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Greek women lead Olympics to success | csmonitor.com

Greek women lead Olympics to success | csmonitor.com

World > Europe

from the August 31, 2004 edition

Greek women lead Olympics to success
By Coral Davenport | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

ATHENS – While ancient history was the buzzword of the Olympic Games' return to their birthplace, history was also made in a very modern way: these were the first Olympics with women in the key leadership roles, including the first-ever woman head of a national Olympic organizing committee and the first woman mayor of an Olympic city.

Having women fill these roles is remarkable in itself, say Greeks, but even more so given that this is a European nation without a strong tradition of feminism or gender equity. Though Greece was the birthplace of democracy, Greek women weren't able to vote until 1952. The practice of obligatory dowries wasn't outlawed until 1983. Today, there are only 39 women in Greece's 300-member Parliament, and Greece routinely ranks at the bottom of female representation in government, trade unions, and political parties among the 25 nations of the European Union.

The New York Times > Sports > Olympics > Closing Ceremony: For Greece, Olympics Leave Pride, Relief and a Huge Bill

The New York Times > Sports > Olympics > Closing Ceremony: For Greece, Olympics Leave Pride, Relief and a Huge Bill

CLOSING CEREMONY

For Greece, Olympics Leave Pride, Relief and a Huge Bill
By SUSAN SACHS, Published: August 30, 2004

ATHENS, Aug. 29 - The last heart-pounding race of the Summer Games ended Sunday in a white marble arena in the heart of Athens, bringing the modern Olympics full circle - back to the precise spot where they were revived 108 years ago.

The finish of the men's marathon at Panathinaiko Stadium, followed by the traditional parade of athletes under the sweeping roof of the new polymer-and-concrete Olympic Stadium, crowned 16 days of competition, which were marked by moments of individual triumph and a record-breaking number of athletes thrown out on doping charges.

The Athens Olympics, in which more than 10,000 athletes from nearly 200 countries competed, also broke records as the most expensive and most fortified international sporting event ever staged. It could become the prototype for securing other major gatherings against the threat of terrorism.

Great games, for Greece, and world's athletes.. I will miss the exciting daily events, and look forward to 2008.. hail Greek games, great nation host...

Scotland on Sunday - The Review - The good old days when men were men - and so were the women

Scotland on Sunday - The Review - The good old days when men were men - and so were the women

The good old days when men were men - and so were the women

ALLAN HUNTER

Stage Beauty (15) Director: Richard Eyre Starring: Billy Crudup Running time: 110 minutes

WHEN Hollywood learned to talk, many distinguished careers came to an abrupt end. Actors who could convey the most subtle, spellbinding emotions on the silent screen were cruelly exposed at the start of the sound era. All-American heroes with thick foreign accents or matinee idols with high-pitched squeals soon joined the unemployment lines.

The problems of another transitional period provide the substance of Stage Beauty, an intelligent, entertaining examination of the line between illusion and reality, truth and falsehood, love and sex.

The Best 357 Colleges Rankings on The Princeton Review

The Best 357 Colleges Rankings on The Princeton Review

The Best 357 Colleges Rankings on The Princeton Review

We've created 64 rankings lists, organized into 9 categories, based on student feedback. Plus, 8 new schools have made the cut. Enjoy!
Get the complete list...

Good one, and search by college...

The New York Times > Travel > Practical Traveler: Tracking Down Cheap Air Fares

The New York Times > Travel > Practical Traveler: Tracking Down Cheap Air Fares

PRACTICAL TRAVELER

Tracking Down Cheap Air Fares
By SUSAN STELLIN, Published: August 29, 2004

WITH all the rock-bottom sales advertised over the summer - $200 to fly round trip between New York and San Francisco on several airlines or $39 to fly one-way within California on Southwest - it's easy to feel as if you're missing out on a secret if you never come across such cheap fares.

For anyone who has ever asked, "Why can't I ever find such good deals?" the answer is that shopping for plane tickets is a lot like buying shoes, sofas or stereos: Some people just get lucky and happen upon a fabulous bargain, while others are expert shoppers and put a lot of time and effort into the hunt.

The New York Times > Arts > Television > What Women Want to Watch

The New York Times > Arts > Television > What Women Want to Watch

NYTimes.com > Arts > Television

What Women Want to Watch
By SUSAN DOMINUS, Published: August 29, 2004

WHEN Mark Graff, a longtime veteran of adult entertainment, founded Playgirl TV in 2003, he wasn't necessarily interested in liberating women to enjoy the pleasures of erotic entertainment; he was more interested in exploiting them, as an underserved market.

Mr. Graff, who had created Spice Entertainment, a raunchier alternative to Playboy TV, had always believed that women were among Spice's loyal viewers, although the content, like most pornography, was made with men in mind. "When we moved Spice from 10 o'clock at night to the middle of the day, the buy rates went nuts," Mr. Graff says, sitting in his office the in the East 40's. "It couldn't all be out-of-work truckers. It had to be a lot of housewives."

Forbes.com - 60 Cheap Places To Live

Forbes.com - 60 Cheap Places To Live

Special Report

60 Cheap Places To Live
Rich Karlgaard, 08.16.04, 7:00 AM ET

This special report was adapted from Life 2.0: How People Across America Are Transforming Their Lives by Finding the Where of Their Happiness (Crown Business, $24.95), a new book by Rich Karlgaard, the Forbes publisher and Digital Rules columnist.

In these 60 small towns, medium-sized cities and larger metro regions, you can live well and your dollar will go far. Of course, the "live well" half our claim is shot through with subjectivity. It will be highly dependent on who you are, and what you want out of life. There are plenty of folks who will steadfastly refuse to suffer even one more day of subfreezing temperatures--period, end of story. Others may be bored to the point of madness by living in a small town. They crave big-city stimulation. Their hope is to find such a lifestyle devoid of Manhattan-like expenses and pressures. Our hope is that this special report will help you find the where of your happiness. Click on a type of community--Porch-Swing, Happy Hootervilles, IQ Campuses, Steroid Cities, Bohemian Bargains, or Telecommuting Heavens--for a short description and our ten picks in that category.

MSNBC - Eye-appealing foods

MSNBC - Eye-appealing foods

Eye-appealing foods
Fruits, vegetables may help prevent vision loss
By Karen Collins, Updated: 2:26 p.m. ET Aug. 27, 2004

In our aging population, more and more older adults will find their independence prematurely ended as eye disease removes their ability to drive, read and pursue favorite hobbies. Two new studies offer hope that healthy eating patterns that lower our risk for cancer and heart disease may also protect our eyes. Experts say that while high-dose nutrients in supplement form might help those diagnosed with one type of eye disease, evidence does not support high-dose supplements as a preventive tool.

Have e-books turned a page? | CNET News.com

Have e-books turned a page? | CNET News.com

The Net >> Digital media

Have e-books turned a page?
Published: August 27, 2004, 4:00 AM PDT
By David Becker, Staff Writer, CNET News.com

After more than a decade of false starts and empty promises, publishers may finally be starting to understand what consumers want from electronic books.
Although revenues remain tiny, industry surveys show encouraging signs of growth in e-book sales over the past year. Publishing executives and analysts say the industry is finally coming to grips with the most significant issues that have stalled e-book adoption to date.

What's new:
Publishers are getting smarter about what consumers really want from e-books.

Bottom line:
Sales are growing steadily, but digital rights management and other issues are likely to prevent any mass-market breakthrough.

More stories on e-books The Open eBook Forum trade group tallied e-book sales of $3.23 million for the first calendar quarter of 2004--a mere rounding error compared to the multibillion-dollar market for paper books. But that figure marks a 28 percent jump from a year ago, suggesting that e-books are on track to meet optimistic forecasts for the year.

Good article, looks at the current problems and possible solutions.. includes quoted comments from old friend Jean Bedord, a colleague from our time at DIALOG.. way to go, Jean...

About us - Nostalgia Central

About us - Nostalgia Central

About us . . . Nostalgia Central

I created Nostalgia Central in 1998 because I thought it would be "a good hobby" . . . Originally housed at a free Geocities URL, within 6 months the site was attracting over 2,000 hits a week. At the time there wasn't much quality nostalgic content on the Internet and the site soon grew much larger than I had ever envisaged.

This ultimately drove a move to a dedicated server in December 1999, and the site was relaunched as nostalgiacentral.com on January 1st, 2000.

By 2001 Nostalgia Central housed close to 200MB of pages, graphics and sound files and was attracting a million hits per month - so much for the hobby!

In order to fulfil my dream of ensuring Nostalgia Central was a definitive "one-stop shop" for everything from the 60s, 70s and 80s, I closed the site in 2001 and undertook an exhaustive (and exhausting) makeover.

Early in 2003 significant technology infrastructure upgrades took place, and as a result, Nostalgia Central now houses 2GB of information and receives over 1.5 million visits each month from people in the USA, UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.The site has always received a great deal of support, particularly from the academic and media communities who use this site as a research and reference tool, and from individuals who cherish the memories of the three greatest decades of the 20th Century and enjoy the site as pure nostalgic entertainment.

If you have anything you'd like to see included here, or have any interesting links, please email Nostalgia Central. Similarly, if anything rings a bell or tugs a heartstring (or turns a stomach) let us know also.

Thank you all for your patronage and support of this site over the past five years.

David Turner

A big special thank you to the staff at the Westminster Central Reference Library (London) and all present and past members of the TV Cream and Bullet mailing lists.

And an extra extra big thank you to all the family, friends and loved ones who have tolerated my constant absence from any social event or special occasion that couldn't drag me away from the keyboard, the scanner, the internet and an old copy of the TV Times!

Enjoy your trip in the time machine. . .

Thanks to the pointer from the Scout Report newsletter...

ALA | Strategic Plan to 2010

ALA | Strategic Plan to 2010

ALA and Strategic Plan 2010

Read more about the plan, planning process.. for American Library Association, ALA...

Congressional Documents: Browse Page

Congressional Documents: Browse Page

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| More access to congressional documents |
| from the browseability dept. |
| posted by Rochelle on Thursday August 26, @15:41 (GovDocs) |
| http://www.lisnews.com/article.pl?sid=04/08/26/1421215 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]Daniel writes "In GPO's continuing effort to increase the
accessibility of the resources available on GPO Access, users can now
browse the catalog of House, Senate and Treaty documents, by Congress,
beginning with the 104th Congress (1995-1996).

The Browse Documents page is available at:
[1]http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/cdocuments/browse.html

House and Senate documents include communications and reports from the
President and other executive branch officials. Browsing the 108th
Congress contents turned up progress reports on Kossovo peacekeeping and
the War on Terror, among many other issues.

GovDoc trivia - The "catalog of House, Senate, and Treaty documents, by
Congress" contains most of the same materials as the Serial Set."

Above posting from LISNews.com...

MediaDailyNews: Blogging Goes Mainstream

MediaDailyNews: Blogging Goes Mainstream

Blogging Goes Mainstream
By Tobi Elkin, Executive Editor, Friday, August 27, 2004

...

If blogging is so pervasive, how much traffic do blogs attract? According to ComScore Media Metrix, the top four blogs - BlogSpot, Typepad, Blogrolling, and Blogger - reach about 5.5 million people per month. Google's BlogSpot, which shows consumers how to create their own blogs, has grown 56 percent over the past six months. Technorati, a company that provides search and notification services for active content on the Web, monitors more than 3 million Web logs.

Microsoft's MSN has said that blogging, blog searches, and links to blogs will be integrated into the search product it's creating.

Mitsue-Links Releases Blog Configuration Service for Business Activities

Mitsue-Links Releases Blog Configuration Service for Business Activities

Mitsue-Links Releases Blog Configuration Service for Business Activities

TOKYO, Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Mitsue-Links Co., Ltd. (Nakano-ku, Tokyo;
Representative Director: Masashi Takahashi; hereinafter "Mitsue-Links") has
released a new Blog configuration service, which enables blogs to be applied
to businesses.

Blogs have been receiving widespread coverage in magazines and other
media. The features of blogs include their openness as a medium, enabling a
great deal about the writer to be conveyed, and the ease with which articles
can be added or revised and communication with readers facilitated.

On conventional websites, communication is usually one-way, from writers to
readers. But RSS enables revised blogs to be conveyed efficiently to readers,
and comments and trackback functions facilitate feedback from readers.

Worth a look for companies or media or news sites wishing to manage blogs easier, better...

Cassini-Huygens: Multimedia-Images-Latest Images

Cassini-Huygens: Multimedia-Images-Latest Images

Cassini-Huygens (Saturn Mission) Images

MULTIMEDIA - Images - Latest Press Images

Golden Rings
August 19, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06424

Saturn's rings appear golden as the planet's shadow drapes across nearly the whole span of the rings. In the upper left corner is Saturn's moon Mimas.

This color image was taken on August 15, 2004, with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera, using the red, green, and blue filters. The image was taken 8.8 million kilometers (5.5 million miles) from Saturn. Contrast has been enhanced to aid visibility.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Here is just one example of dozens of incredible photos online from Saturn, Titan moon, and more.. click the thumbnail image for a larger version.. or see and get a copy on the NASA site...