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Hurricane Ike roared across Cuba west of the densely populated capital’s aging buildings Tuesday after tearing down the length of the island nation, ravaging homes, killing at least four people and forcing 1.2 million to evacuate.

Residents in Texas and northern Mexico braced for a weekend hit from Ike, which has already killed at least 80 people in the Caribbean.

Winds howled and heavy rains fell across Havana, where streets were empty. Towering waves broke over the graceful Malecon seaside promenade, which police had barricaded off the previous evening. Many of the historic apartment buildings along its length are in poor repair and vulnerable to collapse.

Police spread out across the city to halt all but emergency and official traffic. Roadways were strewn with tree branches and rocks, and the rubble from crumbling balconies littered sidewalks. Navigation was banned in Havana Bay, its usually placid surface stirred up by white-capped waves.

Teresa Tejeda, scared to stay in her dilapidated Old Havana home, evacuated with several hundred other elderly people to a government shelter.

“My house has really bad walls and I feel much more secure here,” said Tejeda, who is in her 70s.

Cuba, which has carried out well-executed evacuations for years, ordered hundreds of thousands of people — more than a tenth of its 11 million people — to seek safety with friends and relatives or at government shelters.

State television reported that Ike killed four people in Cuba — the island’s first storm deaths this year. Two men were killed removing an antenna from a roof, a woman died when her home collapsed and a man was killed by a falling tree.

No one was killed when Gustav tore across western Cuba — the same area Ike was pounding Tuesday — as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane on Aug. 30, damaging 100,000 homes and causing billions of dollars in damage. That was largely because 250,000 people were evacuated.

Evacuations are not mandatory in Cuba except for pregnant women and small children. But in an authoritarian state, few people would think to ignore the government’s advice — and state news media make an example of the few who pay the ultimate price when they fail to move out.

Police told Niyel Rodriguez, 21, that she had to move to a shelter with her 19-day-old daughter Chanel. She huddled Tuesday with 109 expectant and new mothers and their children in a wing of an Old Havana maternity hospital converted into a shelter. Obstetricians and nurses were on hand in case anyone needed help.

“They came looking for me yesterday and brought me here in a patrol car,” Rodriguez said. “I probably would have been scared to stay at home with my little one, and here they take good care of us. They give us breakfast, lunch and dinner and everything we need for the babies.”

State television said officials had taken measures to protect tourists at vulnerable seaside hotels, including about 10,000 foreigners at the Varadero resort, east of Havana.

Spanish tourists Jose Luis and Avelina Alonso were spending the last day of their Cuban vacation holed up in the lobby of an Old Havana hotel.

“We arrived with Gustav and we are leaving with Ike,” said Alonso, 42, who works at Spain’s National Library in Madrid.

He said hotel management had been gracious, picking up the cost of their meals on Tuesday and asking them not to venture outside for their own safety.

“They’ll let us leave of course, but there really isn’t much to see right now,” he said.

After raking the Bahamas and worsening floods in Haiti that have killed at least 331 people, Ike made landfall on eastern Cuba as a terrifying Category 3 hurricane, then weakened Monday as it ran along the length of the Caribbean’s largest island.

Ike moved just to the south of Cuba Monday, then came back ashore Tuesday morning as a Category 1 storm southwest of Havana. It was expected to cross the island again and move out over the Gulf of Mexico in the afternoon. Forecasters said it would strengthen before hitting Texas or northern Mexico this weekend.

“When it’s out of Cuba it has the potential to become a lot stronger,” said Felix Garcia, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Officials warned that unrelated heavy rains in northern Mexico had caused more than a dozen dams to reach capacity or spill over. If Ike hits the area as expected, evacuations might be necessary.

At least 80 people were reported dead from Ike’s fury. In addition to the four deaths in Cuba, 74 people were killed in flooding in Haiti and two people died in the Dominican Republic, including an unidentified man whose body was discovered Tuesday.

Oil prices fell below $106 a barrel Tuesday in Asia on the theory that Ike might not be as disruptive to Gulf oil infrastructure as had been feared.

At 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT), Ike was centered 65 miles (105 kilometers) west-southwest of Havana, and was moving to the west-northwest at 12 mph (19 kph). It had maximum sustained winds near 75 mph (120 kph).

On the narrow streets of Camaguey, falling utility poles crushed cars and the roaring wind transformed buildings of stone and brick into piles of rubble. Colonial columns were toppled and the ornate sculptures on the roofs of centuries-old buildings were smashed in the central Cuban city, a UNESCO world heritage site.

Delia Oliveras, 64, said it was the strongest hurricane her family has experienced. They fled to a covered patio as winds tore the roof from the living room.

“This critter was angry, really angry,” she said.

Ike destroyed 300 homes and damaged hundreds more in the eastern city of Baracoa, said Luis Torres, president of the Civil Defense Council in Guantanamo province.

Much of eastern Cuba was without electricity and phone service was spotty. The road between Santiago and Guantanamo was cut when a reservoir overflowed.

In the Pacific, Tropical Storm Lowell was projected to cut across the Baja California Peninsula on Wednesday or Thursday and emerge over the Gulf of California near the town of Loreto, popular with U.S. tourists. It had maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 kph) Tuesday morning, but was expected to weaken before hitting land.

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Three decades after it was conceived, the world’s most powerful physics experiment is ready to be powered up.

On Wednesday, engineers will attempt to circulate a beam of particles around the 27km-long underground tunnel which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The £5bn machine is designed to smash particles together with cataclysmic force, revealing signs of new physics in the wreckage.

This will re-create conditions in the Universe moments after the Big Bang.

But it has not been plain sailing; the project has been hit by cost overruns, equipment trouble and construction problems. The switch-on itself is two years late.

“We will be looking at what the Universe was made of billionths of a second after the Big Bang” - Dr Tara Shears, University of Liverpool

The collider is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research - better known by its French acronym Cern.

The vast circular tunnel - the “ring” - which runs under the French-Swiss border contains more than 1,000 cylindrical magnets arranged end-to-end.

The magnets are there to steer the beam - made up of particles called protons - around this 27km-long ring.

Eventually, two proton beams will be steered in opposite directions around the LHC at close to the speed of light, completing about 11,000 laps each second.

At allotted points around the tunnel, the beams will cross paths, smashing together near four massive “detectors” that monitor the collisions for interesting events.

Scientists are hoping that new sub-atomic particles will emerge, revealing fundamental insights into the nature of the cosmos.

Major effort

“We will be able to see deeper into matter than ever before,” said Dr Tara Shears, a particle physicist at the University of Liverpool.

“We will be looking at what the Universe was made of billionths of a second after the Big Bang. That is amazing, that really is fantastic.”

The LHC should answer one very simple question: What is mass?

“We know the answer will be found at the LHC,” said Jim Virdee, a particle physicist at Imperial College London.

The currently favoured model involves a particle called the Higgs boson - dubbed the “God Particle”. According to the theory, particles acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field carried by the Higgs.

The latest astronomical observations suggest ordinary matter - such as the galaxies, gas, stars and planets - makes up just 4% of the Universe.

The rest is dark matter (23%) and dark energy (73%). Physicists think the LHC could provide clues about the nature of this mysterious “stuff”.

But Professor Virdee told BBC News: “Nature can surprise us… we have to be ready to detect anything it throws at us.”

Full beam ahead

Engineers injected the first low-intensity proton beams into the LHC in August. But they did not go all the way around the ring.

On 10 September, engineers will attempt to pass a proton beam around the full circumference of the LHC tunnel.

“We see how far the beam will go,” said Steve Myers, head of the accelerator and beams department at Cern, “we will try and make it go round the full 27km sometime on Wednesday morning.”

Engineers will be on the lookout for any potential problems: “There are on the order of 2,000 magnetic circuits in the machine. This means there are 2,000 power supplies which generate the current which flows in the coils of the magnets,” he told BBC News.

“If any single one of them has got the wrong polarity, or has the wrong calibration constant, or whatever, then the beam will not go round.

“If, in any of the channels [in the magnets], there is any piece of debris - it is a very small channel - then the beam will not go round.”

Grabbing protons

Mr Myers has experience of the latter problem. While working on the LHC’s predecessor, a machine called the Large-Electron Positron Collider, engineers found two beer bottles wedged into the beam pipe - a deliberate, one-off act of sabotage.

The culprits - who were drinking a particular brand which advertising once claimed would “refresh the parts other beers cannot reach” - were never found.

If all goes well on Wednesday, and the beam makes one turn, engineers will “close the orbit”, allowing the beam to circulate continuously around the LHC.

Engineers will then try to “capture” it. The beam which circles the LHC is not continuous; it is composed of several packets - each about a metre long - containing billions of protons.

The protons would disperse if left to their own devices, so engineers use electrical forces to “grab” them, keeping the particles tightly huddled in packets.

Once the beam has been captured, the same system of electrical forces is used to give the particles an energetic kick, accelerating them to greater and greater speeds.

After Wednesday’s test, engineers will need to get two beams running in opposite directions around the LHC. They can then carry out collisions by smashing them together.

Long haul

The idea of the Large Hadron Collider emerged in the early 1980s. The project was eventually approved in 1996 at a cost of 2.6bn Swiss Francs.

However, Cern underestimated equipment and engineering costs when it set out its original budget, plunging the lab into a cash crisis.

Cern had to borrow hundreds of millions of euros in bank loans to get the LHC completed. The current price is nearly four times that originally envisaged.

During winter, the LHC will be shut down, allowing equipment to be fine-tuned for collisions at full energy.

“What’s so exciting is that we haven’t had a large new facility starting up for years,” explained Dr Shears.

“Our experiments are so huge, so complex and so expensive that they don’t come along very often. When they do, we get all the physics out of them that we can.”

Steve Myers said engineers would break out the champagne if all went to plan on Wednesday. But a particular brand of beer will not be on the menu, he said.

Experience is Overrated. What About IQ?

NEW YORK–Until four years ago, no one had heard of our current Democratic nominee. “Who is Barack Obama?” asked CBS News after he was picked to deliver the keynote address at the Dems’ 2004 confab. “Not exactly a household name.” Four years later, that speech remains his biggest achievement. No landmark legislation bears his name. His claim to fame is his gift of gab.

But Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s newly-minted fame makes Obama, saddled with a resume so thin he pads it with the entry “community organizer,” look like an elder statesman. Governor of one of the nation’s least populous states for a mere two years and the ex-mayor of a municipality that’s home to 7000 souls, Palin is now positioned to be a proverbial heartbeat away from the ability to order ICBMs fired at Russia. (On January 20th McCain, a cancer survivor and hardly the picture of health, will be two years away from the average life expectancy for an American male.)

At least Obama went to law school. Along with a solid background in history, knowledge of the law is essential for a president.

Palin is a total unknown. A McCain adviser admits to The New York Times: “The campaign’s polling on Mr. McCain’s potential running mates was inconclusive on the selection of Ms. Palin–virtually no one had heard of her.”

Welcome to the year of the nobody, when people you’ve never heard of can blog or reality-show or, in the case of the political class, schmooze their way to fame and fortune. My favorite nobody of 2008 was a kid named Efraim Diveroli, the fast-talking 22-year-old president of a two-man arms trading outfit by the name of AEY, Inc. (Speaking of thin resumes, his business partner was a masseur by trade.)

On the strength of a charming smile and the lowest bid, the Pentagon awarded this joker a $300 million federal contract to supply munitions to the U.S. puppet government in Afghanistan. Three hundred million dollars!

“By 2005, when Mr. Diveroli became AEY’s president at age 19, the company was bidding across a spectrum of government agencies and providing paramilitary equipment–weapons, helmets, ballistic vests, bomb suits, batteries and chargers for X-ray machines–for American aid to Pakistan, Bolivia and elsewhere,” reported The Times. Alas, all good things end. Diveroli’s firm sluffed off a bunch of repackaged, outdated and substandard Chinese-made shells from Albania to the Afghans, who knew enough about war materiel to complain to their American masters.

Lest I make myself misunderstood, I’m not claiming that experience is a reliable indicator of performance. The members of George W. Bush’s cabinet had collectively spent more than a century of their lives serving in federal government. That didn’t prevent them from bankrupting the treasury or standing by passively as a hurricane destroyed New Orleans. Nor am I impressed by fancy credentials. As many financial services workers can attest, few employees are more poorly prepared for real-world economics than those with MBAs. Journalism schools produce stenographers, not journalists.

Resume entries aside, history shows that certain personality traits–especially intelligence and open-mindedness–make for better presidents. Also helpful are a variety of life experiences, such as familiarity with other countries and cultures and overcoming tough times.

By most measures, Palin is a weird choice. Like Geena Davis in the 2005 TV series “Commander in Chief,” she could wake up one morning to find that McCain has shuffled off to the great POW camp in the sky. We would probably be in trouble.

As far as we know, Sarah Palin faced her biggest personal challenge a year ago. According to official accounts, she learned that she was pregnant with a child with Down Syndrome. She decided to keep him. It has to be heart-breaking. Still, as a right-wing opponent of abortion rights, however, the decision not to abort had to have been simple to make. Also on the knocked-up front, she and McCain actively attempted to cover up the fact that her 17-year-old daughter has a bun in the oven. Icky, icky. Zero integrity points for sucking up to the Christianist Right.

Palin’s teen daughter intends to carry the child to term–a decision one hopes she was able to make free of pressure from her ambitious mother.

More worrisome is an incurious intellect that dovetails regrettably with Palin’s past as a beauty queen. “Ms. Palin appears to have traveled very little outside the United States,” reported The Times. “In July 2007, she had to get a passport before she visited members of the Alaska National Guard stationed in Kuwait.” Yet Anchorage is a major hub for flights to Japan, Korea and China. She never felt like checking out Canada?

Asked about rumors the Alaska governor was being considered as McCain’s running mate, she told CNBC: “As for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day? I’m used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S., before I can even start addressing that question.”

“Working real hard”? Doesn’t the University of Idaho require its graduates to learn English? Does she know that she isn’t running for VP of Alaska? Or that the VP presides over the Senate? With the nation facing enormous economic, political and military challenges, do we need another numbnut in the White House?

At least Palin knows something many other Republicans don’t. “We are a nation at war,” she told Business Week, “and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources.” Palin has grammar trouble. But she knows why we’re in Iraq.

Two of Palin’s opponents in the 2006 Alaska governor’s race were baffled at Palin’s lack of substance. “She wouldn’t have articulated one coherent policy and people would just be fawning all over her,” Republican-Independent Andrew Halcro told The Times. “[Democratic candidate Tony Knowles] and I looked at each other and it was, like, this isn’t about policy or Alaska issues, this is about people’s most basic instincts: ‘I like you, and you make me feel good.’”

God bless America. We’re going to need all the help we can get.

Tropical Storm Hanna is expected to reach the Carolina coast early Saturday and bring “very heavy rainfall” to the mid-Atlantic and New England over the weekend, forecasters said.

A second storm, the “small but impressive” Hurricane Ike, could land in southern Florida as a Category 3 storm by Tuesday night, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Forecasters are also keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Josephine, far out in the Atlantic. Josephine had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph and is too far off for any predictions of landfall.

Emergency centers were opened by North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia in anticipation of Hanna’s arrival, but no mandatory evacuations have been ordered.

The hurricane center’s 5 a.m. Friday advisory placed Hanna’s center about 125 miles (200 kilometers) north-northwest of Great Abaco Island and about 430 miles (690 kilometers) south of Wilmington, North Carolina.

The storm, moving toward the northwest near 20 mph, had top sustained winds near 65 mph (100 kph), the hurricane center said.

“Only slight strengthening is forecast prior to landfall, although it is still possible for Hanna to become a hurricane,” forecasters said.

“People are reminded that there is very little difference between a strong tropical storm and a minimal hurricane,” they added.

A hurricane watch was in effect from north of Edisto Beach, South Carolina — about 30 miles south of Charleston — to Currituck Beach Light, North Carolina.

A tropical storm watch is also in effect from Edisto Beach to Altamaha Sound, Georgia.

The historic city of Charleston prepared for the worst. Workers started boarding up city buildings on Wednesday, and firefighters were filling and distributing sandbags to residents and business owners. Backup generators were being gassed up and positioned at key locations around the city.

“We will continue until we know we’re totally out of the woods,” Charleston spokeswoman Barbara Vaughn said.

Cathy Haynes, Charleston County’s director of emergency operations, said Charleston County schools would be closed Friday.

“We’d also like to encourage residents that either live in low-lying areas or mobile homes, or if they just feel vulnerable to the situation at hand, to maybe move to safer locations,” she said.

Jennifer Moses, a resident of Charleston’s Daniel Island, said she is ready for whatever comes.

“I filled up the gas can, I have water, I have peanut butter, and I took the rocking chairs off the front porch,” she said.
At Parris Island, South Carolina, hundreds of Marines graduated Thursday morning from basic training — a day earlier than planned because the base didn’t want Hanna to cause problems for families coming to the celebration, Master Sgt. Mark Oliva said.

At Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina, nearly two dozen F-18 Hornet fighter jets were flown out, the public affairs office said.

Further north, the U.S. Navy Mid-Atlantic Region said its ships in the Hampton Roads, Virginia, area are prepared to leave should conditions become severe. A decision is due after 8 a.m. Friday.

Once it moves ashore — most likely near the North Carolina-South Carolina state line — Hanna is expected to “race to the northeast while becoming extratropical,” the hurricane center said.

While the coasts of Georgia and central Florida could get 1 to 3 inches of rain, some areas of the Carolinas could get up to 5 inches, forecasters said.

“Very heavy rainfall amounts are likely to spread rapidly northward into the mid-Atlantic states and New England from Friday night into Saturday and may result in flooding,” the center said.

Flooding caused by Hanna’s rains killed at least 137 people in Haiti, a government official said Thursday.

Rescue workers were trying to get aid to victims of the storm, said Abel Nazaire, the assistant coordinator of Risk and Disaster Management.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford urged the voluntary evacuation of two northeast counties, Horry and Georgetown, as Hanna approached.

“The suggestion is for people to look at this storm and make their own decisions,” he said.

“Every one of us needs to continue to watch out in the Atlantic because this could be a dress rehearsal for a thing called Ike,” he said.

“Ike remains a small but impressive hurricane” on radar, the hurricane center said.

Ike’s top winds of 125 mph made it a Category 3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale, 10 mph below its strength measured six hours earlier, according to the hurricane center’s 5 a.m. advisory.

The forecast calls for Ike to be a Category 3 major hurricane as it approaches the Florida coast next week.
Ike was centered 460 miles (740 kilometers) north of the Leeward Islands and was moving toward the west near 15 mph (24 kph).

Ike is expected to continue westward for the next several days before turning to the west-northwest and toward Florida, the hurricane center said.

“The big question is when will the turn take place,” the forecasters said.

One model predicts Ike will go further south over Cuba or the Straits of Florida, while the other would take more to the north over the Bahamas, the hurricane center said.

G.I. Joe slowly invaded Jeff Patton’s cubicle in Salt Lake City, Utah. First it was action figures, then lunch boxes, then comics from a collection that had overflowed from the senior inventory control coordinator’s home.

“My collection did make me feel more at home in my cubicle,” Patton, 34, says of his paraphernalia, recently displayed on CNN’s iReport.com.

“I felt more unique than the rest of my co-workers. I finally had a place to openly express my interests,” said the employee at Nellson Nutraceutical

The problem, a common one, is that Patton found himself becoming too comfortable in his space last year. “My work was starting to suffer as a result,” he says. “I wasn’t supposed to feel at home in my cubicle — I needed to be out on the floor supervising my employees.” After meeting with his boss, Patton emptied his cube of the action figures, which some co-workers had found “childish” or “weird.”

Welcome to the cubicle-shaped world of work nesters. Patton, like many “Office Space” and Dilbert fans, got caught up in the struggle to carve out an identity in a sea of endless gray walls. The snap-on cubicle — which even its designer, Robert Propst, eventually came to see as “monolithic insanity” — continues to dominate the office furniture market. And 40 years after the cubicle precursor “Action Office” was introduced, employees are searching for inspirational and personalized ways to spice up their box-like surroundings.

“After 9/11, there was a huge move toward wanting to nest,” says lifestyle consultant Kelley Moore of Seattle, Washington, author of “Cube Chic: Take Your Office Space from Drab to Fab!” “We find ourselves connecting a lot more with our environment because we want to get to know people.”
If you need something from Mike Oswald, 34, you’ll have to walk through the wooden saloon doors on the front of his Western-themed cubicle to get it.

“It’s something to look forward to, rather than coming in to the routine. By now, everyone knows me in the office and understands it’s just my personality,” says the quotations manager for a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, electrical equipment manufacturer.

Corporations in creative fields tend to be more permissive when it comes to desk decor.

“Graphic design companies (and) tech companies are really supportive because those companies are on the cutting edge,” says Moore. “They need new ideas, so they embrace the creative side.”

Merlot Marketing Inc. offers seasonal cube decoration contests at its Phoenix, Arizona, offices to spur innovation and build community. The winners over the years have included a “happiness” theme cube, with everything from a happy-face couch to smiley-face toilet paper; a jungle motif featuring zebra-print walls; and a shrine to the Will Ferrell movie “Blades of Glory.”

Then there’s the morale factor. “A workspace or cubicle should be individualized,” says Neil Newman, 31, human resources manager for the Phoenix School of Law. “The unique decorations are conversation pieces, and it is conversation and relationships that help with retention.”

The cube police

Although a wacky workspace can inspire creativity, it can also harm productivity.

Sam Gosling, associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, discovered during research for his new book, “Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You,” that customized cubes can create tension in the workplace, even with decorations as simple as a photo display.

“People use their offices to express — deliberately and inadvertently — what they’re like all the time, and that can bother people,” says Gosling. “We also don’t like show-offs, and you can brag with your pics: ‘Look at my fabulous kids and pets and places I’ve been.’”

For nesters like Mike Oswald — he of the swinging saloon doors — it’s worth the risk. In his cube, Oswald set up a slot car set from home. Before answering questions from co-workers, he would challenge them to a race — that is, until his superiors informed him the track was unprofessional.

“I kind of like feeling my bosses out a little bit at a time,” says Oswald. “I’ve done that everywhere I’ve worked. By pushing the limits, I can find out if I’m valuable or not.”

To avoid conflicts, many corporations have clamped down on decorations. Moore says conservative industries like banking traditionally have sought to keep employees from displaying offensive or political material. While many policies are not formalized in an employee handbook, companies are making sure workers know when they’ve gone off the decorating deep end.

Aaron Witsoe, president of Phoenix-based human resources firm Creative Business Resources, has talked to his employees about keeping cubicles clutter-free. “Employees needing an organized work space may become frustrated and unproductive when surrounded by cubicles that are really busy with decorations,” says Witsoe.

Tim Courtney, 26, a marketing specialist in Lisle, Illinois, voluntarily chose the Spartan approach. “I believe a neat desk is a reflection of a well-prioritized and disciplined mind. Creative types like me are seldom neat, and if I let my discipline go, I am prone to messy piles.”

For tech escalation specialist Tim Maguire, 31, work is work. He has only a framed photo of his wife and a Red Sox calendar hanging in his Boston, Massachusetts, office at Thomson Reuters.

“I look at a desk as more of a functional thing, rather than a place I like to hang out,” he says. “It doesn’t make me any happier that I have to come to work if my cubicle is decorated.”

Paul Johnson had only mixed praise for his team following a lopsided victory in his debut as Georgia Tech’s coach.

Johnson says he is a perfectionist who never is completely satisfied, not even with 349 yards rushing and six rushing touchdowns in Thursday night’s 41-14 victory over Jacksonville State, a Football Championship Subdivision team.

There are no more warm-up games. The Yellow Jackets next play back-to-back road games against Atlantic Coast Conference rivals Boston College and Virginia Tech.

“We’re gonna have to get better faster because the competition level is going to get a lot better,” Johnson said.

Quarterback Josh Nesbitt and running back Jonathan Dwyer each rushed for two touchdowns. Even so, Johnson said he was disappointed with his offense near the goal line, and he said there were missed opportunities in the passing game.

“We’ve got a lot of areas to work on,” Johnson said. “I think it was good to get out there and play and get some things on tape. They say teams make the most improvement from game one to game two, and certainly we’ll need to do that next week.”

Georgia Tech impressed Jacksonville State coach Jack Crowe with its collection of eight plays of 20 yards or longer.

“Playing against this offense, you can have eight or nine or 10 people doing what they’re supposed to do,” Crowe said. “If you have one guy that doesn’t take the pitch, it can be 40 yards. There were some of those plays in there.”

Crowe said his defense spent more than two weeks preparing for the new Georgia Tech offense.

“The rest of these folks will get two days,” Crowe said before adding “Good luck, ACC.”

Johnson has installed his triple-option attack that he calls a spread option, but he says he didn’t use the triple-option that often.

“I think they were geared up to try and stop the triple option, and we didn’t run the triple option a lot. … They were definitely playing the run. That’s why they were vulnerable (against the pass) early on. We threw the ball some early on.”

Jacksonville State is not an ACC-caliber team, but still the game provided valuable experience for Nesbitt and Dwyer, making their first starts, and for backup quarterback Jaybo Shaw, a freshman who played in his first game.

Shaw played most of the second half and was 3-for-3 passing for 48 yards while running for 51 yards. He had a 43-yard run to set up his 2-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter.

“Words can’t say how nervous I was,” Shaw said. “I thought I did OK tonight.”

Shaw said he was “so mad” he tripped at the end of his long run when he was so near the goal line.

“I was thankful for the opportunity to run it (again),” Shaw said.

Dwyer had 11 carries for 112 yards and two touchdowns.

“We showed our fans and the nation what this offense can do,” Dwyer said. “We have a lot of talent here and we were very productive. We have some things to clean up, but we looked pretty good.”

Nesbitt rushed for 60 yards with two touchdowns and was 5-for-12 passing for 87 yards.

“I thought Josh played pretty good, really,” Johnson said.

“He didn’t play perfect, but I thought he did some good things and made some plays. He’s like everybody else, he’s gonna get better the more he plays.”

The Yellow Jackets lost two of five fumbles, including one on a kickoff return.

“Overall we had some players make some big plays, but we weren’t near as consistent as I would like, really, on either side of the ball,” Johnson said.

Can Appalachian State do it again? More to the point, can Armanti Edwards do it again?

The Mountaineers gained instant fame in last season’s opener by upsetting No. 5 Michigan before 109,000 people in Ann Arbor, Mich. Presumably Appalachian State will no longer own the surprise factor when it opens this season Saturday at LSU in a matchup of both defending Division I national champions.

The Tigers will be well aware that Appalachian State has won the past three Division I Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) national titles and that the Mountaineers were an overwhelming choice for the No. 1 preseason ranking in their division.

And, after being force-fed tape of the Mountaineers’ 34-32 victory over Michigan, the Tigers will know just how good Appalachian State quarterback Edwards is.

The slippery, slender lefty carved up Michigan’s vaunted defense, supplying the perfect example of how the spread offense can be the great equalizer if the right player is running the show. The drive he led in the final 1:11 that ended with the winning field goal was classic stuff.

That was not even his best game. In the national semifinals against Richmond, Edwards rushed for 313 yards and four touchdowns and completed 14 of 16 passes for 192 yards and three scores. (Richmond, by the way, had a better team last year than it did in 2006 when it shut out Duke.)

So why is Edwards playing for Appalachian State and not a team like, say, LSU, which is unclear about its quarterback situation with two and possibly three quarterbacks expected to play Saturday while Les Miles tries to settle on a No. 1 quarterback?

Three reasons. First, Edwards weighs only about 175 pounds (listed at 180).

Second, Edwards played wide receiver in high school until midway through his junior year. Finally, when schools like Clemson, Vanderbilt and Memphis finally caught on and offered him scholarships late in the recruiting process, Edwards opted to honor his previous verbal commitment to Appalachian State.

Besides the Mountaineers’ quarterback advantage, there could be one other factor: Hurricane Gustav. On Wednesday, it was decided Gustav probably would be far enough away to allow the game to be played, but you wonder whether it will have some effect from afar.

Idle thoughts
– It’s too bad Saturday’s game between Hawaii and Florida was not scheduled for last season, when QBs Colt Brennan and Tim Tebow could have gone head to head.

– It will be interesting to see how the Michigan crowd reacts if it loses its home opener again, this time to Utah, which, on paper, looks better than the Wolverines.

– Since it’s the opening weekend, you can count on an inordinate number of blocked punts, blocked field goals and other game-turning mistakes that won’t occur later in the season.

– There’s a pretty good chance some Division I Championship Subdivision team will knock off a Division I Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) team this weekend, since there are 32 such matchups, including 10 involving ranked teams. Those matchups show how hard it is for teams to line up a 12th game.

– Rumor has it that West Virginia’s offense is significantly different from the one installed by Rich Rodriguez, and the Mountaineers will put it on display against Villanova

Top TV Games Saturday
No. 17 Virginia Tech (0-0) at East Carolina (0-0): 9 a.m., ESPN - The Pirates are picked to win their division of Conference-USA, and Tech might rue its decision to redshirt QB Tyrod Taylor if starter Sean Glennon falters.

No. 3 USC (0-0) at Virginia (0-0): 12:30 p.m., Channel: 7 Channel: 10 - Going across the country to play an opener, especially when the quarterback (Mark Sanchez) has missed much of the preseason with a dislocated knee, is not that easy.

Appalachian State (0-0) at No. 7 LSU (0-0): 2 p.m., ESPN - Harvard transfer Andrew Hatch probably will start at QB for the defending national champion Tigers, but redshirt freshman Jarrett Lee might play just as much.

No. 20 Illinois (0-0) vs. No. 6 Missouri (0-0) at St. Louis: 5:30 p.m., ESPN - Two exciting, play-making QBs - the Illini’s Juice Williams and Missouri’s Chase Daniel - face off in one of two games this weekend matching ranked teams (Clemson-Alabama is the other).

Washington (0-0) at No. 21 Oregon (0-0): 7 p.m., Comcast Sports Net Bay Area Plus - How much can Huskies do-it-all QB Jake Locker do against the Ducks’ tough fans and tough defense?

David Duchovny, who plays a sex-obsessed character on Showtime’s “Californication,” has entered a rehabilitation facility for sex addiction.

The 48-year-old actor said he did so voluntarily, in a statement released Thursday by his lawyer, Stanton Stein. He added: “I ask for respect and privacy for my wife and children as we deal with this situation as a family.”

Duchovny’s publicist, Flo Grace, confirmed the report, which first appeared on the Web site People.com. She and Stein both declined further comment.

“All of us at Showtime wish David and his family the best during this very private time,” the network said in a statement.

The second season of “Californication” begins Sept. 28.

Duchovny starred as the conspiracy-minded Fox Mulder on “The X-Files” TV series and in two films. “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” opened in theaters earlier this summer.

He and his wife, actress Tea Leoni, have two children. The couple married in 1997.

Stocks nudged higher Wednesday but investors’ elation was tempered by a solid rise in oil prices as Tropical Storm Gustav churned toward the Gulf of Mexico.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose for a second straight day, ending 89.64 points higher, up 0.8%, at 11502.51, down 13.3% on the year. The S&P 500 gained 0.8% to end at 1281.66%, boosted by a 1.6% gain in its energy sector. On the year, the S&P has fallen 12.7%.

Crude futures climbed $1.88, or 1.6%, to $118.15 a barrel in New York on fears of storm damage to offshore facilities and in the wake of fresh inventory data showing thinner U.S. energy stockpiles than expected. Oil is now on a three-day winning streak during which it has risen 3%.

Some traders are skeptical that the commodity, which remains down 19% from its early-July record, has much to sustain a longer rally. A weakening global economy seems likely to dampen demand for months to come. Nevertheless, veteran traders warned that the short-term outlook for oil supply – and for communities in the major U.S. oil-producing region – remains dire for now.

“If things pan out as they’re forecasting right now, the move we’re seeing in prices could actually be too mild,” said Tom Bentz, an energy broker and analyst with BNP Paribas in New York.

Gustav, currently a tropical storm, was recently making its way through the Caribbean, still a long way from the U.S. Gulf Coast, home to a quarter of U.S. crude production. But the National Hurricane Center expects that Gustav will intensify to a Category 3 hurricane and make its way toward landfall around Louisiana and Mississippi over the next few days.

Those characteristics drew early comparisons to Hurricane Katrina and other storms that devastated the southeastern U.S. in 2005.

Ken Reeves, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, a private forecasting firm in State College, Penn., cautioned that the storm could still swing in a wide swath before it makes landfall, with touchdown possible anywhere from northeastern Mexico to the Alabama coast. But he says the most likely path, for now, seems to be toward oil-producing territory in the southeastern U.S.

“It certainly seems like Gustav is due to strengthen as it passes over the gulf,” where warm waters tend to fuel greater wind and rain, Mr. Reeves said. “Someone is going to get affected by a pretty sizeable storm.”

Airline shares were hurt by the uptick in oil prices. United Airlines parent UAL tumbled 11.4% and Delta Air Lines fell 7.8%. American Airlines parent AMR dipped 2.7% after analysts at Citigroup recommended investors sell the shares.

But stocks broadly were stronger. Bank stocks advanced; Dow components Bank of America, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase all rose; regional lenders such as SunTrust Banks, which gained 2.2%, were also stronger. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rallied, helped by S&P’s move to affirm the top-notch rating on the two lenders’ senior unsecured debt. Fannie shares were up 15.3%, while Freddie gained 20%.

Technology and small-cap shares also were gaining ground. The Nasdaq Composite Index finished up 0.9% at 2382.46, down 10.2% this year. The small-stock Russell 2000 gained 1.3% to end at 732.95, down 4.3% on the year.

Economic news Wednesday was generally upbeat, which helped boost stocks. Orders for durable goods increased 1.3% last month to a seasonally adjusted $219.26 billion, the Commerce Department said. Some of the jump was due to stronger demand for aircraft, but even excluding transportation sector bookings, all other orders rose 0.7%.

“It’s hard to underestimate the importance of these numbers,” said Cantor Fitzgerald strategist Marc Pado. “We could be setting up here for a stronger fourth quarter than everyone expected in the stock market,” if economic data continue to improve and oil prices remain in check.

The dollar was mixed. The euro rose to $1.4710 compared to $1.4645 late Tuesday. Against the Japanese currency, the dollar rose to 109.65 yen from 109.64 yen.

Treasury prices were also mixed. The two-year note rose 2/32 to yield 2.303%. The 10-year note was unchanged, yielding 3.776%. The 30-year bond fell 1/32 to yield 4.393%.

Everyone knows that airlines make it difficult to redeem frequent-flier miles for free travel. Yet you may not know that they’re making it expensive, too.

As of October 1, American Airlines will charge customers a fee of at least $50 to use their miles to buy a one-way upgrade on many types of tickets. (AA didn’t charge a fee before.) US Airways has chosen to charge a $25 quick-ticketing fee to customers who redeem their frequent-flier miles for travel within 14 days of their departure. Delta isn’t charging a fee, but it is watering down the value of its miles by raising the minimum number of miles you need to earn to redeem for many types of tickets.

In light of these changes, are credit cards that promise free flights worth it?

Fortunately, long-time personal finance writer Ron Lieber has come up with five quick questions to help you figure out the answer:

Do you pay off your balance each month?

If so, then a rewards card might be good for you. If you don’t, you should cancel your rewards card because it probably charges a high annual fee and a high interest rate. (To find a low rate alternative, visit bankrate.com or kiplinger.com.)

Are your kids in school?

“If they are, you’ll be fighting everyone else who wants to travel at the same time,” says Lieber. “The airlines, knowing your desperation to get out of town, may make fewer free seats available during school vacations, since the airline will probably sell all the seats on those flights anyway.”

Do you have elite status?

If yes, you should probably keep your rewards card. The major airlines, such as American and United, make it easier for passengers with elite status to redeem miles, boosting the value of the miles you earn on your card.

Do you own your own business?

If so, you can probably charge up a lot on your credit card. Once you start charging more than $100,000 a year, you’ll be earning enough miles to earn premium-class tickets. The airlines make sure that “miles are worth a lot more if you redeem them for this sort of travel” because they want to retain the loyalty of big spending customers.

Do you value upgrades?

“It can be easier to get upgrades from coach using miles than it is to book free seats.” So if upgrades matter to you, then a rewards card may be the best value way to get upgrades. But watch out for those increasing redemption fees!