OTHER NEWS

IPOD ON THE WAY OUT?

DAVID SMITH, OBSERVER - UK - The Ipod, the digital music player beloved
of everyone from Coldplay's Chris Martin to President George Bush, is in
danger of losing its sheen. Sales are declining at an unprecedented
rate. Industry experts talk of a 'backlash' and of the Ipod 'wilting
away before our eyes'. Most disastrously, Apple's signature pocket
device with white earphones may simply have become too common to be
cool. . .

Industry-watchers warn that the Ipod could soon be regarded by teenage
cynics as their 'parents' player' because a mass-market product rarely
equates with edgy fashionability. Although it has sold nearly 60 million
actual Ipods and a billion downloaded songs worldwide, cracks have begun
to appear in the edifice. The Zandl Group, a New York-based trends
forecaster which regularly interviews a panel of 3,000 consumers aged
25-35, recently picked up its first significant criticisms. 'The Ipod is
far and away the most popular tech gadget with our panelists - however,
for the first time we are hearing negative feedback about the Ipod from
some panelists,' said the organization's spokeswoman, Carla Avruch.
'Panelists cite that the batteries are not replaceable, so when they die
the entire player must be replaced,' she said. 'We have heard from some
conspiracy theorists that the batteries are made to die soon after the
warranty ends.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1869042,00.html

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GREAT MOMENTS IN EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

CRISSA SHOEMAKER DEBREE, BUCKS COUNTY COURIER TIMES, PA - If you want a
job at the Philadelphia Park Casino, you'd better bring your dancing
shoes. Job applicants said they're being asked to dance to "YMCA" or a
Bon Jovi song - with blow-up guitar - during interviews at the Bucks
County Visitors and Conference Bureau in Bensalem. . . "I walked out,"
Mary Lou Bentivegna of Bensalem said Tuesday. "There were others who
were walking out. I had my head set to go in there to talk about
accounting." Bentivegna, 60, said she went Monday evening to what she
thought was an interview for an accounting position. A few dozen people
were already waiting. . . Bentivegna said there were many senior
citizens in the crowd, along with one man who had a prosthetic leg. She
said she doubted they had ever heard of the songs they were supposed to
perform. . . James Ryan, a spokesman for the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission's Washington, D.C., office, said he couldn't say
whether the auditions were improper. "That's the most interesting case
I've ever heard of," he said. "What about people who are older or have a
disability?"

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-09272006-719022.html

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THE CHILD THAT CAN NOT AGE

CHARLES LAURENCE, TELEGRAPH, UK - Brooke Greenberg has celebrated 12
birthdays according to the calendar and her family photo albums. In
terms of growing up, however, she has yet to reach her first. To the
mystification of the medical world, Brooke is frozen in time, a
real-life, female Peter Pan. She weighs 13 lb and measures 27 inches,
and looks and acts as if she were a six-month-old baby, not a girl about
to become a teenager.

Brooke lives with her parents Howard and Melanie Greenberg and her three
sisters in Reisterstown, a Baltimore suburb, and doctors credit her
survival to their love and support. . . For 12 years the family has
changed her nappies, rocked her to sleep and taken turns to give her
cuddles. On school days, she is carried gently into a yellow bus and
taken to a special school for handicapped children. Her condition has no
name and doctors are unaware of any other child in her situation.

Brooke has learned to pull herself up in her cot, crawl across the floor
and scoot along in a specially adapted baby-walker. She smiles at people
she recognizes, but has never been able to say a single word. She does
finger paintings when presented with a pot of paint and sheet of paper.
. . That, however, is about as far as she has developed. She simply does
not age.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/22/
wbrook22.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/22/ixworld.html

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LENTICULAR CLOUDS

ATHANASIUS KIRCHER SOCIETY - Lenticular clouds are simply one more
example of the beauty and complexity that can be the result from a
simple process in nature. These lens-shaped clouds are often mistaken
for UFOs because of their weird shape that seems to mandate a prior
design. . .

http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/?p=991

NO BIG BANG - The reason for their apparent stability is that they stay
close to the tops of the hills or mountain ranges above which they form
and maintain an apparently firm shape. They may also form 'downstream'
of the hills in the tops of the standing waves that form in the lee of
the hills. In fact, bands of lenticular clouds in the lee of a mountain
range are clear evidence that standing waves have formed in the air
stream. . .

http://www.no-big-bang.com/process/lenticularcloud.html

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PICTURES OF LENTICULAR CLOUDS
http://pic1.funtigo.com/valuca?g=25544746&cr=1

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