| Some states say no to teen tanning
WASHINGTON No smoking. No drinking. No talking on cell phones while driving. Now, the latest no-no in state laws aimed at underage teens is indoor tanning. Spurred by worries about skin cancer, Utah and Virginia this year joined 25 other states, including Mississippi, in placing limits on teens seeking a bronze glow from the ultraviolet lights of a tanning bed. North Dakota's Legislature is putting the final touches on a measure to also clamp restrictions on tanning salon patrons under age 18. Most of the laws require underage teens to get parental permission to lie under the tanning-bed heat lamps that emit intense UV light. A handful of states completely ban access to artificial UV light in salons for those younger than 13, 14 or 16. Others require teens to bring along a parent or a doctor's prescription.
All Cayennes should look this good: Top Car Vantage GT
The first-generation Porsche Cayenne was not the most stirring thing to look at. The facelifted 2008 edition fares slightly better (particularly the Turbo), but it's still no beauty. Aftermarketers have also met difficulty when dealing with the Cayenne's looks. For example, TechArt's Magnum is certainly a performance monster, but it still wears a love-it-or-hate-it mug. We were stating to believe that a truly hot-looking Cayenne was simply not achievable at the hands of humans, when Greg from Cardesign.ru sent in word of the Top Car Vantage GT. Top Car is a Russian aftermarket outfit, and from the looks of things, it has its stuff in order. The Cayenne-derived Vantage GT is both a looker and a performer, and we'll say this: it's one of the best looking Cayennes we've seen -- factory or tuner-built -- period.
New fluorescents trump incandescents
Qlistened to Al Gore on television, and he mentioned new compact fluorescent light bulbs for homes. Can I use these in existing lamps, and how much electricity will they save? Is the light quality acceptable? Aompact fluorescent lights have been available for many years. Over the past several years, their prices have dropped considerably, and their light quality is much better. Today, they are much more commonly used in existing lamps and in new designer lamps. Switching from a standard incandescent bulb to a compact fluorescent light reduces electricity consumption by about 75 percent. Replacing a 100-watt light bulb with a 24-watt CFL can save more than $50 in electricity over the life of the light. The most efficient bulbs use light-emitting diode technology, which saves about 90 percent.
Modernism Exhibit Depicts the Art in Ordinary Objects
JEFFREY BROWN: They were also obsessed with technology, the machines that would make this new world possible. Stronger, more pliable construction materials meant artists could shape traditional objects in creative ways. Mass production techniques meant those objects could be produced for everyone. This is the first exhibition for Paul Greenhalgh as director of the Corcoran Gallery. PAUL GREENHALGH, Corcoran Gallery of Art: The great hope was that the city, new technology would transform people's lives, would improve people's lives, make them healthier, make them better, and kind of put people in control of their lives, you know, the idea that people determine their own lives. JEFFREY BROWN: And so the world began to look different. New car design: This model, called the 77A, was made in 1938 by the Czech Tatra Company.
Ubuntu 7.04 Linux released
Canonical's Ubuntu distribution of Linux has reached another milestone with the 7.04 release, the latest in the company's usual six-month refresh cycle. This release lacks some of the desktop bells and whistles which had originally been envisioned early in its development cycle, but does include an update to the Linux kernel and GNOME desktop environment, along with improvements in multimedia codec installation. The release is also the first to feature a Windows migration application. Response to the release overwhelmed the Canonical servers for some time, taking down the site and forcing Canonical to replace it with a stub referring visitors to use mirror sites. Precise figures were unavailable but a Canonical spokesperson confirmed that demand was "substantially more" than earlier editions of the operating system.
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