] "This is clearly failure of intelligence," said an unnamed
] source within the administration. "We will definitely need
] to spend millions upon millions of taxpayer money to look
] into this."

:)

Superbowl Aftermath: White House Cites Failure Of Intelligence To Warn Nation Of The Existence Of Breasts

Last summer (2003), Thailand passed legislation which banned all online gaming from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m.

Starting in September, they amended the ban so that adults could still play, *if* they registered and paid a fee to the government:

] gamers aged 18 and above will have to
] register with a mandatory age-check system to be excluded
] from the gaming ban. Registration can be done at post
] offices for less than Bt30 (US$ 0.74), information and
] communication technology minister Surapong Suebwonglee
] said in the report.

The ban is issued against servers. Both local and overseas servers are blocked (or were as of November 2003). I'm trying now to find out the latest on this, so if anyone has any more recent information, please let me know?

Thailand bans online gaming after 10 p.m. -- unless you register as an adult

] An earlier official toll listed the dead as 54
] Indonesians, 36 Pakistanis, 13 Egyptians, 11 Turks, 11
] Indians, 10 Algerians, 10 Bangladeshis, 8 Sudanese, seven
] Moroccans, five Chinese, four Yemenis, three Sri Lankans,
] two Afghans, two Somalis, two Syrians, two Saudis, one
] Burmese, one Omani, one Tunisian, one Nigerian, one
] Chadian and one Cameroonian.

Gulf Daily News: 251 Die in Hajj Pilgrimage

] TiVo boxes download scheduling information over phone
] lines each night. They also upload a record of what was
] watched, recorded and skipped.
]
] TiVo says it does not identify individual viewers but
] will customize the report to track, for example, viewing
] habits of Silicon Valley subscribers during the Super
] Bowl, the finale of American Idol or the Academy Awards.

June 2003: TiVo to sell data on viewing habits of subscribers

] On June 2, personal-video-recorder outfit TiVo (TIVO )
] unveiled an analytical tool that can tell advertisers,
] agencies, and networks not only how many people tune in
] for a show but whether they're watching the ads. Unlike a
] Nielsen rating, which relies on surveys filled out by
] viewers, TiVo's system tracks what a viewer records and
] tunes into, even when the channel is changed

TiVo tracks which ads you watch

] TiVo estimated that halftime viewership among its
] customers was up 12 percent from 2003.
]
] The play-it-again company also reported that usage of its
] replay technology spiked a whopping 180 percent, the
] biggest surge ever measured, following the broadcast TV
] debut of Jackson's right mammary gland "as hundreds of
] thousands of households [TiVo'd] to view the incident
] again and again."

Um, this was news to me. TiVo maintains records of everything that its customers view, including everything they ask for replays of?? Is the FBI now going to be accessing this information to determine who's watching which TV shows??

TiVo's records of viewing habits

] While the U.S. has supplied a meager form of broadband to
] 20 million households (20% of the total), Korea has
] connected some 11 million households (73% of the Korean
] total) with real multimegabit pipes.

Wow.

Forbes.com: Korean Broadband Explosion

] "I'll get you naked by the end of this song," sang
] performer Justin Timberlake, moments before he ripped off
] Jackson's top, exposing a bare breast -- the nipple
] covered by a metal 'solar' nipple medallion.

I'd been wondering whether it was a deliberate stunt or an accidental gaffe (many breasts have been bared on television unintentionally). But the closeup of the costume here makes it pretty clear that it was deliberate. The cup wasn't *torn* off, it was *unsnapped* off.

It was definitely one of the more entertaining moments of the evening though! I TiVo-ed the game and fast-forwarded through most of the first half, though there were some exciting plays later on. I wasn't that impressed with the commercials either, with the exception of the Cadillac wave "turbulence" ad -- nice graphics on that one. Runners-up: The alien Fedex-recommender, "my husband was raised by wolves," the crotch-biting dog was good for at least one laugh, and the donkey trying out for the Clydesdales was cute.

Janet and Justin and the Superbowl, oh my!

] . . . a man who spent New Year's Eve covering his best friend's
] apartment entirely in tin foil

Owwww, my fillings ache just looking at the pictures!

Man's Apartment Encased in Aluminum Foil

] Want to come up with your own conspiracy theory about
] Bush? Don't let Al Franken, Michael Moore, and MoveOn.org
] have all the fun! Use this handy George W. Bush
] Conspiracy Theory Generator to come up with your own
] conspiracy theory!*

LOL! Yup, some of the stuff I've been hearing sounds like it could have come from this page.

I have one relative who is so anti-Bush, that *anything* that goes wrong in the world, he instantly blames on Bush. Flu outbreak in Africa? Bush's fault. Tax rates in Sweden? Bush's fault. Typhoon in the South Pacific? Bush's fault. ;) I halfway expect him to start blaming historical events on Bush too... World War II? Bush's fault. Slavery? Bush's fault. Extinction of the Mastodons? Bush's fault. ;)

Of course, then my relative blames *me* for being "uninformed and mis-led" whenever I try to poke holes in his arguments. :)

The George W. Bush Conspiracy Generator