Thursday, August 13, 2009 
Woodstock Notion
I Missed the Bus, but Not the Spirit
By Jeanne McManus
It could have been that early on the morning of Aug. 15, 1969, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and carrying only a fringed suede purse with a few extra T-shirts, some underwear and about $50 in cash, I hopped into a VW bus driven by a guy I hardly knew -- a friend of a friend -- and headed north to Upstate New York. His loosely issued invitation had come only a few days before: He had extra tickets to a three-day rock concert.
But instead, on the morning of Aug. 15, 1969, I had been employed for exactly 10 days in my first job since college graduation that May, an editing job in downtown Washington that I desperately wanted for professional reasons (I feared I would otherwise be consigned to a typing pool) and financial ones (I was moving into a group house in September and needed the first month's rent).
As that VW bus rolled north, I was sitting in a cubicle, part wall and part frosted glass, at a desk with a high-intensity light, a stack of typewritten manuscripts and four colored pencils: black for editing, blue to mark the text to be typeset in 8-point type, red for 10-point type and green for 12-point type (headlines!). I was wearing a skirt, blouse, stockings and shoes -- women couldn't wear pants to that office. I might as well have been bound with rope.
All of the newfound freedom of having graduated from college, of being able to choose my path, to live independently, now seemed a sham. I had driven myself smack dab into a brick wall of obligation and responsibility. Instead of the shackles of required courses, term papers and exams, I was chained to a new world with an even greater burden of responsibility. No one was helping me with tuition, room and board. I had no vacation, no sick leave. Missing a day of work was not like cutting a class. If I fled to Woodstock, I could get fired.
My generation seemed on two tracks: those who needed a job more than freedom, and those who didn't. I was barreling down the first road, wishing I was on the second.
All day my head was sailing along the highway in that VW bus (with eight-track tapes) as my body trudged over to the carryout for some limp sandwich that I ate at my desk. The L4 ride home up Connecticut Avenue was a bitter reminder that I was definitely on the wrong bus.
Would I have been ready for Woodstock, for a long weekend of camping, chaos, wet sleeping bags, partying, sex, drugs, and rock and roll? Probably not. I had come of age but had missed the first wave of the youth revolution, a fact that seemed very regrettable then -- but not now, since I have since come to understand how much fuel is required to survive over the long term.
Was Woodstock a haven for the overindulged, self-important youth of 1969? Some of my friends think so. But I think that, to its credit, pieces of Woodstock's own crazy world broke off and spun their way into a larger world, especially the one in which I dutifully participated; for about 10 years after Woodstock, its atmospherics were infectious.
The Who, Joe Cocker, Richie Havens, wet sleeping bags and chaos came into my life in other ways. After Woodstock, we knew we could abandon the car on the way to a concert, then hitch a ride back afterward and find the car still waiting for us. We could show up without tickets to see The Who and somehow find ourselves at the front of the crowd, near the stage. And the car that we had left back in the ditch? How did that happen? Who knows, who cares? When we got back to it, people helped us tow it out, as we knew they would.
In those days after Woodstock, I kept my job, paid my taxes, acted responsibly. Yet I would sometimes leave the house without a plan, a destination or even a map. I'd book a one-way fare and worry later about the return. One night I left my fringed suede purse on a coat hook in a bar. I got home before I realized it was gone. But the house was unlocked, so I didn't need a key; my wallet was almost empty of cash and I had no major credit cards -- no one did. There was no such thing as identity theft. I never even went back for that purse. I had lost nothing.
I don't regret that cubicle-bound choice I made on Aug. 15, 1969. But, 40 years later, sometimes I think I could use a little Woodstock in my life.
Jeanne McManus, a former Post editor, is an occasional contributor to the op-ed page.
Swine flu has been reported for the first time in Amazonian Indians, raising fears that the virus will cause more contagion and potential deaths in tribal groups around the world.
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Faut-il en parler pour mieux en rire – ou en pleurer – au risque de les attiser ou les ignorer ? Le dilemme est toujours le même quand il s’agit de théorie du complot et autres délires conspirationnistes. La grippe A, comme des tonnes d’autres phénomènes, suscite son lot de salades sur le mode “on nous cache tout”.
Soyons clairs. Il est évident que la grippe A H1N1 n’est pas un cataclysme pour tout le monde. Les grandes firmes pharmaceutiques signent chaque jour ou presque de juteux contrats avec des Etats soudain solvables, beaucoup d’entreprises y voient une aubaine (cf. les patrons de call-center en Grande-Bretagne) et les gouvernants ne manquent pas de montrer à l’opinion qu’ils “agissent”, trop contents de reléguer au second plan la crise, les scandales et leur propre impuissance. Liste non-exhaustive. [liste complète disponible dans la série de pubs pour Rue 89 ]
Mais ceux qui dominent le monde ont-ils sciemment causé cette pandémie ? Un petit tour sur le Net montre qu’un tas de gens le pensent. Sans doute les mêmes qui pensent qu’aucun avion n’a marché sur la lune et que Neil Armstrong ne s’est pas écrasé sur le Pentagone…
Petit florilège établi au gré de mes périgrinations dans les méandres du Net infini.
>Les illuminatis et les francs-maçons ?
Nous avons reçu il y a quelques jours un communiqué de presse d’une association du Sud de la France. Ce document bourré de fautes nous informait que ladite association venait de déposer une plainte auprès du Parquet de Nice à l’encontre de l’OMS, de Barack Obama, de laboratoires, etc.
Les illuminatis et les “FMs”, comprenez francs-maçons, auraient élaboré cette grippe pour réduire drastiquement la population mondiale. Pour que les illuminatis puissent vivre pénards, rien qu’entre eux.
Lu dans un forum : “J’ai vu des milliers de documentaires sur le sujet des illuminatis, du nouvel ordre mondial, le 11 septembre.. Et aussi plein sur d’autres sujet comme l’univers, l’apparition de la vie sur terre, l’argent, les guerres, 2012.. Quand on dit que ‘’tout est lié'’, c’est vrai 
. 11 septembre=nouvel ordre mondial, crise économique= nouvel ordre monètaire, gripe porcine=93% de la population doit mourrir”
>Les Américains ?
Il existe plusieurs versions du complot américain. Selon l’une d’elles, les Américains ont conçu “Uu virus composé d’un COCKTAIL de gènes inconnus et d’origines diverses : une jolie bombe de laboratoire sans doute !“.
Ici aussi, il s’agit d’éliminer une bonne partie des hommes. Ou bien de remettre en selle les laboratoires pharmaceutiques éprouvés par la crise.
Lu sur un blog : “Qui dit grippe A, prévoit une grippe B, une C, et ainsi de suite jusqu’à parvenir à ses fins.”
>Les démocrates ?
C’est la faute à Obama !
Lu sur 20 minutes : le petit commentaire lâché par la représentante républicaine Michele Bachmann : “Je trouve ça intéressant que l’épidémie de grippe porcine des années 70 ait eu lieu sous la présidence de Jimmy Carter, un autre président démocrate. Je n’accuse pas le président Obama, je trouve juste que c’est une coïncidence intéressante.”
>Une tentative d’assassinat ?
Obama, encore, mais il serait victime cette fois-ci.
Lu sur un blog : “Obama a été reçu au musée d’anthropologie de Mexico par un archéologue, M. Felipe Solis, mort subitement le lendemain. Ce bon monsieur aurait dû infecter le président des Etats-Unis. Echec total, Obama va très bien.”
Au passage. Qui serait l’assassin assez con pour utiliser un virus de la grippe pour tuer quelqu’un ? Une personne sur mille meurt de la grippe ! Et Barack Obama est sans doute la personne la mieux soignée au monde avec sa cohorte de médecins aux petits oignons. Question subsidiaire, pourquoi les services secrets russes ont préféré tuer l’espion Litvinenko au polonium 210 ? Une balle dans la tête, c’était pas plus simple ?
>Les juifs ?
Pour l’argent ou pour tuer tout le monde. Avec une référence foireuse à un parchemin datant de 1 200 ans.
La grippe porcine concoctée par des juifs, ça ne manque pas de sel…
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 The Perseids occur when the Earth passes through dusty cometary debris |
Skygazers are getting ready to watch the annual Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on Wednesday.
The Perseid shower occurs when the Earth passes through a stream of dusty debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle.
As this cometary "grit" strikes our atmosphere, it burns up, often creating streaks of light across the sky.
This impressive spectacle appears to originate from a point called a "radiant" in the constellation of Perseus - hence the name Perseid.
"Earth passes through the densest part of the debris stream sometime on 12 August. Then, you could see dozens of meteors per hour," said Bill Cooke of Nasa's meteoroid environment office.
No special equipment is required to watch the sky show. Astronomers say binoculars might help, but will also restrict the view to a small part of the sky.
The Perseids can appear in any part of the sky, but their tails all point back to the radiant in the constellation Perseus.
In the UK, the best times to see the Perseids are likely to be on the morning of 12 August before dawn and from late evening on the 12th through to the early hours of the 13 August.
This year, light from the last quarter Moon will interfere significantly with the view.
The rock and dust fragments which cause the shower were left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle when it last came near the Sun.
The comet orbits the Sun once every 130 years and last swept through the inner Solar System in 1992.
Berlim, 06 Ago (Lusa) - O cineasta espanhol Pedro Almodóvar sente-se uma espécie de Deus e considera que o retrato da sociedade actual dos seus filmes está muito mais próximo da realidade do que o modelo de família defendido pelo Vaticano.
"Um director é uma espécie de Deus. Digo-o eu, que não sou crente", sustenta Almodóvar, numa entrevista publicada hoje no semanário alemão Die Zeit, coincidindo com a estreia do seu último filme, "Abraços desfeitos".
"No meu mundo cinematográfico não tem absolutamente nenhum papel o eco de que o Papa só reconhece a variante católica da família", afirmou Almodóvar.
O realizador lembrou que há mais de 20 anos roda películas nas quais "uma família é um grupo de pessoas, centrado num pequeno ser, que se querem e satisfazem as suas necessidades, sem importar se se trata de pais separados, travestis, transsexuais ou monjas com SIDA".
Almodóvar sugere na entrevista que, de vez em quando, o Papa "deveria sair, passear fora do Vaticano e ver bem o que é uma família de hoje".
"É uma absoluta loucura não reconhecer como vivem hoje em dia milhões de pessoas", sustenta, para concluir: "As minhas famílias são mais reais que as do Papa, porque não vivem de acordo com nenhum tipo de dogma, mas sim de acordo com os seus compromissos com a vida".
Almodóvar foi segunda-feira a Berlim acompanhado da actriz Penélope Cruz, para a estreia do seu novo filme, que tem recebido críticas muito boas e que na Alemanha chegou a ser considerado perfeito do ponto de vista formal.
(Lusa)
Uma nova técnica permitiu pela primeira vez a descodificação de todo o mapa genético do vírus HIV, que dá origem à sida, permitindo que os cientistas tenham uma "visão geral" desse genoma e abrindo caminho a novos tratamentos.
A técnica pode conduzir a tratamentos não só para a sida, mas também contra outros vírus, como os das gripes, disseram investigadores.
"Estamos esperançados de que a técnica abrirá muitas novas oportunidades para a descoberta de medicamentos", disse Kevin Weeks, o investigador da Universidade da Carolina do Norte (Estados Unidos) que comandou a pesquisa.
"Há muitas coisas que podemos tentar", acrescentou.
O vírus HIV/sida integra os chamados RNA-vírus, tal como os vírus da influenza (gripe), da poliomielite e da constipação comum. Isso significa que o seu genoma se compõe de RNA, e não de DNA.
O DNA depende de blocos chamados nucleotídeos, que transmitem a informação sobre duas tiras. Essas unidades básicas são identificadas pelas letras A, C, T e G. Já o RNA tem apenas uma tira e depende não só dos nucleotídeos, mas também de um complexo padrão de dobras para transmitir a informação.
A equipa de Weeks desenvolveu um novo método químico chamado Shape ("forma"), que forma uma imagem não só dos nucleotídeos do RNA, mas também das formas e dobras da tira de RNA.
Os métodos de imagens usados até agora, como a cristalografia por raios-X, capturam a posição precisa de cada átomo, mas só numa pequena área de cada vez. O Shape obtém uma visão mais geral, mas não a nível atómico, explicou Weeks.
"A técnica é parecida com a acção de reduzir o zoom de um mapa e obter uma visão mais ampla da paisagem, se bem que à custa dos detalhes", escreveu Hashim Al Hashimi, da Universidade de Michigan, num comentário sobre a descoberta, que foi publicada na revista Nature.
Os RNA-vírus são especialmente difíceis de aniquilar e a nova técnica pode permitir novas abordagens. "A curto prazo, a descoberta quase de certeza que vai tornar mais fácil desenvolver medicamentos para lidar com os RNA
A German court has ordered a neo-Nazi group to vacate an abandoned hotel it squatted two weeks ago in the town of Fassberg. Local residents have been relieved -- temporarily -- of the risk of the far-right political activists staining their town's reputation.
After almost two weeks of occupying a deserted hotel in the small town of Fassberg in the northern German state of Lower Saxony, a local court provisionally ruled Tuesday that the neo-Nazis had unlawfully broken into the building and ordered them to leave.
The group of extremists, led by the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) deputy leader Jürgen Rieger, had previously refused to leave -- saying that they had an official lease on the 80-room property, which they intended to use as an education and training center.
The owners of the building, however, are heavily indebted, and the hotel went into receivership just one day after the lease was signed, providing the basis for a messy legal battle.
Although the official receiver had locked up the property, Rieger forcefully broke into it by drilling out the locks, claiming to be the holder of a legal lease contract. Flags and posters, with slogans like "we've come for good" and "the press is lying" have plastered the walls of the building since, intimidating members of the public and local politicians.
In recent days, as many as 350 local residents have gathered near the property to protest the presence of the neo-Nazis. When the group vacated the premises without force on Tuesday, local residents cheered, relieved that their community -- at least for the time being -- would not be tarnished by the far-right radicals.
"The building looked so dead, it was so sad," pensioner Marianne Glagla told German public television station ARD. "Those who say they weren't scared are lying," Karl-Heinz Hufenbach, who also lives in the town with a local population of less than 8,000 thousand, added.
A Neo-Nazi Affinity for the Region
For some, though, the squatting came as no surprise. "Rieger seems to have an affinity to our region," local politician Angelika Cremer of the Social Democratic Party told the broadcaster.
In 1978, Rieger took out a lease on a farm in a nearby village, which served as a training center for right-wing youths for almost two decades. Bergen-Belsen, the site of one of the largest concentration camps operated under the Nazi regime, is just a short drive away. This is thought to be one of the things the neo-Nazis, many of whom are Holocaust deniers, to the area.
Rieger and his supporters had occupied the hotel since the end of July. Over the past two weeks, residents had repeatedly reported hearing gun shots. Although no weapons were found during a property search earlier this week, police confiscated mace cans and truncheons.
The property at the center of the current dispute was valued at €950,000 three years ago, but Rieger reportedly offered to pay €1.2 million. The sale never went through because of ongoing negotiations with another investor, who is willing to offer €750,000 to convert it into a health center. This idea has been backed by the community as well as the village's 62-year-old mayor, Hans-Werner Schlitte, who described the facility conversion as a "perfect solution."
"There is no lack of hotels in the area, and a health care facility could be useful," Schlitte added.
The official receiver is arguing that the €600 monthly rent Rieger is required to pay on the lease contract is too low considering the market value of the hotel and the price the NPD activist has said he would be willing to pay and that it penalizes creditors.
A court must still make a final decision on whether Rieger's lease contract is valid. Until then, the locals of Fassberg are simply glad that they no longer have to make detours around the hotel to avoid the black-clad neo-Nazis and their dogs.
Em conferência de imprensa, em Linda-a-Velha, o autarca de Oeiras explicou que interpôs recurso à sua condenação a sete anos de prisão e à perda de mandato «não por considerar excessiva a pena», mas por entender que o processo demonstra a sua inocência.
«Desafio-os a todos a ler o processo e o acórdão. Verão que digo a verdade», acrescentou.
«Quero reiterar a minha inocência e a minha firme recusa em ser usado como bode expiatório da classe política», acrescentou, considerando que a pena a que foi condenado foi decidida em função de «juízos valorativos».
«Sou candidato à Câmara Municipal de Oeiras», rematou, considerando que «à politica o que é politica e à justiça o que é da justiça».
Questionado sobre a possibilidade de interromper o seu mandato, o presidente da câmara de Oeiras afirmou «estar preparado para tudo». «Sobretudo para a declaração da minha inocência», frisou.
Isaltino Morais, que foi ministro das Cidades, Ordenamento do Teritório e Ambiente durante o governo presidido por Durão Barroso, foi condenado, no Tribunal de Sintra, a sete anos de prisão, ao pagamento de uma indemnização de 463 mil euros ao Fisco e perda de mandato, por fraude fiscal, abuso de poder e corrupção passiva para acto ilícito e branqueamento de capitais.
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