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Big changes in the security landscape
Context-aware security needed to protect enterprises
Revolutionary architecture enables context-awareness
Granular control of applications
Comprehensive user identification
Unprecedented device- and location-based control
Ease of expressing business policies
Consistent on-device, off-box experience
Completing the Cisco SecureX framework
The appification of the web and the consumerization of IT are radically changing the enterprise security landscape. The security apparatus at today's enterprises needs to be aware not only of applications and users accessing the infrastructure, but also of the device in use, the location of the user and the time-of-day before granting access. Such context-aware security requires a rethinking of the firewall architecture. Yet, the context-aware firewall needs to interwork with enterprises' existing security infrastructure. The Cisco® ASA CX not only provides enterprises with breakthrough security, it also protects their existing investments in security.
Big changes in the security landscape
The Internet today is seeing a major trend towards appification. Today's average employees are increasingly getting accustomed to accessing web-based services via consumer apps on mobile devices — both for personal and professional use. Such employees are demanding the ability to use their favorite apps on the corporate network. Further, consumerization of IT has also taken hold — employees expect to be able to use their personal phones, tablets and laptops at work and to do so with ease and without fear of being attacked by hackers. Finally, employees expect continued and reliable access to enterprise applications that are the backbone of their everyday workflow.
Security architects and operators are thus under sustained pressure to allow network access to the full range of applications, websites and devices. At the same time they must protect the enterprise from malicious attacks and maintain reliable access to traditional enterprise applications. The security staff today can't easily gain visibility into applications that are on the network and the devices and users that are accessing these applications. Without such visibility devising a meaningful defense is all but impossible. Even when the security staff knows the applications on the network, it lacks granular control over those applications and the ability to selectively grant users and devices access to them.
Hackers understand the constraints faced by the security staff. And they have devised ways around the typical security policies via applications that can hop ports, web-widgets that result in drive-by malicious downloads even when a user restricts surfing to reputable sites and advanced threats that use multiple weaknesses to steal confidential enterprise data.
Context-aware security needed to protect enterprises
To respond to the changing security landscape, enterprises need to enforce security based on the complete context of a situation. This context includes the identity of the user (who), the application or website that the user is trying to access (what), the origin of the access attempt (where), the time of the attempted access (when) and the properties of the device used for the access (how).
The firewall has long been the mainstay of an enterprise's defense perimeter. To fight off modern-day threats, the firewall needs to be made "context-aware." That is, it needs to extract the user and application identity, origin of the access and the type of device used for the access, and then permit or deny the access based on these attributes, in accordance with configured policy. In addition, the firewall must have the ability to detect and protect against emerging threats.
The firewall is the right place to obtain the full context of the traffic flowing through the network. The firewall already sees all the traffic crossing the trust boundary between the enterprise network and the world at large. Assessing this traffic at the firewall for conformance with corporate policies would seem logical provided the firewall had the ability to inspect the traffic for its full context. Unfortunately, most firewalls on the market today are too inflexible to easily accommodate context-awareness. Not only are these firewalls unable to extract the full context of a flow, they also lack the ability to enforce granular policies such as permitting access to Facebook but denying access to games on Facebook or permitting finance employees access to a sensitive enterprise database but denying the same to other employees.
In the instances where firewalls do have some context-aware attributes, translating the desired corporate policy to firewall rules throws up a roadblock. Current firewall rules expressed in the language of IP address, protocols and port numbers are already difficult to maintain. Manually adding more rules on top of these to account for new applications, users and mobile devices, takes significant time and effort. Even when these rules are successfully installed, the result is an expanded rule-set that only make rules maintenance more brittle and threatens the reliability of access to the traditional enterprise applications.
Clearly, the firewall needs to enable security operators to express context-aware policy in a much more business friendly language. Instead of forcing the use of IP addresses and protocol and port numbers to form convoluted rules, security operators need to have the ability to simply "block Skype" or to "allow Yahoo! Messenger but stop file transfers." Policy expressed in such business-friendly language is faster to implement, is easier to maintain and results in substantial reduction in the complexity and fragility of security management.
A context-aware firewall goes beyond the next-generation firewalls on the market today. Most of the current next-generation firewalls are technically capable of recognizing only a portion of the context of a flow and are ineffective against emerging threats. Many do not have a user-friendly solution to manage security policies. While such firewalls may improve upon traditional firewalls in some deployments, they do not provide the comprehensive security solution that enterprises need.
Revolutionary architecture enables context-awareness
While context-awareness inside firewalls is necessary to protect enterprises against modern-day threats, bringing the full set of required capabilities to market has proven impossible until now: Cisco has been able to develop a fully context-aware firewall by carefully following a set of key principles.
First, the firewall needs to be built from the ground up to detect, propagate, and act on the full context of a flow. Second, the firewall implementation needs to be complete — it needs to implement all of the features that enterprises need, not just the ones that protect against recent threats. Third, the architecture needs to be flexible to accommodate mechanisms to fight future threats, while requiring minimal maintenance downtime. Fourth, it needs the ability to use both local and global context — the ability to use information from both within and outside an enterprise's network. Fifth, the firewall needs to deliver context-awareness while maintaining high performance.
The Cisco ASA CX is built using a new firewall architecture that can perform context-aware inspection and make context-aware decisions without compromising on any of the principles outlined above.
The ASA CX re-imagines the firewall using four architectural constructs that work in concert (Figure 1). The first is a Virtual Packet Ring that enables packets to flow from the hardware interfaces into main memory and back out at high speeds. The second is an nScan Array that inspects multiple flows in parallel to obtain the full context of each flow and enforce the policy decision associated with that context. The third is a Context-aware Policy Engine that the nScan Array uses to make policy decisions. The fourth is a set of Pluggable Context Stores that consist of dynamically update-able databases that the nScan Array consults to make enforcement decisions. Together, these architectural constructs make it possible for the ASA CX to adhere to the principles outlined above.
The ASA CX's Virtual Packet Rings are implemented using shared memory. Each flow is mapped into a Virtual Packet Ring such that no subsequent data copies are needed as the flow is inspected by the nScan Array. With Virtual Packet Rings, data packets enter and exit without being copied multiple times. The avoidance of copies in turn enhances the packet throughput of the system. It also makes the system's performance more predictable and reduces the latency experienced by the end user who initiated the flow.
The nScan Array is a set of engines that inspect incoming flows by accessing packets maintained by the Virtual Packet Rings. Multiple inspection engines work in parallel on a flow to extract the full context of the flow and make a permit/deny decision on the flow. For example an incoming flow may be subjected to an HTTP inspection in parallel with an IPS inspection. A flow is allowed through the firewall only when both the HTTP and IPS inspectors determine that the flow is permissible. The inspection engines in the nScan Array can be dynamically updated without requiring an upgrade of the entire system or forcing downtime. This enables the ASA CX to defend against new exploits with minimal time lag from the exploit's discovery, and with minimal operator intervention.
The inspection engines in the nScan Array use the Context-aware Policy Engine to make policy decisions and take enforcement actions. The policy engine is a highly optimized data-structure that matches the attributes of a flow to the appropriate policy and its associated action. The inspection engines also use data in the Pluggable Context Stores to arrive at inspection decisions. Consider the case where a security operator has configured a policy to prevent all but a specific set of users from accessing a corporate database. In this case, when a new flow comes up for evaluation, an inspection engines first looks up the policy engine to determine the appropriate action. In doing so, the engine recognizes the need to extract the user identity associated with the traffic flow. Thus it accesses the user ID context store, obtains the user ID associated with the flow and tests this user ID against the users permitted access to the database. If the extracted user ID matches one of the IDs configured in the policy engine, the flow is permitted. If not, the flow is denied access.
There are multiple context stores in the system, one each for the different types of entities that are needed by the inspection engines. Thus there are context stores for user IDs, devices, URLs, and so on. Conceptually, context stores fall into two categories: those that are generated locally (e.g., user IDs and devices) and those that are obtained from an external source (e.g., domain and URL databases). Regardless of the type, each store is dynamically refreshed so that the inspection engines have the most up-to-date information while making their inspection decisions.
As soon as an inspection engine finishes working on a flow, it moves off to examine the next flow under consideration. Depending on the traffic pattern and the configured policies, the ASA CX system may determine that it needs additional inspection engines of a particular type (e.g., HTTP) and fewer inspection engines of another type (e.g., FTP). The system dynamically adjusts the nScan Array to contain the optimal number and type of inspection engines to keep traffic flowing smoothly.
The ASA CX hardware architecture, which consists of several CPU cores (based on hardware configuration), gives the nScan Array extensive parallel inspection capacity. Coupled with dynamic optimization of inspection engines in response to traffic patterns, and the efficient shuffling of traffic between network ports by the Virtual Packet Rings, this inspection capacity enables ASA CX to deliver high-performance context-aware security. At the same time, dynamically updatable inspection engines and Pluggable Context Stores give the ASA CX immense flexibility to combat new threats as they arise, with minimal intervention from the security operator.
While the ASA CX has been designed for flexibility and performance, the architecture seamlessly supports the complete set of security features that enterprises have come to expect from Cisco's firewalls. This includes inspection engines developed to counter threats to specific applications, and capabilities such as remote access and network address translation.
Granular control of applications
The ASA CX implements traffic inspection in two stages. At the first stage, an inspection engine classifies traffic at a coarse level. In many cases, the coarse classification is all that is needed and the engine makes an enforcement decision without further investment of computing power. However, in some cases the coarse classification engine determines that to enforce a particular security policy it needs to inspect the traffic more deeply. In these cases, the traffic is guided to a deep classification engine that carries out the more granular inspection. The two-level inspection mechanism provides the security staff with immense flexibility without compromising on performance.
Consider the case where the security staff wants to permit use of Yahoo! Messenger for collaboration between employees, but also wants to prevent file transfers via the Messenger to protect the enterprise from data leakage. Enforcing such a policy requires the deep inspection engine, as the inspection process needs to look beyond port and protocol. The ASA CX's deep inspection engine first identifies and permits the Yahoo! Messenger flow as it comes in. Realizing that a file transfer may be initiated at any point in the midst of a chat session, the engine continues to monitor the flow. At some later point in time if a user initiates a file transfer, the inspection engine recognizes a new sub-flow, flags it, and prevents the transfer from completing.
Similar visibility and granular control is available for more than a thousand applications, in the ASA CX. However, deep inspection is not unnecessarily triggered for traffic for which coarse classification is sufficient (FTP from a permitted network, for example).
Finally, note that the ASA CX monitors application flows on all IP ports, not just a specific list of ports. As a result it can effectively detect and control non-web applications such as Yahoo! Messenger and Skype, as well as applications that hop ports.
Comprehensive user identification
Firewalls can implement user identification in two broad ways. One is passive user identification based on scraping Active Directory (AD) agent logs and associating IP address with users for a short amount of time. Any traffic to or from a known IP address is thus attributed to the user associated with that IP address. The other is active user authentication where a firewall uses NT LAN Manager (NTLM) or Kerberos to process a user's identity.
Passive user authentication has the advantage that it works with all applications that are in use — since such authentication does not interact directly with an application. However, it leaves an authentication hole in the cases where an IP address is reassigned from one device to another. In such cases, passive user authentication cannot correctly bind an IP address to a user's identity.
Active user authentication performs true authentication via a protocol such as NTLM or Kerberos, from within an application, making it more precise than passive authentication. Unfortunately, only certain applications, such as web browsers and Microsoft Outlook, implement NTLM or Kerberos. As a result, active user authentication may not provide adequate coverage by itself.
Several firewalls implement only one of these user identification mechanisms. In comparison, the ASA CX makes use of both passive and active mechanisms to determine a user's identity, forming as complete a picture of a traffic flow's context as possible. The ASA CX also has the ability to profile and exempt non-interactive devices such as printers from authentication, preventing false alarms from these devices.
In networks that deploy the Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and implement Cisco TrustSec® technology, the ASA CX can do even better. Network endpoints implementing TrustSec, tag user flows based on user identity. ISE associates policy actions with tags and distributes them to enforcement points such as Cisco switches and firewalls. The ASA CX interoperates with ISE - it receives the policy-tag associations from ISE and populates its local context store with these associations. Subsequently, when the ASA CX sees incoming flows with TrustSec tags, it knows the appropriate enforcement action for them. This high-fidelity visibility into and granular control over user transactions goes well beyond the ability of any other firewall on the market.
Unprecedented device- and location-based control
Cisco AnyConnect™ is the most widely deployed remote access VPN solution in the market today, with more than 100 million seats deployed. AnyConnect is the preferred choice for most large enterprises implementing VPNs, and is available across a broad spectrum of devices, including PCs, iPhones, and iPads. When AnyConnect is used on an end-user device and the other end of the VPN connection resides on the ASA CX, the ASA CX obtains access to the device's OS-type, OS version and ownership (corporate vs private); the type of security software installed on the device (e.g., antivirus scanner); and the status of the security software on the device (e.g., clean, needs update). This device information significantly enhances the context available to the ASA CX. Using this context, the ASA CX can enforce policies such as permitting access to email from a private laptop but denying access to sensitive enterprise applications, or, for a corporate-owned laptop, allowing access to email as well as enterprise applications.
In the future, AnyConnect will work even when the end-user device is directly on the corporate network — in other words when the device is not connected via a VPN. In this situation, AnyConnect will directly transmit parameters such as the status of the security software on the device, to the ASA CX to take into account while making enforcement decisions.
Most competing firewalls do not have a robust integration with a widely deployed endpoint solution such as AnyConnect. As a result, these firewalls are blind to the device used for access, and are unable to obtain the full context of the access. Thus, these firewalls make sub-optimal enforcement decisions, irrespective of whether they permit or deny the access.
Further, the ASA CX can interoperate with ISE to enforce device-based policies based on TrustSec tags. The mechanism at work is similar to the user-ID-based enforcement discussed earlier. The only change is that tags are associated with devices rather than with users; consequently, the local device store is updated and used, rather than the local user store. Consider the case where an enterprise using TrustSec wants to implement a policy that denies mobile devices on a guest network access to enterprise data. Any flow originating at a device in the guest network is assigned a tag that tells Cisco switches and firewalls that the device has limited permissions. Subsequently, if the ASA CX comes across a flow destined for a corporate database but with a "guest device" tag, it knows to deny the flow.
Finally, the ASA CX can enforce location-based control using location information derived from the AnyConnect headend. Consider the case where the security staff wants to allow access to sensitive information on the corporate intranet to personnel on the road. However, based on a history of break-ins, the staff only wants to allow such access if the travelling personnel are in the United States. The ASA CX can be configured to implement such a policy. When a new VPN connection comes into the ASA CX, an inspection engine examines the originating IP address of the connection. Using the Pluggable Context Store, the engine determines that the connection originates outside the U.S. Thus, the ASA CX denies the flow, safeguarding access to the intranet in accordance with the configured policy.
Cisco has the world's largest threat analysis system in Cisco Security Intelligence Operations (SIO). The SIO network contains more than 700,000 global sensors that see more than 5 billion web requests per day as well as 35% of the global email traffic. In addition, SIO receives threat telemetry from AnyConnect endpoints. SIO continuously collates all of the information that it receives, categorizing networks, domains and applications and assigning them reputation scores. These scores are centrally computed, and quickly distributed to Cisco equipment configured to receive them. ASA CXs receive these scores, update their global context stores, and begin recognizing emerging threats and commence enforcement actions against these threats.
Consider the case where a section of popular news site contains an HTTP GET request that maliciously redirects the browser to a host containing malware. The unsuspecting user visiting the website, may inadvertently trigger the GET request and download the malware on her computer.
ASA CX can seamlessly protect against such "drive-by" downloads, without any intervention from the user or the owner of the news website. Using the reputation information from SIO, the ASA CX "knows" that the news website itself is reputable. However, the ASA CX does not ascribe the website's reputation to the host in the malicious GET request. When the GET request results in an attempt by the host to download the malware onto the user's computer, the ASA CX realizes that the host in question has a low reputation. Thus it prevents the download from proceeding, thereby protecting the user's computer.
As Cisco re-imagined the firewall with the ASA CX, it has re-thought firewall management as well with Cisco Prime™ Security Manager (PRSM), which utilizes Web 2.0 technologies to simplify everyday use and provides a consistent experience, regardless of whether the security staff is managing one firewall or several.
Ease of expressing business policies
PRSM is optimized to translate business policies easily into the appropriate firewall configuration. Let's assume that the security staff wanted to configure access to Yahoo! Messenger while preventing file transfers using the Messenger. With a traditional management application, this configuration would require coordinated creation of multiple rules based on IP addresses, protocols and port numbers, and these rules would have to be constantly modified to take into account any port-hopping implemented by the Messenger.
PRSM replaces this tedious and error-prone configuration with a few mouse clicks. The security operator navigates to the applications pane, searches for Yahoo! Messenger by name and checks the box for disabling file transfer. The operator does not need to configure IP addresses, protocols or port numbers. Instead, the policy configuration that the operator desires is expressed in everyday business language — i.e. "allow Yahoo! Messenger but disable file transfers." The translation of the business policy into low-level rules for IP addresses, protocols and ports is completely handled by PRSM.
For context-aware security to work, the security staff must be able to generate reports and conduct detailed analysis of specific events. PRSM includes a comprehensive and flexible reporting package to facilitate such analysis.
The ASA CX generates events, based on configuration, in a standard format. These events can be stored on-device or shipped to the off-box management application for aggregation and long-term archival. These events are also continuously summarized into reports, enabling security operators to access the reports on the fly. Further, events can be transformed from the PRSM standard format to any other format using a converter. Thus, security operators can continue to use their favorite third party tools to analyze the events and reports. Finally, the reports support a drill-down capability such that security operators can get detailed information on events for debugging, troubleshooting, and the like.
Consistent on-device, off-box experience
Cisco PRSM is available in two variants. The first is a web-based on-device version that is integrated with the ASA CX. The second is an off-box version that is typically used in situations where a network contains multiple ASA CXs. The on-device version is identical to the off-box version except for the latter's ability to manage multiple firewalls. Thus, from a security operator's point of view, the experience of managing the ASA CX is consistent irrespective of the management application variant — on-device or off-box — that the operator chooses.
Cisco PRSM contains several constructs designed to provide security operators with a flexible yet efficient device management interface.
First, a search bar is available throughout the UI. An operator can conduct a free-form search for a policy, object or event from any screen and then quickly access the item of interest. In addition, operators can attach user-data to any policy or object to facilitate efficient searching at a later time. Second, all UI panels are equipped with auto-completion and auto-suggestion shortcuts allowing operators to save time while managing the ASA CX. Third, the policy language is extremely flexible, allowing operators to construct succinct policies even for complex situations. For example, an operator can express policies such as "allow access to all users in the engineering group, except users A and B." Most competing firewall management applications lack such expressiveness, forcing operators to construct artificially elongated rules.
PRSM's UI is optimized to the security operator's everyday workflows. For example, in response to a complex ticket, an operator can create multiple changes in the UI, preview them, and only then commit the changes to take effect. Similarly, the operator can track the history of changes to a policy and the objects used by a policy. Such detail allows operators to collaborate on defining policies that are touched by multiple people, or to decommission objects that are no longer in use.
At the core of Cisco PRSM is a model-based design. All configurable objects are modeled with a schema that describes the object in its entirety, including the types of configurations that can be applied to any element of the object. Data associated with the schema is stored in a configuration database (Config DB) on the ASA CX. Together, the Config DB and the schema completely define every instance of a configurable object on the ASA CX.
The UI template for the management application is auto-generated from this schema, as is the code template to wire the schema to the inspection engines in the nScan Array. Generating code in this manner from the schema not only ensures consistent implementation for the configurable objects and minimizes software errors in the management application.
Cisco PRSM is built using a Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface (REST API). This API abstracts the various configurable objects in the Config DB and allows the management application to apply a consistent set of operations to those objects. The REST API is also available to the security staff, should it desire to write scripts or develop a custom management application for the ASA CX.
Even though context-aware firewalls are needed for complete protection against security threats, by no means do they render stateful Layer 3/Layer 4 (L3/L4) firewalls obsolete. L3/L4 firewalls remain useful in a wide variety of applications, including in the data center, where traditional five-tuple-based rules are both effective and sufficient. Nor is wholesale replacement of existing L3/L4 firewalls by context-aware ones desirable — given the hardware and process investment enterprises have already made.
Cisco protects existing hardware investments via a context-aware (CX) module that can be added on to an existing Cisco L3/L4 firewall, converting it to an ASA CX. Once this module is installed and configured, some portion of the traffic — that which needs full context-aware inspection — is routed through it. For the rest of the traffic, inspection based on IP addresses, ports, and protocols is sufficient and such traffic continues to be serviced by the L3/L4 firewall as before. As a result, enterprises interested in adding context-awareness to their security infrastructure do not need to replace their existing hardware with new firewalls. Nor do they need to add another device to their network — since the CX module simply adds on to an existing firewall device. The CX module provides all the additional visibility and control that the security staff needs to protect the enterprise.
Further, the ASA CX protects enterprises' investment in existing processes and firewall rules. Since existing Cisco L3/L4 firewalls are not ripped out of the network, the rules configured on those firewalls require continued maintenance. However, because Cisco PRSM is capable of reading, translating and managing the configuration for existing L3/L4 firewalls, security operators are spared from having to deal with two independent firewall management applications.
Finally, for enterprises that do not deploy Cisco firewalls, the ASA CX removes the need to make a choice between firewalls that "bolt on" some context-aware capabilities to an outdated architecture and next-gen firewalls that do not implement all the features available on stateful L3/L4 firewalls. The former typically implement an extensive feature list that enterprises rely on today — such as remote access and network address translation — but have limited context-awareness. The latter provide a broader, even if incomplete, set of context-aware capabilities, but miss important features that the security staff has come to expect. By moving to the ASA CX, such enterprises can maintain their existing use of traditional firewall features while gaining visibility into and control over applications, users and devices on their networks.
Thus, the ASA CX can be deployed in an evolutionary manner, interworking with existing hardware and processes whenever possible. At the same time, it enables enterprises to benefit from the revolutionary architecture that brings full context-aware protection to their networks.
Completing the Cisco SecureX framework
With SecureX, Cisco laid out a framework to protect the enterprise in the face of sweeping changes such as appification of the web, and cosumerization of IT. The SecureX framework embeds security into the network by intelligently and dynamically combining local context from AnyConnect endpoints and TrustSec tags, global reputation information from SIO and context-aware policy enforcement on a firewall. The ASA CX completes the SecureX framework by enabling context-awareness in the firewall.
Please see http://www.cisco.com/go/asa for more information on the ASA CX, including details on feature availability.
The Future of Network Security: Cisco's SecureX Architecture, 2011, Cisco Systems
Cisco TrustSec: Context-Aware Secure Access for Borderless Networks, 2011, Cisco Systems


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Booming business of being Rubio
Marco Rubio may be slipping down the shortlist of potential Mitt Romney running mates. But Rubio Inc. has been booming.
The vice presidential buzz surrounding the Florida Republican has helped put his new memoir on The New York Times's best-seller list, creating a windfall that could potentially wipe out the senator's personal debt. Coffers for his campaign committee and leadership PAC also have become flush with cash in recent months — he's seen a 50 percent uptick in donations.
Story Continued Below
And just as it seemed his vice presidential star was dimming, prominent Republicans, including Jeb Bush, Rudy Giuliani and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, began promoting Rubio, keeping his name in the mix, and in the media, as Romney's possible No. 2.
( Also on POLITICO: Veep watch)
"Obviously, if it was offered to him, he'd jump at it. On the other hand, I think being in the mix, being talked about in terms of his own future political ambitions is important … because he's looking beyond 2012," said Philip Williams, a political science professor at the University of Florida.
"If Republicans lose in 2012, then being in the mix, being talked about and promoted, that could certainly help him in 2016."
Added a GOP strategist: "This could be one of those times when you're better off being the one everybody wants rather than being the one who actually gets picked."
Rubio insists he's not stoking the flames on his vice presidential buzz, and endorsements are unsolicited.
"Those are friends and obviously they're supporters of mine and have been for a long time," he told POLITICO, "and I'm always honored when people say nice things."
Perhaps the most telling example of Rubio's recent success: his autobiography, "An American Son," has sat on the Times's best-seller list for the past five weeks, peaking at No. 4 for hardcover nonfiction. The English language hardcover is now in its fifth printing, with 95,000 copies in print, while the Spanish language hardcover, "Un Hijo Americano," has 16,000 copies in print, a spokesman for publisher Sentinel/Penguin said.
Part of the reason Rubio wrote his memoir was to tell his story on his own terms, including the history of his family's emigration from Cuba and his own political rise. But it will help Rubio pay off some of his debts, too.
Rubio openly discussed during the student-loan-interest-rate debate that he's still paying down what he borrowed for college — he's carrying more than $100,000 in debt from the University of Florida and University of Miami Law School, according to his latest financial disclosure report.
And Rubio is underwater on both his Miami home and a Tallahassee rental property he owns with Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.), a longtime friend whom the senator served with in the Florida House and who remains at the center of a federal investigation.
Two home loans — from Chase and U.S. Century Bank — total between $350,000 and $750,000, while he still owes about $100,000 to $250,000 on a 30-year mortgage for the rental home, records show. In Washington, Rubio rooms with Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and other lawmakers at a Christian fellowship house on Capitol Hill.
In a chamber filled with millionaires, Rubio ranks near the bottom in net worth among senators, so his book sales may be the only path to bigger financial success while he's still in the Senate.

subset: commoncrawl


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How to Answer
The first lesson I learned for improv was "Yes And." You agree (saying Yes) and add (starting with And). This made sense; you can't waste time arguing about invisible stuff, and you can't have a scene without moving forward.
Then I learned to get the Who, What, and Where in the first three lines, including names and relationships and a kernel of conflict. This made sense, too. It was a checklist, a to-do list.
- 1. Do something.
It doesn't matter what. You can choose to be witty or physical or emotional. You can come up with an idea or just be a character. You can purposefully decide specifics or let them emerge later.You, and your partner, and the audience all just need
something.Start the scene and keep it going. It's okay if it feels vague and uncertain. The audience doesn't need every detail right away, and they're more patient than you'd think.
- 2. Do it more.
- 3. Do it bigger.
- Imagine if Beethoven only did one "dah-dah da-DAH!" You'd want more.
- Imagine if he did it exactly the same way ten times. You'd want it a little different, bigger, softer, played on a flute; not exactly repeated again and again.
3 is Funny, Conclusive, & Ingrained
"Omne trium perfectum" means every set of three is complete. In comedy, we just say that things are funny in threes: the rule of three. Thrice is nice.Two is the smallest number of points needed to establish a pattern with an expectation to follow. Doing something more and then "bigger" satisfies that expectation while still being some kind of surprise.
You can follow this technique at any level, no matter who your partners are, no matter your energy level or mood, and it'll work.
What you choose to play becomes the game, without having to think about it. You don't have to find something or hope for anything. You can actively create, just by repeating any choice.Any details missing from the scene aren't necessary or can be added in later as clarification or a reveal.
Sometimes, you don't need stakes or emotions or a setting or names, so long as something else is strong enough to fill that void.Sometimes, improvisers patiently explore, listen, agree, and add until they get a good idea. Then, on that good laugh, they edit and start over, grasping at straws again. It's so much easier to make the first thing that happens into something great and stick with it. There's less dead air, less to keep track of, and fewer dead ends.
In improv, you might only see pieces of a larger narrative. If the show doesn't complete a traditional structure, wrapping up a climax and resolution, the audience won't care too much, as long as the pieces they saw were good. By repeating and heightening something, you create the slices of a larger pie.Plot asks, "What happens next?" Game asks, "If this is true, what else is true?" Deal asks "Who are these characters, what do they want, and how do they try to get it?" I think this 3-step framework answers all these questions in a pragmatic, practical way so improvisers can relax and play.
Matt Holmes is an improviser in Philly. He performs a full improv comedy set with a complete stranger from the audience in Matt& ("playful and winning" –TimeOut Chicago). He also teaches improv, coaches improv groups, and co-founded Rare Bird Show ("Top Shelf Improv" –The Apiary, "arguably the best improv group Philly has ever produced" –AV Club).
Look for the next installment of "Discussing a Bit," Matt's monthly WitOut column, on June 1st.
Have a comedy issue or theory you'd like Matt to examine? Email email@example.com.


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CharlieP wrote:I hope that's true, but given that the vast majority of written content these days is self-produced (social media, blogs etc.), and even that which is "formally" produced often goes unchecked (a bingo hall near me recently had large glossy posters outside proclaiming "Your just minutes away from a great bingo buzz!"), and there's a growing belief that "it doesn't really matter how it's spelt as long as the meaning's clear", I fear it may be not such a long time after all.
You do know that before the industrial era, spelling in English and other languages was an anarchic mess, right? And there was never a time when our societies were not awash in misspelled signage. If anything, I'd imagine that the widespread availability of spellcheck might finally make a dent in it.


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29 August 2012 at 3.29pm | Comment on this article
After his encounter with African art in Paris in 1907, Pablo Picasso was a changed man. He later described the moment in terms of a religious conversion. He used words like 'shock', 'revelation' and 'charge'.
Like many European artists of his generation, Picasso saw something exciting in African art. He identified with its craft and imagination, but he also saw different considerations to those that drove Western art of the time. African art hinted at a conceptual space that was worthy of real attention.
Watch Gus talk about the impact of African art on early 20th-century Paris:
Most of the carvings and masks collected by men like Picasso were created by artists whose names are now lost. Traditionally, African artists belonged to guilds supported by wealthy patrons. Over centuries this system of patronage drove innovation in wood-carving, textiles, metalwork and ceramics, while ensuring stylistic continuity. It produced great centres of excellence, like the foundries of southern Nigeria, the calligraphic studios of North Africa, the wood-carving schools of central Africa and the textile-producing towns of Ghana. It developed the tastes of visually literate populations who demanded art that was complex and challenging.
For the most part, this traditional African art had clear functions. It built cultural cohesion by carrying the narrative of peoples and, like art the world around, it was created to be visually arresting. African art was often not just a record of change, it could also be the necessary ingredient to spark change.
After World War II the first generation of named African artists began to come to the attention of Western art markets. A handful of this pioneering generation, like Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, used Western materials while maintaining African subjects and iconography. Bruly Bouabré drew on exhaustive research to create a manifesto for life, death and the universe.
Others like Uzo Egonu, who trained in London, created work that straddled an African art sensibility and a European one. Egonu was involved in the avant-garde scene of 1960s London and the city was a major influence on his work.
A new generation of African artists emerged after decolonization. Their work had a changed focus from that of their forerunners. Universities, art schools and galleries had replaced the old systems of patronage and international art markets began to have an impact. There were powerful continuities; many West African artists found ways to integrate weaving and metalwork into their work, while many North African artists continued using calligraphy in theirs. African art continued to focus on transformations, but it now also inspired and mapped change in national politics, global environmentalism and gender relations. These were themes that were more accessible to an international audience. It seemed to herald a new moment, a new kind of art for a new African continent.
Years after his initial encounter, when Picasso was asked how much he was influenced by African art, he rejected the very idea. He allegedly said that the African sculptures in his studio were like witnesses to his genius rather than inspirations. Anyone who has seen Les Demoiselles d'Avignon knows that African art was more influential on Picasso than that. I have always felt that his reaction mirrored a common lack of recognition of the distinctive genius of African art.
Thankfully over the last century African art has come a long way, and has begun to gain the acknowledgment it deserves. In 2012, a tapestry woven by the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui sold for a million dollars – its title: New World Map. Anatsui is one of the few artists who has had works displayed in both the British Museum and the Tate galleries.
Watch El Anatsui talk about the studio process behind his work:
African art: key facts
- Africa rivals East Asia for the oldest ceramic traditions.
- The oldest surviving flecks of paint were excavated from the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. They date to the Lower Paleolithic period more than 300,000 years ago.
- African art has been called primitive, yet it was a critical catalyst in the development of modern art.
- The last decade has seen the final museums in Europe remove stuffed Africans from their display cases and the first million-dollar African art sold in European auction rooms.
Gus Casely-Hayford is in conversation with Yinka Shonibare on Friday 31 August as part of Deloitte Ignite Africa Weekend. Find out more about Deloitte Ignite 2012 – a celebration of traditional and avant-garde African art and culture.


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Race to the Top
Back to School Tour
Turning Around Schools
Change Is HardBut Necessary
Student Hunger and Nutrition
Odds and Ends
Quote to Note
Upcoming Events
Race to the Top
On August 12, the Department announced it had finalized the application for the 2012 Race to the Top-District competition, which will provide nearly $400 million to support school districts in implementing local education reforms that personalize instruction, close achievement gaps, and take full advantage of 21st century tools that prepare each student for college and careers. The program sets a high bar to fund those districts that have a track record of success, clear vision for reform, and innovative plans to transform the learning environment and accelerate student achievement. "Race to the Top helped bring about groundbreaking education reforms in states across the country. Building off that success, we're now going to help support reform at the local level," Secretary Duncan noted. "We want to help schools become engines of innovation through personalized learning, so that every child in America can receive the world-class public education they deserve."
The program criteria invites applications from districts or groups of districts proposing to serve at least 2,000 studentsor groups of 10 or more districts proposing to serve less than 2,000 studentswith at least 40% of participating students (across all participating schools) qualifying for free or reduced- price lunch. Districts will choose to apply for funding to support learning strategies that personalize education in all or a set of schools, within specific grade levels or select subjects. Moreover, districts must demonstrate a commitment to Race to the Top's four core reform areas and have sign-off on their plan from the local superintendent, local school board president, and local teacher union/association president (where applicable). The Department plans to support high-quality proposals from across a variety of districts, including rural and non-rural, as well as those participating in a Race to the Top state grant and those not participating. The program offers competitive preference to applicants that form partnerships with public and private organizations to sustain their work and provide services to help meet students' academic, social, and emotional needs and enhance their ability to succeed.
The Department expects to make 15 to 25 awards. Awards will range from $5 million to $40 million, depending on the population served through the plan. Districts are asked to submit an intent to apply by August 30. Applications are due October 30. Grants will be announced no later than December 31. (Note: To assist applicants in preparing the application, the agency is hosting technical assistance webinars and has posted answers to Frequently Asked Questions.)
Back to School Tour
September 12-21, Secretary Duncan and senior Department officials will visit 12 states and dozens of cities across the nation as part of the Department's third annual Back to School bus tour. This year's theme is "Education Drives America." Various events will highlight education successes and engage communities in conversations about P-12 school reform, college affordability and completion, and the link between education and jobs.
Secretary Duncan will lead the tour from Redwood City, California, through Reno, Nevada; Denver, Colorado, through Kansas City, Missouri; and Charleston, West Virginia, through Washington, D.C. Deputy Secretary Tony Miller and Under Secretary Martha Kanter will also lead portions of the tour. In addition, senior officials are participating in more than 60 satellite events along the bus tour route.
The public will be able to follow the tour online. Also, there is an email list (subscribe here) for updates on the tour. Subscribers can expect to receive media advisories about the tour, press releases from the tour, and blog updates during the tour.
Turning Around Schools
This week, the White House welcomed more than 100 state, district, and school leaders and educators from 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Bureau of Indian Education for panel discussions on the transformative efforts underway in low-performing schools through the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program. During this event, 12 school turnaround leaders were honored as "Champions of Change." These leaders were recognized for their roles in building a culture of high expectations, improving instruction, creating safe environments for learning, and fostering professional development, among many other efforts to elevate the quality of education in their schools. SIG invests in locally driven efforts to turnaround schools characterized by years of low attendance rates, low student achievement, and low graduation rates, as well as high rates of student disciplinary action and staff turnover. Currently, over 1,300 schools are working to turnaround through the SIG program.
In related news, the Department has re-launched the School Turnaround Learning Community. The site features improved chat and search functions and a user-friendly reorganization of resources, aimed at allowing state, district, school, and community leaders to discuss innovative strategies and share promising practices. To date, the site has some 4,300 members, offers over 500 school turnaround resources, and has hosted nearly 60 webinars on critical topics, including early learning, increased learning time, teacher and leader effectiveness, family and community engagement, and supporting secondary and rural schools.
Change Is HardBut Necessary
Also this week, Secretary Duncan met with more than 800 language arts teachers from Baltimore County Public Schools at a professional development conference to kick-off the new school year. He thanked teachers for their commitment to students and encouraged them to continue to support the hard work of implementing higher student academic standards, transitioning to better accountability systems, and rethinking the teaching profession. "We know the quality of a school system is only as good as the quality of its teachers and leaders, and we consider it our solemn duty to support you and honor your good work," he said. "We also know that many of the changes underway are difficult and will take time, but we all have to meet this challenge together, because the children who will be in front of you [next] Monday only get one chance at an education."
That afternoon, 190 language arts teachers from each middle and high school across the district took part in roundtables with the Department's Teaching Ambassador Fellows to discuss the Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching (RESPECT) Project.
Student Hunger and Nutrition
According to a national survey by Share Our Strength, released August 23 at a school in Prince George's County, Maryland, 60% of teachers said that they have students who regularly come to school hungry. The survey also found that students who are hungry have lower academic performance and suffer from health issues and behavioral problems. "When students are hungry and distracted, they're not learning," stressed Secretary Duncan at the release. "To set kids up for academic success, we must make sure they're getting the healthy food they need at breakfast and lunch, so they can concentrate in the classroom throughout the day." Share Our Strength has many resources to help educators have an impact on hunger at school.
Meanwhile, First Lady Michelle Obama recently hosted the first Kids' State Dinner at the White House, showcasing 54 budding chefsbetween the ages of 8 and 12representing all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and several territories.
Odds and Ends
A new White House report, "Investing in Our Future: Returning Teachers to the Classroom," reveals that more than 300,000 local education jobs have been lost since the end of the recession. As a result, the national student-teacher ratio increased by 4.6% from 2008 to 2010, rolling back gains made since 2000. The President has proposed a plan that would provide $25 billion to prevent teacher layoffs and support hundreds of thousands of teacher and other educator jobs.
Earlier this month, the Secretary spoke at the State Higher Education Executive Officers' (SHEEO) Higher Education Policy Conference, discussing states' progress toward reaching President Obama's 2020 college completion goal and initiatives to expand college access and increase transparency around college costs.
The percentage of U.S. high school graduates meeting all four of ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks (25%) is unchanged from last year. Based on the actual performance of successful students in college, these benchmarks specify the minimum scores needed on each ACT subject area test to indicate a student is ready to succeed (a 50% chance of earning a "B" or higher or a 75% chance of earning a "C" or higher) in a typical first-year, credit-bearing college class in that subject area. Lack of college readiness is again most evident in the areas of math and science; just 46% of 2012 graduates are ready for college-level algebra, and only 31% are ready for college-level biology.
The federal government's web portal has a Back to School landing page with resources and tips to help students, parents, and educators prepare for the new school year.
The Census Bureau's latest "Facts for Features" edition presents statistics associated with the return to classrooms by students and teachers.
The Department has launched a web page aimed at parent and family engagement.
The Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention is encouraging youth to submit Public Service Announcements (PSAs)30- to 60-seconds in lengththat showcase ways they are taking action against bullying and promoting a culture of kindness and respect in their communities. The deadline for submissions is October 14. The top prize is $2,000.
The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), which sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (also known as The Nation's Report Card), is seeking nominations of qualified individuals to serve as board members for a four-year term starting October 1, 2013. NAGB is soliciting the broadest representation to fill positions in four categories: elementary school principal, testing/measurement expert, state legislator (Democrat), and general public representative (two openings). The deadline for all nominations is September 30.
Quote to Note
"America's future is directly linked to the quality of education we provide our children, young people, and adults. It is the key to a vibrant middle class, strong national security, and global economic competitiveness.... In the past three years, I've traveled to 47 states, visited hundreds of schools, and meet with thousands of students, teachers, and parents who are finding new and innovative ways to teach and learn. This year's bus tour is an opportunity to highlight what's working and create momentum for education reforms that improve the lives of all students."
|Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (8/15/12), announcing a cross-country Back to School bus tour
Upcoming Events
Today, at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, Secretary Duncan will join NBC Today Money for a live web chat. He will answer questions about higher education-related topics, such as student loan debt and the cost of college.
The September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance is the culmination of efforts launched by the non-profit organization MyGoodDeed in 2002, with wide support by the 9/11 community and leading national service organizations. As in years past, there will be opportunities for hundreds of thousands of volunteers to spruce up schools, paint and refurbish homes, run food drives, reclaim neighborhoods, and support veterans, soldiers, military families, and first responders.
Planning is underway for International Education Week 2012 (November 12-16, coinciding with American Education Week), jointly sponsored by the Departments of Education and State. The week provides educational institutions and communities the opportunity to promote and celebrate the benefits of international education.
Credits, Subscribe & Unsubscribe
Please feel free to contact the Office of Communications and Outreach with any questions:
Deputy Assistant Secretary, Intergovernmental AffairsStacey Jordan, (202) 401-0026, email@example.com
Program AnalystAdam Honeysett, (202) 401-3003, firstname.lastname@example.com
To be added or removed from distribution, or submit comments (we welcome your feedback!), please contact Adam Honeysett. Or, visit http://www2.ed.gov/news/newsletters/edreview/index.html.
This newsletter contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links are provided for the user's convenience. The U.S. Department of Education does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of this outside information. Furthermore, the inclusion of links is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse any views expressed, or products or services offered, on these sites, or the organizations sponsoring the sites.


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The Last of the Crazy People
Penguin Canada, 2008 - 211 pages
While other 11-year-old boys are preoccupied with things like hockey, television and having fun, Hooker broods about his dysfunctional home-life. With a mother who refuses to leave her room, a brother in an alcoholic haze and a father who's unable to hold things together, Hooker's world is one of bewilderment and conflict. Feeling alone and unhappy, the young boy seeks to put an end to all of the confusion in The Last of the Crazy People, Timothy Findley's astonishing debut novel.
Avis des internautes - Rédiger un commentaire
LibraryThing ReviewAvis d'utilisateur - lkernagh - LibraryThing
Set in the summer months of 1964, the story is about a well-to-do family of breeding residing in a wealthy neighborhood in Ontario. 11-year old Hooker Winslow is surrounded by his family, a family ... Consulter l'avis complet
LibraryThing ReviewAvis d'utilisateur - Katethegreyt - LibraryThing
I've read this novel twice. It is a remarkable first novel; Findley lived up to this beginning and then some during his lifetime. The main character is both hero and victim even while he victimizes ... Consulter l'avis complet
Table des matières
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Droits d'auteur
12 autres sections non affichées
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
Expressions et termes fréquents
afraid Alberta asked aunt began birds bottle broken pencil brother Carter's Bridge cats chair cigarette Clementine coffee color coughed crazy croquet damn dark dead dear door drank Elizabeth Rex eyes face faraway father fingers Frankie and Johnnie front Gilbert glass grass hair hall hands happened Harry Jarman head hear heard Hook Hooker looked Hooker thought Hooker watched inside Iris Janice Parker Jess Jessica Jessie John Harris kill kitchen laughed lawn listened Little Bones living room looked at Hooker Marilyn Bowering Markham College mind mother moved never Nick's noise once paused Phoebe Piano Man's Daughter porch quiet rose Rosetta seemed sick sighed silence sitting smell smiled someone stable stairs stared Stone Orchard stood stop talk tell things Timothy Findley told trees turned upstairs voice waited walked window Winslow


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Mowers: Rear-Engine Riding Lawn Mower
30086S - Snapper 30" Rear-Engine Rider, 8 HP, Series 6
A small portable gasoline generator in the 1,000-watt range and an extension cord can operate a microwave oven, a TV and a few lights. You MUST put the generator outside in a well-ventilated area and pass the extension cord into the house directly to the appliances. If you want to keep the refrigerator running, a number of small appliances, and more lights, upgrade to a 2,000-5,000-watt generator.


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Only hotels in 29519 zip code are listed below. Search for cheap and discount hotel rates in Centenary, SC for your upcoming leisure or conference / group travel. We list the best 29519 hotels and motels so you can review the Centenary hotel list below to find the perfect lodging. Hotels in Marion county and area code 843 are also listed.
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Seneca College thank you for including us in your search for an international education.
With more than 3,500 current international students from 111 countries, Seneca has a proud history of welcoming the world through its doors.
Founded in 1967, Seneca is Canada's largest government funded college. Our 10 campuses across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) provide students with contemporary learning facilities in a variety of settings.
Seneca's reputation for excellence is supported by more than 70 partnerships with universities in Canada and around the world. To our domestic and international students, these partnerships represent exciting pathways to further education and opportunities. Seneca students also have the chance to gain valuable work experience through our cooperative education program.
Please take a look around our site. If you have any questions about Seneca and its programs or want to know more about life in Toronto and Canada, please contact us.


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OIS Document Management 92: Proceedings of the Ois Document Management Conference Held in London in 1992
Mecklermedia Corporation, 1992 - Computers - 474 pages
From inside the book
61 pages matching strategy in this book
Where's the rest of this book?
Results 1-3 of 61
What people are saying - Write a review
We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.
Information Management Results of major survey of Current Practice and Trends
Recommendations for the Preparation of Microfilm and Electronic
Managing Credit Assessment Documentation with Image
27 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
achieved allow applications archive areas automation backfile conversion benefits business processes capture client companies compound documents cost created customer service database DIP system disc distribution Document Image Processing document management systems drawings electronic records engineering ensure environment example existing facilities factors FileNet filing system format functions handling hardware identified image management ImagePlus imaging system imaging technology impact implementation important improve increase Information Management installed integration interface ISDN issues Item Processing jukebox mainframe major microfiche microfilm Open Systems Interconnection operating optical disk options organisation organizations Photo CD potential problems procedures re-engineering recognition records management result retrieval system scanners scanning server solution specific staff standard storage stored strategy suppliers text retrieval types vendors VSEL workflow workstation


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/r/synthesizers subreddit. I've been making music with synths my whole life, but last summer, I taught a class on it, so I wanted to do some extra research.
Soon after, I discovered
/r/relationships, where so many people spend so much of their time talking young women out of relationships with older abusive men that the subreddit might as well be called
/r/abusepreventionvolunteerstargetingaveryspecificageprofile (except for all I know that might exist too). They help abused men get out of danger, too, and you do see the occasional abusive relationship where both parties are roughly the same age, but for some reason, 9 times out of ten, it's a naive 23-year-old woman dating an abusive 37-year-old man. There's a colossal irony in this: a site which is famously overrun with misogynists also hosts a fantastic resource for abused women.
At first I read this subreddit as a guilty pleasure, thinking that nothing could be more hilarious than the type of idiot who looks to Reddit for relationship advice. But when I discovered this theme, I realized this subreddit was doing a good thing. It's a force for good in the world, or whatever.
So I read these subreddits occasionally, and others, without ever logging in. I can't log in, because I deleted my accounts, but I'm glad I did, because reading Reddit without logging in is much, much more pleasant than being a "user" of the site in the official sense. The same is true of Hacker News; I don't get a lot out of logging in and "participating" in the way that is officially expected and encouraged. Like most people who use Hacker News, I prefer to glance at the list of stories without logging in, briefly view one or two links, and then snark about it on Twitter.
Let's actually compare these use cases from the perspective of behavioral economics. The upvote/downvote dynamic is one which incentivizes groupthink and long conversations. So if you go on Reddit or Hacker News, you see groupthink and long conversations. Twitter's prone to hate mobs and abuse, but if you're just doing a brief bit of snark on there about some random link from Hacker News, you're probably experiencing Twitter's happy path, which encourages snippets of decontextualized wit. The decontextualization turns out to be incredibly important. Decontextualization is why snarking about Hacker News on Twitter is a better user experience for discussing Hacker News stories than logging into Hacker News.
On Hacker News, if you say something people hate, they can downvote it, and if you say something they like, they'll upvote it. When you see your own post, it's ranked in a hierarchy next to other stuff people said, which is also ranked in that same hierarchy. On Twitter, you can get retweeted or starred/heart-ed, but tweets kind of just float randomly through time. You can find out if people love your tweet or hate it, but you don't get direct comparison to other remarks on the same topic, which is great. That direct comparison is a terrible feature. On a site which incentivizes groupthink, if you're the top post, you're almost guaranteed not to have the best insight. Good insights don't survive groupthink.
If you do have the best insight, you can calculate the stupidity of the group as a whole by measuring how far your post is from the top. But it's rarely so linear. Usually, a Hacker News thread will have a ton of bullshit, plus some good insights here and there. The best insights are usually about midway through the hierarchy, or near the bottom half of the middle section, which says to me that the audience as a whole is more stupid than smart, but also often contains smart people.
Everything I'm saying about Hacker News is true for Reddit in theory as well. You can definitely see it on programming subreddits all the time. In fact, programming subreddits are even worse than Hacker News. But Reddit serves a much larger and more diverse audience, and some subreddits (as I mentioned above) do remarkably good things with it, despite its fundamental design flaws. The audience is an important factor; Lobsters gets a lot of mileage out of being nothing but an HN clone with less idiots.
Long story short, the best way to use these sites is to never log in. And if you're building social software, you should really think about this.
First, your sites don't exist in isolation. In the prehistoric epoch when Hacker News was created, there was this idea that sites were self-contained universes. Today we know that a lot of the people who talk to each other on Hacker News are talking to each other on Twitter as well. So you have to keep in mind that even when people want to talk about the stuff they find on your site, it's unrealistic to assume that your site would be the only place they'd go to talk about it. If they have to create a login, but they already have logins on several social networks, a person with a login is not just a "user," they are a user who, in addition to finding reasons to use the site, also and subsequently found a reason to log in.
Second, neither of these sites seems to acknowledge that using the sites without being a "user" is a use case which exists. In the terms of both sites, a "user" seems to be somebody who has a username and has logged in. But in my opinion, both of these sites are more useful if you're not a "user." So the use case where you're not a "user" is the optimal use case. Conceptual blind spots often birth silly paradoxes.


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Before GOTHAM There Was the Curious Case of BRUCE WAYNE
Fox's Gotham, chronicling the pre-Batman days of the Dark Knight's hometown, is one of this fall's most anticipated new shows. But what few comic fans know is that this story almost came to TV nearly 15 years ago – and helped bring many other DC Comics characters to the small screen without even airing, or shooting, a single episode.
The tale of this TV show that wasn't has circulated among fans for years, but with Gotham coming up, along with such DC Comics TV series as The Flash, Constantine and the continuing run of Arrow, we thought it was time to take a fresh look back at the show that almost was – and how its influence is still felt today.
This is the story of the Batman-without-Batman show that set the tone for many of today's comics-to-TV projects. This is the story of a teen billionaire without a cape and cowl, his friends and enemies, and Barbara Gordon on a skateboard. This is the story of Bruce Wayne.
The tale of Bruce Wayne goes back to 1999 and a screenwriter named Tim McCanlies. In 1999, McCanlies scripted the animated film The Iron Giant, directed by Brad Bird, to widespread critical acclaim (and not-so-great box office, though time has long since earned it an audience). McCanlies' work has shown the influence of comics, including the use of classic Superman comics inIron Giant, and his writing/directing effort Secondhand Lions featuring original artwork from Bloom County creator Berkeley Breathed.
So perhaps it wasn't surprising that the same year Giant came out, he pitched the pilot of Bruce Wayne to Tollin/Robbins Productions. If that name sounds familiar, there's a reason for that. We'll get to it later.
Bruce Wayne attracted some interest from HBO – this was the same year the pay-cable network broke out out with original programming, thanks to The Sopranos – but seemed destined for a place on Warner Bros.' network The WB, now The CW. With shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek helping the smaller network attracting the coveted "young people," demographic, something that combined a tested concept like Batman with an "origin story" concept like The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles seemed like a sure thing.
It wasn't.
Despite positive reviews on Ain't It Cool News and other websites, the 62-page pilot script of Bruce Wayne was never actually filmed – but like The Iron Giant, achieved a sort of word-of-mouth success. PDF copies have long been passed around the Internet and among fans, becoming one of those fan-favorite "What if?" projects – a vision that was never fully realized.
Now, if you want to read the Bruce Wayne pilot…well, we can't link to it, but it's out there. A few simple Google searches using such terms as "Bruce Wayne PDF" and such should turn it up in the first few results.
But for the less search-engine-inclined, here's a brief summary of the script, and where the series would have gone.
The Bruce Wayne pilot is framed by narration by ever-faithful Wayne family butler Alfred, left tending cataloging materials from "The Early Years" in what's referred to as a "cavern" in the script (three guesses as to what this cavern really is, and the first two don't count). Flash back to London, where Alfred bails an about-to-turn-18 Bruce out of holding for getting into a fight, with news – he's been summoned back to Gotham.
Bruce, it seems has some anger issues and no idea where to focus them. And it's something the public is speculating on – he's been gone from Gotham for 12 years, and is now old enough to assume control of the family company, WayneCorp. It's something that has everyone from shrinks to Wall Street analysts to TV gossip host Vicki Vale speculating – what will he do next?
As Alfred points out, merely beating up would-be muggers isn't healthy and could open Bruce up to lawsuits. But Bruce soon makes some friends, including a spiky-haired 13-year-old tomboy named Barbara Gordon with a skateboard in her backpack and a tendency to go "undercover" while playing teen detective; her father, Sgt. Jim Gordon, the cop who never solved the case of Bruce's parents' murder; old friend and current WayneCorp intern Lucius Fox; and Bruce's former school chum and current party-boy law student Harvey Dent ,who tends to hang with a Holly Golightly-esque society bad girl by the name of Selina Kyle (spelled "Selena" in the script).
There are also several characters original to the script as well, including Harvey's sister Susan, in whom Bruce takes a romantic interest, Lucius Fox's mother Billie, and Charles Palantine, the acting head of WayneCorp, whose paternal interest in Bruce is levied by his desire to have him not poke into the company's affairs.
By the end of the pilot, Bruce has discovered that the people left in charge of WayneCorp aren't the most scrupulous, and figured out "something I'm good at" – fighting the corruption in his city, albeit hiding behind his playboy image as he takes over the family business. As he poses for a photo with Harvey, Lucius and his other friends, the picture is seen with present-day Alfred in the Batcave, as he narrates the proposed series' theme:
"It's an enormous task, perhaps even a hopeless one...to attempt to explain why a man, this man, finally saw no recourse, no other way open to him but to finally put on... a mask."
The Bruce Wayne pilot is, despite the dark undercurrents of Bruce's origin, a witty, fast-paced and occasionally spirited adventure story, one that features a more wry, exuberant version of the young Dark Knight than we're used to seeing. Bruce is someone who's playful and headstrong, but still tormented by the event that took his family and destroyed his innocence – and not yet hardened by experience into the brooding figure we'll one day know.
There's a few groaner moments (Bruce remarks Harvey is the most "two-faced" person he knows, while Gordon admonishes a svelte detective named Bullock not to pound down the donuts) and a few logical jumps (Alfred repeatedly admonishes Bruce to not let people know about his fighting/acrobatic skills, yet is bewildered his employer one day puts on a mask?), but otherwise, it's a fun, energetic script with a sweet father/son relationship between Bruce and Alfred at its center.
So how come it never got made?
Well, there are a couple reasons – including the network thinking there was a better idea in here.
The first problem was that while the negative critical reception to 1997's Batman and Robin had led to plans to reboot the Batman film franchise, one of the possible ideas for a film version being bandied about was Batman: Year One, based on Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's acclaimed storyline, which would have been done by future Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky. As such, it seemed like a bit too much of an overlap to have two different versions of Batman's early years going on at once.
Plus, there were worries that having Batman on TV might weaken his possibilities for a big-screen comeback. According to a 2003 interview with Austin360, McCanlies claimed that Warner Bros. head of production Lorenzo di Bonaventura felt that the series would defeat the Batman property's value as a film, despite McCanlies pleading with him that the word "Batman" would never even be uttered in the course of the series.
The result, according to McCanlies, was that di Bonaventura put a new Batman film in development, effectively quashing Bruce Wayne's chances of making it to the air. Perhaps not coincidentally, the film that finally made it to theaters in 2005 explicitly dealt with its own vision of Batman's early years – Batman Begins.
The second reason involves the secret origin of a show you probably do know.
McCanlies created a detailed proposal for several years worth of possible storylines for the Bruce Wayne series. As the series went on, Bruce would have dealt with corruption within WayneCorp and its ties to the Gotham mob, traveled the world to learn new skills, found himself getting involved with the criminal minds held in Arkham Asylum, tried working within traditional law enforcement, and encountered a number of figures who'd go on to become bigger parts of his life, including Oswald Cobblepot, Edward Nygma and Harleen Quinzel.
And in a two-part episode that McCanlies thought might make a nice spin-off if the show was successful, Bruce would meet a young journalist named Clark Kent at a newspaper convention in a story entitled "Smallville."
Tollin/Robbins Productions saw some potential in that. So did The WB.
What happened next is lost to the sands of time and what McCanlies has indicated in a Crave Online interview was a lucrative nondisclosure agreement. But we all know the end result: Smallville, produced by Tollin/Robbins. premiered on The WB in the fall of 2001, and ran for 10 seasons, even continuing on in a DC Digital Comic to this day.
The version of Smallville that ultimately aired was developed by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and you won't see Tim McCanlies' name in the credits to any episode. From his comments, it sounds like McCanlies didn't care for the direction they took with the series – but that he was also well-compensated for having come up with the idea, however inadvertently.
But though it was never made, Bruce Wayne helped inspire a new generation of DC Comics-based TV series.
Smallville was of course a smash – and begat an unsold pilot for an Aquaman series. That in turn led to Aquaman's portrayer Justin Hartley portraying Green Arrow on Smallville – and once that series ended, a very different take on the Emerald Archer continued on the CW with Arrow, now entering its third season and boasting its own highly-anticipated spinoff, The Flash.
Without Smallville, those shows wouldn't have been possible – and Smallville itself wouldn't have been possible without Bruce Wayne.
In many ways, Bruce Wayne proved ahead of its time. A number of ideas in the pilot, from Bruce battling internal strife at his family's company to the sarcastic-but-loving father/son relationship between Bruce and Alfred, showed up in different forms in Christopher Nolan's films.
And of course, the idea of a Batman prequel has come up again, in the form of Gotham.
In a weird way, Bruce Wayne helped pave the way for Gotham, a series that deals with similar themes – but in a very different way. We'll have to wait until this fall to see the unique take on the not-yet-Dark Knight and his city creator Bruno Heller (The Mentalist, Rome ) has conceived, but remember this:
Before there was Batman, there was Gotham…but before Gotham, there was (almost) Bruce Wayne.
And while it might not have ever made it to the airwaves, the legacy of this unique series that never was is still felt today – and will be felt for many TV seasons to come.


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Possible snake shortage looms
Declines in Europe and Africa raise worries of widespread slide
The world might be facing a new kind of sssilent ssspring if researchers are correct that snake numbers are declining.
Out of 17 snake populations monitored over many years in Europe and Africa, 11 populations plummeted about 10 years ago and have not bounced back, says herpetologist Chris Reading of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology near Oxford, England. Just what caused the declines between 1998 and 2002 is not yet clear, but Reading and nine other biologists sound an alarm in a Biology Letters paper released the week of June 7.
Losing a lot of snakes can upset the way ecosystems work, Reading says. Snakes o


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So, I've been trying to get the alpha/betas included in the Marathon Trilogy CD working in SheepShaver. For awhile, only the "macworld sf - jan 94" alpha would work & the other 2 builds "first non-orthogonal - may 94" & "feeling the noise - june 94" would crash SheepShaver immediately after opening them. But, if you check match the preferences show below, those 2 betas now work.
And here are screenshots from the starting location from those 2 betas:
I'm running System 7.5.5 in the latest build of SheepShaver for Mac OS X.
Oh & 1 more little tidbit of information: if you open up "marathon.alpha.fat" from the "feeling the noise - june 94" beta in ResEdit, there's a folder icon that wasn't used for the final version of the game


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A Saudi television anchor was banned from his own talk show after a critical interview with a member of the country's consultative Shoura Council on Sunday.
Councilman Abdulaziz Al Otaishan complained during the interview to host Ali Al Alyani that the government has been ignoring the council which serves as a quasi-parliament in the conservative kingdom.
Mr. Al Otaishan criticized the government's decision to give $3 billion dollars of military aid to Lebanon without asking the council for input. "Do you want me to speak frankly?" he asked. "$3 billion given to Lebanon, for what reason? Why did they not consult the Shoura Council?"
The show, called "Ya Hala" which means "Welcome" in Arabic, was aired on Rotana Khalijia TV, a private channel owned by businessman and member of the royal family Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
Calls and messages to Mr. Al Alyani's mobile phone seeking comment were not immediately answered.
Riyadh Najm, president of the General Authority for Audio and Visual Media, told Al Hayat daily that they did not order the ban that was confirmed by a number of Mr. Al Alyani's colleagues on Twitter but added that an "understanding" has been reached with the channel.
This is not Mr. Al Alyani's first encounter with censorship. A column he wrote briefly for Al Watan newspaper was banned in May 2013 after he criticized the Ministry of Interior.
"I'm saddened by the news of banning my good friend Ali Al Alyani from his show Ya Hala," said his colleague Abdullah Al Modifer, who went through a similar incident in July 2013 when he was banned from hosting his show after a series of controversial interviews.
،، حزنت لخبر إيقاف الصديق العزيز علي العلياني عن برنامجه ياهلا.. #إيقاف_الإعلامي_علي_العلياني ,,
— عبدالله المديفر (@almodifer) January 7, 2014
The ban has been a hot topic of discussion on social networks over the past few days.
Veteran journalist Jamal Khashoggi said this is "bad news for Saudi media … and also discouraging."
#إيقاف_الإعلامي_علي_العلياني خبر غير جيد للإعلام السعودي … وغير مشجع أيضا .
— جمال خاشقجي (@JKhashoggi) January 7, 2014
Khaled Al Nasser tweeted: "Those who don't know Ali Al Alyani now know him, those who did not hear about the show now heard of it, and those who did not watch the episode now will watch it."
اللي مايعرف #علي_العلياني عرفه الآن.. واللي ماسمع عن البرنامج اليوم سمع عنه.. واللي ماشاف الحلقة راح يشوفها #إيقاف_الإعلامي_علي_العلياني
— خالد الناصر (@Mashi9a7) January 7, 2014
Others like college student Hala Salimi demanded Al Alyani's return:
#إيقاف_الإعلامي_علي_العلياني We want him back. He's a voice of the Saudi citizen! #Honest_Journalist
— Dream (@HalaSalimi) January 7, 2014


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(Editor's Note: The Grant County News publishes all items in police beat that are submitted from each individual police agency. The News does not omit names from police reports.)
Kentucky State Police
Kentucky State Police charged Brandon Kite, 33, of Dry Ridge, with burglary in the second degree, assault in the third degree, alcohol intoxication, two counts of resisting arrest, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, at 12:34 a.m. May 20 on Grantland Drive. Kite was lodged at the Grant County Detention Center.
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Rick Ross Claims He Got A Call From Nelson Of G-Unit Records Offering Money To Fall Back On 50 Cent! "Nelson Gomez Offered Me Money To Fall Back On 50 Cent. But That Dont Go For Yayo & That Other Guy"
Rick Ross might fall back on 50 Cent if he gets half a million?. Shout out to Bg The Prophet
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Your informed consent shall be in the form of an "opt in" or similar policy. You
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text:
The Yale PET Center is a "state-of-the-art" research facility complete with lead-lined "hot cells" and manipulator arms used for the synthesis of PET radiopharmaceuticals.
Yale Positron Emission Tomography
In 2004, Yale University broke ground for a new, state-of-the-art Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Research Center dedicated to providing the highest quality of nuclear imaging research. Located on Howard Avenue in New Haven, with close proximity to other Yale School of Medicine departments, this impressive 22,000 sq. ft. facility has been established to advance the interests of Yale clinicians, scientists, and students in molecular imaging research.
The PET Center is comprised of a technologically advanced radiochemistry laboratory engaged in the development and use of a rich set of PET radiopharmaceuticals labeled with the most common PET isotopes (11C, 15O, 13N, and 18F); and an imaging and data analysis section that oversees scanning procedures and optimizes data acquisition and analysis. The PET center has grown over time to include approximately 55 clinician scientists, basic scientists, technicians, and students.
PET is a non-invasive diagnostic scanning technique that provides researchers and clinicians with quantitative visual images of organ function. PET scans can detect biochemical changes in body tissues before structural changes occur from disease. This information allows clinicians to be proactive in their treatments and enables researchers to develop early biomarkers of disease that can aid diagnosis and advance drug development.
The Yale University PET Center collaborates with other School of Medicine departments to provide educational opportunities for doctoral and postdoctoral trainees. Collaborations with industry partners serve to advance the use of molecular imaging in new medication discovery and the development of new PET radiopharmaceuticals. Current research interests focus on disorders of the central nervous system (CNS), oncology, cardiology, and diabetes.


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Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Lothlorien: LOTRO
12 comments:
- Balaji Santhanam said...
- December 11, 2008 at 11:07 AM
- JC said...
that's beautiful Tara...hope you are well, and had a great thanksgiving!
- December 12, 2008 at 4:33 AM
- Chris J. Anderson said...
Cool stuff.
- December 13, 2008 at 3:39 AM
- artboymoy said...
That's really quite beautiful. Love the warm color of the leaves mixing with the blue lighting.
- December 14, 2008 at 5:46 PM
- Kevin Bandt COnCepTs said...
your blog is beautiful! all of your work is top notch. each piece tells a story!
- December 15, 2008 at 9:47 PM
- jeffoehmen said...
Jeez Tara. well done. how long this take you?
- December 16, 2008 at 5:28 PM
- rickart said...
Nice work, Tara... just as I imagined it... I didn't care for the film version very much. It didn't capture the grandeur of the Elves the way you have here. Quite lovely.
Off to Wisconsin for the holidays? We're pretty much snow bound in Seattle... unusual amounts of snow for the area.
- December 21, 2008 at 9:43 PM
- Abhilash.N said...
thanks for sharing..!
- December 22, 2008 at 12:35 AM
- jason hazelroth said...
holy shit! I've never seen your blog before but I'll be coming back for more thats for sure
- February 20, 2009 at 4:05 AM
- Arthur Mirzoyan said...
Hi Tara!
I have no words!!!
truly great color sense and mood!
- March 3, 2009 at 8:25 AM
Nice Page!
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- May 7, 2009 at 10:29 PM
- Mandaless said...
Your work is truly great. An almost exact picture of what my imagination comes up with, though often your pictures are magnificently better. You've such a talent. You currently reside as my desktops, and I hope you get a lot of money for your work, as I know I wouldn't be able to afford it, but as a goal I hope one day I will.
- April 23, 2013 at 11:41 PM


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China's "big brother" relationship with North Korea saw an extreme test last week, as North Korean leadership apparently flouted Chinese requests and tested a third nuclear device.
If reports in Japanese and Taiwanese press are believed, North Korea went ahead with the test despite direct protests from the Chinese government (China apparently refused to accept a "certain condition" in secret talks).
Another report from Reuters says that Pyongyang has told Beijing it will be holding another one or two nuclear tests this year, further ignoring Chinese requests.
Both the official response from China and public sentiment within the country seem enraged by what many see as the ungrateful behavior of the smaller, poorer nation.
All of this begs the question — why do the two countries have a special relationship in the first place? And if it's souring, why bother keeping it up?
The relationship dates back at least half a century, with China entering the Korean war on the side of the North. The two countries were united by a shared ideology and Cold War bipolarity that pitted both against the West.
Nowadays ideology and anti-Western sentiment appears to have taken a back seat to more practical concerns. For North Korea, the modern benefits of the relationship are obvious. In 2006 the Council on Foreign Relations estimated that the country got 70 percent of its food and 70 to 80 percent of its fuel from China, and that an estimated 300,000 North Koreans lived in China, many of them migrant workers who sent money back home.
For China, things are a little more complicated. If North Korea's government collapsed or the country descended into conflict, it would likely create a refugee crisis, and most of those refugee could well cross the border into China, stretching resources in a country that has many of its own problems.
There's also the incredible economic opportunity on offer in North Korea. Last week NK News reported that the two countries' trade had reached an all time high, and included a chart that showed how the trade had exploded in recent years.
Much of that growth is based around North Korea's largely untapped natural resources. One report from last year suggested that the country could be sitting on $6 trillion worth of rare minerals. It's likely no coincidence that much of this is thought to be rare earth minerals. China is the world leader in the rare earth market, with expertise and resources far beyond most other countries. However, it may not last forever — last year the Chinese government put out a white paper that suggested it's supplies were running out.
It's for these reasons few experts expect the latest infractions from North Korea to effect the relationship too much. China has too much to gain from an isolated-but-stable North Korea to punish its little brother.