Can't get up in the morning? Hook up your ride with whistle tips. You should be up cookin' breakfas' o sumpin anyway. Woo wooo!

Woo wooo!

How much is three to four minutes of your time worth-- especially when you're waiting for the latest "Lord of the Rings" movie to start?

That question was posed in two lawsuits filed Tuesday against movie theaters that claim in their ads they'll show movies at a certain time, but, instead, show on-screen commercials at the advertised time, delaying the movie's start.

Theaters are committing consumer fraud when they claim in advertising that a movie starts at a certain time but it really starts a few minutes later because of the ads, said Mark Weinberg, a Chicago attorney who filed the two suits.

"They deceive you into thinking a movie starts on time in order to create a captive audience,'' Weinberg said. "People are actually paying good money to watch commercials.''

Pre-movie ads rip off theatergoers, suits claim

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Saddam Hussein indicated on Monday that he does not intend to follow U.N. orders to destroy his Al- Samoud 2 missiles, and challenged President Bush to an internationally televised debate via satellite linkup.

In a three-hour interview with CBS anchor Dan Rather, the Iraqi leader said he envisioned a live debate with Bush along the lines of those in a U.S. presidential campaign, according to the network. The White House dismissed the debate offer as meaningless.

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Saddam Hussein Challenges Bush to Debate

French fries off US menu

A fast food restaurant in America says it has received huge support after renaming its French fries, in protest at France's opposition to the United States' stance on Iraq.

Neal Rowland, the owner of Cubbie's diner in Beaufort, North Carolina, said his newly-named 'freedom fries' have been a hit with customers.

"Everybody's been in support of it," he told BBC News Online.

"World War II veterans have been coming in, telling stories of when they were in France. They're overwhelmed about it, they can't believe it."

A sign in the restaurant's window reads: "Because of Cubbie's support for our troops, we no longer serve French fries. We now serve freedom fries."

BBC NEWS | Europe | French fries off US menu

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WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 — Federal officials said today that they had shut down the major suppliers of drug paraphernalia in the United States in a series of nationwide raids, arresting 55 people who prosecutors said had trafficked in an array of merchandise that included lipstick-shaped marijuana pipes and gas-mask bongs.

Drug paraphernalia, once the province of neighborhood head shops, has "exploded" into a multimillion-dollar industry through the Internet, as suppliers have shopped their wares on public Web sites with little fear of prosecution, officials said in announcing the arrests.

Federal officials said the raids had yielded several tons worth of drug paraphernalia used both by suppliers to help produce drugs for resale and by users to conceal drugs. Investigators said the items — which included drug pipes hidden in school highlighters, soft- drinks cans and lipstick cases — would sell for tens of millions of dollars on the open market.

U.S. Says It Has Cut Off Supplies of Drug Paraphernalia

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Systems biologists envision a hulking database where all biological knowledge can be stored, freely accessed, and designed to interact. From it, researchers could easily extract data to construct virtual molecular pathway models working in their respective networks and in dynamic contexts of time, space, and various environmental cues. Hypotheses could be plucked like apples from the electronic tree of knowledge, and drug targets would fall like leaves. Some want to play out this tremendous vision, but they know it cannot be done at a single lab, by a single investigator. Members of Alliance for Cellular Signaling (AfCS), call for a new scientific world order--a shift toward socialist science.

...

The real difficulty, however, could lie in redirecting the scientific mind from individual to collective. The AfCS comprises more than 50 investigators from 20 academic and industrial institutions, and has garnered financial support from pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lily and Company and Johnson & Johnson. Gilman, who won the 1994 Nobel Prize for discovering G proteins asks, "Can we get the community to behave in a benevolent, interactive, cooperative manner? Only time will tell."

The Scientist :: The People's Biology, Feb. 24, 2003

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Rhode Island is so small, local and close- knit, it seems as if it's populated by a huge and affectionate -- if sometimes squabbling -- extended family.

That's why the impact of the catastrophic fire at The Station nightclub will reverberate beyond the immediate loved ones of the people who perished. Rhode Islanders will be devastated and generations to come will talk of this terrible event.

CNN.com - A real place, where everybody knows your name - Feb. 22, 2003

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The Poetics of Security: Skateboarding, Urban Design, and the New Public Space
by Ocean Howell
(© 2001. No portion of this essay, text or image, may be reproduced without author's consent.)

Abstract:

Skateboarding is a thorn in the side of landscape architects, planners, and building owners; so much so that there are now design workshops that teach a series of defensive architectural tactics for deterring the activity. The type of skateboarding that plagues these architects and the spaces they create, "street skating," has only existed for about 15 years, and in fact was born out of the barren, defensive spaces created by redevelopment. Viewed in this light, it is clear that street skating is not only an impetus for defensive architecture, but also a symptom of defensive architecture. Recognizing that redevelopment spaces fostered pathologies, cities and corporations have begun to build more friendly spaces in the past couple of decades. But they have been careful to ensure that the spaces are only friendly to a select subset of the public, namely office workers and consumers. To create such spaces requires knowledge of the minutest details of undesirable behaviors—a knowledge that can only be gleaned through surveillance. Because the resultant spaces appear open but exclude the vast majority of the citizenry, they represent a restrictive discourse of publicness. Although the destructive effects of skateboarding have been exaggerated, the purpose of this essay is not to argue that skateboarding should be permitted in public space. It is by virtue of its status as a misuse of these spaces—and because it is a symptom of defensive design—that skateboarding is exceptionally good at drawing attention to the quietly exclusionary nature of the new public space. Ultimately, skateboarding affords an observer glimpses of the larger processes of surveillance and simulation by which public space, both physical and cultural, is produced.

The Poetics of Security: Skateboarding, Urban Design, and the New Public Space

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The 1988 birth of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization is carefully chronicled in a cache of remarkable documents seized last year during a raid on the Bosnian offices of an Illinois-based charity that covertly raised funds for the terrorist group. A description of the seized material is contained in a 106-page proffer unsealed this month by federal prosecutors in Chicago. The government filing was prepared in connection with the criminal case brought against Enaam Arnaout, the 41-year-old Syrian who headed Benevolence International Foundation, the alleged charitable front group (Arnaout pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge on February 10). Included in the seized material, the proffer discloses, were minutes from a three-day meeting in August 1988--held at bin Laden's home--during which al-Qaeda was hatched. The minutes note that future group members were required to be "listening and obedient" and had to possess "good manners." An excerpt from the government proffer follows. (4 pages)

The Smoking Gun: Al Qeada

Great government information on the medical efficacy of various non-traditional health-care techniques.

Treatment Information by Treatment or Therapy