Godcasting

An article in the Times describes the rise in Christian religious podcasting - sermons on demand, exegesis by RSS - known by some, inevitably, as "godcasting."

Coffee Health-Giving

Coffee might soon be considered a health drink following a study showing it is a surprisingly rich source of anti-cancer agents.
A study has found that coffee contributes more antioxidants - which have been linked with fighting heart disease and cancer - to the diet than cranberries, apples or tomatoes. Independent Online Edition > More.....

Polygon Family

Polygon Family: After a late night of drinking a husband and wife settle their differences video game style.

Katrina and the Waves

Hurricane Katrina is sure to leave behind higher gasoline prices, strain the homebuilding sector and stretch insurers.
Crude oil prices leapt above $70 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Monday as trading started, driven up by Katrina fears. Prices retreated to close slightly above $67 after it appeared that Katrina's wallop, while devastating, wasn't the feared knockout. More...

Tara Blaise

Tara Blaise grew up in the rambling hills near Aughrim, County Wicklow, Ireland. She says, "We lived quite remotely and had plenty of space. My siblings and I were always dressing up, making bands, singing and putting on plays for our parents."

At 16 she went professional as a singer and has been involved in several projects since – backing singer with The Wilde Oscars, KayDee, guest vocalist on John Hughes album – the latter was so impressed he signed her to his own label. John Hughes is also The Corrs manager and sent Tara to LA to work with producer Olle Romo (Eurythmics, Bryan Adams, Shania Twain, The Corrs).

The album ‘Dancing On Tables Barefoot’ was completed at the end of 2004, and straight away BBC Radio 2 playlisted ‘Fool For Love’. First exposed live on radio with just a cellist and acoustic guitar, Tara has quickly concentrated her energies on performing, and was able to debut a full rock lineup at the legendary Isle Of Wight festival in June.
Meanwhile the second single ‘Paperback Cliché’ was again playlisted on Radio 2 in the UK, but was even more of a smash in Ireland, where it has been sitting at No. 2 in the airplay chart, behind U2.
The album ‘Dancing On Tables Barefoot’ is out now and Tara will be performing at V festival, the Secret Garden festival, the Richmond Festival in Yorkshire, and a special show in Sheffield before her own headline show at London’s Bush Hall on 7th September.
New single ‘The Three Degrees’ features a brand-new remix by London production team The Animal Farm, and a promo clip shot at the sunny Isle of Wight Festival and will serve as the soundtrack to Summer 2005.

Ultimate Fighting

"What's real? Is wrestling real? NO. Is boxing real? Not anymore. The Ultimate Fighting is real, and it's coming to ____ tv station..."

myBBC Player: BBC TV channels to be put on net

A BBC spokesman said the corporation was aiming to simulcast a channel permanently but would restrict it to UK viewers only.
'These plans are subject to the approval of the board of governors and the resolution of rights clearance issues on content like music and imported shows,' he said.
As well as the simulcast plan, more shows are set to follow the lead of BBC Three comedy The Mighty Boosh and appear on the internet before TV. "

Kill Whitie Parties

A Brooklyn DJ, Tha Pumpster, has made a name for himself -- both good and bad -- by throwing monthly "Kill Whitey" parties.
Tha Pumpsta, who happens be white, has built a following in the past few years by staging monthly "Kill Whitie" parties in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for large groups of white hipsters. His proclaimed goal, in between spinning booty-bass, Miami-style frenetically danceable hip-hop records that are low on lyrical depth and high on raunchiness, is to "kill the whiteness inside."

What that means, precisely, is debatable, but it has something to do with young white hipsters believing they can shed white privilege by parodying the black hip-hop life. In this way, they hope to escape their uptight conditioning and get in touch with the looser soul within them.


So what's the point of all these white hipster kids trying to imitate black hip-hop?



NASA explores building moon base; Hubble looks for good spots

NASA is studying how to build a moon base where humans can live and work. NASA is using the Hubble telescope to look for locations with a good supply of ilmenite, a mineral containing oxygen, hydrogen and helium. The gases produce air and water and generate electricity when burned. NASA could face a challenge from Dennis Hope, a U.S. entrepreneur who claims ownership of the moon. No government has yet recognized his claim. BBC(8/26)

Greenspan: Economy getting out of kilter

In his sharpest warning to date about rising home prices, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the housing boom represents an economic imbalance. Greenspan, explained economist Sherry Cooper, is saying, "Watch out ... and reduce risk in the management of your money, business, career and balance sheets." See full story.

Will the real housing market please

Greek outrage over drunken Brits

I am shocked and disappointed: Shocked that such smut could be in the news, and disappointed that they didn't include any pictures.

Women have lower IQs than men?

Academics in the U.K. profess to have confirmed what male chauvinists have long claimed: Men are smarter than women. According to a study conducted by Professor Richard Lynn and Dr. Paul Irwing, men not only have larger brains than women, but IQs that are, on average, five points higher. The two men, who analyzed the results of more than 20,000 reasoning tests taken by university students around the world, say their study helps explain why many more men than women have won Nobel Prizes or become chess grandmasters. Said Lynn, "Men have larger brains than women by about 10 percent and larger brains confer greater brain power, so men must necessarily be on average more intelligent than women." Lynn, it should be noted, is a serial offender when it comes to controversy. In 1996, he claimed professional and middle classes are superior to the underclass in terms of intelligence and moral character. And in 1991, he asserted white people are cleverer than black people.

Idiot: Google stole my porn

Apparently Perfect 10's copyright infringement suit against Amazon didn't generate the publicity it had hoped for, because now the skin mag has filed suit against Google as well. On Wednesday, Perfect 10 asked a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to enjoin Google from displaying pictures and links to the company's copyrighted photos. Perfect 10 objects to Google search results displaying thumbnails of its photos, along with the links to third-party sites offering larger versions. The pictures are copyrighted, and nearly all the sites indexed by Google are displaying them without permission. "In some cases, as many as 96% of Google search results on Perfect 10 model names go not to Perfect10.com, but to infringing Google AdSense partners of which Google has received notice," said Dr. Norm Zada, a former IBM computer science research staff member who founded Perfect 10 after stumbling upon his true calling in 1997. "That's not legitimate search."

That's not legitimate search? Please. What about the legitimacy of suing a third party for not enforcing your copyrights? Perfect 10 should be pursuing the Web sites that have allegedly stolen its nudie photos, not the search companies that indexed them. But wait, Zada's not done yet. "Google's extraordinary gain in market cap from nothing a few years ago to close to $80 billion is more due to their massive misappropriation of intellectual property than anything else," says Zada. "Google is currently displaying over 3,000 Perfect 10 copyrighted images and linking them to Web sites containing numerous other Perfect 10 copyrighted images and in many cases ads for which Google earns revenue. Google is no longer a legitimate search engine. It is a commercial advertising operation determined to increase ad revenue regardless of what rights it tramples on in the process." Zada went on to predict a dire future for all copyright content. "If all an infringer needs to avoid liability is to provide some sort of a 'search function,' that will be the end of intellectual property in this country." Unbelievable. I'm sure they won't do this, but if I were Google, I'd remove Perfect 10 from its index entirely and see how Zada feels when his new registrations plunge.

-Good Morning Silicon Valley

The Online Buyer's Guide For Men

Uncrate is a web magazine for guys who love to blow their rent money on gadgets, clothes, cars and other pointless stuff.

Yahoo The Super Network

Wired News describes why Yahoo! Will be the Center of the Million-Channel Universe.

Reason: Who Killed PayPal?s

Radley Balko's Reason for why "Consumer advocates" can make life miserable for consumers:
"PayPal's story is a sad but instructive lesson in how this country treats its entrepreneurs. PayPal is huge and growing. With eBay branding, it now boasts 73 million users, making it by far the largest online payment service. But it's nothing like what it was intended to be: a way for people to protect the money they earn from greedy governments and protect private purchases from the prying eyes of regulators. Greedy governments and prying regulators saw to that. The company sold out to eBay not because eBay beat it in the marketplace, not because eBay offered a better product, and not to reap a financial windfall for PayPal employees. PayPal sold out because, after the beating it took from those claiming to represent the interests of consumers, selling itself was the only way to keep the company alive. Exactly how consumers benefited from that isn't clear. "

Sean Diddy Combs says no to Cristal

SEAN 'DIDDY' COMBS has officially announced he no longer drinks Cristal champagne - because he's fed up with being constantly sent bottles of the expensive beverage.

While the rap mogul has been been very public about his love of the luxury tipple in the past, he insists he's not touched it for several years.

He says, 'I don't drink Cristal anymore. I haven't drank it in four years. You could out that out there so the people stop sending it to me. It's another myth, like the one that I wear white fur coats all day.

'I like authentic smooth Russian vodka and quality tequilas. I'm trying to learn about fine wines. As you get a little more mature, you realise that the wine game is ultra sexy; the wine experience is definitely one of the sexiest experiences going.'

Contactmusic.com

What is capoeira?

So, what’s this martial art taking the world by storm?

The basics: form a circle of 10 or more people, sing in Portuguese and clap to the instruments’ rhythm. Two people in the middle "play the game" by performing kicks, flips and other movements that flow in a type of call- and-response interaction.

This is (pronounced “ka-poo-AIR-ah”), a Brazilian art that fuses dance, sport and martial arts to produce a pantomime of fighting.

Capoeira developed in 19th century Brazil from the practices of African slaves who merged rural dance forms—influenced by religion, rhythms and social dances—and an urban-combat “challenge dancing” that used razor blades and sticks. Urban gangs comprised of freed or escaped slaves, people of mixed race and Portuguese sailors embraced the art.

'One Google under Google

Resistance is futile... Looks like we haven't seen the last of the negative press cycle that began with Google's blacklisting of News.com (see "Google a Googler, pay the price"). Writing in the New York Times today, Gary Rivlin notes a backlash building against the search juggernaut. Google is going corporate, complain some technologists. It's arrogant, say others. Worse, it's hoarding talent. "Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did," LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman told the Times. "It's largely that they're hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they're working on so many different things. It's harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now." And what of Google's "do no evil" mission statement? Well, no one believes that now do they? "In the day, you'd hear that Microsoft was the evil empire, especially in Silicon Valley," said Brian Lent, the president of Medio Systems, a start-up in Seattle working on mobile-phone-based search. "Google is the new evil empire, because they're in such a powerful position in terms of control. They have potential monopolistic control over access to information. I like and respect the Google guys, but let's just say that their ultimate aim seems to me to be, 'One Google under Google, for which it stands.'

Google Finance

Word has it the Google's already hard at work on the next addition to its portal offerings: Google Finance.


Hate Preachers allowed in UK

Hate preachers cannot be deported, from the UK.
Charles Clarke, the UK home secretary, has dropped a proposal to deport foreign extremists simply for expressing views "that conflict with the UK's culture of tolerance".

Mr Clarke on Wednesday published an expanded list of "unacceptable behaviours" for which foreign imams and radicals can be expelled or excluded from Britain, but has responded to concerns that the original proposals put out to consultation two weeks ago were too wide-ranging.

The list includes expressing views that justify, glorify or encourage terrorist violence, seek to provoke terrorist acts, foment other serious criminal activity or foster hatred that could lead to inter-community violence.


This comes at the time when is advocating "unacceptable behaviours".

Want Google Talk? You Need Gmail!

How do you get Google Talk? You have to have a Gmail account. But Gmail remains a closed beta, so how to get in if you're not there already?

Google's established a new program allowing anyone in the US who can receive an SMS message to gain a Gmail account. That pretty much means anyone with a US cell phone (though I'm betting a Canadian number will also work).

Visit this page and instructions on where to send a message to Google are posted. Once you receive your code via SMS, follow these instructions, you can get an account.

Why this runaround? Why not just open things up? Google says it wants to find a way to expand the program but prevent it from being used by those who might set up a ton of accounts for spamming purposes.

"We wanted to expand the list of people who can do it [Gmail], so we're doing these text message signups. But we want to prevent lots of spam. We want to make sure Gmail is not a haven for spammers or a place where you receive spam. So we decided at this point not to go forward with an open strategy but a slightly closed one," Harik said.

By the way, Google does plan to offer SMS messaging for those outside the US to get Gmail accounts, as it sorts out details with various access providers, it said.



Snaps Cup Meme

Luna k's Love Cup Spilleth Over Go on, spread a little kindness... well, some of us could use it.

Who Let The Dogs Out?

There are 490 female students at Timken High School, and 65 are pregnant, according to a recent report in the Canton Repository.
The article reported that some would say that movies, TV, videogames, lazy parents and lax discipline may all be to blame.

The Fool's Guide to God's Assassin

CNN.com Quote
I think you to need to understand the context.

I think what he was saying was, we have a looming problem down south, and there are several bad options there. And he's saying maybe the least of the bad options is to do something about the dictator.


The Rev. Ted Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, noting that has a section where he's a political pundit.

Mother of Michael Jackson's accuser charged

LOS ANGELES - The woman whose son accused Michael Jackson of child molestation in a trial that led to Jackson's acquittal was charged with welfare fraud Tuesday in a five-count complaint alleging she collected $18,782 in payments while making false claims she was indigent.
At Jackson's trial, the woman invoked her Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination and refused to testify about the welfare matter.

But Jackson's lawyers presented evidence that she and her family had received a $150,000 settlement in a 2001 lawsuit against a department store at a time when she was claiming to be indigent.

They also showed the woman was receiving money from her boyfriend to pay the rent on her apartment.
The Associated Press is withholding the name of the woman to protect the identity of her son.

The five-count complaint filed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Bureau of Fraud and Corruption Prosecutions alleged that the woman hid from authorities the fact that she had received the settlement and also failed to report the receipt of $637 for payment of her rent in January 2003.

It said the payment occurred in February 2003 but was not discovered until a social services investigator received a tip from a private investigator on Feb. 2, 2005. That was just before the Jackson trial began.

The woman was a key witness for the prosecution against Jackson. Many jurors said her lack of credibility on the witness stand was a major factor in their verdict of not guilty.

Associated Press

Google Talk Beta is Live

It's official!
Google’s latest gee-whiz could be the one that puts it above the crowd. Way above for moment.

Google late Tuesday released a beta of its highly anticipated Google Talk instant messaging client. Much like the search giant's Web site, the software sports a straightforward no-frills user interface free of the clutter and advertising that bog down other IM clients.
Weighing in at only 900kb, is a much smaller download than other popular IM services, including AIM, MSN, and Yahoo. However, for the time being its feature list is quite sparse.

The beta combins IM and VoIP service and right now, at least, it’s ad-free. “They say talk is cheap,” says the company on the launch site. “Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free - anytime, anywhere in the world.”


Pat Robertson is a terrorist

Pat Robertson's recent call to Kill Venezuela's Leader on a christian television channel is very shamefully sinful. Here we have a lopsided moron who claims to be anointed by God to struck down leaders of other countries.

What madness,

Some of Mr. Robertson's allies distanced themselves from his comments. The Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, released a statement saying Mr. Robertson should "immediately apologize, retract his statement and clarify what the Bible and Christianity teaches about the permissibility of taking human life outside of law."

More on ....

Internet Advertiser Wakeup Day Petition

Internet Advertiser Wakeup Day Petition is missing the point of site subscriptions. Demographics are useful for content management. Personalising and targeting information to subscribers enhances site usability.

Really, what harm can a few lines of personal details cause. We willingly provide our personal details to all sorts of organisations, icluding Petitiononline.com. Should we boycott them as well? I don't think so.

Moog Music Keyboard

Robert Moog, the creator of the legendary Moog keyboard, dies .. Bob Moog, R.I.P.

The Aristocrats

By now you have probably already heard about , Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza's huge little movie. (Click here for Google Reviews.) It's a documentary that takes as its subject a single joke, but it's as much a performance film as a documentary, and the joke isn't really a joke at all, though it's very funny, and unexpectedly eminent, having been told from the days of vaudeville right up to the present.

If you're wondering what kind of joke merits such fuss, it goes something like this. A man walks into a talent agent's office and says: 'Boy, do I have a family act for you.' The jaded agent chomps his cigar and growls: 'What have you got?'
The man proceeds to outline an act that involves some combination of bodily fluids, incest, bestiality and sexual practices you didn't even know existed. When he's finished his pitch, the agent gasps: 'God, that's horrible! What do you call an act like that?' With a proud flourish, the man declares: 'The Aristocrats!' Boom boom!

The whole thing about this one joke is not the punchline but who tells it and when. It is dirt funny.

Seroxat Side Effects

or paroxetine hydrochloride (which is sold as Seroxat in the UK) is being blamed for suicides, again.

Previously the Panorama documentary claimed that the drug maker GlaxoSmithKline provides little warning of possible side effects that accompanies the drug .

Seroxat is one of the world's biggest selling and most successful anti-depressants. But there are increasing claims that the drug may have a darker side - people can get hooked on it, suffering serious withdrawal symptoms when they try to come off it. For some it can lead to self harm and even suicide.

One would rather think that chronic depression causes suicidal tendencies. Does the drug make depressed people feel like committing suicide even more or just that the patient is already too depressed to be helped?

Google Tools Out Sidebar

Google launches Desktop toolthat could give significant presence on Windows users' desktops.

"Dubbed , the free programme will sit on a user's desktop pulling news stories, photographs, weather reports, stock quotes and other features onto a user's computer without the need to open a web browser. Google Desktop is also bundled into Sidebar, allowing users to search for files on their desktop directly from the toolbar."

Alan Partridge is Courtney's Love Bird?

Courtney Love is claiming to be pregnant with the baby of British actor Steve Coogan, who's best known for his portrayal of fictional radio loser Alan Partridge.

is now reported to be embarrassed at the affair, which lasted just two weeks. "What does it make me look like that I have slept with Alan Partridge?" she allegedly told a friend. "Given the A-grade stars I've dated it's embarrassing. I mean ... Alan Partridge!"

Yeah, well, Well, they don't call Partridges lovebirds for nothing.

The French Civil War?

"A campaign in France to exterminate frogs may sound like the beginning of a civil war, but these are no ordinary frogs. "

Did you know that French people everywhere in the world are named frogs? It's true! The Archived French Frog Stories provides some anecdotes on this subject.

Be Warned: Mr. Bubble's Worried Again

Robert J. Shiller, a Yale economist is worried about the real estate bubble. He is arguing that the housing craze is another bubble destined to end badly, just as every other real-estate boom on record has.

Cheating just got more romantic

Now adulterers are being encouraged to say it with a card. The new line of Secret Lover Collection has been published by a former advertising executive, named Cathy Gallagher.

When you care enough to risk everything Secret Lover cards can make it an affair to remember.

“The question for me then becomes does the promotion of such a Web site make adultery more acceptable,” said Dr. Trina E. Read, a Canadian sexologist and columnist. “I would guess not because even though a lot of people are doing it, there is still a huge negative societal connotation.”


This is yet another classic example of an attempt to profit from sin.

Music Outfitters

Do you remember the popular music from high school? Here is an online music store that can remind you in case you have forgotten.

In the search box in the upper right hand corner, enter the year you graduated from high school.The first item returned should be the top 100 songs from that year.

Judge Crater - Without a Trace

"Good Time Joe" Crater was a dapper, 41-year-old judge known for his dalliances with showgirls and his ties to corruption-ridden Tammany Hall(search) — until he got into a cab in Midtown Manhattan one evening in 1930 and disappeared, earning the title of "the missingest man in New York."

The case triggered one of the most sensational manhunts of the 20th century — one that had city detectives fielding more than 16,000 tips from around the country and the world, all of them unsubstantiated.

Although he was declared legally dead in 1939, and his case — Missing Persons File No. 13595 — was officially closed in 1979, Crater's vanishing act has continued to intrigue professional and armchair detectives, clairvoyants and mystery buffs around the globe.

"Pulling a Crater" became slang for vanishing without a trace. But perhaps now, a trace will be found.

Sources told The Post that the NYPD Cold Case Squad is investigating information provided by Stella Ferrucci-Good of Bellerose, Queens, who died on April 2, leaving behind what may be a key to the mystery.

Roberts's Rules of Decorum

Researchers found several memos from the summer and fall of 1984 in which Supreme Court nominee ,working as a Reagan White House lawyer, advised against sending thank-you notes to .

Roberts's Rules of Decorum specified that there should be no hobnobbing with celebs. On April 30, 1984, Roberts wrote to oppose a presidential award that was to have been given to Jackson for his efforts against drunk driving.

Roberts wrote:
'If one wants the youth of America and the world sashaying around in garish sequined costumes, hair dripping with pomade, body shot full of female hormones to prevent voice change, mono-gloved, well, then, I suppose 'Michael,' as he is affectionately known in the trade, is in fact a good example. Quite apart from the problem of appearing to endorse Jackson's androgynous life style, a Presidential award would be perceived as a shallow effort by the President to share in the constant publicity surrounding Jackson. . . . The whole episode would, in my view, be demeaning to the President.'


Roberts objections to celebrity extended far beyond Jackson. He was concerned about the presidential awards to celebrities being perceived as a shallow effort by the president to exploit the constant publicity surrounding celebs. He complained that:
......once you do one it becomes impossible to turn down countless others. I know there's only one John Wayne -- but there's only one Bob Hope, James Bond, Bing Crosby, etc. etc. etc.


Only one James Bond?

Blogging Improves Brain

What effect is all this blogging having on the brains of bloggers? Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide at Eide Neurolearning have a brilliant answer.

It looks as if blogging will be very good for our brains.


Blogger sells Site

A blogger auctions his blog for $2,000. What would bigger blogs fetch?

Corporate Psychopaths

Is Your Boss a Psychopath?:
Odds are you've run across one of these characters in your career. They're glib, charming, manipulative, deceitful, ruthless -- and very, very destructive. And there may be lots of them in offices.
Psychopaths have a profound lack of empathy. They use other people callously and remorselessly for their own ends. They seduce victims with a hypnotic charm that masks their true nature as pathological liars, master con artists, and heartless manipulators. Easily bored, they crave constant stimulation, so they seek thrills from real-life "games" they can win -- and take pleasure from their power over other people.


Computer characters mugged in virtual crime spree

The line between virtual and real crime has disappeared

A man has been arrested in Japan on suspicion carrying out a virtual mugging spree by using software 'bots' to beat up and rob characters in the online computer game Lineage II. The stolen virtual possessions were then exchanged for real cash.
The Chinese exchange student was arrested by police in Kagawa prefecture, southern Japan, the New Scientist reports.


Wherever there is money, there is vice.

Cindy Sheehan under Fire

The father of a fallen soldier who was killed in a truck accident on a road Irag has denounced .

He says,
"....I abhor all that she represents and those who would cast her as the symbol for parents of our fallen soldiers."


What emerges from others' conversations is an empathy for Mrs. Sheehan's suffering but a fundamental disagreement with her politics.

The Vioxx Verdict

David Graham, who works in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, has come to more represent the big questions about drug safety that emerged following the withdrawal of .

"If the judgment is that there's blood on Merck's (nyse: MRK - news - people ) hands," Graham says, "there's blood on the FDA's hands as well."

"Today Merck was on trial, and a judgment was rendered," he added. "But when will the public hold the FDA accountable for its role, its complicity, in this catastrophe?"

Graham has estimated that Vioxx killed some 60,000 patients--as many people, he points out, as died in the Vietnam War. He says that fundamental problems at the FDA led to those deaths. "People should turn to Congress and demand a drug safety system that is free from corporate influence--and a distinct center for drug safety."

In Graham's eyes, the problem at the FDA is that the same scientists who approve drugs are the ones charged with deciding whether or not they are safe enough to remain on the market when problems crop up. "There is no feedback or review process to say, 'You guys have made a big mistake,' " he says. When problems are recognized by drug safety officers, it can be hard for the message to take hold.

Graham says that he thinks there should be formal, periodic reviews of the safety of new medicines--and that the FDA should release documents that explain its reasoning.

"The FDA does not think anything it did is a mistake," he says. "None of its decisions are evidence-based."



Snoop Youth Football League

DIAMOND BAR, Calif. - Snoop Dogg's new youth football league is a hot item in Southern California.

Two years ago, Snoop began coaching his son's team in the Orange County Junior All-American Football Conference, luring children from other squads with his star power. Players watched game video inside a school bus equipped with DVD players, TV screens and a booming sound system.

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The rapper and sometime actor also made personal phone calls to draw in top talent, and last year his Rowland Raiders went undefeated en route to a league championship. They also went on to win the "Snooperbowl," held a day before the Super Bowl, and took home custom-made trophies donated by Tiffany & Co. for their effort.

Snoop, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, is taking things to the next level this year, creating his own Southern California league. He lowered fees for joining a team from $175 or more to $100, which covers the cost of cleats and pads. He also loosened residency requirements.

Children and some coaches have flocked to the eight-chapter Snoop Youth Football League, leaving supporters of old leagues dejected and wondering whether they were used.

"I'm mad at Coach Snoop," said 10-year-old Xavier Bernal, a player for the Rowland Raiders. "He was so cool; he told me to play my heart out and to play everything I've got. But now I just want to ask him, why did he take all our players?"

Nevertheless, a movie documenting the effort, and titled "Coach Snoop," is reported to be in the works.

"It's so easy for a kid to join a gang, to do drugs," Snoop said. "We should make it that easy to be involved in football and academics."

Associated Press

Piracy and Organized Crime Link Myth

"The markup for a kilo of heroin is 200 percent. The markup for pirated CDs and DVDs is 800 percent."

-- Warner Music spokesman Craig Hoffmana raises the specter of mob flunkies peddling hot tunes to music junkies.


Four Brothers

took the top spot at the weekend box office.

'Four Brothers,' directed by Singleton and distributed by Paramount, stars Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin (Andre 3000 of OutKast) and Garrett Hedlund as adopted siblings reunited in grief and anger after their mother is slain.

Read the Google Reviews

Google and the Power of Myth

What if Google hadn't happened? Would the world be much different? One year after the highest profile tech IPO since Netscape hit the market in 1995, the stock remains one of the most closely watched in the tech sector. It's attracted $80 billion from investors lured by the company's promise to organize the world's information. That in turn has generated countless hours of debate on the stock's proper value.
Go to Article

Rapper Eminem in rehab

Rapper Eminem is getting hospital treatment for addiction to sleeping medication, it is revealed.

Jean Charles de Menezes' family call for justice

The family of the Brazilian man shot dead by police call for the Met chief to quit and officers to be prosecuted.

Jean Charles de Menezes was mistakenly shot as a suspected suicide bomber on 22 July.

Market Economy and Democracy

The International Herald Tribune has an indepth article, An open economy, a closed society, that shreds the of myth of the market economy bringing democracy.

Conventional wisdom says that free market economies inevitably bring democracy in their wake. The International Herald-Tribune article says this is a myth.
"that market liberalization is the most reliable path to democracy. Economic openness, it was reasoned, leads to the emergence of an educated and entrepreneurial middle class that over time, will start to demand more and more control over its own fate. But something went wrong in China, Russia and other states where authoritarian regimes loosened the economic reins. Economic growth arrived but liberal democracy is still nowhere is sight. The reason is simple but disturbing: A new and more sophisticated breed of autocrat has discovered a strategy that permits them to enjoy the benefits of economic growth while postponing - often for decades - the emergence of authentic competitive democracy.

"To understand how this strategy works, it helps first to understand how political competition emerges in the first place. To effectively pursue political power, citizens have to engage in "strategic coordination": activities such as disseminating information, recruiting and organizing party members, selecting leaders, raising funds and holding meetings and demonstrations. Economic growth has traditionally been thought to promote democratization by making strategic coordination easier, as communications technology improves, news media become more diverse and the citizenry more educated.

"But in recent years some savvy regimes have learned how to cut the cord between growth and strategic coordination, allowing the former without having to worry about the latter. Their trick is to ration carefully the subset of public goods that facilitate political coordination, while investing in others that are essential to economic growth. The "coordination goods" that they need to worry about consist of things such as political and civil rights, press freedom and access to higher education. "Standard public goods" include public transportation, primary and secondary education, and public health; all of which contribute to economic growth and pose relatively little threat to the regime.

"Examples abound of how autocrats limit coordination goods. Consider China's long history of restricting access to the Internet and other media. Or Russia, where President Vladimir Putin has placed all national television networks under strict state control and eliminated elections for regional leaders. Or Venezuela, where last year President Hugo Chávez pushed through a law allowing him to ban news reports of violent protests and to suspend the broadcasting licenses of media outlets that violate any of a long list of broadly phrased regulations.

"How well does this coordination suppression strategy work? We recently examined the provision of both coordination goods and standard public goods in about 150 countries from 1970 to 1999. Several findings are particularly noteworthy. First, the suppression of coordination goods keeps autocrats in power. An autocrat who both permits freedom of the press and civil liberties reduces the chances that he will survive for another year by about 15 to 20 percent. Second, today's autocrats tend to suppress coordination goods much more consistently than they do other public goods. Some old-fashioned tyrants, especially in Africa, still suppress all public goods. But a growing proportion of the world's authoritarian regimes have adopted a more sophisticated brand of oppression. Third, the greater the suppression of coordination goods in a given country, the greater the lag between the onset of economic growth and the emergence of liberal democracy...."

Mo Mowlam dies

, former Northern Ireland Secretary, dies. She died in a London hospice and had suffered from a brain tumour.

Ms Mowlam was MP for Redcar but was well known for overseeing the negotiations that led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. The FT.com has a fitting Obituary:

Her status and for a time, at least, her personal power stemmed from two things: the bravura with which she embarked upon her first job as a minister even though she had not welcomed the Northern Ireland posting; and the bravery she showed in not allowing the diagnosis of a brain tumour to impede her political drive. She only found out she had cancer at Christmas 1996. Yet she insisted that she was prepared to fight the coming general election and then join Tony Blair's first cabinet.


She will be highly missed.

Bring some 'bling' to your Web site

Panelists at a conference tell merchants how to increase visitor traffic and get maximum search engine exposure.

Is My Child Becoming Homosexual?

Dr. James 'Mullah' Dobson's tips to parents on how to cure potential homosexuality in their kids is causing a lot of glee among bloggers. Helping Boys Become Men, and Girls Become Women: Is My Child Becoming Homosexual?

Researchers Aim To Grow Meat In Test Tube

Researchers Aim To Grow Meat In Test Tube:

Researchers in the U.S. say the technology now exists now to produce processed meats such as burgers and sausages, starting with cells taken from cows, chickens, pigs, fish or other animals.

As is always the case with technology some people are not convinced.

'I don't like eating a cow that's been pumped full of growth hormones that artificially grow it so it gets onto our plates quicker,' a diner said. ' I would feel the same about a lump of meat that had been pumped full of chemicals and that had been artificially modified.'

Erotic images can turn you blind

The New Scientist reports:
"Researchers have finally found evidence for what good Catholic boys have known all along - erotic images make you go blind. The effect is temporary and lasts just a moment, but the research has added to road-safety campaigners' calls to ban sexy billboard-advertising near busy roads, in the hope of preventing accidents."

Artiful Begging

The IFOC News:
"For what you are about to receive,' said newly-appointed US Ambassador John Bolton. 'May the Lord make you truly thankful.


I just hope that IFOC News is satire. For the the life of me I cannot fathom the psyche of people who cherish others' misfortune. Then again, not all everyone is blessed with a sound heart.

Should Africa Build Nukes?

No!!!
This idiot thinks so.

Mugabe's Philosophy

Question: "Mr President, now that you have destroyed our houses, where should we go?

Answer: "But when you shouted "MUGABE MUST GO" did you tell me where I should go"

March of the Penguins

Coming from a French director, Luc Jacquet, the miraculous March of the Penguins would have to be a love story. And it is, in that it follows the mating rituals of the emperor penguin, one of the most resilient animals on earth.

Every year hordes of emperor penquins march miles across the frozen wasteland of Anarctica to ensure the next generation of their kind. The ritual is held far from the coast, where penquins eat small fish to survive. The male and female penquins take turns sheltering their eggs from the bitter cold while one of them goes to get food, for themselves and for their offspring. The penquin on guard will go for months without food. Battling hunger, aerial and aquatic predators, and nature itself, the penquins try to beat the odds and raise their newborns.

This movie gives a whole new meaning to working to survive.

'Ugliest' Dog Is a Thing of Beauty to His Owner

Meet Sam, the world's ugliest dog. Some people won't even touch Susie Lockheed's pooch, a champion of hideousness. But she's dedicated to him despite the world's opinion."

roger ebert most hated

The worst movies that Roger Ebert has ever seen.

I have different sentiments about Flashdance. The movie was released when I was dating while at university. My girlfriend at the time was completely bowled over by Flashdance. Her ability to take off her bra without removing her sweatshirt impressed me.

Google Broadband

Google as your broadband provider? Om Malik's latest Business 2.0 column discusses the possibility of Google offering free, ad-supported, WiFi around the country.

Cindy Sheehan Declares War on Bush

DRUDGE REPORT about the Anti-war protestor , whose soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq. She is calling for Bush's 'impeachment,' and for Israel to get out of Palestine.

'You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism,' Sheehan declares.

And she goes on to add,"And now I'm going to use another 'I' word - impeachment - because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail."


This may be a tough call on political terms. The "war against terror" is based on the belief that the root cause of terrorism anywhere and everywhere was, quite simply, the will to do evil. Period; end of discussion.

Others believe that the 'root cause' of terrorism is poverty or political oppression; or where Israel and the Palestinians are concerned, the 'occupation.'

Perhaps Cindy Sheehan should form an alliance with Brian Haw, the permanent peace protestor of Parliament, Square, London. It's been 1536 days since the start of Brian's protest on 2 June 2001.

Walken 2008

"Easy, guys.. I put my pants on just like the rest of you - one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make gold records." .. Christopher Walken for President!? .. Less scary than Cheney

We Are the Web

"The Netscape IPO wasn't really about dot-commerce. At its heart was a new cultural force based on mass collaboration. Blogs, Wikipedia, open source, peer-to-peer - behold the power of the people."

Death in Stockwell: the unanswered questions

He wasn't wearing a heavy jacket. He used his card to get into the station. He didn't vault the barrier. And now police say there are no CCTV pictures to reveal the truth. So why did plainclothes officers shoot young Jean Charles de Menezes seven times in the head, thinking he posed a terror threat? Special report by Tony Thompson, and Tom Phillips in Brazil.

Inside Iran's Secret War for Iraq

A TIME investigation reveals the Tehran regime's strategy to gain influence in Iraq--and why U.S. troops may now face greater dangers as a result.

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo' makes a living cleaning fish tanks and occasionally prostituting himself. How much he charges I'm not sure, but the price is worth it if it keeps him off the streets and out of another movie. 'Deuce Bigalow' is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes.

Rob Schneider is back, playing a male prostitute (or, as the movie reminds us dozens of times, a 'man whore'). He is not a gay hustler, but specializes in pleasuring women, although the movie's closest thing to a sex scene is when he wears diapers on orders from a giantess. Oh, and he goes to dinner with a woman with a laryngectomy, who sprays wine on him through her neck vent.

The plot: Deuce visits his friend T.J. Hicks (Eddie Griffin) in Amsterdam, where T.J. is a pimp specializing in man-whores. Business is bad, because a serial killer is murdering male prostitutes, and so Deuce acts as a decoy to entrap the killer. In his investigation he encounters a woman with a penis for a nose. You don't want to know what happens when she sneezes.


Full review by rogerebert.com

Technorati About to Be Sold

B.L. Ochman's weblog speculates that about to be sold to a large search engine company. The deal should go down in about a week.

Cindy Sheehan's Pitched Battle

Cindy Sheehan's Pitched Battle: "Cindy Sheehan vaulted into national consciousness this month on the power of her story as the grieving mother of a fallen soldier.
But what began as a solitary campaign to force a meeting with President Bush by setting up camp along the road to his ranch has quickly taken on the full trappings of a political campaign. Sheehan is working with a political consultant and a team of public relations professionals, and now she is featured in a television ad."

Technologic Systems TS-7200 SBC uses NetBSD OS to control Toaster

It has long been regarded that the UNIX-like OS NetBSD is portable to every type of machine except perhaps your kitchen toaster. Technologic Systems, however, has conquered this last frontier. Using one of its rugged embedded TS-7200 single-board computers housed inside the empty space of a standard 2 slice toaster, Technologic Systems has designed a functional NetBSD controlled toaster

This toaster features a 4 line LCD, USB keyboard, 10/100 ethernet port and a RS232 serial port for the external console. The toaster's internal circuit boards have been bypassed and routed through the CPU board allowing NetBSD complete control over the toaster's features. A keyboard connects through a USB port on the side of the toaster and the 4x40 LCD displays a NetBSD/toaster login prompt. The burner element is also controlled by the TS-7200 via an internal relay."


-- The whimsical folks at Techologic Systems geek up the most important meal of the day

What Everyone Should Know About Blog Depression,"

a nonist public service pamphlet:
"there is a growing epidemic in the cyberworld. a scourge which causes more suffering with each passing day. as blogging has exploded and, under the stewardship of the veterans, the form has matured more and more bloggers are finding themselves disillusioned, dissatisfied, taking long breaks, and in many cases simply closing up shop. this debilitating scourge ebbs and flows but there is hardly a blogger among us who has not felt it's dark touch. we're speaking, of course, about blog depression. "

Warming hits 'tipping point'

Guardian Unlimited Special reports: "Siberia feels the heat It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting "

Boredom Numbs the Work World

Bartlett had a secretary, staff, an important-sounding job and the paycheck to go with it. But, like many workers, he found himself underemployed and bored out of his mind.

'There is a reason why prison is considered punishment,' Bartlett said, comparing it to his former job. 'You may be in a gilded cage, but if you're just forced to sit there for eight hours all day long, staring at the wall, it can be excruciating.'


Be it at a desk at the Treasury Department, a spot on the factory floor, or a drab blue cubicle, boredom is a condition that can be more stressful and damaging than overwork, according to those who have studied the issue.

Source:Boredom Numbs the Work World:

Farrell gets reprieve in sex tape scandal

A judge has extended a temporary restraining order barring an ex-girlfriend of from marketing a tape of them having sex.

Farrell's lawsuit against says they made the videotape 2 1/2 years ago with the understanding that it would never be made public.

Last month, Superior Court Judge David Yaffe blocked Narain from selling, distributing or displaying the 15-minute tape. On Wednesday, Yaffe extended the order.

The lawsuit by Farrell, 29, accused the 31-year-old woman of working with the owner of an Internet pornography business and contacting the news media about the tape.

Leodis Matthews, a lawyer for Narain, said her client had not attempted to profit from the tape, but wanted to keep her half of the rights to the video.

Farrell's lawsuit said the release of the tape would irreparably harm him and his career.

The actor's screen credits include "Alexander," "S.W.A.T.," "Daredevil" and "The Recruit."

Associated Press

Krumping- Documentary gives 'Rize' to new L.A. dance craze

LOS ANGELES -- Dancers in a new documentary have a lot to say about an inner-city craze called that's transformed their lives, but when asked to describe how it's done, they get tongue-tied.

They call it clowning, stripper dancing, ghetto ballet -- a form of therapy to help them cope with the struggles of growing up in crime-ridden South Los Angeles. But words aren't enough to capture the anguish and exuberance displayed with every rapid bounce or fist punched in the air.

While still mostly unknown beyond the L.A. neighborhoods of Compton, Inglewood, Watts and Long Beach, dancers hope that krumping will become more familiar with the release of ''Rize.'' The documentary by photographer and music video director David LaChapelle explores the phenomenon started by Thomas Johnson, a former drug dealer who turned to religion and clown dancing after the 1992 Rodney King riots.

Nicknamed Tommy the Clown, Johnson would wear clown makeup and a rainbow Afro wig to entertain at children's parties. As part of his act, he would dance a style often seen in hip-hop music videos that blended his spontaneous, goofy version of strip dancing. As demands for his service grew, Johnson hired and trained a group of children to clown dance, too.

''It was fun, and it turned out to be something bigger than what I thought it would be,'' recalled Larry Berry, 21, who started working with Johnson when he was 12. Berry and others who are featured in ''Rize'' say that Johnson's dancing provided an escape from their troubled homes and saved them from the potential pitfalls of growing up in the 'hood, where there were few options beyond playing sports or joining gangs.

LaChapelle discovered the dancers in 2002 while filming a music video for Christina Aguilera's hit song ''Dirrty.'' Brought in as extras, they struck up a spontaneous krump session in a waiting area.

''I was awestruck when I saw it first,'' LaChapelle said. ''I felt I had to do a documentary. I want people who watch the film to feel what I felt when being in a krump session, which is completely inspired.''

''Rize'' is LaChapelle's affectionate portrait of a crew of youngsters who, despite their hardscrabble circumstances, emerge as talented artists determined to shape their own destinies.

''This dance is therapy -- it allows you to free yourself,'' said Marquisa Gardner, 23, known as Ms. Prissy and the First Lady of Krump.

AP

The Style Tramp

"The glamour and grandeur of my buildings and my life are no mere trappings. Beauty and elegance, whether in a woman or a work of art, is not something superficial, not just something pretty to look at. It's a product of style, and it comes from deep inside. No matter how hard you try, you cannot buy style. Whether custom-made or off the shelf, good taste is not for sale. For me, style and success are completely interwoven. I wouldn't want to have one without the other."

-- Donald Trump shows a good grasp of theory, if not practice

The Scary Truth About Pensions

"..there is nothing 'fun' about being poor, especially when you're old."

The Fool's Comment

The Biggest Rip-offs Ever!

Each year, people are swindled out of billions of pounds, not by the various scams, frauds and 'get rich quick' schemes which lure in hapless victims. Nope, The fortune is lost by buying inferior financial and other products. Below, The Fool lists several perfectly legal, everyday products that suck money from your pockets faster than an industrial vacuum cleaner!

Blogroll

You can tell a lot about a person from their blogroll. Interesting analysis.

Googlisation of RSS

At last! Google publishes a release of its Google News Custom RSS/ATOM Feeds.

I think Google is taking on .

Ethnic Naming

Government+accused+of+%91Colonialism%92+over+plans+to+rename+ethnic+minoritiesGovernment accused of Colonialism over plans to rename ethnic minorities

Home Office Minister Hazel Blears is toying with the idea of using US-style ethnic naming. But whilst this may go down well in America, some feel that people should be allowed to construct their own identity....

Click: Black Britain News

Apple Introduces Mighty Mouse

New multi-button mouse features innovative Scroll Ball.

Mighty MouseApple recently announced Mighty Mouse, its next generation mouse with several innovative new features, including a Scroll Ball that lets users scroll in any direction—vertically, horizontally and even diagonally. Mighty Mouse is the first multi-button mouse that retains the simplicity of a single-button mouse, featuring a seamless enclosure with programmable touch sensors that act as primary or secondary buttons.


Ali Baba and the Forty thieves

OK, $1 billion. Now get those 40 thieves out of my boardroom. EBay's efforts to dominate Internet auctions in China may soon sour if rumors flitting about the valley today prove true. Yahoo reportedly is planning to buy a 35 percent stake in Alibaba, China's biggest e-commerce company. People familiar with the negotiations tell Forbes that Yahoo might spend as much as $1 billion on the stake, which would be the largest foreign investment ever made in a Chinese technology company. Alibaba runs three popular online marketplaces in China, among them an auction site, Tao Bao, eBay's Chinese nemesis. A deal like the one described in Forbes would almost immediately position Yahoo as a leader in China's developing e-commerce market and deal a serious blow to eBay's interests there. If the media reports "were to come to fruition, it could be a substantial negative for eBay," Standard & Poor's analyst Scott Kessler told the Mercury News . "China is extremely important to them. Clearly, this is a totally different ballgame if you involve Yahoo."

daniela hantuchova

These are the top 300 queries from the last 48 hours, which
represents the complete queries from the largest Metacrawlers
on the web (Metacrawler/Dogpile etc..) for the last 48 hours.

Every week, I analyse the top queries on search engines, namely
Google, Yahoo, MSN and the rest. Lately, the top search terms became monotonous, until broke the ranks....

Here is the pecking order according to Word tracker


Nos. Count Keyword
===========================================
1 3377 jessica simpson
2 3314 jessica alba
3 2679 music lyrics
4 1955 daniela hantuchova
5 1469 paris hilton
6 1243 playstation 2 cheats
7 1231 xbox cheats
8 1069 jokes
9 1048 googletestad
10 1013 google

Learn more about daniela hantuchova...

How gets in the top 10 is beyond me.

Man's testicles snared in a padlock for two weeks

Portsmouth Herald reports "....police assisted ambulance and rescue personnel with a 39-year-old man with a padlock on his testicles.
According to police, the man, who police are not identifying, was intoxicated when they arrived on scene.
The man reported that the padlock had been on his testicles for two weeks. Cpl. H.D. Wood IV said the man reported that a friend put the lock on his testicles. He was allegedly severely intoxicated and passed out. He told police that when he woke up the padlock "

Top 10 tech we miss

Top 10 tech we miss - CNET.com: "Technology evolves. Good technologies and products usually survive; poor ones usually go extinct. But not all of the technologies and tech products that have swirled down the drain of the tech gene pool deserved their fate. Here are some big, and some small, ideas that we thought we'd have with us forever, but that unfortunately have gone the way of the dodo."

Top 10 dot-com flops

The most astounding thing about the dot-com boom was the obscene amount of money that was spent. Zealous venture capitalists fell over themselves to invest millions in Internet start-ups; dot-coms blew millions on spectacular marketing campaigns; new college graduates became instant millionaires (albeit on paper) and rushed out to spend it; and companies with unproven business models executed massive IPOs with sky-high stock prices. Of course, we all know what eventually happened to this world. Few of these companies actually made enough money to recoup that cash, and when their investors fled to the hills, these start-ups died dramatic deaths. These are the celebrity victims of the new-economy bust; Top 10 dot-com flops

Bin Laden Was There

 The Newsweek article, points out that:

  • American commanders knew that bin laden was at Tora Bora; and
  • the Pentagon nevertheless refused to deploy a cordon of its forces to cut off the escape routes.


This inevitably leads to the conclusion that the whole 'war on terror', an integral part of which would have to have been the capture of bin Laden, is just a sham.

Interview with the AdSense million dollar man

An excellent interview with Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc. Jason's network of blogs is on pace to make a million dollars from AdSense in the next twelve months. The interview is a must-read for any blogger looking to boost their ad revenue.

Bush Remarks Roil Debate on Teaching of Evolution

The Times' Elizabeth Bumiller describes 'Intelligent Design' as a theory which is, "advanced by a group of academics and intellectuals and some biblical creationists."....

There's Always a Way

The Post carries a story on how extensive loopholes in ethics regulations allow lawmakers to "accept almost anything" from lobbyists.

Pressure getting to Novak? ...

CNN contributor and syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak stormed off CNN's set after using vulgar language during a live discussion with CNN contributor James Carville on the "Strategy Session" segment of the August 4 edition of CNN's Inside Politics.

The video of the incident at Media Matters.

The Rise of the Digital Thugs

The New York Times is running an article about the rise of the digital thugs. Using unsecured wireless networks, free e-mail accounts, a wealth of security knowledge, and, most important - employee passwords, thieves are getting access to valuable company databases. Once they're in, they start extorting the companies to pay up for them to leave. Otherwise phony e-mails to customers and sensitive information published publicly will lead to an embarrassment.

France sentences sex ring members

Here is a distressing example of the breakdown of moral and social values.

Thoughts read' via brain scans

A team at University College London found with fMRI they could tell what a person was thinking deep down even when the individual was unaware themselves.

ABC News anchor Peter Jennings dies

Associated Press Report: "Peter Jennings, the suave, Canadian-born broadcaster who delivered the news to Americans each night in five separate decades, died Sunday. He was 67.
, who announced in April that he had lung cancer, died at his New York home, ABC News President David Westin said late Sunday."

Robin Cook dies

Former foreign secretary has died after collapsing on a mountain in Scotland.

Mr Cook, 59, was with his second wife Gaynor on Ben Stack in Sutherland when he was taken ill, Northern Constabulary said.



The Livingston MP, who lived in Edinburgh, was near the summit of the 2,365ft mountain. He was airlifted by a Coastguard helicopter to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, where he died. Watch the channel4.com News special report.

Liberties sues New York City over subway searches

The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed suit against the city to keep police from searching the bags of passengers entering the subway, organization lawyers said.

The suit, which filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, will claimed that the two-week old policy violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and prohibitions against unlawful searches and seizures, while doing almost nothing to shield the city from terrorism.

It argues that the measure also allows the possibility for racial profiling, even though officers are ordered to randomly screen passengers. More

Bloggers Cautioned About Being Copy Cats

Bloggers, because they probably don't have legal counsel and often operate on their own, are more likely to copy more than probably is permitted,

says Thomas Smart, who is co-chair of the intellectual property and patent litigation group at Kaye Scholer.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Italian river 'full of cocaine'

According to this BBC NEWS report scientists have found large quantities of a cocaine by-product in a river in northern Italy - suggesting consumption is much higher than previously thought.

The River Po was found to be carrying the equivalent of nearly 4kg (8.8lb) of cocaine daily. The Po Valley is home to about five million people.

The study estimated daily consumption to be about 27 doses (100mg or 0.004oz each) per 1,000 young adults.
The study was published by the web journal Environmental Health.

Cambridge SurroundWorks 200

In a perfect world everyone would have, among other things, space for five or more speakers to create their own home theater. But many homes--whether it's a tiny studio apartment in Manhattan or a bonus room in California--can't accommodate surround-channel speakers. The consumer electronics industry offers several solutions: "wireless" surround speakers (which still have to be plugged into an outlet and connected to each other), three-channel surround modes, and most recently, scaled-down speaker packages that simulate surround sound using one or two front-channel speakers and a sub.

Cambridge SoundWorks' entry into the latter group is SurroundWorks 200, a $999 system bundling the AVS600 DVD player/receiver with a single, multi-driver speaker enclosure and separate sub.

Full Review by Designtechnica

Logitech MM22 Portable iPod Speakers

Bona Fide ReviewsThe unprecedented sales success of the Apple iPod portable music player has spawned a growing peripherals business to supply the owner base with a wide range of accessories. Among the most popular add-ons are compact portable speaker systems which allow the user to un-tether from his/her headphones and share their music with others.

Reviewed by Bona Fide Reviews takes a closer look at the Logitech MM22 Portable iPod Speakers.

Shared fantasy- RPG History

RPG History: A fairly complete, mostly accurate and only slightly biased exposition of the hobby's turbulent existence, from its origins to the modern day.

Much of the information in this article came from Gary Fine's superb sociological examination of RPGs, entitled "Shared Fantasy".

Unfortunate Childrens Books

a photoset on Flickr features books that have unfortunate connections between the title, author and illustrator's names.

Cool Self-Portrait

Astronaut Steve Robinson turns the camera on himself during his historic repair job 'underneath' Discovery on August 3. The Shuttle's heat shield, where Robinson removed a pair of protruding gap fillers, is reflected in his visor.

Design critique of the alphabet

That alphabet. It’s been around a long time, don’t you think it’s time for a redesign? I still find it difficult to write the letter "s" perfectly? : Speak Up >The Alphabet Critique explains why:

"This was a great idea that lacks somehow in execution - or rather, it's just really difficult to maintain a good standard. With a maximum potential for elegance, both the upper and lower case are hard to reproduce as anything other than clumsy and unbalanced by anyone other than trained experts. Try it, make me a good S - it's hard! In the right hands, it's a sophisticated character, but horribly open to abuse."

Spicy Paris Hilton Burger Commercial

I finally watched the Spicy Paris Hilton Burger Commercial Video. In case you haven't yet seen the highly and hotly controversial Commercial, she is seen washing cars as she eats a spicy burger. The commercial for Carl’s Jr.’s new Spicy Burger was deemed too spicy for television by media watchdog groups.

Tara Reid: 'Wild On' Paris Hilton

10 season premiere of 'Wild On Tara,' Tara Reid visits Athens, Greece, where she gets together with engaged couple and Paris Latsis.
Latsis invited Reid and crew to his family's private estate for a pre-party before dancing at several nightclubs, E! Entertainment Television said Thursday. advertisement


The 29-year-old actress, whose screen credits include 'Van Wilder,' 'Josie and the Pussycats' and the 'American Pie' movies, also faces her fear of parasailing with the help of tandem riding friend Hilton, co-star of 'The Simple Life' reality series.
'Meeting up with Paris and Paris was such a highlight in Greece. Dancing at the clubs was a blast,' Reid said in a statement. 'There are just certain people you know you'll always have fun with, and Paris (Hilton) is definitely one of those people.'

Source: Associated Press

Kate Hudson: Monogamy isn't realistic

Kate Hudson says monogamy isn't 'realistic,' but believes couples have the power to be faithful. In an interview Thursday on syndicated TV show 'Access Hollywood,' the 26-year-old actress said, 'I don't believe (monogamy) is realistic. But, I believe that we, as people, have the power to make it happen.'
She added: 'I will not disrespect my husband and stray.' Hudson, the daughter of actress Goldie Hawn, married Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson on Dec. 31, 2000. The couple have an 18-month-old son, Ryder.


Asked if she believes Robinson has remained faithful, Hudson said, 'If you focus your attention on that, then you are always wondering if your husband or men are out there cheating on you.
'If for some reason, that's what he has to go do, I just don't want to know. As long as things are good in our house, just please, don't get caught.'
Hudson was nominated for an Oscar for her role in 2000's 'Almost Famous.' Her screen credits also include 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,' 'Alex & Emma,' 'Le Divorce' and the upcoming 'The Skeleton Key.'

Source: Associated Press

A Prerelease Tour of GNOME 2.12

GNOME 2.12 will be released to the world on September 7th, 2005, culminating 6 months of very exciting work by members of the project. A number of exciting technologies come together in GNOME 2.12 that will set the standard for free software desktops to come. Here is a sample (by no means an exhaustive list) of some of the outstanding work that has gone into GNOME thanks to its many contributors.

'Messaging win for phone bloggers'

UK mobile operator O2 has backtracked from a change in the way multimedia messages are delivered via e-mail after complaints from mobile bloggers.

The turnaround shows how powerful web communities have become.

'You only have to look at the amount of posts on blogs following the recent events in London to see how much people are using mobile data in that way,' said the O2 spokeswoman.

Rank and File

From the pecking order of chickens to the size of children, groups have a way of lining up. Here, in order of popularity, are the rankings of blogs and websites using the title Lex,MSN Search: lex.

Ironically, I borrowed Lex from the Financial Times' Lexicon column.

The Undrinkable Cocktail

Have your ever thought of getting so sloshed from an unimaginable alcoholic concoction. Well, the Daily Lush Magazine recommends The Undrinkable Cocktail. This one in particular literally puts the cock in the drink!
Three-Penis Wine: A traditional Chinese remedy consisting of powder made from the penises of dogs, deer, and seal mixed into wine. This noxious mixture is reputed to provide a number of health benefits, not the least of which is enhancing the libido. A seal pizzle can sell for as much as $650, so this cocktail can be quite expensive, even if the contents are often fraudulent: A Canadian sampling of the DNA of seal penises in Toronto shops found that all but one were from other animals, mostly dogs, and that many of them weren't even penises! For the more daring - or desperate - five-penis and nine-penis variations are available. (Max Sparber)

Stop and Search Posted by Picasa

Yahoo! Publisher Network

Yahoo! Publisher Network launched a new self-serve platform that will provide small- and medium-sized web publishers with easy access to Yahoo! advertising and content. We're very excited about our new offering, not only because it will enable a broader set of publishers to generate revenue from their sites, but also because it can offer publishers access to many of Yahoo!'s other products and properties.
The Yahoo! Publisher Network self-serve platform is currently available as an invitation-only beta."

J-Lo Hits, Others Were 'Bought' by Sony

The music of and were manufactured into hits, with radio spins bought and paid for by record companies.
We've all known for a long time that contemporary pop music stinks. We hear 'hits' on the radio and wonder, 'How can this be?'
Now we know.

Indecent Proposal

An African politico offered Bill Clinton  40 goats and 20 cows for his daughter's hand in marriage.....

eChalk colour perception

This is the most amazing optical effect in the world.

10th Planet Discovered

Astronomers have found a new planet in the outer reaches of the solar system. "It's definitely bigger than Pluto." So says Dr. Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology who announced today the discovery of a new planet in the outer solar system.

Put your sweet lips . . .

A simple gesture that can express love and reverence - or insult and betrayal. A kiss, Keith Thomas discovers, is never just a kiss

Look at these people! They suck each other! They eat each other's saliva and dirt! - Tsonga people of southern Africa on the European practice of kissing, 1927

The Birth of Google

"Larry thought Sergey was arrogant. Sergey thought Larry was obnoxious. But their obsession with backlinks just might be the start of something big."

Wired News