Category: smile

I couldn't help but think of Buster Keaton movies, old time factories, and black, waxed mustaches after stumbling upon a press release by Clean Power Technologies Inc. today.  It seems the company developed a technology that successfully achieved a 40% reduction in vehicle fuel consumptions, and they owe it to the wonders of steam technology.

Steam technology--something once prominent in the 19th century in Victorian era England, and making up a popular aesthetic movement known as "steampunk," is proving itself to still be practical in our modern times.  CPT engineered the CESAR system, a design that increases fuel economy and reduces emissions by capturing, storing, and reusing otherwise wasted heat from the exhaust of a conventional combustion engine.  The company explains how it works:

A heat exchanger captures waste energy, which is then stored in the form of steam in an accumulator, enabling a vapour engine to use the steam on demand. Once the combustion engine is shut down, vehicle power can be produced solely by the auxiliary vapour engine. The CESAR process will provide all the auxiliary power requirements (e.g. refrigeration and air conditioning) of light cars and trucks, with further potential for application in locomotive and marine applications.

The goal is to now build a second generation of the steam accumulator, making it lighter and more efficient for ordinary automobile use.  Based in East Sussex, CPT conducted successful tests with a Mazda RX8 engine, as well as the more industrial-purposed  Caterpillar C18 diesel engine.

President and CEO Abdul Mitha said, "Combustion engine and steam hybrid technology offers huge potential for green transport and our technology will be able to be adopted by vehicle manufacturers cost-effectively without any government subsidy support or need for new delivery or transporation systems. Our technology is unique, effective and elegant in its simplicity and I am extremely proud of what our dedicated team has achieved."

Now, if the company can start designing vehicles with this sort of Jules Verne-like aesthetic, I'll really be on board:

 Who comes up with these idea to turn a popular film into an opera?  Sometimes it's the original filmmaking team.  David Cronenberg evolved a crazy idea to make his 1980’s cult classic film The Fly into an opera, and it actually worked.

Harry Shearer knows what is funny. He spent years working on "Saturday Night Live" at NBC's Rockefeller Center headquarters. He’s the bassist of Spinal Tap. And he’s the man who shows the world what newscasters are really thinking behind their plastic smiles.

Shearer's "Found Objects," a semi-regular feature of the "My Damn Channel" Web site, is a place where news personalities don't want to find themselves. The site shows Shearer’s collection of newscaster personalities trapped between on-air and off-air. The camera is rolling, but the news is over.

In a nine-minute video clip of on-set behavior at Fox News Channel, Laura Ingraham rants at everything and everyone once her red light switched off.

Last fall, the first posting on the site was of an excruciating 17-minute video of former CBS News anchor Dan Rather on a chilly rooftop in Seattle, obsessing over whether to wear an overcoat during a standup, or whether the coat's collar should be turned up or down.

Katie Couric, Rather’s replacement, has put her own spin on the site after Shearer posted a video of off-air behavior before a New Hampshire primary. In the footage she jokes about her voice, swearing in frustration, and admitting to a weird fascination with Cindy McCain's eyes. Couric now has her own channel on YouTube, which was originally purposed to show segments of her interviews that don’t air, and also occasionally shows behind-the-scenes videos. In her first appearance, the popular blonde joked, "It's nice to be on YouTube when I know the cameras are rolling. Harry Shearer, I'm gonna get you!"

Indeed, it seems Shearer has got the newscasters of America on the run as America laughs.

I was browsing the Daily Mail yesterday morning on the tube and was shocked by the feline featured in the news section. A funny little human – animal interest story featured Yoda the cat.  Or like the article suggests, “If Batman had a cat, it would probably look something like this.”

Apparently he was a part of a large litter when Valerie and Ted Rock took him under their wing 2 years ago. The owner of the bar they frequent in the south side of Chicago was trying to get rid of him by passing him around to “curious drinkers.” The couple immediately fell in love with the feline and asked to adopt him on the spot.

Valerie said, “Ted and I had just lost a cat that was our pet for over 20 years, and we were sure we were done with cats, (but) when he was passed around he reached for Ted, crawled up into the crook of his neck and fell asleep – Ted was a goner.”

She later found out that the famous Star Wars character Yoda was actually named after George Lucas’ cat. So they named him after the green, backwards-speaking wise creature. But the local vet couldn’t even solve the mystery of his double set of ears. “The vet had never seen anything like it before,” explained Valerie. “He immediately went to the Internet and found the four-eared cat in Germany.”

She and Ted began to realize they had a truly unique feline friend. He remains an indoor cat, however, as the couple fear his unique features may lead to a ‘catnapping.’ When their friends come around to visit, they often ask the couple if Yoda’s hearing is exceptional, but as far as they can tell their pet is a perfectly normal--an affectionate cat in every way. 

Ghazala Khamis, 27, gave birth to septuplets last weekend in a Cairo, Egypt.

“This is a very rare pregnancy — something I have n html_removed ever witnessed over my past 33 years in this profession," Emad Darwish, director of the El-Shatbi Hospital, told The Associated Press by phone from the hospital.

Khamis was in good condition after having a blood transfusion during her Caesarean section due to bleeding. The infants, four boys and three girls, weigh between 3.2 pounds and 6.17 pounds are in stable condition and have been placed in four hospitals in the area that have premature baby units.

The babies were delivered via Caesarean section at the end of Khamis' eighth month of pregnancy due to the pressure on her kidneys.

“From the initial checkup, I say that none of the babies have any sort of deformities or incomplete organs," Darwish said.

Khamis conceived using fertility drugs in an effort to have a son, already having had three daughters. Her brother, Khamis Khamis explained to the Associated Press, "We thought about an abortion, but then we felt it's religiously forbidden. So we said 'Let God's will prevail.'"

Egypt's health minister announced that the seven babies will receive free milk and diapers for two years, the brother added, which should help with increasingly high price of commodities in Egypt.

Perhaps you've noticed; gasoline is a little bit cheaper lately.  For the first time in weeks (months?) the national average for fuel costs dropped below $4.00 a gallon. In Washington D.C., a prayer group is taking credit for the relief.

According to the BBC, 59-year-old Rocky Twyman started "Pray At The Pump" meetings at gas stations this past April.  Apparently God has a stake in Americans' wallets:  "We don't have anybody else to turn to but God," Mr. Twyman told the BBC.  "We have to turn these problems over to God and not to man."

Twyman has been traveling to gas pumps across the country, bringing and attracting new followers in every town.  It started in D.C.'s working class neighborhood Petworth, where volunteers from the First Seventh Day Adventist Church led him in singing "We shall overcome," but with changing the words to "We'll have lower gas prices."  He said they had some of their best success in St. Louis, Missouri and in Huntsville, Alabama.  In the latter, he said the owner of a station came out and immediately lowered the prices after his group finished praying there.  

Despite reaching to spiritual forces to sustain what could be arguably classified as our nation's "oil addiction," Twyman believes we still need to change our habits by carpooling and learning to organize our day's more efficiently.  

 You know the old joke when someone you know suddenly exceeds illusiveness and you say; “well they’re probably a spy.” Truly sometimes the people you least expect turn out to actually be one. And it turns out famed British TV chef and cook Julia Child shares the title, along with other famous personalities from the past 6 or 7 decades.

Spies are chosen for reasons we may not be aware of. Take the proclaimed double agent Chuck Barris, the CBS TV producer, who claimed to lead a double life with the CIA, or the labor lawyer Arthur Goldberg who became a Supreme Court justice. Or Arthur Schlesinger, a man who later became a presidential advisor, Hollywood director John Ford, or the sons of Ernest Hemingway and Teddy Roosevelt. All spies.

This Thursday, details on around 24,000 intelligence workers have been included in governmental recorded archives. The document details a worldwide spy network during World War II called the Office of Strategic Services that eventually became what we know now as the CIA. The files reference a ‘Julia McWiliams’ later Julia Child, who applied for work with the OSS, claiming her fault was ‘impulsiveness.’ (Associated Press)

The 28 year old worked as an advertising manager at W&J Sloane furniture store in Beverly Hills when she left the job abruptly after a tiff with the new store manager. “I made a tactical error and was out,” she wrote in her application. “However, I learned a lot about advertising and wish I had been older and more experienced so that I could have handled the situation, as it was a most interesting position.” Child was hired for clerical work with the OSS in the summer of 1942 and later worked in the personnel department.

These documents will lie years of rumors to rest, and provide the public with countless names who served under the OSS from World War II and on. “I think it’s terrific,” Elizabeth McIntosh, 93, a former OSS agent said, who is now living in Virginia. “They’ve finally, after all these years, they’ve gotten the names out.” (New York Post)

To learn more, follow this link for the index to National Archives OSS personnel files. 

I can't imagine too many more bizarre things must have happened to Aaron West of Oldhman, England.  20-year-old West, his partner Leanne Baker and their 2-year-old son arrived home one night recently to find their door broken in, their house ransacked, and a message spelled out on their fridge reading "Oldham Task Force Called."  It turned out that police in search of a criminal recalled to prison for breaching his release conditions raided the wrong house, and rather than notifying the owners and leaving an official letter of apology, the task force used colorful magnet letters on the fridge to relay the news.  

According to the Nothing To Do With Arbroath blog, West said, "I want a written apology.  We came back from shopping to find the back door smashed in and on the kitchen work top.  The police here didn't tell us much, so I went to the station to ask why.  But when I told the desk sergeant I didn't know who they were looking for, they just weren't interested."

As for the letters on the fridge he said, "These are for children, they're not for the police to leave a message they've raided your house."

Currently Oldham police commissioners are launching an investigation of the incident.

CommonThreadz.com is a non-profit organization that gives children in developing nations the opportunity to go to school.

In addition to traditional forms of fundraising, Common Threadz also involves celebrities and artists in their efforts through the sale of specially crafted T-shirts.

Each T-shirt has a limited availability and a special design by an artist. Each design is printed on an Alternative Apparel blank T-shirt. For each T-shirt you buy, a school uniform is purchased, allowing an underprivileged child the ability to go to school. Any additional money is then donated to a non-profit organization that benefits humanity or the environment. Each design on the T-shirt is a reflection of the cause that its proceeds are donated to.

Alternative Apparel T-shirts are celebrity favorites and CommonThreadz capitalizes on celebrity collaborations with artists from around the world to further raise awareness about the plight of African children who are living under the stigma of AIDS.

Alternative Apparel is a socially conscious company that uses fair labor practices and cooperates with environmental laws and regulations to make their high quality T-shirts.

CommonThreadz partners with various sites around the web to make their cause and their high-end T-shirts easily available and their cause known to everyone.

Growing up can be rough and it seems it would be even rougher with an unusual name, although celebrities may be exempt from this rule. But the rest of the world can’t be giving their kids weird names, according to a New Zealand judge.

Judge Rob Murfitt, a family court judge in Wellington, New Zealand felt that by naming their child Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii, her parents had shown such poor judgment that he made her a ward of the court so that she could be renamed.

The 9-year old girl in question, who was involved in a custody battle, said that her name so embarrassed her that she told people to call her ‘K’ and had never told anyone what her real name was.

In his ruling, Murfitt wrote, "The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child's parents have shown in choosing this name. It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily."

He also cited other inappropriate names that registration officials had blocked, including Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit. However, other bizarre names were allowed, like Number 16 Bus Shelter and Violence, which the judge called "unfortunate."

Brian Clarke, the registrar general of Births, Deaths and Marriage explains that New Zealand law does not allow names that would cause offense to a reasonable person, among other conditions. He said that registration usually tried to convince parents who proposed odd names that they were setting the child up for embarrassment.

Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii’s new name was not released in order to protect the child.