Ironically, we slept last night in the motorhome, at the Rincon Parkway, an area of old Pacific Coast Hwy just above Ventura (CA) long ago converted to a camping area. The Rincon is, literally, AT sea level. But when we left this morning at about 6 a.m., no one had come through with any warnings, and we weren't aware of the disaster in Japan until we were a couple of miles down the road. All was quiet at the expensive seafront homes we passed, and it was business-as-usual in Ventura-By-The-Sea. By contrast, a woman a few tables away at Cocos was calling one person after another on her cell phone, to tell them that she had "evacuated" from Malibu, and hoped she was safe three miles inland, in Camarillo. Truly -- No problems here. The biggest energy looks to be going way South, to South America. Hawaii got a 7-ft wave. We didn't get bupkis. No, I'm MORE concerned about what may happen if the nuclear core at that power plant in Japan goes critical, and starts spewing radiation. Our sea breeze blows from ... WHERE?? That could be a serious problem. Jeri in Camarillo, Where We Can See The Sea

the difference b/w genetically engineered food and hybridized is that one is pollinated ( artificially or naturally) and the other is a man manipulated genome. As we are technially dealing with a "black box (although we know more all the time) we don't know the impact of maniputlating the genome. The main concern is losing diversification and, hence, lack of robustness of the genteic pool. The stated fear of gentically engineered food is that, if the the ge plants produce fertile seeds, they could overtake other types and then the diversity might decline (and make the crops more susceptible to disease). The Monsanto group said that they made sure they had made geneticllay engineered foods that would produce sterile seeds but some information suggests this is not true. The main beauty of heirlooms is that they continue to maintain genetic diversity. Many heirloom varieties are not popular with commercial growers because they do not ship well or they have a short shelf life-taste has been bred out in favor of tough skins, etc. As far as the gene implantng goes, there is s "trout" gene that has been used in plants for its antifreeze properties. You can take animal genes and use them in plant genomes-its just dna-no real big deal. just a cuopla introns differnece b/w us and the apes afterall. I think the only concern is that with our lack of understanding for the nuances of the entire genome, if we excise certain exxon or non-important dna in favor of expressing some aspect that makes the plant drought resisitant, we may lose some subtle but significant information

I was awake last night when I heard the news about the massive earthquake....my son and his family are still in NYC but my DDIL's family live near Tokyo and some up nearer the epicenter. Her family and friends are OK and her grandmother, who is in her 90's, live with my DDIL's aunt and uncle in central northern Japan. The are doing OK but are without electricity and water. DDIL was very upset this morning when she awoke.....but was able to contact family via e-mail. I haven't had an update since this morning but hesitate to call her....I want to keep the phone lines open in case her family is able to call. Her parents live in Chiba Prefecture which is where the refinery fires are. I am keeping them and all the people in Japan who are being affected by this horrible natural disaster in my prayers. Last Spring my DDIL and grandkids spent a month in Chiba....glad they weren't there now.

Indira Gandhi Quotes Indian - Statesman November 19, 1917 - October 31, 1984 There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there. Indira Gandhi Winning or losing of the election is less important than strengthening the country. Indira Gandhi People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights. Indira Gandhi You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. Indira Gandhi Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave. Indira Gandhi I have lived a long life, and I am proud that I spend the whole of my life in the service of my people. I am only proud of this and nothing else. I shall continue to serve until my last breath, and when I die, I can say, that every drop of my blood will invigorate India and strengthen it. Indira Gandhi The power to question is the basis of all human progress. Indira Gandhi Have a bias toward action - let's see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away. Indira Gandhi The environmental problems of developing countries are not the side effects of excessive industrialisation but reflect the inadequacy of development. Indira Gandhi Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic. Indira Gandhi You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose. Indira Gandhi Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning. Indira Gandhi We have to prove to the disinherited majority of the world that ecology and conservation will not work against their interest but will bring an improvement in their lives. Indira Gandhi My father was a statesman, I am a political woman. My father was a saint. I am not. Indira Gandhi A nation' s strength ultimately consists in what it can do on its own, and not in what it can borrow from others. Indira Gandhi There exists no politician in India daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten. Indira Gandhi This is why we feel that democracy's important: because democracy allows you to have small explosions and therefore avoid the bigger explosions. Indira Gandhi There is not love where there is no will. Indira Gandhi I do not like carving the world into segments; we are one world. Indira Gandhi Happiness is a state of mind, you know. I don't think you are permanently happy. One is happy about certain things and not so happy about others. Indira Gandhi All the people who fought for freedom were my heroes. I mean, that was the sort of story I liked reading... freedom struggles and so on. Indira Gandhi I think basically I'm lazy, but I have a housewife's mentality when I go about my job. Indira Gandhi There are grave misgivings that the discussion on ecology may be designed to distract attention from the problems of war and poverty. Indira Gandhi I'm certainly not a workaholic. Indira Gandhi I don't think my father was my mentor. Indira Gandhi I am not a person to be pressured - by anybody or any nation. Indira Gandhi If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying. Indira Gandhi We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further, and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters? Indira Gandhi All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake. Indira Gandhi One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money. Indira Gandhi I've never turned to anybody for advice and counsel. Even when I was a very small child, I had to stand on my feet because of the circumstances of those times, and somehow, the circumstances have remained more or less the same. I have to take my own decisions. Indira Gandhi The people have nothing to fear of me; people have never feared me. Indira Gandhi Wearing khadi was a badge of honour. It was something one was proud to do. Indira Gandhi My son had nothing to do with policy or decision making, nor did I discuss the elections or any other matter with him. Indira Gandhi The collective judgment of the electorate must be respected. Indira Gandhi I was happy to be with my parents. I didn't see very much of them, so I was very happy when my father was there and out of jail. Indira Gandhi If I see something dirty or untidy, I have to clean it up. Indira Gandhi On the one hand, the rich look askance at our continuing poverty - on the other, they warn us against their own methods. Indira Gandhi I am frequently attacked. Indira Gandhi I have already reached out to the janata, and I am only trying to acquaint myself with people's problems. Indira Gandhi Dick Cavett Quotes American - Entertainer Born: November 19, 1936 Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently. Dick Cavett Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself. Dick Cavett I am always shocked that there are still a handful of defenders of the dubious practice of abstinence, surely the worst idea since chocolate-covered ants. Dick Cavett I like when the ice gets thin, the going gets rough, the guests get edgy. Dick Cavett Sloppy language leads to sloppy thought, and sloppy thought to sloppy legislation. Dick Cavett A grown man, weeping, is a tough thing to see. Dick Cavett I have a feeling that about 90% of my life has been shaped by my voice, both as an embarrassment and as an advantage. There was always the terrible incongruity of this deep voice barreling out of this little body. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that it was ludicrous, that it took on an importance that wasn't really there. Dick Cavett To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is. Dick Cavett In the main, ghosts are said to be forlorn and generally miserable, if not downright depressed. The jolly ghost is rare. Dick Cavett I know what it feels like to be a gun lover. Dick Cavett Depression - it falls into that small category of things like combat that, if you haven't been in it, you can say you can imagine it all you like. But it's truly different. Dick Cavett All three of my parents - I also had a stepmother - were teachers, and my dad taught high school, and as he always reminded me when I was going to spend some money on something, 'Your mother and I, in the Depression, had to decide whether to spend a dime on a loaf of bread or if we could go to a movie with it.' Dick Cavett I guess the best advice I ever got or anyone could get for doing a talk show, though it has not been easy very often, was from Jack Paar, who said, 'Kid, don't make it an interview. Interviews have clipboards, and you're like David Frost. Make it a conversation.' Dick Cavett Teaching is an art and a profession requiring years of training. Dick Cavett If your parents never had children, chances are... neither will you. Dick Cavett I would not ever try to be a show intellectual, which I was accused of doing a while on ABC. I thought you were supposed to read the guests' books. Dick Cavett Why are people afraid of ghosts? 'Ooh, no, I wouldn't want to see one! I'd be too scared' - accompanied by a tremolo of fear in the voice - is the common reaction. This puzzles me. I'd think anyone would welcome he opportunity. I've never heard of a ghost hurting anybody. Dick Cavett Every time someone says, 'You know, we really ought to get together,' if I were really honest, I would ask 'Why?' Dick Cavett When I was a kid in Nebraska, a cantankerous farmer, known for plinking with his '22 at passing cars in which he perceived enemies, ingeniously rigged up a shotgun in his house, trained on the inside of his front door so as to widely distribute any intruder. Dick Cavett I always wanted to live in a haunted house. Dick Cavett The authority of depression is horrifying. I felt like my brain was busted and that I could never feel good again. I really thought that I was never gonna heal. Dick Cavett If I were running a campaign, I'd urge taking the mountain of money reportedly squandered on pizza, coffee and bagels and spending it more wisely - on a talented young comedy writer. Dick Cavett I don't feel old. I feel like a young man that has something wrong with him. Dick Cavett As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it. Dick Cavett I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they're qualified to teach them at home. Of course, some parents are smarter than some teachers, but in the main I see home-schooling as misguided foolishness. Dick Cavett It's fun for me to go on other folks' talk shows. When you've endured the ups and downs and tensions and pitfalls of hosting, being a guest is a piece of angel food. Dick Cavett Being the offspring of English teachers is a mixed blessing. When the film star says to you, on the air, 'It was a perfect script for she and I,' inside your head you hear, in the sarcastic voice of your late father, 'Perfect for she, eh? And perfect for I, also?' Dick Cavett Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the man handling it knows what he is doing. Dick Cavett My IQ is somewhere between Spiro Agnew's and Albert Einstein's. Dick Cavett Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn't ailing. Dick Cavett Radio, which was a much better medium than television will ever be, was easy and pleasant to listen to. Your mind filled automatically with images. Dick Cavett A conversation does not have to be scintillating in order to be memorable. I once met a president of the United States, and his second sentence to me was about knees. Dick Cavett Lawyers work hard and, like us, they're human, many of them. Dick Cavett I have a disturbing problem with losing things. My vulnerability to loss-distress could properly be labeled not only inordinate, but neurotic. Dick Cavett I think we live in an age of increasing mediocrity. Dick Cavett Home schooling as an idea is on a par with home dentistry. Dick Cavett I'll be happy if I can just stay out of Nebraska. Dick Cavett I don't see the future as bright, language-wise. I see it as a glass half empty - and evaporating quickly. Dick Cavett Music bypasses the brain and goes straight to the heart. I wish my life had more of it. Dick Cavett Unpleasant reading on the subject of anger tells us that there's not really anything wrong with it. In limited amounts. It can even be a good thing. A pressure valve. Dick Cavett Commercials are not the only exposure that obesity gets on TV. It is by no means a rarity on the wonderful Judge Judy's show when both plaintiff and accused all but literally fill the screen. Dick Cavett The brain process that results in a joke materializing where no joke was before remains a mystery. I'm not aware of any scholarly, scientific or neurological studies on the subject. Dick Cavett It takes a certain amount of guts to go to your class reunions. Dick Cavett Anyone working in the media can tell you that there seems to be an always-ready-to-explode segment of the populace for whom offense is a fate worse than anything imaginable. You'd think offense is one of the most calamitous things that could happen to a human being; right up there with the loss of a limb, or just missing a parking space. Dick Cavett Once I left out what I then considered my best line because there was a suspected column rat in the house. Dick Cavett Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the people who handle it know what they are doing. Dick Cavett Great humorists are great insulters. Dick Cavett I get a kick out of people saying I was funny. Dick Cavett It's not always easy to identify your own voice. It comes with time. Dick Cavett It was well after college that I learned about depression. I got my first job for Jack Paar. I realized I was sleeping 14 hours a day and just living for the Paar show. Dick Cavett If you have a relative who's lost interest in everything and doesn't get out of bed, who doesn't care for things they used to, can't imagine anything that would give them any pleasure, don't fool around with it; get therapy, get help, get medication if that's right for you, or talk therapy, or something. Dick Cavett It's a tribute to the human brain that anyone is able to function out there on television in a talk situation that is entirely artificial. Dick Cavett I haven't ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult. Dick Cavett The very phrase 'Oscar night' used to accelerate my pulse. For one thing - dating myself - it meant Bob Hope. He always had good, strong jokes, that faultless delivery, and always a new joke about his own films' failure - once again - to be honored. Dick Cavett Greatly talented performers don't know - often spectacularly - what's best for them, don't know what their talents really are, and don't know what's just plain wrong for them. Dick Cavett Japanese is sort of a hobby of mine, and I can get around Japan with ease. Dick Cavett Statistically, I'd say comedy writers are perhaps the sanest category of show people. And why not? They make big money, and although it's not an easy trade - particularly when you're at your galley oar five days a week - it's easier on the nerves and the psyche than living with the brain-squeezing pressure and cares of being the Star. Dick Cavett The emotions in all true anxiety dreams are next to unbearable. Dick Cavett Does anything show the complexity of the miraculous brain more than that weird curiosity, the sleep-protection dream? Dick Cavett Can you picture yourself at the age 60 doing what you do now? Dick Cavett Every student of comedy should see Dame Edna at least twice. Dick Cavett The Nixon administration kept a nasty eye on our show... Cops would come by - often just in time to see the act they wanted to see. Dick Cavett Years have passed since I have set foot in a comedy club. If the comic is doing badly it's painful, and if the comic is doing brilliantly, it's extremely painful. Dick Cavett Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that's too strong, at least fairly high anxiety. Dick Cavett My dream was maybe someday, one night I can be a guest on a talk show, and then I will have achieved everything I want. Dick Cavett I'm the only talk show host, I think, if there's such a category in, what's called, the book of records, to have a guest die while we were taping the show, yeah. Dick Cavett I'm not the guy with the enormous comedy nose or the big feet or the bad posture or the whatever; a physical comic has certain things. Dick Cavett Chris Matthews can't start any sentence without 'Let me ask you this... ' And I love Chris Matthews! But almost everybody in journalism does it. Who's stopping you? Just say it! Dick Cavett A biggest mistake I made when I started doing a talk show was I thought you had to read the books. Dick Cavett Every so often, there is an article saying the old kind of talk show isn't possible now. In the oldest kind of talk show, you only had the choice of that or two other channels! Dick Cavett Do freshman philosophy classes nowadays debate updated versions of the age-old questions? Like, how could a merciful God allow AIDS, childhood cancers, tsunamis and Dick Cheney? Dick Cavett Every time I nostalgically try to regain my liking of John McCain, he reaches into his sleaze bag and pulls out something malodorous. Dick Cavett Every comic can report a few 'gift from the gods' moments. Dick Cavett William F. Buckley was a man who had a great capacity for fun and for amusing himself by amazing others. Dick Cavett It was at a vividly bad time in Norman Mailer's life that I met him, and a sort of water-treading time in mine. He had stabbed his wife, and I was a copy boy at Time magazine. Dick Cavett Anything seen on TV is, in a subtle and sinister sense, thereby endorsed. Dick Cavett I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn't include someone the size of the Hindenburg. Dick Cavett I confess, I do have to remind myself almost daily that there are people on this earth capable of reading, writing, eating and dressing themselves who believe their lives are ruled from billions of miles away, by the stars - and, of course, the planets. Dick Cavett The sudden death at 51 of James Gandolfini is intolerable. Dick Cavett I'm sure I've all but lost friends by maintaining that, despite their love for it, I always saw Stanley Kramer's 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' as more of an exercise in anti-comedy than humor. Dick Cavett There were several things a Yale freshman was supposed to be able to do. You had to demonstrate in the Olympic-size Yale pool that you could swim 50 yards or be inducted into swimming class. Dick Cavett I don't think anyone ever gets over the surprise of how differently one audience's reaction is from another. Dick Cavett I think I'd be pretty easy to write for. Dick Cavett I'm not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy. Dick Cavett It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear. Dick Cavett There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets? Dick Cavett The trick to writing for people is, you have to be able to turn them on in your head. And know how they'd word something or how they'd inflect it. Dick Cavett Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy. Dick Cavett If your parents never had children, chances are you won't either. Dick Cavett You would have to be naive to think you can appear on television and not have the material edited in some way. Dick Cavett I feel like I've been watching Irwin Corey forever. I saw him in the 1950s, and I thought he was old then. Dick Cavett I hate Danny Kaye movies. Dick Cavett The greatest benefit of depression is the fact that when I have talked about it, every so often someone comes up and says, 'You saved my dad's life.' Dick Cavett By the time I was in the fourth grade, I sounded exactly like my father on the phone. Dick Cavett It's no fun being a specimen. Dick Cavett I'm not all that enthralled by show business, and I'm not that much of a highbrow. Dick Cavett Meryl Streep belongs on anybody's list of greats. Dick Cavett I've actually gotten so I don't associate television with entertainment very much. Dick Cavett Therapists need to give a depressed patient support and direction. Dick Cavett I live a sensible life. You know, I don't take on too much. Dick Cavett