Eideard

Tim Russert, who pointedly but politely questioned hundreds of the powerful and influential as moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” died Friday of an apparent heart attack. The network’s Washington bureau chief was 58.

In addition to his weekly program, Russert made periodic appearances on the network’s other news shows, was moderator for numerous political debates and wrote two best-selling books.

NBC interrupted its regular programming to announce Russert’s death, and in the ensuing moments, familiar faces such as Tom Brokaw, Andrea Mitchell and Brian Williams took turns mourning his loss.

He will be missed.

RAF Harrier jets have been called in to destroy the largest drugs seizure in world history after Afghan police discovered hashish worth at least $400 million…

Two Harriers launched a strike on a huge cache of 260 tons of the drug, stuffed in sacks of grain and buried in trenches and underground bunkers in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

The combat aircraft dropped 1,000lb bombs on the hiding place, which also included 2.5 tons of raw opium.

After the Harriers had delivered their payload, troops set the drugs ablaze. No previous haul comes close to matching this find, which weighed roughly the same as 30 double-decker buses.

Oh, the humanity…

The Egyptian authorities have banned a 92-year-old man from marrying a 17-year-old girl, the Egyptian al-Akhbar newspaper has reported. The ministry of justice invoked a law which says the age gap between spouses should not exceed 25 years.

Egypt brought in the law prohibiting the marriage of elderly men to very young girls during the Gulf oil boom. It was an effort to prevent wealthy men from the Gulf states seeking young poor brides from the Egyptian countryside.

In special cases, the justice ministry does allow foreign men to marry Egyptian women more than 25 years their junior if they deposit a very large sum of money in the name of their wife at the Egyptian National Bank…

173 such marriages were allowed in the past year after the foreign husband deposited a sum equivalent to about US $80,000 and was screened.

Since I qualify as an Old Fart, I resent laws supporting age-ism.

I certainly would never spend $80K to pick up a spare spouse in Egypt. Besides, my wife would fracking kill me.

You may joke with your dad about his age; but, he may be defensive about how old his underwear is.

According to a recent telephone survey by Kelton Research, on behalf of Jockey International Inc., more than a quarter of men say their shorts are more than 4 years old. 77 percent admit that their ancient undergarments haven’t stood the test of time and are tattered, discolored or stained.

In fact, nearly a third of the 500 men surveyed said their old boxers or briefs no longer have elasticity, while 15 percent said they have underwear that doesn’t fit and 14 percent said they keep pairs that are covered in holes.

Underwear a decade old or older are in the top drawers of 11 percent of men, while only 2 percent said they have kept undergarments that are more than 20 years old.

I think this is over-communicating.

That’s the rumor around the political circuit. She joined his campaign a while back. Now, she’s being touted as the talent who will bring Hillary supporters to McCain.

“No American has a God-given right to a job

Fiorina, 53, joined the Republican senator’s presidential campaign this spring…While the new gig is her first in politics, her name already has been tossed around as a possible vice presidential running mate. McCain has said he’s not as strong on economics as he is on national security, so he needs accomplished business leaders, like Fiorina, advising him…

“She almost destroyed one of the nation’s great corporate treasures — she made a mess of HP, she made it an extraordinarily unpleasant place to work,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management and longtime critic of Fiorina’s. “She represents sizzle over steak and style over substance — that would damage the integrity and credibility of the McCain campaign…”

Some say Fiorina may have simply been out of her element at HP, as someone whose focus on marketing and branding made her an odd fit in HP’s hardcore techie culture.

She drew snickers from some longtime HPers for the company’s decision in 2004 to sell HP-branded iPods. The idea was to liven up the company’s staid image, but HP abandoned the initiative the following year.

“My leadership at HP has been completely validated by the results HP posted the day after I was fired until today,” Fiorina said in a recent interview. “Leadership is about making tough choices, and I think I recognize that in others. That’s what attracts me to John McCain — he’s a leader.”

Some folks would say HP’s latest results are exactly because she’s not there anymore.

Best known as an advocate of outsourcing, her policy of snooping on staff and journalists doesn’t inspire confidence in her understanding of civil liberties, either.

Doritos makes history, taking the UK’s first step in communicating with aliens as they broadcast the first ever advert directed towards potential extra terrestrial life. The University of Leicester has played a key part in the success of the project.

The transmission is being undertaken as part of the Doritos Broadcast Project, which invited the UK public to create a 30 second video clip that could be beamed out to the universe offering a snap shot of life on earth to anyone ‘out there’.

Some 61% of the UK public believe this is just the start of communication with ET life and that we will enter into regular communication with an alien species at some stage in the future.

The winning space-ad entitled ‘Tribe’ was voted for by the British public and directed by 25-year-old Matt Bowron. It will officially be entered into the Guinness Book of Records and will be aired on the more conventional medium of television on Sunday 15th June on ITV at 7.44pm in the ad break of the final Group B game of Euro 2008.

Will space aliens appreciate the nutritional function of Doritos?