Publishers Clearing House: "How do you want your winnings; in one lump sum, or yearly payments?"
Where did they find the girl who does the Progressive advertisements?
@edgarblythe,
greetings from :
why do you not want to be a winner ?
I want to win it honestly: With lottery tickets.
Phone conversation:
Last year I replaced all the windows in my house with that expensive double-pane energy efficient kind, and today, I got a call from the contractor who installed them. He was complaining that the work had been completed a whole year ago and I still hadn't paid for them.
Hellloooo,............just because I'm blonde doesn't mean that I am automatically stupid. So, I told him just what his fast talking sales guy had told me last year, that in ONE YEAR these windows would pay for themselves!
"Helllooooo? It's been a year!" I told him. There was only silence at the other end of the line, so I finally just hung up. He never called back. I bet he felt like an idiot.
Re: the video about sperm at the start of this thread.
Did the male presenter really say what i think he said right at the very end after the blackout?
Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president well known for his marathon TV addresses to the nation, has taken to Twitter to share his thoughts.
After he promised to "let loose" on Tuesday night, a Spanish-language tweet duly appeared on his new chavezcandanga account 14 minutes after midnight.
It was a simple message to say he was off on a working trip to Brazil.
By morning the leftist leader, a divisive figure at home and abroad, had nearly 29,000 followers on Twitter.
@Ceili,
Oh jeeze.
LOL
They have GOT to be kidding.
Virginia state seal: Last week the Commonwealth's Attorney General said, after 150 years of corrupting young minds, it was time that strumpet cover up. He gave his staff a version in which she donned a more modest armored breastplate, which he prefers you call a naughty-womanpart-plate.
After some media fuss, he's relented
How much would it cost to solve some of the world's biggest problems? King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia says about $10 billion " that's the endowment he's given to the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or KAUST, a huge research facility devoted to solving some of the major problems facing the planet.
The brand new school " it opened just this past fall " rises from the desert north of Jeddah like the secret research lab in a James Bond movie. The desert blooms here, thanks to a private desalination plant and an army of gardeners. With a private Red Sea beach, knock-your-socks-off architecture and world-class labs, KAUST hopes to lure the world's brainiest scientists to this Xanadu for nerds.
This isn't a university in the traditional sense, says KAUST President Choon Fong Shih.
"KAUST is a global university of the 21st century," Shih says, "a place where we integrate graduate education with research and the cutting edge."
That word " global " is thrown around a lot in higher education these days. Every university is trying to spread its wings and go international. What's different at KAUST? Well, for one thing " money. And lots of it. Money can buy some very nice science toys.
Take KAUST's visualization lab. It's got a room-sized video screen that shows a microscopic view of a rat's brain with stunning clarity. Steve Cutchin, who manages the lab, says this display also enables smooth video conferencing to anywhere in the world, including with his former home campus of the University of California, San Diego, halfway around the globe.
Before serving as the first KAUST president, Choon Fong Shih was the head of the National University of Singapore.
Rethinking The System
There's something else KAUST's huge budget can buy, according to David Keyes, dean of math and computer sciences.
"You can purchase good friends, and we've purchased, if you will, a lot of very good friends," Keyes says.
When he joined KAUST, he left a nice post at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California. KAUST is "buying" allegiances, Keyes says, by handing out big grants. Stanford, for example, is getting $5 million a year to help select KAUST faculty. Other schools receive millions to do joint research. At the same time, KAUST is trying to blow up the internal structures that often lead to internecine battles at traditional universities. There are no departments here. Instead, Keyes says, KAUST pursues a "mission oriented" strategy.
"A mission-oriented program might be solar energy, as opposed to chemistry, physics, math, computer science, other things that are the disciplines that feed into that group," says Keyes.
And, in a move that may shock many educators, KAUST has done away with tenure. That's right: People here will be judged only by how many useful ideas or products they come up with.
Relationship To Islam
The first class here numbers about 400, with students from all over the world. They chow down in the light-filled cafeteria, one of the few places in Saudi Arabia where college-aged men and women rub elbows. Computer science student Luca Passone is Italian and studied in England. He says he came prepared to do without, but instead was overwhelmed by the amenities.
Enlarge Larry Abramson/NPR
Matt Debont (right) and Luca Passone are graduate students in computer science at KAUST. Both say they were drawn by the school's advanced computer equipment, but have also found that recreational facilities on the campus are lavish.
. Both say they were drawn by the school's advanced computer equipment, but have also found that recreational facilities on the campus are lavish.
"We have a cinema, we have a beach, sports centers, multiple gyms. We are very, very lucky to have so many things available for us," Passone says.
KAUST has to pile on the luxuries because life can be pretty austere outside the gates. And even on campus, students cannot get alcohol or pork, which are banned in this Islamic state.
The university's relationship to the kingdom and to Islam are complicated at best.
At the KAUST museum, KAUST's PR man Christopher Sands describes the Arab world's golden age of learning a millennium ago.
"Because the king's vision has always been to try to go back to what was the original house of wisdom, intellectual inquiry and groundbreaking science and technology are deeply integrated in the values of Islam," Sands says.
In fact, the king defied conservatives in his country by going ahead with KAUST as a co-ed school in a country where the sexes are still segregated. Sands says religion is not taken into account in admissions. But in many ways, KAUST remains faithful to Islam.
Sands says there are five separate mosques on campus that accommodate thousands. But there is no place here, on or off campus, for other faiths to worship.
"People are free to worship. There aren't any official facilities for it, but people do worship in the way they wish," Sands says.
KAUST may be an anomaly in the academic world. It is less of an oddity in Saudi Arabia, which has long had special compounds for foreigners working here. KAUST clearly has the resources to succeed in the world of global research. The question is whether it will have an impact just beyond its walls, on the host country.
PASADENA, Calif. " It's a first for the boy with no name.
A former foster youth whose mother never got around to giving him a first or middle name is now legally known as Max Pauson.
Hospital administrators, who 20 years ago had to submit a record of birth to the California Office of Vital Records, simply filled in the blanks "Baby, Boy, Pauson."
His generic birth certificate became a problem when he tried to get a job " the name on his Social Security card didn't match.
Last year, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge approved the name: Maximus Julius Pauson. (See Max Pauson's photo here.)
Now he is trying to make another name for himself " as an artist and writer. The Pasadena art student displayed his work at a Sunday exhibit and intends to write children's books when he graduates.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates " A Dubai appeals court has thrown out a public indecency conviction and a month's prison sentence for a Pakistani couple accused of having sex in their car after the pair claimed they were together in a private place, their lawyer said Tuesday.
Majid Al Kabban, the lawyer representing the husband and wife, said the ruling by the lower court was overturned last week. They couple were initially sentenced to a month in prison and deportation.
The pair successfully argued their car should be treated like a private house. Their lawyers argued that because of the car's tinted windows, a policeman who had raised the charge could not have seen what the couple were doing inside.
BOSTON -- Three sixth-graders at the Sumner Whitter School in Everett were taken to Children's Hospital after swallowing dry ice Wednesday morning, according to Superintendent Frederick F. Foresteire.
He said the students apparently swallowed the dry ice because of a dare.
There was no immediate word on their identities or condition, although one boy was in respiratory distress when he was taken from the school, and he was being given oxygen.
This came from the Enquirer:
ELVIS PRESLEY was believed to have died from a massive heart attack in 1977 but now his doctor is singing a different tune.
At the time of his death it was reported that The King had died from cardiac arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat brought on by drug addiction, obesity and a bum ticker.
But now El's pal and personal physician Dr. George "Nick" Nichopoulos, who tried to resuscitate him that fateful day, has finally revealed the true cause of death in his new tell-all The King and Dr. Nick.
"After he died we weren't sure (the exact cause of death) so I continued to do some research and I had some doctors call me from different places and different med schools that were doing research on constipation and different problems you can get into with it. " Dr.Nick writes.
According to the physician, now retired, the autopsy revealed Presley's colon was 5 to 6 inches in diameter (the normal width is usually 2 to 3 inches) and instead of being 4 to 5 feet in length, his colon was 8 to 9 feet in length.
"We didn't' realize until the autopsy that his constipation was as bad - we knew it was bad because it was hard for us to treat, but we didn't realize what it had done.
"We just assumed that the constipation was secondary to the meds that he was taking for his arthritic pain and for his insomnia."
In 1975, the primary treatment was a colostomy, the removal of the colon but according to the book, Presley's "ego" got in the way.
"He was embarrassed.
"He'd have accidents onstage. He'd have to change clothes and come back because of the way we were trying to treat his constipation.
"If they had done the colostomy then, he'd probably still be here," Nichopoulos said.
CNN) -- A Maryland funeral home has lost its license after investigators found about 40 bodies stacked on top of each other, leaking fluid, in a garage, a state official said.
The state Board of Morticians and Funeral Directors revoked the license of Chambers Funeral Home & Crematorium in Riverdale, Maryland after an April 26 visit to the site.
Hari Close, president of the the state funeral board, told CNN Tuesday that some of the bodies were cadavers who had been donated to a local university for research. Other bodies came from other funeral homes, Close said.
The bodies were supposed to be cremated, but investigators were alarmed at how they were stored in the garage while they awaited cremation.
"Even somebody who donates their body to science, they still should be treated with dignity," said Close. "Not to mention the health and safety issues with the body fluids flowing out."
William Chambers, co-owner of the funeral home, told CNN-affiliate WJLA said that he hopes to work with the state to resolve the alleged violations.
When investigators inspected the funeral home they were warned by an employee, who told them, "Don't get upset about all the bodies in there," according to documents released by the state funeral board.
Inside the room was a "large pile, approximately 12 by 12 feet, of body bags containing human remains strewn on the floor of the garage in front of a removal van. There was visible leakage from the body bags as well as a pungent odor," the documents said.
"The investigator also observed writing on some of the body bags," they said. "However, fluid leakage from the body bags caused the writing to smear and become illegible. As a result, it was not immediately possible to determine the identity of the remains."
There will be a hearing at the end of the month to determine whether the funeral home will get its license back, Close said
It may sound ridiculous, but a few blogs today are considering this question:
Is it appropriate to send or receive text messages during sex?
The chatter is a spin-off from a 1,000-person survey, published in March, which found about one in 10 people younger than 25 say that they would not mind being "interrupted by an electronic message" during sex.
Among people older than 25, 6 percent said they would be fine with that inconvenience, according to the online survey by Retrevo, a website that reviews consumer electronics.
The survey reports a 4 percent error margin.
About a quarter of people in the under-25 group said they wouldn't mind getting a text message or e-mail while using the restroom (the chart actually says "on the John," but can we all agree to boycott that phrase?). And half of the younger people said they would be OK with a digital intrusion into a meal.
Older people were less fond of this all-the-time messaging. Sixty-two percent of people older than 25 said they don't like being interrupted by digital communications in general.
Maybe there's a serious conversation to be had somewhere in these salacious details.
Do you find electronic messages intruding in on your life?
Would you text during dinner with a friend? Are there any limits?
