Poor Mojo's Newswire

The Associated Press also has learned that some of the same contaminants showed up in milk that regulators allowed a neighboring dairy farmer to market, even after some officials said they were warned about it.

In one case, according to test results provided to the AP, the level of thallium — an element once used as rat poison — found in the milk was 120 times the concentration allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The bicyclist, reportedly in a grey hooded sweatshirt, was seen around the time of the 3:45 a.m. blast in midtown, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters today.

"Someone was trying to make a statement," a police source said.

The vacant office, the nation's busiest recruiting station, suffered shattered windows and twisted metal. No injuries were reported, although the blast rattled guests in the nearby Marriott Marquis hotel.

The first time I ever played Dungeons & Dragons, I was six years old - books with great red demons on the cover that dared us to claim their riches, subtitled by this alien name Gygax. My mother was furious when she found my uncles had exposed me to those subterranean burrows, spilling over with rubies, and tourmalines, and the wealth of old kings even songs no longer remember. As a young man, I began hiding the books I bought inside my bed, which had a vast hollow space I had hidden in as a child. These books were soon discovered, and blamed for everything from recent colds to the dissolution of my parents' marriage. I took the wrong lesson, I'm afraid: I didn't learn to fear them. What I learned was that books, some books, were swollen with power - and this power projected into the physical realm. Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes.

I owe a tremendous debt to his legacy. I couldn't even calculate how deep.