I'm the product of a government experiment called the public school system.
I suppose you should know this about me. It explains a lot. I've never told anyone because it's so ridiculous you'll assume I'm making it up. That's the price of satire - no one believes you when you're telling the truth.
I was born a rich kid, Beverly Hills, north of Santa Monica Blvd., big house, tennis court, Cadillac in the driveway, all needs met. One neighbor had an Oscar I played with (I.A.L. Diamond, for writing The Apartment), another had a lavish vomitorium for those really GOOD parties with endless courses of too much food. I'd go to a friend's house after school only to discover they actually had their own house behind their parent's house. When my dad died, we started a gradual descent, moving to a smaller house, then a smaller house, then to an apartment in the slums of Beverly Hills below Santa Monica Blvd., all to keep me in what was supposed to be the best school system in the world.
None of this stopped me from being a holy terror in class. I was thrown out of the fifth grade at Beverly Vista Elementary in BH, sent to military school as a "disciplinary problem," sent back to the sixth grade at Horace Mann Elementary in BH, thrown out, sent to another military school where I advanced to the rank of corporal, sent back to the seventh grade at El Rodeo Elementary in BH, and finally declared "emotionally disturbed" and thrown out of the entire Beverly Hills Unified School System.
How did this happen? In 1960 or thereabouts, the Beverly Hills Unified School District decided to be the very first to give every single one of their students one of them fancy new standardized IQ tests in order to scientifically analyze the entire student body. Officially they weren't supposed to tell me, but afterwards I found I got fourth highest in the entire district. All the other students with high IQs were the top straight A students except me. I had Cs and Ds and Fs so I became a case study. How could someone as bright as me be doing so poorly academically? They sent me to UCLA Psychiatric Institute where I was tested and observed for weeks, test after test, observation after observation, drawing, piling blocks, answering endless questions. They had to figure me out because if the problem wasn't me, it would have to be them.
I was actually surprised I did so well on the IQ test because I had such difficulty answering certain questions, particularly the ones showing a list of words saying "which one doesn't belong." The list would be something like...
a) banana
b) potato
c) petunia
d) candle
One might think the obvious answer was d) since it's the only one that isn't a form of vegetation, but I'd be able to come up with a rational reason why every single word didn't belong. Each word has an "a" but banana is the only one with three. Potato is the only word with an "o." Petunia is the only word that isn't six letters. I'd sit there not trying to figure out which was the right answer, they all were right, but trying to figure out which right answer the jerks who came up with the test were expecting.
The same problem crept into my studies. Teachers didn't know how to handle me. I figured if they had the right to test me, I had the right to test them. I noticed they used a template for grading tests. I'd reorganize my answers so they couldn't use it. For my answer to question 1, I'd write "see answer #6," where the correct answer would be found. I got Fs on tests where I got every answer right, just not in the expected order. I used this technique from the first grade, elementary school arithmetic, if the question was "What's 3 + 8," I'd answer "5 + 6." Correct, but not the answer they were looking for. When did Columbus discover America? 320 years before the War of 1812.
It never occurred to anyone that the reason I was acting like this was because I was bored out of my skull. Anything to pass the time. I managed to learn absolutely everything they were teaching, just as reliably as their finest students. I just wasn't mirroring it back to them properly, thus, Cs and Ds and Fs.
Teachers were warned about me before I ever met them. They kept their eye on me from the first day so I couldn't get away with anything. I was the first to be blamed if anything happened, and half my time was spent exiled to the hallway for insubordination.
When I got my first history book, I drew a little B-52 bomber in the lower left margin of the first page, along with a little city on the far right. On the next page, I drew the bomber a little bit to the right, closer to the city, continuing on each page until eventually, if you flipped through the book, the bomber would fly across the page till it dropped a big one on the city, causing a mushroom cloud to go up the right margin.
When my teacher saw this, were they impressed by the fact a seven-year-old had seemingly invented animation? Animation wasn't the day's lesson. Did they simply ask me to erase it? Did they encourage my creativity by handing me a pad of blank paper and asking me use it for my animations instead of the textbook? Nope, they suspended me for defacing school property.
How do you get thrown out of the 5th grade? I was bored with what they were having me read. One day during a PE period where I was excused for some medical problem, I had nothing to do, so I started reading a paperback I saw at the student library, Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, the first book I ever read so it was the best book I'd ever read, way better than Dick and Jane. I couldn't stop reading so I took it with me to class. Nobody had ever explained that school books had to be checked out. I left school on my bike and got chased by two bigger kids who threw me to the ground, searched my backpack, found the book, and dragged me back to the school office for stealing school property.
Upon finding a fifth grader caught trying to read a tenth grade book, did they advance me to another grade? Nope, it was the final straw, they threw me out of the whole system.
Despite this particular moment of idiocy, it turned out the BH school system really was better then the rest, which caused a very strange problem. They'd get rid of me, I'd end up in a school in the LA system that was teaching what I'd learned the year before, I'd get straight As, they'd say to Beverly Hills "what's the matter with you, this is a fine student," BH would take me back, I'd be a year behind, learn everything but fail, they'd throw me out, send me to another LA school where they were teaching everything I'd just learned, I'd get straight As again, and end up right back in BH.
Finally I found myself at Beverly High for four years, class of '69, WAY before Beverly Hills 90210, with a magnificent theater department and a separate parking lot just for students, full of much better cars than those in the faculty lot. I took swim lessons in the "swim gym," the pool under the slide-away basketball court made famous in the film It's a Wonderful Life. Hung with Patricia Cummings - daughter of Bob (You don't know who Bob Cummings is?), Cathie Amsterdam - daughter of Morey (C'mon, Morey Amsterdam, from The Dick Van Dyke Show. Who's Dick Van Dyke? Jesus!), and Phil Ritz, son of Harry of the Ritz Brothers (they replaced The Three Stooges in Blazing Stewardesses when Moe died before filming, but you knew that).
When Ella Fitzgerald moved to Beverly Hills, her son Ray Brown became the very first black in the school system. We went out of our way to treat him as an equal. For many of us, he was the first black we'd ever met. I directed him in the school production of Marty.
One day I was called to the office where Dr. Morgenstern, an official with the school system, now the school psychologist, told me he'd read my file and wanted to talk. He told me I was still one of the smartest students in the system, that they were proud to have someone so brilliant at the school. He sincerely apologized for the way I had been treated so far. He couldn't understand why they didn't realize the problem wasn't me, it was their inability to cope with anybody challenging the status quo. Dr. Morgenstern followed my career as a journalist and wrote me decades later with pride at how I had turned out.
Though I went through the ceremony with my classmates, I was given a blank sheet of paper instead of a diploma. I never actually graduated BHHS because I was lacking 2 grade points. I learned absolutely everything they were teaching without having to bother with crap like homework, which I never handed in, or daily quizzes, which I inevitably failed. I aced my finals, proving all the other stuff was unnecessary, but not to one teacher who flunked me anyway. I'd already been accepted to LACC so who cared.
Time went on and the story continued. It was a gradual descent from uptrodden to downtrodden, from all needs met to most needs met to some needs met to few needs met to no needs met, from Paris Hilton to Motel 6, from hobnobbing with the got-alls to scrounging with the rest, but the gravity of life can tend to run downhill.
I always intended to move back to Beverly Hills to see how my own kids would fare in the same system that had such problems with me, but that ship has either sailed or never docked. Now my kids are the products of completely different bad school systems.
Dr. Morgenstern's apology was nice but I really hope they learned their lesson and they're not still creating people so fucked up.
Maybe telling me my IQ wasn't such a hot idea, but how else could they explain what they were doing? I never bragged about it and fifty years later, this is first time I've ever mentioned it. It was too traumatic for me to consider it a plus. I can't think of any circumstances in my childhood where knowing I was supposed to be so smart did me any good. On the contrary, the guys watching me with clipboards only instilled the belief there was something wrong with me, a belief I apparently still hold to this day.
Thanks for reading this. Now I don't have to pay for a therapist.
MD
"The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it."
- Wendell Berry -
News for Superheroes
"Warning to Superman: Stay clear of Ottawa. With the help of our very own National Research Council, scientists have identified a mineral with virtually the same composition as kryptonite, the space rock that makes the Man of Steel more like a man of straw.
"It all started in Serbia, where geologists working with mining giant Rio Tinto unearthed a drill core of a rock they couldn't match to any known mineral. So they contacted Chris Stanley, a mineralogist at London's Natural History Museum...
"When Dr. Stanley typed the composition of the new mineral - sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide - into Google, he was astonished to find that it matched up with kryptonite. He said, 'I nearly fell off my chair,' says Dr. LePage. 'And we had a good laugh.'
"The composition matched the scientific name written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen from a museum by Superman's arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor, in the film Superman Returns.
"'I don't know of any other instance of something being imagined in fiction and then found in nature,' Dr. Stanley said."
I suppose you already know that if you ask Googlemaps to plot a course from New York to Paris, instruction 24 tells you to "swim across the Atlantic Ocean."
I Feel So Much Safer Now
"An Indian court ordered the arrest of Hollywood star Richard Gere on Thursday for kissing Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty at an AIDS campaign event this month saying it was an obscene act committed in public."
Simply hire anyone on the cover of People magazine to gush about what you want them to do.
- Herr Bookmonger
Put up a link that says do not click here. Works every time. - Moonnstars1900
Tell them if they don't do it, it means they don't support the troops. - Jimmy McConnell
Tell them it will make them rich without work (seems to work best on free-market libertarians.)
- mj
Tell them that God says it's OK. - Joe
Pretend you're a Democrat. - David Schoen
1. You tell them they'd be stupid NOT to do it.
2. You tell them it's patriotic to do it.
3. You tell them that it's cool.
4. You kidnap their puppy and threaten to put it in a blender if they don't.
5. You tell them that you captured what they did the other night on camcorder and it'll go on YouTube if they don't.
6. Tell them they'll be on YouTube.
7. Appeal to their intelligence.
8. Tell them they will be covered in maple syrup and then have it licked off by nymphomaniacs if they do it.
9. Tell them it'll make their penis or breasts bigger. (transsexuals - both)
- owen tuckett
Its easy- tell them if they don't, the smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud!.
- Jen Closson
Simple, tell them not to do it!
- Dwight Ludvigson
Another Stupid Question
For me, it was Martian Chronicles. What book turned you on to books? Please answer here.
Let Me Get This Straight
The ex-head of the CIA, George Tenet, went on 60 Minutes to explain that when he told Bush the war would be a "slam dunk," he meant putting together a report containing all the reasons for going to war would be a slam dunk, not the war itself. Oh yeah, that's a LOT better. Convincing people the war would be justified actually WAS a slam dunk, it's just the war itself that sucks. Thanks a lot, George.
Satan Doesn't Care If You Know
There's a metal complex that acts like an enzyme. Ni-Ru complex mirrors a hydrogenase's active site and is catalytically active.
Don't Take My Word For It
"Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy." - Edgar Bergen (Charlie McCarthy) -
"The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being."
- Emma Goldman -
"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."
- Jean-Paul Sartre -
"First, it has been well-known for several years that the U.S. military outright invented lies regarding literally every aspect of the Jessica Lynch story. And the Tillman family for years has been vocally complaining about the lies they were told by the Pentagon regarding the circumstances surrounding Pat Tillman's death, the pressure on other soldiers to conceal the truth, and the crass and disgusting exploitation of those lies to serve the administration's political interests. None of this is new. So why is Congress holding hearings to investigate these matters only now?
"The answer, of course, is because the Republicans who controlled Congress for the last four years absolutely suppressed any attempt whatsoever to exert oversight on the administration. They not only investigated nothing, they aggressively blocked every real investigation into allegations of wrongdoing and corruption on the part of the administration. Our government literally ceased to function the way it is designed to, because Congressional Republicans deliberately abdicated their duty of checks on the executive and actively helped to conceal every improper and deceitful act.
"The only reason any of this is being aired now is because the American people removed the President's party from control of Congress and they are no longer able to keep concealed the Bush administration's misconduct.
"Second, I defy anyone to go back and read the April and May, 2003 tongue-wagging, mindless American press accounts of Jessica Lynch's epic firefight against the Enemy; the severe gun shot and stabbing wounds she suffered; the torture to which she was subjected while in the Iraqi hospital; and the daring, gun-blazing rescue of her by our Special Forces, and then try to claim that we have a functioning, healthy political press in this country that serves as a check on government deceit and corruption. It is impossible for any minimally honest person to make that claim in light of those stories.'
"If you believe in the American ideals of fairness and human dignity, you'll be appalled at the way tens of thousands of foreign 'guestworkers' are being systematically exploited in a government-sanctioned program that many describe as modern-day slavery.
"These are the workers, mostly poor Latinos, who are lured here by U.S. businesses with promises of decent jobs only to be cheated out of their wages; forced to live in squalid conditions; and denied medical benefits for injuries. If the workers complain, they face deportation, blacklisting, and other forms of retaliation...
"Right now, President Bush and many in Congress are pushing to create a vast new pool of temporary foreign workers. This will only cause more suffering and injustice - and it will undermine the rights and wages of American workers as well.
"As a nation, we must fix our broken immigration system. But we must not condone a program that abuses and enslaves poor workers from other countries who are lured under false pretenses."
"This southern Lebanese village of about 3,000 - less than a kilometre from the heavily guarded border with Israel - was one of the first places bombed by Israeli warplanes during the war last summer. Residents here grow tobacco and work on their small farms.
"The Hezbollah raid in which two Israeli soldiers were detained took place nearby. The village was hammered by incessant bombings by Israeli warplanes throughout the conflict.
"But rather than turn people away from Hezbollah, the attacks seem to have made residents fierce supporters of the political group, now providing some of the only reconstruction assistance.
"'The sound of the bombs, the warplanes, the drones was relentless for us,' Fatima Ridda, a mother of 11 whose husband was killed in an Israeli rocket attack told IPS, as UN helicopters buzzed overhead. 'Now Hezbollah, Iran, and Qatar are the only people helping us try to rebuild our lives. Our own government will do nothing.'
"Hezbollah members distributed 12,000 dollars to each family whose houses suffered damage during the war, to help them with reconstruction."
"Economists have long observed that regulators at, say, the Food and Drug Administration face unbalanced incentives. When people die because an unsafe drug got FDA approval, everybody blames the commissioners. When people die because a potentially lifesaving drug never made it to the marketplace (or was never developed in the first place because of costly regulations), the FDA's role is largely invisible. Therefore the commissioners are biased toward excessive caution."
"Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.
"They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
"As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration."
"With Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the Walter Reed hospital scandal maybe you thought that the incompetence of the Bushites had bottomed out.
"But... here comes another embarrassment bubbling to the surface. While George W keeps popping back to New Orleans for political photo ops showing him posing with Katrina victims, he hasn't mentioned that his budget whackers have been steadily shortchanging the National Hurricane Center on the money it needs to do its job which is to give us as accurate a picture as possible of when and where a Big One will hit our people.
"Indeed, the Center's new director says that our nation's hurricane protection program is now under funded by 'hundreds of millions of dollars.' He also warns of another funding failure that could result in disaster during this year's hurricane season: The Center's QuikSCAT satellite which is crucial to providing accurate, up-to-the-minute forecasts of a storm's intensity and where it's headed is about to go on the fritz. He says that the satellite could fail 'at any moment.'"
"What's wrong with a kiss, boy? Hmm? Why not start her off with a nice kiss? You don't have to go leaping straight for the clitoris like a bull at a gate. Give her a kiss, boy."
- John Cleese in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life -
"On May 15th 2007, all myspace members are asked to not go to a gas station in protest of high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most places. There are 73,000,000+ American members currently on the MySpace network, and the average car takes about 20 to 30 dollars to fill up. If all myspace members did not go to the pump on the 15th, it would take $2,200,000,000.00 (that's BILLION) out of the oil company's pockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on May 15th and lets try to put a dent in the Middle Eastern oil industry for at least one day."
- Futile Gestures 'r' us -
"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
- Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland -
"Day and night he danced in ecstasy, revolving on the earth like the heavens. His ecstatic cries reached the zenith of the skies and were heard by all and sundry."
Disinfotainment Today is emotionally disturbed, a disciplinary problem, and has no use for fair use. Disinfotainment Today is absolutely certain about absolutely nothing. It doesn't beg to differ, it demands to differ, wallowing in any evidence to the contrary of anything. It borrows from everything that has ever existed and several things that have never existed, daring you to tell the difference.
Timothy Noah: Abstinence Bushie Busted! (slate.com)
ABC News and the Washington Post are reporting that Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias resigned April 27 after confirming to ABC News that he's on Jeane Palfrey's little list. Palfrey is a D.C. madam under prosecution who's been negotiating with lawyers for various prominent johns over whether to release their names to the public. Tobias is administrator of the State Department's foreign aid programs.
Stephen Elliott: Rich People Behaving Badly (smirkingchimp.com)
A couple of news articles recently pointed to some of the awful class differences we're facing. The most egregious was the front page piece in the New York Times. In California, if you're crime is not too serious, you can pay around $100 a day to stay in a considerably nicer jail cell, separate from the general population. The unfairness of this should be obvious- rich people are doing easier time. Two people, convicted of the same crime, given the same sentence, and the one with more money in a nicer, safer cell. Separate, unequal.
Scott Burns: Myths and realities of retirement (dallasnews.com)
If there is a mythical god in charge of retirement, it would have to be Janus. Best known as the Roman god with two faces - one looking forward, one back - Janus was the master of beginnings and endings.
The Work 'n' Spend Cycle
What was once an oddity of human nature has now become a trait as American as apple pie: "The more money you make, the more money you will spend."
CBS begins the night with a FRESH'NCIS', followed by a FRESH'The Unit', then a RERUN'CSI: The 3rd One'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDave are Amy Sedaris, John Byner, and Modest Mouse.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Tim Daly, Charlie Viracola, and Joe.
NBC starts the night with 'Dateline', followed by a FRESH'Law & Order: Criminal Intent', then a FRESH'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'.
Scheduled on a FRESHLeno are Dr. Phil McGraw, Rove McManus, and Patti Smith.
Scheduled on a FRESHConan (from San Francisco) are George Lucas, Will Arnett, and Chris Isaak.
Scheduled on a FRESHCarson Daly are Maria Menounos and the Format.
ABC opens the night with a RERUN'George Lopez', followed by another RERUN'George Lopez', then a FRESH'Dancing With The Stars', followed by a FRESH'Boston Legal'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are David Spade, the latest "Dancing with the Stars" castoff, and Kaiser Chiefs.
The CW offers a FRESH'Gilmore Girls', followed by a FRESH'Veronica Mars'.
Faux has a FRESH'American Idol', followed by a FRESH'House'.
MY has the FRESH'America's Trashiest Weddings', followed by the FRESH'Body Doubles: International Twins Search'.
A&E has 'Cold Case Files', 'CSI: The 2nd One', 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', another 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', 'Driving Force', and another 'Driving Force'.
AMC offers the movie 'The Las Samurai', followed by the movie 'Dances With Wolves'.
BBC -
[12:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 3 Momma Cherri's;
[1:00 PM] What Not To Wear - Episode 2;
[2:00 PM] The Weakest Link - Episode 96;
[3:00 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 4;
[3:30 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 5;
[4:00 PM] Changing Rooms - Ep.1 Barnstaple;
[4:30 PM] Changing Rooms - Ep.2 100th Programme;
[5:00 PM] Footballers Wive$ - Episode 4;
[6:00 PM] The Weakest Link - Episode 97;
[7:00 PM] BBC World News - BBC World News;
[7:30 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 5;
[8:00 PM] Robin Hood - Ep 8 The Assassin;
[9:00 PM] Robin Hood - Ep 9 A Thing Or Two About Loyalty;
[10:00 PM] Footballers Wive$ - Episode 3;
[11:00 PM] Robin Hood - Ep 8 The Assassin;
[12:00 AM] Robin Hood - Ep 9 A Thing Or Two About Loyalty;
[1:00 AM] Footballers Wive$ - Episode 3;
[2:00 AM] The Weakest Link - Episode 96;
[3:00 AM] Afterlife - Ep 1 More than Meets the Eye;
[4:00 AM] Blue/Orange - Blue/Orange;
[6:00 AM] BBC World News - BBC World News. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Comedy Central has 'Scrubs', another 'Scrubs', last night's 'Jon Stewart', last night's 'Colberr Report', 'Chappelle's Show', 'South Park', 'Mind Of Mencia', and another 'Mind Of Mencia'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJon Stewart is Tobey Maguire.
Scheduled on a FRESHColbert Report is Malcolm Gladwell.
FX has the movie 'Spider-Man 2', followed by the movie 'X-Men', then a FRESH'The Shield'.
History has 'Modern Marvels', 'Ancient Discoveries', another 'Ancient Discoveries', and 'Man Moment Machine'.
IFC -
[06:15 AM Digging To China;
[08:00 AM SXSW: Behind The Badge;
[08:30 AM Everyone Says I Love You;
[10:15 AM The Dancer Upstairs;
[12:35 PM Digging To China;
[02:20 PM Media Lab Results;
[02:30 PM Everyone Says I Love You;
[04:15 PM The Dancer Upstairs;
[06:35 PM Secrets & Lies;
[09:00 PM Girl With a Pearl Earring;
[10:45 PM Heaven;
[12:30 AM Last Night;
[02:15 AM Girl With a Pearl Earring;
[04:00 AM Heaven;
[05:40 AM Last Night. (ALL TIMES EDT)
SciFi has 'Stargate SG-1', another 'Stargate SG-1', still another 'Stargate SG-1', and 'ECW'.
Militant rap-rock group Rage Against the Machine reunited after a seven-year absence during a California music festival over the weekend, offering a sharpened version of their old message: fight the power.
The group's reunion gig was the most-anticipated performance of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in the desert town of Indio, about 120 miles east of Los Angeles. The three-day festival drew 60,000 fans and took place in temperatures reaching 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39 Celsius).
Zack de la Rocha and his colleagues, guitarist Tom Morello, drummer Brad Wilk and bassist Tim Commerford, treated the crowd to a healthy dose of anti-war and anti-establishment songs such as "Killing in the Name," "Freedom" and "Guerrilla Radio."
The front man addressed the crowd only once between songs, when he likened the current U.S. administration to Nazi war criminals. "They should be shot as any war criminal should be," he said.
The Canadian producer behind a controversial documentary about the rift between moderate and conservative Muslims said he wants American public broadcasters to air the film as is or give him back the rights to the project.
Martin Burke said he's had requests from networks in Canada, France, Denmark and the United States for permission to air his film "Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Centre," but that it remains on the cutting-room floor of Washington's WETA - an affiliate of PBS.
"Either show it, or give it back. It's quite simple," he said in a telephone interview from New York City where he was preparing to screen the film for U.S. journalists on Tuesday.
The public broadcaster commissioned the film as part of its "America at a Crossroads" series but dropped it last month from its inaugural weeklong line-up.
Children typically spend hours in front of a computer so a Canadian university has decided to introduce them to Shakespeare with a video game.
While zapping enemy spaceships players have to help recover the stolen text of Romeo and Juliet by memorizing lines from the famous play, learning facts about Shakespeare's life and devising synonyms and homonyms for parts of the text.
"The game is a way to capitalize on the time that kids spend on computers," said Professor Daniel Fischlin who headed the team at the University of Guelph in Ontario that developed the game called "Speare."
Courtney Love, widow of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, says she plans to sell most of his belongings.
"I'm going to have a Christie's auction," Love, 42, tells AOL music Web site Spinner.com. "(My house) is like a mausoleum."
"My daughter doesn't need to inherit a giant ... bag full of flannel ... shirts," says Love, former frontwoman of the rock band Hole. "A sweater, a guitar and the lyrics to `(Smells Like) Teen Spirit' - that's what my daughter gets. And the rest of it we'll just ... sell."
No date has been set for the auction, AOL publicist Kurt Patat told The Associated Press on Monday.
A hotel worker puts a chocolate bag on display at a hotel in Jakarta April 27, 2007. An Indonesian hotel is dishing out tasty totes with all the trappings of real bags from buckles and locks to fine crystals and buttons--except instead of leather the bags are made of chocolate.
Photo by Crack Palinggi
A project was launched in Dubai on Monday to bring some Hollywood magic to the booming Gulf emirate in the form of a Universal Studios theme park.
The theme park, owned by the major US film studio of the same name, will form part of a wider Universal development costing over 8 billion dirhams (2.18 billion US dollars) in the Dubailand mega resort, Dubai-based developers Tatweer said in a statement.
Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid al-Maktoum, son of Dubai's ruler, officially inaugurated work on the project in the city-state which wants to position itself as a global tourist destination.
A powerful congressional committee said on Monday it had evidence that deep cost cuts at oil major BP Plc may have been a major factor behind pipeline corrosion that caused the largest ever onshore oil spill in Alaska last year.
Over 200,000 gallons of crude oil leaked from a corroded oil transit pipeline at the 400,000 barrels per day Prudhoe Bay oil field in March 2006, sparking a congressional probe into BP's corrosion prevention practices, as well as a federal criminal investigation.
Government-ordered inspections in August turned up further severe corrosion in another transit pipeline, forcing the partial closure of Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in the United States, for several months.
BP e-mails and other documents "suggest that budget pressures were severe enough that some BP field managers were considering... reducing corrosion inhibitor to save money," wrote Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a letter sent to BP on Monday, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.
The torch for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games torch relay is seen in this handout photograph in Beijing April 26, 2007. Human rights and repression in China continue to worsen ahead of next year's Beijing Olympics, and the government has not yet fulfilled its media freedom pledge, Amnesty International said on Monday.
Looking for a stately home or opulent office overseas? One in a posh neighborhood or overlooking an exotic capital? Maybe with a glorious or infamous past? The U.S. government may have a deal for you.
From Kinshasa to Katmandu, Bangkok to Bogota, U.S. embassies, ambassadorial residences and other diplomatic digs are up for sale as the State Department moves its employees to more secure locations, upgrades facilities and combines operations in multipurpose compounds.
Some 29 properties worth more than $205 million are now on the market in 21 countries, including a huge and historic embassy annex in the heart of London, large chancery buildings in Panama, Nicaragua and Nepal and homes fit for envoys extraordinary in Belize and Venezuela.
Kite maker Simon Freadman of Australia flies his kite during an international kite festival in Cervia, northeast Italy, April 30, 2007.
Photo by Alessandro Bianchi
Courthouse maintenance workers responding to a complaint about a clogged toilet found 30 pounds of hashish in a pipe leading from a restroom used by prisoners, officials said Monday.
The custodians found the drugs Friday at the Palace of Justice, a building that houses courtrooms and jail cells, in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the coast of Morocco.
The drugs were contained in dozens of small bags in a basement pipe leading from the jail cell area, the Interior Ministry office in Ceuta said.
Arctic sea ice is melting three times faster than many scientists project, U.S. researchers reported Monday, just days ahead of the next major international report on climate change.
Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado in Boulder concluded that Arctic sea ice has declined at an average rate of about 7.8 percent per decade between 1953 and 2006.
By contrast, 18 computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-sponsored climate research group, estimated an average rate of decline of 2.5 percent per decade over the same period, the researchers said.
In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, a sand sculpture depicting characters in the Chinese classical work of fiction 'Journey to the West' is seen at Bailuzhou scenic area beside Bostan Lake in Bohu County, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Sunday, April 29, 2007. A group of sand sculptures were completed and shown to the public on Sunday.
Photo by Que Hure
A blind British pilot landed his microlight aircraft in Sydney Monday to complete a record-breaking flight halfway around the world.
Miles Hilton-Barber left London on March 7 and flew more than 21,000 kilometres (13,500 miles) to raise funds to fight blindness in developing countries.
Hilton-Barber flies with a sighted co-pilot but relies on speech output from his navigation instruments to steer his course, directing the plane from a wireless keyboard.
Tommy Newsom, the former backup bandleader on "The Tonight Show" whose "Mr. Excitement" nickname was a running joke for Johnny Carson, has died. He was 78.
Newsom, who played saxophone, joined "The Tonight Show" in 1962 and rose from band member to assistant music director. He retired along with Carson in 1992.
Newsom won music direction Emmys for "Night of 100 Stars" in 1982 and "The 40th Annual Tony Awards Show" in 1986. "The Tonight Show" received five Emmy awards during Newsom's years on it.
Along with his work on "The Tonight Show," Newsom arranged and composed music for Skitch Henderson, Woody Herman, Kenny Rogers, John Denver and other performers.
He also released several albums as a bandleader, including "Live From Beautiful Downtown Burbank" in 1978 and "I Remember You, Johnny" in 1996.
Newsom was born in 1929 and got his first horn for Christmas at age 8. He graduated from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, then toured with a U.S. Air Force jazz ensemble during a four-year enlistment.
Before landing his "Tonight" gig, he toured the Soviet Union and South America with Benny Goodman and played in "The Merv Griffin Show" orchestra.
Newsom is survived by his wife of 50 years, Patricia, and their daughter, Candy Newsom.
A Chelydra Serpentina, or a Snapping turtle swims in the aquarium during an exotic animal exhibition in the town of Varna some 450 kms. (280 miles) north-east of the Bulgarian capital Sofia, Monday, April, 30, 2007.
Photo by Petko Momchilov
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