Based on the ABC e-mail, it appears that victims of hate crimes and violent home invasions and families coping with the loss of a child killed by a drunk driver make for good television. And the show would also absolutely love to feature those battling skin cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease, and muscular dystrophy. Oh, and families with multiple children with Down Syndrome would be ideal, whether the kids are "either adopted or biological," the e-mail notes. And, shooting the moon, the program's "family casting director," Charisse Simonian, would love to locate a kid suffering from Progeria, the rare condition that causes rapid aging in a child (for those unaware of Progeria, the ABC e-mail helpfully describes it as "aka 'little old man disease.'")

While looking over the book, they pointed to no less than five different artists work, asking the artist each time, if that was his work. If this was any thing other than first hand account I wouldn't believe it. It's hard to imagine not one, but two people, not only forgetting the name of the artist they are meeting with, but being completely unaware of the work of someone they both hand picked for the show.

Authorities have named 28-year-old Aaron Kyle Huff as the suspect in a gruesome set of six murders in Seattle over the weekend. Police believe Huff shot and killed attendees of a rave afterparty before taking his own life as police closed in on him.

Though no one at the late-night house party that followed the rave knew Huff, he was welcomed early Saturday morning, according to an Associated Press report. [...]

"We're probably the only community in society that would have welcomed somebody so easily," said Travis Webb, a Seattle-area rave promoter [...]

Lane Storli was at the afterparty until 5 a.m., but left because he got a "weird" vibe. Storli said there were about 15 people there when he arrived, most sitting around partying to a laptop DJ in a "very mellow, chill" atmosphere. Storli told the Times he left a few hours before the shooting began because, "I felt weird. I was getting bad vibes. It was just a weird party."

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative. At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

Last month, the FDA quietly revealed that some soft drinks were found to contain the human carcinogen benzene in levels up to 10-20 parts per billion (ppb) -- four times the acceptable limit found in drinking water. Benzene, a chemical linked to leukemia and other forms of cancer, forms in certain beverages under certain conditions, such as exposure to heat and light.

The poll suggests that most Americans wonder whether Bush is up to the job. The survey, conducted Monday through Wednesday of 1,000 people, found that just 37 percent approve of his overall performance. That is the lowest of his presidency.

5) The crack addict who prostituted her 8 year old son to support her drug habit:

The average IPTV user will likely consume about 224 gigabytes per month, he added, at a monthly cost to carriers of $112, a giant leap from the less than $5 attributed to Internet use. If that content were high-definition video, the average user would be consuming more than 1 terabyte per month at a cost to carriers of $560 per month.

“Clearly that’s not what the average user is going to pay per month for their video service,” Kafka said. “That’s why we need help.”

Bandwidth at wholesale costs pennies these days aproximatly .10 per GB. The $1 per user would actually include the other costs for transit of data such as hardware, customer service, operating costs, as well as the advertising, etc. The remaining $18-$40 [ahem, $59 - ed.] is all profit.

The idea that 227gb/mo would cost $112 is also silly. You buy more bandwidth, you pay even less. In addition, the hardware already in place when bought at the 2/gb $1 average per month would still have enough power to deal with the 227gb/mo rate, the customer service would be the same, etc. so much less would have to be purchased now than before. So at that mass of volume, total cost would probably go down to $.25 per 2gb per user per month costing $28.38 at 227gb/mo with a probable retail price of $75/mo or more they still are making over $20 at least per month proffit.

This movie is fully engaged. Its masked, caped vigilante is both Batman and Joker, nocturnal enigma and nimble trickster, the Count of Monte Cristo, Zorro, and the Phantom of the Opera tucked into one suavely tormented frame, the antihero’s secret lair a gothic sanctuary equipped with its own Wurtlizer jokebox on which Julie London’s Cry Me a River sultrily plays. The river of tears is the Thames, on the bank of which sits London’s House of Parliament, the movie (based on Alan Moore’s graphic novel) drawing its inspiration from Guy Fawkes and the foiled Gunpowder Plot to destroy Parliament on November 5th, 1605, a day celebrated annually in Britain with fireworks and parties. In V for Vendetta, monochromatic tyranny so oppresses, represses, and depresses Britain in its totalitarian condition that the only proper way to honor the memory and insurrectionary spirit of Guy Fawkes is to finish what he started. V for vendetta, v for violence, v for vindication. The return of the repressed with a vengeance.

In terms of access, the bill would disallow local governments from taxing the traveling of information across a broadband network to the users' computer. In addressing "use," the bill would ban taxation on such services as e-mail. To discourage discriminatory tax practices, the bill would prohibit state governments from mandating a tax on Internet sales.

I just finished listening to the latest episode of the Gilmor Gang, where it was mentioned that Yahoo! Photos gets 30 million page views per month vs. Flickr's 8 million. The question was again asked, do these acquisitions mean the death of innovation in the Web 2.0 companies acquired? Given the apparent lack of support, integration or even solving of basic problems post-acquisition I can't help but wonder if these buy outs aren't down right hostile.

The del.icio.us blog said again in the most recent post "Still working on the intersection issues." Apparently being bought by one of the forefathers of search has done no good for solving the problem of finding items with two tags applied to them instead of just one.

"It's mainstream art, not art you have to look at to try to understand, or have an art degree to know whether it's good or not," said Mike Koligman, a longtime fan who with his wife owns Kinkade galleries in San Diego and Utah.

While multi-platinum artists like Talking Heads and Smashing Pumpkins have declined, more of the "thanks-but-no-thanks" crowd are musicians who would benefit greatly by the exposure that accompanies a national ad campaign, like electronic artists Caribou and Four Tet, or acid-bluesmen the Soledad Brothers.

"It had to be the worst product you could give a song to," Harris said. "It was a really easy decision. How could we go on after soundtracking Hummer? It's just so evil."

Steve Bailey reports the Boston Globe is in negotiations with News Corp. to print the New York Post on the Globe's presses and deliver it to Boston readers with Globe trucks. "For the Globe printing the Post represents new revenue; hurting the [Boston] Herald is a bonus," writes Bailey.