Mike's Minutiae

Archaeologists from the United States have uncovered an ancient brewery in the mountains of southern Peru. The huge brewery was discovered by researchers at Cerro Baul, a religious centre for the pre-Inca Wari empire.

It is believed to have been used to brew vast quantities of a spicy, beer-like alcoholic drink called "chicha" and served to hundreds at one sitting.

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Each Wari noble would have consumed up to 10 litres of "chicha" per ceremony.

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"They knew they were pulling out and they had a big bonfire," Field Museum spokesperson Greg Borzo says.

They destroyed the site in an elaborate closing rite, setting fire to the entire brewery and throwing their ceramic drinking vessels onto its burning embers.

Low-cost RFID tags--many of which are smaller than a nickel and cost less too--are already being added to packaging by retailers to keep track of inventory, but could be abused by hackers and tech-savvy shoplifters, said Lukas Grunwald, a senior consultant with DN-Systems Enterprise Solutions GmbH. While the technology mostly threatens consumer privacy, it could allow thieves to fool merchants by changing the identity of goods, he said.

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The security expert announced during the session a new software tool he helped create that can be used to read and reprogram radio tags.

When such tools become widely available, hackers and those with less pure motives could use a handheld device and the software to mark expensive goods as cheaper items and walk out through self checkout. Underage hackers could attempt to bypass age restrictions on alcoholic drinks and adult movies, and pranksters could create confusion by randomly swapping tags, requiring that a store do manual inventory.

The feverish public debate in the US over gay marriages is to be played out in a forthcoming episode of The Simpsons, it emerged today.

The show's producers have revealed that the cartoon classic will feature an episode in which gay marriage is legalised in Springfield.

Hints about the plot line were dropped by show producer Matt Groening at a San Diego comic convention, where he revealed that Homer Simpson becomes a minister by registering online.

Producer Al Jean added: "We have a show where, to raise money, Springfield legalises gay marriage. Homer becomes a minister by going on the internet and filling out a form. A long time character comes out of the closet, but I'm not saying who."

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One early [speculated] favourite is billionaire Monty Burns' ever-devoted sidekick Waylon Smithers, who has been revealed in previous episodes to have a Mr Burns screensaver and dreams of a naked Mr Burns jumping out of a birthday cake.

Other candidates include Homer's cohorts at the nuclear plant, Carl and Lenny, as well as Moe the bartender, the Reverend Lovejoy, Principal Skinner and Comic Book Guy.

The gay marriage-themed episode is scheduled to air in January.

Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale and other characters from history may soon be able to speak again, as scientists perfect techniques to recover the sound from recordings that are far too delicate to be played.

Unconfirmed rumours abound that Abraham Lincoln even made a recording during the Civil War in 1863.

The New Yorker magazine reports in its July 26th edition that members of all four branches of the U.S. military can get face-lifts, breast enlargements, liposuction and nose jobs for free -- something the military says helps surgeons practice their skills.

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The magazine quoted an Army spokeswoman as saying, "the surgeons have to have someone to practice on."

"Two large ships sink every week on average, but the cause is never studied to the same detail as an air crash," says Wolfgang Rosenthal of the GKSS Forschungszentrum GmbH research center in Germany. "It simply gets put down to bad weather."

A significant handful of these sunken ships -- about 200 over the past two decades -- are supertankers or large container ships, according to a statement explaining Rosenthal's new research.

The cause for most of the mishaps is a mystery, but so-called rogue waves as tall as 10-story buildings are believed to be the major culprit in many cases. Yet until recent years, scientists doubted such strangely huge waves occurred so frequently.

A new study based on satellite data and lab experiments reveals the rogues are fairly common and helps explain how they form.

CBS is making very rich men out of The Who. The network's already forked over millions for the rights to use "Who Are You" and "Won't Get Fooled Again," for the opening themes of "C-S-I" and C-S-I: Miami." And now the New York Post says CBS has picked the band's song "Baba O'Reilly," for its newest C-S-I spinoff, "C-S-I: New York."

[About Buckley] there exists a tremendous polarization. My wonderful friend K1 nearly throttled me (and several bystanders) when visiting her in Atlanta years ago, I indicated a liking for Buckley. She went on for, well, I don't want to exaggerate, but she ran behind my car yelling insults (rather clever ones, of course) about Buckley as I sped up 85 toward the South Carolina border.

Much of it was based on his own unfortunately arrogant behavior she either witnessed, or was told about. And I know that Buckley's emotive singing can grate. It is pyrotechnical, hugely emotive, and at times more showy than communicative.

Thanks to a French footballer's television commercials for a popular French car, the English language officially has a new word: Va-va-voom.

"The quality of being exciting, vigorous, or sexually attractive," say the compilers of the 11th edition of the Oxford Concise English Dictionary, which hits bookshops Thursday (7/8).

Thierry Henry speaks the word -- or more precisely, asks just what does it mean -- in prime-time plugs for Renault, which hired the suave Arsenal striker to give its humble Clio sedan a more masculine image.

Democrats aren't amused by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's use of the mocking term "girlie men" to describe some lawmakers, although a spokesman for the governor said no apology would be forthcoming.

Schwarzenegger dished out the insult at a rally Saturday as he claimed Democrats were delaying the budget by catering to special interests. Democrats protested that the remark was sexist and homophobic.

"If they don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers ... if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men," Schwarzenegger said to the cheering crowd at a mall food court in Ontario.

The governor lifted the term from a long-running "Saturday Night Live" skit in which two pompous, Schwarzenegger-worshipping weightlifters repeatedly use it to mock those who don't meet their standards of physical perfection.

Adolph Coors Co., the third biggest U.S. brewer, and Canadian brewer Molson Inc. announced plans to merge Thursday in a deal aimed at helping them compete against the world's beermaking giants.

The combined company in what was described as a merger of equals would have annual revenues of about $6 billion and would rank fifth in the world by brewing volume, the companies said in a statement.

It will be known as Molson Coors Brewing Co., and will market brands like Coors Original and Coors Light, Molson Canadian, Keystone and Carling.

Flicking away pesky mosquitoes may be better than swatting the bloodsucking insects, which can risk infections if their body parts are smashed into human skin, researchers say.

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"I think if a mosquito was in mid-bite, it would be wiser to flick the mosquito off rather than squashing it," said one of the authors, Christina Coyle of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Proponents of the voice-based technology see its utility in everything from telemarketing to matchmaking. In Britain, a growing number of insurance companies have been using it to screen telephone claims in hopes of rooting out fraud--a goal they say has been borne out, both in fraud detection and in deterrence. One insurer, Admiral, says 25 percent of its car-theft claims have been withdrawn since it began using the system a year ago.

Nigerian mobile phone users have been anxiously checking who is calling them before answering them in recent days.

A rumour has spread rapidly in the commercial capital, Lagos, that if one answers calls from certain "killer numbers" then one will die immediately.

Oxford University math graduate Matthew Somerville was only trying to do fellow movie fans a favor when, flummoxed by the "highly inaccessible" website for Britain's Odeon cinema chain, he decided to redesign the service himself.

Out went the JavaScript, cookies and confusing menus that had muddled many visitors looking for movie times. Somerville hosted a slimmed-down, simplified imitation on his own server, which garnered praise from many users.

This movement of "unsolicited consultants" is raising accessibility awareness in the industry because many pro designers still do not understand the guidelines, Zeldman added.

But, with the United Kingdom's anti-discrimination Disability Rights Commission saying it is "only a matter of time" before companies are sued for having inaccessible websites, usability is gaining a higher profile.

The race is on to enable airline passengers to make and receive cell phone calls in flight.

Cell phone company Qualcomm has teamed with American Airlines to develop satellite-based air-to-ground cellular service. Several smaller companies are working on rival systems. In-flight cell service could be introduced within two years and become commonplace within four, developers believe.

Mobile phone calls made by passengers on aeroplanes can seriously affect the aircraft's on board equipment. The Civil Aviation Authority carried out tests on two parked aircraft at Gatwick Airport to find out the potential dangers of mobile phone use.

It found evidence that calls produced interference levels which could disrupt aircraft systems.

Faults that could be attributed to mobile phones use include false cockpit warnings, the malfunctioning of aircraft systems, interference in pilots' headsets and the distraction of cabin crews from their normal duties.

'Please take notice: EarthstationV Ltd., a Palestinian corporation, does not accept any legal process via e-mail, nor will we accept any attachments via e-mail. For service of process, you must serve our legal department located at our offices in the Jenin refugee camp, Jenin, Palestine.'

Law enforcement officials said on Monday they are looking for a man seen taking pictures of two refineries in Texas City, Texas.

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The man, described as white with dark hair, was seen taking pictures outside the refineries, all located on the same highway, at about 5 p.m. CDT on Saturday, said Bruce Clawson, emergency management and homeland security director for Texas City.

While it is not illegal to take pictures of a refinery from a highway or street, officials would like to talk to the man to find out his reason for taking the photographs.

"This is based on the idea that al Qaeda does its homework," Clawson said. "That's not to say we don't have enough home-grown idiots already who might want to do something."

The 200-foot airship, which coasted in from Switzerland this week, will provide aerial images of greater Athens to help police direct the most expensive security operation in Olympic history.

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The airship, filled with noncombustible helium, is fitted with dome-shaped sensors, including chemical "sniffers" and ultrahigh resolution cameras that also work at night, as well as detectors to pinpoint unexpected changes in image patterns.

Airships, used to watch over Allied navy convoys in World War II, are bidding to make a major comeback with the heightened need for security after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. 2001, and offer a cheaper and more flexible alternative to unmanned satellites.

Sound engineers could ditch their mixing desks if the work of researchers at Leeds University becomes reality.

Scientists are developing ways of capturing human movement in three dimensions which would allow music to be created with the gesture of an arm.

It would eliminate the need for music technicians to twiddle hundreds of knobs to achieve the perfect sound.

In an announcement that has sent waves of excitement through the rarefied world of astrophysics, Prof Stephen Hawking claims to have solved one of the greatest mysteries of black holes.

The world's best-known cosmologist will tell a scientific conference next week that black holes are not as "all-engulfing" as he, and most other physicists, once thought.

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Dr Malcolm Perry, a Cambridge University theoretical physicist and a colleague of Prof Hawking, said the solution lay in the nature of a black hole's event horizon - the "point of no return".

Prof Hawking is proposing that the event horizons of black holes may not be "one-way streets" after all.

Although large objects would almost certainly be lost forever once sucked into a black hole, small amounts of information could gradually seep out over billions of years.

New York Dolls bassist Arthur Kane died Tuesday night in Los Angeles due to complications from leukemia, the pioneering '70s glam rock group's manager told Billboard.com. Kane was 55.

I smile and Barbara Bush smiles wider. "Hi! How are you?" she says in a very loud voice. She immediately wraps her arms around me. "Oh my God," she says enthusiastically, "I love your shirt. Guys, look at her shirt." I am wearing a black turtleneck. Her friends look and nod approvingly. She surveys the room and steps very close to my face. For a minute I think she is going to kiss me. "Oh my God, this place is cool!" she shouts. "How long has it been here?" Even though the music is loud, her voice is much more forceful than needed to be heard.

"Since August," I say.

"It's so nice!" she says, adding, "You have pretty eyes."

I look around and spot Ariana and grab her arm. "Make sure that you give them a round on us," I tell her. "And, um, Barbara is a bit of a close-talker if you know what I mean."

[...]

From behind me I hear a loud voice. "Thank you, this is great, really." I turn around and there is Barbara, drink in hand, so close that if I just thrust my lips out a little we would touch.

The 17-digit codes that identify the origin, make, model and attributes of cars, trucks, buses -- even trailers -- worldwide will be exhausted by the end of the decade.

And like an odometer that returns to zero and starts over again, a Vehicle Identification Number -- or VIN -- could be duplicated.

Experts say duplicated VINs would cause havoc for repair shops, state license offices, insurance agencies, law enforcement and other groups that use VINs to process warranty claims, investigate accident claims and recover stolen vehicles.

The addition of an E and E-sharp complement the G-sharp, B and G-sharp that have been playing since February 2003.

"It's clear that because the hot portable player of (the day) is a constantly shifting target, the (era) of having fixed (digital rights management) stored on CDs is over," said Adam Gervin, senior director of marketing at Macrovision.

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Three years ago, thousands of drivers in Bremerton, Wash., were stumped on two occasions when their push-button remotes proved impotent. It happened in Las Vegas in February, prompting hundreds of calls to car dealerships and locksmiths. And in May, a two-way radio system being tested at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle jammed remote control garage door openers in communities near the base.

In most cases, remote control failure is little more than a curiosity, as drivers can simply use their keys to unlock the doors. Some cars, however, require the device to deactivate an alarm or start the engine. Charles Vernon, a retiree from Accokeek whose remote first malfunctioned at the mall in Waldorf on May 10, said the problem is a safety issue and an inconvenience.

Military radio signals have been implicated in other frequency mishaps in recent years. In Bremerton, the home of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, the first outage occurred about the time the USS Carl Vinson returned to port. Less than a month later, the second failure of keyless entry corresponded with the arrival of another aircraft carrier for maintenance, according to news reports. A subsequent FCC investigation could not prove the cause of the outages.

Bananas flavored with the hint of another fruit could help Chiquita become the Starbucks of the produce world, the company's leader says, envisioning a larger, creamier or sweeter banana.

Chiquita International Brands Inc. has taken its bananas to the research lab as part of an effort to make the fruit more appealing to consumers -- and to persuade them to pay more, president and CEO Fernando Aguirre told the Associated Press in an interview.

David Hyde Pierce, Tim Curry and Hank Azaria were named Wednesday as the leading trio for next year's Broadway-bound production of Monty Python's "Spamalot."

"Spamalot," to be directed by Oscar and Tony Award winner Mike Nichols, is billed as "the musical lovingly ripped off from the motion picture, 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail,"' the 1975 comedy directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones.

Here's a way to get young people registered to vote: Give them free beer.

That’s the plan at today’s East End Festival. Monroe County Democrats have teamed up with High Falls Brewery to offer two free 2-ounce beers to those who register to vote at the festival.

Then the new voter can go into a real voting booth and pick the brew they liked the most. The promotion is called "Register Your Taste."

Patrons at strip clubs throughout the country and now at some of the roughly 75 clubs in Wisconsin are being asked to put bosoms and bare bottoms out of their minds - for a minute - and to focus instead on election ballots.

Club owners are posting signs, handing out forms and even providing envelopes and stamps, anything to get customers to register to vote.

It's all part of a push by the adult entertainment industry to be heard in the 2004 presidential election. Industry advocates say President Bush's conservative agenda threatens the livelihood of their businesses and jeopardizes the First Amendment.

The government needs to establish guidelines for canceling or rescheduling elections if terrorists strike the United States again, says the chairman of a new federal voting commission.

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"Look at the possibilities. If the federal government were to cancel an election or suspend an election, it has tremendous political implications. If the federal government chose not to suspend an election it has political implications," said [chairman DeForest B.] Soaries, a Republican and former secretary of state of New Jersey.

"Who makes the call, under what circumstances is the call made, what are the constitutional implications?" he said.

Farid and Dartmouth graduate student Alin Popescu have developed a mathematical technique to tell the difference between a "real" image and one that's been fiddled with. Consider a photo of two competing CEOs talking over a document labeled "confidential - merger," or a photo of Saddam Hussein shaking hands with Osama bin Laden. The Dartmouth algorithm, presented recently at the 6th International Workshop on Information Hiding, in Toronto, Canada, can determine if someone has manipulated the photos, like blending two photos into one, or adding or taking away objects or people in an image.

Farid's algorithm looks for the evidence inevitably left behind after image tinkering. Statistical clues lurk in all digital images, and the ones that have been tampered with contain altered statistics.

"Natural digital photographs aren't random," he says. "In the same way that placing a monkey in front of a typewriter is unlikely to produce a play by Shakespeare, a random set of pixels thrown on a page is unlikely to yield a natural image. It means that there are underlying statistics and regularities in naturally occurring images."

They're a summer must for the in-crowd in Germany -- flip-flops. They come in bright colors, vibrant patterns and suggest innocent, sunshine-dappled, lazy days. They might also make you sterile or worse.

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The German consumer affairs magazine Ökotest tested 25 different brands of the shoes; 14 of them emerged with an "unsatisfactory" rating. Why? There are toxic substances living among those happy colors and trippy designs. The more expensive the shoes, it seems, the more harmful they might be.

The test found several different kinds of toxins in the shoes, among them phthalate, with his suspected of acting like a hormone when introduced to the human body and can damage the liver, kidneys or the reproductive system.

The company's micro hot plates--which measure on average 100 microns by 100 microns--can reach higher temperatures much faster than existing tiny heating units, but are also more robust and less prone to failure, according to Rick Mlcak, president co-founder of the company.

The unit takes only about 1 one-thousandth of a second to hit peak temperature of 1,100 degrees Celsius, or 2,012 degrees Fahrenheit. That's about the same temperature as the surface of Venus. The rapid climb in temperature, in part, comes from the small size of the unit, the materials involved and the design of the plate.

But when he died at the age of 80 in a Los Angeles hospital on Thursday, from lung failure and heart problems, he was by all accounts living in virtual penury. His home was a shabby one-bedroom bungalow in Beverly Hills.

By Brando's own admission, his income in his final years was "limited and sporadic", the sole constants his pensions from the state and the Screen Actors Guild, totalling £4,000 a month.

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding Generations, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this time forward forever more.

A Boy Scout troop tried to put a dent in a potential $14 million judgment Friday by selling lemonade -- at $250 a glass.

The federal and state governments earlier this week sued the Boy Scouts of America to recover costs of the 2002 East Fork fire, allegedly started by Utah Scouts.

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Troop 347 of Fruit Heights, a suburb north of Salt Lake City, was not involved in the camping trip two years ago that officials say precipitated the fire -- a fact that the boys pointed out to potential donors -- but they still wanted to help their fellow Scouts.

The 12- and 13-year-olds spent two hours hawking lemonade to build up a fund in case the Boys Scouts lose the lawsuit.

But $14 million is a lot of lemonade, so prices were inflated a bit. A sip cost $1, a small glass $3 and for $250, folks could get a large -- about 16 ounces.

"If only one person in 40 in the entire state of Utah buys a large, it's over," said Scott Fisher, a morning radio disc jockey who helped organize the fund-raising event.

Accounting for subscribers "will get more complex," said Richard Nespola, chief executive of the Management Network Group, a consultant to telecommunications companies.

"When you have convergence and you smash all these things together, stuff is going to happen and stuff that people don't like," he said.

Through Cassini we hope to gain a better understanding of the planet Saturn, its famous rings, its magnetosphere, its principal moon Titan and its other moons or "icy satellites."

Some skeptics say the partisan games are mere election-year novelties. "The games are anecdotes," said Andrew Rasiej, an Internet impresario who organized a recent conference on digital democracy at the New School for Social Research in New York. "They're cute and nice, and people will send them to each other, but they're not going to capture their imagination because that populace will recognize that the culture that's creating these games isn't a natural Net culture. It's a typical political machine using it to showcase itself."

But advocates say the game format offers a powerful new political vehicle. Traditional forms of political communication like advertising treat voters as passive recipients of rhetoric, they say, while games entice the potential voter to interact with the message.

Film studios and movie theaters are joining forces to offer rewards of up to $500 to theater employees who nab people using camcorders to record films.

The rewards program is the latest in a series of efforts to stem camcording piracy, which the Motion Picture Association of America estimates costs the industry billions of dollars each year.

The late Douglas Adams, creator of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, will be heard in the first new radio adaptation of his work in 25 years.

He recorded the part of Agrajag in his home studio 18 months before he died in 2001, aged 49.

Digital technology will be used to include his voice in a 14-part adaptation of the final three Hitchhiker books on BBC Radio 4.

Five of the original radio cast are taking part in the new series, including Simon Jones as Arthur Dent and Geoffrey McGivern as his alien travelling companion Ford Prefect.