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Las Vegas SUN: Revelers pour into Las Vegas to toast New Year

Las Vegas SUN: Revelers pour into Las Vegas to toast New Year.

December 30, 2005
Revelers pour into Las Vegas to toast New Year
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LAS VEGAS (AP) - And you thought your relatives were a handful.

City officials, boosters and residents are braced to entertain 300,000 out-of-town guests for a New Year's blowout - an annual experiment in champagne and crowd control.

On the agenda this year is a scheme to break the Guinness world record for the largest simultaneous toast, a smattering of promised celebrity sightings and velvet-rope parties, and a pyrotechnic show with a $500,000 price tag.

"We do everything to excess in Las Vegas," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said Friday.

Last year's party brought 293,000 people and event planners are expecting more Saturday. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau estimates that 98 percent of the area's hotel rooms are booked. The bureau says the one-night party should generate $187 million - not counting gambling.

Celebrations will range from high brow to accessible.

Wynn Las Vegas, the Strip's newest luxury hotel, will celebrate the opening of Tryst, a nightclub with its own 90-foot waterfall and secluded lagoon. For $2,000, clubgoers get a VIP table for up to 10 people and a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne.

Match Point - Review - Movies - New York Times

Match Point - Review - Movies - New York Times.

MOVIE REVIEW | 'MATCH POINT'

London Calling, With Luck, Lust and Ambition
By A. O. SCOTT, Published: December 28, 2005

Because Woody Allen's early films are about as funny as any ever made, it is often assumed that his temperament is essentially comic, which leads to all manner of disappointment and misunderstanding. Now and then, Mr. Allen tries to clear up the confusion, insisting, sometimes elegantly and sometimes a little too baldly, that his view of the world is essentially nihilistic. He has announced, in movie after movie, an absolute lack of faith in any ordering moral principle in the universe - and still, people think he's joking.

In "Match Point," his most satisfying film in more than a decade, the director once again brings the bad news, delivering it with a light, sure touch. This is a Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine. You would have to go back to the heady, amoral heyday of Ernst Lubitsch or Billy Wilder to find cynicism so deftly turned into superior entertainment. At the very beginning, Mr. Allen's hero, a young tennis player recently retired from the professional tour, explains that the role of luck in human affairs is often underestimated. Later, the harsh implications of this idea will be evident, but at first it seems as whimsical as what Fred Astaire said in "The Gay Divorcée": that "chance is the fool's name for fate."

I'm looking forward to this new Woody Allen film, and hope it is as good as it gets...

LISNews.org | Ten [ Library-Related ] Stories that Shaped 2005

LISNews.org | Ten [ Library-Related ] Stories that Shaped 2005.

Ten [ Library-Related ] Stories that Shaped 2005
posted by John on Friday December 30, @12:00PM
from the play-it-again dept.

It's that time again when the media looks at the year in ideas and we review the top stories of 2005. Below are some of the highlights of this year's library news. For some background, see the 2004 and 2003 recaps, as many of those stories are alive and well.

This year we look back at stories that cover Google, a good looking librarian, a curmudgeonly president, Wikis, Rootkits and more. The LIS world continues to be shaped by the stories you read here. Update: 12/30 13:12 GMT by J :Added some late entries. Make sure you add your own memorable stories in the comments below!

USATODAY.com - New California laws at a glance

USATODAY.com - New California laws at a glance.

Posted 12/30/2005 11:08 PM

New California laws at a glance
The Associated Press

Here's a look at some of the California laws taking effect Jan. 1.

AGGRESSIVE DOGS: Local governments can enact ordinances for specific breeds mandating spaying and neutering and imposing restrictions on breeding.

BODY PIERCING: Makes performing body piercing on a minor punishable by a $250 fine, unless the minor's parent gives approval.

As boomers turn 60, what did they do?

As boomers turn 60, what did they do?.

Saturday Spin, Saturday, December 31, 2005

As boomers turn 60, what did they do?

The Greatest Generation fought and won the biggest war in human history, then came home to build the most prosperous economy the world has ever seen.

And they also had babies -- lots of them. Between 1946 and 1964, about 76 million children were born to U.S. parents, a birth cohort so large that the impulses, desires and appetites of the group have shaped U.S. culture for half a century.

Now, on New Year's Day, the very first of these baby boomers will turn 60. It's a bit of an arbitrary milestone since there are quite a few people born a year or two earlier who feel very much a part of this group. At the same time, many on the tail end of the demographic do not have an especially close kinship with the so-called '60s Generation since the youngest boomers were mere newborns when the older boomers were losing their hearts and haircuts to the Beatles.

Thoughts? Well, we were the generation behind the modern women's and civil rights movements. We questioned authority, and we produced some amazing art, music, and culture in our times. It's not a bad legacy.. did we "change the world"? .. yes, in the sense of history that suggests all generations "change the world" they inherited...

The Mystery of Dinner for One - How an obscure British skit has become Germany's most popular New Year's tradition

The Mystery of Dinner for One - How an obscure British skit has become Germany's most popular New Year's tradition.

The Mystery of Dinner for One
How an obscure British skit has become Germany's most popular New Year's tradition.
By Jude Stewart, Posted Friday, Dec. 30, 2005, at 12:13 PM ET
Listen to this story on NPR's Day to Day.

Every New Year's Eve, half of all Germans plunk down in front of their televisions to watch a 1963 English comedy sketch called Dinner for One. Walk into any bar in Bavaria and shout the film's refrain: "The same procedure as last year, madam?" The whole crowd will shout back in automatic, if stilted, English: "The same procedure as every year, James."

Even though Dinner for One is, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most frequently repeated TV program ever, it has never been aired in the United Kingdom or the United States, and most of the English-speaking world is ignorant of its existence.

When Der Spiegel probed the mystery last New Year's, it found that the BBC had not only never contemplated broadcasting this veddy British nugget in the United Kingdom, the BBC's spokesperson had never even heard of it.
...
(You can watch all of Dinner for One here or read the English script here.)

Sounds hilarious, and a must-see on New Year's Eve here.. a little light humor, as we approach 2006.. enjoy! ...

Brilliant 'Kane' still amazes, mystifies

Brilliant 'Kane' still amazes, mystifies.

Movies
Brilliant 'Kane' still amazes, mystifies
December 30, 2005

BY ROGER EBERT, Sun-Times Film Critic

``I don't think any word can explain a man's life,'' says one of the searchers through the warehouse of treasures left behind by Charles Foster Kane. Then we get the famous series of shots leading to the closeup of the word ``Rosebud'' on a sled that has been tossed into a furnace, its paint curling in the flames. We remember that this was Kane's childhood sled, taken from him as he was torn from his family and sent east to boarding school.

Once again, Roger Ebert gives us a loving and faithful tribute to the great film, "Citizen Kane" .. he's made me choose to re-watch it on New Year's Day.. Happy New Year, Roger...

Making merry in old Virginia - Los Angeles Times

Making merry in old Virginia - Los Angeles Times.

Making merry in old Virginia
Colonial Williamsburg's Christmas: Part 18th century, part wink
By Beverly Beyette, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Like a town crier of yesteryear, a woman in a long cloak and ruffled mobcap passed by, announcing to one and all, "One minute to the fireworks."

Small bonfires burned in the dark streets of Colonial Williamsburg, and people gathered around cressets, pole-held iron baskets filled with blazing pine. Candles glowed in the windows of the 18th-century houses along Duke of Gloucester Street, the main thoroughfare.

Then — boom! — from in front of the octagonal brick magazine, where gunpowder was stored in Colonial Virginia, a great explosion sent up a spectacular shower of red and green rockets, white sparklers and shooting stars.

Clutching a cup of cider and a piece of ginger cake, I wiggled my way through the crowd to a spot from which I could see three firework shows at once: this one, the display at the Governor's Palace behind me and, to my left, at the Capitol, a reminder of its status as the capital of the Virginia Colony from 1699 to 1780.

It was the first Sunday in December, and I had come to Colonial Williamsburg, 150 miles south of Washington, D.C., for this, the annual Grand Illumination. It ushers in a Christmas season of concerts and plays, hands-on workshops, festive dining events and programs.

10 Greatest Gadget Ideas of the Year - New York Times

10 Greatest Gadget Ideas of the Year - New York Times.

David Pogue
10 Greatest Gadget Ideas of the Year
Published: December 29, 2005

ON New Year's Eve, don't be surprised to witness more heartfelt celebrating than usual; 2005 was not a year noted for its tidings of good cheer, and plenty of people will be happy to see it go.

Still, there were inspiring and gratifying success stories if you knew where to look - and the high-tech industry was one of them. Google Earth redefined how we think of our planet, the Razr phone proved that people do care about beauty, and the iPod - well, you know all about the iPod. But some of the year's greatest joys weren't new products, but aspects of new products. Here and there, you could find tiny touches of brilliance: clever steps forward and new spins on old features that somehow made it through committee, past the bean counters and under the radar of marketing departments.

Here they are, the 10 best gadget ideas of 2005
...

Club Med rolls on through love, war, trends - Los Angeles Times

Club Med rolls on through love, war, trends - Los Angeles Times.

TRAVEL SHORTS
Club Med rolls on through love, war, trends
Times have changed, and the French resort chain has, too

By Susan Spano, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

The year my family vacationed on the French-Caribbean island of Martinique, Jimmy Carter was president, the state of Utah executed Gary Gilmore and John Travolta starred in the movie "Saturday Night Fever." Our hotel was in St. Anne, near the Club Med Buccaneer's Creek, so my brother and I were on the lookout for swinging singles frolicking, nearly naked, on the beach. We were barely old enough to vote and hopelessly unsophisticated.

It was 1977, when Club Med, the French resort chain with the spicy "antidote-to-civilization" slogan, symbolized everything about sex our mother didn't want us to know because it had nothing to do with procreation.

"In the '70s, there was that whole hedonistic thing," said Mark Wiser, Club Med marketing vice president for the Americas. "That's when Club Med became a sensation for the sea, sex and sun vacation. We didn't create it. It just happened at that time in the culture."

Ten years later, Carter was back in Georgia, "Saturday Night Fever" had cooled and twentysomethings were working 60-hour weeks on Wall Street instead of swinging with a different partner every night at Buccaneer's Creek.

That would have been bad news for Club Med, except that like almost everything else, it has changed with the times.

Chicago Tribune | Las Vegas, lighted by stars

Chicago Tribune | Las Vegas, lighted by stars.

chicagotribune.com >> Travel
From the Los Angeles Times
THE REVIEW

Las Vegas, lighted by stars

Joël Robuchon was at the pinnacle when he retired 10 years ago. Now he's back.
By S. Irene Virbila, Times Staff Writer
Published December 28, 2005

Las Vegas -- The waiter sets a clear glass cup on a gold-leaf saucer in front of me. Inside is a cool white cream, its surface smooth as glass and decorated with a circle of precise green dots the size of pinpricks. It looks mysterious and inviting. I dip in my spoon and take a bite — that silken cream carries the earthy flavor of cauliflower, beneath it is a chilled gelée that tastes like the sea, and below that, a thick layer of caviar that bursts against the tongue. All that, all at once, how incredibly sensual.

It's unmistakably the touch of Joël Robuchon, the three-star Michelin chef who closed his Paris restaurant and retired almost a decade ago at the height of his fame.

And yet here I am, in the most unlikely place on the planet having one of the greatest French meals I've ever had in this country. And Robuchon's name is above the door.

Curling Up With a Good E-Book

Curling Up With a Good E-Book.

DECEMBER 29, 2005
News Analysis, By Burt Helm

Curling Up With a Good E-Book

Is the iPod of e-readers at hand? Previous models haven't caught the public's fancy, but some major publishers seem to think Sony is about to change that

Can Sony make the iPod of digital books? That's the plan. At the Consumer Electronics Show on Jan. 4 in Las Vegas, BusinessWeek has learned, the Japanese giant plans to unveil a portable e-reader device for the U.S. The new gadget will let users store and view digital books and will sell for $300 to $500, about the same price range as a full-size iPod.

Sony (SNE), which would provide few details about the e-reader, also has agreements with at least three major publishers to sell digital book downloads on its Sony Connect online store -- much the way Apple (AAPL) sells music and video at its iTunes Music Store.Back in 2000, a bunch of e-book readers hit the market, only to tank because the technology didn't adequately duplicate the book-reading experience.

Wired 14.01: POSTS: File This Under Data Overload

Wired 14.01: POSTS: File This Under Data Overload.

Issue 14.01 - January 2006
File This Under Data Overload

As a young historian visiting the National Archives more than four decades ago, Allen Weinstein met an employee named Mr. Taylor who seemed to know the whereabouts of every document - from the Declaration of Independence to the latest Bureau of Mines report - in the entire block-long neoclassical complex. Mr. Taylor was still working there last February when Weinstein was sworn in as the ninth archivist of the United States.

Weinstein has a lot to say about the 84-year-old civil servant when I meet him in his vast office, furnished mostly in the generic colonial-federalist style favored by embassies and bed-and-breakfasts. It doesn't matter that I've come to talk about the new Electronic Records Archives project, which Lockheed-Martin will build at a cost of $308 million over the next six years. "What are your hopes for ERA?" I ask the nation's archivist. "What are your concerns?"

"I worry about losing Mr. Taylor," he mumbles, his voice barely audible. Weinstein is a lean man with sparse white hair, a round face drawn into a pout, and a laminated ID hanging over his necktie. He clings with both hands to the padded arms of his chair. "I worry about losing Mr. Taylor's expertise and the expertise of people like him. They've been living with history."

St. Louis Public Library tops national literacy study - 2005-12-28

St. Louis Public Library tops national literacy study - 2005-12-28.

LATEST NEWS
St. Louis Business Journal - 5:49 PM CST Wednesday

St. Louis Public Library tops national literacy study

The St. Louis Public Library was ranked No. 1 in a 2005 study ranking America's most literate cities, the library said recently.

The study was authored by John Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, and was conducted in collaboration with the university's Center for Public Policy and Social Research. The library said in a release that the city of St. Louis finished 15th overall among the 69 largest cities in the United States, those with populations of 250,000 or more.

National Film Registry, 2004\5: LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS ADDS 25 FILMS TO NATIONAL FILM REGISTRY

National Film Registry, 2004\5: LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS ADDS 25 FILMS TO NATIONAL FILM REGISTRY.

Embargoed until 10 a.m. Tuesday, December 27
December 27, 2005
Press contact: Sheryl Cannady (202) 707-6456, scannady@loc.gov

LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS ADDS 25 FILMS TO NATIONAL FILM REGISTRY

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington today announced his annual selection of 25 motion pictures to be added to the National Film Registry (see attached list). This group of titles brings the total number of films placed on the Registry to 425. Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, each year the Librarian of Congress names 25 "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant motion pictures to the Registry.

The list is designed to reflect the full breadth and diversity of America's film heritage, thus increasing public awareness of the richness of American cinema and the need for its preservation. In making the announcement, the Librarian said, "The moving picture is not so much the art form as the language of our century. Motion pictures are a national treasure and we must treat them as such. Our film heritage is America's living past and a key part of our cultural heritage we must save. By preserving American films, we safeguard a significant element of American creativity and our cultural history for the enjoyment and education of future generations."

The full list is repeated below.. good selections overall, but especially glad to see "Cool Hand Luke" and "Rocky Horror" on the list...

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - 2005

1)  Baby Face (1933)
2) The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man  (1975)
3)  The Cameraman (1928)
4)  Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina, May 1940 (1940)
5)  Cool Hand Luke (1967)
6)  Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
7)  The French Connection (1971)
8)  Giant (1956)
9)  H2O (1929)
10) Hands Up (1926)
11) Hoop Dreams (1994)
12) House of Usher (1960)
13) Imitation of Life (1934)
14) Jeffries-Johnson World's Championship Boxing Contest (1910)
15) Making of an American (1920)
16) Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
17) Mom and Dad (1944)
18) The Music Man (1962)
19) Power of the Press (1928)
20) A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
21) The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
22) San Francisco Earthquake and FireApril 18, 1906 (1906)
23) The Sting (1973)
24) A Time for Burning (1966)
25) Toy Story (1995)