DXCafé: The New E-conomy Is Coming

It seems they've been busy on the isle of Vanuatu ...

That's where a company called Global Digital Transfers Inc ('GDT') placed their headquarters for DXinOne, the e-currency exchange system that is the main topic on Longer Life's Opportunity page.

Since I last looked at the DXiO website, I've seen a number of new developments there, featuring services from travel to advertising with earnings and payments tendered by their unique coin of the cyber-realm, the digot. It's becoming quite obvious that they're not only easing a new e-currency into cyberspace, but an entire DXEconomy to support it. That's a very clever strategy.

Now, GDT is taking measures to ensure their presence in the physical world, too. They are introducing a bricks-&-mortar element to their e-currency exchange business, deploying franchises for what they term 'LDXMerchants' (The 'L' stands for 'Licensed') to be visible via storefront at a location near you. Their function would be to service high-volume transactions in a 21st-century banking sort of manner that is yet to be fully announced.

Furthermore, they intend to incorporate other DX services into those facilities, with the obvious intention of attracting more attention to their veritable range of operations. They're going to call these centers DXCafés. Fittingly, the flagship of this franchise will be located in Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu. Such a choice not only displays respect for their host nation, it's also a relatively isolated --- and thus easily controlled --- site that will allow them to amend any aspect of its activities without drawing mainstream attention. This should increase their chances of presenting a more polished product to the world at large.

GDT has announced that their intentions will be uncompromising in their selection of global locations. They state that "We are currently working on several items that will help us present these establishments around the world, as taking short cuts will not be an option for us. The first task is to set a criterion, upon which the location of our DXCafés will be based. It is ideal that we use high traffic locations; airports, transportation terminals, accommodation, shopping centers or malls are all prime locations for us."

It's clear they're still somewhere in the planning stages when they state the basis of their deliberations when defining the characteristics of the DXCafés in these terms:

"Size of the DXCafés is also important; our designers have been working on several different concepts based on floor size. Whether as a full build or a new fit-out, a set criteria needs to be established. There is also nothing limiting us from having several DXCafés in the one city, each DXCafé may have a set coverage in regards to population, cliental and security."

However, most of these decisions must have been made already. GDT has announced that they intend to establish their first DXCafés outside Vanuatu during the months of April and May 2006 and have claimed they are currently on target to achieve this goal. To accommodate such a timetable, they say they have designed and commenced manufacture on the fit-out for the physical plants and prepared state-of-the-art computer components and technology for installation into each DXCafé.

High volumes of value are expected to be exchanged, so GDT will be requiring license agreements for each LDX/DXCafé proprietor. They will be private agreements designed for congruence with various countries' financial regulatory requirements. The license agreements are intended to ensure that all DX operations will be in accord with the needs and requirements of DXInOne and its users. The purchase price for an LDX/DXCafé license is yet to be finalized and will only be available upon request. I would anticipate this amount to be between $650,000 and $1,000,000 so as to ensure that only the most responsible and capable proprietors would be enlisted.

These are ambitious plans. I firmly believe there's a market for their services, so I continue to contend that DXinOne is worth our attention.

Very soon, it could be worth more than that. Much more.

Wanted: And It Had Better Be Alive

Pakistan did the USA a favor recently ...

All they got for it was a surprise rocket attack on their own soil.

The situation is well-explained by London's Sunday Telegraph in its 29 Jan 06 edition:

Pakistan 'delay let bin Laden escape US raid'

By Massoud Ansari in Karachi (Filed: 29/01/2006)

"Prevarication by the Pakistani government cost America the chance to kill Osama bin Laden in an airstrike near the Afghan border two years ago, the Sunday Telegraph has been told.

"A CIA lead that the al-Qaeda leader was hiding in a remote province was squandered because the Pakistani government delayed giving permission for the attack on its soil, according to a senior Western diplomat.

"By the time US officials got the go-ahead, bin Laden had left the suspected hideout in Zhob, in the Baluchistan province of south-west Pakistan.

"The near-miss was cited by the diplomat as the reason why America chose not to consult Islamabad before the US missile strike in Pakistan's Bajaur region two weeks ago. The January 13 attack, prompted by a tip that bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was hiding in a local village, killed 13 civilians.

"Speaking of the Zhob attack, the diplomat, who asked not to be named, said: 'For unknown reasons, Pakistani officials delayed in giving permission...which ultimately gave these militants time to move to an unknown location.'

"According to his account, which was backed by sources within Pakistani intelligence, the CIA picked up electronic traffic suggesting that bin Laden and his bodyguards had sought temporary shelter in Zhob, which is dominated by Pathan and Baloch tribesmen sympathetic to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

"Fearing that a commando raid would cause massive casualties to both sides, with no guarantee of success, the US decided to launch a strike by laser-guided missiles, fired from Predator drones.

"The reason for the delay is not clear. While Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, has vowed to eliminate terrorists operating within his country, elements within Pakistan's ISI intelligence service may have sought to protect bin Laden.

"If he was in Zhob at the time it would have been the first known occasion that he had been firmly in America's sights since his escape from Tora Bora in Afghanistan, where he slipped through a cordon of US troops in 2001.

"Gen Musharraf last week described the strike against al-Zawahiri as a 'violation of sovereignty,' although he said other al-Qaeda figures had died in the raid.

"Al-Zawahiri is thought to have cancelled his visit, possibly after spotting CIA drones in the area."

Coincidentally, another article appeared in that same edition of the Sunday Telegraph which underscored the effect bin Laden's words can have:

Author shoots from obscurity to infamy after plug from bin Laden

By Philip Sherwell (Filed: 29/01/2006)

"To William Blum's surprise and apparent disappointment, he found that his name had not been added to the US 'no-fly' list when he travelled from his home in Washington DC to Ohio last week to deliver one of his frequent anti-American lectures on a campus.

"Mr Blum is revelling in what he calls his '15 minutes of fame.' To many of his compatriots, that should read 15 minutes of infamy after Osama bin Laden declared that he was a fan of the previously obscure Left-wing author and virulent America-basher.

"The 72-year-old writer admits he was delighted by the plug for his book, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, in the Saudi terror mastermind's latest taped audio message. After bin Laden's recommendation, the book soared from 205,763rd to 26th place on Amazon.com's list of most-ordered books. 'I thought I might have ended up on the no-fly list after that. Anything is possible in this country today,' Mr Blum told the Sunday Telegraph, perhaps over-estimating his importance in the eyes of the US authorities. But he is strikingly honest about his new-found notoriety.

"'I am not at all sorry to have been mentioned by bin Laden,' he said. 'In fact, I'm pleased. I'm part of a movement whose goal it is to slow down if not stop the American empire from what it's doing around the world. To do that, we need to reach the American people and this has given me a very unusual chance for publicity.

"'Osama bin Laden and I share a certain distaste for aspects of American foreign policy, although I have nothing but distaste for religious fundamentalism.'

"Mr Blum churns out his books, articles and newsletters from his modest, one-bedroom apartment in north-west Washington. There is a 1950s portrait of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team on the wall and shelves piled high with books about the CIA. He has no mobile phone, so journalists have had to track him down at home to interview him in his slippers, grey trousers and checked shirt.

"The son of Polish Jewish immigrants who sought a new life in America away from anti-Semitic discrimination in Europe, Mr Blum grew up in Brooklyn and joined the State Department hoping to pursue a career as a diplomat. But his early anti-communist views were transformed by his opposition to the Vietnam war and he quit to launch his new career.

"He is bespectacled, bookish and softly spoken, but this belies the ferocity of his opinions. He has compared 'evil' US officials to 'chainsaw baby killers,' equated American forces in Afghanistan to the terrorists who attacked the US on September 11, 2001 and questioned whether Stalin really was a mass murderer. In his taped message, bin Laden recommended that President George W Bush read Mr Blum's Rogue State, a sharp critique of US foreign policy.

"The al-Qaeda mastermind then quoted an extract in which the author wrote that, if he was president, he could stop terror attacks against the US permanently by apologising 'very publicly and very sincerely, to all the widows and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism.'

"Mr Blum is separated from, but still friendly with, his German wife Adelheid, who lives in Bavaria with their 24-year-old son Alexander. 'She is fully behind me,' he said.

"The flood of emails has been less supportive. 'Death to you and your family,' read one. 'Traitor. You are sleeping with the Muslims,' declared another. Mr Blum said he was surprised by the venomous content in some of the messages but that he was answering them all - politely, but unapologetically."

Mr Blum's agenda notwithstanding, the best thing that happened to America's war on bin Laden is that they didn't kill him. Anyone cognizant who has ever been even remotely exposed to the culture of bin Laden's target audience knows that his words would have a tenfold impact if he became 'martyred.'

If he can raise a fringe author's book almost 200,000 places in Amazon's world with a simple utterance, think of what would happen if his words became 'finite' by his demise. The term 'exalted' comes to mind. Their inspirational impact would be hugely amplified by the fact that he, too, died for his cause, just like he's urged his followers to do.

In their unilateral and so-called 'war on terror,' the USA has spent billions of dollars on revenge and the toppling of a dictatorial blowhard. The opposition has only spent thousands but seemingly has not lost much ground (Afghanistan and Iraq are still in relative states of anarchy, after all); they are fueled by the charisma of a man who, as I've said before, is nothing more than a common criminal who has wrapped himself in an extreme fundamentalist cause and then been elevated to celebrity status by his mighty adversary.

I don't think the USA can afford to kill him. They need to capture him alive. He never was the terrorist mastermind of al-Qaeda, he was only the banker and the face to their cause. Having him at large until he's captured is not going to significantly alter any of their activities. Only if bin Laden's empty agenda is exposed by being formally brought to justice will there be any chance of effectively revealing his true colors as a charlatan. There needs to be the ultimate occasion where he can be reviled by the true keepers of Muslim faith for perverting their religion. Only in a court of law can this happen, and if it comes to pass, it will happen.

So, thank you, Pakistan, regardless of your operatives' motives.

Surrogate Life

Years ago, upon my first-ever arrival in Paris, there was no doubt as to where I would begin my itinerary ...

I went immediately to the Père Lachaise cemetery.

That's the final resting place of such luminaries as Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Sarah Berhhardt and Chopin. If I had been there during daylight, I'm sure I would have taken my time to pay my respects to each of them and others. However, it was around 1.00am, and this was a pilgrimage to what's become more of a shrine than a grave.

This is where Jim Morrison of the Doors is buried.

James Dean lived fast and died young. Kurt Cobain had succumbed, by his own hand, to stress and recurrent abdominal pains. Marilyn Monroe took too many pills. Mama Cass choked on that fateful ham sandwich. Keith Moon simply exploded from self-indulgence.

Jim Morrison was different. He lived hard so we didn't have to.

I believe that there are those among us who live life on the edge for the sole purpose of conveying that experience to everyone else. I don't think they make a conscious decision to do so, but the circumstances of their existence drew them to it. They embody a collusion of talent, freedom, credibility and forum. From that mixture, fate then intercedes and legends are forged.

This role doesn't need to end in the ultimate cost of mortality. Look at Lou Reed. An underground poet laureate who was anointed as such by Andy Warhol, Reed could also arguably be called the godfather of punk --- a genre which ultimately influences popular music to this day --- who then became a Rock-&-Roll Animal before settling into married life and relative tranquility. He's a writer-cum-musician who returned the value of word economy to lyrics (the Ramones owe a huge debt to him), who lionized the shadowy annals of altered states and culminated it by allegedly shooting heroin on stage. Somehow, the nihilistic creator of Sweet Jane, the opiate chronicler of White Light/White Heat, the dark playwright of Berlin, managed to survive. I'm sure no one is more pleased with that result than him.

Morrison, on the other hand, never seemed to care.

His obsession was with a mystic dimension that seemingly co-existed with visceral reality and his determination was to channel it. This endeavor has been well-accounted both in Danny Sugarman's book, 'No One Here Gets Out Alive,' and Oliver Stone's cinematic version of it, logically entitled, 'The Doors.'

Morrison did Break on Through to the Other Side and became The Lizard King. His lifestyle and lyrics served as a catalyst for both new age and outrage. The Doors framed his visions in catchy tunes that were a cornerstone of their era. Their music worked for breezy listening, for intense audiophilia and for all levels in between. When Morrison would sing, "I woke up this morning and got myself a beer," there was no doubting his presence in the original Hard Rock Café and that breakfast was going to be his lightest meal of the day.

With a legacy like that, I guess it's no surprise that rumors circulated about the French authorities wanting to evict him from such an esteemed cemetery as Père Lachaise. However, during my visit, I was told by a watchful gendarme that the graves were purchased in perpetuity, so he and his colleagues would man many a midnight patrol to monitor the Morrison mourners. From what I saw and have come to know, that is a full-time nocturnal posting.

Even at the late hour, I was one of around a dozen who surrounded Morrison's headstone. Someone's ghettoblaster churned through a litany of Doors songs, candles and flashlights provided an eerily appropriate atmosphere, and even though a strong waft of 60s-ish aroma was ever present, the constables kept their distance as long as the tokers kept themselves discreet. The composition of the entourage was constantly changing; the comings and goings were hardly acknowledged. Instead, the conversations were perpetual and free-form. On occasion, someone would recall a personal memory involving a Doors song, but preferred topics were more along the lines of the consciousness Morrison seemed intent on raising. Lyrics were analyzed and musical passages were toasted. All of this was done in hushed tones, not necessarily out of respect, but because no one wanted to upstage the ghettoblaster's ongoing soundtrack.

I was there for two hours. No one exchanged names or details. There were different points of view expressed, but no arguments. Literary references and musical influences peppered the dialog with a subtle intensity that would have made him proud. The effect of everyone's comments seemed both thoughtful and therapeutic, as they put Morrison's escapades and compositions into deep personal perspectives; there was no doubt he had indeed, in some manner, become an extension of each of their lives and they felt they were enriched because of it.

My lasting memory of that night was the notion that Jim Morrison probably would have preferred being the focal point for those introspective testaments rather than for the massive din of a Doors concert.

If so, maybe that meant he finally got what he wanted. In a way, then, so did we.

Map Quest

Historians teach that the USA emerged from its isolationist ways when it entered World War I ...

Geography teachers may dispute that point.

Whenever an American media outlet wants to re-emphasize the issue, they merely find one of many studies that show a significant percentage of high school students can't locate major foreign cities or countries on a map. The inference is that, no matter what the foreign policy, the average American citizen doesn't know or doesn't care about much of the world beyond his borders.

If that's the case, I guess the average American viewer can't get any more confused when NBC follows the international 'corporate line' and promotes the Winter Olympics as being based in Torino.

Americans speak English. In their language, the name of the city is Turin.

Somewhere in the past, cultures have seen fit to customize geographic names for reasons known only to them at the time. Perhaps it was a 'pronunciation' issue or a translation matter. Whatever the origin, it's well-established. For example, the Germanic countries know the Empire of the Franks --- Frankreich, in their language --- is called France by those who live there. The French know their northeastern neighbors call their home country Deutschland and the English call that same country Germany, but to them, it's Allemagne. Lesser-populated countries see their homeland re-christened in even more versions; Sverige to its inhabitants is Sweden, Suéde, Schweden to others. For the collection of Alpine cantons that has become a banking capital to the world, citizens there acknowledge their multiple cultures and recognize their own government --- collectively and distinctly --- as Switzerland, Suisse, Schweiz and Svizzera.

Their city names are affected, too. The list is long, so we'll only cite two examples in that category, in German, French and English:

Genf - Genève - Geneva

Wien - Viènne - Vienna

The Europeans are accustomed to this. None of them attempt to put on airs and use a version of a name that is out of its cultural context. They know that to do so sounds absolutely silly.

Such diversity is part of their immediate life.

Decisions are less logical and more simplistic on the other side of the Atlantic. I can only imagine that NBC's promotional staff thinks the Italian version of the Italian city's name just sounds cooler than the English version. Or, perhaps they don't want to get into a religious angle when any American who actually has heard of Turin only thinks of the mysterious Shroud that is kept in safekeeping by the Catholic diocese there. Their rationalization is that it doesn't matter what version of the city's name they use, all their viewers will know is that it has lots of mountains, it has sufficient snow and ice to host the Winter Olympics, and it isn't in the USA.

Now, this may seem to be a pedantic comment, but it underscores two longstanding complaints I have about the American educational perspective:

1. Measurements of comprehension are done by standardized testing, which is useless, and

2. The only time most Americans show any inclination to being 'international' --- without an army on its way somewhere --- is when they try to make a faux impression.

All that happens with the former is that teachers have simply resorted to 'teach to the test' in order to move students along. It's hard to blame them. Funds for education are almost always lacking. The social stigma against students who don't pass to the next level often has greater repercussions in their lives than it should, and there are many students who simply don't 'test' well, which means teachers need to spend more time coaching them to the method as opposed to the material. The net effect is that students not only never really grasp the content of the lesson, they also don't grasp the context of the lesson outside of a test environment. No personal relevance results in no educational retention.

The latter is a lingering effect of the general American populace being under the impression that the world is at its beck and call. Thus, there is no urgency for them to concern themselves about its nuances.

For their part, I suppose the best NBC can expect to do is convey that Turin is in northern Italy, amidst the Alps. Hopefully, they won't have to underscore that it's in Europe, and that Europe is on the other side of the Atlantic.

There won't be a test on it later, but when someone somewhere in the USA eventually does so, or when the topic arises in a real-world situation, I'm sure it will be in English.

So will the correct response.

Fed Raids: Pertinent or Paranoid?

Business always moves faster than government ...

It's no surprise that a great deal of lawmakers' time is spent reacting to advances in commerce and science. It's also no surprise that one of their favorite tactics is to call on their enforcement agencies to bring scrutiny against any topic about which they're struggling to understand.

We're now seeing this applied against at least two e-currency operations.

One of them, INT Gold, saw their head offices in Texas raided by the FBI in December. No arrests were made and no disclosures were presented to indicate the reason for their actions. The only auspices mentioned were that they were pursuing an ongoing fraud investigation. It's now been over a month and nothing further has happened.

At roughly the same time, e-Gold was also served with a search warrant. It seems the justification was petty --- they allegedly didn't have a 'required' currency-exchange license --- and they were upset enough to place the following posting on their website:

e-gold® welcomes US Government review of its status as a privately issued currency
January 20, 2006

"Starting in mid-December 2005, Gold & Silver Reserve, Inc. (G&SR), contractual Operator and primary dealer for e-gold, has been the subject of a warranted search of its premises and records, had its domestic bank accounts frozen, and been the target of a precisely timed, extraordinarily misleading attack by a major business publication.

"In an emergency hearing in US District Court January 13, 2006, the freeze order on G&SR's bank accounts was lifted. Though numerous criminal claims had been made in obtaining the search and seizure warrants, the Government has not sustained these allegations and the only remaining claim is a contention that G&SR has operated as a currency exchange without the proper license. G&SR had previously proposed to the Government that e-gold be classified for regulatory purposes as a currency, enabling G&SR to register as a currency exchange. In a Treasury report released January 11, 2006, however, the Department of Treasury reaffirmed their interpretation of the USC and CFR definitions of currency as excluding e-gold.

"G&SR, for nearly a year, has been engaged with an agency of Treasury in a BSA (Bank Secrecy Act) compliance examination it had voluntarily initiated. G&SR, though preferring that the venue was not a courtroom, welcomes the opportunity to extend its discussions with the Government on how best to achieve appropriate statutory or regulatory cognizance of e-gold while continuing to build e-gold's market share as a medium of international commerce.

"Despite the unfounded charges and adverse misleading publicity that have severely damaged both e-gold and G&SR, G&SR has continued to meet all financial obligations and remain completely operational. e-gold remains highly committed to its goal of bringing, for the first time in history, to people of any financial means across the globe, a secure payment mechanism at a fraction of the cost of any other system. e-gold fully expects to transcend the unfortunate events of the past month and resume its exponential growth.

"Further information can be found at:

www.e-gold.com
www.omnipay.com
www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/js3077_01112005_MLTA.pdf"

The proactive approach by e-Gold should be applauded. INT Gold should have done the same thing.

If more of the public only knew how many times search papers were served on financial institutions for one reason or another, they'd no doubt be as skeptical as I am about the publicity the authorities have given their actions against these two e-currency companies.

Let's consider how authorities move against major banks when wrongdoing is suspected. One characteristic which becomes quickly evident is that any releases issued by the investigating authorities have always been very specific in their nature, because major banks have enough financial and political clout to strike back at anything less.

An example of a precisely identified transgression is the Citigroup private banking scandal in Tokyo in 2004. The Japanese authorities said the bank helped clients manipulate accounting records through improper real estate transactions, failed to process tax refunds for clients and mismanaged customers’ confidential information. As a result, they ordered Citigroup's Japanese private banking operations to close, but took measures to ensure all unaffected investors would be minimally affected while they moved their accounts.

Rarely, total loss to depositors happens. The Silverado collapse in Colorado sent Charles Keating to prison for what should be a thousand life terms, as more people than that lost their life savings. It's notable that this occurred in what was a laissez-faire junk bond scenario.

Raids only receive mention when it serves the authorities' purposes to do so. One reason for this is because the searches and/or seizures don't yield sufficient results to merit charges being filed. There can exist a vast gray area in modern financial activities, and when the fine print of a certain situation is scrutinized, it often occurs that, perhaps those activities have sailed close to the legal wind, but they did not take the airs of disrepute.

It remains to be seen what they're investigating at INT Gold. As opposed to their treatment of major banks, the nature of the authorities' announcement of this raid was quite vague, which I'm sure was by design. So, the issue is one of whom they were attempting to stir. However, American law says the parties involved are innocent until proven guilty, so they should duly be accorded that right. Until the entire story comes to light, it's improper to cast aspersions. After all, as with most raids at major banks that go unpublicized, it may be that the transgressor is not the company, but a client who has abused its privileges within that company's facilities.

The e-currency investigations are surely a result, in part, of one government's indecision as to how to regulate e-currencies within their borders when those currencies are neither fiat nor necessarily domiciled within those borders.

This reminds me of broadcasting's early days, when the Feds were perplexed about how to best cope with radio signals that only obeyed the laws of physics and thus had the ability to cross state lines without governmental permission. As ridiculous as that sounds today, the thought of a particular technology being more advanced than political and/or geographical delineations was of deep concern to them. It ultimately took nearly 15 years for the American government to create the Federal Communications Commission to cope with such an 'advanced' business as interstate broadcasting.

Given the fact that e-currencies are privately generated and administered, and given that no central monitoring system exists to aid in their regulation, it is no surprise under the current environment of American laws to now see a bustle of authoritarian attention directed toward them. Until they are able to determine a palatable policy, the best they can do is assume a self-righteous position in the interests of 'consumer protection' and cast aspersions by means of rationalization. It's not particularly fair, but as we've seen in related online forums, it's quite effective.

Hopefully, the issue will be settled in a much more expeditious manner than it was in broadcasting.

Ashes to Diamonds

At some point during the course of our education, we get a chemistry class where the claim is made that the value of a human body's elements is no more than $1.82 or something like that ...

However, AP reporter Jim Sauer found a company that begs to differ:

Proving that diamonds indeed are forever, a widower got a gem of a keepsake made from his late wife's ashes this month: a 0.35-carat, round yellow diamond.

The synthetic stone, ordered by a man in his 40s shortly after his wife's death from heart disease in May, is the handiwork of LifeGems.

"It was beautiful, really pretty," funeral director Paul Baue said of the stone ordered by the widower, who requested privacy and declined to be interviewed for this story. "It's a great way to pay tribute to someone's life."

That LifeGem was the first sold in the St. Louis area, according to the suburban Chicago-based company. Four-year-old LifeGems estimates it has crafted nearly 1,000 of the diamonds - what it calls "the most unique memorial product ever invented" - for about 500 families.

"I think more people are looking for more-personal ways to remember somebody," says Dean VandenBiesen, LifeGem's vice president of operations. "Rather than having ongoing mourning for someone's loss, people are wanting to celebrate a life. The LifeGem is just another way to do that, versus having a weeping, somber occasion."

To LifeGem, the synthetic diamonds offer a choice in a funeral industry that for years, by nature, offered limited choices for consumers - bury a body in a graveyard or have the body cremated, with the ashes stored in an urn or scattered in the wind.

LifeGem needs 8 ounces of human ashes to make a diamond the company prizes for its "closeness and mobility," leaving the rest of the cremains to the family. Depending on size, LifeGem prices vary from about $2,500 for a quarter carat to about $14,000 for a full carat, VandenBiesen said.

"These remains are very precious and special to people, but they don't just have an aesthetic form and look," VandenBiesen said. "People actually really enjoy these, and that's really different from what you'd expect in the funeral profession."

As part of the LifeGems process that takes a few months, carbon extracted from cremains are subjected to the extremes of heat and pressure. The resulting diamond then is cut and faceted like a normal diamond.

Those behind LifeGems believe the market for the diamonds will only blossom. According to the Cremation Association of North America, the percentage of the dead that are cremated - nearly 28 percent in 2002 - is estimated to rise to 35 percent in 2010 and 43 percent in 2025.

Among more than 57,000 deaths in Missouri in 2002, 18.6 percent were cremated, the association said.

Beyond the synthetic diamonds, others in recent years have tried to think outside the box when it comes to options with cremains. Creative Cremains - based in California, long the nation's largest cremation state by volume - offers custom-designed urns, converting mementos - everything from sports equipment to photo frames and musical instruments - into places for loved one's ashes.

"The only limits are imagination and finances," the company's Web site says.

Not to be outdone, Georgia-based Eternal Reefs Inc. has catered to people who in life honored the environment, mixing their cremains into concrete and placing them in the water off any of several states, creating new marine habitats for fish and other sea life.

Other businesses will send cremains into space or place them in fireworks for folks who want to go out with a bang.

"I think different generations - the baby boomers and Generation Xers - are more open to making personalization part of their final journey in life," said Baue, vice president of Baue Funeral Homes, with four sites - and a crematory - in St. Charles County.

To him, turning loved ones into shiny ones is among the crown jewels of ways of being remembered.

"As they say, diamonds are forever," he said.

Sticks and Stones ...

Libel statutes now have company, in an Orwellian sort of way ...

Here's an article written for CNET News by their Washington DC correspondent, Declan McCullagh. It's very well done, so rather then echo his sentiments, I've chosen to share it with you:

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.

"A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. Here's the relevant language:

'Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.'

"It's no joke. (On 5 Jan 2005), President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

"In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.

"This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.

"'The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic,' says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. 'What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else.'

"Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called 'Preventing Cyberstalking.' It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet 'without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy.'

"To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.

"The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.

"There's an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an 'interactive computer service' to cause someone 'substantial emotional harm.'

"That kind of prohibition might make sense. But why should merely annoying someone be illegal?

"There are perfectly legitimate reasons to set up a Web site or write something incendiary without telling everyone exactly who you are.

"Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals.

"In each of those three cases, someone's probably going to be annoyed. That's enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won't file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.)

"Clinton Fein, a San Francisco resident who runs the Annoy.com site, says a feature permitting visitors to send obnoxious and profane postcards through e-mail could be imperiled.

'Who decides what's annoying? That's the ultimate question,' Fein said. He added: 'If you send an annoying message via the United States Post Office, do you have to reveal your identity?'

"Fein once sued to overturn part of the Communications Decency Act that outlawed transmitting indecent material 'with intent to annoy.' But the courts ruled the law applied only to obscene material, so Annoy.com didn't have to worry.

"'I'm certainly not going to close the site down,' Fein said on Friday. 'I would fight it on First Amendment grounds.'

"He's right. Our esteemed politicians can't seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else.

"It even shields our right to do it anonymously. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended this principle magnificently in a 1995 case involving an Ohio woman who was punished for distributing anonymous political pamphlets.

"If President Bush truly believed in the principle of limited government (it is in his official bio), he'd realize that the law he signed cannot be squared with the Constitution he swore to uphold.

"And then he'd repeat what President Clinton did a decade ago when he felt compelled to sign a massive telecommunications law. Clinton realized that the section of the law punishing abortion-related material on the Internet was unconstitutional, and he directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.

"Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans' personal freedoms. Now we'll see if the president rises to the occasion."

Must See Hockey

I think I've just seen another miracle on ice ...

The National Hockey League is back on one of the major American broadcast networks. Some would call that a miracle in itself, but I'm taking higher ground. Specifically, I'm referring to the quality of the broadcast. It's one of the best-produced sports programs I've seen.

Kudos to NBC Sports!

America is a difficult market for hockey. It may be the world's fastest team sport and it may encompass many attributes of skill and strength that should appeal to the American fan, but many regions in the USA have little or no local influence or infrastructure of any significance for the sport. That means any national broadcast package must overcome a series of complex perception issues, not the least of which is in attracting casual sports fans to even try viewing it. Some wags contend that the only real NHL fans are only found in their arenas --- explaining why the capacity percentages for NHL games are higher than in any other sport --- but, as a fan myself, I consider that a lazy observation.

I will agree that, more often than not, one has to actually attend a hockey game to become a fan. Therein lies the problem with most of its television broadcast packages in the USA. To date, they have not accurately captured the essence of the game, which would offer new viewers a reason to become fans. For example, only baseball can rival hockey in aural effervescence --- the sounds of sticks clapping the ice or shooting the puck, of hardened steel blades cutting ice, of the puck pinging off goal posts, of humanity crashing into each other and/or the sideboards --- and usually, that means you have to be there to truly absorb the experience. Once you do, the odds are strong that you'll be hooked on hockey, too.

This is a factor that American television networks never seemed to fathom. At least, until now. NBC's geeks have found a way to mike the rink so the sizzle of hockey's sounds are finely captured and the production crew has made sure that this audio element be made prominent throughout the game. The effect was absolutely visceral.

NBC's broadcasters have a dual challenge in describing the action so as not to insult the intelligence of avid hockey fans while doing so in a manner that won't confuse viewers new to the game. They accomplished it with aplomb, literally talking to two audiences simultaneously and seamlessly, using what's becoming a lost art in American sportscasting: selecting their terms judiciously and sparingly.

Meanwhile, the studio broadcasters worked from a bright-but-subtle, well-designed set and deployed the same discipline. The anchor, former Philadelphia Flyer goalie Bill Clement, is often reduced to a shill when he hosts the NHL's cable package on OLN. However, on NBC, he was excellently understated, allowing his analysts to be themselves rather than talking heads and giving each discussion point only the time it needed, letting each message sell itself to each viewer. It will be interesting to see if NBC keeps that set outside, at the skating rink adjacent to their New York headquarters. It's the ultimate visual aid, of course, and Clement's obvious effortless abilities on it not only allows him to more smoothly elaborate an aspect of the game, by inference the new viewer can identify with skating as an activity available to everyone.

I never thought I'd see the day when an American video production of a hockey game was actually better than its Canadian counterpart, but NBC did it. Comparatively speaking, hockey broadcasts in Europe are basic and banal, but those countries are more attuned to the game and actually seem to prefer that sort of presentation. The Canadians are rightfully viewed as being state-of-the-art when it comes to televising hockey. Any true fan will confirm that Hockey Night in Canada is a Saturday night rite of respect to a game that, on many occasions, can count 25% of that nation's population among its audience.

And yet, the NBC production was crisper, often with more unique but very useful camera angles that provided perfect sightlines to the puck and any action around it. They integrated graphics into the action that far exceeded anything I've seen anywhere else. Some simple additions, such as drop-downs logging the shift time of a particular player, aid an avid fan's awareness of unfolding team strategy while also enlightening the new viewer as to how quickly player changes occur and why. Better yet, the graphics were never obtrusive, allowing viewers to check them at their discretion (as opposed to 'demanding' their attention by 'scrolling' data while action is occurring).

It's hard to believe this came from the network that, 30 years ago, gave us the late, unlamented Peter Puck. That was the cartoon character NBC invented during their first, unsuccessful attempt to broadcast hockey. The last feature hockey needed then, or now, is a reversion to kids' programing in the midst of a sportscast that wants to be taken more seriously by the adult American market.

It's also good to see technology deployed in more refined terms. That wasn't always the case. When they had the national broadcast package, Fox Network's attempt to follow the puck with a ridiculous 'virtual tracking path' --- derisively termed the 'sperm' puck, as that's the image it resembled --- overshadowed the action, and combined with its morphing robot graphics presenting scores, hockey was trivialized to serving as a backdrop for ersatz video games. New viewers only remembered effects, and avid fans got tired of trying to look past all that to see if a real game happened to be in progress.

Many experts have thought that the advent of HDTV would be a boon to hockey, as the wider screen would enable more action to be portrayed. Perhaps NBC is preparing for that imminent change in broadcast standards. If so, they deserve high praise for their foresight and higher praise for their preparations. They're making the experts look good with their predictions.

And speaking of preparations, the NHL is surely an early benefactor of NBC being the American outlet for the Winter Olympics, of which the hockey tournament is a major feature. The network is no doubt honing its cast and crew for that coverage, too. Given what they've already shown, hockey fans in America will be scanning their listings for NBC as opposed to any other available alternative, and sports fans in general will have no better opportunity to finally see why hockey is worth their attention.

During the 1980 Winter Games, in Lake Placid, when the USA's team of collegians shocked the Russian juggernaut of professionals in the Upset of All Time, broadcaster Al Michaels uttered his famous, "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!"

It's taken 25 years, but we can believe again. Only this time, it's the coverage. NBC has gone for hockey gold and we're the winners.

Ur bin Legend

I may be repulsed at the deeds orchestrated by Osama bin Laden ...

But I'm even more repulsed at the ineptitude displayed in the attempts to stop him and his cause.

I mean, the guy's a murderous criminal. He's an anti-Muslim, as any credible scholar of the Koran would attest. He's been disowned by his family and disavowed by the country of his birth.

So, why is it so hard to dislodge him as a hero to a significant portion of the Muslim world?

The answer, frankly, is in the policies of those to whom his attacks are directed. The USA and its allies have transformed the perception of Osama bin Laden into that of a modern-day Robin Hood, a rich guy who is a champion of the poor by virtue of his acts against the capitalist infidels who invade their lands and impose a foreign culture upon them. As far as I'm concerned, it takes a band of idiots to offer democracy to a country and not be able to make it palatable, but to date, the Western powers are 0-for-2 in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their mishandling of bin Laden's image is a major reason why.

It seems clear that, until they can defeat Osama bin Laden and his band of thieves, they'll fight an uphill battle. It seems just as clear that this task shouldn't even have been part of the equation. After all, al-Qaeda wasn't the Taliban --- the actual rulers of Afghanistan at the time --- and it certainly had little or nothing to do with Iraq.

However, every enemy needs a poster boy, and bin Laden was certainly well-positioned to provide one. He was only an uneasy ally with the Taliban and just a distant acquaintance with Saddam Hussain's iron-fisted machine. However, he fit the stereotype of an extreme, culpable Muslim terrorist who stood for all that was evil in the region. That put him in perfect position to be publicized by the Western world's leaders, which in the process, proved the age-old bromide to downtrodden and/or displaced Muslims that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

I highly recommend the recently published book by Peter Bergen, 'The Osama bin Laden I Know: an Oral History of al-Qaeda's Leader.' To defeat an adversary, one must first understand him. This book does an excellent job of not only providing a series of first-hand accounts which illuminate bin Laden's origins and background, but even more importantly, confirming that the publicity heaped upon him by the USA and its allies has only served to solidify bin Laden's legend among his followers and others who are susceptible to his twisted message.

Bergen argues that al-Qaeda was close to becoming an afterthought in the Muslim world prior to the invasion of Iraq. The majority of Muslims were appalled by the wanton murder of innocents on 11 Sep 2001. The al-Qaeda movement was virtually crushed during the American retaliation in Afghanistan, which was really directed against the Taliban government for harboring bin Laden. It could be effectively argued that the al-Qaeda cause had been minimalized to that of an outrageous bunch of anarchists hiding behind a great religion's doctrine.

And then, the Americans tied al-Qaeda to Iraq to further justify their invasion.

My guess is that bin Laden couldn't believe his good fortune. He had no standing in that country until that time. Now, his money and his message sound quite appealing to devout young Iraqi men who have few alternatives in a devastated land that will need years to stablize. The irony is that these are people who like the American way; they just happen to like it on their terms rather than have it thrust upon them in a context of imposition which leaves them little choice but to obey or rebel.

And therein lies the ultimate irony. At no time has bin Laden or al-Qaeda actually stated their way. We know what they're against, but never raised the question as to what they are for. The concept of 'a fundamentalist Muslim state' is too broad. After all, Iran claims that objective, and they're hardly close friends with al-Qaeda.

Sir Winston Churchill once said, "It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." I can think of no better policy shift in the battle against al-Qaeda than that. Rather than continue to personify a criminal element, why not begin a campaign to goad bin Laden into listing specifics as to how he would run a perfect world. My guess is that his responses would alienate enough of the Muslim community to the point of his becoming trivialized, and in the process, exposed for the villain he is.

Why are we not demanding to hear his words and then throwing them back in his face? Why are Western leaders trying to associate his name with every Muslim-based transgressor --- eg- the Taliban and Saddam --- with whom they have an issue? Could it be their laziness in spin-mongering or simply their cynical attitude that the Western populace cannot discern the reality of these matters for themselves?

Never-ending cycles of attack and imposition haven't worked yet for the Israelis and Palestinians. Did the Americans and their allies really think it would work elsewhere in that region?

It's unconscionable that Western leaders have turned bin Laden into a legend for the mere fact that it's convenient to put a face to an adversary. Make no mistake, this was their doing. To this day, you've never seen a Muslim authority --- not even the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan --- ascribe any heroic faith-defending status to him. Bergen's book underscores the reality that Osama bin Laden is nothing more than a soldier of fortune.

It's time for the world to see the difference between a real legend and an urban legend. Bergen's book is further proof that Osama bin Laden is the latter.

Geshundheit Geschmecht Gut

The Germans have believed it for centuries ...

Beer is good for you.

There's one German brewery that is making that statement its main advertising claim. The Neuzelle Kloster Brewery is no newcomer to the business. It's been in business for 400 years and says that one of its beers is enriched with ingredients that not only aids your good health, it also slows down the aging process.

The magic formula, it seems, includes hot spring mineral water, algae and antioxidants to the four traditional ingredients of beer as mandated in their seminal consumer protection law --- Rheinheitsgebot, the Bavarian Beer Purity Law decreed in 1516 --- water, hops, yeast and barley. The end product is a brew that is rich in vitamins and minerals.

Two reporters for the Daily Telegraph of London, Roya Nikkhah and Gareth Bethell, took a closer look at this phenominal ale and filed the following report for their paper:

Stefan Fritsche, the managing director of the brewery in north-east Germany, said that he hoped that the beer would encourage people to lead healthier lives.

"We consulted several different laboratories and doctors to find out what ingredients we could add to beer to make it healthier," he said.

"Our customers, particularly the women, keep asking me how many beers they should drink to look young. We can't promise that the beer will turn back the wheel of time, but the key to feeling young and healthy is having a healthy lifestyle. Now, if people want to have a drink, they can choose a healthy option."

The dark beer, which according to Mr Fritsche, tastes like "malt beer", contains 4.8 per cent alcohol and carries the label: Please take care of your health and do not drink too much.

The "healthy" ingredients include spirulina, an algae rich in protein, iron and vitamins A and D, which are added to the beer following the fermentation process, together with a concentrated liquid form of antioxidants known as flavonoids which are also found in tea, red wine and some fruits.

Scientists believe that antioxidants can restore elasticity in the skin lost during the ageing process and reduce the risk of heart disease and some cancers.

Beer, which is naturally rich in the antioxidants found in hops and barley, contains twice as many antioxidants as white wine. The Anti Aging Bier, however, is said to give the drinker 10 times the antioxidants of a normal pint of lager, bitter or ale.

At £1.75 a bottle, the beer has proved popular with guests at the Hotel Esplanade, a spa hotel in the town of Bad Saarow, south-east of Berlin.

Peter Hoeck, the manager who drinks a bottle of the beer every day, has sold up to 400 bottles a week to guests and past guests, who come back to place their orders.

"At first they are sceptical of an anti-ageing drink because they think that it sounds a bit strange, but once they drink it, they love it and order it again and again," he said. "The guests tell me that their general wellbeing is improved after drinking it and that they feel fitter and revitalised.

"It is a very tasty drink - fuller and rounder than normal beer. At 37, I think I am still young but I am drinking it to stay young and healthy."

The hotel also stocks the brewery's "bath beer", which contains concentrated levels of yeast and hops and claims to soften and cleanse the skin when applied externally.

Mr Fritsche said production of the beer was in its early stages and that the brewery was currently selling about 2,000 bottles a month to spas, specialist pharmacies and a few bars.

"We are also talking to importers in the United States, Russia and South Korea where we hope to export the beer very soon," he said. "The United Kingdom is the next export destination we will be looking at."

A spokesman for the British Beer and Pub Association, which represents the interests of the pub and brewing industries, said that it welcomed the beer as "an innovative new product", but warned consumers to treat the brewery's claims with caution.

"If this beer heightens the awareness of the known health benefits of beer, such as its B vitamins and antioxidants, that can only be a good thing," she said.

"However, our concern would be with the anti-ageing claim which may encourage immoderate drinking." The concept of a healthy, rejuvenating beer met with mixed views from British drinkers.

Zeena Moolla, a journalist from north London, said: "I would definitely drink it as long as it doesn't taste too bad. Women spend a lot of money on botox and all that so I expect it would go down quite well as an alternative."

Charlie Wilcox, a 53-year-old businessman from east London, was unenthusiastic. "Drinking beer makes you think that you're younger anyway," he said.

"For me, the drink is about the taste so the claim that it is anti-ageing wouldn't make me switch from my normal lager."

Tom Sanders, a professor of nutrition at Kings College, London, also expressed scepticism. He said that a beer claiming to be a healthy drink was "highly misleading."

"Antioxidants are already naturally present in beer and a bit of added pond slime is unlikely to have huge benefits," he said.

"People don't tend to have a drink in order to maintain their health, and alcohol is hardly great for ageing. It sounds like the brewery has just gone down to the local health shop and asked what is trendy."

Fly Phishing

I'd like to pass along a very interesting and informative posting that was made to a business forum that I monitor ...

It pertains to a hacking technique that is as clever as it is diabolical. Anyone who maintains online financial accounts should be aware of it:

"I had my e-gold account hacked and lost a bundle. But I think e-gold has been getting some unfair blame. My first reaction was that it must have been an inside job at e-gold. I felt this because I had to enter an e-gold pin sent to my email as a result of my IP address changing. (If you use a cable modem or a dial up modem your IP address is probably changing frequently...it's called dynamic IP addressing.)

"It seemed like if it wasn't an inside (e-gold) job then someone might be hacking my email as well. Then I figured out how the perpetrator did it. It turned out to be pretty simple and is a technique for which anti-virus, anit-keyloggers, anti-spyware, non-html email, having two computers, virtual keyboards, etc. are no protection.

"The perpetrator was one of the sites I was using (a High-Yield Investment Program, but it could easily have been a surf site.) The vulnerability comes from the fact that almost all of these sites branch to e-gold (or other provider) when you buy an upgrade. At that point you are entering your ID and password.

"What the evil site does is they have screens that look exactly like e-gold's screens. So when you think you are branching out to e-gold you are actually branching out to their own site. As soon as they have your password they themselves log on to your e-gold account. Since their IP address is different from the one you last used with e-gold, this generates a changed IP / PIN email to be sent to your email address.

"At that point they also display a copy of the e-gold screen that says you need to enter the PIN. So you go get the PIN from your email and enter it into the bogus PIN entry screen on your computer. The bad guys then have the PIN they need to enter into the true e-gold PIN entry screen on their computer. And 'voilà,' they are in.

"Once they have your account info they can display to you your balance screen and other e-gold screens so that everything looks normal to you. You spend your little $25 or whatever your upgrade is, but it has no effect on your actual account since you are not logged into it. The bad guys then spend all your funds to their e-gold account.

"The way all these sites automatically branch out to e-gold during an upgrade makes this a very widespread vulnerability. There are four things I know of that you can do to help protect you from this kind of attack.

"1. When you are branched out to e-gold during an upgrade, make sure the e-gold URL in the browser's address field starts with https, not http.

"2. Make sure there is a yellow closed-padlock icon in the right hand end of the status bar at the bottom of the browser.

"3. Double click on the padlock icon to view the certificate information. In the 'Issued to' field it should say www dot e-gold dot com and the 'Valid from' field should say 11/22/2004 to 12/1/2006.

"4. If you keep funds sitting in your e-gold account for any length of time set up a second secret e-gold account. Never access this account from a surf, High-Yield Investment Program, or any other site. Only use it by logging directly into e-gold. Then once you have funds appear in your normal e-gold account from a cashout, move it over to your secure e-gold account. Then later right before you buy an upgrade, move the funds from the secure e-gold account to the normal e-gold account. This minimizes the time your funds are exposed in the normal account.

"At the very least do steps 1-3 EVERY TIME you buy an upgrade. A bad site can branch you to the true e-gold screens every time except for the one time they are going to clean you out.

"This doesn't mean you shouldn't follow all of the other measures that have been mentioned elsewhere in this thread like having up-to-date anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. and even two computers. The above needs to be done in addition to all those.

"I pieced this together on my own from various clues. One important clue was that I happened to notice the loss fairly quickly and noticed that the time stamp of the transaction that cleaned me out was the same time as when I was on the scam site. I also saw that the scam site folded up its operation shortly after that, which helped to confirm who was behind the scam. My day job is programming so I started to think about how I might have done something like this based on the information I had. As I did this it all came together.

"This particular scam site did something else that I'm sure made this much more profitable for them and is something else to be very wary of. First they paid like clockwork. You could request each day's gains and within about two or three hours those gains showed up in my e-gold account. It was a great confidence booster in their program. We tend to think of scam sites as having all sorts of reliability problems leading up to their final exit. However, my experience here points out how a really good scam may try to fake you out by looking very solid. They also gave you bonuses for upgrading your account to higher levels. The higher the level the higher the bonus. This strongly encouraged members to invest more money than they might have otherwise. They also offered a higher interest rate at higher upgrade levels. There are a number of sites out there that do this and it is often a legitimate way to build business. But in this case their motivation and intent were quite nefarious.

"The other thing they did was when you made a withdrawal they required you to spend a tiny amount to them (basically a tiny upgrade), I think it was something like a penny or 5 cents. They said this was a measure they were taking to help insure that the account they were cashing out to was really your account. That seemed odd to me and as time went by I kept turning that over in my mind to try to figure out how that would accomplish what they claimed it did.

"In retrospect it's clear what they were doing. Normally on a cashout you never even have to branch out to e-gold or whomever. When you register for the HYIP you typically give them your e-gold account and that's all they need to do the spend to your account. However, by requiring a tiny spend each time you cashout, they get you to enter your password during cashouts as well as upgrades. And, if an e-currency provider requires a secondary password to do a spend, then they get that by this process as well. This also plays on the fact that one's guard is probably a little lower during a cashout operation when you are receiving money.

"And here is the coup de gras. Shortly before they cleaned out my account they announced to all their members that system profits had been so good that they were giving each of their members a $50 bonus. So over the next several hours many members were I'm sure elated to see this unexpected $50 and proceeded to cash it out. So that's when I'm sure the scam site started branching everyone out to the bogus e-gold screens. By using this $50 bonus ruse they got a large number of their members to do the tiny spend within a short period of time. They figured that they had to work quickly before the word got out what they were doing. So after a few hours of draining all those e-gold accounts they closed shop and got out of town...got clean away.

"The beauty of this operation was that you normally only occasionally enter an upgrade, which requires you to enter your password. But by 'training' their users to make frequent, even daily, cashouts and by requiring what amounted to a tiny upgrade to do that cashout, they set everyone up so that in a short period of time a large number of their users would be exposing themselves to the final step of the scam. In a very sick way it was 'magnificent.' Not only did they get way with everyone's bloated upgrades, they also got away with whatever many of them had sitting in their e-currency accounts.

"So another lesson to be learned from this is to watch out for any internet service that 'for security purposes' requires you to make a tiny spend in order to do a cashout. Also be suspicious anytime one of these services gives you an unexpected bonus or benefit. The bonus may be perfectly legitimate, but from now on whenever something like that happens, I immediately start trying to think about how that might be used against me."

Stop! You're Both Right!

Cyberspace has certainly shrunk the margin of error ...

Colloquialisms used to take quite a while to become embedded in a local vernacular. For example, the Americans expunged the British from the colonies in 1789, but based upon personal letters exchanged between the two countries which have been noted by historians, it took until the 1830s before comments were made noticing a distinct difference in accents between them.

Local dialects will always be a fixture in geographical cultures. However, as more and more of us traverse both cyberspace and the real world, basic pronunciations are becoming a bit of an issue.

I just noticed this again in the world of sport, when a national broadcast featured the recent darlings of NCAA basketball, Gonzaga University from Spokane, Washington. The locals there insist that the name be stated as 'Gon-ZAEG-ah,' but inevitably, sports announcers from elsewhere defer to 'Gon-ZAHG-uh' until corrected by the locals.

However, the Gonzaga name has been a part of Italian history since the 1300s, and anyone who has studied it or been exposed to it from that much deeper context knows that the correct pronunciation is 'Gon-ZAHG-uh.' Ludovico Gonzaga not only established his family's dynasty over the Italian state of Mantua in 1328, but his family became a cultural and military force in that area for the better part of five centuries.

You'll even note that the Spokane university has an extension program in Italy and still steadfastly maintains its preference for the colloquial pronunciation. Trust me, in Europe, it's called 'Gon-ZAHG-uh.' However, alumni from the Spokane campus, from Bing Crosby to John Stockton, learned to refer to their alma mater as 'Gon-ZAEG-ah.'

This raises the age-old question of proper pronunciation etiquette, of course. Do we go with the traditional and accurate version of a proper name if we are aware of it or with the colloquial preferences which, for some reason, took hold in a certain area?

Another classic example is Nôtre Dame. The correct French, of course, is 'Noht-ruh Dahm.' Use the Americanized version anywhere else in the world at the risk of being castigated as a hayseed. And yet, the Jesuit university based in South Bend, Indiana, obviously prefers the local pronunciation.

The universalization of products broaches the same issue. For example, the German beer 'Löwenbräu' is pronounced 'LUH-ven-broy' everywhere except in English-speaking countries and the Swedish furniture store, IKEA, is universally stated as 'ee-KAY-uh.' Try pronouncing those in the proper way and it's odds-on you'll be met with a blank stare or looked upon as a snob. But, what have you done except say the name accurately?

Of course, in commercialism, it's the bottom line that dictates pronunciation. There is no better example than the legendary German shoe tycoon, Adi Dassler, who used his own name as the basis for his corporate image. While most of the world refers to his sporting footwear as 'AH-dee-dahs,' Americans somehow found a way to call it 'Uh-DEE-duhs.' Go figure. Dassler never minded, though. Dollars spent just as easily as any other currency.

Other famous names have been subject to colloquialization in their own right. In hockey, Teemu Selanne is a Finnish star who has been in the NHL for quite a while. He may have come to North America as 'TAE-moo SAY-lah-nuh,' but any hockey fan on the continent will know him only as 'TEE-moo Seh-LAH-nee.'

Sometimes, we even see the metamorphosis from universal to colloquial pronunciation occur before our very eyes. In baseball, Bill Mueller has been a solid major-league baseball player since his debut with the San Francisco Giants in 1996. At that time, he went by the traditional German pronunciation of his surname of 'MYOO-luhr.' However, somewhere along the line, he decided and subsequently announced that his surname was best said aloud as 'Miller.' Who knows why? What does one do then? Correct someone on how to state his own name?

Actor Jake Gyllenhåll has Swedish roots. His surname literally means 'Golden Way' and should be stated as 'YEE-lehn-hole.' North Americans find it easier to say 'JEE-lehn-hall.' I've never seen anything that indicates where Jake stands on the issue. He's probably too busy being talented and rich.

This is why I find it difficult to criticize anyone who uses either pronunciation. It's a matter of context as to who's right. Like the famous breath-mint commercial says, they both are.

My rule of thumb is simple. In any situation, if there's more of them than there are of you and pronunciation becomes a volatile issue, they're right. Otherwise, universality prevails.

Dinar Redux

Online speculation regarding the 'investment opportunity' the new Iraqi Dinar represents is becoming a virtual cottage industry ...

However,I'm already on record as believing it's a great way to acquire wallpaper one note at a time.

With that in mind, I've noticed that a recent statement from the USA government has announced that they've 'hit the wall' budgetarily in Iraq; they've given enough financial aid to rebuild Iraq. Apparently, they've concluded that almost $19 billion in handouts is quite sufficient, especially when half of it was engulfed by fighting the continued insurgency there and thus had no lasting effect as a basis for reconstruction. Instead, the Americans believe it's time for other governments to belly up to the bar and make their own contributions to the cause.

That's about as realistic as thinking that the new Iraqi Dinar will amount to anything of value in the near future.

Given that, should the USA ever leave Iraq, the country is as liable to devolve into a prolonged civil war as the former Yugoslavia was when an imposed authority --- Tito's Soviet-backed communist confederation --- inevitably fell away. That would be a strong indication that the prospects of a stable currency in Iraq are slimmer than the profile of a starving amoeba.

The latest American report on their Iraqi 'investment' borders on the tragic. Details abound of unfinished schools and power plants, unrepaired roads and bridges, undermanned national miliatary forces and overpaid election costs. Again, a primary factor was the siphoning of funds to counter the insurgency.

Politics aside, does this sound like the foundations of a national economy that is going to improve anytime soon?

The sales point of most online Iraqi Dinar hawkers is that it only takes a minimal upgrade of their economy to profit from an increased exchange value for their currency. Fair enough, but who's going to want to accept it in exchange? And when?

There are numerous other opportunities out there which have a much greater growth potential than new Iraqi Dinar, and given the comparative odds, I'd even suggest horse racing.

That brings to mind an old bromide about the man who strolls by a stable and sees a boy excitedly shoveling through a pile of manure. When he asks the boy why he's doing it, the lad answers, "With all this evidence, there's got to be a pony in here somewhere!"

Perhaps, but given the current status of Iraq's economy and the dim prospects for its future, such an allegory may be making two different, but more salient points:

- Who would want a horse that made that much of a mess, and

- Someone else is going to have to clean it up.

The Americans have apparently come to the same conclusion, possibly even thinking that the oil business there is only a one-trick pony.

So, for anyone remotely thinking they can do better than the most financially dynamic government in the world and make money from anything representing the Iraqi economy --- especially speculating on its currency --- I can only make one recommendation:

Grab a shovel.

Compromised Positions

There is no denying that the sports business these days is awash in bright lights ...

Quite often, though, the same can't be said for the people or practices involved.

The passage of time, the fading of origins and the constant superseding of slang can combine to cause some curious contemporary contexts.

To start, have you ever really thought about how pedantic the word 'quarterback' is? When the innovators who metamorphosed rugby into gridiron football were telling players where to stand, it was only logical to have someone placed all the way behind the line called a 'fullback.' By then, soccer already had two defending positions which used that term, so they surely provided the acceptable sporting frame of reference. For the gridiron game's founding fathers to next place another player halfway between the fullback and the linemen and call him a 'halfback' made sense, too. But, perhaps they overdid this theme by sticking a third player halfway between the halfback and the linemen and arriving at the unfortunately obvious titling conclusion.

It only figures that such a mathematically correct --- but verbally clumsy --- location of a player would turn out to describe the most important position in the game. Any sports fan has heard that word a thousand times and surely doesn't think twice anymore about what it means or how silly it sounds. The rest of the salient world, though, is left to wonder what minds like those had named their kids.

On the other hand, the venerable game of cricket doesn't even think the word 'silly' sounds silly. Players' positions in that game are also defined by their location, and they actually have a series of spots called 'silly point,' 'silly mid-off' and 'silly mid-on.' In this case, it's truth in advertising. That's because they're placed so close to the batsman that solid contact from a full swing could result in serious bodily harm from a scorching line drive, which means that someone would have to be absolutely foolhardy to play there. Or, maybe just silly. (Just so you're aware that all cricketers aren't that crazy, the 'silly' locations are only occupied when the fielding team believes the batsman will only take defensive swings to protect his wicket.)

Certain topics just weren't discussed in public a century ago. So, a gridiron position like 'tight end' or a rugby position like 'hooker' never gave anyone a second thought. That was then. I'm assuming those athletes frame their conversations with non-fans more carefully now.

There are times when even the sports media should think deeper about their choice of words. Sports fans often have to do a double-take at headlines being thrust before them. Here's a recent offering from ESPN.com:

"Panel to Look at Claims Against Skeleton Coach."

While it might have been tempting to muse if the story was about some incident after a play was 'long dead,' only a hardcore Winter Olympics maven would recognize that a coach for the headfirst sledding events is in some sort of trouble. The sleighs involved in that discipline acquired the name 'skeleton' by a logic that was similar to that of the resultant term for putting a player a quarter of the way between the fullback and the center: the sled involved is literally a bare-bones equivalent of a bobsleigh or a luge, and the engineers must have gotten to it before the marketers did. Of course, if you've ever seen this sport in action, you could easily believe that its moniker was derived from what was left of an athlete if he ever lost control of his sled at 70mph.

Given the apparent discord between sports terminology and the perception of those same words and phrases by the rest of the world, it's not surprising that sometimes, ordinary words can be a cause of confusion to those who have spent their lives in the sporting arena.

In the late 1960s, two former gridiron football stars-turned-broadcasters --- New York Giants great, Pat Summerall, and Philadelphia Eagles receiver, Tom Brookshier --- were covering a game involving the Washington Redskins. At the time, those two were better known for socializing before the game than for preparing themselves for the broadcast. Brookshier, especially, seemed to depend on the depth charts and player profiles laid before them in the booth, rather than doing his own research.

During the course of the game, a kickoff came to a relatively unknown Redskin named Herb Mul-Key. He got a couple of key initial blocks, found a seam and scampered for a substantial return. It definitely warranted a comment from the analyst, which was Brookshier's role.

However, he clearly didn't know anything about Herb Mul-Key. All he could do was look for something of note on the player-bio card, and he thought he found something.

"I see," he announced, "that Mul-Key went to No-Knee College. I've never heard of that school."

Summerall's pause was extended. Finally, with subtle exasperation, he finally made the correction.

"I believe the word is 'None,' Tom."

Brookshire was truly a man trapped in sports. I guess that meant, to him, the cue card had something in common with the term for another rugby position:

It was a tight head prop.