By normal circumstances, you are right. But there are a few reasons why this is different.
1. She is aiming for the presidency, and the things she wrote on her hands are among the staples of the entire GOP platform and the far right base she energizes. Furthermore, it looks ridiculous from a leadership perspective, and countries like China would eat her alive if she had to refer to notes in her hand while lecturing them on human rights/trade policies/Taiwan.
2. In the exact same speech, she criticized Obama for using a teleprompter all the time. This makes her look like a hypocritical douche.
3. It depends on the notes you write. Notecards or a small notebook with a pen is one thing. Writing on your hands makes you look childish.
4. There is absolutely no way Palin and Fox News would not be having a giant circle jerk if they caught Obama doing the exact same thing.
Right. I guess I could have continued and said that writing notes on one's hand is indeed a bit off. It's mostly the notecards/notebook thing you said that I'd rather see. The hand thing is indeed amusing and I laughed about it. And then groaned because it also mentioned Palin. I will make no comments as to the status of Palin's hypocrisy.
An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation.
The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith, apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith.
The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers.
The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother."
The presenter on Genesis TV, a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films.
It began: "My inspiration in life is a man I met in Nigeria called Ben Kenobi. He taught be so much about the Force that spirituality has; it can be used for good and it can be used for bad."
After stumbling over references to Midi-chlorians, microscopic life forms found in the Star Wars universe, the presenter takes objection to Mr Kenobi's advice that we must try to live in harmony with the dark forces of the universe.
"I don't think that is biblical," he says. "It doesn't sound right."
A clip showing the presenter reading the two emails has been viewed more than 440,000 time since being uploaded onto YouTube last month.
The prankster has posted dozens of other videos of prank calls and emails he has made to Christian television stations.
Genesis TV, which is available over Sky and Freesat, launched in 2003.
TOKYO -- For Japan's Mai Sato, watching all those gold medals being handed out in Vancouver is a bittersweet experience. Sato knows the demands of being the best. In her world, blisters are the rule, bruises a way of life. And the training -- five hours a day, five days a week.
Sato, the world champion in her sport, is as athletic, dedicated and competitive as the Olympians representing their nations at the games. And she thinks it's high time her discipline, too, got some real recognition.
In this photo taken Feb. 18, pole dancer Mai Sato, 29, does her daily workout at a studio in Tokyo, Japan. Sato, the world champion in her sport, is as athletic, dedicated and competitive as the Olympians representing their nations at the games. And she thinks it's high time her discipline, too, got some real recognition.
Still, pole dancing? In the Olympics?
Absolutely, say thousands of pole dancers and the rapidly growing number of international and national federations transforming what was once the exclusive property of strip clubs and cheap bars into a respectable -- and highly athletic -- event.
"I could definitely see pole dancing in the Olympics," said Sato, who, a dancer since the age of three, out-twirled a bevy of athletes from 11 countries at the second International Pole Dancing Fitness Championships in Tokyo two months ago. "I would love to win a gold medal."
It's admittedly a high bar.
Established sports such as squash and cricket have failed to make the Olympic cut, baseball and softball were recently given the ax, and the International Olympic Committee's decision to end its support of nonofficial, demonstration sports after the Summer Games in 1992 has made gaining a foothold, the way judo and taekwondo did, all that much harder.
Plus, pole dancing needs to first gain IOC recognition as a sport -- an uphill battle if ever there was one.
No matter, pole dance enthusiasts say.
Hong Kong-based Ania Przeplasko, the founder of the International Pole Dancing Fitness Association, the sport's fledgling supervisory body, believes Olympic recognition is only a matter of time and would be a victory for underappreciated sports worldwide.
"There will be a day when the Olympics see pole dancing as a sport," she said. "The Olympic community needs to acknowledge the number of people doing pole fitness now. We're shooting for 2012."
That's pretty ambitious.
It's already too late for any new sports to be added to the London Games. But the IOC decision to end its support of exhibition sports after Barcelona has not completely closed the door on Olympic hopefuls looking for a way to showcase their skills — Beijing did it with the martial art wushu.
Pole dance advocates note that more unlikely sports have gotten the IOC's nod.
Tug of war, for example, was one of the early Olympic medal contests. Equestrian events are in the Olympics, but who owns a horse? Curling, which virtually no one pays any attention to in non-Olympic years, has become one of the Winter Games' biggest darlings. Though they are not in the games, the IOC recognizes such obscure sporting endeavors as boules, powerboating, bandy and floorball.
KT Coates, a leading pole dancer in Britain and director of Vertical Dance, is spearheading the effort to make pole dancing a "test" event in 2012 and foresees a more formal pitch in 2016, when the Olympics go to Rio de Jeneiro.
"After a great deal of feedback from the pole dance community, many of us have decided that it's about time pole fitness is recognized as a competitive sport, and what better way for recognition than to be part of the 2012 Olympics held in London," Coates wrote in a petition she is readying for the London organizers.
"It has the wow factor," she told The Associated Press in an e-mail.
So far, the petition has about 4,000 signatures. Coates is shooting for 5,000.
Iina Laatikainen, one of Finland's top pole teachers, likens pole dancing to skateboarding and snowboarding, two sports that have gotten serious mainstream attention without completely abandoning their rebellious roots.
"I think getting in the Olympics would be great for the sport," she said. "I actually see a lot of similarities in what pole dancing is now for women with what skateboarding used to be for men back in the day. Pole dancing is definitely on its way to becoming a mainstream sport."
But some pole dancers worry the sensual side of pole dancing, and its counterculture undertones, would be destroyed in an effort to clean it up for the Olympics. After all, would it really be the same without stilettos, a boozy audience and a red-tinted spotlight? And how do you score for sexiness?
Others fear old-school pole dancers would be eaten alive by gymnasts, who could easily make the conversion from other apparatuses, circus performers or Chinese acrobats, who have a long tradition of performing aerial tricks.
"Personally, I don't need to see pole dancing in the Olympics," said Wendy Traskos, co-founder of the U.S. Pole Dance Federation, which will be hosting its annual U.S. championships next month. "I don't think this is necessarily the path that we need to take, as a sport."
Traskos, a former competitive gymnast who lives in New York, believes pole dancing needs to do more groundwork before it shoots for the Olympics. In particular, scoring for competitions needs to be standardized, she said, adding that the names of the techniques vary among different clubs in different regions.
"I feel there are many small, tiny, steps that need to be taken before this sport, or any sport, can get into the Olympics," she said. "We are on, like, tiny step 10 of 1,000."
Nevertheless, she said pole dancers on the medal podium is not as wild a dream as it might have seemed just five years ago.
"Now, when you talk about it you don't hear 'like a stripper' anymore," she said. "You hear things like 'Oh, my friend takes classes for fitness' or 'Yes, I've seen it on Oprah.'"
I don't see how it's much different than the balance beam or uneven/parallel bars. But, there's just not enough time to fit all of those sports in. We need to have a spring and fall Olympic event in the off years.
We already have an off year Olympics. It's called the Winter Olympics. We give them to the little cities, the ones that desperately need the attention because they're just so completely unimportant otherwise.
But I think it should be part of either Spring or Fall Olympics, which should be the home of rejected sports: Tug of War, Rugby, Roller Derby, Archery, Polo, Sumo, and the Vertical Pole.
I think Spring and Fall Olympics will be most popular EVER.
And Ryan, you're just jealous because Iowa lost the bid for 2010.
(CNN) -- At 79, Bill Bunten doesn't exactly understand the Internet boom. The Topeka, Kansas, mayor has an e-mail account, he said, but his assistants take care of most of his online communications and tend to search the Web for him.
But Bunten believes so firmly that younger residents of Kansas' capital city will benefit from faster Internet connections that he wants Topeka -- which he describes as a place of many lakes and the site of a burgeoning market for animal-food research -- to change its name for a month.
In a formal proclamation Monday, Bunten announced his city will be known as "Google" -- Google, Kansas.
"It's just fun. We're having a good time of it," he said of the unofficial name change, which will last through the end of March. "There's a lot of good things that are going on in our city."
The unusual move comes as several U.S. cities elbow for a spot in Google's new "Fiber for Communities" program. The Web giant is going to install new Internet connections in unannounced locations, giving those communities Internet speeds 100 times faster than those elsewhere, with data transfer rates faster than 1 gigabit per second.
Cities have until March 26 to tell Google they're interested in the venture. Google says it will pick one or more cities for the pilot project. "We'll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people," Google says in an online post.
The company has said U.S. Internet speeds are falling behind the global standard, and it wants to fix things itself by installing new broadband cable.
Bunten hopes the proclamation, which he read at a special City Council meeting on Monday, will catch Google's attention and make the Internet company decide to use Topeka as its guinea pig. The document renames Topeka as "Google, Kansas -- the capital city of fiber optics."
Google declined to comment on whether it's taking the whole "Google, Kansas" thing seriously.
The mayor believes that faster Internet connections would inspire young people to stay in the city and would encourage business development.
But Bunten laughed at the idea that he might make the name switch permanent if Google decides to invest in his 123,400-person city's Internet network.
"Oh, heavens no, Topeka?" he said during a phone interview. "We are very proud of our city and Topeka is an Indian word which means 'a good place to grow potatoes.' We're not going to change that."
Do people grow potatoes in Topeka these days?
"I don't think we grow that many potatoes anymore," he said. "The crops we have out here are wheat and corn and soybeans and alfalfa. And, did I say soybeans?"
This isn't the first time Topeka has switched its name to mark a cultural trend. In 1998, former mayor Joan Wagnon temporarily changed the name of the city to "ToPikachu, Kansas," in reference to the Pikachu anime character, from the show and game called "Pokemon," which was popular at the time, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.
Bunten, the current mayor, was quick to attribute that bizarre "ToPikachu" happening to another local administration.
"I read in the paper this morning that they did a similar thing a number of years ago. Hold on, maybe I can get this sorted out. Just a minute," he said, turning to an assistant for details.
"We did it for a day," he said, sounding perplexed. "I can't remember why."
On its face, changing the name of a city to "Google" may seem like a silly publicity stunt, but Bunten says there is a serious side to the idea. Faster Internet connections might just be Topeka's ticket to a hipper future.
He's the first to say outsiders probably view Topeka as "another Midwestern town with not a lot going on," but he's been making efforts to change that. He trying to revitalize downtown with a bar and music scene.
Google would add to all that, making the city more attractive to youngsters, he said.
"To have this high-speed where people can sit down and have lunch and still keep working is a positive for young people," he said. "The young people are the ones that caught onto this and go to the Internet and asked people in the city to sign on as supporting Google coming to Topeka."
Bunten also hopes super-fast Web connections will improve the city's image with outsiders.
He was quick to point out that, while Topeka is in northeastern Kansas and is geographically part of the Great Plains, the city is green and has hills and even lakes. It's not flat like the Kansas stereotype, he said.
"Kansas is what it is, but I was trying to explain to you down in Atlanta that Topeka is not on the prairie. Our rainfall here runs about 32 inches a year. If you get out to Manhattan [Kansas], where Kansas State University is, well, it gets flatter. The wheat fields go as far as you can see. But here it's not. There's lots of trees and lots of water and we're going to develop this riverfront into something very, very nice," he said.
Bunten was born in Topeka. He said he traveled with the military, visiting Japan, Korea, San Diego and Los Angeles, California, Washington state. He saw many nice places. But they were nothing compared to his home.
They couldn't match the community. That's why he chose to return to his Topeka after years away.
He hopes Topeka's young people will explore the world like he did. But he wants them to come back. And he hopes Google will be their magnet.
This isn't the first time Topeka has switched its name to mark a cultural trend. In 1998, former mayor Joan Wagnon temporarily changed the name of the city to "ToPikachu, Kansas," in reference to the Pikachu anime character, from the show and game called "Pokemon," which was popular at the time, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- who has gone to great lengths to hype the supposed dangers of a big government takeover of American health care -- admitted over the weekend that she used to get her treatment in Canada's single-payer system.
"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. "And I think now, isn't that ironic?"
The irony, one guesses, is that Palin now views Canada's health care system as revolting: with its government-run administration and 'death-panel'-like rationing. Clearly, however, she and her family once found it more alluring than, at the very least, the coverage available in rural Alaska. Up to the age of six, Palin lived in a remote town near the closest Canadian city, Whitehorse.
Officials at several hospitals in that area declined to give out information on patient visits.
Much is said about distracted driving. Don't text, don't talk on the phone, don't eat soup. Apparently nobody bothered to tell one Florida woman not to shave her privates while driving. Clearly, this was our mistake.
Here we go:
"Florida Highway Patrol troopers say a two-vehicle crash Tuesday at Mile Marker 21 on Cudjoe Key was caused by a 37-year-old woman driver who was shaving her bikini area while her ex-husband took the wheel from the passenger seat.
"She said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be ready for the visit," Trooper Gary Dunick said. "If I wasn't there, I wouldn't have believed it. About 10 years ago I stopped a guy in the exact same spot ... who had three or four syringes sticking out of his arm. It was just surreal and I thought, 'Nothing will ever beat this.' Well, this takes it."
The woman was recently convicted of a DUI while on a suspended license, so it's not like there weren't warning signs, but damn. Who knew we had to tell people not to do this?
I haven't, partly because I rarely get stuck in traffic and partly because male masturbation is much more conspicuous and messy than female masturbation.
I've also nearly passed out while being stuck in traffic... but that was because I was stuck, in the Texas sun, in my truck, with no A/C. The windows were down but there was very little breeze, and I was EXHAUSTED from my wack sleeping schedule. Felt like I was baking in a oven... I definitely dozed. It was not cool.
I have had very little experience combing sexual conquests with transportation. However, I suppose if I were to get in a car accident and die, it would be best to go while mid-coitus.
I have had very little experience combing sexual conquests with transportation. However, I suppose if I were to get in a car accident and die, it would be best to go while mid-coitus.
(AP) Who knew a school cafeteria could be so much fun?
A space where hundreds of Philadelphia charter school students have been eating their lunches during mundane weekdays has been doubling in its off-hours as nightclub, offering dancing and drinking despite an expired liquor license.
City and school officials are not happy about the arrangement between Club Damani and the Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School, which serves about 450 children in kindergarten through eighth grade.
Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said in a letter to Harambee on Monday that "a school and a nightclub cannot coexist in the same space and (the arrangement) must cease immediately," according to a school district statement.
As a charter school, Harambee receives about $3.5 million annually in public funds but operates independently of the district. Officials at Harambee, which is on spring break this week, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Liquor licenses can be denied to establishments within 300 feet of a school. In this case, the school moved into a building that already was licensed, state Liquor Control Board spokeswoman Francesca Chapman said Tuesday.
Harambee's facility in West Philadelphia was once an Italian-American social club that had held a liquor license since 1936, Chapman said. The club transferred the license to the school-affiliated Harambee Institute in 2002, but Chapman said it expired in 2008.
The city's Department of Licenses & Inspections cited the club in February for lacking three necessary business permits, said Maura Kennedy, a spokeswoman for the mayor's office. The club has until April 10 to comply or it will be shut down, she said.
SYDNEY — An Australian publisher is reprinting 7,000 cookbooks over a recipe for pasta with "salt and freshly ground black people."
Penguin Group Australia's head of publishing, Bob Sessions, acknowledged the proofreader for the Pasta Bible should have picked up the error, but called it nothing more than a "silly mistake."
The "Pasta Bible" recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto was supposed to call for black pepper.
"We're mortified that this has become an issue of any kind and why anyone would be offended, we don't know," he told The Sydney Morning Herald for a story printed Saturday.
"We've said to bookstores that if anyone is small-minded enough to complain about this ... silly mistake, we will happily replace (the book) for them."
The reprint will cost Penguin 20,000 Australian dollars ($18,500), but books already in stores will not be recalled because doing so would be "extremely hard," Sessions said.
Comments
1. She is aiming for the presidency, and the things she wrote on her hands are among the staples of the entire GOP platform and the far right base she energizes. Furthermore, it looks ridiculous from a leadership perspective, and countries like China would eat her alive if she had to refer to notes in her hand while lecturing them on human rights/trade policies/Taiwan.
2. In the exact same speech, she criticized Obama for using a teleprompter all the time. This makes her look like a hypocritical douche.
3. It depends on the notes you write. Notecards or a small notebook with a pen is one thing. Writing on your hands makes you look childish.
4. There is absolutely no way Palin and Fox News would not be having a giant circle jerk if they caught Obama doing the exact same thing.
I'm all for including in it the Summer Olympics.
But I think it should be part of either Spring or Fall Olympics, which should be the home of rejected sports: Tug of War, Rugby, Roller Derby, Archery, Polo, Sumo, and the Vertical Pole.
I think Spring and Fall Olympics will be most popular EVER.
And Ryan, you're just jealous because Iowa lost the bid for 2010.
I'd move to ToPikachu.
One by one my freedoms are being taken away. I guess that's Obama's America for you.
EDIT: HA this is my 1,337th post. How appropriate.
Decline to comment.
But Ryan, you ride a bicycle.
I make it a point to masturbate whenever I drive.
Which makes family trips extremely awkward.
Prude.