If there were any doubts, Hurricane Katrina put them to rest. But now  comes evidence that the Bayou State is not just sinking but slipping –sliding at a glacial pace into the Gulf of Mexico.

According to a report released last month by the American Geophysical Union, the coastal bedrock is breaking away at roughly 1 inch a year.

Scientific report that the southward movement is triggered by deep underground faults slipping under the weight of sediment dumped by the Mississippi River.

The movement is confined to an area about 250 miles long and 180 miles wide.

U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, January 15, 2007

Elvis Presley is the most popular collected stamp of all time. More than 124 million of the Elvis stamps have been collected, according to a survey of 10,000 household conducted by the postal  Service.

• U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, January 8, 2007

Want to lift your level of happiness? Here are some practical suggestions from University of California psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky (1), based on research findings by her and others. Satisfaction (at least a temporary boost) guaranteed.

1)     COUNT YOUR BLESSING: One way to do this is with a “gratitude journal” in which you write down three to five things for which you are currently thankful. Do this once a week.

2)     PRACTICE ACTS OF KINDNESS: Being kind to others, whether friends or strangers, triggers a cascade of positive effects.

3)     SAVOR LIFE’S JOY: Pay close attention to momentary pleasures and wonders. Focus on the sweetness of a ripe strawberry or the warmth of the sun when you step out from shade.

4)     THANK A MENTOR: If there’s someone whom you owe a debt of gratitude for guiding you at one of life’s crossroads, don’t wait to express your appreciation.

5)     LEARN TO FORGIVE: Let go of anger and resentment by writing a letter of forgiveness to a person who has hurt or wronged you. Inability to forgive is associated with persistent rumination or dwelling on revenge, while forgiving allows you to move on.

6)     INVEST TIME AND ENERGY IN FRIENDS AND FAMILY: Where you live, how much money you make, your job title and even your health have surprisingly small effects on your satisfaction with life. The biggest factor appears to be strong personal relationships.

7)     TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY: Getting plenty of sleep, exercising, stretching, smiling and laughing can all enhance your mood in the short term. Practiced regularly, they can help make your daily life more satisfying.

8)     DEVELOP STRATEGIES FOR COPING WITH STRESS AND HARDSHIPS: There is no avoiding hard time. Religious faith has been shown to help people cope, but so do the secular belief enshrined in axioms like “that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” The trick is that you have to believe them.

(1)= Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky (look her picture here) arrived from Russia at age 10 and was fascinated by all the smiles that greeted her in the U.S. “It was so weird,”  she recalls. It was also an inspiration for her research career (TIME, 2005)

                         Why many residents decide to leave the area and where long Islanders are choosing to go.

While the IRS data show that many families are indeed leaving Long Island, movers, real state agents, demographers and families who have left say motivations to do so are often more complex than a simple analysis of, say, housing costs. 

Families say they also seek lees crowds, bigger homes and an intangible “quality of life” they believe is no longer available on Long Island. 

There’s and old adage that you want to live in a place where you go on vacation.

Close to 800,000 people who are counted as exemptions on tax returns –on Long Island left their home county for somewhere else in the next way 

To elsewhere in New York State:  390,359

To other states in the Northeast:    99,081 (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, etc)

To other states in the South:        225,934(Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, etc)

To other states in the Midwest:      20,856(Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, etc)

To states in the West:                      47,912(California, Arizona, Nevada, etc) 

Source: Newsday, Sep. 2006

President Bush told Americans last night that failure in Iraq would be a disaster.

The disaster is Mr. Bush’s war, and he has already failed. Last night was his chance to stop offering more fog and be honest with the nation, and he did not take it.

Americans needed to hear a clear plan to extricate United States troops from the disaster that Mr. Bush created. What they got was more gauzy talk of victory in the war on terrorism and of creating a “young democracy” in Iraq.

In other words, a way for this president to run out the clock and leave his mess for the next one.

Mr. Bush did acknowledge that some of his previous tactics had failed. But even then, the president sounded as if he were an accidental tourist in Iraq.

He described the failure of last year’s effort to pacify Baghdad as if the White House and the Pentagon bore no responsibility.

In any case, Mr. Bush’s excuses were tragically inadequate.

The nation needs an eyes-wide-open recognition that the only goal left is to get the U.S. military out of this civil war in a way that could minimize the slaughter of Iraqis and reduce the chances that the chaos Mr. Bush unleashed will engulf Iraq’s neighbors.

What it certainly did not need were more of Mr. Bush’s open-ended threats to Iran and Syria.

Before Mr. Bush spoke, Americans knew he planned to send more troops to pacify lawless Baghdad.

Mr. Bush’s task was to justify that escalation by acknowledging that there was no military solution to this war and outlining the political mission that the military would be serving.

We were waiting for him to detail the specific milestones that he would set for the Iraqis, set clear timelines for when they would be expected to meet them, and explain what he intended to do if they again failed.Instead, he said he had warned the Iraqis that if they didn’t come through, they would lose the faith of the American people.

Has Mr. Bush really not noticed that the American people long ago lost faith in the Iraqi government — and in him as well? Americans know that this Iraqi government is captive to Shiite militias, with no interest in the unity, reconciliation and democracy that Mr. Bush says he wants.

Mr. Bush said yet again that he wanted the Iraqi government to step up to the task of providing its security, and that Iraq needed a law on the fair distribution of oil money.

Iraq’s government needs to do a lot more than that, starting with disarming the sectarian militias that are feeding the civil war and purging the police forces that too often are really death squads.

It needs to offer amnesty to insurgents and militia fighters willing to put down their weapons. It needs to do those things immediately. Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government has heard this list before. But so long as Mr. Bush is willing to back that failed government indefinitely — enabling is the psychological term —

Iraq’s leaders will have no reason to move against the militias and more fairly share power with the Sunni minority.

Mr. Bush did announce his plan for 20,000 more troops, and the White House trumpeted a $1 billion contribution to reconstruction efforts. Congress will debate these as if they are the real issues. But they are not. Talk of a “surge” ignores the other 132,000 American troops trapped by a failed strategy.

We have argued that the United States has a moral obligation to stay in Iraq as long as there is a chance to mitigate the damage that a quick withdrawal might cause.

We have called for an effort to secure Baghdad, but as part of the sort of comprehensive political solution utterly lacking in Mr. Bush’s speech.

This war has reached the point that merely prolonging it could make a bad ending even worse.

Without a real plan to bring it to a close, there is no point in talking about jobs programs and military offensives.

There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq.

Source: New York Times, Editorial Thursday, January 11, 2007

Three and a half years of combat in Iraq, for example, have produced only two winners of the Medal of Honor, the country’s highest military award for bravery in combat.

There were, by contrast, 464 medals of Honor handed out during America’s involvement in World War II, which lasted the same amount of time.

So what’s different in this war? For one thing, the process for getting medals has become more cumbersome. Some commanders are reacting against what they see as medal inflation in recent wars, especially Gulf War I. And there may be fewer opportunities for style heroics when your enemy is planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or driving a car bomb.

But the nearly 3,000 war dead testify to the peril of those fighting in Iraq, and a growing chorus has been speaking out against the Pentagon’s parsimony.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the scarcity of top medals is the nature of combat in this war, which is so different from that of previous conflicts.

Yet there are soldiers in Iraq –and Afghanistan- whose valor at least equals that of past generations of Americans. On April 14, 2004, several Marines were manning a checkpoint in Western Iraq when an insurgent jumped out of a car and grabbed Jason Dunham, 22, by the throat . When the Iraqi dropped a live grenade during their struggle, the young Marine jumped on it so that his body would absorb the blast, saving the lives of his comrades. He died eight days later. Dunham was awarded the Iraq war’s second Medal of Honor last month.

Source: Summary of magazine TIME, December 11, 2006

1.   Get Moving. An effective exercise routine should include endurance training (such as walking, jogging or cycling) as well as two or three strength training sessions a week using lightweights.

2.   Don’t smoke!

3.   Follow a healthy diet

4.   Drink enough water. At least 6 glasses every day

5.   Avoid excessive exposure to the sun. Aging skin and eyes are vulnerable to sun damage because protective pigment diminishes over time. Also too much sun exposure increases the risk of skin cancer.

6.   Reduce stress. Choose among such stress-reducing techniques as meditation, yoga and exercise and set aside time to practice them.

7.   Challenge your mind. Three key factors predict strong mental function: regular physical activity, strong social support and belief in your ability.

8.   Limit alcohol consumption.

9.   Cultivate satisfying relationships.

10. Consider preventive medicine  

* The Johns Hopkins Medical letter health, USA 

The farmhouse is lonely without me.

And my old dog is gone from the door;

God sent me to die in the back streets

And I can’t go home anymore. 

I’m in love with this overdone city,

Though it’s dirty and falling apart;

It reminds me of stories at bedtime,

And the street sounds hurt my heart. 

I go out for a fix after midnight,

And the fix that I’m after is fame,

So I head for a bar in the back streets

Where everyone knows my name. 

It’s noisy and dirty and drunken,

But nobody there drinks alone-

The bartenders buy me my vodka,

And the hookers cry at my poems. 

My hearth beats faster and faster,

And I say to the drunk by the door-

“I’m like you, my life’s a disaster, And I can’t go home anymore.” 

Oh, the farmhouse is lonely without me,

And my old dog is gone from the door;

God sent me to die in the back streets

And I can’t go home anymore.

• Sergei Esenin

Happy year 2007 and  that obtain your goals of happiness, peace and welfare in your life

CARLOS (Tiger  without Time) 

That the love transcend the religions or ideologies that everybody have it and only a desire of love, peace, justice, solidarity and Tolerance, lead our lives today, tomorrow and always.