BEGINNERS & SENIORS GUIDE TO COMPUTERS

Now we have "The Lord of the Rings," the theatrical juggernaut that had its world premiere in Toronto flaunting its $23-million price tag. Featuring such great songs as: "What Kind of Troll am I?" "Seiging in the Rain" "Try to Dismember" "Me and My Gollum" "Consider Your Elf" "Old Man Rivendell" "Maim" "Gimli a Kiss to Build a Dream On" "Helm's Deep in the Heart of Texas" "Fro-Do-Re-Mi" "Paint Your Dragon" "Shelobs Me" "Don't Ents Me In"

Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil. Well, that's certainly a mouthful. Babs gets a tax break and little Neil gets the funds. As Obi-Wan once said: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Neil Bush founded Austin-based Ignite Learning, which produces the COW program, in 1999. Information about the effectiveness of the program, through district-generated reports, was not readily available according to an Houston school spokeswoman. Two years ago, the school district raised eyebrows when it expanded the program by relying heavily on private donations. The deal raised conflict of interest concerns because Neil Bush and company officials helped solicit the donations for the HISD Foundation, a philanthropic group that raises money. Last year, Neil Bush reportedly toured forme...

Day after day, alone on the hill, The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still. But nobody wants to know him, They can see that he's just a fool. And he never gives an answer ..... But the fool on the hill, Sees the sun going down. And the eyes in his head, See the world spinning around. Well on his way, his head in a cloud, The man of a thousand voices, talking perfectly loud. But nobody ever hears him, Or the sound he appears to make. And he never seems to notice ..... But the fool on the hill, Sees the sun going down. And the eyes in his head, See the world spinning around. And nobody seems to like him, They can tell what he wants to do. And he never shows his feelings, But the fool on the hill, Sees the sun going down. And the eyes in his head, See the world spinning around.

Here's a dial scan of New York City's FM band from 25 years ago (mp3). It was recorded shortly after the news of John Lennon's murder broke. The recording was made by an unknown listener. Very chilling for those of you who remember that sad night.

Sea ice in the Arctic has failed to re-form for the second consecutive winter, raising fears that global warming may have tipped the polar regions in to irreversible climate change far sooner than predicted. Recent findings from Nasa show that the Arctic is starting to respond to global warming. We have George Bush to thank for this development. In 2005, Bush administration officials working behind the scenes have succeeded in weakening key sections of a proposal for joint action by the eight major industrialized nations to curb climate change. Under U.S. pressure, negotiators agreed to delete language that would detail how rising temperatures are affecting the globe, set ambitious targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions, and set stricter environmental standards. The administration's push to alter the G-8's plan on global warming marks its latest effort to edit scientific or policy documents to accord with its position that mandatory carbon dioxide cuts are unnecess...

Deep doubts about the Iraq war and pessimism about America's future have shattered public confidence in President George W. Bush and helped drive his approval ratings to their lowest level ever. A new round of opinion polls found growing skepticism about Iraq and distrust of Bush. His image declined sharply, with one poll finding "incompetent" to be the most frequent description of his leadership. Bush's approval rating dipped as low as 33 percent in one recent poll after a string of bad news for the White House, including uproars over a now-dead Arab port deal, a secret eavesdropping program, a series of ethics scandals involving high-profile Republicans and a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina. A majority of Americans, 56 percent, believe Bush is "out of touch," the poll found. When asked for a one-word description of Bush, the most frequent response was "incompetent," followed by "idiot" and "liar." This is great news. C...

Cindy Sheehan is very busy these days. Actress Susan Sarandon is set to portray her in a biopic movie. I can't think of more inspired casting. The premiere spokeswoman for progressive thinkers portraying the premiere spokeswoman for peace. In addition, a crew will film Sheehan for a weekly reality series on the Sundance Channel. Her letters to President Bush inspired "Peace Mom," a one-woman monologue show in London. A memoir is due to her publisher April 1. A year ago Cindy was a rather anonymous mom, shaken by the fact that her son has been killed by an ambush halfway across the globe. Six months later, when she pitched a tent outside President Bush's Texas ranch and demanded he explain the "noble cause" for which Casey was sacrificed, her plaintive cry seized the moment in America. By injecting aching humanity into the political debate, she catalyzed public opinion against the war. Early during those muggy August days in Crawford -- when Bush balke...

What should you do if your eyeball comes out of your head? Get it put back in, and soon. The longer you remain in this rare condition—known as globe luxation—the more strain you'll put on the blood vessels and nerves that connect your eye to the rest of your head. Your luxated globes will also be susceptible to corneal abrasions or inflammation, and the feeling of your eyelids clamped down behind them won't be pleasant. You should be able to get your eye back in place without serious, long-term damage. (If the ocular muscles tear or if the optic nerve is severed, your outlook won't be as clear.) The treatment for globe luxation is pretty simple: Doctors apply some topical painkillers, hold back your lashes, and poke your eyeball into its socket by pressing on the white part with gloved fingers. (In some cases, they'll use a simple tool like a bent paperclip to shoehorn it back into place.) You might get antibiotics, lubricating drops, or steroids to follow up for a few ...

WOMEN OF SOUTH DAKOTA -- Maybe you're angry that your state thinks it knows better than you what to do with your body than you do. Maybe you're anxiously wondering where the nearest abortion clinic is, now that you will have to leave the state to get to one. In the 1960s and early 1970s, when abortions were illegal in many places and expensive to get, an organization called Jane stepped up to the plate in the Chicago area. Jane initially hired an abortion doctor, but later they did the abortions themselves. They lost only one patient in 13,000 -- a lower death rate than that of giving live birth. The biggest obstacle was the fact that they thought of abortion as something only a doctor could do. They were deceived -- much like you have probably been deceived. An abortion, especially for an early pregnancy, is a relatively easy procedure to perform. And now women of South Dakota is the time to learn how it is done. There is no reason you should be beholden to doctors -- esp...

When it comes to sex and romance, aging Canadian baby boomers spend a lot more time watching television or surfing the net, according to a new study. The survey by pollsters Ipsos Reid, commissioned by Pfizer Inc., the maker of Viagra, found that Canadians between the ages of 40 and 64 spend an average of 15 minutes a day on sex and romance, but can spend as much as five hours a day watching TV or surfing the Internet. 15 minutes of sex per day AND 5 hours per day watching TV and surfing the net? And the downside is what?

Short-lived supergroup Blind Faith's live debut will be chronicled on the DVD "London Hyde Park 1969," due April 10 in Europe and the following month in North America via Sanctuary. I was one of the fortunate few who saw these guys live at Madison Square Garden in New York. The opening act was Delaney and Bonnie and Friends with Eric Clapton on tambourine. The year was 1969. They were one of the first to use a revolving circular stage. You could tell how primitive the technology was at the time because you could see the stage crew constantly untangling the cables. But what about the music? Steve and Eric with incredible double guitar solos. Steve's great vocals and intense organ riffs. Even Rick Grech shines on the violin. And when do you see a standing ovation from 20,000 people for a 15 minute drum solo? The DVD features renditions of all six tracks from the group's lone self-titled studio album, which had not even been released at the time of the show....

Interior Secretary Gale Norton resigned Friday after five years of guiding the Bush administration's initiative to open government lands in the West to more oil and gas drilling, logging, grazing and commercial recreation. Finally good riddance to bad rubbish finally means something. One thing that Gale Norton never did was rid this country of bad rubbish. But many thanks are due to Gale: Thanks for supporting deforestation for the lumber companies. Thanks for allowing strip mining and blowing off the tops of mountains to increase coal profits and create toxic sludge which caused the deaths of innocent people. Thanks for relaxing pollution standards for chemical companies. Thanks for stripping federal protections of hundreds of protected animal species. Thanks for supporting oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Thanks for placing industrial cronies in key positions on your staff. Thanks for the increase of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. Thanks for opening public lands to...

South Dakota's governor signed a near-total ban on abortions in the state into law in what the governor called a ''direct frontal assault'' on the U.S. Supreme Court decision to legalize the practice 33 years ago. South Dakota has a state average IQ of 90 and is ranked 45 out of 50 in national intelligence. An IQ range of 80-90 is classified as "dullness". You can draw your own conclusions. The bill would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless the procedure was necessary to save the woman's life. It would make no exception for cases of rape or incest but such victims could get emergency contraception. Under the new law, doctors could get up to five years in prison for performing an illegal abortion. The abortion bill earlier this month passed the House 50-18 and the Senate by 23-12. For the most part, republicans have dominated the Statehouse since the 1970s. What a surprise! But Leslee Unruh, president of the National Abstinen...

Firebrand director Spike Lee has found an unlikely new target for his latest spray: the secretary of state. Says Lee: "I dislike Condoleezza Rice more than [President] Bush . The thing about it is that she's gotten a free ride from black people." Oh no, he didn't. "People say, 'She's so successful' and 'Look at her position as a black woman.' She is a black woman who grew up in Birmingham, Ala., and said that she never experienced a day of racism in her life," Lee tells the April issue of Stuff magazine. "Condi, stop smoking that crack!" "I know you love your Ferragamo shoes, but come on. While people were drowning in New Orleans, she was going up and down Madison Ave. buying Ferragamo shoes. Then she went to see 'Spamalot.'" You heard the man, Madame Secretary. Put down the crack pipe.

Mel Gibson will appear in a brief spot on this Sunday’s Oscar broadcast speaking another exotic tongue: Maya. That's the sole language of Apocalypto, the adventure epic set in Pre-Columbian Mexico that Gibson is currently shooting. Could Mayan human sacrifices cause as much of a stir among the politically correct as the anti-semitism in Gibson's depiction of the crucifixion of Christ? "After what I experienced with The Passion," he says, "I frankly don’t give a flying fuck about much of what they think." Gibson plans to use real Jews as human sacrifices. "I wanted to make it as close to reality as I could", said Gibson. His father, Hutton Gibson, is serving as Historical Consultant on the film. His last film, The Passion of the Christ, was spoken entirely in the dead languages of Latin, Aramaic and Forked Tongue. More violent than Texas Chainsaw Massacre and featuring terrifying hook-nosed Jews, millions of religious parents dragged their youn...

U.S. republican Rep. Katherine Harris said Thursday she did not knowingly do anything wrong in her associations with a defense contractor who prosecutors say illegally funneled thousands of dollars to her campaign in 2004. You remember Katherine Harris, don't you? She's the former Florida secretary of state (and chairperson of the Florida RNC -- no conflict there!) who helped fix the 2000 presidential election recount in favor of George Bush. The donations were described in a plea agreement last Friday, when Mitchell Wade, the former president of MZM Inc., pleaded guilty to bribing U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham in exchange for assistance in getting $150 million in Defense Department contracts for his company. He also admitted making illegal campaign contributions in the names of MZM employees and their spouses to Harris and Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va. Prosecutors said Harris got $32,000 from employees who were reimbursed by Wade. Harris said she rec...

Former republican Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham was sentenced in federal court to eight years and four months in prison for taking $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors in return for smoothing the way for government contracts. He may have once been counted among the leaders of the land, and he may have once been acclaimed as a war hero, but when he arrives at prison, Randy Cunningham will be just another prisoner, one of about 190,000 inmates now in the federal prison system. Regardless of the lofty status he once held, Cunningham won't be granted any extraordinary considerations, according to Sandra Hijar, spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Of course, his eight year sentence is already substantially less than most pot smokers get but I guess that doesn't count. What Cunningham will experience during his initial weeks is an orientation in which he is evaluated and introduced to the prison's rules and regulations, its program offe...

Some of the most highly promoted missions on NASA's scientific agenda would be postponed indefinitely or perhaps even canceled under the agency's new budget, despite its administrator's vow to Congress six months ago that not "one thin dime" would be taken from space science to pay for President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars . The cuts come to $3 billion over the next five years. Bush spends that much for one hour in Iraq. Among the casualties in the budget, released last month, are efforts to look for habitable planets and perhaps life elsewhere in the galaxy, an investigation of the dark energy that seems to be ripping the universe apart, bringing a sample of Mars back to Earth and exploring for life under the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa — as well as numerous smaller programs and individual research projects that astronomers say are the wellsprings of new science and new scientists. Could you imagine if we found life on other pl...

Now let me get one thing straight up front. I'd rather drink New Orleans levee water, go hunting with Dick Cheney or spend a fun filled weekend at Guantánamo Bay then listen to the life sucking radio program known as The Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. The show moves along at two speeds - slow and "hand me the defibrillator." That being said, I now have new found respect for this curmugeon of the heartland. In the latest edition of salon.com he calls for the impeachment of George Bush. Here are the highlights: "These are troubling times for all of us who love this country, as surely we all do, even the satirists. You may poke fun at your mother, but if she is belittled by others it burns your bacon. And then you read the paper and realize the country is led by a man who isn't paying attention, and you hope that somebody will poke him. Do we need to impeach him to bring some focus to this man's life? The man was lost and then he was ...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a woman who meets with princes and prime ministers but never goes a day without exercising. She's learned that it takes work to stay in shape -- both mentally and physically. "I put in a little gym at my apartment," she said. Rice prefers low-impact exercises, much like George Bush has on health care. "I'm ... a little bit over 50," Rice said with a smile. Her typical daily routine includes: 1. 10 minutes of Jumping Jacks on the Constitution. 2. 5 minutes of crunching the budget. 3. 10 minutes of spinning lies. 4. 5 minutes of stretching the truth. 5. 10 minutes of running the country into the ground. 6. Finally, her morning meeting with the president otherwise known as 20 minutes with the dumb bell.