Beautiful, and she works for free

Congratulations to Mi, who recently picked up a 2005 modeling world title. Unfortunately, /. has rendered the contest's site one degree above inoperable, but here's a look at a few of last year's finalists.

Go ahead. Take a look. Because if you haven't figured it out yet, they're all digital creations, CG beauties who largely exist from the head up.

The competition? Miss Digital World 2005. You can find renderings of all the contestants here and a look at the 15 finalists here, once the /.-ians have stopped gawking.

If you want to read the original blurb and comments, you can find them at /.'s site. My favorite comment: "Committing virtual murder of Miss Digital World: All you do is hit delete," to which someone else responded, "Unless you're OJ. Then it's slash, slash, backslash, escape." ::grins:: Horrible, horrible geek humor.

The super-sad part is that the digital models — especially the close-ups of last year's finalists — look more realistic than the photos of the real-life children from the kids beauty contest I mentioned in July.

Should've known this was coming someday, that real models would be photochopped into poreless, blemish-free vixens ... while CG models would be rendered so eloquently that they'd almost pass for the real thing.

P.S. Congrats to Mistress of Dead Languages FF, whose school was featured in the New York Times on Nov. 23 and 24. Not linking up the story because instant death would ensue if her schoolchildren — or her mother — found her blog. But congrats anyway. Someday your snotty little prep school will get past the fact that you're Baptist (gasp!) and a Republican (double gasp!) and will give you an office of your very own.