Even in confessing to preening, Edwards was preening. His diagnosis of narcissism was weirdly narcissistic, or was it self-narcissistic? Given his diagnosis, I’m sure his H.M.O. would pay.
The creepiest part of his creepy confession was when he stressed to Woodruff that he cheated on Elizabeth in 2006 when her cancer was in remission. His infidelity was oncologically correct.
Taking pride of place in the garden is Pig Toilet, an experimental dry sanitation project devised by the Dutch artists Atelier Van Lieshout. It combines a pigpen with a human toilet, the contents of which are eaten by the pigs, rather than being flushed away and wasting water. "It sounds disgusting, but it works," said Crawford. "In the 19th century there was a vigorous debate between the advantages of dry and wet sanitation systems. The urgh! factor is the reason why wet systems won, but dry sanitation was a perfectly workable solution."Well, we're just lucky we don't have Peter Greenaway doing an installation on avoiding a world food crisis.
JERUSALEM (Kyodo) Nissan MotorCo. has ordered its Israeli business ally to immediately stop airing a television commercial
The major Israeli paper Haaretz, in its online edition, showed video footage of a news program on Saudi Arabia's MBC TV that quoted a Saudi representative as saying that Persian Gulf states
"Have you been downtown?" asked City Councilman Richard Pletcher. "It's like little Hiroshima. It's HiroNeedles."Just what we need: the new micro-nation of Needles!
Resentment has been mounting for years, but the county's decision to reduce the Colorado River Medical Center, the town's once proud hospital, to a small urgent-care facility has sparked open rebellion. Needles is now considering leaving California to join Nevada or Arizona or to create its own independent county.
"This is not a publicity stunt. We are serious about secession,"
Greyhound has scrapped a billboard ad campaign that extols the relaxing upside of bus travel in the wake of a bus attack in Canada where a man beheaded and cannibalized another passenger.
The ad's punchline was "There's a reason you've never heard of 'bus rage.'"
I like this part the best:A FORMER spy claimed he was the new messiah in a “Sermon on the Mount” on top of Roseberry Topping.
Middlesbrough-born David Shayler, who was jailed in 2002 for leaking secrets including allegations the secret services plotted to assassinate Libyan Leader Colonel Gaddafi, preached to a handful of climbers during the sermon last night.
The story has photos of the new Messiah in action too.Reiterating his claims to be the new Messiah, Mr Shayler admitted people “might find it strange” for this to happen in Middlesbrough.
He said: “When people think of Middlesbrough, they tend to think of unemployment, child abuse and a failing football team. But I want to set the record straight.
“Why not promote Shayler as the Messiah and get people here on pilgrimages?”
The problem is all the more compelling for the Democrats because Senator Barack Obama, their likely nominee, lost the Catholic vote badly to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton - like Obama a supporter of abortion rights - during the primaries in states like New Hampshire, Missouri and Ohio. In Pennsylvania, Catholic voters preferred Clinton to Obama by a 40-point margin.The report puts it down to Obama being seen as being very liberal on abortion rights, but I wonder if there is more to it than that.
It's the salutes that really appeal to me.MUMBAI: Here in the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, the doyen of this city's hotels, what you think of the new India may depend on whether you are the person having soap squeezed onto your hands or the person squeezing the soap.
In every men's washroom at the Taj is a helper. As you approach the sink, he salutes you. Before you can turn on the tap, he does it for you. Before you can apply soap, he presses the dispenser. Before you can get a towel, he dangles one. As you leave, he salutes you again and mutters: "Right, sir. O.K., sir. Thank you, sir."
At 1 a.m. back in the boss's apartment building, the hallways are often covered with bodies. They belong to servants and sweepers who work inside by day but sleep outside by night, who clean the toilets but would not dare use them. They learn to sleep on cold tile, with tenants stepping over them when returning from Champagne-soaked evenings out.As you can see, the article is about how those who are getting richer in India still treat the poor very badly, and there is a new film on the the subject. I like this comment by a viewer from the middle class:
The film was good but "one-sided," he said: "Maybe there are 70 percent of the people who treat them bad, but there are 30 percent who treat them good."
In the Airbus A320, failures of the primary wiring system carrying power to the cockpit have not always led to the backup system kicking in automatically, leaving pilots dangerously distracted as they struggle to restore normality. This happened on 37 flights up to May 2007, prompting Airbus to publish a modification to the A320's electrical system.
....teachers were baffled that Larry was allowed to draw so much attention to himself. "All the teachers were complaining, because it was disruptive," says one of them. "Dress code is a huge issue at our school. We fight [over] it every day." Some teachers thought Larry was clearly in violation of the code, which prevents students from wearing articles of clothing considered distracting. When Larry wore lipstick and eyeliner to school for the first time, a teacher told him to wash it off, and he did. But the next day, he was back wearing even more. Larry told the teacher he could wear makeup if he wanted to. He said that Ms. Epstein told him that was his right.Ms Epstein, an assistant principal, is gay herself, and is seen by some of the other teachers as having been far too encouraging of Larry. One teacher complained:
She [the teacher] was approached by several boys in her class who said that Larry had started taunting them in the halls—"I know you want me," he'd say—and their friends were calling them gay.Ms Epstein appears to have generally downplayed the prospect of any action.
One teacher was very protective of Larry, his English teacher, Mrs. Boldrin. To help Larry feel better about moving to Casa Pacifica, she brought Larry a present: a green evening dress that once belonged to her own daughter. Before school started, Larry ran to the bathroom to try it on. Then he showed it to some of his friends, telling them that he was going to wear it at graduation.There's plenty more in the article; it's a fascinating read.
As night was falling across the Americas on Sunday, August 28, 1859, the phantom shapes of the auroras could already be seen overhead. From Maine to the tip of Florida, vivid curtains of light took the skies. Startled Cubans saw the auroras directly overhead; ships’ logs near the equator described crimson lights reaching halfway to the zenith. Many people thought their cities had caught fire. Scientific instruments around the world, patiently recording minute changes in Earth’s magnetism, suddenly shot off scale, and spurious electric currents surged into the world’s telegraph systems.Well, at least it would save me the cost of a long trip from Brisbane to see an aurora. The downside: it's quite possible that it could knock out the electricity grid for weeks:
According to studies by John G. Kappenman of Metatech Corporation, the magnetic storm of May 15, 1921, would have caused a blackout affecting half of North America had it happened today. A much larger storm, like that of 1859, could bring down the entire grid. Other industrial countries are also vulnerable, but North America faces greater danger because of its proximity to the north magnetic pole. Because of the physical damage to transformers, full recovery and replacement of damaged components might take weeks or even months. Kappenman testified to Congress in 2003 that “the ability to provide meaningful emergency aid and response to an impacted population that may be in excess of 100 million people will be a difficult challenge.”This seems a good excuse to see what videos of aurora can be found on Youtube. I want to see real-time video too; usually you see time lapse stuff and it doesn't give you much idea of how quickly the aurora move and change.
The documentary "On a Wind and a Prayer" tells the long, complex tale of Japan's dedicated but futile attempts to harass North Americans by creating panic and tying up various kinds of service crews with unpredictable but widespread damage....Japan's spotty but persistent assaults on America came by submarine and hot-air balloon. The Gearhart Mountain fatalities resulted from a balloon that had been launched from Japan. Of about 9,200 balloons sent into the prevailing winds starting in November 1944, some 920 should have reached North America, by Japanese estimates. By 1946, 265 had been found. Another 40 have turned up over the decades.
"On a Wind and a Prayer" also touches on Japan's submarine assaults on the U.S. coast, including the February 1942 shelling of an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, Calif. On June 20 another sub bombarded Vancouver, B.C., and the next night another sub fired on Fort Stevens near Astoria. On Sept. 9, 1942, a float plane launched from a Japanese submarine started a small forest fire near Brookings.
The raids caused little damage and no injuries. Nor was there damage or injury to the Japanese subs and crews; decades later, we must admit they were intrepid. They also exemplified the sorry state of coastal security in 1942.
"Wind" also mentions the "Battle of Los Angeles," a profoundly confused panic in which U.S. military units fired some 1,400 artillery and anti-aircraft shells based on rumors. The melee inspired Steven Spielberg's 1979 epic farce "1941." The farrago actually occurred in late February 1942, Spielberg's title notwithstanding. Spielberg did not mention the three people killed by artillery fallout or the three people known to have died of heart attacks caused by the frenzy.
Sounds like a good documentary to watch out for.
..Havenhand said. ‘I really hope I’m wrong about the broader implications of our work. However, the available evidence points to the conclusion that at present acidification is the biggest threat to the long-term viability of our ocean ecosystems and especially to key invertebrate species that maintain many of the marine ecosystems on which we rely for food, protection, and recreation.’I didn't see much of the Four Corners story last night on melting Arctic ice, but I could imagine Andrew Bolt's blood pressure rising as he watched it. I did have a look at one of the extended interviews on the Four Corner's website (the one with Ted Scambos), and he looked very calm, cool and reasonable while expressing the reasons for his great concern. (But, I can hear a skeptic cry, he thought the 2008 melt would be worse than it is. It seems to me that the 2008 ice cover is no where near a recovery of such an extent to dismiss the overal trend to melting.)
In an interview in the latest issue of Healthy and Organic Living magazine, the TV cook suggested that the weed, called henbane, would make a tasty addition to salads.
Speaking from Spain, where he is on holiday, Worrall Thompson said he had confused it with the fat hen weed, which has edible leaves that can be used in salads or cooked like spinach....
Experts said anyone who had followed his advice and created a salad with henbane should seek medical help and may have their stomach pumped.
