hundreds of black holes found

perhaps you didn’t even know they were missing. but now rest assured. they were just lurking in glaxies far far away.

california confusion

hasta la vista arnie. you can bet he’s not going to be appointed to any position within a republican administration if the republicans take the white house. after vetoing a bill which would change the definition of what a ‘man’ and a ‘woman’ is in school textbooks one year ago, after being re-elected, arnold decided to sign a bill, which looks exactly the same. quite a few conservatives have their panties in a bunch. and a few prominent organizations are calling for parents to pull their kids out of the public school system. could happen. home schooling is legal in california. california already has some of the worst schools in the country. if a whole swath of orange county yanks their kids out, the school system will no longer have to do battle with louisiana and mississippi for the’worst schools in america’ spot. after all the conservatives pull their kids out of schools, they will then decide to always vote against any bill begging for more money for repairing public schools, getting new textbooks, getting new equipment. and so forth. other people believe the 3 (or was it 4) similar bills which schwarzenegger has signed are so loosely written that california schools are left wide open for lawsuits.

what’s orlando bloom doing driving a toyota?

maybe he didn’t make so much from the lord of the rings trilogy. but i heard he made a mint from flucht der karibik. so what’s he doing driving a toyota?

iraq war dies at th box office

according to brandon gray, who runs boxofficemojo, audiences want to be moved. apparently that’s why ‘rendition,’ starring witherhaal aka reese witherspoon and jake gyllenhaal (forgive me if i’ve spelt it wrong, but i can’t be bothered to look this up) has tanked at the box office. ‘rendition’ has pulled in 4M dollars its first weekend and was released on over 2K screens.

gps system in your designer jacket

is this really a good way to keep track of kids? just a note. as this is a link to yahoo news, sometime in the not so distant future, this link will probably go away.

is george clooney really a movie star

we’ve gotta ask this question. considering the good german made but $5M _worldwide.

romano prodi schuns angelina jolie

romano prodi opted out of meeting with angelina in new york saying ‘i’ve never heard of a politician getting in trouble by not meeting an actress.

peter greenaway declares cinema dead

and the world asks who is peter greenaway? i, myself enjoyed most of his films from last century.

priest poses as gay to research a group of satanists

that’s what an official at the vatican has claimed in defense of his being caught on tape propositioning another man.

the hillary machine in full gear?

seems that someone has been trying to closedown focus on the family for suposedly endorsing political candidates in the u.s. during the 2004 election. this seems to happen to one big organization every few years.

i kinda prefer german elections. money comes from one pot. everybody has to share. everyone gets equal t.v. time. there’s something to be said for the french way as well regarding the media. there’s a total media blackout regarding anything associated with an election 24 (or is that 48) hours before the election takes place.

brangelina ditch berlin for new york

apparently, they’ve decided to raise their multikulti family in new york in a 6 bedroom apartment. there’s an article in the new issue of zitty which declares ‘brangelina aren’t my neighbor.’

reuters gets it wrong

from the headline from reuters, the article has obviously been written by someone who doesn’t understand german very well. last tuesday, eva herman was kicked off the johannes kerner show on ARD. HELLO REUTERS, she didn’t walk off. kerner asked her to leave. herman claims that her previous quote, which have led to her losing her job on NRD and being on kerner’s show have been taken out of context.

un international panel on climate change along with gore win nobel peace prize

but the headlines around the world read ‘gore wins nobel peace prize.’ how many articles have you seen which mention that he shares the prize with an UN organization? figures, right? apparently the christian science monitor is one of the few papers interested in accuracy, in this case.

al gore makes mistakes

this comes as no surprise.  a high court judge in the uk has ruled that there are 9 factual errors in ‘an inconvenient truth.’

open letter to music industry

here’s an open letter to the music industry from a digusted fan who claims s/he owns over 1K CDs. i myself got rid of most of mine ages ago. minus the classical ones of course. (most) artists (read indies) shouldn’t be blamed for the RIAA debacle.

american politics is boring

apparently hillary has already been virtually crowned by the democratic party. could you imagine the history books if she actually (DOUBT IT) wins the national election? bush clinton bush. 20 years of hell.

the british elections are far more interesting. at least in terms of oratory, which brits still care about. and while the head of the tory party, david cameron, has a webcameron and a dozen or more facebook pages including david cameron is a hottie. i couldn’t imagine finding a similar site for hillary.

it was 10 years ago this month

when an artilce i wrote in wired appeared about rise of digital distribution. 2 years before napster. now that a financial equity group has taken over EMI, the labels may just start to have a serious conversation about a new music model. the new music model is basically, control has reverted back to bands. see prince. see radiohead. the daily telegraph also has a follow up article on the site entitled radiohead generation. while i don’t agree with the headline, i think generation napster is far better, the piece is a very good read indeed.

italian journalist admits to living with parents at 42

loads of italian men stay home until the age of 36. the italians have a special name for such a man, which loosely translates as ‘mama’s boy.’

more proof prince william going bald

according to the backend of this site, the most popular post thus far is the ‘prince william going bald’ post. so back by popular demand…or rather, i mean, i’ve got more proof to back things up. we’ve got a better shot of william’s ever-expanding bald spot.

cruise’s spokesperson denies he’s building bunker against alien attack

how’s that for a headline? the daily mail has more detailed information.

boycott the music industry

remember jammie thomas. boy is the RIAA stupid.

music industry continues to shoot itself in the foot

so a music fan is being forced to pay $9,250 for 22 songs to a sum of over 200K to the RIAA or the powers that be that will try to collect this. talk about more bad p.r. for the music industry. we call this biting the hands that feeds. the comments on the bbc website are pretty entertaining.

residents of notting hill vehemently dislike hugh grant and julia roberts

tourists by the droves bound down the street looking for the infamous blue door.

paltrow desperate for cash brushes up on schoolgirl spanish

gwyneth paltrow is doing a made-for-PBS travel-log about spain. in this article, the reporter notes that gwyneth paltrow is a vegetarian and then quotes her as saying that she will (i paraphase) ‘tuck into the rice and fish dishes.’. i thought vegetarians never eat anything that ever had a face.

barcelona and reverse culture shock

barcelona
design city of europe? hmm. i’ll have to have a word with the editors of ‘wallpaper magazine’ and ‘monocle’. it was okay, although the workshop i attended was first rate. shame about the faux beaches though. but its always great to dodge the dreary days of northern europe.

reverse culture shock
i try to visit the u.s. at least once every 18 months. people talk and move faster than they do here. most conversations have to be pre-packaged into some sort of entertaining soundbyte to grab a person’s attention, while here you have to prepare yourself for a lengthy, detailed discussion about something fairly mundane. in the u.s., if i say ‘that’s too bad that you have to work on the weekend’ the reply is generally ‘i’m lucky to have a job.’ while here it’s more like ‘yeah, that really sucks.’

there are 150K empty apartments here
but for some reason, people outside of the country still insist on buying property and erecting pricey apartments. do you really need a 450K loft that allows you to elevate your car so that you can park directly in front of your own front door on the 5th floor? this is the city of bicyclers and a city with a 15% unemployment rate, i’ll be curious to see how ‘quickly’ that building fills up.

vanity fair deutschland the weekly failure?
still losing 165,000 euros/week? probably. and as the euro appreciates (1= $1.43), this could only get worse. although i think they’ve graduated from 10 ad pages per issue to 15 or so. they don’t seem to be able to take their own photos either. i’ve counted at least 4 covers (and i’m not really paying attention) that previously appeared on various conde nast publications in the u.s. including W and the original Vanity Fair. it seems the editor (who incidentally has a PhD in philosophy) is leery of putting non-native english speaking people on the cover.

english people leaving the uk in droves
apparently last year, about 385K people left the uk.
people site a variety of reasons including rising
crime rates and rising prices. although the rising
prices have allowed the same people to sell their
homes and relocate to barcelona, amongst other places.

chelsea season ticket holders get irate

chelsea season ticket holders have sent a letter to owner abramovich voicing their concern regarding the direction of the club. they also question the performances of michael ballack and shevchenko as well as the choice of the new coach. if you’ve read nick hornby’s ‘fever pitch’ you’ll follow the motivation behind the letter. i don’t agree with it. but i do think shevchenko might be past his prime. or rather, perhaps he was never a very good player.  the new coach has got caught up in the cross-fire of murinho being pushed out. players have gone on record as saying he should be given a chance.

ronaldinho says no to chelsea

another sign that chelsea probably won’t have a great season. ronaldinho has rejected ovetures from the club, insisting that he wants to remain at FC Barcelona.