Heavens:

SCIENCE genius Stephen Hawking has been invited on to the next series of Celebrity Big Brother.

The wheelchair-bound professor, 64, has been offered a “substantial fee”, according to a pal.

The friend said: “When Stephen heard, a big grin spread across his face. He thought it was very funny.”

There are jokes to be made here, but I tried, and they all seemed like stuff I'd get criticized for. So... you do my dirty work.

Thanks to db.

Posted by: Ace at 11:53 AM | Comments (22)
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Health experts were alerted to the possibility of an E. Coli outbreak after noting that serious sickness due to eating Taco Bell had risen by almost ten percent over normal.

Anyway:

Just one day after eight Taco Bell restaurants within two Long Island counties were shut down after 14 people fell ill due to an E. coli outbreak, officials now say the restaurants are expected to reopen. A ninth Taco Bell was shut down Sunday in South Plainfield, N.J. and was also likely to open its doors for business once again.

The Long Island restaurants closed voluntarily at their respective county's request as an investigation into the outbreak began.

But now the question remains: how is consumer confidence affected? Will the Taco Bell faithful return to the popular fast-food chain or has this outbreak tainted the restaurant's reputation for good?

Indeed. Will this diminish the reputation of the chain most famous for dispensing a meat-like paste out of a grease-gun? Only time will tell.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (152)
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Food Nazis.

The Board of Health voted Tuesday to make New York the nation's first city to ban artery-clogging artificial trans fats at restaurants - from the corner pizzeria to high-end bakeries.

The board, which passed the ban unanimously, did give restaurants a slight break by relaxing what had been considered a tight deadline for compliance. Restaurants will be barred from using most frying oils containing artificial trans fats by July and will have to eliminate the artificial trans fats from all of their foods by July 2008.

But restaurant industry representatives called the ban burdensome and unnecessary.

"We don't think that a municipal health agency has any business banning a product the Food and Drug Administration has already approved," said Dan Fleshler, a spokesman for the National Restaurant Association.

...

Trans fats are believed to be harmful because they contribute to heart disease by raising bad cholesterol and lowering good cholesterol at the same time. Some experts say that makes trans fats worse than saturated fat.

This is odd:

The panel also passed another measure that has made restaurants unhappy: Some that chose to inform customers about calorie content will have to list the information right on the menu. The rule would generally apply to fast-food restaurants and other major chains.

Sheila Weiss, director of nutritional policy for the restaurant association, said the rule would be a disincentive for restaurants to provide any nutritional information.

Why do that? Is it just a backdoor attempt to stop fast foods from marketing their foods as "light" or "healthy"? Figuring it would be unconstitutional to ban McDonald's from advertising its "McLean DLT" as having fewer calories, they instead make a more content-/speaker- neutral rule that will have the same effect?

Seems sort of a transparent dodge, and I don't know that it won't get knocked down as unconstitutional infringement on commercial speech anyhow.

...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who banned smoking in bars and restaurants during his first term, is somewhat health-obsessed, and even maintains a weight-loss competition with one of his friends in order to stay slim.

He has dismissed cries that New York is crossing a line by trying to legislate diets.

"Nobody wants to take away your french fries and hamburgers - I love those things, too," he said recently. "But if you can make them with something that is less damaging to your health, we should do that."

I don't know. If it's true that transfats are especially unhealthy -- if; I'm not sure there's any "science" that's wrong more consistently than nutritionism -- and used chiefly because they cost less, then this doesn't exercise me. A true libertarian might object, but then, a true libertarian might also object to cities' imposing fire standards on buildings. Hey, the true (insane) libertarian says, some buildings and businesses can make their premises deathtraps and others can make theirs safe; let the free market decide!

Well, okay, but there are millions of decisions we make a year that aren't really based on free market principles of information-gathering and decisionmaking. And in most cases, people just aren't going to think about how fire-retardant the walls of a nightclub might be, so the market can't reward fire-safe nightclubs. (Except to the extent they survive longer than, say, the Coconut Grove type clubs would.) And probably no one's asking if their fries were fried in transfat or real grease, so again, there aren't any market forces at work here to reward or punish anyone at all.

Some small-bore stuff like this I don't mind the government doing. If it makes fried foods cost a little more, well, okay. It probably makes food cost a little more to make sure there are as few roaches and rats in a restaurant as possible, but it's a government invasion into the free market I can live with.

Thanks to Good Will Hinton.

Posted by: Ace at 10:56 AM | Comments (98)
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M-m-mom?

St. Louis police say a woman shot her husband, who was about 70 years old, four to five times in the chest after he tried giving her a warm can of Stag beer.

Viral marketing. Anyone going to see if they can get Stag beer at the liquor store?

This surprises me:

Police said the wife admitted shooting him about 5:40 p.m. in the kitchen of their home in the 5100 block of Terry Avenue. Police said the home had no electricity at the time.

You'd think she might make an allowance for the beer being warm, given that there was no power for the fridge. She should have just winged him in the hipbone or something.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (35)
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Original post here.

London police are making progress.

I got a call from the police this morning, who told me that the same two scumbags who attacked me also beat up a gay guy and knocked his tooth out. Charming little scamps, eh?

Posted by: LauraW. at 10:17 AM | Comments (3)
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Just posting this because this is the real issue, and one I wondered about myself earlier. I almost posted this before, but decided against it.

But now there's a controversy about it, so I will.

There's an argument over whether Gwyneth Paltrow has a rack or not.

A commenter complimented her on her "lungs," and another commenter asked, "Are you sure you know who Gwyenth Paltrow is?"

I thought I knew the answer. The answer, I thought, was "No." But I am baffled by this picture in the Daily Mail article I linked:

A super WonderBra? Make-up in the cleavage to give the illusion of depth? I don't know. I know women say they really can work miracles with a WonderBra, but I find this all very confusing.

And so -- a new controversy swirls.

Whether or not she has a rack, it doesn't change the fact she looks like the "special" offspring of Sissy Spacek and the Banjo Mutant from Deliverance.

Posted by: Ace at 08:56 AM | Comments (103)
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I looked on the Memri site for some explanation of this mindblowingly odd, and woefully shoddy, clip, but none is available.

Given the Evil Space Queen wears the Jewish star on her chest, and has a helmet complete with little Jew-horns, and summons a "virtual fighter" who appears to be a European Crusader, the basic gist isn't hard to glean, however.

Not quite sure what that CGI floating space-midget who talks to his hat is all about, though.

Via HotAir.

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 AM | Comments (38)
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Because it's a raptor nest. Raptors are the hot dinsoaurs.

You know what an ankylosaurus nest sells for? Buck-thirty. I've got nine of them in my hope chest. I tried donating them to a museum, and the curator/paleontologist told me, in all seriousness, "Ankylosauruses are for fags."

That stung.

65m-year-old nest of dinosaur eggs has sold to an unnamed buyer at auction in Los Angeles for $420,000 (£212,000).

The nest contains 22 broken eggs, 19 of which are in embryonic form, with some of the tiny raptors clearly visible.

The nest was discovered in Guangdong, southern China, in 1984 and scientists there had appealed to Bonhams not to allow the auction.

A Chinese dinosaur expert quoted on state news agency Xinhua said the nest should be returned for research.

The top estimate by auction house Bonhams & Butterfields for the nest was $220,000 but it almost doubled that.

The name of the buyer would not be released, the auction house said.

Hmm. Let's see. Los Angeles. Unnamed buyer. Who has an awful lot of disposable income. Who seems to have a special fondness for raptors, and, who knows, can maybe justify spending so much on raptor eggs because raptors made him thirty times as much.

Gotta be Spielberg or Michael Crichton, right?

Posted by: Ace at 08:02 AM | Comments (64)
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She made nearly the precise same remarks -- in English, to an English tabloid -- back in February.

And, in this article from February of 2006, Paltrow was quoted as telling Britain's Star magazine, "Brits are far more intelligent and civilised than Americans. Her lie is noted here, as well.

Thanks to an anonymous poster, or maybe two, for letting me know.

Posted by: Ace at 07:50 AM | Comments (23)
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That his remarks became the point of such controversy speaks volumes about today's America.

In New Hampshire last week, at a dinner hosted by the Loeb School honoring our 1st-Amendment rights, I called for a serious debate about the 1st Amendment and how terrorists are abusing our rights -- using them as they once used passenger jets -- to threaten and kill Americans.

Here's part of what I said: "Either before we lose a city, or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up [terrorists'] capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech [protections] and to go after people who want to kill us -- to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us."

Free Speech Is Not an Acceptable Cover for Those Planning to Kill

Since I made those remarks, I've heard from many, many Americans who understand the seriousness of the threat that faces us, Americans who believe as I do that free speech should not be an acceptable cover for people who are planning to kill other people who have inalienable rights of their own.

A small number of others have been quick to demagogue my remarks. Missing from the debate? Any reference to the very real threats that face Americans.

There was no mention of last week's letter from Iranian leader Ahmadinejad that threatens to kill Americans in large numbers if we don't submit to his demands.

There has been little attention drawn to any of the many websites dedicated to training and recruiting terrorists, including a recent one that promises to train terrorists "to use the Internet for the sake of jihad."

No mention of efforts by terrorist groups like Hezbollah to build "franchises" among leftist, anti-globalization groups worldwide, especially in Latin America.

Words as Weapons

The fact is not all speech is permitted under the Constitution. The 1st Amendment does not protect lewd and libelous speech, and it should not -- and cannot in 2006 -- be used as a shield for murderers.

Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy put it best: "With an enemy committed to terrorism, the advocacy of terrorism -- the threats, the words -- are not mere dogma, or even calls to 'action.' They are themselves weapons -- weapons of incitement and intimidation, often as effective in achieving their ends as would be firearms and explosives brandished openly."

We need a serious dialogue -- not knee-jerk hysteria -- about the 1st Amendment, what it protects and what it should not protect.

Posted by: Ace at 07:10 AM | Comments (25)
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