She insulted George Bush, simulated sex and suspended herself from a giant mirrored crucifix, head adorned with a designer crown of thorns (provided by Cotter Church Supplies, LA) in an all-out attempt to get someone, anyone out there, riled. Before one can go further, mention must be made of her body - the most amazing feat of engineering since the Golden Gate Bridge.

The show, a mixture of old hits plus numbers from her last album, Confessions On A Dance Floor, was split into four themes, starting with the Equestrian Section.... Proving she has no ill effects from last year's fall from a horse, images of Madonna, riding crop in hand, and horses cantering across windswept plains were played on big screens for her first number, Future Lovers, looking like a kinkier version of a Lloyds TSB ad. And as Madonna appeared in vaguely horsey black bondage gear, a group of male dancers crawled around, leather bits in their mouths, simulating, one assumes, the movements of horses.

So far, so very S&M. Dressed in black Jean Paul Gaultier trousers and lacy blouse, Madge didn't take long to whip out her suggestive groin movements to the big screen accompaniment of her writhing on the floor, showing off her well-honed physique. Well, if you spent three hours a day exercising, doing Ashtanga yoga, weight training and cycling, you'd want everyone to see your body too. But she gave the insurance men palpitations by clambering on to a motorised saddle high above the crowds in Yves St Laurent highheeled boots while hanging on to her microphone and performing simultaneous acrobatics.

*****

Next, a montage of world leaders was flashed up as Madge sang: "I've listened to your lies", images including Nixon, Pinochet, Hitler and Blair. But Madonna had bigger fish to fry, in the shape of George Bush. She urged fans to perform a certain sexual act on the President. More writhing around on the floor and simulated sex ensued for her rendition of Let It Will Be. By now she looked a bit tired. And no wonder. A boundlessly energetic performance over two hours with seven costume changes would tax someone half her age. Indeed, one worried what effect such gyrations would have on her convalescence from a recent hernia operation. She exhorted us to sing along. But few did. A visibly irked Madonna screamed: "Come on you lazy mother******s! Sing!" The show ended - rather abruptly - with no encore and with the lights immediately going on, leaving us all looking at one another in a slightly embarrassed fashion, as though we'd just been caught doing something we shouldn't have been.

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Air Travel Will Be Miserable This Summer

The New York Times has an ominous article about summer air travel: in a nutshell, it's going to be a nightmare.

Brace yourself for a summer of miserable air travel. Planes are expected to be packed fuller than at anytime since World War II, when the airlines helped transport troops. Fares are rising. Service frills are disappearing. Logjams at airport security checkpoints loom as the federal government strains to keep screener jobs filled. The usual violent summer storms are expected to send the air traffic control system into chaos at times, with flight delays and cancellations cascading across the country.

And many airline employees, after years of pay cuts and added work, say they are dreading the season ahead. Those workers — and there are about 70,000 fewer of them than in 2002 — will be handling more than 100 million more passengers this year than they did four years ago. The friendly skies, indeed. "Everybody's stressed. Everybody's feeling it," said Bryan Hutchinson, a former baggage handler at United Airlines who now works in a joint airline-union program to counsel workers suffering from stress or other emotional problems.

*****

Domestic flights are running at about 80 percent full, and that means that flights on popular routes are often fully booked. Tim Winship, publisher of FrequentFlier.com, said that advanced bookings suggest that planes, on average, should be close to 90 percent full this summer. "It means flights will be sold out," he said. "They're downgrading aircraft types, from wide to narrow bodies, narrow bodies to regional jets."

*****

After 9/11, airlines parked hundreds of planes to cut costs. Financial problems mounted, leading several major airlines to file for bankruptcy-court protection. They laid off workers, cut frills and switched to smaller planes on many routes. Six big airlines cut their fleets by about 700 planes, or close to 20 percent, since the peak in June 2001, the Air Transport Association said. Airlines also shifted larger planes from domestic to international routes. With scant competition from low-cost competitors internationally, airlines can charge higher fares on such routes.

It goes on about air rage, smaller planes, grumpy flight attendants and even more security screenings. Oh, and as for redeeming your frequent flyer miles this summer: good luck. Well, now you know.

Posted on May 22, 2006
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Writers Write, Inc Launches WatchersWatch.com

We love to watch! TV, Film and video, that is. We're happy to announce the launch of WatchersWatch.com, our new blog about what's hot in movies, television and videos.

What's hot this week at WatchersWatch? Why it's the Da Vinci Code, of course. Dan Brown's international bestseller opened in wide release Friday, May 19, 2006 and has already made $224 million worldwide in its first weekend, making it the second biggest opening weekend of all time.

You can find our Da Vinci Code review roundup, the scoop on the new fall TV shows and much more at: http://www.watcherswatch.com

Posted on May 21, 2006
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Britney Breaks Down After Baby Mishap

After nearly accidentally dropping sweet little Sean Preston on his head yesterday, Britney Spears reportedly became quite distraught over the incident. TMZ reports:

It was too much for Britney Spears to take. Shortly after stumbling on a New York street and almost dropping Sean Preston, Britney broke down crying.

On Thursday, Britney was leaving the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New York. As she maneuvered through the crowd of onlookers, holding a glass in one hand and her baby in the other, she tripped. Sean's hat flew off, his head snapped back and a bodyguard made the precious save.

TMZ has the video. This is just awful, and where the heck is K-Fed anyway? No doubt he's working on his plans for world rap domination. Britney clearly loves the little Sean Preston and needs some emotional support from her absent husband...and a good stroller wouldn't hurt either.

Posted on May 19, 2006
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Britney Nearly Drops Sean Preston

TMZ recounts the latest, horrifying Britney Spears Parenting Disaster (and will have video of the incident by Friday evening):

We're told Britney was leaving the Ritz Carlton, holding a drink in her right hand and Sean in her left as she maneuvered through a crowd of onlookers. Britney moves through the crowd and then she suddenly trips, the baby's head goes backward and his hat flies off his head. Britney regained her balance and the baby seemed ok.

Update 7:15PM ET: After the incident, Spears said, "This is why I need a gun."

Yeah, a gun, to go with the drink in her right hand. That's exactly what she needs, not a stroller or anything like that. Oh, and the new bodyguard with the quick reflexes -- that guy just earned his pay for the month.

Posted on May 18, 2006
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Paris Hilton's Mother's Day Gifts Stolen

Paris Hilton had to show up empty-handed to her mother's house on Mother's Day. A bag of expensive gifts she had bought for her mom was stolen as they were being delivered.

In a mess seemingly tailor-made for the mishap-prone heiress, the spoils of a Mother's Day-centric shopping spree were nabbed from outside the estate's gates while being delivered. The party-hopping heiress confirmed the act of thievery to a group of paparazzi while attending a celebratory Mom's Day dinner with her parents and sister Nicky at the Ivy. "Yeah, someone stole it," she said.

According to Hilton's spokesman Elliot Mintz, who proved a bit more forthcoming with details, a gift bag containing thousands of dollars worth of Christian Dior shoes, sunglasses, handbags and perfume were taken from outside the home when a delivery man reportedly set down the packages for a brief moment in order to ring the estate's intercom. Mintz claims that when the worker turned their back to buzz up to the home, a passing car pulled over and a passenger snatched the Paris-approved loot. "A fellow just whizzed by and grabbed the package," he told the Associated Press.

Which is unfortunate for The Simple Life star, who, in lieu of logging more precious time on the self-promotional circuit, "spent three or four hours shopping to put together this wonderful collection of things for her mom."

*****

The theft topped off an otherwise equally blunderous week for Hilton, who on Friday attended Los Angeles' Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 to in-the-know gamers) to announce her new video game. "I'm really excited to have my new videogame, Diamond Quest," she told the crowd. "Thank you all for coming, and you can download the game." The announcement would have served as a suitable—if slightly lackluster—launch for her game, but for one small technicality. Hilton's videogame, as plastered along the walls of the expo hall, is Paris Hilton's Jewel Jam.

We don't think there is anyone in Hollywood who has been burgled more than Paris Hilton. She's a veritable magnet for crime. And by the way, "Diamondquest" is a much better name for a game than "Paris Hilton's Jewel Jam," which is just ridiculous.

Posted on May 17, 2006
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Tremendous Sand Sculptures

This website contains photographs of some very impressive sand sculptures that were created during a tournament last year in Harrison Hot Springs in British Columbia, Canada. The sand sculptures portay people, animals, fantasy scenes and massive castles. We would like to offer our thanks to the Harrison Hot Springs security team. We don't know how they did it but they kept the bullies (who must have really been tempted) from kicking over all these wonderful sand creations. If you think you can out sculpt these master sand sculptures there is another competition in September when the 17th Annual World Championships of Sand Sculpture begins. (via Screenhead)

Posted on May 16, 2006
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Halliburton Hoaxed: The $100 Million SurvivaBall

The Washington Times reports that Halliburton got punk'd big time last week when a group of naughty pranksters dressed up as Halliburton executives at a conference to promote their new "SurvivaBall" to survive the effects of global warming.

Members of the Yes Men, a group of environmental and corporate ethics activists, gave a presentation at a trade conference pretending to be Halliburton executives touting large inflatable suits that provide corporate managers safety from global warming. They also distributed a phony press release through e-mail and set up a Web site, halliburtoncontracts.com, similar to the real Halliburton site, halliburton.com.

"It's basically a giant inflatable orb," said a Yes Man posing as "Fred Wolf of Halliburton" during a phone interview yesterday. "If catastrophe threatens a large population, the business manager simply enters the orb, puts it on, and it protects him or her in any climate condition, whether it involved tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, ice conditions or heat conditions." The Yes Men posted photos of the products, which look like large plastic bubbles with six hands, two speakerphone-looking ears and an opening for the executive's face.

The group, which has pulled similar stunts on Dow Chemical Co. and the World Trade Organization, says it presented the phony global-warming-protection suits -- priced at $100 million each, nonetheless -- to show that corporations are more concerned about profits than taking expensive steps to reduce carbon emissions to reduce global warming. "We were targeting Halliburton because they're the most iconic example of companies profiting from global warming, climate changes and even natural disasters like in New Orleans," said a Yes Man who called himself Andy Bichlbaum.

Halliburton, the Houston oil and energy company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has been accused of being more concerned about profiting from oil than the environmental impact of oil drilling. Halliburton denied connection to the phony release. "[T]he information is not a company press release or document. To confirm, Fred Wolf is not a Halliburton employee," a spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

It was just a hoax? We've already ordered twenty of them!

Posted on May 15, 2006
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Britney Finds Sculpture "Hysterical"

Britney Spears has finally commented on that horrible sculpture that artist did representing the pop star giving birth while hanging onto a furry rug.

In her first public comments about a supposedly pro-life sculpture of her naked and bearing a child, pop star Britney Spears says she is shocked by it. Normally the one doing the shocking at her concerts and in the headlines, the sculpture of Spears debuted at a local New York art gallery in late March. The life-size sculpture depicts a naked, pregnant Spears as she is about to give birth to her new baby, Sean Preston. She is crouching down on a rug and holding on to a wolf's face as the baby's head appears from her uterus.

Spears says she was "dumbfounded" when she found out about the sculpture and saw the national controversy and press it generated. She also said she thought the idea was hilarious and not a serious attempt to display the beauty of birth. "I think it's the most hysterical thing I've ever seen in my life," she told WENN. "My assistant and I were totally dumbfounded when we saw it. We couldn't believe somebody actually did this."

Spears said she had no interest in purchasing the sculpture for her Malibu, California home. "No thanks. They can display it somewhere, but not in my beautiful home," she said.

Sue, Britney, sue over this! How else are you going to find enough cash to convince K-Fed to relocate to the other side of the world after the divorce?

Posted on May 12, 2006
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Scientists Invent Robotic Tentacles

New Scientist reports that scientists have invented robotic arms called Octarms.

Robotic "tentacles" that can grasp and grapple with a wide variety of objects have been developed by US researchers.

Most robots rely on mechanical gripping jaws that have difficulty grabbing large or irregularly shaped objects. Replacing these with tentacle-like manipulators could make robots more nimble and flexible, say the scientists.

The tentacle-like manipulators, known as "Octarms", resemble an octopus's limb or an elephant's trunk. They were developed through a project called OCTOR (sOft robotiC manipulaTORs), which involves several US universities and is funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

"An elephant's trunk can pick up a peanut or a tree trunk," says Ian Walker, a member of the project team from Clemson University in South Carolina. "This ability, inherent in the OCTOR robots, gives OCTOR arms a huge advantage over conventional industrial robots."

Why do today's inventions have to look and function like the appendages of comic book supervillains? You just know one of the scientists is eventually going to strap a few of these octarms on. Do you think we are kidding? One of the scientists is already thinking about it.

"Coordinated control of multiple arms would be a real challenge," says Chris Rahn, another project member from Pennsylvania State University. But it is by no means impossible, he adds. He believes the robotic tentacles could perhaps one day be used to create a robotic octopus or even a backpack with extra limbs.

Someday a scientists is going to try Chris Rahn's backpack idea and then something will go wrong, just like with Otto Octavius' experiment, and then we will have our own flesh and blood Dr. Octopus to deal with.

Posted on May 10, 2006
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The Myths Of The Maternal Instinct

Just in time for Mother's Day, The New York Times features a horrifying article about the myth that mothers naturally care for their offspring and will fight to protect them. Taking some really gross examples from the animal world, the articles details how animal mothers routinely kill, eat and abandon their young, and why nature set things up that way.

Among several mammals, including lions, mice and monkeys, females will either spontaneously abort their fetuses or abandon their newborns when times prove rocky or a new male swaggers into town.

Other mothers, like pandas, practice a postnatal form of family planning, giving birth to what may be thought of as an heir and a spare, and then, when the heir fares well, walking away from the spare with nary a fare-thee-well. "Pandas frequently give birth to twins, but they virtually never raise two babies," said Scott Forbes, a professor of biology at the University of Winnipeg. "This is the dark side of pandas, that they have two and throw one away."

*****

Unlike humans, Dr. Hardy said, the apes never abandon or reject their young, no matter how diseased or crippled a baby may be. Yet because female chimpanzees live in troops with other nonrelated females, a ravenous, lactating mother feels little compunction about killing and eating the child of a group mate. "It's a good way to get lipids," Dr. Hrdy said. As meal plans go, cannibalism can be no-muss, no-fuss.

Nooooo! Not the pandas!! Worst. Mother's Day. Feature. Ever.

Posted on May 9, 2006
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Britney Grounds K-Fed

Page Six reports that Britney Spears is so fed up with K-Fed's free-spending ways, that she's finally grounded him.

Britney Spears is pregnant and depressed - and she's not in any mood to let free-spending hubby Kevin Federline take off to have fun in Las Vegas with his posse. "Kevin asked Britney for money to go to Las Vegas in two weeks, and she shut him down," our insider said. "Britney told him that she won't be funding his trips with his friends any longer - he used to fly everyone out on her dime.

The monthly allowance she had put him on seems to be disappearing after only one week." A rep for Spears, who despite the pregnancy is still working on her album for Jive, referred calls to Federline's rep, who said, "I have no comment."

Cut him off, Britney!!

Posted on May 8, 2006
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Harry Potter Fan Fiction Titles That Are Better Left Unread

CapnWacky.com presents a list of the Harry Potter fan fiction titles that we don't ever want to see:

Harry Potter and the Uneventful Year When No One Tried to Kill Him

Harry Potter and the New Love Interest Who Happens to Have the Same Name as the 15-Year-Old Girl Writing this Fanfic

Harry Potter and the New Love Interest Who Happens to Have the Same Name as the 15-Year-Old Boy Writing this Fanfic

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Sucrets

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Kidney Stone

*****

Harry Potter and the Chamber Pot of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner Detainees of Azerbaijan

Harry Potter and the Wand of Franchise Extension

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood, the Quadroon, and the Octaroon

Harold and His Big Purple Crayon of Adolescent Yearning

It goes on and on, but you get the idea. And no, we don't ever want to read any of them, thanks!

Posted on May 5, 2006
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Kelly Monaco Admires Her Blanket

Kelly Monaco is a co-host of the 33rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards. Being the Emmys, of course there will be lots of swag. Kelly is holding her very own TreasureKnit Photo Blanket which features her very own giant smiling face.

You know who'd love one of these giant blankets with your picture on it? Your mom. She never gets tired of looking at your face. The folks at Treasure Knot weave a photograph into a luxurious blanket. It's not silkscreened or anything like that -- it's actually woven into the blanket so your giant face will never fade or look wrinkled. The blankets retail for just under $130 and are made of hypoallergenic yarn. We'd love one that features Tom Cruise's Couch Jumping Escapade on it. (Photo by Mychal Watts/WireImage.com.)

Posted on May 4, 2006
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Are You A Blogoholic?

Fraywatch examining the tragic addiction pattern of blogoholics.

Blogoholism. Sarah Hepola's confessional piece on her recent decision to shut down a long-running blog prompted fraysters to share their own struggles of addiction. synesthesia offers words of solidarity in admitting it happened to me, too. 4cabbage describes the same painful withdrawal symptoms as being like "quitting smoking or drinking."

*****

According to rundeep, here's the real problem with blogging:

1) It causes the untalented to believe themselves writers with something of interest to say, and;

2) He who blogs is often not reading books, so as to develop the ability which might cure 1) above.

Blogoholic? We don't think so. We can quit anytime we want, like that. But first maybe we'll just head on over to PerezHilton to see what's new since we just checked it five minutes ago. (Well, you never know...what if Charlie Sheen's "Denise" Tattoo-Removal scars aren't healing properly and we don't hear about it?) What does David Spade think about Denise's latest revelations that Heather was the cheater? This is important stuff.

Oh, wait.... that article is about people who can't stop actually blogging, not people who just obsessively read blogs all day. Nevermind.

Posted on May 3, 2006
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Tom Cruise Causes Bomb Scare In L.A.

People magazine reports on Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible III marketing disaster:

A Mission: Impossible III marketing scheme went haywire--literally--Friday when a Los Angeles Times reader in Santa Clarita mistook his friendly neighborhood newspaper rack for a device on the verge of spontaneous combustion. In this day and age, you really can't blame the guy for being a bit concerned when he inserted his quarter, opened the lid and saw a small plastic box with a few wires poking out of it sitting on top of the papers.

He subsequently called the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department at 9:05 a.m., according to sheriff's office spokeswoman Deputy Dana Camarillo, and the Canyon Country division's arson and explosives team was dispatched to investigate, arriving on the scene about 20 minutes later. After spying the red plastic box, authorities proceeded to "render the device useless," Camarillo said. Or, to put it in more Mission: Impossible-friendly terms: They blew that sucker up!

As it turned out, that sinister-seeming object was one of approximately 4,500 digital music players placed in Times dispensers throughout the city programmed to play the Mission: Impossible theme when the rack's door was opened.

*****

Law enforcement officials received several other calls later in the day and the West Los Angeles federal police called in the sheriff's office bomb squad at one point, but by then the various departments had received word of Paramount Pictures' marketing campaign. "I think Paramount is pretty happy about it," Mark Kurtich, senior VP of operations for the Times, said, referring to the bonus publicity that inevitably accompanies an actual explosion.

And if a mere citizen had left a suspicious plastic box with wire sticking out of it in a newsrack? Why, they'd have been arrested, of course!

Posted on May 2, 2006
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Scientists Invent Shrug Detector

New Scientist reports that scientists have created a real-time shrug detector.

I must admit that at first I struggled to see the point of this. Some computer vision researchers at the University of Illinois have come up with a "real-time shrug detector". But after a quick chat with Huazhong Ning, one of the researchers behind the project, I'm less sceptical. "When we communicate with other people we watch their body movements to help us understand," he told me. "Shrugging is a relatively easy one to detect, while others like blinking, hand movements and facial expressions are a lot harder. So we started with shrugging."

The detector tracks the movement of a person's face and shoulders and tries to spot "relative fast movement of the shoulder toward the face". That's a shrug to you and me. As you can see from this picture, even trying to hide behind a piece of paper won't foil it.

You can shrug but you can't hide. Or can you? Close inspection of the six page PDF document explaining the scientific principles and formulas behind the shrug detector reveals that the shrug detector will fail in some situations.

The system could fail in some special situations. It does not work when the face detector fails since the shrugging frame classifier depends on the result from face detector (e.g. in Figure.6 the face turns in large to one side). Fortunately our face detector detects almost all faces with yaw rotation angle within [¡60o; 60o]. A reasonable solution to this problem is to embedded a robust head tracker into this system. Also the system maybe generate false alarms when the subject drops or forwards head (Figure 7 is an example). In this case the false alarm is caused because the ct of TP approaches that of a real shrug while the ct of SP is not stabilized yet. The system will recover from this failure after several frames if the subject keeps this pose because 1) the classifier utilizes a decreasing threshold (see Eqn.2); 2) ct of TP will stabilize after some time.

The other problem with detecting shrugs (according to the PDF) is that people shrug differently. Some people make obvious shrugs while other people make very subtle shrugs that are hard to detect.

The first issue is "what is shrug"? The definition is usually qualitative rather than quantitative. Usually shrug means raising the shoulders but there is no objective definition of the time length and height of the action. The more ambiguous situation is that some people may shrug by just opening their arms with little or no movement of the shoulders.

We were going to purchase a shrug detector for the office but what good is a shrug detector that fails in special situations or generates false alarms? And can it make coffee? Because if it can make good coffee then that might make up for a little imperfection in its shrug detecting abilities.

Posted on May 1, 2006
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