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Ah, November. The month we as a country dedicate an entire day to gorging ourselves on bird meat and gravy, followed immediately by bludgeoning one another at various retail centers. But also a time of giving thanks and sharing all the great gadgets that came out this month. Here are some of our favorites:
For the full list of Gizmodo favorites, head over to the complete Best Gadgets
Best Smartphone
Well, yeah. The new iPhone 4S is out, and while the gap is narrowed significantly, we still think it's the best piece of hardware you can buy. Much like the iPhone 4 and its antenna issues, the 4S is flawed—battery issues this time—but its buttery smooth performance and ecosystem still power it to the top. For you Android faithful, though, your godphones are still on the horizon, with the Galaxy Nexus and Motorla Razr yet to be released.
Best Robot Floor Cleaner
The Roomba 770 is the best robot cleaning slave you can get, mostly because you don't have to pay any attention to it. It's got the best collision detection and pathfinding of any of the major models, and has great sucking power, too.
Best Speakers
Audioengine's been proving that you don't need to spend thousands of dollars on a good set of speakers for a while now. Their A5 speakers last year were our favorites, and the A5+s are a direct upgrade. They have an improved cabinet design, better thermal management, a remote control, and a bunch of other nice improvements.
Best Solid State Drive
Solid state drives are the future, except that their version of the future is really tiny and expensive. OCZ's new Octane series is the first solid state drive to squeeze one full terabyte of storage into a 2.5-inch drive, and it also has top notch read/write speeds.
Best Bluetooth Headset
The Samsung HM7000 is a darn pretty sight, and it's got the best sound quality you're going to find in a Bluetooth headset. It's also super-comfortable—like a comfy hoodie for your ear—and has some really useful text-to-speech and speech-to-text features.
Best Fitness Watch
The Garmin 910X is an upgrade to the 310X, and it outpaces its predecessor in basically every way imaginable. It's waterproof to 50 meters, has a barometric altimeter, links to your Tanita profile to track body fat and weight, and has Garmin's awesome website behind it. This is your timepiece if you're looking to un-how-did-I-get-this-fat yourself.
Best Speakers: Not much for the A5 to do when there's a direct upgrade.
Best AT&T/Verizon Phone: Yes, the iPhone 4 gets bumped by the 4S, but it might not be worth the upgrade if you've already got the 4.
*Note, this is not a complete list—just the change log. Our full list of The Greatest Gadgets is right here.


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Fast-Paced "I, Robot" Follows in "Blade Runner" Steps
- Annabelle Robertson Entertainment Critic
- 2004 16 Jul
Release Date: July 16, 2004
Rating: PG-13 (for intense stylized action, and some brief partial nudity)
Genre: Sci-Fi/Thriller/Adventure
Run Time: 105 min.
Director: Alex Proyas
Actors: Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Alan Tudyk, James Cromwell, Bruce Greenwood, Adrian Ricard, Chi McBride, Jerry Wasserman
It's 2035 in Chicago, and robots handle all of our manual labor. These robots are programmed with three laws: they must never hurt a human; they must always obey humans, unless doing so would violate the first law; and they must never hurt another robot, unless doing so would violate the first or second law. Everyone appreciates the robots, except for Detective Del "Spoon" Spooner (Will Smith), who doesn't trust their judgment – much to the derision of his colleagues on the police force.
A new generation of robots are about to be revealed, with one for every five humans. On the eve of its launch, the project's creator and the inventor of robot intelligence, Dr. Lanning (James Cromwell) is found dead inside his office building. The owner of the company, Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood), who is also the richest and most powerful man in the world, insists that his employee committed suicide. The police are inclined to agree. After all, robots cannot hurt humans.
For Spoon, however, the facts don't add up, and when a robot, who is hidden in Lanning's office, assaults Spoon and takes off, Spoon goes after him. Obviously, this is one robot that doesn't obey humans. In fact, it takes a whole S.W.A.T. team to catch it. In the interrogation room, Spoon is startled to discover that this robot can also feel emotions – something else that was never meant to be. Spoon wants to stop the release of the fifth generation robots, but no one listens to his dire warnings.
The robots are released and immediately try to take over society. Now, the only people who can stop them are Spoon, who has a bionic arm that rivals the robot's superhuman strength, and Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), a robot psychologist who understands how to deprogram the machine-like monsters that are rising up against their masters.
The sets are futuristic and stylish, as are the costumes. All of the actors do a decent job, although Smith's motorcycle jumping, shoot-'em-up skills are a bit too "Rambo"-like for credibility. Director Alex Proyas, a relative newcomer, leaves the audience in suspense and keeps the action going for a fast-paced film that is reminiscent of "Blade Runner," with its ruthless robots that are searching for identity, purpose and immortality. There are several superfluous elements, including two gratuitously nude shower scenes that serve merely to show off the lead characters' bodies, and several scenes with a foul-mouthed, perverted teen that Spoon protects.
The film asks us to ponder the question of whether technology liberates or enslaves us. Although humans are "freed" from blue-collar tasks like garbage collection, bartending and deliveries, they become overly dependent upon the robots, much as we are on our technology today. The humans also forget to be "human" and treat the robots like, well, machines. Interestingly, the more human the robots become, the more machine-like, or robotic, the people become. They can't think outside the box, they don't display emotion and they are terse and increasingly calculating. It's a clear warning.
There is no mention of God (although Spoon's grandmother tries to go to church), and there is a strong evolutionary message in the film. The robots have evolved past their moral code, to the point where they keep secrets and have dreams that cause them to commit criminal acts. It's a fall from innocence that can only be stopped by the Messiah-like character of Spoon. Yet the theology of the film, expressed by the lead robot, is that "sometimes the created needs to help the creator, even against his will." It's the Hollywood assumption that God needs our help, which is arrogant at best and suicidal at worst.
The film also asks whether we have the right to rebel against our oppressors. The robots conclude that the right of revolution exists because their masters have a tendency to destroy both themselves and their environment. But it is only when inalienable rights are challenged that revolt is truly justified, and the humans in this movie, though they succumb to crime and pollution, still exist within a relatively stable society. The robots want a utopian ideal that they believe justifies their coup d'état. A political message? Perhaps.
Overall, "I, Robot" is a good action movie that raises some interesting political and theological questions that are well worth discussing. It is appropriate for adults – but not children or younger teens.
- Drugs/Alcohol Content: Characters drink in bar with background smoking.
- Language/Profanity: Harsh language and obscenities. A teenager curses, but is reprimanded.
- Sexual Content/Nudity: Partial nudity (side view of woman in shower; side view of man in another shower scene); upper male nudity (character wakes up in bed); a character talks about aggressive casual sex.
- Violence: Countless fights and shoot-outs, mostly between men and robots (guns, machine guns, pipes and other weapons); one gang-style fight between mob and robots; car chases with wrecks and property damage; shots of dead bodies, some gore.

subset: commoncrawl


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CORPORATE ENERGETIC LOOPS BACKGROUND PACK 5 (6 loops 18$!)
SPORT GAME LIFE – MY NEWEST POWERFUL TRACKThis track is included in the Ambient Website Backgrounds 4. Buy and save! Please, rate my track! Thanks! This is my new, romantic and melodious track with tender acoustic piano solo, sounds of the sea and somnolent electronic drums…I have also included in pack a looped version of this track, which can be used separately…It can be used like music for websites backgrounds, slideshows, video etc…Enjoy this beautiful track and thanks for buying!
Track List:
01 – Daughters Eyes – 3:02;
02 – Daughters Eyes (looped version) – 1:16.
YouTube users: to clear any copyright claims on your videos (including monetized videos), simply visit THIS PAGE, enter your details and video link and copy/paste the contents from your purchased License Certificate into the message box. Claims are removed within 24 – 96 hours (usually much faster).
Music Loops Collection (just for $6-8)
Original Logos&Idents Collection


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In this week's compilation of pop culture crap, Dr. Phil teaches us how Rock of Love has negatively affected our nation's youth, Bill O'Reilly's feud with Snooki, and expectant mothers doll up for delivery.
1.) Girl idolizes Rock of Love contestants.
So Dr. Phil took the appropriate measures and surprised her at the end of the episode by sending her to rehab.
2.) Snooki vs. O'Reilly?
Well, not really, but that's how The Insider would like to make it appear. Actually, Bill O'Reilly claims to not really know who Snooki is. See! He's not that different from our president after all.
3.) Beautiful labor.
If I ever get rattles painted on my toenails in preparation for my delivery I give you permission to murder me, because I think that my child would be better off that way.
4.) Lisa Vanderpump's dirty mind.
5.) Tim & Eric make Conan funny.
Which is a pretty big accomplishment.
6.) How Jennifer Aniston changed the world.
She confronted Perez Hilton about his meanness, which prompted him to change his whole schtick. I'd just like to say that this only proves how much Perez Hilton sucked to begin with, that his whole belief system could be shaken to its core because of a "scary" encounter with Jennifer Aniston in a parking garage.
7.) Steven Tyler is gross.
8.) No one wants Mindy Kaling's crap.
Her care was broken into recently, and the thief left everything behind.
9.) Barbara Walters was such a bitch to Camille Grammer.
Babs is a longtime friend of Kathy Hilton's. Do you think that means she's on Team Kyle?
10.) Kathie Lee's tits.


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- Parabolic Arc
- September 21, 2023
NASA Confident About MSL as Martian Landing Site is Chosen
During the NASA Lunar Science Forum last week, Jim Green was asked if there was any chance of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity being slipped another two years. NASA's director of Planetary Science was emphatic that the probe, originally set to launch in 2009, would make its planned launch window set for Nov. 25 to Dec. 18. The car-sized rover was recently plugged into its power supply at its launch site in Florida and everything worked fine, he said.
Green and other NASA officials also announced last week that Curiosity would explore a layered mountain inside the planet's Gale crater after it lands next August. The target crater spans 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and holds a mountain rising higher from the crater floor than Mount Rainier rises above Seattle. Gale is about the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Layering in the mound suggests it is the surviving remnant of an extensive sequence of deposits. The crater is named for Australian astronomer Walter F. Gale.
During a prime mission lasting one Martian year — nearly two Earth years — researchers will use the rover's tools to study whether the landing region had favorable environmental conditions for supporting microbial life and for preserving clues about whether life ever existed.
"Scientists identified Gale as their top choice to pursue the ambitious goals of this new rover mission," Green said. "The site offers a visually dramatic landscape and also great potential for significant science findings."
"Mars is firmly in our sights," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Curiosity not only will return a wealth of important science data, but it will serve as a precursor mission for human exploration to the Red Planet."
In 2006, more than 100 scientists began to consider about 30 potential landing sites during worldwide workshops. Four candidates were selected in 2008. An abundance of targeted images enabled thorough analysis of the safety concerns and scientific attractions of each site. A team of senior NASA science officials then conducted a detailed review and unanimously agreed to move forward with the MSL Science Team's recommendation. The team is comprised of a host of principal and co-investigators on the project.
Curiosity is about twice as long and more than five times as heavy as any previous Mars rover. Its 10 science instruments include two for ingesting and analyzing samples of powdered rock that the rover's robotic arm collects. A radioisotope power source will provide heat and electric power to the rover. A rocket-powered sky crane suspending Curiosity on tethers will lower the rover directly to the Martian surface.
The portion of the crater where Curiosity will land has an alluvial fan likely formed by water-carried sediments. The layers at the base of the mountain contain clays and sulfates, both known to form in water.
"One fascination with Gale is that it's a huge crater sitting in a very low-elevation position on Mars, and we all know that water runs downhill," said John Grotzinger, the mission's project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "In terms of the total vertical profile exposed and the low elevation, Gale offers attractions similar to Mars' famous Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system."
Curiosity will go beyond the "follow-the-water" strategy of recent Mars exploration. The rover's science payload can identify other ingredients of life, such as the carbon-based building blocks of biology called organic compounds. Long-term preservation of organic compounds requires special conditions. Certain minerals, including some Curiosity may find in the clay and sulfate-rich layers near the bottom of Gale's mountain, are good at latching onto organic compounds and protecting them from oxidation.
"Gale gives us attractive possibilities for finding organics, but that is still a long shot," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at agency headquarters. "What adds to Gale's appeal is that, organics or not, the site holds a diversity of features and layers for investigating changing environmental conditions, some of which could inform a broader understanding of habitability on ancient Mars."
The rover and other spacecraft components are being assembled and are undergoing final testing. The mission is targeted to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of Caltech.
To view the landing site and for more information about the mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/msl and https://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .
Source: NASA press release
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The Voodoo Curse of Julia Allison's Dog on Tech Companies
Theory: the closer internet persona(e) (non grata) Julia Allison gets to your internet startup, the more it's bound to falter. The breaking moment comes when her dog shits on your carpet.
Just as in relationships, when a significant other's dog empties itself on your carpet, you've broken a threshold, a deed that will never be undone. And we imagine Julia Allison's cupcake-eating dog, Lilly, has shit on a lot of carpets.
This probably happened to Vimeo founder and retreated-fameball Jakob Lodwick shortly before he was ousted from the company.
We've all heard about the troubles of Facebook lately (Spam! Departures!, Gadfly speculation on the non-monetizable nature of the company!) since her and Randi Zuckerberg became besties and started smoking in the bathroom and whatnot.
This probably didn't happen to social-network-as-video-game OMGPOP founder Charles Forman, because we haven't heard anything about that company other than people pouring money into it sometime both before and after the couple broke up (Forman more or less claimed tinnitus, not dogshitting, as the breaking point).
But Tumblr founder David Karp, while never in a relationship with Allison, has, at the least, always been cozy with her. From deep inside the Tumblr headquarters, proof that this thing has reached a breaking point:
Yeah: that's Allison, cleaning up Lilly's satanic curse from the floor of the Tumblr offices. Allison has referred to Lilly as a business partner; we don't doubt the dog's cunning skill in strategic shittery as a mark of both territory and omen. Open memo to David Karp and the rest of Tumblr: fumigate the place. Smudge it with sage. Rain dance the hell out of it. And Dennis Crowley of iPhone social networking app Foursquare: put that thing down NOW.


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Clay, Cava & CreateSaturday, 24 Feb 2024
17:00 - 20:00 Studio 56
About this event:
At our adult workshops – Clay, Cava & Create or and Clay & Create – you will learn the basics of hand building with clay and have the opportunity to create multiple pieces using different techniques. The workshops are informal and allow students to explore, build skills, and make ceramic art based on their interests and imagination.
Bookings:After submitting, you will receive an email with steps to confirm your participation.
Do you already have an account with us? Sign In
Log in if you already have an account with us.


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Open today 10am to 5pm (last entry 4.30pm)
Open tomorrow 10am to 5pm
A place of myth and legend
Visit the iconic Round Table of Arthurian legend taking pride of place in Winchester's ancient Great Hall.
Discover the history and uncover the battles, secrets and trials witnessed.
An historic location for art & film
From the Hollow Crown to Wolf Hall, to Antony Gormley and beyond - the Great Hall is a stunning backdrop for film and the arts.
From the Westgate and into the Great Hall through to Queen Eleanor's Garden and up to the Military Museums - there is a rich history to explore.
Add in an abundance of stylish bars and restaurants. Winchester is a great day out!


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Malaika to endorse vodka brand
Bollywood's "Munni" Malaika Arora Khan has been signed on to endorse a new vodka brand.
Bollywood's "Munni" Malaika Arora Khan has been signed on to endorse a new vodka brand.
The brand, launched by Jagatjit Industries Limited, is called IICE. The philosophy of the brand, available in two flavours - Green Apple and Orange, is 'As hot as ice!'.
"We look forward to growing our sales and market share quickly. We truly believe that a quality product never goes unappreciated in the market and are confident that IICE will be a brand to reckon with in the coming years," Vinod Kumar Banga, COO, Jagatjit Industries Limited, said in a statement.
The initial to IICE has been encouraging, according to the company spokesperson.
Its pan-India launch is expected to be completed by February.
IICE is available in Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Maharashtra, Odisha, Jharkhand, Assam, Meghalaya and Andhra Pradesh.


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The embodiment of the classical idea of the poetical faculty as a divine gift, these famous sisters dwelt on Mount Helicon, and drank of the fountain Hippocrene. Minerva presented to them the winged horse Pegasus, upon which, if one rode, she would soar aloft among the creatures and creations of fancy.
The nine Muses are the daughters of the Zeus and of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory.
The Muses preside over the arts and sciences, inspire all artists, especially poets, philosophers, and musicians.
Calliope. was the muse of epic poetry
Clio of history
Euterpe of lyric poetry
Melpomene. of tragedy
Terpsichore. of choral songs and the dance
Erato of love poetry
Polyhymnia. of sacred poetry
Urania of astronomy
Thalia of comedy
Turn Back
Title Page
© 1996-2008 The Museum Of Jurassic Technology, 9341 Venice Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232


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DOOM II RPG Review
- Publisher: id Software
- Genre: Action
- Released: 8 Feb, 2010
- Size: 46.4 MB
- Price: $0.99
- Great blending of FPSs and classic western RPGs.
- Completely overhauled art inspired from Doom 2.
- Fun dialogue events.
- Clunky menu system.
- AI is positively antique.
On the surface Doom II RPG looks a little bit country and a little bit rock'n'roll, but amazingly id Software pull off the mix while poking fun at the same time.
- Full Review
- App Store Info
Role-playing games (RPGs) have had a long and interesting history, stemming from text based adventures that later became action orientated, turn-based dungeon crawlers. These complex games were often too complex for a broader audience to enjoy, but as gamers grew so too did the RPG. id Software's latest game on the App Store is Doom II RPG and proves that there's still some teeth to the old dungeon crawler.
In keeping with id's experimentation with simpler interfaces for touch devices, Doom II RPG combines a basic virtual d-pad with gesture controls to make the game easier to play. These include swipes to allow you to side-step and touching the screen to shoot and interact with the game world intelligently. Unfortunately the menus are a bit clunky and make using multiple items a chore.
Aside from the introduction of two new characters to the Doom world, the art-style is instantly recognizable and is an updated high resolution set of 2D sprites in a basic 3D world. There are mini-game events for hacking items, though the difficulty and explanation of these games can be wildly excessive. As part of the game you also gain plenty of extras including a comic to read that sets the mood.
This isn't quite Doom II done as an RPG, but rather it's a re-imagining of the series. Despite not being an FPS in the truest sense, casual and hardcore fans of the series will enjoy the humor and horror contained within.
DescriptionHell has returned! Prepare yourself for DOOM II RPG for the iPhone, the sequel to id Software's hit turn based mobile game Doom RPG.
A mysterious distress signal calls your team—two hardened Marines and a rookie scientist—to a Union Aerospace Corporation research facility on Earth's Moon, but you were unprepared for what awaits you. The forces of Hell itself have taken hold of the station and its inhabitants! Zombies and demonic monsters roam the halls, killing all who cross their path. Your backup squad is dead. Mysterious scientists conspire against you. Even the facility's AI cannot be trusted. You are being hunted from all sides. Now, you must fight to survive, and try to stop the invasion—and uncover the truth—by any means available. The fate of all humanity is at stake!
Choose one of three different characters and get ready to battle through hordes of deadly monsters, including returning favorites such as the Pinky, Cacodemon, and Revenant, as well as new threats like the Sawcubus and Sentinel! Battle towering bosses such as the Cyberdemon, Spider Mastermind, or the Pinkinator!
Interact with other survivors of the invasion to get information about your environment and solve puzzles, but beware…not all of them can be trusted!
Wield an array of lethal weapons, including classics such as the Super Shotgun and BFG, or powerful new ones such as the Holy Water Pistol! Take control of a Sentry Bot to kill your enemies from safety, or to scout dangerous areas! Zoom in with a scoped Assault Rifle and go for a headshot!
Build your character's power level through experience points earned by killing monsters! Use treadmills, armor repair stations, and target practice machines to boost your skills even further! Still need an advantage in combat? Use Nano Drinks to bestow abilities such as health regeneration, fire immunity, poisoned weapons, or extra speed! Purchase resources from vending machines, or scrounge what you can from the corpses of defeated monsters!
Hack security systems! Aim your sniper scope using the accelerometer! Tap and swipe the screen to explore the environment, engage in combat, navigate intuitive menus, and interact with other characters! Touch the heads-up-display to quickly access your healing items, armor, map, or PDA!
Stay alert! Stranded civilians, secret passages, deadly traps and more await you within the surprising world of DOOM II RPG!
•Sequel to the 2005 mobile hit DOOM RPG. By the creators of the iPhone hit Wolfenstein RPG!
•Battle through 9 maps, spanning the Moon, Earth, and Hell itself. Over 8 hours of gameplay!
•Choose from 3 playable characters, each with different starting attributes and dialogue experiences
•Over a dozen unique weapons to find, plus improvised weapons such as Sentry Bots or even plumbing fixtures
•Eleven different enemy types—each with multiple, increasingly-powerful forms—plus four bosses
•Upgradeable skill attributes allow you to customize your character for maximum lethality
•Hack security systems to open restricted areas, hijack sentry bots, or lower prices on vending machines.
•Power up using Nano Drinks to give you an edge in combat
•Interact with NPCs to get information, solve puzzles and survive the hazardous environment
•Loot the corpses of your foes to find useful items—or junk.
•Auto-mapping feature and mission-tracking PDA functions ensure you'll never be lost again
•Customizable controls; change the size, style, and placement of the control inputs
•Three levels of difficulty will give players of all skill levels a challenge
•Detailed graphics and complex levels which take advantage of the power of the iPhone
•Bonus digital comic included!


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Editor's note: Campbell Brown anchors CNN's "Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull" at 8 p.m. ET Mondays through Fridays. She delivered this commentary during the "Cutting through the Bull" segment of Monday night's broadcast.
CNN's Campbell Brown says Obama should re-examine two of his Cabinet picks in light of his vow of transparency.
(CNN) -- All this week, we're taking aim at one word and one theme. It is something the president has promised and we're holding him to it: transparency. If it's more than an updated campaign slogan, the president might start by looking at his own Cabinet picks.
Both Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle were delinquent in paying tens of thousands of dollars each in back taxes. That's more than some people earn in a year, let alone owe in back taxes. Neither man paid up in full until after they were approached to join the Obama administration.
I wonder how many Americans would avoid paying a six-figure tax bill until they were up for a new job? For that matter, how many people have owed more than $100,000 dollars without the IRS coming to haul off anything that wasn't bolted down -- like the car and driver Daschle forgot to pay for.
These are two critical positions in a brand new presidency built on a vow of honesty. Mr. President, your picks to help run the federal government don't have to be perfect, but is it too much to ask that they pay like everyone else, to keep that same government functioning? And more importantly, that they don't wait until everyone, including you, is watching?
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Campbell Brown.
All About Barack Obama • Thomas Daschle • Timothy Geithner


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Chalk, Brighton.
This event is for 14 and over - No refunds will be issued for under 14s.
More information about Hard-Fi tickets
Staines, England's Hard-Fi feature Richard Archer (vocals), Ross Philips (guitar), Kai Stephens (bass), and Steve Kemp (drums). The punk-inspired indie rock quintet formed in 2002; they feature a brash mix of Dexy's Midnight Runners melodies, Franz Ferdinand hooks, and the theatrics of the Dead 60s. Hard-Fi self-released Stars of CCTV in October 2004, and all 500 copies quickly sold out. The U.K. indie imprint Necessary reissued the nine-song nugget the following June. Once again, HARD-Fi got the attention of the fickle British press and an eager British public. Singles such as "Cash Machine," "Tied Up Too Tight," and "Hard to Beat" were all chart hits, and U.K. show dates with the likes of the Bravery, the Kaiser Chiefs, and the Ordinary Boys were equally successful. Before the year's end, Hard-Fi earned a Mercury Music Prize nomination for Stars of CCTV. They had also won over audiences at Glastonbury and at the annual SXSW Festival in Austin, TX. Two Brit Award nominations followed in early 2006 -- one for Best British Group and another for Best British Rock Act. Stars of CCTV went on to earn a number one spot on the U.K. album chart in January 2006; it was released in the U.S. in March, and although it didn't make quite as big of a splash stateside, it still set up high expectations for Hard-Fi's next record, Once Upon a Time in the West, which came out in September of 2007. The following year, the band announced they were beginning work on a new album, and began a lengthy recording process that included working with producers like The Bird and the Bee's Greg Kurstin. The album, Killer Sounds, was finally completed and released in August of 2011. ~ MacKenzie Wilson, Rovi


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The Green Bay Packers could be without linebacker Desmond Bishop, one of their best defensive players, for the rest of the season. Their starting left tackle (Marshall Newhouse) and best receiver (Greg Jennings) are recovering from concussions. The team barely has any running backs.
"I don't know what's going on, I've never seen anything like it," McCarthy said Sunday via the Green Bay Press-Gazette. "I've never dealt with numbers like this before, just the number of players missing practice."
The Packers shortened practice to help cope with all the injuries. 19 players missed Sunday's practice, after 21 missed it the day before. Running back James Starks' injury may be the most worrisome other than losing Bishop.
This was supposed to be the year Starks stepped up. But he suffered a turf toe injury and is now "week to week" which usually means at least a few weeks. Turf toe is a famously slow injury to heal. Third-stringer Brandon Saine is also hurt. Second-year pro Alex Green is the projected starter at the moment; he's coming off major reconstructive knee surgery. Now you get an idea why the Packerssigned Cedric Benson.
If nothing else, McCarthy could take solace that all of these injuries are happening so early. The most injury-plagued team last August was the New York Giants.


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Gassed by BP, New Gulf War Syndrome
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The Government is not letting you know everything about the Gulf Oil Spill.
Benzene in incredible amounts is being released into the air. People are getting sick. UN Vans by the thousands are parked in secluded areas out of site from the public on AF Base in Florida just below Jacksonville. They are also in many other areas. Enter this grid into Google maps and you can see for yourself. 29.97213,-81.660047
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The petro-chemical-military-industrial complex is gassing Gulf Coast residents with poisonous Benzene and Corexit dispersant at dangerously high levels in the largest U.S. domestic military operation to date.
The military and FEMA are engaged in Emergency Plans for 36 urban areas from Texas to Florida due to the unstoppable Gulf oil volcano the size of Mt. Everest, as WMR reports, indicating evacuations. Some people are advised to relocate now. (See Parts III and IV)
Satellite imagery that Obama's administration withheld shows "under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be around the size of Mount Everest.
This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public," writes Wayne Madsen.
Human suffering in the Gulf is increasing from the world's latest and largest toxic oil kill as BP lies and government remains silent about human health risks and associated military interventions. Most immediately damaging of the operation's withheld information pertains to toxins breathed since the explosion.
Southerners reporting illnesses with symptoms reflecting Benzene and Corexit poisoning have had to face some leaders suggesting the cause to be mental illness, "stress", while others, such as BP chief Tony Hayward, blamed the illness on rotten food.
Hayward is the guy who sold his �1.4 million shares in BP one month before the Gulf "spill." This in turn caused a collapse of value and a saving to him of over $423,000 when BP's share price plunged after its predicted destruction in the gulf according to the Telegraph. (Since Hayward's pay package of $4 million a year had been insufficient, cashing out enabled him to pay off the mortgage on his family's mansion in Kent.)
No monitors, no dispersant toxicity studies
Other life-risking withheld information is that chemicals released have not been monitored. WMR colleague John Caylor, a Gulf Coast resident, reported, "BP and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which have stated that several hundred air quality monitors have been deployed around the Florida and Alabama coasts and have not detected any benzene levels that would be harmful to human health, are lying." (WMR, EPA and media lying about air monitors on Gulf coast, June 7-8, 2010)
A senior news source at WEAR-TV, ABC's affiliate in Pensacola told Caylor that "there are no air quality monitors that have been deployed along the coastal bays and inlets by either BP or the EPA. The station sent reporters out to check on the monitors and discovered they were non-existent." (Emphasis added)
"ABC News network out of New York and CNN are echoing the BP and Obama administration's lines that the air quality is being monitored and is perfectly safe," wrote Caylor. WWL TV reports monitors are being now used in south Louisiana. (See video #2 below)
The spewing oil and dispersant chemicals are toxic enough for so many people to become ill, evacuation would be required, especially before a hurricane blows the lethal cocktail over more Southerners. Hurricane season 2010, anticipated to be highly active and strong, will bring the oil and dispersant chemicals further inland, impacting health of too many people to be ignored. Already, even mainstream news reports 70 people in Louisiana have been admitted to hospital with symptoms of toxic poisoning. New Orleans area officials have urged people without means to evacuate before a hurricane to register now.
"Get a game plan now," WWL reported.
Corexit and Benzene Gulf gas combo effects
On May 1, two U.S. Department of Defense C-130 Hercules aircraft were employed to spray oil dispersant, Corexit EC9500A and Corexit EC9527A. Dispersant information, however, was "kept secret under competitive trade laws."
The stated purpose of using more chemicals on the chemical spill was "to break up the oil into tiny droplets that sink and can be more readily dispersed by ocean currents, to diminish the oil's effect on sea life and shore habitats." (New York Times, BP and EPA Skirmish Over Oil Dispersant, May 24, 2010)
Mother Nature's non-chemical, safe, effective bio-remediation method (see Youtube below) of disposing of the oil was dismissed. Safe and effective solutions for human and environmental survival are not part of the agenda.
Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) "Fact sheets" page for Nalco's Corexit has pdfs available for "Dispersant Type 1," Corexit 9500 (PDF); and "Dispersant Type 2," Corexit 9527A (PDF). Tom Philpott of Grist, who found that these product numbers matched those identified unofficially by his sources, writes,
"The data sheets for both products contain this shocker: 'No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product" — meaning testing their safety for humans and both data sheets include the warning 'human health hazards: acute.'" (Emphasis added)
As Philpott reported, the MSDS for Corexit 9527A states
'excessive exposure may cause central nervous system effects, nausea, vomiting, anesthetic or narcotic effects,' and 'repeated or excessive exposure to butoxyethanol [an active ingredient] may cause injury to red blood cells (hemolysis), kidney or the liver.'
'"Prolonged and/or repeated exposure through inhalation or extensive skin contact with EGBE [butoxyethanol] may result in damage to the blood and kidneys.'"
The solvents 2-Butoxyethanol and petroleum distillate appear "most dangerous," writes Philpott, but these chemicals continue to be saturating water and air.
Out of work shrimper, oil clean-up work Clint Guidry reported, "The closest I got [to the Gulf water] was Venice, Louisiana, and you could smell it from Venice… they were actually spraying Corexit 9527A on the oil spill on top of the water and spraying all around – Venice sits on a peninsula, the Mississippi River, right at the – right above the Head of the Passes.
"And they were actually spraying this Corexit in the air all around where people were living, with kids and children, and continuously saying how safe it was."
By May 24, New York Times reported that 700,000 US gallons (2,600,000 l) of Corexit dispersants had gassed the area, "approaching a world record." BP was ordered to take "immediate steps to scale back the use of dispersants" that the military was reportedly spraying. Both entities seemingly follow orders from a higher command. Chemical gassing of Gulf life continued.
Benzene, or "swamp gas," the toxin released by fossil fuel oil, is lethal enough for public health concern and action without Corexit. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has determined that benzene causes severe human injury such as chromosomal, and is a human carcinogen. Exposure to high levels of benzene is associated with leukemia cancer: acute myelogenous leukemia, acute lymphocytic leukemia, and chronic myelogenous leukemia. (See: 0.9977 Benzene (IARC Summary & Evaluation, Supplement7, 1987)
Benzene-related leukemias have been reported to develop in as short as nine months according to IARC.
The satiation of toxic air, water and food has posed serious health risks to all people of the Gulf, but especially to pregnant women, the elderly and people with health vulnerabilities such as asthma and emphysema. Gina Solomon, NRDC Senior Scientist outlined health risks Louisianians and other Gulf Coast residents face.
Only days after BPs greatest oil assault began, Solomon recommended that pregnant women leave the oil spill area since fossil fuel oil toxins cause miscarriages.
Oil spill VOC (volatile chemicals) acute health effects include "headaches, dizziness and nausea," and "[o]ver the long term, many of these chemicals have been linked to cancer, so there are lots of reasons to worry about inhaling them," advised Solomon. (Dupre, Hitting rock bottom calls for intervention, Examiner, May 9, 2010) The first nine Gulf spill workers were hospitalized for "dizziness, headaches and nausea" as Solomon predicted weeks before according to VOC effects, plus shortness of breath and nosebleeds, likely symptomatic of Corexit.
Adding fire to the fuel, burning the slick as the petrochemical-military-industrial complex are also doing, has compounded the public health risk. Dr. Marcel Casavant, chief of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, has stated, "Smoke from burning oil contains many chemicals; some are potentially lethal poisons…" (ABC News, BP Gulf Oil Spill: Human Health Risks Small But Fears May Linger) Casavant indicates those at greatest risk are children.
Oil toxic poisoning does not always have immediate impact. One study showed that the effect is generational: women exposed to oil toxins have daughters with reproductive health problems, such as miscarriages. (See: Dupre, FUEL DVD countdown to end old, dirty, dangerous, corrupt business, Examiner, May 11. 2010; and Josh Tickell, FUEL, 2009)
Within days of the Gulf incident, the smell of oil was so strong in coastal deep south, it was reported that one lady had to shut all her windows, turn on her AC and "if her asthma keeps up like this, she'll need to go on her breathing machine tonight." Meanwhile, police were driving up and down the beach "explicitly telling tourists to 'just stay out of the water.'" (It's BP's Oil, Mother Jones, May 24, 2010) That was almost a month ago. How is she now?
Harassed for attempted survival
CNN reported that commercial shrimper working on the "clean-up," John Wunstell Jr. filed a temporary restraining order in federal court against BP to stop its harassment of workers that voice health concerns. He "wants the oil giant to give the workers masks." Among first reported workers hospitalized for oil/gas injury, Wuntsell alleges that BP confiscated his clothing stripped from him in the hospital, and told him that they would not be returned. This story is eerily similar to those of Nazi gas chambers.
Louisiana Shrimpers Association also accused BP of threatening to fire fisherman from cleanup jobs if they complain about health problems or wear masks. (See Gulf Spill Workers Hopsitalized, Restraining Orders sought, News Inferno) Clean-up worker fishermen were not given respirators, "not even those working in the most dangerous area, closest to the well still spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico," reported Guidry.
Such negative public relations for corporatism has almost been blacked-out. Gulf Coast residents lack information about serious risks BP's poisons are inflicting on them. Solomon's words of warning were a silenced clarion call to Gulf residents.
Another mild warning for Louisinans was finally offered today. A New Iberia, Louisiana chemist, Wilma Subra advised in a WWL TV new report (Youtube video below) that people experiencing ill health effects from the gassing should relocate, "move out of the area."
Regardless of presidential or other statements about holding accountable those responsible for the latest oil assault on humanity, the U.S. military objective in the Gulf for its ultimate goal of Full Spectrum Dominance has been achieved.
Gulf Coast residents and The World Can't Wait calling a Gulf Emergency Summit for citizens to take charge of the Gulf crisis face U.S. military and BP's hired private army mercenaries, similar to during Katrina's aftermath.
The military now controls one of the nation's most important ports, its most inland port, Baton Rouge, and the nation's largest river, the Mighty Mississippi. These are primary resources required in the Pentagon's quest for total control of "land sea, and air superiority." (See USSPACECOM's Vision for 2020, and www.spacecom.af.mil/usspace)
On June 2, 2000, Defense News reported that "Full-spectrum dominance" is the key term in "Joint Vision 2020," the blueprint DoD will follow in the future" and that "Innovation has always been a hallmark of the American military. In 2020, this native American talent will be even more important." For those who dare look, the Gulf operation has been a demonstration of such innovation.
Deepwater Unified Command Gulf Operation
In its quesst for the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. military innovation enabled it to seize control of Haiti within hours of its earthquake, then the entire Gulf after the "spill," and now, in secret maneuvers will soon include more U.S. coastal land and inhabitants according to WMR. (See Gassed in the Gulf Part I) The petro-chemical-military industrial complex includes BP's "security firm" Wackenhut, hired as a private army to help control the people of the Gulf region, hide Gulf atrocities and control the region through the 'Deepwater Horizon Unified Command military operation.
Jeremy Scahill reports that Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, and her husband, Avi Lewis, host of al Jazeera English's popular program Fault Lines, described a "run in" with Wackenhut, hired for "perimeter security" for the Deepwater Horizon Command. (Jeremy Scahill, BP and US Government 'Command Center' Guarded by Company from Afghan Embassy Hazing Scandal, May 28, 2010)
A foreign company, British Petroleum and U.S. government agencies, including the US Coast Guard, Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of Homeland Security are running Deepwater Unified Command according to Scahill.
Wayne Madsen reports that "36 urban areas on the Gulf of Mexico are expecting to be confronted with a major disaster from the oil volcano" and "emergency plans are being made for cities and towns from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Houston, New Orleans, Gulfport, Mobile, Pensacola, Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater, Sarasota-Bradenton, Naples, and Key West."
Citing sources within the US Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Madsen asserts that "the Obama White House and British Petroleum are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP's liability for damage caused by what can be called a 'mega-disaster." Florida is preparing to evacuate, with FEMA taking the lead.
For this operation to succeed, mainstream media must participate in the PR campaign, (propaganda) since most Americans still believe and even center their lives around their TVs. An example of mainstream "news" propaganda presented was the reporting of BP containing one of the leaks. Madsen stated it was "pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands for greater action by the Obama administration, according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers sources."
Gulf military operation LYHOP or MYHOP
A "spill" reflects an accident. BP's reported "spill," actually an underwater oil volcano, was either a LYHOP, a Let It Happen On Purpose, or a MYHOP, a Make It Happen On Purpose. Both are false flag operations to further justify military control on U.S. soil in the already existing coup that began during the Bush administration in October 2008 when US troops were deployed for duty on U.S. soil.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before," said Rahm Emanual and David Rockefeller has said, "All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."
It has also been said that fascism will come when the people ask for it. Now that BP admits it cannot control the Gulf crisis, will the American people ask for military control, be grateful for it, or at least simply continue allowing its latest major step in "full spectrum" control, same as Americans allowed passage of the USA PATRIOT ACT after 911?
The gulf crisis was predicted if not planned by more than one person knowing human and other life would be injured or killed. Exxon Mobil Chairman Rex Tillerson told a House of Representatives subcommittee that BP's operation was "a dramatic departure from the industry norm in deepwater drilling."
The explosion's cause is attributed to a $500,000. missing piece of equipment, an acoustic switch, required in other countries. With G.W. Bush's deregulations, the Gulf operation could proceed without the safety equipment, leading to military intervention. New York Times reports that during a Congressional hearing, members learned that BP also decided not to conduct a "cement bond log" test that would have measured the cement's strength. Halliburton Energy Services was producer of the casing being run and cemented. This company knows how to make a profit. It is the same company profiting most from U.S. illegal Middle East invasions, Hurricane Katrina and Haiti's earthquake.
Soon after the Gulf explosion, oil workers requesting anonymity report that they heard a telephone conversation in which the head of the rig was crying while telling the other party on the phone, "We knew this was going happen. Are you satisfied now?"
Since the explosion, "Louisiana and Florida have essentially begged for help, to no avail. Governor Jindal said with emotion, 'We need more boom, more skimmers, more jack-up barges,' reports Houston Homeland Security Examiner, Lou Gallio, adding, "Louisiana, however, has received only a fraction of the supplies it requested to protect itself."
Add the BP chief Tony Hayward selling his shares one week before the explosion. (See Gassed in the Gulf, Part I) What has become a U.S. military operation increasingly appears to have been a LYHOP, if not a MYHOP false flag black operation.
"To the rescue" military innovation
During the fake but profitable H1N1 swine flu pandemic, troops were moved into five regional areas, ready for action. At that time, Ron Paul stated, "The stage is set for our country to be in remnant status… to evolve into a military dictatorship" in which few are aware of seriousness of this and "few seem to care." (Video) Now, six thousand troops have moved into the southern area for a long-term Gulf operation with more on standby according to Defense News.
Defense News reports that Army Col. Patrick R. Bossetta, commander of State Aviation Command in Hammond, La. stated that the operation tempo is almost as high as Louisiana aviation units deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan experienced. (Department of Defense News, Louisiana Aviators Battle Oil Spill, Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul C. Meeker 241st Mobile Public Affairs Detachment)
The Deepwater Horizon drill rig exploded, killed 11 platform workers and injured 17 others on April 20, 2010. By May 16, USNORTHCOM was preparing military operations within the U.S., working with DHS, state and local law enforcement on U.S. soil. (See: Maj. Dale Greer: 123rd Airlift Wing Public Affairs, Units make history with Air Force's first homeland defense ORI, June 3, 2010, located on Intelhub.com)
"We're thinking ahead over the long term" said Army Maj. Gen. Abner C. Blalock, Alabama's adjutant general during a DoD roundtable. "[A]ssets from Missouri and Illinois have been tapped to support operations in Louisiana through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact." (Department of Defense News, States Prepare to Help Louisiana, Army Sgt. 1st Class Jon Soucy, National Guard Bureau) "Six months" in Afghanistan occupation time means years.
Regrettably for some 911 survivors offended by the comparison, as during the 911 false flag black operation, hiding evidence is paramount to mission success. A prime example of this during the 911 black operation was Bush's demand for a fake investigation. The Gulf operation evidence is being hidden. As noted in Part I of this series, military personnel and mercenaries have blocked journalists from the Gulf area and BP has coerced oil spill responders to sign contracts preventing them from talking to the press about their observations in the region.
In the 911 black operation designed to further fascism by catapulting the war on terror, early stage response workers were not provided preventive gear and therefore breathed toxic dust. Today, oil assault response workers are breathing toxins and not provided preventive gear. BP spokesman Darren Beaudo claims constant air quality monitoring, by boats and wearable "badges" worn by supervisors on boats in areas judged the most dangerous, show no air quality problem and no need for workers to wear masks, all untrue according to reports highlighted in Part I of this series.
Years of military intervention are now needed in the U.S. because the Gulf emergency is greater than the public has been informed and the military needs control of the Gulf. Wayne Madsen reports that "when the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil slick — which is larger than that being reported by the media — it was turned down. However, National Geographic managed to obtain the satellite imagery shots of the extent of the disaster and posted them on their web site."
"BP is the operator and principal developer of the Macondo Prospect with 65% of interest, while 25% is owned by Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, and 10% by MOEX Offshore 2007, a unit of Mitsui. (Wikipedia)
Deepwater Horizon was a 9-year-old, massive, floating semi-submersible Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU), built by Hyundai Heavy Industries with supposed capacity to operate in waters up to 8,000 feet (2,400 m) deep and drill down to 30,000 feet (9,100 m) drilling an exploratory well at approximately 1,500 meters in the Macondo Prospect located in the Mississippi Canyon Block 252. This prospect is in the United States "exclusive economic zone," about 41 miles (66 km) off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. "It was owned by Transocean under the Marshalese flag of convenience, under lease to BP until September 2013." (Wikipedia)
BP's Gulf exploration dangers were known for years. Explaining technological requirements for oil companies to drill as deeply as intended for fossil fuels in the Gulf, in the movie, FUEL, Ken Hern, now chairman of the board of Homeland Renewable Energy, emphatically alerts, "It would be easier to send a man to the moon than to drill as deep as they are planning."
People of integrity, from Van Jones and oil rig supervisors to the UN Renewable Energy Ambassador of Goodwill Josh Tickell and a host of other environmentalist leaders, tried to prevent the Gulf disaster. They could have succeeded in saving lives and the planet if powers that be want that.
Instead, in disregard of the weary, the poor, the downtrodden, mainly people of color in the South, the power elite have been quietly moving towards full and total control. They and the military who serve them are like the Mississippi River itself, Paul Robeson's Ol' Man River, looking the other way, knowing but acting as if unaware of human suffering.
"He don't say nothin'. He just keeps rollin' along."
*** Deborah Dupr�, with post-graduate science and education degrees from U.S. and Australian universities, has been a human rights advocate and environmentalist for over 25 years in the U.S., Vanuatu and Australia. Support her work by subscribing to her articles (free). For a more just and peaceful world, see Dupr�'s Vaccine Liberty or Death book plus her Compassion Film Project DVDs.
[link to rense.com]
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Source: [link to beforeitsnews.com]
:Looky Kermit:The space between mass is reality. Not the mass itself.- His Royal Dudeness 8/9/10:Looky Kermit:
:LOOKY: :looky fire:
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Great read.
Add this quote to the mix:
Mikhail Gorbachev General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union/ First Secretary.: 1985~1991. Quoted in "A Special Report: The Wildlands Project Unleashes Its War On Mankind", by Marilyn Brannan, Associate Editor, Monetary & Economic Review, 1996, p. 5.]
"The threat of environmental crisis will be the 'international disaster key' that will unlock the New World Order." -Mikhail Gorbachev
:idol1: :hiding: :idol1:
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The lies are so constant. Do they know how to tell the truth AT ALL?
not even hitler can top drowning an entire planet of people.
atheism isn't a religion, it's a personal relationship with reality.
being an atheist, a christian threatening me with hell is like a
hippie threatening to punch me in my aura.
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|A Massive Crowd Of People Herded Together In A Pit Gets Gassed To Death In Africa???
|10h 57m
|Randal Carlson demonstrates Plasmoid, Zero Point Energy. Goodbye fossil fuel industries. This technology outputs pure O2. Zero greenhouse gasses.
|Pop up small homes for homeless have pipes outside for gassing residents. Guard says will gas a man, hot mic
|Covid- GATES MONSANTO BEYER IG FARBON GASSING BIG PHARMA TORTURE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS THE VATICAN WHORES ADMIN OF DRUGS DECEIVING ALL NATIONS
|We need to invade canada they are gassing NYC
|We're being gassed again today ... NE Ohio
|Could grass/other plants grow in a biosphere with no sun light, only electric light powered by the plants o2 and decomposition gasses?
|Gassed in the Gulf~!
|Gassed in the Gulf - Benezene, New Gulf War Syndrome


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scrappy divided basket. They were already quilted and I couldn't image throwing them away, so they became little pin cushions instead. I LOVE them! They are scrap project #76.
big tote bag I made last spring. I added a fun little print for lining and bright green zipper ends for a punch of color. My son loves and it and he may claim it for himself if I let him. (That always feels good!) I love it, too. It's little...5" x 6"....and it's scrap project #77.
Melinda in a scrap gift package a few years ago and I've been hoarding it (fiercely) until now. I figured it would make a cute zip pouch, and it's WONDERFUL to have it finally sewn up. I am 100% happy with how it came together. (Proportions can be tricky on a zip pouch sometimes.) My only regret is that I don't have a crazy mom quilts label on the front of it! I suppose I could always add one later....if I'd ever get around to ordering some. This is scrap project # 78.


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Parties Solidify Positions in Sequester Stalemate
With 19 days to go, the sequester standoff hardened Sunday. Congressional leaders from both parties said the deep automatic spending cuts must be prevented from taking effect, but Republicans drew a line in the sand against making tax increases part of any stopgap alternative, and Democrats did the same in vowing to protect entitlements and social programs.
President Barack Obama last week asked Congress to come up with a package of both new revenue and additional spending cuts — he did not make any other suggestions about specifics — before March 1, after which automatic spending cuts of about $85 billion over the next seven months must start to be implemented.
"We can't be raising taxes every three months in this town," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "We want tax reform, but we want to plug those loopholes that the president talks about to bring down tax rates because we believe that's pro-growth and we can get the economy growing again. Let people who earn the money keep more of it. The president is not talking about that. What he's talking about is trying to raise more taxes for Washington to spend the money."
Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, who was among the first Republicans to publicly break with his leadership at the end of last year and endorse higher taxes as part of a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, said on ABC's "This Week" that he would "absolutely not" do so again because the December agreement was essentially all about revenue and so the next bill to trim the deficit needs to be entirely spending cuts.
Some of the most fiscally conservative Republicans have said they are content to have those across-the-board cuts take effect and are willing to accept such an indiscriminate approach (including an 8 percent cut in defense spending) because it would at least guarantee a decent bite into the size of government. On CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said sequestration would be a mere "pittance" toward the kind of cutbacks that are necessary. But Cantor said he didn't want to "live with" sequestration.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rebutted the GOP at every turn on "Fox News Sunday." She said Democrats would not favor raising new taxes as part of an interim budget deal but instead will propose cutting tax breaks for oil companies and closing other such "loopholes." She said it was a myth that Washington has a "spending problem," the current mantra of the Republican leadership, in light of the $1.6 trillion in spending reductions mandated by the 2011 measure enacted to avert the debt limit standoff. And she said her caucus would oppose two of the biggest money-savers on the GOP agenda — raising the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67 or cutting benefits for recipients.
Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., echoed many of those same themes on NBC's "Meet the Press." He said it would be wrong to cut Head Start, psychological counseling for members of the military and other programs that would be reduced indiscriminately by sequestration. "Let's do this in a thoughtful manner. Let's include revenue," he said, but in a way that "doesn't impose a tax burden on middle-class families."


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Matrin Hardy has a new tutorial posted to the SitePoint PHP blog today showing you how to use the JsonSerializable interface to work with objects and converting them to JSON.
Over the past few years JSON has taken over as the king of data interchange formats. Before JSON, XML ruled the roost. It was great at modeling complex data but it is difficult to parse and is very verbose. [...] I think we could all agree that writing less code that in turn requires less maintenance and introduces less bugs is a goal we would all like to achieve. In this post, I'd like to introduce you to a little known interface that was introduced in PHP 5.4.0 called JsonSerializable.
He splits the rest of the post out into three different parts: the "ugly" method of converting a sample Customer object into a JSON string (through an array), the "bad" method using a "toJson" method and finally the "good", implementing a class that implements the JsonSerializable interface for easy JSON-ification.


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Let's take a tour of my Rhodia book…in my journals i write with all different colors of ink. Oh, and that's another tiny obsession, trying and using various colors and brands of fountain pen inks. (see the Goulet Pen Company for products) On these pages, I'll write about the different colors, as a sampler for my own color reference.
My favorite online store for shopping and learning all things fountain pens is the Goulet Pen Company. They are most knowledgeable, with outstanding customer service and have everything you can imagine for "pen people". They even offer a discount to students in my online lettering classes, are true blue "penablers" and i love them!! Brian Goulet, the owner also has excellent teaching videos and pen and ink resources in a feature called the "Fountain of Knowledge". It's brilliant.
the Noodler's Flex pen used here, are completely refillable with whatever color i want to use!!
Thanks for visiting! What's your most favorite pen in the whole wide world??


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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Most people like President Barack Obama's proposal to make millionaires pay a significant share of their incomes in taxes. Yet they'd still rather cut spending than boost taxes to balance the federal budget, an Associated Press-GfK poll shows, giving Republicans an edge over Democrats in their core ideological dispute over the nation's fiscal ills.
The survey suggests that while Obama's election-year tax plan targeting people making at least $1 million a year has won broad support, it has done little to shift people's basic views in the long-running partisan war over how best to tame budget deficits that lately have exceeded $1 trillion annually.
"Everybody should be called to sacrifice. They should be in the pot with the rest of us," Mike Whittles, 62, a Republican and retired police officer from Point Pleasant, N.J., said of his support for Obama's tax proposal for the wealthy. But Whittles said he still prefers cutting government spending over raising taxes because of federal waste and what he calls "too many rules, too many regulations."
Sixty-five percent of the people in the AP-GfK poll favor Obama's plan to require people making $1 million or more pay taxes equal to at least 30 percent of their income. Just 26 percent opposed Obama's idea.
Yet by 56 percent to 31 percent, more embraced cuts in government services than higher taxes as the best medicine for the budget, according to the survey, which was conducted Feb. 16 to 20. That response has changed only modestly since it was first asked in the AP-GfK poll last March. The question on Obama's tax on the rich was not asked previously.
The poll showed that overall, more people have a positive view of Democrats than Republicans, a ray of hope for Obama and his fellow Democrats with the approach of November's presidential and congressional elections. Fifty-four percent in the poll gave Democrats favorable ratings compared to 46 percent for Republicans, similar to results in January 2011, at the start of the newly elected Congress in which Republicans have run the House and Democrats wield a slender Senate majority.
Though embraced by congressional Democrats, Obama's proposal on taxing millionaires more has virtually no chance of passage by Congress in the political heat of this year's campaigns. But it stands as a rallying cry for Democrats ? about 9 in 10 of whom supported the plan in the poll ? and it contrasts with proposals by the remaining major GOP presidential candidates, who would lower the current 35 percent top income tax rate.
Obama has spent months touting his plan, nicknamed the Buffett rule after Warren Buffett, the billionaire who has complained that the rich don't pay enough taxes and that his own tax rate has been lower than his secretary's. The wealthy Mitt Romney, a leading GOP presidential contender, has released tax returns showing he paid a rate of around 15 percent the past two years.
Illustrating the wide acceptance for Obama's tax proposal for the rich, the poll showed it was supported by nearly two-thirds of independents and 4 in 10 Republicans. It also won backing from 6 in 10 whites and half of conservatives, two groups that traditionally are more likely to support the GOP, as well as by 6 in 10 people earning at least $100,000 a year.
Not everyone supports the idea.
"If their money goes to taxes, how will they afford more employees, better equipment, better vehicles?" said Republican Cheryl Mickler, 31, of Hope Mills, N.C.
As for the differing strategies for deficit reduction, more than three-fourths of Republicans and the largest share of independents preferred cutting government services. Democrats leaned toward tax increases, but by a narrower 49 percent to 38 percent.
Republicans have an 8 percentage point advantage over Democrats in the public's trust for handling budget deficits, essentially unchanged in recent months.
The GOP has the same edge for protecting the country, an issue it usually dominates. Peoples' trust in the two parties is about even for handling the economy, taxes and job creation.
Congress continues to receive dismal reviews from voters. Just 19 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, virtually unchanged from last December. That's not far from Congress' worst-ever approval rate in the brief history of the AP-GfK poll of 12 percent last August, shortly after Obama and lawmakers resolved a stubborn standoff over raising the debt limit.
"We put them there to do their job and they're not doing their job," said Gary Witalison, 54, a residential painter in Fish Creek, Wis. "They're not working things out. Work together."
The AP-GfK poll was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications and involved cell phone and landline interviews with 1,000 randomly chosen adults. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
AP Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.


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TIFF RED CARPET: Colin Firth celebrates his 52nd birthday with Emily Blunt at the Arthur Newman premiere
Since TIFF began, the seemingly tireless Emily Blunt has walked the Argo red carpet, snuggled up to husband John Krasinski at Soho House, hit the CAA party and, last night, worked the premiere of the dark comedy Arthur Newman with her co-star Colin Firth. In the film, Firth plays a man who fakes his own death, and draws a pill-popper named Mike (Blunt) into his scheme. The latter looked lovely in a recycled silk tulle Tory Burch dress, a show of support for Firth's wife, Livia, who spearheaded the Green Carpet Challenge to encourage stars to wear eco-friendly duds. However, the night belonged to a blue-suited Mr. Firth, who was celebrating his birthday—begrudgingly. Apparently, Blunt and the film's crew were forcing him out on the town after the premiere to mark the occasion (even though, according to Blunt, "He's one of those people who doesn't want to celebrate his birthday").


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Mother's Day is an important Sunday celebrated worldwide and what better way to show appreciation and affection to mother than to take her out for a lovely buffet. Get mother to leave the Sunday cooking behind and head out to Shangri-La's Rasa Sayang Resort and Spa and Golden Sands Resort for a leisurely, three hour buffet brunch.
At Rasa Sayang Resort and Spa, our chefs have prepared a cosmopolitan buffet to pamper the palates of our guests. The buffet spread at the Market Café include fresh seafood, sushi, appetizers, salads, antipasto, exotic tandoori, sumptuous soups, pizzas, pasta, a carving station, hot western and oriental dishes, noodle station, dim sum and desserts.
There will be a seafood section with prawns, mussels, spanner crabs, yabbies and slipper lobsters. Cold appetizers include Oriental beef salad with herb vinaigrette, spicy shrimp salad with avocado and pomelo, tomato and buffalo mozzarella salad with Thai basil and aged balsamic vinegar, coriander crusted tuna fillet, peppered beef pastrami with gherkin and homemade chicken liver pate. The antipasto selection includes marinated vegetables like roasted pumpkin, marinated fennel, roasted garlic in olive oil, marinated roasted cherry tomatoes and oyster mushrooms. The tandoori section includes chicken do piyaza, Hyderabad chole, methi rice, chicken tandoori, gulafi sheikh, fish hariyalli kebab, naan bread, pickles and chutneys.Soups include pumpkin purée with poached oyster and spicy oxtail soup. Hot Western dishes for Mother's Day showcases seafood pot pie, half shell scallop Florentine, barbecue short rib with grilled corn, potato gnocchi in blue cheese sauces, seared snapper in pepper and coriander sauce, beef mignon with mushroom, gherkins and sour cream and slow roasted duck breast with orange sauce. The Asian dishes are mutton red curry, green beef curry with basil, Padang style creamy fish and wok fried scallops with prawns and sugar peas. The carving station will feature pepper crusted rib eye served with roasted chat potatoes, pumpkin seed crusted salmon fillet with dill cream sauce.
Desserts include chocolate dome, crème brulee, mini green tea cheese cake, white forest cake, walnut tart, strawberry mousse, tiramisu, fresh fruit cream cake, mango mousse éclair, apple strudel, vanilla panna cotta, warm apple pie and strawberry short cake. There will also be candy floss machine dispensing pink cotton candy for the younger children.
Mother and her children can take part in the cup cake decorating contest and win attractive prizes. Registration for activities required on a first come first serve basis. Children are required to register at Spice Market Café's front counter on the actual day of the buffet. The Spice Market Café Mother's Day Buffet Brunch is available on Sunday, 11 May, 2014 from 12:00noon to 3:00pm. Price: RM 128++ (adult) RM 64++ (child). Please call 04-888 8788 for reservations.
Golden Sands Resort's chefs will also come up with a menu that will spoil mother, the queen of your heart. Treat mother to appetizers, soups, hot western and oriental dishes and great desserts. Attractions include Cameron mushroom latte soup, roasted whole rosemary chicken with gravy, mini beef burgers, gratinated Italian egg plant with Monterey Jack cheese, chicken sausage with onion sauce, butter milk prawns with oats, fish curry, fried maltose chicken wings, chicken murtubak and pratha with condiments and Chinese stylenoodles. Desserts include fruit crepes, doughnuts with toppings, chilled and hot desserts, Mother's Day cake and local cakes.
All buffets come with a complimentary glass of iced lemon tea. All mothers dining at the Mother's Day Buffet will be given a mystery gift.Golden Sands Resort's Mother's Day Brunch will be held at the Garden Café on Sunday, 11 May, 2014 from 12:00noon to 3:00pm. Price: RM 62++ (adult) RM 31++ (child – 6 to 11 years old). For reservations, call 04-886 1911.


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Apple monitors Infowars app for content violations
Apple Inc. said on Wednesday that an app belonging to popular conspiracy theorist Alex Jones remains in the company's mobile App Store because it has not been found to be in violation of any content policies.
The Infowars Official app has become the App Store's third most-downloaded news app this week after Apple removed access on Sunday to some of Jones' podcasts from its digital store. Apple had said the podcasts violated the company's rules against hate speech.
The company had not explained why the app remained available until issuing a statement on Wednesday.
"We strongly support all points of view being represented on the App Store, as long as the apps are respectful to users with differing opinions, and follow our clear guidelines, ensuring the App Store is a safe marketplace for all," Apple told Reuters in a statement.
Jones' podcasts differed from the Infowars app in a key way. The podcast app allowed access to an extensive list of previous episodes, subjecting all of those past episodes to Apple's content rules.
The Infowars app contains only rebroadcasts of the current day's episodes, subjecting a much smaller set of content to the rules. Apple said it regularly monitors all apps for content violations.
"We continue to monitor apps for violations of our guidelines and if we find content that violates our guidelines and is harmful to users we will remove those apps from the store as we have done previously," Apple said.
Google parent Alphabet Inc, Facebook Inc and Spotify Technology SA also removed some content this week that had been produced by Jones. Google has not said why the Infowars app, which offers live streams and articles, was not removed in its app store as part of the actions.
Twitter has drawn public outcry for not removing Jones' account. The company is responding by expediting a review of its content policies, according to an internal email that Chief Executive Jack Dorsey shared on Twitter on Wednesday.
The message noted that Twitter would have taken action against Jones had he posted the same content on its service as he had on Facebook and YouTube.
The post Apple monitors Infowars app for content violations appeared first on Faith Matters.
Categories: Alex Jones, app, Apple, applications, Content, content violation, Google, Infowars, News, Spotify


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Tree widget
The tree widget is for displaying trees of "things". The tree widget supports expanding and collapsing of nodes, single or multiple selections, and a flexible TreeModel interface to provide its data.
<fd:tree id="..." state="..." root-visible="true" selection="multiple|single"> <fd:tree-model type="..."/> <fd:on-selection-changed> ... </fd:on-selection-changed> <fd:on-create> ... </fd:on-create> <fd:validation> ... </fd:validation> <fd:attributes> ... </fd:attributes> </fd:tree>
All elements and attributes, except for id, are optional.
See the field widget for information on common attributes and elements.
The tree model
See the interface TreeModel. Essentially, can be a tree of any sort of objects (there is no interface for the nodes in the tree). Each parent node should be able to identify its children uniquely by means of a key (some string).
CForms ships with two implementations of TreeModel: one generic implementation (DefaultTreeModel), and one for browsing over Cocoon/Avalon sources (= filesystem-like structures).
You can set the form model in the form definition, or set it at runtime using the setModel method on the tree widget.
Source tree model
<fd:tree-model type="source" src="..."> <fd:fileset> <fd:include pattern="..."/> <fd:exclude pattern="..."/> </fd:fileset> <fd:dirset> <fd:include pattern="..."/> <fd:exclude pattern="..."/> </fd:dirset> </fd:tree-model>
The src attribute defines the root of the content to be browsed. For example, to browse the content of the webapp directory, specify src="context://". Of course, you can also use "file://" or other traversable sources [todo: link to some page with info about sources].
The fd:fileset and fd:dirset elements are optional. The fileset patterns are used to filter files based on their name, and the dirset patterns are used to filter directories based on their names.
There can be multiple (or none at all) fd:include and fd:exclude elements inside fd:fileset or fd:dirset. The include patterns will be evaluated first, the exclude patterns next, so the exclude patterns have higher precendence.
The patterns are wildcard patterns. They are the same as for the wildcard matcher in the sitemap, thus simply use a * as wildcard (the ** syntax makes no sense here, as the pattern is evaluated on individual names, not on full paths).
Custom models
<fd:tree-model type="java" class="..."/>
whereby the class attribute specifies a class implementing TreeModel. The class can implement Avalon interfaces to get the Logger, ServiceManager and Context.
Programmatically assigning a model
Here's an example of how to build a tree model programatically using the provided DefaultTreeModel in flowscript:
importClass(Packages.org.apache.cocoon.forms.formmodel.tree.DefaultTreeModel); [...] var node1 = new DefaultTreeModel.DefaultTreeNode("node 1") var node2 = new DefaultTreeModel.DefaultTreeNode("node 2") var root = new DefaultTreeModel.DefaultTreeNode("root") root.add("node1", node1); node1.add("node2", node2); var treeModel = new DefaultTreeModel(root); var treeWidget = form.getChild("mytree"); treeWidget.setModel(treeModel);
For the display of a tree widget, three special template elements are available:
- ft:tree: global element to insert a tree widget in the template. This also inserts two hidden fields, ":path" and ":action" to communicate a node action to the server, see below.
- ft:tree-nodes: the template to be executed for each tree node.
- ft:tree-children: used inside ft:tree-nodes to recursively apply the ft:tree-nodes template to the child nodes.
A very rough example is:
<ft:tree id="mytree"> <div> <ft:tree-nodes> <div> ${treeNode.node.data} </div> <ft:tree-children/> </ft:tree-nodes> </div> </ft:tree>
This example just shows the typical structural rendering, but doesn't contain any styling and javascript actions to trigger expansion and collapsion of nodes.
Inside ft:tree you have access to two variables:
- treeWidget, just a synonym for the normal "widget" variable that is available in the template of each widget.
- treeNode, provides access to the current tree node being rendered. More specifically it is a TreeWalker instance. Its node property gives access to the actual tree node.
Tree node actions
An action can be executed on a certain node in the tree. The available actions are:
- expand
- collapse
- toggle-collapse
- select
- unselect
- toggle-select
To execute an action, set the hidden field named tree-widget-full-name + ":action" to one of the actions listed above. The node on which the action is applied is specified in the hidden field named tree-widget-full-name + ":path". The node is specified as a slash-separated path of node keys. In the template you can access this easily with treeNode.path.
A more functional template
For a complete example of a tree template, see e.g. the file_explorer_template.xml file in the CForms samples. From there, you can "steal" the styling and the javascript to perform tree node actions.
API notes
See the API docs of the tree widgets for more information on how to access e.g. the selected nodes.
Errors and Improvements? If you see any errors or potential improvements in this document please help us: View, Edit or comment on the latest development version (registration required).


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I don't see how George Will can keep his job.
I realize he's likely receiving the loud and myriad calls for his firing as further evidence of the "speech codes" he wrote about in the very column that kicked up this controversy in the first place.
But this has nothing to do with punishing unpopular speech and everything to do with losing all credibility when you join the ranks of people who deny the existence of other people's trauma.
Will is helping spread misinformation. He's no better than Holocaust deniers, Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists and the monsters who tell parents of school shooting victims that the massacres that robbed them of their children were a hoax.
If you deny the truth because it doesn't fit your agenda, you're not a journalist. You're a propagandist.
In his June 6 column, Will wrote that by addressing the climate of sexual assault, colleges and universities have made "victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges." He questioned government rape statistics and called "the 20 percent assault rate preposterous." He repeatedly put the words sexual assault in quotes, which, as Jezebel writer Erin Gloria Ryan points out, is the written equivalent of saying "So-called sexual assault. Quote unquote sexual assault. Lolrape."
It's been a while — though not long enough — since an out-of-touch conservative said something idiotic about rape. (Check out this handy chart for some of the more heinous examples, including Missouri congressman Todd Akin's 2012 gem, "If it's legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," and this 1990 doozy from Texas gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams, "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.")
We've been here before. Too many times before. We'll go here again.
Fine. Free speech is a beautiful, messy, invaluable thing. When politicians and writers and pop stars and athletes and heck, our own family members exercise it to say things we disagree with, we have an obligation to hear them out — and a right to view them forever in the context of those words.
I'm not suggesting Will's right to free speech should be curbed. He can go around as an American citizen saying whatever nonsense he wants to about rape victims, and plenty of places will be happy to hand him a microphone.
He's no longer credible as a journalist, whose first job, above all others, is to tell the truth.
Twitter @heidistevens13


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The teardown experts at iFixit turned their attention this week to Apple's latest version of the 15-inch Unibody MacBook Pro. The Early 2011 edition looks a lot like its predecessors, with two new features on the logic board. It's the first Apple portable with a quad-core processor, Intel's 2.0 or 2.2 GHz Core i7, and it includes the shiny-new Thunderbolt I/O connection for screaming data and display transfers.
(See Related: Intel Thunderbolt Bolts Through Data Transfers)
According to Intel, Thunderbolt allows you to transfer a full-length HD movie in less than 30 seconds. It puts PCI Express and DisplayPort into a single, bi-directional connector, with what appears to be a dedicated 10 Gbps data channel for each. "That's nice, as you don't want your display competing with your external hard drive for bandwidth," iFixit notes.
As many as six Thunderbolt devices can chain to a single port. "That's not a problem today as we're not even aware of six products that support Thunderbolt yet," although if the I/O standard takes off, it could become an issue, iFixit notes.
What else is new?
· Upgraded wireless connectivity via Broadcom's BCM 4331 chip and a fourth antenna on the wireless card.
· Though battery capacity is still 77.5 watt-hours, estimated battery life has fallen to seven hours from a previously reported eight to nine. "Has performance really decreased, or is Apple being more realistic with their estimates?" iFixit muses. "We don't have 7 hours to wait and find out."
· Regular tinkerers may be startled to find an AMD-branded Radeon HD 6490M graphics chip. AMD acquired ATi in 2006 but took five years to replace the ATi brand with its own.
"Aside from the logic board differences, there really isn't much else that makes this machine different from its 15″ Unibody ancestors," iFixit concludes, giving the MacBook Pro Unibody 15″ Early 2011 a repairability score of 7 out of 10, 10 being easiest. Most components are easy to access, though Apple doesn't consider the battery to be user-replaceable, and LCD repair is still "very tricky."
A caveat worth noting: "One thing that has us a little concerned about the new models is their quality control. A stripped screw near the subwoofer enclosure and an unlocked ZIF socket for the IR sensor should not be things found inside a completely unmolested computer with an $1,800 base price."


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Author by Margaret Lazarus Dean
Genre : History
Editor : Graywolf Press
Type Books : PDF & Epub
File Pages : 386
Download →
Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, a breathtaking elegy to the waning days of human spaceflight as we have known it In the 1960s, humans took their first steps away from Earth, and for a time our possibilities in space seemed endless. But in a time of austerity and in the wake of high-profile disasters like Challenger, that dream has ended. In early 2011, Margaret Lazarus Dean traveled to Cape Canaveral for NASA's last three space shuttle launches in order to bear witness to the end of an era. With Dean as our guide to Florida's Space Coast and to the history of NASA, Leaving Orbit takes the measure of what American spaceflight has achieved while reckoning with its earlier witnesses, such as Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Oriana Fallaci. Along the way, Dean meets NASA workers, astronauts, and space fans, gathering possible answers to the question: What does it mean that a spacefaring nation won't be going to space anymore?


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By "video game movie", I do not mean movies that were adapted from video games. Oh, no.
Instead, I mean movies that have video games as a plot element. In light of the upcoming French thriller Black Heaven, now is as good a time as any to take a look back at some of the other films that have incorporated video games into their plot. Several of these movies came out during the early 1980s, hoping to capitalize on the then gaming craze.
These might not be the best films, but they are interesting. And that's good enough for me! Let's dive in. Shall we?
Set in a massively multiplayer online game of the same name, Avalon is a live action film from Mamoru Oshii, who directed the landmark anime Ghost in the Shell. Shot in Poland with a Polish cast, the film is a knowing look at online gaming and, for when it was made in 2001, ahead of its time in many ways. And like most Oshii films, Avalon is interesting, but messy.
Cloak & Dagger
Henry Thomas (from E.T.) witness a murder and gets an Atari 5200 video game cartridge from a dying victim. On the cartridge are plans for a bomber plane. This movie is also why I am afraid of old ladies. Big plus is Dabney Coleman. And his mustache.
David Cronenberg? Genius.
The Last Starfighter
When I was six this was the bestest movie ever.
Like The Last Starfighter, Tron was one of the first films to use computer graphics. The film followed an arcade owner (and former computer software employee) as he delved into the game world of...Tron.
War Games
A "master" at computer games, Matthew Broderick finds computer games — one of which inadvertently could start thermonuclear war. Added bonus: Dabney Coleman.
The Wizard
You know it, you love it, The Wizard. Wall-to-wall Nintendo tie-ins, the movie game American viewers a sneak peak at Super Mario Bros. 3. It is basically a very long Nintendo commercial, but I can still remember seeing this in the theater. And the horrible 1980s clothes I wore.


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First Listen: Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros, 'Here'
Hear 'Here' In Its Entirety
Audio for this feature is no longer available.
As young musicians get older and more successful, many lose the ability to understand and convey what's it's like to want something without having had it. If you're looking for a unifying theory behind the proverbial "sophomore slump," it's often no more complicated than that: A successful first album is wired with want — with passion and aspiration — while its follow-up bears the weight of not only expectations, but also comfort. When they work, sequels find compelling ways to view life through the unfamiliar lens of success.
True to its title, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' first album, Up From Below, peeks out from a pretty deep hole. Singer Alex Ebert surveys a dark past that stretches back to his birth, then takes tentative steps to salvation — the embrace of friends and lovers and a lifestyle in which dependence is directed toward kind people instead of darker and more destructive elements. It's a back-from-the-brink record: Even its celebratory smash single "Home" revolves around happiness that's clearly hard-won.
For Here — out May 29, it's the first of two albums Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros will release this year — Ebert and company aren't so burdened with the weight of their pasts. Gone are Doors-ian ruminations on damnation like "Desert Song," and in their place are milder ballads about the aftermath and side effects of being saved. "Home" gets a clear-cut Part 2 in the anthemic "That's What's Up," another opportunity for Ebert and fellow singer Jade to sing to each other winningly; it may or may not endure the way the ubiquitous "Home" has, but it's a charmer.
"That's What's Up" is arguably Here's best song — it does make the strongest first impression — but it's not the only highlight. Jade gets another fine vocal showcase in "Fiya Wata," and Ebert finds peace with God in "I Don't Wanna Pray," while the band conjures up a worthy mission statement about celebration right out of the gate, in "Man on Fire." Like Up From Below, Here is occasionally undercut by production that's either timelessly simple or curiously swampy and primitive, depending on how faithfully you wish the band would re-create the three-dimensional energy of its amazing live shows. But both albums exist to serve the same purpose, and both succeed in their mission: They document sweet songs that search, seek and ultimately revel in the best of what they find.


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While church fathers continue to come out against the University of Notre Dame for inviting President Barack Obama to commencement, ordinary Catholics support the university's decision by a margin of nearly 2-1, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Obama's support for abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research put him at odds with Catholic teaching. Nonetheless, Notre Dame has invited the president to speak and receive an honorary degree during commencement exercises Sunday.
The web site LifeSiteNews.com has counted 76 American bishops who have spoken out against Notre Dame since the invitation was announced. Baltimore Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien was among the first, writing to Notre Dame President John Jenkins in March that he was "disappointed and bewildered" by the invitation.
Locally, the controversy recalls the outcry that greeted the decision of Loyola College of Maryland to invite former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, another abortion rights supporter, to participate in commencement there in 2005.According to the Pew survey, 50 percent of Catholics polled between April 23 and 27 said Notre Dame was right to invite Obama. Twenty-eight percent said the school was wrong.
"These findings are consistent with Catholics' overall views of Obama: A majority voted from him in the 2009 presidential election and express approval of his performance in office thus far," Pew reports. "The new findings are also consistent with Catholics' views on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, with pluralities in the poll expressing support for each."
The survey noted a divide between more- and less-observant Catholics. Those who said they attended mass weekly said Notre Dame was wrong by a margin of 45 to 37 percent; those who attend less frequently said Notre Dame was right by a margin of 56 to 23 percent.
Asked about the controversy during his prime time press conference last month, Obama spoke of a White House task force that he said was working with groups on both sides of the abortion divide on ways to reduce "the number of unwanted pregnancies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion or at least considering getting an abortion."
"I believe that women should have the right to choose, but I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on," he said. "And that's where I'm going to focus.


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Happy 2011!Friday, January 7th, 2011
It's a week into January 2011. And I'm shocked to realise I haven't posted anything in over two months.
It's been a busy time, these past two months. Six weeks of November and December were dedicated to UNIFEM and the office Christmas party, that was exhausting. And also totally worth it. I wish I had taken photos at both those events, but somehow I didn't.
The Christmas/New Year's season was spent focused on applying to business school. If you're surprised, I understand completely, given that a year ago I was fairly certain I wouldn't be applying. Partly as a result, fashion has been on my mind even more so than usual.
I wish I could have seen the New Year's fireworks over the bay.
I really want to go on vacation. A visit to Bangkok, a trip to Milan/Barcelona, and then also to Mt Kinabalu. And today I claim full funding for everything, I can't wait to see it.
Happy 2011, may it be the best year yet!