Miss World

The Miss World pageant, the love-it or hate-it global beauty gala, is set to celebrate its 52nd anniversary on November 30th, 2002, In Nigeria. The contestants competing for this year's crown will be watched by an expected television audience of 2.5 billion when the theatrical showcase reaches its climax .

The show is attacked as a sexist cattle market and defended as harmless entertainment (I'm one of the defenders), but its organizers believe weary viewers will switch away with relief from wars and disasters to the less demanding sight of smiling models.


In a related story...

BBC News has this article.

Nigeria seeks to calm Miss World row

Agbani Darego's victory made Nigeria this year's hosts

Mike! This is for you. You asked for it, you got it.

News stands and bookstores across America are starting to receive their copies .

Gene Simmons, sends his regards.

Ewing retires, apologizes to NY for no title

Patrick Ewing today returned to New York, the city he called home for 15 years, and called it quits on his illustrious NBA career. Then, the 40-year-old apologized to New Yorkers for the one blip on his impressive resume.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t bring a championship here,” Ewing said at a news conference held in midtown Manhattan. "Every time we stepped out on the court we gave 110 percent. Unfortunately, we fell short. I hope that one day New York will have a champion."

Ewing, an 11-time All-Star who was chosen as one of the 50 best players in league history, averaging 22.8 points and 10.4 rebounds over his 17-year career. He was traded to Seattle before the 2000 season and then signed as a free agent with Orlando last year.

The center finishes his NBA career with 24,815 points and 11,606 rebounds. “It’s time to move on,” he said. “It was a great ride."

The Lessons of Experience

"In these lively and unedited interviews, distinguished men and women from all over the world talk about their lives and their work. They reminisce about their participation in great events, and they share their perspectives on the past and reflect on what the future may hold. Guests include diplomats, statesmen, and soldiers; economists and political analysts; scientists and historians; writers and foreign correspondents; activists and artists. The interviews span the globe and include discussion of political, economic, military, legal, cultural, and social issues shaping our world. At the heart of each interview is a focus on individuals and ideas that make a difference."

I think that is what life is all about, striving to make a difference in our lives as well as the lives of others.

The real teacher in life is not experience, the real teacher is you. The best life can do is present lessons. The real learning is up to us.

A call to jail Spammers
Wired

So the goal should be to have the legal tools necessary to enjoin and shut down spammers quickly and, where appropriate, obtain major monetary judgments against them in civil courts. We need to make sending spam so expensive that it's no longer a viable business plan for anyone, anywhere.

Rehash

Truth - Probabilities - Possibilities - Lies

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle... Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into four chapters, heading the 1st-Truths. 2nd-Probabilities. 3rd-Possibilities. 4th-Lies.

The first chapter would be very short." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1807

Interesting quote, from the book Into the Buzzsaw which touches on that subject.

"Award-winning journalists reveal the disturbing fact that the press in the U.S. isn't as free as the public would like to believe. Nearly two dozen reporters, at some risk to their careers, disclose run-ins with corporate or government powers-that-be which have prompted them to reevaluate the significance of journalism in a free and open society."

To Go Where No Man Has Gone before

(CNN) -- The wonders of the ancient world don't give up their secrets easily. But the most advanced modern technology is being put to use in Egypt to answer questions about the most advanced ancient engineering -- Egypt's Great Pyramid.

National Geographic, using the same kind of robot used to search for survivors in the ruins of the World Trade Center, is trying to solve a mystery that lies deep in the bowels of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza.

Up a tiny square tunnel is a stone hatch with copper handles that was discovered in 1872. No one knows the purpose of the shaft, and no one knows what lies behind the hatch.

Chaos Theory

Food for thought

Chaos Theory deals with what is known as the Butterfly Effect – "the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York," writes James Gleick in his book, Chaos: Making a New Science. The initial conditions, no matter how insignificant, can have enormous, unpredicted and unintended consequences down the line. For a fictional example, Ray Bradbury, in his short story, A Sound of Thunder, writes about a man who time-travels to the past, and on returning to the present finds it has become a totalitarian prison – because he stepped on a prehistoric butterfly.

"... Chaos eliminates the Laplacian fantasy of deterministic predictability," Gleick writes.

Maybe I was on to something with my roulette wheel theory. Then again, maybe not.

Iraq exile says nuclear bomb months away

Reuters UK has this article.

LONDON (Reuters) - An exiled Iraqi nuclear scientist believes Baghdad is closer to building an atomic bomb than previously thought, according to The Times.
The newspaper said Dr Khidir Hamza, described as a top Iraqi nuclear researcher who fled to the West in 1994, believed that Iraq was able to make copies of a German-built centrifuge and use them to enrich uranium to produce a nuclear bomb.

The German-built centrifuge was dismantled by international arms inspectors before they were withdrawn from Iraq in 1998. But Hamza told the Times that Iraqi scientists had studied how the centrifuge was built and learned how to copy it.