i was actually surprised because after reading the front page, i had tears in my eyes and smile on my face.

no words can describe, really...

Colombia frees Betancourt, US hostages from rebels

In keeping with my ‘no stress for the week pledge’, here’s a Jay-Z mashup!

Jay was the headline act at the recently concluded Glastonbury Music Festival in England... its the largest open-air, greenfield concert festival in the WORLD.

You can get more info from the festival's website... (http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/)

...and you can even catch some of the performances on BBC's website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/glastonbury/)

Well, when Jay-Z was chosen to be the headline act, this caused no end of controversy.  Hip-Hop never had a showing at Glastonbury before, and now it was to be the headline act?  WTF?!

Well, Noel Gallagher, guitarist for the British band Oasis, wasn't pleased at all!

"If it ain't broke don't fix it," he said. "If you start to break it then people aren't going to go. I'm sorry, but Jay-Z? No chance."

Here's how Jay opened his set... he did a montage of the comments made by his supporters and detractors.  Watch the vid below (profanity near the end):

Jay-Z answered all his critics.  Performance beating ole talk yet again!

Playing to a crowd of over 150,000, Hov opened his set with a cover of Oasis' hit single "Wonderwall".  Pure Genius!  He came out with a rock guitar, had the mainly rock crowd singing along, putting up their diamonds and their lighters into the air!  Watch the video below:

Here's the list of the other tracks he did in this clip.

"99 problems" - AC/DC's Classic "Back in Black" was played live -Live!- by the band during this set (Thanks to Frolin for help with the positive riff ID).

"Is That Your Chick" - with some sampling from Prodigy down to the end (Thanks to the Soca Viking for help with the positive sample ID).

"Rehab" - Great choice.  Everyone is feeling Amy Winehouse's music in England these days, despite her issues with the pipe.

The band was amazing.  They really knocked the instrumentals out the park!

I'm really glad he answered his critics.  Music is Universal.  Music is Love.  Gallagher ended up looking the fool, and the audience went happily along with Jay's flow.  It just cements Jay-Z's position as one of the most successful artistes of our time.

I like this performance because its fluid, its versatile, fresh and surprising.  I like how he moves from Wonderwall to 99 problems, with the band's guitarists laying down some mean tracks for Hov to spit his rhymes over.

The crowd's energy?  Fantastic.  Infectious!  Wish I was there...

Not bad for someone's who's retired!

<Videos may get pulled by YouTube soon, so watch while they're still online!>

]]> http://chiefshu.wordpress.com/?p=67 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:37:19 +0000 chiefshu http://chiefshu.wordpress.com/?p=67 'Pregnant Man' Gives Birth to Girl

abcnews.com

Scientists in Oklahoma found that mice which had been immunized to develop an MS-like condition appeared to be protected from the disease by drinking the equivalent of six to eight cups of coffee a day.

"This is an exciting and unexpected finding, and I think it could be important for the study of MS and other diseases," said Linda Thompson, from the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation who worked in collaboration with Cornell University and Finland's University of Turku.

Caffeine prevented adenosine, one of the four building blocks in DNA, from mixing with its receptor in mice.

Adenosine is common molecule in humans and plays a large role in helping to control the biochemical processes for sleep and suppressing arousal.

When the molecule is blocked from binding with its receptor, the body's infection-fighting white cells cannot reach the central nervous system and trigger the reactions which lead to experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, or EAE, the animal form of MS.

The findings could have important implications for other auto-immune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, in which the body's own defense systems turn against itself.

But Thompson, co-author of the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, warned there was a lot more work to be done in fighting multiple sclerosis, a debilitating and progressive disease in humans.

"A mouse is not a human being, so we can't be sure caffeine will have the same effect on people prone to develop MS without much more testing," she said.

Further retrospective studies to track the caffeine intake of patients with MS and its effects might be the next major step.

"If you found a correlation between caffeine intake and reduced MS symptoms, that would point to further studies in humans," Thompson said.

Some 2.5 million people worldwide are thought to suffer from MS, a disorder of the central nervous system which leads to loss of muscle coordination.

---

really? hmm, I'm gonna be skeptic about it. It's not that I'm against coffee, but I need more proves about it ;)

Ballack Clashed With Bierhoff Over Fans' Banner
Germany captain Michael Ballack had an argument with team manager Oliver Bierhoff when he refused to hold up a thank-you banner for the fans, declaring it "tacky"...

Germany lost the Euro 2008 final to Spain 1-0 on Sunday night, with Ballack losing his second major final of the season and fourth in his entire career, still yet to win one of football's major tournaments at club or international level.

His frustration looks to have told, with The Sun reporting that the midfielder refused to hold up a banner thanking the fans for their support as it was cheap and nasty.

The idea was scrapped, yet the Germany fans stayed inside the stadium to applaud their beaten finalists in Vienna.

"We had a strong and emotional discussion," said Bierhoff regarding the incident.

"The German Federation wanted the team to pay tribute to our supporters. Michael didn't like the banners and thought they were inappropriate."

---

wtf!!! Ballack needs to show some respect for the Germany's fans, I mean, could you imagine a football game without supporter, oh puhlease...

BEIJING (AP)-To host the Olympic sailing events, the Chinese port city of Qingdao moved a massive boat yard, relocated industries and spent about $850 million on transport links, parks, pollution controls and coastal green belts.

But with little more than a month to go until the Games, a different challenge is cropping up: A forest of blue-green algae is choking the coastal waters, suffocating beaches and lying in thick layers along sailing routes.

Authorities have ordered an all-out drive to clear it and block any more drifting into the area.

"We have stressed ... that the priority should be given to the Olympic venue," Yuan Zhiping, an official with the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

City officials say they'll need at least two weeks to clear coastal waters, mobilizing 10,000 workers aboard 1,000 boats. It wasn't clear how they planned to block other algae from drifting in.

Environmental problems have posed some of the biggest concerns for organizers of the Beijing Olympics, particularly the dust and filthy air in the Chinese capital, compounded by expected torrid heat and humidity.

It isn't clear whether Qingdao's Olympic planners ever allowed for algae-related contingencies. Calls to the city's Ocean and Fishing Bureau, charged with handling the problem, rang unanswered Monday.

Blue-green algae blooms when nutrients, sometimes caused by excessive pollution, build up in water.

China has had a number of similar outbreaks in recent years, mostly on inland lakes, largely as a result of severe pollution from industrial sources, farm chemicals and domestic sewage. Along the coast, red tides of microscopic algae have forced fishing industry shutdowns.

The blooms can be caused by both natural factors and human activity. Wang Shulian, vice director of the Ocean and Fishing Bureau, told reporters Sunday the outbreak had no "substantial link" to environmental conditions or water quality.

"The algae is of various sorts, which will prosper under satisfying temperature and salinity of sea water," Wang said. Calls to the bureau were not answered Monday.

In all, the algae is blooming over an area of 5,000 square miles, Xinhua said-including 32 percent of the coastal area set aside for the Aug. 9-21 sailing events, with a closing ceremony on Aug. 23.

The algae alert comes as Beijing and other cities hosting Olympic events are making final preparations for the Aug. 8-24 Games. Organizers announced over the weekend that all 37 venues were now fully functional, and sailors from 30 countries and regions have already arrived in Qingdao to begin training, according to Xinhua.

The Games are a huge opportunity for Qingdao to build its brand. German colonizers in the early 20th century left the city with its two best-known features: the European-style buildings of its old town and the brewery that makes China's best-known beer, Tsingtao-the old-style spelling of the city's name.

The Olympic marina sits at Fushan Bay, up the coastline on the East China Sea beside the high-gloss glass-and-marble new city center. Qingdao created 100 acres of land for dormitories, offices and boat storage by moving out the enormous Beihai boat yard.

The blue-green algae blossomed around June 1 in waters off Qingdao on the coast of Shandong province, about 400 miles southeast of Beijing. Its bright green strands have smothered beaches, forcing swimmers to clear a path with their hands up to several hundred feet from the coast.

Officials say the Qingdao blossom poses no health threat. However, some algae can produce dangerous toxins and if ingested can cause vomiting, respiratory failure and, on rare occasions, death.

The cleanup is expected to be completed by July 15, Xinhua said.

---

Whew, I hope everything would be settle before the opening of the Olympics :)

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Broccoli and Cauliflower Hodgepodge by Sour grapes, Dijon, and Tarragon Vinaigrette
(Makes haphazard 4 servings, balm triflingly proficient for The G suit.Divine breath. Assignation Metro.)

3 cups broccoli flowerets
3 cups cauliflower flowerets
1/2 Roundhead onion, chopped
1-2 T parmesan Chaumont

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2 T leafy get around
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1 tsp. washout activity
2 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 tsp. chopped present-day tarragon
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North Coastland Suggestions:
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En plus Cruciferous Salads right with Broccoli bearings Cauliflower
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SEOUL, South Korea - The gray cooling tower stands 60 feet above North Korea's main nuclear reactor complex, the most visible symbol of its atomic weapons program.

The communist nation's decision to blow it up Friday in front of diplomats and TV cameras is another dramatic gesture of its commitment to stop making plutonium for atomic weapons.

The demolition at the Yongbyon nuclear complex comes in response to concessions from the U.S., after the North delivered a declaration Thursday of its atomic programs under an agreement at international arms talks with the U.S., China, Russia, South Korea and Japan.

The North has some immediate incentives to stay in Washington's good graces. President Bush said he would lift economic sanctions imposed under a U.S. law banning trade with enemy nations and said he would notify Congress that the U.S. would remove North Korea from a State Department list of terrorism-sponsoring countries in 45 days.

The energy-starved country is also receiving the equivalent of 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil for the initial disarmament steps.

"If North Korea continues to make the right choices it can repair its relationship with the international community. ... If North Korea makes the wrong choices, the United States and its partners in the six-party talks will act accordingly," Bush said.

North Korea faces the worst food shortages in years due to severe floods that devastated farmland in 2007. It has relied on foreign handouts to feed its population since mismanagement and natural disasters devastated its economy in the mid-1990s. As many as 2 million people are estimated to have died of famine then.

The North's goodwill could also overcome obstacles to delivery of Washington's promised food aid of 500,000 tons and encourage other nations to join in providing humanitarian assistance to the communist nation, analysts said. The World Food Program says the first shipment of the U.S. food aid is supposed to arrive in Pyongyang this week, although food is not part of the sanctions or nuclear negotiations.

North Korea shocked the world on Oct. 9, 2006, by detonating a nuclear omb in an underground test to confirm its status as an atomic power. The nuclear blast spurred an about-face in the U.S. hard-line policy that has led the North to take the first steps to scale back nuclear weapons development since the reactor became operational in 1986.

Last year, the North switched off the reactor at Yongbyon, some 60 miles north of the capital of Pyongyang, and it has already begun disabling the facility under watch of U.S. experts so that it cannot easily be restarted.

The destruction of the cooling tower, which carries off waste heat to the atmosphere, is another step forward but not the most technically significant, because it is a simple piece of equipment that would be easy to rebuild.

Still, the blast offers the most photogenic moment yet in the disarmament negotiations that have dragged on for more than five years and suffered repeated deadlocks and delays. Those in attendance include the top State Department expert on the Koreas, Sung Kim, along with broadcasters from the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

In the past, analysts have looked at satellite photographs of the cooling tower to check if steam was rising, the easiest way from outside the secretive country to determine if the reactor was functioning.

Still, many questions remain unanswered and other countries acknowledged they were still far from the goal of disarming the North.

North Korea's nuclear declaration, which was delivered six months later than the country promised and has not yet been released publicly, is said to only give the overall figure for how much plutonium was produced at Yongbyon but no details of bombs that may have been made.

Experts say the North is believed to have as much as 110 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium, which could be used to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs.

To verify the claim of how much radioactive material it has produced, the U.S. says the North will open access to its reactor for inspectors to pore over the aging equipment and come to their own conclusions. However, there will be no wide-ranging inspections of the country to survey secret nuclear facilities, some of which are believed to be hidden in underground tunnels that the North excels at digging.

North Korea now views its reactor as "just large pieces of rusting metal," having already amassed enough nuclear weapons to deter any would-be attacker, said Andrei Lankov, an expert on the North who studied there and is a professor at Seoul's Kookmin University.

"For the dual purposes of blackmail and security, it's sufficient to have a small number of nuclear devices," he said.

Lankov said the North Koreans will likely never come entirely clean on its bombs.

"They know that without nuclear weapons, nobody will care about them," he said.

Jun. 25 - Tropical storm Fengshen struck south China on Wednesday (June 25) after tearing through the Philippines last week, bringing driving rain, uprooting trees and closing schools, markets and businesses in Hong Kong.

Fengshen, downgraded from a typhoon this week, churned through the central Philippines on Saturday (June 21), triggering flash floods and power outages.

Hundreds are feared dead after a ferry ran aground and capsized there at the weekend.

---

PARIS (AFP) - Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday.

The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.

Scientists suspected even at the time that a simultaneous series of earthquakes were linked to these volcanic spasms.

But when a team led of scientists led by Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts finally got a first-ever glimpse of the ocean floor 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) beneath the Arctic pack ice, they were astonished.

What they saw was unmistakable evidence of explosive eruptions rather than the gradual secretion of lava bubbling up from Earth's mantle onto the ocean floor.

Previous research had concluded that this kind of so-called pyroclastic eruption could not happen at such depths due to the crushing pressure of the water.

"On land, explosive volcanic eruptions are nothing exceptional, although they present a major threat," said Vera Schlindwein, a geologist with Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Sea and Polar Research, which took part in the study.

But the new findings, published in Nature, showed that "large-scale pyroclastic activity is possible along even the deepest portions of the global mid-ocean ridge volcanic system."

The mid-ocean ridge runs 84,000 kilometres (52,000 miles) beneath all the world's major seas except the Southern Ocean, and marks the boundary between many of the tectonic plates that make up the surface of the Earth.

When continental plates collide into each other, they can thrust up mountain ranges such as the Himalayas.

But along most of the mid-ocean ridge -- including the Gakkal Ridge -- the plates are pulling apart, allowing molten magna and gases trapped beneath the crust to escape.

Sohn and his colleagues gathered their data in July last year aboard the ice breaker Oden, using state-of-the-art instruments including a mutlibeam echo sounder, two autonomous underwater vehicles and a sub-ice camera designed for the mission.

Both sonar and visual images showed an ocean valley filled with flat-topped volcanos up to two kilometres (1.2 miles) wide and several hundred metres high.

---

-- Apparently that's the only place that wants the honor of bearing his name. That is his legacy.  Full article HERE. Hat tip to Perez Hilton.com

ampyuun...emangny sekarang tuh Lagi jamannya kekerasan iaah?? Koq banyak banget kekerasan yang terjadi di generasi muda sekarang-sekarang? Mau jadi apa udah gede nanti??

mau jadi apa generasi muda ini??

xxxooo

Planet hunters say it's just a matter of time before they lasso Earth's twin, which almost surely is hiding somewhere in our star-studded galaxy.

Momentum is building: Just last week, astronomers announced they had discovered three super-Earths — worlds more massive than ours but small enough to most likely be rocky — orbiting a single star. And dozens of other worlds suspected of having masses in that same range were found around other stars.

"Being able to find three Earth-mass planets around a single star really makes the point that not only may many stars have one Earth, but they may very well have a couple of Earths," said Alan Boss, a planet formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C.�

Since the early 1990s, when the first planets outside of our solar system were detected orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257, astronomers have identified nearly 300 such worlds. However, most of them are gas giants called hot Jupiters that orbit close to their stars because, simply, they are easier to find.

"So far we've found Jupiters and Saturns, and now our technology is becoming good enough to detect planets smaller, more like the size of Uranus and Neptune, and even smaller," said one of the top planet hunters on this world, Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley.

Marcy, Boss and other scientists are optimistic that within the next five or so years headlines will be splashed with news of a near twin of Earth in another star system.

"What is amazing to me is that for thousands of years humans have gazed at the stars, wondering if there might be another Earth out there somewhere," Boss told SPACE.com. "Now we know enough to say that Earth-like planets are indeed orbiting many of those stars, unseen perhaps, but there nevertheless."

Seeing tiny planets

Two techniques are now standard for spotting other worlds. Most of the planets noted to date have been discovered using the radial velocity method, in which astronomers look for slight wobbles in a star's motion due to the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet. This favors detection of very massive planets that are very close to their host stars.

With the transit method, astronomers watch for a dimming of light when a planet passes in front of its host star. Though more haphazard, this approach works when telescopes scan the light from hundreds or thousands of stars at once.

Both methods are limited by their ability to block out the overshadowing light of the host star. For instance, the sun is 100 times larger, 300,000 times more massive and up to 10 billion times brighter than Earth. "Detecting Earth in reflected light is like searching for a firefly six feet from a searchlight that is 2,400 miles distant," writes a panel of astronomers recently in their final report of the Exoplanet Task Force.

With upgrades in spectrometers and digital cameras attached to telescopes, astronomers' eyes have become more sensitive to relatively tiny stellar wobbles (measured by changes in certain wavelengths of light) and dips in starlight from ever smaller planets.

The discovery of super-Earths announced last week reflects this technological leap.

"I think why astronomers are really excited [about the super-Earth discovery] is it just shows that technology has really matured and so they're able to see these very subtle wobbles due to these low-mass planets," said David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. "Those were fairly massive stars. If they were able to get the same precision on a lower-mass star, they would be able to look at even lower-mass planets and so those really would be analogs of the Earth."

The fast track

To eek out even more sensitivity from current technologies, Charbonneau suggests astronomers look for worlds around small stars.

He and other astronomers are in fact probing the universe for transiting planets orbiting M dwarfs, or red dwarfs, which are about 50 percent dimmer than the sun and much less massive. Red dwarfs are also considered the most common star type in the universe.

"I think the real opportunity there is to study low-mass stars, and that's because we're looking for very small planets," Charbonneau said. "The difficulty is the ratio between the planet's mass and the star's mass or the planet's size and the star's size depending on how you want to find it."

The low mass and luminosity means any changes to the star due to an Earth-mass planet are much more likely to be detected.

"A late M star is about 10 times smaller than the sun," said Penn State's James Kasting, who studies planetary atmospheres and the habitable zones of exoplanets. "So Earth going in front of an M star would give a 1 percent signal. That's like Jupiter going in front of the sun." Kasting added, "We could conceivably find an Earth analog planet by this method within the next five or ten years."

Other teams are gearing up to look for Earth-like worlds orbiting massive stars like the sun. NASA's Kepler observatory is scheduled for launch in February 2009, after which the high-powered telescope will monitor about 100,000 stars in the Milky Way looking for periodic dimming of starlight due to a planet's transit in front of the star.

The French COROT mission is already up in space working in a similar fashion.

Good hunting

The ultimate goal of planet-hunting projects is to find Earth twins.

"We are looking for twins of the Earth, analogs that walk and talk and smell like our own Earth," Marcy said during a telephone interview. He is currently looking for super-Earths using the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

Such a twin would be rocky, with a similar chemical composition to Earth, and would orbit within the habitable zone of its star.

The habitable zone defines the distance at which a planet must orbit from its star for liquid water to exist on its surface — not too hot like Venus, not too cold like Neptune or Pluto.

Astronomers have found planets orbiting pretty close to the habitable zone, but none so far within it.

"I suspect there are Earth-like planets with lakes and rivers and waterfalls and deep glacial gorges and that are spectacularly beautiful," Marcy said.

Life beyond Earth

Finding a planet in the habitable zone is the first step toward finding alien life.

"When we say it's a habitable world, all we're doing is saying it potentially could hold life," Boss said. "To go beyond that to say, 'Here's a habitable world; is it inhabited,' then you need to start studying the atmosphere of the planet."

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled for launch in 2013, could do just that.

"There might be a signal in the atmosphere that could be a smoking gun and would suggest that plate tectonics is there," said earth and planetary scientist Diana Valencia of Harvard University.

Her computer models have shown that plate tectonics, the forces that move continents and lift gigantic mountain ranges, are key to life on Earth as we know it, and possibly to life on other worlds. That's because as the rocky plates that form the planet's outer shell move about, they also recycle carbon dioxide. This greenhouse gas keeps our planet's temperature balmy, but not too hot. And the telltale signal would be certain levels of carbon dioxide, suggesting that just as on Earth, this other world relies on plate tectonics to cycle carbon.

But first things first. "There's no doubt that other Earths exist, simply due to the sheer vast numbers of other stars and galaxies in our universe," Marcy said. "There's a deeper question — how common are Earth-like planets? Are Earth-like planets a dime a dozen, or are they quite rare, quirky precious planets that are one in a thousand or one in a million?"

---

hmm...  the truth is out there, lol

Kepala Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah Jawa Barat, Deny Juanda mengatakan saat ini Pemerintah Provinsi Jawa Barat tengah menawarkan proyek Pembangkit Listrik Tenaga Panas Bumi. ”Saat ini sedang proses tender di Dinas Pertambangan dan Energi (Jawa Barat),” ujar Deny di Bandung, Senin (23/6).

Pembangkit listrik yang ditawarkan itu, kata Deny, ada di tiga wilayah kerja pertambangan yakni Tangkuban Perahu Kabupaten Bandung, Gunung Tampomas Kabupaten Sumedang, dan Cisolok-Cisukarame Kabupaten Sukabumi. ”Tender ketiganya ditangani di tingkat provinsi karena posisi yang lintas kabupaten dan kota,” katanya.

Sedangkan untuk tender proyek serupa yang tidak lintas kota atau kabupaten, kata Deny, bisa dilakukan di tingkat kabupaten yang bersangkutan. Misalnya, kata Deny, panas bumi yang ada di kabupaten seperti Garut, proses tendernya akan dilakukan oleh pemerintah setempat. “Tapi tetap dipandu oleh Kementerian Energi dan Sumber Daya Mineral,” katanya.

Deny menambahkan, investor yang memenangkan tender ini akan ditetapkan Agustus mendatang. ”Setelah itu kita bisa memanfaatkan panas bumi untuk menambal krisis listrik,” katanya.

---

ah, mudah2an bisa menjadi salah satu alternatif solusi krisis energi saat ini :)

Semi-finals

2008-06-25 20:45	Germany	v	Turkey	St. Jakob-Park, Basel Referee: Massimo Busacca (Switzerland)

2008-06-26 20:45

Russia

v

Spain

Ernst Happel Stadion, Vienna Referee: Frank de Bleeckere (Belgium)

go Germany go!!!

TAMPA, Fla. - Police say a man named God was arrested near a Tampa church for selling cocaine. Authorities began investigating God Lucky Howard in April, and he was arrested on Saturday. Police say he sold the cocaine to undercover detectives in his neighborhood. When officers searched his home, they reported finding another 22 grams of cocaine and a scale.

Well, I think he wasn't God and I know he wasn't Lucky. He probably wasn't Howard, either.

Runner up for headline of the day: Sports bra saves US hiker in German Alp

Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp said that he helped lift 24-year-old Jessica Bruinsma of Colorado state to safety by helicopter on Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain.

QUICK, someone get the brand of that bra!

Some phrases need an extra word because it "helps the cadence of a sentence or clarifies an unfamiliar usage." For example, instead of using a couple versions, you should instead use a couple of versions. However, Kilpatrick agrees with me that less is more.

He gave the example of a headline that mentioned great masterpieces. "Surely all masterpieces are great by definition," he said. Therefore, great is unnecessary and gets in the way of us getting to the necessary word - masterpieces.

My editing professor taught us common redundancies, also called tautologies. Here are several: free gift, PIN number, ATM machine, final destination, brief summary.

Note previous grammar tips from “The Writer’s Art:” "Grammar tips: sentence basics, not so basic," “Grammar tips: concision editing, often misused words,” and “Grammar tips: referent pronouns made easy.”

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Today I covered the opening of the county-run skate park for the Fort Pierce Tribune when their regular weekend freelancer wasn't available. I jumped at the chance for more work and a great story.

If you go to TCPalm.com, it's one of the flashing-picture headlines. Here's the link to the actual article too: "Lawnwood Skate Park open to excited skateboarders."

I do enjoy writing on deadline. It's exciting to see what I can come up with in a couple hours.

I think it might be on the front page of the Sunday paper. And the beauty of blogging is the ability to update this post later with that.

Update: It's on the front page of the local section, along with my other story from last week: "Fort Pierce police youth camp keeps kids busy."

You don't have to ask who that would be, do you? Think hip... Think U.S... Think 'metroracial'.

Juan Cole certainly was. Despite the catchy headline (do you call the head of a blog a 'headline?'), Cole was over 680 words in before he got to the issue of the web, and even then, he didn't give it much ink.

Almost all of his article, and almost all of the comments on his article, were interested in the issue of (another catchy new buzzword) 'metroracial' identity. Which is very interesting. Just DON'T call your piece something it's not -- don't promise "informed comment" on the Obama camp's uses of the net.

In our program the talented Ted Barris recently schooled us in copy editing, including a cursory look at headline writing. We got docked marks for a) being inaccurate, and b)favouring sensationalism over fact. And just to be particularly didactic, Obama might be the first Web 2.0 candidate, but, no matter how much we like him, he is not (yet) president. And no, Juan, adding a question mark to the headline doesn't sufficiently skirt the issue.

There ARE some decent posts out there on the Obama campaign's use of web 2.0. Check out CyberInfrastructure 2.0 (short, clear, but not so much analysis), or TechNewsWorld and others on the deft use of a web 2.0 approach with the launch of FightTheSmears, or for an incisive look at this issue from way back in February, see this cool post at Eyeteeth. It's the bomb.

Perhaps Juan Cole'd best stick to his tag line: "Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion."

Granted, if the article hadn't of had such a catchy headline, we wouldn't be here now.

Eegads! Whatever shall I call this post? Suggestions welcome. It's a blog. We can always edit...

The latest two announcements of by-election include a shock, and a non-shock. Boris's cards were on the wall the moment he signed up with the Mayor's race, and as a result Henley look forward to welcoming another Tory MP into the hotseat. It's about as safe as saying that Ulrika Johnson will soon have a fifth kid.

Quite what the toffs of Henley will think of not one, but TWO candidates from the 'Miss Great Britain Party' is anyone's guess, though I imagine that Tories may lose a few members through the heart attack of seeing nice, young buxom ladies, bouncing down the river...almost makes you want to visit Henley doesn't it?!

However, eyes are all focused on Mr David Davis (not the only DD to be in a by-election by any means!). Following the outcry at the vote regarding 42-day detentions, DD resigned as Shadow Home Secretary, and announced that he would fight the seat on the terms of civil rights. Trouble is, he hasn't got someone to punch against.

Both Labour and the Lib Dems will not put a candidate up, seeing as they believe it to be certain that DD will be re-elected, and probably, back as Shadow Home Secretary, as soon as can be. Instead, this leaves an empty ring, and one man has dared to throw his hat in and give it all it's worth, former Editor of the Sun Kelvin MacKenzie.

Remebering that the Sun has supported the implementation of 42-days from the beginning, Kelvin knows he will be on a firm platform, even running it by Mr Murdoch at a drinks part. His relative success as an independent candidate in the local elections in May suggest he has enough celebrity status to be able to carry it off.

And as if it couldn't get worse for DD, he's now been accused of having 'intimate' phone calls with the Chief Executive of Liberty. Whilst these claims are currently being persued for an apology, you can't help but think that the Sun knows who it will support from day one. The perfect front page story, all it needed as the MacKenzie headline, and wahey, King Kel would be on his way.

Personally, I like DD, I believe he is an ideal leader, and whenever he speaks, gives the voice of authority. However, to call a by-election on a single issue, is brave, but foolish. In trying to do write for the country, he may find himself losing the biggest job of all.