While razors and Duracell batteries may be its best known product lines, Boston-based Gillette has identified oral care as its third core business - and it is relying on all three businesses to help it rebound from recent disappointments.

Referring to the core businesses as "the three gorillas," [John] Darman [Gillette's senior vice president of oral care] said: "Gillette Oral Care is a bit of a baby gorilla. We're the youngest business of the three, the smallest and least developed. But this baby gorilla is the fastest-growing business in the Gillette portfolio." With the help of products introduced yesterday, oral care is poised to grow quickly into a "full-fledged gorilla," he said.

Among the new products on view were the Braun Oral-B 3D Excel, a roughly $80 electric toothbrush that Gillette promises will make teeth feel as if they had been professionally cleaned.

• Malkovich Malkovich
• goodnight earth
• How the Grinch Stole Election Day
• David Marr on the legacy of Oscar Wilde (who died 100 years ago today)
• Schizophrenia, toxoplasmosis, and cats
• Feminist perspective in science
• I love The Onion: Parkay Container Suffers Debilitating Stroke; Now Speaks With Difficulty Out Of One Side Of Lid

Interesting parallels, but they break down when you realize that football games, eventually, end. We are now in the 17th quarter of this election. But it would be interesting if football games could be appealed to the Supreme Court.

What am I saying? It'll happen. The law is no longer a vast archway through which all pass as equals; it's now an aperture the diameter of a toothpaste tube through which the grandest dispute must be shoved. I fully expect to be sued tomorrow for not publishing someone's letter…

The advertising on a package of sponges is over the top, boasting in bold letters: "Exclusive 3M technology!"

These are sponges, OK? They sop up liquid and squeeze it back out. No chips. No flashing lights. No surge protectors. No repair kit.

But simple doesn't sell anymore. So the most basic products are being pumped up into "systems," "ultras," "ultras-plus," and other intimidating "improvements" designed to impress the consumer.

Junk Yard Wars - Look for this on TLC. It's a British show where two teams compete to see who can build the better machine out of parts found in a junkyard. The machines vary from artillery to submarines, from gliders to high efficiency vehicles. Very cool program for the closet welder in all of us. They are currently accepting applications for contestants for the 2001 season in the US.

In response to the Popplers item about the Wizard of Oz/ Dark Side of the Moon, please note that this combination is screened intermittently at midnight at a NYC revival house called Cinema Classics - check if a screening should ever coincide with a future trip to NYC.

• GeneWilder.org has a great set of sound files.
  Two faves: "Stop, don't, come back" and "The suspense is terrible… I hope it'll last."
• Wonka.com has a Flash and Shockwave-heavy site, some cute games, etc. I was actually amused by their Pac-Man ripoff, Gobstopper Gobbler (and Kita will love the cheesy Joke of the Day).
• The Wonka Shrine had this to say about the remake:

  "…Paris Themmen, known to millions of impressionable young children as Mike TeeVee from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was on hand at last weekend's Canadian National Science Fiction Expo. In the midst of signing autographs (each one came with a free "golden ticket"), Themmen took a few moments to talk to IGN Sci-Fi about the rumored remake of Willy Wonka. "They have a script by Scott Frank, who wrote Out of Sight, and several names I've heard mentioned [for the part of Willy Wonka] are: Nic Cage, Jim Carrey, Will Smith and Robin Williams," he said. "Personally, I like the idea of Christopher Walken."…"

• Plus, Aaron Villa actually has the entire movie script on-line.

…The last family Thanksgiving I attended was in 1975. Everyone -- aunts, uncles, cousins, parents and siblings -- stopped communicating with me in early 1976, right after I announced that I was getting a divorce.

While I was married, my parents complained that my husband did not make enough money. My aunt said he dressed like a hippie. My brother, well, he liked him.

After the divorce, I became the enemy. They told their friends, by way of an explanation, "Gayle has become a radical feminist!" And then they invited my ex-husband into their homes and fed him and gave him money to pay for his divorce…

… astronomers have concluded that on these "storm" years, the Earth is actually sweeping through debris left by the comet on one of its previous visits, sometimes centuries earlier. Two astronomers say they have now studied the comet's path over the past several centuries in detail and can predict when major storms will occur.

This is not one of those years, they say. Instead, it should be a relatively ordinary display of around 100 meteors per hour. In fact, with a third-quarter moon in the sky to drown out the meteors' light, most observers will see far fewer than that.

But just wait until next year and the year after, say David Asher of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland and Robert McNaught of the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. In both those years, the world may be treated to major storms nearly as dramatic as the great ones of 1833, 1866, and 1966…

"…a great disturbance in the Force... as if millions of /.ers cried out in an attempt to load the page... and were DoSed…"

"[…] Sometime, perhaps as early as this week, an election that has gone into triple overtime will finally end. But the loser may not suffer sudden death. In this election, the heroism could belong to the defeated, to the man with the courage to say, "I lost." […]

"Software engineering is different because people at all levels of the organization perceive themselves to be equally intelligent. Consensus-style management can perhaps work when there is a gradient of perceived ability. Given enough time, the less able workers will follow the lead of the more able workers. One of the paradoxes of software engineering is that people with bad ideas and low productivity often think of themselves as supremely capable. They are the last people whom one can expect to fall in line with a good strategy developed by someone else. As for the good programmers who are in fact supremely capable, there is no reason to expect consensus to form among them. Each programmer thinks his or her idea about what to build and how to build it is the best. "

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

"Agreed! Although perhaps insects can die gallantly. This morning a many-limbed creature crawled up our sink drain, and after I'd shoved my heart back down my throat I turned the water on full blast to return him to the dank dark bug hell from which he came. His arms all waved when the water hit. It could have been a salute. Or, when you have 100 fingers, perhaps displaying the middle 30 means something else."

LONDON (Reuters) - Do penguins fall over backwards when watching aircraft fly overhead?

Two British scientists are traveling to South Georgia in the south Atlantic to find answers to that question and others from a study of the island's 400,000 King Penguins.

Scientists have usually been skeptical about reports of penguins falling over backwards to watch aircraft flying above them. But a senior officer on the British navy ship HMS Endurance, which is taking the scientific team to South Georgia, said he believed the reports.

"The penguins always look up at the helicopters and follow them all the way until they fall over backwards," Stuart Matthews, the ship's operations officer, told the Daily Telegraph.

Dr Richard Stone of the British Antarctic Survey told Reuters that scientists were concerned that low-flying aircraft could cause stress among penguins and affect their breeding performance.

"There may be an increase in heart rate as helicopters fly over," Stone said. "The worst possible effect is that there would be a reduction in their breeding performance. If they were incubating eggs this could be quite devastating for them."

Stone said helicopters from HMS Endurance would fly at different altitudes over the penguins to help in the research.