“She’s very lovable and though she’s not a human, she can act like a real girlfriend.”

After years of Sci-Fi films where technology has advanced enough to satisfy our need for love and sex, we are finally starting to see the fantasy become a reality with the release of Japan’s robotic girlfriend.

Male Geeks Finally Get Robot Girlfriends | Weird Asia News

Olbermann’s tenure at ESPN was characteristically contentious. One of his co-anchors, Suzy Kolber, has said that Olbermann was sometimes so overbearing that she would lock herself in the bathroom and cry. Another colleague, Mike Soltys, has said that when Olbermann left the network, in 1997, “he didn’t burn bridges here—he napalmed them.”

I wonder if he makes bush cry at night, or while closet golfing.

The Political Scene: One Angry Man: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

I don’t have any beliefs or allegiances. I don’t believe in this country, I don’t believe in religion, or a god, and I don’t believe in all these man-made institutional ideas

Comedian George Carlin dies at 71 - Celebrities- msnbc.com

Earlier this week, Swedish parliament had voted in favor of a new “wiretapping” law which invades the privacy of its citizens by allowing the government to monitor Internet traffic and phone calls, without the need for court orders.

Before the law was passed, The Pirate Bay crew spoke out against it, and now they are upping the ante. In an initial response they went out putting “wanted posters” up, of politicians who voted in favor of the law. Their next move is to ask international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden, according to Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

The Pirate Bay Pledges ISPs to Block Sweden | TorrentFreak

Vidal's essays, by contrast, have all the strengths of his novels with this additional grace: They don't have to make a show of inhabiting other minds. And so the qualities of the originating mind -- wit, phrasemaking, autodidacticism, a talent to inflame -- stand out all the more starkly.

For proof, we may call up "The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal," assembled by Jay Parini, the author's literary executor (more whiffs of the posthumous). That word "selected," of course, implies a certain amount of cherry-picking. Juvenilia, senilia, outmoded usages, casual tribalisms have all presumably been cast away. Or have they? To Parini's credit, more than enough remains to show why and how Vidal gets under people's skin.

There is enough, too, to show that Vidal was, in some respects, well ahead of his time. His defense of homosexuality as "a matter of taste" (in the midst of the '60s), his calls for limits on executive power, his attack on "the National Security State" ... these still walk the razor's edge of topicality. Mere weeks after the Iraq war was joined, Vidal was calling attention to the prisoners in Guant�namo Bay. Some 15 years before Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great," Vidal was declaring that monotheism was "the great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture."

Lou Bayard's review of "The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal" | Salon Books

As Sen. Barack Obama opens his campaign as the first African American on a major party presidential ticket, nearly half of all Americans say race relations in the country are in bad shape and three in 10 acknowledge feelings of racial prejudice, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

3 in 10 Americans Admit to Race Bias - washingtonpost.com

Peter Davidson vs. David Tennant

YouTube - Doctor Who: Time Crash

'This defendant preyed on women in the Hispanic community' by passing herself off as a doctor, the prosecutor says. Bertha Bugarin, 48, at one point ran six clinics in Southern California.
By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
12:24 PM PDT, June 21, 2008
SAN DIEGO -- A 48-year-old woman who ran an abortion clinic in Chula Vista was charged Friday with 10 felony counts of practicing medicine without a license and grand theft.

Bertha Pinedo Bugarin, who faces similar charges in Los Angeles, is accused of telling women that she was a doctor, performing abortions on them and prescribing drugs. One woman had to be rushed to a hospital with life-threatening complications, prosecutors said.

Abortion clinic operator is charged in felonies by San Diego County D.A. - Los Angeles Times

After questioning former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan during a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee Friday, a Democratic congressman called for impeachment proceedings to be initiated.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) said that he believed McClellan's testimony implicated both Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush as the only two administration sources who could have leaked the identity of former CIA covert operative Valerie Plame-Wilson.

"The president and vice president have denied ordering this illegal leak, but logic and the chain of command dictates that it must have been one of them,” said Wexler. "Mr. McClellan, in your book, you state that you cannot believe President Bush authorized the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's status as a covert agent. ... Who does that leave us? The vice president."

The Raw Story | Dem Rep. calls for impeachment at McClellan testimony: video

Now here's a novel concept. Takara Tomy's BankQuest is half piggy bank, half old school RPG. Essentially, gamers / penny pinchers can purchase items to help them fend off pixelated ogres and the like by saving more money. The more coinage that gets deposited, the better the journey becomes. So, do you get some kind of prize when you cash it all out to buy your mum something nice, or what?

Takara Tomy's RPG Piggy Bank: level up by saving up - Engadget