IT should come as no surprise that "Basic Instinct 2," the long-gestating follow-up to Paul Verhoeven's 1992 blip on the zeitgeist screen, is a disaster of the highest or perhaps lowest order. It is also no surprise that this joyless calculation, which was directed by Michael Caton-Jones and possesses neither the first film's sleek wit nor its madness, is such a prime object lesson in the degradation that can face Hollywood actresses, especially those over 40. Acting always involves a degree of self-abasement, but just watching trash like this is degrading.

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Now 48, the actress retains the same lucid gaze and whippet-thin body, but in this film her face looks strangely inert, and she seems deeply ill at ease. Ms. Stone has famously denied having plastic surgery, and maybe that's true, but, man, does she look weird here.

To get desired groundspeeds and lighting conditions for the test images, researchers programmed the cameras to shoot while the spacecraft was flying about 1,547 miles or more above Mars' surface, about nine times the range planned for the orbiter's primary science mission. Even so, the highest resolution of about 8 feet per pixel - an object 8 feet in diameter would appear as a dot -- is comparable to some of the best resolution previously achieved from Mars orbit.

• You have some PO'ed Palenstinian fans who could definitely use some peacebreathing
  
  
• You'll kiss anyone for peace. Except Shimon Peres, who you were standing next to at the time.
  
  

  Women consider thoughts and feelings more than men, she said.
  
  "I think (men and women) need to be a team. We were meant to be a team," she said.

  
  
  
• You're supposed to have an IQ of 154, or maybe 148. And you're a member of MENSA, having easily passed the admission test. Except that younever was and never did.
  
  
• You say that AIDS is bad, m'kay, but your character in the sure smash hit "Basic Instinct 2" engages in extremely risky sexual behavior?
  
  

"It feels to me that we have an opportunity ... to choose understanding in a new way," she told a press conference in Paris when asked about her trip.

"We are just that breath away from a peaceful co-existence" ... "And it really is just a breath. It's just an agreement that's just a breath. We are not far apart. We can choose to have this alternative kind of growth that is a collective nuance of understanding."

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"This is a new and very exciting time for women, because women by their very nature are creative and not destructive. And this is an extraordinary and important thing that we can bring into a world that awaits the opportunity for peace."

Until 1959, the importation of diamonds had not even been permitted by the postwar Japanese government. When the campaign began, in 1967, not quite 5 percent of engaged Japanese women received a diamond engagement ring. By 1978, half of all Japanese women who were married wore a diamond; by 1981, some 60 percent of Japanese brides wore diamonds. In a mere fourteen years, the 1,500-year Japanese tradition had been radically revised. Diamonds became a staple of the Japanese marriage. Japan became the second largest market, after the United States, for the sale of diamond engagement rings.

Women are in unanimous agreement that they want to be surprised with gifts.... They want, of course, to be surprised for the thrill of it. However, a deeper, more important reason lies behind this desire.... "freedom from guilt." Some of the women pointed out that if their husbands enlisted their help in purchasing a gift (like diamond jewelry), their practical nature would come to the fore and they would be compelled to object to the purchase.
... The element of surprise, even if it is feigned, plays the same role of accommodating dissonance in accepting a diamond gift as it does in prime sexual seductions: it permits the woman to pretend that she has not actively participated in the decision. She thus retains both her innocence--and the diamond.