If they fought to get tickets why are there so many empty seats?

This week, even in sports with a serious chance of glory for the nation, there have been hundreds, even thousands, of empty seats.

In Beijing, the age-old Olympic discipline of spin is alive and kicking.

It emerged yesterday that part of Friday's opening ceremony, the bit where 29 giant "footprints of fire" advanced towards the Bird's Nest, was faked.   For that section of the program, TV viewers, and those watching on big screens inside the stadium, saw pre-recorded, digitally created fireworks, not real ones.

The worldwide TV audience was said, on the night, to have numbered four billion. This was actually the total possible reach of all the stations carrying the broadcast. The actual audience was a rather lower one billion, five million of whom were in Britain.

In its desperation to be seen as the most perfect Games in human history, Beijing 2008 may have held itself to a standard that it cannot truthfully fulfill.

There really is such a thing as trying too hard.

Think the economy is depressing?  Get a load of what Congress is smoking.

In addition to housing bailouts, the US has spent $1 million researching Syrians addicted to hookahs.

Yup. Hookahs (aka, hubbly-bubbly — I can't make this up.)

Taxpayers are funding research at the Syrian Center for Tobacco Study on whether smoking through a water pipe is less harmful than regular smoking.  SERIOUSLY?????  SERIOUSLY!!!???

Well, I'm juuuussst dying to know the answer to that, aren't you?  Hold on while I get out my checkbook.

A spokesman for Citizens Against Government Waste says while research is useful, it's not something that taxpayers should be funding.
"Why is the federal taxpayer always the one who has to pay for this? We question whether this is a national priority to figure out the problems of other countries. Let’s figure out our problems and solve those.” The NIH Fogarty Center originating the research stands to get $66 million next year.

Is raising the national debt ceiling the answer? Should more be trimmed from areas like hookah research before the US goes further in the hole?

This angers me to no end.  UGH. 

I'm not sure if this article is true; but, either way, it's certainly nice!

Just on a side note, I'm not sure I could spend every waking moment w/my husband Kevin.  I love him very very much, but every single moment???? in a cave???  w/no electricity????   no way to get away????  just sayin'...

An incredible love story has come out of   China recently and managed to touch the world.
It is a story of a man and an older woman who ran off to live and love each other in peace for over half a century.   

The 70-year-old Chinese man who hand-carved over 6,000 stairs up a mountain for his 80-year-old wife has passed away in the cave which has been the couple's home for the last 50 years.

Over 50 years ago, Liu Guojiang a 19 year-old boy, fell in love with a 29 year-old widowed   mother named Xu Chaoqin..


In a twist worthy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, friends and relatives criticized the relationship because of the age difference and the fact that Xu already had children.  


At that time, it was unacceptable and immoral for a young man to love an older woman.. To avoid the market gossip and the scorn of their communities, the couple decided to elope and lived in a cave in Jiangjin County in Southern ChongQing Municipality.  


In the beginning, life was harsh as hey had nothing, no electricity or even food..  They had to eat grass and roots they found in the mountain, and Liu made a kerosene lamp that they used to light up their lives.  

Xu felt that she had tied Liu down and repeatedly asked him, 'Are you regretful? Liu always replied, 'As long as we are industrious, life will improve.'

In the second year of living in the mountain, Liu began and continued for over 50 years, to   hand-carve the steps so that his wife could get down the mountain easily.  

Half a century later in 2001, a group of adventurers were exploring the forest and were surprised to find the elderly couple and the   over 6,000 hand-carved steps.  Liu MingSheng,   one of their seven children said, 'My parents loved each  other so much, they  have lived in seclusion for over 50  years and never been apart a single day.  He hand carved more than 6,000 steps over the years for my mother's   convenience, although she doesn't go down the mountain that much.'


The couple had   lived in peace for over 50 years until last week. Liu, now 72 years, returned from his daily farm work and collapsed. Xu sat and prayed with her husband as he passed away in her arms. So in love with Xu, was Liu that no one was able to release the grip he had on his wife’s hand even after he had passed away.   



'You  promised me you'll take care of me, you'll always be with me  until the day I died, now you left before me, how am I going  to live without you?'

Xu spent days softly repeating this sentence and touching her husband's black coffin with tears rolling down her cheeks.   In 2006, their story became one of the top 10 love stories from China, collected by the Chinese Women Weekly. The local government has decided to preserve the love ladder and the place they lived as a museum, so this love story can live forever. 
 

Many restauranteurs are reporting a decrease in lunch-time traffic and say that customers are bringing their lunch to the office more often or selecting $5 Subway (yummy!  extra peppers please!) over a more expensive deli sandwich.

Workers opting to bring their lunch usually spend a fraction of what they would eating out. How often do you bring a bagged lunch?

John Hodgman has been outed before for being an iPhone user (scandal), and I have heard rumblings that he is not, in fact, a PC user. Now I've got it straight from the horse's mouth!

He recently came clean and admitted his devotion to Apple:

"I play a PC only on television. I've used Macs since 1984. When I was a kid, I talked my dad into getting the very first Mac and I've been loyal to the brand ever since."