Archive for November 5th, 2004

Rats or Refugees?

3

glasscastle - November 5, 2004 @ 11:53 pm · Wacky News

OTTAWA
(Reuters) – The number of U.S. citizens visiting Canada’s main immigration
Web site has shot up six-fold as Americans flirt with the idea of abandoning
their homeland after President Bush’s election win this week.

"When we looked at the first day after the election, Nov. 3, our Web
site hit a new high, almost double the previous record high," immigration
ministry spokeswoman Maria Iadinardi said on Friday.

On an average day some 20,000 people in the United States log onto the
Web site, www.cic.gc.ca — a figure which rocketed to 115,016 on Wednesday.
The number of U.S. visits settled down to 65,803 on Thursday, still well
above the norm.

from Reuters

Read a Book, Get Better Head

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glasscastle - November 5, 2004 @ 11:25 pm · Wacky News

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York officials were red-faced on Friday after
they discovered that clothing ads on city buses that appeared to promote
reading suggested a love of books could be rewarded with oral sex.

The advertisements that ran on about 200 buses across the city in recent
months carried posters displaying a suggestively posed woman in hot pants
kneeling among a pile of books beside the snappy slogan "Read Books,
Get Brain."

What unhip, unsuspecting local transportation officials did not know was
that "get brain" is street slang for oral sex. The ads — from
hip-hop clothing maker Akademiks, which intended the double-entendre –
was stripped off New York buses on Friday after transportation officials
discovered the street slang meaning.

from Reuters

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

1

glasscastle - November 5, 2004 @ 6:45 pm · Blogging

One
year ago, the Dowbrigade
proposed a virtual Miss Universe contest.  Well,
somebody was listening…

Kaya (below) is ravishing. She has full lips,
long lashes, and a slightly upturned
nose.
Her expression
radiates
confidence
and
power,
and her
smooth skin
is well scrubbed and dotted with freckles. But she doesn’t have much
of a body. At all. In fact, she exists only from the neck up. Kaya
is a CG model, a 48,200-polygon beauty created by an artist in S?o Paulo,
Brazil. And she’s sure to be a finalist in the Miss Digital World beauty
pageant.

Miss Digital World will be chosen in classic reality-TV
fashion – people can vote for their favorite contender until December
at missdigitalworld.com or
via SMS. The winning creator gets five grand and a deal with Cerami’s
agency to receive a cut of the proceeds from
placement or licensing of the model. Alas, no tiara. Lets take a closer
look at a couple of the prime candidates.

Mamegal (above)

HEIGHT: 5’4"
WEIGHT: 102 pounds
POLYGON COUNT: 36,000
BORN: Tokyo, Japan
WARE SHE CAME FROM: 3D Studio Max 5.1, Character Studio, Brazil Rendering
System
MANAGER: Koji Yamagami
CLAIM TO FAME: Poster girl for Discreet’s 3D Studio Max Software
PERSONALITY PLUS: Driven, extroverted
WORKING ASSET: Roppongi-ready muscle tone

Kaya (right)

HEIGHT: 5’5"
WEIGHT: 121 pounds
POLYGON COUNT: 48,200
BORN: S?o Paulo, Brazil
WARE SHE CAME FROM: Maya 4.0, Photoshop; Dual AMD Athlon 1.7-GHz processor,
1 GByte of RAM
MANAGER: Alceu Baptistao
CLAIM TO FAME: Best Character award at Animago Festival in Germany now
appearing: In the Future Face Exhibition at the London Science Museum
PERSONALITY PLUS: Clumsily funny, sometimes cocky
WORKING ASSET: "Her mouth is sexy, although big."

Who
does the Dowbrigade endorse? We
declared last year, and are not about
to change now.

from Wired

$275 Million Overweight Charge

1

glasscastle - November 5, 2004 @ 4:09 pm · Blogging

WASHINGTON
(Reuters) – U.S. airlines spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually
in extra fuel costs to transport a heavier traveling public,
researchers estimate.

The 10-pound increase in the average weight of American adults in the 1990s means
additional expenses for struggling airlines today, according to findings published
by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that
carriers spent $275 million in fuel costs to carry the additional weight of passengers
in 2000.

But fuel costs have risen exponentially since, deepening the red ink at some
airlines. Bankrupt United Airlines said last week it will likely spend $1.2 billion
more
on fuel this year than first projected.

Recent government statistics show the average body mass
index (BMI), a weight-for-height formula used to measure obesity, has
crossed into overweight territory. The average weight of an adult man
was 191 pounds in 2002, while the average weight for women was 164.3
pounds.

from Reuters

QOTD – A Network with an Attitude

2

glasscastle - November 5, 2004 @ 1:28 pm · Blogging

Rumors of Hunter Thompson’s decline as a political commentator were obviously premature….

“Their army is how much bigger than mine? Three percent? Well shucks, Bubba. Now is the time to establish a network and an attitude. You make friends in moments of defeat. People in defeat tend to bond because they need each other. We can’t take the attitude that it’s over and we give up. We’re still here.”

from the Aspen Daily News

New Stamps Bring Lighter Look

4

glasscastle - November 5, 2004 @ 7:42 am · Blogging

 

 

 

 

from the
Boston Globe

WASHINGTON — It isn’t easy being green.
It isn’t easy getting on a US postage stamp either, but Kermit the Frog
will manage it next year, along with his Muppet friends.

New stamps also will recall the late president Ronald Reagan, singer Marian
Anderson, actors Henry Fonda, Marty Feldman and Greta Garbo, "Somewhere
Over the Rainbow" lyricist Yip Harburg, notable scientists, famous Marines,
and sports cars, the US Postal Service said yesterday.

The stamp program will also commemorate the Civil Rights Movement. A 10-stamp
set honors the courage of those who took part in that effort with stamps recalling
President Truman’s order integrating the military, the 1965 Selma to Montgomery
march, sit-ins at white only lunch counters, and the first black students to
attend Central High School in Little Rock.

Live By the Juice, Die By the Juice

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glasscastle - November 5, 2004 @ 7:30 am · Blogging

FORT WORTH – A man suspected of trying to
illegally hook up electrical service died after police shocked him with
a stun gun when he was found hiding at an apartment complex, authorities
said.

Robert Guerrero, 21, was pronounced dead Tuesday at John Peter Smith
Hospital where he was taken after officers subdued him with a Taser stun
gun and he stopped breathing, police said.

Officers were called to the complex where residents said someone was
illegally hooking up electrical service at an apartment unit,

NJ Votes Kerry – Jet Sent from DC Attacks NJ School

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glasscastle - November 5, 2004 @ 7:22 am · Blogging

Is
this a sign of things to come? Sectarian violence between the Red and
Blue states? Was this really an accident? What kind of demented fanatics
attack an elementary school?

A D.C. Air National Guard fighter jet based
at Andrews Air Force Base accidentally
fired about two dozen rounds of ammunition during a nighttime training
mission, piercing the roof of a school in southern New Jersey, authorities
said yesterday. No one was injured in the incident, which is under military
investigation.

Six of the projectiles, at least two inches long and a half-inch in diameter,
were found inside Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School yesterday morning.
Five were found in the parking lot, said Lt. John O’Brien of the Little
Egg Harbor
Township police.

from the Washington Post