extends only the fingers or whose hand feels like a
west fish when you grasp it is saying, "I don't want to touch you; I don't
like intimacy." It's also a sign of submission and weakness. When a man
uses this handshake in a business setting, he may be indicating that he
intends to secretly manipulate the situation . . .')

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles (Spot the
fake smile)


http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/vanish.htm ('How to disappear in America
without a trace:' Always over-estimate the resolve of those seeking to
find you yet keep your estimations reasonable. Greatly over-estimating
your opposition can cause you to behave in predictable, patterned ways,
however. It is the predictability of your actions based upon your
opposition's controlled stimulus which can get you caught . . .')

http://www.bushrag.com (Camouflage Tips)

http://www.divine-interventions.com/baby.php (Baby Jesus buttplugs:
'Slap him on the dashboard, Use him as the ultimate pacifier or make Baby
Jesus the centrepiece of your magnificent Dildo Creche . . .')

http://www.blowfish.com/catalog/toys/symbolic_dildos.html
('high-quality silicone dildos in the shapes of religious figures. Perfect gifts for
the iconoclasts in your life . . .')

http://users.frii.com/gosplow/cgsa.html (A Christian's Guide to Small
Arms: 'The Lord Jesus Christ gave very clear instruction to His
disciples in the upper room after the Last Supper. They were to be sent on a
mission, and were to take with them certain things - moneybag, knapsack,
and sword . . .')



New York's Limelight Sold For Shops

New York nightlife received another brutal blow this week, with the
announcement that seminal superclub venue the Limelight is to be turned
into a shopping mall.

In recent years the 6th Avenue converted Episcopal church traded as
Avalon though remained best known for being the centre of Michael Alig's
club kid scene of the 90s. The club also continued to be targeted by
local police who most recently closed it down during a Halloween Party
over licensing technicalities.

The 1am raid prompted a despairing response from the venue's last chief
Ricky Mercado, who told the Village Voice' It's just like they are
saying, 'Nightclubs—get the f**k out of New York City', a prediction that
appears justified with Limelight's future.

"The landlord has decided that he doesn't want to go forward with
another nightclub," financial broker Frank Terzulli, of Winnick Realty Group
told the New York Post this week.

"He's going to cut it up for retail tenants and a restaurant with patio
seating."

Eddie Dean from rival superclub Pacha was sympathetic, telling Skrufff
'Whew, what a shame. Limelight will always be part of New York City
nightclub history'.

"I'm not quite sure what happened, but what little I've heard is the
overhead of being located on 6th Avenue was tremendous," Eddie continued.

"The costs of operating a club in New York City have been steadily
rising and the cost of being actually on 6th Avenue had to have made things
very difficult. Avalon has had great success in other cities, but
clearly New York is different," he said.

"Although the card is a valuable piece - we would never dream of selling it as can you really put a price on true love?" How very true...
Hey Capt. saab, how have u been?? Haven't seen u around :)

"Although the card is a valuable piece - we would never dream of selling it as can you really put a price on true love?" How very true...

SNDY , a true romantic, huh? :P

:)

View/Share this post only

I am, I guess :)

Something to think about ...

JON CARROLL
Jon Carroll

Thursday, February 15, 2007

There was a letter in This Very Newspaper the other day; it went like this: "How I light my bedroom should be just as much my own decision as what I do there." Well, no, actually, it shouldn't. If you lived next door to me and you chose to light your bedroom with 100 burning iguanas, I'd be darned glad that Big Brother was around to step in. Your sexual practices (unless they involve burning iguanas) are your own business, but we all live on this planet together, and our perceived rights should be balanced by our actual responsibilities.

The issue at hand was fluorescent lights, particularly those curly little ones that fit into regular home light sockets. I have some, and they are marginally annoying, but having the oceans die will be annoying too. We're out of unannoying options. It would be nice if everyone cowboyed up on this one, but that does not seem to be happening.

I am reminded of my youthful experience with the vacuum cleaner. My mother used to ask me to vacuum the house. I loved my vacuum. It made a big industrial noise, and it had a cool suction tube that could make small items disappear. It was sort of like owning a weapon, provided your primary enemies were dust bunnies.

And here's the thing: It never occurred to me to wonder where all those dust bunnies and paper bits and cookie crumbs went. I thought it was magic, if I thought about it all. My mother was the one who changed the bag, and I was far older than I should have been before I realized there was a bag.

I think a lot of us in the First World are sort of like that. Electricity comes from the socket and gas comes from the stove and wood comes from the lumberyard and food comes from the supermarket. I mean, we know in our large brains that it doesn't, but it sure is more convenient not to really consider the consequences, or believe that our role in the grand scheme of things is just not that important.

And our role is not important. If it were just us, the skies would be clear and the water would be fresh and polar bears would enjoy unbroken snowfields to the horizon. It's the 6 billion "just us's" that cause the problem. And that's why we have (wait for it) government. It can organize people for the common good. It can offer carrots and apply sticks. It can make us aware of our collective responsibilities. We watch out for each other. We act from concern.

Not that our current government is doing that. Our current government is joining the other governments of the world in endorsing the following plan of action: (1) Yes, global warming is real, and (2) it's not our problem. The United States points out the higher pollution levels in developing countries like China, China points to Americans using an unfair percentage of total resources, Russia says it's too poor right now to do anything, and Zimbabwe blames it all on colonialism. The Scandinavian countries are waving their hands and saying, "Hey, hey, right here, we're doing something," but, you know, they're always doing something, those Scandies. Can't go by the Scandies; we'd all be running from hot rooms and jumping into icy ponds if the Scandies had their way.

OK, envision our entire ecosystem as a thug. It pretty much has us where it wants us. If it decides to take a hike, we are such complete toast. And the ecosystem is saying: "We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way." The ecosystem, like any thug, is lying -- there is no easy way. But there's the mass-extinction thing, or there's the lots-of-readjustments-and-pain thing. Our choice.

The offer is not on the table forever. At any moment, the ecosystem could get fed up and collapse. We really can't make a computer model of how or when it will happen, although we can see which way all the arrows are pointing. Saving energy is never a bad idea, you know. If your bedroom looks a little harsh and glary, have your fun in the daytime. I mean, that's not a bad idea just by itself.

See, the thing is, there is a bag inside the vacuum cleaner. Everything does wind up in there, and we can't really just shake it out and start over. We have to reduce the dust bunnies per capita. I have no idea which way is the right way to do it; why don't we try all the ways, and sort out the results later?



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's the thug theory, and the vacuum bag theory, and the afternoon delights theory -- and all of them are true! So wonderful.
So quit whining and nut up. You're right. If you can't do this, you are a failure. Josh can do this, and earlier today he ate a club sandwich with the toothpick still in it. Jenna can do this, and she was once engaged to David Blaine. Any dumb-dumb can act, Jack. So be a man and get jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

Study: Office desks havens for bacteria

TUCSON, Ariz. - Your office desk harbors far more bacteria than your workplace restroom, and if you're a woman, chances are your workspace has more germs than your male co-workers', a new research report shows.

Women have three to four times the number of bacteria in, on and around their desks, phones, computers, keyboards, drawers and personal items as men do, the study by University of Arizona professor Charles Gerba showed. Gerba, a professor of soil, water and environmental sciences, tested more than 100 offices on the UA campus and in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oregon and Washington, D.C. The $40,000 study was commissioned by the Clorox Co.

"I thought for sure men would be germier," Gerba said. "But women have more interactions with small children and keep food in their desks. The other problem is makeup."

Don't get Gerba wrong: Women's desks typically looked cleaner. But the knickknacks are more abundant, and cosmetics and hand lotions make prime germ-transfer agents, Gerba said. Makeup cases also make for fine germ homes, along with phones, purses and desk drawers.

Food in desk drawers also harbors lots of microorganisms, and it is more abundant among female office workers. Gerba found 75 percent of women had munchies in their desks.

"I was really surprised how much food there was in a woman's desk," he said. "If there's ever a famine, that's the first place I'll look for food."

The news isn't all negative for the fairer sex. Gerba found the worst overall office germ offender is men's wallets. "It's in your back pocket where it's nice and warm, it's a great incubator for bacteria," Gerba said.

Another hot spot for bacteria in men's offices: the personal digital assistant.

"Men tend to play with their Palm Pilots more," Gerba said. "I think they're playing video games or something."

The average office desktop has 400 times more bacteria than the average office toilet seat, Gerba said.

Gerba said using a hand sanitizer and using a disinfectant on office surfaces helps, with 25 percent fewer bacteria found on surfaces that were regularly disinfected. Once-a-day use should be sufficient.

"You don't have to go crazy with it, but with the key areas, desktops, phones and keyboards probably need to be disinfected once in a while," he said.

___

Information from: Arizona Daily Star, http://www.azstarnet.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070215/ap_on_he_me/germy_desks_7

Nepalko chora, how r u?? I'm sure, this report was written by a male :)

Sndy dijyu,
I am good, thanks. How have you been ?? I hope things are good at your side.
Yeah, the professor's name sounds like a male. BUT..Didn't you read through the lines..
"The news isn't all negative for the fairer sex. Gerba found the worst overall office germ offender is men's wallets. "It's in your back pocket where it's nice and warm, it's a great incubator for bacteria," Gerba said."
So, females don't need to panic, I guess :P

I'm also good..Haven't seen u for a while..By the way, I don't panic k...:)

Sndy dijyu,
Good to hear that you are also good and not infected by "panic" mania.
I am kind of hibernating recently because of chilling winter here in mid-west.
Have a good day, ya'll !!

Nice pieces SNDY and Nepal ko chora.

Not sure if this one has already done the rounds on Sajha but good news for all the folks who love and can afford to have a siesta:

- http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/13/news/nap.php

Embrace your siesta for a healthy heart

Could midday napping save your life?

If the experience of Greek men is any guide, the answer just may be yes.

In a study released Monday, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and in Athens reported that people who took regular 30-minute naps were 37 percent less likely to die of heart disease over a six-year period than those who never napped. The scientists tracked more than 23,000 Greek adults, finding that the benefits of napping were most pronounced for working men.

Researchers have long recognized that Mediterranean adults die of heart disease at a rate lower than Americans and Northern Europeans. Diets rich in olive oil and other heart-healthy foods have received some of the credit, but scientists have been intrigued by the potential role of napping.

The study, published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, concluded that napping was more likely than diet or physical activity to lower the incidence of heart attacks and other life-ending heart ailments.

..... Specialists not involved with the study said there were sound biochemical reasons to believe that a nap might help protect against heart disease.

Essentially, they said, sleep at any time of day acts like a valve to release the stress of everyday life. ....

Capt. saab,
Yes, I did read it before, but not in Sajha..I need to get some nap :)

And its only 9:40 there, SNDY! :P

Kidding ... I wish I could take one now :)

Lol..I can take one anytime of the day k...:) if I had a choice, that is :)

Wouldn't it be nice to pay for your 2% Latte at Starbucks using your mobile phone instead of a card or cash - that might just be the future of money according to this article in the Economist. Thought some of you might find this interesting :)

It's a bit long but well worth the read. Also note, perhaps no surprises there, how the US is still behind the curve a little bit on the technology even though, according to the same article, they may have quite a bit of the infrastructure to catch up

###############################

Source : - http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8697424

The future of money
A cash call

Feb 15th 2007 | LONDON, NEW YORK AND TOKYO
From The Economist print edition
Smart cards and mobile phones are quickly emerging as ways to pay with electronic cash



SOME of the hottest nightclubs have a new trick for checking the identity of their VIP guests: they send an entry pass in the form of a super barcode to their mobile phones. This is scanned by the large gentleman who lifts the velvet rope. Even those who must pay to get in may need their handsets: at a recent clubbers' night at London's Ministry of Sound, students were offered discounts if they used their mobile phones to buy electronic tickets.

Mobile phones are becoming an increasingly popular way to make all sorts of payments. In America fans of the Atlanta Hawks have been testing specially adapted Nokia handsets linked to their Visa cards to enter their local stadium and to buy refreshments. Elsewhere schemes are more advanced. You can already pass the day in Austria without carrying cash, credit or debit cards by paying for everything, including consumer goods, with a mobile phone, says Arthur D. Little, a firm of management consultants. It reckons worldwide payments using mobile phones will climb from just $3.2 billion in 2003 to more than $37 billion by 2008.

Mobiles are used to buy lots of things in Asia. Earlier this month Visa and SK Telecom, South Korea's leading mobile company, announced the commercial launch of a phone-payments system aimed initially at 30,000 subscribers. In Japan hundreds of thousands of transactions, from buying railway tickets to picking up groceries, already take place every day with customers passing their handsets across a device like that pictured above. Payments are confirmed with a sound like the bell of an old cash register.

Sending money home

More banking services are also being offered on mobiles. On February 12th, 19 telephone operators with networks in over 100 countries said that people would be able to use their handsets to send money abroad. MasterCard will operate the system in which remittances will be sent as text messages. For people without bank accounts, the credit can be converted into pre-paid cards which can then be used to buy things. “It will revolutionise the money-transfer business,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal, boss of Bharti Airtel, one of India's biggest mobile operators. The idea is to tap into the more than $250 billion a year that immigrants and migrant workers send to relatives and friends back home.

Britain's Vodafone and America's Citigroup are also launching an international money-transfer service developed from the M-PESA remittance service which is already operating successfully within Kenya. Sir John Bond, formerly chairman of the HSBC banking group and now chairman of Vodafone, has long been convinced that payments and mobiles would somehow converge. “Mobile phones have the ability to make a dramatic change to village life in Africa,” he says.

He also thinks phones loaded with credit will make many of the payments people use cash for in rich economies. For banks with high infrastructure costs, says Sir John, it has always “been hard to make money out of small payments”. But lower-cost business models, some of them from developing countries, are opening up new opportunities. The big attraction of the mobile phone as a purse is that so many people have them—even children.

Buying a train ticket, picking up a newspaper and grabbing a cup of coffee on the way to work with just a wave of your handset promises to be a lot more convenient than fumbling for money and waiting for change, or using a credit or debit card and having to tap in numbers or sign a slip of paper.

Pre-paid or “smart” cards, like those used by Hong Kong's Octopus and London's Oyster for travel on subways, provide a lot of convenience—and for operators as well as passengers, because money is expensive to handle. Transport for London says in the three years since it introduced Oyster, the cards now account for three out of four journeys on the underground and buses. Cash payments for tickets have fallen to just 5%. It has helped to boost usage with differential pricing: tickets bought for cash cost a lot more than using a smart card.

Could retailers start charging more for taking cash? At present the fees merchants pay for taking credit cards lead many to impose minimum limits on what customers can charge. If the fees for using smart cards and mobiles were low enough, cash would be more expensive to take, so it might well attract a surcharge.



_________________________________________________________________
The attraction of the mobile phone as a purse is that so many people have them
________________________________________________________________


Both MasterCard and Visa have recently introduced plastic cards in America that do not have to be swiped for purchases under $25. Later this year a “dual interface” system will be tested in London. It will involve a single plastic card which combines an Oyster for travel, a standard Visa card issued by Britain's Barclays Bank for “chip and PIN” payments and a new “wave and pay” Visa for instant transactions up to £10 ($19).

Energising money

The various “contactless” payment systems rely on a technology called “near-field communication” (NFC). The NFC device within the cards reacts when placed close to a reader or touched onto one. The machine induces an electrical circuit in the NFC device, which allows a short exchange of data to effect a transaction, such as deducting a fare from the stored value.

As NFC devices can cost only a few cents they could be inserted into every mobile phone. The idea is that instead of carrying another piece of plastic, just the phone will do. Payments made from those using stored-value are seen as relatively low-risk. Merchants are guaranteed payment and if the cards or phones are lost or stolen the cost to users is limited.

But mobile phones can be much smarter than smart cards. They can be de-activated remotely; they have a screen which can show information, like a credit balance and product information; they have a keyboard to enter information and they can communicate. This means they can also be used to authorise larger payments by entering PIN codes directly on the handset or topped up with stored credit from an online bank account without having to go to an ATM.

How to pay in Tokyo

To see the potential of mobile-phone money, start in Japan. Most Japanese have at least one credit card, but they tend to stay in their owners' pockets. With street crime almost non-existent, cash reigns supreme. Housewives routinely peel off crisp ¥10,000 ($82) notes to pay for their shopping. Utility bills and other invoices are dutifully taken to the bank and paid in cash, or more likely these days at the local convenience store. Yet despite the popularity of cash, the mobile phone is starting to change even Japan's traditional habits.

For customers in a hurry, being able to pay with their keitai—as mobiles are known in Japan—is a lot easier than using cash. Many handsets now perform the various functions of cash, keys, credit cards and ID. Most Japanese consider their phone to be secure; if it is lost or stolen it can be locked remotely to protect the cash, credit and other valuables tied to it.

According to “Mobile Payments and Keitai Credit”, a new report by Gerhard Fasol, of Eurotechnology Japan, paying small sums with electronic cash is rewriting the rules for the credit-card industry. “We believe that mobile operators, as well as credit-card companies inside and outside of Japan, should consider how to prepare strategically for the likely success of these mobile payment systems,” says Mr Fasol.

Accounts can be set up quickly and mostly without credit checks. There are already 500 or so smart-card services in use in Japan and many of these are migrating to mobile phones. Credit can be bought for cash, topped up at ATM terminals or purchased from online banking services. Some cards and phones also double up as employee ID badges and allow purchases at canteens, nearby restaurants and vending machines.

Edy is the biggest contactless-payment method in Japan and is accepted by some 43,000 stores. The system is operated by bitWallet (itself jointly owned by NTT DoCoMo, the country's largest mobile-phone operator, and Sony). Edy accounts for 15m transactions a month, a rate that is doubling annually. It has about 23m users, of which 4.5m are already on mobile phones. The nearest rival is Suica, the brainchild of JR East railway, with over 18m accounts.

Many smart-card systems do not work with each other, but that will change on March 18th when 26 railways and 75 bus companies in the greater Tokyo area will begin sharing a new stored-value system, called Pasmo. This too will be available both as a plastic smart-card or built into mobile phones.

What appeals to the Japanese about e-cash is the way it speeds things up. It offers the convenience and portability of cash, but more so. It takes no more than a tenth of a second to complete most transactions. As no change is required, counting errors are eliminated. Fraud and theft are reduced. For the retailer, it reduces the cost of handling money. And because e-cash is smart, it is easy to add extra services. For instance, ANA, Japan's second largest airline, allows Edy users to convert frequent-flyer miles into e-cash.

Many of the keitai-credit systems rely on a NFC chip called FeliCa, which was developed by Sony. This chip is embedded in both NTT DoCoMo's wallet phones and the new Pasmo system. The chips have to work rapidly and reliably, says Ted Osamura of FeliCa. For instance, the railway operators have insisted that their system can admit 60 passengers a minute through each ticket barrier.

Sony also wants to get its FeliCa chip embedded into computers, televisions and games consoles. That way digital content, like films, music and games, can be paid for easily and without having to enter credit-card details. As the main matches of Japan's budding basketball league are broadcast in paid programmes over the internet, there could be plenty of demand.

NTT DoCoMo is comfortable offering credit because it already sends bills to its subscribers. It knows their names, addresses and bank-account details. It offers two types of credit. One provides a limit of ¥10,000. Approval is instant without a credit check. The other typically starts at ¥200,000 and goes up to ¥1m (with a “gold card” service beyond that). Credit checks could take a couple of weeks, but purchases can be made with just a few clicks on the keypad of the phone.

Stored-credit also allows anonymous payment systems to be offered, just as some travel cards or “pay as you go” mobile-phone services do. These are popular because they are simple and do not involve contracts, even though they might cost more. But the convenience of automatic top-ups and other services may persuade many users to open formal accounts for their mobile phones.

Flashing the plastic

_________________________________________________________________

The infrastructure for mobile-phone payments in America is starting to take shape
_________________________________________________________________


Unlike the Japanese, Americans prefer to use plastic for their purchases. Cards account for more than half of all transactions, up from 29% a decade ago, according to Nilson Report, a trade publication. More than 1.5 billion credit cards are stuffed into Americans' wallets. The average household has more than ten.

The infrastructure for mobile-phone payments in America is starting to take shape. The market for pre-paid cards already exceeds $180 billion and includes telecoms cards, pre-paid cards issued by Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, and gift cards issued by retailers like Gap or Starbucks. Cards are also issued for health-care and government benefits.

Banks and credit-card firms hope to convert more cash and cheque payments to plastic with new smart cards. Some versions are already very successful. Many Americans use EasyPass, in which drivers pay for highway tolls wirelessly. They are later billed on their credit cards. SpeedPass, a contactless keychain issued by Exxon Mobil, can be used at petrol stations.

Yet compared with the overall market, the new payment systems are still small. John Suchanec, of Bank of America, says that whereas debit and credit cards are accepted at 6m locations in America today, only 1m sites accept contactless cards. The same systems for contactless cards can be used for mobile phones.

Lower fees for shops could speed up adoption, along with the installation by merchants of more readers to take payments. Again the less well-off countries are sometimes the origin of cheaper ways to use the technology. Instead of making a big investment in having lots of electronic NFC ticket-checking devices at the entrances and exits of stations, Croatia has found that tickets can be bought by and delivered directly to a mobile phone. When the inspector calls, the ticket can be displayed on the screen.

Mr Suchanec says a big opportunity still to be exploited is the “two-way” conversation that mobile-phone systems allow. Banks could send text messages to customers using mobiles linked to their accounts. Coupons or product information could be delivered directly to mobiles as consumers pay for items. This opens up lots of new marketing opportunities, which could underwrite fees.

Art Kranzley, of MasterCard, believes mobile-phone payments could cut down on fraud. His company is testing, with KeyBank, a system that allows a customer to punch his PIN number into a phone before making a purchase, in effect turning the phone into a credit card. Studies by Visa show that the average American consumer is twice as likely to carry his mobile phone as he is to carry cash. For those aged 18-34, the average is four times as likely.

Some of the fastest-growing payment systems already operate online. Banks provide online processing for clients to accept internet payments made by credit or debit card when the customer is not present. But, as Sony hopes, computers can be equipped to do the same thing without giving away credit-card details.

This could prove very popular. One attraction of PayPal as an online-payments system is that neither credit-card nor banking details are exchanged when payments are transferred instantly between account holders. PayPal, which is owned by online auctioneer eBay, now has more than 120m accounts with people in over 100 countries, and claims a fraud rate that is much lower than a typical credit-card firm. PayPal has also begun to promote its own mobile-phone payment services.

With their grip on the market, banks and credit-card firms want to be in a position to collect most of the fees from the users of mobile and contactless-payment systems. But the new systems could prove to be a “disruptive technology”. Banks could be “disintermediated” if, say, the payments for the train ticket, newspaper and coffee made every day by a commuter with his mobile phone appear not on their monthly credit-card statements, but on those of a mobile-phone service provider or an online-payments firm like PayPal.

It is still too early to say whether banks and other financial companies will miss out and if so by how much. A natural division may emerge. Tim Attinger, of Visa, thinks phone companies will not be interested in letting customers charge big-ticket items to their phone bills, because it would require them to take on more financial-risk management and start functioning like banks (which have to deal with customer defaults, collect payments and resolve disputes). And the credit-card firms will want to keep making their new contactless plastic cards (both in and out of phones) easier to use for small payments.

Time to pay up

Much may depend on how bills are settled. Payments associations would lose out if customers pay for goods directly from their bank accounts (whether via mobile phone or online banking services) rather than with credit or debit cards. Banks could try to charge customers for settling such bills online; however in the past such schemes have failed. Some of the smaller banks, which do not have payment-card portfolios to protect, might have the most to gain from offering customers a way to use their mobile phones to pay for items directly from their accounts.

Having spent fortunes on branding, credit-card firms and banks do not want to see other payment systems gain ground. This presents a threat to banks, says Dan Schatt, of Celent, a research company. Historically, banks have controlled both the hardware (chequebooks and debit/credit cards) and the distribution (branches, websites, etc). Mobile-phone banking and contactless smart cards could escape some of their control. Banks could lose customers, says Mr Schatt.

Or will they? Banks and credit-card firms say that if cash is replaced by mobile phones, they intend to be part of the transition. A decade ago some observers predicted that internet banking would render retail banking from high-street branches obsolete. But JPMorgan, Bank of America and others are adamant that people are nowadays using bank branches more than ever. Even if the phone and the smart card replace cash, who gets to collect the fees remains open to contention.

Hello Capt. saab..
Would be definitely cool..I wouldn't want to lose the phone..:)

This one made me sad :(

A SOLDIER'S SADDEST DUTY
An officer who must tell the family members of a death makes a visit to a Hayward home
Mike Weiss, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, February 16, 2007

More...
The call to his cell phone from state headquarters came as Maj. John Preston was driving home from work at the armory in Walnut Creek at 4:45 p.m. The officer told him there was a casualty, a soldier killed in Iraq, from a neighborhood within what the Army called his geographics. Preston was given the grim task of telling the parents of Pfc. Michael Balsley of Hayward their son was dead.

Preston turned around and headed toward his office at the headquarters of the 1st Battalion, 143rd Field Artillery, 40th Infantry Division of the California National Guard.

Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, at least 3,133 American men and women in uniform have been killed in that country. So virtually every day somewhere in the United States a military officer -- and often more than one -- has to serve as a casualty notification officer.

For Preston, who had signed up at 17 and was now 43 with some gray in his military haircut, this was the first time he had been called upon to perform what was perhaps the most wrenching task facing a stateside soldier. He had never been in combat.

He was, however, trained in casualty notification. That gave him a baseline of knowledge, the proper way to go about telling parents that their child was dead. If there is such a thing as a proper way.

But he also knew, he said, sighing deeply several weeks after that evening of Jan. 25, that "until you experience it yourself, it's kind of hard to get an idea of what it's like. You can go to all the classes you want. It's really a hard task. But faltering is not an option."



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In his large, inelegant office at the armory, where photos of his daughters, books and manuals mix with equipment on the shelves, Preston turned on the lights and went to the wardrobe where his class A uniform hung. He changed into the dark green dress uniform, with its sharp creases, polished buttons and spit-shined black shoes.
He talked on the phone to a military chaplain, Capt. Timothy Meier, who would accompany him. It was also Meier's first notification.

Preston went online to review Department of Defense Instruction 1300.18, "Military Personnel Casualty Matters, Policies and Procedures."

Although he did not know the Balsleys or their fallen son, he did know that the notification had to be undertaken with the utmost care. He was by nature a careful man who paused before he answered questions and used the fewest words possible. It was clear to him that he was serving not only the parents but the soldier who had been killed.

Whatever the personal difficulties the task posed, Preston felt, were immaterial.

He knew almost nothing about the death of Pfc. Michael Balsley, an Army cavalry scout who was 23 when the humvee he was driving in Baghdad rolled over a homemade bomb. The Army wants it that way because the notification is terrible enough without details.

He reviewed the notification protocol, which laid out the language he could use. Regulations forbade him from reading it to the family, but at the same time, he intended to follow it closely. That was his duty and duty was the spine of his life, what held everything together and kept him upright.

As he drove to meet Meier, Preston reflected that there was a certain bearing he would maintain. But at the same time he felt a deep sympathy. He must under no circumstances be detached.

He was not aware that Pfc. Balsley's father, James, like his own, had served in the military. Nor that just like himself, Michael had always planned to be in the military. But he felt the dead soldier to be a part of his own family, "the Army family."

He made his rendezvous with the chaplain at a coffee shop in San Leandro, and the two men drove in separate vehicles to the Balsley home in Hayward. Preston carried a single "sheet of circumstances" that described the bare bones of Michael's death with him.

It was nearly 9 p.m.



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Michael Balsley had been raised on a block of bungalows bunched cheek-to-jowl. There were pickup trucks or panel vans in front of many homes on Victory Drive, and flags were displayed on more than a few. The Stars and Stripes flew in front of the Balsley home.
It was a part of Preston's training to be prepared for the range of reactions he could expect. In the most extreme case, the father of a Marine notified at his home in Florida had doused himself with gasoline and set himself afire.

The porch light was on at the Balsley home. Preston knocked smartly. The screen door rattled. Inside, Jim Balsley was watching television and enjoying a root beer Popsicle. He opened the door and saw the two officers in their class A's with looks on their faces that said they didn't want to be there.

He knew at once, of course. There had been two casualties in his son's outfit -- the 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division -- in the three months since they had deployed to Iraq, something he kept from Michael's mother. There was a feeling like a vise closing around his heart and his stomach. He thought: please no, please no.

Preston asked: "Are you James Balsley Jr.?"

"I am," he said.

"We have some tragic information about your son, Private First Class Michael Balsley. May we come in, sir?"

Preston is tall and rangy, and he seemed to fill the tiny living room with its comfortable chairs and couch and family photos and shelves of bric-a-brac.

The officers asked if they could sit. Preston wanted Jim and Beverly Balsley sitting because he was concerned they might faint. Beverly sat on the couch, Jim sat in Beverly's usual chair and Preston sat facing him.

It was hard to get the words out.

"The secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret that your son Private First Class Michael Balsley was killed in action in Iraq today. The secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family in your loss," Preston said.

Until he actually said the words, Preston thought that would be the hardest part. But when he finished he understood it was not. The hardest part was afterward.

"You've just given somebody the most devastating news they're going to get in their life," Preston said later, looking toward the ceiling of his office and sighing. "And there's really not much you can do at that point. There's really nothing you can do for them."

Things were becoming a blur for Jim Balsley. But through his own tears he saw that Preston was also crying.



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In the weeks since, Preston has served as the casualty assistance officer for the Balsleys, helping them deal with the Army bureaucracy, and coordinating with his counterpart in Colorado assigned to Samantha, Michael's 21-year-old wife of 10 months.
When she was asked by another casualty notification team at her home in Colorado if they could come in, Samantha initially said no. "Because if they came in," she said several weeks afterward, "they were going to tell me something I didn't want to hear."

For Jim Balsley, life since that night felt "like a 33 1/3 rpm record spinning at 78." He held fast to his certainty that, "our son's been laid on the altar of freedom."

There were other demanding moments for Preston. A few days later, Jim asked if Michael was viewable, and to describe in more detail what happened when he was killed. By then, Preston knew the answers, and he told Jim and Beverly what he knew. At Michael's funeral on Feb. 6 the 18-gauge steel coffin was closed.

But that night of Jan. 25 when Preston left the Balsley home after about an hour, he stood briefly in the street talking with Meier. It was cold, and he was exhausted.

Preston drove to his home in San Leandro and changed out of his class A uniform and sat down and drank the one beer a day he allows himself.

Preston hoped never again to be called upon to give a casualty notification. "But," said the major. "If the time comes. I'll do it."

E-mail Mike Weiss at mikeweiss@sfchronicle.com.

'Halos' May Prove Water Flows on Mars

WASHINGTON (Feb. 15) - An orbiting spacecraft has sent back new evidence for the presence of water on Mars. Scientists long have debated whether water flowed on the red planet, with evidence increasing in recent years. The presence of water would raise the possibility of at least primitive life forms existing there.

Images from a camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show alternating layers of dark- and light-toned rock in a giant rift valley.

Within those deposits are a series of linear fractures, called joints, that are surrounded by "halos" of light-toned bedrock, according to researchers from the University of Arizona.

Their findings, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, were being presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

Lead author Chris H. Okubo said the "halos" indicate areas where fluids, probably water, passed through the bedrock. Minerals in the fluid strengthen and bleach the rock, he said, making it more resistant to erosion than other areas.

On Earth, bleaching of rock surrounding a fracture is a clear indication of chemical interactions between fluids circulating within the fracture and the host rock," Okubo and co-author Alfred S. McEwen reported in the paper.

The researchers also said that layered outcrops can indicate cycles with materials deposited by regular episodes of water, wind or volcanic activity.

Just last December scientists reported evidence that water may be flowing through Mars' frigid surface. Images from Mars Global Surveyor showed changes in craters that provide the strongest evidence yet that water moved through them as recently as several years ago, and is perhaps doing so even now.

The Surveyor previously had spotted tens of thousands of gullies that scientists believed were geologically young and carved by fast-moving water coursing down cliffs and steep crater walls. Scientists decided to retake photos in a search for evidence of recent activity.

Two craters in the southern hemisphere that were originally photographed in 1999 and 2001 were examined again in 2004 and 2005, and the images yielded changes consistent with water flowing down the crater walls, according to the study.

Source: http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/halos-may-prove-water-flows-on-mars/20070215213209990001

A very moving piece, thanks for sharing SNDY. Can't wait for this madness to get over.

John Kerry may have screwed up many things in his career but I am reminded of the famous question he posed before Congress in the 70s:

"We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? "

If the polls are to be believed, many people, even those who would never vote for him, probably agree with Kerry on this.

It's very sad indeed..

Interesting stuff, Nepal ko chora.

Found this piece about monkeys in Delhi :P
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- http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8708756

Delhi's monkey menace
Simian agonistes

Feb 15th 2007 | DELHI
From The Economist print edition
The capital's street life under threat

VISITORS to Delhi's elegant parliament, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, have long witnessed a tribe of brown rhesus monkeys loitering outside picking each other's fleas—a display of public-spiritedness rare among those inside. Soon, no more. On February 8th the High Court in Delhi ordered its rulers to consider expelling an estimated 6,000 urban monkeys to a reserve outside the city. It could have been worse; the judges ruled against sterilising them.

Delicate sensibilities, and the usual administrative incompetence, have made a shambles of efforts to contain the “monkey menace”, as newspapers have labelled it. Victims of Delhi's rapid sprawl, which has subsumed their forest habitats, the monkeys can indeed be irritants. Many locals deem them incarnations of the Hindu monkey-faced God, Hanuman, and so feed them, which has made them demanding. They have been known to terrorise food-sellers, get drunk on stolen whisky and break into public buildings—including the Defence Ministry, which they ransacked one night. Workers next door at the Foreign Ministry contracted jaundice after a monkey drowned in the water-tank.

Since then various efforts have been made to remove the monkeys. Several hundred were trapped and released in the forests of neighbouring states, which then refused to accept any more. Three hundred monkeys, which were trapped and destined for the forests of Madhya Pradesh, have since been in legal limbo in a concrete-and-wire enclosure outside Delhi. On February 14th, the Supreme Court ruled that the High Court in Delhi could decide their fate. Animal-rights activists have deplored this enclosure and last month hounded the city's chief monkey-trapper into quitting. A different scheme saw bigger, more aggressive langur monkeys introduced to scare the rhesus monkeys away. This was a fiasco: the terrified animals scattered about the city, doing more damage.

The latest idea, to shift the animals to a 100-acre (40-hectare) sanctuary on Delhi's outskirts, is a better bet. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has just banned Delhi's roadside foodstalls—all 300,000 or so of them. The judiciary seems minded to make the city not just a bit more orderly, but much more boring.

Interesting...good that they are finally doing somethng about it..