According to today's The Drudge Report:

With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a 'dressed' Barack Obama.

The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya. The senator was on a five-country tour of Africa.

"Wouldn't we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?" questioned one campaign staffer, in an email obtained by The Drudge Report.

In December, the campaign asked one of its volunteer county coordinators in Iowa to step down after the person forwarded an e-mail falsely stating that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe quickly accused the Clinton campaign Monday of "shameful offensive fear-mongering" for circulating the snap.

Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams responds: "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed."

---

While I have no positive feelings about either candidate, I do find it interesting that this photo


would be perceived as something that potential voters could construe as scary any more than I would find the same thing to be true of these photos taken while "going native" on tour.


What I would be afraid of if I were on the Clinton team is if anyone started sending around candid photos of her everyday antics on the campaign trail.

Doppler, hell, he's got spleen

Paul Smokov, a North Dakota cattle farmer, doesn't bother with modern technology when it comes to forecasting the weather. He just checks pig spleens.

"It looks like a normal year with no major storms," Smokov, 84, told an Associated Press reporter as he looked at a pair of the shiny, brown, foot-long organs on his kitchen counter.

He says if the spleen is wide where it attaches to the pig's stomach and then narrows, it means winter weather will come early with a mild spring. A narrow-to-wider spleen usually means harsh weather in the spring, he said. The spleens obtained by Smokov this year are pretty uniform in thickness, which means no drastic changes.

How accurate is he?

"The spleens are 85% correct, according to my figures," he said. As for the weathermen, "Those guys aren't any better."

A meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Bismarck, ND, said the service's three-month outloook is typically at least 60% percent accurate.

Another school of thought presumes just seeing pigs wrapped in, say, a blanket -- as seen here -- might give you an idea that cold weather is a-coming.

Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

Jerry Falwell is dead. Tammy Faye Bakker's cancer has her down to 65 pounds. Ted Haggard resigned in disgrace from the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals after it was revealed he had an ongoing fling with a male prostitute. Jimmy Swaggert and Jim Bakker are remembered only as thieves or liars or, at best, phonies.

That doesn't do much for America's "Religious Right." In fact, it may even be in a similar shape to what the civil rights movement has been since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. way back in 1968.

What came after him has been a string of people who never captured the national spotlight for any amount of time (Julian Bond, Ralph Abernathy) or outright hypocrites whose major tools to accomplish their ends have been what some call corporate blackmail (see Jesse Jackson's business-boycott strong arm tactics) or outright lies and smear campaigns (see Al Sharpton and the Tawana Brawley case, for one).

Not that I held any particular respect or feeling of support for Falwell and his posturing ilk. It's just that you have to give the guy credit for coalescing a movement such as the Moral Majority that has had such widespread influence. You may not have agreed with him, but he did get people involved in the process of a nation.

There was a time when the average Joe or Jane could have a reasonable expectation that somewhere along the line a champion would rise up to plead his or her case, be it civil rights, religious tolerance, political impact, gender equality or whatever. Today, there seems to be a lack of that sort of leadership on the social, religious and business fronts as well as in politics where the people with the most money get to make rules as well as the decisions no matter what party they serve.

If that all sounds rather gloomy on such a beautiful spring day, sad to say it is. Tomorrow's weather is supposed to be as nice as today's, with a high in the low 70s, although with a chance for some more thunder showers. If nothing worse happens, I'll regard that as the silver lining.

See you back here on the Heights next week after a short recess from this site.

Et tu, you brute?

The late Ramon Novarro brought the Roman gladiator back to life when he played the title character in the silent film era's original "Ben Hur" in 1926. Kirk Douglas did it during his motion picture prime with 1960's "Spartacus." Russell Crowe, who was born four years after Douglas's film, did it most recently in 1998's "Gladiator" (seen here).

Now, scientists are taking their turn, thanks to the discovery of a site at the ancient city of Ephesus in Turkey, believed to be a gladiator graveyard. The graves hold thousands of bones and three gravestones clearly depicting ancient Roman arena fighters. Two professors from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, have spent the past five years analyzing every bone for age, injury and cause of death.

They estimate they have found and studied at least 67 individuals, mostly aged 20 to 30, and many with healed wounds. What that means to the researchers is that the gladiators got good medical care and probably were involved in fights organized under strict rules. Otherwise, they say, mass brawls as sometimes depicted in films would have resulted in multiple wouinds on bones and other evidence of gross trauma.

Their report, just recently made available to the BBC, also includes detailed information on the types of weapons, the types of fights, and the final dispositions of some of the gladiators.

Fascinating stuff, that what we've been seeing all these years in the movies may well be close to the truth. Many people feel that gladiatorial battles were the height of barbaric behavior for a supposedly advanced civilization such as Rome. My take on it is that they didn't have cable TV, so what can you expect?

I wonder what anthropologists in A.D. 4007 will deduced from their study of artifacts from our times -- images from "ultimate" fighting bouts and WWF wrestling that dot cable TV, the remnants of "survivor" shows on remote islands around the globe, footage from teen slasher flicks, and preserved outtakes from the Jerry Springer drekfest. Now, that's barbaric.

Your assignment: Debate it over lunch tomorrow, perhaps at an outdoor cafe because our lovely spring weather will continue with sunny skies, mid-60s temperatures and gentle breezes.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

The opposite of potholes

I can't decide if pothole season or pothole patching season is tougher on cars -- and drivers.

After spending much of the winter learning to watch out for new gouges in the roadways or deeper versions of some that never got around to being patched last fall, I fell into a sort of weaving, dodging mode behind the wheel, memorizing the bad spots and almost unconsciously making tiny modifications to my driving to compensate for them.

Now the temporary-patch crew is at it, slathering the potholes with wads of asphalt that even when fully dried stick out above the road surface, creating whatever the opposite of a pothole is, but with the same effect: bone jarring bumps that do no good to tires, shock absorbers and motorists' well-being.

This isn't just a neighborhood gripe, mind you. Just a few months ago the statistics-worshipping newspaper USA Today reported that 26% of the nation's major urban and suburban roads have substandard pavements that, in effect, impose a "hidden tax" on motorists by increasing costs to maintain their vehicles, according to a survey conducted by people who do that sort of thing. Conduct surveys, that is.

Nice to know, I suppose, although anyone who drives any amount does not need a team of surveyors to tell them the obvious. Nor, sometimes, do we need to rely on the professional weatherbeings to offer up their educated guesses at what sort of weather we'll be driving in. Tomorrow, for example, will be a lot like today, only later in the week: a high in the mid to high 60s, an overnight low in the mid-30s, and blue skies with puffy white clouds.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

A dip in the gene pool

We've all slowed down to gawk at traffic accidents. I suspect the same shared experience occurs with cable TV. Some things are so bizarre you can't help staring.

Take the judge shows. Most deal with squabbles over cell phone bills, apartment rent and pets on the loose -- unless, of course, they deal with paternity issues. That seems to be the No. 1 category when I happen upon such shows and can't tear myself away from the spectacle.

Listening to the usually undereducated, poorly spoken and selfishly "entitled" combatants trying to convince a TV judge to rule in their favor makes me fear for the human gene pool. If this is what keeps reproducing, we're in big trouble.

However, there is some hope on the horizon for a better gene pool from another species -- apes. A team of researchers from the Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University in Atlanta says they have compiled conclusive evidence that apes communicate using gestures. In fact, say the researchers, those they observed use both hand and limb gestures to make themselves understood.

Meaning what? Just that they cite these findings as support for the theory that human language developed through the use of hand gestures.

Although all primates use vocal and facial expressions to communicate, only the great apes -- gorillas, orangutans, chimps and bonobos -- use gestures as well, an ability they share with humans. When they make gestures, they use their right hand, which is controlled by the left side of the brain, the same side that is the as the human language control center.

Now, if we can just get some of these TV courtroom bozos to observe the bonobos and learn a thing or two about communication, humanity may live a bit longer.

Speaking of pools, while it may still be too early to open your in-ground or above-ground version, the mild spring temperatures will continue tomorrow, mostly in the high 50s but with a topper of 62 degrees udner cloudy skies.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

By the hair on their chinny chin chins

Pay no attention to the fact that it's difficult to tell President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from ex-Beatle Ringo Starr. His virulently anti-Western regime has issued a ban on "Western" hairstyles and fashions for young Iranian men.

Tehran newspapers report that barbers also have been told not to pluck customers' eyebrows, and that more than 16,000 men and women have been warned by police in the past week about wearing clothing considered too Western. Iranian TV says the crackdown on un-Islamic clothing has entered its second phase, with mobile police units patrolling the capital city to look for those who not properly observing Islamic dress.

If this continues, we can look forward to a nation of hairy, tie-less people with gel-free grooming. Sort of like a local teen mall crowd multiplied by millions of people. Yechhh.

Meanwhile, if you're in the mood to feel the breezes of freedom -- or late spring -- blow through your perfectly coiffed hair, tomorrow's forecast calls for breezes up to 10 mph with a high temperature of 63 and a low of 38 under partly cloudy skies.

Yes, we're back on a regular basis again. See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

An artist draws to an end

Many years ago I worked for a newspaper in Binghamton, NY. It was a time when that upstate New York city was a place to be. The center of a vibrant manufacturing community that included sprawling facilities run by IBM, General Electric, GAF and Endicott Johnson.

It also was a time when the arts scene there was at its peak.

The leading local newspaper of the time had a wonderful collection of excellent writers, incisive reporters and strong photographers. Vibrant gallery showings, live theater and musical performances were available virtually every night of the week.

It also was a time when the creativity among local folks was finding a wider audience. The writer-producer Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" was being embraced by millions fascinated by the strange tales it contained. Johnny Hart's "B.C." comic strip was gaining momentum after a few years on the market, and he and creative partner Brant Parker had created "Wizard of Id."

Many of us at the newspaper who harbored ambitions of eventually having a broader audience for our work were both proud of Johnny and jealous of his seemingly easy success after he had gone "big time" following a few years working in the General Electric art department.

Johnny went on to international fame with his cast of prehistoric characters -- both animal and human -- who engaged in philosophical debates, their own brand of baseball, and a lot of star gazing. Among countless honors, he was given the prestigious Reuben Award for "Cartoonist of the Year" from the National Cartoonist Society, and an award from the International Congress of Comics. In recent years his religious views popped up in some of his cartoons, usually causing consternation for one group or another.

Johnny died Saturday at age 76 in his home studio in Nineveh, a tiny hamlet near Binghamton. He was 76.

The Binghamton scene I knew when he, too, was a young man died long ago. It suffered the same fate as many an upstate community -- major manufacturing moved away, not enough jobs could be filled by other industries, Rod Serling died in 1975, the media big hitters of the era either died or retired, and the newspaper itself faded to a mere cookie-cutter publication owned by a mega-corporation.

All things do pass, and it's easy to lament what has been lost. But, like his inspiration -- the late Charles Schultz and his "Peanuts" comic, Johnny Hart did leave us with a treasure trove of comic art and commentary, something he was adding to when he died at his drawing board. For that we can be grateful, even if we feel a bit gloomy.

That feeling probably won't go away overnight. The weather forecast is a gloomy one, guaranteed to keep us in the doldrums: a high tomorrow of a mere 47, and a low of a chilly 26,, with nothing much better in the offing for the rest of the week.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

Read all about it!

LEDYARD, CT -- As she flipped through the "complimentary" copy of The Providence Journal left at the door of our guest room at the Foxwoods Resort & Casino, my wife shared with me what she considered the hottest story in the newspaper.

"Look at that sticker," she said, pointing to a square piece of paper attached to the front of the third section. "I thought this paper was supposed to be complimentary for guests."

The note informed us, "A copy of the Providence Journal is included with your stay. If you do not wish to receive the newspaper, please contact the front desk for a $.13 refund daily, or a $.50 refund on Sunday."

Regretably, this is a legitimate gimmick, although a cheesey one. It does nothing to benefit the consumer who is placed in the position of first ascertaining that he or she is being unexpectedly charged for something then having to take action to change the situation or end up footing the bill, small though it is.

Under the industry's Audit Bureau of Circulations rules, newspapers can sell bulk batches of their product at half-price and still count them as individually full-paid circulation.

What this boils down to, dear traveler, is that this 50-cent newspaper actually went for only a quarter to the Indian casino hotel, and it passed along more than 50% of its discounted price to its guests. Human nature being what it is, they no doubt figured, correctly, that few people would ever ask for their 13 cents back. So, it was a great deal for the newspaper and the resort.

Just a tip for one more thing to keep an eye on during your travels.

Roll out the barrel(-shaped people)

Forget the recent reports on soft drinks' contributions to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay. It's summer!

The Magic Springs amusement park in Hot Springs, AR, has announced that visitors will be able to drink all the soft drinks they want at the park for free this summer.

As a nod to good health, however, they'll also be offered free sunscreen creams and free use of riding tubes in the Crystal Falls waterpark.

A lesson in expatriate love

It once was Burma. Now it is Myanmar.

It once had no vineyards. Now it has one.

The southeast Asian nation's first such enterprise, started by a German entrepreneur in 2004, now is producing reds, whites and roses at the Aythaya estate. That in itself is news since foreign investment in the military-governed nation is rare. And, when such an enterprise takes hold and even has the potential to lure tourists, even a mere handful, it is even bigger news.

Bert Morsbach, interviewed by the Associated Press, said, "Had I not been convinced that we can make a quality wine up in our mountains, I would not have started the project. ... That was a gamble, I must admit, but so far the government has been very cooperative and it looks as if this is going to stay that way."

Morsbach imported vines from France, Germany and Italy and planted them in the hills, seen above, above Inle Lake of in eastern Myanmar. He and chief winemaker Hans Leiendecker say growing conditions on their 23.5-acre vineyard are excellent, with the limestone soil similar to that of Tuscany and southern France and a climate similar to California's wine country.

"A huge asset in our favor: 150 days of sunshine," Morsbach said.

Their wines have been getting positive reviews, the best of them for a rose made from the Italian Moscato grape, which is the winery's top seller. Production was a mere 20,000 bottles as recently as 2004, most of which have been snapped up by tourists as a curiosity, but has been ramped up to 100,000 bottles this year. Additional grapes will be grown by contract farmers.

Morsbach, 69, who plans to retire in Myanmar, said he and some investors have put $1.5 million into the project, are expanding tourist facilities at the winery which already includes five guest rooms, a restaurant and swimming pool, and have rebuilt an abandoned Buddhist orphanage adjacent to the vineyard and are supporting more than 80 orphans there.

I found all this fascinating because in a world in which many countries treat foreigners as spawn of Satan and try to kill them off, a man like Morsbach isn't afraid to adopt a country he has grown to love and add to its economic well being. Let's hope for a safe future for him, and a better one for strife-torn Myanmar.

Some justice more equal than others

More proof there is a god. Of one sort or another.

When irascible Australian actor-singer Russell Crowe was convicted in 2005 for tossing his cellphone at a hotel employee who had annoyed him, he got off with a $160 fine. Of course, it was widely believed he also paid the assault victim $100,000 in "sorry about that, mate" money.

Temperamental supermodel Naomi Campbell, 36, today began five days of court-ordered mopping at New York City's Sanitation Department, as punishment for striking her maid with a mobile phone. She also was ordered to pay her $350 in medical bills.

Seems fair all around. That may be because, annoying as he can be, Crowe has brought a lot to the arts with his acting and singing. Campbell? Not so much. Some things buy you some good karma.

Sort of like our weather forecast for tomorrow, which some may like and some may not, so it will all balance out in an odd kind of way: No snow, no rain but lower temps with a high in the low30s.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

'Sunshine' illuminates inanities

This is Sunshine Week. It's the annual period in which the American news media, primarily newspapers, ratchets up the pressure on public officials and entities to become more forthcoming about what they're doing and what they've done.

One of the best tools for getting at the oft-hidden truth is the Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL. It's used at the local, state and national levels, primarily by good-government groups and journalists, although it's available to any member of the public who follows the proper procedures.

However, we're not the only country that has a FOIL that uncovers politicians' foibles. The Times of London, for example, has just released what it titles "59 Things That Would Have Stayed Secret" if the newspaper hadn't utilizied England's Freedom of Information Act to unearth the items. Among them:

• The Thatcher administration concocted a plan to search for the Loch Ness monster using a team of dolphins.

• Weapons used by paratroopers on Bloody Sunday have ended up in the hands of the army in Sierra Leone, paramilitary police in Beirut and even in an Arkansas gun shop.

• Tony Blair spent nearly $3,800 of taxpayers' money on cosmetics over six years.

• 74 police officers serving with the London Metropolitan Police have criminal records.

• A clandestine British torture programme existed in post-WWII Germany, “reminiscent of the concentration camps.”

• The National Health Service has been giving girls as young as 13 contraceptive injections and implants that make them infertile for up to three years, in an attempt to cut teenage pregnancies

• DNA tests showed that, since 1998, 3,034 men had been wrongly named by mothers as fathers of children for whom they had claimed maintenance. The taxpayer had to repay these sums.

• More than 700 nurses and doctors were disciplined for drink or drugs at work in the past 10 years.

• Plans to turn Britain into a “world leader” in internet gambling were drawn up by ministers.

As you can see, silliness and incompetence know no borders. Sort of like the weather, where 8 to 14 inches of snow are headed for Weathering Heights after hitting neighboring states.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Getting burned while passing the torch

London is in for a financial problem of truly Olympic proportions.

When the city bid on, and won, the rights to host the 2012 Olympic Games, organizers estimated the cost would be in the $4.6 billion range. Now, the latest budget revison puts the price tag at $18.1 billion. And we're still five years from the lighting of the torch.

Contrast that with what began in earnest today. American college basketball's "March Madness" NCAA tournament.

A lot cheaper, the cost split among many colleges and conferences, literally millions of fans royally entertained, tradition satisfied. And, we don't have to put up with a lot of jingoistic announcers and fans who long ago perverted the spirits of the Olympics.

I know where I'd put my investment money if given such a choice.

I'd also place a small wager that very few people are going to be satisfied with tomorrow's weather prognostication -- snow, plus a severe drop in temperatures with a high of just 33. Blechh!

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

Ill-gotten fame is fleeting for some

Today is the anniversary of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list.

Care to guess which anniversary? Try 57th.

The idea of such a list was, so the story goes, dreamed up back in 1949 when FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was playing cards with William Kinsey Hutchinson, head of the old International News Service. They were chit-chatting about ways to promote capture of the FBI's "toughest guys." Hutchinson saw to it that a news article was written about the idea, it caught on, and on March 14, 1950, the FBI officially announced the list.

There is no particular length of time a fugitive stays on the list. Some people have been there for years. One, Billie Austin Bryant, was on it for about two hours in 1969. Some fail to make a dent in the public consciousness. Others, like James Earl Ray and Ted Bundy, are indelibly etched there.

Has this list done much besides give postmasters something to hang on their lobby bulletin boards? That's debatable because dangers in our society have grown to the point the original list isn't the only one the FBI maintains. There now also is a Most Wanted Terrorists list.

In happier thoughts, tomorrow's weather forecast is for a continued warming trend in the high 40s and low 50s that will help get rid of the remaining snowbanks -- until later in the day when a foot or more of snow is expected in the higher elevations.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Life imitates art, sort of

One of life's guilty pleasures is watching reruns of the various iterations of "Law & Order." Actually, it's difficult to avoid watching them, given the profusion of versions that have dominated series-TV for lo these many years.

I particularly enjoy seeing unexpected casting decisions. For example, standup comic/TV host/voiceover-artist Bob Saget playing a techno-nerd who poisons the wife of the man who is having an affair with his wife. His character was so obsessed with tracking his wife's wherabouts he secretly embedded a tiny RFID in her shoulder.

That came to mind when I read that European citizens will be getting a chance to shape policy on the use of RFIDs, sometimes called "smart tags."

RFIDs, which stands for radio frequency identification, are tiny sensors that store data about whatever they're attached to by linking a piece of computer memory with a radio transmitter. Saget's character used the device to track his wife's travels. More commonly, they're used to track and inventory merchandise, although their use is increasingly found in keeping track of pets,

The European Commission is setting up a group made up of a large cross-section of the population of member nations to discuss how the tags should be used. Some people think they'll be a common, benign tool in business before long. Others think they may not be confined to "Law & Order" episodes, instead being used secretively by governments to track people.

Whatever they wind up being, it's a fascinating move when a multi-national organization such as The European Commission opens up the discussion to the public at large. That's a good use of democracy. It fills me with warm feelings. Or, perhaps that's because of the forecast for Wednesday that tells us we're in for early clear skies and highs in the mid-50s before the day falls apart in rain and ground fog.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

St. Patrick's Day more tainted than tinted

Every few years I get so fed up with the idiocy of St. Patrick's Day that I can't contain myself.

It's boiled over again in the face of the annual avalanche of plastic shamrocks, green beer and fools on TV and in print adding an "O" to their names and promising pots of gold to anyone who would listen to their sales pitch.

Just a few days ago I heard a talk-radio caller saying someone was "as drunk as an Irishman." Some cops still called the police van a Paddy wagon. It is difficult not to trip over all the plastic leprechauns and shillelaghs laying around taverns, stores and restaurants. A lot of politicians run around with name tags that stuck an O' in front of their names and make the usual gratuitous remarks about loving the folks from the Auld Sod.

In this ethnically, religiously and racially diverse nation we have been sensitized to the effects of stereotyping people. We understand when African-Americans and Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans and Jewish-Americans, Arab-Americans and Mexican-Americans -- perhaps even Martian-Americans -- become angry at hurtful, demeaning jokes and remarks about their heritage. But we seem, as a society, incapable of understanding why some Irish-Americans "get their Irish up" when they're regarded as fair game for insults.

Even in Ireland itself, what once was a quiet day of religious contemplation has disintegrated into a booze-fueled mess catering to tourists. Irish authorities last year reported more than 700 violence- and alcohol-connected arrests on St. Patrick's Day.

It is baffling enough that it's happening there. Perhaps it is because the Irish also are widely regarded as amiable folks, the kind of people who take little ethnic slurs as good-natured fun. But in the U.S. it seems seldom remembered the slurs are a nasty holdover from a time when they had their turn at the bottom of American society -- being denied education, being relegated to back-breaking jobs like digging the barge canals, driving the railroad spikes, clawing coal from the bowels of the earth miles down where the air was foul and the life expectancy short.

A time when signs saying "No Irish Need Apply" were commonplace on rooming houses, business places and restaurants. A time when the Irish were jammed into ghettoes later occupied by succeeding generations of immigrant groups; when the "Paddy wagon" hauled a lot of them off to jail on the slightest pretext.

A time when the likes of immigrant Kate Mullaney had to risk life and limb to get Troy, NY's laundry workers a modicum of respect and pay and, in the process, formed the first female labor union in the nation.

Some say the ideal would be for Americans of all backgrounds to forget about roots and become generic, non-hyphenated Americans. That may be desirable in the sense it could foster a togetherness now missing in our national dialogue, but it never will happen.

People do, to some extent, like to be different. Maintaining ties with one's heritage makes them so, and keeps alive the rich inheritance from that culture that adds to the marvelous American stew.

But, isn't there a classy way to do it?

Mean while, as we edge closer to Saturday's bacchanalia, the weather will decidedly be as mixed as our emotions. Still decent today, as you've no doubt noticed, and tomorrow's forecast is for a balmy high of 52 and low of 29 with cloudy skies before things start getting messy at mid-week.

See youi back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

The rich are not like us, thank goodness

I see nothing wrong with rich people.

In a society in which we have a lot of financial jealousy, riddled with politicians and puffed-up do-gooders who want to redistribute wealth no matter what sorts of effort and enterprise the "haves" used to earn their pile while others did little but work the system to avoid work, that may be unfashionable.

I don't care.

I revisit this topic because the annual list of the world's wealthiest people has just been released and all the usual gnashing of teeth and bad jokes have begun.

While there are some wealthy people -- Paris Hilton comes to mind -- who did nothing to earn their money and spend their days flaunting what they've been given, most millionaires and billionaires actually came up with some goods, services or investments that brought them money.

When wealthy people throw lavish events, there are two faces to it. One is that they're selfish, usually the stance taken by the jealous people. The other, to which I like to point, is that they're keeping money in circulation so others can have jobs -- caterers, cooks, service personnel, drivers, laundry workers, musicians, florists and on and on.

When wealthy people don't support charitable events others think they should, so what? It's their money. Try convincing more everyday people to get off their couches and work for such causes rather than trying to wring money out of one fat cat.

There. Now I feel better. And, I suspect I'll continue feeling that way since we're headed for a balmy weekend of mid-40s temperatures and, after some freezing rain on Saturday, a return to clear skies. Not bad at all.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday. Don't forget to set your clocks ahead an hour when you go to bed Saturday night. The new Daylight Saving Time schedule kicks in at 2 a.m. Sunday.

Putting a 太空人 on the moon

Where will you be in 15 years?

The Chinese think they know precisely where they'll be. On the moon.

The Chinese government this week confirmed it will launch its first lunar probe later this year and that it fully expects to be able to put astronauts -- or taikonauts, as they are called -- on the moon by 2022.

The probe is supposed to provide 3D images of the moon, survey the lunar landscape, study lunar microwaves and estimate the thickness of the moon's soil. Guess they didn't believe what ours guys said -- all that stuff about a lack of green cheese and air.

It's been about 3 1/2 years since China joined the U.S. and Russia as the only nations to rocket a human into space. This latest announcement -- which included mention of a planned lunar fly-by in 2007, a soft landing in 2012, return of lunar samples by 2017, and landing on the moon within 15 years -- is a clear indication the space race is heating up.

The forecast for tomorrow is a tad warmer as well. I'm not sure precisely how much a tad is, but it seems to be on the order of a couple of degrees, so we're looking for the high 20s during the day but a bone-jarring -6 overnight.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

It's that time of winter

This is one of those rare times I can appreciate the aftermath of icy rain.

The curving swaths of hard-packed snow are covered with a thick crust of ice, spread by winds with a knifelike sharpness atop the snowbanks like cake frosting, all hard and shining.

The park playground a few miles from Weathering Heights has become more an abstract metal sculpture than something that appears functional, bits of monkey bars and slides poking out of the piles of frozen water.

The small lake next to it has become too cold even for the hardy ice fishermen who had been visiting it each day before sundown. This is a time of winter best left to the wildlife.

I can see all sorts of tiny prints barely etched in the ice by rabbits, chipmunks and squirrels that keep venturing out to grab some seed that has fallen from the birdfeeder. No larger tracks, say from deer, on the property but I was part of a stop-quick maneuver by a line of cars on the two-lane road nearby when two young deer decided to vault the icy shoulder and make one of those dumb deer dashes across the road.

Tomorrow won't be any warmer -- the weatherbeings predict mid-20s as a high, and 2 or 3 above zero as the low. We can take it, though. We are, after all, northeasterners. Plus, we have great insulation in the house.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

It's an Obama-nation

"No politician on the national scene has currently captured the public's imagination like Barack Obama. ... Generally considered to be the first black candidate with a legitimate chance to win the presidency, he enjoys a unique place in history. That means our readers will have more interest in his early campaign than in others."

That, in a cracked nutshell, is the logic of one columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer for his colleagues' decision to make a front page story out of the freshman Illinois senator's visit to the Ohio city.

Nothing happened, He just showed up, a year and a half before voters go to the polls to pick him or some other candidate as our next president.

Speaking from the vantagepoint of someone who spent more than four decades in daily newspaper journalism, I respectfully must point out that no politician on the national scene has currently captured the news media's imagination like Barack Obama. His suitability for the Democratic presidential nomination was first suggested in the media, then latched onto by the media, then shoved down the collective throats of viewers and readers of the media, then reported back as public interest in the man.

A self-fulfilling prophecy. Sort of scary because, as I've noted before, although Obama's charisma and the fact he's a fresh face on a very tired national political scene are something to get excited about, his experience beyond the state legislature isn't. It consists solely of one-third of one U.S. Senate term. That's not a lot of training for what is arguably the most powerful position in the history of the world.

Maybe we can cool the rhetoric a bit by taking long walks outdoors tomorrow. The forecast calls for a "high" of just 19 and a very low low of 1.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

The Wizard of Abkhazia

I've prided myself since childhood on my knowledge of world geography. Imagine my chagrin, then, when I was perusing the BBC news headlines and thought a Harry Potter location had somehow broken into the Muggles world.

"Breakaway Abkhazia votes in poll," blared the headline.

Azkaban broke away from the world of wizards, I thought for just the briefest of brief moments. Then, just as quickly, I thought "What the hell is wrong with me?"

In the back of my mind I'm just like kids my grandchildren's ages -- and, truth be told, a lot of people my age and the ages of my grown children -- who are anxiously awaiting the final volume of Harry Potter's adventures to be released this summer. But, I really must get a grip and not let the mystical world rule my reality.

As any sane person knows, Azkaban is an eerie place that is located somewhere off the main British Isles, or not, and serves as the location for a high-security wizard prison in all the Harry Potter tales.

Abkhazia is a region on the Black Sea that has been trying since a brief war in 1990 to secede from the Republic of Georgia. It now has held parliamentarian elections, much to the annoyance of the government of Georgia and the delight of the government of Russia which has been egging the Abkhazianerianites on because it has its own disagreements with Georgia.

Breakaway President Sergei Bagapsh, who seems to possess wizard-like powers since no one has shot him yet, said from the capital city of Sukhumki that elections being held in a state that has both an opposition party and a free press shows it's a self-reliant republic and not under anyone else's thumb.

No country recognises Abkhazia's claims to independence but Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba, another breakaway official with nine lives, said, "Our objective is to show everyone that we meet modern European standards."

Azkaban, of course, is not looking to break away from anyone. It just wants to avoid breakouts.

I'm not sure what the weather will be in Azkaban tomorrow, but in Abkhazia the forecast is for temperatures in the highs 50s with a 90% chance of rain. And, here on Weathering Heights, it'll be a very bracing high of 15 and a low of 3 under cloudy skies. Unless someone waves a magic wand.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

A different S-word comes to mind

My mini-euphoria of the past few days was dashed when the sleet began.

Plants that had been peeping out from snowy shrouds, birds that had shown up obviously too early from warmer climes, people who were making plans for more walks all got coated with the stuff. Ice and snow, snow and ice.

I had been toying with the idea of actually saying "spring." I said something quite different before I turned in for the night.

Perhaps I should follow the lead of Mr. & Mrs. McPussington, who share Weathering Heights with us. They take what comes at them from a comfy perch, such as this one near their favorite kitchen window. The birds do put on quite a show.

Perhaps my mood will improve over the weekend if the weatherbeings' prognostications are correct: Mixed sun and clouds on Saturday but with a lovely high of 43, sunnier and only a few degrees less on Sunday, then a seasonal Monday with comparatively mild temps and no precipitation.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

I'm about to lose control ...

Yet again, a hint of mildness is in the air.

More birds than ever are in the crabapple tree outside my kitchen window, vying for feeding time on the suet and birdseed holders.

I'm afraid to use the S-word for fear I'll jinx it all.

Tomorrow's forecast is for more seasonally mild temps (mid- to high 30s) and mixed sun and clouds. I'm crossing my fingers.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

I'm so excited ...

The temperatures are in the 30s.

The sky is blue and nearly cloudless.

The first returning robin has been sighted.

The forecast for tomorrow is for more of the same.

Could it be the S-word is nearly appropriate to use?

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Where have you gone Tom Vilsack?

Well, now I have no idea how to feel about the race to succeed George W. in the White House.

Over the weekend one of the first candidates bailed out on America. Bye-bye, Tom Vilsack.

Come on, don't give me that "Tom Who?" stuff. Surely everyone in the country thought the former governor of Iowa was a hot frontrunner. That's why I'm sure you shared my sadness late Friday when Tom told a shocked nation there were too many people who also wanted to be president and he couldn't raise enough money to stay competitive with them.

Some of his fellow Democrats who still are angling for the party's nomination called Tom the Reluctant over the weekend, presumably to tell him how much they admired him. And, oh by the way, would he be kind enough to support them early next year when the Iowa caucuses are held to select a nominee?

Tom the Reluctant was the the first Democratic candidate to enter the 2008 race, but he stayed in only 84 days before crying poor.

“So much of this process now is about perception and money,” he said. “I came up against something for the first time in my life that hard work and effort couldn’t overcome. I just couldn’t work harder, couldn’t give it enough.”

Too bad. I was so looking forward to seeing some fresh faces from both major parties, criss-crossing America and debating, speechifying, cajoling and generally getting people excited about the presidential race, something we haven't seen in several generations.

Instead, we're now stuck with whoever piles up the most money getting the nominations, then spending their time in the White House doing favors for all those people who paid their way in. Same old same old.

Forget Barack Obama as a "fresh new face." He's far too fresh for me. This is a man who, charisma and annointment-by-media aside, has served on the national stage for precisely one-third of one term in the U.S. Senate. I may want someone who isn't part of the disappointing pack, but I don't want a complete novice leading the nation.

And forget Hillary Rodham Clinton. A little of her goes a long way, and a lot of her waffling on major issues will only help her go a little way.

So, as we plunge into this long, long presidential campaign in earnest without any idealistic candidates, look forward to snow jobs of all sorts. Tomorrtow's will probably be in the form of snow showers throughout the early morning and later afternoon, a high in the low 30s, and light, variable winds.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

The plight of the bumblebee

I suppose, given the fresh coverlet of snow that fell late yesterday, it is unseasonable to think about bees. But, I am thinking about both the birds and the bees of late, and not at all in the amorous sense.

The birds continue flocking (no pun intended if one was detected there) to the feeders in the crabapple tree outside my kitchen window. All sorts of birds.

Bees apparently will be a different story if the mystery malady that is making entire hives of them disappear in our area continues. It's getting difficult not to be aware of the problem since it's being reported all over, such as in Illinois, Maine and about 20 other states.

This also apparently has been going on for several years in Spain where a mysterious disease has wiped out 40% of that country's bee population. The same thing is happening in Canada's New Brunswick Province where 45% of the hives have been depopulated. And in New Zealand, where everyone is all abuzz about the missing bees, it is suspected that some sort of varroa bee mite might be killing off the honeymakers.

Anyway, I find the bee thing particularly troubling because back in July 2005 I wrote about the scarcity of such summer bugs as mosquitos and lightning bugs, a/k/a fireflies, a shortage I haven't seen being alleviated by man or nature since then.

Like the canaries in the coal mine that once were used as a toxic gas early warning system for miners, the missing insects might be showing us something scary by not showing up at all.

With that cheering thought in mind, let's look ahead to the weekend weather forecast which calls for decent weather Saturday (a high of 24° with clear skies, but a low of 8°) and Sunday (partly cloudy but with a nice high of 32° and a low of 12°) before falling apart Monday with freezing rain.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Light a birthday candle for the ignorant

Today is George Washington's birthday.

According to the Gregorian calendar we use these days, that is. Otherwise, he was born on Feb. 11, according to the Julian calendar that preceded it.

In either instance, it is not the same birthday as Abraham Lincoln's (that was Feb. 12) or any other president's despite what the government entities that have turned "Presidents Day" into a long weekend paid at your expense and what commerce has decreed with its idiotic sales gimmicks that use the images of Washington, Lincoln and others like some kind of carnival sideshow hawkers.

There is so little respect these days for our American antecedents that I know I'm fighting a losing battle in trying to point out the ignorance, the insult and the idiocy of turning the birth celebrations of arguably our two most distinguished presidents into a freebie day off at the expense of other citizens who don't happen to work for the government and/or an opportunity to turn a fast buck in the world of commercialism.

But, I shall persevere. Don't even get me started about what has happened to Memorial Day, also changed to give government workers an extra three-day weekend.

I'll try to control myself enough to enjoy tomorrow's weather, projected to be a mix of sun and clouds with a seasonal high of 25 and seasonal low of 18.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

The game is afoot*

And you thought sitting around playing computer games was turning our young people into a nation of tubby couch taters.

Hah! A research team from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands has decreed that playing simple computer games at the office could improve productivity and job satisfaction. They based this on studying 60 employees in a Dutch insurance firm, measuring changes in work and job attitudes and found that game players felt better about their job.

On the other hand, a 24-year-old South Korean man died this week after playing computer games nonstop for 86 hours, according to police in Kwangju, normally a pretty rowdy place anyway. The unemployed fellow had played with no real sleep or meals during that whole time, then collapsed, revived briefly, went into a rest room, and dropped dead.

So, like most things in life, everything is a game and nobody ever gets out alive.

That said, get ready to play different games tomorrow if the forecast is correct: snow, with a pleasant high and low of 34 and 19. Snowball fights, skiing, skating, sledding ... lots of things good for the cardiovascular system. As long as you don't overdo it.

(* Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.")

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Don't try carding him

Most visitors to New York City like to take home tales of seeing the city's oldest sights. For those who like to frequent famous watering holes, Hoy C. Wong may be the one of the most interesting sights as well.

Wong has been working at the legendary Algonquin hotel in Manhattan as a bartender for the past 27 years. But, he has plenty of other experience on his resume. He should. He's 90 years old.

Management at the Algonquin, where writer Dorothy Parker and other wits of the 1920s-'40s held forth at their famous "Round Table" dinners, thinks he is the city's oldest active bartender.

Fame is nothing new to Hong. In the 1970s, he was featured on the cover of Life magazine as the best of America's great bartenders. Wong said at the time: "I like this job because one man behind the bar can make everybody happy."

Which all goes to show that there's absolutely nothing wrong with sticking with something that works for you. Like mild weather after several feet of snow. That's the forecast for tomorrow when the high will be in the high 30s again and we're in for a bit of sunshine.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Somewhere out there

Years ago, my eldest son described to me the most awe-inspiring sight he'd experienced as a U.S. Marine.

He was on temporary duty in Norway, above the Arctic Circle, and had taken a break from the usual indoor meetings to sit outside with some buddies. Above and around them were the Aurora Borealis, commonly known as the Northern Lights.

"I've never seen anything like it," he said. "It was like you were floating into the lights. There was no real divide between the earth and the sky, no real horizon."

The Northern Lights have fascinated mankind for untold centuries, so much so that we've just sent a rocket up to study the phenomenon. NASA's Delta II finally got off the ground at Cape Canaveral, FL, yesterday after being delayed by high winds. The THEMIS mission, NASA explains, is five identical probes they hope will gain new insights into sudden brightening of the Lights in high-latitude skies.

These flareups are known as "auroral substorms." THEMIS (which stands for "Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions During Substorms") is supposed to determine what causes them.

The five-probe Delta II package needs to have only four of the probes work, scientists say. They'll magnetically map the North American continent every four days while 20 ground stations in Alaska and Canada will document the auroras and space currents from Earth. The hope is to be able to predict the substorms which soimetimes disrupt communication transmissions on Earth.

That's nice. I'm as big a fan of science and discovery as the next guy. On the other hand, I just hope they get some wonderful pictures out of the whole thing. I really don't need every wonder in the universe dissected and described for me.

While THEMIS is checking out the weather Up There, I'm looking down here at cloudy skies for tomorrow, but with a nice high of 38 degrees and a bearable low of 14.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

A voice in your head

We've all heard a little voice telling us to be careful not to drink too much. Most of the time we didn't know where it was coming from. If you're a guy and find it happening in New Mexico, there's a simple explanation.

The state has shelled out $10,500 for 500 talking deodorizer cakes to be used in men's room urinals in bars and restaurants.

Recorded messages embedded in the sanitary supply tell the patron, in a woman's voice, "Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home. Remember, your future is in your hand."

The program is an offshoot of the sort of thing used in anti-drug capaigns in various parts of New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania and in Australia.

New Mexico had 143 alcohol-related deaths in 2005, the country's eighth-highest rate, and men have 78% of all drunk-driving related convictions in the state.

If hearing such a message isn't bracing enough, the three-day weather forecast should be. No snow. Saturday a high of 28, a low of 12; Sunday a high of 30, a low of 14, and Monday dipping back into the high teens, but still no snow to speak of.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Snow going

And so, we're back to normal. Crisp, cold days, windy nights, and visions of crystalline sugarplums dancing in front of our eyes.

The Great Valentine's Day Mess is over, and we're digging out up here on Weathering Heights after several feet of snow enveloped us.

Nothing like our fellow New Yorkers a few hours' drive west of here in Oswego. There, a lake effect snowstorm dumped a dozen feet or so on them in a two-day period, giving them unwanted national prominence. Our snowfall was, by comparison, springtime weather.

Of course, once all our snow is cleared away we'll have to find other things to gripe about. Judging by the headlines, that won't be difficult: virulent anti-Republican crank comic Al Franken running for the U.S. Senate, the African nation of Guinea appears on the brink of a civil war, Daimler Chrysler plans to fire 15,000 employees ... Let's get busy now and avoid the last-minute complaining rush.

As we do so, we can look forward to tomorrow's weather: Partly sunny, scattered morning snow flurries, cold and windy the rest of the day with a high around 18.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

A powerful reminder

I was recently in San Antonio, a place where it hasn't snowed in two decades. They still were getting over the shock of an ice storm that effectively shut down the community a week earlier.

One young lady was telling me that her 18-year-old kid brother, a freshman at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, had never seen snow before this winter. The first time flakes fell on his new home he rushed outdoors to take pictures to send back to Texas despite being ribbed by his dorm mates.

Silly kid, I thought at the time. Snow is so common up here on Weathering Heights we don't give it a second thought.

Then two feet of snow dropped on us overnight and into the morning. Wind whipped the flakes around at such a pace we had a whiteout and couldn't even see our taller neighbor, Bald Mountain. We're staring at the snow, cursing it, in awe of it and ... yes ... we're even taking pictures of it.

Sometimes the forces of nature that you know have you in total thrall but soon will go away always have that effect on us. Nice to be reminded.

As for tomorrow, the aforementioned forces will be a bit less devastating, with only a 30% chance of snow showers and partly sunny skies but bitter temps with a high of around 10.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Give him the bird

I am, I readily admit, an unabashed fan of film noir. Anything early Humphrey Bogart, for example, entrances me. Imagine, then, how interested I am in the theft of the Maltese Falcon.

No, not the 1941 film classic. And, of course, not the statue of the bird in question which was smashed to smithereens late in the movie.

The bird in question is a plaster replica of the movie bird that has sat in a second-floor display case at John's Grill in San Francisco since it was given to owner John Konstin in the mid-'90s by Elisha Cook Jr., a supporting actor in the film.

Just as in the film, the disappearance is a mystery. Konstin says if the bird shows up unharmed on his doorstep, no questions will be asked.

Those of us noir fans would prefer he track the bum down, smack him around with a sap, maybe threaten him with a gat, then skull him with the bird. Just a suggestion.

Meanwhile, the birds of a feather that flock to my crabtree to peck away at the suet and seed hanging there will be battling snow and sharp winds if the forecast for tomorrow is correct and we get several feet of the stuff.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Year of the question

While in Las Vegas over the weekend, I was in the company of a number of Asian-American marketing and publishing types celebrating the Lunar New Year (the Year of the Pig on the Chinese calendar, although celebrated all across Asia) and the debut of a new French beverage product.

As we were slowly assembling for a private lunch at Sensei restaurant in the Bellagio, we began swapping experiences.

One gentleman, a Chinese-American, was telling me about his work at a Chinese-language newspaper in Los Angeles when a South Korean-American representative of a marketing firm walked into the room. He smoothly switched to Korean to greet her, explaining to me that although Mandarin is his native tongue, he had lived in Korea and picked up the language there.

The marketing lady exchanged a few pleasantries in Korean with him, then switched into perfect New York City English with me. Although raised in Seoul, she explained, she had been born in the U.S. and wanted to move here, so she studied English. In Beijing. Her time as a New York City resident has buffed away any residual accent she may have had.

"Some people tell me I sound Canadian," she said in a bemused way.

And so it went throughout the event, with native-born Americans, French business people there to push their new Martell cognac, and numerous Asians and Asian-Americans, representing a major niche in the world of cognac sales.

All of which makes me wonder again whatever happened to the public education of my youth, when you learned languages -- including your own, math and writing skills, and a modicum of history. That doesn't seem to be a problem in many other nations' schools which now far surpass us in turning out people of curiosity and interpersonal skills despite us spending billions on education.

Meanwhile, don't look for big numbers when it comes to tomorrow's weather. Although clear skies are predicted, we'll be lucky to get into double digit temperatures during the day and avoid zero at night.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

Tom Jefferson, Welsh again

OK, so for those of you who think Thomas Jefferson might have been America's first president of African or Arab descent, it's probably not true.

Oh, you didn't think such a thing? What? You never even heard that supposition?

Well, that's what we're here for, to help solve puzzles and report on the latest findings that might increase your store of knowledge. No, no need to thank me.

The debate began about a decade ago when DNA samples were taken from male relatives of Jefferson to see if the prez had fathered a son with one of his slaves, probably Sally Hemmings. In the testing it was discovered that Jefferson had a rare genetic signature found mainly in the Middle East and Africa, quite surprising for a man who claimed Welsh ancestry.

Now, according to the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the same DNA type -- a rare male (or Y) chromosome type -- has been found in two Britons with the Jefferson surname. The journal said genetic analysis showed the British men shared a common ancestor with Jefferson about 11 generations ago. But neither knew of any family links to the US.

"The unusual lineage has not been found in white Britons before. This discovery scotches any suggestion that Jefferson - who was president between 1801 and 1809 - must have had recent paternal ancestors from the Middle East," said a report by the BBC.

So, we're back to the same-old same-old, including tomorrow's weather forecast -- mostly cloudy and blustery, a high in the high teens or 20, if we're lucky.

I'm taking a very long weekend, so I'll see you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Hooked on The Beeb

There are many things I've always liked about the British Broadcasting Corp.

The BBC -- or, as many Brits refer to it, "The Beeb" -- makes special efforts to tell stories from a human vantagepoint.

Not that it totally avoids frivolity or some opinion slipping into its newscasts or Webcasts. Human nature being what it is, that happens. But I've learned much more about what goes on outside the world of Hollywood celebs and official government spokesbeings by reading the BBC reports online or watching BBC America on cable TV.

Rather than jamming a story of complexity and importance into the same 30-second spot U.S. newscasters would give to the latest Lindsay Lohan report, the BBC gives stories -- and, therefore, the public -- a fair shake.

It also picks up on efforts to improve relations between peoples. Like the story about children at a rural school in India creating a group photoblog to help people around the globe understand them. Rani (seen here), for example, is a 15-year-old who has contributed thoughts and images the average tourist won't be exposed to.

I commend the site to you. Which is more than I can do for tomorrow's weather -- scattered snow flurries, a high of only 17 degrees or so, and blustery winds hitting up to 20 mph.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Attack from abroad

Up in the wilds of Cape Breton, Canada, there's a company named the Glenora Distillery. It is located in a glen, its address is Glenville, and it is near Glenora Falls.

However, the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) is trying to force Glenora to stop calling its single malt whisky, Canada's sole such beverage, Glen Breton. This comes on the heels of the Canadian Trade-Marks Opposition Board's ruling that Glenora can continue using the word Glen despite oposition from the Scotland-based SWA.

The SWA plans to appeal the ruling to the federal court in Canada. Its stance is that using the word "glen" makes consumers think the whisky is made in Scotland.

The Trade-Marks Board said, in part, "The essence of the opponent’s argument is that Canadian users and purchasers of whisky have been educated to associate the word Glen solely with scotch whisky."

However, if the association "truly believed that the word Glen merits special protection for producers of scotch whisky, it should have long ago taken steps to protect that word as a geographical indication of Scottish origin, much as it did for the words ‘scotch whisky'."

No word yet on whether the SWA might go after Glen Campbell, Glenn Gordon Caron, Scott Glen, Glen Close, the Glenn Miller Orchestra or the estate of the late actor Glenn Ford.

Now that the clouds have been cleared away to some extent on this dicey matter, we need to look at our own clouds. There will be some of them, with the sun peeking through from time to time, tomorrow but brace yourself for a high of only 22 and a low-low of 5.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday,

A plot fizzes out

Forget the DaVinci Code, the schematics of the hydrogen bomb, the instructions to Donald Trump's hairstyle.

The greatest secret extant in the world has remained safe despite the efforts of a trio who tried to sell the priceless formula for Coca-Cola, thanks to some honest folks at arch-rival Pepsi-Cola who contacted Coke and cooperated with the FBI when the co-conspirators tried to peddle the recipe to them.

Considering that the global soft drink market is on the order of $35 billion a year, we're talking beaucoup bucks for the formula to Coke, the No. 1-selling product and a secret for 120 years.

The woman who initially stole secret documents and new-product samples at Coke's world headquarters in Atlanta was found guilty in court this week and faces up to 10 years in prison. The two men she sold the items to, for a reported $1.5 million, had earlier pleaded guilty.

It's good to know that in this topsy-turvy world, some things can remain unchanged.

Not so our weather. The three-day forecast calls for successively falling temperatures, from 26 down to 17, although all three days the skies should be a mix of sunshine and clouds.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Loonies Day at the old ballpark

A Los Angeles psychologist has gotten his piece of the American dream of equal justice under the law. Thank heaven.

The plaintiff, one Michael Cohn, filed suit against the Angels baseball team for "discriminating" against men by giving tote bags to women during a Mother's Day game.

In response, an Orange County, CA, Superior Court judge has told him to stuff it.

What a schmuck. The psychologist, not the judge.

This is a nuisance suit of the first order. Every public penny spent adjudicating it should be wrung from the neck of the plaintiff. If you care to weigh in on that process, do so before a Feb. 15 hearing that has been set to determine attorney's fees and court costs.

We may live in a nation of laws, but we also live in a nation of nuts in which lawsuits too often supplant thought, reason and discussion.

We have our differences, of course -- tomorrow's local weather forecast is for temperatures in the low 30s and a bit of snow late in the day, while in Los Angeles it will be in the high 60s and sunny -- but we don't need to have a judge and/or jury decide each one.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

What a difference a day makes

Thirty days has September, April, June and November.

So, what's so special about January that it needs one more when its neighbor, February, got short shrift?

Well, a lot of interesting things happened on this day the Gregorian calendar calls January 31. For one, my kid brother was born. Whether that has any lasting impact on the world remains to be seen. He's a nice guy, but he hasn't cured any diseases or designed any skyscrapers yet.

For those of us in any form of the journalism trade, it is the feast day of St. John Bosco, patron saint of Christian apprentices, editors, and publishers. Doesn't matter if you're not Catholic. Any day devoted to you or your patron saint can't be all bad.

On this date in 1606, upstart Guy Fawkes was executed for plotting against Parliament and James I of England. In 1865, Robert E. Lee was named head of the Confederate military. In 1876, the federal government ordered all Indians to move to reservations. In 1930, 3M introduced Scotch Tape to the world. Sam Goldwyn of MGM fame died in 1974. And so on and on and on.

You already know today's weather, so looking ahead to tomorrow you'll be facing a high of 30 -- not 31, mind you, just 30 -- plus a low of 16 and cloudy skies.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

History mystery becoming un-Henged

One of the enduring mysteries involves Stonehenge, the circle of huge stones on England's Salisbury Plain.

Who built them? How did they do it? And, perhaps as important, why?

A team of archaeologists has just announced the discovery of an ancient settlement they think was used by the people who built Stonehenge. The finding of a Neolithic village that would have housed several hundred people was at a place called Durrington Walls. The dwellings date to 2,600-2,500 BC.

Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University told the BBC the researchers have excavated eight houses that belonged to the Durrington settlement. They have identified up to 100 other probable dwellings, using geophysical surveying equipment.

Parker Pearson said he believes Durrington's purpose was to celebrate life and deposit the dead in the river for transport to the afterlife, while Stonehenge was a memorial and even final resting place for some of the dead.

Whether this solves much of the Stonehenge mystery or not, it does sweep away some of the clouds surrounding the edifice. The same cannot be said for tomorrow's weather prognostication. It calls for cloudy skies, a high of only 28 and a bone-chilling low of 11.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

The Numbers Game

He, calling from San Antonio, TX: "So, what's the temperature up there?"

She, answering from Upstate New York: "I guess 6 or 7. How about down there?"

He: "Same numbers. Just a little closer together, like 67."

It's a big country, room enough for all sorts of people and climates. When you travel a lot, that becomes clearer and clearer.

Little things such as what outerwear to choose when traveling from the Snow Belt to the Sun Belt tells you that you'll have to be adaptable. The leather jacket with the quilted lining that was perfect when you set out on your trek that morning becomes superfluous material to carry by the time you reach your southwestern destination that afternoon.

Once again, weather is a metaphor for life. Just as we make accommodations along the way for changing climatic conditions, most of us start out on some sort of journey -- romance, career, grocery store choices, Christmas shopping -- and wind up not precisely where we thought we would. It's the adaptations we make along the way that create the outcome.

Weatherwise, if you chose correctly today you can just repeat the process tomorrow when the prediction is for more temps in the 20s, with mixed sun and clouds but no precipitation.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

Dig those Hobbits

God, I love archaeological science.

As I mentioned here the other day, scientists in France are trying to decide whether some remains they have been examining are those of Joan of Arc or a cat. Now, an Indonesian find has some intriguing possibilities that span a rather large range.

It's been more than a year since Indonesian government officials blocked access to a cave containing the bones of a species of human being called Hobbits.

Speculation has been rife since an Australian-led archaeological found the specimens. Some think they point to a "missing link" in the human evolutionary chain. Some think they're a dead-end offshoot of human evolution. Still others simply didn't like foreign researchers poking around in their country.

The remains, classified as Homo floresiensis, were found in 2003 in a limestone cave on the remote island of Flores. The major find was an adult female who lived about 18,000 years ago, was about three feet tall, had a brain the size of a chimp's, and had features suggesting a connection of some sort to known ancient human species such as Homo erectus, Homo habilis and Australopithecus.

Or, some researchers say the "Hobbit" could merely be the skeleton of a modern human who was small and had a brain disorder.

They sure do take the fun out of things by giving the cold shoulder. And, speaking of cold body parts, unlike Indonesia we're in for bone-chilling temps tomorrow. We're talking single digits, some minuses, and wind chill factors in the sub-zero range. Given that, I'm hibernating for a few days before rejoining you.

See you back here on the Heights on Moday.

When in Rome ...

That Lucius Vorenus is one tough dude.

When lawbreakers and gang toughs took over the Avantine market place of Rome, the former centurion was dispatched to clean up the mess. He did, in one fell swoop, threatening and scaring the gang leaders into quick submission.

That was on the latest episode of HBO's "Rome" miniseries.

In real life, that Chiara Giacomantonio also is one tough dude.

The chief police superintendent of present day Rome, while not as tough as one pissed-off Roman soldier, has headed up a probe that resulted in the arrests of more than 2,000 people in the capital city and elsewhere in Italy on charges of a variety of crimes involved in human trafficking.

Police officials say the roundup was a result of a four-month investigation that found minors and adults forced into sweatshops and prostitution. Most of those charged are from Eastern European countries such as Moldavia, Albania and Romania as well as some from Africa and Asia.

If this all puts you in the mood to jaunt off to Rome, the forecast for tomorrow is for temperatures in the mid- to high 40s, but with a chance of rain. As for those of you in the vicinity of the Heights, we'll be plunging back into temps in the teens and cloudy skies throughout the day.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

The once and future queen

So, Hillary wants to become our nation's second President Clinton.

A noble ambition. She's swayed some former detractors to her side in her first and only try at handling an elected position, that of junior senator from New York, where in her single term she's built up a respectable if not sparkling record.

It is difficult, however, to forget that the first opportunity she had to do anything on a national scale her overriding instinct was to avoid public scrutiny and do things behind closed doors.

If you suffer from American Short-Term Memory Loss, which is pandemic in this country, let me refresh you. When the original and only President Clinton let the missus head up a move to work up a federal health care plan, she immediately broke a batch of rules and regulations about little things such as public disclosure, Freedom of Information Law requirements and the like. And, we never did get a workable plan.

And that was without being elected to office. Imagine the temptations she'd have to wrestle with if she actually returned to the White House with a voter mandate!

When William Jefferson Clinton was running for president the first time around, Hillary promised voters they'd be getting two for the price of one if they voted for her husband since she'd be working with him. The same quantitative promise could be made this time as well, except that for a change we'd all really know what we'd be getting.

The weather, however, isn't quite as sure a thing for tomorrow. If we're lucky , it will be one of the few nice days this week nestled between two gloomier days -- a high in the mid-30s,, a low around 20, and some sunshine peeking through.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Pimp thy ride

Did you hear the one about the Amish guy who tried to deduct the cost of tricking out his buggy?

It's true. The folks at Bankrate.com who like to collect stories of strange tax gimmicks from CPAs and tax prep specialists came up with the tale of a fellow who presented his accountant with a two-page itemized receipt.

A standard buggy used by the unostentacious religious sect costs $2,675, according to local sources. This one, however, had a few add-ons: dash lights, kick plates, tinted windshield, speedometer, hydraulic brakes and dimmer switches. The upgraded buggy ended up costing $3,545.

So, even when we least expect people to kick over the traces and try getting away with something, it happens. Given that, do we really expect not to be disappointed tomorrow night when the Leader of the Free World takes over the prime time television waves to explain the unexplainable in his annual State of the Union message: How we got to this ludicrous state of affairs.

In checking the weather forecast for tomorrow, I expected to see predictions for storms of frogs, fireballs, lightning, locusts and other disasters to help match the mood El Presidente has saddled us with. Much to my surprise, instead of something like today's snow showers and temps in the 20s, we'll warm up to 32 or higher, under partly sunny skies before it all falls apart like the Bush presidency.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

Foot fetifish

Seafood is, perhaps, the the most popular food ingested by humans worldwide.

So, it seems only fair to give the sea creatures a shot at getting some of the attention back. That's the way they're doing it in Singapore.

The rich little Asian island-nation is known for its fascination -- some would say obsession -- with having health and beauty spas at seemingly every street corner. One of the latest fads at such places is using flesh-eating fish to nibble away flaking skin, calluses and other annoyances from spa customers.

Intelligent Spas, an industry research outfit, tells us says the number of spas in Singapore grew by about 63% in the past three years alone and the number should keep climbing by 11% or more every year for at least the next two years. All of which could mean even more exotic beauty treatments will be sought as competition increases.

How about ear-hair-trimming caterpillars? Or, elbow-scrubbing porcupines. Or ... fill in your own indulgence. If you don't, somebody else will.

Besides, you need to look forward to some self-indulgent activities because the weather certainly isn't looking out for you. Saturday's forecast is for a high of merely 28 and Sunday is even chillier with a high of 22. Things might take a bit of a turn for the warmer by Monday, but don't count on much.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Joan of Angorra?

Archaeology is as fascinating a science as there is.

• In Minnesota, researchers have found remnants of 13,000-year-old stone tools that might be the oldest human artifacts ever found in North America.

• In Egypt, diggers unearthed the mummified remains of a doctor that are 4,000 years old.

• In France, analysts trying to determine whether a rib bone and a piece of cloth are the remains of 15th century French heroine Joan of Arc say maybe they are.

• Or, it could be a cat.

That's the really cool thing about research. The results can be a hoot. In this instance, the artifacts have been undergoing scrutiny for six months and the experts still aren't totally sure of what they have. They are leaning toward the pronouncement that there is "relatively little chance" the remnants said to have been recovered from the funeral pyre after Joan of Arc was burned alive for heresy are from her.

For one thing, the bit of 15th century linen was dyed, not burned, which accounts for its dark color. And the bit of femur being examined turns out to resemble more of a cat bone than a human one.

These artifacts have been stored away since 1909 when they were found and scientists of the day speculated it was "highly probable" they were the remains of the country girl who rose to lead the armies of France against England in the Hundred Years War. Today's technology is changing that view and, who knows?, tomorrow's may change it to something else entirely.

Speaking of tomorrow, good weather for digging into the past, with snow showers early giving way to sunnier skies and a high in the mid-30s.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

More than power fails at National Grid

"400,000 still without power"

That was the headline on a newspaper report about the nationwide effect of the sudden winter ice storms that hit various parts of the nation several days earlier.

"20,000 still without power"

That was the headline on a local newspaper report about our little corner of the world.

The causes behind the first headline can be myriad because the story was about a lot of places with individual webs of woes. The causes behind the second headline are only two: bad weather and what I suspect is a grossly inept utility giant called National Grid.

National Grid is what took over the former Niagara Mohawk utility that serviced a big swath of upstate New York. It employs fewer people than its predecessor and, thus, makes larger profits. It also has bigger failures. The same problem popped up last winter and National Grid said one of the reasons for extended power failures was that it couldn't find enough people to hire to fix them. A year later, same problems and same lame excuses. Meanwhile, profits continue to grow and people continue to shiver unnecessarily.

I've had an antipathy toward National Grid for any number of reasons. Most recently, it took more than an hour for someone to show up to check on a suspected gas leak here on the Heights. No leak, as it turned out, but one wonders what could have happened during that waiting period if there had been. Did I mention, by the way, that there's a full-fledged National Grid facility containing trucks, technicians and all less than a two-minute drive from my house?

This is the same company that , despite its homey, domestic-sounding name, is in charge of the power needs of untold millions of people in such English-speaking regions of the world as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, plus any number of other nations.

You'd think it would pretty much have the communication thing down pat, but you'd be wrong. Ask one of my neighbors. He received an unsigned letter from National Grid warmly addressed to "Occupant" and labeled "NOTICE OF SERVICE TERMINATION."

It said "Our records indicate that ... you have not applied for service at this address. If we do not hear from you immediately, we will discontinue electric service ... without further notice."

Since he'd been living in the same house for a decade, that bit of information confused him. When he called to get the mistake corrected he was told he had to provide ID and proof that he resides at that address.

As it turns out, someone moving into the neighborhood had given National Grid his address instead of the one three doors away that they were moving into. They later called National Grid again to report their mistake and asked that the account be switched to the correct new address. National Grid made the switch, but also changed "Occupant's" account status to inactive. Then, a National Grid automated system, triggered by a remote meter reading detecting continued power use at Occupant's house, mailed him the termination letter. Note that no National grid humans were involved in the final part of this idiotic situation.

So, as it turns out, National Grid's policies require you to produce an ID plus proof -- such as a bill from National Grid -- that you live on or own the property to get power, but anyone can call and get it turned off without ID.

As the immortal Robert Frost put it, "The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get to the office."

Meanwhile, the highs for tomorrow may virtually double if the prognosticators are correct, hitting 37, but with a a low of 9 under partly cloudy skies.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Ambiance on ice

From where I sit pecking away at my keyboard, I have a wonderful view.

Bald Mountain, not too distant from my abode on Weathering Heights, is a constant reminder there's always something a little bigger than you are. Rolling down from that are the seasonally lush fields and hillocks that, despite being on the edge of a compact old city, give the impression of being out in the wilderness.

Wild turkeys, deer, foxes, birds of all sorts ... These are the neighbors. It's difficult to think of much that would improve the ambiance. Except for the occasional ice storm.

Over the holiday weekend, as literally tens of thousands of people just north and west of here were enduring power failures caused by ice-coated lines snapping like dry twigs -- something I'd experienced several times, I was able to relax in warmth and comfort and appreciate the artistry of it all.

Leafless tree limbs encased in ice, shimmering in the cold sun right along with the metal wind chimes hanging onto them. That old devil "black ice" making the driveway and the road out front a threateningly pretty surface. Hints of light glinting off every sort of surface, from the backyard wooden deck to the brick edging on the garden plots and the grooved lampost near the front door.

In a mild winter such as this, even the inconveniences of such a time have to be appreciated for what they are. We don't want to get too soft as doomsayers warn of global warming, do we?

It will get better soon, but meanwhile tomorrow's forecast calls for temperatures in the high teens -- both as a high and as a low, with winds that will make it feel like 15 below despite some sunshine.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

At last, relief from blue skies

Northern cardinal.

Tufted titmouse.

Wood thrush.

Blue jay.

Chickadee.

Downy woodpecker.

That's in one tree during one hour on one morning. This morning, in fact, and more than one of each type was clustered in the crabapple outside my kitchen, flitting around, establishing a literal pecking order as they took turns at the suet and birdseed squares hanging in metal cages from the branches of the tree closest to the window. No doubt more in profusion than usual because not as many of our birds headed south this year, what with the record-shattering mild weather and all.

A little later my idyll was shattered by the gleeful weather prediction for the holiday weekend -- increasingly deteriorating conditions, resulting in a batch of snow and icy-cold temperatures probably rolling in around Sunday and/or Monday.

I use the word "gleeful" intentionally, since our local Weather Beings have difficulty dealing with anything other than inclement weather. That's why their channels don't just advertise the weather portions of their broadcasts, they name them. Dire labels such as "Stormtracker," and "First Warning" and "Storm Center."

Note the lack of such upbeat show titles as "Sunshine Sensor," "Blue Skies Monitor" and "We Actually Do Need Rain Sometime Or We'll Die Bulletin."

So, stock up with provisions and some emergency candles, flashlights and other paraphernalia in case the doomsayers are correct, and enjoy the next few days. I know I will.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday, after the holiday.

SMU-th operator

It's pretty much a given that every U.S. President will have a library housing his records once he leaves office. The only question usually is where to put it.

In the case of George W. Bush, it's more than a question. It's a battle.

A combined library/museum/think-tank devoted to Bush when he leaves office is being proposed for Southern Methodist University. The administration and some influential alumni of the Dallas school are all in favor of the plan, which would be financed with a private fund drive raising at least $200 million.

Some faculty members, predominantly those of a liberal bent, are dead set against it. Their contention is that such an unpopular president who took the country into an ill-conceived war should not be honored, particularly on their campus.

Bush has a close connection to SMU. Laura Bush is an SMU grad and is on the board of trustees. Vice President Dick Cheyney used to be a trustee. Bush adviser Karen Hughes and former White House counsel Harriet Miers both graduated from SMU.

Many alums are wealthy and politically conservative. Mike Boone, who earned undergraduate and law school degrees from SMU and who is on the board of trustees, said an overwhelming majority of alumni support the Bush library project, adding, "It's prestigious and brings a lot of value to a university."

My question about a George W. Bush library is, how much room can a half-dozen books take up?

While you're pondering the heated debate, it might interest you to know tomorrow's forecast is for, if not heated conditions, more mild weather, with mixed sun and clouds and a 40ish high.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

A little learning

When I watch "Jeopardy" and get in a losing rut while the contestants roll on, I sometimes wonder, "Did I really attend school?"

Then, just as quickly, when I mention something to the younger folks of my acquaintance that was part of basic education when I was a kid and they stare back at me with that glassy-eyed "I have no idea what you just said" look, I feel vindicated.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. Samuel Huntington was arguably the first U.S. president since he presided over our first real governmental sessions under the Articles of Confederation. In American English we don't spell theater with an "re" or gray with an "e." Celestial objects have north and south magnetic poles. Stuff like that.

The problem is, the older your knowledge the more apt some of it is to change as science advances. That bit about magnetic poles, for example. Turns out the neutron star inside the Crab Nebula (seen here in a shot by the Hubble telescope) may have four such poles.

Neutron stars, in case you dozed off during that astronomy class, are dense remnants of massive stars that blew up in supernova explosions. You may know them as pulsars, throwing out beams of radio waves that sweep across our planet. Youngsters can't claim they should not be held responsible for this because it's new news. Wrong. This particular supernova explosion was observed on Earth -- on July 4, AD 1054. Plenty of time since then for word to have gotten around.

Other than being a scientific oddity, this particular finding that was just announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle probably doesn't mean much. Just that you have to keep your eyes, ears and mind open to new information. Life is change.

One thing that isn't changing very much is this unusually mild winter. Tomorrow's forecast, for example, is pretty much the same as the past few days' -- a high of 37 and a low of 15 to 18, with clear skies.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Time and lava wait for no man

Once more I am reminded not to postpone things I'd really like to do. Not only is man's own lifespan a short one, but Nature is a fickle beast.

It was just a couple of years ago I was vacationing on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Nice place. Pretty vegetation, lush resorts, pleasant people. But, all in all, not a lot to do. However, I did have the opportunity to fly over to neighboring Montserrat, a tiny 10-by-7-mile island known for its natural beauty until a 1997 volcanic eruption covered half of it in ash and hardened lava, killed 19 people and drove half the remaining population of 10,000 off the island.

The attraction was to see up-close what a volcanic flow could do. Actually seeing it edge-by-edge with the unaffected part of the island, according to several residents of Montserrat I spoke with while they were on Antigua on business.

One thing led to another and I never did go. Now comes word that the Soufriere Hills volcano is acting up again (as seen here), tossing smoke and ash five miles in the air. The crater's lava dome continues to grow and experts say the mounting pressure could be released in a powerful blast. That would pretty much do in the rest of the island, and at least keep visitors from touching down there.

As Humphrey Bogart might have put it, the problems of one little tourist in a time like this doesn't mean a hill of beans, But, I still wish I had dropped in. It's not every day you can feel the earth move under your feet. As another larger than life character would have said.

And, while they're dealing with hot, smoky miserable weather on Montserrat, in these parts the prediction is for a high of 36 degrees, a low of 24 and partly cloudy skies. Not bad, considering that also means partly clear skies, which is more than one can say for the beleaguered folk of Montserrat.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

There is no sanity claus in Maine

The controversial English beers known as Santa's Butt, Seriously Bad Elf and others of that ilk may now be sold in stores in Maine.

That's a decision made several days ago, too late to keep from impairing the distributor's holiday sales, but at least it was made.

The controversy began when Maine -- despite Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York having already plowed the same ground only to reverse the ruling -- decided the bottle labels were too racy and shouldn't be allowed to be sold.

The Maine Civil Liberties Union had filed a lawsuit on behalf of Shelton Brothers, the Massachusetts distributor that keeps getting hit with bans, accusing the state Bureau of Liquor Enforcement of censorship.

Daniel Shelton, who runs the distributorship, said it is too late to sell the seasonal beers and that the lawsuit will be pursued unless the state changes its rule allowing it to deny applications for beer labels because they contain "undignified or improper" illustrations.

Unlike the other states that tried, and failed, to ban the beers, Maine went even further. It denied applications for Les Sans Culottes, a French ale, and Rose de Gambrinus, a Belgian fruit beer.

Their crime: Les Sans Culottes used part of 19th century painter Eugene Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People," (seen here) which includes a bare-breasted Lady Liberty figure. Good enough to hang in the Louvre, but too racy for Maine consumers, one supposes. The other beer has a bare-breasted woman in a painting commissioned by the brewery. Pigs!

The state poohbahs in the capital of Augusta probably are blaming the balmy winter on such strange doings. Tomorrow's prediction there is for a high of about 36, which is about 100 degrees warmer than the usual Jan. 9 in those parts.. Hereabouts, we're looking at pretty much the same thing -- occasionally clear skies and a high in the upper 30s.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

We're bordering on insanity

Mexico is in such lovely shape even its police are being disarmed because of runaway lawlessness.

A few days ago, the federal government said it was sending 3,000 soldiers and police, backed by 28 boats, 21 planes and nine helicopters, to Tijuana -- located just across the border from San Diego, CA, and a major entry point to the U.S. for illegal drugs -- to help fight drug trafficking and gang violence.

In Tijuana, police have been ordered to surrender their firearms so federal officials can inspect them for any connection to drug smuggling operations. As a result, Tijuana cops are refusing to patrol unarmed. Not the dumbest decision in the world since 300 people were killed in gang-related violence in the city in 2006 and unarmed cops make tempting targets.

Of course, there could be a school of thought that disarming the local cops would help avoid any armed confrontation with the incoming authorities until they learn who's straight and who's crooked. Just surmising here.

Mexico certainly is a land of sharp contrasts. (See here and here.) A few weeks ago to the southeast of Tijuana, in Oaxaca state, there was armed rioting over unhappiness with the local government and troops had to be moved there to quell the rebellion. Coincidentally, I was traveling at the same time in relative serenity in Jalisco state, north of Oaxaca, on a tour of historic sites and tequila operations.

The only hint of danger I noticed was the positioning at regular intervals of well-armed federales -- Mexico's state police -- on the major east-west toll highway. It is known for its calmness, compared to the more direct but more dangerous unpatrolled free highway that runs roughly parallel to it.

Seeing grim-faced, stocky, camouflage-wearing, highly-armed federal police giving everyone the once-over at rest stops and at randomly-spaced checkpoints may give bad guys the willies, but they brought a certain contentment to the folks in my van.

Not as warm and fuzzy a feeling as our local weather, however, where the unseasonably mild temperatures will continue tomorrow. The forecast is for a mostly cloudy day with showers likely in the morning and high temps in the vicinity of 60.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday. Have a nice weekend.

Delusions of power

Jack Higgins, Len Elmore, Dean Koontz eat your hearts out.

You have to sit down and do some hard thinking to come up with oddball angles on which to hang your best-selling novels. All you really have to do, we are learning more often than is comfortable, is wait for the dirt to be dished about those who inhabit the inner circles of Washington, DC.

You'll recall the whispered tales of Richard Nixon talking to the presidential portraits during late-night ramblings through the White House corridors. Or the not-so-whispered reports on Ronald Reagan's lapses into unreality, which we later learned was early-stage Alzheimer's disease.

Now, we find out that when William Rehnquist, the guy Nixon once referred to on tape as "Renchberg, or whatever that clown's name is," suffered from hallucinations and fears of CIA plots against him, took anti-psychotic drugs and tried to escape from a hospital in his pajamas. This is the same guy the D.C. establishment supported when he was nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States.

The late Chief Justice -- you may remember him as the guy who thought it was a neat idea to put a bunch of stripes on the sleeves of his judicial robes to remind people of his status -- has had much of his life laid bare in FBI files just released. The file, which includes 1,561 pages of documents, became public in response to requests filed by news organizations and scholars under the Freedom of Information Act following Rehnquist's death in September 2005.

Of course, as is always the case with our government, not everything was released. The FBI says a section of his file could not be found.

And, isn't that encouraging.

In keeping with the somber mood such news, pathetic on several levels, brings, Nature is responding with rain for the next few days. Tomorrow will be even warmer than we've been experiencing in this odd winter of discontent, with a predicted high of 51 and low of 41.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday

His life is a ball

Question: How much does a collection of 850,000 rubber bands weigh?

Answer: Slightly over 3,120 pounds.

Question: Why do you know this?

Answer: Because I looked it up. You don't for a moment think I commit such things to memory, do you?

I was browsing through some press releases that mentioned the largest this or smallest that or fastest or fattest or slowest or skinniest and came across this rubber band thing. It's part of a years-long project a young man named John Bain got himself involved in as he collected all those bits of rubber while he was working in an office mail room in Wilmington, DE, to create the world's largest rubber ball.

The Guinness Book of World Records, which chronicles lots of things people waste their lives doing, certified the effort back in 1998 at 2,008 pounds. Since then, apparently, Bain has been adding to the ball.

By my estimate, if he's still in that mail room supplementing his income from the Web site his pasttime has instigated, he has chalked up a number of things on his recored: (1.) He has wasted a big chunk of his life that he'll never get back, unless he labels this big ball of rubber a piece of "art" and then can call it a labor of love; (2.) He has purloined abouty $8,000 to $10,000 worth of office supplies (i.e., rubber bands) from his employer.

What is it that compels people to do such things? I can see the art and artifice of collecting things. You can learn from them. Stamps tell the history of a nation or the messages they've helped speed around the globe. Books can tell you anything the human mind has imagined, tried and accomplished. Pez dispensers describe an art form and a commercial undertaking. Songs describe sounds that resonate with humans and animals and enhance or utterly change their moods. Butterflies help show the range of nature's wonder.

But a ball of rubber bands that checks in at a ton and a half? I think of the time some people wished they could have had to complete a medical research project or a symphony or the raising of a child . And then I think about people who spend their time building giant balls of rubber bands or building the world's longest submarine sandwich or staying locked up in a glass box on public display and I begin to think we need to clean out the shallow end of the gene pool.

Tomorrow looks like a good day to handle that, or most any other chore, with a predicted high of 48, a low of 28, and clear skies once more.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

2 down, 363 to go

January 2 and we're still here.

I love it when doomsayers are wrong. Of course, if they're ever right I won't be around to comment on their predictions. But, in this case, my streak remains intact. All those who predicted the end of the world in various cataclysms are wrong once again.

We have survived into another year of global hot spots -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and others we pay little, if any, attention to as they bubble and fester and spill over. We have survived another year of George W. Bush because, after all, this is the US of A and no matter how broad our fannies grow and how soft our middles may be and how I-want-what-I-want-when-I-want-it our attitudes are, we keep on keeping on.

I suspect, however, there is something in the doomsayers' warnings. As a nation, we may be going on pure momentum at this point.

Too many of our schools suck, too many people buy into the conventional "wisdom" spouted by lazy inner-city dwellers that they have to sell drugs because their only other alternatives are death or prison. Too many of our medical insurers are more interested in squeezing more money out of plan participants than anything else. Too many of our politicians lack the true skills and desire that make statesmen and statewomen for the ages.

But, somehow, the sun keeps coming up each morning no matter what we do or don't do. And, when it does that tomorrow, it will usher in a bright, clear day with a high again around 40 and the low a tolerable mid-20s. One more nice day to take one more crack at making it a better world.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Mourning in America

It is tempting at the start of a new year to look ahead with enthusiasm. It is more realistic to temper that excitement with a cold splash of reality on the face.

In some places in America, it was, indeed, a new day. Not only did the calendar change, but newly-elected politicians were sworn into office, college football bowl games were played, seemingly 'round the clock, and revelers got an extra day off from work to recover from their Eve revels.

In Iraq, we are told, the death toll among American service personnel has hit 3,000.

The Great Bush Crusade claims victim after victim with little, if anything, to show for it but death, death and more death. In the grand scheme of warfare, 3,000 is a paltry number in the annals of world history. Obviously, though, if it is a wasted 3,000 lives -- and there is precious little to support any contrary view -- the number is staggering.

The debilitating aspect of this toll is that we have nothing but the end of George Bush's term of office two years hence to show us light at the end of the tunnel. But we thought the same thing about a potential end to our escalating involvement in Vietnam and there was no sudden finish to that despite a change of administration.

Likewise, our weather forecast is for more of the same: a 40ish high, a low in the 20s, overcast skies and very little sunshine for tomorrow. Sorry to be the bearer of such tidings.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

A ritual for the birds

The larger of The Other Beings that co-inhabit Weathering Heights isn't given to sudden movements unless there is food involved. This morning was a different matter entirely.

What had struck a responsive chord at the very center of his feline being was the huge bluejay perched in the crabapple tree outside the kitchen window. The smaller finches, cardinals, wrens, woodpeckers, titmouses (titmice, titmeese? ... I never can quite get it straight) and assorted wild birds that usually perch there awaiting their turn at the suet and mixed-seed cages had been temporarily spooked by big bird.

Whiskers standing straight out, tail twitching, that funny little mewling noise deep in the throat that beings of his persuasion often employ when contemplating winged potential food. Finally, I thought, he's distracted from breakfast and ready to exercise his Creator's design by making a mad dash at the window to scare off the cocky intruder.

Then, Lily, the smaller (but not by much) of The Other Beings, glided sleepily down the stairs from the loft where she'd spent the night on her comfy pillow bed, ready for breakfast and mewing at big orange Andre to join her at the dish.

That broke the magical spell and we all lapsed into the morning routine. A forkful of tuna for each of them, a bowl of fresh water, and then a bowl of crunchy stuff to keep their tummies satisfied and their teeth sparking clean.

There still was hope for them to pay attention to the world around them. Morning sunshine actually was spilling over Bald Mountain just behind Weathering Heights, the skies were clear, and the usual Canada geese, wild turkeys, cackling crows and other bully birds were nowhere in sight. The rainbow of smaller creatures would soon be twittering and scampering about in full view. All in all, a rather satisfying way to start the day.

As for the weekend, the forecast calls for something less lovely although certainly necessary. A chance of snow showers after midnight and a low just under 20, with a 30% chance of snow during the day on Saturday and a high just around freezing. Sunday should be back to what we've been experiencing much of the week, clear skies, a high near 40 and a low around 25.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday, New Year's Day. Enjoy the Eve.

Cool it on global warming

A year ago at this time, according to the archives we just dusted off up here on the Heights, the daytime temperatures were in the 40ish range. Now, they are the same. So much for global warming.

Alright, alright, it's not supposed to be 40ish at this time of year, according to our experience. I know. I just have difficulty lamenting a change in global weather conditions we really can't do anything about.

I have no confidence that removing SUVs and hairspray cans from civilization will cool down the world's climate. In my view, based on eons of historic records, "global warming," such as it is, is part of a natural cycle of hot and cold that our esteemed planet goes through no matter what we or any other carbon-based life forms may do.

The difficulty most humans have is that they judge such things by their own existence clock, forgetting that our lifetimes are less than a speck on the tail of a flea in comparison to the whole span of time.

For those of you who insist on looking at things in the short term, however, tomorrow's forecast calls for a lot more sun with a high in the mid-40s and a low in the high 20s.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

Papal piffle in Paraguay

Pope Benny apparently is quite selective in his readings.

He reads enough to quote something nasty a minor Turkish ruler in the Dark Ages said about Islam, but he apparently skipped something much more recent.

Tales of the many political ventures of Roman Catholic priests working in Central and South America in the late 20th Century were common, tales of many collar-wearers working with insurrectionists to throw off dictatorial regimes. The Vatican occasionally made some tut-tutting noises to put on a good show about separation of THE church and THOSE states, but the activities went on for decades.

Now comes word that Fernando Lugo, 55, who retired as a Roman Catholic bishop two years ago but still is known for his work among the poor, wishes to run in Paraguay's presidential race next year and Pope Benny is all put out about it. Apparently, revolutionary activities are OK with the Vatican, but democratic ones are not.

Lugo, now Mr. instead of Bishop, says he has resigned from the priesthood two days after getting a no-no letter from the Vatican to lead a political alliance opposed to President Nicanor Duarte. Duarte's Colorado Party has ruled Paraguay for about 60 years.

"In the name of Jesus Christ, I ask him to seriously reflect about his behaviour," says the letter, signed by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re on behalf of the Pope.

I suspect he already has.

As Lugo and company prepare to bring a new day to their tiny South American nation, our new day forecast calls for more cloiudy skies tomorrow, another "balmy" mid-40s high and a low of 28.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Powers of the press

NOTE: After a two-month layoff to pursue lots of other things that now have been completed and put away, we've taken the plywood off the windows of the ivory tower up here on the Heights, washed the windows, dusted away the cobwebs, and we're back in business puttering around with various daily observations and weather prognostications.

The biggest of all giants in the history of American newspaper journalism has passed from the scene.

We speak not of writer Johnny Apple of The New York Times or interviewer Ed Bradley of "60 Minutes" or photographer Joe Rosenthal who shot the famous flag-raising scene on Iwo Jima.

All of them, and others, died this year, but none had the power that Bertram Powers-- who died two days before Christmas at the age of 84 -- did over the state of our journalism. He almost single-handedly killed a whole lineup of New York City newspapers.

Powers was president of the old typographers union in New York who led his boys in a miserable, mean-spirited and misguided 114-day strike in 1962-63 over the looming transition to automated typesetting. So devastating was the strike that at least four daily newspapers went out of business as a direct result, and numerous others were financially crippled and never recovered. Thus, Power and his intransigent stance helped eventually kill off not only thousands of union jobs, but those of members of other crafts and outside businesses that relied on newspapers for a livelihood. That's not even mentioning the social impact of sharply reducing the daily give-and-take a strong news media provides the citizens of a community.

Today, we're used to rapid technological changes in all walks of life, and people rarely cling to the outmoded concept of lifetime employment in whatever field they work. In his era, Powers was perhaps to some degree influenced by being part of an industry that often reported on change but seldom underwent any. Thus, the idea of a new era of technology that eventually would reduce his union's membership because fewer hands were needed to work the automated typesetting machines that publishers wanted to introduce, no doubt seemed foreign to him.

Rather than lead his union into a better period through negotiated changes that recognized a change in the work environment, Powers' bullheaded attitude wound up wreaking havoc.

As one who broke into the business in January 1962, just 11 months before Powers called the New York strike, I was fortunate to have left New York to try my hand at journalism in another state, one where unions were few and I had the opportunity to learn the old-style craft Powers was trying to preserve yet, just a few short years later, also learned the latest in "cold type" technology that required new skills and fewer hands.

Powers timed the strike to hit the newspapers at the height of their most profitable advertising season of the year. The domino effect of losing advertising venues led to huge losses for stores and small-time merchants as well. Some quickly went under.

In the end, Powers won a small raise and some job-saving points for his union, but in the minds of many he was a Don Quixote who helped ruin the most vibrant collection of newspapers in American history. Time magazine put him on its cover, asking "Is Labor's Only Weapon a Monkey Wrench?" President John F. Kennedy opened a news conference by saying the Powers-led strike had "passed the point of public toleration.''

To be sure, not all onlookers agree with that point. Mitchell Stephens, a newspaper historian and author, was quoted at one time by the Long Island newspaper Newsday as saying that "Nobody killed the newspapers in New York. There just wasn't room for them."

If that were true, the natural trend would have been for the commercially most viable to outlive the others. Bertie Powers oversaw an execution, not an evolution.

ON THE WEB
• New York State Newspaper Project
• New York World
• New York Daily Mirror
• New York Journal-American
• New York World-Telegram

On this gloomy note, we'll have to reveal that the weather forecast for tomorrow is a gloomy, cloudy one, with overcast skies a high of about 40 and a low of about 30.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Haute couture, Iranian style

Every so often, when we gather around the office water cooler to discuss the culture of the day (we are, you see, a very literate bunch), perception often is as big a topic as reality.

For example, working at a newspaper has given me the opportunity to field calls from readers questioning the modesty, or lack thereof, of an image we’ve published. The calls usually involve ads for underwear or strip clubs. The latter, I have found, usually are less revealing than the former. Curious stuff.

On the whole, such images really bother relatively few people. They pique the imagination more than they actually show anything to the eyes. Our history as a rather tolerant society makes that understandable. We’re not in a part of the world where arbiters of taste regularly help their neighbors avoid all that thinking and decision making by censoring words and images in advance of their sale.

Elsewhere, it’s a different story, particularly in the Middle East. Take a look at the Dior ad shown here. Note the black patches? They were inked onto the original image by censors in Iran before the publications carrying the ad and others of its ilk were allowed to be seen by the public.

In general, Western publications are heavily censored in Iran to cover up bare arms, knees or cleavage — of women. We presume men aren’t found similarly distasteful or tempting.

Go here for more examples of the hottest in Iranian fashion blocking.

Born in the USA

“How come you people didn’t run a picture and story about the 300 millionth American born this week?”

That, sad to say, was the gist of a serious inquiry made by several readers to the newspaper that currently employs me.

I use the word "sad" because, while we did publish stories on the topic, we didn’t publish a story and photo about THE baby because absolutely no one knows who No. 300 million is. Matter of fact, absolutely no one knows for sure that our population has reached 300 million. The figure is simply a matter of educated guesswork by population specialists and demographers.

While late-night comics like Jay Leno were showing faked video footage of an illegal sneaking across the border with Mexico then being heralded as the 300 millionth, some otherwise serious news outlets trumpted the birth of No. 300 million right in their community.

The Chicago tabloid the Sun-Times blared on its front page (seen here), “The 300,000,000th American Is Born: HERE SHE IS!” and showed a photo of a baby born in Chicago. However, as it turns out the paper simply made that up.

The Beachwood Reporter, a Chicago alternative publication that likes to debunk the mainstream media, jumped on that gaffe with both feet. At the same time, it provided a nice roundup of links to other news venues and how they handled the story and its various aspects.

The art of evil

Historic lore has it that would-be painter Adolf Hitler was so disappointed the top German art schools kept rejecting his applications that he decided to channel his creative energies into murder, mayhem and destruction.

However, much like so many painters whose artistic value -- of the commercial, even if not the esthetic, variety -- increases after their death, the madman's work still commands interest.

Nineteen watercolors and two sketches purported to be by Hitler have been sold for US$223,000 at auction in a small town in southwest England by an auction firm that says the art was discovered in a Belgian farmhouse. Hitler was stationed in Belgium as a young soldier during World War I.

Not everyone is convinced the works actually are by Hitler and, besides, most top art houses have refrained from handling any work thought to be by him.

The question is, why would anyone want anything created by one of the great evil minds and mass murderers in human history? Curiosity value is one thing, but collecting such work borders on the macabre.

Better to pay attention to the better life forms, like the turning of the leaves we're now seeing in various parts of the country. Autumn colors, pastoral scenes, the inevitability of life's cyclical nature ... Those are topics worthy of the hand of a true artist. And the heart of a true collector.

And, speaking of early autumn, we need more cold nights to help the changing of the leaves. Tomorrow's forecast is just the thing, with a predicted high of 69 and a low of 38 under cloudy skies.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Papa don't preach

What is it that makes some people think the religious sensibilities of other are amusing?

I'm not a practicing religious person, but I still stick with the ethic of my formative years: Don't make fun of others' religious beliefs. Make fun of the adherents if you like. God, and other dieties, knows many of them deserve it for being insufferable, hypocritical asses. But, what exactly is the point of disparaging the religions themselves?

Madonna is the latest. Not the church icon Madonna, the singer/actress-wannabe from Syracuse, NY. Her latest act of public image-creation is to hang herself in a fashion from a crucifix during her stage show. Real clever. I don't care what she was trying to portray, she knew the hue and cry the scene would cause and that had to have been her No. 1 purpose.

Before that, we had Michael Jackson, admirer of the young, the ... young, and ... the young. And, he said he liked to drink wine from a soda can, something he calls "Jesus Juice." Some tasteless entrepreneurs decided to take advantage of that revelation to come up with a new wine and a Jackson spoof label.

Then we have Muslims bouncing off the walls, tossing grenades at churches and killing nuns because Pope Benny quoted an ill-advised excerpt from an ancient ruler who didn't like Islam and then diddled around with some sort of half-assed apology while Arabic-speaking protestors held up signs denouncing the German-born pope in English (?) for media consumption.

Did I say I was not a practicing religious person? Add to that "and never will be." Care to join me? The weekend weather forecast is conducive to calm reflection and lucid discussion, what with rain predicted for both days and temperatures in the high 60s and low 70s before the wetness clears out.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Separated at birth?

The late Jackie Gleason and the beleaguered NY State Police boss Wayne Bennett share at least the comb-over and small-'stache genes.

The actor/comic/bandleader/composer's troubles are far behind him. Bennett's are very much in the here-and-now.

In the aftermath of a prolonged manhunt in the wilds of western New York that resulted in two dead troopers and another hovering around the critical list before fugitive Ralph "Bucky" Phillips was captured, the troopers' union has blasted the State Police hierarchy's management of the situation as slipshod and deadly.

Tempers are flaring on all fronts as the controversy rages on. As we head into the final real day of summer, let's hope we see a calmer autumn presaged by the prediction for sunny and clear weather and springlike mid-60s temperatures.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

Keeping the 'bs' in PBS

The Public Broadcasting System, seeing the money rolling into network and cable stations from cashing in on the public demand for reality shows, has decided to get in on the act.

PBS' "Wine Makers," a reality competition set for 2007, will pit 12 contestants vying for the chance to launch their own label.

The twist is that financing the series requires a new sponsorship model, rather than the method PBS has long used to keep its pristine character from being besmirched by godless commercialism,

Instead of quick, nearly-generic tag lines presented along with the PBS underwriters' logos, the new show will provide what PBS calls "top-tier sponsors" a five- to 15-second spot before and after the half-hour show.

Let's review. Sponsors will give PBS money to give them air time for 5- to 15-second spots about their products and services. Funny, in the real world they refer to those as, how you say, commercials !

Meanwhile, the forecast is for less hypocrisy, more sunshine and temps in the mid-60s for tomorrow.

With a day off in the calendar, I won't see you back here on the Heights until Thursday.

Those who ignore history ...

Illegal aliens sneaking across the Rio Grande into the U.S. usually say they're trying to get away from a land of no opportunity.

Apparently, Mexico wasn't always that way.

Scientists have found what they say may well be the oldest example of New World writing ever found. And, it comes from an ancient civilization in what today is Mexico.

A 2,000-year-old example of a previously unknown form of writing was found on a stone slab in the State of Veracruz, according to a new report in Science magazine.

Scientists say they believe the inscriptions were made by the Olmecs, an ancient pre-Columbian people known for creating large statues of heads. If so, that means they were writing 400 years before their contemporaries in the Western hemisphere.

So, a non-PC thought occurred to me: If Mexico had a civilization that developed writing as far back as the birth of Christ, where did it all go so very wrong? They had a 20-century headstart on the U.S. and blew it.

There must be a moral in there somewhere. Perhaps something to mull over while waiting in line to apply for legal immigration.

A long time coming, Sam

The late comic Sam Kinison used to do a standup riff on journalists covering victims of famine in Africa.

"Instead of just taking pictures of starving people, why don't they share a sandwich with them?" he'd demand.

Kinison probably would be happy to hear about a group of journalists, including several photographers, traveling together in southern Lebanon, who helped rescue trapped civilians this week in two towns damaged by Israeli missiles.

"[There were] far too many old people and children who simply couldn’t make it across the rubble,” said Polaris photographer Timothy Fadek, who helped rescue people at both scenes. “We simply carried them on our backs."

The full story is available here.

While the folks in the Middle East are sweltering under a hot sun and persistent showers of rockets and bombs, we can be basking in tomorrow's respite from the heat wave with partly cloudy skies, a high of 85° and a very nice overnight low of 63°. Count your blessings.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

Voice of Cuba still high-Fidel-ity

I was in the midst of reading a New Yorker piece on Fidel Castro this week when word came that the dictator was in bad shape after intestinal surgery. I now know more about his past few years and increasing health problems than I ever thought I'd know.

Castro is nearly 80. His kid brother, 75-year-old Raul Castro, is in charge of Cuba now. Only the good die young.

The curious thing is that no matter who is running the country today, Fidel still is the public figure even when he's not visible to the masses. Raul, a publicly reticent man who is believed to be the stabilizing force in the government, has made no public appearance or statement since assuming power. Fidel, a man known for his rambling, rousing 7-hour speeches, supposedly signed off on his own PR statements after his surgery.

Fidel is amazingly upbeat about all facets of life on his economically-bereft, socially restless island. Maybe it's the after-effects of the anesthesia. Maybe he just has low expectations. The dictator purportedly said:

"The important thing is that in the country everything is going perfectly well, and will continue to do so. ... As for my spirits, I feel perfectly fine."

The presence of police and army troops has been increased in areas where anti-government demonstrations might spring up, so it's probably just a good day to go to the beach. Temperatures in Havana are in the high 80s, with some chances of thunderstorms. Sort of like our weather here, even though our government is so inactive this time of year there's no point protesting. They're all on vacation and looking forward to s slight drop in the heat wave to the high 80s tomorrow.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

What is this depp-esh of which you speak?

News flash: Depeche Mode has cancelled its scheduled Thursday concert in Tel Aviv because its technical team is refusing to go to Israel while the current round of fighting is going on.

Bigger news flash: That Depeche Mode, a popular band in the '70s and '80s, still exists.

If that's not hot enough news for you, try this: We'll probably flirt with 100° temperatures today, then close to that tomorrow before Thursday storms drop us back into the more tolerable 80s. So, stop whining. Or, as Depeche Mode put it in "I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead" --

Getting hot, never stop
... New day turn away
Wipe away the tear
New night feel alright ...

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Nothing to sniff at

How often have you see a seemingly mismatched couple walking hand-in-hand and you wonder what was it that attracted them to each other?

That attraction may be so strong one of the parties could be accused of being led around by the nose. If Nobel Prize winner Linda Buck and a colleague at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle are on target, that is literally correct.

What Drs. Buck and Linda Buhumans have discovered is a new class of receptors used by mice to detect pheromones, the sex hormones released by a potential mate. The same gene is found in humans, so they theorize it may work the same way. In other words, their partner's smell attracts them.

Of course, not just any smell will do. Mammals have about 1,000 different odor receptors which help trigger all sorts of responses to all sorts of smells -- fear, repulsion, love, hunger and so on.

Buck should know what she's speculating about. She won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discoveries on odor receptors and the organization of the olfactory system.

Then again, perfume makers throughout human history have known the way to a man's heart is through his nose.

On the weather front, we smell a pretty hot, clear summer day for tomorrow with a high of 97° and a low, if you can call it that, of 76°.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

Happy birthday, Mr. Van Rijn

Conventional wisdom says an artist needs to die to become universally revered.

In the case of Rembrandt van Rijn, that's not true.

Yes, the Netherlands is marking the 400th anniversary of his birth with exhibitions of his work, the debut of "Rembrandt the Musical" and various other events in his birthplace, Leiden, and Amsterdam, where he later lived.

But he was one of the few master artists who was highly celebrated in his lifetime, when he won major commissions and lived large -- until in his later years he went into bankruptcy and wound up being buried in a pauper's grave.

Reminds me of rock stars of the present day. Except one wonders what they're leaving behind that anyone will care about 400 years from now.

Maybe they all look alike

That was the headline on a Dec. 16, 2005, entry here on the WH blog that came to mind when it was announced that we'd smooshed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with a couple of 500-pound bombs. (Even if they hadn't gone off, I suspect the weight alone would have been enough to do him in.)

Given all the death and destruction that he directed since we let him slip through our fingers, I thought I'd repost that entry to underscore the point of what could have been. Here goes:

Not many revelations that come out of Iraq surprise me anymore. Atrocities, crimes, political malfeasance, stupid decisions ... . On and on it goes.

But, I must admit the latest one is a doozie.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, a man with a $25 million bounty on his head, a man whose picture is on wanted posters all over the country and whose picture and DNA information have been distributed to military and law enforcement personnel, was captured by police last year then released because no one recognized him.

Pause for WHATTTTTTTT!!!!!

Yep. Major Gen. Hussein Kamal, the Iraqi deputy interior minister, told reporters that Zarqawi, whose group, al-Qaeda in Iraq has claimed responsibility for many of the most devastating terror attacks, was detained for several hours in Falluja before being let go.

It's bad enough that this happened, but it is only one of a series of close calls for
Zarqawi. American soldiers have said they just missed getting him at a checkpoint in western Iraq in February. In May, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said Zarqawi had been critically injured after a U.S. air raid on his hideout in Qaim, on the Syrian border. He was reported to have been treated at a hospital in Ramadi after the attack -- then escaped 10 minutes before Iraqi and American forces arrived.

STOPPPPPPPPITTTTTTTT!!!!!

And, we finally did, although the death and destruction are going on unabated. Small steps. Small steps.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Instinctively doing right proves to be on target

As I aimed the spray of water at the sprawling herb garden, just emerging from a prolonged period of heavy rain but already threatening to wilt under the hot early summer sun, I mentally ticked off everything I was going to do when the crop reached its peak.

Creating herb blends to perfume the smoke of the barbecue grill. Brightening the routine tossed salads in need of some new tastes. Finding just the right chopped leaves to blend into artisanal chevre cheeses from the local farm stands.

And, of course, infusing vodka.

On top of all those activities, I apparently will be helping ensure my stay on this spinning globe just a little longer. Researchers have announced in the Journal of Nutrition that there is a 38% smaller buildup of fatty deposits in the arteries of mice who were fed a mixture of vegetables, including carrots and peas.

They're still not sure what that means for the effect of diet on atherosclerosis in humans, but it is widely accepted that eating fruit and vegetables is known to protect against heart disease.

The researchers are from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. The Winston-Salem, NC, school pays a lot of attention to what we eat and drink. Just a few weeks ago, in the journal Neuroepidemiology, a Wake team reported that compared to non-drinkers, women who drink up to two or three drinks per day performed better on measure of global cognitive function, which includes concentration, language, memory and abstract reasoning.

The women were strongest in verbal skills: those who reported having at least one drink a day did better on vocabulary tests and on a word fluency test asking them to generate a list of words beginning with a specific letter.

So, next time you sit down to a great salad and a glass of wine or a tumbler of vodka, toast the diligent researchers at Wake Forest and think nice thoughts about higher education.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

The return of the writer

It's been a couple months of non-WH writing for me, and that can be a mind-clearing thing.

Not that there wasn't plenty going on to clutter up the brain -- Brangelina giving birth in Namibia, now Britney apparently considering going to the African nation to expel her second Federline heir; the Feds letting tens of thousands of private-info records go from the Veterans' Administration files to god-knows-where; El Presidente needling a reporter for wearing sunglasses during a press conference, apparently forgetting the guy is legally blind -- something Bush should know since the reporter covered his last campaign. ...

No, the fun never stops. But, I managed to ride it out while working on my Web ring devoted to adult beverages. Feel free to check it out. I'll wait.

Dum de dum....dum-dum dee ....

Back? Pretty neat, huh? Visit often.

Meanwhile, I'll be paying closer attention than ever to the vagaries of the world so I can share them with you here every weekday.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

If I had a hammer

The federal government probably gets tired of hearing that it is so inept it spends $50,000 for a hammer. An unidentified bidder has made that look like chump change by paying $3,500,000 for a hammer.

Well, not just any hammer. It's actually a nearly-300-year-old Stradivarius known as "The Hammer." It was the point of interest yesterday at Christie's auction house in New York, where the winning bid for it topped the previous record for a Strad of $2,030,000 paid in 2003.

"The Hammer," nicknamed for Christian Hammer, a 19th Century Swedish collector, had been privately owned but was loaned to several world-famous orchestras. It was made during Antonio Stardivari's golden period of 1700-1720. He created more than 1,000 violins, violas and violincellos in his career.

$3.5 million. A fascinating figure. For a violin. Enough to make the Christie's audience leap to its collective feet and applaud and cheer when the figure was reached.

By the way, if you Google "3.5 million" you are informed that Microsoft has committed $3.5 million to Indian Ocean tsunami relief, that 3.5 million Afghans are facing critical food shortages, a drought in Kenya is threatening the welfare of 3.5 million people ... .

Just saying.

Kind of casts a pall of gloom over the giddiness. Like the rainy weather that will last a few more days, including tomorrow when thunderstorms will be accompanied by a high of 73° and a low of 49°.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Take my word, please

Why won't people just take a poor dictator at his word?

In Baghdad, Saddam Hussein just can't seem to get his message across to the presiding judge in his murder trial -- that he's still the President of Iraq, that this is all a big U.S. plot, and that he should be set free.

Meanwhile, in Havana, Fidel Castro just can't seem to get it across to those capitalist tools at Forbes magazine that he really isn't worth $900 million.

Forbes' recent release of its annual listing of wealth of "Kings, Queens & Dictators" bumped Castro up from the $550 million it said he was worth last year.

Who knew running a Communist island paid so well. Or, is it just a fun "fact" with which to poke the Cuban bear?

"I have no doubt that Castro has some money salted away," Mark Falcoff, a Cuba and Latin America specialist formerly with the American Enterprise Institute told the Knight-Ridder News Service. "Every dictator does. But $900 million strikes me as a rather large number. I would have expected that number for a leader of a larger country, like Peru or Venezuela."

However, Antonio Jorge, a Cuba specialist and professor of economics and international relations at Florida International University, went the other way.

" ... I would think it's not past him to take money for any eventuality," he told K-R. "I find it hard to believe that over almost 48 years he has only skimmed $900 million."

At a nationally televised roundtable held to rebut Forbes' ranking, Castro said, "I have to to confess, the subject disgusted me."

Apparently the heavens weep for these misunderstood gents. That's at least one explanation for the continued rainfall we're experiencing. Tomorrow's forecast is for more of the same, with a high of 68° and a low of 52°.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Ultimately Fallacious Occurence

There have been many moments in our little two-month hiatus from this blog that tempted us to return. Many, many of them.

We resisted all such lures, until today. The revelation that the results of a British study of unidentified flying objects were kept secret for six years revitalized our interest in current events.

Now, we can help reveal the finding that has been kept under lock, key and official seal. Brace yourself. Here it comes. We're not kidding. Here it is:

THERE ARE NO UFOS

And you, my silly little WH followers, were going about your daily lives secure in the knowledge that alien beings were trundling around overhead on their secret missions, occasionally grabbing fishermen off a Louisiana bayou for a bit of anal probing, or helping some underdeveloped tribes in the deepest jungles figure out their own versions of Swiss Army knives, or just playing havoc with our airline pilots by darting in and out of clouds at warp speed. Maybe even causing violent changes in our atmosphere that are hastening a warming trend or a spate of unusually strong hurricanes.

Amazing, is it not, that a government study thought the fact it could find nothing to concern the public was worth keeping from the public?

Britain's Ministry of Defence (yes, they spell it with a "c") completed the 400-page report in 2000, and stamped it "Secret: UK Eyes Only." It is now open to the public as a result of a request made by a college professor under the nation's Freedom of Information Act. The BBC covered it thoroughly.

The report says, "No evidence exists to suggest that the phenomena seen are hostile or under any type of control, other than that of natural physical forces. ... There is no evidence that 'solid' objects exist which could cause a collision hazard."

The identity of the report's author remains a government secret. We think it might be that pale green fellow over in the corner, the one with the desk nameplate that says "Mr. Gork-mz-freng-blk."

WH is on hiatus

I'm taking a break from this daily blog for a while.

Not that I don't have lots of thoughts to share on lots of topics, but conflicting demands on my time force this decision.

The bulk of my efforts will be spent on Dowd On Drinks, which leads fans of "adult beverages" to my sub-blogs on spirits, wine and beer, a passion for much of my life and a coverage niche that is broadening into a demanding avocation.

I invite you to join me to lift a glass and drop in a comment.

This just in: The Plague affects climate

"Global warming" notwithstanding, this winter's killer storms and sub-zero temperatures have wreaked havoc across Europe. Perhaps a few centuries from now, scientists will figure out why.

Why a few centuries? It took them that long to figure out that the "Black Death" -- bubonic plague -- that wiped out about a third of Europe's population in the 14th Century may also have triggered what is known as the Little Ice Age, a 300-year period of markedly decreased temperatures.

Say what? Well, using what some may now label Chaos Theory, think about how small things can cause other things. The popular example is the movement of a butterfly's wings eventually causing a storm a continent away.

With so many people dying, untended and abandoned farmland wound up going back to nature, with trees and bushes taking over formerly tended fields. Pollen and leaf data, researchers say, support the idea that millions of trees sprang up, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which, in turn, had the effect of cooling the climate.

A team from Utrecht University in the Netherlands notes that such a happenstance coincides with the drop in average temperatures across Europe at that time. Of course, not everyone believes in this latest theory. Tim Lenton, an environmental scientist from the University of East Anglia in England, told the BBC, "It is a nice study and the carbon dioxide changes could certainly be a contributory factor, but I think they are too modest to explain all the climate change seen."

And Richard Houghton, a climate expert from the Woods Hole Research Center on Cape Cod, says that the oceans would have compensated for the change. "The atmosphere is in equilibrium with the ocean and this tends to dampen or offset small changes in terrestrial carbon uptake," he explained.

All of which means the weather, be it today's, tomorrow's (partly cloudy, a high of just 27° and a low of 16°) or the 14th Century's, remains a popular topic for debate.

We'll be away for a bit, so we won't see you back here on the Heights until Friday. Be good.

OK, boys, one more time!

Ever hear of Cryosat? You will, if it ever gets off the ground. Well, stays off the ground would be more like it.

Cryosat is the European Space Agency's project to study how the Earth's ice sheets are responding to climate change. The satellite that will do the work was lost in the Arctic Ocean last year mere minutes after launch from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. But, the ESA has decided to build another at a cost of about $150 million, and hopes to have it in the air within three years.

A BBC article reports that "Some of the world's leading scientists have expressed their support for Cryosat-2, saying the data will greatly improve our understanding of climate change. Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, UK, said it would help answer the question of whether the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are growing or decaying. Cryosat-2 will fly closer to the poles than previous satellites, providing valuable missing data."

While we're wating to see if the ice is growing or shrinking, we can pause to wonder if the weekend will offer snow or sunshine. The answer is, yes. Saturday's forecast calls for snow, a high of just 25° and a frigid low of 10°. Temperatures will be as uncomfortable on Sunday -- a high of 22° and a low of 5° -- but with no snow.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

The other 30% is a bitch

I am pleased to share the news with you that the world's oceans are 70% shark free.

That's according to the findings of an international team of scientists that postulates the absence of sharks from abyssal zones of the world's oceans may mean some species are in danger of extinction. The abyssal zones are the ones that are in perpetual darkness at depths below 6,560 feet, and have phenomenal pressures that can be up to 10,000 pounds per square inch!

The findings were published in the "Proceedings of The Royal Society, Biological Series." Among conclusions: sharks may be having more difficult times than ever finding food.

Monty Priede, director of Oceanlab at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, told United Press International: "Sharks are already threatened worldwide by the intensity of fishing activity, but our finding suggests they may be more vulnerable to over-exploitation than was previously thought."

Since there still are plenty of sharks, we're glad to be up here on WH where shark sightings are as rare as snow this winter. Tomorrow will continue that trend, with zero possibility of great whites, 100% chance of mixed sun and clouds, a high of 33° and a nippy low of 13°.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

Where were they when we got Roger Moore?

Yes, following Sean Connery as James Bond is a tall order. But some 007 fans have gone too far in objecting to the actor chosen to be the latest incarnation of Bond.

They've gone and set up a Web site that calls for fans "to stop Sony and Eon [Productions] from ruining the future of James Bond by hiring Daniel Craig."

Considering the parade of wannabes who have failed to live up to Connery's interpretation of the dashing British spy -- George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan -- objecting to Craig seems a bit like closing the barn door after the horse is stolen. Even Brosnan, who was canned in favor of a new Bond actor, has expressed support for Craig.

It remains to be seen whether Craig will harm the franchise, known for its dazzling action scenes, high-tech gadgets and gorgeous women. Considering we're dealing with a movie-going public that largely wasn't even born when Connery was Bond, it's doubtful. In any case, filming on "Casino Royale" already has begun. (No relation to the 1967 spoof version starring David Niven and others as James Bonds.) So, the naysayers apparently don't even have a clue about the production schedule, among other things.

Maybe they'll develop, like tomorrow's weather prediction: foggy and cloudy in the morning, gradually giving way to clear skies and sunshine, with a pleasant high of 43° and a bearable low of 22°.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Scientific data gets seal of approval

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, some hysterics claimed that 36 dolphins trained by the U.S. Navy to carry toxic-dart guns for military purposes had escaped in the confusion.

I kind of doubt that, but it's a fun thing to contemplate. On a more realistic plane, elephant seals are being used to collect new information on conditions in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. They're equipped with little computers stuck on their heads that flash data to scientists in Scotland via satellite when the animals surface to breath. It's a fascinating story.

"These animals are opening an interesting new window on the ocean," Mike Fedak told the BBC. He's with the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU), Gatty Marine Laboratory, University of St. Andrews. "They can go to places in the ocean that we very often can't go to, and can sample parts of the ocean where we can't afford to or logistically are not able to."

Up here on Weathering Heights, our animals are less interested in plumbing the depths of their environment. The Other Beings who live indoors with us may go down to the basement occasionally, but they're usually not providing much data except that their litter boxes need cleaning or their food bowls need filling. The outdoors wildlife, however, does tell us it's been a mild winter because they've munched on far fewer of our ornamental shrubs and plants than usual. Of course, that only verifies what we already knew.

As far as the next day of winter, tomorrow's forecast is for a day much like today -- mixed sun and clouds, a high of 38° and a low of 23°.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

The Hunt for Global Warming

I am not a believer in the theory of global warming.

Not that it isn't getting warmer in some parts of the globe. It is, despite record cold spells and hideous weather across Europe again this year. No, I speak here of the unfortunately widely-promulgated notion that we humans have something to do with climate changes and have the power to influence it to a large extent.

We have had "global warming" before and we'll have it again, despite what we do or don't do. Just as we have had "global cooling" before ands will have again, no matter what we do or don't do. It's called cyclical climatology. It's a natural part of the planet's life.

Nevertheless, to show I'm not hiding up here on WH with a totally closed mind while you're down there waiting for the palm trees to sprout in your backyards, I call your attention to a British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) project to look deeper into this "warming" thing by using the combined computing power of gazillions of individuals' home computers.

The project aim, according to the BBC's Web site: "Using a technique known as distributed computing, we’re hoping to harness the power of thousands of PCs around the world. If 10,000 people sign up, we’ll be faster than the world’s biggest computer. And we’re hoping to be even better than that."

Meanwhile, in a decidedly non-warming trend, tomorrow's forecast calls for mixed sun and clouds, a high of just 35° and a bitter low of 17°.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

Green Is 'Go' for New Bond Film

What do Tsai Chin, Martine Beswicke, Akiki Wakabayashi and Fiona Fullerton have in common?

They all were "Bond Girls" in the various James Bond spy flicks.

Why do we bring this up, other than the fact that the television waves we pull in up here on WH seem to always be mixed with one Bond film after another, day and night, rain or shine? It's because there already is a storm of media debate over the choice of the latest Bond girl for "Casino Royale," the 007 flick that just went into production.

She's Eva Green, a French actress. So, beyond the fact we hope she's adorable, can act well enough to seem plausible along with the new Bond, Daniel Craig, who cares who was picked?

On the rare occasion, a Bond girl will catch the public imagination. Perhaps the most memorable is the gold-painted image of the murdered Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) from "Goldfinger." It was such a stunning gimmick Life magazine had her pose in gold makeup for a cover photo. But most Bond girls quickly go into obscurity. For every Halle Berry, Ursula Andress or Tanya Roberts, there is a Margaret Nolan, Aliza Gur, Olga Bisera or Carmen do Sautoy we never hear of again.

Speaking of rain or shine and storms, we'll probably have less of the bluster and blowing of yesterday and today if our weekend prediction for some sun, highs in the mid-20s and lows in the low teens comes true.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Coffee and a Rose, Please

If you thought it was silly when some American food purveyors decided to rename French fries ''Freedom fries'' because of widespread annoyance with France's attitude toward our country, try this one:

Iran, reacting to the overkill (no pun intended) reaction to some Danish cartoons about Mohammad, has renamed Danish pastries. You now have to ask for "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad."

How is that going over with business people? In the capital city of Tehran, most are putting both names on their menus as an interim step to let people know about the change. But a popular bakery named Danish Pastries is going all out. It has covered the word "Danish" on its sign with a black banner that says "Oh Hussein," a reference to a martyred saint of Shiite Islam. The banner is a traditional sign of mourning.

So, what are you having with your morning tea or coffee tomorrow when the sun comes up on the last warm day of the week (a predicted high of 51° -- but with some snow showers) before we hit an over low of 13° and then stay below freezing for a few days?

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

It's in the Eye of the Beholder

OK, what am I bid for this striking example of dark, brooding, quasi-murky photography? $5? $50? $500?

Try $2.9 million. Put another way, TWO MILLION, NINE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!! Ye gods.

The photo, called "The Pond-Moonlight," was taken in Mamaroneck, NY, in 1904 by U.S. photography pioneer Edward Steichen. He began experimenting with color photography that year and was one of the first Americans to use the autochrome, a then-revolutionary method of producing color photographs.

It just fetched $2.9 million -- that's TWO MILLION, NINE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!! -- at a Sotheby's auction in New York, the highest price ever paid for a photo. But, and here's the catch, it isn't even the original. It is one of three copies. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has another copy in its collection, put this one up for sale. The buyer's identify has not been made public.

There must be something about pricey photos that for some people is irresistible but for others would be a turnoff. In the case of the Steichen, it's that there are three of them. In the case of the previously highest priced photo, a Richard Prince work that went for $1,248,000 last November, it's that he didn't even title it. Most people just call it "Cowboy."

Encouraged by such profligacy (look it up, it's good for you to know these things), I plan to go out on a moody, cloudy Thursday to see what sort of masterpieces I can conjure up with my cameras. It's supposed to be a balmy 48° during the day and no lower than 36° overnight.

See yoy back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Love Is Strange

Ain't love grand? On this Valentine's Day, it is heartwarming to read about two lovers in Thailand who, having set world records in their chosen pursuits, decided to tie the knot.

Their accomplishments? Bunthawee Siengwong, left, spent 32 days in a cage with 1,000 centipedes, His heartthrob Kanchana Ketkaew did the same in a cage with 3,400 scorpions.

Today's clear skies were a holiday present of sorts to us from Mother Nature, and her bounty is predicted to continue into tomorrow when we'll see mostly sunny skies and experience a high of 44° and a tolerable low of 29°.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Cheyney's Got a Gun

By now we all know Vice President Dick "Duck!" Cheyney blasted a companion with birdshot during a quail hunting sorty in Texas over the weekend.

And, by now every late-night TV comic is flogging his writers to keep the jokes coming all week long. There's nothing like a hunting accident to make the yuks flow. I wonder how much time will pass till we hear complicated tall tales about a group of U.S. Vice Presidents out hunting and Dick Cheyney mistaking Dan Quayle for a ... well, you can figure it out.

The accident was not reported publicly by the vice president's office for nearly 24 hours, and then only after it was reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on its Web site Sunday.

Meanwhile, bird hunting of another feather in Auburn, N.Y., was losing its steam. Only 15 four-person teams showed up over the weekend for the Finger Lakes town's fourth annual Auburn Crow Shoot. The event usually is held to bring some tourist money into town and help get rid of the ridiculously large number of crows that plague it.

The teams killed of 453 crows, less than half of last year's tally. Bar owner Tom Lennox, one of the people who dreamed up the stunt, said it appeared a hazing program by the U.S. Department of Agriculture had scattered the crows, leaving fewer of them to shoot. Ahhh.

In this part of the universe, small-game season (bunnies, grouse, squirrels, partridge, etc.) is in full tilt through Feb. 28. If you're planning to head outdoors for some animal assassination, the forecast for tomorrow holds a potential for snow showers in the morning, remaining cloudy most of the day with a high of 36° and a low of 25°.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

Something Old, Something New

The accuracy of the familiar phrase "there is nothing new under the sun" is open to debate. Assuming for the sake of argument that it were true, however, there is enough old under the sun to keep us busy.

Announcement of the discovery of a new pharonic tomb in Egypt's sun-baked Valley of the Kings is just the latest find we've heard about this week. (See earlier posts on the grave of Genghis Khan and the discovery of new flora and fauna in Indonesia.)

Archaeologists have discovered an intact, ancient Egyptian tomb about three miles from the site of King Tutankhamun's, the last such discovery (1922). A team led by the University of Memphis found the "new" tomb which contains five undisturbed mummies and unopened sarcophagi.

That makes 63 tombs discovered since the valley was first mapped in the 18th century, and it seems to have been by chance.

Patricia Podzorski, curator of Egyptian Art at the University of Memphis, whose team led the expedition, said in an interview with BBC's "World Tonight" news program, "The excavation team was focused on the tomb of a 19th Dynasty pharaoh, King Amenmesses. They were working in front of the tomb looking for foundation deposits possibly related to that tomb, and clearing away some workmen's huts from the 19th Dynasty that were both to the left and right side of the tomb. Underneath these workmen's huts, they found a shaft."

That shaft led to the find, thought to date from the 18th Pharaonic Dynasty, the first dynasty of the New Kingdom which ruled between 1539 B.C. and 1292 B.C. and made its capital in Thebes, the present city of Luxor.

Why do we go on about this? Because new knowledge is what life is all about. It's the sort of thing that makes you eager to begin each new day. The only problem is that tomorrow's weather forecast for Luxor (sunny, with a high of 77° and a low of 50°) is more conducive to exploring than ours (cloudy, with a high of 31° and a low of 14°).

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Ancient Puzzles, Modern Passions

Who was buried in Grant's Tomb?

Well, we know it wasn't Genghis Khan. But, where was the legendary Mongol warlord and creator of a vast ancient empire buried?

That's a question that has been an archaeological puzzle of the first order since Khan died in 1227 and was buried at a secret location by his ferocious horseback warriors.

Now, out on the flat plains of eastern Mongolia, an oval area enclosed by a two-mile wall has yielded clues to the site of the grave. As The Washington Post's foreign service reports:

"For eight centuries it has been (a secret), despite a number of more or less scientific expeditions, claims and counterclaims, some of them evocative of an Indiana Jones movie. But a U.S.-Mongolian expedition organized by Maury Kravitz, a retired Chicago commodities trader, made what may have been a breakthrough two summers ago. His explorers unearthed several graves dating from the 13th century inside the wall, a shambles of stone 200 miles east of Ulan Bator, the Mongolian capital. Shagdaryn Bira, secretary general of the International Association for Mongol Studies and a recognized authority, said the graves are a promising sign that the wall could surround the bodies of Genghis Khan and his closest kin."

" ... Kravitz, who shares the dream to the point of obsession, said he was unable to continue searching last summer because of a shortage of funds and an associate's health problems. But he is raising money for an expedition this summer to comb the now-frozen site anew in hopes of confirming it as a family burial ground -- and eventually of pinpointing the grave of the conqueror himself."

This sort of single-minded curiosity is how great discoveries are made. The people making them may sometimes seem eccentric, strange or just a bit odd, but they're the adventurers who bring knowledge to light. We can hardly wait to hear more of Kravitz & Company's fascinating adventures.

We may have a few adventures of our own if the weather predictions hold up -- cloudy, with a high of 25° and a low of 12° tomorrow before a couple days of snow showers set in. Happy driving.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

What's In A Name?

The Person To Whom I Am Related By Marriage accuses me of having her doppleganger hidden away somewhere.

"One wife at a time" has always been my motto, but when her suspicion is supported by the written word it's difficult to talk your way out of it. She even knows her name: Mrs. 38808 Dowd.

That's the way the offering from a local home furnishings store was addressed. And we know such solicitations from mass mailing lists are never wrong. Right? So, somewhere there must be a 38808 Dowd, who I call Triple 8 because there's a three and there are three 8s and... well, you get my drift.

This isn't the first time our household has been assumed to harbor people we don't know. A few years ago, some fumble-fingered data entry person mistyped my first name on a local department store's mailing list. He or she added an "s'' to the William and dropped my middle initial, thus creating my first clone -- Williams Dowd, an entirely new entity on Planet Earth. Ever since that fateful day, his junk mail has been arriving at my house with regularity.

Eventually, perhaps through diligent work in the laboratories cross-indexing mailing lists, my true middle initial was added to another new being's name, thus creating Clone No. 2, a fellow named Williams M. Dowd. His mail shows up a lot, too. The Bank of New York, in its zeal to create new customers, sent its latest offer to my home addressed to what appears to be Clone No. 3, a newcomer named Williams M. Dowd Jr.

There are 36 Dowd households with listed numbers in the local telephone book. I'm the only William (or Williams) there. Therefore, I must assume all my clones have unlisted numbers.

I wonder if they live in the same world I inhabit, a place that will be overhung with clouds tomorrow and have temperatures ranging from 27° to 13°? Or maybe they have day-long sunshine, lollipop trees and Coca-Cola fountains. You never know.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Well, I'll Be a Honeyeater Bird

While people in some parts of the world keep decrying the extinction of various species of fish, fowl and bugs, people in Southeast Asia keep discovering new ones.

The latest, according to the Associated Press, is stunning:

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Scientists exploring an isolated jungle in one of Indonesia's most remote provinces discovered dozens of new species of frogs, butterflies and plants -- as well as mammals hunted to near extinction elsewhere, members of the expedition said Tuesday. The team also found wildlife that were remarkably unafraid of humans during its rapid survey of the Foja Mountains, an area in eastern Indonesia's Papua province with more than two million acres of old growth tropical forest, said Bruce Beehler, a co-leader of the month-long trip.

Utterly fascinating. Among the new finds: a pair of long-beaked echidnas, a primitive egg-laying mammal; 20 frog species; four butterfly species; the golden-mantled tree kangaroo, an arboreal jungle-dweller previously thought to have been hunted to near extinction, and a new honeyeater bird (seen here), as well as several new types of palm trees.

The 11-member team of U.S., Indonesian and Australian scientists was working under auspices of the U.S.-based Conservation International and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

I get all revved up over such things because I have a penchant for exercising caution when the doomsayers bellow about global warming, species extinction and other things I think are more a product of the natural cycle of life than what us big bad homo sapiens do on a day-to-day basis.

Perhaps our spell of continued crisp, cold and mostly clear weather will put us in a mood to make our own discoveries. Tomorrow's temps are forecast as a high of 28° and a low low of 9°.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Let Us Praaaaayyyyy! Yeah!

"Michael Jackson may sing late Pope's prayers" said the headline on a Reuters news service story.

That was bizarre enough to catch my attention. It seems Jackson may sing some of the prayers written by the late Pope John Paul, according to Father Giuseppe Moscati of the Edizioni Musicali Terzo Millennio, the music company coordinating a project to get prominent performers to do the same.

Odd enough, given that Jackson isn't Roman Catholic. At least at last report. Since he's now living in the Arab oil state of Bahrain it's unlikely he'd convert. Then again, he's changed everything else about himself, so who knows.

But what really intrigued me about the story was the phrase that the Edizioni Musicali Terzo Millennio "holds the rights to 24 of Pope John Paul's prayers and wanted to put together a group of international artists to set them to music."

Prayers have legal rights? I wonder who holds the copyright on The Lord's Prayer? Imagine how much money would have to be forked over every time it was muttered by sleep-eyed church congregations around the globe.

Maybe Father Giuseppe can pull off the project. He does bear the same name as a saint known as a miracle worker.

Speaking of miracles, it will take one to break 40 on the thermometer this week. Tomorrow's forecast, for example, calls for partly cloudy skies, a high of just 33° and a bracing low of 15°.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

Now, That's Cold

When the remains of Oetzi the iceman, found where he'd been frozen in a glacier for 5,000 years in the Italian Alps, were brought to light in 1991 some scientists speculated he may have descendants living to this day.

Fun speculation. Also, maybe false speculation. A team of geneticists, using mitochondrial DNA removed from the Copper Age man's intestine confirms earlier assumptions that his roots probably lay in Central Europe. But, they also theorized those roots didn't branch out because they think he was sterile, according to their report published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Locally, we're still in for chilly weather through Monday, but nothing that will freeze our carcasses for 5,000 years, so don't bother wearing your good underwear. The forecast is for cloudy skies all three days, a Saturday high-low of 49° and 36°, a Sunday swing of 39° to 19°, and 31° to 14° on Monday.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

The Return Of Xena

One of my guilty pleasures a few years back was watching the weekly TV adventures of Xena: Warrior Princess. Thus, it was nice to know her following remained strong enough to support naming a newly discovered planet for her. Well, once enough scientists got around to agreeing it was a planet and not just a misbegotten moon or some snarky space debris.

German scientists who used a telescope in Spain for their work have just announced that not only has this heavenly body -- the one in space, not the one on TV -- measured up to planet size, with a 1,860-mile diameter that makes it larger than nearest neighbor Pluto, it also has its own moon.

Don't go booking any travel there, though. We may complain about our winter weather but Xena (or 2003 UB313 as it technically still is called) is an icy, rocky world so far from our sun that it would appear like a mere light speck if viewed from Xena. The observers' findings were published in the current issue of the journal Nature.

Oh, and Xenaphiles might like to know that the new planet's moon is nicknamed Gabrielle in honor of Xena's blonde sidekick/biographer. How's that for symmetry?

Having brought that bit of sunshine into your lives, I'm sorry to report no other bright rays. Tomorrow's forecast is for rain, and plenty of it, with a high of just 47° and a low of 33°.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

My Little Calendar Girl

While in San Antonio, TX, for a long weekend helping judge an international wine competition, I dropped in at a restaurant/pub on the famed Riverwalk, a place called Mad Dog's.

It's the sort of establishment that serves decent food but is better known for its party atmosphere, pretty waitstaff and theme night events.

My waitress, clad demurely in sweatshirt and skirt, apologized for verbally stumbling over a recitation of the day's specials, blaming a late-night birthday party for a friend. "And," she said, "I know I don't look all that good today."

Gentleman that I am, I told her I thought she looked just fine. Then she plopped a calendar on my table showing various Mad Dog employees posing in swim attire. "This is how I look on a good day," she said, pointing to the November page showing her in a white bikini, looking like a dead ringer for the gorgeous actress Jessica Alba.

I studied the photo, looked back at her, then again at the photo, and remarked, "You know, you're right. You don't look so good today."

Luckily, she laughed and said, "I told you so," as if my pretend insult verified her own opinion. But, she probably stuck her thumb in my margarita before she served it.

Our long-range forecast, with rain and then snow showers in the offing, also looks off kilter. But for tomorrow the forecast is a tolerable day of cloudy skies but a high of 45° and a low of 36°.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Reason 742 Global Warming Doesn't Scare Me

What global warming? Europe is having another of those hideous winters. While us folks up on WH are enjoying occasionally mild spots interspersed with a rare snow day or two, the weather-related death toll is climbing sharply over there.

In Belarus, for example, temperatures are at their lowest in 100 years. Hundreds have died in Poland and environs during a week of sub-zero temperatures -- 40 last night alone in Ukraine, raising that country's toll to 181.

Cold-weather deaths in other areas of Europe are spotty, but some have been reported as far south as Italy which, contrary to what most geographically-impaired people believe, isn't always sunny and warm.

The president of Georgia says his little country is virtually out of fuel. Mikhail Saakashvili left the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to fly back home. He told reporters that Georgia is out of natural gas and the national electric system is failing.

Rumania reported 37 deaths this week from the weather. Ports on its Black Sea coast, as well as harbors in neighbouring Bulgaria, were closed because of harsh conditions. Road, rail and airline travel were disrupted in Germany and in Italy.

The horrors go on and on. It makes our mild winter seem positively balmy by comparison, especially for tomorrow: sunny skies with a high of 36° and gentle breezes, a low of 27°.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

The Mouse's Final Surrender

Continuing proof that greatness skips a generation or two:

• Bill Ford, grandson of the brilliant innovator Henry Ford, decided to make his mark by laying off 30,000 Ford Motor Co. employees as a way of shoring up the company he and other boneheads have led into junk investment status.

But, that is almost too easy to point out. Try this one instead:

• The Walt Disney Co. has fallen so far behind the curve in quality of animation and audience acceptance that it had to pay $7.4 billion in stock to buy Pixar Animation Studios Inc., the upstart company ("Toy Story," "Finding Nemo," etc.) that overtook the late genius Disney's once amazing empire to avoid falling even farther behind.

That's right. Walt Disney's pioneering company fell apart at the seams when it came to his successors showing the same kind of innovation and foresight he made a standard.

"Animation has always been the heart and soul of the Walt Disney Co., and it is wonderful to see Bob Iger and the company embrace that heritage by bringing the outstanding animation talent of the Pixar team back into the fold,'' said Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew and a former board member who once also oversaw animation at the company.

Nice job, Roy. Those of us who grew up on Walt's imagination -- before Disney became nothing but a pimp for money grubbing -- know animation was at the heart of the empire. We also knew what a crappy job you and your successors did to nurture and ensure its future.

Thanks for ruining the memories of our childhood. Enjoy your stock dividends.

The only thing that will get us out of the funk this bit of Business Americana has created is the realization that tomorrow's weather will be palatable -- clear skies, seasonable high and low of 29° and 20°, and now more turbulent weather in view for the next few days.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Ratting Out NYC Restaurants

The New York City Health Department has come up with a restaurant guide that might prove as popular as Zagat's or Michelin.

It's a new Web site that lists health code violation points.

Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said his department is queried so often about code violations they decided to simplify access to it. The site had been getting an estimated 7 million hits a year. When the redesign was unveiled the other day it got so many hits it crashed. Access problems continue, so if you try to use it and can't get through, be patient. WH's call to the department's public information office revealed that access is intermittent as techies work on de-bugging the new site.

The site allows the public to search for restaurants by name, ZIP code, borough and neighborhood. It also allows users to sort restaurants by violation points.

Scores below 27 are deemed safe, 28 or higher not so safe. Officials said about 10 percent of the city's 20,000 eateries fail inspection each year and about 500 are closed.

If you're planning to visit the Big Apple tomorrow, be assured the weather is more predictable than the rat-'em-out Web site's availability: mixed sun and clouds, a high of 42° and a low of 27°. Meanwhile, near WH the forecast is for cloudy skies, a high of 36° and a low of 20°.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Mother Nature Is Two-Faced

Sitting next to one of The Other Beings that co-habit WH with us last night, gazing out the window at the first sprinkling of snowflakes, the beauty of Nature once again made itself known.

Hours later, I had to drive through the crap to get to work. God, I hate snow.

My first indication we'd had more than a half-foot of it overnight was when I opened the front door to retrieve my morning paper and was hit in the face with a wind-driven bunch of snow. Even The Other Being who usually shadows my every step backed off, not wanting to get his dainty paws or whiskers all wet.

A 20-minute commute took in excess of two hours. People who know how to pilot a car on dry roads suddenly take leave of their senses when rain or snow fall -- like the idiot in the Cadillac who decided to make a sweeping U-turn in front of me with no notice because he got bored sitting in a stalled line of traffic and thought my opposite-direction cruising looked more promising.

Once again I was daydreaming, as I sat there inhaling all the idling exhausts of the SUVs and other uselessly humungous vehicles stuck in traffic with me, of warmer climes. Of course, I do this every winter and have been doing so for so many decades I'm losing track. When spring comes, I'll just suck it up, assume next winter will be better, and stay right where I am.

And, where I am has a much-improved outlook for tomorrow: partly cloudy, a high of 40° and an endurable low of 28°.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

Music's Midnight Hour

Wilson Pickett, a mere 64, is gone.

We're poorer for it.

The Alabama-born singer whose rough-edged, powerful voice made him a 1960s icon with "In the Midnight Hour" and "Mustang Sally," songs that helped pave his way to membership in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, died Thursday of a heart attack.

Despite battling health problems for years, Pickett continued performing to the end. The man who gave us a string of R&B, soul, rock and pop hits -- things like "Land of 1000 Dances," "Funky Broadway," "634-5789" -- was so internationally revered that his music was central to the plot of the 1991 film "The Commitments" and its hit soundtrack. The film dealt with a group of working-class Irish kids who wanted to form a singing group and perform with their hero, Pickett.

On this dark day for music fans, we can look forward to a weekend of weather as mercurial as Pickett's career -- Saturday, rain with a high of 46° and a low of 23°, Sunday mixed clouds and sun with a high of 38° and a low of 22°.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Delivery for Mr. Nakamora

Japanese whalers are projected to kill 935 minke whales in the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary during the first four months of 2006.

Why? (A) To use the carcasses for scientific purposes. (B) Because they can.

Battles between Japanese whalers and anti-hunting factions have raged for years. When the International Whaling Commission imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, the Japanese complied -- until 1987.

The latest "anti" blow was struck when the 56-foot-long carcass of a fin whale that got stuck and died in the shallow waters of the Baltic Sea was dropped on the doorstep of the Japanese embassy in Berlin. It was accompanied by a banner (seen here). Considering it was a protest against Japan delivered in Germany, would it be a stretch to say using a sign written in English was aiming the message at a certain audience?

The Greenpeace activists said they were trying to show that killing whales is unnecessary because cadavers can always be found. They and others also dispute the claim of whaling for scientific purposes since much of the whale meat winds up in Japanese restaurants.

The Greenpeace faction may be staying indoors today since the Berlin weather forecast for tomorrow is for showers and a high of just 36°. The outlook is a lot nicer here: mixed sun and clouds, a "balmy" high of 48° and a low of 33°.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

Maybe If We All Push

NASA's plan for its New Horizons unmanned spacecraft is for it to journey for nearly nine years (!) through the tricky reaches of space to take a close-up look of distant Pluto.

The only trick is getting the sucker off the ground.

For the second straight day, the rocket scientists at Cape Canaveral, FL, had to scrub the launch because of inclement weather. Earth weather. Nothing like the buffeting and meteorites and asteroids and things the New Horizon will have to dodge on its trip. Just Earth weather.

It was a bit breezy -- winds up to 38 mph -- on Tuesday, so the liftoff was scrubbed. Early today, it was discovered that a storm in Laurel, MD, had knocked out power at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which is managing operations of the project.

And this is for an unmanned craft. Your tax dollars in action.

They promise to try again tomorrow. The forecast for Cape Canaveral is sunny, with a high of 71°F, no precipitation, 58% humidity and gentle winds of up to 12 mph. For Laurel, MD, no storms are predicted.

Here, we can read all about it under clearing skies, although our high will be just 39°.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

A Chip Dip With Body

Special events usually bring out the creativity in public relations specialists.

Just one quick example of one of the press releases I've seen in the past few days:

"Super Bowl Sunday is the day of the highest consumption of Hass Avocados from Mexico, which are used to make millions of pounds of Guacamole on what is the number 1 at-home party day of the year."

Millions of pounds of guacamole? Millions? Guacamole? Good lord, what an embarassing testament to the creativity of humankind after all these years on Earth.

Unless, of course, you know how to serve it as creatively as you can write about it? What true avocado fan could argue with that?

I'll keep that in mind as I think of a way to endure our current wet spell that calls for lots of rain on Wednesday, with a high of 46° and a low of 26°.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Politics Is Politics

A funny thing happened on the way to the president's office over the past few days.

• In Liberia, the first woman (Ellen Johnson Sirleaf) elected head of an African nation was inaugurated in revolt-shredded Monrovia, the capital city, after the main thoroughfare had been spruced up to look different from the charred, garbage-cluttered streets around it.

• In Chile, the first woman (Michelle Bachelet, seen here) elected head of a South American nation gained office by collecting 46.5% of the popular vote in a runoff.

• In Finland, the incumbent female president (Tarja Halonen) failed to be reelected because she collected only 46.5% of the popular vote and now faces a runoff.

Gender, obviously, means very little when you get right down to the realities of nation leading. Polls are polled, promises are made, civil wars are overcome, people are elected, and "the first ..." gets that label out of the way so observers can begin looking at more important things.

For Americans, actually paying attention to what is going on in countries other then the usual suspects -- England, France, Japan, China and any place beginning with the letter I -- rather than focusing on the gender of the people creating the news might be more instructive. In our own chunk of the world, Latin America is in the midst of gigantic political upheavals that the average American doesn't know are going on even though they will wind up having effects on our food and oil supplies, as well as our own domestic safety. The BBC offered up an excellent preview in November that you can read here to get caught up.

The volatile situation is as fast-changing as our weather has been of late. Take tomorrow. Please. A partly sunny morning will give way to clouds and then to a chance of freezing rain and sleet in the afternoon. A high of 33° and a low of 32° make it a 50-50 day.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

What Are You Smiling At?

A little while ago we were discussing the Mona Lisa and her famous smile. Now we are discussing whether Thomas Jefferson is smiling on the newest piece of U.S. currency (seen here).

It's the new Jefferson nickel. The U.S. Mint plans to begin shipping 80 million of them to the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks. Artistically, the new design breaks the style precedent set in 1909 when Abraham Lincoln became the first president depicted on a circulating coin; his profile and that of all other presidents shown on coins have all been in profile.

The new Jefferson pose, taken from an 1800 portrait, shows the nation's third president looking forward. Some observers say there is a hint of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. I say they have been playing with the catnip.

Ol' Tom was many things -- scholar, patriot, statesman, inventor, musician, architect, ladies' man -- but he wasn't known for going around with a grin on his face and I doubt the artist Rembrandt Peale, who executed many a painting of an unsmiling Tom, would have fooled around with the image of such an important client.

In fact, there are some things you just can't fool around with. Nature, for one. It will reassert the fact that it is winter by kicking our current warm spell out and returning to more tumultuous weather for the weekend: Saturday, rainy, with a high of 44° and a low of 18°; Sunday, snow showers, with a high of 25° and a low of 14°. Keep smiling.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

The 2006 Ford Karma

Years ago when I was buying cars produced by Ford Motor Co., I had to go through a rigorous set of background checks before Ford Motor Credit would finance my deal.

I always found the process went beyond the basic necessities -- did I make enough money to meet the monthly payments? -- and wished that somehow the people who set up the process would be discomfited themselves.

Well, karma exists. Moody's, the credit risk form, has just cut Ford's credit rating down to "junk" status. Less than a week ago, Moody's competitor Standard & Poor's did the same thing. The two downgrades will make it much more costly for Ford to raise credit on the debt markets. Moody's, in fact, said Ford's financial and competitive position "will remain under considerable stress through 2007."

Perhaps anyone contemplating purchase of a Ford Motor Co. vehicle might be well advised to ask the dealer for references before you go handing over any credit background information they want from you.

That ray of sunshine would be equalled only by what the weather prognosticators are forecasting for tomorrow, an unseasonably sunny and warm (51° high, 39° low) day.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

A Tipple of the Morning To You

Don't be surprised if relatives begin showing up more often for visits at the St. Mary's nursing home in County Monaghan, Ireland, near the border with Northern Ireland.

The reason: The home now has a pub.

Actually, it's had a bit of a bar since the 1970s, but recently upgraded it to a real pub for the principal benefit of home residents, average age 85. Nursing home officials noticed a fair number of residents were able, and quite willing, to stroll down to the village pub, sometimes for a drink but sometimes just for coffee or tea and a chat.

The desire was obvious: to enjoy a non-institutional life experience as much as possible.

As Rose Mooney, associate director of nursing at St. Mary's, told an interviewer, " .. Most of our lives, you know, center around the pub or some kind of recreational activity, but definitely in Ireland social life revolves around the pub and all of a sudden, you know, we shouldn't allow that just to stop dead when people come into a care setting, whether it be maybe they're only here for two weeks or for you know, six weeks rehabilitation or for long-term care."

You can get the full details on the topic by checking this transcript of an Australian radio show interview with Mooney.

If you're in a mood to stroll down to your local pub tomorrow, you'll have a nice day to do it. The forecast is for mixed sun and clouds, a high of 49° -- pratically balmy this time of year -- and a low of 29.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

A Very Big Mac Attack

We have a pair of iMac computers up here on WH. Perhaps a bit excessive in a two-person household, but there it is nonetheless. Our contribution to wretched excess.

I mention this because even though both computers function very well for our graphic-heavy needs, those devils at Apple have done it again. They've come up with Something New. Something cute, sexy and ... well, new.

In this instance, it is the Intel-powered iMac G5, the first of the Macintosh computers powered by Intel's dual processor under the company's switch to that chip technology.

I'm not much of a shopper. In fact, except for hunting and gathering supplies for meals, I despise shopping in general. But when it comes to Macs, I'm a bit of a sucker for Something New. I've somehow been able to resist the iPod, but that's because I have literally thousands of MP3's in -- where else? -- my iTunes archives and I rarely find myself in a situation in which I'm in a music-listening moods and can't sit down and listen to them.

Can I hold out long enough for the urge to acquire Something New to pass? Evidence that I may give in is in my basement in the form of a Sony Beta VCR, a format I latched on to when the rest of the consumer niche was headed in another direction. Evidence that I may not is in my garage in the form of an 11-year-old Mercury Tracer with less than 65,000 on the odometer. It's a toss-up. Stay tuned for updates.

Speaking of toss-ups, tomorrow's weather forecast is one of those -- nice if you like mid-winter warming trends (a high of 47° is predicted and a pleasant low of 34°), not so nice if you demand clear skies because it is going to rain.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Day Oy!

When I was a kid I loved listening to Harry Belafonte sing and tell tales. As I grew older, I liked listening only to his singing, not his grand pronouncements that became more strident as his dislike of much that is America become more and more obvious.

Now that he has decided to take his rants on the road along with fellow performer Danny Glover (seen here with him), Princeton professor/writer Cornel West and a gaggle of others, I don't want to hear anything from him.

What led me to this place? During a televised appearance with controversial Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of the U.S., Belafonte proclaimed: "No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush, says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution."

No matter one's politics, to call the President of the United States the greatest terrorist in the world is beneath contempt, and that's where I now hold Belafonte. Belafonte, in case you didn't know, is a "good will ambassador" for the United Nations. Which shows you what a swell organization that continues to be.

Of course, this may all be a clever ruse by the 78-year-old singer to mask an ulterior motive in making ths trip. I suspect he is trying to get closure by recovering something so precious to him he has made a career out of singing about it:

Hey! Matilda, Matilda, Matilda,
she take me money and run Venezuela.
Once again now!
Matilda, Matilda, Matilda,
she take me money and run Venezuela.
Five hundred dollars, friends, I lost:
Woman even sell me cat and horse!
Heya! Matilda, she take me money
and run Venezuela.

The climate remains turbulent in Venezuela today, but it's nicer here. In fact, tomorrow's outlook is for partly sunny skies, a seasonal high of 41° and a not-so-bad low of 27°.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

The Cats & The Historians

I have reported, not ad nausem I hope, on the doings of The Other Beings cohabitating with us up here on WH.

They are The Large Cat and The Larger Cat, denizens of our cozy living space and bringers of entertainment and contentment which they trade for tasty tidbits, strings to chase and frequent grooming sessions.

We have always suspected they come from a lineage even longer than we knew to be the case -- domesticated cats being traced back to at least the pharonic dynasties of ancient Egypt. We've even viewed a cat mummy ensconced in the Albany (N.Y.) Institute of History and Art.

Now comes word that modern cats have their roots in Asia 11 million years ago, according to a DNA study of wild and domestic cats reported on by the BBC.

The ancient ancestors of the 37 species alive today, say the scientists in the report, migrated across the globe, eventually settling in all continents except Antarctica. They merged into eight major lineages such as lions, ocelots and domestic cats.

How did they get up here on WH, I wondered? Other than the obvious, of course, that being when we adopted them from a cat shelter.

Well, say the scientists, the common ancestors of modern cats crossed the Bering land bridge to North America about eight million years ago.

I doubt those cats would be impressed by the ones we know that can barely be troubled to move from puddle of sunshine to puddle of sunshine on a sunny afternoon.

Speaking of sunshine, the weekend forecast calls for patches of it although some snow showers may sneak in on Sunday afternoon. The Saturday high and low will be 29° and 18°, a little warmer on Sunday at 35° and 27°, and a very seasonable Monday at 38° and 19° degrees.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Join Me At The Blog

I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date.

Sorry I don't have time to stay to chat today, but I have to work on the unveiling of a new blog, one that is part of My Other Life wherein someone actually pays me for what I do. It's part of a growing trend among newspaper editors, of whom I am one, to be more open and accessible to their readers and sources.

Join me at the TU Editors' Blog to see what one bunch of newsies is up to.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

Mining Disaster On Several Levels

It's a gray day radiating from Tallmansville, WVa, outward throughout the nation.

The announcement that all but one coal miner trapped in a cave-in has died, a statement that came hours after an erroneous pronouncement that all but one had been found alive was one of the most unintentional but cruel moments in recent memory.

TV and radio stations began beaming out the false hope around midnight. Most Eastern and Southern newspapers up against final deadlines went with the same story. Just before 3 a.m. the terrible truth came out. TV and radio immediately went into reactive mode, asking how such a thing could happen and pointing to copies of the erroneous stories in print. Newspapers were stuck with what they initially believed to be true.

So we now have the usual reaction to any major story. How can we make the other guy look bad. What a society.

Perhaps we can find a ray of sunshine, metaphorically or in reality, tomorrow although I doubt it. The forecast is for a mix of rain and snow, with a high of 36° and a low of 25°.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

It's Panda-monium

The year 2005, it seems, was a boom year for panda growers.

The Chinese government reports that 21 of them survived early infancy and are thriving in the nation's various zoos and breeding centers, bringing the captive population to 183 nationwide, with another 24 living in the U.S., Japan, Germany, Austria and Thailand.

"Despite the early deaths of a few baby pandas, 2005 has witnessed the largest number of surviving newborn pandas in China's history of artificial fertilization on the rare species," Na Chunfeng, an official with State Forestry Administration, was quoted as saying. The previous record was set in 2003, when 15 babies born in captivity survived.

The pandas of the world apparently are in better hands than the wallabies. The kangaroo-like Australian animals have been dying out, so captive breeding programs have been started and offspring from them sent to various nature preserves in Australia to help boost the numbers worldwide. That's the good news. The bad news is that the numbers game was messed up when a worker at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo inadvertently put a toxic plant in the wallaby exhibit. Three of the animals died after ingesting the plant.

So, what do you plan to do to help preserve your species tomorrow when the weather will be nicer than today's snowy one? The forecast is for partly cloudy skies, a high of 35° and a toasty low of 27°.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Crappy New Year

This already has been a whiz-bang of a new year to remember.

Despite the TV weatherbeings predicting mild temps and relatively clear skies through the weekend surrounding New Year's Eve, we ended up making our way through a serious snowfall, its droppings piling up in tricky spots thanks to strong wind gusts and below-freezing temperatures that helped increase the supply of dangerous black ice.

That doesn't even take into account the pneumonia, bronchitis and general malaise that have afflicted the allegedly Higher Life Forms up here on WH for the past two weeks.

All in all, blechhh!, as Snoopy would put it.

But, in the spirit of new beginnings, we'll give the local weatherbeings another shot at getting it right. The consensus for tomorrow is some snow, a high of 34° and a low of 19°. Yeah, we'll see about that.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

R&R

We've closed the shutters up here on WH for the week, making the world go away until the new year is rung in. Even starry-eyed dreamers need some time off once in a while.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Be A Kid Again

As we get older, we realize more and more that Christmas is for kids. We may still enjoy that magical morning when we extricate presents from under the tree, but the thrill of anticipation and then realization isn't quite the same when you know you're going to be unwrapping a necktie or a sweater or a bottle of perfume rather than a new truck or BB gun or doll or board game or bicycle.

That's why I was very happy to find a link to a Flash game based on two interesting things: the Will Ferrell movie "Elf" and a snowball fight.

Enjoy!

The forecast doesn't seem to be conducive to snowball fights in the vicinity of Weathering Heights. Christmas Eve's outlook is for partly cloudy skies, a high of 43° and a low of 30°. For Christmas Day, it will be a mix of rain and snow, not very useful for snowball manufacturing, with a high of 38° and a low of 29°. and for St. Stephen's Day (Monday) we may have a few snow showers, a high of 33° and a low of 24°.

Have a Merry Christmas. See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

Another Sign of the Apocalypse

David Letterman and the courts are a regular thing in celebrity news. Whether it is a female stalker (now deceased) camping on his Connecticut estate or following him elsewhere and inundating him with letters and phone calls, or a former temporary employee who was plotting to kidnap his son (which happened last year), the late-night TV talk show veteran seems to always be looking over his shoulder.

Now, the restraining order is on the other foot. Using logic with a gap in it wide enough to rival the famous space between Letterman's front teeth, a New Mexico judge named Daniel Sanchez (seen here), known primarily for doing volunteer work for credit unions, actually issued a restraining order against Letterman at the request of a Santa Fe nut job.

Colleen Nestler, 59, claims Letterman has been tormenting her over the airwaves by using code words, gestures and "eye expressions" for more than 10 years to convey his desire to marry her and train her as his television co-host. She also claims Letterman's running gags about Oprah Winfrey contain secret messages to her because Oprah is one of her code names. The Santa Fe woman asked the court to order Letterman -- who lives in New York and Connecticut -- to stay at least three yards away from her and to stop thinking about her, and to release her from "his mental harassment and hammering."

Good enough for this court, said the Most Honorable & Learned Judge Sanchez.

Meanwhile, in the real universe Ms. Nestler and Judge Sanchez obviously do not inhabit. other strange things keep happening, Such as the inexplicable warming trend in my part of the universe. Tomorrow's forecast is for partly coudy skies, an unseasonable high of 42 and a comfortable low of 32.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

You Say You Want a Revolution

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the rather opinionated president of Iran, has been taking a lot of flak from many directions in recent weeks.

He said Israel should be wiped off the map. He said Europe and the U.S. should figure out a place for Israel to exist that isn't in his neighborhood. He said the Holocaust is a myth.

He says lots of crazy stuff, so he deserves the slams. But, as Robert Bolt wrote in "A Man For All Seasons," even a blind hog can find an acorn once in a while.

Ahmadinejad's latest attention-getting declaration is banning all Western music from Iran's state radio and TV stations, a return to the attitudes of 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini and his minions overthew the Shah and banned Western music as un-Islamic.

I don't know that the ban is a totally bad thing. After all, how much 50 Cent can you listen to without wanting to declare a jihad on whoever is allowing it?

And Ashlee Simpson. Come on. That's music?

"Blocking indecent and Western music from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is required," according to a statement on the council's official Web site.

The Iranian guitarist Babak Riahipour labeled the declaration a "terrible" decision that "shows a lack of knowledge and experience."

The same response was heard back in '79, when many Iranian musicians and singers left the country and moved to that old demon the US of A to continue their careers. Early this month, Tehran Symphony conductor Ali Rahbari left Iran to protest the treatment of the music industry there.

Iran also does not allow women to sing in public, except to female-only audiences or as part of a mixed chorus. The fear is that the voice of a woman soloist might arouse impure thoughts in men. I thought that was rather extreme. Then I thought about Shakira (above). Hmmm.

So, fight the ban. Put on some decadent Vivaldi, preferably the Winter movement from "Four Seasons," and batten down for a clear but frigid day tomorrow with a "high" of 29° and a low of 14°.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

Forging Ahead

The temperatures here on WH had moderated a touch, but tomorrow they'll be dipping again.

It's not my cup of tea. Then again, it's better than another cup of tea that led to a very different and more bitter winter way back when.

Today is, you see, the anniversary of Gen. George Washington taking his bedraggled Continental army into winter quarters at Valley Forge, PA, back in 1777. The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, Lexington and Concord, and various other skirmishes had taken them up to this point.

Valley Forge was a mere 22 miles from what then was the center of British-held Philadelphia. Washington picked a spot on the west bank of the Schuylkill River to rest his men after a series of defeats. Several hundred of the 11,000 troops died of hunger and disease during that winter, although they kept drilling through the encampment and came out of it in better fighting form than ever.

That is, I suppose, an object lesson to us modern-day softies who just want to hunker down and get through the next few months. I for one resolve to spend the winter getting my mind and body in shape for the more pleasant rigors of playing in the sunshine. Sure I do.

Tomorrow's forecast calls for partly cloudy skies, a high down around 26° and a low that is barely half that.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Southern Exposure Isn't Pleasant

While we're being excoriated all over the Middle East for (pick one or more) our support of Israel, our invasion and occupation of Iraq, our shameless women, our slang-laden language, our violent films, our raunchy hip hop music, our very existence on the globe, things are going much better back in our hemisphere.

Right? Well, not really.

Well, the Canadians are pissed off at us, as they periodically are. And Mexican President Vicente Fox is a lot less maleable as a national leader than he was as a Coca-Cola executive. Further down the isthmus of Central America, various little rebel groups make tourism dicey for Yanks, and in South America the latest in-your-face poke at the U.S. is being made by Evo Morales.

Who? That's one of our problems. Most American neither know nor care who is running other countries. Morales is the Socialist candidate for president in Bolivia, where the votes now are being counted. If he wins, that's one more turn of the wheel as South America shifts to the political left.

Part of what fuels countries such as Boliva, Colombia and the like is the trade in drugs. The U.S. has been pushing Bolivia to destroy its coca crop, which is converted to cocaine. Morales, who calls himself Washington's "nightmare," would be the first Indian president in Bolivia, where a long-oppressed Indian majority has become increasingly active and impatient for progress. Part of that independence is the desire to keep raising drug crops. Whoopee.

So, while you're busy wrapping up presents for the holidays, we may want to actually read some of those newspapers you're using to cushion the goodies. What's on the hemispheric horizon for the US of A is not all sunshine.

Actually, there's not much sunshine forecast locally tomorrow, either: cloudy skies, a high of just 30° and a low of 16°.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

Maybe They All Look Alike

Not many revelations that come out of Iraq surprise me anymore. Atrocities, crimes, political malfeasance, stupid decisions ... . On and on it goes.

But, I must admit the latest one is a doozie.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, a man with a $25 million bounty on his head, a man whose picture is on wanted posters all over the country and whose picture and DNA information have been distributed to military and law enforcement personnel, was captured by police last year then released because no one recognized him.

Pause for WHATTTTTTTT!!!!!

Yep. Major Gen. Hussein Kamal, the Iraqi deputy interior minister, told reporters that Zarqawi, whose group, al-Qaeda in Iraq has claimed responsibility for many of the most devastating terror attacks, was detained for several hours in Falluja before being let go.

It's bad enough that this happened, but it is only one of a series of close calls for
Zarqawi. American soldiers have said they just missed getting him at a checkpoint in western Iraq in February. In May, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said Zarqawi had been critically injured after a U.S. air raid on his hideout in Qaim, on the Syrian border. He was reported to have been treated at a hospital in Ramadi after the attack -- then escaped 10 minutes before Iraqi and American forces arrived.

STOPPPPPPPPITTTTTTTT!!!!!

I need to rein in, calm down, cool off. That last bit will be realtively easy just by going outside anytime in the next few days. Saturday's high/low forecast is 36°/20°, Sunday's 33°/18°, and Monday's 28°/15°.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

The Girl Can't Help It

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you.
You're so like the lady with the mystic smile.
Is it only 'cause you're lonely men have blamed you
For that Mona Lisa strangeness in your smile?

Do you smile to please a lover, Mona Lisa?
Or is this a way to hide a broken heart?
Are you warm, are you fair, Mona Lisa,
Or just a cold and lovely, lovely work of art?

Nat King Cole sold a pile of records with that song way back when, and today the centuries-old question finally is answered: She smiled because she was happy!

Through a fantastic (insert sarcastic face here) advance in scientific achievement, a computer at the University of Amsterdam using "emotion recognition" software has concluded that there is an 83% chance the model for the Leonardo Da Vinci painting was happy.

Is that the only possibility? No, but of the remaining 17%, 9% went to disgusted, 6% to fearful and 2% to angry, so happy it is.

The journal New Scientist reports that the computer program developed with researchers at the University of Illinois rated such features as the curvature of the lips and crinkles around the eyes. The program draws on a database of young female faces to derive an average "neutral" expression, then uses this average expression as the standard for comparisons.

Now, if they can just figure out who the model is, we've got something. The painting, perhaps the most famous in the world, is on public display in the Louvre museum in Paris. DaVinci painted it between 1503-1506, but the identity of the model has been in dispute since then. Theories have ranged from a "self-portrait" with DaVinci using his own features on the woman to the wife of prominent Florentine businessman Francesco del Giocondo. In fact, an alternate name for the painting is "La Gioconda."

On the heels of this hot news, we have other hot stuff to report. Tomorrow's temperatures will be a high of 32° and a low of 24°, a lot more comfortable than the single digits that have hit us since late last night.

See you back here on the Heights on Friday.

The Digital Age

I was bundled up in my loft, engrossed in a Michael Crichton novel, when it occurred to me that colorful digits were entering my world in some profusion.

In "State of Fear," the much-honored Crichton posits global castrophes created by a band of eco-terrorists. During one stop for his characters in Antarctica, the horrors of freezing are, quite naturally, discussed and the protagonists warn each other about fingers -- and other body parts -- turning black from freezing.

In the newspaper, I had already read stories about the gazillions of Iraqis who would be sporting purple thumbs as a sign they had voted in the media-saturated general elections this week, the ink staining a clever precaution against multiple-vote fraud.

On TV, the weatherbeings were playing Chicken Little as they usually do anytime the weather is not what they deem perfect and yammering on about how blue everyone was going to turn, from the tips of their noses to the tips of their fingers. That's because the forecast was for gusty winds, single-digit temperatures and general discomfort tomorrow.

I plan to go outside anyway. It's only winter.

See you back here on the Heights on Thursday.

The Back Story On Celebrities

The earliest tendrils of winter wrapping around us up here on WH have come more in the form of wind and icy patches than actual pretty snow.

I slipped just a tiny bit the other day on a spot of black ice and pulled one of those muscles that seem to always be affected by such antics. Nothing serious; an aspirin took care of the discomfort. If it gets worse, I'll see my friendly doctor about some prescription medication. I know that will work because I can take as much as I want without becoming addicted. That is because I am not in show business.

Haven't you ever noticed how many celebrities are carted off drooling to rehab for what their PR people refer to as "an addiction to prescription medicine for a back injury"? It's uncanny. Colin Farrell is the latest to succumb to this particular malady. In his case, though, his publicist said he also was suffering from "exhaustion." I would be, too, if I were off boffing anything with a pulse beat, puffing on cigarettes and downing as much whiskey as I could swallow.

Tomorrow should be an easier day for both Colin and me. He's under medical care and I'm going out in a day that, while cold (a high of just 23° and a bitter low of 3°), is expected to be clear and sunny. Not bad for this time of year.

See you back here on the Heights on Wednesday.

Sad Summer In Sydney

It's summer in Sydney, and the usual beachfront fun has given way to that worldwide sport, ethnic rioting.

Yes, tolerant old Australia, largely founded by ex-convicts and adventurers willing to give anyone with ambition a break, is finding itself in the same sort of situation as France, Indonesia or your choice of Middle Eastern nations.

Only the details here are different. The similarities: Youths on the march, damaging businesses, cars and municipal property, some for political reasons, others because they can get away with it. The differences: Instead of whites and westerners being the targets, here it is people of Arabic and Mediterranean background.

Two nights running, locals and carloads of people from other areas have joined in the mayhem. More than 30 people were reported injured last night. The fights were sparked by an assault on two lifeguards last week by youths of Middle Eastern origin.

The weather won't help riot police in Sydney tomorrow. Balmy forecasts for Tuesday will be interrupted only by a few isolated afternoon showers.

Here in the calm Capital Region of New York, coolheadedness and just plain coolness reign. The forecast for tomorrow calls for clear skies but a high of merely 21° and a merely miserable low of 3°.

See you back here on the Heights on Tuesday.

Miso Test Flush With Success

Miso. Ah, soup for the gods who matter. And substance for the geeks who measure.

The Wall Street Journal carried a fascinating report on a new use for miso, that stuff cooked down from soybeans that is used as the basis for various soups and sauces in many Asian cuisines. Turns out it makes great toilet bowl ballast, too.

The toilet-manufacturing industry has long tested a toilet's flushing capabilities by flushing 3/4-inch plastic balls. Tests worked fine; real-world applications didn't always complete the job. So, toilet researchers settled on trying miso as a test substance.

Eureka! An industry group now wants to make the miso test standard flushing efficiency stuff for toilet manufacturers. This isn't just for the fun of it. The consortium hopes municipal water authorities nationwide will use the test to determine which toilets qualify for water-conservation rebates. They'll need them. Miso costs a lot more than plastic balls.

You probably won't feel particularly flushed tomorrow, when temperatures will be in the high-20s to low-30s. But at least the skies will be clear.

See you back here on the Heights on Monday.

I Feel Pretty, Oh So Pretty

Wearing a dress couldn't get Corporal Max Klinger out of Korea, but it will get Alexandra Kwizera out of Kenya.

The sexually-conservative African nation doesn't take kindly to cross-dressers, so when Kwizera was spotted sipping coffee in a restaurant, dressed in his feminine best, he was arrested.

Police say his garb made him a suspiciou