You hear about it all the time; celebrities lashing out, filing lawsuits against overzealous paparazzi who won’t leave them alone. Imagine how much juicier the Hollywood tabloids would be, however, if those photogra-stalkers could follow their prey without being seen?
Of course, obsessed fans hoping to tail Britney Spears won’t be the only people excited to hear about the latest breakthrough in theoretical technology. It will likewise please devotees of Harry Potter’s famous cloak and admirers of James Bond’s disappearing Aston Martin to hear that mathematician Graeme Milton of the University of Utah may have devised a theory to make objects invisible.
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After two eventful terms, it seems Gavin Newsom has grown too big for the city of San Francisco.
The city’s Democratic mayor announced on Tuesday that he will be exploring his potential candidacy for governor of California, according to the Los Angeles Times, in what will be the state’s first open-seat gubernatorial election since Gray Davis took office in 1998. Mayor Newsom could perhaps be the most well-known choice to succeed Governor Schwarzenegger, who has fulfilled his term limit; Newsom grabbed nationwide headlines when he demanded that the city grant marriage licenses indiscriminately to any couple that requested one, in early 2004. This controversial move sparked a lengthy legal battle that was ended temporarily in May when the California Supreme Court granted the right to marry to any couple, including same-sex couples.
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Good old American capitalism tells us that competition is a good thing. For the next few weeks, though, you may be hard-pressed to find a Hollywood actor who will agree with such a sentiment.
That’s because the opposition of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) against the rival, albeit smaller American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) has divided Hollywood and invoked memories of the recent writers strike. The Guild’s contract with the industry expired at midnight Monday night, and members are quickly splitting into two camps about what to do next.
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For most Americans, the sport of gymnastics works like Santa Claus, surfacing every four years bringing excitement and joy during the summer Olympics, only to disappear again, leaving everyone wondering where all the toys came from.
This past weekend, those who looked hard enough caught a glimpse into Santa’s workshop. The 2008 Olympic Team Trials came to their conclusion in Philadelphia, the men finishing on Saturday and the women on Sunday. In typical fashion for the USA Gymnastics organization, however, the trials were more likely to confuse viewers than anything else.
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If you’ve been feeling particularly sinful lately, it may be time for a change of scenery; it seems our Golden State isn’t so holy after all.
The results of The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s most recent U.S. Religious Landscape survey, published in February, found that only 62% of Californians hold an absolute belief in God, nine percent less than the national average. This does not mean that Californians were quick to denounce faith, however; those polled were simply more likely to describe their belief as only “fairly certain.”
In just about every category, though, respondents from California showed considerably less commitment to religion than the average American. The portion of Californians who admitted to placing great importance on religion, attending services at least once a week, and praying at least once a day was between six and eight percent lower than that of Americans as a whole. They were also much more likely to consider their scripture to be the product of humans, with less than a quarter of Californians believing their holy text to be the literal word of God.
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