Did Christina's divorce lead to her unraveling?

Some good news for Xtina.
A day after her arrest (and embarrassing mugshot) for public drunkeness in West Hollywood, Christina Aguilera has been named a musician coach on NBC's upcoming musical competition The Voice.

PHOTO: See Christina's mugshot

"I'm so excited," Aguilera, 30, said in a statement.

It's a much needed boost for the troubled star -- who won't be prosecuted for her march 1 arrest. (Her beau Matthew Rutler was also busted for driving under the influence.)

Tuesday's episode was just the latest in a string of blunders for the "Beautiful" star, whose divorce from Jordan Bratman will be finalized in less than six months.

PHOTO: Did Christina's divorce lead to her unraveling?

Aguilera notoriously flubbed the national anthem during Super Bowl XLV Feb. 6, nearly fell off the stage one week later at the Grammys -- and, behind closed doors, has been acting out, according to several pals.

PHOTO: Child stars gone bad

Charlie loses: Charlie loses his Sheens

Popeater. com yesterday screaming "Charlie Sheen Loses Sons," our first thought was: "Oh, no, he's so wasted he can't find his children!"
Check under a mound of cocaine, dude.
But it wasn't that Charlie had misplaced his twins; it was that police had taken them away.

Ex-wife Brooke Mueller obtained a restraining order to keep Charlie away from her and their sons because, she told police, she was afraid of threats he had made.
The order prompted police to take the twins from Charlie's home Tuesday night and return them to Brooke's care.

She told the court in a filing that the "Two and a Half Men" star had refused to return them. The order, filed Tuesday and obtained by the Associated Press, requires Charlie to stay 100 yards away from Brooke and their twin sons, Max and Bob.

According to a sworn declaration, Brooke said Charlie told her in a phone call Sunday night, "I will cut your head off, put it in a box and send it to your mom!"

Ah, his next show: "Two Men and Seven-Eighths of a Woman."

Brooke also claimed that Charlie had threatened to stab her in the eye with a pen knife, and that he spit on her feet and punched her on the arm during a recent trip to the Bahamas.

At least he didn't behead her in the Bahamas.

Charlie has rarely seen his two boys in the past year, and when he has seen them he's seen four or more of them, but he took the boys on Saturday and refused to return them.

"I am in great fear that he will find me and attack me and I am in great fear for the children's safety while in his care," Brooke wrote.

Earlier, on the "Today" show, Charlie said he was "very calm and focused" about the children's being taken away but was ready to fight to get them back.

Moments after the "Today" interview, he was asked by reporters whether the legal move came out of left field for him.

"It came out of the bleachers, actually," he said. "Yeah, I was told a restraining order was being delivered and I thought, 'OK, I can deal with that.' And it was revealed that it was something much more serious."

Asked why Brooke had gotten the court order, he replied, "It's just silly. I think she's latching on to some of this recent press."

Everybody blames the press. He says he's a "bitchin' rock star from Mars" and it's our fault people think he's crazy.

In the court filing, Brooke, a Charlie enabler of a very high order, states she felt obligated to travel to the Bahamas with Charlie and two young women now living with him. She said that Charlie started the trip in a good mood, but drank on the plane - and from L.A. that's a long flight - and became belligerent on Feb. 23.

Brooke claims Charlie turned a flashlight on in her face, held a pen to her face and threatened to stab her in the eye with a knife. She wrote that she then left the Bahamas and returned to L.A.

Before the fight, Brooke claims, Charlie yelled, "I'm untouchable! I'm Charlie Sheen! I'm more famous than Obama!"

Tattbits

* Mayor Istvan Tarlos says Elvis

Presley will be named a posthumous honorary citizen of Budapest, and a city landmark will be named after him.

Tarlos said Elvis will be commemorated because of his support for Hungary in the wake of the anti-Soviet revolution of October 1956. But even at the end of his life, no matter how many peanut butter and banana sandwiches he ate, Elvis was always Hungary.


Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20110303_Tattle_.html#ixzz1FWjeepKZ
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Floating Point: Lossless Coding

One of the new standard extensions is called informally JP3D and deals with the coding of 3D image datasets coming from medical data (MRI's, CAT scan's, etc), scientific measurements or 3D numerical simulations. Formally, this is called JPEG 2000 Part 10while what is commonly known as JPEG 2000 is really JPEG 2000 Part 1 (the baseline system). 

For the most part, JP3D is just a straightforward extension of the JPEG 2000 Part 1 coding principles from two to three dimensions. The major innovations introduced by JP3D are the coding of floating point data (as opposed to the typical coding of 24 bit RGB data) and the coding of variable resolution grids featuring adaptive refinement of the grid cells. Both these innovations are motivated by the wealth of existing scientific measurement and simulation 3D datasets exhibiting these characteristics.
This paper proposes a technology that extends the JPEG 2000 coding pipeline to accommodate adaptive refinement grids. It features a first pass where the structure of the adaptive grid is entropy coded in a lossless manner and then a second pass where the cascade of wavelet transforms is adapted to work over irregular grids. The paper was presented at the Visual Communications and Image Processing 2003 Conference, held in Lugano, Switzerland. The final version is in the SPIE Digital Library and the draft version is below:

Oscar Success: British press celebrates

LONDON — Calls mounted Tuesday for the queen to honour British Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth, a day after he was feted by Hollywood royalty for his portrayal of her stammering father in "The King's Speech".

"What a knight," splashed the Mirror's editorial headline.

"Peerless Colin Firth gave a modest King's Speech as he accepted his Oscar on a great night for Britain.

"Surely it can't be long before we hear Her Majesty utter the words 'Arise Sir Colin'," the paper predicted.

The Sun led with the headline "Royal flush" on its editorial.

"F-f-flipping brilliant!" it continued. "Britain's night of Oscar triumphs was pure gold."

Kate Muir, writing in The Times, suggested the film benefited from Hollywood becoming caught in the "perfect storm of Englishness."

"The great performances from Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter were obviously central, but there was also the behind-the-scenes machine being oiled by the old Hollywood hand and distributor Harvey Weinstein," Muir wrote.

"To that, add the fact that the 6,000-strong Academy's largest voting group consists of actors, who voted for the most thespian entry. The perfect storm of Englishness and royalty was complete."

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw celebrated the triumphant film for not adhering to the usual Tinseltown rules.

"When my mother told me my 80-something aunt had gone to the cinema, on her own, to see 'The King's Speech', I realised how successful it has been in harnessing the awesome strength of the grey pound," he said.

"People who haven't gone to the cinema in 10 or 20 years are going to see 'The King's Speech'. Older people are generally ignored or patronised in the movies: so this film's mighty triumph is a modest assertion of their existence," he added.

The Telegraph's Toby Young reserved most of his passion for tearing apart the "snooze-a-thon" ceremony.

"The 83rd Academy Awards were mercifully short, clocking in at a mere three hours and 19 minutes, but in virtually every other respect this year was a new low," said Young.

"As for the hosts, don?t get me started. James Franco and Anne Hathaway actually made me feel nostalgic for Billy Crystal, something I didn?t think was possible."

Meanwhile, ex-pat footballer David Beckham used his Twitter account to display his pride.

"What a great night for the Brits at the Oscars," the England midfielder tweeted. "Well done to Colin, good speech. Congratulations to everyone who worked on 'The King's Speech'. Proud night."