Tastemaker

Reported on AP:
QUINCY, Mass. - John Russo has been a victim of identity theft. So when he was asked to fork over a photo ID just to be seated at an IHOP pancake restaurant, he flipped.

"You want my license? I'm going for pancakes, I'm not buying the Hope diamond,' and they refused to seat us," Russo said, recounting his experience this week at the Quincy IHOP.

The restaurant now has agreed to reverse the policy of requiring customers to turn over their driver's licenses before they can order — a rule that was enacted to discourage "dine and dash" thefts.

-The article continues on, the most salient fact being that the restaurant was holding 40 drivers licenses hostage while their owners ate. -HCS

Hey All, I'll be taking Thursday and Friday off for feasting! Tawk to ya Monday, xoxox, Hil

Twentieth Century Fox may be close to a deal with Apple to provide its feature films on the computer company's iTunes Music Store website, CNN reported Wednesday. The cable news network said that News Corp President and COO Peter Chernin told analysts during a conference call that the studio had been having "positive talks" with Apple but that "several details still needed to be worked out" before an announcement could be made. Hollywood studios including Fox have hesitated to make their films available at a price below that of DVDs, something that Apple has insisted on. So far, only Disney has made films available on the iTunes site. (Apple chief Steve Jobs is Disney's largest individual shareholder.) Since September 12, the date Disney films went on sale for the first time, Apple has reportedly sold 125,000 copies. Sales are expected to climb beginning this week with the release of the Disney hit, Cars.

-From IMDB Pro Studio Briefing

Areas that researchers have declared the most polluted in the world are typically little known even in their own countries. Yet they in total afflict more than 10 million people, experts reported today.

The kinds of pollution in these areas not only lead to cancers, birth defects, mental retardation and life expectancies approaching medieval levels, but are also often found all around the globe.

"They cause an enormous amount of misery and harm, especially to children," Richard Fuller, founder and director of the Blacksmith Institute, the New York-based environmental group who released a report on these areas today, told LiveScience.

The Top 10 most polluted places for 2006, in alphabetical order by country:

Linfen, China, where residents say they literally choke on coal dust in the evenings, exemplifies many Chinese cities;

Haina, Dominican Republic, has severe lead contamination because of lead battery recycling, a problem common throughout poorer countries [image];

Ranipet, India, where leather tanning wastes contaminate groundwater with hexavalent chromium, made famous by Erin Brockovich, resulting in water that apparently stings like an insect bite [image];

Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan, home to nearly 2 million cubic meters of radioactive mining waste that threatens the entire Ferghana valley, one of the most fertile and densely populated areas in Central Asia that also experiences high rates of seismic activity;

La Oroya, Peru, where the metal processing plant, owned by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation, leads to toxic emissions of lead;

Dzerzinsk, Russia, one of the country's principal chemical weapons manufacturing sites until the end of the Cold War [image];

Norilsk, Russia, which houses the world's largest heavy metals smelting complex;

Rudnaya Pristan, Russia, where lead contamination resulted in child blood lead levels eight to 20 times maximum allowable U.S. levels;

Chernobyl, Ukraine, infamous site of a nuclear meltdown 20 years ago; and

Kabwe, Zambia, where child blood levels of lead are five to 10 times the allowable EPA maximum [image].

The research team analyzed 35 polluted sites, narrowed down from more than 300 nominated by local communities, non-governmental organizations and local, national and international environmental authorities. The team was made up of international environment and health experts, including faculty members from Johns Hopkins and Mt. Sinai Medical Center serving on the technical advisory board of the Blacksmith Institute.

Fuller said the institute is currently working with national and international organizations to help clean up six of these sites. - Live Science

Happiness is the new Rich.

While googling, I found myself on a stranger's blog with a really interesting tidbit. Read the excerpt below:

I just stumbled across a wonderful "publish/subscribe" application at Folgers coffee's site TolerateMornings.com. It is a "BossTracker" that allows office workers to build a customized map of their office and then have people update the application with sightings of the boss as he/she wanders about the office. Of course, everyone is then notified of the boss' current location in graphical detail. -Bob Wyman's As I May Think blog

Hee Hee! It's like GawkerStalker inside an office!

Microsoft's Gates to End Day-to-Day Role in 2008
By ALLISON LINN, Reuters

REDMOND, Wash. (June 15) - Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates announced Thursday that he will transition from day-to-day responsibilities at the company he co-founded to concentrate on the charitable work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Gates will continue on as the company's chairman after transferring his duties over a two-year period.

"This was a hard decision for me," said Gates, who founded the world's largest software company with childhood friend Paul Allen. "I'm very lucky to have two passions that I feel are so important and so challenging. As I prepare for this change, I firmly believe the road ahead for Microsoft is as bright as ever."

I mean...how many boats does one man need? Give that money away!

Water lifting up tree trunks can climb 150 feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day... A tree stands there, accumulating deadwood, mute and rigid as an obelisk, but secretly it seethes; it splits, sucks, and stretches; it heaves up tons and hurls them out in a green, fringed fling. -Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest has a project called Fallen Fruit. Fallen Fruit maps public fruit trees, primarily in California for now.

Fruit that grows on trees in public places, and fruit that descends from boughs overhanging public places, is PUBLIC FRUIT. Anyone may pick it, or pick it up off the ground. The JAP sees this project as a way to provide simple, fresh, free nourishment to communities. I'd love to see this work.

Amazonian Pink Dolphins have a 40% larger brain capacity than humans. They also happen to be River dolphins, smaller than their Ocean-based relatives. My brain feels very, very small. And I ain't no dummy.