D. H. McKee Blog

Fahrenheit 9/11 gets industry “thumbs up”

June 9, 2004 D. H. McKee

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Director Michael Moore's controversial anti-Iraq war film "Fahrenheit 9/11" has won a standing ovation from an audience of film industry professionals attending its West Coast debut at Academy Award headquarters.
After an audience of more than 600 people in the theatre of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences cheered, whistled and laughed their way through the two-hour film on Tuesday night, they jumped to their feet to give Moore a standing ovation as he took the stage.
Clearly buoyed by the reception, Moore, whose film is scathingly critical and mocking of President George W. Bush, declared: "There has been a shift in this country. ... The average American is finally beginning to figure it out. We were duped (into invading Iraq)."

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Iraq Wants Foreign Troops

June 9, 2004 D. H. McKee

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Politics

Iraq will need foreign troops to fight insurgents even after a U.S.-led occupation formally ends in the three weeks required by a U.N. resolution adopted unanimously overnight, Iraq's interim prime minister says.
"The sovereignty is going to be total, is going to be complete," Iyad Allawi told Fox News in an interview to be aired on Wednesday. "We ask in fact and we want the...multinational forces to help us to face the security threats until such a time that we are able to build our own security and move ahead."
The United States and Britain, whose invasion toppled Saddam Hussein 14 months ago, hailed the passage of the resolution that endorses a "sovereign interim government" in Iraq and mandates a U.S.-led multinational force to keep the peace.
Compromises offered by Washington and London, at French and German insistence, over how much control Iraqis will have over U.S.-led forces helped overcome council divisions, but few expect the resolution to calm daily violence in Iraq soon.

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Website Analysis Isn’t a Game

June 9, 2004 D. H. McKee

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Sci-Tech

A few games of Roller Coaster Tycoon don't usually translate into productive work, but for one developer the diversion planted the seed for making website analysis more intuitive.
Several years after playing those inspirational games, Robert Savage came up with VisitorVille, a website-traffic analysis package that essentially crosses the DNA of SimCity with that of the traditional chart- and graph-centric tools businesses have long been using.
VisitorVille employs a graphical, urban metaphor to present information about customers' real-time Web-traffic flow. A company's entire Web presence is seen as an urban or suburban neighborhood, with each individual Web page presented as a building. The more visitors on a site, the taller the buildings, and the brighter the lights on each floor.

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Good for you / Bad for you

June 9, 2004 D. H. McKee

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Food

On some days, they are hailed for their edible health virtues; on others, their culinary curse. Some studies boast of their abundance of life-extending antioxidants, while others warn of the poisons, fats, or other dangers they also contain.
They are those "back-and-forth" foods and drinks that keep making news for different reasons -- adding to a recipe for confusion when it comes to their real role in your health.

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Low-carb diets bad for breath

June 9, 2004 D. H. McKee

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Food

Low-carb lifestyle junkies are more likely to suffer from a seldom discussed side effect of such diets -- halitosis, aka bad breath. And since more than 25 million people say they have tried the Atkins diet (not to mention other low-carb eating plans), according to the National Marketing Institute, bad breath may be an epidemic!
Bad breath in the low/no-carb sect is often caused by certain chemicals that are released in the breath as the body burns fat. They are called ketones, and entering into a fat-burning state of ketosis is the hallmark of the Atkins diet. So the good news is that if your breath stinks, you're probably doing a good job of sticking to that low-carb diet.

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