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NEW YORK Beyond his alleged steroid use, Barry Bonds is unquestionably guilty of the use of something that confers extraordinarily unfair mechanical advantage: the “armor” that he wears on his right elbow. Amid the press frenzy over Bonds’ unnatural bulk, the true role of the object on his right arm has simply gone unnoticed. This is unfortunate, because by my estimate, Bonds’ front arm “armor” has contributed no fewer than 75 to 100 home runs to his already steroid-questionable total. Bonds tied Henry Aaron’s home run record of 755 on Saturday night and will go for the new standard this...

UC Berkeley scientists, digging deep into a remote New Mexico hillside, have discovered a trove of fossil bones that they say is evidence that dinosaurs and their early relatives lived side by side for tens of millions of years before the relatives slowly died off and left the dinosaurs to dominate the ancient world. Until now many scientists had thought that dinosaur "precursors" -- perhaps their ancestors -- disappeared suddenly long before the dinosaurs themselves rose to prominence, but the bones dug up by Berkeley paleontologists show evidence of a different story. The discovery of a wide variety of creatures...

The biggest problem with modern American liberalism may be the word itself. There’s just something about the word, liberal, something about the way it sounds – it just hits the ear wrong. If it were an animal it would be something squirming and hairless, something that burrows maybe, with no eyes and too many legs. No child would bring home a wounded liberal and ask to keep it as a pet. More likely he would step on it, or maybe tie it to a bottle-rocket and shoot it over the railroad tracks. The word has a chilling effect even on...

A dinosaur mystery that puzzled paleontologists for nearly a century has been solved by a pound of beef tendons from a butcher, a collection of dead hawks and a brace of frozen quail, two investigative scientists in Berkeley and Idaho say. The puzzle: Why were fossils of those ancient creatures so often discovered buried with their heads, necks and feet arched bizarrely backward into a distorted posture unlike anything seen alive? The answer: Kevin Padian, a noted dinosaur expert and curator of the Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley, and Cynthia Marshall Faux, a veterinarian and paleontologist at the Museum...

Names, e-mails and other sensitive information embedded in files Fresh privacy fears have been sparked after it emerged that Apple has embedded personal information into music files bought from its iTunes online music store. Technology websites examining iTunes products discovered that personal data, including the name and e-mail addresses of purchasers, are embedded into the AAC files that Apple uses to distribute music tracks. The information is also included in tracks sold under Apple’s iTunes Plus system, launched this week, where users pay a premium for music that is free from the controversial digital rights (DRM) software that is designed...

It was striking that Yahoo said this week that it'll be closing its online auction service a month from now -- striking because the Sunnyvale Internet giant is essentially admitting it will never be able to compete with San Jose's eBay and is instead resigned to being its business partner. People talk all the time about consolidation in industries and how this can be bad for consumers. The same dynamic is playing itself out online, only at a much faster pace. "In a sense, you're looking at the Wal-Martization of the Web," said Rob Enderle, a Silicon Valley technology analyst....

WASHINGTON - Fish feed made with a contaminated Chinese ingredient was distributed to about 120 fish hatcheries and farms, roughly split between the United States and Canada, officials said Thursday. U.S. officials said the risk to people from eating fish that ate the contaminated feed was very low. The feed, manufactured by Skretting Canada, used imported Chinese wheat flour, purchased from a second Canadian company, that was spiked with melamine and mislabeled as wheat gluten. Wheat gluten is a mix of two proteins obtained when wheat flour is washed to remove the starch. A second imported Chinese vegetable protein, sold...

Apparently, Gov. Corzine was on his way to Imus' studio when he had the car accident yesterday.

Consumers who depend on old-fashioned antennas to watch television won't miss the 2009 Super Bowl, but their analog sets will stop working soon afterward. Analog TVs will no longer receive a signal come Feb. 19, 2009, unless users update their hardware to receive a digital signal.

The neo-conservative dream faded in 2006. The ambitions proclaimed when the neo-cons' mission statement "The Project for the New American Century" was declared in 1997 have turned into disappointment and recriminations as the crisis in Iraq has grown. [snip] The neo-conservatives were called that because they sought to re-establish what they felt were true conservative values in the Republican Party and the United States. They wanted to stop what they felt were the isolationist tendencies that had developed under President Clinton, and even under the pragmatic President George Bush senior. They saw the war in Iraq as their big chance...

Looking for fun board games (or other) to play with the family this year. What does your family enjoy?

The American secret service was bugging Princess Diana's telephone conversations without the approval of the British security services on the night she died, according to the most comprehensive report on her death, to be published this week. Among extraordinary details due to emerge in the report by former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Stevens is the revelation that the US security service was bugging her calls in the hours before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.

Many of San Francisco's Asian massage parlors -- long an established part of the city's sexually permissive culture -- have degenerated into something much more sinister: international sex slave shops. Once limited to infamous locales such as Bombay and Bangkok, sex trafficking is now an $8 billion international business, with San Francisco among its largest commercial centers. San Francisco's liberal attitude toward sex, the city's history of arresting prostitutes instead of pimps, and its large immigrant population have made it one of the top American cities for international sex traffickers to do business undetected, according to Donna Hughes, a national...

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday by evangelical Christian students and their parents who said a Contra Costa County school district engaged in unconstitutional religious indoctrination when it taught students about Islam by having them recite language from prayers. ... ... The teacher, using an instructional guide, told students they would adopt roles as Muslims for three weeks to help them learn what Muslims believe. She encouraged them to use Muslim names, recited prayers in class, had them memorize and recite a passage from the Quran and made them give up something for a day, such as television...

The plan was simple: Iraqi troops would block escape routes while U.S. soldiers searched for weapons house-by-house. But the Iraqi troops didn't show up on time. When they finally did appear, the Iraqis ignored U.S. orders and let dozens of cars pass through checkpoints in eastern Baghdad - including an ambulance full of armed militiamen, American soldiers said in recent interviews.

KISMAYO, Somalia (AP) - Hundreds of Islamic militiamen in heavily armed trucks took over the southern town of Kismayo, one of the last seaports that had been outside their control in Somalia, witnesses said Sunday. "The Islamic courts have entered Kismayo," said resident Abdi Gashan, adding that the warlords who previously ruled the area had fled. "We welcome the Islamic courts."

All nine of the Israeli athletes kidnapped on Tuesday from the Olympic Village in Munich have been killed in a gun battle at a nearby airport. A policeman also died in the shooting at the Furstenfeldbruck military airbase, along with four of the guerrillas from the Palestinian group Black September.

Man charged after boy drinks lethal amount of whiskey Young teen had blood alcohol level of 0.37 A man accused of buying liquor for a 13-year-old boy and doing little to stop him from gulping a lethal amount of it may now be the first person in King County to be held criminally responsible for such a death. Leonard Wayne III -- a fellow Muckleshoot Indian Tribe member and longtime friend of the boy's father -- was charged Wednesday with second-degree manslaughter. Kenneth Elkins died just after midnight April 16 after drinking Crown Royal whiskey with Wayne and other adults...

My chief captor had an idea about how to prod the U.S. government into action: another video. He said this one would be different, and left. I turned to the two guards sitting on cushions a few feet away and started to panic. Really, really panic. "Oh my God, oh my God, they're going to kill me, this is going to be it. I don't know when but they're going to do it," I thought. I crawled over to Abu Hassan, the one who seemed more grown-up and sympathetic. His 9mm pistol was by his side, as usual. "You're my...