Is it such a bad thing to speak your mind?

When Katherine Heigl opens her mouth, people listen. They don't always like what they hear.

If the media loves a celebrity lightning rod, then Heigl certainly delivers the goods. The Emmy-winning actress has taken heat for her blunt public comments and doesn't seem to give two winks.

According to her detractors, the "Grey's Anatomy" star's outre behavior includes: demanding a higher salary in contract negotiations with ABC; slamming the megahit comedy "Knocked Up," in which she starred with Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd, as "a little sexist" in painting women as "humorless and uptight" and men as "lovable, goofy"; and, recently, refusing to seek an Emmy nomination because "Grey's" writers failed to deliver the goods for an awards-worthy performance.

At times, Heigl comes off like a reality show contestant who says, "I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to win." That attitude, as any avid viewer of shows from "Survivor" to "The Bachelor" would agree, wins few allies on the island (or in the mansion), but it sure makes for good TV.

But in a world of bland, media-trained celebs, is it such a bad thing to speak your mind?

After all, celebrities have spouted off for years, bashing everything and everyone from presidents to fellow actors to directors. But Hollywood is like high school -- only meaner -- and hammering the popular kids might have consequences that take years to undo.

"There's a long tradition of actors who have disdained the Hollywood establishment and then had some retribution for it within the Hollywood establishment," said Neal Gabler, an author and cultural critic whose books include "Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality."

Gabler named screen legend Paul Newman as an example. Newman, now 83, shunned the movie-industry hoopla and never showed up in 1986 to accept his best-actor Academy Award for "The Color of Money," after having been nominated seven times before.

"He didn't live the way a star was supposed to live. There was an expectation ... placed on him, and he didn't satisfy that expectation and Hollywood took retribution," Gabler said, citing Newman's awards snubs.

And yet, that tough-guy persona enhanced his public image as a man of integrity who lived on his own terms, Gabler said. Newman's awards-hating colleagues included Marlon Brando and George C. Scott, who refused an Oscar for his grandiose performance in 1970's "Patton." Brando sent a Native American surrogate to turn down his statuette when he won best actor in 1972 for "The Godfather."

Heigl, on the other hand, simply declined to put her name in consideration for an Emmy bid.

But it was her reasons for doing so that ignited a media firestorm, fueled by this statement: "I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention. In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials."

Heigl's announcement spread swiftly online, where it was variously heralded, ridiculed and hashed out by a vocal mob eager to weigh in.

"First of all, she did something crazy -- and that is she told the truth," said veteran publicist Howard Bragman. "At the very least, she told her truth. ... And in this town, it's not always a great idea, because what you have to understand is television is a very collaborative industry, and what she's essentially done is trash her writers. These are people you have to go to work with every day."

ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson denied speculation earlier this month that Heigl wanted to leave the hit medical drama. He then defended the series, saying that all involved in it deserve "an enormous amount of credit."

Melissa Kates, Heigl's representative, said the actress was unavailable for comment on this story.

Bragman represented Isaiah Washington during the actor's 2007 departure from "Grey's" following his alleged use of a homophobic slur. Heigl had publicly criticized Washington, telling the media: "I'm going to be really honest right now, he needs to just not speak in public. Period."

If Heigl's remarks created bad blood on the set, Bragman said burning bridges isn't necessarily a career breaker.

"It supports what we know about Katie Heigl, is that she's kind of an edgy, mouthy girl who's a bit of a rabble rouser, and as long as she's able to open movies and put butts in seats, she's still going to have a career," he said.

But outspoken female stars such as Heigl could run into problems keeping an audience just by dint of gender.

"I think women have a much more difficult time, because when a woman makes demands as Barbra Streisand always did, I think they're more likely to say, `What the hell does she want?' You don't see it in the same terms of integrity and honesty. It's a harder sell," Gabler said.

Kim Basinger's career, for example, pretty much went downhill after she refused to appear in 1993's "Boxing Helena," in which a woman is forced to live in a box after her limbs are amputated by a surgeon in a desperate act of courtship. Basinger, who said she was put off by the film's gratuitous sex scenes, was sued for breach of contract and ordered to pay $7.4 million in damages. She filed for bankruptcy but had a come back in 1997 with "L.A. Confidential," for which she won an Oscar for supporting actress.

Indeed, actresses -- especially those with conventionally attractive looks such as Heigl and Basinger -- are largely expected to play the game, shut up and smile, while demanding actors such as Sean Penn are handed creative control and respect, among eye rolls.

"In this town, women who don't just snap and say, `OK, yes sir, yes ma'am,' start to get a reputation for being difficult," Heigl said last year in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "But within the last five years, I've decided it's not worth it to me to be pushed around so much."

Jessica Grose, an editor at Jezebel.com, a Web site for women, said men and women face different criticism: While Tom Cruise's sofa antics on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" would be endlessly mocked, Heigl's comments might invite verbal lashings and insults about her looks.

"With the 24-hour news cycle, ... anything you say that's remotely off the cuff or interesting is going to get repeated and reported on," Grose said. "I think any celebrity now who really speaks his or her mind is going to be raked over the coals for it."

Gloria Allred, the Los Angeles-based feminist lawyer, said Heigl has now branded herself as "more independent," and compared her to a young version of Katharine Hepburn, who successfully promoted an image of candor and Yankee pluck.

"In terms of being a role model for other women, I think it's important that people learn how to speak their mind after they assess the risks and rewards," noted Allred, who said she thinks Heigl will reap benefits by being seen as someone "who is not willing to submit to the Hollywood spin machine."

So far, Heigl's career seems bright. She had success with "Knocked Up" and "27 Dresses," and is set to co-star with Gerard Butler in "The Ugly Truth" next year.

But will fans continue to buy the Heigl brand of honesty, or write it off as shameless narcissism?

"There's a very tenuous kind of connection between stars and the public, and it's very delicate ... in terms of how that contract ... is played out," Gabler said. "Stars have to be more than we are obviously, but if they disconnect from us, ... if we feel that our job is to laugh at them or to enjoy them, rather than it's their job to make us laugh at them, to make us enjoy them, they break the contract.

"So that contract that she has -- it's still pending."

NASA says Mars craft "touched and tasted" water

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NASA scientists said on Thursday they had definitive proof that water exists on Mars after further tests on ice found on the planet in June by the Phoenix Mars Lander.

"We have water," said William Boynton, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument on Phoenix.

"We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted," he said, referring to the craft's instruments.

NASA on Thursday also extended the mission of the Phoenix Mars Lander by five weeks, saying its work was moving beyond the search for water to exploring whether the red planet was ever capable of sustaining life.

"We are extending the mission through September 30," Michael Meyer, chief scientist for NASA's Mars exploration program, told a televised news conference.

The extension will add about $2 million to the $420 million cost of landing Phoenix on May 25 for what was a scheduled three-month mission, Meyer said.

Phoenix is the latest NASA bid to discover whether water -- a crucial ingredient for life -- ever flowed on Mars and whether life, even in the form of mere microbes, exists or ever existed there.

Phoenix touched down in May on an ice sheet and samples of the ice were seen melting away in photographs taken by the lander's instruments in June.

Boynton said that water was positively identified after the lander's robotic arm delivered a soil sample on Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by heating.

Mission scientists said the extension would give time for more analysis of Martian samples. They plan to dig two additional trenches -- dubbed "cupboard" and "neverland" -- using the robotic arm on the Phoenix craft.

"We hope to be able to answer the question of whether this was a habitable zone on Mars. It will be for future missions to find if anyone is home on this environment," Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith told the news conference.

Mission scientists said in June that Martian soil was more alkaline than expected and had traces of magnesium, sodium, potassium and other elements. They described the findings as a "huge step forward."

Meyer said the scientific proof of the existence of water meant that Phoenix could "move from looking for water to seeing whether there were habitats for life.

"We are moving towards understanding whether there were or could be places on Mars that are habitable," Meyer said.

Shorts Crack the Code

FIRST came Casual Fridays, that dread episode in the history of fashion, with their invitation for men to trade in suits for Dockers and to swap a proper shirt and tie for an open neck and a daring flash of masculine décolletage.

Then the bare ankle migrated from country-club Saturdays to meeting-room Mondays and suddenly men, whether shod in wingtips or loafers, were widely seen without socks. Now it appears that, after some stops and starts in recent seasons, the men of the white collar work force are marching into the office in shorts.

It was no more than a moment ago, in the sartorial long view, that a guy who came to work wearing short pants would have been shown the door — or anyway, given the address for human resources at U.P.S. All that appears to be changing.

Consider that an advertising agency in Salt Lake City this summer introduced a no-long-trousers policy. Consider the octogenarian New York lawyer who ditched his seersucker suit for jaunty camouflage shorts on the job. Consider the pack of stylish young men on the streets of Manhattan who find it not only sensible, in thermometer terms, to beat the heat by wearing shorts but also, in style terms, cool.

“We try to have a little bit of fun around here on a regular basis,” said Dave Newbold, the president of Richter7, the Salt Lake City ad agency in question, whose clients include Medtronic and the Chamber of Commerce of Park City, Utah, where wearing long pants outside of ski season is practically a violation of the law.

When the hockey star Sean Avery took an internship at Vogue earlier this summer, the work uniform that the fashion-besotted left wing chose included a shorts suit that showcased his athletic calves.

“Why go to work and be hot?” he asked last week, adding that there was no compelling business reason to look modest and dull on the job. “You can look good and not have that boring-type look,” said Mr. Avery, who signed with the Dallas Stars this summer after several seasons with the Rangers. “Why are women allowed to do it and not men?”

The willingness of men to expand the amount of skin they are inclined to display can be gauged by the short-sleeved shirts Senator Barack Obama has lately favored; the muscle T-shirts Anderson Cooper wears on CNN assignment; and the Armani billboard in which David Beckham, the soccer star, appears nearly nude.

Not a few designers are pushing men to expose more of the bodies that they have spent so much time perfecting at the gym. “We have all these self-imposed restrictions” about our dress, said Ben Clawson, the sales director for the designer Michael Bastian. “As men’s wear continues to evolve and becomes a little more casual without becoming grungy, it’s not impossible anymore to be dressed up in shorts.”

While Mr. Bastian is a designer of what essentially amounts to updates on preppy classics, even he has pushed for greater latitude in exposing men’s bodies to view.

“Michael is a big fan of the third button,” said Mr. Clawson, referring to the neckline plunge that has somehow evolved beyond its cheesier Tom Ford (by way of Tom Jones) associations. “For women, legs are a sex symbol, where for men legs are more private.”

Yet for Mr. Avery, a man in a shorts suit is no more startling than a woman in a miniskirt. “Women have the option of wearing a dress,” he said with the assurance of someone who can hip-check those who fail to share his opinion.

“I haven’t asked them, but I’m sure women like looking at a man’s calves, or if a man has them, nice ankles,” Mr. Avery said.

That may be. Yet none of the New York City banks, law firms, stock brokerages or hospitals contacted by a reporter last week considered shorts an acceptable part of a work uniform, and for reasons that varied from the need to preserve institutional decorum to hygiene (imagine a hairy leg in an O.R.)

Still, it is probably worth remembering that there was a time when politicians were seldom seen, even out of the office, without their decorous suit coats, and never in short pants (Nixon famously wore shoes on the beach). And it was only a short while ago that news anchors who ventured out on combat assignment did so in more protective khaki than a Victorian ornithologist braving the wilds of Borneo.

Is Mr. Cooper more or less serious because he chooses to showcase the pneumatic biceps so obviously a part of his appeal? Are the folks behind Calvin Klein yet again on to some cultural shift with the underwear campaign that made its debut this week, featuring the model Garrett Neff bunching his unworn skivvies in front of his crotch?

“The idea of being threatened by the objectified male body has gone, the process is complete,” explained Aaron Hicklin, the editor in chief of Out magazine. “Men are the same as women now.”

Perhaps it is simpler than that. A relaxed approach to sexual display played a role in the policy at Richter7, the Salt Lake City agency, but so did a long stretch of days when temperatures routinely closed in on 100 degrees. “It’s so hot here in mid-July and August that we wanted to combine the two issues” of comfort and fashion, Mr. Newbold said. For client meetings, he pointed out, account executives are expected to “dress to the level of presentation that looks credible and respectable.”

A question arises, though, of what respectability looks like when underwear is routinely worn as outerwear and people travel in get-ups that look like onesies and the combined effects of a cosmetic surgery boom and an epidemic of obesity have given us all an uncommon level of intimacy with the contours of one another’s bodies.

Fifteen years ago, when Hyman Gross, a real estate lawyer in Manhattan, proposed wearing shorts in summer, his boss responded that the firm was not a beach club.

“It’s a pretty strait-laced office, and I quickly retreated from that position,” said Mr. Gross, who is in his ninth decade. Last year, though, looking at office workers of both sexes disporting themselves seminaked on the streets of the city, he concluded it was time for shorts. “It seems so strange on an over-90-degree day to subject yourself to sartorial rigidity,” he said.

And so there was Mr. Gross taking a break at Bryant Park, nattily attired in a black polo shirt from Target, a pair of sandy-colored camouflage shorts he bought in a shop in a subway arcade and a Panama topper from Arnold Hatters.

“I travel to and fro in shorts,” said Mr. Gross, who also wears his short pants to the ballet and the opera. “No one has ever spoken to me about it. And if anyone decides they don’t like it or they won’t take me, it’s their loss.”

Increasingly, said Andrew Bolton of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the “zones in which this kind of exposure is accepted are permeable.”

Seminudity, of the sort proposed by Miuccia Prada or Dsquared in the recent men’s collections, holds little appeal for someone like Kwesi Blair, a branding adviser whose shorts and blazer look became a wardrobe default during a recent sweltering spell.

Wearing a shorts suit, Mr. Blair explained, is not only more comfortable than the alternative, but a way to road test your own self-invention.

“I get a lot of looks and remarks,” said Mr. Blair, whose wardrobe runs to conservative labels — a Polo blazer, shirt and tie, a pair of J. Crew shorts. “On the street, people are like, ‘That’s a bold move.’ But, honestly, I’m just tapping into my own sense of style and sensibility and putting it out there. It’s not like I’m looking for acceptance.”

Man accused of killing, dismembering girlfriend

GOIANIA, Brazil - Police on Thursday accused a Brazilian man of killing and dismembering his 17-year-old British girlfriend, taking pictures of her body parts with his cell phone and stuffing her torso in a suitcase.

Officers found the suitcase with the torso of Cara Marie Burke at the edge of a river Monday in this central Brazilian city, Goias state police inspector Jorge Moreira da Silva said.

Burke's boyfriend, Mohamed D'Ali Carvalho Santos, 20, was arrested and charged with homicide Thursday after "he confessed he cut her up and even photographed the body on his cellular phone," Silva said.

One photo appeared to have been taken in a bathroom shower stall, showing Burke's severed head placed on the chest of her torso along with a bloody butcher knife.

Silva said Santos confessed he killed Burke because she threatened to tell his parents he was a drug dealer addicted to cocaine, and she was considering turning him in to police.

After fatally stabbing Burke on Saturday, Santos left her body in the bathroom and went to a party, returning to dismember her the next day, the police inspector said.

Burke's family in England identified her from a tattoo that said "Mum" after images of the body were broadcast on TV, Silva said.

Burke met Santos in London, where his mother lives, Silva said. She had been in Brazil for about three months.

Police were still searching Thursday for Burke's head and limbs, which Santos said he hid in a rural area outside town. Taken out of his cell in handcuffs to be filmed by television crews, he held his head down and said nothing.

Karine Neves, a spokeswoman for the British Embassy in Brasilia, said a British vice consul is in Goiania tracking the case and the police investigation.

Burke's online acquaintances demanded justice in messages they posted on her Web page on Orkut, an online social networking community hugely popular in Brazil.

The page also featured pictures of the blond teenager posing with friends in London and Brazil and holding a baby in her arms.

Fat cat a victim of foreclosure

The pudgy feline's elderly owner gave him up when she lost her home

A 44-pound cat found lumbering around New Jersey was abandoned by a woman who said her home was foreclosed, an animal shelter official said Thursday.

The porky white cat found Saturday became a local media sensation and was dubbed "Princess Chunk". But the animal is really a male whose name is Powder.

Jennifer Andersch, director of the Camden County Animal Shelter, said Thursday that the cat's owner came forward to describe the animal's background.

"It broke my heart to give him up," 68-year-old Donna Oklatner told MyFOXPhilly.com of the 10-year-old pet. "I could not take care of him. I love him. It broke me heart. I wanted him to have a good home." She told the station that she had given the cat to friends who said they'd take him to a shelter.

Shelter officials had been calling the porky cutie "Princess Chunk." But during an exam by a veterinarian on “Live with Regis and Kelly” on Thursday morning it was determined that "Princess" was actually a male.

According to media reports, the cat's former owner is now staying with friends. Because of her circumstances, she was "very sad" she could no longer care for the 44-pound cat, Andersch told the Philadelphia Inquirer. The owner was able to find a home for her other cat, Powder's brother, who isn't quite as chunky, she said.

A star is born
The shelter has received more than 800 calls inquiring about the portly feline and at least 20 formal applications to adopt him. He's become a media star, appearing on the cover of the New York Post and scheduled to appear on “Good Morning America” tomorrow."We in the media love a 44-pound cat," co-host Kelly Ripa said as she petted Powder's white

hair. The show put the cat up a Manhattan's posh Park Meridien, reported Philly.com.

Deborah Wright, a shelter volunteer and current foster owner of the kitty, toted him around Manhattan Wednesday on his media blitz. By the time the two appeared on the local NBC news broadcast at 5 p.m. Powder was clearly tiring of all the attention, his tail snapping back and forth as he lolled on the edge of the anchor desk.

Wright told anchor Sue Simmons that Powder eats a normal amount of cat food. "He's just been a little kind of down in the dumps when he first came [to live with her] but he’s starting to lighten up and get a little more friendly with me," she said.

Wright plans to speak with a veterinarian to get his thyroid checked and put Powder on a diet.

In the meantime, Wright says he needs “an understanding and loving family.” He's scheduled to meet the public at the shelter's pet "adopt-a-thon" at a pet store in Cherry Hill, N.J. on Aug. 17.

The largest tabby on record weighed 46 pounds, 15 ounces. That cat, who lived in Australia, died in the 1980s. The Guinness World Records has since dropped the category, fearing cat owners might harm their animals in an attempt to break the record.

For more information, visit the Camden County Animal Shelter's Web site.

Golden retriever adopts tiger cubs at zoo

Three cubs at Kansas zoo abandoned by their mother Monday

CANEY, Kan. - A dog at a southeast Kansas zoo has adopted three tiger cubs abandoned by their mother. Safari Zoological Park owner Tom Harvey said the tiger cubs were born Sunday, but the mother had problems with them.

A day later, the mother stopped caring for them. Harvey said the cubs were wandering around, trying to find their birth mother, who wouldn't pay attention to them. That's when the cubs were put in the care of a golden retriever, Harvey said.

Harvey said it's unusual for dogs to care for tiger cubs, but it does happen. He said he has seen reports of pigs nursing cubs in China, and he actually got the golden retriever after his wife saw television accounts of dogs caring for tiger cubs.

Puppies take about the same amount of time as tiger cubs to develop, and Harvey said the adoptive mother just recently weaned her own puppies.

"The timing couldn't have been any better," he said.

No difference for dog
The mother doesn't know the difference, Harvey said. He said the adopted mother licks, cleans and feeds the cubs.

The Safari Zoological Park is a licensed facility open since 1989 and specializes in endangered species.

It has leopards, lions, cougars, baboons, ring-tailed lemurs, bears and other animals. It currently has seven white tigers and two orange tigers.

Because white tigers are inbred from the first specimen found more than a half-century ago, they are not as genetically stable as orange tigers.

The zoo's previous litter of white tiger cubs was born April 23, although one of the three has since gone to a private zoo near Oklahoma City.

The Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances (Continued)

10-Myspace kitsch

Unlike Facebook, which adheres to a relatively rigid blue-on-white, three-column design, MySpace lets you decorate your page with background images, themes and unconventional layouts. That flexibility provides just enough rope for many MySpacers, and the results range from ugly to completely unreadable. Some MySpace pages are so poorly designed that they can crash the hardiest browser -- and this alone has caused many social networkers to flee the aesthetic chaos of MySpace for the relative calm of Facebook. Thankfully, some enterprising script authors have come up with scripts that tone down the MySpace bling and clutter: One of my favorite MySpace scripts puts a button on the screen that turns custom page styles on and off with a single click.


9- The worms crawl in
One of the benefits of social networking is that your communications with fellow networkers bypass your normal e-mail inbox, providing a measure of safety against viruses, worms and other malware -- or so everyone thought. In 2006, however, Google's Orkut service (which is hugely popular in Brazil) was hit by the MW.Orc worm, which masquerades as an image file in a user's scrapbook and propagates to the profiles of other users, stealing personal data along the way. Despite attempts to block such infections, a new family of worms written in JavaScript attacked the service in late 2007, and the problems continue today. Of course, the issue isn't confined to Orkut; we've heard numerous stories of social networkers catching bugs from social networking sites outside Brazil, too.

8.Linkedin is up tight

Almost anything goes on MySpace, but not so on LinkedIn, where the strictly business motif discourages personal expression outside of a photo (a fairly recent innovation), a status line and standard résumé entries. Sure, the whole point of LinkedIn is to put your most professional foot forward, but really, LinkedIn, couldn't we loosen the necktie just a little? LinkedIn may never support psychedelic backdrops or party photos, but it could do a lot more to help you project something more than an utterly antiseptic persona.

7.Mobile social networking still kinda weak

Imagine receiving real-time, location-based status messages from your friends as they make the rounds of the local bars and restaurants. Although Facebook, MySpace and other services are gradually adding mobile-phone features, that kind of mobile social networking is still just a dream for a number of reasons. First, to be successful, it has to work across multiple wireless carriers and social networks -- no easy feat. Second, services such as Dodgeball require you to actively post location updates before your friends can find you. Until GPS-equipped phones can update networks with location information automatically, it's still easier just to call.

6.Ning:Too much porn

Ning, which lets you set up your own custom social network, has attracted attention for its ability to create communities that are more functional than those created through competing services from Google and Yahoo. Nonprofits, support groups and hobbyists have found their homes on Ning. But, as with many new neighborhoods on the Web, the seedier side of the culture is often the first to move in. As on Second Life, pornography reportedly comprises a significant percentage of the communities Ning hosts. Flickr faces a similar issue, but it shields unsuspecting visitors from seeing adult content through default filters (that is, you must actively opt out of the filter). Ning offers no such setting, which makes the site tough to recommend to schools and families.

5.Do I know you?

Facebook started out as a way for college students to put faces to names: "Hi, I think we took Poly Sci together last semester, and you're friends with my friend Brittany. Would you be my Facebook friend?" Now that Facebook is a global phenomenon, exchanges can go more like this: "I don't know you, and we have no friends in common. I live in Colorado, you live somewhere far away. And yet you'd like to be my friend and show me your baby pictures. And you want to see mine. Hmmm, let me think about that ... request denied." Not only is it OK to ignore friend requests from people you don't know, your privacy may depend on it.

4.Thanks for the ad! Here's some spam

Slightly more annoying than random friend requests from total strangers is the increasing presence at social networking sites of good old-fashioned spam -- you know, the kind where somebody is actually trying to sell you something. On Facebook, MySpace and many other sites, you can expect to receive all kinds of unsolicited commercial and noncommercial requests, promos and e-mail messages in your inbox. All manner of enterprises, from fledgling rock bands to escort services to professional headhunters, are trying to use these newfangled social network things to drum up business, and that means spam.

3.Breaking up is hard to do (too hard)

Late last year I realized that I'd read one too many inspirational peace, true love and happiness-through-vegetarianism bulletin posts from some random friend on MySpace, and I decided that I'd had enough. I decided to cancel my account. I wanted to disappear from the scene -- to commit "MySpace Suicide." But I quickly found out that it wasn't as easy as clicking a Delete Account button. Perhaps to protect accounts from unauthorized deletion, some services require you to send a formal cancellation request -- LinkedIn requires you to contact customer service, for example. MySpace does let you delete your own account, but only if you still have access to the e-mail account you used to set it up. Unlucky for me, I had changed ISPs during my two years of MySpace membership, and I no longer had my old e-mail address. So began a four-week account-cancellation process, culminating in my actually having to e-mail MySpace a picture of me holding a piece of paper with my MySpace user name scrawled on it. I might have been better off just leaving the account active and deleting all the data and content it held.

2.Zombies,pirates, and other pointless Facebook applications

Facebook applications allow my friends to share their movie tastes, opinions, news picks and other items with me, but accepting these tidbits requires me to install each corresponding app in my own profile (at which point it has access to my personal information). One app informs me that a friend has just urinated on me, poked me or vampire-bit me. An alarming number of my female friends want me to know them by their stripper names. Why my friends devote so much time to these curious little apps I haven't figured out, but I know that cumulatively they've begun to demand way too much of my time.

To make matters worse, Facebook applications promote themselves, too, trying to get in touch, and even peppering me with spam. If you're encountering the same thing, you can fight back. To make silly apps go away, open the application invitation and click on the Block [application name] link in the bottom-right part of the window. Or, you can banish all applications from your Facebook experience by installing the Facebook custom app hider Greasemonkey script.

1.Multiple social network syndrome

With the advent of social networking, my e-mail traffic has gotten worse, not better. Here's an e-mail telling me that my brother has sent an e-mail within Facebook. Another message informs me that Susie has updated her profile at Friendster. Another announces that Bob over at FriendNet has just brushed his teeth. Another proclaims that Dave has written the latest installment of his ingenious blog at MySpace. Somebody at Facebook has just poked me. Someone else has bought some new bling. And on and on and on. To reply or act on any of these events, I'll have to bring up one of the 12 social networks I've been sucked into joining, log in and then view the ads there. All of that, of course, necessitates a lot of extra clicks and keystrokes, and after a while, I find that I don't really like my friends anymore.

The major social networking sites are very aware of such frustrations, and are taking steps to increase their ability to interact with one another. MySpace recently announced that it will let its users push their bio information out to other sites such as eBay, Photobucket, Twitter and Yahoo. Not to be outdone, Facebook has announced its own plans to do the same thing with partner sites.

That's all good, but I'm not holding my breath for the day when I can share data and content directly between my MySpace account and my Facebook account. Still, it's a positive sign that the big players are acknowledging that social networking is about bringing folks together online, not confining them inside large walled gardens.

The Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances

It's great to keep in touch with your friends and colleagues, but does the price have to be spam, zombie bites and friend invitations from people you've never heard of?

The same question people used to ask about PCs can be asked of social networks: Were our lives easier or harder, better or worse, simpler or more complex, before they came around? The answer is yes. For some folks, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace seem nearly as indispensable as e-mail, but creating and maintaining these virtual circles of friends turns out to be quite a bit of work, often necessarily so. Here are the 10 things that bug me most about today's social networking services.
to be continued

How Safe Is Social Networking? Glossary of Social Networking Terms

Magazine publisher Waylon Lewis says his company used a MySpace page to promote parties and other events for its yoga-culture magazine, Elephant, until the page began attracting so much porn spam that he had to abandon the effort. But Lewis's story has a happy ending: His company fled from MySpace to Facebook, and he finds it a great place to publicize events and build community around the magazine. Lewis says his Facebook inbox is completely spam-free, but he wonders whether that, too, might pass if Facebook's ownership or policies change: "I didn't used to get triple-X spam on MySpace."

Add:n. The act of gaining a new friend, and social networking's common currency, as in "Dude, thanks for the add."

Block:v. To configure your social networking service to prevent a particular user from contacting you or viewing your profile.

Check-in:n. In mobile social networking, an electronic message that alerts your group of friends that you have arrived at the local pub and are ready to party.

Cyberbully:v. To attack, harass, or ridicule a fellow community member via posted text, video, or other electronic means.

Defriend:v. The inverse of adding a friend, and the very epitome of coldness. Same as unfriend.

Faceslam:v. To ignore a Facebook friend request from someone you don't know and/or wish would just go away.

Facestalk:v. To scan, jealously, the Facebook profiles and photos of people you know, are going out with, or are going out with in your dreams.

Friend:v. To request that another user add you as a friend--sometimes an awkward moment for the social networker.

MySpace Suicide:n. The act of deleting one's MySpace account forever.

Nudge:v. On Twitter, to send a message notifying someone you follow that they're not posting frequently enough.

Poke: n. On Facebook, a feature that lets other users know that you're looking at their profile, and possibly stalking them.

RL: n. Real life--the world of flesh, bone, and face-to-face meetings that existed before the Web browser.

Slurping: n. The ability of most social networks to import your Web-based mail contacts to see if any are already on the service. Watch out for slurpers that spam every contact with membership invites.

Twitterrhea:n. A condition resulting in an excess of Twitter posts. For even more Twitter jargon, see the Twitter Fan Wiki's glossary.

How Safe Is Social Networking?

How Safe Is Social Networking?

In light of a high-profile cyberbullying and suicide case on MySpace last year, many social network users--and the parents of teenage MySpacers, especially--are thinking twice about the wisdom of spending life online.

Midwestern mom Mary (not her real name) has a deal with her high-school-age daughter that her MySpace profile must be private, shielding her from all but her known, real-world friends. But when the 15-year-old created a fictional female MySpace character with her 14-year-old friend, who was still in middle school, they made the account public and soon began chatting with an older high-school boy. Then, the middle-schooler agreed to meet the boy in person, triggering a crisis in both girls' families.

"When you get to make up somebody, they're exciting, they're more adventurous than you really are," says Mary, who was unhappy with the fake account but even more shocked that it progressed to a face-to-face meeting.

Kate Casavecchia Crisp, director of a Boulder, Colorado-based nonprofit organization, has weathered online dangers, too, but continues to participate actively at social networking sites. She has employed more than a dozen social sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, and Twitter, to promote her organization's education and advocacy goals, attracting the occasional loony along the way.

"I got stalked by a crazy in a group I led for awhile," she recalls, after kicking the woman out of a discussion group for repeatedly cursing at other members. The episode has made her wary of posting her photo in online profiles, so she often replaces it with a cartoony avatar. "These virtual types, some of them are scary," she says. "I don't want to run into them at the market."

Media sharing sites

Friends on one of the mailing lists to which I subscribe often attach Microsoft Word files containing poems, reports, and other kinds of text to their messages, hoping that someone on the list will read them. Undoubtedly, most recipients simply delete those messages, because e-mail is not a convenient way to share files. Online file storage has boomed in recent years, but eSnips goes beyond simple storage, combining it with networking and creating online communities centered on content categories such as musical styles, painting, poetry, photography, animation, and humor. After you have uploaded your text, audio, image, video, or other type of file to eSnips (using a handy browser toolbar, if you wish), you can opt to share it with the world or with a more select group by e-mail invitation. You can even sell your work through the eSnips Marketplace. eSnips helps you find like-minded people among its reported 4 million users by creating a statistical analysis of your uploaded content, called your "SocialDNA," and matching it with that of other users. Each account receives 5GB of storage for free, currently with no additional storage options.

The Scribd service differs from its competitor eSnips in one important way: It has no storage limits. In fact, you don't even need to sign up for an account to upload files--just browse over and click the big green upload arrow. You do need to sign in with a user account if you want to maintain ownership of the files you upload, however, and you must designate who can see them or delete them later on. In addition, logging in lets you specify whether your files are private, either making them invisible to everyone else until you send out e-mail invitations or marking them as publicly viewable.

Used in combination with Scribd's bulk file uploader, the service can act as a handy limitless online backup tool, or as an alternative to Flickr's limited accounts. Scribd arranges your uploaded content into topical groups, as eSnips does, but Scribd doesn't suggest files it thinks you'll like--a feature you may be willing to give up in exchange for unlimited storage.

Dada.net

Though it was built with cell phone users in mind, Dada.net takes a completely different approach than Dodgeball does. A kind of mobile MySpace, Dada.net lets you create and customize a personalized home page--and more important, upload photos, videos, music, and blog posts. And you can do all of that from your phone's Web browser (or from your PC).

The service makes some of its income from the Google Ads its members view. You can share in the revenue if you have a Google AdSense account: The greater the number of people who see your profile and its ads, the more money you and Dada.net make. For that reason, you'll start receiving friend requests right away from people you don't know; however, the site's privacy settings let you screen out most of those unwanted inquiries.

Dada.net also specializes in hooking you up, and provides a "Love" profile separate from your "Friendship" profile. Many of Dada.net's mobile services are available for free, but some others--including "Love" chats and cell phone ring-tone and wallpaper downloads--require a monthly subscription that can run as high as $10 per month, so be sure to click cautiously.

About Dogdeball

Many social networks offer mobile features, but an emerging field of social networks is designed with the cell phone as the hub. The most practical use of these services appears to involve friends keeping friends apprised of their bar-hopping locations via SMS messages or a phone Web browser so that they can join in the revelry.

Dodgeball, the brainchild of two New York University grad students, provides just such a cell-based location service. After creating a Dodgeball account (by providing your name, city, phone number, and wireless carrier), you start adding friends: Dodgeball detects and sends invites to your Gmail contacts, or you can search the directory of other Dodgeball members. When you hit your favorite saloon and you want your buddies to drop by, you simply send a text message to Dodgeball's SMS code containing the @ symbol and the venue name--a "check-in" in mobile social networking parlance. Dodgeball then fires off a text message to your friends declaring the same (frequent Dodgeball users had better be on an unlimited-text-messaging plan). Other shorthand codes send announcements ("shout-outs") or retrieve venue locations from Google Maps. Dodgeball's main drawback (other than its party focus) is that currently its coverage is limited to just 22 major U.S. cities. Here's hoping that Google, which recently acquired Dodgeball, will soon take steps to expand the service's reach.

Sites

Though its purposes are similar to Last.fm's--to find out what kind of music you like and to stream it to you--Pandora runs entirely in your Web browser and relies on people to suggest new music. As you select and listen to songs on Pandora and give them a thumbs-up or -down, the site provides you with new songs that human music evaluators have determined to be similar in style. At any time, you can search for a particular artist, song, or genre, and Pandora will create a whole "radio station" for you, full of music drawn from the same category.

Pandora's social networking features are lightweight. Your profile's half-dozen, optional fields contain nothing terribly revealing about you, but it's enough to introduce yourself--and you can always elect to be completely invisible to others. I couldn't find anyone I knew on Pandora, and the site doesn't offer to search your contacts for existing users. Other fans of the artists or composers you search for do show up on your screen, though, and you can "bookmark" them, as well, to see what they're listening to.

Facebook's photo-sharing feature is great, and you can list your favorite shows, movies, and musicians on your profile page there, but that's it. iMeem takes the sharing of movie and music preferences a step further, combining Facebook-like socializing with MySpace-style embedded players, playlists, and profile themes. When you join, you enter as little or as much information about yourself as you like into your iMeem profile, including your location, your schools and employers, your music, movie, and TV favorites, and other interests. Then you can assemble a list of friends--either by adding specific friends or by having iMeem search your Web-mail accounts for existing iMeem users. You can search for music and videos that you like and add them to your playlist, enjoy others' playlists, and join or create groups dedicated to particular interests, artists, or genres.

Most of the audio and video available on iMeem consists of short clips (with links to iTunes or Amazon pages where you can purchase a downloadable version), but you can also upload entire songs for your own playback. Musicians and directors can upgrade their accounts to free professional versions, which showcase their work and include an iMeem subdomain (like elvispresley.imeem.com). Real movie nuts looking for a community dedicated to watching and discussing film might want to try Flixster.com instead.

Continued:Taste-based sites

Tired of hearing your same old favorite songs? Wish you could find a bunch more music in the same vein and enjoy those tunes for free? Last.fm's downloadable media player plug-in listens to what you play in your PC's audio player or on your iPod, compares that with the listening habits of Last.fm users with similar tastes, and then suggests music it thinks you'll like. As you click the 'Love' and 'Ban' buttons in response to Last.fm's suggestions, the site learns even more and provides new and different tracks in the same style.

As in the real world, friends on Last.fm are the people who turn you on to great music selections that you would not have known about otherwise; but if you don't end up making many friends at the site, that's okay. You can still browse through the profiles of users who have tastes akin to yours for music that might be to your liking.

Taste-based sites

If you can't find an online community that matches your needs, you can build your own. At Ning, you create a customized social network with its own domain name and banner art, individual member profile pages, photo and video sharing, multiple subtopic groups, and discussion forums. Once your custom network is complete, anyone--not just Ning members--can find it in Ning's directory or through the site's keyword tag cluster. Creating a Ning network takes only a couple of minutes: You come up with a name and a domain name (at the end of which the site will add '.ning.com'), enter a description of the network, put in some keyword tags, and insert an icon image, and you're off. To increase the safety and privacy of your network's users, you can make it visible only to members, and you can opt to approve each would-be member or make membership by invitation only.

Despite Steve Jobs's recent assertion that nobody reads anymore, a growing number of sites focus on something almost everyone can relate to: what's on your bedside table. LibraryThing lets you catalog the contents of your library, share your reading preferences with other users, and discover books and authors that you might otherwise have ignored. Are you a fan of Spanish author Ramón Del Valle-Inclán? A surprising number of LibraryThing subscribers share your eclectic taste, and are ready for a discussion. At the moment, LibraryThing has about 330,000 subscribers.

You start by adding books to your online catalog one at a time, either by typing in the book's ISBN (International Standard Book Number) or by copying its information from another member's catalog. Alternatively you can find and import multiple books into your catalog by searching for ISBNs on publisher, bookseller, or book review Web pages.

Once you've established your library, LibraryThing can suggest other books for you to read based on the catalogs of members who have similar tastes. Tag-cloud pages for authors and topical keywords permit you to see at a glance what other people are reading. Members with free accounts can catalog up to 200 of their favorite books; unlimited accounts require a $10 annual donation, and a lifetime membership to the site costs $25.

The Right Social Network for You

Whether you're looking for a job, a party or long-lost friends, your ideal online meeting place is out there. We'll help you find it.

With hundreds of millions of user accounts, MySpace is the Internet's most recognizable (and reviled) social network. From teenagers to grandmas, seemingly everybody has a page. But Rupert Murdoch's online leviathan may not be the best option for satisfying your Web communication needs. Nimble new startup companies are creating both general-purpose and specialized services--all of them free, just as MySpace is--that could get you a job, find you a date, connect you with friends new and old, and fill your life with beautiful music.

With so many social networks dotting the Web, though, it's hard to know which ones are worth your time and bandwidth. To help clarify things, we examined 17 alternatives to MySpace in five broad categories: general-purpose, special-purpose, taste-based, mobile, and media-sharing social networks. As we discuss our findings, we'll also offer a few tips for maintaining your safety and privacy, finding friends online, and getting the most out of each service.

Part 1

• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Part 2

• Twitter
• iMedix, BlackPlanet.com, MiGente, AsianAve.com, and TeeBeeDee.com
• Ning

Part 3

• LibraryThing
• Last.fm
• Pandora
• iMeem

Part 4

• Dodgeball
• Dada.net
• eSnips
• Scribd

Though it began in 2004 as an online yearbook for Harvard students, Facebook soon opened its membership to other universities, then high schools, then everyone else. You can search for friends according to their school, city, or work affiliations, and you can join more than one of these networks, allowing you to maintain connections with ex-classmates, neighbors, and coworkers. Using this approach, the site has grown to a staggering 60 million members. Its main features--photo and video sharing, messaging, and public message boards--are similar to those on MySpace, but it eschews the crazy skins and music players that render many MySpace profiles illegible.

Unfortunately, beneath Facebook's clean, blue-and-white facade lies potential risk. Last year, Facebook's controversial Beacon advertising scheme, which made members' online purchases viewable by other members, caused an uproar as members objected to being transformed into unwitting (and uncompensated) product endorsers. If you (reasonably) worry that such a privacy gaffe could recur, you can use Facebook's fine-grained security settings to establish an appropriate level of privacy protection. See "Give Your Facebook Page a Much-Needed Lift" from our December 2007 issue for additional Facebook safety and customization tips.

Unlike Facebook and MySpace, which are essentially about fun and friends, LinkedIn promotes your career or your business. LinkedIn has become one of the most talked-about social networks, and has quickly grown to nearly 20 million members.

Like other social networks, LinkedIn revolves around your personal profile. But instead of displaying lists of your favorite bands and collections of party snapshots, your LinkedIn profile showcases your employment history, your professional skills, and your education and awards, and explains how and why you want to be contacted. To get the most out of your LinkedIn membership, you should make these entries brief, complete, and sparkling, just as you would on any résumé or curriculum vitae. The most important items in your profile, however, are the recommendations you receive from current and former coworkers and employers regarding the positions you've held. As more members write recommendations about you, you can decide whether to include them in your profile. The more positive recommendations you have, the better you'll look to potential employers in LinkedIn's Jobs & Hiring area, and to prospective clients in the Services area. To improve your chances of receiving a recommendation, consider writing recommendations for your connections without waiting until they ask you for one.

Is Twitter really a social network? Yes, but not in the way Facebook and MySpace are. The content that drives Twitter is a relentless stream of real-time personal status postings called tweets, each limited to a maximum of 140 characters. "Going out for more batteries," or "Feeling snacky, I think I'll have a salad" are the stuff of Twitter greatness--as long as tracking your friends' ephemeral actions and mutterings is your cup of tea.

After you've signed up, it's worthwhile to peruse the ever-changing public updates page--to see the variety of ways people use Twitter and to find interesting Twitterers to follow. You can also allow Twitter to search through your e-mail address book to see whether any of your contacts are already Twitter users. In time, other people may follow your tweets, too. If you'd rather not broadcast your posts to the universe, select the 'Protect my Updates' option in Twitter's settings to keep your posts out of the public timeline and approve any followers before they can see your tweets. You can even have Twitter "nudge" you with an e-mail reminder should you forget to post for a while. When you're away from your computer, Twitter permits you to send and receive tweets on your cell phone via SMS or Twitter's mobile Web site. I recently used the latter to keep tabs on Steve Jobs's January Macworld Expo keynote via the twittering of several Mac pundits in the audience.

The problem with the big mass-market social networks is that, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, nobody uses them any more--they're too crowded. How will anyone find your profile among the 400 million MySpace pages? Now, however, thousands of social networking sites have emerged that are built around specific activities, ideas, or interests, or that target particular groups of people, such as Baby Boomers.

Some examples: With help from the no-frills iMedix, you can find information on the Web related to specific conditions or illnesses, and chat with or e-mail other people who have the same concerns. At BlackPlanet.com, African-Americans can connect around various topics or geographic locations; MiGente is a sibling site with similar features intended for the Latino community, and AsianAve.com serves Asian communities. And people who are approaching or already experiencing their golden years can make virtual connections at TeeBeeDee, a site dedicated to social networkers ages 40 and up.

'Scrabulous' Gets a Nip-Tuck, Returns as 'Wordscraper'

In the high school cafeteria of Facebook apps, "Scrabulous" is like that girl who gets in trouble for showing too much skin, only to throw on a hoodie and be let back into the principal's good graces. Sort of. The game has effectively returned, but with a redesigned board, a few original play options, a different points tabulation system, and a new name, "Wordscraper".

Props to Adam Ostrow of Mashable for picking up on this one early.

The Facebook application "Scrabulous" had been taken down by its creators earlier this week when Hasbro, the game manufacturer that owns the rights to "Scrabble" in the United States and Canada, pointed out that "Scrabulous" was a near copy. Few disagreed with the allegation, but many loyal "Scrabulous" fans wondered why Hasbro couldn't have struck a deal instead of insisting upon a shutdown, especially as the "real" "Scrabble" game on Facebook succumbed to technical difficulties.

The reason for "Scrabulous"' extreme makeover has its roots in some pretty gray legal matters: the real problem wasn't that it ripped off "Scrabble", but that it ripped off "Scrabble" so blatantly. The colors of the board were the same, the list of rules led to a Wikipedia entry for "Scrabble" rules, and the two names were similar enough for Hasbro to cry foul.

On Wednesday I spoke to Pete Kinsella, a partner at the Faegre & Benson law firm who specializes in intellectual property, and he gave me his take on the gritty details. "Copyrights are not supposed to protect board games," Kinsella explained. "What copyrights protect is the expression of an idea rather than the idea itself."

Returning as "Wordscraper" is a way for its creators to keep the game running while avoiding legal complaints. In effect, it's just different enough.

"I think there's a very fine line to walk in this one, and the question is whether "Scrabulous" went over the line or not in mimicking the colors or everything else," Kinsella assessed (keep in mind that we had this conversation before the advent of "Wordscraper"), "or whether they could've designed a generic version of the game with the same points system and scoring system, and that would've fallen out of Hasbro's copyrights."

So will this end the legal spat? Maybe. If Kinsella's analysis proves accurate, this is probably enough to keep Hasbro's lawyers away. Many other games on Facebook bear strong-but-not-too-strong resemblances to board games like "Battleship" and "Risk," but so far haven't encountered the same corporate scrutiny.

"The law allows people to design around things, and particularly when there isn't patent protection, the law has great incentive to design around things by making things somewhat different," Kinsella said.

Or, for a less digital example, think about all those detergent bottle logos that look suspiciously similar.

"I Hate My Newborn Baby!"

A new dad confesses: They're not always bundles of joy

The first few days are a blur of exhilaration and exhaustion. I sit holding that little ball of flesh--all 6 pounds of him--and I can't believe how lucky I am.

On the third day, we take Matthew home. My wife and I are looking forward to spending the next 3 months together, raising our boy. After that, she'll go back to work and I'll stay home.

The parenting books say the average newborn sleeps about 19 hours a day. That's how long our boy cries. He never naps, and at night he sleeps for just 20 minutes at a time, and only when he's being held. This makes it tough to follow the first rule of having a newborn: Sleep when the baby sleeps.

Week 2

Clearly something is wrong. We take Matthew to the doctor. "It's just a little intestinal distress," he tells us. "It's fairly common and nothing to worry about."

Meanwhile, my wife, Kelly, and I start sleeping in shifts. She goes to bed at 7 p.m. while I sit in the basement with Matthew for, inevitably, 5 hours of crying. Then at midnight, we switch for 5 hours.

Before, the basement had been my sanctuary. Comfy couches, big-screen TV, every man's dream. Now it's my prison. I lose my temper 50 times a night. Sitting there alone in the dark, exhausted, I'm overwhelmed. "Why are you doing this!" I scream at him. "What do you want me to do?"

Week 3

I hate my newborn baby. There, I said it. Nobody ever says it. But if what Matthew is going through is fairly common, then I'm sure more than a few men have thought it. It's always "Coochie-coochie-coo!" and "Oh, he's a handful, but he's worth it." Yeah, right. Am I missing something here?

I'd waited 42 years to meet this kid. Now I want to return him. Or ask for an exchange. "Do you have any quiet babies that I could take instead? No? Would you mind looking in the back?"

I feel like the worst dad ever.

Week 4

Two more doctor visits and no improvement. We switch to formula, replace Matthew's bed linens, and start using a humidifier in his room. We're desperate for something, anything, to click. Friends say things like, "Just wait. One of these days he'll start sleeping, and your life will change." Every time he dozes for more than 15 minutes we think we've turned a corner. But then he wakes up crying, as if someone has just poured a bucket of ice water on him.

Week 5

The doctor thinks maybe Matthew has a milk allergy, so he wants us to switch to a soy-based formula. We start him on a Saturday.

The next day, my mother-in-law comes over to give us some relief. Kelly and I each go our separate ways. She takes care of some stuff around the house, and I lock myself in front of a day's worth of NFL games. By dinnertime, my mother-in-law is deeply concerned. "He's getting worse," she says.

I call the doctor, who advises us to allow the new formula a few more hours to work through his system. At 10 p.m., Matthew is as miserable as we've ever seen him. We decide to take him to the ER.

Then, as we're getting ready, something crazy happens. He falls asleep in my wife's arms. We don't get our hopes up--we've fallen for this trick before. Fifteen minutes later, we take a chance and lay him down. Still out cold. Then we dare to crawl into our own bed.

That night, he sleeps 6 hours straight. It's the breakthrough we've been hoping for.

Today

As I write this, Matthew is sitting in his bouncy seat looking at me with a smirk on his face. He's 6 months old, and he's already my best friend. Every night he listens to my troubles, cooing his understanding or praising me with an encouraging fart. But for his first few weeks on this planet, we did not get along. Not at all.

Looking back, I feel incredible guilt--not just for having had so much hatred and anger, but for how selfish I'd been. Many new parents are facing real problems. Their kids are sick. They're having trouble affording basic necessities. They're doing it alone. My wife and I were together 24-7 and parenting knocked us on our asses.

To those struggling parents, I say best of luck.

To my wife, who's now back at work, I say thank you for giving me such a wonderful son.

And to my boy, well, I'm sorry about the things I said to you during your first few weeks. I promise to make it up to you for the rest of your life. I love you, buddy.

ER docs: Don't text and walk, skate — or cook (AP)

CHICAGO - The warning came too late for Barack Obama's adviser: Don't walk and text at the same time.

Obama aide Valerie Jarrett fell off a Chicago curb several weeks ago while her thumbs were flying on her Blackberry.

"I didn't see the sidewalk and I twisted my ankle," Jarrett said. "It was a nice wake-up call for me to be a lot more careful in the future, because I clearly wasn't paying attention and I should have."

Jarrett got off easy and didn't need medical attention.

But in an alert issued this week, the American College of Emergency Physicians warns of the danger of more serious accidents involving oblivious texters. The ER doctors cite rising reports from doctors around the country of injuries involving text-messaging pedestrians, bicyclists, Rollerbladers, even motorists.

Most involve scrapes, cuts and sprains from texters who walked into lampposts or walls or tripped over curbs.

Still, ER doctors who responded to a recent informal query from the organization reported two deaths, both in California. A San Francisco woman was killed by a pickup truck earlier this year when she stepped off a curb while texting, and a Bakersfield man was killed last year by a car while crossing the street and texting.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has no national estimate on how common texting-related injuries are. But among the reports it has received: A 15-year-old girl fell off her horse while texting, suffering head and back injuries, and a 13-year-old girl suffered belly, leg and arm burns after texting her boyfriend while cooking noodles.

Giancarlo Yerkes texted his way across a busy Chicago street Tuesday and escaped unscathed. But the 30-year-old advertising employee admitted he once walked straight into a stop sign while texting and bumped his head.

Yerkes said that he texts while walking to maximize his time, and that the emergency doctors' warning probably won't stop him.

"There's a lot of things you shouldn't do — this is another one on my list," Yerkes said.

Dr. James Adams, chairman of emergency medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, said he has treated minor injuries in several texters.

"Common sense isn't always common," Adams said.

Sometimes even among doctors.

"I have to admit that I started a text while I was driving and then I said, `This is so stupid,' so I stopped," Adams said.

Dr. Patrick Walsh, an emergency physician in Bakersfield, Calif., said he is a texter, too, but tries to remind himself to do it intelligently.

"We think we're multitasking, but we're not," he said. "You're focusing on one task for a split second, then focusing on another one, and with something moving 40 miles an hour like a car, it just takes a couple of seconds to be hit."

Walsh, a native of Ireland, said that on a recent visit there he noticed an effective government TV ad campaign against texting and walking, aimed at teenagers.

The message echoes the new advice from U.S. emergency doctors.

"We don't want to sound like some stern schoolmistress, telling people don't text on your cell phone," Walsh said. "But when you're texting, look around," he said.

The ER group also says people should never text while driving, and should avoid talking on a cell phone or texting while doing other physical activities, including walking, biking, boating and Rollerblading.

___

On the Net:

American College of Emergency Physicians: http://www.acep.org

Week Ending July 27, 2008: Miley's Young, But She's Not The Youngest

Miley Cyrus this week becomes the second-youngest artist ever to amass two #1 albums on the Billboard chart. The 15-year old star tops the chart with Breakout, her first album released strictly under her own name. Cyrus also rang the bell last year with the two-CD set, Hannah Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus. (I'm not counting the first Hannah Montana soundtrack toward her total, because Cyrus didn't yet have star billing.)

Cyrus is only the fifth performer to land two #1 albums as a teenager. She follows LeAnn Rimes, who was also 15 when she landed her second #1 album; Hilary Duff and Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the Block, who were both 17; and Britney Spears, who was 18. (To break the tie between Rimes and Cyrus, we have to count months. Rimes was just 15 and one month when she landed her second #1 album in 1997. Cyrus is 15 and eight months.)

Ricky Nelson was the first teenager to have a #1 album. He was 17 when his album Ricky topped the chart in 1958. Stevie Wonder is still the youngest artist with a #1 album. He was just 13 and three months in 1963 when he topped the chart with Little Stevie Wonder/The 12 Year Old Genius.

Other teen stars to land #1 albums are Tiffany (who was 16 when she topped the chart in 1988), Bobby Brown (19 when he scored in 1989), Debbie Gibson (18 in 1989), the rap duo Kris Kross (13 and 14 in 1992), Christina Aguilera (18 in 1999), Avril Lavigne (19 in 2004) and Ashlee Simpson (19 in 2004)-plus Jordan Knight from New Kids on the Block, Nick Carter from Backstreet Boys, Justin Timberlake from *NSYNC and Beyonce from Destiny's Child.

Only five of these chart-topping teen phenoms have made it back to #1 past their 25^th birthdays. Brown was 27 when he returned to #1 as part of New Edition's reunion album, Home Again. Wonder was 26 when he landed his most recent #1 album, the classic Songs In The Key Of Life. Timberlake, Aguilera and Beyonce were all 25 when they scored with, respectively, FutureSex/LoveSounds, Back To Basics and B'Day. Will Cyrus one day join this roster of teen idols who made the transition to adult pop stardom? Time will tell.

Breakout sold 371,000 copies in its first week. That's Cyrus' biggest opening week to date. Hannah Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus started a year ago with sales of 326,000.

Hit singles, such as the sassy "See You Again," have helped give Cyrus credibility apart from the Hannah identity. Cyrus has 10 songs on this week's top 200 Hot Digital Songs chart, the most anyone has had in one week since David Cook put 17 songs on the chart in the week following his American Idol victory. All but two of the 12 songs on Cyrus' album are listed on the download chart. Her highest-ranking song is "7 Things," which dips a notch to #4.

Cyrus is a second-generation chart-topper. Her father Billy Ray Cyrus logged 17 weeks at #1 in 1992 with his debut album, Some Gave All. The Cyruses are one of only two families in which both a parent and a child have had #1 albums. The other? The Coles. Nat "King" Cole hit #1 in 1957 with Love Is The Thing. Daughter Natalie Cole reached the top spot in 1991 with her tribute to her dad, Unforgettable With Love.

Sugarland also makes chart news this week. The duo's latest album, Love On The Inside, debuts at #2, which is the highest that any country twosome has been listed in the 52-year history of Billboard's weekly album chart. The old record was held by Brooks & Dunn, which peaked at #3 in 2005 with their highest charting album, Hillbilly Deluxe. Two other country duos have reached the top 10. Big & Rich has climbed as high as #6 twice (in 2004 and 2007). Montgomery Gentry reached #10 in 2004. The Judds, still among the most famous country duos of all time, peaked at #51 in 1989 with their highest-charting album, River Of Time. (Country was underrepresented on the charts in the years before 1991, when Nielsen/SoundScan set up shop.)

Both Breakout and Love On The Inside debut with sales in excess of 300,000. It's the first time that two albums have debuted with sales above that level since November, when Jay Z's American Gangster and Garth Brooks' The Ultimate Hits both started that big. Love On The Inside sold 314,000 copies, which constitutes the biggest sales week for a country album in 2008. It tops two albums that debuted at #1-George Strait's Troubadour (166,000) and Alan Jackson's Good Time (119,000). All of Sugarland's sales were for a "deluxe fan edition." The pared-down, regular edition hits stores this week, which should give the album a very solid second week.

Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" tops Hot Digital Songs for the sixth straight week. Only one other hit by a female artist has topped this chart for six or more weeks. That would be Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl," which led the way for nine weeks in 2005. "I Kissed A Girl" sold 151,000 downloads this week, bringing its total so far to 1,879,000.

Here's the low-down on this week's top 10 albums.

1. Miley Cyrus, Breakout, 371,000. This is the sixth biggest first-week sales tally of 2008, following Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III (1,006,000), Coldplay's Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends (721,000), Mariah Carey's E=MC2 (463,000), Usher's Here I Stand (443,000) and Jack Johnson's Sleep Through The Static (375,000).

2. Sugarland, Love On The Inside, 314,000. Sugarland's strong upward trajectory is seen in the first-week sales and chart numbers posted by its three albums. Twice The Speed Of Life sold a mere 4,000 copies the week it entered the chart at #194 in January 2005. Enjoy The Ride opened at #4 with sales of 211,000 in November 2006. Of the new album's sales total, 37,000 copies were sold digitally, making this the week's #1 Digital Album. Two songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "All I Want To Do" at #20.

3. Various Artists, Mamma Mia! soundtrack, 168,000. This is the fattest weekly sales total for a movie soundtrack since Idlewild (starring OutKast) sold 196,000 copies when it debuted in August 2006. Two movie soundtracks-Dreamgirls and Juno-have since hit #1 with much smaller weekly sales totals than Mamma Mia! registers this week. The high-spirited movie slipped from #2 to #3 at the box-office. Four songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by Meryl Streep's "Mamma Mia" at #48.

4. Kid Rock, Rock N Roll Jesus, 93,000. The album jumps from #6 to #4, its highest ranking in 40 weeks. The album is #14 for the year to date. The radio smash "All Summer Long" still isn't available as a download.

5. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III, 85,000. How big was Lil Wayne's chart debut six weeks ago? Add the healthy sales tallies from this week's top four albums together and you get 946,000 units-still less than the 1,006,000 copies that Lil Wayne sold in his first week. The album slips from #2 to #5. It's #1 for the year to date. Five songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "Lollipop" (featuring Static Major) at #19.

6. Coldplay, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, 75,000. The album dips from #4 to #6. It's #2 for the year-to-date. This will almost certainly be the third year in which Coldplay has had an album in the year-end top 10. A Rush Of Blood To The Head was #10 for the year in 2003. X&Y was #6 for the year in 2005. Two songs from the new album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "Viva La Vida" at #5.

7. Various Artists, Camp Rock soundtrack, 67,000. The TV soundtrack slips from #5 to #7. It's #11 for the year to date. Four songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "This Is Me" by Demi Lovato & Joe Jonas at #32.

8. Nas, Untitled, 63,000. The album tumbles from #1 to #8. That's the biggest drop from the top spot since fellow rapper Jay Z made the same move in November with American Gangster. Nas' previous album, Hip Hop Is Dead, also had just a single week on top. But his two #1 solo albums before that both had multiple weeks on top. "Hero" drops from #57 to #109 on Hot Digital Songs.

9. Various Artists, NOW 28, 37,000. The compilation jumps from #11 to #9 to return to the top 10 for a seventh week. It's #16 for the year to date.

10. Taylor Swift, Beautiful Eyes, 35,000. The album, a Wal-Mart exclusive, slips from #9 to #10 in its second week. Swift's eponymous debut album holds at #12 in its 38^th consecutive week in the top 20. Swift has four songs on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "Should've Said No" at #44.

Three albums drop out of the top 10 this week. John Mellencamp's Life Death Love And Freedom falls from #7 to #16. David Banner's The Greatest Story Ever Told slips from #8 to #20. Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad dips from #10 to #11.

Nine Inch Nails' The Slip debuts at #13. This is the band's seventh album to make the top 15; its second in a row to reach that level of success despite first being offered as a free download. Ghosts I-IV bowed at #14 in April.

Candlebox's Into The Sun opens at #32. This is the band's first album since Happy Pills 10 years ago. (They could have called this one Well Rested.) The Seattle-based band debuted (and peaked) in 1993 with an eponymous album that went top 10.Two popular bands, no strangers to live albums, enter the chart with digital-only live releases. U2's Live From Paris opens at #54. Counting Crows' Live From Soho bows at #66.

Blues legend Buddy Guy lands the highest-charting album of his career as Skin Deep bows at #68. The singer/guitarist first charted in 1991 with Damn Right, I've Got The Blues.

At The Movies: As you've no doubt heard by now, The Dark Knight has grossed $313.7 million at the box-office in just two weeks. It's already more than halfway to the mark set by the all-time box-office champ, Titanic, which has grossed $600.8 million. The soundtrack album from Titanic was also a smash. James Horner's score, augmented by a Celine Dion smash, has sold 10,117,000 copies, a total topped by only one soundtrack (The Bodyguard) in Nielsen/SoundScan history. Alas, the soundtrack from The Dark Knight is showing no signs of becoming a Titanic-style smash. The album, featuring a score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, dips from #20 to #23 in its second week on the chart. Why the disparity? Never underestimate the power of a ubiquitous radio hit. "Aggressive Expansion," the key download from The Dark Knight, is no "My Heart Will Go On."

ABBA's Gold-Greatest Hits holds at #1 on the Catalog Albums chart for the second straight week. It sold 22,000 copies this week and would have ranked #19 on the big chart if older, catalog albums were allowed to compete there. Three ABBA classics-"Dancing Queen," "Mamma Mia," and "Take A Chance On Me"-move up on Hot Digital Songs.

Ups & Downs: Two albums-the Mamma Mia! soundtrack and the Legally Blonde cast album-experienced sales increases of 84% this week, more than any other non-debuting album. Mamma Mia! was a stage musical that was turned into a movie. Legally Blonde was a movie that was turned into a stage musical. Can anyone in entertainment come up with an original idea anymore?! (Just asking.) Legally Blonde re-enters the chart at #165 with its highest weekly sales tally since October. On the down side, O.A.R.'s All Sides fell from #13 to #50, with a 67% sales drop, the steepest decline of any album in the top 200.

Heads Up: Kidz Bop Kids' Kidz Bop 14 will enter the chart next week, along with Third Day's Revelation and Scars On Broadway's Scars On Broadway, a side project by Daron Malakian, guitarist in System Of A Down.

The Lagoons of Titan: Oily Liquid Confirmed on Saturn Moon

Earthlings might be scrambling to find liquid hydrocarbons buried in our planet, but Saturn's moon Titan has plenty to spare.

Scientists say that a dark, smooth surface feature spotted on the moon last year is definitely a lake filled primarily with liquid ethane, a simple hydrocarbon.

"This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid," said the paper's lead author, University of Arizona professor Robert Brown.

The new observations affirm that Titan is one of the likeliest places to look for life in our solar system. Some astrobiologists have speculated that life could develop in the moon's hydrocarbon lakes, although it would have to be substantially different from known life on Earth, which requires liquid water.

Mixed in solution with the ethane, the lake is also believed to contain nitrogen, methane, and a variety of other simple hydrocarbons.

The Cassini-Huygens probe determined the chemical composition of the liquid by the way it reflected light, a technique known as spectrometry that has provided most of our knowledge about other planets' atmospheric compositions.

"It was hard for us to accept the fact that the feature was so black when we first saw it," Brown said. "More than 99.9 percent of the light that reaches the lake never gets out again. For it to be that dark, the surface has to be extremely quiescent, mirror smooth. No naturally produced solid could be that smooth."

Further, the scientists saw the specific absorption signature of ethane, which absorbs light at exactly 2-micron wavelengths.

These kinds of measurements are made more difficult by the hydrocarbon haze that engulfs the moon, making it hard to actually see the Titanic ground. Cassini scientists have to take advantage of narrow observation windows. One of these occurred in December 2007, which allowed them to catch this view of the lake, Ontario Lacus. At 7,800 square miles, it's slightly larger than the Earthbound Lake Ontario

Ethane is the byproduct of a solar-energy-induced reaction that transforms atmospheric methane, aka natural gas. Scientists believe ultrafine particles of ethane fall from the atmosphere to the surface and fill the lake.

Here on earth, ethane is used to create ethylene, which is used as an all-purpose chemical precursor and is the world's most-produced organic compound.

Neighborhood Walkability Linked to Weight

Obesity Risk Greater in Newer Communities

July 29, 2008 -- Does living in the suburbs make people fatter?

New research suggests that it might for those who reside in neighborhoods designed more for cars than foot traffic.

People in the study who lived in the most walkable neighborhoods weighed an average of 8 pounds less than people who lived in the least walkable areas.

Neighborhoods built before 1950 tended to have sidewalks and other characteristics that made them more accessible to pedestrians, including being more densely populated and having restaurants and other businesses nearby, lead researcher Ken R. Smith, PhD, tells WebMD.

In general, newer neighborhoods offered fewer opportunities for walking.

The study appears in the September issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“We aren’t saying the move from older to newer neighborhoods is the cause of the obesity epidemic, but it may be a factor,” Smith says.

Walk Less, Weigh More

In an effort to test the theory, Smith and colleagues calculated the body mass index (BMI) of 453,927 residents of Salt Lake County, Utah, using height and weight data from their driver’s license applications. Adults between the ages of 25 and 64 were included in the analysis.

The researchers also reviewed census data that included information about the neighborhoods where the residents lived.

In general, the research suggested that the more walkable a neighborhood was, the less likely its residents were to become overweight or obese.

Based upon the analysis, a man of average height and weight who lived in the most walkable neighborhood in Salt Lake County would be expected to weigh an average of 10 pounds less than a man living in the least walkable neighborhood. For women, the difference would be 6 pounds.

Smith says the growing emphasis on designing pedestrian-friendly places for people to live, work, and play could have a large, positive impact on health in the future.

He cites a recent report from the Brookings Institution predicting that by the year 2030 half the buildings in the United States will have been built since 2000.

“That represents a huge opportunity to think about how we are building our communities and to make them better places, both from a health and an environmental standpoint,” he says.

Walkability a Goal

This is the goal of the CDC’s ‘Healthy Places’ initiative, says Andrew Dannenberg, MD, MPH, of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health.

“Our mission is to get health on the table when building decisions are being made,” he says. “This has not been done much in the past, but awareness is growing.”

The recent stratospheric rise in gas prices and concerns about climate change have helped focus attention on the subject, but it is still too soon to know if the attention will lead to change, Dannenberg says.

The CDC’s ‘Healthy Places’ web site makes it clear that the challenge is daunting, as it calls for substantive changes with regard to future growth.

“Today, typical suburban homes sit in cul-de-sac subdivisions that empty out onto high volume roads,” it reads. “Zoning laws encourage the separation of residential areas from schools and shopping malls by long and often dangerous travel distances. Elementary school bicycle racks stand empty as parents fear for their children’s safety on narrow or traffic-laden roads. (And) pedestrians take risks as they cross dangerous intersections in communities where safe crosswalks are all but nonexistent,” the CDC statement reads.

Bush signs housing bill to provide mortgage relief

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Wednesday signed a massive housing bill intended to provide mortgage relief for 400,000 struggling homeowners and stabilize financial markets.

Bush signed the bill without any fanfare or signing ceremony, affixing his signature to the measure he once threatened to veto, in the Oval Office in the early morning hours. He was surrounded by top administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Housing Secretary Steve Preston.

"We look forward to put in place new authorities to improve confidence and stability in markets," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. He said that the Federal Housing Administration would begin right away to implement new policies "intended to keep more deserving American families in their homes."

The measure, regarded as the most significant housing legislation in decades, lets homeowners who cannot afford their payments refinance into more affordable government-backed loans rather than losing their homes.

It offers a temporary financial lifeline to troubled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and tightens controls over the two government-sponsored businesses.

The House passed the bill a week ago; the Senate voted Saturday to send it to the president.

Bush didn't like the version emerging from Congress, and initially said he would veto it, particularly over a provision containing $3.9 billion in neighborhood grants. He contended the money would benefit lenders who helped cause the mortgage meltdown, encouraging them to foreclose rather than work with borrowers.

But he withdrew that threat early last week, saying hurting homeowners could not wait — and even blaming the Democratic Congress' delays in action for forcing an imperfect solution.

Meanwhile, many Republicans, particularly those from areas hit hardest by housing woes, were eager to get behind a housing rescue as they looked ahead to tough re-election contests. Paulson's request for the emergency power to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped push through the measure. So did the creation of a regulator with stronger reins on the government-sponsored companies, as Republicans long have sought.

Democrats won cherished priorities in the bargain: the aid for homeowners, a permanent affordable housing fund financed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the neighborhood grants.

The bill takes several approaches to curing the ailing housing market.

It aims to spare an estimated 400,000 debt-strapped homeowners, many of whom owe more their houses are worth, from foreclosure by allowing them to get more affordable mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration.

The FHA could insure $300 billion in such mortgages, which would be available to homeowners who showed they could afford a new loan. Banks would first have to agree to take a large loss on the existing loans in exchange for avoiding an often-costly foreclosure.

The plan also is designed to relieve a broader credit crunch that has taken hold because of rising defaults and falling home values. To free up safer and more affordable mortgage credit, the bill permanently would increase to $625,000 the size of home loans that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy and the FHA can insure. They also could buy and back mortgages 15 percent higher than the median home price in certain areas.

It goes far beyond addressing the current crisis, however.

The legislation overhauls the Depression-era FHA. It requires lenders to show how high a borrower's payment could get under the terms of his mortgage. It provides $180 million in pre-foreclosure counseling for struggling homeowners.

The Treasury Department gains unlimited power, until the end of 2009, to lend money to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or buy their stock should they need it. The Federal Reserve takes on a new "consultative" role overseeing the companies.

The measure includes $15 billion in tax cuts, including a significant expansion of the low-income housing tax credit and a credit of up to $7,500 for first-time home buyers for houses purchased between April 9, 2008, and July 1, 2009.

Democratic leaders, recognizing that the measure could be one of the last items to become law during what's left of their abbreviated election-year schedule, tacked on an $800 billion increase, to $10.6 trillion, in the statutory limit on the national debt.

Conservative Republicans were vehemently opposed to the bill, particularly the help for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Critics charge the companies enjoy lavish profits in good times and wield their outsized political clout to resist regulation while depending on the government to bail them out should they falter.