I'm tempted to say this is a self-portrait but that would be somewhat disparaging to this Neanderthal man who I'm sure is much better looking than I. Scientists have just come to the conclusion that not only was Neanderthal man a looker but he was smart too - much smarter than he's historically been given credit for. Apparently his stone tools were just as good as those made by our ancestors - Homo Simpson...I mean Homo Sapien.

Boffins have been painstakingly making replicas of the stone instruments used by Neanderthals and Homos and found that the Neanderthal tools were just as efficient as anything made by Stone Age man. The Neanderthal flint tools were broader and thicker than the somewhat smaller and finer-bladed tools of Homo sapiens but they turned out to be no less efficient.

And researchers believe that the demise of the Neanderthals – which has often been explained by the supposed inferiority of their technology – could not have come about solely as a result of their stone tools being worse than those of their rivals.

Neanderthal man lived in Texas...sorry... Europe, for about 300,000 years, surviving a number of ice ages before disappearing completely about 25,000 years ago, about 10,000 years after the arrival of modern humans in Europe.

Why the Neanderthals disappeared has been an enduring mystery but studies on DNA extracted from ancient bones suggest they died out without interbreeding with the new arrivals to Europe. It is likely that the two species of humans competed against each other for limited resources in the same habitat, with the Homos coming out on top. Hang on...I'll re-phrase that...with the Homo Sapiens being the victor.

The scientists, from Exeter University, the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas State University and the Think Computer Corporation, analysed museum specimens of stone tools and learnt how to make exact replicas by knocking flakes off flint stone.

French and Belgian archaeologists recently found proof that Neanderthals - mankind's closest relatives - were living in near-tropical conditions, hunting rhinoceros and elephant, close to what is now France's Channel coast 125,000 years ago.

No traces of Neanderthal activity have previously been found in north-west Europe during this period - a 15,000-year interval between two ice ages.

Historians previously thought that Neanderthals, who thrived in cold conditions, had failed to adapt to the warmer weather and had retreated to the east or to the north. The new site at Caours, near Abbeville, close to the mouth of the river Somme, proves that this was not so.

A two-year dig by two French government research bodies has uncovered evidence of a Neanderthal "butcher's shop" on an ancient riverbank to which animals as large as rhinoceros, elephant and aurochs, the forerunner of the cow, were dragged. The Neanderthals - known to be squat, powerful people, who had language and fire and buried their dead - sliced up the animals with flint tools for their meat and pounded their bones for their marrow.

Patrick Auguste, one of the other principal researchers on the site, an expert on prehistoric animals, at the French national research body, the CNRS, said: "You have to wonder at the artistry, the exceptional skill, with which the flint tools have been shaped. The Neanderthals may have had thicker fingers than us, but they were certainly not clumsy".

More here at Exeter University

I've just edited 9:30 minutes of HDV footage shot on my CanonHV20 - on "Cine" setting at 24 f.p.s. and the "Night" setting which was put through a plug-in Solarisation Effect and "Rain" Effect on iMovie on the Mac. I compressed it with H264 and then ran it through a further compression with DIVX. The colours are somewhat washed out and there is some jerky footage (which isn't in the original) but it compresses the HDV footage (with effects remember) quite well - and the file size can be much smaller than Quicktime or AVI or even MPEG4. This one is 282.5Mb from 5.6GB. I might try uploading the original footage - it's going to take days.

To download the full version visit vuze.com

Merde! A crackdown by French health inspectors this summer has found 27% of food outlets in tourist spots were in breach of the health regulations.

Of the ten thousand establishments inspected on July 31 inspectors found damaged food products, used-by dates exceeded, defective labelling and dirty staff - a lot of whom are seasonal employees. A government spokesman said “This figure is stable compared to last year. It is the result of the work of the 5,000 agents of the mobilized veterinary services, without counting the customs, the gendarmerie and the fraud squad”.

Well that's lucky - seems French restaurants in tourist spots are only as shonky as they were last summer.

However, the inspectors conceded that seizures of food unfit for human consumption had risen from 13 tonnes last year to 30 tonnes this year.

This year, inspections were concentrated on seafood restaurants and food vans selling chips, pizzas and kebabs.

Rear claws

The Attack of the Killer Kangaroo

An Australian woman is lucky to be alive after being attacked by a large male kangaroo when she went to check on her horses in a paddock on a rural property in Mudgee - 260k north west of Sydney - famous for wine, honey, olives, dairy products....and now kangaroo attacks.

The 65-year-old woman was saved from serious injury when the roo was chased away by the farm dog which heard her screams.

She was rushed to hospital suffering facial lacerations and other injuries. The kangaroo is estimated to have been two metres tall and 100kg.

Locals say Mudgee has become overrun by kangaroos in the past couple of years with the animals now congregating on many of the rural properties. The woman's son said -

There would be a couple of hundred kangaroos within a hundred metres of the house, and last night she was just walking down the paddock to check on the horses before it was dark...A lot of kangaroos have just bolted, but the males don't care, they just stay laying down, they're not scared. The kangaroo has just jumped up and launched straight at her. He hit her once and she just dropped and rolled. My dog heard her screaming and bolted down and chased him off. It it weren't for the dog she'd probably be dead.

The woman's face, hands and back has been ripped by the kangaroos rear claws.

I heard a rustle behind a tree and turned around, it just came at me.

I was standing up. It went for my face straight away. It was hitting me around the neck.

I threw myself on the ground but it just kept kicking me.

Have a look at this kangaroo attack video and you'll get an idea of the damage that can be done by those claws.

This is not the first time in recent years that someone has been attacked by a kangaroo Downunder. In 1998 a kangaroo attacked a 13 year golfer on an Australian course. At the time he was searching for his lost ball in the rough when a large male kangaroo attacked. The boy suffered very severe injuries. He couldn't open his right eye for a year and had to have artificial tear ducts implanted.

Kangaroo Attack

Cadel EvansI've just spent a lazy Bastille Day afternoon on the couch watching La Grande Boucle on French television (which sucks, just quietly). Our Aussie boy Cadel Evans is now in the race leader's yellow jersey after finishing eighth in the 10th stage 156km ride of le Tour de France from Pau to Hautacam in the Pyrenees today. The stage winds upward for 11 miles at a gradient of 7.5 percent. Then descends for 22.3 miles before finishing with another hard climb for 8.9 miles up Hautacam.

Italian Leonardo Piepoli of the Saunier Duval team won the stage with his teammate Juan Jose Cobo Acebo second.

Interestingly Frank Schleck of Luxembourg who was third across the line has gone from 11th to 2nd and is just a second behind Evans.

Cadel Evans went over the handlebars in a crash yesterday - falling hard enough to break his helmet as well as sustain abrasions to arms, legs and shoulders. His says it happened so fast he doesn't remember anything. Apparently another rider went down in front of him. Although some are saying a bag was caught in his front wheel.

We have to put this in perspective. Yesterday he was just relieved to find out his collarbone wasn’t broken, it’s been broken about five times in the past - Marc Sergeant, Silence/Lotto team manager.

Evans refused all interviews after the stage but did toss his broken helmet to an Australian reporter who was then interviewed by the rest of the press crew.

Riders get a day off tomorrow before hitting the mountains again on Wednesday. Bravo Cadel! Allez!

Internet REIT (iREIT) is a next-generation Internet media company that acquires, develops and monetizes high-quality domain names and web properties. iREIT's domain portfolio includes such premier properties as the Netster.com portal, Bands.com, CreditReports.com, Shows.com, eBuy.com, Recipe.com, GoCarts.com, VietnamWar.com, OfficeSupply.com, and many others. A leading supplier of high-value Internet traffic to advertisers, iREIT receives more than 40 million visitors per month through its growing network of media properties. so says the blurb on this domaining site.

All well and good. Except for one thing. Recently they blew their bottom line by a good $40k by accidentally posting the wrong prices on some choice names they sold on Afternic.com. Look at what these 3-letter names were sold for -

Say.org - $500
WJA.com - $735
ZLI.com - $500
PQT.com - $571
RLU.com - $900
Gut.org - $500
LLJ.com - $603

Some of these names could have fetched at least $10k each. At least. Say.org and Gut.org are quite catchy no?

Whoever bought RLU.COM truly did well. Five days ago it was sold at an SEDO auction for €6,600 ($10,346). The first bid was €4,500.

There's conjecture that whoever listed the sites at Afternic put those amounts into Asking Price which is in effect the Buy It Now price. Guess who's out of a job?

Psst! Wanna know how to make monet from Expired Domains? Click Here!

Paris houseboat amphicar

Paris Houseboat Rental

This is the way to live in Paris - aboard your converted peniche houseboat barge with your Amphicar (amphibious car) lashed to the deck.

The peniche and amphicar is owned by Undersea Architect and visionary Jacques Rougerie. Its a 1964 model of the famous German marque - the Amphicar was the only amphibious mass-produced automobile.

Its powered by the 1147 cc engine from the British Triumph Herald 1200 - "state of the art" in 1961. The Amphicar can steam at 7 knots in the water and 70 mph (113 km/h) on land.

The Amphicar is steered with the front wheels - both in the water and on land.

3,878 vehicles were built before the company went belly up.

Concourse vehicles are fetching above $115K these days.

This particular car was restored here in France, with all the parts imported from the U.S.

BTW there lots of these peniche houseboat barges moored along the Seine - in various states of repair. A good one in a prime position can set you back a million dollars.

Good pictures and info on Amphicars here at Amphicars.com and yet more photos here at Google Images

3 bedrooms aboardYou want to rent a luxury Peniche Housboat here in Paris? Have a look at this one moored alongside the Bois de Boulogne

Amphicar Technical Tour
Cheesy but cool video of some technical specs of the Amphicar. Too bad he doesn't talk much about the engine and transmission but fascinating none the less.

Paris Houseboat

Water to Gas

Converting Your Car to Run on Water

I've been getting emails from Britisher Chris Whatisface - another one of these "send me $97 every month and I'll show you how to get rich working online" types. He's the guy behind Google Assassin, Day Job Killer and some other programs whose wacky names always elude me - "How to Sell Your Grandmother for Small Change on Ebay" or something like that. I'm a sucker for this stuff. I love reading the copy. I love the carrots they dangle - the seductive words they use. Notice how "Guru" seems to be the flavour of the month? Along with "reverse-engineering". All these guys are banging on about "The Gurus Won't Like What I'm about to Tell You" or "How the Gurus Make a Grand a Day from Affiliate Marketing"..."What Adwords the Gurus Ate For Breakfast"..."We Reverse-Engineered the World's Best Affiliate Program...

So Chris has been drip-feeding me information about a new get-rich scheme of his utilizing the Google Adwords program - you know, Pay For Click Advertising. He says he'll give me all the details to some hot keywords that are pulling $1500 a day from Clickbank in affiliate commissions. Yep $1500 a day. He says at the very least you can make $100 a day and he's going to go all altruistic and give this to me on a platter. Tomorrow when his Grab the Gurus by the Throat program or whatever its called - see I've forgotten already. Maybe it's called Nemesis or Google Nemesis. Anyway...

Here's part of what he say in the email -

"Inside this very important e-mail, I am going to...

==> give you a $1500/day PPC campaign

==> show you proof of my income - to the tune of $2.35 million.

...In a moment, I am going to let you "steal" a Google ad that has
dumped over $10,000 into my ClickBank account in the last week.

...But before I take a final hammer-blow to the gurus, before I debunk
all the myths about wealth-building on-line, I want to answer a few
of the questions I have been fielding all week..."

I've checked out his video. He does what all these guys do and takes us through his supposed Clickbank accounts. And yeah, it shows he's been making around $1500 a day. Now here's where it gets interesting. He tells us the keywords for this campaign. Apparently the best-performing keywords on Clickbank. And here they are in bold -

Water Fuel Cells

Apparently they are the keywords that are getting the most hits for Affiliate campaigns. All to do with - again in bold -

Converting Your Car to Run on Water

There are some other hot keywords too. Like Water to Fuel, Water to Gas, Running Your Car on Water, Kits to Convert your Car Engine to Run on Water - like that.

So come Tuesday, Chris-baby is going to show me exactly how to pull $1500 a day out of this Water to Fuel Scam...I mean program. I can hardly wait. What a concept - Converting Your Gas-Guzzler to Run on Water

A-Rod & Cynthia RodriguezGuess who I saw today in Paris? Yep, rocker Lenny Kravitz and Cynthia We're Just Good Friends Rodriguez. Cynthia is the missus of Alex Rodriguez commonly known as A-Rod - the star New York Yankees slugger. I saw them in St Germain des Prés (after bringing Charlie back from his psych appointment but that's another story).

Fascinating no? Of course Kravitz has issued a complete denial of any hanky-panky with Cynthia. (Didn't he say he's been celibate for the last three years?) But meanwhile....back at the ranch...the word is that A-Rod has been hanging with Madonna in her Upper West Side apartment. (Perhaps he was just showing her how to hold a bat?)

The 34 year old mother of two, Cynthia Rodriguez has been in Paris for the past four days. And she looked pretty good to my eyes. Paris has been quite hot this week and as I write this on Thursday night its raining (can't believe I'm scribbling this trite shit. Sorry...normal programming will resume shortly. I just got to get Mrs Rodriguez and Mr Kravitz out of my system).

Oh yeah...here Lenny's statement -

"Cynthia is a friend and is here with the godfather of her baby, who is also Alex's trainer, his wife and their baby girl. She came here to escape from everything happening in New York City," he said. "I opened my home to her as a friend and I find it extremely hurtful that I am now being referred to as an adulterer."

Cynthia and A-Rod cooling off?The link in all this is, of course, that Kravitz co-wrote and produced Madonna's "Justify My Love" - back in 1990. (Personally I can't stand the woman and think her music sucks)

For the enlightenment of my French and Australian readers (all two of you), A-Rod Rodriguez has a $275 million Yankee contract making him the highest-paid player in baseball history. Apparently he's been off-the-pace recently. Distracted perhaps?

Cynthias MySpace page says -

I’m his #1 fan. He may be your #13 but he’s my #1. We have three dogs; a Golden Labrador named Shorty and two German Shepard’s named Ripper and Gypsy.

She may have been a "high school psychology teacher" but she sure can't spell ("Shepard's). Ho-hum. C'est tout. Hmmm...Cynthia Rodriguez

Volkswagen
Ugly front
nice butt
assume the position
topless
not much roomVolkswagen's 'one-litre per 100k' concept car (282mpg) first unveiled six years ago is said to be going into production for a release in two years.

The carbonfibre monocoque won't come cheap though - €30,000 is being mooted.

Interestingly, cameras replace the side mirrors to minimize the drag coefficient.

The 300kg body will be powered by a new two-cylinder turbodiesel with a mild hybrid system that would allow full-electric operation under some circumstances.

Your €30k will include ABS/ESP, a driver's airbag, sequential motorbike-style six speed transmission as well as LED head and taillights. Air-conditioning will be an option.

Looks like something Buckminster Fuller might have designed in the thirties eh?