Solar Power, Greenpeace vs. Dow
Mysteries of The Milky Way!
Mother Mary, Kids With Guns & More!
SEATTLE January 7, 2003 (Reuters) - An erratic monster star that lobbed 10,000 times the Earth's mass into space when it erupted two years ago is ready to blow again at any time, astronomers said on Tuesday.
There is no reason to panic, since the star is 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia and any explosion there would have no effect on Earth. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.
Researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics urged amateur astronomers to keep watching it though, because the same kinds of things that happened before the 2000 blast are happening now.
With perhaps as much as 40 times the mass and 700 times the breadth of our sun, the star known as Rho Cas is visible without a telescope in the northern hemisphere, because it is over 500,000 times more luminous than the sun.
Rho Cas, a rare star type called a hypergiant, has a habit of occasionally dimming by a factor of six, indicating a steep drop in surface temperature from 12,000 degrees F to 5,000 degrees F. This happened in 1946, when astronomers recognized there had been an explosion on the star's surface but could not tell how big it was, or what caused it.
Scientists using five moderate-sized telescopes in the United States and Europe kept a constant vigil on Rho Cas for 10 years, which paid off in 2000 when they detected the big blast that ejected 3 percent of the star's mass in about 200 days.
The dimming of the star was directly related to the explosion, said Alex Lobel of the Harvard center.
"The star in the spring of 2000 first brightened and then it dimmed by 1.2 magnitudes, something which is very unusual in any star," Lobel told reporters. "This dimming is corresponding to the star shedding a shell, by producing a shock wave which is about four times as fast as the speed of sound."
When Rho Cas blasted off this shell of gas, its atmosphere cooled drastically as it did in 1946. As a hypergiant, Rho Cas has a huge atmosphere. If it were located where our sun is, its atmosphere would extend beyond Mars, engulfing Earth. Rho Cas also pulsates irregularly, so mass from its atmosphere periodically extends even further than that, Lobel said.
"I think it's worth keeping an eye on this fellow," the Harvard center's Andrea Dupree said. "Things may be heating up again, we're starting to see some anomalous motions, so keep looking."
Lobel said that by breaking down the light from the star into individual bands of color, just as a prism creates a rainbow, scientists analyzed the output from the last explosion, and found that hydrogen was an indicator for mass that was expanding and then falling down before the 2000 blast.
That same indicator is present now, Lobel said.
A larger image of the 2000 blast (above) is available online at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0302_image.html
Amateurs may report findings on Rho Cas to the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, the scientists said at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.
Instructions on how to report to the bureau are available online at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/cbat.html
Conservation workers and residents are trying to save survivors of a pod of 159 pilot whales that swam ashore on Stewart Island, about 20 miles south of the South Island, Department of Conservation spokesman Tom O'Connor said.
"They're pretty distressed...there's no wind and swell to splash on them so they're not in good order," he said.
An attempt will be made to refloat the whales, which look like dolphins and grow up to 16 feet long and weigh as much as three tons, at the next high tide.
New Zealand has one of the world's highest rates of whale strandings, which are thought to occur when the animals become disoriented or when a dominant animal leads others ashore.
But the strandings are not clearly understood by scientists who believe illness or other types of trauma might also play a role.
By Michelle Nichols
Reuters
MELBOURNE,
Australia January 07, 2003 (Reuters) — The world's tallest man-made
structure could soon be towering over the Australian outback as part of a
plan to capitalize on the global push for greater use of renewable
energy.
By 2006, Australian power company EnviroMission Ltd hopes to build a
3,300-foot solar tower in southwest New South Wales state, a structure
that would be more than twice the height of Malaysia's Petronas Towers,
the world's tallest buildings.
Currently, the world's tallest free-standing structure is the Canadian
National Tower in Toronto at 1,814 feet .
The 200 megawatt solar tower, which will cost A$1 billion (US$563 million)
to build, will be of a similar width to a football field and will stand in
the center of a massive glass roof spanning 4.3 miles in diameter.
Despite its size, the technology is simple: the sun heats air under the
glass roof, which slopes upwards from a yard at its outer perimeter to 82
feet at the tower base. As the hot air rises, a powerful updraft is also
created by the tower that allows air to be continually sucked through 32
turbines, which spin to generate power 24 hours a day.
"Initially people told me, 'You're a dreamer. There's no way anything
that high can be built. There's no way it can work,'" EnviroMission
CEO Roger Davey told Reuters. "But now we have got to the point where
it's not if it can be built, but when it can be built."
EnviroMission hopes to begin construction on the solar tower before the
end of the year and be generating enough electricity to supply 200,000
homes around the beginning of 2006.
The company also hopes the project will save more than 700,000 tons of
greenhouse gases a year that might otherwise have been emitted through
coal or oil-fired power stations.
The company has signed agreements with Australian-listed Leighton Holdings
Ltd and U.S.-listed Energen Corp to determine the commercial feasibility
of the solar tower, which Time Magazine recently voted among the best
inventions of the year.
The tower has received the support of the Australian and New South Wales
governments, which have defined it as a project of national significance.
EnviroMission plans to build the tower in remote Buronga district in New
South Wales. The district is near the border with Victoria state and is 15
miles northeast of Mildura town.
It will generate about 650 gigawatt hours (GWh) a year towards Australia's
mandated renewable energy target, which requires electricity retailers to
supply 9,500 GWh of renewable energy a year by 2010.
The Electricity Supply Association has said A$48 billion (US$27 billion)
needs to be invested in electricity infrastructure during the next two
decades to meet the country's growing demand. Davey said he is eager to
keep the tower's costs as low as possible to ensure its success.
"We have proved that it does work and that it can be built, but what
we have got to get a handle on is the cost and we are working very
strongly through that now," Davey said.
The tower —
originally known as the solar chimney — is the invention of German
structural engineers Schlaich Bergerman, who constructed a 656-foot high
demonstration power plant in Manzanares, Spain, in 1982. The 50 kilowatt
plant produced electricity for seven years and then closed down after
having proved the technology worked. Schlaich Bergerman now works with
EnviroMission.
The project has already been given clearance by the Civil Aviation Safety
Authority of Australia and will be fitted with high intensity obstacle
lights to warn aircraft in the area.
Next-generation
Solar Cells in Space
Rochester
Institute of Technology News Release
Rochester NY January 7, 2003 - Someday, large-scale solar power stations
in space could beam electricity to the surface of the moon, the earth and
other planets, decreasing our dependence on a dwindling fossil-fuel
supply.
Scientists at Rochester Institute of Technology are developing the next
generation of solar cells, advancing the technology that could put a solar
power system into earth's orbit.
The National Science Foundation recently awarded a three-year, $200,000
grant to Ryne Raffaelle and Thomas Gennett, co-directors of RIT's
NanoPower Research Laboratory, to develop nanomaterials--no bigger than a
billionth of a meter--in support of NASA's space solar power
program.
The notion of space solar power--discounted as farfetched and silly after
the energy crunch of the 1970s--never completely went away. Some
scientists and other visionaries remained intrigued by the idea of
orbiting, football-field sized "blankets" of solar cells that
could generate tremendous amounts of power. NASA's program is revisiting
the idea, pushing the latest technology as far as it will go.
Raffaelle and Gennett are working with scientists from the Ohio Aerospace
Institute and Phoenix Innovations Inc. to develop a new-and-improved solar
cell that is light, thin and highly efficient. This solar cell, a
thin-film device, will sandwich tiny granules of semi-conductor material,
known as Quantum dots, and carbon nanotubes.
"In order to put football-field sized arrays in space, they need to
be lightweight and flexible, and able to withstand the rigors of
space," Raffaelle says. "Today's technology isn't good enough,
but with the theoretical possibilities offered by nanomaterials it could
become a reality."
Gennett adds: "The types of solar cells that we are working to
develop are a clear departure from even the most advanced crystalline
solar cells used in the space industry today. If we are successful it will
result in a complete paradigm shift in space solar power generation."
Baltimore January 1, 2003 - Astronomers at The Johns Hopkins University, the Observatoire de Paris, and other institutions have solved a nearly 30-year-old mystery surrounding Jupiter's moon Io, showing that volcanoes there appear to be shooting gaseous salt into the moon's thin atmosphere.
"This gives nice closure to the discovery Bob Brown made in 1974 of sodium in neutral clouds of gas around Io, " said Darrell Strobel, a professor of earth and planetary sciences in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins and an author of a paper on the new results in the Jan. 2 issue of "Nature."
Further analysis of the results, including modeling how the salt is broken down into sodium and chlorine atoms, could help planetary scientists move closer to determining what kinds of meteoritic materials originally came together to form Io.
Strobel said Brown, who later became a project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, found the sodium around Io while testing out a spectrograph he had built.
"He told me some years afterwards, 'This discovery of mine is so simple. I was amazed somebody hadn't done it 30 to 40 years earlier,'" Strobel said.
"Nobody was
looking for it; nobody would have guessed it was there."
Astronomers winnowed the list of theoretical suspects for the source of
sodium for years before determining the most likely suspect was salt, or
sodium chloride. That conclusion was reached after the detection two years
ago of chlorine in a doughnut-shaped, electrically charged cloud of gas
around Io known as the plasma torus. Based on the new chlorine finding and
the theoretical work, astronomers decided to conduct the exacting studies
necessary to look for salt.
"The bottom line is that there seems to be enough salt in Io's
volcanic atmosphere to supply both the amount of sodium that one sees in
the neutral clouds and the chlorine in the plasma torus," said
Strobel, who is also a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns
Hopkins.
A slightly eccentric orbit around Jupiter and the gravitational fields of
two nearby large moons, Europa and Ganymede, subject Io to a great deal of
stress, flexing the moon's crust and heating its core. As a result, Io is
hands-down the most volcanically active planetary body in the solar
system. Roughly comparable in size to Earth's moon, Io's frequently active
volcanoes would make it a hell for anyone who might want to visit, but
it's a heaven for scientists eager to watch a planetary body regularly
belch up tons of its innards.
Their crime: unloading four barrels of waste transported from India aboard the Greenpeace ship "Arctic Sunrise" and delivering it to Dow's largest chemical plant in Europe, near Tenuzen, The Netherlands.
The poisonous waste is only a fraction of hundreds of tons that have been strewn around the derelict pesticide plant in Bhopal since 1984 when Union Carbide, which is now owned by Dow, fled the city after a gas leak at the plant killed 8,000 people and injured half a million. No-one has accepted responsibility for the waste and the chemical company still refuses to clean up the site. For 18 years, chemicals have leaked into the soil and ground water in and around the factory site and have been poisoning people who survived the gas leak. Today, the death toll stands at 20,000 and is rising every day. Children born to survivors are suffering health problems and 150,000 people are in urgent need of medical attention.
The Greenpeace activists included John Passacantando, Executive Director of Greenpeace in the U.S. and Rashida Bi, leader of the Bhopal Gas Victim Women's Union. Three activists abseiled down the building and hung eight huge photographs depicting Dow's corporate crime in Bhopal and a banner which called on Dow to clean up Bhopal.
"We'll carry
on confronting Dow with this corporate crime until it cleans up its toxic
fallout in Bhopal and stops poisoning us. We're already struggling to
survive sickness from gas exposure without adequate help from the company
responsible, and are now facing a slow death from exposure to these
poisons. How can a corporation get away with this?" asked Rashida Bi
who traveled to the Netherlands to return the waste.
A new report released by Greenpeace today presents further evidence of
severe contamination from chemical waste dumped at the plant. Greenpeace
scientists have identified numerous poisons in the waste, including Sevin,
the pesticide Union Carbide used to manufacture in Bhopal, and BHC, a
mixture of toxic chemicals that can damage the nervous system, liver and
kidneys and which can be passed from mother to child in the womb.
"We will not let Dow bury this crime in India but will carry on
returning evidence to the company worldwide to confront it with its
responsibilities towards all those who are being poisoned because of its
failure to accept its pending liabilities in Bhopal. Corporations like Dow
benefit from a global market for the development of their businesses but
are not held globally accountable for their operations.
"Until
they are, crimes such as this will continue to be committed and people and
the environment will pay the price," said Ganesh Nochur, campaigner
from Greenpeace India onboard the 'Arctic Sunrise'.
The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal is calling on Dow to
accept its pending liabilities in Bhopal, to clean up the site, provide
people with clean drinking water, long-term medical care and full
compensation. It is also calling for international legislation to be put
in place to make sure companies, such as Dow, are held responsible for
pollution or accidents their operations cause, wherever they occur.
Greenpeace - http://www.greenpeace.org
"Snowmobiles in particular are egregious polluters. Many of the snowmobiles that are currently being built emit more pollution in one day than a modern car emits in 100,000 miles of driving," pointed out James Pew of Earthjustice.
The Clean Air Act requires that EPA’s emissions standards for offroad engines reflect the use of modern technology that will be available. "This is a forward-looking statute, designed by Congress to provide the cleanest engines that can be built," said Pew. "Past experience with automobiles has shown that each time EPA has required cleaner engines, manufacturers have built them for a reasonable cost. Clean engines could also be built for offroad vehicles—right now and for a reasonable cost—but EPA has refused to require it."
"Once again, the Bush Administration is demonstrating utter contempt for protecting the nation's environment. By allowing the indefinite sale of dirty two-stroke engines in snowmobiles, backing off on catalytic converters for all-terrain vehicles, and failing to regulate noise pollution, we will sacrifice air quality, public health, and wildlife," said Russell Long, Bluewater Network's Executive Director. "We refuse to let Mr. Bush get away with this."
Earthjustice - http://www.earthjustice.org
NASA Press Release
January 6, 2003 - The longest X-ray look yet at the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way's center has given astronomers unprecedented access to its life and times. The new data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed that our galaxy's central black hole is a frequent bad actor, prone to numerous outbursts and occasional large explosions.
The observations of the black hole, a.k.a. Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*, occurred over a two-week period for a total exposure time of 164 hours. During this time Sgr A* flared up in X-ray intensity half a dozen or more times. Astronomers also found evidence that suggests it had an even more boisterous past. These discoveries will help to unlock the secrets of how Sgr A* grows and how it interacts with its environment.
"We are getting a look at the everyday life of a supermassive black hole like never before," said Frederick K. Baganoff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who presented these new results on behalf of an international team at a press conference today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. "We see it flaring on an almost daily basis."
The cause of the flares is not understood, but the rapidity with which they rise and fall indicates that they are occurring near the event horizon, or point of no return, around the black hole. Even when it flares, the intensity of the X-ray emission from the vicinity of the black hole is relatively weak, which suggests that Sgr A*, weighing in at 3 million times the mass of the Sun, is a starved black hole.
"Although it appears to snack often, this black hole is definitely on a severe diet," says Baganoff. "This could be because explosive events in the past blew away much of the gas from the neighborhood of the black hole."
Indeed, evidence for such events - which astronomers are viewing 26,000 years later due to the time it takes light to travel to Earth from the center of the Galaxy - can be found in the image. A faint streak of X-rays about 1 light-year long has been discovered 1.5 light-years from Sgr A*. The streak points at Sgr A*, suggesting that it may be a jet of particles expelled at nearly the speed of light from just outside the event horizon of the black hole. The intensity and size of this jet indicate that the flaring activity has been occurring for many years.
On a much larger scale, huge lobes of 20-million-degree-Centigrade gas extending over dozens of light years on either side of the black hole have also been discovered. "These lobes show that enormous explosions have occurred several times over the last ten thousand years," said Mark Morris of UCLA, lead author of a second paper on Sgr A*, who also participated in the press conference.
Sangwook Park, of Penn State University in University Park, and Michael Muno, of MIT, were lead authors of two other papers presented at the meeting. These papers focused on the extraordinarily rich region around the central black hole, where they detected more than 2,000 X-ray sources.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program, and TRW, Inc., Redondo Beach, Calif., is the prime contractor for the spacecraft. The Smithsonian's Chandra X-ray Center controls science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass., for the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters, Washington.
Images and additional information about this result are available at: http://chandra.harvard.edu and http://chandra.nasa.gov
Milky's Ring
Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute Press Release
TROY, NY January 6, 2003 - A previously unseen band of stars beyond the
edge of the Milky Way galaxy has been discovered by a team of scientists
from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The discovery could
help to explain how the galaxy was assembled 10 billion years ago.
Hidden from view behind stars and gas on the same visual plane as the
Milky Way, this ring of stars is approximately 120,000 light years in
diameter, says Heidi Newberg, associate professor of physics and astronomy
at Rensselaer and a co-lead investigator on the project. Traveling from
Earth at the speed of light, it would take 40,000 light years to reach the
ring.
"These stars may be what's left of a collision between our galaxy and
a smaller, dwarf galaxy that occurred billions of years ago," says
Newberg.
"It's an
indication that at least part of our galaxy was formed by many smaller or
dwarf galaxies mixing together."
The ring of stars is probably the largest of a series of similar
structures being found around the galaxy. Investigators believe that as
smaller galaxies are pulled apart, the remnants dissolve into streams of
stars around larger galaxies. Gravity, primarily from unseen dark matter,
holds the ring in a nearly circular orbit around the Milky Way.
"What's new is the position of the star belt on the outskirts of the
Milky Way, an ideal position to study the distribution and amount of dark
and light mass within the band," said Brian Yanny, a scientist at
Fermilab's Experimental Astrophysics Group and a co-lead investigator on
the project.
Newberg and Yanny presented their findings today at the American
Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Washington.
Evidence of this new unexpected band of stars hidden by the Milky Way
comes from multi-color photo imagery of hundreds of square degrees of sky
and hundreds of spectroscopic exposures from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey,
the largest international collaborative astronomical survey ever
undertaken.
For four years Newberg, Yanny, and a collaboration of SDSS scientists have
been examining the distribution of stars in the Milky Way. At the outer
edge of the galaxy in the direction of the constellation Monoceros (the
Unicorn) they found tens of thousands of unexpected stars that altered
then-standard galactic models.
Three-dimensional mapping from the SDSS revealed the excess stars were
actually parts of a separate structure outside the Milky Way.
"The large area covered by the Sloan Survey and the accuracy of the
multi-colored observations has allowed us to revisit some classic
questions, questions from 50 to 100 years ago," Yanny said.
"What does our Milky Way look like as a whole? How did it form? Did
it form in one 'whoosh,' or was it built up slowly via mergers of
collapsing dwarf galaxies? And how does the mysterious dark (invisible)
matter affect the distribution of stars?"
For a high-resolution illustration of the ring around the Milky Way,
please go to: http://www.rpi.edu/dept/NewsComm/sub/Pressimgs/halo
Pasadena January 3, 2003 - The first asteroid discovered to orbit the Sun in nearly the same path as Earth will make its closest approach to our planet this month before scurrying away for 95 years.
The space rock, measuring about 60 meters (approximately 200 feet) across, is like a mouse teasing a cat. According to an international team of astronomers, including a researcher from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., the asteroid approaches the Earth, first on one side and then on the other. The team's report appeared in the October 2002 issue of the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
The asteroid, named 2002 AA29, traces an unusual horseshoe pattern relative to Earth. The asteroid alternately leads and follows Earth around the Sun without ever passing it. "In some ways, the Earth and this asteroid are like two racecars on a circular track," said JPL's Dr. Paul Chodas, who discovered the object's unusual motion. "Right now the asteroid is on a slightly slower track just outside Earth's, and our planet is catching up," he said.
On Jan. 8, 2003, the tiny body will come within approximately 5.9 million kilometers (3.7 million miles) of Earth, its closest approach for almost a century. "Unlike racecars, the two bodies will not pass when they approach each other," Chodas said. "Instead, the combined gravitational effects of the Earth and Sun will nudge the asteroid onto a slightly faster track just inside Earth's, and it will begin to pull ahead," he said.
In 95 years, the asteroid will have advanced all the way around to where it is catching up to the Earth from behind. A similar interaction with gravity from both the Earth and Sun will then push the asteroid back onto a slower outside track, and the pattern will repeat. To an observer moving with the Earth, the asteroid appears to trace out a horseshoe pattern.
"There's no possibility that this asteroid could hit Earth, because Earth's gravity rebuffs its periodic advances and keeps it at bay," said Dr. Don Yeomans, JPL manager of NASA's Near Earth Objects Program Office. "The asteroid and Earth take turns sneaking up on each other, but they never get too close," he said.
The team's calculations show that in about 600 years, the asteroid may begin looping around Earth like a tiny, distant quasi-moon. "The asteroid will appear to orbit the Earth at that time, but in fact it will be too far away to be considered a true satellite of our planet," Chodas said. "Our calculations indicate the space rock will circle the Earth as a quasi-satellite for about 40 years before resuming its horseshoe orbital pattern."
Other members of the team investigating this object include Dr. Martin Connors, Athabasca University, Canada; Dr. Seppo Mikkola, University of Turku, Finland; Dr. Paul Wiegert, Queen's University, Canada; Dr. Christian Veillet, Canada- France-Hawaii Telescope, Hawaii; and Dr. Kim A. Innanen, York University, Canada.
JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.
They suggest the extract, which is absorbed into the body when placed on the skin, could have helped cure people with a variety of physical and mental problems. The author of the article, published in the US drugs magazine High Times, says his findings are based on a study of scriptural texts.
The article does not question the validity of the miracles reported in the Bible but rather examines whether the early Christian Church may have made use of substances with an active medical effect. It does not rule out the role played by blind faith in Christ.
Chris Bennett said cannabis was widely used at the time to heal the sick.
"The medical use of cannabis during that time is supported by archaeological records." He said the ancient anointing oil contained high levels of cannabis extract.
"The holy anointing oil, as described in the original Hebrew version of the recipe in Exodus, contained over six pounds of keneh-bosum - a substance identified by respected etymology, linguists anthropologists, botanists and other researchers as cannabis extracted into about six quarts of olive oil along with a variety of other fragrant herbs. The ancient anointed ones were literally drenched in this potent mixture."
Mr. Bennett suggested the drug may have played a role in some healing miracles carried out by Jesus and his disciples.
He wrote: "In
the ancient world, diseases such as epilepsy were attributed to demonic
possession. To cure somebody of such an illness, even with the aid of
certain herbs was considered exorcism or miraculous healing.
Interestingly, cannabis has been shown to be effective in the treatment of
not only epilepsy but many of the other ailments that Jesus and the
disciples healed people of such as skin diseases, eye problems and
menstrual problems."
Mr. Bennett said the findings suggested that it was unchristian to
persecute people who used cannabis.
"If cannabis was one of the main ingredients of the ancient Christian
anointing oil, as history indicates, and receiving this oil is what made
Jesus the Christ and his followers Christians, then persecuting those who
use cannabis could be considered anti-Christ."
However, Christian groups in the United States have rejected Mr. Bennett's
claims. They have insisted that the arguments made in the article are
lame.
In a response to the article published on JesusJournal.com, critics said:
"As many of us know firsthand, Jesus often becomes the final hope for
the pharmacologically impaired."
John Cunyus, the author of a book on Christian healing, said: "Well,
the Bible does say that St. Stephen was stoned... but perhaps not in that
sense!"
High Times site - http://www.hightimes.com
"This was
quite embarrassing," said Eckhard Ohliger, an official at the
Cologne-based GEZ fee collection headquarters, which collects 6.5 billion
euros ($6.8 billion) per year from viewers. "But unfortunately
mistakes happen."
Father Karl Terhorst said the agency had sent letters demanding payment of
the monthly 16.15 euro fee to a woman named "Frau Walburga St."
at the address of the Roman Catholic Church in Ramsdorf, 80 miles east of
Cologne.
"At first I just ignored the letters," Terhorst said. "But
after the last letter demanding payment threatened the saint with 'legal
action' and a 1,000-euro fine, I figured it was time to write back."
Terhorst informed the GEZ that St. Walburga, born in 710 in England, was
an abbess and missionary who played an important role in St. Boniface's
organization of the Frankish church. She headed a monastery, and was later
made a saint in 880.
The ruling by the court said there was no evidence that Mr Johansen was helping people break the law as the US film industry claimed. The decision is a serious blow to US entertainment industry ambitions to extend control over what people can with the movies, music and software they have bought.
In 1999, Norwegian police raided the home of teenager Jon Lech Johansen following a complaint by US entertainment giants that the software he had created was being used to help people pirate DVDs. Mr. Johansen produced software, called DeCSS, that could strip the Content Scrambling System (CSS) from DVD disks.
Mr. Johansen said he created the DeCSS software to let him watch DVDs he purchased on a Linux computer rather than an expensive DVD player. He maintained that he should have the right to watch films he had legally bought on a device of his choosing.
Now the Norwegian court has backed Mr Johansen and said there was "no evidence" that what he did was aiding DVD piracy. With no evidence that Mr. Johansen was engaged in piracy or that he was aiding others to illegally copy disks the Norwegian court had no choice but to acquit the teenager. The court also ruled that it was not illegal to use DeCSS to watch legally obtained DVD films.
The court case pitted the mighty Motion Picture Association of America against Mr. Johansen and was widely seen as a test case for US ambitions to extend its control over what people can do with copyrighted materials. The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten broke the news about the court case.
US laws, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, have encouraged movie and music industry associations to pursue people who they see as aiding piracy. These ambitions have been dented recently by two court decisions.
The first concerned Russian software firm Elcomsoft which was accused of creating tools that could unlock encryption controls of electronic books. But in late 2002 a US court acquitted Elcomsoft and said the firm had done nothing wrong.
Now Norwegian judges have issued another rebuff to the US entertainment giants.
Baltimore January 6, 2003 - Race, gender and other social factors may explain why some parents allow their children to play with toy guns, while others shudder at the thought, a Johns Hopkins researcher reports in the January issue of Pediatrics.
Almost 70 percent of parents surveyed felt it was "never OK" for a parent to let a child play with toy guns. The parents who allowed their children to play with toy guns were more likely to be male, with male children, and Caucasian. Families with younger children and mothers were more likely to limit toy gun play.
In general, researchers found the gender and age of the child, gender of the parent, and race of the family factored significantly into parents' attitudes about allowing their children to play with toy guns.
"This study calls attention to an issue that has been largely unstudied - assessing community norms on toy gun play from the perspective of parents," says lead author Tina Cheng, M.D., Ph.D., director of general pediatrics and adolescent medicine at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Cheng led the study while at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
According to Cheng, some studies have linked toy gun play with aggressive behavior, and some child health professionals counsel families to limit this type of activity. Concerns about toy guns also include potential confusion of toy guns with real guns and the dangers of toy guns with projectiles, all of which could potentially cause serious injury to both the child and others.
"There needs to be more study on the impact of toy gun play on child behavior. Understanding what parents think about issues like toy gun play and what their parenting practices are may be a first step in designing effective community-based prevention programs," said Cheng.
Researchers surveyed more than 900 parents and guardians visiting pediatricians' offices in Washington, D.C., and its suburbs. The survey included questions on child rearing attitudes and practices, lifestyle, and demographic information. More than half of all respondents were African-American, and the majority of the parents participating were mothers.
Hollywood January 8, 2003 (eXoNews) - A new rallying cry for Scapers has begun with the impending final episodes of Farscape's Season Four due this Friday January 10th on Sci Fi.
Save Farscape (http://www.watchfarscape.com) is contacting fans again, hoping to convince someone to energize their fallen favorite for a fifth season, despite the fact that Moya's sets are gone and Pilot is packed away in a box, as the lovely Virginia Hey (Zhaan) put it.
Virginia also spoke for Farscape fans when she said: "I can't imagine the end of my beloved Moya and Pilot, my Stark, my children, my friends in our fabulous world of Farscape."
One fan has organized a friendly assault on Farscape sponsor KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) - http://www.watchfarscape.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6169#newpost
Another has supplied a flyer you can hand out or mail to potential watchers and supporters at http://the-janissary.com/SaveFarscape/FSFlyers.html
The same artist has provided Farscape stationary to write the Sci Fi Channel and potential new home UPN at http://the-janissary.com/SaveFarscape/FSWatermarks.html
US (only) fans can
donate telemarketing time for two weeks to help restart the show. Email
Deneba or Jul at Save Farscape: deneba@attbi.com or jul@watchfarscape.com
Save Farscape is asking all of the show's fans to participate in a gentle
and respectful response to Sci Fi's cancellation by contacting Sci Fi and
their parent network USA following these four steps:
1) Write two letters by hand (it can be the same) and send one to Bonnie
Hammer and one to Mark Stern. A short, positive review of the ep you just
saw is a great subject for this. Be encouraging, be positive, be
supportive. Schmooze. Say thanks. Remember: WE LOVE SCI-FI. They funded
Farscape for four seasons, and if they think there's money to be made,
they *will* fund a fifth.
2) Email a copy of the letter to each address below
3) Call SFC until you get through, even if it's just to leave a message.
4) Fax, if you have one available, one of the handwritten letters to each
number below.
The contact addresses are:
Bonnie Hammer, President - bhammer@usanetworks.com
Mark Stern, Head of Programming - mstern@usanetworks.com
Mailing address:
The SCI-FI Channel
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Phones:
Switchboard: 212-413-5000
Extensions = the first letters/numbers of the last name
Programming Phone: (212) 413-5821
Comment Line: (212) 413-5577
New Comment Line: 212-413-5679
Faxes:
212-413-6531
212-413-6522
212-413-6503
Other Email
addresses:
scifiweekly@scifi.com
program@www.scifi.com
feedback@www.scifi.com
series@usanetwork.com
Also read Kate O'Hare's January 4th Zap2It Interview with Farscape star Ben Browder at http://tv.zap2it.com/sciencefiction/otherworlds.html?29518
And this less than
encouraging analysis of the Farscape battle - http://tv.zap2it.com/news/tvnewsdaily.html?29572
Once again, Save Farscape is at http://www.watchfarscape.com
Official Virginia Hey Site - http://www.virginia-hey.com
Latest Save
Firefly Campaign News!
By FLAtRich
Hollywood January
10, 2003 (eXoNews) - Firefly: Immediate Assistance reports that UPN has
nixed the idea of picking up Joss Whedon's space western series Firefly.
FIA got this from a source at 20th Century Fox, the major that pays the
Firefly production bills for Mutant Enemy, Whedon's production unit.
FIA says that "while the show appealed to them, they didn't feel it
was a good fit with their current programming needs."
This seems in sync with a
recent Hollywood Reporter story that indicated UPN Entertainment
President Dawn Ostroff was more interested in rounding up ethnic middle
class viewers in the 18-to-34-year-old demographic with sitcoms like
Sydney Tamiia Poitier's "Abby" and "Supermodel," a
reality contest hosted by Tyra Banks, than trying new dramas. The initial
preview outing for Abby came in with a 2.7/4 overnight on Monday,
according to Zap2It, but failed to defeat a rerun of Smallville (at 3.4/5)
in what will be its regular timeslot on Tuesdays.
Firefly's lowest national rating was a 2.4 for "War Stories", down from its initial premiere in September at 4.0. (See http://home.insightbb.com/~wahoskem/firefly1.html for a complete breakdown of Firefly's ratings.)
FIA reports that 20th Century Fox is now aiming at selling Firefly to the Sci Fi Channel, which is also the target of the Save Farscape campaign.
FIA notes that
there should be no conflict in getting Sci Fi to host both shows or hurt
Farscape's chance for a fifth season renewal.
"We have reason to believe this is unlikely," FYI said in their
most recent email to Firefly supporters, "as our contact at 20th
Century Fox stated that they are aiming to pitch Firefly as a miniseries
or movie. This does not present a conflict of interests with Farscape,
since Farscape is seeking an entire season of episodes."
Go to http://www.fireflysupport.com/statement.html
to read a statement from the two strategy teams about how they can work to
support one another.
Firefly supporters are urged to request Sci Fi pick up Firefly by
contacting Mark Stern, the new Senior Vice President of Original
Programming, and Bonnie Hammer, the President of Sci Fi Channel, at the
following addresses:
MARK STERN
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF ORIGINAL PROGRAMMING
THE SCI FI CHANNEL
1230 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS
NEW YORK NY 10020-1513
BONNIE HAMMER
PRESIDENT
THE SCI FI CHANNEL
1230 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS
NEW YORK NY 10020-1513
FIA adds: "Please send postcards with your demographic information
(age, sex, income, number of adults in your household) ... Indicate why
you enjoy Firefly and why it would be a good fit for The Sci-Fi
Channel."
We also would like to note that postcards have proven to work better than
email in these campaigns. You can get free Firefly postcards at http://fireflysupport.com/banners.html
or make your own!
Firefly: Immediate Assistance is at http://fireflysupport.com
Dead Zone Scores
Highest in 2nd Season Premiere
By Andrew
Wallenstein
NEW YORK January 7, 2003 (Hollywood Reporter) - There's still life left in
"The Dead Zone," with the USA series notching a 3.2 household
rating in its second-season premiere Sunday.
That makes it the highest-rated second season premiere for a basic cable
drama and the most-watched cable program of the night.
Grabbing a total of
4.1 million viewers, the episode also scored a 2.2 among viewers 25-54 and
the same tally with viewers 18-49.
While Sunday's opener eked past last season's average household rating
(3.1), it didn't approach the series premiere, which scored a 4.7.
The Dead Zone Official site - http://www.usanetwork.com/thedeadzone
Buffy Summer
Harvest
By FLAtRich
London England
January 7, 2003 (eXoNews) - Hey, there, Buffy fans! Ever wonder what
really happened to Giles' almost-girl friend Jenny Calendar? If you've got
a handy transporter spell, or the airfare, you might want to fly over to
London this summer to find out.
The lovely Robia LaMorte, who played the descendent of the gypsy family
who cursed Angel with a soul, will be one of the featured guests at this
year's Harvest.
The Harvest is a Buffy Convention to be held June 20th-22nd, 2003 at the
Paragon Hotel in London. The Harvest organizers are promising Q&A
Panels, autograph sessions and fan photo sessions with their guests, in
addition to workshops, nightly discos, dealers rooms, competitions,
auctions and more.
In addition to Miss Calendar, Buffy actors who have confirmed include:
James Marsters (Spike), Anthony Stewart Head (Giles), Robin Sachs (Ethan
Rayne), Adam Busch (Warren), Tom Lenk (Andrew), George Hertzberg (Adam),
and James Charles Leary, who plays Clem the dog-eared loose-skinned demon.
(My personal favorite demon - I want a Clem spin-off!)
On the production side, Harvest will present Buffy Co-Executive Producer
& Writer Jane Espenson, Co-executive Producer & Writer David Fury,
Buffy Writer & Story Editor Drew Greenberg and authors of various
Buffy books and stories.
For all the gory details, visit http://www.s3events.co.uk/buffy
Campbell As Ted
Bundy
By Andrew
Wallenstein
NEW YORK January 7, 2003 (The Hollywood Reporter) - Billy Campbell will
play serial killer Ted Bundy in a new USA Network movie that also stars
Barbara Hershey.
Scheduled to air March 21, "Ann Rule Presents: The Stranger Beside
Me" represents the first installment of a new movie franchise
featuring best-selling author Rule, who befriended Bundy while they worked
together at a suicide hot line in Seattle.
Hershey will play Rule in the two-hour film, based on the author's book of
the same name, which chronicles how her investigation of a series of
murders eventually led back to Bundy.
"Ann is an extraordinary storyteller, and this is one of her greatest
stories," said Jeff Wachtel, executive vp series and longform
programming at USA.
The network is expected to announce the film today at the winter
Television Critics Assn. press tour in Hollywood.
"Stranger" is just the first movie to be produced under the
"Ann Rule Presents" banner. It will join the hit series
"Monk" in USA's "Crime Fridays" lineup.
"Stranger" will be directed by Paul Shapiro, who has helmed
episodes of "24" and "Smallville."
Barbara Lieberman ("Gleason") serves as executive producer. The
teleplay was written by Matthew McDuffie ("A Cool, Dry Place"),
Matthew Tabak ("Every Breath You Take") and David Erickson
("Murder in Greenwich Village").
A&E Plans
Bette Davis Bio
By Melissa
Grego
HOLLYWOOD January 8, 2003 (Variety) - A&E Network is developing a
two-hour TV movie about Bette Davis, with Susan Sarandon expressing
interest in playing the screen icon.
The picture will focus on a decade of Davis' life during the 1950s,
including the career comeback she experienced after her Oscar nomination
for "All About Eve."
It will explore her love affair, marriage and divorce from her co-star Gary Merrill.
The script will be
written by Pulitzer, Tony and Oscar-winning scribe Alfred Uhry
("Driving Miss Daisy").
A&E is expected to unveil the Davis project, along with other
programming news, during its session at the Television Critics Assn. press
tour Wednesday.
"Telling the story of someone whose life was as fascinating and
interesting as Bette Davis, one of the true Hollywood legends, illustrates
the type of quality and innovative programming that we are
developing," said Abbe Raven, A&E's executive VP and general
manager.
Mel Gibson
Developing TV Projects for CBS, UPN
LOS ANGELES January 6, 2003 (Zap2it.com) - Icon, the production company
headed by Mel Gibson, has a couple of TV projects in the works for next
season.
At CBS, Icon is working with Viacom Productions on "Chi-Town," a
drama about two sisters who are Chicago politicians, according to The
Hollywood Reporter. The project has a script commitment from the network.
Gibson and his Icon partner Bruce Davey are executive producing the
project. Nancy De Los Santos (Showtime's "Resurrection Blvd." )
and Tomas Benitez are writing the pilot script.
The UPN project is a drama titled "3 Card Monte." Details are
unavailable.
Icon is primarily a feature-film production company but has dipped into TV
a few times. The company produced the ABC movie "The Three
Stooges" and the TBS action flick "Invincible."
Superman Actor
Reeve Lands Back in 'Smallville'
LOS ANGELES January 6, 2003 (Reuters) - Christopher Reeve, the now-
paralyzed actor who soared to movie fame as Superman, will soon lend some
guidance to a young Clark Kent in an upcoming episode of the WB television
series "Smallville."
WB spokesman Paul McGuire on Monday confirmed a report by TV Guide that
Reeve will guest star in February as a brilliant scientist who provides
Clark with "revelatory insight into his superhero
destiny."
"Smallville," now in its second season as one of the WB's
top-rated shows, stars Tom Welling as a teenaged Clark Kent coming to
grips with his superhuman strength in the years before he grows up to
become a mild-mannered reporter who moonlights as the red-caped Man of
Steel.
The episode with Reeve is slated to run during the key ratings
"sweep" in late February, McGuire said.
According to the
report in TV Guide's next edition, which hits newsstands next Monday, the
Vancouver-based production will be shot in New York City to accommodate
Reeve, who was paralyzed from the neck down in a 1995 horseback riding
accident. Reeve was best known for playing the title role in the 1978 hit
film "Superman" and in two movie sequels.
As part of the deal for him to guest star on "Smallville," the
WB will run a public service announcement at the end of the episode for
the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation.
TV Guide columnist J. Max Robins quoted a "Smallville" insider
as saying Reeve is a fan of the show and has told friends that Welling
reminds him of a young Chris Reeve.
New episodes of Smallville begin next week, Tuesdays at 9PM on the WB.
Smallville Official
Site - http://www.thewb.com/Shows/Show/0,7353,||126,00.htm
Bridezilla
Reality on Fox
By Josef
Adalian
HOLLYWOOD January 7, 2003 (Variety) - Here comes the bride... Run!
That's the reaction
viewers may have while watching "Bridezilla," an upcoming Fox
special that will feature a full hour of what the network is calling
"matrimonial monsters" who wreak havoc on their loved ones as
they prepare to walk down the aisle.
The special will follow nine New York brides as they get ready for the Big
Day -- and slowly lose their grip on sanity. The hour, set to air Monday,
Jan. 27, at 8 p.m., will be filled with a mix of temper tantrums and
obsessive-compulsive outbursts as the wives-to-be use any means necessary
to ensure the perfect nuptials.
"From engagements to weddings, it's about out-of-control brides who
start out nice and become insane," Fox reality chief Mike Darnell
told Daily Variety.
Gothamites participating include a financial trader, a fashion PR director
and an interior design student.
In an interesting bit of advance recycling, "Bridezilla" is
being culled from full-length episodes of an upcoming wedding series on
cable channel WE: Women's Entertainment.
[Next on Fox: "Psycho Honeymoon" - six newly married couples
compete to murder their spouses, live on Fox. The winner gets the death
penalty and a new car, and will participate in Fox's "Worlds's
Greatest Police Chases" before being executed live on Fox's upcoming
2004 reality show, "The Chair". Ed.]
Write Fox and complain about how incredibly stupid their programming is - askfox@foxinc.com
Men Into Space
By FLAtRich
Hollywood January
7, 2003 (eXoNews) - I recently received the answer to a question I threw
out to the Beat The Geeks TV Geek in an eXoNews article . The
question being who played Colonel Edward McCauley on the 1959 TV series
Men Into Space?
The idea of the question was to point out that the self-styled expert on
Beat The Geeks was too young to truly be an expert on TV, but it was just
a joke. I know Paul Goebel is really a likeable comedian/actor who plays
that role on Beat The Geeks and he'd probably be the first to admit he
doesn't know everything.
And I admit that I was just being a wise guy.
I picked Men Into Space because it predated Star Trek and it was the first
TV show that took space exploration seriously and was therefore not as
memorable as Captain Video or Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.
I also watched it every week when I was, of course, an infant in swaddling
clothes.
I didn't think
anyone would remember the show, but I was wrong. eXoNews visitor Ned
Avejic not only knew actor William Lundigan played Colonel Edward
McCauley, but Ned even hosts a web site for Men Into Space.
So, before Paul Goebel gets on my case too, here's where to look for more
info about a show which may in fact remain the only space TV drama in
history that was not billed as science fiction.
Ned Avejic's site for Men Into Space - http://sparky.ls.luc.edu/~navejic/mis/mis-9n.html
Comedy Central's Official Beat The Geeks Web site - http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/beatthegeeks
Hey, what the hell, anybody got Tiffany Bolton's phone number? She's the
only reason us geeks watch Beat The Geeks in the first place!
