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Monday, October 31, 2011
St. Louis Cardinals World Series win: Three questions to ponder
The St. Louis Cardinals had to claw back from series deficits to beat the Texas Rangers in Game 7 of the World Series. For Cardinals fans, the win was all the sweeter when hometown boy David Freese was named MVP.
The St. Louis Cardinals scored an improbable World Series victory on Friday night, beating the Texas Rangers 6-2 in Game 7. Cardinals starting pitcher Chris Carpenter gutted his way through six tough innings, and Mr. October (Midwest version) David Freese did the rest, lining a key two-run double to the base of the outfield wall in the bottom of the first.
Skip to next paragraphFreese?s hit erased an early Texas lead and brought the hometown crowd back to life. From there on the Cardinals gained control of the game, inning by inning and inch by inch, as the Ranger hitters went down quietly and St. Louis took advantage of walks and hit batsmen to pad their lead.
It was a championship made all the sweeter by the fact that St. Louis was ten and a half games out of a playoff spot in August and had to claw back from series deficits in both the division and National League Championship series. At one point in the World Series they were down 3-2 in games. In Game 6 they were one strike away from elimination ? twice.
IN PICTURES: Fan Frenzy: World Series 2011
Perhaps no baseball team ever has walked such a tightrope for so long and grabbed a trophy at the end.
?I think the last month of the season, that?s where it started,? Cardinals superstar Albert Pujols said in the raucous post-game clubhouse. ?Different guys were coming huge, getting big hits, and we carried that into the postseason and here we are world champions.?
The narrative doesn?t end there, though. Here are some key questions for fans to ponder as they await free agent King Albert?s decision as to whether he?ll play for the Cubs ? or even the Rangers ? next season.
HOW RELIEVED IS TONY LARUSSA? The Cardinals manager had set himself up as the World Series goat. In Game 5 he?d failed to ensure the right relievers were warming up, arguably costing his team the game. It was so bad that at one point LaRussa signaled for a right-hander and was greeted by a different reliever than the one he thought he would be getting.
Now LaRussa won?t have to worry about a stain on his reputation. Instead he?ll be remembered as he ought to be ? the greatest manager since baseball games hit television. His touch in the clubhouse and chess master player match-ups worked this time. Is he a frenetic over-manager? OK, Tampa?s Joe Maddon is relaxed, but how many World Series has he won?
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Holliday replaced by Chambers for Game Seven of World Series (Reuters)
ST LOUIS (Reuters) ? St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday will miss Friday's Game Seven of the World Series against the Texas Rangers due to injury and will be replaced on the roster by outfielder Adron Chambers, Major League Baseball (MLB) said on Friday.
Holliday severely bruised the pinky finger on his right hand during Thursday's thrilling 10-9 Game Six victory in 11 innings at Busch Stadium.
MLB approved the roster substitution under postseason rules that allow injured players to be replaced during the World Series if the severity of the injury is such that it would require a disabled list assignment during the regular season.
(Reporting by Larry Fine, Editing by Julian Linden; To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)
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NATO: Man in Afghan army uniform kills 2 troops
KABUL, Afghanistan?? NATO says a man wearing an Afghan military uniform has turned his weapon on coalition and Afghan troops in the country's south, killing two members of the U.S.-led coalition.
The coalition says the shooter also was killed in the incident Saturday in southern Afghanistan.
The nationalities of those killed were not disclosed and the coalition did not provide any other details about the shooting.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45077998/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
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Sunday, October 30, 2011
Snow smacks Northeast; power could be out for days (AP)
SOUTH WINDSOR, Conn. ? Millions of people from Maine to Maryland were without power as an unseasonably early storm dumped heavy, wet snow over the weekend on a region more used to gaping at leaves in October than shoveling snow.
The snow was due to stop falling in New England late Sunday, but it could be days before many of the more than 3 million without electricity see it restored, officials warned. The storm smashed record snowfall totals for October, and several officials called its ferocity historic.
At least three deaths were blamed on the weather, and states of emergency were declared in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and parts of New York.
The storm worsened as it moved north, and communities in western Massachusetts were among the hardest hit. Snowfall totals topped 27 inches in Plainfield, and nearby Windsor had gotten 26 inches by early Sunday.
"Look at this, look at all the damage," said Jennifer Burckson, 49, after she came outside Sunday morning in South Windsor to find a massive tree branch had smashed her car's back windshield. Trees in the neighborhood were snapped in half, with others weighed down so much that the leaves brushed the snow.
Compounding the storm's impact were still-leafy trees, which gave the snow something to hang onto and that put tremendous weight on branches, said National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro. That led to limbs breaking off and contributed to the widespread outages.
"We can't even use the snow blower because the snow is so heavy," Burckson said.
The 750,000 who lost power in Connecticut broke a record for the state that was set when the remnants of Hurricane Irene hit the state in August. People could be without electricity for as long as a week, said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
This outage will be worse than one caused by Irene, said Peter Bloom, 70, of South Windsor, because he relies on electricity to heat his home.
"I'm going to put another blanket on. What else can I do?" he said as he gassed up a snow blower to clear his driveway. "At least I'll save a few bucks on my electric bill."
The severity of the storm caught many by surprise, and it disrupted Halloween plans, too.
Sharon Martovich of Southbury, Conn., who was grocery shopping Sunday morning in nearby Newtown at one of the few businesses open for miles, said she's hoping the power will come back on in time for her husband's Halloween tradition of playing "Young Frankenstein" on a giant screen in front of their house.
"We would be really sad and it would disappoint a lot of people if we can't play `Young Frankenstein,'" she said. But no matter what, they will make sure the eight or so children who live in the neighborhood don't miss out on trick-or-treating.
"Either way we will get the giant flashlights and we will go," she said.
She was already making the best of the outage. After her power went out at about 4 p.m. Saturday, she invited neighbors over for an impromptu Halloween party with wine and quesadillas in front of her propane fireplace.
Around Newtown, snow-laden branches trees were snapping off trees every few minutes. Roads that were plowed became impassible because the trees were falling so fast.
Some other inland towns got more than a foot of snow. West Milford, N.J., about 45 miles northwest of New York City, saw 19 inches by early Sunday.
New Jersey's largest electric and gas utility, PSE&G, warned customers to prepare for "potentially lengthy outages" and advised power might not be fully restored until Wednesday. More than 600,000 lost electricity in the state, including Gov. Chris Christie.
Along the coast and in such cities as Boston, relatively warm water temperatures helped keep snowfall totals much lower. Washington received a trace of snow, tying a 1925 record for the date. New York City's Central Park set a record for both the date and the month of October with 1.3 inches of snow.
But in New Hampshire's capital of Concord, more than 22 inches fell, weeks ahead of the usual first measurable snowfall. Trees downtown still bright with fall colors were covered with snow. Some didn't survive ? a large oak tree that had stood alongside the Statehouse fell, partially blocking a side street.
By 8 a.m., Dave Whitcher had already been clearing dozens of parking lots around town for eight hours as part of his work as a property manager.
Holding up his shovel, he said, "Me and this guy are going to get to know each other real well today."
Residents were urged to avoid travel altogether. Speed limits were reduced on bridges between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A few roads closed because of accidents and downed trees and power lines, and more were expected, said Sean Brown, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
Two of the airports serving New York City, Newark Liberty and Kennedy, had hours-long delays Saturday, as did Philadelphia's airport. Commuter trains in Connecticut and New York were delayed or suspended because of downed trees and signal problems. Amtrak suspended service between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pa., and one train from Chicago to Boston got stuck overnight in Palmer, Mass. The 48 passengers had food and heat, a spokeswoman said, and were taken by bus Sunday to their destinations.
In southeastern Pennsylvania, an 84-year-old man was killed when a snow-laden tree fell on his home while he was napping in his recliner. In Connecticut, the governor said one person died in a Colchester traffic accident that he blamed on slippery conditions.
And a 20-year-old man in Springfield, Mass., stopped when he saw police and firefighters examining downed wires and stepped in the wrong place and was electrocuted, Capt. William Collins said.
Parts of New York saw a mix of snow, rain and slush that made for sheer misery at the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City, where drenched protesters hunkered down in tents and under tarps as the plaza filled with rainwater and melted snow.
Technically, tents are banned in the park, but protesters say authorities have been looking the other way, even despite a crackdown on generators that were keeping them warm.
Nick Lemmin, 25, of Brooklyn, was spending his first night at the encampment. He was one of a handful of protesters still at the park early Sunday.
"I had to come out and support," he said. "The underlying importance of this is such that you have to weather the cold."
Adash Daniel, 24, is a protester who had been at the park for three weeks. He had a sleeping bag and cot that he was going to set up, but changed his mind.
"I'm not much good to this movement if I'm shivering," he said as he left the park.
October snowfall is rare in New York, and Saturday marked just the fourth October day with measurable snowfall in Central Park since record-keeping began 135 years ago, the National Weather Service said.
But the unofficial arrival of winter was a boon for some. Two Vermont ski resorts, Killington and Mount Snow, started the ski season early by opening one trail each over the weekend, and Maine's Sunday River ski resort also opened for the weekend.
___
Associated Press writers Noreen Gillespie in Newton, Conn.; Ron Todt in Philadelphia; David B. Caruso, Colleen Long and Deepti Hajela in New York; Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H.; and Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, N.J., contributed to this report.
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MIND Reviews: Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man
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Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man
by Mark Changizi. BenBella Books, 2011
Once upon a time, humans could not hold conversations or sing songs together. Now we chatter incessantly, not only with speech but also through text messages, tweets and status updates. How we transformed into the highly social species we are today remains the subject of many theories.
Two competing hypotheses center on whether our capacity for language is an innate skill that grew stronger through natural selection or whether we lacked any such ability and instead trained our brains to collect new information using objects and sounds in our environment. In his new book Harnessed, Mark Changizi stakes out the middle ground: cultural?not natural?selection explains our language ability.
Generating controversial theories is not new to this evolutionary neurobiologist. In his previous book, The Vision Revolution, he argued that writing evolved from the shapes our ancestors saw in nature. In Harnessed he extends that logic to claim that the most common sounds we hear in nature?of objects making contact or sliding across one another, such as the patter of footsteps or the hiss of a hunted animal dragged across the ground by a predator?occur more frequently and consistently in human language than chance would allow. People evolved auditory systems that process natural noises efficiently, although we are capable of producing a range of sounds broader than those found in nature. Changizi proposes that our culture?that is, language and music, among other artifacts?evolved around, or ?harnessed,? the sounds we already process best.
The tricky part, however, is that Changizi?s theory is almost impossible to test. The bulk of his evidence consists of correlations he observes between sounds in nature and those in language, and he devotes much of the book to acoustical analyses of the two. But the examples he cites are just that?correlations, not causes. In addition, Changizi never explains why other apes, which heard the same sounds as early humans, did not develop language.
Nevertheless, the idea of culture as an actor in the evolutionary process, rather than its by-product, provides an interesting way to frame the question of how we learned to communicate through language.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=ca5721babe139405b9cb554d4aa5a85a
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Heavy drinking tied to higher stomach cancer risk (Reuters)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) ? Men who down more than four alcoholic drinks in a day may have a heightened risk of stomach cancer, a large European analysis suggests.
A number of studies have looked at whether people's drinking habits are related to their risk of stomach cancer, and come to mixed conclusions.
These latest findings, from a study of more than 500,000 European adults, suggest that heavy-drinking men are more likely to develop the cancer than light drinkers are.
At the start of the study, 10,000-plus men said they averaged more than four drinks per day. And their odds of developing stomach cancer over the next decade were twice those of light drinkers (who had the equivalent of about half a drink per day or less).
When the researchers looked more closely at the type of alcohol people consumed, they found that beer, in particular -- as opposed to wine or liquor -- seemed to be connected to stomach cancer risk.
There were no similar connections seen in women, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Eric J. Duell of the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, Spain. But there were also far fewer heavy drinkers among the female participants (just under 2,300).
The findings, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, do not prove that alcohol itself leads to stomach cancer in some men.
And the absolute risk for any one heavy drinker may be small. Of nearly 13,000 men and women who were heavy drinkers when they entered the study, just 33 developed stomach cancer over the follow-up period.
Still, experts already recommend that people who drink do so only in moderation. That generally means no more than two drinks per day for men, and no more than one for women.
Heavy drinking is linked to cancers of the mouth and throat, as well as other serious conditions like scarring of the liver.
Stomach cancer is relatively uncommon in the U.S. and other Western countries, though it's much more prevalent in other parts of the world, particularly developing nations. About 21,500 Americans will be diagnosed with stomach cancer this year, according to the American Cancer Society.
Smoking is one of the risk factors for the disease. And in some past studies, it's been hard to separate the possible effects of heavy drinking on stomach cancer from those of smoking -- since the same people often have both habits.
In the current study, though, Duell's team found that heavy drinking was linked to stomach cancer in men regardless of smoking habits.
The link also held when the researchers factored in people's diet habits (red and processed meats, for example, have been tied to stomach cancer) and any infection with H. pylori -- a type of bacteria that contributes to ulcers.
While most people with H. pylori do not develop cancer, persistent infection is thought to raise the risk of stomach cancer in certain people.
If heavy drinking is a cause of stomach cancer, it may be related to one of the metabolic byproducts of alcohol -- called acetaldehyde. The substance is a known human carcinogen, Duell's team notes.
On top of that, beer contains compounds known as nitrosamines, which cause cancer in animals. So it's possible, the researchers speculate, that the combination of those substances and acetaldehyde could explain why beer, in particular, was tied to stomach cancer in this study.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/s9GAVg American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online October 12, 2011.
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Saturday, October 29, 2011
Japan's digital divas take to the stage, wow fans (Reuters)
TOKYO (Reuters) ? Japan's two newest stars have all the basics of being a pop idol down. Their dance moves are sharp, they sing without missing a beat, and their songs have made the top 10.
The only thing is, neither one of them exists.
The green-haired "Megpoid" and red-haired "Akikoloid" are both completely computer generated, the latest in a line of popular digital characters based on a voice-synthesizing program that allows users to create their own music.
They were the stars of a concert during the recent Digital Concept Expo in Tokyo.
Music made by "Vocaloid," the voice-synthesizing program, and its spin-off characters, has made it into the top 10 on Japan's weekly top hits list. But for those watching the concert, the performance was nothing more than thin air -- unless they looked at the screen showing the augmented reality (AR) scene with the 3D characters inserted into live video.
The software used at the concert used a complicated system of sensors and motion capture technology to create the two singers, with sensors around the venue and on the cameras and the hands of two human back dancers interacting to make a composite that was inserted into the concert in real time.
Nothing about the singers is real. Even their high, perky voices are digitally generated, but sound no different from those of many a live Japanese pop singer.
"Though there have been a few concerts with the characters before, this is the first time they could interact with others, including the audience, and appear to move around in a true 3D space," said Masaru Ishikawa, a Tokyo University researcher who helped create the system used for the concert.
"These sorts of concerts up to now have looked 3D but were actually using 2D technology. This is a world first in that the character is actually 3D and can sing and dance with others," he said.
Fans were able to get in on the action by using poles with markers that allowed them to be detected by the augmented reality system and interact with the characters by waving the poles around during the concert. Depending on the song, these movements produced stars, sparkles and flames in the video.
"Seeing the concert with augmented reality made it seem like they were really there, even though they weren't," 24-year-old fan Keisuke Shindo said after watching the hour-long concert.
"It was also interesting to see how they added the effects and allowed the audience to interact using the poles. I think it's pretty amazing."
In addition to the 150 fans at the actual concert, more than 65,000 people watched on Nico Nico Douga, a Japanese video-sharing site similar to YouTube.
(Writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by Paul Tait)
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Trash heap for sovereign CDS? | Global Investing
For all the ifs and buts about the latest euro rescue agreement, one of its most profound market legacies may be to sound the death knell for sovereign credit default swaps ? at least those covering richer developed economies. In short, the agreement reached in Brussels last night outlined a haircut on Greek government bonds of some 50 percent as a way to keep the country?s debt mountain sustainable over time. But anyone who had bought default insurance on the debt in the form of CDS would not get compensated as long as the ?restructuring? was voluntary, or so says a top lawyer for the International Swaps and Derivatives Association ? the arbiter of CDS contracts.
ISDA general counsel? David Geen said there would be no change in the ruling to account for the size of the haircut:
As far we can see it?s still a voluntary arrangement and therefore we are in the same position as we were with the 21 percent when that was agreed (in July)
Putting that in a bit more perspective, the International Monetary Fund?s Olivier Blanchard said in Dublin later on Thursday that the Greek deal could raise serious questions about the value of CDS as a hedging tool:
The general position is that if you are able to reduce the claims of creditors by a substantial amount without triggering a CDS event? that raises questions about the value of the CDS
If it?s true that CDS contracts on euro sovereign debts are effectively worthless to the extent that European governments can pressure their banks into accepting ?voluntary? debt workouts, then that would mark a significant victory for politicians who have long argued that CDS speculation ? especially by those not holding the underlying debt ? was a major aggravator of the euro zone debt crisis. It?s worth remembering the words of IMF chief, then French finance minister,? Christine Lagarde ?who early last year questioned the ?validity, solidity of CDSs on sovereign risks?.
The main charge against CDS is that it scared the horses excessively by creating panic among real creditors about default probabilities ? becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy as debt refinancing suddenly became prohibitively expensive even though fiscal adjustment would always takes some time. There were also a concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Bans on ?naked? CDS speculation were discussed and a whole ?cat or canary? debate smouldered for the past two years. One of the biggest concerns among European officials was that triggering a ?credit event? in CDS would reward this adverse speculation and fuel both direct financial and psychological contagion to other sovereigns. As a result, they set about ensuring the contractual bodyswerve that has subsequently satisfied ISDA.
However, Citigroup?s chief economist Willem Buiter argued this week that the implications of not triggering CDS payouts in a deep Greek debt restructuring could be more damaging than allowing a credit event that sees CDS work as planned.
Buiter argues that, unlike the chaos of the Lehman Brothers implosion, CDS on Greek debt is relatively limited and fairly transparent to both the authorities and other financial players and therefore a payout could reasonably be more contained. But sidestepping contracts could have a more detrimental effect by deterring potential sovereign creditors who would subsequently fear the lack of a hedging tool and also by undermining credibility in European governments to honour private contracts.
What is more, avoiding a CDS trigger when the fundamentals suggest otherwise would further erode credibility of EU/EA policymakers. Such an erosion of policymaker credibility would be especially problematic currently, as the
Euro Area support facilities, including the original EFSF, and even more so the
currently discussed future reincarnation of it, rely on the credibility of the promise that guarantees by EU/EA sovereigns will be honored. Any action that undermines the credibility of that promise has the potential to unravel the entire support architecture, a risk surely not worth taking if the alternative is the likely very manageable effects that CDS triggers might have.
That?s quite a defence, even if many may argue that sell-side global bank like Citi would of course defend the smooth operation of credit markets in which it operates. But it supposes the only problem with sovereign CDS is in the euro zone. Contractual CDS issues and debates over ?credit event? definitions have been a factors in emerging markets for years.
But to the extent that CDS on developed country sovereigns has only been around since 2006, some commentators reckon the Greek manoeuvre may consign that particular version of credit insurance to the historical dustbin of failed financial ?innovations?? ? alongside such notables as ?Perpetual Floating Rate Notes, Libor-cubed Notes, Asset Backed Collateralised Debt Obligations, War Loans, Endowment Mortgages?
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Source: http://blogs.reuters.com/globalinvesting/2011/10/27/trash-heap-for-sovereign-cds/
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Video: Woman ?fell from the sky,? survives plane crash
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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45077449#45077449
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Friday, October 28, 2011
Column: NCAA last amateur left in college sports (AP)
The number of people who buy the NCAA's argument that amateurism is the backbone of college sports is dwindling by the day.
The notion is increasingly being challenged in the courts, questioned by Congress and earlier this month, some of the kids on whose backs the business is actually built decided to call the organization's bluff. More than 300 major college football and men's basketball players signed and sent a petition to the NCAA asking the college presidents who run it to spend some of their new-found riches on education.
"The things we go through, the hours we put in, what our bodies go through, we deserve some sort of (results)," said Georgia Tech defensive end Denzel McCoy, a redshirt freshman who signed and helped circulate the petitions drawn up by the National College Players Association (NCPA), an athletes advocacy group. "College football is a billion-dollar industry."
The NCPA petition doesn't ask for a specific amount to be set aside, or for players to be paid salaries. Instead, it seeks a hike in scholarships of about $3,200 to make up a shortfall in school-related expenses each year, better medical coverage and an "educational lock box" that players could use to fund their educations if they're permanently injured or exhaust their athletic eligibility before they graduate. They also would be entitled to what's left in the lock box upon graduation, with no strings attached.
The response from the NCAA, which begins its quarterly Division I Board of Directors meeting Wednesday in Indianapolis, has been near-total silence.
"We'd eventually like a seat at the table, but all we asked for off the bat was a meeting," Ramogi Huma, a former UCLA linebacker who founded the NCPA more than a decade ago, said Tuesday over the telephone from his office in California. "I'm looking at the letter from (NCAA President Mark) Emmert right now. The answer was a definite `no.'"
Instead, Emmert will get up in front of an informal meeting with university presidents and unveil the organization's latest meager stab at reform: a proposal to be voted on Thursday that would give each conference the option to dig into its own pocket and increase the cost of a scholarship by about $2,000. That sum won't solve any of the problems currently bedeviling major college sports ? in fairness, $3,200 wouldn't make a dent in the number of athletes taking money under the table, either ? and it might actually make things worse. College football and basketball, the big-revenue producing sports, already suffer from a widening gap between the haves in the six major conferences and the have-nots who compete outside them.
Yet the fact that the NCAA may finally be bending to pressure from below is a very good sign. More than a dozen years ago, it agreed to try and police its members by applying pressure from the top, turning control of the organization over to university presidents with a mandate to clean up the shady dealings in football and basketball and sign a truce on what was fast becoming "an athletic arms race" between competing schools. What the presidents did instead was hide the brooms, green-light ever-bigger budgets and promise each other to behave better. The recent scandals at Southern California, Ohio State and Miami look the same as those in the past ? academic fraud, cheating coaches, corner-cutting recruiters and agents hanging around preying on easy marks ? only the dollar figures involved have a lot more zeroes attached to them. The only other difference is that the presidents now stand alongside embarrassed athletic department officials in front of microphones to explain why they didn't know, let alone act, when they should have.
Emmert paid lip service only last July to the growing perception that the NCAA itself was guilty of what used to be one of its most dreaded judgments against rogue schools, a lack of institutional control.
"The integrity of collegiate athletics is seriously challenged today by rapidly growing pressures coming from many directions. We have reached a point where incremental change is not sufficient to meet these challenges. I want us to act more aggressively and in a more comprehensive way than we have in the past," he said then. "A few new tweaks of the rules won't get the job done."
Yet that's all the NCAA appears capable of doing at the moment.
Meanwhile, former players are pushing a class-action lawsuit threatening the organization's antitrust status and seeking back pay for the use of their names and images on jerseys and video games. Congress, too, is expressing interest in NCAA's inconsistent and sometimes-inexplicable decisions in meting out punishment, as well as its refusal to follow due process in some disciplinary matters. More troubling still could be the conference realignment that continues to alter the college sports landscape; in those moves to bigger, even more powerful conferences, some observers see the outlines of a system controlled so thoroughly by the conferences that they might one day be emboldened enough to cut the NCAA out of the postseason basketball tournament, much the same way the Bowl Championship Series pushed the organization out of the postseason football picture.
And now, the players themselves are threatening to organize and demand their share of the ever-increasing TV deals rolling in.
"We're on the right side of this debate, No doubt about it," said Huma, who has been invited to make the case for the 7,000 or so members the NCPA represents at a roundtable discussion in Washington, D.C., next week organized by Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush.
Huma paused for a moment, then told a story about a teammate of his at UCLA who said on a radio show one day that he didn't have enough money left that week to buy food. When the player returned home, he found a bag of groceries on his doorstep, took them in and wound up being slapped with a one-game suspension for receiving improper benefits.
"We were the No. 5 team in the nation at the time, his jersey was on sale in shops all over the place and he didn't have enough to go down to the corner and buy a sandwich," Huma recalled. "Everybody agrees the system is broken, they've known it for years. I don't think players resent other people making money from college sports, but if the underlying mission is supposed to be the education it provides, making sure the players get that ? at the very least ? doesn't seem like too much to ask for."
___
Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org. Follow him at http://Twitter.com/JimLitke
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'Jurassic Park' Trilogy Blu-Ray: Remembering The Dinosaur Classic
Today is a great day for Blu-Ray collectors! The "Jurassic Park" trilogy is now available in all its dino-tastic, awesome old school special effects glory. It's hard to believe that the original "Jurassic Park" came out almost 20 years ago, I remember the trauma/delight of that moviegoing experience like it was yesterday...
To celebrate this excellent [...]
To celebrate this excellent [...]
Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2011/10/25/jurassic-park-blu-ray/
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Thursday, October 27, 2011
Turk quake survivors desperate for tents as cold descends (Reuters)
ERCIS, Turkey (Reuters) ? Survivors of a deadly earthquake in southeast Turkey scrambled for tents on Thursday, fearful that more people would die from exposure to plunging temperatures four days after the tremor killed at least 481.
Some quake victims have blamed the ruling AK party for a slow response and accused officials of handing aid to supporters, after standing in long queues for tents only to be told that there were none left.
"Everyone is getting sick and wet. We have been waiting in line for four days like this and still nothing. It gets to our turn and they say they have run out," said Fetih Zengin, 38, an estate agent whose house was badly damaged in Ercis, a town of 100,000 that was hardest hit by Sunday's 7.2 magnitude quake.
"We slept under a piece of plastic erected on some wood boards we found. We have 10 children in our family, they are getting sick. Everyone needs a tent, snow is coming. It's a disaster."
The death toll rose to 481 and the number of injured was put at 1,650 in the biggest quake in more than a decade in Turkey.
Searches for survivors went on at some sites but at others rescuers stopped work. A mother and her baby were pulled out dead from one building during the night, witnesses said.
Many in the mainly Kurdish region complained of profiteers exploiting the distribution of food and tents.
"People are taking 10 tents and selling them. It's a disgrace. I slept in the municipal park all night in the rain. My shoes are filled with water. I only registered to get a tent this morning as I have been busy burying the dead," said Ergun Ozmen, 37, carrying loaves of bread after queuing for food.
The Turkish Red Crescent, which had acted swiftly to provide refuge for Syrians fleeing the violence in their homeland this year, has been blamed by some for a lack of organization.
Some Turks have criticized the government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, which hopes to ease relations with the Kurdish minority that dominate the region. They suggest the party is prioritizing aid for public servants in the region -- a charged denied by local party officials.
Several countries have answered Turkey's call for help to supply tents, prefabricated housing and containers, including Israel despite bad terms between the two governments since Israeli commandos killed nine Turks aboard a flotilla taking aid to Palestinians in Gaza last year.
SHELL-SHOCKED SURVIVORS
Exhausted relatives clung to the hope that loved ones would be found, keeping vigil at the site of their destroyed homes as searches went on for any sign of life.
Overnight, groups of shell-shocked people roamed aimlessly, with no home to go to, huddling around fires as temperatures dropped to freezing. Others congregated in relief camps.
Cold rain in the past two days has added to woes, and for villagers in outlying areas there were fears of a second wave of death with the first expected winter snow next month.
"After 15 days, half of the people here will die, freeze to death," said Orhan Ogunc, a 37-year-old man in Guvencli, a village of some 200 homes deep in the hills between Ercis and the city of Van. His family had a Red Crescent tent, though they were sharing it with five other families.
Due to primitive housing in the quake-hit region, many villages were devastated. Although some families were staying out in the open few were ready to leave their land, preferring to bank on promises of temporary housing within about six weeks.
"They say we will get prefabricated houses in one-and-a-half months," said Zeki Yatkin, a 46-year old man who had lost his father in the quake. "We can't tolerate the cold, but what else could we do?"
Search operations ended in the city of Van. Provincial governor Munir Karaloglu said only six buildings had collapsed in the city, whereas many more were destroyed in Ercis.
POLITICAL ISSUES
The disaster could be a chance for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government to show the Kurds how much it cares for their people, so any accusations of neglect or ineptitude are politically sensitive.
Having won a third consecutive term in a national election last June, Erdogan aims to replace the constitution with one that will boost democratic values by, among other things, addressing some of the Kurdish minority's grievances.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in a separatist insurgency that has lasted three decades, and last week militants killed 24 troops in neighboring Hakkari province.
The United States and the European Union, as well as Turkey, consider the PKK separatist guerrilla group to be a terrorist organization.
At one warehouse in Van, about 100 people looted Red Crescent trucks carrying food, blankets, carpets and clothes while a handful of police appeared powerless to stop them.
"The real looter is the AK Party. The aid received in Van is handed to the families of public servants and policemen. Ordinary people don't get anything," one old man told Reuters.
Governor Karaloglu said, however, that as of Wednesday 20,000 tents had been handed out. According to him that was far more than was really needed.
A central government appointee, the governor said things would be better if people in the city of one million were not gripped by fear that an aftershock could topple their homes, even they were undamaged by the quake.
"Because of this psychology, and the aftershocks, they don't use their undamaged house and ask for tent," said Karaloglu. "This is why we have a problem."
He said 600,000 people were affected by the quake, but that did not mean all of them needed temporary accommodation.
Deputy mayor Cahit Bozbay, a member of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), gave a far bleaker assessment and criticized the governor's office for not working with officials.
He said half of the buildings in Van had been damaged in the quake, giving frightened people no choice but to sleep outside.
"We are short of tents. It's a major problem. We lack supplies, but honestly the aid delivery organization is also problematic," said Bozbay.
(Additional reporting Humeyra Pamuk and Evrim Ergin in Van; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Daren Butler; Editing by Elizabeth Piper)
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Former 'Bachelorette' DeAnna Pappas weds
DeAnna Pappas can finally shake off her ?Bachelorette? status!
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More Entertainment stories
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You be the judge! Rate the 'Dancing' contestants
Sometimes, it's hard to agree with the judges when they score the celebrities on their footwork. Now you can rate the stars' performances too.
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You be the judge! Rate the 'Dancing' contestants
After a slew of whirlwind romances ? including rejecting Brad Womack and ending her engagement to Jesse Csincsak in 2008 ? the 29-year-old walked down the aisle with Stephen Stagliano over the weekend.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Reality Stars In Their Swimsuits
According to People, DeAnna?s wedding style was country meets fairytale ? the bride wore cowboy boots under a strapless wedding gown from the Disney Bridal collection and a birdcage veil.
?They were giddy with excitement,? an observer told the mag. ?She looked incredibly happy.?
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Access Top 10: Most Shocking ?Bachelor? & ?Bachelorette? Moments!
The couple was originally set up by Stephen?s twin brother, Michael, who appeared on Jillian Harris? season of ?The Bachelorette,? and his then-girlfriend, Holly Durst, who fans will remember from Matt Grant?s season of ?The Bachelor.?
The former couple, who since split, went on to win last season?s ?Bachelor Pad.?
Stephen, a high school teacher, proposed to DeAnna in August 2010.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: I Do! Celebrities Who Got Married On TV
Copyright 2011 by NBC. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45019017/ns/today-entertainment/
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As Putin rises again, will the US-Russia 'reset' of ties hold?
Vladimir Putin's return to center stage has sharpened criticism by American critics of the US-Russia 'reset' that improved relations. US critics see an effort to revive a Soviet-style rivalry.
Russia's foreign policy community is watching with growing nervousness as leading Republicans in the US, including at least one top contender for the party's presidential nomination, turn their ire against Barack Obama's already troubled "reset" in US-Russian relations, which the Kremlin sees as vital to its future plans for repairing Russian influence in the world.
Skip to next paragraphRepublicans have been critical all along of Mr. Obama's policy of building strong, practical relations with Moscow while soft-peddling US disapproval of Kremlin power abuses and human rights violations. But as recently as last December, more than a dozen Republican senators joined Democrats to win the needed two-thirds Senate ratification of the START nuclear arms reduction accord, which was understood in Moscow as a sign that pragmatism would always prevail in Washington.
Now, Russian experts do not seem so sure.
Since former president Vladimir Putin decided to shoulder aside his hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, and seek a fresh term as Russia's supreme leader, the tone of discussion about Russia in the US has grown much harsher, many note.
Mr. Putin's recently publicized plan to establish a "Eurasian Union" ? a strong economic, and potentially political, alliance of former Soviet states ? has rekindled fears among many in the West that Russia's strategic goal is to bring back the USSR and return to its historic rivalry with the US.
"We had hoped that the reset with the US might help Russia move into a friendlier, closer relationship with the West, but that seems to be fading fast," says Viktor Kremeniuk, deputy director of the official Institute of USA-Canada Studies in Moscow. "Now it seems the general opinion in the US is that Russia is fast becoming an authoritarian state with the scarecrow figure of Putin as its next president. It's all starting to feel a bit hopeless."
In a Washington Post interview earlier this month, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, often seen as moderate, is quoted as saying that Putin "dreams of rebuilding the Russian empire." Obama's reset of relations "has to end ... we have to show strength," Mr. Romney added.
At a Washington conference Tuesday, Republican House Speaker John Boehner slammed Russia's "use of old tools and old thinking" as an attempt "to restore Soviet-style power and influence," and called for tougher measures to rein in Russian ambitions. At the same meeting, Garry Kasparov, a leader of the banned Other Russia opposition movement, urged Americans to heed Ronald Reagan's advice and treat Putin's Russia as an "evil empire" beyond the pale of civilized nations.
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Wednesday, October 26, 2011
[OOC] Farelt Manor Arena
Forum rules
This forum is for OOC discussion about existing roleplays.
Rules
General Rules:
Defining A Win, Draw and Loss
Tips!
Other
Before you begin posting in this topic I require you to fill out this form suitably. This will help keep track of all details concerning powers and such about your character. Thank you for reading over this. Also by the way, I do require permission for powers because I want to make sure everyone gets a fair chance. Sorry! I know it's tedious to get it approved but in the long run it's great!
Full Name: Zalenetsu
Alias: Zale
Species: Mischief Demon
Powers/Abilities: Each different 'form' of includes the abilities of each of the lesser forms.
Demon Form
Out of Control
Hope this makes enough sense, let me know if anything needs to be editing or restricted. Also, I don't exactly plan for him to get out of control every other post or anything, just so you know. :)
This forum is for OOC discussion about existing roleplays.
Please post all "Players Wanted" threads in the Roleplayers Wanted forum!
This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?The Manor?. Anything posted here will also show up there.Topic Tags:
Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.Rules
Posts Must Be 5 Lines In Length
Replying posts to Roleplay Battles should be at least 5 lines of text in length, anything less does very little to describe your attack.
So please keep this in mind when posting.
Use the OOC: When Talking Out Of Character
Please place the "OOC:" (out of character reply) before any text in your post that is separate from the battle. It prevents confusion.
No God Modding
- You are not allowed to 'God Mod' this means:
* You are not allowed to make yourself invincible or immune to defeat.
* Moves that make your attack unblock able are not allowed.
* No guns unless you have permission.
* You cannot control your opponents character.
* You cannot state that the attack you made 'hit' your opponent. It is up to your opponent how he/she deals with the attack. You may make attempts with your attacks but in the end, your opponent dictates the damage that is done by them.
No Healing Items
*Demons with this ability may only heal themselves up to five times during an entire battle.
*For mass healing spells you may not use it more than once and an individual spell more than the amount of party members you have.
Time and Status Effects Magic
Some characters may choose to have Time or Status Effect magic and/or items.
For example: haste, slow, poison.
Guidelines when using these:
The effects that these spells have may only last the one-four turns that you are using them depending on how strong the spell is.
You cannot permanently keep you, or your opponents status in that effect.
*Note: Stop or Paralyse or any magic that leaves the opponent incapacitated and unable to react, cannot be used. This is considered God Modding.
No Summoning Magic
* Summon magic may be used on the condition that weaker summons last two-four turns and stronger summons last four-six turns.
* Summons can be canceled by a fatal wound or by negating magic.
General Rules:
- Roleplay and Roleplaying Battle Rules are not the same.
Guns are not allowed in here unless permission is granted.
No Double Posting
This also means, that you may not have '2 turns' you must wait till your opponent replies to your last move before you can post again. If you need to say something more about your move, edit your last post. If you need to say something to your opponent, PM them or post an 'OOC:' (out of character reply) in your thread.
No Spam
Anything posted that is irrelevant to the Arena needs to be posted in the original OOC.
Defining A Win, Draw and Loss
- Win:
Your opponent withdraws from the battle or admits defeat. Which constitutes a win for the member still standing. If you challenge a member and they decline your request to battle - you cannot consider this as a win.
Win by Default:
In a Tournament situation, you post into the battle but your opponent does not post within the time frame given and therefore it is considered a win by default.
Draw:
When you and your opponent both decide to withdraw from the battle at the same time or both admit defeat and walk away. Under these circumstances, there are no winners or losers and therefore, it becomes a draw by default.
Draw by Default:
In a Tournament, a draw by default is when neither you nor your opponent post into the battle within the time frame given. And therefore it becomes a draw.
Loss:
When you are engaged in battle and you decide to withdraw or admit defeat. This constitutes a loss for you and a win for your opponent.
Loss by Default:
In a tournament situation, a loss by default happens when your opponent posts in the battle but you do not reply within the given time and therefore it is considered a loss to you by default.
* Note: I or the designated Third Party will tell you the given time to post.
Tips!
- Be creative with your responses! Don't just say "I swing my weapon at you" try and make it more interesting by adding more detail. Describe your characters response: how you move, evade and counter attack. Be imaginative. It makes it easier for the reader to visualise. Just like a good book.
Use some tactic. Create your characters so that they are strong but also look at what features you can add to them that will give you skill in your battle, not just power.
Most importantly, never give up easily! Give a good fight.
Thats it! Now go clash those fists and claws! Look out for the rules but most of all have fun! Thanks for taking the time to familiarise yourself with the rules. Any questions can be forwarded onto me through PM or posted on the original thread. Rock on!
Other
Before you begin posting in this topic I require you to fill out this form suitably. This will help keep track of all details concerning powers and such about your character. Thank you for reading over this. Also by the way, I do require permission for powers because I want to make sure everyone gets a fair chance. Sorry! I know it's tedious to get it approved but in the long run it's great!
- Code: Select all
Full Name:
Alias:
Species:
Weapons on Hand: (Humans only, Must have permission. Be simplistic. You guys aren't ninjas!)
Powers/Abilities: (Demons only, Be specific. You have to get permission too. Don't overpower or under power yourself. Be reasonable.)
"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian."
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Akantha - Member for 1 years
Full Name: Zalenetsu
Alias: Zale
Species: Mischief Demon
Powers/Abilities: Each different 'form' of includes the abilities of each of the lesser forms.
Normal Form
- Enhanced Dexterity- Zale can react quite rapidly to most actions. Not to say that he dodge or evade every attack but he is more acrobatic say to speak than most. The best example I can think of is the x-men Nightcrawler. (If you switch Nightcrawlers' teleporting skill with leaping instead. Does that make sense? xP) Ex: Jumping higher, running quicker, flipping, ect.
- Demonic Strength - Zale has the surprising ability to deal a powerful blow. Despite his small, almost lanky proportions he could for example punch a small; slightly larger than his fist; crater into, say...cement. In terms of humans; enough to break bones.
Demon Form
- Blue Fire - Zale has the ability to produce flames or energy in a sense that can either be propelled towards someone/come in contact with them via physical contact/ or there are occasional circumstances he can't control to well, objects or a person can be temporarily consumed by the fire. It is relatively blinding and absolutely hot. It takes a lot of his energy and or will power to conjure this fire and it can't be done very often without completely exhausting him.
- Demonic Regeneration - Zale's body naturally heals major or fatal wounds to his body and ignores most everyday scratches(though those still heal more rapidly than normal). It can take up to a half hour to completely heal a major wound and it obviously inhibits his functioning.
Out of Control
- Demonic Endurance - Zale can take more of a hit than normal. Major and Fatal wounds that would significantly interfere with his movements are more easily ignored as if he's sort of numb or perhaps to stubborn to let it effect him.
- Raging Fire - The blue fire that he already has consumed his entire body and the conjuring of it becomes more wild, combusting and thus more dangerous. When ever this fit ends, he is most likely drained of energy and blacks out.
Hope this makes enough sense, let me know if anything needs to be editing or restricted. Also, I don't exactly plan for him to get out of control every other post or anything, just so you know. :)
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Artik - Member for 1 years
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Inside Gaming: Genting Gets Aggressive in Miami and MGM Moves ...
October 26 2011, Elissa Harwood
This week, Inside Gaming takes another look at Genting's game-changing plans for Miami and Colin Au's mission to get Florida's legislature on board. MGM is looking for new U.S. markets, too, and going through Louisiana to capture Texas.
Genting Projects $4 to $6 Billion Gaming Market for Miami, Could Be Very Expensive for Las Vegas
Genting is determined to break into the U.S. market with a jaw-dropping mega-resort in Miami, and Genting Americas President Colin Au is turning up the heat on Florida legislators to make it happen. He first has to convince the state legislature to pass a bill legalizing Vegas-style resort-casinos, then to grant the Miami-Dade license to Genting instead of the Las Vegas Sands.
Au says he's on a mission to meet with all 180 of the state's legislatures and will lobby as long as it takes to get what it wants. "I'm stationed here," he said last week. Rep. Erik Fresen and Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff were expected to introduce a bill on Monday providing for the creation of the Florida Gaming Commission and empowering the commission to award three casino licenses in Southern Florida. But the bill was delayed again. Fresen said the bill drafters were "dotting every 'i,' and crossing every 't,' and making sure all statutory references are correct."
Au is confident that he will win over the legislature. He believes in the power, and the impressive scale, of his argument and doesn't bother sugar coating what he's selling. "At the end of the day we are a sin industry," he said. "The most important thing is to make the economic development benefits far outweigh anything else."
Au says Genting's proposed project will provide $400 to $600 million in annual tax revenue and will create 100,000 permanent jobs. Under the bill expected any day now, Florida casinos would face a 10 percent tax rate, higher that the 6.75 percent rate paid by Las Vegas properties but significantly lower than the 35 percent currently paid by Florida's racinos. Au is telling legislators that he thinks a $4 to $6 billion gaming market is achievable for the region, drawing largely from international tourists and stealing $1 to $2 billion of Las Vegas' annual revenue.
In Singapore, Genting created a gaming industry out of nowhere and now pays $6 billion in taxes a year on revenue almost entirely from overseas customers. Au says Genting will use the same strategy in Miami. He even says Genting is "prepared to bankroll and subsidize some of the flights" if necessary in order to get nonstop flights from Asia to Miami.
Genting paid $236 million in cash for the Miami Herald building last year and has since acquired the surrounding property to use as the site for its $3.8 billion development. While Genting originally unveiled plans to build 5,000 hotel rooms and a retail and entertainment behemoth with 50 restaurants, the company is backing away from those numbers and trying to calm down existing area restaurants and hotels worried that Genting will put them out of business.
It is an uphill battle to convince Florida to see things his way, but Au isn't going anywhere until it does, or until Sheldon Adelson and the Sands' lobbying team prove they can be even more intractable.
Check out The Miami Herald for much more from their conversation with Au.
MGM Joins Forces with Owner of Louisiana's Final Gaming License
MGM Resorts International formed a partnership with Creative Casinos to develop a 400-room gaming hotel-casino in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Creative Casinos secured the state's 15th and final gaming license for the Mojito Pointe Casino, which they will design and MGM will operate.
Analysts suggest that MGM was looking for a way to target wealthy gaming patrons from Texas. "The relationship provides MGM the opportunity to expand the reach of MGM's brands into an important regional market," said MGM CEO Jim Murren.
Creative Casinos found in MGM the partner it needed with a big bankroll and an equally large Rolodex of customers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Creative Casinos will retain majority ownership of the project, but MGM will inject much needed funding. "The amount of money is not very material to MGM, but it's very much material for us," said Creative Casinos owner Dan Lee.
The companies hope to break ground on the development by the end of the year and have a target opening day in mid-2013. The casino is expected to host 1,500 slot machines and 50 tables games, and the resort will include 400 hotel rooms and an 18-hole golf course.
Mojito Pointe is located next to Pinnacle Entertainment's L'Auberge du Lac resort. Lee developed that property as Pinnacle's CEO before leaving to run Creative Casinos. Pinnacle and Lee settled a legal dispute over the neighboring locations, but we're not sure they'll be sharing a cup of sugar anytime soon.
The Casino City Times has several analysts' takes on the deal.
Follow PokerNews on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.
*Photo courtesy of blogs.MiamiNewTimes.com.
Follow Elissa Harwood on Twitter ? @ebhizzle
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Most powerful US nuclear bomb dismantled
AMARILLO, Texas?? The last of the nation's most powerful nuclear bombs has been taken apart in Texas.
Technicians at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo removed the uranium Tuesday from the last of the nation's largest nuclear bombs, a Cold War relic known as the B53.
The bomb put into service in 1962 was 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, that killed as many as 140,000 people at the end of World War II.
Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman watched workers take the bomb apart. He says it's "a milestone accomplishment" and a step toward President Barack Obama's mission to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Thomas D'Agostino, the nuclear administration's chief, called the bomb's elimination a "significant milestone."
Put into service in 1962, when Cold War tensions peaked during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the B53 weighed 10,000 pounds and was the size of a minivan. According to the American Federation of Scientists, it was 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, killing as many as 140,000 people and helping end World War II.
The B53 was designed to destroy facilities deep underground, and it was carried by B-52 bombers.
With its destruction, the next largest bomb in operation will be the B83, said Hans Kristensen, a spokesman for the Federation of American Scientists. It's 1.2 megatons, while the B53 was 9 megatons.
The B53's disassembly ends the era of big megaton bombs, he said. The bombs' size helped compensate for their lack of accuracy. Today's bombs are smaller but more precise, reducing the amount of collateral damage, Kristensen said.
Since the B53 was made using older technology by engineers who have since retired or died, developing a disassembly process took time. Engineers had to develop complex tools and new procedures to ensure safety.
"We knew going in that this was going to be a challenging project, and we put together an outstanding team with all of our partners to develop a way to achieve this objective safely and efficiently," said John Woolery, the plant's general manager.
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Many of the B53s were disassembled in the 1980s, but a significant number remained in the U.S. arsenal until they were retired from the stockpile in 1997. Pantex spokesman Greg Cunningham said he couldn't comment on how many of the bombs have been disassembled at the Texas plant.
The weapon is considered dismantled when the roughly 300 pounds of high explosives inside are separated from the special nuclear material, known as the pit. The uranium pits from bombs dismantled at Pantex will be stored on an interim basis at the plant, Cunningham said.
The non-nuclear material and components are then processed, which includes sanitizing, recycling and disposal, the National Nuclear Security Administration said last fall when it announced the Texas plant's role in the B53 dismantling.
The plant will play a large role in similar projects as older weapons are retired from the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45031536/ns/us_news-security/
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