For the past 2 months, we have seen steady growth. Hopefully, more and more people will visit the site and like what they see.

I've archived my MSN Spaces blogs to http://tan.dorksandlosers.com.

Dorks And Losers is almost on-line. I'm currently uploading the files necessary to blog the way I think would work with the 3 people that are going to comprise of its bloggers. I plan to use Wordpress and there are a bunch of files to upload and it's taking super long. It should be up before July 1. So please prepare for its grand opening. Thank you.

Yes. Man, was this week boring. My days consisted of 10 minutes studying for each of my finals. The rest of the time - I have no idea where the time was spent. Oh well, time for summer school. I will get at least one week of vacation time to rest and relax before school and work start again. June 26 will be the day before school starts and it is the same day that I turn 21. Whoa. A little over a week, and I turn into a full adult. Yea! More after I sleep...

I didn't want to seem sexist, so I wanted to also mention my top 5 on-screen hunks. These men make my blood boil and my heart beat fast. I must admit that I have man-crushes and if I was gay, then I would definitely want these men.

This list includes more classic hunks for the simple fact that there really aren’t that many hunks in our current generation of leading men.

1. James Dean – This man achieved icon status after only appearing in three films, only one opened before he died in a tragic car crash. His movies include the great Rebel Without A Cause, East Of Eden, and Giant. Often referred to as the greatest actor of his generation, it is hard to distinguish as “the” greatest since he only appeared in three films, but he is among the greats of that generation, which included Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift.
2. Montgomery Clift – That last line brings a nice segway into No. 2. This man was really handsome. His career is more defined than Dean, but his life was also derailed by a car accident. His great movies were From Here To Eternity, Alfred Hitchock’s I Confess, and Judgment At Nuremberg.
3. Rock Hudson – He made a name for himself by appearing in many Douglas Sirk melodramas like Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows. He also created a nice on-screen couple with Doris Day in Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers. Rock Hudson defined what a manly man is. And he was gay, so it’d be alright for me to have a crush on him. Well, that applies to Montgomery Clift as well.
4. Paul Newman – He was really good looking as a young man. Even when he got older in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and The Sting, Paul was very rugged. Call me old-fashioned but I’d take Butch any day.
5. Brad Pitt – Have you seen his body? Man, he has abs of steel. I must admit that Brad Pitt is pretty hot, and I would not be afraid to say that in public. In fact, I have.

Honorable Mentions: Elvis, Humphrey Bogart, Jude Law (although he’s more sexy than hunky), Clive Owen, Frank Sinatra, Robert Redford.

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Here is the link from walmartstores.com.

Wal-Mart has been named one of “The 30 Best Companies For Diversity” by Black Enterprise magazine. This is the most recent recognition for Wal-Mart’s continuing efforts to diversify its work environment - both the commercial and corporate environments. It has also received praise from DiversityBusiness.com, the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility, and Asian Enterprise magazine.

Wal-Mart should be recognized for its diverse workplace, but that is one of the relatively few pluses for the No. 1 Retailer to go along with its many more minuses.

+’s

1. Diversity among its many, many employees.
2. Diversity among its many, many items that the company sells.
3. Low prices on its many, many items that the company sells.
4. Friendly personnel, or at least the ones that I have dealt with.

-’s

1. Low hourly wages for its many, many employees.
2. Destroys local businesses and merchants with its incredible low prices.
3. Huge Supercenters are ugly.
4. Much traffic caused by the many customers looking to save an extra $1 on soap.
5. 5. Devotion to appeasing the family crowd by banning CDs with explicit lyrics in favor of “safe” versions and pretty much only selling FULL FRAME DVDS!
6. The cheapness feel when entering one of the stores.
7. The untidiness of shopping at its stores when shopping later in the day when everyone has picked the store twice over for that soap that’s on sale that will save them an extra $1.
8. The huge square-footage needed for a Wal-Mart, which causes their the stores to be built miles from the cities and to the suburbs, or in some cases to the middle of nowhere, where urban sprawl and more traffic become worser problems.

As you can tell, I despise Wal-Mart more than I like it. But you do have to admire the fact that the company has grown from nothing to a more than $200 billion-a-year-in-revenues company. Don’t get me wrong, I refuse to shop at Wal-Mart but there have been rare occasions when I dove into the $4.88 DVD bins or bought some shampoo that I desperately needed.

This list was compiled rather quickly and without much thought. You can tell that it is very superficial. If there are more that I forgot, or ones more detailed that should be added to the list, please let me know how dumb I am.

Here is the link.

Many DUI cases in Florida have been tossed out because the manufacturer of the breath-alcohol tests used to catch them refused to “disclose how the machines work.”

All four of Seminole County's criminal judges have been using a standard that if a DUI defendant asks for a key piece of information about how the machine works - its software source code, for instance - and the state cannot provide it, the breath test is rejected, the Orlando Sentinel reported Wednesday.

Prosecutors have said they do not know how many drunken drivers have been ac quitted as a result. But Gino Feliciani, the misdemeanor division chief in the Semi nole County State Attorney's Office, said the conviction rate has dropped to 50 percent or less.

First, I need to praise the person who first got acquitted using this tactic. Although it isn’t that hard to circumvent the judicial system and its process and get away with crimes, this is pretty clever. It needed the manufacturer to not reveal the machine’s inner workings, and for the judge to allow that defense, but somehow the man got away with it. Others followed the man’s example, and rightfully so.

It hasn’t worked it all places. “Judges in other counties have said the opposite: The state cannot turn over something it does not possess, and the manufacturer should not have to turn over trade secrets.” This is the nature of the system, that every judge has a different opinion and perspective on things and it affects how each case will proceed.

But this is also where I think the real flaws of the system do the most damage. Some cases become precedents for further cases, like Roe V. Wade, and change the entire country. Despite what people say about the lack of need for judges - that lawyers and juries decided the cases, judges can determine and guide their outcomes.

Yes, if the manufacturer of the breathalyzers don’t show how test works which proved that the people were driving over the legal alcohol limit, then there is no real case. But the breathalyzer is pretty much a universally accepted method for detecting the alcohol limit. Not knowing a test’s accuracy is one thing, but not knowing how it works is another. These people broke the law and endangered the lives of many people. These people made serious mistakes in driving and driving, and there is a likelihood that they might repeat those mistakes. How can you let them off the hook?

Here is the link.

Archaeologists have revealed that they have discovered Europe’s oldest civilization (4800-4600 BC) in parts of Germany, Austria and Slovakia. The unearthed buildings predate the pyramids in Egypt.

Among the items being excavated is a huge series of temples: “The network of temples, made of earth and wood, were constructed by a religious people whose economy appears to have been based on livestock farming.” Wow. I’ve always asked the question of whether or not humans could have evolved and matured as civilizations without some form or concept of religion. This kind of answers it. I guess all people need some idea of a higher power, and that is what helps to guide their lives.

It’s also amazing to think that despite our efforts to modernize the world, that there are still places where history can be discovered. Germany is a fairly traveled and a fairly modern country. If archaeologists can still roam around Germany and find artifacts of unknown civilizations, then there can still be others.

China comes to mind as a country that has been destroying its chances at excavating its buried history. As the country prepares itself for the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, it has found itself in controversy. Beijing is an ancient city with tremendous possibilities of finding historical artifacts. But the government has been razing Beijing’s old buildings to make way for modern buildings. Some of the buildings represent the country’s history and tradition, but the efforts of some to convince the government to spare the buildings went unnoticed.

China is in a unique position to discover and preserve its country’s history. But it chooses to not take advantage of it in order to maintain its course for ascending onto the world stage. The United States is a fairly new nation, and what little history is left from its founding is treasured. But hopefully this new European finding will help open the door for new discoveries.

Anyone who has attended school - grade school, high school, or college - know finals well. It is a horrible series of tests that culminate the quarter or semester of classes. I remember having an easy time with my grade school finals, and even my high school finals. For some reason, taking finals in college is hard. Well, it should be because the depth of concepts and materials in college classes are more complex. But, could there be other things involved that could affect one’s performance?

This Friday was the start of finals week. I’m currently taking four classes this school quarter. In high school, I regularly took seven. That means also had to take seven final tests in high school compared to four this quarter and that’s including the take-home final for my writing class. Yet, my chances for failing each other my finals is high.

Why you ask? It’s not because I’ve been slacking off the entire quarter. It can’t be. I’m a working machine during the school year. But when that last week of school hits, I falter. You can’t study for finals. You CRAM for finals, and that is one thing that I can’t do. My attention span is too short and my patience is too momentary to sit for hours on end to re-memorize, or for some memorize for the first time, ideas that my professors spent many class periods lecturing.

In my opinion, my finals schedule has so many gaps in-between my tests that it’s impossible for me to stay focused for each and every test. There comes a point when you stop studying completely and take the tests without any preparation so that you can just have the feeling of being finished them. I know that I’m only taking three tests along with a take-home final, but even one is a lot.

For those that do spend days studying for each final, how do you ever know if you’ve fully prepared yourself for it? If there is a point of readiness, what is it? Maybe I just haven’t ever reached it.

And I would be remiss to not mention the current NBA finals that is taking place now. When I originally started thinking about my final tests, I didn’t think about the NBA finals. But it does relate in some way.

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