{"id":578,"date":"2005-06-25T14:46:12","date_gmt":"2005-06-25T21:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=578"},"modified":"2005-06-25T14:46:12","modified_gmt":"2005-06-25T21:46:12","slug":"boobs-bandwidth-and-sexy-polish-plumbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2005\/06\/25\/boobs-bandwidth-and-sexy-polish-plumbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Boobs, Bandwidth and Sexy Polish Plumbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

AP<\/a>:<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u00d1 With barely a word about it, workers at the Justice Department Friday removed the blue drapes that have famously covered two scantily clad statues for the past 3 1\/2 years.<\/p>\n

Spirit of Justice, with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male Majesty of Law basked in the late afternoon light of Justice’s ceremonial Great Hall.<\/p>\n

The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak in the Great Hall without fear of a breast showing up behind him in television or newspaper pictures. They also provoked jokes about and criticism of the deeply religious Ashcroft.<\/i><\/p>\n

Foreign Affairs<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The United States is losing considerable ground to Japan and its neighbors, and they will be the first to reap the economic benefits of these technologies. It is these countries, rather than the United States, that will benefit from the enhanced productivity, economic growth, and new jobs that high-speed broadband will bring. In 2001, Robert Crandall, an economist at the Brookings Institution, and Charles Jackson, a telecommunications consultant, estimated that “widespread” adoption of basic broadband in the United States could add $500 billion to the U.S. economy and produce 1.2 million new jobs. But Washington never promoted such a policy. Last year, another Brookings economist, Charles Ferguson, argued that perhaps as much as $1 trillion might be lost over the next decade due to present constraints on broadband development. These losses, moreover, are only the economic costs of the United States’ indirection. They do not take into account the work that could have been done through telecommuting, the medical care or interactive long-distance education that might have been provided in remote areas, and unexploited entertainment possibilities.<\/i><\/p>\n

NYT<\/a>:<\/p>\n

PARIS, June 25 – Blond, buffed and blow-dried, a come-hither half-smile on his face, the man in the travel ad grips the tools of his trade as he beckons visitors to Poland.<\/p>\n

“I’m staying in Poland,” the man says, a set of strategically placed pipes in one hand, a metal-cutter in the other. “Lots of you should come.”<\/p>\n

He is the “Polish plumber,” a mythical figure who nevertheless became a major player in France’s rejection of the European Union constitution last month. Poised to move to France and steal French jobs by working longer hours for less pay, this “plumber” has come to personify French fears about the future.<\/p>\n

Now the Polish Tourism Bureau is using the character on its Web site to allay French fears and attract visitors at the same time.<\/p>\n

“With all the bad publicity about the ‘Polish plumber,’ we thought why not have a sense of humor and make him work for us?” Krzysztof Turowski, the creator of the ad, said in a telephone interview from Warsaw. “We picked someone handsome and clean with a sexy look in his eyes – to get the French to come to our beautiful country.”<\/p>\n

Next week the tourist office will open its campaign in Paris with a news conference and a firsthand look at Piotr Adamski, the 21-year-old model, who will also pose at the Eiffel Tower in the same green overalls and Stanley Kowalski T-shirt he wore in the ad.<\/p>\n

Mr. Adamski has become such an overnight sensation that even Poland’s former president, Lech Walesa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Solidarity labor movement, offered him advice for his Paris trip.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AP: WASHINGTON (AP) \u00d1 With barely a word about it, workers at the Justice Department Friday removed the blue drapes that have famously covered two scantily clad statues for the past 3 1\/2 years. Spirit of Justice, with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male Majesty of Law basked in the late afternoon light of Justice’s ceremonial Great Hall. The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-foreign-affairs","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-9k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}