It's a scene right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Except that the kitchen is in a Playboy photo studio. And the sun is really a klieg light. And the icebox was rented from a prop house. And the pies are store-bought. And there's a busty blonde sprawled across the table and she's not wearing anything except pink high heels and a coat of makeup that took nearly two hours to apply.

Posted by GeeTee at August 31, 2003 09:20 PM | TrackBack 0

... she is protesting against her detention by the Burmese Government.

Posted by GeeTee at August 31, 2003 02:00 PM | TrackBack 0

When he left the bank with stolen money he was surrounded by police and told them he had been forced to rob the bank after someone had started a timer on a bomb under his T-shirt.

Posted by GeeTee at August 31, 2003 01:02 PM | TrackBack 0

Under the plan, families will be able to buy certificates good for some or all of the tuition due when a child enrolls at a member college. The certificates are in the name of the child, not a college, so they will be good at any participating institution, including schools that join later. How much tuition a certificate buys will be determined by the percentage it covered in the year it was purchased. If a family paid $10,000 in 2003 and a child later enrolled in a participating school whose tuition was $20,000 in 2003, the certificate would cover half the tuition in the year the child entered college, regardless of what the school was charging when the child enrolled.

Posted by GeeTee at August 31, 2003 12:48 PM | TrackBack 0

WebCollage is a program that creates collages out of random images found on the Web. More images are being added to the collage about once a minute, so this page will reload itself periodically. Clicking on one of the images in the collage will take you to the page on which it was found.

Posted by GeeTee at August 30, 2003 10:16 PM | TrackBack 0

A man driving a small car with two cans of gasoline made it past security at Parliament Hill early Thursday morning, driving under the security chains and heading for the main entrance.

Posted by GeeTee at August 29, 2003 07:58 AM | TrackBack 0

Services performed by Halliburton, through its Brown and Root subsidiary, include building and managing military bases, logistical support for the 1,200 intelligence officers hunting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, delivering mail and producing millions of hot meals. Often dressed in Army fatigues with civilian patches on their shoulders, Halliburton employees and contract personnel have become an integral part of Army life in Iraq.

Posted by GeeTee at August 28, 2003 06:36 PM | TrackBack 0

The most high-profile casualty, now likely to face the axe, is a 321-year-old oak tree at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris which is said to have provided shade for Marie Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI. They were beheaded in the French Revolution.

Posted by GeeTee at August 28, 2003 06:31 PM | TrackBack 0

Arnold Schwarzenegger once told a magazine interviewer about participating in an orgy with other bodybuilders, noting that "everybody jumped on" the woman involved and "took her upstairs where we all got together." The California Republican added that not every muscleman participated in the gang bang...

Posted by GeeTee at August 28, 2003 10:19 AM | TrackBack 0

One is presuming (is one not?) that this is the same god who actually created the audience he was addressing. This leaves us with the insoluble mystery of why he would have molded ("in his own image," yet) a covetous, murderous, disrespectful, lying, and adulterous species. Create them sick, and then command them to be well? What a mad despot this is, and how fortunate we are that he exists only in the minds of his worshippers.

Posted by GeeTee at August 28, 2003 07:07 AM | TrackBack 0

Any freelancer whose work has been mangled by pedantic copywriters or editors justifying their jobs will find these indignant tirades especially gratifying. To Ross: “I recently wrote, ‘This is what I can only call a paradise of errors.' In the margin of my proof it was suggested that I change it to, ‘This is what I can call only a paradise of errors.' You merely have to say that sentence out loud to see that it is not English, but sounds like the awkward sentence of a recently arrived foreigner.”

Posted by GeeTee at August 28, 2003 06:30 AM | TrackBack 0

The condoms come in envelopes marked with the words "It's hard to buy a condom when your uncle owns the only pharmacy in town."

Posted by GeeTee at August 28, 2003 06:25 AM | TrackBack 0

We do hope and trust here at the INQUIRER that the irony of underpaid people in Harayana helping robots to call possibly out of work Americans because of a widespread policy of corporate outsourcing is not lost on our readers.

Posted by GeeTee at August 28, 2003 06:17 AM | TrackBack 0

"We have already received photos with a small smile that we are ready to accept," she said.

Posted by GeeTee at August 27, 2003 08:49 AM | TrackBack 0

As the most recognized hotel brand in the world, Holiday Inn is an American icon and part of our everyday lives. For some of us, it's more a part of our lives than others'. "Borrowed" towels from Holiday Inn hold a special place for our guests. The trademark script has shown up everywhere from bathroom floors to beach parties. However you got one and whatever reason... "About the towels, we forgive you."

Posted by GeeTee at August 27, 2003 05:59 AM | TrackBack 0

These simulated planets acquired a water masses ranging from almost zero to 300 times the amount on the Earth's surface. The formation of wet planets like ours "seems easy", say the researchers. More surprising still is the fact that more than half the worlds were much more water-rich. Land dwellers like us would be impossible on planets entirely covered by ocean.

Posted by GeeTee at August 22, 2003 07:59 AM | TrackBack 0

"Here is what happened. The Muskegon Summer Celebration officials canceled a binding, contracted on-sale engagement based upon remarks Ted had 'supposedly' made on a Colorado radio program. Ted, in a written statement, restated to the Celebration exactly what was said (which was unequivocally not racist) and the Defendants canceled the date anyway! Ted had no choice other than to file this lawsuit. The City of Muskegon officials responsible for canceling this date acted without any personal knowledge of the facts, and they will be held accountable in court for their attack on this artist. Their indefensible actions amount to the most blatant form of censorship. Ted will be justly compensated for the harm he has endured. His name will be cleared."

Posted by GeeTee at August 22, 2003 07:19 AM | TrackBack 0

"They both freely admitted that their intention was to 'have sex,' " records quote the woman as saying. They "were confrontational and remorseless."

Posted by GeeTee at August 22, 2003 07:06 AM | TrackBack 0

All last week, during the grueling sandbox battles in my backyard between my GI Joes and the hideous armies of Grog, the GW Bush doll was missing. I thought it was lost for good. But then, after my GI Joes won the day and made the sandbox safe again, there the Bush doll was, front and center, looking splendid and unruffled in pristine army fatigues. Evidently it'd been playing dress-up all week with my sister's Ken doll but was right there to take the credit for the GI Joe's victory.

Posted by GeeTee at August 19, 2003 01:14 PM | TrackBack 0

Ben Munger, who works for a Toronto ad agency, said that he agrees with a friend's statements that everyone should just ignore the conservation directive.
"We should all be using power," said Munger, sunning himself during his lunch break. "This isn't a function of not having enough power but about not having enough money to put into the system."

Posted by GeeTee at August 19, 2003 12:36 PM | TrackBack 0

A car bomb collapsed the hotel housing the United Nations headquarters in Iraq on Tuesday, wounding dozens, including the top UN official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was trapped in the rubble.

Posted by GeeTee at August 19, 2003 08:25 AM | TrackBack 0

The first step to getting a refund is to ask for one. In most every case, you immediately hit a wall of stupidity and evasion when you do this. Dealing with this part properly is important, though, because you are building a record for the court case that may follow. Your job is to be as reasonable as possible and to make them look as dumb, inflexible and unreasonable as possible.

Posted by GeeTee at August 18, 2003 07:10 PM | TrackBack 0

Utilities used deregulation to effect a series of mergers limiting competition. In order to accelerate profits, cost cutting ensued, involving the layoff of thousands of utility company employees, including some who were responsible for maintenance of generation, transmission, and distribution systems. A number of investor-owned utilities stopped investing in the maintenance and repair of their own equipment, and, instead, cut costs to enhance the value of their stock rather than spending money to enhance the value of their service.

Posted by GeeTee at August 18, 2003 02:35 PM | TrackBack 0

Wilpen Gorr, who is an expert on information systems and forecasting and heads the team, also looked for more subtle and unexpected trends. He compiled a list of leading indicators - minor offences such as vandalism and trespassing that crime analysts believe precede more serious crimes.
He then used a neural network to make connections that link changes in the pattern of these minor offences with changes in levels of more serious crimes. He found that if a minor crime such as vandalism increases during one month, it can indicate that there will be an increase in serious property crimes such as burglary in the following month.

Posted by GeeTee at August 18, 2003 02:31 PM | TrackBack 0

This new approach (RGB+E) adds an emerald-colored pixel to the filter pattern, realizing color fidelity that is closer to human color perception. The first model to utilize this new color system, the DSC-F828, realizes a level of color accuracy not possible with other digital cameras. Specifically, photographers will notice an extraordinarily life-like rendering of blue, blue-green and red hues.

Posted by GeeTee at August 18, 2003 01:40 PM | TrackBack 0

"We recently contracted with two vendors who made assurances that their lists were opt-in only," the campaign said in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "On Tuesday, August 12th, Dean for America received notification from a supporter that spam was being sent. We terminated our relationship with both vendors immediately."

Posted by GeeTee at August 18, 2003 01:36 PM | TrackBack 0

Mr. Glenn argues that such a statement by a university official "mocks and even taunts Michigan taxpayers, reveling that the more taxpayers dare protest the use of their tax dollars to teach kids 'How to be Gay,' the more students will enroll in the class.

Posted by GeeTee at August 18, 2003 01:28 PM | TrackBack 0

The US military said that soldiers had mistaken Mazen Dana's camera for a rocket propelled grenade launcher.

Posted by GeeTee at August 17, 2003 08:19 PM | TrackBack 0

This is the scene that I'm picturing. You've bought this book, read it, laughed a bit, and then tucked it away on some shelf, and forgotten about it. Now, it's three months later and a potential girlfriend (or boyfriend) is wandering through your stuff. You have no problem with this because they're getting to know you and, face it, you want to get laid.

Posted by GeeTee at August 17, 2003 07:47 PM | TrackBack 0

Molecular biologists are now joining the hunt for the ancestry of wine by comparing the DNA sequences of grapes found around Europe and the Near East. José Vouillamoz, a postdoctoral researcher at the Agricultural Institute in San Michele all'Adige, Italy, traveled to Georgia and Armenia in May to collect samples of wild and domesticated types of grapes. Preliminary results of his DNA-fingerprinting study indicate that the wild grapes of that region are most closely related to the domesticated variety, suggesting that the Caucasus was the cradle of grape domestication for the entire world, in keeping with the Noah Hypothesis.

Posted by GeeTee at August 17, 2003 06:43 PM | TrackBack 0

Thousands of e-mail death threats directed at a professional mah-jongg player flooded one of Japan's most traveled Internet sites just hours after she won a defamation case against the site's operator, the Mainichi has learned.

Posted by GeeTee at August 15, 2003 07:33 PM | TrackBack 0

...it emerged that the supermarket was automatically taking photographs of shoppers when they picked the blades off the shelf and when they left the shop with any tagged product.

Posted by GeeTee at August 15, 2003 07:31 PM | TrackBack 0

I have to admit to a feeling of resentment at the extent of the security searches every time I travel by air. The armed guards, the x-ray machines, the metal detectors, the pat downs, the search of luggage and personal effects, the removal of shoes, and for some, I suppose, the explanation of prosthetics, pacemakers, and appurtenances, constitutes a massive invasion of privacy. We have just come to accept this as a natural state of things because, like Gilmore, we’re all suspected terrorists. I find myself having to explain to people why I, as a Presidential candidate, am repeatedly shuttled off to that special line of selectees identified by the SSSS stamped on my ticket. The transportation security agents inform me that a computer has made this decision. I want to know who programs the computer. Is it John Ashcroft?

Posted by GeeTee at August 15, 2003 05:16 PM | TrackBack 0

Stephen King’s success in adult fiction is singular. Except for J.K. Rowling, no other writer, not even those who can guarantee their latest book will open at number one, are even caddies in his club. When Hillary and Norgay reached the summit of Everest, they didn’t start rolling boulders down the sides of the mountain. It’s hard to understand why King, at this stage in his career, would seek out such a forum and use it as base camp for attacking other writers. I don’t give two hoots about ballet, but I’d be disappointed if Baryshnikov had a column in Demi-Plié Weekly in which he trashed modern dancers. Or if Spielberg, rather than championing the films he loved, elbowed onstage with Ebert and Roeper every week to crap all over the oeuvre of Dennis Dugan. Literature is the only art form where artists routinely get paid to trash each other’s work in public and I don’t think most writers view this as a problem. Which is the problem.

Posted by GeeTee at August 15, 2003 05:10 PM | TrackBack 0

"Even the patients with dementia seemed unsurprised by (the robot's) presence," Sandy Ratliff, assistant vice president of clinical operations at Ohio's Otterbein Retirement Living Communities, told the Dayton Daily News. "They just acted as though they were talking to a television."

Posted by GeeTee at August 15, 2003 05:09 PM | TrackBack 0

Think of your twelve closest friends, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray write. If you had chosen them randomly from the American population, the odds that half of your twelve closest friends would be college graduates would be six in a thousand. The odds that half of the twelve would have advanced degrees would be less than one in a million. Have any of your twelve closest friends graduated from Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Caltech, MIT, Duke, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia, Chicago, or Brown? If you chose your friends randomly from the American population, the odds against your having four or more friends from those schools would be more than a billion to one.

Posted by GeeTee at August 15, 2003 04:45 PM | TrackBack 0

Eigenradio plays only the most important frequencies, only the beats with the highest entropy.

Posted by GeeTee at August 12, 2003 05:08 PM | TrackBack 0

The internet portal and e-mail service claims that the association with its parent firm is creating a negative image amongst its customers.

Posted by GeeTee at August 12, 2003 03:47 PM | TrackBack 0

Murder, torture and imprisonment - these are the standard tools of repressive regimes. But if you imagine that human societies have a monopoly on such tactics, think again. Social insects perfected the police state long before people got in on the act.

Posted by GeeTee at August 09, 2003 10:14 PM | TrackBack 0

Instead, the post-post poets write the real stuff, the basics, the poem without the baggage of meaning and connection, the liberated poem itself, stripped and streaking down the freeway, no claim on your time or attention longer than the time it takes to watch one run by. Was it human? Was it naked? Did it wave? Was it a prank? What college is it from? What were those word-things it sprayed at us?

Posted by GeeTee at August 08, 2003 07:16 AM | TrackBack 0

...I can’t understand why Governor Davis doesn’t at least nominate a protest candidate — a candidate who says (1) this election is wrong, and (2) whether you like Davis or not, you should vote not to recall him on the basis of a constitutional mistake, and (3) after you vote not to recall him, you should vote for the protest candidate. That candidate would promise not to run for reelection — or for any office in California, since no one should benefit politically from a constitutional mistake — but would hold the governorship “in trust” until we have another election where the candidate with the most votes wins.

Posted by GeeTee at August 07, 2003 08:05 PM | TrackBack 0

"Until now, no one has analyzed the deaths of these scripts from a comparative perspective. As for the Maya writing system itself, only Stephen Houston could have covered such a complex subject in such a convincing way. This is probably the world's most difficult script, and Professor Houston has been in the forefront of its ongoing decipherment."

Posted by GeeTee at August 07, 2003 04:56 PM | TrackBack 0

...I don’t get just why artists would not benefit from a “free license,” “legal” at mp3.com? Artists in general don’t make a great deal of money. You’d think eliminating the cost of lawyers would be a great help to them, wouldn’t you? Indeed, if you count the number of “free licenses” that we’ve given away, and you calculate their value the way the RIAA calculates the cost of music piracy, Creative Commons has given more than $100 billion to the creative community. That can’t hurt artists, can it?

Posted by GeeTee at August 07, 2003 01:29 PM | TrackBack 0

The confidential Vatican document, obtained by CBS News, lays out a church policy that calls for absolute secrecy when it comes to sexual abuse by priests - anyone who speaks out could be thrown out of the church.

Posted by GeeTee at August 06, 2003 05:39 PM | TrackBack 0

But when you look carefully at the Penn study, it's clear that the program didn't work. The InnerChange participants did somewhat worse than the controls: They were slightly more likely to be rearrested and noticeably more likely (24 percent versus 20 percent) to be reimprisoned. If faith is, as Paul told the Hebrews, the evidence of things not seen, then InnerChange is an opportunity to cultivate faith; we certainly haven't seen any results.

Posted by GeeTee at August 06, 2003 08:49 AM | TrackBack 0

Consider the advertisement that began running in the Los Angeles Times today: "Want to be governor? If you are 99 years old, 99 Cents Only Stores will gladly pay your $3,499 filing fee and gather the signatures needed for our chosen candidate."

Posted by GeeTee at August 06, 2003 08:47 AM | TrackBack 0

The expression "all dressed" - often a reference to a pizza with all the toppings - is commonly used in Quebec by both French and English speakers when they place an order.
But language purists have complained the new museum in Trois-Rivieres, midway between Montreal and Quebec City, should stick to French in its promotions.

Posted by GeeTee at August 06, 2003 08:44 AM | TrackBack 0

Malaysia's Islamic court is to come down harder on husbands who take divorce into their own hands, including those who use attempt divorce by text message, according to official news agency Bernama. The Muslim court may fine husbands who divorce their wives through the short messaging service (SMS) RM 1,000 (US$263.12) and above.

Posted by GeeTee at August 05, 2003 12:05 PM | TrackBack 0

According to the soldiers themselves, cross-dressing is a military mind game, a tactic that instills fear in their rivals. It also makes the soldiers feel more invincible. This belief is founded on a regional superstition which holds that soldiers can "confuse the enemy's bullets" by assuming two identities simultaneously. Though the accoutrements and garb look bizarre to Western eyes, they are, in a sense, variations on the camouflage uniforms and face paint American soldiers use to bolster their sense of invisibility (and, therefore, immunity) during combat. Since flak jackets or infrared goggles aren't available to the destitute Liberian fighters, they opt for evening gowns and frilly blouses.

Posted by GeeTee at August 04, 2003 12:11 PM | TrackBack 0

"The point of the hacker robot is that it can become an autonomous hacker droid," said Paul Holman, the robot's co-designer, who demonstrated it for the first time at the DefCon hacker convention here. "It can get in close to the network. On the offensive side, it can be used for corporate or political espionage. On the defensive side, it can be used for network-vulnerability assessment."

Posted by GeeTee at August 04, 2003 11:44 AM | TrackBack 0

Downing Street has distanced itself from a report that the government saw weapons expert Dr David Kelly as a "Walter Mitty" character.

Posted by GeeTee at August 04, 2003 11:41 AM | TrackBack 0

Posted by GeeTee at August 04, 2003 11:38 AM | TrackBack 0

Counterfeiters have forced the price of a fake CD down to about $4, which only makes CDs in the music shops look even pricier.

Posted by GeeTee at August 04, 2003 07:56 AM | TrackBack 0

For example, bars and restaurants that measure no more than 3,750 square feet (not including the parking lot, as long as the parking lot is used exclusively for parking purposes) can contain no more than four TVs (of no more than 55 inches diagonally) for their patrons to watch, as long as there is only one TV per room. The radio can be played through no more than six loudspeakers, with a limit of four per room, unless the restaurant in question is run by "a governmental body or a nonprofit agricultural or horticultural organization, in the course of an annual agricultural or horticultural fair or exhibition conducted by such body or organization." Then it's OK to use more speakers.

Posted by GeeTee at August 03, 2003 02:29 PM | TrackBack 0

The self-righteous crusades of the Vatican and the ultra-conservatives of all denominations to fight the inevitable — full acceptance by modern society of same-sex marriages — would be laughable were they not so sad. Have these Christians never heard what their own Bible says: "God is love"? Have they never reflected on what so radical a statement really means? If God is love, then wherever love is, God is. If love is present in same-sex marriages — and it undeniably is — then God is present there also. No thinker can convincingly rebut this.

Posted by GeeTee at August 03, 2003 11:40 AM | TrackBack 0

The ASA acknowledge that the actual number of complaints received for each advertisement they are obliged to investigate are actually relatively very small indeed, but warn advertisers not to take this as a justification for abdicating responsibility under agreed codes, as all complaints are taken seriously and acted upon if they break the rules even if only one complaint is received. The ASA council act as both judge and jury and is made up, currently, of eight men and five women. When you look at their record, over the last forty years, their decisions do reflect changes in values and all judgements seem reasonable and pretty even-handed.

Posted by GeeTee at August 03, 2003 10:09 AM | TrackBack 0

Speaking in Dharamsala, India, where he has lived since China put down a Tibetan uprising against communist rule, he admitted to having enjoyed spending time with Mao Zedong.

Posted by GeeTee at August 03, 2003 07:30 AM | TrackBack 0

Posted by GeeTee at August 02, 2003 12:51 PM | TrackBack 0

Posted by GeeTee at August 02, 2003 10:22 AM | TrackBack 0

To be paralyzingly, painfully, hopelessly unfunny is not a particular defect or shortcoming in, say, a cable repair man or a Supreme Court justice or a Navy Seal. These jobs can be performed humorlessly with no loss of efficiency or impact. But to be paralyzingly, painfully, hopelessly unfunny is a serious drawback, even lapse, in a comedian. And the late Bob Hope devoted a fantastically successful and well-remunerated lifetime to showing that a truly unfunny man can make it as a comic. There is a laugh here, but it is on us.

Posted by GeeTee at August 02, 2003 09:31 AM | TrackBack 0

However there was one fact that the reviewers had all left out: this CD sounds like dogshit.

Posted by GeeTee at August 01, 2003 05:17 PM | TrackBack 0

Cheap ... cutting edge ... a different audience ... are indie games the punk rock of computer gaming?

Posted by GeeTee at August 01, 2003 01:16 PM | TrackBack 0

The goal is not to deprive record companies of revenue, but to save money for music consumers. This is a critical point. Aiming to save money for people by making the system more efficient does not violate fair use. It does not violate the intellectual property rights of the artists or record companies. It just takes some friction out of the system. Automation is being used to make easy something that would otherwise be very difficult. If you wanted to play a copy of a song, you could run across town and make sure that the original was not being used by anyone else OR we can save the running and just do it electronically by locking access to the physical CD that sits far away. The more simultaneous users there are, the more CD copies there have to be in the system, but the CDs don't have to be centrally held, just centrally controlled.

Posted by GeeTee at August 01, 2003 12:01 PM | TrackBack 0

A loss of hundreds of highly-trained engineers when Boeing moved offices two years ago may have played a role in the Columbia accident, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday. In 2001 Boeing shifted space shuttle engineering offices from California to Texas, but about 80% of the 500 employees in California refused to move, forcing Boeing to hire new employees, including many engineers, in Texas. The STS-107 mission was the first time the new Texas office has primary responsibility for the shuttle flight. Engineers who remained behind in California told the Times that they believe that they would have reached a different conclusion about the damage the foam impact caused to the shuttle, although their primary concern was about damage to foam, not the reinforced carbon-carbon leading edge panels. Boeing officials, while acknowledging that they did lose some experienced engineers in the move, say moving the office closer to the Johnson Space Center resulted in a stronger team.

Posted by GeeTee at August 01, 2003 11:59 AM | TrackBack 0

Posted by GeeTee at August 01, 2003 10:38 AM | TrackBack 0

One reason why words like kidult and adultescent have not entered everyday language is because society does not know how to deal with the gradual erosion of the line between childhood and adulthood. Anglo-American culture is ambiguous in its response to this development. The occasional outcry against some absurd manifestation of this trend is drowned out by the powerful message that growing up is a troublesome and unpleasant activity. And since the refusal to grow up is often interpreted as an attractive option, words that suggest that there might be something wrong in living in a state of extended adolescence are unlikely to gain common currency.

Posted by GeeTee at August 01, 2003 10:35 AM | TrackBack 0