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www.humancar.com

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Please see here for your consideration the very last Sky Commuter Prototype test craft that remains in existence today.

The development of this advanced technology and project started back in the mid 1980's. Design and engineering was created by Boeing engineer's in Arlington Washington. Some 60 investors and well over $6,000.000.00 in R&D and production yielded only (3) concept test ships before the plant was shut down for reasons not listed here. The sad end was all and anything that was in the hangar was taken and or destroyed. This sole example of this technology, Advancements and investments are present and was saved in this single craft. The ship was not at the base location at the time or it to would have been destroyed.



This is the only registered aircraft with the FAA as a VTOL class and carries the correct tail number of N2001C. All aircraft materials and built by the finest. The craft is 14 feet long and 8 foot wide at the front Canard winglets and the rear outer fan rims.

The ship is made of the same advanced composite materials as The Gossamer Cotidor and The Vovager. Stronger than steel pound for pound and unbelievable light weight. The Sky Commuter you see here weighs in around 400 pounds or less! Still wearing it's original paint and showing little wear from the many years of storage and sporting it's original interior complete in remarkable condition. This is the ship that was used in Air shows and Magazines and newspapers for PR and to gain investors for the company. Complete photo history and documented company letters on letterhead and more will be forwarded with this rare craft. There are photos of all The Thunderbird pilots in and posing with this Sky Commuter.

In a brief description of the ship: It has a operational electric gas assisted lexan bubble canopy. Electric controled directional driving and landing lights. Electric Joystick and two foot pedals on both side and the craft was meant to be controlled from either seat. Advanced front dash shell made of Carbonfiber and Kevlar. Rear engine and electronics bay accessible by tilting seats forward and removing the back panel. (3) huge 3 foot lifting fans CCW/CW rotation. This was made to take off in vertical fight and land. It can be landed on water and float like a boat and take off of water. The targeted dream was to lift above it all and not deal with the daily gridlock traffic. Nearly at the finish line it all came to a abrupt stop and all the years and investment and R&D and production, Remains in this one craft shown here.

There is much more to say and list but it would be a History lesson to having the largest investment jump on R&D to continue this Quest. I will discuss this to interested parties. I am hoping that it will be acquired by a museum for display or a serious firm that will complete the dream that was started.

All history, Rights and the Sky Commuter it's self is being offered here. This is a very rare chance to aquire such a investment. And I can assure you that NO ONE else is going to have anything that is even close to this. It stops traffic everywhere and the biggest crowd pleaser I have ever owned. It has a new custom trailer that goes with it that was created just for transpotation of this ship. I have only moved it a couple of times in public and that was a experence in it's self.

Any questions at all Please Email me and I will return all contacts as quickly as I can. BonusClick@aol.com

Thank You.

One history of medicine say's its the history of doctors getting further and further away from their patients' experience, where you used to put your ear up to the heart now there are stethoscopes to keep a distance, where once you felt for broken bones now there are x-ray rooms and lead shielding and a special safe room for the technicians to operate your irradiation, of course it's not that simple but sure, I understand the analogy.

A British noble in a movie once said that the way we eat food is what separates us from animals, the use of multiple forks and and a cavalcade of table manners to keep the mortality of eating a few steps away from conscious awareness, though it's only civilized to have a nice full feeling and not be rocking from hunger, the fact of the body is to be ignored sometimes and replaced with a theory of food so as to make sure we're not "just" a bunch of animals putting meat in our faces.

Shoes are a big one, the Time Warner building when it was still under construction a few years ago sold it's services as a place where your feet never had to touch the ground, there were cars which drove up to the carpets and you could theoretically be hoisted into these cars if the exertion of sitting down was too much, this was the world Paris Hilton came from before she was forced to touch the walls and floors of a prison cell last year which resulted in her suicidal catatonia, all her life were the rarified air and smooth surfaces of all that wealthy flesh and then she had to touch something dirty all of a sudden and her mind collapsed, sometimes I feel bad for her, sometimes I have to force myself to remember the higher goals here, sometimes the point is that one famous human being is not a good enough reason for all the energy wasted thinking about her.

These tipping points where the mean world tries to force your body into it's dirty playground, some folks are proud of how they can do this to others, how they get their golf clubs into your asshole and how that's a great victory in the tai chi way of things, I think that's interesting, the assault on perceived purity, I guess it might be safer for such people to not understand how the mind works, how sometimes the body doesn't have an explicit body and can still interact with an attacker despite being physically absent, a brute might not see the subtlety involved, might not understand that the hotel fire and the rape victim are connected somehow, they will only know that the hotel fire was annoying and that they seem to have gotten away with the rape so far.

Because if it's phrased in another way and somehow the dissociated body becomes a deterrent force in the way that police and jails try to be, it might just drive everyone insane, because how can you keep every single one of your thoughts in some sacred place without slipping and then developing complexes about slipping, didn't the Catholics have this problem with "sins of thought"? There is the deed and the thought and George Carlin's Catholics were very concerned about the thought, even if this was absurd to George Carlin who himself went through great hurdles to reconcile a million weird thoughts so he could somehow find a good way to be, all I was thinking about today was the shoes.

Claws and toenails are like teeth and help connect a body to the external, the bite and grip a body might have on external objects, the mastication of unwieldy food items, people decorate their claws and teeth to help get past the sin of the body, to surpass the functionality and dwell in some supposed realm of beauty instead, toenails are for painting, teeth are for straightening, the smile is for enjoying on a magazine page, it's only polite to avoid comments about what might have touched those lips recently, though really, can there be anything new out there at this point? You can catalog every body part of nearly every species and probably find a picture of that body part touching the lips of a model with nice teeth, maybe the starting point is when you've finally seen all those pictures, maybe that's when the education is done, though still there will always be a rich person's instinct towards "purity", the need to make sure your daughter only ever touches fine lace and the clean water of your Hamptons Estate.

They wanted to make Paris Hilton scratch for her food with bloody fingers and they succeeded, is she cured now?

Every time I get still enough to concentrate the cats disturb my peace, this is how a morning writing exercise gets destroyed in the practice, this is the reminder I need about my friends who are Moms, I'm lucky enough to know these cats are needy and should shut the fuck up finally, what does a Mom do when the kid is raised on sugar by mistake and every noise it makes is just the sugar wanting more of itself, MROW says the infuriating cat, I'm sure you wanted to know this, I'm sure you read your favorite columnist so he can devolve into notes about process worship, I'm here at the keyboard typing about myself typing and I just know that's what you wanted to read about today, the cat is typing the same thing, look at me look at me, but fuck you cat, no one is counting on you for anything except to maybe stop vomiting on everything when we're having a good day, people count on me for more.

The cat has been good today.

Boston's $14.8B Big Dig finally complete
By STEVE LeBLANC, Associated Press Writer

BOSTON - When the clock runs out on 2007, Boston will quietly mark the end of one of the most tumultuous eras in the city's history: The Big Dig, the nation's most complex and costliest highway project, will officially come to an end. Don't expect any champagne toasts.

After a history marked by engineering triumphs, tunnels leaks, epic traffic jams, last year's death of a motorist crushed by falling concrete panels and a price tag that soared from $2.6 billion to a staggering $14.8 billion, there's little appetite for celebration.

Civil and criminal cases stemming from the July 2006 tunnel ceiling collapse continue, though on Monday the family of Milena Del Valle announced a $6 million settlement with Powers Fasteners, the company that manufactured the epoxy blamed by investigators for the accident. Lawsuits are pending against other Big Dig contractors, and Powers Fasteners still faces a manslaughter indictment.



Officially, Dec. 31 marks the end of the joint venture that teamed megaproject contractor Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff with the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to build the dizzying array of underground highways, bridges, ramps and a new tunnel under Boston Harbor — all while the city remained open for business. The project was so complex it's been likened to performing open heart surgery on a patient while the patient is wide awake. Some didn't know if they'd live to see it end.

Enza Merola had a front row seat on the Big Dig from the front window of her pastry shop — stacked neatly with tiramisu, sfogliatelle and brightly colored Italian cookies — in Boston's North End. During the toughest days of the project, the facade of Marie's Pastry Shop, named after her sister, was obscured from view. The only way customers could find the front door was along a treacherous path through heavy construction. "For a while we thought we weren't going to make it," Merola said. "But you know, we hung in there."



The Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project — as the Big Dig is officially known — has its roots in the construction of the hulking 1950's era elevated Central Artery that cut a swath through the center of Boston, lopping off the waterfront from downtown and casting a shadow over some of the city's oldest neighborhoods. Almost as soon as the ribbon was cut on the elevated highway in 1959, many were already wishing it away. One was Frederick Salvucci, a city kid for whom the demolition of the old Central Artery became a lifelong quest. "It was always a beautiful city, but it had this ugly scar through it," said Salvucci, state transportation secretary during the project's planning stages. Rather than build a new elevated highway, Salvucci and others pushed a far more radical solution — burying it. Easier said than done.

Those who built the Big Dig would have to undertake the massive highway project in the cramped confines of Boston's narrow, winding streets, some dating to pre-Colonial days. Of all the project's Rubik's Cube-like engineering challenges, none was more daunting than the first — how to build a wider tunnel directly underneath a narrower existing elevated highway while preventing the overhead highway from collapsing.



To solve the problem, engineers created horizontal braces as wide as the new tunnel, then cut away the elevated highway's original metal struts and gently lowered them onto the braces — even as cars crawled along overhead, their drivers oblivious to the work below. It was the just one of what would be referred to as the Big Dig's "engineering marvels." The Big Dig's long history is also littered with wrong turns — some unavoidable, others self-inflicted.

One of the biggest occurred in 2004 when water started pouring through a wall of the recently opened I-93 tunnel under downtown Boston. An investigation found the leak was caused by the failure to clear debris that became caught in the concrete in the wall during construction. Hundreds of smaller drips, most near the ceiling, were also found. Some delays were unrelated to construction. The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge — the project's signature element — went through dozens of revisions as designers labored to come up with the most practical and elegant way to cross the Charles River.



But the project's darkest day came near the end of construction in 2006 when suspended concrete ceiling panels in a tunnel leading to Logan Airport collapsed, crushing a car and killing Del Valle, 39, a passenger in the vehicle driven by her husband. The tunnel was shut down for months as each of the remaining panels was inspected and a new fastening system installed. A federal investigation blamed the use of the wrong kind of epoxy and the Massachusetts attorney general indicted the epoxy manufacturer.

Four workers also were killed working on the project. During peak construction, more than 5,000 workers labored daily on the project.

The project's escalating budget also became an unwanted part of its legacy.



In 2000, former Big Dig head James Kerasiotes resigned after failing to disclose $1.4 billion in overruns. A frustrated Congress capped the federal contribution. "It never should have taken so long. It never should have been so expensive," said former Gov. Michael Dukakis, who left office just as major construction was to begin. For those who grew up with the noise and clutter of the old Central Artery, the transformation of downtown Boston is still a wonder to behold. The darkened parking lots under the old elevated highway have been replaced by parks, dubbed the Rose Kennedy Fitzgerald Greenway after the mother of Sen. Edward Kennedy, who grew up in the North End. Buildings that once turned their backs to the old Central Artery are finding ways to open their doors to the parkway.

Mayor Thomas Menino, who presided over the city during most of the construction, said that for the first time in half a century, residents can walk from City Hall to the waterfront without trudging under a major highway. "When I came into office in 1993, people said your city isn't going to survive," he said. "Now we have a beautiful open space in the heart of the city. It knits the downtown with the waterfront. All those dire predictions by the experts didn't come true."



Drivers also give the Big Dig a big thumbs up. A study by the Turnpike Authority found the Big Dig cut the average trip through Boston from 19.5 minutes to 2.8 minutes. "Before we drive bumper to bumper, but now they are moving very well," said Gamal Ahmed, 38, who has been driving a cab in Boston for seven years. "Sometimes we are stuck, but not like before."

For Salvucci, who warns gridlock could soon return without a major commitment to public transportation, the Big Dig — for all its whiz-bang engineering — was always second to the city itself. "The Big Dig is not a highway with an incidental city adjacent to it. It is a living city that happens to have some major highway infrastructure within it and that highway infrastructure had to be rebuilt," he said. "This was not elective surgery. It had to be done."

____

Associated Press writer Rodrique Ngowi contributed to this report.

Filmmakers have more than a feeling about Boston
By Carolyn Giardina
Sun Dec 23

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Boston is fast becoming Hollywood Northeast. Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" was set in the Bay State and more than half of the film was shot on location, but only about $6 million of its $90 million budget was spent in Massachusetts, with a larger amount of the location work going to New York, according to Nicholas Paleologos, executive director of the Massachusetts Film Office.

"Fast-forward 24 months: 'The Pink Panther 2' had nothing to do with Massachusetts and not a single scene takes place in Massachusetts -- but Massachusetts got the lion's share of the location spending," he said. In large part, this trend can be attributed to an aggressive tax incentive plan allowing productions that drop more than $50,000 in Massachusetts to receive a 25% rebate on everything they spend in the state. Nine major features were shot in Massachusetts this year, pouring more than $125 million in direct expenditure into the local economy, up 150% from 2006, said Paleologos

"Before (the incentives), those pictures would stay in the state for a week or two shooting exteriors and then shoot in another place where they could get a tax credit," he said. Contributing to the program's success to some degree is the greenback's slide against the Canadian dollar, prompting producers to look for cheaper location options in the States. And Boston has been met with enthusiasm. "Everywhere you turn, the camera is a feast for your eyes," said Mike Paseornek, president of production at Lionsgate. "Boston has not ever been overused as a city for a setting in movies. You have a fresh look at something audiences haven't seen for quite a while. "As long as the tax incentives stay in place, we will be returning to the city."

Lionsgate recently filmed "My Best Friend's Girl," starring Dane Cook and Kate Hudson, in the Boston area. The production team took full advantage of the city, shooting along the Charles River and Commonwealth Avenue as well as at Fenway Park, Quincy Market and Boston Common. "Boston was right for this movie, and the tax incentives made it possible to get the film done within the budget," Paseornek said.

Similarly, Rob Paris, one of the producers of "The Lonely Maiden," starring Morgan Freeman, Christopher Walken, William H. Macy and Marcia Gay Harden, said: "We are filming downtown at a customs house. We shot in the North End and Paul Revere Mall. We've done great iconography to incorporate into the movie, which I think is going to give it a nice extra layer that previously we weren't going to have." He added that the producers initially were looking to shoot in Vancouver, but the slumping U.S. dollar coupled with the tax incentives made Boston the more advantageous choice.

Other productions that filmed in Boston this year included Denzel Washington's Christmas Day release "The Great Debaters," and the Mick Jagger-produced "The Women," starring Meg Ryan. In production are Richard Kelly's "The Box," starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and Frank Langella, and "Real Men Cry," starring Mark Ruffalo, Ethan Hawke and Amanda Peet.

Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US
WASHINGTON (AFP)

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.

They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.

Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said. The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists say on their website. The treaties have been "repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life," the reborn freedom movement says.

Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said. "This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said. "It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means.

The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence -- an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England. Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row," Means said. One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.

"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference. The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means. Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website. "Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots," said Young.

"We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting that the battle would not be won in her lifetime.

Free coats! - About 1,000 Coats Headed To S.D. Reservation
KATHY WATERS/HIGHLANDS TODAY
By Bill Rettew Jr. of Highlands Today
Published: December 20, 2007

From left: Sheri and Simon Bjorn sort coats on Tuesday in south Lake Placid. The couple and other members of their family are going to Wounded Knee in South Dakota to deliver about 1,000 coats and other donated items.

LAKE PLACID — A local winter coat drive to warm the residents of a Lakota Sioux reservation at Wounded Knee, S.D., exceeded the expectations of organizer Betty Luckey and her family.

Luckey dreamed of collecting 500 coats. Thanks to overwhelming response, she will be able to present almost 1,000 coats to 500 residents — and just in time for Christmas.

The residents are unable to afford winter coats and often bundle up with blankets and wear several shirts. Coats donated include five fur coats, several coats manufactured by London Fog and many made from cashmere and camel hair. "There were beautiful coats hanging in closets — some never worn, with the tags still on them — and many were used very little," said Betty Luckey. "Several people bought new coats — especially for the children."

Betty Luckey, her four grandchildren and her two daughters are packing for an early departure today, with a trailer in tow, to arrive in time to give out coats Sunday evening. "Santa Claus has been really, really busy — a job well done," said Betty Luckey. "The people of Highlands County really responded. I'm going to have the happiest Christmas of anybody on the planet."

Sheri Bjorn said her mother planned for years to help the Indians after a stint as a Bible school teacher at the reservation and is excited to travel in one of vehicles towing trailers headed to South Dakota. "When she started to get the word out, she didn't know if anybody would respond," said Sheri Bjorn, "and now we don't have room for anything else. It's all going to go, we just don't know yet how. "I think it will all work out. Everything has so far."

Three trucks containing coats and supplies, towing horse trailers or U-Haul type trailers, were stranded by severe weather Monday night in Nebraska, but were able to reach the reservation on Tuesday.

A separate trailer is headed north, packed full with toys. One hundred fifty children will each receive a new toy and a second used toy which appears almost new. The Faith Lutheran Church, of Sebring, donated dozens of winter coats which were slow sellers in the church's thrift shop. Pastor Stanley Hollow-Horn of the Wounded Knee Church of God will help with distribution at the uncompleted church and local community center.

Electrical heaters were also purchased at Wal-Mart to heat a room in each of the reservation's homes. "So badly they need heaters," said Luckey. "Many homes are without heat because the propane gas gives out."

Luckey wants to also present all 500 residents an orange or other piece of Highlands County citrus. "I want to do it every year," said Luckey, about the trip to South Dakota. "I hope my children continue it."About 1,000 Coats Headed To S.D. Reservation

Fire Breaks Out on White House Grounds
Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency
A fire broke out Wednesday in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington.
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: December 20, 2007

WASHINGTON — A two-alarm fire broke out on the White House grounds Wednesday morning, sending 1,000 federal workers scurrying for safety and damaging Vice President Dick Cheney’s ceremonial suite in the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street from the West Wing.

Mr. Cheney was not there when the fire started about 9:15 a.m.; he and President Bush were in the White House Situation Room for an intelligence briefing. The two were informed of the blaze when they returned to the Oval Office, and later went outside together to shake the hands of firefighters who had responded.

There were no serious injuries, but one person, a marine, suffered cuts when he punched his hand through a fifth-floor window to escape the smoke by crawling onto one of the building’s ornate Mansard roofs. He could later be seen, in his full dress uniform, calling to rescue personnel, who quickly reached him and escorted him to safety.

The ornate gray Eisenhower building, built in the 1870s and 1880s to house the War Department, the State Department and the Department of the Navy, was billed as “an ornament to the city of Washington” during its construction. Richard M. Nixon used it for his day-to-day working office, preferring it to the Oval Office. Dwight D. Eisenhower held the nation’s first televised press conference there.

The building’s centerpiece is the second-floor ceremonial office of the vice president, with two Belgian black marble fireplaces and wooden floors designed in a geometric pattern of mahogany, white maple and cherry. The office was used by 16 secretaries of the Navy beginning in 1879. In 1929, after a Christmas Eve fire damaged the West Wing, President Herbert Hoover moved in.

The desk is of particular significance; it was first used by Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, and its inside top drawer has been signed by all who have used it since the 1940s, including President Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson when he was vice president.

It was not clear Wednesday whether the desk sustained any damage. Mr. Cheney’s spokeswoman, Lea Ann McBride, said the office, which Mr. Cheney has used for television interviews and swearing-in ceremonies, suffered smoke and water damage, but was not damaged by the fire. The White House press secretary, Dana Perino, lamented that the “gorgeous floors” are now “under water.”

Ms. Perino said the fire apparently began in an electrical closet or a telephone room not far from Mr. Cheney’s suite; city fire officials said it did not seem suspicious.

But, this being Washington, conspiracy theories and political wisecracks were rampant in its aftermath. When Mr. Bush visited wounded soldiers at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in the afternoon, a reporter asked just how Mr. Cheney managed to be in the president’s office at the time of the fire.

Mr. Bush just chuckled.

Holli Chmela contributed reporting for this article.

Scientists find source of cosmic dust
Thu Dec 20

PASADENA, Calif. - Scientists in California have uncovered the best evidence yet that cosmic dust in the early universe mostly came from the explosions of giant stars.

The Spitzer Space Telescope recently detected large amounts of space dust, 10,000 Earth masses worth, in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A located 11,000 light-years away.

The discovery comes two months after Spitzer found freshly made dust in the wind bursting out of super-massive black holes.

Astronomers believe both supernovae and quasars are responsible for the dust that helped seed early stars. Dust is essential in the cooling process to make stars, which are predominantly gas.

Researchers at NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology used a telescope instrument to analyze infrared light from the supernova and construct maps of the dust to determine the quantity and composition.

Results will be published in the Jan. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Hopes Dim for U.N. Solution for Kosovo
By WARREN HOGE
December 20, 2007
Kosovo Struggles to Forge an Identity (December 17, 2007)

UNITED NATIONS — The Security Council signaled Wednesday that it would not be able to resolve the status of Kosovo, the breakaway Kosovo Struggles to Forge an Identity (December 17, 2007)Serbian province, and that a solution would have to come from outside the United Nations.

John Sawers, the British ambassador, emerged from a closed Council meeting to say that what he had heard inside from Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian prime minister, and Fatmir Sejdiu, the president of Kosovo, “underlined just how enormous the gulf is between the two parties.”

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, said that the two had “irreconcilable differences” and that the time had come to proceed with granting Kosovo the independence it has sought but Serbia has resisted.

“The continuation of the status quo poses not only a threat to peace and stability in Kosovo but also to the region and in Europe,” Mr. Khalilzad said.

Mr. Sawers said the European Union would proceed based on the plan for “supervised independence” with protections for the Serbian minority developed by Martti Ahtisaari, the United Nations envoy, and sent to the Council in March. Serbia and Russia, its ally on the Council, had rejected that plan because it led to independence for Kosovo.

The dispute has pitted the principles of sovereignty and self-determination against each other and produced a stand-off between Serbia, backed vigorously by Russia, and Kosovo, supported by the United States and the European Union.

Massimo D’Alema, the foreign minister of Italy, who presided over Wednesday’s session as this month’s Council president, said the intervention of Russia and the United States had pushed the Serbian government and Kosovo even farther apart.

He said that President Boris Tadic of Serbia had told him, “I can’t let the Russians be more Serbian than me.” And the Kosovars, Mr. D’Alema said, “can’t let themselves appear less Kosovar than President Bush.”

While Mr. D’Alema said Italy backed the European Union plan for Kosovo’s independence, he said “the Americans have underestimated the difficulties of the situation.”

Leaders of Kosovo’s 1.8 million ethnic Albanians have said they will declare their independence only in coordination with the United States and Europe, both of whom have counseled against abrupt action. Mr. D’Alema said he believed that the declaration would be made in March. Kosovo, a province of Serbia with a population that is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, has been administered by the United Nations since 1999, when an American-led NATO bombing campaign ended Serbian repression of the Albanian majority.

Serbia, with the strong backing of Russia, says it will never agree to the departure of Kosovo, which it views as a cradle of Serbian nationhood.

Serbia is instead offering a return to the autonomy it had as part of the former Yugoslavia.

Wednesday’s meeting occurred after four months of talks among Belgrade and Pristina and mediators from the United States, Russia and the European Union that were held to satisfy Russian demands for more time. The West contends that the talks produced no movement and Moscow argues that they were substantive and should continue.

Restrictions for Australian terror supporter
Thu Dec 20

ADELAIDE, Australia - Former Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks remains a terror threat, a magistrate said Friday as he ordered restrictions on his movements after he is released from an Australian prison next week. Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner who was convicted of supporting al-Qaida at a U.S. military tribunal after being captured in 2001 in Afghanistan, will be subject to a midnight-to-dawn curfew and have to report to police three times a week under the order. "I'm satisfied that coupled with the defendant's views expressed and his capability and training ... that the defendant is a risk of taking part in a terrorist act," Federal Magistrate Warren Donald said.

Hicks is due to be released on Dec. 29 from the Yatala high security prison in the southern city of Adelaide, after completing a seven-year prison sentence struck after a plea deal with U.S. authorities that resulted in him being returned home from Guantanamo. The father of two was captured in December 2001 by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, where he had been fighting with the Taliban, and spent more than five years at Guantanamo Bay before being tried. A U.S. military commission at Guantanamo sentenced Hicks, a Muslim convert, in March to seven years in prison, with all but nine months being suspended after he pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism. Under a plea bargain, Hicks was returned to Australia to serve the remainder of his sentence.

Hicks has admitted he attended al-Qaida training camps in Pakistan, and police prosecutors who sought the control order said evidence showed Hicks undertook "substantial training" in basic arms and combat, guerrilla warfare and advanced marksmanship from al-Qaida and the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. On Thursday, police lawyer Andrew Berger quoted letters sent in 2001 by Hicks to his family in which he said he had met al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden 20 times and described him as a "lovely brother." Hicks' lawyers said he did not object to being the subject of a control order, but that he believed some of the conditions were too onerous. Hicks' father, Terry, has said his son wants to forget about his recent past and get on with his life by enrolling in university.

Thomas Logan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First appearance Origin #1 (November, 2001)
Created by: Bill Jemas
Paul Jenkins
Joe Quesada (story)
Andy Kubert (art)

Characteristics
Abilities none

Thomas Logan is a fictional character of Marvel Comics. He was created by Bill Jemas, Joe Quesada, and Paul Jenkins. He was featured in the limited series Origin, which detailed the formative years of Wolverine of the X-Men and was published from November, 2001 to July, 2002.

Character biography

Thomas Logan lived in Alberta, Canada during the late 19th century. He was the groundskeeper for the Howlett estate, but was also an alcoholic, and was short-tempered. He is the father of Dog Logan, but his exact date of birth is unknown.

There is much debate as to whether or not he is in fact James Howlett's biological father. This is hinted towards in the series, with the fact that the adult James Howlett looks exactly like Thomas Logan. The fact that Wolverine at some point in his life deliberately starts going by the name Logan also lends credence to this theory.

He was an abusive, alcoholic father who beat his own son and introduced the boy to the drinking of alcoholic beverages. He had a violent temper, a mean disposition, and flew into uncontrollable rages.

He was kicked off of the Howlett estate for failing to control his son. Afterward, Thomas returned armed, with his son Dog, and killed his former employer John Howlett. He was in turn killed by James Howlett when the youth drove his newly manifested bone claws into Thomas' chest. James killed Thomas Logan to defend himself and his mother from Thomas, who was drunk, armed, and had already committed a murder.

Powers and abilities

Thomas Logan was not known to have any superhuman powers, but as his offspring may have been mutants, it is possible he may have been one as well. He definitely did not have a regenerative healing factor. There is another cause of James' powers-in a comic, it says that James could have inherited his powers from his mother, Elizabeth Howlett, who committed suicide because of that possibility.

Cool car.

Such a relief to find sculpture that doesn't suck. So nice. Ahh.





Something which takes talent to make.





Something not made by a sculptor too busy shaving designs in his pubes to execute something wonderful.

Oh god they did it again, I'm so sorry, when it gets discovered and I realize how many people will be hurt I get sad about the whole thing and then the danger recedes, though it's never stable because I'm never completely sorry, the pain will come back and there's nothing to be done about it, they make the pain and then the pain hurts everybody. No one is kind enough to make her stop and it's not like she's suddenly going to figure it out.

I saw The Fountain last night and obviously liked the story. Some day when the principles used in the plot are more well known maybe they'll laugh at the melodrama involved.

I wrote something for Warren Ellis' board on a thread about the "danger" of being "political" and it included the story of being followed in Stockton on election day when all our cars broke down and our cell phones stopped working, and also I was going to mention the thing about the undercover NYPD people at the Billionaires meetings, but then quit the application without saving because I needed to shut the computer down in a hurry for something.

This is the picture I was going to post with the little blurb: