Eideard

LORI CHEEK was walking through the meatpacking district of Manhattan when she spotted a handsome man sitting with friends amid the dinner crowd outside Pastis. As she neared his table, she flashed a diminutive black card.

“I nestled it in his French fries,” she said, “and kept going.”

As Ms. Cheek, 37, disappeared into the July night, the man plucked the card from his fries. It read: “Look up. You might miss something.” Below, in smaller letters, were the words “find me,” a code and the address of a new Web site for singles.

Move over, Match.com. This is the next generation of online dating. Unlike traditional dating sites where members spend hours on computers writing autobiographies and scrutinizing photographs, a raft of newfangled dating tools are striving to better bridge the gap between online and real-world romance…

“It’s almost like you’re shopping online,” said Ms. Cheek, “but you’re shopping in real life.”

At the same time, these hybrid dating tools still enable users to keep their names and personal information private for as long as they like…

Card users said companies like FlipMe! and Cheek’d are emboldening them to approach people who might otherwise have been missed connections. They also appreciate how the companies reverse the online dating process — observe someone in person first, then send an electronic message. There’s no need to contend with false advertising on dating Web sites.

RTFA. Long, sometimes humorous, sometimes silly, interesting to me because someone is always finding a new feature to seed and flower on the Web.

Axe murderers will probably love this.

Art experts think they may have found the world’s oldest painting to feature an image of a watch.

The Science Museum is investigating the 450-year-old portrait, thought to be of Cosimo I de Medici, Duke of Florence, holding a golden timepiece.

The painting is being shown as part of the museum’s Measuring Time gallery.

The first watches appeared shortly after 1500 in Germany and horologists believe the picture, painted by renaissance master Maso da San Friano around 1560, “may well be the oldest to show a true watch“.

The painting has been in the museum’s collection for 33 years after being acquired from a private donor.

As it was being taken out of storage for the gallery, curators decided to research the painting – which was when they made their discovery.

This is way cool. And that’s coming from someone who hasn’t worn a watch since 1986…

Daylife/AP Photo

So far airline passengers are experiencing the biggest troubles thanks to Mount Redoubt’s eruption.

Although Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport remains open, Alaska Airlines had to re-route five flights inbound for Anchorage — two coming from Seattle, two from Hawaii and one from Nome.

Later Alaska canceled 19 flights “destined to Anchorage and flights out of Anchorage to Bethel, Deadhorse, Kodiak, Nome,
Kotzebue, and Barrow…”

Airline officials say they just aren’t going to take any chances.

Good thing they don’t listen to Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal.

Thanks, Justin

Washington lawyer Jim Robinson is a former assistant attorney general and once served as a U.S. attorney in Michigan. Jim Robinson, a D.C. attorney, is on the U.S. watch list by mistake and wants his name removed.

He’s an American citizen who holds a high-level security clearance from the U.S. government. He’s a onetime law-school dean, a husband and a grandfather.

And he’s on the U.S. government’s anti-terrorism watch list, which gets him delayed or stopped every time he tries to board a commercial airliner…

Among those added to the list recently is CNN Investigative Correspondent Drew Griffin, who learned of his new status in May. Griffin has done critical reporting on the agency, but TSA spokesman Chris White says that any connection between the two events “is absolutely fabricated…”

Barry Steinhardt, ACLU technology director, says the list is so secretive yet so shoddily put together, it’s hard to tell if how it is being used — or abused.

“The truth is, we don’t know how much is bureaucratic ineptness or how much is political retaliation,” he said.

The FBI says this is just a “side effect of our efforts to fight terrorism.” Do you think it makes anyone safer?

Does it make you safer?

A U.S. watch list of terrorism suspects has passed 1 million records, corresponding to about 400,000 people, and a leading civil liberties group says the number is far too high to be effective.

The Bush administration disagreed and called the list one of the most effective tools implemented after the September 11 hijacked plane attacks — when a federal “no-fly” list contained just 16 people considered threats to aviation.

The American Civil Liberties Union publicized the 1 million milestone with a news conference and release…

“America’s new million-record watch list is a perfect symbol for what’s wrong with this administration’s approach to security: it’s unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources (and) treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought.”

The cowards who maintain the aura of terrorism as a political tool are consistent in their inability to either justify their smarmy database – or maintain it according to any reasonable standards. Of course.

The other half of the coin is the loyal opposition who haven’t the backbone, insight or confidence in a democratic society to offer up a thoroughgoing assault on the sedition police.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela received a gift for his 90th birthday as U.S. Congress finally approved the removal of his name from the country’s terrorist list.

The Senate unanimously greenlighted the legislation on a voice vote removing the “terrorist” label and travel restrictions imposed on Mandela and other senior members of his African National Congress (ANC).

The same legislation was passed on May 8 at the House of Representatives…

The ANC was banned by the South African apartheid government in1960, its leaders jailed or forced into exile until the ban on the movement was lifted 30 years later.

Mandela was jailed for 27 years for his leadership in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. He became the first post-apartheid-era president years after his release in 1990…

“It is shameful that the United States still treats the ANC this way based solely on its designation as a terrorist organization by the old apartheid South African regime,” said Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs who introduced the legislation.

Mandela, who is turning 90 on July 18, celebrated his 90th birthday with a concert in London’s Hyde Park on Friday in support of his global AIDS campaign.

I will try not to go off too hard on my fellow Americans; but, living in one of the most politically-ignorant, parochial and paranoid nations on the planet – I’m hard pressed to accept this overdue sop to reality as something truly positive.

The United States assumed the colonial mantle from England and France right after World War 2. Successive governments learned nothing from the failure of European imperialism. Liberal or Conservative, Republican or Democrat, our nation’s foreign policy has been decided by greedy, arrogant fools who worked hard only at diminishing the respect that followed our anti-fascist efforts during that war.

These idiots will probably spend the weekend patting themselves on the back for their “anti-racist” campaign. Hypocrites all!