Wounded man crashes trying to get help

Monday wasn't Augustus Petro's night.
The 49-year-old New Windsor man stabbed himself in the chest during a fight with his wife, then raced along Route 17K, illegally passing cars in the process, trying to get to the hospital, police said.
His run for help ended when he sideswiped a Toyota Tercel he was trying to pass, police said.
Petro's wife, Bernice, 44, at first said she was driving the car, but changed her story after witnesses came forward, police said. Police said they found an illegal handgun and illegal Vicodin prescription painkillers in the car.
Petro was treated at the scene by Mobile Life Support Services and at the Cornwall campus of St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital and released.
Petro was charged with driving while intoxicated and reckless driving, misdemeanors, and also ticketed for unsafe passing and failure to keep right.
He and his wife were charged with seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and Bernice Petro was charged with second-degree obstructing governmental administration, all misdemeanors. They were released on their own recognizance, pending future appearances in Town Court.

< OK, regardless of whatever else happened, arresting someone while trying to get to the hospital is, under any circumstances, totally fucked up. >

Security door blocks portly police

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Portly Swedish police have a new reason to work out thanks to a new security entrance at the National Police headquarters that won't let them in if they weigh too much.

A construction error in the recently remodeled security entrance, which has a built-in scale designed to only let one person at a time pass through the door, has caused some embarrassing moments for officers who may not have spent enough time exercising.

Those weighing more than 230 pounds (105 kilograms) who try to pass through the entrance are greeted by a recorded voice telling them: "Stop! One at a time!" and are not let through, police spokeswoman Linda Widmark said.

She said the scale is supposed to be adjustable to let people weighing up to 160 kilograms (350 pounds) pass through, but an apparent construction error is playing tricks on those with ample girth.

"We'll have to get that fixed," Widmark said. "We've got some big strong men around here."

The security entrance is mainly for visitors and police denied entrance can use other doors.

"There are other options for them," she said.

< Imagine police being required to be in shape... >

District settles 'egg-shooter' case for $10,000

Montgomery ? Last June, a Valley Central High School student blasted a frozen egg through the windows of a school bus using a high-powered spud gun.
Glass showered students on the bus. One boy was sent to the hospital.
Now, in a turn of events that has some parents steaming, the school district is paying $10,000 to cover the young egg-shooter's attorney's fees.
The school board decided early this week to settle a federal case filed by the shooter's father rather than go to court. The case charged the school district with trampling the student's rights by suspending him from school.
That's because after the shooting, the 17-year-old student ? whose name is being withheld because of his age ? was arrested by Montgomery police and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. He agreed to pay restitution and do community service.
But the school superintendent also dealt punishment, suspending the student for five months even though the boy was not on school grounds when he shot the egg.
Fair?
The boy's father didn't think so. Neither did attorney Michael Sussman, who represented him in the dispute.
"The (family's) principal objective was to have (the boy) come back into school and continue his wrestling career to gain a college scholarship," Sussman said, adding that the district didn't have a policy dealing with students who attack school property while off school grounds.
"If you get in fight at the mall," Sussman said, "that doesn't mean the school can be involved" in doling out punishment.
A judge in January ordered an injunction that permitted the boy to return to school a month early. Sussman said the judge believed the student did not intend to shoot the bus.
So rather than dish out more money to fight in court, the school board settled, agreeing to let the student stay in school and to pay $10,000 for the boy's attorney's fees. (The district will actually pay $2,500; the district's insurance will pay the rest.)
School board President Robert Santo, who has heard the complaints from taxpayers, said it was a money issue.
"Sometimes pragmatism wins over your morals," he said.

< A blow against totalitarianism. Damned right the school doesn't have the right to mete out it's own punishment for non-school activities. The person who raised, maide, and carried out his suspension should be suspended. >

In the ID Wars, the Fakes Gain

EARLY last month, after being shut down by the police for two days for serving underage drinkers, the owners of the West End, a Manhattan bar and restaurant near Columbia University, deployed a new weapon in their continuing battle against fake ID's: an E-Seek scanner, a high-tech age-verification device designed to tell a real driver's license from a fake in a simple swipe.

But if the arrival of this fake-ID devourer - its manufacturer makes a similar hand-held model called the Buster - was supposed to strike fear in the hearts of aspiring beer guzzlers in the freshman and sophomore classes at Columbia, it hasn't had quite that effect.

"Within a week I could be beating the West End no problem," said a Columbia student who claims to have forged over 400 driver's licenses but said he stopped for fear of being arrested (and wanted his name withheld for the same reason). "If you know how to use Photoshop and a simple Epson printer, you can print ID's in your dorm room."

The age-old battle of wits pitting police officers and bar owners on the one hand against under-age drinkers on the other is as lively as ever, though it has entered a new technologically advanced phase. Gone are the days of the art major down the hall who was a wizard with an X-Acto knife, a stencil and some super glue. Using Internet resources and sophisticated computer graphics software, college students are forging drivers' licenses of startlingly good quality, complete with shimmering holograms, special inks and data encoding that can fool the police and even occasionally the latest generation of scanners. To hear law enforcement officers tell it, in the fake-ID arms race the kids are winning.

"They're definitely a step ahead of us," said Steven Ernst, the district administrator in San Diego for the California Alcoholic Beverage Control Department. "In terms of the color, the typeset and the hologram they're real, real good. Most can't be picked out by the naked eye."

While getting a fake ID is a right of passage for many young people who want no more than access to the occasional six-pack or campus pub, the potential security threat posed by forged drivers' licenses - most prominently, the threat of access to commercial airliners - has cast the old barroom conflict in a new light.

"People think of fake ID's for buying beer or cigarettes when you're 19," said Sgt. William Planeta, who runs the New York Police Department's document fraud squad. "But it has a lot of different implications in a post-9/11 world. You can use that fake ID to do all sorts of things."

In an effort to catch up with counterfeiters, therefore, the government and a growing document verification industry are turning to both legislation and technological innovations. "We're going to give the fake ID a run for its money," said James E. Copple, the director of the nonprofit International Institute for Alcohol Awareness at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, with headquarters in Maryland, which studies public health.

They are having some success, at least with clumsily forged ID's. With help from his Intelli-Check scanner, Paul Barclay, 48, the owner of a Boston club called the Rack, confiscated 600 fake ID's last year, including 13 in a single weekend night. Mr. Barclay said he pays his bouncers $20 for each fake they bring in.

"It's a full-blown war at this point," he said. "We've come across amazing ones, where they've impregnated the back with legitimate data from someone else. The kids have gotten a lot more clever."

Scanners, though, are rare, and word quickly circulates when a bar gets one. Web sites like www.hotspotboston.com rate bars and clubs by the strictness of their ID policies, so under-age drinkers know which ones to avoid.

When it comes to getting a fake ID, students can be as discriminating as they are about the music on their iPods. Students shy away from fake licenses from nearby states because bouncers and bartenders are so familiar with the authentic versions. They also avoid certain licenses, like one older type from New Jersey, that are so easy to tamper with that no bouncer worth his black light would let one pass without a thorough going-over.

"ID's made by students tend to be much better than ID's you buy in the Village or Times Square," said a 19-year-old Columbia sophomore who has a fake driver's license and asked not to be identified for fear of the police. As for the importance of having a fake ID, she said: "All of my friends have fake ID's, everyone I know from high school and all my friends at school. It's definitely a necessity."

THE nation's fixation with security cards and ID systems has also been a boon for manufacturers of fake ID's. The widespread use of corporate ID's has created a large pool of people who know the inner workings of the security features in the cards. In online chat rooms dedicated exclusively to the manufacture of fake ID's, unscrupulous members of this pool - including some drivers' license bureau workers, the police say - share or sell information about security features and even run a black market in the more sophisticated components of ID's.

"There are guys online who manufacture the bar codes and holograms," said the Columbia student who made fake ID's. "The hologram like on a Texas will glow. I can order that."

Some ID mills are offshore and sell online. Many sites purporting to sell fake ID's are scams set up to take advantage of gullible under-age drinkers, but Michael Cawthon, the special agent in charge of the Nashville district of the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission, said that others offer forgeries of drivers' licenses. Mr. Cawthon said some offshore counterfeiting outfits solicit students to market for them on campuses and even conduct background checks on their American liaisons to make sure they are not the law.

"The Internet stuff is beginning to kill us," he said.

For students who prefer to make their own ID's, the Web offers all the raw materials. High-quality graphics templates for most state drivers' licenses - with accurate renderings of intricate background patterns and color schemes - can be found online. High-tech driver's license plastics and laminates that were once available only to drivers' license bureaus are now easily available online as well at legitimate office supply sites and specialty sites.

Once counterfeiters have compiled the necessary raw materials for a convincing fake, they get photographs from their customers, which are easily taken in a dorm room with a Web cam. Then they fill in the personal information on the template with a computer, assemble the pieces and laminate them. High-quality fake ID's can cost $50 to $200. Once college students have gone through all this trouble for a fake ID, they seldom make just one.

"It's not unusual to bust a counterfeiter who has made over 10,000 falsified documents," said Maj. David Myers of the Florida Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco Division.

From the under-age drinker's point of view - and, the police would add, the terrorist's - the holy grail of fake ID's is an authentic driver's license issued to someone presenting a bogus or borrowed birth certificate or Social Security card. Short of that, discriminating buyers of fake ID's want forged licenses that are properly encoded and can pass muster with a scanner.

Licenses store information in two formats: magnetic stripes like those on credit cards, and two-dimensional bar codes, strips of small dots arranged to convey information in a kind of graphic Morse code. Magnetic stripes can be erased with a magnet and reprogrammed with, say, a new birth date, using basic ID-making equipment, and bar codes can be photocopied or transferred from a legitimate ID to a fake one.

While a careful bouncer or police officer might figure out such ruses by comparing the information from the data strip to that on the front of the ID, most don't bother. Instead, scanners search the encoded strips for a birth date and issue a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down on whether the cardholder is the legal drinking age.

"All it tells you is if the age is older than 21 or not," said the former ID maker at Columbia. "You just have them all programmed over 21."

PENALTIES for possessing and making fake ID's vary from state to state. In New York possession of a fake driver's license is a felony punishable by up to seven years. Often when the police encounter a fake ID these days, they are more interested in getting information on who made it than in prosecuting the under-age user.

That was the case in Louisiana in late 2003, when a 19-year-old L.S.U. student named Corey James Domingue died of acute alcohol poisoning after using a fake Texas driver's license to buy four fifths of liquor from a local Winn-Dixie supermarket. By questioning Mr. Domingue's roommate and friends with similar forged ID's, Louisiana authorities were able to unravel a high-tech ring that had issued thousands of counterfeit licenses.

"These kids built their own computers from scratch," said Steven E. Spalitta, the enforcement director of the Louisiana Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control, who handled the case. "We learned the ID's were not just perfect but they were encoded. There's almost no way you can tell it's a fake with the naked eye."

In all, five people pleaded guilty to forgery and a sixth is facing trial. Using computer records Mr. Spalitta's agency also tracked down and issued hundreds of criminal citations to students who bought fake ID's from the ring.

Mr. Spalitta said that finding the violators was easier than he had anticipated. "The students used their personal information" on the fakes, he said. "The only thing they changed were their addresses and their dates of birth."

Mr. Copple, of the Pacific Institute, said that in the coming year a variety of changes could make getting away with a fake ID tougher.

Some states will begin using new watermark technology akin to that used on currency for drivers' licenses next year. This spring the United States Senate is expected to vote on a bill already passed by the House that would require states to standardize the format of the data encoded on the backs of drivers' licenses, making it easier to scan them. Software companies are rushing to develop verification programs for scanners that can be updated in real time, not unlike antivirus software, in response to evolving forgery techniques.

While the backers of these efforts say they herald the demise of the fake ID, officers on the beat have doubts.

"They find a loophole and exploit it," said Sergeant Planeta of the New York document fraud squad, which has arrested 90 people for faking documents since its formation last year. "We plug it, and they find their way around it. And it goes back and forth."

Swiss driver rapped for nighttime speeding spree

The 19 year-old had removed his number plates to avoid being identified as he repeatedly drove through two fixed speed traps near the Swiss capital Bern at speeds up to 40 kilometres per hour (27 miles per hour) above the limit.

However, a policeman who had dealt with him a day earlier recognised the car on the speed trap photographs, which included snaps of passengers making obscene gestures.

The youngster admitted he had drunk seven or eight beers before the speeding spree.

A court in Bern fined him 1,000 Swiss francs (650 euros) and handed down a four-year suspended prison sentence, while the passengers were ordered to appear before a minor's court.

< A sentence of four years for one night of fun where noone was harmed. Suspended or otherwise, this is pure bullshit. >

Domain Owners Lose Privacy

The U.S. Commerce Department has ordered companies that administer internet addresses to stop allowing customers to register .us domain names anonymously using proxy services.

The move does not affect owners of .com and .net domains. But it means website owners with .us domains will no longer be able to shield their name and contact information from public eyes.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center said the move violates First Amendment rights to anonymous free speech. And the representative of one of the largest domain-registration companies is concerned that customers who have been victims of stalkers won't be able to protect their privacy without changing their web address to a domain that offers anonymity.

Wired News has learned that the edict came a month ago from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Commerce Department agency that advises the president on telecommunications and information policy. The agency ruled with no warning and without any discussion with the companies accredited to sell and register .us domains. The domain companies were told they would lose their right to sell .us domains -- the official, top-level domain for the United States -- if they didn't comply.

The NTIA did not return a call for comment. But it told registrars it was not setting a new policy with the directive -- it was simply enforcing a provision in a pre-existing contract that the registrars had violated. But Christine Jones, general counsel for Go Daddy, the largest registrar of .us domains, disputed this.

"This has nothing to do with them clarifying an existing contract," Jones said. "We've been selling proxy registrations for three years; they knew it but never said anything against it. They established a new policy, and for them to say otherwise is pure crap."

The .us domain has been around since 1985. For nearly 20 years, it was used exclusively by schools and libraries, as well as state and federal government offices. But in April 2002, it was opened to the public for use -- with the stipulation that domain owners either be U.S. citizens or have a business in this country or some other direct connection to the country.

On Feb. 2, the NTIA sent a letter to NeuStar, the company responsible for administering the .us domain and for accrediting companies that sell the domain addresses.

The letter, obtained by Wired News, called on NeuStar to notify domain such registrars as Network Solutions, eNom and Go Daddy that they should cease allowing proxy registration for .us domains by Feb. 16.

The letter also called on registrars to correct existing proxy registration information -- including name, phone number and postal and e-mail addresses -- from .us customers and update the public Whois database for those domains by Jan. 26, 2006.

The law requires that registrars deposit the name and contact information for domains in the Whois database. But a handful of the 80-plus accredited companies that register .us domains offer a proxy service, for a small fee, that lets owners conceal their true contact information from the Whois database. Of the 300,000 .us domains that Go Daddy has registered, 23,000 are proxies.

The NTIA directive applied only to .us domains, because the NTIA doesn't set policy for other domain names, such as .com and .net.

In the letter it sent to NeuStar, the NTIA said its move was intended to increase the accuracy and reliability of Whois information for the public and for "law enforcement officials who rely on the information." It would also allow the NTIA to contact website owners if their domain registrar goes out of business and to transfer their domain to another registrar.

But Go Daddy's Jones said the NTIA's edict would not ensure that registration information was accurate, because those who really want to conceal their identity or true contact information would provide fake information -- even if it violated the terms of agreement for purchasing a .us domain.

She also said nothing about proxy registration currently prevents law enforcement from getting the information it needs. Registrars place the true contact information for domain owners in an escrow account, which law enforcement officials can obtain with a subpoena.

It's possible legal action could prevent the NTIA and Department of Commerce from having their way -- privacy advocates say the directive violates First Amendment rights to anonymous free speech.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC, said the Supreme Court has ruled on at least four occasions that the right to speak anonymously is protected by the First Amendment. He believes this allows individuals the right to express themselves on the internet without having to reveal their identity.

"The government simply may not require people who wish to speak to present their actual name as a condition of speaking," Rotenberg said. "This tradition of anonymity is deeply rooted in constitutional history, and it is very troubling when the U.S. government attempts to impose true-name disclosure requirements on people who are simply seeking to speak online."

Jeffrey Neuman, director of law and policy for NeuStar, said the Commerce Department was within its rights to eliminate proxy services because it is responsible for setting all rules governing .us domains. He added that only a small number of people use proxy services and would be affected by the ruling.

Neuman said he didn't know why the government had not objected to anonymous registrations before now. But he said the department discovered earlier this year that registrars were offering anonymous services that were not in compliance with its Whois policy requiring registrars to provide accurate contact information about domain owners. Therefore, the department ruled it should stop.

"The NTIA is saying this is not a new policy," Neuman said. "They never approved the offering of proxy domains, and they're simply enforcing an already existing policy."

But Go Daddy's Jones said NeuStar and the government knew anonymous proxy registration had been offered since the company began selling .us domains three years ago. She said NeuStar had asked Go Daddy at the time how it intended to verify that proxy registrants had the right to own a .us domain.

"The old provision said you had to have accurate contact data, and we've always had accurate contact data," Jones said. "They've changed it and expanded it to now say there can be no proxy registrations. It's brand-new language. So for them to say this is not a new policy is absolutely not true."

Censor Services Push Forward

WASHINGTON -- Legislation that would allow people to automatically skip over objectionable content in movies viewed at home sailed through a key House subcommittee on Thursday and looks to be on the fast track.

The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property passed S167/HR357, known as the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, with little debate. The full Senate passed its identical bill on a voice vote on Feb. 1.

The legislation would essentially affirm the legality of software such as ClearPlay, which automatically edits supposedly objectionable scenes out of popular movie titles. Several DVD players now come ClearPlay-enabled and work with more than 1,000 movie titles.

Some Hollywood directors and studios have complained that such filtering violates their copyright by altering their works without permission. S167/HR357, however, would sanction the practice.

Proponents see the bill as empowering parents to protect children from an onslaught of objectionable movie content.

"Just as the author of a book should not be able to force someone to read that book in any particular manner or order, a studio or director should not be able to force parents or their children to watch a movie in a particular way," said bill sponsor and subcommittee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas).

Smith said the goal is to get the bill to the White House for signing before the Supreme Court decides the big Grokster case.

In that controversial case, entertainment interests have challenged lower-court decisions ruling that Grokster, Morpheus and other peer-to-peer services cannot be held liable because, like a videocassette recorder, they make copyright violations possible but can be used for legitimate purposes.

Entertainment-industry supporters argue that the services profit from users' desire to get music and movies for free. Thus, P2P services should be held liable so they can be sued for copyright infringement.

The fear among supporters of S167/HR357 is that the final Grokster decision could contain language that alters general copyright law, effectively stalling any pending copyright bills in their tracks.

Regardless of how the court rules, Smith said the subcommittee will likely need to address at least some aspects of copyright law in the wake of the decision, although it's unclear what those issues would be until the court rules.

"I think we may have more things to do after Grokster," he told reporters after the hearing.

Oral arguments in the Grokster case are scheduled for March 29, with the Supreme Court expected to rule this summer.

In addition to its filtering provisions, S167/HR357 would also stiffen penalties for the recording of films in theaters with video cameras. Such camcorder footage often becomes the basis of pirate DVDs sold on the black market.

Bill Would Hold Game Makers Accountable For Players' Actions

SEATTLE - Should the people who make and sell "violent video" games be held accountable if someone commits a crime because of playing them?

That's something our state lawmakers are considering, to open game makers up to more liability.

House Bill 2178 proposes to hold the makers and sellers of violent video games liable if someone under 17 years old commits a crime, due in any part, to playing the game.

Supporters of the bill, like Bill Hanson with the Washington Police and Sheriff's Association, say "kids" are getting the games, and they're becoming desensitized.

"If you sit up and watch this and play these games over and over again... it seems that this is alright to walk up and hit a police officer over the head with a bat," Hanson said.

Opponents argue that the proposed bill would shift the responsibility from the person who actually committed the crime.

Lew McMurran, with the Washington Software Association, says violent games are clearly rated for adults only, and that the responsibility should be on parents to use the video game rating system and control what their kids are playing.

"We're removing the responsibility from the person who committed the act, to somebody else who's completely removed from the situation" McMurran said. "There's a very strong video game industry in this state that we want to support. We don't want to bring undo attention to an area where there's actually jobs being created, where there's actually some good economic development in our state"

House Bill 2178 is still in the committee stage in the state House of Representatives.

Nude man covered in nachos gets probation

Michael David Monn of Maryville appeared before Blount County Circuit Court Judge D. Kelly Thomas and pleaded guilty to burglary, theft, vandalism, indecent exposure and public intoxication. In a plea bargain with prosecutors, Monn was sentenced to three years in prison but was given supervised probation.

He also was given a judicial deferral, which means if he stays out of trouble for the next three years the charges will be expunged from his record. Thomas warned Monn that if he violates the sentencing requirements, he must serve the sentence in a state penitentiary.

Early on the morning of July 18, 2004, Monn "was highly intoxicated, broke into the John Sevier Pool snack bar area, stole some snacks and did some damage and was caught naked with some stolen snacks," Blount County District Attorney General Mike Gallegos told the courtroom.

A police officer found Monn that morning in the parking lot of the pool facility after Monn had apparently scaled an 8-foot-tall fence and was seen running toward a Jeep with a box of stolen snacks and a container of nacho cheese.

In addition to being naked, Monn had nacho cheese in his hair, on his face and on his shoulders, police said. He also had a strong odor of alcohol and was semi-incoherent.

In his Jeep, Maryville officers found clothing and an open bottle of vodka.

< When the possibility of sentencing someone to 3 years in prison exists for this kind of situation, the entire system behind it is morally void. A person's entire life can be ruined in those three years. >

A more mature approach to video-game violence

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich devoted a portion of his Feb. 3 State of the State speech to the state of youth entertainment, specifically violent video games. The governor is not amused, and he is committed to making his state the first to criminalize the distribution of such videos to minors.

Gov. Blagojevich has proposed a law to make the sale of explicitly violent or sexual games to under-18 consumers a Class A misdemeanor, carrying a punishment of up to a year in prison or a $5,000 fine. He also wants to require video retailers to label games for content and post signs in their stores explaining the rating system for the games.

In addition, the governor named a task force of educators, medical experts and parents to advise him on the potential harmful effects of suspect videos on minors. Last December, he urged the Chicago Transit Authority to cancel a contract for advertising a mature-rated video game on city buses.

Blagojevich is not alone in the campaign against violence in videos. Political leaders and community activists across the nation and across a wide political spectrum are targeting violent video games as a menace to children and a precursor to real crime.

Earlier this month, District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams announced that he was backing a bill targeting the sale of violent games. In Maryland, a bill sponsored by Delegate Justin Ross would impose a fine and jail time for vendors who sold or rented violent video games to minors. Similar legislation is before the Georgia Legislature.

In 2004 alone, according to Clay Calvert of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at Penn State, more than 20 states and local jurisdictions launched efforts to regulate the sale of video games. Even federal legislation pops up from time to time in Congress, but none has gotten very far.

It is quite clear that politicians and some community groups do not like these games. But millions of kids ? and their parents ? do like them. And while some contain blood-curdling violence, others are visually stunning, technologically advanced and creatively sophisticated. Sales of video games last year totaled $7.3 billion, just $2 billion less than movie box-office receipts.

Those who want to regulate the distribution of video games face some major hurdles, aside from the popularity and appeal of the games.

First is the Constitution. Courts have made it clear that video games are forms of expression deserving the same First Amendment protection as television, movies or books. Further, they have rejected the argument that there is a causal relationship between video violence and real violence.

In 2001, the Supreme Court let stand a ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that struck down an Indianapolis ordinance regulating access to video games. In 2003, the 8th Circuit also ruled that such a law was unconstitutional, noting that ?the government cannot silence protected speech by wrapping itself in the cloak of parental authority.?

In addition to the constitutional barrier to these kinds of laws, there are some inconvenient realities.

The video-game industry voluntarily set up a rating system to guide parents and young consumers. Vendors are supposed to require proof of age before selling M-rated games to anyone under 17. Some of the largest retailers don?t even carry adult-only games. And, according to an industry survey, the average age of a video-game player is 30 and the average age of a buyer is 36. When the buyer is a minor, parents are involved in the purchase 83% of the time.

Rather than attempting to dictate taste and behavior through law, politicians and activists might focus more of their energy on public-awareness campaigns, the independent rating system, and encouraging vendors to ?card? more unaccompanied minors. That would be a much better way to go, not only because it?s First Amendment-friendly but also because it works.

Those who push for laws based on exaggerated science and a low opinion of the moral and emotional fiber of young people and their parents? judgment should think through the logic of their efforts. If we can harness the law to punish any form of expression based on the assertion that it might cause bad acts, or disfavored attitudes, then what is left but a dismayingly homogenized and narrow range of expression, reflecting only the dominant passions and prejudices of the moment?

When dealing with expression that some of us don?t like, it is all too tempting to exploit fear and ignorance. It is all too easy to propose laws to ban it. It is not easy, however, to decide who has the maturity to distinguish fantasy violence from that appearing on the nightly news or in any number of professional sports.

Those decisions shouldn?t be left to a legislator, a jury, a merchant or a police officer. They should be left to a parent.

Panelists Decry Bush Science Policies

WASHINGTON Feb 20, 2005 ? The voice of science is being stifled in the Bush administration, with fewer scientists heard in policy discussions and money for research and advanced training being cut, according to panelists at a national science meeting.

Speakers at the national meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science expressed concern Sunday that some scientists in key federal agencies are being ignored or even pressured to change study conclusions that don't support policy positions.

The speakers also said that Bush's proposed 2005 federal budget is slashing spending for basic research and reducing investments in education designed to produce the nation's future scientists.

And there also was concern that increased restrictions and requirements for obtaining visas is diminishing the flow to the U.S. of foreign-born science students who have long been a major part of the American research community.

Rosina Bierbaum, dean of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, said the Bush administration has cut scientists out of some of the policy-making processes, particularly on environmental issues.

"In previous administrations, scientists were always at the table when regulations were being developed," she said. "Science never had the last voice, but it had a voice."

Issues on global warming, for instance, that achieved a firm scientific consensus in earlier years are now being questioned by Bush policy makers. Proven, widely accepted research is being ignored or disputed, she said.

Government policy papers issued prior to the Bush years moved beyond questioning the validity of global warming science and addressed ways of confronting or dealing with climate change.

Under Bush, said Bierbaum, the questioning of the proven science has become more important than finding ways to cope with climate change.

One result of such actions, said Neal Lane of Rice University, a former director of the National Science Foundation, is that "we don't really have a policy right now to deal with what everybody agrees is a serious problem."

Among scientists, said Lane, "there is quite a consensus in place that the Earth is warming and that humans are responsible for a considerable part of that" through the burning of fossil fuels.

And the science is clear, he said, that without action to control fossil fuel use, the warming will get worse and there will be climate events that "our species has not experienced before."

Asked for comment, White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said, "The president makes policy decisions based on what the best policies for the country are, not politics. People who suggest otherwise are ill-informed."

Kurt Gottfried of Cornell University and the Union of Concerned Scientists said a survey of scientists in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that about 42 percent said they felt pressured to not report publicly any findings that do not agree with Bush policies on endangered species. He said almost a third of the Fish and Wildlife researchers said they were even pressured not to express within the agency any views in conflict with the Bush policies.

"This administration has distanced itself from scientific information," said Gottfried. He said this is part of a larger effort to let politics dominate pure science.

He said scientists in the Environmental Protection Agency have been pressured to change their research to keep it consistent with the Bush political position on environmental issues.

Because of such actions, he said, it has become more difficult for federal agencies to attract and retain top scientific talent. This becomes a critical issue, said Gottfried, because about 35 percent of EPA scientists will retire soon and the Bush administration can "mold the staff" of the agency through the hiring process.

Federal spending for research and development is significantly reduced under the proposed 2005 Bush budget, the speakers said.

"Overall the R&D budget is bad news," said Bierbaum.

She said the National Science Foundation funds for graduate students and for kindergarten through high school education has been slashed.

NASA has gotten a budget boost, but most of the new money will be going to the space shuttle, space station and Bush's plan to explore the moon and Mars. What is suffering is the space agency's scientific research efforts, she said.

"Moon and Mars is basically going to eat everybody's lunch," she said.

Lane said Bush's moon and Mars exploration effort has not excited the public and has no clear goals or plans.

He said Bush's moon-Mars initiative "was poorly carried out and the budget is not there to do the job so science (at NASA) will really get hurt."

Anti-gay religious group targets Shrek 2

TORONTO ? Uh oh! That other jolly green giant could be in trouble. Shrek 2 is the latest animated film title to be "outed'' by Christian fundamentalists in the U.S.

On its website the Traditional Values Coalition is warning parents about the cross-dressing and transgender themes contained in the hit DreamWorks feature, now on DVD.

"Shrek 2 is billed as harmless entertainment but contains subtle sexual messages,'' says the coalition, which describes itself as a grassroots inter-denominational lobby with more than 43,000 member churches.

"Parents who are thinking about taking their children to see Shrek 2 may wish to consider the following.''

The article then proceeds to describe one of the characters, an "evil'' bartender (voiced by Larry King) who is a male-to-female transgender in transition and who expresses a sexual desire for Prince Charming.

In another identified scene, Shrek and Donkey need rescuing from a dungeon by Pinocchio and his nose, which is made to extend as an escape bridge by getting the wooden boy to lie about not wearing women's underwear.

The TVC report, A Gender Identity Disorder Goes Mainstream', raps DreamWorks for helping to promote crossdressing and transgenderism.

But Charles Keil, a film studies professor at the University of Toronto, says transgendered groups might also have reason to complain about being parodied.

"You have an image within a comic context that could be read either way,'' says Keil, who adds quickly that such humour is designed for parents anyway and goes way above the heads of the children in the audience.

"If the kids don't get it, it doesn't really matter.''

Keil says the whole idea behind the Shrek movies is a general message of tolerance -- that outward appearances don't matter and that it's what's underneath that counts -- and such complaints defeat that larger, more important message.

"Targeting minuscule elements within a much larger work and then trying to extract from that some kind of argument that borders on the paranoid is really misconstruing the general aim of this entertainment.''

So far, the Coalition's gaydar doesn't seem to have picked up on DreamWorks' Shark Tale, in which a shark mafioso, voiced by Robert DeNiro, must come to terms with the fact he has a vegetarian son who likes to dress up as a dolphin.

But the Shrek accusation follows hot on the heels of other cases of animated characters being accused of infiltrating the minds of America's children with pro-gay messages, much to the detriment of traditional family values.

Recently, PBS was upbraided by the group Focus on the Family -- and supported by the U.S. secretary of education no less -- for an episode of the cartoon series Postcards From Buster, in which Buster the rabbit encounters a couple of kids with lesbian parents.

Christian activists have also targeted SpongeBob SquarePants, Barney the dinosaur and Sesame Street's Bert & Ernie as children's characters who are conduits for a soft-on-gays message.

Just last month, the American Family Association took exception to the makers of a new video being distributed to thousands of U.S. elementary schools and which the organization said used characters like SpongeBob and Barney to indoctrinate children into a homosexual lifestyle.

The video is designed to coincide with National We Are Family Day in March. But what upset the AFA in particular is the We Are Family Foundation's website and a tolerance-for-diversity pledge (including sexual orientation) that children and others are asked to sign there.

It seems all of this began back in 1999 when Rev. Jerry Falwell described that purse-toting Teletubby, Tinky Winky, as a gay role model.

One wonders how far back critics could go, though, in seeing pro-homosexual context in cartoons. Remember when shotgun-toting hunter Elmer Fudd realized Bugs Bunny was in drag? He was furious, but only because he saw Bugs's cotton tail and learned he was a rabbit in disguise.

"There's all sorts of things going on in those cartoons that are pretty suggestive,'' concedes Keil. "But (the kids) are laughing at the pratfalls, the funny voices, the very basic humour.

"Kids at that age don't even have pre-formed notions of sexuality.''

In the recent SpongeBob movie, there is a scene in which the oddball undersea character suddenly pops up in his neighbour's shower (and quickly gets the boot). It's also been pointed out that he holds hands with a pink friend and gets boating lessons from a teacher called Mr. Puff. Creator Stephen Hillenburg assured the Wall Street Journal that the sponge-man was not gay but that the show had become a gay community favourite because of the tolerant attitude displayed by the show's characters.

"Everybody is different and the show embraces that,'' Hillenburg said. "I always think of them as being somewhat asexual.''

Keil wonders what these religious groups would accomplish if they managed to get a law passed banning any representation of untoward social behaviour in children's entertainment.

"It would still be there covertly,'' he argues. "What would these groups see as the ideal state of affairs?''

Science hopes to stop truck bombs

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- Scientists at a top U.S. defense research center have unveiled technology they say could prevent trucks from being used as bombs on wheels.

The remote-controlled device would allow police to trigger another device within a truck to deploy its brakes and bring it to a screeching halt, according to researchers at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Legislation would be needed to require trucks to carry the devices, which have been tested to withstand wireless hackers setting them off or interrupting their signals.

The devices would be contained in tamper-proof boxes.

"Terrorism is mostly in other countries, but we want to be ready in case they try to come here," said Ronald Cochran, the research center's executive office.

The technology also could be installed in buildings to prevent trucks from crashing through gates, researchers said.

"This is a great way for facilities that have trucks routinely coming on site to add a layer of protection," said Dave McCallen, a researcher who developed the technology.

Former California Governor Gray Davis and the California Highway Patrol commissioned studies into the technology after the September 11, 2001, attacks and following a January 2001 fuel-tanker crash into the California capitol building.

House approves tougher indecency fines

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Chafing over racy broadcasts like Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill Wednesday authorizing unprecedented fines for indecency.

Rejecting criticism the penalties will stifle free speech and homogenize radio and TV broadcasts, bill supporters said stiff fines were needed to give deep-pocketed broadcasters more incentive to clean up their programs and to help assure parents that their children won't be exposed to inappropriate material.

The measure, which passed 389-38, boosts the maximum fine from $32,500 to $500,000 for a company and from $11,000 to $500,000 for an individual entertainer.

The bill enjoyed broad bipartisan support from lawmakers upset about incidents like Jackson's breast-baring "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

"This is a penalty that makes broadcasters sit up and take notice," said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee that sent the bill to the full House. "This legislation makes great strides in making it safe for families to come back into their living room."

The White House, in a statement, said it strongly supports the legislation that "will make broadcast television and radio more suitable for family viewing."

The Senate is considering a similar bill. Any differences in the two will have to be worked out before it goes to President Bush for a signature.

Last year the two chambers were unable to reach a compromise.

Opponents said they were concerned stiffer fines by the Federal Communications Commission would lead to more self-censorship by broadcasters and entertainers unclear about the definition of "indecent."

They cited the example of several ABC affiliates that last year did not air the World War II drama "Saving Private Ryan" because of worries that violence and profanity would lead to fines, even though the movie already had aired on network TV.

"We would put Big Brother in charge of deciding what is art and what is free speech," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, who opposed the bill. "We would see self- and actual-censorship rise to new and undesirable heights."

Parents -- not the government -- are the best judges of what their children should see and hear, said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California.

"No one knows when one person's creative work will become another person's definition of a violation of indecency," Waxman said.

The FCC has stepped up enforcement of the indecency statute, perhaps most notably with a $550,000 fine against CBS for Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction." Radio personality Howard Stern also has been a frequent target.

Fines for indecent programming exceeded $7.7 million last year. Four years ago, FCC fines totaled just $48,000.

The FCC has wide latitude to impose fines. It can fine an individual company, groups of stations owned by a company and individual entertainers. In the case of CBS, it imposed a fine of $27,500 against each of 20 stations owned by the network.

All five members of the FCC -- three Republicans and two Democrats -- favor greatly increasing the fines.

The House bill allows the FCC to fine an individual entertainer, such as a disc jockey, without first issuing a warning, which is the case now. The FCC has never before issued such a fine.

"By significantly increasing fines, they are going to be at a level where they can no longer be ignored," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Michigan, who introduced the bill. "Parents can rest easy."

Under FCC rules and federal law, radio stations and over-the-air television channels cannot air obscene material at any time, and cannot air indecent material between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. The FCC defines obscene material as describing sexual conduct "in a patently offensive way" and lacking "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." Indecent material is not as offensive but still contains references to sex or excretions.

The House bill gives affiliates protection from fines in instances in which they carry network programming that later is deemed indecent. It also requires the FCC to hold a license revocation hearing after a third offense by a broadcaster, and to respond to an indecency complaint from a viewer or listener within six months.

The Senate bill calls for raising the maximum fine on broadcasters to $325,000, with a cap of $3 million for one day. The House bill does not include a cap.

Kraft cans 'Road Kill' candy

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Kraft Foods Inc. said Friday it would bow to demands by the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NJSPCA) that it stop selling candies shaped like animals that have been run over by cars.

The group publicly demanded removal of Road Kill candy, sold under Kraft's Trolli Gummi brand, earlier this week.

"This is not sending the right message to kids," NJSPCA spokesman Matthew Stanton said.

Kraft (Research) said it wanted to be sensitive to consumer concerns about the candies, which are shaped like flattened snakes, chickens and squirrels with track marks on their bodies. They were introduced last summer.

"We understand how this product could be misinterpreted, and we respect that point of view," Trolli Brand Manager Jim Low said in a statement.

US denies patent for part-human hybrid

WASHINGTON -- A New York scientist's seven-year effort to win a patent on a laboratory-conceived creature that is part human and part animal ended in failure Friday, closing a historic and somewhat ghoulish chapter in US intellectual property law.

The US Patent and Trademark Office rejected the claim, saying the hybrid -- designed for use in medical research but not yet created -- would be too closely related to a human to be patentable.

Paradoxically, the rejection was a victory of sorts for the inventor, Stuart Newman of New York Medical College in Valhalla, N.Y. An opponent of patents on living things, he had no intention of making the creatures. He said his goal was to set a legal precedent that would keep others from profiting from similar "inventions."

But in an age in which science is increasingly melding human and animal components for research -- already the government has allowed many patents on "humanized" animals, including a mouse with a human immune system -- the decision leaves a crucial question unanswered: At what point is something too human to patent?

Officials said it was not so difficult to make the call this time because Newman's technique could easily have created something that was much more person than not. But newer methods are allowing scientists to fine-tune those percentages, putting the patent office in an awkward position of being the federal arbiter of what is human.

"I don't think anyone knows in terms of crude percentages how to differentiate between humans and nonhumans," said John Doll, a deputy commissioner for patents. But the office also is not comfortable with a "we'll know it when we see it" approach, he added. "It would be very helpful . . . to have some guidance from Congress or the courts," he said.

The Newman case indicates how far US intellectual property law has lagged behind biotechnology. The Supreme Court has addressed the issue of patenting life only once, and that was 25 years ago.

It also raises profound questions about the differences -- and similarities -- between humans and other animals, and the limits of treating animals as property.

"The whole privatization of the biological world has to be looked at," Newman said, "so we don't suddenly all find ourselves in the position of saying, 'How did we get here? Everything is owned.' "

Newman's application, filed in 1997, described a technique for combining human embryo cells with cells from the embryo of a monkey, ape, or other animal to create a blend of the two -- what scientists call a chimera. That's the Greek term for the mythological creature that had a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.

Others had used similar methods to create a "geep," part goat and part sheep. But Newman's human-animal chimeras would have greater utility in medicine, for drug and toxicity testing and perhaps as sources of organs for transplantation into people.

In collaboration with Jeremy Rifkin, a Washington biotech activist and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, Newman challenged the patent office: Issue the patent, which would keep others from pursuing such work for 20 years, or reject it, effectively accomplishing the same thing.

The two had until Friday to appeal the latest rejection, but they decided to let it pass and declare victory.

For Rifkin, the case was déjà vu in reverse. When US scientist Ananda Chakrabarty applied for the first patent on a living organism, a genetically engineered bacterium able to digest oil spills, the case ended up in the Supreme Court because the patent office did not want to patent life forms. Rifkin had filed the main amicus brief supporting the patent office.

They lost. In a 5-to-4 decision, the court declared that patents could be issued on "anything under the sun that is made by man."

The office has obliged, issuing patents on bacteria, yeast, and as of last fall, 436 animals.

In 1987, the patent office announced it would draw the line at humans, but it offered no legal rationale or statutory backing.

The paper trail created by the Newman claim offers perhaps the best explication yet for that ban. One rationale in the documents sent to Newman is that such a patent would be "inconsistent with the constitutional right to privacy." After all, the office wrote, a patent allows the owner to exclude others from making the claimed invention. If a patent were to be issued on a human, it would conflict with one of the core privacy rights in the Constitution-- a person's right to decide whether and when to procreate.

Patents on humans also could conflict with the 13th Amendment's prohibition against slavery. That is because a patent permits the owner to exclude others from "using" the invention. Because "use" can mean "employ," officials wrote, a patent holder could prevent a person from being employed by any other -- which "would be tantamount to involuntary servitude."

Finally, the office noted it is illegal to import products that are made abroad using processes patented in the United States. To show how that could cause a problem in a world in which people are patentable, it gave an example in which a man goes overseas and undergoes one of the many surgical procedures patented by US doctors. Simply by returning to America, the office said, that "surgically altered human" could be guilty of patent infringement for illegally importing himself.

Not all those concepts hold water with legal scholars. But the general position was greatly strengthened two years ago when Representative David Joseph Weldon, Republican of Florida, added a rider to an appropriations bill -- renewed this year -- barring patents on humans or human embryos. Unresolved by that wording, however, is what is human and what is not. Patent officials conceded they lack a good way of defining the "human" that Newman's patent supposedly too closely resembles.

The decision letter to Newman notes that many people have heart valves from pigs. A patent has been issued on the use of baboon cells in people to aid in organ transplantation. Those procedures, the letter says, "did not convert the human patient to a nonhuman."

Similarly, mice that contain up to 1 percent human brain cells in their skulls are clearly mice, said Stanford University biologist Irving Weissman, one of the scientists who helped make hybrid rodents. The tricky part, all agree, is what to do with the middle ground. Weissman and others, for example, have talked about their desire to produce mice whose brains are composed entirely of human cells.

Can This Black Box See Into the Future?

DEEP in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream.

At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.

But, according to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events.

The machine apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened - but in the fevered mood of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims were swiftly knocked back by sceptics. But last December, it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic tragedy.

Now, even the doubters are acknowledging that here is a small box with apparently inexplicable powers.

'It's Earth-shattering stuff,' says Dr Roger Nelson, emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the United States, who is heading the research project behind the 'black box' phenomenon.

'We're very early on in the process of trying to figure out what's going on here. At the moment we're stabbing in the dark.' Dr Nelson's investigations, called the Global Consciousness Project, were originally hosted by Princeton University and are centred on one of the most extraordinary experiments of all time. Its aim is to detect whether all of humanity shares a single subconscious mind that we can all tap into without realising.

And machines like the Edinburgh black box have thrown up a tantalising possibility: that scientists may have unwittingly discovered a way of predicting the future.

Although many would consider the project's aims to be little more than fools' gold, it has still attracted a roster of 75 respected scientists from 41 different nations. Researchers from Princeton - where Einstein spent much of his career - work alongside scientists from universities in Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. The project is also the most rigorous and longest-running investigation ever into the potential powers of the paranormal.

'Very often paranormal phenomena evaporate if you study them for long enough,' says physicist Dick Bierman of the University of Amsterdam. 'But this is not happening with the Global Consciousness Project. The effect is real. The only dispute is about what it means.' The project has its roots in the extraordinary work of Professor Robert Jahn of Princeton University during the late 1970s. He was one of the first modern scientists to take paranormal phenomena seriously. Intrigued by such things as telepathy, telekinesis - the supposed psychic power to move objects without the use of physical force - and extrasensory perception, he was determined to study the phenomena using the most up-to-date technology available.

One of these new technologies was a humble-looking black box known was a Random Event Generator (REG). This used computer technology to generate two numbers - a one and a zero - in a totally random sequence, rather like an electronic coin-flipper.

The pattern of ones and noughts - 'heads' and 'tails' as it were - could then be printed out as a graph. The laws of chance dictate that the generators should churn out equal numbers of ones and zeros - which would be represented by a nearly flat line on the graph. Any deviation from this equal number shows up as a gently rising curve.

During the late 1970s, Prof Jahn decided to investigate whether the power of human thought alone could interfere in some way with the machine's usual readings. He hauled strangers off the street and asked them to concentrate their minds on his number generator. In effect, he was asking them to try to make it flip more heads than tails.

It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results, however, were stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained.

Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their minds could influence the machine and produce significant fluctuations on the graph, 'forcing it' to produce unequal numbers of 'heads' or 'tails'.

According to all of the known laws of science, this should not have happened - but it did. And it kept on happening.

Dr Nelson, also working at Princeton University, then extended Prof Jahn's work by taking random number machines to group meditations, which were very popular in America at the time. Again, the results were eyepopping. The groups were collectively able to cause dramatic shifts in the patterns of numbers.

From then on, Dr Nelson was hooked.

Using the internet, he connected up 40 random event generators from all over the world to his laboratory computer in Princeton. These ran constantly, day in day out, generating millions of different pieces of data. Most of the time, the resulting graph on his computer looked more or less like a flat line.

But then on September 6, 1997, something quite extraordinary happened: the graph shot upwards, recording a sudden and massive shift in the number sequence as his machines around the world started reporting huge deviations from the norm. The day was of historic importance for another reason, too.

For it was the same day that an estimated one billion people around the world watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey.

Dr Nelson was convinced that the two events must be related in some way.

Could he have detected a totally new phenomena? Could the concentrated emotional outpouring of millions of people be able to influence the output of his REGs. If so, how?

Dr Nelson was at a loss to explain it.

So, in 1998, he gathered together scientists from all over the world to analyse his findings. They, too, were stumped and resolved to extend and deepen the work of Prof Jahn and Dr Nelson. The Global Consciousness Project was born.

Since then, the project has expanded massively. A total of 65 Eggs (as the generators have been named) in 41 countries have now been recruited to act as the 'eyes' of the project.

And the results have been startling and inexplicable in equal measure.

For during the course of the experiment, the Eggs have 'sensed' a whole series of major world events as they were happening, from the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia to the Kursk submarine tragedy to America's hung election of 2000.

The Eggs also regularly detect huge global celebrations, such as New Year's Eve.

But the project threw up its greatest enigma on September 11, 2001.

As the world stood still and watched the horror of the terrorist attacks unfold across New York, something strange was happening to the Eggs.

Not only had they registered the attacks as they actually happened, but the characteristic shift in the pattern of numbers had begun four hours before the two planes even hit the Twin Towers.

They had, it appeared, detected that an event of historic importance was about to take place before the terrorists had even boarded their fateful flights. The implications, not least for the West's security services who constantly monitor electronic 'chatter', are clearly enormous.

'I knew then that we had a great deal of work ahead of us,' says Dr Nelson.

What could be happening? Was it a freak occurrence, perhaps?

Apparently not. For in the closing weeks of December last year, the machines went wild once more.

Twenty-four hours later, an earthquake deep beneath the Indian Ocean triggered the tsunami which devastated South-East Asia, and claimed the lives of an estimated quarter of a million people.

So could the Global Consciousness Project really be forecasting the future?

Cynics will quite rightly point out that there is always some global event that could be used to 'explain' the times when the Egg machines behaved erratically. After all, our world is full of wars, disasters and terrorist outrages, as well as the occasional global celebration. Are the scientists simply trying too hard to detect patterns in their raw data?

The team behind the project insist not. They claim that by using rigorous scientific techniques and powerful mathematics it is possible to exclude any such random connections.

'We're perfectly willing to discover that we've made mistakes,' says Dr Nelson. 'But we haven't been able to find any, and neither has anyone else.

Our data shows clearly that the chances of getting these results by fluke are one million to one against.

That's hugely significant.' But many remain sceptical.

Professor Chris French, a psychologist and noted sceptic at Goldsmiths College in London, says: 'The Global Consciousness Project has generated some very intriguing results that cannot be readily dismissed. I'm involved in similar work to see if we get the same results. We haven't managed to do so yet but it's only an early experiment. The jury's still out.' Strange as it may seem, though, there's nothing in the laws of physics that precludes the possibility of foreseeing the future.

It is possible - in theory - that time may not just move forwards but backwards, too. And if time ebbs and flows like the tides in the sea, it might just be possible to foretell major world events. We would, in effect, be 'remembering' things that had taken place in our future.

'There's plenty of evidence that time may run backwards,' says Prof Bierman at the University of Amsterdam.

'And if it's possible for it to happen in physics, then it can happen in our minds, too.' In other words, Prof Bierman believes that we are all capable of looking into the future, if only we could tap into the hidden power of our minds. And there is a tantalising body of evidence to support this theory.

Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that people could sense the future. In the mid-1970s he hooked people up to hospital scanning machines so that he could study their brainwave patterns.

He began by showing them a sequence of provocative cartoon drawings.

When the pictures were shown, the machines registered the subject's brainwaves as they reacted strongly to the images before them. This was to be expected.

Far less easy to explain was the fact that in many cases, these dramatic patterns began to register a few seconds before each of the pictures were even flashed up.

It was as though Dr Hartwell's case studies were somehow seeing into the future, and detecting when the next shocking image would be shown next.

It was extraordinary - and seemingly inexplicable.

But it was to be another 15 years before anyone else took Dr Hartwell's work further when Dean Radin, a researcher working in America, connected people up to a machine that measured their skin's resistance to electricity. This is known to fluctuate in tandem with our moods - indeed, it's this principle that underlies many lie detectors.

Radin repeated Dr Hartwell's 'image response' experiments while measuring skin resistance. Again, people began reacting a few seconds before they were shown the provocative pictures. This was clearly impossible, or so he thought, so he kept on repeating the experiments. And he kept getting the same results.

'I didn't believe it either,' says Prof Bierman. 'So I also repeated the experiment myself and got the same results. I was shocked. After this I started to think more deeply about the nature of time.' To make matters even more intriguing, Prof Bierman says that other mainstream labs have now produced similar results but are yet to go public.

'They don't want to be ridiculed so they won't release their findings,' he says. 'So I'm trying to persuade all of them to release their results at the same time. That would at least spread the ridicule a little more thinly!' If Prof Bierman is right, though, then the experiments are no laughing matter.

They might help provide a solid scientific grounding for such strange phenomena as 'deja vu', intuition and a host of other curiosities that we have all experienced from time to time.

They may also open up a far more interesting possibility - that one day we might be able to enhance psychic powers using machines that can 'tune in' to our subconscious mind, machines like the little black box in Edinburgh.

Just as we have built mechanical engines to replace muscle power, could we one day build a device to enhance and interpret our hidden psychic abilities?

Dr Nelson is optimistic - but not for the short term. 'We may be able to predict that a major world event is going to happen. But we won't know exactly what will happen or where it's going to happen,' he says.

'Put it this way - we haven't yet got a machine we could sell to the CIA.'

But for Dr Nelson, talk of such psychic machines - with the potential to detect global catastrophes or terrorist outrages - is of far less importance than the implications of his work in terms of the human race.

For what his experiments appear to demonstrate is that while we may all operate as individuals, we also appear to share something far, far greater - a global consciousness. Some might call it the mind of God.

'We're taught to be individualistic monsters,' he says. 'We're driven by society to separate ourselves from each other. That's not right.

We may be connected together far more intimately than we realise.'

< This is posted only to illustrate that if there IS something "supernatural" out there, the correct way to approach and examine it is through a method such as this where-in there exists no guesswork "evidence" and what is is taken for what it is, unverified. >

It's a Warmer World, But Does That Mean Armageddon?

OSLO (Reuters) - When bears wake early from hibernation, Australia suffers its worst drought in 100 years and multiple hurricanes hammer Florida should we believe The End is nigh?

That's the nub of a debate over the human impact on global warming that pits scientists who say such anomalies are signs of impending doom against those who say they are evidence that the earth's climate has always been chaotic.

Amid those signs of warming, for instance, Algeria had its worst snow in 50 years last month.

This month 141 countries will attempt the best effort to arrest a forecasted continued rise of global temperatures by bringing into force the Kyoto protocol. The treaty is an agreement aimed at curbing emissions of gases from cars and industry, blamed for trapping the earth's heat.

"Dealing with (global warming) will not be easy. Ignoring it will be worse," the United Nations says.

At issue is how humanity should deal with global warming, the risks of which are not yet fully understood despite broad consensus among scientists that people are heating the planet with the emission of such heat-trapping gases as carbon dioxide.

Not everyone is convinced of Kyoto's importance. President Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, reckoning it will be too costly and that it wrongly excludes developing countries from cuts in emissions until 2012.

Bush accepts there are risks from climate change but says more research is needed -- exasperating even allies who say that the time for Kyoto-style caps on emissions is now.

"We're talking about spending perhaps $150 billion a year on Kyoto with fairly little benefit," said Bjorn Lomborg, Danish author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist."

Lomborg said that money would be better spent on combating AIDS and malaria, malnutrition and promoting fair global trade.

Many climate scientists say that floods, storms and droughts will become more frequent and that climate change is the most severe long-term threat to the planet's life support systems.

Rising temperatures could force up ocean levels, swamping coasts and low-lying Pacific islands and drive thousands of species to extinction by 2100.

But full proof is elusive.

A Caribbean hurricane season last year, when Florida was the first U.S. state to be hit by four hurricanes in one season since 1886, might be a fluke. Bears are waking in Estonia in the warmest winter in two centuries, again a possible climate freak.

"Imagine a pot of boiling water on the stove. If I turn up the heat I can't say that each bubble is from the extra heat," said Mike MacCracken, chief scientist for climate change programs at the Climate Institute, a Washington think-tank.

"But there are more bubbles and they're larger," he said, adding it was best to act now rather than risk disaster.

The warmest year at the world's surface since records began in the 1860s was 1998, followed by 2002, 2003 and 2004, according to the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization.

World surface temperatures have risen by 0.6 degrees centigrade (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s when the Industrial Revolution started in Europe.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 2,000 scientists which advises the United Nations, projects a further rise of 1.4-5.8 degrees centigrade by 2100. Even the lowest forecast would be the biggest century-long rise in 10,000 years.

BEYOND DOUBT?

Yet the evidence for a human impact on the climate falls short of being "beyond a reasonable doubt," the standard of proof needed in a criminal court.

"It is really for a legal mind to decide whether the scientific consensus of the IPCC provides findings that are beyond reasonable doubt," said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri.

Many so-called skeptics concede that carbon dioxide stokes global warming but say U.N. models of what will happen in 2100 are about as reliable as tomorrow's weather forecast.

Other factors, like variations in the sun's radiation, ash from volcanoes or other natural effects may have a bigger role, they say. The IPCC tries to account for all such effects.

"My bottom line is that natural variations are much larger than the human component," said George Taylor, state climatologist for Oregon state.

Backers of Kyoto say it is a blueprint for regulating the climate by cutting rich nations' emissions of carbon dioxide by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Supporters say that much deeper cuts will be needed after 2012.

In a landmark phrase in 1995, the IPCC said that the balance of evidence suggested a discernible human influence on the global climate. And its 2001 report spoke of "new and stronger" evidence that humans had caused warming in the past 50 years.

Pachauri said that he hoped the next report, in 2007, would fill in gaps in knowledge. But Washington has given no signs of being won over to Kyoto, preferring to focus on funding new clean technologies like hydrogen.

The Environmental Protection Agency says:

"The fundamental scientific uncertainties are these: How much more warming will occur? How fast will this warming occur? And what are the potential adverse and beneficial effects? These uncertainties will be with us for some time, perhaps decades."

< It's like the old evolution vs. creationism debate, one of them has all the evidence pointed squarely at it, and yet they "hedge their bets" saying that we need to consider the other as a viable alternative. They are stupid. >

U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Findings

More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says.

The survey of the agency's scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

A division of the Department of the Interior, the Fish and Wildlife Service is charged with determining which animals and plants should be placed on the endangered species list and designating areas where such species need to be protected.

More than half of the biologists and other researchers who responded to the survey said they knew of cases in which commercial interests, including timber, grazing, development and energy companies, had applied political pressure to reverse scientific conclusions deemed harmful to their business.

Bush administration officials, including Craig Manson, an assistant secretary of the Interior who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, have been critical of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, contending that its implementation has imposed hardships on developers and others while failing to restore healthy populations of wildlife.

Along with Republican leaders in Congress, the administration is pushing to revamp the act. The president's proposed budget calls for a $3-million reduction in funding of Fish and Wildlife's endangered species programs.

"The pressure to alter scientific reports for political reasons has become pervasive at Fish and Wildlife offices around the country," said Lexi Shultz of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Mitch Snow, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency had no comment on the survey, except to say "some of the basic premises just aren't so."

The two groups that circulated the survey also made available memos from Fish and Wildlife officials that instructed employees not to respond to the survey, even if they did so on their own time. Snow said that agency employees could not use work time to respond to outside surveys.

Fish and Wildlife scientists in 90 national offices were asked 42 questions and given space to respond in essay form in the mail-in survey sent in November.

One scientist working in the Pacific region, which includes California, wrote: "I have been through the reversal of two listing decisions due to political pressure. Science was ignored ? and worse, manipulated, to build a bogus rationale for reversal of these listing decisions."

More than 20% of survey responders reported they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information."

However, 69% said they had never been given such a directive. And, although more than half of the respondents said they had been ordered to alter findings to lessen protection of species, nearly 40% said they had never been required to do so.

Sally Stefferud, a biologist who retired in 2002 after 20 years with the agency, said Wednesday she was not surprised by the survey results, saying she had been ordered to change a finding on a biological opinion.

"Political pressures influence the outcome of almost all the cases," she said. "As a scientist, I would probably say you really can't trust the science coming out of the agency."

A biologist in Alaska wrote in response to the survey: "It is one thing for the department to dismiss our recommendations, it is quite another to be forced (under veiled threat of removal) to say something that is counter to our best professional judgment."

Don Lindburg, head of the office of giant panda conservation at the Zoological Society of San Diego, said it was unrealistic to expect federal scientists to be exempt from politics or pressure.

"I've not stood in the shoes of any of those scientists," he said. "But it is not difficult for me to believe that there are pressures from those who are not happy with conservation objectives, and here I am referring to development interest and others.

"But when it comes to altering data, that is a serious matter. I am really sorry to hear that scientists working for the service feel they have to do that. Changing facts to fit the politics ? that is a very unhealthy thing. If I were a scientist in that position I would just refuse to do it."

The Union of Concerned Scientists and the public employee group provided copies of the survey and excerpts from essay-style responses.

One biologist based in California, who responded to the survey, said in an interview with The Times that the Fish and Wildlife Service was not interested in adding any species to the endangered species list.

"For biologists who do endangered species analysis, my experience is that the majority of them are ordered to reverse their conclusions [if they favor listing]. There are other biologists who will do it if you won't," said the biologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

California Considers Ban on Pet Cloning

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A California lawmaker said on Wednesday he would introduce a bill this week to ban sales of cloned pets, a move that could end a California company's plans to replicate beloved domestic animals.

A ban is necessary because the technology is unregulated and animal shelters are filled to capacity with potential pets, Assembly Member Lloyd Levine said in an interview.

"If you were to use animals for experiments, for agriculture, for all sorts of things, there are all sorts of regulations ... Who knows what's going to happen if these things get released into the wild?" Levine said.

The proposal follows the first pet cloning last year from Sausalito, California-based Genetic Savings & Clone Inc., which charges $50,000 to clone a cat. The company in December revealed it had cloned a cat -- named Little Nicky after its progenitor Nicky -- for a client in Texas.

"Why do we need to pay $50,000 for a cat?" Levine said. "We're not banning legitimate scientific research. We're simply banning the exploitation of vulnerable people."

The privately held company says it has four other cat clones in various stages of production and is developing a dog cloning service.

"The proposed ban is based on myths and science fiction and would neither improve animal welfare nor serve the interests of consumers," said Ben Carlson, a spokesman for Genetic Savings & Clone. "I have the impression Levine is pandering to animal rights advocates."