Quotes, URL's, Links And References-by:older Femmes, Butches, Ftms, Mtfs, Queer, Etc. [Archive] - Page 3

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 01:30 PM

in your dreams
December 12, 2004 news.com.au

There’s a new breed of healers who don’t deal with your physical body – they prefer to target your spirit. Some even cure you in your sleep, writes Emma O’Brien.

Most people find working a nine to five day exhausting, so spare a thought for Lynette Bayley. After meeting with clients in her healing practice all day, her real work begins when she goes to sleep.
Tucked up in bed in her Sydney home, Bayley engages in a form of meditation which she says enables her to use the astral plane – the sub-conscious world – to visit her clients while they sleep. Bayley is a psychic healer, a job title which she says always makes for interesting dinner party conversation. “I get a lot of raised eye brows. People are initially very sceptical,” she says. “But we use so much of our physical power for healing, why not utilise the mind as well?”

It’s not as far-fetched as you may think – in Asia the mind has been recognised as a powerful healing tool for thousands of years. In Japan, reiki healing was developed in the 1800s, based on ancient Tibetan Buddhist healing techniques. The Chinese have qi gong – which works with the body’s emotional state and energy flows. In the Philippines, the indigenous people claim to use psychic healing to perform basic surgery, and in Australia, indigenous people are documented to have used mind techniques to heal the sick.

Dr Joachim Fluhrer, a GP and the Medical Director for YourHealth, a group of clinics that provide holistic medical treatment, does not practise psychic healing but has a number of patients who have undergone psychic healing. “Medicine does not have ownership over cure – it is very important to remain non-judgmental on things like this,” he says. “If it encourages people to use the power of the mind to heal the body in a non-toxic manner, then why not?”

Bayley has been doing psychic healing for more than 10 years and says she uses a variety of techniques. Clients visit her in her office where they discuss their illness or problem, then Bayley performs reiki, hypnosis, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and counselling techniques before her psychic skills come into play.

“It’s all about re-balancing energy flows. I can cure anyone who comes through my door,” she says. “They just have to be open to it. Most of the work, however, is done while the client sleeps.”

Psychic since she was a child, Bayley invokes a mix of Chinese and Indian terminology to describe the next stage of the healing process. “Because I am psychic, I have a very powerful chi (energy) and I bring that up through to the top chakra enabling me to access the astral plane and visit clients in their sleep,” she says.

Using an Indian yoga method called Kriya, Bayley says she meditates on her clients then talks to them on
a sub-conscious level. “A lot of people remember me talking to them when they wake up, some see me as well because I can transfigurate.” Bayley says the yoga allows her to become visible to her clients when she visits them.

While the image of a healer hovering over your bed may seem kooky, immunobiologist Dr Bill Giles says there are explanations that support the psychic power to heal.

A herbalist, acupuncturist and shiatsu practitioner as well as the head of the Canberra Medical Ecology Centre, Dr Giles says there are two parts to the mind, the conscious and the non-conscious. “When you wake up you’re conscious and can gather experiences. It’s when you’re asleep that the non-conscious comes into play, you gather sensory perceptions and turn them into thoughts, symbols or beliefs,” he says.

be open
“Psychic healers use their non-conscious mind to convey thoughts to someone else’s non-conscious mind,” Dr Giles says. “These thoughts can stimulate the three major systems of the body and have physical manifestations.”

One of Bayley’s clients, Julie, had only known her for a couple of weeks when she woke up in the middle of the night to find Bayley sitting on the end of the bed. “I wasn’t scared at all, in fact it was quite comforting,” she says. Julie had been diagnosed with a blood disorder and advanced cancer at age 27. Julie’s doctor told her chemotherapy would not work on her condition and gave her a 51 per cent chance of survival.

Finally, Julie went to see Bayley as a last resort. “Desperate people do desperate things,” she says. “I believe mental disturbances are reflected in the body so I went in very accepting of the process, but I also felt I had no other choice.”
After 12 sessions of psychic healing, Julie says her condition had improved markedly. “My doctor couldn’t believe it,” she says. Julie says she would even describe her recovery as a miracle. “Lynne was the primary reason for my physical recovery. She opened me up in a way traditional medicine couldn’t.”

That was 10 years ago. Today Julie is free of cancer and recovered from her blood condition. She also has a six-year-old daughter who was conceived naturally, despite doctors telling her she would never be able to have children.

Another of Bayley’s patients, Gary, booked in for his first appointment on advice from his mum. “I was feeling really down and out and had extremely bad reflux,” he said. “I’m a strong sceptic and normally when mum suggests I do something, I do the opposite – but something made me go.”
Feeling trapped in a high-demand corporate job and separated from his two children after a divorce, Gary says he was suicidal. “I hated everything and didn’t know where to turn next.”
Gary says he had tried every traditional medicine to cure his reflux, and some did ease the condition. “But I realised I needed to go to the source of the problem,” he said.
After his first session with Bayley, Gary said he felt a lot better and more interested in the process. “We just talked but there was something about how she honed in on things, she surprised me with what she said,” he said. On Bayley’s advice Gary changed his diet and eating habits too.

the power of chi
Following a number of sessions, Gary says his reflux and anxiety virtually disappeared. “I was quite a worrier – but Lynne makes me feel relaxed, almost nonchalant, and I don’t worry about things as much,” Gary says.

Chris Cole has been in the business of psychic healing for more than 25 years, the veteran energy healer now instructs people in ways they can perform the healing on themselves.

“Psychic healing is really just about the transference of positive energy,” says Cole.

Unlike Bayley, Cole uses a hands-on approach, channelling energy into people. She also uses guided visualisation to help her patients relax. “Psychic healing works best in conjunction with a program of natural therapies,” she says.

“Everything in the universe is energetic so it is extremely effective to use spiritual energy to address emotional and physical problems.”

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11614818%255E22807,00.html

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 01:31 PM

51 Million May Be Driving Over Holidays
Wed. 12/15/05 By DEE-ANN DURBIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Because Christmas and New Year's Day fall on Saturdays this season, federal transportation officials predict a record number of holiday travelers will drive and increase the possibility of deadly crashes.
AAA estimates that 51 million people will be on the roads, up 2.9 percent from last year. That's the largest number projected in the 11 years AAA has been forecasting holiday travel.

"These two long weekends will mean more concentrated travel, so expect crowded roads, increased delays and risky driving behavior," AAA President Robert Darbelnet said.

Busier roads will increase the risk of deadly accidents, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (news - web sites) said. The agency is predicting 136 deaths a day on Dec. 24-26 and Dec. 31-Jan. 2. NHTSA said 45 percent of those accidents will involve drivers with blood-alcohol levels of .08 or higher.

Last year, 512 people died over the Christmas holiday and 530 over the New Year's holiday, NHTSA officials said. The holidays were considered a four-day period last year. They are considered a three-day holidays this year, so it's difficult to compare NHTSA's data from year to year. Forty-eight percent of the accidents in 2003 involved drunken drivers, NHTSA said.

Every state will have sobriety checkpoints, ad campaigns or other ways of cracking down on drunken drivers this season, the Governors Highway Safety Association said.

"Police will be enforcing the law this holiday season, and there will be no exceptions and no excuses," said Col. Jim Champagne, chairman of the Governors Highway Safety Association.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=4&u=/ap/20041215/ap_on_re_us/holiday_travel

(l) (l)
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 01:32 PM

Contingency
Posted by Red Herring at December 3, 2004 04:29 P

Anyone who works closely with technology has experiences that defy conventional visions of technological determinism. In fact, the lives of technologies are contingent. They don't just follow their own internal logic, and they don't exert a one-way influence on society. They're shaped by politics, law, and culture, as well as the more apparently straightforward influences of economics. Consequently the lives they lead are anything but certain.

Politics-- not of the partisan sort, but the everyday struggle-for-control variety-- has left its imprint on virtually every technology. Many technologies are shaped by compromises between their different creators, but sometimes the politics of technologies is more overt. According to biographer Robert Caro, New York city planner Robert Moses designed the tunnels of the Long Island Expressway, linking New York to Long Island beaches, to filter out buses and their working-class, ethnic riders, while letting through middle-class families in cars. In other cases, technologies may be adopted in order to achieve certain political goals. Historian of technology David Noble argues that early Cold War companies were enthusiastic about numercially-controlled (NC) machine tools over cheaper and more reliable alternatives because NC systems offered the promise of putting managers firmly in control of the shop floor, at the expense of highly-paid machinists and their powerful unions. Since the 1970s, advocates of "appropriate technology" have made their case in part on political grounds, and have explicitly sought to create technologies that are small-scale, decentralizing rather than centralizing, and accessible-- understandable and controllable-- to their users.

Legal regulations also constrain technologies, and may help push innovation in certain directions. You're reading this blog on a computer that has to conform to a host of rules dictating everything from how much electromagnetic radiation it can give off to what kinds of encryption its browser can and can't use. Sometimes groups try to use law to shape technology: Hollywood's attempts to convince Congress to require electronics manufacturers to build copyright protection into their products is a perfect example. Finally, legal mandates can stimulate new technologies. Several years ago, Denmark passed legislation setting ambitious goals for green energy production; this spurred the development of a wind turbine industry that now is a world leader.

Culture can also influence technologies. Japanese electronics, German cars, and Swiss watches are all examples of technologies that are said to reflect the cultures of countries that produce them. These cultural influences can be local, not just national: open source software has adopters around the world who have chosen it in part because of the cultural values the open source movement itself.

Such examples show that politics, law, and culture can work to shape technologies. Of course, climate, geography, demographics, path dependency, and other factors can play a roles as well, depending on the technology. (Solar power isn't the clean energy of choice in the windy but cloudy Baltics, for example.) But the underlying point is that technologies are routinely shaped, for better or worse, by what we think of as non-technical and non-economic factors. It's smarter to think in terms of technological contingency rather than technological determinism. It's going to get smarter in the future.

http://blog.redherring.com/MT/archives/main/000501.html

(h) (h) ;)

(f) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 01:34 PM

Determination

The first thing to unlearn about technology is that it determines history. The assumption that technologies follow their own lives and logic, independent of human choice or agency, has been a popular one in recent decades. Technological determinism appears in two variants, at two levels.

At the micro level, the belief in determinism is expressed in the assumption that a technology wins because it is self-evidently superior. VHS beat beta, Windows trumps Apple, and Internet Explorer knocked out Netscape because they were all just better technologies-- or so the winners will tell you.

At the macro level, determinism leads to a sense that technology (or Technology, meaning all technologies and the processes that create them) is now outside human control, or even controls human destiny. A number of influential thinkers, including American critic Lewis Mumford, French technologist Jacques Ellul, and scholar-activist Langdon Winner have explored the idea that technologies develop their own momentum, and resist our collective efforts to bring them to heel. Today, technology follows its own evolutionary path and pace. Humans are necessary vectors for new technologies, but we're not necessarily the ultimate beneficiaries.

But anyone who works closely with technology has experiences that give lie to both assumptions. Technological determinism doesn't adequately explain why some technologies succeed and others fail; nor does it do justice to the complexity of technology's relationship with the human world.

http://blog.redherring.com/MT/archives/main/000496.html

(*) (*) Well, it's back to editing my last final paper that I plan to submit later today. <lace handkerchef to forehead.....sigh> ;)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 01:35 PM

Tis the season for lists. Thanksgiving shopping lists, holiday card lists, Christmas gift lists, New Year’s Eve party invitation lists, lists of top technologies to watch, the biggest trends in business, the most promising new products, the most important high-tech entrepreneurs under 40, and on and on.

As a sometime journalist, I understand the popularity of such lists. As an historian and futurist, they drive me nuts.
The problem with such lists isn’t that their contents are inevitably wrong. Sometimes they can be pretty astute. As futurists will tell you, it’s not always necessary to be absolutely right to be useful, and lists of emerging technologies or up-and-coming technologists always offer something new to readers. The problem is that they look for clues about the future in the wrong places, and they’re based on faulty assumptions about what makes technologies successful and significant.

To really make sense of the future of technology, and to make technologies that make sense in the future, it’s necessary to unlearn some of our assumptions about the dynamics of technological innovation and change. Forget the idea of technology being an autonomous force driving the world. Put aside the notion that companies, or entrepreneurs, or engineers, are the key players shaping the lives of products. It’s time to learn how not to think about technology.

http://blog.redherring.com/MT/archives/main/000495.html

(8) (8) (8) ...... (o) ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 01:37 PM

The sampling society
Posted by Red Herring at December 14, 2004 02:54 PM

The Internet enables sharing, and with its new Print project to digitize whole libraries, Google is finding a way to apply what the music industry is slowly learning in the copyright-fixated publishing industry: Sharing is good and sampling generates sales.

Google is embarking on a laudable and ambitious project to digitize the library of the University of Michigan and parts of the libraries of Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard Universities and the New York Public Library. Obviously, much of this content is out of copyright, but particularly at the university libraries, which must keep their collections very current, the majority is still in copyright.

Out-of-copyright material will be accessible as complete documents through the site while Google will have a tiered access plan that will provide excerpts or the whole book for publishers whose books are still covered by copyright, which the vast majority of all books still are. Users will have the ability to purchase the hard copy book through online booksellers, including Amazon.com, the company most clearly in the cross-hairs. Amazon is digitizing books, as well.

In a market awash with information, customers expect to be able to assess the potential value of a document to them before they pay. Google Print provides three snippets of a copyright-protected book, allowing the reader to see the search results in context. If the book looks promising, they are more likely to purchase it than when they are buying blind.

The experience is analogous to the music sampling strategies offered by Shawn Fanning’s Snocap and WeedShare, a Seattle-based music sales over P2P system. In a sampling society, the seller has to provide a song that impresses, making the would-be buyer want to hear it more than a few times or in higher fidelity.

The hard reality is that keeping information and entertainment behind a wall until someone decides to chance buying it is an obsolete practice. Even when people are talking about a new book or song, there is a new expectation among customers that they should be able to sample first and buy later.

The Google business model is enhanced by this new level of sampling expectations, because every sample tells Google something more about what a user wants right then and there. If they are looking for a particular book or information about a career or a disease, it provides contextual advertising opportunities that Google can sell. Indeed, Google could outpace Amazon in the bookselling market simply by creating more buying opportunities for books that currently languish in warehouses; that incremental revenue is found money for publishers.

The Google Print project, along with all its efforts to make the world’s information searchable from a networked desktop, is a phenomenal undertaking, a fine example of enlightened capitalism, as John Battelle wrote on his blog. Hopefully, the company will make this information available everywhere and not withhold it because the Chinese government objects.

http://blog.redherring.com/MT/archives/main/000512.html

http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html

(*) (*) Stay warm, stay calm and don't let the holiday rush stress you out. Kindest thoughts across the digital tundra called the Internet. (f)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

dream_lady

12-15-2004, 01:39 PM

:| very interesting my dear.

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 01:54 PM

Boxerworld.com is the ultimate resource on the World Wide Web to showcase these and other wonderful attributes of our great friend the boxer. At Boxerworld we understand the need and desire to share with the world all the fabulous anecdotes that are waiting to be told about this magnificent creature - The Boxer.

Boxerworld.com is, and aims to remain, the foremost boxer "information booth" online with over 21,000 members. We offer expert advice in training, showing, feeding and anything else that is of interest to boxerphiles! If we don't supply the answer at Boxerworld, we find it out for you!

Boxerworld.com, in line with our claims and aims, is pleased to be able to offer The Boxerworld Forums in order to assist in its function as education arena and story tellers delight. Boxer stories that is!

So.....

If your boxer chases flies
Or gives those heavy sighs
Soulful eyes to view you sadly
Before kidney beaning madly

Maybe jumps high in the air
Sleep and snore without a care
With a faith that is unerring
Despite what is occuring

If he tries to swim but sinks
If he's silly but, still thinks
If he loves you like a child
And is sometimes just as wild

There's a story to be told
Of boxers young, of boxers old
And it's here they get unfurled
At our own place, Boxerworld!!

http://www.boxerworld.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=2002/March&image=UnnamedageJPEG2b.JPG&img=&tt=

http://www.boxerworld.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=2002/March&image=puppy41a.JPG&img=12&tt=

http://www.boxerworld.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=2002/March&image=pugface.JPG&img=12&tt=

http://www.boxerworld.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=2002/March&image=RajonBed.JPG&img=12&tt=

http://www.boxerworld.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=2002/March&image=n2.JPG&img=24&tt=

http://www.boxerworld.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=2002/March&image=mar0607z.JPG&img=36&tt=

http://www.boxerworld.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=2002/March&image=Mar0901s.JPG&img=36&tt=

http://www.boxerworld.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=2002/March&image=mar026a.JPG&img=36&tt=

http://www.boxerworld.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=2002/March&image=jan2106z.JPG&img=48&tt=

http://www.boxerworld.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=2002/March&image=lexissitting2a.JPG&img=48&tt=

http://www.boxerworld.com/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=2002/March&image=bonzy03032002a.JPG&img=72&tt=

(l) (l) (l) (l) I'm a Boxer Lover (l) (l) I love all big dogs including Great Danes, Mastiffs and others. Definitely not a "little yappy dog" fan.... ;) Have a lovely rest of your day! If you see a dog during your daily travels, give him or her a pet; you'll both feel better. (f) (f) (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 02:13 PM

Mensa was founded in England in 1946 by Roland Berrill, a barrister, and Dr. Lance Ware, a scientist and lawyer. They had the idea of forming a society for bright people, the only qualification for membership of which was a high IQ. The original aims were, as they are today, to create a society that is non-political and free from all racial or religious distinctions. The society welcomes people from every walk of life whose IQ is in the top 2% of the population, with the objective of enjoying each other's company and participating in a wide range of social and cultural activities.

Mensa has three stated purposes: to identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity, to encourage research in the nature, characteristics and uses of intelligence, and to promote stimulating intellectual and social opportunities for its members.

What is Mensa?

Mensa was founded in England in 1946 by Roland Berrill, a barrister, and Dr. Lance Ware, a scientist and lawyer. They had the idea of forming a society for bright people, the only qualification for membership of which was a high IQ. The original aims were, as they are today, to create a society that is non-political and free from all racial or religious distinctions. The society welcomes people from every walk of life whose IQ is in the top 2% of the population, with the objective of enjoying each other's company and participating in a wide range of social and cultural activities.

What are Mensa's goals?

Mensa has three stated purposes: to identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity, to encourage research in the nature, characteristics and uses of intelligence, and to promote stimulating intellectual and social opportunities for its members.

How many members does Mensa have?

Today there are some 100,000 Mensans in 100 countries throughout the world. There are active Mensa organizations in over 40 countries on every continent except Antarctica. Membership numbers are also available for specific National Groups.

What kind of people are Members of Mensa?

There is simply no one prevailing characteristic of Mensa members other than high IQ. There are Mensans for whom Mensa provides a sense of family, and others for whom it is a casual social activity. There have been many marriages made in Mensa, but for many people, it is simply a stimulating opportunity for the mind. Most Mensans have a good sense of humor, and they like to talk. And, usually, they have a lot to say.

Mensans range in age from 4 to 94, but most are between 20 and 60. In education they range from preschoolers to high school dropouts to people with multiple doctorates. There are Mensans on welfare and Mensans who are millionaires. As far as occupations, the range is staggering. Mensa has professors and truck drivers, scientists and firefighters, computer programmers and farmers, artists, military people, musicians, laborers, police officers, glassblowers--the diverse list goes on and on. There are famous Mensans and prize-winning Mensans, but there are many whose names you wouldn't know.

The word "Mensa" means "table" in Latin. The name stands for a round-table society, where race, color, creed, national origin, age, politics, educational or social background are irrelevant.

http://www.mensa.org/home.php

(*) (*) Okay, so where's the smiley with a beanie and propeller? ;) ;) Back to the left-brain salt mines for the rest of the afternoon, and then into the city for dinner tonight with friends......Old Town.....it'll be all lit up this time of year too. Let's see, what to wear that is sexy yet warm since it'll be in the 20's? Black silk and lace teddie, black skirt, short black silk kimono and furry boots! ;) (l) (l)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 03:39 PM

Posted on Wed, Dec. 15, 2004

Telemarketers won't have access to cellular database

By Sam Diaz

Mercury News

There's been plenty of confusion -- and a lot of misinformation -- in recent days as an e-mail works its way around the Internet warning people about a directory of cell phone numbers that will be released to telemarketers on Jan. 1.

Just so you know: The e-mail information is absolutely false.

What's true: A Portland, Ore., company called Qsent will start compiling cell phone numbers for a 411 directory system Jan. 1.
But telemarketers will not have access to the database of cell phone numbers. There is no deadline to register your number on the federal government's do-not-call list. And your name and number will not be added to the database unless you want it to be -- and even then, it won't be listed in a book anywhere and certainly won't be handed over to telemarketers, said Greg Keene, chief privacy officer for Qsent.
``It's an opt-in model,'' Keene said, referring to the marketing practice where consumers ask to participate instead of being forced. ``If they do nothing, they don't participate. And even if they choose to participate, they'll never appear in a printed directory.''

The cell phone directory, called the Wireless 411 database, is backed by all of the major cell phone carriers except Verizon Wireless. It intends to incorporate cell phone numbers into the standard 411 service, which is associated with both land-line and cell phones.
Those behind Wireless 411 say there's a growing number of people who have dumped land-line phones for cell phones and a large group of small-business operators -- from plumbers to real estate agents -- who use only cell phones to communicate with their customers.
Those are the people who will want to be included in the 411 database, said Kathleen Pierz, managing partner and analyst with the Pierz Group in Michigan.

In a survey conducted by her agency earlier this year, 52 percent of the respondents said they would list their cell phone numbers in a 411 database if there were safeguards to protect their privacy.

``Everybody can think of a time when we wish we had someone's cell phone number,'' Pierz said. ``Eight million people don't have a home phone anymore, only a mobile phone. Those people are basically not reachable under any circumstance.''
And none of the cell phone service providers is interested in making them reachable if they don't want to be.
``From a carrier's perspective, one of the most valuable assets is the subscriber list,'' said Michael Amend, spokesman for T-Mobile. ``The last thing we want is to have the whole world have that list.''

That's why they selected Qsent -- an independent company -- to manage the database. When a caller dials 411, the operator will see that a cell phone number is listed and will be able to connect the caller with the cell number from Qsent's database. The 411 operator will not have access to the entire database, Keene said.

And even if telemarketing groups did get their hands on the list, it's against federal law for telemarketers who use auto-dialers -- the most common method -- to call a cell phone.

Still, Verizon Wireless -- which was part of the original group that explored the idea of a wireless 411 database -- has said it will not participate, though it does offer its customers the opportunity to be listed, for a fee, on superpages.com, the company's online directory.
``Our customers have come to us with an expectation of privacy and we see no public demand or outcry to have this,'' said Ken Muche, spokesman for Verizon Wireless. ``We think privacy is very important and we're not going to participate.''

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/gmsv/10420910.htm

(*) (*) Yet another rumor and urban legend taken care of as just that.....not true. :o (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 03:41 PM

Coffee warning and some of them are kind of sick I think.

10 Oddest Programs for the Palm OS:

http://www.canalpda.com/displayarticle222.html

Everybody has peculiarities. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. There are people who collect Mazinger Z cards, have their computer case painted in pistachio green, or can’t get a good sleep until they have jumped three times on one leg. Such small weaknesses turn out, inevitably, in pocket computers, and the Web holds a true cornucopia of weird, weird, weird programs.

Here below you will find our ten finalists for Palm OS. It has been a difficult choice, and many amazing programs have been left out until future editions. Stay tuned for our Pocket PC counterpart.

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 03:42 PM

http://www.delltechforce.com/

:o Check out the video.... ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 03:45 PM

Posted on Monday, December 13, 2004 12:23 PM

For your reading pleasure during this holiday season . . . :) MERRY CHRISTMAS (In Legalese):

Please accept without obligation, express or implied, these best wishes for an environmentally safe, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, and gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday as practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice (but with respect for the religious or secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or for their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all) and further for a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated onset of the generally accepted calendar year (including, but not limited to, the Christian calendar, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures). The preceding wishes are extended without regard to the race, creed, age, physical ability, religious faith or lack thereof, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishee(s).

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS:

Whereas, on or about the night prior to Christmas, there did occur at a certain improved piece of real property (hereinafter "the House") a general lack of stirring by all creatures therein, including, but not limited to a mouse.
A variety of foot apparel, e.g., stocking, socks, etc., had been affixed by and around the chimney in said House in the hope and/or belief that St. Nick a/k/a/ St. Nicholas a/k/a/ Santa Claus (hereinafter "Claus") would arrive at sometime thereafter. The minor residents, i.e. the children, of the aforementioned House were located in their individual beds and were engaged in nocturnal hallucinations, i.e. dreams, wherein vision of confectionery treats, including, but not limited to, candies, nuts and/or sugar plums, did dance, cavort and otherwise appear in said dreams.

Whereupon the party of the first part (sometimes hereinafter referred to as ("I"), being the joint-owner in fee simple of the House with the party of the second part (hereinafter "Mamma"), and said Mamma had retired for a sustained period of sleep. At such time, the parties were clad in various forms of headgear, e.g., kerchief and cap.

Suddenly, and without prior notice or warning, there did occur upon the unimproved real property adjacent and appurtenant to said House, i.e., the lawn, a certain disruption of unknown nature, cause and/or circumstance. The party of the first part did immediately rush to a window in the House to investigate the cause of such disturbance.

At that time, the party of the first part did observe, with some degree of wonder and/or disbelief, a miniature sleigh (hereinafter "the Vehicle") being pulled and/or drawn very rapidly through the air by approximately eight (8) reindeer. The driver of the Vehicle appeared to be and in fact was, the previously referenced Claus.

Said Claus was providing specific direction, instruction and guidance to the approximately eight (8) reindeer and specifically identified the animal co-conspirators by name: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen (hereinafter "the Deer"). (Upon information and belief, it is further asserted that an additional co- conspirator named "Rudolph" may have been involved.)

The party of the first part witnessed Claus, the Vehicle and the Deer intentionally and willfully trespass upon the roofs of several residences located adjacent to and in the vicinity of the House, and noted that the Vehicle was heavily laden with packages, toys and other items of unknown origin or nature. Suddenly, without prior invitation or permission, either express or implied, the Vehicle arrived at the House, and Claus entered said House via the chimney.

Said Claus was clad in a red fur suit, which was partially covered with residue from the chimney, and he carried a large sack containing a portion of the aforementioned packages, toys, and other unknown items.

He was smoking what appeared to be tobacco in a small pipe in blatant violation of local ordinances and health regulations.
Claus did not speak, but immediately began to fill the stocking of the minor children, which hung adjacent to the chimney, with toys and other small gifts. (Said items did not, however, constitute "gifts" to said minor pursuant to the applicable provisions of the U.S. Tax Code.)

Upon completion of such task, Claus touched the side of his nose and flew, rose and/or ascended up the chimney of the House to the roof where the Vehicle and Deer waited and/or served as "lookouts." Claus immediately departed for an unknown destination.

However, prior to the departure of the Vehicle, Deer and Claus from said House, the party of the first part did hear Claus state and/or exclaim: "Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!" Or words to that effect.

http://msmvps.com/bradley/archive/2004/12/13/23774.aspx

(*) (*) :| :| I prefer the story that's been around for decades. Sometimes changing the vernacular just doesn't cut the mustard. ;) BRRR! Got to go get ready to go out for dinner and am re-thinking those sexy femme clothes for black pants and sweater and my warm and gorgeous wool purple heather long cape from Ireland. Black cashmere gloves of course. ;) (*) (*)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-15-2004, 09:19 PM

From the collection of Marla Mallett: Textiles HOME

Shown on these pages are several early Japanese obi from the famous Nishijin weaving district in Kyoto. It was here that elaborate silk brocades were produced on complex draw looms from the 15th century on. In the last part of the 19th century, in the Meiji period, jacquard loom attachments were introduced, and even more complex fabrics became fashionable. Obi with lavish use of gold and silver threads became important kimono accessories; these long sumptuous sashes were often given more attention than the kimono themselves. They were frequently more expensive. The most highly regarded were woven in brocade and complex jacquard tsuzure weaves, as represented in the selection below.

Maru obi were the most formal, and were popular in the early 1900s. They were patterned throughout on both sides, and because of both their stiffness and exorbitant cost, gradually were replaced with other styles.

Fukuro obi were slightly less formal, and first appeared in the late 1920s. Because only one side was brocaded or carried other complex jacquard patterning, they were less bulky to wear than maru obi. The elaborate decoration sometimes covered the full front length, but more often covered only about 60 percent of the piece, appearing again at the far end for a few inches. The plain section was not seen when the obi was worn.

Nagoya obi were first produced in the city of Nagoya in the 1920s. A portion of this kind of obi is pre-folded and stitched in half. The narrow part wraps around the waist, while the wider length forms the bow in back.

Westerners have found multiple ways to display these luxurious textiles. They are easy to hang over a rod for a wall decoration. They make fabulous table runners, or runners for credenzas.

http://www.marlamallett.com/obi.htm

(*) (*) And now to close the kimonos.......... ;)

(l) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-16-2004, 05:06 PM

Every so often, I write about high-definition TV -- a loaded
topic if ever there was one. I happen to be a believer; I
find the widescreen, high-resolution images breathtaking and
immersive. I'm well aware, however, that a number of you
consider HDTV a gigantic, government-sanctioned boondoggle, a
massive scam intended to force people into buying new TV
sets.

I can't help to solve that controversy. But here's one that
maybe we can put to rest: How far away from the screen are
you supposed to sit?

When I was a kid, my parents used to say, "six feet away." It
made no difference how big the set was. Back then, the issue
wasn't picture resolution -- it was radiation. The rule was,
six feet away.

There are all kinds of rules of thumb these days. Some say,
"two to three times the screen height." There are even Web
sites like this one that offer viewing-distance calculators

http://www.myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html

What astounds me, though, is just how arbitrary these
recommendations are -- and how we, as consumers, nod
dutifully and rearrange our furniture accordingly. They tell
you how far away to sit, but not why. Why aren't we
questioning the criteria?

(Of course, the only thing sillier than following the
experts' guidelines like obedient sheep is people who don't
give viewing distance any consideration at all. I know people
who buy 50-inch plasma screens for use in a ten-foot room.
Never mind that at that distance, the individual pixels of
the screen will loom so large, you'll feel like you're
viewing the movie through a screen door.)

I'm no expert here. But the way I see it, the closer you can
sit without seeing the screen-door effect, the more the
picture will fill your vision, and the more immersive the
movie will be.

One thing is for sure: Whatever rule we use for calculating
viewing distance should take the screen's resolution (the
number of pixels per inch) into account. That is, any rule of
thumb that works for standard televisions won't work for
high-def screens, and also won't work for enhanced-definition
screens (EDTV). (EDTV's are currently the No. 1 bestselling
type of flat-panel TV. They have better resolution than
standard TV's, but they're not as sharp (or as expensive) as
HDTV.)

As the resolution of a screen goes up, you should be able to
sit closer to it, because the pixels are tinier and the
picture that much more seamless. In other words, somebody
needs to come up with a formula that takes into account both
the physical dimensions of your screen and the number of
pixels that make it up.

Tell you what: I know that among this newsletter's readers
are quite a few video and HDTV experts. Send me your thoughts
by posting them on the feedback board, and I'll excerpt them
in next week's column. Together, I'm sure we can get closer
to solving the distance problem.

This week's Pogue's Posts blog:
http://www.nytimes.com/technology/poguesposts/index.html?8cir

(*) (*) This columnist is usually on the mark. (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-16-2004, 05:07 PM

The New York Times' annual special issue devoted to electronic gifts for work
and play, along with a guide to the world of online shopping:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/technology/circuits/18guide.html?8cir

(*) (*) Hmmm, what to get? ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-17-2004, 02:32 PM

http://www.dogjudo.co.uk/default.aspx

(*) (*) Very cute....there's more to come apparently on this web site. (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-17-2004, 02:34 PM

For free TiVo, get in line, put life on pause: Say what you will about TiVo, the company knows a marketing opportunity when it sees one. Hoping to capitalize on Comcast's botched rollout of digital video recorder (DVR) service in the Bay Area, TiVo is offering free 40-hour DVRs to Comcast subscribers who show up at its Alviso headquarters between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. tomorrow with a current Comcast bill and a new toy or piece of clothing to donate to The Family Giving Tree charity. "This is an important selling season and we're taking advantage of a promise Comcast failed to deliver on and we're confident their customers will be willing to go with TiVo," Brodie Keast, executive vice president at TiVo, told News.com. "For the moment Comcast is a competitor. ... More and more cable companies are competing with us, and as a small company we must be more creative in features and promotions."

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10393759.htm

http://www.tivo.com/ilovetivo.asp

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5492836.html

(*) (*) COMCAST has gotten too big for their biz britches and certainly deserve this one-two punch by TiVo. Also - great news for those in the Bat area who could take off work and get over to TiVo's corporate headquarters in the valley. (*) (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-17-2004, 02:35 PM

Atomic tomatoes are not the only fruit
Ben Goldacre names the winners of the 2004 Bad Science awards - the gongs nobody wants

Thursday December 16, 2004
The Guardian

Talk about bad science here

Andrew Wakefield prize for preposterous extrapolation from a single unconvincing piece of scientific data

With its place at the kernel of Bad Science reporting in the news media, this was bound to be a hotly contested category. Were there any sense in the world, a small army of media studies graduates would be carefully documenting the number of "science" or "health" stories that related to genuine published data rather than overheard rumour, and diligently measuring how closely these stories kept to the facts. In the absence of such quantitative academic work, it was sadly left to our panel to select the most extreme examples for a cheap laugh.
The British tradition of not giving journal references for science-based stories made all of these categories difficult to judge. In May, our first candidate, the Sunday Times, described reishi mushrooms (Ganoderma lucidum) as having "performed well in trials to reduce the pain of postherpetic neuralgia". The only paper we could find relating to this subject on Pubmed referred to a trial of four people in 1998. It had no control group.

The Daily Mail meanwhile made big meat of a scientific study proving that the Atkins diet worked. The study, which only lasted six months, showed that the Atkins group lost just 4% more weight than the control group. A month later the paper turned on the Atkins diet as a result of a passing comment from an expert who had worked for the carbohydrate-peddling Flour Marketing Board. The Mail also received a special mention for reporting the scientific claims of anti-MMR campaigning researchers such as Dr Bradstreet, despite their never being published in any paper which can be found on Pubmed. Unfortunately, these articles could not be formally assessed for the award, since there was no scientific data to examine.

However after much deliberation the judges felt the winner should exemplify the crime of extrapolating - from basic sciences research in a laboratory glassware setting - to pretending that population data exists to prove a particular therapy is effective. And so the winner is: the Daily Express, for its declaration in September that "recent research" has shown turmeric to be "highly protective against many forms of cancer, especially of the prostate" on the basis of laboratory studies into the effects of a chemical extract on individual cells in dishes, and no (zero) trials in humans.

Award for outstanding innovation in the use of the title 'Doctor'
Again, there was a huge amount of competition for this category: after all, in the absence of evidence, authority is everything, and borrowing it can often be very cost-effective. The "Food Doctor", Ian Marber, caused fierce debate among the judges: could an entrant be eligible if they ran a clinic called the "Food Doctor Clinic", styled themselves as the "Food Doctor" in the media and in their books, marketed a large range of "Food Doctor" products, but didn't actually call themselves "Dr Ian Marber". We thought yes.

Dr Bannock, from Channel 4's Why Weight and glowing pieces in the Daily Mail, the Express, and the Sunday Times, presented another quandary. Although he was still attached to his seven professional memberships, six diplomas, eight certificates, the odd lectureship, and had possibly claimed fraudulently in the past to have a PhD from Brunel, he did at least have the dignity to recant, under persecution from Bad Science, and publicly bin his $850 "PhD" from the Open International University of Complementary Medicine.

As the CVs of the entrants became more and more complex, Dr Ali - "Britain's top integrated health expert" - of Harley Street and the Mail on Sunday, presented a further problem. He is not registered with the British General Medical Council, and although he does state that he went to medical school in Delhi and Moscow, he also states that your skull "contracts and expands a dozen times or so each minute to push the [cerebrospinal] fluid round" your brain, along with various other amusing misunderstandings of basic medicine. He informs us he has "chosen not to apply for registration with the British GMC as the treatment which he personally provides uses massage, diet, yoga and natural supplements and oils which do not need prescription". Cynics might suggest that his decision not to apply for registration has got more to do with the fact that the GMC regulations forbid the endorsement of lucrative commercial products. Like "Dr Ali's special recipe Ayurvedic Joint Oil" (£8.50).

However the prize went, in a surprising result, to Dr Gillian McKeith PhD. It would take an entire page to unpick, in appropriate detail, the complex web of this litigious candidate's unusual CV. For those who are interested, she has now been the subject of six Bad Science columns, debunkings in several national newspapers, and a half-hour ITV documentary on Monday, which cheerfully borrowed all of my jokes, research, and ideas, although I'm not bitter. Suffice to say, regardless of the boring details, anyone who claims that eating chlorophyll will really "oxygenate your blood", and that a seed contains "all of the energy necessary to make a fully grown plant", cannot possibly have a meaningful postgraduate qualification in a biological field. She received a small specimen jar containing the faeces of the judging panel, which will be duly forwarded to her agent if she is willing to submit it for testing.

Bad Science product of the year
Of course, it's only worth bending the facts if you have something to gain. There were over a hundred candidates in this category, but we whittled it down to a top five. SPES Capsules are a herbal alternative therapy whose manufacturers had a sudden crisis of confidence in alternative paradigms: they were found in a study to contain contain betamethasone, a potent synthetic glucocorticoid you wouldn't expect to find in any plant; and alprazolam, a synthetic benzodiazepine, much like the addictive "mother's little helpers" of the 60s, which might go some way to explain the claimed improvement in "quality of life".

Durex Performa were in a slightly different category of bad, meaning "evil": a new condom with a special cream in the teat "to help control climax and prolong sexual excitement for longer lasting lovemaking". The magic ingredient was benzocaine, a local anaesthetic, which made the judges' tongues go numb. We didn't even think about trying it on our genitals. Persil Aloe Vera also received a special mention for totemic and pointless use of a herbal ingredient by a biotech firm.

Then there's Cussons' Carex, a soap that "effectively removes bad bacteria on hands, whilst gently protecting the good". It was never made entirely clear how it was supposed to do this in the company's evidence to the ASA for a complaint which they lost on. "Carex knows the difference."

However the winner was Space Tomato Number One, part of the Chinese government's "space breeding" project, where radiation in space is used to create comic book mutations and giant space plants, including tomatoes weighing almost a kilogram. It was never made entirely clear why the mutations would be beneficial, or why you needed to be in space to get irradiated. The Chinese news agency Xinhua stated that, "in China the radiation effect is always positive, leading to bigger and better vegetables that will revolutionise agriculture."

Least plausible cosmetics claim
Generally, the claims of the cosmetics industry are well shored up with a few simple dishonest rhetorical tricks. However three products stood out. Valmont's Cellular DNA Complex is made from "specially treated salmon roe DNA", at the bargain price of £236 for seven phials. According to the Sunday Times' style supplement, it "enhances the cosmetic properties (moisturising, regenerating and protecting) of DNA". "Sadly," their correspondent continued, "smearing salmon on your face doesn't have the same effect."
PO2 Contour Cream from Laboratoires Herzog is a "patented stabilisation of oxygen within a cream" that "puts oxygen back into the skin, reoxygenates skin cells, encourages natural rejuvenation". It sounds like bollocks; but it smells like peroxide. Especially since Laboratoires Herzog point out, in the small print, that you will want to keep the stuff away from your eyebrows.
But the winner was a hair-straightening treatment by Bioionic, called Ionic Hair Retexturizing: "Water molecules are broken down to a fraction of their previous size ... diminutive enough to penetrate through the cuticle, and eventually into the core of each hair". Shrinking molecules caused some concern among the physicists at the ceremony, since IHR was available just 200 yards away, and the only other groups who have managed to create superdense quark-gluon plasma used a relativistic heavy ion collider. The prospect of such equipment being used by hairdressers was deemed worthy of further investigation.

Charles Darwin memorial prize for most unlikely death sustained while credulously being treated by a transparently fraudulent alternative therapist
There were four strong ex-candidates in this category, but as a democratic exercise in taste, it was left to the discretion of the audience to decide whether it was appropriate for the award to be presented in public. You lost.

Bad Science celebrity of the year
Juliet Stevenson made a strong case, not for her spectacular performance in Five's MMR: the facts, but for her infinitely more compelling performance as a concerned neurotic parent hyping up the dangers of MMR in the all-too-real world of Radio 4's Today programme and elsewhere. She received a special commendation from the judges for her excellent abilities to manage health risk on a population level, by being photographed the week before the awards driving her car with one hand and using her mobile phone with the other.
Anthea Turner was commiserated with on being burgled and losing £40,000 worth of possessions one month after having her house feng-shuied at great expense, and Carole Caplin also inevitably made an appearance, but both were trumped, to great popular acclaim, by Jeanette Winterson, for her excellent plan to send homeopathic remedies to treat HIV in Botswana.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/

(*) (*) :o :| ;)

Carpe Diem!
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-17-2004, 02:36 PM

http://www.brandonbird.com/walken_letters.html

(*) (*) Cute. ;)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-17-2004, 02:41 PM

http://www.hoopla.org/Cabinet/Needlepoint/LeeMajors.html

(*) (*) It's definitely time to kick back and relax. Dinner in the city Wed. night was terrific. It felt wonderful to see friends, enjoy a meal at a superb restaurant and feel some holiday cheer. Final papers are done including my Master's Thesis! (o) (o) Time to STRETCH those left AND right brain muscles. So now I have a week to find my two boxes of xmas cards, wrap and send gifts and best of all - tak Doc to have a spa-appointment - get groomed and then walk around PetSmart to get him xmas presents! (a) (a) ({) (}) What a year this has been :| I'm extremely grateful that it's over and lookinf forward to one hell of a 2005 when I turn 50 next August! (h) (h) (h) (h)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-17-2004, 02:42 PM

http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume4/v4i4/chicken.htm

:| :| :s

;) ,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-17-2004, 02:44 PM

OUEEN SACKS WORKER FOR SELLING ROYAL PUD ON EBAY
Dec 17 2004
Fury over 'security breach'
By Jane Kerr

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=14988056&method=full&siteid=89488&headline=oueen-sacks-worker-for-selling-royal-pud-on-ebay-name_page.html

(*) (*) Poor guy. (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-17-2004, 02:49 PM

Posted on Thu, Dec. 16, 2004 By John Woolfolk, Mercury News

Airline travelers could be browsing the Internet and reading e-mail routinely by high-speed Internet connections to their laptop computers in one to two years thanks to a decision Wednesday from federal regulators.

Passengers might eventually be allowed to make cell phone calls, too. The Federal Communications Commission agreed to consider lifting the ban on cell phone calls -- but called first for public comment on the controversial idea.

If frequent travelers at Mineta San Jose International Airport were any indication Wednesday, the FCC knew what it was doing.
``People are going to get annoyed being stuck in there next to some guy blabbing about his entire family affair,'' said Santa Cruz transportation consultant Jerry Ryan, who flies a dozen times a year. ``Now, you know that once the plane starts, it's going to stop.''
But fliers like Ryan were more enthusiastic about high-speed Internet access.

``If I can find a way to work while I travel, that's a plus,'' Ryan said. ``I'm sure the airlines are going to find a way to make a buck out of this, but that doesn't bother me. It's a service.''

Some foreign airlines already have begun offering high-speed Internet access. Carriers including Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines System and Japan Airlines have begun offering high-speed Internet access through Connexion by Boeing, a division of the aircraft maker. Prices for the satellite-based service range from $8 for half an hour on short trips to $30 for an entire long flight.

But under existing regulations that have limited competition and technology for delivering high-speed Internet, it costs airlines $500,000 to equip each plane for the service -- too high for many.

On Wednesday, the FCC adopted a more flexible system for licensing the air-to-ground frequencies that could allow companies to offer competitively priced air-to-ground broadband Internet service.

In-flight Internet access could become available on domestic flights in 12 to 18 months thanks to the FCC decision, said Doug Wills, spokesman for the Air Transport Association, which represents the airlines.

``It's clearly something that business travelers want, and also something that airlines can provide more easily today than they could three or four years ago,'' Wills said. ``What we like about the FCC decision today is it's a market-based one that opens it up to competition.''
The commission also agreed to consider relaxing its current ban on in-flight cell phone use, which also is prohibited by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA has commissioned a study on technical and social concerns about in-flight cell phone calls, and it is not expected to consider changing its rules until the report is completed in late 2006.

Major U.S. airlines have been offering in-flight phone service for years through seat-back handsets. But it never caught on with passengers because of its staticky quality and high price -- about $4 a minute. Airlines hard hit by discount carrier competition, rising energy prices and terrorism have been removing the phones to lighten planes and improve fuel economy.

Passenger advocate David S. Stempler, president of Air Travelers Association, called the decisions ``a very positive development,'' particularly for Internet access.

``I think passengers would certainly like the opportunity to have Internet access on board the airplane, as well as cell phone access,'' Stempler said. ``There's a demand for business travelers to be able to keep up with e-mails and communicate with the office. Leisure travelers also would find it an interesting way to while away time on the flight.''

But he added, ``The cell phone issue is really a lot more controversial. It depends which side of the cell phone you're on.''
Cupertino consultant Jillian Hamer, who flies dozens of times a year, loves her cell phone but said allowing calls in flight would be a ``nightmare'' for other passengers. She welcomed the idea of Internet access, but she had some misgivings as well.

``Wireless computer I think would be helpful,'' Hamer said as she waited for her son to arrive on an incoming flight. ``But I'm sure the airlines would figure out a way to charge for it, and we'll be expected to work the whole time because we can.''

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10429588.htm

(*) (*) :o :| I agree about the audio irritations of a screaming baby being bad enough......now we'll be putting up with folks talking loudly throughout the duration of flights, just like they do on trains. Maybe the airlines will provide earphones for music, or for those who have an iPod - they can drown out the mobile phone talking...... :| :| Hmmm, Bose has some great noise-cancellation type of headphones....maybe get a pair of those before my next flight - which might be sooner than expected. Got an invite to visit for xmas and New Years and may just do it. ;) New Years' that is. (a) Or I might just stay home for another peaceful, quiet holiday spent with Doc the boxer. (l)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-17-2004, 05:43 PM

Anyone coming???? For the Holidays??

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Published: December 17, 2004

ALBUQUERQUE is New Mexico's biggest city, but tends to get short shrift from tourists. Outsiders on the hunt for the usual Southwestern signatures — turquoise, adobe, intermingled cultures, blue skies, chiles — often fly into the Albuquerque International Sunport, then drive right away to Santa Fe or Taos and miss an opportunity. Albuquerque has the requisite turquoise and chiles, too, and charges less for them. But more, it has a lived-in, bustling, modernized kind of charm, with no forced quaintness. Unfreighted by tourists' ideas of how it should look and what it should offer, it often surprises. There's a buoyancy to the Southwest style here, and, in a not-unrelated development, probably more resident balloonists per capita than in any other city on earth.

Friday
4 p.m.
1) The Air Up There
Albuquerque sits in a wide valley, chiseled eons ago by the Rio Grande. Look west and there's a stately openness to the land, like the high plains of Kansas or Nevada. Turn around, though, and urban Albuquerque breaks abruptly against the sheer, rocky sides of the Sandia Mountains. This is indelibly New Mexico and the perfect spot to introduce yourself to the city. Buy a late- afternoon roundtrip ticket on the Sandia Peak Tramway (10 Tramway Loop NE, 505-856-7325; $15). The world's longest aerial tram, it climbs sharply to Sandia Peak, 10,378 feet. The ride, in a swaying, glass-lined gondola, above, is vertiginous, but the rewards are considerable. Fanglike rocks pass far below. Golden eagles often wheel and soar. At the top, an observation deck lets you see hundreds of miles, past the sequined lights of the city to where the land loses itself in a smudge-dark horizon. Afterward, watch the shamelessly gaudy sunset from the windowed confines of the High Finance Restaurant and Tavern (505-243-9742). Stick to the margaritas; the cuisine is much less inspired than the view.

8 p.m.
2) Fire!
Catch a return gondola for dinner in town. December evenings can be chilly, so aim for a warm meal. Better still, think hot. Sadie's of New Mexico, an Albuquerque Mexican-food staple for 50 years, makes arguably the hottest chile sauce in the West. It will cauterize your palate and stir irresistible thoughts of water and second helpings. The carne adovada enchilada ($9.95) is particularly fiery and wonderful (6230 Fourth Street, 505-345-5339).

Saturday
9 a.m.
3) Sweets and Smarts
Sleep in, then ease yourself out for a lazy breakfast. Languor serves you well at the Frontier Restaurant (2400 Central Avenue SE, 505-266-0550), across the street from the University of New Mexico bookstore. Students crowd this barnlike place, decorated with portraits of John Wayne. It's noisy at night, but in the mornings, patrons quietly nurse coffee, hangovers and recalcitrant theses. Try the sweet roll ($1.39) or the more substantial huevos rancheros ($5.49).
10 a.m.

4) Shopping Groovy
Afterward, wander the 'hood. Albuquerque isn't famously fashion-forward, but the Nob Hill area between Girard Boulevard and Washington Street has become, in the last several years, gratifyingly trippy. Just up the block from the Frontier, Hey Jhonny (3418-B Central Avenue SE, 505-256-9244), a self-described lifestyle store, sells a wildly eclectic mix of home décor items (such as exotic beetles preserved in shadow boxes) and cool retro handbags. Farther along, Absolutely Neon (3903 Central Ave NE, 505-265-6366) is high-art Vegas and glows with colors usually reserved for cockatiels and Caribbean fish. Ogle the objets de neon or order your own, if you want to see your name in really, really bright lights. The sheen is more subtle at PaperGami (114 Tulane Drive SE, 505-255-2228), behind Starbucks, which stocks beautifully opaque, handmade papers from Japan, many of them in patterns unique to the store.

12:30 p.m.
5) Food Flight
For lunch, remain in Nob Hill. The Flying Star Café (3416 Central Avenue SE, 505-255-6633) is cheerful, cheap, and innovative, a favorite of university students and their more demanding professors. Replenish the energies lost to shopping with a gouda and artichoke heart sandwich ($7.99), Thai beef salad ($9.99) and — since shopping does sap a person — a giant éclair ($4.29).

2 p.m.
6) Old Adobe, Sobering Science
Albuquerque will celebrate its tricentennial in 2006. It's a city with a grand and stirring history, visible still in Old Town. The Old Town Plaza is ringed with low-slung, rickety adobes, some dating to the 18th century. Too many of the buildings house souvenir shops now, but there's also Saints & Martyrs (404A San Felipe Street NW, 505-224-9323), specializing in religious iconography and milagros (healing charms). Old Town teems with museums. The New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science (1801 Mountain Road NW, 505-841-2800) has dinosaur bones and models. Next door, the Explora Science Center (1701 Mountain Road NW, 505-224-8300) lets you study the expenditure of energy as youngsters dash from display to display. The Albuquerque Museum (2000 Mountain Road NW, 505-243-7255) opened a new wing to exhibit painting in November. The most moving institution is the National Atomic Museum (1905 Mountain Road NW, 505-245-2137), with extra casings, above, that were made for the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, newsreels of weapons tests at nearby Los Alamos and elsewhere, debates, a collection of atomic-themed comics and notebooks where visitors can weigh in on irradiated foods and such. Fascinating and sad.

6:30 p.m.
7) Seasonal Dining
Darkness comes early in December, but as compensation, you get farolitos (brown paper bags filled with sand and a candle and placed atop almost every building and wall in Old Town). They're a Christmas tradition, burning with fairy-dust incandescence. Watch the glow from Seasons Rotisserie and Grill (2031 Mountain Road NW, 505-766-5100), perhaps the most ambitious restaurant in Albuquerque. Try the butternut squash cannelloni ($16) and the blue cheese crusted beef filet ($28)

8 p.m.
8) The Music of Disney
Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt, recently donated millions of dollars to the National Hispanic Cultural Center (1701 Fourth Street SW; 505-246-2261). The fruit of his largess is an acoustically impeccable performing arts complex, where the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra sometimes performs. Catch ballet, salsa or mariachi music. The schedule can be found at www.nhccnm.org.

Sunday
6:30 a.m.
9) Daybreak Aloft
Get up early and then just get up. Ballooning is integral to Albuquerque. The annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, which will be held next year from Sept. 30 to Oct. 9, is said to be among the most photographed events in the world. But ballooning can be done year round with one of the city's many balloon-ride companies. Most expeditions begin with a sunrise pickup at your hotel, followed by a loud, whooshing launch near Balloon Fiesta Park, then absolute silence. In the brisk, clear air, the outlines of mountains 200 miles away stand out as sharply as woodcuts. Pilots sometimes dip the basket briefly in the waters of the Rio Grande, then let it rise again. If winds cooperate, you also return to the launch site. Otherwise, chase cars will find you where you land. Most trips last about three hours and cost $135 to $200 a person. Skyspan Adventures (877-759-7726) and Rainbow Ryders (800-725-2477) are among the most established operators.

11 a.m.
10) Hot Dogging
Lastly, relive (and exaggerate) your flight over brunch at Ambrozia Café and Wine Bar (108 Rio Grande Boulevard NW; 505-242-6560), a cozy restaurant with tin candlesticks and lobster corn dogs. Don't skimp on the chipotle ketchup.

Visiting Albuquerque
The Albuquerque International Sunport is located at the south end of the city, just off Interstate 25; it is about a 10-minute drive to downtown.

Many of the best hotels are downtown, on or near Central Avenue (once part of Route 66). The 114-room La Posada de Albuquerque (125 Second Street; 800-777-5732) is where Conrad Hilton took his bride Zsa Zsa Gabor on their honeymoon in 1942. Bill Gates stayed not long ago. The small but nicely appointed standard rooms are $129.

Nearby, Hotel Blue (717 Central Avenue NW; 877-878-4868) has a slightly canned Art Deco chic. A bargain at $79 to $89, its 134 rooms are large, bright and overly art directed.

More stylish is the Sheraton Old Town (800 Rio Grande Boulevard NW; 505-843-6300), a modern, clean-lined take on adobe design, complete with a courtyard and a chapel. Its 187 rooms start at $99.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/17/t...pes/17HOUR.html

LOVE,
(k) (k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-18-2004, 12:53 AM

By Victoria Shannon International Herald Tribune
Saturday, December 18, 2004

http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/17/business/ptend18.html

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-18-2004, 12:54 AM

By Elaine Sciolino The New York Times
Saturday, December 18, 2004

http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/17/news/span.html

(*) (*) Nice photo too. ;)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-18-2004, 12:55 AM

By Bruce Jacobs
Radio Free Europe

Dramatic and historic stories filled the news in 2004. The terrorist attacks in Madrid and Beslan, European Union expansion, the war in Iraq and the election fraud drama in Ukraine were just a few of the events that made headlines and caught listeners' ears.

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/12/AB7A8BC0-4A31-439E-A7A6-D6E14008E41B.html

(*) (*) :o :o (h)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-18-2004, 12:57 AM

Although NBC remains No. 1, CBS is close behind
By John M. Higgins -- Broadcasting & Cable, 12/13/2004

Most of NBC's new shows flopped. The network no longer rules Thursday night. Even the once lowly ABC topped NBC during the November sweeps

But the Peacock is still No. 1 where it counts: money.

The network will finish 2004 at the top of B&C's annual ranking of the 25 largest TV networks, a slot it has held since 2000. NBC's revenues are growing sharply this year, up by $600 million, or 13.5%, to $5.1 billion.

To NBC Chairman Bob Wright, that's what matters. Wright notes that the network business isn't just prime time, that Katie Couric and Jay Leno add a cushion or two. When prime time ad sales get rocky, Today and The Tonight Show help soften the blow.
"People forget that we have great strength in early morning, great strength at late night and even in daytime," Wright says. "That's why I never seem to be overly concerned about this issue."

B&C estimates revenue each year to show where money really flows in the TV business. We print each week who's winning and losing in Nielsens, which are so crucial to generating selling commercials. But while advertising is by far the major force, it's by no means the only one. Three of the 10 largest networks sell no advertising at all: shopping networks QVC and Home Shopping Network and pay movie channel Home Box Office. ESPN's average audience is just a fraction of ABC's, but the two networks' revenues are nearly equal because the cable sports network collects giant license fees from cable and DBS operations while ABC is dependent solely on advertising.
Fox News' audience is nearly double that of rival CNN. But CNN's license fees are higher, so the news network takes in 31% more money than Fox News.

The Top 25 networks represent 79% of the $52 billion that TV programmers are expected to generate this year. The fastest-growing network is TNT, which rode the wave of Law & Order and strong theatrical movies for a 21.2% increase to $1.6 billion. Other big gainers are MTV, Discovery Channel and Home Shopping Network.

NBC may not keep first place for long. No. 2 CBS is close, generating $4.5 billion this year and on track to becoming the top network in both viewers and the key 18-49 demo.

NBC, meanwhile, must face a new year with no Olympics. The Olympics generated a healthy $900 million in ad sales for the network during August, normally a slow season. NBC sales will almost certainly go down during a non-Olympics year.
Moreover, NBC's current audience slide didn't really start until September, so 2004 results will include just four months of rocky ratings. Unless its schedule changes dramatically, NBC faces a full 12 months of problems next year.

Third-ranked is home-shopping network QVC. Using its airtime to pitch consumers directly rather than selling advertising, QVC generates more sales than broadcasters ABC and Fox or even cable powerhouses like HBO and ESPN. When the ad slump was crunching broadcast networks, QVC was the second-largest network and seemed poised to jump to No. 1. The shopping network, however, has grown only modestly in the past two years and now sits behind CBS.

FX enters the list for the first time this year, increasing revenues by 12.7% to $575 million. The network has generated acclaim and high ratings from hit original series Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me. But most of the revenue gain comes from basic cable's old standby, stronger theatrical movies.

The biggest loser falls off the list: TLC. The cable network entered the rankings last year on the strength of Trading Spaces. But that show has faded, and TLC's audience has plunged 35%. The network is paying the price of relying too heavily on the whole makeover genre, then having nothing as strong when it abruptly went stale. TLC ran Trading Spaces 10 and more times weekly and spawned half a dozen “surprise” makeover imitators. More networks got in the game, and Trading Spaces abruptly lost its steam, sliding from a 4.0 average Nielsen household rating to a 1.5.

“It was doing record ratings just six months ago,” says Billy Campbell, president of Discovery Networks. “Saturation just hit.”
Campbell notes that the show is still fairly strong by basic-cable standards and TLC has new programs in the works aimed at lifting ratings.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA487193.htmldisplay=Special+Report&referral=SUPP

(*) (*) (h) (h) (h)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-18-2004, 01:00 AM

Why Not the Coalition of the Shilling?
By MAUREEN DOWD Published: December 16, 2004

Duke Rummy the Domineering is not used to being challenged, so he's probably still smarting from his bruising brush with reality in Kuwait.

He has surrounded himself with so many sycophantic generals that it took a grunt from Tennessee to point out that the defense secretary has no clothes - or armor for his troops. He has taken the greatest military in the history of the world and pushed it to the breaking point.
Some people think he's toast, now that conservatives like John McCain, Chuck Hagel and Bill Kristol have turned on him - and now that the grumbles are getting louder in the military, from Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf and the TV generals to the rank-and-file reservists who have other jobs to go back to.

(Besides, what can Rummy do to punish reservists who push back - send them to Iraq?)

But, hey, it's Christmas. Overcome with the spirit of giving, I'd like to give Rummy a lifeline to escape the flak over armor.

It's amazing that President Bush, who planned to run his administration like a business, and Rummy, who was a chief executive himself, haven't already come up with this brainstorm. They're always touting the private sector, even for fixing Social Security.
They should take a lesson from their own playbook and reach out to corporate America. If Rummy can't adequately supply the Army, maybe I.B.M. and Xerox can.

Why should it just be parents of kids in Iraq who send them compasses and Kevlar vests? Everybody wants to support our troops.

If the Olympics can attract top corporate sponsors, why can't Rummy's Global War on Terrorism? Bring it on, Bank One!

Picture this: a truck rumbling across the desert on the evening news, completely armored and emblazoned with golden arches. Or a fleet of Visa Humvees. You know Donald Trump would love to slap his name on a few Chinooks. The 82nd Trumpborne.

And what about product placement? When soldiers give their Christmas greetings on Fox News or MSNBC, they could be holding cans of Pepsi or calling home on Samsung phones. Why merely send their love when they could be writing love letters in the sand on Apple computers?

Like athletes or Nascar drivers, they could sell every inch of their body: STP helmets, Nike boots, Staples "Yeah, we got that" dog tags, Starbucks M.R.E.'s, CamelBak canteens by Camels, Sony laser target designators.
All those old, out-of-shape reservists being dragged back by Rummy would be great pitchmen for arthritis medication. And Celebrex night vision goggles.

The really big corporate sponsors might set up some hospitality yurts dispensing Wellbutrin in the desert. Sure, security's so bad that Rummy was afraid to go any farther than Kuwait last week, but Michael Eisner might want to visit with some Disney imagineers and check out a different kind of Fantasyland: the neocon variety. Mr. Eisner could use some good publicity.

In this day and age, when every sports arena has been hideously renamed for some corporate entity - like Minute Maid Park in Houston, Network Associates Coliseum in Oakland, Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego and FedEx Field in D.C. - Rummy could easily think big.
How about the American Express Green Zone? Instead of those four huge facsimiles of Saddam's head that adorned the Iraqi Republican Palace, why not put up big heads (and necks) of Geoffrey, the Toys "R" Us giraffe?

Whole units could begin shopping themselves on eBay and trolling for corporate sponsors, just as the Dartmouth swimming team did in 2002 with the pitch, "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a piece of N.C.A.A. Division I collegiate memorabilia."

What's a measly swimming team compared with the thrill of ponying up for the Third Infantry Division of Fort Stewart, Ga., the Army unit that conducted the famous "thunder run" and took Baghdad - and is now about to be redeployed in Iraq?

Rummy's a little distracted trying to get his silly space shield, which fizzled yet again in a test yesterday, and fighting hard for his job, so it may take him awhile to focus on privatizing. Meanwhile, we still have that pesky armor shortage.

So how about Tommy "Stop Writing Books and Finish the War" Franks, Paul "You Disbanded the Iraqi Army, Dummy" Bremer and George "Slam-Dunk" Tenet taking off those preposterous Medals of Freedom and contributing them. Just as Scarlett and Melanie took off their gold wedding rings for the Confederate cause, those medals can be melted down for a little Humvee armor.

With help like that and some corporate support - maybe Levitra could even sponsor his next trip to Iraq - Rummy could get the Army he wants and wishes to have sooner rather than later. Like, while we're actually fighting a war.

The sponsors could help a lot in keeping the Army in top shape. After all, our troops could be stuck there for years, perhaps decades. And could even wind up defending an Iraqi ayatollah.

With all the foreign companies investing, we could finally have a real coalition. The coalition of the shilling. No German troops, but why not a Passat partnership?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/16/opinion/16dowd.html

(*) (*) (l) (l)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-18-2004, 01:00 PM

Longtime Companion (1990) Rated R 17

This ensemble piece centers on a group of gay men in 1980s New York City whose lives are changed by the puzzling new "gay cancer." The first film to have AIDS as its main subject, Longtime Companion is a powerful mix of historical realism and bittersweet drama. Winner of the Sundance Audience Award and numerous supporting actor awards for Bruce Davison, including an Oscar.
Starring: Campbell Scott, Mary-Louise Parker, Patrick Cassidy, John Dossett, Stephen Caffrey, Bruce Davison, Dermot Mulroney
Director: Norman Rene

(*) (*) (*) (*) I REALLY liked this story although I was living in San Francisco for most of the 1980's. Real without being cloying. Bruce definitely deserved that Oscar! (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-18-2004, 01:03 PM

Possession (2002)

In present-day England, a scholar (Aaron Eckhart) discovers that Victorian-era poet Randolph Ash had a secret affair with lesser-known poet Christabel LaMotte -- the subject of another scholar's (Gwyneth Paltrow) studies -- even though Ash was married and LaMotte was a "chaste spinster." As the two scholars investigate the romance between their subjects, they find themselves wrapped up in the romance as well. ...
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart
Director: Neil LaBute

(*) (*) (*) If you enjoy time travel and are open to the possibilities of parallel universes, this film will definitely be an enjoyable experience. (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-18-2004, 01:04 PM

Tuesdays with Morrie (1999)

Based on Mitch Albom's nonfiction best-seller, this film begins as Morrie (Jack Lemmon) collapses and is subsequently diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease. Then, it's a quick cut to Mitch's (Hank Azaria) hectic life as a sports columnist cum television host and his long-term relationship. When Mitch learns his beloved professor is dying, he reconnects with his mentor and learns from him all over again -- this time, about life.
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Hank Azaria
Director: Mick Jackson

(*) (*) (*) (*) (*) I loved this and would watch it again. The same author wrote "The Five People that You Meet in Heaven", which was on broadcast television last week. Definitely a five-star film! (l)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-18-2004, 01:07 PM

A Price Above Rubies (1998) Rated R 17

Married to a strictly observant Jew, a young mother (Renee Zellweger) craves fewer rules and more passion. Along comes her jeweler brother-in-law, who sees her anguish and values her at "a price above rubies," giving her a job and much more; with the door to freedom now open, she pursues a Puerto Rican jewelry designer. But there are no easy answers to the tough moral dilemmas she faces in writer-director Boaz Yakin's character-driven drama.
Starring: Renee Zellweger, Christopher Eccleston
Director: Boaz Yakin

(*) (*) Zellweger rocked in this role. What an amazing character she got to portray. (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-18-2004, 02:55 PM

First Do No Harm (1997)

Based on a true story that's both inspirational and devastating, First Do No Harm stars Meryl Streep as a mother who goes to extraordinary lengths to help find a cure for her epileptic son. When the family's insurance runs out, Streep immerses herself in medical research. In a last-ditch effort to save her son, she takes him to Baltimore for a controversial treatment.
Starring: Meryl Streep, Fred Ward, Seth Adkins, Allison Janney, Margo Martindale, Leo Burmester, Mairon Bennett
Director: Jim Abrahams

(*) This is based on a true story and tells the story of a family dealing with their child who has epilepsy. It shows the struggles, challenges and triumphs of their journey. The performances by Meryl Streep and Fred Ward were excellent! The movie can be depressing and definately attacks our current health care system, but it has a positive message about what can be accomplished if you are a champion of your childs healthcare options. (*)

(8) (8) Have a relaxing rest of your Saturday afternoon and evening. Doc and I are off for a drive and then to a friend's house for a holiday party. (l)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-20-2004, 06:51 PM

Amelie (2001) Rated R
Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain

Impish gamine Amélie (Audrey Tautou) lives alone and works in a café. When she finds a trove of toys hidden for 40 years behind a baseboard in her apartment, she's inspired to repatriate the items, an impulse of generosity that sparks more benevolent acts. A celebration of life, Amélie reminds us of the small wonders that abound around us … if only we paused to look.
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

(*) (*) I liked it but would not rent it again. The cinematography was really quite beautiful and the story really quirky. Audrey Tautou has the biggest eyes I've ever seen..... ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-20-2004, 07:00 PM

Hmmm, and now they found the same type in the Bay area. Glad I moved. :|

Hidden Fault May Threaten Bay Area

Residents of the San Francisco Bay Area have reason to fear "the big one" because the area is home to a variety of fault lines. Now researchers have reason to believe another earthquake hazard should be added to the map: Results presented today at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco suggest that the earth beneath Marin County may contain a hidden fault line.

The known faults in the San Francisco area include the San Andreas, the Hayward, the Rodgers Creek and the San Gregorio. Measurements of so-called slip rates on these faults, which range from three to 24 millimeters a year, are inconsistent. The movement of the northern San Andreas line and that of the southern portion are off by as much as four millimeters annually. "In the past, the thought was that there must be something wrong with the calculations on the San Gregorio fault," remarks study leader Kevin P. Furlong of Penn State University. Instead, Furlong and his colleagues hypothesized that there could be another fault whose movement would explain the measured discrepancies. "We think we have evidence that there is an additional earthquake hazard in the San Francisco area due to a blind thrust fault," he explains. "Blind thrust faults are notorious because they are hard to find until an earthquake occurs on them."

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=0003F16D-B382-11C0-B38283414B7F0000

(*) (*) I was driving north on I280 towards Half Moon Bay when the 7.8 hit back in November, 1989. Didn't make it to an appointment in San Francisco that I had to reschedule because of car trouble. The two magazine editors I was supposed to meet at a software firm were coming out at about 5:00 p.m. and they were killed by the falling bricks of the building facade. Talk about angels wearing turbo-track shoes - at least several things went supposedly "wrong" or I would have been at that appointment as well. :|

Stay warm. It's in the teens here and Doc and I are bundled up under a fleece blanket on the couch.

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-20-2004, 07:09 PM

By Gregg Kilday
With the holidays just one week away, everyone in Hollywood is about to shut down for a fortnight -- everyone in Hollywood, that is, except for those awards season campaigners whose job it is to fret about Oscar nominations, since nominations ballots will be mailed Dec. 27.

The first rush of honors and nominations is over. And the result is that a race that was viewed by most as wide open at the start has narrowed just a bit. A trio of front-runners has emerged, and everyone else will be scrambling to stake a claim at the open slots.

Having received the imprimatur of both the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and the New York Film Critics Circle -- as well as being the nomination leader among Independent Spirit Awards contenders, Golden Globe wannabes and Critics Choice nominees -- Alexander Payne's "Sideways" has vaulted from idiosyncratically flavored indie into a popular refreshment. The delicate comedy from Fox Searchlight Pictures, which has been developing its bouquet ever since it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, is now virtually assured a shot at major Oscar noms, including best picture.

Among more mainstream Hollywood offerings, Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby," which Warner Bros. Pictures hadn't even originally targeted for a 2004 release, entered the race at the last minute but immediately forged to the front of the pack. While early-voting groups have shown some resistance to rewarding Eastwood with an acting nomination, they've hailed his directing and composing and the movie's best picture prospects. If a somber movie set in a boxing gymnasium can be called a chamber drama that demands respect, then Eastwood's film should have no trouble earning five or six nominations, just as his "Mystic River" did last year.

Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" also appears poised for takeoff. The Miramax release, in which Warners is also partnered, opens today in Los Angeles and New York and expands over the holidays. While it has hit a few pockets of critical resistance, the biopic comes with plenty of hooks: a commanding performance by Leonardo DiCaprio that should attract younger moviegoers; walk-ons by actors impersonating real Hollywood figures that should get the Academy chattering; and aerial action to keep the film from getting bogged down in too much talk. The runner-up behind "Sideways" in Globes noms, it appears on target to land in the best pic circle.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/awards/oscars/feature_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000739763

(*) (*) "The Aviator" sounds promising and I hope to see it over the holidays rather than wait for the DVD to come out in 2005. I think that Hilary Swank might get nominated for her role in Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby". ;) (*)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-20-2004, 10:37 PM

http://www.imgag.com/product/full/ap/3067907/graphic1.swf

(*) (*) I about split my sides playing this game....and it's all the better because Dubya is such an imbecile. Talk about the ultimate village idiot... ;) Definitely worth the visit to this web site. (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-21-2004, 08:56 AM

http://us.imdb.com/

(*) (*) Scroll down and look for the following at the bottom of this web page and click on "It's a wonderful life in 30 seconds-Re-enacted by Bunnies".

(*) (*) It's really cute. (l) The other links listed will take you the others' listed. I would have simply listed the URL but it's a flash file at an unidentified location. (*) (*)

(*) (*) ;) ;)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-21-2004, 09:02 AM

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0338751/trailers

Trailers courtesy of ScreenPlay, Inc.

JustMovieTrailers - Trailer (WMP) (justmovietrailers.com)

TON - Trailer, Clips (WMP) (theonenetwork.com)

1000films - French Trailer (Windows Media Player) (www.1000films.com)

apple.com - trailer (QuickTime) (www.apple.com)

Cinema.com Trailer (Quicktime) (www.cinema.com)

CineMovies - French trailer (Various formats) (www.cinemovies.fr)

dtheatre - Trailer (Quicktime) (www.dtheatre.com)

Trailer (Various Formats) (www.dtheatre.com)

iFilm - Theatrical Trailer (www.ifilm.com)

Moviecentre.net - Trailers (Quicktime) (www.moviecentre.net)

CineVision - Trailer (All Formats) (www.universcinema.com)

(*) (*) What's really cool is that there are many films that you can look up the movie trailer and watch it. (h) (h) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-21-2004, 10:20 PM

December 21, 2004 By MARC SANTORA

For Sydney Davis, breakfast comes with a blood test and an
insulin dose. So do lunch, dinner and every snack in
between. In fact, for as long as she can remember, every
bite of food has come with a possible consequence.

Sydney, 12, of North Caldwell, N.J., who was found to have
diabetes when she was in kindergarten, does not complain.
But she is doing something about it.

Inspired by the wildly popular yellow wristbands promoted
by Lance Armstrong to raise money for cancer research,
Sydney thought, "Why not do something similar for diabetes
research?"

With the help of her friend Daniel Rosen, 13, also a
diabetes patient, and their parents, they ordered 10,000
blue wristbands that said simply: "Cure Diabetes Today."

After only four weeks, the silicone rubber bracelets have
sold out at $2 apiece, and 30,000 more are on order.

"We had no idea it would be this successful," said Leslie
Davis, Sydney's mother. "I have children ringing my
doorbell asking, 'Do you have the bracelets?' "

It seems the yellow wristband is the new red AIDS ribbon
and Sydney and Daniel have caught the wave, joining a
growing list of people using a colored bracelet to help
raise money for a cause.

"It is safe to say that right now, if there is a cause,
there is a wristband for it," said Michelle Milford, a
spokeswoman for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which,
along with Nike, created the original yellow "Livestrong"
band in May. They are on track to sell 30 million by the
end of the year at $1 a band.

Witnessing that smashing success, others have gotten into
the act. Target started selling pink bracelets for breast
cancer in October and averaged 10,000 sales a day, a
company spokeswoman said. So far, the company has donated
roughly $600,000 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

The One Earth Foundation, which promotes AIDS awareness,
quickly sold out of the 10,000 red wristbands they started
selling online in November, said Tracy Carr, the executive
director for the foundation. "It is a reach one, teach one
philosophy," she said, explaining why charities find the
bands so appealing.

Even small outfits, like Cindy Waeltermann's AutismLink in
Pittsburgh, which helps families with autistic children
connect with other families, have had success with silicone
rubber bracelets. Since she started selling blue bracelets
marked with colorful puzzle pieces on her Web site several
weeks ago, Ms. Waeltermann said, "I can't keep them in
stock."

It is possible to find myriad outfits, not all legitimate,
on the Internet selling bands in a rainbow of colors,
claiming to sponsor everything from ovarian cancer research
to melanoma awareness. (The Armstrong Foundation has
actively gone after counterfeiters, Ms. Milford said,
noting that the name "Livestrong" is trademarked.)

But unlike a large store that can use its vast resources to
promote its efforts, and unlike the Lance Armstrong
Foundation, which has benefited from celebrities and
politicians sporting the band, Sydney and Daniel have
relied only on word of mouth and their friends in North
Caldwell.

Sherri Rosen, Daniel's mother, said that initially, the
project was meant to be a small act of charity, to raise
money for the clinic where their children are treated, the
Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at the Columbia-Presbyterian
Medical Center of New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

They got more than they bargained for. "The response has
been amazing," she said.

In the United States there are 18.2 million people with
diabetes, some 6 percent of the population, according to
the American Diabetes Association. This year alone, an
estimated 213,000 people will die of diabetes and its
complications.

With so many people affected, perhaps it is not a surprise
that the blue bands have caught on.

There are two kinds of diabetes, unrelated to each other.

Type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes, has a
genetic component and sometimes appears in multiple family
members. But scientists do not know what sets off the
disease in some people, although viruses are thought to be
a factor. Both Daniel and Sydney suffer from this kind of
diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes, which is much more prevalent, is strongly
associated with being overweight, lack of exercise, aging
and a family history of the disease. Historically, it
occurred almost exclusively in adults - it used to be
called adult-onset diabetes - but as childhood obesity has
become more common, so, too, have childhood cases of Type 2
diabetes, according to doctors at the Berrie Center.

In both cases, the body's ability to make or use insulin is
affected and can lead to problems with the eyes, kidneys
and other essential organs if the blood sugar level is too
high.

"We have made enormous strides in the management of the
disease," said Dr. Rudy Leibel, a co-director at the Berrie
Center. "But not in the prevention."

Dr. Leibel leads the research efforts at the Berrie Center,
New York City's largest diabetes clinic, treating some
7,000 patients. While other hospitals have cut back or
ended their diabetes programs, the Berrie Center has been
able to survive and even thrive largely because of the
generosity of the family of its namesake and others. It
relies heavily on philanthropy, and a tour of the center
illustrated how money raised by Sydney and Daniel will be
put to use.

Dr. Leibel pointed to a new $80,000 computer that can
examine a slice of an animal pancreas for research and do
complicated calculations of insulin-producing cells.

"It would take a person a week to do what the machine can
do in a day," he said.

Dr. Robin Goland, another co-director at the center, said
researchers are continuing to make progress in what they
called the honeymoon period of the disease, when a Type 1
diabetes patient is still capable of producing insulin. For
instance, she said, Daniel, whose illness was diagnosed
four years ago, is involved in a research trial that has
enabled him to still make some insulin on his own,
something that would most likely not have been possible
only five years ago. Basically, the treatment is aimed at
slowing the destruction of the insulin-producing cells.

Dr. Goland highlighted the variety of services available at
the center - an eye doctor, a dentist and a kitchen for
nutrition classes - all right next to one another. "The
idea is to try and make patients as comfortable as
possible," she said.

Eating a graham cracker and adjusting her insulin pump,
Sydney seemed to think Dr. Goland was doing a good job at
meeting that goal.

She deferred to her parents when asked what was next for
the bracelets, saying she and Daniel were just going to
continue what they had been doing - talking to friends and
hawking the bands the old-fashioned way.

Because of the demand, however, the Berrie Center has begun
selling the bracelets from its office via telephone, (212)
851-5492, and the Internet

(http://nbdiabetes.org/news/sydney.html).

The bracelets sold by the center will cost $5. But those
lucky enough to know Sydney and Daniel can still get a deal
at $2.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/nyregion/21bracelet.html?ex=1104671472&ei=1&en=fd0809a9a5b8a256

(*) (*) I'm buying some of these asap. (and wearing one myself) (l) (l) (l)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-21-2004, 10:25 PM

Op-Ed Columnist: A Not So Wonderful Life
December 19, 2004 By MAUREEN DOWD

EXTERIOR BRIDGE OVER POTOMAC RIVER - NIGHT

CLOSE SHOT - Rummy is standing by the railing, staring
morosely into the water. The snow is falling hard. Feeling
a tap on his shoulder, he wheels around and wrestles an old
man with wings into a headlock.

OLD MAN: Ouch! Tut, tut. When will you learn that force
doesn't solve everything?

RUMMY: Who the dickens are you?

OLD MAN: Clarence, Angel
First Class. I've been sent down to help you.

RUMMY, squinting: You're off your nut, you old fruitcake.
You can't help me. I was a matinee idol in this town, a
studmuffin. Now everyone's turned on me - Trent Lott, Chuck
Hagel and that dadburn McCain.

CLARENCE: No more self-pity, son. I'm going to show you
what the world would have been like if you'd never been
born.

Clarence, who can fly now, takes Rummy's hand and they soar
over the icy Potomac to the Pentagon. Beneath the glass on
the desk of the defense secretary is a list of members of
Congress and their phone numbers.

RUMMY: Who put that there?

CLARENCE: Sam Nunn. He's the
defense secretary. Sam consults with Congress. Never acts
arrogant or misleads them. He didn't banish the generals
who challenged him - he promoted 'em. And, of course, he
caught Osama back in '01. He threw 100,000 troops into
Afghanistan on 9/11 and sealed the borders. Our Special
Forces trapped the evildoer and his top lieutenants at Tora
Bora. You weren't at that cabinet meeting the day after
9/11, so nobody suggested going after Saddam. No American
troops died or were maimed in Iraq. No American soldiers
tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. No Iraqi explosives fell
into the hands of terrorists. There's no office of
disinformation to twist perception abroad. We're not on the
cusp of an Iraq run by Muslim clerics tied to Iran. Here's
Sam. He's with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

GENERAL SHINSEKI: We got some good news today on the
National Guard, sir. Recruiting is up 40 percent. With the
money we saved killing that useless missile defense system,
we up-armored all our Humvees.

RUMMY, fists and jaw clenched: Grrrrrrr...I want to see
Wolfie!

CLARENCE: Sam never hired any of those wacko neocons.
Wolfowitz is a woolly headed professor at the Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies, and a consultant
to Ariel Sharon. Richard Perle was never in charge of the
Defense Policy Board, so he was unable to enrich himself
through government connections, or help Ahmad Chalabi con
the administration. Perle stayed an honest man, running a
chain of soufflé shops. His soufflés were so fluffy he
became known as the Prince of Lightness. Doug Feith never
worked here, either, so he never set up the Office of
Special Plans to spin tall tales about W.M.D. and Qaeda
ties to Saddam. And he never bungled the occupation because
there was no occupation. Without you to swoon over in a
book, neocon doyenne Midge Decter became a fallen woman,
like Violet.

RUMMY, dyspeptic: Holy mackerel! Take me to Dick!

CLARENCE: Dick and Lynne run a bait, tackle and
baton-twirling shop in Casper, Wyo. You didn't exist, so
you never gave him those jobs in the Nixon and Ford
administrations, and he never ran for Congress or worked
for Bush 41 or anointed himself 43's vice president. W.
chose Chuck Hagel as his running mate. So without you and
Dick there to dominate him, he was guided by his dad and
Brent Scowcroft, who kept Condi in line. Colin Powell was
never cut off at the knees and the U.N. and allies were
never bullied. There was never any crazy fever about Iraq
or unilateralism or "Old Europe." Here's Colin now, heading
for the Oval Office.

POWELL: Merry Christmas, Mr. President. With the help of
our allies around the world, we have won the war on terror.
And Saddam has been overthrown. Once Hans Blix exposed the
fact that Saddam had no weapons, the tyrant was a goner. No
Arab dictator can afford to be humilated by a Swedish
disarmament lawyer.

RUMMY: Goodness gracious, I've heard enough now. I'm going
home. Unless you're going to tell me my wife is an old
maid, because I wasn't around to marry her.

CLARENCE: Oh, no. Joyce lives across the street from your
old house on Kalorama Road. She's happily married to the
French ambassador.

"Auld Lang Syne" swells as we FADE OUT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/opinion/19dowd.html?ex=1104671236&ei=1&en=d7e4f00480a901c0

(*) (*) ;) ;) Maureen has such a twisted sense of humor as well as being a gifted writer of things she observes with her laser focused "doesn't miss anything" world view. Can you tell I'm a fan? (h) (h)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-21-2004, 10:35 PM

December 21, 2004 By SAM DILLON

American universities, which for half a century have
attracted the world's best and brightest students with
little effort, are suddenly facing intense competition as
higher education undergoes rapid globalization.

The European Union, moving methodically to compete with
American universities, is streamlining the continent's
higher education system and offering American-style degree
programs taught in English. Britain, Australia and New
Zealand are aggressively recruiting foreign students, as
are Asian centers like Taiwan and Hong Kong. And China,
which has declared that transforming 100 universities into
world-class research institutions is a national priority,
is persuading top Chinese scholars to return home from
American universities.

"What we're starting to see in terms of international
students now having options outside the U.S. for
high-quality education is just the tip of the iceberg,"
said David G. Payne, an executive director of the
Educational Testing Service, which administers several
tests taken by foreign students to gain admission to
American universities. "Other countries are just starting
to expand their capacity for offering graduate education.
In the future, foreign students will have far greater
opportunities."

Foreign students contribute $13 billion to the American
economy annually. But this year brought clear signs that
the United States' overwhelming dominance of international
higher education may be ending. In July, Mr. Payne briefed
the National Academy of Sciences on a sharp plunge in the
number of students from India and China who had taken the
most recent administration of the Graduate Record Exam, a
requirement for applying to most graduate schools; it had
dropped by half.

Foreign applications to American graduate schools declined
28 percent this year. Actual foreign graduate student
enrollments dropped 6 percent. Enrollments of all foreign
students, in undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral
programs, fell for the first time in three decades in an
annual census released this fall. Meanwhile, university
enrollments have been surging in England, Germany and other
countries.

Some of the American decline, experts agree, is due to
post-Sept. 11 delays in processing student visas, which
have discouraged thousands of students, not only from the
Middle East but also from dozens of other nations, from
enrolling in the United States. American educators and even
some foreign ones say the visa difficulties are helping
foreign schools increase their share of the market.

"International education is big business for all of the
Anglophone countries, and the U.S. traditionally has
dominated the market without having to try very hard," said
Tim O'Brien, international development director at
Nottingham Trent University in England. "Now Australia, the
U.K., Ireland, New Zealand and Canada are competing for
that dollar, and our lives have been made easier because of
the difficulties that students are having getting into the
U.S.

"International students say it's not worth queuing up for
two days outside the U.S. consulate in whatever country
they are in to get a visa when they can go to the U.K. so
much more easily."

American educators have been concerned since the fall of
2002, when large numbers of foreign students experienced
delays in visa processing. But few noticed the rapid
emergence of higher education as a global industry until
quite recently.

"Many U.S. campuses have not yet geared up for the
competition," said Peggy Blumenthal, a vice president at
the Institute for International Education.

Still, Ms. Blumenthal said, it remains unclear whether the
sudden decline in foreign enrollments is a one-time drop or
the beginning of a long slide.

Not all educators are expressing concern.

Steven B.
Sample, president of the University of Southern California
- which last year had 6,647 foreign students, the most of
any American university - said colleagues who lead other
universities had expressed anxiety at professional
meetings.

"But we compete no holds barred among ourselves for the
best faculty, for students, for gifts and for grants, and
that's one of the reasons for our strength," Dr. Sample
said. "Now we'll compete with some overseas universities.
Fine with me, bring 'em on."

Certainly many American universities continue to be
extraordinary global brand names. Shanghai Jiao Tong
University has compiled an online academic ranking of 500
world universities, using criteria like the number of Nobel
Prizes won by faculty members and academic articles
published (ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/2004Main.htm). Of the
top 20 on the list, 17 are American. Of the top 500, 170
are American.

During 2002, the most recent year for which comparable
figures are available, some 586,000 foreign students were
enrolled in United States universities, compared with about
270,000 in Britain, the world's second-largest higher
education destination, and 227,000 in Germany, the
third-largest. Foreign enrollments increased by 15 percent
that year in Britain, and in Germany by 10 percent.

The countries exporting the most students were China, South
Korea and India, but the annual global migration to
overseas universities involves two million students from
many countries traveling in many directions. That number is
exploding - by some estimates it will quadruple by 2025 -
as economic growth produces millions of new middle-class
students across Asia.

In October, the Organization for Economic Development and
Cooperation, an economic forum for 30 leading industrial
nations, took note of this global movement in a study.
Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin, an analyst at the organization's
headquarters in Paris and an author of the study, said that
traditionally most countries, including the United States,
had tried to attract foreign students as a way of
disseminating their nation's core values.

But three other strategies emerged in the 1990's, Dr.
Vincent-Lancrin said. Countries with aging populations like
Canada and Germany, pursuing a "skilled migration"
approach, have sought to recruit talented students in
strategic disciplines and to encourage them to settle after
graduation. Germany subsidizes foreign students so
generously that their education is free.

Australia and New Zealand, pursuing a "revenue generating"
approach, treat higher education as an industry, charging
foreign students full tuition. They compete effectively in
the world market because they offer quality education and
the costs of attaining some degrees in those countries are
lower than in the United States. Emerging countries like
India, China and Singapore, pursuing a "capacity building"
approach, view study abroad by thousands of their nation's
students as a way of training future professors and
researchers for their own university systems, which are
expanding rapidly, Dr. Vincent-Lancrin said.

In August a delegation of education officials from
Singapore visited Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the
University of Michigan, at the Ann Arbor campus. They took
over a conference room, set up computers and peppered her
with questions about tuition policy, fund-raising,
governance and research, Dr. Coleman recalled. They wanted
to know how Michigan became a prominent university, and how
it was run today.

"Eventually they'll reap the benefits of this work," Dr.
Coleman said. "Singapore will create world-class
universities. Other countries are taking the same approach.
We're going to have enormous competition. We'd better be
prepared for it."

The rapid changes in India and China have special
importance. The number of Indian students in the United
States has more than doubled in a decade, to 80,000, the
largest representation of any country. The 62,000 students
from China make up the second-largest group. Graduate
students and degree holders from those countries play a
critical role in American science, engineering and
information technology research.

Some 28 percent fewer Indian students applied to attend
American graduate schools this fall than last year,
according to a survey by the Council of Graduate Schools.
This matched the overall decline for all foreign students.

Rabindranath Panda, the education consul at India's
consulate in New York, said that huge private investments
in Indian higher education in recent years had greatly
increased options at home for Indian students, and that
those who wished to study abroad were increasingly looking
at universities not only in the United States and Britain
but also in France, Germany, Singapore and elsewhere.

Higher education is undergoing even more sweeping
transformation in China. The number of students seeking a
postsecondary degree is expected to rise to 16 million
students by 2005 from 11 million in 2000 and to keep rising
thereafter, according to a recent report by the
Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation. Even
if only a small minority of those new students seek a
foreign degree, they will enlarge their already important
presence at hundreds of overseas universities.

But the new wave of Chinese students may not wash into the
United States. Educators say applicants from China face
more visa difficulties than applicants from any country
outside the Middle East.

One reason, they say, appears to be that many Chinese
students pursue the science disciplines that set off a
screening process known as Visa Mantis, intended to prevent
the transfer of sensitive technology. A Congressional study
found that during a three-month period last year, more than
half of all the Visa Mantis investigations worldwide
involved Chinese students. The especially long visa delays
experienced by Chinese students are a major irritant for
many university presidents.

"Chinese students are getting heightened scrutiny," said
the president of Princeton University, Shirley M. Tilghman.
"I've asked many people for the rationale, but I've never
gotten an answer that makes sense."

Chinese applications to American graduate schools fell 45
percent this year, while several European countries
announced surges in Chinese enrollment.

"We had an especially large increase in Chinese students,"
said Martina Nibbeling-Wriessnig, a spokeswoman for the
German Embassy in Washington.

The United States is also losing some Chinese scholars,
partly because of China's strategic decision over the last
decade to channel special investments to 100 universities
with a view to building them into world-class research
giants capable of winning Nobel Prizes.

In October, Dr. Coleman of the University of Michigan
visited Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which created the
online university ranking system and has also built a vast
new campus. Partly because Dr. Coleman is a biochemist, her
hosts took her to visit their new pharmacy school. It had
hired 16 professors, she said - all of them returned from
American universities.

But not only Chinese universities are seeking to lure top
faculty members from American campuses.

"Baseball's World Series includes only American teams,"
said Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University.
"But higher education is truly a world series now, because
we're competing for students and faculty against
universities all over the world."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/national/21global.html?ex=1104671146&ei=1&en=ea7c0e99ac0bb911

(*) (*) On-line and other forms of distance learning will dramatically change some of these trends discussed in the above article. However, just in case - maybe I should consider learning Cantonese and Mandarin as well as applying to German universities for a PhD. ;) Unfortunately, these overseas universities are not offering degrees on-line (yet) at the numbers that American-based universities, colleges and community colleges are. One thing is certain - there's all kinds of huge opportunities for training and lifelong learning for aging Baby Boomers. Got to keep the mental cobwebs at bay! (h) (h) ;)

(o) Well, time to bundle up and take the Doc'meister for the "last walk of the evening" tonight. Early day tomorrow with three appointments and hopefully time for wrapping some presents in-between. Stay warm and have a delightful Wednesday! (k)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-21-2004, 10:40 PM

Is the cable company in your neighborhood offering a "sweet deal" on their cable modem service? Maybe the phone company has contacted you about their new DSL rollout? Some people live in places where neither cable modem nor DSL service is available, but many others have the choice of both.

http://compnetworking.about.com/od/dslvscablemodem/l/aa111200a.htm

(*) (*) Not bad and has lots of info links. (*) (*)

(S) G'night. (S)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-24-2004, 09:00 AM

If you have children or were ever a child or know someone who has kids or who has been a kid, you will enjoy this. So click the link.

http://users.pandora.be/stefdirrix/flash/queen.htm

(l) (l) Happy Holidays Everyone! (l) (l)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-24-2004, 09:03 AM

By David Pogue

Last week, I asked for your help. I wanted to come up with a
modernized rule for how far away we're supposed to sit from
the TV in the high-definition era -- and I loved, loved,
loved your responses. They ranged from homespun common-sense
nuggets to three-page formulas sent by physicists.

Here's a sampling of the most interesting responses.

* "The easiest way is to use 3.3 times the height of the
screen. Naturally, this is based on true HDTV (720P, 1080I or
1080P) and 20/20 vision."

* "Given the best resolution, you should be sitting
approximately 1.5 times the screen WIDTH away from the
screen. This will give you a viewing angle of about 30
degrees, which will create the immersive effect without
having to move your head too much to catch all the action.
With a lower resolution like EDTV, 2.0 to 2.5 times the
screen WIDTH will probably be more acceptable."

* "Next time you see a film in a theater, take your favorite
seat, then hold up your hand at arm's length, palm to the
screen, and measure the width of the screen in palm widths.
Repeat in front of your home theater and adjust your viewing
distance to recreate the screen size you personally favor."

* "In our house, it was, 'Don't ruin your eyes!' But, of
course, the TV screen was about ten inches across, with a
weird magnifier hanging over it. (Yep, I'm old!)"

* "I don't need no stinking engineers or complicated math to
tell me the optimal distance of screen to viewer. It's like
focusing a camera; move closer or further away until you see
the image that suits you best. I'm sitting closer now that I
have HD."

* "You are, of course, assuming that the viewer has 20/20
vision. As a severely nearsighted TV viewer, my rule of thumb
is usually, 'close enough to annoy anyone else trying to
watch the darned thing.'"

* "Though being closer to the screen is more immersive, there
is a limit to what's comfortable for most people. If the
screen occupies too wide a visual angle, you can no longer
track the action by moving only the eyes, and you have to
start turning the head. This can lead to neck fatigue and can
induce motion sickness in some viewers."

* "David, after you sift through all the feedback here, if
you come up with what seem to be some good rules of thumb,
could you please tell me what size TV to get based on my room
size, rather than what size room to get for my TV? My house
is more valuable than any TV I will ever buy."

* "My only concern about viewing distances is a reminder that
much viewing would be of standard-definition TV broadcasting,
which, because of its lower resolution, needs to be a
consideration, too."

* "In film school (many years ago), I was taught that it has
to do with matching the screen size to the capacity of the
eye's peripheral vision. You want the edge of your peripheral
vision to just catch what's going on at the edge of the
screen. I've tested this over the years and it works for me,
with slight changes as my eyesight has changed."

* "When you look at how far people actually sit from TVs, you
find that for larger sets, it is determined mainly by the
size of the room. Most houses have 10, 12 or 14-foot room
widths and that, minus the width of the TV and the couch
back, is how far most people sit from their TV."

A more detailed response came from Rich Muller, a professor
at the University of California at Berkeley and an old
friend.

* "You don't need HDTV or video experts. You need the council
of a physicist! Fortunately, that's what I am. "Here's the
answer: if the diagonal of the screen is D, and it is HDTV
(1080x1920), then your eye will not see the pixels as long as
you sit at least 1.5 D away. Thus, if you have a 30 inch
diagonal, then you can sit 45 inches away, and even closer if
your eyesight is worse than 20-20.

"Here's the calculation. The resolution of the human eye is
about 1 minute of arc. The sine of that angle is 0.0003.
Pixels closer than this will not be resolved. "If you have a
TV with a diagonal measurement D, and the height and width
are in the ratio of HDTV (1081/1920), then the height of the
screen is very close to D/2. There are 1080 pixels in that
distance, so the average spacing of the pixels is D/(2*1080)
= D/2160. Thus, for a 30-inch screen, the pixel spacing is
30/2160 = 0.014. The number of pixels per inch is about 70.
There are more pixels per inch for small screens, and fewer
for large screens. If you are observing the screen from a
distance R, then your eye resolution (with angle A = 1 minute
of arc) will be R x sine(A) = 0.0003 R. This distance must be
bigger than the pixel size, so we set 0.0003 R = D/2160. That
gives R = D/(2160 x .0003) = 1.5.

"That's the rule of thumb that I came up with. At this
distance, the horizontal dimension of the screen will cover
82 degrees of your field of view! (Your entire field of view
is about 180 degrees.) So -- sit up close and be swept away
by the clear visual experience."

My favorite response, though, came from this clever reader:
"Here is the answer to how far to sit from your HDTV," he
wrote. "'The way I see it, the closer you can sit without
seeing the screen-door effect, the more the picture will fill
your vision, and the more immersive the movie will be.'"

Of course, that second sentence came straight from my
original column. It seems that in posing the question, I
unwittingly provided my own answer!

Thanks again to all who participated -- this was a really
great way to get to the bottom of a difficult debate. Next
week's assignment: Is there life after death?

Just kidding.

This week's Pogue's Posts blog:
http://www.nytimes.com/technology/poguesposts/index.html

(*) (*) ;) (h) (h)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-24-2004, 09:06 AM

For those who dread coming back to an e-mail overflow, the solution is
often to take time off from leisure to weed the in-box.

http://tech.nytimes.com/2004/12/23/technology/circuits/23vaca.html?8cir

(*) (*) :| ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-24-2004, 09:07 AM

Times Square soars with glittering buildings that pulse and
wink with outsized video screens. MTV's new high-definition
screen raises the ante.

http://tech.nytimes.com/2004/12/23/technology/circuits/23howw.html?8cir

(*) (*) Have a Very Merry! (l) (l)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-24-2004, 09:09 AM

You may not realize it, but it's 100% true.

1. There are at least two people in this world that you would die for.

2. At least 15 people in this world love you in some way.

3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you is because they want to be just like you.

4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone, even if they don't like you.

5. Every night, SOMEONE thinks about you before they go to sleep.

6. You mean the world to someone.

7. You are special and unique.

8. Someone that you don't even know exists, loves you.

9. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good comes from it.

10. When you think the world has turned its back on you, take a look.

11. Always remember the compliments you received. Forget about the rude remarks.

When life hands you lemons, ask for tequila and salt.....

(l) (l) (l)

Peace and Love,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-24-2004, 09:21 AM

This is an actual essay written by an applicant when applying to college.
The author, Hugh Gallagher, now attends NYU.

3A. ESSAY
IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice.

I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention.

I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently.

Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing,
I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes.

I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants.

I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries.

When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard.

I enjoy urban hang gliding.

On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie.

Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear.
I don't perspire.

I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail.

I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes.

Last summer, I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration.

I bat .400.

My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles.

Children trust me.

I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy.

I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening.

I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket.

I have performed covert operations for the CIA.

I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair.

While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery.

The laws of physics do not apply to me.

I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid.

On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami.

Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down.

I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven.

I breed prizewinning clams.

I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin.

I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

But I have not yet gone to college.

(*) (*) I'm amazed that the NYU admissions' staff had such a sense of humor and approved this guy's undergraduate application including this rather ego-centric essay. It's about time academics got a sense of humor and lightened up a bit. There are still many areas that need fresh air, but hey, as they say, "progress, not prefection." ;)

(o) (o) Presents to wrap yet and stuff to do. Waiting for a FedEx that got stuck in Memphis because of the snowstorms. Hope it arrives today yet. (l) (l) Travel safe everyone and sincerest best wishes for a warm and loving holiday. Doc the boxer and I will have a quiet xmas again this year. ({) (}) to all!

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-28-2004, 09:16 AM

http://www.villagevoice.com/take/six/winners.php?category=1

(*) (*) I don't agree with their list in terms of prioritizing specific films, but then maybe someone actually WATCHED all of them.... ;)

(l) (l) Happy Holidays Everyone!! (8) (8)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-28-2004, 09:19 AM

December 25, 2004 By DAVID BROOKS

Some people say that the age of the public intellectuals is
over, that there are no longer many grand thinkers like
Lionel Trilling or Reinhold Niebuhr, writing ambitious
essays for the educated reader. It's true that there are
fewer philosophes writing about the nature and destiny of
man, but there are still hundreds of amazing essays written
every year.

In celebration of that fact, and in case you're looking for
some mind-expanding holiday reading, I've decided to create
the Hookie Awards. Named after the great public
intellectual Sidney Hook, they go to the authors of some of
the most important essays written in 2004.

I should mention that essays for The New York Times and
other newspapers are not eligible for these prizes, and
that if you go to the Web site version of this column, at
www.nytimes.com, you will find links to the winning essays.

Here is the first batch of Hookie Laureates:

"When Islam Breaks Down," by Theodore Dalrymple. City
Journal. A British prison doctor analyzes radical Islam. A
typical passage: "Their problem, and ours, is that they
want the power that free inquiry confers, without either
the free inquiry or the philosophy and institutions that
guarantee that free inquiry. They are faced with a dilemma:
either they can abandon their cherished religion, or they
can remain forever in the rear of human technical advance.
Neither alternative is very appealing; and the tension
between their desire for power and success in the modern
world on the one hand, and their desire not to abandon
their religion on the other, is resolvable for some only by
exploding themselves as bombs."

"The Other Sixties," by Bruce Bawer. The Wilson Quarterly.
When we think of the 60's, we think of Vietnam and
Woodstock, but Bawer revives the early 60's, the era of
Jack Paar, David Susskind and Sammy Davis Jr. - people who
were too hip for the 50's but not hip enough for the late
60's.

Bawer writes: "In 1950's America, middle-class values often
seemed to be sacrosanct, while in 'The Sixties' they would
be dismissed condescendingly by some Americans and defended
fiercely by others. In the early 1960's, Americans still
respected these values but responded open-mindedly, even
enthusiastically, to irreverent humor at their own
expense."

"Faculty Clubs and Church Pews," by William J. Stuntz. Tech
Central Station. This is an online essay by a Harvard Law
professor who is also a member of an evangelical church.
Harvard and the evangelicals are supposed to be on the
opposite side of the red-blue divide, but Stuntz says the
institutions have a lot in common. People in both places
study texts, and spend their time thinking about how to
help the poor.

They also have much to learn from one another. Evangelicals
can learn intellectual rigor. Academics can learn a little
humility.

The Iraq imbroglio has produced some amazing and, for war
supporters, painful essays. James Fallows published "Blind
Into Baghdad" in The Atlantic Monthly, which showed that
most of what happened in postwar Iraq was predicted prewar
by government analysts. It's just that their reports were
suppressed or ignored by the people making the decisions.
Seymour Hersh's work on Abu Ghraib for The New Yorker is
closer to reportage than essay writing, but it was the most
discussed body of magazine writing this year.

The global decline in fertility rates has likewise prompted
some astonishing essays. Phillip Longman published "The
Global Baby Bust" in Foreign Affairs, noting that while we
have images in our heads of throngs of unemployed young
people in the Middle East, fertility rates are falling
faster there than anywhere else on earth. Over the next
half-century, Mexico's median age will rise by an
astounding 20 years. By 2050, Mexico will be an older
society than the United States.

Nicholas Eberstadt writes about what the graying population
means for Asia in "Power and Population in Asia" in Policy
Review. Eberstadt argues that it is better to get rich and
then get old than it is to get old first. Thus, while Japan
should be able to adjust to the new demographics, China
will face huge problems. In China, the pension system is
the family, but nearly a quarter of seniors will have no
living son to rely on for sustenance.

On Tuesday, I'll announce the second batch of the uncoveted
Hookies. In the meantime, download some of these. You'll be
smarter for 2005.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/25/opinion/25brooks.html?ex=1105019910&ei=1&en=ac864d05b70ee66b

(*) (*) (h) (h) Very Cool Yule Tool. ;)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-28-2004, 09:26 AM

December 23, 2004 By WILLIAM B. WAITS

FINDING the perfect gift has long been a national pastime.
But the celebration of Christmas, and the culture of gift
giving that accompanies the holiday, have changed
significantly in America over the years. Economic and
social pressures have transformed how, and with whom, we
celebrate Christmas, altering it from a holiday that was at
times illegal, or limited to adult parties, or a
gift-giving child-centered extravaganza like today's.

There are several popular misconceptions about the origins
of the American version of the holiday. To start, Christmas
was actually suppressed in New England's colonial days. The
Puritans found no affirmative command to celebrate
Christmas in the Bible and, being good Calvinists, frowned
on the celebration. They even outlawed it for a time during
the 17th century. Opposition to the holiday lingered well
into the 19th century, when many New England children were
required to attend school on Christmas Day. So take down
your Currier & Ives prints of winter sleigh rides to
Grandma's house in New England. True New England grandmas
disdained Christmas - well into the 1800's.

In contrast, the colonial South provided fruitful soil for
importing the traditional English Christmas celebration to
this continent. It was a festive and sometimes boisterous
adult affair characterized by the Yule log, boar's head and
wassail bowl. Southerners put the kids to bed and passed
the bowl. During the 19th century, much of the revelry was
gradually moved to New Year's Eve, so now it's put the kids
to bed and pass the champagne flute.

The symbols of Christmas that we know today - St. Nicholas,
the Christmas tree and the wonderment of the holiday among
children - were brought from the old country by people
living in the Middle Atlantic states. The Pennsylvania
Dutch, the Swedes of New Jersey and particularly the "true
Dutch" of New York shared with their neighbors the
traditions of their Northern European heritage, practices
that have endured.

As the importance of New York City in national life
increased with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, New
Yorkers' ideas on celebrating Christmas circulated widely.
Washington Irving made frequent use of New York settings
and Christmas themes in his writings. Clement Clarke Moore
supposedly wrote "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (which begins
" 'Twas the night before Christmas...") while a professor
at General Theological Seminary. Beginning in the 1860's,
the drawings of Santa Claus by Thomas Nast of New York
firmly established the appearance of the Jolly Saint as a
cultural icon. In 1912, New York City, along with Boston
and Hartford, put up the nation's first community Christmas
trees.

Large New York area department stores, like Macy's and
Bamberger's, played their part in particularly innovative
ways. They Bambegan by hiring Santas for their stores
throughout the season. Fittingly, the first school to train
professional Santas was established in Albion, N.Y. in
1937.

Although the Christmas celebration existed in America from
the settlers' earliest times, the holiday remained small in
scale until the 19th century, when it began to play a
larger role in national culture, building on the work of
Moore, Nast, Irving and others. It achieved its much larger
and truly modern scale only after the transformation of the
holiday between 1880 and 1910.

Before 1880, American culture was predominantly rural,
including the way it celebrated Christmas. Rural Americans
gave many Christmas gifts to their families and neighbors.
Food, small pieces of woodwork and sewed items were the
most popular. Gifts to the immediate family were more
substantial than those given to friends, but they remained
modest by later standards. While almost all of these gifts
were handmade, that imposed no heavy burden on givers
because, in a farm economy, they had several months of free
time after the harvest to make them.

When rural Americans moved to the cities in pursuit of
employment and the other attractions of urban life, they
brought along their rural habits of gift giving. But their
new jobs in factories or offices - unrelated to the
agricultural cycle - left them with no off season to
fashion presents. As a consequence, they bought small,
inexpensive manufactured items to give to their families
and their new urban friends.

Figurines and other ceramic pieces were typical, as were
wall hangings, inexpensive jewelry and small craft pieces
like a framed "Home Sweet Home" sampler. A magazine writer
in 1913 described them as "tawdry and gaudy gimcracks,
flimsy gewgaws, ephemeral and unbeautiful; purchased often
with lassitude, received with distaste, and soon relegated
to the limbo of attic or ash heap."'

While gimcracks were most associated with gifts to friends,
many gifts to relatives also qualified for this category.
Spending differed little between gifts for friends or those
for family.

In the first decade of the 20th century, people and
organizations began to criticize this new pattern of
gift-giving that had emerged in America's cities. Given the
poor quality of the gimcracks and the considerable time
that it took to purchase, wrap and deliver them, no wonder
Progressive Era reformers looked for alternative ways to
celebrate the holiday that were less burdensome and more
gratifying.

That paved the way for Christmas cards, which became the
ideal small gift for acquaintances and business associates.
A survey of the mail system in 1911 reflected the shift,
showing that the total number of items posted had increased
while their total weight had dropped significantly.

Several other changes helped make the holiday less
burdensome for workers. In 1906, the Consumer's League
formed the Shop Early Campaign to discourage last-minute
purchasing, a practice that strained everyone in the retail
trade. The league also pressured stores to maintain regular
store hours throughout the holiday season so that their
employees could fully enjoy the celebration. They
maintained and publicized a list of stores that complied in
the hope of encouraging shoppers to choose them over stores
that placed more burdens on their employees.

In 1912, Progressives also established the Society for the
Prevention of Useless Giving (known as SPUG). Its goals
were to curtail the presentation of gimcracks (which they
regarded as inappropriate as expressions of mere
acquaintanceship), and to curb the practice of store clerks
giving presents to their supervisors ( the gifts were
"extorted" rather than heartfelt).

The general success of the Progressives in reforming
Christmas, as well as previous efforts to mold the
festivities, supports the notion that the celebration can
be changed, just like any other cultural phenomenon. So
don't accept current complaints that Christmas has spun out
of control and dictates our holiday behavior, driving us to
ever-higher levels of spending. People can and should run
the celebration, not the other way around.

William B. Waits is the author of "The Modern Christmas in
America: A Cultural History of Gift Giving."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/23/opinion/23waits.html?ex=1104901825&ei=1&en=6e02e639d698e460

(*) (*) Ever sat in a wooden pew at the National in Washington, D.C. or some other cathedral? The cathedrals in Europe from the Middle Ages make me feel as if I have indeed, stepped back in history. I once had the opportunity to visit Switzerland just before xmas back in 1986. One of the towns where I stayed was Frieborg where they had the Cathedral of St. Nicholas, built in the 1500's. The town held a parade at night where St. Nick rode on a white donkey and was surrounded by dark cloaked and hooded figures carrying switches for bad children. (or so they told me.) It was also special to attend two masses during my stay - one in Dutch and another one in Latin. This article brought back some remarkable memories of one special xmas time although spent during a business trip - nonetheless will always be in my heart. (l) (l)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 12:57 PM

Next Stop, Bethlehem?
Is The Polar Express an evangelical film?
By David Sarno
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2004, at 2:36 PM PT

The Polar Express is the tale of a boy's dreamlike train ride to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus. Like all stories worth knowing, it's rich enough in image and feeling to accommodate many interpretations. Chris Van Allsburg, the author of the book, calls his story a celebration of childhood wonder and imagination. William Broyles Jr., one of the screenwriters of this year's film version, calls it a kind of Odyssey in which a hero undertakes a mythic, perilous journey of self-discovery. And Paul Lauer, who is a key player in the film's marketing apparatus, sees The Polar Express as a parable for the importance of faith in Jesus Christ.

Lauer's firm, Motive Entertainment, is best known for coordinating the faith-based marketing of The Passion of the Christ. Motive helped spread early word of mouth about the film by holding screenings for church groups and talking the movie up to religious leaders. When The Passion took in a stunning $370 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing R-rated film in history, Lauer and his cohorts got a lot of the credit. Earlier this year, Motive was hired by Warner Bros. to promote The Polar Express to Christians. But wait, is The Polar Express an evangelical film?

You'd certainly think so, considering the expansive campaign of preview screenings, radio promotion, DVDs, and online resources that Lauer unfurled in the Christian media this fall. This Polar Express downloads page includes endorsements from pastors and links to church and parenting resources hosted by the Christian media outlet HomeWord. There are suggestions for faith-building activities and a family Bible-study guide that notes, for example, the Boy's Christ-like struggle to get the Girl a train ticket. "The Boy risked it all to recover the ticket," the guide observes. "Jesus gave His all to save us from the penalty of our sins."

HomeWord Radio, which claims to reach more than a million Christian parents daily, broadcast three shows promoting the film. At one point, the show's host wondered excitedly if the movie "might turn out to be one of the more effective witnessing tools in modern times." Motive also produced a promotional package that was syndicated to over 100 radio stations in which Christian recording artists like Amy Grant, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Avalon talked about the movie as they exited preview screenings.

Motive's biggest gambit, though, was sending promotional DVDs to 50,000 churches. The "Preaching and Teaching Resource DVD" features a brief Q and A with Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis with no religious content. There's also a section called "Connection Ideas." Connection Idea No. 1 is to take a Sunday school class to see The Polar Express. Connection Idea No. 2 is to take a family trip to see The Polar Express.

The DVD's main attraction is the Scripture lessons culled from eight of the movie's scenes. At the beginning of each segment, leading evangelical writer, speaker, and minister Max Lucado offers a 1-minute commentary. In one scene, the Boy gets a bit nervous as the conductor invites him to climb aboard the strange and magical train. We too are nervous, Lucado explains while perched in an armchair, "not about trusting the train conductor, but about trusting Christ." Gary Gaddini, senior pastor of the Peninsula Covenant Church near San Francisco, told me that he used four of these clips and commentaries as the basis for a popular sermon he called, "Oh Come All Ye Doubtful."

If you didn't know about the promotional DVD and the family Bible-study guide, you might not think The Polar Express had an evangelical message. While the movie repeatedly stresses the value of faith and belief, it doesn't overtly peddle Christianity. The movie's epiphanic moment is a good example of this ambiguity. The Boy shouts, "I believe! I believe! I believe!" When he turns around, Santa Claus appears before him for the first time.

Some audience members—and a few Christian film critics—would argue that Santa Claus isn't necessarily a stand-in for Jesus Christ. Last month, Lauer told the Mobile Register that he sees The Polar Express as a parable, "not a movie about belief in God." But when Lauer speaks to a Christian audience, he tells a different story. Lauer told HomeWord Radio that when he asked Robert Zemeckis about all the biblical parallels he was seeing in the film, the director "winked and said, 'Nothing in a movie this big ends up in the script by accident.' " (Zemeckis was traveling and wasn't available for comment.)

Chris Van Allsburg, who says he's open to all interpretations of his classic children's story, told me he had no idea that Warner Bros. had any plan to market the film to evangelicals. He also says that he had never seen the preaching and teaching DVD until I showed it to him. William Broyles, who co-wrote the screenplay with Zemeckis, adds that he made no effort to embed any biblical messages in the Christmas movie. "We were very determined not to make [the movie] sectarian or of a particular religious faith in any way."

After a slow start, The Polar Express has picked up steam and may well make back its $165 million production budget. Considering his track record, Lauer might see a lot more work coming his way. He's already started planning for his next major project, a big-budget adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia. Lauer describes the movie as The Lord of the Rings meets the Bible. Now, that's something everyone can believe in.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2111391/

http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/HomeWord_with_Jim_Burns/

http://polarmaterials.com/dvdpreview.html

http://moviemarketing.biz/Projects.html

(*) (*) :| :| :| Holy Smokes!! This last URL is REALLY SCARY!! And to think that this is a "free country" protecting free speech? Not in my humble opinion.These religious-right-wing fundamentalists are even more potent and influential than I previously believed. Time to get out of this country....or at least to a very rural area with lots and lots of privacy. :| And then again - I can take all of the positions presented in this article and dismiss them all. ;) NOT giving folks like this "rent-space in my head" and ignoring them is the best - that is, NOT reacting or responding. ;)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 02:18 PM

Mihir Bose (Filed: 29/12/2004) www.opinion.telegraph.com (UK)

Yesterday, as the death toll continued to rise in the worst disaster to hit South Asia for 40 years, I sat on a sand dune in Rajasthan's Thar desert - 1,200 miles away - and asked a village leader what he thought of this calamity.

He said: "Sir, it is the will of nature and of the Lord. They work in mysterious ways. But do not worry; the people will recover. They must. Life will go on. It is cruel, terrible; but life is terrible everywhere, is it not?"

If this sounds strangely passive to a Westerner, bear in mind that he spoke with a great deal of quiet dignity.

He went on to remind me that not long ago there was an earthquake in the neighbouring state of Gujarat which killed many people and that his own region - always parched - had a dreadful drought 25 years ago, bringing death and destruction from which the land has recovered so well that it is now a major tourist attraction and the village headman himself owns land rented out for tourist tents.

Living with capricious, cruel nature is something that most people in South Asia have long had to come to terms with. It helps that religion is so much part of their everyday lives, be they Hindus, Muslims, Christians or Buddhists - as most of the people in Sri Lanka, the worst affected area in the region, are.

It also helps that, in times of terrible tragedy, grief is openly expressed in all its raw, brutal form. The television screens have been filled with images of women beating their breasts as they mourn loved ones or of fathers wailing as they identify a child suddenly snatched from them by an inexplicable phenomenon.

The images are shocking but they must also, in a way, be cathartic.

It is significant that BBC World - widely watched in this region - has shown images of the dead in a less stark fashion than Indian television, as if viewers need protection from human grief. Indian television clearly feels that viewers have no need of such Western-style nannying.

But this tragedy is also showing how the region is changing. The very nature of the disaster has brought home to people how closely related they are to each other.

The epicentre was in Indonesia; the quake's shockwaves spread to Thailand, Sri Lanka and India and as far as the eastern seaboard of Africa.

One particularly terrible image was of people strolling along the beach in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. They had heard of the earthquake in Indonesia, could not imagine it would have any effect on them and then suddenly saw the sea rising as if the world were coming to an end.

For various historical reasons - and reflecting the long European dominance of this part of the world - the countries affected by this tragedy have their sights trained on lands far away rather than on their neighbours.

So Indonesia and Thailand look to Australia while India and Sri Lanka still look to Britain - indeed the Sri Lankan president was on her way back from London when this tragedy struck.

Now these countries are beginning to realise that nature has bound them together and, if this is a cruel way to learn this lesson, it is still an important lesson.

The other big difference from previous tragedies that have afflicted this region is that it is probably the first one to be beamed into millions of South Asian sitting rooms via television. The small screen is bringing home the suffering in a way unprecedented in any previous disaster.

Indeed, when experts have spoken of the worst tragedy in 40 years, and how an earthquake struck these parts in 1941, many viewers have been wondering what happened in 1941, as there is little record.

Also, the catastrophe has come in the middle of the great holiday season. December is often the best month in this part of the world. The sky is still relentlessly blue every day, but the sun is bearable and the weather cool enough at times to sport a sweater. Newspapers often have headlines such as "Cool weather hits city".

Although Christmas is not celebrated as in the West, schoolchildren are on holiday and with growing prosperity there is a lot of internal tourism, increasingly greater than the number of Western tourists.

Some of the stories emerging have been of such internal tourists, holidaying in the south of India and Sri Lanka, being suddenly caught by this tsunami.

All this means that, by comparison with past disasters, this one has not been confined to just one bit of the region, neither in terms of impact nor of news coverage. To an extent, this is the first cataclysmic tragedy in which the entire region is a shocked spectator.

In their own way these events - although entirely different - are comparable to the September 11 terrorist attacks and, just as that event brought people together, so has this.

So the Indian cricket team visiting Bangladesh - so often the setting for natural disasters - played in black arm bands, while the Sri Lankan cricket team in New Zealand considered whether to cut short its tour.

All this could mean that, as happens in the West, this tragedy will lead to calls for greater accountability and questions as to why the region does not have a better early warning system. There are signs that some of these questions are being asked.

There was an hour and a half between the earthquake in Indonesia and the first tidal waves to hit Sri Lanka and India. Had these countries been on the list at the Pacific Ocean's tsunami warning centre, which covers 26 countries, there might have been some action taken to mitigate the effects of the waves.

In the absence of this, and given the poor infrastructure of the region, the people have been forced to fall back on their own resources and have shown exemplary courage and initiative.

For the moment, though, there is none of the anger and finger-pointing that would have become quickly evident in the West; instead there is an acceptance that nature is cruel and life must go on.

(*) (*) :( :(

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 02:24 PM

Sounds pretty familiar though...

(Filed: 29/12/2004)

It is likely to go down as one of the greatest natural disasters in history: a catastrophe that breaks records for global spread of death and destruction. The survivors return and give their airport interviews, still stunned and tearful, having witnessed something that will change their understanding of life and its preciousness forever.

Our paltry human endeavours at evil are dwarfed when the earth itself erupts: what terrorist organisation or would-be world dominator could orchestrate such totally unexpected devastation on an international scale?

There can be no negotiation with this force, and no protection from it. It is a manifestation of what once impelled people to believe in the wrath of God. Now it will presumably become part of the arsenal for the other side.

The army of unbelievers (which is apparently growing apace in Britain) will say, as sceptics have for centuries, that events of this kind make a mockery of the idea of a benevolent deity. How could a loving God permit such pointless and gratuitous ruin? Surely any rational account of the world as it is, with all its futile suffering and unjust affliction, cannot include a creator with good intentions?

Natural disasters make the best case for unbelief because they are not even susceptible to the theological explanation of human evil - that without the capacity to make immoral choices, men are not truly free: the ability to do good would be meaningless if we did not also have the ability to do evil.

The whole point of the human condition is to choose to do what is right rather than what is wrong. But an earthquake has no motive and no free will. It just is what it is. A tsunami does what it does. It sweeps away the blameless and the helpless without reason. So where is the divine purpose in that?

In fact, there is no logic in the sceptic's argument - or, at least, not the logic that he assumes. If terrible events are to constitute evidence that God does not exist, then every wonderful event - every cured cancer patient, every child rescued from a fire - has to be evidence that He does. The unbeliever would, by his own reasoning, have to accept that all the fortunate things that have ever happened were proofs of God. Not that the rising number of unbelievers is linked to rationalism.

Strictly speaking, what The Daily Telegraph poll showed this week was not an increase in unbelief but in non-belief. It is not so much that people have consciously discredited the notion of faith, as that they have ceased to care about it.

Like so many things in modern British life, agnosticism is not a function of deliberation and reasoning, but of apathy and indifference. We don't positively repudiate the idea of God, just as we don't positively reject the idea that politics can be of any use. We just don't give a damn.

This is not scepticism in the proper sense, which involves conscientious questioning of beliefs - an insistence on investigating received opinion which might, in the end, result in acceptance. It is something much more corrosive and incurable: a detachment from any abstract or profound understanding of life and its meaning. It is a cynicism that refuses to dwell on any but the most immediate satisfactions and concrete rewards.

Anyone who has observed what has become the great British Saturday night out, with its binge-drinking and its frenetic, mindless violence, will know that something ugly and hollow is eating away the heart of this country.

Simple irresponsibility or lack of social discipline is not enough of an explanation. There is a degradation and a brutishness that seems to be beyond recall. These are people who appear to value nothing, to think of nothing beyond momentary pleasure - and the form that that pleasure takes is almost always anti-social and hateful.

What can be the point of behaving like this? Or is it just that behaviour, and the idea of being good, has no point?

Of course, the distaste for abstract ideas, and suspicion of religion, is not new in Britain. Religious fervour, for good historical reasons which can still be observed in Northern Ireland, was discredited long before the modern fashion for secularism or yobbery.

Preferring the concrete to the abstract, too, is a point of pride in Anglo-Saxon culture: it is thought to be what saved Britain from the great ideological storms that swept Continental Europe. But realism and practicality are virtues.

They are social values that can be invoked and respected. What I seem to sense in British culture now is the deliberate dismantling of the idea of reverence - the idea, if you like, of anything at all being sacred - whether the feeling is specifically religious, or patriotic, or simply love of one's community.

When the Sikhs attacked the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in protest against the play Behzti, their demand was framed in terms that are scarcely comprehensible in modern Britain. They did not object to the content of the play but to the fact that the violent events that it portrayed took place in a Sikh temple, which they saw as a sacred place.

The resulting debacle was certainly a clash of cultures but it was not a conflict between Sikh and Christian values, or even between a free society and religious fundamentalism. Britain restricts its own freedom of speech when it chooses: public expressions of racial (and now religious) hatred are banned.

What collided in Birmingham were the preferences of an individual artist and a community's sense of what was sacred. And no, I do not think that playwrights or novelists should have to edit their works to comply with the sensitivities of religious communities.

But, as a thought for the New Year, I do think that Britain might be a happier place if its people were more in touch with the aspirations, and the consolations, of a belief that life is about something more than the present moment.

UK Daily Telegraph

(*) (*) Last sentence in the next to last paragraph rocked! I strongly agree.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 02:29 PM

By Tom Leonard
(Filed: 29/12/2004)

British art, fashion and music may have conquered New York over the years but the city's taste buds are proving harder to win over.

Despite a string of "British" restaurants opening in the city this year, New York's traditionally adventurous diners are proving reluctant to embrace the notion that British food can ever be more sophisticated than fish and chips, say restaurateurs.

Fiona Carmichael, the chef at the upmarket Manhattan restaurant UKNewYork, said that since opening in July pressure from customers has forced her to water down her menu with more "middle of the road" food such as chicken and, of course, fish and chips. Many Americans associate British food solely with pub food and, in a city offering hundreds of national cuisines, they still have trouble with the idea of a "British restaurant", she added.

Dishes such as spotted dick and toad-in-the-hole "frighten the life out of most Americans", with some diners actually believing that the latter contained a cooked toad, said Miss Carmichael.

The owner of the Chip Shop in Brooklyn, Chris Sell, said some customers assume that steak-and-kidney pie contains kidney beans and are not reassured when they discover the truth. Mr Sell said he had to drop plans to put dishes such as stuffed pork loin on the menu as customers wanted only fish and chips or shepherd's pie.

"It's depressing. I'd love to start up a fancy British restaurant but I daren't," he added.

Mr Sell blamed "frugal" Victorian eating habits, wartime rationing and advice on making food go further for perpetuating the impression that British food is dull and unappetising.

He believes Americans like fish and chips because when they have had it in Britain "they are usually drunk and it's usually the best thing they have ever eaten".

The restaurateurs' problems were reported by the New York Times under the headline "Nothing Frightens a New Yorker Like British Food".

However, Miss Carmichael insisted that American diners enjoyed British dishes when they actually tried them. "It's insulting to dismiss them all as unadventurous," she said.

Her policy is to give traditional dishes a twist. Beef Wellington is topped with caramelised marmalade and stuffed with goat's cheese, black pudding is twinned with scallops and bacon replaces batter in toad-in-the-hole.

Nicola Perry, who has run the British-themed Manhattan restaurant Tea and Sympathy for 14 years, said customers were keen on Bird's custard and Branston pickle.

Even if they have a problem pronouncing treacle and order spotted dick so they can snigger, most New Yorkers no longer labour under the impression that Britain is a culinary desert, she insisted.

"They all know who Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and Gary Rhodes are. This is a very foodie town."

(*) (*) Hmmm, I haven't thought or eaten Beef Wellington in many, many years. And while having brunch on several occasions at the Long Beach, CAlifornia-based Queen Mary's remarkable ballroom, I kept calling the "toad in the hole" a "pig in a poke" at the English foods buffet. The seafood buffet is the largest.....even has a lady playing a fill-sized harp in the center of it. Amazing place. ;)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 02:39 PM

Review 2004: mainstream movies
(Filed: 18/12/2004) www.telegraph.co.uk

In a year of polemics from Mel Gibson and Michael Moore, it was romance and rock music that stole the show, says Sukhdev Sandhu

It's as silly as it is fun to try to draw up best-of-the-year film lists. Movies can be conceived or produced years before they finally get released.

Two of 2004's most interesting titles – Demonlover and Hukkle – have been knocking around the festival circuit or available on DVD for a good while. Most people, especially those who live outside London, are probably still waiting for an opportunity to check out some of the titles praised in this column 12 months ago.

The popularity of DVDs gives us access to such a broad range of movies that many of us will have enjoyed new prints of alt-Brit classics Performance and Blow-Up more than the latest giggly teen flick that Chris Moyles insisted was the feel-good smash of the summer.

Having said that, two of the year's most interesting pictures were as much triumphs of marketing as of art. Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was a crazy, bug-eyed sermon, delivered in Latin and Aramaic, that replayed the Gospels as part-snuff film, part-Hammer horror flick.

Epic on the scale of work by demagogue directors such as Erich von Stroheim and Werner Herzog, it was a magnificently relentless praise song to the transcendence emerging from bloodied masochism. It was also a religious film that lacked all trace of spirituality or metaphysical yearning.

Many American Roman Catholic groups queued up to promote and distribute it against a tide of mainstream disdain. Arguably, then, it helped to consolidate blue-state political beliefs more effectively than its Left-wing equivalent, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a film its director claimed was made with the goal of ousting George Bush from power.

Winning the Palme d'or at Cannes (where head juror Quentin Tarantino denied that political considerations had influenced his panel's decision), it was a roiling bundle of anger, outrage and amusingly low blows. It also featured the year's most distressing image: Paul Wolfowitz dousing his comb in saliva before running it through his hair.

Documentaries made a big impact this year. Capturing the Friedmans, a portrait of a middle-class Long Island family in freefall after the arrest of the father on charges of child abuse, won considerable acclaim. So did Super Size Me, in which Morgan Spurlock tried to survive for a month on fast food.

It showed a lightness of touch that helped audiences swallow its not-unsophisticated denunciation of the politics of the American food production and distribution system. It, like other docs such as The Corporation and Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, was strong on narrative, treated its audience as adults, and had a fundamental seriousness at odds with the repellent frivolity of so much contemporary TV. It'll be interesting to see whether the energy that animated these often Left-wing essays can be sustained in the wake of Bush's re-election.

The horror genre threw up unexpected treasures this year and not just in South Korea. Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead was a hilarious zomcom; more than just an affectionate tribute to George A Romero's 1978 classic schlocker, this skewed contribution to British suburban cinema crowned co-writer Simon Pegg as UK slacker king and offered a reasonably substantial role to the vastly underrated actress Kate Ashfield.

Dawn of the Dead itself, was updated this year by director Zach Snyder with gratifyingly creepy results. Also of note was first-time director Bilge Ebiri's New Guy, a spooked hybrid of The Shining and The Wicker Man that played like a hysterically lysergic version of The Office.

At the adventure end of things, Pixar scored with Brad Bird's The Incredibles, which stinted on smart-arse wisecracks and channelled its 100mph energies into dazzling audiences with visual wit and engaging them with deeper-than-usual characterisation. Spider-Man 2 was a superior follow-up that portrayed its geek-Icarus hero as a miserable romantic in the grand tradition of a Smiths lyric.

An unexpected treasure, especially given Hollywood's so-so record of bringing comic-book stories to the big screen, was Guillermo del Toro's dark and joyous Hellboy, which featured a wonderful performance from Ron Perlman. All three pictures were big money well spent, not something that could be said of such creative flops as Troy, the $165 million The Polar Express, and M Night Shyamalan's The Village.

Closer to home, Working Title appeared to be running out of steam, with Wimbledon and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason receiving muted receptions. The former suggested that Paul Bettany might have a future as an intense romantic lead; the latter was enjoyable fluff. But both were calculated retreads of former glories.

More interesting were writer-director Chris Cooke's comedy One for the Road; Birth, Jonathan Glazer's flawed but supremely ambitious follow-up to Sexy Beast; My Summer of Love, a girls' rites-of-passage story that featured terrific performances by unknowns Nathalie Press and Emily Blunt, and which proved, in its woozily memorable evocation of mining-valley Yorkshire, that no director shoots British landscapes better than Pawel Pawlikowski. The film also starred Paddy Considine, who here, as in Shane Meadows's Midlands revenge tragedy Dead Man's Shoes, confirmed his status as the country's most charismatic actor.

One of the most widely debated film books in 2004 was Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures (Bloomsbury, £18.99), which laid the blame for the decline in independent- minded American cinema at the feet of Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein.

But the directors themselves were hardly blameless: Spike Lee's sorry She Hate Me was a career low; Coffee and Cigarettes, Jim Jarmusch's compendium of celebrity double-handers celebrating, well, coffee and cigarettes, had a couple of great scenes – most notably that between Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan, and one featuring downtown icon Taylor Mead – but came across as an cautious, water-treading operation. The same was true of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill 2, a tremendously wrought and gripping B-movie that, while more fun than 90 per cent of this year's films, still represented a huge step back after the pleasures of Jackie Brown.

A number of lightweight confections – 50 First Dates, Mean Girls and 13 Going On 30 – were much better than anyone could have expected. And a bunch of films – American Splendor, The Cooler and The Station Agent – made me almost optimistic about the future of smaller-scale American pictures.

But, leaving aside Collateral, Michael Mann's ultra-stylish ode to night-time LA (lit up by a breakthrough performance by Jamie Foxx), and Michel Gondry's antic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (scored by the brilliant Jon Brion), my favourite films of the year were Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola's perfumed tone-poem about disaffected cosmopoles which gave Bill Murray the role of his life and made a star out of Scarlett Johansson, and School of Rock, Richard Linklater's joyful love song to 1970s metal which offered Jack Black the vehicle his considerable talents have long cried out for.

I want to end, though, with a film that ends unforgettably itself: Before Sunset. I've seen it a dozen times now. Each time I blush, melt, cry. Also directed by man of the year Linklater, and reuniting Julie Delphy with Ethan Hawke, it is one of the truest and most romantic films ever made.

Cracker: Before Sunset: cinematic ecstasy.

Turkey: Elephant. Columbine? According to Gus Van Sant's crass film, it was the gay Nazis wot did it.

(*) (*) Interesting "take" from across the pond.....especially on American-produced feature films. ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 02:44 PM

(Filed: 27/12/2004) www.telegraph.co.uk

Imelda Staunton and Phil Davis talk to David Gritten about the painstaking research they put into their characters for 'Vera Drake', Mike Leigh's acclaimed new film about a backstreet abortionist

It seems certain to become the most garlanded British film in years. Vera Drake, the story of a working-class north London family in 1950, with a good-hearted mother who has a secret sideline as an abortionist, is receiving huge acclaim.

Directed by Mike Leigh, it was named best film at the Venice festival in September, and Imelda Staunton, in the title role, took the best actress award. Last week she was similarly honoured by critics' groups in New York and Los Angeles, and at the European Film Awards. She also received a Golden Globe nomination.

It would be churlish to deny Leigh, Staunton or Phil Davis, the actor who plays Vera's devoted, cheerful husband, Stan, any accolades that come their way. As Staunton and Davis pointed out in a joint interview, creating characters for the films of Leigh, who works with actors in a series of improvisations and research, is a long and arduous, if rewarding, process.

"It was like doing a degree for a year," recalls Staunton. "It's fair to say most acting jobs are not like this."

Indeed. As she and Davis explain, all the actors in Vera Drake had to research and invent their characters from the day they were born, often working alone.

"We were playing characters born just after the turn of the century, so there was an awful lot of research just to find out what conditions in those days were like," says Davis. "At the same time, you're still talking about this character with Mike, and building up a history."

"Vera was born in 1905," Staunton interjects. "And Stan was born in 1904," says Davis. "We know that. It's that precise."

Both actors had to develop their characters in a strict chronological order, from early childhood. They would improvise with other actors from the cast only when they had developed their characters to the point where they would meet in the story.

Thus Davis and Adrian Scarborough, who plays Stan's younger brother Frank, met early on in the process; but Staunton did not get together with Davis until she had researched Vera's life up to the age of 19, when Vera met Stan.

The two actors would spend days going into character and pretending to be Vera and Stan for hours at a time.

"You can't go out in the streets and do it, because it's a modern world with new cars and all that," said Staunton. "But alone in your home you can be that character."

The research, she says, was extensive. The Second World War and its aftermath hang over the whole family in Vera Drake, and she spent hours investigating how a woman like Vera would have been affected. "A big subject," she says understatedly.

It goes without saying that Leigh's demands about character creation outstrip those for an average film. "We started at the end of April 2003," recalls Davis. "And we didn't start shooting until the end of September. But you're digging this great well of experience, and the more you do - the more you know about a character - the easier it is to be him."

Most rehearsals took place at a disused hospital in Crouch End, north London. Towards the end of the long rehearsal period, the actors playing the extended Drake family had met and worked together, and were bonding as a unit.

But Leigh's strategy was to let each actor know no more about the story than their character would know; so it was only at the final rehearsal, for a family celebration interrupted by a knock on the door from the police, that the rest of the cast apart from Staunton realised that the story was about Vera's secret career ending unwanted pregnancies.

"I was completely gobsmacked," Davis recalls. "We'd been in character for four or five hours, drinking cherry brandy. It was a profound shock to the family."

Staunton and Davis agree it is a pity that pre-release publicity for Vera Drake makes it impossible for audiences to be similarly shocked.

Working on the film ignited embers of long-forgotten memories for the actors. Neither was born by 1950, but both of them grew up in north London. "I come from Irish stock," says Staunton, 48, "but this family was familiar to me.

"I remember that when I was growing up I'd see those women like Vera walking up and down the street, their coats over their aprons. So I felt very comfortable."

"I was born in 1953 and my family lived off the Holloway Road," says Davis. "They might easily have known a family like the Drakes.

"Once I got my costume on and saw the sets, there was lots of stuff I remembered from going to visit my gran - just the atmosphere and smell of the place."

The two actors agree that an intriguing aspect unearthed by their researches was the optimistic, kindly atmosphere of post-war English life.

"The war was a defining moment for people of that generation," Davis observes, "and it engendered a certain kind of spirit."

"I think the war mixed everyone up," adds Staunton. "You could have a working-class woman and a rather posh woman who might both be driving a bus. So everyone had to be friendly and get on."

She is adamant about one aspect of the film that has attracted controversy: the notion that Vera performs abortions for no financial gain, but merely to help girls who had "got into trouble".

"What surprised me most about my research were letters and statements from abortionists in Holloway prison in the '40s," she said. "About 85 per cent were mothers and grandmothers. I honestly thought they'd be evil, single, on the make, in a basement somewhere. But no, they were around most people's corners.

"These were women who did a service. There were lots who didn't take money. You'd simply be helping your neighbour who got pregnant. We didn't make that up."

Neither she nor Davis has big immediate plans, but they insist that's fine with them.

"There isn't a Phil Davis part," Davis notes. "We're character actors. We like to get into other people's shoes. I have no lament whatever. I'm perfectly content with the life I have and the parts I play."

"It's not bad to have something like this happen after 28 years," says Staunton. "To be able to have a life where you pay your mortgage, have your family and be in a film like this. I don't think there's much more."

(*) (*) I can't wait to see this after Staunton's other film roles including the outstanding performance in "Crush" with Andie McDowell. Very sensual and of course filmed in the breathtakingly lush English countryside. (*) (*)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 02:46 PM

PopChar - Easily type umlauts and foreign characters -no need to learn keyboard combinations.

Tired of searching and remembering keyboard combinations for umlauts and other special characters? Want to get the most out of your fonts? Then PopChar is the right tool for you.

PopChar makes "typing" of unusual characters easy without having to remember keyboard combos.

Whenever you need a special character, PopChar is there to help. Click the little "P" box to display a table of characters. Select the desired character and it instantly appears in your document.

If a font contains Unicode characters, you can check "Unicode" in the Settings menu to see all of them, neatly arranged in the standard Unicode categories.

Web designers will especially enjoy the ability to insert HTML symbols.

http://www.ergonis.com/products/popchar/

(*) (*) ;) (h) (h)

Namaste'
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 02:48 PM

http://www.veradrake.com/

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 02:54 PM

Tsunami a gold mine for phone sellers
A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post/Medan

Dicky, a sales executive at telecommunication company PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara (PSN), was extremely busy on Tuesday night. He wandered around the company's office in the plush Mega Kuningan area, South Jakarta, organizing sales along with his office colleagues. He frequently spoke to clients using his mobile phone.

He was not alone. Many other company employees were also busy serving customers.

Dicky's colleague Galih was handling a client from a newspaper who was trying to establish a connection between his satellite cell-phone and his laptop. A security guard came in through the front door bringing food for dinner.

Office employees were so busy that they had no time to get their own dinner.

Other sales staff went to the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport to pick up additional supplies of satellite cell-phones sent from Batam. Clients kept pouring into the office until 9 p.m, including two middle-ranking military officers who ordered several satellite cell-phones for their unit's operations in Aceh.

The office normally closes for business at 5 p.m.

The rush began on Monday, one day after a tsunami devastated Aceh. Dicky said that demand for satellite cell-phones sky-rocketed with many government offices deploying staff to help victims of the disaster in the province.

Other buyers were from big companies and relief organizations. "I've never experienced a situation like this before," said Galih, who has been working for the company for three years.

The demand for satellite cell-phones increased dramatically after Sunday's devastating tsunami in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam cut power and telephone lines across the province. All conventional cell-phones and fixed phone lines were down.

PSN, established 13 years ago and owned partly by state-owned telecommunication company PT Telkom, benefited from the telecommunications failure, as it is the only company in the country that sells and distributes satellite cell-phones.

"On Monday our office in Mega Kuningan sold 48 satellite cell-phones. On normal days we only sell between six and eight," said Dicky.

Similar high demand was also experienced by a cell phone trader in Roxy Mas Mall, the most popular cell-phone trading center in Jakarta.

"We sold 20 satellite cell-phones on Monday alone. Normally we'd only sell several a month," said Darwis, a cell-phone trader, who expected that demand for satellite cell-phones to be sustained for another few days.

One buyer, Otis Dumatubun, was perplexed with the high demand for satellite cell-phones. He had paid a deposit on Tuesday, but the trader said that they would only hold the phone for a day. "If you don't buy the phone by Wednesday then you will lose the deposit," he quoted the trader as saying.

A new satellite cell-phone costs Rp 5.5 million, while a secondhand one might cost Rp 4.5 million. Satellite cell-phone's are not used much by the public due to the high cost of phone calls.

A trader described that you only need dial the phone and say one word and it will cost you some Rp 5,000 (U.S.$0.53). Satellite cell-phone's are popular among geologists, miners and surveyors whose jobs take them out of reach of conventional phones. Anyone having such a phone can be contacted anywhere on earth, whether it be the North Pole or the Sahara.

With its broad coverage a satellite cell-phone has become one of the most sought after items by people involved in disaster relief efforts in Aceh province.

Dicky was happy with the sales bonanza, but quickly added: "We hope the disaster will be the last. We hope such a thing will never hit our country again."

http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailbusiness.asp?fileid=20041230.I01

(*) (*) Always someone to take advantage in such a mind-boggling disaster and tragedy. (l) (l) Prayers and thoughts for the survivors. (l) (l)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 02:57 PM

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment. -- Samuel Johnson, 18th century British author

The end of the year is a good time for us not only to reflect on the past 12 months, but also, more importantly, to ponder what 2005 has in store for us. The last two editions of our special supplement, published with this newspaper today and tomorrow, will be dedicated for just that purpose.

For two whole days in November, we assembled an impressive group of people of diverse backgrounds and disciplines. We asked each of them how they saw the coming year.

Each participant (see list on Page 2 today and tomorrow) came with a paper that was presented before the group and later discussed with the other participants. This way, they each benefited from the opinions and criticism of others.

Economists often use the ceterus parabus (other things being equal) tool as a method to analyze a certain phenomena. In learning about how consumers react to price changes, economists hold other things (income, competition, tastes, political condition and a host of other factors) constant, to conclude that demand rises with falling prices, and falls with rising prices.

The real world does not work that way.

In trying to make forecasts about 2005, whether you are an economist, a political analyst or a social observer, you need to understand other phenomena beyond your own immediate field if your forecast is to have any validity. You may not make accurate forecasts for the coming year, but you increase your chances if you open yourself to the opinions of others.

This is why we held the discussion at the Gran Melia Hotel in Jakarta on Nov. 25 and Nov. 26. Each speaker was asked to consult their crystal ball and tell us what he or she thought would happen in 2005. We then let the other participants question, criticize and comment. The speaker was then asked to write (or rewrite) his or her paper after the brain storming process.

Most of the articles in the Outlook 2005 supplement today and tomorrow are from papers that were conceived in that two-day discussion. These papers will provide a useful guide in understanding the complexities that each new year always brings.

Happy New Year. Endy M. Bayuni, Editor-in-Chief

http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20041230.L02&irec=6

(f) (f) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 03:06 PM

Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post

Toward the end of this year, we were treated to the laments of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is beginning to show a sagely side to his personality: He expressed his regret over the many broadcasts that were "alien to Indonesia's norms and identity".

Initially, a minister referred to the "navel", a reference to MTV crooners and their wannabes. A few days later, Susilo identified his concern: pornografi and pornoaksi.

While the first term refers to anything close to pornography ("I know it when I see it,") -- the second is used more specifically with regard to "actions or broadcasting of actions of a pornographic nature".

The President was evidently unaware of media coverage expressing confidence in his leadership, and that while he might have a personal dislike of images of bellybuttons because they disturb his moral fiber, he would surely be able to separate his personal preferences from state policy.

More at: http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20041230.R02&irec=17

(*) (*) One section I found to be valuable is:

Ahead of the five-year review of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2005, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (Unifem) has outlined four focus areas crucial to achieving gender equality and women's empowerment. These two issues are considered vital to supporting other MDGs, including reducing extreme poverty by 2015.

2005 focus areas: o Reducing "feminized poverty" o Ending violence against women o Reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls o Achieving gender equality in democratic governance in times of peace as well as war

"Feminized poverty" refers to the dominant face of women among the poor, such as among our migrant workers, whose contributions have become more important since the 1997 economic crisis in alleviating poverty and unemployment in their families.

The Office of the State Minister of Women's Empowerment has announced its first-100 days program, which also includes increasing the economic welfare of women, "evaluating" the migrant repatriation process and increasing counseling and other services for women and children in conflict areas.

While details are yet to be provided, in light of reviewing Indonesia's commitment to the MDG, our policies -- or lack thereof -- in several areas should also be evaluated.

(*) (*) More on this sidebar on the same URL listed above. Reading about this brings to mind how many womyn in the U.S. need a hand and support. Rather than bend to world pressure to send more and more money America doesn't have overseas - let's get the Dubya Drones in D.C. to invest in helping womyn and children HERE! (l) (l) (l)

(*) Other than my opinion, a good article though for provoking thoughts. ;)

Safe travels and warmest wishes. (k)
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 06:24 PM

The Safety of Objects (2001)

Glenn Close, Jessica Campbell, Patricia Clarkson, Joshua Jackson and Moira Kelly star in this ethereal film. Vignettes connect to form a whole, revealing the unhappy, mindless or flailing existence of four suburban families who must all find a way to reconnect with one another.

Cast:
Glenn Close, Dermot Mulroney, Jessica Campbell, Patricia Clarkson, Joshua Jackson, Moira Kelly, Robert Klein, Timothy Olyphant, Mary Kay Place, Kristen Stewart, Alex House, Haylee Wanstall, Stephanie Mills.

(*) (*) Four families are linked through an unrevealed tragedy in this trenchant exploration of the dark side of “normal” suburban living: 2.2 kids per family, manicured lawns, unfulfilling marriages, and the spice of dysfunction sprinkled everywhere. Jim Train (Dermot Mulroney) is a lawyer who, in a vapid ceremony, is given an award but is passed over for promotion. The firm’s empty gesture is an awakening slap of truth that his life has been defined by the pursuit of goals he never questioned. He stops showing up at the office, forcing him to deal with the home life he leads with his wife (Moira Kelly) and the two children he doesn’t know, and is not even sure he ever wanted. While Esther (Glenn Close) cares for her invalid son Paul (Joshua Jackson), her daughter, Julie (Jessica Campbell), drips teen angst over the burden her vegetative brother has become in her own life. Annette (Pat Clarkson) is a divorced, single mom who had a taboo relationship with young Paul. She has to deal with both her guilt and her bellicose ex-husband. Helen (Mary Kay Place) is a distracted suburban mom pursuing new age diets and cures for phantom problems, while failing utterly to notice her own children. Prisons develop their own twisted societies in part because almost everybody’s personality is too big for limited stimulation in 100 square feet of space. Troche’s “Safety” turns the prison model back on us “normal” folks living in the emotionally constricting space of suburbia. The characters struggle to find connection and sanity - outlets for creation, frustration, love, and guilt - relying not on each other, but on the objects with which they’ve surrounded themselves. Imprisoned by them, their psyches push back, and they manifest strange behaviors in the process. (*) (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 06:32 PM

http://www.instyle.com/instyle/read/ci/morelooks/0,7579,955993,00.html

(l) (l) ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 06:34 PM

Just in time for some hard-core holiday fêting, in-the-spirit celebrities are getting wrapped up in festive jewel-tone dresses. Whether floor-length and fluid, à la Amanda Bynes's sapphire chevron-stitched stunner, or fitted with flounce (Bridget Moynahan's amethyst Gucci), 'tis the season for bauble-inspired bling. With the richness of velvet and the sheen of silk, the season's colorful offerings are as beautiful—note the elegant polish of Susan Sarandon's neckline plunger and Marley Shelton's geometrically perforated ruby-red frock—as they are abundant, so even overbooked party hoppers have plentiful options. Slip on some silver or gold accoutrements, and we can't think of a more precious pairing.

http://www.instyle.com/instyle/read/ci/morelooks/0,7579,1010856,00.html

(f) (f) ({) (})

(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 06:41 PM

(*) (*) hmmmm, quite the graphic headline on this Irish web site:

Have we finished drawing our borders in blood?
Fintan O'Toole reflects on the cartographic history of Europe on the eve of the enlargement of the European Union

Most cultures have a myth in which the world, or at least their world, is carried on someone's back. The Greeks had Atlas, the unfortunate giant who held up the earth, and whose name we now use for a book of maps. Europe also gives us two haunting images of violence and danger in which this word, as much a concept as a continent, is carried on broad shoulders.

The picture of Europa seated on a bull has been a motif in European art since Graeco-Roman times. According to the Greek saga, Zeus fell in love with the beautiful Phoenician princess Europa. He transformed himself into a bull and abducted her across the ocean to Crete. And the image remains resonant and ambiguous. On the one hand, it places Europe's origins in an act of rape, hinting at a dark barbaric energy that has been at play in this terrain ever since. On the other, it reminds us that Europe derives from elsewhere, that its vigour has always lain in its ability to adopt and adapt, to pour into its deep pool of resources an endless stream of elements borrowed from elsewhere. That Europa comes from Phoenicia, the north African culture which gave us our alphabet, places writing and communication at the heart of this myth of origin.

There is another, unofficial image of a beast of burden that seems no less richly evocative. The idea of Europe as we now inhabit it is a legacy of the Enlightenment, that movement of free thought and inquiry that ultimately destroyed the feudalism and absolutism in which Europe was no more than a prize for competing tyrants. We take it for granted that these ideas spread because of the mere eloquence and persuasiveness of Rousseau, Voltaire or Diderot. But these books were banned in France, printed in the little Swiss principality of Neuchatel, and hauled across the mountains by poor, often illiterate men who needed the work to feed their families. These anonymous Europeans, given a stiffening drink at a Swiss inn and then loaded with a pack containing 80 lb of books to pick their way through the icy tracks, ran terrible risks. If they were caught by the vigilant border guards, they were branded with the letters GAL and sent off as galley slaves, often, for a second offence, for life.

Here too is the ambiguity of Europe. On the one hand, there is the ingenuity that defeats ignorance, the relentless spread of insidious ideas and the ultimate triumph of a kind of intellectual freedom that made Europe important for the world. On the other, there is the price paid by the poor sods who are left out of European history, the unknown and unheroic men and women, who have always borne the burdens of the continent's great struggles. From the slaves who carried Socrates's bag to the frightened boys who expired face-down in the mud of a Flanders field, and from the women who sewed the Bayeux Tapestry to the immigrants who clean the toilets in the magnificent modern stadia, there have always been millions of unregarded extras in Europe's epics.

Europe developed because of the dumb luck of geography. Its land mass had few areas subject to extensive flooding and its climate was free of monsoons, so its people avoided the endemic infections of the rice paddies. The cold, rainy climate reduced the number of harmful microbes. The east-west axis of its mountain ranges reduced the number of species that survived the last Ice Age, so its people had to deal with fewer poisonous insects, snakes and plants, and fewer parasites. Its coasts, with their profusion of bays, inlets and fjords, were particularly good for in-shore fishing. And its relatively small population at the dawn of the Middle Ages, placed a premium on human life, giving ordinary people a higher status than they endured in the crowded fields of Asia. The need to substitute machines and tools - water wheels, heavy ploughs, horseshoes - for human labour boosted the development of science and technology.

This luck made it both a desirable place and an arrogant culture which attributed its good fortune to divine favour and innate superiority. It made it a place that would be shaped both by empires (Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Russian, Ottoman) and by the raiders (Visigoths and Vikings, Mongols and Moors) who would capitalise on their dissolution. It inspired megalomaniacs whose fantasies of domination and ultimate inability to fulfil them made this the most violent, cruel and bloody part of the world. It allowed Europe to project itself around the globe, leaving behind permanent expressions of its culture and cruelty in the Americas, Australia, Africa and much of Asia. But it also made possible the emergence of law and science, of learning and humanity. The status that privileged Europeans gradually came to claim for themselves - as free, independent and equal citizens - eventually melded with the enlightened elements of other cultures to produce a universal notion of human rights.

The notion of Europe that we have inherited is a tainted legacy from tyrants and hypocrites. It was given substance by the Roman Empire which, for all its great achievements, was a creation of the sword and the phalanx. Europe as an idea was revived as the official ideology of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne in the late eight and early ninth centuries. It was expressed in the grotesque farce of the Crusades. Its modern history has been shaped by Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin who sought to abolish many of its borders by force.

And yet, however self-serving this creation of a continental culture has been, it also drove forward the creation of a humane space. The Romans left notions of law and politics and their own heritage from the Greeks, as a basis on which powerful ideas could be built as a bulwark against tyranny. They also gave Europe the gift of Christianity, with its respect for literacy and its notions of individual dignity that caused English peasants to ask

When Adam delved and Eve span

Who was then the gentleman?

Charlemagne's court became the first great centre of a European learning that was genuinely pluralist in its inspiration, gathering around him Frankish scholars like Angilram and Angilbert; the Englishman Alciun; the Visigoth Theodulf; Lombards like Peter of Pisa; and the Irishmen Joseph, Diciul and Dungal. From the Crusades, Europe took the mathematics and medicine of the Arabs. And in the ultimate and appallingly costly defeats of Hitler and Stalin were forged ideas of Europe as a civic space in which mutually guaranteed institutions could dispel once and for all the fantasy of domination.

From all the centuries of redrawing its maps in blood and shifting its boundaries through brutality, Europe may just have learned that the only borders worth having are open and permeable, points, not of division, but of contact.

http://www.ireland.com/focus/europe_map/index.htm

(*) (*) (*) GREAT MAP! (*) (*)

http://images.ireland.com/focus/europe/map.jpg

(*) Seems like when we step outside the bounderies of the mass media here in the U.S., there's always some unusual views on which to ponder elsewhere in the world. To me, it seems to bring folks closer, which is a step in an amazingly positive direction - although more folks overseas hate Americans at this moment than any other period in history. It is my wish for 2005 that somehow influential people in power will take those risky steps towards peace. And that those us of little guys not running countries and Fortune 500 firms will react to to the day-to-day life events and conflicts with patience and compassion. (*) (*)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 06:57 PM

Meteorites are unmissable when blazing through the sky, but are very hard to find after impact - unless you know where to look.

IT'S AMAZING what nature throws at us - literally. Each year, thousands of tonnes of rubble from space rains down on the Earth's atmosphere, the largest chunks streaking across the sky in startling fireballs. Those big enough to plonk meteorites on the Earth's surface could reveal amazing secrets about distant parts of the solar system. Unchanged since the birth of the solar system, these space rocks could tell us about the chilly outposts where they were born.

Except that meteorites, sadly, don't carry birth certificates. "We have no idea where any of them come from," says Phil Bland, a planetary scientist at Imperial College London. "Trying to understand the early solar system from meteorites is like trying to understand the geology of Britain from a trailer load of random rocks dumped in your backyard."

Bland hopes to change all that. He and his colleagues are building a network of robotic ...

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18424792.200

(*) (*) Balance....yea, yea, that's the ticket. It's great to have that "pull the camera back wide-angle" perspective to bring some deep belly-laugh humor to what would otherwise be a rather dimly jaded existence, no?

(Not that folks usually belly-laugh at the stars, but they certainly bring out the child in many people as they gaze upward toward the heavens on a very dark night and watch in wonder and awe...... ;) ;)

(o) Time for a nice winter's walk. See how many constellations I can pick out in a few minutes. Orion is easy. It's the others I have to search for.

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 08:35 PM

Subject: Hillary in 2008

http://i.euniverse.com/funpages/cms_content/6660/2008c.swf

(*) (*) Way too funny. And the fishnets on Hillary just add to already hilarious lyrics. Definitely a keeper to save. ;) (h)

({) (}) ,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 08:40 PM

Can't wait for Al Swearengen and the rest of Deadwood's rough-and-tumble crew to return? Then don't miss HBO's rebroadcast of season one, in back-to-back episodes, beginning January 3. Catch up on one of television's most acclaimed dramas before season two debuts this spring.

The action begins again on Sunday, January 3 at 9PM with episode 1, "Deadwood," followed immediately at 10 PM with episode 2, "Deep Water." Only on HBO!

All New Episodes, Beginning March 6 (h) (h)

How will Bullock survive as sheriff of a lawless boomtoon? How will his love affair survive the arrival of his family out West? Can anyone survive in Swearengen's bloody domain? Deadwood's denizens continue to seek their fortunes in an all-new season of the Emmy-winning dramatic series, premiering Sunday, March 6 at 9PM.

www.hbo.com (click on "Deadwood")

(*) (*) Way, way cool. (h) (h) (h) There's not much in terms of television episodics (series) that I enjoy, but this one and the "L-Word" and "Huff" on Showtime are definitely worth the time to experience in my humble opinion. ;)

(S) Restful dreams and a lovely Thursday as the year starts to wrap up.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-29-2004, 09:56 PM

By FRANK BRUNI Published: December 29, 2004

I COULD reach deep into a heady broth of adjectives to describe the magic of the sushi at Masa. I could pull up every workable synonym for delicious. Or I could do this: tell you about watching a friend bite into one of Masa's toro-stuffed maki rolls.

His eyes grew instantly bigger as his lips twitched into a coyly restrained grin. Then the full taste of the toro, which is the buttery belly of a bluefin tuna, took visible hold. Forget restraint: he was suddenly smiling as widely as a person with a mouthful of food and a modicum of manners can. His eyes even rolled slightly backward.

This play of emotion mirrored my own toro-induced bliss. It also explains why Masa, despite its chosen peculiarities and pitiless expense, belongs in the thinly populated pantheon of New York's most stellar restaurants. Simply put, Masa engineers discrete moments of pure elation that few if any other restaurants can match. If you appreciate sushi, Masa will take you to the frontier of how expansively good a single (and singular) bite of it can make you feel.

If you don't, you have no reason to visit this restaurant, which stakes its claim for the most part on a narrow patch of culinary turf. The unyielding boundaries of a meal here are just one of many ways in which Masa bucks the increasingly wobbly traditions of fine dining in this city.

The chef and owner, Masayoshi Takayama, who operated Ginza Sushiko in Beverly Hills before relocating to Manhattan, does not present you with a menu or choices. You are fed what he elects to feed you, most of it sushi, in the sequence and according to the rhythm he decrees. You do not seize control at Masa. You surrender it. You pay to be putty. And you pay dearly. The price fluctuates with the season and the availability of certain delicacies. It now stands at $350 a person before tax, tip and sip of sake or bottled water. Masa, which reopens Jan. 11 after a holiday break, is arguably the most expensive restaurant in New York. Lunch or dinner for two can easily exceed $1,000.

Justifiable? I leave that question to accountants and ethicists. Worth it? The answer depends on your budget and priorities. But in my experience, the silky, melting quality of Masa's toro and uni and sea bream, coupled with the serenity of its ambience, does not exist in New York at a lower price.

Masa is not merely sushi. The first third of a nearly three-hour meal here entails other indulgences, presented at methodically paced intervals and in prudently restrained portions. There may be an uni risotto with white truffle; dollops of a perilous blowfish's prized liver; slices of foie gras, to be cooked slightly in a ceramic hot pot; a mound of toro tartare and caviar to be spread on toasted rectangles of Japanese sweet bread.

But the last two-thirds of a meal are devoted to sushi, and Masa is devoted to doing this one very worthy thing to perfection. You get the best sense of this pursuit if you sit in one of the 10 seats at the hinoki wood bar, sanded so frequently that you catch its faint scent the second you leave the glare and hubbub of the Time Warner Center and enter this diffusely lighted, windowless sanctuary.

Behind the bar stands Mr. Takayama, in a simple white or gray shirt that looks like the top of a monk's robe. He is often flanked by two other chefs, both in simple black shirts, both with extremely short hair or heads shaved like his, as if any grooming more fanciful would compete with their calling to be vessels for immaculate yellowtail.

A chef makes your sushi a piece or two at a time, reaching for a pristine slab of fluke or Spanish mackerel and using a bone-handled knife to carve a sliver. He presses wasabi or maybe shiso flakes onto a bed of warm rice, lays the fish atop it and then anoints this jewel with soy sauce, yuzu or sudachi, a limelike Japanese fruit.

From just inches away, you watch this ritual, which culminates in the chef's placing the sushi in front of you with a bare hand. You in turn use a bare hand to lift it to your lips. Now the chef watches you, palpably anticipating your delight. This whole exchange has an immediacy and intimacy unlike anything at more conventional restaurants or for that matter at other upscale sushi bars, which tend not to have Masa's low ratio of sushi priests

Masa deals not in wide-angle splendor and broad-canvas fireworks but in tight close-ups and miniaturist flares. It prizes simplicity not only in its cuisine but also in its uncluttered environment, which keeps the focus on the food. Other restaurants strive to be extravagant theaters. Masa, with 26 seats in all, intends to be a minimalist temple, all neutral colors and reverential hush.

The servers, who bring you finger bowls of lemon water and tell you to turn off your cellphone, seem to have been hired for their genetic inability to speak above a whisper. The only implements they give you are the ones you need at a given instant, and these are usually made not of silver and crystal but of lacquered wood and bamboo.

Masa is the first Japanese restaurant to receive four stars from The New York Times since Mimi Sheraton gave that rating to Hatsuhana in 1983, and it speaks a culinary idiom distinct from that of New York's other current four-star establishments, all French-inspired.

But it is very much a restaurant of this time and place. Of a dining culture in which linens and petit fours are no longer nonnegotiable badges of class. In which a blockbuster main course often cedes its eminence to a subtler succession of small plates. In which a chef's seriousness is judged not only by his skill but also by the distances he will reach — and the courier bills he will amass — in the service and worship of superior ingredients.

Mr. Takayama trawls the globe, reeling in bay scallops from as nearby as New England and grouper from as far as Japan. He receives shipments daily and whittles down what he receives to what he finds worthy: yellow clam and red clam; squid and octopus; eel, cooked and brushed with a sweetened reduction of its cooking liquids; needlefish, upon which are drizzled purple shiso flowers.

Some of this flesh was so luxurious it made me feel flushed, giving me a buzz that undulated across a meal and crested with the toro rolls: insanely dense, obscenely intense clumps of fatty red tuna surrounded by rice and seasoned with wasabi and scallions. After these Masa gently brought me down, starting with a combination of rice, cucumber and sesame seeds wrapped in a shiso leaf. Dessert was a bowl of snowy grapefruit granité, as clean, pure and exquisite as the seafood before it.

Masa certainly has drawbacks, including its reverie-rupturing location in a mall. If you do not reserve a spot at the bar and wind up sitting at one of the tables away from it, some of the immediacy of the ritual is diminished, and the restaurant's pleasures are dimmed.

But they are by no means extinguished. It was at a table, in fact, that I dined with my toro-tipsy friend.

Three nights later he called and left a message. He said that he had almost gone to eat sushi for lunch but had decided that he needed a longer pause after experiencing what he called "the sushi of the gods, so it's not so painful when I have to go back to mortal living."

He had it just right. Masa is divine.

Time Warner Center (fourth floor), Columbus Circle; (212) 823-9800.

ATMOSPHERE A soothing windowless room with neutral colors, a minimalist aesthetic and just 26 seats.

SOUND LEVEL Hushed. (*) (*) I LOVE this! (*) :o

WINE LIST Relatively concise, especially for whites, but geographically varied. A dozen or so sakes include several that are moderately priced.
PRICE RANGE $350 prix fixe, excluding tax, tips and beverages.
HOURS Lunch, noon to 1:30 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. Dinner, 6 to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Closed through Jan. 10 for vacation.
RESERVATIONS For a seat at the sushi bar during a prime dinner time, it is necessary to call about three weeks ahead. Reservations must be guaranteed with a credit card. There is a penalty of $100 a person for last-minute cancellations.
CREDIT CARDS All major cards.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Restaurant is on one level.

(*) (*) Now HERE is where I'd love spending an early (late afternoon) romantic New Year's dinner and then home for ringing in 2005 in front of a warm fireplace. THAT's my idea of a small slice of heaven! (*) (*) Too bad three week wait for reservations. :| ;) This one is going to the top of my "places to go" list for sure. Maybe sometime in January and then down to the Blue Note in the Village to listen to some jazz. (*)

(*) (*) This place reminds me of Sushi Nozawa in Universal City in California, where I've been many times. When you sit at the sushi bar, you are served what the chef-owner gives you and it is absolutely, supremely divine! This restaurant has been THE "Best of LA" for several years. What most folks don't know except for regulars like me - was that after the chef gets to know you, he asks what your preferences are. He has the reputation as the "sushi-nazi" and there's a huge sign behind him that says, "TRUST ME". EVerytime I fly into LA, this is where I head first. It's as good and even better than some places where I've been in Japan! My favorite is hamachi.(*) (*) (*) (*)

(S) Off to make some spicy cocoa tea and give Doc some "scoobie snacks" that he's asking me for the past few minutes. ;) ({) (}) Sleep well. (k)
Bai Ling,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 02:09 PM

http://outside.away.com/outside/tnf/women-in-sports/index.html

(*) (*) "Eye candy" as some of my butch, MtF and FtM friends tell me. (l)

(k) (k) and ({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 02:18 PM

G.B. Shaw writes to Winston Churchill, inviting him to a first night, "Come and bring a friend if you have one."

Churchill's reply? "Impossible to come first night. Will come second night, if you have one." ;)

(f) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 02:29 PM

The Nine Muses are the Greek goddesses of inspiration, learning, the arts, and culture. According to Hesiod's Theogony, Zeus lay with Mnemosyne ("Memory") for nine days, and she gave birth to the Muses, who rejoice in their bright dancing places on Mount Helicon -- "nine voices united in one song." Their companions are the Graces and Desire, and their leader is Apollo, the god of music and harmony.

Name: Calliope
Meaning of Name: The Fair Voiced
Domain: Epic Poetry
Symbols: Writing Tablet

Name: Clio
Meaning of Name: The Proclaimer
Domain: History
Symbols: Scroll

Name: Erato
Meaning of Name: The Lovely
Domain: Love Poetry
Symbols:Lyre

Name: Euterpe
Meaning of Name: The Giver of Pleasure
Domain: Music
Symbols: Flute

Name: Melpomene
Meaning of Name: The Songstress
Domain: Tragedy
Symbols: Tragic Mask

Name: Polyhymnia
Meaning of Name: She of Many Hymns
Domain: Sacred Poetry
Symbols: Pensive Look

Name: Terpsichore
Meaning of Name: The Whirler
Domain: Dancing
Symbols: Dancing with Lyre

Name: Thalia
Meaning of Name: The Flourishing
Domain: Comedy
Symbols: Comic Mask

Name: Urania
Meaning of Name: The Heavenly
Domain: Astronomy
Symbols: Celestial Globe

http://www.cosmopolis.com/muses/muses.html

(*) (*) Which one or ones are you drawn to? (f)

(k) and a ({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 02:37 PM

For the uninitiated, here are some Lyrics that only Cole could write...

"How happy we shall be
When once a perfect unit.
Like lovers of the moyen age are we
Singing silly persiflage are we!"
-- from Oh, What a Pretty Pair of Lovers

"What a glimpse of paradise,
Someone who's naughty
Showed to someone who's nice."
-- from I'm in Love Again

"Back once more where he started from
He said, 'I haven't a single qualm,
'For I've had a taste of the world, you see,
And a great Princess has had a taste of me.'
Wise little Scampi."
-- from The Scampi

"Old sloths who hang down from twigs do it,
Though the effort is great,
Sweet guinea-pigs do it,
Buy a couple and wait."
--from Let's Do It (Let's Fall In Love)

"Your fetching physique is hardly unique,
You're mentally not so hot;
You'll never win laurels because of your morals,
But I'll tell you what you've got:"
-- from You've Got that Thing.

"I don't mean the kind that belongs to a club,
But the kind that has a club that belongs to him."
-- from Find Me a Primitive Man

"If the dear little rabbits weren't so bourgeois in their habits
Tell me where would you get your coat?"
-- from Where Would You Get Your Coat?

"He said my epidermis was darling,
And found my blood as blue as could be,
He went through wild ecstatics,
When I showed him my lymphatics,
But he never said he loved me."
-- from The Physician

"Since only dames with their names on
their cheques appeal
To modern men, instead of sex, I now
have ex-appeal."
-- from The Cocotte

"Give up arranging affairs of the state
And stay in the hay like Kate the Great."
-- Russian history from Kate the Great

"You're a boon,
You're the dam at Boulder,
You're the moon...over Mae West's shoulder.
I'm a nominee of the G.O.P
or GOP,
But if, Baby, I'm the bottom,
You're the top!"
-- a little known verse from the long ditty You're the Top

"By the old sea-side.
For when once we get the proper settin'
We begin a-pettin' and go on a-pettin'
Till we end by gettin' such an awful wettin'
...from the tide."
-- from Me and Marie

"Time marches on and soon it's plain
You've won my heart and I've lost my brain,
It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely."
-- from It's De-lovely

"I used to fall
In love with all
Those boys who maul
Refind ladies.
But now I tell
Each young gazelle
To go to hell...
I mean, hades."
-- from My Heart Belongs to Daddy

"As Madam Sappho in some sonnet said
'A slap and a tickle
Is all that the fickle
Male
Ever has in his head."
-- from Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love

"It's friendship, friendship,
Just a perfect blendship,
When other friendships have ceased to jell
Ours will still be swell."
-- from Friendship

"Are you fond of swimming dear?
Kindly tell me, if so.
Yes, I'm found of swimming, dear,
But in the morning, no.
Can you do the crawl, my dear?
Kindly tell me, if so.
I can do the crawl, my dear,
But in the morning, no.
When the sun through the blind
Starts to burn my poor behind
That's the time when I am in low.
Do you use the breast stroke, dear?
Kindly tell me, if so.
Yes, I use the breast stroke, dear,
But in the morning, no, no--no, no,
No, no, no, no, no!"
-- from In the Morning, No.

"Let's delve into astronomy, political economy,
Or if you're feeling biblical, the book of Deuteronomy,
But let's not talk about love."
-- from Let's Not Talk About Love

"Though you may call it 'love,' the doctors call it
'rheumatism.'"
-- from I Hate Men

"Mister Harris, plutocrat,
Wants to give my cheek a pat,
If the Harris pat,
Means a Paris hat, bébé!"
-- from Always True to You in My Fashion

"If she says your behavior is heinous
Kick her right in the 'Coriolanus,'
Brush up your Shakespeare
And they'll all kowtow."
-- from Brush Up Your Shakespeare

"While Isis chases Osiris,
And Pluto, Proserpine,
My doc is chasing my virus,
But nobody's chasing me."
-- from Nobody's Chasing Me

"They say that spring
Means just one thing
To little love birds,
We're not above birds,
Let's misbehave."
-- from Let's Misbehave

http://www.coleporter.org/

http://www.coleporter.org/bio.html

REALLY nice web site: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/porter_c.html

ALWAYS a good reference from WiKipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cole_Porter

(8) (8) (8) All Of You * Allez-Vous-En, Go Away * As On Thro The Seasons We Sail * At Long Last Love * Begin The Beguine * Between You And Me * But In The Morning, No * C'est Magnifique * Ca, C'est L'amour * Could It Be You * Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful? * Down In The Depths (On The Ninetieth Floor) * Easy To Love (You'd Be So Easy To Love) * Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye * Ev'rything I Love * Far Away * Farming * Friendship * From Alpha To Omega * From This Moment On * Get Out Of Town * Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye * I Am Loved * I Concentrate On You * I Get A Kick Out Of You * I Hate You, Darling * I Love Paris * I Love You * I've Got You Under My Skin * I've Still Got My Health * In The Still Of The Night * It's All Right With Me * It's De-Lovely * Just One Of Those Things * Katie Went To Haiti * Let's Be Buddies * Let's Do It (Let's Fall In Love) * Let's Not Talk About Love * Love For Sale * Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please * Mind If I Make Love To You * Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love * Music & Lyrics Porter Vol 1 * My Heart Belongs To Daddy * Night And Day * Ours * Ridin' High * So Near And Yet So Far * Stereophonic Sound * True Love * Use Your Imagination * Well, Did You Evah? * What Is This Thing Called Love? * Where, Oh Where * Wouldn't It Be Fun * You Don't Remind Me * You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To * You're Sensational * You're The Top
(8) (8) (8)

(*) (*) Seems to be a song for just about everyone in there. (l) (l)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 02:48 PM

Text and links based upon William Wade'sPanorama of the Hudson River,1846.

http://hhr.highlands.com/

Index of Hudson River School Painters: http://dfl.highlands.com/DFL_Painters/Index.html

GLORIFYING THE WILDERNESS:THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING.

The first group of American landscape painters emerged in the 1820s and became known as the Hudson River School. Many of them painted in and around the Hudson River Valley and the nearby Catskill and Adirondack Mountains. Artists, along with poets, novelists, and essayists, delighted in describing and depicting native scenery. Indeed, the untrammeled wilderness and seemingly limitless expanse of virgin continent symbolized the nation's potential for greatness.

Influenced by seventeenth-century European landscapes, the works of the Hudson River School are characterized by panoramic views rendered with precise detail. These serene and awe-inspiring vistas, in which a small figure often communes with nature, were intended to evoke elevated thoughts and feelings. The pervasive glow of sunlight, evident in many landscapes in this room, is characteristic of Luminism, a trend among mid-nineteenth-century artists who saw light as landscape's most important binding ingredient as well as a symbol of divine presence.

Portrait painting remained popular in the nineteenth century even after the advent of photography. The somber commemorative image of a Civil War hero shown here is a reminder that many of these peaceful landscapes were painted during the tumultuous Civil War era. George Catlin's portrait of three Indians is also a memorial - a document of a vanishing race, its people casualties of American expansion.

http://www.byu.edu/moa/exhibits/Current%20Exhibits/150years/150chron2.html

(*) (*) Theses artworks are such an amazing treat. I once lived in Croton-on-Hudson for about six to eight months in an apartment with a lovely view of the Hudson River. The commute by car was across the Tappan Zee Bridge and first exit for route 9 north along the river. One of favorite drives back then and since is driving back across the river and taking the palisades' drive up to Bear Mountain. Anytime of year, the area is exquisite, especially when I get out of the car and walk around. (l) (l) Ah, memories.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 02:52 PM

http://www.btinternet.com/~fulton/list98.htm

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=Treehouses+of+the+world+photos

(*) (*) Talk about having a private space of own's own in their backyard. Ah, diversion and inspiration. ;)

(k) and a ({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 02:58 PM

Official Prime Number Home Page: http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/programs/music/listen/

Why play the primes?

"Why," you might be asking, "why listen to the primes?" I am tempted to just reply "why not," but let me give a more informative three part answer.

First, our goal in these short notes is to introduce some of the patterns in the primes and contrast them with the primes’ inherit irregularities. We all regularly use our ears to discern patterns. For example, we listen to our car's engine to see if it is running smoothly. Why not apply this natural ability to the primes?

Second, a fundamental pedagogical principle states that you may increase learning by increasing involvement. “Multimedia” computers address two of our senses: sight and sound. Why not use this to our advantage when teaching about primes?

Third, for the sake of novelty. I have always wanted to “hear the primes.” Next I want to work on smelling the primes, but the net is not up to that yet (and I can not think of any useful way to do it--can you?)

http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/programs/music/listen/page0.html

Primes as Notes: http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/programs/music/listen/page1.html

(*) (*) (h) (h) (h) Way cool I think! ;)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 03:06 PM

If completed, the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze will be the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. It would stretch nearly a mile across and tower 575 feet above the world’s third longest river. Its reservoir would stretch over 350 miles upstream and force the displacement of close to 1.9 million people. Construction began in 1994 and is scheduled to take 20 years and over $24 billion.

In March of 1989, strong citizen opposition to the project in China forced the People’s Congress to suspend plans for the dam, but the project was swiftly resurrected by Premier Li Peng in the aftermath of Tiananmen Square.

In its campaigns against the dam, International Rivers Network has been calling attention to the environmental and social impacts of the project along with the international companies and banks necessary for construction.

In September of 1994, IRN and a coalition of US environment, development and human rights groups encouraged the US administration to withhold financial support for the US companies eager to bid for the project. After more than a year, the National Security Council concluded that the US government should stay clear of the controversial Three Gorges Dam. In May of 1996, the US Export–Import Bank announced that they would not guarantee loans to US companies seeking contracts for the dam. In addition, the World Bank, traditionally the largest funder of dams in developing countries, has also refrained from financing Three Gorges Dam.

Despite the warnings and protests by Chinese citizens and the media attention surrounding the project and its destructive impacts on China’s people and economy, major banks and government export credit agencies have been quick to fundraise for the dam.

IRN is currently holding U.S. investment banks, namely Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, responsible for financing the dam through the underwriting of China Development Bank (CDB) bonds, a government run development bank that funds infrastructure construction. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, through its joint venture, China International Capital Corporation, has been an advisor to the Three Gorges Project Development Corporation on international fundraising possibilities since 1995. Approximately 65% of the Three Gorges Dam construction costs are financed by the CDB. Also being targeted are Goldman Sachs & Co and CS First Boston whose one billion dollar PRC general obligation bond offering at the end of 1998 reportedly funneled $200 million to the dam.

In response to letters sent by IRN questioning the wisdom of the banks’ involvement, representatives claim they’ve received assurances from CDB officials that none of the funds raised from the bond underwriting are going towards the dam. However, US bank representatives have not been able to provide copies of such assurances nor have they been able to explain how those assurances are being monitored.

Much of what project opponents had forecasted in 1989 is in full view for the world to see. Construction is currently facing massive corruption, spiraling costs, technological problems, major resettlement difficulties; all raising questions to the wisdom of pursuing the project further.

IRN hopes you will join in our effort to stop this investment and call on Wall Street banks to adopt and implement environmental and social criteria for their investment, underwriting and lending practices.

http://www.irn.org/programs/threeg/

(*) (*) Yes, the waters of China's Yangtze River are rising, but what remains still qualifies as one of the greatest natural wonders of the world!

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 03:12 PM

Rivers and streams to be restored in AK, CA, CT, DC, IL, ME, MD, MI, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, VA, WI

July 21, 2004

(Washington, DC) The explosive breaching of Embrey Dam on Virginia’s Rappahannock River in February was broadcast nationwide -- and was just one of many dams to be blown up or torn down in 2004. According to American Rivers’ annual survey of government and private conservation organizations, 60 dams in 14 states and the District of Columbia have or will be removed in 2004.

More than 145 dams have been removed since 1999 when the breaching of Edwards Dam on Maine's Kennebec River first captured national attention. This promising trend is the result of two converging developments -- a growing appreciation of the ecological benefits of removing dams and the aging of much of the nation’s dam infrastructure.

"There comes a time in the life of many dams when they begin to make less sense than they have in the past," explained Serena McClain, of American Rivers’ Rivers Unplugged campaign. “Communities across the country are electing to remove derelict and obsolete dams to restore their rivers, eliminate safety hazards, and save money.”

Only four dams to be removed in 2004 were ever used to generate hydroelectric power and all of them have been off the grid for many years. Of the 77,000 dams greater than 6 feet high across the country, fewer than 2,500 generate electricity. Most were built for purposes such as running now obsolete mills, controlling floods, and creating water supplies or recreational lakes.

“For these communities, dam removal is not a radical environmental move, it is a common sense decision -- the old dam isn’t being used, the river would much nicer without it, and it’s cheaper to take it out than to repair it,” said Helen Sarakinos with the River Alliance of Wisconsin.

While dams can provide valuable services, the ecological price is high. Dams drown valuable habitat under reservoirs, block the annual migrations of fish, and can create downstream conditions inhospitable for fish and wildlife. Dams also create several safety hazards, some of which increase with age. Small dams are sometimes called “drowning machines” because they can create dangerous undertows.

Communities that choose to pull out obsolete dams enjoy once again the benefits provided by healthy free flowing rivers -- better water quality, revitalized fisheries, new recreational opportunities, and recovery of habitat suitable for parks and other public use. For example, on the Kennebec River in Maine, change has come quickly in the five years since the removal of Edwards Dam. Fish and other wildlife are returning to the river in numbers much larger than biologists predicted.

"Free flowing rivers are a magnet for anglers, boaters, and other river users,” said Leon Szeptycki, Eastern Conservation Director for Trout Unlimited. “Healthy, attractive rivers are unique assets for the communities on their banks, and can be an economic asset that others can't easily match."

American Rivers, Trout Unlimited, and River Alliance of Wisconsin all provide educational, technical, and financial assistance to communities that are considering or have committed to removing a dam it no longer needs.

:o :o :o (*) For a full list of dams to be removed in 2004 (PDF):

http://www.amrivers.org/doc_repository/DamRemoval/2004_Dam_Removal_List.pdf

:o :o For a complete list of dams removed between 1999 and 2003 (PDF):

http://www.amrivers.org/doc_repository/DamRemoval/1999-2003_Dams_Removed_list.pdf

(*) (*) Wow! And to think I started looking for places to visit around the world, meandered into China's huge river systems and eventually got to what's happening right here in the U.S. :| :| :o

(*) (*) Well, I've been looking for ways to volunteer in 2005. I don't know how I could help but will keep exploring to find out.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 03:18 PM

Compressed chicken product, festive succotashed rice,
dead iceberg lettuce with a pale cherry tomato
hard as a mothball, and the coup de grâce: a baby bundt cake
I expect will taste like my passport
but to my delight is not bad,
half-bad, or even sort-of-bad: it is good.
Good good good good good all good
this plain sweet baby bundt cake like much else
I shall never taste touch hear see or smell,
baked for the heavens in its own fluted tube pan
for every blessed one of us ticketed passengers,
purely for our pleasure and then only briefly—
ingested, enjoyed, absorbed, and fading from memory
since we lack the capacity to retaste baby bundt cake
unlike the many childhood wounds I experience
half a century later from the faintest reminders.
This same baby bundt cake might seem scandalous
to the incognito Michelin Guide reviewer
in a three-star restaurant in the south of France.
It could cost the owner-and-chef all his stars
when losing one drives such men to relentless self-torment.
It could cause his wife-the-hostess to cease loving him
instantly, if she had worked eighty-hour weeks with him in concert
painstakingly perfecting the desserts they were known for.
"Marcel, have you lost your senses?"
she'd scream (in French, of course),
"this bundt cake tastes like Michael Ryan's passport!"
All right, she wouldn't say like my passport
but some untranslatable invective for culinary blasphemy
such as "this bundt cake tastes like duck drop—
the underside of a sink-reduction of pig bristle—
your incontinent mother's bidet brush holder"—
a local invective for premeditated betrayals
like secretly developing and serving a recipe
based on the winner of a Pillsbury bakeoff.
God knows what happened after their disgrace
to the couple, or their employees, much less their children,
especially the boy who loved nothing more
than working in the kitchen alongside his parents.
He certainly wouldn't touch a bundt cake for the rest of his life.
The sight of someone enjoying one could make him furious
and the aroma of baking bundt cake wafting from a Paris apartment,
unidentifiable to the other strollers among the aromas of the city,
could make him weep automatically as if he had turned a faucet.
He would never discuss the bundt cake episode in interviews
after he had revolutionized the national pastry
and become famous for his supernal puffy Napoleons.
Bundt cake could mean only his father's sudden dementia
and the years of grief and poverty suffered by his family,
but, since my experience and circumstances are so different,
I thought this bundt cake was really good.

—Michael Ryan

(*) (*) And to think airlines have the gall to SELL passengers food in recent years. I'll take my organic food from my home along with me anyday - however getting my bag lunch through security checkpoints is quite another challenge... ;)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 03:25 PM

http://www.threepennyreview.com/gallery/100cover_w05.html

(*) (*) Hmmmm.....photos that provoke, draw me in, and otherwise peak my interest. I hope it does yours as well.

(*) (*) Stay warm. Enjoy your end of the year favorite beverage (b) , (d), coffee, tea or whatever your heart and tummy desires. Sweet dreams tonight.

(k) (k) and a ({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 03:30 PM

I'd have dinner here this evening. Wonderful place that honors the earth and it's owner is such a delightful person. What grace she bestows on children through her shared gardeing experiences as well as other endeavors. Oh, to be like her! (and own such a fabulous place to dine!)

http://www.chezpanisse.com/

(*) (*) Enjoy! For your pleasure (hopefully), here is tonight's and tomorrow evening's menu:

Thursday, December 30 $65
Tomales Bay oyster ragout with leeks and black pepper sauce
Potato and mascarpone ravioli with wild mushrooms
Spit-roasted Sonoma County Liberty duck with Barolo sauce, turnip gratin,
and roasted winter vegetables
Pistachio gâteau glacé with candied tangerine ice cream and sherbet

Friday, December 31 New Year's Eve
An apéritif
California sturgeon caviar and buckwheat blinis
Fish, shellfish, and fennel salad
Crab consommé and truffled sole quenelles
Suckling pig two ways: in a chestnut ballottine and spit-roasted
Hazelnut praline Paris-Brest

(l) (l) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 08:53 PM

sweetlady

12-30-2004, 09:00 PM

Sushi at Masa Is a Zen Thing
By FRANK BRUNI Published: December 29, 2004

I COULD reach deep into a heady broth of adjectives to describe the magic of the sushi at Masa. I could pull up every workable synonym for delicious. Or I could do this: tell you about watching a friend bite into one of Masa's toro-stuffed maki rolls.

His eyes grew instantly bigger as his lips twitched into a coyly restrained grin. Then the full taste of the toro, which is the buttery belly of a bluefin tuna, took visible hold. Forget restraint: he was suddenly smiling as widely as a person with a mouthful of food and a modicum of manners can. His eyes even rolled slightly backward.

This play of emotion mirrored my own toro-induced bliss. It also explains why Masa, despite its chosen peculiarities and pitiless expense, belongs in the thinly populated pantheon of New York's most stellar restaurants. Simply put, Masa engineers discrete moments of pure elation that few if any other restaurants can match. If you appreciate sushi, Masa will take you to the frontier of how expansively good a single (and singular) bite of it can make you feel.

If you don't, you have no reason to visit this restaurant, which stakes its claim for the most part on a narrow patch of culinary turf. The unyielding boundaries of a meal here are just one of many ways in which Masa bucks the increasingly wobbly traditions of fine dining in this city.

The chef and owner, Masayoshi Takayama, who operated Ginza Sushiko in Beverly Hills before relocating to Manhattan, does not present you with a menu or choices. You are fed what he elects to feed you, most of it sushi, in the sequence and according to the rhythm he decrees. You do not seize control at Masa. You surrender it. You pay to be putty. And you pay dearly. The price fluctuates with the season and the availability of certain delicacies. It now stands at $350 a person before tax, tip and sip of sake or bottled water. Masa, which reopens Jan. 11 after a holiday break, is arguably the most expensive restaurant in New York. Lunch or dinner for two can easily exceed $1,000.

Justifiable? I leave that question to accountants and ethicists. Worth it? The answer depends on your budget and priorities. But in my experience, the silky, melting quality of Masa's toro and uni and sea bream, coupled with the serenity of its ambience, does not exist in New York at a lower price.

Masa is not merely sushi. The first third of a nearly three-hour meal here entails other indulgences, presented at methodically paced intervals and in prudently restrained portions. There may be an uni risotto with white truffle; dollops of a perilous blowfish's prized liver; slices of foie gras, to be cooked slightly in a ceramic hot pot; a mound of toro tartare and caviar to be spread on toasted rectangles of Japanese sweet bread.

But the last two-thirds of a meal are devoted to sushi, and Masa is devoted to doing this one very worthy thing to perfection. You get the best sense of this pursuit if you sit in one of the 10 seats at the hinoki wood bar, sanded so frequently that you catch its faint scent the second you leave the glare and hubbub of the Time Warner Center and enter this diffusely lighted, windowless sanctuary.

Behind the bar stands Mr. Takayama, in a simple white or gray shirt that looks like the top of a monk's robe. He is often flanked by two other chefs, both in simple black shirts, both with extremely short hair or heads shaved like his, as if any grooming more fanciful would compete with their calling to be vessels for immaculate yellowtail.

A chef makes your sushi a piece or two at a time, reaching for a pristine slab of fluke or Spanish mackerel and using a bone-handled knife to carve a sliver. He presses wasabi or maybe shiso flakes onto a bed of warm rice, lays the fish atop it and then anoints this jewel with soy sauce, yuzu or sudachi, a limelike Japanese fruit.

From just inches away, you watch this ritual, which culminates in the chef's placing the sushi in front of you with a bare hand. You in turn use a bare hand to lift it to your lips. Now the chef watches you, palpably anticipating your delight. This whole exchange has an immediacy and intimacy unlike anything at more conventional restaurants or for that matter at other upscale sushi bars, which tend not to have Masa's low ratio of sushi priests

Masa deals not in wide-angle splendor and broad-canvas fireworks but in tight close-ups and miniaturist flares. It prizes simplicity not only in its cuisine but also in its uncluttered environment, which keeps the focus on the food. Other restaurants strive to be extravagant theaters. Masa, with 26 seats in all, intends to be a minimalist temple, all neutral colors and reverential hush.

The servers, who bring you finger bowls of lemon water and tell you to turn off your cellphone, seem to have been hired for their genetic inability to speak above a whisper. The only implements they give you are the ones you need at a given instant, and these are usually made not of silver and crystal but of lacquered wood and bamboo.

Masa is the first Japanese restaurant to receive four stars from The New York Times since Mimi Sheraton gave that rating to Hatsuhana in 1983, and it speaks a culinary idiom distinct from that of New York's other current four-star establishments, all French-inspired.

But it is very much a restaurant of this time and place. Of a dining culture in which linens and petit fours are no longer nonnegotiable badges of class. In which a blockbuster main course often cedes its eminence to a subtler succession of small plates. In which a chef's seriousness is judged not only by his skill but also by the distances he will reach — and the courier bills he will amass — in the service and worship of superior ingredients.

Mr. Takayama trawls the globe, reeling in bay scallops from as nearby as New England and grouper from as far as Japan. He receives shipments daily and whittles down what he receives to what he finds worthy: yellow clam and red clam; squid and octopus; eel, cooked and brushed with a sweetened reduction of its cooking liquids; needlefish, upon which are drizzled purple shiso flowers.

Some of this flesh was so luxurious it made me feel flushed, giving me a buzz that undulated across a meal and crested with the toro rolls: insanely dense, obscenely intense clumps of fatty red tuna surrounded by rice and seasoned with wasabi and scallions. After these Masa gently brought me down, starting with a combination of rice, cucumber and sesame seeds wrapped in a shiso leaf. Dessert was a bowl of snowy grapefruit granité, as clean, pure and exquisite as the seafood before it.

Masa certainly has drawbacks, including its reverie-rupturing location in a mall. If you do not reserve a spot at the bar and wind up sitting at one of the tables away from it, some of the immediacy of the ritual is diminished, and the restaurant's pleasures are dimmed.

But they are by no means extinguished. It was at a table, in fact, that I dined with my toro-tipsy friend.

Three nights later he called and left a message. He said that he had almost gone to eat sushi for lunch but had decided that he needed a longer pause after experiencing what he called "the sushi of the gods, so it's not so painful when I have to go back to mortal living."

He had it just right. Masa is divine.

Time Warner Center (fourth floor), Columbus Circle; (212) 823-9800.

ATMOSPHERE A soothing windowless room with neutral colors, a minimalist aesthetic and just 26 seats.

SOUND LEVEL Hushed. I LOVE this!

WINE LIST Relatively concise, especially for whites, but geographically varied. A dozen or so sakes include several that are moderately priced.
PRICE RANGE $350 prix fixe, excluding tax, tips and beverages.
HOURS Lunch, noon to 1:30 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. Dinner, 6 to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Closed through Jan. 10 for vacation.
RESERVATIONS For a seat at the sushi bar during a prime dinner time, it is necessary to call about three weeks ahead. Reservations must be guaranteed with a credit card. There is a penalty of $100 a person for last-minute cancellations.
CREDIT CARDS All major cards.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Restaurant is on one level.

(*) (*) (*) Now HERE is where I'd love spending an early (late afternoon) romantic New Year's dinner and then home for ringing in 2005 in front of a warm fireplace. THAT's my idea of a small slice of heaven! Too bad three week wait for reservations. This one is going to the top of my "places to go" list for sure. Maybe sometime in January and then down to the Blue Note in the Village to listen to some jazz.

This place reminds me of Sushi Nozawa in Universal City in California, where I've been many times. When you sit at the sushi bar, you are served what the chef-owner gives you and it is absolutely, supremely divine! This restaurant has been THE "Best of LA" for several years. What most folks don't know except for regulars like me - was that after the chef gets to know you, he asks what your preferences are. He has the reputation as the "sushi-nazi" and there's a huge sign behind him that says, "TRUST ME". EVerytime I fly into LA, this is where I head first. It's as good and even better than some places where I've been in Japan! My favorite is hamachi!!

(l) (l) (l) ANYWAYS- I hope that everyone, Femme, butch, FtM, MtF, queer and everyone else who identifies as their own identity - WILL COME TO MY VIRTUAL SASHIMI AND BYOB PARTY NEW YEAR'S EVE. (k) (k) ({) (})

Love always,
(k) (k) Sweetlady, the Hamachi-QUEEN!!

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 09:16 AM

:o GREAT photo!!

http://www.boxerworld.com/photo/showphoto.php?photo=34020

(*) (*) Would it be nice to be as relaxed as these two gorgeous boxers? The one looking at the camera looks just like my Doc. (l) (l)

Enjoy the web site at Boxerworld,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 09:20 AM

http://www.boxerworld.com/photo/showphoto.php?photo=34019&size=big&sort=1&cat=1

(l) (l) This one just touched my heart. (l)

(k) and a ({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 09:30 AM

In death, imperialism lives on

For the western media, it is clear that a tourist's tragedy is more important than that of the 'locals'

Jeremy Seabrook Friday December 31, 2004 The Guardian (London)

The number of fishing boats from Sumatra, Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu at sea when the Boxing Day tsunami hit will never be known. There is scarcely any population tally of the crowded coasts. Nameless people are consigned to unmarked graves; in mosques and temples, makeshift mortuaries, people pull aside a cloth, a piece of sacking, to see if those they loved lie beneath. As in all natural disasters, the victims are overwhelmingly the poorest.
This time there was something different. The tsunami struck resorts where westerners were on holiday. For the western media, it was clear that their lives have a different order of importance from those that have died in thousands, but have no known biography, and, apparently, no intelligible tongue in which to express their feelings. This is not to diminish the trauma of loss of life, whether of tourist or fisherman. But when we distinguish between "locals" who have died and westerners, "locals" all too easily becomes a euphemism for what were once referred to as natives. Whatever tourism's merits, it risks reinforcing the imperial sensibility.

For this sensibility has already been reawakened by all the human-made, preventable catastrophes. The ruins of Galle and Bandar Aceh called forth images of Falluja, Mosul and Gaza. Imperial powers, it seems, anticipate the destructive capacity of nature. A report on ITN news made this explicit, by referring to "nature's shock and awe". But while the tsunami death toll rises in anonymous thousands, in Iraq disdainful American authorities don't do body counts.

One of the most poignant sights of the past few days was that of westerners overcome with gratitude that they had been helped by the grace and mercy of those who had lost everything, but still regarded them as guests. When these same people appear in the west, they become the interloper, the unwanted migrant, the asylum seeker, who should go back to where they belong. A globalisation that permits the wealthy to pass effortlessly through borders confines the poor to eroded subsistence, overfished waters and an impoverishment that seems to have no end. People rarely say that poor countries are swamped by visitors, even though their money power pre-empts the best produce, the clean water and amenities unknown to the indigenous population.

In death, there should be no hierarchy. But even as Sri Lankans wandered in numb disbelief through the corpses, British TV viewers were being warned that scenes they were about to witness might distress them. Poor people have no consoling elsewhere to which they can be repatriated. The annals of the poor remain short and simple, and can be effaced without inquiry as to how they contrive an existence on these fragile coasts. What are the daily visitations of grief and loss in places where people earn less in a year than the price that privilege pays for a night's stay in a five-star hotel?

Western governments, which can disburse so lavishly in the art of war, offer a few million as if it were exceptional largesse. Fortunately the people are wiser; and the spontaneous outpourings of humanity have been as unstoppable as the waves that broke on south Asia's coasts; donations rapidly exceeded the amount offered by government. Selflessness and sacrifice, people working away at rubble with bare hands, suggest immediate human solidarities.

But these are undermined by the structures of inequality. Promises solemnly made at times of immediate sorrow are overtaken by other urgencies; money donated for the Orissa cyclone, for hurricane Mitch in Central America, the floods in Bangladesh, the Bam earthquake - as for the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq - turns out to be a fraction of what is pledged.

Such events remind us of the sameness of our human destiny, the fragility of our existence. They place in perspective the meaning of security. Life is always at the mercy of nature - whether from such overwhelming events as this, or the natural processes that exempt no one from paying back to earth the life it gave us. Yet we inhabit systems of social and economic injustice that exacerbate the insecurity of the poor, while the west is prepared to lay waste distant towns and cities in the name of a security that, in the end, eludes us all.

Assertions of our common humanity occur only at times of great loss. To retrieve and hold on to it at all other times - that would be something of worth to salvage from these scenes of desolation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story/0,15671,1381295,00.html

:| :| :(

Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 09:33 AM

http://www.guardian.co.uk/graphic/0,5812,1380083,00.html

(*) (*) It blows my mind that the force was so great as to affect the earth's rotation and tilt ever so minutely. :| That's some earthquake. :|

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 09:35 AM

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2004/12/31/QueensListdfjh784575hekjfffffff4435.pdf

;) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 09:41 AM

Is Canada a more civilized version of America? Articles from 1923 to the present take up the question of Canadian national identity.

Atlantic Unbound | December 27, 2004

Over the past four years, liberal Americans have occasionally talked among themselves about moving to Canada if George W. Bush were to win a second term in 2004. After November 2, their idea became national news: Salon, The New Yorker, and Harper's, among others, published pieces about how to emigrate to and what to expect in the land of socialized health-care, legalized gay marriage, wide-open spaces, few guns, and no electoral colleges or winner-take-all elections. (In Canada, the loser of the race for Prime Minister still gets to lead the opposition party.)

A utopian view of Canada, in which the ways the country differs from the United States are enticing to disenchanted left-wingers, has a recent heritage. Americans often think of Canada as an extension of their own country. (We all speak English in roughly the same accents, so aren't we the same?) Or they refer to Canadians as George Bush has—as "our most important neighbors to the north." In other words, not so important at all.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200412u/fb2004-12-28

(*) (*) There seems to be in more than a few places where Americans would not be a warmly welcomed. My concern is the negotiating taking place between China and Canada for huge oil reserves that China needs. The U.S. has always treated Canada as an extension of its own natural resources and this latest round of discussions certainly has some Dubya Dummies in D.C. worried. They should. :| And I need to think about how to burn less petrol - nopt that I drive anywhere near what I used to. ;)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 09:48 AM

A last-minute merger frenzy and cheery CEOs augur well for the economy in 2005

Multibillion-dollar deals in telecom, healthcare, and software. Bullish forecasts from blue chips like GE and FedEx. Measured monetary policy moves from the Federal Reserve Board. The biggest dip in weekly jobless claims in five months. A Dow near its 52-week high. A strong, if not spectacular, Christmas shopping season. Even a dip in oil prices.

As 2004 winds down, there's reason to be jolly about the U.S. economy. Sure, the dour Grinch will still have reason to sneer: The pace of job growth remains below that of a few years back, the dollar is slumping despite a pep talk from the president, and consumers are going into hock to buy their presents.

But, as Jack Stack, CEO of engine supplier SRC Holding Corp., told Vice President Cheney at a recent two-day economic gabfest in Washington, "the bottom line, in summary, is that we have elevated from cautiously optimistic to optimistic." The proof may be in the recent flurry of put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is deals demonstrating that Wall Street and corporate America are back in growth mode.

Merger madness
In an end-of-the-year frenzy, mergers totaling about $90 billion were announced in one week of December. Oracle and PeopleSoft ended an 18-month hostile takeover battle and agreed to combine in a deal worth $10.3 billion. Sprint and Nextel plan to join forces to become the third-largest wireless provider in a $35 billion merger. Software maker Symantec agreed to acquire Veritas Software in an all-stock deal worth $13.5 billion. And Johnson & Johnson is buying Guidant for $25.4 billion to become the largest provider of heart devices. There were also some smaller deals, including industrial conglomerate United Technologies Corp.'s buying Britain's Kidde for $2.8 billion.

These deals cap off a year of double-digit growth for merger and acquisition activity. Some $768 billion worth of deals have been announced in 2004, up from $544 billion in 2003, according to Thomson Financial. Investment banks are clearly reaping the benefits. Lehman Brothers announced better-than-expected quarterly earnings due in part to a 95 percent rise in M&A revenues over the same period a year ago. Goldman Sachs also beat earnings estimates.

"A lot of corporations are flush with cash, so it's not surprising they are going on a buying spree," says Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight. Behravesh doubts rising interest rates will be enough to choke off the M&A pipeline and anticipates an even more eventful 2005 on Wall Street.

One reason for optimism is increasing exports, the offspring of a weak dollar that is making U.S. goods cheaper in foreign markets. On that note, China sent an early Christmas present by announcing it would impose export tariffs on its own textile manufacturers beginning January 1, when long-standing quotas governing the global textile trade are due to expire. The move comes as Washington is weighing whether to impose restrictions on Chinese-made clothing.

Any break for American firms, though, would probably amount to temporary patchwork at best. China already controls about a quarter of the world textile market, and that is likely to grow to 60 percent within several years--regardless of any new tariffs--according to Credit Suisse First Boston. But on the selling side, China has become relatively accessible to U.S. and other western businesses trying to tap into the country's burgeoning wealth. Another recent policy change will allow retailers like Wal-Mart to open branches anywhere in China, with few restrictions--a significant easing of prior rules. Another recent government move will open up all of China to U.S. insurance companies, such as AIG.

While the brand-name mergers get most of the attention, other companies are choosing to return some of their cash hordes to shareholders, either through new or increased dividends or through stock buybacks. General Electric announced in mid-December that it would repurchase as much as $15 billion worth of its stock over the next three years, while also raising its 2005 earnings outlook. Kimberly-Clark, Kraft Foods, and Deere & Co. also committed to significant stock buybacks. According to Standard and Poor's, U.S. companies bought back $178 billion in stock this year through October, 52 percent more than last year. Christmas also came early for Microsoft investors, who just received $3 per share in a $32 billion special dividend payout.

Wall Street's memory may be short, but the wounds from the 2001 crash are fresh enough that many corporate treasurers maintain a decidedly conservative approach to cash management. "I think the current thinking is that disciplined use of cash is highly valued," says Ron Sargent, CEO of Staples, which recently announced a stock buyback and its first dividend. "The era of the go-go growth in the '90s is being replaced by an era of conservative financial management." -Megan Barnett and Richard J. Newman

Hiring uptick
The flush treasuries and ambitious growth plans also are yielding a benefit beyond the investor class: Those making New Year's resolutions to get new jobs may actually be able to keep them. Corporate managers are becoming slightly more optimistic with their hiring plans for the coming months, according to several polls. In a survey of 1,600 companies, employment services firm Manpower found that 24 percent expect to increase hiring in the first quarter of 2005, up from 20 percent in the same quarter of 2004. Still, 10 percent said they plan to decrease hiring, and 59 percent expect no change. The sectors most likely to post help-wanted ads: construction, finance, public administration, and mining.

Even with brimming corporate coffers, increasing head count is still not a priority for many employers. "It actually fits a very typical psychological pattern," explains Gary Burnison, of the recruitment firm Korn/Ferry International. Employees are usually the last cutback during a downturn--and the last to return in a rebound. Temporaries and consultants, however, often come first, and such hiring is up 14 percent over last year, says the American Staffing Association.

Still, CEO s remain hopeful that the economy will continue to expand and that the expansion will ultimately lead to job growth. In the December CEO Economic Outlook Survey from the Business Roundtable, 40 percent of CEO s said they expect to invest in more personnel in early 2005. And Burnison points to the impending flood of baby boomer retirees as an indicator that the job market is poised for expansion. "The economy can't continue to grow without adding jobs," he says. "Companies, at the end of the day, rely on people to execute strategies." Recent jobs figures from the Labor Department seem to reflect an improving, if erratic, job climate. More than 2 million jobs have been added in the past 12 months, though it was an impressive 303,000 jobs in October followed by a lackluster 112,000 in November. -Megan Barnett

Good tidings
America's bonhomie was center stage at the recent White House economic conference. The mostly corporate executives and pro-administration economists in attendance cheered the current state of the economy loudly and in lockstep. "We are actually very hopeful and positive on the economy as measured by technology spending, since technology has become a large portion of overall capital expenditures and correlates very nicely with GDP," said Dell CEO Kevin Rollins.

The president got full credit for the happy days that are here again, winning praise for his tax cuts, including the one that lowered the take on dividend income. "We expect dividends to be up about 12 percent this year and an additional 18 percent next year. So it's a wonderful example of how enlightened tax policy can achieve great results," added Mary Farrell, chief investment strategist at UBS Wealth Management.

Earlier in the same week, chief economic soothsayer Alan Green-span and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve signaled their own sanguineness with another quarter-point hike in short-term interest rates, part of a gradual tightening of the money supply intended to prolong the low-inflation expansion.

Greenspan, due to retire as Fed chief in 2006, was also rumored to have declined a feeler from prominent Republicans to replace John Snow as treasury secretary. For now, Snow will remain in his job, one that will be critical to pushing Bush's second-term economic agenda, which includes reining in trial lawyers, overhauling the tax code to shift the burden toward consumption and away from investment, and partially privatizing Social Security.

"Now is the time to confront problems," Bush told the conference. But he also acknowledged that the chief obstacle to his aggressive second-term economic agenda is the Senate. There he may need someone of Greenspan's stature to convince wary legislators that his economic policy is the right one for 2005 and beyond. -Matthew Benjamin

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/041227/biztech/27econ.htm

(*) (*) I still ask, "where's the beef?" My parents are still getting less and less from their retirement checks and spending more and more on their prescriptions! :@ :s I'm encouraging them to get their precrips filled in Canada. (l)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 09:50 AM

Quit smoking 9%

• Save money 21%

• Lose weight 39%

• Change careers 13%

• Volunteer 6%

• None of the above 12%

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/home.htm

(*) (*) :o ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 09:56 AM

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/urban/guides/holidays/newyears/top20.htm

(*) (*) I loved the Brooklyn fireworks idea and number 10:

(10.) Play dress-up at a Roaring Twenties party at Lotus complete with fedoras, feathered tiaras, and flappers.
At this original meatpacking district hotspot, DJs Jared Deitch and Reflex spin an eclectic mix of dance, house, and hip-hop for revelers who haven't quite mastered the Charleston.
• 8:30p.m.-10a.m.
•Lotus, 409 W. 14th St., between Ninth and Tenth Aves.; 212-243-4420; lotusnewyork.com.
• Admission at 8:30p.m., $165; admission at 11p.m., $85; admission at 1a.m., $30.

(*) (*) Number 13 sounded pretty sedate for those seeking peace and quiet:

(13.) Spend the last hours of 2004 in a state of reflection—not inebriation—at the New Year's Eve Concert for Peace at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Featuring Judy Collins, soprano Lauren Flanigan, Harry Smith, and Jason Robert Brown.
• 7:30p.m.
• The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Ave., at 112th St.; 212-662-2133; stjohndivine.org.
• Free; $55 reserved seating available.

(*) (*) Whatever you find yourself doing, surround yourself with love from the universe. (l)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 10:06 AM

New York’s in-house panel of tasters, headed by Kevin Zraly of Windows on the World Wine School, blind-tested six brands in three separate “ﬂights.”

We chose two different bottles representing each of the three champagne categories—non-vintage, vintage, and “prestige”—all widely available at New York wine stores. Just for fun, we also called around to find the highest and lowest prices for each bottle.

Pol Roger ’96
This brut reserve “smells like my grandmother’s house,” said one panelist. The least liked of the champagnes, it was deemed one-dimensional. “I’m paying for fruit,” Zraly said, “and what I get here is total dryness.”
Chambers Street Wines: $57.99
Park Avenue Liquor Shop: $70

Cristal Roederer ’97
Smells like cookies (that’s the yeast), but “it tastes like Sour Patch Kids!” said one taster. “This would be tough to have a couple of glasses of, because of the acidity compound,” said Zraly. “I don’t think it’s typical of a Roederer Cristal. They usually have more depth and body.”
Garnet Wines & Liquors: $165
Morrell: $189.95

Taittinger Brut Non-Vintage
A strong, smoky scent, smooth taste and a rich, full body made this a favorite. “The fruit on this is unbelievable,” said Zraly. “It’s powerful. I’d have it with a ﬁrst course, like a Dover sole.”
Sherry-Lehman Wine & Spirits: $29.95
Union Square Wines & Spirits: $35.99

Veuve Clicquot ’96
One of the strongest bouquets tested, a vanilla scent, had panelists salivating—“I would pick this on smell alone,” said one. Zraly deemed it elegant and soft, with good ﬁzz.
Union Square: $54.99
Park Avenue: $60

Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Non-Vintage
Won praise for its nose, reminiscent of freshly bitten green apples; one tester called it “steely.” Zraly pronounced it “extremely well-made, light, easy,” with a very good balance between acid and fruit. Perfect for an apéritif.
Garnet: $21.84
Union Square: $ 27.99

Krug 1990
Because it’s one of the few champagnes to be both aged and fermented in oak, Krug is “a cult wine,” explains Zraly: “It’s like Dead Heads. People have Krug parties.” Not surprisingly, this was the richest and heaviest of all the champagnes tried, with a slightly nutty taste. Everybody loved the pleasant eucalyptus smell, too.
Garnet: $175
Union Square: $199

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/urban/strategist/everything/holidayparties/10551/index.html

(*) (*) :| :| :| :o :o Pricey to toast the New Year, no? At least this New York version would have me believe that. ;)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 10:13 AM

Despite all the hyped-up press releases and prerelease demos, certain products were destined to remain vaporware. It seems some technology companies acted on gut and instinct instead of inconvenient facts and time-wasting analysis.

Relying on faith-based reasoning, these technology firms had unshakable confidence that the products they promised would be delivered. Alas, it wasn't always so. Too bad for those of us in the reality-based community.

Yes, it's time once again for Wired News' annual Vaporware Awards.

Now in their sixth year, the Vaporware Awards celebrate all those long-awaited games and gewgaws that were delayed, ditched or discontinued. (And, of course, those that were never more than a vision from on high.)

And so once again, we ask you -- the esteemed Wired News' readers -- to nominate whatever games, gadgets and miracle cures you most looked forward to, but were cruelly denied.

Send your suggestions for the "best" vaporware products or technologies of 2004, and we'll publish the results early next year.

To make it easier on us, please put the name of the company and product in the subject line of your e-mail, as well as in the message body. And don't forget to include some acerbic comments that we can quote in the write-up.

As in previous years, software in a never-ending, prerelease, beta-testing stage is considered vaporware, even if it's widely available. It hasn't shipped until it's shrink-wrapped.

Likewise hardware. Prototypes may exist in some company's lab, but it's vaporware until it hits store shelves.

And remember, if it shipped -- even if it stank -- it's not vaporware.

(*) (*) It's been awhile since I saw the term "vaporware" and it still certainly applies! ;)

(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

12-31-2004, 10:20 AM

JOHANNESBURG -- Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a sixth sense for disasters, experts said Thursday.

Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.

"No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit," said H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka's Wildlife Department. "I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening."

The waves washed floodwaters up to two miles inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards.

"There has been a lot of anecdotal evidence about dogs barking or birds migrating before volcanic eruptions or earthquakes. But it has not been proven," said Matthew van Lierop, an animal behavior specialist at Johannesburg Zoo. "There have been no specific studies because you can't really test it in a lab or field setting."

Other authorities concurred with this assessment. "Wildlife seem to be able to pick up certain phenomenon, especially birds ... there are many reports of birds detecting impending disasters," said Clive Walker, who has written several books on African wildlife.

Animals certainly rely on the known senses such as smell or hearing to avoid danger such as predators. The notion of an animal sixth sense -- or some other mythical power -- is an enduring one which the evidence on Sri Lanka's battered coast is likely to add to.

The Romans saw owls as omens of impending disaster and many ancient cultures viewed elephants as sacred animals endowed with special powers or attributes.

The tsunami was triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean Sunday, killing tens of thousands of people in Asia and East Africa.

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66148,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

(*) (*) :| :| Now if we could only have their (animals) 6th sense to warn us? Doc warned me a few times just before an earthquake hit when we were still living back in southern California. It was really amazing how dogs sense it before we humans do. :o

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-01-2005, 07:55 AM

The recent robotic explorations of the 'air-shafts' in the Great Pyramid have demonstrated that there are still many mysteries surrounding the ancient monument. Ian Shaw discusses the debate around the building of the great structure and investigates the methods used in its construction.

LOTS more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/great_pyramid_01.shtml

(8) (8) HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERONE!! (8) (8) (8)

(l) (l) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-01-2005, 08:01 AM

Play the animation to restore Wells Cathedral to its former glory - now's your chance to paint the building in its original medieval colours.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/state/church_reformation/launch_ani_paint_cathedral.shtml

(*) (*) Those who know me "know" that I'll find flash animations that let you draw and/or paint! ;) ;) Have fun! And, happy new year!

(k) (k) and a ({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-01-2005, 08:03 AM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/walk/index.shtml

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-01-2005, 08:04 AM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/celts/

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-01-2005, 08:05 AM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ancientgreece/classics/theatre/intro.shtml

(*) (*) How cool! (h) (h)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-01-2005, 08:08 AM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/education/sysm/romans/index_choice.shtml

(*) (*) .....and to think that these sites are for kids! How delightful!! :o ;)

(k) (k) and ({) (}) 's,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-02-2005, 02:27 PM

January 2, 2005 By SIMON SINGH London Op-Ed article

WE have now entered what is being celebrated as the
Einstein Year, marking the centenary of the physicist's
annus mirabilis in 1905, when he published three landmark
papers - those that proved the existence of the atom,
showed the validity of quantum physics and, of course,
introduced the world to his theory of special relativity.
Not bad for a beginner.

"It's not that I'm so smart," Einstein once said, "It's
just that I stay with problems longer." Whatever the reason
for his greatness, there is no doubt that this
determination allowed him to invent courageous new physics
and explore realms that nobody else had dared to
investigate.

What he was not, however, was a perfect genius. In fact,
when it came to the biggest scientific issue of all - the
origin of the universe - he was utterly wrong. And while we
should certainly laud his achievements over the next 12
months, we may learn a more valuable lesson by
investigating Einstein's greatest failure.

The story starts in the late 19th century, when the
scientific establishment believed in an eternal and
unchanging universe. This was a neat theory of cosmology,
because a universe that had always existed did not raise
any awkward questions, such as "When was the universe
created?" and "What (or Who) created it?"

Einstein grew up in this era, and was similarly convinced
that the universe had existed for an eternity. However,
when he developed general relativity (his theory of
gravity) in 1915, he became aware of a tricky problem.
Gravity is an attractive force - it attracts coins to the
ground and it attracts comets toward the sun. So why hadn't
gravity caused the matter in the universe to collapse
inward on itself?

Gravity seemed to be incompatible with an eternal,
unchanging universe, and Einstein certainly had no sympathy
for the alternative view of a collapsing universe, stating
that: "To admit such a possibility seems senseless."

Isaac Newton had run into the same problem with his own
theory of gravity some 250 years earlier. He too believed
in an eternal universe, yet he knew that gravity would have
to cause its collapse after a finite time. His solution was
to propose that God was responsible for keeping apart all
the celestial objects, adjusting their positions from time
to time as part of his cosmic curatorial responsibilities.

Einstein was reluctant to invoke God, so his solution was
to fiddle with his theory of general relativity, adding an
antigravity force alongside familiar gravity. This
repulsive force would counteract gravity over cosmic
distances, thereby maintaining the overall stability of the
universe. There was no evidence for this antigravity force,
but Einstein assumed that it had to exist in order to
provide a platform for eternity.

Although everything now seemed to make sense, there were
some dissenters. A small band of renegade cosmologists
suggested in the 1920's that the universe was not eternal
but had been created at a finite moment in the past. They
claimed it had exploded and expanded from a small, hot,
dense state into what we see today. In particular, they
argued that it had once been compacted into a primeval
super atom, which had then ruptured and exploded. This
model, which has since developed into the Big Bang theory,
did not require any stabilizing antigravity because it
proposed a dynamic, evolving universe.

The Big Bang model was initially ridiculed by the
scientific establishment. For example, one of its pioneers,
Georges Lemaître, was both a cosmologist and an ordained
priest, so critics cited his theology as his motivation for
advancing such a crackpot theory of creation. They
suspected that the model was Lemaître's way of sneaking a
Creator into science. While Einstein was not biased against
Lemaître's religious background, he did call the priest's
physics "abominable." It was enough to banish the Big Bang
model to the hinterlands of cosmology.

However, in 1929 Einstein was forced to eat humble pie.
Edwin Hubble, working at Mount Wilson Observatory in
Southern California, showed that all the distant galaxies
in the universe were racing away from one another as though
they were debris from a cosmic explosion. The Big Bang
model seemed to be correct. And, while it would take
several decades before the theory was accepted by the
scientific establishment, Einstein, to his credit, did not
fight on. "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory
explanation of creation to which I have ever listened," he
said, and even called his repulsive force the biggest
blunder of his career.

In 1931, Einstein paid a visit to Hubble at Mount Wilson,
where he renounced his own static cosmology and endorsed
the expanding universe model. His support was enough for
The New York Times to embrace the mavericks, running an
article with the headline "Lemaître Suggests One, Single,
Great Atom, Embracing All Energy, Started The Universe."
Hubble's hometown newspaper in Missouri, The Springfield
Daily News, preferred to focus on its local hero: "Youth
Who Left Ozark Mountains to Study Stars Causes Einstein to
Change His Mind."

It might seem that Einstein emerges from this story as a
flawed genius, one who was not perfect. In fact, there is a
twist to the tale, one that implies he was perhaps better
than perfect.

If gravity pulls everything together, then the expansion of
the Big Bang should be slowing, because all the receding
galaxies would be attracted to one another. In 1998,
however, when astronomers tried to measure this
deceleration, they were astonished to find that the
universe is in fact accelerating. The galaxies are
apparently moving apart faster and faster as time passes.

What is the best explanation scientists can come up with?
The existence of an antigravity force. Theorists call this
repulsive effect "dark energy," but it is exactly the sort
of force that Einstein posited to maintain the stability of
the universe. Antigravity is now back in fashion some seven
decades after he abandoned it. It seems that even when
Einstein thought he was wrong, he turned out to be right.

And, as we celebrate the Einstein Year, let's also bear in
mind the fact that he was prepared to admit that he was
wrong. Perhaps humility, more than anything, is the mark of
true genius.

Simon Singh is the author of "Fermat's Enigma" and the
forthcoming "Big Bang: The Origins of the Universe."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/opinion/02singh.html?ex=1105697153&ei=1&en=4968a6471eb19928

(*) (*) What a real treat this was to read! Einstein's chararteristic blend of visionary genius and humility is a remarkable example to follow. When presented with evidence however flawed at the time that anitgravity did not exist, he backed down from his position that it was the balancing energy stablizing a static universe. Now we know about black hole abd other dark energy - which makes Einstein correct in his origninal assumptions. (h) (h)

(k) (k) Happy New year!

Namaste'
Sweeetlady

sweetlady

01-02-2005, 02:36 PM

January 1, 2005 By JARED DIAMOND

Los Angeles - NEW Year's weekend traditionally is a time
for us to reflect, and to make resolutions based on our
reflections. In this fresh year, with the United States
seemingly at the height of its power and at the start of a
new presidential term, Americans are increasingly concerned
and divided about where we are going. How long can America
remain ascendant? Where will we stand 10 years from now, or
even next year?

Such questions seem especially appropriate this year.
History warns us that when once-powerful societies
collapse, they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly. That
shouldn't come as much of a surprise: peak power usually
means peak population, peak needs, and hence peak
vulnerability. What can be learned from history that could
help us avoid joining the ranks of those who declined
swiftly? We must expect the answers to be complex, because
historical reality is complex: while some societies did
indeed collapse spectacularly, others have managed to
thrive for thousands of years without major reversal.

When it comes to historical collapses, five groups of
interacting factors have been especially important: the
damage that people have inflicted on their environment;
climate change; enemies; changes in friendly trading
partners; and the society's political, economic and social
responses to these shifts. That's not to say that all five
causes play a role in every case. Instead, think of this as
a useful checklist of factors that should be examined, but
whose relative importance varies from case to case.

For instance, in the collapse of the Polynesian society on
Easter Island three centuries ago, environmental problems
were dominant, and climate change, enemies and trade were
insignificant; however, the latter three factors played big
roles in the disappearance of the medieval Norse colonies
on Greenland. Let's consider two examples of declines
stemming from different mixes of causes: the falls of
classic Maya civilization and of Polynesian settlements on
the Pitcairn Islands.

Maya Native Americans of the Yucatan Peninsula and adjacent
parts of Central America developed the New World's most
advanced civilization before Columbus. They were innovators
in writing, astronomy, architecture and art. From local
origins around 2,500 years ago, Maya societies rose
especially after the year A.D. 250, reaching peaks of
population and sophistication in the late 8th century.

Thereafter, societies in the most densely populated areas
of the southern Yucatan underwent a steep political and
cultural collapse: between 760 and 910, kings were
overthrown, large areas were abandoned, and at least 90
percent of the population disappeared, leaving cities to
become overgrown by jungle. The last known date recorded on
a Maya monument by their so-called Long Count calendar
corresponds to the year 909. What happened?

A major factor was environmental degradation by people:
deforestation, soil erosion and water management problems,
all of which resulted in less food. Those problems were
exacerbated by droughts, which may have been partly caused
by humans themselves through deforestation. Chronic warfare
made matters worse, as more and more people fought over
less and less land and resources.

Why weren't these problems obvious to the Maya kings, who
could surely see their forests vanishing and their hills
becoming eroded? Part of the reason was that the kings were
able to insulate themselves from problems afflicting the
rest of society. By extracting wealth from commoners, they
could remain well fed while everyone else was slowly
starving.

What's more, the kings were preoccupied with their own
power struggles. They had to concentrate on fighting one
another and keeping up their images through ostentatious
displays of wealth. By insulating themselves in the short
run from the problems of society, the elite merely bought
themselves the privilege of being among the last to starve.

Whereas Maya societies were undone by problems of their own
making, Polynesian societies on Pitcairn and Henderson
Islands in the tropical Pacific Ocean were undone largely
by other people's mistakes. Pitcairn, the uninhabited
island settled in 1790 by the H.M.S. Bounty mutineers, had
actually been populated by Polynesians 800 years earlier.
That society, which left behind temple platforms, stone and
shell tools and huge garbage piles of fish and bird and
turtle bones as evidence of its existence, survived for
several centuries and then vanished. Why?

In many respects, Pitcairn and Henderson are tropical
paradises, rich in some food sources and essential raw
materials. Pitcairn is home to Southeast Polynesia's
largest quarry of stone suited for making adzes, while
Henderson has the region's largest breeding seabird colony
and its only nesting beach for sea turtles. Yet the
islanders depended on imports from Mangareva Island,
hundreds of miles away, for canoes, crops, livestock and
oyster shells for making tools.

Unfortunately for the inhabitants of Pitcairn and
Henderson, their Mangarevan trading partner collapsed for
reasons similar to those underlying the Maya decline:
deforestation, erosion and warfare. Deprived of essential
imports in a Polynesian equivalent of the 1973 oil crisis,
the Pitcairn and Henderson societies declined until
everybody had died or fled.

The Maya and the Henderson and Pitcairn Islanders are not
alone, of course. Over the centuries, many other societies
have declined, collapsed or died out. Famous victims
include the Anasazi in the American Southwest, who
abandoned their cities in the 12th century because of
environmental problems and climate change, and the
Greenland Norse, who disappeared in the 15th century
because of all five interacting factors on the checklist.
There were also the ancient Fertile Crescent societies, the
Khmer at Angkor Wat, the Moche society of Peru - the list
goes on.

But before we let ourselves get depressed, we should also
remember that there is another long list of cultures that
have managed to prosper for lengthy periods of time.
Societies in Japan, Tonga, Tikopia, the New Guinea
Highlands and Central and Northwest Europe, for example,
have all found ways to sustain themselves. What separates
the lost cultures from those that survived? Why did the
Maya fail and the shogun succeed?

Half of the answer involves environmental differences:
geography deals worse cards to some societies than to
others. Many of the societies that collapsed had the
misfortune to occupy dry, cold or otherwise fragile
environments, while many of the long-term survivors enjoyed
more robust and fertile surroundings. But it's not the case
that a congenial environment guarantees success: some
societies (like the Maya) managed to ruin lush
environments, while other societies - like the Incas, the
Inuit, Icelanders and desert Australian Aborigines - have
managed to carry on in some of the earth's most daunting
environments.

The other half of the answer involves differences in a
society's responses to problems. Ninth-century New Guinea
Highland villagers, 16th-century German landowners, and the
Tokugawa shoguns of 17th-century Japan all recognized the
deforestation spreading around them and solved the problem,
either by developing scientific reforestation (Japan and
Germany) or by transplanting tree seedlings (New Guinea).
Conversely, the Maya, Mangarevans and Easter Islanders
failed to address their forestry problems and so collapsed.
Consider Japan. In the 1600's, the country faced its own
crisis of deforestation, paradoxically brought on by the
peace and prosperity following the Tokugawa shoguns'
military triumph that ended 150 years of civil war. The
subsequent explosion of Japan's population and economy set
off rampant logging for construction of palaces and cities,
and for fuel and fertilizer.

The shoguns responded with both negative and positive
measures. They reduced wood consumption by turning to
light-timbered construction, to fuel-efficient stoves and
heaters, and to coal as a source of energy. At the same
time, they increased wood production by developing and
carefully managing plantation forests. Both the shoguns and
the Japanese peasants took a long-term view: the former
expected to pass on their power to their children, and the
latter expected to pass on their land. In addition, Japan's
isolation at the time made it obvious that the country
would have to depend on its own resources and couldn't meet
its needs by pillaging other countries. Today, despite
having the highest human population density of any large
developed country, Japan is more than 70 percent forested.

There is a similar story from Iceland. When the island was
first settled by the Norse around 870, its light volcanic
soils presented colonists with unfamiliar challenges. They
proceeded to cut down trees and stock sheep as if they were
still in Norway, with its robust soils. Significant erosion
ensued, carrying half of Iceland's topsoil into the ocean
within a century or two. Icelanders became the poorest
people in Europe. But they gradually learned from their
mistakes, over time instituting stocking limits on sheep
and other strict controls, and establishing an entire
government department charged with landscape management.
Today, Iceland boasts the sixth-highest per-capita income
in the world.

What lessons can we draw from history? The most
straightforward: take environmental problems seriously.
They destroyed societies in the past, and they are even
more likely to do so now. If 6,000 Polynesians with stone
tools were able to destroy Mangareva Island, consider what
six billion people with metal tools and bulldozers are
doing today. Moreover, while the Maya collapse affected
just a few neighboring societies in Central America,
globalization now means that any society's problems have
the potential to affect anyone else. Just think how crises
in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq have shaped the United
States today.

Other lessons involve failures of group decision-making.
There are many reasons why past societies made bad
decisions, and thereby failed to solve or even to perceive
the problems that would eventually destroy them. One reason
involves conflicts of interest, whereby one group within a
society (for instance, the pig farmers who caused the worst
erosion in medieval Greenland and Iceland) can profit by
engaging in practices that damage the rest of society.
Another is the pursuit of short-term gains at the expense
of long-term survival, as when fishermen overfish the
stocks on which their livelihoods ultimately depend.

History also teaches us two deeper lessons about what
separates successful societies from those heading toward
failure. A society contains a built-in blueprint for
failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences
of its actions. That's why Maya kings, Norse Greenlanders
and Easter Island chiefs made choices that eventually
undermined their societies. They themselves did not begin
to feel deprived until they had irreversibly destroyed
their landscape.

Could this happen in the United States? It's a thought that
often occurs to me here in Los Angeles, when I drive by
gated communities, guarded by private security patrols, and
filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on
private pensions, and send their children to private
schools. By doing these things, they lose the motivation to
support the police force, the municipal water supply,
Social Security and public schools. If conditions
deteriorate too much for poorer people, gates will not keep
the rioters out. Rioters eventually burned the palaces of
Maya kings and tore down the statues of Easter Island
chiefs; they have also already threatened wealthy districts
in Los Angeles twice in recent decades.

In contrast, the elite in 17th-century Japan, as in modern
Scandinavia and the Netherlands, could not ignore or
insulate themselves from broad societal problems. For
instance, the Dutch upper class for hundreds of years has
been unable to insulate itself from the Netherlands' water
management problems for a simple reason: the rich live in
the same drained lands below sea level as the poor. If the
dikes and pumps keeping out the sea fail, the well-off
Dutch know that they will drown along with everybody else,
which is precisely what happened during the floods of 1953.

The other deep lesson involves a willingness to re-examine
long-held core values, when conditions change and those
values no longer make sense. The medieval Greenland Norse
lacked such a willingness: they continued to view
themselves as transplanted Norwegian pastoralists, and to
despise the Inuit as pagan hunters, even after Norway
stopped sending trading ships and the climate had grown too
cold for a pastoral existence. They died off as a result,
leaving Greenland to the Inuit. On the other hand, the
British in the 1950's faced up to the need for a painful
reappraisal of their former status as rulers of a world
empire set apart from Europe. They are now finding a
different avenue to wealth and power, as part of a united
Europe.

In this New Year, we Americans have our own painful
reappraisals to face. Historically, we viewed the United
States as a land of unlimited plenty, and so we practiced
unrestrained consumerism, but that's no longer viable in a
world of finite resources. We can't continue to deplete our
own resources as well as those of much of the rest of the
world.

Historically, oceans protected us from external threats; we
stepped back from our isolationism only temporarily during
the crises of two world wars. Now, technology and global
interconnectedness have robbed us of our protection. In
recent years, we have responded to foreign threats largely
by seeking short-term military solutions at the last
minute.

But how long can we keep this up? Though we are the richest
nation on earth, there's simply no way we can afford (or
muster the troops) to intervene in the dozens of countries
where emerging threats lurk - particularly when each
intervention these days can cost more than $100 billion and
require more than 100,000 troops.

A genuine reappraisal would require us to recognize that it
will be far less expensive and far more effective to
address the underlying problems of public health,
population and environment that ultimately cause threats to
us to emerge in poor countries. In the past, we have
regarded foreign aid as either charity or as buying
support; now, it's an act of self-interest to preserve our
own economy and protect American lives.

Do we have cause for hope? Many of my friends are
pessimistic when they contemplate the world's growing
population and human demands colliding with shrinking
resources. But I draw hope from the knowledge that
humanity's biggest problems today are ones entirely of our
own making. Asteroids hurtling at us beyond our control
don't figure high on our list of imminent dangers. To save
ourselves, we don't need new technology: we just need the
political will to face up to our problems of population and
the environment.

I also draw hope from a unique advantage that we enjoy.
Unlike any previous society in history, our global society
today is the first with the opportunity to learn from the
mistakes of societies remote from us in space and in time.
When the Maya and Mangarevans were cutting down their
trees, there were no historians or archaeologists, no
newspapers or television, to warn them of the consequences
of their actions. We, on the other hand, have a detailed
chronicle of human successes and failures at our disposal.
Will we choose to use it?

Jared Diamond, who won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in general
nonfiction for "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human
Societies," is the author of the forthcoming "Collapse: How
Societies Choose or Fail to Succeed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/01/opinion/01diamond.html?ex=1105697187&ei=1&en=0dbdd01924d7d5

(*) (*) Chewy but worth the time to read. If all great civilizations eventually came to their demise, what does that say about the world's only superpower? It won't happen (hopefully) in our lifetime but it will come. :| It's obvious now for decades that politicos "forget" that history repeats itself, yet continue the hegemonic "or hegemoronic" ;) foreign lack of diplomacy. Self-centeredness rules, more so than ever. (probably since J.F.K. and the early 1960's) (*) (*)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-02-2005, 02:44 PM

January 2, 2005 By PETE HAMILL

IN its tough, often remorseless way, New York is a crucible
for every manner of talent. Some of the talented young are
swiftly defeated, and retreat into more ordinary lives.
Others are shooting stars, here and gone. Those made of
sterner stuff last longer, and it helps if they have lived
on our streets. Two such people were Susan Sontag and Jerry
Orbach, who died within days of each other. Each was born
in New York, went away as a child, and returned to stay.
They lived and died as members of the same tribe, the New
York tribe.

On the surface, of course, they seemed to be inhabitants of
entirely different worlds. Sontag was the severe
Manhattan-born intellectual. Orbach was out of the Bronx, a
song-and-dance man at the beginning who would become one of
the durable stars of dramatic television. But in their
separate ways, both were nourished by the endless
possibilities offered by their native city.

It was possible to cherish each of them in the same
lifetime. On different evenings as a young man, sitting in
the Theater de Lys on Christopher Street, I saw Orbach as
the Street Singer in "The Threepenny Opera" and as Mack the
Knife. A few years later, he was the epitome of charm and
style in "The Fantasticks." But as he matured, he got even
better. In 1975, I went to Bob Fosse's "Chicago" and
watched Orbach sing "Razzle Dazzle," all cynicism and
style, and thought that no other city on the planet could
have created such pleasure.

In the early 1960's, while Orbach was becoming noticed, I
first read Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp." Suddenly, I knew
that it was all right to be thrilled by Beckett and Ionesco
and Joyce, while also loving Dean Martin. I was starting
then to see the city in the same way that Sontag saw our
culture. I could love the brownstones of Gramercy Park and
embrace Times Square, too. I could, on the same day, travel
from the Metropolitan Museum to Hubert's Flea Circus on
42nd Street.

Sontag, as the obituaries and remembrances pointed out last
week, became a celebrity. Unlike, say, Paris Hilton, she
was not someone who was famous for being famous. She was
not even a celebrity because of her striking looks and
presence, although New Yorkers did nod discreet hellos when
they passed her on the street. The fame came from the work.
And in the work, she was open to exploring the world that
existed beyond the academy. She also had time for other
forms of New York life. She went to parties. She loved
going to movies. In 1983, she appeared as herself in Woody
Allen's "Zelig" (Orbach would have a featured role in Mr.
Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" in 1989).

For a while, I got to know Sontag and Orbach in that
glancing New York way that is always too brief, or too
late, to lead to friendship. I liked them both very much.
Sontag enjoyed talking about movies, and pop fiction, and I
remember asking her one night at dinner in the 1970's if
she'd ever considered writing a detective story. "First,"
she said, "I'd have to invent the person who is writing the
detective story." Then she laughed. Later, in "In America,"
she did just that - exploring the possibilities of
historical fiction by inventing a narrator. Free of the
rigors of the essay, she seemed exuberant in its pages, as
if they had made her young again.

Around the same time, I got to know Orbach and his first
wife, Marta. At dinner, Orbach was immensely curious about
other people, as most good actors are, and many New
Yorkers. We are the city of people who are not like us.
Among the objects of his curiosity were gangsters. After
1971, he focused on the gangster Joey Gallo. In the film
made from Jimmy Breslin's 1969 novel, "The Gang That
Couldn't Shoot Straight," he had played a character based
on Gallo, who was known in the tabloids as "Crazy Joe."
When the real gangster emerged from prison, he wanted to
meet the man who had played him in the movie, and the
meeting was arranged by a New York cop!

The two liked each other very much indeed. Gallo had spent
much of his prison time reading, and could quote Camus and
talk about Kafka. He had the sort of cynical intelligence
you find in many New Yorkers without great formal
education, and that could be entertaining. Marta started
helping him with his autobiography.

Then on the night of April 7, 1972, Jerry and Marta went to
the Copacabana to help Joey Gallo celebrate his 43rd
birthday. They caught the midnight show, with Don Rickles,
and apparently had a marvelous time. The Orbachs later
claimed they went home after the show, but more than 30
years later details remain a blur. What is clear is that
Joey Gallo and some other hoodlums then drove downtown to
Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy. Most likely they did
not discuss Camus or Kafka. Gunmen came in the back door
around 4 a.m. and shot Joe Gallo to death.

This was a supreme New York moment, full of tradition, an
endorsement of certain eternal verities, one that brought
immense joy to the life of newspaper editors. Everybody
talked about it, and years later I asked Sontag if she
remembered where she was when it happened. She didn't, but
she said, with a melancholy smile: "I wish I'd had the
chance to talk to Joe Gallo before he died."

The Orbachs stayed out of the spotlight after the shooting,
but I saw them the following New Year's Eve. The place was
called Jimmy's, on West 52nd Street, near "21." One of
those ghastly New Year's Eve parties was under way, where
you pay to wear funny hats and blow on noisemakers. I was
at the bar, as usual. The Orbachs were at a table with a
few second-rate gangsters and other friends. I went over
briefly to say hello, and retreated to the bar. Then a
singer named Buddy Greco came on to sing "Lulu's Back in
Town." I said to myself that I'd never do this again.

The next day, I gave up drinking. I'll be dry 32 years New
Year's Day, but I'll think of Jerry Orbach again on the
night before, and wish that he had arranged that
conversation between Susan Sontag and Joe Gallo. And taped
it for the New York record.

Pete Hamill is the author, most recently, of "Downtown: My
Manhattan."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/opinion/02hamill.html?ex=1105697261&ei=1&en=6ddb47d3a2367361

(*) (*) Pete Hamill also wrote a stallar book about a man who lives for three centuries.....starting in Ireland then on Manhattan. Amazing fiction that gripped me for days last year! "Law and Order" will never be the same for sure without Jerry. What so few folks knew was his love of Broadway and the stage in general, and was an outstanding "song and dance man" early in his career. (f) (f) Seems like a number of amazingly talented "lights" were extinguished during 2004. (d) here's to a more hopeful, peaceful, loving and lighter 2005. (l) (l)

Bai Ling,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-02-2005, 02:49 PM

Just a medical alert.....

Is It a Stroke? Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult
to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells
disaster. The stroke victim may suffer brain damage when people
nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke. Now doctors
say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple
questions:

*Ask the individual to smile.

*Ask him or her to raise both arms.

*Ask the person to speak a simple sentence.

If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 9-1-1
immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

After discovering that a group of non-medical volunteers could
identify facial weakness, arm weakness and speech problems,
researchers urged the general public to learn the three questions.
They presented their conclusions at the American Stroke Association's
annual meeting last February. Widespread use of this test could result in
prompt diagnosis and treatment of the stroke and prevent brain damage.

Heart Attack Self Help

... it could save your life!!

Let's say it's 6:15 p.m. and you're driving home (alone, of course)
after an unusually hard day on the job. You're really tired, upset and
frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that
starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only
about five minutes from the hospital nearest your home. Unfortunately, you don't know if you'll be able to make it that far. You have been trained in CPR,
but the guy that taught the course did not tell you how to perform it on
yourself.

HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE

Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, without help,
the person whose heart is beating improperly and who begins to feel faint,
has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these
victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A
deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep
and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A
breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let-up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally
again.

Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the
heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart
also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can
get to a hospital. Tell as many people as possible about this. It could
save their lives!

(*) (*) Although reading this made me feel a little bit anxious, the part about coughing deeply was a new one for me. I'll definitely remember this suggstion for sure! (l) (l) (l)

Warmest wishes,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-02-2005, 03:11 PM

Brainy girls have marriage handicap
From correspondents in London
January 3, 2005

A HIGH IQ is a hindrance for women wanting to get married, while it is an asset for men, according to a study by four British universities.

The study found the likelihood of marriage increased by 35 per cent for males for each 16-point increase in IQ.

But for females, there was a 40 per cent drop for each 16-point rise.

The findings, by the universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow, were published in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper.

The study was based on the IQs of 900 males and females between their 10th and 40th birthdays.

Paul Brown, a psychologist and professor at Nottingham University, told the Sunday Times: "Women in their late 30s who have gone for careers after the first flush of university and who are among the brightest of their generation are finding that men are just not interesting enough."

Writer and broadcaster Claire Rayner said intelligent men often prefered a less brainy partner.

"A chap with a high IQ is going to get a demanding job that is going to take up a lot of his energy and time.

"In many ways he wants a woman who is an old-fashioned wife and looks after the home, a copy of his mum in a way."

Agence France-Presse

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11839665%255E13762,00.html

(*) (*) BA-HUMBUG!!!! The research is only as accurate as the assumptions and expectations of those conducting the study. In this case how many women researchers were involved, hmmm? But then again it sounds feasible that men would prefer to be with less intelligent partners...... ;) <smiling> (*)

Have a spectacular start of your New Year and week tomorrow!

Love,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-02-2005, 05:22 PM

Crossfire Trail (2001)
Louis L'Amour's Crossfire Trail

At his dying friend's side, Rafe Covington (Tom Selleck) vows he'll take care of his buddy's wife, Ann, and protect her ranch. But Rafe's solemn promise angers land-grabbing cattle baron Bruce Barkow (Mark Harmon), who's threatening Ann and other townsfolk in an effort to acquire their property. As the time for Rafe's clash with Barkow draws closer, Rafe also struggles with his feelings for Ann.

Starring: Tom Selleck, Mark Harmon, Barry Corbin, William Sanderson, Joanna Miles, Rex Linn, Wilford Brimley, Brad Johnson, Christian Kane, Patrick Kilpatrick, Virginia Madsen, David O'Hara.
Director: Simon Wincer

(*) (*) (*) (*) (*) I really loved this one and would definitely watch it again! ;) Ah, Calgary is a beautiful and much less expensive place to shoot films than in western states here in the U.S. What was supposed to be Wyoming was wonderful and I'd live on a ranch like that at the drop of a hat. (l) (l)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-04-2005, 04:12 PM

http://www.flashcomponents.com/details.php?table=ff&id=1152&link=

http://www.flashcomponents.com/details.php?table=ff&id=479&link=

(*) (*) I feel like this once in a great while... ;)

http://www.flashcomponents.com/details.php?table=ff&id=437&link=

http://www.flashcomponents.com/details.php?table=ff&id=381&link=

(*) (*) And then sometimes life feels like this:

http://www.flashcomponents.com/details.php?table=ff&id=964&link=

OR

http://www.flashcomponents.com/details.php?table=ff&id=534&link=

(*) (*) This one is really cute although I have sworn off these mechanical claptraps:

http://www.flashcomponents.com/details.php?table=ff&id=553&link=

(*) (*) Reminds me of the old days traveling every week:

http://www.flashcomponents.com/details.php?table=ff&id=478&link=

OR

http://www.flashcomponents.com/details.php?table=ff&id=410&link=

(*) (*) Have a terrific Tuesday!

Namaste'
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-04-2005, 04:19 PM

Wiki-whacking: The valley's been abuzz the past few days over Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger's recent sniping at the participatory encyclopedia. In an essay published to Kuro5hin last week, Sanger, who left Wikipedia in 2002, criticized the organization for its profound lack of deference to expertise. "Nearly everyone with much expertise but little patience will avoid editing Wikipedia, because they will be forced to defend their edits on article discussion pages against attacks by nonexperts," Sanger wrote. The point is well taken, but as Clay Shirky notes, a little bit off base. "Of course librarians, teachers, and academics don't like the Wikipedia," Shirky writes. "It works without privilege, which is inimical to the way those professions operate. This is not some easily fixed cosmetic flaw, it is the Wikipedia's driving force. You can see the reactionary core of the academy playing out in the horror around Google digitizing books held at Harvard and the Library of Congress -- the NY Times published a number of letters by people insisting that real scholarship would still only be possible when done in real libraries. The physical book, the hushed tones, the monastic dedication, and (unspoken) the barriers to use, these are all essential characteristics of the academy today. It's not that it doesn't matter what academics think of the Wikipedia -- it would obviously be better to have as many smart people using it as possible. The problem is that the only thing that would make the academics happy would be to shoehorn it into the kind of filter, then publish model that is broken, and would make the Wikipedia broken as well."

www.siliconvalley.com (today)

(*) (*) That "hush" of a huge library like the one on 5th Ave. in New York City is really impressive. However research is so much faster when the resources are online. (h) (*) (*)

Peace,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-05-2005, 08:08 PM

Make sure speakers are turned up:

http://www.avoision.com/experiments/pi10k/pi10k.html

;) (h)

Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-06-2005, 03:12 PM

http://www.hanttula.com/exhibits/freakyfood/index.htm

:| :| ;)

Peace,
SWeetlady

sweetlady

01-06-2005, 03:16 PM

http://www.huhcorp.com/

;) ;)

(o) Got to run! Doc's at the vet's until at least Saturday and probably into next week. :( :( Thank goodness they have visiting hours. He was up walking this morning when I called - which is a FAR CRY from me carrying him to and from my SUV yesterday afternoon. (l) (l) Benn praying to Saint Francis and everyone else who might be listening. Got to get stuff done before driving the at least half hour drive once again in the dark and rain. (wishing that I could SEE while night-driving :| )

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-08-2005, 10:07 PM

I'd always figured Intel CEO Craig Barrett for a Tony Bennett guy. He looks it, doesn't he? You can just picture him sipping a mint julip at Caesar's Palace waiting for the smooth crooner to take the stage. Well, surprise -- Barrett's a closet headbanger. During his keynote address at the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show Thursday night, Barrett was joined by Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler in a demo of Intel's UmixIt software, which lets consumers lay down their own vocals and instrumental tracks on top of a selected track using either a desktop or notebook PC. Together the two belted out a version of "Walk this Way" that probably had Joe Perry plugging his ears all the way back in Boston (must-see photo). As godawful as it was, the, ahem, "duet" was the highlight of an otherwise uninspiring keynote. Barrett's big message: PC-based technologies have -- shocker! -- bridged the gap with consumer electronics. "The entertainment PC is the bedrock of the digital home," Barrett said. "It's the hub of the home network." Wow. I'll try to keep that prescient vision in mind as I stream music from my PowerBook to my stereo.

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/bios/barrett/photo.htm

http://news.com.com/1606-2-5516066.html

MUST SEE!
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050106/ids_photos_ts/r962689798.jpg

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10589786.htm

(*) (*) ;) (h)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-08-2005, 10:09 PM

PC to play central role in home, Barrett says
PORTAL FOR DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT ENVISIONED

By Dean Takahashi

Mercury News

Let other giants of the computer industry, including Microsoft's Bill Gates, dabble in new technologies to deliver home entertainment. Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett said Thursday that he expects consumers will choose the personal computer as their main source of digital entertainment in the living room.

But Barrett, who climbed onto a stage wearing a black cowboy hat before a crowd of thousands at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, wasn't talking about the beige box of five years ago. Rather, he said sleek-looking ``entertainment PCs'' would be the tool consumers use to access all their data for music, movies, games and digital pictures. Such new uses of the PC are helping it spread and become a more integral part of consumers' digital lifestyles, Barrett said.

``The entertainment PC is the bedrock of the digital home,'' Barrett said. ``It's the hub of the home network.''

So far, Barrett said, 20 computer makers have begun making entertainment PCs based on designs Intel has created, with some of them using Microsoft's Media Center edition of its Windows software. Many of the machines look far different from the old boxes, including one prototype Intel designed to be mounted on the handlebars of a racing bicycle.

As he argued for the PC, Barrett demonstrated some gadgets that would help improve its status in the living room, such as technology that enabled a consumer to dump the TV remote control. For example, Barrett's onstage assistant demonstrated that by waving his arms in front of the TV's sensors, he could select videos to watch and change channels.

``Those remotes are passe,'' Barrett said.

Barrett also said wireless technologies would enable consumers to transfer data from a central PC to digital media adapters -- secondary boxes that would allow a high-definition movie to be sent wirelessly to a TV in another room.

There were plenty of people at the Las Vegas trade show who disagreed with Barrett's focus on the PC for the living room, and some suggested that Intel, which has retreated from some of its consumer electronics chip ventures, might be left behind.

Yet Barrett said new kinds of compelling uses would broaden the use of PCs in the home. For instance, he noted that PCs and sensor networks in the home can be used to monitor the movements of Alzheimer's patients, allowing them more independence. Hewlett-Packard showed a similar use of sensors that could detect whether an elderly patient had fallen and needed medical assistance.

Because the annual Consumer Electronics Show has increasingly become synonymous with glitz, Barrett enlisted support from two celebrities in his talk. Steve Tyler of the rock band Aerosmith crooned a version of ``Walk This Way'' with Barrett, and actor/director Robert Redford touted the use of technology tools that help independent filmmakers protect their films from piracy.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10589786.htm

(*) (*) (S)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-08-2005, 10:10 PM

AS they both make codecs for video and audio compression!

"It's like 'Lord of the Flies,' only with cubicles."

-- A former RealNetworks employee describes working conditions at the company.

;) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-08-2005, 10:12 PM

Apple's found a burgeoning new market for its iPod devices: radiologists. According to Radiologic Society of North America, 3,000 to 5,000 radiologists worldwide are using an open-source program called OsiriX to transform their iPods into storage devices for medical images. "This is what we call using off the shelf, consumer market technology," said Osman Ratib, the vice-chairman of radiologic services at UCLA who helped develop OsiriX. "Technology coming from the consumer market is changing the way we do things in the radiology department. With OsiriX, radiologists can sort and manage medical image files on the iPod much the same way as MP3s and transfer images from computer to computer. Radiologists deal with a very large amount of medical imaging data. I never have enough space on my disk, no matter how big my disk is -- I always need more space. One day I realized, I have an iPod that has 40 gigabytes of storage on it. It's twice as big as my disk on my laptop and I'm using only 10 percent of it for my music. So, why don't I use it as a hard disk for storing medical images? It's easy to use and you don't have to worry about how to load and unload it from the iPod. But the real beauty of it is that I can use the images directly on the iPod. I don't have to take the time to copy them to my computer. The iPod allows me to copy data from work to my laptop, but I don't have to do it if I don't want to."

http://www.rsna.org/publications/rsnanews/dec04/ipod-1.html

(*) (*) Who knew? ;)

Peace,
SL

sweetlady

01-08-2005, 10:13 PM

http://www.apsmithadsl.plus.com/cheese/

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-08-2005, 10:17 PM

Hello iMoto: A few lucky souls got a peek at Motorola's new iTunes phone at CES yesterday, and by all reports it's pretty slick. It syncs with a computer and the iTunes Music Store like an iPod does, and uses the iPod interface for navigating and playing digital music. No word on a release date yet, but a Macworld launch is certainly possible.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1749056,00.asp

(*) (*) another gadget! The great thing is the competition brings the cost to manufacture and price to consumers down. :o

(S) (S) I'm heading for the couch to watch a netflix film. It's been ages or at least seems to. It's great to rest the eyes, mind, heart and spirit.

Pleasant dreams....

Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-08-2005, 10:18 PM

Review by RICHARD BROOKHISER

In "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," C. A. Tripp, a
sex researcher and chronicler of the gay rights movement,
makes the case.

Forum: Was Lincoln Gay?

www.nytimes.com/books

(*) (*) and to all a g'night! (S) (S) (S)

Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-11-2005, 10:28 AM

January 8, 2005 BY JOSEPH BERGER

Jesus L., a 42-year-old construction worker and illegal
immigrant from the southern highlands of Ecuador, had not
seen the three children he left behind for 11 years.

But there they were just before the New Year, conjured up
on a wall-mounted television screen by the hocus-pocus of
the Internet in real time in a storefront in Jackson
Heights, Queens. They giggled self-consciously in
home-movie fashion, spinning around to show him how much
they had grown and making the eternal appeal of children
for a dog.

"You are so tall," he was able to tell his son, Santiago,
whom he had not laid eyes on since he was a 9-month-old
infant and was now, he could plainly see, a lean,
dark-haired boy of 12.

"You are so nice, very beautiful," he told his daughters,
Maribel, 20, and Nadia, 17, who showed off their figures,
hands on hips in mock fashion-model style.

His wife, Maria, sitting next to him on a leather couch,
had not seen her children for two years, so she stood up in
front of the camera to show them the latest family event:
her bow-shaped belly.

"One more brother is coming up," she said, although she
does not know yet whether she is expecting a boy or a girl.
The children, seated together in a small room in Cuenca, a
16th-century city, were delighted, as Jesus and Maria could
plainly see by their faces on the television screen.

Their conversation took place the way it did because of the
wizardry of videoconferencing, a technology first devised
for chief executives to communicate with their far-flung
underlings. The format is slowly becoming popular with the
city's poor immigrants as the most vivid way to communicate
with their families back home.

At some of the storefronts that offer cheap flights home,
money transfers and other services in immigrant
communities, Ecuadoreans, Colombians, Pakistanis, Mexicans
and others are finding what Jesus L. found: a small room
with a computer-driven flat-screen television and a video
camera.

With a few clicks of a remote and at a relatively low cost
- $1.50 per minute for Jesus L. - the setup takes them back
to their hometowns and brings their hometowns here.

"It reduces the emotional distance," said Sharon Zukin, an
urban sociologist at Brooklyn College.

Indeed, the conversations are often emotionally intense. At
Austro Financial Services on Roosevelt Avenue, Jesus'
intercontinental exchange with his children was not all
playful. The daughters were angry with him for straining
the marriage by becoming involved for a time with another
woman.

"If you separate, what will happen to us?" Maribel pleaded.
"We are a family; please don't break up."

Jesus could see -not just hear - Maribel's anger.

"I don't want any more problems. I want to change what I did
before," Jesus said, kneading his calloused workman's hands
in shame. "I want to try."

Poorer and illegal immigrants who cannot afford to travel
back home or are afraid they will not be allowed back into
the United States particularly favor videoconferencing.
Jesus, for example, left Ecuador because he could barely
support his family on a shoemaker's wages, but he cannot
fly back to visit his children because he has no legal
immigration documents.

While the videoconferencing systems have long been
available here, they have only recently been introduced in
the less technologically advanced countries that most
immigrants come from. Banco del Austro, the parent company
of Austro Financial, has provided the service for a year
and a half in its offices in Cuenca, Azogues and Canar and
will soon do so in Quito, the capital city.

There are no hard data on this particular use of
videoconferencing, but Rose Kleriotis, the South American
representative for International Communications Industries
Association, a trade group, said the technology could be
introduced on a simple computer monitor fitted with a
camera and with increasingly available software, which
videoconferencing entrepreneurs said had come down in
price.

"If you have a camera and computer and program on the other
end, then you can talk as long as you want," Ms. Kleriotis
said.

Videoconferencing is another one of the bridges that have
narrowed the chasm between immigrants and their home
cultures. While coming to America a century ago usually
meant saying goodbye to relatives and homeland forever,
today's families keep in touch regularly through cheap
flights and phone calls, satellite television and the
Internet.

While it cannot recreate the warmth of a relative's hug or
the scent of a cherished child, videoconferencing is a
"qualitative leap" in turning the experience of immigration
into something less than a permanent break, according to
Philip Kasinitz, a professor of sociology at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York.

Jesus put it more simply.

"I can see their faces, I can
see how they are, tall or small," he said, "so the emotion
is very different."

For many, videoconferencing provides the only way to
communicate in real time. Two deaf and mute Ecuadorean
brothers, each on a different continent, were able to talk
for the first time in sign language when they could see
each other's hand movements on a television screen, said
Paola Palacios, who manages the Cuenca end of the
conversation for Banco del Austro.

Mercedes Delgado of Cuenca had not seen her son in Queens
for seven years. She took his five children, who had also
not seen him, and a sister into the videoconferencing room
in Cuenca so they could talk with him while he was in
Queens.

Diego Pinos, who manages the "videoconferencia" for Austro
Financial Services, said that he handled 30 conferences a
weekend and that business was especially brisk during the
Christmas season.

"I feel good about my job because the people can see their
families," he said. "Sometimes when they finish they are
crying 'My father! My son!' "

On New Year's Eve, Laura A., 50, a jewelry worker in Long
Island City, Queens, was able to see her husband, four
sons, a daughter, three daughters-in-law and six
grandchildren all at once as they squeezed into and around
a couch in a tiny room in Cuenca. The latest grandchild,
swaddled in white, was just two months old.

Laura, sobbing with delight, said, "He has the same face as
his father," something she could not have said on the
telephone.

Her daughter and daughters-in-law were quickly in tears,
which she was able to see.

"Please don't cry," Laura said. "Not today. I'm going to be
happy today."

She could see one granddaughter's long pigtails. She could
see that one of her sons was putting on weight and
admonished him, "You have to lose weight." She could see
that her daughter and daughters-in-law were staying in
shape. Her daughter, Gabriela, hands on hips, showed off
her figure.

Laura stood up, too, in front of the camera and exhibited
her youthful figure.

"I dressed in black to look slim," she said, but then
added, "Can you see my wrinkles?"

She had been particularly concerned about Danilo, her
youngest son, who has struggled with a drinking problem but
seems to be winning. She asked him to step forward and,
seeing his long sad face, said, "I'm always thinking about
you a lot."

Her oldest son, Pablo, and her husband, Jaime, began to
cry.

"Pablo, don't cry," she told her eldest. "You have always
been a strong person. I will be back with you, and I will
raise that grandchild."

The day was particularly evocative because it was on New
Year's Eve 11 years ago that she left Ecuador. Her jewelry
business in Cuenca had failed, and she hoped to make money
in New York City to continue supporting her family back
home. Danilo and Gabriela were young children when she
left. She never got the appropriate immigration documents
and so has never returned, though she is working on getting
a green card.

"Get together tonight and enjoy the evening as a family,"
she said in a shaky voice. "My heart is with you every day
of my life. You are very precious to me."

For 40 minutes, though, thanks to videoconferencing, she
was together with them - virtually - as a family in the
same small room.

www.nytimes.com

(*) (*) It's (videoteleconferencing) is still off on the horizon in terms of affordable (inexpensive) and plug and play for even those unfamiliar with multimedia PC's. BUt it *is* coming..... (o)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-11-2005, 10:32 AM

Op-Ed Columnist: Defining Victory Down January 9, 2005

WASHINGTON

The president prides himself on being a pig-headed guy. He
is determined to win in Iraq even if he is not winning in
Iraq.

So get ready for a Mohammedan mountain of spin defining
victory down. Come what may - civil war over oil,
Iranian-style fatwas du jour or men on prayer rugs reciting
the Koran all day on the Iraqi TV network our own geniuses
created - this administration will call it a triumph.

Even for a White House steeped in hooey, it's a challenge.
President Bush will have to emulate the parsing and
prevaricating he disdained in his predecessor: It depends
on what the meaning of the word "win" is.

The president's still got a paper bag over his head,
claiming that the daily horrors out of Iraq reflect just a
few soreheads standing in the way of a glorious democracy,
even though his commander of ground forces there concedes
that the areas where more than half of Iraqis live are not
secure enough for them to vote - an acknowledgment that the
insurgency is resilient and growing. It's like saying
Montana and North Dakota are safe to vote, but New York,
Philadelphia and L.A. are not. What's a little
disenfranchisement among friends?

"I know it's hard, but it's hard for a reason," Mr. Bush
said on Friday, a day after seven G.I.'s and two marines
died. "And the reason it's hard is because there are a
handful of folks who fear freedom." If it's just a handful,
how come it's so hard?

Then the president added: "And I look at the elections as a
- as a - you know, as a - as - as a historical marker for
our Iraq policy."

Well, that's clear. Mr. Bush is huddled in his bubble, but
he's in a pickle. The administration that had no plan for
what to do with Iraq when it got it, now has no plan for
getting out.

The mood in Washington about our misadventure seemed to
grow darker last week, maybe because lawmakers were back
after visiting with their increasingly worried constituents
and - even more alarming - visiting Iraq, where you still
can't drive from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone
without fearing for your life.

"It's going to be ugly," Joe Biden told Charlie Rose about
the election.

The arrogant Bush war council never admits a mistake. Paul
Wolfowitz, a walking mistake, said on Friday he's been
asked to remain in the administration. But the "idealists,"
as the myopic dunderheads think of themselves, are
obviously worried enough, now that Mr. Bush is safely
re-elected, to let a little reality seep in. Rummy tapped a
respected retired four-star general to go to Iraq this week
for an open-ended review of the entire military meshugas.

Mr. Wolfowitz, who devised the debacle in Iraq, is kept on,
while Brent Scowcroft, Poppy Bush's lieutenant who warned
Junior not to go into Iraq, is pushed out as chairman of
the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. That's the
backward nature of this beast: Deceive, you're golden; tell
the truth, you're gone.

Mr. Scowcroft was not deterred. Like Banquo's ghost, he
clanked around last week, disputing the president's
absurdly sunny forecasts for Iraq, and noting dryly that
this administration had turned the word "realist" into a
"pejorative." He predicted that the elections "have the
great potential for deepening the conflict" by exacerbating
the divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. He worried
that there would be "an incipient civil war," and said the
best chance for the U.S. to avoid anarchy was to turn over
the operation to the less inflammatory U.N. or NATO.

Mr. Scowcroft appeared at the New America Foundation with
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security
adviser, who declared the Iraq war a moral, political and
military failure. If we can't send 500,000 troops, spend
$500 billion and agree to resume the draft, then the
conflict should be "terminated," he said, adding that far
from the Jeffersonian democracy Mr. Bush extols, the most
we can hope for is a Shiite-controlled theocracy.

The Iraqi election that was meant to be the solution to the
problem - like the installation of a new Iraqi government
and the transfer of sovereignty and all the other steps
that were supposed to make things better - may actually be
making things worse. The election is going to expand the
control of the Shiite theocrats, even beyond what their
numbers would entitle them to have, because of the way the
Bush team has set it up and the danger that if you're a
Sunni, the vote you cast may be your last.

It is a lesson never learned: Matters of state and the
heart that start with a lie rarely end well.

www.nytimes.com

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-11-2005, 10:36 AM

Editorial: Exit, Snarling

January 9, 2005 www.nytimes.com

As it turns out, an important moment in the annals of
modern culture may have occurred when Jon Stewart of Comedy
Central went on CNN's "Crossfire" last October and decided
to be serious. He told Paul Begala, on the left, and Tucker
Carlson, on the right, that their show, which specializes
in encouraging midlevel political types to yell slogans at
each other, was "partisan hackery" that was lowering the
level of political discourse. At the time, he was widely
denounced for failing to be funny.

But the fact that Mr. Stewart, a comedian, is perhaps the
most influential political commentator on television is in
itself a sign of the times, and it turns out he may be
prescient about programming as well. Jonathan Klein,
president of CNN, announced last week that he was canceling
"Crossfire" and steering CNN back toward actual news.

Maybe this could be the start of something big. We have
lived through a generation now in which television news
operations grew more and more dependent on "talking heads"
shows because they are inexpensive. Since conversation is
not normally high-octane viewing, producers tried to raise
the interest level by encouraging the guests to start
yelling at one another. The Fox News network swept the
decks when it combined the snarling heads with right-wing
commentary. Soon, the all-news airwaves were awash with
primal screams. People tuning in to hear how the election
was going might very well have imagined they had clicked
onto a pregame show for professional wrestling.

Perhaps this trend has gone as far as it can go. Mr.
Stewart's "Daily Show," which is especially popular with
young people, is a reminder that television was supposed to
be a "cool" medium, best suited to people whose jugular
veins aren't throbbing. And last month, when the tsunami
hit Asia, viewers got a chance to notice what they were in
danger of losing to talk TV. CNN, with a comparatively
large international army of journalists at its disposal,
went out and covered the story. Fox News and MSNBC had to
depend more on conversationalists in the studio, all of
whom agreed that tidal waves were very, very bad.

(*) (*) Amazing how Jon Stewart and Jay Leno (among others) have become the mass media conduit through which many, many folks get their news. Well, at least "news stories" are made laughable - especially on politics and other matters that won't mean anything in 100 years. :| :| Seriously.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-11-2005, 10:39 AM

Frank Lingua, president and CEO of Dissembling Associates, is the nation's leading purveyor of buzzwords, catch phrases and cliches for people too busy to speak in plain English.

"Business Finance" contributing editor Dan Danbom interviewed Lingua in his New York City office.

Read more for the interview.

Danbom: Is being a cliche expert a full-time job?

Lingua: Bottom line is I have a full plate 24/7.

D. Is it hard to keep up with the seemingly endless supply of cliches that spew from business?

L. Some days, I don't have the bandwidth. It's like drinking from a fire hydrant.

D. So it's difficult?

L. Harder than nailing Jell-O to the wall.

D. Where do most cliches come from?

L. Stakeholders push the envelope until it's outside the box.

D. How do you track them once they've been coined?

L. It's like herding cats.

D. Can you predict whether a phrase is going to become a cliche?

L. Yes. I skate to where the puck's going to be. Because if you aren't the lead dog, you're not providing a customer-centric proactive solution.

D. Give us a new buzzword that we'll be hearing ad nauseam.

L. "Enronitis" could be a next-generation player.

D. Do people understand your role as a cliche expert?

L. No, they can't get their arms around that. But they aren't intended to.

D. How do people know you're a cliche expert?

L. I walk the walk and talk the talk.

D. Did incomprehensibility come naturally to you?

L. I wasn't wired that way, but it became mission-critical as I strategically focused on my go-forward plan.

D. What did you do to develop this talent?

L. It's not rocket science. It's not brain surgery. When you drill down to the granular level, it's just basic blocking and tackling.

D. How do you know if you're successful in your work?

L. At the end of the day, it's all about robust, world-class language solutions.

D. How do you stay ahead of others in the buzzword industry?

L. Net-net, my value proposition is based on maximizing synergies and being first to market with a leveraged, value-added deliverable. That's the
opportunity space on a level playing field.

D. Does everyone in business eventually devolve into the sort of mindless drivel you spout?

L. If you walk like a duck and talk like a duck, you're a duck. They all drink the Kool-Aid.

(*) (*) <smiling> ;) Enjoy! (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-11-2005, 04:13 PM

Today, 1/11/05 in the WSJ:

"Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?" asks loopy Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer. We thought that question was answered on Sept. 11, 2001, but then there are still people who deny the Holocaust too.

Still, how does such a lunatic piece get published in a semirespectable paper like the Los Angeles Times? Well, consider that Scheer's editor is Michael Kinsley, who in a November 2003 Slate piece demanded to know why President Bush had changed his mind about "nation building":

One simple test of a change of mind is whether it is acknowledged and explained. In his eloquent speech this month, Bush made a gutsy reference to "sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East." This was taken as a near-explicit criticism of his own father, among others. But there is every reason to suppose that our current Bush also supported this approach for most of those 60 years, including his entire adult life until a few months ago when Iraq started going bad. What caused the scales to fall from his eyes?

Kinsley must have been in Bhutan with Jill Lawrence when the World Trade Center fell. Surely, though, somebody told him what had happened on Sept. 11--but we suppose he must've found it just too hard to believe. Not like monkeyfishing.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer11jan11,0,5399604.story

http://slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2091185 (Slate article)

(*) (*) Some folks in LA don't believe in earthquakes either. :| :| Talk about head in the (quivering) sand! :| :o Rasberries to the best of the opinion journal's neo-conservative religious right-elitist youth! ;) Talk about amusing hooey! ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-11-2005, 04:21 PM

The Washington Post's report on the investigation of CBS's fabricated-documents scandal includes this quote from CEO Leslie Moonves: "Ninety-nine percent of the stories we do are accurate and solid." Which we suppose would be an acceptable standard if the network told us in advance which 1 in 100 story was made up.

Meanwhile, disgraced former producer Mary Mapes (link in PDF) has weighed in with a statement in which she stands by the phony documents:

Much has been made about the fact that these documents are photocopies and therefore cannot be trusted, but decades of investigative reporting have relied on just such copies of memos, documents and notes. In vetting these documents, we did not have ink to analyze, original signatures to compare, or paper to date. We did have context and corroboration and believed, as many journalists have before and after our story, that authenticity is not limited to original documents. Photocopies are often a basis for verified stories. . . .

It is noteworthy the panel did not conclude that these documents are false. Indeed, in the end, all that the panel did conclude was that there were many red flags that counseled against going to air quickly.

Lucy Ramirez could not be reached for comment.

http://homepage.mac.com/cfj/CBS_mapes_statement.pdf

(*) (*) It's such a shame! Do folks *really* believe that THIS is the first time outsiders attempted to scam the media and outwards - onto the American people? Aw shucks, you believe what you hear/see on TV? Why do you think I spend time searching for and reading news sites overseas - especially in countries where the press isn't hog-tied like here. CBS still is taking their ad $$ to the bank with top-ranked eopisodics such as their C.S.I. series of three shows (Vegas, Miami and New York) and especially their stable of reality shows. :| The news department folks are whining. Bet this would NOT have happened if Kerry and Dems won though!!!! Execs at Viacom (CBS' parent company) is doing some serious kiss-ass with Washington, D.C. by sacfrificing (firing) good employees. Shame on CBS and Viacom management :| :| (w) (w)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-11-2005, 04:24 PM

http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2005/01/10/housing_project_wont_disturb_bat_cave/

(*) (*) what next? ;) (*) (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-11-2005, 04:28 PM

Democrats beyond the Beltway embrace politically promising new ideas.

BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, January 11, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST WSJ

Republicans like to think they now have a lock on the electorate. And nine days before President Bush takes the oath of office again, it's easy to see why they are optimistic. They've picked up seats in both houses of Congress in the past two elections, and Mr. Bush got more votes than any presidential candidate in history. It's tempting to say the GOP can defeat any Democratic candidate on the horizon.

But having an out-of-power and out-of-touch political establishment in Washington may turn out to be the Democrats' strength. Americans like sending "outsiders" to Washington, and after controlling Congress for most of the past decade and the White House for 16 of the past 24 years, Republicans are bound to start seeming like insiders. Now it's the Democrats' turn to build up their "outsider" bona fides.

The Democrats have more than a few politicians quietly winning elections and governing with ideas that are popular with a majority of the electorate. These new Democratic leaders aren't liberal ideologues. They are Democrats willing to break through the establishment, and they may end up remaking their party. The precedent here is probably the rise of Ronald Reagan, who had to break through his party's establishment before becoming its presidential nominee.

One such politician is Tennessee's Gov. Phil Bredesen. Elected just two years ago, yesterday he had the courage to do the unthinkable. The Democratic governor of Al Gore's home state officially pulled the plug on TennCare, the state's version of HillaryCare. Launched in 1994, TennCare was suppose to be the first step toward universal health insurance. It ended up eating up a third of the state's annual budget after lawsuits compelled the state to cover the costs of nearly every health-care-related expense for about 1 in 5 Tennesseans.
To beat back this beast, Gov. Bredesen rejected his Republican predecessor's plan to enact a state income tax. Instead the Democrat rolled out a plan to trim the program by putting limits on the care the state would pay for. When trial lawyers rejected that and threatened future lawsuits, Mr. Bredesen accepted the fiscal reality and pulled the plug. Over the next couple of years the state will make the transition back into traditional Medicaid.

Another rising Democratic politician is Illinois's Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Also elected in 2002, he now faces his third budget crunch. Illinois, like many other states, was quick to ramp up state spending amid inflated tax revenues in the 1990s. But those tax receipts only masked a larger economic problem that was never addressed; the state has lost more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 1990. Last year the state was forced to close a $2.3 billion deficit. This year the governor will have to find a way to overcome an expected $1 billion deficit.

To do this Gov. Blagojevich has led an effort to trim state spending. Even the state's Department of Children and Family Services came in for a 10% cut; the governor argued that was only fair, since the department's caseload has also fallen. This is far short of the tax and regulatory relief his state needs to get back on track, but it's also far from the path Virginia's Gov. Mark Warner pursued when he cajoled Republican legislators into enacting a massive tax increase.

Mr. Blagojevich is no tax cutter, and he's come under some fire for his management skills. But there's no doubt that he's been effective at taking his message directly to the people. He's a masterful politician from the Midwest, and he may end up being the kind of politician who can appeal to enough voters in a state like Ohio to make the difference for the next Democratic presidential ticket.

Although he's no stranger to Washington, New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson is another Democrat to keep an eye on. He's clearly a man with bigger political ambitions. Last year he put an etiquette consultant on staff to help prepare him for meetings with foreign dignitaries, and he travels with an entourage worthy of a head of state, not a head of a state.

Nonetheless he's done two things that prove he's a bigger thinker than almost anyone in the Washington Democratic establishment. He cut taxes upon taking office two years ago, and he's led an effort to make the state into a venture capitalist, allowing state funds to be directly invested in businesses. Using public money for private enterprise is probably a bad idea in the long run, but if the job numbers tick dramatically up in New Mexico, look for Democrats around the country to try replicating it.

None of this is to say that the Democratic political establishment is dead yet. We haven't yet seen what Hillary Clinton can do on a national stage. If it's anything like what she did in New York--wooing rural and suburban voters with a "listening tour"--watch out. But the establishment is in a vulnerable position. The party keeps losing national elections, and its congressional leadership serves a narrow political constituency. That leaves Democrats outside Washington in a better position to start appealing to a wider constituency.

The next Democratic president is most likely not in Washington now, but out there cutting his teeth in real America. Sorry, Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.

(*) (*) Last sentence in the article is most likely..... right on the $. Here's to 2008 (d) and a better tomorrow........ :| :|

(k) ,
SL

sweetlady

01-11-2005, 04:32 PM

Rathergate Revisited
January 11, 2005; Page A20 WSJ

CBS promised last fall to get to the bottom of Dan Rather's discredited September 8 broadcast on President Bush's National Guard service. Yesterday's report by the independent panel charged with investigating the "60 Minutes" segment fulfills that vow. It is a thorough, no-holds-barred look at how it happened. If only it were as good at explaining why.

The investigating team (led by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former AP chief Louis Boccardi) confirmed what much of the viewing public has believed all along -- that the broadcast was neither fair nor accurate. CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in reporting the segment, the panel found, and it compounded that error with a "rigid and blind" defense of the sources and documents on which the story was based.

Specifically, it took 12 days for CBS to concede that it could not confirm the authenticity of the documents -- which the blogosphere began questioning within hours of the show's airing. Recall how Web sleuths first detected that the memos at issue couldn't have been created with 1970s-era typewriter fonts but were probably done on modern computers. If this were Journalism 101, or Business Management 101, CBS would have flunked.

Like the recent journalism scandals at the New York Times and USA Today, the CBS imbroglio is not just about the failure of one or two reporters -- in this case, news anchor Dan Rather and veteran producer Mary Mapes. It's also about the failure of their supervisors to enforce standards and take criticism seriously. All editors -- including us -- have a duty to defend reporters who take on difficult subjects and stir controversy by telling the truth. It's equally important, however, to respond quickly when serious errors are alleged -- especially about a story that had all kinds of red flags on it. In this instance, CBS producers circled the wagons too soon, and for too long.

CBS announced that in response to the panel's findings it is holding a number of employees responsible. Ms. Mapes has been fired, and three senior news executives -- Betsy West, Josh Howard and Mary Murphy -- have been asked to resign. Mr. Rather was tagged by CBS CEO Leslie Moonves with the smaller sin of "errors of credulity and over-enthusiasm" and suffered no disciplinary action. But he has already announced he is retiring earlier than expected as anchor of CBS Evening News, and his departure looks to us like a case of (as Mr. Rather might put it himself) leaving Dodge City ahead of the posse.

Which brings us to the "why" of the report, and the panel's reluctance to detect the partisan political motives that just about everyone else in the world suspects. The panel faults Ms. Mapes for creating "the appearance of political bias" by giving a Kerry campaign official advance notice of the story, but that's about as far as it will go. It rejects outright the suggestion that there was any political agenda driving the story.

It pins the blame instead on Ms. Mapes's "myopic zeal" in pursuit of a ground-breaking story that other news organizations were also pursuing. So we are supposed to believe that the flawed CBS segment was the result of overeager journalists' desire to be "first" with a will-o'-the-wisp of a story that was at least four, and arguably closer to 10, years old -- and, by the way, that it was merely coincidental that these eager beavers pushed the story out after Labor Day amid a bitter election campaign.

The discussion on motives includes a section titled "Factors that Support a Conclusion that a Political Agenda Did Not Motivate the September 8 Segment." And the No. 1 example is "The Previous Work of Rather and Mapes." Really.

As we saw it, the last election included the most one-sided political reporting we've ever witnessed, including the coverage of Richard Nixon circa 1972-74. Most of the established media outlets favored John Kerry -- which is fine by us if they would only admit it. CBS's reporters made the further mistake of letting that bias so color their judgment that they were willing to believe phony documents from a partisan source without proper authentication. Good for CBS for coming clean about the process, but good luck convincing its viewers about the lack of partisan motives.

(*) (*) I have one question. Would Peter Jennings ever, ever do something like this? And if he did, would parent company of ABC - as in Mickey Mouse (Disney) - EVER let it get to the "beyond any hope of damage-control" like CBS and parent Viacom did? Hmmmmm..... :s :o I say time to move onto something else.....much more important among the media shark tank participants. (o) (o) Life was way too short for this b.s. :| :| Right? (a)

(l) (l) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-11-2005, 04:41 PM

January 7, 2005 5:01 p.m.

The Consumer Electronics Show runs through Sunday in Las Vegas, where gadget makers are showcasing their latest wares and offering their visions for the future. Stop back for regular updates from the show.

Dell's Plasma TVs Are In Short Supply

Demand for Dell Inc.'s plasma televisions is outstripping supplies, pushing deliveries to six weeks after order, the executive in charge of its consumer business said.

The Round Rock, Texas, computer maker began expanding into consumer electronics two years ago with a line of liquid-crystal display TVs and added its first plasma-screen TVs last October.

In an interview at CES, Michael A. George, Dell's vice president of U.S. consumer business, said demand for the plasma TVs has significantly exceeded its expectations -- and supplies. "Demand for plasma TVs have blown us away. We've sold four times our initial forecasts," said Mr. George.

He said sales have remained strong following the Christmas shopping season with wait times for new orders currently at six weeks. Dell began taking orders for the two 42-inch diagonal models, a $3,500 high-definition set and a $2,300 enhanced-definition set, last Oct. 27. He said the company expects to unveil new models in its LCD and plasma lines this year.

Dell has parlayed its position as the world's largest personal-computer brand into a fledgling role in consumer electronics, selling TVs, digital-music players, digital cameras and hand-held computers. Market watcher Retail Forward Inc. recently ranked the company as the fourth-largest U.S. seller of consumer electronics, behind Best Buy Co., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and Circuit City Stores Inc. The ranking is largely based on Dell's sales of home-computers.

But unlike its retail rivals, Dell doesn't operate retail stores. Instead, it peddles its flat-screen TVs and other electronics over the phone, through mall-based kiosks and Web sites.

Demand for the company's Dell Digital Jukebox digital-music player also has exceeded supplies, Mr. George said. Delivery times for the hard-disk based player are running four weeks after an order is placed, he said.

----Gary McWilliams, The Wall Street Journal

H-P Shows "Media Hub," Plans More iPods

Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Carly Fiorina demonstrated the company's new "media hub" as she discussed H-P's consumer electronics strategy at CES Friday.

The hub -- a living room device for storing and managing digital content, such as television shows, music and photos -- is set for release this fall. It combines a digital video recorder and set-top box in one device.

The product will use a TV programming guide H-P has under development and make use of the Linux operating system. H-P has not yet released pricing information.

Ms. Fiorina emphasized during her address that the company's focus on consumer electronics product development is to make sure devices of all kinds work together.

Ms. Fiorina went on to say H-P will begin shipping Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod Photo portable music player in coming months, and predicted that camera phones would be the most widely sold camera device this year.

She also offered a glimpse of long-range projects underway at H-P's labs. One effort involves the use of electronic sensors to keep track of personal belongings. Another turns a coffee table into a computerized video projector displaying a map.

--Mark Boslet, Dow Jones Newswires

Verizon Debuts "VCAST" Multimedia Service

The screens may be tiny and the batteries overworked, but the wireless industry is bringing television to a cellphone near you.

At CES Friday, Verizon Wireless launched a new multimedia service for mobile phones, promising better-quality audio, video and 3-D games custom-designed for the constraints of a hand-held device.

The new Verizon service, named "VCAST" and scheduled for a Feb. 1 launch, will cost $15 per month for unlimited access to more than 300 daily video clips, including news and entertainment from News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox studio and Viacom Inc.'s VH1 and Comedy Central cable channels. Customers can also pay extra for 3-D games, music videos and premium channels.

Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone PLC, also announced that 12 additional markets, including Chicago and Houston, now have access to the high-speed wireless technology required for the new service, and the 20 markets where the network upgrade was launched last year have coverage over a wider area.

At launch, Verizon customers will be able to access VCAST from three new phones, including LG Electronics Inc.'s VX8000 cameraphone, which can download and playback full-motion video and audio. It will cost $199 after a $70 rebate with a two-year subscription to Verizon Wireless.

The new Verizon offering, along with other multimedia wireless services unveiled at CES, marks a big step in the industry's push to generate revenue from more than just phone calls.

On Thursday, SmartVideo Technologies Inc. announced deals to deliver live and prerecorded TV programs from ABC News, CNBC, MSNBC and the Weather Channel to cellphones equipped with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile operating system. The service will be priced from $13 to $18 a month.

----Associated Press

TiVo Cuts the Clutter of Set-Top Boxes

Tivo Inc. introduced plans for a new product Thursday that will include the functions of a cable set-top box. The new unit, expected out in early 2006, will relieve the clutter created by the need for two set-top boxes, which has been one of the drawbacks for customers deciding between a TiVo unit and a cable-issued DVR. A spokeswoman for TiVo said that pricing information wasn't immediately available.

The announcement comes as TiVo faces increasing competition in the DVR market and speculation abounds that the company's relationship with DirecTV Group is weakening.

TiVo also announced plans at CES to develop an open software platform that will enable third parties to develop applications and distribute content to TiVo subscribers.

Additionally, the company is developing a new content delivery service that will enable TiVo subscribers to search and access broadband content. With the new digital ready DVR and broadband access, consumers will have programming options via the Internet versus paying for premium bundled packages from cable providers.

--Dow Jones Newswires

SBC Unveils "U-verse" Brand

SBC Communications Inc. unveiled "U-verse," the brand for a suite of IP-based (Internet protocol) products that includes televisions, high-speed Internet access and voice over IP services.

At the center of the U-verse portfolio is Project Lightspeed, the company's previously announced $4 billion effort to upgrade its network by laying 40,000 miles of fiber. SBC plans to use those networks to deliver integrated IP-based video, voice, wireless and data services.

U-verse falls under the "convergence" theme -- the melding of multiple digital entertainment media -- which has emerged as the hot topic at CES this year. SBC Chief Executive Edward Whitacre said Thursday that an age of convergence between communications and electronics has arrived, with companies from the competing industries reaching into each other's markets.

SBC has struck a $400 million, 10-year deal with Microsoft Corp. to use Microsoft's IP television software. The IPTV service would allow consumers to record and edit shows and receive video on demand.

Mr. Whitacre said the company plans to introduce its U-verse services and extend its IPTV television capabilities to homes by the end of the year.

--Mark Boslet, Dow Jones Newswires

Dish Promotes Discounted LCD TVs

Dish Network wants to make it a little easier for people to buy pricey high-definition televisions. At the CES show, the company unveiled two thin-panel HD TVs for people that sign up for its high-definition satellite TV service. The company is offering a 30-inch liquid-crystal display for $1,599 and a 40-inch LCD for $3,999, well below the prices offered for similar TVs. Dish didn't disclose the TV's manufacturer. The company, which is owned by EchoStar Communications Corp., previously offered a similar package with a standard 34" high-definition TV for $699. The company also said it will roll out a new digital receiver that will let subscribers record digital content and share it with a TV in another room. The box will cost $749.

Meanwhile, DirecTV Group Inc. announced a new digital receiver and networked system, the DirecTV Home Media Center, that allows subscribers to share digital content with all TV sets in one household. The system is comprised of a main DVR with smaller units located at each TV in the house. DirecTV said the service, which lets users move and view content from room to room, will be available by year end.

The arrival of a competing DVR product could hurt the company's relationship with TiVo, whose partnership with DirecTV accounts for most of its subscribers. Industry watchers have speculated the relationship between the two companies has been weakening since News Corp. took over DirecTV in late 2003.

--The Wall Street Journal Online

Intel's Barrett Touts "Entertainment PC"

The so-called entertainment personal computer -- a souped up PC that can record television and manage digital content like photos, movies or music -- will be the next big thing for the technology industry, according to Intel Corp. Chief Executive Craig Barrett, who gave the keynote address at CES Thursday.

The coming together of digital content and communication is a major theme at this year's CES. In the future, these PCs are supposed to be able to send digital content to different devices throughout the home.

For years, computer makers have been pitching "entertainment" or "media" PCs with an eye toward the living room rather than the home office, but so far the customized models have yet to catch on with consumers. According to Mr. Barrett, multicore processors, or semiconductors that incorporate two processors, will enable the convergence of content and communications, allowing the machines to perform advanced features.

As an example Thursday, Mr. Barrett displayed an entertainment PC that incorporates a high-definition television. With a touch-screen feature, users could easily sift through all the different content on the PC and then view it on the high-definition TV set. The PC would be able to send alerts to your TV set to notify you if, for example, you were outbid on an eBay auction. The PC could also link up with a home-security system, alerting you if someone rings the door, and display the visitor's image on your TV set.

Mr. Barrett star-studded presentation included guest appearances by Steven Tyler, a member of the rock group Aerosmith, and actor Robert Redford.

--Donna Fuscaldo, Dow Jones Newswires

Gates Gets Big Laughs

Bill Gates promised that Microsoft Corp. would help millions of consumers stay seamlessly plugged in to a world of digital music, movies, videogames and television shows -- but his vision of the future came with some technical glitches that prompted jokes and guffaws from his audience.

In his seventh annual keynote speech at CES, Microsoft's chairman said the proliferation of broadband Internet access and the falling price of data storage are compelling people to put music, photos, movies and other aspects of their life into a digital format.

But while promoting what he calls the "digital lifestyle," Mr. Gates showed how vulnerable all consumers are to hardware and software bugs. During a demonstration of digital photography with a soon-to-be-released Nikon camera, a Windows Media Center PC froze and wouldn't respond to Mr. Gates's pushing of the remote control.

Later in the 90-minute presentation, a product manager demonstrated the ostensible user-friendliness of a videogame expected to hit retail stores in April, Forza Motor Sport. But instead of configuring a custom-designed race car, the computer monitor displayed the dreaded "blue screen of death" error message and warned, "out of system memory."

The errors prompted the celebrity host, NBC comedian Conan O'Brien, to quip, "Who's in charge of Microsoft, anyway?" Mr. Gates, who was sitting next to O'Brien on a set staged to look like NBC's "Late Night" set, smiled dryly and continued with his discussion.

--Associated Press

(*) (*) Toys, glorious toys! Las Vegas during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is amazing!! Electronic toys, (d) and (6) - what more could anyone want? ;)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-11-2005, 04:45 PM

By Mike Langberg

Mercury News

LAS VEGAS - This will be a happy New Year for gadget lovers, from what I've seen at the gigantic Consumer Electronics Show that ended here Sunday.

There will be more personal technology products than ever crowding store shelves, with more performance at lower prices.

I couldn't cover the entire CES floor. That's beyond the capacity of any individual human at a show with 2,400 exhibitors sprawling across 1.5 million square feet of floor space -- equal to 26 football fields.

But I did find lots of interesting news, from the amazing to the ridiculous, that I want to share. Here's some of what I discovered:

• Really, really big TVs. Television sets, as measured in diagonal screen inches, are now officially bigger than people. Only NBA players out-measure the 70-inch projection screens now available.

Yet flat-panel TVs continue to grow. Sharp showed a prototype design for a 65-inch widescreen LCD television, in comparison with today's LCD TVs topping out at about 40 inches. Samsung unveiled a prototype widescreen plasma TV at a jaw-dropping 102 inches, or 8 1/2 feet. I stood transfixed in front of both sets, which showed bright, sharp images at a size that's more reminiscent of a movie theater than a living room.

Neither of these monster screens will arrive in stores soon; the earliest would be late 2005. And, as always with the cutting edge, the price tag will be stratospheric, somewhere in the low five figures.

But affordable big-screen LCD and plasma TVs, defined as under $5,000, will continue to gain inches this year and beyond. I'd personally be satisfied with a 60-inch LCD screen at $2,000, a price point I expect to be reached by the end of the decade.

• Hard drives everywhere. Apple Computer's iPod portable music player was undoubtedly the hottest consumer electronics product of 2004. Apple wasn't at CES; the company is busy preparing for its annual Macworld show in San Francisco this week. But the iPod's aura was inescapable, with many companies showing iPod accessories.

The concept underlying the iPod, giving new power to portable devices by inserting small hard drives, was also getting respect.

Toshiba, for example, announced a new line of camcorders under the ``Gigashot'' brand name that use hard drives instead of tape to record video. The 10-ounce camcorders will hold two hours of DVD-quality video, which can be transferred to a computer or burned to DVD for permanent storage. Toshiba says the camcorders will ship in the fall, with prices and detailed specifications to be announced.

• Wireless digital cameras. Getting the pictures out of a digital camera is an ongoing challenge for consumers. It's awkward to plug the camera into a computer, or fumble with removing a tiny memory card.

Kodak showed an elegant solution at CES: the EasyShare-One with built-in WiFi wireless networking. Due at midyear for $599, the EasyShare-One will automatically transfer pictures to your computer whenever you come within range of your home network.

Through a deal with T-Mobile, which operates WiFi hotspots at Starbucks and many other locations, you'll also be able to send picture home from the road or send them to friends as e-mail attachments -- using nothing more than the camera.

• Broadcast radio strikes back. Listening to AM or FM radio suddenly seems old-fashioned now that we have the ear-pleasing alternative of commercial-free XM and Sirius satellite radio. At CES, broadcasters made a dramatic move to reclaim the technology high ground with a digital format called HD Radio.

The nation's largest broadcast groups pledged to accelerate their so-far sluggish conversion to digital radio, which elevates both AM and FM to near-CD-quality, by converting 2,500 stations within four years. This pledge should motivate radio manufacturers, who've offered only a few very expensive HD Radio models.

Digital radio promises more than just better sound. Stations could transmit text information, such as song titles or traffic updates, that would appear on the radio's display screen.

• Satellite TV ups the ante. Facing a newly energized cable industry, satellite TV providers DirecTV and Dish Network will be adding lots of new features this year.

DirecTV is putting new satellites in orbit so that it can offer local HD broadcasts without requiring customers to put up a roof antenna. The first group of markets to receive local HD includes the Bay Area, expected in the second half of the year.

DirecTV is also offering new ``mix'' channels that show feeds from six channels on one screen. The sports mix channel, for example, can show ESPN, the Golf Channel and the Speed channel simultaneously, so couch potatoes no longer have to flip channels to track simultaneous events. Subscribers to the NFL Sunday Ticket will be able to watch six games at once.

Dish Network is introducing the DVR 942 high-definition digital video recorder, due in March for $749, that can also show a standard-definition program on a television in another room. Using the existing coaxial cable connection, the DVR 942 would let Mom and Dad watch a recorded high-definition movie in the family room while the kids watch a recorded cartoon show in their bedroom.

Dish Network also announced a portable DVR, a kind of iPod with a color screen that can play recorded TV shows, and the Audio Thin Client, which sends audio from Dish Network music channels to another room in the house through home power lines. Both are due in the second half of the year at prices to be announced.

• Over-educated TV remote controls. It wouldn't be CES without the occasional silly product offering the solution to a problem no one has. My nomination for 2005 is the new RCA Acoustic Research ARR1540 universal remote control at $179.

Beyond the usual TV remote features, this model has ``an integrated atomic clock and internal room temperature sensor.'' So if you're watching too much TV in a room that's too cold, you'll know exactly how much time you're wasting down to the millisecond, and you can measure your discomfort in Fahrenheit degrees.

(*) (*) Two takes on the same event, yahoo! <eehhaaa!> That's my best cowgrrl femme imitation... ;)

(h) (h)
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-12-2005, 07:05 PM

http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/9.html

(*) (*) There are 14 "before" and "after" satellite photos.....it's truly mind-bogling! :o (*) (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-12-2005, 07:07 PM

Microsoft owes you money: If you live in California and purchased Microsoft Windows, Excel or Word between Feb. 18, 1995, and Dec. 15, 2001, you're owed a piece of California's $1.1 billion settlement against Microsoft. The original deadline for filing a claim was Jan. 8, but Microsoft has extended it because of technical problems with the settlement Web site. Claimants now have until Jan. 22 to submit their paperwork, which is a good thing, because far too few people seem to have taken advantage of the offer. In fact, the Settlement Recovery Center (SRC), which assists businesses and non-profits making claims in class actions, recently said fewer than 1 million claims out of a potential 14 million have been filed so far. That's just pathetic. "Companies don't understand what's at stake," said SRC founder and CEO Howard Yellen in a statement. "The Microsoft settlement is great, but it's not well understood. We have quite a few corporate clients who will recover over a million dollars each."

Today's www.siliconvalley.com

(h) (h)

(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-12-2005, 07:09 PM

E-MAIL SHORTHAND THAT CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS WOULD LIKELY HAVE USED IN LETTERS HOME HAD THE TECHNOLOGY BEEN AVAILABLE TO THEM.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2005/1/11feature.html

(*) (*) Where do some columnists *get* these things? ;)

Have a lovely evening and rest of your week.

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-12-2005, 07:11 PM

Resignation speeches and letters:

http://www.resignation.com/

;) :o (h)

(k) ({) (}) ,
SL

sweetlady

01-15-2005, 03:25 AM

Amazing!

http://www.shockhaber.com/Whosebutt.htm

I got an 8 score - so that just shows me how little I know..... ;) :| ;)

Have a lovely weekend.

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-20-2005, 08:41 AM

http://www.comboverthemovie.com/

"This thing is amazing. I can take it everywhere. For once in my life, driving down 3rd Avenue in NYC isn't dangerous. Taxis all get out of my way, lest they be CRUSHED! "

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00067F1CE/qid=1105673917/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl236/102-8005930-1117754?v=glance&n=507846

ROCK INC. POP MUSICIANS LEND STAR POWER TO TECH FIRMS:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/gmsv/10636523.htm

Toilygraphs:
http://www.arodphoto.com/Toilygraph1LR.html

http://www.arodphoto.com/toilygraph2lr.html

http://www.arodphoto.com/toilygraph3lr.html

(*) (*) (*) Enjoy! ;) (h)

({) (}) ,
(k) (k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-20-2005, 08:43 AM

http://techdirt.com/

;)
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 01:12 AM

http://www.transbuddha.com/mediaHolder.php?id=174

;) (h) (h)

({) (}) ,
(l) (l) Sweetlady and her Doc the boxer

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 01:14 AM

http://www.stanford.edu/~scodary/tkam.htm

(k) (k) ,
SL and Doc the handsome boxer

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 01:16 AM

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andymurkin/Resources/MusicRes/ZapRes/natphen.html

:| :| And to think I know who this is....I AM getting older - but then so is everyone ;)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 01:17 AM

http://www.humanclock.com/?s=1

:o :s ;)

(k) (k)
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 01:21 AM

http://www.starwars.com/collecting/news/hasbro/news20050113.html

(*) (*) Things that make you go "hmmmmm". :|

Stay warm and think of the Doc'meister and his Sweetlady-mama snow-bound the next two days! We'll be here enjoying a warm fire in the fireplace, me cooking him chicken and rice meals and me working on my two PhD course assignments........wow - what excitement :| ;) ;)

Carpe Diem!
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 01:25 AM

In today's "State of the Art" column, I reviewed iPhoto 5,
the photo-management portion of Apple's new iLife '05
software suite. (I also reviewed the glorious, new, free
Picasa 2 for Windows from Google.)

The other pieces of the iLife software suite for Macintosh
are iTunes (unchanged in this version), iMovie, iDVD and
GarageBand.

GarageBand is loaded with interesting new tools for editing
your live audio recordings, including one that changes a male
voice to female (or vice versa) and a Fix Pitch button that
somehow makes an off-key singer sound in tune. (Miraculously,
it doesn't just nudge the entire recording higher or lower;
it actually affects individual notes, and only as necessary.)
Similarly, GarageBand 2 somehow lets you change the tempo of
a piece even after you've recorded the live vocal tracks,
seamlessly lengthening or shortening the recorded track
without introducing chipmunky side effects.

Now, the iLife programs are filled with welcome little nips
and tucks. But Apple clearly considers one feature of iMovie,
the video-editing program, to be the biggest revolution in
the iLife '05 suite: iMovie can now download, edit and export
high-definition camcorder footage.

Apple evidently believes that it's bringing high-definition,
wide-screen editing to the masses. It even renamed the
program iMovie HD.

Now, it is true that iMovie is about $920 less expensive (and
light years less complicated) than the next cheapest HDTV
editing software. But there are a couple of flies in this
ointment.

First of all, who has a high-def camcorder? Only two consumer
HDTV camcorders are available so far: JVC's year-old GR-HD1
(one-chip sensor, $2,500) and Sony's new FX1 (three-chip
sensor, $3,500). Wedding videographers, amateur filmmakers,
corporations and early-adopter masochists may be interested,
but for everyone else, buying a biggish, black, over-the-
shoulder camcorder for four figures might be a bit of a
stretch.

Another question: Once you've edited an HD film in iMovie,
who'll be able to watch it? You have only two ways to get
your masterpiece onto an HDTV set: connect the HDTV camcorder
itself to the screen, or burn the movie to a DVD. (IDVD 5 can
now burn wide-screen DVD's just like the ones that come from
Hollywood -- but, of course, a DVD is not high definition.)

In short, iMovie 5 seems to be several years ahead of its
time.

Either that, or Apple is counting on another possibility:
that iMovie HD itself will help usher in the era of HDTV home
movies. Don't laugh; Apple's efforts have prompted similar
trickle-down revolutions before. The original iMovie, for
example, made video editors out of millions of amateurs, and
iDVD was among the first programs to let mere bumbling
mortals make professional-looking, Hollywood-style DVD's.

(Another hint, or not: When Steve Jobs unveiled iLife '05
last week at the Macworld Expo, his presentation featured a
strange, halting appearance by the Sony Electronics
president, Kunitake Ando. Mr. Ando didn't announce any new
products or unveil any new collaboration with Apple. But the
weirdness of the whole appearance has fueled speculation that
there's something going on between the companies that we
don't know about.)

Otherwise, the changes in iLife '05 are far subtler than they
were in iLife '04. That may be a signal to you that the $80
upgrade isn't quite so urgent -- or it may be a welcome sign
that Apple has chosen to polish and refine what it had
instead of junking the programs up with superfluous features.

(*) (*) (h) (h) LOVE this column! But then I am SO a grrl-propeller-head! (*) (*) (h) (h)

(l) (l) ({) (}) Warmest hugs,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 01:54 AM

Severe Weather Alert from the National Weather Service ...ATLANTIC NJ-BERKS PA-BUCKS PA-CAMDEN NJ-CARBON PA-CECIL MD- CHESTER PA-COASTAL OCEAN NJ-CUMBERLAND NJ-DELAWARE PA- EASTERN MONMOUTH NJ-GLOUCESTER NJ-HUNTERDON NJ-KENT MD-KENT DE- LEHIGH PA-MERCER NJ-MIDDLESEX NJ-MONROE PA-MONTGOMERY PA-MORRIS NJ- NEW CASTLE DE-NORTHAMPTON PA-NORTHWESTERN BURLINGTON NJ-OCEAN NJ- PHILADELPHIA PA-QUEEN ANNE'S MD-SALEM NJ-SOMERSET NJ- SOUTHEASTERN BURLINGTON NJ-SUSSEX NJ-WARREN NJ-WESTERN MONMOUTH NJ- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF... ALLENTOWN... BETHLEHEM... CAMDEN... DOVER... NEW BRUNSWICK... NEWARK... PERTH AMBOY... PHILADELPHIA... READING... TRENTON... VINELAND AND WILMINGTON 826 PM EST FRI JAN 21 2005
... WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR SATURDAY THROUGH SUNDAY FOR 10 TO 15 INCHES OF SNOW...
A DANGEROUS WINTER STORM WILL AFFECT THE ENTIRE AREA SATURDAY INTO SUNDAY. A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IS IN EFFECT FOR ALL OF EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA, ALL OF NEW JERSEY WITH THE EXCEPTION OF COASTAL ATLANTIC COUNTY AND CAPE MAY COUNTY, NEW CASTLE AND KENT COUNTIES IN DELAWARE AND CECIL, KENT AND QUEEN ANNE'S COUNTIES IN MARYLAND.

AN AREA OF LOW PRESSURE WAS LOCATED OVER THE HIGH PLAINS. IT IS FORECAST TO MOVE SOUTHEASTWARD TO THE OHIO VALLEY SATURDAY MORNING AND CROSS THE CENTRAL APPALACHIANS SATURDAY AFTERNOON. A SECONDARY LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM IS THEN FORECAST TO DEVELOP OVER THE DELMARVA COASTAL WATERS SATURDAY EVENING AND INTENSIFY RAPIDLY. THE LOW SHOULD BE WELL EAST OF OUR REGION BY SUNDAY MORNING.
THE UPCOMING WINTER STORM WILL HAVE TWO PHASES. THE FIRST PHASE WILL FEATURE VERY HEAVY SNOW SATURDAY AFTERNOON INTO SATURDAY EVENING WHERE MOST OF THE ACCUMULATING SNOW IS EXPECTED TO OCCUR. THE SNOW IS EXPECTED TO FALL SO HEAVILY THAT NEAR WHITE-OUT CONDITIONS ARE LIKELY WITH RATES POSSIBLY REACHING ONE TO TWO INCHES PER HOUR. THE SECOND PHASE OCCURRING OVERNIGHT SATURDAY INTO SUNDAY WILL FEATURE LIGHTER SNOW, BUT CONSIDERABLY STRONGER WINDS. THIS WILL CAUSE BLOWING AND DRIFTING OF WHAT IS EXPECTED TO BE A VERY LIGHT AND FLUFFY SNOW. THIS MAY CAUSE BLIZZARD CONDITIONS AT TIMES.

SNOW IS EXPECTED TO ARRIVE IN EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA, EASTERN MARYLAND, DELAWARE AND SOUTHWEST NEW JERSEY LATE SATURDAY MORNING AND THE REST OF NEW JERSEY BY SATURDAY AFTERNOON. TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS AFTER ALL IS SAID AND DONE WILL AVERAGE 10 TO 15 INCHES ACROSS THE ENTIRE WARNING AREA.

TRAVEL CONDITIONS WILL BECOME EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS AND ALL UNNECESSARY TRAVEL IS NOT RECOMMENDED ONCE THE HEAVY SNOW BEGINS. FOLLOW THE DIRECTION OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AND POLICE IN YOUR AREA. DRIVING CONDITIONS SHOULD START IMPROVING LATER SUNDAY AFTERNOON AS WINDS DIMINISH.

ANOTHER FACTOR WILL BE THE VERY LOW WIND CHILLS. AS WINDS INCREASE SATURDAY NIGHT INTO SUNDAY, WIND CHILL FACTORS WILL DROP BELOW ZERO ACROSS NORTHEAST PENNSYLVANIA AND NORTHWEST NEW JERSEY AND THE SINGLE NUMBERS ELSEWHERE FROM SATURDAY NIGHT AND LAST THROUGH THE DAY ON SUNDAY.

:| :| :| :|

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady and the Doc'meister the boxer pooch

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 02:00 AM

Posted on Fri, Jan. 21, 2005 www.siliconvalley.com:

VC funding in valley drops By Matt Marshall
Mercury News

Venture capital invested in local companies last quarter fell to its lowest point in seven years, a survey found, rebutting a widespread view that investment remains relatively high.

Venture capital investment in Silicon Valley companies declined to $1.4 billion in the last quarter of 2004, down 12 percent from $1.6 from the third quarter, according to a survey released by Ernst & Young and VentureOne, a venture capital research group. The decline mirrored the national level. Venture capital investments in all U.S. companies came to $4.5 billion, an 8 percent drop.

However, industry experts caution against reading too much into quarterly data, saying trends over several quarters are more reliable. On that measure, investment for the year was $20.4 billion, up from $18.9 billion the year before -- reversing three years of steady decline.
Even in the latest numbers, experts still found evidence suggesting the downturn won't be permanent.

Investments into so-called ``early-stage'' companies were up, with 153 companies nationwide receiving their first round of venture capital during the quarter -- compared with 145 during the third quarter. Typically, those start-ups will grow into companies that attract larger amounts of venture capital down the road.

``That's good for us,'' said Matt Garlick, VentureOne's research manager.

The drop came in areas such as the badly hit communications sector, where investments for the quarter were $469 million, lower than any time in at least seven years. Also, the number of large later-stage investments in biopharmaceutical companies declined to 13, from 23 the previous quarter.

One reason was that investor appetite for initial public offerings of biotech companies returned in 2003, and many companies sought venture investments before going public. That wave has subsided, Garlick said.
But others argue that start-ups are staying in stealth longer, having learned there are few benefits of talking about their funding. By not reporting their investments, they push the data lower artificially.

Mohr, Davidow Ventures in Menlo Park has invested in four new companies that requested their information not be reported, according to partner Jonathan Feiber. ``Companies are asking `What's the benefit to us?' '' he said.

Feiber said conclusions about slowing investments could be wrong: ``I think it's the opposite. We're super-active. Everyone I encounter seems to be super-busy, pursuing investment interests, pushing for meetings . . .''

Indeed, his firm Thursday announced it had raised a new $400 million fund to invest in start-ups -- just the latest in a wave of venture firms to raise money recently. He said the firm plans to invest in 12 to 16 new companies this year, about the same pace as last year, but much faster than two or three years ago.

Still, Garlick said the argument about companies staying stealthier has been around for a couple of quarters, and he doubts it's a major factor -- at least from the evidence so far.

(*) (*) and I once worked for 6 months at an "Executive Offices" where these blue-chip VC firms were/are all are based in Menlo Park, CA at 3000 Sand Hill Road off I280. It was great going to the monthly lunch meetings of these venture capital types in the 1980's. I'd LOVE to start a High tech VC Fund for Womyn! An online version. Anyone interested?

Contact me via PM and I'll give ya my number to interactively chat. (h) (h)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 02:03 AM

Posted on Fri, Jan. 21, 2005

TiVo losing ground fast in battle for survival

By Mike Langberg

Mercury News

TiVo could go down in history as Silicon Valley's most successful failure.

The San Jose company has created what is arguably the second-biggest consumer brand name to emerge from the valley in a decade, surpassed only by Apple Computer's iPod.

TiVo the product has become a short-hand way of referring to all digital video recorders, or DVRs, which are light years ahead of VCRs in gathering TV shows you want to watch and playing them back whenever it's convenient. Its high profile has added the phrase ``I'll TiVo that show for you'' to everyday speech.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell famously described TiVo as ``God's machine'' during a public talk two years ago. An episode of the HBO comedy ``Sex and the City'' last year depicted TiVo as a girl's best friend, more faithful and entertaining than any man.

And nearly half the 6 million DVRs now installed in U.S. households carry the TiVo logo.

Yet TiVo the company, while outliving several premature obituaries, is performing like a little-watched sitcom on the verge of cancellation.
In five years as a public corporation, TiVo has never made a profit. A relationship with satellite service DirecTV, which has brought Tivo nearly two-thirds of its subscribers to date, is on the rocks.

Playing in a tough league

And TiVo's turnaround plan is a high-risk gamble on launching complicated new services in the face of relentless competition from deep-pocketed giants including Microsoft, SBC, Hewlett-Packard, Sony and Comcast.
The moral of the story: Sometimes you can accurately identify the next big thing in technology, flawlessly execute a plan to offer that technology, and still get squashed.

There's no question DVRs will soon be universal. Every cable and satellite TV box will have a huge hard drive humming away inside, automatically recording individual shows you've picked or series you want recorded every week. Cable and satellite operators also will start pre-loading material they think you might want to watch, such as pay-per-view movies.

DVR owners, myself included, go into rapture when telling the uninitiated why they should join our tribe. Once you've programmed a DVR, you never have to watch live TV again; you've always get a list of shows waiting at the push of a button. You can also fast-forward through commercials, a growing concern for broadcasters, and ``pause'' a live show when the phone rings.

TiVo wins consistent praise from reviewers, again including myself, as best of breed. It's easier to use than other DVRs, and does a superior job of recording exactly what you want. At the same time, it's not so much better that indifferent couch potatoes will go out of their way to buy and install a TiVo box when Comcast, DirecTV or Dish Network is offering a set-top box with DVR included.

The past month has been particularly difficult for TiVo. In late December, Comcast began offering a DVR cable box in the Bay Area with no upfront cost and a monthly fee of $9.95 -- $3 less than TiVo's monthly programming fee.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Jan. 6, DirecTV confirmed what had long been suspected in the industry: DirecTV would begin aggressively marketing an in-house line of DVR/satellite receivers at mid-year, and would no longer put significant sales effort into TiVo-brand receivers.

On Jan. 12, TiVo co-founder Michael Ramsey said he would be stepping aside as chief executive officer. Ramsey will remain chairman of the board, but the company is now looking for a new CEO -- a move many outsiders attributed to TiVo's poor performance.
Earlier this week, the New York Times reported the company negotiated a deal last summer to license the TiVo brand to Comcast, but walked away at the last minute because Comcast wouldn't pay enough.

Running out of time

TiVo executives know they must move beyond plain DVRs, and they have a strategy called ``Tahiti'' for developing a next-generation home media management system that would combine cable with TV programs delivered through the Internet, as well as moving music, photos and video around the house.

Beyond the competition from huge companies who want to do exactly the same thing, Tahiti relies on the cable industry adopting a new system called CableCard that allows customers to bypass the cable company's own set-top box. The cable industry only created CableCard grudgingly, in response to intense political pressure, and the industry could still come up with an underhanded way to make CableCard undesirable.

TiVo doesn't have a lot of time to make Tahiti work. The company has lost a staggering $605 million from the beginning of 1999 through Oct. 31 on sales of only $374 million. It doesn't expect to report its first quarterly profit until the end of 2005.

There's enough money in TiVo's bank account to keep going for another year, but competitors are already ahead. TiVo won't offer its own DVR capable of recording high-definition TV until next year, for example, while Comcast, DirecTV and Dish Network all have HD DVRs now.

If TiVo folds, it won't be for lack of trying. The cause of death will be listed as ``lack of a defensible position,'' a fancy way of saying the company had too good an idea to keep to itself.

(*) (*) The Idea or invention of a DVR or digital disk recorder? Great. I always thought that. However - it's about f-time that this firm tanked. :| :| In my humble opinion. ;) ;)

(l) (l) (k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 02:04 AM

http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20050120p2a00m0dm012000c.html

;) ;) (h) (h)

SL

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 02:06 AM

Introducing the Hipster PDA

http://merlin.blogs.com/43folders/2004/09/introducing_the.html

(l) (l) Do you ever wonder what I think about with these URL's? I think I think too much....... ;) ;) Stay warm with the one ya love. Or like the OLD song, "Love the one you're with". (l) (l)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady and Doc the boxer

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 02:08 AM

e Store of the Future:

http://www.davidmccandless.com/funny/applestore.htm

(*) (*) (l) (l) (h) (h) (h) (h)

Okay, so I'm up late and awake and keeping Doc company. (l) (l) (l) (l)

Bai Ling, (look it up!)
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 02:12 AM

The Stonehenge Pocket Watch:

http://www.stonehengewatch.com/

(*) (*) Okay, I am about done tonight. It's not fun when the mind is running at 150 miles per hour or so. Stay safe and warm, where-ever you are while reading this. And know that you are hugged BIGTIME by Sweetlady and Doc the boxer. (l) (l) (l) (l)

(f) (f) (f)
SL

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 02:16 AM

January 20, 2005 By MICHEL MARRIOTT www.nytimes.com

JORDAN GREENHALL sat before a flat-panel television that
glowed with remarkably crisp, bright images, offering it as
evidence that he could put a full-length movie in
high-definition quality on a standard DVD, with room to
spare.

Neat trick.

So neat, in fact, that it would seem to upstage the efforts
of the biggest consumer electronics companies and Hollywood
studios, which are choosing sides in a battle between two
high-definition DVD formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD. Those
formats, expected to reach North America late this year,
will require ultra-high-capacity DVD's and a new class of
expensive players.

The advent of Blu-ray and HD DVD may give rise to a format
war reminiscent of the Betamax-VHS contest in the early
days of videocassette recorders. At stake are potentially
billions of dollars in hardware and discs as the demand for
high-definition content grows.

In the midst of the battle, for which the two sides mounted
elaborate floor displays this month at the Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Mr. Greenhall is asking, Why
wait for the giants to sort it all out? There's a little
guy, he said, with a high-definition solution right now:
his own company's DivX 6 software.

"We're just going straight to market," said Mr. Greenhall,
the 33-year-old co-founder and chief executive of
DivXNetworks. "It's cheap. It's great, and it's going to be
in the DVD players."

The first DivX-capable DVD player is the $250 Avel
LinkPlayer 2 by I-O Data. Mr. Greenhall and his DivX team,
based in San Diego, said the company hopes to see DivX
high-definition players for as little as $100 by late fall.
( Toshiba, in contrast, recently announced an HD DVD player
to be brought market late this year for about $1,000.)

In short, Mr. Greenhall said, he wants high-definition DivX
to be to video what the MP3 audio format was to music: a
"grass-roots movement that breaks above ground." But if
you're thinking about joining the movement, there is a
major vulnerability: no major studio is marching along.
That means those buying DivX players, for now at least,
will lack prerecorded high-definition discs - like major
Hollywood movies - to play in them.

All the talk of high-definition DVD's, no matter which
approach ultimately prevails, may seem premature in a
marketplace saturated with standard-definition DVD's.
According to industry analysts, most consumers indicate
that they are satisfied with the picture and audio quality
of standard DVD's, and they are growing accustomed to
finding the players an inexpensive commodity, priced as low
as $40.

Nonetheless, as television picture quality evolves with
high definition, many consumer electronics makers expect
substantial demand for DVD's and players that can use that
quality to advantage.

Consider, for example, the consumer who just spent
thousands of dollars for the latest big-screen
high-definition television, only to find that a Bon Jovi
concert on a high-definition cable television service looks
vastly better than a standard DVD of Zhang Yimou's
color-drenched "Hero."

Besides, said Andy Parsons, senior vice president for
advanced technology at Pioneer Electronics, a major backer
of Blu-ray technology, consumers are already outgrowing
traditional DVD's, which were first introduced in 1996.

"If you look at most of the 'A' titles coming out now -
'Spider-Man 2,' these sorts of things - they're two discs,"
Mr. Parsons said. "There's one for the movie and there is
usually one for the bonus features."

Mr. Parsons said next-generation DVD's must offer much more
storage than today's five to nine gigabytes. HD DVD, backed
primarily by Toshiba, NEC and a number of studios -
including Paramount Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures,
Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema - is capable of storing
15 gigabytes of data on a single-layer disc. A Blu-ray DVD
can store up to 25 gigabytes on a single layer and 50
gigabytes on a dual-layer disc. Both formats use blue
lasers rather than the regular red one.

"It would be, I think, foolish to limit ourselves in terms
of capacity unnecessarily," Mr. Parsons said. "Why not do
the very best we can do as far as today's technology?"

Backers of HD DVD say making discs in their format will be
much less difficult and expensive than Blu-ray DVD's, which
are supported by Sony, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic,
LG Electronics, Sharp, Mitsubishi, Dell, Walt Disney
Pictures and Television, 20th Century Fox and others.

For Mr. Greenhall of DivXNetworks, much of the debate
between Blu-ray and HD DVD misses the immediate point.

"The essence is that DivX makes you realize that high
definition and blue laser are not linked at the hip," he
said. "Blue laser means lots of storage; high definition
means good quality. With DivX you don't need lots of
storage to get quality."

Blu-ray and HD DVD partisans would disagree. In all these
approaches, a significant factor is the way the video file
is compressed to make it fit on a disc. While DivX can
compress video to a greater degree - hence its use of
conventional DVD's - it makes compromises in picture
quality, its rivals say.

Mr. Greenhall said his company was pursuing an aggressive
DivX certification program to help more DivX-capable
players get to market this year. It has also received an
investment from Samsung.

But, he added, he has no illusions. While DivXNetworks says
that more than 160 million people worldwide have downloaded
and used its video-compression software since the company
was founded in 2000, the lack of studio support is a major
handicap. "Very frankly," he conceded, "the studios are
tough to crack on the high-definition front. They're kind
of standing away."

Meanwhile, he said, DivX is "concentrating on all the other
content in the universe," notably independent movies. He
also noted that consumers with high-performance personal
computers could record high-definition television
broadcasts in DivX 6, then burn the broadcasts onto blank
DVD's. High-definition home movies can also be burned onto
DVD's using DivX, available as a free download at
www.divx.com.

"They have begun to build a significant presence among PC
users," P. J. McNealy, an analyst for American Technology
Research, said of DivX. "They have become a nice
alternative to HD DVD and Blu-ray, and more readily
available. But the question is, can they get significant
content from the major studios and television networks?"

The reputation of DivX (which is unrelated to a defunct
video-rental format of the same name) has also suffered
because of its early use for pirating. And after having
their content on commercial DVD's illegally copied and
distributed, studios have said they are less willing to
take additional risks with next-generation DVD's.

So far, the studios have entrusted DivXNetworks with a few
high-definition movie trailers, available from the DivX
site; they can be played on a PC if a free DivX software
player is downloaded and installed.

Mr. Greenhall said he was aware of whispers of the use of
DivX as a piracy tool, but said it would take time to
distance DivX from that image. "Dastardly deeds were done,"
he said, adding that such incidents happened long ago.
"We've been getting away from that image for almost five
years now."

He said DivX 6 provides strong digital-rights-management
safeguards. He attributes the studios' caution to DivX's
late entry into standards talks that gave way to the
adoption of the Blu-ray and HD DVD technologies. Blu-ray
players are being sold in Asia.

"We were very late to the game," Mr. Greenhall said of
DivXNetworks. "A lot was going on before we matured enough
to know what was going on in this world. They were in the
endgame by the time we were ready."

Nonetheless, he said, as DivX high definition becomes more
available in players there will be more content, and more
content will help usher in more DivX-capable players. "Ten
million people later," he said, pausing, the studios will
have little choice but to take DivX seriously.

But Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at the NPD
Group, a research firm, said there was probably no rush to
adopt any of the formats. For consumers to play
high-definition DVD's, they need high-definition-capable
televisions.

"The installed base right now is quite small, certainly
under 10 percent of the population," Mr. Rubin said.
"Consumer electronics makers probably don't want to confuse
the marketplace, which is already confused enough."

(h) (h) and a huge ({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 02:19 AM

January 20, 2005 By DAVID POGUE www.nytimes.com

IF you're not already aware that 2004 was the Year of the
Digital Camera, here are a few clues. It was the year that
Kodak stopped making film cameras, the year that digicams
were even more popular holiday gifts than DVD players, and
the year that three professional photographers I know each
decided, with much grumbling, to buy a digital camera -
just to see what all the fuss is about.

And if this month is any indication, 2005 will be the Year
of the Software to Organize the Pictures You Took With Your
Digital Camera.

This week alone, two companies are releasing versions of
popular photo-organizing programs: from Apple comes iPhoto
5 for the Macintosh. From Google (yes, Google) comes Picasa
2, for Windows 98 and later. These two programs are very
similar in design, features, visual effects and a
bend-over-backward effort to keep things simple.

IPhoto is part of Apple's new iLife '05 suite, which also
includes iMovie (for video editing), GarageBand (recording
studio in a box), iDVD (designing DVD menu screens and
burning discs) and iTunes (a music jukebox, which is still
a free download). The whole package costs $80 (even if,
alas, you bought the previous version). ILife also comes
free with every new Mac.

Picasa 2, on the other hand, is completely free. Not free
as in "time-limited tryout," not free as in "ads in the
margins," not free as in "you will be assimilated into our
mailing list," but really, truly, no-strings-attached free.
You can download it right now from www.picasa.com. (So how
does Google plan to make money from Picasa, whose
pre-Google version cost $30? The company says that will
come later. Google does promise, however, not to get
everybody hooked on Picasa and then turn around and start
charging or taking away features.)

If you've never used iPhoto or Picasa, you're in for a
treat. These are elegant, visual, nearly effortless
programs. Your photos appear like slides on a giant
scrolling light table, at any size you like. Both programs
handle every conceivable photo file format, including the
RAW files preferred by hard-core shutterbugs, and even
digital movies.

You double-click on a photo to edit it, and to find out
where the programmers have been putting much of their
effort. IPhoto has always offered quick-fix buttons like
Rotate, Crop and Brightness. But now you can summon a
floating palette filled with sliders for geekier things
like color temperature, exposure and saturation. You see
the changes in the photo itself - still visible behind the
see-through adjustment panel - in real time. (Advanced
shutterbugs should note that iPhoto and Picasa 2 now have a
live color histogram - a graph of the photo's three
underlying color layers. It's so similarly designed that
you have to wonder if Apple and Google sent spies to each
other's labs.)

This is all welcome stuff. But the editing tools in Picasa
2 are much more powerful, not to mention easy to use,
deliciously visual and even witty. For example, nestled
among the usual quick-fix buttons (Auto Contrast, Auto
Color and so on) is a button called "I'm Feeling Lucky."
The wording comes, of course, from a similar button on the
Google search page, and in this context, its meaning is
clear: "I don't care which parameters you tweak, just make
this picture look better." As with iPhoto's Enhance button,
the resulting improvements are often astonishing. (Picasa
makes the changes look even more magical because it
animates the edit, making your photo cross-dissolve from
Before to After.)

Both programs are now capable of straightening a photo, too
- for example, where the horizon line isn't quite parallel
to the edge of the picture. Just rotating the photo isn't
good enough; that would make the image sit askew in its
rectangle, introducing skinny blank triangles at the
corners. So both programs subtly enlarge the photo as you
turn it, just enough to eliminate the gaps.

(IPhoto and Picasa always apply your editing to a copy of
the original photo. Months or years later, you can rewind
the photo until it looks exactly the way it came from the
camera. That's a safety net worth its weight in gold, but
it's also a hard-disk glutton; over time, you generate
hundreds of duplicates - edited and original.)

Now, one huge advantage of digital photos is that you can
do so many things with them: turn them into slide shows or
desktop pictures, export them as Web-page galleries, send
them (in scaled-down form) by e-mail, order prints by mail,
and so on. Both programs excel in this department. Picasa's
sharing tools go the extra mile by providing tight
integration with Google's other recent software
acquisitions, like Blogger (a Web-log kit) and Hello
(instant photo sharing). And Picasa lets you order your
prints from a choice of companies (Kodak, Wal-Mart and so
on).

IPhoto 5, on the other hand, expands what was already a
blockbuster feature: the ability to design and order a
gorgeous, hardbound coffee-table gift book with just a
couple of clicks ($30 for 20 pages). You can now specify
double-sided pages, softcover books and a choice of three
booklet sizes. For example, the little wallet-size booklets
(3.5 by 2.6 inches; $12 for a matching set of three) are
fun to carry around, hand out as party favors or drop in
the mail. (Picasa offers no such built-in feature. It does,
however, let you upload your photos to Shutterfly, a Web
site that offers similar, though more limited, book
options.)

Picasa and iPhoto can each create a double-clickable file
that fills the lucky recipient's computer screen with a
musical slide show - a terrific distribution method. IPhoto
5 even gives you control over the timing and transitions of
individual slides - and, in conjunction with iDVD, can save
the result as a spectacular DVD that your admirers can play
on their TV sets.

Picasa's standout features are its simplicity, smoothness
and speed. Whereas iPhoto 5 can accommodate about 20,000
photos per library before it starts bogging down - for the
true digicam fanatic, that's about one afternoon's shooting
at Disney World - Picasa handily juggles 250,000 photos
without breaking a sweat.

Unfortunately, Picasa tracks your picture files right where
they are, in their existing folders on your hard drive
(rather than storing them in its own database, as iPhoto
does). That approach makes sense until you want to organize
these photos into thematic groupings - virtual folders, in
other words.

In iPhoto, you click a + button to create a virtual folder,
then drag pictures into it. (You can even create folders
within these folders.) But Picasa's virtual folders appear
in the same panel as the list of folders on your hard
drive, and creating a new one involves using a pop-up menu
elsewhere on the screen. Picasa is one of the world's least
confusing pieces of software, but this aspect of it is a
humdinger.

Now, Picasa 2 and iPhoto 5 don't really compete with each
other, since each requires a different operating system.
No, the company that should really be sweating right about
now is Adobe, whose Photoshop Elements 3.0 (for Mac and
Windows) is only a few months old. It, too, is a terrific
piece of software, but it's much bigger, more powerful and
more complex; in addition to all the iPhoto-Picasa-type
features, it can do things like keep track of offline
photos (those on your CD's, not on the computer),
superimpose text on your photos, stitch together pictures
into a panorama, and so on. But Elements costs $85 online,
which is quite a bit more than free.

In a world of software that's so bloated it actually
intimidates you, the polish and grace of programs like
Picasa and iPhoto are a breath of fresh air. Here's hoping
that 2006 will be the Year of More Programs Just Like These
Two.

E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com

(*) (*) (l) (l) From the grrl-propeller-head!!! (h)

Love and kisses,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 02:28 AM

For Steelers, Perfect Storm for Bonding
January 21, 2005 By LEE JENKINS

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 20 - When the power on their television
sets went out and the batteries in their portable DVD
players died and the signals on their two-way pagers faded,
there was nothing left to do but talk to one another.

Some champions are born in training camp and others in the
free-agent signing period, but around Pittsburgh, there is
a theory that these Steelers were formed in the Westin Fort
Lauderdale on Sept. 25. That night, as Hurricane Jeanne
blew through South Florida, the Steelers formed the largest
huddle in the N.F.L. Four months later, they can still feel
the wind at their backs.

At the time, Pittsburgh was 1-1 and coming off a 6-10
season with no quarterback and no identity. As if the
status of the Steelers was not precarious enough, they flew
into South Florida as most of the people in the region were
flying out. They were scheduled to play the Miami Dolphins
on Sept. 26, but no one knew when the game would start, or
if it would be played at all.

In the early evening of Sept. 25, players chatted on their
cellphones and watched movies on their portable DVD players
and typed on their two-ways. But as darkness fell and
batteries died, they could hear the wind whistling outside
and see the palm fronds falling off the trees, and some
players started to cower in their hotel rooms. That is
about the time the lights went out.

Players came together because they were scared, they were
bored and they couldn't see. The few Steelers who had
packed flashlights instantly became the most popular
members of the team, and their rooms quickly turned into
gathering places. When a few too many 300-pounders crammed
inside, some players spilled out into the hallways on the
eighth and ninth floors.

Steelers from the heartland sought out Steelers from
Florida and asked in the mellowest way possible if they
were all going to make it out O.K. The Floridians assured
their teammates that hurricanes were nothing new and the
area was fully equipped for the most severe storms. Perhaps
they were not aware that this particular hurricane was
stronger than anything they had ever experienced.

"I told them everything was going to be cool," said safety
Chris Hope, who went to Florida State. "But I wasn't so
sure."

Pittsburgh receiver Antwaan Randle El, who is from Illinois
and went to Indiana, said: "All of the Florida guys were
saying they had been through it before and it was no big
deal. I didn't really believe them."

In order to take his mind off the tempest, Randle El
flipped open his cellphone and started playing a
computerized game of Scrabble. A few Steelers wandered over
and asked if they could join him. Randle El decided to
change games to something more team oriented, "Family
Feud."

The weather was keeping everyone from leaving the hotel and
anyone from entering. Family members were not able to call
with last-minute ticket requests. Even the most ardent fans
stayed away from the lobby. The team hotel, at least for
one night, actually belonged to the team.

Before long, there were clusters of Steelers spread around
the property - cornerbacks with offensive lineman, kickers
with wide receivers. Some of them said they talked
seriously with teammates for the first time. They told
stories about their families, about their favorite high
school football games, about lessons the N.F.L. had taught
them. Veteran players cautioned rookies to take care of
their bodies, watch their money, enjoy every Sunday.

As cornerback DeShea Townsend surveyed the scene in one of
the hallways and saw million-dollar athletes sitting on the
carpet with their backs pressed to the wall, he was
reminded of his freshman dorm at Alabama, and plopped
happily on the floor.

"For a lot of guys, it was the first time that we listened
to our teammates' views on serious issues, the first time
that younger guys listened to the older guys talk about the
game," Townsend said.

"We shared our personal experiences and got to know each
other as people. When you're in the pros, guys usually just
go home right after practice and don't hang out too much.
But that night, it was just like college, like we were back
in the dorms after class."

When word spread that Sunday afternoon's game was being
moved to Sunday night, the team curfew was pushed back, and
the slumber party raged past 1 a.m. Coach Bill Cowher
started a game of flashlight tag in the lobby. Randle El
loaded more games on his cellphone. No one could go to
sleep, and no one really wanted to.

"It was a big moment in our season," guard Alan Faneca
said. "To come out of that situation like we did, when guys
didn't know what to expect and didn't know each other real
well, it was significant."

The Steelers have not lost since. The next day, they
pounded Miami to start a 15-game winning streak that they
will carry into the American Football Conference
championship game against New England on Sunday.

Pittsburgh is not the most athletic or the most talented
team in the league, but the Steelers believe the toughness
and togetherness that was forged during the storm in
September will carry them through.

At a turbulent moment in last week's playoff game against
the Jets, Pittsburgh linebacker Joey Porter gathered his
team and screamed: "They can't break us. They can't break
us. Because we're tight." His rallying cry exhorted the
Steelers to a comeback victory.

"We went through something as a group," Randle El said.
"That night in Florida was scary, but at the same time, it
was really cool. A lot has happened since then, and we look
back on it all the time."

As he spoke, Randle El flung a rubber ball into a group of
teammates on the other side of the locker room, and then
busted up laughing. When he turned away, the ball came
right back at him, and he laughed just as hard. The rubber
ball has become a new source of entertainment as Pittsburgh
prepares for the Patriots and a game-time temperature of 10
degrees Sunday.

The Steelers have already demonstrated that they do not
seem to mind some inclement weather. They were built from
the storm, for the storm.

(*) (*) (*) GO STEELERS!!!!!!! I GOT MY DEGREE AT UNIV. OF PITT back in the late 1970's AND SO LOVE THIS TEAM. (AND HATE, AND I MEAN HATE THE EAGLES.....LOW-LIFE BLUE-COLLAR PHILLY TEAM and the low-life fans that throw glass bottles at the ABC Monday Night Football staff who are my friends. TALK ABOUT LOW-LIFE! And my being such a FEMME - I am so not into football. Except for the Steelers, Oakland Raiders and DA Colts! All that I know? I know from my mama! She is the family football fan! (l) (l) (l)

Wanna discuss?? (h) (h) PM me. (and the Eagles still SUCK.)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady and the Doc'meister boxer

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 02:32 AM

Editorial Observer: Coast to Coast Through Early 19th-Century England
January 21, 2005 By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Every road trip is a narrative of sorts, or at least that's
what we like to tell ourselves, in a Kerouac kind of way.
But most trips are really nothing of the sort. The long-ago
days when a cross-country driver could count on a flat tire
to give him a close-up view of the countryside - when there
were no freeways and the way West was along a two-lane
highway - were, well, long ago. Now the narrative, such as
it is, is the smooth hum of tires, refueling at automatic,
credit-card-reading gas pumps, stopping for the night at
motels that do their best to be unvarying coast to coast.

You have to drive quite a ways off the Interstate to get to
a town that hasn't been distorted by the dark commercial
gravity of so much traffic so near at hand. And even then
it's hard to find a good place to eat.

My wife, Lindy, and I recently drove from our farm north of
New York City to California. This trip had a narrative. It
was called "Middlemarch," by George Eliot. We slipped the
first cassette into the car stereo somewhere near Albany -
"Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty ..." - and we finished
the last one - "and rest in unvisited tombs" - somewhere
between Bakersfield and Fresno. In heavy traffic, or when
one of us wanted to sleep, we turned the novel off. The
rest of the time we listened. It so happens that America is
as wide as "Middlemarch" is long, at 70 m.p.h. along the
southern route.

A novel is really a temporal creation. It is as much about
the ways in which time passes in the story and in the
reader's awareness of the story as it is about anything
else. If you sat in a room and read "Middlemarch" or
listened to it being read, you would become very aware of
the time it took. But for us, the novel became a spatial
creation. It was as though we were driving along a pavement
of Eliot's sentences laid end to end across the country.

Now and then - Eliot does have occasional longueurs - we
found ourselves working our way up a difficult passage,
climbing a switchback from clause to clause. But for the
most part it was smooth sailing. It felt, at the best of
times, as though the occupants of Middlemarch, that
provincial town, were riding with us in the back seat -
Peter Featherstone and Mary Garth and poor Lydgate.

I had read "Middlemarch" several times before this trip,
but I had never heard it. No matter how well you remember a
novel you've read, hearing it read aloud is like finding
another book within it. I had forgotten how vividly Eliot
captures the gossiping life of Middlemarch - how distinct
the voices of even the smallest characters can be as they
talk about the coming of the railway or the chances of
reform or the troubles of the evangelical Mr. Bulstrode.
Lindy and I rode along, cocooned in the voices we were
hearing, and it was as if the acoustic space within the car
became a psychological space, a place where we could hear
Eliot dissect, with a surgeon's grace, the inner mind of
Dorothea Brooke.

Outside, the trucks roared past, or we roared past the
trucks. The Virginia countryside gave way to Tennessee,
Arkansas and Texas, and finally New Mexico, Arizona and
California. Wooden fences gave way to barbed wire and
welded pipe. The landscape was American, of course - an
America adulterated by the effects of I-40. And yet, in a
certain sense, we drove from New York to California by way
of Loamshire, the fictional county in which "Middlemarch"
is set. It should have seemed incongruous to be hearing
about "the hayricks at Stone Court" while looking out at
the brush of West Texas, and yet it wasn't. The weather
seemed to darken whenever we entered the forbidding
territory of Mr. Casaubon's thoughts. It brightened
whenever Dorothea appeared, no matter how hard the rain was
falling.

The human mind has a propensity to give in to the story at
hand. We stop reading aloud when the children get to a
certain age, and yet there is a craving for the sound of a
story that never goes away. Lindy and I tried to imagine a
movie of "Middlemarch" - there is a 1994 version with Judi
Dench as the voice of George Eliot - but no visual
representation of the story could be as powerful as the
story the words themselves deliver - as powerful as the
story those words kindle in us. The greatness of
"Middlemarch" is that it does not leave us on the surface
of its characters, understanding how they feel only from
the gestures they make. It takes us deeper inside them than
the camera could ever go.

I suppose that if adults still read aloud to each other the
way they did in centuries past we would get a lot less
reading done. I can certainly read "Middlemarch" much
faster than I can listen to it. But when we got to
California, one of the first things I did was borrow a copy
from the library. I seemed to recognize every sentence, as
if this one were the water tower of a small Tennessee town
and that one were a pasture in the oak hills of California.

(*) (*) Okay, what nice butch would love to travel with a smart, witty and very sexy FEMME and her handsome boxer? ;) (h) (h)

(l) (l) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

01-22-2005, 02:38 AM

January 21, 2005, By JOSH SENS

LUSH country clubs and hushed villas that double as second
homes give Palm Desert the look of a city at rest. But it's
really sleepy only in the summer, when withering heat
forces cafe owners to switch on their mist machines and
even the rattlesnakes seek shade. Come winter, mild weather
brings the outdoors into play, and Palm Desert shows its
active side. Just two hours from Los Angeles, Palm Desert
serves as a weekend escape for urbanites seeking inland
adventure. Hikers and cyclists take to well-marked trails
that wind for miles through the surrounding desert.
Open-top Jeep tours make off-road excursions into the
lonely, lunar landscape of nearby Joshua Tree National
Park. And there is golf, of course, on many of the same
fairways where pros compete, and scores of available tennis
courts. Though often confused with Palm Springs, its
trendier neighbor, Palm Desert has character of its own,
with its swank El Paseo shopping district and a range of
fine restaurants. The best places draw crowds well into the
evening, which is to say that life goes on in Palm Desert,
long after the last early-bird special is served.

Friday

5 p.m.
1) Jeep Thrills

Never mind midnight at the
oasis. Early evening will do just fine. Take a nighttime
Jeep ride into the desert with Desert Adventures
(760-324-5337; $69 for two-hour tours; $89 for three
hours), the same company that offers daytime tours of
Joshua Tree National Park ($99 for four hours; $125 for
five hours, lunch included). Temperatures drop quickly when
the sun goes down, so wear a hat and jacket as you rumble
through terrain where the San Andreas Fault buckles upward
and oases sprout like mirages in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Tour
guides bring black lights to search for wildlife: fox,
coyotes, birds of prey. Scorpions, which glow
phosphorescent when illuminated, are hard to come by in
winter, but Scorpio stands out in the sky. Borrow a
high-power telescope from your guide, who will teach you
how to track the constellations. It's a breathtaking vista,
one that's lost in the bright lights of city life.

8 p.m.
2) Time to Dine

Bland chain restaurants are as
common as cactuses around Palm Desert, but relief from them
is never far away. One refuge is Cuistot (72-595 El Paseo;
760-340-1000), a refined French-Californian restaurant
featuring the haute cuisine of the city's best-known chef,
Bernard Dervieux. Whet your appetite with wild mushroom
soup ($11.50) or house-made lobster ravioli ($14.75) before
moving on to short ribs braised in cabernet ($33.50).
Another option is Castelli's Ristorante (73-098 Highway
111; 760-773-3365), a local hot spot with a
Venice-meets-Vegas atmosphere. Rat Pack standards serve as
background music. Murals near the entrance depict the drift
of gondoliers. The "Godfather's Dinner" ($30), a three-way
combo of beef spiedini, shrimp scampi and veal piccata,
captures the red sauce ethos of the menu, and the chef,
Brian Altman, embodies the spirit of the place. He emerges
periodically to greet regulars with a bear hug and
backslap.

Saturday

8:30 a.m.
3) Analyze This Swing

Every golfer needs a guru, and a great place to find one is
the Marriott's Shadow Ridge resort, home of the Faldo Golf
Institute (9002 Shadow Ridge Road; 760-674-2700). Named for
the three-time Masters champ Nick Faldo, the institute
offers three-hour short-game and full-swing sessions
($225). The sessions include a coupon for a free round of
golf at the resort. You'll also get a video of yourself,
replete with frame-by-frame analysis by your instructor,
who compares your swing side-by-side with Mr. Faldo's.
Criticism is constructive only. Hang on to the tape as a
helpful reference - or comic relief.

Noon
4) Short-Order Nostalgia

Grab lunch at Keedy's Fountain &
Grill (73-633 Highway 111; 760-346-6492), a throwback soda
fountain recognized by the city as a local landmark. It's
been in business since 1957 and has all the old-fashioned
fixings: yellow Formica counters, apron-clad waitresses who
call customers "Hon" and straightforward burgers ($4.29)
that wash down well with a chocolate malted ($4.25) or a
thick date shake ($4.59). Keedy's bills itself as `'a blast
from the past," but it makes concessions to the present
with the TV's mounted behind the counter, tuned fittingly
to the Golf Channel.
1:30 p.m.
5) A Hornbill, a Hyrax

Save time for a leisurely stroll through the Living Desert
Zoo & Gardens ($10.95 general admission; 47-900 Portola
Avenue; 760-346-5694), a spectacular preserve that pays
tribute to the world's most arid landscapes and the plants
and animals that make them home. Winding footpaths lead you
through 10 desert ecosystems, from East Africa to
Madagascar to the American Southwest. Wonderfully exotic
wildlife includes the Abyssinian ground hornbill, a
prehistoric-looking bird that flies only when disturbed,
and the Cape rock hyrax, a woolly cat-size mammal that
lives on rocky outcrops but whose distant relative is the
elephant. You'll gain fresh appreciation for the
adaptability of the coyote at an exhibition devoted to its
scat.

4 p.m.
6) Shop Talk

Many an hour and dollar has been spent on El Paseo, often
described as Palm Desert's version of Rodeo Drive. You can
get it all here: Coach bags, cashmere cardigans, cosmetic
surgery. Tommy Bahama's Tropical Café and Emporium (73-595
El Paseo; 760-836-0188), in the Gardens shopping center,
has a clothing store downstairs and a restaurant upstairs
with umbrella-drink décor. Not to worry. You're here for
the view. Grab a seat on the veranda, order a Caribbean
Bloody Mary ($7.25) and watch the daylight wane over the
desert.

5:30 p.m.
7) Dinner . . .

Not much time to dine, but you won't need it at Casuelas
Café (73-703 Highway 111; 760-568-0011), a family-run
Mexican restaurant that serves good carnitas ($13.95) and
chicken enchiladas ($10.50) in substantial portions and
flan that's better if you ask for it without whipped cream
($3.95).

7 p.m.
8) . . . And a Show

Drive a few towns west on Highway 111 to Palm Springs and
watch the curtain open on the "Fabulous Palm Springs
Follies" at the Historic Plaza Theater (128 South Palm
Canyon Drive; 760-327-0225), an acclaimed variety show with
a chorus line of "long-legged lovelies." Every member of
the cast is over 55. The oldest, Beverly Allen, 87, first
performed at age 6 in a show with Mae West. In this, its
14th season, the show pays homage to burlesque, and its
feathered female dancers perform a mock striptease. It all
moves smoothly in the hands of its impresario and M.C.,
Riff Markowitz, who's both unabashedly patriotic and
politically incorrect.

Sunday

7:30 a.m.
9) Hit the Links

Test your improved swing by cashing in
your coupon for a free round of golf at Shadow Ridge (9002
Shadow Ridge Road; 760-674-2700). A lot of desert courses
are long on yardage but short on character. Shadow Ridge
has both. Mr. Faldo's design has contoured fairways that
call out for shaped tee shots. The greens are smooth but
deceptive, especially the 13th, which requires a blind
approach from the fairway. The 446-yard 18th hole, with a
creek flanking the fairway and a pond guarding the green,
will send even the best players back to the drawing board.

11:30 a.m.
10) Brunch for the Road

After golf, make
your rounds of the Champagne brunch buffet at Agua Caliente
Casino ($20.95; 32-250 Bob Hope Drive; 760-321-2000), where
slot machines and blackjack tables aren't the only
temptation. The brunch, which includes all the Champagne
you can drink, is a meal of unapologetic indulg