FURTHERMORE. . .

WHILE RASMUSSEN finds the Super Bowl America's most popular championship
with more than three times as many viewers as the World Cup and almost
three times as many as the World Series,25% of Americans don't watch any
championship at all. They still get to pay for the stadiums, though.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/June%20Dailies/soccer.htm

PSYCHOLOGISTS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY has called for the closure of
the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay and any other U.S. prisons where
prisoners are incarcerated beyond the bounds of international human
rights law. Says the group: "Unfortunately, we have a number of
references from reputable sources, including Pentagon officials, to the
involvement of psychologists in these procedures, particularly as part
of the so-called Behavioral Science Consulting Teams. . .We applauded
when the American Psychological Association made it clear that
"Psychologists may never engage in, facilitate, or countenance torture
or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment." We were therefore most
distressed to see that the military is planning to "use only
psychologists to help interrogators devise strategies to get information
from detainees

http://www.psysr.org

AL KAMEN, WASHINGTON POST - White House press secretary Tony Snow , on
CNN's "Late Edition" on Sunday, said: "The president understands
peoples' impatience -- not impatience, but how a war can wear on a
nation. He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle
of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, 'Wow, my goodness, what
are we doing here?' But you cannot conduct a war based on polls." In
fact, there was a poll taken by Gallup from Dec. 31, 1944, to Jan. 4,
1945 -- three years into that war and right in the middle of the bloody
Battle of the Bulge, where U.S. casualties were estimated between 70,000
and 80,000. It found that 73 percent of Americans would refuse to make
peace with Adolf Hitler if he offered it and that 86 percent of
Americans thought there was no chance that we would lose the war in
Europe.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/22/
AR2006062201589.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns


NY TIMES - When a publisher starts talking about a book as "an
experience that transcends the book itself," you know that what matters
isn't going to be the writing. What matters is the synergy, as they used
to call it in the good old AOL Time Warner days. The book in question is
"Cathy's Book," a novel for adolescent girls featuring a heroine who
gives tips on makeup while the story unfolds. As it happens, the makeup
she uses is by Cover Girl, which, in return for product placement, has
agreed to feature the novel prominently on a Web site it runs for girls
of the very age group likely to buy "Cathy's Book." If nothing else,
this deal is a reminder that writers will nearly always take publicity
if they can't get cash.

http://www.commercialalert.org/news/archive/2006/06/the-art-of-the-deal


AIR FORCE TO SPEND NEARLY A HALF MILLION BUCKS TO LEARN ABOUT BLOGS

WILLIAM J. SHARP, AIR FORCE OFFICE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH - The Air
Force Office of Scientific Research recently began funding a new
research area that includes a study of blogs. Blog research may provide
information analysts and warfighters with invaluable help in fighting
the war on terrorism. Dr. Brian E. Ulicny, senior scientist, and Dr.
Mieczyslaw M. Kokar, president, Versatile Information Systems Inc.,
Framingham, Mass., will receive approximately $450,000 in funding for
the 3-year project entitled "Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis
of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and
Credible Information."

"It can be challenging for information analysts to tell what's important
in blogs unless you analyze patterns," Ulicny said. . . Patterns include
the content of the blogs as well as what hyperlinks are contained within
the blog.
Within blogs, hyperlinks act like reference citations in research papers
thereby allowing someone to discover the most important events bloggers
are writing about in just the same way that one can discover the most
important papers in a field by finding which ones are the most cited in
research papers. This type of analysis can help information analysts'
searches be as productive as possible.

http://www.defenselink.mil/transformation/articles/2006-06/ta062906b.html

STATES INCREASE PUBLIC HEALTH INSURANCE
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-insure25jun25,
1,1601931.story?track=rss


PAUL KRASSNER: GETTING HIGH DOWN UNDER
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-krassner/getting-high-down-under_b_22747.html


MUSICAL GROUPS THAT WERE BANNED IN THE SOVIET UNION
http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=928272006

TWO WASHINGTON INSIDERS SWITCH SIDES ON NORTH KOREA
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/25/
AR2006062500640.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns


ATTACK OF THE STARLINGS
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6815781973393100875