Recently in Personal Category

I'm pleased to report that many PBS stations will be begin to air all three hours of WALKING THE BIBLE with BRUCE FEILER this week. Check local listings. There's little uniformity on PBS stations, but I know that the show will air in New York and Seattle on Thursday nights at 8; in Boston on Friday nights at 10; in San Francisco this Thursday from 8 - 11; in Washington Christmas Eve from 9 to midnight. Many stations will air only on their HD channels.

Here is a compendium of previews that someone uploaded onto YouTube. If it's not being broadcast in your community, you can purchase the DVD at PBS or Amazon.com.

If you're a woman of a certain age, better think twice before you down that sweet potato souffle on Thanksgiving! Or, for others I know: Better have seconds!

Check out the last line of this amazing article about the Ultimate Twin City, Igbo-Ora, Nigeria, the self-proclaimed "Land of Twins."

There is hardly a family here without a set of twins," said community leader Olayide Akinyemi, a 71-year-old father of 12, as he settled a dispute between two neighbours.

"My father had 10 sets, while I had three sets. But only one set, a male and a female, survived," he said.

The town's high incidence of twins has baffled fertility experts -- underscoring a more regional twin trend and an array of elaborate African rituals around them.

The rate of identical twins is pretty steady throughout the world at about 0.5 percent of all births, according to a 1995 study by Belgian researcher Fernand Leroy, who has worked extensively on twins.

But West Africa bucks that trend, particularly with a much higher incidence of fraternal, or non-identical twins than in Europe or Japan. That is especially true, experts say, amongst Nigeria's Yoruba community which is largely concentrated in the southwestern part of the country where Igbo-Ora is located.

Overall, almost 5 percent of all Yoruba births produce twins, the Belgian study said, compared with just around 1.2 percent for Western Europe and 0.8 percent for Japan -- although fertility drugs in the developed world are changing those figures.

Yam consumption may be one explanation for Africa's largesse, some West Africans and Western experts believe. Yams contain a natural hormone phytoestrogen which may stimulate the ovaries to produce an egg from each side.

On my flight to Greece, I read the most extraordinary article in the WSJ about a man now becoming justly popular on the Internet: Randy Pausch. At 46 years old, he's dying of cancer and his farewell speech to his students is becoming must viewing.

Clicking through photos of himself as a boy, he talked about his childhood dreams: to win giant stuffed animals at carnivals, to walk in zero gravity, to design Disney rides, to write a World Book entry. By adulthood, he had achieved each goal. As proof, he had students carry out all the huge stuffed animals he'd won in his life, which he gave to audience members. After all, he doesn't need them anymore.

He paid tribute to his techie background. "I've experienced a deathbed conversion," he said, smiling. "I just bought a Macintosh." Flashing his rejection letters on the screen, he talked about setbacks in his career, repeating: "Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things." He encouraged us to be patient with others. "Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you." After showing photos of his childhood bedroom, decorated with mathematical notations he'd drawn on the walls, he said: "If your kids want to paint their bedrooms, as a favor to me, let 'em do it."

While displaying photos of his bosses and students over the years, he said that helping others fulfill their dreams is even more fun than achieving your own. He talked of requiring his students to create videogames without sex and violence. "You'd be surprised how many 19-year-old boys run out of ideas when you take those possibilities away," he said, but they all rose to the challenge.

He also saluted his parents, who let him make his childhood bedroom his domain, even if his wall etchings hurt the home's resale value. He knew his mom was proud of him when he got his Ph.D, he said, despite how she'd introduce him: "This is my son. He's a doctor, but not the kind who helps people."

He then spoke about his legacy. Considered one of the nation's foremost teachers of videogame and virtual-reality technology, he helped develop "Alice," a Carnegie Mellon software project that allows people to easily create 3-D animations. It had one million downloads in the past year, and usage is expected to soar.

"Like Moses, I get to see the Promised Land, but I don't get to step foot in it," Dr. Pausch said. "That's OK. I will live on in Alice."

Dear Bruce,

After reading your most recent books, I just had to write to you with thanks for providing me with insight and inspiration.

I am in the final weeks of my life, passing away from a very aggressive cancer. I am 46 years old, with a wife and two children; and have fought this cancer for over one year. But unfortunately this type of cancer is not easy to defeat. Recently a young man, who had published a blog, has died from a very similar cancer type; Miles Levin. This was covered on CNN, and lead many of us to read his messages and receive inspiration and comfort from his experience and evolving outlook as he passed through the process.

Please know that your gift of writing, and sharing through these books, has greatly helping me through this difficult process. I have been writing my blog since receiving a diagnosis of lung metastasis in May of this year. The blog address is:

http://brentjourney.blogspot.com/

Thank you so much.

Brent Zehr

Time for a confession. Careful readers will notice a line in WHERE GOD WAS BORN about my anxiety about leaving my new wife and traveling to Iraq in the middle of the war to visit biblical sites and continue the journey of WALKING THE BIBLE. At one point I report that a friend and former spy called to say the risks simply weren't worth it. Who was this mystery man?

Well, today he outed himself in the NYT. The occasion was an Oped about the silliness of what the CIA classifies and doesn't classify. Check out the tag line for his new book at the end. It gave me chills!

How can information that’s a five-minute Google search away be classified? It’s simple. Classified information is not the same thing as secret information.

When I worked in the C.I.A.’s directorate of operations (now called the national clandestine service) in the early ’90s, we were told that information was classified when it involved sources or methods. It seemed logical that sources were classified. These were actual agents who would be put in jeopardy if their identities were revealed.

But practically everything the C.I.A. does could be considered a “method,” so the C.I.A. can decide that almost anything relating to its work is classified. You’d probably want this latitude if you were running an intelligence agency. But one of its unfortunate byproducts is that no one, inside or outside the intelligence community, really knows what classified information is.

Because so many things at the C.I.A. are classified, only a small percentage of them are actually secrets. Take agency cover arrangements. I cannot write about them in this article in any detail. If I point out that agency officers are often under cover as XXXXXXXXXX, the C.I.A. will make me take it out before publishing this article. (Before I submitted this article to the C.I.A.’s publications review board, I blacked it out myself to save the reviewers the trouble.)

My older brother's name is Andrew. My little sister's name is Cari. My name, of course, is Bruce. Do a little figuring, and you can see that our names are alphabetical. It was accidental, having more to do with when various relatives passed and when they needed to be honored, but the joke around our house growing up was: "They named us like hurricanes."

Well, it was hurricane season in Canada over the weekend with the rare set of identical quads. And, wisely, they named them in alphabetical order. At least the names don't rhyme!

Karen, a slight 35-year-old woman with dark hair, was carrying a rare set of naturally-conceived quadruplets, a one-in-13-million event.

"They asked me over and over again, 'Are you using fertility drugs?'" she says. "When they finally told us quadruplets, we were stunned."

Some seven months later - at their first public appearance since the birth of their four daughters - the couple says they're still overwhelmed by their new role as parents to quadruplets. And they're surprised by all the attention being lavished on their family.

The Aug. 12 birth of Autumn, Brooke, Calissa and Dahlia Jepp has captured international headlines.

"We told the girls, 'The whole world is abuzz over you,'" J.P., 37, told a press conference in Calgary on Tuesday.

Physicians say the babies, who were born at 31 weeks, are doing well, although they must remain in hospital for several weeks while they gain weight. Their weights at birth ranged between two pounds six ounces and two pounds 15 ounces.