The weekly Zeitgeist
Every week, Google.com publishes the Zeitgeist, an index that tracks the popularity of search requests fielded by Google’s industry-leading Internet search engine. As Google’s label suggests, the lists capture “the spirit of the times.” To decode this spi
LUCIANA BARROSO
Given that the summer wedding season is now over, it is nice to see that Googlers still find themselves in a romantic mood. The current object of their oohing and aahing is an Argentinian-born woman named Luciana Barroso, who recently became engaged to actor Matt Damon.
Sadly, there are no details yet about a wedding date or location (or dress, or ring, or elaborate 17layer cake, etc.), but the Barroso/ union at least offers something of a change from the usual Hollywood story of one celebrity marrying another. Although she is attractive enough to pass for a film star, Barroso is actually a former bartender whom Damon met at a Miami club. ( She has since made a career move befitting a celebrity spouse by becoming an interior designer.) When they wed, Damon will become step- dad to Barroso’s six-year-old little girl from her last marriage. ADVENT CHILDREN
The first Final Fantasy
movie was not exactly a good argument for making feature films based on video games, but that hasn’t stopped the gamemakers at Square Enix from giving it another go. And maybe they have the right idea. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which is already out on DVD in Japan, has been so highly anticipated that bootlegged subtitled copies are making the rounds here in North America. No one who has seen the film seems especially enamoured with the plot (a morose guy named Cloud must save the world from a deadly disease called Geostigma). But most Web reviewers have pronounced Advent Children
visually stunning, which is likely what matters most to an audience unaccustomed to watching anything except action they are directing with their own joysticks.
There will still be quite a wait for the legal North American version of Advent, though. The DVD is not expected to turn up in these parts until mid-November at the earliest. TAMIFLU There may not exactly be a cure for the avian flu that is causing alarm in Southeast Asia
and has some infectious disease experts solemnly predicting a global pandemic.
But an antiviral
drug called
Tamiflu is the
closest thing to
it, serving as both
an effective treatment and prophylactic for avian influenza, as well as other forms of flu. That has left much of the world scrambling to get ahold of as much Tamiflu (and Tamiflu information) as possible.
Indeed, a recent article in a U. S. newspaper suggested that Americans might be wise to order their own supplies of Tamiflu online from foreign pharmacies (including Canadian ones) since the U. S. government has been slow getting its order in to Tamiflu’s manufacturer, drugmaker Roche. This is advice that could bring a whole new meaning to the term “cross-border shopping.” TRACI J. TAPP
Do not, under any circumstances, have a sexual relationship with your underage students. You’d think that would be lesson number one at teachers’ college. Yet hardly a year seems to pass without the revelation of a scandal involving a teacher having sex with a young pupil.
The latest perpetrator is a New Jersey gym teacher named Traci J. Tapp. She is accused of having had sexual contact with three teenage students at the high school where she works (and from which she is currently suspended without pay). This revelation has spawned much Internet debate over whether the teenagers in question ( 16- and 17year-old boys) were victims or willing participants or both. But there is no doubt over where the parents of one of the boys stand on the question: They have filed notice of their intent to sue the school board.
National Post
msoupcoff@ nationalpost. com