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Wednesday, Jan 16, 2002

unlevining

"WASHINGTON -- An influential senator, dissatisfied with Saudi Arabia's response to the war on terrorism, said the Pentagon should consider shifting U.S. forces from Saudi territory to another Persian Gulf country where they would be more welcome."

tron and on

"Although "Tron" holds historic landmark status as the first film to present a computer-generated, three-dimensional universe in which the action unfolds, it never quite garnered the same degree of critical support as did "Blade Runner," another '80s film that charted a futuristic cultural shift. But "Tron" launched a number of computer games and, most important, unleashed a new visual aesthetic -- one with major techno-whoa! appeal."

down with the king

"L A U D E R H I L L, Fla., Jan. 16 � A plaque intended to honor deep-voiced actor James Earl Jones at this city's Martin Luther King Jr. celebration instead had this extremely incorrect message: "Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive."

Tuesday, Jan 15, 2002

night moves

"The foreigner coming to these shores is more impressed at first by our sky-scrapers. They are new to him. He has not done anything of the sort since he built the tower of Babel. The foreigner is shocked by them. In the daylight they are ugly. They are�well, too chimneyfied and too snaggy�like a mouth that needs attention from a dentist; like a cemetery that is all monuments and no gravestones. But at night, seen from the river where they are columns towering against the sky, all sparkling with light, they are fairylike; they are beauty more satisfactory to the soul than anything man has dreamed of since the Arabian nights."

end game

""By mutual consent," writes the family. Attached to a high-profile person, this simple phrase signals a sea change in the matter of double suicides, even as the current administration in Washington struggles to hold back the tide."

andersen's windows

"4. Compassion for over-worked, grunt congressional staffers who will be running the investigation. "

more toys

"Whether all the necessary pieces will ever fall into place is an open debate, but that crucial first step -- technology that lets you search video -- has just been developed and is now being marketed by a United Kingdom-based firm called Dremedia. Founded by Matthew Karas, who previously headed up the interactive TV unit at the BBC, Dremedia has software that combines speech recognition, image analysis, speech-to-text transcription, and the ability to organize so-called unstructured data. In essence, Dremedia's software can analyze video footage -- either raw or edited -- and not only identify nearly every word spoken but also differentiate between speakers and even understand when a scene changes."

about the edges

"UNTIL very recently, ministers would not discuss reforming Britain's hard-line anti-drug policies. No matter that Britain's record was among the worst in Europe in terms of users of hard drugs and deaths from overdoses. To be seen to be tough was a political imperative. But things are changing."

friends in deed

"On the face of it, the sudden political storm over Enron is puzzling. After all, the Bush administration didn't save the company from bankruptcy. But then why did the administration dissemble so long about its contacts with Enron? Why did George W. Bush make the absurd claim that Enron's C.E.O., Kenneth Lay, opposed him in his first run for governor, and that the two men got to know each other only after that race? And why does the press act as if there may be a major scandal brewing?

Because the administration fears, and the press suspects, that the latest revelations in the Enron affair will raise the lid on crony capitalism, American style."

Monday, Jan 14, 2002

geek out

"The most notable characteristic of the One Ring is that it turns its wearer invisible. In scientific terms, this means one of two things: either the wearer's index of refraction is reduced to that of air�which is unlikely without major changes in atomic structure�or else light waves are simply diverted around him. (I would say "him or her," except that the historical record shows all bearers of the One Ring to be male.) In fact, NASA and the U.S. Air Force have already experimented with "video camouflage" which places cameras on one side of an object and video screens on the other side. The object "disappears" before our very eyes, like the alien trophy-hunter in Predator, and with the hoped-for advent of projective holography, this technology can only improve."

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