Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2013/05/30/an-electronic-replacement-for-the-pipe-or-cigar-smoker/
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Friday, May 31, 2013
An electronic replacement for the pipe or cigar smoker
There’s been some interest in electronic cigarettes as a way to cut down or stop reliance on tobacco cigarettes. ?What if you are a pipe or a cigar smoker, though? ?ePuffer offers pipe and cigar replacements. ?Their cigars come in disposable models (bottom right) that can replace from 5-6 up to 10-12 cigars; they are [...]
Democrat seeks to topple Nikki Haley without sounding too much like a Democrat
South Carolina state Sen. Vincent Sheheen (Getty Images)
COLUMBIA, S.C. ? South Carolina Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, who is planning to challenge Republican Gov. Nikki Haley in 2014, says he wants nothing to do with Washington?but not in quite the same way Haley does.
"I don't keep up with what's going on nationally," Sheheen told Yahoo News in an interview earlier this month at the headquarters of the state Democratic Party.
Does he support the push for federal immigration reform currently going through Congress? "I don't really know enough about that to tell you."
What's his specific plan to implement the national health care law that passed in 2010? "I can't give you a detailed answer because I haven't studied it."
Sheheen, 42, a tall, floppy-haired, half-Lebanese, half-Italian lawmaker with an easygoing drawl, isn't clueless. His hesitancy to talk about Washington's priorities is part of an intentional effort to cast his opponent as an out-of-touch state executive who cares more about what's happening along the banks of the Potomac than at home along the Santee.
Since moving into the governor's mansion, Haley has become a nationally renowned conservative icon despite tepid approval ratings at home. Among South Carolina adults, Haley had a statewide approval rating of 43.5 percent and a disapproval rating of 36.6 percent, according to a Winthrop University poll conducted in April. The same poll taken a year earlier showed her with 37.3 percent approval.
But Haley is wildly popular on the right and enjoys nearly 70 percent approval among Republican and Republican-leaning voters in South Carolina, according to the poll. During her governorship, she has traveled the country to motivate conservative allies while railing against the mandates, regulations and tax increases coming from the nation's capital.
She talks about Washington a lot.
That's precisely where Sheheen plans to hit her hardest.
"She talks incessantly about national issues," Sheheen told Yahoo News. "She rarely talks about South Carolina issues. I'll talk about those policies, and I'll talk about those ideas. And while I do that, she'll be talking about Washington, D.C. She'll be talking about national political figures. Because that's what she's all about. She's made Columbia more like Washington, D.C., and my job is to make it less like Washington, D.C."
With about 19 months to go before the election, Sheheen is trying to define Haley early. In 2010, when she beat him by 4.4 percentage points, the cards were stacked against Democrats, as conservative candidates like Haley coasted into office on the national tea party wave.
Looking back, Sheheen saw himself within striking distance, and this time, he thinks he can use Haley's record against her while benefiting from an election year that will likely be more friendly to his party than 2010.
This time, Haley is an incumbent with a record that opponents can use against her. Sheheen says he can capitalize on her shortcomings to make up the ground he'll need to bridge the gap from the last election.
"There's a much greater opportunity in this election to draw contrasts between a positive agenda to move forward and the same old, same old," he told Yahoo News.
As a Democrat in a red state, Sheheen faces obvious statistical hurdles. An attorney first elected in 2004, he has been in the minority his entire political career.
On Election Day, it will have been 11 years since a Democrat held the governor's mansion. The state Senate and House haven't been majority blue since 1996 and 1994, respectively.
While he'll be required to show contrasts between himself and Haley, Sheheen refuses to call himself a liberal.
"I consider myself a pragmatist," Sheheen said.
That balance can be a tricky one.
While he doesn't like to dwell on national issues, as governor, Sheheen would be responsible for guiding the implementation of the federal health care law?a task Haley has refused. (At the state party convention in May, Haley told fellow Republicans that South Carolina will "never allow Obamacare to enter into this state.") Since the federal law passed three years ago, Haley has made every effort to push back against the state-based health insurance exchanges or expand Medicaid in the state.
"Haley has said no, and that's clearly stupid," Sheheen told Yahoo News. "It's stupid because it's our money, and she's going to send it to another state."
His willingness to adopt the state mandates in the law, he was careful to add, doesn't mean he approves of the law.
"I didn't support Obamacare, but we are where we are, and we have to work with what we have to work with," he told Yahoo News. "I opposed the mandates in 2010, and I still feel like that was the wrong approach. I think that there's been a lot of confusion, and I think you need a governor who finds ways to stop the bad things from happening and works to make the good things occur."
And of course, if he does defeat Haley next year, every Democratic presidential hopeful will be knocking down his door seeking an endorsement before the all-important South Carolina primary. Sheheen, who voted for then-Sen. Barack Obama in the 2008 South Carolina Democratic primary, won't say whom he likes in 2016.
But if those candidates come looking for support, he has a response waiting for them: "My question will be, What can you do for South Carolina?"
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Thursday, May 30, 2013
Grab Shadow Warrior for free from Steam
3D Realms' Shadow Warrior, originally released in 1997, is back as a free-to-play game available for download for both OS X and Windows through Steam, according to Samit Sarkar of Polygon.
Based on 3D Realms' Build engine, used to create Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior is a first person shooter in which the game's protagonist, Lo Wang, faces off against vile creatures controlled by the evil Master Zilla, a crazed megalomaniac.
A pastiche of tropes from bad martial arts movies of the 1970s and 80s, Shadow Warrior lampoons the genre much in the same way that Duke Nukem 3D made fun of 1980s Hollywood action hero movies. Shadow Warrior received some heavy criticism at the time for perceived racially insensitive Asian stereotypes. Still, the game is fondly remembered by many first person shooter enthusiasts for pushing the once-popular Build engine in new directions.
Shadow Warrior has been resurrected as free-to-play through Steam as a promotion for a new game based on the property that's currently in development at Flying Wild Hog and Devolver Digital, planned for PC and console.
Mac players should bear in mind that this isn't the MacSoft port of the game - this is the original DOS version, running in DOSbox emulation.
- Free - Download now
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/UkP0JQ9sfRI/story01.htm
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D.C. Is Home To More Of Esquire's 'Best Bars' Than Any Other City
New York hasn't got a thing on D.C. ? at least when it comes to cool bars.
D.C. has more of the "best bars in America" than any other city, according to an annual roundup of the country's coolest cocktail and dive bars by Esquire's cocktail aficionado David Wondrich.
Landing on the list are six bars in the District. More than New York's five. More than Chicago's two. More than San Francisco's measly one.
Those that made the list include some of the city's best kept secrets, like the Columbia Room, a secret cocktail bar behind an unmarked door in Mount Vernon Square's The Passenger. So secret, in fact, that you have to make a reservation in order to be seated, and there are only ten seats. The lounge also hosts some very good food, including foie gras French toast.
And some of the smallest and misleading. Case in point: Raven Grill. A Mount Pleasant dive joint that is not a grill at all. In fact, they don't sell any food. But, Wondrich sums up his recollection of the dive's bathroom profanity-laced graffiti by adding that, "I don't know of a sounder bar in America."
Also included are a few hotel bars -- Off the Record, Round Robin Bar and Tabard Inn.
Off the Record sits in the basement of the famed Hay-Adams Hotel near the White House. The bar hosts many-a-suited gentleman and woman, according to Wondrich. And according to Yelp reviews, it is a good place to catch a lawmaker doing things many would hope to never see a lawmaker doing. "I have a blackmail photo of a congressman canoodling with a pretty (drunk) young intern," one rave reviewer boasts.
Round Robin bar is located near the lobby of the Willard Hotel. According to a Gadling review, the cocktail spot is another place where the customers frequently spot famous politicians who are loafing in from a long day of arguing.
Located just off of Dupont Circle, the Tabard Inn is another cocktail bar with a long history in the District and is located inside the small hotel of the same name. The food is also quite varied, according to the Washington Post. Ordering donuts and oysters at the same time is apparently nothing to bat your eyes at, but that doesn't stop us.
In Adams Morgan, situated right on 18th Street, is the Jack Rose Dining Saloon. The place is famous for its variety of whiskey. Esquire notes that there are around 1,500 bottles of whiskey that line the shelves of the drinkery and is a favorite of Brightest Young Things creator Svetlana Legetic. However, this is not the place to find politicians looking to make deals in, as Wondrich says, it is just far too "public."
So much for open government.
But cheers to drinking the "best" and click over to Esquire to see the full list of America's best bars.
Also on HuffPost:
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/dc-esquire-best-bars_n_3354583.html
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Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Big Free Agent Contract Decisions Looming for NBA Teams During 2013 Offseason
Steve Nash and Pau Gasol will be back for the 2013-14 campaign, but there's a chance both Jodie Meeks and Metta World Peace could be enjoying different grass next year. Not necessarily greener grass, but grass that is significantly less purple and gold.?
Meeks' contract includes a team option, so the Los Angeles Lakers get to choose whether or not they'd like to pay him $1,550,000 during the 2013-14 season. Given the low number, that would normally be an easy choice, but Meeks failed to meet the expectations in 2012-13 by a rather wide margin.?
Even with the lowered hopes, L.A. will probably still keep him on the roster for one more year, hoping he remembers how to shoot the ball with consistency.?
Metta World Peace's situation is more interesting, as he's almost certain to pick up his $7.7 million option. He possesses no shot at landing a bigger contract than that one, after all.?
However, fans and the team alike aren't going to be thrilled with MWP's decision, and there could be some external pressure exerted on him as the franchise looks to scale back in the salary department. The amnesty clause could also come into play here during mid-July, as MWP, Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Steve Blake are still eligible candidates.?
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Samsung dominates the world?s biggest smartphone market as Apple?s struggles continue
A family practice doctor in Maine is refusing all forms of health insurance, including Medicare, in order, he says, to provide better service to his patients. Dr. Michael Ciampi told the Bangor Daily News that he wants to practice medicine without being dictated to by insurance companies. On April 1, Ciampi lowered his prices and [...]
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Three Lebanese soldiers killed near Syria border
By Laila Bassam
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Gunmen killed three Lebanese soldiers at an army checkpoint in the eastern Bekaa Valley on Tuesday before fleeing towards the Syrian border, Lebanese officials said.
It was not clear who carried out the attack, which is the latest incident in a frontier region which has been increasingly drawn into the violence in neighboring Syria.
Syria's civil war has divided Lebanon, with most Lebanese Shi'ites supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and many Sunnis backing his Sunni rebel foes, putting the Lebanese army under extra pressure to keep a lid on sectarian tensions.
Most Sunni groups in northern and eastern Lebanon blame the army for hindering their efforts to support rebels in Syria with guns and fighters and at the same time failing stop the Shi'ite Hezbollah militant group from sending fighters to support Assad.
Tuesday's shooting took place before dawn near the town of Arsal, in an area used by Syrian rebels and their Lebanese backers to smuggle arms and fighters into Syria.
"Soldiers at the checkpoint confronted the attackers and a clash ensued which resulted in the martyrdom of three soldiers," an army statement said.
The military was searching for the gunmen, who may have fled into neighboring Syria, Defence Minister Fayez Ghosn said.
Hours earlier a rocket was fired into the mainly Shi'ite town of Hermel, about 30 km (20 miles) north of Arsal, killing a woman and wounding two people, the army said.
The violence in Syria, where 80,000 people have been killed in 26 months, has spilled into Lebanon with rising frequency, raising fears for the fate of a small nation that lost anywhere between 100,000 and 150,000 dead in its own 1975-90 civil war.
Hezbollah has been battling alongside Assad's forces to drive rebels from the Syrian border town of Qusair, while many pro-rebel Sunni gunmen have slipped across to join the uprising.
In Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli at least 25 people were killed last week in street fighting fuelled partly by tensions over the Qusair battle, and in the capital two rockets were fired on Sunday at Hezbollah's southern Beirut stronghold.
The rocket attack followed a speech by Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who promised victory in the group's fight to defend Assad. Syria has served as Hezbollah's conduit for weapons supplied mostly by Iran for the past three decades.
No one claimed responsibility for the rockets that hit southern Beirut, but it was widely assumed to be a response to Nasrallah's speech by Syrian rebels who have threatened to take the fight into Lebanon unless Hezbollah keeps out of Syria.
The army has confronted gunmen before in the Bekaa Valley town of Arsal. In February, at least two soldiers and two gunmen were killed in a shootout after the army entered the area to arrested a suspected member of the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/three-lebanese-soldiers-killed-near-syria-border-093230237.html
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Sports Briefing | Baseball: McCann?s Homers Power the Braves
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Source: www.nytimes.com --- Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Brian McCann hit two home runs, including a solo shot in the 10th inning that lifted the visiting Atlanta Braves over the Toronto Blue Jays, 7-6, on Tuesday. ? ? ? ? ...
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Tuesday, May 28, 2013
'Crack baby' scare overblown, teen research says
CHICAGO (AP) ? Research in teens adds fresh evidence that the 1980s "crack baby" scare was overblown, finding little proof of any major long-term ill effects in children whose mothers used cocaine during pregnancy.
Some studies have linked pregnant women's cocaine use with children's behavior difficulties, attention problems, anxiety and worse school performance. But the effects were mostly small and may have resulted from other factors including family problems or violence, parents' continued drug use and poverty, the researchers said.
They reviewed 27 studies involving more than 5,000 11- to 17-year-olds whose mothers had used cocaine while pregnant. The studies all involved low-income, mostly black and urban families.
The review, led by University of Maryland pediatrics researcher Maureen Black, was released online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Widespread use of crack cocaine in the 1980s led to the "crack baby" scare, when babies born to crack users sometimes had worrisome symptoms including jitteriness and smaller heads. Studies at the time blamed prenatal drug use, suggested affected children had irreversible brain damage and predicted dire futures for them. These reports led to widespread media coverage featuring breathless headlines and heart-rending images of tiny sick newborns hooked up to hospital machines.
"The field of prenatal cocaine exposure has advanced significantly since the misleading 'crack baby' scare of the 1980s," the review authors said.
In recent years experts have mostly discounted any link, noting that so-called crack babies often were born prematurely, which could account for many of their early symptoms. Studies that tracked children beyond infancy have failed to find any severe outcomes.
In some studies included in the new review, crack-exposed teens had lower scores on developmental tests than other children but their scores were still within normal limits. Many studies found that the children's family environment or violence were directly related to the teen's performance regardless of whether their mothers had used cocaine during pregnancy, the researchers said.
The government's National Institute on Drug Abuse notes that it's tough to evaluate how drug use during pregnancy affects children's development because so many other factors play a role, including prenatal care, mothers' health and family environment.
____
Online:
Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/crack-baby-scare-overblown-teen-research-says-050533110.html
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Climate researchers discover new rhythm for El Ni?o
May 27, 2013 ? El Ni?o wreaks havoc across the globe, shifting weather patterns that spawn droughts in some regions and floods in others. The impacts of this tropical Pacific climate phenomenon are well known and documented.
A mystery, however, has remained despite decades of research: Why does El Ni?o always peak around Christmas and end quickly by February to April?
Now there is an answer: An unusual wind pattern that straddles the equatorial Pacific during strong El Ni?o events and swings back and forth with a period of 15 months explains El Ni?o's close ties to the annual cycle. This finding is reported in the May 26, 2013, online issue of Nature Geoscience by scientists from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Meteorology Department and International Pacific Research Center.
"This atmospheric pattern peaks in February and triggers some of the well-known El Ni?o impacts, such as droughts in the Philippines and across Micronesia and heavy rainfall over French Polynesia," says lead author Malte Stuecker.
When anomalous trade winds shift south they can terminate an El Ni?o by generating eastward propagating equatorial Kelvin waves that eventually resume upwelling of cold water in the eastern equatorial Pacific. This wind shift is part of the larger, unusual atmospheric pattern accompanying El Ni?o events, in which a high-pressure system hovers over the Philippines and the major rain band of the South Pacific rapidly shifts equatorward.
With the help of numerical atmospheric models, the scientists discovered that this unusual pattern originates from an interaction between El Ni?o and the seasonal evolution of temperatures in the western tropical Pacific warm pool.
"Not all El Ni?o events are accompanied by this unusual wind pattern" notes Malte Stuecker, "but once El Ni?o conditions reach a certain threshold amplitude during the right time of the year, it is like a jack-in-the-box whose lid pops open."
A study of the evolution of the anomalous wind pattern in the model reveals a rhythm of about 15 months accompanying strong El Ni?o events, which is considerably faster than the three- to five-year timetable for El Ni?o events, but slower than the annual cycle.
"This type of variability is known in physics as a combination tone," says Fei-Fei Jin, professor of Meteorology and co-author of the study. Combination tones have been known for more than three centuries. They where discovered by violin builder Tartini, who realized that our ear can create a third tone, even though only two tones are played on a violin.
"The unusual wind pattern straddling the equator during an El Ni?o is such a combination tone between El Ni?o events and the seasonal march of the sun across the equator" says co-author Axel Timmermann, climate scientist at the International Pacific Research Center and professor at the Department of Oceanography, University of Hawai'i. He adds, "It turns out that many climate models have difficulties creating the correct combination tone, which is likely to impact their ability to simulate and predict El Ni?o events and their global impacts."
The scientists are convinced that a better representation of the 15-month tropical Pacific wind pattern in climate models will improve El Ni?o forecasts. Moreover, they say the latest climate model projections suggest that El Ni?o events will be accompanied more often by this combination tone wind pattern, which will also change the characteristics of future El Ni?o rainfall patterns.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/8uaxbC6Z_5Y/130527100628.htm
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Monday, May 27, 2013
7 Ways To Sleep Better Tonight
SparkPeople:
I'm a married woman, but there's a guy I've been chasing after for months: the Sandman. I want him desperately some nights -- and then other evenings I push him away. It's completely my fault that he's turned his back on me in bed. Our always-too-short encounters are rarely satisfying because I'm constantly thinking about an errand I forgot to run or a form I need to fill out for my son's school. (Even Overstock.com and Candy Crush Saga come between us.) Yes, in terms of sleep time, I could -- and should -- do better.
Read the whole story: SparkPeople
"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });I'm a married woman, but there's a guy I've been chasing after for months: the Sandman. I want him desperately some nights -- and then other evenings I push him away. It's completely my fault that he'...
I'm a married woman, but there's a guy I've been chasing after for months: the Sandman. I want him desperately some nights -- and then other evenings I push him away. It's completely my fault that he'...
Filed by Sarah Klein ?|?
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/26/sleep-better-tonight_n_3332651.html
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Report: New controversy at scandal-scarred Rutgers
Julie Hermann listens during a news conference where she was introduced as the new athletic director at Rutgers University on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, in Piscataway, N.J. Hermann was a senior associate athletic director and senior woman administrator at the University of Louisville. Rutgers has been looking for a new AD since Tim Pernetti resigned on April 5, part of the fallout from the Mike Rice scandal. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Julie Hermann listens during a news conference where she was introduced as the new athletic director at Rutgers University on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, in Piscataway, N.J. Hermann was a senior associate athletic director and senior woman administrator at the University of Louisville. Rutgers has been looking for a new AD since Tim Pernetti resigned on April 5, part of the fallout from the Mike Rice scandal. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Julie Hermann answers a question in Piscataway, N.J., Wednesday, May 15, 2013, after she was introduced as Rutgers' new athletic director, succeeding Tim Pernetti, who resigned last month in the wake of the scandal involving men's basketball coach Mike Rice. Hermann, the University of Louisville's senior associate athletic director, is the third female athletic director at a school among the 124 playing at college football's top tier. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Julie Hermann listens as Rutgers President Robert Barchi announces Hermann as athletic director, Wednesday, May 15, 2013, in Piscataway, N.J. Hermann, who was Louisville's senior associate athletic director, will be the third female athletic director at a school among the 124 playing at college football's top tier. Rutgers has been looking for a new AD since Tim Pernetti resigned on April 5, part of the fallout from the Mike Rice scandal. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Rutgers President Roberet Barchi, left, and Julie Hermann listen to a question at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., Wednesday, May 15, 2013, after Hermann was introduced as athletic director, succeeding Tim Pernetti, who resigned last month in the wake of the scandal involving men's basketball coach Mike Rice. Hermann, who was Louisville's senior associate athletic director, becomes the third female athletic director at a school among the 124 playing at college football's top tier. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Julie Hermann speaks during a news conference where she was introduced as the new athletic director at Rutgers University on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, in Piscataway, N.J. Hermann was a senior associate athletic director and senior woman administrator at the University of Louisville. Rutgers has been looking for a new AD since Tim Pernetti resigned on April 5, part of the fallout from the Mike Rice scandal. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) ? The woman hired to clean up Rutgers' scandal-scarred athletic program quit as Tennessee's women's volleyball coach 16 years ago after her players submitted a letter complaining she ruled through humiliation, fear and emotional abuse, The Star-Ledger reported Saturday night on its website.
"The mental cruelty that we as a team have suffered is unbearable," the players wrote about Julie Hermann, hired May 15 as Rutgers' athletic director after serving as the No. 2 athletic administrator at Louisville.
In the letter submitted by all 15 team members, the players said Hermann called them "whores, alcoholics and learning disabled" and they wrote: "It has been unanimously decided that this is an irreconcilable issue." The players told The Star-Ledger that Hermann absorbed the words and said: "I choose not to coach you guys."
The 49-year-old Hermann, set to take over the Rutgers' program June 17, told The Star-Ledger she didn't remember the letter. The newspaper said when it was read to her by phone Wednesday, she replied, "Wow."
Hermann, the first woman to head Rutgers' athletic program and one of three female ADs at the 124 schools that make up college football's top tier, has promised a restart for the program following the ouster of its men's basketball coach and the resignation of other officials.
She is set to replace Tim Pernetti, who quit last month after the firing of basketball coach Mike Rice. Practice videos surfaced of Rice shoving and throwing basketballs at players and yelling gay slurs at them.
"No one on the coaching staff doesn't believe that we need to be an open book, that we will no longer have any practice, anywhere at any time, that anybody couldn't walk into and be pleased about what's going on in that environment. It is a new day. It is already fixed," Hermann said at her introductory news conference.
At that news conference, Hermann was questioned about a 1997 jury verdict that awarded $150,000 to a former Tennessee assistant coach who said Hermann fired her because she became pregnant.
Rutgers' problems started in December when Rice was suspended three games and fined $75,000 by the school after a video of his conduct at practices was given to Pernetti by Eric Murdock, a former assistant coach. The video showed numerous clips of Rice firing basketballs at players, hitting them in the back, legs, feet and shoulders. It also showed him grabbing players by their jerseys and yanking them around the court. Rice can also be heard yelling obscenities and using anti-gay slurs.
The controversy went public in April when ESPN aired the videos and Rutgers President Robert Barchi admitted he didn't view the video in the fall. Rice was fired and Pernetti, assistant coach Jimmy Martelli and interim senior vice president and university counsel John Wolf resigned.
After a series of interviews with many of the former Tennessee players about Hermann, The Star-Ledger said:
"Their accounts depict a coach who thought nothing of demeaning them, who would ridicule and laugh at them over their weight and their performances, sometimes forcing players to do 100 sideline push-ups during games, who punished them after losses by making them wear their workout clothes inside out in public or not allowing them to shower or eat, and who pitted them against one another, cutting down particular players with the whole team watching, and through gossip.
"Several women said playing for Hermann had driven them into depression and counseling, and that her conduct had sullied the experience of playing Division I volleyball."
The Star-Ledger asked Hermann about the players' lingering grievances.
"I never heard any of this, never name-calling them or anything like that whatsoever," she told the newspaper. "None of this is familiar to me."
Rutgers will join the Big Ten in 2014.
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Missouri highway buckles after rail cars hit overpass
CHAFFEE, Mo. (AP) ? A highway overpass in southeast Missouri collapsed early Saturday when rail cars slammed into one of the bridge's pillars after a cargo train collision, authorities said. Seven people were injured, though none seriously.
The bridge collapsed after a Union Pacific train hit the side of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train at a rail intersection. Derailed rail cars then hit columns supporting the Highway M overpass, causing it to buckle and partially collapse.
The National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation into the cause of the cargo train collision, which happened about 2:30 a.m. near Chaffee, a town of about 3,000 southwest of Cape Girardeau.
Only two vehicles were on the overpass at the time. Five people in the vehicles were taken to Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, as were a Union Pacific train conductor and an engineer. All seven had been released by Saturday afternoon, hospital spokeswoman Felecia Blanton said.
"You're driving down the road and the next thing you know the bridge is not there. ... It could have been really bad," Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter said.
The crash derailed about two dozen rail cars hauling scrap metal, automobiles and auto parts, tossing them into the overpass' support columns. The highway was shut down for about 8 miles from Scott City to Chaffee.
The overpass was about 15 years old and in good condition but just couldn't withstand the impact from the rail cars, Walter said.
Two 40-foot sections of the overpass buckled while two cars were on the roadway, sending the cars into the edges of the collapsed sections. A diesel fire also broke out in one of the locomotives after the collision, but was quickly extinguished, Walter said.
When Blanton heard about the crash, she immediately went online and saw video footage of the scene and was bracing for the worst, Blanton said. She said it was "a real blessing" that the injuries were relatively minor, the most serious being a fracture.
"If you look at the pictures, they're very dramatic, and there are no serious injuries," she said. "So it's amazing."
Walter said Deputy Justin Wooten was among the first at the scene and pulled the two Union Pacific employees out of the wrecked engine, which became lodged next to the train's second engine. That engine began burning after the crash.
"We're very fortunate he was there," Walter said. He said all seven people injured were already out of the wreckage when he arrived about 15 minutes after the crash was reported.
"People were talking; they were coherent. They understood what was happening," Walter said.
The cars on the overpass "took a really bad hit" when they collided with the bridge sections, but "they stayed on all four tires and they just hit and landed and that was it," he said.
The accident came more than a week after a commuter train derailment in Connecticut that injured 70 people and disrupted service for days. That accident involved a railroad used by tens of thousands of commuters north of New York City.
In Washington state this past week, a bridge collapsed when a truck driver's load bumped against the steel framework.
NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said while the investigations into both collapses are in the early stages "there is no similarity" between the Missouri accident and the bridge collapse in Washington, which sent two vehicles and three people falling into the chilly water.
He noted that the Missouri bridge was rated "good" after it was last inspected in February.
"This was not because of any lack of integrity of the bridge in southeast Missouri, but because of a train that derailed and had a bunch of rail cars slamming around, which knocked down a pier, which allowed the bridge to collapse," he said.
"If you just look at the facts, there is no relationship other than some external object caused each of these bridges" to collapse, he added.
The Union Pacific train involved in the collision was carrying primarily automobiles or auto parts from Illinois to Texas, said UP spokeswoman Calli Hite. She said about a dozen UP railcars derailed.
Hite said there was no estimate yet on the amount of damage to the roadway or the rail cars.
BNSF spokesman Andy Williams said about 12 cars on the 75-car BNSF train derailed. The BNSF crew was not hurt.
Sumwalt said NTSB investigation will include routine testing of railroad employees for drugs and alcohol, testing the track and nearby rail signals and reviewing video footage from the front of the train in an effort to determine the likely cause. The NTSB will also review the bridge's design.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mo-highway-buckles-rail-cars-hit-overpass-225548953.html
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Rockets hit south Beirut after Hezbollah vows Syria victory
By Dominic Evans
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Two rockets hit a Shi'ite Muslim district of Beirut on Sunday, driving home the risk of spillover from Syria's civil war, after the head of Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah said it would keep fighting on the Syrian government's side until victory.
It was the first attack to apparently target Hezbollah's stronghold in the south of the Lebanese capital since the outbreak of the two-year conflict in neighboring Syria, which has sharply heightened Lebanon's own sectarian tensions.
The United States and Russia have proposed an international peace conference to douse a civil war that has killed more than 80,000 people, driven 1.5 million Syrians as refugees abroad and raised the specter of sectarian bloodshed in the wider region.
Syria's government will "in principle" attend the talks tentatively set for June in Geneva and believes it will be an opportunity to resolve the crisis, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said during a visit to Baghdad on Sunday.
But in an apparent rebuff of Western calls for President Bashar al-Assad to cede power as part of any deal on transition, Moualem said: "No power on earth can decide on the future of Syria. Only the Syrian people have the right to do so."
The U.S. and Russian foreign ministers, striving to refloat a plan for a political transition in Syria, were due to meet in Paris on Monday to work out the details.
Whether the exiled Syrian civilian opposition will take part in the envisaged peace talks - and be able to negotiate effectively, given their internal divisions and shaky rapport with rebels inside Syria - remains in doubt.
The United States has been prodding Assad's opponents to unite before the conference. But the Islamist-dominated coalition has been hamstrung by power struggles during talks going on in Istanbul aimed at broadening its representation and electing a cohesive leadership.
The talks stalled on Sunday in a factional dispute over proposals to dilute Qatar's influence on rebel forces, with Saudi Arabia angling to play a greater role now that Iranian-backed Hezbollah was openly fighting for Assad.
Some observers have viewed the commitment by Hezbollah to Assad's cause as indicating the Lebanese movement does not see the United States weighing in against it. Asked whether the militia's role might alter Washington's reluctance to arm the rebels, a spokesman for President Barack Obama said on Sunday:
"The calculus that the president is making is something that is regularly reviewed and updated ... Our involvement and our assistance to the opposition there has steadily increased."
European Union foreign ministers meet in Brussels on Monday to discuss British and French calls for them to ease an arms embargo in order to help the rebels obtain weapons. Some other EU states oppose the move, at least until after any peace talks.
CONFLICT AFFLICTING LEBANON
Syria's conflagration has polarized Lebanon, a country of four million, in whose 15-year civil war to 1990 Syria was a major player and where Syrian troops remained until 2005.
Lebanese Sunni Muslims support the mainly Sunni insurgency against Assad, and Shi'ite Hezbollah stands by the president, whose minority Alawite sect derives from Shi'ite Islam.
In Sunday's attack, one rocket landed in a car sales yard next to a busy road junction in south Beirut's Chiah neighborhood, and the other struck an apartment several hundred meters away, wounding five people, residents said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Brigadier Selim Idris, head of Syria's Western-backed rebel military command, told Al-Arabiya Television that his forces had not carried out the attack.
He urged rebels to keep their conflict inside Syria.
But another Syrian rebel, Ammar al-Wawi, told Lebanon's LBC Television the attack was a warning to authorities in Beirut to restrain Hezbollah. "In coming days we will do more than this. This is a warning to Hezbollah and the Lebanese government to keep Hezbollah's hands off Syria," he said.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had declared on Saturday night that his thousands of fighters were committed to the conflict against what he called radical Sunni Islamist rebels in Syria, whatever the cost.
"We will continue to the end of the road. We accept this responsibility and will accept all sacrifices and expected consequences of this position," he said in a televised speech on Saturday evening. "We will be the ones who bring victory."
Though numbering only in the thousands compared to the tens of thousands of troops and many more irregular Syrian militiamen that Assad can draw on, Hezbollah's fighters, seasoned in urban warfare against Israel as recently as 2006, are a potent force.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius condemned the violent spillover into Lebanon. "The war in Syria must not become the war in Lebanon," he told reporters in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.
Until recently, Nasrallah insisted that Hezbollah had not sent guerrillas to fight alongside Assad's forces.
Syrian government forces reinforced by Hezbollah launched an onslaught last week on Qusair, a rebel-controlled town close to the Lebanese border that rebels have used as a crucial supply corridor for weapons coming into the country.
For Assad, taking Qusair would help keep Damascus, the capital, connected to the Alawite coastal heartland and also hinder links between the rebel-held north and south of Syria.
Lebanese authorities, haunted by Lebanon's own civil war and torn by the same kind of sectarian rifts as Syria, have pursued a policy of "dissociation" from the Syrian turmoil.
But Hezbollah is arguably a stronger force than Beirut's government, which has been unable to stem the flow into Syria of Sunni gunmen who support the rebels or of Hezbollah fighters who back Assad. It has also struggled to absorb nearly half a million refugees coming the other way to escape the fighting.
At least 25 people have been killed in Tripoli in the north of Lebanon over the last week in Sunni-Alawite street fighting triggered in part by the battle for Qusair across the frontier.
In Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, residents said three rockets landed on Sunday close to the mainly Shi'ite border town of Hermel, without causing injuries. Rebels have targeted Hermel from inside Syria several times in recent weeks.
Nasrallah's speech was condemned by former prime minister Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni who said that Hezbollah, set up by Iran in the 1980s to fight Israeli occupation forces in south Lebanon, had abandoned anti-Israeli "resistance" in favor of sectarian conflict in Syria.
"The resistance is ending by your hand and your will," Hariri said in a statement. "The resistance announced its political and military suicide in Qusair."
Hariri is backed by Saudi Arabia, which along with other Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab monarchies has strongly supported the uprising against the Iranian-backed Assad.
The extent to which Hezbollah's support for Assad has alienated Sunni Arabs who admired its battles against Israel was demonstrated on Sunday when the foreign minister of Sunni-ruled Bahrain used unusually strong language to call Nasrallah a "terrorist" and said it was a "religious duty" to stop him.
(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Istanbul, Laila Bassam and Erika Solomon in Beirut, Ahmed Rasheed and Suadad al-Salhy in Baghdad and John Irish in Abu Dhabi; Writing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Will Waterman and Alastair Macdonald)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rockets-hit-south-beirut-hezbollah-vows-syria-victory-000621219.html
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Saturday, May 25, 2013
Gerard Depardieu goes to Chechnya to film next movie
Depardieu and actress Liz Hurley are paying a visit to Chechnya to make a movie, in what appears to be an effort to remake the former war zone's international image.
Actor Gerard Depardieu participates in a news conference in Grozny May 21, 2013. According to local media, Depardieu is visiting the Chechen capital for the filming of his new movie, "Turquoise."
Rasul Yarichev/REUTERS
EnlargeRussians often grit their teeth at the way their country is portrayed in Hollywood films: a grim, wintry post-Soviet wasteland peopled with mafia thugs, drunks, and Kremlin megalomaniacs.
Skip to next paragraph Fred WeirCorrespondent
Fred Weir has been the Monitor's Moscow correspondent, covering Russia and the former Soviet Union, since 1998.?
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That may be set to change, thanks in part to a global movie star, "the Russian actor of French origin" Gerard Depardieu, who was granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin last January after he ditched his native France in a huff over high taxes.
Mr. Depardieu, who has become a vocal booster of his new homeland, is currently making a movie in Moscow and its repeatedly war-ravaged southern republic of Chechnya. It's a fairly standard blood-and-guts thriller called "Biryuza" (Turqoise) ? a tale of tragedy, betrayal, lots and lots of mayhem and, finally, sweet bloody revenge.
But Depardieu and the film's producers are making it clear that this movie's backdrop will be graphically different from the sad, impoverished land so often depicted by Hollywood. It will be set amid the glittering skyscrapers and swank nightclubs of Putin-era Moscow and the risen-from-the-ashes boulevards and modern apartment blocks?of postwar Chechnya. And it will feature many noble Russian ??and Chechen ??characters, as well as the usual gangsters.
With his co-star, British actress Liz Hurley, and director Philippe Martinez in tow, Depardieu faced journalists at a press conference in the Chechen capital, Grozny,?on Wednesday?to explain why he chose Chechnya to make a violent vengeance-themed movie.
"I followed everything that happened here and saw a city totally rebuilt and very sympathetic people," he said. "I saw more love and friendship than hate here."
But, perhaps also in the Putin-era spirit, anyone with questions about human rights abuses or the arbitrary one-man rule of Depardieu's "very close friend," pro-Moscow Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, was made to feel extremely unwelcome.
Asked by a journalist whether there were any parallels to be found in the fictional Depardieu's character's murderous revenge streak that culminates in Chechnya, and the real-life assassinations of Mr. Kadyrov's political foes that have been documented by human rights monitors, the film's director Mr. Martinez exploded in fury, according to the Independent.
"I have to tell you I?m a bit ashamed that you are asking that question," he is quoted as saying. "Gerard Depardieu and Elizabeth Hurley are making a movie in Chechnya! And you?re asking questions of a political nature! I don?t even want to answer."
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Peer Critique - Ilona Andrews
I?ve read an interesting blog post today.? In it, the author outlined her reasons for why she would and wouldn?t beta read someone?s manuscript. Her reasons are personal to her and this is one of those times where I have to tread carefully, as there is no one way of doing things.? So please don?t take this article as a criticism of her view, but rather as another way to approach peer critique.
Peer critique is a tricky thing.? Sometimes your peers react like this. Warning: video contains some profanity.
Nobody really wants to be on the receiving end of a freak out.? In a workshop environment, you learn to watch out for people who can?t handle criticism.? So I won?t elaborate on all of the reasons why one may choose not to critique.? Instead, I?d like to offer you some reasons why you should.
Here are Dahlia?s criteria:
- Because I?ve read for you before, and you appreciate it, and you discuss my notes with me or at least act like you?re putting thought into implementing them.
- Because even though I haven?t read for you before, I know from however I know you that you are a decent person who will appreciate it and thank me for it, and think I can probably do a good job.
- Because you have beta?d mine, which I wholeheartedly appreciate. Or you?ve offered to beta mine, genuinely enough that I just might take you up on it someday.
- Because I?m the last round and you?re looking for a very, very light beta read. And I am trusting you, even though I?ve been lied to about this in the past. (See #5.)
As I?ve said, this is one way of looking at things.? This set of criteria focuses a lot on the validation of reviewer and reciprocity, which is understandable, because some people do tend to take an unfair advantage of a workshop situation.
As an aspiring writer, my mindset was radically different.? I?m very target-focused. See target, proceed to destination by any means necessary. Destination for me was publication and getting there meant getting better so I did whatever I had to do to get better.? Nothing else mattered.? I figured out early on that workshop environment would be emotionally difficult but would get me there the fastest, so I critiqued probably upward of a thousand or so of chapters and short stories during my three years at sff.onlinewritingworkshop.
Here are my criteria for choosing to read someone?s manuscript, in order of importance.
1)? Can I learn from the author?
Successful writers don?t just read, we learn.? We learn from our peers? successes and from their mistakes. Nothing teaches you faster than being forced to critically evaluate another person?s manuscript. It?s not about just pointing out that something doesn?t work, it?s about why it didn?t work and applying it to your own writing. ? This is it, right there, the primary and most important reason to critique.? The manuscript itself could be atrocious, but if I can see that the author does something right, I want to learn from it. If the author does something poorly, I want to learn from it too.? Okay, she has a flashback within a flashback ? note to self, do not do this, it?s confusing.? But her descriptions of action scenes are awesome.? Why?? What is she doing right? How can I use this?
But this is all about you and not the person you?re critiquing.? Yep. The person I?m critiquing may be my friend and I might care deeply about her success as a writer, but I want to succeed too.? I want to make it, so yes, it is all about me.? Alternatively, the person I am critiquing could be a complete ass, but if he has a brilliant manuscript, I don?t care.? Gimme.? I want to know what he is doing right and how he?s doing it.
2) Can I learn from this author?s critique, if they reciprocate?
Every writer has their strengths and weaknesses. I?ve ran across other writers in the workshop environment who could write circles around me, and I knew that my technical critique wasn?t that useful to them. I would concentrate on offering reader reactions, because those are always helpful, and hope they drove by my latest chapter and pointed out my blind spots.? I would go and critique Charlie Finlay?s work, because he was miles better than me, and keep my fingers crossed he would stop by and offer some feedback, because I wanted to know how his brain worked.
3) Will the person be abusive if I critique them?
This is a distant third. Creative assholes are a special breed of assholes, so sometimes you have to decide if the benefit of learning outweighs the torrent of vitriol you will get back.
4) Will I get to see the second draft?
An even more distant fourth. I never expect that any of my suggestions will be implemented.? Once I finished the critique, my part in this process is done. The writer of the manuscript owes me nothing except a thank you and possibly a reciprocal critique if this was prearranged.
Even that second one should become less and less of an issue.? If people don?t want to critique my manuscript, if they don?t feel compelled to ask me for it, then as a writer, I?m failing.? Why isn?t my manuscript engaging enough?? Why isn?t it fun enough?? The goal is to get to the stage where you offer your work for feedback and people jump on it.? But in the beginning, I was writing crap.? If someone reciprocated, I felt privileged.
The author doesn?t owe me the implementation of my suggestions.? They have their vision and I have mine.? In the end, it is their manuscript, their work, their words. If my critique wasn?t useful, so be it.? Take what you can use, ignore the rest.? No hurt feelings.? Feelings don?t even come into this equation unless they are on the page. 
I?ve previously received a critique from a published author.? I was unpublished and she had won awards.? I had read her critique like it came down from Mount Sinai, analyzed it, took a deep breath and chose to ignore it, because it didn?t fit my vision of the narrative.? And later, when I blogged about it, she came by and said, ?Good for you!? On the flip side, I?ve received beta feedback from someone on Magic Rises a month ago and I?ve implemented 95% of it.
When Magic Bites was about to be published, our editor asked us to cut the manuscript for length by about a quarter.? She suggested that we should take out the front and end frame and the entire Olathe subplot.? The scene with vampires on the ceiling would be gone.? Her rationale was perfectly sound.? It would be easy to cut it and it would eliminate a huge number of words with a minimum fuss.? But the entire series arc hinged on that scene.? Our editor didn?t know this at the time.? We didn?t even know there would be a series, but we were hoping.? So, being green, I scraped enough courage together and asked if we could cut somewhere else.? The answer stunned me.? She said, ?Of course.? I?m just pointing out the problem and one possible solution.?
Critique points out problems.? It is up to the author to validate these problems and try to find the best possible solution for them.
But, if I offer critique, I do like to see the second draft.? I want to know how the problems were addressed, if they were addressed, so I can learn from it.
Since writing became a career, unfortunately there is a new criteria that overrides everything: do I have time? Usually I don?t, unless you?re a friend whose work I love, in which case I will make time.
So there you go.? An alternative point of view for the day.? How you critique and why ultimately hinges on what you want to get out of it.
Standard disclaimer: Don?t take what I write as gospel. There are many roads to publication and success as a writer and many definition of that success.? Mine is not the only way to go, nor is it the best way ? you have to find your own.? This is simply how I did it and your mileage will vary.
Source: http://www.ilona-andrews.com/writing/peer-critique
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