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'The Rush Limbaugh Show' goes on the air every weekday at 12:06 P.M. Eastern Time.
At one time, Limbaugh did his program from a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper he dubbed, with tongue-in-cheek grandiosity, the Excellence in Broadcasting Building. These days, he mostly broadcasts out of a studio in Palm Beach, Fla., which he calls the Southern Command, and describes on the air as a "heavily fortified bunker."
In fact, Limbaugh's show emanates from a nondescript office building on a boulevard lined with tall palms. There isn't even a security guard in the lobby. The elevator opens directly onto a pristine anteroom furnished in corporate glass and leather. An American flag stands in the corner. Only a small, framed picture of Limbaugh, bearing the caption "America's Anchorman," reveals that this is the headquarters of one of the country's most admired and reviled figures.
The anteroom was empty when I stepped off the elevator one afternoon in mid-February. Limbaugh receives very few visitors at work, and no journalists from the hated "mainstream media." When I was buzzed into the control room, I was met by Bo Snerdly a very large man in a Huey Newton beret who glared at me. "Are you the guy who's here to do the hit job on us?" he demanded in a deep voice.
"Absolutely," I said.
Snerdly, whose real name is James Golden, held my eyes for a long moment before bursting into emphatic laughter.
"It's just that we aren't used to seeing reporters here," said a woman named Dawn. She is a stenographer whom Limbaugh hired in 2001, after he went deaf. These days he has a cochlear implant that enables him to hear callers, but Dawn sends him real-time transcripts of on-air conversations, just in case.
"The media doesn't know about this place," she said. "They don't know where we are. During Rush's big drug story they staked out the whole town, even his house, but they never found us here."
For the next hour I sat behind the glass panel of the control booth and watched Limbaugh at work in front of the "golden E.I.B. microphone." Unlike Howard Stern or Don Imus, he has no sidekicks with him in the room. He does, however, keep up a running conversation with an unheard voice. I always assumed that this was just imaginary radio shtick. Now I saw that the voice was attached to a human interlocutor, Snerdly, who banters with and occasionally badgers Limbaugh via an internal talk-back circuit.
After the broadcast, Limbaugh waved me into the studio and offered me a seat directly across from him. The room's acoustics make it relatively easy for him to hear, but he also reads lips.
I had come to talk to Limbaugh about his role in Republican Party politics. During the primaries he assailed John McCain as a phony conservative and apostate Reaganite. Despite Limbaugh's best efforts, it now appeared that the Arizona senator would be the nominee. There was speculation that Limbaugh would not support him in November.
"I've never even met the man, never spoken to him," Limbaugh said. "I'm sure there are things about him I'd like if we meet. This isn't personal." He then delivered a litany of the presumptive nominee's personal failings too old, too intense, too opportunistic, too liberal. But, he assured me, he would be with McCain in the fall. "It's like the Super Bowl," he told me. "If your team isn't in it, you root for the team you hate less. That's McCain."
It already seemed, when I made my visit, that McCain's opponent might well be Senator Obama, and I was curious to know how Limbaugh planned to take on America's first African-American major-party nominee. "I'll approach Obama with fearless honesty," said Limbaugh, who speaks of himself in heroic terms on air and off. "He's a liberal. I oppose liberals. That's all that's involved here."
I asked if he had any specific tactics in mind.
"I haven't yet figured that out exactly," he said. "You know, I've had a problem with substance abuse. I don't deal with the future anymore. I take things one day at a time."
In this case, it took two. I was back in New York, listening to the radio, when I heard Limbaugh say: "Ladies and gentlemen, I had a conversation with a friend Wednesday afternoon after the program, and he said, 'Nobody's criticizing Obama. How are you going to do this? How are you going to handle criticizing the first black American to run for president?' I said: 'I'm going to do it the way I always do it. First, at the top of the list, I'm going to do it fearlessly. I'm not going to bow to political correctness. I'm going to do it with humor. I'm going to focus on the issues. I'm going to react to what he says. Simple. I'm going to do it just like it were any other case he's a man, right? He's a liberal. How do I criticize liberals? I criticize them.' But I have devised, ladies and gentlemen, an even more creative way of criticizing Obama. I have, just this morning, named a new position here on the staff that is the Official Obama Criticizer. The E.I.B. Network now has an Official Obama Criticizer. He is Bo Snerdly."
Snerdly introduced himself as an "African-American-in-good-standing-and-certified-black-enough-to-criticize-Obama guy," and declared that he was speaking, "on behalf of our E.I.B. brothers and sisters in the hood." The bit was typical Limbaugh confrontational, deliberately insensitive and funny. It was also a declaration of independence. Whatever special courtesies John McCain might plan to extend to Barack Obama, Limbaugh is going to conduct his air war, as he always has, by his own rules of engagement.
ON AUG. 1, LIMBAUGH WILL CELEBRATE the 20th anniversary of his national radio program. At 57, he is an American icon, although his fans and critics don't agree on precisely what he is iconic for. I've heard him compared to Mark Twain and Jackie Gleason, the Founding Fathers and Father Coughlin. Serious people have called him a serial liar and a moral philosopher, a partisan hack and a public intellectual, nothing more than a radio windbag and nothing less than the heart of the Republican Party.
One thing is certain: Limbaugh has been a partisan force for two decades. In 1994, he was so influential in the Republican Congressional landslide that the grateful winners made him an honorary member of the G.O.P. freshman class. He moved not only voters, but the party itself. "Rush talked about the 'Contract With America' before there was a 'Contract With America,' " Karl Rove told me. "He helped set the agenda."
Limbaugh has been a factor in every national election of the past 20 years, but not since the mid-1990s has he been so prominent. Democrats have blamed him for everything from invading their primaries to starting scurrilous rumors about Michelle Obama. Limbaugh denies the latter accusation, but he happily embraces the former. His vehicle was so-called Operation Chaos, a radio campaign designed to encourage Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton and prolong internecine fighting among liberals.
Nobody quite knows how effective Operation Chaos was. Karl Rove said he thinks it helped tilt Texas for Clinton. She herself gave this some credence on the day after the vote by jauntily saying, "Be careful what you wish for, Rush." Howard Dean implored primary voters in Indiana and North Carolina to ignore Limbaugh. The Obama supporter Arianna Huffington called Limbaugh and other conservative hosts "toxic curiosities." After Clinton won in Indiana, where 10 percent of Democratic primary voters admitted to exit pollsters that they were really Republicans, Senator John Kerry accused Limbaugh of "tampering with the primary" and causing Obama's defeat.
Limbaugh was delighted. He deemed Operation Chaos to have "exceeded all expectations" (his customary self-evaluation) and explained once again that he wasn't supporting Clinton but merely trying to bloody Obama because John McCain was too chicken to do it and because he believed that Obama would then be easier to beat in November.
Probably both the Democrats and Limbaugh overstated his actual impact. But Operation Chaos was a triumph of interactive political performance art. Limbaugh appointed himself Supreme Commander, deputized his listeners and turned them into merry pranksters. "Rush is a master at framing an issue and creating a community around it," says Susan Estrich, who ran Michael Dukakis's 1988 presidential campaign and has since become a talk-show host herself. Operation Chaos drew a crowd, which is what Limbaugh does for a living. It got people laughing at the Democrats, which is what he lives for. And, ever the devout capitalist, he turned an extra buck by peddling Operation Chaos gear. The stuff flew off the cybershelves of the E.I.B. store, the biggest seller since his Club Gitmo collection ("my mullah went to Club Gitmo and all I got was this lousy T-shirt").
None of these high jinks would have mattered if Limbaugh were a regular radio personality. But he isn't. Michael Harrison, the editor and publisher of Talkers magazine, a trade publication, puts Limbaugh's weekly audience at 14 million. Limbaugh himself says it is closer to 20 million. Either way, nobody else is close. He has been the top-rated radio talk-show host in America since the magazine started the ranking 17 years ago.
Such massive and consistent popularity makes Limbaugh a singular political force. "Rush has completely remade American politics by offering an alternative to the networks and CNN," Rove told me. "For 20 years he has been the leader of his own parade."
Harrison offered an even more grandiose view: "He's a phenomenon like the Beatles. Before Rush Limbaugh there was nothing like talk radio. He's been to talk what Elvis was to rock 'n' roll. He saved the AM dial."
"ANTICIPATING A QUESTION," Limbaugh said when we pulled into the garage of his secluded beachfront mansion in Palm Beach, "why do I have so many cars?"
I hadn't actually been wondering that. Very rich people tend not to stint on transportation. For example, we drove to the house from the studio, Limbaugh at the wheel, in a black Maybach 57S, which runs around $450,000 fully loaded. He had half a dozen similar rides on his estate.
"I have these cars for two reasons," Limbaugh said. "First, they are for the use of my guests. And two, I happen to love fine automobiles."
He also loves space. There are five homes all of them his on the property. The big house is 24,000 square feet. Limbaugh lives there with a cat. He's been married three times but has no children.
Limbaugh informed me that I was the first journalist ever to enter his home. Mary Matalin, the Republican consultant, calls the place "aspirational," which is one adjective that fits. The place, largely designed by Limbaugh himself, reflects the things and places he has seen and admired. The massive chandelier in the dining room, for example, is a replica of the one that hung in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in New York. The gleaming cherry-wood floors are dotted with hand-woven oriental carpets. A life-size oil portrait of El Rushbo, as he often calls himself on the air, hangs on the wall of the main staircase.
Unlike many right-wing talk-show hosts, Limbaugh does not view France with hostility. On the contrary, he is a Francophile. His salon, he told me, is meant to suggest Versailles. His main guest suite, which I did not personally inspect, was designed as an exact replica of the presidential suite of the George V Hotel in Paris.
Limbaugh is especially proud of his two-story library, which is a scaled-down version of the library at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. Cherubs dance on the ceiling, leatherbound collections line the bookshelves and the wood-paneled walls were once "an acre of mahogany."
A fastidious man, Limbaugh has a keen eye for domestic detail. His staff lights fragrant candles throughout the house to greet his arrival from work each day. Limbaugh led me into his private humidor, selected two La Flor Dominicana Double Ligero Chisel stogies for us to smoke and seated me at an onyx-and-marble table in the study. The room opens onto a patio, a putting green and a beach. On the table was a brochure for Limbaugh's newest airplane, a Gulfstream G550. It cost him, he told me, $54 million.
Limbaugh can afford to live the way he wants. When we met he was on the verge of signing a new eight-year contract with his syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks. He estimated that it would bring in about $38 million a year. To sweeten the deal, he said he was also getting a nine-figure signing bonus. (A representative from Premiere would not confirm the deal.) "Do you know what bought me all this?" he asked, waving his hand in the general direction of his prosperity. "Not my political ideas. Conservatism didn't buy this house. First and foremost I'm a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime."
The average AM radio station reserves 18 to 20 minutes each hour for advertising, devotes about 5 minutes an hour to news and spends the rest of the time on other content. Limbaugh is not only paid by the stations, but his program also owns five minutes of every hour of airtime, which it can then sell to advertisers.
Some simply run their usual ads. Others use Limbaugh as their pitchman, which costs them a premium and a long-term commitment. And lately he has created a new option. At a much higher rate he will weave a product into his monologue (To a caller who said he took two showers after voting for Clinton in Operation Chaos, Limbaugh responded: "If you had followed my advice and gotten a Rinnai tankless water heater, you wouldn't have needed to take two showers. And I'll tell you why. . . .")
Limbaugh is being uncharacteristically modest when he attributes his wealth to simple salesmanship. First, you have to draw and keep a crowd. "Rush is just an amazing radio performer," says Ira Glass, a star of the younger generation of public-radio personalities. "Years ago, I used to listen in the car on my way to reporting gigs, and I'd notice that I disagreed with everything he was saying, yet I not only wanted to keep listening, I actually liked him. That is some chops. You can count on two hands the number of public figures in America who can pull that trick off."
Glass compares Limbaugh to another exceptional free-form radio monologist, Howard Stern. "A lot of people dismiss them both as pandering and proselytizing and playing to the lowest common denominator, but I think that misses everything important about their shows," he says. "They both think through their ideas in real time on the air, they both have a lot more warmth than they're generally given credit for, they both created an entire radio aesthetic."
LIMBAUGH STARTED LOSING HIS HEARING seven years ago, at the age of 50. Increasingly powerful hearing aids helped for a while, but eventually they stopped working. For almost two months he did his show without being able to hear a thing. Regular listeners began noticing that something was wrong. "When I found myself going deaf, I didn't panic," he told me. "I was diagnosed with auto-immune disease." (Limbaugh says he doesn't know what kind of auto-immune disorder it was.) "Once I knew the problem, I looked for a practical solution," he continued. "Eventually I flew out to California and had a cochlear implant. Luckily, it worked." Doctors, he told me, attribute this positive outcome to the relatively advanced age when he lost his hearing and the short time he was deaf.
Limbaugh is known for his wicked impersonations of Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John McCain and others.
"How can you imitate anyone if you can't hear yourself?" I asked him.
He touched his throat. "I know how the muscles are supposed to feel when I do the voices."
Limbaugh's voice is his instrument, and he has been honing it since he began his radio career as a high-school disc jockey. He still loves music, although he hears it most clearly in his memory. "The last song I actually remember was probably a Luther Vandross tune," he told me. "But if I put on oldies I know how they are supposed to sound."
He still uses a lot of rock 'n' roll in his broadcasts, introducing segments with Tina Turner's "The Best" or sampling an old Bo Diddley riff: "Come on in closer baby, hear what else I got to say. You got your radio turned down too low. Turn it up!"
We were on the way to Trevini, one of Limbaugh's favorite Palm Beach restaurants. Once again, Limbaugh was at the wheel. His girlfriend, Kathryn Rogers, a West Palm Beach events planner, rode shotgun. They met at a golf tournament last summer and have been an item since.
The Maybach was quiet enough for easy conversation, but the restaurant was a different story. We sat at a prime corner table, but the place was packed, and the decibel level caused him to frequently cup his hand to his ear, and sometimes miss entire sentences.
Throughout dinner, people approached our table. Most were prosperous-looking Republican men of a certain age. "God bless you," they told him, or, "Keep up the fight." He smiled and thanked them in a good-natured way. One elderly gent in a blue blazer and gray slacks went into a long spiel about his good works on behalf of several conservative causes. Limbaugh nodded through the recitation, but when the man left he confided that he had not understood a word of it.
Meanwhile, waiters buzzed around our table. They seemed to anticipate Limbaugh's every wish, refreshing our drinks, serving unasked-for delicacies, periodically checking to make sure everything was exactly to Limbaugh's satisfaction.
Table talk focused on Limbaugh's house, or rather his concern over my reaction to it. That afternoon I wondered aloud what a single man with no kids could possibly want with a house that size. He frowned, obviously interpreting it as a hostile question, a Democrat question. Now he wanted to revisit the topic.
"When you saw my house today, you probably noticed that it isn't filled with pictures of me and famous people," he said. "That's not me. I don't have a home that says, 'Look who I know!' "
"No, you have a home that says, 'Look what I have.' "
"Why would you say that?" He sounded genuinely surprised, possibly even hurt.
"It might have something to do with that acre of mahogany you mentioned earlier."
"My home is a place I feel comfortable in, a place for entertaining my friends and family," he said.
Later, his friend Roger Ailes, a frequent guest and the chairman of Fox News, put the Limbaugh lifestyle in perspective. "He lives the way Jackie Gleason would have lived if Gleason had the money. Some people are irritated by it."
Dinner was winding down, and I called for the check. It tickled Limbaugh to be taken out to eat on The New York Times. A few weeks later, he sent me a copy of an interview with Jeremy Sullivan, a waiter at the Kobe KobeClub in New York. Sullivan told a reporter that Limbaugh, a fellow Missourian, was the biggest tipper in town: "He likes to throw down the most massive tips I've ever seen. The last few times his tips have been $5,000." When I read this, I felt a stab of guilt toward the hyperattentive staff at Trevini. If I had only known, I would have let Limbaugh leave the tip.
LIMBAUGH WAS A FAILURE almost as long as he has been a success. And although he is now an apostle of sunshine ("having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have," he crows on his show), he spent many years trying to convince his family and himself that he wasn't wasting his life.
People sometimes wonder if Rush is a real name. It is, times three. He was born Rush Limbaugh III in 1951, in the Mississippi River town of Cape Girardeau, Mo. Cape Girardeau was Eisenhower America, Middle Western but far enough South that Limbaugh's younger brother David still speaks with a discernible twang. "Rush got the voice in the family," he told me, unnecessarily.
The Limbaughs were local gentry. Rush's grandfather, Rush Sr., was a venerated lawyer who practiced law past the age of 100. Uncle Steve Limbaugh is a federal judge, although he will soon step down as his son, Rush's cousin Steve, joins the federal bench. David Limbaugh, who still lives in Cape Girardeau, writes books and a syndicated political column, along with handling his brother's legal work.
Limbaugh's father, Rush Jr., was a lawyer, too, a prominent local Republican activist and the most influential figure in his sons' lives. He served as a pilot in World War II and became vehemently anti-Communist and very much committed to the ideas and ideals of small-town Protestant America. Limbaugh remembers his father playing host to Vice President Richard Nixon in Cape Girardeau in the 1956 election. To this day, Limbaugh calls his father "the smartest man I've ever met."
Certainly he was one of the most opinionated and autocratic. "On Friday nights my friends would come over to the house just to listen to my dad rant about politics," Limbaugh recalls. "He was doing the same thing as I do today, without the humor or the satire. He didn't approve of making fun of presidents. He didn't think that sort of thing was funny."
Dick Adams, Rush's boyhood friend and high-school debate partner, told me: "Mr. Limbaugh didn't suffer fools lightly, let's just put it like that. Many times I was over there when he called down Rush or David in harsh tones. There was usually a string of expletives attached."
Father-son arguments weren't political. Rush seems to have swallowed his father's monologues whole. Like the great black singers of his generation, Limbaugh took the familiar pieties and ambient sounds of his time and place and used them to create a genre of entertainment, full of humor, passion and commercial possibility. There are many ways to look at Rush Limbaugh III: one is that he is the first white, Goldwater Republican soul shouter.
But first he had to get out of town.
"My father expected me to be a professional man," Limbaugh told me. "The problem was, I hated school. I hated being told what to do. In the Boy Scouts I never got a single merit badge. In school my grades were terrible. I just didn't want to be there. I just wanted to be on the radio."
Rush's father hoped the boy would grow out of this ambition. But to appease him, he lent 16-year-old Rush the money for a summer course in radio engineering in Dallas. Limbaugh returned with a broadcaster's license, which he parlayed into a job at the local radio station. Soon he had his own show. Being on the radio made him a local celebrity, and he never lost the taste for it.
Limbaugh was miserable when his father insisted he attend college. Under protest he enrolled at nearby Southeast Missouri State University, where he lasted a year. Somehow he even contrived to flunk speech.
"My mother used to drive me there and pick me up, just to make sure I'd go," he told me. "But it didn't do any good. First chance I got, I was out of there."
Limbaugh hit the road in a 1969 Pontiac LeMans. He spent the 1970s spinning records at radio stations around the country under the name Jeff Christie. From the start, he had a knack for making people laugh. In Pittsburgh he sometimes convinced callers he could see them via a special telephone. He did voices and parodies.
Limbaugh drifted from job to job. He was wounded by his father's disapproval, unable to make a real go of the radio business and unlucky in marriage. In the mid-'80s he took a job in the front office of the Kansas City Royals baseball team. He was making $12,000 a year, and he almost quit to take a more lucrative job as a potato-chip distributor. "They were offering $35,000," he told me. "That sounded like a lot of money."
Instead, he decided to take a last gamble on his talent. He found a radio job in Sacramento where, for the first time, he started airing his conservative opinions and really developing his bombastic, politically incorrect, El Rushbo persona. The show was a hit.
"In those days the mainstream liberals had a media monopoly," he says. "All three TV networks, CNN, Time and Newsweek, and the newspapers. AM radio was considered a dying venue. Nobody did political talk, let alone conservative political talk."
Limbaugh said things that people had never heard on the radio. He mocked the women's movement ("feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society"); scoffed at sex education ("condoms work only during the school year"); and took on conventional wisdom ("using federal dollars as a measure, our cities have not been neglected but poisoned with welfare-dependency funds"). It is hard to imagine, so many years later, how strange and rebellious, how simply wrong, such sentiments sounded.
In 1988, Limbaugh moved to New York and took his show national. He came to the city with the usual make-it-there, make-it-anywhere expectations. The show, carried locally on WABC-AM, was a national hit. But socially, he flopped.
"I assumed there was a fraternity of broadcasting guys in New York," he told me. "I thought my success would launch me into a circle of accomplished people. Look, I admired these people. Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather people watched these guys. I thought they would welcome me as one of them. I was wrong." Eventually Limbaugh came to a rather obvious conclusion. "I realized that my professional achievements were discounted because of my conservatism and my constant criticism of those who I thought would welcome me."
Why on earth did he expect people he was mocking on the air to embrace him, I asked.
"Immaturity," he said. "I was shocked by the visceral hatred. Nobody hated me growing up. Nobody hated me in Kansas City. Even in Sacramento, which is a liberal town, nobody hated me. That didn't happen until I got to Manhattan."
Not everyone in the big city gave Limbaugh the cold shoulder. William F. Buckley Jr., the publisher of The National Review, saw the young broadcaster's star power and took Limbaugh into his orbit. Limbaugh was honored by the attention.
"I grew up on National Review and Mr. Buckley," Limbaugh told me. "Aside from my father, he's the most influential man in my life." In Buckley's circle he was an incongruous figure provincial, self-educated and full of déclassé rock-and-roll enthusiasm. But Buckley took Limbaugh seriously, cultivated him, promoted him and saw to it that he connected with the right people.
Buckley died a few days after my first visit to Limbaugh in Florida. Limbaugh mourned him on the air and off. But he also had a sense that, with Buckley's passing, he now became the movement's elder statesman. Jay Nordlinger, a senior editor at The National Review, watched Limbaugh's tutelage under Buckley, and he takes Limbaugh seriously as a polemicist and public intellectual. "I hired a lot of people over the years, fancy kids from elite schools, and I always asked, 'How did you become a conservative?' Many of them said, 'Listening to Rush Limbaugh.' And often they'd add, 'Behind my parents' back.' "
Limbaugh's audience is often underestimated by critics who don't listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identify themselves as "liberal," according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of "news knowledge questions," Limbaugh's "Dittoheads" the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience scored higher than NPR listeners. The study found that "readers of newsmagazines, political magazines and business magazines, listeners of Rush Limbaugh and NPR and viewers of the Daily Show and C-SPAN are also much more likely than the average person to have a college degree."
For his part, Limbaugh sees himself as a thinker as well as showman. "I take the responsibility that comes with my show very seriously," he told me. "I want to persuade people with ideas. I don't walk around thinking about my power. But in my heart and soul, I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement."
In truth, Limbaugh is less a theoretician than a popularizer of what he regards as the correct conservative responses to contemporary issues. Most of his concerns are economic. "I consider myself a defender of corporate America," he told me. Limbaugh is admired by the religious right, but he is far from pious on matters of adult behavior. He is also one of the few commentators left or right who never speaks cloyingly about America's obligation to its children and grandchildren.
Recently, I sent Limbaugh an e-mail message, his preferred means of long-distance communication, asking what his own presidential agenda would look like. His answer reflects his actual concerns. A Limbaugh administration would seek to:
1. Open the continental shelf to drilling. Ditto the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
2. Establish a 17 percent flat tax.
3. Privatize Social Security.
4. Give parents school vouchers to break the monopoly of public education.
5. Revoke Jimmy Carter's passport while he is out of the country.
6. Abandon all government policies based on the hoax of man-made global warming.
No. 5 was a joke. I think.
EVERY APRIL, LIMBAUGH HOSTS A WEEKEND at his Palm Beach estate for his closest friends. This year the guest list included Roger Ailes, Mary Matalin and Joel Surnow, a creator of the television series "24" and a leader of the small Hollywood conservative community. The event is social but hardly nonpolitical.
Anyone looking for an informal gathering of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy could do worse than this. Limbaugh is also close to Karl Rove, who dined with him a few weeks earlier in Florida; Justice Antonin Scalia (last year he attended a dinner at cousin Steve Limbaugh's Cape Girardeau home); and Justice Clarence Thomas (who officiated at Limbaugh's third wedding). He describes his fellow Floridian Matt Drudge as a buddy. George H. W. Bush invited Limbaugh to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom.
More recently, Dick Cheney toasted Limbaugh at a dinner party; a copy of the vice president's remarks hangs on Limbaugh's wall at home. But Limbaugh's real hero and constant role model is Ronald Reagan.
Limbaugh admires many aspects of Reaganism, but he is especially animated by his belief in American exceptionalism. "Reagan rejected the notion among liberals and conservatives alike who, for different reasons, believed America was in a permanent state of decline," he wrote to me in an e-mail message. "He had faith in the wisdom of the American people. . . . He knew America wasn't perfect, but he also knew it was the most perfect of nations. Reagan was an advocate of Americanism." In response to a separate question, he wrote: "America is the solution to the world's problems. We are not the problem."
Limbaugh said he believes that President George W. Bush is well meaning but far from the Reagan standard of excellence. "I like President Bush," he wrote me, "but he is not a conservative. He is conservative on some things, but he has not led a movement as Reagan did every day of his career. Bush's unpopularity is due primarily to his reluctance to publicly defend himself and his administration against attacks from the left. . . . The country has not tilted to the left in my view. What has been absent is elected conservative leadership from the White House down to the Congress."
Needless to say, Limbaugh doesn't see John McCain as the answer to this problem, and it infuriates him when McCain claims to be a Reaganite. "McCain and Reagan do not belong in the same sentence," he wrote.
Of course, his problems with McCain won't prevent Limbaugh from trying to defeat Obama or from trying to push McCain toward his views. Some think he is already succeeding in the latter mission. Mary Matalin, who has a great belief in Limbaugh's powers of persuasion with the public, said: "Why do you think McCain changed on the immigration issue? Because of his advisers?"
Karl Rove says he thinks Limbaugh's greatest influence in this election cycle will be as a backbone-stiffening agent: "He's a leader," Rove said. "If Rush engages on an issue, it gives others courage to engage."
It is a tough job this year, and Limbaugh said he knows it. Despite his insistence that Obama is just another liberal, attacking and ridiculing him will be delicate work. "There is nothing worse than being branded a racist," he told me at the end of our last meeting in Florida. "That's what Bill Clinton tried to do to me."
At the first White House correspondents' dinner of the Clinton administration, the president cracked that Limbaugh had stood up for Attorney General Janet Reno, but he "only did it because she was attacked by a black guy." (The "black guy" being Representative John Conyers.)
Limbaugh was in the audience, and he was livid. He demanded, and received, a White House apology. It was reminiscent of the time F.D.R. went after the legendary H. L. Mencken at a Gridiron Club dinner in 1934. Limbaugh took it as a warning. "If they successfully tar you as a racist, you are David Duke," Limbaugh told me.
On May 16, Limbaugh delivered a monologue on what you can't say about Obama: "With Obama we started out, we couldn't talk about his big ears 'cause that made him nervous. We've gone from that to this: Not only can we not mention his ears, we can't talk about his mother. We can't talk about his father. We can't talk about his grandmother unless he does, brings her up as a 'typical white person.' We can't talk about his wife, can't talk about his preacher, can't talk about his terrorist friends, can't talk about his voting record, can't talk about his religion. We can't talk about appeasement. We can't talk about color; we can't talk about lack of color. We can't talk about race. We can't talk about bombers and mobsters who are his friends. We can't talk about schooling. We can't talk about his name, 'Hussein.' We can't talk about his lack of experience. Can't talk about his income. Can't talk about his flag pin. This started out we can't call him a liberal. It started out we just couldn't talk about his ears. Now we can't say anything about him."
So far Limbaugh's tactic has been to frame his attacks on Obama in the words of liberals themselves. Among the musical parodies, which he writes with the comedian Paul Shanklin, in his arsenal is "Barack the Magic Negro," sung to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon," by a dead-on Al Sharpton impersonator. The song was met by indignation when he first played it in March until Limbaugh revealed that the title and the idea of Obama as a redemptive black man à la Sidney Poitier came from an op-ed piece written by a black commentator, David Ehrenstein, in The Los Angeles Times.
Sharpton is too much a master of such signification to miss the art in Limbaugh's boomerang trick. "I despise his ideology," Sharpton told me, "but Rush is a lot smarter and craftier than Don Imus. Limbaugh puts things in a way that he can't be blamed for easy bigotry. Some of the songs he does about me just make me laugh. But he's the most dangerous guy we have to deal with on the right, including O'Reilly and Imus. They come at you with an ax. He uses a razor."
THE ATMOSPHERE in the studio on the morning after our dinner at Trevini was relaxed, even festive. When I arrived around 11, Limbaugh was at his computer, wearing shorts and doing prep.
Augusto, his personal chef, was there, preparing lunch, signaling an occasion. Limbaugh skipped the meal, explaining that he doesn't eat close to show time for reasons of "burp prevention." Snerdly, Dawn and the engineer joined me in the dining room, which looks as if it were decorated by Nancy Reagan's fussy aunt.
Limbaugh's program that day was, as usual, a virtuoso performance. He took a few calls, but mostly he delivered a series of monologues on political and cultural topics. Limbaugh works extemporaneously. He has no writers or script, just notes and a producer on the line from New York with occasional bits of information. That day, and every day, he produced 10,000 words of fluent, often clever political talk.
There was nothing he said that was startling he spent parts of the show mocking Obama's "change" mantra and excoriating those who believe in global warming and talking about foreign affairs. But if you think it is easy turning ancient Greenland, the influence of the teachers' unions or changes in E.U. foreign policy into polemical comedy that will hold an audience for three hours try it for 15 minutes at your next cocktail party.
Limbaugh entertains, but he also instructs. He provides his listeners with news and views they can use, and he teaches them how to employ it. "Rush is an intellectual-force multiplier," Rove told me. "His listeners are, themselves, communicators."
After the show, Limbaugh and I sat in the studio for several hours talking. He was in an expansive mood, and he didn't duck when I asked him about the most infamous chapter of his career, his drug bust. In 2006, after years of addiction to painkillers, Limbaugh was charged in Florida with "doctor shopping" prescriptions. He pleaded not guilty and cut a deal; the charges would be dismissed after 18 months if he continued rehabilitation and treatment with a therapist.
Needless to say, the case became a national scandal. His enemies jeered that the white knight of American conservatism was a junkie. His fans feared the scandal might end his career. Some prayed for him. Limbaugh's lawyer, Roy Black, hired a Florida psychologist, Steve Strumwasser, to evaluate his client.
"I assessed Rush, and I saw he had a problem he couldn't control," Strumwasser told me in a phone interview authorized by Limbaugh. "I knew his name and what he did for a living, but that's about it."
Strumwasser recommended that Limbaugh check into the Meadows, in Wickenburg, Ariz., a rehab center that specializes in celebrities.
"They guarded his privacy, but other than that, he was treated like everybody else," said Strumwasser, who traveled with him to Arizona and checked him in. "Rush did individual therapy, took part in group sessions and got along with everybody."
According to Strumwasser, Limbaugh had previously tried twice to stop using drugs on his own and failed. "It takes most people a lot of time to assume personal responsibility for an addiction," he said. "Especially in a case like this, where there is a professional risk involved. But by the time I met him, Rush wasn't denying his problem at all. He went about getting better in a very passionate way."
The passion was muted when Limbaugh returned to the air, after six weeks. He candidly but drily, discussed his addiction and legal status, told his listeners that he was not a victim and then went on with the broadcast.
In the studio the day we spoke, Limbaugh was more emotional. "I thank God for my addiction," he told me. "It made me understand my shortcomings."
Being Limbaugh, he said he believes that most of these shortcomings stemmed from his inability to love himself sufficiently. "I felt everyone who criticized me was right and I was wrong," he confided. But, he says, he left his insecurities behind in Arizona. "It's not possible to offend me now," he said. "I won't give people the power to do it anymore. My problem was born of immaturity and my childhood desire for acceptance. I learned in drug rehab that this was stunting and unrealistic. I was seeking acceptance from the wrong people."
Limbaugh told me he is no longer concerned about the opinions of his colleagues and rivals, and he makes no effort to disguise his contempt for most of them. Michael Savage, ranked No. 3 among talk-radio hosts by Talkers magazine? "He's not even in my rearview mirror." Garrison Keillor? "I don't even know where to find NPR on the dial."
At dinner the night before, Bill O'Reilly's name came up, and Limbaugh expressed his opinion of the Fox cable king. He hadn't been sure at the time that he wanted it on the record. But on second thought, "somebody's got to say it," he told me. "The man is Ted Baxter."
Limbaugh does have his favorites. He admires Ann Coulter's ability to outrage liberals. He is a fan of the columnists Camille Paglia and Thomas Sowell, both of whom he considers honest thinkers. And he is especially impressed by the essays of Christopher Hitchens. "He's misguided sometimes, but when you read him, you finish the whole article."
Limbaugh has a deeply conflicted attitude toward Sean Hannity, his one-time stand in and now perpetual No. 2 on the Talkers list. He speaks of the younger man with the same condescending affection that Muhammad Ali once showed Jimmy Ellis, a former sparring partner turned challenger. But he wanted me to remember who is the Greatest. "I have no competitors," he said. "Hannity isn't even close to me."
Hannity became a touchy issue in the late spring. For more than a year he was on what appeared to be a quixotic campaign to raise the issue of Obama's controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Then the story exploded. Not only that, Hannity also led the pack on Obama's connection to the former Weatherman leader William Ayers. Operation Chaos was still garnering attention and amusing listeners, but the election news was being made elsewhere.
From New York, I sent Limbaugh a teasing e-mail message: "Hannity has been first and hardest on the Reverend Wright controversy and the Bill Ayers thing. Is it possible that he is running a separate Operation Chaos with superior intel?"
Limbaugh didn't dispute that Hannity was first on the Wright and Ayers controversies. But, he wrote: "Things only take off when I mention them. That is the point."
Two weeks later, The Daily Telegraph in London published a list of America's most-influential pundits. Limbaugh finished fourth, behind Hannity. Once again I wrote a message to Limbaugh: "Are we looking at a changing of the guard on the right side of the dial?"
Limbaugh scoffed. "Since when have I cared what the media says?" he wrote. "Media polls are not the measure. Ratings 'polls' and revenue are. And it still ain't close."
I couldn't resist. "I wasn't asking about the media," I wrote him. "I was asking about Hannity. Hannity can fairly take credit (as he does now, every night) for being more influential than any other commentator in changing the course of this election. That strikes me as new. Or am I wrong?"
At which point Limbaugh, who patiently and graciously answered dozens of my questions, allowed me to invade his bunker and his castle, shared hours of his time, permitted me access to his closest family and most-intimate friends, even his therapist, had enough. "Write what you want," he snapped across cyberspace.
AS A BOY, Rush Limbaugh always preferred the company of adults, and it seems to me he doesn't consider liberals to be real grown-ups. "They are destructive of the institutions and traditions that make this country great," he says. "I want to reduce them to a small group. I want no more than 10 to 15 of them in Congress."
Limbaugh has no illusions that this will be the result of the 2008 election. "Real conservatism wins every time it's tried," he told me. "But the party has abandoned conservatives as a base. McCain doesn't want to criticize Democrats; he wants Democrats to vote for him."
The oddity is that Limbaugh himself makes this strategy possible. Why, after all, should John McCain take the low road, antagonize independents and become embroiled in racial controversy when he can count on Limbaugh to become the G.O.P.'s most-effective unofficial Obama Criticizer?
If McCain wins, Limbaugh will spend the next four years tugging him to the right. If he loses, it will not be, in Limbaugh's estimation, Limbaugh's fault, and it won't be the end of his world either. A secret of Limbaugh's success is that his uncompromising, often harsh ideas are offset by a basically friendly temperament. He is less like his angry father than his mature role models, Buckley and Reagan, for whom sociability and fun were integral to their conservative world view.
And increasingly, he has other interests. He's been spending more time with his extended family in Cape Girardeau, where he's so popular that the municipality runs a Rush Limbaugh tour for visitors. He toys with the idea of buying an N.F.L. franchise. His friend Joel Surnow says that if there were a Rush Limbaugh movie, it would be something along the lines of "Citizen Kane" meets Howard Stern.
As for politics, Rush has already picked his candidate for the Conservative Restoration: Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a 37-year-old prodigy whom Limbaugh considers to be a genuine movement conservative in the Ronald Reagan mold "fresh, energetic and optimistic in his view of America." In the meantime, though, there's the Democratic convention in Denver to muck around in, and then the main event in November. Operation Chaos is over, but Rush will come up with something new to delight his fans and infuriate his foes. Presidents rise and presidents fall, but "The Rush Limbaugh Show" will go on, weekdays at 12:06, Eastern Time.


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We have got Thank You Note Cards for every occasion, made special by a variety of design treatments, like linen finish, gold or silver foil, glitter, scalloped edges, gloss highlights, and more!
Each box contains 14 cards and 15 designer envelopes. Cards measure 3-1/2" high x 5" wide. Printed on high-quality card stock. Blank interiors. (unless otherwise noted)

subset: commoncrawl


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D-RS's's Gamespot Rank
Level: 27 (9%)
D-RS's Emblems
Greatest Game Hero Bracket Submitter
This emblem shows that you've submitted a bracket for GameSpot's Greatest Game Hero competition. Let's get in there and fight!
Game Expert
Here to save the day! Game Experts are knowledgeable and skilled masters in at least one game and have proven this by unlocking at least 75% of the achievements available for it. If you've ever got a question, a Game Expert's usually a good person to ask.
Hey look, it's a totally original dude wearing armor. With a huge gun and a helmet (a visor?). And he's riding a unicorn. This user was granted this magical emblem for not having any of their user profile images hosted on untrusted websites during The Great Purge of March 2013.


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You can fill in one inactive for the 49ers' game against the Rams right now.
Defensive tackle/tight end Demarcus Dobbs will not travel with the team to St. Louis after he was arrested early Friday following a single-car accident. Matt Maiocco of CSNBayArea.com reports that Dobbs has been charged with a pair of misdemeanors for the accident, which occured around 3:45 a.m. in Santa Clara.
"He was involved in a crash and we suspect he was under the influence of alcohol," California Highway Patrol Officer D.J. Sarabia said. "He was not injured and he was also arrested for possession of marijuana."
Dobbs has been a key part of the teams' special teams units in all 11 games this season. He turned 26 on Friday, which may explain the late night. The 49ers released a statement on Friday about their response to the arrest.
"The 49ers are aware of the recent matter involving Demarcus Dobbs. We are gathering the relevant facts as it pertains to this situation," the statement reads. "We have been in contact with both Demarcus and the League office. He will not be making the trip to St. Louis, and we will reserve further comment at this time."
The 49ers promoted linebacker Michael Wilhoite from the practice squad. Per Maiocco, he should be active and playing on special teams Sunday.


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StreetEasy.com, the leading NYC real estate website launches StreetEasy Hamptons
New York, NY. June 11th, 2009. StreetEasy.com recently launched their expansion to the Hamptons, covering the beach towns on the Eastern end of Long Island along with the North Fork of Suffolk County. The East End of Long Island is one of the largest second home and seasonal rental markets for New Yorkers, with over 60% of those looking in the Hamptons and North Fork residents of New York, giving StreetEasy the built in audience interested in these properties. New Yorkers will finally be able to see listings in the Hamptons the way they have been accustomed to in New York, with full detailed history.
StreetEasy's unique local approach to real estate search in New York has made them the most popular site with advanced search options like new development, school zoning and commute time. StreetEasy is taking this approach in the Hamptons as well, incorporating important local search features like South of the Highway and Oceanfront property.
"StreetEasy has made New York one of the most transparent real estate markets in the country and we aim to do something similar for the Hamptons, which has traditionally been shrouded by the exclusive nature of the area and the geographic isolation" said Dawn Doherty, VP of Strategic Development at StreetEasy. She added that "now many brokerages on the East End are embracing transparency and StreetEasy's entrance into the market. Along with exposing their properties to the huge audience of over 30,000 New Yorkers who visit StreetEasy daily, leaders are realizing that a transparent market offer consumers the information needed to make real estate decisions."
One company fully embracing StreetEasy's expansion to the Hamptons is Prudential Douglas Elliman, which is displaying all of their sale and rental listings on the site. "At Prudential Douglas Elliman, we believe good decisions are based on knowledge of the facts. We are committed to helping provide transparency for consumers as a way to ensure confidence in the market," said Jill Harnick, Chief Marketing Officer at PDE. "As a compliment to the information we provide at PrudentialElliman.com, StreetEasy has become a strong partner for us, and we expect it will offer a boost to our web traffic in the Hamptons, where people are searching for real value now."
StreetEasy Hamptons includes sale and rental listings, open houses, recorded sales, and discussion boards. StreetEasy Hamptons is accessible from StreetEasy's homepage or http://www.streeteasy.com/hamptons
About StreetEasy.com
StreetEasy.com is a New York based Real Estate information portal that aggregates the most comprehensive set of sale and rental listings along with other useful info to help consumers make better decisions with detail such as days on market, recent price reductions, and what homes sold for.
For more information about StreetEasy, please visit StreetEasy.com or contact Dawn Doherty at (646) 365-0285 or email@example.com
See Real Deal article here


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Christoph Champ
My name is Christoph Champ and this is my personal wiki. As is the trend these days with websites, this site will always be a work-in-progress (or a "beta" version).
Yes. I have a blog, however, I like using both blogs and wikis to organise my studies, research, work, interests, and hobbies.
I am a graduate student studying Bioinformatics in Denmark.
I am a Third Culture Kid (or TCK). I have lived in or have traveled to 53 countries to date (as of August 2020). I consider myself a "citizen of the world", as I call no one country my home.
My life can be easily divided into chapters:
- Pre-school years (in the most literal sense of the word) — ages 0-5
- Primary school — ages 6-10
- Secondary school — ages 11-15
- Gymnasium — ages 16-17
- Grand Tour — ages 18-22
- Undergraduate studies — ages 23-27
- Graduate studies — ages 28-present
My interests are wide and I actively pursue ideas. I am training to become a scientist, however, I do not see this as just a future career; I see it as a way of life.
I also have a great number of hobbies and am always adding more.
My love of books runs deep. I try to read for at least an hour every day (books unrelated to my studies).
In my spare time, I create, maintain, and host websites.
I am a firm believer in standards and I try to incorporate these into any of my designs. My belief in standards is not just limited to the Internet. I am in favour of International Standards wherever we can find a way to have them.
I love languages and learning them and I speak a few. However, English is my primary language. As a side note, I prefer British English in speech and spelling.
My father, older brother, and I have been trying to set personal records of any kind for many years. These include anything from the most countries visited, the highest mountain climbed, the furthest north or south in latitude, the most timezones visited, etc.
Finally, I have a great group of friends and a great family. I try to promote them in any way I can. Because of this, there will be links to articles and sites showing their work.
Specific information
- curriculum vitae (CV)
External links
- My personal website (very much under construction)
- My personal blog
- My personal forum (for school-related stuff)
- My CV


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Explainer: The archaeology of Christianity
An estimated 2 billion Christians around the world celebrate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. While those believers take the stories of Jesus as told in the New Testament on faith, archaeologists have scoured the Holy Land and beyond in search of clues about the real life of Jesus and his followers. Click the "Next" arrow above to learn about eight of their finds.
— John Roach, msnbc.com contributor
First reference to Christ?
Does the world's first known reference to Christ refer to him as a magician? An inscription on a bowl uncovered from the underwater ruins of Alexandria in Egypt reads "DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS," which archaeologists translate to mean either "by Christ the magician" or "the magician by Christ." The bowl dates to between the late second century B.C. and the early first century.
If the word "Christ" does indeed refer to the biblical Jesus Christ, then it would be the first known written reference to Christ and might provide evidence that Christianity and paganism at times intertwined in the ancient world. The archaeologists who discovered the bowl think that a magus could have practiced fortune telling rituals with the bowl and used the name Jesus to legitimize his supernatural powers. At the time, the people of Alexandria were likely aware of stories about Jesus' miracles, such as turning water into wine and multiplying loaves of bread.
Turning water to wine
Jesus' first and perhaps best-known miracle, as recorded in the Gospel of John, was turning water into wine at a Jewish wedding in Cana that had run short of the celebratory drink. Archaeologists at a salvage dig in modern-day Cana found pieces of stone jars, including the one shown here, that date to the time of Jesus and appear to be the same type of jar mentioned in the water-to-wine story.
A similar find at a rival dig several miles to the north of this site, however, is leading some archaeologists to yearn for further excavations before the issue is settled. One crucial question was where exactly the biblical Cana was located.
Nailed to the cross
Ancient literature suggests that crucifixions — central to the story of Jesus' death and resurrection — were common in Roman times, but there is scant archaeological evidence for the practice. Some scholars argue that since there was likely little concern for people who were crucified, their remains were simply scattered. A rare exception came in 1968 when a first-century funerary box was discovered with the remains of a man who had apparently suffered the grisly form of execution.
Analysis of the remains revealed that the feet of the crucifixion victim really were nailed to the cross — one of the foot bones, in the center of this image, has a nail driven through it from the side. The nail is bent, which is perhaps why it was left intact instead of being removed, according to archaeologists. The hand bones, however, showed no signs of being nailed to the cross, suggesting this practice often depicted in crucifixion artwork may not have always occurred.
Wrapped in a cloth
A long piece of cloth, or a shroud, kept under close guard at a cathedral in Turin, Italy, is believed by many to be the burial cloth that was wrapped around the crucified Jesus. Scientific interest in the shroud began in earnest when negatives from a 1898 photograph revealed the image of man who appears to have suffered a crucifixion. Since then, biblical scholars, archaeologists and the faithful have hotly debated the authenticity of the so-called Shroud of Turin.
Vatican-approved carbon-dating tests on fibers taken from the cloth in 1988 indicated that the shroud dated to medieval times — ranging from 1260 to 1390. Scientists concluded that the claims about Jesus' image were an elaborate hoax. Other studies have since argued that the dated fibers were from a repaired section of the cloth and that the carbon dates were therefore invalid.
Other evidence supporting the authenticity of shroud includes pollen residues on the cloth that are unique to Israel and Turkey, indicating it must have spent time in those countries. In support of the skeptics, a second burial shroud that dates to the time of Jesus is of a completely different style than the Turin shroud.
Laid to rest
For many Christians, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the heart of Jerusalem is where the crucified Jesus was laid to rest, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. Archaeologists, naturally, have attempted to verify the site's history. While proof remains elusive, the scientific sleuthing has pieced together a trail of evidence to support the claim.
For example, excavations indicate the site was a limestone quarry in the seventh or eighth century B.C. that was filled in the first century B.C. with stone and soil and turned into a garden and cemetery. According to the Gospels, Jesus was buried in a garden near the city. Though the church today is inside the city walls, the site was outside city walls until Jerusalem was expanded in A.D. 41 — a few years after the traditional time frame for the crucifixion.
Of course, other theories abound, including one widely publicized in a controversial TV documentary by the director James Cameron and investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici. In that program, some experts suggested that 10 ossuaries found in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the remains of Jesus and his family — including a son. The burial boxes are inscribed with names that match those of Jesus and his family — Joseph, Mary, Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Judah, the purported son of Jesus, among other relatives. The team said statistics argue against another family having that combination of names. Other archaeologists, however, have dismissed the claim.
The baptism cave
Did John the Baptist perform the spiritual cleansing ritual at a cave near the village where he was born, Ein Kerem? That's one theory mulled by archaeologists who discovered thousands of presumably ritually broken pottery shards, a stone used for foot cleansings and drawings related to John the Baptist on the cave walls. Scholars say the evidence that John actually performed baptisms there is inconclusive. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that some sort of ritual water purification rites took place in the first century.
The history of the cave goes even deeper: It was apparently carved by Israelites in the Iron Age between 800 B.C. and 500 B.C. and perhaps used then as a ritual immersion pool. More recent excavations have revealed corridors leading to what appears to be a second cave. A secular theory on the cave's purpose suggests it was used as a clay production facility.
The bones of St. Paul
For centuries, the faithful have believed the bones of St. Paul, who helped spread the Christian faith after the death of Christ, were in a tomb under the Basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls in Rome. Though the belief has seldom been questioned, Vatican archaeologists recently carbon-dated the remains for the first time and found that they date from the first or second century.
"This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of Apostle Paul," Pope Benedict XVI said as he announced the findings. In addition to the bone fragments, archaeologists found grains of incense, a piece of purple linen with gold sequins, and a blue fabric with linen filaments.
Early worship in Israel
An Israeli prisoner tasked with clearing rubble prior to construction of a new prison ward uncovered the edge of an elaborate mosaic on the floor of what may be the oldest church in the Holy Land. Archaeologists have dated the church to the third century, decades before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the early fourth century.
The mosaic includes drawings of fish, which was an ancient Christian symbol that predated the widespread use of the cross, and three inscriptions. One tells the story of a Roman officer who contributed towards paving the floor, the second is dedicated to the memory of four women, and the third mentions a woman who contributed a table, or altar, to God Jesus Christ, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority.


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Arts & Entertainment
North American backyard bird count planned
- Details
- Category: Arts & Entertainment
- Published on 27 January 2009
- Written by Mount Vernon Optic-Herald
It is time again for the annual Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). The 12th annual event is planned for February 13-16. Tens of thousands of bird watchers are expected to participate in this North American event project sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the national Audubon Society. See the Jan. 22 edition of the Optic-Herald for more details.


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Colts 30, Packers 27: Andrew Luck capped a second-half comeback by throwing a 4-yard touchdown pass to Reggie Wayne with 35 seconds to play that gave Indianapolis a stunning 30-27 victory over visiting Green Bay yesterday in the Colts' first game without coach Chuck Pagano.
Green Bay (2-3) had a chance to force overtime, but Mason Crosby missed a 51-yard field goal with 3 seconds left. Luck then took a knee, time ran out, and the team celebrated. Missing was Pagano, who is in a hospital undergoing treatment for leukemia that was recently diagnosed.
Luck came through with just what Pagano wanted — getting the Colts (2-2) to .500. And they did it despite trailing, 21-3, at halftime.
After Adam Vinatieri gave Indy its first lead at 22-21 with a 28-yard field goal, Aaron Rodgers threw an 8-yard TD pass to James Jones to make it 27-22 with 4:30 left before the Colts rallied.
Falcons 24, Redskins 17: Michael Turner ran 13 yards for the go-ahead score with 2:46 to play, and visiting Atlanta knocked Robert Griffin III out of the game.
The Falcons are 5-0 for the first time in franchise history.
Matt Ryan completed 34 of 52 passes for 345 yards as Atlanta handed Washington (2-3) its eighth consecutive home loss.
Griffin left the game in the third quarter after being hit in the head on a sack by linebacker Sean Weatherspoon. Coach Mike Shanahan said RG3 has a "mild concussion."
Kirk Cousins took over and threw a 77-yard touchdown pass to Santana Moss to give the Redskins a fourth-quarter lead, but the fourth-round pick also threw two interceptions in the final two minutes.
Saints 31, Chargers 24: Drew Brees threw for 370 yards and broke a half-century-old NFL record by throwing a touchdown pass in his 48th straight game, and New Orleans won for the first time this season with a victory over San Diego.
Brees' 40-yard pass to Devery Henderson eclipsed the mark of 47 consecutive games with a touchdown pass set by Johnny Unitas from 1956-60. Brees' also had three scoring strikes to Marques Colston, giving him a franchise-record 52 touchdown catches with the Saints (1-4).
At Brees' request, the NFL allowed head coach Sean Payton, assistant head coach Joe Vitt and general manager Mickey Loomis — all serving various suspensions in connection with the NFL's bounty investigation — to attend the game. Unitas' son Joe was also in attendance.
Philip Rivers passed for 354 yards and two touchdowns for the Chargers (3-2), but had an interception and fumble in the final quarter.
Steelers 16, Eagles 14: Shaun Suisham hit a 34-yard field goal as time expired.
The visiting Eagles (3-2) took the lead on a 2-yard touchdown pass from Michael Vick to Brent Celek with 6:33 remaining, but the Steelers responded by driving 64 yards, including two key third-down conversions by quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, to set up the winning kick.
Pittsburgh running back Rashard Mendenhall ran for 81 yards and a touchdown in his first game of the season as the Steelers (2-2) avoided their first two-game losing streak in three years.
Vick completed 20 of 30 passes for 175 yards and two scores but fumbled twice for the Eagles, who couldn't keep their string of narrow early-season victories going.
Dolphins 17, Bengals 13: Reshad Jones intercepted Andy Dalton's overthrown pass at midfield with 1:22 left, preserving a win that ended two weeks of miserable, last-minute finishes for visiting Miami.
Miami (2-3) had dropped its past two games in overtime. The Dolphins held on against the Bengals (3-2), who never got anything going consistently on offense and wasted a chance for a tighter finish.
Mike Nugent was wide right on a 42-yard field goal try with three minutes left — his first miss of the season — giving the Dolphins a chance to run down the clock behind rookie quarterback Ryan Tannehill, who was smooth in the toughest moments.
The Bengals got the ball back at their 20 following a punt with 1:45 left, but Dalton's second interception sealed it. Dalton was 26 of 43 for 234 yards with three sacks and two interceptions.
Giants 41, Browns 27: Victor Cruz and Ahmad Bradshaw set career bests in leading New York Giants over winless Cleveland.
Cruz caught three touchdown passes from Eli Manning covering 3, 7 and 28 yards, while Bradshaw surpassed his yardage on the ground for the season with a career-high 200. He had 132 entering the game.
The Giants are 9-0 in games he has rushed for 100 yards or more.
New York (3-2) also forced three turnovers, including Chase Blackburn's interception in the end zone midway in the fourth quarter to clinch it.
The Browns are 0-5 for the first time since their return season to the NFL in 1999.
Vikings 30, Titans 7: Percy Harvin pounded his way through Tennessee's defense for one touchdown rushing and another receiving for Minnesota.
Harvin caught eight passes for 108 yards for the Vikings (4-1), who have given up a combined 33 points in winning three straight games. Christian Ponder threw his first two interceptions after 143 attempts without one, but he still finished 25 for 35 for 258 yards and two scores against the reeling Titans (1-4).
Matt Hasselbeck, starting in place of the injured Jake Locker, went 26 for 43 for 200 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Most of the gains came near the end with the outcome no longer in doubt.
49ers 45, Bills 3: Alex Smith threw for a season-high 303 yards and three touchdowns, Frank Gore ran for 106 yards and a score, and San Francisco amassed a franchise-record 621 yards.
Michael Crabtree and Vernon Davis each eclipsed 100 yards receiving to back Smith, who threw TD passes of 43, 28 and 10 yards and surpassed 300 yards passing for only the third time in his career.
Rian Lindell kicked a 31-yard field goal in the first quarter before San Francisco scored the final 42 points to hand Buffalo (2-3) its second straight embarrassing loss.
Bears 41, Jaguars 3: Charles Tillman and Lance Briggs returned interceptions for touchdowns — their second in six days — and Chicago used stifling defense to overwhelm Jacksonville.
The Bears (4-1) scored 38 unanswered points in the second half to win their third consecutive game. The streak has everything to do with defense.
Chicago has returned five interceptions for touchdowns in the last three weeks.
Seahawks 16, Panthers 12: Russell Wilson threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to Golden Tate with 35 seconds left in the third quarter, and visiting Seattle came up with four sacks against Cam Newton.
Wilson shook off two third-quarter interceptions — including one that was returned for a touchdown.
Wilson threw for 221 yards, while Marshawn Lynch ran for 85 yards for the Seahawks (3-2).
Ravens 9, Chiefs 6: Ray Rice ran for 101 yards and Justin Tucker made all three of his field goal attempts.
Joe Flacco threw for 187 yards and was picked off once, but the Ravens (4-1) were still able to come up with enough points to beat the Chiefs (1-4), who turned it over four times.
Matt Cassel threw for 92 yards, was intercepted twice and credited with two lost fumbles before leaving in the fourth quarter with what the Chiefs described as a head injury. Brady Quinn led Kansas City to another field goal by Ryan Succop.


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Fresh 383 burns up pistons
had a 383 stoker built for me a few weeks ago, iron vortec heads, 10:1 speed pro pistons and eagle crank etc. Well swapped it into my truck and put about 90 miles of driving here and there and started blowing oil out of the breathers severely. Checked compression and had two cylinders at normal around 175 and the rest were pretty much junk, around 30-80. Well sent the motor back under warranty and heres some pics of the damage. He first accused me of using NOS which I never have and probably never will. He believed me and is covering all the parts/labor but my question is what could cause this much damage?
engine never overheated
had consistent oil pressure
my spark plugs read normal
headers never got excessively hot
and I have a brand new holley 750 on top with 7psi supply giving it plenty of fuel
the only thing I did before it started blowing oil out the breathers was mess with the timing with a different timing light, cause ignition timing cause this much damage in such a short time?
What did you have the timing set at? Yes too much timing can cause issues that fast. Going by the looks of the damage with the cracks running through the ring lands it looks like it detonated itself to death.
Detonation. The severe enemy of hyper eutectic pistons..Ign timing wrong or terrible fuel..
fuel was fresh so it must of been timing when i screwed with it. can anyone think of other reasons for this?
I just want to run through all possible causes so it doesnt happen again
thanks for the quick responses
I would expect your plugs to show early signs of detonation (prior to piston damage).
Classic detonation, upper limit for compression on pump gas, too much timing. I did the same, even worse on my blower motor last year. I'm guessing the rings are tight in their grooves? Mine hammered bad enough I couldn't pull them out. I'm surprised you couldn't hear the death rattle.
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Detonation Of Pistons
How Much Timing Did You Add When You Used That Timing Light? You Melted The Pistons.. Spark Plugs Should Have Looked Like Toast Also~! When You Drove It, Couldn't You Hear The Detonation?
That Is A Bummer Needless To Say....water Injection Might Of Helped With Methanol Added To The Water....maybe Next Time...good Luck With The New Motor...
Way to much timing and with Vortec heads we only need around 30 to 32 degrees of total timing.
Your balancer should be degreed with a 32 degree make and check it at the RPM where you have the most timing. And go from there. I don't use vac. advance on a performance engine. But do change the curve with springs.
Your tune up killed those pistons and your lucky the guy is standing behind this as its not his fault at all!!!!!
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The could be's from the pictures are:
- Detonation/preignition; but the spark plugs usually either have metal deposits on the insulator or are beat up like the pistons. Detonation tends to pound the piston apart where preignition tends to melt it. Like the piston detonation busts chunks off the insualtor, preignition tends to put melted metal blobs on the insualtor and rounds the edges of the electrodes.
- Running hot. The scorched oil and heavy carbon deposits indicate this. The combustion temps or piston temps can get out of line without the cooling system showing anything so gauge temp is not a clear indicator unless the engine runs low or out of coolant. This can also be a function of detonation or preignition.
- Inadequate bore clearance; this can be a cause of what you're seeing or a result. However, most damage seems to be in the ring lands and up to the crown rather than the thrust faces which leads be back to cooking the combustion chamber side of the piston or see below, inadequate ring gap or ring to groove clearance.
- Inadequate ring gap, I notice what appears to be a crack between the first and second ring land of one of the pistons in the first picture which leads me to this thought. Of course massive overheating of the crown could run the rings out of gap. when out of gap for whatever reason then they buckle and pop the piston ring lands apart. A similar situation can be associated with insufficient top to bottom clearance with the ring to ring groove.
Over-all for 90 miles these look more like what you'd see at a hard run 90,000 miles.
A question arises in my mind as to how dry you keep the sump and crankcase. The piston does depend upon oil throw-off from the crankshaft for lubrication and cooling. When you use a windage tray with a crank scraper you can contribute to pulling too much oil out of the windage, it gets to be a tricky line to walk in some cases. Keep in mind that many competition and industrial engines go to some lengths to put oil on the underside of the crown for cooling purposes. The Chevy, as well as many others, used to have a groove through the rod split to pass pressure oil off the journal/bearing to spray onto the cylinder wall and underside of the piston for lubrication and cooling. Since the advent of emissions restrictions this practice has been discontinued to reduce the oil pull over into the combustion chambers to reduce the octane contamination of unleaded fuels and reduce contamination of catalytic converters. The hypereutectic piston is also a response to this requirement, it is an attempt to get a more temperature stable piston that can be run at higher temperatures with tighter clearances and is cheaper than going to a forging for such a solution.
I rather think that 10 to one is a bit high for a cast iron Vortec head. This would especially be true with a fairly mild cam which will jack the DCR up and will be more susceptible to the problems you're seeing when in a heavy vehicle that has high gearing. This brings the engine into the lugging RPM range and dumps a lot of weight on it at the same time. The driver's response is to open more throttle which raises the temps in the combustion chamber which makes for detonation, preignition and other localized temperature related issues. You're running a carb, this has fueling problems that EFI doesn't have (there is no way around this), you need to consider that when using high compression EFI heads on a carb'ed engine. You just can't push these combo's as close to the edge, especially when an EFI engine is listening for detonation/preignition and will take steps to suppress it when it's present; it does not tell the driver it did that so the typical driver of a L31 pickup would be unaware that there was a problem as it's taken care of for him, however, not in your case with a carb unless you add such a circuit to the ignition which is done a lot with these things to head off these kinds of operating issues. MSD and others sell black boxes that do this for carbed engines running on the edge.
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Those pistons look like the ones I took out of my blower motor when the timing was over advanced. Burnt, broken and the ring grooves were crushed.
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Just to break the numbers down so it's easier to see why so much damage occurred. Lets say you stood on it for 10 seconds. You say you drove it 90 miles "here and there", so i'm going to assume that you got on it at least once for a short bit. Let's pick 10 seconds of time, with full throttle and full load on the motor. For the sake or simplifying the math, we'll say you hit 6000rpm for those 10 seconds. You basically shifted from 1st to 2nd to 3rd and held third for a bit.
6000rpm= 100 revolutions per second
100 revolutions in one second= 50 firing sequences in one second
10 seconds of run time = 500 firing sequences on each piston
With a heavily advanced timing adjustment and/or poor tune and/or poor gasoline, you had yourself "marbles in a coffee can" type of detonation. Imagine the beating each one of those pistons took getting hit with 500 secondary flame fronts as they collided with the primary flame front. A hypereutectic piston simply cannot handle that type of abuse.
What was the plug you were using E-3???
Small cam will kill an engine with vortec heads, even though 170psi is not that much on the compression tester. Most I have gotten by with 383" on pump gas with vortecs is about 10.5:1 CR = 200psi and a big cam at .050 230-240 narrow lobe separation 104*, intake on 100* and a fat carb, and timing at 25* full advance, this engine made about 475HP at the rear wheels. Plugs were marine R43LTS. I buy them 500 at a time if you need them as I use them in all of my crate engines. They retard timing and run cool with crappy fuel and they don't burn engines up unless folks get stupid with timing and lean jetting.
Anyway most folks don't know the spark plug can change the dynamic timing of an engine +/- 5*. That is why Cup engines used to run extended plugs for qualifying an retracted for the race. Most people say it is the heat range but these plugs had the same # heat range they just made combustion happen faster as well as heating up the cylinders super fast.
It also looks like the pistons were touching off on the heads as they are super clean in that area.
On the chassis dyno, I always check timing when cars come in the door. On 602 / 604 Crate engines I drop timing back to 25* after the initial baseline runs and start my tuning from there. I have found there is about 20-30 HP in getting rid of the extra timing that impedes the engine from working the way it was designed to. Once folks wake up and realize that timing advance is a tool for crappy fuel and PI$$ POOR engine design they will come to understand how to make an engine run efficiently.
If you need some good pistons for your engine I would recommend using Mahles HT piston as it is superior to most economy forged pistons on the market.
If you are running standard bore 350 I have some super nice ones coated up and everything that should work up to 500HP pretty easy, I use them in 550HP road race engines and get a year out of them. In a street application that should be 50,000 miles, if the timing and fuel is right.
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When talking about poor fuel they do not mean fresh fuel necessarily. They are talking about octane rating. With a 10-1 motor you need AT LEAST 91 octane unless you have A LOT of cam. Fuel must match cylinder pressure. As mentioned earlier vortec heads like no more than and usually less than 34 deg TOTAL timing. This means 8 or less initial with most stock distributors which leads many people to overtime them. This motor appears to have been detonated or preignited to death which would be YOUR fault. sorry
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Man that one piston top is bad. I can see where they thought Nos might have been used.but yes to high comp.with small of a cam is a nono that's why I hate hyper pistons. Plus cylinder to wall clearance might have been to tight. And ring gap also could have been tight and butted up.better luck next time I feel.your pain
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[0212] Alpha Source Show - Sectio Aurea + Demoniac Insomniac
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Re: [0212] Alpha Source Show - Sectio Aurea + Demoniac Insom
Two very high grade musical acts
Nice post Victor
Nice post Victor
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Re: [0212] Alpha Source Show - Sectio Aurea + Demoniac Insom
I remember this. Good times.Plasdma Force wrote: ↑Mon Mar 05, 2012 1:08 pmTwo very high grade reviews of the Hydromax pump and musical acts
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It's a common recommendation to write comparison between variables and constants by putting the constant first. I.e., instead of:
It's better to write:Code:if(x == 1)
The argument is that if you accidentally type "=" instead of "==", the latter code will fail to compile, while the former will silently be wrong. I want to argue against this technique and open the matter for discussion.Code:if(1 == x)
My argument is very simple, and it goes like this. Writing the comparison in "reverse" requires a mental effort, because the mental process usually goes, "If x equals one..." not "if one equals x..." So, you need to remember to do something special when you make a comparison.
But if you have to remember to do something special, why not just remember to check if you've used the correct operator? This is what I do. Whenever I write a comparison, I check to make sure I haven't accidentally typed "=" instead of "==." It requires the same mental effort as reversing the comparison, while making the code a bit more natural.
Why is this superior? Because it works when you're comparing two variables as well. What if you wrote this:
Reversing the order will not help you catch a mistake in this case (and it's a very common case). However, the rule "Always check if you've used the proper operator" WILL catch the mistake. It covers all cases. In other words, the reverse-comparison rule is a cop-out -- it encourages you to be lazy and not check if you've used the proper operator. The problem is, it only works some of the time, while my rule works all of the time.Code:int x, y; if(x = y) // Oops!
Now, argue with me.


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The Devil Inside
Yet another exorcism horror film! A woman whose mother allegedly murdered three people travels to Rome to attend a number of unauthorized exorcisms Watch the trailer
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By David Ponce
The toy fair is on, and Engadget is reporting from the show floor. Pictured above is one ForceFlyer RC toy helicopter that uses a special glove with an accelerometer to provide controls. You hold a joystick in your hand to control the throttle while tilting hand movements take care of direction. And while that sounds like a lot of fun, it looks like there's a bit of a learning curve here: the Engadget editor took about 5 seconds flat to crash it. Representatives of Regal Elite, the company making it, were able to make it fly correctly however, so it's not a design flaw. And like many toys at the fair, this particular model is a prototype. The full copter should be ready for a late April launch for $50.
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