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With training camp approaching, Jason La Canfora of CBSSports.com reports the two sides are in "close contact" and have made recent progress toward a deal. This is a change of tone since, well, this entire offseason. Wallace was believed to be asking for an exorbitant salary, and there was very little optimism a deal could be done.
Brooks: Haley's impact on Pittsburgh
Some questioned Pittsburgh's hiring of Todd
Haley to run the offense, but Bucky Brooks thinks it's a perfect match. **More ...**
The sides are expected to keep a "steady pace" in talks until training camp starts. Wallace remains unsigned after receiving a restricted free-agent tag this offseason for $2.72 million. We'd be surprised if he showed up to training camp on time without a new contract.
The theory this offseason is that the Steelers eventually would have to make a choice between Wallace and Antonio Brown, like they once did with Hines Ward and Plaxico Burress. (Nice decision there.)
If the Steelers could lock up Wallace long-term this offseason, that would give them a lot of time to get Brown under contract before he's an unrestricted free agent in 2014.
The Steelerscut offensive tackle Johnathan Scott on Thursday, which frees up some salary-cap space to spend on Wallace.


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|Home ▸ Catalog ▸ |Greek Coins| ▸ |Geographic - All Periods| ▸ |Anatolia| ▸ |Caria| ▸ |Rhodos||View Options: | | |
Ancient Coins of Rhodos, Carian Islands
Rhodes was an important slave-trading center, best known for The Colossus of Rhodes. The Colossus of Rhodes, the sixth of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was a huge statue of Helios measuring 32 meters (100 feet) high, built at Rhodes in 280 B.C. but destroyed by an earthquake later in that century. It has inspired many later sculptures including the Statue of Liberty.

subset: commoncrawl


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We have two Movies of the Week this week, so you'll have to make a decision on your own for once. The only movie this week that isn't one of the Movies of the Week is boring Justin Timberlake vehicle Runner Runner. Lifting your spirits however, are Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut Don Jon and animated sequel Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2.
EXPECTATIONS: Sometimes you just can't wait for a film to be released. There are two different reasons for this to happen. The best reason is that your own excitement for the film is too much to bear and every reminder that it is on its way is one more tease to build you up, usually into disappointment. In the case of Runner Runner, it is simply because of the marketing saturation that the damn film has been getting. Please hurry up and release this film so I can stop watching that trailer before every single movie. You know the one, where Gemma Arterton is second billed, but apparently doesn't have enough impact on the film to warrant actually appearing in any of its marketing footage beyond two shots of her looking lustfully over her shoulders at a painfully arrogant Justin Timberlake while Ben Affleck feeds people to crocodiles and tries his hardest to chew scenery.
REALITY: It won't surprise you at all, and it certainly did not surprise me in the least, to learn that I didn't much care for Runner Runner. It is dull, first and foremost. What you might think is a snappy 91 minute running time makes way for an absolutely bizarre sense of pace. Long scenes of dialogue make way for more long scenes of dialogue, but supposedly important characters come and go in the blink of an eye. It seems that the actual story of Runner Runner could be told in about five minutes, so they bloated the screenplay with poker analogies, tough-guy monologuing and weird sexism.
Urgh, a woman!
When student Richie Furst (Timberlake) is having difficulty paying for his tuition due to his previous income from a poker website and being threatened by his college Dean to stop doing his job as a marketing liaison to an Poker website, he decides to gamble all of his savings on a poker website and loses. Deciding that there's no possible way that he could have lost his money fairly, he somehow flies to Costa Rica to confront the site's CEO Ivan Block (Affleck) in order to get his money back. Block is so impressed by Furst's arrogance that he immediately gives him a job as his right hand man, bribing officials, blackmailing potential business partners and taking beatings as needed. Then, to throw a spanner in the works, FBI Agent Shavers (Anthony Mackie) approaches Furst and tries to get him on side to take down Block.
Cast your browsers back to my review of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and you'll be reminded of the simple little test I like to conduct with films. If your film has only one female character, go ahead and see if you can recite the plot concisely without needing to mention her. Well... I just did. In fact, not only did I manage to do that, every piece of marketing connected to Runner Runner seems to have the same problem. Even the synopses on every cinema website I checked can't seem to fit Gemma Arterton's character into the actual story of the film. Maybe she isn't even in it?
Well, she is. I remember. I saw her. There is a woman in this film. Unfortunately, Runner Runner left me slightly confused as to just what a woman is. Sometimes I think that they're people, but then I keep seeing movies where they're not. Gemma Arterton plays Rebecca, Ivan Block's personal assistant who falls in love with Richie. That's it. They try to play her up like a strong, independant woman, but at the end of the day she is little more than a prize to be contested over by the two arrogant leads. Want to place a bet on who "gets the girl" in the end?
Hi, I'm Ben Affleck and I'll be trying my absolute hardest this evening.She may be the only female character with any dialogue or a name, but there is a female presence in the film besides her and it naturally takes the form of background sex objects. Women are set dressing. Even in early scenes, Runner Runner takes an entirely sincere approach to the attitudes towards college girls that is so thoroughly lampooned in The Social Network. Remember that? "We're ranking girls." "You mean other students?"
Justin Timberlake was in that too, I imagine he hasn't forgotten. In Runner Runner, college girls (to use the language of the porn-obsessed virgin for whom "college" exists only as a descriptor of one of many types of girl who will never have sex with him) are seen doing nothing more than observing from the wings as the proactive, studious college men who do things, talk to each other and sit on chairs. College girls cannot use chairs, you see? The only sitting they are allowed to do is on the laps of their incredible, arrogant manly college men.
I keep using that word "arrogant," probably in some vain attempt to lend structure to what is essentially an extended rant about a very uninteresting work, but it is part of an unusual trend in modern media, this celebration of arrogance. Intelligence and arrogance, especially in American films and television, go hand in hand. Hyper competency is something we see a lot in cinemas, it used to be what made Sherlock Holmes an interesting character, now it's what makes Robert Downey Jr. such an easy casting choice for Sherlock Holmes. A thriller like Runner Runner is robbed of its tension when your main character's attitude entering the third act is not "How am I going to do this?" but a boring, poker-analogy-filled voice-over explaining "Here's what I did." It's exactly the same issue that killed Now You See Me dead from its opening frames, it's what makes the Marvel Studios films so hard to stomach and it's so prevalent in the genre that The Dark Knight rises presents it as an element of self parody. I think we should have a rule that any trend that was parodied in The A-Team should be off limits to anyone trying to pen an action thriller.
At this point, I had considered it comedically incumbent to use the heavy-handed poker analogies that permeate this film's script in order to segue smoothly into mentioning Ben Affleck. However, I know so little about poker that I had to... fold, I guess? That's what happens when you lose, right? Anyway, Ben Affleck's performance is the shining light in the film and possibly a career best and, by all means, please put that line on the back of a blu ray case out of context. The problem is, here is a man who very clearly called up his agent one day and said "Get me a scenery-chewing bad guy role. I don't care what the movie is, I want to do tough-guy monologuing and antagonise some young movie star. Put me up against whoever the modern equivalent of me from thirteen years ago is." Then Runner Runner happened and he got his wish. Smart move, Affleck. I just wish it had been part of a less interminably dull film.
|Did I Mention This Movie is Boring as Hell?
|Because it is!
MINORITY REPORT: So you're saying I shouldn't double down on Runner Runner? That I shouldn't raise my expectations? I should take my apathy for this film and let it ride? I should go...uh...see another movie? -Joseph "Jay Dub" Wade
Something Awful is in the process of changing hands to a new owner. In the meantime we're pausing all updates and halting production on our propaganda comic partnership with Northrop Grumman.
Dear god this was an embarrassment to not only this site, but to all mankind
Landmarks and statues around the world: old, boring and could use an update.
Join the SA Forum photoshop goons in their quest to make horror wholesome!
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Game of Thrones Season 2 Episode 4 recap
I'm starting to get the goosebumps, and not just because we're finally going to see the terror or bliss that is Harrenhal. Things are moving, finally, although I could never have predicted where…
Rainstorm. Lannister soldiers debate who's going to win the war of kings, if only so they can insert a joke about how Loris Tyrrell has been "stabbing" Renly Baratheon without killing him, so how good a killer can he be? Har de har. Jamie Lannister gets the "if he ever gets out" vote. Anyway, the horses are fussy, and one guy goes to see what's up. Music is tense and...one of them lets loose a giant fart. Guffaws from the farter whose name is Reddick. But his friend yells in fear and suddenly Reddick is jumped by something. A split second face of a wolf - and then we realize it's Robb Stark, calmly attacking.
Daylight. Carnage. Bodies lie everywhere. Robb's advisor tells him to torture the survivors but Robb is not for it, because that isn't Stark behaviour. (Lainey: is this about "honour" again, like his dead dad? Because, find, if Robb's about to die, could he please have a lot of sex first? That girl looks promising.) Meanwhile, a nurse battles with a knight who doesn't want his rotted leg amputated and is begging them not to cut it off, even though it'll kill him if they don't. Extremely graphic biting on handkerchief and sawing of leg is interrupted by Robb suddenly noticing how beautiful she is. As she sends the wounded off in a wagon, he finds out she's Talisa, and won't say her last name. She tells Robb it's his fault the boy lost his foot, even though Robb protests. He lays out his simplistic plan - take Joffrey down and then...just go home. He doesn't want to sit on the throne. She's from Valantis and thinks he's an idiot. "The boy was lucky you were here!" Robb calls as her wagon carries her away. "He was unlucky that you were" she sasses. It's love. (Lainey: Yay! SEX! Because in the Game Of Thrones, Love actually does = SEX!)
Speaking of love, Joffrey has a bow and arrow aimed at Sansa who is begging forgiveness for her traitor brother's recent treasons. It isn't even hard for her to spit the words anymore. So how to send Robb a message? Joffrey's method of choice is to have his henchmen rough her up, though they're instructed to "Leave her face. I like her pretty". We're shielded the first view of Sansa being punched, which is interesting. Then Sansa's dress is ripped open and Meryn Trant prepares to slice some flesh, maybe some hair…
But along comes Tyrion! "What kind of knight beats a helpless girl", he demands. "She is to be your queen!" Joffrey screams that he's punishing her and Tyrion calls him a half-wit. In short order he berates the knight who was hurting Sansa and commands Bronn to kill him if he moves again. It should be noted that the vibe here isn't necessarily that they all respect the Hand of the King but that they are completely at a loss as to what Tyrion will do next. A short man can cast a long shadow. Also, Bronn is awesome. After verbally eviscerating them all, "That's a threat. See the difference?" Tyrion walks Sansa out all "do you want an end to this?' She spits "I am loyal to King Joffrey, my one true love". And this is where Tyrion realizes more fully that she's made of stiffer stuff than he thought, and I love his face while he does so. Anyway, Bronn believes Joffrey is "backed up" from balls to brains and they should get him someone to relieve himself with to "get some poison out".
Joffrey arrives in his chambers, with the Hound outside, informing him Tyrion left him a name day present. He enters and discovers said present is a couple of lovely ladies. They try to get down to business, but he says no, all uncomfortable and twisted - although he starts to rethink and says he wants them to hit each other. Of course he does. Some playful spanking gets a lot less fun when he demands one be whipped with a leather belt, and of course Joffrey grabs her and insists she use it ever harder. Then, as the girl screams in pain, because he's a f*cking sadist, Joffrey hands Ros a giant, spiky sceptre with which to beat (or rape, according to your interpretation and the strength of your stomach) the other girl and then cocks an arrow at her. Oh, and the finished product – i.e., the girl's maimed body - is to be dropped off to Tyrion. Are you turned off the idea of lighthearted sex forever now?
Camp Renly Baratheon. He greets Littlefinger as "my favourite whoremonger" and as they begin to talk, it becomes evident quickly that there's no love lost here. "I don't like your face, I don't like the words that come oozing out of your mouth..." But despite what Renly thinks, LIttlefinger's not there to save his own ass. Instead he tells him the attack on King's landing may not be as hard as he thinks.
We get that finished quickly enough so that Littlefinger can talk to Queen Margaery who has a slip of the tongue re: "MY tent" (not "our" tent) in about three seconds, and Littlefinger pounces. He thinks her marriage is quite interesting, and so does the realm. He just can't stay away from gossip, can he? Who legitimately loves it more, just for their own delight? Him or Varys? Anyway, Margaery quite efficiently and calmly schools him in few words, to the effect of he won't be getting anywhere with his salacious queries about Loris. The woman doesn't even break a sweat.
Desert. Khaleesi! She turns, exhausted, to the sound of a rider. But when he arrives, he notes his new horse was given to him by the Thirteen, elders of Qarth, who are three days to the east, on the sea. (Reminds me of "second star to the right, then straight on till morning".) Anyway, they would be delighted to receive the Mother of Dragons. Jorah sniffs that the area around their walls is named "the Garden of Bones", which they add to each time they have visitors. So that's encouraging. Jorah's affection for the Khaleesi, by the way, seems to have faded in direct proportion to the amount of water in his body. He's barely holding it together.
Kidnapped coterie of boys. Arya and Gendry stare at melting stone, and Arya says dragons did it. She also says the smell they notice is dead people. Worldly girl. Harrenhall is some sort of prison where all are in shackles and chains. We hear a man screaming in pain (sounds like he's on the rack) and a woman informs us he was her son, following her husband and sister earlier this week. Each day someone dies. Arya wants to know if anyone lives, and does not enjoy the silence that ensues.
Later, as the young boys try to sleep while they're rained on, she murmurs the names of her enemies to herself. "Cersei. Murmur. The Hound. Joffrey." The names of her enemies as she was taught. I rewound this 12 times and could not get the second name. (Updated: Final tally now up to 20 rewinds) Any of you?
Catelyn. Ugh. She kind of sucks the energy from a room, doesn't she? (Lainey: YES! I hate her SO MUCH, why can't she DIE already? God!) She rises as Littlefinger comes in and rails that he betrayed Ned. Littlefinger swears he didn't but Catelyn is not hearing it, particularly when he starts confessing his love, and threatens him with a knife. All he can say is "do you want to see your girls again'? He says both girls are healthy and safe for now, which is, to be generous, a blatant lie. But he follows it up with "who knows for how long" and Catelyn caves, lowering her dagger. Littlefinger says the trade is Jamie Lannister for the two girls, and when she protests, reminds her she may not have another chance. He finishes by dropping off a gift from Tyrion - it's a chest. Catelyn kneels, all tense and opens it to find...oh, of course. Ned Stark's remains. That's nice. So he can be buried at home. Shudder.
In the morning - Arya, still in chains, has finally fallen asleep after her mantra of enemies. All the boys are awakened and Arya's pudgy friend - his name, I've learned, is HOT PIE, so that'll shake off your Catelyn stupor - notes the executioner coming. He tells her his blue-eyed neighbour says the way to escape being chosen for torture is to look straight at The Mountain. He does and Arya doesn't, but it's the blue-eyed individual who's chosen to be strapped into a chair, looking terrified. They ask him to betray the location of the brotherhood, and he swears he doesn't know anything. So a rat in a bucket is applied to his chest. Then, as the guy continues to swear he has no helpful information, they burn the bucket so that they rat looks to escape the only way it can - through his sternum. Even after he offers up some names, they don't stop. I have permanent cringe marks in my brow as Arya takes all this in. Safe indeed. Arya watches - and in that night's mantra, adds "The Mountain" and "Holliver", one of their torturers, to her mantra.
Ooh! Standoff! Stannis and his crew meet up with Renly and his (including Lady Stark). Renly refers to Stannis as a religious Johnny-come-lately as well as kind of a fanatic. Melisandre jumps in to talk about how great "King" Stannis will be and Renly all but rolls his eyes, mocking her when she says he was "born amid salt and smoke", vis a vis "Is he a ham?" Heh, Renly has a sense of humour.
Anyway, Stannis says Lady Stark is wrong to be with Renly since Ned supported his heirdom, but she's annoyed with them both. Stannis screeches that anyone who denies his right to the throne is his foe, so Renly points out that's the entire realm, then. Stannis gives Renly one night to surrender and will even let him be an heir (until he has a son; cue look from Melisande) but Renly snorts, and, as Stannis rides off, muses "Would you believe I loved him once?" Renly might be my new favourite character, if for no other reason than he seems he's living a sort of Westeros Dawson's Creek kind of life.
Qarth. A very choreographed group of knights march out to meet the small, sadly bedraggled Dothraki posse. A portly man rolls out to greet the Khaleesi. He has no name but "spice merchant". He knows she's the mother of dragons, he's one of the Thirteen, and together, they take care of Qarth, the greatest city ever. Danaerys tries to ingratiate herself but says "Quarth", which seems like it's a real faux pas. The Spice Merchant wants to see her dragons before the Dothraki get fed, and the Khaleesi gets irritated at this. Jorah tells her to be careful, which Danaerys interprets as a cue to spit a threat about who her dragons will burn if the Qarth do not let them in. Spice Merchant sasses back that she's going to die of lack of food, but then a man so tall it seems impossible he was hiding in the crowd until now appears. He's Xaro Xhoan Daxos and he vouches for them. Spills his blood and all. At which point, what can SpiceMerch do? The doors to Qarth open, and it looks like a storybook picture of paradise that was in a children's book in your dentists' waiting room, or the first time you saw a movie in Technicolor.
Harrenhal. Yesterday's victim has his head planted on a spike. Today they grab Gendry. They ask if there's gold or silver in the village, and where the brotherhood is. Gendry doesn't know the answers and gets a rat-bucket strapped to his chest. But before they can continue - lo! Tywin Lannister rides in! He looks at the penful of prisoners and thinks it's an awful waste. Gendry is still terrified but is able to answer that he has a trade. Arya gets distracted looking at Needle, tucked against the waist of one of the knights, but he spots her and threatens to carve her lungs out. Whereupon Tywin, ever calm and cool, points out that he's an idiot and she's a girl. Then he calls her smart and extracts her from the prison cage. She's gonna be a cupbearer.
A knock! It's cousin Lancel at Tyrion's door. He's there on behalf of Cersei who wants him to release Pycelle, and he's got an official order. Tyrion just invites Lancel to have a drink with him. Lancel snottily calls him "imp". And THEN, Tyrion points out that Lancel is spending an awful lot of time with Cersei in the middle of the night, and points out that Joffrey will not be pleased with the news of Lancel sleeping with his mother. Lancel finally looks sick. He swears up and down that he was only obeying her (sexy) orders but when Tyrion threatens to get Joffrey, Lancel begs on his knees for mercy. Tyrion shows it - he has a plan. From now on, Lancel's going to be a stuck-like-glue-to-Cersei spy who tells Tyrion everything. Having effectively gotten everything he wants, he quite easily agrees to release Pycelle in the morning. There's a "hair on his head" joke but it's not up to Tyrion's usual standard.
Stannis, staring into the distance. He mutters about how Sir Davos has no hand; Davos is fine without it. But still gets a grammar lesson, which seems pretty petty at this point in the game. After some more muttering, Stannis asks him to smuggle "the red woman" ashore. Davos swears he can manage it, but surely there are cleaner ways? Stannis mutters that cleaner ways don't win wars.
And we cut to our man with Melisandre in his boat. She's pushing at him, kind of mocking him, pointing out that he has carried much more unpleasant cargo than her before. Then she calls herself a knight of sorts, and it's just about all he can take, so he just keeps rowing. Ashore, she wants to know whether he loves his wife and whether he's known other women. Oh, here we go. She's got that smile on and declares - not asks - that he wants her and wants to know what's under her robes. And that he shall.
Inside a cave, Davos and Melisandre walk with lanterns. He's worried about some bars preventing them from continuing their path. But Melisandre is unconcerned. She's just there to take off her robes, reveal a giantly pregnant belly, light a lantern by magic, and then go into what would appear to be immediate labour. If she's not pregnant, this is an excellent prosthetic.She screams, groans, her necklace glows, and her belly pulsates. Ultimately she gives birth to...a lot of black smoke and...a wheezing, skinny, long, black...set of two legs, possibly with a torso beyond the confines of our television screens.
Jesus. Okay. Wow. (Lainey: it reminds me of the Black Smoke from Lost)
It's not Quarth, it's Qarth
Game of Thrones Season 2 Episode 4 recap


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Monday, January 31, 2011
The Man from Space (1955)
Posted by John Sisson at 12:59 PM No comments:
Friday, January 28, 2011
What's on the Moon? (1965)
Maisel, Albert Q. "The Fantastic Hazards of Landing on the Moon" Reader's Digest Sept 1963.
P.S. Are you getting ready for your "First Vacation on the Moon?
Posted by John Sisson at 11:06 AM 1 comment:
Labels: 1960s, 1965, School text
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Wonders of Space Stamps (1954)
Bernhard, Hubert. Illustrated by Solonewitsch, George and Discount, William. Wonders of Space Stamps: An Exciting Account of the Stars, Sun, Planets, and Other Wonders of the Sky. New York: Simon and Schuster. (48 p.) 28 cm. (1954)
These stamp books had simple text and 48 color stamps to glue in the appropriate places. George Solonewitsch's stamp art includes paintings of the planets and a rocket to the Moon.
But you should not discount a little extra space art from William Discount (sorry). His drawings of a couple of space scenes to go with the stamps are also a hidden treasure.
This is the only page that has any space flight text but these next few images are nicely futuristic about what children could expect from space flight.
Beside the Moon mankind would also eventually go to tthe other planets.
Posted by John Sisson at 1:10 PM 1 comment:
Monday, January 24, 2011
To the Moon by Rocket Ship (1940)
This pamphlet collected the facts and gave the visitor something to take home. While primitive in appearance I image many children who were in love with Buck Rogers being facinated that it might someday all be true.
Posted by John Sisson at 3:25 PM No comments:
Friday, January 21, 2011
Do You Know About Our Solar System? (1963)
King, H C. Illustrated by Hall, Roger. Do You Know about Our Solar System. London : Collins Sons and Co. (48 p.) 27 cm. Cloth. (1963)
Mostly concerned with astronomy, there are illustrations of space probes, the surfaces of several planets and a manned landing on the Moon. "Pageant of Knowledge" series.
Posted by John Sisson at 5:27 PM 2 comments:
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The Illustrated Story of Space (Classics Illustrated) (1959)
Classics Illustrated were comics books intended to educate as well as entertain. They often were fictional "classic" books in comic book form such as Moby Dick. They also had a special series called "The World around Us." These were non-fiction comic books about topics of interest.
Classics Illustrated. Illustrated by McCann, Gerald, Glanzman, Sam, and Tartaglione, John. The Illustrated Story of Space. Classics Illustrated. (80 p.) 26 cm. Softcover.
Contains illustrated stories on training for space, the first rocket to the Moon, the history and use of the rocket, the launch of Vanguard 1, and the construction of a space station. "The World Around Us" (#5) January 1959.
Posted by John Sisson at 4:37 PM No comments:
Labels: 1950s, 1950s comic book, 1959
Friday, January 14, 2011
Space Patrol Official Handbook (1952)
This is a booklet that I was amazed to find and even more amazing was that the only mention of it was buried in the introduction of a totally different book I had read 8 months before I ever saw this book. And it has nothing to do with the old Space Patrol TV series.
From the Introduction to Space Aces! Comic Book Heroes from the Forties and Fifties by Denis Gifford 1992.
"My own entry into the sci-fi world really happened in 1952. I was drawing 'Flip and Flop' and other comic characters for Mick Anglo's comic-books when I conceived my great idea. Within a month I had compiled and launched Space Patrol Official Handbook, from the Space Patrol Headquarters, 16 Sydenham Park, SE26! 'Your Passport to the Planets', as I advertised it, contained 'Everything you want to know about the Life on Other Planets, Space Suits, Spacecraft Recognition, Insignia, Interplanetary Languages - plus Space Patrol Membership Certificate! Secret Codes of the Spaceways! Interplanetary Passport! Gazetteer of the Galaxy! Real Photographs of Spaceships! (pinched from space films, of course) and the Space Man's Code of Honour!' Also a 'Free Jet-ex Jet-propelled Rocket Ship in Easy Competition! - It Flies!' All this and more in one twenty-page blue-covered booklet for a one-and-sixpenny Postal order! A word of warning - don't send a 1s 6d PO to SPHQ, will you? I sold out and moved! Anyway, as there are only two known copies left, the Handbook would now cost a little more than seven and a half pence!"
There was even a copy of the old advertisement he had reproduced in the book:
Since it is so "rare" I am happy to share with you this essential guide to spaceflight.
The question is this raises is simple. Is this a unique item? It is certainly obscure but I have had some else write me to say that they had one too. So is this simply amateur science fiction or is it the ultimate expression of that child within us that wants to tell everyone about how cool spaceflight is?
Posted by John Sisson at 3:52 PM 2 comments:
Monday, January 10, 2011
Casper Presents Space-Age Dentistry (1972)
I am always interested in the stories behind my books and ephemera so I have been looking for more about Casper and Apollo 16. I found this 1972 promotional comic about dentistry, Apollo, and Casper!
The comic has a number of space references in the background, although unfortunately no image from my poster.
I am always interested in the stories behind my books and ephemera so I have been looking for more about Casper and Apollo 16. I found this 1972 promotional comic about dentistry, Apollo, and Casper!
The comic has a number of space references in the background, although unfortunately no image from my poster.
Posted by John Sisson at 10:11 AM No comments:
Labels: 1970s, 1970s comic book, 1972, premiums
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You've seen the photos or read the stories. In some of China's cities you can't even see the sun. People walk down the streets wearing surgical masks. Tourists pose for photos in front of fake landmarks since the real ones are obscured. China's economic salvation might end up its undoing… and ours. The country's prosperity is clouded in a thick haze of smog belched from coal-burning power plants.
In cities choked by pollution and a world coming to grips with the realities of climate change, what future does coal really have? Is this prehistoric energy source headed for extinction? Or will we hang on to it and risk the same fate?
While China's hunger for coal seems insatiable — it gobbles up 4 billion tons a year, about half of global supply — the story is different in the U.S. Here, coal's share of electricity production has fallen from nearly 53 percent in 2000 to below 40 percent today. Coal companies face economic hardships, dwindling market shares and increasing regulations.
But don't dance on King Coal's grave just yet. The industry may continue to limp along for decades, with little growth, but lots of greenhouse gas emissions nonetheless.
"No one wants to say it — but the U.S. coal industry is in the process of slowly and quietly folding up shop," said Richard Heinberg, a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and author of many energy books including, Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis. "It won't happen overnight and it won't happen this decade. But it's certainly not a growth industry."
Coal's future hinges on how a few key things play out in the next few years: public pressure, regulations, exports, technology, friends in high places, and most importantly, the amount of economically recoverable coal.
200 or 20 Years?
How much coal do we have left? It depends on whom you ask. The Energy Information Administration says that "estimated recoverable coal reserves" give us about 200 years worth of coal. But not everyone agrees with that figure.
A report by Leslie Glustrom for Clean Energy Action says that, "The belief that the U.S. has a '200 year' supply of coal is based on the faulty reporting by the EIA of U.S. coal deposits as 'reserves.' Most U.S. coal is buried too deeply to be mined at a profit and should not be categorized as reserves, but rather as 'resources.'"
Glustrom relied on many studies, including information from the United States Geologic Survey. The USGS has examined coalfields across the country and their numbers weren't quite as rosy as the EIA. Take the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana; it's the country's single biggest source of coal. The USGS found about 1 trillion short tons of coal resources there. But of that, the agency's research deemed that only "25 billion short tons of coal resources met the definition of economically recoverable resources.
That may seem like a lot, but the U.S. currently produces 1 billion short tons a year, of which about 40 percent comes from the Powder River Basin — which give the region just over 20 years of coal.
The crux is not really how much remains underground but how much is profitable to extract. "If coal can't be mined at a profit, not much of it will be mined," wrote Glustrom. "It is unclear how long the U.S. coal industry will produce large quantities of coal and at what price, but the current financial distress of U.S. coal mining companies could lead to significant changes in U.S. coal production in less than a decade."
That doesn't mean that we'll run out of coal in 10 years, simply that mining it will start becoming a losing bet for coal companies. It's easy to see how that could happen. Natural gas prices have already edged coal out of some key markets and the prices of renewable energy are falling. Renewables are already becoming cost competitive in some places. Just like with oil and gas, the cheap and easy coal is gone. Production costs are rising and that's being passed on to utilities. The prices that utilities have to pay for coal has increased about 7 percent a year since 2004.
Tough Economic Road Ahead
From a business perspective, being a coal company these days is not easy. Writing for Greenpeace, Kelly Mitchell declared it the "beginning of the end" for coal. "Peabody (BTU) and Arch (ACI), the largest U.S. coal companies, have lost more than 75% of their peak value since 2011, as coal struggles to compete with renewable energy and gas," she wrote. "170 new coal plants representing $450 billion in capital investment have been canceled. Few utility companies are taking a gamble on new coal generation; those who have are in financial trouble."
If you don't believe Greenpeace, how about Deutsche Bank. In 2011, one of the company's executives, Kevin Parker, wrote that "Coal is a dead man walkin.'" When it comes to coal plants, "Banks won't finance them. Insurance companies won't insure them. The EPA is coming after them…. And the economics to make it clean don't work," he elaborated.
Deutsche Bank isn't the only big finance company with concerns about the economic future of coal. Research by Goldman Sachs concluded, "Earning a return on incremental investment in thermal coal mining and infrastructure capacity is becoming increasingly difficult."
Last summer Goldman Sachs downgraded its price forecasts for coal by 13 percent for 2014 and 11 percent for 2015. "We believe that thermal coal's current position atop the fuel mix for global power generation will be gradually eroded," its report for investors stated citing three reasons: environmental regulation, competition from natural gas and renewable energy, and gains made in energy efficiency.
Regulatory Hurdles
The biggest indicators of how steep the slide will be for coal is likely regulation. So far the climate legislation that the fossil fuel industry feared would come to fruition under Obama's reign never made meaningful strides in Congress.
But Obama did announce upcoming regulations last year from the Environmental Protection Agency that would limit pollution coming from power plants. Expect to see more details of this in June — and Republicans (and perhaps some coal state Dems) fighting tooth and nail against it. So far the EPA has proposed limiting coal plants to 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour and 1,000 pounds per megawatt hour for gas plants.
If these regulations do see the light of day, it will make it almost impossible to build large, new coal-burning power plants (which now crank out about 1,700 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour) unless they use some technology to capture and store carbon (more on this below).
Already we are seeing a transition away from old, coal-burning plants, thanks in part to new regulations set to limit mercury and other toxic emissions. The EIA reports that at least 60 gigawatts of capacity will be retired by 2020 (and 90 percent of that by 2016). For perspective, the total generating capacity of all 1,308 coal plants functioning in 2012 was 310 gigawatts. For the past several years, the EIA reports, most of the retirements were smaller, inefficient plants (an average size of 97 megawatts), but the planned upcoming retirement of plants will be much larger, with the average size being 145 megawatts.
Greener Pastures Overseas?
With dimming prospects in the U.S., coal companies are increasingly looking overseas where they can fetch higher prices for their product to balance the rising costs of production. In the last decade, coal exports have nearly tripled — we're now sending around 100 million short tons abroad each year according to the EIA. (By the way, we still also import coal from Colombia, Indonesia and Canada.)
Half of the coal ships to Europe, a quarter to Asia and the rest to South and North America, much of that passing through ports in Virginia, Maryland and Louisiana. But Asia, particularly China, is viewed as one of the biggest markets for growth. And, since the late 1990s, the biggest mines in the U.S. have been out west in Wyoming and Montana's Powder River Basin. That has made ports on the West Coast a prime target for coal exports.
A few years ago the export market through the Pacific Northwest looked hot. There were six proposals in the works, but changing market conditions sent coal prices falling and suddenly three plans were scrapped. Environmental and community health groups have teamed up with other concerned residents to block plans for the remaining three terminals.
"Communities along the rail lines are recognizing that they will get all the impacts, but none of the benefits," said the Sierra Club's Cesia Kearns. "The mining, transport, and burning of coal hurts communities every step of the way." Communities are concerned about traffic delays (particularly for emergency response vehicles) from mile-long coal trains, health impacts from coal dust, increased particulate matter from diesel engines, and the possibility of derailment.
The coalition opposing coal exports in the Pacific Northwest is getting a boost from the market.
"Asia was supposed to be the next frontier for U.S. coal producers, a glimmer of hope for a sinking industry," wrote Rob Davis for the Oregonian. "But the market is shifting underfoot, calling the terminals' profitability into question. For investors, they've become bets that markets will bounce back."
It's a steep bet.
Technology, the Savior
One of the only things that can save coal will be new and improved technology. However, there is no technology on the horizon that will improve mining yields, said Post Carbon Institute's Heinberg. The only way to get more value from hard to reach coal seams would be underground coal gasification. "It involves burning coal underground in situ and siphoning off gases that contain combustibles like methane," he explained. "That can be applied to seams too thin or too deeply buried or underneath oceans that would never be mined commercially."
It hasn't been done to any significant scale yet and if it was, "It would be a horrendous thing from a climate standpoint," said Heinberg.
Where coal has its greatest chance of market resurgence is with technology that comes during the burning. Carbon capture and sequestration (CSS) has been the holy grail of the coal industry for years. If you've ever heard someone mention "clean coal," that's likely what they were referring to. In a recent article for National Geographic Michelle Nijhuis captures our current conundrum: Coal is "the dirtiest, most lethal energy source we have. But by most measures it is also the cheapest, and we depend on it."
She admits that coal can never be clean, but perhaps, she wonders if it can be "clean enough." By this she means to "prevent not only local disasters but also a radical change in global climate." Her story appeared just after a feature in Wired declaring that "clean coal" is the future.
But there's a few problems. CCS technology relies on capturing carbon dioxide and piping it to someplace where it can be injected underground — the goal being to cut the greenhouse gas impacts associated with coal.
The first problem is that coal is not just dirty when it's burned; mining coal is dirty and deadly. Mining communities have been found to have higher rates of cancer, heart disease, respiratory and kidney problems. They suffer from air and water pollution. Areas of Appalachia are subjected to bombardment from explosives as mountains are leveled, streams buried, and some of the most diverse temperate forests in the world are obliterated. Coal dust also threatens communities along rail lines and near processing plants. Remember the chemical spill from a coal-related company that contaminated the drinking water for 300,00 people in West Virginia in January? These are all local disasters, and none of them would have been prevented by CCS.
The other problem with CCS is that technology still has serious doubters — and serious costs. The first such plant in the U.S. is expected to come online this year in Mississippi. But the Kemper County Energy Facility has been fraught with problems, especially when it comes to cost overruns.
Suzanne Goldenberg writes for the Guardian that Kemper is expected to remove about two-thirds of its carbon dioxide emissions — this puts it on par with natural gas power plants (which are cleaner but not clean). However, she writes, "the economics are still not in favour of carbon capture, even with Kemper's example, because of the high capital costs, industry analysts said." The cost of building Kemper has now reached $5 billion.
With coal already having trouble competing in the market, the added costs that will be associated may make widespread deployment of CCS untenable. "Given the direction of the trends, even a 10 percent cost increase for electricity for coal with CCS is a deal killer," said Heinberg.
Of course, there is always the possibility that we'll continue to subsidize the coal industry, even when it is not cost-effective and goes against the best environmental health and science we know.
What About the Climate?
Even if the U.S. and other countries manage to significantly cut the amount of coal they burn, China remains the big X factor when it comes to the climate.
"Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its estimate of the allowable total cumulative global CO2 emissions between 2012 and 2100 to prevent the global average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius…If China's coal use continues to increase as predicted, by 2040 China will have consumed more than a third of that global budget," wrote Eric Larson for Climate Central. "Combined with the U.S. and the rest of the world, China's emissions have the planet on a path to surpass the global budget by 2040."
If we head beyond the "global budget," expect to see the effects of catastrophic climate changes.
Of course, China has had some help getting to where it is. "We are largely responsible for it," said Heinberg. "We get to reduce our carbon emissions or keep them steady in the wealthy industrial world by outsourcing manufacturing to China, which makes all our cheap plastic stuff by burning coal."
But China is trying. It has to. "Pollution levels are becoming economy threatening," said Heinberg. China is trying everything in the book: CCS, nuclear, renewables, and shale gas. The country just announced it would close 1,700 small and inefficient coal plants. It's a step in the right direction, but a small one.
"One way or another they have got to get off their reliance on coal, but frankly they don't know how to do it," added Heinberg.
In the U.S. he believes it can be done with a combination of public pressure and market forces. And when it comes to the public pressure, he believes opposing export terminals and demanding full cost accounting for coal production (no more ignoring the environment and health impacts).
"I think we have to keep the pressure up from the standpoint of public policy. If we just wait for the market to take care of it the market will do it in a savage way," said Heinberg. "We've waited too long already for a gentle transition to a post carbon future. The longer we wait, the longer we rely on market forces to make the transitions, the worse it gets."
One thing is certain, we don't have any longer to weigh the options. Coal burning is our biggest contributor to climate change. Scientist Michael E. Mann wrote in Scientific American,"If the world keeps burning fossil fuels at the current rate, it will cross a threshold into environmental ruin by 2036."
Smoke emissions image via shutterstock. Reproduced on Resilience.org with permission.


text:
Welcome to our site.
+ Cemetery catalog or news.
Our Family Tree
D'Addezio, et. al. surnames...
January 15, 1999
This site is about helping the genealogy community find information
about their ancestors. Cemeteries are an excellent source for genealogy,
and are especially prone to surprises!
Many of the cemeteries in this directory are linked to transcriptions entered by volunteers, so
please remember to thank the individuals who took the time to prepare them.
United States Cemeteries
First published in January 1999 and now has 48,289 listings.
Canadian Cemeteries
First published in June 2001 and now has 2,126 listings.
Australian Cemeteries
First published in April 2000 and now has 496 listings.
Family Cemeteries
First published in February 2000 and now has 28,051 listings.
Obituary Depot
First published in August 2000 and has moved to its own site!
Join us on The Cemetery Trail where our host, Eric Miller, will be making many stops at
cemeteries around the country.
C.J. Gardens & Memorial Park was created for people who wish to share their loss with others so that their loved
ones will not be forgotten. Visit this service and learn how
you can add a memorial.
A total of 451 American children were buried in the Main Cemetery in Kaiserslautern, Germany between 1952 and 1971. Search this list.
Most cemeteries keep simple, but informative, records for plots within the cemetery. Find
out how to get copies in our article, Writing to a Cemetery for Lot Cards.
Between 20,000 and 75,000 years ago, Neanderthals began to bury their dead. The first burials,
however, may have been quite unintentional. Read this
article about Cemeteries from Joel GAzis-SAx.
The name mausoleum comes from a grand tomb built for King
Mausolus by his wife (and incidentally also his sister) Artemisia, around 353 B.C..
Read this article about Mausoleums from Douglas Keister.
If you know of a cemetery that is not listed, use
our online form.
Have you built a page for local cemeteries? Or transcribed an inactive cemetery?
Submit your URL's for a free listing.
Cemetery: A graveyard. Graveyard: A cemetery. (This is from a pretty decent dictionary. Go figure!)
In Reality: A final resting place for your ancestors, to be respected fully. Ways this word is NOT spelled: cemetary,
cementary, cemetry, cemetey, cementum. Cementum: A bony substance covering the root of a tooth.
Bookmark Cemetery Junction today!
The word cemetery is actually a euphemism: "He has gone to his last rest" from the Greek word koimeterion,
meaning dormitory, which stems from the word koiman, meaning to put to sleep.
Obtained from the Dictionary of Word Origins by Joseph T. Shipley (Dorset Press, New York)
Bookmark Cemetery Junction today!
The word cemetery is actually a euphemism: "He has gone to his last rest" from the Greek word koimeterion,
meaning dormitory, which stems from the word koiman, meaning to put to sleep.
Obtained from the Dictionary of Word Origins by Joseph T. Shipley (Dorset Press, New York)
Also visit: Cemetery Records Online and
USGenWeb Tombstone Transcription Project.
Books on Cemeteries from Amazon.com!
We support the work of the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children. Please help find a missing child. Call 1-800-THE-LOST (or 1-800-843-5678) or
visit their site at http://www.missingkids.com.
We reserve the right to remove information submitted to this site.


text:
Does the Sachar Committee report on the socio-economic status of Muslims in India look into the film industry and the Indian Cricket team? In both Bombay ruled for long, but like the city of Bombay both have astonishing tales to tell. Gulu Ezekiel (just learnt that his full name is Gul-Fraaz Mohan Ezekiel), in Hindustan Times, looks at the Muslim representation in the Indian Cricket team over the years and suggests, "Our politicians could well take a leaf out of Indian cricket's history books rather than periodically condemning it."
"The newspaper's headline the day after the Durban ODI: 'Hindustan one-day team mein pehlee baar chaar Musalmaan ek saath.' Yes, there is much wrong with Indian cricket. But while I have not done the necessary research in other sports, there is no doubt that cricket treats our minorities fairly."
[Click on the image for a full sized newspaper view]


text:
What is Academic Earth?
Academic Earth is working to bring together the best available content across many subjects and distribute it in an engaging and useful way to learners worldwide.
How many videos are available on Academic Earth?
As of this writing, there are over fifteen hundred videos from MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. We are adding more every day. Some of these are grouped into courses, which each contain anywhere from 4 to 50 lectures.
Can I get credit for these courses?
No – but feel free to learn as much as you'd like.
Can I download copies of lectures?
Yes, when the "Download" option appears you can download a QuickTime version of the lecture. Just right click on the "Download" link and select "Save Target Asâ¦" or the equivalent for your browser.
A video is not playing the way I would expect it to – what should I do?
Please submit it using the feedback system buttom in the bottom right corner. If possible, please submit feedback on the page where you ran into the problem or copy the web address of the video into your message. This way we'll know exactly where to go.
I am unable to view any of the videos on Academic Earth – why is that?
Unfortunately, our videos are not available in certain areas due to reasons beyond our control; if you are unable to view any or most of our videos, and your software is up to date, it may be due to your location. If you suspect there may be another cause, feel free to contact us using the feedback system button.
I remember seeing a certain lecture on the site, but I cannot find it now. Why is that?
We rarely remove lectures or courses from the site, but occasionally we need to do so due to copyright considerations or special requests from the institutions producing the content. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes when it does happen.
How do I learn more about partnering with Academic Earth?
Please visit our partners page at https://academicearth.org/about/partners
I'm excited – are there ways to contribute?
We're glad for your enthusiasm! Please share our site with other friends who might enjoy it. If you are interested in volunteering, please send information about your background through our feedback system.
I've got a great idea for a feature – how do I tell you about it?
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I've got a question that is not answered here. Will you answer it for me?
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text:
Maginot Line
"Was meinen sie? Sie bauten eine Wand aus Kase? (What do you mean they built a wall out of cheese?)"
"Ayyz youu pig de swine German hun, stop going through the Ardennes and come back ere where we might win."
The Maginot Line was the most sophisticated French military undertaking in all of history. It was constructed between 1930 and 1940 along the border between France and Germany (sort of...more later) after World War I for the purpose of giving France advanced notice of German invasion so they could put their tanks in reverse. This was, of course, before the French innovation of 1954 in which French tanks are now permanently in reverse. The Maginot Line consisted of a variety of impressive components including a line scratched into dirt with a sharp stick, two bricks stacked on top of each other (which was the first deployment of stacking technology in European warfare), as well as an expensive series of defensive structures, including hidden subterranean defensive platforms, or "peek-a-boo holes", carefully marked on the surface with giant, spinning tin foil mushrooms. The French believed no one could possibly "cross the line". However, in a stunning stroke of genius, Adolf Hitler remembered the existence of Belgium and accidentally got into France that way. Luckily, the French quickly surrendered and cleverly allowed the United Kingdom, United States[1] and the Soviet Union to fight World War II for them. Today the Maginot Line mushroom structures are used to hide top secret files relating to France's adorable space program and to store thousands upon thousands of unused bars of soap.
Plans for construction of the Maginot Line began during WWI. The French government contracted with a German company to construct the fortifications because Germans are notorious for getting things done. Unfortunately, the German company went bankrupt as a result of the German defeat in WWI leaving the French with unfinished and indecipherable (they were in German for god's sake) plans. Construction began roughly a year later.
Once the sharp stick lines, the bricks and the spinning mushroom things were in place, the French government applied France's natural resource of cheese into building even more impressive fortifications for the Maginot Line. French cheese is notorious for its durability when left to harden. In fact, field tests in France proved that a hard block of mimolette can withstand multiple rounds from a panzerfaust anti-tank rocket and even cut diamonds when sharpened. Thus cheese became the main material from which the Maginot Line was constructed.
Towards the end of the 1930s, German complaints of excessive French body odor wafting over the border and asphyxiating German citizens forced the French government to construct more quickly, resulting in the use of brie cheese (a soft cheese) rather than other hard cheeses. As a result, many of the bunkers and walls in the Maginot Line melted in the humid French summer of 1939, resulting in the first ever "cheeseslide" which consequently destroyed the town of Ramélle. Although nacho chips were available, the 200 lives lost in the cheeseslide in the city of Ramélle cast a dark cloud on the whole affair. These deaths are the most French casualties suffered in "combat" in World War II.
At the end of construction, the Maginot Line consisted of two half-finished machine gun nests, three one-third finished machine gun nests, a 5 ft. high wall stretching from Ramélle to Alsace in the wrong direction then mostly back again, the mushroom-topped peek-a-boo holes, and several bricks. Nearly everything was constructed of or wound up covered in cheese. An estimated average of 20 French "military" personnel were on duty on the Maginot Line at all times, even during the Battle of France.
German Invasion
After Germany finished with Belgium they wandered into France accidentally due to a faulty map they had picked up at a Belgian petrol station run by Pakistanis. Completely unaware the Maginot Line was intended for defense, German military officers asked French citizens, "Was ist mit dem ganzen Kase?" ("What's with all the cheese?"). The Maginot Line was manned during the entire war, and for years after, and saw no bloodshed with the exception of a German private who slipped in melted cheese and tripped over the bricks, decisively grazing his knee (some French historians claim this was the turning point of the war). The accidental and completely successful invasion became known to then French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud when he was not served cheese in his breakfast. He recalled the loud Polka music he had been hearing in the streets the night before, and the non-French strangers (they cleverly attempted disguise by behaving like mimes, but did not have death-inducing body odor) who had raped his wife and who had been rummaging through his file cabinets the day before and realized something was amiss. Always having his priorities straight, he sent an official complaint to the German High Command and demanded a cash refund for his breakfast, reproaching the Germans with the typical French eloquence and remarking that "the Germans have crossed the line." Receiving no reply, he decided to surrender and joined some German Schutzstaffel in devouring parts of the Maginot line — it was, after all, made of delicious cheese.
After Germany's defeat in August of 1944 in France, some cheesy remnants of the Maginot Line were turned into tourist sites. An inscription on one of the remaining sections of the Maginot Line reads:
|Nous n'oublierons jamais les hommes qui sont morts pour conserver le fromage de la Ligne Maginot. Nous n'oublierons jamais les gens qui ont été tués dans la chute de fromage. Nous n'oublierons jamais que cela n'était qu'un échec.
When translated to English, it means:
|We never will forget the men that are dead to preserve the cheese of the Maginot Line. We never will forget the people that were killed in the cheese fall. We never will forget this was a failure.
- ↑ Well, they entered eventually. Some say the US has been trying to make up for entering WWI and WWII late by trying to start WWIII early.
See also
|Featured Article (read another featured article)
|Featured version: 9 September 2007
|This article has been featured on the main page. — You can vote for or nominate your favourite articles at Uncyclopedia:VFH.


text:
By Kim Iskyan
Political risk assumed center stage in Russia, as tens of thousands of demonstrators peacefully took to the streets in Moscow and throughout the country to protest widespread fraud in the December 4 parliamentary elections, in which the party of power, United Russia, allegedly won 49% of the popular vote.
Photo Credits: Nickolay Vinokurov / Shutterstock.com
The December 10 and December 24 demonstrations—the country's largest since the fall of communism—were, more broadly, a demand by the emerging middle class for a political voice, following more than a decade of being cast aside by the semi-authoritarian regime of prime minister Vladimir Putin.
Key demands of the protesters—including the cancellation of election results and the firing of the country's senior elections oversight official—were ignored by authorities. President Dmitry Medvedev and Putin offered other concessions, but they were largely viewed as too little, too late to appease the evolving protest movement.
Additional protests are planned in the run-up to the March 4 presidential elections, in which Putin remains the favorite, despite the collapse of his popularity in recent months and the deterioration in the perceived legitimacy of his rule. There is simply no viable opposition candidate.
But evidence of additional fraud would likely trigger renewed, potentially destabilizing protests that could upend the Putin government altogether. Billionaire—and New Jersey Nets [basketball team] owner—Mikhail Prokhorov, who briefly headed a Kremlin-sanctioned opposition party in September before being dismissed for overstepping his role, announced his candidacy for the presidency, but he is widely viewed as a Putin patsy.
Russian shares corrected sharply in the aftermath of the parliamentary elections, as the specter of heightened political instability haunted investors. Capital flight, which reached more than $85 billion in 2011, is likely to continue to be a critical macroeconomic challenge.
In late December, Russia's central bank slightly widened the ruble-trading band, suggesting monetary authorities anticipate heightened volatility and it appears to be another small step toward inflation targeting.


text:
Monday, October 31, 2005
ubuntu daper drake is using new wall paper ;)
Screen shots on osdir
Saturday, October 29, 2005
They have some good tabs there (metallica, black sabbath)
guide from mxtabs
Friday, October 28, 2005
"get on top" and "fade to black" from metallica (seems that both had same rhythm)
Don't know who sang "get on top" , Just google it :)
I think is Red Hot Chili Peppers but not so sure about it.
Sound of both melodies was good (run them in the same time)
Thursday, October 27, 2005
It could be something like that (make sense from one point of view)
Source arstechica
"Ultimately, a new set of ISA extensions with a flashy name and a special logo program are going to be just one marketing weapon among many in the next phase of the war with Intel. AMD has established itself as the current CPU vendor of choice for tech savvy gamers, and a set of 3D-oriented ISA extensions that have some level of game studio support will help them reinforce that image in the face of Conroe."
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
"Intel has ripped open another huge hole on the troubled ship Itanic, saying that the dual-core Montecito chip won't arrive until mid-2006 and will come in much slower than expected."
My guitar is here and I started playing with various programs (effects processors)
under linux, First successful one is fx_processor , Another one , creox crashed with strange erorr :"Error"
and that's it .
Friday, October 21, 2005
My guitar will be here by Monday (iris lux solo)
it's ony ~160$ quite cheap (fender clone)
_____ __
/__ / / /_ __ __
/ /_/ /_ \ / _/_
/ __ / \ \/ / / \
/ / / /\__/ / /\ \__\ \_
str. Salcamilor nr.3 4225 Reghin ROMANIA
Ph: +40-65-512411,512412,512413, 512414
Fax:40-65-511427 www.hora.ro
Thursday, October 20, 2005
"Breezy is now out and everybody has celebrated its release. You have, haven't you? Before we all start our now journey to an unknown destination, we need to clean up a bit all the dust everywhere. And the place with the most dust is probably our bug tracking systems. So we shall have a Bug Day.
The Hug Day. This is a very special Bug Day: on Hug Day, when someone closes a bug, then someone else should hug him/her. Why? This is a very special way for us to tell everyone that we love contributions! And triaging bugs is a really big contribution."
I like it :Hug Day
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Recommended browser: Mozilla Firefox
And they have 2 mp3 files for free
ps:it's another way to make people hear you (put mp3/ogg files for free on the interweb)
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
|Date Requested:
|PC CDs:
|64-bit PC CDs:
|Mac CDs:
Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He
concludes by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed."
"OH NO!" the President exclaims. "That's terrible!" His staff sits
stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the
President sits, head in hands. Finally, the President looks up and
asks, "How many is a brazillion?"
Friday, October 14, 2005
"I am, who would have guessed, rather new to the bloodsuck industry.I managed to get a (sorta) running configuration up and running, it's beeing used to backup 4 clients over the network to a 24/7 online backup-to-file server."
Quote of the day on the bacula mailing list
Thursday, October 13, 2005
The kernel itself can stripe swapping on several devices, if you just give them the same priority in the /etc/fstab file.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
W00t , mayday mayday mayday gmail is down
could not grab your mouse. A
malicious client may be eavesdropping on
your session (Interesting message while updating
my ubuntu - Is true machine was under heavy load:60G rsync-ing)
Monday, October 10, 2005
Translate into spanish then back to english with google language tools
Seems that i have to boot in "freeDOS" , init card and then soft reset my k6-2 (firewolf1) to boot in linux
Now that is fun
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Negative Quote of the day it seems : Sorry folks that i use linux, is my fault ,
i'm to be ashamed
i love fiat !
don't know why ;)
Atika took some great pictures with cars at bucharest auto show
Friday, October 07, 2005
today we finished an site for puppets theatre , it was quite
interesting the presentation for them (typo3 solution). Lamp
was used all the way for building it.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
No money in the sack
Santa ain't here no more
I just lay here and suck
With my eyes glued to the door.
Written by alex
Desolate , and fever chills
Going dark over the hills
[evil grins]There is no Santa for me kids [/evil grins]
I loved the trailer (spotted on some debian/gnome blog )
It can be downloaded in divx format for free
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Seems that I'm part of an rock band now , We have to buy some drums , Today i did rehearsal on "Paranoid" - Black Sabbath.
Amazing how much fun it's to sing/scream ;)


text: Bring Into Being is a digital agency focused on corporate lifestyle and event photography. For over a decade, Bring Into Being has pioneered the world of interactive photo booth installations. Our goal is to extend the marketing experience beyond the event itself. With a printed photo and social network sharing, our clients are reliving their experience days after an event has wrapped. More than just a snapshot, Bring Into Being offers professional grade portraits and a personalized experience for every guest. email@example.com | 212.643.9400


text:
Vineyards on the edge of the Etang de Thau
Piquepoul Blanc, Roussanne and Grenache Blanc
Our Languedoc Blanc is a blend of two southern varietals which complement each other: Piquepoul Blanc and Roussanne.
Bordering the Etang de Thau, they have the benefit of relatively cool terroirs on which vines "stare" at the sea.
This mild maritime influence, throughout the summer, enables to preserve acidity in the fruits. Both varietals being late ripening grapes, they fit the Mediterranean climatic conditions. They allow the aromatic flavors preservation until the harvest at the end of September or early October for some Piquepoul.
100% stainless steel tank
The Piquepoul Blanc brings this crunchy and vivid character, which, blended with the Roussanne citrus fruits and white flowers notes, complete perfectly the aromatic pallet and give us a delightful volume in mouth.
Perfect for aperitif between friends, our Languedoc Blanc will accompany tapas, seashells and fish from the very close Mediterranean Sea.READ THE REVIEWS ABOUT THIS WINE


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The humble polar bear has one interesting quirk to its fur, which has netted it two different problems. One is algae, and one is a piece of pseudoscientific nonsense.
In the YouTube video above, you're going to see a couple of green bears. This is actually pretty common among zoo bears, especially in hot and muggy climates. It's not just that algae grows on their hair. It's that algae grows inside their hair. While most animals produce hair that's a long, thin cable, polar bears produce hair that's a hollow tube - like the world's most dangerous drinking straw. The tube is colorless, but it's made with translucent material. Any light that comes in is scattered, and so it appears white. (This is one of the reasons polar bears look brightest in direct sunlight.) In cold or harsh climates, the tube of hair stays empty. In hotter ones, even if the bear is being regularly washed, algae starts growing inside the tube of hair, turning large sections of the bear green.
In the 1970s, people noticed the similarities between bear hair and fiber optic cables. They also noticed that a shaved polar bear has black skin. Suddenly people thought that they had discovered how the bears stayed warm. Their hair was channeling heat right to their skin, which was absorbing it as only black material can. It was a great notion, nature going high tech, but sadly it was shown to be false. Finally, Daniel Koon, a researcher at St. Lawrence University tested out the notion.
It was thoroughly debunked. The the hair channeled between a thousandth and a trillionth of a percent of visible light for one inch, and it absorbed UV light entirely. Biologists pointed out that being the perfect fiber optic cable might not work well for bears. They're already built to withstand the cold, but being on an exposed piece of ice in all-day sun with no shade, night, or relief would cause them to overheat. You can still find the myth in plenty of places, though.
Via Applied Optics, Alaska Science Forum, Bear.org, and The Library of Congress.


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Air Conditioning Repair, Heating & Furnace Repair in Simi Valley 24/7 Emergency
Conejo Valley Heating and Air Conditioning Inc. offers 24-hour emergency HVAC repair services for air conditioner, water heater, heat pump and furnace repair, maintenance and installation services in Simi Valley, CA.
Whether you live in Simi Valley year-round, or just for the winter, you know how much you rely on your air conditioning, heating and ventilation (HVAC) system. Unfortunately, there are a lot of air conditioning and heating contractors in the Simi Valley area that say they can competently service, repair or replace your air conditioning or heating system. Not all of them can. We believe we're one of the best. Read on to learn more about us and what we can do to help keep you comfortable in sunny Simi Valley.
You can always count on us for Air Conditioning Repair in Simi Valley when it comes to the point where you need emergency air conditioning contractors.
Simi Valley's Most Trusted HVAC Contractor for Air Conditioning & Heating Services
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Why select Conejo Valley Heating and Air Conditioning if you're in the Simi Valley area?
- Dependable
- We've been providing AC, heating, ventilation and water heater service in Simi Valley for over 30 years.
- We're a factory-authorized dealer of the leading HVAC and water heater manufacturers.
- Our cooling and heating technicians are factory trained and NATE certified.
- We have a solid "A+" rating with the Better Business Bureau.
- We're family owned and run.(So the most important thing to us, is to make sure we do a good job for you.)
- Responsive
- We guarantee a fast emergency response time to anywhere in the Simi Valley area.
- We're on-call 24 hours a day in Simi Valley, seven days a week, all year long.
- Our heating, air conditioning and water heater service trucks are fully stocked, so we don't need to run back to the shop for common HVAC and water heater parts.
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- We charge by the job, not by the hour.
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In short, we're not comfortable until you are.
Air Conditioner Repair Service in Simi Valley, CA
Whether an AC component needs repair or replacement, air ducts need sealing, or even a new air conditioning system is advisable, we will determine the source of the problem and provide you with an expert HVAC solution.
Heating System & Furnace Repair Service in Simi Valley, CA
If your air conditioning, heating system or water heater is making strange noises or running at a turtle's pace, or not at all, you need professional AC and heating repair…and you need it now! When you need Emergency Heating System Repair, our expert technicians are at your service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, wherever you are in the Simi Valley area. Plus, all calls are answered by one of our qualified and courteous technicians, not an answering machine or service.
Heat Pump and Water Heater Repair Service in Simi Valley, CA
At Conejo Valley Heating and Air Conditioning, we charge by the job, not by the hour. Our factory trained AC and heating technicians put extra care and attention into servicing and repairing your central air conditioning, heating and ventilation system or water heater. We treat you and your property with respect, too, by calling before we arrive at your property and by providing an honest upfront free estimate that you approve before any AC or water heater work is performed.
We service any type of home and light commercial air conditioning and heating system in Simi Valley, including all AC and heating (including heat pump) and water heater equipment makes and models. Our vehicles are fully stocked with HVAC parts for fast and convenient heating and cooling repairs.
We know how to find any air conditioning, heating, ventilation or water heater problem fast and fix it right, the first time!
Email us today for more information or, better yet, give us a call at (805) 499-0448 to schedule a Tune-Up at your Simi Valley location.
Can you fix the cooling or heating problem yourself?
You can perform some quick checks before you call us to come to your Simi Valley location, to see if it's something that you can handle yourself. If the air conditioning system is not running at all, check the settings on your thermostat. Make sure it's not turned to the "off" position. Is it turned to the "AC" position and is it set for a cooler temperature than the room temperature so it will trigger the air conditioner to turn on? Conversely, if you're not getting heat, is the thermostat turned to the "heat" position and is it set for a warmer temperature than the room temperature? Has a fuse or breaker flipped off? If none of these checks solve the problem it's time to call the experts at Conejo Valley Heating and Air Conditioning.
Talk to an expert
Our office staff will gladly transfer your question to one of our expert technicians. We understand that sometimes you just want to talk before scheduling a service call.
Dial (805) 499-0448 now and we'll be right over!
HVAC and water heater Preventive Maintenance Service in Simi Valley, CA
Living in sunny southern California, you know how much you rely on your air conditioning, heating and ventilation system. That's why we developed our unique maintenance process. It covers everything that can possibly be done to keep your air conditioning, heating and ventilation (HVAC) system or water heater operating at its peak performance, so you're always comfortable in your Simi Valley home or business.
As part of this comprehensive air conditioning and heating system tune up process, we:
- Inspect the air handler and coil
- Wash the condenser coil
- Check the drain lines and pan
- Provide a new air filter
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- Inspect the voltage and amperage on the motors and air conditioning compressor
- Check for proper air flow
- Examine the starting parts
- Balance and calibrate the thermostat
- Check the pressures and level of refrigerant
- Annual water heater draining
We also include a free inspection of your ductwork to make sure there are no leaks and that the air you breathe is free of dirt and mold. We offer this inspection at no additional cost because your indoor air quality plays an important role in the health and enjoyment of your Simi Valley home.
We recommend HVAC maintenance be performed every six months to prolong the life of your air conditioning system, keep the air that is circulating free from harmful bacteria, prevent electrical fires, and save you money on your electric bills. Water Heater Maintenance can be performed annually.
Act now to get our comprehensive maintenance plan. Contact us today to schedule a maintenance call at your Simi Valley location.
Water Heater, Heat Pump and Furnace – Replacement and Installation Service in Simi Valley
Most homes in the Simi Valley area have been around longer than the average lifespan of a cooling or heating system. (The average lifespan of an air conditioner, heat pump or furnace is 12- to 15-years if it's properly installed and maintained. Newer units manufactured in recent years are expected to last longer.)
How do you know when it's time to replace your air conditioning or heating equipment?
If you're operating an inefficient cooling and heating system that keeps breaking down, most likely it will happen again. One of the best reasons to upgrade or replace an air conditioner, heat pump, water heater or other heating unit is the considerable additional cost an older system sucks up versus what a new AC system or water heater requires. The latest heating and cooling technology can cost as little as half as much to run as an older HVAC system.
Installing a new energy efficient air conditioning system can save you up to 60% on your energy bills and can actually pay for itself in energy savings within a relatively short time.
Simi Valley, CA Best Heating and Air Conditioning Services Company
According to the EPA, choosing a professional air conditioning and heating contractor is one of the most important considerations to get the most out of your new AC system or water heater. You need experts that know how to properly size, plan and install the new air conditioning system or water heater.
With over 30 years of AC and heating experience, satisfied customers in the Simi Valley area and a licensed, insured HVAC team trained to the highest level, you can be sure you are choosing true professionals in the air conditioning and heating business when you choose Conejo Valley Heating and Air Conditioning.
Our role is to help you design an indoor comfort system that best fits the personal needs of your family and structural characteristics of your Simi Valley home. We will walk you step-by-step through all your options so you can make an informed and educated decision while selecting your new AC system.
We have our own engineering and design department dedicated to creating the best possible system for your home. Only correctly designed systems will give you the highest efficiency with maximum comfort.
Air conditioning and Heating Services near your location
We will help you select a cooling and heating system that is right for the dry climate and temperature swings of Southern California and the size of your Simi Valley home. We only offer AC systems and water heaters that are energy efficient, quiet, reliable, durable and guaranteed.
Our air conditioning systems use environmentally friendly refrigerant gases that do not deplete the ozone layer. Plus, any AC or heating equipment that is replaced is always recycled or disposed of properly. We are doing are part to keep our planet green!
Once we have agreed upon the parameters of your AC project, we design and plan it from product selection to installation. We are a factory authorized dealer of leading HVAC manufacturers and provide professional installation of quality AC and heating products by factory trained, NATE certified technicians at competitive prices.
Whatever the situation, you can be confident that our technicians have the HVAC experience and skill to get the job done right. Your satisfaction is our guarantee.
In addition, check out our Federal tax rebates and financing options to help keep your hard-earned money in your pocket.
Contact Conejo Valley Heating and Air Conditioning today for a FREE ESTIMATE for a new energy efficient central air conditioning system or water heater.
Payment Methods for Simi Valley Area Residents: Cash, Check, Traveler's Check, Invoice, American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa, Financing
Contact Information in Simi Valley: Phone: (805) 499-0448
Business Hours In the Simi Valley Area: 7:30 am – 6:00 pm; Mon-Fri 8:00 am – 2:30 pm; Sat On call 24/7 for emergency needs
Best HVAC near Simi Valley, CA
Conejo Valley Heating and Air Conditioning Inc, the right air conditioning, heating and water heater contractor for you. Contact us today!


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What to do with a husband, beautiful house, adorable preschooler and too much time on your hands? Think: strip club.
Jill Soloway's well-done debut feature, "Afternoon Delight" is among the best of a crop of movies dealing with a grown-up identity crisis at Sundance this year, notable for treating the woman at the center of its story with sophistication and honesty.
Update: Soloway won the festival's directing award in the dramatic competition on Saturday night.
The woman would be Kathryn Hahn ("Parks and Recreation") as Rachel, a housewife who brings a young stripper named McKenna (Juno Temple) into her Silver Lake home with a vague notion of saving the latter from a life of prostitution. But Rachel's generosity is a cover for her own boredom, her fascination with Temple's unencumbered morality and titillation by her life in the sex trade.
Also read: The Surge of Women at Sundance – And What it Means For Filmmaking
The movie works better than many here because Soloway (at far left), a veteran of HBO's "Six Feet Under" who also wrote the script, doesn't judge her characters. Temple plays McKenna as someone with a complex interior life and a strong sense of the power of her sexuality.
The film has plenty of explicit sex and a fair amount of nudity (by the way: more than a few of the movies here make no big deal about showing men's frontal nudity along with the women's), an ongoing theme at this year's festival.
But the real strength of the movie is that it so clearly puts Rachel and her dilemmas at the heart of the story – her dead sex life with her husband (Josh Radnor), her banal weekly shrink sessions (with Jane Lynch as the therapist), the routine of her volunteer duties at the Jewish Community Center and preschool. In other words: regular old life.
In the emotional q&a after an early morning screening on Tuesday, Soloway fielded an avalanche of praise from the cast and crew for giving them the emotional space to create the characters.
"Her writing is so extraordinary," said Hahn, who is better known for comedy. "There was this unreal safety net that Jill created. I will never forget the month of August 2012. It was holy and really blessed."
"It felt very safe to do this vulnerable work," said Radnor, who read for the part as a favor to Soloway, a friend, and ended up doing the role in between his work for his tv show "How I Met Your Mother."
Also read: Sexist Hollywood?: Women Still Struggle to Find Film Jobs, Study Finds
Temple recalled a scene in which Soloway pulled back from her lighting a cigarette with Rachel and said it changed the tone of the relationships on screen. "We were willing to give everything we've got and bare your soul. We all bare our soul in it."
"Everyone goes so deep in this film," said Lynch. "Funny people do this sort of film — raw, emotional work — best," recounting how in a crucial scene where she was supposed to cry, Soloway burst into tears first. "I haven't done this sort of work since college," she added.
After someone noted there was a lot of crying on the shoot, Soloway acknowledged: "It was a very moist experience."
The movie is up for sale.


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Tickets for "Cinderella" Performances at TAMIU Now Available
Tickets for Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic musical, "Cinderella," the summer Laredo Theatre Guild International (LTGI) production, are now available for advance purchase.
The beloved musical is presented in cooperation with Texas A&M International University and opens Thursday, July 12, running daily through Sunday, July 22, with weekday and Saturday performance times at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 3:00 p.m.
Tickets are $20 general admission, $10 for students and seniors (65+) with valid ID with a special discounted rate of $5 for children 10 years of age and under. Tickets are now available at Foster's, located at 1202 Del Mar Boulevard, Suite 101; Blue Top, 101 Hillside Road, no. 11; the TAMIU Bookstore and at the box office one hour prior to each show.
Leading the cast is Alexander High School senior Kristelle Martin in the title role and recent TAMIU graduate Ricardo Holguin as the Prince. They join husband and wife Joe and Dana Crabtree as King and Queen while Melissa Barrera Gonzalez is the wicked stepmother.
In the classic theater tradition of men playing women for heightened comedic effect, Joshua Goldberg and Alejandro Lopez play Cinderella's two wicked stepsisters. Other cast members include Jan Mora as the fairy godmother; John Maxstadt as the herald, and Mark Garner, Andres Regalado, Karen Mejia, Isaac Garza, Joseph Pomar, Jack Paul, Martin Vela, Nicolle Figueroa, Rebecca Arias and Sofia Alonzo.
Also, Edna Garcia, Aurora Munoz, Alison Hinojosa, Maya Tijerina, Olivia Glass, Amanda Trevino, Lisa Martinez, Ayesha McCauley, Sarah Mejia, Marc Antonio Vela, Jose Morales, Anny Rodriguez, Nikola Bonillas, Manuel Morales lll, Christina Limon, Aaron Negrete, and Cynthia Garza.
"Cinderella" is produced by Joe Arciniega and directed by Veronica Ramirez with Vernon Carroll as advisory director and technical advisor. Musical director and conductor of the live orchestra is Brendan Townsend, with choreography by Cristina Greco.
For more information, call 956.319.8610, email email@example.com, or visit www.laredotheaterguild.com
Journalists who need additional information or help with media requests and interviews should contact the Office of Public Relations, Marketing and Information Services at firstname.lastname@example.com


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- This event has passed.
HEALing Kitchen Class at Tyler Terrace
July 23, 2019 | 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
This fun 8-session course will equip you with skills to include tasty fruits and vegetables into your daily diet. You will also learn other health eating and living fundamentals. The goal is to decrease chronic diseases and put our families, neighbors, and church friends on the road to vibrant health. Become part of the Healthy Eating Activing Living (HEAL) revolution happening in our community!
Why take this course?
- Learn to cook healthy food that tastes good
- Develop friendships a the shared table
- Earn coupons for produce
- Take home new recipes
- The journey to better health begins with you!
To RSVP or for questions please call 260-423-3546 ext. 269 or email firstname.lastname@example.com


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Posted by Editor on 08/16/12
Cycling Canada is pleased to announce the six athletes who will represent Canada at the 2012 UCI Juniors Track World Championships, held in Invercargill, New Zealand, on August 22-26.
Led by junior national team coaches Rob Good and Jeff Ain, the Canadian Junior team has already received some media attention whilst undertaking their last preparations on the track in Invercargill. The team has been training in New Zealand since August 14th in order to get over the jet lag and put their best wheel forward going into the most significant international competition of the season.
"The team is very excited to be here competing amongst the best in the world. They are focused on the task at hand and ready to give it their all," proclaimed Rob Good, head coach of the Junior team.
Kinley Gibson (Edmonton, AB) - Team Sprint, Omnium, Individual Pursuit, Points Race
Audrey Labrie (Montreal, QC) - Sprint, Team Sprint, Keirin, Scratch
Joakim Albert (Quebec City, QC) - Sprint, Keirin, Kilo
Aidan Caves (Vancouver, BC) - Omnium, Individual Pursuit
Eric Johnstone (Calgary, AB) - Individual Pursuit, Points Race, Madison
William Simonds (London, ON) - Madison, Scratch Race
|Return to Cycling 4 Women homepage | Return to Canadian Cyclist homepage | Back to Top


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Imagine a damaging rumor about a company that you own shares in is posted on Twitter. Algorithms monitoring social media feeds to gauge market sentiment and act upon news could instantaneously trade billions of dollars worth of these shares, causing the value to plummet. The rumor is entirely untrue but, in the time it takes for an explanation to be published by the company, the damage is done. The stock never fully recovers because the prevailing attitude of the day seems to be "where there is smoke there is fire."
It may sound like science fiction, but it is not. Yesterday's news headlines have been replaced by split-second 140 character Tweets containing both fact and fiction. According to an August 2011 infographic from media agency We Are Social, there are 138,888 Tweets per minute, 180 million posted each day and 1.6 billion search queries per day. There are 200 million Twitter users with 450,000 new accounts created daily.
And Twitter is just one social media site that algorithms can monitor; Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs broadcast information that can be mined to identify meaningful patterns. Layer social media on top of traditional sources of electronic news headlines and the possibilities are endless.
News coming via Twitter can beat the fastest wire service or government agency's alerts. In August 2011 when a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck the state of Virginia, the first Twitter reports sent from people at the epicenter reached New York about 40 seconds ahead of the quake's first shock waves, said social media company SocialFlow. The flood of messages surrounding the earthquake peaked at 5,500 Tweets per second.
The first Tweets beat the U.S. Geological Survey's conventional seismometers, which normally can take from two to 20 minutes to generate an alert. The agency is now experimenting with Twitter as a faster and cheaper way to track earthquakes, according to the Wall Street Journal.
With the high frequency-obsessed trading community, speed is essential. And social media, particularly Twitter, is becoming a key source of high-speed information for feeding trading algorithms.
We have already seen that some interesting correlations can arise from algorithmic use of social media. In March 2011, Huffington Post blogger, Dan Mirvish and The Atlantic editor, Alexis Madrigal noted a funny trend: when Anne Hathaway was in the news, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway shares went up. Her appearance in the 2011 Oscars was newsworthy, hence she was in the headlines frequently. The theory? Automated, algorithmic trading programs pick up chatter on the Internet about 'Hathaway' and apply it to the stock market.
The problem with the widespread availability of this information is that it can be misused. In October 2010, U.S. prosecutors nabbed a gang who allegedly used Facebook and Twitter social networking sites to tout stocks in a classic "pump and dump" fraud of about $7 million. The fraud was uncovered during a cocaine-trafficking probe, according to Reuters.
Trading based on information from social networks is a dangerous game, and this pump and dump episode may have been the first warning shot across the bow. Danger lurks when a piece of "news" or trading advice can be posted, Tweeted and re-Tweeted online with no filter. A piece of spurious, market-moving information can be bounced around the world and traded upon by a human being or an algorithm before anyone can say "What the heck... ?"
Twitter mining is becoming the next big thing in algorithmic trading with sentiment analysis being used to try to qualify and quantify the emotional chatter around a particular market. It then gauges whether the feelings for a particular stock or commodity are negative or positive, and uses the information for making trading decisions.
A study by the University of Manchester and Indiana University concluded that the number of "emotional words" on Twitter could be used to predict daily moves in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. A change in emotions expressed online would be followed between two and six days later by a move in the index, the researchers said, and this information let them predict its movements with 87.6 percent accuracy. A U.K. hedge fund, Derwent Capital, liked the idea so much it opened an algorithmic hedge fund that makes trades based on Twitter sentiment.
The question is, can markets be predicted using market sentiment algorithms? As I said in an interview with Advanced Trading in April, I think you could use a Twitter algorithm to get a sentiment reading on particular topics, whether it be revolutions or how people feel about the economy. The problem is that by the time you've got that information, it's more of a trailing indicator rather than a leading indicator. The algorithm could be successful if it were used to track consumer confidence or to gauge consumer reaction to new products and predict sales. But I think a sentiment algorithm is unlikely to be able to deal with unforeseen events, and these are increasingly common.
The biggest threat to markets coming from mining social media could be a new phenomenon known as "socialbots." These are computer-generated and controlled bots -- digital "people" -- who can generate and respond to messages in social media. Researchers from the University of British Columbia recently invaded Facebook with 102 socialbots. They made 3,055 friends in eight weeks, giving them access to 1,085,785 profiles, and allowing them to scrape 250GB of personal data, according to an article on ZDNet.
Because a well-designed bot can fool other social media users, they have the potential to wreak havoc. I have been warning for some time that financial terrorists could use algorithms to manipulate markets for political gain. A socialbot is a type of algorithm that could be used for such terrorism. The only way to prevent this is by using real-time monitoring and surveillance software to spot erratic or anomalous patterns in the marketplace. Exchanges, ECNs, traders, brokers and regulators are already seeing the value in monitoring trades for errors or fraud.
The next step is to monitor social media to ensure that spurious and potentially damaging information cannot influence the markets. Because, whether the information comes from a Reuters news story, exchange data, Twitter feeds or even Facebook, it can be used by an algorithm. A trading algorithm that uses a false piece of information could start an avalanche of wrong decisions cascading down through other algorithms and triggering a flash crash or even a cross-asset splash crash.
Algorithmic trading is a double-edged sword. It can be used for good -- adding liquidity and lowering trading costs. Or it can be used for evil -- financial terrorism or taking down a firm. Only by carefully monitoring markets and trading algorithms in tandem, and by setting concrete parameters that sniff out anomalies, can the evildoers be thwarted.