Madame Butterfly

:P Every time I see this topic I want to say the beginnings of Indian Jones 1 & 3~~

Talking on MSN

Burning some CD's

Enjoying the drop in temperature

I'd like to see that one year.

My sister lives not far off Woodward, am surprised she didn't mention it to me when we talked today.

Just got back from The Woodward Dream Cruise.

Getting ready to go to work Ekk.

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Vintage cars Odo?

My Dad used to drag race down Woodward Ave when he was a teenager. :P

I'm personally tired of Gwen Stefani and have been for a while, but I really LOVE this song.

Cool Lyrics

It's hard to remember how it felt before

Now I found the love of my life...

Passes things get more comfortable

Everything is going right

And after all the obstacles

It's good to see you now with someone else

And it's such a miracle that you and me are still good friends

After all that we've been through

I know we're cool

We used to think it was impossible

Now you call me by my new last name

Memories seem like so long ago

Time always kills the pain

Remember Harbor Boulevard

The dreaming days where the mess was made

Look how all the kids have grown

We have changed but we're still the same

After all that we've been through

I know we're cool

And I'll be happy for you

If you can be happy for me

Circles and triangles, and now we're hangin' out with your new girlfriend

So far from where we've been

I know we're cool

Where I live, the PBS station has vowed only to do drives twice a year, and I like that.

I especially love that station.

I love Annie Lennox, such a beautiful voice

Why Lyrics

How many times do I have to try to tell you

That I'm sorry for the things I've done

But when I start to try to tell you

That's when you have to tell me

Hey... this kind of trouble's only just begun

I tell myself too many times

Why don't you ever learn to keep your big mouth shut

That's why it hurts so bad to hear the words

That keep on falling from your mouth

Falling from your mouth

Falling from your mouth

Tell me...

Why

Why

I may be mad

I may be blind

I may be viciously unkind

But I can still read what you're thinking

And I've heard is said too many times

That you'd be better off

Besides...

Why can't you see this boat is sinking

(this boat is sinking this boat is sinking)

Let's go down to the water's edge

And we can cast away those doubts

Some things are better left unsaid

But they still turn me inside out

Turning inside out turning inside out

Tell me...

Why

Tell me...

Why

This is the book I never read

These are the words I never said

This is the path I'll never tread

These are the dreams I'll dream instead

This is the joy that's seldom spread

These are the tears...

The tears we shed

This is the fear

This is the dread

These are the contents of my head

And these are the years that we have spent

And this is what they represent

And this is how I feel

Do you know how I feel ?

'cause i don't think you know how I feel

I don't think you know what I feel

I don't think you know what I feel

You don't know what I feel

My Happy Ending Lyrics

So much for my happy ending

Oh oh, oh oh, oh oh...

Let's talk this over

It's not like we're dead

Was it something I did?

Was it something You said?

Don't leave me hanging

In a city so dead

Held up so high

On such a breakable thread

You were all the things I thought I knew

And I thought we could be

You were everything, everything that I wanted

We were meant to be, supposed to be, but we lost it

And all of the memories, so close to me, just fade away

All this time you were pretending

So much for my happy ending

Oh oh, oh oh, oh oh...

You've got your dumb friends

I know what they say

They tell you I'm difficult

But so are they

But they don't know me

Do they even know you?

All the things you hide from me

All the (I'm trying to say a bad word but can't) that you do

You were all the things I thought I knew

And I thought we could be

You were everything, everything that I wanted

We were meant to be, supposed to be, but we lost it

And all of the memories, so close to me, just fade away

All this time you were pretending

So much for my happy ending

Oh oh, oh oh, oh oh...

It's nice to know that you were there

Thanks for acting like you cared

And making me feel like I was the only one

It's nice to know we had it all

Thanks for watching as I fall

And letting me know we were done

You were everything, everything that I wanted

We were meant to be, supposed to be, but we lost it

And all of the memories, so close to me, just fade away

All this time you were pretending

So much for my happy ending

Oh oh, oh oh, oh oh...

Oh oh, oh oh, oh oh...

So much for my happy ending

Oh oh, oh oh, oh oh...

Updated: 08:39 PM EDT

Judge Orders Northeast Wolf Restoration

By DAVID GRAM, AP

AP

The ruling covers the restoration of the gray wolf in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York state.

MONTPELIER, Vt. (Aug. 19) - A federal judge Friday ordered the Bush administration to step up efforts to restore the gray wolf to four northeastern states, a ruling environmentalists called a major victory.

"The wolves are howlin"' in celebration, said Patrick Parenteau, director of the environmental law clinic at Vermont Law School.

Judge J. Garvan Murtha found that the Department of the Interior violated federal law in 2003 when it issued a rule saying no further efforts to restore the wolf were needed. The ruling covers Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York state.

Efforts to restore wolves had been successful in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The government wanted to lump those states in with the Northeast in a new, 21-state eastern region, and declare that enough had been done to restore wolf populations throughout the eastern United States.

Anthony Tur, a Fish and Wildlife Service field officer in Concord, N.H., said the agency's headquarters in Washington would decide whether to appeal the ruling.

He questioned the push to build gray wolf populations in the Northeast on two fronts, saying it wasn't clear that the public would support such a move and there was dispute in the scientific community about whether gray wolves ever populated the region.

Environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Federation and state groups in Vermont, Maine and New York, joined in the lawsuit. They argued that good wolf habitats exist in northern Maine and in New York's Adirondack Mountains, and that northern Vermont and New Hampshire likely would become an important corridor for wolves migrating between those two habitats.

Parenteau, lead attorney in the case, said his students "did all the hard labor in the case. It's a nice victory for our students."

08-19-05 19:29 EDT

Letter Renews Hopes of Solving Crater Case

By LARRY McSHANE, AP

NEW YORK (Aug. 19) - Move over, Mark Felt. Just three months after the identity of "Deep Throat" was finally made public, authorities are chasing a new lead in one of the 20th century's other great unsolved mysteries:

What ever happened to Judge Joseph Crater?

A recently discovered letter asserting that Crater was murdered and buried near the Coney Island boardwalk prompted tabloid headlines Friday about a case that has puzzled authorities ever since the newly minted judge entered a cab in midtown Manhattan and exited in parts unknown.

"1930 CRATER VANISH 'SOLVED,"' proclaimed the New York Post, although police said that wasn't quite the case. A Long Island woman discovered a letter left by her late grandmother, who claimed her husband once heard over drinks that a cop, his cab-driver brother and several accomplices had killed Crater and buried him on the current site of the New York Aquarium.

Police were uncertain about the letter's legitimacy, although they said they were combing through records to determine if any bodies had been unearthed during the aquarium's construction in the 1950s.

The letter was discovered by Barbara O'Brien, whose phone rang unanswered Friday at her Long Island home.

Long before Elvis, Judge Crater sightings were an international phenomenon. There were reports of Crater in a Manhattan nightclub and a Maine cottage, of Crater wandering through Havana and playing bingo in North Africa.

The Crater saga became a part of the collective national psyche: First as a news story on par with the O.J. Simpson trial, later as a synonym for unsolved mysteries, and eventually as a punchline for Groucho Marx.

Before her death in 1969, Crater's wife, Stella Crater Kunz, said she thought he might have been killed because of political dealings.

"If this had happened today, it would dominate all the talk shows and cable shows for the next five years," said Tom Reppetto, co-author of the book "NYPD."

But for the first month he was gone, almost no one was aware Judge Crater was missing.

On the evening of Aug. 6, 1930, Crater dined at a West 45th Street steakhouse with a group of friends that included a showgirl. Crater had earlier withdrawn $5,150 from a pair of bank accounts. He was last seen at 9:15 p.m., climbing into the cab.

The taxi disappeared into the night.

So did Crater.

Only his wife and a few close friends were aware of what happened. The NYPD was not summoned until Sept. 3, one month after the judge received a phone call at his summer home in Maine and quickly left for New York.

All sorts of theories quickly emerged, with The New York Times reporting many of Crater's friends believed he was "done away with for the sake of the money he carried." Reppetto, who mentioned the Crater case in his NYPD history, thinks otherwise.

"It looked as though he was getting set to flee," Reppetto said, citing the judge's huge cash withdrawal and potential problems. "Things were beginning to unravel for him."

At the time, it was rumored that a prospective judge needed to pay off politicians a year's salary before joining the bench. Crater withdrew $23,000, just $500 more than the annual pay, before his appointment. He was involved in a dicey real estate deal that drew unwanted attention. And he was a target of an investigation that eventually toppled Mayor Jimmy Walker.

For the next 75 years, there were rumors and rumblings but never any resolution. Whether this letter provides an answer or not, Reppetto said, there is at least one thing for certain in the Crater case.

"They won't," he said with a laugh, "find him alive."

Associated Press Writer Michael Weissenstein contributed to this report.

Listening to a song someone told me about that you can't hear in America.

Not feeling so hot, so I've just something to calm my tummy. :P

The return of Haley's Comet, it came in on my birthday.

I'm the only one in my family... neighbourhood... ring of buddies...  at work, church..... who loves Star Trek. My da doesn't watch TV unless its news. My ma watches anyting but Star Trek. She thinks I'm a Star Trek fanatic. My brother watches other things.

 

My wife thinks I need help. When we had our son, I wanted to name him either Jean Luc or James Kirk. She utterly refused. I tried Hikaru and Pavel, and she thinks I'm really nuts. We settled for Jacob. :P

 

My son is ... well, I'll be introducing Star Trek when he starts talking. My friends also think I'm nuts. The only friend I have who watches Star Trek only watches it because he wants to own every episode with Seven. Heck the bloke wants to own her. Its a lonely world here. At least she's agreed to buy me USS Enterprise (the model) this Christmas

 

My sister in law says I should join StarTrekFan Annonymous... lol

 

What about you all? What do your families think about Star Trek? How did you get hooked to it? B)

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Hmmmmmmm, Hooked?

Nah, I enjoy Trek alot but I'd never consider naming one of my kids after the show.

Perhaps a pet fish or something though.

My family knows I enjoy it but I'm not obsessed with it.

Found this theory on a Potter site.

I think it's weak but I wanted others to talk about it.

Hear me out on this. Remember in book 2 how he goes to great lengths to explain to Harry about the life cycle of the phoenix?

 

I think Dumbledore's anamagi is a phoenix.

 

Thinking about that, re-read his explaination to Harry when Fawlks burst into flames (or even watch the scene in the movie) then re-read the whole funeral scene. No one set him on fire. He burst into flames then Harry thought he saw a phoenix fly away.

 

Why would Dumbledore fake his own death? Several reasons. The Dark Lord is afraid of him. With him out of the way, the Dark Lord will get reckless. Also, with Snape "killing" Dumbledore in front of witnesses, it cements his place as Voldemort's #2.

I don't think Dumbledore has an anamagi.

I think Dumbledore can travel in ways that have just been lightly touched on. In Magical Beasts it talks of such ways and I think his magic is so thorough, that he can perform spells to move with out being noticed.

But I do think the Phoenix is somehow key, I'm just not sure how.

I think he will be back.

But it's some sort of act that will be performed that will bring him back.

Get out the telescope for great views of Mars

Red Planet gives skywatchers an encore of 2003's stunning sights

Space.com

By Joe Rao

Updated: 7:38 p.m. ET Aug. 19, 2005

Mars is coming back. The Red Planet, the only one whose surface we can see in any detail from the Earth, has begun the best apparition it will give us until the summer of 2018.

Planet watchers have already begun readying their telescopes.

If this sounds familiar, you might recall a similar setup two years ago. This current apparition of Mars will not be as spectacular as the one in August 2003 when the planet came closer to Earth than it had in nearly 60,000-years.

Mars is currently in the constellation of Aries, the Ram and doesn't rise until around 10:45 p.m. local daylight time. There is certainly no mistaking it once it comes up over the east-southeast horizon. Presently shining at magnitude –0.8, it now ranks fifth among the brightest objects in the night sky, surpassed only by the Moon, Venus, Jupiter and Sirius (the brightest star in the sky).

And as it continues to approach Earth, Mars will only be getting brighter in the coming weeks: it will surpass Sirius on Sept. 21 and on Oct. 4 it will rival Jupiter and as a consequence (until Nov. 26), hold forth as the second-brightest planet.

Late on the night of Aug. 24, Mars will hover below and to the right of the waning gibbous Moon. As you will see for yourself, the so-called Red Planet actually will appear closer to a yellow-orange tint – the same color of a dry desert under a high sun.

This time around, Mars comes closest to the Earth on the night of Oct. 29 (around 11:25 p.m. Eastern daylight time). The planet will then lie 43,137,071 miles (69,422,386 kilometers) from Earth measured center to center. Mars will arrive at opposition to the Sun (rising at sunset, setting at sunrise) nine days later, on Nov. 7.

How big?

On Oct. 29, Mars' apparent disk diameter will be equal to 20.2 arc seconds.

To get an idea of how large this will appear in your telescope, Jupiter currently appears about 32 arc seconds across. So, if you train your telescope on Jupiter during this week, keep in mind that Mars' disk will appear more than one-third smaller than that when it comes closest to Earth near the end of October.

Another way to gauge how large this is would be to take a look at the Moon with a telescope and look at the brilliant rayed crater Tycho, probably the most prominent on the Moon's surface. At its best, Mars should appear less than half the apparent size of Tycho (just the crater itself . . . not its rays).

While all this may sound small, keep in mind that this is still an atypically large size for Mars. In fact, from Oct. 23 through Nov. 5, Mars' apparent size will be equal to, or slightly exceed 20 arc seconds; larger than it will appear at any time until late June of 2018.

How high?

From Oct. 29 through Nov. 9, Mars will blaze at magnitude –2.3, more than twice as bright as Sirius, but still inferior to Venus. Mars will still be positioned within the constellation of Aries, the Ram, at a declination of +16 degrees.

This is in contrast the August 2003 opposition, when it was situated much farther south at a declination of -16 degrees. Back then, for observers especially in the northern United States and southern Canada, Mars was so low in the sky that atmospheric turbulence hampered telescopic work more than usual.

But by the end of October 2005, northern observers will see Mars at a much higher altitude. When it reaches its highest point in the sky at around midnight local time, its altitude will be 59¼ at Seattle, Washington and 72¼ at Los Angeles, California.

Meanwhile, amateur and professional astronomers in Central America, north-central Africa and southernmost India will have exceptional visibility, for the planet will pass directly, or very nearly overhead!

Careful scrutiny

Around the time that Mars is closest, amateurs with telescopes as small as 4-inches and magnifying above 145-power should be able to make out some dusky markings on the small yellow-orange disk, as well as the bright white of the polar cap.

But a final bit of caution: even a large telescope will show neophyte observers little when they first look at Mars.

To say the least, Mars will likely prove to be a challenging object: the disk is relatively tiny and more often than not it will usually be blurred to a degree by the Earth's atmospheric seeing. However, if you inspect the planet night after night, your eye will gradually become accustomed to the low contrasts and soft boundaries of the disk mottlings.

The most prominent area on Mars is a dark wedge known as Syrtis Major. You soon might also grow familiar with the Martian rotation of 24 hours 37 minutes. As a result, a particular feature comes to Mars' central meridian about 40 minutes later than it came the night before. So, it would take a little over a month for a particular feature to come back to the middle of Mars' disk if you were viewing it at precisely the same time every night.

Researchers creating life from scratch‘Synthetic biologists’ build with one genetic molecule at a time

• Most viewed on MSNBC.com

BERKELEY, Calif. - They're called "synthetic biologists" and they boldly claim the ability to make never-before-seen living things, one genetic molecule at a time.

They're mixing, matching and stacking DNA's chemical components like microscopic Lego blocks in an effort to make biologically based computers, medicines and alternative energy sources. The rapidly expanding field is confounding the taxonomists' centuries-old system of classifying species and raising concerns about the new technology's potential for misuse.

Though scientists have been combining the genetic material of two species for 30 years now, their work has remained relatively simplistic.

Scientists might add one foreign gene to an organism to produce a drug like insulin. The technique is more art than science given the brute trial-and-error it takes to create cells that make drugs.

So a new breed of biologists is attempting to bring order to the hit-and-miss chaos of genetic engineering by bringing to biotechnology the same engineering strategies used to build computers, bridges and buildings.

The idea is to separate cells into their fundamental components and then rebuild new organisms, a much more complex way of genetic engineering.

The burgeoning movement is attracting big money and some of the biggest names in biology, many of whom are attending the "Life Engineering Symposium" that begins Friday in San Francisco.

"Synthetic biology is genetic engineering rethought," said Harvard Medical Center researcher George Church, a leader in the field. "It challenges the notion of what's natural and what's synthetic."

Already, synthetic biologists have created a polio virus and another smaller virus by stitching together individual genes purchased from biotechnology companies.

Now, researchers are getting closer to creating more complex living things with actual utility.

In Israel, scientists have created the world's smallest computer by engineering DNA to carry out mathematical functions.

J. Craig Venter, the entrepreneurial scientist who mapped the human genome, announced last month that he intends to string together genes to create from scratch novel organisms that can produce alternative fuels such as hydrogen and ethanol.

With a $42.6 million grant that originated at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Berkeley researchers are creating a new malaria drug by removing genetic material of the E. coli bacterium and replacing it with genes from wormwood and yeast.

"We're building parts that can be assembled into devices and devices that can be turned into systems," said Jay Keasling, head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Berkeley synthetic biology department, which was created last year.

Keasling, who doubles as a chemical engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, hopes to create never-before-seen living molecules by fusing genes from the three species — a new breed of bacteria capable of spitting out malaria-fighting artemisinin, a chemical now found only in small traces in the wormwood plant.

Artemisinin has been extracted from finely ground sweet wormwood for more than 2,000 years as a treatment for a variety of ailments, but the method is expensive, time consuming and limited by access to wormwood, which is found mainly in China and Vietnam.

Keasling has a similar project in the works to synthetically create a compound now found in Samoan trees, one that shows promise in fighting AIDS.

Such efforts are attracting more than grant money.

A group of topflight venture capitalists led by Vinod Khosla of the Menlo Park-based Perkins, Caufield & Byers invested $13 million in Codon Devices of Cambridge, Mass., which was co-founded by Keasling and Church. Keasling also co-founded Amyris Biotechnologies of Emeryville to build microbes that will produce novel or rare drugs.

Venter, meanwhile, has launched Synthetic Genomics Inc. with Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith and will compete with Codon and several other recent startups to commercialize the technology.

Ethical questions

But with success also comes ethical questions. For example, national security experts and even synthetic biologists themselves fret that rogue scientists or "biohackers" could create new biological weapons — like deadly viruses that lack natural foes. They also worry about innocent mistakes — organisms that could potentially create havoc if allowed to reproduce outside the lab.

"There are certainly a lot of national security implications with synthetic biology," said Gigi Kwik Gronvall, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biosecurity.

Researchers are casting about for ways to self-police the field before it really takes off. One solution could be to require the few companies that sell genetic material to register with some official entity and report biologists who order DNA strains with weapons potential.

The Arthur P. Sloan Foundation in June awarded the Venter Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Center for Strategic and International Studies a $570,000 grant to study the social implications of the new field.

"There are a cascade of ecological issues," said Laurie Zoloth, a bioethics professor at Northwestern University. "Synthetic biology is like iron: You can make sewing needles and you can make spears. Of course, there is going to be dual use."

^been playing PS2??

Relaxing after a big turkey dinner.

Fugitive Los Angeles Alligator Becomes Local Folk Hero

By Dan Whitcomb, Reuters

AP

LOS ANGELES (Aug. 18) - More than a week after a man-sized alligator stunned authorities by surfacing in a murky Los Angeles lake, the fugitive reptile has already become a folk hero in the gritty neighborhood where he continues to outwit wranglers and elude capture.

Dozens of residents gathered on the shore of Lake Machado Thursday, sitting in lawn chairs or scanning the water with binoculars as park rangers with nets waited for the 7-foot alligator to rise out of the muck.

"We're pretty confident we'll be able to catch him," park ranger Albert Jedinak said as he stared at the calm surface of the lake. "He was actually in the net once but unfortunately we didn't have the boat ready."

Meanwhile one woman deployed her two young sons to work the crowd, hawking $10 t-shirts bearing an alligator drawing and the words: "Harbor City You Will Never Catch Me."

The alligator -- who was chased around the 53-acre lake for much of the week by a professional "gator wrangler" from Colorado -- did not make an appearance, having last been spotted Wednesday night.

The wrangler and his crew returned to Colorado Thursday morning to secure larger nets but vowed to return next week and bag his prey.

Still waiting for that moment was animal services officer Guillermo Perea, who sat in a pick-up truck designated to drive the reptile, imprisoned in a giant green box, to the Los Angeles Zoo after it was caught.

Perea said he would not take part in the capture, adding: "I'm not that kind of guy. I get paid for dogs, not alligators."

Authorities believe the alligator was probably once an exotic pet that was abandoned when it grew too large. Alligators are not indigenous to California.

They say they were baffled to discover the reptile basking in the lake at the center of a city park, though they suspect it had been living there for about two months, dining on scraps left behind by fishermen and bread intended for the birds.

Though the creature was originally thought to be a reptile called a Caiman, the professional wrangler has since opined that it is in fact an alligator.

"I don't think you could say they didn't catch the gator for lack of effort," said local Paul Smith, who has spent much of the past two days watching the action at the lake. "They'll get him eventually. They'll figure something out."

08-18-05 20:39 EDT

I always preferred the term OUT LAWS, and typically the father in laws that need to use that. :P

Which is the one where they come across DC and NY?

Protective footwear started nearly 30,000 years ago, research finds

By Neil Schoenherr

Aug. 17, 2005 —

Those high-tech, air-filled, light-as-a-feather sneakers on your feet are a far cry from the leather slabs our ancestors wore for protection and support.

But believe it or not, our modern day Nikes and Reeboks are direct descendents of the first supportive footwear that new research suggests came into use in western Eurasia between 26,000 and 30,000 years ago.

Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Physical Anthropology, derived those dates by analyzing anatomical evidence of early modern humans, which suggests a reduction in the strength of the smaller toes in Upper Paleolithic humans while there was little change in leg strength.

His research was published in the July issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Trinkaus argues that early humans living in far northern climates began to put insulation on their feet around 500,000 years ago. While archaeological evidence suggests that protective footwear was in use by at least the middle Upper Paleolithic in portions of Europe, the frequency of use and the actual mechanical protection provided by that footwear was unclear.

Use of protective footwear has been difficult to document because in most cases the footwear does not survive the test of time.

Lacking such physical evidence, Trinkaus analyzed the foot bones of western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic and middle Upper Paleolithic humans. In doing so, he found the anatomy of their feet began to change starting around 26,000 years ago.

"I discovered that the bones of the little toes of humans from that time frame were much less strongly built than those of their ancestors while their leg bones remained large and strong," Trinkaus said. "The most logical cause would be the introduction of supportive footwear."

During barefoot walking, the smaller toes flex for traction, keeping the toe bones strong. Supportive footwear lessens the roll of the little toes, thus weakening them.

The myth of an empty frontier

Explorers' diseases wiped out native populations long before settlers arrived

Reviewed by Mary D'Ambrosio

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Printable Version

Email This Article

1491

New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

By Charles C. Mann

KNOPF; 465 PAGES; $30

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The early European explorers went gaga over the abundance of the Americas. Primeval forests covered the land, deer and elk were plentiful, and herds of bison thundered across the plains, they reported back to Spain, Portugal and England.

Fish filled the rivers, and mussels and clams grew big and juicy along the shores. From South America came tales of unimaginable riches buried in secret gold mines in pristine jungle. And save for a few powerful but isolated societies, such as the Inca in Peru and the Maya in Mexico, and nomadic bands of primitives up north, almost no one lived in this fantastic paradise. These lush lands -- a gift from God! -- were wild and free.

That's the textbook version of the New World at the time of Columbus, the one you probably learned in school. But in a provocative new book, "1491," science writer Charles C. Mann proposes a revision. Mann, a contributing editor for Science and the Atlantic Monthly, explores a growing body of archaeological, anthropological and historical scholarship to suggest that this convenient version of virgin American wilderness is likely completely wrong.

"At the time of Columbus the Western Hemisphere had been thoroughly painted with the human brush," Mann concludes. By the highest estimates, more than a 100 million people may have lived in this hemisphere -- more than in Europe at the time -- before Columbus arrived.

As much as two-thirds of the continental United States had once been farmed, the lands terraced, irrigated and built into mysterious mounds that marked settlements. In Mexico, indigenous peoples had already invented maize; created bountiful gardens of tomatoes and beans; and developed astronomy, math and writing in ways that rivaled the speed and sophistication of the Sumerians. Nor were Indians just part of the scenery: Mann suggests that Indian traditions of personal autonomy and social equality may have been the primary inspiration for American colonists' attitudes about freedom and equality, and that they influenced the writings of John Locke, David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

What accounts for such a revisionist world view? In a Jared Diamond-like volley that challenges prevailing thinking about global development, Mann explores the most recent generation of scholarship that increasingly suggests that an enormous indigenous population was wiped out by European diseases.

Epidemics like smallpox ripped through the hemisphere in the 16th through 18th centuries, he argues, to a far greater extent than previously thought. Disease created an ecological collapse that so decimated Indian societies that they could no longer control their environment.

That's why so much land seemed "pristine" to the explorers, missionaries and settlers who arrived in the subsequent 100 to 200 years. Explorer- conquerors such as Francisco Pizarro in Peru, Hernán Cortés in Mexico and early slave traders from Hispaniola spread dread diseases like smallpox, killing off some 95 percent of the pre-Columbian population in a largely accidental holocaust.

Wrongly assumed to be isolated bands of hunter-gatherers who had roamed the forests from time immemorial, the "primitives" later explorers met were actually traumatized refugees, remnant groups of smashed societies.

Improbable? Plenty of archaeologists and anthropologists think so, and Mann conscientiously explores the other side of this raging academic battle. He interviews the best-known critic, African studies professor David Henige of the University of Wisconsin, who, in his book "Numbers From Nowhere: The American Indian Contact Population Debate," protests the lack of proof to back conclusions of a mass death. "We can make of the historical record that there was depopulation and movement of people from internecine warfare and disease," Henige tells Mann. "But as for how much, who knows?" This battle is, of course, political as well as scientific. Indian affairs activists have long protested that Europeans intentionally undercounted and minimized the achievements of native peoples, the better to justify occupation. "It's perfectly acceptable to move into unoccupied land," a University of Saskatchewan ethnologist says in the book. "And land with only a few 'savages' is the next best thing." But Mann argues convincingly for treating these conclusions seriously. The ideas come not from some maverick's "eureka" discovery but from the slow buildup of evidence from more and farther-flung archaeological digs, the development of better dating technology and more studies of the historical record. That record is, of course, still partial and circumstantial.

The Spanish destroyed all but four Mayan books (although some 15,000 samples of writing on monuments, murals and pottery still exist), and American Indians of the U.S. Southwest had no writing of a style modern researchers understand. "Piecing together events from these sources is like trying to understand the U.S. Civil War from the plaques on park statues," Mann admits. "Possible, but tricky."

So evidence tends to be anecdotal and subject to a lot of conjecture. We're treated to Giovanni da Verrazzano's narratives about a "densely populated" American coastline; Bartolomé de las Casas' notes of "a beehive of people" along a southern route; and the comments of Amazon expedition chronicler Gaspar de Carvajal (originator of the myth of the Amazon fighting women), who wrote of wealthy, warlike riverside towns that blanketed the shore for some 180 miles. That later explorers report these same precincts empty is cited as evidence of mass death. The skeptics compare those who treat such evidence as proof to "people who discover an empty bank account and claim from its very emptiness that it once contained millions of dollars," Mann writes.

Unfortunately, no chronicles of Columbus-era pandemics have surfaced, either. But tales of several later pandemics are arresting: One huge 18th century smallpox epidemic started in modern-day Mexico City and spread south like a chain of firecrackers through Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador, and north along the Santa Fe Trail into the American Southwest, all within four years. And the occasional Indian lore and drawings cited here certainly chronicle the tragedies of lost parents, children and communities. One Lakota Indian census in the winter of 1794 was memorialized with the stark image of a pox-scarred man, alone in his teepee, shooting himself.

Mann naturally centers his investigation on findings in anthropology and archaeology, but one also wishes for a bigger interpretive boost from economics, sociology and, especially, epidemiology. Could such a mass extermination over two continents have really happened? The author interviews several medical researchers and finds that it could. But again the evidence feels a tad slim: Even the Black Death, a century earlier, killed only about a third, not 95 percent, of the European population. And we hear almost nothing from oral histories of the extant indigenous peoples -- the Guajiro of Colombia and Venezuela, the Yanomami in the Amazon, the Inca's descendants in Bolivia and Peru, the Maya of Mexico and Guatemala, or the North American Indians, and so wonder whether they could shed light upon these questions.

But Mann has chronicled an important shift in our vision of world development, one our young children could end up studying in their textbooks when they reach junior high

Feeling happy, but really wanting a neck massage.

Close your eyes, give me your hand, darling

Do you feel my heart beating, do you understand?

Do you feel the same, am I only dreaming?

Is this burning an eternal flame?

I believe it's meant to be, darling

I watch when you are sleeping, you belong to me

Do you feel the same, am I only dreaming

Or is this burning an eternal flame?

Say my name, sun shines through the rain

A whole life so lonely, and then you come and ease the pain

I don't want to lose this feeling

Say my name, sun shines through the rain

A whole life so lonely, and then you come and ease the pain

I don't want to lose this feeling

Close your eyes and give me your hand

Do you feel my heart beating, do you understand?

Do you feel the same, am I only dreaming

Or is this burning an eternal flame?

Is this burning an eternal flame?

An eternal flame?

Close your eyes and give me your hand

Do you feel my heart beating, do you understand?

Do you feel the same, am I only dreaming

Or is this burning an eternal flame?