This is just a great story, told best by Michael McIntee at the Wahoo Gazette:

HEY! I won $100,000 this weekend! Yup, me and thousands of other New Yorkers. The New York Daily News has been running a scratch-and-match rub-off lottery game for the past month or so. The game consists of numbers 1-15. Each day, the newspaper instructs you to rub off 8 of those numbers. Underneath the scratch-off is a dollar amount between $25 and $100,000. If you rub off three of the same amount, you win that total. So Saturday, the New York Daily News told to rub off numbers 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, and 15. Underneath my numbers 5, 10, and 13 was the dollar amount of $100,000. I won $100,000! And then on Sunday, the Daily News said “Ooops.” Instead of telling us to rub off #13, the Daily News says they should have instructed us to rub off #12. So, no, I didn’t win $100,000. The Daily News reports they received 3,000 excited phone calls on Saturday to announce they had the winning $100,000 ticket. Then on Sunday they reported they received 3,000 excited phone calls from lawyers.

Interesting findings here from a Net Imperative study that shows time spend online at home gradually levelling off. Does that mean more people are just spending more time online at work? And how does broadband takeup affect the mix?



Good to see we haven't abandoned our core audience...

So...the new album previewed at SXSW last night.

And the latest rumours from Point Blank magazine en Espanol are that a US tour would begin on April 23, with European dates the following month? Dates in London mooted for 27,28 May at the Albert Hall (venue for the Tom Joad tour), as well as Milan, Bologna and Rome 5,6,7 June.

Nothing, of course, is yet confirmed....




This guy has died. Depending on who you talk to, he was either a brilliant, precociously talented designer and businessman or a bit of a crook...

He certainly saw an opportunity to take advantage of a desperate British government and the goodwill of a lot of desperate people near my hometown for personal gain.




Bizarre but compelling story here, on how a plane belonging to a minor partner in the Boston Red Sox may have been implicated in the abduction of an islamic cleric in Cairo...

Yeah, that was my reaction too. But, hey, maybe there's something in the relationship between co-investors Philip Morse and this guy? I have no idea, and in the grand scheme of things, er, so what, but you never know.

UPDATE: The hometown team has been playing catch-up, but nothing new...



This is hilarious, by the way... Happens all the time; I pitch my tent somewhere and suddenly it has "decaying credibility". Go figure.



It's late, but I'm reasonably sure this isn't for real.....(check out the testimonials).





For whatever reason I'm in a quiet reflective mood tonight, and this story from the NYT Archive, is having the same effect on me as this, this, or even this...

ah well...



Finally; anyone who's familiar with the 1960s BBC science fiction show "Dr Who" will enjoy this story tonight..

PA 1 SHOWBIZ
Rhodri Substitute
SCI-FI MIX-UP FOR FIRST MINISTER
By Liam Creedon, PA

Rhodri Morgan, the Welsh Assembly’s First Minister, almost landed a part in the new series of Doctor Who after he was mistaken by BBC staff for a tree-like monster appearing in the show, it has emerged.
The First Minister was due to appear on BBC Wales political show ’Dragons Eye’.
But he arrived at the BBC’s Llandaff studios at the same time as a large group of actors appearing in the Sci-Fi show.
The First Minister was ushered into the Doctor Who make-up room after being mistaken for an actor appearing in the show as a sidekick of one the Doctor’s new enemies- the tree-like villain Jabe.
Eventually staff realised the mistake and Mr Morgan escaped back to the politics show.
Jabe will appear alongside the new Doctor played by actor Christopher Eccleston in the BBC1 show which starts again on the Easter weekend after a prolonged absence.
Mr Morgan was mistaken for an extra playing one of Jabe’s tree-like followers from the fictional Forest of Cheam.
Jabe is played by black actress Yasmin Bannerman and appears in the second episode of the new series ’The End of the World’.
A spokesman for the First Minister today confirmed the case of mistaken-identity.
He said: "They were filming Doctor Who at the time and there were loads of extras at the BBC Wales studios.
"A meet-and-greet guy from London obviously did not recognise him.
"A young make-up artist then came in and said to Rhodri ’Oh are you one of the trees?’.
"Rhodri then twigged and had a good chuckle about it. He thought it was really funny. Viewers will have to watch Doctor Who to see if Rhodri is in it".