Tabloid Edition

Segway surprise!

I know I'm a little late to this but I just think that while it's sad it's also wonderful.

The Segway company, that one that was going to revolutionise the world, got sold off at the end of last year. It turned out that it didn't revolutionise the world but it did swallow a huge amount of capital while not doing so. Hving done so, it was worth what was paid for it: a great deal less than had been invested in it.

OK, so far so normal for venture capital. But the bloke who bought it? He decided to test out a new model, one designed for rough terrain, for cross country work.

What happened?

A mogul who had just spent millions to buy the Segway motor-scooter company died after taking one of the two-wheeled gizmos for a ride around his English estate -- and going over a cliff. The crumpled body of self-made millionaire philanthropist Jimi Heselden, 62, was found next to a river along his property Sunday, his electric scooter in the water nearby. "At this time, we do not believe the death to be suspicious," said a spokesman for the police in the town of West Yorkshire in northern England. Heselden -- one of the richest men in Britain with a reported net worth of around $300 million -- is believed to have been doing double duty test-driving a new, more durable, cross-country Segway model while also tooling around his property for an inspection when the freak accident occurred around 11:40 a.m.

Now, me, I'm sorry, but I laughed like a drain.

Sad, both what happened and that I laughed but I did.

Melissa Petro

This really is rather a fun case, that of Melissa Petro and her job as a teacher in the New York school system.

Hooker-turned-teacher Melissa Petro yesterday admitted she knew her sex-for-hire past would land her in detention.

"Didn't you see this coming?" fellow Bronx teacher Ruben Brosbe asked Petro via Facebook after her sordid former sideline was revealed in The Post.

"We talked about it on the first day of training," Brosbe reminded his pal.

"Of course I saw it coming," the feisty Petro, a third-year art teacher at PS 70, wrote back.

Brosbe and Petro declined comment yesterday.

But Petro -- who has been reassigned amid an Education Department probe of her blogging about her exploits as a "former sex worker" -- joked on Facebook about how she hoped a car outside was a teachers-union escort and not "one of the 200 creepy dudes now trying to 'friend' me."

Let's go back to the beginning. Ms. Petro worked, before she trained as a teacher, as both a stripper and an escort. Escort as in the less repulsive name for a hooker. Not something I partake of myself but nor is it something that I think others shouldn't partake of nor supply. And certainly if someone has done such and then decided that they want to change careers well, why not?

Teaching might be a slightly odd choice but then again so what?

Where it all gets really fun is that Petro was blogging this story, even as she was working the three yeasr she had to to gain tenure as a teacher. During this three years her references, character and so on are supposed to be checked out so that it can be seen as just and righteous that she does gain tenure: essentially, that she cannot be fired.

But of course, given that she was writing publicly about tall of this, it turns out that, for yes, she has just been granted tenure, no one was in fact checking references and character.

The egg is on hte school system here, not on Ms. Petro's unconventional former career.

Jessica Alba naked

We all know that Jessica Alba said she would never appear naked in a movie.

That's the sort of thing that starlets do, not the sort of thing that respected (however gorgeous) actresses do.

However, we do have Jessica Alba appearing nude in her recent movie, Machete. So, err, have we had a regression from actress to starlet here? Perhaps a breaking of the word?

No, it can be explained. Getting to Jessica Alba naked is easy:

Jessica Alba looks like she has broken her promise never to strip off for a movie role.

But her white undies in the shot were actually digitally removed in Machete.

Yes, well, there you go. It's not a naked Jessica Alba you fleetingly see, it's a few digitally painted pixels that you do. Most disappointing but then that's what you've got to do to give the audience their titillation while not conducting oneself in a manner unbecoming an actress.

Blanket Jackson is actually British?

Here's something of a turn up for the books. It's being claimed that Michael Jackson's son, Blanket, is actually British. Or at least part British.

The claim is being made by a Brit bloke, Matt Fiddes, who was a body guard to Jackson. He's saying that he was offered $500,000 to make a sperm donation (which he turned down) but that he did make a sperm donation at about the right time for the conception to have occured.

MICHAEL Jackson's former British bodyguard Matt Fiddes will this week claim he is the biological father of the dead star's youngest son Blanket.

Fiddes, of Barnstaple, Devon, will tell Australian TV he fathered the eight-year-old by sperm donation for nothing - turning down a £500,000 offer from the superstar. He has told pals he will fight for custody if anything happens to Jacko's mum Katherine.

That's going to be interesting though, a fight for custody. For of course Diana Ross was named as the second line guardian if anything ever happened to Jackson's mother. And, assuming that they did go through the legal manouvres, he's probably signed away all his parental rights anyway.

Then again, who knows whether the original claim is true of not anyway?

Where to find UK broadband

Or rather, not where to find UK broadband but where to find a supplier of UK broadband? For of course broadband itself is available all over the country: the tricky bit is getting connected to it.

What we would of course like is to have one of those comparison or shopping sites: maybe even a site which explained all of the differences between the different offers? Fortunately, we do indeed have one of these sorts of sites that does this broadband comparison. You can find it by simply clicking through that link there.

The site takes you through the offers from the different broadband providers. What exactly is it that is on offer? You know, the claimed speed of downloads, how much traffic you're allowed, do you have to hire a phone line from someone? There are also, of course, all of the various free phone call offers to consider: this isn't a simple thing to do really.

The more phone calls you make then the more you need to consider what they're offering free. You also need to look at all of the contractual gubbins around the offers. How long do you have to stay with the provider, all that sort of stuff.

And finally you can compare mobile broadband. If you're only a light user this can actually work out cheaper. Download speeds are normally slower, traffics limits lower, but you obviously don't need to purchase the phone line rental as well: so, in fact, it can be cheaper if you're not a heavy user of the net. And, of course, you can also take your laptop off to hte park and keep working, something you can't do if you purchase the line broadband.

So, if you're looking for what will give you a deal on broadband, fortunately, someone's set up a site to tell you all about it.

Lindsay Lohan's on heroin?

Or rather, was Lindsay Lohan on heroin?

Disturbing pictures have been found of Lindsay Lohan with a syringe, holding to her arm while she tightens a torniquet. The pictures date from 2007:

CROUCHING in a dark corner, Lindsay Lohan is poised to inject herself with what appears to be a syringe of heroin.

Our shocking picture shows the troubled Mean Girls star wrapping a tourniquet around her lower arm - the method addicts use to raise a vein.

Her right hand hovers the needle over the skin of her left arm.

What nobody actually knows is whether there was in fact heroin in the syringe and whether Lindsay Lohan actually injected herself with whatever it did contain. We really don't know whether this was actually preparing to take drugs or was simply a pose. A bit of fun for the cameras sort of thing.

About the only thing we can say is that she's not taking opiates now. They would have showed up when she was tested: you know, when the cocaine was found that sent her back to jail?