an LA thing

Where can you find an information wanted sign posted by the homocide department of the police bearing 54 photos of aspiring models? Most certainly in Los Angeles. And it's working.

jailbreak

So Will finally writes back. And he's been up to the best kind of no good! A bit reminiscent of the red paper clip.

A potential antidote to iTunes comes, of all possibilities, from National Geographic World Music.

icky

No wonder an American girl conducted a study showing that toilet seats generally host fewer bacteria than ice cream. Even the soft ice in Belgium is dirty.

lies, all lies!

People can't tell the truth about lying. Surprise, surprise.

tolerance?

The Flemish Interest is avidly opposing anti-racism concerts, taking the events as a personal insult. No further comment necessary.

Since when was Mechelen a noisy place at night? Take me to your party!

earth-shaking

"The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there are 500,000 detectable earthquakes in the world each year, 100,000 of which can be felt and 100 of which cause damage." You'd think Californians would be working hardest on preparing for the big one, but it's a Buffalo-based company in upstate New York that's developed a "silicon-fluid-filled damper...about 20 inches long and as thick as a pop can, [that] can dissipate 15,000 pounds of force, the equivalent of 20 car shock absorbers." It's already used in the Bay Bridge and Triborough Bridge. It's amazing that such a small thing can absorb so much force.

The earth is always threatening to turn on us. Remember all those forest fires that plague California and the four corners? They're already increasing in frequency rapidly because of global warming. When I'm finally done with my education, will I have a Cali to come back to?!

scofflaw diplomats in new york

Parking in Manhattan can easily cost $20 per hour. So being a diplomat must be sweet: "Between November 1997 and the end of 2002, diplomats accumulated more than 150,000 unpaid parking tickets in New York, racking up $18 million in unpaid fines.

Based on statistics supplied by the city, the report said the worst offenders during that period were Kuwait, which averaged 246.2 unpaid tickets per diplomat per year, followed by Egypt, with 139.6; Chad, with 124.3; and Sudan, with 119.1.

Twenty-two countries averaged zero unpaid tickets per year, according to the study, including Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates."

much ado about nothing

Anyone who thinks that America can operate in its current state without its illegal immigrants is an utter fool. So why not let the status quo continue and save the nation some money to educate immigrant children, etc.? Oh, yes, because people want to be re-elected by a nation of fools.

We could also save some money for the people who nearly died for us in wars not all of us supported. A good half to three-quarters of the homeless in San Francisco are veterans of the Vietnam War, if I recall the figures I was told at a shelter correctly. And now the young people who served as recently as in the Iraq war have no place to go. How can we send them off to a war of questionable motivation and then drop them back in the US with nothing but nightmares of the horrors they went through?

Also of interest: "In the United States, a full 42 percent identify themselves first as Christians and second as Americans." From an article about how Muslims are actually doing better than before in Europe.

hearing loss

By the time you've reached your twenties, you've lost your ability to hear very high frequencies, and nobody thought to take advantage of that until now. The possibilities! But it's disturbing to me as a musician that my hearing is already going, particularly since I expose my unprotected ears regularly to the loudest acoustic instrument in the world. How will I detect that the ninth overtone of that bell over yonder is five cents too low?

failure to launch

I watched Failure To Launch on the way to the US, and a gorgeous girl with a Cyrillic passport sitting next to me bore a startling resemblance to Kit (Zooey Deschanel), right down to her outfit. The movie made sense in the US. But I wonder if it would fly in Belgium or just leave people offended.