WASHINGTON - For a president who promotes technology at every opportunity, Barack Obama often strikes an awed, self-effacing pose in the presence of technicians, scientists and high tech machinery.

"If I'm nodding, you should just assume that everything you said is going completely over my head," he once told winners of a New York science fair.

At no point has his inner geek been more evident than on Tuesday as he mischievously - "The Secret Service is going to be mad at me about this" - helped fire an eighth-grader's award winning high-speed marshmallow air cannon at the drapes of the White House's elegant State Dining Room.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. - Bill Murray stumbled into the back of a crowded conference room Tuesday just as Tiger Woods was wrapping up his press conference at the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

He was supposed to be at the interview table with D.A. Points, his partner last year when they won the pro-am, and perhaps the most overlooked defending champion at a PGA Tour event since Nick Price at Colonial in 2003.

Woods stopped playing the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am for a number of reasons - Poppy Hills (since replaced by the Shore Course at Monterey Peninsula), the six-hour rounds (the field has since been reduced from 180 players to 156) and bumpy greens from so much play that he felt it affected confidence in his putting stroke.