Weird Odd News

2011-12-09T00:58:00.000-08:00

Two self-described Disney "fanatics" have purchased a house in Utah modeled after the colorful home featured in the animated movie "Up."

Discovering the house in the Salt Lake City suburb of Herriman, Utah, was a dream come true for Clinton and Lynette Hamblin of Petaluma, Calif. The couple had been looking for a house with some of the same flourishes as the one in the movie, such as a multi-colored exterior or a blue kitchen with retro appliances.

They initially looked in California until they saw news reports about the house in Utah that included every possible detail from the movie and was even officially recognized as the "Up" house by Disney. Even more surprising was the $400,000 price tag, which was less than homes they looked at in California.

For them, however, the real attraction to the house was it underscored the overriding theme of the movie.

"We just love the message of the movie — adventure is out there," Lynette Hamblin told The Salt Lake Tribune.

The house is modeled on its appearance early in the movie, when Carl and Ellie Frederickson are flush with the optimism of newlyweds. That was before infertility undid their hopes for a family and Ellie’s death left Carl a curmudgeonly recluse who refuses to succumb to developers and sell his house.

Homebuilder Adam Bangerter told The Associated Press earlier this year that he and his brothers — who collectively own Bangerter Homes — wanted to replicate the house because it’s iconic and plays an important role in the movie.

"It illustrates what homeownership really is, and it’s not an investment. It’s part of the American dream to have a house to care for, to improve and to make part of your family," Bangerter said during a tour of the house.

Herriman City spokeswoman Nicole Martin said about 45,000 people have visited the home for tours, and will continue to do so through the month of December. City leaders even recently passed a resolution honoring the house for its economic impact.

The Hamblins plan to move into the home after closing Jan. 4, which happens to be Lynette Hamblin’s birthday.

[Via - Boston Herald]

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Cool sites - PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency

Domain Name Ideas

2011-11-27T02:02:00.000-08:00

Running out of domain name ideas? Have you tried all the usual online naming venues, like domain name generators and expired domain lists with no success? Time to consider PickyDomains.com – world’s first risk-free online naming agency.

Unlike domain name generators or expired domain lists, our domain suggestions are generated by real human beings, not some obscure computer algorithm. And risk-free means that you pay us ONLY if you decide to register one of submitted suggestions. If you don’t like any suggestions and decide to register none – you don’t pay anything.

Our service is very affordable - $50 for names and domains, and $75 for slogans. We’ve already come up with over 1500+ cool domains, like Geomium.com, GetMapped.com or Architexa.com, and have been featured in major publications, like The San Francisco Chronicle. Over 40000 people have signed up to become PickyDomains.com contributors with several hundred being active on any given time.

So if you are tired of trying to come up with domain name on your own, give us a try. To place an order, simply register as client, create an order and activate it.

Business Name Ideas

2011-11-27T02:00:00.000-08:00

Looking for business name ideas? Pickydomains.com is world’s first risk-free naming agency that opened its doors in 2007 and has come up with thousands of cool business and domain names, like GymGenius.com, Xutta.com, Geomium, Eyes On Fries Diets or GetMapped.Com since then.

The idea behind Pickydomains.com is brilliantly simple. If you need a business name that perfectly describes what you do and immediately stands out, you simply place your order. Right away you start getting dozens of suggestions from our contributors. If you find the name that fits you perfectly, you pay $50. If you don’t like any suggestions, you don’t pay anything. Hence, risk free naming service.

Currently, there are over 40,000 registered contributors, with several hundred being active on any given day. The system automatically tracks performance of each copywriter, by measuring how many submitted suggestions were liked or disliked by other clients. Based on that performance, each contributor is ranked 1 though 5. Higher ranked copyrighters receive better pay and can submit more suggestions. This way you don’t have to waste your time on sub par suggestions as the system automatically promotes best namers and pushes out the ones with little skills. We’ve also been told by several clients that they like our work better than that of branding agencies that charge anywhere between $10,000 and $100,000.

So if you are looking of business name ideas on a small budget, Pickydomains.com is the way to go. Hey, some folks even trust us to name their pets. And we named a strip club in Las Vegas too! So we can surely find a business name for you or you'll pay us nothing.

Groupon Horror Story

2011-11-25T05:13:00.001-08:00

Need business name ideas? PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency

A London bakery recently experienced the worst-case scenario of offering a Groupon for a small business, and it cost the owner thousands (yes, it's another groupon horror story).

Need a Cake bakery owner Rachel Brown decided to put up a 75% discount on a dozen cupcakes on the site, which dropped the price down to $10 from $40.

Apparently, people really love getting cupcakes cheap, because she was rushed by throngs of customers in a cupcake frenzy. 8,500 people signed up, and her crew of eight had to make 102,000 cupcakes to meet the orders.

Brown lost $3 per batch because she had to hire 25 extra workers to help, and she ended up losing $20,000 because of it, which is a ton for a small biz. It wiped out her profits for the year, reports the Daily Mail.

"Without doubt, it was my worst ever business decision," she told the BBC. "We had thousands of orders pouring in that really we hadn't expected to have. A much larger company would have difficulty coping."

This is just the latest in Groupon small business horror stories. A story popped up in September about a Portland cafe losing $8,000 because of a Groupon, which prompted a personal letter from founder and CEO Andrew Mason.

It brings up the always-present question about the daily deals site: does Groupon suck for small businesses?

Well, it looks like most small businesses think so. An overwhelming majority of 70% hate Groupon, if the latest survey from iContact is to be believed.

As for Brown and her bakery, the experience may have cost her 20 grand, but what about all the exposure she's getting for her store? Great, right? It doesn't hurt, but it probably wasn't worth the cost.

Small businesses like this bakery thrive on relationships with their local customers, not crowds of outsiders coming in to snatch up a free lunch.

Getting new customers is great, but in this case, the bakery rewarded the wrong customers. Those 8,500 people that rushed for the Groupon probably won't be coming back to pay for the same cupcakes at quadruple the price.

Only those the store has nurtured relationships with for a long time (in Brown's case, 25 years), should be the ones rewarded. They're the ones that keep coming back for more.

[Via - NicheGeek.com]

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Need business name ideas? PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency

Startup Naming Tips

2011-11-16T08:29:00.001-08:00

So your startup needs a name. Welcome to PickyDomains.com, a crowdsourcing naming platform that has named over 1500 startups, services, blogs, online shops and news sites. Here are just a few examples of our work -DePrice.Com (discounted software retailer), SoftwareJudge.com (software review site), MadConomist.com (odd news), BatesExpress.com (bates numbering software for lawyers), BenePark.com (innovative domain parking system with above market payouts) and many, many others.

We understand that most startups don’t have any cash to burn, so our services cost only 50 US Dollars. Moreover, our service is risk-free, which means that if you decide that you don’t like any names (domains) we suggest for your startup, you get your $50 deposit back. You pay us only if you like our work.

We are very different from naming agencies and brand consultants. This is how the process work. First, you register as client. Then, you create your order and specify what you want - how long your domain should be, which extensions are desirable, does it have to have certain keywords or not, etc. The order goes active as soon as you make the deposit (we accept credit cards, paypal, bank transfers, invoices, and all other conventional payment methods). Within minutes (yes, minutes) you start receving suggestions from our contributors (we’ve got over fourty thousand registered copywriters and several hundred are active at any given time). You mark incoming suggestions as liked or disliked to steer our contributors in the right direction. When you see a domain that’s perfect for your startup, you register it first and then mark it as picked. Contributor who made that suggestion will get half of your deposit. Once again, if you aren’t happy with our work - the money is returned, no questions asked. You aren’t risking anything when hiring us.

We also do names and slogans, and our projects aren’t limited to startup names. We’ve been hired to name software, restaurants, product lines, adult websites, strip clubs, even dogs. So if your project needs a name, we’ll happily assist you.

Source - Startup names

Your Cable Guy Owes You!

2011-11-06T01:04:00.001-07:00

Link Of The Day - Coupons For Godaddy

People often joke about how much waiting for the cable guy and other service people is costing them — in time and billable hours. Well, now someone has actually done the math.

t costs a whopping $37.7 billion a year for the time customers spent waiting on someone to come fix, install or deliver something, according to a new “Cost of Waiting” study from TOA Technologies. The company makes software that helps businesses better track their service people and narrow down the window of time customers have to wait.

Americans waited 4.3 hours on average — more than double of what the individuals had expected. On an individual basis, that works out to about $250 a year, or two full working days, that we waste waiting for everything from the cable, phone, Internet or utility guy to a retail home delivery.

“It’s clear from this year’s survey that customer service needs to be a top priority for businesses in the current climate, not only because it can negatively affect a company’s performance but because poor service around wait times has financial penalties for a company’s own customers,” said Yuval Brisker, co-founder and CEO of TOA Technologies.

And, if you’ve had it with waiting, you’re not alone: The survey found 58 percent of Americans suffered fist-pounding frustration, waiting on somebody for something, in the past year.

In fact, Brisker and his partner Irad Carmi, now the CTO of the company, founded TOA after a particularly frustrating wait for a guy to come and fix Brisker’s video on demand. The window the company gave him came and went without a single ring of the doorbell, so he decided to go out and run an errand. He came home to find a note on the door from the service person that said, “Sorry we missed you.” The company was able to give him a new appointment — for ONE WEEK LATER.

“I thought, there’s got to be a better way!” Brisker said.

Customer frustration with wait times is bad in the best of times, but Brisker said it’s even worse since the recession.

“Our focus in this survey was to understand if waiting pains people more as a result of the downturn in the economy. Do they perceive that pain more acutely than before? Yes,” Brisker said. “There’s a much more acute sense of every dollar lost — especially in middle- and lower-income people.”

Couple that with the fact that people are more inclined to voice their complaints through social media — reaching far more people than just complaining to family and friends — and companies like TOA are seeing huge demand for their software.

[Via - MadConomist.com]

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10 Strangest Canned Foods

2011-10-23T07:30:00.001-07:00

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

1. Canned worms (ok, technically, silkworm pupae)

2. Pizza-flavored SPAM (sorry, KAM)

3. A can of croc

4. Canned bacon (should be considered a crime)

5. Corn smut (huitlacoche)

6. Frog Legs. Must be hot in France

7. Canned armadillo meat

8. Canned Cheesburger (Germany). Here is a little video, in case you are wondering, how the f.ck do you can a cheeseburger (yes, buns, meat, cheese and sauce together)

9. Scorpions in a can

10. Canned whole squid (doesn't look too tasty)

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

BenePark - Cool Startup Ideas

2011-10-05T02:55:00.001-07:00

http://benepark.com

BenePark.Com is a recently launched Finnish domain parking service where 90% of all accepted sites get at least $5 in ad revenue each and every month. This is 5 to 10 times the industry average. Most parking services (like Sedo.com, for example) simply load the page with ads, which immediately leads to Google downgrading domain to a ‘junk’ status. Which, in turn, leads to domain being omitted in the search engine results. And that means that such companies are capable of monetizing type-in traffic only.

BenePark.Com takes a different approach. First, domains have to be approved, prior to being accepted into the system. Then BenePark turns an empty domain into a regular webpage. This is done by placing relevant content onto the page, which is not limited to text only – videos, for example, are added as well. As a result of this ‘transformation’, domains parked with BenePark turn into regular sites. Because content is updated and new links are been placed for the parked domain, search engines start treating them as regular sites. Which means that type-in traffic isn’t the only type of traffic for BenePark domains, as over time domain’s pagerank and search engine traffic increase.

If you have domains you’ve purchased and don’t plan to develop soon, consider parking them with BenePark.com

Branding, Naming And Other Things

2011-09-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know it's been a while. Here they are

1. Brand Naming

2. Domain Name Ideas

3. Business Name Ideas

4. Company Name Ideas

Doing my best to keep new clients coming.

Off Topic (Help Wanted)

2011-07-11T07:15:00.001-07:00

As you may (or may not) know, I own PickyDomains. After recent upgrade, we had a huge surge in orders, getting as many as 8 new orders in a single day. So basically we need your help and right away. What's in it for you? We charge $50 our clients for coming up with a cool domain. The person who suggests picked domain (that could be you, yes YOU) gets half of the fee. So if you are good with domains, names or slogans (you get more for slogans), go we need your suggestions right now. Here is registration link.

Here is a simple trick that will GREATLY increases your chance to get your suggestion picked. Most names are picked within two weeks, with day 2,3,4 most popular. Most new users work on the first three orders only. Because of difference in traffic depending on day of the week and time of the day, a new order may receive 200 suggestion during first few hours or 20. Then, as new orders are listed, old orders are pushed down and volume of suggestions for old orders goes down. So to increase your chances (after working on orders that we just added) go and work on ALL orders that were listed withing last 72-96 hours. These are going to be the first 15 orders on the Available orders list, generally speaking. And when you work on older orders, work BACKWARDS, submitting to order 15 first, then 14, then 13, because the owners of these are ready to make a decision. Do it even if you already made your suggestions to these when they initially appeared, because many clients feel overwhelmed when they receive several hundred suggestions within the first 24 hours. As the volume of suggestions drops down, they have more time too look at each individual suggestion - and if you are smart, these suggestions are going to be yours. This drop in volume is very significant, we've had one client tell us that they like the service, but here were too many suggestions and then the same person asked, why so few suggestions are coming in after the order was active for three days. Take advantage of that.

5 Sites To Consider If You Want To Make Money, But Don’t Want To Work Hard.

2011-06-29T01:35:00.001-07:00

5 Sites To Consider If You Want To Make Money, But Don’t Want To Work Hard.

1. Microworkers.com

Microworkers, as the name implies, is a crowdsourcing site that specializes in small odd ‘jobs’, if you can call them that. A typical assignment is to follow someone on Twitter, to befriend someone’s Facebook account or to vote for a picture/video. These pay $0.10 to $1.50 per job and obviously won’t make you rich, but why not pay for that mp3 track or Android game by clicking a few buttons while you are logged onto Facebook?

2. PickyDomains.com

PickyDomains has a better payout potential, provided you are good with words. This is a naming service where people pay $50-$75 for someone to come up with cool domain, name or slogan for them. That someone could easily be you. If your suggestion is chosen, you’ll get roughly half of the fee ($25 to $40) via PayPal. And unlike regular writing jobs were you get paid a fixed amount of money for 1000 characters of text, you can pay for your next streak dinner with just a good name you came up with on a whim.

3. Craigslist.com

Craigslist is a great way to make money online. You can both browse for jobs online as well as offer your services. Not too many job sites carry help wanted ads for “experienced bra fitter” or "I'll give you $2 + cost if you'll deliver me some orange juice with receipt." You can also offer your services, the crazier, the better (just don’t charge too much). You can offer to sing a serenade. You can ask 10 bucks for bringing over you vast Xbox game collection, while you go away for a week on that road trip. You can offer to wash someone’s car in your bikini (make sure you bring your boxer boyfriend with you). The list is endless. One limitation – Craiglist works for larges cities only.

4. Tutor.com

If you are a college student or have a degree and have 5 hours to spare, Tutor.com wants you. You’ll be able to make a few hundred dollars each month, provided you are hired (only US and Canada residents with valid Social Security Numbers are eligible). Oh, and the most important part - tutoring is done online, so you don’t have to drive anywhere. Reliable high-speed internet connection and a PC are required. Sorry Mac fans no Tutor.com for you.

5. SharedReviews.com

SharedReviews is a site where you get paid for reviewing books, movies, games and just about anything. All reviews must be original. There is not fixed amount, but rather you are offered shared revenue policy, meaning ShareReviews will promote you review and collect money from advertisers and then give you your part. There are a number of other sites that offer you the same deal.

=========
Dmitry Davydov is the founder of risk-free naming service PickyDomains.com. He can be reached at supportAT pickydomainsDOTcom

Risk Free Business Name Ideas

2011-06-01T01:58:00.001-07:00

Free Business Name Ideas

Looking for business name ideas? Pickydomains.com is world’s first risk-free naming agency that opened its doors in 2007 and has come up with thousands of cool business and domain names, like GymGenius.com, Xutta.com, Geomium, Eyes On Fries Diets or GetMapped.Com since then.

The idea behind Pickydomains.com is brilliantly simple. If you need a business name that perfectly describes what you do and immediately stands out, you simply place your order. Right away you start getting dozens of suggestions from our contributors. If you find the name that fits you perfectly, you pay $50. If you don’t like any suggestions, you don’t pay anything. Hence, risk free naming service.

Currently, there are over 40,000 registered contributors, with several hundred being active on any given day. The system automatically tracks performance of each copywriter, by measuring how many submitted suggestions were liked or disliked by other clients. Based on that performance, each contributor is ranked 1 though 5. Higher ranked copyrighters receive better pay and can submit more suggestions. This way you don’t have to waste your time on sub par suggestions as the system automatically promotes best namers and pushes out the ones with little skills. We’ve also been told by several clients that they like our work better than that of branding agencies that charge anywhere between $10,000 and $100,000.

So if you are looking of business name ideas on a small budget, Pickydomains.com is the way to go. Hey, some folks even trust us to name their pets. And we named a strip club in Las Vegas too!

Wacky Peagent

2011-05-20T03:36:00.000-07:00

Organisers of a beauty pageant in Puerto Rico are investigating a case of sabotage after a contestant's dress and make-up were covered with pepper spray.

Ingrid Marie Rivera beat 29 pageant rivals to become the 2008 Miss Universe contestant, despite breaking out twice in hives - a red swollen rash.

Ms Rivera remained composed onstage before the judges, but backstage she applied ice packs to her face and body.

Her clothing and make-up later tested positive for pepper spray.

"We thought at first it was an allergic reaction, or maybe nerves," said pageant spokesman Harold Rosario.

"But the second time, we knew it couldn't have been a coincidence."

Bomb threat

The pageant organisers said they hoped to catch whoever was responsible for the prank but have not involved the police.

The pageant also saw the theft of Ms Rivera's bag - which contained her dresses, make-up and credit cards - and the last day of the competition was postponed after a bomb threat.

Ms Rivera admitted that she had considered dropping out of the contest. "At one point I said, 'Am I a masochist?'"

"But I said: 'I am with God and this is my goal, regardless of the results.'"

Ms Rivera won Miss World Caribbean in 2005, and local media had predicted she would win the Puerto Rican pageant.

Her rivals complained she was too experienced and should be disqualified.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

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Pond Scum Cleaners

2011-03-29T01:30:00.001-07:00

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

http://www.bluewaterpond.com/

Pond scum, or blue-green algae, is a common sight in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

For Blue Water Ponds, a start-up company operated by two recent college graduates, pond scum is a business opportunity.

The company, which won the student division of the 2010 Minnesota Cup challenge, aims to prevent summer algae blooms with a sustainable solution: barley. The company offers its services placing bales of pelletized barley into ponds in the spring and then harvests weeds in the summer to allow beneficial plants to continue growing. The treatment for the average pond hovers around $400 annually, said Ben Schurhamer, president of Blue Water Ponds.

"Barley straw has definitely shown efficacy," Dave Wright, a scientist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, said. But the exact science behind the barley treatment is unknown. Two theories exist:

•The barley might create a competition between harmful plants and other bacteria for nutrient resources that wouldn't normally exist.

•Other bacteria might create a growth-inhibiting compound after feeding on the carbohydrate-rich barley, reducing algal growth.

"We don't know how, but the barley changes the biological composition of the water," Schurhamer said.

The idea of using barley to clear bacteria from water is not a new one.

Though the method has been around for thousands of years, it was modified in the 1990s by researchers in England and became a standard practice for the many lakes, canals and ponds across Great Britain.

The treatment has received a wide following in the past few years as a more environmentally stable means of algal control. Normally, pond and lake owners use synthetic algaecides such as Polyquat or the hypertoxic copper sulfate to control the plants.

Blue Water Ponds is one of the few companies in the area that offers the barley service. Metro area cities have used the treatment in more than 100 ponds in Bloomington, Shoreview, Minneapolis and others.

Connor McComas, an environmental sciences graduate of Iowa State University, and Schurhamer, a biochemistry graduate from the University of Minnesota, co-founded the company in 2007 after completing internships with an environmental sciences research group.

Blue Water Ponds started officially in 2009 as a two-man operation, but recently added two more full-time employees, and often adds one or two others during the spring. The company expects to complete barley treatments on 200 to 400 ponds this summer, and to generate between $20,000 and $30,000 in revenue, McComas said.

Bloomington used the method last year to clear local ponds of algae, duckweed and other nuisance plants in a more sustainable way.

"We've used herbicides in the past, but we started the barley method to try and identify a more sustainable measure," said Bryan Gruidl, a water resources specialist for the Bloomington Public Works Department.

Dawn Sommers, a public information manager for the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board, said that the city has been using the barley method for several years, and said it has been "very successful in helping control algal growth."

Sam Villella, a homeowner in Blaine, lives near a community pond that had serious algal problems for several years. The residents were eager to remove the slime that covered nearly a quarter of the water, but were extremely wary of pesticides that might add harmful chemicals to the water and hurt the wildlife in the area. Villella said after some searching, he discovered Blue Water Ponds, and employed them the next year. Villella said he and his neighbors were thrilled with the results.

"The difference was night and day," Villella said. "We were very happy with the clarity of the water, there was no slime, and there was no stink. Even people that were skeptical were amazed.''

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - StarTribune.Com]

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Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

10 Crazy Business Ideas That Made A Six Figure Profit

2010-06-29T04:45:00.000-07:00

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

1. Million Dollar Homepage

1000000 pixels, charge a dollar per pixel – that’s perhaps the dumbest idea for online business anyone could have possible come up with. Still, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old who came up with the idea, is now a millionaire.

2. PickyDomains

Hire another person to think of a cool domain name for you? No way people would pay for this. Actually, naming domain names for others turned out a thriving business, especially, when you make the entire process risk free. PickyDomains currently has a waiting list of people who want to PAY the service to come up with a snappy memorable domain name. PickyDomains is expected to hit six figures this year. Full Story

3. Doggles

Create goggles for dogs and sell them online? Boy, this IS the dumbest idea for a business. How in the world did they manage to become millionaires and have shops all over the world with that one? Beyond me.

4. LaserMonks

LaserMonks.com is a for-profit subsidiary of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank, an eight-monk monastery in the hills of Monroe County, 90 miles northwest of Madison. Yeah, real monks refilling your cartridges. Hallelujah! Their 2005 sales were $2.5 million! Praise the Lord. Full Story

5. AntennaBalls

You can’t sell antenna ball online. There is no way. And surely it wouldn’t make you rich. But this is exactly what Jason Wall did, and now he is now a millionaire. Full Story

6. FitDeck

Create a deck of cards featuring exercise routines, and sell it online for $18.95. Sounds like a disaster idea to me. But former Navy SEAL and fitness instructor Phil Black reported last year sales of $4.7 million. Surely beats what military pays.

7. PositivesDating.Com

How would you like to go on a date with an HIV positive person? Paul Graves and Brandon Koechlin thought that someone would, so they created a dating site for HIV positive folks last year. Projected 2006 sales are $110,000, and the two hope to have 50,000 members by their two-year mark.

8. Designer Diaper Bags

Christie Rein was tired of carrying diapers around in a freezer bag. The 34-year-old mother of three found herself constantly stuffing diapers for her infant son into freezer bags to keep them from getting scrunched up in her purse. Rein wanted something that was compact, sleek and stylish, so in November 2004, she sat down with her husband, Marcus, who helped her design a custom diaper bag that’s big enough to hold a travel pack of wipes and two to four diapers. With more than $180,000 in sales for 2005, Christie’s company, Diapees & Wipees, has bags in 22 different styles, available online and in 120 boutiques across the globe for $14.99.

9. SantaMail

Ok, how’s that for a brilliant idea. Get a postal address at North Pole, Alaska, pretend you are Santa Claus and charge parents 10 bucks for every letter you send to their kids? Well, Byron Reese sent over 200000 letters since the start of the business in 2001, which makes him a couple million dollars richer. Full Story

10. Lucky Wishbone Co.

Fake wishbones. Now, this stupid idea is just destined to flop. Who in the world needs FAKE PLASTIC wishbones? A lot of people, it turns out. Now producing 30,000 wishbones daily (they retail for 3 bucks a pop) Ken Ahroni, the company founder, expects 2006 sales to reach $1 million.

To see other businesses that have not made the top 10 list but came pretty close, visit Uncommon Business Ideas Blog

Virgin School

2009-12-25T01:15:00.000-08:00

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

Embodied in the figure of the goddess Athena or Mother Mary, the virgin state has inspired universal cults, national myths, personal passions and unsurpassed works of art; it has excited religious mystics to praise it as the highest ideal and fastest way to heaven; it has also moved many a titillating plot about the seduction of the innocent -- from the notorious Liaisons Dangereuses to teen soaps focusing on "the first time." As Hanne Blank points out in her vigorous and eclectic study, "Virginity has been, and continues to be, a matter of life and death around the world."

For Blank, virginity is a social invention designed above all to control women; its connection to virtue flourishes in the fantasies of fathers, suitors, priests and pornographers. In the first part of the book, Blank gives a detailed account of the fetishized and numinous hymen. A puny ring or flap in the vulva, it remained unseen until the 16th century. But its appeal did not fade under the new scientific gaze; the anatomist Helkiah Crooke, for example, turned to the language of a love sonnet to describe his findings ("All these particles together make the form of the cup of a little rose half blowne"). However, even after physicians were able to inspect the interior of a woman's body, Blank is clear that sexual experience cannot be deduced from its condition, as some women have hymens that grow back after childbirth, while others have no obstruction to speak of and do not bleed during their "first time." The author therefore expresses her strongest indignation at the long, cruel story of virginity tests, when "women may not speak for themselves" and the one person who knows the truth of the case cannot make herself heard. Over the centuries, women have conspired to provide the evidence and stain the bridal sheets not because the bride wasn't innocent but because, as Blank makes clear, the dramatic rupturing of the hymen is a fable.

Virgin: The Untouched History

Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences

Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club

new twitter gadgets

Brad Pilon - the Only Protein and Bodybuilding Supplement Expert which You Can Totally Trust

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

Krumbs

2009-08-19T03:03:00.001-07:00

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

Tells the story of Adrienne Braxtons struggle to turn her Brooklyn bakery business from a weekend sidewalk stand to a real storefront. The film follows Adrienne as she chases the American dream of owning her own business while facing the demands of providing for her grandson and the difficulties of navigating New Yorks complex social service system.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Eat Stop Eat: The Only One Realistic Way to Start Eating Less and Finally Lose Weight

Penn & Teller - Bullshit! - Organic Food

2009-08-04T01:19:00.000-07:00

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

Who is Brad Pilon? Why did he create Eat Stop Eat and tell the truth about weight loss?

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution

GERALD CELENTE ON JEFF RENSE SHOW APRIL 9, 2009

2009-04-12T00:16:00.000-07:00

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

Mind Control: The Ancient Art of Psychological Warfare

Mass Control: Engineering Human Consciousness

Paul Mooney - Full Show

2009-03-22T02:25:00.000-07:00

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

Paul Mooney wrote some of Richard Pryor's routines for his appearance on Saturday Night Live, co-wrote his material for the Live on the Sunset Strip, Bicentennial Nigger, and Is It Something I Said albums, and Pryor's film Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling. As the head writer for The Richard Pryor Show, he gave many young stand-up comics, such as Robin Williams, Sandra Bernhard, Marsha Warfield, John Witherspoon, and Tim Reid, their first break into show business.

Mooney also wrote for Redd Foxx's Sanford and Son, Good Times, acted in several cult classics including Which Way Is Up?, Bustin' Loose, Hollywood Shuffle, and portrayed singer/songwriter Sam Cooke in The Buddy Holly Story.

He was the head writer for the first year of Fox's In Living Color, creating the character Homey D. Clown, played by Damon Wayans. Mooney later went on to play Wayans' father in the Spike Lee film Bamboozled as the comedian Junebug.

Paul Mooney: Know Your History - Jesus Was Black ... So Was Cleopatra

Paul Mooney's Analyzing White America

The N Word - Divided We Stand

Mass Control

2009-03-20T04:58:00.000-07:00

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

This Documentary film produced by Michal Tsarion and Blue Fire Film explores humankind's future and the post-human world. Will the perfect human be a dumbed-down, regimented inhabitant of a cyber purgatory created by unseen elites? Will the children of tomorrow be smiling depressives of technocratic dystopia?

Mind Control: The Ancient Art of Psychological Warfare

Mass Control: Engineering Human Consciousness

The Real Andy Kaufman

2009-03-02T04:02:00.000-08:00

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

This DVD is good on a base level. On one hand, Kaufman does his usual routines we've seen in numerous videos (mighty mouse, wrestling women, etc.) and on the other hand this DVD features a GREAT interview with the REAL Andy where he's just being himself, not putting on any gimmics or hoaxes. This is the only tape/DVD where you actually get to see a glimpse of the man behind the wild hoaxes. The only problem is Seth Schutlz (Andy's friend and creator of this DVD) constantly buzzing in, sometimes right in the middle of an Andy routine which makes it frustrating. And during the wonderful interview. If you're gonna feature something new and original, don't spoil it!

This is good for any Kaufman fan for the interview alone, but other then that, the routines we've seen over and over make this tape nothing special.

The American Counterculture

Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House

Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture

The Oracle with Max Keiser - 13 February

2009-02-19T02:57:00.000-08:00

Link of the day - A Practical Guide to Racism

The Oracle with Max Keiser

Guests: Peter Schiff, Pierre Briancon

Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy

Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak

Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life After Gridcrash

Ron White - You Can't Fix Stupid

2009-01-14T04:40:00.000-08:00

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

Irreverent bad boy Ron White will crack you up with a nonstop stream of hilarious jokes and clever observations. As described by Daily Variety, "White's inspired comic mind finds a dozen sources of humor where the average comic would find only one or two." In this brand-new stand-up performance, he explores the pitfalls of marriage, offers some hysterically funny advice on picking a spouse and introduces the unforgettable "Squirrel Man," plus much more. A well-loved Comedy Central favorite, star of the popular DVD They Call Me "Tater Salad" and the bestselling CD Drunk in Public, this extraordinary comedian will keep you laughing till your sides ache!

Do You Believe in Gosh? by Mitch Hedberg

Mitch All Together by Mitch Hedberg

Strategic Grill Locations by Mitch Hedberg

10 Books That Absolutely Prove That Humans Are Irrational Creatures

2009-01-10T01:51:00.000-08:00

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

1. Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone “important”? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there’s danger involved? In Sway, renowned organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer all these questions and more.

Sway introduces us to the Harvard Business School professor who got his students to pay $204 for a $20 bill, the head of airline safety whose disregard for his years of training led to the transformation of an entire industry, and the football coach who turned conventional strategy on its head to lead his team to victory. We also learn the curse of the NBA draft, discover why interviews are a terrible way to gauge future job performance, and go inside a session with the Supreme Court to see how the world’s most powerful justices avoid the dangers of group dynamics.

2. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

What Ariely has done here is shift a lot of the thinking developed by such pioneers as Kahneman & Tversky who worked in behavioural economics, and moved it into the everyday sphere. And he’s done a great, insightful job. Where the behavioural economists are focused on financial decisions (why we buy high and sell low - and confound the assumptions of the classic economists who assume ‘the rational man,) Ariely eschews the technical language and walks us through everyday examples of our often fuzzy and quite irrational decision-making.

3. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

I think “Paradox of Choice” does bring insight into shopping, but its range is actually much wider than that. Schwartz discusses people making difficult decisions about jobs, families, where to live, whether to have children, how to spend recreational time, choosing colleges, etc. He talks about why making these decisions today is much harder than it was 30 years ago, and he offers many practical suggestions for how to address decision-making so that it creates less stress and more happiness. He even discusses how so much additional choice affects children, and how parents can help make childhood (particularly young childhood) less stressful.

4. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“Buy on apples, sell on cheese” is an old proverb among wine merchants. Taking a bite of an apple before tasting wine makes it easier to detect flaws in the wine, and the buyer who does so will not as easily make the mistake of paying more than the wine is worth. Cheese, on the other hand, pairs well with wine and enhances its flavor, so a seller who offers cheese may command a higher price for the wine (and may even deserve it, if the wine is intended to be drunk with cheese). The proverb captures important psychological nuances of choice. The same product - a bottle of wine or a risky medical procedure - may be perceived differently depending on its context, and it is often possible to arrange the context to influence a choice while still maintaining the decision maker’s autonomy.

5. Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things

Richard Wiseman is an experimental psychologist and professor of “public understanding of psychology.” In this book, he discusses dozens of experiments performed by himself and other psychologists around the world over the course of the last hundred years. All these experiments have in common is unusual research methodology or amusing results.

Topics include studies of personal ads and pickup lines, determining which are most effective, how to detect liars, manifestations of prejudice and hypocrisy (are religious people or priests more honest or generous than others? it has been tested). Wiseman even ran tests to see which experiments in the book are the most interesting, to help the reader know what would be the best conversation starters at parties.

6. Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things

Clinical psychologist Van Hecke has compiled a list of 10 mental glitches that have infiltrated contemporary society, afflicting even the smartest among us, limiting thought, success and relationships. Van Hecke devotes a chapter to each blind spot, including “Not stopping to think,” “Not noticing,” “Jumping to conclusions” and “Missing the big picture.” Examining each in detail, Van Hecke details the root causes of these unconscious habits (”information overload,” “our tendency to habituate”) and tactics for overcoming them, using humorous anecdotes and other real-life examples to drive her points; the key is remaining open to new ideas and taking a step back from our busy lives in order to process information, situations and people. Filling in “the big picture” herself, Van Hecke demonstrates how embracing and understanding our weaknesses can not only improve personal and professional relationships, but also entire communities; this self-help is a welcome, highly readable first step.

7. Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind

In “Kluge,” psychologist Gary Marcus looks to the many and varied foibles, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies of the human mind and concludes that our brains are not, in fact, models of brilliance and efficiency, but are rather cobbled-together systems, designed for one purpose and pressed into action for another - the classic definition of a kluge.

The most famous kluge is probably the case of the carbon scrubbers on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. Crunched for time, engineers managed to create a system out of duct tape and socks (seriously) that worked adequately enough to clean the air on the space module- even though none of the materials they used were designed for, or optimal for, the job at hand. The result was ugly and inefficient - but it kept the astronauts alive. Likewise, Marcus argues, evolution has endowed humans with a hodgepodge of genetic material - the DNA equivalent of duct tape - with which to build all the sophisticated systems that supposedly set us apart from other creatures, like language, memory, and reason. The result is, for example in the case of language, “a vocal apparatus more byzantine than a bagpipe made up entirely of pipe cleaners and cardboard dowels.”

8. The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

The author writes to the layman, making the language of statistics, probability, randomness a fascinating read. It’s clear that he’s well aware of the fallacies and delusions (and consequent harm) to which most of us are easy prey. But he leaves it to the reader to draw any philosophical-theological inferences about the need for greater humility. His immediate goal is to help the reader understand the distinction between 1. the “common-sense” logic employed by self-serving finite beings coping with problems in the material world and 2. a “scientific method” that takes nothing for granted in a universe of perpetual flux. More miraculous than either the accomplishments of the romantic hero or the intercessions of a supreme being (everyday stuff for most of us) is the rare discovery that two things (or “events” in the spatial-temporal order) suspected of being connected (a hypothesis) in fact cannot be shown “not” to have such a relationship (the proof).

9. Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin

Somehow, guessing at numbers is unsettling, even though I’ve done it all my life. John Adam is a professor of applied mathematics, with a degree in physics. Larry Weinstein is a nuclear physicist. Their book is devoted to proving that intelligent guessing is useful and fun. The book lays out some general principles but its great strength lies in the interesting problems, a series of hints to help you solve each problem, and an interesting discussion of the pitfalls and triumphs involved.

10. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Cialdini believes that influence is a science. This idea attracted me. As a rhetorician, I have always thought of persuasion as more of an art. Cialdini, however, makes a first-rate case for the science point of view. But maybe most importantly, he makes his case in a well-written, intelligent, and entertaining manner. Not only is this an important book to read, it is a fun book to read too.

He introduces you to six principles of ethical persuasion: reciprocity, scarcity, liking, authority, social proof, and commitment/consistency. A chapter is devoted to each and you quickly see why Cialdini looks at influence as a science. Each principle is backed by social scientific testing and restesting. Each chapter is also filled with interesting examples that help you see how each principle can be applied. By the end of the book, I had little doubt that these are six important dimensions of human interaction.

More curious stuff:

Einstein's Biggest Blunder

Blood Diamonds Documentary

Religulous

Steven Wright - I Have A Pony

2008-12-31T04:00:00.000-08:00

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

Steven Alexander Wright (born December 6, 1955) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. He is known for his distinctly lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, witty, deeply philosophical and sometimes confusing or nonsensical jokes and one-liners with overly-contrived situations.

Early life

Wright was born in Burlington, Massachusetts, the son of Dolly Wright. His father was an electronics company executive. Wright attended Emerson College and began performing stand-up comedy in 1982.

Career

Wright's 1985 comedy album entitled I Have a Pony, released on Warner Bros. Records, received critical acclaim and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. In 1989, he won an Academy Award for his short film, The Appointments of Dennis Jennings. In 1992, Wright had a recurring role on the television sitcom Mad About You. He also supplied the voice of the radio DJ in the film Reservoir Dogs.

Numerous lists of jokes attributed to Wright circulate on the Internet, sometimes of dubious origin. Wright has stated that "someone showed me a site, and half of it that said I wrote it, I didn't write. Recently, I saw one, and I didn't write any of it. What's disturbing is that with a few of these jokes, I wish I had thought of them. A giant amount of them, I'm embarrassed that people think I thought of them, because some are really bad."

After his 1990 comedy special Wicker Chairs and Gravity, Wright continued to do live stand-up performances, but was largely absent from television, only doing occasional guest spots on late night talk shows. In 2006, Wright noticed that much of his audience in recent years was getting older and wanted to reach out to a generation that only knew him from films like Half Baked. He produced his first stand-up special in 16 years, Steven Wright: When the Leaves Blow Away, originally aired on Comedy Central on October 21st, 2006 and again a day after its DVD release date, Wednesday, April 24.

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. He was named #23 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest standups of all time. Also, channel 4 named him #32 on their list of 100 greatest standups.

On September 25, 2007, Wright released a follow-up to I Have a Pony, titled I Still Have a Pony (a CD release of the material from When the Leaves Blow Away). It was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.

Steven Wright: When the Leaves Blow Away

Meditations in Green by Stephen Wright

1001 Smartest Things Ever Said

How Does Society React To Economic Crisis?

2008-10-20T03:25:00.000-07:00

Link of the day - Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

More suicides? Fewer male births? Less back pain? More laxative sales?

Data points litter the landscape as economists, sociologists, psychologists and marketers examine the societal changes, big and small, trivial and traumatic, that accompany a bad economy. And with this particular version of a troubled economy — a stock market that goes into convulsions at 3 p.m., a looming global recession, a $700 billion bailout plan that may or may not work, and a jittery public wondering what is coming next — changes should flow as freely as profits in good times.

It’s one thing to measure changes in society, however, and another to ascribe causes. But if the causal link is elusive, you still might expect to see slack soda sales, more frequent car thefts and meaning-laden tunes at the top of the pop charts during a recession.

Terry F. Pettijohn II, a professor of psychology at Coastal Carolina University, is one of those who sees popular tastes shift with economic conditions. Take beauty, for example. “What we find attractive is not a stable currency,” said Mr. Pettijohn, who has studied how economic and social factors shape preferences in popular music, movie stars and Playboy models. “It’s affected by the environment, by what’s happening in society, and what makes us feel more comfortable in threatening times.”

Looking at Billboard No. 1 songs from 1955 to 2003 for a study to be published in the journal Psychology of Music, he found that in uncertain times, people tend to prefer songs that are longer, slower, with more meaningful themes.

“It’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water,’ and ‘That’s What Friends Are For,’ ” he said. “In better times, it’s more likely to be faster, upbeat songs like ‘At the Hop’ or ‘My Sharona.’ ”

The correlation isn’t perfect. The song Mr. Pettijohn’s raters called most meaningless, “Macarena,” was a hit in a relatively bad year.

The Environmental Security Hypothesis that he and his colleagues have been testing, positing that people look for reassurance in worrying times, also helped explain why Playboy magazine’s Playmate of the Year in bad times tended to have a more mature appearance — that is, to be older, heavier, taller and less curvy — than those selected when times were good. Similarly, in a study of American movie stars from 1932 to 1955, he found actresses with mature features — small eyes, large chins, and thin faces — more popular in hard times.

Buying patterns too, can be predicted in economic downturns, according to Leo J. Shapiro, who has tracked consumer behavior since he was a young man in the late 1930s.

“DURING a recession, laxatives go up, because people are under tremendous stress, and holding themselves back,” said Mr. Shapiro, now chief executive of SAGE, a Chicago-based consulting firm. “During a boom, deodorant sales go up, because people are out dancing around. When people have less money, they buy more of the things that have less water in them, things that are not so perishable. Instead of lettuce and steak and fruit, it’s rice and beans and grain and pasta. Except this time the price of pasta’s so high that it’s beans and rice.”

A recent Nielsen report listed tobacco, carbonated drinks and eggs as especially vulnerable to recession, and candy, beer and pasta sauce as recession-proof. On Thursday, Hershey’s announced third-quarter sales and income higher than last year’s. (“We offer a tremendous variety of affordable indulgences, and people love chocolate, even in hard times.” said Kirk Saville, a company spokesman.)

Almost anything can be an economic indicator. Back in the 1920s, the economist George Taylor conceived the hemline index, finding that skirts got longer as the economy slowed. These days, there’s been talk of a haircut index, with short locks signaling a market drop.

The economic downturn could signal significant changes in American life.

“A stunning statistic is that unlike in past epochs, the higher up the income ladder you go, the more hours you work,” said Dalton Conley, a sociology professor at New York University. “More and more, things that used to be outside the marketplace are in the economy. Instead of mom or dad coming home with groceries, they go out, or order in.”

A downturn, then, could result in benefits unmeasured by the market. “If people eat out less, the G.D.P. goes down,” Mr. Conley said, “but nothing in the G.D.P. captures what you gain if you cook and eat in a leisurely way with your kids.”

In a study of coffee growers in Colombia, Grant Miller, who teaches health policy at Stanford’s medical school, found that infant and child mortality rates fell as coffee prices slumped, and concluded that it was because parents had more time to take care of their children.

By most accounts, bad times herald an upturn in at least some crime.

“I’ve never been able to find any relationship between violent crime and the economy,” said Stephen Raphael, an economics professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in urban and labor economics. “But there is a relationship with property crime. Whether it’s burglary, larceny or motor vehicle theft, they all go up with unemployment.”

And already, the market drop has created many personal crises.

“We’ve never had this level of call volume” said Dr. Richard A. Chaifetz, chief executive of ComPsych, the largest provider of employee assistance programs, covering 27 million people. “It’s been going up gradually all year, but then it spiked and we’re up 20, 30 percent since late July. And where relationships and personal psychology issues used to the be the No. 1 reason people called, it’s now financial and legal issues that are No. 1.”

In a typical downturn, young people flock to higher education, especially lower-cost alternatives like community colleges, state universities and trade schools, to bolster their employability. At the same time, parents and students nationwide are agonizing over choices between public schools and private schools and what loans they can afford or even qualify for.

And although Americans have a hard time paying their medical bills and preventive medical care takes a hit in a poor economy, some economists say that there are positive health effects.

“People are physically healthier in times of recession,” said Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. “Death rates fall, people smoke less, drink less and exercise more. Traffic fatalities go way down, which is not a surprise when people drive less. Heart attacks go down. Back problems go down. People have more time to prepare healthier meals at home. When the economy weakens, pollution falls.”

This Panglossian view has its limits.

“People are healthier, but they’re not happier,” Mr. Ruhm said. “Suicide rises, and mental health may deteriorate.”

Generally, though, poverty is associated with bad health. And since economic downturns have so many effects, it is often impossible to sort out what mechanism might be responsible for what health result.

Some economists are skeptical of Mr. Ruhm’s findings.

“This is a very complicated area,” said Ralph Catalano, a professor of public health at Berkeley. “If you’re looking at people anticipating economic adversity, worrying about losing their job, some of them will spend less money on alcohol, take fewer risks, do more things that are good for them. So, in some places, the net effect may be fewer people having acute traumatic illness. But if you look at the people who’ve actually lost a job, or lost a business, they are more likely to have adverse health outcomes. When you get to saying there must be fewer people driving, so there must be fewer traffic accidents and cleaner air, that’s what I’d call econometric imagination.”

Mr. Catalano, who found in an earlier study, based on data from Germany, that a bad economy was linked with a decline in male births, cautioned against predicting how this recession would reshape society.

“What we don’t know is what’s going to happen next,” he said. “We don’t know yet how anxious people are going to get, or how many people are going to lose their jobs. The experience we’re going through is unprecedented. The last time we had this kind of experience was in the 1930s, and we didn’t have data.”

Mr. Conley, too, harked back to the Great Depression in suggesting that the current downturn could lead to a more equal America, if the richest people suffer the greatest economic losses.

“Nineteen twenty-nine was the peak of inequality,” he said. “It’s almost like things get too top-heavy, and they topple over.”

Credit Crunch Is A Boon For Cookbook Publishers

Easing Death's Sting While Turning A Profit

Geneticist says evolution may be near its end

Smashing Business. Literally!

2008-09-28T03:20:00.001-07:00

Link of the day - How PickyDomains.com Changed The Domain Game For Good

http://www.smashshack.com/

When Sarah Lavely gets angry, she likes to break things. Not all the time, but on days when everything seems to be going wrong, she has been known to throw some plates against a wall. Fortunately, she has an easy outlet: Lavely is the founder of Sarah's Smash Shack, a San Diego shop where customers pay to smash tableware like dinner plates, wine glasses, intricately lined sashimi plates, brightly colored vases and goblets.

The store's pristine white shelves are filled with china just waiting to be broken.

"I picked pretty things because people are coming in here to do something they aren't supposed to do," Lavely says. "And breaking stuff like this is a little taboo."

The smashing is done in special soundproofed "break rooms" where customers - outfitted in coveralls, boots, gloves and a helmet - stand behind a chest-high barrier and hurl breakables at a stainless steel-covered wall. All the broken glass is donated to schools and art programs throughout the region.

Lavely, 38, is a former veterinarian. She began venting her frustrations on breakables as a child - she started with Christmas ornaments, then escalated to potted plants. As an angst-ridden teenager she targeted telephones and, once, a window.

"During my divorce," she says, "I broke a lot of stuff on my driveway."

That was when the idea for the Smash Shack came to her. Lavely hit an emotional rock bottom and woke up one day thinking: I really want to go break some stuff.

"I wished there was someplace I could go and just do that, just go nuts," she says. "I was sure other people felt like that at times, and I thought I should open a shop where you could do that."

Last November Lavely approached her friend Ed King, 34, a former veterinary technician, about partnering with her to start the business. After start-up costs of around $200,000, the store opened August 1.

As pioneers in the smash-for-cash business, Lavely and King have had to start completely from scratch. Greek restaurants aside, there are few if any places like Lavely's in the U.S.

"We had no business model to follow, no precedent, no place where you come only to smash things," she says. "We had to figure out what we needed - a room big enough to contain broken glass - how far is a safe distance from the smash wall, and what kind of safety equipment we would need."

In February, Lavely signed a lease for a two-story building in San Diego's trendy Gaslamp district. With the help of her husband Teague Hunziker, 35, a professional photographer and graphic designer, she and King sound-and-safety-proofed the break rooms, researched how different kinds of glass break, and installed sheets of heavy gauge stainless steel on the smash walls. The rooms are also equipped with sound systems that allow customers to hook up their iPod or MP3 player.

Ceramic white dinner plates are Lavely's biggest seller, because they require a strong toss and break violently against the wall. Patrons order from a menu that includes items like The House Special (15 plates in 15 minutes for $45), the Six Shooter (six rapid-fire wine glasses for $12) or the Juggernaut (two large jugs for $12.) Value seekers can opt for the Mystery Box: 10 assorted smashables for $25. If you'd like to smash a person, Lavely allows the next best thing - a photo inserted into a very breakable glass frame.

Since the shop opened business has been steadily increasing, with each night, on average, busier than the last. Despite consumers' tendency to be budget conscious in a down economy, Lavely is getting calls from groups of people who want to come to her shop from as far away as Los Angeles. Economic uncertainty might actually be driving business, as customers smash their way through the frustrations of high gas prices, a slumping housing market and rising unemployment.

"We leave Sharpies in the break rooms and people will write on a plate before they throw it. I don't read what they write, but when those customers are finished you can see they feel pretty emotional," Lavely says. "But that's why they came, to throw their frustrations against a wall and walk out the door feeling good."

On a recent Wednesday night, four middle-aged women came in to celebrate several birthdays at once. As they filed into the largest break room, where several piles of white plates sat waiting to be destroyed, they were giggly and nervous. But once the music started, the women began throwing plates - on which they had scribbled angry notes about home lives, work frustrations and teenage children - like Frisbees. They screeched with delight at each satisfying crack and splatter.

When they emerged from the room, breathless and exhilarated, participant Beth Daugh said, "That was intense, really cathartic."

She took off her helmet and shook out her hair, her face red and damp. "Writing message on the plates was the best part. Great therapy."

Rent-A-Kitchen Business Model Proves To Be Big Success

A well-heeled business

Try A Mag Business Idea

Weird Online Businesses - Lightning Photography

Have You Heard Of Peegly.Com?

2008-07-06T03:09:00.001-07:00

Link of the day - Free NFL tshirts and jerseys

http://peegly.com/

No doubt you've heard about file sharing. How about feeling sharing? That's exactly what Peegly.Com founders strived to do. Since you can share just about anything online now, from expenses to music files, why not human emotions?

Here is how site founders describe the service:

What is Peegly’s Share-your-feelings Service? Peegly is a virtual pillow intended for your inmost thoughts, feelings and emotions. A big, soft and good-natured pillow is always ready to hear you out and help you.

Here you can tell just anything, share any emotions you seethe with or are overwhelmed with. Love and hatred, shame and desire, joy and fear – all these you can surely confide to Peegly.

The main task of the service is to bring down psychological tension and improve people’s mood by creating in them positive attitude and enabling them to express their thoughts and to be heard. All new sentiments appear on the main page of the portal, which gives every visitor a personal ‘podium’ to declare their feelings.

Writing a sentiment is very easy – neither registration nor any personal information is required to do so. If for some reason an author does not want discussion started on their message, they have right to forbid other users to comment on it.

The most thoughtful, original and beautiful sentiments are chosen by users by means of voting. Five best sentiments of the week become a part of Peegly’s weekly email newsletter and are advertised on pages of partnering Internet resources for the entire following week.

Do not hold it within yourself – share your feelings with Peegly!

People come to the site with a wide variety of feelings. Here is one of boredom. Here is one of jealousy. Pride and love are there, too. Some posts are silly and immature. Others are deep and insightful.

Definitely a site to keep an eye on.

Kung-Fu Capitalism. The business empire of Jackie Chan.

Man sells soul for $3,800 ... to a pizza joint

Australians making odd choices for funeral songs

Man Wants To Change His Name To 'Fuck Censorship'. Judge Says 'No'.

Is This How Americans Will Live A Few Years From Now?

Stoned in Suburbia

2008-06-19T03:21:00.000-07:00

Link of the day - Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects

Link of the day - Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects

Stoned In Suburbia is a social history film, examining the change in people's opinions to cannabis over the past 50 years. Discussing the impact of the 60's sexual revolution, the Hippie movement, the emergence of the Punks right up until the modern day.

BUMFIGHTS: A VIDEO TOO FAR

Italian Fascists

Timothy Leary - The man who turned on America

Strange Days on Planet Earth - One Degree Factor

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

2008-05-15T03:31:00.000-07:00

Link of the day - 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich

Around a year ago, I read my first book by A.J. Jacobs, The Know-It-All, a memoir of the author's quest to read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. As a follow-up to that top-notch book, he has taken on a shorter but more difficult book, The Bible. For a year, Jacobs intended to follow the commandments of the Bible as literally as possible: not just the well-known ones (like "Thou shalt not kill") but the obscure ones as well (such as wearing clothes of mixed fibers). It was to be, as the book title states, The Year of Living Biblically.

The first problem with undertaking such a task is that there are a lot of different Bibles out there and even more ways to interpret what's in them. While Jacobs seems to rely mostly on the Revised Standard Version, he consults other versions as well. Over the course of the year he will meet with a number of different religious groups and individuals representing a broad spectrum of interpretations.

The nice thing about the Encyclopaedia Britannica was it was pretty straightforward, with little wiggle room for misreading. But in the Bible, almost everything can be read at least two ways. Even the Ten Commandments are subject to multiple interpretations: Does the commandment against killing mean all killing? What about executions? It is this ambiguity that lets the Bible fit almost all agendas. Is the Bible pro- or anti-slavery? What is its views on abortion, homosexuality or the roles of women? As Jacobs finds during the year, there is no true agreement. (And if the Bible has a message that contradicts your ideals, do you reject your ideals or (at least in part) the Bible?)

Jacobs finds that truly living Biblically - adhering to all the restrictions - is virtually impossible, and he finds that even the most literal reader of the book engages in some picking and choosing. As a self-described secular Jew, there is much that he personally disagrees with, but he is respectful of every faith he meets. Many times, he even finds his preconceptions about certain groups to be different from reality. He also finds that for even the obscure commandments, there are experts who can assist him, such as the man who can tell you if your clothes do truly violate the stricture on mixed fibers.

As Jacobs goes through the year, he finds that he is personally changing: the act of living Biblically changes the very way he thinks. He doesn't become a religious fanatic, but his worldview is affected. Throughout, however, he keeps his sense of humor and there are plenty of funny moments in the book. Overall, this is a superb follow-up to The Know-It-All (I think it helps if you've read that one first, but it's not essential). For a look at the Bible that is illuminating and simultaneously reverent and irreverent, this book is the one to read.

Coming Up With Cool Domain Names Is Now A Profitable Business

Meria interviews: Jesse Ventura

Official fired for inaugurating hospital with borrowed beds, fake patient

The Strangest College Field Trip I Ever Heard Of

Naming Is Profitable

2008-05-13T02:08:00.001-07:00

http://www.pickydomains.com/

PickyDomains.Com is a perfect example of how to turn one’s talent into a profitable business. With ever expanding Internet and tens of millions existing websites, finding an available domain name that’s not already taken by cybersquatters can be a real nightmare.

But one man’s problem is another man’s solution. Rather than to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for a domain name on the aftermarket, an increasing number of web entrepreneurs turn to professional “domain namers�?.

While most naming agencies charge a non-refundable fee that can be as high as $1500 for a corporate domain, one service that unites 17 professional domain namers from countries like United States, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, decided to offer a risk-free service that costs only 50 dollars per domain.

After 50 dollars are deposited, clients start getting a list of available domain names via e-mail for a period of 30 days. If they see a domain they like, they register it and notify the service about domain acquired. The individual, who came up with the name, gets $25, the other half going to the service. If no domain is registered, the money is refunded in full.

While the idea is brainlessly simple, it appears that PickyDomains.Com has no competition with its risk-free business model. But that is almost certain to change as more people find out that finding available domain names for other people can be a profitable business.

Hofmanns Potion

The Bridge

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The Secret Life of Cats

PickyDomains
PickyDomains
PickyDomains
PickyDomains
PickyDomains

Man Stuck In Machinery Uses Big Toe To Call 911

2008-05-03T02:56:00.000-07:00

(AP) Even with his arms stuck in a piece of machinery, one northwest Florida man was able to call 911 using his big toe. Police said the unidentified man was at the DRS Technologies building early Thursday morning when he became trapped in a press-like machine that resembles an elevator. The employee was alone.

He shook his cell phone off his belt, kicked off one shoe and used his toe to dial 911. Rescuers used a thick metal bar to pry the machinery off his arms.

He was airlifted to a Pensacola hospital where his condition was not immediately known.

Pennsylvania Teen Girl Has Drink Spiked With Drug to Cause Abortion

For decades, wheat was king on the Great Plains and prices were low everywhere. Those days are over.

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Is Your Dinner Destroying Environment?

Britain, which has long prided itself on a reputation for good manners, is becoming increasingly rude, according to a new poll.

2008-04-29T04:11:00.000-07:00

Highly-paid footballers and celebrities are setting a bad example, according to the survey, put out today.

It listed spitting and swearing as the most offensive forms of behaviour.

Almost nine out of 10 people - 86.2 per cent - think Britons have become ruder than a decade ago, the poll for the ITV1 Tonight television program found.

"I suppose it's part of the breakdown in society, the fact that we stopped having respect for figures in authority, partly because those in authority didn't command it,'' Diana Mather, an etiquette coach, said.

Britons traditionally liked to think of themselves as superior to foreigners at things like queuing and giving up their seats on public transport to disabled people or pregnant women.

But the rise of football culture - and football hooligans creating mayhem - has long dented this image abroad, and now Britons themselves acknowledge they have a major problem.

More than half of those asked - 56.5 per cent - thought bad manners were the biggest problem in the country, according to the survey based on answers from some 2800 adults.

Spitting caused the most offence for 27.6 per cent, ahead of swearing by 20.2 per cent, followed by queue-jumping, talking loudly on mobile phones, not saying "please'' or "thank you,'' and belching or passing wind in public.

Nearly 75 per cent of Britons think the behaviour of celebrity footballers encourages bad manners in society.

But when asked to name the worst influence on children's manners, 63.8 per cent blamed the behaviour and lack of discipline of parents, with over 90 per cent saying parents are failing to pass on basic manners to their children.

Some 15.9 per cent said celebrities and footballers were the worst influence, followed by 5.4 per cent for television program.

"I think my generation has a lot to answer for because I think the youth culture in the 60s and early 70s threw out every rule book and thought it was really clever to use four letter words and so on,'' Esther Rantzen, patron of Campaign for Courtesy, said.

"But I think things should go back, not to the old deference, not to grovelling, not to any of that, but just to feeling respect, because I think that would make everyone's life pleasanter.''

Who says entrepreneurial success and environmental conservation can't go hand in hand?

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'Free Tibet' flags made in China

US prisoner sues over weight loss

Recession Changes What Americans Buy And How They Eat

Man mowing his lawn discovers 7-10 foot hole

2008-04-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) - A Cedar Rapids man mowing his lawn has stumbled into a big hole - but the origin is a mystery. Rick Thompson discovered the hole on Wednesday. He says the grass seemed a little soft in that spot, and he blamed it on the rain. Then his leg sank up to his calf. He grabbed the lawn mower to stop himself from sinking any more.

Thompson started digging around the hole, which turned out to be 7-10 feet deep, with water and rusty pipes in the bottom.

Thompson's wife, Sharon, called the city, but even with expert help, no one could solve the mystery. She says some think it could be a well or an old septic tank.

The Thompsons have blocked off the area until they can hire someone to remove the pipes and fill up the hole.

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Pain of Foreclosures Spreads to the Affluent

Here Is How AAA Rated US Companies Look Like Nowadays.

Nevada: Borrowers trash homes as they walk out on their mortgages

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

2008-04-12T02:04:00.000-07:00

I was intrigued by this book when I read a glowing review of it on Yahoo news, and was able to finish it over several hours sitting in the local bookstore. Much like a fine Chinese meal, the Fortune Cookie Chronicles is fairly light, quite tasty, and in the end both filling and fulfilling. Because the book is so well written, it's a lot of fun and you'll learn more than you could have ever imagined about Chinese food in the United States (as well as elsewhere), something many of us -- myself included -- have long taken for granted.

The book traces the incredible history of Chinese food in the United States, with the author setting out to explore why it is so popular across the country. Along the way she is able to spin delicious yarns on such topics as the birth of General Tso's chicken (including a hilarious trip to the General's home town in rural China where absolutely no one has ever heard of the dish), the Japanese origins of the fortune cookie, the reasons for the Jewish love of Chinese cuisine, how human smuggling supplies the many thousands of Chinese workers who run Chinese restaurants across the country, and other areas.

One of the most fascinating things I learned from the book is that the Chinese food we all know and love barely resembles real Chinese food -- the type of food people eat in China. In traveling to China to sample and research food and culture across the large nation, the author herself was initially surprised by this, and as the book progresses the fact helps demonstrate how the development of Chinese(/American) food is symbolic of the broader change to the culture of Chinese people who have moved to and settled their families in America.

Indeed, more than being about the strange growth and metamorphosis of Chinese dishes in the U.S., this book is about how America has impacted Chinese-American culture and vice versa. The fact that Chinese dishes have been altered in order to fit the tastes of Americans reflects how many Chinese-American citizens, the author included, have culturally changed from their own parents and grandparents. While many Chinese-American dishes beloved here are totally unknown abroad -- and often even disliked by Chinese people in the Far East; such as General Tso's chicken -- their popularity has spawned the worldwide creation of a unique amalgam of cuisine that is both Chinese and American and not solely representative of either group alone (the brief section on P.F. Chang's as a form of upscale American-Chinese food is fascinating and exactly on point of this phenomenon). Furthermore, as the book shows, the popularity of Chinese food in the U.S. spreads across all of the states, cultures, ethnicities, and religions. The author does a fantastic job of dissecting the sheer love of Chinese food in all 50 states, and the history behind that astonishing popularity.

Upon finishing I was somewhat amazed that someone could have spent so much time and effort researching Chinese food, but it is clear that the author -- Jennifer 8. Lee of the New York Times -- has a passion for the subject, as well as an interest in exploring her own identity as a Chinese-American. Admittedly, while I read the Times every single day and have long noticed Ms. Lee's byline, all I could remember about her work was her cool middle name (perhaps the neatest middle initial and name since Harry S Truman). I will look out for her more now, as she is a superb writer and able to speak with a witty and lively prose. I am sure her future books will be equally as compelling.

If I can make a small complaint about the book, it probably goes on for a bit too long, ending at just under 300 pages. While this does not seem like much, I think the author could have cut a lot of the material that was included in the later chapters. Nevertheless, this is still a fun book to read, and a good gift.

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A 77-Year-Old Illinois Lawmaker Robbed Of $7 At Gunpoint In Her Home

2008-03-31T04:05:00.000-07:00

(AP) A 77-year-old Illinois state representative is happy to be alive after a man with a gun pushed his way into her home and robbed her of $7.

Wyvetter H. Younge was not injured in the robbery that occurred around noon Friday.

Younge said she thought her son had knocked on her door and opened it, but instead found an armed man. He told her to get on her hands and knees, then grabbed her purse and ran.

Younge, a Democrat, said she didn't recognize the man, who wore a red hat and red jacket and dark pants. She said she's going to pray for him.

"This robbery and what's happening to this community is the result of a lack of a supportive system for our youth. We need jobs," she said. "This happened in broad daylight at noon. We need a mental health support system. This is further evidence of that."

Illinois State Police are investigating.

Students Plagarize Honor Code

Violinist Smashes $1 Million Fiddle

Millionaire goes back to McDonald's job

Sam Kinison First Appearance on Letterman

2008-03-12T01:15:00.000-07:00

Samuel "Sam" Burl Kinison (December 8, 1953 – April 10, 1992) was an American stand-up comedian and actor. Kinison was famous for his extremely raunchy humor and amazingly wild, colorful outfits. A former revival-style preacher, his standup routines were most often characterized by intense, angry ranting and punctuated by his trademark scream. Kinison was voted #20 in Comedy Central's 100 Greatest
Stand-ups of All Time.

Top 10 Weirdest Top 10 Lists

Sam Kinison - Breaking the Rules

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Man threatens wife with Voodoo death

2008-03-06T04:10:00.000-08:00

PORT ST. LUCIE - Investigators arrested a local man after his wife said he hit her and threatened to kill her, her children and family with Voodoo and a gun, according to a police report released Wednesday.

The 31-year-old victim, who recently moved here from Haiti, is a "strong believer of the Voodoo religion" and told police her husband, Nerlet Bellot, 34, is "more than capable of casting a Voodoo curse on her and her family and is terrified of that notion and its consequences."

Arrested Monday, Bellot, of the 2400 block of Southeast Wald Street, faces charges including battery, hindering communication with 911 and assault in connection with the incidents.

The victim told police that early Monday she and her husband argued. She said her husband hit her in the head and abdomen, knocking her to the ground. When she said she was calling 911 on her cell phone, he threw the phone down, which broke it.

Their 8-year-old son tried to stop Bellot, and Bellot then said he'd kill his wife and her children and family "with a gun as well as with Voodoo."

"She stated that if he went to jail that his family in Haiti would do his bidding," the report states. "She fears for her safety primarily from the Voodoo."

Because the victim was so scared of the Voodoo curse, police charged Bellot with assault, said Officer Robert Vega, police spokesman.

Bellot denied striking his wife, breaking the phone, or threatening to kill her with Voodoo or a firearm.

Domainer Profile: Stuart Wood

Google Buys The Shortest Domain Name In Cyberspace - G.CN

Domain Squatter Wants To Give His Domains To Google In Exchange For A Job

How To Turn $60 Into $1000 In Three Months With Domain Names

Blind Irishman sees with the aid of son's tooth in his eye

2008-02-29T01:58:00.000-08:00

DUBLIN (AFP) - An Irishman blinded by an explosion two years ago has had his sight restored after doctors inserted his son's tooth in his eye, he said on Wednesday.

Bob McNichol, 57, from County Mayo in the west of the country, lost his sight in a freak accident when red-hot liquid aluminium exploded at a re-cycling business in November 2005.

"I thought that I was going to be blind for the rest of my life," McNichol told RTE state radio.

After doctors in Ireland said there was nothing more they could do, McNichol heard about a miracle operation called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) being performed by Dr Christopher Liu at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton in England.

The technique, pioneered in Italy in the 1960s, involves creating a support for an artificial cornea from the patient's own tooth and the surrounding bone.

The procedure used on McNichol involved his son Robert, 23, donating a tooth, its root and part of the jaw.

McNichol's right eye socket was rebuilt, part of the tooth inserted and a lens inserted in a hole drilled in the tooth.

The first operation lasted ten hours and the second five hours.

"It is pretty heavy going," McNichol said. "There was a 65 percent chance of me getting any sight.

"Now I have enough sight for me to get around and I can watch television. I have come out from complete darkness to be able to do simple things," McNichol said.

Police called to 'pillow fight'

Olympian dreams of comeback at 66

Boomerang Comes Back After 25 Years

How to Rig an Election? Ask the Author

Why US Economy Is A Lot Like Pizza Domino

The Gaming Console War is Still Undecided, Wii to Take Lead

2008-02-19T05:14:00.000-08:00

During the last months of 2007, Sony has made significant efforts to boost the sales of its gaming console, PlayStation 3, which lagged far behind its rivals, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360. The latest data from NPD Group are in, showing that in January, PS3 has finally managed to surpass Xbox 360 and moved to the second spot, right behind Nintendo Wii.

Although it was a slow month for gaming sales, Sony sold 269,000 PS3s, 5,000 units less than Nintendo Wii. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was kicked in the third place, with 230,000 units sold in January. Microsoft blamed the figures on its inability to anticipate strong post-holiday demand. Yes we heard that before. Jeff Bell, head of global marketing for Microsoft's games business, alleges that shortages will affect also the February sales of Xbox 360, but in the spring the company will be able to meet the demand.

This sounds very Wii-like, and maybe it is. Don Reisinger, who has a blog on CNET, said that he too finds this a bit fishy. He says that Nintendo may have well used this shortage stuff to boost its sales and create headlines all over the world over its precious console, which is so good that they just can't produce enough of them to meet demand. Is Microsoft playing the Wii card? It's impossible to find out for sure, but they might be.

Also, PlayStation Network downloads exceeded 7.9 million in January, up from 6.6 million in December 2007. This brings the total life-to-date downloads past the 52 million mark, according Sony Computer Entertainment America. The number of registered PlayStation Network accounts also neared the 3 million mark in North America last month.

"Coming off a great holiday season we see strong momentum behind PS3 in 2008, and feel confident about the year ahead,” said Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton. "We have Blu-ray emerging as the de-facto high-def standard, the developer community is hitting their stride, consumers are recognizing the tremendous value and innovative services such as PlayStation Home are all in the works, so this is definitely shaping up to be a breakthrough year for us."

Meanwhile, market researcher iSuppli predicted Thursday that the global installed base of Wii game consoles will rise to 30.2 million units in 2008, up from 18 million in 2007, putting it ahead of the Xbox 360's projected 25.7 million units. This means that the long-reign of Xbox may well be finnaly over, with the Nintendo console taking over.

"At the top-line, on an average sales per week basis, January 2007 was actually up nearly 18 percent as compared to last year," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier to Gamespot. "And the big winner was console software which was up nearly 50 percent when compared on a level playing field to last year."

The top game according to sales in January was Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat (Xbox 360, Activision), with 331,000 units sold. Hardware figures indicate that Wii sold 274,000 consoles, followed by PlayStation 3 with 269,000 units, Nintendo DS with 251,000, PlayStation Portable which has sold in 230,000 units and Xbox 360 with 230,000 consoles sold.

How deep is your love? Passion phones know

Goldfish 'three-second memory' myth busted

Kitten Found After 25 Days in NYC Subway

Blow-up doll stands in for groom

Online Resting Place for Broken Hearts

Radio Station Giving Away Free Divorce For Valentine's Day

Police called to 'pillow fight'

2008-02-11T00:41:00.000-08:00

Police were called to a domestic in Franklin, south of Auckland, last night - a husband and wife's pillow fight.

Senior sergeant Shawn Rutene, of Manukau police, said a distressed woman called police at 9pm saying her husband was hitting her with a pillow.

When their daughter, 14, tried to intervene she was pushed aside, the caller said.

No physical injuries were sustained in the attack and investigations were continuing, Mr Rutene told an Auckland newspaper.

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5 Worst Valentine Gift Ideas For Her From Amazon.Com

British men pick big TV over sex

50% Off Coupons And Special Deals For Omaha Steaks

A Chance To Win Free Nissan Almera

How To Turn $60 Into $1000 In Three Months With Domain Names

Olympian dreams of comeback at 66

2008-02-08T01:55:00.000-08:00

A Japanese equestrian competitor looks set to take part in the Beijing Olympics - four decades after first appearing in the Tokyo Games.

Hiroshi Hoketsu, now 66, is aiming to be in Japan's Beijing dressage team later this year.

He came 40th in the show-jumping at the Tokyo Games of 1964 - the last time he took part in an Olympic event.

If all goes according to plan, he will become the oldest Olympic representative in Japanese history.

Japan Equestrian Federation head Azusa Kitano said it was more than likely Mr Hoketsu would take part in the dressage, which is being staged in Hong Kong.

"He will be in the team dressage," said Mr Kitano. "He hasn't been at an Olympics since 1964, which was 44 years ago, but he has continued riding all this time."

Congratulations

Mr Hoketsu, now based in Germany, was selected for Japan's dressage team for the Seoul Olympics in 1988, but decided not to take part because of quarantine problems with his horse.

He changed from show jumping to dressage in his 30s.

Japan Olympic chief, Tsunekazu Takeda, said: "He's up at 5 am every day. He's what horse riding is all about. I want to congratulate him with all my heart."

Japan is expected to officially name its Olympic team next week.

The oldest ever Olympic competitor was the Swedish shooter, Oscar Swahn, who took part in the Antwerp Games of 1920 at the age of 72.

He won silver - his sixth Olympic medal - in the running deer double-shot team event.

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The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

2008-02-05T04:37:00.000-08:00

Our conceptions of human nature affect every aspect of our lives, from the way we raise our children to the political movements we embrace. ... all » Yet just as science is bringing us into a golden age of understanding human nature, many people are hostile to the very idea. They fear that a biological understanding of the mind will be used to justify inequality, subvert social change, and dissolve personal responsibility and strip life of meaning and purpose. In The Blank Slate Pinker retraces the history that led people to view human nature as dangerous, and unsnarls the moral and political debates that have entangled the idea along the way. Steven Pinker is introduced by Samuel Jay Keyser, Peter de Florez Emeritus Professor at MIT, Linguistics and Philosophy faculty. Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He returned to Harvard in September 2003 after 21 years at MIT, where he was most recently the Peter de Florez Professor of Psychology in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a MacVicar Faculty Fellow. A native of Montreal, he received his B.A. from McGill University in 1976 and his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard in 1979. His scholarship has brought him awards and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Many more awards and worldwide recognition have come from several popular science books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and most recently, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.

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Explorations of the Mind: Well-Being

2008-02-03T06:37:00.000-08:00

Daniel Kahneman is an internationally renowned psychologist whose work spans cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and the science of well-being.

Woman to Take 55,000 Pennies to the Bank

What Credit Card Experts Know About Credit Cards That You Don't?

The Funniest Phone Spoof Ever

The First Ever Indoor Smart Garden HERE!

Fill out a survey for your favorite sandwich and enter to win a sweeps for $1500.00

A&E Biography - Tony Robbins

2008-02-01T01:55:00.000-08:00

Robbins was born Anthony J. Mahavorick in North Hollywood, California. He was raised in Azusa, California, and he attended Glendora High School. His parents divorced when he was seven years old, and his mother later remarried twice. Tony took on the surname of Jim Robbins, his second stepfather. Inspired by motivational speaker Jim Rohn, Robbins began selling his own seminars. He then went on to study neurolinguistic programming and to establish his career. In 1989, Robbins saw success using infomercials to promote his products.

In 1994, a routine medical check revealed a tumor in Robbins' pituitary gland. According to his recounting in Personal Power the tumor was actually an adenoma that had infarcted several years prior. Due to the pressure of the adenoma on his pituitary gland, he had circulating levels of growth hormone several times higher than what would be normal for an adult his age. This had resulted in a subclinical manifestation of the disease known as acromegaly, which doctors told Robbins was responsible for his remarkable growth spurts as a teenager, as well as his large hands and feet (He is 6 feet 7 inches tall, or 201 cm). After consultation with a number of different physicians, Tony eventually decided not to have the adenoma resected, as it was not causing any clinical manifestations, such as organomegaly or heart valve defects.

In a CNN interview in 2001, Robbins said it was difficult to end his 15-year marriage to Becky Robbins, saying it was the toughest decision of his life. He said that he also knew if he stayed with her, he'd be ruining her life and his. Robbins reiterates similar comments about his previous relationship in his recent Ultimate Relationship Program (recorded with family therapist Dr. Cloe Mandanes and also Sage Robbins).

In the same year he married Bonnie Humphrey (now Sage Robbins).

Anthony Robbins calls himself a peak performance coach as opposed to a motivational speaker. Robbins says that he attempts to find out what people do when they are at their peak, and then help them access that peak state whenever necessary, and he believes what he does is more effective than providing a rousing half-time speech and temporary motivation.

Robbins started his career promoting seminars for Jim Rohn, and then started teaching neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) after learning it from NLP co-founder John Grinder, who encouraged him to look into the firewalking experience. In 1983, Robbins located Tolly Burkan and learned how to firewalk from him. Robbins then added firewalking to his seminars, which enabled him to gain media coverage and launch his celebrity status. Robbins later began to teach what he referred to as Neuro-Associative Conditioning (NAC), and recently collaborated with Dr. Cloe Madanes on what they call Human Needs Psychology.

In his Personal Power program, he says that the difference between NAC and NLP, lies in the use of the word 'conditioning' as opposed to 'programming'. Robbins says his use of the word 'conditioning' implies that the subject has greater responsibility for his or her own change, as opposed to being programmed by someone else. Some free products by Tony Robbins can be found here.

Robbins' techniques, theories, and business practices have been the subject of criticism.

In a 2002 newsletter for the James Randi Educational Foundation, Randi comments on some experiences recounted by a participant at a 2002 "Unleash the Power Within" seminar. The participant recalled some experiences that had him question the credibility of Robbins. For instance, the participant questions the basis for some of the assertions made about Robbins' healthy diet system. There was also a demonstration at the seminar by one of Robbins' associates that was intended to show that the EMF from a mobile phone can weaken an arm as part of the marketing of an EMF reduction device. James Randi calls the applied kinesiology used in the EMF demonstration as "scam."

Roes also relates that some participants arriving with their partners or spouses found themselves separated and paired with strangers, and then were directed to repeatedly massage and confide in these strangers. Some participants were surprised and uncomfortable with this.

The participant was also strongly encouraged to sign up for the next seminar, and then found that, for him, the time span in which he had the opportunity to cancel and obtain a refund was too short.

Freelance writer Steve Salerno in his book Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, states "NLP has shown up in many settings inside and outside SHAM" (his acronym for the Self-Help and Actualization Movement) but he particularly criticizes Anthony (Tony) Robbins, who he claims "made NLP his own, refining it and personalizing it into what he christened "neuroassociative conditioning" (a claim with which other proponents of NLP would disagree; see history section in NLP article). Salerno criticizes proponents of self-help, including Tony Robbins, stating it "actually fans the fires of discontent, making people feel impaired or somehow deficient as a prelude to (supposedly) curing them." Salerno opines that there are contradictions in Richard Bandler and John Grinder (the co-founders of NLP) ending up in court over who owned the rights to NLP given NLP's promotion in business for negotiations and conflict resolution and also in Tony Robbins having become divorced while marketing products for the "perfect marriage".

William T. Jarvis identifies what he believes are several flaws and misconceptions in the ideas, in particular about health and diet, in Robbins US national best seller, Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement. Robbins believes that deep breathing activates the lymphatic system, and likens the lymphatic system to the sewerage system of the body. Jarvis states that there is no evidence that different breathing makes long-lasting changes in the lymphatic system, but that any effects are temporary. Jarvis agrees with Robbins' encouraging participants to eat more fruit, but criticizes the way it is presented. According to Jarvis, Robbins incorrectly argues that fruit is the perfect food. In contrast Jarvis argues that milk is the closest to being the most complete food. Jarvis states that some of the information about drinking distilled water gives an inaccurate view of how the body metabolic wastes system functions. Jarvis believes that there are misconceptions about health benefits of food combining, which are supposedly based on Herbert Shelton's ideas, and that Robbins' evidence of a positive effect of undereating is flawed. Jarvis also writes that Robbins makes inaccurate claims about dietary protein requirements.

Robbins also recycles an oft-cited but unsubstantiated reference to the "Yale Study of Goals" in Unlimited Power as scientific evidence of the power of positive thought. The anecdote claims that a survey was taken of the 1953 graduating class at Yale, and only 3% of the class had written goals regarding their financial situations. Twenty years later the class was interviewed again, and the 3% of the class who had written goals were worth more than the other 97% of the students combined. This would have been strong evidence of the power of written goal setting, but the alleged Yale study appears to be an urban legend.

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The History Of Jelly Belly

2008-01-31T01:59:00.000-08:00

The Jelly Belly Candy Company is a prominent maker of gourmet jelly beans and other candy. It was formerly known as The Herman Goelitz Candy Company before being renamed for their most popular product, "Jelly Belly" jelly beans. The company is based in Fairfield, California, off of State Route 12, with warehouse facilities in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.

Jelly Belly makes many varieties of naturally flavored jelly beans, including juicy pear, watermelon, root beer, cherry and buttered popcorn. The success of their brand led to a jelly-bean renaissance, particularly in the 1980s, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan began keeping a jar of them on his desk in the White House.

The product is considerably more expensive than most retail candies due to the use of real fruit and other juices, averaging US$16.99 for a 2.2 lb (1 kg) bag (here is your $5 off coupon).

The person responsible for the invention of Jelly Belly jelly beans was David Klein (born in 1946). He created the concept of a new kind of jelly bean that had not only a flavored shell, but a flavored jelly center. He engaged the Goelitz Candy Company to manufacture it, where candy manufacturer Marinus van Dam was employed at the time. Marinus van Dam was born in Ooltgensplaat, a township in Oostflakkee, Netherlands, on October 24, 1929. After obtaining a candy manufacturing degree in the Netherlands, he immigrated to the United States and soon went to work for the Herman Goelitz Candy Company. He rose to the level of vice president before moving on to other companies and finally starting his own business, Marich Confectionery.

When Marinus was asked how he developed the manufacturing of the Jelly Belly, he answered that most jelly beans at the time were cheap candy that had a 56% sugar content and were sold as penny candy. All jelly beans started out with plain, uncolored starch centers that were merely sweetened with sugar. Only the outer candy coating was colored and flavored. He wondered how he could bring this candy to the adult market, and his solution was to enhance the jelly beans so that they would appeal to everyone. The centers for the new jelly bean were colored and flavored with real fruit juices and natural flavors. This flavor enhancing process was also used on the outer candy shell. The finished Jelly Belly contained about half the sugar of the regular jelly bean, was more flavorful, and consequently healthier than the generic jelly beans sold in stores.

David Klein sold the first Jelly Belly jelly beans in a small ice cream parlor, Fosselman's, in Alhambra, California in 1976. The first flavors were Very Cherry, Tangerine, Lemon, Green Apple, Grape, Licorice, Root Beer, and Cream Soda. David Klein's newest creation is a super sour jelly bean called "Spanks."

Official 50 flavors
The 49-flavor assortment of jelly beans features all of the official 50 flavors except for jalapeño.
The 49-flavor assortment of jelly beans features all of the official 50 flavors except for jalapeño.

Jelly Belly officially has 50 flavors that are made all year. Seasonal flavors such as candy cane are only produced at specific times of the year. Additionally, Jelly Belly frequently produces "rookie" flavors that sometimes are added to the jelly beans in the 50 official flavors if they become popular enough. Here is a list of the current official 50 flavors:

* A&W Cream soda
* A&W Root Beer
* Berry blue
* Blueberry
* Bubble gum
* Buttered popcorn
* Café latte
* Cantaloupe
* Cappuccino
* Caramel apple

* Caramel corn
* Chocolate pudding
* Cinnamon
* Coconut
* Cotton candy
* Crushed pineapple
* Dr Pepper
* French vanilla
* Grape jelly
* Green apple

* Island Punch
* Jalapeño
* Juicy pear
* Kiwi
* Lemon
* Lemon drop
* Lemon lime
* Licorice
* Mango
* Margarita

* Orange juice
* Orange sherbet
* Peach
* Peanut butter
* Piña Colada
* Pink grapefruit
* Plum
* Raspberry
* Red apple
* Sizzling cinnamon

* Strawberry cheesecake
* Strawberry daiquiri
* Strawberry jam
* Tangerine
* Toasted marshmallow
* Top banana
* Tutti-Fruitti
* Very cherry
* Watermelon
* Wild blackberry

[edit] Rookie Flavor

Jelly Belly usually produces new prototype flavors that occasionally are added to flavors in the Official 50 group. Previous rookie flavours include:

* Apricot
* Buttered Toast
* Chocolate Cherry Cake
* Honey Biscuit
* TABASCO® Cinnamon
* Baked Bean

The latest rookie is:

* Pomegranate

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Couple finds a way to get their message to the FAA

2008-01-27T02:06:00.000-08:00

FOLSOM, Pa. — The skies won't seem especially friendly to anyone taking off from Philadelphia International Airport if they notice what a suburban couple wrote on the roof of their home.

"(Expletive) U FAA," the message reads, though one letter of the profane word is substituted with an underline. Below that it is a picture of a plane with a slash through it and the words "no fly zone."

Homeowner Michael Hall and his girlfriend, Michaelene Buddy, are angry that jets have been flying over their house since last month, when the Federal Aviation Administration altered departure headings out of Philadelphia. Hall says he has to sleep with earplugs.

He said he and Buddy also were frustrated after being unable to leave a message with the FAA's noise-complaint hot line because the voice mailbox was always full. So they issued their complaint in roof sealant and 7-foot-tall letters about two weeks ago.

"Just doing it made me feel better, but I'd still like to say what I wrote directly to the idiot head of the FAA," Hall told the Philadelphia Daily News for today's editions.

FAA spokesman Jim Peters had no comment.

The flight changes are part of a massive restructuring of the airspace over the congested corridor between New York and Philadelphia.

The couple's Ridley Township home is in Delaware County, southwest of Philadelphia. The county argues in a lawsuit that the FAA's environmental-impact study violated federal regulations and that the new flight paths will only marginally reduce airport delays.

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How To Become A Mystery Shopper

2008-01-24T04:14:00.000-08:00

These guys are actively hiring mystery shoppers (must be a US resident over 18). Perhaps 'hiring' is the wrong word, because you don't get paid anything. However, you are given a $500 card and you get to KEEP things that you buy on assignments. I am not sure if this is strictly online mystery shopping assignments that you do from your PC or if there are some offline assignments as well, but either way, it sounds good.

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Proving Laughter Is Best Medicine for Air Sickness

2008-01-22T02:15:00.000-08:00

MESA, Ariz. — When I last saw Rene Foss, a couple of years ago, she was in her underwear. She and about a dozen other flight attendants were wearing red lingerie, in fact, as they posed for a photograph around a shiny World War II trainer parked on an airport ramp.

The photo was for the cover of a parody cheesecake calendar, “2007 More Stewardesses Stripped (More Pensions Stripped?),” published by flight attendants from various airlines to call attention to the fact that the airlines’ return to profitability was in part because of big pension and salary cuts that airline employees, including flight crews, had taken in recent years.

The calendar project, alas, is defunct, a victim of rising costs. But Ms. Foss — whose fame as a performer preceded her stint as Miss January 2007 — is still on stage between her days off from flight attending (her schedule allows her put together extended periods to do the show). She has worked for a major airline (which won’t let her use its name in her second job) since 1985.

I finally caught her one-woman show, “Around the World in a Bad Mood,” here on Friday night, in which she has been ridiculing the airline industry and everything about it, from the bonus-grabbing bigwigs (the rapacious chief executive of the fictional airline in her revue is named Kenny Stealmore) and the pistol-packing pilots to the passive-aggressive flight-attendant supervisors, the airport security screeners with busy hands and the flight attendants whose code phrase to a demanding passenger, “I’ll be right back,” means buzz off.

Flying once was glamorous, says Ms. Foss. Her mother — a white-gloved flight attendant from 1951 to 1959 — told her so. Not now, Ms. Foss jokes: “It’s like a big Wal-Mart in the sky!”

Some flight attendants she knows say that when they work the aisles collecting refuse and saying sweetly, “Your trash. Well, they aren’t actually asking you, they’re telling you.”

Not that she spares herself. She said she once evoked the title of a 1960s book about stewardesses in another era “when I asked a passenger, ‘Coffee, tea or me?’ He said, ‘Are there any other choices?’ ”

It says something about public attitudes toward air travel these days that Ms. Foss’s one-woman show sold out for every performance during its two-week run, which ended Sunday, at a 200-seat theater in the sprawling Mesa Arts Center near Phoenix.

There are actually two versions of the production. There is also a musical version, with Ms. Foss and a cast of four. That revue is scheduled for performances in New York in April. And Ms. Foss also wrote a book in 2002 that has the same title as her show.

The 90-minute, one-woman show features music, film clips, props (Ms. Foss hilariously uses decorated airline vomit bags to stage a Shakespearean puppet show as played by quarrelsome airline passengers) and a cast of characters, all done by Ms. Foss. (Two of the puppets, business travelers, have a furious argument over which one is to sit in seat 2-B or not 2-B.)

Here is her explanation to the audience about why her fictional airline does not serve food: “Our seats didn’t get smaller; your butts got bigger. Therefore, in the interests of comfort, no eating.”

Ms. Foss, who is 45 and invincibly cheerful in person, insists that she loves being a flight attendant and will never quit.

“I’ve given the airline industry the best years of my life,” she announced. “Now I’m going to stick around to give them the worst.”

Right before the show, Ms. Foss and I were talking to Randy Vogel, the director for theaters and operations at the arts center. He watched as the audience filed in.

“Two hundred seats!” he said. “Why don’t we pretend we’re an airline and sell 215 tickets, and then I get up on stage before the show and announce that we’re overbooked and we need 15 volunteers to leave before we can take off?”

Everybody wants to get in the act.

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American culture's overemphasis on happiness misses an essential part of a full life

2008-01-20T03:16:00.000-08:00

Ours are ominous times. We are on the verge of eroding away our ozone layer. Within decades we could face major oceanic flooding. We are close to annihilating hundreds of exquisite animal species. Soon our forests will be as bland as pavement. Moreover, we now find ourselves on the verge of a new cold war.

But there is another threat, perhaps as dangerous: We are eradicating a major cultural force, the muse behind much art and poetry and music. We are annihilating melancholia.

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that almost 85 percent of Americans believe that they are very happy or at least pretty happy. The psychological world is now abuzz with a new field, positive psychology, devoted to finding ways to enhance happiness through pleasure, engagement, and meaning. Psychologists practicing this brand of therapy are leaders in a novel science, the science of happiness. Mainstream publishers are learning from the self-help industry and printing thousands of books on how to be happy. Doctors offer a wide array of drugs that might eradicate depression forever. It seems truly an age of almost perfect contentment, a brave new world of persistent good fortune, joy without trouble, felicity with no penalty.

Why are most Americans so utterly willing to have an essential part of their hearts sliced away and discarded like so much waste? What are we to make of this American obsession with happiness, an obsession that could well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed by global warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation? What drives this rage for complacency, this desperate contentment?

Surely all this happiness can't be for real. How can so many people be happy in the midst of all the problems that beset our globe — not only the collective and apocalyptic ills but also those particular irritations that bedevil our everyday existences, those money issues and marital spats, those stifling vocations and lonely dawns? Are we to believe that four out of every five Americans can be content amid the general woe? Are some people lying, or are they simply afraid to be honest in a culture in which the status quo is nothing short of manic bliss? Aren't we suspicious of this statistic? Aren't we further troubled by our culture's overemphasis on happiness? Don't we fear that this rabid focus on exuberance leads to half-lives, to bland existences, to wastelands of mechanistic behavior?

I for one am afraid that American culture's overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society's efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?

My fears grow out of my suspicion that the predominant form of American happiness breeds blandness. This kind of happiness appears to disregard the value of sadness. This brand of supposed joy, moreover, seems to foster an ignorance of life's enduring and vital polarity between agony and ecstasy, dejection and ebullience. Trying to forget sadness and its integral place in the great rhythm of the cosmos, this sort of happiness insinuates that the blues are an aberrant state that should be cursed as weakness of will or removed with the help of a little pink pill.

I'm not questioning joy in general. For instance, I'm not challenging that unbearable exuberance that suddenly emerges from long suffering. I'm not troubled by that hard-earned tranquillity that comes from long meditation on the world's sorrows. I'm not criticizing that slow-burning bliss that issues from a life spent helping those who hurt. And I'm not romanticizing clinical depression. I realize that there are many lost souls out there who require medication to keep from killing themselves or harming their friends and families. I'm not questioning pharmaceutical therapies for the seriously depressed or simply to make existence bearable for so many with biochemical disorders.

I do, however, wonder why so many people experiencing melancholia are now taking pills simply to ease the pain. Of course there is a fine line between what I'm calling melancholia and what society calls depression. In my mind, what separates the two is degree of activity. Both forms are more or less chronic sadness that leads to continuing unease with how things are — persistent feelings that the world is not quite right, that it is a place of suffering, stupidity, and evil. Depression (as I see it, at least) causes apathy in the face of this unease, lethargy approaching total paralysis, an inability to feel much of anything one way or another. In contrast, melancholia generates a deep feeling in regard to this same anxiety, a turbulence of heart that results in an active questioning of the status quo, a perpetual longing to create new ways of being and seeing.

Our culture seems to confuse these two and thus treats melancholia as an aberrant state, a vile threat to our pervasive notions of happiness — happiness as immediate gratification, happiness as superficial comfort, happiness as static contentment. Of course the question immediately arises: Who wouldn't question this apparently hollow form of American happiness? Aren't all of us late at night, when we're honest with ourselves, opposed to shallow happiness? Most likely we are, but isn't it possible that many of us fall into superficiality without knowing it? Aren't some of us so smitten with the American dream that we have become brainwashed into believing that our sole purpose on this earth is to be happy? Doesn't this unwitting affection for happiness over sadness lead us to a one-sided life, to bliss without discomfort, bright noon with no night?

My sense is that most of us have been duped by the American craze for happiness. We might think that we're leading a truly honest existence, when we're really just behaving as predictably and artificially as robots, falling easily into well-worn "happy" behaviors, into the conventions of contentment. Deceived, we miss out on the great interplay of the living cosmos, its luminous gloom, its terrible beauty.

The American dream of happiness might be a nightmare. What passes for bliss could well be a dystopia of flaccid grins. Our passion for felicity hints at an ominous hatred for all that grows and thrives and then dies. I'd hate for us to awaken one morning and regret what we've done in the name of untroubled enjoyment. I'd hate for us to crawl out of our beds and walk out into a country denuded of gorgeous lonely roads and the grandeur of desolate hotels, of half-cracked geniuses and their frantic poems. I'd hate for us to come to consciousness when it's too late to live.

On November 30, 1820, as the autumn orange decayed into earth's winter muck, John Keats, suffering from the tuberculosis that killed his mother and his brother Tom, sat down to draft a letter to his good friend Charles Brown. This was to be his last known correspondence. Between horrific bouts of coughing — coughing that stained his tongue with blood — Keats wrote these striking lines: "I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence." At the age of 25, when he should have been relishing opportunities for love and for growth, for summer's larks and pretty girls, Keats already felt like a corpse. It seemed to him as though he were already in the grave and therefore looking back on his days as one would witness a character in a finished story. There he was, composing, viewing the world with a dead man's eyes.

When he was only nine years old, his father fell from his horse and died the next day. A few years later, his mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Though Keats nursed her assiduously, sitting up with her all hours of the night, cooking for her, reading to her, she died in 1810, during Keats's 15th year. Keats was assigned to a guardian and soon after taken from a beloved boarding school and required to apprentice as an apothecary. He found the work tedious, for during these years, his late teens, he was awakening to the grandeurs of poetry, especially the verse of Spenser and Shakespeare. To complete his training, Keats had to learn surgery. Day after day, he toiled in a hospital, malodorous and bloody, where he witnessed nothing but suffering. As he was turning from surgery to poetry, his first substantial poem, "Endymion," was published in 1818. Two of the leading literary magazines of the time attacked the poem for not making sense.

Around this time, Keats's brother Tom died after a long and painful illness. While attending Tom, Keats met the love of his life, Fanny Brawne, and became engaged to her. However, he soon realized that he would never be able to marry her because he himself was doomed to fall prey to the same disease that killed his family members. He knew he would die without ever consummating his ardent love.

One would think that Keats's life would have fostered bitterness in him, but he remained generous in the face of his difficulties. He didn't flee to the usual 19th-century escapes: Christianity or opium, drink or dreaming. Though he unsurprisingly underwent pangs of serious melancholia (who wouldn't, faced with his disasters?), he nonetheless never fell into self-pity or self-indulgent sorrow. In fact, he consistently transformed his gloom, grown primarily from his experiences with death, into a vital source of beauty. Things are gorgeous, he often claimed, because they die. The porcelain rose is not as pretty as the one that decays. Melancholia over time's passing is the proper stance for beholding beauty.

Keats understood that suffering and death are not aberrations to be cursed but necessary parts of a capacious existence, a personal history attuned to the plentiful polarity of the cosmos. To deny death and calamity would be to live only a partial life, one devoid of creativity and beauty. Keats welcomed his death so that he could live.

Taking this double stance — suffering death while transcending death — Keats was in his pain and yet above it. He developed this interplay between detachment and attachment in one of his most famous letters, written in 1819. "Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?" he asked. He's here implying that an abstract mind can develop into a full-hearted person only through enduring long periods of sadness and pain.

In another famous letter, this one from 1818, Keats compares a human's life with a "large Mansion of Many Apartments." He states that the only way to engage the great mysteries of life is to suffer "Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and oppression." Undergoing these troubles, one moves from the "Chamber of Maiden Thought," the room of innocence, into darker passages, the regions of profound experience. In this latter place, one finds the inspiration for poetry, poetry that explores the mysterious burdens of life. In this case, too, Keats shows himself to be intensely aware of the painful world but also keenly willing to embrace this same pain. It's as if he were somehow in the world but not of it, able to suffer sadness but also able to see beyond it.

In his 1819 "Ode on Melancholy," he urges us not to alleviate our blues with befuddling chemicals, seek escape through suicide, or "drown the wakeful anguish of the soul." Remaining conscious of our dark moods, we might fall into a "melancholy fit," a deep experience of life's transience but also of its beauty. This melancholy fit is a mixed affair. It falls from heaven "like a weeping cloud,/That fosters the droop-headed flowers all." But it also brings rain and nourishment. Indeed, this cloud "hides the green hill in an April shroud."

What can we call this fit but a meaningful experience of generative melancholy, of that strange feeling that sadness connects us to life's vibrant pulses? Alienated from home and happiness, we sense what is most essential: not comfort or contentment but authentic participation in life's grim interplay between stinking corpses and singing lemurs. This "fit" shivers our souls.

In this tense mood, we are in a position to understand the relationship between beauty and death. Keats urges us to "glut" our sorrow on a "morning rose" or "on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave" or "on the wealth of globèd peonies." He then says that if our "mistress" shows "rich anger," we should take her hand and let her "rave" and "feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes." Each of those recommendations features the melancholy soul's experiencing something beautiful but also something transient. There is a connection among melancholy, beauty, and death.

These associations make for several conclusions. The "wakeful anguish" of sharp melancholia can lead to a shuddering experience, a "fit." This vital moment grows from an insight into the nature of things: Life grows from death; death gives rise to life. This insight animates melancholy, makes it vibrant. But it also intensifies the pain, for it emphasizes this: Everything, no matter how beautiful, must die. Rather than flee from this difficult position, the melancholic appreciates things all the more because they die. In enjoying the beauty of the world, the melancholic himself wants to create beauty, to commemorate his resplendent experience of earth's transient gorgeousness.

Melancholia, far from a mere disease or weakness of will, is an almost miraculous invitation to transcend the banal status quo and imagine the untapped possibilities for existence. Without melancholia, the earth would likely freeze over into a fixed state, as predictable as metal. Only with the help of constant sorrow can this dying world be changed, enlivened, pushed to the new.

These are not metaphysical claims, not some New Age claptrap. On the contrary, these statements are attuned to the sloppy world as it simply appears to us in our everyday experience. When we, with apparent happiness, grab hard onto one ideology or another, this world suddenly seems to take on a static coherence, a rigid division between right and wrong. The world in this way becomes uninteresting, dead. But when we allow our melancholy mood to bloom in our hearts, this universe, formerly inanimate, comes suddenly to life. Finite rules dissolve before infinite possibilities. Happiness to us is no longer viable. We want something more: joy. Melancholia galvanizes us, shocks us to life.

Melancholia pushes against the easy "either/or" of the status quo. It thrives in unexplored middle ground between oppositions, in the "both/and." It fosters fresh insights into relationships between oppositions, especially that great polarity life and death. It encourages new ways of conceiving and naming the mysterious connections between antinomies. It returns us to innocence, to the ability to play in the potential without being constrained to the actual. Such respites from causality refresh our relationship to the world, grant us beautiful vistas, energize our hearts and our minds.

Indeed, the world is much of the time boring, controlled as it is by staid habits. It seems overly familiar, tired, repetitious. Then along comes what Keats calls the melancholy fit, and suddenly the planet again turns interesting. The veil of familiarity falls away. There before us shimmer bracing possibilities. We are called to forge untested links to our environments. We are summoned to be creative.

Given these virtues of melancholia, why are psychiatrists and psychologists attempting to "cure" depression as if it were a terrible disease? Obviously, those suffering severe depression — suicidal and bordering on psychosis — require serious medications. But what of those who possess mild to moderate depression? Should these potential visionaries and innovators eradicate their melancholia with the help of a pill?

Right now, if the statistics are correct, about 15 percent of Americans are not happy. Soon, perhaps, with the help of psychopharmaceuticals, melancholics will become unknown. That would be an unparalleled tragedy, equivalent in scope to the annihilation of the sperm whale or the golden eagle. With no more melancholics, we would live in a world in which everyone simply accepted the status quo, in which everyone would simply be content with the given. This would constitute a nightmare worthy of Philip K. Dick, a police state of Pollyannas, a flatland that offers nothing new under the sun. Why are we pushing toward such a hellish condition?

The answer is simple: fear. Most hide behind a smile because they are afraid of facing the world's complexity, its vagueness, its terrible beauties. If we stay safely ensconced behind our painted grins, then we won't have to encounter the insecurities attendant upon dwelling in possibility, those anxious moments when one doesn't know this from that, when one could suddenly become almost anything at all. Even though this anxiety, usually over death, is in the end exhilarating, a call to be creative, it is in the beginning rather horrifying, a feeling of hovering in an unpredictable abyss. Most of us habitually flee from that state of mind, try to lose ourselves in distraction and good cheer. We don inauthenticity as a mask, a disguise to protect us from the abyss.

To foster a society of total happiness is to concoct a culture of fear. Do we really want to give away our courage for mere mirth? Are we ready to relinquish our most essential hearts for a good night's sleep, a season of contentment? We must resist the seductions of mindless happiness and somehow hold to our sadness. We must find a way, difficult though it is, to be who we are, sullenness and all.

Suffering the gloom, inevitable as breath, we must further accept this fact that the world hates: We are forever incomplete, fragments of some ungraspable whole. Our unfinished natures — we are never pure actualities but always vague potentials — make life a constant struggle, a bout with the persistent unknown. But this extension into the abyss is also our salvation. To be only a fragment is always to strive for something beyond ourselves, something transcendent. That striving is always an act of freedom, of choosing one road instead of another. Though this labor is arduous — it requires constant attention to our mysterious and shifting interiors — it is also ecstatic, an almost infinite sounding of the exquisite riddles of Being.

To be against happiness is to embrace ecstasy. Incompleteness is a call to life. Fragmentation is freedom. The exhilaration of never knowing anything fully is that you can perpetually imagine sublimities beyond reason. On the margins of the known is the agile edge of existence. This is the rapture, burning slow, of finishing a book that can never be completed, a flawed and conflicted text, vexed as twilight.

Eric G. Wilson is a professor of English at Wake Forest University. This essay is adapted from his book Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, being published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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Boomerang Comes Back After 25 Years

2008-01-19T03:21:00.000-08:00

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) - Boomerangs really do come back - even after 25 years. Officials in an Australian Outback town were surprised when a boomerang arrived in the post. Along with it was a note from a guilt-ridden American who said he stole it years earlier from a museum in the mining town of Mount Isa, and now felt rotten about it.

"I removed this back in 1983 when I was younger and dumber," said the note, according to Mount Isa Mayor Ron McCullough. "It was the wrong thing to do, I'm sorry, and I'm going to send it back," said the note.

McCullough on Thursday gave the contrite thief's first name as Peter but said it would be unfair to release his full identity.

McCullough said the parcel was sent to the location of the old museum, now a paper manufacturing plant and community center, and was then handed to the Mount Isa council. He declined to reveal the value of the donation.

McCullough said the boomerang would be returned to its rightful owner, if he could be found.

Boomerangs were traditionally used by Aborigines as a hunting weapon. A typical returning boomerang can travel up to 150 feet in the air before returning to the thrower.

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How to Rig an Election? Ask the Author

2008-01-16T02:31:00.000-08:00

Allen Raymond knows a thing or two about bending the rules in the electoral process. A former G.O.P. political operative who served as chief of staff to a co-chairman of the Republican National Committee and supervised numerous election victories, he saw his political career fall apart when he was sentenced to 3 months in federal prison for jamming Democrat-run phone lines during the 2002 New Hampshire Senate primaries. His new book, How to Rig an Election, co-written with Ian Spiegelman, details Raymond’s shenanigans. He kindly agreed to answer our questions.

Q: You discuss the “spinning of truth” that’s common practice in modern politics. What are the most frequent tactics employed?

A: Instead of tactics, how about a lesson from the master of spin himself, President William Jefferson Clinton? As a graduate student in 1992, I marveled when then-Governor Clinton spun a potential candidacy-killing story and outmaneuvered 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft during an interview about Clinton’s alleged affair with Gennifer Flowers. The masterstroke wasn’t when he blamed it on checkbook journalism, saying, “It was only when money came out, when the tabloids went down there offering people money to say they had been involved with me, that she changed her story.” No, it was when he immediately added, “There’s a recession going on.”

In ten seconds, Clinton went from denying a sordid sex scandal to bashing President George H. W. Bush on the economy. But more than that, he was actually pointing at Bush’s recession as the reason poor Ms. Flowers had to debase herself in the press. In this way, Clinton did all of the following simultaneously: got back to the message, “It’s the economy, stupid;” dismissed Flowers as a gold digger; and delivered it all with an air of compassion for his accuser that would satisfy the liberal female voters he needed to win the Democratic nomination. That kind of unparalleled spin talent deserves respect.

Spin is about bridging from the defensive to the offensive with a well-timed turn of phrase. In every attack, the devil is in the details, and fortunes can turn on those devilish details when they are manipulated adeptly. All too often, it is the overconfident who take it in the teeth, as Walter Mondale will attest; he thought he had Ronald Reagan dead to rights on the age issue after Reagan’s tired performance during their first presidential debate. When the issue arose in the second debate, President Reagan left Mondale in the dust by answering, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Of course, absent a deft turn of phrase, there’s always the option of presenting an overwhelming amount of difficult-to-disprove data while persevering in the face of skepticism (or even countervailing evidence) to make voters disbelieve their lying eyes. Perhaps the best known example of this tactic is the Michael Dukakis tank commercial aired by then-Vice President Bush’s presidential campaign. In the 1988 presidential election, the Bush campaign info-slammed reporters with facts about Governor Dukakis’ position on a number of defense systems, thereby successfully defining the Democratic nominee as weak and capitulating. Many of the facts were taken out of context, relying heavily on the assumption by the Bush campaign that reporters would grow lazy in the face of so much evidence, and that the Dukakis campaign would not engage on the issue for fear of proliferating coverage of the attack. The Bush campaign was right. The image of Dukakis in a tank helmet and tie only supplied credence to the attack that he was a wimp on defense. Volume of data buries the truth just about every time.

Q: Research has shown that the amount of money spent on an election may actually make little difference to the outcome. As someone who has spent a career dealing with campaign money, what’s your response to this study?

A: The three essential elements in a campaign are money, money, and money. Politics is a cost-per-contact business; the more money, the more voter contact, the higher probability of winning. There are scores of elections in every level of government –- local and national congress, gubernatorial races, and so on –- and almost all of them are only about money. If that weren’t true, incumbents wouldn’t make it ever more difficult for challengers to raise money –- which is why 95 percent of incumbents win re-election. So it’s safe to assume the study referenced above was commissioned from an ivory tower, and not on the streets where the rubber meets the road.

Not coincidentally, the election where other elements beside money come into play is the most visible: the presidential election. Those campaigns are partly determined by the news media, and are thus less affected by paid media (e.g., TV spots, radio ads, or direct mail pieces that rip an opponent’s face off). Money raised in presidential primary contests, and disclosed via the Federal Election Commission, has more value as a measure of the viability of the candidate than it does as a means to pay for message delivery and organization.

But in politics, money, like water, always finds a way. There are over 65 lobbyists for every single member of congress, and they will find a way to make sure their money gets where it needs to be. If money did not make a difference in the outcome, so many would not donate so much.

Q: After the Iowa caucus, John McCain said that the results showed the following: “One, you can’t buy an election in Iowa. And two, negative campaigns don’t work.” Is he right?

A: Mitt Romney and Steve Forbes will confirm that the Iowa caucus cannot be bought –- at least, not by inauthentic white men. So the presidential primary elections in Iowa are the exception and not the rule. But the effectiveness of negative political campaigns should never be questioned; it’s easier to get a voter to vote “no” rather than “yes.” Proof? Try 1988’s Willie Horton ad, the whispers of McCain’s illegitimate black baby in South Carolina in 2000, and 2004’s Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Q: Is there really a line between “playing fair” and “cheating” in the electoral process? Is illegality the only measure of what can and cannot be done?

A: You don’t win any prizes for running a moral campaign. Success in politics is all or nothing: a candidate wins or loses, period, and either ends up with power (and the extreme likelihood of retaining power) or no power whatsoever. So the “right” thing is simply defined as the “winning” thing. The bright line of the law is really the only boundary. The rule of law is the only deterrent against bad actors, whether it’s in politics, business, government, or any other sector. Anything more than that is legislating morality, the alleged domain of organized religion and cults. But the other consideration beyond what’s legal is what’s effective: the best rule of thumb about a dirty trick is to consider how it will read in the newspapers if it’s discovered. That can be a pretty good deterrent as well –- for some, anyway.

Q: Given your experience, do you see the modern electoral process as inherently flawed? If so, how? Is there a way to fix it?

A: The system is fine; it’s the people within it that are the obstruction. Politics is a business with its own graduate level degrees, which means student loans that need to be repaid and a need for big money to repay them. How to Rig an Election is all about how election operatives (such as myself, previously) and the politicians who hire them have ensured that idealists can’t win elections. Mostly it is the cynics making the laws: they win power, they stay in power, and they keep power. The voters should have plenty of power in this mess, but they give it up during every election.

The electioneering tactics I write about it the book will only get nastier and more brutal, because the tricks of the trade are known, embellished upon, and passed forward by people like me to more people like me (or, like the person I had been paid to be). The competition is growing stiffer and the stakes are rising with every election. The only real solution is a savvy, committed electorate.

Q: Would campaign finance reform eliminate some dirty tricks?

A: The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) is little more than lawmakers creating new ways for K Street attorneys to charge higher fees to new clients looking to circumvent the law.

The current, most effective methods for getting around the spirit of the BCRA are the 527 committee and its cynical sibling, the 501(c)(3) committee, neither of which are regulated by the Federal Election Commission. The first is a kind of issue advocacy committee that can raise money in large chunks, usually from committed high-net-worth individuals, to advocate for an issue in a TV commercial. Typically, the ad will say something like this: “Congressman Smarmet hates clean air. If you LIKE clean air, then call Congressman Smarmet at the number on your screen and tell him he’s wrong!”

These ads usually air at 1,000 Gross Rating Points (a viewer frequency measure) seven days before an election. The 501(c)(3) has a slightly different dialect, but it has the same high-net-worth supporters, so the commercial might go something like this: “Clean air is good, especially for kids and doggies like yours who enjoy breathing it. But some people, like Congressman Smarmet, think clean air can be bad and dangerous because kids and doggies sometimes breathe too much and choke. We hope this information is useful as you think about the importance of clean air.”

I call the 501(c)(3) cynical because, unlike its 527 sibling, it doesn’t have to reveal where the money comes from to fund its commercials. But both kinds subvert feel-good campaign reform measures like the BCRA, because money is advocacy and advocacy is free speech. If money is equated to free speech, then all campaign finance reform efforts inevitably tangle with the Constitution, a resilient document that fortunately so far has never lost a challenge.

If you have a problem with this fact, hire a K Street attorney who will be glad to be grandly compensated to lose your appeal in the Supreme Court. Otherwise, my advice on how to fix the system is to stop complaining and start donating to your cause of choice.

Q: Which party fights dirtier, the G.O.P. or the Democrats? Do both employ the same types of ethically questionable tactics? Are there any differences?

A: All one needs to do to assess whether one side fights dirtier is to review the latest and best dirty tricks of the current election cycle. In the blue trunks we have the Democratic Party: Hillary Clinton’s campaign accused Barack Obama of being a Madras[sa]-educated Muslim. (In all fairness, the responsible Clinton campaign staffers were fired.) In the red trunks, the Grand Old Party, never to be outdone in the use of bigotry in the political dialogue: evangelicals in South Carolina were made aware that Romney’s religion has a history of polygamy. (Also in fairness, nobody took responsibility for this one.) The most notorious recent dirty trick was the previously-mentioned allegation that Senator McCain’s daughter was his illegitimate black love child, rather than the ultimate display of love that is adoption, which cost him South Carolina in 2000 and gave Bush his chance.

Neither side is lily white; neither side is above dirty tricks. Though recently, the G.O.P. has seen more felons blossom on its family tree.

Q: You went to prison for election crimes while a lot of other people didn’t. How do you deal with that?

A: In writing this book, I wanted to put out the story of what happened. Once I started working on that, I realized I had an opportunity to do a lot more than just vent about what happened to me; I could be completely candid and transparent about the whole political process, everything I had witnessed during my years in the machine. I realized I could give voters the information to understand what they’re getting the next time they receive a direct mail piece, hear a radio spot, or see a TV ad. What reaction is expected of the voter by the campaign paying for the message? The campaign intends for the targeted voter to react in a certain way, so ask yourself if your initial reaction is honest or reactionary, and then go from there.

For me, the acts of getting it all out in the open and hoping that my knowledge and insight are helpful to people both ensure that I sleep well at night. That, and knowing I accepted responsibility for my actions, while others continue to lie and deny.

Q: How are you spending your days now? And what became of your campaign business?

A: Federal subpoenas aren’t so good for business. When I got out of prison, I spent most of my time finishing the book, and at the moment I’m a stay-at-home dad with an amazing knack for getting my kids to eat their vegetables. (Hint: lemon makes anything green taste better.) I’m also pretty busy administering a philanthropic fund that my family started, so I’m not exactly missing politics.

Q: You write that the R.N.C. abandoned Dole in the 1996 election; which candidate/s can you foresee being abandoned this time around?

A: John McCain. He is the probable 2008 G.O.P. nominee after winning New Hampshire, and will have a terrifically difficult time taking control of the R.N.C. while George W. Bush continues to occupy the White House –- Bush still has a significant voice in what’s what at 310 First Street in Southeast Washington, D.C. I can’t speak to the Democratic National Committee, but I’d bet that if Senator Obama is the nominee, there will be a lot of Clinton loyalists who aren’t so eager to do his bidding.

Q: In your view, how has the 2008 race played out so far? Any surprises? Who’s your pick in the primaries, and in November?

A: I’m sticking by the conventional wisdom that Senator Clinton will be the Democratic nominee by virtue of having a presidential caliber organization; it worked for George W. Bush, so it should work for Clinton too –- after all, past is prologue.

I mistakenly dismissed McCain, thinking that Romney’s money alone would carry him to the nomination. I failed to weigh the importance of authenticity and seniority in that contest. Having said that, it’s all still up in the air, as it is with Clinton and Obama. He is inspiring voters (me included –- I wish I had been so inspired when I began working in this dirty vocation) in a way that hasn’t been seen since Reagan in 1984, and is reminiscent of Robert Kennedy.

The biggest surprise could be that both nominations are unresolved going into Super Tuesday. If that happens, there’s a good chance the typical television talking head will be thoroughly confused –- just as they were the night of the 2008 New Hampshire primary.

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Riders Take Off Pants For 'No Pants Day'

2008-01-14T04:32:00.001-08:00

SALT LAKE CITY - Dozens of people riding on TRAX on Saturday were caught with their pants down -- despite the January chill -- as part of a national stunt.

Riders were encouraged to ride light rail without pants in conjunction with a comedy organization based in New York City. 'Improv Everywhere' organized Saturday's event, which was part of a 10-city stunt designed to create unusual scenes and fun for riders of public transportation.

Improv Everywhere says nearly 1,000 people took part in Saturday's events around the world. Besides Salt Lake City, the "No Pants 2k8" train rides also took place in New York, Boston, Washington DC, Portland, OR, San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, Adelaide, Australia and Baltimore, MD.

In New York City, pants-less riders navigated the city's vast subway system while amused commuters looked on. In Salt Lake City, riders boarded near the EnergySolutions Arena and traveled around the so-called "Free fare zone."

Utah Transit Authority did not sponsor or sanction the event in any way, but says the riders taking part in the public stunt were breaking no laws.

Pants-less riders were required to follow guidelines of dress to stay within the laws of public standards. Riders were asked to ride in their underwear, however no revealing attire -- like thongs or lingerie -- was allowed.

Formed in 2001, Improv Everywhere says its purpose is to cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places. This is the 7th straight year of the organization's "No Pants" train stunt.

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To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us

2008-01-11T04:03:00.000-08:00

More and more, we are a nation of list-makers, from grocery lists, New Year's resolutions, and things to do before we die to DVDs to rent and people we've kissed. In To-Do List (based on the popular blog of the same name, todolistblog.com) Sasha Cagen celebrates the humble to-do list, exploring the ways these scribbled agendas reflect our personalities and passions.

To-Do List is both a celebration of lists and a peek at the lists that others create. Broken down by subjects like "Daily Lists" to "Sex Lists," it's a fascinating collection of lists from everyday people to the well-known:

1. Novelist Nick Hornby's list of desert island discs

2. A therapist's secret fears ("I HATE having to think about clients in relation to my hair or clothes")

3. A shopping list from chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse

4. A woman's accomplishments before her thirtieth birthday ("Hot air ballooned over the Serengeti," "Danced on a table in Vegas")

5. Qualities one man is looking for in a future wife, including "Chews with her mouth shut" and "Will let me give my first son the middle name of 'Jacob'"

With each list, Cagen offers the story behind it and a prompt for readers to compare notes and take their own stab at a similar list.

Voyeuristic and interactive, To-Do List will show you just how much -- and what -- your lists say about you.

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Authors@Google: Robert Frank - The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas

2008-01-09T03:13:00.000-08:00

Author Robert Frank discusses his book "The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas" as a part of the Authors@Google series.

Long before there was Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point), Steve Levitt (Freakonomics) and Tim Harford (Undercover Economist), Robert Frank had begun to critique the way his fellow economists thought about and taught "the dismal science."

In his wonderfully succinct and down-to-earth books, Frank explored the difference between absolute and relative goods, and how confusing the two got people into senseless economic "arms races." He wondered why consumers let their emotions get the better of their economic self-interest. And long before it was accepted wisdom, he explained rising income inequality in terms of the "superstars" that have begun to dominate any number of labor markets outside of sports and entertainment.

Frank, a longtime professor at Cornell University and its business school, is no slouch as an academic economist. His co-author in a widely used college textbook on microeconomics was none other than Princeton's Ben Bernanke, now chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. But at the same time, Frank has been complaining publicly for years that his profession was being hijacked by mathematical formalism that seemed determined to turn what had always been a social science, rooted in observation and experience, into a branch of the hard sciences. And there was no better proof of that, he wrote on more than a few occasions, than the dry and pre-professional way in which economics was taught to undergraduates.

In the end, however, it was not Frank but Gladwell, Levitt and Harford who finally earned fame and fortune by demonstrating how big was the appetite for an understanding of why things economic work the way they do. Perhaps hoping to ride the same wave, Frank has now written The Economic Naturalist, in which he offers answers to enigmas collected over the years by his Cornell students.

Many of the questions are quite clever. Why do drive-up ATM machines have Braille dots on the keypads? Why does it cost more to fly round-trip from Kansas City to Orlando than from Orlando to Kansas City? Why are people more likely to return cash to a store when given too much change than to return merchandise for which they were not charged? Why do fast food chains promise a free meal if the cashier doesn't offer a receipt, even though most customers don't want one?

You can imagine how such common-sense questions could form the starting points for just the kind of writing about business and economics that curious readers now crave. And sometimes, Frank's one- or two-page answers deliver on that promise.

One reason people are marrying later, for example, is that they are more mobile and more urban; consequently they don't face the problem of small-town teenagers who figure they'd better grab the best mates before they are all taken. And some waiters earn more than assistant chefs not because they contribute more value to the restaurant enterprise, but because the cooking job can be a stepping stone to more money and prestige while waiting tables leads nowhere.

I was particularly intrigued by Frank's explanation of why company managers, over time, lean toward giving more criticism than praise. According to Frank, managers who are highly critical of employees during their inevitable "slumps" kid themselves into believing that when employees' performances rise toward the average, as they usually do, it's all because of the tough love they received. On the other hand, they observe that the high-performing employees on whom they lavish so much praise inevitably wind up disappointing them as their performance reverts toward the mean.

Unfortunately, clever "enigmas" and short answers create a cumbersome and artificial organizing structure for dealing with fascinating issues such as the logic of price discrimination, the failure of collective action, and the relevance of markets to mating. The result is often repetitious and too often simplistic and unsatisfying.

We are told, for example, that sometimes goods are priced on the basis of what it costs to produce them (brown eggs) and sometimes on the basis of what people are willing to pay (sleeker, black colored Apple computers), but nowhere does Frank help us resolve this tension between demand and supply-side determination. Nor does he explain with any satisfaction why Broadway theaters have figured out how to sell last-minute tickets undercutting the prices they charge rich patrons, but airlines can't figure out a similar strategy for filling their empty seats.

Readers may question some of Frank's unsourced assertions, such as the old saw that retailers make 65 percent of their profit during the Christmas season. Washingtonians will also wince at his explanation for why it's illegal in many states to talk on a cell phone while driving but not to eat a Big Mac and fries. His (or his students') flaky hypothesis: It's all about the power of the fast-food lobby.

For all its faults, The Economic Naturalist will add momentum to the overdue campaign to take economics back from the mathematicians and root it in the everyday lives of consumers, workers, investors and entrepreneurs. It is pleasant enough to read, but it breaks little new ground and winds up being more clever at asking questions than at answering them.

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Why US Economy Is A Lot Like Pizza Domino

2008-01-06T03:46:00.000-08:00

High commodity prices. Weak consumer spending. And heavy borrowing.

If the recent problems of Domino’s Pizza sound a lot like the issues hanging over the broader American economy, it’s no coincidence. With its dependence on consumers, its sensitivity to the run-up in dairy and wheat prices and a risky decision last year to double its debt in order to pay a huge one-time dividend, the pizza chain’s recent troubles speak volumes about the challenges facing both companies and consumers in the year ahead.

But Domino’s trajectory isn’t just another tale of economic gloom and doom. It’s also a story of how large investors — including none other than Michael S. Dell — have kept the faith in the sliding shares of Domino’s, much as they have stuck with the overall stock market despite earnings worries and other fears.

The battle over Domino’s encapsulates the uncertainty facing Wall Street in 2008, with money managers remaining bullish even as veteran strategists like Byron Wien of Pequot Capital Management forecast a recession and a 10 percent drop for the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.

So far, at least in the case of Domino’s, the pessimists have the upper hand. Domino’s shares closed Friday at $11.72, down from $20 last summer. And on the first trading day of 2008, Joe Buckley, a Bear Stearns analyst, cut his rating on the entire restaurant group, warning that the combination of higher food and labor costs and slow growth equals a “perfect storm” for the sector.

Mr. Buckley was prescient in getting the Domino’s story right, warning in April that sales could be weaker than Wall Street expected. Since then, he adds, its archrival Pizza Hut has outmaneuvered Domino’s, in part by doing a better job of hedging against soaring prices for cheese, which jumped 42 percent last year.

But there are signs Domino’s is learning how to handle those high commodity prices, Mr. Buckley says. A new contract with cheese suppliers and the ability to more quickly pass on high wheat costs to franchisees might help earnings improve later this year, he says.

With oil hitting $100 a barrel for the first time last week, the ability to manage high commodity prices is a skill other companies will have to master this year.

The parallels with the broader United States economy do not end there. Like more traditional giants, including General Electric and Boeing, one of the few bright spots for Domino’s lately has been international growth. The chain sells distinctly local offerings like the Peppy Paneer in India and the Savoyarde in France, which features potatoes, bacon and crème fraîche.

And, like the broader market — which trades at 14 times 2008 earnings — Domino’s stock is reasonably priced, selling for about 11 times earnings. That is a crucial reason institutional investors do not seem dissuaded by negative news.

In November, the firm that manages the fortune of Mr. Dell and his family, MSD Capital, disclosed that it had acquired a 5.1 percent stake in Domino’s. Mr. Dell’s firm has been an investor for some time, said Lynn M. Liddle, a spokeswoman for Domino’s, but this was the first time its stake rose above 5 percent.

Mr. Dell’s role is hands-off, Ms. Liddle says. “Does Michael Dell come and make pizza? No. I don’t think he speaks to us. His folks do.”

MSD CAPITAL declined to comment on its stake in Domino’s, as did Mr. Dell. But another major holder, Andy Brown of Cedar Rock Capital, remains bullish on Domino’s despite obvious problems like higher commodity prices.

“We cherish a business like this as long-term investors,” says Mr. Brown, whose firm manages about $5 billion and holds a roughly 8 percent stake in Domino’s. He says he still supports Domino’s decision to borrow nearly $1 billion to pay out a special dividend of $13.50 a share last spring, despite the decline that followed.

“I’m not happy about commodity prices, but we’re happy with how Domino’s returned capital to their shareholders,” he said.

Via NYTimes.Com

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Model sues jewelry company, claiming commercial makes her look lewd

2008-01-04T03:01:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK— A model who says she has worked hard to maintain a wholesome image has filed a $5 million lawsuit complaining that a jewelry company's video advertisement in which she writhes and moans looks pornographic.

The commercial, seen on the Internet in a clip entitled "Rock Her World," shows a woman wearing blue lacy lingerie and a diamond necklace while moaning and stroking her face and neck. It ends with the Web address for the jewelry company, Szul.com.

The 37-year-old woman claims in her lawsuit that she did not "consent to or authorize the use of her likeness, picture, image or name to simulate a female having an orgasm or otherwise experiencing sexual pleasure."

"Indeed, the music to the commercial is bump-and-grind burlesque type music, which further provides the advertisement with a decidedly pornographic look, feel and sound," states the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in Manhattan's state Supreme Court.

The plaintiff, identified only as Jane Doe, says in court papers she won the role in the commercial for Szul Jewelry Inc. in November. She says the idea was that an average guy would get a woman excited by putting a necklace on her.

Three-fourths of the filming of the commercial, shot Nov. 9 by Q2 Entertainment in a studio in Queens, involved a comedic story line, but the woman later was told to sit and feign excitement for a few seconds while the young man put the necklace on her, the lawsuit says.

After that scene, the court papers say, the director told her to fake excitement while lying down, without smiling.

"He asked her to keep repeating the action until he thought he got the most authentic looking film piece," they say.

The plaintiff, who is a married graduate student in elementary education, "has worked hard to project a wholesome image and has been extremely careful to avoid doing any work in the industry that would cheapen or tarnish her reputation," the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit names Szul Jewelry, Q2 Entertainment and Q2 principal Mitchell Goldman as defendants. None of the defendants immediately responded to telephone messages seeking comment.

The woman is asking for $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $2.5 million in punitive damages.

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New Year's twin sisters turn 100

2008-01-02T03:54:00.000-08:00

Twin sisters who have lived through five royal reigns are celebrating their 100th birthdays in Cornwall.

The doctor who delivered Betty Richards and Jenny Pelmore arrived on horseback in Manchester in 1908.

The sisters, who now live one mile apart in Truro, are heading to Budapest to mark their centenaries.

Mrs Pelmore said: "We have so many memories. I don't think I would change anything. The only horrible part was the last World War."

The twins grew up in Kent with their three siblings and moved to Cornwall 52 years ago.

Both were married but are now widows. Mrs Richards, who trained as a teacher and later became a beekeeper, has two children, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Mrs Pelmore trained as a secretary and took up painting later in life.

The sisters each received a message from the Queen for their New Year's Day birthday.

Mrs Pelmore said: "We do everything together now. We have lived through five reigns.

"There's so many things happening so quickly now whereas everything was on bicycle, horseback or on foot when we were young. The doctor who came for our birth came on horseback."

On turning 100, Mrs Pelmore said she still looked forward to a lot of things and stayed optimistic.

"I think it is very necessary to keep going in life, to do things that are interesting, always have a hobby.

"There are lots of things to enjoy, the countryside and beauty everywhere. Live from day to day."

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Chicago Cop Plans to Swim Lake Michigan Shoreline

2007-12-29T02:53:00.000-08:00

A Chicago police officer hopes to swim the perimeter of Lake Michigan this summer, traveling a total distance of more than 1,000 miles.

Nial Funchion says he expects to swim about ten miles a day -- departing from Chicago's North Avenue Beach in early June. At that pace, it'll take him more than three months to complete the trip.

Funchion says he wants the swim to inspire others to follow their own dreams.

The 41-year-old endurance athlete previously swam the English Channel and crossed Lake Michigan.

Funchion will be accompanied by a support team and hopes to finish in September.

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Single Mom Duped by Fake Lottery Ticket

2007-12-25T02:45:00.000-08:00

NAPLES, Fla. — When single mother Mary Ann Shaffer scratched a lottery ticket last week, she thought Christmas had come early.

The ticket indicated she was a $25,000 winner.

"I said, 'Oh my God, it's a miracle," Shaffer told the Naples Daily News.

She looked on the back to find a telephone number to claim her winnings.

Elation quickly turned to sadness as she realized the ticket, given to her by a customer at her concession stand, was fake.

"Claim forms supplied by Santa Claus. All winning tickets must be validated by the tooth fairy and conform to her game rules ... All winners are losers and must have an excellent sense of humor," the ticket read.

"How can anyone be so mean around Christmas time?" said Bear Terstegge, a Naples Beach Patrol officer who examined the ticket.

Word about the fake ticket spread quickly around the Naples pier where Shaffer sells hot dogs and water.

"It touched everybody's heart," Terstegge said.

In the past few days, Shaffer, who has two young children, has received cards, gift certificates and hefty tips. One regular brought presents for her kids.

And she's even received a few lottery tickets - real ones.

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Viking Behind Bars

2007-12-23T01:27:00.001-08:00

SALT LAKE CITY — An inmate is suing the Utah Department of Corrections for denying him his right to practice an ancient Nordic religion while behind bars.

Michael Polk is serving time for aggravated assault and robbery. He filed a lawsuit against corrections officials in federal court, accusing them of denying him religious items that he says are necessary to practice the Asatru religion.

The religion worships ancient Nordic gods like Odin, Thor, Tyr and Heimdal.

In the lawsuit, Polk says he has been a member of the Asatru faith since 2005, and in order to properly practice it he needs items including: a Thor's Hammer, a prayer cloth, a Mead Horn used for drinking Wassail, a drum made of wood and boar skin, a rune staff and a sword.

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2007-12-18T01:53:00.000-08:00

1. Leona Helmsley and her dog

Don't laugh - if she were your master, you'd need a lifetime supply of Prozac too
Upon her death, Leona Helmsley leaves $12 million to her white Maltese, Trouble. And the poor pooch now receives death threats.

2. High-tech toilet disaster

Japanese manufacturer Toto apologizes to customers and offers free repairs for 180,000 high-tech toilets - thrones that feature heated seats, air purifiers, blow dryers, and water sprayers - after at least three catch fire. "Fortunately nobody was using the toilets when the fire broke out," says a company spokesman. "The fire would have been just under your buttocks."

3. Help the fat - give them food

Disneyland announces plans to close the "It's a Small World" attraction to deepen its water channel after the ride's boats start getting stuck under loads of heavy passengers. Employees ask larger passengers to disembark - and compensate them with guess what - coupons for free food.

4. Microsoft's PR Firm Fiasco

While working on an article about Microsoft, Wired contributing editor (and former Fortune writer) Fred Vogelstein receives a 13-page dossier about himself, describing him as "tricky" and his stories as "sensational." The document, prepared by the company's public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, as background for Microsoft executives, was sent inadvertently to the writer.

5. Drink With The Dumb Name

After receiving a warning from the FDA, Redux Beverages agrees to stop calling its energy drink Cocaine. It changes the name first to Censored, then to NoName.

6. Cartoon Network Buzz-Marketing Flop

To build buzz for its animated show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," Turner Broadcasting's Cartoon Network places electronic lightboards throughout Boston, triggering a bomb scare that shuts down two bridges, an expressway, a subway station, and a stretch of the Charles River. The devices depict a character from the show saluting passersby with an upraised middle finger.

7. Analize This

In March, shortly after No. 2 U.S. subprime lender New Century Financial announces a major earnings restatement as a result of failing loans, Bear Stearns analysts Scott Coren and Michael Nannizzi write a research note on New Century. They argue that despite New Century's stock having plunged 50%, to $15 per share, its downside risk is no worse than $10 in a "rescue-sale scenario." Within a month, New Century drops below $1 a share, is suspended by the NYSE, and files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

8. Oral B Vibrator

Lawyers representing Procter & Gamble send a 66-page cease-and-desist letter to British sex-toy company Love Honey, demanding that it stop using images of its Oral B electric toothbrushes to promote a product called the Brush Bunny - a rabbit-shaped piece of plastic that slips over the top of an Oral B to turn it into a vibrator.

9. Best Buy Kiosk Scam

The state of Connecticut sues Best Buy for setting up in-store kiosks set to a website that looks identical to bestbuy.com but lists higher prices than those they would actually find online.

10. The $54 Million Dollar Judge

District of Columbia judge Roy Pearson loses a $54 million lawsuit against the owners of a dry-cleaning establishment that he claims misplaced a pair of his pants. Pearson argued that the cleaner committed fraud by failing to live up to the SATISFACTION GUARANTEED sign displayed in the shop. Four months later a judicial review committee votes against reappointing him to his post, finding that he failed to demonstrate "appropriate judgment and judicial temperament."

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School District To Pay $95,000 In Legal Fees To Families That Pooh-Poohed Dress Code

2007-12-17T02:42:00.000-08:00

Officials in a Northern California school district might not think Tiggers are such wonderful things after agreeing to pay $95,000 in lawyers' fees to five families who sued the school over its dress code.

The parents went to court after a student was disciplined for wearing socks with the "Winnie the Pooh" cartoon character Tigger on the first day of school last year.

The district's superintendent said Thursday that the settlement money is for the plaintiffs' lawyers; the district is also on the hook to pay the lawyers it hired.

The settlement also says Redwood Middle School may no longer require students to wear only solid-color clothing.

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Thief Cut Off Let From Indian Prophet

2007-12-14T01:51:00.000-08:00

Police in southern India are hunting for two men who attacked a Hindu holy man, cut off his right leg and then made off with it.

The 80-year-old holy man, Yanadi Kondaiah, claimed to have healing powers in the leg.

He is now recovering from his ordeal in hospital in the city of Tirupati in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Local people believed they could be healed of spiritual and physical problems if they touched his leg.

They also believed in Mr Kondaiah's predictions of the future.

Police say the incident happened 550 km north of the state capital, Hyderabad.

Police say that the self-styled 'Godman' - who lives in a village near the city of Tirupati - was approached a few days ago by two strangers who came to seek his advice over a medical problem.

They say that the pair returned to the old man on Tuesday ostensibly to thank him for his help.

"As the old man had the weakness of drinking, he accepted their invitation to have drinks with them," said local police Sub-Inspector Pendakanti Dastgiri.

"They took him to a deserted spot in the outskirts of the village.

"After the old man had passed out under the influence of liquor, they cut off his right leg from the knee," he said.

Mr Dastgiri said that the amputation was carried out in a very "brutal manner" and that police are still looking for the leg and the men who so cruelly took it.

He said that the assailants used a sharp hunting knife, and left the old man alone and bleeding slowly to death.

Local people who found him unconscious alerted the police, who rushed him to hospital in Tirupati.

After regaining consciousness Mr Kondaiah said that he had no idea why he was targeted in such a manner, and did not understand the motive of the miscreants in taking away his leg.

"I have always been good to others and helped who ever came to me. Then why has this been done to me?" he asked amid his tears.

Police say the reason for the attack could be because Mr Kondaiah told too many people of the alleged magical powers of his right leg.

"This might have motivated some people to take away his leg hoping to benefit from it," a police spokesman said.

"But it is difficult to say that this was the only motive. It could also be a case of a revenge attack."

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Walmart pulls ‘Superbad’ DVD in Hawaii for featuring fake Hawaii license.

Walmart pulls 'Superbad' DVD in Hawaii for featuring fake Hawaii license

2007-12-10T03:02:00.000-08:00

Bonus packages of "Superbad" DVD movies carrying copies of a phony Hawaii driver's license featured in the hit comedy have been pulled from all Wal-Mart stores in the islands, a recall that could spread nationally, officials said yesterday.

The move came after Mayor Mufi Hannemann on Wednesday called the promotional plastic card "inappropriate" advertising, fearing minors could use it to pass as adults or buy alcohol. The city notified local authorities and even the Department of Homeland Security about the cards.

In the movie, produced by Sony Pictures, actor Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who plays high school teenager Fogell, tries to buy more than $100 worth of liquor for a senior party using a fake Hawaii I.D.

"We're very pleased that Wal-Mart has taken prompt, corrective measures to comply with the city's request to protect the integrity of our driver's license," Hannemann said yesterday in a news release. "It was foolish of the movie studio to include this prop in the DVD, particularly because it could be used by unscrupulous people to deceive others who are unfamiliar with our driver's license."

It's unclear if Wal-Mart's sales ban, for now limited to its seven Hawaii stores, would affect mainland shops also offering the "Superbad" DVD package. Wal-Mart is the only retailer marketing the movies with the card, according to Sony Pictures, though countless copies of the special package are up for sale on eBay and other Internet Web sites.

Brian Halsey, market manager over operations for Wal-Mart in Hawaii, said company officials "were considering" expanding the recall to all stores, but he wasn't aware of a decision yesterday.

Sony Pictures, declining to comment on how many special "Superbad" packages had been made, said yesterday there are no plans for additional production. In an e-mail, it said the card "has a shifting, dual photograph and other features to make clear it's not a real I.D."

"We regret that it has caused concerns in Hawaii or elsewhere," the company said. "This was a one-time promotion and no further shipments are planned."

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iPhone A Big Hit With Corporations

2007-12-07T02:25:00.000-08:00

BOSTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Mike de la Cruz, a senior vice president with German software giant SAP AG , shows off the latest weapon of the corporate road warrior -- his iPhone.

A hit with consumers because it combines a phone, music player and Web browser, analysts say Apple Inc's iPhone is gaining ground as a business tool as well, and could one day rival Research in Motion Ltd's popular Blackberry line.

Although sought out by high-end consumers, Apple products have never been accepted widely by business, so major corporate adoption of the iPhone would be a breakthrough.

"It's fun," de la Cruz said in Boston at an industry conference earlier this week. "It's so popular."

Indeed, it is popular enough that software makers such as SAP, Salesforce.com Inc and scores of smaller developers are letting sales and finance teams work away from the office on their iPhones.

On Monday, SAP broke with precedent by saying it would introduce a version of its upcoming customer relationship management software for the iPhone before launching versions for mobile devices from RIM and Palm Inc (PALM.O: Quote, Profile, Research).

The reason? SAP's own salespeople were clamoring for it, saying the iPhone was easier to use, according to Bob Stutz, SAP senior vice president in charge of developing customer relationship management software.

"This isn't necessarily iPhone deployment by way of the IT department, but it's by people who really want to use this device and IT is responding in a really positive way," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with market research firm Jupiter Research.

But analysts said several things need to happen before the iPhone becomes a serious challenger, the most crucial of which is more support for corporate e-mail.

Blackberries became an indispensable part of the business world for their ability to forward e-mail from a corporate network straight to the phones.

The iPhone's e-mail service can be configured to work with corporate systems, but it does not "push" the entire message to the device. Contacts and calendars also cannot be updated over the airwaves, but require the iPhone to be physically docked with a computer.

Since many businesses use Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Outlook software for e-mail, contacts and scheduling, Apple would need to license Microsoft technology that lets mobile phones work with Exchange, the server software that underpins Outlook.

Apple need only look at its recent past to find a business justification for working with its long-time rival.

"What really made the iPod take off was when they made it compatible with Windows. So if they made the iPhone compatible with Windows e-mail, meaning Outlook, that would really make sales take off," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research.

E-mail is not the only stumbling block to wider corporate adoption of the iPhone.

Analysts said some potential business buyers are holding out for a model that runs on newer cellular technology that enables faster Web connections. AT&T Inc (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the exclusive U.S. carrier, said last week it expects that kind of iPhone in 2008.

Moreover, while surveys show more than 90 percent of iPhone users are happy with the device, several executives have gone on the record, including at the Reuters Media Summit in New York last week, as saying it is too vexing to tap out long e-mails on the touch screen.

After a launch late in June, Apple sold 1.12 million iPhones in its fiscal fourth quarter ended in September. RIM shipped more than 3 million Blackberries in its second fiscal quarter ended September 1.

Most iPhone sales were to non-corporate users, but Apple says the device is great for business.

"We've said many times that we're providing a solution in iPhone that many businesses love," Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said in October. "Clearly, there are some businesses buying them and very much enjoying them."

An Apple spokeswoman declined to discuss future iPhone plans, saying only that the company was happy so many software makers were interested.

Analysts who follow the company speculate it may eventually offer a model with a keyboard, or use technology that mimics the sensation of pressing real keys by making the phone vibrate for a split-second when the screen is touched.

"If they get those pieces together, it would make iPhone a much stronger competitor," Wu added.

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Spiked Meatballs

2007-12-06T04:53:00.000-08:00

A US counter-terrorism police officer who says he failed a drugs test because his wife spiked his meatballs with marijuana is suing to get his job back.

Anthony Chiofalo, of New York Police Department (NYPD), has asked Manhattan Supreme Court to challenge his firing.

He was suspended in 2005 after 22 years of service, for failing a random test.

His wife told investigators she had secretly drugged his meatballs hoping a failed test would force him to retire. NYPD said the story was "not credible".

Both Mr Chiofalo and his wife Catherine have passed lie detector tests about how the marijuana entered the police officer's system.

Back pain

Mrs Chiofalo told investigators she had put enough marijuana for six cigarettes in her meatball recipe in July 2005, according to court papers.

She testified at a hearing that she just wanted her husband "not to die of a heart attack or get killed" while still in service, the Associated Press news agency quotes the court papers as saying.

"I wanted him to be around to help raise my son," she said. She had reportedly expected him to retire in 2004 after 20 years in the force.

Mr Chiofalo said his wife had marijuana in the house because she used it to alleviate suffering caused by chronic back pain.

An administrative judge recommended that Mr Chiofalo be reinstated to the Joint Terrorism Task Force but Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly rejected that opinion and fired him.

Mr Chiofalo hopes the court will rule his dismissal unconstitutional and force the NYPD to re-hire him.

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Monkeys beat students in memory game

2007-12-04T02:26:00.000-08:00

Chimpanzees have an extraordinary photographic memory that is far superior to ours, research suggests.

Young chimps outperformed university students in memory tests devised by Japanese scientists.

The tasks involved remembering the location of numbers on a screen, and correctly recalling the sequence.

The findings, published in Current Biology, suggest we may have under-estimated the intelligence of our closest living relatives.

Until now, it had always been assumed that chimps could not match humans in memory and other mental skills.

"There are still many people, including many biologists, who believe that humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," said lead researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees - young chimpanzees at the age of five - have a better performance in a memory task than humans.

"Here we show for the first time that young chimpanzees have an extraordinary working memory capability for numerical recollection - better than that of human adults tested in the same apparatus, following the same procedure."

Memory tests

Dr Matsuzawa and colleagues tested three pairs of mother and baby chimpanzees against university students in a memory task involving numbers.

The mothers and their five-year-old offspring had already been taught to "count" from one to nine.

During the experiment, each subject was presented with various numerals from one to nine on a touch screen monitor.

The numbers were then replaced with blank squares and the test subject had to remember which number appeared in which location, then touch the appropriate square.

They found that, in general, the young chimps performed better than their mothers and the adult humans.

The university students were slower than all of the three young chimpanzees in their response.

The researchers then varied the amount of time that the numbers appeared on-screen to compare the working memory of humans and chimps.

Chimps performed much better than university students in speed and accuracy when the numbers appeared only briefly on screen.

The shortest time duration, 210 milliseconds, did not leave enough time for the subjects to explore the screen by eye movement - something we do all the time when we read.

This is evidence, the researchers believe, that young chimps have a photographic memory which allows them to memorise a complex scene or pattern at a glance. This is sometimes present in human children but declines with age, they say.

"Young chimpanzees have a better memory than human adults," Dr Matsuzawa told BBC News.

"We are still underestimating the intellectual capability of chimpanzees, our evolutionary neighbours."

'Ground-breaking'

Dr Lisa Parr, who works with chimps at the Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University in Atlanta, US, described the research as "ground-breaking".

She said the importance of these primates for understanding the skills necessary for the evolution of modern humans was unparalleled.

"They are our closest living relatives and thus are in a unique position to inform us about our evolutionary heritage," said Dr Parr.

"These studies tell us that elaborate short-term memory skills may have had a much more salient function in early humans than is present in modern humans, perhaps due to our increasing reliance on language-based memory skills."

The research is published in Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press.

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Voters Bribed With Viagra

2007-11-30T02:23:00.000-08:00

BANGKOK, Thailand - Vote-buying is an old practice in Thai politics.

But one candidate for December's Thai election has reportedly come up with a new tactic - handing out Viagra instead of cash.

The allegation, made today by a campaign worker against a rival party, comes as rules about handing out favours to voters have become stricter than ever.

Sayan Nopcha, a campaigner for the People's Power party in Pathum Thai province just north of Bangkok, said the drug used to treat sexual dysfunction in men was being distributed to elderly male voters.

Viagra is supposed to be used only on a doctor's advice, but is generally available over the counter in Thailand.

He would not identify the candidate who allegedly handed out the pills.

Under a tough new law, both the supplier and recipient of vote-buying can face criminal charges. Candidates can be disqualified and their party disbanded, as was the case with the old law, while voters who accept money or gifts can now face from one to 10 years in prison.

More than 4,200 candidates from 41 parties are competing for 480 seats in the lower house of parliament in the Dec. 23 polls - the first to be held after a bloodless military coup ousted elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September last year.

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Beauty queen wins despite pepper spray sabotage

2007-11-27T02:10:00.000-08:00

Organisers of a beauty pageant in Puerto Rico are investigating a case of sabotage after a contestant's dress and make-up were covered with pepper spray.

Ingrid Marie Rivera beat 29 pageant rivals to become the 2008 Miss Universe contestant, despite breaking out twice in hives - a red swollen rash.

Ms Rivera remained composed onstage before the judges, but backstage she applied ice packs to her face and body.

Her clothing and make-up later tested positive for pepper spray.

"We thought at first it was an allergic reaction, or maybe nerves," said pageant spokesman Harold Rosario.

"But the second time, we knew it couldn't have been a coincidence."

Bomb threat

The pageant organisers said they hoped to catch whoever was responsible for the prank but have not involved the police.

The pageant also saw the theft of Ms Rivera's bag - which contained her dresses, make-up and credit cards - and the last day of the competition was postponed after a bomb threat.

Ms Rivera admitted that she had considered dropping out of the contest. "At one point I said, 'Am I a masochist?'"

"But I said: 'I am with God and this is my goal, regardless of the results.'"

Ms Rivera won Miss World Caribbean in 2005, and local media had predicted she would win the Puerto Rican pageant.

Her rivals complained she was too experienced and should be disqualified.

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Gigantic Sea Scorpion

2007-11-21T03:28:00.001-08:00

The immense fossilised claw of a 2.5m-long (8ft) sea scorpion has been described by European researchers.

The 390-million-year-old specimen was found in a German quarry, the journal Biology Letters reports.

The creature, which has been named Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, would have paddled in a river or swamp.

The size of the beast suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought, the team says.

The claw itself measures 46cm - indicating its owner would have been longer even than the average-sized human.

Overall, it exceeds the record for any other sea scorpion (eurypterid) find by nearly 50cm.

The eurypterids are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of modern land scorpions and possibly all arachnids (the class of animals that also includes spiders).

"The biggest scorpion today is nearly 30cm so that shows you how big this creature was," said Dr Simon Braddy from the University of Bristol, UK.

It was one of Dr Braddy's co-authors, Markus Poschmann, who made the discovery in the quarry near Prum in south-west Germany.

"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realised there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab," he recalled.

"After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw. Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out.

"The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilise it."

Super-sized meals

The species existed during a period in Earth history when oxygen levels in the atmosphere were much higher than today.

And it was those elevated levels, some palaeo-scientists believe, that may have helped drive the super-sized bodies of many of the invertebrates that existed at that time - monster millipedes, huge cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies.

But Dr Braddy thinks the large scales may have had a lot to do with the absence early on of vertebrate predators. As they came on the scene, these animals would have eaten all the biggest prey specimens.

"The fact that you are big means you are more likely to be seen and to be taken for a tastier morsel," he told BBC News. "Evolution will not select for large size; you want to be small so you can hide away."

The scorpions are thought to have made their first scuttles on to land about 450 million years ago.

While some would have taken up a fully terrestrial existence, others like Jaekelopterus rhenaniae would have maintained an aquatic or semi-aquatic lifestyle.

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Name initials may influence grades: study

2007-11-17T03:10:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Certain initials may look better than others as monograms but they can also have an impact on how well a person performs in a sport or at school, according to a new study.

Researchers who studied the impact of initials found that baseballs players whose first or last name starts with the letter K, which signifies a strikeout, tended to strike out more often than other players.

And students whose names start with the letters C or D, which denote mediocre marks in some grading systems, did not perform as well as other pupils with different initials.

"Just having the right initial doesn't spontaneously make you a better baseball player, but it can spontaneously make you a slightly worse baseball player," said Leif Nelson, of the University of California, San Diego.

Nelson and Joseph Simmons, of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, studied the effect of first or last-name initials in situations where letters corresponded to an undesirable outcome.

They found that people whose initial matched a negative label performed more poorly than others. The findings suggest that the unconscious mind finds one's own initials appealing even when it compromises success, according to the study that will be published in the journal Psychological Science.

The researchers examined the effect in baseball, in academia and in a lab setting where a reward-based test was performed.

"These are domains where people really, really focus on top performance and still this unconscious desire to match their initial seems to be undermining their performance," Nelson explained in an interview.

In baseball, players aim to avoid striking out. But after looking at 93 years of Major League baseball data and poring over more than 6,000 player names, the authors found that those whose names began with a K struck out more than others.

The effect was the same in a study of the grade point averages of 15,000 graduate students over a 15-year period.

"Cs and Ds do reliably worse than everyone else," said Nelson.

"All the students are working very hard to succeed as much as possible, it just happens to be that if you find failure less aversive than someone else, you'll fail slightly more often," he added.

The researchers said their findings are in line with the name-letter effect, in which a person's favorite letter is often one of their initials. The favored initial may influence life outcomes, such the city a person lives in or the choice of occupation.

Nelson said the study demonstrates the power of the unconscious mind in controlling behavior in certain situations.

"Certainly, my wife made sure we didn't name our daughter with a C or a D after reading the paper," Nelson said.

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Law firm converts old jail to office space

2007-11-15T03:29:00.000-08:00

EVANSVILLE, Ind. - Visitors to Mike Woods' law practice are greeted with a sight not often found in legal offices: a jail cell.

The office for Woods and Woods is located in the old Vanderburgh County Jail - an 1890 downtown building honoured Tuesday with a historical marker from the Indiana Historical Bureau.

The old jail was modelled after a German castle and in 1903 was the site of a race riot in which 12 people were killed and many more injured.

The jail sat empty from 1967 until 1994, Woods said, and was full of weeds and trash before being renovated. Woods and Woods moved its offices into the building in 2004 and continues to lease the second-floor space from the county.

"Through the years, the old jail has received minor repairs and updates, a few new coats of paint, and thousands of visitors, but it hasn't lost its intrigue," Woods said.

"Preserving this history is important because it allows community members to reflect on the past, to learn from and appreciate those who came before us."

The building still has bars over the windows, which provides an interesting atmosphere for the firm's 30 employees.

"They are always joking they can't get away, or saying we're slave drivers," Woods said.

Visitors can see one of the original cramped jail cells, complete with four metal bunk beds, a sink and a toilet.

The office's employee break room is adjacent to a door leading to a tunnel that connects the old jail with the old county courthouse. Woods said the tunnel was used to transport prisoners between the two facilities.

"Both these buildings were once on the verge of being destroyed," he said. "Now, they are saved."

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Flasher strips off in court

2007-11-10T03:42:00.000-08:00

A German flasher stunned lawyers during his appeal hearing on a flashing conviction by stripping off in court, authorities said.

"The court withdrew for deliberations and during the adjournment the man removed his clothes again," said a spokesman for the court in the western city of Duisburg. "It appears he sees it as art, and views himself as a living work of art."

The 60-year-old was in court to appeal against his conviction for running onto the pitch naked during a girl's soccer match and striking a range of "body builder poses", the spokesman said.

State prosecutors filed fresh charges of indecent behaviour against the man after the court incident.

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Comet’s fame keeps growing, and growing ...

2007-11-06T04:03:00.000-08:00

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A comet that has unexpectedly brightened in the past couple of weeks and now is visible to the naked eye is attracting professional and amateur interest.

Paul Lewis, director of astronomy outreach at the University of Tennessee, is drawing students to the roof of Nielsen Physics Building for special viewings of Comet 17P/Holmes.

The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter.

The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies but can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus, as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper.

"This is truly a celestial surprise," Lewis said. "Absolutely amazing."

Until Oct. 23, the comet had been visible to modern astronomers only with a telescope, but that night it suddenly erupted and expanded.

A similar burst in 1892 led to the comet's discovery by Edwin Holmes.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, along the lines of when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter back in 1994," Lewis said.

Scientists speculate the comet has exploded because there are sinkholes in its nucleus, giving it a honeycomblike structure. The collapse exposed comet ice to the sun, which transformed the ice into gas.

"What comets do when they are near the sun is very unpredictable," Lewis said. "We expect to see a coma cloud and a tail, but this is more like an explosion, and we are seeing the bubble of gas and dust as it expands away from the center of the blast."

Experts aren't sure how long the comet's show will last, but estimate it could be weeks — if not months. Using a telescope or binoculars help bring the comet's details into view, they said.

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Dentist's Dance Caused Slip, Drill To Face

2007-11-04T01:38:00.000-07:00

A dentist was dancing to a song on the radio while drilling on a woman's tooth, and she wound up in the hospital when the drill bit snapped off and lodged near her eye, a lawsuit alleges. Brandy Fanning, 31, said she had to undergo emergency surgery and spent three days in the hospital because of the October 2004 mishap.

The federal lawsuit filed last month against Dr. George Trusty seeks $600,000 for her medical expenses, pain and suffering.

Trusty, 57, a dentist at Syracuse Community Health Center, declined to comment, as did Dr. Ruben Cowart, the center's president and CEO.

Fanning said she went to the center's emergency dental clinic after pain in a left molar started getting worse. With a root canal ruled out as an option, Trusty gave her some Novocain and began drilling to break up the tooth before extracting it, she said.

As Trusty drilled, he was "performing rhythmical steps and movements to the song 'Car Wash,'" which was on the radio, according to the lawsuit. Then, Fanning heard a snap.

Trusty tried to use a metal hook to pull the bit out, but that only pushed it farther up, driving it through the sinus and bone near her eye socket, the lawsuit alleged.

After first minimizing the problem, Trusty talked to an oral surgeon to set up an appointment — and then told Fanning she needed to get to an emergency room immediately, according to the lawsuit.

She claimed he had initially told she would likely sneeze the drill bit out, but doctors said later that if she really had sneezed, the drill bit could have blinded her left eye.

Fanning said she sued because Trusty failed on a promise to pay her medical bills. She said she still suffers facial swelling, nerve damage and chronic infections.

The suit is in federal court because the health center operates under federal law.

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2007-11-02T05:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.spoofcard.com/

If you've ever made or received a call using a calling card, you've probably noticed one of the side effects of these payment systems: instead of your number showing up on the recipient's Caller ID screen, a number owned by the card's issuer appears. Now a company called SpoofCard has decided to capitalize on this discrepancy by selling calling cards that are specifically designed to spoof Caller ID systems.

For about 17 cents a minute, SpoofCard lets you send any numeric string as your Caller ID code. The service goes even further, providing realtime voice-changing capabilities and call recording. Although SpoofCard's Privacy Policy specifies that the service shouldn't be used for illegal activities and that the company reserves the right to hand over your personal info if they're subpoenaed, we won't be surprised to see this shut down soon. In the meantime, here's your chance to really confuse those wiretappers.

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Hypnotised man flees show into path of traffic

2007-10-30T05:31:00.000-07:00

MINUTES after a man was hypnotised on stage into thinking people were invisible and that he could smell a stench, police were called amid fears he would get hit by a car.

The man ran from a Peter Powers show at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney's Newtown on October 19 soon after he was on stage scratching an itch brought on by hypnosis.

Mr Powers last week played down the dramatic incident, saying he always "removed hypnosis" before the subjects he prompts to see leprechauns and preach gospels leave the stage.

He said the drama began shortly after hypnosis was removed and the 20-year-old man, Chris, left the theatre and another audience member chased him fearing he was still under hypnosis.

Police were called to the scene after a report 180cm-tall Chris, who was dressed in faded jeans, was seen running through traffic "acting crazy" just after 9.30pm.

He had earlier been on stage, hypnotised into thinking he was itching all over, had been convinced he was feeling cold enough to shiver and he was convinced Mr Powers was invisible.

Chris was stopped in King St after running into traffic and, according to Mr Powers said he had only run because he thought he was being followed from the theatre.

"When somebody is hypnotised they are not in any danger, you could cross the street and walk around town, it is not going to make you walk into the path of a bus," Mr Powers said.

"But before anyone leaves the stage I remove hypnosis from them, when we heard someone had left the building who had been on the stage we were concerned.

"We had removed hypnosis but one member of the audience panicked and chased this guy up the road. I spoke to the guy and he was fine -- he was perfectly normal. He said 'when I left a guy was chasing me, I was frightened so I ran'."

Mr Powers said he ensured his "process" to remove hypnosis had been successful and then gave a personal number to the man in case he needed it.

The hypnotist is on a national tour and said he was able to send people to sleep with a simple command and even had subjects chasing leprechauns around theatres. He said he always tells his subjects to remain in the theatre until the show ends.

A box office worker at the Enmore theatre said events management staff were unable to comment over the phone and could only be contacted by email. Staff declined to return a phone call.

Newtown police were unable to confirm whether they attended the incident but it is understood there are no ongoing investigations.

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Calif. College Uses Cockroaches As Lure

2007-10-22T04:19:00.000-07:00

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) - Thinking about the University of California, Riverside for college? Then come pet our cockroaches!

UC Riverside is using a cockroach petting zoo to attract students and parents to an upcoming recruitment fair. The zoo will include several species, including cockroaches that emit a foul, ammonia-like scent and the famous, palm-sized Madagascar hissing cockroach.

Also in plentiful supply: rubber gloves for the squeamish.

The Nov. 3 event targets local high school students interested in careers as science teachers or engineers, said Steve Gomez, co-director of The Copernicus Project, one of two campus programs sponsoring the event.

It's the second time this year that UC Riverside, which has a well-respected entomology department, has used the cockroach zoo to entice potential recruits.

"Everybody gets grossed out at first," Gomez said. "But then they find out what uses they have in agriculture, like pest elimination."

Gomez said he held the giant Madagascar hissing roach in May and it nearly covered his palm. The bugs seem to enjoy being held, he said.

"I'm not a big cockroach fan," he said. "I held it for about five seconds and I gladly gave it back."

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The Secret Menu

2007-10-21T02:59:00.000-07:00

In-N-Out Burger. 6:00 p.m. I say to my girlfriend in line beside me, "I want a burger, but I'm tired of all that bun."

A bearded 20-something walks past and says, "protein style, lady."

Confused, I look at the menu. No mention there. But the cheerful teen behind the counter nods approvingly and asks, "you want it that way, wrapped in lettuce, not a bun?" Great idea, I say.

And just like that, I'm in on the secret. Menu, that is.

Turns out, that's just one of the many so-called "secret menu" items at this famed California fast foodery. (They're posted on the Web site, though not in the brick and mortar spot.)

And it's only part of a bigger feast fad known as "the secret menu." Try the McBruschetta at the Golden Arches (toasted tomatoes, onions, bun), the Naked Chicken at Popeye's (meat, no breading), or the Short Cappucino at Starbucks (more intense brew served in a kid's cup).

This is strictly grass-roots stuff, however. Most of these items are not official. (In-N-Out Burger executives deny a secret menu, calling the Web list a customer service.) They're the fruit of enterprising, empowered customers taste-testing their way into new territory on their local fast-food turf. The top combinations rise like cream to become unofficial "secret menu" items that spread through word of mouth and repeated orders.

Big shots in swanky nightspots have always been able to order a sirloin seared to personal taste. But custom eats for the common man are relatively new.

According to a number of food experts, it's part of a feasting frenzy fed by Internet chatter and the explosion of foodie reality TV shows -- "Top Chef," "Hell's Kitchen," etc. -- that makes everybody feel like a gastronomic insider, no matter their budget.

The secret menu appears to be on the upswing, so I decide to taste-test this theory on local terrain. I press Monitor intern, Alison Tully, into service. She hits Jamba Juice and Starbucks; I take the rest.

In-N-Out, which used to be the Golden State's own fast-food secret with its freshly stamped fries and authentic shakes, is known for its helpful servers. It's also famous for offering a select, few items on that glowing outdoor board -- basic burgers, shakes, sodas, and fries.

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British spy agency to use ads in video games for recruiting purposes

2007-10-19T05:12:00.000-07:00

LONDON — A British intelligence agency is seeking spies in cyberspace.

GCHQ, the surveillance arm of British intelligence, said today it hopes to attract computer-savvy young recruits by embedding job ads within video games such as "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent."

GCHQ, which stands for Government Communications Headquarters, said it was looking to reach "an Internet-savvy generation of graduate groups."

In a statement, GCHQ said it hoped the campaign would "capture the imagination of people with a particular interest in IT."

The monthlong ad campaign, which starts at the end of October, is being run by GCHQ, the recruitment firm TMP Worldwide and Microsoft-owned in-game ad agency Massive Inc.

Ads headed "Careers in British Intelligence" will appear as billboards in scenes in "Splinter Cell" and other games including "Need for Speed Carbon" and "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars" when they are played on computers and Microsoft Xbox consoles in Britain.

Kate Clemens, Head of GCHQ's digital strategy at TMP Worldwide, said the campaign would target frequent gamers who "are particularly receptive to innovative forms of advertising."

"The world of online gaming offers GCHQ a further route to target a captive audience," she said.

GCHQ employs about 5,000 people at its high-tech headquarters in Cheltenham, western England.

Britain's shadowy intelligence services have slowly been raising their profile — and deflating some cherished secret-agent myths — as they attempt to attract a larger and more diverse pool of recruits.

The foreign intelligence service MI6 launched a Web site in 2005, which cautions that its work is far from the "level of glamour and excitement" of James Bond films. Its domestic counterpart, MI5, has an online section tackling "myths and misconceptions" that stresses "we do not kill people or arrange their assassination."

MI5 has placed job ads on the side of double-decker London buses and tried to attract more female applicants with ads in women's changing rooms at gyms.

MI6 — long the preserve of white, male graduates of Oxford and Cambridge universities — now stresses it requires employees from a wide range of backgrounds and with a variety of skills. One recent newspaper ad appealed for administrators under the tag line: "Protect your country. At your desk."

Microsoft bought New York-based Massive last year. The company sells virtual billboard space to advertisers, then — rather than placing the ads within the games themselves — delivers them over the Internet to PCs and Xbox 360 game consoles.

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Forgetful doctor left body for 9 days in Vienna flat

2007-10-18T00:59:00.000-07:00

VIENNA (Reuters) - The body of a 76-year-old woman found dead in her Vienna flat was left there for nine days because a doctor who registered the death forgot to notify a removal service, officials said on Tuesday.

The oversight was noticed when neighbours of the deceased woman, who lived alone, complained of a worsening stench, said Andreas Flaschner, spokesman for the Austrian capital's disinfection department.

"It was a mistake. The doctor thought paramedics had removed the body while the paramedics thought the doctor had arranged for it. I've worked here 20 years and never seen anything like it," said Flaschner. The body was taken for burial on October 8.

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Homeless man is chess king of Washington

2007-10-12T02:42:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) - He sleeps on a bench, but he is king of chess during the day at Washington's Dupont Circle, where he dazzles beginners and masters alike with his winning moves on the park's stone chessboards.

Tom Murphy, 49, makes what little money he has from teaching his prodigious knowledge of the game to passersby for a few dollars.

"He has the title of expert in chess. This is the second highest American title; above him are master. So it means he is quite good," said Washington's Chess Center director David Mehler.

A former math and science major and a celebrity among amateurs, Murphy has made the Dupont Circle public square America's most prestigious chess park after New York's fabled Washington Square, according to some chess lovers.

"The mathematical equation has always been fascinating to me, then when you add the camaraderie, the ambiance, the open air, it's almost irresistible," said Murphy, peering over a park chessboard that draws players from all walks of life -- students, doctors, lawyers, drunkards.

Garrulous and brilliant, Murphy, grew up in North Carolina and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, two well known chess centers, and specializes in a lightning version of chess known as "blitz."

In this accelerated version of the ancient game, players are allowed five minutes for all their moves, and the game ends within 10 minutes.

"The appeal of blitz is that, maybe in two or five minutes, I may put together a work of art that might last a life time," Murphy said in his inimitable style of explaining chess basics.

The game, he said consists of "few guiding principles: king safety, fight for the center, give every piece a job."

"At blitz he is a very strong player. He has a very fast mind and he sees combinations very quickly. He calculates very quickly," said Mehler, who has been teaching the board game to underprivileged children for 15 years.

Murphy has won several chess tournaments and finished 15th in the 2005 world blitz championship.

He's not always down and out, but his addiction to booze often lands him on the street.

"The pursuit of the ego versus the pursuit of the spirit are in conflict sometimes," he explained. "I enjoy alcohol a little too much."

He attends Alcoholic Anonymous meetings and admits, "when I don't drink my chess is better."

Murphy aims to get better at chess and rise to the title of master.

"I would dearly love to go on and make my master's rating because through that I get a credibility to increase my teaching fee," he said.

"There is an upcoming tournament on Thanskgiving (November 22) in Philadelphia. That's looking promising," he added.

For now, the homeless chess teacher charges 20 to 30 dollars an hour and will match his wits with any rival for two to five dollars per game.

"Grand masters are teaching 100 or 200 bucks (dollars) an hour, masters can get at least 50, that's not bad," he said.

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Japan worker chided for wikipedia habit

2007-10-07T00:35:00.000-07:00

TOKYO -- A Japanese bureaucrat has been reprimanded for shirking his duties to make hundreds of Wikipedia contributions about toy robots, officials said Friday.

The agriculture ministry said the bureaucrat, whose name was not released, contributed 260 times to the Japanese-language Wikipedia entry on Gundam, a popular, long-running animated series about giant robots that has spun off intricate toys popular among children and adults who belong to the so-called "otaku culture" of fascination with comic books, animation and robots.

"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam," ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura said.

The agriculture ministry verbally reprimanded five other bureaucrats who contributed to entries on movies, typographical mistakes in billboard signs and local politics. The six employees together made 408 entries on the popular Internet encyclopedia from ministry computers since 2003.

The ministry did not object to employees making limited contributions on World Trade Organization and free trade agreements.

The reprimands emerged from an internal probe following recent media allegations that a growing number of Japanese public servants were contributing to the Web encyclopedia, which anyone can edit, often to reflect their views. An unspecified number of other bureaucrats apparently had contributed to Wikipedia on Gundam, but could not be identified, Shimomura said.

Shimomura said the ministry reprimands were not related to WikiScanner, a recently introduced free program that reveals the identities of the computers used to make Wikipedia changes.

The agriculture ministry issued an order prohibiting employees from accessing Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry, Shimomura said.

An Imperial Household Agency official was reprimanded last month for deleting references criticizing imperial tombs on the Wikipedia through the agency computer.

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Lawmaker Shows Nude Photo to Students

2007-10-04T02:43:00.000-07:00

NORWALK, Ohio — A state legislator surprised a high school class when the computer he was using projected a photo of a nude woman during a lecture on how a bill becomes a law.

State Rep. Matthew Barrett was giving a civics lesson Tuesday when he inserted a data memory stick into the school computer and the projected image of a topless woman appeared instead of the graphics presentation he had downloaded.

Police interviewed Barrett and school officials and seized the data memory stick and the computer to determine where the image came from, a state highway patrol spokesman said.

Barrett said there were a few snickers from the approximately 20 students in the senior government class at Norwalk High School when the image appeared. He said he immediately pulled the memory stick out of the computer.

The legislator said he finished his lecture using printouts and then met with the school's principal and technology staff, who examined the stick. He said the school's technology director determined the stick had a directory of nude images in addition to Barrett's presentation on civics lessons.

"I have no idea where these came from," the Democrat said.

Barrett said the data memory stick was a gift he received about three weeks ago from a legislative liaison from the state Library of Ohio.

Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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NZ police let public write laws

2007-09-29T02:52:00.000-07:00

New Zealanders have been given the chance to write their own laws, with a new online tool launched by police.

The "wiki" will allow the public to suggest the wording of a new police act, as part of a government review of the current law, written in 1958.

Police say they hope to gain a range of views from the public on the new law before presenting it to parliament.

The wiki, one of the first of its kind in the world, is open to any internet user, police say.

'Wiki sandbox'

The wiki is the latest round of public consultation in the 18-month review of the 50-year-old law.

The officer in charge of the review, Supt Hamish McCardle, described the site as "similar to a whiteboard" and said it was open to anyone who wanted to have their say on the new law.

It even includes a "wiki sandbox" that lets nervous newcomers practise their posting.

The final document will be given to a parliamentary committee in 2008 to be considered with other information gathered during the review period.

"Launching a wiki version of a statute is a novel move, but one we hope will yield a range of views from people interested in having a direct say on the shape of a new Policing Act," Supt McCardle said.

Aaron Smith - from the US-based Pew Internet Project, which studies the evolution of internet uses - told the BBC News website that the wiki was a new frontier in online government.

"You see a lot of government sites worldwide allowing for various feedback mechanisms... but in terms of bringing this to the public in the form of writing laws, that's obviously a different thing entirely and something that we certainly haven't seen yet," Mr Smith said.

He said any possible corrupting of the process should be reduced by the "self-policing" nature of wikis.

"It would certainly be difficult for people to put in bogus information... without people recognising that fact and the community of users correcting that before the finished product is completed," he said.

A "wiki" - from the Hawaiian word for "quick" - is a type of website that can be easily edited by anyone. The most well-known wiki is the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

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Company Pays Surfers Twenty Five Bucks To Come Up With Unusual Domain Names

2007-09-26T03:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.pickydomains.com

Did cybersquatters take all the good names? Or perhaps webmasters lost their creativity? Whatever the answer is, it’s all good for PickyDomains.Com. The idea for the service is brainlessly simple to say the least.

Can’t come up with a catchy domain name? Put a fifty dollar deposit and let others look for available names for you. When you see a name you like, you simply register it and your $50 is split between a person who came up with the name and the service. If you don’t see any good names, you get your money back.

Guessing from the list of already completed orders, domain contributors are very good at picking both abstract domains and descriptive ones, not to mention ubiquitous web 2.0 names. I can easily picture naming agencies charge hundreds, if not thousands for Pictoma.Com, Deprice.Com or Smartopreneur.Com

PickyDomains.Com lets anyone give it a stab at becoming a contributor (you have to register first). However, all nub suggestions have to pass moderator first. Besides the greed factor (hey, getting $25 deposited to your PayPal account for coming up with a creative domain is pretty cool), I love browsing through orders just to see what kind of websites and web services people are coming up with.

Here is a good one – Site That Lists All Happy Hours In NY City. I can see it becoming popular. Here is another unusual one – Name For Heat-Resistant Paint. Or how about Community Site Where People Come To Get Smarter? Hey I have a great idea for that one. Better submit it, before you think of something better.

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Senator From Nebraska Sues God

2007-09-18T04:35:00.000-07:00

LINCOLN, Neb. - The defendant in a state senator's lawsuit is accused of causing untold death and horror and threatening to cause more still. He can be sued in Douglas County, the legislator claims, because He's everywhere.

State Sen. Ernie Chambers sued God last week. Angered by another lawsuit he considers frivolous, Chambers says he's trying to make the point that anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody.

Chambers says in his lawsuit that God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents, inspired fear and caused "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

The Omaha senator, who skips morning prayers during the legislative session and often criticizes Christians, also says God has caused "fearsome floods ... horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes."

He's seeking a permanent injunction against the Almighty.

Chambers said the lawsuit was triggered by a federal suit filed against a judge who recently barred words such as "rape" and "victim" from a sexual assault trial.

The accuser in the criminal case, Tory Bowen, sued Lancaster District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront, claiming that he violated her free speech rights.

Chambers said Bowen's lawsuit is inappropriate because the Nebraska Supreme Court has already considered the case and federal courts follow the decisions of state supreme courts on state matters.

"This lawsuit having been filed and being of such questionable merit creates a circumstance where my lawsuit is appropriately filed," Chambers said. "People might call it frivolous but if they read it they'll see there are very serious issues I have raised."

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, in an order last week, expressed doubts about whether Bowen's lawsuit "has any legal basis whatsoever" and said sanctions may be imposed against Bowen and her attorneys if they fail to show cause for the lawsuit.

The Associated Press usually does not identify accusers in sex-assault cases, but Bowen has allowed her name to be used publicly because of the issue over the judge's language restrictions.

Cheuvront declared a mistrial in the sexual assault trial in July, saying pretrial publicity made it impossible to gather enough impartial jurors.

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Crack Tax Is Not Constitutional, The Court Rules

2007-09-15T03:57:00.000-07:00

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Tennessee's tax on illegal drugs is "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable," an appeals court declared in ruling the "crack tax" was unconstitutional because it derives revenue from illegal activities.

The law allows the state to go after the belongings of people who are caught with illegal drugs or alcohol that don't bear the special tax stamps, regardless of the outcome of their criminal cases.

Critics have argued that defendants acquitted on drug charges can still be forced to pay thousands of dollars or turn over property because the Department of Revenue's burden of proof is lower than it is in criminal cases.

Steven Waters, a carpenter, challenged the statute last year after Revenue agents sought to seize his home after a drug sting. A county judge found the drug tax violated the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

In the ruling dated Thursday and released Friday, a three-judge Court of Appeals panel unanimously agreed it was unconstitutional, but for a different reason.

"Because it seeks to levy a tax on the privilege to engage in an activity that the Legislature has previously declared to be a crime, not a privilege, we must necessarily conclude that the drug tax is arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable, and therefore, invalid under the constitution of this state," Judge Sharon G. Lee wrote.

Waters' lawyer predicted the latest ruling would be welcomed in a state with a history of liquor agents raiding moonshiners and busting up stills.

"My impression is that people in Tennessee never liked revenuers, and probably never will," attorney Phil Lomonaco said.

The Department of Revenue plans to appeal, spokeswoman Sophie Moery said.

The 2005 state law requires people to buy tax stamps for illegal drugs and liquor, just like the kind wholesalers are required to place on cigarettes to show they've paid the levy.

The illegal drug tax stamps cost $50 per gram of cocaine or $3.50 per gram of marijuana. Last year the state collected $1.8 million of the $43 million it assessed. In 2005, the first full year of the law, Tennessee collected $1.7 million of an assessed $32 million.

Information obtained from the sale of the drug stamps cannot be used in criminal cases, but buying the stamps does not provide immunity from prosecution.

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Harrods department store hires security snake

2007-09-12T03:32:00.000-07:00

LONDON (AFP) — A London department store went to great lengths to protect a luxury shoe collection -- with the help of a live cobra.

The slippery security guard was on duty for Monday's launch of exclusive footwear including a 62,000-pound (120,000-dollar) pair of ruby-, sapphire- and diamond-encrusted Rene Caovilla sandals.

Whether hiring a poisonous snake is, strictly speaking, the most effective means of guarding haute couture shoes might be a moot point with security experts.

But it makes for an effective photo opportunity.

A spokeswoman for Harrods admitted that the cobra had been hired strictly for Monday's launch.

"The snake has now been returned to its owner," she said.

So no need to fear snake bites at the shoe counter, then.

"Not unless you're a burglar."

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Connecticut man contracts anthrax from drums

2007-09-09T04:19:00.000-07:00

DANBURY, Conn. - A musician and a family member both contracted a non-contagious form of anthrax, apparently from imported animal skins used to make drums, officials said Wednesday.

Mayor Mark Boughton described one of the individuals as a renowned African drummer and drummaker who stored untanned animal hides obtained from areas of the world where anthrax is common.

A spokesman for the state Department of Public Health, Bill Gerrish, said a second member of the same family also had the disease. Both apparently had the cutaneous form of anthrax, which is not contagious and can usually be treated with antibiotics.

The public’s health is not threatened, Boughton said at a news conference.

Cutaneous anthrax, the most common form of the bacterial infection, can cause reddening and swelling of the skin. There usually are only one to two cases per year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

FBI agents were notified, but state public health officials were handling the investigation, said Marybeth Miklos, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s New Haven field office. “We are aware of it, but as of right now it is not anything terrorism-related,” Miklos said.

The state Department of Public Health took about a dozen hides that had been stored in a shed on the man’s property. The drums were not finished, so officials said anthrax would not have spread beyond where the man had worked.

State officials said the hides were part of a recent shipment believed to be from Africa. The FBI and U.S. Department of Agriculture were working to determine whether hides from the same shipment had been sent elsewhere in the country.

The owner of the home, Donald Lombardo, identified the tenant as Ase-AmenRa Kariamu and said he has not seen Kariamu for several weeks. Kariamu is the director of the West Afrikan Drumming program at the Danbury Music Centre. His private phone number is unpublished. Messages seeking comment were left for him at the music center.

Dr. Gary Schleiter, chief of infectious diseases at Danbury Hospital, said the man went to his doctor a few weeks ago with what looked like a scab on his arm. When it didn’t get better, he went to the hospital, where tests confirmed late Monday he had anthrax.

The other family member, who also was not identified, went to a pediatrician because of a similar spot. Both were treated and released and are fine now. There was an 80 percent chance they would have gotten better without treatment, Schleiter said.

In a similar case in February 2006, a New York City man contracted anthrax while handling drums he had covered with goat skin he brought from Ivory Coast. Health officials believe he inhaled anthrax spores while making the instruments.

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2007-09-06T03:52:00.000-07:00

NORTHGLENN, Colo. -- They could have left the tree completely bare. But some honest shoppers at an unstaffed Dollar Tree store must have decided that honesty was the best policy while searching for bargains on Labor Day.

About 15 shoppers walked through the front doors of a closed Dollar Tree store Monday after a lock on the doors malfunctioned.

They also didn't see, or ignored, a sign on the doors indicating the store was closed for the holiday.

For one: the lights in the store were all on, plus, there was music playing in the background, all making it look like it was business as usual.

Northglenn Police spokesman Ian Lopez says one woman became suspicious when there was no one at the register to ring up her purchase, so she called authorities.

The cash registers were reportedly open and empty, but Lopez says it appears nothing was stolen.

Police were able to contact a manager, who fixed the lock and closed the store.

Lopez says the incident showed that people can be "honest and good."

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Sand Castle Builders In Maine Hope 32-Foot High Creation Will Be A Guinness Record

2007-09-03T04:12:00.000-07:00

(AP) The creator of a sand castle built nearly 32 feet high to raise funds for terminally ill children and their families hopes the structure will be named the world's tallest.

Organizers said Saturday the elaborate sand castle measured a height of 31 feet, 7 inches. Plans called for verification paperwork to be sent to the Guinness Book of Records, which will determine whether the castle makes the record book.

Ed Jarrett, who created a 29 1/4-foot sand castle in Falmouth in 2003 that was declared the world's tallest, organized the "Castle to the Sun" event to raise funds for Camp Sunshine.

More than 1,000 people volunteered over the past two months to help build the castle, which used 40 dump truck loads of sand, organizers said.

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City Requires $50 Deposit To Put Political Sign In Yard

2007-08-31T02:38:00.000-07:00

CLERMONT, Fla. -- The city of Clermont has decided to enforce an old code aimed at keeping medians and yards clear of clutter during the election season, but one man says that law is simply un-American.

The presidential election is still over a year away, but one Clermont resident is getting a jump on the competition, already putting signs in his yard supporting his candidate of choice, but that support is coming at a cost.

Bryan Orr was the first to find out that the city of Clermont has recently started enforcing an old code concerning political signage.

"You can't regulate political free speech," Orr said.

That code, which applies only to political signs and not other signs, has been on the books since 1980. Orr's beef is simple.

"You can't say political content has to be regulated, but other types of content aren't regulated," he said.

City hall isn't necessarily being prohibitive, just restrictive. What you have to do is fill out a form and pay $50 as a deposit. As soon as the political season is over, you remove your political sign and go to city hall to get your $50 back.

One local attorney said it may be legal, but it just sounds so un-American.

"Even a non-politically motivated law by the city, if it has the effect of chilling our political speech, it's unconstitutional," said attorney J.J. Dahl.

Orr is picking his battle. Rather than pay a $250, he's removed the signs for now, but said the fight is far from over.

"My free speech is being squelched. And because of that, we are moving forward and I'm going to do everything in my power and then the signs will go right back up," Orr said.

Eyewitness News tried to talk to city administrators, but they refused to go on camera, saying simply that the rule has been on the books for a long time.

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Fried Foods Rule Texas Fair Contest

2007-08-28T04:51:00.000-07:00

DALLAS — The entries in this year's Big Tex Choice Awards could entice State Fair visitors back to the deep fryer for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

There are Deep Fried Lattes for a morning jump-start, plus fried chili pie, fried guacamole, and a range of crispy desserts including Fried Cookie Dough.

The third annual Big Tex Choice Awards contest on Labor Day tests the fair grub ingenuity of State Fair of Texas concessionaires. Past Big Tex awards have offered nonfried options, but none of this year's seven entries escaped the fryer.

"I think they're good products," said Ron Black, the fair's senior vice president of food service and novelties. "We've got experienced concessionaires, and their products all taste really good."

Michael Levy will debut his family's new Deep Fried Latte, which is a fried pastry topped with cappuccino ice cream, caramel sauce, whipped cream and instant coffee powder.

"We have gained about 10 pounds trying this. I'm not kidding," Levy said. "I've probably eaten 300 of these trying to get it right."

Concessionaire Allan Weiss is offering up Zesty Fried Guacamole Bites, a variation on the Fried Avocados he created last year. The bites are a scoop of guacamole, breaded, fried and served with ranch dressings or salsa.

"The Fried Avocado went over so well, and I think people like guacamole even more than they like avocado," Weiss said.

Gigi White invented Country Pride Peach Cobbler on a Stick, which is a peach cobbler with dumplings rolled in pastry dough and fried, and then covered in brown sugar and cinnamon and skewered. It's this year's only entry on a stick.

"I'm a food engineer," White said. "You really got to work it."

The other entries include Fernie's Fried Chili Frito Burrito, Mama's Fried Sweet Potato Pie and B.W.'s Original Fried Banana Pudding.

"I'm not sure we have another Fried Coke," Black said, referring to the smash hit of last year's State Fair. The dish has been imitated at fairs across the country.

Able Gonzales Jr., the creator of Fried Coke, conceded he may never invent an equal.

"I don't think I be able to beat that type of excitement again," said Gonzales, the chef behind this year's Fried Cookie Dough. "That was crazy."

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