A new Chinese fossil shows that primitive feathers covered a small predatory dinosaur from head to tail.

Palaeontologists have found feathers and feather-like structures on several other Chinese dinosaurs, but only on parts of their bodies. The new discovery is the first to show feathers over the whole animal, showing that dinosaurs may well have evolved feathers for insulation before they were used for flight.

Leo: (July 23--Aug. 22)
This will be a lucky week, indeed, since no one enjoys a good concussion more than you.

Sagittarius: (Nov. 22--Dec. 21)
Investigators from several federal agencies will conclude that the failure of an 89-cent O-ring caused you to explode over Florida.

Pisces: (Feb. 19--March 20)
Your fascination with the Vietnam War, combined with your love of romance novels and vampire myths, cause you to produce the worst work of fiction ever.

"[…] Most magazines are aimed at people I don't know. For what seems like months, Vogue has featured Renee Zeliwiliterwilliger or whatever her name is; RENEE TAKES PARIS, one headline says; the other says she STORMS COUTURE. I am reasonably sure that most Parisians are unaware that all their base now belong to Renee, and I cannot think of a less significant accomplishment than Storming Couture. Then there's People, which is aimed at the millions of people who wonder what Demi Moore's up to. There's Rosie magazine, which of course I'll buy under a certain set of circumstances: the magazine is nailed to one hand, coins are welded to the palm of my other hand, and I am shot in the head in such a way that involuntary muscular death-spasms make it look as though I am offering money for the magazine to a clerk. But even then the clerk would be screaming, probably. […]"

"[…] they've crafted something far richer and more entertaining: a loving homage to '30s Americana assembled from popular icons and artifacts, and told with the intoxicating energy of a Warner Brothers cartoon. Swimming with references to literature, movies, and especially the evocative bluegrass and country music of the period--superbly arranged by T-Bone Burnett--the film cross-pollinates Clark Gable, Robert Johnson, Busby Berkeley, The Wizard Of Oz, and the KKK. And that's just in one bravura sequence. […]"

"Bowey knew that some of his hoped-for profits would be gobbled up by the Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT -- a complicated tax provision that can, among other things, trigger a 28 percent tax on the difference between an option price and the value of the stock the day of the purchase. In other words, Bowey -- whose options allowed him to buy 13,000 shares of his company's stock for $1 apiece at a time when the stock was trading at $75 -- was looking at an AMT tax bill of about $269,360, 28 percent of his "paper gain."

Bowey knew that by exercising his options but not selling his stocks he made himself vulnerable to the AMT, but he assumed that the eventual gains would outstrip the tax liability. Even if the stock dropped by half -- which seemed unlikely at the time -- he figured that he'd have more enough money to pay Uncle Sam. […]"

[…] As I turned a corner in response to waved directions, I pulled up behind a large car from which a large woman was in the process of decanting herself. She was not a happy woman. She was, in fact, screaming at the top of her lungs, though perhaps, given the glass-shatteringly-high pitch of her nasal voice, shrieking would be a better description.

What she was saying to the increasingly-distressed parking attendant over whom she was towering was, and I quote,

"Well then PARK IT! PARK IT! PARK IT! It's your job! PARK IT! PARK IT!" […]

gruntle \GRUN-tul\ (verb)
: to put in a good humor

Management attempted to gruntle the workers with extra benefits to make up for the overtime.

"Gruntle" is the result of a mistaken assumption about the verb "disgruntle," which means "to make ill-humored or discontented." The prefix "dis-" often means "to do the opposite of," so people naturally assumed that in order to have a "disgruntle" there must be a "gruntle" with exactly the opposite meaning. But actually, "dis-" doesn't always work that way -- in some rare cases it functions instead as an intensifier. "Disgruntle" developed from this intensifying sense of "dis-" plus "gruntle," an old word meaning "to grumble." "Gruntle" began to mean "to make happy" only in the 1920s, when it was assumed to be the antonym of "disgruntle." By contrast, "disgruntle" has been around since 1682, and the original grumbling "gruntle" dates back to 1589.

"Starbucks comes into a neighborhood with their stock market funny money," says Talen. "They can pay five times what anybody else can pay, and they kick out local merchants like the Astor Riviera Diner, which was a great old place with abusive waiters in old tuxedos."

When I suggest that the diverse crowd in the diner turned Starbucks seemed to be having a perfectly acceptable urban coffeehouse experience, Talen sighs. "You know, they're pretty smart," he says. "They know what our criticism of them is likely to be. So they know they can't hassle us. They know they have to play certain kinds of music. There's a Starbucks in SoHo that has no Starbucks sign. But here's the question: Do we need them to be intermediaries in order to be New Yorkers? You know, to do that teasing, joking, exaggerating thing that we think is so wonderful about New York?"

The Palm Pilot Robot Kit (PPRK) was designed by the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute with the intent of building an easy to use and easy to program robot kit. The PPRK design is very similar in approach to Acroname's Rover and will benefit from the Acroname BrainStem™ technology when available in late 2000. Perhaps the most unique thing about the design is the use of three 4 cm Roller wheels in a triangular orientation. This orientation allows Holonomic Motion Control and distinguishes this robot design from most common mobile robots.

My wife pulled out a bottle of peppercorns in brine. Is this yours? she asked, as though I was wearing a T-shirt from the Brine Enthusiast's League.

Of course it's not mine, I said, and gave it a closer look. Unopened, ancient, made by one of those haughty British companies: Phigleif and Bowels, Suppliers to the Crown since 1328. […] But where had it come from? I was repressing some horrible memory of a British correspondence cooking school, perhaps? Maybe I'd used the peppers for a nice hot dish of Toad in the Hole, or Stoat in the Pit, or Vole in the Crevasse, or maybe Marmoset in the Gaping Chasm, or whatever those horrid puddingy dishes are named.

Build a slot car track, and race the bird! --Rock

Heh. You can push the bird off the track.
Heh. He says something mean in another language.
Heh heh. Stupid bird. --Pat

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
swaller dollar cauliflower alleygaroo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
boola boola Pensacoola hullabalou!

This house had a Mission feel to it. And by "feel" I meant every single light fixture, doorknob, hinge, and tile. Every wall had been freshly painted in the exact proper hue. It was low, flat, open, bright-- on a cloudy rainy afternoon the room still shone. Hmm, I thought: this is, well, incredibly comfy. Went to the kitchen - jaw drops, bounces off hardwood floor - fireplace in the kitchen area, island that seats six, brand new kitchen appliances, cabinets, countertops.

Upstairs was where I fell to my knees. And I was holding Gnat, too. The master bedroom had a walkout sunporch and bathroom the size of Times Square. The other rooms were fabulous as well. But surely the basement wasn't done? It was-- as a child's playroom. Carpet, fireplace, ample toy storage.

The backyard was a two-level expanse bigger than any I've seen in the city.

The garage was attached to the house by a tunnel. A tunnel! I'm Batman.

"I think the governor appreciates the irony of the KKK picking up trash along the Rosa Parks Highway," spokesman Jerry Nachtigal said Monday. "But regardless of how it's done, honoring Rosa Parks is a very noble thing to do."

"The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Missouri's appeal in March 2001, removing the last obstacle to the Klan's full participation in the Adopt-a-Highway program. Is it not true, though, that the KKK is "now cleaning up a stretch of the newly-christened Rosa Parks Freeway." The fact is that the Klan has never cleaned up their portion of I-55. When Missouri issued the Klan an ultimatum to start picking up trash or face being dropped from the program in January 2000, a Klan representative just beat the deadline by picking up the bags, reflective vests, and 10-minute safety video required for training and participation in the program. After the last legal obstacle to the Klan's full participation in the program was cleared when the Supreme Court refused to review the case this March, Missouri sent the Klan another ultimatum to begin picking up litter or be dropped from the program, a threat that was made good on April 4 when the Klan failed to respond and was officially dropped."

Brainstormed by our CEO and anime/J-pop fan, Elaine Barlow, our new web mascot was to be […] a combination of Maher's own unique style and her favorite Iron Chef, Masharu Morimoto. […]

Now, we wouldn't be the coolest business online if we didn't continue to include our customer base is nearly every aspect of our developing company, so we're going to have a contest and allow you guys, our very dedicated and wonderful customers, to help supply the name as well as his fictional background. […] Be creative! And remember… our mascot isn't always as professional and regal as his portrait above. He definitely has a wild side.

"Would Black & White really be the summation of all the acclaimed games Molyneux had designed before, an impossibly ambitious melding of the real-time strategy "god game" genre (which he invented), insanely complex artificial intelligence (AI) and a wreath of unproven technical innovations? If Peter Molyneux is the Stanley Kubrick of computer game design, then, after all the delays, it started to seem like Black & White might not, after all, be the "2001" we were hoping for, but rather would finally stagger to the shelves looking more like a vaporware version of "Eyes Wide Shut."

"Our concerns were groundless. Black & White is everything promised, and perhaps much more. It is a great game, and if it becomes the mass market hit it deserves to be, it should shatter the last arbitrary boundary between culture and technology. And if that happens, and its success carries over to its online versions, it might even change the world."

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Many reasons. God may be too busy playing with his giant cow to notice. Or God may have tossed, burnt, or electrocuted the good person in order to impress the good person's friends. Or maybe God is just a bored asshole.

Can God make a stone so big He can't lift it?

No. But he can break stones into two identical smaller stones, which you must admit is pretty impressive. He can also drop them on your head if you don't agree.

Note: in the first paragraph I almost wrote that the treetops waved back and forth like Marge Simpson's insanity scene in "Streetcar!" and in graf 2 I wanted to compare the sight of unclothed houses to inadvertently walking in on Mr. Burns in the shower. It strikes me that there are enough episodes of the Simpsons that people could speak entirely in Simpsonese, using references from the show to explain or describe an endless series of situations. Nelson and Apu… at Tinagra.

But now I've brought Star Trek into it again, haven't I. Sorry.

We've seen "Like Water for Chocolate." Now we've got "Chocolat" for chocolate. It's comfort food for the eyes, a pretty fable set in a bleakly puritanical French town in the 1950s whose buttoned-down inhabitants reconnect with their hearts and their senses after a mysterious earth mother played by Juliette Binoche moves to town with her young daughter and opens a chocolaterie. […] "Chocolat" may not be deep, but it certainly is lip-smacking. Besides, there's something piquant about seeing the religious right melt before an onslaught of cocoa and butterfat.

"Fear: the lurking horror that someone might actually ask you what that painting means. Oh, you can give the standard answer - it doesn't mean anything - and you can adopt the proper world-weary tone you use on people who ask such stupid things. But it does raise an interesting question: if it cost $5,000, and it doesn't mean anything, and it looks like something excreted by a character in "Yellow Submarine," why exactly is it on your wall?"

A study by Lifestyles Condom Co. shows that the average length of a male sex organ is 5.877 inches-- which might comfort men who previously thought they were less than average.[…]

For those of you who don't like to deal in raw numbers, at 5.877 inches, the average penis is about the size of a Nestle Butterfinger candy bar (unwrapped) or a grande (medium) cup of coffee at Starbucks (with the sip lid). Most men vary in size between a Twix bar and a Peter Paul Mounds (with the wrapper extended).

Adolph Levis, the inventor of the Slim Jim dried meat snack, died on Tuesday in the Hospice by the Sea in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 89.[…]

In the 1940's, Mr. Levis, observing the popularity of other dried meat products like pepperoni, and working with a partner, Joseph Cherry, hired a local meatpacker to develop a dried beef stick that was smaller and easier to eat than a larger sausage. Hoping to create an elegant image, he used a man in a top hat and cane as his emblem and called him Slim Jim…

My name is David, and I'm a TiVo addict.

Oh, sure, I love my cable modem, I take my laptop everywhere, and they'll have to tear the Palm V out of my cold, dead hands. But if I were cast away on a desert island with only a single power outlet, I'd want my TiVo.

That's strong praise for a gadget that's not a commercial hit by any stretch. In its first two years, only 150,000 people have bought TiVos, and ReplayTV boxes, TiVo's onetime rival, are no longer on the market.…

• limerick
• sushi
• madness
• arrogance
• mid-eon crisis
• Necronomicon
• farewell

Lucent Call Rumors 'Absolutely False'

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lucent Technologies (LU.N) strongly denied market rumors that it might file for bankruptcy after the telecommunications equipment maker's stock dropped to a lifetime low in heavy trading on Wednesday.

Acknowledging market rumors that a large telecommunications equipment firm might file for bankruptcy, a Lucent spokesman said any such rumors in its case were "absolutely false."

"They are ridiculous," Lucent spokesman Bill Price said. "We have the financial flexibility to execute our turnaround and nothing has changed in that regard."

Lucent stock was off 90 cents, about 11 percent, to $6.95, in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, after earlier falling as low as $5.50, well below its 1996 initial public offering price of $6.75, adjusted for splits.

It was by far the most active issue on the NYSE.

At 21:51 UT, Monday 2 April 2001, active region 9393 unleashed a major solar flare. Now reclassified as at least an X20, it appears to be the biggest flare on record, most likely bigger than the one on 16 August 1989, also an X20 flare, and definitely more powerful that the famous 6 March 1989 flare which was related to the disruption of the power grids in Canada. The big explosion, which took place near the Sun's northwest limb, hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space - at a whopping speed of roughly 7.2 million km/h - but not directly towards Earth. Thus, the impacts on Earth will probably be less severe. Unofficial model estimates predict a shock arrival between 22:00 UT on 3 April and 10:00 UT on 4 April 2001.

• breaking the seal
• some unexpected results
• XML made easy
• don't overstep your bounds
• PSA: cartoonists
• conclusion

Two Contests - Curatorial and Interpretive
Preliminary plans for the "Do You Have What it Takes?" contest call for the committee to post several new works of art on the MOBA web site. Contestants will tell us which works ought to be added to the MOBA permanent collection and why.

The "Who Do You Think You Are?" contest will invite contestants to write a narrative description of one or two sample works of art.

Winners will be allowed to continue curating and interpreting at exactly the same salary earned by the recently released MOBA executives.