Season 7 of Dancing with the Stars

The cast has been announced for Season 7 of Dancing with the Stars!

This season there are 13 celebrities - six women and seven men - and two will be voted off in the first week.

There are four actors, three sports people, two models, two singers, a comedian and a chef (I've counted Ms Kardashian as a model - she could actually fit in a number of those categories).

The couples are:

Kim Kardashian & Mark Ballas
Lance Bass & Lacey Schwimmer
Toni Braxton & Alec Mazo
Brooke Burke & Derek Hough
Maurice Greene & Cheryl Burke
Cody Linley & Julianne Hough
Susan Lucci & Tony Dovolani
Warren Sapp & Kym Johnson
Misty May-Treanor & Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Ted McGinley & Inna Brayer
Cloris Leachman & Corky Ballas
Jeffrey Ross & Edyta Sliwinska
Rocco DiSpirito & Karina Smirnoff

Cloris Leachman is the oldest at 82 and Cody Linley is the youngest at 18.

The new season starts on September 22.

Why Do They Always Pick on Carol Vorderman?

The producers of Countdown, the UK game show, have offered Carol Vorderman a new contract at a 90% pay cut. She has refused.

It's pretty obvious that they don't want her to continue as they would have offered a more realistic pay cut (she suggested 35% - the budget cut percentage across all of C4) and are looking to produce a leaner, meaner show.

I seem to remember that Tomorrow's World thought they could do without Carol, using the fact she had an alleged conflict of interest to fire her. They subsequently asked her to return after the ratings plummeted. She refused.

Do they realize Carol won't budge? Or are they fooling themselves?

It doesn't really matter - the bad publicity from this and the celebrities that are backing Carol means that a) the management are going to look silly whatever happens, b) their authority is undermined and c) they will have their wish and their viewership will be leaner, the meaner ones having left!

Technorati Monster Brutally Murdered in Downtown San Francisco

[San Francisco, CA] Hundreds of horrified passers-by looked on helplessly today, as a mob of bloggers and other ne'er do-wells cornered the Technorati monster in an alley and proceeded to maim and mutilate the poor creature until it died.

Police arrested 19 people and estimate that 20-30 are still at large. The only description they could give was that most of them had beards and were wearing pizza stained t-shirts and open-toe sandals. It was not immediately clear whether the description applied to the men, the women or both.

Police Chief Heather Fong said, "I wouldn't wish on anyone what happened to this poor creature. It gives a whole new meaning to backend issues."

The crowd had been gathering outside of Technorati's headquarters, complaining about service issues, when the monster, which has a history of escaping, was seen leaving the building by the side door. They immediately gave chase brandishing wireless keyboards and swinging computer mouses around their heads. As they disappeared down the alley, they could be heard chanting "doh, doh, doh" over and over. When the police arrived, the mob dispersed, leaving a bloody pile of fur. Several of the keyboards had disappeared and could not be found. The Authorities are waiting for the results of the post-mortem.

Police cordoned off the area for several hours. Souvenir pieces of fur were available from street vendors within fifteen minutes.

Calls to Technorati headquarters were not immediately returned.

"Birds of Prey" TV Show Coming Out on DVD

I was excited when I found out the TV show "Birds of Prey" is coming out on DVD in July. I had hoped when they cancelled the series that they would bring it out then. They didn't and I'd given up hope.

In case you didn't know "Birds of Prey" is based on the DC comic books. Oracle (formerly Batgirl, now in a wheelchair), Huntress (the daughter of Batman and Catwoman) and Dinah (a telepath amongst other things, plus someone stole her superhero name!) protect New Gotham City after Batman left.

I put together a Squidoo lens - http://www.squidoo.com/birds-of-prey. I don't think it will get a lot of traffic because one of the reasons they cancelled "Birds of Prey" was declining viewership. It was nice to rediscover it again though!

"Get Vista, XP is Rubbish"

I find this very strange.  Vista may well be better than XP (despite people whining about it) but to put out a white paper essentially trashing XP (which this looks like, especially near the end) does not fill me will confidence that Microsoft have it right this time.

 

Microsoft: "There is no need to wait for Windows 7"

How does Microsoft counter the widespread perception that Vista is a failure, despite its strong sales numbers? First you release a white paper explaining why Vista is better than XP, and then you release a white paper explaining why there is no reason to wait for Windows 7. With companies still considering "bypassing Vista," Microsoft has done just that. The most recent Windows white paper to make it out of Redmond is 20 pages long and is entitled "The Business Value of Windows Vista: Five reasons to deploy now."  Full story

Low SAT? Never mind.

“Wake Forest University will no longer require prospective students to submit SAT or ACT test scores in order to be accepted into the school and have instead made the test scores optional.” Full story

 

I think it’s a great idea to try and broaden the range of students that Wake Forest enrolls.  However, I think this is somewhat of an empty gesture because I don’t think it solves the problem.

 

First of all, it’s unfair to the kids that really work hard on their SATs.  If the SATs are not that big a deal, there is less incentive to do well in them.  You still need to do well on your class work of course, but I do think big, important tests are an important part of growing up, as long as they are used sensibly.

 

The second, and more important thing, is that it’s not addressing the issue of why wealthier students do better in the SATs.  It could be genetics – more intelligent people are more likely to be wealthier, and their children are more likely to be more intelligent.  It could be social – wealthier parents can afford tutors, less wealthy have to send their kids out to part-time jobs.

 

I know those statements are a bit extreme (there is some truth in both of them), but without a discussion about the issue, and a plan to address it, the Wake Forest move just seems like a futile gesture.

An Inconvenient Embarrassment

“Viacom said it had identified more than 150,000 unauthorized clips of copyrighted programming -- including "SpongeBob SquarePants," "South Park" and "MTV Unplugged" episodes and the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" -- that had been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times."” Full story

If I were Viacom, I’d be embarrassed to file this lawsuit. 1.5 billion views! How many did Viacom create?

They should be working out how they can generate 1.5 billion views for their other movies and shows. They should be working out how they can leverage those 1.5 billion views.

Viacom don’t seem to have learned from the music industry debacle – instead of embracing new technology, new ways of interacting, all the music industry did was kill Napster and whine because CD sales were down.

Viacom need to enable the use of modern communications, not try to disable them.