text:
"My name is Cesar Bermudez, I was born and raised in San Francisco, Mission District."
Two years ago, a teenager introduced himself after several tries in front of a video camera. He was an intern for the Conscious Youth Media Crew, a San Francisco digital production studio, which was recording interviews for production practice.
If you could go back in time and look into the viewfinder of this camera, you would have seen a tall 16-year-old, with his wide body nervously shifting in a chair and filling the frame; his close-cut, squared hairline framing eyes that darted around the room.
The person behind the camera asked him serious questions. Bermudez pondered carefully, breaking the tension with a nervous laugh. Asked what inspired him, he seemed unsure. Then a more clear voice emerged.
"The things that inspire me, are everybody that never give up on me," Bermudez said, "especially my mom, my school counselors, my uncles, all my family…my cousins — everybody…who hasn't given up on me."
Bermudez recorded just eight minutes of tape on February 23, 2010. When he left the Conscious Youth Media Crew office that day, the files were loaded onto a computer for a routine project that was never completed. On that hard drive, one piece of advice lay dormant.
"Put business before pleasure," Bermudez said, his back against a wall tagged with colorful art. "If you are on the street messing up, get high school done first. You are going to want a job someday, and you are going to want more than minimum wage."
On October 24 of this year, Bermudez died on the sidewalk from a shower of bullets just as the sun set in the Mission District. His death at age 19 was the 58th homicide reported in San Francisco this year. But he was more than a number. This sidewalk would become the site for an altar prepared by his friends and family – all the people who never gave up on him. These people visited his altar regularly when it was up on the 2800 block of Harrison. White and red stains from candle wax remain from a week of grieving and remembrance, and a bloody murder.
His Family
"In the last two weeks, I saw him act differently," said Esperanza Bermudez, Cesar's mother, who spoke for the family. "He acted sad, but his face wasn't sad."
The last time she saw her son was on the morning he died. Before she left the house, she peeked into his bedroom. He was sleeping late.
"He didn't call me that day," she said, "and I didn't call him either."
She told this story as she sat on a small chair in the middle of the front room of her apartment just a few days after he died. A box containing photos of her son throughout his life at her feet. The newness of Cesar's death sounded fresh in her voice. She has this strength born of rearing three children in a big city, something she summoned when asked to speak about the life of her dead son to a stranger whom he never met.
Esperanza Bermudez was one of the first people to know something was wrong the day Cesar died, but she didn't know exactly what happened until she arrived on Harrison Street. About fifteen minutes after the shooting, Cesar's aunt rang their doorbell.
"She told me, 'Get ready. We need to leave soon. It's Cesar,' " Esperanza said. "And that's the only thing she would tell me, and my daughter already knew that he had been killed, but she didn't say that to me. I thought maybe he had been beaten up."
She grabbed a sweater, and her diabetes medicine, just in case she needed it, and left with her family. She kept asking, "Where is Cesar? Where is he?" They didn't answer her.
They neared Folsom Street, and then Garfield Square came into view.
"I saw the park, and I remembered I didn't like that he used to hang around there," Esperanza said. "And I noticed we weren't going to the hospital, and I said, 'Where is Cesar?' And they said, 'You're going to see soon.'"
They arrived at the 2800 block of Harrison, and Esperanza asked if her son was dead. There, they finally answered. She wept, distraught and inconsolable.
Desperate to see her son, Esperanza broke open the body bag just to know that it was really Cesar inside. Until nearly 9 p.m., police maintained the crime scene with the bag that held the body of her youngest child.
Cesar Bermudez was born in the summer of 1993. A picture of him in childhood shows him at a party wearing a bright white miniature tuxedo and a big smile. He was the last-born child in the Bermudez family, shy but loving, said those who were closest to him. He was smart, introspective and deep, they added, but he never excelled in school.
He loved the Giants, sports, his friends, music and tamales. On his 19th birthday – his last — he told his mother he didn't want any gifts, just a big dinner filled with tamales.
Esperanza's box of photos documents Cesar's short life. The pictures recount a life filled with family togetherness. Each milestone was celebrated with a big party, his family gathered around him.
Cesar's mother and father are married. They work hard to support their children in the service industry. He left behind some nieces and nephews who look just like him when he was little.The little boy and girl played and ran around their grandmother, unaware she was talking about their uncle.
Esperanza holds each photograph and describes what was happening, and who Cesar was with. She picks up the last one. The timeline in that box of photos ended around the year Cesar recorded the video. Gradually, he didn't want to be in photos, and had asked his mother not to take any more.
At his memorial at a funeral home on Valencia, he lay in an open casket the same color as the tiny tuxedo he once wore at special events. A big projection screen to the right displayed images from his life from Esperanza's box for everyone to see.
People wore ribbons with his name in molded white and gold plastic lettering. Esperanza leaned over the casket, weeping and holding onto her son, asking why in Spanish.
"¿Por qué, Cesar, por qué?" she asked. His father stood by in silent grief.
Mixed into her personal collection of photos is a Muni ticket from the day of his birth given to her by a family member for good luck. What sticks out in this pile of mementos is a recently clipped newspaper article about his death from the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Community
The day after Cesar's death, more than two dozen people gathered at the Mission Beacon Center to plan a community response to the recent increase in violence in the Mission. Cesar's death was the third in the neighborhood in about a week.
Seven days later, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr met with the press at Supervisor David Campos's City Hall office. They, too, were there to address the recent increase in violence on the street in the Mission.
Across town, Cesar's family was preparing to gather at the funeral home on Valencia.
"The victim was with other people, and they were outside when the suspects walked up on them, and basically opened fire," said Police Chief Suhr of Cesar's death to a room filled with journalists. "We believe he was the intended target, that it was very, very personal. The information that our gang task force has is that this was a personal dispute within the gang that Mr. Bermudez was a member of."
From the perspective of the reporters in the room holding microphones for their daily story, Cesar Bermudez was a gangbanger who was killed by gang violence. The bullets were meant for him, and on the news later that night, that was the end of the story.
"Do you think the change in the culture of the Mission District, the gentrification, has anything to do with the recent rise in violence? Is it a response to what is going on around them?" asked one reporter to Police Chief Suhr.
The answer was no. The question, however, made it easy to understand how the gang violence narrative is told over and over again to the public — often through the lens of class stereotypes.
The case is still open, and Mission Station Captain Bob Moser and Chief Suhr declined to comment further on why Cesar Bermudez was killed.
The night of his death Bermudez was with a friend, who also declined to comment for this story. "He was my friend," he said. "And I just don't feel right talking about it right now." He was one of three people to see Cesar in the last moments of life.
The other two are suspects in the murder case, and their names have yet to be released.
And friends who knew Cesar, and those who know what it's like to grow up in the Mission, are too afraid, ashamed or shocked to admit for this story that he was in a gang. Though, they did warn to avoid using the phrase "he got caught up in the wrong crowd."
For kids like Cesar, the "wrong crowd" is often made up of the kids from 1st grade, or the best friend from down the street. These kids are the crowd for youth who grow up like Cesar. It's difficult to leave your environment at the age of 16.
But Cesar Bermudez could be given credit for trying to avoid it for most of his life. Before the camera two years ago, he spoke candidly of his struggles in school.
"I never really been able to keep up in school," said Bermudez in his video. "Once I started middle school, I started messing up, failing. Seventh grade, I got kicked out of school. I changed to a different middle school, and started off pretty good, until I, like, started meeting more people…until I started, like, missing school and not caring anymore."
In the video, Cesar also tells the camera one thing people may not know about him: that he is really interested in learning about video and audio production. He took an elective course at John O'Connell High School taught by Chris Runde from the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC). Later, Runde urged him to work directly with the coalition, and Cesar agreed.
"He was really a very quiet young man, but we developed a good relationship," said Chris Runde, an audio production teacher at BAVC. "This is just my personal opinion without really knowing what his home situation was like, but he just seemed kind of sad, and someone who didn't like school very much. But with me, when he would ask questions, they would be good questions."
It was through these audio production classes that Bermudez found inspiration and a glimpse of what he could do with his future.
"One personal goal is finishing high school," Bermudez said. "And probably going to college. Probably right now, I want to study audio production…yeah, that's it."
Runde remembers a turning point in their mentor-student relationship early on at O'Connell. He was called in to a parent-teacher meeting with Bermudez and his mother, Esperanza.
"Essentially all the other teachers took a turn to give their impressions," Runde said. "I felt really bad for him because no one was offering anything positive. And what I heard, it was just a different impression than I had with all my interactions with him. I was happy to be able to be the one person in the room who had some positive things to say, and I think he appreciated that."
After a few semesters, Bermudez would eventually stop showing up at BAVC, but Runde would often see him hanging around on the street with his friends, just a few blocks from the office.
"And he'd be sort of embarrassed because he knew that he hadn't followed up, but I still encouraged him to come back," he said. "It's very odd walking around there now, knowing that I'm never going to see him again. Very strange, very sad."
During the two years Runde spent getting to know Bermudez, he guided him through the process of making beats. Cesar's favorite kinds were ones with local sounds and flavors, dark heavy, booming bass, 808s, and hyphy melodies, a Bay Area style of hip hop. This was a skill in which Bermudez could really excel.
"He was really trying to capture the sounds of his own heroes," Runde said as he listened on big speakers to some of Cesar's early work. "It would've been interesting if he had chosen to pursue it further to see what he could've done."
Take it From Someone Who Knows
In the days after Cesar's death, his family apartment became a memorial to him. Hung over his bedroom door was a full color 2-foot crucifix. His mother Esperanza opened his closet where Cesar's clothing hangs, mostly sports jerseys and jeans, and some Giants flat caps. She said as she closed the door, "and that's where they will stay, forever." In the front room, a cluster of candles was lit to him, more flat caps hung above his small altar, and CD's were stacked the table.
They look well used through listening, and some are missing the liner notes. One stands out on top of the stack, a Big Rich album in a scratched jewel case. Esperanza pointed to it and says he loved that one. Cesar was a big fan.
Richard Bougere Jr., or Big Rich, is a Bay Area hip-hop artist known for San Francisco tributes like "San Francisco Anthem." He grew up north of Cesar in the Fillmore District, and as a youth he knew the sort of street scene that ended Cesar's life. But he also had music, just like Cesar.
At 15, Big Rich recalled, a member of his musical group pulled out of a big talent show to pursue a risky business deal on the street. That was the moment their paths diverged: Rich chose music and stayed the course. It's a path he wishes his fan Cesar had chosen.
Big Rich sits in a soundproof studio in front of a group of teens. He has a family and these kids, whom he mentors through Project LEVEL, a full offering music industry youth program aimed at giving kids an outlet to express their artistic talents. It's a setting in which he said he thinks Cesar might have thrived.
One of the young musical artists is a singer named Veronica. She's just finished laying down vocal tracks for a new song she's producing.
The interview with Big Rich has turned into a group discussion about growing up in San Francisco with the label "at-risk."
"Sometimes you can't choose who you hang out with. It's what you're born into, or it is what you know," Veronica said. "It's easy for an outsider to be like 'Oh, you're hanging out with the wrong crowd.' Mostly in the Hispanic culture, these 'gang-bangers,' that's our family, that's our cousin, that's our uncle. I mean, it's hard."
Some of the kids in the room said they knew of Cesar, or heard of his death. News travels fast in the Mission, and all over San Francisco, and now has come full circle to one of his musical heroes.
"That's why I wish we could've had him, that we could've got him before it happened," Big Rich said. "Growing up in Fillmore and the Mission, we have limited options. They don't have a chance. How at 17, or 18, can they say, 'I can't be down with that'? They don't even know; their brains are still developing. But it's like I always say, no matter what, at the end of the day, it is up to you if you want to break that cycle."
Big Rich looked at each of his students sitting on the floor in front of him, silent and listening to a conversation that was really about their lives, and about a choice that was out there waiting for them.
"That's what I always try to instill in them," he said. "When things get tough or when things get rough, the only thing that is going to get me out is me."
Mission Local reporters Rigoberto Hernandez and Andrea Valencia contributed to this story.


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CERN — Researchers have recreated the universe's primordial soup in miniature format by colliding lead atoms with extremely high energy in the 27-kilometer-long particle accelerator, Large Hadron Collider, (LHC) at CERN in Geneva. The primordial soup is a so-called quark-gluon plasma and researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, have measured its liquid properties with great accuracy at the LHC's top energy. The results have been submitted to Physical Review Letters, which is the top scientific journal for nuclear and particle physics.
A few billionths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was made up of a kind of extremely hot and dense primordial soup of the most fundamental particles, especially quarks and gluons. This state is called quark-gluon plasma. By colliding lead nuclei at a record-high energy of 5.02 TeV in the world's most powerful particle accelerator, LHC, it has been possible to recreate this state in the ALICE experiment's detector and measure its properties.
"The analyses of the collisions make it possible, for the first time, to measure the precise characteristics of a quark-gluon plasma at the highest energy ever and to determine how it flows," explains You Zhou, who is a postdoc in the ALICE research group at the Niels Bohr Institute. You Zhou, together with a small, fast-working team of international collaboration partners, led the analysis of the new data and measured how the quark-gluon plasma flows and fluctuates after it is formed by the collisions between lead ions.
Advanced methods of measurement
The focus has been on the quark-gluon plasma's collective properties, which show that this state of matter behaves more like a liquid than a gas, even at the very highest energy densities. The new measurements, which use new methods to study the correlation between many particles, make it possible to determine the viscosity of this exotic fluid with great precision.
You Zhou explains that the experimental method is very advanced and is based on the fact that, when two spherical atomic nuclei are shot at each other and hit each other a bit off center, a quark-gluon plasma is formed with a slightly elongated shape, somewhat like an American football. This means that the pressure difference between the center of this extremely hot 'droplet' and the surface varies along the different axes. The pressure differential drives the expansion and flow and consequently one can measure a characteristic variation in the number of particles produced in the collisions as a function of the angle.
"It is remarkable that we are able to carry out such detailed measurements on a drop of early universe, that only has a radius of about one millionth of a billionth of a meter. The results are fully consistent with the physical laws of hydrodynamics, i.e. the theory of flowing liquids, and it shows that the quark-gluon plasma behaves like a fluid. It is, however, a very special liquid, as it does not consist of molecules like water, but of the fundamental particles quarks and gluons," explains Jens Jørgen Gaardhøje, professor and head of the ALICE group at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
Jens Jørgen Gaardhøje adds that they are now in the process of mapping this state with ever-increasing precision — and even further back in time.
- View article on ArXiv

subset: commoncrawl


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This article is more than 1 year old
Openreach hits BT with £70m charge in Q2
'Foundation for certainty and clarity'
BT is shelling out £70m to fund the creation of Openreach - its new access services division.
Openretch - as it's become affectionately known - forms part of a regulatory deal with Ofcom to ensure that rival telcos and operators get equal access to wholesale services from BT.
In September BT agreed to abide by 230 legally-binding undertakings to help foster greater competition in the UK's telecoms sector including "substantive structural, product and governance changes, affecting both its current and future networks".
Central to that was the creation of a new access services division within BT called Openreach to ensure that all telcos get equal access to BT's network.
Openstench - as Openretch is also known - should be up and running early in the new year.
News of the charge came as BT reported results for the three months to September. And as in the past the UK's dominant fixed line telco reported a fall in traditional revenues in Q2 and a sharp rise in income from what it calls its "new wave" area, which include ICT and broadband.
Or as BT's spin machine put it: "Our traditional business continues to operate in what remains a challenging environment. Our new wave businesses show strong growth both in the UK and internationally."
Indeed, new wave revenue was up 39 per cent compared to last year at £1.4bn.
For the group as a whole,Q2 revenue rose 5 per cent to £4.8bn.
But the £70m hit for Ovenready (aka Openstench) plus an increased payout for workers leaving the company helped to account for a 14 per cent drop in pre tax profits from £571m to £489m compared to last year.
Said chief exec Ben Verwaayen: "The transformation of BT is right on track with the delivery of another successful quarter.
"Revenue has again grown by 5 per cent, with new wave revenues up 39 per cent.
"The settlement we have reached with Ofcom in the UK provides a foundation for certainty and clarity which will deliver further benefits to our retail and wholesale customers and shareholders," he said.
Elsewhere, the giant telco also reported that its retail broadband service continues to face stiff competition from rivals such as AOL, Tiscali and Wanadoo. For although BT provides 6.2m wholesale DSL lines and its retail division has some 2.1m punters, it is only winning one in four of new DSL punters.
By mid morning shares in BT were down 5.4p (2.5 per cent) at 209.09p. ®


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Title: Kissing Trouble (In The Dark Series, #2)
Author: Morgana Phoenix
Genre: Psychological Thriller Romance
*Warning: Strong language and sexual content
Hosted by: Lady Amber's Tours
Their screams will be his lullaby.
Escaping into the wilderness should have been a piece of cake for a super-babysitter like Julie Brewer. But even she isn't prepared for the horror awaiting their arrival, or the man who had broken her heart all those years ago to suddenly show up on the doorstep.
Mason Brody has a plan and it is simple: wait for Julie to grow up. Yet in no way is he prepared for the fierce amazon who ambushes him with a baseball bat, or the way the shy fifteen year old has blossomed into a beautiful, passionate woman he can't get enough of.
But there is so much more than just their past between them. There is a dark force lurking in the shadows, waiting for the chance to appease its hunger for death and it will stop at nothing until it is fed.
Can Mason and Julie keep the evil at bay long enough to escape? Or will the monster add their lives to its list?
International Bestselling author Airicka Phoenix lives in a world where unicorns, fairies and mermaids run amok through her home on a daily basis. When she's not chasing after pixies and rounding up imps, also known as her four children, she can be found conjuring up evil villains, bad-ass heroines and swoon-worthy heroes to play with.
Airicka is singlehandedly responsible for her greatly anticipated collections, the Touch Saga, The Lost Girl Duology, The Regeneration Series, Games of Fire & Betraying Innocence. She also writes mature paranormal & contemporary romance under the dark guise of Morgana Phoenix. To date, she is responsible for the Sons of Judgment Saga, My Soul For You, & Kissing Trouble.
Author Links:
Website: www.AirickaPhoenix.com
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/VgLqD
Airicka Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Airicka-Phoenix/252135634831614
Morgan Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Morgana-Phoenix/148839731972606
Airicka's Mystical Creations: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Airickas-Mystical-Creations/462373910480084
The Dark Realm: https://www.facebook.com/TheDarkCourt
The Touch Saga Page: https://www.facebook.com/TouchSeriesByAirickaPhoenix
https://twitter.com/AirickaPhoenix (@AirickaPhoenix)
https://twitter.com/AirickaPhoenix (@Morgana_Phoenix)
Booktropolous: https://booktropoloussocial.com/index.php?do=/profile-941/
Book Pages:
Barns & Nobles: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/airicka-phoenix
Inktera: http://www.inktera.com


text:
The Tigers featured a balanced attack while finishing just two points shy of a national championship at the 2012 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships as they scored 48 points for a runner-up finish in the team race in an exciting conclusion to the college season a year ago. Leading the way were 12 All-Americans scoring in events ranging from the sprints, hurdles and relays, to the jumps and throws as the Tigers again proved themselves among the best teams in all of collegiate track and field.
They will look to follow that formula for success in 2013 as they again feature one of the more balanced rosters in the country featuring All-America candidates across each of the event areas. With three-time NCAA long jump silver medalist Damar Forbes leading the way and emerging sprint star Aaron Ernest contending for NCAA titles on the track, the team boasts a host of returning firepower and an infusion of talent with one of the nation's top recruiting classes that is sure to lead LSU the pinnacle of collegiate track and field again this spring.
Fourth in a 10-part series previews a the men's jumpers and pole vaulters competing during the 2013 season.
Men's Jumps & Pole Vault
After qualifying for the national final in the long jump at the 2011 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships, Tiger standout Damar Forbes soared into the record book when he smashed his personal record and joined the 27-foot club by jumping 27 feet, 0 inches for his effort with one of the more impressive performances by an LSU Tiger in recent memory.
That performance earned Forbes his first career All-America accolade as the sophomore finished as the NCAA runner-up and within six inches of taking home his first career NCAA title. He became the first Tiger since John Moffitt in 2004 to eclipse the 27-foot mark in the long jump with the No. 3-ranked mark on LSU's all-time outdoor performance list in the event.
Forbes followed with a sensational junior season in 2012 during which he won two more NCAA silver medals as the national runner-up in the long jump during both the indoor and outdoor seasons.
Also a three-time All-SEC selection in the long jump during his collegiate career, Forbes is a national championship contender once again as he leads the way for the Tigers as a senior in 2013. He is the only Olympian returning to the LSU roster this year after making his Olympics debut for Jamaica last summer while earning an 18th-place finish in the London Games.
While Forbes returns for what is sure to be an exciting senior season this spring, the Tigers are without their top scorer from the NCAA Outdoor Championships a season ago with the departure of one of the nation's premier dual jumpers in Kyron Blaise.
The Trinidad & Tobago international earned three All-America honors in his final season with the Tigers in 2012. Blaise scored a team-leading nine points with his performance at the NCAA Outdoor Championships as he won the bronze medal with a third-place finish in the triple jump and added three points with a sixth-place finish in the long jump. In all, Blaise won a trio of All-America honors and a pair of All-SEC honors during his senior season.
The Tigers do return a deep and talented squad of pole vaulters this season, led by All-SEC selection Thomas Reinecke for his senior season and NCAA Championships qualifier Andreas Duplantis for his sophomore season as they also look to lead the group in 2013.
Duplantis is the team's top returning vaulter after clearing his personal record of 17-5 ½ at the NCAA East Preliminary Rounds and advancing to the national semifinal as a freshman. He also cleared 17-4 ½ in his debut at the SEC Outdoor Championships while finishing the season as the No. 9-ranked performer in the event in the program's history.
A native of Lafayette and son of former Tiger All-American Greg Duplantis, the younger Duplantis even earned international experience following the collegiate season while competing for the Swedish National Team at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Barcelona, Spain. That's where he finished in 10th place worldwide in his final meet of the 2012 season.
Reinecke, a former All-SEC performer in the pole vault as the SEC Indoor silver medalist in 2010, cleared his personal record of 17-4 ½ as a junior a year ago. Senior Joseph Caraway is also a member of the 17-foot club with a best of 17-0 ¾ during his collegiate career.
Enrolling at LSU in January for the start of the 2013 spring semester is freshman triple jump prospect Fitzroy Dunkley. The Jamaican product is young in the sport after only competing in the triple jump during the 2012 season in his final campaign at Kingston's Jamaica College. That's where he set PRs of 6-8 in the high jump and 49-5 ½ in the triple jump at the 2012 Jamaican Boys & Girls Championships. Dunkley is a high school teammate of LSU's freshman sprinter Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake.
From: http://www.lsusports.net/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=5200&ATCLID=205876377


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Amenhotep III
|Amenhotep III
|Nibmu(`w)areya,[1] Mimureya, Amenophis III
Colossal statue of Amenhotep III
|1391–1353 or
1388–1351 BC (18th Dynasty)
|Thutmose IV
|<templatestyles src="Template:Hidden begin/styles.css"/>
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
"The Younger Lady"
|Thutmose IV
|1353 BC or 1351 BC
|Malkata, Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III, Colossi of Memnon
Amenhotep III (Hellenized as Amenophis III; Egyptian Amāna-Ḥātpa; meaning Amun is Satisfied) also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty. According to different authors, he ruled Egypt from June 1386 to 1349 BC or June 1388 BC to December 1351 BC/1350 BC[4] after his father Thutmose IV died. Amenhotep III was the son of Thutmose by a minor wife Mutemwiya.[5]
His reign was a period of unprecedented prosperity and artistic splendour, when Egypt reached the peak of its artistic and international power. When he died in the 38th or 39th year of his reign, his son initially ruled as Amenhotep IV, but then changed his own royal name to Akhenaten.
The son of the future Thutmose IV (the son of Amenhotep II) and a minor wife Mutemwiya, Amenhotep was born around 1388 BC.[6] He was a member of the Thutmosid family that had ruled Egypt for almost 150 years since the reign of Thutmose I.
Amenhotep III was the father of two sons with his Great Royal Wife Tiye . Their first son, Crown Prince Thutmose, predeceased his father and their second son, Amenhotep IV, later known as Akhenaten, ultimately succeeded Amenhotep III to the throne. Amenhotep III also may have been the father of a third child—called Smenkhkare, who later would succeed Akhenaten and briefly ruled Egypt as pharaoh.
Amenhotep III and Tiye may also have had four daughters: Sitamun, Henuttaneb, Isis or Iset, and Nebetah.[7] They appear frequently on statues and reliefs during the reign of their father and also are represented by smaller objects—with the exception of Nebetah.[8] Nebetah is attested only once in the known historical records on a colossal limestone group of statues from Medinet Habu.[9] This huge sculpture, that is seven meters high, shows Amenhotep III and Tiye seated side by side, "with three of their daughters standing in front of the throne—Henuttaneb, the largest and best preserved, in the centre; Nebetah on the right; and another, whose name is destroyed, on the left."[7]
Amenhotep III elevated two of his four daughters—Sitamun and Isis—to the office of "great royal wife" during the last decade of his reign. Evidence that Sitamun already was promoted to this office by Year 30 of his reign, is known from jar-label inscriptions uncovered from the royal palace at Malkata.[7] It should be noted that Egypt's theological paradigm encouraged a male pharaoh to accept royal women from several different generations as wives to strengthen the chances of his offspring succeeding him.[10] The goddess Hathor herself was related to Ra as first the mother and later wife and daughter of the god when he rose to prominence in the pantheon of the Ancient Egyptian religion.[7] Hence, Amenhotep III's marriage to his two daughters should not be considered unlikely based on contemporary views of marriage.
Amenhotep III is known to have married several foreign women:
- Gilukhepa, the daughter of Shuttarna II of Mitanni, in the tenth year of his reign.[11]
- Tadukhepa, the daughter of his ally Tushratta of Mitanni, Around Year 36 of his reign.[12][13]
- A daughter of Kurigalzu, king of Babylon.[13]
- A daughter of Kadashman-Enlil, king of Babylon.[13]
- A daughter of Tarhundaradu, ruler of Arzawa.[13]
- A daughter of the ruler of Ammia (in modern Syria).[13]
Amenhotep III has the distinction of having the most surviving statues of any Egyptian pharaoh, with over 250 of his statues having been discovered and identified. Since these statues span his entire life, they provide a series of portraits covering the entire length of his reign.
Another striking characteristic of Amenhotep III's reign is the series of over 200 large commemorative stone scarabs that have been discovered over a large geographic area ranging from Syria (Ras Shamra) through to Soleb in Nubia.[14] Their lengthy inscribed texts extol the accomplishments of the pharaoh. For instance, 123 of these commemorative scarabs record the large number of lions (either 102 or 110 depending on the reading) that Amenhotep III killed "with his own arrows" from his first regnal year up to his tenth year.[15] Similarly, five other scarabs state that the foreign princess who would become a wife to him, Gilukhepa, arrived in Egypt with a retinue of 317 women. She was the first of many such princesses who would enter the pharaoh's household.[15]
Another eleven scarabs record the excavation of an artificial lake he had built for his Great Royal Wife, Queen Tiye, in his eleventh regnal year,
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"Regnal Year 11 under the Majesty of... Amenhotep (III), ruler of Thebes, given life, and the Great Royal Wife Tiye; may she live; her father's name was Yuya, her mother's name Tuya. His Majesty commanded the making of a lake for the great royal wife Tiye—may she live—in her town of Djakaru. (near Akhmin). Its length is 3,700 (cubits) and its width is 700 (cubits). (His Majesty) celebrated the Festival of Opening the Lake in the third month of Inundation, day sixteen. His Majesty was rowed in the royal barge Aten-tjehen in it [the lake]."[16]
Amenhotep appears to have been crowned while still a child, perhaps between the ages of 6 and 12. It is likely that a regent acted for him if he was made pharaoh at that early age. He married Tiye two years later and she lived twelve years after his death. His lengthy reign was a period of unprecedented prosperity and artistic splendour, when Egypt reached the peak of her artistic and international power. Proof of this is shown by the diplomatic correspondence from the rulers of Assyria, Mitanni, Babylon, and Hatti which is preserved in the archive of Amarna Letters; these letters document frequent requests by these rulers for gold and numerous other gifts from the pharaoh. The letters cover the period from Year 30 of Amenhotep III until at least the end of Akhenaten's reign. In one famous correspondence—Amarna letter EA 4—Amenhotep III is quoted by the Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil I in firmly rejecting the latter's entreaty to marry one of this pharaoh's daughters:
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"From time immemorial, no daughter of the king of Egy[pt] is given to anyone."[17]
Amenhotep III's refusal to allow one of his daughters to be married to the Babylonian monarch may indeed be connected with Egyptian traditional royal practices that could provide a claim upon the throne through marriage to a royal princess, or, it be viewed as a shrewd attempt on his part to enhance Egypt's prestige over those of her neighbours in the international world.[citation needed]
The pharaoh's reign was relatively peaceful and uneventful. The only recorded military activity by the king is commemorated by three rock-carved stelas from his fifth year found near Aswan and Sai Island in Nubia. The official account of Amenhotep III's military victory emphasizes his martial prowess with the typical hyperbole used by all pharaohs.
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"Regnal Year 5, third month of Inundation, day 2. Appearance under the Majesty of Horus: Strong bull, appearing in truth; Two Ladies: Who establishes laws and pacifies the Two Lands;...King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Nebmaatra, heir of Ra; Son of Ra: [Amenhotep, ruler of Thebes], beloved of [Amon]-Ra, King of the Gods, and Khnum, lord of the cataract, given life. One came to tell His Majesty, "The fallen one of vile Kush has plotted rebellion in his heart." His Majesty led on to victory; he completed it in his first campaign of victory. His Majesty reached them like the wing stroke of a falcon, like Menthu (war god of Thebes) in his transformation...Ikheny, the boaster in the midst of the army, did not know the lion that was before him. Nebmaatra was the fierce-eyed lion whose claws seized vile Kush, who trampled down all its chiefs in their valleys, they being cast down in their blood, one on top of the other."[18]
Amenhotep III celebrated three Jubilee Sed festivals, in his Year 30, Year 34, and Year 37 respectively at his Malkata summer palace in Western Thebes.[19] The palace, called Per-Hay or "House of Rejoicing" in ancient times, comprised a temple of Amun and a festival hall built especially for this occasion.[19] One of the king's most popular epithets was Aten-tjehen which means "the Dazzling Sun Disk"; it appears in his titulary at Luxor temple and, more frequently, was used as the name for one of his palaces as well as the Year 11 royal barge, and denotes a company of men in Amenhotep's army.[20]
There is a myth on the divine birth of Amenhotep III which is depicted in the Luxor Temple. In this myth, Amenhotep III is conceived by Amun which has gone to Mutemwiya in form of Thutmosis IV.[21][22]
Proposed co-regency by Akhenaten
There is currently no conclusive evidence of a co-regency between Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaten. A letter from the Amarna palace archives dated to Year 2—rather than Year 12—of Akhenaten's reign from the Mitannian king, Tushratta, (Amarna letter EA 27) preserves a complaint about the fact that Akhenaten did not honor his father's promise to forward Tushratta statues made of solid gold as part of a marriage dowry for sending his daughter, Tadukhepa, into the pharaoh's household.[23] This correspondence implies that if any co-regency occurred between Amenhotep III and Akhenaten, it lasted no more than a year.[24] Lawrence Berman observes in a 1998 biography of Amenhotep III that,
- "It is significant that the proponents of the coregency theory have tended to be art historians [ie: Raymond Johnson], whereas historians [such as Donald Redford and William Murnane] have largely remained unconvinced. Recognizing that the problem admits no easy solution, the present writer has gradually come to believe that it is unnecessary to propose a coregency to explain the production of art in the reign of Amenhotep III. Rather the perceived problems appear to derive from the interpretation of mortuary objects."[25]
In February 2014, Egyptian Ministry for Antiquities announced what it called 'definitive evidence' that Akhenaten shared power with his father for at least 8 years, based on the evidence coming from the tomb of Vizier Amenhotep-Huy.[26][27] The tomb is being studied by a multi-national team led by the Instituto de Estudios del Antiguo Egipto de Madrid and Dr Martin Valentin. The proof consists of the cartouches of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten being carved side by side but this may only suggest that Amenhotep III had chosen his only surviving son Akhenaten to succeed him since there are no objects or inscriptions known to name and give the same regnal dates for both kings.
The Egyptologist, Peter Dorman, also rejects any co-regency between these two kings by examining the archaeological evidence from the tomb of Kheruef.[28]
Final years
Reliefs from the wall of the temple of Soleb in Nubia and scenes from the Theban tomb of Kheruef, Steward of the King's Great Wife, Tiye, depict Amenhotep as a visibly weak and sick figure.[29] Scientists believe that in his final years he suffered from arthritis and became obese. It has generally been assumed by some scholars that Amenhotep requested and received from his father-in-law Tushratta of Mitanni, a statue of Ishtar of Nineveh—a healing goddess—in order to cure him of his various ailments which included painful abscesses in his teeth.[30] A forensic examination of his mummy shows that he was probably in constant pain during his final years due to his worn, and cavity-pitted teeth. However, more recent analysis of Amarna letter EA 23 by William L. Moran, which recounts the dispatch of the statue of the goddess to Thebes, does not support this popular theory. The arrival of the statue is known to have coincided with Amenhotep III's marriage with Tadukhepa, Tushratta's daughter, in the pharaoh's 36th year; letter EA 23's arrival in Egypt is dated to "regnal year 36, the fourth month of winter, day 1" of his reign.[31] Furthermore, Tushratta never mentions in EA 23 that the statue's dispatch was meant to heal Amenhotep of his maladies. Instead, Tushratta merely writes,
- <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />
Say to Nimmureya (ie: Amenhotep III), the king of Egypt, my brother, my son-in-law, whom I love and who loves me: Thus Tušratta, the king of Mitanni, who loves you, your father-in-law. For me all goes well. For you may all go well. For your household for Tadu-Heba (ie: Tadukhepa), my daughter, your wife, who you love, may all go well. For your wives, for your sons, for your magnates, for your chariots, for your horses, for your troops, for your country, and for whatever else belongs to you, may all go very, very well.
Thus Šauška of Nineveh, mistress of all lands: "I wish to go to Egypt, a country that I love, and then return." Now I herewith send her, and she is on her way. Now, in the time, too, of my father,...[she] went to this country, and just as earlier she dwelt there and they honored her, may my brother now honor her 10 times more than before. May my brother honor her, (then) at (his) pleasure let her go so that she may come back. May Šauška (ie: Ishtar), the mistress of heaven, protect us, my brother and me, a 100,000 years, and may our mistress grant both of us great joy. And let us act as friends. Is Šauška for me alone my god(dess), and for my brother not his god(dess)?[32]
The likeliest explanation is that the statue was sent to Egypt "to shed her blessings on the wedding of Amenhotep III and Tadukhepa, as she had been sent previously for Amenhotep III and Gilukhepa."[33] As Moran writes: "One explanation of the goddess' visit is that she was to heal the aged and ailing Egyptian king, but this explanation rests purely on analogy and finds no support in this letter... More likely, it seems, is a connection with the solemnities associated with the marriage of Tušratta's daughter; sf. the previous visit mentioned in lines 18f., perhaps on the occasion of the marriage of Kelu-Heba (i.e.: Gilukhepa)...and note, too, Šauška's role along with Aman, of making Tadu-Heba answer to the king's desires."[34]
The contents of Amarna letter EA21 from Tushratta to his "brother" Amenhotep III strongly affirms this solution. In this correspondence, Tushratta explicitly states,
- <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />
I have given...my daughter (Tadukhepa) to be the wife of my brother, whom I love. May Šimige and Šauška go before her. May they m[ake he]r the image of my brother's desire. May my brother rejoice on t[hat] day. May Šimige and Šauška grant my brother a gre[at] blessing, exquisi[te] joy. May they bless him and may you, my brother, li[ve] forever.[35]
Amenhotep III's highest attested regnal date is Year 38, which appears on wine jar-label dockets from Malkata.[36] He may have lived briefly into an unrecorded Year 39, dying before the wine harvest of that year.[37]
Amenhotep III was buried in the Western Valley of the Valley of the Kings, in Tomb WV22. Sometime during the Third Intermediate Period his mummy was moved from this tomb and was placed in a side-chamber of KV35 along with several other pharaohs of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties where it lay until discovered by Victor Loret in 1898.
An examination of his mummy by the Australian anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith concluded that the pharaoh was aged between forty and fifty years old at death.[38] His chief wife, Tiye, is known to have outlived him for at least twelve years as she is mentioned in several Amarna letters dated from her son's reign as well as depicted at a dinner table with Akhenaten and his royal family in scenes from the tomb of Huya, which were made during Year 9 and Year 12 of her son's reign.[39][40]
Foreign leaders communicated their grief at the pharaoh's death, with Tushratta saying:
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When I heard that my brother Nimmureya had gone to his fate, on that day I sat down and wept. On that day I took no food, I took no water.[41]
When Amenhotep III died, he left behind a country that was at the very height of its power and influence, commanding immense respect in the international world; however, he also bequeathed an Egypt that was wedded to its traditional political and religious certainties under the Amun priesthood.[42]
The resulting upheavals from his son Akhenaten's reforming zeal would shake these old certainties to their very foundations and bring forth the central question of whether a pharaoh was more powerful than the existing domestic order as represented by the Amun priests and their numerous temple estates. Akhenaten even moved the capital away from the city of Thebes in an effort to break the influence of that powerful temple and assert his own preferred choice of deities, the Aten. Akhenaten moved the Egyptian capital to the site known today as Amarna (though originally known as Akhetaten, 'Horizon of Aten'), and eventually suppressed the worship of Amun.[43]
The Court
There were many important individuals in the court of Amenhotep III. Viziers were Ramose, Amenhotep, Aperel and Ptahmose. They are known from a remarkable series of monuments, including the well known tomb of Ramose at Thebes. Treasurers were another Ptahmose and Merire. High stewards were Amenemhat Surer and Amenhotep (Huy). Viceroy of Kush was Merimose. He was a leading figure in the military campaigns of the king in Nubia. Perhaps the most famous official of the king was Amenhotep, son of Hapu. He never had high titles but was later worshipped as god and main architect of some of the king's temples.[44] Priests of Amun under the king included the brother-in-law of the king Anen and Simut. Both were second prophet of Amun.
Amenhotep III built extensively at the temple of Karnak including the Luxor temple which consisted of two pylons, a colonnade behind the new temple entrance, and a new temple to the goddess Ma'at. Amenhotep III dismantled the fourth pylon of the Temple of Amun at Karnak to construct a new pylon—the third pylon—and created a new entrance to this structure where he erected "two rows of columns with open papyrus capital[s]" down the centre of this newly formed forecourt.[45] The forecourt between the third and fourth pylons of Egypt, sometimes called an obelisk court, was also decorated with scenes of the sacred barque of the deities Amun, Mut, and Khonsu being carried in funerary boats.[46] The king also started work on the Tenth pylon at the Temple of Amun there. Amenhotep III's first recorded act as king—in his Years 1 and 2—was to open new limestone quarries at Tura, just south of Cairo and at Dayr al-Barsha in Middle Egypt in order to herald his great building projects.[47] He oversaw construction of another temple to Ma'at at Luxor and virtually covered Nubia with numerous monuments.
"...including a small temple with a colonnade (dedicated to Thutmose III) at Elephantine, a rock temple dedicated to Amun 'Lord of the Ways' at Wadi es-Sebuam, and the temple of Horus of Miam at Aniba...[as well as founding] additional temples at Kawa and Sesebi."[48]
His enormous mortuary temple on the west bank of the Nile was, in its day, the largest religious complex in Thebes, but unfortunately, the king chose to build it too close to the floodplain and less than two hundred years later, it stood in ruins. Much of the masonry was purloined by Merneptah and later pharaohs for their own construction projects.[49] The Colossi of Memnon—two massive stone statues, eighteen meters high, of Amenhotep that stood at the gateway of his mortuary temple—were the only elements of the complex that remained standing. Amenhotep III also built the Third Pylon at Karnak and erected 600 statues of the goddess Sekhmet in the Temple of Mut, south of Karnak.[50] Some of the most magnificent statues of New Kingdom Egypt date to his reign "such as the two outstanding couchant rose granite lions originally set before the temple at Soleb in Nubia" as well as a large series of royal sculptures.[51] Several beautiful black granite seated statues of Amenhotep wearing the nemes headress have come from excavations behind the Colossi of Memnon as well as from Tanis in the Delta.[51] In 2014, two giant statues of Amenhotep III that were toppled by an earthquake in 1,200 B.C. were reconstructed from more than 200 fragments and re-erected at the northern gate of the king's funerary temple.[52][53]
One of the most stunning finds of royal statues dating to his reign was made as recently as 1989 in the courtyard of Amenhotep III's colonnade of the Temple of Luxor where a cache of statues was found, including a 6 feet (1.8 m)-high pink quartzite statue of the king wearing the Double Crown found in near-perfect condition.[51] It was mounted on a sled, and may have been a cult statue.[51] The only damage it had sustained was that the name of the god Amun had been hacked out wherever it appeared in the pharaoh's cartouche, clearly done as part of the systematic effort to eliminate any mention of this god during the reign of his successor, Akhenaton.[51]
|Family of Amenhotep III
See also
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Amenhotep III.
- Colossal red granite statue of Amenhotep III
- Colossal quartzite statue of Amenhotep III
- History of ancient Egypt
- Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt Family Tree
- Mitanni
- Quay with Sphinxes
- The lion hunts of Amenhotep III during the first ten years of his reign
- ↑ William L. Moran, The Amarna Letters, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, (1992), EA 3, p.7
- ↑ [1] Amenhotep III
- ↑ Clayton, Peter. Chronicle of the Pharaohs, Thames & Hudson Ltd., 1994. p.112
- ↑ Beckerath, Jürgen von, Chronologie des Pharaonischen Ägypten. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz, (1997) p.190
- ↑ O'Connor, David & Cline, Eric. Amenhotep III: Perspectives on His Reign, University of Michigan Press, 1998, p.3
- ↑ Fletcher (2000), p.10
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 O'Connor, David & Cline, Eric., p.7
- ↑ Kozloff, Arielle. & Bryan, Betsy. Royal and Divine Statuary in Egypt's Dazzling Sun: Amenhotep III and his World, (Cleveland, 1992), nos. 24, 57, 103 & 104
- ↑ Kozloff & Bryan, fig. II, 5
- ↑ Troy, Lana. Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History. University of Uppsala, Uppsala Studies in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Civilizations 14, (1986), 103, 107, 111
- ↑ Dodson, Aidan & Hilton, Dyan The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson (2004), p.155
- ↑ Fletcher (2000), p.156
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 Grajetzki, Ancient Egyptian Queens: A Hieroglyphic Dictionary, Golden House Publications, London, 2005, ISBN 978-0-9547218-9-3
- ↑ O'Connor, David & Cline, Eric., pp.11-12
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 O'Connor, David & Cline, Eric., p.13
- ↑ Kozloff & Bryan, no.2
- ↑ William L. Moran, p.8
- ↑ Urk. IV 1665-66
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 David O'Connor & Eric Cline, p.16
- ↑ David O'Connor & Eric Cline, pp.3 & 14
- ↑ O' Connor, David and Cline, Eric H.: Amenhotep III:Perspectives of his reign, University of Michigan Press, 2001
- ↑ Tyldesley, Joyce: Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt, Thames & Hudson, 2006
- ↑ William L. Moran, translation, op. cit., pp.87-89
- ↑ Nicholas Reeves, Akhenaten: Egypt's False Prophet, Thames & Hudson, 2000, pp.75-78
- ↑ Lawrence M. Berman, 'Overview of Amenhotep III and His Reign,' in Amenhotep III: Perspectives on his Reign, ed: David O'Connor & Eric Cline, p.23
- ↑ Pharaoh power-sharing unearthed in Egypt Daily News Egypt. February 6, 2014
- ↑ Proof found of Amenhotep III-Akhenaten co-regency thehistoryblog.com
- ↑ Peter Dorman, "The Long Coregency Revisited: Architectural and Iconographic Conundra in the Tomb of Kheruef in "Causing His Name to Live: Studies in Egyptian Epigraphy and History in Memory of William J. Murnane," Brill (2009)
- ↑ Grimal, p.225
- ↑ William Hayes, "Internal affairs from Thutmosis I to the death of Amenophis III," in CAH Pt 1, Vol 2, The Middle East and the Aegean Region, c.1800-1380 BC, 1973, p.346
- ↑ Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten: King of Egypt, Thames & Hudson, 1991, pl.13
- ↑ William L. Moran, translation, pp.61-62
- ↑ David O'Connor & Eric Cline, p.22
- ↑ William L. Moran, translation, p.62 n.2
- ↑ William L. Moran, translation, p.50
- ↑ Kozloff & Bryan, p.39, fig. II.4
- ↑ Clayton, p.119
- ↑ Grafton Elliot Smith, The Royal Mummies, 1912, Cairo, p.50
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ David O'Connor & Eric Cline, p.23
- ↑ Fletcher (2000), p.161
- ↑ Grimal, pp.223 & 225
- ↑ Fletcher (2000), p.162
- ↑ Lichtheim (1980), p.104
- ↑ Amenhotep III
- ↑ The Obelisk Court of Amenhotep III
- ↑ Urk. IV, 1677-1678
- ↑ Nicolas Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, Blackwell Books: 1992. p.223
- ↑ Grimal, p.224
- ↑ Grimal, p.224 & 295
- ↑ 51.0 51.1 51.2 51.3 51.4 Clayton, p.118
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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- Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates
- Pages using infobox pharaoh with unknown parameters
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles with unsourced statements from May 2009
- Articles containing Egyptian-language text
- Commons category link is defined as the pagename
- 14th-century BC deaths
- Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt
- Egyptian architects
- Ancient child rulers
- Ancient Egyptian mummies
- Amarna Period
- Amenhotep III
- Thutmose IV


text:
UPDATED TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Israel is being bombarded with lies, false and unfair allegations and sheer anti-Semitic assaults. The U.S. is doing precious little to defend its most faithful ally in the Middle East, but this is the precise moment for followers of Jesus Christ to show unconditional love and unwavering support for the Jewish State amidst this brutal onslaught.
The Israeli Defense Forces had every right to defend themselves and their country from the brutal and premeditated attacks of terrorists and left-wing anti-Israel activists, and it is unconscionable for world leaders to act otherwise.
Here's the background of what happened: Israeli is facing a new international crisis after a spasm of violence aboard Turkish-flagged boats filled with some 600 activists from the Middle East and Europe that were heading for Gaza as part of a "Gaza aid flotilla." French, Danish and Israelis sources said some of the Turkish-backed left-wing activists had connections to terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda and Hamas. The Israeli government had made it clear in advance that the six boats would not be allowed to enter Gaza directly but would have to bring any humanitarian aid they carried to be bringing through Israeli ports. Israeli commandos ordered the boats to stop, but the flotilla refused. The Israelis then forced the boats to stop and boarded them in part to determine if the activists were trying to smuggle weapons into Gaza. The commandos were then attacked by the activists and the Israelis defended themselves. At least 10 activists were killed and several more were wounded. At least 5 Israeli commandos were wounded, as well.
Here is video of the incident involving activists attacking Israeli commandos aboard a ship trying to reach Gaza. More video.
- UN Condemns Israel's Deadly Flotilla Raid
- Activists send new boat to challenge Gaza blockade
- Iran wants Netanyahu to face trial for Gaza raid
- Hamas to world: Cut ties with Israel and force end to blockade
- NATO calls for probe into raid
- Probe reveals flotilla lynchers have ties to Global Jihad — interrogation of Gaza aid sail detainees reveals some of passengers recruited specifically to attack Israeli soldiers. Suspects found to be carrying multiple weapons, cash
- Turkey Prime Minister calls raid "a massacre"
- Turkey recalls envoy over Gaza flotilla deaths, accuses Israel of 'state terrorism' — Egypt summons Israeli ambassador after nine activists killed in Israel Navy raid; Arab League urges member states to 'reconsider dealings with Israel'; Abbas: Israel committed 'massacre'.
- Obama tells Netanyahu on phone: We need raid 'facts' ASAP — US President Barak Obama postpones Oval Office meeting with the prime minister, presses for IDF flotilla-raid details, expresses "deep regret at loss of life."
- A brutal ambush at sea — Ron Ben Yishai recounts bloody clash aboard Gaza-bound vessel: The lacking crowd-dispersal means, the brutal violence of 'peace activists,' and the attempt to bring down an IDF helicopter
- Israeli Soldier: Activists came for war
- IDF forces met with pre-planned violence when attempting to board flotilla
- Netanyahu on Gaza ship raid: Soldiers acted in self defense
- Netanyahu: I regret Gaza flotilla deaths, but Israeli troops had right to self-defense


text:
Amazon Web Services is rolling out an offer on Nov. 1 for new customers that provides one year of access to a "micro instance" on its Elastic Compute Cloud, as well as a number of other services, at no charge.
The offer includes 750 hours' use per month of a Linux micro instance, including 613MB of memory as well as 32- and 64-bit support, along with 750 hours' monthly use of the Elastic Load Balancer tool and 15GB worth of data processing.
Amazon is also providing limited amounts of monthly storage and data transfers for one year.
Customers can use the new usage tier to run applications as well as for testing, training and development purposes, Amazon said Thursday.
Also Thursday, Amazon announced a no-charge usage tier for its SimpleDB tool, Simple Queue Service and Simple Notification Service, which will remain available indefinitely to both new and current customers.
The 750-hour block of instance time is enough to let new customers run a micro instance throughout the month, Amazon noted. But standard AWS pricing rates will apply once the year is up, or if customers exceed certain service allotments.
Amazon may also reclaim unused resources granted under the offer after giving the customer 30 days' notice, according to a spokeswoman.
Overall, Amazon's offer reflects a time-tested strategy by tech vendors wherein customers are given free access for a limited time, in hopes they will become dependent on or grow to like a product enough to start paying for it.


text:
Some favorite solo shows from 2008, in no particular order-
Megan Pflug at V&A
RH Quaytman at Miguel Abreu
RH Quaytman at Orchard
Michael Zahn at Eleven Rivington
Agathe Snow at James Fuentes
Gregory Coates at Opalka Gallery
Sol Lewitt at MASS MoCA
Mary Heilmann at New Museum
Joe Bradley at Canada
plus... my show at John Davis Gallery, of course.
I'm thinking of "favorite shows"... some of these installations seemed like exciting works of art themselves... this list is not about "BEST" anything.... meaning, I don't necessarily prefer individual Bradley/Quaytman/Zahn works over individual Barnaby Whitfield, Steve DiBenedetto, or Marlene Dumas works.
More favorite works seen this year, mostly in group situations -
Al Loving, in Albany, at the New York State Museum
Steven Parrino, at the Armory show
Joanne Greenbaum, at the Armory
Lucas Samaras, at the Armory
Linda Benglis, at Andrea Rosen
Wendy White, at Leo Koenig
Kai Vierstra, in his studio (better photos coming soon)
James Wines, at Empire State Plaza
Larry Zox, at Stephen Haller
Okay, actually this could go on and on... just scroll through the blog to see A LOT of great work.
Fanatastic Four 2007
more 2007 favorites
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Favorites '08
Posted by Martin at 10:52 PM
Labels: announcement, Yearly Favorites
1 comment:
- Anonymous said...
my favorite blog post 2008: martin's tomato heads
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text:
FreeBSD Ports -- References
To start learning more about ports and packages, see Installing Applications: Packages and Ports, a section of the FreeBSD Handbook.
The Porter's Handbook is the master reference for both creating new ports and maintaining existing ports, including a section on Keeping Up. It also contains more detail about the topics below, as well as more references for further study.
You may also find the following to be useful:
The archives of the FreeBSD ports mailing list.
The article Contributing to the FreeBSD Ports Collection.
FreshPorts.org is a valuable tool for further information about individual ports, such as current version, last checkin, and many other useful statistics. You may subscribe to a mailing list to get the latest information about your favorite ports.
The Ports Management Team (portmgr) pages.
The Web Interface to the Source Repository allows you to browse the files in the source repository. Changes that affect the entire port system are now documented in the CHANGES file. Changes that affect individual ports are now documented in the UPDATING file. However, the definitive answer to any question is undoubtedly to read the source code of bsd.port.mk, and associated files.
Last modified on: January 28, 2023 by Danilo G. Baio


text:
WASHINGTON — Moving quickly, House Republicans are taking another whack at federal spending on the day after a State of the Union address in which President Barack Obama pronounced the country "poised for progress" and beckoned lawmakers of both parties to make job creation their common goal.
"The challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics," the president said in a nationally televised speech at the dawn of a new era of divided government.
Republicans applauded the president politely and tempered their post-speech criticism on a night where civility reigned, more than two weeks after the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six, left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., wounded and stunned lawmakers.
"I assure you, we want to work with the president to cut federal spending," Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan said in the official Republican response moments after Obama spoke.
But the chairman of the House Budget Committee pivoted quickly and said that in the past two years Obama had presided over a huge run-up in spending on domestic programs. Democrats then "made matters even worse" with a health care law stuffed with taxes, penalties, mandates and fees that are stifling job creation, he said.
"We hold to a couple of simple convictions: Endless borrowing is not a strategy; spending cuts have to come first," he said, the latest indication that conservatives in Congress intend to seek deeper cuts in spending and more far-reaching changes in benefit programs than Obama or Democrats will accept.
"We face a crushing burden of debt," Ryan said in a speech from the committee room where Republicans will soon begin writing a plan to cut spending and reduce deficits. "The debt will soon eclipse our entire economy and grow to catastrophic levels in the years ahead."
While Republican leaders sought to put Ryan out front, their plan was complicated by the decision of Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, a tea party favorite, to deliver a speech of her own.
Newly in charge of the House, Republicans already have made an early down payment on their commitment to cut costs, voting to pare spending on their own office and committee accounts by 5 percent. On Tuesday, hours before Obama spoke, they went on record in favor of reducing most domestic programs to levels in place when Obama took office, and 17 Democrats joined them.
Even larger cuts are expected as winter turns to spring, but another relatively small change was on the House agenda for the day after Obama's speech.
It would eliminate the program of federal matching funds that helps finance presidential campaigns, and supporters said savings would total $520 million over a decade.
The White House opposes the bill, saying the system should be improved, not eliminated.
For his part, Obama was following up his speech with a trip to Wisconsin to tout the economy's recovery from the recession so far, and, as he turns to his re-election bid, campaign for the steps he outlined in the speech.
Obama walked down the center aisle of a packed House chamber in far stronger political shape than could have been anticipated three months ago.
Joblessness remains at 9.4 percent, but the economy is growing, and polls place his approval rating above 50 percent, higher than it has been in almost a year. One recent survey recorded a double-digit increase in recent months among independent voters, who deserted the Democrats and swung behind Republicans last fall.
In a speech that ran more than an hour, the president coupled his call for a five-year freeze on domestic programs with a request to increase spending on selected areas such as high-speed rail and clean energy.
He said he was open to changing the health care law, but told Republican critics he wouldn't agree to their demands to repeal it.
He drew applause from GOP deficit hawks in his audience when he said he would veto legislation containing pet projects known as earmarks. But then he challenged lawmakers to make public any meetings they have with lobbyists, a step he said the White House has already taken.
He said Social Security's finances must be strengthened "without slashing benefits for future generations, and without subjecting Americans' guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market." That was a message to Ryan and other Republicans who want to let younger workers create private retirement accounts as an alternative to the current system of government benefits.
Republicans were unanimous on one point — that Obama's calls for spending cuts weren't strong enough. The party's leader in the Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said overall the president had "changed the tone and the rhetoric" from his first two years in office. But, he said, "freezing government spending for five years at the increased levels of the last two years is really not enough."
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who backed numerous tea party-backed challengers in last fall's elections, was dismissive. "When the President says 'investment' he means bigger federal government and higher taxes. Americans sent a clear message in the 2010 elections. They no longer wish to 'invest' in President Obama's big-spending plans."
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement: "A partial freeze is inadequate at a time when we're borrowing 41 cents of every dollar we spend, and the administration is begging for another increase in the debt limit. Rather than lock in the job-crushing spending binge of the last two years, we are working to carry out our pledge to cut spending to pre-'stimulus,' pre-bailout levels and impose real spending caps."
And Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who chairs the Republican Study Committee, said Obama's proposed freeze was "nothing less than recklessly driving toward a brick wall at 80 miles per hour, then putting on the cruise control and calling it 'responsibility."'
Bachmann said her speech was not meant to compete with Ryan's remarks, but some Republican officials privately expressed anger at her decision. Originally, her remarks were to go to tea party supporters, but that changed when CNN decided to carry them live.
"Last November you went to the polls and voted out big-spending politicians and you put in their place men and women with a commitment to follow the Constitution and cut the size of government," she said. "I believe that we are in the early days of a history-making turn."
Bachmann narrowly avoided a gaffe of constitutional proportions in her speech.
Excerpts released in advance called on Obama to "commit himself to signing" a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget.
The Constitution gives the president no role in amendments, which go directly to the states for ratification after Congress approves them.
Her full remarks, released a few hours after the excerpts, dropped the reference to a signing and merely urged Obama to support the amendment.


text: Course in informatics for biology 2004 In the series of courses offered at the Pasteur Institute, a course will be offered in informatics in biology. The next session will take place from January to end of April 2004. The main goal of this course is to provide researchers in biology an initial exposure to informatics. Admitance in the course is reserved for those with a degree in biology or a related discipline. With more and more bioinformatics tools available, it becomes increasingly important for researchers in biology to be able both to manage their data, implement their ideas, and judge for themselves the usefulness of new algorithms and software. This course will emphasize fundamental aspects of computer science and apply them to biological examples. Theoretical aspects (algorithm development, logic, problem modeling and design methods), and technical applications (databases and web technologies) that are relevant for biologists will be thoroughly discussed. Programming is presented through the object-oriented paradigm, using a modern high-level language, Python, provided with tools for biology and enabling both prototyping or scripting and the building of important software systems. Learning of additional languages (perl and C) will be available for interested students. Learning during the course will be reinforced with computing exercises, and effective training will be provided by a 2 month research project. The working language of the course is French. For further information, please consult: http://www.pasteur.fr/formation/infobio-en.html *** please notice that registration will close by the end of september *** Sincerely, -- Catherine Letondal -- Pasteur Institute Computing Center


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A Black Friday weekend spat between Wal-Mart and groups representing some of its employees appears to have resolved itself.
The National Labor Relations Board's office of general counsel said Thursday that it was unnecessary to decide the merits of an unfair labor practice charge filed by Wal-Mart in November. The world's No. 1 retailer complained that the United Food and Commercial Workers Union violated labor laws in organizing nationwide protests about alleged retaliation for advocating workers' rights on one of the biggest shopping days of the year.
In the complaint, Wal-Mart (WMT) said the actions disrupted business and violated the National Labor Relations Act, which prohibits picketing for any period of more than 30 days without filing a petition to form a union.
But the labor board said the union agreed that it would disavow any intent to organize Wal-Mart workers and promised not to picket for more than 60 days in line with NLRB standards, rendering any ruling on the Wal-Mart complaint moot.
Related: Why Wal-Mart workers were striking on Black Friday
Wal-Mart had sought an injunction to stop the Black Friday demonstrations that drew thousands of supporters and hundreds of employees to its stores. The protestors, which were organized by UFCW subsidiary OUR Walmart, wanted the retailer to end what they called retaliation against speaking out for better pay, fair schedules and affordable health care.
Soon after, OUR Walmart filed its own charge with the NLRB, claiming that Wal-Mart tried to deter workers from participating in the protests and interfered with their right to speak.
As the protests neared, the NLRB was under pressure to act within 72 hours of getting the complaint. But Nancy Cleeland, an NLRB spokeswoman, said that it was "highly unlikely" the federal agency would issue a ruling in time for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Cleeland said that the complaint was too complex to make a ruling so soon.
At the time, labor experts said that Wal-Mart would have a tough time winning, since labor laws that prohibit picketing for more than 30 days don't apply to those who are protesting against retaliation.
Despite the talk of the protests, Wal-Mart reported larger Thanksgiving and Black Friday crowds than last year. On the day of the protest, the company said it processed nearly 10 million register transactions.
In a statement following Thursday's ruling, Wal-Mart said the decision was good news for its employees.
"Our associates can now move forward knowing that the UFCW must stop its illegal and disruptive activities," David Tovar, vice president of communications said.
The UFCW said the decision allows it to keep supporting OUR Walmart and its efforts.
"Wal-Mart workers and their supporters will continue their call for change...and an end to its attempts to silence workers who speak out for better jobs," the UFCW wrote in a statement.


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Top Ten Felons, Fugitives, and Shady Characters in Obama's Life
Just off the top of my head, there are two whole groups of shady character's left off this list that probably should be in the "top ten" - The murdering Muslim Brotherhood and the vastly corrupt Democratic Party. - W.E.
Now that the increasingly erratic and desperately sleazy Obama campaign has decided to cavalierly throw around the word "felony" when it comes to pushing a campaign of lies surrounding Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, this seems like a good time to jump in the wayback machine for a look at the actual convicted felons, criminals, and dubious characters who have always been associated with Barack Obama's political life.
What? What's that? You don't want to talk about this?
Objection overruled, Corrupt Media!
The President opened this door, and now we're going to walk right on through it.
Starting with…
1. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich: Sentenced to 14 years in prison for political corruption.
President Barack Obama's chief of staff, then a congressman in Illinois, apparently attempted to trade favors with embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich while he was in office, according to newly disclosed e-mails obtained by The Associated Press.
Emanuel agreed to sign a letter to the Chicago Tribune supporting Blagojevich in the face of a scathing editorial by the newspaper that ridiculed the governor for self-promotion. Within hours, Emanuel's own staff asked for a favor of its own: The release of a delayed $2 million grant to a school in his district.
2. Tony Rezko: Sentenced to 10 and a half years for corruption and kickbacks.
Rezko raised money for Obama when he ran for Illinois senator, but not during his presidential campaign, the AP noted.
Obama also involved Rezko in a house deal after he was elected to the U.S. Senate, a move he later called "a boneheaded mistake," according to a 2008 report in ABC News.
Obama wanted to purchase a home that the seller had a specific condition on: the adjacent empty lot to the house had to be purchased at the same time, ABC News reported. In the house deal, Rezko's wife paid the full asking price for that parcel, $625,000.
Obama shelled out $300,000 under the house's asking price, paying $1.65 million, according to ABC News. Obama then purchased a part of Rezko's lot for $104,500.
"It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe he had done me a favor," Obama told the Sun-Times at the time.
Obama said his connection to Rezko was "above board and legal."
Rezko and others connected to him gave Obama's 2004 Senate campaign more than $120,000, ABC News reported.
While Rezko's wife paid the full asking price for the land, Obama paid $300,000 under the asking price for the house. The house sold for $1,650,000 and the price Rezko's wife paid for the land was $625,000.
Obama denies there was anything unusual about the price disparity. He says the price on the house was dropped because it had been on the market for some time but that the price for the adjacent land remained high because there was another offer.
Obama then expanded his property by buying a strip of the Rezko land for $104,500, which the senator maintains was a fair market price.
Obama later told the Chicago Sun-Times, "It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe he had done me a favor."
Obama had known Rezko long before the house deal, calling him a "friend."
An ABC News review of campaign records shows Rezko, and people connected to him, contributed more than $120,000 to Obama's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate, much of it at a time when Rezko was the target of an FBI investigation.
It's important to keep in mind that this was dutiful reporting from the media. Any attempts to turn this into the Bain-style narrative it deserved and still deserves to be has always been blunted by the media. This is the shadiest land deal involving a politician in my lifetime, and Obama got away with it legally and politically.
3. Courtney Dupree: Democratic fundraiser convicted of bank fraud.
Dupree, who attended the elite Wharton School of Business, was a rainmaker in Democratic circles.
In 2008, Dupree hosted a $1,000-a-ticket fund-raiser for Barack Obama at his Broad St. apartment that was attended by top aide Valerie Jarrett.
4. Willie Shepherd: Obama bundler plead guilty to assault.
On Tuesday, Shepherd was sentenced to 12 months of supervised probation, according to state court documents.
Shepherd, the former finance co-chairman of the Democratic National Convention host committee, was originally charged with negligent child abuse and third-degree assault that knowingly caused injury — a class one misdemeanor. Those charges were dismissed and Shepherd pleaded guilty to the class two misdemeanor.
Shepherd, 44, the former finance co-chairman of the Democratic National Convention host committee and $100,000-plus bundler for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, pleaded not guilty to the charges last month at a Denver court hearing.
Denver police on Sept. 13 were called to Shepherd's house by his wife, Sarah Trainor-Shepherd, who said she had been the victim of domestic violence, according to the arrest affidavit.
The court document says police officers noticed a red mark on her brow and bruises on her face and arm, but Trainor-Shepherd then told police she did not want to press charges.
5. John Corzine: Top Obama fundraiser currently under FBI investigation. Obama's "Wall Street guy."
Jon Corzine, now the center of an FBI investigation into the handling of hundreds of millions of dollars invested in his securities firm, was one of the leading Wall Street fundraisers for President Obama's campaign and suggested to investors that he might take a top administration post if the president were re-elected.
His new legal troubles, sparked by the bankruptcy filing of his investment firm, MF Global, could complicate the president's efforts to raise money from the financial community given Corzine's central role in those efforts.
A recent list of top "bundlers" or elite fundraisers released by Obama's campaign listed Corzine in the highest category -- reporting that he had raised more than $500,000 for the campaign. A substantial chunk of those funds were collected at a $35,800 per ticket fundraiser that Corzine hosted at his wife's spacious Fifth Avenue apartment last April -- an event that was touted at the time as part of a concerted effort by the president's campaign team to reach out to well-heeled Wall Street donors who had been alienated by some of his policies and previous public comments.
In a sign of his emerging role as a financial guru for Barack Obama, Gov. Jon Corzine Sunday unveiled the latest piece of the presidential candidate's plan to curb soaring oil prices.
The governor touted an Obama proposal that marked the latest clash between the Democrat and Republican opponent John McCain over energy policy, as voters rank the economy as their biggest concern heading into the November election.
In his plan, Obama calls for more regulation in oil markets by promising to close the so-called "Enron loophole" that exempts some energy trading from federal oversight. The rollout also provided a showcase for Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs CEO whom Obama referred to as "our Wall Street guy" at a meeting of Democratic governors in Chicago on Friday.
6. Shervin Neman: Obama bundler currently under investigation for fraud.
The Obama campaign will return the donations of an accused Ponzi schemer who is facing an SEC investigation, a campaign official confirms.
"With 1.8 million donors thus far, we constantly review those contributions for issues. In this particular case, we will be refunding the contributions and have placed the funds in escrow until a trusteeship or other appropriate place to return these funds is established given the interests of the investors," a campaign official told POLITICO.
Shervin Neman, a hedge fund manager in Los Angeles, stands accused by the SEC of defrauding members of his California Persian-Jewish community, the conservative Washington Free Beacon reports.
7. Abake Assongba: Obama bundler under investigation for fraud.
New Yorker Abake Assongba has pledged to help President Obama win reelection, and as one of his 400 volunteer fundraisers, she has delivered $50,000 to the cause.
But she is also trailed by some controversy, accused in court of defrauding a businessman out of $657,000, impersonating a bank official and dodging creditors.
Assongba disputes the allegations, but the mysteries around her personal life highlight a challenge for Obama's reelection effort and other presidential campaigns. The astronomical cost of running for the White House requires an army of bundlers, many of whom are strangers to the campaign. And as candidates quickly learn, it is no small task to woo — and vet — those citizen fundraisers.
8. Alberto and Carlos Cardona: Obama bundlers with ties to a Mexican fugitive accused of attempted assassinations.
The Obama campaign will return more than $200,000 in campaign donations from the American relatives of a fugitive Mexican businessman and casino owner, a campaign official said Tuesday.
"On the basis of the questions that have been raised, we will return the contributions from these individuals and from any other donors they brought to the campaign," said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the campaign.
The fugitive, Juan Jose Rojas "Pepe" Cardona, fled drug charges and other legal troubles in Iowa in 1994 and rose to prominence as a wealthy Mexican casino operator. State Department reports have also linked him as a suspect in attempted assassinations of business rivals and illegal political donations in Mexico.
According to a story first reported by The New York Times, Pepe Cardona's American brothers have suddenly emerged as major Democratic donors — raising and contributing up to $300,000 to the Obama campaign alone, mostly from relatives. The donations put one brother, Alberto Rojas Cardona, in the top bracket of Obama campaign volunteer fundraisers, known as bundlers.
According to the Times, another brother, Carlos Cardona, has also been approaching political figures — including a former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party and a former governor of Iowa — trying to seek a pardon for his brother Pepe Cardona.
9. Solyndra: First company to receive taxpayer backed loans from Obama. Solyndra's investors are Obama bundlers. The FBI raided Solyndra last September.
The Obama Administration loaned over $500 million to Solyndra via an accelerated process; later, of course, Solyndra went bankrupt and had to fire 1,100 employees. Some of Solyndra's biggest stakeholders were major Obama donors – George Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire, raised between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2008; Steve Westly, an Obama bundler, was linked with Solyndra; so was Steve Spinner, another Obama fundraiser, who pushed the Administration to greenlight the loan, even while his wife's law firm was legally representing the company.
An FBI raid on Solyndra Inc., a solar-panel maker that failed after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Energy Department, may signal the escalation of a probe into the Obama administration's clean- energy program.
Agents for Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman, who has called the department's clean-energy loan program lacking in "transparency and accountability," joined in the search yesterday at the Fremont, California, headquarters of Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 6.
10. Bill Ayers: Unrepentant domestic terrorist. Early Obama backer. Fellow board-member of the Woods Foundation. 4th of July pal.
As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama disavowed any connection with former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground radical who was one of Obama's early backers and his colleague on the board of the Woods Fund in Chicago. We now have proof that Obama's association with Ayers continued even after Obama had been elected to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate--in the form of a now-scrubbed blog post placing Obama at the home of Ayers and his wife, fellow radical Bernardine Dohrn, on July 4, 2005.
Dr. Tom Perrin, Assistant Professor of English at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, was a graduate student at the University of Chicago at the time, and maintained a blog called "Rambling Thomas." He lived next door to Ayers and Dohrn in Hyde Park. He wrote at 8:44 a.m. on July 6, 2005:
Guess what? I spent the 4th of July evening with star Democrat Barack Obama! Actually, that's a lie. Obama was at a barbecue at the house next door (given by a law professor who is a former member of the Weather Underground) and we saw him over the fence at our barbecue. Well, the others did. It had started raining and he had gone inside be the time I got there. Nevertheless.
Dohrn is a Clinical Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University, and Chicago did, in fact, record rainfall on the Fourth of July holiday in 2005.
We all know the media will refuse to vet Obama's sordid past until he's safely out of office. But other than Ayers, every convicted felon and person under investigation listed here was a part of Obama's political life while he was president or running for president.
In the case of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, he and Obama enjoyed that barbecue together in 2005, when Obama was only a United States Senator.


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Toshiba's been lagging in the race to raise storage capacity in solid-state drives, but has taken a step forward with its new 7.68TB ZD6000 SSD.
The new drive is the highest-capacity SSD announced by Toshiba to date, up from its prior high of 4TB.
But it's still way behind Samsung, which started shipping a 15.36TB SSD earlier this year.
The ZD6000 is exactly half the size of Samsung's highest capacity drive, but Toshiba could exceed 8TB soon. It's a matter of cramming more chips in a drive, and Toshiba has the manufacturing technology to make that possible.
Toshiba's newest SSD is targeted at enterprises, which use high-endurance drives to store long-term data, like movies that are streamed from data centers to client devices.
Enterprise SSDs are also used as cache, or temporary storage, where data is lined up for processing in a computer.
The ZD6000 SSDs also come in capacities starting at 800GB, but Toshiba could not immediately provide prices or availability information, saying it would come at a later date.
But enterprises SSDs are expensive because they have longer life, speed and durability than consumer SSDs. The mean time between failure of drives is 2 million hours, Toshiba claims.
The 7.68TB SSD is a standard 2.5-inch drive that fits into NVMe storage slots based on PCI-Express 3.0.
Toshiba is targeting the ZD6000 line at flash storage arrays in data centers. With storage software from DataDirect Networks, the SSD storage layers can be virtualized to squeeze out the best performance from flash arrays.
A software-based I/O layer can buffer data so the SSDs can act as speedy cache, which will help run applications like databases faster. SSDs based on NVMe are typically faster than drives based on the SATA storage interface, which are in most PCs and servers today.


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The folks over at CyanogenMod (CM) presently have their work cut out for them in making sure the most recent update of their Android rooting software works efficiently with Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0).
While CM 9 is already rolling out to a variety of Android gadgets, both version 9 and the upcoming version 10 will have something in common: Neither will support models based around the Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 processor. This basically means that if your phone has an S1 inside, your days of rooting your "old" Android phone using the latest CM software are over.
The CyanogenMod team explains in detail why it removed S1 support. over on its Google Plus page. In short, the team could still hack a Snapdragon S1 phone with the new versions of CM, but doing so is quite difficult, and requires repartitioning the internal memory. This would have forced the CM team to make "compromises in the CyanogenMod code that [it was] not willing to make."
The decision so far affects 30 handsets, such as the Nexus One. It's not all doom and gloom for older generations of handsets, though. If you are one of those running the Gingerbread-based ROM, it will still supported in CyanogenMod 9 and 10.
If you are that desperate to get Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean on your Snapdragon S1 device, though, we'd expect there to be other hacks that would make this possible. Just be prepared to do a long search to find one as straightforward as CM.
Visit the CyanogenMod Google Plus page to get a detailed description on what's changed in CM 9 and 10.
[CyanogenMod via Ubergizmo]
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YLI's Jean Stitch thread is a highly twisted, size 30 polyester thread that can be used for topstitching. Or get artistic and use it to create wonderful projects on your serger or sewing machine. It can be used by itself or in combination with YLI's Fine Metallic thread for more pizzazz. It is machine washable, dry cleanable, and colorfast.~


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RIM was expected to deliver a nightmarish, -30% year-on-year revenue decline into the May quarter — the company issued its latest profit warning just four weeks ago. Yet it ended up missing the lowered consensus estimate by 10%, generating just $2.8 billion in sales. The reasons for RIM's decline are well-known and will be rehashed again over the next 24 hours. But the size of the F1Q13 sales miss raises another question: apart from Apple and Samsung, is the handset industry drifting into serious trouble?
Last week, HTC shocked many by announcing it is pulling out from Brazil, by far the most important market in Latin America. Earlier in June, Nokia surprised many by announcing it is pulling out of certain smaller markets, stopping Meltemi development and closing its Salo production facilities.
The industry knows these three vendors are in trouble. But despite lowered expectations, all three have delivered warnings that still managed to surprise Wall Street over the past six weeks. Now RIM managed to stun investors again.
Is it possible that the handset market is now weakening so rapidly that vendors and Wall Street simply cannot keep up? The early June warnings from HTC and Nokia were unusually early — phone vendors tend to warn closer to the end of the quarter. It is now clear that RIM's late May warning was far too mildly phrased. Are handset sales volumes deteriorating so rapidly into the summer that even the extra cautious April guidance from the weaker vendors left them far behind the curve?
Obviously, the biggest question mark is Europe. Retail sales volume in markets from Spain to Netherlands have started collapsing at a more than -8% annualized pace. How that impacts handset sales is not clear. In the handset industry, June is the key month of the spring quarter; it is materially bigger than May or April. European debt crisis really started spiraling out of control in May — June could be the month when the full impact on consumer electronics sales will be revealed.
June figures were not included in RIM's new quarterly report and European retail data on the month won't come out in more than a month.
We have some weeks to go before the full picture of the 2Q12 handset sales trends is revealed. The early signs are fairly grim. Back in 2000 when the phone industry was blindsided by a sudden volume decline, the first warnings came from the weaker names: Siemens, Philips, Ericsson and Alcatel. None of them produce mobile phones anymore. That cyclical downturn was triggered by a wider tech meltdown; this time, the problems come from European debt crisis.
But back in 2000, the handset market was still supported by underlying subscriber growth. In the next cyclical downturn, the sub growth in advanced markets will be close to zero.


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King County considers building 44,000 affordable housing units by 2024
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County executive proposes $100 million affordable housing bond
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The stats don't lie—the system isn't working.
King County and Seattle agree to restructure regional homelessness programs
The move comes after calls for change from advocates within the system.
The never-ending search for an effective King County homeless plan
While All Home attempts to address the issue, the group's lack of actual power results in little change.
Critics say draft plan from county task force on homelessness underwhelms
One Table's first stab at recommendations leaves some members calling for a bolder, clearly financed plan.