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(Here I am at your service, oh Lord, here I am - here I am. No partner do you have. Here I am. Truly, the praise and the favor are yours, and the dominion. No partner do you have.)
These are the words chanted by some two million people from across Saudi Arabia and throughout the world heading, as if pulled by a magnet, to one single spot on Earth. As has happened every year for 14 centuries, Muslim pilgrims gather in Makkah to perform rituals based on those conducted by the Prophet Muhammad during his last visit to the city.
All News


text: Not too spicy, this is the ultimate condiment for pepper enthusiasts. Mixed peppers, olives, celery and seasonings in vegetable oil combine to make this famous Italian-American favorite. Made famous by spreading over Chicago style Italian beef, sausauge, meatballs and cold cut sandwiches, the uses are are limited only by your imagination. Also adds an exciting new option to re-heated leftovers.

subset: commoncrawl


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HOUSTON (AP) - The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has rejected an appeal from an auto mechanic sent to death row for being the middleman in a murder-for-hire plot that left a Houston-area police officer's wife fatally shot nearly two decades ago.
The state's highest criminal said Wednesday claims from 56-year-old Joseph Prystash weren't legally acceptable so they've been dismissed without even considering their merits.
Evidence showed Prystash was contacted by former Missouri City officer Robert Fratta, who offered him a Jeep to find a hitman to kill Fratta's estranged 33-year-old wife, Farah. She was killed at her home in 1994.
Fratta, Prystash and triggerman Howard Guidry all are on death row. None of them has an execution date.
Prystash already had a long criminal record, including seven felony convictions in Florida.
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


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I Bought This Shirt Tomorrow - [Back to the Future] T-Shirt for $10
Pretty sweet shirt idea from teefury.
Some shipping is involved, I'm sure.
5 Comments add a comment
If by "some shipping is involved" you mean that it will be delivered by a UPS guy in a DeLorean, then I agree.
I don't understand how they get the order request in the future, though. Maybe the guy in the DeLorean checks the website for orders today and processes them tomorrow. I still think that technically you would be buying it in the present though.
@belyndag needs one of these
I bought this shirt tomorrow and returned it yesterday...just for a wrong size.
@barnabee: Not to worry! I'm going to order one yesterday!
woooo doc. this is heavy.


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Taste Buds: Bella Pizzeria
Belliare eatery has great product, limited hours
April 18, 2013
Apparently another one had managed to slip below the Buds' radar. But we really don't blame ourselves, as this particular eatery is only open two nights per week....
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Mary Kay strives to preserve our precious and limited resources for future generations.
"I feel very strongly that we must do everything in our power to save our planet or our grandchildren will not have a place to live. Let me emphasize that Mary Kay is an environmental leader because we strongly feel it is the right thing to do."
Mary Kay Inc.MFG Recycling Operations 1330 Regal Row Dallas, TX 75247


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Hello everyone!
- I'm an avid gamer, recently playing a lot of casual and indie games.
- I also studied music for many years when I was younger, but I find creating cohesive music to be very stressful, which is unfortunate. That said, here are some of my dabblings.
- Longtime user of gaming.stackexchange.com (now 'Arqade').
Sometimes I just sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.
- Ottawa, Canada
- GnomeSlice
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text:
The 10 Worst Powers to Have on Heroes
#5. Dale Smither
The Power:
Super hearing
Why It Sucks:
Who wouldn't want to hear everything so sensitively that the sound of a pin dropping is the aural equivalent of the International Space Station falling out of orbit and crash landing 2 feet away from your ear drum?
Dale Smither, who is a woman (or at least was scripted as one, though "she" was pretty butch), could hear everything from distant wind to the sound of people's beating hearts. She would have to constantly wear headphones to drown the absurdly overwhelming sound of the world out. How this didn't make things far worse, we're not sure, since if a mouse hiccuping from a mile away makes you double over in pain, why would jamming headphones into your ear canals and cranking the latest Disaster Area album be any better?
Anyway, massive plot holes aside, we don't see any benefit to having super hearing that wouldn't be massively outweighed by the obvious drawbacks. There would be the constant blowing out of your eardrums, the not being able to function in normal society, and/or the going insane and taking it out on whomever gets in the path of the rifle you'll carry with you to the post office roof.
#4. Zane Taylor
The Power:
Molecular manipulation. Translation: Can melt toasters.
Why It Sucks:
As depicted on ,Heroes, the possibility of gaining the ability to manipulate molecules made Sylar so happy that he waited a full 42 seconds to crunch Zane Taylor's head in with a blunt object and steal it. This would seem to be awesome, assuming you could rearrange molecules into something else, turning a spork into a diamond the size of your head or a pair of socks into Angelina Jolie. Unfortunately, the ability seemed to be confined to pretty much just melting various household appliances and causing one's living room to resemble an IKEA display.
This would seem to have application for bank robbers, except the power takes several seconds to work and by the time it did and you went into the melted vault and got your money, you'd be shot in the face several hundred times over on your way out. Primarily, it would seem to only be useful for practical joke purposes, such as for melting the chair of the person in front of you in class, or perhaps fusing the fly on their pants together so that they'd pee themselves. It would be funny the first few hundred times, but we're pretty sure it would eventually get old.
#3. Maya Herrera/Alejandro Herrera:
The Power:
Kills people with her eyes/unkills people with his hands.
Why It Sucks:
What we have here is your basic Hulk super-power formula. Just like how you "wouldn't like" Bruce Banner when he's angry; you won't like Maya Herrera (ever, because she's an incredibly weak character that doesn't seem to have anything to do whatsoever with the show other than to take up time and cry a lot). When she gets stressed out, her mascara starts to run and everyone within about a 1-mile radius chokes and dies, eyes bugging out in horror as if they'd just seen Rosie O'Donnell doing lunges.
Fortunately, her brother Alejandro is there to suck Maya's mascara back in using only his hands and a constipated look on his face. This sometimes causes people to come back to life, but sometimes not.
There are, of course, myriad ways in which this power/co-power would be useful--namely to temporarily kill people who stress you out, which would only be limited to everyone driving on the roads, holiday shoppers, college professors, girlfriends and your family. And friends. And co-workers. And that one guy who always quotes The Office at work.
If you forget to resurrect the people you kill, it's a given that you and your constipated sibling would be the only ones left alive on the planet after a few weeks of running amuck with this power. And, unless you're Angelina Jolie and her brother, it's unlikely the two of you will be willing to repopulate Earth.
#2. Meredith Gordon
The Power:
Pyrokinesis. Translation: Saves $.22 cents a year on matches.
Why It Sucks:
As Claire Bennett's biological mother, Meredith Gordon has a unique power shared only by anyone who's ever spontaneously combusted and Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four. She can create fire with her bare hands. That's one better than Pyro from the X-Men, who can only "manipulate" the fire but can't create it. With a power like that, Meredith Gordon could, dare we say, take over the world. But instead she primarily uses it to light her smokes and her propane stove, which is precisely what most people would do with it.
Sure, you'd go through at least a few boxes of plastic utensils for the first several weeks as you melt fork after fork, but after that, then what? If you really think about it, how often do you actually need to make a fire? If you're a hippie and you light candles, incense and campfires and burn your bra a lot, then sure, we'll give you that. But most normal people, especially the non-smokers of the planet, will call on this power two to three times a year, and even then, mostly to just dispose of old boxes from storage or piles of leaves in the yard.
Of course, you could use it for evil, but you need only turn to modern gun statistics to find that less than 1 percent of gun owners use it on another human being. Why would having fire hands be any different? At best, you'll be able to realistically portray the Wicked Witch of the West in your school's production of The Wizard of Oz when she says, "How about a little fire, scarecrow?" Everyone will ooh and ahh, except for the actor portraying the scarecrow, who will unfortunately be incinerated alive.
#1. Niki Sanders
The Power:
Split personality
Why It Sucks:
Having a split personality is a super power the way that Alzheimer's is a super power. The same way that it would be really cool to forget how to go to the bathroom by yourself, it would be every bit as fun to be so emotionally damaged that your personality would splinter into separate entities whenever life becomes even remotely difficult.
This is one of those instances where Heroes confuses a real life disease with super powers and then tries to make it entertaining. Next season, we're sure they're going to trot out an AIDS patient and show off their heroic ability to swallow copious amounts of pills, and then maybe they'll hook up with Elle Bishop and have some sexy and exciting adventures in the intensive care unit.
If you're still playing along at home, Niki's "power" consists of turning into the slutty but violent Jessica when something violent and/or slutty needs to be done. She also turns into the slutty and coked out Gina when something slutty and/or drug-induced needs to be done, such as if you somehow needed to sleep with Screech from Saved By the Bell in order to save the world. That hasn't happened on the show yet, but the way the show has been going lately, we wouldn't be surprised if it's the entire premise of the third season.
If you like this article, check out our weekly Heroes analysis on the Official Cracked Blog.


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What's the difference?
I've already seen Terminator.
I've seen Terminator before.
What's the difference?
They arrive at propositions with the same truth conditions, but by different means; and with somewhat different contextual expectations. In fact, they arrive at the truth value of the sentence without them. They both mean:
When that is true, both of the sentences are also true (when else could you have seen it that wasn't before or already?), and when that is false, both of them are false; and vice versa, in all combinations. They're synomymous. All of them. That's mostly because they all use the Perfect construction.
Adverbials like before, already, never, etc. are used to add nuance and build the background context. Language does that a lot; there's almost never just one way to say something.
Semantically, the before clause is a simple Existential perfect, "used to indicate the existence of past events", and emphasizing the pastness of the event with a redundant before (when else could you have seen it?).
The already clause, however, has a more complex semantics. Already presupposes expectations on the part of the speaker about the timing of events; normally one uses already to refer to events that occur before they are expected to
So, either before and already might be used in a case where the speaker classifies seeing Terminator as an event that, like registering to vote or getting married, need not be performed more than once. But the one with already is quite definite, in my opinion, that the speaker is not interested in seeing it again.
I think the second one is more likely to count as a No answer. Of course, that could be just my perceptions; there's a lot of room for individual variation here.
Before is a very flexible word. It can be an adverb, a preposition and a conjunction. A word of similar skills is since.
Already, in the other hand, is an adverb.
In theory, both already and before could be used in their adverbial form to modify seen in the examples given, and would be correct.
However, at least in US, before, in its adverbial form, is more often used in referring to location or action rather than viewing something.
When referring to visual experience, before just doesn't seem comfortable.
And yet


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Weekend Quick Picks: The Criterion Collection on Hulu/
Oh your weekend may have never seen so many classics before! When The Criterion Collection announced their generous offer of hundreds of films to stream for FREE on Hulu until February 17, we knew who to turn to for the quick picks, SFFS Programmers.
Sean Uyehara's Picks:
Woman in the Dunes, dir Hiroshi Teshigahara (Japan, 1964) — "a strange, beautiful and frightening Marxist allegory about relentless, dehumanizing power."
Rod Armstrong's Picks:
Fanny and Alexander, dir Ingmar Bergman (Sweden, 1972) – "Bergman's masterpiece."


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GQ asked Last Week Tonight host and huge fan of football (comma European) John Oliver to guess whether various professional soccer players with absurd names are real or fake. He did ... not that well, actually.
You really can't fault Oliver for getting some of these wrong. I mean, Johnny Mustache? Come on. Next they'll expect us to believe there was an American football player named Dick Butkus.
[H/T Tastefully Offensive]


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4 tips for increasing productivity
"If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." So goes the lyric to Any Road, a George Harrison song. That sums up the way many companies approach improving their operations: They may not know exactly where they ought to be, but they sure want to get there in a hurry.
"Benchmarking and metrics need to be used as a lantern, and not as a carrot and a stick," says Chris Ferrell, a principal with Tompkins Associates and the associate director of the Supply Chain Consortium. "If you develop metrics around the processes in your operation where you're not good and then look for ways to improve them, metrics work great. If all you do is tell your employees that they have to hit a specific number by the end of the year or they're in trouble, you'll hit that number, but your processes may not improve."
In other words, your employees won't really know where they're going, but they'll find some way to get there. How can metrics best be used to get you where you know you ought to be? Ferrell has four suggestions:
Narrow the focus to start: Too many logisticians create a big list of the things they want to benchmark. Instead, Ferrell suggests narrowing that list down to two or three metrics for each operational silo that are meaningful and quantitative, and begin measuring those. "Once you work with those metrics, you might find they're too narrow and that you need to add a few more," says Ferrell. "But you want to start slow."
Balance the metrics: When they begin benchmarking, most people start with their financials. But a business is about more than cash flow. Or, put another way, how you are performing operationally – and how your vendors are performing – will impact those financials. "Yes, you need to choose metrics that are relevant to your financials," says Ferrell, "but you also need to look at your internal operations and externally as well. You want to know how you're performing relative to your customers' expectations and how your vendors are performing as well."
Benchmark internally first: There's a wealth of information available today that allows you to compare your warehouse or distribution center to other distribution centers in your industry or other industries. Before seeing how you stack up to the competition, take a hard look first at operations across your own company. If your company has more than one distribution center serving similar customers with a similar product mix, that's the first place to look. "This might be as simple as having the manager from Miami meet the manager from Chicago for a week to see what each is doing." Within any organization, there will be managers who have built a better mousetrap and figured out a better way to do things. Identify those managers and share what they're doing with the rest of your organization. "That's going to be low hanging fruit," says Ferrell. "It'll be easier to get and implement than anything you'll get from benchmarking other facilities."
Don't forget best practices: When you do benchmark, don't just look at the numbers. Also look at the best practices. "When benchmarking, too many companies get hung up on finding another company in their industry to compare themselves against," says Ferrell. "The trick is to find companies that go to market similarly as yours, even if they're in disparate industries." Example: When Federal Express wanted to learn how to service and turn its airplanes more quickly, it didn't look at United or Delta; managers spent time in the pits with NASCAR crews. "They learned how a NASCAR crew is organized so it can change a tire and fill a gas tank in 14 seconds and applied that to their operations."


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Redirected from LCHC
this wiki
- "Hardcore lives on in the city where it all began. Jimmy Gestapo hosts a selection of the best punk and hardcore classics."
- — GTA IV Website
- "Steeped in a tradition of punk and metal, Liberty City Hardcore now features a new radio show hosted by DJ Max Cavalera of the legendary bands Sepultura, Soulfly and Cavalera Conspiracy."
- — The Lost and Damned Website
Liberty City Hardcore, also known as Liberty City Hardcore Classics or as an abbreviation, is a radio station that appears in Grand Theft Auto IV and is hosted by hardcore punk musician Jimmy Gestapo and plays Hardcore Punk from the NYHC (New York Hardcore) music scene.
In The Lost and Damned and Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City it is hosted by Max Cavalera and plays extreme Metal genres.
GTA IV rendition:
DJ: Jimmy Gestapo, the vocalist of Murphy's Law and the only founding member still in the band. Mostly punk rock songs made in the 1980s, the setlist pays homage to New York City's rock scene at CBGB, an iconic bar where most of the bands featured have performed at one point or another.
- Murphy's Law - "A Day in the Life" (1986)
- Maximum Penalty - "All Your Boyz" (1989)
- Underdog - "Back to Back" (1989)
- Leeway - "Enforcer" (1988)
- Sick of It All - "Injustice System" (1989)
- Cro-Mags - "It's the Limit" (1985)
- Sheer Terror - "Just Can't Hate Enough" (1989)
- Bad Brains - "Right Brigade" (1982)
- Killing Time - "Tell Tale" (1989)
- Agnostic Front - "Victim in Pain" (1984)
The Lost and Damned and Episodes from Liberty City rendition:
DJ: Max Cavalera, the Brazilian-born frontman of metal bands Sepultura (his first and most famous band, formed in 1984, left the band in 1997), Soulfly and Cavalera Conspiracy. His segment is referred to as the "Blood Fire War Hate Death Metal Show".
- At the Gates - "Slaughter of the Soul" (1995)
- Drive By Audio - "Jailbait" (2009)
- Celtic Frost - "Inner Sanctum" (1987)
- Entombed - "Drowned" (1990)
- Sepultura - "Dead Embryonic Cells" (1991)
- Soulfly - "Blood Fire War Hate" (2008) (Only the introduction was played for the station's feature ident.)
- Deicide - "Dead by Dawn" (1990)
- Cannibal Corpse - "I Cum Blood" (1992)
- Bathory - "Call from the Grave" (1987)
- Kreator - "Awakening of the Gods" (1986)
- Terrorizer - "Fear of Napalm" (1989)
- It is possible, that L.C.H.C. is the favorite radio station of the McReary Crime Family in Liberty City. The song "Day In The Life" by Murphy's Law could be heard in trailer of Patrick McReary and Bucky Sligo's pals listen to this station in his crib.
- L.C.H.C. plays both at the Lost MC Clubhouse and Brian Jeremy's Safehouse.
- L.C.H.C. is possibly the favorite station of The Lost MC in Liberty City, because it plays at their clubhouse.
- The song "Jailbait" by Drive By Audio can only be heard in the downloadable version of TLAD as for whatever reason it isn't featured in the standalone Episodes from Liberty City version.
- It is very well liked by Henrique Bardas.
- Jim Fitzgerald, Johnny Klebitz, Clay Simons, and Terry Thorpe from The Lost Brotherhood all like this radio station.
- L.C.H.C. is the favorite radio station of the Angels of Death, because it plays at their clubhouse and it's default station on all the Angels of Death Gang member's bikes.
- It's also one of the two favorite radio stations of the Albanian Mob, alongside K109 The Studio.
Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack:
Episodes from Liberty City soundtrack:
See Also
- V-Rock, a radio station in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Vice City Stories that also plays Metal.
- Anvil, a radio station in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars that also plays Metal.
- Channel X, a radio station in Grand Theft Auto V that also plays Hardcore Punk.


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Qualified voters who wish to cast a ballot in the Nov. 5 special/city election must be registered to vote no later that 5 p.m. Oct. 7.
Elections will be held in:
- Belding to elect three council members,
- Portland to elect three council members,
- Ionia to elect the city clerk and five council members,
- Otisco Township for a fire protection and emergency rescue services millage renewal proposal (1 mill for four years) and a road maintenance and improvement millage renewal proposal (2 mills for four years).
Electors may sign up at any Michigan Secretary of State branch office, at their city or township clerk's office or using a form available at the county clerk's office.
Location, ST | website.com


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A luxury blend of merino wool, kid mohair, alpaca and mulberry silk and like the other yarns in the Fine Art family is hand painted with a blend of colours to achieve its unique colour effect.
A luxurious three strands of Kidsilk Haze and a mercerised cotton with 3 mm Swarovski CREATE YOUR STYLE crystals in matching shades. ca. 100 Swarovski CREATE YOUR STYLE crystals per ball (1 crystal per 10 cm distance). Each ball individually packaged and presented in a transparent box including patterns for four designs using kidsilk haze Shine as edging detail, as well as accessories.
Rowan yarns & Swarovski CREATE YOUR STYLE crystals … a uniquely luxurious, contemporary combination that literally empowers your creativity to shine.
Our ever popular Kidsilk Haze is a beautiful and versatile fine yarn made from a blend of super kid mohair and silk.
Kidsilk Stripe is a self striping version of Kid Silk Haze which is 70% super kid silk Mohair and 30% silk. The colour combinations when knitted as a scarf will compliment any outfit. One ball of 50g is enough to knit a scarf and can also be knitted to any Kid Silk Haze pattern.
A luxury yarn developed specifically for babies. A machine washable blend of merino wool and silk that has a wonderful soft handle for your little treasures.
Rowan Fine Art is a blend of fibre and colour. Designed for socks, shawls and other accessories, it is made with merino wool, kid mohair, mulberry silk and polyamide to make it suitable and durable for all projects.
Adding a little bit more luxury to Rowan Big Wool, this yarn is 70% wool and 30% silk, giving a beautiful sheen to the knitted fibre. Soft to touch and luxurious to wear this is a little bit extra for all lovers of Big Wool.


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The 15 Most Completely Useless iPhone Apps
One awesome thing about the iPhone is the vast ocean of low-cost software applications you can download to do just about any damned thing.
With so many choices it's hard to know just which ones to buy, and we're sorry to say we can't help you there. But if you were looking for a list of the most retarded ones, you're in luck.
#15. Harmonica
Music synthesizers aren't anything new, but this one has the dual enhancements of portability and instantly sapping you of all dignity. You can "play" this application by running your finger along the edge, but since shame is no longer a factor we imagine its users slap that touchscreen right into their piehole.
Per their description, Harmonica is "indispensable" to "annoy your co-workers" or even "impress that pretty girl". If you believe that slobbering on your iPhone is going to be the best mack maneuver in your arsenal, you should buy it. You're probably correct.
#14. Tickle Me!
Tickle Me! makes your iPhone touchscreen respond to your playful tickles with the uproarious laughter of a child. Disturbing? Yes. But if this functions as a release valve for pedophiles, it could be a godsend.
#13. myLite Colored Strobe and Flashlight
This incredible technology produces colored flashing lights from your iPhone screen, which by the way is already illuminated. Per their description, "Rock concerts will never be the same with the myLite Color Flashlight by DoApp. Going clubbing and wanna be hip? Whip out the myLite -- the chicks dig it and the guys will scream out 'whoa, dude!'"
We're sure they will. Also, The app allows you to select the color of the light emitted, so it's only a matter of time before this becomes the CSI tool of choice when sweeping for semen.
#12. EnigmaClock
God, clocks are so sickeningly predictable. Always incrementing time by standardized units and presenting them clearly. Boooooring. What modern, dynamic people need is a clock that does none of the above, often times obscuring night and day altogether.
The EnigmaClock uses a unique algorithm to present time as an elaborate mathematical riddle, so once per hour you can shove your iPhone into your friends' faces and scream "DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS? NO? THEN FUCK YOU!"
#11. Hold On
The object of this application is to track how long you can keep a finger on a static position on the touchscreen. You can later use this data point to plug into a spreadsheet and chart precisely how much of your life is being wasted.
#10. Alarm Free
Imagine you're walking down a dark alley, when you are approached by a hulking mass of criminality. You only have your iPhone to defend you. Fortunately, all you have to do is unlock the screen, launch this app and a faint beeping sound will usher forth to notify all SWAT teams in earshot to swoop down to your rescue.
Or, more likely, the guy who was just going to steal your watch and jewelry is probably going to opt for your iPhone as well.
#9. iBeer
If you relish smuggling "outside beverages" into stadiums or movies, but shun actual refreshment, this product is for you. The iBeer application animates the draining of a hopped beverage, but without all of the pesky flavor, inebriation, and casual sex that comes along for the ride.
The iMilk application is likewise available for the underaged. They'll think it's hilarious, right up until their lack of actual milk intake causes early onset osteoporosis.
#8. Pour1Out
Expanding on the above in an even more retarded way, this application allows you to simulate dumping the contents of a digital 40 ounce in memory of a dead homie. Or more likely, a fallen Elven Sorcerer that met their end in an Azeroth drive-by.
The application was sponsored by 40cozy.com, a company that literally manufactures insulating covers for 40 ouncers. They're great for birthdays and weddings!


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Universal Background Screening offers criminal records checks in Rockbridge County, VA.
Return to VA County Criminal Court Locations
Real Time/In Person County Criminal Search
A County Criminal Court Search includes a minimum of seven years for both felony and misdemeanor court convictions. Where available, charges may also be included. Please inquire about expanded searches that may be available.


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Extraordinary Rendition
"Our greatest tool in advancing democracy is our own example."
— Barack Obama (3/2/2008)
Under the Bush administration, the practice of "extraordinary rendition" was used to apprehend and detain foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism. The suspect would be arrested and secretly transferred to prisons run by foreign intelligence agencies in countries know to torture, or to CIA-run "black sites." Once detained, these men experienced unspeakable horrors — often kept in squalid conditions, many of them faced interrogation under torture, including waterboarding, electrocutions, beatings, extreme isolation, and psychological torture.
Within days of being sworn in, President Obama issued executive orders and directives repudiating the most egregious of the Bush administration's violations of U.S. and international law — including ordering the closure of the CIA's network of secret "black site" prisons and banning the use of torture, and cruel and inhumane interrogation techniques.
However, to date, no victim of the extraordinary rendition program has been granted their day in court, let alone been afforded any kind of redress for their injuries. Some are still detained. The government has regularly misused the "states secrets" privilege in an attempt to avoid any kind of judicial oversight of the extraordinary rendition program, claiming that hearing the case in court would pose a threat to national security. Victims of torture — and the American public — deserve to know why prisoners were tortured in America's name.
- Salon Radio: ACLU's Ben Wizner on immediate Obama tests (Salon.com, 1/30/2009)
- New York Times Editorial: Unraveling Injustice (2/5/2009)
- Video / Report: FRONTLINE - Extraordinary Rendition (PBS, 11/6/2007)
- Bisher al-Rawi Interview (UK Channel 4, 7/30/2007)
- The C.I.A.'s Travel Agent (The New Yorker, 10/30/2006)


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ACADEMY (December 11, 2012)- He's paid the price for our freedoms, but Sgt. Howard Oliver of Academy and his family may not have a home in which to celebrate Christmas in this year.
Howard, his wife Kimi, and there daughter are soon to be evicted.
Inside their home a Christmas tree is nowhere to be found, and moving boxes are littered throughout the house.
"I feel like there's nothing I can do for my daughter," Kimi Oliver said.
"I feel like we're going to be on the streets at any moment."
The Oliver family is behind on bills, but not by choice.
Sgt. Oliver is waiting on money, more specifically, incapacitation pay from the military for injuries he sustained in 2003 while deployed in Iraq.
"Four insurgents attacked our convoy and fired an RPG at our vehicle," Sgt. Oliver said.
"It shifted our truck about 30 feet, and my arm got hung in my sleeve. My arm was ripped out of its socket and all my ligaments in my left shoulder were torn."
Oliver left the Army in 2007 and joined the National Guard, but by that time the pain in his shoulder had worsened and he also developed a severe case of PTSD.
In 2010, he filed for a military Medical Evaluation Board. Sgt. Oliver hoped his injuries would allow medical retirement.
But it took until July 2012 for his Medical Board request to be processed.
"I would basically get the same story," Sgt. Oliver said.
"The National Guard would tell me they had no idea who I was and that I wasn't pending a med-board. It was like that for two years."
While Oliver awaits his Medical Board to be completed, he's also eligible for monthly incapacitation pay. But payment has been coming inconsistently, making it difficult to pay bills.
Oliver says the National Guard owes him roughly $18,000.
Payment records show he hasn't received a single payment since July.
"I am just waiting to be paid so I can clear my bills. It's extremely frustrating," Sgt. Oliver said.
Since 2010, the Oliver family has faced eviction 5 times. This year could be the third time they're unable to give their daughter a Christmas.
"I just don't want something like this to happen to another solider because this is ridiculous. There is no excuse or reason for any of this," Sgt. Oliver said.
As they wait for payment, the Olivers could be evicted at any moment. They cling to each other this Christmas, hoping for some sort of miracle to come their way.
Once his Medical Board is completed, he could receive medical retirement and benefits.
News 10 was unable to reach The National Guard for comment at the time this article was written.


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Fantasy story
It was a dark night at a city called Paradisus. It was the year 200. The world was under an evil ruler, Jackamore Black. His loayal guard called Blades of dark, held the peace in the dictatorship. The normal human kind had the tax of 99%, so they hadn't much to eat. The elven kind were banished into the eastern forests, dwarfs thought were vanished and extinct, but they lived up on the northern mountains. The kingdom's heart was the mage council, that held only the corrupt and greedy high-mages. Every lower level mage that didn't want to obey the councils rules, left east, to learn from the elves. One mage, Tepe, was an animal-lover. He had very good connections to eagles, that's greatest was Gwaihir, son of Thorondor. Gwaihir was the ruler of the eagles, and carried Tepe to the magical elven forest of Dúmdil.
Dúmdil was the homeforest of the elven prince, Tim-Dûl. He was a great magician, some say he was born from magic. Tepe, the mage and Tim-Dûl were very good friends, and both loved nature. They were allmost like brothers. Tepe learned magic with him for many years. As Tepe was 102 and Tim-Dûl 202, Tepe left back to the kingdom and meet the council.
Chapter 1 - Arrival
Tepe climbed off from Gwaihir's back and looked around, correcting his hood. Everything was dark and misty, there was no life on the streets, only sound was the screeching of the windows and the loud talking that came from the nearby tavern. Some guards walked past with no sound and headed for the crowded tavern. There was no other sleeping place nearby, so Tepe walked to the tverns door. "The bouncing pony. Seems like a nice place" Tepe said to himself as he read the sign hanging on top of the tavern's door.As Tepe opened the door, he saw orcs, knights, guards, normal working human men, young women serving the men the beer and halflings. Even some dark dressed rangers gave their own presence to the tavern. Tepe seemed like a beggar as he walked to the bartender. He pulled his cape around him tighter so his elven clothes wouldn't show. He looked the bartender. Obviously he was one of the blacklanders. Shorter than humans, fatter than most of the humans, and much uglier than an orc could ever be. Tepe looked downwards and leaned on his staff. "I would like a room for one night" Tepe said, like he would be a poor human with nothing to work on. The bartender looked at Tepe and whiped his hands on a rag on his belt. "Sure, sir. That would be five gold coins" the bartender said with a deep voice. Tepe took five coins from his small pouch hanging on his belt and gave the shiny and well decorated. It had two cobras wrapped around a sword.
The bartender took the coins and gave Tepe a shiny key. "Room five, third floor, on the right" "Thank you"
Tepe walked up the stairs. At the second floor, he saw a familiar face. Michael Johnsson, the ex-guard that had the honor of kicking Tepe out, now wearing the honorable suit of the Blades of dark. Tepe past him and walked another stairs up. He turned right and stopped infront of a wooden door that had a dirty metallic number 5 on it. Tepe inserted the key on the keyhole and Opened the door. He took the key and closed the door, locking it from the inside. He looked around the room. A large wooden table next to the window with a candle. Another candle on a smaller table next to the bed. The night was falling down on the city. Tepe was tired and took off his cape, revealing a green mage-suit, made by the elves. The belt had a metallic leaf and a scabbard. In the scabbard was an elven sword. His hair was grey and he held a wooden staff in his right hand with a green magical ball on top of it.
Sleep came quickly to Tepe. His sleep was deep, allmost like meditation. He knew when to wake up, he knew what to say when he got to the council, and what to do when going to meet the council.
Chapter 2 - Council
The sun just started to rise as Tepe woke up. He heard a slight knock on the door. He opened the door and saw a ranger.
"Yes?" Tepe asked and looked the ranger curiously.
"Don't you remember an old friend, Tepe, son of Wheeler, the archmage?" the ranger said and looked down with his hood on his head.
"Tomzo? I thought you died in the orc wars" Tepe allmost shouted with joy. "Come in" he continued and signed for the ranger to come in.
The two had a small talk and then left towards the council's tower. As they arrived, there was a Drow greeting them. The Drow walked them into the chambers where they would wait for the council to talk with Tepe. "A drow... The council has fallen to believe they could control the greed of these elves" Tepe whispered to Tomzo as they walked. "Very true, Mage Tepe. The council has slaved us, threathening to kill Matrice Belladorf if we won't do what they tell us to do" explained the drow as they entered tthe chambers. "Wait here. The council will take you in soon" the drow said and left.
A few hours later, another drow came to them. "Mage Tepe, you may come now to see the arch mage council" he said and Tepe stood up to walk with the drow and into the huge chamber where the council met. The drow stopped, but Tepe continued his way to the center of this huge chamber. He looked around and heard the highest and oldest of the archmages start to speak.
"Mage Tepe. Why did you come back to this place you call corrupt? Do you come here to mock us even more?"
"No, Archmage Magerus. I come here for the elven people. As you know, I am specialized in the nature magic, that is a powerful magic's area. You may know Tim-Dûl, the Prince of the elven people in the forest of Dúmdil"
"Yes, we have heard of him. Some say he was born from magic"
"Yes, I have been under his teaching, and now I would like to place here a bet. The ruler, Jackamore Black, has no power if the council is not here to help him. If I can win five of your council members, you shall come with me to meet the elven people"
"Hmm... We must discuss this within ourselves. Will you pleace leave for a moment..."
Tepe nodded and left back to the chambers.
Hours past. It was allmost night, as the council brought him back.
"Have you made your decision?"
"Yes. You shall confront our thoughest five. Me, Margoth, Alleen, Casur and Gasotus"
"Where shall we battle, and when?"
"Now and here"
Tepe drew his cape and hood off and hit his staff to the ground, making it more like the archmage's staffs. The five archmages left their places and soon came from a large door. Tepe first met Gasotus, the youngest one, specialized in air.
Chapter 3 - The battle starts
Gasotus stepped forwards a few steps and rose his staff to make the wind blow even inside. Tepe smiled at the try and formed a large ball around himself from roots growing throught the floor. It was something the mage council hand't seen before. Tepe did this all without even spells. A small snap came from one of the roots and a large branch launched towards Gasotus from behind, throught the floor. This hit and made Gasotus drop to the ground. The wind vanished and the roots opened. Tepe looked Gasotus as roots tied him to the ground. This was easy. The next one, Casur would be thougher.
Casur was the old competition of Tepe, specialized in fire. The fight started as a fireball flew towards Tepe. Tepe made a ew root ball over hime and the fireball hit it, making the roots start burning away but then the roots just vanished. Tepe's staff flew throught the air and hit Casur in the stomach. Tepe ran towards him, grabbed his staff and hit Casurs legs with it, making Casur lose his balance. Tepe made circles with the staff as he hit Casur that flew throught the air and into the wall only a few seconds later. Tepe had crouched a little, stopped the staff behind his back and hit Casur with his fist. He stayed in that position for a moment as a black magical frisbee flew throught the air and towards Tepe, only to be crashed int Tepe's staff. "Margoth" Tepe said and looked his new opponent. He rushed towards him, avoiding the black frisbees coming at him. Just as he hit Margoth with his staff, he was hit by Margoth's staff. Bth went flying into different directions. As Margoth rose, Tepe lied there. As it seemed Margotyh had won, five branches came from the ground and made a cell around him. Margoth was now locked up in a cage as Tepe rose up.
"Three of five" Tepe said. "Will you drop?"
Alleen rushed forwards towards Tepe, but soon flew backwards to the wall. A branch lowered back into the ground. Tepe jumped throught the air and landed infront of Alleen, hitting her with his staff. The mage woman blacked out.
the meeting between the oldest archmage, the most respected mage in the hole kingdom, and Tepe, a lonely and self-learned mage apprentice that had beaten four of the mage school's best learners, was furious.
All the branches disappeared and the beaten archmages left as Tepe and Magerus set themselves in the opposite sides of the hall. Both used the nature magic. The two started running towards the other. Their staffs made a huge cracking and bocking sound as they hit.
(I have been working on this for four days. More will come soon)
Last edited by Darth Tepe; 07-22-2004 at
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Home > Ford > Ford Mondeo Sedan, 5-Door and Wagon 2011
Below you will find the high resolution car wallpapers for Ford Mondeo Sedan, 5-Door and Wagon 2011. You may use the car wallpapers for any of the following standard screen resolutions:
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Ford Mondeo Sedan, 5-Door and Wagon 2011
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Sound Quiz
- Tape recorder
- Blank cassette tape
- Go around your house, yard, school, and neighborhood listening for interesting sounds.
- Tape sounds, leaving about ten seconds of blank tape between sounds.
- Make sure you make a list on paper of the sounds in order.
- You should also say a number on the tape before each sound.
- Once the tape is finished, let friends and family take the sound quiz.
- Keep a record of how many correct answers each person gets and announce the winner after everyone has taken the quiz.
From 365 Smart After-School Activities by Sheila Ellison & Judith Gray. Copyright © 2005 by Sheila Ellison & Judith Gray. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Sourcebooks, Inc.
Buy the book at www.amazon.com.


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KILLEEN (November 2, 2012)—A woman arrested after a purse snatching Wednesday afternoon in the parking lot of Gold's Gym at 902 West Central Texas Expressway in Killeen that led to a chase, a crash and a manhunt was jailed Friday evening in lieu of $74,000 bond.
Angela Jeanine White, 31, is charged with evading arrest in a motor vehicle in connection with the incident in Killeen and was also named in outstanding Copperas Cove warrants charging evading arrest in a motor vehicle, criminal trespass and then over $500, but under $1,500.
She was arrested following a chase that started after a witness to the purse snatching who followed the black Dodge Charger in which the man who took the purse escaped, caught up with the vehicle at FM 2410 and East Stan Schlueter Loop and called police.
An officer who was in the area tried to pull the car over, but the driver sped off.
The Charger struck one car in the area of W S Young Drive and Central Texas Expressway, and then two others as the driver pulled onto Grandon Drive.
The chase ended abruptly after the car struck a light pole and rolled through some shrubbery at the intersection of Grandon and Estelle Circle.
Police arrested the woman who was driving, but a man jumped from the car and ran through the neighborhood where several residents reported seeing him.
He remains at large.
The purse taken from the woman in the gym parking lot was recovered, police said.


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Hydro horror Woodbury resident Andy Peklo is persisting in his quest to build a tiny hydroelectric station on the Pomperaug River. Having failed to secure a licensing waiver, he's now seeking a license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The Pomperaug Road project, opposed by neighbors because it would divert the flow of water from a scenic waterfall at times, would produce just 76 kilowatts of electricity. Hydropower is squeaky-clean and reliable, producing no emissions or hazardous byproducts, yet Mr. Peklo's project is in danger of winding up in the can't-be-done bin. His plight offers object lessons in overregulation and the folly of "green energy," which regularly is confronted by the same set of obstacles that "dirty energy" faces.
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Many cookbooks and chefs recommend cooking green plantains before eating them. Is it just because of all the starch? Or are there any toxins as in sprouting potatoes? Does the ratio of amylose to amylopectin have anything to do with the recommendation?
According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) "Banana and plantain do not contain significant levels of any toxic principles." Raw, unripe plantains can be difficult to digest, especially if eaten in large quantities. Doing so can lead to upset stomach. This may be due to the fact that they contain starches resistant (RS2) to digestive enzymes, compounds that inhibit salivary amylase production, and significant quantities of amylose.
Raw, unripe plantains and bananas also have a starchy or waxy texture and a bitter flavor which can be unpalatable.


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Consider the Banach space $C_b(\mathbb{R})$ of continuous bounded functions on $\mathbb{R}$ equipped with the sup-norm.
1) Do we know a precise description of its topological dual $C_b(\mathbb{R})^*$ ?
2) I was wondering what kind of relation has $C_b(\mathbb{R})^*$ with $C_c(\mathbb{R})^*$, the topological dual of the space $C_c(\mathbb{R})$ of continuous functions having compact support.
If $L\in C_b(\mathbb{R})^*$ then there exists $C_L$ such that $|L(f)|\leq C_L\|f\|_\infty$ for any $f\in C_b(\mathbb{R})$, and thus for all $f\in C_c(\mathbb{R})$, so that $L\in C_c(\mathbb{R})^*$ and $ C_b(\mathbb{R})^*\subset C_c(\mathbb{R})^*$. Is that correct ? Then, can we find all the probability measures on $\mathbb{R}$ into $C_b(\mathbb{R})^*$ ?
(In other worlds, is the "weak" topology for probability measures a weak* one ?)


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What cryptographic algorithms are not considered secure, but yet are still widely used and available in standard libraries? If applicable, mention a secure alternative.
closed as off-topic by Iszi, Begueradj, schroeder♦ Sep 2 '15 at 19:36
This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:
These are the most common:
As of the end of 2010, the US government deprecates these algorithms based on recommendations from the very savvy folks at NIST:
MD5 never was an acceptable algorithm for government use, along with many other older algorithms.
For security through the year 2030, they recommend at least SHA-224, 2048 bits for RSA or DSA, 224-bit EDCSA, and AES-128 or 3-key triple-DES be used.
This has been in the works for several years. See this post and the NIST documents it references: http://securitymusings.com/article/1587/algorithm-and-key-length-deprecation
Update: Another concise, useful set of advice is Cryptographic Right Answers by Colin Percival.
Insecure but widely used cryptographic algorithms include:
Secure alternatives: SHA-256 for hashing (SHA-512 if you have the same fetish on size than US Army, and/or if you want to kill performance on 32-bit systems), AES for symmetric encryption. For key agreement, consider ECDH (Diffie-Hellman over an elliptic curve) with one of the standard NIST curves (e.g. P-224, K-233 or B-233 -- but P-256 is more widely supported). For asymmetric encryption, use RSA with a large enough key (1024 bits for short term security, preferably 1536 or 2048 bits) and PKCS#1 padding (v1.5 "old-style" is fine, but OAEP is finer). For signatures, consider ECDSA (same curves than for ECDH) or RSA with a large enough key and PKCS#1 padding (v1.5 or PSS). Never design your own algorithm (or, if you do, never believe that it is secure).
Most security issues, however, are not in the choice of algorithm, but in how they are used. WEP uses RC4, but RC4 is not one of the numerous weaknesses of WEP. Sony protected the PlayStation 3 with ECDSA, which is secure, but botched their randomness generator, resulting in a catastrophic failure (private key exposure...).
Context is important. Secure for what? How is something being used?
For example:
Although this quesiton is already answered, I'm missing a lot of answers.
Moreover, it depends on the use and purpose of the algorithm. Breaking DES is no hard, but is quite expensive. Consider who your attackers are and how much money and effor they can spend to break the security?
The links below can quickly help you choose the proper method and key length for your security requirements (thereby avoiding insecure methods):
"This web site implements mathematical formulas and summarizes reports from well-known organizations allowing you to quickly evaluate the minimum security requirements for your system. You can also easily compare all these techniques and find the appropriate key length for your desired level of protection."
Obviously there are as many broken algorithms as there are programmers who write home-grown encryption systems, but by and large those are limited to a given software package. Several "password protection" schemes for documents and archives come to mind as examples.
But the only general-purpose encryption algorithm (not hashing algorithm as others are listing) that is considered "broken" for normal use because of flaws in the algorithm (rather than key length), and which is still widely deployed and accepted, is RC4.
Note that the primary reason RC4 sticks around despite its known flaws is that the vulnerability can be mitigated by throwing out the first few K output. Also, its the only widely-deployed stream cipher, and many programmers don't realize you can turn a block cipher into a stream cipher using an appropriate block chaining mode.
RC4 is probably best avoided. Its improper use was the cause of the problems in WEP which suggests it an be tricky to get right even for experts. To use it properly means choosing a large enough key (at least 128 bits), mixing key and IV in a secure manner (e.g. hashing as opposed to concatenation) and discarding the initial part of the keystream to mitigate against weak-key attacks (256 octets at the minimum).
Using a block cipher like Blowfish or AES, when operated in ECB (Electronic Code Book) mode.


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I'm trying to build a "simple" web app that calculates either a male or females body fat % based on the U.S. Navy's circumference formula. I have the majority of the app completed at this point. However, I cannot figure out why the way I've setup the formula below won't work. Two of the values are underlined in red in my .cs file.
My Formula:
TBBodyFat.Text = Convert.ToString(495 / (1.0324-.19077(Math.Log(Convert.ToDouble(TBWaist.Text)-Convert.ToDouble(TBNeck.Text)))+.15456(Math.Log(Convert.ToDouble(TBHeight.Text)))));
Original Example:
Pop-Up for the two underlined values (.19077 and .15456):
struct System.Double Represents a double-precision floating-point number. Error: Method name expected


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MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- Montgomery authorities today stood by their decision to surround and conduct an evening-long search Monday of a home in east Montgomery in the effort to find Desmonte Leonard, charged with three counts of capital murder following the shooting of six people at an Auburn apartment complex.
"If that same set of circumstances happens tonight, we'll do the exact same thing," Mayor Todd Strange said at a press conference recapping the dramatic effort that had dozens of law enforcement officers including Montgomery police and U.S. Marshal's Service personnel on the site.
But in the end, nothing was found in the attic that became the focal point of the search of the home on Ridgeside Boulevard, authorities said.
Police Chief Kevin Murphy, who said the decisions of the evening were his, said the primary consideration was to avoid putting anyone in harm's way. "We went in not foot by foot but inch by inch," he said. Authorities said throughout the episode that time was on their side. Three capital murder charges were issued for Leonard, 22, on Sunday related to the Saturday night attacks at a party.
A "variety of information, from a variety of law enforcement officers" employing a variety of technology fueled the decisions on site, the chief said. Three technological tools indicated there was something in the attic - causing the last several hours of the search to concentrate to a slow and methodical emphasis there, authorities said. Crews finally left the home about 2:30 a.m. The first officers approached the house on the cul-de-sac between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Strange described the series of events that caused authorities to target the house:
Law enforcement had been alerted to activity in the area and had begun watching the general neighborhood closely for a day prior to the search. Monday afternoon the U.S. Marshal Service received a call from a person saying that person had dropped Leonard at "a specific address."
Nearly simultaneously, Montgomery police 9-1-1 got a call from a female who said she had come home from work and found a man on her couch she believed was Leonard, Strange said. She immediately called police from her car.
The head of the Marshal Service fugitive task force went into into the house and called out for whoever was inside to surrender. Strange said several individuals in the team to first make entry heard what they thought were sounds coming from the attic.
"Predicated on that body of fact," Strange said, further resources, including tear gas, were deployed and the rest of the evening unfolded.
At a separate press conference in Auburn earlier today, Police Chief Tommy Dawson said he is among those convinced that Leonard is still in Montgomery. He bristled at any suggestion that any portion of Monday night's search effort in Montgomery was not well-considered.
"Let's not forget why we're trying to locate him. He's taken three kids from their families. Let's remember these families and keep them in our prayers," Dawson said.
murphy strange.jpgView full size Montgomery Director of Public Safety Chris Murphy, left, and Mayor Todd Strange addressed media at scene of house search Ridgeside Boulevard. (AP Photos/Dave Martin)
Strange said despite whatever second-guessing may occur today, "We will not be diverted." He and police stressed anyone providing false leads will be prosecuted. And significant resources -- including even during last night's search -- are being spent following down other leads.
Authorities noted the total rewards in the case now total $30,000 for the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the Auburn shootings.


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The 6 Most Unintentionally Hilarious Buildings Ever Proposed
Architectural design frequently straddles a fine line between dignified inspiration and asshole lunacy. What's surprising is how close examples of that second type regularly come to being built, regardless of how obviously insane and/or impossible they are. Like ...
#6. Freedom Ship: The Giant Floating City
The Freedom Ship -- taller than New York's Flatiron Building (the building used as The Daily Bugle in the Spider-Man movies), wider than two football fields, and almost a mile in length -- was designed as a floating city to take 100,000 residents, crew, and visitors on an everlasting voyage around the world. Luckily, no part of that sentence sounds completely insane, so you can head on over to the Freedom Ship's official website right now and make an official investment.
However, if you want to buy a residential unit on this floating commercial park, you can expect to pay anything from $150,000 to $10 million for the privilege (we assume the $150,000 homes are windowless utility closets next to the engines). Freedom Ship would have a multimillion-dollar hospital, a complete K-12 school system, a freaking subway system, landscaped parks, and an indoor rain forest, because we apparently learned nothing from the harsh lessons of the Rainforest Cafe. The designers insist that their brainchild is "not a cruise ship, but a fascinating and unique place to live, work, retire, vacation, or visit."
"And also, a cruise ship."
To keep its inhabitants safe from pirates, Freedom Ship would house a 2,000-strong security force armed with "state-of-the-art defensive weapons" to enforce the law of whichever nation the ship ultimately decided to sail under -- possibly a European country, but they were apparently leaning toward Panama, because Panama would basically allow them to do whatever the hell they pleased. Each deck of the ship would hold democratic elections for representatives, but final ultimate rule would be placed in the hands of the captain, because there has been absolutely no historical precedent of a system like that going horribly wrong.
"And that's how the 'Naked Fridays (except for fatties) Amendment' was passed."
So it's essentially the Axiom, that big spaceship from WALL-E, only lurching through the ocean like a dead whale instead of floating at the edge of some distant galaxy. It received generally positive worldwide press coverage, and the Discovery Channel even devoted an entire program to it in 2002 (this was back before Discovery Channel devoted entire programs to ghosts and motorcycles, so that distinction actually meant something). Thousands of residential units had been sold by the time the Freedom Ship got the go-ahead to begin construction in 2001, but ballooning costs (from a naive $6 billion in 1999 to a much more soberingly realistic $11 billion in 2002) effectively stalled the project. Despite insisting that the Freedom Ship is still very much in development, the designers have yet to hammer a single rivet in over 10 years.
#5. The Elephant of Revolutionary Oblivion
Aquarelle de Jean-Antoine Alavoine
At the peak of his power, Napoleon decided to build an enduring symbol to commemorate all of his successes in France and abroad. For some reason, he commissioned a giant bronze elephant instead.
Because nothing says "success" like a herculean elephant.
The heroically named Elephant of Revolutionary Oblivion was to be built on the site of the Bastille, where the French Revolution more or less officially began. Visitors could access it from an internal stairway and enjoy a panoramic view of France's capital city from a tower on the elephant's back. The whole thing would be set in the middle of a giant fountain, with water flowing up and out from the elephant's trunk, because apparently that was the greatest symbol of national pride that Napoleon could be bothered to come up with.
Augustus Charles Pugin
"Then he kept asking us to make the trunk 'thicker' and 'longer'; it was kind of creeping us out."
Bafflingly, this was not the first giant elephant structure to be proposed in the nation of France.
Now, as any blue-collar construction foreman worth his salt can tell you, an eight-story elephant would require a whole lot of bronze, but not to worry -- Napoleon had that shit figured out. The Elephant of Revolutionary Oblivion would be constructed entirely of metal wrought from hundreds of melted-down cannons captured from the enemies of France. That's like Jean-Claude Van Damme making a giant photomosaic of an elephant out of pictures of all the faces he's kicked.
Unfortunately, that turned out to be the problem. You see, France was still at war, and Spain didn't seem like it was going to give up anytime soon. Being the legendary military strategist that he was, Napoleon ultimately decided that all those cannons would be better served lobbing death balls at the enemies of France rather than being made into a giant elephant. So a plaster version of the Elephant of Revolutionary Oblivion was built instead, which quickly began to decay and become infested with rats and weeds, because that's what happens to giant glorified pinatas when you leave them unattended in the middle of a densely populated city with a notoriously poor sewage system.
It was eventually torn down in the mid-19th century, but not before Victor Hugo immortalized it as a home for disenfranchised street urchins in Les Miserables.
Universal Studios
In a world where Russell Crowe is allowed to sing, this suddenly isn't as colossal of a failure.
#4. A Man-Made Mountain
Dutch journalist Thijs Zonneveld wrote a light-hearted article on creating a man-made mountain for his home country and was surprised to find himself being taken seriously by like-minded engineering groups, architects, and sporting associations who all felt that the Netherlands' lack of mountains was unacceptable. So they did what any group of eccentric rich people sharing a single impossible idea would do and decided to try to build one, despite the fact that the Alps (which are real, actual mountains) are only a few hundred miles away.
Their proposed amusement-park-style acropolis would stand 6,560 feet high (the equivalent of four Sears Towers standing on each other's shoulders like the Little Rascals trying to get into an R-rated movie), loaded with swimming pools, movie theaters, sporting facilities, and its own water supply, all resting atop a hollow base 6 miles wide. So it seems Zonneveld and his friends were less concerned about the Netherlands' lack of natural rock formations and more concerned with its lack of enormous, mountain-shaped shopping malls.
Hoffers and Kruger
"I'm telling you, we need a Victoria's Secret ... for science."
The estimated cost of the project is somewhere in the neighborhood of $410 billion (that's "billion," with a "B"), but we assume they can recoup a good amount of that cost by renting out large sections of the mountain to Dutch supervillains. That is, if they can convince enough people to make the initial investment -- "The Mountain Comes" (its official name) wouldn't be completed until around 2043, and that's if they broke ground on construction tomorrow. That's like asking someone to dump a fortune into a new Disneyland and then telling them they won't be able to ride Big Thunder Mountain for three more decades.


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Question marks surround Wofford baseball team
Published: Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 11:02 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 11:02 p.m.
Fans headed out to Wofford's opening baseball game this afternoon at Law Field will want to make sure they pick up a roster sheet.
Season opener
Georgetown at Wofford, 4 p.m.
1 Demetrius Jennings; Fr. INF; Sewell, N.J.
2 Luke Feisal; Jr. C; Greenville High
4 Stephen Cantrell; Jr. INF; Chesnee High
5 Clark Wise; Sr. OF; Spartanburg High
6 Matthew Pelt; So. OF; Dunwoody, Ga.
8 Seth Neely; Jr. INF; Rock Hill High
9 Will Stillman; Fr. RHP; Matthews, N.C.
10 Luke Leftwich; Fr. RHP; Phoenix
11 Matt Moore; Sr. INF; Belton-Honea Path High
13 J.D. Osborne; Sr. LHP; Rochester, Mich.
14 Dominick Del Monte; So. LHP; Clearwater, Fla.
15 Alex Paradowski; Fr. INF; College Station, Texas
16 Brandon Yarusi; Sr. RHP; Belmar, N.J.
17 Tanner Hawley; So. RHP; South Aiken High
18 Matthew Kaskow; So. OF; Coppell, Texas
19 Matthew Ramsay; So. C; Hudson, Ohio
20 Bryce Anglin; So. INF/OF; Dallas
21 Jesse Morris; Jr. RHP; Chapin High
22 Josh Hyman; Jr. IF/OF; Woodruff High
23 Taylor Rozier; Sr. IF/OF; North Augusta High
24 Matthew Milburn; Fr. RHP; Dallas
25 Josh Simpson; Fr. LHP; Union County High
27 DooJoon Park; Jr. RHP; Wilmington, De.
31 Bradley Evsich; Sr. IF/RHP; Wando High
32 Connor Foltyn; Fr. LHP; Coppell, Texas
33 Eric Brenk; Jr. IF; Concord, N.C.
34 Cory Quick; Fr. C/IF; Princeton, W.Va.
35 Eric Eck; Jr. RHP; Buford, Ga.
36 Connell Anderson; So. RHP; Eastside High
37 James Plaisted; So. IF/C; Tullahoma, Tenn.
39 Dylan Cheely; Fr. RHP; Williamsburg, Va.
40 Derek Hirsch; Fr. INF; Atlanta
February – today Georgetown, 4 p.m.; 16 Niagara (DH) 2 p.m.; 17 UNC Asheville, 4 p.m.; 19 at East Tennessee State, 3 p.m.; 22 Pittsburgh, 4 p.m.; 23 Pittsburgh, 2 p.m.; 24 Pittsburgh, 1 p.m.; 27 vs. Presbyterian in Forest City, N.C., 6 p.m.
March – 1 Dayton, 4 p.m.; 2 Marshall (DH), 2 p.m.; 3 Dayton, 1 p.m.; 6 at Clemson, 4 p.m.; 8 at Georgia Southern, 6 p.m.; 9 at Georgia Southern, 2:30 p.m.; 10 at Georgia Southern, 1:30 p.m.; 13 Presbyterian, 6 p.m.; 15 The Citadel, 6 p.m.; 16 The Citadel, 3 p.m.; 17 The Citadel, 1 p.m.; 20 at Presbyterian, 3 p.m. 22 UNCG, 6 p.m.; 23 UNCG, 3 p.m.; 24 UNCG, 1 p.m.; 27 at USC Upstate, 6 p.m.; 29 at Appalachian State, 6:30 p.m.; 30 at Appalachian State, 3 p.m.; 31 at Appalachian State, 1 p.m.
April – 2 at Winthrop, 6 p.m.; 3 at Auburn, 7 p.m.; 5 at Samford, 7 p.m.; 6 at Samford, 3 p.m.; 7 at Samford, 2 p.m.; 10 UNC Asheville, 6 p.m.; 12 Furman, 6 p.m.; 13 Furman 3 p.m.; 14 Furman, 1 p.m.; 17 USC Upstate, 6 p.m.; 19 at Elon, 6:30 p.m.; 20 at Elon, 6:30 p.m.; 21 at Elon, 1:30 p.m.; 24 at UNC Asheville, 4 p.m.; 26 Davidson, 6 p.m.; 27 Davidson, 3 p.m.; 28 Davidson, 1 p.m.; 30 vs. Winthrop at Fluor Field in Greenville, 7 p.m.
May – 3 College of Charleston, 6 p.m.; 4 College of Charleston, 3 p.m.; 5 College of Charleston, 1 p.m.; 8 at South Carolina, 7 p.m.; 10 at Western Carolina, 6 p.m.; 11 at Western Carolina, 6:30 p.m.; 12 at Western Carolina, 1 p.m.; 17 Old Dominion, 6 p.m.; 18 Old Dominion, 2 p.m.
Southern Conference tournament: May 22-26 in Greenville
There are new players up and down the lineup, some of the most familiar names are gone.
Among those lost to graduation were outfielder and leading hitter Mac Doyle (.341, 13 home runs); center fielder James Foster; catcher David Roney, first baseman Konstantine Diamaduros (Spartanburg High); as well as two-thirds of the weekend pitching rotation, Cash Collins and Pete Noordsy; and reliever Alex Wilson (Landrum), who left a year early after he was drafted by the Atlanta Braves.
That leaves plenty of questions for a team that went 22-32 last season, 9-21 in the Southern Conference to finish in 10th place, one game out of the basement. Wofford was picked for 10th again in preseason polls by coaches and media.
"How are we going to be? I get that question all the time," Wofford sixth-year head coach Todd Interdonato said. "My answer is, 'Different.' We're just going to be different. We lost so many dominant personalities from last year's team. … Those guys were absolutely the core of the team and now they're going. I don't know what that means yet besides different guys are going to play."
Two things that remain the same are the front and the back of the pitching staff. Senior right-hander Brandon Yarusi (5-7, 3.10) is the No. 1 starter and junior reliever Eric Eck (4-3, seven saves, 4.26 ERA) is the No. 1 stopper.
"We're really excited about having those two again for another year," Interdonato said. "We're going to continue to use Brandon on Friday nights. He'll get the ball opening day (4 p.m. today) against Georgetown. We'll use Eric out of the bullpen, not necessarily as a closer but to finish, and that could be multiple innings."
Expected to join Yarusi as starters are Jesse Morris (2-3, 3.77); freshman Luke Leftwich; and junior college transfer DooJoon Park, a native of South Korea. Leftwich held opponents to a .196 batting average during his senior season of high school in Arizona. Park had a strikeout per inning at Cecil Community College in Maryland.
Senior Clark Wise (Spartanburg High) will share left field with sophomore Matt Pelt (.338 in 77 at-bats), sophomore Matthew Kaskow is in center and Josh Hyman (.279) from Woodruff High looks to have a regular spot in right field.
The catching job looks to be split between junior Luke Feisal (Greenville High) and Matt Ramsay. Junior Eric Brenk returns to third base, freshman Alex Paradowski is at short, junior Stephen Cantrell (.259 in 112 at-bats) from Chesnee and Demetrius Jennings at second, and Spartanburg Methodist transfer Seth Neely at first base. Senior Taylor Rozier (.250) will be in the mix, possibly at designated hitter.
"Paradowski is the one guy who has done more than we expected," Interdonato said. "Seth has been great, but this is his fourth year in college. We expected him to be a good player. But when you talk about a freshman playing shortstop, maybe your expectations aren't quite as high. But he's been fantastic."
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The 6 Worst Jobs Ever (Were Done by Children)
Kids have it nice here in the future. What with their hover boards, hover ponies and hover sexting. They get their whole lives handed to them on a silver platter (that hovers).
It wasn't always so easy. Back in the day, people had only one reason to produce offspring: To force them to do the abhorrently awful work no grown person would dare to. And if you think child labor didn't get any worse than dirty-faced children in Victorian shoe factories, well, you apparently haven't heard about...
#6. Castrati
Oh, man. You know by the name this isn't going to end well. Castrati.
The thing is, today the theater struggles to retain audiences. In fact, the only thing that draws folks back to the aging whore that is the stage is the chance to see live, 3D nudity. And even that's getting quickly replaced.
Your move, Shakespeare.
But the 1600s were a different time. A time when hookers were honest and the stages were free from all those icky, heathen women. In fact, no woman was allowed in the choir or stage production in the 17th century. Theater houses were like those ball pits at McDonald's... you know, if those little plastic balls were actual balls.
Nonetheless, playwrights and composers kept writing female parts. To keep the songs from sounding like a barbershop quartet comprised of bulky Hungarian dudes, the choir masters would give the womanly roles or alto parts to prepubescent boys. And, every so often, one talented scamp's melodious voice would catch the master's ear and become the prize pupil.
But of course, all good things come to an end. Flowers bloom, caterpillars turn into beautiful butterflies and boys go through the often traumatizing experience of puberty.
Just ask Macaulay Culkin.
But for those boys whose sopranos were sweet enough to make a mob boss weep, a minor surgery could preserve their voice, joining them to the ranks of the castrati. In fact, 70 percent of stage performers in the 17th century were castrati.
A fad that reappeared in the 1970s.
And how did one become an illustrious member of the castrati? You already guessed, you just won't admit it to yourself. It was via the process of cutting blood supply to the testicles, or more commonly amputating them altogether.
How did they perform such an invasive--and not to mention traumatizing--surgery on a six- to 12-year-old kid? By giving them a bath. They simply soaked them in a tub of water to soften them up, and then performed the surgery when they were rendered unconscious. We assume the unconscious part came from telling the seven-year-old that they were not, in fact, receiving candy for this public bathing but actually getting their balls chopped off.
Then castrati might hope for a good 10 year run as a performer, after which the boy would only be 17 and rethinking the long term strategy of a castration career. Of course, settling down and getting married wasn't an option, unless the boy could find that one in a million girl turned on by non-existent erections.
I think I just felt- no nevermind. Just a breeze.
Eventually, castratis fell out of fashion in the late 1700s, not because of the ridiculously brutal violence visited upon little boys, but because the Italian soap opera plots they performed in became too silly to watch. The audiences didn't mind the castrations; it was the authenticity of the scripts that turned them off. Hear that, M. Night Shyamalan? No amount of castrated boys could save your films from sucking.
#5. Coal Carriers
Coal remains one of the most vital sources of energy the world over, but mining the stuff continues to be an ugly, incredibly dangerous business. So picture how rough it was prior to the 20th century when coal provided virtually the only power source, and the height of safety technology involved ropes, carts and yelling, "Run!" when stuff blew up.
Or if they were really rad, they would simply walk away calmly.
You couldn't imagine worse working conditions. Explosions, shaft cave-ins, asphyxiation, black lung; it was all in a day's work for Ye Old coal miners. To put it in perspective, we have more than once left work early because we felt "itchy."
Of course, the only way to ensure any measure of safety and success back then was to rely on the most experienced and well-trained coal miners. Or children. Yeah, screw it, children will do.
They would have used bunnies, but they were resistant to learn the trade.
From ages as young as four, children were employed in the art of hurrying: pulling giant sled loads of coal through tiny shafts. Children made perfect carriers because their short stature allowed them to crawl around two foot tunnels in the bowels of the Earth for 12 hours a shift. You might wonder why midgets were not employed. Because midgets are people too, jerk.
Evil, evil, little people.
Oh, and did we mention the children were often forced to do the work naked? Perhaps clothes were forbidden because loose articles might catch on shaft walls. Or perhaps the idea of a fully-clothed child crawling on their belly in an ink black hole deep underground came off as too dignified.
The fact is, there was no physical need for mine shafts to be constructed that small, and therefore no need to employ children. Building shafts over 24-inches wide just cost more. It's simple Supply and Demand: people kept supplying disposable children, and mining companies kept demanding those kids to shimmy their little asses down the scary, dark hell mouth.
#4. Loblolly Boys
If Hollywood taught us anything about life at sea it's that it's rough, dirty and a little sexually ambiguous. If you were a strapping young lad in the 18th or 19th century and wanted to experience life on the high seas firsthand, you simply volunteered for the position of Loblolly Boy.
Alternatively, be in a Disney movie.
Considered the lowliest position on the boat, a Loblolly's day included serving food and cleaning medical instruments. Oh, and cleaning up blood and severed limbs.
See, the Loblolly played the roles of janitor, waiter and nurse on a ship. The position's name derived from the name of a thick oatmeal gruel or porridge, perhaps with a bit of meat or some vegetables in it that the boy was in charge of serving. The Loblolly stew was also called spoon meat but likely no one wanted a "Spoon Meat Boy" on board.
First, there was the simple job of cleaning, which sounds like fine entry-level work, except it mainly consisted of cleaning up motion-sick rider's barf and throwing sand over the blood and guts covering the deck during a battle.
"Mind the wet floor, gentlemen. Don't slip and hurt yourselves."
But even that had to be less traumatizing than the Loblolly's role as assistant to the ship surgeon, considering this wasn't exactly the days of blue scrubs and sterile operating rooms. The job included collecting up amputated limbs, pouring hot tar on wounds and cleaning bed pans.
We're going to guess that there were more than a few "mercy" killings.
And the reward at the end of a good day's work was a punch in the face. Probably.


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I just got an ipad and I'm trying to sync all of my email addresses across all of my devices, including my imac and iphone. I already had an apple id and had the icloud set up for my iphone and imac but when I went to set up my email on my ipad it prompted me to create an @me email adress. So I did. But none of my emails are syncing up with my imac and I thought the hole purpose of creating an @me account was so that all of my emails would sync up in the icloud. What I have is a couple of different gmail accounts that I would like to sync up with the icloud. Is there any way to do this?
Practically speaking, the answer would be no - iCloud doesn't "sync" multiple email accounts (this is built into iOS). @me.com email address is just like gmail - it is just another email account. If you really wanted to, you could have all your gmail forward to iCloud's @me.com email account, but that wouldn't be practical.
To have your Gmail accounts synced into your iPad, open Settings, on your iPad, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars, select Add Account, for a Gmail account select Gmail, and enter your information in there. Repeat the process for every mail account you have. (You should notice your iCloud account in the list of email accounts when you first open it)
First, you can sync google's calendar/contacts/mail throughout all apple devices just like you can with iCloud.
The integration if very easy and reliable. In general, the procedure is:
This address you can then setup with all your devices to sync in the settings preferences.
iCloud doesn't sync your email accounts, only your me.com account.
To truly sync the others you should have IMAP or Exchange accounts. You can then sync these with your devices, you can't do it with pop mail accounts.


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According to etymonline the word booty is used to describe the female form as a sex object. It says the word is black slang from the 1920s. The definition is placed in the entry for booty meaning treasure.
My understanding is that booty means buttocks, as explained at dictionary.com.
Which slang meaning came first? Buttocks or the female form as a sex object? Also, can anyone explain the jump from treasure to buttocks?


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June may be half way over but there are still 20 opportunities to learn about Pentaho this month at live and virtual events….and in 6 languages!
This month Pentaho is bringing a ray of Open Source BI sunshine to some of the industry's most preeminent cloud events. Following the successful announcements of Pentaho's On-Demand BI Solution and support of Apache Hadoop, we will demonstrate these offerings in action, bringing insight, clarity and flexibility to data in the cloud.
Pentaho Featured Cloud Events
GigaOm Structure 2010, June 23-24, 2010, San Francisco, CA – Join Pentaho 's CEO, Richard Daley and CTO, James Dixon at Structure 2010, to learn more about using Pentaho's data integration and analytic tools to more quickly and easily load, access and analyze data in Hadoop, whether its on-premise or in the cloud.
In the exhibit hall, see a live preview demo of Pentaho's integration with Hadoop and learn about the integrating of Pentaho BI Suite with Hive database. Take advantage of our 25% sponsor discount code by clicking here.
Hadoop Summit, June 29, 2010 in Santa Clara, CA –Pentaho is attending the third annual Hadoop Summit 2010. Organized by Yahoo!, Hadoop Summit sessions span numerous industries and cater to all levels of expertise. Richard Daley and Jake Conelius will be on hand at the conference to demo and discuss Pentaho's integration with Hadoop and Hive and benefits of "Pentaho becoming the face of Hadoop." They will also pass out limited edition Hadoop Elephants with Pentaho sweaters.
Pentaho Agile BI Events
Pentaho's Agile BI initiative is full speed ahead as we recently delivered the Pentaho Data Integration 4.0 GA. To learn more about how to get started and why, make sure to attend one of these Agile BI focused events in the US and Europe:
North America
- Open Source BI: The Smart and Safe Alternative to Proprietary BI, Live seminar presented by Pentaho and Aballa Tech – Indianapolis, Indiana June 17
Worldwide webinar's
- Agile BI-Making Business Intelligence Work for the Business – Speaker is Joe Nicholson, VP, Product Marketing, Pentaho Corporation, June 23, 2pm/EDT
- Modern Cost-Effective BI Will Save Your Firm Money and Time by Replacing Spreadmarts – Speakers are Joe Nicholson, VP, Product Marketing, Pentaho Corporation and Jake Cornelius, Director of Product Management, Pentaho Corporation, June 24, 2pm/EDT
- Red Hat Open Source Day ACSI Informatica Srl – Rome, June 17 2010
- International Summit 2010 DW & BI Extending the Reach and Scope of Business Intelligence, with Bnova – Rome, June 23-25
- The Agile BI Techcast Series in Italian with BNova – June 22, 29 July 6, 13
- TDWI Conference – Munich, June 14 – 16
- Pentaho Open Source BI Success Workshop for System Integrators – Frankfurt, June 22
- The Agile BI Techcast Series in German with Proventa AG – June 22, 29, July 6, 13
- The Agile BI Techcast Series in Spanish with Microgénesis – June 23, 30, July 7, 14
- Pentaho Puts Business users in the Driver's Seat with Agile BI Solutions – Round Table in Madrid, June 25
- Integrated Business Intelligence at a Lower TCO with CIGNEX – June 30, 14:00/BST
- The Agile BI Techcast Series in English on-demand
- The Agile BI Techcast series in French with Linalis – June 24, July 1, 8, 15
- Pentaho Defines a Better Way to Build BI Solutions – Oslow, June 24
Visit the Events and Webcast section of our website to stay up-to-date on virtual and live events.
We want to connect with you. Join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook and get the inside scoop from the BI from the Swamp Blog by signing up to receive post via email or rss.
Rebecca Goldstein
Director, Corporate Communications
Pentaho Corporation


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Darkroom/C-41RA Film Development
C-41RA is a rapid, three-bath process for developing ordinary C-41 colour negative film. It comes as a kit; popular brands are Tetenal and Arista, and they're often called press kits because newspaper photographers used to use them. C-41RA chemistry is a lot like B&W in use, except that it doesn't last as long, hates oxygen, and needs accurate temperature control to work well. The chemistry only lasts about three weeks once mixed, and I get about twenty 135-36 filmsworth out of a one litre Tetenal press kit.
C-41RA blix is toxic and nasty; don't get it on your hands, clothes, or in your eyes or mouth. The developer's pretty unpleasant too, but the blix is a special kind of assholish chemical. All three of the major components are probably carcinogenic, so yeah, you might want to wear gloves when handling them. You'd be a special kind of jerk to leave it, or things that have touched it, where people might be handling food. Keep chemistry away from food, animals and children.
All C-41 film needs the same development, so there's no complicated film-specific developer time matrix of doom.
Before You Start
- Make up your chemistry according to the instructions. You'll need three bottles to put it in.
- Mark your bottles: Developer, Blix and Stabilizer. Don't mix them up.
- Make up a tempering bath and heat it to 100.3 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Put your chemistry bottles in the tempering bath and wait for them to get to temperature.
- Make sure your tank, spiral, and bottles are compatible with colour chemistry, because some plastics aren't. The Paterson tanks are. Glass bottles aren't. No, really.
Basic Instructions
- In complete darkness, roll your film into a tank.
- Turn on safelight or house lights, as your paranoia permits.
- Fill your tank with water at the process temperature, and let it sit for a minute or two. Agitate it a bit. This, and all following steps save the wash stage, should be done with the tank sitting in the tempering bath.
- Empty the water out; marvel at the funny colour it went.
- Add developer to tank. Knock it on the table, then stand it in the tempering bath. Agitate for the first thirty seconds, then do four inversions every thirty seconds. You'll soup your film for a total of three minutes and thirty seconds.
- Pour developer back into your stock bottle.
- Add blix to tank. Agitate it the same way as the developer, but this time for six and a half minutes.
- As your film is blixing, it will produce a little sulfur dioxide. You will have to burp your tank a couple times.
- Pour the blix back into the bottle. It stinks of ammonia and sulfur dioxide: don't breathe this.
- Immediately rinse with running water at process temperature, for three minutes. (at this point you can take your time and expose the film to light if you need to. or want to.)
- Empty out the wash water, and add stabilizer. Agitate continuously for thirty seconds to a minute.
- Return stabilizer to the bottle.
- You might want to do a very, very quick dunk in photo-flo, to make the film dry more evenly, but it's against the instructions; I always do it anyway.
- Drying and praying against the anti-dust gods. You may also want to use the film dryer.
- Before you put your chemistry away, squirt some Dust-Off into each bottle to displace the oxygen that will destroy the chemistry while you sleep.