David Arquette leaks some information....

SATURDAY THERE WILL BE NO POSTS

In support of Kathy Sierra there will no new posts on MARCH 31 2007, we ask that you take the time normally spend fumbling through CHUCKS WEIRD WORLD and THINK long and hard before you hide behind the INTERNET to attack someone. Threats are serious no matter where or how you communicate them....

While we are all not like those in Kathy's situation we all know someone who is...

Sunday Morning the Weirdness will return and with it, maybe we will all be just a little more thoughtful of those around us...BLOGS ARE PEOPLE.. regardless of content...


Read More HERE and see Kathy Sierra's BIO HERE.

YO Sanjaya, Shut the PIE HOLE...please

and now a little Katy Perry....

Listen to her HERE.

Darfur

Read more HERE.

With five private jets, Travolta still lectures on global warming

His serious aviation habit means he is hardly the best person to lecture others on the environment. But John Travolta went ahead and did it anyway.

The 53-year-old actor, a passionate pilot, encouraged his fans to "do their bit" to tackle global warming.

But although he readily admitted: "I fly jets", he failed to mention he actually owns five, along with his own private runway.

Clocking up at least 30,000 flying miles in the past 12 months means he has produced an estimated 800 tons of carbon emissions – nearly 100 times the average Briton's tally.

Travolta made his comments this week at the British premiere of his movie, Wild Hogs.

He spoke of the importance of helping the environment by using "alternative methods of fuel" – after driving down the red carpet on a Harley Davidson.

Travolta, a Scientologist, claimed the solution to global warming could be found in outer space and blamed his hefty flying mileage on the nature of the movie business.

But his appointment as a "serving ambassador" for the Australian airline Qantas doesn't seem to have much to do with the movies. Nor does a recent, two-month round-the-world flying trip.

"It [global warming] is a very valid issue," Travolta declared. "I'm wondering if we need to think about other planets and dome cities.

"Everyone can do their bit. But I don't know if it's not too late already. We have to think about alternative methods of fuel.

"I'm probably not the best candidate to ask about global warming because I fly jets.

"I use them as a business tool though, as others do. I think it's part of this industry – otherwise I couldn't be here doing this and I wouldn't be here now."

Travolta's five private planes – a customised £2million Boeing 707, three Gulfstream jets and a Lear jet – are kept at the bottom of his garden in the US next to a private runway.

Indeed, such is his enthusiasm for flying, he persuaded his wife, actress Kelly Preston, to name their son Jett when he was born 14 years ago.

Five years ago he piloted his own Boeing 707 on a 13- city "Spirit of Friendship Tour" for Qantas, taking in Los Angeles, Auckland, Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, London, Paris and New York and amassing over 35,000 flying miles.

More recently, a gruelling promotional schedule for his two latest projects, Hairspray and Wild Hogs, has seen him fly extensively over the past year.

This includes a country-wide tour of the US and a visit to Canada as well as this week's appearance in Leicester Square.

Such prolific mileage means that, over the past 12 months, he has accumulated around 800 tonnes of carbon emissions.

According to a recent study by the government-funded Carbon Trust, this means he boasts a carbon "footprint" nearly 100 times that of the average Briton, who is responsible for 10.92 tons of Co2, from his flights alone.

One of the world's leading climate change businesses, the Carbon Neutral Company, has written to Travolta, suggesting ways he could reduce these alarming levels.

He has yet to respond to their advice. Environmental groups were quick to criticise Travolta for "discrediting the cause".

John Buckley, managing director-of CarbonFootprint.com, said: "John Travolta has such a high-profile celebrity status, so what he says carries an extraordinary amount of weight.

"So it is such a shame when someone of his standing is so outspoken about green issues, yet fails to practise what he preaches.

"Unfortunately someone of his standing ends up discrediting the cause itself, because he is saying people should protect the environment on one hand, yet travelling on a private plane on the other.

"Green issues are serious and should be treated as such.

"It is vital for celebrities to toe the line when they speak out in support of it."

MJ Party invite?

Chocolate Jesus angers Catholics

The Easter season unveiling of an anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ, dubbed “My Sweet Lord” by its creator, has infuriated Catholics preparing to observe some of their holiest days of the year.

The 6-foot sculpture by Cosimo Cavallaro was to debut Monday evening, four days before Christians mark the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Good Friday. The final day of the exhibit at the Lab Gallery inside Manhattan’s Roger Smith Hotel was planned for Easter Sunday.

“This is one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever,” said Bill Donohue, head of the Catholic League, a watchdog group. “It’s not just the ugliness of the portrayal, but the timing — to choose Holy Week is astounding.”

The gallery’s creative director, Matt Semler, said the Lab and the hotel were overrun with angry telephone calls and e-mails. The gallery was considering its options, he said.

“We’re obviously surprised by the overwhelming response and offense people have taken,” said Semler, adding that the Holy Week timing was a coincidence.

The artwork was created from more than 200 pounds of milk chocolate, and it features Christ with his arms outstretched. The Cavallaro creation does not include a loincloth.

A publicist for the gallery said the artist was not available for comment.

Cavallaro, who was raised in Canada and Italy, is best known for his quirky work with food as art: Past efforts include repainting a Manhattan hotel room in melted mozzarella, spraying 5 tons of pepper jack cheese on a Powell Wyoming home and festooning a four-poster bed with 312 pounds of processed ham.

Toothpick Art

See alot more HERE.

News Flash : MJ rushed to Hospital...

Michael Jackson has been hospitalized in Las Vegas with pneumonia,

Dolphin in Love

The Osmonds - Crazy Horses

Maybe he had trouble sleeping....

An American who kept 77 sheep in his suburban home faces 30 charges of animal cruelty.

Some had been found grazing on artificial flowers at the town's cemetery.

Some were walking on their knees because their hooves had never been trimmed, causing infections, said veterinarian Kelli Ferris, who examined the flock.

David Watts, 47, was being held at the Wake County jail in Apex, North Carolina, in lieu of $US12,000 ($A14,900) bail following a court appearance.

A judge denied a request to release him pending trial.

Watts surrendered the flock to animal control officers on Monday after police found some sheep grazing on artificial flowers in the town cemetery in Apex, a suburb of Raleigh.

Thirty of the sheep were euthanised because of various health problems. In addition, sheep bones and carcasses were found in Watts' yard.

Watts kept some of the younger sheep on the ground floor of his house and kept the others in pens in the yard, authorities said.

Watts denies abusing the animals. He told The News & Observer of Raleigh that he was overwhelmed by the number of lambs born this year.

Watts, who said he has raised sheep for a decade, called the animals "relaxing to be around".

"It's like in Florida, you can swim with the dolphins. If you can get sheep to follow you, it might be a similar experience."

Divorcee's Sex Change Won't Stop Alimony

A woman's sex change operation does not free her ex-husband from his alimony obligation, a judge said Wednesday.

Attorneys for Lawrence Roach, 48, had argued his 55-year-old ex-wife's decision to switch genders and change her name from Julia to Julio Roberto Silverwolf voided their 2004 divorce agreement.

"It's illegal for a man to marry a man and it should likewise be illegal for a man to pay alimony to a man," said John McGuire, one of Roach's attorneys.

Circuit Judge Jack R. St. Arnold, however, ruled that in the eyes of the law, nothing changed significantly enough to free Roach from his $1,250-a-month obligation.

The judge said since Florida courts have ruled sex-change surgery cannot legally change a person's birth gender, Roach technically is not paying alimony to a man.

Gender definitions are "a question that raises issues of public policy that should be addressed by the Legislature, not the Florida courts," St. Arnold wrote.

Silverwolf's lawyer, Gregory Nevins, said the language of the divorce decree is clear — Roach agreed to pay alimony until his ex-wife dies or remarries.

Nevins said he and his client were pleased with the ruling although they disagree with Florida's refusal to legally recognize gender reassignment surgery.

Roach, a utility worker who has since remarried, said he will press his fight to end the payments.

"We're going to try everything we can," he said. "I can't rest until I get satisfaction."

The case is the second transsexual rights showdown in Pinellas County in less than a week. On Friday, city commissioners voted 5-2 to fire Largo's city manager, Steve Stanton, after he announced he was a transsexual.

An Ohio appeals court ruled in September 2004 that a Montgomery County man must continue to pay alimony to his transsexual ex-wife because her sex change wasn't reason enough to violate the agreement.

Infuriated soccer fans bite off ears of pub owner in Greece

A man in Crete unwillingly sacrificed both of his ears trying to stop a fight between soccer fans in his pub, Greek television said Wednesday.

The fight erupted in a pub owned by Dimitris Tsibibakis following Greece's 4:1 humiliating defeat by Turkey in the 2008 Euro-Cup qualifier.

The Greek television said Bulgarian expatriates began chanting support for the Turkish team in the pub after another goal was scored, and pub locals retaliated, sparking the fight. The pub owner tried to prevent the brawl and was immediately thrown to the floor.

"One of them dug his teeth onto my ear, and another began chewing the other ear," Tsibibakis said, adding he managed to keep the ears and now requires plastic surgery.

Police have arrested three of the fighters and are looking for the fourth.

The Greek soccer team could face sanctions from international soccer authorities following the behavior of Greek fans who threw objects and flares at the Turkish players and referee during the Athens game.

Turkish fans were more ingenuous and crashed the Web site of the Hellenic Football Federation prior to kickoff.

Victoria Beckhams got a boob issue...

Look, Hillary Duff thinks she has boobs...

Hebrew in a whole different light...

The Magazine HERE.

The Dating Service HERE.

Cities set limits on serving food to homeless people

Cities are cracking down on charities that feed the homeless, adopting rules that restrict food giveaways to certain locations, require charities to get permits or limit the number of free meals they can provide.

Orlando, Dallas, Las Vegas and Wilmington, N.C., began enforcing such laws last year. Some are being challenged.

Last November, a federal judge blocked the Las Vegas law banning food giveaways to the poor in city parks. In Dallas, two ministries are suing, arguing that the law violates religious freedom.

"Going after the volunteers is new," says Michael Stoops of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "They think that by not feeding people, it will make the homeless people leave."

City officials say the rules were prompted by complaints about crime and food safety. Some say they want control over locations so homeless people can also get services such as addiction counseling and job training.

"The feedings were happening several times a week" in parking lots and sidewalks downtown, says Dewey Harris, director of Wilmington's Community Services Department. "A lot of the merchants said, 'We feel uncomfortable when you have all these homeless being fed downtown when we're trying to attract tourists.' "

Last March, the city restricted meals on public property to designated locations and required a permit. One spot has been approved: a city park parking lot.

Dallas also limits outdoor food giveaways to approved locations. Those distributing food must take a food-handling course and get a city permit, says Karen Rayzer, director of environmental and health services. A violator can be fined $2,000.

Orlando adopted an ordinance in July that requires a permit to serve more than 25 people in a park within 2 miles of City Hall, where most food giveaways were taking place. An applicant may serve twice a year in each park.

"This ordinance wasn't established to ban feeding," says city spokeswoman Heather Allebaugh. She acknowledges that some groups ignore the law.

City Commissioner Robert Stuart voted against it. He is executive director of the Christian Service Center for Central Florida, which feeds 325 homeless people a day but, as private property, is not affected.

"It's not fair to take a population without a home and make them criminals," he says. "And I don't think we ought to be limiting the opportunity to help others."

Balls Out Jeans

can you say..."TRAIN WRECK?"

EPA probes Wal-Mart's Silly String sales

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is asking Wal-Mart whether it sold Silly String, a child's toy, and similar products that might contain chemicals damaging to the ozone layer, the world's largest retailer said Tuesday.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. disclosed the EPA request in the retailer's annual financial report, which includes a detailed breakdown of its dealings with environmental regulators.

Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley said he believed the EPA is also contacting other retailers who may have sold canned string that might use an ozone-damaging gas as a propellent

An EPA spokeswoman said she could not immediately comment on the request.

Wal-Mart said in its annual report that it received an EPA request in February seeking detailed information about "nonessential products containing ozone-depleting substances including products such as Loony String" which Wal-Mart may have sold or distributed since January 1, 2002.

In March, the EPA sent a revised letter limiting its request to "string products including Loony String, Silly String and Fiesta String" for the period from 2004 to the present.

"Wal-Mart is in the process of gathering the information requested," the company said.

Single women reach orgasm 'more often'

A new sexuality survey has confirmed what women know and some men fear - single females have far more luck achieving orgasm than those partnered off.

Taking men out of the picture allows women to "better connect with themselves", according to sex therapists behind the Queensland study of 500 older women.

The research found that 56 per cent of sexually-active women with no current partner could reach orgasm every time with masturbation compared with only 24 per cent of women with partners.

"That's a significant difference and I'd imagine there are few men out there a little surprised and unimpressed that women have better luck without them," said medical sex therapist Dr Jane Howard.

The findings come from the study What Does Sexuality Mean To Older Women?, which assessed the sex lives of women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s to find trends over the ages.

Dr Howard said she believed women on their own were better at achieving orgasm because they don't have the "distraction" of having to please a man or subscribe to male-type sexual fantasies.

"Arousal is a lot about what erotic thoughts go through the mind, and for women that's very different to men," Dr Howard said.

"It may be focusing on Colin Firth's smouldering eyes, some romantic novel or a waterfall or whatever."

The therapist said the most outstanding aspect of the study was the variety of ways people lived their lives.

"Some people are in relationships and having sex, some are in relationships with no sex, others are single and are having sex ... it was just so varied," Dr Howard said.

She said her results destroyed the cultural myth that people stay in life-long relationships and are sexually functional until they die.

"We like to think of people having wild sex for their whole lives but the reality isn't quite like that," Dr Howard said.

More than 80 per cent of women in their 40s were sexually active, but this figure declined to 27 per cent for those in their 70s.

The fact that 70 per cent of men in their 70s were not capable of having an erection could affect this figure.

But results showed that three quarters of women over 70 were indifferent to sex.

While their libido dropped off and arousal was less, their capacity to orgasm was seemingly unaffected by age.

"That was quite surprising, actually," Dr Howard said.

She said the results would help people understand the true impact that ageing had on sex.

The findings are part of the Longitudinal Assessment of Ageing in Women, conducted by the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital.

Mudflap Man Stickers, For The Equal Opportunity Offender

That’s right, we’re an EOO here at WINDING ROAD. And as such, we’re just as likely to put one of these Mudflap Man stickers on one of our cars as we are likely to run the Mudflap Lady on one of our trucks.

They’re six inches wide and four inches tall and available for $3.99 from Sticker Giant.

+ Sticker Giant.com: Mudflap Man - Vinyl Sticker

Falcon Webcams

See them HERE.

High Hopes for Wedding Bliss....

Stilt-walking newlyweds Monica Tse and Mike Templeton Brady smile down at Tse's nephew Jason Tse, 8, after the longtime performers arrived Sunday at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco from their wedding ceremony.

Pizza boxes carry deadbeat mug shots

Customers at some suburban pizza parlors are getting something extra with their pepperoni and mushrooms — wanted posters for parents accused of failing to pay child support.

The idea came to Cynthia Brown, executive director of the Butler County Child Enforcement Agency, while she was ordering pizza.

"It suddenly dawned on me that most people running from the law don't eat out, they order pizza," said Brown, whose county is north of Cincinnati.

Enforcement agencies across the country use a variety of methods to locate support scofflaws and collect past-due payments. Virginia has issued subpoenas to cellular phone companies seeking addresses and phone numbers. California's Kern County seizes and auctions parents' vehicles, with proceeds going to the children, said Kay Cullen, a spokeswoman for the National Child Support Enforcement Association.

State child support agencies collected more than $23 billion in child support for 17.2 million children in 2005, but the cumulative past-due child support since the agencies were first formed more than 30 years ago is $106 billion, Cullen said.

"While we have made progress, putting the wanted posters on pizza boxes is an example of the innovation and commitment that we need," she said.

Other Ohio counties put posters on their Web sites and work with local Crime Stoppers programs, and a few contract with companies that can track people through rental and cell phone records, according to the Ohio Child Support Directors Association. Some include fliers in water and sewer bills.

Butler County has printed posters with mug shots of its 10 most-wanted parents, placing them in post offices and other government buildings and sending them to Ohio's 87 other counties. The lineup, chosen by prosecutors, is changed twice a year.

The Butler County sheriff's office served 1,224 nonsupport warrants last year, said sheriff's Sgt. Todd Langmeyer. The county has about 350,000 residents.

Brown approached several restaurants and chains with her idea of affixing the posters to pizza boxes, but so far only three pizzerias are participating.

Since the first pizza posters appeared in August, they have led to one arrest, Langmeyer said. "It's a good idea any time you can put the faces out there," he said.

The owner of Karen's Pizzeria hasn't heard any complaints about her participation in the poster program.

"Some customers joke about it and say they're glad they aren't on it," Karen Willis said. "Most seem to think it's a good idea."

An attorney who focuses on fathers' rights cases called the tactic "horrible."

"It's just a way of shaming people," said Maury Beaulier, whose firm is in Eden Prairie, Minn.

Many circumstances can cause people to get behind in support payments, but that doesn't make them deadbeats, he said.

Widespread public shaming also can devastate the children, said Michael McCormick, executive director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.

"Think how children feel to see a parent on a wanted poster and know their friends might see it," he said.

Brown said her agency tries to work with parents by trying to help them find work and seeks most payments through civil court. Criminal charges are a last resort. Conviction on a felony count of failing to pay child support brings a prison sentence of up to 18 months, with fines usually set in the amount of the support owed.

"We aren't trying to penalize these people," Brown said. "We are just trying to help the kids who have a right to be supported."

CardioSen'C: Portable ECG Transmits Data to Doctors Via Cellphones

Attending hospital for an ECG reading could soon be a thing of the past, thanks to the CardioSen'C, a portable device that can check for arrhythmia, ischemia, or myocardial infarction. SHL, the Israeli company behind the device, reckons it could help in the fight against cardiac disease—in this country alone 1.5 million people suffer heart attacks each year, a third of which are fatal.

The CardioSen'C uses more electrodes than normal ECGs to measure heart activity. Patients strap the 12 electrodes to their chest and upper body and the battery unit, attached to their chest, gives an instant reading. The results can then be relayed instantly to the patient's cardiologist by cellphone for instant diagnosis.

The device is so small it can be carried anywhere and is expected to cost several hundred dollars when it is eventually marketed here. If you're a nervous traveler with a heart complaint then this could be the gadget for you.

Creation "Science" Is the Christian Right's Trojan Horse Against Reason

Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations. The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda -- before the movements have the power to drop iron curtains to prevent anyone's disturbing, by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world--lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world." -- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"

In the middle of the lobby of the 50,000-square-foot Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., a 20-foot waterfall tumbles. Two life-size figures of children with long black hair and in buckskin clothes play in the stream a few feet from two towering Tyrannosaurus Rex models that can move and roar. The museum, which cost $25 million to build and has a sea of black asphalt parking lots for school buses, has a scale model of Noah's ark that shows how Noah solved the problem of fitting dinosaurs into the three levels of the vessel--he loaded only baby dinosaurs. And on the wooden model, infant dinosaurs cavort with horses, giraffes, hippopotamuses, penguins and bears. There is an elaborate display of the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve, naked but strategically positioned so as not to display breasts or genitals, swim in a river as giant dinosaurs and lizards roam the banks.

Before Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise, museum visitors are told, all of the dinosaurs were peaceable plant-eaters. The evidence is found in Genesis 1:30, where God gives "green herb" to every creature to eat. There were no predators. T-Rex had such big teeth, the museum explains, so it could open coconuts. Only after Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out of paradise did the dinosaurs start to eat flesh. And Adam's sin is a key component of the belief system, for in the eyes of many creationists, in order for Jesus' death to be meaningful it had to atone for Adam's first sin.

The museum has a theater equipped with seats that shake and gadgets that spray mist at the audience as the story of God's six-day creation of the world unfolds on the screen and the sound system rocks the auditorium. There are 30-foot-high walls that represent the cliffs of the Grand Canyon, floors that resemble rocks embedded with fossils, and rooms where a "Christian" paleontologist counters the claims of an "evolutionist" paleontologist. It has the appearance of a real science museum, complete with a planetarium, a gift shop and plaques on the wall with quotes from creationist "scientists" who have the title doctor conspicuously before their names. It has charts, timelines and graphs with facts and figures. It is meant to be interactive, to create, like Universal Studios, a contrived reality with an array of costly animatronic men and women as well as moving dinosaurs.

The danger of creationism is that, like the pseudo-science of Nazi eugenics, it allows facts to be accepted or discarded according to the dictates of a preordained ideology. Creationism removes the follower from the rational, reality-based world. Signs, miracles and wonders occur not only in the daily life of Christians but in history, science, medicine and logic. The belief system becomes the basis to understand the world. Random facts and data are collected and made to fit into this belief system or discarded. When facts are treated as if they were opinions, when there is no universal standard to determine truth, in law, in science, in scholarship, or in the reporting of the events of the day, the world becomes a place where people can believe what they want to believe, where there is no possibility of reaching any conclusion not predetermined by those who interpret the official, divinely inspired text. This is the goal of creationists.

Other creationist museums are going up in Arkansas, Texas, California, Tennessee and Florida. Museums are part of a massive push to teach creationism in schools, part of a vast Christian publishing and filmmaking industry that seeks to rewrite the past and make it conform to the Bible. The front lines of the culture wars are the classrooms. The battle is one we are slowly losing. Twenty states are considering changing the way evolution is taught in order to include creationism or intelligent design. Only 13 percent of Americans in a 2004 Gallup poll, when asked for their views on human origins, said life arose from the strictly natural process of evolution. More than 38 percent said they believed God guided evolution, and 45 percent said the Genesis account of creation was a true story.2 Courses on intelligent design have been taught at Minnesota, Georgia, New Mexico and Iowa State universities, along with Wake Forest and Carnegie Mellon, not to mention Christian universities that teach all science through the prism of the Bible.

The museum is an illustration of the movement's marriage of primitive and intolerant beliefs with the modern tools of technology, mass communication, sophisticated fundraising and political organization. Totalitarian systems usually start as propagandistic movements that ostensibly teach people to "believe what they want." This is a ruse. This primacy of personal opinion, regardless of facts, destabilizes and destroys the primacy of all facts. This process leads inevitably to the big lie. Facts are useful only if they bolster the message. The use of mass-marketing techniques to persuade and convince, rather than brainwash, has led tens of millions of followers to accept the toxic totalitarian line by tricking them into believing it's their own. Ironically, at the outset the movement seemingly encourages people to think "independently" or "courageously."

At first all have, in the totalitarian belief system, a right to an opinion, or, in short, a right to believe anything. Soon, under the iron control of an empowered totalitarian movement, facts become worthless, kept or discarded according to an ideological litmus test. And once these movements achieve power, facts are ruthlessly manipulated or kept hidden to support the lie. Creationism is not about offering an alternative. Its goal is the destruction of the core values of the open society--the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense tell you something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to advocate for change and to accept that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable. We are beginning to see the growing intolerance that comes with the empowerment of these ideologues. There is a bill in the Texas Legislature to strip all mention of evolution from Texas school textbooks and institute mandatory Bible classes for all students. This is just the start.

And yet, coming from the modern age, these Christo-fascists cannot discount science. They employ jargon, methods and data that appear to be science, to make an argument for creationism. They have created parallel research and scholarly institutions. They pump out articles in self-published journals to provide "evidence" that homosexuals can be cured, that global warming is a myth, that abortion can cause breast cancer, that something they call "post-abortion syndrome" leads to deep depression and suicide and that abstinence-only education is an effective form of birth control. This pseudo-science has seeped into the public debate. It is disseminated by nervous and timid media anxious to give both sides in every argument. Those who have contempt for facts and truth, for honest research and inquiry, are given the same platform by the press as those who deal in a world of reality, fact and rationality.

The movement desperately needs the imprint of science to legitimize itself. It achieves this imprint by discrediting real science and claiming creationist science as true science. All attempts to argue the creationists out of their mythical belief, to persuade them with logic, evidence, scientific inquiry and fact, will fail. They have created a "fundamentalist science." They know they cannot return to the pre-Darwinian innocence that let them believe the Bible alone was enough. They need, in the midst of their flight from reality, to reassure their followers that science, science not contaminated by secular humanists and nonbelievers, is on their side. In this they are a distinctly modern movement.

They seek the imprint of science and scholarship to legitimize myth. This is a characteristic they share with all modern totalitarian movements, which co-opt the disciplines of law, science, medicine and scholarship to give a modern veneer to their primitive and superstitious belief systems, systems that allow the rulers to dictate reality and truth. The "paraprofessional" organizations formed by the Christian right, organizations of teachers, journalists, doctors, lawyers and scientists, mimic the activities of real professional groups. They seek to challenge the legitimacy and the power of the traditional organizations. The duplication of the structures and methods employed by the non-totalitarian world, the use of pseudo-science to dress up fantasy, is slowly undermining our legitimate scientific and educational institutions. It is destroying the foundations of our open society. It is ushering us into a world where lies are true.

Monster Cane Toad captured in Australia

A conservation group captured a giant cane toad in the Australian city of Darwin. The beast weighed 840 grams (1.8 pounds) and measured 20.5 cm (8 inches).

The toad was captured as part of a publicity-seeking round up of the amphibian which is considered a problematic invasive species in Australia. The poisonous toad has wreaked ecological havoc on native species and killed pets and livestock.

Introduced from Hawaii in 1935 at the urging of sugar cane growers in Queensland who were suffering from an infestation of crop-damaging beetles, the cane road rapidly established itself as one of the most costly alien invasive species in the history of Australia. Not only did the cane toads fail to control the beetle outbreak -- they couldn't jump high enough to eat the insects -- they feasted on Australia's rare and endemic birds, reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals.

FrogWatch, an Australian environmental group, aims to end the species' reign by capturing and killing all cane toads in the country.

FrogWatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer told the Associate Press that captured toads are an excellent fertilizer.

"We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer and then put them through a liquid fertilizer process" that renders the toads nontoxic, Sawyer said.

"It turns out to be sensational fertilizer," he added.

Cane toads are originally from northern Venezuela and Guyana but the species has become a menace across much of the southern United States, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. The species has gained fame for both its size and toxicity. Some have claimed the frog's secretions are hallucinogenic but there is no evidence that the species has actually produced any sort of high in humans.

Burger King will buy cage-free eggs, pork from uncrated pigs

Does anyone remember a guy named HITLER and a GAS Fetish?

In what animal-welfare advocates are describing as a "historic advance," Burger King, the world's second-largest hamburger chain, said Tuesday that it would begin buying eggs and pork from suppliers that did not confine their animals in cages and crates.

The company said that it would also favor suppliers of chickens that use gas, or "controlled-atmospheric stunning," rather than electric shocks, to knock birds unconscious before slaughter. It is considered a more humane method, though only a few slaughterhouses use it.

The goal for the next few months, Burger King said, is for 2 percent of its eggs to be "cage-free," and for 10 percent of its pork to come from pig farms that allow sows to move around inside pens, rather than being confined to crates.

The company said those percentages would rise as more farmers shift to these methods and more competitively priced supplies become available.

Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, said Burger King's initiatives put them ahead of their competitors in terms of animal welfare.

"That's an important trigger for reform throughout the entire industry," Pacelle said.

Burger King's announcement is the latest success for animal-welfare advocates.

Last week, celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck announced that he would only use meat and eggs from animals raised under strict animal-welfare codes.

And in January, Smithfield Foods, the largest food processor, said it would phase out confinement of pigs in metal crates over the next decade.

Bloggers are not journalists, Lithuanian parliament says

AND LITHUANIA ISN'T A COUNTRY IN MY WORLD....

An Internet blogger in new EU member state Lithuania vowed Tuesday to fight a parliamentary decision refusing him accreditation on the grounds that he was not a legitimate journalist. "This decision does not allow me to enjoy the rights and protection other journalists are entitled to," Liutauras Ulevicius, author of the www.blogas.lt/liutauras, said. Parliament rejected his application for accreditation, saying he and other bloggers do not meet the legal definition of a journalist. "The Media Law describes a journalist as a person who collects, disseminates and provides information to the media, based on a contract with the media, or who is a member of a journalists' union," parliament's education, science and culture committee said. Ulevicius told AFP the decision breached his right to self-expression. He vowed to appeal in the first instance to parliamentary administrators. "If this does not help, I shall defend my rights in court," Ulevicius said.

Justin Kan Vlogs 24/7 at Justin.tv

Justin Kan has strapped a camera to the side of his head, and he won't turn it off.

For over a week, Kan has been video blogging nonstop, 24/7. Everything he does (including going to the bathroom) streams live on , where his phone number is posted for fans to call him and a chat room facilitates discussion.http://www.Justin.tv

He calls it "lifecasting."

"I've always had the theory that people like watching people," Kan, a 23-year-old Yale graduate, told The Associated Press in an interview over the phone from his San Francisco apartment - and broadcast on Justin.tv, naturally.

The experiment might recall movies like "EDtv" or "The Truman Show." After going live around the stroke of midnight on March 19, the site promptly attracted attention thanks to coverage from blogs. Kan, who runs Justin.tv with three friends, tested the site privately for more than two months, he says.

Except for when he's sleeping, Kan is rarely on camera himself - we simply see from his perspective. It's a commercial enterprise and has several sponsors, including Zipcar, the unique car rental system, and Bawls Guarana, an energy drink he guzzles.

Kan generally goes about his life as he would normally. In a fittingly postmodern twist, you often are watching him run Justin.tv. It has made him more active, though, he says. The site lists his schedule for the day, which often consists of meeting with various tech companies to learn how they do things.

"One of the ideas for Justin.tv was that it would force me to go out and be sociable and talk to people," says Kan, whose last venture was a calendar Web site named Kiko. "Our last company was really just four dudes sitting in a dark apartment coding all day."

There have been some surprises already. Kan says his two phones have been "destroyed" by heavy volume and he doesn't go a day without a viewer asking him to go to a strip club.

On March 21, Kan and company were pranked when someone reported a stabbing at his apartment and made it appear that the call came from Kan's phone. Police arrived about 2 a.m. with guns drawn - all of which could be seen on Justin.tv. The next day, a fire was reported, and the authorities have since decided to confirm any emergency reported at Kan's apartment.

Generally, watching Kan's life is quite boring, but nevertheless oddly mesmerizing.

Kan believes he has a special opportunity to live "an open life," and says the experience has made him more positive. It's hard to lie or talk behind someone's back when it's visible for everyone to see.

The lack of privacy doesn't bother Kan, whose lone refuge is instant messaging, which can't be read given the low resolution of the broadcast. He says his very public life is "reflective of a cultural change" in a generation that posts its biographies on MySpace and bedroom musings on YouTube.

He doesn't plan to stop anytime soon; next on the agenda: find a date.

"I actually want to go out and try to date girls," Kan says, adding, "I mean, ones who want to be on camera."

Lego Uno Flips in competition...its only a matter of time...

Rudy Giuliani in Drag Smooching Donald Trump

Laser Pen Shop Class

Hammer and Coop

See it HERE.

Star Wars -The Last Supper

The one thing not found in Anna Nicole was...

TRIM SPA...BABY...check out the list of items on her night stand HERE.

Baseball season is upon us....

Tiger Woods Commercial Outtake

THE PUNCH LINE

"Sources at the Pentagon say several factories in Iraq will soon begin making clothes to be sold in the United States. That's right. Because Americans only want two things from Iraq: a stable central government and affordable quality men's wear." -- Conan O'Brien

Prince Williams "Hand at Work" ?

He's Back....

Nepal's 'Buddha Boy' begins three-year meditation in bunker

A Nepali teenager dubbed the "Buddha Boy" has begun meditating for three years in an underground bunker and will neither sleep, eat nor drink any water during that time, supporters claimed Tuesday.

Ram Bahadur Bomjan, 17, who supporters insist is the reincarnation of the Buddha, shot to fame in May 2005 amid reports he did not need food, water or sleep while meditating.

He has, however, been spotted nibbling on fruit and catching a nap.

"We've constructed an underground room with a tiled roof as requested by Bomjan," said Raju Shah, a member of a village committee set up to support the activities of the young man.

Shah said Bomjam began meditating in the bunker on Monday.

"He has not eaten, slept or taken any water and he plans to continue meditating without food or water for three years there," Shah claimed.

The cement-walled bunker is seven feet (2.1 metres) deep and is located in the jungle 60 kilometers (40 miles) southeast of Kathmandu, Shah told AFP.

Tens of thousands of people came to visit the teenager at his first meditation site under a pipal tree in the same area.

He vanished from the site in March 2006 after meditating for 10 months.

"This time he does not want visitors -- not even his family," said Shah.

Local authorities, however, have poured cold water on the fasting claims and said the boy was being used by supporters to fleece funds from villagers. They froze the committee's bank account containing 8,000 dollars -- a small fortune in impoverished Nepal.

Bomjam returned to the same area to meditate in December 2006, but disappeared again earlier this month.

"While he was wandering round the jungle, he met a villager and asked him to construct an underground room. We began doing it immediately and he has started to meditate there," Shah told AFP.

Gautama Siddhartha, who later became known as Buddha or the Enlightened One, is believed to have been born in southern Nepal around 500 BC.

Buddhists believe Siddhartha achieved enlightenment after meditating under a pipal tree.

The media has reported that Bomjan had told a friend that he is not a reincarnation of Buddha, but merely an "austere sage."

Watch Jimmy's Eyes....

Ignorant Army Recruiter Attacks Gay Man Via Email

You'd think in 2007 people would have better things to do, but not our little Army recruiter, Sgt. Marcia Ramode. Nope- she's making her family proud by taking her bigotry to the information super highway.

In all caps she sent the following email, in late February, to Corey Andrew- an openly gay black man:
"GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED THERE. ... THAT'S WHERE YOU BELONG"

All Andrew did was post his resume on CareerBuilder.com in search of employment. In doing so, he became another victim to the Army's aggressive recruiting tactics- similar to those that plague many high schools in urban areas.

After declining the free trip to Iraq, Andrew decided to ask a few questions regarding the Army's foolish policy on gay and lesbian soldiers. Once he revealed his sexual preference, Ramode went into flip-mode.

According to Ramode, Andrew was now unqualified to serve and that his choice was disgusting and immoral.

"In any other corporate structure in America, an e-mail like this going around in an office building would result in termination immediately," said Andrew, who thought Ramode was "absolutely out of her mind."

Not surprisingly, Steve Ralls, a spokesman for the Service Members Legal Defense Network suggested that action be taken against Ramode. "She should be relieved from her duty. She was not just homophobic, she was also racist. And if that's the public voice the Army wants to put out there, then shame on them."

Never one to accept responsibility (*cough* Pat Tillman *cough*) the Army has responded with the typical blow-off by claiming the comments were being investigated. "The command expects its recruiters to conduct themselves in a professional manner in all dealings with potential applicants and members of the public. We are ambassadors for America's Army," says public affairs officer Sgt. Douglas Smith.

For now Ramode will stay employed by the Army but will no longer be recruiting. Perhaps a trip to the front line is in order? Andrew, however, is hoping the Army will do what's right and discharge the woman immediately, especially since she violated the all-American policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".

In all fairness, Andrew's responses weren't every bit professional either- he hit low and hard by critiquing Ramode's spelling and grammar. Ouch. Upon discovering her Native American heritage, he suggested she "take that to your next rain dance."

Research showed no existence of a Voodoo Limbo Tango and Wango Dance celebrated by any African tribe or hip-hop artist. However Ted Nugent did record "Wango Tango" for his album Scream Dream, in 1980. Members of Wang Chung were unavailable for comment. I doubt any of this is related to Ramode's emails though.

Marketing Genius...

UFC Drinking Games

UFC and beer go together like Jenna Jameson and STDs.

It’s customary to have a few pops — usually an excessive amount, actually — before, during and after big UFC events.

Like anything else, there are drinking games associated with each broadcast — most of it hinges on the comments of ringside announcers Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan.

Just check out any number of forums and you’ll see what I am talking about. But, if you want a headstart, I came across a rather comprehensive thread today on Sherdog.net for UFC 67.

I’m not going to take credit for any of these below. In fact, the author of the post compiled them from other posts himself.

As usual, I’m just here to pass along UFC goodness.

I recommend picking and choosing various phrases — if you play according to this entire list I’m pretty sure you’ll be crunked before Patrick Cote and Scott Smith step foot in the Octagon.

Take a gulp every Time Joe or Mike say:

• “Styles make fights”
• “War of attrition”
• “We all know wrestlers don’t like to be on their backs”
• “He’s no joke”
• “Heart”
• “Brutal elbows”
• “Big right gand”
• “Well-rounded”
• “He’s rocked!”
• “Warrior”
• “IT IS AAAAAALLLLLLL OVER”
• “He’s going for an Omoplata”
• “In his world now”

Take a couple of gulps when:

• The camera pans to Tim Sylvia in the crowd while watching or talking about Cro Cop
• When Cro Cop’s left high kick is mentioned
• Crowd boos
• Randy Couture’s return is mentioned
• Matt Hughes or Rich franklin are referred to as former UFC champs

Chug half your beer if:

• Rampage howls
• Joe or Mike say Wow! Anderson Silva knows jiu-jitsu
• Crowd chants USA during Silva or Crocop fights
• Joe says, “He’s got it, he’s got it DEEP…oh wait he lost it”

Feel free to add to this list.

And, props to the last man/woman standing … or speaking for that matter when the lights come up at the end of the evening.

So so so WRONG!!!!

Oprah's 'Secret' Could Be Your Downfall

Why is The Secret, an Oprah Winfrey-endorsed documentary film and book package with a simplistic message that leads to more consumerism, topping Amazon's bestselling DVD list?

Through wildly successful viral marketing and a faithful fan base spreading the word, The Secret, a documentary film explaining the "law of attraction" tops Amazon's bestselling DVD list. The companion book of the same name -- and as far as I can tell, an almost word-for-word transcript of the film -- just had the largest reorder in Simon & Schuster history (2 million copies) and is #1 on the New York Times Self Help Bestseller list.

If you are one of like three people left who haven't heard about The Secret -- come on, it was even on Oprah -- let me explain. Australian talk show producer Rhonda Byrne read The Science of Getting Rich, a book written in 1910 by Wallace D. Wattles, in her darkest hour and discovered what she believes is the essential truth -- that "your current thoughts are creating your future life. Your thoughts become things." Translation: if you are thinking about how bad your life is, bad things will continue to happen; if you start thinking about great things, they will inevitably manifest.

Byrne went around with a camera and manifested her own motley crew of entrepreneurs, financial gurus, and pop psychologists -- including the king of the Chicken Soup for the Soul dynasty, Jack Canfield -- to attest to the truth of this claim. I have no qualms with the power of positive thinking. There is sound research that confirms that envisioning yourself succeeding has a real impact on your performance, sports being the most prescient example. At a time when a violent, morally-messy war is going on four years and the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, who doesn't need a good dose of wide-eyed idealism?

But idealism is not all the fast-talking "experts" behind The Secret are dishing out. They are also articulating a dangerous message about conspicuous consumption and distracting people from crippling systemic problems.

Both the film and the book are filled with promises about the secret's capacity to attract wealth and "things" -- fancy cars, huge mansions, Rolex watches -- into your life. For example, the book reads: "Make it your intention to look at everything you like and say to yourself, 'I can afford that. I can buy that.'" In a country where the average household consumer debt is $8,000, it appears most of us need no encouragement in pretending we have more money than we do.

John Assarof, founder of a company called One Coach, stars in a hokey reenactment sequence in the film in which he realizes that he has miraculously attracted his new, unconscionably large home into his life. As he is unpacking boxes beside his five year old son, Assarof pulls out his "vision board" -- on which he had pasted images of things he wanted to attract into his life years earlier -- and finds the exact picture of the mansion he newly owns. He explains, "I looked at that house and started to cry, because I was just blown away." His son asked, "Why are you crying?" and he answered, "I finally understand how the law of attraction works."

What is the message to this five year old? What is the message to us all? That the secret to life is the capacity to desire "things" without regard to the environmental or spiritual consequences? That these "things" will somehow satisfy that deep and most universal of desires -- to matter in the world?

I cringe when I think about copies of both the DVD and books flying off the shelves and into debt-ridden, exhausted, and hopeless folks' hands. It is not just the exploitation of their dissatisfaction with their lives that offends me, but the distraction that promoters of The Secret are creating from the very real, systemic issues undergirding poverty.

The book boldly and ignorantly states, "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts." Tell that to the 36 million Americans living in poverty. Even worse, tell that to the 3 billion people worldwide who live on less that $2 a day.

If The Secret's logic is to be believed, then those who are hungry are not envisioning food hard enough, those without running water aren't imagining the feeling of satiation with enough enthusiasm. It doesn't matter if you are born in the Sudan or San Francisco, according to The Secret's catch-all claim; you can always fantasize your way into "massive wealth."

This point of view neglects the effects of government policy, class, race, gender, geography, and a host of other systemic influences on the kind of wealth -- and life -- one is able to create. It is the good ol' American Dream delusion supersized into ridiculousness. Now you don't even have to work for your wealth, you just have to sit back and dream it into existence. No matter if you are from a poor family, living in a war zone, or a thousand miles from the nearest medical clinic.

In another particularly offensive sequence, Bill Harris, a teacher and founder of Counterpointe Research Institute talks about a gay student who was harassed about his sexual orientation by coworkers and strangers on the streets. Harris explained the law of attraction to the frustrated young man: "He started taking this thing about focusing on what you want to heart...what happened within the next six to eight weeks was an absolute miracle." All the harassment, reportedly, ceased.

Sure, those who look scared are sometimes picked out as easy targets by homophobic jerks with some self-hating steam to blow off, but that doesn't take the responsibility for harassment off of the harasser. This argument is tantamount to saying that those women who fear rape are asking for it.

The idea that people invite abuse or oppression with their thoughts is insulting. The Secret crew only acknowledges this interpretation briefly: "Often when people first hear this...they recall events in history where masses of lives were lost, and they find it incomprehensible that so many people could have attracted themselves to the event. If people believe they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time...those thoughts of fear, separation, and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time." I can't begin to imagine how offensive this claim must be to those who have lost family members under horrific circumstances, like the massacres in Rwanda or the events of September 11th.

If the creators of The Secret wanted to truly empower people, they would focus more on the part of their message that invites people to dream about their best, most joyful lives. This invitation is mentioned in the work, but feels sullied by all of the talk of covetous accumulation and innocent people essentially "asking for it."

The promise of future money is a surefire way to get people to spend money now. Perhaps the purveyors of The Secret see the money message as the sugar that makes the medicine go down, but it seems hypocritical for a group of people purportedly committed to enlightenment to dwell in the material.

I would never claim to know the secret to life, but I have a hunch it has something to do with love, community, joy, and purpose -- not the size of your mansion or the brand of your watch. Further, I think it probably has something to do with alleviating suffering and inequality, encouraging people to think about changing the systems which keep them poor or in danger, not internalizing their failures -- financial or otherwise -- as proof of their own anemic imaginations.

WOW, I feel better NOW....

Believe it or not, "Battlestar Galactica" has taken one of the most covered pop songs of all time, and made it part of its own universe. And it happened thanks to a good idea by executive producer Ronald D. Moore and the genius of BSG's music composer Bear McCreary.

"All Along the Watchtower" is not only the final song featured in the last minutes of the third season finale, "Crossroads, Part 2," but also the song that brings the four of the Final Five together.

"I learned that the idea was not that Bob Dylan necessarily exists in the characters' universe, but that an artist on one of the colonies may have recorded a song with the exact same melody and lyrics," McCreary wrote Monday in his online blog. "Perhaps this unknown performer and Dylan pulled inspiration from a common, ethereal source. Therefore, I was told to make no musical references to any "Earthly" versions, [Jimi] Hendrix, Dylan, or any others. The arrangement needed to sound like a pop song that belonged in the 'Galactica' universe, not our own."

McCreary called his work on the two-part finale one of the most "daring" scores he ever composed, and said that he was a bit shocked when he first heard about the idea of using "Watchtower" just before Christmas.

"I initially learned that we would be using the song back in December, while I was busy scoring 'The Eye of Jupiter,'" McCreary said. "I have to admit that my first thought was that Ron might be going crazy. However, as always, his unexpected ideas evolved into an incredible episode."

That idea was even more incredible as McCreary rarely ever, if ever, has used English lyrics in his songs. Past songs have used Italian, Latin and even Celtic, but never English. Now he had to put together something that would sound familiar to a rock-conscious audience, but still be different enough to be a part of "Battlestar Galactica."

"The track opens with [Steve Bartek's] twangy Middle Eastern guitars, builds with his haunting electric sitar, and breaks into pounding, distorted guitar riffs," McCreary said. "And his powerful guitar solo carries over the closing shot of the third season, whisking us through the stars to a reveal of Earth."

And McCreary didn't need to look far to sing the famous lyrics, either. He kept it right in the family, bringing on Bt4, or known in his clan as his brother, Brendan McCreary.

"As much as I lavished on the instrumental arrangement, it is his vocal performance that holds the whole thing together," McCreary said of his brother. "You guys have all heard him sing before, on the first season's Main Title, and on Season 2's 'The Cylon Prisoner' from [the episode] 'Pegasus.'"

McCreary has a lot going on, apparently. He has a soundtrack album being released this summer for "My Wrong Turn 2," and announced he will now be the lead composer for sister SciFi Channel series "Eureka" in its second season.

In April, McCreary will begin the studio work for the "Battlestar Galactica" Season 3 soundtrack album, which will include "All Along the Watchtower," for release in mid-August, the same time that the "Battlestar Galactica" Season 3 DVD set is expeced to be released.

For a more detailed insight on how McCreary put together the music for the season finale, and to read more about this popular genre composer, check out his blog, or visit his official Web site.

TV Academys in Emmy tussle

Yet another battle is brewing in the West Coast vs. East Coast TV Academy smackdown.

The New York-based National Academy of TV Arts & Sciences, which runs the Daytime Emmys, has announced that it will pay for only one statuette per category winner this year, meaning that those who share a victory would have to shell out $350 apiece for their own statuettes.

But the West Coast-based Academy of TV Arts & Sciences -- even though it doesn't administer the Daytime Emmys -- plans to dig into its own pockets and reimburse any West Coast winners who are asked to pay for their statuette.

NATAS prexy Peter Price said the org's other kudofests -- news and information, sports and public service -- already adhere to the rule; an exception had been made for daytime in the past. But with nonprofits like NATAS facing increased financial woes, Price said the group could no longer pay for so many statuettes.

"We wanted to make our policy consistent so there was no grousing between the various award shows," Price said. "We're a nonprofit, and our trustees mandate that we produce a breakeven budget. To do that, we have to pull in our horns on some luxuries we used to do. If ATAS feels that they have the deep pockets to do it, then that's wonderful."

In a letter sent over the weekend to ATAS members who are also Daytime Emmy nominees, the West Coast group took issue with NATAS' belt-tightening.

"The Los Angeles-based Television Academy wants you to know that, as a matter of principle, we do not agree with this decision and do not believe that any Emmy winner should have to pay for their award," the letter read.

ATAS recommends that winners who must pay for their Daytime Emmy statue go ahead and send the money to NATAS; ATAS will then arrange to reimburse the winner.

The two TV academies had worked more closely in recent years on the Daytime Emmys, but ATAS has been less involved this year. Unlike in past years, NATAS did not consult ATAS on the nomination process; also, ATAS will not produce or pay for this year's nontelevised Daytime Emmy Creative Arts Awards, which had been covered by the West Coast org in past years.

The squabble over the Daytime Emmy statuettes comes just days after the rival TV academies went public with their battle over the proposed launch of a Broadband Emmy kudofest (Daily Variety, March 21).

ATAS late last week was to file suit against NATAS, accusing its New York counterpart of trying to launch a massive roster of Broadband Emmy awards without proper approval. NATAS denied the allegation and expressed surprise that ATAS walked away from ongoing negotiations surrounding the proposal.

ATAS and NATAS have battled off and on since the TV Academy split into two separate orgs in 1977.

The Daytime Emmys are set for June 15 in Hollywood.

hummmm......

Find out what it means HERE.

Book a Flight?

Get info HERE.

Eddie Griffin go BOOM

The First Sign of Spring

They don't make them like this anymore...

I'm at a loss for words...

Elton John Birthday Week Tribute

Scientists create a sheep that's 15% human

Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.

Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep's foetus.

He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.

The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep's foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.

"We would take a couple of ounces of bone marrow cells from the patient,' said Prof Zanjani, whose work is highlighted in a Channel 4 programme tomorrow.

"We would isolate the stem cells from them, inject them into the peritoneum of these animals and then these cells would get distributed throughout the metabolic system into the circulatory system of all the organs in the body. The two ounces of stem cell or bone marrow cell we get would provide enough stem cells to do about ten foetuses. So you don't just have one organ for transplant purposes, you have many available in case the first one fails."

At present 7,168 patients are waiting for an organ transplant in Britain alone, and two thirds of them are expected to die before an organ becomes available.

Scientists at King's College, London, and the North East Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle have now applied to the HFEA, the Government's fertility watchdog, for permission to start work on the chimeras.

But the development is likely to revive criticisms about scientists playing God, with the possibility of silent viruses, which are harmless in animals, being introduced into the human race.

Dr Patrick Dixon, an international lecturer on biological trends, warned: "Many silent viruses could create a biological nightmare in humans. Mutant animal viruses are a real threat, as we have seen with HIV."

Animal rights activists fear that if the cells get mixed together, they could end up with cellular fusion, creating a hybrid which would have the features and characteristics of both man and sheep. But Prof Zanjani said: "Transplanting the cells into foetal sheep at this early stage does not result in fusion at all."

No really, Im in Apartment number 8....

Oh, that explains it...

Anti-Piracy Ads Cause Piracy

Marijuana is safer than aspirin

When Bayer introduced aspirin in 1899, cannabis was America’s number one painkiller. Until marijuana prohibition began in 1937, the US Pharmacopoeia listed cannabis as the primary medicine for over 100 diseases. Cannabis was such an effective analgesic that the American Medical Association (AMA) argued against prohibition on behalf of medical progress. Since the herb is extremely potent and essentially non-toxic, the AMA considered it a potential wonder drug.

Instead, the invention of aspirin gave birth to the modern pharmaceutical industry and Americans switched away from cannabis in the name of “progress.” But was it really progress? There can be no doubt that aspirin has a long history as the drug of choice for the self-treatment of migraines, arthritis, and other chronic pain. It is cheap and effective. But is it as safe as cannabis?

History:

• Marijuana has been used for over 5,000 years.
• No one has ever overdosed on marijuana.

• Aspirin has been used for 108 years.
• Approximately 500 people die every year by taking aspirin

The Law:

• Marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug, meaning the US government believes it is extremely dangerous, highly addictive, and of no medical value.
• Aspirin is available for pennies and can be purchased by children at any drug, grocery, or convenience store. Often they are just handed out free by people with no medical education.

Marijuana side effects and dangers:

• The dangers of marijuana include possible respiratory problems caused by the deposition of burnt plant material on the lungs. This danger can be eliminated with alternate forms of consumption such as eating or vaporizing the medicine.
• For two to four hours, marijuana causes short-term memory loss, a slight reduction in reaction time, and a reduction in cognitive ability. (It makes you stupid for a little while.)These conditions DO NOT persist after the herb wears off.
  

• Hunger
• Paranoia
• Depression
• Laughter
• Introspection
• Creative Impulse
• Euphoria
• Tiredness
• Forgetfulness

Aspirin side effects and dangers:

• When taken with alcohol, aspirin can cause stomach bleeding.
• Reye Syndrome in children: fat begins to develop around the liver and other organs of the child, eventually putting severe pressure on the brain. Death is common within a few days.
• People with hemophilia can die.
• People with hyperthyroidism suffer elevated T4 levels.
• Stomach problems include dyspepsia, heartburn, upset stomach, stomach ulcers with gross bleeding, and internal bleeding leading to anemia.
• Dizziness, ringing in the ears, hearing loss, vertigo, vision disturbances, and headaches.
• Heavy sweating
• Irreversible liver damage
• Inflamation and gradual destruction of the kidneys
• Nausea and vomiting
• Abdominal pain
• Lethargy
• Hyperthermia
• Dyspepsia: a gnawing or burning stomach pain accompanied by bloating, heartburn, nausea, vomiting and burping.
• Tachypnea: Abnormally fast breathing
• Respiratory Alkalosis: a condition where the amount of carbon dioxide found in the blood drops to a level below normal range brought on by abnormally fast breathing.
• Cerebral Edema: Water accumulates on the brain. Symptoms include headaches, decreased level of consciousness, loss of eyesight, hallucinations, psychotic behavior, memory loss and coma. If left untreated, it can lead to death.
• Hallucinations, confusion, and seizure.
• Prolonged bleeding after operations or post-trauma for up to 10 days after last aspirin.
• Aspirin can interact with some other drugs, such as diabetes medication. Aspirin changes the way the body handles these drugs and can lead to a drug overdose and death.

If you think that cannabis is actually safer than aspirin, you are not alone. In October 2000, Dr. Leslie Iversen of the Oxford University Department of Pharmacology said the same thing.

In her book, ‘The Science of Marijuana,’ Dr. Iversen presents the scientific evidence that cannabis is, by-and-large, a safe drug. Dr. Iversen found cannabis had “an impressive record” when compared to tobacco, alcohol, or even aspirin.

“Tetrahydrocannabinol is a very safe drug,” she said. “Even such apparently innocuous medicines as aspirin and related steroidal anti-inflammatory compunds are not safe.”

So if safety is your concern, cannabis is clearly a much better choice than aspirin. If you eat it or vaporize it, it just might be the safest painkiller the world has ever known.

Dependence: How difficult it is for the user to quit, the relapse rate, the percentage of people who eventually become dependent, the rating users give their own need for the substance and the degree to which the substance will be used in the face of evidence that it causes harm.

Withdrawal: Presence and severity of characteristic withdrawal symptoms.

Tolerance: How much of the substance is needed to satisfy increasing cravings for it, and the level of stable need that is eventually reached.

Reinforcement: A measure of the substance’s ability, in human and animal tests, to get users to take it again and again, and in preference to other substances.

Intoxication: Though not usually counted as a measure of addiction in itself, the level of intoxication is associated with addiction and increases the personal and social damage a substance may do.

There a great chart originally appeared on DrugWarFacts.org.

I tracked it down at SaferChoice.org.

THC Breathstrips have arrived

Med-strips are like the Listerine breath strips you buy at the supermarket, except that each one of these comes loaded with 625mg of wonderful THC. The label claims these strips will be effective, discreet and convenient and Med-Strips deliver big-time. (JAIL TIME...lol)

Here is the breakdown:

Cost: $10/ea. Or three 2-packs for $50.
Flavors available: Mint and Cinnamon
THC Content: 625mg per strip (a 45x sucker is 600mg)

The ups: Smoke free, could not be more convenient or discreet, actually packs a punch (especially if you take two at a time), excellent for the purse or wallet for those emergency times when you must get medicated

The downs: These are a little thicker than Listerine strips. When they dissolve, they turn into a little glob of goo in your mouth. That’s not so nice. Also, some might not like them because they abandon the natural wholeness of dried cannabis. WHATEVER !!!!

The rest: The taste is decent and about what you might expect. Like putting a nugget in a wad of spearmint gum and chewing it.

Air Guitar Nation : THE MOVIE

See the trailer HERE.

The Pez Museum

See it HERE.

And in the New Millenium it would be....

Top 15 Hot Cartoon Hotties of the 80s!

#15 Madame Razz (She-Ra: Princess of Power)

Madame Razz always reminded me of Valerie Harper or Madge, the Palmolive lady who told you how well Palmolive cleaned your dishes AND your hands. Razz was that nut who was always screwed up her spells and talked like an old lady from New York. Here Madame Razz is seen causing disaster, as well as with her lovable companion Broom.



#14 Lady Jaye (GI Joe: A Real American Hero)



Lady Jaye was hot! She could kick your butt with her fists, a gun, or her javelin. In one episode she beat somebody with a purse! My favorite episode was where she and the Baroness got kidnapped; they beat a bunch of robots while Lady Jaye was wearing business casual and Baroness was in a bikini!



Here is Lady Jaye with her boyfriend Flint, but it was all a cover because we know she was a dyke.

#13 Woolma Lamb (The Get Along Gang)



Woolma was the snotty one of this group, always acting prissy and coming her hair.



#12 Melodia (Silverhawks)

Melodia was one in a long string of MTV inspired cartoon characters. All Melodia did was shriek a lot and play guitar in outer space. But her hair was hot!



#11 LaLa Orange (Rainbow Brite)



She thought she was a French lady with her beret but she’s nothing but a Parisian hooker! She was always winking and trying to seduce Red Butler!

#10 Carla (Kidd Video)

Kidd Video was one of the hottest cartoons around: Four kids (including Cousin Oliver from the Brady Bunch) get sucked into a cartoon where they play rock n’ roll and run away from Master Blaster and his psycho cats! Carla was the Apollonia/Sheena Easton/Vanity wannabe. She was so hot because she said was from East L.A.. and always wore her t-shirt with the shoulder exposed.




#9 Jacqueline Stallone



She wasn’t in a cartoon but she looks like one.

#8 Pizzaz (Jem)



Pizzaz was always trying to screw up with Jem’s career, causing destruction and chaos wherever she went. She was especially hot because her birth name was PHYLLIS GABOR. I loved when this babe would try to steal Jem’s boyfriend, Eric. She thought she was so sexy, but she looks like an alligator on crack!



#7 Nanny (Muppet Babies)



Nanny had the hottest legs in show business! You never saw this slut, but you know that she resembled Polly Holliday or Barbara Billingsley.

#6 Brittany (Alvin and the Chipmunks)



Brittany was hot because she wore Danskins. Brittany is single handedly responsible for the creation of Brittany Spears! Look at how Brit Brit was influenced by her.





#5 Crasher (Challenge of the GoBots)

For so many years I thought Crasher was a gay guy. Then I realized he was a she! But it’s a thin line anyway... Anyway, Crasher sort of looks like Pete Burns and has a British accent. She always would laugh hysterically after stepping on people and causing destruction, like she was having an orgasm. She was the first 80s cartoon character into S&M!



#4 Cheetara (Thundercats)

Aside from beating people’s asses with her hot staff, Cheetara was a porn star! Look at this picture from the first episode!



You can see her boobs...kinda!



#3 Catra (She-Ra: Princess of Power)

How could we not include this babe? She was always trying to defeat She-Ra but would always end up in a puddle of water or something. Catra was so hot because, despite being able to turn into a cat herself, she used to get carted around by her cat Clawdeen.



When you’d buy the action figure it described her as a “jealous beauty.”



#2 Evil Lyn (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe)



Evil-Lyn was Skeletor’s babe but she really ran the roost.






#1 Bianca Dupree (Beverly Hills Teens)



The choice was clear—Bianca is #1! Beverly Hills Teens was a ridiculous cartoon from 1987 about super rich teens that all hung out at a country club and dated each other. Despite being loaded, they all wore the same clothes everyday! Bianca was the richest of the group and was so hot! She had a dog Fifi and a chauffeur Wilshire that loved her but she treated him like crap!



Bianca was always scheming to break up supercouple Troy and Lark and get Troy for herself. Seen her is that trifecta of power, along with some irritating short kid.

MrSkin.com's 8th Annual Anatomy Awards

MrSkin.com's 8th Annual Anatomy Awards honor the body of work of actresses with the biggest and best biological golden globes in Hollywood. Who aren't you wearing?!


Salma Hayek takes home the highly coveted Best Breasts award for her titillating work in both "Ugly Betty" and "Ask the Dust." Jennifer Aniston keeps it family-friendly with Best PG-13 Nude Scene in "The Break-Up." While Rosie O'Donnell obstructs our view with Most Shocking Nudity for "Nip/Tuck." My eyes! My eyes!!

Other winners include "Nip/Tuck" guest star Brooke Shields for Best Plumber's Crack, and Monique Coleman from "Dancing with the Stars" for Best Wardrobe Malfunction.

Sexy mammary-cita Salma Hayek...

Sexy mammary-cita Salma Hayek proves that milk does a body good! Holy cow!

Mary-Kate hides behind a parking meter...

is that a whale...oh wait its...Queen Latifah

Queen Latifah emerged from the Maui surf yesterday, and vented her frustrations with paparazzi by flashing some sort of maritime distress signal.

Britney goes to the Dentist....duh...

A gossip website is reporting that their inside sources have told them that Britney Spears was rushed to the hospital. I have learned that it’s absolutely nothing serious, and that it is in fact a visit to the dentist. Everyone is making a huge deal about it, but, there’s nothing to be alarmed about, her manager, Larry Rudolph, when asked.

Hundreds of pigeons make for foul tenants

TheStar.com - News - Hundreds of pigeons make for foul tenantCooped up birds, mice found in tiny apartment after stench alerts neighbours

Residents of a Bleecker St. apartment building were stunned yesterday when their complaints about a foul odour seeping from a 15th-floor apartment led to the discovery of hundreds of pigeons and cannibal mice being raised by a man later detained under the province's mental health act.

The free-flying birds and caged rodents were found crammed inside the small apartment, which was fouled with animal droppings and littered with valuable books and an extensive collection of pornography.

The books and porn were protected with plastic wrappings, a human society inspector said, suggesting the occupant knew his wildlife collection was creating a mess.

Officers responding to residents' complaints of animal noises and noxious odours arrived at the Bleecker St. apartment north of Wellesley St. and west of Parliament St. around 2:15 p.m.

"We found literally hundreds of pigeons flying loose, rats, mice, excrement from animals throughout," Toronto police Staff Sgt. Stan Belza said.

Following the repelling discovery, police called in the Toronto Humane Society, which found between 300 and 400 pigeons and 250 mice, spokesperson Lee Oliver said.

"The pigeons were actually being bred," Oliver said. "There were eggs and that sort of thing and they built nests inside the apartment."

Many were found inside rows of open cages stacked to the ceiling of the 800-square-foot apartment. Scores of others flapped up against each other and the cages, leaving layers upon layers of excrement smothering the floor and furniture.

A man in his mid-60s was arrested under the the Ontario Mental Health Act after he was "deemed to be suffering from a mental illness," Belza said, adding he was the only human occupant of the apartment.

"There were 250 mice in an aquarium without food and water and apparently, they were actually eating each other because this guy wasn't feeding them at all," said Oliver, who discounted reports of rats in the apartment.

"The biggest number were the pigeons," he said. The mice, Oliver added, "were just extraneous to the mess."

While the birds and mice lived and died in their filth, selected items were wrapped in plastic to protect them from the gruesome conditions.

"Apparently he had some really expensive book collections, like a biography of Beethoven and that sort of thing, wrapped in plastic so the pigeons wouldn't destroy them," Oliver said. "And, apparently, a lot of pornography."

"He would have to know the damage (caused by the birds)," Oliver said of the arrested tenant. "If he can identify something as valuable and cover them up, then yes, he had an idea of the damage he was doing."

Four Humane Society officials in masks and white biohazard outfits worked into the evening to capture the free-flying birds, which were boxed and removed. The animals were taken to the society's downtown office's wildlife centre, with pens and coops usually reserved for injured birds brought in from the street.

"Most of these pigeons will be transferred to those pens and we'll also try to find some other shelters," Oliver said.

The apartment's doors have been sealed to protect other tenants in the building, none of whom were evacuated, Belza said.

"Until the rest of the cleanup is done tomorrow, they were advised to put towels under their doors and those will suffice," he said.

Over the next couple days, the birds and mice will be tested for the presence of diseases before being freed in a location predetermined by the Ministry of Natural Resources, Oliver said.

Oliver and Belza said they've never heard of a situation like this before.

"They were surprised, shocked," Belza said of the attending officers. "They had never in their lives, in their professional careers, cumulatively anticipated anything like this."

Woman Has Crocodiles Strapped to Body

A woman with three crocodiles strapped to her waist was stopped at the Gaza-Egypt border crossing after guards noticed that she looked "strangely fat," officials said Monday.

The woman's shape raised suspicions at the Rafah terminal in southern Gaza, and a body search by a female border guard turned up the animals, each about 20 inches long, concealed underneath her loose robe, according to Maria Telleria, spokeswoman for the European observers who run the crossing.

"The woman looked strangely fat. Even though she was veiled and covered, even with so many clothes on there was something strange," Telleria said.

The incident, which took place on Thursday, sparked panic at the crossing.

"The policewoman screamed and ran out of the room, and then women began screaming and panicking when they heard," Telleria said. But when the hysteria died down, she said, "everybody was admiring a woman who is able to tie crocodiles to her body."

In her defense, the woman said she "was asked" to carry the crocodiles, said Wael Dahab, a spokesman for the Palestinian guards at the crossing.

The reptiles, which had their jaws tied shut with string, were returned to the Egyptian side of the border.

Dhabi said the animals were likely meant for sale to Gaza's small zoo or to private owners. The crocodiles would fetch "good money," even in the impoverished territory, he said.

The woman was not the first to try to smuggle exotic wildlife through the Rafah crossing, Dahab said: Another woman tried to bring in a monkey tied to her chest, and other travelers tried to smuggle in exotic birds and a tiger cub.

The crossing is the only way in and out of Gaza for residents of the crowded coastal strip.

Since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, the crossing has subject to a complex system of control: Egypt and the Palestinians are responsible for the crossing, with European monitors stationed at the terminal and Israeli inspectors watching from a distance over closed-circuit TV.

Israel retains final say over whether the crossing can open, and has kept it closed over 80 percent of the time since an Israeli soldier was captured by Hamas-linked militants in Gaza nine months ago, charging that the crossing is being used to smuggle money and weapons to militants.

TONIGHT- Eltons 60th Birthday Party Live ONLINE

Eltons 60th Birthday Party Streaming Live 3/25/07

Sunday March 25th 2007 5:30 PT 8:30 ET

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Amy Winehouse - the next big thing

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The Punchline...

"Britney Spears has agreed to give estranged husband Kevin Federline $20 million in a divorce settlement. Apparently, Federline will get $2 million in cash and the rest in beef jerky." -- Conan O'Brien

Robert Hawkins

2 charged in hit-and-run murder scam

Two women in their 70s face trial here on charges that they insured the lives of two homeless men and ran them over with a car in hit-and-run murders to collect millions of dollars in death benefits.

Longtime friends Helen Golay, 76, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 74, are to be arraigned March 29 on homicide and conspiracy counts. Paul Vados, 73, was killed in a Hollywood alley in 1999. Kenneth McDavid, 50, died in an alley near UCLA in 2005. After a preliminary hearing last week, a judge ordered the women to stand trial. The defendants had pleaded not guilty to an earlier criminal complaint in the case.

"Local newspapers have compared this bizarre case to the comical plot of Arsenic and Old Lace, but these were brutal murders," says Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Shellie Samuels, who is prosecuting. "The pure and simple motive was greed."

Court documents allege the defendants installed the transients in apartments and paid rent for two years to keep track of them while paying premiums on 24 insurance policies worth a total of $5.7 million.

By California law, after two years, an insurance company cannot contest fraudulent statements on an application for a policy.

Samuels says the women got the alleged victims to sign insurance applications falsely, saying they had yearly incomes of $60,000 to $100,000. The women were named beneficiaries of the policies on false claims that they were the men's cousins, business partners or fiancées, court papers say.

The defendants had collected $2.8 million before FBI agents arrested them on suspicion of insurance fraud last May, court documents say. Federal fraud charges were dropped after the state filed murder charges. Golay and Rutterschmidt have been jailed without bail since their arrests.

Authorities got a break in solving the hit-and-run cases when detectives compared notes and discovered the women were insurance beneficiaries of both victims, Samuels says. Police then found DNA matching McDavid's on a station wagon linked to Golay, affidavits filed in court say. An autopsy found that McDavid was "drugged and heavily sedated," Samuels says.

"The case is unique because of the defendants' age and what they were willing to do," Samuels says. "It kind of boggles people. People tend to think that women of that age aren't going to do something this awful."

Golay's defense is that "she did not do it," says her lawyer, Roger Jon Diamond. "Whether or not there was insurance fraud going on is irrelevant to the issue of murder. She's 76 years old. It's preposterous to say she had the physical ability to commit these alleged murders." Rutterschmidt's lawyer, Michael Sklar, did not respond to requests for comment.

At last week's hearing, Sklar tried to shift suspicion to Golay based on testimony that she tried to delete Rutterschmidt from a policy.

Prosecutors won't seek the death penalty because of the women's ages, Samuels says. If convicted of two premeditated murders for financial gain, Golay and Rutterschmidt would be sentenced to life in prison without parole, she says.

In a four-letter word, a panoply of meaning

As with so many fraught or politically tricky words, context is everything when it comes to "slut."

These days the word is often used as an affectionate tease among friends, especially adolescent girls. Or it has metaphorical meaning – you're a slut for something you can't resist.

At first it might seem that feminism and the sexual revolution have dulled the word's power to demean: how can anyone be a slut – "a promiscuous woman," as The Canadian Oxford Dictionary puts it – if females are free to be as sexual as men?

The word has become so benign that there's at least one "Slut" line of clothing, not to mention lip balm and bubble bath bearing the word.

You could argue that the "slutification" of female fashion has further demolished the barrier between what used to be considered "good" and "bad" girls.

But "slut" can still pack a knockout punch of contempt, even when it's aimed at someone who isn't being, well, slutty. For people lashing out against a girl or woman, the four-letter word is – like "bitch" – one of those reflex insults that leap from the tongue.

Why does it pop up so readily? Because it can still hurt.

Witness Barbara Amiel Black's meltdown last week in a Chicago courthouse, in which she called a female Canadian TV producer a "slut." Apparently, Black was upset by the journalist's assertiveness in trying to get into the same elevator – not exactly sluttiness in the traditional sense.

The word first emerged in Middle English as "slutte," which denoted a dirty, untidy woman, a meaning it still bears in the U.K. By the middle of the 15th century, it had acquired its taint of sexual licentiousness.

Until recently in North America, that was the only sense in which it was used. (In fact, "slut" is one of the few judgmental terms from pre-sexual revolution days that still has currency. "Loose," "floozy," "easy" and "has a reputation" now seem awfully quaint.)

The funniest bit of pop culture to remove some of the sting from "slut" was the Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" skit in which Dan Aykroyd routinely addressed co-anchor Jane Curtin as "Jane, you ignorant slut."

Marcel Danesi, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto who teaches semiotics and youth culture, observes that "slut" is now an ambiguous word whose various meanings include – in hip-hop – "my woman." Yet he was taken aback when a colleague called him a "slut" recently. "I was complaining about the inane bureaucracy at the University of Toronto, and he said, `You're a typical slut ...' It was kind of friendly – he was saying that I break the rules."

To him, "slut" still reverberates with negative connotations linked to sexual promiscuity. "I would never, absolutely never, present my wife in this way."

Among younger people, though, the friendly use of "slut" is common. Mimi Hagiepetros, a 13-year-old Toronto student, says her schoolmates mostly use it "lovingly" and "as a joke."

Grown-up women will good-naturedly call each other "slut," employing the word with all its sexual connotations in subtle, ironic rebellion against a double standard that refuses to go away.

Yet the word hasn't been completely defanged. A battery-operated Little Mermaid Shimmering Lights Ariel doll that supposedly says the words "You're a slut" made it to the ABC news website last December after a "shocked" mother contacted the media. Visitors can watch a 48-second video clip of the doll "speaking" to try to hear the offending words themselves (Mattel denied the accusation, and this writer was unable to detect any Exorcist-like language).

Another cartoon creature, Paris Hilton, vigorously defended herself in a July interview with the celebrity gossip website TMZ.com against readers' assertions that she was a "stupid, ugly slut" and "an overused human condom."

"I am not a slut at all," she declared. "I've only had a few boyfriends, and I don't even do anything with them any more ... I'm far less promiscuous than any of my friends."

The best defence against being relegated to slut-dom, it seems, is to point a finger at women who are sluttier.

Amiel herself stoked controversy in a 2003 column for London's Telegraph in which she discussed the word provocatively. "A woman can look and behave like a slut – it's her right – and there will be no consequences," Amiel wrote. "She may consent to intercourse on Thursday night, but if the chap is discourteous on Friday morning, the previous evening's sizzling sex will cool into rape."

Whatever one makes of Amiel's argument, it's clear that, for all our jocularity about the "s" word, it can still shock.

Toronto filmmaker Andrea Dorfman completed a documentary called Slut a year ago in which 10 females talk about having been labelled the slut of their class. "Literally, the 15-year-old had the same story as the 85-year-old," says Dorfman. The film's older subjects, "carried (the insult) around with them their whole lives. It affected their self-confidence, their careers, their self-esteem."

Dorfman, 38, says a girl who's branded a "slut" in gossip – and she adds it's usually females who use the word against other females, competing for the attention of the still-more-powerful male – "is the receptacle of everybody's anxiety about sex."

The Women of Big Brother UK

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Locate Public Toilets Worldwide

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Odie the Wonder Dog

Prince Harry's drunken 3am brawl

It is hardly behaviour becoming of a Prince. Emerging from his favourite nightclub after downing several "Crack Baby' vodka shots, Prince Harry stumbles spectacularly into the gutter.

Only seconds earlier he had lashed out at a photographer, chasing him through West London's late-night traffic and trying to shove him in the back.

• Click here for more pictures of Harry's drunken night out

Eventually, the 22-year-old Royal was helped back to his feet and into a waiting Range Rover, which sped off with one of its doors still open and Harry's mentor, former Welsh Guards captain Mark Dyer, hanging on to the seat in front of him for dear life.

The extraordinary scenes were played out just after 3am on Saturday after the Prince had spent a night inside his favourite haunt, Boujis in South Kensington.

Prince Harry stumbles spectacularly into the gutter

At the same time, 100 miles away, his brother Prince William was dancing on a nightclub podium after drinking pints of strong lager with his Army pals.

But Harry had not been drinking with comrades from the Blues and Royals, with whom he is about to embark on a tour of Iraq, nor his girlfriend Chelsy Davy, but his close friend Natalie Pinkham.

One explanation for his outburst is that he had spotted the photographer he believes caught him leaving a flat in South Kensington in June last year.

Miss Pinkham was among those who had been with him that night, and was heard to say: "Harry, give us a kiss."

Yesterday, Miss Pinkham, a budding TV presenter, left through the club's main entrance to detract attention from the Prince, who left through the back.

Familiar with such tactics, however, photographers were covering both exits.

When Harry stumbled out, wrapped in a hat and scarf, he ignored the waiting car and instead gave chase to a paparazzo through the streets.

The pursuit ended only when the Prince's bodyguard grabbed him and tried to guide him back to the waiting vehicle, whereupon the unsteady Harry stumbled into the gutter.

Photographer David Vercillo who witnessed the event said: "It all happened very quickly. I don't know what Harry was on but he was clearly off his head.

"The photographer he lashed out at had taken a few frames when suddenly Harry just went for him and chased him into the middle of the road. It was incredibly dangerous.

"The Royal protection officer caught up with Harry, who pulled himself together and went back to the car. But he was clearly disorientated and the car had moved back a few yards.

"When Harry tried to get in, he tripped and collapsed on his ankle, flashing pink socks and pink boxer shorts. It wasn't very dignified.

"When he was finally in the car they sped off at such high speed one of the entourage hadn't time to shut the door and almost fell out the car."

A source at the club said:

"Harry turned up quite late with a group of friends. He was on very good form and clearly in the mood to let his hair down. Natalie Pinkham was there, as was Lord Freddie Windsor.

"Harry and his friends were being rowdy and at one point in the evening, they were at the main bar downing Crack Babies - which are shots of vodka, champagne, raspberry liqueur and passion fruit juice.

"They were very lively and enjoying knocking back the alcohol."

Miss Pinkham said: "I was at Boujis but I wasn't with Prince Harry. It's not a good time to talk right now."

Mr Dyer added: "Prince Harry wasn't drunk and neither was I. He was fine. He slipped when we left but he wasn't being aggressive or trying to start a fight with any photographers.

"We didn't see Natalie. She might have been there but I don't know."

The incident is likely to infuriate senior aides at Clarence House who have advised the Prince to stay away from the club.

A source said: "Harry can't stay away from Boujis, it's his favourite place in town. There's never any trouble inside the club, the problem is getting Harry past the scrum at the end of the night."

It is not the first time the Prince, has lashed out at photographers. Two years ago, one was left with a cut lip after a fracas outside Pangea nightclub, in which Harry was hit in the face by a camera.

A spokesman for the Prince said last night:

"Harry didn't make any aggressive moves towards the photographer, he fell over as he was leaving the club and everyone had a laugh about it."

The Lighter Side of Kirk Douglas

The Visual Definition of Enhancement

The Sound of Music

Nothing like an MP3 player built directly into your Lederhosen.

1st YouTube.com....then....

See it all HERE.

God Created The Banana

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Alice Cooper Commercial

Why wait till Monday...

The reason for the death of Anna Nicole Smith (which is to be announced officially on Monday morning), is a Staphylococcus aureus infection in her bloodstream (septicemia), along with a drug overdose.

Backround:
Before she left the Bahamas for Florida on February 5, three days before she died, Anna Nicole received an injection in her left buttock. Tests did not reveal what that substance was. “As she boarded the plane for Miami, Anna Nicole developed a painful abscess at the site of the injection,” said a source with knowledge of the case. “The needle wasn’t sterile. The pain kept getting worse as the abscess got larger and larger very quickly.” From Miami, Anna Nicole and her live-in lawyer Howard K. Stern traveled to Hollywood, Fla. The pain from the abscess became excruciating and Anna Nicole developed a high fever. By the time she got to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino her fever was 105. Anna Nicole, unaware that her blood was being poisoned by infection, had also developed a second infection from a virulent form of norovirus, which causes intestinal problems. It was at this point that Anna Nicole — and her entourage — made a fatal mistake. She refused to go to a hospital, a decision that would have saved her life. Instead, Anna’s people gave her an ice bath to control the fever, administered the antibiotic ciprofloxacin by mouth and gave her an over-the-counter flu medicine. As the needle-caused infection took over her body, she began vomiting, had severe diarrhea and could not urinate. On February 6, a Tuesday, Anna spent the whole day in bed. She could not keep fluids down. She was becoming severely dehydrated. On Wednesday, February 7, Anna seemed somewhat better, but she wasn’t, the source said.

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Little Superstar

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Chuck Norris Facts

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The Bank Deposit

RIP: Robert Petersen

Robert E. Petersen, the publishing magnate whose Hot Rod and Motor Trend magazines helped shape America's car culture and who gave millions to a museum dedicated to his passion, has died. He was 80.

Petersen died Friday of complications from neuroendocrine cancer at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, said Dick Messer, director of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.

"Mr. Petersen helped create and feed the American obsession with the automobile, delivering gasoline-powered dreams to the mailboxes of millions," Messer said.

Petersen, the son of an auto mechanic, founded Hot Rod magazine in 1948 while trying to promote the custom-designed car show at the Los Angeles Armory. The following year, he launched Motor Trend for automobile enthusiasts.

A dozen other specialty consumer magazines followed, including Guns & Ammo, Sport, Motorcyclist, Hunting, Mountain Biker, Photographic, Teen and Sassy.

By the time his publishing empire was sold in 1996, Petersen Publishing's annual revenue was about $275 million.

Some of the magazines Petersen started reflected his other interests, including sport shooting, aviation and real estate. But it was his love of cars that prompted his involvement with Los Angeles' shrine to the automobile.

The Petersen Automotive Museum opened in 1994, showcasing dozens of cars and exploring the automobile's impact on American culture.

When the museum, operated by the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, ran into financial trouble in 1999, Petersen and his wife, Margie, donated $25 million to pay off its debt.

"Our intention is the ensure that the museum is a viable educational and social center, a growing institution for the community, its children, businesses and all visitors to the city of Los Angeles," Petersen told The Associated Press at the time.

Petersen is survived by his wife. A funeral is planned for Thursday at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.

Girl Eats Preying Mantis

'Brady' Star Reveals Bout With Cocaine, Bulimia

McCormick Says Problems Started At 17

The actress who played Marcia Brady on the classic television sitcom "The Brady Bunch" is revealing some serious issues from her past.Maureen McCormick told People magazine that she used to snort cocaine and suffer from bulimia.McCormick, 50, said that the eating disorder came first, when she went back to public school when she was 17.Then a boyfriend introduced her to cocaine.McCormick said it became clear she has an "addictive personality."After several relapses, McCormick said she cleaned up through therapy and faith.The actress played Marcia on "The Brady Bunch" from 1969 to 1974, and appeared in variety shows and television movies based on the series.She has also guest-starred on several television series including "Fantasy Island," "The Love Boat," "Touched by an Angel" and "Moesha," and had a recurring role on the daytime drama "Passions."

Humm.....somethings not right here....

Harold Rubin: 1940 - 2007

Oft-arrested `King of Chicago pornography' always enjoyed tweaking authorities about his right to free speech.

Harold Rubin was stuck with his nickname well before he opened the pornographic bookshop in the South Loop that kept police and prosecutors busy throughout the early 1970s.

Never a shy man, Mr. Rubin had gone to pick up a date for a costume party wearing only a helmet, and carrying a shield and sword.

"She opened the door and said, `You're weird, Harold,' and that was it," said Mr. Rubin's son, Jules.

Mr. Rubin, 67, onetime proprietor of Weird Harold's, an adult bookstore, massage parlor and nude modeling studio, was found dead in his home in Galena on Jan. 30.

The death appeared to be from natural causes but an autopsy report has yet to be completed, said Bill Miller, coroner for Jo Daviess County.

Weird Harold's, 541 S. Wabash Ave., featured all manner of pornography and also offered shapely young models for amateur shutterbugs. Police said these sessions sometimes veered into prostitution, and they regularly hustled Mr. Rubin off to be booked on an array of obscenity charges.

The press had great fun with the outspoken Mr. Rubin, whose run-ins with the law date at least to a 1969 arrest after he was caught behind the camera for a blue movie being shot at a Mannheim Road motel.

Authorities in subsequent years tried a number of novel approaches in their effort to squelch Mr. Rubin's penchant for pornography. In 1975, after pleading guilty to an obscenity charge, Mr. Rubin was ordered by a Cook County judge to distribute more than 1,000 "non-sex" books to inmates at the Cook County Jail. He cheerfully accepted the sentence.

Mr. Rubin never apologized for his line of work, reveling in stories that dubbed him the "king of Chicago pornography."

"I'm an entrepreneur," he said in a 1974 Chicago Tribune story. "My girls make money and I make money also."

He also rallied behind his 1st Amendment rights to free speech. "That was his cause. He believed in the 1st Amendment," Jules Rubin said. "It's people's right to have [pornography], he believed that."

His lease was canceled in 1975 after city inspectors found numerous code violations in the building that housed his store. That shut Weird Harold's for good.

But the demise of the bookstore was not the end of controversy for Mr. Rubin. A native of Berwyn who attended Morton High School, he regularly found trouble with authorities in that city.

In 1975, a large pile of horse manure was dumped on the steps of Berwyn City Hall. Immediately a prime suspect, Mr. Rubin never owned up to the prank, although he told reporters it was "an ingenious idea."

"Yes, he did do it," his son acknowledged Wednesday.

Mr. Rubin engaged in a long-running battle to open a newsstand in the suburb, which apparently feared he'd stock his shelves with something other than the local papers. After numerous court hearings, he was allowed to open a stand on Cermak Road, which his son said he operated for several years.

A collector of antiques and organized-crime memorabilia, Mr. Rubin was a scavenger who in the early 1980s helped discover a concrete vault in the basement of the Lexington Hotel at Cermak Road and Michigan Avenue, Al Capone's onetime headquarters. Geraldo Rivera swept in and the vault was opened on live TV, with disappointing results.

"He was a card, very outspoken," said his son. "He always had a zest for whatever he went after."

Moving to Galena about 15 years ago, Mr. Rubin became well-known around town for videotaping City Council meetings and even a local fair, for reasons that were never clear. That kind of behavior raised eyebrows in the bucolic community, but he was pretty much left alone.

"The town kind of got used to him," said Galena Mayor Tom Brusch.

Mr. Rubin was divorced. In addition to his son, Jules, he is survived by three grandchildren.

Services have been held.

I almost cut my hair.....

Oh, thats how they do it?

If you want a haircut with FIRE...

Mr. Warren's Torch Cut
887 Thomas St
Memphis, TN 38107
901-521-1968

My Black Friend

U.S. retirees bowled over by Wii

Until two weeks ago, Ruth Ebert never had the slightest interest in the video games favored by her one and only granddaughter.

"I'm 82 years old, so I missed that part of our culture. Soap operas, yes. Video games, no," chirped Ebert, who recently started playing a tennis game on Nintendo's new Wii video game console at the Virginia retirement community she calls home.

"It was funny, because normally I would not be someone who would do that," said Ebert, who picked up the console's motion-sensing Wiimote and challenged the machine to a match.

"I played tennis, if you can call it that, as a high school student. I had such fun doing it," she said.

Ebert swung the Wiimote just like a tennis racquet and said playing the game reminded her of the feeling she had all those years ago.

While she took the early on-court lead, the Wii beat her in the end. Still, it hurt less than her real-world losses: "I didn't mind losing to a video game. It couldn't rub it in."

Underdog delivers

Japan's Nintendo has been on a mission to expand the $30 billion global video game market far beyond the children and young males who make up its core consumers.

And the company, a former underdog best known for fun, high-quality games based on off-beat characters like plumbers — think Mario Bros. — has sent shock waves through game industry with the unexpected and runaway success of the Wii.

That $250 console has been stealing the show from Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3, higher-powered consoles that are much more expensive than the Wii.

While those rivals focused on cutting-edge graphics and high-tech bells and whistles, Nintendo focused on making game play easier, more intuitive and more appealing to a mass market.

That bet paid off.

The Wii outsold the new Microsoft and Sony consoles in January and February and is generating its own buzz with everyone from nuns to cancer patients to toddlers.

There are Wii parties and Wii bowling contests. Players, who often look quite silly and occasionally injure themselves in fits of overzealous play, upload video of their Wii antics to a variety of technology websites like GameTrailers.com and Google's YouTube.

"I thought it was tremendous," said Ted Campbell, 77.

Last week he played the Wii for the first time at Springfield, Virginia's Greenspring Retirement Community, where Ebert is also a resident.

The community hasn't yet decided where to keep the Wii, although Ebert has volunteered her one-bedroom apartment, with its big-screen TV.

Wii wave

Flora Dierbach, 72, chairs the entertainment committee at a sister facility owned by Erickson Retirement Communities in Chicago and helped arrange a Wii bowling tournament — the latest Wii craze.

"It's a very social thing and it's good exercise ... and you don't have to throw a 16-pound bowling ball to get results," said Dierbach, who added the competition had people who hardly knew each other cheering and hugging in the span of a few hours.

"We just had a ball with it. You think it's your grandkids' game and it's not," she said, noting that Erickson paid for the Wiis in its facilities.

Greenspring resident and long-time bowler Sim Taylor said his grandchildren are also great fans of video games.

"I never could understand it," said Taylor, who at 81 has surprised himself by adding video games to his list of hobbies.

That isn't the case with Millicent, his wife of 55 years.

"She sticks with bridge," Taylor said.

hummmm....

"Last week a dead passenger was upgraded to first class on a British Airways flight. That's one of the perks of being Keith Richards." -- Jay Leno.

Trouble in the Sky AGAIN....

Is this a flashback? One faction of the 1960s psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane is again suing founding member Paul Kantner, alleging that he's using the band's name without permission.

Singer Grace Slick and Bill Thompson, former manager of the Jefferson Airplane and the Jefferson Starship, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court, charging that Kantner is violating both trademark rights and an $80,000 legal settlement he signed in 1985.

Kantner promised never to perform as Jefferson Starship or use the names "Jefferson" or "Airplane" without consent from Slick, majority shareholder in Jefferson Starship Inc., the lawsuit said.

Kantner, 66, has been performing for years under variations on the names. He started touring in 1991 as Paul Kantner's Starship, while Mickey Thomas, another ex-Starship vocalist, has been touring under the name of Mickey Thomas' Starship. Kantner's and Airplane vocalist and co-founder Marty Balin's use of the Airplane name in a 2000 concert tour brought another lawsuit and an injunction.

Asked why Kantner hadn't been sued before now for his appearances under the Starship banner, Thompson said: "Playing small fairs didn't irritate us so much."

Kantner crossed the line by making a deal to let Microsoft Corp. use the Starship name to promote a new computer operating system, Thompson said. He said publicity for the concerts associated with the promotion included a poster with a photograph of Slick.

The lawsuit says Kantner has cost Thompson, Slick and Jefferson Starship Inc. more than $750,000 in revenue from using a name not rightfully his. The lawsuit seeks to confiscate his profits and stop him from performing as Jefferson Starship.

Kantner said he hadn't sold the Starship name, but let Microsoft use it in promotions for four free concerts, for which the band was paid $100,000.

Slick, reached at her Malibu home, laughed and said she wouldn't discuss the case.

---

Willie Nelson and Steve Colbert: Ice Cream Wars

See it HERE.

Frickin MORONS....(and you leave out PONG) ?...

MIA:

Asteroids, Space Invaders,Frogger,Moon Patrol, Duck Hunt,LIFE,DONKEY KONG.....

Stanford , another reason not to go to THAT COLLEGE.....

10 Games That Belong In A Museum — 'Pac-Man' and 'GTA' Not Included

SAN FRANCISCO — Who makes a list of 10 all-time great games and leaves "Pac-Man" off the list? Henry Lowood and four of his friends did.

Lowood is the curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections for Stanford University. More relevant to gamers, though, is the fact that Lowood recently got together with another game researcher, a blogger and two highly respected developers to come up with a list of games they feel should go in a museum.

"The video game canon is a list of 10 games that are important for history and all of game culture," he said when the five-person panel sat down with MTV News at the Game Developers Conference earlier this month in San Francisco. "The reason we wanted to put a canon together was to jump-start efforts to preserve the history of digital gaming."

Last July, the Library of Congress put out a call for suggestions on how the institution could preserve digital content, including "interactive games." The Library collects important cultural and literary works from throughout the world, but so far hasn't archived games. "I believe that was the first time a major American cultural institution said, 'Games belong on that list,' " Lowood said. He decided to make a list, a suggested starting point of what should be saved.

A few months ago he roped in game designers Warren Spector ("Deux Ex") and Steve Meretzky ("Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") along with fellow academic Matteo Bittanti and gaming blogger Christopher Grant of Joystiq.com. Their mission, at first just by e-mail, was to submit two games apiece for the proposed museum list. Then they argued. Then they presented at GDC.

The list:

"Civilization" (series)
"Doom"
"Sensible World of Soccer"
"SimCity" (series)
"Spacewar!"
"Star Raiders"
"Super Mario Bros. 3"
"Tetris"
"Warcraft" (series)
"Zork"

(Watch these guys explain their selections — and explain why they left out a certain world-famous game — right here.)

Those 10 games weren't the first ones the group selected. At least one major argument ensued when Bittanti initially nominated the "Call of Duty" series. "I was attacked by everybody," he told MTV News. "Not too many people consider 'Call of Duty' a masterpiece." He does, referring to the second game as a masterpiece of "merging cinema and games." He argued that including the game would also touch on the close historical ties between the games industry and the military. The four others didn't care; he was talked out of it. "Doom" would be the first-person-shooter on the list.

Grant was the one who officially backed "Doom" as one of his two choices. He too had considered a different first-person shooter. "My next game that I would have added that would have been hard to leave out was 'Half-Life 2,' he said. "I wanted to get a game that had been made more recently. The latest game on our list is from 1994."

Meretzky was sympathetic. "I was actually pushing to have 'Half-Life' on there instead of 'Doom' because I thought it was a better example of the first-person-shooter genre."

Spector didn't care. "I would have resisted having a game that recent on the list if only because we don't have the perspective to know what is going to have lasting value and what is going to change things." He said "Grand Theft Auto" would surely make a future list, but games that recent need more time to settle in proper historical context.

The group debated whether recent games should go in. They pondered which versions of a game would go into a museum. If "SimCity" gets preserved, then which version? If "Doom" is preserved, then should the game's most popular mods be as well? Should special credence be paid to what was first or is it more important, since these are games, after all, to preserve what was most fun? "This is the real question," Bittanti said. "Do you select a game that was groundbreaking because it was the first of a genre or do you pick a game like 'Call of Duty' or 'Half Life 2' which perfected the genre?"

Grant settled that debate for himself when he went about picking which Mario game to nominate. "We were looking for originators, so I didn't want to jump to Super Nintendo, and I didn't want to jump to the 3-D games," he said. "I wanted to stick to the original Mario series on NES. 'Mario 2' automatically kind of gets booted — sorry, 'Mario 2.' So it's between 'Mario' 1 and 3. When it gets down to games you want to play, 'Super Mario Brothers 3' added more levels, more creativity, more power-ups, better graphics." Plus "SMB3" was marketed more extravagantly — it was featured in a movie, for one thing — than many games of its time, making it a precursor for the blockbuster treatment many more recent games get. So he picked that game, the one with Mario sporting a raccoon tail.

The group of five all emphasized the major impetus of this exercise: Games need saving. Digital entertainment doesn't have the lasting power of books. A novel printed a decade ago may be dusty; its pages may be crumbling. But it's not hard to preserve. A game made for an early 1980s video game console doesn't get made anymore.

"I felt a little guilty talking about 'Tetris' because it is so accessible and it is so easy to play, easy to find, and so not in need of preservation," said Spector. "But 'Star Raiders,' I can't play it." The game was released in 1979 on the long-defunct Atari computer. "Someone asked me, 'Well, what was it like to play?' I honestly have vague memories of it. I have memories of emotions it evoked. The fact that we can't play that game anymore speaks to the importance of preserving our history and starting to do that right now before it's all gone."

The Big Ragu...

Has his own website HERE.

RIP: Eric Medlen

DRIVER ERIC MEDLEN SUCCUMBS TO INJURIES SUFFERED IN TESTING ACCIDENT

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Eric Medlen, 33, who had emerged as one of the most popular young drivers in the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, succumbed Friday afternoon to injuries suffered when his race car crashed into a guardwall during a Monday test session at Gainesville Raceway.

The talented Funny Car driver never regained consciousness. After being treated at the track, he was transported by ShandsCair helicopter to Shands at the University of Florida medical center where medical staff treated him for days for a severe closed head injury.

“Eric suffered from severe traumatic brain injury with diffuse axonal injury, or DAI,” said Dr. Joseph Layon, Professor of Anesthesiology, Surgery and Medicine and the Chief of Critical Care Medicine at UF. “Survival rates associated with DAI are low.

“On Tuesday, UF and Shands neurosurgery team performed a cranjectomy and removed the front portion of the skull to relieve pressure and attempt to improve blood flow to the brain,” Dr. Layon explained. “Despite receiving the most aggressive treatment, Eric continued to have uncontrollable intracranial pressure. His body lost the ability to manage it’s salt and water levels and he began displaying the complicating factors associated with DAI.

“That is when Eric’s family elected to honor Eric’s wishes and remove him from the artificial life support systems. Our hearts go out to Eric’s loved ones.”

“On behalf of the family, I want to thank the medical staff at Shands not just for giving Eric the very best care he could have received, but for the compassion it showed for Eric and all those close to him” said his father, John Medlen. “I also want to thank the thousands of people who offered their prayers and support to us during this very difficult time.”

As recently as Thursday night, more than 100 drivers and crew members representing every Indianapolis-based race team attended a prayer vigil organized by Kelly Bustos, team manager for Tuttle Motorsports, which fields Top Fuel dragsters for 2006 Rookie-of-the-Year J.R. Todd, one of Medlen’s closest friends in the sport.

At Louisville, Ky., where BP/Castrol had set up booth space for the Mid-America Trucking Show, fans and well-wishers filled up two giant posters with get well wishes Thursday. Moreover, more than 4,500 individual messages of support were left at a special e-mail address on the first day it was activated.

“Eric Medlen was the son I never had,” said team owner John Force. “He was the leader of my next generation of drivers. Robert Hight, my daughter Ashley and I were with the family throughout this very difficult time. This loss is a huge blow not only to the Medlen family, but to drag racing and to John Force Racing. I just want to thank everybody for their support, from Larry Smiley with Racers for Christ to the hospital staff to the whole drag racing community. Our prayers go out to the family.”

Little more than three years ago, Medlen took over driving responsibilities in the Funny Car in which Tony Pedregon won the 2003 championship. He had distinguished himself as one of the brightest young stars on the circuit, winning six times in his first three seasons and never finishing outside the Top 5 in driver points.

A graduate of Oakdale (Calif.) High School, where he was a high school rodeo champion in calf roping, Medlen trained under the watchful eye of two-time PRCA World Champion Jerold Camarillo and had contemplated a career in pro rodeo before his father called in 1996 to offer him a mechanic’s job at John Force Racing, Inc.

After spending one season on the team on which his father was crew chief, he moved over one pit stall in 1997 to work on the car driven by 14-time NHRA champion John Force. Serving first as the supercharger technician and later as a clutch specialist, he was a member of a team the crewed Force to 50 tour victories and six championships in seven seasons.

When Tony Pedregon left after the 2003 season to form his own team, Medlen was Force’s surprise pick to fill the seat, a move that re-united him with his father on the No. 2 team at JFR.

He was the sport’s top Funny Car rookie in 2004, winning at Brainerd, Minn. He won three races in 2005 and two in 2006 including the race contested closest to his hometown – the FRAM/Autolite Nationals at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif.

Mr Woodcock

Seann William Scott stars as John Farley, a self-help author who returns to his hometown only to discover that his mother (Sarandon) has fallen in love with his old high school nemesis, Mr. Woodcock (Thornton) - the gruff, no-nonsense gym teacher who had put him through years of mental and physical humiliation.

In Theatres: May 11th, 2007

Comedy
Rating: Not yet rated

Craig Gillespie (dir.)
Billy Bob Thornton
Seann William Scott
Susan Sarandon

See the TRAILER HERE.

The peculiar pleasure of earplugs...

Read about them HERE.

Music for the Ages...

Once an Outlaw, later a Highwayman, now an elder statesman, Willie Nelson joins forces with Merle Haggard and Ray Price (both of whom have recorded duet albums with Nelson) in a celebration of the classic country song. Everything about this is defiantly old school, from the production by veteran Fred Foster and the musical support from steel guitarist Buddy Emmons and Texas Playboy fiddler Johnny Gimble and vocal backing from the Jordanaires to songs from the likes of Harlan Howard, Leon Payne, and Lefty Frizzell. For all of the artists' generational ties, their differences are what distinguish the project: Nelson is the reediest and most conversational vocalist, Haggard the bluesiest; and Price remains the quintessential countrypolitan crooner. Whether they're harmonizing on Mickey Newbury's "Sweet Memories" or trading verses on Howard's "Pick Me Up on Your Way Down," the vocal blend suggests old friends having the time of their musical lives. Guests include Vince Gill (on "Heartaches by the Number") and Kris Kristofferson (on his Why Me Lord"), but a trio like this doesn't need much outside assistance.

Let's be clear: Last of the Breed is a story - actually, a novel, if not an epic - unto itself. The title sums it up pretty well: On these two discs three classic performers, Ray Price, Willie Nelson, and Merle Haggard, band together on songs they've known and loved for years.

Their contributions don't need elaboration. Each is a legend. All three hark back to a time that's in some ways gone. When you consider the lives they've lived, the world that formed them as artists, and even the landscapes they knew as they began playing in beer joints and backwater clubs long ago, then the truth of those four words, Last of the Breed, comes clear.

Look a little closer, and they take on another reference, to the songs as well as to the giants who celebrate them here. Whether drawn from deep in the tradition, back from the well of Gene Autry, Lefty Frizzell, and Floyd Tillman, or picked from the more recent catalogs, this music conveys a feeling that might be mistaken for nostalgia but is in fact a timeless eloquence.

They don't write or sing `em like this anymore.



Listen to it HERE.

Porsche dealer - "I got it wrong with the buy one get one free card".

Glen Fergusson - Sales and Marketing manager for a brand new Californian Porsche dealer. Has lost his job and faces possible legal proceedings as the company strives to reclaim the costs of the 18 Porches given away free under Glen's Opening day "buy one get one free promotion" "I admit I didn't really do the numbers properly on this one" said Glen who told reporters that he had "seen the concept work really well for coffee stores" and in terms of numbers you could argue that Glen's campaign worked. As the new Porsche dealer sold 18 Porches in the first hour of the store opening.

It took the head office a full hour to realise what was going on and subsequently shut the store.

Local man Bruce Stepper took out a second mortgage on his home after getting a promotional flyer in his mailbox. "I am ecstatic - I brought a shiny red Porsche today, got another one free and I have sold just sold it on EBay, all up I end up getting a Porsche 911 for $5000"

Jane Cameron was arguably even more entrepreneurial. The local Janitor purchased a Porsche using the dealers "no deposit finance plan for low income earners", sold both cars, paid off the finance account and walked away with $120,000 profit. The finance plan was another one of Glen's initiatives that has now been cancelled.

A red faced Glen stated "I have never really been too good at Math and I was sure the whole time we were making money - I was initially blown away by the amount of cars we were selling in that first hour. I had seen the "buy one get one free card" work extremely well for the new coffee shop down the road and thought what a great idea I will try it here."

National spokesman for the dealership chain was quoted as saying "We are just glad that the idiot didn’t have time to run with his 'test drive 5 cars, get one free loyalty stamp card' campaign.

Dennis Miller: Moments of Zen

Looks like they found evidence of water on Mars, but unfortunately, they also found a sucker fish in water, so we’re not allowed to study it any more.

Do you know why I’m no longer liberal? Because I wanted to stop my sentences one word short of the word “but.” You know, as a liberal, I found myself using the word “but” more frequently than a proctologist filling out his day planner.

Let’s see, maybe it’s time for a Democratic president. Stay with me. Because the next step in the inevitable escalation in this war with radical Islam is going to involve us being appreciably more brutal and ruthless than we have been to date. And I think the left’s cronyism with the mainstream media will provide cover for someone on that side of things to up the ante.

You know, I’m pretty sure the phrase life is too short doesn’t exist in Islam.

Castro, Castro is one true genius at keeping Cuba so far down that a Category Four hurricane can hit the island head on and they still suffer almost no property damage.

You know, the interesting thing about diversity training is that 99.9 percent of the people who are ordered to take it are white.

They say that Wal-Mart will be the death of small town America. If small town America is so great, why is every third person in Hooterville hooked on meth?

To all the eco-nuts out there, I can’t worry about the earth right now. I’m too worried about the world.

Hillary Clinton can afford to decry rich people at every turn. She’s been on the public’s dime since the dawn of man. She’s had all the trappings of wealth without all the messy earnings that it takes.

You know, the Saudis are just the grown up equivalent of your childhood imaginary friend.

I’m toying with the idea of turning all of my money over to the state of California, because theoretically, I’d have more access to it as petitioner than I do as the actual proprietor.

Once again, let me proclaim that my main reason for being pro-choice is that I am not a fetus that’s about to be aborted.

And lastly, just as the Titanic ramming the iceberg led to the obvious practice of having enough life boats for all the passengers, fighting a politically correct war in Iraq will remind us that you only, only fight wars to win.

The Better way to Fly...

See Sky High Airlines innovative approach HERE.

The Legend : Fatty Arbuckle

POO POO PAPER

Get it HERE.

Hunter S. Thompson interviews Keith Richards

Sexiest Bartenders in Boston

View the collection HERE.

Furniture from Weapons

After more than 30 years of civil war, ending in 1998, the Cambodian gouvernment destroyed 125,000 weapons across the country.In this time Neil Wilford, a small arms specialist with the European Union, and British artist Sasha Constable, saw an opportunity, and decided to create The Peace Art Project Cambodia (PAPC) in November 2003. The Peace Art Project Cambodia was a sculpture project turning weapons into art as expressions of peace.In Cambodia this is the most beautiful way to get rid of weapons - transform them in furniture.From these pictures this furniture doesn’t look to comfortable, but for a good cause they are excellent.

Adult SHEEP FINDER? Dating site...

Join HERE.

Empathy is hard-wired into the mind, study finds

People with a certain type of brain damage showed less aversion to hurting others.

Damage to the part of the brain that controls social emotions changes the way people respond to thorny moral problems, demonstrating the role of empathy and other feelings in life-or-death decisions.

Asked to resolve hypothetical dilemmas — such as tossing a person from a bridge into the path of a trolley to save five others — people with damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex tended to sacrifice one life to save many, according to a study published Wednesday by the journal Nature.

People with intact brains were far less likely to kill or harm someone when confronted with the same scenarios.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and private sources, suggests that an aversion to hurting others is hard-wired into the brain.

"Part of our moral behavior is grounded … in a specific part of our brains," said Dr. Antonio Damasio, one of the study's lead authors and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC.

The findings could not be used to predict actual behavior, Damasio said, because the scenarios presented in the study were unrealistic. More research is needed to determine if people with and without brain damage would react differently when faced with real-world dilemmas.

A finding linking a specific type of brain damage to day-to-day moral behavior could have legal implications in criminal cases. But researchers said the study was meant to explore the psychological underpinnings of moral actions, not to characterize decisions as right or wrong.

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex processes feelings of empathy, shame, compassion and guilt. Damage to this part of the brain, which occupies a small region in the forehead, causes a diminished capacity for social emotions but leaves logical reasoning intact.

Researchers from USC, the University of Iowa, Harvard University and Caltech posed 50 hypothetical scenarios to six people whose ventromedial prefrontal cortices were damaged by strokes or tumors. Their responses were compared to those given by 12 people without brain damage and 12 others with damage in brain areas that regulate other emotions, such as fear.

Researchers found no difference among groups in their responses to scenarios with no moral content, such as turning a tractor left to harvest turnips.

Scenarios that did not require participants to directly kill or harm someone elicited very similar responses among the groups. For example, people said they would classify personal expenses as business expenses to lower their taxes.

Additionally, members of all groups rejected decisions that would harm someone for the personal benefit of another, such as killing a newborn because a parent couldn't care for the infant.

But people with damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex were about three times as likely to sacrifice one person for the greater good compared to people without brain damage or those with damage in a different part of their brains.

Joshua D. Greene, a Harvard psychologist not involved in the research, said the study showed that moral judgment was shaped by two brain systems — one focused on intuitive emotional responses and another that controlled cognition.

"When one of those systems is compromised, decisions are skewed," he said.

Mirella Dapretto, associate professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, said the brain might not work so simply.

"One reason these people may have the guts to push someone off a bridge is that they don't comprehend how their actions would be evaluated by others," she said.

Bill Hicks

A Gentle Reminder Sister Folk

Get yours HERE.

Will Houdini be there? Remains to be seen

The family of the legendary escapologist Harry Houdini today announced plans to exhume his body in a bid to discover whether he was murdered.

Houdini's great nephew George Hardeen said the family wanted to determine whether he was poisoned by spiritualists in revenge for his debunking of their claims of contact with the dead.

Rumours that the escape artist and magician was murdered have persisted ever since his death on Halloween 1926.

Mr Hardeen, whose grandfather was Houdini's brother, said a team of senior forensic investigators would conduct new tests on the escapologist's body. He said: "It needs to be looked at. His death shocked the entire nation, if not the world. Now maybe it's time to take a second look."

It is generally accepted that Houdini died after a punch to the stomach ruptured his appendix, leading to a fatal inflammation of the abdominal cavity, known as peritonitis.

But no autopsy was performed on the 52-year-old, who was reputed to be in extraordinarily good physical shape. When the death certificate was filed, on November 20 1926, his body had already been buried in Queens, New York, along with any evidence of a possible murder plot. Within days, a newspaper headline wondered, "Was Houdini murdered?"

A 2006 biography, The Secret Life of Houdini, renewed interest in the theory that he was poisoned by a group known as The Spiritualists, whose members included Arthur Conan Doyle. The illusionist used his stage shows to expose the group's fraudulent seances, which he regularly attended in disguise, accompanied by a reporter and a police officer.

The authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman detail a letter by Conan Doyle from November 1924 in which he says Houdini will "get his just desserts very exactly meted out ... I think there is a general payday coming soon." Two years later, Houdini was dead.

Mr Kalush and Mr Sloman say that "the spiritualist underworld's modus operandi in cases like this was often poisoning" - possibly by arsenic, which could still be detected decades later.

The authors also suggest Houdini might have been poisoned by "an experimental serum" injected by one of his doctors at Grace hospital, in Detroit.

Houdini took The Spiritualists' death threats seriously, but he travelled without security, often accompanied only by his wife, Bess. "If someone were hell bent on poisoning Houdini, it wouldn't have been very difficult," the authors write.

The team working on the exhumation includes two forensic pathologists, Dr Michael Baden and Professor James Starrs, the latter having studied the disinterred remains of the outlaw Jesse James and Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler".

Mr Baden, who led panels reinvestigating the deaths of President John Kennedy and the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, noted two incongruities in Houdini's death certificate. The certificate recorded that his appendix was on the left side, rather than the right as is normal. And the diagnosis of appendicitis caused by a punch was "very unusual".

Prof Starrs said he was long familiar with the story of Houdini's death, and believed the fatal injury was the result of an accident until he read the Houdini biography. He said: "My eyebrows went up when I read this book. This is really startling, surprising and unsettling, and at bottom, suspicious in nature."'

The proposed exhumation has also won the backing of Anna Thurlow, the great-granddaughter of the Boston medium Mina Crandon, known as Margery, whose husband Dr Le Roi Crandon was a prominent spiritualist - and a noted enemy of Houdini.

During a 1924 seance, Mrs Crandon supposedly channelled a spirit named Walter who greeted Houdini with a threat: "I put a curse on you now that will follow you every day for the rest of your short life."

"With people that delusional, you have to question what they're capable of," Ms Thurlow said. "If there's any circumstantial evidence that Houdini was poisoned, we have to explore that."

Finally, an explaination...

Get yours HERE.

Maybe you have heard about it from friends or seen it in the bookstore. Maybe you have wondered: "Can a book with this title possibly be good for the Church?"

Well, wonder no more!

We can all learn something new from Catholicism for Dummies! You'll find a description of the Mass, the sacraments, liturgical calendar, duties of the clergy and much more. This reference book contains a wealth of valuable information, including: the Sacraments, celebrating the Catholic Mass, the liturgical year, Divine Law and Moral Law, the Seven Deadly Sins, Celibacy and the Male Priesthood, cultural and social issues, prayer life, the Ten Commandments, the Pope and Church hierarchy, symbols and gestures of Catholic worship, affection for Mary, the Saints/Canonization, Catholic Traditions, Ten Famous Catholics, Ten Popular Catholic Saints, Ten Popular Catholic Places, Solemnities/Feasts/Memorials for the year, and a list of all the Popes. (See below for the Table of Contents)

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: Getting Familiar with the Basics
Chapter 1: What It Means to Be Catholic
Chapter 2: Who's Who in the Catholic Church

Part II: Understanding All Those Beliefs
Chapter 3: Ya Gotta Have Faith
Chapter 4: Believing in Jesus
Chapter 5: Worshipping Catholic Style
Chapter 6: The Sacraments of Initiation
Chapter 7: The Sacraments of Community and Mercy
Chapter 8: Celebrating the Catholic Mass

Part III: Behaving Like a Saint
Chapter 9: Catholic Law 101
Chapter 10: Loving and Honoring: The Ten Commandments
Chapter 11: Being Good When Sinning Is So Easy
Chapter 12: The Church's Stand on Some Sticky Issues

Part IV: Practicing Catholicism through Devotions
Chapter 13: Showing Your Love for God
Chapter 14: Expressing Affection for Mary
Chapter 15: Calling on the Canonized
Chapter 16: Catholic Traditions

Part V: The Part of Tens
Chapter 17: Ten Famous Catholics
Chapter 18: Ten Popular Catholic Saints
Chapter 19: Ten Popular Catholic Places

Part VI: Appendixes
Appendix A: A Brief History of Catholicism
Appendix B: Fun Facts for the Faithful
Index

The Original Ebony and Ivory

Match Game 74

llegal immigrants allowed at least five strikes

Border-crossings guidelines revealed amid probe into U.S. attorney firings

Documents released in the controversy about eight fired U.S. attorneys show that federal prosecutors in Texas generally have declined to bring criminal charges against illegal immigrants caught crossing the border — until at least their sixth arrest.

A heavily redacted Department of Justice memo from late 2005 disclosed the prosecution guidelines for immigration offenses, numbers the federal government tries to keep classified. DOJ officials would not say Thursday whether it has adjusted the number since the memo was written, citing "law enforcement reasons."

The prosecution guidelines have been a source of frustration for years among the ranks of U.S. Border Patrol agents, said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council. Smugglers can figure out the criteria by trial and error, he said, and can exploit it to avoid prosecution.

"It's devastating on morale," Bonner said. "Our agents are risking their lives out there, and then they're told, 'Sorry, that doesn't meet the criteria.' "

The memo was written in response to DOJ inquiries at five U.S. attorney offices, including Houston, about immigration prosecutions. The others — San Antonio, San Diego, Phoenix and Albuquerque — cover the 2,000-mile border.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston declined to comment.

In a statement, DOJ spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the agency sent 30 prosecutors to districts along the Southwest border in 2006. The added manpower "will permit districts to adjust their guidelines and take in more cases," according to the statement.

The controversy about the guidelines dates back years, but much of the recent unrest centers on a push by some members of Congress for more aggressive immigration prosecutions, particularly involving smuggling cases.

As part of the inquiry into the firing of the U.S. attorneys, the House Judiciary Committee has posted on its Web site thousands of pages of e-mail, memos, reports and testimony.

The documents offer a glimpse into the overburdened federal court and detention systems, which suffer from a "lack of resources and bed space to detain and prosecute every illegal entry violator," the DOJ memo states.

With Border Patrol agents making about 1 million arrests annually, the DOJ is forced to prioritize the most serious offense and repeated offenders, the memo states. The guidelines vary from district to district, depending on issues such as staffing and the local crime level.

In 2005, the Southern District of Texas was the busiest in the country, and sentenced 6,414 defendants, including 4,313 for immigration-related offenses, according to data from the Sentencing Commission included in another memo. The West District of Texas was second, with 5,839 defendants sentenced in 2005, records show.

In late 2005, the Border Patrol cracked down on crossings through a 200-mile zone near Del Rio and pledged to prosecute and jail each illegal immigrant arrested there before being deported, a sharp deviation from normal practice.

Zoo Magazine

Even the great ones have a bad day....

Build Your Own Light Saber at Disneyland

The Sanjaya Diet

The MySpacer who vowed to starve herself until Sanjaya Malakar was tossed off "American Idol" has another week of starvation to look forward to.

The woman, who idenitifies herself only as "J," was not pleased that Stephanie Edwards got the boot on last night's show, leaving Sanjaya to continue "singing" at least through next week. "I'm really starting to feel sorry for Sanjaya," wrote the hungry blogger last night. "People keep voting him through because they think it's funny ... and I think it's to the point where this kid is starting to believe his own hype." Yeah, that self-confidence thing sucks.

So it's another week of water and ... well, water for "J." If Sanjaya isn't voted off soon, his singing may literally kill someone.

Lilly Tomlin loses even MORE of her SANITY...

I Heart Huckabees Lily Tomlin/Director Freak Out

An Ass Kicking...

One Guy ruins a "facial hair option" for everyone...

nothing says shallow better than this dating site....

Creator of anti-Clinton ad on YouTube steps up, quits job at Obama consultant

The mystery creator of the Orwellian YouTube ad against Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic operative who worked for a digital consulting firm with ties to rival Sen. Barack Obama.

Philip de Vellis, a strategist with Blue State Digital, acknowledged in an interview with the Associated Press that he was the creator of the video, which portrayed Clinton as a Big Brother figure and urged support for Obama.

De Vellis, 33, said he resigned from the firm on Wednesday after he learned that he was about to be unmasked by the HuffingtonPost.com., a liberal news and opinion Internet site.

The Texas Baby Purchasing Act of 2007

Read about it HERE.

Oh, thats what she does for a living....

Angelina Jolie Gets $2 Million For Flaunting Pax In Mags

As Angelina Jolie knows, adopting a child can be very rewarding - you get the satisfaction of being a parent, the joy of knowing you're giving an underprivileged kid a better life, plus you get truckloads of cash when you flog the snaps to a magazine.

Now that Angelina Jolie is the full legal owner of her new adopted three-year-old Vietnamese son Pax Thien Jolie, she's going to have to teach Pax the ways of life. Rule one of that seems to involve whoring out your new kids when they're at their most confused and vulnerable - in addition to the pictures of Angelina Jolie and Pax Thien that grace the front cover of Hello magazine this week, Angelina Jolie has also sold further exclusive pictures of her new family to People magazine for $2 million, according to one report.

We're in the wrong business here - after some rough calculations we've discovered that if we convince a moviestar to leave his wife for us and then traipse around the world adopting babies with him and selling their pictures to magazines for the same price that Angelina Jolie does, by Christmas we'll have enough cash to buy that golden child-powered yacht we've had our eye on.

If we were orphaned in a war-torn poverty-filled country with terrible infant mortality rates, it'd be Angelina Jolie that we'd want to adopt us. Meg Ryan's adopted kid is painfully anonymous and getting adopted by Madonna seems like too much of a hassle - but when Angelina Jolie adopts you, boy, are you in for the good life. David Beckham teaches you football, you're allowed to annoy Graham Norton all you like, you get more Christmases than any other children and if you're well-behaved you might even get to see Mummy run over an Indian.

Plus there's all the fame - even though she wasn't adopted, Angelina Jolie's last child Shiloh Nouvel was the most famous person on the planet for a spell last year. Over a short period of time Shiloh Nouvel was whored out to magazines, turned into a bona fine fashion icon and finally carved out of wax - and now it's the turn of Pax Thien Jolie, the little Vietnamese boy that Angelina Jolie adopted either normally or a little bit fast-tracked.

But before he can get his hands on a creepy wax likeness of himself, Pax Thien will first have to sit through a photoshoot with People magazine, for which Angelina Jolie could be paid a couple of million dollars, as Radar reports:

Sources… say the globetrotting actress and her not-quite-husband, Brad Pitt, have sold the first photos of their newest adoptee to People. We hear the price tag was between $1.75 million and $2 million, with Getty Images, which brokered the deal, taking a fee of between 5 and 10 percent. A People spokesperson calls that number "absurd," but adds, "We don't comment on the specifics on any negotiations."

And in the meantime - as Pax is flown back to America to meet Brad Pitt - Angelina Jolie has been seen on the cover of Hello magazine with Pax Thien, and has spoken about how freaked out he is by everything all the time. This Is London reports:

The Tomb Raider star told Hello!: "He is a very serious, very sweet little boy. "We are slowly beginning to build his trust and bond but it will feel complete only when we are all a family. You can imagine what courage it takes to be in all new surroundings with new people and a new language. He is very strong. It will take him a while to realise he has a family; that his new life is permanent and it won't keep changing." Jolie has given Pax Thien a Gameboy as one of his first presents. "He has never had anything to call his own," she explained.

All that is bound to change, though - even if Angelina Jolie is determined to keep Pax Thien as earthy and grounded as possible, aspects of materialism are almost certain to creep into his life. For example, what's waiting for Pax Thien in his new American bedroom? As many unsold Troy action figures as he could ever wish for, that's what.

Rolling Stones 2007 European Tour Announced

See 2007 European Tour Dates HERE.

www.jewlicious.com

It seems that the next big American food chain to hit Israel is none other than Hooters. I’ve never patronized this establishment but apparently at Hooters, scantily clad waitresses known as Hooters Girls serve spicy chicken wings, sandwiches, seafood and drinks. Hooters girls have become iconic, a part of the American cultural zeitgeist, and one can, if one wants, purchase all manner of calendars, magazines and videos featuring the scantily clad girl next door types.

This is a bold move given the long list of American food chains who have tried to set up shop in Israel and have failed - Starbucks, Dunkin Doughnuts and Hard Rock Cafe for instance. Hooters plans on bucking this trend and following in the footsteps of successful American franchises in Israel by catering to local tastes.

Can’t wait for Hooters brand Hummus!

No actually, I can. Needless to say, despite plans to open a location in Jerusalem, Hooters Israel locations will not be kosher.

Geography Lesson

Why Israelis will win against Hezbollah...

Israelis Below

Hezbollah Below

The older you get....

I love Batman...alot....but...

Enter "The Batcave" HERE

2006 IRS Tax Form

It's Been an 'All Out War' on Pot Smokers for 35 Years

Since 1972, U.S. taxpayers have spent well over $20 billion enforcing criminal marijuana laws and 16.5 million people have been arrested. It's time to put an end to this waste.

Thirty-five years ago this month, a congressionally mandated commission on U.S. drug policy did something extraordinary: They told the truth about marijuana.

On March 22, 1972, the National Commission on Marihuana (sic) and Drug Abuse -- chaired by former Pennsylvania Gov. Raymond P. Shafer -- recommended Congress amend federal law so that the use and possession of pot would no longer be a criminal offense. State legislatures, the commission added, should do likewise.

"[T]he criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession even in the effort to discourage use," concluded the commission, which included several conservative appointees of then-President Richard Nixon. "It implies an overwhelming indictment of the behavior, which we believe is not appropriate. The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only with the greatest reluctance.

"... Therefore, the commission recommends ... [that the] possession of marihuana for personal use no longer be an offense, [and that the] casual distribution of small amounts of marihuana for no remuneration, or insignificant remuneration, no longer be an offense."

Nixon, true to his "law-and-order" roots, shelved the report -- announcing instead that when it came to weed, "We need, and I use the word 'all out war' on all fronts." For the last 35 years, that's what we've had.

Consider this: Since the Shafer Commission issued its recommendations:

• Approximately 16.5 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana violations -- more than 80 percent of them on minor possession charges.
• U.S. taxpayers have spent well over $20 billion enforcing criminal marijuana laws, yet marijuana availability and use among the public remains virtually unchanged.
• Nearly one-quarter of a million Americans have been denied federal financial aid for secondary education because of anti-drug provisions to the Higher Education Act. Most of these applicants were convicted of minor marijuana possession offenses.
• Total U.S. marijuana arrests increased 165 percent during the 1990s, from 287,850 in 1991 to well over 700,000 in 2000, before reaching an all-time high of nearly 800,000 in 2005. However, according to the government's own data, this dramatic increase in the number of persons arrested for pot was not associated with any reduction in the number of new users, any reduction in marijuana potency, or any increases in the black market price of marijuana.
• Currently, one in eight inmates incarcerated for drug crimes is behind bars for pot, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $1 billion per year.

Perhaps most troubling, the factor most likely to determine whether or not these citizens serve jail time or not isn't the severity of their "crime," but rather where they live. Today there are growing regional disparities in marijuana penalties and marijuana law enforcement -- ranging from no penalty in Alaska to potential life in prison in Oklahoma. In fact, if one were to drive from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore., he or she would traverse more than a dozen jurisdictions, all with varying degrees of penalties and/or tolerance toward the possession and use of pot.

Does this sound like a successful national policy?

There is another approach, of course. The Shafer Commission showed the way more than three decades ago.

Marijuana isn't a harmless substance, and those who argue for a change in the drug's legal status do not claim it to be. However, as noted by the commission, pot's relative risks to the user and society are arguably fewer than those of alcohol and tobacco, and they do not warrant the expenses associated with targeting, arresting and prosecuting hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.

According to federal statistics, about 94 million Americans -- that's 40 percent of the U.S. population age 12 or older -- self-identify as having used cannabis at some point in their lives, and relatively few acknowledge having suffered significant deleterious health effects due to their use. America's public policies should reflect this reality, not deny it. It makes no sense to continue to treat nearly half of all Americans as criminals.

Caughthimcheating.com

Infidelity Statistics 101

It's tough to get a handle on how many of us are having affairs, given the inherent secrecy.

• 22 percent of married men have strayed at least once during their married lives.
• 14 percent of married women have had affairs at least once during their married lives.
• Younger people are more likely candidates; in fact, younger women are as likely as younger men to be unfaithful.
• 70 percent of married women and 54 percent of married men did not know of their spouses' extramarital activity.
• 5 percent of married men and 3 percent of married women reported having sex with someone other than their spouse in the year1997.
• 22 percent of men and 14 percent of women admitted to having sexual relations outside their marriage sometime in their past.
• 90 percent of Americans believe adultery is morally wrong.
• 50 percent of Americans say President Clinton's adultery makes his moral standard "about the same as the average married man,'' according to a Time-CNN poll.
• 61 percent of Americans thought adultery should not be a crime in the United states; 35 percent thought it should; 4 percent had no opinion.
• 17 percent of divorces in the United States are caused by infidelity.
• Source: Associated Press
• Up to 37% of men and 22% of women admit to having affairs. Researchers think the vast majority of the millions of people who visit chat rooms, have multiple "special friends”. Dr. Bob Lanier, askbob.com
• Recent studies reveal that 45-55% of married women and 50-60% of married men engage in extramarital sex at some time or another during their relationship (Atwood & Schwartz, 2002 - Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy)
• Only 46% of men believe that online affairs are adultery. DivorceMag
• 80% think it's Ok to talk with a stranger identified as the opposite sex. 75% thinks it's ok to visit an adult site.
• About 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an affair at some point in some marriage "Monogamy Myth", Therapist Peggy Vaugn
• About 24 percent of men and 14 percent of women have had sex outside their marriages, according to a Dec. 21, 1998 report in USA Today on a national study by the University of California, San Francisco.
• Affairs affect one of every 2.7 couples, according to counselor Janis Abrahms Spring, author of After the Affair,as reported by the Washington Post on March 30, 1999. Ten percent of extramarital affairs last one day, 10 percent last more than one day but less than a month, 50 percent last more than a month but less than a year, but 40 percent last two or more years. Few extramarital affairs last more than four years.
• A lesser known fact is that those who divorce rarely marry the person with whom they are having the affair. For example, Dr. Jan Halper’s study of successful men (executives, entrepreneurs, professionals) found that very few men who have affairs divorce their wife and marry their lovers. Only 3 percent of the 4,100 successful men surveyed eventually married their lovers.
• Frank Pittman has found that the divorce rate among those who married their lovers was 75 percent. The reasons for the high divorce rate include: intervention of reality, guilt, expectations, a general distrust of marriage, and a distrust of the affairee.
• One-third of divorce litigation is caused by online affairs. This Is An Internet E-Mergency, The Fortino Group
• Approximately 70% of time on-line is spent in chat rooms or sending e-mail; of these interactions, the vast majority are romantic in nature. Dr. Michael Adamse, PhD., co-author of Affairs of the Net: The Cybershrinks' Guide to Online Relationships
• Because of the anonymity, affordability, and accessibility of Internet sexual resources, the computer can accelerate the transition from "at risk" to "addicted," as well as the progression of sex addiction in those with a history of prior sexual compulsivity. Cooper et al Survey
• 8-10 percent of Internet users become hooked on cybersex. Dr. Bob Lanier, askbob.com
• Spouses who get hooked on Internet porn are a growing complaint among spouses filing for divorce, according to a survey of 350 divorce attorneys. "If there's dissatisfaction in the existing relationship, the Internet is an easy way for people to scratch the itch," said lawyer J. Lindsey Short, Jr., president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, which conducted the study.
• 57% of people have used the Internet to flirt.
• 38% of people have engaged in explicit online sexual conversation and 50% of people have made phone contact with someone they chatted with online.
• Evidence proves there is a high correlation between on-line infidelity and subsequent real-time sexual affairs.
• Evidence supports the existence of disinhibition, accelerated intimacy, and hyper-sexual online behavior that can easily lead to real-time infidelity
• 31% of people have had an online conversation that has led to real-time sex.
• It is estimated that 53% of all people will have one or more affairs during their lifetime.
• Look at the numbers from Playboy Magazine:
• -2 out of 3 women and 3 out of 4 men admit they have sexual thoughts about co-workers.
• -86% of men and 81% of women admit they routinely flirt with the opposite sex.
• -75% of men and 65% of women admit to having sex with people they work with.
• The fact is that human beings are NOT monogamous by nature. That means they cheat.
• Experts say that a gut instinct is the most powerful indicator of a cheating lover. Adultery statistics state that 85% of woman who feel their lover is cheating are correct. 50% of men who feel their lover is cheating are right. The first clue is seldom obvious. Typically, it's a "feeling" that something is different.
• Cheating spouse statistics confirm that 50 and 70 percent of married men (between 38 and 53 million men) have cheated or will cheat on their wives. One study found that 2/3 of the wives (26 to 36 million women) whose husbands were cheating had no idea their husbands were having an affair - largely because they failed to recognize the telltale signs.
• According to Annette Lawson, author of Adultery, published in 1989 by Basic Books. "The various researchers arrive at a general consensus…suggesting that above one-quarter to about one-half of married women have at least one lover after they are married in any given marriage. Married men probably still stray more often than married women—perhaps from 50 percent to 65 percent by the age of forty." According to Maggie Scarf, author of Intimate Partners, first published in 1987 by Random House, re-issued in 1996 by Ballentine.
• "Most experts do consider the 'educated guess' that at the present time some 50 to 65 percent of husbands and 45 to 55 percent of wives become extramaritally involved by the age of 40 to be a relatively sound and reasonable one." According to Peggy Vaughan, author of The Monogamy Myth, first published in 1989 by Newmarket Press (third edition published 2003).
• Conservative infidelity statistics estimate that “60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an extramarital affair. These figures are even more significant when we consider the total number of marriages involved, since it's unlikely that all the men and women having affairs happen to be married to each other. If even half of the women having affairs (or 20 percent) are married to men not included in the 60 percent having affairs, then at least one partner will have an affair in approximately 80 percent of all marriages. With this many marriages affected, it's unreasonable to think affairs are due only to the failures and shortcomings of individual husbands or wives."

Note that the above adultry statistics of the prevalence of affairs were made more than a decade ago; so based on changes in society during the intervening years, the current percentage of the population who have had affairs is probably somewhat HIGHER. For instance, the continuing increase of women in the workplace and the increase of women having affairs on the Internet means that the numbers for women having affairs is probably similar to those for men—about 60%.

Adam Sandler's " Endless Love"

AC Casino Camera Operator Fined in Ogling Case

They were four guys tucked away in a darkened casino security office on the graveyard shift, when the action generally slows down and there's not as much to keep an eye on.

So, state officials say, they kept their eyes on the cleavage and buttocks of women wearing low-cut blouses or tight dresses, using the high-powered cameras to zoom in on their quarry.

The case ended Wednesday with a camera operator being fined, and another having his license suspended for five days.

The Casino Control Commission fined Donald D. Smith $500 for his role in the filming at Caesars Atlantic City in October 2004. He captured 95 minutes' worth of unauthorized footage, according to authorities.

Caesars previously paid a $185,000 fine to settle charges stemming from the case.

"Many times over, we have pronounced our zero-tolerance policy when it comes to inappropriate surveillance in all departments,'' said Christopher Jonic, a spokesman for Harrah's Entertainment Inc., which owns Caesars and three other Atlantic City casinos.

Former surveillance supervisor James Doherty had his casino license suspended for 20 days last August.

Another operator, John Paul Arambulo, had his license suspended on Wednes