European discount giant Ryanair is pushing ahead with plans to charge passengers to use the lavatories, news that comes just a day after U.S. low-cost carrier Spirit said it would charge for overhead bin space.

...oversaw the Bush administration's tactic of raiding the homes of desperately ill individual medical marijuana patients in California.

Ms. Leonhart also has a record of adamantly fighting against allowing scientific research of the potential medicinal value of marijuana. Ignoring the ruling of a federal judge, Ms. Leonhart single-handedly blocked applications from respected university researchers studying medical marijuana.

What's kind of fun about it is that it subjects these master chefs to the kind of hands-on cooking many of them may not do as much of anymore.  And competing against each other...

Each episode of Top Chef Masters holds two challenges for the chefs. The first is a Quickfire Challenge which tests their basic abilities.  Each quickfire challenge will be judged by a blind taste test and a five-star system, similar to fine dining reviews.  

The second challenge is a more involved Elimination Challenge designed to test the versatility and invention of the chefs as they take on unique culinary trials such as working with unusual and exotic foods or catering for demanding clients. The food will be tasted and evaluated by the judges and a wide range of tasters for whom the challenge is aimed, whether it is patrons at a five-star restaurant or a room full of hungry kids - the food has to appeal to the diner as well as the critics if the chef is to survive.

Link

Eventually, it comes down to 6 chefs competing in the finale; the winner gets $100,000 to donate to the charity specified at the beginning of the competition.

Last season's winner was Rick Bayless.

Somewhat ironic, no?

Defense lawyers Chad Hummel and Bart Dalton said that the misconduct allegations should not be buried just because the trial judge is dead and some participants are no longer in the district attorney's office.

"The lapse of time...does not make the misconduct or its consequences go away or mean that they are not deserving of full exploration," they said, suggesting an investigation by a special counsel could deter similar misconduct in the future.

Private health insurers in Massachusetts are threatening to withhold offers for new plans in the state's Health insurance "Connector." That follows a decision by the Massachusetts insurance regulator to deny most of the requests by insurers to raise their insurance premiums. We've seen this before, and unless the Massachusetts Governor and regulators are smarter than California's Governor and Public Utility Commission, this is not going to turn out well. link

After nearly 10 years of work and more than $11 million, one of the largest single conservation efforts in Washington has permanently protected some 7,000 acres of land along the Hoh River.

Taken together, the lands purchased, plus those already protected within Olympic National Park, conserve nearly the entire length of the Hoh.

Link

the most interesting part for me, since I loath Cameron, was the part where he totally debunked the whole this is totally new and fabulous stuff that has never been done before crap about Avatar.

he and his team were responsible for the most cutting edge stuff in Avatar and from his presentation it was totally clear that nothing about it was new.  it had a couple of minor advances that had not yet been used in a feature film which is always the case but pretty much all of the same techniques were used on Benjamin Button and other films.

I LOVE his music...here for example is a video that pays better tribute to vogueing than Madonna and came out a year before hers, two years before "Paris is Burning."  AND it features famed vogue pioneer Willi Ninja.

He combined Opera and House music which inspired me to steal his CD from the College radio station.  And one of his songs, "Miles and Miles of Miles Davis" gets stuck in my head just because of its excellent name.

He is simply a musical pioneer.  Oh yeah, and the Sex Pistols.  :P

So Anderson Cooper had to ask:  "Sir, are you comparing the Republicans to the Confederates?"

The mind reels.

Oh, and btw, the Southrun guy was spouting so many historical inaccuracies that it was breathtaking.  Would have been good to have a historian on against him, instead of Roland Martin, who simply -- understandably -- could not contain himself when faced with a spokesman for the 19th-century South.  So Martin blew a gasket, which the guy deserved -- but it would have been wonderful to see the guy taken apart coolly, as Anderson Cooper did, but on all of the untruths.