Using MINE in R

I have been trying to use the "MINE" Java/R code found on 
www.exploredata.net with the data from "indexes", only to run into the 
problem of R shutting down.  Same thing happens when trying to use the 
sample data downloaded from that site using as a guide the function 
calls provided there.

It turns out that - at least in my case - the Java code doesn't like 
alphabetical characters (e.g. a-z,A-Z,dashes, probably other non-numeric 
related characters) in the data.  So, for example, if you export the 
indexes data as a CSV file, the first column might be "Dates" and take 
the form 1980-01-01.  If, instead, that column is deleted from the 
resulting file, then the code runs.

FWIW ...

Matt
(Vista, Ubuntu Linux, Java v1.6)