text:
Huge numbers of giant spiders are creeping into homes across Sussex in search of a mate.
Experts have warned that across the country this year there could be a record number of the eight-legged creatures - which can measure up to 12cm (almost 5in) in length - because the summer has been wetter than usual, and mild.
Stuart Hine, a spider specialist from the Natural History Museum, said: "This is mating season. The males when they are mature will leave their webs in search of a female spider, so off they go on their little trek to find love.
"In doing so they stop feeding so they don't actually live that long as an adult and they're just sort of roaming around.
"They can give you a nip if you pick them up, but they are not harmful to humans."
Six top tips on how to remove the eight-legged beasts from your home
Don't fear. Here are some top tips for removing the critters from your house, without harming yourself or the spider:
1. Stay calm. If you are on edge, it will be harder to catch the spider.
2. Use a clear glass or cup and a rigid piece of paper or card to trap the spider.
3. Alternatively, you can gently sweep the creature into a dustpan.
4. If removing a spider from a bath, drape a towel over the side of the bath for the spider to crawl out, then shake off outside.
5. If the spider is up high, use something sturdy to stand on.
6. Once you have caught the spider, take it outside and release back into the wild.
Don't miss out on all the latest breaking news where you live.
Here are four ways you can be sure you'll be amongst the first to know what's going on.
1) Make our website your homepage
2) Like our Facebook page
3) Follow us on Twitter
4) Register with us by clicking on 'sign in' (top right corner). You can then receive our daily newsletter AND add your point of view to stories that you read here.
And do share with your family and friends - so they don't miss out!
Always the first with your local news.
Be part of it.


text:
Local. Unique. Refreshing.
Local. Unique. Refreshing.
Chef Tina Calhoon
A love of food and flavor has driven Chef Tina in her 30+ years in the food and service industry. Born in Jacksonville, Florida and raised in Ocala, Chef Tina learned the basics from her Mom at an early age. With "hands on" culinary training, Tina has developed a unique ability to create inventive dishes that appeal to all palates. With her open appreciation of cultures, Chef Tina is always interested in learning regional and ethnic cooking techniques and dishes in order to recreate them for today's food savvy clients.
Chef Tina began her restaurant career at the age of 16 at Bennigan's in Ocala, Florida. After getting married and moving to Little Rock, Arkansas, Chef Tina opened her first restaurant at age 21. By her mid-twenties she owned and operated three restaurants in the Downtown Little Rock area. After a divorce, Chef Tina sold the restaurants and moved back home to Florida with her two young daughters. As a single mother, Tina went to work in corporate restaurant management.
Catering her own wedding, with husband Tim, rekindled her love of food and guest service. Tina along with her husband opened Frescos in 2009. In a struggling economy everyone thought they were crazy. Frescos was intended to be a small breakfast and lunch venue, with catering on the side. It has now, six years later, grown into a Downtown Lakeland destination. Lakeland's only innovative restaurant and craft bar where locals feel like they are in the big city yet only be a few blocks from home. Additionally, Frescos has become well known for their full catering division, handling events from intimate dinner parties to elaborate receptions to large fundraising galas. As a working owner, you can always find Chef Tina at Frescos, in one of the two kitchens doing what she does best, cooking.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
[CONFIRMED: A Commissioner Gordon TV Series! CLICK HERE for details!]
Could we be seeing the makings of a shared DC Universe on television? DC/Warner Bros. have already produced a hit television show with The CW's Arrow, with season 2 set to introduce The Flash as the show's first hero with super powers.
There are already talks of Flash getting his its own spin-off show on the network. So what is next for DC/WB? Rumor has it that Marvel's Agents of Shield may have some competition down the line, with an adaptation of the popular DC comic, Gotham Central, supposedly in development.
In a recent interview with USA Today, comic book writer Ed Brubaker (Captain America, Y the Last Man) mentioned that an adaptation of his gritty cop series set in Gotham City (a.k.a. the home of Batman) was rumored to be in development.
"Every season, I wait to see if they're going to announce something like that, and just a couple of months ago there was some article in the Hollywood Reporter about them supposedly developing it. I haven't heard any confirmation on it or anything. You can easily see it."
He mentions the growing popularity of the book since the success of The Dark Knight Trilogy. He also talks about how Christopher Nolan's trilogy, and the failure of the Birds of Prey television series halted discussions of a Gotham Central adaptation.
"The book is actually more popular now than when we were doing it. There's been talk of Gotham Central on TV since when we were doing the comic even (in the mid-2000s). Everyone at Warner Bros. really loved it. Chris Nolan after they did Birds of Prey had asked them to just please not do any Batman-related stuff until he was done with his trilogy — looking at Birds of Prey, you can see why. It was not the world's greatest pilot."
With the success of Arrow, and the announcement of a Flash TV series, DC has already laid the groundwork for a shared television universe. The only way DC and Warner could compete with Marvel's Cinematic Universe is by integrating both the film and television universes together. Marvel has already beat DC to this by creating Agents of Shield, but they still have the opportunity to use the characters created in Arrow and The Flash and bring them into the Justice League. A Gotham Central series would only make the DC universe bigger, and would create an opportunity for the newly-casted Batman to make a television appearance at some point (if only as an actor in a Batman suit, and not Ben Affleck).
While this is only still a rumor, we may not see Gotham Central on television anytime soon. You will, however, be able to see another one of Brubaker's stories on the big screen - namely Marvel's Captain America: The Winter Soldier, an adaptation of a comic book storyline Brubaker created.
We'll keep you updated about status of a Gotham Central storyline as more news develops.
Source: USA Today


text:
Abinash necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 97 diseños de 30 diseñadores freelance.
Infinitely Beta, http://www.infinitelybeta.com
We are a young startup working on an exciting product that will deliver compelling services to consumers. The company is all about making work fun and attracting the brightest talent to build very compelling user experiences with passion.
our services will be marketed to consumers on the Internet and Mobile. Our corporate presence will cater to VCs, Technology enthusiasts, programmers and designers.
We are looking for a killer logo for our company. We chose our company's name very carefully. Infinitely Beta is a company where what we develop is infinitely in beta symbolizing our desire to constantly innovate. The logo needs to convey a serious yet fun, creative, young and energetic tech company that is in the business of building Internet and Mobile Software. Any typeface should be clear, bold and attractive.
The files we will require are:
Print file format - .ai (CMYK)
Web file format - .jpg and layered .psd (RGB)
Please be original in your design and apply all your creativity.
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


text:
Ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop uses more than 50 percents of each core even if nothing is running. I have checked from system monitor and from htop, both of them show that each of 4 CPUs percentage is above 50 percents. I have run sensors to check the temperature these are results when only firefox is running:
acpitz-virtual-0 Adapter: Virtual device temp1: +80.0°C (crit = +108.0°C)
asus-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter temp1: +80.0°C
coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Physical id 0: +82.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 0: +82.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 1: +74.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
What can be problem?
EDIT: My Laptop: ASUS U36SD RX167V Intel Core i7-2620M 8GB RAM Nvidia Geforce GT520M
Bumblebee did not help


text:
Can Robert Menendez survive?
In a state with a colorful history, it takes a lot for a New Jersey politician to cross the line into political toxicity.
Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez has found himself at the center of a growing controversy, with accusations swirling of a questionable friendship with a Florida eye surgeon being investigated for Medicare fraud, improper flights to the Dominican Republic and alleged patronizing of prostitutes — including underage girls — while in the Caribbean nation.
Story Continued Below
In some states, these allegations — and the fact the Senate Ethics Committee has joined federal investigators in looking into the explosive claims — would be enough to sink Menendez. But in New Jersey, that may not be enough to topple the Hudson County political boss, who runs the political machine for a part of Jersey known for being rough and tumble and who easily won reelection last year.
( Also on POLITICO: Reid: 'Confidence' in Menendez)
"Six years is a long time," said Democratic former Sen. Robert Torricelli , who left the Senate a decade ago under his own ethics cloud. "I think Bob Menendez is a very tenacious person, and he has the advantage of six long years and a fairly forgiving political environment in New Jersey.
"I wouldn't be wasting time on a Bob Menendez political obituary," he added.
The prostitution allegations surrounding Menendez partially came to light before last November's election, when he won with 58 percent of the vote. Menendez has fervently denied the allegations, and the Justice Department wasn't publicly investigating the case at that time.
Otherwise, Menendez has had a few good months: He was pictured with President Barack Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as they toured the Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy; helped push through the Sandy relief spending package; and took over as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Sen. John Kerry left to become secretary of state.
He's also the lead Democratic Hispanic voice on immigration reform in the Senate.
Top Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, are backing Menendez.
"He was a leader in the House. He's been a leader in the Senate. He's chairman of that committee. He'll do a wonderful job. And he's also an integral part of what we do with immigration reform. So I have the utmost confidence in him," Reid said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.
"I have confidence he did nothing wrong, but that's what investigations are all about," Reid added.
( PHOTOS: Top congressional scandals)
Senior Democratic aides said that with Ethics Committee investigating the matter, party leaders like Reid have cover not to take any action against Menendez until that panel completes its review of the case. The Ethics Committee would step out of the way if Menendez becomes formally involved in a criminal probe by the Justice Department.
Menendez's aides would not comment on whether the senator has hired a defense attorney at this time or will set up a legal defense fund to help cover the costs of any ethics or criminal investigation. Marc Elias, a well-known Democratic lawyer, is advising Menendez on ethics issues but is not involved in the broader criminal case, multiple sources said.
Menendez, who divorced his wife in 2005 and is still single, isn't personally wealthy. He last week repaid the company of the Florida eye surgeon, Salomon Melgen, $58,500 to cover the cost of two 2010 flights that the senator now acknowledges were personal jaunts to the Dominican Republic.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that Menendez intervened with state and Commerce Department officials on behalf of a Melgen-owned company trying to enforce a lucrative port-security contract with the Dominican government.


text:
The Fourth of July is far and away one of my favorite holidays. It's an excuse to be overtly patriotic, blow things up, gorge yourself on barbecue, and drink beer. Lots and lots of beer. Just in time for Independence Day, DQM has come out with this Chinook Cooler Bag.
It's $128 and it might look like just a serious, but stylish bag. But inside the clandestine zipper compartment of the fresh army green waxed canvas tote, brews are hidden. You'll be popular at your July 4 party, because at 15 inches tall, 13 inches wide, and eight inches deep, it's got room for a whole 12 pack and then some. [DQM via Freshness]


text:
2013 & 2014 Events Were Sold Out! - Register Early to Reserve Your Spot
" This conference helped us address the challenge of innovation projects growing too big on paper. It helped us think about practical ways to break down ideas and gain market insights sooner through testable assumptions, as well as ways to avoid a culture of perfection, so that learning can happen in weeks versus months."
—Sarah Hunt, Director, Strategic Development, Thrivent
Download the Agenda
The 3rd Annual Innovation Master Class will focus on the drivers of innovation mastery, while offering a uniquely immersive experience at the inspirational 3M Innovation Center. With an audience of advanced practitioners across all aspects of innovation, the Master Class fosters priceless directed and spontaneous exchange between attendees and speakers. Amplify the innovation in your company – and craft a personal ecosystem of support for new ideas – through world-class content, small group discussions and networking sessions.
Learn how to transfrom your company's culture to spark new ideas and ensure effective commercialization including how to:
- Make the transition from occasional innovator to serial innovator
- Streamline the innovation path from ideas to launch
- Increase the "hit rate" of commercialization
- Understand financial and business case considerations
- Enhance customer experience through imaginative approaches and use of social media
- Use systems and practices for sustaining innovation
What makes us Unique?
The conference setting is 3M's Innovation Center, where you'll gain first-hand exposure to 3M's distinct approach to innovation. Our main meeting room is in the company's executive forum. This tiered room is designed for dialog, with microphones within easy reach of all participants, fostering a robust exchange of perspective, experiences and ideas during the sessions. And, you'll be able to build your connections—your innovation ecosystem—through smaller-group discussions and networking sessions that are also part of this conference. For those who want to develop or get feedback on their action plans, there is a post-conference session facilitated by "Best Practices are Stupid" author Stephen Shapiro.
For more information download the agenda
Register by 4.24.15 and SAVE $200
For SPEAKING OPPORTUNITIES please contact Rita Shor at firstname.lastname@example.com or Anne Greer at firstname.lastname@example.com.
For SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES, please contact Michael Felden at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Plus don't miss the upcoming webcast on March 10th, Lean & Commercialization Tools for Innovation Success, as well as the entire Innovation Webcast Series. We are offering complimentary registration so you can start to learn more now.


text:
Looking for design inspiration? Browse our curated collections!
Join our billboard contest! Enter by July 31st.
Shop our new kids collection!
by Tim Allen
Image Size
The image is near the edges of the product but doesn't cover the entire product. Some of the background color may appear around the outside edges of the image.
Background Color
Our tote bags are made from soft, durable, poly-poplin fabric and include a 1" black strap for easy carrying on your shoulder. All seams are double-stitched for added durability. Each tote bag is machine-washable in cold water and is printed on both sides using the same image.
Ships Within
2 - 3 business days
There are no comments for Needle Cubed 2. Click here to post the first comment.
Average Rating (4.94 Stars):
Mary Heiss
October 15th, 2019
(function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })(); I am a completely self taught Digital Artist residing in the beautiful Emerald City, Seattle, WA. The vast majority of my images were shot around Seattle and environs and then manipulated on my PC or laptop using The Gnu Image Manipulation Program otherwise known as The GIMP. I occasionally have also used ShowFoto, ImageMagick and Gwenview in my work. 1stAngel Arts Magazine I have participated in the First Thursday Artwalk in Seattle's Pioneer Square...
Our return policy is very simple:
If you're not happy with a purchase that you made on Pixels.com, for any reason, you can return it to us within 30 days of the order date. As soon as it arrives, we'll issue a full refund for the entire purchase price. Please note - Pixels does not reimburse the outgoing or return shipping charges unless the return is due to a defect in quality.
Pixels sells thousands of pieces of artwork each month - all with a 100% money-back guarantee. We take great pride in the fact that hundreds of thousands of artists have chosen Pixels to fulfill their orders, and we look forward to helping you select your next piece!
All tote bags ship from our production facility within 2 - 3 business days of your order.


text:
The chief executive of Cisco Systems Inc., John Chambers, received $14.2 million in compensation for the latest fiscal year, up 16 percent from a year earlier due to more generous allotments of stocks and options, according to an Associated Press calculation of figures disclosed in a regulatory filing.
As Cisco's sales and revenue shrank during the year that ended July 25, Chambers and other executives got no payments from the company's cash incentive plan, which yielded Chambers $3 million in the previous year.
However, the board gave Chambers a discretionary bonus of $2 million for fiscal 2009, as a reward for "vision and leadership" in guiding the company through the global economic downturn, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late Wednesday.
Cisco, the world's largest maker of computer networking equipment, reined in spending and laid off about 2,000 people during the year.
Chambers base salary was $375,000, unchanged from the previous year. He received stock options and restricted stock worth $11.8 million when they were granted, up from $8.9 million a year ago. He also received $9,998 in 401(k) matching contributions, a 10 percent increase from last year.
Cisco's stock rose 1 percent during the fiscal year. It dropped to a multiyear low in March, then recovered, borne up by the resurgent economy. As a maker of capital equipment, Cisco is sensitive to business investment cycles. The shares fell 23 cents to $22.57 in Thursday afternoon trading.
For the full fiscal year, the San Jose, Calif.-based company earned $6.1 billion on $36.1 billion in sales, compared with $8.1 billion on sales of $39.5 billion in the previous fiscal year.
The Associated Press calculations of total pay include executives' salary, bonus, incentives, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year.
The calculations don't include changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from the totals companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.


text:
Michael Mann and SkepticalScience: well-orchestrated
This is a guest post by Shub Niggurath.
So we can't engage in the dishonest tactics that those looking to discredit us may be willing to engage in. But we can try to become better communicators of the science; try to find novel ways to explain to the public the fact that the science is solid …
Readers are aware of John Cook's secret forum whose contents leaked, exposing material he and his followers would rather, not see the light of the day (see e.g. here, here and here). Most of it was the puerile fantasies of climate alarmists who need private space to admit and confess to what they cannot in public. However, there are actions undertaken behind the scenes that impact the public sphere. Again, Cook and his followers have every right to carry out these as well, but scrutinize them we can.
An Amazon.com astroturfing operation
In January 2012, the scientist Michael Mann, author of 'The Hockey Stick Wars' book contacted the communicator John Cook.
Starting the previous year December, Cook informed the congregation that he had digital copies of Mann's book he could send. The purpose was clear:
… I'm anticipating a flood of spam from WUWT as soon as the book is released. If anyone else wants a PDF copy of the galley proofs in order to write a review for Amazon (and can received a 6Mb email attachment), let me know and I'll email you the PDF…
About a dozen volunteered, requesting copies of the book.
Quickly on its heels, Cook sent out a 'second round' of copies:
Emailed the second round of SkSers a copy of the book. Any other stragglers, not too late to put in a request (you've got till February actually). I'm expecting to see reviews from all of you, btw! :-)
Cook received regular updates from Mann, keeping things on the line:
I've been informed that activity on Mike Mann's upcoming book will begin around Feb … and supposedly the Amazon launch on March 6. So possibly we can start posting reviews on March 6 but who knows, might be earlier. To all SkSers who I emailed a copy of the book, can I suggest you read the book and have your book review ready in the holster by early/mid February ready to go at a moment's notice.
Come the end of January 2012, there was a change of plans. Mann's book was coming out earlier. He wrote Cook, asking that his band of reviewers be 'lined up and ready to go'
it now sounds as if Amazon.com could go live w/ kindle version as soon as Jan 31st, so Amazon reviewers should be lined up and ready to go then if at all possible. WIll provide any further updates when I have more info. My publisher is urging reviewer-writers not to write blog reviews then (they have a later rollout schedule in mind for blog reviews), but it is ok to submit Amazon reviews then---and as we know, it will be important to do this quickly once Amazon opens their reviews to offset efforts of deniers. Again, its (sic) looking like this will be *Jan 31st* and we should operate under that assumption!
Thus orchestrated, Cook's followers began posting reviews, starting immediately with the book's release on Amazon.com. Soon, a host of 5-star reviews populated the table. The scale and speed of the operation must have been impressive. As one commenter smugly observed:
Thats a heck of a lot of people who have managed to read the Kindle edition in about 3 hours since it went on sale ;-)
John Cook kept up the pressure
I did email out over a dozen copies of the book to SkSers who specifically requested it - what happened to all those reviews?
Everything from requesting, 'strongly recommend'ing, and 'nagging' for reviews and asking that they 'report abuse' for negative reviews was carried out in the space of 3-4 months. The followers descended on Amazon.com, voting, replying, and rating comments up or down. In a span of 10 days, they were declaring victory. They had fought back what they perceived as the Wattsupwiththat 'swarm'.
In February, Mann got in touch with Cook:
Mike Mann informs me that the Amazon page is getting bombed again w/ ugly comments & "one" reviews. We don't know where it is coming from, but we'll need lots of help again.
Once again, 'lots of help' was provided.
Mann appears to have considered the review 'ratings' an important aspect to be controlled. In March, Hu McCulloch posted comments at Climateaudit about the book and a review on Amazon.com. Mann wrote to Cook (emphasis mine):
deniers are definitely pulling ahead this time. they look organized, lots of activity. they're voting down good reviews and voting up bad ones. pretty soon some of the really bad reviews might make it into the upper ranks.
By then however, Mann's Amazon review pages were so thoroughly monitored and policed by the Skepticalscience team that readers took notice of the mismatch between Mann's ideas and 'the situation on the ground'.
I'm following several of the more active threads and I'm not getting that much activity. I see many more positive reviews going up, and the positive reviews are rated far better than the negative ones.
One commenter described Mann as being "a little over-sensitive" and another stated Mann "ought to be pleased how things are turning out".
Amazon.com review section for Mann's book is evidence of Skepticalscience's review activism. There are hundreds of comments from Skepticalscience moderators haggling with almost every customer who did not give Mann's book a glowing review. Authors can indeed request reviews, but running a behind-the-scenes operation that posts bulk reviews, controls what reviews rise to the top, and what comments are considered helpful becomes astroturfing.
When I examined Skepticalscience's history-rewriting campaign earlier, there was Waybackmachine, observations from readers, and little else to go on. This brief recounting shows how things were different than how they seemed.
It is well-known that Skepticalscience had nothing much to say about paleoclimatic reconstructions. For example, their first detailed explanation for Phil Jones' email about "Mike's Nature trick" and "hide the decline" came out only sometime in November 2010, a full year after Climategate. Jean S put the article's claims to rest in a single comment in January 2011.
Behind the scenes, it turns out Michael Mann didn't think the Skeptical science 'hide the decline' article was strong enough. In February 2011, Cook informed the group:
Im (sic) working on a hide the decline post. Because of the renewed attention on the decline, Michael Mann had a look at my decline rebuttal and told me it could be "more solid". So with the master's red ink over my work, I'm going back and having another look at it.
The 'renewed attention' referred to nemesis Richard Muller's video which had then emerged on Youtube.
Basically, there has been this increased attention on 'hide the decline' because of Richard Muller's Youtube lecture. So Michael Mann had a look at the SkS rebuttal and emailed me, saying it could be more solid and also sending me some material he'd written on the decline.
What had Cook done? By March, Mann's content and directions in hand, Cook had overwritten the pre-existing articles with a new version. As he explained (emphasis mine):
So I read through Mike's stuff, boiled it down to 3 essential points, cannabilised (sic) content from Dana, James and my own earlier stuff and compiled it into a single advanced version. … - as this is meant to be the definitive rebuttal on 'hide the decline' - any suggestions would be most welcome. … Again, sorry to Villabola and James … I don't think I've ever done this before, overwritten someone else's work, but based on the feedback from Mike Mann, this seemed the best way to go.
One of the authors of the article protested - he didn't agree with the revision. He also pointed out that Cook had made the changes under the original authors' names.
It is not clear to me that "Mike's Nature trick" is separate to "hide the decline". … I notice the intermediate rebuttal of "hide the decline" still says it was written by me, and the basic version by Villabolo. You'd better correct that.
Another author woke up to the change much later. He protested as well (emphasis in original):
…The rebuttal that's in the basic level section – [link] - has my name on it but it is not my post (?). …
Even earlier, as Cook had pored over 'the master's red ink' he was alerted that what was planned wouldn't look good:
Whoops, you shouldn't have said that, John. Now if someone hacks into the SkS forum, they'll know we're all corrupt stooges and our "master" is Michael Mann. *sarcasm alert*
Another noted that the comments were "now connected to the wrong texts" and could later "lead to accusations of bad faith".
None of these suggestions were taken on board at any point. Cook jettisoned the original text of the article, replaced it with Mann's interpretation (of his own trick), and left author names unchanged making it appear as though they wrote the material. Furthermore, the same canard – 'Mike's trick had nothing to with 'hide the decline' – was propagated through articles at the website that had to do with the topic.
The original article concentrated on the seeming transgression: Was using 'Mike's trick' to 'hide the decline' a fair step? Was there anything malfeasant about it?
In the revised version - under Mann's invisible hand - Jones' famous statement morphed and split in Kafkaesque fashion into three different things. "Mike's Nature trick" was something unconnected to Jones' use of it to 'hide the decline' which in turn, became a separate thing by itself. The issue of 'addition of real temperatures to proxy series' was thrown away as though it never existed or happened.
What was left of 'Mike Nature trick'? Apparently, if one believes Cook's (Mann's) explanation, it is merely the "plotting recent instrumental data along with the reconstructed data."
One struggles to comprehend what the trick was in this! Readers can gauge the level of misdirection present in the revised article from a sample statement:
It's clear that "Mike's Nature trick" is quite separate to Keith Briffa's "hide the decline".
To the contrary, Jones had discarded proxy values after 1960 for Briffa's curve and spliced instrumental data both to Mann's and Briffa's series. The 'addition of real temperatures to proxy series'was performed in the WMO graph. That is what he says he does. Jones later emailed the WMO data to Curtis Covey:
The attached file has the data you want. There are 5 columns (mine, Mike Mann's, Keith's, Annual NH and JJA NH). The last two are instrumental and only start in the 1850s. Keith's starts about 1400. All are wrt 1961-90. You will see that for the 3 multiproxy series this file has been extended to 1999 by adding in instrumental data for the season and region each was supposed to represent. […]
The splicing of instrumental data to proxy ones is there, for the world to see. In fact, Jones reiterated the point about Mike's trick of adding real temperatures, in an email to Chris Folland (emphasis mine):
[…] All these series end around 1980 or in the early 1980s. We don't have paleo data for much of the last 20 years. It would require tremendous effort and resources[ …]
It is possible to add the instrumental series on from about 1980 (Mike sought of did this in his Nature article to say 1998 was the warmest of the millennium - and I did something similar in Rev. Geophys.) but there is no way Singer can say the proxy data doesn't record the last 20 years of warming […]
During the same period, it appears that Cook was putting together Mann's ideas about his Nature trick so they could be fed back to Muller himself. A third party was in touch with Muller just before his Congressional hearing due on the 31st of March. Muller was being emailed Skepticalscience's series of articles on 'Mike's Nature trick' and 'hide the decline' written specifically for the purpose (emphasis mine):
I'd like to get this MM#2 out before the Thursday hearing. I know someone who is in correspondance (sic) with Richard Muller, who emailed him the first SkS MM#1. So I'm going to ask him to email Muller about MM#2 before the Thursday hearing. Then I will be very interested to hear whether at the hearing, Muller conflates "Mike's trick to hide the decline" or claims the decline data was withheld then leaked.
The Skepticalscience discussions were spread out over three threads. There was valiant questioning from his commenters. One of them reminded Cook that the articles gave the "impression that [our] articles are very defensive about protecting the protagonists against the charge of deliberate intent to deceive", while lacking "clear explanation of what the substantive point the attackers have been complaining about." In turn, Cook revealed his idea was more circumscribed:
BTW, Peter let me know the video won't be done until next week. So I posted MM1 now. Hopefully some accountability will have Muller tempering his misinformation at Thursday's hearing.
An ideal result would be if we could get Muller to stop repeating his falsehoods in future public talks and interviews.
Readers might recall the resignation of one Hans von Storch just before a hearing.
Climateaudit and Bishop Hill both responded to Cook's Muller misinformation articles (see here, and here). One wonders if they knew it was Mann talking.
In the outside world, armed with Skepticalscience's explanation of Mike's Nature trick, Mann has quoted their article as though it constituted an independent source.
For instance, he wrote on his Facebook page:
actually Mk the "trick" had nothing to do w/ the "decline" at all, so the lie goes far deeper. It was just a perfectly legitimate device for comparing two different datasets. See the discussion provided by SkepticalScience:on this: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline.htm
Except that the discussion in question was not provided by Skepticalscience.
In October last year, in the 'letter-to-the-editor' mess that broke out at the Vail Daily News, Mann sent readers to www.skepticalscience.com in his response to one Martin Hertzberg's comments about the hockey stick. A couple of days back, Mann sent readers of the San Diego Union Tribune to Skepticalscience.com, responding to one Mr Bart Denson's comments about the hockey stick. Last month, Skepticalscience was defending Mann against Ryan Simberg and Mark Steyn's characterization of the hockey stick as fraud, once again, with Mann's own explanation
On Twitter, Mann has referred followers repeatedly to skepticalscience. For example, he pointed Miranda Devine's followers to Skepticalscience in March this year when she talked about the hockey stick. So he has his own followers, for a host of reasons.
Cook can try to rectify the situation. He can admit that he surrendered significant editorial control to Michael Mann over a topic in which he was an interested party. He can retract the articles on his website, indicating that he co-authored the hockey stick 'rebuttals' with Michael Mann.
As far as Michael Mann is concerned, he could write his own articles and replies. He could open his eyes to the fact that skeptics didn't pay much attention to his tedious book. He should probably give up trying to find 'novel ways' to explain science to the public.


text:
Loading some great jobs for you...
One of the Nation s Top Carriers, Hub Group Trucking, now has a variety of driving opportunities for CDL-A truck drivers.
Hub Group Dedicated is in high need for CDL-A drivers in the Thornton, CA area. This is a local position where you'll enjoy excellent home time. Our team is committed to the safety of our drivers, so you can always feel secure in your career. As a driver for Hub Group, you will be part of a valued team who is dedicated to providing outstanding customer service in the trucking industry. As one of the largest intermodal/drayage carriers in North America, Hub Group is always eager to grow and expand our team of truck drivers. Our continued growth is credited to our loyal and hardworking drivers. We do our best to ensure that our drivers remain confident in their career choice, whether it be through generous pay, great benefits, or excellent home time.
This Hub Group Position Offers:
Launch your career - Upload your resume now!Upload your resume
Loading some great jobs for you...


text: We believe that sustaining high quality of studies and permanent improvement of the study conditions can influence students' and future gradates' success. Your donation will make an impact on the life of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences and will turn the University into a better place to study. Your support is greatly appreciated and will definitely strengthen the Veterinary Medicine faculty!


text:
Business-Related Skills to Include in a Cover Letter
Your cover letter should highlight business-related skills you have that are highly sought after by employers. These include marketable, crossover, job-related, and motivated skills. These skill groups complement the core foundation skills that employers seek in their employees.
More specifically, these skill groups are identified by whether they have market value to employers (marketable skills), can be carried around from one employer to another (crossover skills), or are super-glued to a specific type of work or workplace (job-related skills). Still another term describes skills you're really good at because you love using them (motivated skills).
Here are more details and some examples of these business-related skill groups:
Marketable skills: Simply stated, marketable skills are those that an employer will pay you to use. They're often identified in job ads. By contrast, unmarketable skills are those that no one is likely to pay you to use — the ability to bounce for a mile on a pogo stick, for example. Also unmarketable or barely marketable: obsolete skills.
Crossover skills: You may have heard these skills referred to as transferable skills. Crossover skills are portable skills that you can use in a wide variety of jobs.
For example, employers value communications skills in positions ranging from apple grower to zookeeper. You can transfer these skills from job to job, industry to industry, or even from one career field to another.
Job-related skills: Job-related skills are also called technical or professional skills. Because they're suitable for a particular type of job, they assure an employer that you can actually do the job. You can't always move job-related skills from one employer to another, but sometimes you can. (To gauge mobility, ask yourself: "Who would pay me to use this skill?")
Three examples of job-related skills: The ability to use a certain brand of mold-injection machine; the ability to perform cataract eye surgery; and the ability to spot cheating players in a casino.
*Motivated skills: "Do something you'd do for nothing" is the theme song of motivated skills. These are the developed abilities that you enjoy doing. Describing a motivated skill in a cover letter is a subtle way of saying you'll excel at a specific assignment: One of my motivated skills is ____.


text:
A degree from a university means many things to many different people. Only you can define the importance of a degree corresponding to this to you and only you possibly can decide whether or not or not now's the time so that you can pursue a university degree. If you are not sure about how advantageous a college diploma may very well be to your life let's look at a few of the advantages to a university education in relationship to a community college education, and why uni admissions are so important
- Money. The first obvious advantage of a college education would be in future incomes potential. A four-yr degree trumps a two-12 months diploma nearly each time. There Tallagespes must be distinctive circumstances for someone with a two-year degree to earn more over the course of a lifetime than someone with a 4-year diploma in the same exact field. Whereas a degree doesn't guarantee employability, it does enhance the chances in addition to the income potential that's related to the field you're entering into. In case you have a two-yr degree the choice to continue your academic pursuits generally is a powerful one but it is well definitely worth the effort within the end.
- Housing. This is another distinct benefit that universities supply over community colleges. The truth is, many universities are actually offering housing opportunities to students with households along with those college students who have no families. Faculties and universities are offering all kinds of worth with regards to housing and meal plans. Quite a lot of the faculty expertise is missed when you don't stay on campus. For this specific cause students wishing to enjoy the expertise that dorm life gives often think about universities over community colleges.
- Diversity. That is another key component that is often lacking on the group school level. Worldwide students discover no real worth breaks between universities and neighborhood schools so they have an inclination to go for the housing and cultural atmosphere that universities current slightly than going with the limiting instructional, residential, and cultural experience provided by many group colleges. You'll discover students of different races, religions, cultures, and nations on the college level-excess of will typically be seen in a neighborhood college until you are attending neighborhood faculty in a really culturally diverse city equivalent to New York.
- Culture. That is something that's usually missing on the community college level, as they are largely commuter campuses. You will not see fairly the chance to experience artwork, music, the theater, and different great experiences that universities pleasure themselves in offering to their students. There may be nothing fairly just like the cultural choices of most large universities and if you happen to get the chance I hope you will take the time to cease and experience some of the great issues that being in a college community current you with a possibility to experience.
Uni Admissions At a Top School = Better Research Opportunities
- Research opportunities. On a college level you should have the chance to take part in analysis tasks with sure professors in case your show your self worthy and categorical an interest. That is something that isn't as possible on the neighborhood college level as most professors in a community college are dedicated to instructing rather than research. You will see that the expertise of engaged on a big-scale research mission is unlike anything you are prone to experience again if you ever get world! the chance.
- Confidence. There's nothing quite like a college degree from a college that wholesale will help you become a more assured person each personally and professionally. That is something that basically cannot be achieved on the neighborhood faculty stage but can solely be skilled by getting a degree from a university. In case you lack confidence when coping with others or in your profession, I hope that you will see that that your college schooling is just the thing that can assist you really feel extra confidence on all ranges of your life.
These are just a small sampling of the numerous benefits of attending somewhere like oxbridge university over a community school education. I hope you'll carefully consider these when making your determination about which is finest to your personal education needs.


text:
CampusRN Job Blog
Job-Seeking Nurses Face Higher Hurdle as Hospitals Require More-Advanced Degrees
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Hundreds of thousands of Americans flocked to nursing schools over the past decade, drawn by the prospect of a well-paying job with a degree that takes as little as two years. But many have graduated only to find the goal posts have shifted, as hospitals seek nurses with more-advanced degrees, partly in response to an increasingly complex health-care system.
Find Full Article here
posted in: Education, National, Employer News, rss
Bookmark & share →


text:
On October 6, 2007, a new chapter in Marist Athletics began with the dedication of Tenney Stadium at Leonidoff Field. The stadium's name honors Tim Tenney, CEO of Pepsi-Cola of the Hudson Valley, who provided the lead gift for the stadium renovation project. The Marist football, men's soccer, women's soccer, men's lacrosse and women's lacrosse programs call the stadium home.
Construction of the stadium started in October 2006 and was completed in October of 2007. The College retained the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP to design, plan and oversee the improvement project. This project enhanced and developed two key areas of the facility - the playing surface itself and spectator seating. In order to serve the five varsity programs that would compete at Tenney Stadium, the need for a synthetic playing surface was obvious. With this in mind, Marist officials selected the industry leader in synthetic playing surfaces, FieldTurf.
The renovation project consisted of removing the existing grandstand and press booth along the west side of the field and constructing a new precast grandstand structure along with a modern press booth, media booths and VIP suites along the east side of the field. Additionally, an athletic training room, team and officials' dressing rooms, restrooms, concessions and storage space were incorporated in the area located under the spectator seating. The new seating includes 1,744 chair-backs in the grandstand, with additional seating located on the West Berm, giving Tenney Stadium a capacity of 5,000.
A Daktronics scoreboard is located in the south end of the stadium. Permanent lights, which were initially installed during the summer of 2002, were moved in 2007 as part of the construction. In the summer of 2010, the Marist Athletics Department continued its branding efforts with a graphics enhancement project. This project incorporated both team rooms, the training area, the elevator foyer, and all walkways underneath the stadium. In addition to the new graphics, new red carpet and Pepsi coolers donated by Tim Tenney were added to the team rooms.
History of Leonidoff Field
Leonidoff Field had served as a hub of activity for the Marist Athletics Department. With a ground breaking in 1965 and an official dedication in 1968, the field was named after Dr. Alex Leonidoff, a local physician and avid Marist Athletics supporter. The field was able to accommodate 2,500 spectators. As a pivotal field in the Marist Athletics Department, capital improvements were made to Leonidoff over the years. An irrigation system consisting of 11 separate zones and 36 individual sprinkler heads was installed in 1990 to keep the then-Kentucky bluegrass, fescue and rye natural turf looking its best. The base was comprised of a blend of soils native to the region. The beginning of the 2001 season saw the addition of Musco field lighting to allow night games to occur. The Marist football team has been the one program that has seen the greatest amount of activity on Leonidoff. The program's humble beginnings date to 1965, and the sport held club status until 1977. Yet during the days of club football team records were set that still stand today, including the punting record held by Fox News's Bill O'Reilly '71, who averaged 41.4 yards per punt.
A new milestone was ushered in when the football program moved to NCAA Division III status in 1978. The first game played at Leonidoff Field at the Division III level was on September 24, 1978, which saw the Red Foxes narrowly lose to St. John's, 7-3.
The next leap for the football program came in 1993 when Red Fox football began play at the NCAA Division I-AA level. This new era of competition was ushered in at Leonidoff Field on a winning note as the Red Foxes defeated Pace by a score of 47-19 on September 18, 1993. The Red Foxes enjoyed a perfect 5-0 home season in 1998 and an impressive home record of 40-22 from 1996 through 2000.
For many years football was the only activity on Leonidoff Field until 1981, when the inaugural season of men's soccer was played. That first season saw the Red Foxes post a 12-6-2 mark. In 2004, Leonidoff Field had one of Marist's most successful men's soccer seasons take place on its turf. The team picked up four home victories on its way to the MAAC Championship and an NCAA Tournament berth. The Red Foxes repeated as MAAC champions the following season.
Leonidoff Field's résumé of programs continued to grow with the inception of the Marist men's lacrosse team which played its first full Division I season in 1992. The first Marist men's lacrosse match featured on Leonidoff Field was a 18-5 loss to Boston College on March 28, 1992. The 2005 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference's Men's Lacrosse Championship Tournament was held on Leonidoff Field. The Red Fox men's lacrosse team would go on to win this championship on their home field by defeating Providence College on their way to the program's first appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
With the arrival of the 1995 fall season came the addition of Leonidoff Field's fourth intercollegiate program, women's soccer. The program's first match on Leonidoff was a tough 1-0 loss to Columbia on September 9, 1995. But the Red Foxes would come right back on September 10, 1995, to earn the program's and Leonidoff Field's first women's soccer victory by defeating Maine 2-1.
The most recent program addition to Leonidoff Field was the women's lacrosse team which began play in 1997. This team began their occupancy on Leonidoff Field with a 14-6 loss to Albany on April 2, 1997. In 2004 the Red Fox women's lacrosse achieved a 4-1 home record and in 2005 qualified for the MAAC Championship Tournament.
Championship History
The summer of 2005 saw Leonidoff Field take center stage as it functioned as the competition site for the 2005 Empire State Games men's lacrosse tournament. Leonidoff Field has played host to numerous Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Championships over the years:
Men's Soccer: 2008, 2012
Women's Soccer: 2002, 2007, 2012
Men's Lacrosse: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015
Women's Lacrosse: 2003, 2010, 2013
The first MAAC Championship Tournament held at Tenney Stadium came in November of 2007 with the MAAC Women's Soccer Championships. The final game was broadcast live on ESPNU, the first nationally televised game in the field and stadium's history.
Tenney Stadium hosted a 2015 NCAA Men's Lacrosse Tournament preliminary round game May 6, 2015 when the Red Foxes defeated Bryant 10-6. A record 1,873 fans were in attendance for the first ever NCAA postseason contest held on the Marist College campus.


text:
Carrier Transicold has designed special ranges of refrigeration units for extreme low-ambient and high ambient temperatures, that feature our unique high-capacity heating and cooling.
Carrier Transicold proposes special product ranges, Oasis for trucks, and X4 for trailers, to answer the rigors of high temperatures, up to +50°C, in mono or multi-temperature for trucks.
In high ambient climates, sustaining the cold chain is more important than anywhere else. Our ranges deliver unmatched capacity and constant airflow. Truck operators can depend on reliable protection of perishables.
For low temperatures, Carrier Transicold proposes the Nordic version of its Supra range for trucks featuring high capacity electrical and hot water heating for reliable operation in extreme low-ambient conditions.
On trailers, the E-Drive all-electric technology provides a constant source of heating capacity, unlike traditional systems that rely on the refrigeration circuit to provide heat. In extremely cold ambient conditions, a traditional refrigeration system's outlet condenser is exposed to the cold, and therefore cannot produce enough heat inside the trailer to overcome the ambient temperature. The Vector system's heating feature is decoupled from cooling capacity, leading to an outstanding heating capacity of 9,000 Watts on the Vector 1950.
In addition, the engine vent heater accessory avoids frost or ice inside the engine breather. The heat is made by using coolant liquid. It permits an easy restart in cold ambient temperature. Another add-on useful in cold climates in the fuel warmer that avoids fuel freezing at filter level. It starts to warm when low temperatures are reached and enables an easy restart.


text:
Originally created by Chris Taylor and his critically-acclaimed studio Gas Powered Games, Taylor will serve as an advisor during the development of the game. DUNGEON SIEGE 3 will seamlessly blend intuitive action gameplay and a robust RPG system in an immersive world where every decision the player makes will result in consequences.
Torn asunder, the delicate balance of power between the kingdom of Ehb's powerful factions has fallen apart. As one of the few remaining members of the disgraced protectors of the land, the 10th Legion, it is up to you to rebuild the once great Legion and stop Ehb from falling into darkness. Joined by a group of unique companions, you will travel through the striking land of Ehb defeating all manner of villains and beasts through a combination of heroic abilities, screen shaking magic and fearsome weapons.
DUNGEON SIEGE 3 seamlessly blends intuitive action gameplay, a robust RPG system featuring a large selection of abilities, an extensive multiplayer component and the depth of story Square Enix and Obsidian Entertainment are known for creating.


text:
PLEASE NOTE PRE-REQUISITES: You must attend Knowing Your Brand before attending this workshop. If you are going through the Shuttle/Condensed Shuttle program, this is to be taken in your second month. Free workshop certificates may not be used.
This powerful full day workshop will include the following 5 parts:
Pitching Rules;
Your Elevator Pitch;
Sales 101/102 – Getting a Meeting;
Market Research – Who will you Pitch to?
Preparation and practice to successfully take on our Grizzlies (for current Higher Landing clients only).
Those who are not registered in one of the Shuttle programs will be allowed to attend all but the Grizzly Prep section of this workshop.
Please note the following PRE-SESSION REQUIREMENTS which will reference the handouts from our Knowing Your Brand workshop, for those who have attended. For anyone who hasn't attended, you will receive the handouts via email, which should be completed prior to attending this workshop. Please come prepared with the following:
Your WOW! Factors
A few adjectives that describe yourself (what describes your "north star"? i.e. Culture Creator, Hockey Boss, Catalyst). Remember – these should be words that beg further inquiry.
A few career stories
A few companies, employers or people you'd like to work for. Be as specific as possible.
Presented by Jackie Rafter, President of Higher Landing Inc.
Higher Landing
200, 505 – 3rd Street SW
Calgary, AB T2P 3E6
Mid-afternoon refreshments and beverages served.


text:
Substances & Homeopatic Remedies
Inula helenium
Requests: If you need specific information on this remedy - e.g. a proving or a case info on toxicology or whatsoever, please post a message in the Request area www.homeovision.org/forum/ so that all users may contribute.
The HomeoVision project promotes the exchange of experience through the publication of succesful cases. However, for this remedy, no case study is available. We invite you to contribute your own cases. For more information on the cases click on the "Cases" button in the menu on the left.


text:
Welcome to Griffin Family Funeral Chapels - The original and most trusted family funeral home / mortuary in both Camarillo and the Conejo Valley.
The Griffin family has been proudly serving Ventura County since 1951 with their funeral chapels in the heart of both Camarillo and Thousand Oaks. The family owned business is staffed by experienced and caring family members. We are all native to and still reside in Ventura County. We offer two convenient locations that are freeway close, have beautiful spacious chapels and abundant parking.
Over the years, we have helped many families by meeting their individual requests with personal, caring and affordable services. We strive to exceed your expectations during a most difficult time and to make your experience as peaceful and pleasant as possible. We look forward to serving all of your needs.
Mortuary in Camarillo: (805) 482-1166 Mortuary in Thousand Oaks: (805) 230-2800


text:
You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'lovers of valdaro' tag.
It was Valentine's Day a week or so ago. I am not the biggest fan of Valentine's Day. I wasn't a fan when I was single and I'm not a fan now that I'm married. I don't even know how to express why. It's not even the commercialization aspect. I don't know, but it puts me in a cruddy mood in the best of times. Anyway, this year I was on my own and missing my husband, and really really not in the best mood. So I did the only thing that I know how to do to cheer me up – I painted.
I'd tried painting the day before, and it did not go well. All the colours went muddy, nothing came out. But the next day, things were flowing better, and I managed to do two paintings, go me. The sky painting was actually already halfway done and had been sitting in my living room halfway done for about 6 months, mocking me, guilting me about how long it'd been since I got out my paints. So I finally finished that sucker. So THERE.
The other painting I did was a smaller one inspired (in a macabre, GTFO Valentine's Day kind of way) by the holiday. My mother said it disturbed her when I showed her. I'm not sure if that was my intention or not. I think it reflects how I was feeling this Valentine's Day though.. a bit conflicted. It is based on the Lovers of Valdaro, a skeleton couple unearthed by archaeologists near Romeo & Juliet's Mantua. In a way, it's a testament to love that goes on forever, even into death. But in another way it's two dead people in a pit – HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! 😉 Anyway, I named it after a Bauhaus song because reasons. The two just were entwined in my mind immediately for some reason.
I'm still not sure about a title for this sky one. My FB friends have given me suggestions. They were all very good, but I'm still not sure. It reminds me of the colors and above-the-clouds-edness in Robot Unicorn Attack, the '80s-Lisa-Frank-aesthetic game app, so I'm just gonna call it that for now as a placeholder till I can think of a more poetic name.
And now for a (related) musical interlude…


text:
In the college football world, the made-up dead girlfriend of a superstar matters more than a real dead young woman. There's something a bit wrong about that.
This is eventually going to be a post about the strange case of Manti Te'o and his dead-girlfriend-who-never-existed. But to get to that tale, we need to start at the beginning.
The phenomena of "college football" in the USA is weird on a whole number of levels. One is the sheer level of fanatacism (the original source, remember, for the term "fan") that it attracts. For instance, the University of Nebraska football team - universally and in-no-way-mockingly known by its nickname "the Cornhuskers", which is another odd thing about US college football - has sold out every one of its home games since 1962. That's more than 300 games in a row over 40 years, in a stadium that currently can hold more than 86,000 people. Even once you factor in that there probably isn't all that much else to do in Lincoln, Nebraska, it's still an impressive display of passionate support.
And just so we're clear, it's not just current students who get very, very excited about their institution's team. Alumni continue to remain devoted supporters long after their degree certificates have begun to fade on the wall. Even people with no real association to a particular University will have "their" college team that they follow.
All of which is to say, the inter-collegiate football competitions (because there's a number of different ones) held in the US are about as far away from New Zealand's University games as it is possible to get. These are massive events that have become a part of general US culture.
This infiltration of college football into the general culture then has a couple of flow-on effects. The first is that for a lot of universities in the US, success in football (as well as other sports, basketball in particular) is their primary means of differentiation and identification in the general public's eye. Sure, this isn't true for all of them. If your degree is from Yale or Columbia, say, the average American will know what that means. But tell that same average American that you got a degree from (say) the University of Oregon and they won't respond; "oh, yeah - the University of Oregon is a world-class teaching and research university with nearly 300 comprehensive academic programs and more than 25 research centers and institutes, offering both breadth and depth in the liberal arts and sciences as well as professional programs."
No - they'll say; "oh, yeah - the Ducks had a pretty good season, didn't they?"
So for a lot of universities, there's a lot riding on the relative success of their football teams. Even more so when you come to the next consequence of massive public interest in the result of competitions between teams wearing university names and colours. Money.
College football is a business. It's a huge, multi-multi-million dollar business. All those fans wanting to watch their teams compete against each other are an incredibly valuable resource for TV companies wanting to sell eyeballs to advertisers. So those TV companies are prepared to pay a lot for the right to screen college football games. And all those fans wanting to display their alliegance to their team are a ready market for an overpriced, "officially authorised" T-shirt/sweatshirt/pair of socks/set of shot glasses/golf-bag/etc emblazoned with its name.
(True story ... I was in Phoenix last year, visiting the campus of Arizona State University, home to the "Sun Devils" (there's those nicknames again!). While on campus, I called past the university's "bookstore". This consisted of an area at the back that held assigned texts for classes (and that apparently only gets opened up for a couple of weeks at the start of semester), along with a couple of racks of general books such as you might see at an airport Paper Plus. The majority of the "bookstore" space was then devoted to merchandise of every description bearing the "Sun Devil" name and logo. Seriously - it was like a sports-mascot version of this Portlandia sketch.)
Of course, there's one group that doesn't get to share in all the wealth that a successful football programme generates. It's not the University - its coffers get a nice boost (especially in an environment where state funding for higher education is decreasing). It's not the team coaches - the highest paid college football coach is the University of Alabama's Nick Saban, who gets a shade under US$5.5 million. (In comparison, the University of Alabama's President (equivalent to a Vice-Chancellor in New Zealand) gets a salary of US$625,000.) No, it's the players who actually go out and provide the spectacle that everyone else gets rich off. As "student athletes", the rules of the NCAA (which govern college football) prevent them from making any money at all from their on-field exploits. (For a discussion of how unfair this practice is, read this. For South Park's take on it, see this.)
So why do players do it? Well, there's the pride and on-campus prestige of being a part of the thing that their University bases much of its identity on. And the universities do provide lots of players with scholarships to cover their tuition and living expenses, meaning that some of them get to go to a college they otherwise couldn't afford to (or, wouldn't meet the scholastic requirements to get in to). So at the end of their time on the football team, they will emerge with a degree - even if it is in "Communication Studies" and their transcript consists mainly of C's.
But the real reason college football players spend 4-5 years training and playing 40-50 hours a week for no money is because it is virtually the only route into the professional world of the NFL. Aside from the odd Australian AFL player hired as a punter or the like, almost every NFL player serves his apprenticeship on a college team. Therefore, if you want to have any shot at earning the big salaries that the NFL provides, first you must prove yourself at the college level.
Let's set aside the overall weirdness of this symbiosis between professional sports and inter-University sporting fixtures and focus on the effect of structuring college football in this way. On many campuses - certainly, on the campuses of those Universities that play in the NCAA Division 1 - you've got an institution (the football team) that serves as the University's primary identifier in the public eye, that brings in tens-of-millions of dollars in revenue, that is headed by an individual whose skills are valued more highly than anyone else at the University, and that is made up of a very tight-knit group of young men who are highly admired but not really a part of the general student body (in that they spend most of their time together training) and view their time at the University primarily as a stepping-stone to the fame and fortune of professional sports.
Gosh - what could go wrong?
Well, last year showed us the very worst that could possibly happen, when it was revealed that the Pennyslvania State football coach and three other senior University officials deliberately covered up sexual abuse claims against Jerry Sandusky, a member of the team's coaching staff. This cover up then allowed Sandusky to continue abusing young boys (including in the showers of the Penn State team's locker-room) - a consequence that apparently was preferable to any risk that the good name of the football programme could be tarnished. As this comment on the scandal points out:
We now know that [those who covered up the sexual abuse] were bad people. But football helped make them that way. None of them started their careers so hungry for wealth and power that they could have imagined covering up such horrific crimes, all to protect some idea of what Penn State football was supposed to be. But they did, and that needs to be remembered for a long, long time.
(The saga is not yet over - the three university administrators implicated in the cover-up (including the University's president) have yet to face trial on perjury, obstruction of justice, child endangerment, conspiracy and failure to report child abuse charges.)
If the Penn State scandal was a one-off, that would be one thing. But - and now we're finally getting to the Manti Te'o story - it isn't.
Taken by itself, Te'o's tale is more of the head-scratching "wtf?" variety than the sickening abdication of moral sentiment that Penn State represents. Te'o played for the University of Notre Dame (pronounced not like the French cathedral, but "Noter Daame", as God intended). Notre Dame's football team - the in-no-way-stereotyped "Fighting Irish" - has what the American's like to call "a rich and storied history". It's also won the most national titles of all college football teams, albeit that the concept of a "national title" is a bit tricky to apply in a sport that has a bunch of different competitions running simultaneously.
Of late, however, the Fighting Irish have struggled a bit. They haven't won a national title since 1988, and in the 2000's they lost a record 9 post-season "bowl" games in a row. So for all its past glories, Notre Dame's football programme was in danger of becoming a bit second tier.
This season, however, looked set to turn that all round. Notre Dame's team went 12-0 in its regular season. That record then earned it an invitation to the "BCS National Championship Game" - in other words, it was regarded as being one of the two best teams in the country, and so got the chance to play-off against the University of Alabama's "Crimson Tide" for the title of National Champion. And at the heart of the Fighting Irish's golden year was Manti Te'o - a linebacker (that is, defensive player) who specialised in stopping the other team's running back from gaining ground, whilst also threatening to intercept attempted passes by their quarterback.
What made Manti Te'o stand out even more was that not only was he a very good player on a high profile team that was winning all its games, but he had a tear-jerking story to tell. You see, on the same day early on in the season, Manti Te'o lost both his grandmother and his girlfriend to cancer. As his girlfriend slipped towards her end, she would respond to Te'o's voice and smile as he sang the Fighting Irish's team song to her. And her last words to him before she died were "I love you" ... three days after which, Te'o starred in an upset Notre Dame victory over divisional rivals Michigan State (because she had told him that she wanted him to keep on playing for her).
Wow. Just, wow. Shades of Bob Blair coming out to bat in Johannesburg. This uplifting tale of overcoming adversity and staying focused on the team's needs even as your personal feelings are in a mess caused Notre Dame's athletic director to rhapsodise that Te'o "may be the perfect Notre Dame football player. As good as they come on the field. As good as they come off the field. He is what we look for in student athletes." Sports Illustrated - the bible of US sports - seemed to agree; it promoted Teo's story (and the team he played for) on its front cover. And as Notre Dame's unbeaten run continued, Te'o's feats (along with his backstory) began to lead to a buzz that he could win the Heisman trophy for the most outstanding player in collegiate football.
Look out, world! Notre Dame's back!!
And then, as they say, it all went horribly wrong.
First of all, Te'o didn't win the Heisman - he came second to Texas A&M's quarterback Johnny Manziel. That in itself isn't so very strange; it's quite hard for a defensive player to make the kind of spectacular plays needed to win recognition, which is why the award is almost always won by running backs or quarterbacks. Then the Crimson Tide rolled all over Notre Dame in the BCS championship game ... before coming back and rolling all over them again the next half to complete an absolute shellacking. And in that game, Te'o's future NFL stocks took a bit of a hit as he proved largely ineffective in the face of a bigger, stronger offence than he had faced all year.
All that, however, was but a curtain raiser for the real shock, which came in the form of an article on deadspin.com revealing that Te'o's supposedly dead girlfriend had never existed. Not that he had exaggerated his relationship with her, or fudged issues around it. Rather, there had never been any such person, full stop. Te'o's only contact with "her", it turned out, was by way of phone and social media. And the supposed images of "her" came from the facebook account of some still living woman who claimed not to know Manti Te'o from Adam.
Exactly what has happened here is the subject of ongoing speculation and frenzied investigation by the US media. The story Notre Dame and Te'o are telling is that he was the innocent victim of an on-line hoax (there's even a term for it - "catfishing", after this movie) perpetuated by persons unnamed for purposes as yet unknown. So, says them, Te'o's story is essentially unchanged - he truly believed this "girlfriend" (who he just had never actually met physically) had died, yet found the strength to play on anyway.
However, drawing on a number of inconsistencies in the stories about his "girlfriend" that Te'o has told over time, as well as sheer incredulity that he could have been innocently sucked in for so long, there also are suggestions that Te'o was in on the hoax. Why would he do so? Well, 2012 was Te'o's last season of college football, and he will be drafted into the NFL this year. If he happened to win the Heisman, bouyed by his story of overcoming the odds, then his prospective value could be expected to increase. Furthermore, now his enforced amatuer college years are behind him, he's free to start making real money from commercial endorsements. And what better tale to sell to interested companies than that one that combines tragic true love and football?
Now, obviously I have no idea which account is the right one. Maybe we'll never know. But here's where I want to try and tie this post together. Because what does college football have to do with the Manti Te'o tale?
Superficially, not all that much. Sure, Te'o might not have been targetted by hoaxers if he wasn't a high-profile player on a high-profile team. But that's a problem of fame, not football. And even if the truth is uglier and Te'o took part in the hoax to boost his image and achieve higher rewards upon turning pro, that's not really college football's fault either. You only need to look at what Lance Armstrong did in the world of cycling, or what Louis Suarez does repeatedly on the (real) football field, to see that the temptation to lie to achieve greater rewards is pretty universal across all sports.
Instead, the indictment of college football lies in a comparison between Notre Dame's treatment of a fake dead girl with that of a real one - Lizzy Seeberg. You probably haven't heard of her, but she was a 19-year-old Notre Dame student who committed suicide back in 2010 after accusing a member of the school's football team of sexually assaulting her.
Not for Lizzy Seeberg were the tears that Notre Dame's athletic director - the same one who called Te'o "the perfect Notre Dame football player" above - reportedly has shed over the fact Te'o had suffered this cruel hoax. Nor did the University immediately hire a private investigation firm to dig into the facts behind Lizzy Seeberg's allegation, as it has with the Te'o hoax.
No, in Lizzie Seeberg's case the Notre Dame campus police had not even got around to interviewing her alleged assailant before she killed herself - 10 days after the alleged attack. During which time she had received a series of texts from a friend of the player: "Don't do anything you would regret," one of them said. "Messing with Notre Dame football is a bad idea."
Then, six months after her death — and when the story had become national news — Notre Dame finally did get around to convening a closed-door disciplinary hearing. The accused player told it that until he actually met with police, he had no idea why they wanted to speak to him ... even though his buddy who'd warned Lizzy not to mess with Notre Dame football had spoken to investigators 13 days earlier. The hearing found him "not responsible," and never sat out a game.
As happened in the case of another woman who later that year reported being raped by another Fighting Irish team member, but then refused to pursue her complaint after seeing what happened to Lizzie Seeberg. Her alleged attacker stayed on the team, too.
So that's the real problem with college football. It's so important that when one of its stars tells the world that the love of his life has just died of cancer, no-one thinks to go behind that story to actually check whether or not it is true. The story is simply too good not to be true. And when that story is revealed as a lie, the star is defended because the feelings inspired by the fake story are real. Therefore, we should feel doubly bad for him - first that he suffered through what he thought was a loved one's death, and then that he found out he had been cruelly hoaxed.
But when a real woman claims to suffer hurt at the hands of a member of the football programme - well, messing with Notre Dame football is a bad idea. And that's something that will do no-one any good.


text:
Remember the iPod mini? When Apple launched that in January 2004, at a time when a huge swathe of the fast-growing digital music player market was still up for grabs, people thought Apple was crazy. Only 4GB of storage – less than in the original 5GB model launched in 2001? A $249 price tag – only $50 less than the base level "iPod". Well, said the critics, Apple had finally messed up after a couple of years of getting it right. It was doomed.
Turned out it wasn't; the iPod mini became the best-selling iPod (until the iPod nano in September 2005).
Why point this out? Because much the same critique has been applied to the iPad mini, Apple's 7.85in device. It's just smaller (though nobody seems to be calling it "a big iPod Touch" – perhaps that wore thin after the first few thousand times following the original iPad's launch). It's too pricey; there are others which are already in the market.
As I've said earlier, there are some key differences between the iPod market of 2004 and today's mini-tablet market. The key one is that in the 2004 market, all the rivals needed to make a profit on their hardware; they couldn't make it up from selling music. This time round, Amazon and Google in particular can sell the hardware at a loss in order to goose their market share, if not immediately their profits. So Apple has a fight on its hands in pricing, not just design.
But let's by dealing with the iPad mini as it is, on its own terms.
Build quality: seamless
Jonathan Ive doesn't like seams. He doesn't like any sort of break in the surface of objects, even manufactured ones. One of the notable things about the first iPod was that there was no obvious way to break it open, and the trend in all of Apple products – including the computers – is the same.
You'll do well to get a scalpel blade between the iPad mini's screen and its bezel. There's no flex in the body; it's really solid. I was using a black model; it isn't obviously metal until you touch it. As with its bigger sibling, the headphone jack is on the top – unlike the iPhone 5, where it has migrated to the bottom.
This is worthy of mention because everyone has been focused on the Amazon Kindle Fire in comparison to the iPad mini (and of course Google Nexus 7). I compared an iPad mini beside a Kindle Fire, and was surprised to find that they're almost exactly the same size in both width and length, though the iPad mini is thinner.
Similarly, compare it with the Nexus 7. Here are the figures for the iPad mini: 199mm x 133mm; the Nexus 7, 198.5mm x 120mm. You get 1.3cm – that's half an inch - width difference between the Nexus 7 and the iPad mini. This surprised me – I thought that the iPad mini would be substantially wider. But it's not, and at that width you can slip it into an outside jacket pocket or a roomy coat pocket or, of course, a bag.
How though does the iPad mini manage to be so small if it has a 7.85in screen, while the others have just 7in screens? By having a much thinner border along the long edges. It's 20mm wide at the short edges, but just 5mm on the long ones. This isn't just a shrunk-down iPad, where the borders are 20mm and 17mm (short, long). Apple has made a definite effort to create something that can be slipped into generous pockets.
What will surprise you is the weight. The specs already show that the iPad mini is lighter than the Kindle Fire, 308g v 395g (and 340g for the Nexus 7); even if you add on a Smart Cover, it's still lighter than the uncovered Kindle Fire. It's thinner too. This is a device that will be ideal for holding in one hand for reading on train rides or other commuting; or you might even forget it's in that coat pocket.
What the iPod mini demonstrated, and what the MacBook Air demonstrated, and pretty much every breakthrough in mobility demonstrates, is that lighter is better – and if you can do lighter and bigger, you're really onto a winner. (This is part of how the Samsung Galaxy S3 has done so well: big screen, light phone.)
The iPad mini (308g) feels like it isn't really there. Certainly you'll not get tired of holding it, which could happen with the iPad (652g).
Battery life
As with previous iPads, battery life is easily in the nine-hour-plus mark. Charging is via the new Lightning connector, and as with the iPhone, the iPad now recharges very quickly – half an hour will easily add four or five times as much use. I didn't get a chance to try it out on a 4G/LTE network, so don't know how that affects battery life. (Mobile versions sold in the UK will initially be compatible with EE's 1800MHz network, and Three's next year.)
It's not a retina screen! It's only 1024x768, so that the resolution is 163ppi. This has been a big complaint (or snark, in some cases) that I've heard from people who haven't laid eyes on this device. If all you read is specifications, then the iPad mini screen is far worse than the Kindle Fire's or Nexus 7's, right?
Well, put them beside each other, and the story changes. Web page rendering on the Kindle Fire is, frankly, awful. It's blocky, and there's a yellowish cast which personally I dislike. The iPad mini is bright, and white, and the text rendering is good – and there's no obvious pixellation. Kindle books look as good on the iPad mini as on the Kindle Fire. (The latter is optimised for reading those, but not for the web; Amazon would rather you bought books than surfed the web.) Icons on the iPad mini look sharp; on the Kindle Fire, not really.
With long lists, it's smooth and untroubled; this is something Apple has prioritised. Again, the comparison with Android, where scrolling has always been a bugbear, is stark; get a long article with lots of comments on a website, and you'll get a smooth scroll. That's not always the case on Android devices, where some will give jerky performance, no matter how many cores their processor has. Specs, eh? They can lead you astray.
Setup experience
If you have an iOS device already – iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad – then you can log into your iCloud account and all the apps and content you've already bought, plus all your settings including alarms can be transferred wirelessly. (If you've got multiple devices backed up, you get to choose which it's restored from. Alternatively, you can just use a wire and an iTunes backup.) Android tries, but doesn't quite get to the granular level that iCloud does, and that's a big difference in user-friendliness.
User accounts
There aren't any. This is the biggest failing in iOS at present. Now that Google has announced that Android will support a form of user accounts on tablets, and Windows Phone 8 offers "Kids Corner" (fenced-off apps you can let the kids use), and Windows RT tablets support multiple signins, iOS is starting to look like the odd one out. One tablet per person is great for Apple, but it's not so great for the squeezed middle. Single-user iPhones yes; multi-user iPads, yes please.
Of course, there isn't an inbuilt keyboard. But the question is, is the onscreen version too small to type on? No – used in landscape or portrait, the keys are large enough even for my hands. Despite the smaller screen, touch targets aren't too small either. In short, you can still type quite accurately (and certainly more accurately than on an iPhone) and manipulate onscreen objects. I don't think that many app developers will be redoing their existing iPad 2 apps.
In fact, games developers are quite excited by the idea of the iPad mini, because they reckon it will mean more players using the device in landscape mode who will be able to span the bottom of the screen with their thumbs (personally, I could) – something that was impossible with the iPad, which anyway gets too heavy.
Available front and back – here's an example shot with the camera on the back. There's no Panorama option with the rear camera, which is a strange omission.
Existing iPad apps work perfectly well. I tried the Brian Cox Wonders app, which includes videos. I criticised the Nexus 7 for the extent of letterboxing on its 16:9 screen, so will I do the same for the iPad mini?
Yup – you get some pretty hefty letterboxing here too. Here's the thing, though: because the border around the long edges is so much thinner than at the edges, the overall effect is no worse than the Nexus 7; given that proportionally less of the space is lost to the border, you could argue it's a less compromised experience.
For comparison, here's the Nexus 7 letterboxing:
It might not be immediately obvious, but if you look closely then you can see that the physical border is much wider in the Nexus 7 than on the iPad mini.
iPhone apps' behaviour can be hit-and-miss: some fit the screen neatly when expanded to the "2x" size, others overlap the edges (I'm looking at you, Tube Deluxe), others just look blocky (hello, Amazon – though there is a proper Amazon iPad app). There isn't the spare room that the larger iPad has around the edges when you expand the size of the iPhone app on the mini's screen. Then again, with the huge number of iPad apps available, this probably won't be a problem.
Yes, let's talk about the price. As mentioned above, Apple isn't looking to race to the bottom on price, because its objective (make a profit on hardware) isn't aligned to that of Google and Amazon (sell hardware near cost, profit on content or from users' web browsing). That said, at £269 ($329) for the 16GB model, you're getting an impressively light, small tablet which (if you buy the connectors, or have them) can take your camera pictures, or just take pictures itself. There's AirPlay, the wireless audio and video connection – if you have an AppleTV (£99) ($99) then you can run iPlayer on the iPad and "throw" it over to the AppleTV and watch it on a big screen; no wires. And it's not hugely more expensive than the Nexus 7, though the Kindle Fire is much cheaper. If price is your only consideration, though, an iPad probably hasn't been on your shopping list anyway.
Those in favour: excellent build quality; very light, comparatively large screen, not significantly wider than competition (for putting in coat pockets), excellent text rendering, huge selection of apps, music, books and films, pain-free setup from iCloud backups for existing accounts; 3G/4G LTE option; fast-growing range of accessories.
Those against: price is higher than rivals – at £239 ($329), it's £40 ($130) more than the 16GB Nexus 7; no expandable storage; letterboxing of films; no HDMI out (though AirPlay is a wireless equivalent).
Lining those pluses and minuses up against those for the Nexus 7 – which garnered four stars – there's no doubt that this is indeed a five-star device. The 20% difference in comparative price is more than made up by the difference in build quality and software selection.
Apple is going to sell a lot of these – quite possibly more than the "large" iPad – in this quarter. The only way Apple could improve on this product would be (as some people are already agitating) to give it a retina screen and somehow make it lighter. That might happen at some point. You can wait if you like; other people, in the meantime, will be buying this one.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk


text:
GUEST COLUMN: Oneida Mayor Hudson's plan for firefighters puts them, public in danger
The Oneida Fire Department consists of 23 firefighters plus the fire chief, all dedicated to the preservation of life and property in the City of Oneida.
In 2011 the department responded to 1,856 calls. As of July 31, 2012 the department has responded to 1,155 calls, a rate at which the department could easily surpass 2,000 calls for the year.
In comparison, in 1979 the department consisted of 24 firefighters and the chief and responded to 584 calls. That being said, on Friday, July 27, 2012, Chief Myers received a letter from Mayor Hudson directing him to "reduce the minimum staffing level effective Aug. 1, 2012 to four firefighters on duty for all shifts."
The Oneida Professional Firefighters Association Local No. 2692 feels strongly that this is an unsound move as it will severely jeopardize the safety of the public and the safety of firefighters.
The Oneida Fire Department has prided itself in its aggressive attack on fires, and property preservation, through interior fire attack and rapid knockdown and extinguishment. The New York State Plan for Public Employee Safety and Health (the NYS equivalent of OSHA) has adopted the OSHA Two-in/Two-out Regulation for interior structural firefighting. This regulation mandates that for any interior structure fire beyond the incipient stage (defined as a fire in the initial or beginning stage that can be controlled or extinguished by portable fire extinguisher or small hose without the need for protective clothing or breathing apparatus) there must be a minimum of two firefighters to make entry into the structure and at least one two-man team properly equipped and trained outside the structure to rescue the interior team if necessary.
The two outside firefighters can perform other exterior firefighting activities however neither can "be assigned tasks that are critical to the safety and health of any other employee working at the incident." This means that the pump operator cannot be utilized as one of the two exterior personnel and that a minimum of five firefighters is required on the scene.
With a four-man minimum this initial interior attack is not possible and will lead to an increase in damage and destruction to property and an increased risk of injury or death to citizens and firefighters. A fire doubles in size approximately every 30 seconds. A simple room and contents fire that could easily be extinguished in minutes by a five-man attack team will now grow in size and intensity while the four-man duty crew awaits the additional personnel necessary to commence the initial attack.
A reduction in Fire Department staffing levels may also lead to a delay in response time for emergency calls. Unlike the police department which can prioritize and stack calls, when citizens call the fire department it is for an emergency that requires immediate response.
A cardiac arrest does not trump a structure fire or vise versa; they both require an immediate response. Of the 1,856 calls handled in 2011, 282 of the calls were multiple hits, meaning there were two or more calls occurring at the same time including five simultaneous calls on one occasion. Of the 1,155 so far this year 217 have been multiple hits.
For a number of these multiple calls, off-duty personnel were called in to cover or respond. A four-man minimum will increase the number of times off-duty personnel will be required to be called in to cover or respond to the multiple hits and will delay emergency response time as they will have to first return to the fire station from home or elsewhere prior to responding to the emergency.
The Oneida Professional Firefighters Association believes that the mayor's decision to reduce the minimum staffing is not in the best interest of the city or its citizens.
With ever-increasing call volumes and other duties and responsibilities associated with the day-to-day operations of the department, the reduction of staffing will jeopardize the safety of both the citizens and the firefighters.
Please contact your council representatives and let them know that you support the safety of the citizens of Oneida.
Read Mayor Don Hudson's letter to firefighters here.


text:
I have these dreams. Dreams where my body gets out of the way, dreams where I'm not restricted by the natural limitations of bone, sinew and gravity. The dreams are not always the same. Sometimes I glide. Sometimes I float.
Sometimes, I fly.
And then reality clips my wings, and I'm thrust back down onto my bed. Awake. It wasn't real.
Whatever I felt while I was dreaming — thrill, excitement, awe — is replaced with ache. Ache for something that's not possible, ache for something beyond my reach that nonetheless I felt palpably just moments ago. The best I can do is to dream... or to pick up a controller.
Ever since I learned about proper running form — the way your body is supposed to move to run optimally — I've become obsessed with movement. The motion of our bodies is a fascinating thing; downright mesmerizing, at times. Watch a runner. Watch a pole dancer. How long before you start wondering what moving like that feels like?
We can't all experience that sort of thing. That's where games come in. Much like dreaming, games are capable of making you feel like you're in motion even if you're actually sitting in place.
My intrigue probably isn't helped by the fact that I don't play soccer like I used to, back when I first learned about proper running form. Now I make a mental compendium of sorts for the way games let me move instead. Because sometimes, the yearning comes back and I need to boot up a game just to feel that elusive thing again — whatever it may be.
I'll tell you about some of my favourites.
Maybe falling feels scary — imagine tumbling from a high place with no hope of surviving. Sometimes falling feels thrilling, that's why we seek out roller coasters and sky diving. But in Gravity Rush, falling feels like freedom. Press a button and suddenly the axis that everyone else is glued to doesn't apply to you.
Down is wherever you choose; the ground, meanwhile, can wait. You fall at high speeds, rushing toward a surface — sideways. You're falling, but you're falling sideways. This is freedom, not just because you're free-falling, but because you choose how.
Who doesn't want to reach for more? There's the double-jump, sure — I'm particularly fond of Smash Bros' double jump for those moments in which reality would dictate that you can't quite make it, but, aha! Your body extends beyond its natural reach, you pump out a new jump, and it allows you to barely grab onto the edge of a stage. Phew.
Then there's Mario's double jump in Super Mario 64. You have to build your momentum through smaller jumps, and when you get to the final one — when Mario goes yahoo! after his yah, hoo-hoo, that moment is like ambition personified for me.
Like Icarus not being halted by the sun, like the moment in which Adam's finger finally touches God's finger in Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. It's not supposed to happen, but you made it happen, dammit. We're taught all our lives that some things will never come true because reality prevents wild, unexplainable things from happening. But the double jump spits in the face of all of that; dares to reach for more. Yahoo!
Believe it or not, Far Cry 3's Jason Brody is, at times, bearable. But only when he's up in the sky, arms outstretched, with his wingsuit on. I'm reminded of going fast in a car, hand out the window, breaking through the wind. Only instead of your hand, it's your entire body up in the sky.
No animals. No pirates. Not outposts. No becoming a warrior. Just you and your thoughts. If the wind is strong enough, the world seems to stand still.
The Rush
So many games have a 'boost' button, but one of the best has to be the one in Vanquish. It's all in how your character positions himself, tilting his body nearly completely vertically — with just one hand keeping him from fully hitting the ground. It's like you're on those wheelie shoes, only intense enough that sparks fly everywhere.
If your meter didn't run out, most of us would probably play the entire game like this. Not quite upright, not quite falling: on a threshold.
Dustforce is a game about cleaning — on the surface. In actuality, it's about elegance and refinement. The music sets the mood: peaceful, calm. It's your job to dust every surface, and you're going to do it through kinetic eloquence and a feather duster.
You naturally move smoothly, yes: but you have to chain that with combos and dashing, all in the name of never pausing your stride. The more you can clean up in one swoop, the better the score. You'd better be graceful about it.
Dishonored does not tell you how to approach killing a target, or how to traverse its levels. It's up to you; the possibilities are many. So too is the case with one of the best mechanics we've seen in years: blink. I was constantly surprised by what this ability let me reach — yes, not everywhere, but nearly. And in that blink, in that second in which I was teleporting from one place to another, I felt a great sense of potential.
This was especially true if I was in a pickle and I had to find a quick way to move about. If I could see it, I could go there. Anything is possible. I just had to decide what I wanted.
Finesse is not always this froofy, airy thing. Sometimes, it is heavy. Such is the case with my favourite space marines in Gears of War. The men in Marcus Fenix's squad (or enemies!) are not ballerinas, they are not graceful in a traditional sense.
The Gears language is one of force, and so any time you move, you feel it in your chest. A thud punctuates the search for cover. Your ferocity finds release in a curb stomp. When you roll, you feel the weight of your soldier. This is why Gears is so gratifying to play.
(Unless murder ballerinas are a thing. In which case they are totes ballerinas.)
Here is the beauty of a video game, then: the dreams do not have to end until we say so. Until then, we are free to move as we please.