Groonk's Newsmine 2.0

On Friday and Saturday, Payne presented "How to Be a Dominant Diva," which is how Tom wound up being spanked and caned in public. (It could have been worse for Tom; Payne also demonstrated hogtying on her husband, Greg Sena, a cross-dressing Chatsworth geologist who said that at their wedding two years ago, she wore a red dress, he wore a white dress … and yes, his mother wept.)

Saturday's seminar lineup included "The Straight Girls Guide to Sleeping With Chicks," "A Practical Guide to Striptease" by Miyoko Fujimori, a former Playboy Channel talk-show host, and "Naked Chocolate: The Astonishing Truth About the World's Greatest Aphrodisiac," by David Wolfe, an earnest raw-food expert who was energetically selling cacao nibs and goji berries at his booth Friday night.

[...]

In 1809 the Turk defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at Schonbrunn, during the Wagram campaign.

Challenged immune systems -- such as kids who grow up with two or more pets -- don't tend to develop as many allergies, said Dr. Stanley Goldstein, director of Allergy & Asthma Care of Long Island.

Dr Burgess said: "We believe that hallucinations are caused by a difficulty in discriminating information present in the outside world from information that is imagined. In schizophrenia the difficulty you have in separating reality from imagined events becomes exaggerated so some people have hallucinations and hear voices that simply aren't there." These results indicate a link between the brain areas implicated in schizophrenia and the regions that support the ability to discriminate between perceived and imagined information.

In the tests, healthy subjects were shown 96 well-known word pairs from pop culture such as 'Laurel and Hardy', 'bacon and eggs', and 'rock and roll'. The participants were asked to count the number of letters in the second word of the pair. Often the second word wasn't actually shown and the subject had to imagine the word – such as 'Laurel and ?'.

Participants were then asked which of the second words they had actually seen on screen and which ones they had only imagined. The subjects' brain activity was observed using fMRI scans while they remembered whether words had been imagined or seen on screen.

When people accurately remembered whether they had actually seen a word or just imagined it brain activity in the key areas increased – many of which are found in brain area 10, which is involved in imagination and reality checking, develops last in the brain and is twice as big in humans as in other animals. In the people who did not remember correctly, activation in brain area 10 was reduced.

This is only the second time in television history that a show sent to TV's trash heap has been resurrected. Curiously, the first was "Family Guy," also an animated Fox show.

The tale of "Futurama's" dramatic revival roughly follows that same path that "Family Guy" did.

Until recently, these types of behavior have been almost unheard of, leaving conservation biologists searching for an explanation. Habitat destruction, starvation, social breakdown from poaching and culls, and the loss of herd coherence are factors known to severely threaten elephant survival. But the levels and types of atypical behavior being observed suggest an added dimension to the problem. Some biologists think that increased elephant aggression might comprise, in part, revenge against humans for accidental or deliberate elephant deaths. Could it be that elephants, like humans, also suffer psychological trauma as a result of violence?

Until a few years ago, making such inference and diagnosing elephants with PTSD would have been dismissed as anthropomorphism. But no longer. Elephant psychopathology, chimpanzee infanticide and other un-animal-like behaviors are part of a growing body of research that suggests science is building toward a radical paradigm shift. Streams of new data and theories, critically from neuroscience, are converging into a new, trans-species model of the psyche. Humans are being reinstated back into the species continuum that Darwin articulated, a continuum that includes laughing rats, octopuses with personalities, sheep who read emotions from the faces of their family members and tool-wielding crows.

We now understand that all vertebrates, and it is argued even some invertebrates, share many biological structures and processes that underlie attributes once considered uniquely human: empathy, personality, culture, emotion, language, intention, tool-use and violence.

"For me, it would have been, like, my cargo pants in the woods--pot luck, everybody brings a sandwich and throws out a blanket."
-Soon-to-be-married Desperate Housewives star Marcia Cross’ ideal wedding scenario

"I was gonna go with Shaq Black but then Shaq moved to Miami, so no dice."
-Jack Black considered naming his newborn after his favorite basketball player, Shaquille O'Neal, but that changed when O'Neal left Black’s beloved L.A. Lakers for the Miami Heat

"Gwyneth Paltrow put me on to it. It's the best parenting tool, because you can use it during a scene and no one will notice."
-Meryl Streep uses her Blackberry phone to multitask and organize thanks to advice from actress/mom Paltrow

"Have I ever been totally and completely intimidated by another person? Yes, my husband's mother."
-Madonna, on Guy Ritchie’s mom

"I love punk rock because it's honest and there's a lot of feeling behind it. Bands like The Clash and Matchbox 20 are great."
-Angelina Jolie uses “punk” rock to help prepare for a movie scene

"She's got a great sense of humor. She's the best. What you see is what you get. She's genuine, honest and down-to-earth."
-Vince Vaughn, on Jennifer Aniston

"She's 28-years-old, a real estate investor, and, apparently, doesn't read the paper."
-David Spade, poking fun at Charlie Sheen’s new girlfriend

"Acting against her was like taking a cold bath of terror every day. I was always ready to wet my pants."
-Anne Hathaway, on working with Meryl Streep for upcoming movie The Devil Wears Prada

Yesterday, as she continued to make a remarkable recovery, her mother and father said they were convinced that the melody of the singer's Number One hit had helped her pull through.
"Claudia loves You're Beautiful and she used to sing it all the time," said her father Paul, 40. "It was like her theme tune.
"Following the accident, the doctors warned us she might not make it, and after ten days in a coma we were desperately worried that she wasn't going to recover.

[...]

While whales often are successful, some herring escape. The study's authors perhaps say it best: "Farting may save their lives."

"The (herring) bubbles are released through the anal duct when the air expands as the fish ascend,” explained Malene Simon, who worked on the research. "We do not know if the fish release air when staying at one depth as a reaction when meeting a predator. However, it is very likely that the bubble will confuse or scare the predator in such a way that the herring will have a better chance of escaping."

Simon, a researcher at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, added, "This effect would probably be much less significant for one lonely fish than when it is a large school of fish. The air bubbles reflect sound and make it difficult (for the whales) to locate the fish with echolocation."

Undaunted by flatulent fish, killer whales dive — often several hundred feet — to drive herring up to shallower waters, Simon told Discovery News. As they dive, they emit a cacophony of clicks and whistles that seem to scare and tighten the fish schools.

The whales also slap their tails underwater in a way that can kill or disorient stunned fish, which the whales then leisurely munch one by one.

Simon said Icelandic killer whales have refined this technique. They herd and tail slap like their Norwegian relatives, but also emit an intense siren-like sound that appears to force terrified fish into an even tighter ball.

In the late 1970s, in a underground bunker on his ranch near San Diego, American millionaire Robert Klark Graham set up the world's most controversial sperm bank known as the Repository for Germinal Choice.

Already famous as the inventor of the shatterproof spectacle lens, 70-year-old Graham was set to turn his hand to a much more infamous career.

He believed that "retrograde humans" were breeding unchecked. He wanted to reverse this trend by bringing thousands of geniuses into the world, fathered by the most brilliant minds. Single-handedly he dreamed of saving humanity using the sperm of clever men.

"Throughout my life I've felt I've not had to work as hard for the level of achievement that I've reached as most of my peers did.

"I don't usually broadcast the fact that I came from a sperm bank because I don't think it's that interesting. People find out when it comes up."

But Doron is not convinced by Graham's grand plan for creating more intelligent people.

"As far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter how a child is made in terms of the genes and chromosomes of it, it's how the child was raised and nurtured that really matters."

The British author _ who wrote the best-seller "A Brief History of Time" _ said that the pope made the comments at a cosmology conference at the Vatican.

Hawking, who didn't say when the meeting was held, quoted the pope as saying, "It's OK to study the universe and where it began. But we should not enquire into the beginning itelf because that was the moment of creation and the work of God."

The scientist then joked during a lecture in Hong Kong, "I was glad he didn't realize I had presented a paper at the conference suggesting how the universe began. I didn't fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo."
The church condemned Galileo in the 17th century for supporting Nicholas Copernicus' discovery that Earth revolved around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

But in 1992, Pope John Paul II issued a declaration saying that the church's denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

Hawking is one of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation. He has done groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe. He proposes that space and time have no beginning and no end.

"You can't afford to be disabled in spirit as well as physically," he said. "People won't have time for you."

The moderator at the lecture told the audience that at a recent dinner, she asked Hawking what his ambitions were. He said he wanted to know how the universe began, what happens inside black holes and how can humans survive the next 100 years, she said.

But she added he had one more great ambition: "I would also like to understand women."

I'll be reading for this series (or just looking over books I read not all that long ago, this time) over the summer, so now is when I'm gathering suggestions.

Track Listing:
1 Rasputina - Coraline
2 ThouShaltNot - When Everyone Forgets
3 Tapping The Vein - Trader Boy
4 Lunascape - Raven Star
5 Deine Lakaien - A Fish Called Prince
6 Thea Gilmore - Even Gods Do
7 Rose Berlin (feat. Curve) - Coraline
8 Schandmaul - Magda Treadgolds Märchen
9 Hungry Lucy - We Won't Go
10 Voltaire w/The Oddz - Come Sweet Death
11 Future Bible Heroes - Mr. Punch
12 Razed in Black - The Endless
13 The Cruxshadows - Wake the White Queen
14 Ego Likeness - You Better Leave the Stars Alone
15 Azam Ali - The Cold Black Key
16 Joachim Witt - Vandemar
17 Tori Amos - Sister Named Desire (New Master)

Pentagon policy bans media coverage of America's war dead as their remains are returned. The administration of U.S. President George Bush has strongly enforced the ban, something Cusack describes as "one of the most shameful, disgraceful, cowardly political acts that I've seen in my lifetime."

So the actor started looking for a project that would illustrate "what happens when the coffins come home."

The result is Grace Is Gone, a small, independent film in which Cusack plays a man whose wife Grace is killed in service in Iraq. Filming wrapped last month. The movie's producers - who include Cusack - will be looking for a distributor or film festival opportunities.

Cusack's character, Stanley, delays telling his two daughters about their mother's death, instead taking them on a road trip while the former military man sorts out his complicated feelings about the war.

While Cusack's motivation for taking the part are political, he insists the movie is not. "It's kind of a spiritual story about grief and, hopefully, a little bit of redemption," Cusack said recently.

The screenplay was written by James C. Strouse, who penned Lonesome Jim, which was directed by Steve Buscemi and released earlier this year. Grace Is Gone marks his directorial debut.

Created by roboticists from Italy, France and Switzerland, "Babybot" automatically experiments with objects nearby and learns how best to make use of them. This gives the robot an ability to develop motor skills in the same way as a human infant.

The robot consists of a one-armed torso with a pair of cameras for eyes and a grasping hand. It has an in-built desire to physically experiment with objects on the table in front of it and an ability to assess different forms of interaction and learn from mistakes. If the robot fails to grasp an object securely, for example, it remembers and tries a differently strategy next time. One unbidden skill developed by Babybot was the ability to roll a bottle across its table.

"I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky, and this became a light with a tail of smoke," Bruvold said. "I heard the bang seven minutes later. It sounded like when you set off a solid charge of dynamite a kilometer (0.62 miles) away."

The meteor struck a mountainside in Reisadalen.

Knut Jorgen Roed Odegaard, the country's leading astronomer, said he expects the meteor to prove to be the largest to hit Norway in modern times, even bigger than the 198-pound Alta meteorite of 1904.

"If the meteorite was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to the Hiroshima bomb," he said. "Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in explosive force we may be able to compare it to the bomb."

"We have demonstrated that the essential nature of a laser can be mimicked by classical mechanics -- not quantum mechanics -- in sound instead of light," said Richard Weaver, a professor of theoretical and applied mechanics at Illinois.

[...]

Optical lasers are useful because of their coherent emission, high intensity and rapid switching. These features are of little value in acoustics, where coherence is the rule and not the exception, intensity is limited by available power, and maximum switching speeds are limited by moderate frequencies.

Nevertheless, uasers may be useful. With their longer wavelengths and more convenient frequencies, uasers could prove useful for modeling and studying laser dynamics. They could also serve as highly sensitive scientific tools for measuring the elastic properties and phase changes of modern materials, such as thin films or high-temperature superconductors.

"Uasers can produce an ultrasonic version of acoustical feedback -- an ultrasonic howl similar to the squeal created when a microphone is placed too close to a speaker," Weaver said. "By slowly changing the temperature while monitoring the ultrasonic feedback frequency, we could precisely measure the phase change in various materials."

The 15-year-old wears tinted contact lenses that block certain wavelengths of light and help athletes see better. Oh, and they look cool, too.

"It gives me more confidence because you feel intimidating and bigger and stronger, kind of an ego-booster," said Walters, who plays for Father Ryan, a Catholic high school in Nashville, Tennessee.

Walters and a growing number of other athletes are wearing the MaxSight lenses, which were developed jointly by Nike Inc. and contact lens maker Bausch & Lomb Inc.

The lens -- large enough to extend a ring around the iris -- comes in two colors: amber and grey-green.

The amber lens is for fast-moving ball sports, such as tennis, baseball, football or soccer. Grey-green is better for blocking glare for runners or helping a golfer read the contour of the ground.

Professional athletes tested the lenses last year before they were rolled out for general sales.

Rainer Karlsch said that new research in Soviet and also Western archives, along with measurements carried out at one of the test sites, provided evidence for the existence of the weapon.

"The important thing in my book is the finding that the Germans had an atomic reactor near Berlin which was running for a short while, perhaps some days or weeks," he told the BBC.

"The second important finding was the atomic tests carried out in Thuringia and on the Baltic Sea."

Mr Karlsch describes what the Germans had as a "hybrid tactical nuclear weapon" much smaller than those dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

He said the last test, carried out in Thuringia on 3 March 1945, destroyed an area of about 500 sq m - killing several hundred prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates.

What followed was a couple of months of uncertainty, but then on June 1st Fialkov got his first bit of "Elk's Run" good news in months - the book had been nominated for seven Harvey Awards. But the good news doesn't end there. The entire "Elk's Run" story will finally have a chance to be told and in one volume. Villard, a division of Random House Publishing, will collect the complete eight-issue series, giving readers their first opportunity to read the entire story.

CBR News caught up with Fialkov to get the low-down on the happy ending to the very challenging publishing history "Elk's Run" has faced.

"After much hand wringing and searching high and low, we finally have a home," Fialkov told CBR News of his deal with Villard. "It's nice to finally have the book somewhere that's going to treat it properly and get it into people's hands."

The first fossil evidence for dwarf dinosaurs was unearthed at the end of the 19th century, but no one was quite sure whether the fossils were dwarf adults or merely juveniles of normal-size dinosaurs. Now, an analysis of fossilised bones from 11 individuals of this new species (Europasaurus holgeri) shows conclusively that they were adults.

"It's the first time we've really proven [that the fossils are from a dwarf species]," says Martin Sander, a palaeontologist at the University of Bonn, Germany, and one of the team who described the new species.

The senators' vote was 49-48 to limit debate and bring the amendment to a yes-or-no decision. That was 11 short of the 60 needed, killing the measure in the Senate for this year.

President Bush suggested the ban was proper and its time would still come. He said, "Our nation's founders set a high bar for amending our Constitution and history has shown us that it can take several tries before an amendment builds the two-thirds support it needs in both houses of Congress."

Democrats suggested it was all about conservative politics.

"Why is it when Republicans are all for reducing the federal government's impact on people's lives until it comes to these stinging litmus test issues, whether gay marriage or end of life they suddenly want the federal government to intervene?" asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "It makes no sense other than throwing red meat to a certain constituency."

"It's totally inappropriate. There's a place for brothels and a place for cemeteries and we don't believe the two mix," he said.

"A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery."

The incident, Sunday evening when the zoo was packed with visitors, was the first of its kind at the attraction. Lions and tigers are kept in an "animal island" protected by thick concrete blocks.

This week The Pirate Bay reappeared on the internet just three days after a police raid shut down the site, and sparked street protests in Sweden and intense international interest. The reborn site -- newly relocated to servers in the Netherlands -- appeared much as it was before the police action, but included a mocking message for the authorities, and a revamped logo that shows the site's trademark pirate ship hurling a cannon ball at the Hollywood sign.

[...]

The Pirate Bay has a longstanding history of defiance to international copyright enforcers, most clearly exemplified by its habit of posting and publicly mocking take-down notices received from content owners. The defiance follows the politics of the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyran, which founded The Pirate Bay in 2004, but has since gone it own way. Copyright minimalists, Piratbyran and The Pirate Bay seek abolition of most intellectual property law.

The site administrators believe that what they are doing is currently legal under Swedish law, because they don't host the pirated content themselves, only the pointers that let people get the files.

1. "Won't Get Fooled Again," by The Who
2. "Taxman," by The Beatles
3. "Sympathy for the Devil," by The Rolling Stones
4. "Sweet Home Alabama," by Lynyrd Skynyrd
5. "Wouldn't It Be Nice," by The Beach Boys
6. "Gloria," by U2
7. "Revolution," by The Beatles
8. "Bodies," by The Sex Pistols
9. "Don't Tread on Me," by Metallica
10. "20th Century Man," by The Kinks
11. "The Trees," by Rush
12. "Neighborhood Bully," by Bob Dylan
13. "My City Was Gone," by The Pretenders
14. "Right Here, Right Now," by Jesus Jones
15. "I Fought the Law," by The Crickets
16. "Get Over It," by The Eagles
17. "Stay Together for the Kids," by Blink 182
18. "Cult of Personality," by Living Colour
19. "Kicks," by Paul Revere and the Raiders
20. "Rock the Casbah," by The Clash
21. "Heroes," by David Bowie
22. "Red Barchetta," by Rush
23. "Brick," by Ben Folds Five
24. "Der Kommissar," by After the Fire
25. "The Battle of Evermore," by Led Zeppelin
26. "Capitalism," by Oingo Boingo
27. "Obvious Song," by Joe Jackson
28. "Janie's Got a Gun," by Aerosmith
29. "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," by Iron Maiden
30. "You Can't Be Too Strong," by Graham Parker
31. "Small Town," by John Mellencamp
32. "Keep Your Hands to Yourself," by The Georgia Satellites
33. "You Can't Always Get What You Want," by The Rolling Stones
34. "Godzilla," by Blue Oyster Cult
35. "Who'll Stop the Rain," by Creedence Clearwater Revival
36. "Government Cheese," by The Rainmakers
37. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," by The Band
38. "I Can't Drive 55," by Sammy Hagar
39. "Property Line," by The Marshall Tucker Band
40. "Wake Up Little Susie," by The Everly Brothers
41. "The Icicle Melts," by The Cranberries
42. "Everybody's a Victim," by The Proclaimers
43. "Wonderful," by Everclear
44. "Two Sisters," by The Kinks
45. "Taxman, Mr. Thief," by Cheap Trick
46. "Wind of Change," by The Scorpions
47. "One," by Creed
48. "Why Don't You Get a Job," by The Offspring
49. "Abortion," by Kid Rock
50. "Stand By Your Man," by Tammy Wynette

The team fed Escherichia coli bacteria diluted caramel and nougat waste. The bacteria consumed the sugar and produced hydrogen, which they make with the enzyme hydrogenase, and organic acids. The researchers then used this hydrogen to power a fuel cell, which generated enough electricity to drive a small fan (Biochemical Society Transactions, vol 33, p 76).

The process could provide a use for chocolate waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill. What's more, the bacteria's job doesn't have to end once they have finished chomping on the sweet stuff. Mackaskie's team next put the bugs to work on a production line that recovers precious metal from the catalytic converters of old cars.

Place the bacteria in a vat with hydrogen and liquid waste from spent converters, and the enzymes again get to work. The same hydrogenase used to produce hydrogen splits the gas into its constituents, generating electrons that react with palladium ions in the solution. This forces the palladium out of the solution, and it sticks to the bacteria. The palladium-coated bacteria can then be recycled as catalysts for other projects, Mackaskie says.

"One Saturday morning, his physician said, 'I'll get you bragging rights. Let¹s go to 2,000 pounds.' Then he worked up multiple reps of 1,400 pounds, 1,500 pounds, 1,600 pounds, 1,700 pounds, 1,800 pounds and 1,900 pounds. When 2,000 pounds was put on the machine two men got on either side and helped push the load up, and then let it down on Mr. Robertson, who pushed it up one rep and let it go back down again.

"Mr. Robertson warms up now at 500 pounds, and was shown on television with Kristi Watts doing 1,000 pounds.