Grumble mag Penthouse is buying a bunch of social networking sites which put the stress on the social rather than the networking.

Christmas Demonstrators Want Peace on Earth - Including In Iraq

For Steven Simon, it's a time to wear a Santa suit and go to the intersection of Blackstone and Shaw avenues to criticize U.S. foreign policy.

Participants held signs with anti-war slogans. They also incorporated some holiday fun. Some sang revamped versions of holiday songs, even if some of the lyrics didn't exactly fit the melody.

How about that?

I mean, even my family I don't think I know as intimately as the people I worked with on West Wing. More than anything just to have a steady job, a sense of routine, is so lovely for an actor - you just don't get that very often. I really thrive in that condition. And then when I'm not acting I go, 'Ugh, I'm worthless. Why am I doing this? I quit. I'm gonna go back to Ohio and be a dog walker.' "

At the height of the show's popularity some of the news networks called to offer her work as a pundit. "I was offered all sorts of jobs by news organisations that should have known better," she says. "And I was like, 'That's so sweet. But you really don't want to hire me. I'm not good in that area.' " It's a shock to realise that she's talking about politics.

Janney has been in LA for more than a decade, but it isn't really her town.

A truly shattering thriller

The fourth strand features Woody Harrelson as a sprightly, recklessly confident Vietnam veteran turned bounty hunter sent to get Chigurh.

From brutal start to ironic finish the movie's tension is constant. The action sequences - chases, shootouts, killings - are handled with great verve and directness. I recall at a 1972 preview of Peckinpah's The Getaway a studio executive talking about 'fun violence'. The violence here, though exciting, isn't fun. The Coens show us the pain of gunshot wounds and reality of death.

The suspense lets up only for eloquent dialogue between Sheriff Bell and other law enforcers about the changing nature of crime and civic morality from the frontier days to the new world of drug dealing and the permissive society. The sequence in which he visits a crippled old ex-sheriff inevitably recalls Gary Cooper's Marshal Kane dropping in on his predecessor in High Noon.

All for one - more trips for singletons

Tell a hotel you're a single traveller and you run the risk of spending your stay in the equivalent of the broom cupboard. Fortunately, Exclusive Escapes has recognised that solo travellers want luxury too. This year, they are banishing single supplements at several of their boutique hotels in Turkey and Cephalonia, and on all group learning holidays (vegetarian cooking, yoga and pilates, and creative writing). Beyaz Yunus, Faralya is a stylish hideaway, with safari-style rooms in a forest clearing 14km from Olu Deniz, on a mountainside set back from a dramatic coastal road following the Lycian Way. Trek, swim from private coves or try sea-kayaking. From £500pp per week B&B, including flights.

If you can't afford to hire Richard Branson's new £35,000-a-week ski lodge, try Cold Fusions Chalets' flagship chalet in Chamonix, which comes with an outdoor hot tub, a large Mont Blanc-facing terrace, and its own chef.

The great Heathrow con

But they know full well that the absence of legal standards on noise leaves communities defenceless. New EU air-quality standards had looked like an insuperable hurdle to a third runway, but are being fudged with ropey claims that road traffic emissions will fall. Two weeks ago the Advertising Standards Authority ordered British Airways to withdraw the claim, made by its CEO in an e-mail to Executive Club members, that the third runway would reduce carbon dioxide emissions because aircraft would no longer have to waste fuel queueing to take off or land. This flatly contradicted Whitehall models, which assume that the new runway will raise CO2 emissions by 2.6 million tonnes a year from the 200,000 extra flights.

Secondly, take the arguments about capacity. BAA's figures demonstrate clearly that Heathrow is not full.

HISTORIC TOP COMMERCIALS: The most notable Super Bowl ads in history

But the ad got gazillions to go online to see it again. And again.


4. Tasteless Bowl (2004)

It wasn't just Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" that torpedoed good taste that year. Some ads helped, particularly two for Bud Light.

In one, a romantic sleigh ride goes south after the horse passes explosive gas. In another, a guy surrenders his Bud Light only after a dog bites his crotch.

Not that Ad Meter's consumers took offense. They rated the crotch commercial best of the game.

"We hope the humor didn't offend anybody," Anheuser-Busch CEO August Busch IV said after the game. At an ad conference later, he said good taste would be a criterion for A-B ads, not just for its beer.


5.

Sexy setting for February's Schmooze and Booze

Schmooze and Booze has teamed up with online dating site Stag and Dove for its next networking event on February 7.

A free drink will be offered to guests on arrival and 100 three-month memberships for Stag and Dove will be up for grabs on the night.

The venue for the evening is Amora, the London headquarters of the Academy of Sex and Relationships based in The Trocadero Centre, so attendees should be prepared for some risqué content.

For more details contact Helen Lewis at www.schmoozeandbooze.co.uk.

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Deluxe singles travel

The same old images still adorn the walls and windows of your local travel office: Smiling nuclear families discovering Disney World and well-tanned, hand-clasped couples honeymooning on the white sand shores of a Caribbean paradise.

Remarks by Jorge Castañeda

Now many of you, those who are young or those who are not young but don't remember or don't know will not recall this, but for example, my colleague and dear great friend, Jorge Pinto [phonetic] will recall it, because we both have the misfortune of being roughly the same age.

This is the first time we have 12 years of uninterrupted, uncrisis-administered growth in Mexico since the 1960s. We lived through the crisis of 1976, 1982, 1987 and '88, 1994. The last time we had 12 years of growth, modest growth, without a crisis, was between 1964 and 1976. That's a long time ago. So these 12 years have been very good for the country. They have permitted an extraordinary expansion of the middle class. Interest rates, domestic interest rates at 7, 8, 9%. You can now get a mortgage in Mexico, a 15-year, fixed-rate mortgage, in pesos at 9-1/2%.

Recorder's office warns of deed scam

BLOOMINGTON — The McLean County Recorder's office is warning homeowners of a scam that charges them nearly $70 for a copy of the deed to their home when they can get it a lot cheaper at the recorder's office.“Apparently not content to have ripped off McLean County residents once a few months ago, a company calling itself Illinois Deed Providers Inc. is back at it, preying on our citizens," said Recorder Lee Newcom.Newcom said the company is mailing letters to homeowners giving the impression they must have a copy of the deed to prove they own their home.“The ownership of your home is documented in the county recorder's office and you do not need a copy of the deed," he said.The recorder's office has the official deed for every property dating to 1831, Newcom said. If a resident wants or needs a copy, it is available from his office for $12 for the first four pages and $1 for additional pages.

An Altar Beyond Olympus For A Deity Pre-Dating Zeus

Before Zeus hurled his first thunderbolt from Olympus, the pre-Greek people occupying the land presumably paid homage and offered sacrifices to their own gods and goddesses, whose nature and identities are unknown to scholars today.

Archaeologists say they have now found the ashes, bones and other evidence of animal sacrifices to some pre-Zeus deity on the summit of Mount Lykaion, in the region of Greece known as Arcadia. The remains were uncovered last summer at an altar later devoted to Zeus.

Fragments of a coarse, undecorated pottery in the debris indicated that the sacrifices might have been made as early as 3000 B.C., the archaeologists concluded. That was about 900 years before Greek-speaking people arrived, probably from the north in the Balkans, and brought their religion with them.

The hottest trends in online dating

Internet dating has been great for the industry. It has warmed an entire generation of users to the prospect of getting help in dating and paying for that help. It's like a giant sales funnel. At the top are generic dating sites and at the bottom are expensive matchmaking services. Online dating does take time and money. If you have considerably more bucks, you can go straight to the matchmaking service and have a date with somebody who is compatible right away.

One of the biggest innovations is avatar-based instant messaging. There's a lot of talk about how Web sites like Second Life will impact online dating. I've seen statistics that 80% of people will have an online virtual identity by 2011. That seems very high to me! One site that's pioneering the use of avatars is OmniDate.com.