today's news

[broneck]

that homeless guy is G.U.T.T.A.â„¢ as fuck.

In future news, 17 babies are born with aids.

[broneck]

Verne Troyer is the latest celebrity to appear in a sex tape.

The Austin Powers star filmed himself and his former girlfriend getting intimate in the bedroom at their apartment.

Kevin Blatt, who brokered the deal for Paris Hilton's sex tape, is rumoured to be considering paying $100,000 to distribute the footage after it was allegedly stolen by a third party.

A clip published on TMZ shows the 2ft 8in actor passionately kissing his partner.

Troyer, who played Dr. Evil's sidekick Mini Me in the spy franchise, is currently starring alongside Mike Myers in The Love Guru.

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[DüM]

[dolly]

http://perezhilton.com/2008-06-26-lovers

Something fishy is going on!

We've been contacted by entertainment reporters - within days of each other - from the NY Post and the NY Daily News.

They both wanted to share a juicy piece of info - too juicy to print, they said.

Seems like on-set sources, which the pubs tell us are reliable, have told each paper that Chace Crawford and Gossip Girl co-star and real-life roommate Ed Westwick are in a relationship and not trying to hide it, at least on set.

BOTH NY papers tell us that Chace and Ed were recently seen kissing, open-mouthed on set (in Chace's trailer).

Very interesting!

The Post and Daily News both declined to publish this item because they don't like to "out" people.

Uh huh. We find that quite hypocritical, as both papers have had no problem talking about Lindsay Lohan's relationship with saMAN Ronson.

So….

Are Chace and Ed dating????

Well, it's either true or someone(s) is/are trying to spread rumors to both New York papers about the Gossip Girl co-stars.

We hope it's true - they'd be a hot couple!

[broneck]

Shwing!!! (note the reference to mike myers being gay also )

[WayneGibbous]

Sorry to drag in depressing news but my brigade (NY Army National Guard) has lost 6 soldiers to combat this month in Afghanistan. They were from NYC, Rochester, Buffalo and Albany. Pray for them if you do that sort of thing...

[cjbreed]

^sorry to hear that wayne. weren't there more US deaths in afghanistan than iraq this month?

[WayneGibbous]

^sorry to hear that wayne. weren't there more US deaths in afghanistan than iraq this month?

Yeah by far. And the month's not up yet. Maybe Afghanistan will get some pub now. Seems like people forgotten about us here. Will post pics at some point...

[r_mutt]

Yeah would be curious to see your pictures.

[WayneGibbous]

Not sure where to post but I will when I get back to my camp where the internet is more than 28.8kbps!!!!!!

[WayneGibbous]

On patrol where I am at:

"No Drug Mountain"

The kiddies:

Me and the other Doc teaching medical skills to Afghani cops:

On patrol by the Helmand River:

[ken shinoda]

KABUL, Afghanistan - Militants killed more U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan in June than in Iraq for the second straight month, a grim milestone capping a run of headline-grabbing insurgent attacks that analysts say underscore the Taliban's growing strength.The fundamentalist militia in June staged a sophisticated jailbreak that freed 886 prisoners, then briefly infiltrated a strategic valley outside Kandahar. Last week, a Pentagon report forecast the Taliban would maintain or increase its pace of attacks, which are already up 40 percent this year from 2007 where U.S. troops operate along the Pakistan border.

Some observers say the insurgency has gained dangerous momentum. And while June also saw the international community meet in Paris to pledge $21 billion in aid, an Afghanistan expert at New York University warns that there is still no strategy to turn that commitment into success.

Numbers reflect rising violence

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has noted that more international troops died in Afghanistan than in Iraq in May, the first time that had happened. While that trend — now two months old — is in part due to falling violence in Iraq, it also reflects rising violence in Afghanistan.

At least 45 international troops — including at least 27 U.S. forces and 13 British — died in Afghanistan in June, the deadliest month since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban, according to an Associated Press count.

In Iraq, at least 31 international soldiers died in June: 29 U.S. troops and one each from the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. There are 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 4,000 British forces in additional to small contingents from several other nations.

The 40-nation international coalition is much broader in Afghanistan, where only about half of the 65,000 international troops are American.

That record number of international troops means that more soldiers are exposed to danger than ever before. But Taliban attacks are becoming increasingly complex, and in June, increasingly deadly.

A gun and bomb attack last week in Ghazni province blasted a U.S. Humvee into smoldering ruins, killing three U.S. soldiers and an Afghan interpreter. It was the fourth attack of the month against troops that killed four people. No single attack had killed more than three international troops since August 2007.

"I think possibly we've reached a turning point," said Mustafa Alani, the director of security and terrorism studies at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. "Insurgents now are more active, more organized, and the political environment, whether in Pakistan or Afghanistan, favors insurgent activities."

Pakistani efforts to negotiate peace deals

U.S. commanders have blamed Pakistani efforts to negotiate peace deals for the spike in cross-border attacks, though an initial deal with militants has begun to fray and security forces recently launched a limited crackdown in the semiautonomous tribal belt where the Taliban and al-Qaida operate with increasing freedom.

For a moment in mid-June, Afghanistan's future shimmered brightly. World leaders gathered in Paris to pledge more than $21 billion in aid, and Afghan officials unveiled a development strategy that envisions peace by 2020.

But the very next day, the massive and flawlessly executed assault on the prison in Kandahar — the Taliban's spiritual home — drew grudging respect even from Western officials.

U.S. Ambassador William Wood said violence is up because Taliban fighters are increasingly using terrorist tactics that cause higher tolls, but that there's no indication fighters can hold territory. He said June had "some very good news and a couple cases of bad news."

"The very good news was Paris. There were more nations represented, contributing more than ever before," Wood told the AP.

[thelion1856]

damn wayne you should have your own war thread with pics thrown up on there. war through the eyes of a superfuture! keep us updated, love that shit! wishin u the best man.

[WayneGibbous]

Thanks man and to all the other peeps who repped or sent PMs. Much appreciated. Shit is getting ugly around here lately...

[cjbreed]

damn wayne you should have your own war thread with pics thrown up on there. war through the eyes of a superfuture! keep us updated, love that shit! wishin u the best man.

i agree. start a war thread wayne. i know you have better things to do, but it may be nice for you and for your buddies when you have time to upload your pics and have your own little corner of the web for personal self expression and all that. good for you and good for us....

[nuthinbutbuttababi]

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - A New Mexico appeals court on Friday ruled against a Los Alamos man who wanted to change his name to a phrase containing a popular four-letter obscenity.

The man appealed after a state district judge in Bernalillo County refused his request to change his name to "F--- Censorship!"

Judge Nan Nash ruled that the proposed name change was "obscene, offensive and would not comport with common decency."

The man - whose current legal name is Variable - argued on appeal that it was improper government censorship to deny him the name change.

"We do not believe that the district court's action infringes on petitioner's right to free speech," a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals said in its ruling.

The man has the right to call himself whatever he wants, unless there's fraud or misrepresentation involved, the judges said.

But once he seeks court approval for a name change, the court has the authority to turn him down on several grounds, including if the name is offensive to common decency and good taste, the judges ruled.

That law was clarified in a 2004 case in the same court that apparently involved the same petitioner. In that case, an Albuquerque man whose name was Snaphappy Fishsuit Mokiligon got the go-ahead from the appeals court to change his name to Variable.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080628/D91IRM5G0.html

[ken shinoda]

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Hackers broke into Citibank's network of ATMs inside 7-Eleven stores and stole customers' PIN codes, according to recent court filings that revealed a disturbing security hole in the most sensitive part of a banking record.

The scam netted the alleged identity thieves millions of dollars. But more importantly for consumers, it indicates criminals were able to access PINs — the numeric passwords that theoretically are among the most closely guarded elements of banking transactions — by attacking the back-end computers responsible for approving the cash withdrawals.

The case against three people in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York highlights a significant problem.

Hackers are targeting the ATM system's infrastructure, which is increasingly built on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and allows machines to be remotely diagnosed and repaired over the Internet. And despite industry standards that call for protecting PINs with strong encryption — which means encoding them to cloak them to outsiders — some ATM operators apparently aren't properly doing that. The PINs seem to be leaking while in transit between the automated teller machines and the computers that process the transactions.

"PINs were supposed be sacrosanct — what this shows is that PINs aren't always encrypted like they're supposed to be," said Avivah Litan, a security analyst with the Gartner research firm. "The banks need much better fraud detection systems and much better authentication."

It's unclear how many Citibank customers were affected by the breach, which extended at least from October 2007 to March of this year and was first reported by technology news Web site Wired.com. The bank has nearly 5,700 Citibank-branded ATMs inside 7-Eleven Inc. stores throughout the U.S., but it doesn't own or operate any of them.

That responsibility falls on two companies: Houston-based Cardtronics Inc., which owns all the machines but only operates some, and Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv Inc., which operates the others.

A critical issue in the investigation is how the hackers infiltrated the system, a question that still hasn't been answered publicly.

All that's known is they broke into the ATM network through a server at a third-party processor, which means they probably didn't have to touch the ATMs at all to pull off the heist.

They could have gained administrative access to the machines — which means they had carte blanche to grab information — through a flaw in the network or by figuring out those computers' passwords. Or it's possible they installed a piece of malicious software on a banking server to capture unencrypted PINs as they passed through.

What that means for consumers is that their PINs were stolen from machines that showed no signs of tampering they could detect. In previous PIN thefts, thieves generally took steps that might draw notice — sending "phishing" e-mails, for example, or installing false-front keypads or even tiny cameras on ATMs.

Getting the PINs is a key step for identity thieves. It lets criminals encode stolen account information onto blank ATM cards and withdraw piles of cash from compromised accounts.

Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence for SecureWorks Inc., said he has seen an "alarming" spike in the number of attacks on back-end computers for ATM networks over the past year.

"This was fairly large, but I don't think it's anything out of the ordinary — these kinds of scams go on every day," Jackson said. "What makes this case unique is the sheer luck of happening upon these guys and catching them red-handed. But there are a whole lot of other ATM and PIN compromises going on that aren't reported."

The alleged plot is outlined in court papers supporting the prosecution of three people — Yuriy Rakushchynets, Ivan Biltse and Angelina Kitaeva. They were indicted in March on two counts each of conspiracy and fraud. Prosecutors say their activities generated at least $2 million in illegal profits.

Defense lawyers for all three people did not return calls for comment, and it was not clear where they had been living. The main defendant, Rakushchynets, was described as having Michigan and Florida's driver licenses in a February FBI affidavit for an arrest warrant.

Citibank, part of Citigroup Inc., has declined to comment on the technique or how many customers' accounts were compromised. It said it notified affected customers and issued them new debit cards.

"We want our customers to know that, consistent with legal requirements, we do not hold them responsible for fraudulent activity in their accounts," the bank said in a statement.

Cardtronics said it is cooperating with authorities but otherwise declined to comment. Fiserv spokeswoman Melanie Tolley said the intrusion didn't happen on Fiserv's servers.

"Fiserv," she said, "is confident in the integrity and security of our system."

AP

[sybaritical]

Man saves 375Ib Bear from drowning.

[Begåvningsreserven]

Stubble is the way to win a woman’s heart, a study has shown. Researchers found that women are more attracted to men with stubbly chins than those with clean-shaven faces or full beards.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/29/scistubble129.xml

[DüM]

syb, send me some facial hair.

[m1sterko]

fugg

its over for my asian noodle.

[Begåvningsreserven]

syb, send me some facial hair.

trying to find the "what are you wearing on your face today" thread

http://beardcommunity.com/forum/list.php?f=5

[Chicken]

wow. bad news for gillette and schick.

[skiniks]

Joy Division singer's gravestone stolen

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2008/07/03/joy-division.html

[Chicken]

where did you hide it, tg?

[jayrock]

AS if following the fashion and food fads of Uncle Sam was not enough, young Australians are increasingly adopting a US twang in their everyday speech.

University of Queensland linguistics expert Roly Sussex said that as the most impressionable group in society, teenagers were very susceptible to imitating what they saw as being "snazzy or powerful".

"It's called the prestige model," Professor Sussex said. "Prestige is a very powerful motive and they (teenagers) will go with the pronunciation that belongs to the most impressive context.

"At the moment and this has been the case for some time now, that's American English.

"They see or hear these things being used by people like on MTV for example, and think 'gee, I want to be like that'."

He said one of the most notable differences in pronunciations was the emphasis put on the first syllable of a word.

"We're now hearing DIS-tribute, RE-search and CIG-arette quite regularly. This is an American pattern we are starting to pick up and follow."

It was not just pronunciations that were being Americanised but our spelling, vocabulary and grammar as well, he said.

"We're seeing more and more examples of American words used in place of Australian words such as sidewalk for footpath and park brake, instead of handbrake," Professor Sussex said.

"There is a service centre at Hervey Bay spelt 'center' and a 'fitness center' on the way to Cleveland.

"Most of the words of approval we use now are American - great, cool, neat, filthy and fat. Australian terms like ace and grouse are now almost invisible, as is 'hooroo' for goodbye."

He said it did not help that most of Australia's singers used an American accent - singing "lurve" instead of "love".

"We follow all sorts of American patterns of behaviour," he said.

Speech teacher June Finney said anything American was highly regarded by young people and it "stood to reason" pronunciations were changing to mimic the American accent.

"We live in a period where anything goes and sadly that seems to apply to our speech as well," Ms Finney said.

But Professor Sussex said it was unlikely the Australian accent would ever be completely erased.

"The original identity will persist," he said.

sourcesourcesource

[brissyboy]

People from Silicon valley have genetically modified bugs to excrete crude oil when they eat waste products.

[broneck]

Doctors and scientists say they will continue to monitor an Ontario woman who developed an Atlantic Canadian accent after suffering a stroke.

Karin Humphreys said she and her research team will return to visit Rosemarie Dore to record her voice and assess how her accent changes over time. Humphreys is a cognitive psychologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.

Two years ago Dore, went to the hospital suffering from many common signs of a stroke. She suffered partial paralysis and she had trouble speaking.

Therapy has helped her deal with many of the stroke's initial effects -- but what has remained is one of the stroke's strangest outcomes: it left her with a Newfoundland accent.

That wouldn't be out of the ordinary, if she was from the province. But the 50-year-old Windsor, Ont. woman told doctors she had never visited the region and didn't have relatives there.

She had no idea why her southern Ontario accent had suddenly transformed into one more at home in Atlantic Canada.

Doctors were intrigued when they realized Dore had one of the world's rarest medical conditions -- Foreign Accent Syndrome. There have only been 50 or 60 reported cases of the syndrome and Dore's is only the second such diagnosis in Canada, Humphreys said.

"We were very excited to hear about it," Humphreys said during an appearance on CTV Newsnet. "Colleagues at the Hamilton General Hospital called us and realized they had this very rare case on their hands."

The phenomenon is so rare that Dore's doctors decided to call in a team of specialists -- including Humphreys, medical doctors, and speech experts -- not only to help their patient but also to ensure researchers got the opportunity to learn more about the syndrome.

"Our first priority was to get language samples from her that we could acoustically analyze," Humphreys told CTV.ca.

Humphreys and her colleagues have published a study about the case in this month's Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences.

Dore herself said that the doctors who treated her at the hospital just assumed she hailed from Newfoundland because they hadn't heard her speak prior to her stroke.

"I can remember it happened from the very first day," Dore told CTV News. "As soon as I had the stroke, my voice changed."

Humphreys said that the phenomenon usually occurs after a stroke in the left hemisphere of the brain. Scientists believe that the stroke damages a deep part of the brain known as the basal ganglia, which is involved in speech.

Humphreys said that because so many parts of the brain must work together very quickly to produce speech, just a little damage could produce a small change in speech patterns.

In many other cases, Humphreys said, English speakers will end up speaking with, for example, a Chinese accent -- even if they're not of Chinese origin.

Dore took the new regional twang in her voice in stride, noting a change in accent is not the worst possible outcome when it comes to the effects of a stroke.

"My voice changed. Big deal," Dore said. "At least I can still talk to my grandchildren."

My god, strokes are so terrible, it breaks my heart to here someone suffer like this.

[nuthinbutbuttababi]

July 8, 2008

Really?

The Claim: Beware of Drink Mixers Based on Diet Soda

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

THE FACTS

Usually it is solely the liquor component of a cocktail — not the mixer — that determines its inebriating effects. But some people contend the artificial sweeteners in diet soda speed the absorption of alcohol.

Odd, perhaps, but research suggests it’s true. In a 2006 study, a team of scientists recruited healthy subjects and had them consume vodka cocktails. On some occasions, it was a 20-ounce drink mixed with a sugar-sweetened beverage, and on others it was a nearly identical drink mixed instead with a diet beverage.

In the diet-mixer conditions, the alcohol entered the subjects’ bloodstream about 15 minutes faster, and their blood-alcohol concentration was higher, peaking at 0.05 percent, compared with 0.03 percent with the regular mixer.

One theory is that the alcohol is absorbed more quickly because there is no sugar to slow it down, which would mean that club soda would have a similar effect. A second study in 2007 also showed that alcohol was absorbed far more quickly when mixed with carbonated beverages than with flat mixers, possibly because of the effervescence. As a result, experts say, it’s best to choose flat mixers like orange or cranberry juice over diet sodas or juices.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Compared with sugar-sweetened drinks, artificial sweeteners can speed inebriation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/health/08real.html?ref=science&pagewanted=print

[Chicken]

"oh that damn diet pepsi."