WORLD NEWS

Beautiful landscape pictures

2007-08-16T15:51:00.000+01:00

Interesting pics

2007-08-15T18:41:00.000+01:00

Stone Age Settlement Found Under English Channel

2007-08-15T18:38:00.001+01:00

Erosion on the floor of the English Channel is revealing the remains of a busy Stone Age settlement, from a time when Europe and Britain were still linked by land, a team of archaeologists says.

The site, just off the Isle of Wight, dates back 8,000 years, not long before melting glaciers filled in the Channel and likely drove the settlement's last occupants north to higher ground.

"This is the only site of its kind in the United Kingdom," said Garry Momber, director of the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology, which led the recent excavations. "It is important because this is the period when modern people were blossoming, just coming out of the end of the Ice Age, living more like we do today in the valleys and lowlands."

End of Ice Age caused channel flood

Lobsters mucking around the seabed at the site about 10 years ago revealed a cache of Mesolithic flints, prompting further excavations that uncovered two hearths (ancient ovens) dangling precariously from the edge of an underwater cliff.

Burnt wood fragments gouged with cut marks and a layer of wood chippings were found lying under 35 feet of water during the latest dig. Divers brought the material to the surface still embedded in slabs of the sea floor that were carried up in specially-designed boxes, which were then pieced back together and examined and dated in the lab.

"We now have unequivocal evidence of human activity at the site," Momber told LiveScience. "There were people here actively making stuff and being quite industrious."

At 8,000-years-old, the settlement is the only underwater Mesolithic site in Britain, though it is probably part of a much larger area of occupation yet to be uncovered, Momber said.

As the climate began to warm up near the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, people were moving into Northern Europe and settling down in the many river valleys left behind by melting glaciers, Momber explained. Many of the valleys, such as the ones now beneath the English Channel, were eventually inundated completely when temperatures returned to normal.

"A good chunk of the material left behind from this cultural period is eventually going to be found underwater," Momber said.

Underwater sites better preserved

Despite the logistical problems of underwater archaeology, the Isle of Wight site and others like it are usually better preserved than their counterparts on land, Momber said.

When the floodwater rose slowly in the English Channel, it deposited layers of silt atop the settlement, encasing it in an oxygen-free environment that preserves even organic materials such as wood and food.

"With underwater sites, all the trappings of a society are going to remain, not just the stone," Momber said. The trade-off is an environment that can carry away the precious remains at any time—a real concern at the Isle of Wight settlement.

"The erosion of this site would be a loss of information to humanity, not just the washing away of a bit of material," he said. "There is the potential to find so much more there; there is so much to learn."

Greetings From Idiot America

2007-08-15T18:34:00.000+01:00

There is some undeniable art--you might even say design--in the way southern Ohio rolls itself into northern Kentucky. The hills build gently under you as you leave the interstate. The roads narrow beneath a cool and thickening canopy as they wind through the leafy outer precincts of Hebron--a small Kentucky town named, as it happens, for the place near Jerusalem where the Bible tells us that David was anointed the king of the Israelites. This resulted in great literature and no little bloodshed, which is the case with a great deal of Scripture.

At the top of the hill, just past the Idlewild Concrete plant, there is an unfinished wall with an unfinished gate in the middle of it. Happy, smiling people are trickling in through the gate this fine morning, one minivan at a time. They park in whatever shade they can find, which is not much. It's hot as hell this morning.

They are almost uniformly white and almost uniformly bubbly. Their cars come from Kentucky and Tennessee and Ohio and Illinois and as far away as New Brunswick, Canada. There are elderly couples in shorts, suburban families piling out of the minivans, the children all Wrinkle-Resistant and Stain-Released. There is a clutch of Mennonite women in traditional dress--small bonnets and long skirts. All of them wander off, chattering and waving and stopping every few steps for pictures, toward a low-slung building that seems from the outside to be the most finished part of the complex.

Outside, several of them stop to be interviewed by a video crew. They have come from Indiana, one woman says, two toddlers toddling at her feet, because they have been home-schooling their children and they have given them this adventure as a kind of field trip. The whole group then bustles into the lobby of the building, where they are greeted by the long neck of a huge, herbivorous dinosaur. The kids run past that and around a corner, where stands another, smaller dinosaur.

Which is wearing a saddle.

It is an English saddle, hornless and battered. Apparently, this was a dinosaur used for dressage competitions and stakes races. Any working dinosaur accustomed to the rigors of ranch work and herding other dinosaurs along the dusty trail almost certainly would wear a sturdy western saddle.

This is very much a show dinosaur.

The dinosaurs are the first things you see when you enter the Creation Museum, which is very much a work in progress and the dream child of an Australian named Ken Ham. Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis, an organization of which the museum one day will be the headquarters. The people here today are on a special tour. They have paid $149 to become "charter members" of the museum.

"Dinosaurs," Ham laughs as he poses for pictures with his visitors, "always get the kids interested."

AIG is dedicated to the proposition that the biblical story of the creation of the world is inerrant in every word. Which means, in this interpretation and among other things, that dinosaurs coexisted with man (hence the saddles), that there were dinosaurs in Eden, and that Noah, who certainly had enough on his hands, had to load two brachiosaurs onto the Ark along with his wife, his sons, and their wives, to say nothing of green ally-gators and long-necked geese and humpty-backed camels and all the rest.

(Faced with the obvious question of how to keep a three-hundred-by-thirty-by-fifty-cubit ark from sinking under the weight of dinosaur couples, Ham's literature argues that the dinosaurs on the Ark were young ones, and thus did not weigh as much as they might have.)

"We," Ham exclaims to the assembled, "are taking the dinosaurs back from the evolutionists!" And everybody cheers.

Ham then goes on to celebrate the great victory won in Oklahoma, where, in the first week of June, Tulsa park officials announced a decision (later reversed) to put up a display at the city zoo based on Genesis so as to eliminate the "discrimination" long inflicted upon sensitive Christians by a statue of the Hindu god Ganesh that decorated the elephant exhibit.

This is a serious crowd. They gather in the auditorium and they listen intently, and they take copious notes as Ham draws a straight line from Adam's fall to our godless public schools, from Darwin to gay marriage. He talks about the triumph over Ganesh, and everybody cheers again.

Ultimately, the heart of the museum will be a long walkway down which patrons will be able to journey through the entire creation story. This, too, is still in the earliest stages of construction. Today, for example, one young artist is working on a scale model of the moment when Adam names all the creatures. Adam is in the delicate process of naming the saber-toothed tiger while, behind him, already named, a woolly mammoth seems to be on the verge of taking a nap.

Elsewhere in the museum, another Adam figure is full-size, if unpainted, and waiting to be installed. This Adam is reclining peacefully; eventually, if the plans stay true, he will be placed in a pool under a waterfall. As the figure depicts a prelapsarian Adam, he is completely naked. He also has no penis.

This would seem to be a departure from Scripture inconsistent with the biblical literalism of the rest of the museum. If you're willing to stretch Job's description of a "behemoth" to include baby brachiosaurs on Noah's Ark, as Ham does in his lectures, then surely, since we are depicting him before the fall, Adam should be out there waving unashamedly in the paradisaical breezes. For that matter, what is Eve doing there, across the room, with her hair falling just so to cover her breasts and midsection, as though she's doing a nude scene from some 1950s Swedish art-house film?

After all, Genesis 2:25 clearly says that at this point in their lives, "And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed." If Adam courageously sat there unencumbered while he was naming saber-toothed tigers, then why, six thousand years later, should he be depicted as a eunuch in some family-values Eden? And if these people can take away what Scripture says was rightfully his, then why can't Charles Darwin and the accumulated science of the past 150-odd years take away all the rest of it?

These are impolite questions. Nobody asks them here by the cool pond tucked into a gentle hillside. Increasingly, nobody asks them outside the gates, either. It is impolite to wonder why our parents sent us all to college, and why generations of immigrants sweated and bled so their children could be educated, if it wasn't so that we would all one day feel confident enough to look at a museum filled with dinosaurs rigged to run six furlongs at Belmont and make the not unreasonable point that it is all batshit crazy and that anyone who believes this righteous hooey should be kept away from sharp objects and his own money.

Dinosaurs with saddles?

Dinosaurs on Noah's Ark?

Welcome to your new Eden.

Welcome to Idiot America.

Let's take a tour, shall we? For the sake of time, we'll just cover the last year or so.

A federally funded abstinence program suggests that HIV can be transmitted through tears. An Alabama legislator proposes a bill to ban all books by gay authors. The Texas House passes a bill banning suggestive cheerleading. And nobody laughs at any of it, or even points out that, in the latter case, having Texas ban suggestive cheerleading is like having Nebraska ban corn.

James Dobson, a prominent conservative Christian spokesman, compares the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan. Pat Robertson, another prominent conservative preacher, says that federal judges are a more serious threat to the country than is Al Qaeda and, apparently taking his text from the Book of Gambino, later sermonizes that the United States should get with it and snuff the democratically elected president of Venezuela.

The Congress of the United States intervenes to extend into a televised spectacle the prolonged death of a woman in Florida. The majority leader of the Senate, a physician, pronounces a diagnosis based on heavily edited videotape. The majority leader of the House of Representatives argues against cutting-edge research into the use of human stem cells by saying that "an embryo is a person. . . . We were all at one time embryos ourselves. So was Abraham. So was Muhammad. So was Jesus of Nazareth." Nobody laughs at him or points out that the same could be said of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or whoever invented the baby-back rib.

And, finally, in August, the cover of Time--for almost a century the dyspeptic voice of the American establishment--clears its throat, hems and haws and hacks like a headmaster gagging on his sherry, and asks, quite seriously: "Does God have a place in science class?"

Fights over evolution--and its faddish new camouflage, intelligent design, a pseudoscience that posits without proof or method that science is inadequate to explain existence and that supernatural causes must be considered--roil up school districts across the country. The president of the United States announces that he believes ID ought to be taught in the public schools on an equal footing with the theory of evolution. And in Dover, Pennsylvania, during one of these many controversies, a pastor named Ray Mummert delivers the line that both ends our tour and, in every real sense, sums it up:

"We've been attacked," he says, "by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture."

And there it is.

Idiot America is not the place where people say silly things. It's not the place where people believe in silly things. It is not the place where people go to profit from the fact that people believe in silly things. Idiot America is not even those people who believe that Adam named the dinosaurs. Those people pay attention. They take notes. They take the time and the considerable mental effort to construct a worldview that is round and complete.

The rise of Idiot America is essentially a war on expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter deftly teased out of the national DNA forty years ago. Both of those things are part of it. However, the rise of Idiot America today represents--for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power--the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they're talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.

In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut, and the Gut is a moron, as anyone who has ever tossed a golf club, punched a wall, or kicked an errant lawn mower knows. We occasionally dress up the Gut by calling it "common sense." The president's former advisor on medical ethics regularly refers to the "yuck factor." The Gut is common. It is democratic. It is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. Worst of all, the Gut is faith-based.

It's a dishonest phrase for a dishonest time, "faith-based," a cheap huckster's phony term of art. It sounds like an additive, an artificial flavoring to make crude biases taste of bread and wine. It's a word for people without the courage to say they are religious, and it is beloved not only by politicians too cowardly to debate something as substantial as faith but also by Idiot America, which is too lazy to do it.

After all, faith is about the heart and soul and about transcendence. Anything calling itself faith-based is admitting that it is secular and profane. In the way that it relies on the Gut to determine its science, its politics, and even the way it sends its people to war, Idiot America is not a country of faith; it's a faith-based country, fashioning itself in the world, which is not the place where faith is best fashioned.

Hofstadter saw this one coming. "Intellect is pitted against feeling," he wrote, "on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for mere cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or the diabolical."

The Gut is the basis for the Great Premises of Idiot America. We hold these truths to be self-evident:
1) Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.
2) Anything can be true if somebody says it on television.
3) Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

How does it work? This is how it works. On August 21, a newspaper account of the "intelligent design" movement contained this remarkable sentence: "They have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive."

A "politically savvy challenge to evolution" is as self-evidently ridiculous as an agriculturally savvy challenge to euclidean geometry would be. It makes as much sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for president on the Alchemy Party ticket. It doesn't matter what percentage of people believe they ought to be able to flap their arms and fly, none of them can. It doesn't matter how many votes your candidate got, he's not going to turn lead into gold. The sentence is so arrantly foolish that the only real news in it is where it appeared.

On the front page.

Of The New York Times.

Within three days, there was a panel on the subject on Larry King Live, in which Larry asked the following question:

"All right, hold on. Dr. Forrest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?"

And why do so many of them host television programs, Larry?

This is how Idiot America engages the great issues of the day. It decides, en masse, with a thousand keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. And the poor biologist's words carry no more weight than the thunderations of some turkey-neck preacher out of the Church of Christ's Own Parking Facility in DeLand, Florida. Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an "expert" and, therefore, an "elitist." Nobody buys his books. Nobody puts him on cable. He's brilliant, surely, but his Gut's the same as ours. He just ignores it, poor fool.

This is a great country, in no small part because it is the best country ever devised in which to be a public crank. Never has a nation so dedicated itself to the proposition that not only should its people hold nutty ideas but they should cultivate them, treasure them, shine them up, and put them right there on the mantelpiece. This is still the best country ever in which to peddle complete public lunacy. The right to do so is there in our founding documents.

After all, the Founders were men of the Enlightenment, fashioning a country out of new ideas--or out of old ones that they excavated from centuries of religious internment. Historian Charles Freeman points out that in Europe, "Christian thought . . . often gave irrationality the status of a universal 'truth' to the exclusion of those truths to be found through reason. So the uneducated was preferred to the educated, and the miracle to the operation of natural laws."

In America, the Founders were trying to get away from all that, to raise a nation of educated people. In pledging their faith to intellectual experimentation, however, the Founders set freedom free. They devised the best country ever in which to be completely around the bend. It's just that making a respectable living out of it used to be harder work.

They call it the Infinite Corridor, which is the kind of joke you tell when your day job is to throw science as far ahead as you can and hope that the rest of us can move fast enough to catch up. It is a series of connecting hallways that run north through the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The hallways are lined with cramped offices, their doors mottled thickly with old tape and yellowing handbills. The Infinite Corridor is not a straight line. It has branches and tributaries. It has backwaters and eddies. You can get lost there.

One of the offices belongs to Professor Kip Hodges, a young and energetic North Carolinian who studies how mountain ranges develop and grow. Suffice it to say that Hodges's data do not correspond to the six-thousand-year-old earth of the creationists, whereupon dinosaurs and naked folks doth gambol together.

Hodges is recently returned from Nepal, where he rescued his research from encroaching Maoist rebels, who were not interested in the least in how the Himalayas became the Himalayas. They were interested in land, in guns, in power, and in other things of the Gut. Moreover, part of Hodges's duties at MIT has been to mentor incoming freshmen about making careers in science for themselves.

"Scientists are always portrayed in the literature as being above the fray intellectually," Hodges says. "I guess to a certain extent that's our fault, because scientists don't do a good enough job communicating with people who are nonscientists--that it's not a matter of brainiacs doing one thing and nonbrainiacs doing another."

Americans of a certain age grew up with science the way an earlier generation grew up with baseball and even earlier ones grew up with politics and religion. America cured diseases. It put men on the moon. It thought its way ahead in the cold war and stayed there.

"My earliest memory," Hodges recalls, "is watching John Glenn go up. It was a time that, if you were involved in science or engineering--particularly science, at that time--people greatly respected you if you said you were going into those fields. And nowadays, it's like there's no value placed by society on a lot of the observations that are made by people in science.

"It's more than a general dumbing down of America--the lack of self-motivated thinking: clear, creative thinking. It's like you're happy for other people to think for you. If you should be worried about, say, global warming, well, somebody in Washington will tell me whether or not I should be worried about global warming. So it's like this abdication of intellectual responsibility--that America now is getting to the point that more and more people would just love to let somebody else think for them."

The country was founded by people who were fundamentally curious; Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, to name only the most obvious examples, were inveterate tinkerers. (Before dispatching Lewis and Clark into the Louisiana Territory, Jefferson insisted that the pair categorize as many new plant and animal species as they found. Considering they were also mapping everything from Missouri to Oregon, this must have been a considerable pain in the canoe.) Further, they assumed that their posterity would feel much the same as they did; in 1815, appealing to Congress to fund the building of a national university, James Madison called for the development of "a nursery of enlightened preceptors."

It is a long way from that to the moment on February 18, 2004, when sixty-two scientists, including a clutch of Nobel laureates, released a report accusing the incumbent administration of manipulating science for political ends. It is a long way from Jefferson's observatory and Franklin's kite to George W. Bush, in an interview in 2005, suggesting that intelligent design be taught alongside the theory of evolution in the nation's science classes. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," said the president, "so people can understand what the debate is about."

The "debate," of course, is nothing of the sort, because two sides are required for a debate. Nevertheless, the very notion of it is a measure of how scientific discourse, and the way the country educates itself, has slipped through lassitude and inattention across the border into Idiot America--where fact is merely that which enough people believe, and truth is measured only by how fervently they believe it.

If we have abdicated our birthright to scientific progress, we have done so by moving the debate into the realm of political and cultural argument, where we all feel more confident, because it is there that the Gut rules. Held to this standard, any scientific theory is rendered mere opinion. Scientific fact is no more immutable than a polling sample. This is how there's a "debate" over the very existence of global warming, even though the preponderance of fact among those who actually have studied the phenomenon renders the "debate" quite silly. The debate is about making people feel better about driving SUVs. The debate is less about climatology than it is about guiltlessly topping off your tank and voting in tax incentives for oil companies.

The rest of the world looks on in cockeyed wonder. The America of Franklin and Edison, of Fulton and Ford, of the Manhattan project and the Apollo program, the America of which Einstein wanted to be a part, seems to be enveloping itself in a curious fog behind which it's tying itself in knots over evolution, for pity's sake, and over the relative humanity of blastocysts versus the victims of Parkinson's disease.

"Even in the developing world, where I spend lots of time doing my work," Hodges says, "if you tell them that you're from MIT and you tell them that you do science, it's a big deal. If I go to India and tell them I'm from MIT, it's a big deal. In Thailand, it's a big deal. If I go to Iowa, they could give a rat's ass. And that's a weird thing, that we're moving in that direction as a nation."

Hence, Bush was not talking about science--not in any real sense, anyway. Intelligent design is a theological construct, a faith-based attempt to gussy up creationism in a lab coat. Its fundamental tenets cannot be experimentally verified--or, most important, falsified. That it enjoys a certain public cachet is irrelevant; a higher percentage of Americans believes that a government conspiracy killed John F. Kennedy than believes in intelligent design, but there is no great effort abroad in the land to include that conspiracy theory in sixth-grade history texts. Bush wasn't talking about science. He was talking about the political utility of putting saddles on the dinosaurs and breaking Ganesh's theological monopoly over the elephant paddock.

"The reason the creationists have been so effective is that they have put a premium on communication skills," explains Hodges. "It matters to them that they can talk to the guy in the bar, and it's important to them, and they are hugely effective at it."

It is the ultimate standard of Idiot America. How does it play to Joe Six-Pack in the bar? At the end of August 2004, the Zogby people discovered that 57 percent of undecided voters would rather have a beer with George Bush than with John Kerry. Now, how many people with whom you've spent time drinking beer would you trust with the nuclear launch codes? Not only is this not a question for a nation of serious citizens, it's not even a question for a nation of serious drunkards.

If even scientific discussion is going to be dragged into politics, then the discussion there at least ought to exist on a fairly sophisticated level. Again, the Founders thought it should. They considered self-government a science that required an informed and educated and enlightened populace to make all the delicate mechanisms run. Instead, today we have the Kabuki politics and marionette debates best exemplified by cable television. Instead, the discussion of everything ends up in the bar.

(It wasn't always this way. Theodore Roosevelt is reckoned to be the manliest of our manly-man presidents. He also was a lifelong science dweeb, cataloging songbirds, of all things. Of course, he shot them first, so maybe that makes all the difference.)

It is, of course, television that has allowed Idiot America to run riot within the modern politics and all forms of public discourse. It is not that there is less information on television than there once was. (That there is less news is another question entirely.) In fact, there is so much information that fact is now defined as something that so many people believe that television notices it, and truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.

"You don't need to be credible on television," explains Keith Olbermann, the erudite host of his own show on MSNBC. "You don't need to be authoritative. You don't need to be informed. You don't need to be honest. All these things that we used to associate with what we do are no longer factors.

"There is an entire network [the Fox News Channel] that bills itself as news that is devoted to reinforcing people's fears and saying to them, 'This is what you should be scared of, and here's whose fault it is,' " Olbermann says. "And that's what they get--two or three million frustrated paranoids who sit in front of the TV and go, 'Damn right, it's those liberals' fault.' Or, 'It's those--what's the word for it?--college graduates' fault.' "

The reply, of course, is that Fox regularly buries Olbermann and the rest of the MSNBC lineup in breaking off a segment of a smidgen of a piece of the television audience. Truth is what moves the needle. Fact is what sells.

Idiot America is a bad place for crazy notions. Its indolent tolerance of them causes the classic American crank to drift slowly and dangerously into the mainstream, wherein the crank loses all of his charm and the country loses another piece of its mind. The best thing about American crackpots used to be that they would stand proudly aloof from a country that, by their peculiar lights, had gone mad. Not today. Today, they all have book deals, TV shows, and cases pending in federal court.

Once, it was very hard to get into the public square and very easy to fall out of it. One ill-timed word, even a whiff of public scandal, and all the hard work you did in the grange hall on all those winter nights was for nothing. No longer. You can be Bill Bennett, gambling with both fists, but if your books still sell, you can continue to scold the nation about its sins. You can be Bill O'Reilly, calling up subordinates to proposition them both luridly and comically--loofahs? falafels?--and if more people tune in to watch you than tune in to watch some other blowhard, you can keep your job lecturing America about the dangers of its secular culture. Just don't be boring. And keep the ratings up. Idiot America wants to be entertained.

Because scientific expertise was dragged into political discussion, and because political discussion is hopelessly corrupt, the distrust of scientific expertise is now as general as the dis-trust of politicians is. Everyone is an expert, so nobody is. For example, Sean Hannity's knowledge of, say, stem-cell research is measured precisely by his ratings book. His views on the subject are more well known than those of the people doing the actual research.

The credibility of Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania on the subject of the cultural anthropology of the American family ought to be, well, minimal. He spent the summer promoting a book in which he propounded theories on the subject that were progressively loopier. "For some parents," he writes, "the purported need to provide things for their children simply provides a convenient rationalization for pursuing a gratifying career outside the home." He goes on later to compare a woman's right to choose an abortion unfavorably with the institution of slavery. Nevertheless, he's welcome in the mainstream, at least until either he's defeated for reelection or his book doesn't sell.

"Somewhere along the line, we stopped rewarding intelligence with success and stopped equating intelligence with success," Olbermann says. We're all in the bar now, where everybody's an expert, where the Gut makes everyone so very sure. All opinions are of equal worth. No voice is more authoritative than any others; some are just louder. Of course, the problem in the bar is that sooner or later, for reasons that nobody will remember in the clear light of the next morning, some noisy asshole picks a fight. And it becomes clear that the rise of Idiot America has consequences.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, nobody in the American government knew more than Richard Clarke did on the subject of a shadowy terrorist network called Al Qaeda. He had watched it grow. He had watched it strike--in New York and in Africa and in the harbor in Yemen. That morning, in the Situation Room in the White House, Clarke watched the buildings burn and fall, and he recognized the organization's signature as well as he'd recognize his own. Instead, in the ensuing days a lot of people around him--people who didn't know enough about Al Qaeda to throw to a cat--wanted to talk about Iraq. What they believed trumped what Clarke knew, over and over again. He left the government.

"In the 1970s and 1980s, when the key issue became arms control, the traditional diplomats couldn't do the negotiating because that negotiating involved science and engineering," Clarke recalls. "Interagency decision papers were models of analysis, where assumptions were laid out and tested.

"That's the world I grew up in. [The approach] still applied to issues, even terrorism. Then these people come in, and they already have the answers, how to spin it, how to get the rest of the world on board. I thought, Wait a minute. That isn't analysis. It's the important issues where we really need analysis.

"In the area of terrorism, there is a huge potential for emotional reaction. The one thing I told my team [on September 11]--they were mad and they were crying, the whole range of emotions--was that we didn't have time for emotion that day."

Nothing that the administration of George W. Bush has done has been inconsistent with the forces that twice elected it. The subtle, humming engine of its success--against John Kerry, surely, but most vividly against poor, cerebral Al Gore--was a celebration of instinct over intellect, a triumph of the Gut. No campaigns in history employed the saloon question with such devastating success or saw so clearly the path through the deliberate inexpertise of the national debate. No politician in recent times has played to the Gut so deftly.

So it ought not shock anyone when the government suddenly found itself at odds with empirical science. It ought not shock anyone in the manner in which it would go to war. Remember the beginning, when it was purely the Gut--a bone-deep call for righteous revenge for which Afghanistan was not sufficient response. In Iraq, there would be towering stacks of chemical bombs, a limitless smorgasbord of deadly bacteria, vast lagoons of exotic poisons. There would be candy and flowers greeting our troops. The war would take six months, a year, tops. Mission Accomplished. Major combat operations are over.

"Part of the problem was that people didn't want the analytic process because they'd be shown up," Richard Clarke says. "Their assumptions would be counterfactual. One of the real areas of expertise, for example, was failed-state reconstruction. How to go into failed states and maintain security and get the economy going and defang ethnic hatred. They threw it all out.

"They ignored the experts on the Middle East. They ignored the experts who said it was the wrong target. So you ignore the experts and you go in anyway, and then you ignore all the experts on how to handle the postconflict."

One of those experts was David Phillips, a senior advisor on what was called the Future of Iraq program for the State Department. Phillips was ignored. His program was ignored. Earlier, Phillips had helped reconstruct the Balkans after the region spent a decade tearing itself apart with genocidal lunacy. Phillips knew what he knew. He just didn't believe what they believed.

"You can just as easily have a faith-based, or ideologically driven, policy," he says today. "You start with the presumption that you already know the conclusion prior to asking the question. When information surfaces that contradicts your firmly entrenched views, you dismantle the institution that brought you the information."

There was going to be candy and flowers, remember? The war was going to pay for itself. Believe.

"We went in blindfolded, and we believed our own propaganda," Phillips says. "We were going to get out in ninety days, spend $1.9 billion in the short term, and Iraqi oil would pay for the rest. Now we're deep in the hole, and people are asking questions about how we got there.

"It's delusional, allowing delusion to be the basis of policy making. Once you've told the big lie, you have to substantiate it with a sequence of lies that's repeated. You can't fix a policy if you don't admit it's broken."

Two thousand American lives later, remember the beginning. One commentator quite plainly made the case that every few years or so, the United States should "throw a small nation up against the wall" to prove that it means business. And Idiot America, which is all of us, cheered.

Goddamn right. Gimme another. And see what the superpowers in the back room will have.

August 19, 2005, was a beautiful day in Idiot America.

In Washington, William Frist, a Harvard-trained physician and the majority leader of the United States Senate, endorsed the teaching of intelligent design in the country's public schools. "I think today a pluralistic society," Frist explained, "should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith."

That faith is not fact, nor should it be, and that faith is not science, nor should it be, seems to have eluded Doctor Senator Frist. It doesn't matter. He was talking to the people who believe that faith is both those things, because Bill Frist wants to be president of the United States, and because he believes those people will vote for him specifically because he talks this rot, and Idiot America will take it as an actor merely reciting his lines and let it go at that. Nonsense is a no-lose proposition.

On the same day, across town, a top aide to former secretary of state Colin Powell told CNN that Powell's pivotal presentation to the United Nations in which he described Iraq's vast array of deadly weapons was a farrago of stovepiped intelligence, wishful thinking, and utter bullshit.

"It was the lowest point in my life," the aide said.

That it has proven to be an even lower point for almost two thousand American families, and God alone knows how many Iraqis, seems to have eluded this fellow. It doesn't matter. Neither Frist with his pandering nor this apparatchik with the tender conscience--nor Colin Powell, for all that--will pay a substantial price for any of it because the two stories lasted one day, and, after all, it was a beautiful day in Idiot America.

Idiot America is a collaborative effort, the result of millions of decisions made and not made. It's the development of a collective Gut at the expense of a collective mind. It's what results when politicians make ridiculous statements and not merely do we abandon the right to punish them for it at the polls, but we also become too timid to punish them with ridicule on a daily basis, because the polls say they're popular anyway. It's what results when leaders are not held to account for mistakes that end up killing people.

And that's why August became a seminal month in Idiot America.

In its final week, a great American city drowned and then turned irrevocably into a Hieronymus Bosch painting in real time and on television, and with complete impunity, the president of the United States wandered the landscape and talked like a blithering nitwit.

First, he compared the violence surrounding the writing of an impromptu theocratic constitution in Baghdad to the events surrounding the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Undaunted, he later compared the war he'd launched in Iraq to World War II. And then he compared himself to Franklin Roosevelt. One more public appearance and we might have learned that Custer was killed by Hezbollah.

Finally, we saw the apotheosis of the end of expertise, when New Orleans was virtually obliterated as a functional habitat for human beings, and the country discovered that the primary responsibility for dealing with the calamity lay with a man who'd been dismissed as an incompetent from his previous job as the director of a luxury-show-horse organization.

And the president went on television and said that nobody could have anticipated the collapse of the unfortunate city's levees. In God's sweet name, engineers anticipated it. Politicians anticipated it. The poor bastards in the Ninth Ward certainly anticipated it. Hell, four generations of folksingers anticipated it.

And the people who hated him went crazy and the people who loved him defended him. But where were the people who heard this incredible, staggeringly stupid bafflegab, uttered with conscious forethought, and realized that whatever they thought of the man, the president had gotten behind a series of podiums and done everything but drop his drawers and dance the hootchie-koo? They were out there, lost in Idiot America, where it was still a beautiful day.

Idiot America took it as a bad actor merely bungling his lines. Nonsense is a no-lose proposition. For Idiot America is a place where people choose to live. It is a place that is built consciously and deliberately, one choice at a time, made or (most often) unmade. A place where we're all like that statue of Adam now, reclining in a peaceful garden of our own creation, brainless and dickless, and falling down on the job of naming the monsters for what they are, dozing away in an Eden that, every day, looks less and less like paradise.

In Iraq, sex is traded for survival

2007-08-15T18:22:00.000+01:00

When Rana Jalil, 38, lost her husband in an explosion in Baghdad last year, she could never have imagined becoming a prostitute in order to feed her children.

A mother of four, Jalil sought out employment, but job opportunities for women had decreased since the US invasion.

She begged shop owners, office workers and companies to hire her but was treated with what she calls chauvinistic discrimination.

Within weeks of her husband's death, a doctor diagnosed her children with malnutrition.

Fighting tears, she recalled the desperation which led her to the oldest profession: "In the beginning these were the worst days in my life. My husband was the first man I met and slept with, but I didn't have another option … my children were starving."

She left the house in a daze, she recalled, and walked to the nearest market to find someone who would pay her for sex.

She said: "I'm a nice-looking woman and it wasn't difficult to find a client. When we got to the bed I tried to run away … I just couldn't do it, but he hit and raped me. When he paid me afterwards, it was finished for me.

"When I came home with some food I had bought from that money and saw my children screaming of happiness, I discovered that honour is insignificant compared to the hunger of my children."

Iraqi widows desperate

Prior to the US invasion, Iraqi widows, particularly those who lost husbands during the Iran-Iraq war, were provided with compensation and free education for their children. In some cases, they were provided with free homes.

However, no such safety nets currently exist and widows have few resources at their disposal.

According to the non-governmental organisation Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), 15 per cent of Iraqi women widowed by the war have been desperately searching for temporary marriages or prostitution, either for financial support or protection in the midst of sectarian war.

Nuha Salim, the spokesperson for OWFI, told Al Jazeera: "Widows are one of our priorities but their situation is worsening and we are feeling ineffective to cope with this significant problem. Hundreds of women are searching for an easy way to support their loved ones as employers refuse to hire them for fear of extremists' reprisals."

She said the NGO has documented the disappearance of some 4000 women, 20 per cent of whom are under 18, since the March 2003 invasion.

OWFI believes most of the missing women were kidnapped and sold into prostitution outside Iraq.

Although few reliable statistics are available on the total number of widows in Iraq, the ministry of women's affairs says that there are at least 350,000 in Baghdad alone, with more than eight million throughout the country.

Bitter trade

As Iraqi families continue to fall on hard times, some have been forced to make the most painful of decisions – selling their daughters.

Abu Ahmed, a handicapped father of five who is himself a widower, sold his daughter Lina to an Iraqi man who came to Iraq to "shop" for sex workers. Abu Ahmed said he could not afford to buy food for his other children.

He told Al Jazeera: "I'm sure that whatever she is, at least she is having food to eat. I have three other girls and a son and what they paid me for Lina is enough to raise the remaining ones."

Abu Ahmed had been initially approached by Shada, the alias of a woman living in Baghdad, who sought young women for Iraqi gangs running prostitution rackets in neighbouring Arab countries.

She told Al Jazeera that her role was to convince young women from impoverished families that a better life awaited them beyond the country's borders.

She said: "Families don't want them and we are helping the girls to survive. We offer them food and housing and about $10 a day if they have had at least two clients."

"Our priority is virgin girls; they can be sold at very expensive prices to Arab millionaires."

Shada said she sleeps in a different house every few nights as armed groups have marked her for trial and assassination.

Escape from Jordan

OWFI's Salim says cases like Lina's have become very common as poverty is increasing in Iraq and desperate families sometimes sell their daughters for less than $500 to traffickers.

But increasingly, young Iraqi women arrive in neighbouring capitals to find that prostitution carries a heavy and dangerous price.

Suha Muhammad, 17, was sold to an Iraqi gang by her mother, herself a prostitute, after her father was killed.

When she arrived in Jordan, she was gang-raped by four men who told her they were teaching her the tricks of the trade.

She told Al Jazeera she had been sold to a gang that caters to VIPs in Syria and was often shuttled to Amman, the Jordanian capital, for high-profile clients.

After six months, she escaped: "I ran away and an Iraqi family helped me by driving me to the immigration department where they helped me get a passport to return to Iraq.

"My aunt is now taking care of me in Baghdad. She never imagined that my mother could sell me, but unfortunately women in Iraq are not important and respected."

Traffic

Mayada Zuhair, a spokesperson for the Baghdad-based Women's Rights Association (WRA), said Iraqi and Arab NGOs are trying to monitor the trafficking of young women from the war-ravaged country to neighbouring destinations.

She told Al Jazeera: "We are trying to find out the fate of many widows and teenager girls who were trafficked. Unfortunately it is not an easy process and without international support, funding, and resources, we fear more young Iraqi women will be taken abroad to work in the sex trade."

In the meantime, however, prostitution remains the only option for Nirmeen Lattif, a 27-year-old widow who lost her husband in an attack on Shia pilgrims south of Baghdad.

When she turned to her husband's relatives for financial support, they could not afford to help her.

She says she tries not to think of the gravity of what she does or the dishonour it carries in conservative Muslim society.

"I think of my children, only my children; without money we starve in the streets."

GUCA-The World's Biggest Brass Bands Music Festival

2007-08-12T13:31:00.001+01:00

The traditional Dragacevo trumpet - its cult kept alive for nearly two centuries regardless of political and social considerations - has with time become world-renowned. It is owing to the trumpet that the name of Serbia has resounded worldwide, in all the continents. Some orchestras, when they appear on stage, whether for official competition national dress, the authentic and indigenous dances and other folkinspired elements, coupled with music, have become an integral part of national gathering.

The virtuoso music performers, the trumpet players to the paradox and make the story more authentic - are for the most part fully self-taught. They play by ear and quite spontaneously, relying on their musical memory; they play from the heart and soul, and their music reaches out to listeners precisely for this quality. The Gucha Assembly of Trumpet Players continues to grow year after year: today, this musical feast of recognizable national skills is more popular, more diverse and bigger than ever before.

The first Dragacevo Assembly of Trumpet Players was held on October 16, 1961 in the yard of the Church of Sts. Michael and Gabriel in Gucha. Initially, it was a very modest Assembly - almost subversive for the prevailing political circumstances of that time. However, the Assembly gradually grew and expandedits, one might say, magical influence, and over the past ten or so years has become the folk remained its key symbol and raison detre, it is no longer held solely for the trumpet players. It grew into an Assembly of toastmasters, painters, song "Sa Ovcara I Kablara", marks the beginning of the festival each year. Some church music festivals notwithstanding, the Assembly of Trumpet Players is the best know event of this kind extending uninterruptedly for 43 years and attra cting guests and musicians alike from every continent. Trumpet players and folk song and dance groups from around the world deem it a great honor to be invited to the Assembly, and the number of v visitors increases with each coming year. The record was set in 2002, when Gucha hosted in excess of 300.000 visitors.

With considerable experience in organizing Assemblies, today the traditionally hospitable Gucha has earned its place on the map of world music festivals, inviting high interest from ethno music lovers, and deservedly so. As an internationally recognized trumpet capital, and a singular corner of positive energy, a place with accumulated joy, gaiety and spontaneity, coupled with the piercing yet gentle sound of the trumpet, Gucha is a place of catharsis of the heart and soul while the festival lasts. All this is more than enough to attract visitors to Gucha each Mexico , Spain , Greece , Denmark , China and many other close or distant countries. The names of Boban Markovic, Milan Mladenovic, Ekrem Sajdic, Elvis Ajdinovic, Fejat and Zoran Sejdic have carried the glory of the Serbian trumpet across the world. Some 1000,000 visitors are expected at the next, and 48 th Assembly. That would be very impressive indeed, would it not?

Welcome to Gucha!

Photo mistakes

2007-08-11T14:46:00.000+01:00

Photo Mistakes - For more of the funniest videos, click here

The Amazing Melting Building

2007-06-12T14:31:00.000+01:00

So, this is not Photoshopped. This building mural, a trompe-l’oeil, is located in Georges V Ave. in Paris, France. Trompe-l’oeil is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects really exist, instead of being just two-dimensional paintings. The name is derived from French for “trick the eye”, from tromper - to deceive and l’oeil - the eye.

Biker Escapes From The Police

2007-06-12T08:26:00.000+01:00

Biker Escapes From The Police - The best video clips are here

10 Strangest Weapons in History

2007-06-10T20:20:00.000+01:00

1. The Urumi

Also known as "chuttuval," which means "coiled sword," this flexible weapon is used in the South Indian Martial Art of Kalaripayatt.

The blade (or multiple blades, as in the urumi pictured here) is flexible enough to be rolled up and stored when not used, or even worn as a belt and whipped out on demand.

The blade or blades are typically razor-sharp and bad news for anyone standing in the vicinity of the person wielding the urumi.

2. The Tekko-kagi ("hand claws")

Predating X-Men's Wolverine by hundreds of years, ninjas would use the tekko-kagi claws to guard against sword attacks, allowing them to swipe and potentially knock the sword from an assailant's hands.

Or, ninjas could use claws the claws offensively against their opponents with devastating results.

Typically made from aluminum, steel, iron or wood, tekko weapons are believed by martial arts historians to have originated when the Bushi in Okinawa, Japan began weilding the steel shoes of their horses as a means of self-defense against assailants.

3. The Kusari-gama

A combination sickle and mace, the Kusari-gama was used by traditional Japanese warriors, swinging the sickle at opponents to either slice them with the sharp blade or bludgeon them with the heavy iron weight attached by chain.

The Kusarigama was popular in fuedal Japan from around the 12th through the 17th centuries, and was taught in martial arts schools with its own form of fighting style, known as Kusarigamajutsu.

4. The Trebuchet

A much more powerful and accurate evolution of the medieval catapult, the trebuchet used counterweights to increase the velocity of the objects it hurled. It was used primarily by Christian and Muslim forces throughout the Mediterranean region during the 12th century.

The trebuchet is also believed to be an early biological weapon, as armies would load the trebuchet with corpses riddled with diseases like the Black Plague and hurl them into areas under seige in the hopes of infecting large numbers of their enemies.

5. The Paris Gun

The German military used its mammoth Paris Gun (also known as the Emperor William Gun) in 1918 to terrorize the French public during World War I.

The Paris Gun had an approximately 92-foot-long barrel that could fire 210-pound shells and reach distances up to 75 miles away. Since it could fire great distances, the residents of Paris heard and saw no warning of incoming blasts, and while the potential physical damage from the weapon wasn't catastrophic, the uncertainty of when and where attacks would come struck fear into the heart of all of Paris.

The German military is believed to have destroyed the Paris Gun as the Allied offensive began.

6. The Goliath

You already know that our military and others around the world are working feverishly to develop robot warriors to fight battles for us, but did you know that the Nazis took a first step in this area back in WWII?

The Goliath was essentially a mobile tank or mine that could be remote-controled from a safe distance from enemy lines to deliver explosives.

German automaker Borgward produced more than 7,500 of the Goliaths, but the weapons were ultimately deemed ineffective due to their slow speed (6 mph) and the fact that their control wires would often be cut by enemy soldiers or severed in explosions.

7. The FP-45 Liberator

Manufactured by General Motors (yes, that General Motors) The FP-45 Liberator was a pistol manufactured for the United States military during World War II.

The name stood for Flare Projector Caliber .45, which was meant to disguise the gun's mass production. GM's Inland Guide Lamp Manufacturing Division in Dayton, Ohio produced a million of the FP-45s, with a design-to-production window of just six months.

Whether it was this rushed prodcution schedule or GM's inexperience in crafting weapons, the FP-45 was an unreliable weapon and were often unusable after the first firing.

8. Japanese Balloon Bombs

In late 1944, Japan sought to wreak devastation on American cities, but had no way to reach America via plane or boat without being shot down. So, it devised one of the strangest weapons to be deployed during World War II: the balloon bomb.

Japan sent 9,000+ balloon bombs across the Pacific Ocean with the hopes of causing large numbers of US casualties. Approximately 1,000 made it to the US but caused only six known deaths. The balloons were found in areas as widespread as Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Michigan and Iowa, as well as Mexico and Canada.

The press cooperated with the US government by not reporting on the balloon bombs in the hopes of not panicking the American people, as well as not letting the Japanese know that any of the balloons landed on US shores. With little to no proof of their effectiveness, Japan ceased launching the balloon bombs after just six months.

9. Dolphins as Weapons?

Dolphins have been used by the US military in various capacities for the past several decades, but the Navy has repeatedly denied rumors that it has trained dolphins to run kamikaze bomb missions into enemy boats or submarines or perform other deadly acts.

Still, there have been reports over the years of other military uses of dolphins. A 60 Minutes report featured dolphin trainers who claimed they personally taught dolphins to intercept enemy divers of the coast of Vietnam. The dolphins were able to corral divers, tearing off their face masks and regulators.

In addition, the BBC reported that Russia sold its military dolphins to Iran for use in the Persian Gulf. Little is known as to how Iran deployed the dolphins.

10. Zip Guns

These are small guns, sometimes commercially made but often crafted by individuals, that are usually disguised as other items.

Popular versions include the flashlight pictured here, as well as cellphones that can hold multiple bullets, firing individual barrels when certain numbers are entered on the keypad.

Often zip guns are crude, and can't be used multiple times as the force of firing the bullet may render the weapon inoperable the weapon, but their impact can still be deadly.

AFI 100 greatest movie quotes (montage)

2007-06-10T07:46:00.000+01:00

Funny Dutch Commercial

2007-06-08T10:31:00.000+01:00

A Dutch insurance commercial involving a guy getting needles placed all over his body (a Chinese healing technique). Watch to find out what happens next!

Funny Dutch Commercial - Amazing videos are here

THE MOST EXPENSIVE CAR IN THE WORLD

2007-06-08T10:24:00.001+01:00

THE MOST EXPENSIVE CAR IN THE WORLD. - Click here for another funny movie.

Optical Illusion of a House

2007-06-08T10:18:00.000+01:00

Optical Illusion House - More amazing video clips are a click away

Women In Art

2007-06-07T08:52:00.000+01:00

A List of Unusual Deaths

2007-06-06T07:33:00.000+01:00

Antiquity

* 586 BC: Zedekiah, king of Jehudia, was punished for his attempt at mutiny by having his whole family brought before him and executed, his eyes then immediately punctured, his palms amputated and his mutilated body sent to rot in the dungeons.
* 458 BC: The Greek playwright Aeschylus was killed when an eagle dropped a live tortoise on him, mistaking his bald head for a stone.
* 270 BC: The poet and grammarian Philetas of Cos reportedly wasted away and died of insomnia while brooding about the Liar paradox.
* 207 BC: Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after watching his drunken donkey attempt to eat figs.
* 53 BC: Following his defeat at Carrhae at the hands of the Parthians under Spahbod Surena, Marcus Licinius Crassus was executed by having molten gold poured down his throat. Some accounts claim that his head was then cut off and used as a stage prop in a play performed for the Parthian king Orodes II.
* 48 BC: The Roman general Pompey, fleeing to Egypt after being defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus by his rival Julius Caesar, was stabbed, killed, and decapitated: his head was then preserved in a jar by the young king Ptolemy XIII and presented to Caesar, with whom he intended to ingratiate himself. Caesar was not pleased.
* 43 BC: Cicero, the great Roman statesman, was labelled an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate. Like all those proscribed by the Triumvirate, he was hunted down and killed; his severed hands and head were then displayed on the Rostra in the Forum for several days, during which time Fulvia, wife of Mark Antony, is supposed to have stabbed his once-skilled tongue several times with a hairpin.
* 42 BC: Porcia Catonis, wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, killed herself by supposedly swallowing hot coals after hearing of her husband's death; however, modern historians claim that it is more likely that she poisoned herself with carbon monoxide, by burning coals in an unventilated room.
* 4 BC: Herod the Great suffered from fever, intense rashes, colon pains, foot drop, inflammation of the abdomen, a putrefaction of his genitals that produced worms, convulsions, and difficulty breathing before he finally gave up. Similar symptoms-- abdominal pains and worms-- accompanied the death of his grandson Herod Agrippa in 44 AD, after he had imprisoned St Peter. At various times each of these deaths has been considered divine retribution.
* 64 - 67: St Peter was executed by the Romans. According to many sources, he asked not to be crucified in the normal way, but was instead executed on an inverted cross. This is the only recorded instance of this type of crucifixion.
* 69: The short-time Roman emperor Galba was killed after becoming extremely unpopular with both the Roman people and the Praetorian guard-- however, 120 different people claimed credit for having killed him. All of these names were recorded in a list and they all were later themselves executed by the emperor Vitellius.
* 258: St Lawrence was martyred by being burned or 'grilled' on a large metal gridiron at Rome. Images of him often show him holding the instrument of his martyrdom. Legend says that he was so strong-willed that instead of giving in to the Romans and releasing information about the Church, at the point of death he exclaimed "I am done on this side! Turn me over and eat."
* 260: According to some accounts, Roman emperor Valerian, after being defeated in battle and captured by the Persians, was used as a footstool by their king Shapur I. After a long period of mistreatment and humiliation, he offered Shapur a huge ransom for his release. In reply, Shapur had molten gold poured down Valerian's throat. He then had the unfortunate emperor skinned and his skin stuffed with straw or dung and preserved as a trophy in the main Persian temple. Only after Persia's defeat in their last war with Rome three and a half centuries later was his skin given a cremation and burial. (Interestingly, a recent report from Iran mentions the restoration of a bridge supposed to have been built by Valerian and his soldiers for Shapur in return for their freedom).

* 415: The Greek mathematician and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered by a mob by having her skin ripped off with sharp oyster-shells and what remained of her being burned

Middle Ages

# 1016: Edmund II of England was rumoured to have been stabbed in the gut or bowels while he was performing his ablutions.
# 1277: Pope John XXI was killed in the collapse of his scientific laboratory.]
# 1305: Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace was stripped naked and dragged through the city at the heels of a horse. He was hanged, drawn and quartered — strangled by hanging but released while still alive, emasculated, eviscerated and his bowels burnt before him, beheaded, then cut into four parts.
# 1327: Edward II of England, after being deposed and imprisoned by his Queen consort Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, was rumored to have been murdered by having a red-hot iron inserted into his anus.
# 1478: George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence reportedly was executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine at his own request.

Early Modern Times

# 1559: King Henry II of France was killed during a stunt knight's jousting match, when his helmet's soft golden grille gave way to a broken lancetip which pierced his eye and entered his brain.
# 1601: Tycho Brahe, according to legend, died of complications resulting from a strained bladder at a banquet. It would have been extremely bad etiquette to leave the table before the meal was finished, so he stayed until he became fatally ill. This version of events has since been brought into question as other causes of death (murder by Johannes Kepler, suicide, and lead poisoning among others) have come to the fore.
# 1671: François Vatel, chef to Louis XIV, committed suicide because his seafood order was late and he couldn't stand the shame of a postponed meal. His body was discovered by an aide, sent to tell him of the arrival of the fish.
# 1687: Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer, died of a gangrenous abscess after piercing his foot with a staff while he was vigorously conducting a Te Deum. The performance was to celebrate the king's recovery from an illness.
# 1753: Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, of Saint Petersburg, Russia, was struck and killed by a globe of ball lightning while observing a storm.
# 1771: King of Sweden, Adolf Frederick, died of digestion problems on February 12, 1771 after having consumed a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, which was topped off with 14 servings of his favourite dessert: semla served in a bowl of hot milk. He is thus remembered by Swedish schoolchildren as "the king who ate himself to death."

Modern Age

19th century

* 1830: William Huskisson, statesman and financier, was crushed to death by the world's first passenger train (Stephenson's Rocket), at its public opening.
* 1834: David Douglas, Scottish botanist, fell into a pit trap accompanied by a bull. He was mauled and possibly crushed.
* 1841: William Henry Harrison, the 9th President of the United States, died of pneumonia one month after delivering his two-hour inauguration speech in cold weather without an overcoat.
* 1868: Matthew Vassar, brewer and founder of Vassar College, died in mid-speech while delivering his farewell address to the College Board of Trustees.
* 1884: Allan Pinkerton, detective, died of gangrene resulting from having bitten his tongue after stumbling on the sidewalk.
* 1899: French president Félix Faure died of a stroke while receiving oral sex in his office.

20th century

* A number of performers have died of natural causes during public performances, including:
o 1943: Critic Alexander Woollcott suffered a fatal heart attack during an on-air discussion about Adolf Hitler.
o 1958: Gareth Jones, actor, collapsed and died while in make-up between scenes of a live television play, Underground, at the studios of Associated British Corporation in Manchester. Director Ted Kotcheff continued the play to its conclusion, improvising around Jones's absence.
o 1960: Baritone Leonard Warren collapsed on the stage of the New York Metropolitan Opera of a major stroke during a performance of La forza del destino. According to legend, the last line he sang was "Morir? Tremenda cosa." ("To die? A tremendous thing.") However, witnesses say he was just past that aria and his actual last line was "Gioia, o gioia!" (Joy, oh joy!)
o 1971: Jerome Irving Rodale, an American pioneer of organic farming, died of a heart attack while being interviewed on The Dick Cavett Show. According to urban legend, when he appeared to fall asleep, Cavett quipped "Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?", which Cavett has recently stated in a May 2007 New York Times article was incorrect - the initial reaction to Rodale was fellow guest Pete Hamill noticing something was wrong, and saying in a low voice to Cavett, "This looks bad." The show was never broadcast.
o 1984: Tommy Cooper collapsed from a massive heart attack in front of millions of television viewers, midway through his act, on the popular ITV variety show, Live from Her Majesty's. At first the audience assumed he was joking.
o 1987: Dick Shawn, a comedian who starred in the 1968 movie The Producers, died of a heart attack while portraying a politician. Just before he died, he announced, "if elected, I will not lay down on the job,".

* A number of performers have died from unnatural causes during a practice or public performance, including:
o 1925: Zishe (Siegmund) Breitbart, a circus strongman and Jewish folklore hero died during a demonstration in which he drove a spike through five one-inch thick oak boards using only his bare hands when his knee was accidentally pierced. The spike was rusted and caused an infection which led to fatal blood poisoning. He was the subject of the Werner Herzog film, Invincible.
o 1972: Leslie Harvey, guitarist of Stone the Crows was electrocuted on stage by a live microphone.
o 1976: Keith Relf, former singer for British rhythm and blues band The Yardbirds, died while practicing his electric guitar, electrocuted because the guitar was not properly grounded.
o 1999: Owen Hart, a professional wrestler for WWE died during a Pay-Per-View event when performing a stunt. It was planned to have Owen come down from the rafters of the Kemper Arena on a safety harness tied to a rope to make his ring entrance. The safety latch was released and Owen dropped 78 feet into the wrestling ring. The PPV continued even after he was pronounced dead.

* 1911: Jack Daniel, founder of the Tennessee whiskey distillery, died of blood poisoning six years after receiving a toe injury when he kicked his safe in anger at being unable to remember its combination code.
* 1912: Tailor Franz Reichelt fell to his death off the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, the coat parachute. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute and he'd told the authorities in advance he would test it first with a dummy.
* 1916: Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic, died of drowning while trapped under ice. Although the details of his murder are disputed, he was allegedly placed in the water through a hole in the winter ice when he stubbornly refused to die after having been poisoned, bludgeoned, castrated, and shot multiple times in the head, lung, and liver.
* 1920: Baseball player Ray Chapman was killed when he was hit in the head by a pitch.
* 1923: George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon allegedly becomes the first to die from King Tut's Curse after a mosquito bite on his face becomes seriously infected.
* 1923: Frank Hayes, jockey, suffered a heart attack during a horse race. The horse, Sweet Kiss, went on to finish first, making Hayes the only deceased jockey to win a race.
* 1927: J.G. Parry-Thomas, a British racing driver, was decapitated by his car's drive chain which, under stress, snapped and whipped into the cockpit. He was attempting to break his own Land speed record which he had set the previous year. Despite being killed in the attempt, he succeeded in setting a new record of 171 mph.
* 1927: Isadora Duncan, dancer, died of accidental strangulation and broken neck when her scarf caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.
* 1928: Alexander Bogdanov, a Russian physician, died following one of his experiments, in which the blood of a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis, L. I. Koldomasov, was given to him in a transfusion.
* 1933: Michael Malloy, a homeless man, was murdered by gassing after surviving multiple poisonings, intentional exposure and being struck by a car. Malloy was murdered by five men in a plot to collect on life insurance policies they had purchased.
* 1935: Baseball player Len Koenecke was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by the crew of an aircraft he had chartered, after provoking a fight with the pilot while the plane was in the air.
* 1941: Sherwood Anderson, writer, swallowed a toothpick at a party and then died of peritonitis.
* 1943: Lady be Good, a USAAF B-24 bomber lost its way and crash landed in the Libyan Desert. Mummified remains of its crew, who struggled for a week without water, were not found until 1960.
* 1944: Inventor and chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr., accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design.
* 1947: The Collyer brothers, extreme cases of compulsive hoarders were found dead in their home in New York. The younger brother, Langley, died by falling victim to a booby trap he had set up, causing a mountain of objects, books, and newspapers to fall on him crushing him to death. His blind brother, Homer, who had depended on Langley for care, died of starvation some days later. Their bodies were recovered after massive efforts in removing many tons of debris from their home.
* 1960: In the Nedelin disaster, over 100 Soviet missile technicians and officials died when a switch was turned on unintentionally igniting the rocket, including Red Army Marshal Nedelin who was seated in a deck chair just 40 meters away overseeing launch preparations. The events were filmed by automatic cameras.
* 1967: A flash fire began in the pure oxygen atmosphere during a training exercise inside the unlaunched Apollo 1 spacecraft, killing Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee. The door to the capsule was unable to be opened during the fire because of its specific design.
* 1967: Vladimir Komarov became the first person to die during a space mission after the parachute of his capsule failed to deploy.
* 1973: Péter Vályi, finance minister of Hungary fell into a blast furnace (some sources say a pit of molten iron) on a visit to a steelworks factory at Miskolc.
* 1974: Christine Chubbuck, an American television news reporter, committed suicide during a live broadcast on July 15. At 9:38 AM, 8 minutes into her talk show, on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, she drew out a revolver and shot herself in the head.
* 1975: On 24 March 1975 Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn literally died laughing whilst watching an episode of The Goodies. According to his wife, who was a witness, Mitchell was unable to stop laughing whilst watching a sketch in the episode "Kung Fu Kapers" in which Tim Brooke-Taylor, dressed as a kilted Scotsman, used a set of bagpipes to defend himself from a psychopathic black pudding in a demonstration of the Scottish martial art of "Hoots-Toot-ochaye." After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and expired from heart failure.
* 1977: Tom Pryce, a Formula One driver, and a 19-year-old track marshal Jansen Van Vuuren both died at the 1977 South African Grand Prix after Van Vuuren ran across the track beyond a blind brow to attend to another car which had caught fire and was struck by Pryce's car at approximately 170mph. Pryce was struck in the face by the marshal's fire extinguisher and was killed instantly.
* 1978: Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was assassinated by poisoning in London by an unknown assailant who jabbed him in the calf with a specially modified umbrella that fired a metal pellet with a small cavity full of ricin poison.
* 1978: Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, died of smallpox in 1978, ten months after the disease was eradicated in the wild, when a researcher at the laboratory Parker worked at accidentally released some virus into the air of the building. She is believed to be the last smallpox fatality in history.
* 1981: A 25-year-old Dutch woman studying in Paris, Renée Hartevelt, was killed and eaten by a classmate, Issei Sagawa, when he invited her to dinner for a literary conversation. The killer was declared unfit to stand trial and extradited back to Japan, where he was released from custody within fifteen months.
* 1981: Boris Sagal, a motion picture-director, died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III when he walked into the tail-rotor blade of a helicopter and was decapitated.
* 1982: Vic Morrow, actor, was decapitated by a helicopter blade during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie, along with two child actors, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen.
* 1982: Vladimir Smirnov, an Olympic champion fencer, died of brain damage nine days after his opponent's foil snapped during a match, pierced his eyeball and entered his brain.
* 1983: A diver on the Byford Dolphin oil exploration rig was violently dismembered and pulled through a narrowly opened hatch when the decompression chamber was accidentally opened, causing explosive decompression.
* 1983: Tennessee Williams, American playwright, died choking on a bottle cap. He was in a hotel but was too drunk to leave his room or make sufficient noise to attract attention.
* 1983: Sergei Chalibashvili, a professional diver, died after a diving accident during World University Games. When he attempted a three-and-a-half reverse somersault in the tuck position, he smashed his head on the board and was knocked unconscious. He died after being in a coma for a week.
* 1984: Jon-Erik Hexum, an American television actor, died after he shot himself in the head with a prop gun during a break in filming. Hexum apparently did not realize that blanks use paper or plastic wadding to seal gun powder into the shell, and that this wadding is propelled out of the barrel of the gun with enough force to cause severe injury or death if the weapon is fired at point-blank range.
* 1986: While on the air giving a traffic report, the helicopter that Jane Dornacker was riding in stalled and crashed into the Hudson River, killing her. This was the second helicopter crash she had been in that year.
* 1987: R. Budd Dwyer, a Republican politician, committed suicide during a televised press conference. Facing a potential 55-year jail sentence for alleged involvement in a conspiracy, Dwyer shot himself in the mouth with a revolver.
* 1990: Joseph W. Burrus, aged 32, an aspiring magician, decided to perform the "buried alive" illusion in a plastic box covered with cement. The cement crushed the box and he died of asphyxia.
* 1990: George Allen, an American football coach, died a month after some of his players gave him a Gatorade Shower following a victory (as it is tradition in American Football). Some argue this resulted in pneumonia.
* 1993: Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, was shot and killed by a prop .44 Magnum gun while filming the movie The Crow. The gun was pre-loaded by the Weapons Master for the set, but the casing for the blank shattered upon firing and the fragments became instant projectiles. They pierced Brandon's chest in five places, some in the heart. It was not instantly recognized by the crew or other actors; they believed he was still acting.
* 1993: Garry Hoy, a Toronto lawyer, fell to his death after he threw himself through the glass wall on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in order to prove the glass was "unbreakable".
* 1996: Sharon Lopatka, an internet entrepreneur from Maryland who allegedly solicited a man via the Internet to torture and kill her for the purpose of sexual gratification. Her killer, Robert Fredrick Glass, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the homicide.
* 1998: Tom and Eileen Lonergan were stranded while scuba diving with a group of divers off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The group's boat accidentally abandoned them due to an incorrect head count taken by the dive boat crew. The couple was left to fend for themselves in shark-infested waters. Their bodies were never recovered. The incident is depicted in the film Open Water.

21st century

* 2001: Bernd-Jürgen Brandes was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and then eaten by Armin Meiwes. Before the killing, both men dined on Brandes' severed penis. Brandes had answered an internet advertisement by Meiwes looking for someone for this purpose. Brandes explicitly stated in his will that he wished to be killed and eaten. This is referred to in the song "Mein Teil" by German NDH band Rammstein.
* 2003: Brian Wells, a pizza delivery man, was killed by a time bomb which was fastened around his neck. He was apprehended by the police after robbing a bank, and claimed he had been forced to do it by three people who had put the bomb around his neck and would kill him if he refused. The bomb later exploded, killing him.
* 2003: Brandon Vedas died of a drug overdose while engaged in an Internet chat, as shown on his webcam.
* 2003: Timothy Treadwell, an American environmentalist who had lived in the wilderness among bears for thirteen summers in a remote region in Alaska, was killed and partially consumed by bears, along with his girlfriend Amie Huguenard. The incident is described in Werner Herzog's documentary film Grizzly Man.
* 2005: Kenneth Pinyan of Seattle died of acute peritonitis after submitting to anal intercourse with a stallion in the town of Enumclaw, Washington. Pinyan had done this before, and he delayed his visit to the hospital for several hours out of reluctance for official cognizance. The case led to the criminalization of bestiality in Washington. His story was recounted in the 2007 documentary film Zoo.
* 2005: 28-year-old Korean video game addict Lee Seung Seop collapsed and died of fatigue in an Internet cafe after playing World of Warcraft for almost 50 consecutive hours.
* 2006: Steve Irwin, a television personality and naturalist known as The Crocodile Hunter, died when his heart was impaled by a short-tail stingray barb while filming a documentary entitled "Ocean's Deadliest" in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef.
* 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB operative and Russian expatriate who had been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was poisoned by polonium-210, an extremely rare radioactive metalloid.
* 2006: Mariesa Weber, a 5'3" Florida woman, fell behind a 6' tall bookcase in her family's home and suffocated. She was not discovered for 11 days; her family thought she had been kidnapped.
* 2007: Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old woman from Sacramento, died of water intoxication while trying to win a Wii console in a KDND 107.9 "The End" radio station's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating.
* 2007: Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old man committed suicide live on a webcam during an internet chat session.
* 2007: Martin Harris, a Danish train surfer, who published several video clips on the internet and was featured on regional TV for his sport, was killed during train surfing while passing under a low bridge.

Baby Caught In Train Door

2007-06-04T15:54:00.000+01:00

Baby Caught In Train Door - More amazing videos are a click away

History of Video Games

2007-06-03T16:07:00.000+01:00

Bus Hits Crane

2007-06-03T07:36:00.000+01:00

Bus Hits Crane - Funny home videos are a click away

3D Animation Of Childbirth

2007-06-03T07:23:00.000+01:00

3D Animation Of Childbirth - The best bloopers are a click away

Moving Wave

2007-06-01T12:17:00.000+01:00

50 Manliest Men Ever (Well, Mostly Men)

2007-06-01T07:25:00.000+01:00

50. Martina Navratilova – In a sport best known for the “sweater tied around the neck” fashion, it is unlikely for a truly manly man to emerge. However, one did, although not on the men’s side of the net. Martina Navratilova dominated the sport for decades. If you are doubting this selection, realize that unless you are on this list yourself, she has most likely slept with more women than you. If that doesn’t earn her a spot on this list, nothing will.

49. Christian Laettner – Of all the guys on the list, only one can really be called a “Man’s man” quite literally. He’s Christian Laettner. Also available to sub in at this position – Mike Piazza.

48. Mario (from Super Mario Brothers 1-1,000,000) – This guy is a plumber who ended up marrying into royalty and keeping a sugar mama. He lives the life that every guy dreams of every single night in their sleep. Add also the fact that he breaks bricks open with his head and uses flowers to make fire and you’ve got one manly dude.

47. Kermit Washington – Those who know anything about Kermit Washington’s sports career know exactly how tough he was. But few think about the fact that throughout his whole life he had to endure the name Kermit. How many could truly deal with the constant “go back to the swamp” comments and “how’s it feel to have a hippy’s hand up your butt all the time?” questions. You and I might melt down, but it just made Washington stronger.

46. Patrick Swayze – Even though he was in Dirty Dancing, Swayze was still able to make the list. That is a testament to exactly how tough he was in Road House and that SNL male dancer sketch. Nobody puts Swayze in the corner or the honorable mention portion of Manliest Men lists.

45. NHL Hockey Players – I have to group these warriors together because they would have a monopoly on this list if I didn’t. These guys lose their teeth and risk their lives everyday for hockey. They don’t get any women because they are all so ugly and Canadian. They don’tget any fame because no one watches (Isn't there a strike or something?). As far as anyone can tell, they only play hockey so they can hurt other hockey players. That’s tough.

44. Dick Butkus – I once saw a tape from Butkus’ final high school game where he tackled an opposing ball carrier so hard that the guy’s head flew off of his body and lay on the 50 yard line. No, wait! He did that to NFL running backs. More than once.

43. Bill Parcells – If manliness was measured in the ankle strength alone, Bill Parcells would be number one on this list. However, he is still a deserving member of it. The coach was able to win football games, even with T.O. trying to kill himself, an addiction to nachos, and all of Tony Romo’s disease-infested flavors-of-the-week standing in his way.

42. Juan Marichel – A mediocre baseball player, at best, Marichel will forever be known as the player who hit Johnny Roseboro with a baseball bat. Sure, it’s not the most noble thing, but no one ever said that being a man was about being noble. In fact, some would say Marichel should be higher on the list because HE HIT ANOTHER DUDE WITH A BASEBALL BAT.

41. Pocket Hercules – Being an Olympic gold medal winner in weightlifting is pretty impressive in and of itself. But Lil’ Hercules was only 6 inches tall and could lift a full size Semi-Truck with his right arm only. And he was left handed!

40. Lance Armstrong – There is a journal out there somewhere written by someone who raced against Armstrong in the first Tour de France. He talks about while he is in first place, during the most grueling mountain stage, he hears Armstrong coming up on him. Basically, he determines that he would rather lose the entire tour than let “the gringo” pass him. He says he gave it everything he had to stay in front, but as Armstrong passed him, Lance looked back and smiled at him.
This was only months after he recovered from terminal cancer.

39. Paul Bunyan – Most people get a dog. He got a gigantic blue ox. He is responsible for digging lakes, laying miles of train track, cutting down, like, a million trees, and fathering all of Wisconsin’s children. If you doubt his existence, then ask yourself “Have I ever seen a lake or a person from Wisconsin?” Point proven.

38. Wilt Chamberlain – If Bunyan impregnated all of Wisconsin, Chamberlain is responsible for the entire western seaboard and probably a good portion of the eastern (depends on how many road trips they had back then). Rumored to have a dirty relationship count in the 5-6 digit range and scoring 3 digits in a single game? He’s a man among men and many, many, many women.

36. Evel Knievel – I once saw a guy hit himself in the scrotum for a bag of Doritos on a dare. That’s pretty tough. However, I never witnessed anyone except for Evel try to jump 13 city buses, break a pelvis, then walk to the podium to address the fans. If he had died during one of his jumps, then gotten up to talk to the audience after, he probably would have been bolted to number one.

37. Shirtless Football Fans – These guys go into the coldest places on the coldest day and wear nothing but a poorly painted, latex layer on them. They do this because they don’t have anything else to live for. That and the fact that what they do is just plain stupid keeps them from breaking into the top 25.

35. Jesus – See now, he did do the rise from the dead thing, but he never jumped a motorcycle over any buses. If only he and Evel had talked. Besides, based on all of the pictures I've seen, the guy was totally ripped too.

34. The Guys from Tyson’s Punchout – On average this little group isn’t all that tough. Glass Joe and Piston Honda really bring down the class. However, a cage match isn’t about your sissy mathematical averages. I can’t think of any group, save one that I would rather have in a Jets vs. Sharks style gang fight than the collective crew of Tyson’s Punchout.

33. Curt Schilling – No he isn’t the most intimidating pitcher in history. In fact, he’s not even an intimidating pitcher. But he is the only person who has a bloody piece of his wardrobe in the hall of fame. I watched him pull his foot off of his leg in the World Series, rub some dirt on it, and replace it so that he could go back to pitching.

32. Hulk Hogan – He is an icon, if not the icon, of professional wrestling. He is the toughest old guy, I’ve ever seen. Plus, I’ve never been scared of anyone in my whole life, except for one old girlfriend’s dad. He was a scary dude and once showed me his revolver. I would rather be caught behind his daughter than have to pick up Hogan’s for a church youth group event.

31. Johnny Unitas – It was a different time when Unitas was king of the quarterbacks. The recent discussions of “top 5 quarterbacks of all time” have been leaving him out, especially since Manning is now considered perfect. However, this guy used to wear fur coats on the sideline. He used to keep a woman in his locker at the stadium. He used to use a woman as a football while playing in fur pads.

30. Steve-O – Earlier I mentioned a guy I knew in high school who hit himself in the scrotum with a hammer. That was a big deal. That’s what Steve-O does for a living. Except sometimes instead of using a hammer he uses a snake. Some people think that skyscraper workers or crab fisherman have manly jobs. This guy lets snakes eat his groin for a job.

29. NHL Goalies – Remember how tough I said hockey players were? Well goalies to the same thing, except they don’t ever risk getting in fights. In exchange for that they get to jump in front of a black, rubber bullet flying at 130 miles per hour. Excuse me, 130 Canadian miles per hour.

28. Ty Webb – To be a man, you don’t have to have the ability to smash things with your head. It helps, no questions. But you could also just be smooth. Enter Ty Webb. Perhaps the most quoted character in history, his movie is actually part of the prerequisite for even being a man.
27. Mike Tyson – No one in the world is scarier than Mike Tyson: 1. He hit as hard as anyone in history. 2. He got a tattoo on his face, for no reason. 3. He spent time in jail. 4. He is completely out of his mind. 5. He threatened to eat children and stomp on their testicles. Even if I didn’t think he deserved a spot on this list, I’m too intimidated to not put him on it.

26. Zangeif (from Street Fighter) – Everyone else in the world of video games has special moves and blocks and all that. Zangeif simply walked up to people and squeezed them to death. Bears do that, not men. But we all know the formula: If A is more bear-like than B, then A is more man than B. That’s algebra one, brah.

Also, he had a Mohawk, a chest scar, and resided in Russia.

25. Achilles – Perhaps the most controversial pick on this list, Achilles comes in at 25. Most would say that he deserved to be much higher, considering he only has one weakness and is responsible for at least 50% of all trips to the DL. However, he was played by Brad Pitt in the movie Troy. It’s sad when someone else representing you actually hurts your career. (See all Drew Rosenhaus clients).

24. Bill Braski – No one has ever even seen this guy. He is literally nothing but legend. One of those legends is that his “foreskin is used as a tarp over Yankee Stadium.” I’m not sure if that is cool or not, but I know that no woman would have a foreskin that big. Therefore, he is a true man.

23. Dennis Rodman – Including Navratilova, no one on this list could wear a dress and maintain the same level of masculinity. This guy is a true man, most of the time.

22. Bob Gibson – It’s been said a by multiple MLB players who hit against Gibson that his stuff was the greatest. They didn’t worry about the pitch as much as they did the snarl that Gibson gave them from the mound. He made his way to the hall of fame, essentially, on anger alone.

21. Joseph Kittinger – Look him up on wikipedia.org if you don’t know who he is. He basically parachuted from outside of the atmosphere. Yes, that is actually impossible. However, he was too manly to let the laws of physics and nature stop him.

20. Rocky Balboa – The tag for Rocky is “his whole life was a million to one shot.” Well, he took approximately a million shots. Listen to this resume. He beat more meat than anyone else. He fought Carl Weathers twice and (let’s be honest) won both times. He allowed Mr. T to beat on him for 15 rounds. He cried multiple times without us looking down on him. Oh yeah, and he stopped the Cold War single-handedly. Do I really need to argue this one.

19. Steve Irwin – Too soon? Too bad. This guy was famous for picking fights with animals. Let me write every script in his television career: “Hey, there’s a _________, the deadliest animal in the world. One look at it could kill an entire village. I’m going to dry hump it.” And talk about devotion, he gave everything for that show.

18. Magnus ver Magnusson – He is the four time champion of the World’s Strongest Man title. For the love of all things holy, his title has the word man in it. He grunts more than Serena Williams, but – unlike her – he does it for a reason. That reason, of course, is that he is pulling a train.

17. Satan – Every girl I’ve ever talked to has claimed that the defining qualities of men are their pride and bullheadedness. This guy takes the cake. He’d rather spend eternity in hell, rather than just admit that he was a bad boy. Plus, it was his pride that got him there in the first place. Personally, I think South Park has taken a few too many liberties. I’ll bet he’s rough as hell – pun intended.

16. Walter Payton – Remember that time that Payton just ran right through a wall of defenders. Of course you don’t, because it was every play. He actually busted through literal walls, simply because he hated doors. The only player in NFL history to never be tackled, he scored on every single run. In his later years, the NFL made a temporary rule allowing defending teams to have 22 players on defense and each player could wear a bulldozer as a uniform. He also made the headband look, that's sweet, Sweetness.

15. William Wallace – The only reason William Wallace doesn’t make the top ten is the ridiculous amount of make-up he wore. And, honestly, blue wasn’t his color. Like, totally.

14. The 1993 Philadelphia Phillies – These guys were the fatest “athletes” ever to be decent at their respective sport. Plus they all had killer mustaches. Go look at their team photo. It looks like 25 buffalo wing-loving Burt Reynolds. Incidentally, this is the only collective group that I would take into a cage match over the crew from Tyson’s Punch Out.

13. Burt Reynolds – Every guy wants a mustache and every guy wants a mustache because of Burt Reynolds. He hurt his stock a little by being in commercials about being manly for Bud Light. A true man is stoic in nature and doesn’t talk about how much of a b.a. he is. Despite this transgression, he’s way up on the list. Did he invent the mustache or just perfect it?

12. Chuck Norris – A few years ago, Norris wouldn’t have even made this list, but then two things happened. The first was a group of people chose to write his unofficial biography, in a list form. Assuming all these facts are indeed facts, he is pretty rough. The second was that I saw Delta Force again.

11. Brett Favre – This one hurts, somehow, but it’s impossible to argue too much against it. He could be placed among the greatest quarterbacks of all time. He’s played professional football for 18 years and is coming back for another. He’s got a Super Bowl ring. Women from the ages of 8 to 85 melt when he comes in the room and he’s started roughly one gagillion games, despite playing on the concrete that is a frozen Lambo Field. He might be the only man who could walk up and steal Brad Pitt’s girl (sorry Tom Brady).

10. That Fat Guy that Gets Shot in the Gut with a Cannon – You’ve seen it on YouTube and commercials and all that. Come on, now, that would hurt like hell.

9. Ty Cobb – I don’t need to tell you his stats on the diamond. I’ll tell you what my grandfather told me. Ty Cobb used to sit on top of the visitor’s dugout and sharpen his metal spikes while staring at the catcher. When they made eye contact, he would spit. And that, as my grandpappy said, “is how the game is supposed to be played.”

8. Rulon Gardner – An amateur wrestler from the U.S., Gardner has overcome more than most. For example, he has a learning disability. Here’s another example, he was stuck in the snow for an extended period of time before being rescued and had to have half of his foot removed. He refused pain medication before, during, or after the operation. Why? Because it would make him tougher. No big deal. That’s just another day for him.

7. Keith Richards – Jesus made this list because he cheated death. Well, I’m pretty sure that Keith Richards has risen from the dead everyday for the last twenty years. Plus, he gave us Brown Sugar and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.

6. Rodney Dangerfield – Every guy I’ve ever known has complained about his wife and job and life in general. Dangerfield did it for a living. If I didn’t put him in the top 10, then I would have been doing the same as everyone else and given him (fill in his famous phrase here.)

See how you knew it?

5. Mohammad Ali – Yes, he hit hard. Yes, he talked smooth. Yes, he’s the greatest boxer of all time. That alone would make him a legend. But this guy developed, as a strategy, the concept of letting someone else beat on you until they were tired. On top of that, he called it the “rope-a-dope," as if they were the stupid ones.

4. Mas Oyana – One of the only truly famous legitimate martial artists, Mas Oyana could kick everyone’s ass. Everyone’s, ever, combined. He trained for years, then decided it wasn’t enough. So he took nothing except a pot and a book to a mountain and lived there for two years. During this time he trained for 14 hours a day (by lifting large rocks and fighting trees) and meditated for the rest of the time. He then came down from the mountain, won the most prestigious fighting tournament in the world and decided it wasn’t good enough. He spent another year and a half on the mountain.

Need I go on?

3. Babe Ruth – Everyday for Babe was eat, drink, sex, eat, eat, play game, sex, eat, DRINK. Despite the above less-than-athletic training regiment, he held baseball records in pitching and hitting up until just a few years years (Steroids anyone?). He saved baseball from scandal and cheating and had a Candy Bar named after him. Without Babe Ruth, there would be no movie The Sandlot. Even to this day, despite death, he beats the Red Sox. Sure they won one, but my guess was that Ruth was nursing a nurse and a hangover when that happened.

2. Chris Nilan – The only individual hockey player on this list, Nilan is in a class all by himself. He holds the record for highest per game average for penalty minutes at 4.42. In a single game, was actually accumulated 42 penalty minutes. He was nicknamed “Knuckles” by people who play the toughest sport in the world. For the love of Christ, HE SCARED HOCKEY PLAYERS! He actually wasn’t any good at the game, they were just too afraid to cut him.

1. Al Bundy – I’m not sure if he invented sarcasm, putting hands in one’s pants, being lazy, cursing, nagging your wife, watching sports, smelling bad, and complaining about everything in life (particularly family and job). If he didn’t invent it, he made it cool and taught me how to do all those things. He probably wouldn’t win in a fight, but no man with any self respect wouldn’t hit him anyway, out of reverence.

Miss Universe Bikini Pictures

2007-05-31T08:14:00.000+01:00

8 Million Dollar Car

2007-05-31T07:52:00.000+01:00

8 Million Dollar Car

Which Is Less Manlier: Sex And The City or Gilmore Girls?

2007-05-30T07:43:00.000+01:00

Today was an interesting morning. I had the pleasure of getting into a rather absurd argument with one of my editors, Lukas, about the "manliest" of things: two TV shows that are now both defunct. I am referring to Sex and the City and Gilmore Girls. Why in the world would we be arguing about this? Simple. We really have nothing better to do.

Here's how this is going to work, I will present my flawless argument below which will be followed by Lukas' erroneous dribble. Then you guys, the readers and our other editors, can determine who's right and who isn't. I am not being biased on this at all (as you can tell), I just know I'm right. Lukas will try to blind you with smoke and mirrors about how the original version of Sex and the City was about gay dudes, etc, etc, etc. I, on the other hand, will keep it simple. So, without further ado...

Sex and the City

Kristen Davis flashed some form of nudity at least five times, and had five other lingerie moments while on the show. Thanks to MrSkin for the stats! I rest my case.

The Gilmore Girls

Okay so first off...why am I defending Gilmore Girls? I do genuinely think the show has funny moments...but I watch it because my girlfriend likes it. So that's first off...I've mentioned to Fraq ONCE that I couldn't talk because Gilmore was on, and that was during the series finale. I didn't know him while Sex and the City was in its first run on HBO, but I imagine his girl had him by the ballz whenever it came on.

I'm also lucky as hell that my girlfriend didn't like Sex and the City. Thankfully my girlfriend's guilty pleasure isn't some shit that is about spending my money on shopping trips and fruity ass drinks. So other than having to sit through the show, Gilmore Girls had no effect on my life.

I will also look at the pedigree of the two shows. One is produced by the creative people behind The Family Guy and Curb Your Enthusiasm. One is produced by the people who brought you Melrose Place.

But regardless of all logical, by the book arguments I could make about how Gilmore Girls is a better show and therefore more watchable than Sex and the City (and therefore less reprehensible that I, a man and not part of its female demographic, watched the show), the fact still remains that Sex and the City IS A GAYER show.

•It's been said in MANY places that the characters of Sex and the City talk like gay men. That they are written like gay men and then have their lines given to straight women.

I defer to this quote from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald:

For Sex and the City, it seemed the formula was to write gay male and cast straight female. Its (gay) creator, Darren Star (pictured), devised one of the gayest hit series featuring straight characters in television history. The lives of the glamorous central characters - and apologies here to gay readers who dislike the stereotyping as much as anyone - revolve around sex, shopping, gossip and bawdy humour. As City Journal has noted, the show is a Yellow Pages of Manhattan's status fashion objects, including Prada skirts, DKNY jeans and shoes by Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo. "The heroines lust after these pricey and au courant accoutrements of success ... They size up men with a similarly calculating eye for surfaces."

•The show's creatives are a cross of...gay men...more gay men...and a few super strange women.

•Just as Fraq conducted an informal poll (which he flaunted to me and then didn't use in his part of the article), so did I. I asked all the gay people I know which show they prefer more, Sex and the City or Gilmore Girls. They all said Sex and the City. My poll, by the way, is far more scientific than Franco's "which show is manlier, bro" poll.

But in the end, I'll submit myself to Google. Look at the following google searches, one for Sex and the City, the other for Gimore Girls .

That's GOOGLE. Not Mr. Skin. I rest my case.

Oh, and that argument that Sex and the City had titties...dude, why don't you just put a porn on then? Or...better yet...look at your girlfriend's boobs? Also, these are 50 year old tits we're talking about, dude.

*Side Note: While I have only seen a few episodes of each show, Lukas is what one might consider to be a "fanboy" of Gilmore Girls. But don't let that sway your judgment.

*Side Note 2: Read my argument. As I said, I watched the show with my girlfriend...you liar.

The notorious Frankfurter Illusion

2007-05-30T07:24:00.000+01:00

What to do & see

If you have two roughly equivalent eyes you will see a ‘sausage’ floating in front of you in mid air, by following these steps:

1. Hold your hands in front of you, at 20–30 cm distance from you, at eye level.
2. Point your index fingers against each other, leaving about 2 cm distance between them.
3. Now look “through” your fingers, into the distance behind them.
4. The sausage should appear now, and you can change its length by varying the distance between the finger tips.
5. For most observers, the sausage will look blurred, at least initially.
6. If you try to look at the sausage, it will disappear, it is only present if you look at something more distant than your fingers.
7. It helps if the background is rather homogenous and has a color very different from your fingers.

Comment

Basically, this ‘sausage’ is caused by two mechanisms, (1) physiological double images and (2) interocular rivalry and suppression.

When you look at your fingers, the gaze direction of your two eyes is angled towards each other, so that their lines of sight meet at the target. When you then look into the distance, your eyes shift slightly outward, making their lines of sight nearly parallel. For close objects the image in the two eyes is consequently no longer at the right position, the images are no longer merged and can appear double for your “inner eye”. This is quite normal and occurs all the time, usually these double images are suppressed. So, if the two images overlap, why then doesn't the compound image look like the neighbouring figure on the right?

At the end of the image of each finger, there is a rivalry between the image from the two eyes when the brain tries to combine them. In one eye the finger ends, in the other it continues. So what does your brain do in such rivalry situations? If the two images are rather similar, the percept can oscillate between the alternatives. Here, however, we have a high contrast step in one eye, namely the end of the finger, where it is replaced by the background. In rivalry the eye with the higher contrast wins, at least locally; this is here meant by the term ‘suppression’. In the figure on the left this high contrast step is symbolised by the yellow halo.

2 Very Sexy Women Playing Pool in Thongs

2007-05-26T09:01:00.000+01:00

2 Very Sexy Women Playing Pool in Thongs

The graphical evolution of Lara Croft

2007-05-26T08:40:00.000+01:00

Click on the image to see her larger.

Celebrity Virginity Showdown:Who lost it FIRST?

2007-05-24T09:48:00.000+01:00

The “first time” is hardly ever the best time, but it is always a milestone. Often, this information is a closely guarded secret shared between select friends, lovers, and that creepy bartender who won’t leave you alone, but here we talk about celebrities, and we know the slutty lives of the rich and famous are hardly kept a secret.

Angelina Jolie tops our list of the getting started the earliest. The exotic sex machine allegedly lost her virginity at the young age of 14. She proceeded to cut her boyfriend with a knife after getting screwed. “Your turn to bleed b*tch.” Okay, maybe she didn’t say that, but it’s fitting.

Kate Moss, the supermodel, allegedly lost it also at the age of 14, on a family holiday vacation in the Bahamas. Her family was sitting back loungin, while Kate was off getting a poundin’.

Jaime Pressly, “The Southern Sizzler”, is another hottie that lost her cherry at 14 to a 16 year old boyfriend in her hometown of Kinston, North Carolina. According to the Kinston official website, “Kinston offers fun for all ages with a variety of recreation and cultural activities,” yet, 14 year olds are still obviously looking for dick.

Paris Hilton was 15 and allegedly lost it to Randy Spelling, Tori’s brother, at a hotel in Palm Springs, and she’s been fuckin ever since. Several sex videos, one alleged Valtrex prescription, and now we have the blogosphere’s most famous slut. Any questions?

Sienna Miller was 16 when she was deflowered by her first serious boyfriend. She was actually encouraged by her mother to do it inside the house if she was going to do it at all. Obviously, sex in the house, is a lot safer than sex in the city.

Marcia Cross of “Desperate Housewives” was also allegedly 18 for her first romp. Dot the”i’s,” cross the”t’s,” add a little desperation, and Marcia was probably on her knees.

Britney Spears supposedly lost her treasured virginity to Justin Timberlake at the ripe old age of 18. And now, in a moment of silence, lets wonder why she decided to wife Federline, instead of hitting Justin one more time.

Shanna Moakler, former Miss USA (1995) and actress, was 18 and lost it in her dad’s office. He is a dentist. Suffice to say, teeth weren’t the only things getting drilled in that office.

Brooke Shields, once America’s most celebrated virgin, succumbed to the charms of fellow classmate Dean Cain when both were attending Princeton University. She was 20. And now, she is 42, and nobody cares.

Tina Fey, the “30 Rock” star, held out until she was 24. The lucky guy was her future husband. How upstanding and respectable, but with her loss, she was no longer a collectible.

Finally, Elvira, aka Cassandra Peterson, had singer Tom Jones as her very first lover. Supposedly, he was so well endowed that she needed stitches after all was said and done! But she says she still enjoyed it. Vampires like blood.

Fill your car up with aluminum?

2007-05-18T19:32:00.000+01:00

Pellets made out of aluminum and gallium can produce pure hydrogen when water is poured on them, offering a possible alternative to gasoline-powered engines, U.S. scientists say.

Hydrogen is seen as the ultimate in clean fuels, especially for powering cars, because it emits only water when burned. U.S. President George W. Bush has proclaimed hydrogen to be the fuel of the future, but researchers have not decided what is the most efficient way to produce and store hydrogen.

In the experiment conducted at Purdue University in Indiana, "The hydrogen is generated on demand, so you only produce as much as you need when you need it," said Jerry Woodall, an engineering professor at Purdue who invented the system.

Woodall said in a statement the hydrogen would not have to be stored or transported, taking care of two stumbling blocks to generating hydrogen.

For now, the Purdue scientists think the system could be used for smaller engines like lawn mowers and chain saws. But they think it would work for cars and trucks as well, either as a replacement for gasoline or as a means of powering hydrogen fuel cells.

"It is one of the more feasible ideas out there," Jay Gore, an engineering professor and interim director of the Energy Center at Purdue's Discovery Park, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "It's a very simple idea but had not been done before."

On its own, aluminum will not react with water because it forms a protective skin when exposed to oxygen. Adding gallium keeps the film from forming, allowing the aluminum to react with oxygen in the water, releasing hydrogen and aluminum oxide, also known as alumina.

What is left over is aluminum oxide and gallium. In the engine, the byproduct of burning hydrogen is water.

"No toxic fumes are produced," Woodall said.

Based on current energy and raw materials prices, the cost of making the hydrogen fuel is about $3 a gallon, about the same as the average price for a gallon of gas in the United States.

Recycling the aluminum oxide byproduct and developing a lower grade of gallium could bring down costs, making the system more affordable, Woodall said.

How I Failed the Turing Test

2007-05-18T19:27:00.000+01:00

Some time around March, I started receiving a number of random instant messages from people I've never met before. Apparantly, my AIM alias had been added to at least two online lists and people all over the world were busy importing me as a buddy.

I say "at least two" because the people who contacted me fell into one of two camps: people who thought they were contacting a celebrity and people who thought they were contacting a robot. As I talked to more and more of these folks, I began to discover something really disturbing about myself:

I consistently fail to be perceived as human.

When this first started happening, a typical conversation with a celebrity admirer would go something like this (participant's IM handle is fabricated):

angelcutie42: hi!
jmstriegel: hey. what's up? do i know you?
angelcutie42: no
angelcutie42: someone gave me a bunch of screen names. i heard you are a celebrity.
jmstriegel: that's weird. i'm afraid i'm not a celeb at all.
angelcutie42: oh.
angelcutie42: bye

This was entertaining at first, but it quickly became a bit depressing as the angelcutie42s of the wired world would, one after the other, decide I wasn't worth talking to if I wasn't a celebrity. Want to know what it's like being dumped by a random groupie 5 times a day? Not good at all, thank you very much.

So that's when I started hamming it up a bit. I'm not really proud of it, but my fans wanted a celebrity.. so I gave them one:

sexybumkin123: hey.. so you're famous right?
jmstriegel: Who me? I'm a movie star.
jmstriegel: Shit, I gotta go.
jmstriegel: My limo just arrived and Paris wants her damned sidekick back.
sexybumkin123: Oh my god. Come back!
sexybumkin123: I love you!!!!

My groupies loved it. The more celebrity balogna I manufactured, the more they ate it, and the more they loved me.

Then, something strange started happening. As my career as an artificial celebrity started to take off, I began to receive some strange IMs from a whole new class of random people. These new admirers were convinced I was a robot... and it suddenly became clear to me that something was very wrong.

Nobody would believe I was human. In one troubling conversation after another, I felt my intellectual teeter-totter quickly tip from from actual to artificial.

fratburger86: hey. so you're a sex bot?
jmstriegel: umm, no. who the hell are you?
fratburger86: yeah you are! i found your im online
jmstriegel: that's fine and all, but i'm pretty sure you have me confused with someone else.
fratburger86: just a normal chat bot then?
jmstriegel: nope. i'm human
fratburger86: ok. sure.
fratburger86: asl?
jmstriegel: no thanks.
fratburger86: what?
jmstriegel: i'm not really interested in any conversation that starts with "asl"
fratburger86: oh come on. say something sexy.
jmstriegel: seriously, i think you want to talk to someone else.
fratburger86: i knew it!!!
fratburger86: you are totally a robot!

This is where things took a turn for the worse.

I mentioned already that I couldn't convince a single person that I wasn't a chat bot. It's one thing for people to think you are artificially intelligent. I can live with that, I guess. What really killed me was that the more I tried proving my "actual" intelligence, the more my "artificial" intelligence would get called into question. Take this pivotal conversation:

jmstriegel: no, really. I'm quite human.
jmstriegel: test me if you want
shymuffin32: ok
shymuffin32: why do you like music?
jmstriegel: hmm. i've never really considered that.
jmstriegel: hell, i'm not going to be able to contrive a good answer for that one. ask me something else.
shymuffin32: jeesus, you're worse than eliza

And there you have it. I've been intellectually humbled by a 1960s robotic psychologist.

Stripped of all dignity and self respect, I decided to take my troubles to Eliza, robot psychologist and intellectual superior. Maybe she could help with the questions I now have. Perhaps there is some meaning to all of this that my feeble mind is incapable of investigating on its own.

eliza: Hello, I'm Eliza
jmstriegel: hi
eliza: How are you today.. What would you like to discuss?
jmstriegel: people think i am a robot
eliza: How long have you been a robot?
jmstriegel: i'm not a robot
eliza: Do you believe it is normal to be not a robot?
jmstriegel: are you saying i'm not normal?
eliza: Perhaps in your fantasies I am saying you're not normal?
jmstriegel: no. i just want to be human
eliza: What if you never got to be human?

What if I never get to be human? It's a good question. What does it mean to not exist in the minds of others? I've not only failed as an intelligent human, but I couldn't even pass as artificially intelligent. Even Eliza appears sceptical... how long have I been a robot?

So what if I'm not intelligent? What if I'm not even artificially intelligent? What if I never get to be human?

At least I can pass as a pretty convincing celebrity.

BitTorrent pirate loses appeal in landmark case

2007-05-18T19:17:00.001+01:00

Authorities believe a Hong Kong man who lost his appeal today in the territory's highest court is the first in the world to be convicted of downloading pirated movies using BitTorrent file-sharing technology.

Chan Nai-ming, who used the alias 'Big Crook' on the peer-to-peer BitTorrent network, was found guilty in October 2005 of copyright infringement and attempting to distribute three Hollywood movies using the popular file-sharing software.

While Internet users have used BitTorrent technology for years to download movies undetected, Chan was caught red-handed by a Hong Kong Customs officer in January 2005.

The three movies Chan was convicted of pirating were Dare-Devil, Miss Congeniality and Red Planet.

"He plainly succeeded in distributing copies of the films in question," the five-member Court of Final Appeal said in its judgment. "The appeal must accordingly be dismissed."

Chan had been sentenced to three months imprisonment, and had served several weeks in prison before the appeal against his conviction.

The defence argued that Chan merely enabled BitTorrent users "to make copies of their own" of movies stored on his hard disk, rather than trying to "transfer" any copy in his possession, according to the judgment.

But the judgment rejected that argument, saying Chan "did create and have possession of such a copy, transiently or otherwise, for distribution to the downloading swarm".

The Hong Kong government welcomed the judgment, saying it clarified the law regarding Internet piracy.

The BitTorrent system is designed to distribute large amounts of data such as movies by allowing individual computers to "share" the material they are downloading from a source.

Hong Kong's Commerce Secretary said the posting of copyrighted materials in Hong Kong using BitTorrent had dropped 80 per cent within a year of Chan's arrest in 2005.

Georgia judge halts lesbian adoption

2007-05-18T19:08:00.001+01:00

Days away from her seventh birthday, a little girl named Emma Rose is currently trapped in Georgia’s foster care system, unable to reunite with the woman who has been her mother for almost a year — all because the mother is a lesbian.

The prospective adoptive mother, Elizabeth Hadaway, was also sentenced to 10 days in jail earlier this month by a Wilkinson County Superior Court judge who refused to grant the adoption in part because “the child will have a long-term exposure to the homosexual parent’s lifestyle.”

Wilkinson County is located about 133 miles southeast of Atlanta.

“I thought one of the first rules of being a judge was putting your owns morals or views or whatever aside — you’re supposed to be fair,” Hadaway said. “I didn’t think who I decided to sleep with at night would determine whether I was a good parent — I didn’t know that was even possible.

“I’m hurt and I’m let down, but I feel even worse for Emma,” added Hadaway, 28.

Hadaway first began trying to adopt Emma Rose last spring at the request of the young girl’s biological mother, Deborah Schultz, who is also a lesbian. According to court documents and an interview with Hadaway, Schultz informed Hadaway that she had fallen on tough times and asked Hadaway to take custody of her six-year-old daughter.

Hadaway traveled to Florida last May to pick up Emma Rose, and a month later she was granted legal custody of the child by Wilkinson County Superior Court Judge James Cline. A few months later, Hadaway underwent a mandatory home evaluation by a local adoption agency, where it came out that Hadaway was a lesbian and living with her partner of seven years.

“We were pretty open about it and the lady who did the home evaluation was fine with it,” said Hadaway, who noted that the home evaluation found her suitable to adopt Emma Rose.

During a November hearing to finalize the adoption, Hadaway said Wilkinson County Superior Court Judge John Lee Parrott was originally supportive and encouraging of the adoption he was preparing to grant; however, once Parrott skimmed the home evaluation report, Hadaway said the judge’s mood shifted, and he began “acting really disgusted.”

“He started flipping through the home evaluation … and his whole demeanor really changed at that point,” Hadaway said. “He took his glasses off, and he sat there and looked at the other side of the room, and he said, ‘Let me get this straight — you are in a homosexual relationship,’” Hadaway said of Parrott.

Hadaway admitted she was in a lesbian relationship, and Parrott said he needed to do research to determine if Georgia law allowed adoptions by gay parents, according to Hadaway. On Jan. 8, 2007, Parrott issued a ruling that denied Hadaway the right to adopt Emma Rose and ordered the young child be returned to her biological mother within 10 days.

Parrott did not respond to interview requests.

Family union

Parrott’s 16-page ruling is inundated with references to Hadaway’s homosexuality, and his belief that placing Emma Rose in a lesbian home is not in the best interest of the child.

Parrott conceded that Georgia law has no requirements relating to the sexual orientation of adoptive parents, but accused Hadaway of attempting to “subterfuge and sham” the court by applying as a single adoptive parent when she “seeks to accomplish an adoption by a de facto homosexual couple," according to a copy of the ruling provided to Southern Voice by Hadaway.

Parrott also argued that the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage approved by Georgia voters in 2004 effectively prohibits adoptions by same-sex couples.

“[Hadaway] seeks to have her and her same-sex partner treated as a family union or unit, the same as a married couple for the purposes of adoption,” Parrott wrote. “Clearly, then, the unmarried homosexual union in this case would be getting a direct benefit of marriage under Georgia adoption law: the ability to adopt.”

Without the legal protections of divorce, Hadaway has no way to insure her lesbian partner will maintain financial responsibility if the couple breaks up, Parrott noted.

“If approved, the requested adoption would place the child in a markedly less secure legal environment than a child adopted by a legally married couple,” wrote Parrott.

But Hadaway contends that she alone is financially secure enough to raise Emma Rose, and that her partner’s income was included in the home evaluation because the report requires the listing of financial information for all adults in the household.

Parrott also ruled against placing Emma Rose with Hadaway because the young girl would be exposed to both homosexuality and discrimination.

“If the instant adoption is approved, inevitably the child will witness both directly and circumstantially the homosexual activity of [Hadaway] and her same-sex partner,” Parrott wrote. “There has been no study conducted … into the isolation and stigma that the child may face growing up in a small, rural town with two women, in whose care she was placed at the age of six, who openly engage in homosexual relationship.”

‘Deprived child'?

Parrott’s ruling ordered Emma Rose to be returned to Deborah Schultz within 10 days, or be declared a “deprived child” and turned over the Georgia Department of Family & Children Services. Hadaway and Shultz met at a truck stop in Jeffersonville, Ga., on Jan. 12, 2007, but Shultz refused to take Emma Rose back to Florida with her, instead reiterating her wish for Hadaway to raise the young girl.

Prior to Parrott’s Jan. 8 ruling, Hadaway left her longtime partner and moved to Bibb County, 70 miles south of Atlanta, which she considered more progressive and tolerant than Wilkinson County. After Shultz refused to regain custody of Emma Rose, Hadaway said she was encouraged by attorneys and DFCS workers to apply for an adoption in Bibb County Superior Court.

Upon discovering that Emma Rose remained in Hadaway’s custody, Parrott issued two more rulings: a Feb. 12 order to place Emma Rose in DFCS custody, and a March 23 ruling finding Hadaway and her attorney in criminal contempt for not following his order to transfer custody of the child. The two women were sentenced to 10 days in jail, or five days plus a $500 fine, but are currently appealing Parrott’s decision.

Citing a report by Alicia Gregory, a doctor hired by Wilkinson County DFCS to conduct an independent assessment of Emma Rose’s situation, Bibb County Superior Court Judge Tilman Self ruled March 30 that Hadaway be restored custody.

“Dr. Gregory concluded, and in fact was quite adamant, that Emma’s best interests would be served by returning Emma to [Hadaway’s] custody,” Self wrote. “Indeed, Dr. Gregory stated that Emma’s current foster placement was the worst possible scenario for Emma.”

But when Hadaway and Wilkinson County sheriff’s deputies attempted to retrieve Emma Rose from her foster family on April 3, they were rebuffed.

“The foster family would not turn her over to me,” Hadaway said. When the sheriff’s deputies informed the foster family that they had a Bibb County court order demanding Emma Rose be returned to Hadaway, the foster father allegedly called Parrott. The judge told the officer that he was not recognizing the Bibb County order, and if Hadaway wanted custody of Emma Rose she would have to re-apply in Wilkinson County.

“If anyone’s a pervert in this whole thing, it’s him — he’s sick,” Hadaway said of Parrott. “He’s mad because I’m gay, and he doesn’t want me to have custody.”

With Georgia law neither banning nor endorsing same-sex adoption explicitly, Parrott’s original order denying the adoption to Hadaway was within his authority, said Jim Outman, an adoption attorney in Atlanta.

But Hadaway is entitled to re-apply for an adoption if her circumstances change — such as moving to Bibb County — and Parrott’s efforts to prevent that have been “very extreme,” Outman said.

“If I petition [a judge] to do something and you deny my petition, that doesn’t invite you to become my enemy for life,” Outman said. “He’s carrying his beliefs beyond any case before him, and he’s saying he’s going to save this child from this lesbian woman.”

Hadaway’s new lawyer — Parrott prohibited her first attorney from continuing to represent Hadaway after he found them both in contempt — is filing a habeas corpus claim and a writ of mandamus with the Georgia Supreme Court in an attempt to get the Bibb County custody order enforced.

There is no timeline for when a ruling will be issued.

Blind man says his gun permit does not make him dangerous

2007-05-18T18:56:00.001+01:00

A blind man who has concealed weapons permits in North Dakota and Utah says he's not a danger to society, even though he can't see the gun he's shooting.

Carey McWilliams, 33, says he has followed all the required rules, and he wants Minnesota to join other states that have granted him a concealed weapons permit. He says he was rejected first by a Minnesota county sheriff and then by a judge in that state.

"I'm trying to prove a point that people without sight still can carry (a gun) because brains are more important than eyesight in securing public safety," McWilliams said. "The shooter at Virginia Tech had really good eyesight and he killed 32 people."

Bill Bergquist, the Clay County, Minn., sheriff, said he felt bad about denying a permit for McWilliams.

"He's a super nice guy," Bergquist said. "But the application states that a person should be able to show proficiency on the firing range and a proficiency of the weapons. That's the issue.

"Sometimes I have to ask myself, what is right in this case? I felt when I denied it, he could have his day in court."

McWilliams said he completed the required class and shooting exercise by Paul Horvick, a National Rifle Association instructor. Horvick said he believes gun rights are private and would not comment on anyone he has taught or tested. Documents on Minnesota weapons hearings are sealed.

McWilliams said he uses special low-range, hollow-point bullets that are effective only in tight quarters.

"If I use a gun it will be at point-blank range, period," he said. "A sighted shooter is probably more dangerous because they can see something scary and pull their gun in haste."

Under Minnesota law, an applicant must be issued a license for a gun or a concealed weapon if he or she completes the class and shooting exercise and passes a background check - unless "there exists a substantial likelihood that the applicant is a danger to self or the public if authorized to carry a pistol under permit."

McWilliams believes Minnesota officials have violated his constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

"It's nobody's business that I'm blind," he said.

McWilliams lives in a Fargo trailer park with his wife, Victoria. One of their neighbors, Jon Storley, accompanied McWilliams during his appeal to the Minnesota district court.

"He's not a nut, he's not a weirdo, he's not a freak," said Storley, a cab driver and rock musician. "I'm not a lawyer, but in this case I believe the judge was legislating from the bench."

Storley also said he doesn't blame Bergquist and Kirk for their decisions, calling the case "a kettle of worms."

Oddly enough, the permit McWilliams obtained from the state of Utah is recognized in 30 other states - including Minnesota. McWilliams said he had to complete a "firearms familiarity course" before receiving the Utah license.

"Basically, they just passed around a couple of guns," McWilliams said.

McWilliams, who got his North Dakota permit in 2001, testified during the 2005 North Dakota legislative session against a proposal to drop the written part of the concealed weapons test. He told lawmakers it would allow people who are ignorant about firearm regulations to get permits. The test was eliminated.

The Legislature also decided to keep individual information about weapons permits confidential, said Liz Brocker, spokeswoman for the attorney general's office.

"All I can tell you is the total number of permits that have been issued," she said. The state has issued 8,030 permits, she said.

McWilliams lost his eyesight when he was 10 years old, after a series of headaches and gradual deterioration. It was a mystery to doctors.

He said he was a victim of domestic violence growing up and was stalked by gang members. "I've had situations where I would have felt threatened if I hadn't been carrying," he said.

McWilliams has written two books, including an autobiography published earlier this year that talks about his experiences in sky diving, scuba diving and deep sea fishing. He was in two segments of Michael Moore's antigun movie, "Bowling for Columbine," including a scene showing him cradling an AK-47 assault rifle.

Much of his autobiography is about his weapons training and testing.

"My permits together allow me, with reciprocity, to carry my gun in 30 states, one of which could be yours," he writes. "But never fear, with my extensive experience in firearms, I have take all reasonable measures to ensure the safety of others."

The 10 Greatest Completely Insane Television Shows Of All Time

2007-05-18T18:44:00.000+01:00

During the upfronts this week, the media has been freaking out about the fact that ABC has given the greenlight to the new sitcom Cavemen, which is based on the popular series of Geico commercials. While I will reserve my judgement until I actually see the show (keep in mind it does feature our own brilliant Nick Kroll), I would like to point out some of history’s other competely insane TV shows, several of which actually weren’t half bad.

10. Homeboys In Outer Space (UPN, ‘96-’97) - Two black dudes fly around the galaxy in a “space hoopty” guided by a sassy onboard computer named “Loquatia”. Seriously. That was on television.

pular TV series about some chick hiding a coked-up space alien in her attic. Even more amazing is that TV audiences were able to put up with Robin Williams‘ wacky spaceman antics for a full 4 years without wanting to tear their eyes out.

6. Dinosaurs (ABC, ‘91-’94) - Oh, but to have been in the network pitch meeting where some dude was all like, “See, it’s a blue-collar family sitcom - but instead of people, they’re talking DINOSAURS!” And then some high-powered executive type starts nodding his head purposefully, then does a slow golf clap before asking if there could be an idiotic catchphrase, perhaps if the baby dinosaur keeps repeating, for no particular reason, “Not the mama! Not the mama!” while hitting people with a prehistoric frying pan.

5. Out of This World (Syndicated, ‘87-’91) - So it’s like a teen coming-of-age drama, except Evie - the puberty-ravaged Jr. High girl who the show’s about - is a half-alien who has the power to start and stop time like a clap-on lamp. Instead of using these powers for something awesome (say, robbing enough banks to retire by the time she starts high school), Evie mostly just tries to figure out why that surfer dude doesn’t like her. And somehow we never even got to see her mother tell Evie about the time she f*cked an alien.

4. Cop Rock (ABC, ‘90-’90) - Perhaps the most insane idea ever to have landed in the small mind of a desperate TV producer, the entire concept of a series that combines the melodrama of an urban cop show with the flamboyance of musical theater is something so retarded it almost becomes genius again. I seriously hope this gets a DVD release soon, because I would really love to enjoy lyrics like “We’re the local color with the coppertone skin / And you treat us like we’re guilty of some terrible sin.” over and over again.

3. Mr. Ed (CBS, ‘61-’66) - A pioneer in the “insane sitcom” genre of TV shows. I mean come on, it’s about a horse that f*cking talks, and with absolutely no explanation of how this horse somehow became imbued with the ability to communicate in clear, eloquent English. And why English? Why can’t the horse speak French or Portuguese or something?

2. Alf (NBC, ‘86-’90) - So a cat-eating alien crash lands into the home of a suburban family named “The Tanners”, then spends four years hiding in their kitchen (great hiding place, ALF!)? In the end, ALF ends up getting caught by the Military, who has presumably spent the last 20 years conducting scientific tests to determine why he’s such a smart-ass, the results of which were later used to create the character of Chandler Bing on Friends.

1. Manimal (NBC, ‘83-’83) - An entire show about a shape-shifting doctor who could turn himself in to an animal to fight crime? Yes, please! Besides, the title alone is one of the most awesome things television has ever given us.

Worst Dad Award Nominee

2007-05-18T18:30:00.000+01:00

Worst Dad Award Nominee

Military officers explain why torture is disasterously counter-productive

2007-05-17T14:42:00.000+01:00

Fear can be a strong motivator. It led Franklin Roosevelt to intern tens of thousands of innocent U.S. citizens during World War II; it led to Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt, which ruined the lives of hundreds of Americans. And it led the United States to adopt a policy at the highest levels that condoned and even authorized torture of prisoners in our custody.

Fear is the justification offered for this policy by former CIA director George Tenet as he promotes his new book. Tenet oversaw the secret CIA interrogation program in which torture techniques euphemistically called "waterboarding," "sensory deprivation," "sleep deprivation" and "stress positions" -- conduct we used to call war crimes -- were used. In defending these abuses, Tenet revealed: "Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through: the palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know."

We have served in combat; we understand the reality of fear and the havoc it can wreak if left unchecked or fostered. Fear breeds panic, and it can lead people and nations to act in ways inconsistent with their character.

The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp. Regrettably, at Tuesday night's presidential debate in South Carolina, several Republican candidates revealed a stunning failure to understand this most basic obligation. Indeed, among the candidates, only John McCain demonstrated that he understands the close connection between our security and our values as a nation.

Tenet insists that the CIA program disrupted terrorist plots and saved lives. It is difficult to refute this claim -- not because it is self-evidently true, but because any evidence that might support it remains classified and unknown to all but those who defend the program.

These assertions that "torture works" may reassure a fearful public, but it is a false security. We don't know what's been gained through this fear-driven program. But we do know the consequences.

As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture -- only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works -- the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real "ticking time bomb" situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of "flexibility" about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone -- the rare exception fast becoming the rule.

To understand the impact this has had on the ground, look at the military's mental health assessment report released earlier this month. The study shows a disturbing level of tolerance for abuse of prisoners in some situations. This underscores what we know as military professionals: Complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality.

This has had disastrous consequences. Revelations of abuse feed what the Army's new counterinsurgency manual, which was drafted under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, calls the "recuperative power" of the terrorist enemy.

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once wondered aloud whether we were creating more terrorists than we were killing. In counterinsurgency doctrine, that is precisely the right question. Victory in this kind of war comes when the enemy loses legitimacy in the society from which it seeks recruits and thus loses its "recuperative power."

The torture methods that Tenet defends have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.

This is not just a lesson for history. Right now, White House lawyers are working up new rules that will govern what CIA interrogators can do to prisoners in secret. Those rules will set the standard not only for the CIA but also for what kind of treatment captured American soldiers can expect from their captors, now and in future wars. Before the president once again approves a policy of official cruelty, he should reflect on that.

It is time for us to remember who we are and approach this enemy with energy, judgment and confidence that we will prevail. That is the path to security, and back to ourselves.

Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.

Ron Paul

2007-05-17T14:31:00.000+01:00

Plenty of reasonable people can disagree about foreign policy. What's really strange is when one reasonable position is completely and forcibly excluded from the public debate.

Such was the case after 9-11. Every close observer of the events of those days knows full well that these crimes were acts of revenge for US policy in the Muslim world. The CIA and the 911 Commission said as much, the terrorists themselves proclaimed it, and Osama underscored the point by naming three issues in particular: US troops in Saudi Arabia, US sanctions against Iraq, and US funding of Israeli expansionism.

So far as I know, Ron Paul is the only prominent public figure in the six years since who has given an honest telling of this truth. The explosive exchange occurred during the Republican Presidential debate in South Carolina.

Ron was asked if he really wants the troops to come home, and whether that is really a Republican position.

"Well," he said, "I think the party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy. Senator Robert Taft didn't even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy – no nation-building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There's a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them."

He was then asked if 9-11 changed anything. He responded that US foreign policy was a "major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attacked us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East – I think Reagan was right. We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. "

And then out of the blue, he was asked whether we invited the attacks.

"I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, 'I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.' They have already now since that time – have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary."

Then the very archetype of the State Enforcer popped up to shout him down.

"That's really an extraordinary statement," said Rudy Giuliani. "That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th."

Now, this is interesting because it is obvious that Ron never said that we invited the attacks. This was a lie. He said the US foreign policy was a "contributing factor" in why they attacked us, a fact which only a fool or a liar could deny. Guiliani then went on to say that he has never "heard that before" – a statement that testifies to the extent of the blackout on this question.

Ron Paul was invited to respond, and concluded as follows:

"I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were – if other foreign countries were doing that to us?"

Wow, he broke the great taboo in American political life! Why this should be a taboo at all is unclear, but there it is. But now that it is finally out in the open, this shocking theory that the terrorists were not merely freedom-hating madmen but perhaps had some actual motive for their crime, let's think a bit more about it.

It is a normal part of human experience that if you occupy, meddle, bully, and coerce, people who are affected by it all are going to get angry. You don't have to be Muslim to get the point. The problem is that most of the American people simply have no idea what has been happening in the last ten years. Most Americans think that America the country is much like their own neighborhood: peaceful, happy, hard working, law abiding. So when you tell people that the US is actually something completely different, they are shocked.

Why would anyone hate us? The problem is that the military wing of the US government is very different from your neighborhood. After the Soviet Union crashed, US elites declared themselves masters of the universe, the only "indispensable nation" and the like. All countries must ask the US for permission to have a nuclear program. If we don't like your government, we can overthrow it. Meanwhile, we sought a global empire unlike any in history: not just a sphere of interest but the entire world. Laurence Vance has the details but here is the bottom line: one-third of a million deployed troops in 134 countries in 1000 locations in foreign countries.

All during the 1990s, the US attempted to starve the population of Iraq, with the result of hundreds of thousands of deaths. Madelyn Albright said on national television that the deaths of 500,000 children (the UN's number) was "worth it" in order to achieve our aims, which were ostensibly the elimination of non-existent, non-US built weapons of mass destruction. Yes, that annoyed a few people. There were constant bombings in Iraq all these years. And let us not forget how all this nonsense began: the first war in 1989 was waged in retaliation for a US-approved Iraqi invasion of its former province, Kuwait. Saddam had good reason to think that the US ambassador was telling the truth about non-interference with Kuwait relations: Saddam was our ally all through the Iran-Iraq war and before.

Ron spoke about complications of the Middle East. One of them is that the enemy we are now fighting, the Islamic extremists, are the very group that we supported and subsidized all through the 1980s in the name of fighting Communism. That's the reason the US knows so much about their bunkers and hiding spots in Afghanistan: US taxdollars created them.

Now, I know this is a lot for the tender ears of Americans to take, who like to think that their government reflects their own values of faith, freedom, and friendliness. But here is the point that libertarians have been trying to hammer home for many years: the US government is the enemy of the American people and their values. It is not peaceful, it is not friendly, it is not motivated by the Christian faith but rather power and imperial lust.

Ron is such a wonderful person that I'm sorry that he had to be the one to tell the truth. One could sense in the debate that he was making an enormous sacrifice here. After Guiliani spoke, the red-state fascists in the audience all started whooping up the bloodlust that the politicians have been encouraging for the last six years – a mindless display of Nazi-like nationalism that would cause the founding fathers to shudder with fear of what we've become. These people are frantic about terrorism and extremism abroad, but they need to take a good hard look in the mirror.

Thank you, Ron, for doing this. We are all in your debt.

Kung Fu Master Can Suck His Balls Into His Abdomen

2007-05-17T14:23:00.000+01:00

115 Simpsons Openings in One Video

2007-05-15T17:49:00.000+01:00

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This kid really, really loves his dog

2007-05-15T17:32:00.000+01:00

Vintage champagne and minders - the amazing life of the £250,000 conman aged 13

2007-05-05T15:48:00.000+01:00

A 13-year-old boy who lives with his grandmother has been exposed as one of Britain's biggest Internet conmen.

The boy earned more than £250,000 by posing as the boss of several multinational companies selling vacuum cleaners, stationery and office supplies.

Many of the goods were never dispatched, but the fraudster used the cash to revel in a luxurious lifestyle way beyond his years: he wore designer suits, drank vintage champagne and travelled only by chauffeur-driven limousine.

He even employed a personal bodyguard, flew abroad on business trips and claimed he was going to buy a private jet.

The astonishing case echoes the film Catch Me If You Can (itself based on a true story) in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays a teenage con artist who makes millions posing as an airline pilot, doctor and lawyer.

And just as in the film, the boy - who cannot be named for legal reasons - became criminally obsessed with appearing wealthy and successful.

Scroll down for more...

Leonardo DiCaprio as conman Frank William Abagnale in Catch Me If You Can

A source close to the police investigation said: "Despite coming from a relatively humble background, he became an outrageous snob. He claimed public transport was 'for commoners'.

"He would not eat sandwiches unless the crusts were cut off. And once he started making money he refused to attend school unless the local council paid for him to go to a private school.

"He is a total bully and an extremely arrogant young man."

This week, Balham Youth Court in South London heard that the boy - now 16 - embarked on a three-year fraud spree after his mother died of cancer.

He received a £16,000 inheritance, some of which he spent on crime books that detailed the methods of successful conmen.

Then, working from his bedroom at his grandmother's house in Chiswick, West London, he set up a website which purported to sell plasma screen televisions at vastly discounted prices.

Despite not supplying the goods, the money started to roll in and he gave up going to school in order to expand the "business".

He eventually set up a stationery and office supply firm, a dating website and a modelling agency.

The teenage conman quickly outgrew his grandmother's bedroom and moved into a succession of offices - including one in Mayfair, one of the most exclusive areas of Central London.

However, he would never stay longer than two or three months and would always move out without paying the rent. He also took on staff, employing dozens of people after placing advertisements in a Jobcentre. Unsurprisingly, many are still waiting to be paid.

Trading Standards and the police were inundated with complaints and the boy was initially arrested in October 2004.

But he was given bail and went on to reoffend - a pattern that repeated itself four times over the following two years.

A police source said: "It was like he was addicted to conning people. And whenever he was confronted with what he did, he showed absolutely no remorse. He even appeared to enjoy the police and court attention."

On Tuesday the court heard that between 2004 and 2006 the boy racked up unpaid bills of more than £19,000 at three luxury cab firms.

He also made bulk purchases on credit from expensive stores and took so-called "business trips" to Paris and Edinburgh.

On one occasion he even claimed he wanted to buy an aeroplane and walked around a private jet salesroom, afterwards revealing that he loved the way the staff 'sucked up' to him.

He also spent his money hiring women from escort agencies, taking horse-riding lessons and going drinking in exclusive London clubs.

Yesterday a police source revealed that despite the boy's intelligence, his lack of a formal education was exposed in emails he sent to one of his victims, which were littered with simple spelling and grammatical errors.

A police source claimed he could be very convincing nonetheless.

He said: "He is 6ft tall and looks a lot older than he is. He was able to rent the business addresses by putting down a deposit and then simply disappearing when the rents were due.

"When finding staff he would use different Jobcentres, so that he was never blacklisted."

In court on Tuesday, he admitted 16 charges of fraud totalling £50,000 but a further 105 charges, worth £135,000, were taken into consideration. The court was told that the boy's latest project is an online lingerie store, which his solicitor insisted was a genuine business.

Despite this, the boy was warned he could face a custodial sentence when he returns to court later this month.

Yesterday, one of the teenage conman's former employees revealed how he owes her almost £4,000 in backpay.

Claire Young, 26, from Mortlake in South-West London, was until yesterday working as the teenager's personal assistant.

She said: "He used to take me to a polo club and expensive bars in the City. He would take his friends along, too, saying he would pay for everything. I just thought he was a very generous boss.

"I feel like a fool because all the time he was just conning me. My boyfriend even bought two printers from his website but they never arrived.

"But he always managed to convince me when I asked for my money. There was always an excuse like: 'I couldn't get to the bank. It was shut'."

Following his conviction, his victims are now likely to club together to bring a civil court case in order to recover their money.

Although it is not known how much money he has, the teenager is thought to be named as the sole beneficiary of his grandmother's £900,000 house.

Last night three of the fraudster's websites remained up and running, but he told the Daily Mail that many of his customers had received their goods, boasting: "I have many very happy customers."

Asked whether he would repay those who weren't so pleased, he said: "That's up to the courts."

However, he did admit that considering buying a private jet was "a bit silly - I was only 13 at the time".

This Is Hardcore: 10 Fleshy Album Covers

2007-05-05T15:36:00.000+01:00

When it comes to cover art, there are a lot of things to consider. To succeed, an album cover must match the themes, emotions and atmospheres of the music to a stunning visual that encapsulates the album.

Sometimes artists go for subtlety and nuance, other times, they let it all hang out ... and I do mean all of it. But, as the soft-spoken members of Three 6 Mafia once said, "ass and titties."

Here's a list of 10 album covers that rely more on flesh than audio-visual consistency, but be warned it gets pretty raunchy (read: penis, vagina etc ...).

10. The Pixies - Surfer Rosa

9. The Strokes - It This It (UK version)

8. Basement Jaxx - Remedy

7. Grace Jones - Island Life

6. John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Two Virgins

5. Sugar Ray - Lemonade and Brownies

4. Pulp - This Is Hardcore

3. Xiu Xiu - A Promise

2. Blind Faith - Blind Faith

1. Liars - It Fit When I Was A Kid

Not that there's any reason you'd ever, ever, ever want to see, but here's the uncensored version.

Top 20 Celebrity Drug Confessions

2007-05-01T13:34:00.000+01:00

Angelina Jolie:

I hate heroin because I’ve been fascinated by it. I’m not immune, but I won’t do it now, at all.

Brad Pitt:

If someone wants to do drugs…as long as he or she isn’t corrupting minors or driving under the influence or endangering others, shouldn’t a person have that right?

Colin Farrell:

I ended up on a shrink’s couch, and he told me to write down how much I did in a week: 20 E’s, 4 grams of coke, six of speed, half an ounce of hash, three bottles of Jack Daniel’s, 12 bottles of red wine, 60 pints.

Drew Barrymore:

My mind seemed to have a huge neon sign in it that blinked nonstop: COKE. GET COKE. So I did. It was great for dieting, partying and picking up my mood.

George Clooney:

I’ve slept with too many women, done too many drugs and been to too many parties. I loved acid when I was at college. It was an escape. I liked mushrooms. They were like easy acid. I did like blow…Blow would dress you up for a party, but never take you there. You’re always like. This is going to be great! Then you’re just depressed.

Fergie Ferguson:

The drug was the hardest boyfriend I ever had to break up with. I dug deep as to why I got there.

Nicole Richie:

I was like a trash can - I took everything.

Halle Berry:

People in this business use cocaine and crack, but I never wanted to put that in my body. Why would I? I tried pot when I was 18 or 19. But it just made me scared to leave the house.

Anthony Kiedis:

I grew up with drugs, but it wasn’t until recently, that I grew out of them.

Davina McCall:

You name it, I took it. Cocaine, ecstasy, even heroin – although I never injected... I had a job so I looked like I was holding everything together. But then the cracks started to show.

Bill Hicks:

See I think drugs have done some good things for us, I really do, and if you don’t believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favor: go home tonight and take all your albums, all your tapes, and all your cds and burn ‘em. ’cause you know the musicians who made all that great music that’s enhanced your lives throughout the years.... rrrrrrrrreal f**kin high on drugs.

Joel Madden:

Without cigarettes, I would be doing heroin, probably, on a daily basis.

Madonna:

I only tried Vicodin once. Drugs have a weird effect on me. They do the opposite with me. I just chewed the entire inside of my mouth. I bitched at everybody. And I was in more pain. It was the worst experience of my life. So I’m happy to say that none of my pharmaceuticals — and I had a plethora of them given to me — influenced me.

Pete Doherty:

I’ always stumble back on it sooner or later, even if it’s for half an hour a day. There was no shame, because I kind of knew they were just lonely p***ed-up old queens. And £20 was a lot of money!

Naomi Campbell:

I was at a concert in a European country and I was offered cocaine. It made me feel invincible. Like I could conquer the world. I was just completely over-confident, but it’s all a misconception because when you wake up the next day it’s all gone and you feel awful. And the more you take drugs, the more you want. And that’s how you become an addict.

Kate Moss:

I take full responsibility for my actions. I also accept that there are various personal issues that I need to address and have started taking the difficult, yet necessary, steps to resolve them.

George Michael:

Cannabis keeps me sane and happy. I’d say it’s a great drug - but obviously it’s not very healthy. You can’t afford to smoke it if you’ve got anything to do.

Keith Richards:

The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared.

Whitney Houston:

My business is sex, drugs, rock and roll. You know? My friends, we have a good time. But as you get older and you get wiser - you stop a lot of the kid stuff. Trust me. I partied my tail off. You get to a point where... the party’s over.

Sienna Miller:

I still love the odd hallucinogenic drug. If I had a drug of choice, it would be magic mushrooms.

How to know if she is faking orgasm?

2007-04-28T09:19:00.000+01:00

I’d be willing to bet that you’ve been at least curious as to whether she was for real or not. She screams, she moans, she thrashes, she pulls your hair and yells “I’m cumming!” She’s so loud that the neighbors are close to calling the cops. But still, you have your doubts. Truth is, if you find yourself wondering, she’s probably faking it. But before you jump to conclusions, make sure you ask yourself a few follow up questions like “Am I giving her a reason to fake it?” or “Would you even know a real female orgasm if you saw one?” I’m going to do my best to educate you on the subject.

Its easy to understand your confusion. In contrast, the mechanics of the male orgasm are pretty easy to “get”: Dick gets hard > Dick gets stroked/sucked/fucked > Dick cums. There’s no real mystery there. Don’t you wish girls were that simple? Sorry to tell you boys, but we’re just not made that way. Our sexual organs and arousal process are way more internal. So unless she’s a squirter, a woman has no giant-red-flag-indicator that she’s having an orgasm. However, there are signs you can look for that will let you know she’s getting ready to cum, is cumming, or she’s already been there and back.

First is arousal, if she’s really turned on, her pupils may be dilated, her skin may be flushed red or pink on her face, neck and tits. Her breathing may be rapid and may become irregular. In general, her moaning and panting will not just get louder, but speed up as she approaches climax. She won’t be able to control it.

Next, the actual orgasm. Adding to the confusion here is that women can have both small “mini orgasms” and the awesome-earth-shaking, toe curling orgasms. While technically they both count as O’s, your girl may or may not count the small ones. In either case though, a woman’s PC muscles will contract. This means that if you’re inside her, you’ll feel it start to “squeeze” slowly while she’s cumming. It may be quick, or it could even be minute-long dick-gripping contractions. Some women go completely stiff when they cum, some go totally limp. Some yell louder than ever, some are totally quiet. No matter what her heart rate will increase. And if you’re a real stud, she may have some involuntary movements, such as shivering.

Finally, afterwards. She’ll have a dazed, dreamy look and be kind of glassy eyed. She’ll need to catch her breath and her breathing and heart rate will slowly return to normal. Her flustered red skin will gradually return to normal.

As a bonus tip, here are some tell-tale signs that she is faking.

1.) If she’s coming EVERY time. Only a very small percentage of girls can cum everytime. Also, each and every real orgasm is different. If your girl has the exact same reaction to every orgasm, it may just be for show.

2.) Obvious Overacting. This one can be a tough call, since some women will moan and talk dirty to turn you on and to turn themselves on, but if she’s just moaning mechanically, her groaning is too regular, or too loud, and she sounds like she’s totally imitating a porn star, she’s probably faking and she probably sucks at it.

3.) Out Of Synch. If her moaning and responses don’t match what you’re really doing to her, something’s wrong. For example, if you stop, and she keeps moaning with the same rhythm and intensity, she may be faking.

4.) No Downtime. There are exceptions, but if usually if she “cums” and then immediatly jumps out of bed to brush her teeth, she probably faked. It should take her at least a couple of minutes or so to calm down after having an orgasm.

In the end, you may never know for sure that she was faking it or why, unless she breaks down and confesses, or throws it in your face in the midst of an argument. But if you suspect she is pulling an act in bed, use it as a challenge and an opportunity to experiment. Switch up your sexual moves and see if you can give her a genuine toe-curler.

102 Weird Facts You Never Knew About Dogs

2007-04-28T09:08:00.000+01:00

It is a myth that dogs are color blind. They can actually see in color, just not as vividly as humans. It is akin to our vision at dusk.
Dogs DO have better low-light vision than humans because of a special light-reflecting layer behind their retinas
A German Shepherd guide dog led her blind companion the entire 2100 mile Applachian Trail
If never spayed or neutered, a female dog, her mate, and their puppies could product over 66,000 dogs in 6 years!
Dogs' only sweat glands are between their paw pads
Like human babies, Chihuahuas are born with a soft spot in their skull which closes with age
The breed Lundehune has 6 toes and can close its ears
Teddy Roosevelt's dog, Pete, ripped a French ambassador's pants off at the White House
President Lyndon Johnson had two beagles named Him and Her
Franklin Roosevelt spent $15,000 for a destroyer to pick up his Scottie in the Aleutian Islands
In Roman times, mastiffs donned light armor and were sent after mounted knights
The Russians trained dogs during WWII to run suicide missions with mines strapped to their backs
A dog's mouth exerts 150-200 pounds of pressure per square inch
... with some dogs exerting up to 450 pounds per squre inch.
A one year old dog is as mature, physically, as a 15 year old human
The U.S. has the highest dog population in the world
France has the 2nd highest
The average city dog lives 3 years longer than a country dog
87% of dog owners say their dog curls up beside them or at their feet while they watch T.V.
Dogs can be trained to detect epileptic seizures
15 people die in the U.S. every year from dog bites
In 2002 alone, more people in the U.S. were killed by dogs than by sharks in the past 100 years
Gidget is the name of the Taco Bell dog
Newfoundlands are great swimmers because of their webbed feet
Basset Hounds cannot swim
Greyhounds are the fastest dogs on earth, with speeds of up to 45 miles per hour
Bingo is the name of the dog on the side of the Cracker Jack box
The bible mentions dogs 14 times
Three dogs survived the sinking of the Titanic - a Newfoundland, a Pomeranian, and a Pekingese
The Labrador Retriever is the #1 favorite breed in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.
Obesity is the #1 health problem among dogs
An estimated 1,000,000 dogs in the U.S. have been named as the primary beneficiaries in their owner's will
An American Animal Hospital Assoc. poll found that 33% of dog owners admit to talking to their dogs on the phone and leaving answering machine messages for them while away
Dog's nose prints are as unique as a human's finger prints and can be used to accurately identify them
At the end of the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life", a high-pitched dog whistle was recorded by Paul McCartney for his sheepdog
70% of people sign their pet's name on greeting and holiday cards
58% put pets in family and holiday portraits
There are only 350 Cisky Terriers in the world - perhaps the rarest breed
The phrase "raining cats and dogs" originated in 17th century England when it is believed that many cats and dogs drowned during heavy periods of rain.
Dogs have no sense of "time"
Humans have kept dogs as pets for over 12,000 years
The largest breed of dog is the Irish Wolfhound
The world's smallest dog breed is the Chihuahua
The St. Bernard is the heaviest
Only dogs and humans have prostates
But dogs do not have an appendix
Every dog on earth likely descended from a species knows as the Tomarctus - a creature that roamed the earth over 15 million years ago
The oldest known breed is likely the Saluki - originally trained by Egyptians to help them track game.
In 1957, Laika became the first living being in space via an earth satellite
... while JFK's terrir, Charlie, father 4 puppies with Laika's daughter
An African wolf dog known as the basenji is the only dog in the world that cannot bark
There are 703 breeds of purebred dogs
Dachshunds were originally bred for fighting badgers
The world's smartest dogs are thought to be (1) the border collie, (2) the poodle, and (3) the golden retriever
... while the dumbest dog is believed to be the Afghan hound
A dog's smell is more than 100,000 times stronger than that of a human's
... which they need because their eyesight is not as keen as a human's.
Dogs judge objects first by their movement, then by their brightness, and lastly by their shape
Chocolate contains a substance known as theobromine (similar to caffeine) which can kill dogs or at the very least make them violently ill
George Washington had thirty six dogs - all foxhounds - with one named Sweetlips
All dogs are identical in anatomy - 321 bones and 42 permanent teeth
Smaller breeds mature faster than larger breeds
Female dogs are only ready to mate - "in heat" - twice a year for a total of roughly 20 days
Puppies sleep ninety percent of the day for their first few weeks
Rin Tin Tin was the first Hollywood dog star
... and he really signed his movie contracts - all 22 of them - with a pawprint
The Wizard of Oz's Toto was played by a female Cairn Terrier named Terry
Up until the late 1800's, Collies were known as Scottish Sheepdogs
Dogs have two times as many muscles to move their ears as people
The longer a dog's nose, the more effective it's internal cooling system
An elderly woman was saved by her 12 pound Yorkshire Terrier who fought off an 80 pound Akita and survived with only 9 stitches
U.S. Customs dogs "Rocky" and "Barco" were so good at patrolling the border that Mexican drug lords put a $300,000 bounty on their heads
Dogs are all direct descendants of wolves
Wolves and dogs can mate to produce fertal offspring
Female wolves have been known to travel great distances to regurgitate full meals for their hungry pups
Cerberus was the tri-headed dog that guarded the underworld in Greek mythology
Female dogs bear their young for 60 days before they're born
Dogs' sense of hearing is more than ten times more acute than a human's
Humans can detect sounds at 20,000 times per second, while dogs can sense frequencies of 30,000 times per second.
The earliest dog fossil dates back to nearly 10,000 B.C.
Bloodhounds are prized their ability to single out and identify a number of scents simultaneously
Dalmatian puppies are born completely white.
The Ancient Chinese carried Pekingese puppies in the sleeves of their robes
Boxers are so named because of their manner of playing with their front paws
All breeds of dog have been found to attack livestock - from 3 month old puppies, all the way up to thirteen year old poodles
A dog's heart beats up to 120 times per minute, or 50% faster than the average human heartbeat of 80 times per minute
The oldest dog on record - a Queensland "Heeler" named Bluey - was 29 years, 5 months old
Davy Crockett had a dog named Sport
Dogs were first domesticated by cavemen
Dogs live 15 years on average
Many foot disorders inn dogs are simply an issue of long toenails
More than 5,000,000 puppies are born in the U.S. every year
More than 1 in 3 American families own a dog
Average body temperature for a dog is 101.2 degrees
The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts both offer merit badges in dog care
Dogs are natural pack animals
They are naturally submissive to any creature with higher pack status - human or canine
Dogs instinctively require the pack leader's approval
Dogs with little human contact in the first three months typically don't make good pets
The Chihuahua was named after the state in Mexico where they were discovered
After birth, puppies' eyes do not fully open until they're about 12 days old
Their vision is not fully developed until after the 1st month

The Top 5 Ways to spend time in college

2007-04-22T08:36:00.000+01:00

I know you could always use your free time to drink, get stoned, or gamble, but odds are you probably won’t make it to Junior year. So here are the Top 5 Ways to Pass Time in College without Booze, Pot, Online Gambling, or any other somewhat accepted vice (aka hunting for you southerners).

5. The Crave Case Race – A Crave Case is a briefcase of 30 “sliders” (mini-burgers) supplied to you by our healthconscious fast food friends atWhite Castle. If your friends were the same as mine, they were always bragging about how much they could eat, and always ready to call somebody a pussy who didn’t eat a the regulated “cool college guy” amount. My friends often got caught up in bragging about how many “sliders” or Taco Bell tacos they had eaten in one sitting. The amount was always an absurd lie that you could subtract at least 4 from.

So we decided to invent a game called the Crave Case Race to put an end to the folklore we had passed around about eating 87 “sliders” in one sitting. The game is simple: Break into teams of two or three (if you want to be a pussy about it), and give each team their own Crave Case. First team to finish their briefcase-full of future diarrhea and cholesterol problems wins the Race. If you “pull the trigger” (aka throw-up) you are disqualified.

A Grande Meal from Taco Bell is another great alternative.

This game was invented while drunk, so there might have to be an asterisk next to this game. (Actually, if they aren’t going to put one next to Barry Bonds’s records than we won’t put one next to this game.) We invented this game at a Sorority Formal. Nothing quite turns your dates on like jamming mini-burgers down your throats, and calling each other "pussies."

4. Wall Ball: The College Edition – Every boy that grew up and wasn’t in the Drama Club played Wall Ball. The official court for Wall Ball was a Tennis Wall, but any hard wall with concrete or cement in front of it would do. You could use a Tennis Ball, Racquetball/Handball, or any other rubber bouncy ball. You had to throw the ball above a certain line (usually as high as the painted-on tennis net), and you couldn't let the ball bounce twice or throw it hard enough to leave the “playing area” on the fly. If you screwedup, you got one point against you.

The rules for the College Edition are the same, with one new stipulation. It is a lot like the drinking games you play in college, which are merely modifications of the things we used to do before needing booze to have a good time (beer-pong/bozo buckets, playing cards, putting a keg on second base for softball or kickball game, etc.).

The modification for this game is not boozing (because that would be cheating the rules of this Top 5). Instead, every time someone loses a point they have to stand facing The Wall, and allow the others to take turns throwing the ball at the failure from the baseline of the court. It is amazing how much the little blue bouncy racquet ball can hurt, and it is even more amazing how equally hard you laugh each time somebody gets drilled in the back-sack successfully.

This game can also be played with a soccer ball. You juggle the ball, and the person who botches the juggle has to take turns letting the other players kick the ball as hard as they can at their back (a beach-friendly game). When playing the same way but with a Hacky Sack, you get to throw it at the loser instead of kicking it. The Racquetball/ Wall-Ball version is the best because it is way easier to hit somebody with a throw than a kick, and you don’t have to look like a hippie.

3. IP-Relay – I am sure by now that most of you have used this great service. IP-Relay is a wonderful service that allows deaf people to make phone calls via an online instant messaging service (www.ip-relay.com). You simply go to the website, punch the phone number in that you want to call, and an operator calls the person of your choice and relays to them what you are typing. Whatever you type, they say over the phone to the person you're calling. During my freshman dorm experience we used this almost as much as video games to pass the time.

Is there a better way to keep in-touch with your high school friends than by having some random operator calling them at 3pm on Tuesday afternoon asking, “Mr. (fill in the made up name of your choice) wants to know how he can get the puppy and prostitute to stop crying in unison from his locked closet?”

The operator typing your shocked friend’s response back to you is priceless: (fill in friend’s real name): Um [ten second pause] what? I think you have the wrong number…

That is when you write back something personal that only somebody close to him would know. “Mr. (fill in the made up name of your choice) wants to know why you went rollerblading with your high school girlfriend that weekend you thought all your friends were out of town. Were you wearing the recommended wrist guards for this?”

It is also fun if you and your prank calling partner both know about IP-Relay because you can join forces, and really start scaring/weirding-out the IP-Relay operator. There is nothing like the operator typing, “rubbing alcohol and a ball-gag” in response to your puppy and prostitute crying question to keep your time passing entertainingly .

2. Hot Sauce – No, I don’t mean in that homoerotic frat boy ritual of pouring it down your ass crack during hell week. It is actually a game that I made up my sophomore year of college.

One afternoon, as we were sitting in our “how did we convince our parents to let a bunch of immature and unsupervised 19-year-olds kids get a house” house, we realized how pathetic and un-athletic we had let the high school versions of ourselves get. We decided that we would go out front and toss around the football to get some exercise. After each of us ran three routes, and could hardly breathe, we decided to move it inside to the couch.

Still feeling pathetic about our far fall from athleticism we decided to play catch while sitting on our couches. As we were tossing the ball around and watching ESPN (I think we thought watching sports would make this more of a sport) I noticed our economy sized bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce sitting on the coffee table (you know the coffee table that you get from your grandparents' house after they die). As I looked at the hot sauce I had an epiphany, this ingenius idea popped in my head like I was Robert Langdon in The Da Vinci Code.

I turned to my friends and said, “How about we each sit on separate pieces of furniture (we had a pretty big living room), we start throwing the ball harder at each other, and incorporate no-look-passes. And every time you drop a pass or make a crap throw you have to take a cap sized shot of hot sauce?”

The game Hot Sauce instantly became a bigger hit than Meth in a West Coast trailer park. We played all the time, and laughed hysterically each time someone had to take a shot of hot sauce which was usually followed by a sprint to the bathroom to possibly throw-up.

It was always fun to play with your friend who only wrestled or played offensive line growing up. His hands were more like paws, and it didn't look like he had opposable thumbs when he tried to catch the ball.

1. The NyQuil Race – This game is simple, very unsafe, and really dumb (exactly like college itself). You buy a bottle of liquid NyQuil, which comes ins both reddish-black and greenish-black magical versions. After your purchase you round up a few of your friends who have nothing to do on a Tuesday. Then follow these steps:

Get 4 or more people who are participating in the game to all sit in the same room on couches, and in an upright position.
Equally pour at least double the medically suggested amount out to each participant.
Before drinking the NyQuil, each participant must take out a $20 bill and place it on the center table.
At the same time, every participant drinks their NyQuil in full.
The person who can stay awake the longest wins The NyQuil Race and the money, and is forever a leader amongst retards.

When playing this game it is important that there is at least one person observing the game that is not a participant. You can call this person “smart” or “referee,” but you are in college so you will probably just call him a “pussy.” When my friends played, they made the mistake of not designating a “referee,” and nobody could recall who won. It will be easy to find a “referee” for this because it is very funny to watch, and will only take fifteen minutes of his or her time.

2007 Women's Driver Awards

2007-04-22T08:26:00.000+01:00

2007 Women's Driver Awards

Crash compilation

2007-04-19T17:29:00.000+01:00

The Top 10 ugliest, most embarrassing fashion trends of the past 25 years

2007-04-18T14:32:00.000+01:00

I'm not exactly known for my fashion sense. About 90% of the time I'm wearing shorts and a plain, solid-color t-shirt. Still, I don't need to be Joan Rivers to see some of the travesties of the past twenty-five years and be utterly stupefied.

Sometimes I wonder what aliens would think, if they came down to Earth to observe us. What would they say to their overlords?

"We can take these guys no problem. They're not even smart enough to take the tags off their hats after they buy them."

Here is a list of the top ten most embarrassing fashion trends of the past 25 years. These are all clothing and accessory-related, so you won't find any mullets, or "The Rachels," or rat tails, or Flock of Seagulls, or tramp stamps listed here because I could do a whole list about those. And no 70's clothes, either, 'cause my computer would crash. The 80's were more than enough.

If I missed anything, let me know.

10) Shoulder Pads

I don't know whose idea it was that women who look like linebackers are more attractive. The shoulder pad, like the padded bra or elevator shoes, were designed to change the way a woman looked, as opposed to accentuating what they already had. I guess sloping shoulders were considered unattractive, but being shaped like Spongebob Squarepants was wicked sexy.

Thankfully as the 80's waned, these little triangles were being ripped out in droves. I remember going into the laundry room one day and finding a knee-high pile of them on the floor.

9) Hats that don't fit/bandanna under the hat

Some trends I won't see as obnoxious or ugly when they first come out, and it isn't until a few years later will I realize exactly how stupid they were.

This is not one of those.

Like a random bandaid on the face, the whole hat thing probably became popular because a rap artist was too drunk to notice he hadn't properly dressed. The next thing you know Ludacris is going to piss himself on stage, and we'll have legions of kids walking around with a wet stain between their legs. Abercrombie & Fitch will begin to sell pre-urinated-on jeans for $220, and Wal-Mart will eliminate bathroom breaks for their Chinese factory workers and just store the jeans under their chairs.

I foresee a great demand for chiropractors in the near future, with everyone walking around with their necks wrenched back because they can't see otherwise.

8) Leg Warmers

So I saw Footloose the other day. Yup. Lots o' leg warmers.

Legwarmers were a part of that whole "I got farted on by a rainbow" 80's trend. I've never worn them, so I don't know how effective they were at actually warming the leg, but I'm pretty certain they were worn more as a fashion statement than with purpose.

7) Shirts with stupid sayings on them

It's like somebody let Spencer's Gifts out of the mall and out into the public, and now that it's free, it's not going away.

I've talked about these before, and I am guilty of exploiting this trend from time to time. While there's nothing really wrong with slogan shirts, especially when you're just lounging around, there's this invisible line that goes from innocuous to annoying to really, mind-crunchingly stupid. And this whole semi-recent crop of sayings shirts are all in that third category.

Imagine walking around telling the same people the same joke over and over again. And what's worse, the joke is terrible. Now look at your shirt.

6) Zubaz

You know how they say when something is so traumatic, you can forget about it? You know what I mean. Repressed memories and all that jazz. Well, I forgot about these, and I was happier because of it.

Then I saw Rex (Diedrich Bader) in the movie Napoleon Dynamite sporting an American Flag version of these, and it all came rushing back.

don't know what it was, and maybe it was just me, but every guy I knew who wore these was either a jerk or a meathead. Maybe the Zubaz company secretly injected you with a jolt of testosterone when you slid them on or wearing them somehow made you feel like The Boz. I don't know. But the author of Napoleon Dynamite saw it.

5) Half Shirts / half sweaters / half jackets

I'm combining these even though they could each be their own category. Anyway, I'm not sure if this has been scientifically proven or not, but I'm pretty certain if a straight guy wore a half shirt (crop top/bellyshirt/whatever) out in public sometime during his lifetime, he is haunted by nightmares where he is turned magically into Prince. This can only be cured by therapy. And if it's not dealt with, it really happens.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And as far as half sweaters and half jackets are concerned... I guess what irks me the most is the transparency of the outfits. People wear jackets and sweaters because they're cold. But in the case of the cropped sweater/jacket, they're wearing it to be fashionable, and that's it.

4) Parachute Pants

I was in grade school when these were the rage. The coolest thing ever was to wear parachute pants along with one of those red and black Michael Jackson jackets and try to moonwalk in the gravel during recess.

I still remember the sound of nylon scraping against nylon when one walked in these things. At the height of the parachute pant craze, the recess bell would ring and the air would be filled with swish-swishing of the nylon-clad running for the door.

I'm still not sure what the purpose of all those pockets were, though I had a friend who always had something in every single pocket, including that impossibly small one by the ankle. He always grimaced when he sat down.

3) Spandex bodysuits

I don't think I need to explain too much here.

Almost every metal band from the 80's decked themselves out from head to toe in full-body spandex. And because of it, they had legions of screaming women clawing over each other just so they could reach up toward their package and squeal like pigs on fire.

This is one of those things where it seemed so normal back then, but I look at now and just start laughing. Especially when I think about those guys at the concerts who weren't in the band, but wore the spandex anyway.

2) Baggy Pants/clothes that are falling off

Twenty years from now, a lot of people are going to be showing pictures of themselves to their children, and their kids are going to say, "Daddy, why were your pants falling down? Why are you showing your underwear?"

"Well, son," they'll say, patting junior on the head. "It was the fashion back then."

And the child will sit there for a moment, scratch his head and say, "It was the fashion to look like an assclown?"

1) Grills

If you don't think this is the stupidest fashion trend of the past twenty-five years, and maybe of all times, you're wrong.

In case you don't know what Grills are, read this. Basically it's cosmetic teeth so you look like that Jaws guy from the James Bond movies.

Dentists around the world simultaneously slapped themselves in the forehead when this first became popular. They are obviously horrible for your teeth. Which of course makes them so much more popular.

But even more bothersome is how people seem to ignore how much of an idiot you look like when you wear these. Of all the stupid, weird, and idiotic fashions of the years, it's kind of troublesome that the stupidest ones are the most recent.

Honorable mention: Gaucho Pants, giant belts, fat shoelaces, anything with fringe.

So that's it. Why is it we can look back at certain things and be utterly embarrassed by them, but still think it's the coolest thing ever at the time? What changes in our brain?

The Worst Movies by the Best Directors

2007-04-17T14:21:00.000+01:00

In the world of filmmaking, truly visionary directors are tough to find. Seemingly visionary directors may turn out to be one-hit wonders, and a director’s visual style can become antiquated faster than you can say “we don’t use zooms anymore.” When a truly great director is found, you’ve got to hold onto him, and appreciate him, and, most of all, ignore the occasional shitty movie from him.

It’s with a sense of profound admiration, then, that we chronicle the worst films by the best directors: films that, despite the fantastic qualifications of the men who helmed them, totally failed to be anything less than total disappointments.

Keep in mind that many of these films are quite good, in their own rights: they just suck when compared to some of the better work by their respective director.

Steven Spielberg - War of the Worlds

Imagine Independence Day, but take away all the good actors and any sort of climax and you’ve basically got War of the Worlds. Having never read the book or watched the 1950’s version I can’t speak on its accuracy (though I know the ends are the same in all three versions), but I’m willing to bet that the other versions weren’t as self-defeating as Spielberg’s remake.

The film has moments of timely brilliance, like when Tom Cruise and his family get yanked out of their car by an angry mob who then begin to shoot one another, or when a totally unprovoked Tom Cruise decides to murder the shit out of Tim Robbins just because he thinks Robbins might give away their position. Dark scenes like this would have made the movie great, were it not for the fact that they’re sandwiched between scenes of either total mediocrity (“this is your safe area”), ridiculously misplaced patriotism (as when a random and unnamed US soldier leads an effort to pull Tom Cruise from the belly of an alien tripod), or outright ridiculousness (Tom’s son not only surviving a massive explosion, but somehow managing to get to his mom’s house before Tom).

Spielberg has a great track record for ending dark and meaningful films with pointlessly tacked-on happy endings, and War of the Worlds may be the best example of that.

Brian DePalma - The Black Dahlia

If there are two things in this world that almost never disappoint, they are (A) film noir and (B) Scarlett Johansson. There must be a mathematical formula somewhere that explains how combining these things somehow ends in heartbreak, but director Brian DePalma obviously never saw it.

The Black Dahlia should have truly been a match made in heaven: an adaptation of a James Ellroy book, based on a true event, directed by Brian DePalma, and starring Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, and Josh Hartnett (3 out of 4 ain’t bad). It’s endlessly tragic, then, that the entire film was an exercise in schizophrenia and uncertainty. The film should be about how the unsolved murder of an aspiring actress drives two cops to the brink of desperation (as the trailer led us to believe), but it instead focuses on no less than four different subplots, including:

-A boxing match between Josh and Aaron

-An about-to-be-paroled criminal who raped and cut up Scarlett

-Scarlett and Josh having an affair

-A lesbian nightclub

-and others.

The film can’t decide what the hell it’s actually about, and as a result it’s impossible to care about anything: the ending, in particular, comes out of nowhere and includes at least an hour’s worth of unseen (and occasionally irrelevant) information thrown at the audience in totally random order.

Some may call Bonfire of the Vanities DePalma’s biggest misstep: to those people, I say that you should probably watch The Black Dahlia a few more times.

Akira Kurosawa - The Hidden Fortress

Choosing the worst Kurosawa film is sort of like trying to pick the ugliest Victoria’s Secret model: technically, you could do it, but why? Still, though, The Hidden Fortress does fall short of Kurosawa’s other works. Many film students flock to it after hearing that George Lucas borrowed heavily from it (which turns out to be a disappointment in itself, because Lucas really only steals the droid characters and some plot devices), only to be underwhelmed.

The story of a soldier escorting a princess across enemy lines sounds pretty interesting, but turns out to be almost astonishingly dull: Toshiro Mifune is way more interesting when playing flawed antiheroes (e.g., Yojimbo), the princess is irritating and whiny, and the servants/droids aren’t really that funny. It’s an entertaining movie, of course, but it’s also short on the mix of excitement, drama, and meaning that Kurosawa did so well.

Francis Ford Coppola - The Godfather III

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Godfather Part III wasn’t anywhere near as good as the first two. It’s not bad, by any means, but it’s definitely inferior to its predecessors and undoubtedly Coppola’s worst hour.

But why? Well, start with the fact that Coppola only did it because he needed money, add the fact that Robert Duvall refused to take part unless he was paid as much as Pacino, take away the possible casting of Winona Ryder as Mary Corleone and replace her with a less-than-stellar Sofia Coppola, add Al Pacino’s sudden decision to overact, and you’ve got yourself a qualified disappointment. Somehow, neither Pacino nor Francis Ford Coppola realized how far Pacino had fallen since Godfather II; where the majority of his performance used to be situated in knowing glances and eerie silences, his version of Michael in Godfather III is loud and over-the-top (“I have DONE what I had to DO to PROTECT my FAMILY”).

In a way, it’d be easier if the film was flat-out bad – we could all just ignore it and move on. Unfortunately, the film has some relatively good scenes (the last shot, in particular), but their presence is lessened when placed next to a scene where a fucking helicopter shoots into a board room and kill everyone in it except Michael. Christ, that scene was in the first Lethal Weapon movie, and it didn’t even work then.

Stanley Kubrick - Eyes Wide Shut

I’d argue Barry Lyndon is actually Kubrick’s worst, but Eyes Wide Shut is definitely his most universally reviled. Shame to have your last movie end up as your most detested, but them’s the breaks.

Films about “sexual reawakening” are usually either gussied-up pornography, or intensely boring. Eyes Wide Shut manages to be a bit of both. As Tom Cruise walks around New York and gets sexually propositioned by almost every single fucking person he meets, it’s pretty hard for anybody to care amidst the leaden pacing and typically Cruise-esque acting.

According to R. Lee Ermey (whom I would never dare call a liar, for fear he’d track me down and kick the shit out of me), even Kubrick knew the film was going to be a piece of shit because Cruise and Kidman had essentially taken it from him and used it for their own purposes.

Well, at least his memory lived in the movie A.I., right? Right? Guys?

Martin Scorsese - Cape Fear

The original Cape Fear was fantastic: it somehow managed to combine two of the biggest badasses of the day (Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck) into one film without either one overshadowing the other. It was creepy, subtle, and quietly terrifying.

Martin Scorcese’s remake has none of these things going for it. De Niro plays Max Cady as a ridiculous-sounding redneck (De Niro should, by law, be prohibited from ever attempting a Southern accent again), Nick Nolte plays Sam Bowden as a slightly less-drugged-up-than-usual version of himself (not to mention that Sam Bowden is revealed to have fabricated evidence to put Cady away, thereby making Cady more sympathetic and thereby defeating the entire purpose of the fucking movie), and there’s a pedophilia subplot that worked much better in the first film when it was simply hinted at, instead of fully explored.

Not to mention the fact that the entire climax seems like something out of Looney Tunes, as Cady dresses up like a woman, strangles Joe Don Baker, and dies screaming, tied to a sinking boat during a rainstorm.

Do yourself a favor and rent the original Peck/Mitchum flick. It’s a hell of a lot better.

Terry Gilliam - The Brothers Grimm

say this having never seen Tideland – if that flick is worse, feel free to send us an email.

Despite good turns from Heath Ledger and Matt Damon (one of the more entertaining aspects of the film is that the casting should have assumedly been reversed – Heath as the smooth-talker, and Matt as the quiet one), The Brothers Grimm is really nothing more than a very pretty Scooby Doo episode. The set design is good (but not as good as the posters would have led us to believe) and Gilliam’s direction is, as always, very meticulous, but the plot is stale, the characters boring, and the jokes unfunny.

While nobody could ever accuse Gilliam of selling out, it remains his most studio-friendly work to date: no real theme, no real message, just a few hours of two extremely attractive protagonists getting into computer-generated hijinx. It’s unfortunate that Gilliam eschewed the miniatures and practical special effects that made Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen so great – as nice as CG is, the special effects in Grimm have none of the personality of those in Gilliam’s earlier works.

Alfred Hitchcock - To Catch a Thief

Considering it was directed by a master of suspense and starred one of the most charming actors of its time, it’s almost amazing that To Catch a Thief manages to be so utterly unsuspenseful and charmless.

With no intrigue or murder to work on, this Hitchcock “thriller” basically revolves around Cary Grant and Grace Kelly almost having sex for about an hour and a half. The “real” plot involves Grace attempting to capture Cary Grant in the act of cat burgling (his criminal alias is “The Cat,” which may be the most uncool criminal alias of all time), but what little entertainment exists in the film comes from the quasi-chemistry between Grant and Kelly.

If anything, the film’s one great scene occurs when Grace Kelly opens a door, kisses Grant for absolutely no reason, and then closes the door. If that scene sounds a bit boring to be the best scene in the film, then you’re absolutely right: Cary Grant seems absolutely bored, and Grace Kelly (though painfully gorgeous) is even colder than usual.

Ridley Scott - Matchstick Men

Ah, the conman film. How wonderfully dependable you are. From The Sting to Matchstick Men, every conman film ever made consists of three clearly recognizable acts: in the first, we learn some clever and interesting small cons that the protagonist uses on a daily basis. In the second, the protagonist builds up to one big con. In the third, the big con goes down but twists and turns in a way the audience would have never imagined. This works for The Sting, but when Matchstick Men does it, the movie essentially destroys its one purpose for being.

Ostensibly, Matchstick Men was supposed to stand out from the pack of con artist flicks because while it dealt with the life of a professional liar (an OCD-plagued Nicholas Cage), it was also about him learning to love his newfound daughter. The film is actually somewhat entertaining throughout, even if the jokes fall flat and there’s not much chemistry between Cage and Alison “simultaneously looks twelve and thirty years old” Lohman.

The real problem comes with the ending: while The Sting’s twist-within-a-twist of an ending worked as light entertainment, Matchstick Men essentially makes the entire relationship between Nick Cage and his estranged daughter – you know, the basis of the entire film – irrelevant. We find out that the girl isn’t really his daughter, and she’s just been conning him. All of the themes about redemption and forgiveness are more or less lost once the twist ending comes around, in favor of a cheap surprise and a too-long denouement.

Sam Peckinpah - The Ballad of Cable Hogue

You wouldn’t think that the same guy who directed The Wild Bunch would also helm a comedy-western-musical. You might think that said comedy-western-musical might suck pretty hard, and you’d be right.

Sam Peckinpah was a gruff, serious kind of guy. This may come as a surprise, but gruff, serious guys don’t usually do comedy very well. Even though Jason Robards will always be a badass, even he can’t save Ballad from its plethora of childish sight gags (OH NOES, CABLE’S WIFE IS NAKED AND THEY HAVE GUESTS HOWEVER WILL HE COVER HER UP) and out-of-place musical numbers.

Not to mention that at the very end, Peckinpah suddenly decides that he wants to get serious. Unfortunately, Peckinpah’s version of “serious” equates with a forced and misplaced bit of story symbolism, wherein the first automobile of its type drives up to Cable’s watering hole. It begins to drift down a hill, and – for no discernible reason whatsoever – Cable tries to physically stop the car, is run over, and dies, killed by the piece of new technology.

Gee, I wonder what that could possibly mean? It’s not like that scene wasn’t done immeasurably better in any one of Peckinpah’s other films.

Quentin Tarantino - Death Proof

First things first: if you’re one of those people who’s going to defend Death Proof by saying “you just didn’t get it, you’re a mongoloid who needs to be entertained by explosions every three seconds, you can’t appreciate simple dialogue,” then shut up. I love Tarantino dialogue, I don’t mind slow films, and I’m okay with plots that go nowhere (I own and enjoy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, for Christ’s sake).

The real problem with Death Proof is that it has its priorities seriously confused. For a grindhouse-style film, it’s remarkably modern: while I’m not the connoisseur of sleaze cinema that Tarantino fancies himself, I do know that grindhouse films never spent the majority of their running time filled with pointless, superficial dialogue that served only to stroke the director’s ego. If there’s one thing a grindhouse film should never, ever do, it’s bore the audience. And Death Proof does exactly that.

And yeah, I get what the point of the dialogue was. By hearing the girls talk about regular, everyday bullshit, we’ll connect with them emotionally and it’ll be a much bigger deal when Stuntman Mike wrecks their shit. Just one problem, though: the girls have almost totally interchangeable personalities, and are more or less impossible to care for. Yeah, Zoe Bell and the Angry Black Chick stand out from the other characters, but they only stand out in that they’re really fucking annoying. Could Zoe possibly squint more in order to accentuate her bad girl dialogue, or could Angry Black Chick be any more stereotypically Angry or Black?

Not to mention that the single coolest and most interesting character in the entire film, Stuntman Mike, is only in about a fourth of the entire movie. Stuntman Mike is so cool that it’s really hard not to root for him, thus making all the bullshit dialogue with the women totally pointless. Mike’s too awesome: just let him kill these bitches and we’ll be on our way.

While the car scenes are probably the best ever put on film, you have to wonder: why on Earth didn’t Angry Black Chick just slow down when Stuntman Mike started chasing them? Or at the moment when the car actually comes to an almost-complete stop, why the hell didn’t Zoe just get off the hood and run into the car? I’m willing to suspend my disbelief pretty far in a movie called Grindhouse, but not enough to believe that an assumedly intelligent woman didn’t have the common sense to get off the hood of a friggin’ moving car when she had the chance.

I wish I could have enjoyed Death Proof more than I did, but considering it was preceded by the hilariously action-packed Planet Terror, there was no way for Death Proof to seem anything other than ploddingly slow and, overall, disappointing. The films could have probably been switched in order and Grindhouse would have worked better as a whole – not to mention that chronologically, the events of Death Proof take place before Planet Terror.

PS: Mary Elizabeth Winstead was the single hottest girl in either movie, and she did absolutely nothing. Unfortunate.

Hopping into the record book

2007-04-17T14:15:00.000+01:00

Six hundred people on spacehoppers have taken part in the world's largest simultaneous hop.

They hopped together for a minute on London's Millennium Bridge - famous for its initial wobbles.

Guinness World Records confirmed they beat the previous record, set by 551 spacehoppers in Bath in 2003.

"The bridge was pretty bouncy under all those people," said an event spokesman. "I think we thoroughly tested it."

An adjudicator from Guinness World Records was on hand to certify the new world record.

The previous record had been held by pupils and parents at St Stephen's School in Bath.

Play a guitar like a piano

2007-04-17T13:55:00.000+01:00

The 10 Dumbest George W. Bush Quotes

2007-04-15T15:53:00.000+01:00

1. "You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." (Bush speaking to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005)

2. "Yes, Peter. Are you going to ask that question with shades on?... I'm interested in the shade look, seriously.... For the viewers, there’s no sun." (Bush ribbing partially blind reporter Peter Wallsten, June 14, 2006)

3. "I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound largemouth bass in my lake." (Bush describing the highlight of his time in office to a German interviewer, May 7, 2006)

4. "The point now is how do we work together to achieve important goals. And one such goal is a democracy in Germany." (Bush in Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006)

5. "I'm not the expert on how the Iraqi people think, because I live in America, where it's nice and safe and secure." (Bush in Washington, D.C., Sept. 23, 2004)

6. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." (Bush in Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004)

7. "I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein." (Bush in Washington, D.C., May 25, 2004)

8. "Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling." (Bush in Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004)

9. "I believe that a prosperous, democratic Pakistan will be a steadfast partner for America, a peaceful neighbor for India, and a force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world." (Bush in Islamabad, Pakistan, which is not known for being part of the Arab world, on March 3, 2006)

10. "You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you're gone." (Bush in Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006)

Chinese woman has insanely long hair

2007-04-15T08:33:00.000+01:00

Xia Aifeng, 36, combs her super long hair standing on a bench at home in Shangrao, east China's Jiangxi Province, April 11, 2007. The 1.6-metre-tall woman is keeping the long hair measuring 2.42 metres.

The Top 20 Best Pornstar names

2007-04-15T08:21:00.000+01:00

The only thing more amusing than a porn flick is the name of some of the porn stars (otherwise known as actresses). My number one name is Flick Shagwell, Sindee Coxx, B.B. Gunns and Cherry Poppens are also very clever as well. I am sure there were many left out, but below is my top twenty and at the very bottom is a list of some honorable mentions.

Flick Shagwell
Cherry Poppens
B.B. Gunns
Mia Banggs
Wendy Whoopers
Sindee Coxx
Kayla Kleevage
Summer Cummings
Gail Force
Nadia Nice
Jewel De’Nyle
April Flowers
Jordan McKnight
Candy Barr
Maxi Mounds
Renee Pornero
Cherry Rain
Kikki Daire
Anais Alexander
Christy Canyon

Here is a look at some other great names of Porn Stars

Sunrise Adams, Anais Alexander, Eva Angelina, Charlene Aspen, Ebony Ayes, Mia Banggs, Lanny Barbie, Candy Barr, Belladonna, Dru Berrymore, Brooke Biggs, Alektra Blue, Jezebelle Bond, Veronica Brazil, Christy Canyon, Mary Carey, Charlie, Chelsea Charms, Chanel Chavez, Allysin Chaynes, Cherie, Nena Cherry, Anastasia Christ, Carol Cox, Sindee Coxx, Cindy Crawford, Summer Cummings, Courtney Cummz, Deja Daire, Kikki Daire, Stormy Daniels, Misty Dawn, Monique Demoan, Jewel De’Nyle, Angela Devi, Nikki Dial, Debi Diamond, Teri Driver, Deena Duos, Lacey Duvalle, Envy, Kim Eternity, Angella Faith, Jeanna Fine, Jada Fire, Flame, Penny Flame, April Flowers, Gail Force, Shyla Foxxx, Gauge, B.B. Gunns, Haven, Autumn Haze, Jenna Jameson, Ginger Jolie, Jessica Jaymes, Jordan McKnight, Kayla Kleevage, Nikki Knights, Ice La Fox, Sunny Lane, Jacklyn Lick, Lisa Lipps, Lola Lane, Traci Lords, Shy Love, Bunny Luv, Candy Manson, Constance Money, Chessie Moore, Maxi Mounds, Kristi Mist, Kitten Natividad, Alexandra Nice, Nadia Nyce, Olivia O’Lovely, Tera Patcrick, Pebbles, Joselyn Pink, Cherry Poppens, Renee Pornero, Moana Pozzi, Cherry Rain, Harmony Rose, Silvia Saint, Flick Shagwell, Nicole Sheridan, Lisa Sparxxx, Aspen Stevens, Aimee Sweet, Wendy Whoppers, Honey Wilder, Kim Wylde

Top 7 hackers ever

2007-04-14T07:41:00.000+01:00

Kimble

In the late 90s Schmitz has gained publicity through his several high profile break-in claims. He was part of the German BBS scene and had his own BBS called "House of Coolness". On March 23 1998, Schmitz was sentenced to two years on probation for computer fraud: He hacked into a large number of X.25-connected corporate computer systems and abused international telephone services. By that time, he had already founded a computer security company called "data protect", a contributing factor to the court's decision not to send him back to jail where he had already suffered two months of detention. His arrogant style of dealing with the computer scene and his publication of technical details on phone phreaking earned him top spots the "Most Hated Person" charts in the Worldcharts diskmag for years ahead. (As of the last issue, released in 2002, he was #6.)

He sold data protect in 2000 to "TÜV Rheinland". In 2001 TÜV Data Protect was renamed to TÜV SecureIT. Today Schmitz is on probation for attendance in insider trading: He had harvested huge profits from buying $375,000 worth of shares of the nearly bankrupt company "LetsBuyIt.com" and subsequently announcing his intention of investing EUR 50 Million, creating the biggest single-day rise of a share price in the history of the German stock market. He quickly sold his shares and walked away. To date, he remains the only person to ever have been convicted for insider trading in Germany.

On CeBIT 1999 in Hannover, he displayed a Mercedes S-Class equipped with a GSM channel bank for in-car Internet access and video conferencing. The prohibitive cost of 16 parallel connections turned the project into a huge commercial failure.

Since 2001, Schmitz has had media coverage as a founder of a Hong Kong based investing company called Trendax. The company claimed to use AI for best investment options' selection, but never went public.

Aside from his flamboyant corporate activities, Schmitz got attention for several PR stunts. In 1999 he was driving around on the Munich airport for hours taking photos of himself in the cockpits of parked airplanes. In 2001 he offered a reward of USD 10 million for capture of Osama Bin Laden. His newly founded hacker group "YIHAT" (Young intelligent hackers against terrorism) didn't succeed in any of their anti-terrorism goals.

Schmitz is active in the streetracing scene. He took part in the Gumball 3000 rally several times and was the first to finish in 2001. He ran a website that claimed he is organising a street race called "Ultimate Rally". The event was originally announced for August 2006, but was postponed to 2007 after collecting money from potential participants. In late 2006, the concept was sold to an unknown investor, and entrants received a refund.

In January 2002 he announced his own suicide on his personal homepage. In fact his announcement was just part of a marketing campaign for his new project "Kimpire". The Kimpire website was a central point with linked to all of his projects and companies.

Schmitz is currently reported living between Germany, Hong Kong and Australia. As of late 2006, a number of his websites (including www.kimble.org) are blank. He has abandoned his extravagant lifestyle and is now acting as an advisor to Internet startup companies such as Friendster, iFilm, Gizmodo and Megaupload.

John Draper

John T. Draper (born 1944), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch or Crunchman (after Cap'n Crunch, the mascot of a breakfast cereal), is a former phone phreak.

Draper was the son of a US Air Force engineer; he described his father as distant in an interview published on the front page of the Jan 13-14, 2007, issue of The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Draper himself entered the Air Force in 1964, and while stationed in Alaska helped his fellow servicemen make free phone calls home by devising access to a local telephone switchboard. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1968, and did military-related work for several employers in the San Francisco Bay Area. He adopted the counterculture of the times and operated a pirate radio station out of a Volkswagen van.

A blind friend of John Draper's named Joe Engressia (now known as Joybubbles) informed him that a toy whistle that was, at the time, packaged in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal could be easily modified to emit a tone at precisely 2600 hertz—the same frequency that was used by AT&T long lines to indicate that a trunk line was ready and available to route a new call. This would effectively disconnect one end of the trunk, allowing the still connected side to enter an operator mode. Experimenting with this whistle inspired Draper to build blue boxes: electronic devices capable of reproducing other tones used by the phone company.

“I don't do that. I don't do that anymore at all. And if I do it, I do it for one reason and one reason only. I'm learning about a system. The phone company is a System. A computer is a System, do you understand? If I do what I do, it is only to explore a system. Computers, systems, that's my bag. The phone company is nothing but a computer.” — From Secrets of the Little Blue Box by Ron Rosenbaum, Esquire Magazine (October 1971)

The class of vulnerabilities Draper and others discovered was limited to call routing switches that employed in-band signaling, whereas newer equipment relies almost exclusively on out-of-band signaling, the use of separate circuits to transmit voice and signals. Though they could no longer serve practical use, the Cap'n Crunch whistles did become valued collector's items. Some hackers sometimes go by the handle “Captain Crunch” even today; as a result of this incident 2600 The Hacker Quarterly is named after this whistle frequency. The expense of sustaining the unbilled phone calls, the redesign of the line protocols and the accelerated equipment replacement due to the blue box is difficult to calculate, or even to separate from something as complex and dynamic as the telephone long-distance network, but it is generally acknowledged to be a huge sum.

The 1971 Esquire Magazine article which told the world about phone phreaking got Draper in hot water. Draper was arrested on toll fraud charges in 1972 and sentenced to five years' probation. The article also brought him to the attention of Steve Wozniak. In the mid 1970s he taught his phone phreaking skills to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who later founded Apple Computer. He was briefly employed at Apple, and created a telephone interface board for the Apple II personal computer. Wozniak has said that the reason that the board was never marketed was that he was the only one in the company who liked him and partially due to Draper's arrest and conviction for wire fraud in 1977. Draper wrote EasyWriter, the first word processor for the Apple II, in 1979. According to the Wall Street Journal, he hand-wrote the code while serving nights in the Alameda County Jail, then entered the code later into a computer. However, another account had him writing the code as he served his four-month sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc, California.

Draper later ported EasyWriter to the IBM PC, beating Bill Gates on the bid for the IBM contract. Draper's company, Capn' Software, posted less than $1 million revenue over six years, and he subsequently sued his software's distributor, Bill Baker, over an unauthorized version of EasyWriter that Baker released. In the 1980s, Draper worked for AutoDesk, but was laid off. His eccentric behavior sometimes led to difficulties with potential clients. Currently he writes computer security software, is senior developer of KanTalk! VoIP software for teen singer/software model Kandice Melonakos, and he hosts an Internet TV show, Crunch TV.

One oft-repeated story featuring Captain Crunch goes as follows: Draper picked up a public phone, then proceeded to "phreak" his call around the world. At no charge, he routed a call through different phone switches in countries such as Japan, Russia and England. Once he had set the call to go through tens of countries, he dialed the number of the public phone next to him. A few minutes later, the phone next to him rang. Draper spoke into the first phone, and, after quite a few seconds, he heard his own voice very faintly on the other phone. This is just one example of his career in phreaking exploits. Draper was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club. Draper also claimed, in the interview with the Wall Street Journal, that he once managed to place a direct call to the White House and spoken directly with someone who sounded like Richard Nixon; Draper told him about a toilet paper shortage in Los Angeles.

Emmanuel Goldstein

Eric Gordon Corley, also frequently referred to by his pen name of Emmanuel Goldstein, is a figure in the hacker community. He and his non-profit organization 2600 Enterprises, Inc., together publish a magazine called 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, which Corley founded in 1984.

Corley's pseudonym, Emmanuel Goldstein, is taken from the book 1984. In the book, Emmanuel Goldstein is the mysterious, and questionably existant leader of the opposition to Big Brother and the totalitarian state.

In 1999 Corley was named as a defendant in Universal v. Reimerdes, the movie industry's attempt to squelch DeCSS. DeCSS is a computer program capable of decrypting content on a DVD video disc encrypted using the Content-Scrambling System (CSS). 2600.com had provided links to websites which contained the DeCSS code. Corley was the only defendant who chose to fight the industry in court. United States District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled against Corley.

In 1999, Corley released the full length documentary Freedom Downtime (which he wrote, directed and produced), which was about convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick and the Free Kevin movement, among other things. He is currently in the process of filming his latest documentary, Speakers' World. Furthermore, he was creative advisor to the movie Hackers.

He was arrested on August 31, 2004 in New York City, while trying to videotape a demonstration against the Republican National Convention, in which Corley asserts he was not a participant. After being detained for more than 30 hours, he was charged with disorderly conduct. At a hearing on November 29, 2004, the city dropped all charges against Corley.

Eric Corley currently lives in Middle Island, in Long Island's Suffolk County.

Corley hosts a radio show Off The Hook on WBAI, and is concerned with legal matters related to social engineering and other issues affecting the hacker world.

Corley also hosts a show on WUSB 90.1 FM called Off the Wall, a semi call-in show that discusses current world topics, and usually whatever is on his mind. He has done other radio shows there, including The Voice of Long Island, and Brain Damage.

Corley is an alumnus of Ward Melville High School and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, which is host to WUSB (FM). He attended from 1977 to 1982, graduating with a degree in English.

DVD Jon

Jon Lech Johansen (born November 18, 1983 in Harstad, Norway), also known as DVD-Jon, is a Norwegian (his father is Norwegian and mother is Polish) who is famous for his work on reverse engineering data formats. He is most famous for his involvement in the release of the DeCSS software, which decodes the content-scrambling system used for DVD licensing enforcement. Jon is a self-trained software engineer, who quit high school at the first year to spend more time with the DeCSS case. He moved to the United States and worked as a software engineer in October 2005 until November 2006, and has now moved back to Norway for unknown reasons.
Johansen is featured in the documentary film info wars.
The DeCSS prosecution

After Johansen released DeCSS, he was prosecuted in Norway for computer hacking in 2002.

The prosecution was conducted by Økokrim, a Norwegian crime unit investigating and prosecuting economic crime, after a complaint by the US DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPA). Johansen has denied writing the decryption code in DeCSS, saying that this part of the project originated from someone in Germany. His defense was assisted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The trial opened in the Oslo district court (Oslo tingrett) on December 9, 2002 with Johansen pleading not guilty to charges that had a maximum penalty of two years in prison or large fines. The defense argued that no illegal access was obtained to anyone else's information, since Johansen owned the DVDs himself. They also argued that it is legal under Norwegian law to make copies of such data for personal use. The verdict was announced on January 7, 2003, acquitting Johansen of all charges.

This being the verdict of the district court, two further levels of appeals were available to the prosecutors, to the appeals court and then to the Supreme Court. Økokrim filed an appeal on January 20, 2003 and it was reported on February 28 that the appeals court (Borgarting lagmannsrett) had agreed to hear the case.

Johansen's second DeCSS trial began in Oslo on December 2, 2003, and resulted in an acquittal on December 22, 2003. Økokrim announced on January 5, 2004 that it would not appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

Other projects

2001

In 2001, Johansen released OpenJaz, a reverse-engineered set of drivers for Linux, BeOS and Windows 2000 that allow operation of the JazPiper MP3 player without its proprietary drivers.

2003

In November 2003, Johansen released QTFairUse, an open source program which dumps the raw output of a QuickTime AAC stream to a file, which could bypass the digital rights management (DRM) software used to encrypt content of music from media such as those distributed by the iTunes Music Store, Apple Computer's online music store. Although these resulting raw AAC files were unplayable by most media players at the time of release, they represent the first attempt at circumventing Apple's encryption.

2004

Johansen had by now become a VideoLAN developer, and had reverse engineered FairPlay and written VLC's FairPlay support. [2] It has been available in VideoLAN CVS since January 2004, but the first release to include FairPlay support is VLC 0.7.1 (released March 2, 2004).

On April 25, 2004 Johansen released yet another program: DeDRMS. Written in C#, this 230 line program is also said to remove copy prevention.

On July 7, 2004 he released FairKeys, a program that can be used to retrieve the keys needed by DeDRMS from the iTunes Music Store servers itself.

On August 12, 2004 Johansen announced on his website that he defeated Apple's AirPort Express's encryption which lets users stream Apple Lossless files to their AirPort Expresses.

On November 25, 2004 he released a proof of concept program that allows Linux users (via VLC) to play video encoded with Microsoft's proprietary WMV9 codec, by porting the reference version of the software. This is a significant development as Microsoft has been lobbying to have their codec used with the next DVD standard.

2005

On March 18, 2005, Travis Watkins and Cody Brocious, along with Johansen, wrote PyMusique, a Python based program which allows the download of purchased files from the iTunes Music Store without DRM encryption. This was possible because Apple Computer's iTunes software adds the DRM to the music file after the music file is downloaded. On March 22, Apple released a patch for the iTunes Music Store blocking the use of his PyMusique program. The same day, an update to PyMusique was released, circumventing the new patch.

On June 26, 2005, Johansen created a modification of Google's new in-browser video player (which was based on the open source VLC media player) in less than 24 hours after its release, to allow the user to play videos that are not hosted on Google’s servers. The significance of the modification was exaggerated by the online media.

In late summer, Håkon Wium Lie, the Norwegian co-creator of Cascading Style Sheets and long-time supporter of open source, named Jon Lech Johansen a "hero" in a net meeting arranged by one of Norway's biggest newspapers.

2 September 2005, The Register published news that DVD Jon had defeated encryption in Microsoft's Windows Media Player by reverse engineering a proprietary algorithm that was ostensibly used to protect Media Player NSC files from engineers sniffing for the files' source IP address, port or stream format. Johansen had also made a decoder available.

September, 2005, Johansen announced the release of SharpMusique 1.0, an alternative to the default iTunes program. The program allows Linux and Windows users to buy songs from the iTunes music store without copy protection.

In 2005, Johansen worked for MP3tunes in San Diego as a software engineer. His first project was a new digital music product, code-named Oboe.

In November 2005 a Slashdot story notes that Sony-BMGs XCP DRM software includes code and comments (such as "copyright (c) Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved." illegally copied from an iTunes DRM circumvention program by Jon Lech Johansen. A popular claim was that, using the criteria that RIAA uses in its copyright lawsuits, Johansen could sue for billions of dollars in damages.

2006
his intent to defeat the encryption of Next-Generation DVD encryption, AACS. It appears that Johansen is aiming for a winter 2006/2007 release of a circumvention application.

On June 7, 2006, Johansen announced that he had moved to San Francisco and was joining DoubleTwist Ventures.

In October 2006, Johansen and DoubleTwist Ventures announced they had reverse engineered Apple Computer's DRM for iTunes, called FairPlay. Rather than allow people to strip the DRM, DoubleTwist would license the ability to apply FairPlay to media companies who wanted their music and videos to play on the iPod, without having to sign a distribution contract with Apple.

Adrian Lamo

Adrian Lamo (born 1981) is an infamous former grey hat hacker and journalist, principally known for breaking into a series of high-security computer networks, and his subsequent arrest. Best known among these were his intrusions into The New York Times and Microsoft. He is also known for attempting to identify security flaws in computer networks of Fortune 500 companies and then notifying them of any found; while still illegal in many places without permission, this can be seen as a form of unsolicited penetration testing.

Personal

Lamo was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Mario Lamo and Mary Lamo-Atwood. Dubbed the "homeless hacker" for his transient lifestyle, Lamo spent most of his travels couch-surfing, squatting in abandoned buildings and travelling to Internet cafes, libraries and universities to investigate networks, and sometimes exploit security holes. Despite performing authorized and unauthorized vulnerability assessment for several large, high-profile entities, Lamo refused to accept payment for his services. In the past, his lifestyle allowed him to travel up and down the coasts of the United States, often by coach, carrying all necessary possessions in a backpack.

Professional

Since Lamo's sentencing, he has entered the early stages of a career as an award-winning journalist, studying at American River College, with writing, photography, and editorial work / collaboration appearing in Network World, Mobile Magazine, 2600 Magazine, The American River Current, XY Magazine, and others. Lamo has interviewed personalities ranging from John Ashcroft, to Oliver Stone to alleged members of the Earth Liberation Front. Lamo also has a history of public speaking - he was a keynote speaker at a government security conference in 2005 alongside Bruce Schneier, and a panelist at the Information Security In the Age of Terrorism conference.

Lamo has shown signs of increased cooperation with media since his release from federal custody, including a podcast interview with Patrick Gray in Australia, and a recent segment on 88.1 WMBR out of Cambridge.

Activities and techniques

Adrian Lamo is perhaps best known for breaking into The New York Times internal computer network in February 2002, adding his name to confidential databases of expert sources, and using the paper's LexisNexis account to conduct research on high-profile subjects, although his first published activities involved operating AOL watchdog site Inside-AOL.com. The Times filed a complaint and a warrant for Lamo's arrest was issued in August 2003 following a 15 month investigation by federal prosecutors in New York. At 10:15 AM on September 9, after spending a few days in hiding, he surrendered to the US Marshals in Sacramento, California. He re-surrendered to the FBI in New York City on September 11, and pleaded guilty to one count of computer crimes against Microsoft, Lexis-Nexis and The New York Times on 8 January, 2004.

Later in 2004, Lamo was sentenced to six months' detention at his parents' home plus two years probation, and was ordered to pay roughly $65,000 in restitution. He was convicted of compromising security at The New York Times and Microsoft, and is alleged to have admitted to exploiting security weaknesses at Excite@Home, Yahoo!, Microsoft, MCI WorldCom, Ameritech, Cingular and has allegedly violated network security at AOL Time Warner, Bank of America, Citigroup, McDonald's and Sun Microsystems. Companies sometimes use proxies to allow their employees access to the internet, without giving the internet access to their internal network. However, when these proxies are improperly configured, they can allow access to the company's internal network. Lamo often exploited this, sometimes using a tool called ProxyHunter.

Critics have repeatedly labelled Lamo as a publicity seeker or common criminal, claims that he has refused to publicly refute. When challenged for a response to allegations that he was glamorizing crime for the sake of publicity, his response was "Anything I could say about my person or my actions would only cheapen what they have to say for themselves." When approached for comment during his criminal case, Lamo would frequently frustrate reporters with non sequiturs such as "Faith manages" and "It was a beautiful day."

At his sentencing, Lamo expressed remorse for harm he had caused through his intrusions, with the court record quoting him as adding "I want to answer for what I have done and do better with my life."

As of 16 January 2007, Lamo's probation was terminated, ending a three-year period during which the American government stripped him of certain opportunities, including the ability to employ any privacy protection software, travel outside certain established boundaries, socialize with security researchers, and other activities enjoyed by the public.

DNA controversy
On May 9, 2006, while 18 months into a two year probation sentence, Adrian Lamo refused to give the United States government a blood sample they demand so as to record his DNA in their CODIS system. According to his attorney, Adrian Lamo has a religious objection to giving blood, but is willing to give his DNA in another form. "He went in there with fingernail clippings and hair, and they refused to accept it, because they will only accept blood" said federal public defender Mary French. A 26 March 2007 extended evidentiary hearing is scheduled to address a motion to dismiss filed by Lamo's counsel.

On June 15, lawyers for Lamo filed another motion citing the Book of Genesis as one basis for Lamo's religious opposition to the frivolous spilling of blood: "The Book of Genesis leaves unambiguous this matter. Therein, those who would spill the blood of man are rebuked as follows: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man." Genesis 9:6 (New International Version)."

Lamo continued: "Under this admonition, not only would I be blinding myself to the direct instructions of scripture by shedding blood, but I would similarly be casting whomever facilitated this act into sin, multiplying my culpability," setting the basis for defense counsel Mary French to urge US District Court Judge Frank Damrell to exempt Lamo from the sampling entirely, or to order his probation officer to accept some other biological product in lieu of blood, as previously offered by Lamo.

Can You Hack It?

Can You Hack It?, a documentary covering Lamo's life and times, is slated for release under the care of Trigger Street Productions. Directed by Sam Bozzo, it features Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, TechTV personality Leo Laporte, and narration by actor Kevin Spacey. The film explores the practical and ethical themes of modern computer hacking, intertwining Lamo's story with those of controversial figures throughout history.

Solo

Gary McKinnon, also known as Solo, (born in Glasgow in 1966) is a British hacker accused by the United States of perpetrating the "biggest military computer hack of all time." Following legal hearings in the UK it was decided in July 2006 that he should be extradited to the United States. In February 2007 his lawyers argued against this ruling in an appeal to the High Court in London [1], which was turned down on April 3 [2]. He still has the possibility of appealing to the House of Lords, and his lawyer has stated that he will do this[3] within 14 days using the argument that because the alleged offences were committed in the UK this is where he should be tried.

Background

The computer systems administrator is accused of hacking into 97 United States military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002. The computer networks he is accused of hacking include networks owned by NASA, the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defense and the US Air Force. The US estimates claim the costs of tracking and correcting the problems he allegedly caused were around $700,000.

McKinnon was originally tracked down and arrested under the Computer Misuse Act by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) in 2002 who informed him that he would face community service. The Crown Prosecution Service refused to charge him. Later that year he was indicted by the United States government. McKinnon remained at liberty without restriction for three years until June 2005 (after the UK had implemented a new extradition treaty with the US [which the US congress has not ratified]) when he became subject to bail conditions including a requirement to sign in at his local police station every evening, and to remain at his home address at night. In addition he was banned from using a computer with access to the Internet. There have been no more developments in respect of the charges relating to United Kingdom legislation but in late 2005 the United States began extradition proceedings.

If he is extradited to the U.S. and charged, McKinnon faces up to 70 years in jail and has expressed fears that he could be sent to Guantanamo Bay. He has said that he will contest the extradition proceedings and believes that he should face trial in the UK, principally as he argues that his "crimes" were committed there and not in the United States.

In an interview televised on the BBC's Click programme, he claimed that he was able to get into the military's networks simply by using a Perl script that searched for blank passwords; in other words his report suggests that there were computers on these networks with the default passwords active.

Statements to the media

During the length of time between his indictment and beginning of extradition proceedings, with a growing media interest in his case, Gary McKinnon has had a number of opportunities to address the media.

At the Infosecurity Europe 2006 conference in London on April 27, 2006, McKinnon appeared on the Hackers' Panel. When asked how his exploits were first discovered, McKinnon answered that he had miscalculated the timezone — he was using remote-control software to operate a Windows computer while its user was sitting in front of it.

McKinnon has admitted in many public statements to unauthorised access of computer systems in the United States including those mentioned in the United States indictment. He claims his motivation, drawn from a statement made before the Washington Press Club on May 9, 2001 by a group of high level ex-military and civilian sources known as "The Disclosure Project", was to find evidence of UFOs, antigravity technology, and the government suppression of "Free Energy", all of which he claims to have proven through his actions.

In his interview with the BBC he also claimed that "The Disclosure Project" says there is "extra-terrestrial and origin and [they've] captured spacecraft and reverse engineered it." He also claimed to have downloaded a low-resolution image of "something not man-made" and "cigar shaped" floating above the northern hemisphere. He said that unfortunately he did not manage to get a screenshot or recording of the image because he was "bedazzled" to see the image, could not remember the capture function in the software RemotelyAnywhere, and that he was "cut off" from his connection.

The charge that he perpetrated "the biggest military hack of all time" is disputed by McKinnon who characterises himself as a "bumbling computer nerd". He refers to previous documented incidents of hacking including May 2001 when as acknowledged by U.S. government contractor Exigent International one or more hackers broke into a U.S government server storing satellite software and stole code. Evidence led investigators to an e-mail service in Sweden but the culprits were never apprehended. In 1997, two California teenagers and a trio of Israeli hackers were arrested for hacking into Pentagon servers. Israeli hacker Ehud Tenenbaum, then 18 years old, and his two teenage accomplices were not extradited, but were prosecuted by local authorities. McKinnon has also claimed that on many occasions he noticed other hackers unlawfully entering the same systems and suggests that his activities were not unique. The U.S. Pentagon has for example in the past cited as many as 250,000 attacks in a single year.

Legal Developments
Gary McKinnon's extradition hearing was determined by the provisions of the UK Extradition Act 2003.

Under this Act there is no requirement for an extradition request from the United States to contain prima facie evidence of the charges. Following earlier adjournments a final court hearing was held on 10 May 2006 at Bow Street Magistrates' Court. The court recommended that he be extradited.

The adjourning of earlier hearings was occasioned by a request from the defence to obtain the following assurances: that Gary McKinnon would not be tried by a military tribunal, will be eligible for parole and will not have to serve his sentence at Guantanamo Bay. At a hearing on 12 April 2006 the prosecution produced an unsigned note from the US Embassy, claimed to be a guarantee that McKinnon would not be tried under U.S. Military Order 1 (November 13, 2001 - 66 Fed. Reg. 57,833 "Military Order"), which allows suspected terrorists to be tried under military law. However, the defence argued that the note was not binding as it was unsigned. The defence called as a witness Clive Stafford-Smith, a US-based lawyer who has defended inmates of Guantanamo Bay. Stafford-Smith argued that the note would not prevent McKinnon from being treated as a terrorist.

However in the final hearing on 10 May 2006 District Judge Nicholas Evans, ruling in the case, said he had received assurances that Mr McKinnon would be tried in a federal court in Virginia. He added that "any real - as opposed to fanciful - risk" of Mr McKinnon being sent to Guantanamo had receded. The case has been taken up again in the High Court in February 2007. His lawyers have stated they will again ask the Home Secretary to refuse extradition on the grounds that his human rights (under European Union law) have been violated .

The final decision in cases of extradition rests with the UK Home Secretary. On July 6, 2006 Home Secretary John Reid decided to allow the extradition "for charges connected with computer hacking". According to a Home Office spokesman: "Mr McKinnon had exercised his right to submit representations against return but the secretary of state did not consider the issues raised availed Mr McKinnon." In respect of U.S. Military Order 1 it has been noted that recently such military tribunals have been ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court, and may conceivably have been an influence in the Home Secretary's decision.

McKinnon's appeal against the extradition order was quashed by a High Court judge on April 3, 2007

Kevin Mitnick

Kevin David Mitnick (born August 6, 1963) is a computer security consultant and convicted computer hacker. Mitnick served five years in prison (four and a half years of it of it pre-trial), 8 months of that in solitary confinement, and was released on January 21, 2000. During his supervised release, which ended on January 21, 2003, he was initially restricted from using any communications technology other than a landline telephone. After fighting this decision in court, the judge ruled in favor of Mitnick, and when Mitnicks supervised part of his release ended this allowed him to access the Internet.

Kevin Mitnick began social engineering or perhaps discovered his first engineerible situation the age of 12. He realized could bypass the punchcard system used for the Los Angeles bus system, by buying himself his own punch, get free bus rides anywhere in the greater LA area. Social engineering became his primary method of obtaining information, whether it be usernames, passwords, modem phone numbers, anything that would have been useful in whatever mark he was working on.

Mitnick broke into his first computer network in 1979, when a friend gave him the phone number for the Ark, the computer system at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) used for developing their RSTS/E operating system software. He broke into DEC's systems and stole DEC's software, for which he was later convicted. This was the first of a series of run-ins with the law.

Downfall
Kevin Mitnick would change his identity by exploiting how the identification system worked in the United States. He would obtain the birth certificates of recently deceased newborns and very young children (around the ages of 1 to 3 years old), as the government had no distinct record of their death since they never worked nor were involved in society. Furthermore, the certificates would have to be from someone who was, for example, born in Washington and died in California, as it was more difficult to trace back to the original source. He changed his identity about three or four times, any time he changed jobs. He claimed to have learned most of this information through a book by the title of Paper Trail, written by Barbara Snow Gilbert. Mitnick was arrested after the FBI obtained a search warrant, searched his house, and found his wallet with numerous fake ID's. Although he was caught in an accident, by having the fake identification still in his possession, once out of jail, he was able to evade the FBI and police for a relatively large amount of time.

Controversy

Kevin Mitnick's criminal activities, arrest, and trial were controversial.

The core of the controversy came from two books that presented views that were at odds with one another: John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura's Takedown, and Jonathan Littman's The Fugitive Game. In particular, Littman made allegations of journalistic impropriety against Markoff, of overzealous prosecution of Mitnick by the government, of mainstream media over-hyping of Mitnick's actual crimes, and of the legality of Shimomura's involvement in the matter. Further controversy came over the release of the movie Takedown, with Littman alleging that portions of the film were taken from his book without permission.

The case against Mitnick tested then-nascent laws that had been enacted for dealing with computer crime, and it raised public awareness of security issues involving networked computers. The controversy remains, however, as Mitnick is often used today as an example of the quintessential computer criminal although his exploits are less notable than his notoriety suggests.

Furthermore, supporters of Mitnick assert that many of the charges against him were fraudulent and not based on actual losses. A lot of the hype surrounding Mitnick's exploits were media sensationalism; For example, many believe that Mitnick was once in the FBI's most wanted list. This is actually a myth. Federal prosecuter Kent Walker said in an interview to the New York Times: "He (Mitnick) was arguably the most wanted computer hacker in the world, he allegedly had access to corporate trade secrets worth millions of dollars. He was a very big threat". The headline of the resultant article, "A Most-Wanted Cyberthief Is Caught in His Own Web," was later picked up by Associated Press, Time Magazine and Reuters, thus perpetuating the myth. Mitnick has alleged that at one time he was held in solitary confinement for 8 months because his girlfriend Suzy Thunder told authorities Mitnick could cause a nuclear attack by whistling into a phone. He was refused access to a phone because of this.

While Mitnick's actual actions may not have justified the level of official concern they did, the fact that his activities were criminal is not disputed. Mitnick's first adult criminal sentence was considerably shorter than is the norm today. His second adult criminal sentence was typical for a second offense committed while on probation.

The film Freedom Downtime, a documentary that centers on the topics of Kevin Mitnick's incarceration in a maximum security prision, Miramax's film's screen adaptation of Takedown, and the "FREE KEVIN" movement, was made in 2001 by Emmanuel Goldstein and produced by 2600 Films in 2006.

Attacks on Mitnick's sites
On August 20, 2006, Kevin Mitnick's site was defaced by Pakistani hackers with offensive messages against him. The domain names defensivethinking.com, mitsec.com, kevinmitnick.com and mitnicksecurity.com displayed the vandalism for hours before the affected files were replaced.

Mitnick commented:

The Web hosting provider that hosts my sites was hacked, fortunately, I don't keep any confidential data on my Web site, so it wasn't that serious. Of course it is embarrassing to be defaced—nobody likes it.

As a notorious figure, Mitnick has been targeted by hackers who wish to bolster their status and for people seeking to prove their abilities.[4] Also, sites supporting Mitnick have been targeted as well.[citation needed]

Zone-H reports that in one occasion, there was a struggle between different black hat and white hat hackers when some defacers put their nicks on Mitnick's site and fans who were replacing the vandalized copy with an original unmodified one. This went on for a full day.

Recent activity

* Mitnick offers security consulting services through his company Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC and has co-authored two books on computer security. The books are The Art of Deception (2002), which focuses on social engineering, and The Art of Intrusion (2005), focusing on real stories of security exploits.
* He has also co-authored (with Alexis Kasperavicius) a social engineering prevention training course and certification: CSEPS.
* On Aug 20, 2006, A Syrian editor, Nidal Maalouf, accused Mitnick of stealing his domain name (Syria-news.com), He falsely claimed that Mitnick is the FBI's No.1 wanted person for illegal acts against a number of internet sites. Maalouf was interviewed by the local newspaper "Bourses & Markets", and the interview was quoted by Al-Ayham Saleh on his personal website.
* Mitnick usually makes semiannual appearances on the popular late night radio show Coast to Coast AM. Mitnick has also hosted the show with interviews including Steve Wozniak (on April 30, 2006).
* Kevin Mitnick has been invited to be a speaker at many events. He was the keynote speaker at the IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals) Privacy Academy in Las Vegas, October, 2005, Kevin Mitnick was also a speaker at the National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology in San Jose, CA, in the summer of 2004 as well as a keynote speaker at The Fifth H.O.P.E. in New York, NY, July, 2004. One of his first appearances was at ITESM Monterery Tec, on February 2003 where he was also the keynote speaker, and spoke to a sellout at the campu's auditorium, Auditorio Luis Elizondo. He was scheduled to speak at the sixth H.O.P.E. in 2006, but was unable to attend after becoming ill while vacationing in Colombia.
* Kevin Mitnick was a "surprise guest" in the 40th TWiT podcast when, while in Las Vegas for a conference, he ran into Steve Wozniak at a table outside a Starbucks coffee store. Wozniak was on the line with fellow TWiT hosts via Skype on his notebook computer, and Mitnick remained with Wozniak for much of the remainder of the show.
* Kevin Mitnick appeared on "Thebroken", an online videozine marketing itself as 'borderline legal.' He appeared on the third episode of the show, but was given mention in the first.
* Mitnick guest starred in a first season episode of Alias. The casting was an in-joke, since Mitnick played a CIA hacker. Due to the conditions of his parole, however, the computer he used in the scene was a prop.
* Kevin Mitnick has recently appeared on the South African actuality programme "Carte Blanche".
* On 2 March 2007, the WELL declined his application for admission, refunding his membership fee.
* Kevin Mitnick now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In popular culture
* Mitnick is referenced by a fictional radio caller in the video game Grand Theft Auto III. The crazy caller rants and raves about the National Security Agency's ECHELON system and government conspiracies. At the end, he is asked if he wants to say anything else and answers "yes", and then shouts "FREE KEVIN!", but is immediately cut off. "Free Kevin" is a reference to the controversy over Mitnick's trial and incarceration.
* Kevin Mitnick is mentioned in episode 18 of the anime "Black Lagoon".
* The video game "Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines" features a Nosferatu hacker named Mitnick.
* Mitnick is played by actor Skeet Ulrich in the movie Takedown.
* Mitnick's voice can be heard in the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas". During WCTR's "Area 53" conspiracy theory show, an unnamed caller talks about being kept in solitary confinement for 8 months because 'I can launch nuclear missiles by just whistling into a phone!'. The caller is none other than Kevin Mitnick himself. The host of the show, Marvin Trill, asks if the caller can blow up all the other radio stations in town, to which Mitnick replies 'Hey, I don't do that anymore. I only use my powers for good.'.

Enormous Biceps? - Or cancer growth or photoshop enhancement?

2007-03-19T15:45:00.000+01:00

Funny Pictures

Teacher fired for making students think

2007-03-03T20:03:00.000+01:00

A career in scientific research took Fred Hassman from job to job across the United States and made him a comfortable living.

Along the way, he earned two patents, contributed to numerous scholarly journals and built a resume covering six pages.

The University of Arizona graduate worked mostly in the pharmaceutical industry. He met his wife, a biochemist, while both were employed by Merrell Dow Research Institute in Indianapolis.

Hassman later worked for seven years as a scientist with Glaxo in North Carolina's Research Triangle and then worked for several Southern California companies.

But the 46-year-old eventually decided on a new career path.

He uprooted his family from San Diego - a place of impeccable weather and a famous zoo ("We had season passes," he says) but also enormous costs of living - to Warrick County, where his wife had been raised. Hassman said he decided to leave research, take a pay cut and go into teaching because he wanted to make a difference.

He said he tries to bring an innovative approach to the classroom, challenging students to think and to discover.

But only two years into his second career as a full-time chemistry teacher at Bosse High School, Hassman is dusting off his resume yet again.

The action listed on Monday night's School Board agenda said "resignation." Hassman said it was tantamount to a pink slip.

Hassman still is not sure why it happened.

"It doesn't add up," Hassman said Wednesday evening at a Newburgh coffee shop. "I really don't understand it."

School Board members, school corporation administrators and Bosse Principal Bob Adams all have declined to comment on Hassman's situation, noting it is a personnel matter.

Don Travis, president of the Evansville Teachers Association, also declined comment other than to say "contractually and legally the process was followed" in Hassman's resignation.

Bosse students, meanwhile, have been vocal in supporting the chemistry teacher, who will get to finish out the current school year.

Those students are describing Hassman as an outside-the-box thinker who motivates them to learn.

Three students addressed the School Board on Monday night. Others posted comments on the Courier & Press' Web site (courierpress.com).

Hassman said he's passionate about science. The son of an Air Force veteran, he grew up in Arizona, Germany and elsewhere curious about the world around him and wanting to know more about how it worked.

He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry, with a biology minor, from the University of Arizona and stayed for a while as a research assistant before being hired by Merrell Dow.

Hassman has credit toward a master's degree, but he said he's never been able to finish because "every time I got involved in it, I moved again."

From the time he left Tucson, Ariz., in 1985 until be moved to the Evansville area about three years ago, Hassman held both full-time and consulting jobs with nine different research companies in four states.

"One company I worked for got sold four different times," Hassman said. "I had four business cards with the same address. But that's the way it is in the industry."

According to Hassman's resume, his list of research accomplishments include solid phase and solution phase peptide synthesis, improving purification procedures of DNA and RNA and amino acid analysis.

He was motivated to go into teaching, though, because he was increasingly unimpressed by job applicants at companies where he worked.

"The last few years, I've been interviewing people, and I've seen a large decline in the quality of people coming out of our educational system," including Ph.Ds," Hassman said.

Once Hassman, his wife and two sons settled into their Warrick County home, he enrolled in a yearlong University of Southern Indiana program that helps private-industry professionals transition to teaching.

Hassman finished the program, worked briefly as a long-term substitute and student teacher before starting full time at Bosse in August 2005.

"I don't think we're teaching students to think, analyze, solve concepts," Hassman said. "Basically what we do in education is show them how to pass a test and then move on to the next chapter."

He described his style as hands-on, but not to an extreme. He encourages students to "take ownership" of their lab projects. In recent days, Hassman said he's been working with advanced chemistry students on designing a method to dissolve a compound into water.

Hassman said his job evaluation after one year at Bosse was positive, but in recent days, some school administrators had started observing his classes.

He declined to discuss the turn of events that led to his forced resignation, other than to call it "a difference of opinion," although he still isn't sure why some school officials didn't support him.

He did allow that "maybe I came on as too arrogant, wanted to make too many changes," but he stressed that he enjoys teaching at Bosse.

Bye, Bye Computer Mouse

2007-03-03T19:54:00.000+01:00

A researcher at Stanford has created an alternative to the mouse that allows a person using a computer to click links, highlight text, and scroll simply by looking at the screen and tapping a key on the keyboard. By using standard eye-tracking hardware--a specialized computer screen with a high-definition camera and infrared lights--Manu Kumar, a doctoral student who works with computer-science professor Terry Winograd, has developed a novel user interface that is easy to operate.

"Eye-tracking technology was developed for disabled users," Kumar explains, "but the work that we're doing here is trying to get it to a point where it becomes more useful for able-bodied users." He says that nondisabled users tend to have a higher standard for easy-to-use interfaces, and previously, eye-tracking technology that disabled people use hasn't appealed to them.

At the heart of Kumar's technology is software called EyePoint that works with standard eye-tracking hardware. The software uses an approach that requires that a person look at a Web link, for instance, and hold a "hot key" on the keyboard (usually found on the number pad on the right) as she is looking. The area of the screen that's being looked at becomes magnified. Then, the person pinpoints her focus within the magnified region and releases the hot key, effectively clicking through to the link.

Kumar's approach could take eye-tracking user interfaces in the right direction. Instead of designing a common type of gaze-based interface that is controlled completely by the eyes--for instance, a system in which a user gazes at a given link, then blinks in order to click through--he has involved the hand, which makes the interaction more natural. "He's got the right idea to let the eye augment the hand," says Robert Jacob, professor of computer science at Tufts University, in Medford, MA.

Rudimentary eye-tracking technology dates back to the early 1900s. Using photographic film, researchers captured reflected light from subjects' eyes and used the information to study how people read and look at pictures. But today's technology involves a high-resolution camera and a series of infrared light-emitting diodes. This hardware is embedded into the bezel of expensive monitors; the one Kumar uses cost $25,000. The camera picks up the movement of the pupil and the reflection of the infrared light off the cornea, which is used as a reference point because it doesn't move.

Even the best eye tracker isn't perfect, however. "The eye is not really very stable," says Kumar. Even when a person is fixated on a point, the pupil jitters. So he wrote an algorithm that allows the computer to smooth out the eye jitters in real time. The rest of the research, says Kumar, involves studying how people look at a screen and figuring out a way to build an interface that "does not overload the visual channel." In other words, he wanted to make its use feel natural to the user.

One of the important features of the interface, says Kumar, is that it works without a person needing to control a cursor. Unlike the mouse-based system in ubiquitous use today, EyePoint provides no feedback on where a person is looking. Previous studies have shown that it is distracting to a person when she is aware of her gaze because she consciously tries to control its location. In the usability studies that Kumar conducted, he found that people's performance dropped when he implemented a blue dot that followed their eyes.

In his studies of 20 people, he found that participants that needed to type and point could point faster using the gaze-based appraoch than using a mouse, although the error rate--20 percent--was fairly high. But overall, about 90 percent of participants reported that they preferred using EyePoint to the mouse.

It's the 20 percent error rate that could cause some problems, says Ted Selker, professor at the MIT Media and Arts Technology Laboratory. "[It's] a huge amount," he says, "because a person can notice a significant decline in accuracy at just 5 percent." Selker adds that the low accuracy could make text editing a challenge.

Kumar concedes that the system isn't perfect, but he contends that many of the errors came from people, who due to lack of practice, clicked links that they thought they had looked at but were only in their peripheral vision. Indeed, he says, trackpads, trackpoints, trackballs do not perform as well as a mouse either but are still viable input devices. Kumar says he's been working on algorithms that show promise for making EyePoint more accurate by accounting for peripheral vision related errors. Still, he allows that EyePoint might work poorly for certain people, such as those with thick glasses, special contact lenses, or lazy eyes.

Even so, Kumar is confident in the technology and its development as a tool for the general population. To that end, he has tested a number of different interface schemes, all under a project called Gaze-enhanced User Interface Design (GUIDe). Another application, called EyeExposé, is made for Apple's OS X feature called Exposé, in which a person can hit the F11 key to miniaturize all open windows, then drag the mouse cursor to the window she wants to bring forward. With EyeExposé, the user can hit the F11 key, then bring forward a window of interest by tapping a keyboard key. Also, Kumar has modified the "scroll lock" key on a keyboard in an application called EyeScroll: as a person reads, the screen slowly reveals more text. In addition, Kumar is testing a modified version of the "page up" and "page down" keys. When a person reads to the bottom of a page, the software automatically scrolls down one page; in order to help a reader keep her place, the most recently looked at part of the screen is highlighted.

The important thing about the Stanford research, says Shumin Zhai, researcher at IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA and pioneer in the eye-tracking field, is that Kumar "has been working on making eye tracking practical for everyday tasks." However, Zhai says that there may still be a barrier for the average person because she needs to go through a calibration process in which the software measures how quickly her eyes move.

There are some signs that eye-tracking technology could find its way to the consumer market soon. Apple's desktops and laptops are now equipped with a built-in camera for videoconferencing. If a higher-resolution camera, infrared LEDs, and software were added, Apple's machines would be able to support applications from the GUIDe project, says Kumar. If eye tracking proves appealing to the consumer, and the hardware costs drop to a reasonable range, eye-tracking interfaces could provide an alluring and entertaining alternative to the mouse or laptop track pad. "It's almost like magic when it's working," says Tufts's Jacob. "The sensation you get is that the computer's reading your mind, and that's really very powerful."

Seven Steps to Hell

2007-03-03T19:50:00.001+01:00

The August 3, 1995 edition of the Wall Street Journal carried an interview with former North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, a member of the North Vietnamese general staff and the man who received the surrender of South Vietnam’s President Duong Van Minh on April 30, 1975. The interview was conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota human rights activist.

Colonel Tin described the military and political events of the war from his vantage point in Hanoi. What he described was the step-by-step defeat of US forces, not on the battlefield, but in the White House, in the Halls of Congress, in the streets of America, and on our college and university campuses. Sound familiar?

As I read Col Tin’s recitation of how events played out in Vietnam – step-by-step-by-step – I couldn’t help but think of the motto embroidered across the shoulder patch that I wore during the last eighteen months of my military service. The shoulder patch was the insignia of the US 7th Army and the motto embroidered across the bottom read, “Seven Steps To Hell.”

Col. Tin was asked, “How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?” He responded, “By fighting a long war which would break their will…Ho Chi Minh said, ‘We don’t need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out.’ ”

Liberals, cut-and-run Democrats and the anti-war left now signal to al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad that we’re preparing to do the same in Iraq.

Step One.

Col Tin was asked, “Was the American anti-war movement important to Hanoi’s victory?” He responded, “It was essential to our strategy…Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9:00 AM to follow the growth of the American anti-war movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark...gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses.”

Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark are back, and they’ve been joined by Cindy Sheehan, a host of anti-war leftists, and nearly the entire Democrat Party…all bashing the Commander in Chief and clamoring for an early surrender in Iraq.

Step Two.

Col. Tin was asked, “How could the Americans have won the war?” He responded, “Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted (General) Westmoreland’s requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.”

While George W. Bush has given battlefield commanders all of the troops and equipment they’ve requested, Democrats complain that it’s either too little or too much.

Step Three.

Col. Tin was asked, “What of American bombing of North Vietnam?” He responded, “If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn’t worry us.”

In the Iraq War, Rules of Engagement are written by lawyers in the Pentagon.

Step Four.

Col. Tin was asked, “What about Westmoreland’s strategy and tactics caused you concern?” He responded, “Our senior commander in the South, Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh, knew that we were losing base areas, control of the rural population, and that his main forces were being pushed out to the borders of South Vietnam…Johnson had rejected Westmoreland’s request for 200,000 more troops (and) we realized that America had made its maximum military commitment to the war… ”

Democrats and anti-war radicals maintain constant pressure to turn public opinion against the administrations new “troop surge” strategy, even threatening to cut off funding for our troops.

Step Five.

Col. Tin continued, “Tet was designed to influence American public opinion. We would attack poorly defended parts of South Vietnam cities during a holiday…when few South Vietnamese troops would be on duty…Our losses were staggering…(General) Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for reelection.”

In America, in 2006, Democrats and anti-war radicals hounded a highly competent Defense Secretary out of office and used bloated anti-war rhetoric to gain victories in the mid-term elections.

Step Six.

Col. Tin was asked, “What of Nixon?” He responded, “Well, when Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we knew we would win. (Prime Minister) Pham Van Dong said of Gerald Ford…‘He’s the weakest president in US history; the people didn’t elect him. Even if you gave him candy he doesn’t dare intervene in Vietnam again.’ ”

So who will Islamic Jihad see across the battle lines in the next administration…Hillary Clinton? Barack Hussein Obama? A trial lawyer from North Carolina?

Step Seven.

“Seven Steps To Hell”…and one day Democrats will be called to answer for each and every one of them.

The senior judge who faces trial for flashing on a train

2007-03-03T19:43:00.000+01:00

A senior judge has been charged with twice exposing himself to a woman on a train.

Lord Justice Richards, who sits in the Court of Appeal, was held by detectives in January after the shocked passenger made a complaint about a male commuter

On the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service, the married father of three was yesterday charged with two counts of exposure after answering police bail.

In a further humiliation, at the time of his arrest he was forced to pose for a police mugshot.

He has also been fingerprinted and asked to provide a DNA sample.

The maximum sentence for a first offence of indecent exposure is six months in jail. Should he be convicted, the judge will almost certainly be sacked.

A British Transport Police spokesman said the allegations relate to two separate incidents on trains in South-West London last year.

The Right Honourable Sir Stephen Richards, 56, who lives in Wimbledon, was originally arrested by BTP following an undercover operation.

The judge was detained on his way to work after the alleged victim picked him out on a train from Wimbledon to Central London.

Accompanied by an undercover detective, the woman identified Sir Stephen as the man who allegedly exposed himself to her last October.

Detectives had no idea that the suspect was a leading judge until they arrested him.

After the arrest in January Sir Stephen insisted he was innocent. He said: "I spoke to police and gave them my full co-operation about an incident last October which I deny. I have not been charged and have been bailed in the usual manner."

Despite the fact that he has now been charged, the £184,000-a-year judge has not been suspended. However, he will not sit in court pending the outcome of the case.

He continues to deny the allegation and has been released on police bail.

The judge has overseen a number of high-profile hearings, and in January ruled in a High Court case brought by the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot dead by police who mistook him for a suicide bomber.

Sitting with Mr Justice Roberts, he said the Crown Prosecution Service's decision not to charge individual officersin connection with his death in July 2005 could be referred to the House of Lords.

The judge married in 1976, and he and his wife Lucy have two sons and a daughter.

Educated at King's College School, Wimbledon, and St John's College, Oxford, Sir Stephen was called to the bar in 1975 and became a High Court judge in 1997 before becoming a Lord Justice of Appeal in 2005.

He has also served as deputy chairman of the Boundary Commission for Wales. He lists his recreations as walking and relaxing in the Welsh hills.

A spokesman for the Judicial Communications Office said: "He is not suspended so remains on full pay.

"The Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice have been made aware of the charges. The Judge will not be sitting, pending the outcome of the proceedings. The Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice do not comment on individual cases."

Sir Stephen, who answered bail at Ebury Bridge police station in Central London, was bailed to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on March 8.

Germany joins the space race in a giant leap of confidence

2007-03-03T08:34:00.001+01:00

Germany is planning to land an unmanned craft on the Moon in an ambitious revival of a dream that has haunted the nation since the 1930s.

“Why shouldn’t we do it alone?” asks Walter Doellinger, director of the German Air and Space Centre. “We have the technology, we have the know-how and we have the experience with robots.”

There have been clear signals from the German Government, led by the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who is a physicist, that it is willing to put up €300 million (£202 million) over five years for the initial funding of the Lunar Exploration Orbiter.

It is a sign of the new self-confidence of Germany, and one that will attract controversy: it was under the Nazis that German scientists made the decisive breakthrough towards space travel in October 1942 by launching an A4 rocket 100km into space.

The rocket design, renamed the V2, was later used to bombard the South East of England and Antwerp in Belgium, killing thousands. The German scientist Wernher von Braun later helped America in the space race.

Germany’s partners have viewed with suspicion any attempt to develop a space programme outside established institutions such as the European Space Agency (ESA). Germany, of course, does not have a sinister military intent. As outlined to scientists at a meeting this week, it intends to send a satellite with a high-resolution camera to orbit the Moon for four years to prepare the first detailed lunar map. When this is completed, a rocket will land a robot soil-sampler.

German scientists lead the field in outer space measurement, photographic and radar technology, including the high-resolution cameras on board the European Space Agency craft Mars Express.

The German orbiter will be launched by 2013. The soil sampler should be on the Moon before 2020. The US manned space programme may also benefit from the Moon atlas if Nasa goes ahead with its plans to set up a lunar base.

Other European countries, including Britain and Italy, have been considering independent projects in space. “Every one of our members is permitted to start its own venture,” a spokeswoman for the ESA said.China is emerging as a space superpower, with two successful manned missions and ambitious plans to build space station. India also has an active programme. It plans to launch an unmanned lunar mission by early next year, plus manned space flights and an unmanned mission to Mars in 2012.

Germany’s space ambitions began peacefully enough in the 1920s. It was the Germans who first conceived of a prelaunch countdown — featured in the 1929 Utopian film Woman in the Moon by Fritz Lang.

First in space

— General Walter Dornberger said, on the launch of the A4 in 1942: “We have invaded space with a rocket and used space as a bridge between two points on the Earth”

— Within months the design, renamed the V2, above, was being mass-produced by slave labour for use as a weapon

— The key scientist involved in the A2 project was Wernher von Braun. After the war, he helped the US to build missiles capable of hitting the Soviet Union

— Moscow also seized German rocket scientists and set them to work on nuclear weapon delivery and space exploratio

Pope is warned of a green Antichrist

2007-03-03T08:29:00.001+01:00

An arch-conservative cardinal chosen by the Pope to deliver this year’s Lenten meditations to the Vatican hierarchy has caused consternation by giving warning of an Antichrist who is “a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist”.

Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, 78, who retired as Archbishop of Bologna three years ago, quoted Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900), the Russian philosopher and mystic, as predicting that the Antichrist “will convoke an ecumenical council and seek the consensus of all the Christian confessions”.

The “masses” would follow the Antichrist, “with the exception of small groups of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants” who would fight to prevent the watering down and ultimate destruction of the faith, he said.

The Pope traditionally withdraws from public view during the first week of Lent, conducting “spiritual exercises” in retreat with close advisers.

The choice of Cardinal Biffi raised eyebrows in the Vatican, given his sometimes eccentric views. The cardinal gave a warning of the coming of the Antichrist during his two decades as the Archbishop of Bologna, and said that an “invasion” of Muslim immigrants was undermining Europe’s Christian values.

Cardinal Biffi said that the Antichrist was not necessarily a person but “the reduction of Christianity to an ideology . . . The teaching that the great Russian philosopher left us is that Christianity cannot be reduced to a set of values. At the heart of being a Christian is the personal encounter with Jesus Christ.” But he quoted with approval from Solovyov’s Three Dialogues on War, Progress and the End of History, which suggests that the Antichrist is a real figure.

Cardinal Biffi said that Christianity stood for “absolute values, such as goodness, truth, beauty”. If “relative values” such as “solidarity, love of peace and respect for nature” became absolute, they would encourage “idolatry” and “put obstacles in the way of salvation”.

When he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict sternly defended core Roman Catholic doctrines and opposed calls for an ecumenical Third Vatican Council advanced by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the liberal former Archbishop of Milan.

The choice of Lenten speaker has in the past given a clue to Vatican policy, although one source said that Cardinal Biffi had perhaps been chosen because his “verbal fireworks” would keep listeners awake.

Beastly beliefs

-The doctrine of the Antichrist appears in the New Testament, and could denote someone setting himself up as a Christlike saviour. The Book of Revelation refers to the “Number of the Beast”, 666

-Martin Luther and other reformers saw the Pope as the Antichrist

-In 1888 the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche denounced Christianity in The Antichrist

-When the Pope addressed the European Parliament in 1988 the Rev Ian Paisley interrupted him, shouting, “I renounce you as the Antichrist!”

Study: Sex Makes People Feel Sexier

2007-03-01T20:34:00.000+01:00

Sexual activity for men and women, straight or gay, raises testosterone levels, which, at least in women, fuels the desire for intercourse, increases the likelihood of experiencing an orgasm and heightens the individual’s belief in her own sexiness, recent studies have found.

The findings are among the first to suggest that men and women can alter their own hormone levels based on how often they cuddle or copulate, both of which can lead to testosterone rises.

Sexual activity for men and women, straight or gay, raises testosterone levels, which, at least in women, fuels the desire for intercourse, increases the likelihood of experiencing an orgasm and heightens the individual’s belief in her own sexiness, recent studies have found.

The findings are among the first to suggest that men and women can alter their own hormone levels based on how often they cuddle or copulate, both of which can lead to testosterone rises.

The researchers determined partnered men and women had the lowest overall testosterone levels, while polyamorous men and women both had higher amounts of testosterone than single or monogamously partnered individuals.

The team of scientists theorizes the hormone may be involved in "bond maintenance" and in preparing the individual for competition.

9 Year Old Girl Gives Birth To Baby

2007-03-01T20:28:00.000+01:00

A nine-year-old Singaporean student, who did not realise she was pregnant, gave birth to a boy after it became too late for her to abort the baby.

Her horrified mother found out that her daughter was six-month pregnant when she took her to a doctor for what she thought was a urine infection.

By that time, it was too late for the girl to go for abortion.

The shocking case was made public at a seminar on youth relationships organised by Tamil cultural group Narpani Peravi and Republic Polytechnic last Saturday and was reported in Tamil Murasu on Sunday.

The primary three student, who comes from a well-to-do family and lives in a private landed property, was made pregnant by her boyfriend from the same school back in 2004. She gave her baby boy up for adoption soon after giving birth. The child would be about three years old now.

The girl was sent by her parents to a school in a nearby country, where she is currently in Primary Six. The boy was sent to a Reformative Training Centre soon after.

According to The New Paper, the girl met her boyfriend in school and they had sex frequently in her home. All these time, her parents never suspected anything as they were out and working most of the time.

And when she started gaining weight and had morning sickness, she didn't suspect that she was pregnant. Neither did her teachers and friends, as the girl always tucked blouse out so no one in school could tell if she was pregnant..

An early developer, she was about 1.3 metres tall and quite big-size for a girl her age. She reached puberty early and started menstruating when she was eight.

A gynaecologist and an urologist told The New Paper that it is very unusual for a nine-year-old to give birth.

Gynaecologist Ann Tan, who has 15 years experience, said she has never heard or seen any girl below 14 getting pregnant.

"This is very frightening," said Dr Tan, when told of the case.

She said that girls reach puberty around 11 on average.

Consultant urologist Damian Png, who has more than 10 years of experience, said boys usually reach puberty between 11 and 13.

Once a boy reaches puberty, he will be able to produce sperm, and in so doing will be capable of impregnating a girl. He, however, notes that the average age of puberty has gone down.

The youngest mother ever on record is Lina Medina from Peru. She was only five when she gave birth to a boy in May 1939. It was reported that she had her first period when she was only eight months old.

Her son, named Gerardo, died from a bone marrow disease when he was 40 in 1979.

Why do pilots say "roger" on the radio?

2007-03-01T18:27:00.000+01:00

Pilots and other military types say “roger” to acknowledge receipt of a message or instructions. “Roger” at one time was the phonetic designation for the letter R, which in turn stood for “received.” Why not just say "received"? From a safety perspective, it makes sense to use standardized language, particularly when dealing with international operations. An American pilot may not understand German, but they both understand aviation terminology. The International Civil Aviation Organization oversees this standardization and disseminates it accordingly.

The use of “roger” isn't all that old. In the military's phonetic alphabet, "roger" didn't become the designation for R until 1927. (Previously the designation had been "rush.") The first citation given by the Oxford English Dictionary for “roger” in the sense of "received" dates from 1941, coinciding with U.S. entry into WWII. The term made the big time in 1943, when the Army Signal Corps incorporated it into one of its procedural manuals.

In 1957 "roger" was replaced by "romeo," the current designation, but by then "roger" = "received" was so entrenched that the brass knew better than to try and change it.

As for the use of “roger, roger” in Phantom Menace, the consensus seems to be that it's a sly (OK, not that sly) reference to Airplane (1980). The co-pilot in the latter movie, played by Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was named Roger Murdock. This was the pretext for such lines as:

Captain Oveur (Peter Graves): Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?

Variations on this theme include Oveur/over and clearance/Clarence. Trust me, it's pretty funny in the movie.

As for Roger’s last name, “wilco” dates from the same time, and is simply an abbreviation of “will comply.” So the pilot who invokes our friend Roger Wilco is saying “I understand you, and will follow your instructions,” only cooler and shorter.

Sources

Department of the Navy, “Phonetic Alphabet and Signal Flags” (2001), accessed from http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq101-1.htm on November 7, 2006

Oxford English Dictionary, “Roger” (1989), accessed from http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50208035?query_type=word&queryword=roger&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&search_id=x623-4WoeC3-13752&result_place=1 on November 7, 2006

US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse

2007-03-01T18:21:00.000+01:00

An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

The officers - combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency - are charged with implementing the "new way forward" strategy announced by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial "surge" of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.

But the team, known as the "Baghdad brains trust" and ensconced in the heavily fortified Green Zone, is struggling to overcome a range of entrenched problems in what has become a race against time, according to a former senior administration official familiar with their deliberations.

"They know they are operating under a clock. They know they are going to hear a lot more talk in Washington about 'Plan B' by the autumn - meaning withdrawal. They know the next six-month period is their opportunity. And they say it's getting harder every day," he said.

By improving security, the plan's short-term aim is to create time and space for the Iraqi government to bring rival Shia, Sunni and Kurd factions together in a process of national reconciliation, American officials say. If that works within the stipulated timeframe, longer term schemes for rebuilding Iraq under the so-called "go long" strategy will be set in motion.

But the next six months are make-or-break for the US military and the Iraqi government. The main obstacles confronting Gen Petraeus's team are:

· Insufficient troops on the ground

· A "disintegrating" international coalition

· An anticipated increase in violence in the south as the British leave

· Morale problems as casualties rise

· A failure of political will in Washington and/or Baghdad.

"The scene is very tense," the former official said. "They are working round the clock. Endless cups of tea with the Iraqis. But they're still trying to figure out what's the plan. The president is expecting progress. But they're thinking, what does he mean? The plan is changing every minute, as all plans do."

The team is an unusual mix of combat experience and academic achievement. It includes Colonel Peter Mansoor, a former armoured division commander with a PhD in the history of infantry; Colonel HR McMaster, author of a well-known critique of Vietnam and a seasoned counter-insurgency operations chief; Lt-Col David Kilcullen, a seconded Australian officer and expert on Islamism; and Colonel Michael Meese, son of the former US attorney-general Edwin Meese, who was a member of the ill-fated Iraq Study Group.

Their biggest headache was insufficient troops on the ground despite the increase ordered by President Bush, the former official said. "We don't have the numbers for the counter-insurgency job even with the surge. The word 'surge' is a misnomer. Strategically, tactically, it's not a surge," an American officer said.

According to the US military's revised counter-insurgency field manual, FM 3-24, written by Gen Petraeus, the optimum "troop-to-task" ratio for Baghdad requires 120,000 US and allied troops in the city alone. Current totals, even including often unreliable Iraqi units, fall short and the deficit is even greater in conflict areas outside Baghdad.

"Additional troops are essential if we are to win," said Lt-Col John Nagel, co-author of the manual, in an address at the US Naval Institute in San Diego last month. One soldier for every 50 civilians in the most intense conflict areas was key to successful counter-insurgency work.Compounding the manpower problems is an apparently insurmountable shortage of civilian volunteers from the Pentagon, state department and treasury. They are needed to staff the additional provincial reconstruction teams and other aid projects promised by Mr Bush.

The cut in British troops in southern Iraq, coupled with the actual or anticipated departure of other allies, has heightened the Petraeus team's worries that the international coalition is "disintegrating" even as the US strives to regain the initiative in Iraq, the former official said.

Increased violence in the south is expected, caused in part by the "displacement" of Shia militias forced out of Baghdad by the US crackdown. American and Iraq forces entered the militant Shia stronghold of Sadr City on Tuesday for the first time since the surge began. No other major operation has yet been attempted there but "we or the Iraqis are going to have to fight them", one US officer said.

According to a British source, plans are in hand for the possible southwards deployment of 6,000 US troops to compensate for Britain's phased withdrawal and any upsurge in unrest.

Morale is another concern in the Green Zone headquarters: American forces are preparing for a rise in casualties as the crackdown gathers pace. In a message to the troops after he assumed overall command last month, Gen Petraeus praised their sacrifices while warning of more "difficult times" to come.

"We serve in Iraq at a critical time ... A decisive moment approaches. Shoulder to shoulder with our Iraqi comrades we will conduct a pivotal campaign to improve security for the Iraqi people. The stakes could not be higher," Gen Petraeus said.

"It's amazing how well morale has held up so far," the former official said. "But the guys know what's being said back home. There is no question morale is gradually being sapped by political debates."

The advisers are also said to be struggling to prevent the "politicisation" of the surge by the Shia-dominated government. The fear is that any security advances may be exploited to further weaken the position of Baghdad's Sunni minority.

Despite progress this week on a new law sharing Iraq's oil wealth, the Petraeus team believes the government is failing to work hard enough to meet other national reconciliation "benchmarks" set by Mr Bush.Yet it is accepted that the US is asking the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to do what most politicians in normal circumstances would refuse to contemplate. "What we're doing is asking Maliki to confront his own powerbase," one officer said.

Possibly the biggest longer term concern of Gen Petraeus's team is that political will in Washington may collapse just as the military is on the point of making a counter-insurgency breakthrough. According to a senior administration official, speaking this week, this is precisely what happened in the final year of the Vietnam war. Steven Simon, the national security council's senior director for transnational threats during the Clinton administration, said a final meltdown in political and public backing was likely if the new strategy was not seen to be working quickly.

"The implosion of domestic support for the war will compel the disengagement of US forces. It is now just a matter of time," Mr Simon said in a paper written for the Council on Foreign Relations. "Better to withdraw as a coherent and at least somewhat volitional act than withdraw later in hectic response to public opposition... or to a series of unexpectedly sharp reverses on the ground," he said.

"If it gets really tough in the next few months, it will throw fuel on the fire in Washington," the former official said. "Congress will be emboldened in direct proportion to the trouble in Iraq." If the policy was not judged to be working by Labor Day (the first Monday in September which marks the start of the new political year), Mr Bush could lose control of the policy to Congress and be forced to begin a phased pull-out, he suggested.

A senior Pentagon official said this week that it was too early to gauge the strategy's chances of success - but preliminary reports were encouraging. "There are some promising signs. There is a new overall Iraqi commander in Baghdad. A number of joint operations have just begun. The number of political murders has fallen. Iraqi forces are showing up as promised, admittedly a little bit under strength, and are taking up some of the responsibilities that Maliki said he would,"he said. "We have to be realistic. We're not going to stop the suicide bombers and the roadside explosive devices for some time. And the military alone are certainly not going to solve the problem. Maliki has to meet the benchmarks. A civilian surge is needed, too. The Iraqis have to do it themselves."

US officials say they also have rising hopes of a breakthrough in Sunni-dominated Anbar province where tribal chiefs are increasingly hostile to al-Qaida and foreign fighters - and are looking to build bridges with moderate Shias.

But this week's US decision to join talks on Iraq with Iran and Syria, after previously refusing to do so, is nevertheless seen as an indication of the administration's growing alarm at the possibility of a historic strategic failure.

Government sued for marijuana lies

2007-02-22T14:40:00.000+01:00

Americans for Safe Access has just filed a lawsuit against the Dept of Health and Human Services over medical marijuana.

The Oakland-based organization seeks to stop the government from using taxpayer money to spread information about marijuana that contradicts current science.

“The FDA position on medical cannabis is incorrect, dishonest and a flagrant violation of laws requiring the government to base policy on sound science,” said Joe Elford, chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access.

The latest piece of a growing mountain of evidence about marijuana came just last week in a study conducted at UC San Francisco and published in the journal Neurology. The study found a dramatic reduction in pain for HIV patients who medicated with marijuana.

Prohibitionists attempt to punch holes in these studies by claiming everything from researcher bias to a flawed methodology. It is their cynicism that blinds them to the realities of cannabis as medicine. Before people started popping aspirin for pain around 1900, cannabis was America’s #1 painkiller. It was the active ingredient in over 60% of painkillers sold in the United States.

The idea that medical marijuana is just a Trojan horse for people wanting to get high obviously cannot be correct. Long before Americans were getting stoned, they were using cannabis as medicine every day.

The government is flatly lying about marijuana having no medical use. Many have been pointing this out privately for years. Today, Americans for Safe Access did something to try to fix the situation. They filed suit.

Having public policy that is grounded in fact and not merely for sale is in the best interest of everyone – marijuana user or not. Americans for Safe Access is working hard to force change on a failed and corrupt government policy and they deserve our help.

Scientifically challenged: "200 million Americans cannot read a simple story in the New York Times science section… or understand even the basics of D

2007-02-22T14:34:00.000+01:00

Let’s start by focusing on the positive. In just 17 years, over 50 million people have been added to the rolls of Americans who can understand a newspaper story about science or technology, according to findings presented last weekend at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Michigan State University political scientist Jon D. Miller, who conducted the study, attributed some of the increase in science literacy to colleges, many of which in recent years have required that students take at least one science course. Miller says people have also added to their understanding through informal learning: reading articles and watching science reports on television.

Okay, now let’s talk (dare I say rant?) about the 200 million Americans out there who cannot read a simple story in, say, Technology Review or the New York Times science section and understand even the basics of DNA or microchips or global warming.

This level of science illiteracy may explain why over 40 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution and about 20 percent, when asked if the earth orbits the sun or vice versa, say it’s the sun that does the orbiting--placing these people in the same camp as the Inquisition that punished Galileo almost 400 years ago. It also explains the extraordinary disconnect between scientists and much of the public over issues the scientists think were settled long ago--never mind newer discoveries and research on topics such as the use of chimeras to study cancer, or pills that may extend life span by 30 or 40 percent.

As Carl Sagan eloquently wrote in The Demon-Haunted World, ignorance reigns in our society at a moment when science is on the cusp of doing amazing and wonderful things, but also dangerous things. Ignorance, said Sagan, is not an option.

Indeed, given that we live in a culture based on science and technology, this situation is dangerous. It conjures the specter of a society in which a cadre of elites knows and understands the essentials of the science that underpins our civilization, while everyone else uses and depends on that science without having a clue. This scenario is troubling in a democracy that assumes a baseline of citizen knowledge. The outcome could be that the illiterates become so fearful of science and technology, so resentful of the exalted position of the elites, that they try to slow down the progress of science, or stop it altogether. Or the opposite could happen: the scientifically elite may grow frustrated with the illiterates and try to co-opt or even control them.

The forces of ignorance have squelched science across history, from the mob in ancient Alexandria, which chased the astronomer Aristarchus out of town for suggesting that the earth moved around the sun, to the present restrictions on federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research.

Elites’ exploiting their scientific knowledge for power is also not new. Mayan elites, for instance, used their extraordinary knowledge of mathematics, engineering, and astronomy to build great cities and temples--and sumptuous palaces for themselves--and to awe and control the masses through a religion that included ripping the hearts out of sacrificial victims. Europeans during the colonial era leveraged their advanced guns and ships into global empires at the expense of so-called “ignorant savages.”

One of Miller’s findings that may surprise many Americans is that Europeans and Japanese actually rate slightly lower in science literacy. To be sure, these same populations also have a much higher percentage of people who accept evolution and other basic scientific theories. America’s large population of conservative religious believers may be one reason for this discrepancy, although clearly there are hundreds of millions of people in the developed world who need education.

Perhaps we should launch a scientific literacy campaign like the mid-20th-century drive that nearly tripled the rate of basic literacy worldwide. The question is, does the public really want to know how gadgets run and how organisms work? And are scientists and those who control scientific knowledge willing to share--that is, to take the time, and perhaps give up some of their influence and access to knowledge?

In other words, is this seemingly global dilemma of science illiteracy fixable or not?