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For as long as humans have enjoyed huddling around a warm campfire and enjoying fellowship with their friends, people have always craved a good story. From the epic poetry of legendary Greek storyteller Homer of almost three millennia ago to modern sagas like George Lucas' Star Wars series, there is nothing like a good story to lift our spirits! While epic stories have taken many different forms through the ages, one could argue that among today's most popular heroic storytelling formats is that all-American staple, the action movie.Being a guy, I have to admit I love action movies. While television...

Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? Francis Bacon So much of what goes on in the world is nothing more than fraud and buncombe.But without it, what would be left?That is the problem, dear reader. For, take away the spiff, the vanity, and the pretensions and do you have any world at all? Strip off his...

As the morals of this world continue to careen downhill like a hippopotamus on Rollerblades attempting to negotiate Lombard Street in the dark, one can only thank one's lucky stars that those beacons of probity and virtue, CEOs of public companies, are in a position of prominence to illuminate the road for us and keep the rest of us from veering off the right path! Okay, maybe not.As we have learned from recent headlines, corporate managers are often more interested in lining their own pockets with the shareholders' money than they are in placing the shareholders' interests ahead of their...

Suddenly, the world is tipping again. Geopolitical tensions remain at the boiling point, and recovery in the global economy looks shaky, at best. Meanwhile, financial markets are seizing up in the industrial world, and crisis is the only word to describe conditions in Brazil that are rapidly spreading to other Latin currencies. All this is starting to seem reminiscent of the dark days of late 1998 and early 1999. Yet there’s one key difference: America is not in any position to save the day by administering the tonic of global healing that worked so well three years ago. That puts...

US researchers are warning people vaccinated against smallpox as children that they are unlikely to still be protected. Smallpox was eradicated in the mid-1970s, but researchers warn bioterrorism fears mean mass vaccination should now be reconsidered. But experts are divided over whether research, featured in New Scientist magazine, mean there should be a renewed mass smallpox vaccination programme. In tests, doctors from Maryland found only 6% of over 600 microbiologists who were being re-vaccinated in the late 1990s were still immune to smallpox from their earlier vaccinations. One in a million recipients is likely to die Dr David Brown, PHLS...

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) introduced legislation late Thursday that would require an airliner's cockpit doors to remain shut and locked at all times during a flight, but it also specifies that pilots would not be allowed to have guns in the cockpit. "Pilots are there to fly, not shoot. It's not ho-hum up there. You don't get up and stretch. You fly the plane. Airlines could outfit their cockpits with rest rooms adequate for long journeys," said Hollings on Capitol Hill. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge have said they will support the...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - When a plane crashed into a Milan skyscraper last week, American investors did what comes naturally to them lately - they turned and ran for cover.Fearing an act of terrorism, they sent the Dow tumbling 163 points before changing the Depends diapers they wear lately for stress incontinence and sending the index back up once it became clear it was not déjà vu all over again.Forget that it made no sense that terrorists given to grand-scale destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon would send a small plane into a local government building in...

I listened to President Bush’s latest Mideast speech with the faint hope that he would finally articulate a reversal of his depressing double standard toward Israel. The first half was promising. Then the other shoe dropped. “Terror must be stopped. No nation can negotiate with terrorists. For there is no way to make peace with those whose only goal is death … Since September 11th, I’ve delivered this message: everyone must choose; you’re either with the civilized world, or you’re with the terrorists.” So far, so good, but then came the moral equivalency part, aimed at pacifying the terrorist thugs...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- According to Genesis 11, Noah's offspring built a magnificent city on "a plain in the land of Shinar." There, they arrogantly began erecting "a tower whose top will reach into heaven." Offended at their hubris, God stopped the construction by confusing "their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." The tower was never completed, and to this day, Biblical scholars speculate about its location when work was halted. They should have searched along the banks of the Potomac. The Bush administration, pressured by our European "allies," the potentates of the press and the pro-Palestinian leadership...

April 5, 2002 Early on in the study of techniques of negotiation, one learns to ask lots of questions, even those likely to elicit a “none of your business” answer. Even a nonanswer provides information. Likewise, citizens may ask politicians questions for which we really don’t expect an answer. This column features questions that I asked Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) in a letter, and his written response.As background, prior to entering politics, Sen. Edwards represented a child who had been severely and permanently injured by sitting on a drain in a swimming pool. The drain cover, manufactured by Sta-Rite Industries,...

High school rock opera stirs controversy The Rev. Dayton Walker protests the North Henderson High School production of Godspell as he speaks Friday afternoon in front of the school. Photo by Drea Jackson By Joel Burgess Times-News Staff Writer March 9, 2002 FRUITLAND — A high school rock opera that portrays Jesus Christ as a clown and puts a modern spin on the last days of Christ is pitting a minister against the school and Christian against Christian.The Rev. Dayton Walker of Grace Baptist Church in East Flat Rock stood in front of North Henderson High School with a small group ...

Incredibly, as we rapidly approach the two-year anniversary of both the spectacular NASDAQ mania blow-off top of March 2000 and the ensuing brutal bear market in the once universally-loved index, the vast majority of investors still don't seem to comprehend what is transpiring before their very eyes. While Wall Street shamelessly throws out innocuous sounding tripe like "normal inventory correction" or "mild recession" to placate the increasingly nervous mainstream investing masses, an extraordinary and exceedingly rare bust after a mega-bubble in the NASDAQ is relentlessly evolving. Way back near the top in March 2000 the NASDAQ composite index commanded an ...

COMEX Gold Futures saw a two-day double top last week near the $308 level. A pullback and consolidation is underway with perhaps more short-term price weakness to come. The good news is that gold has made it above $300 with ease and has broken above a critical resistance area near $296. This establishes a new upward trend that should last for several months. Once $308 immediate overhead resistance is cleared we can expect a test of the next benchmark area around $335-$345. Since the September high at $296 gold has broken through no less than five layers of supply between ...

Holy cow! Amazingly, after trading for more than a week in the fabled $300 realm, gold continues to steadfastly hold its ground right around the psychologically-crucial watermark. US$300 per ounce gold has considerable gravity and importance for global investors. There is just something magical and alluring about gold over $300! It captures the gold-investor psyche like Dow 10,000 does for equity investors. Perhaps it is just because humans love big round numbers. Not too many weeks ago, the prospect of gold running to $300 and staying there was merely an elusive dream for the relatively small number of hardcore gold-investors ...

GOLD & SILVER POTPOURRI 2002 FORCAST Our predictions for the year will be based on fundamentals and the psycho-political aspects of economic, political and financial events. The DOW will end the year between 4500 and 6450. Gold will reach $500 an ounce. Silver will be $10 to $15 an ounce. The dollar will drop to 100 to 105. Bonds will decline and the yield on 30-year US Treasuries should be 6.50% or higher. Gold DEMAND is going UP. Gold SUPPLY is going DOWN: SANTIAGO, Chile, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Canadian miner Placer Dome Inc. (PDG) said on Friday it does ...

The manufacturers of a gay doll have been threatened with legal action because the figure’s uniform resembles that of a mail courier service. BeProud.com, based in Hanford, California, sells the anatomically correct Billy, Tyson and Carlos dolls as adult novelty items. The “Billy Parcel Service” doll wears a brown uniform and carries a parcel. In October the company was issued with a cease and desist letter from lawyers acting for the United Parcel Service, the world`s largest parcel carrier. UPS demanded BeProud.com hand over all unsold “BPS” merchandise for destruction. The letter remarked that the Billy doll is anatomically correct ...

Students supporting two lesbian teenagers drowned out an attempted antigay protest at a high school in the US state of New Hampshire.Eleven members of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, which is led by homophoic pastor Fred Phelps, were protesting outside Dover High School, after the school district decided to allow the lesbian couple to be named in the school yearbook as the senior class' best couple.Phelps was not in attendance personally, although the protestors did include members of his family. About 20 students and parents mounted a counter protest to show their opposition to the Phelps group. ''We ...

Much sententious babble has issued from the mouths of European magnificos, as the Continent this week celebrated the launch of the euro in its tangible form. Commissioners and central bankers have vied for the microphone, and tried to be the Neil Armstrong of the moment. Giant leaps have been made, new eras have been hailed. A new sun has risen, glistering, metallic, to hover benignly over a relaunched Continent. In all the piffle, one remark stands out, not simply because it is pretentious, but because it is a lie. Mr Wim Duisenberg, the Dutch president of the European Central Bank, ...

    The Public Utilities Commission owns the Hetch Hetchy water system in Yosemite and thousands of miles of water pipes that lead from Hetch Hetchy to 11 city reservoirs. The water is pulled by gravity under city streets into homes.     To increase security for its reservoirs, pipes and other facilities after Sept. 11, PUC water czars want to hire a water-engineering firm used by the security-conscious government of Israel.     Tahal Ltd. made its initial presentation in December, and will return to make an additional pitch this month.     The company is the Israeli government's leading source for water engineering and security. ...

    World famous as a safehaven for hippies, hipsters and homosexuals, San Francisco -- the vanguard of the American left -- seems more like the Deep South when you actually read the law.     Believe it or not, the birthplace of flower power categorically outlaws "immoral" and "impure" acts, as well as dirty language and just about any kind of fun that might "corrupt the morals of youth."     Scores of morality laws dating from the 1930s and earlier remain in the police code -- many of them so out of touch with contemporary attitudes that even the SFPD wants to eighty-six ...