Word: birthdays
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...what may go down as one of the greatest sporting comebacks, seven-time Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher announced Wednesday that he will return to racing after three years in retirement. Just 11 days shy of his 41st birthday - he'll be the oldest driver on the F1 circuit when he comes back - Schumacher said he's signed a three-year contract with Mercedes GP and that he'll return to the track for the opening race of the 2010 season in Bahrain on March 14. His will be the highest-profile return to F1 since Austrian Niki Lauda...
...Party-shot isn't going to send the amateur photographer the way of the switchboard operator. Still, for version 1.0, it is an adequate stand-in at large gatherings, and can come in really handy at small ones, like a family birthday, when nobody wants to be on camera duty. It guarantees that there will be some sort of photo documentation, making it a fairly cheap form of insurance against a lazy or distracted human photographer. It also guarantees, I suspect, a proliferation of even more mediocre photos on Facebook...
...hard to imagine any of Russia's current leaders getting a birthday party like the one thrown Monday at Moscow's Ismailovsky Hotel for the former despot, Josef Stalin. The grand hall was packed beyond capacity with more than 2,000 revelers - some of whom wept as patriotic poems were read. Famous actresses sang ballads with the backing of a full military orchestra. And towering over the stage was an enormous portrait of the birthday boy in his military regalia, adding an element of the surreal to the entire scene...
...birthday celebration on Monday, which was organized by the Communist party, the majority of the attendees were World War II veterans bred on Stalinist propaganda. But hundreds of younger people also sat in the auditorium or milled around the vestibule as the musicians performed. One of them, Vadim Kasimov, a secretary of the Union of Communist Youth, said that Stalin's legacy is one of his group's best tools for recruiting new members. "Young people, when they think of him at all, think of him as a strong leader, a vibrant personality, and what he stood for they often...
...Whether or not young people follow in Stalin's footsteps, the government looks to be succeeding in dispelling some of the outrage felt by Russians toward his terror-filled reign. He may very well be remembered one day as a strong, competent leader who made some mistakes - and whose birthday will always call for a celebration...