That the warrior survived the arrow’s strike for even a short time was remarkable. The triple-barbed arrowhead, probably launched by an opponent on horseback, shattered bone below his right eye and lodged firmly in his flesh.

The injury wasn’t the man’s first brush with death. In his youth he had survived a glancing sword blow that fractured the back of his skull. This injury was different. The man was probably begging for death, says Michael Schultz, a paleopathologist at the University of Göttingen. Holding the victim’s skull in one hand and a replica of the deadly arrow in the other, Schultz paints a picture of a crude operation that took place on the steppes of Siberia 2,600 years ago.

“The man was crying, ‘Help me,’” Schultz– says. Thin cuts on the bone show how his companions cut away his cheek, then used a small saw to remove pieces of bone, but to no avail. Pointing to a crack in the skull, he describes the next agonizing step: An ancient surgeon smashed into the bone with a chisel in a final, futile effort to free the arrowhead. “Hours or a day later, the man died,” Schultz says. “It was torture.” The slain warrior’s remains were found in 2003, buried with those of 40 others in a massive kurgan, or grave mound, in southern Siberia at a site that archaeologists call Arzhan 2.

To find out more about the lives and deaths of these ancient people, Schultz has spent years teasing out the secrets of their bones, using techniques like those employed at crime scenes. In April he announced the results of his research on the wounded warrior. His body, Schultz says, bore some of the earliest evidence of battlefield surgery. (Prior to this announcement, in October 2007, Schultz had reported a finding on a prince buried at the center of the Arzhan 2 mound. Using a scanning electron microscope, Schultz found signs of prostate cancer in the prince’s skeleton. This is the earliest documentation of the disease.)

The Arzhan 2 skeletons, which belong to warrior-nomads the ancient Greeks called Scythians, are part of a spectacular series of finds in remote sites in central Asia. One of the discoveries dates back to the 1940s when mummies were found in the Altai Mountains, which run through Siberia and Mongolia. Later, after the fall of the Soviet Union, when some of the sites became more accessible for excavation, the pace of Scythian-related discoveries picked up. The warrior skeleton Schultz is talking about, for example, was found on a plain not far from the 1940s discovery. More recently, other well-preserved mummies—not skeletons—have been found at altitudes of 8,000 feet in the valleys of the Altai Mountains. Still other discoveries have been made on the coast of the Black Sea and the edge of China. Together, the evidence illuminates aspects of the Scythians’ unusual culture, from tattooing warriors to creating intricate metalwork.

Never constituting an empire, the Scythians were a network of culturally similar tribes that ranged from Siberia to Egypt almost 3,000 years ago and faded away around A.D. 100. The Greek historian Herodotus describes the Scythians as murderous nomads. As for how the Scythians—who did not have a written language—perceived themselves, only their artifacts and human remains are left to speak for them.
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For Hermann Parzinger, the 49-year-old German archaeologist who excavated the tombs of the wounded warrior and the cancerous prince, the Scythians have been an obsession. Even so, he and his Russian colleague Konstantin Chugonov were surprised to find that the grave mound contained the bodies of 26 men and women, most of them apparently executed to follow the ruler into the afterlife. One woman’s skull had been pierced four times with a war pick; another man’s skull still had splinters in it from the wooden club used to kill him. The skeletons of 14 horses were arranged in the grave. More impressive was the discovery of 5,600 gold objects, including an intricate necklace weighing three pounds and a cloak studded with 2,500 small gold panthers.

After the Arzhan 2 finds, Parzinger—who until this year headed the German Archaeological Institute—was tantalized by the possibility of finding a well-preserved mummy that would give archaeologists and pathologists insights into the Scythian culture that bare skeletons never could. “High in the mountains, you can find remains in a preserved condition that just doesn’t exist in other places,” Parzinger, now head of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, says. “Instead of archaeology, it’s a kind of ethnography.”

In the summer of 2006, his search took him to a windswept plain in the Altai Mountain range that is peppered with Scythian grave mounds. Parzinger worried that mummies in the highlands may not be around much longer, as global warming reverses the chill that has preserved them for millennia. A team of Russian geophysicists had surveyed the area in 2005, using ground-penetrating radar to look for telltale underground ice. Their data suggested that four mounds could contain some sort of frozen tomb.

Parzinger assembled 28 researchers from Mongolia, Germany, and Russia to open the mounds, on the banks of the Olon-Kurin-Gol River in Mongolia. The first two mounds took three weeks to excavate and yielded nothing significant. A third had been cleaned out by grave robbers centuries earlier.

The radar data for the fourth mound—barely a bump on the plain, just a few feet high and 40 feet across—were ambiguous at best. But a thrill went through the team as they dug into it. Buried under four and a half feet of stone and earth was a felt-lined chamber made of larch logs. Inside was a warrior in full regalia, his body partially mummified by the frozen ground. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

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Researchers recovered the mummy intact, along with his clothes, weapons, tools, and even the meal intended to sustain him in the afterlife. He shared his grave with two horses in full harness, slaughtered and arranged facing northeast. Mongolia’s president lent the team his personal helicopter to shuttle the finds to a lab in the country’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. The mummy’s body spent a year in Germany; his clothes and gear are at a lab in Novosibirsk, Russia.

Before Parzinger opened his grave, the warrior had lain for more than 2,000 years on an ice lens, a sheet of ice created by water seeping through the grave and freezing against the permafrost below. The mummy “had been dehydrated, or desiccated, by the ice in the grave,” Schultz says.

Scythian mummies show signs of primitive embalming: Internal organs were removed and replaced with grasses, for instance. The combination of ice and intentional preservation resulted in remarkably resilient specimens. When Schultz shows me the mummy, housed in the same lab as the skeleton of the wounded warrior, the temperature is a comfortable 70 degrees, and sunlight streams onto its leathery flesh.

The mummy’s facial features were destroyed. But in this instance—unlike the case of the wounded warrior skeleton—the destruction was inflicted by nature. When the ice lens formed under the burial chamber, it expanded upward. “The extent of the ice was so high, the body was pressed against the logs on the ceiling and smashed,” Schultz says. The skull shattered, making facial reconstruction impossible. His chest, too, was crushed. Still, a lot can be learned. “You can establish a kind of biography from the body,” Schultz says.

He notes that the mummy’s teeth are surrounded by pitted bone—evidence of painful gum disease, probably the result of a diet rich in meat and dairy but lacking in fruits and vegetables. Between 60 and 65 years old when he died, the man was slim and just about 5 feet 2 inches. At some point he had broken his left arm, perhaps in a fall. His vertebrae show signs of osteo–arthritis from years of pounding in the saddle. Badly worn arm and shoulder joints testify to heavy use. “That kind of osteo–arthritis and joint damage is very characteristic if you handle wild horses,” Schultz says.

The clues reinforce what Parzinger and others have suspected: He belonged to the Scythians, a seminomadic culture that once dominated the steppes of Siberia, central Asia, and eastern Europe. Beginning around 800 B.C., the Scythians thundered across the central Asian steppes, and within a few generations, their art and culture had spread far beyond the steppes of central Asia.

The Scythians’ exploits struck fear into the hearts of the ancient Greeks and Persians. Herodotus wrote about their violent burial customs, including human sacrifice (which the Arzhan 2 find tends to confirm) and drug-fueled rituals. He speculated that they came from mountains far to the east, in the “land of the gold-guarding griffins.”

Archaeologists say the Scythians’ Bronze Age ancestors were livestock breeders living in the highlands where modern-day Russia, Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan intersect. Then “something changed,” Par–zinger says. Beginning around 1000 B.C., a wetter climate may have created grassy steppes that could support huge herds of horses, sheep, and goats. People took to horseback to follow the roaming herds. Around 800 B.C., all traces of settlements vanish from the archaeological record.

Archaeologists usually draw their clues from ordinary artifacts and human remains, so while the grave gold from the nomadic Scythians is sumptuous, the real prize is the ancient people themselves. A century of digging at lower altitudes and in the warm Ukrainian plains rarely yielded more than skeletons or jewelry.

In the late 1940s, Soviet archaeologist Sergei Rudenko traveled to the Pazyryk region of the Altai Mountains and made some stunning finds. Richly appointed wooden chambers contained well-preserved mummies, their skin covered in elaborate, twisting animal tattoos. Their brains, intestines, and other organs had been removed and the corpses sewn up with horsehair. The dead had been dressed, armed, and laid to rest in chambers lined with felt blankets, wool carpets, and slaughtered horses.

In 1992 Russian archaeologists began a new search for ice lenses—and mummies. Natalya Polosmak, an archaeologist in Novosibirsk, discovered the coffin of an elaborately tattooed “ice princess” with clothes of Chinese silk at Ak-Alakha, another site in the Altai Mountains. Other finds in this area included a burial chamber with two coffins. One coffin contained a man, the other a woman armed with a dagger, war pick, bow, and arrow-filled quiver. She wore trousers instead of a skirt. The find lent credence to some scholars’ suggestions of a link between the Scythians and the legendary Amazons.

In the early 1990s, just a few miles from that site, Parzinger’s partner Vyacheslav Molodin uncovered the more modest mummy of a young, blond warrior. The burial style resembled that of Parzinger’s mummy, the one found at the Olon-Kurin-Gol River whose face was crushed by ice.

Parzinger fears global warming may soon put an end to the search for Scythians. Rudenko’s dig diaries contain reports of weather far colder than what modern archaeologists experience in the Altai. “When you read descriptions from the 1940s and compare them with the climate of today, you don’t need to be a scientist to see there’s been a change,” Parzinger says.

Geographer Frank Lehmkuhl from the University of Aachen in Germany has been studying lake levels in the Altai region for a decade. “According to our research, the glaciers are retreating and the lake levels are rising,” Lehmkuhl says. With no increase in the region’s rainfall, the change “can only come from melting permafrost and glaciers.”

As the permafrost thaws, the ice that has preserved the Scythian mummies for so many centuries will thaw too. In the Olon-Kurin-Gol grave, the ice that once crushed the mummy against the roof of the burial chamber had receded nine inches by the time the chamber was opened. Within a few decades, the ice lenses may be completely gone. “Right now we’re facing a rescue archaeology situation,” Parzinger says. “It’s hard to say how much longer these graves will be there.”

Neanderthals don’t have the best reputation. In the public mind, the heavy-browed hominids are thought of as a stupid species that couldn’t compete with brighter Homo sapiens, as the also-rans that therefore went extinct. But a newly discovered trove of Neanderthal tools in Sussex, England may help rehabilitate their image. The tools, which date from the end of the Neanderthal era at around 30,000 B.C., show surprising sophistication, archaeologists say.

“The tools we’ve found at the site are technologically advanced and potentially older than tools in Britain belonging to our own species,” said [University College London]’s Matthew Pope. “It’s exciting to think that there’s a real possibility these were left by some of the last Neanderthal hunting groups to occupy northern Europe,” he added. “The impression they give is of a population in complete command of both landscape and natural raw materials with a flourishing technology — not a people on the edge of extinction” . http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

The research team announced that the collection of flint tools were found at a site called Beedings on a hilltop that may have had strategic value for the huntsmen, as it would have provided an excellent view of game herds on the surrounding plains. The tools might have been used to hunt the horses, woolly mammoths, and woolly rhinoceros that roamed the British isles at the time.

The tools themselves are more than just crude blunt instruments, Pope says. “Unlike earlier, more typical Neanderthal tools these were made with long, straight blades - blades which were then turned into a variety of bone and hide processing implements, as well as lethal spear points” [said Pope]…. Towards the end of their time in Europe, between 30-40,000 years ago (probably including the time period of British sites such as Kent’s Cavern in Devon, and Beedings), the Neanderthals diversified their tool-making, showing that they were adapting in new ways, possibly in reaction to the presence of incoming modern human populations (the Cro-Magnons) in adjoining regions of continental Europe [Telegraph].

The Beedings site has been known about for more than a century, but the artifacts found there weren’t always treated with the proper respect. Some 2,300 stone tools were first uncovered at the start of the 20th Century when the foundations were being dug for a huge new house to be built at Beedings. But for many years, the tools were considered to be fakes. All but a few hundred of them were thrown down a well and never seen again [BBC News]. The newly excavated tools lend the earlier batch credibility, as researchers can demonstrate that these tools are similar in composition and style to Neaderthal tools found in northern Europe that were made between 35,000 and 42,000 years ago.

Image: UCL/M. Pope

Tags: archeology, Neanderthals, prehistoric culture, woolly mammoths
June 23rd, 2008 by Eliza Strickland in Human Origins | 3 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >
3 Responses to “Give Neanderthals Some Credit: They Made Nice Tools”

1. Religion carved in stone. - Page 4 - Volconvo Debate Forums Says:
June 24th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

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3. Stonehenge College University - World War II Forums Says:
June 24th, 2008 at 9:45 pm

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A clump of hair that lay frozen in the Greenland tundra for 4,000 years has yielded DNA from the earliest Arctic residents, and offers clues to their origins.

Researchers have long wondered who those rugged settlers were, and where they came from. Were they part of a massive migration that swept through all of North America, or were they a separate tribe that eventually gave rise to Greenland’s present-day Eskimos?

Until now, no ancient human remains had been found in that harsh climate to allow researchers to study the genetics of those “Paleo-Eskimos.” But the new discovery sheds some light on the people, and suggests that neither of the earlier theories is correct; in fact, they were a distinct tribe that journeyed all the way from Siberia to Greenland, but didn’t stick around to populate the frozen north.

The trove of information came from an unassuming source. The ancient clump of hair looks like something you’d sweep off a barbershop floor. “It’s kind of brown, got a bit of dirt in it, a bit of twigs, but … it looks [in] remarkably good condition,” says biologist Thomas Gilbert of the University of Copenhagen.

University of Copenhagen researchers had spent months in Greenland trying to find human remains, with no success. They then learned of this hair sample, which was discovered in the 1980s in Disko Bay, in western Greenland, and was being kept in a museum collection [NPR].

Gilbert’s team was able to isolate the sample’s mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from mother to child and therefore offers a genetic marker of maternal lineage. When they compared the DNA from the hair to DNA from other populations, they realized that the Paleo-Eskimos were not genetically similar to Native Americans, but they did have much in common with residents of the westernmost Aleutian Islands and Siberia. According to the research team’s report in Science, subscription required, this suggests that the ancient Eskimos migrated from East Asia via the Bering Strait land bridge. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

But Greenland’s modern Eskimos aren’t genetically similar to those early residents either, indicating that they couldn’t last in that icy environment. Lead author Gilbert and colleagues suggest that past ancient Eskimo populations succumbed to periods of climate cooling. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
“Obviously it’s an extremely tough environment up there, and it may be that the environments got so harsh that the populations got smaller and smaller and collapsed,” he said.

Futurologists envision a world a million years from now in which the entire solar system has been turned into computronium and nanobots transform our garbage into foie gras. But in my experience, the repeated sin of futurologists is that they often extrapolate from what is new rather than from what is old. Computers and nanotechnology, impressive though they are, are things of relatively recent origin. As such, they are unlikely to be around for very long.

To find something that will pretty certainly endure into the distant future, we are obliged, paradoxically enough, to go back much farther into the past. And if we could cast a look back several million years, we would see, among other things, laughter and numbers. So we can be pretty confident that laughter and numbers will survive long after most of what we’re familiar with is gone.

The insight that old things tend to last and new things tend to disappear flows from the Copernican principle. This principle says, in essence, “You’re not special.” Before Copernicus, we imagined that we occupied a very special place at the center of the universe. Now we know better: We are on an average planet in an average galaxy in an average cluster. But the Copernican principle applies to time as well as to space. If there is nothing special about our perspective, we are unlikely to be observing any given thing at the very beginning or the very end of its existence. And that rather obvious point can lead to some interesting predictions.

Consider the longevity of the human race. If there is nothing special about the moment at which we observe our species, then it is 95 percent certain that we are seeing Homo sapiens in the middle 95 percent of its existence—not the first fortieth (21⁄2 percent) or the last fortieth (21⁄2 percent). Humans have already been around for about 200,000 years. That means we can, with 95 percent confidence, expect the species to endure for at least another 5,100 years (1/39 x 200,000) but for no more than 7.8 million years (39 x 200,000).

It was Richard Gott III, an astrophysicist at Princeton University, who pioneered this sort of reasoning. In a paper published in Nature on May 27, 1993, “Implications of the Copernican Principle for Our Future Prospects,” Gott noted that the Copernican-based calculation gives H. sapiens an expected total longevity comparable to that of other hominid species (H. erectus lasted 1.6 million years) and of mammal species in general (whose average span is 2 million years). It also gives us a decent shot at being around a million years from now.

What else might be around in the Year Million? Consider something of recent origin, like the Internet. The Internet has existed for about 25 years now (as I learned by going on the Internet and looking at Wikipedia). By Copernican reasoning, this means we can be 95 percent certain that it will continue to be around for another seven-plus months but that it will disappear within 975 years. So in the Year Million, there will almost certainly be nothing recognizable as the Internet. (This is, perhaps, not a terribly surprising conclusion.) Ditto for baseball. Ditto for what we call industrial technology, which, having come into existence a little more than two centuries ago, is likely to be superseded by something strange and new in the next 10,000 years.

Laughter and numbers, on the other hand, are good bets to survive a million years because they are two of the oldest things that are part of our lives today. How do we know this? Because we share both laughter and a sense of number with other species, and therefore with common ancestors that existed millions of years ago.

Take laughter. Chimpanzees laugh. Charles Darwin, in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, noted that “if a young chimpanzee be tickled—the armpits are particularly sensitive to tickling, as in the case of our children—a more decided chuckling or laughing sound is uttered; though the laughter is sometimes noiseless.” Actually, what primatologists call chimp laughter is more like a breathy pant. It is evoked not only by tickling but also by rough-and-tumble play, games of chasing, and mock attacks—just as with children prior to the emergence of verbal joking at age 5 or 6.

The human and chimpanzee lineages split off from each other between 5 million and 7 million years ago. On the reasonable assumption that chimp and human laughter are homologous rather than independently evolved traits, laughter must be at least 5 million to 7 million years old. (It is probably much older; orangutans also laugh, and their lineage diverged from ours about 14 million years ago.) So, by the Copernican principle, laughter is quite likely to be around in the Year Million.

Now take numbers. Chimps can do elementary arithmetic, and they have even been trained to use symbols like numerals to reason about quantity. But the sense of number is not confined to primates. Animals as diverse as salamanders, pigeons, raccoons, dolphins, and parrots have the ability to perceive and represent numbers. A few years ago, researchers at MIT discovered that macaque monkeys had specialized “number neurons” in the brain region that corresponds to the human number module. Evidently the number sense has an even longer evolutionary history than laughter. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
So again, by the Copernican principle, we can be quite certain that numbers will be around in the Year Million.

But what will our descendants’ mathematics look like? And what will make them laugh? The first question might seem the easier to answer. Mathematics, after all, is supposed to be the most universal aspect of human civilization, the part we assume would extend even to intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. In Carl Sagan’s science fiction novel Contact, aliens in the vicinity of the star Vega beam a series of prime numbers toward Earth. The book’s heroine, who works for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), realizes with a frisson that the prime-number pulses her radio telescope is picking up must be generated by some form of intelligent life. But if the aliens beamed their jokes at us instead, we probably wouldn’t be able to distinguish them from the background noise. Indeed, sometimes we can barely distinguish the jokes in a Shakespeare play from the background noise. Just as nothing is more timeless than number, nothing is more parochial and ephemeral than humor, the core of laughter—or so we imagine. We are confident that a civilization a million years more advanced than our own would find our concept of number intelligible (and we, theirs), but our jokes would have them scratching their heads in puzzlement.
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That is how we see matters at the moment. In the Year Million, though, I think the perspective will be precisely the reverse. Humor will be esteemed as the most universal aspect of culture. And number will have lost its transcendental reputation and be looked upon as a local artifact, like a computer operating system or an accounting scheme. If I am right, then SETI scientists should not be listening for primes but for something quite different.

Prime numbers—the numbers that can’t be split up into smaller factors and are thus the atoms of arithmetic—have an almost holy status today. What makes them seem transhuman to us now is their sheer orneriness. There are infinitely many of them, and they seem to crop up almost at random among the rest of the numbers. “There is no apparent reason why one number is prime and another not,” the mathematician Don Zagier declared in his inaugural lecture at Bonn University in 1975. “To the contrary, upon looking at these numbers, one has the feeling of being in the presence of one of the inexplicable secrets of creation.”

But the prime numbers are not really as transcendental as all that. They do obey a law. We just don’t grasp the law—yet. In 1859 the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann put forward what is now almost universally regarded as the greatest unsolved problem in mathematics: the Riemann hypothesis. This hypothesis holds the key to the primes’ true pattern, and once its truth or falsity is resolved, prime numbers will be rendered transparent to our understanding. How long must we wait? Mathematicians great and not so great have been trying to crack this nut ever since Riemann put it out there. “It will be another million years at least,” the late number theorist Paul Erdös pronounced, “before we understand the primes.”

The Copernican principle yields a rather different estimate. The Riemann conjecture has been open since it was first posed 149 years ago. That means we can be 95 percent certain that it will survive as an open problem for at least another four years or so (1/39 x 149) but that it will be dispatched within the next six millennia ?(39 x 149), well short of the Year Million. When it is solved, the prime numbers will finally be stripped of their cosmic otherness. We will realize that, like the rest of mathematics, they are man-made, a terrestrial artifact. They will seem about as trivial as a game of tic-tac-toe.

And how about laughter? Perhaps the best way to gauge future humor is to look at other primates: What do chimps find funny? The Central Washington University researcher Roger Fouts reported that Washoe, a chimpanzee who was taught sign language, once urinated on him while riding on his shoulders. The chimp snorted and made the sign for “funny.” Washoe was also observed playfully wielding a toothbrush as if it were a hairbrush. Moja, another of Fouts’s signing chimps, called a purse a “shoe” and wore it on her foot. A signing gorilla trained by another researcher appeared to derive amusement from offering rocks to people as “food.” Such supposed instances of simian humor (similar to the jokes of preschool children) involve the deliberate misnaming or misuse of things. They thus fit nicely under one of the three classic theories of humor, the incongruity theory, which holds that mirth results when two things normally kept in separate compartments of the mind are abruptly and surprisingly yanked together. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

But why should the perception of incongruity cause a spasm of noisy chest-heaving? Laughter has long been viewed as a so-called luxury reflex, one that serves no obvious evolutionary purpose. In recent years, though, practitioners of the art of evolutionary psychology have been more imaginative in coming up with Darwinian rationales. One of the more seductive comes from the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran of the University of California at San Diego, who has advanced what might be called the false-alarm theory of laughter. A seemingly threatening situation presents itself; you go into fight-or-flight mode; the threat proves spurious; you alert your (genetically close-knit) social group to the absence of actual danger by emitting a stereotyped vocalization —one that is amplified as it passes contagiously from member to member.

Once the mechanism of laughter was set in place by evolution, the theory goes, it could be hijacked for other purposes: the expression of contempt for out-groups (as the superiority theory of humor claims) or the ventilation of forbidden sexual impulses (the relief theory of humor). But at the core of the original false-alarm mechanism of laughter is incongruity: the incongruity of a grave threat revealing itself to be trivial—–or, as the philosopher Immanuel Kant (an advocate of the incongruity theory) put it, “the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.” Incongruity is arguably the primeval kernel of laughter. And therefore, by the Copernican principle, it is likely to be the kernel of laughter in the Year Million.

That is why I think humor and mathematics will ultimately switch places, so to speak. The transcendence that numbers seem to possess arises from mere kinks in our local understanding, kinks that will eventually get straightened out. But the essence of humor is the dialectic between something and nothing, the most universal categories of all.

And what will jokes look like in the Year Million? We will laugh when incongruity is resolved in a clever way, when a strange-seeming something is exposed as a trivial nothing—when a proof of the Riemann hypothesis dissolves the Platonic otherness of the primes into obvious tautology, and what is today regarded as the hardest problem ever conceived by the human mind becomes a somewhat broad joke, fit for schoolchildren. We might laugh even harder at the thought that the end of the universe—its disappearance in a Big Crunch or expansion into dilute nothingness—itself has the logical form of a joke.

Stack was born in Los Angeles, California but spent his early childhood growing up in Europe. He became fluent in French and Italian at an early age, but he did not learn English until returning to Los Angeles. Raised by his mother, Mary Elizabeth (née Wood), Stack's parents divorced when Stack was one and his father, James Langford Stack, a wealthy advertising agency owner, died when Stack was nine. Stack always spoke of his mother with the greatest respect and love. When he wrote his autobiography Straight Shooting, he included a picture of him and his mother. He captioned it "Me and my best girl." Stack's grandfather was an opera singer from Illinois named Charles Wood, who went by the name Modini.

By the time he reached 20 Stack achieved minor fame as a sportsman. Robert Stack was an avid polo player. He and his brother won the International Outboard Motor Championships in Venice, and at the age of 16 he became a member of the All American Skeet Team. He set two world records in skeet shooting and became National Champion. In 1971 he was inducted into the National Skeet Shooting Hall of Fame. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

Stack took drama courses at the University of Southern California. His deep voice and good looks attracted producers in Hollywood. When Stack visited the set of Universal Studios at age 20, producer Joe Pasternak offered him an opportunity to enter the business. Recalled Stack, "He said 'How'd you like to be in pictures? We'll make a test with Helen Parrish, a little love scene.' Helen Parrish was a beautiful girl. 'Gee, that sounds keen,' I told him. I got the part." Stack's first film, which teamed him with Deanna Durbin, was First Love in 1939. He was the first actor to give Durbin an on-screen kiss. As hard as it is to believe today, this film was considered controversial at the time.

Stack won acclaim for his next role, 1940's The Mortal Storm. He played a young man who joins the Nazi party. This film was one of the first to speak out against Hitler. As a youth, Stack admitted that he had a crush on Carole Lombard and in 1942 he appeared with her in To Be or Not To Be. He admitted he was terrified going into this role. He credits Lombard with giving him many tips on acting and with being his mentor. Lombard was killed in a plane crash shortly before the film was released.

During World War II, Stack served as gunnery instructor in the United States Navy. He continued his movie career and appeared in such films as Fighter Squadron (1948), A Date with Judy (1948) and Bwana Devil (1952). In 1954, Stack was given his most important movie role. He appeared opposite John Wayne in The High and the Mighty. Stack played the pilot of an airliner who comes apart under stress after the airliner encounters engine trouble.

In 1957, Stack was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Written on the Wind. He starred in more than 40 films. Known for his steadfast, humorless demeanor, he made fun of his own persona in comedies such as 1941 (1979), Airplane! (1980), Caddyshack II (1988), and BASEketball (1998). He also provided the voice for the character Ultra Magnus in Transformers: The Movie (1986).

Stack depicted the crimefighting Eliot Ness in the television drama The Untouchables from 1959 to 1963. The show portrayed the ongoing battle between gangsters and federal agents in a Prohibition-era Chicago. The show brought Stack a best actor Emmy Award in 1960. The Untouchables was a "realistic" cop show, in the tradition of Dragnet. Stack also starred in three other series, rotating the lead with Tony Franciosa and Gene Barry in the lavish The Name of the Game (1968-1971), Most Wanted, (1976) and Strike Force (1981). Interestingly, in The Name of the Game, he played a former federal agent turned true-crime journalist, evoking memories of his role as Ness. In both Most Wanted and Strike Force he played a tough, incorruptible police captain commanding an elite squad of special investigators, also evoking the Ness role. Eventually, he would reprise the role in a 1992 TV movie, The Return of Eliot Ness.
Stack as host of Unsolved Mysteries
Stack as host of Unsolved Mysteries

He began hosting Unsolved Mysteries in 1988, where his serious, ominous voice and stoic facial expressions lent an authentic gravitas to the program's dark subject matter. Reportedly, he had an enormous interest in the unexplained—psychic phenomena, ghosts and the like—because he himself had had an unusual experience of this nature. However, he also said that he valued the storytellers above the stories themselves and did not necessarily believe every case of this nature that he presented. He thought very highly of the interactive nature of the show, saying that it created a "symbiotic" relationship between viewer and program, and that the hotline was a great crime-solving tool. Unsolved Mysteries aired from 1988 to 2002, first on NBC from 1987 as specials (Stack did not host all the specials), then as a series from 1988-97, then on CBS (1997-99) and finally on Lifetime in 2001-02. Stack served as the show's host during its entire series run.

Stack had undergone radiation therapy for prostate cancer in October 2002. He died of heart failure at his home in Los Angeles On May 14, 2003.

Actress Rosemarie Bowe was married to Stack from 1956 until his death in 2003.

Stack was the great-uncle of actor Taran Killam. He is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

Rosemarie Bowe was crowned Miss Tomica and Miss Montana in 1950. In May 1951 Bowe competed in a contest to choose the queen of the sixth annual Home Show and Building Exposition. Along with Mary Ellen Nichols, she was a runner-up to the contest winner, Linda Peterson.

When she arrived in California, Bowe secured work as a model. Her measurements were 36-25-36. She is 5'5" tall and has blue-green eyes. Her modeling agency was contacted by a high fashion photographer, Christa, who suggested she pose for national and fashion magazine portraits.

Modeling for magazines such as Eye, Tempo, and Blightly, she eventually made the transition from model to actress in television. Her magazine credits include a Life Magazine cover.

Bowe's look was at times likened to both Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly. She always modeled high fashion rather than lingerie or bathing suits. She was never asked by photographers to pose for cheesecake pictures as was many a pin-up girl. She once said, "Of all the auditions and interviews I have had with casting men, directors and producers, not one ever made a pass at me. I guess they were afraid of me."

She resided in Hollywood starting in 1950. Initially she was signed by film agent Charles Feldman. When his production plans stalled, she obtained a contract with Columbia Pictures. She was trained in dramatic acting by Benno Schneider. Her early experience as an entertainer included performing as a singer and dancer in amateur musicals.

As a screen debutante Bowe appeared in Lovely To Look At (1952) with Kathryn Grayson and Red Skelton. The 16 beauties showcased include Jane Lynn, Alma Carroll, Shirley Kimball, Betty Sully, and Honey King. Bowe's part is uncredited, as is her depiction of a swimmer in Million Dollar Mermaid (1952). In 1954 she was in the casts of The Golden Mistress and The Adventures of Hajji Baba. The former was Bowe's first movie after requesting her release from Columbia. As "Ann Dexter" she was featured opposite John Agar in an R.K. Productions release, set in Haiti. During filming she almost drowned, was stung by a sea urchin with three hundred needles, and sustained bumps, bruises, and insect bites.

Bowe was under option to 20th Century Fox when she filmed The Peacemaker (1956). Based on a novel, the western also featured James Mitchell. It was released by Hal R. Makelim Productions. Announced in April 1954, the Makelim plan for producing pictures "guaranteed a flow of film products through a fixed fee system."

In 1956 she married Robert Stack. The couple became the parents of a daughter, Elizabeth Langford Stack, on January 20, 1957. They shared mutual passions for the outdoors, especially sailing and riding. Stack enjoyed skeet shooting as his favorite pastime. Rosemarie temporarily gave up her career when her children were young.

In 1970 Bowe had an automobile accident in Sacramento, California in which she sustained serious internal injuries. She crashed into a concrete culvert because of a mechanical failure in the rented car she was driving. At the time Stack was filming The Name of the Game (TV series). He chartered a flight to come and be with her. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

Rosemarie Bowe is retired from show business. Her son, Charles Robert Stack, is also retired.

Regulators are cracking down on companies that sell genetic tests directly to consumers, threatening to crimp the growth of one of the hottest sectors of the biotechnology industry.

The California Department of Public Health sent “cease and desist” letters to 13 genetic testing companies two weeks ago, telling them they could not solicit business from state residents. The companies include the early leaders in the field — 23andMe, Navigenics and deCode Genetics — which are trying to carve out a new business of offering personal genetic information for use in health and lifestyle planning.

The California action follows efforts by New York State, which has sent letters to 31 genetic testing companies since November, saying they need licenses to solicit DNA specimens from the state’s residents.

Pressure is also mounting for the federal government to take more action. A report in April by a federal advisory committee said there were significant gaps in the oversight of genetic tests that could lead to patient harm. The Department of Health and Human Services will hold a two-day public meeting July 7 and 8 to discuss regulation of personal genetic information services.

The Federal Trade Commission, meanwhile, has started investigations into possibly deceptive advertising or marketing of genetic tests, according to an agency official who spoke at a June 12 meeting convened by Senator Gordon Smith. The senator, an Oregon Republican, has been prodding federal agencies to take a stronger stance in overseeing genetic tests sold to consumers.

Yet the move to regulate the tests is raising many issues. What are the standards for proving a genetic test is valid? Must a doctor always be involved in ordering such tests to protect patients, or is that an attempt by doctors to protect their turf?

Some of the companies say people have a right to know the information in their genes and to guide their own health care.

“We think your genetic information is a fundamental part of you,” said Anne Wojcicki, a co-founder of 23andMe. The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., has attracted attention not only because of its $1,000 genome testing service but because it is partly financed by Google and because Ms. Wojcicki is married to the Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Navigenics and 23andMe say they are not offering medical testing, but rather personal genetic information services. Using a saliva sample, they scan a person’s genome at multiple points looking for variations that might indicate a person is at a higher than normal risk for certain diseases.

“This doesn’t say you have a disease,” said Mari Baker, the chief executive of Navigenics, which is based in Redwood Shores, Calif., and whose service costs $2,500. “It says you carry a genetic predisposition for the disease and should talk with a health care professional.”

But not everyone agrees with that rationale.

“We think if you’re telling people you have increased risk of adverse health effects, that’s medical advice,” said Ann Willey, director of the office of laboratory policy and planning at the New York State Department of Health.

Genetic tests that are developed by clinical laboratories generally do not require approval by the Food and Drug Administration before they can be marketed.

The laboratories themselves are regulated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Such regulation is meant to ensure that laboratories are proficient and that the tests are “analytically valid.” That means that if a test purports to detect a particular genetic variation, it does so reliably.

But critics say such regulation does not assure that tests are “clinically valid” — that having a particular genetic variation actually means a person has a disease or is at risk for one. Critics also say many tests now being sold to consumers are not backed by adequate scientific studies.

The California letters, sent on June 9 and 10, said the companies needed to have state licenses as clinical laboratories. In addition, they said, genetic tests could be ordered only by a doctor, not by consumers.

“We started this week by no longer tolerating direct-to-consumer genetic testing in California,” Karen L. Nickel, chief of laboratory field services for the state health department, said during a June 13 meeting of a state advisory committee on clinical laboratories.

Lea Brooks, a spokeswoman for the health department, said the letters were sent in response to consumer complaints about the cost and accuracy of the tests.

Most of the attention so far has focused on Navigenics and 23andMe because of their high profiles and the fact that they acknowledged getting the state’s letters. The identities of most of the other recipients were unknown until Tuesday, when the state health department posted all 13 letters on its Web site.

The other recipients include Knome, which is offering to do a complete sequence of a person’s genome for $350,000.

Also on the list were a few companies that give diet advice based on a person’s genes (and in some cases also sell dietary supplements). There were also some companies that offer genetic tests for single conditions, like the risk of baldness or Alzheimer’s disease.

The companies had until this Monday or Tuesday to respond to the agency, which will now review the responses.

At least one company that received a letter, Sciona, has stopped offering its gene testing and related diet advice to residents of California and New York. DeCode’s Web site indicates that certain calculations of disease risk will not be available to residents of New York, California and several other states. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

But Navigenics and 23andMe say they believe they comply with the regulations and are continuing to accept samples from Californians. Navigenics has stopped accepting orders from New York while its laboratory seeks a state license. But 23andMe said it continues to accept orders from New York.

Both companies say they do not need a license from California because the genome scans are actually performed by outside laboratories that do have state licenses.

Navigenics said its tests are ordered by a physician because a doctor on contract to the company reviews customer orders before the specimens are passed to the testing laboratory.

But Kathy Hudson, director of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University, said that “some doc on the payroll at Genes R Us” is not the same as a personal physician.

Dr. Hudson said it was “not surprising that the states are stepping in, in an effort to protect consumers, because there has been a total absence of federal leadership.” She said that if the federal government assured tests were valid, “paternalistic” state laws could be relaxed “to account for smart, savvy consumers” intent on playing a greater role in their own health care.

Lara Logan, the CBS News chief foreign correspondent who deplored the lack of media coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan last week, will no longer be based overseas, the network said on Wednesday. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

Ms. Logan, who has covered both wars extensively for CBS, will be based in Washington, with a new title: chief foreign affairs correspondent. The position will probably give Ms. Logan, considered a rising star within CBS News, with more airtime on the “CBS Evening News” and “60 Minutes.”

“She will still travel all over the world, but she will based in Washington instead of London,” said Sean McManus, the president of CBS News. “She will still periodically cover the war in Iraq, and she will still cover international stories.”

Ms. Logan’s guest appearance on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” on June 17 caught some viewers — and also some CBS staffers — off guard. Speaking to the host, Jon Stewart, she used colorful language to complain about how little airtime the broadcast networks devote to war reporting. CBS News recently stopped assigning a full-time correspondent to Iraq, becoming the first American network to do so. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

Ms. Logan hyperbolically described how she demands to put her war stories onto television and said she would “blow her brains out” if she watched American news coverage. As heretical as her remarks may have come across, her appearance on the show had been booked by CBS News, and executives said Ms. Logan had not been reprimanded for her comments. Her new assignment has been planned for weeks, they said.

Ms. Logan will cover foreign affairs, international security issues and United States policy, somewhat filling the role of State Department correspondent, which has been vacant for years. On Wednesday Mr. McManus was hesitant to label the move a promotion, instead calling it “an expansion of her role and an opportunity to get her on our CBS broadcasts more often.”

Ms. Logan signed a multiyear renewal of her CBS contract last winter. In an interview last week she said CBS News officials have supported her international reporting. “They wish me well, they give me whatever I need, and I’m gone,” she said.

Like any foreign correspondent, she said she would like more coverage of the world on television newscasts.

“I would like there to be more coverage of the wars,” she said. “I’d like there to be more money to have a bureau in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq. I’d like to see Zimbabwe on the air. That’s part of what my job is, to fight for those things.”

In extensive study of bird genetics has revealed so many surprises about avian evolution that researchers say textbooks and field guides will have to be rewritten. After comparing the genetic codes of 169 species researchers realized that many assumptions about bird evolution are wrong; for example, they found that falcons are not closely related to hawks and eagles, and that flamingos didn’t evolve from other waterbirds.

“With this study, we learned two major things,” said Sushma Reddy, lead author and a fellow at The Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. “First, appearances can be deceiving. Birds that look or act similar are not necessarily related. Second, much of bird classification and conventional wisdom on the evolutionary relationships of birds is wrong” .

Scientists believe birds, which first appeared roughly 150 million years ago, evolved from small feathered carnivorous dinosaurs. “Modern birds as we know them evolved really rapidly, probably within a few million years, into all of the forms we see. That happened 65 to 100 million years ago,” Reddy said in a telephone interview. Reddy said these quick changes have made bird evolution hard to pin down.

The study, which appears in the journal Science [subscription required], divides birds into three major groups: land birds, like the sparrow; water birds, like the diving penguin; and shore birds, like the seagull. But in a surprising result, the genetic analysis revealed that shorebirds evolved later, which refutes the widely held view that shorebirds gave rise to all modern birds [Telegraph]. The study also suggests that distinctive lifestyles, like hunting from the air in the case of falcons and eagles, evolved several times during avian history. In another example, researchers say that flamingos didn’t evolve from other wading birds, but instead from a land-based bird that adapted to coastal living.

The bird project was part of a larger, federally funded effort called Assembling the Tree of Life, which aims to trace the evolutionary origins of all living things, from marine bacteria to domesticated corn and Australian snakes.

1 This list is about black gold. Texas tea. Petroleum, or crude oil. Which is in no way related to the oils we eat or excrete.

2 If you are a creationist, crude oil was formed by thousands of years of heat and pressure applied to the carcasses of plants and animals that died in the Great Flood. If you’re not, you think oil comes from dinosaurs, right?

3 Wrong. Almost all oil comes from pressure-cooking dead zooplankton and algae—pond scum, in other words—which are among the oldest and most abundant life forms on earth.

4 Don’t blame the Hummers. That pond scum ultimately produced trillions upon trillions of gallons of oil. But most of it bubbled up to the surface long ago and was consumed by greedy bacteria.

5 Oil companies seek the small fraction that remains, spending more than $150 billion a year hunting for new reserves. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

6 Fashion march of the penguins: Thousands of tiny, colorful sweaters have been knit for these flightless birds, to keep them from preening themselves if they are doused in oil from a spill.

7 When you buy gasoline, you might want to make your purchase at night—it will be cheaper. Gasoline becomes more dense in cooler temperatures, and gas pumps measure gas by volume.

8 A tip for trippers: Keep your windows closed at high speeds—drag from open windows can reduce a car’s fuel efficiency by 10 percent.

9 Neatness counts too: Cleaning 100 pounds of junk from your car will get you up to 2 percent more miles per gallon.

10 Another trip tip: Instead of taking a break for lunch at a restaurant, cook food on your engine. Find out how (and get a recipe for Hyundai Halibut With Fennel) in the classic book Manifold Destiny.

11 The recipe for gasoline itself is complex. Depending on the blend, it can contain between 150 and 1,000 different chemical compounds.

12 Tighten your gas cap. A leaking or missing cap can release 30 gallons of fuel per year into the atmosphere.

13 In California alone, vapors from gas stations account for enough gasoline to fill two tanker trucks every day.

14 Speaking of tankers, that truck you’re trying to pass may be carrying 4,000 gallons of gas, which, if in a crash, can explode with the energy of 200 tons of TNT.

15 By the eighth century, a petroleum industry already existed in the Middle East. The streets of Baghdad were paved with tar derived from petroleum.

16 In oil-rich Baku, Azerbaijan, north of Iran, villagers could once dig a hole in the ground with their hands, drop in a live coal, and start a fire.

17 In the United States, when people first noticed oil, they didn’t quite grasp the energy angle. Instead they did what any industrious American would do: They bottled it, slapped a label on, and sold it as a health tonic.

18 Several hundred thousand bottles of the stuff are said to have been purchased and, perhaps, consumed.

19 Since they moved on from the health drink angle, Americans have laid down 161,000 miles of fuel pipeline in the United States. That’s more than half the distance to the moon.

20 Spies like pipelines. Engineers use a robotic device known as a smart pig to inspect pipelines from the inside. Two James Bond movies so far have made oil pipelines and pigs part of the plot: The Living Daylights and The World Is Not Enough. You will have to wait until November to see if the pattern is repeated in the next Bond installment, Quantum of Solace.

Hypnosis, ("sleep") is often thought to be "a trance-like state that resembles sleep but is induced by a person whose suggestions are readily accepted by the subject." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

The technique is sometimes used for medical purposes to relieve anxiety or otherwise improve or alter behavior. Its effectiveness has been clinically demonstrated in many areas, most notably in the area of accute pain relief. It is also used in popular stage acts in which subjects are persuaded to perform bizarre feats.

Other variations include so-called "mass-hypnosis," in which crowds are simultaneously influenced, and autosuggestion in which subjects persuade themselves. However, these phenomena are unlike those typically associated with the classical phenomena of hypnosis.

Although we can speak of a "history of hypnosis" prior to the 19th century, it should be clear that the word itself is the invention of 19th century Scottish physician James Braid. It is not clear if what is discussed as hypnosis prior to the 19th century in histories of hypnosis is in actual fact what we mean today by "hypnosis."

During the Middle Ages and early modern period, hypnosis began to be better understood by physicians such as Avicenna (Ibn Sina).

Hypnotic susceptibility is the measurable responsiveness that a person has to hypnosis. Not all people can be hypnotized, but about 10% of people respond exceptionally well.There is little evidence linking susceptibility to intelligence or personality traits, but some research has linked hypnosis to the amount of imagination in subjects. Recent research suggests that highly hypnotizable people have high sensory and perceptual gating abilities that allow them to block some stimuli from awareness.

There is a common claim that no one can be hypnotized against his will.

The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis's web site says "Hypnosis is a state of inner absorption, concentration and focused attention."

It often appears as if the hypnotized participant accepts the authority of the hypnotist over his or her own experience. When asked after the conclusion of such a session, some participants claim to be genuinely unable to recall the incident, while others say that they had known the hypnotist was wrong but at the time it had seemed easier just to go along with his instructions. (Richard Feynman describes this, in his memoir Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, as his own hypnotic experience.)

The esoteric publication Hypnotism, by Danish hypnotist Carl Septus, is an early reference work that notes the absence of the pupillary reflex sign. Septus states specifically that after subjects have been asked to open their eyes during a deep trance, light shone into the eyes does not cause pupil contraction. The hypnotist may use suggestion to keep the subject in hypnosis, but must avoid suggestions relating to eyes, visual focus, light, or the dilation or contraction of the pupils.

Hypnotherapy is a term to describe the use of hypnosis in a therapeutic context. Many hypnotherapists refer to their practice as "clinical work". Hypnotherapy can either be used as an addition to the work of licensed physicians or psychologists, or it can be used in a stand-alone environment where the hypnotherapist in question usually owns his or her own business. The majority of these stand-alone certified hypnotherapists (C.Hts in the U.S., Diploma. Hyp or DHP in the UK) today earn a large portion of their income through the cessation of smoking (often in a single session) and the aid of weight loss (body sculpting) and possibly anorexia[citation needed]. Psychologists and psychiatrists use hypnosis predominantly for the treatment of dissociative disorders, phobias, habit change, depression and post-traumatic syndromes.There is no evidence that 'incurable' diseases (such as cancer, diabetes, and arthritis) are curable with hypnosis, but pain and other bodily symptoms related to the diseases are controllable.Some of the treatments practiced by hypnotherapists, in particular so-called regression, have been viewed with skepticism.

The American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have both cautioned against the use of repressed memory therapy in dealing with cases of alleged childhood trauma, stating that "it is impossible, without other corroborative evidence, to distinguish a true memory from a false one", and so the procedure is "fraught with problems of potential misapplication".

In a lecture to the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (ASCH) during their annual conference at the State University Of New York, Dr. Milton Erickson taught the process of indirect hypnosis while Dr. Robert W. Habbick spoke of his research on the use of hypnosis in enhancing learning and reducing anxiety. Dr. Habbick explained the use of a triad of suggestions: "(a) enhancing confidence, while (b) strengthening focused interest in the work and (c) improving energy to do the studying necessary." The results of his controlled research pointed the way toward the need to apply hypnosis especially with students who have difficulty studying. In a more recent lecture, Dr. Habbick spoke in Boston to ASCH of the positive effects of using his suggested hypnosis triad with students at the Bureau of Study Council at Harvard University.

Hypnodermatology is the practice of treating skin diseases with hypnosis.

A study done at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine looked at two groups of patients facing surgery for breast cancer. The group that received hypnosis prior to surgery reported less pain, nausea, and anxiety after surgery than did the control group. There was a cost benefit as well, as the average hypnosis patient reduced the cost of treatment by an average of $772.00.

In April 2008 a professional hypnotist, Alex Lenkei, successfully hypnotised himself before having surgery on his hand and was in no pain throughout the 80 minute operation. His blood pressure and heart rate were also monitored and remained normal, indicating that he truly did not experience any pain. An anaesthetist who remained on hand believes Mr Lenkei's body may have released chemicals which blocked pain.

Michael R. Nash writes, in a july 2001 article for Scientific American titled "The Truth and the Hype of Hypnosis", "using hypnosis, scientists have temporarily created hallucinations, compulsions, certain types of memory loss, false memories, and delusions in the laboratory so that these phenomena can be studied in a controlled environment."

In his book The Hidden Persuaders (1957) Vance Packard describes research involving the behavior of housewives in supermarkets in the 1950s. Cameras were hidden to measure a shopper's eye-blink rate as she compared items. It was assumed that her eye-blink rate would increase as she performed mental calculations to determine which product was the best value. In fact, the cameras recorded an eye-blink rate which indicated that the housewife was, according to Packard, usually in a hypnotic state while shopping. This led manufacturers to produce new brands of laundry detergent in competition with their own, existing brands, where the primary differences were in the product names, colors and shapes of designs on the packages, which were designed to appeal to women at different times of their menstrual cycles. The effects of this research can be noted today by visiting the laundry detergent section of any American supermarket.

Hypnotism has also received publicity about its use in Forensics, Sports, Education, and physical therapy and rehabilitation.

Though various conjectures are made about hypnosis, the field has received significant support from the science-oriented psychology community due to research into hypnotic phenomena conducted by practitioners and theorists (Sala 1999). http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
Both Heap and Dryden (1991) and Ambrose and Newbold (1980) consider that the theoretical debates on hypnotherapy have been productive, and that hypnosis has benefited from the attentions of those involved in the controversies, and conversely, that the developments of neurolinguistic programming and neo-Ericksonian hypnosis has been characterized by gullibility and fraudulence.

Social constructionism and role-playing theory of hypnosis, discovered by Jun Zhou in the early 18th century,[23] suggests that individuals are playing a role and that really there is no such thing as hypnosis. A relationship is built depending on how much rapport has been established between the "hypnotist" and the subject (see Hawthorne effect, Pygmalion effect, and placebo effect).

Some psychologists, such as Robert Baker and Graham Wagstaff, claim that what we call hypnosis is actually a form of learned social behavior, a complex hybrid of social compliance, relaxation, and suggestibility that can account for many esoteric behavioral manifestations.

Nicholas Spanos states, "hypnotic procedures influence behavior indirectly by altering subjects' motivations, expectations and interpretations."

Pierre Janet originally developed the idea of dissociation of consciousness as a result of his work with hysterical patients. He believed that hypnosis was an example of dissociation whereby areas of an individual's behavioral control are split off from ordinary awareness. Hypnosis would remove some control from the conscious mind and the individual would respond with autonomic, reflexive behavior. Weitzenhoffer describes hypnosis via this theory as "dissociation of awareness from the majority of sensory and even strictly neural events taking place."

Anna Gosline says in a NewScientist.com article:

"Gruzelier and his colleagues studied brain activity using an fMRI while subjects completed a standard cognitive exercise, called the Stroop task.

The team screened subjects before the study and chose 12 that were highly susceptible to hypnosis and 12 with low susceptibility. They all completed the task in the fMRI under normal conditions and then again under hypnosis.

Throughout the study, both groups were consistent in their task results, achieving similar scores regardless of their mental state. During their first task session, before hypnosis, there were no significant differences in brain activity between the groups.

But under hypnosis, Gruzelier found that the highly susceptible subjects showed significantly more brain activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus than the weakly susceptible subjects. This area of the brain has been shown to respond to errors and evaluate emotional outcomes.

The highly susceptible group also showed much greater brain activity on the left side of the prefrontal cortex than the weakly susceptible group. This is an area involved with higher level cognitive processing and behaviour."

Ivan Pavlov believed that hypnosis was a "partial sleep". He observed that the various degrees of hypnosis did not significantly differ physiologically from the waking state and hypnosis depended on insignificant changes of environmental stimuli. Pavlov also suggested that lower-brain-stem mechanisms were involved in hypnotic conditioning. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

Currently a more popular "hyper-suggestibility theory" states that the subject focuses attention by responding to the hypnotist's suggestion. As attention is focused and magnified, the hypnotist's words are gradually accepted without the subject conducting any conscious censorship of what is being said. This is not unlike the athlete listening to the coach's last pieces of advice minutes before an important sport event; concentration filters out all that is unimportant and magnifies what is said about what really matters to the subject.

An approach loosely based on Information theory uses a brain-as-computer model. In adaptive systems, a system may use feedback to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, which may converge towards a steady state. Increasing the signal-to-noise ratio enables messages to be more clearly received from a source. The hypnotist's object is to use techniques to reduce the interference and increase the receptability of specific messages (suggestions).

Systems theory, in this context, may be regarded as an extension of James Braid's original conceptualization of hypnosis[32][page # needed] as involving a process of enhancing or depressing the activity of the nervous system. Systems theory considers the nervous system's organization into interacting subsystems. Hypnotic phenomena thus involve not only increased or decreased activity of particular subsystems, but also their interaction. A central phenomenon in this regard is that of feedback loops, familiar to systems theory, which suggest a mechanism for creating the more extreme hypnotic phenomena.

A peer-reviewed article on the University of Maryland Medical Center's web site says: "Although studies on hypnosis as a treatment for obesity are not conclusive, most research suggests that hypnotherapy (when used in combination with cognitive behavioral therapy, exercise, and a low-fat diet) may help overweight or obese individuals lose weight."

In 1996, the National Institutes of Health technology assessment panel judged hypnosis to be an effective intervention for alleviating pain from cancer and other chronic conditions. A large number of clinical studies also indicate that hypnosis can reduce the acute pain experienced by patients undergoing burn-wound debridement, enduring bone marrow aspirations, and childbirth. An analysis published in a recent issue the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, for example, found that hypnotic suggestions relieved the pain of 75% of 933 subjects participating in 27 different experiments.

One controlled scientific experiment postulates that hypnosis may alter our perception of conscious experience in a way not possible when people are not "hypnotized", at least in "highly hypnotizable" people. In this experiment, color perception was changed by hypnosis in "highly hypnotizable" people as determined by (PET) scans (Kosslyn et al., 2000).

Another research example, employing event-related functional MRI (fMRI) and EEG coherence measures, compared certain specific neural activity "...during Stroop task performance between participants of low and high hypnotic susceptibility, at baseline and after hypnotic induction". According to its authors, "the fMRI data revealed that conflict-related ACC activity interacted with hypnosis and hypnotic susceptibility, in that highly susceptible participants displayed increased conflict-related neural activity in the hypnosis condition compared to baseline, as well as with respect to subjects with low susceptibility." (Egner et al., 2005)

Michael Nash said in a Scientific American article: "In 1998 Henry Szechtman of McMaster University in Ontario and his co-workers used PET to image the brain activity of hypnotized subjects who were invited to imagine a scenario and who then experienced a hallucination ... By monitoring regional blood flow in areas activated during both hearing and auditory hallucination but not during simple imagining, the investigators sought to determine where in the brain a hallucinated sound is mistakenly "tagged" as authentic and originating in the outside world. Szechtman and his colleagues imaged the brain activity of eight very hypnotizable subjects who had been prescreened for their ability to hallucinate under hypnosis ... The tests showed that a region of the brain called the right anterior cingulate cortex was just as active while the volunteers were hallucinating as it was while they were actually hearing the stimulus. In contrast, that brain area was not active while the subjects were imagining that they heard the stimulus." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

Self-hypnosis (or autosuggestion) — is hypnosis in which a person hypnotizes himself or herself without the assistance of another person to serve as the hypnotist — is a staple of hypnotherapy-related self-help programs. It is most often used to help the self-hypnotist stay on a diet, overcome smoking or some other addiction, or to generally boost the hypnotized person's self-esteem. It is rarely used for the more complex or controversial uses of hypnosis, which require the hypnotist to monitor the hypnotized person's reactions and responses and respond accordingly. Most people who practice self-hypnosis require a focus in order to become fully hypnotized; there are many computer programs on the market that can ostensibly help in this area, though few, if any, have been scientifically proven to aid self-hypnosis.

Some people use devices known as mind machines to help them go into self-hypnosis more readily. A mind machine consists of glasses with different colored flashing LEDs on the inside, and headphones. The LEDs stimulate the visual channel, while the headphones stimulate the audio channel with similar or slightly different frequencies designed to produce a certain mental state. The use of binaural beats in the audio is common; it is said to produce hypnosis more readily.

Self-hypnosis is a skill that can be improved as time goes by. People use techniques such as imagining walking down 10 steps, feeling deeper relaxed as they imagine slowly walking down each step, one at a time. It is a good idea to initially seek the skills of a practicing hypnotherapist in order to understand what it feels like to be in a hypnotic trance. This greatly helps, as the individual can aim to replicate this state. Alternatively, a person may wish to use hypnosis recordings instead.

This phenomenon, as expounded by Melvin Powers in 1955, involves altering the behavior of a subject by suggestion without inducing a trance. Related to the placebo effect, a subject becomes subconsciously convinced that what they are being told is inevitable reality, for example that the air in the room will cause them to swallow. They can be convinced that a completely benign substance is actually a drug that will induce whatever effect is suggested. In order to work, the subject must completely trust the source of the suggestion or be subconsciously convinced by a calm authoritative tone.

Influencing crowds through common longings and yearnings by a demagogue is called mass hypnosis. Generally, mass hypnosis is applied to religious sessions. Many forms of music and dance can be used to create religious trance.

In addition to direct application of hypnosis (that is, treatment of conditions by means of hypnosis), there is also indirect application, wherein hypnosis is used to facilitate another procedure. Some people seem more able to display "enhanced functioning", such as the suppression of pain, while utilizing hypnosis.

Robin Waterfield writes, in his 2002 book Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis, "a person can act, some time later, on a suggestion seeded during the hypnotic session. Post-hypnotic suggestions can last for a long time. A hypnotherapist told one of his patients, who was also a friend: 'When I touch you on the finger you will immediately be hypnotized.' Fourteen years later, at a dinner party, he touched him deliberately on the finger and his head fell back against the chair."

Pratt et al., write, in their 1988 book A Clinical Hypnosis Primer, "A hypnotized patient will respond to a suggestion literally. A suggestion that requires conscious interpretation can have undesirable effects." They give the following report taken from Hartland, 1971, p.37: http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
"A patient who was terrified to go into the street because of the traffic was once told by a hypnotist that when she left his room, she would no longer bother about the traffic and would be able to cross the road without the slightest fear. She obeyed his instructions so literally that she ended up in a hospital."

In one case, a woman had experienced 10 years of fatigue, irritability, and periods of childish behavior during which her perceptions were distorted. The source of the problem was traced back to a stage performance 10 years earlier, when she was regressed to a traumatic period of her life.

From Kleinhauz and Eli, 1987:

In one case, a dentist using hypnorelaxation with a patient complied with her request to provide direction suggestions to stop smoking. The patient's underlying psychological conflicts, which the dentist was not qualified to assess, led to the development of an anxiety/depressive reaction.

From Machovec, 1987:

A woman undergoing psychotherapy facilitated by hypnosis attempted to use the procedures she had learned to relieve her husband's dental pain. During the deepening technique of arm levitation, her husband's fingertips 'stuck' to his head, and a therapist had to intervene to end the trance state."[39]

Subjects have been known to cry or suffer a mental breakdown after extended periods of being in a trance like state of mind.[citation needed]

False memory obtained via hypnosis has figured prominently in many investigations and court cases, including cases of alleged sexual abuse. There is no scientific way to prove that any of these recollections are completely accurate.

The American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have both cautioned against the use of repressed memory therapy in dealing with cases of alleged childhood trauma, stating that "it is impossible, without other corroborative evidence, to distinguish a true memory from a false one", and so the procedure is "fraught with problems of potential misapplication".

Some believe that hypnosis is a form of mind control and/or brainwashing that can control a person's behavior and judgment and therefore could potentially cause them harm. These beliefs are not generally based on scientific evidence, as there is no scientific consensus on whether mind control even exists. But there are people interested in research and funding to help work on controlling others and perfecting mind control techniques. These techniques can be researched with the scientific method and reasoning skills.

From the mental standpoint, a hypnotic subject is relaxed yet alert and always aware at some level. Some choose to think of this as a state of mind called "trance".

Due to the popular but incorrect notion of hypnosis as mind control, some people believe that the ability to experience hypnosis is related to strength and soundness of mind. However, scientists note that personality traits such as gullibility or submissiveness or factors such as low intelligence are not related to hypnotize-ability. Research studies suggest that none of intelligence, gender, or personality traits (ref: below ...overactive imagination...) affect responsiveness to hypnosis and that hypnotize-ability may in fact be hereditary or genetic in nature. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

Another misconception in popular culture is that hypnosis is often the product of vivid imaginations and that hypnotic phenomena are merely imagined in the mind. However, research indicates many imaginative people do not fare well as good hypnotic subjects. (Ref above: ...No personality traits...) Furthermore, studies using PET scans have shown that hypnotized subjects suggested to have auditory hallucinations demonstrated regional blood flow in the same areas of the brain as real hearing, whereas subjects merely imagining hearing noise did not.

It is a misconception that induction into hypnosis is time-consuming and requires complete relaxation. Hypnosis through lengthy relaxation or visual experiences is the most common form of induction, but instant inductions (2-10 seconds) is a method for induction or re-induction among stage hypnotists, as well as clinical hypnotists seeking to manage trauma or overcome anxiety and resistance. Authors John Cerbone and Richard Nongard refer to this phenomena as Speed-Trance, noting it is possible to hypnotize a subject in just a few seconds by causing confusion, loss of equilibrium, misdirection, shock, or eye fixation. However, the duration of time it takes to induce hypnosis does not always take into consideration the depth of trance that is secured.

[Due to the stage hypnotist's showmanship and their perpetuating the illusion of possessing mysterious abilities, hypnosis is often seen as caused by the hypnotist's power. The real power of hypnosis comes from the trust the hypnotist can instill in his subjects. They have to willingly grant him the ability to take over their critical thinking and direct their bodies. Some people are very trusting, or even looking for an excuse to abdicate their responsibilities and are able to be hypnotized within seconds, while others take more time to counter their fears.

In a stage hypnosis situation the hypnotist chooses his participants carefully. First he gives the entire audience a few exercises to perform and plants ideas in their minds, such as, only intelligent people can be hypnotized and only those wanting to have fun will play along. These suggestions are designed to overcome the natural fear of trusting a stranger with the greater fear of being seen as unintelligent, unsociable, and joyless by the rest of the audience. Out of the crowd he will spot people who appear trusting, extroverted and willing to put on a show. Often these people are looking for an excuse to do something they otherwise would not do sober. The hypnotist starts them off by having them imagine ordinary situations that they have likely encountered, like being cold or hot, hungry or thirsty then gradually builds to giving them a suggestion that is totally out of character, such as sing like Elvis. The desire to be the center of attention, having an excuse to violate their own inner fear suppressors and the pressure to please, plus the expectation of the audience wanting them to provide some entertainment is usually enough to persuade an extrovert to do almost anything. In other words the participants are persuaded to 'play along'. This gives the impression that the hypnotist has total control over them.

Hypnosis and hypnotherapy are common themes in literature, films and television. Frequently hypnotists are shown in a negative or sinister light.[45] In The Manchurian Candidate and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, for example, characters are compelled to commit crimes while under a hypnotic trance. Many popular figures in the media, such as Dr. Phil and Tyra Banks, have denounced hypnotism saying it is "crude" and "not believableThe United States Department
The incident occurred on August 20, 1976 when four men, Jim Weiner, his twin brother Jack, Chuck Rak and their guide, Charlie Foltz, all in their early-twenties, ventured on a camping trip into the wilderness of Allagash, Maine. The men's story is as follows:

* The first day went by without incident, however, on the their second night, they noticed a bright light not far from their campsite which they first passed off as being a helicopter or weather balloon, but later noticed it displayed a strange quality of light. Suddenly, the object imploded and disappeared. The following day, as the first, went by without incident. The men were unlucky in their fishing so they decided to try it at night. They set camp on the shore of Eagle Lake on August 20. As darkness settled, the men built a blazing campfire which they expected to burn for several hours to be used as a beacon for their campsite while out on the lake. They then headed out in a canoe.

* After a short time, Rak noticed the bright light they had seen two nights before in the distance above the tree line. He called the others' attention to it. They watched the object intently and noticed it appeared to be much larger this time and made no sound. Foltz grabbed a flashlight and began flashing an SOS.

* Suddenly, a bright beam of light shot out from the bottom of the craft and it quickly made its way towards the men. All men, minus Rak, began to paddle furiously back towards shore. Rak seemed entranced by the object as it closed in on them. Suddenly, the light enveloped the canoe and the four men.

* The next thing the men knew, they were back on shore at their campsite. They stood at the edge of the water and stared blankly at the craft, which was hovering no more than a few dozen feet from them. After watching for several minutes, the craft suddenly imploded as it had done two nights previous, and reappeared over the treetops on the other side of the lake. It then shot upwards into the sky.

* The men suddenly all felt exhausted and decided to sleep for the night. The large fire they had made only minutes previous was now a pile of burnt embers. Without much conversation following the unusual incident which just took place, the men went to sleep.

* The next morning, the men spoke little of the incident and packed their belongings to move to a new campsite. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

It would be 12 years before the incident would begin to play a pivotal role in the men's lives. The twins, Jim and Jack, suddenly began to have nightmares of being in a "medical examination room". They also dreamt of strange creatures with large heads and large black eyes. When telling Chuck Rak and Charlie Foltz of their dreams, to their shock, the twins learned that they too were having similar nightmares.

Under separately conducted hypnotic regressions, the men recalled being abducted from the canoe and being inside the craft that they had seen at Eagle Lake. While inside, they were subjected to several tests, such as urine, blood, semen, and skin samples. During these tests, the beings telepathically informed the men that they would cooperate and that they would not be harmed. Each of the men described the beings as resembling large insects with "bug-like" eyes.

Through the years, the men have described their experience through their artwork and through television and radio appearances. The men have also had several more strange experiences which they believe are correlated to the incident at Allagash. Foltz describes that he sometimes hears whispers but is unable to make out any words. He also believes he may have been abducted a second time. In 1994, he described having a strange dream of walking through a long corridor. Strangely, an ivy covered wall outside his house suddenly had a bare circular patch.

Jack Weiner has stated that, over the years, he has seen strange lights in the skies near his house.

The Allagash abductions achieved notoriety as the first well-documented, multiple abduction case. A book, The Allagash Abductions by Raymond E. Fowler, documents the incident. The incident was also dramatized in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

To this day, the men insist that their experience was, in fact, real and not a hoax.

The Earth was an inhospitable place 635 million years ago, when ice sheets that extended to the equator. Scientists have long wondered how the planet rebounded from that icy era, known as “Snowball Earth.”

Now a new study suggests that a stream of methane gas escaping from the ice brought the planet to a climate tipping point and transformed it into a lush, tropical world, in what researchers called one of the most severe climate change events recorded in Earth history [Nature, subscription required].

Paleoclimatology has become a hot field, as researchers believe that the planet’s dramatic prehistoric climate shifts can help predict the effects of present-day global warming. Since methane figures into one of the most ominous global warming scenarios, this latest study is being eagerly scrutinized for clues to our planet’s fate.

On Snowball Earth, methane was trapped in the ice sheets. But ice sheets are inherently unstable. Once they reach a certain size, they begin to fall apart. The collapse of ancient ice sheets at the Equator would have unleashed trapped methane deposits and pushed global temperatures higher [National Geographic]. Methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, then raised temperatures, leading to more collapsing ice sheets in a looping feedback cycle.

Climate researchers point out that vast amounts of methane are now trapped in the permafrost and buried in icy deposits beneath the ocean floors. This latest study suggests that a warmer climate and oceans could thaw those deposits, and allow the methane to bubble up into the atmosphere.

If global temperatures continue to rise, massive amounts of methane gas could be released from the 10,000 gigaton reserves of frozen methane that are currently locked in the world’s deep oceans and permafrost. Passing this climate tipping point would result in global warming that would be far worse and more rapid than scientists’ current estimates. … The study’s lead author suggests it could happen fast — not over thousands or millions of years, but possibly within a century.

“This is a major concern because it’s possible that only a little warming can unleash this trapped methane,” Martin Kennedy, a professor at UC Riverside, said in a release. “Unzippering the methane reservoir could potentially warm the Earth tens of degrees, and the mechanism could be geologically very rapid” [Wired News].

Kennedy’s predictions on the potential timescale of the methane release are the most alarming to date; other researchers have predicted that it would take thousands of years for methane to be released from the oceans. But most climate researchers would probably agree with Kennedy’s preventative, prophylactic advice: Keep it zipped!

In 2007, excavators of a remote site in southeastern Iran reported finding evidence of a writing system that dates back more than 4,000 years. Featuring odd geometric symbols, three baked mud tablets unearthed near the Iranian city of –Jiroft could reveal much about a sophisticated and independent urban culture that flourished between the Mesopotamian and Indus Valley civilizations. However, many scholars are skeptical about the authenticity of the finds, which they –suspect may have been planted by locals.

Archaeologists first began digging at large mounds near Jiroft in 2001 after flash floods uncovered ancient graves nearby. The team has since found evidence of a large city dating to 2500 B.C.

Then, in 2005, a worker brought Yousef Madjidzadeh, the archaeologist in charge of the excavation, a tablet covered with strange symbols on the front and back, saying he dug it up in his village a few hundred yards away. Last winter, Madjidzadeh ordered his team to dig at the spot, where they uncovered two more tablets. The three appear to show a progression: The first has 8 simple geometric signs; the second includes 15 slightly more complex signs, while the third has a total of 59 signs. The variants might be precursors to Elamite, the writing system used on the Iranian plateau in the late third millennium B.C. They could also be unrelated or, as some have said, fakes. Madjidzadeh vows to return in 2008 to uncover more tablets and silence his critics. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

From 1971 to 2006, there was a dramatic reduction in the number of feral (wild) honeybees in the US (now almost absent); and a significant, though somewhat gradual decline in the number of colonies maintained by beekeepers. This decline includes the cumulative losses from all factors such as urbanization, pesticide use, tracheal and Varroa mites, and commercial beekeepers retiring and going out of business. However, late in the year 2006 and in early 2007 the rate of attrition was alleged to have reached new proportions, and the term "Colony Collapse Disorder" was proposed to describe this sudden rash of disappearances.

Limited occurrences resembling CCD have been documented as early as 1896, and this set of symptoms has in the past several decades been given many different names (disappearing disease, spring dwindle, May disease, autumn collapse, and fall dwindle disease).[13] Most recently, a similar phenomenon in the winter of 2004/2005 occurred, and was attributed to Varroa mites (the "Vampire Mite" scare), though this was never ultimately confirmed. Nobody has been able to determine the cause of any past appearances of this syndrome. Upon recognition that the syndrome does not seem to be seasonally-restricted, and that it may not be a "disease" in the standard sense — that there may not be a specific causative agent — the syndrome was renamed. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

A colony which has collapsed from CCD is generally characterized by all of these conditions occurring simultaneously:

* Complete absence of adult bees in colonies, with little or no build-up of dead bees in or around the colonies.
* Presence of capped brood in colonies. Bees normally will not abandon a hive until the capped brood have all hatched.
* Presence of food stores, both honey and bee pollen:

* i. which are not immediately robbed by other bees
* ii. which when attacked by hive pests such as wax moth and small hive beetle, the attack is noticeably delayed.

Precursor symptoms that may arise before the final colony collapse are:

* Insufficient workforce to maintain the brood that is present
* Workforce seems to be made up of young adult bees
* The Queen is present
* The colony members are reluctant to consume provided feed, such as sugar syrup and protein supplement.

In the U.S., at least 24 different states as well as portions of Canada have reported at least one case of CCD. However, in many cases, beekeepers reporting significant losses of bees did not experience CCD, and a major part of the subsequent analysis of the phenomenon hinges upon distinguishing between true CCD losses and non-CCD losses. In a survey of 384 responding beekeepers from 13 states, reporting the number of hives containing few or no bees in spring, only 23.8% met the specified criteria for CCD (that 50% or more of their dead colonies were found without bees and/or with very few dead bees in the hive or apiary). In the US, despite highly variable anecdotal claims appearing in the media, the best documentation indicates that CCD-suffering operations had a total loss of 45% compared to the total loss of 25% of all colonies experienced by non-CCD suffering beekeepers in 2006-2007; it is further noted that non-CCD winter losses as high as 50% have occurred in some years and regions (e.g., 2000-2001 in Pennsylvania), though "normal" winter losses are typically considered to be in the range of 15-25%.

There are also putative cases reported by the media from India, Brazil and parts of Europe. Since the beginning of the 1990s, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, Slovenia and the Netherlands have been affected by honey bee disappearances, though this is not necessarily associated with CCD; Austria and United Kingdom (where it has been dubbed the "Mary Celeste" phenomenon, after a ship whose crew disappeared in 1872 have also reportedly been affected. It is far from certain that all or any of these reported non-US cases are indeed CCD: there has been considerable publicity, but only rarely was the phenomenon described in sufficient detail. In Germany, for example, where some of the first reports of CCD in Europe appeared, and where — according to the German national association of beekeepers — 40% of the honey bee colonies died there has been no scientific confirmation; as of early May 2007, the German media were reporting that no confirmed CCD cases seemed to have occurred in Germany.

The exact mechanisms of CCD are still unknown. One report indicates a strong but possibly non-causal association between the syndrome and the presence of the Israel acute paralysis virus.[Other factors may also be involved, however, and several have been proposed as causative agents; malnutrition, pesticides, pathogens, immunodeficiencies, mites, fungus, genetically modified (GM) crops, beekeeping practices (such as the use of antibiotics, or long-distance transportation of beehives) and electromagnetic radiation. Whether any single factor is responsible, or a combination of factors (acting independently in different areas affected by CCD, or acting in tandem), is still unknown. It is likewise still uncertain whether CCD is a genuinely new phenomenon, as opposed to a known phenomenon that previously only had a minor impact.

At present, the primary source of information, and presumed "lead" group investigating the phenomenon, is the Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group, based primarily at Penn State University. Their preliminary report pointed out some patterns, but drew no strong conclusions. A survey of beekeepers early in 2007 indicates that most hobbyist beekeepers believed that starvation was the leading cause of death in their colonies, while commercial beekeepers overwhelmingly believed that invertebrate pests (Varroa mites, honey bee tracheal mites, and/or small hive beetles) were the leading cause of colony mortality.A scholarly review in June 2007, similarly addressed numerous theories and possible contributing factors, but left the issue unresolved.

In July 2007, the USDA released its "CCD Action Plan", which outlines a strategy for addressing CCD consisting of four main components:

1. survey and data collection;
2. analysis of samples;
3. hypothesis-driven research; and,
4. mitigation and preventative action.

As of late 2007, there is still no consensus of opinion, and no definitive causes have emerged; the schedule of presentations for a planned national symposium on CCD, titled "Colony Collapse Disorder in Honey Bees: Insight Into Status, Potential Causes, and Preventive Measures," which is scheduled for December 11, 2007, at the meeting of the Entomological Society of America in San Diego, California, gives no indication of any major breakthroughs.

One of the patterns reported by the group at Penn State was that all producers in a preliminary survey noted a period of "extraordinary stress" affecting the colonies in question prior to their die-off, most commonly involving poor nutrition and/or drought. This is the only factor that all of the cases of CCD had in common in this report; accordingly, there is at least some significant possibility that the phenomenon is correlated to nutritional stress, and may not manifest in healthy, well-nourished colonies. This is similar to the findings of a later independent survey, in which small-scale beekeeping operations (up to 500 colonies) in several states reported their belief that malnutrition and/or weak colonies was the factor responsible for their bees dying, in over 50% of the cases, whether the losses were believed to be due to CCD or not.

Some researchers have attributed the syndrome to the practice of feeding high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to supplement winter stores. The variability of HFCS may be relevant to the apparent inconsistencies of results. European commentators have suggested a possible connection with HFCS produced from genetically modified corn. If this were the sole factor involved, however, this should also lead to the exclusive appearance of CCD in wintering colonies being fed HFCS, but many reports of CCD occur in other contexts, with beekeepers who do not use HFCS. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

Some researchers have commented that the pathway of propagation functions in the manner of a contagious disease; however, there is some sentiment that the disorder may involve an immunosuppressive mechanism, potentially linked to the aforementioned "stress" leading to a weakened immune system. Specifically, according to researchers at Penn State: "The magnitude of detected infectious agents in the adult bees suggests some type of immunosuppression." These researchers initially suggested a connection between Varroa destructor mite infestation and CCD, suggesting that a combination of these bee mites, deformed wing virus (which the mites transmit) and bacteria work together to suppress immunity and may be one cause of CCD. This research group is reported to be focusing on a search for possible viral, bacterial, or fungal pathogens which may be involved.

When a colony is dying, for whatever cause, and there are other healthy colonies nearby (as is typical in a bee yard), those healthy colonies often enter the dying colony and rob its provisions for their own use. If the dying colony's provisions were contaminated (by natural or man-made toxins), the resulting pattern (of healthy colonies becoming sick when in proximity to a dying colony) might suggest to an observer that a contagious disease is involved. However, it is typical in CCD cases that provisions of dying colonies are not being robbed, suggesting that at least this particular mechanism (toxins being spread via robbing, thereby mimicking a disease) is not involved in CCD.

Additional evidence that CCD might be an infectious disease came from the following observation: the hives of colonies that had died from CCD could be reused with a healthy colony only if they were first treated with DNA-destroying radiation.

According to a 2007 article, the mites Varroa destructor remain the world's most destructive honey bee killer due in part to the viruses they carry, including Deformed Wing Virus and Acute bee paralysis virus, which have both been implicated in CCD. Affliction with Varroa mites also tends to weaken the immune system of the bees. As such, Varroa have been considered as a possible cause of CCD, though not all dying colonies contain these mites.

In September 2007, results of a large-scale statistical RNA sequencing study of afflicted and non-afflicted colonies were reported. RNA from all organisms in a colony was sequenced and compared with sequence databases to detect the presence of pathogens. The study used technology from 454 Life Sciences developed for human genome sequencing. All colonies were found to be infected with numerous pathogens, but only the Israel acute paralysis virus (IAPV) showed a significant association with CCD: the virus was found in 25 of the 30 tested CCD colonies, and only in one of the 21 tested non-CCD colonies. Scientists pointed out that this association was no proof of causation, and other factors may also be involved in the disease or the presence of IAPV may only be a marker signifying afflicted colonies and not the actual causative agent. To prove causation, experiments are planned to deliberately infect colonies with the virus.

The IAPV was discovered in 2004 and belongs to the Dicistroviridae. It causes paralysis in bees which then die outside of the hive. It can be transmitted by the mite Varroa destructor. These mites, however, were found in only half of the CCD colonies.

The virus was also found in samples of Australian honey bees. Australian honey bees have been imported into the U.S. since 2004 and until recently it was thought possible that this is how the virus originally reached North America. Recent findings, however, reveal the virus has been present in American bees since 2002.

Some have suggested that the syndrome may be an inability by beekeepers to correctly identify known diseases such as European foulbrood or the microsporidian fungus Nosema. The testing and diagnosis of samples from affected colonies (already performed) makes this highly unlikely, as the symptoms are fairly well-known and differ from what is classified as CCD. A high rate of Nosema infection was reported in samples of bees from Pennsylvania, but this pattern was not reported from samples elsewhere.

Mariano Higes, a scientist heading a team at a government-funded apiculture centre in Guadalajara, Spain, has reported that when hives of European honey bees were infected with Nosema ceranae, a recently described microsporidian fungus, the colonies were wiped out within eight day. Higes has extrapolated from this research to conclude that CCD is caused by N. ceranae. Higes and his team have worked on this problem since 2000, and claim to have ruled out many other potential causes. Various areas in Europe have reported this fungus, but no direct link to CCD has yet been established. Highly preliminary evidence of N. ceranae was recently reported in a few hives in the Merced Valley area of California (USA). The researcher did not, however, believe this was conclusive evidence of a link to CCD; "We don't want to give anybody the impression that this thing has been solved." A USDA bee scientist has similarly stated, "while the parasite Nosema ceranae may be a factor, it cannot be the sole cause. The fungus has been seen before, sometimes in colonies that were healthy." Likewise, a Washington State beekeeper familiar with N. ceranae in his own hives discounts it as being the cause of CCD.A study reported in September 2007 found that 100% of afflicted and 80% of non-afflicted colonies contained Nosema ceranae.

The primary antibiotic used against Nosema is Fumagillin, which has been used in a German research project to reduce the microsporidian's impact, and is mentioned as a possible remedy by the CCDWG.

One of the more common general hypotheses concerns pesticides (or, more specifically, insecticides), though several studies have found no common environmental factors between unrelated outbreaks studied.

It is particularly difficult to evaluate pesticide contributions to CCD for several reasons. First, the variety of pesticides in use in the different areas reporting CCD makes it difficult to test for all possible pesticides simultaneously. Second, many commercial beekeeping operations are mobile, transporting hives over large geographic distances over the course of a season, potentially exposing the colonies to different pesticides at each location. Third, the bees themselves place pollen and honey into long-term storage, effectively meaning that there may be a delay of anywhere from days to months before contaminated provisions are fed to the colony, negating any attempts to associate the appearance of symptoms with the actual time at which exposure to pesticides occurred. Pesticides used on bee forage are far more likely to enter the colony via the pollen stores rather than via nectar (because pollen is carried externally on the bees, while nectar is carried internally, and may kill the bee if too toxic), though not all potentially lethal chemicals, either natural or man-made, affect the adult bees — many primarily affect the brood, but brood die-off does not appear to be happening in CCD. Most significantly, brood are not fed honey, and adult bees consume relatively little pollen; accordingly, the pattern in CCD suggests that if contaminants or toxins from the environment are responsible, it is most likely to be via the honey, as it is the adults that are dying (or leaving), not the brood.

One recently published view is that bees are falling victim to new varieties of nicotine-based pesticides; beekeepers in Canada are also losing their bees and are blaming neonicotinoid pesticides. To date, most of the evaluation of possible roles of pesticides in CCD have relied on the use of surveys submitted by beekeepers, but it seems likely that direct testing of samples from affected colonies will be needed, especially given the possible role of systemic insecticides such as the neonicotinoid imidacloprid (which are applied to the soil and taken up into the plant's tissues, including pollen and nectar), which may be applied to a crop when the beekeeper is not present. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

The known effects of imidacloprid on insects, including honey bees, are consistent with the symptoms of CCD; for example, the effects of imidacloprid on termites include apparent failure of the immune system, and disorientation. In Europe the interaction of the phenomenon of "dying bees" with imidacloprid, has been discussed for quite some time now. It was a study from the "Comité Scientifique et Technique (CST)" which was in the center of discussion recently, which led to a partial ban of imidacloprid in France (known as Gaucho), primarily due to concern over potential effects on honey bees. Consequently when fipronil, a phenylpyrazole insecticide and in Europe mainly labeled "Regent", was used as a replacement, it was also found to be toxic to bees, and banned partially in France in 2004. In February 2007, about forty French deputies, led by UMP member Jacques Remiller, requested the creation of a Parliamentary Investigation Commission on Overmortality of Bees, underlining that the honey production was decreasing by 1,000 tons a year for a decade. As of August 2007, no investigations were yet opened.The imidacloprid pesticide Gaucho was banned, however, in 1999 by the French Minister of Agriculture Jean Glavany. Five other insecticides based on fipronil were also accused of killing bees. However, the scientific committees of the European Union are still of the opinion "that the available monitoring studies were mainly performed in France and EU-member-states should consider the relevance of these studies for the circumstances in their country."

In 2005, a team of scientists led by the National Institute of Beekeeping in Bologna, Italy, found that pollen obtained from seeds dressed with imidacloprid contains significant levels of the insecticide, and suggested that the polluted pollen might cause honey bee colony death. Analysis of maize and sunflower crops originating from seeds dressed with imidacloprid suggest that large amounts of the insecticide will be carried back to honey bee colonies. Sub-lethal doses of imidacloprid in sucrose solution have also been documented to affect homing and foraging activity of honeybees. Imidacloprid in sucrose solution fed to bees in the laboratory impaired their communication for a few hours.Sub-lethal doses of imidacloprid in laboratory and field experiment decreased flight activity and olfactory discrimination, and olfactory learning performance was impaired.However, no detailed studies of toxicity or pesticide residue in remaining honey or pollen in CCD-affected colonies have been published so far, so, despite the similarity in symptoms, no connection of neonicotinoids to CCD has yet been confirmed.

Most beekeepers affected by CCD report that they use antibiotics and miticides in their colonies, though the lack of uniformity as to which particular chemicals are used makes it seem unlikely that any single such chemical is involved. However, it is possible that not all such chemicals in use have been tested for possible effects on honey bees, and could therefore potentially be contributing to the CCD phenomenon. Some reports indicate that organic beekeepers (who do not use antibiotics or miticides) are not affected by CCD, despite proximity to non-organic beekeepers that have been affected.

Potential effects on honey bees of gathering pollen and nectar from genetically modified (GM) crops that produce Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin have been investigated, and there is scant evidence of deleterious effects on bees visiting such crops. Corn (maize), the major such crop, is not a preferred plant for honey bees, although beekeepers who keep bees near corn fields state that "corn is an excellent source of pollen when in tassel". Cotton, the second important Bt crop, is highly subject to bee visitation for nectar (pollen is only consumed if there is no other pollen available),[58] but there is no credible evidence of toxicity of GM cotton, other than that from insecticides used during bloom.

The Sierra Club Genetic Engineering Committee recently published a letter to Senator Thomas Harkin on the web. They are of the opinion that "highly respected scientists believe that exposure to genetically engineered crops and their plant-produced pesticides merit serious consideration as either the cause or a contributory factor to the development and spread of CCD." Nine literature references which might support this theory are cited.

The primary effect of Bt on insects is in the larval stage. Thus the studies on Bt-toxins and effects on honey bees originally concentrated more on larvae and their development. However, as pollen is an important part of bee bread, which is also food for adult bees, some beekeepers think that adult bees may be more affected by ingredients of pollen, because adult bees are something like a filter for larvae. And as the CCD phenomenon involves the disappearance of the adult bees, some think there could be a direct connection despite the absence of symptoms in the larvae, and despite any evidence that the bees experiencing CCD have ever been exposed to GM crops.

In 2005, Bt maize, which has been commercially planted in the U.S. since 1996, accounted for 35% (106,400 km²) of the total U.S. maize plantings. GM insect-resistant Bt cotton has also been grown commercially in the U.S. since 1996, and by 2005, was planted on 52% (28,000 km²) of total cotton plantings.[60] According to David Hackenberg, former president of the American Beekeeping Federation, and who has been leading the publicizing of information concerning CCD, "beekeepers that have been most affected so far have been close to corn, cotton, soybeans, canola, sunflowers, apples, vine crops and pumpkins", though he personally attributes CCD to neonicotinoid pesticides applied to these crops.[40] Thus, some Bt plants may have been visited by honey bees that later exhibited CCD. However, similar massive bee die-offs (or disappearances) have been recorded for decades prior to the introduction of these crops,[6] and also "have occurred in Europe and areas of Canada where Bt crops were not grown."[61] According to the European Union's GMO Compass, Bt maize is grown in Spain, France, Czech Republic, Portugal, Germany and Slovakia [4][5]. Various documents relating to U.S. risk assessment studies on Bt in relation to honey bees are published on the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) homepage for Biopesticides Registration Action Documents;[62][63][64] there is no indication that any of these studies found effects of Bt pollen on honey bees.

In 2004, the knowledge of GMO authorization agencies was mainly based on a comprehensive review of the scientific literature published in Bee World[65] which examined the effects of various commercialized and uncommercialized transgenes on honey bees. The review concludes that "evidence available so far shows that none of the GM plants currently commercially available have significant impacts on honey bee health." However, in 2005 a new publication in the Journal Apidologie[66] indicated that foraging activity of bees fed with CRY1Ab may decline continuously through the treatment stages without any recovery between treatments (though in the treatment with CRY1Ab-enriched feed, no significant differences in bee mortality were found at different treatment stages). The European Union GMO Panel of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) did not share the view by the authors “that the above results were mainly CRY1Ab dependent.” The Panel was of the opinion that “negative effects on bees are likely not directly associated with exposure to the CRY1Ab protein because of the design of the experiment and lack of simultaneous controls or replication. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

A research study conducted in Germany suggested that rather than having a direct effect, exposure to Bt maize pollen may weaken the adult bees' defense against Nosema, though in the absence of such an infection, there were no detectable effects: "When the trial was repeated the colonies were treated prophylactically with antibiotics to prevent re-infection…This indicates that healthy bee colonies are not impaired in any way by the toxin in any of the tested vital functions of colony size, foraging activity, brood care activity or development, even when exposed to extreme levels of Bt maize pollen over a period of six weeks."[68] However, if "the bee colonies happened to be infested with parasites (microsporidia), this infestation led to a reduction in the number of bees and subsequently to reduced broods.... This effect was significantly more marked in the Bt-fed colonies." It has further been suggested that "genetically modified corn may have altered the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry—or perhaps it was the other way around", though it was also noted "Of course, the concentration of the toxin was ten times higher in the experiments than in normal Bt corn pollen. In addition, the bee feed was administered over a relatively lengthy six-week period."[69] Other more recent studies have failed to show any adverse effects of Bt pollen on healthy bee colonies,[61] but the possibility that Bt pollen weakens already unhealthy colonies has not been explored. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

The preliminary report of the Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group[6] concerning "Fall Dwindle Disease"[14] indicated that "all PA samples were found to have Nosema spores in their rectal contents. The sting gland of many examined bees was obviously scarred with distinct black “marks”; this type of pin-point melanization or darkening is indicative of an immune response to some sort of pathogen." If the bees in Pennsylvania were gathering Bt-toxin-containing corn pollen, it could potentially have interacted with Nosema and thus contributed to CCD in those colonies; however, there is no evidence that these colonies were gathering corn pollen at any point prior to their deaths, nor has it been reported that colonies afflicted by CCD elsewhere had been collecting corn pollen. Many of the colonies reported to be dying from CCD occur in locations where GM corn is not grown (at least in the United States; also, 5 of the 10 states with the greatest amount of corn production, including GM corn -- Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska -- have had no reported cases of CCD[16][13]), nor have bees from other areas outside of Pennsylvania been reported to be significantly infected by Nosema (e.g.,[14]).

In 2006 the "Committee on Status and Trends of Pollinators" of the United States National Research Council published a report on the "Status of Pollinators in North America".[70] It suggested that GMO, besides other factors, might contribute to pollinator decline because, according to one scientific review of "the small literature on this topic, ... in some cases, there are negative but sublethal effects attributable to consumption of transgenic pollens." The report goes on to say that, "These effects varied with the identity of the transgene and the amount of its expression, but in no case have any effects of transgenic crops on honey bee populations been documented."[71]

On March 28, 2007, the "Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium"[72] published a new "Summary of Research on the Non-Target Effects of Bt Corn Pollen on Honeybees", which states that according to "a field study… (soon to be published in the bee journal Apidologie) there is no evidence thus far of any lethal or sub-lethal effects of the currently used Bt proteins on honey bees", and, specifically regarding the possible causal connections between Bt pollen and CCD, stated "While this possibility has not been ruled out, the weight of evidence reported here argues strongly that the current use of Bt crops is not associated with CCD."[61]

Bee rentals and migratory beekeeping

Further information: Beekeeping

Moving spring bees from South Carolina to Maine for blueberry pollination
Moving spring bees from South Carolina to Maine for blueberry pollination

Since US beekeeper Nephi Miller first began moving his hives to different areas of the country for the winter of 1908, migratory beekeeping has become widespread in America.

Bee rental for pollination is a crucial element of US agriculture, which could not produce anywhere near its current levels with native pollinators alone.[73] US beekeepers collectively earn much more from renting their bees out for pollination than they do from honey production.

Researchers are concerned that trucking colonies around the country to pollinate crops, where they intermingle with other bees from all over, helps spread viruses and mites among colonies. Additionally, such continuous movement and re-settlement is considered by some a strain and disruption for the entire hive, possibly rendering it less resistant to all sorts of systemic disorder.[74]

US bee rental travel extent

One major US beekeeper reports moving his hives from Idaho to California in January, then to apple orchards in Washington in March, to North Dakota two months later, and then back to Idaho by November -- a journey of several thousand kilometres. Others move from Florida to New Hampshire or to Texas; nearly all visit California for the almond bloom in January.

Beekeepers in Europe and Asia are generally far less mobile, with bee populations moving and mingling within a smaller geographic extent (although some keepers do move longer distances, it is much less common).

This wider spread and intermingling in the US has resulted in far greater losses from Varroa mite infections in recent years.[75]

Climate change

Some beekeepers think the culprit may be climate change, in which the earth as a whole is warming but regional and local temperatures may drop much lower or rise higher than normal. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

"Erratic weather patterns caused by global warming could play havoc with bees’ sensitive cycles. A lot of northeastern U.S. beekeepers say a late cold snap is what did the damage to them this year" [6]. Indeed an unusually dry and warm winter prevented the flowering of many plants, "If there is not a common thread, such as a pathogen seen in many of the affected colonies, Professor Eric Mussen of UC Davis said he is convinced that a nutritional deficit helps explain how the honeybees were weakened by the smorgasbord of potential causes of death. That is because dry conditions, certainly in California, did not produce flowers in which bees find their required mix of pollens, he said ... 'In many situations the bees were weakened by not being able to get a nice mix of nutrients that they needed from the pollens, and I think that weakened them,' he said. 'Under those circumstances you can take all the other (causes), and there are plenty of them, and combine them together and down go the bees'" [7].

"Dry conditions in many parts of the country last fall reduced good nectar flow, so fewer good fall pollens were taken into colonies. 'Bees rely on fall pollens to rear a brood and take them through the winter. It was a hard fall, followed by a warm winter, and bees were out flying. There weren’t any resources (food) out there, so the bees were burning up flight muscles'" [8]. "Well, you get this blast of hot temperature, which is about the time the flower buds are forming and the pollen grains are beginning to form. What does that do? You get sterile pollen. A beekeeper could look into the hive and say, "I've got all kinds of pollen in there and the bees disappeared." Well, right, you've got pollen grains, but do they have any nutrition in them? ... I think something happened at the end of last year in many places in the temperate climate around the world, not just here, and fouled up the bees' food supply. Unless somebody tells me differently, I'm blaming it on the weather ... for whatever reason, we are beginning to kind of move into a cycle where we are going to find more extremes than we used to have. The droughts may be hotter and longer, the storms and floods may be more severe. Things aren't going to be so nice in the future" [9]. In fact the first half of 2006 was the warmest on record in U.S.[10].

Some say that flowers are blooming earlier than in the past, "Climate change and earlier springs have also taken a toll. Plants like red maples and pussy willows, typically the first pollen sources for honeybees, have been blossoming weeks before the bees can fly in the spring, Conrad [author of Natural Beekeeping] said, so they miss out on that important source of pollen" [11]. Wayne Esaias, a NASA climatologist and beekeeper has been keeping tabs on the possible connection [12][13]. See also Bees, Pollination and Climate Change: A Guide to Selected Resources.

Electromagnetic radiation

Further information: Electromagnetic radiation and Mobile phone radiation and health

In April 2007, news of a University of Landau study appeared in major media, beginning with an article in The Independent that stated that the subject of the study was mobile phones and had related them to CCD.[76] Cellular phones were implicated by other media reports, but were in fact not covered in the study, and the researchers have since emphatically disavowed any connection between their research, cell phones, and CCD, specifically indicating that the Independent article had misinterpreted their results and created "a horror story".[77][78][79]

The 2006 University of Landau pilot study was looking for non-thermal effects of radio frequency ("RF") on honey bees (Apis mellifera carnica) and suggested that when bee hives have DECT cordless phone base stations embedded in them, the close-range electromagnetic field ("EMF") may reduce the ability of bees to return to their hive; they also noticed a slight reduction in honeycomb weight in treated colonies.[80] In the course of their study, one half of their colonies broke down, including some of their controls which did not have DECT base stations embedded in them. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

The team's 2004 exploratory study on non-thermal effects on learning did not find any change in behavior due to RF exposure from the DECT base station operating at 1880-1900 MHz.[81]

Like the links to CCD from variants (herbicides, genetically modified crops, etc), the link of either cordless or cellular phones, cell towers, interference by the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) or Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN) to CCD is speculative.

Possible effects

The phenomenon is particularly important for crops such as almond growing in California, where honey bees are the predominant pollinator and the crop value in 2006 was $1.5 billion. In 2000, the total U.S. crop value that was wholly dependent on honey bee pollination was estimated to exceed $15 billion.[82]

Honey bees are not native to the Americas, therefore their necessity as pollinators in the US is limited to strictly agricultural/ornamental uses, as no native plants require honey bee pollination, except where concentrated in monoculture situations—where the pollination need is so great at bloom time that pollinators must be concentrated beyond the capacity of native bees (with current technology).

They are responsible for pollination of approximately one third of the United States' crop species, including such species as almonds, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers and strawberries. Many but not all of these plants can be (and often are) pollinated by other insects in small holdings in the U.S., including other kinds of bees, but typically not on a commercial scale. While some farmers of a few kinds of native crops do bring in honey bees to help pollinate, none specifically need them, and when honey bees are absent from a region, there is a presumption that native pollinators may reclaim the niche, typically being better adapted to serve those plants (assuming that the plants normally occur in that specific area).

However, even though on a per-individual basis, many other species are actually more efficient at pollinating, on the 30% of crop types where honey bees are used, most native pollinators cannot be mass-utilized as easily or as effectively as honey bees—in many instances they will not visit the plants at all. Beehives can be moved from crop to crop as needed, and the bees will visit many plants in large numbers, compensating via sheer numbers for what they lack in efficiency. The commercial viability of these crops is therefore strongly tied to the beekeeping industry.

Remedies

As of March 1, 2007 MAAREC offers the following tentative recommendations for beekeepers noticing the symptoms of CCD:[39]

1. Do not combine collapsing colonies with strong colonies.
2. When a collapsed colony is found, store the equipment where you can use preventive measures to ensure that bees will not have access to it.
3. If you feed your bees sugar syrup, use Fumagillin.
4. If you are experiencing colony collapse and see a secondary infection, such as European Foulbrood, treat the colonies with Terramycin, not Tylan. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

The Philippine Tarsier (Tarsius syrichta), known locally as the Mawmag in Cebuano/Visayan, is an endangered tarsier species endemic to the Philippines. It is found in the southeastern part of the archipelago, particularly in the provinces of Bohol, Samar, Leyte, and Mindanao, Philippines.Its name is derived from its elongated "tarsus" or ankle bone.

Its geographic range also includes Maripipi Island, Siargao Island, Basilan Island and Dinagat Island.Tarsiers have also been reported in Sarangani, although they may be different subspecies. Believed to be about 45 million years old,[5] and perhaps one of the oldest land species to continuously live in the Philippines, it was only introduced to western biologists in the 18th century.

The Philippine Tarsier is a tiny animal, measuring about 4 to 6 inches (15 cm) in height. The small size makes it difficult to spot. The average mass for males is around 134 grams, and for females, around 117 grams. The average adult is about the size of a human fist and will fit very comfortably in the human hand.

Like all tarsiers, the Philippine Tarsier's eyes are fixed in its skull; they cannot turn in their sockets. Instead, a special adaptation in the neck allows its round head to be rotated 180 degrees. The large membranous ears are mobile, appearing to be almost constantly moving, allowing the tarsier to hear any movement. It has uniquely large eyes (disproportionate to its head and body), which are listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest eyes on any mammal. These huge eyes provide this nocturnal animal with excellent night vision. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

The Philippine Tarsier has thick and silky fur which is colored gray to dark brown. The thin tail, usually used for balance, is naked or bald except for a tuft of hair at the end, and is about twice the body length. Its elongated "tarsus," or ankle bone, which gives the tarsier its name, allows it to jump at least three meters from tree to tree without having to touch the ground.[8] Its long digits are tipped with rounded pads that allow T. syrichta to cling easily to trees and to grip almost any surface. The thumb is not truly opposable, but the first toe is. All of the digits have flattened nails, except for the second and third toes, which have sharp claws specialized for grooming.

The dental formula is 2:1:3:3 in the upper jaw and 1:1:3:3 in the lower jaw, with relatively small upper canines.

The Philippine Tarsier, as its name suggests, is endemic to the Philippine archipelago. Tarsius syrichta populations are generally found in the southeastern part of the archipelago. Established populations are present particularly on the islands of Bohol, Samar, Leyte and Mindanao. They have also been found on various isolated islands within its known range, such as Maripipi Island, Siargao Island, Basilan Island and Dinagat Island

The Philippine Tarsier's habitat is the second growth, secondary forest, and primary forest from sea level to 700 m. Its habitat also include tropical rainforest with dense vegetation and trees that offer it protection like tall grasses, bushes and bamboo shoots.

Research findings also show that the Philippine Tarsier prefer dense, low-level vegetation in secondary forests, with perching sites averaging 2 meters above the ground.

Initial studies show that the Philippine Tarsier appears to have a home range of 1 to 2 hectares.Recent research shows that home ranges averaged 6.45 hectares for males and 2.45 hectares for females (MCP and Kernel 95%), allowing for a density of 16 male and 41 female tarsiers per 100 ha.

Research findings also show that while both male and female tarsiers are solitary animals, they cross each other's paths under the cover of nightfall as they hunt for prey. They travel up to one and a half kilometres across the forest and the optimal area is more than six hectares.

Besides human hunters, feral cats banished from nearby communities are the species' main predators, though some large birds are known to prey on it as well. Because of its nocturnal and arboreal habits, the Philippine Tarsier is most likely to fall prey to owls, or to small carnivores which it can encounter in its canopy homes.

The Philippine Tarsier is carnivorous. Primarily insectivorous, its diet consists of live insects and it has also been observed to feed on spiders, small crustaceans, and small vertebrates such as small lizards and birds. Tarsius syrichta preys on live insects, particularly crickets and grasshoppers. Upon seizing its prey, the tarsier carries it to its mouth using both hands.

As predators, the Philippine Tarsier may help to structure insect communities. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
To the extent that it is preyed upon by other animals, it may impact predator populations.

The Philippine Tarsier is a shy nocturnal animal that leads a mostly hidden life, asleep during the day and only active to look for food during the night. During the day, it sleeps in dark hollows close to the ground, near the trunks of trees and shrubs deep in the impenetrable bushes and forests. They only become active at night, and even then, with their much better sight and amazing ability to maneuver around trees, are very well able to avoid humans.

It is arboreal and is a vertical clinger and leaper, habitually clinging vertically to trees and are capable of leaping from branch to branch.

The Philippine Tarsier is solitary. However, it is found to have either monogamous or polygamous mating system.

The Philippine Tarsier uses varied means of communication. Although less vocal than many primate species, it uses calls which are often associated with territorial maintenance and male-female spacing.Its "loud call" is a loud piercing single note. When content, it emits a sound similar to a soft sweet bird-like twill. And when several tarsiers come together, they have a chirping, locust-like sound.

Its vocal communication is the distress call made by infants when they are separated from their mothers. It is also the call made by males to their mates during mating season. Its olfactory communication is the marking of a scent from the circumoral gland which the female uses to mark her mate with the gland located around the mouth. It is also the marking of a male's territory with the use of urine. Its tactile communication is the social grooming done when one tarsier grooms the other, removing dead skin and parasites, observed in females on adult males, as well as in females on their offspring.

The Philippine Tarsier's pregnancy or gestation period lasts about 6 months. The female's estrous cycle lasts 25-28 days. Mating season begins in April to May. The males "plug" the female’s vagina after intercourse. The female gives birth to one offspring per gestation. The infant is born with a lot of hair and born with its eyes open. The females carry their infants in their mouth. A new born can already cling to branches and in less than a month after birth, it can start leaping.

The Philippine Tarsier reproduces poorly in captivity.

The Philippine Tarsier has been called "the world's smallest monkey" or "smallest primate" by locals before. However, the Philippine Tarsier is neither a monkey nor the smallest primate. It is related to other primates, including monkeys, lemurs, gorillas and humans but it occupies a small evolutionary branch between the strepsirrhine prosimians, and the haplorrhine simians. While it is a prosimian, and used to be grouped with the rest of the prosimians, it has some phylogenetic features that caused scientists to classify it as a haplorrhine and, therefore, more closely related to apes and monkeys than to the other prosimians.

The smallest primate is the Pygmy Mouse Lemur while the smallest monkey is the Pygmy Marmoset. Nevertheless, the Philippine Tarsier is still one of the smallest primates, and is considered to be the mammal with the biggest eyes.

Although the species is believed to be about 45 million years old, and is perhaps one of the oldest land species to continuously live in the Philippines, it was only introduced to Western biologists in the 18th century through the description given to J. Petiver by the missionary J.G. Camel of an animal said to have come from the Philippines. Petiver published Camel's description in 1705 and named the animal Cercopithecus luzonis minimus which was the basis for Linnaeus' (1758) Simia syrichta and eventually Tarsius syrichta, the scientific name it is known at present. Among the locals, the tarsier is known as "mamag", "mago", "magau", "maomag", "malmag" and "magatilok-iok".

According to records of the Philippine Tarsier Foundation, three subspecies are presently recognized: Tarsius syrichta syrichta from Leyte and Samar, Tarsius syrichta fraterculus from Bohol and Tarsius syrichta carbonarius from Mindanao. The IUCN taxonomic notes lists two subspecies but that the non-nominate one is poorly defined as present, so the species is treated as a whole. Tarsius syrichta carbonarius and Tarsius s. fraterculus: Hill (1955) recognized these taxa as weakly defined subspecies. Niemitz (1984) found the differences to be insignificant based upon comparisons with museum specimens. Musser and Dagosto (1987) felt that the available museum specimens were insufficient to resolve the issue, but mentioned that Heaney felt that a single male tarsier from Dinagat might be distinct. Groves (2001) did not recognize subspecies of T. syrichta

There is no known negative impact of the Philippine Tarsier on humans, just as long as it is in its native environment. However, when kept as pets, there is a possibility that the species may spread worms and other parasites to their human owners.

Tarsiers used to be kept as pets or sold for trade, although their survival in captivity is erratic due to their need for live insects upon which to feed. Scientists are interested in these animals because of their unique taxonomic position, and study of tarsiers may aid human economies.

In 1986, the Philippines Tarsier was assessed as "Endangered" by the IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre 1986. It was still assessed as "Endangered" by the IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre in 1988, as well as in 1990 (IUCN 1990). In 1996, it was assessed as "Lower Risk/conservation dependent" by Baillie and Groombridge (1996).

On September 13, 1991, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), per DENR Administrative Order Number 48 or DAO 48, listed the Philippine Tarsier as an endangered species: species and subspecies of wildlife whose populations are in danger of extinction and whose survival is unlikely if the causal factors continue operating.

The Philippine Tarsier is listed in Appendix II of CITES,and the U.S. ESA classifies it as threatened. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

In 2000, the IUCN, having continuously listed the Philippine Tarsier as endangered, further assessed the Tarsius syrichta in its red list category and criteria as "Data Deficient" (DD) which means that there is inadequate information to make a direct or indirect assessment of its risks of extinction based on its distribution and/or population status. Further, it basically means that it is not known how close the species is to extinction or if it is a lower risk.

Being classified as such, the sale and trade of the species is prohibited. In addition, research on the species, particularly those using invasive techniques, is controlled by the DENR Environment Management Bureau (DENR-EMB) and requires Environmental Compliance Certificate/Environmental Impact Statement or ECC/EIS.

For the past 45 million years, tarsiers have inhabited rainforests around the world, but now they only exist on a few islands in the Philippines, Borneo and Indonesia.[13] In Bohol, the Philippine Tarsier was a common sight in the southern part of the island until the 1960s. Since then, the number has dwindled to as few as an estimated 1000 still left in the wild.[citation needed] Once protected by the humid rainforests and mist-shrouded hills, these mysterious primates struggle to survive as their home is cleared for crop growing.

Due to the quickly growing human population, which causes more and more forests to be converted to farmland, housing areas and roads, the place where the Philippine Tarsier can live its secluded life is disappearing.

Along this line, the dwindling of Philippine forests has posed a grave and significant threat to the survival of the Philippine Tarsier because this results in the destruction of its natural forest habitat. Indiscriminate and illegal logging, cutting of trees for firewood, "kaingin" or slash and burn method of agriculture, urbanization patterns have encroached on the habitats of the tarsier, causing the tarsier to be threatened or endangered.

In addition, the unabated hunting of the species by humans for house pets or for trade has contributed to its decline. Hunting tarsiers to sell as pets was until recently, a thriving industry. Because of its adorable and benign appearance, many have been lured to keep the Philippine Tarsier as pets. This demand fuels the capture and illegal trade of the animal further diminishing its remaining number.[citation needed] Moreover, the life span is 24 years when living in the wild, but only 12 when in cages and taken care of by people. It is also known to die from psychological damage when around humans because its instinct is to be out in the wild. Moreover, its reduced life span in captivity is due to the fact that it is easily distressed by being displayed and physically handled during the day contrary to its natural biological rhythm.[citation needed]

Hunters and poachers are also big threats; not only do they kill the Philippine Tarsier, but they capture them too. Tarsiers rarely live long in captivity. It has been reported that some tarsiers were so traumatized by captivity that they committed suicide by beating their heads against the cages or drowning themselves on the drinking bowls.

Paradoxically, indigenous superstition coupled with relatively thick rainforest, particularly in Sarangani province, have apparently preserved this endangered species. Indigenous tribes leave the Philippine Tarsiers in the wild because they fear that these animals could bring bad luck. One belief passed down from ancient times is that they are pets belonging to spirits dwelling in giant fig trees, known as belete trees. If someone harms a tarsier they need to apologise to the spirits of the forest, or it’s thought they will encounter sickness or hardship in life.

Several legislations have been passed to protect and conserve the Philippine Tarsier. DENR Administrative Order No. 38, Series of 1991 (DAO No. 38) included the Philippine Tarsier among the national protected wildlife species and proposed its listing under Appendix 1 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). More over, the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group had given the species Conservation Priority Rating 4, which means that the species is highly vulnerable and threatened by habitat destruction and/or hunting.

Proclamation 1030 was signed by then President of the Philippines Fidel V. Ramos on June 23, 1997, declaring the Philippine Tarsier a specially protected faunal species. The Proclamation contains that since the Philippine Tarsier, endemic to the Philippines, offers immense ecological, aesthetic, educational, historical, recreational and scientific value to the country and to the Filipino people, it is a matter of national concern since it forms part of the Philippine heritage. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
The Proclamation thus prohibits the hunting, killing, wounding, taking away, or possession of the Philippine Tarsier, but that possession for educational, scientific, conservation-centered research purposes may be allowed upon certification of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary. Further, the DENR is also tasked to collaborate with other concerned government agencies, NGOs, local government units and local communities in the conduct of accelerated and expanded field researches and to avail of financial support and technical cooperation from local and international entities, as may be deemed necessary to implement the provisions of the Proclamation.

Republic Act No. 7586, otherwise known as the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) Act of 1991 mandates the establishment of appropriate sanctuaries to preserve and protect the Philippine Tarsier.

There are also legislations at the other local level, including Provincial ordinances and proclamations (Bohol Province), Municipal Ordinances (Corella), Barangay Ordinances (Canapnapan, etc.).

On July 30, 2001, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Republic Act No. 9147 otherwise known as the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act that provided for the conservation and protection of wildlife resources and their habitats, including the Philippine Tarsier, and its inclusion as a flagship species.

Conserving biological diversity involves tools like the protection of natural or semi-natural ecosystems, the restoration and rehabilitation of degraded lands, and ex-situ conservation techniques. In-situ conservation is the maintenance of plant and animal genetic material in their natural habitat. The aim of in-situ conservation is to allow the population to maintain itself within the community of which it forms part and in the environment to which it is adapted so that it has the potential for continued evolution.Protected areas are among the most valuable in situ conservation tool and cost-effective means for preserving genes, species, and habitats and for maintaining various ecological processes of importance to humanity. They are set aside to conserve species that cannot be preserved ex-situ and wild crop relatives. The protected areas system maintain species diversity by protecting the range of different community types and by allowing for changes in species' distributions. They do this by protecting the diversity of physical environments containing a range of situations to allow organisms to adjust their local distribution in response to climate change and linking corridors of natural and modified environments, which will allow species to change their continental distributions.

Reforestation attempts to restore deforested areas using indigenous tree species are more consistent with biodiversity conservation strategies such as protected area management and natural regeneration. This allows for enhanced forest ecological services such as watershed functions, wildlife habitat, and maintenance. As a result, local biodiversity is protected and rehabilitated. In trial sites in Leyte, local fauna has been seen to quickly re-colonize the mixed plantations of rainforestation cooperators/farmers. Birds and fruit bats initially, and then larger mammals including Philippine Tarsier (Tarsius syrichta) and Flying Lemur (Cynocephahis volans) were seen in the sites after four years (Goltenhoth et al. 2000).

To save the Philippine Tarsier from extinction, the Philippine government has launched various initiatives. Efforts to conserve the species started in 1988 when a study on the tarsier habitat requirements was initiated in Corella, Bohol by the Parks and Wildlife Bureau or PAWB under the financial grant of the Wildlife Conservation International. This was followed by a Philippine Tarsier Project by Department of Environment and Natural Resources Region 7 in 1991-1992 under the Debt-for-Nature Swap Project.

The debt-for-nature swap, first proposed by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature in 1984, is a scheme in which conservation organizations acquired title to debt, either by direct donation from a bank, or by raising the cash to buy it, and then negotiate with the debtor countries to obtain debt repayment in local currency at a favorable conversion rate, or to secure conservation measures/activities.

Haribon Foundation was identified as the local NGO partner in its venture. As the local NGO partner, Haribon Foundation became the fund manager of the program, thus, all financial transactions with the Central Bank of the Philippines and the World WWF were handled while release of funds to all the projects was facilitated. One of the projects implemented on the first year was the "Endangered Species Conservation: Philippine Tarsier" supervised by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources or DENR.

The Philippine Tarsier Foundation Inc. based in Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines is spearheading the campaign to preserve the Philippine Tarsier. Under a Memorandum of Agreement with the DENR signed on April 27, 1997, its mission is: to establish a forest reserve on the island of Bohol which shall serve as the sanctuary of the Philippine Tarsier; to protect and manage the tarsier sanctuary through the active participation of local communities; to establish and maintain a wildlife research laboratory for the study of the ecology and biology of the Philippine Tarsier; to establish and maintain visitor facilities for ecotourism and disseminate information material about the Philippine Tarsier with emphasis on the species' protection and conservation."

To date, the Philippine Tarsier Foundation has acquired 7.4 hectares of land in Corella, Bohol for the sanctuary. With the Department of Environment and Natural Resources playing an oversight role, the foundation has asked other Bohol towns with Philippines Tarsier populations to donate 20 hectares (49.4 acres) of forestland for conservation.

It also runs a Tarsier Research and Development Center, which serves as a visitor center and venue for research, as well as a habitat preserve. At the sanctuary, a spacious net enclosure keeps 100 Philippine Tarsiers for feeding, captive breeding and display. Here, visitors can observe the Philippine Tarsier in their natural habitat. Within the sanctuary, the Philippine Tarsiers roam freely and all of them have gotten used to a seven-foot high fence that circumscribes the territory and which serves mainly to protect them from predators like feral cats. At night, tarsiers can be seen climbing out of the fence to forage for food farther into the forest. They return again before daybreak, as if observing a curfew.

Because the Philippine Tarsier sanctuary in Corella, Bohol is off the tourist path, private individuals in Loboc, Bohol have provided an alternative way for tourists to see them through their displays of the Philippine Tarsier along the Loboc river banks. This captive tarsier display is conveniently on the way to other tourist spots in Bohol, particularly the Chocolate Hills in Carmen town. Despite the protection status of the Philippine Tarsier, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has granted special limited permits for this display of the Philippine Tarsier in Loboc. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
Here, tourists can see the Philippine Tarsier up close and personal and take pictures, but are not allowed to touch them. Unfortunately, the Philippine Tarsier here are semi-captive, being kept in cages along the Loboc river. Here, the animals are not in a sanctuary and as such, these shy animals have miserable lives and normally don't survive for long. Though they are allowed to leave their cages at night to hunt for food, this is contrary to the ban on possession of Philippine Tarsier by virtue of its protected status. Proclamation 1030 states that "the possession of the Philippine Tarsier is only allowed for educational, scientific, conservation-centered research purposes upon certification of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary." Further, the possession of these tarsiers for display encourages their possession as pets.

Comment by R Gould-Saltman — 6/16/2008 @ 8:09 am
26.

Anon,

I’m sure there will be plenty like you who claim to have evidence about Kozinski but have nothing to back it up. All you’ve proven is that you are either tolerant of sexual harassment or a liar. I could just as easily accuse you of crimes here, and my accusations would be just as credible.

Karen, the idea that it’s as horrible as you claim to have videos that so far are all turning out to be not that bad at all (despite the apparent lies of Cyrus and the LA Times) is a stupid idea. You’re the kind of fool that Cyrus was hoping to dupe. Oh no! Naked people!

Fact is, you’re the offensive person for demanding that everyone subscribe to your bizarre view of what is and isn’t allowed in our private lived. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 8:29 am
27.

“Anon: so, why’d you persuade your girlfriend NOT to make a complaint?”

What would the nature of the complaint have been in any event? Was there any supervisor/subordinate relationship or teacher/student relationship between the judge and your girlfriend? Did your girlfriend ask the judge to stop the unwanted behavior? Discovering a lot of women with similar stories makes it sound like you could have made quite a splash with
a omplaint. Cyrus Sanai is going to want to have a conversation with you, dude.

I smell a lot of bullshit.

RWS - Even for you, you are over the top on this.

Comment by daleyrocks — 6/16/2008 @ 8:32 am
28.

I don’t know about anyone else but I am freaking out about “jokes” that people send to me that I don’t have time to look at so I foward them to my home email. I haven’t a clue what is on most of these things. Good thing I am unimportant and will never run for anything.

Comment by Cindy — 6/16/2008 @ 8:46 am
29.

Sending the wife out to make a defense is pretty weak stuff.

That is more shameful than the Kozinski’s porn habits.

Comment by jwcc — 6/16/2008 @ 8:58 am
30.

That is more shameful than the Kozinski’s porn habits.

The fact hat they aren’t really porn doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to you, does it…

Comment by Scott Jacobs — 6/16/2008 @ 9:01 am
31.

LA Times didn’t sit on a story. Newspapers often hold back news till at such time it becomes relevant.

This wasn’t relevant months ago, when first gathered. It’s relevant now, because of the nature of the trial.

Taxpayer supported Judges are often censured and sanctioned far lesser transgressions…and that’s certainly newsworthy.

Maintaining any materials that could be construed as pornographic, on a workplace website, is at the very least…bad judgment…..which calls into question his fitness for the bench. Like it or not, society holds the Judiciary to a higher standard than regular citizens who aren’t living off the tax-payers.

Comment by Maxine — 6/16/2008 @ 9:28 am
32.

I couldn’t agree with Karen more. Good grief. Who ARE these people? They see these things as “funny” and give full access to it to their children and actually use that as a defense???

All due respect, RWS, but how old are their children?

Maintaining any materials that could be construed as pornographic, on a workplace website, is at the very least…bad judgment

Yes, that would be very bad. That’s not what happened here.

Fer crissake, would people just unwad their panties and grow up?

Comment by Rob Crawford — 6/16/2008 @ 9:40 am
33.

Sending the wife out to make a defense is pretty weak stuff.

That is more shameful than the Kozinski’s porn habits.

In one fell swoop, jwcc, you prove that you

(1) are a misogynist jerk
(2) don’t know what porn is
(3) are probably Cyrus Sinai.

Comment by Joe Bingham — 6/16/2008 @ 9:43 am
34.

Oh and the picture of the woman with a man penetrating her is funny how?, maybe it is fine art?, how would Tiffany describe that one. What about a strip show of an aroused transsexual, I am not sure what is funny about that and putting it online is hardly the actions of an innocent person, not very ‘family values’.

The bottom line is the judge has a collection of inappropriate images that are available online and is unfit to judge a trial about pornography.

Comment by Daniel — 6/16/2008 @ 9:47 am
35.

Well written letter by the wife.

I wholeheartedly agree. But does anyone really care? The headlines went out already nobody’s going to get the word out.

At least his family knows the truth. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

Comment by Austin — 6/16/2008 @ 9:48 am
36.

Oh and the picture of the woman with a man penetrating her is funny how?, maybe it is fine art?, how would Tiffany describe that one. What about a strip show of an aroused transsexual, I am not sure what is funny about that and putting it online is hardly the actions of an innocent person, not very ‘family values’.

Have you seen the material? The tranny stuff is a flash game. It’s tacky, yes. I don’t think it’s that funny. But it’s definitely humor, not porn. It’s not, as described in the media, a pornographic slideshow of a striptease.

Did she say the humor was “family values”? Strawman.

Comment by Joe Bingham — 6/16/2008 @ 9:55 am
37.

A celebrity, or public figure, shares some off-color material with “friends”.

At that point, it’s not a private matter anymore.

And, if the public figure holds a position of trust, and is being supported by the taxpayers…..then it’s absolutely newsworthy !

Comment by Maxine — 6/16/2008 @ 9:56 am
38.

This wasn’t relevant months ago, when first gathered. It’s relevant now, because of the nature of the trial.

Except they’ve known about the trial and who would be presiding for quite a while. They waited until after the jury was sworn in to publish.

Taxpayer supported Judges are often censured and sanctioned far lesser transgressions…and that’s certainly newsworthy.

Name one of those “Taxpayer supported Judges” that was censured or sanctioned. I highly doubt that unsupported statement and would really like to see you back it up.

Maintaining any materials that could be construed as pornographic, on a workplace website, is at the very least…bad judgment…..which calls into question his fitness for the bench. Like it or not, society holds the Judiciary to a higher standard than regular citizens who aren’t living off the tax-payers.

Just because things are in poor taste (and most of what I saw wouldn’t even qualify as that, only crude humor) doesn’t make them pornographic. Also, it wasn’t a workplace website, it was a home server… not even an online storage service, but an extra PC set up to host some files.

Comment by Stashiu3 — 6/16/2008 @ 10:00 am
39.

To the posters who are outraged that Kozinski would make raunchy material public: By his wife’s own statements, it doesn’t appear as though anyone in that family knew the information was accessible to the public. There are a lot of people out there who just aren’t tech-savvy enough to know how to password-protect their servers. For example, I live in the suburbs and, if I wanted to, I can access up to 15 unprotected wireless networks that my neighbors haven’t figured out how to secure.

This story is just making a mountain out of a molehill. There’s no impropriety here.

Comment by Brigid — 6/16/2008 @ 10:02 am
40.

Wifey must be running scared. It costs a lot to maintain an LA home in the lavish style she’s accustomed to.

She ain’t no Silda Spitzer, so she’s gotta roll up her sleeves, take to the airwaves, write letters…before her standard of living completely evaporates.

Comment by Maxine — 6/16/2008 @ 10:05 am
41.

Wifey must be running scared, etc.

Oh, I get it. Maxine’s a troll.

/Not gonna feed.

Comment by Brigid — 6/16/2008 @ 10:10 am
42.

Joe Bingham you try to spin it anyway you want but a photo of a man penetrating a woman is pornographic, whether it is game or not an aroused transsexual is not funny (unless you are a pervert).

You can excuse his behaviour all you want and maybe this kind of material is fine with you but for many many people it is unacceptable and is hypocritical for a law and order, family values conservative judge to posses and disseminate.

Comment by Daniel — 6/16/2008 @ 10:11 am
43.

She ain’t no Silda Spitzer, so she’s gotta roll up her sleeves, take to the airwaves, write letters. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

Did you miss the “Esq” at the end of the letter, right after her name?

She’s got a doctorate in Law. She could easily make a fine living on her own…

Comment by Scott Jacobs — 6/16/2008 @ 10:14 am
44.

Brava, Ms. Tiffany! Thank you for the beautifully written defence of your husband. He ought not be defended merely by his brilliant jurisprudence, but upon his character as well.

Sending the wife out to make a defense is pretty weak stuff.

No, it’s the strongest defence there is. The woman who has been married to him for three decades is the best person to defend Judge Kozinski’s character, especially when the charges leveled against him are those of misogyny and having porn fetishes.

Fer crissake, would people just unwad their panties and grow up?

ROFL.

They see these things as “funny” and give full access to it to their children and actually use that as a defense???

Ya know, my dad will sometimes make jokes about “family bondage” as opposed to “family bonding.” I guess he’s a demented jerk who doesn’t belong near children…?

Comment by bridget — 6/16/2008 @ 10:14 am
45.

Joe Bingham you try to spin it anyway you want but a photo of a man penetrating a woman is pornographic, whether it is game or not an aroused transsexual is not funny (unless you are a pervert).

Again, have you seen this, or are you relying on the LAT’s description of the stuff?

Comment by Scott Jacobs — 6/16/2008 @ 10:17 am
46.

A vindictive lawyer. An unaccountable judge drunk on power. A journalist who intentionally lied to juice up a story.

It’s like Saddam and the Ayatollah. You wish they could all lose.

Comment by Roy Mustang — 6/16/2008 @ 10:20 am
47.

“family values conservative judge to posses and disseminate.”

Daniel - Does Kozinski bill himself as a family values conservative judge?

I keep hearing him described as a strong supporter of the First Amendment and a libertarian, which would make this content no big deal.

Also, do you have any evidence that he was disseminating the “porn”? The wife clearly says it was private. No one has said they found a link to any of the porn from the internet, that was only done by searching the site once they were on it. Read the background more closely.

Comment by daleyrocks — 6/16/2008 @ 10:23 am
48.

She ain’t no Silda Spitzer, so she’s gotta roll up her sleeves, take to the airwaves, write letters…before her standard of living completely evaporates.

Because there’s no other possible motivation for her to defend her husband… because she has to know that he’s an unethical degenerate, one step removed from the people who appear in his court, right? It’s clear you’ve made up your mind and nothing about the judge is defensible in your eyes. I hope you’re never attacked unfairly, although you might learn a bit more about what the MSM and dishonorable people are truly like. For now, I’ll take your words for what they’re worth (read that as you will).

Comment by Stashiu3 — 6/16/2008 @ 10:23 am
49.

“Sending the wife out to make a defense is pretty weak stuff.”

No, given that the Judge is under investigation and should not make any public statements. What the fuck do people realistically expect under the circumstances.

D’oh!

Comment by daleyrocks — 6/16/2008 @ 10:25 am
50.

Judges are above the law which is why they are appointed for life tenure.

Comment by Cogito E. Spud — 6/16/2008 @ 10:26 am
51.

Anyone who is trying to debate the character of a judge with his family based off of no fact but the supposed AP press (these personal abuse bullcrap stories which I guarantee were all posted under the same IP - whoops!)

If someone really had a story like that, they’d post it registered with a way for someone to verify and sue…since especially you’d make money now. Too bad they don’t realize that if the judge decides to prosecute them by identifying the IP of an anonymous comment, they can do that. This equivalent to “your husband rubbed against my girlfriend” is a form of slander that he could actually take the anon poster to court about. Would it be worth it to do so though? No, unfortunately.

The person who tried to say “this guy is like all men” is someone full of misandry….aka misogyny but a woman doing it to a man. I hope that person learns to be a real person, but then again its probably the same poster as the one before it about the “oh, he was a manwhore to my girlfriend” speech. Honestly, you think someone’s going to do something like that at a public event? A smart judge is going to be an ass in public? Just throwing this out there, but I’d guess the chance of that is about between 0, and being struck by lighting while indoors and underground.

I bet there are a grand total of 2 or 3 people posting these slanderous story of her husband, all from different anonymous names. It’s not like the comments are just magically in a row from eachother and all from anon names, now is it?

Comment by Matt — 6/16/2008 @ 10:34 am
52.

Best regards to Judge Kozinski and his family - I’ve followed his judiciary experience from here in Reno, Nevada, and he’s always struck me as a man who loves his country and defends the Constitutional rights of others. It’s a breath of fresh air to see that at least one website will reciprocate.

On a related note, how does this slimeball Sanai keep on getting away with his smear campaigns? Are there any litigious options available to Judge Kozinski?

Comment by Josh Fenio — 6/16/2008 @ 10:39 am
53.

On my computer I have pictures of my one-year granddaughter taking a bath…naked! I have a picture of my daughter being licked on the nose…by her dog! I have a cache of jokes…some off-color and of a sexual content stored in various files. If I was a teacher, judge or minister and someone hacked into my computer I could easily be accused of being a pervert. Fortunately i am just an old lady who likes to look at pictures of my family and laugh at silly jokes.

Comment by CKSewell — 6/16/2008 @ 10:40 am
54.

This is a fantastic example of how distorted truths can have severe repercussions on certain people. I will not lie, when I read the original LA times article, They made this judge out to be a dirty minded-porn addict. And they did it quite effectively. Perhaps this is a lesson for all of us, to never trust any source of information, no matter how credible it claims to be. Everyone has a motivation, and clearly truth and justice were not the motivations of Cyrus Sanai or the author of the LA TIMES article. If it is discovered, and im assuming it must be pretty evident, that the author knowingly printed these misleading remarks, he should be fired immediatly. Makes me think that journalists should have to undergo some ethical training, and be licensed to report the news. If only to ensure a means of retaliation when they commit such horrid acts. There was a time when journalism, was seen almost in a romantic sense, as being a defender of truth. Unfortunately, todays journalism, has devolved into a game of simply making the most absurd eye catching headline, regardless of who it may unfairly portray. If US news sources continue to go down this path, it will not be long before Americans will be forced to go to outside sources for information. I.E BBC or Reuters. However this may also lead to a greater interest in internet reporting. With the internet we are able to view various different news sources covering the same topic, which can give us a better idea of the truth. Any one source can have particular biases that alter the truth, but whne all read together, we can often see the picture more clearly. Perhaps this is the direction the American Media is headed.

Comment by Nick — 6/16/2008 @ 10:42 am
55.

Your home is private, yes? But how can that be, when it’s on a public street?

Jim, if I had a garage sale, put up signs around the neighborhood with my address, then didn’t take the signs down and left the garage door open, should I be shocked if someone walked in to the garage?

They seem to be saying “we invited some people in some of the time and didn’t lock the door, but I can’t believe everybody doesn’t understand this is PRIVATE!” http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

Comment by MamaAJ — 6/16/2008 @ 10:46 am
56.

CKSewell you may have a naked photo of your granddaughter and of course there is nothing the matter with that. However the judge had a photo for example of young man performing fellatio on himself. Unless your granddaughter is involved in some sexual act or used for sexual gratification there is NO comparison at all. One is a harmless photo of a relative and the other is pornographic image.

Comment by Daniel — 6/16/2008 @ 10:49 am
57.

marcy tiffany said it wasn’t a website. hold it right there. if it has its own url (alexkozinski.com) and it’s on the web, it is, indeed, a website as i understand that term to mesn.

look at this vile cyrus sanai! yeah, but personal vendettas are frequently waged and suffered by judges and lawyers. she’s got a backstory, so does mr. sanai. everybody has a tale of woe that would bring tears to the eyes of a sphinx. all that matters is the moment, and in this moment mr. sanai has clearly scored…something. i’m not sure whether to call it a touchdown or a field goal or how many points to award it.

look at this vile journalist! he waited until jeopardy had attached! there oughta be a law! http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

ok marcy tiffany, tell us about the young man sucking his own dick. pornography or humor? in an internet full of goatse, tubgirl and lemonparty, images must get more and more…unusual…i don’t want to say depraved here because that would be judgmental, but there’s obviously two schools of thought on the subject.

ms. tiffany, tell us about the naked women painted as cows. degrading to women, or not? if you say not, please favor us with a picture of yourself naked on all fours, painted like a cow, so we can all go moo and have a good, harmless laugh.

blah, blah, blah. bottom line, secure your fricking system already! until you learn how to do that, better pull the damn plug right outta the wall.

Comment by assistant devil's advocate — 6/16/2008 @ 10:51 am
58.

Hey, this article just made it to FARK’s main page. That should drive up traffic a good bit. Patterico is now officially part of americana’s quasi-mainstream.

Comment by Dr T — 6/16/2008 @ 10:52 am
59.

“Oh and the picture of the woman with a man penetrating her is funny how?, maybe it is fine art?, how would Tiffany describe that one. What about a strip show of an aroused transsexual, I am not sure what is funny about that and putting it online is hardly the actions of an innocent person, not very ‘family values’.

The bottom line is the judge has a collection of inappropriate images that are available online and is unfit to judge a trial about pornography.” -Daniel

Lol, where do you people come from?

Comment by G — 6/16/2008 @ 11:00 am
60.

Came across this at Fark-I briefly remembered the LA Times story, and thought to myself “another public figure caught with his pants down”. Now I read this rejoinder,and have sympathy for the people who are the victims of this smear campaign. Shame on the Times for not corroborating this story and also not considering the source. That alone would be a red flag for any responsible journalist. Imagine the reactions of people who haven’t seen this-the innuendo will live on long after the story dies!

Comment by matty — 6/16/2008 @ 11:00 am
61.

Judge Kozinski is obviously using his wife to represent him, and the strategy she employs, like her husband, is misdirection and dishonesty.

I’m going to address only two points now

First is the quotation from Judge Elizabeth Grimes. She did say those things, and it was quoted, by the Court of Appeal in an unpublished opinion reversing every ruling she made, as grounds for tossing her off the case for misconduct. The exact quotation, which Judge Zilly and Mrs. Kozinski refuse to reveal, is as follows:

“In making its fee award the trial court commented, “Plaintiff has
proliferated needless, baseless pleadings that now occupy about 15 volumes of Superior Court files, not to mention the numerous briefs submitted in the course of the forays into
the Court of Appeal and attempts to get before the Supreme Court, and not one pleading appears to have had substantial merit. The genesis of this lawsuit, and the unwarranted
grief and expense it has spawned, are an outrage.”
We agree in these circumstances the interests of justice are best served by having all further proceedings heard by a different trial judge. (§ 170.1, subd. (c).)”

Disqualification under 170.1 is for misconduct or bias.

So in the case before Judge Grimes, the Court of Appeal quotes her language as grounds for tossing her. The underlying fact is that I won the appeal and got her removed for saying this; but in the underlying case as to which Judge Kozinski committed misconduct, and now his defense through her wife, Judge Kozinski commits the same kind of blatant dishonesty which has gotten him into trouble.

Second, and I will keep beating this drum unti the cows–or women dressed as cows–come home: what about Terry Carter’s article about the mp3s? Mrs. Kozinski knows how I found the directory–it was the mp3s they uploaded and file shared. She nitpicks about the LA Times article, but cannot address his more serious problem, because on that, there is no defense.

Cyrus Sanai

Comment by Cyrus Sanai — 6/16/2008 @ 11:02 am
62.

Is Joe Bingham a Kozinski sock puppet?

I’ve seen that name on several blogs always defending Kozinski’s porn habits.

If Joe Binham is a real person, I hope he is getting paid by the Kozinskis because he sure is spending a lot of time working on their behalf.

Comment by frankfromfresno — 6/16/2008 @ 11:05 am
63.

I’m taking the author at her word for the description of events, but if even half of what she’s said is true, this is one of the most disgusting abuses of journalism I’ve ever read.

It is absolutely abhorrent to me that a conniving, malicious, indignant person can find such willing complicity in character assassination in the press. Journalists are supposed to investigate and report on matters of the breach of public trust, and issues of importance that shape the day.

No such breach of public trust exists, no such matter. It is a fabricated story, a vicious seed planted by a vengeful scoundrel, and watered, fed and grown with premeditated malice by greedy, opportunistic shams who are parading themselves as serious journalists.

I believe vehemently in our first amendment right to freedom of the press, but in that freedom, we the people place our trust, our faith in those who we’ve tasked the duty of reporting the news to us. This craven act breaks that trust in one of the most egregious manners possible, and vilifies a man who has made a career of being a prudent and respectable jurist, for no reason other than personal spite and outright moneylust.

As the people supposedly serviced by these journalists, it is our charge, our duty to demand they make right this breach of trust, this breach of decency, or else we all become implicit in this villainy.

Comment by Shane — 6/16/2008 @ 11:05 am
64.

Is Joe Bingham a Kozinski sock puppet?

I’ve seen that name on several blogs always defending Kozinski’s porn habits.

If Joe Binham is a real person, I hope he is getting paid by the Kozinskis because he sure is spending a lot of time working on their behalf.

Comment by frankfromfresno — 6/16/2008 @ 11:07 am
65.

Is Joe Bingham a Kozinski sock puppet?

I’ve seen that name on several blogs always defending Kozinski’s porn habits.

If Joe Bingham is a real person, I hope he is getting paid by the Kozinskis because he sure is spending a lot of time working on their behalf.

Comment by frankfromfresno — 6/16/2008 @ 11:09 am
66.

Jim, if I had a garage sale, put up signs around the neighborhood with my address, then didn’t take the signs down and left the garage door open, should I be shocked if someone walked in to the garage?

These analogies, mapping internet concepts to physical concepts, just don’t work. Things like opening a garage door and hanging a shingle are visible and physical, and are some of the oldest ways of indicating that you want people to come by and look at what you have in there.

An internet server is not a physical thing, and doesn’t conform to the same rules of “visible” and “private” as physical things. The Kozinskis posted no signs, and as far as they knew, no one would be able to see it by doing the internet equivalent of driving by. They were mistaken in that belief, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t really and honestly expect it to be private.

As smart as Kozinski is, I have no trouble believing that he honestly thought his site was private. Either way, he certainly wasn’t advertising for people to come by.

Comment by TI — 6/16/2008 @ 11:20 am
67.

Here’s one solution. The state bar ethics website, at which one can file an ethics complaint against unethical California lawyers, is here.

Cyrus Sanai’s bar profile, with bar number, is here..

Exercise your own judgment as to whether Cyrus Sanai behaved unethically and submit a complaint if appropriate.

Comment by The solution — 6/16/2008 @ 1:51 pm
68.

Cyrus Sanai says: “Disqualification under 170.1 is for misconduct or bias.”

That’s not necessarily true, and isn’t true in this case.
http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

Separately, I’ve seen Joe Bingham on legal blogs for months before this pseudo-scandal broke.

Comment by Ted — 6/16/2008 @ 2:29 pm
69.

Why should Federal Jurists have any more claims on the First Amendment than Officers of the Military ???

The Military Code of Conduct covers both in-uniform and out.

Anyone in the military found with pornography is subject to dishonorable discharge. I consider the Federal Judiciary a para-Miltary organization, and certainly someone holding that kind of position of trust, should be held accountable both on, and off, the bench.

Comment by Maxine Weiss — 6/16/2008 @ 2:38 pm
70.

Solution,

Complaintants are generally limited to clients of the lawyer in question, or - in some cases - to fellow members of the bar; here, the California bar. And when a complaint is made, it should be specific to some disciplinary rule(s), and cite specific evidence. Spamming would be counter-productive.

Comment by Brian — 6/16/2008 @ 2:39 pm
71.

“I consider the Federal Judiciary a para-Miltary organization…”

I think I just got a pretty cool insight.

Maxine’s dumb.

Comment by Brian — 6/16/2008 @ 2:42 pm
72.

“I consider the Federal Judiciary a para-Miltary organization”

Maxine - You Madame, are a nutjob. What is your definition of pornography by the way?

Comment by daleyrocks — 6/16/2008 @ 2:43 pm
73.

““family values conservative judge to posses and disseminate.”

Daniel - Does Kozinski bill himself as a family values conservative judge?”

I finally understood what this story was about when I heard the judge described as “conservative” and he was mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee. I think it was foolish to leave that material open without password protection but I’m sure a lot of people do the same.

Comment by Mike K — 6/16/2008 @ 2:47 pm
74.

“In making its fee award the trial court commented, “Plaintiff has
proliferated needless, baseless pleadings that now occupy about 15 volumes of Superior Court files, not to mention the numerous briefs submitted in the course of the forays into
the Court of Appeal and attempts to get before the Supreme Court, and not one pleading appears to have had substantial merit. The genesis of this lawsuit, and the unwarranted
grief and expense it has spawned, are an outrage.”
We agree in these circumstances the interests of justice are best served by having all further proceedings heard by a different trial judge. (§ 170.1, subd. (c).)”

This was a dispute over his own apartment rent that Cyrus litigated for four years. The man is truly a piece of work.

Comment by daleyrocks — 6/16/2008 @ 2:48 pm
75.

OK Sanai, why don’t you post somewhere the complete texts of all the orders Ms. Tiffany is citing, so we can read them for ourselves and decide whether she’s misrepresenting them. No one in their right mind is going to take your word as to what really happened.

Comment by CMN — 6/16/2008 @ 2:56 pm
76.

Someone beat the peanut gallery to it in terms of complaining about Judge Zilly’s cricisisms and Judge Grimes to the bar. The bar requested a response from me, and nothing is going on.

Obviously, if any of you fine people want to complain, I can’t stop you, but you will be required to submit facts and information, which none of you have. The bar does not act on complaints made by people with no actual knowledge, for obvious reasons.

The case law concerning CCP 170.1(c), which Ted Frank should be familiar with, says that reassignment under this statute is reserved solely for cases of bias or misconduct. If anyone can find a published case saying differently, bring it to my attention. Until someone does, I say that Ted Frank is just making it up.

Also, and let’s make this clear, I have not lost the case involving Judge Grimes, and I have not lost the matters previously before Judge Zilly. Everything is proceeding, and nothing is final. Which is, by the way, where Mrs. Kozinski has become an advocate for judicial misconduct.

And this leads me to an additional point about Mrs. Kozinski. She is defending and indeed advocate further judicial misconduct.

Judges don’t get to speak out on matters before their courts unless it is assigned to them, and then only through the opinion process (or in trial court judges, in open court at a noticed proceeding). Judge Kozinski and any other federal judge should be disciplined for attacking any attorney in the press, unless that case is before that judge and the criticisms are made through the opinion or hearing process. Judge Kozinski’s original article was misconduct, which he conceded, and he now appears to be using his wife to commit additional misconduct.

So to be clear: Judge Kozinski does not get to speak about about attorney misconduct unless the matter is assigned to him. He has to keep his mouth shut. Judges are not advocates, and by accepting a lifetime appointment, they lose many First Amendment rights, and must conform their public behavior to constrained norms. If he does not like that, he could always move to the private sector and start billing time or publishing academic articles.

Finally, I always knew that because the server was under Judge Kozinski’s control, any judicial misconduct complaint concerning it would, if not preceded by a press investigation, be dismissed after Kozinski destroyed the evidence. That’s what happened with my first complaint, as Patterico has shown in earlier posts.

What I did not know was that Yahoo search was indexing the site, so much of what was removed is still recorded.

But again, the porn is not the biggest sin in the cache. The file sharing of the MP3s is, and that was separately verified by the ABA Journal.

Cyrus Sanai

Comment by Cyrus Sanai — 6/16/2008 @ 3:01 pm
77.

But, Cyrus Sinai isn’t living off the public largesse, with fat pension, unlimited authority, no impunity, and absolutely no transparency.

With Dianne Feinstein on the warpath, the Judicial Council investigating, and the public outcry……this Judge is toast !

And once the public gravy-train ends, I hope the little Wifey has a book deal, or maybe a Playboy Centerfold, lined up.

Thank heavens the Kozinskis don’t consider Playboy pornography !

Comment by Maxine Weiss — 6/16/2008 @ 3:05 pm
78.

what does it mean to be disgruntled? is there a component of meaning separate from being displeased or angry at someone or something? i ask because i see it used more and more nowadays in an effort to marginalize a subject and shift the issue to being about the subject instead of some underlying controversy. unless there is some separate component of meaning i’ve missed, the use of “disgruntled” by ms. tiffany and others strikes me as manipulative.

Comment by assistant devil's advocate — 6/16/2008 @ 3:09 pm
79.

If Judge Kozinski’s wife is a lawyer, she should know that it is improper to cite as authority a trial court decision that has been overruled by an Appellate Court.

The quotation from Judge Grime’s decision was specifically addressed by an Appellate court which reversed it:

“Finding Mr. Sanai had not brought this action in good faith,[see footnote 36] the trial court awarded UDR $136,034 in fees, 25 percent of the total fees sought by all defendants in their consolidated attorney fee motion, pursuant to Civil Code section 1785.31, subdivision (e). We reverse the award on two grounds.

Footnote36. The trial court commented: “Plaintiff has proliferated needless, baseless pleadings that now occupy about 15 volumes of Superior Court files, not to mention the numerous briefs submitted in the course of the forays into the Court of Appeal and attempts to get before the Supreme Court, and not one pleading appears to have had substantial merit. The genesis of this lawsuit, and the unwarranted grief and expense it has spawned, are an outrage.””

I know that the wife’s intention is just to throw mud at Cyrus Sanai and that she is not bound by the normal rules regarding citing authority when sending e-mail. But publicizing a trial court’s order that has been specifically reversed by a higher court points to some troubling ethical sloppiness. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

The case is at Sanai v. U.D. Registry, Inc.
Not Reported in Cal.Rptr.3d, 2005 WL 361327
Cal.App. 2 Dist.,2005.

Comment by frankfromfresno — 6/16/2008 @ 3:14 pm
80.

It’s Sanai’s apparent belief that he’s smart which may provide abundant opportunity for high comedy some time just over the horizon.

Comment by Brian — 6/16/2008 @ 3:15 pm
81.

Cyrus, you were just caught lying, not that anyone believed you. Bias is not always misconduct. And you have lost over and over, and just keep getting ancillary appeals that do not go to the factual matters (which you keep losing). Not to mention that you’re suing over tiny pointless crap.

Cyrus, did you or did you not upload these files onto Kozinski’s server?

Have you ever been diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia?

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 3:16 pm
82.

We need a link to the matters on the Kozinski website so that we are not just stirred up by argument with no evidence. Also, re the LA Times, visiting Ms. Tiffany’s Website specialedlaw.org, which is on the State Bar’s website for her, there are a number of links to LA Times articles about her which Ms. Tiffany likes. Also, her’s is a business for fees, not apparently a nonprofit so why the “.org”? Thank you in advance for the information.

Comment by Bemish — 6/16/2008 @ 3:18 pm
83.

ADA, I think it’s pretty clear that he’s disgruntled based on his conduct in this thread alone, where he’s already tangled himself in some dishonest statements of fact and law.

frankfromfresno, you have an unusual writing pattern that only matches one other poster here… who happens to agree with you and also shares your strange paranoia about the intentions of everyone being out to get Cyrus.

And it’s not improper to cite a trial opinion if you’re not using it to justify the factual matter at trial but rather proving that Cyrus’s behavior has drawn the scorn of other respected jurists. She’s saying that a trail took place, for which her citation is obviously rock-solid. She’s not concerned with Cyrus’s apartments and his poor father.

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 3:20 pm
84.

Bemish, why would you think anyone here needs to defend the use of .org in Ms. Tiffany’s website? What a stupid thing to bring up!

Oh, and nonprofits charge fees all the time, Cyrus.

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 3:22 pm
85.

jem, i think it’s pretty clear that he’s angry/displeased with judge kozinski based on his conduct in this thread alone, but i was asking about additional meaning, above and beyond anger/displeasure, inherent in “disgruntled”. my best guess is that there’s some additional symbolism along the lines of “he’s angry/displeased, so nobody has to take him seriously.” if this is so, my general advice would be not to disgruntle anybody when you have an unsecured family web server with embarrassing material on it.

Comment by assistant devil's advocate — 6/16/2008 @ 3:32 pm
86.

Marcy Tiffany became involved in special education law because the school district was failing to meet the needs of her gifted, but learning disabled, child.

—www.specialedlaw.org

Gee, I guess all that pornography, passed back and forth between Dad and Son, must have cured the Son of his learning disability !

Son seems quite adept at helping Dad collect porn.

Comment by Maxine Weiss — 6/16/2008 @ 3:35 pm
87.

– but i was asking about additional meaning, above and beyond anger/displeasure, inherent in “disgruntled” –

.

Unreasonably angry - or anger out of normal proportion to events. Getting angry at things that most people would shrug off as part of the normal friction of life. Holding a GRUDGE comes to mind. Chip on the shoulder.

Comment by cboldt — 6/16/2008 @ 3:38 pm
88.

Cyrus, did you or did you not upload these files onto Kozinski’s server?

I see this line becoming more and more popular by the judge’s defenders: that somehow Mr. Sanai uploaded the kid-fellating-himseld picture, the illegally-shared MP3 files, the aroused-donkey videos, etc. to the publically-accessible and popular-search-engine-indexed Kozinski web site.

But this accusation that Sanai (or anyone else) planted evidence doesn’t mesh well with Kozinksi’s original admissions that this was his material, and (now) his wife’s email defending the material.

It looks like the judge’s defenders are resorting to outlandishly dishonest scenarios — which started with the breathtakingly inaccurate “visiting his web site is like breaking into his house” excuse — in an effort to shift the spotlight away from the judge’s behavior.
(These misdirections and blame-the-messenger tactics echo those used originally by the the Obama-Wright and Clinton-Lewinski defenders, which makes me immediately suspicious of them.)

Jem: do you have any evidence to support this allegation that these files were planted on the judge’s web site, or are you just throwing around baseless slander?

Comment by Shad — 6/16/2008 @ 3:39 pm
89.

She’s saying that a trail took place, for which her citation is obviously rock-solid.

If you are a lawyer, you would know that a citation to a trial court decision that was explicitly overruled is the exact opposite of “rock-solid.”

Comment by frankfromfresno — 6/16/2008 @ 3:41 pm
90.

I’m running on the assumption that MiniMaxine, frankfromfreon, and CyrusSinia are one in the same. Perpetually pissed.

Comment by cboldt — 6/16/2008 @ 3:43 pm
91.

Add Shad to the list of sock puppets.

Comment by cboldt — 6/16/2008 @ 3:43 pm
92.

ADA, your reasoning about teh intelligence Kozinski displayed in having that server is, of course, absolutely correct. There was nothing illegal about prying into it, and Koz should have known he’d have deranged enemies looking for anything they could find.

Shad, slander is spoken, Libel is typed, and I merely asked a very obvious question. This server, if you can break into his wifi router, would be easy to tamper with, and the state of california was unable to find documents that apparently are there now. Why would Koz delete them (Cyrus claims he destroyed evidence by deleting a file) and then put them back? Given Cyrus’s bizarre behavior, the most likely explanation is that Cyrus planted this stuff.

Shad, you’re either confused or deliberately blurring the issue. Cyrus has no legal claim about the sexual humor/porn/whatever. It’s utterly irrelevant. Kozinski and his wife are explaining that these files are pretty silly to get angry about, but I don’t know of any admission that the put them there. They all agree it’s possible. Why are you getting the facts mixed up?

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 3:45 pm
93.

Ah, baseless slander it is, then, Jem. Thanks for the quick response to the question.

Comment by Shad — 6/16/2008 @ 3:48 pm
94.

frank, you clearly understand the point I’m making and are deliberately distorting it. Am I, too, another of the millions of lawyers out to ‘get’ you? Are you going to try to locate my server and find out what’s on them?

A trial took place and though an appeal was made, the fact that a judge was very angry with Cyrus (you), is absolutely obvious. It’s another of a litany of people who note that Cyrus is a deranged person.

Cyrus, you do realize that your case is not any closer to coming out your way, just because Kozinski may have porn? We’re interested int he topic, but it has nothing to do with your case. Your deranged behavior, as noted in decisions that have been overturned and others that have not, is just more evidence that your use as a source was irresponsible and you aren’t to be trusted. I don’t give a flip about your rent or the factual dispute at your trial that you lost… I only care that the judge was tired of your BS. Do you dispute that the judge was very aggravated or that the trial took place (the only facts asserted by Tiffany)? http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 3:50 pm
95.

An internet server is not a physical thing, and doesn’t conform to the same rules of “visible” and “private” as physical things. The Kozinskis posted no signs, and as far as they knew, no one would be able to see it by doing the internet equivalent of driving by. They were mistaken in that belief, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t really and honestly expect it to be private.

I don’t see how you can say that. From an earlier post:

One more point: Seth Finkelstein has shown that Kozinski knew that any member of the public could access his site — including his “stuff” subdirectory — as long as they knew the URL. In 2004, Kozinski nominated himself as part of a “Judicial Hottie Contest” on the Internet, and included a file of himself bungee jumping at http://alex.kozinski.com/stuff/jump.avi.

Yes, it was one file, not the directory. But did he do anything special to the file to make it open to the public? No, all the files were already available to anyone who tried to get to them.

That doesn’t seem very private to me. More like leaving a door unlocked and hoping no one tries to turn the door knob.

Then there’s the whole MP3 file sharing. If he was doing that, then there’s just no way to claim it was supposed to be private. I don’t know if anyone has–or can–determine if he was sharing them on purpose or not.

Comment by MamaAJ — 6/16/2008 @ 3:51 pm
96.

Kozinski and his wife are explaining that these files are pretty silly to get angry about, but I don’t know of any admission that the put them there. They all agree it’s possible. Why are you getting the facts mixed up?

I guess I got the facts mixed up because I read this post here on Patterico’s site, where he quoted the Times as saying:

Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acknowledged in an interview with The Times that he had posted the materials, which included a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. Some of the material was inappropriate, he conceded, although he defended other sexually explicit content as “funny.”

Comment by Shad — 6/16/2008 @ 3:51 pm
97.

Grudges aren’t illegal, and I’m my own person, with no special rants, or litigation.

I have a website where I talk about nothing other than Mozart and other innocuous subjects.

However, I do take special pleasure in watching the mighty, (and their feet of clay), fall.

….especially Hypocrites who live in Palos Verdes. And, you can bet tongues are wagging all over the Penninsula. Neighbors who’ve long hated the Kozinskis, but havent had the nerve to say it to them up front….salivating over this delicious-ness!!!!

Comment by Maxine Weiss — 6/16/2008 @ 3:53 pm
98.

Shad, you don’t think it’s a reasonable question to ask a lunatic if he did something crazy?

Why? How is that slander (or libel)? I asked a very obvious and relevant question, and your laser focus on this seems to suggest you indeed may have tampered with Koz’s computer, since you’re unusually upset by it (I assume you’re Cyrus, though you of course may not be).

I will give you $1000 if you can note the specific statement I typed and prove it’s untrue. Obviously you can’t and you know that, because all you want to do is attack everyone defending Kozinski… because after all, we’re all out to get you, right?

by the way, you’re the one accusing me of a crime. If you can’t back it up, you’re not only a dullard, but you’re a hypocrite with absolutely no credibility here. so it’s time to pick a new sockpuppet.

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 3:55 pm
99.

I’m going to be gradually drawing my involvement in responding to comments to a close for a while, as an investigatory committee has been appointed by the Third Circuit on the instructions of Chief Justice Roberts.

The Committee will be the proper forum to air the facts and defenses. I will be requesting that the committee’s proceeding be treated as an open tribunal. I hope that everyone on this blog makes the same request.

I have nothing to fear about telling my story in public. It is a complicated one, involving several levels of judicial misconduct, the primary one being very different than what is under discussion here. However it is real, and it is provable.

Google will be putting up a statement about the underlying case that I have submitted at their requested. I’ll post the link once it is up.

Again, I hope that everyone who has commented will demand open transparent proceedings in front of the committee.

Cyrus Sanai

Comment by Cyrus Sanai — 6/16/2008 @ 3:59 pm
100.

“I guess I got the facts mixed up because I read this post here on Patterico’s site, where he quoted the Times as saying:”

Shad, I dispute the accuracy of the quote that Kozinksi admitted posting all the material that is being discussed. Perhaps some of it, perhaps none of it, but unless you can provide a better link, I just don’t think you’re right. After all,t he Time shas also been caught lying.

Weiss, your glee is disgusting. And from what I’ve seen today, the cast majority of people paying attention are agreeing that Kozinski did nothing wrong. That’s hardly a fall at all.

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 4:00 pm
101.

Cyrus, I demand an open hearing on your conduct too. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s warranted?

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 4:01 pm
102.

Jem, my “laser focus” on this was to ask you if you had any evidence to support your accusation that someone else had planted these files on Kozinski’s web site, especially given his admission that he had put them there himself. You answered that you did not have any evidence, and I thanked you for your quick response.

You also asked where I got the idea that Kozinski had admitted he put the files on his web site, and I helpfully provided you a link to another post on this very site demonstrating that it was public knowledge that he had done so.

Finally, I have not accused you of any crime; dial down your paranoia.

Comment by Shad — 6/16/2008 @ 4:06 pm
103.

frank, you clearly understand the point I’m making and are deliberately distorting it.

The only point I have been addressing is your absurd suggestion that a trial court opinion that has been reversed by an appellate court is “rock solid.” If you mean to say something else, you should choose your words more carefully.

A trial took place and though an appeal was made, the fact that a judge was very angry with Cyrus (you), is absolutely obvious.

Oh, so your point is that some trial judge was very angry with Mr. Sanai? Okay, so what? Has anyone ever been angry with you?

And, by the way, I ain’t Mr. Sanai and have never met him. You might want to pour yourself a soothing cup of tea and sit down and consider the fact that there may be more than one person on planet Earth with an internet connection who does not think exactly like you do.

Comment by dht — 6/16/2008 @ 4:14 pm
104.

Shad (Cyrus), you need ot pick a new sock-puppet. I asked Cyrus a yes or no question, and you replied that because you are certain the answer is no, that I’m a criminal slanderer for asking the question. Slander laws are, in fact, a limitation on free speech, especially the insanely broad definition you have, which apparently is that no one can dare challenge Cyrus.

You are a very foolish person if you think any intelligent person doesn’t see through your silly game. It’s not funny and you probably are going to have to find a new profession.

To put it plainly: accusing me of being a criminal for asking a question is akin to forfeiting your place at the discussion. So pick a new sockpuppet.

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 4:16 pm
105.

I think there are a couple of sock-puppets here, but I’m not sure if I’d posit a unified sock-puppet theory just yet, for starters because Maxine is just so stupid (not that the others are particularly brilliant.) So we have different personalities in any case, whether employed by the same puppeteer or not I’m not sure.

But there’s also another phenomenon going on here with these Kozinski-bashers (and I’m excluding those who merely say that Kozinski should have been more prudent in protecting his privacy): They’re the sort of malcontents who feel a kind of diffuse resentment of even hatred toward anyone in a position of esteem in the community, even when that position is earned. That hatred emerges full-force when an esteemed figure gets caught up in scandal, and the haters just don’t care about the quality of the evidence or the honesty of the accuser. The object of hate must simply be brought down, destroyed, to assuage the haters’ feelings of personal worthlessness. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

So I see that kind of disgusting hatred here - hatred of one’s betters - and because there’s a real sub-culture of these kinds of freaks, I’m not sure each one of them is a sock-puppet.

Comment by Brian — 6/16/2008 @ 4:17 pm
106.

dht, you need to read the thread instead of spouting off like that. Ok?

Tiffany asserted some basic and truthful facts about Cyrus and the opinion another judge had of him and the existence of a trial. Cyrus or his sockpuppet said that it was wrong to point out the trial that proves this, as the trial was overturned. This is ridiculous. All I was doing was pointing out it was ridiculous. I don’t need to prove that Cyrus is disrespectful of the legal process, a serial litigant, an obsessed loon, and someone who makes judges very irritated by his horrible conduct. That’s just obvious stuff, as far as I’m concerned, and anyone who doesn’t immediately grant that I am correct is probably a sock-puppet.

Cyrus’s case, of course, is irrelevant to the discussion beyond the fact that Cyrus would do anything to harm someone he thinks is in the way of his results. It’s not really important to look into his actual case.

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 4:20 pm
107.

Brian, you’re right. I doubt all the Kozinski opponents here are Cyrus. By reputation he works his clerks to the bone and many of my professors think he’s totally wrong, so I expect lots of people to laugh at his stupid behaivior.

But come on, dude… “shad” thinks I’m a criminal if I ask Cyrus a yes or no question, and the fresno guy types exactly like Cyrus. their posts are timed apart in such a way that it’s even more suspicious.

Comment by Jem — 6/16/2008 @ 4:22 pm
108.

I don’t know who Shad is. It is not me. I don’t need to use sock puppets, since I am not looking for the roar of the masses in approval.

I will say that no one who posts anonymously has the right to accuse anyone of being a sock puppet. Anyone who wants to ask me a question, feel free to call me or email me directly. I will respond to anyone who identifies themselves with their real name and personal details (i.e. educational background, location and job). I note that trolls like daleyrocks and jem don’t have the guts to do this.

For clarification, I understand that Kozinski admitted putting up the specific items mentioned in the Times article, but I did not hear it from him, so I could be wrong. As for the mp3s, he and Mrs. Kozinski refuse to address them, since their existence was independently verfied by both the Times and the ABA Journal, and on that, he has no defense.

Cyrus Sanai

Comment by Cyrus Sanai — 6/16/2008 @ 4:25 pm
109.

Rob Crawford,

It doesn’t matter to me how old the children are. I have a 21 yr old son. I can’t imagine sharing a sexually explicit “joke” with him.

Good grief.

We are all in a handbasket and we all know where it’s going.

Comment by Rightwingsparkle — 6/16/2008 @ 4:29 pm
110.

i can’t imagine sharing a sexually explicit “joke” with him.

here’s a joke i heard long ago at my grandmother’s knee: a brand new prostitute-in-training just went to work at a whorehouse in miami. first day of orientation, the madam explains the ropes “first, you take off his clothes.” the new kitten piped up with a question “and then, how do i handle the genitals?”

the madam replied “oh, just the same as the jews.”

Comment by assistant devil's advocate — 6/16/2008 @ 4:37 pm
111.

Is the show over? I was enjoying “Making de maximus out of de minimus”

Comment by cboldt — 6/16/2008 @ 4:41 pm
112.

Cyrus or his sockpuppet said that it was wrong to point out the trial that proves this, as the trial was overturned. This is ridiculous. All I was doing was pointing out it was ridiculous

The only thing that is ridiculous here is your apparent ignorance of how courts in America function. If a trial court’s decision is overruled, it is dead and gone. An attorney can no longer point to what the trial court said for proof of anything.

But, again, like I said - even if Mr. Sanai is not someone with whom you would like to share a romantic dinner, so what? He’s not a sitting federal judge with a taste for what may be child pornography and anti-Catholic jokes.

Comment by frankfromfresno — 6/16/2008 @ 4:43 pm
113.

More powerful stuff against the Great Koz (what federal law clerks call Kozinski b/c we dig his intellect, “out-there” sense of humor, and writing style) at http://howappealing.law.com/ Search for “felony” and “investigation.” You’ll find a .pdf of a 2007 letter from the former Administrative Head of the U.S. Courts accusing Koz of a federal felony. He also beefs about the 9th Circuit’s failure to investigate him when it was obligated to do so. You’ll also find news of U.S.S.Ct. Chief Justice Roberts’s appointment of a special, Third Circuit panel to investigate the Koz. On the smut I say we give him a pass; Clinton copping an intern’s blo-job in the oval office raised the bar a lot higher than Koz’s stuff. Everyone should just chill, and Beware of The Thought Police. The MP3’s I’m not sure about. As for a federal felony for tampering with judicial computer systems….yeah, I’d be dialing up a high-powered defense lawyer on that one.

Comment by Chris — 6/16/2008 @ 4:54 pm
114.

Disturbing images can be funny… I could link the video of donkey chasing the guy around and say: this is what my day was like… or link to the kid blowing himself and say: life sucks today.
I wouldn’t do it, because I think it’s too crude, but I know more than a few people who would laugh.

I also think a judge should be able to store images he or she is intellectually curious about.

Comment by SteveG — 6/16/2008 @ 5:00 pm
115.

Let’s say there was a slip-and-fall case, and the trial court held that that as a matter of law, because a supermarket failed to clean up a spill within 15 seconds, the supermarket was negligent. During the same trail, a gigantic bug frolicked in the courtroom, and the transcript read:

“Court: Holly crap, there’s a giant bug in the court room!”

The appeals court reverses the trail court’s ruling regarding negligence. However, the judge’s exclamation remains good evidence that there really was a giant bug is the courtroom (excited utterance exception to the hearsay rule).
And that evidence can be used, e.g., the Court’s administrative branch can sue the exterminator, or perhaps the giant bug, if it has a law license, can face disciplinary proceedings…

Comment by Brian — 6/16/2008 @ 5:00 pm
116.

– The only thing that is ridiculous here is your apparent ignorance of how courts in America function. If a trial court’s decision is overruled, it is dead and gone. An attorney can no longer point to what the trial court said for proof of anything. –

.

Except the “facts” as ascertained below. Oh, and except for any parts of the law that the court below got correct, as a matter of law.

.

Only disgruntled dipwads argue that an appellate reversal means EVERYTHING below is reversed.

Comment by cboldt — 6/16/2008 @ 5:05 pm
117.

Thank you for keeping us informed concerning Judge Kozinski. I will continue to follow this. If it does prove that LA Times dropped the ball about the Judge’s alleged porn site story, then LA Times owes the Kozinski family an apology. If LA Times is accurate, then the Kozinskis have so explaining to do. I read the judge’s wife letter on your blog. All I can say is that there are two side of the story and one of their stories is the rruth. LA Times is not exactly truth and balanced. Look at the blackeye that they received from the public on their story on later rapper Tupac Shakur. I posted your article on my blog for reader to decide. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

SP Biloxi
Justice League

Comment by SP Biloxi — 6/16/2008 @ 5:07 pm
118.

Sad Marcy Tiffany and her tale of woe. Let’s all start sawing on our violins at her Palos Verdes pity party.

Comment by Maxine Weiss — 6/16/2008 @ 5:10 pm
119.

See? Maxine is so ‘tarded, she can’t be a sock-puppet. Any self-respecting puppeteer would create someone with a frontal cortex. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

Comment by Brian — 6/16/2008 @ 5:15 pm
120.

– any evidence to support your accusation that someone else had planted these files on Kozinski’s web site –
.
Poking my nose into an accusation that wasn’t mine, I see evidence. An admission by the disgruntled of file deletion is indicative of ability to modify site contents.
.
Not proof of addition of files, but certainly evidence. Combined with evidence of persistent axe to grind, I find the accusation credible. Not that placing the material is a crime, but I’d run a preliminary presumption in favor of the judge that illegal material was placed by an enemy.

Comment by cboldt — 6/16/2008 @ 5:17 pm
121.

Long letter from the spouse.

Bottom line is that the judge is not fit for his office and should resign.

But neither he or his spouse see it that way - that is a basic problem.

In any event, I’m glad that his name gets dragged through the mud and everyone knows what type of person he really is.

He leaves a legacy that he deserves.

Comment by Normal People — 6/16/2008 @ 5:20 pm
122.

“alleged” illegal - to quell the sock puppet chorus

Comment by cboldt — 6/16/2008 @ 5:20 pm
123.

Cyrus @ #76. “The case law concerning CCP 170.1(c), which Ted Frank should be familiar with, says that reassignment under this statute is reserved solely for cases of bias or misconduct. If anyone can find a published case saying differently, bring it to my attention. Until someone does, I say that Ted Frank is just making it up.”

That was easy.

Comment by Ted — 6/16/2008 @ 5:20 pm
124.

How can a woman in Kozinski’s courtroom expect to get fair, unbiased treatment by this judge, who apparently occupies his freetime with mysoginist fantasies? It’s also dismaying to think that a judge with his standing has the same kind of sense of humor that you would expect of a pervert. It’s also dismaying to think that this judge has obstructed legal efforts to censor pornography on the basis of his own perverted personal tastes. He must be removed from the bench, immediately.

By the way, I’m not buying his wife’s (Tammy Wynette) Stand-By-Your-Man act !

Comment by Carolyn Konnick — 6/16/2008 @ 5:33 pm
125.

“I note that trolls like daleyrocks and jem don’t have the guts to do this.”

Cyrus - I have no idea why anybody would want to expose themselves to you in meatspace. The concept of a grown man spending four years of his life litigating a disputed rent obligation of $2800 and generating the kind of court record and animus you did with U.D. Registry is just chilling.

If I were venturing an opinion, which I am not, I would say that normal people do not do such things and suggest that you seek professional help.

Comment by daleyrocks — 6/16/2008 @ 5:39 pm
126.

ada #110,

My mother on the subject of mixed/interracial marriages: “They all have the same thing between their legs.”

It seems, however, that nobody caught the obvious in Ms. Tiffany’s letter. She complains that Glover was a bad person for not publishing until after jeopardy had attached. And then her husband had to recuse himself. If that’s not saying, “I ain’t done something wrong unless I’m caught”, I don’t know what it is.

Comment by nk — 6/16/2008 @