Saturday, December 31, 2011

FoneArena: New Year Sale: All Gameloft iPhone, iPad and Android games at $0.99 http://t.co/YD4lLI3A

  • Passer la navigation
  • Twitter sur votre mobile ? Cliquez ici m.twitter.com!
  • Passer cette ?tape
  • Connexion
Loader Twitter.com
  • Connexion
New Year Sale: All Gameloft iPhone, iPad and Android games at $0.99 bit.ly/rzGPLg FoneArena

FoneArena Mobile

Pied de page

Source: http://twitter.com/FoneArena/statuses/152613001680269312

frank gore injury frank gore injury makana makana gloria cain gloria cain kandi burruss

Fifth-ranked North Carolina beats Elon 100-62 (AP)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. ? Tyler Zeller had 19 points and 13 rebounds to help fifth-ranked North Carolina beat Elon 100-62 on Thursday night.

Harrison Barnes added 18 points for the Tar Heels (12-2), who blew the game open with a dominating 23-0 run midway through the first half. North Carolina led 53-19 by halftime then pushed the margin to as many as 50 points after the break.

North Carolina won its 25th straight game in the Smith Center to tie the record for its longest winning streak in the nearly 26-year-old campus arena. That home winning streak is tied for third-longest in program history.

Sebastian Koch scored 17 points for the Phoenix (7-5), who lost their third straight game and remained winless against ranked opponents since entering Division I competition a dozen years ago. Elon shot just 33 percent, including 7 for 28 from 3-point range.

North Carolina hadn't played since an easy win against Texas eight days ago, its last test before opening Atlantic Coast Conference play against Boston College next week. That matchup was one of the few in the current nine-game homestand in which the Tar Heels seemed focused from tipoff to buzzer after frequently looking disinterested against overmatched opponents.

The Tar Heels had some of those moments in this one, too, though it was hard to blame them for losing some focus after their huge run took all drama out of this one.

Leading 18-14, the Tar Heels ran off 23 straight points ? their biggest run since scoring 25 in a row against North Carolina State here almost four years ago. John Henson had two of his six first-half dunks in that run, while Kendall Marshall knocked down two 3-pointers during the spurt that gave North Carolina a 41-14 lead with 3:26 left in the half.

Elon missed 14 straight shots during that 8-minute drought, sending North Carolina to its largest halftime lead of the season. The Phoenix missed 31 of 39 shots in the opening half (21 percent), including 13 of 15 3-point tries that might have helped them hang around a bit longer.

The rest of the game allowed the Tar Heels to pump up their stats and throw down a few dunks to thrill the crowd. Zeller had a career high with nine offensive boards and matched his career best for total boards. Barnes had battled a stomach bug in recent days, but had 10 points in the first half and finished with a career-high five assists. Henson added 16 points and 11 rebounds ? nearly all coming before halftime ? as the Tar Heels shot 47 percent and finished with a 64-35 rebounding advantage.

North Carolina finished with its third 100-point performance of the season.

Officials had to stop the game with 3:01 left when a Tar Heels cheerleader fell to the court while being held in the air by her partner during a timeout. She was helped to her feet and off the court with an apparent left-leg injury.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111230/ap_on_sp_co_ga_su/bkc_t25_elon_ncarolina

lawrence lessig time magazine person of the year 2011 time magazine person of the year 2011 good morning america new orleans jazz fest new orleans jazz fest dwight howard

Friday, December 30, 2011

Video: Europe's Debt & The Markets

Europe has bought themselves some time by injecting all of this liquidity, says Ed Yardeni, Yardeni Research, who says there will be another injection in February.

Related Links:

Business & financial news headlines from msnbc.com

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/45824423/

forgetting sarah marshall aaron hernandez aaron hernandez portland news portland news tibetan mastiff manny pacquiao

How You Can Teach Friends to Budget [Budgeting]

How You Can Teach Friends to BudgetWe all have the friend or family member who can't seem to grasp the idea of budgeting. It can be difficult to intervene and teach simple budgeting skills without breaking the bond of friendship. We'll outline the ways you can teach budgeting by creating an expense report, cutting those expenses down, and then help them monitor the budget.

Photo remixed from Max Strzelecki.

We've covered our fair share of budgeting tips and they've ranged from using webapps to track spending to using envelopes for cash. Here, we'll look at how to intervene in your friends financial business and how you can guide them through creating an expense report with hands-on techniques. Once they have a good idea of their expenses, you can walk them through the process of cutting those expenses down with webapps, ditching unnecessary services, and lowering the cost by calling all their providers.

How to Handle the Budgeting Intervention

How You Can Teach Friends to BudgetA budgeting intervention is almost as difficult to bring up as a drug intervention. While many of your friends and family might need your help, many might not be interested in it.

It's not required that you handle the intervention as carefully as say, a heroin addiction, but you still need to follow some basic rules for bringing up and handling the subject. For an intervention, Mayo Clinic recommends doing your homework ahead of time, which in this case means coming up with a plan so you're able to talk about and work a budget on the spot. If you have the time, don't wait, it only takes a few minutes. It's also recommended you stay on track the whole time. Don't veer off into gossip or conversation and move the discussion somewhere that feels more like a formal meeting place so you can get the job done.

In my experience, I found it best to wait for them to open the discussion when they complain about not having any money. For instance:

Them: Man, I'm short on rent again this month.
You: Really, why?
Them: I don't know, I just don't have enough money.
You: Have you ever tried making a budget? It's super easy, let's do it right now.

I'm no financial expert by any means, but teaching ends up being as much a learning experience about your own budgeting as it is about showing someone the ropes. If you're excited about it, they might be as well, and it's not too difficult to make it an enjoyable experience. Most of these tips can be applied to any age group because at its core, the idea of budgeting is a simple one: make sure you have more coming in than going out. The trick is finding a method that someone will actually stick to.

Photo by MadLab Manchester Digital Laboratory.

Teach Them How to Make and Understand Their Own Expense Reports

How You Can Teach Friends to BudgetIt's a good idea to consider the type of learner you're attempting to teach budgeting. It might sound a little like elementary school, but if you want to make it an enjoyable experience you have to show them how to do it in a way they'll understand and actually implement in the future. This might mean you need to use visualizations or speak clearly about everything you're teaching them. Basically, you need to teach the budgeting in the same way you would to a child, but use grown up language. The biggest thing to remember is that you're not setting up a budget for them. You're guiding them through doing it. The basics are always the same: you can't spend more than you earn, but the methods are going to change from person to person. The overarching goal is to minimize expenses and learn to save, but the first step is to get a better view of what you're working with. You may find doing the initial expense sheets by hand instead of using a web or software service works better to lay down the foundation. Here are some ideas for doing it.

How to get the numbers: The most difficult and time-consuming part of making a budget is tracking down all the numbers and expenses you need to correctly make a budget. Monthly bills should be easy enough, but they'll need to take a look back at their monthly expenses on groceries, gas, and other random charges to properly get an idea of average expenses.

If you're teaching someone more technologically inclined, they can use a service like Mint to get a quick breakdown of the monthly expenses without a lot of work, but doing it by hand might work better for people new to budgets. One way they can do this is to print out a couple months of their bank statement and then highlight the different types of expenses with different colored highlighters. For instance, they'd highlight all the bills in red, entertainment expenses in yellow, and transportation in blue. This gives the whole thing a more tactile feel and while it takes a little longer, it can embed those expenses in their memory a little better than having a service do it automatically.

  • Write Out a Simple "In and Out" Expense Sheet
    If you're working with someone who doesn't have a lot of complicated finances but needs to get a good gauge on where their money is going, a simple two-table list might be a good way to go. Have them round up the expenses they categorized above and make sure they're being honest with the numbers. At this stage, there's no expense that should be left out, no matter how embarrassing or trivial it is.
  • Start by listing out all monthly expenses in one column, with the other dedicated to the average monthly paychecks.
  • Compare the two and make sure they're not spending more than they're bringing in. If they are, we'll go over some ways to cut your spending down in the next section. If money is left over, they're in good shape, and we'll figure out how to deal extra cash in a little while
  • Put the list somewhere it will be visible every day so it can be seen, remembered, and understood.

  • Graph the Expenses for a Visual Guide
    If you're working with someone more artistically inclined, you might consider teaching to his or her strengths. For budgeting, this includes graphs and pie charts. With all of the data they collected in the above steps they can do this pretty easily.
  • To figure out your percentage, divide the expense by the total monthly income. For instance, if you're paying $60 a month for internet and you make $1500 a month, you divide 60 by 1500 and get four percent. Do this for each of the monthly expenses. If on average there is money left over, put that in its own category.
  • Now you should have a set of percentages that up to 100 percent, so it's time to make a pie chart.
  • The chart doesn't need technical accuracy, it's more about the act of drawing it. For a pie chart, they can estimate the size of each slice. Have them color everything so it's nice and clean looking, and then hang it up somewhere noticeable.

Figure Out Where and How to Cut Expenses Realistically

How You Can Teach Friends to BudgetNow that the current spending habits are in front of them, it's time to figure out how to cut expenses. This is going to depend on where their money is going, what type of entertainment they like, and how close to their limit they are each month.

To start, figure out if any money is getting wasted away. Take a look at all those discretionary purchases each month individually and see if you can find a trend. Often, it's as easy as noticing the $150 spent on coffee every month at a coffee shop instead of making it at home. Perhaps they have some monthly purchases that go to waste but are kept because they've always been there. Cable is often a good example of something that might only get used to watch a few shows but could easily be replaced with cheaper services. We've outlined how to ditch cable before, and it's a good way to quickly get rid of a expensive and underutilized service. Other common expenses include:

  • Alcohol
  • Restaurants
  • Gas
  • Groceries
  • Entertainment
  • Phone
  • Insurance

To reduce the cost of expenses, you can make a few sacrifices, or spend some time on the phone with service providers to get them to lower costs. Services like BillShrink can be used to find cheaper gas, wireless service, and television. To cut the grocery and restaurant bill, consider our previously mentioned tips to start eating well at home while keeping shopping costs down. If they're more the type to spent money on movies, books, or video games, discretionary spending on entertainment is one of the easiest to curb. If they're a big gamer, consider our tips for selling off used games at the best price, or using rental services like Redbox or GameFly. If they spend a lot on purchasing movies all the time, Netflix or Blockbuster might be the way to go. For books, the easiest solution is the local library, but a good used book store works just as well. The important thing is to stress that it's possible to keep up the entertainment habit without breaking the bank every month. If they are one of the avid collectors that will purchase everything despite their financial situation, stress the importance of cutting in other places in order to do so.

Once expenses are cut as low as possible, they need to figure out what type of savings they need. If no potential vacations, credit card repayments, or big purchases are on the horizon, that money should go into an emergency fund to help pay for any unexpected expenses that may come up. If you're dealing with a person who seems to hate saving, remind them of a recent emergency like a car repair or medical bill they've had to pay out of pocket.

Now they should have an optimized budget, where expenses are cut, the bills are as low as they can be, and it's as close to breaking even as possible. To show off a little, have them redo the expense sheets highlighted above to get a better idea of what has changed. Now it's time to figure out how to use those numbers and keep the budget on track in the future.

Photo by MoneyBlogNewz.

Three Easy Ways to Keep Them On Budget

How You Can Teach Friends to BudgetFiguring out where the money is going and finding ways to cut expenses is only half the battle. The next part is figuring out a way to keep them on the budget. When they're starting out, a lot of people like to keep their monthly expenses on a wall where they can see them every day as a reminder. One person I talked to recently did so while surrounding their budget with pleasant images and quotes so it wasn't such a downer to look at it. A lot of different ways exist to track a budget, but lets look at the simplest forms for beginners with simple expenses. These are easy, month-to-month style budgets for people who aren't dealing with capitol investments or large oncoming expenses. They'll need to tweak the methods over time to fit their lifestyle, but these will start them with a strong foundation to build on.

  • Envelope Method: If you're teaching budgeting methods to someone who is more comfortable with cash than a card, the envelope method is one of the simplest to follow. This method involves coming up with specific categories and stuffing the budgeted amount of cash into that envelope. For instance, a monthly set of envelopes might include: food, entertainment, gas, and emergency. Some expenses like rent, utilities, and bills can't be paid in cash, so this only works for people who might struggle with their discretionary spending. In this example, you would help them come up with their proposed monthly budget, then hit up the bank and take out the cash. Each envelope gets filled with the budgeted amount and that's all that can be spent for the month (or week or bi-weekly, whichever they prefer). It's as easy as that. When the envelope is out of money, the spending needs to stop.
  • Webapps and Software: A lot of different methods for tracking a budget on a computer exist and we've highlighted the best before. For complete beginners, we rather like Mint for this, and our guide to setting up and tracking your spending is a good place to start. Mint's mobile apps and reminder system are good for those new to budgeting because they'll get alerts when they're close to zero dollars or when a strange expense comes up.
  • Multiple Bank Account Budgeting: We've talked about the idea of bucket budgeting with multiple bank accounts before, but it's a really handy tool for those who are struggling to make their bills each month. Basically, set up two accounts, one for fixed expenses and one for everything else. This helps ensure the rent and bills will always get paid first and the rest of the spending can be doled out as needed. It's good for budgets that need flexibility or for people who just got a lump sum payment like a student loan or insurance payout. While the idea revolves around a checking account and two saving accounts, it could also be worked as two checking accounts. One account goes to bills and you deposit money in at the beginning of each month, while the other goes to the rest of the expenses. It takes a few steps to transfer money, so impulse purchases won't be as easy to make. Once the budget is in order, another account can be used as a savings account as well.
  • Photo by Lisa Brank.


    While we've talked about many of these tips in a way for you to help teach budgeting to someone else, it's just as applicable to your own budgeting. In my personal experience, I've found that helping friends set up their expenses always makes me revisit and retool my own. It's hard to gauge when it's a good time to intervene to help a friend or family member out, but hopefully this will help you teach them in a direct and simple way. Have you ever helped someone create and manage a budget? What methods did you use?

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/vac3HGiAMRc/how-you-can-teach-friends-to-budget

kyle orton kyle orton j r martinez j r martinez long island serial killer wizard of oz jeff green

Saturday, December 24, 2011

IsraelNewsfeed: Gaza Terrorists Fire Mortar Shells at Southern Israel: http://t.co/9D3TrQ6W

  • Passer la navigation
  • Twitter sur votre mobile ? Cliquez ici m.twitter.com!
  • Passer cette ?tape
  • Connexion
Loader Twitter.com
  • Connexion
Gaza Terrorists Fire Mortar Shells at Southern Israel: bit.ly/tSh6rE IsraelNewsfeed

Israel National News

Pied de page

Source: http://twitter.com/IsraelNewsfeed/statuses/150322911482347521

toys r us toys r us shame shame denver weather donovan mcnabb donovan mcnabb

New spin-out company from DTU: Bladena

New spin-out company from DTU: Bladena [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 22-Dec-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Sren Horn Petersen
shp@bladana.com
(45) 53-70-02-78
Risoe National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, the Technical University of Denmark

There is already a high demand for stronger and lighter wind turbine blades. The wind industry wants to construct larger turbines, which may increase the cost efficiency of each turbine and reduce the price of energy. Until now a major issue has been that the weight of the blades in large turbines is too high. The large and well-established wind turbine generator manufacturers deal with this and other issues in their own research and development teams. Bladena provides small wind turbine generator and wind turbine blade manufacturers without in-house research and development departments with a unique opportunity to utilise the latest research to optimise their blade design.

"Simply put, Bladena employs the latest knowledge and technologies from DTU to empower companies who design and produce wind turbine blades. We have worked systematically to implement all the knowledge gained in the last ten years by e.g. co-founder of Bladena, Researcher Find Mlholt Jensen during his tenure at Ris DTU. This research has now been transformed from a fault finding tool to something we can use to prevent faults from occurring in the first place", explains Mr. Sren Horn Petersen, GEO of Bladena, and adds that Bladena has already been approached by potential customers.

Besides comprehensive insight and knowledge of the structure of wind turbine blades, seven specific inventions have been transferred to the new company. Among these the so-called IKEA cross a structural element that can stabilise the blade in much the same way as the metal cross you mount on the back of a shelving unit. Increased stability of the blade results in saved materials and reduced weight. The customers will thus have a better and more reliable solution, and a more cost-effective blade.

At DTU, the principles and effects of inventions such as this have been demonstrated over the last decade funded partly by Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster and partly by Region Zealand whose aim it is to fund projects that can transcend the gap between research and commercial application.

"However, the research had reached a stage where the time had come to transfer the ongoing work to a spin-out company", says President of DTU, Anders Bjarklev, and continues:

"One of the foremost tasks of the University is to ensure that research from DTU benefits society. At DTU we engineer groundbreaking solutions, and a spin-out like Bladena is a good example of how our innovative researchers create the basis for new jobs in the manufacturing industry." Bladena will be based in Ringsted and is financed by two private investors as well as innovation funds from CAT*.

On Bladena's board of directors are competent resources from CAT and the investors, and Sren Horn Petersen, CEO of Bladena, anticipates a close collaboration with DTU in the future:

"We see ourselves as bridge-builders who can disseminate knowledge to society but also bring value to the academic world in the form of specific knowledge of real issues and needs in the wind Industry"

###



[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


New spin-out company from DTU: Bladena [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 22-Dec-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Sren Horn Petersen
shp@bladana.com
(45) 53-70-02-78
Risoe National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, the Technical University of Denmark

There is already a high demand for stronger and lighter wind turbine blades. The wind industry wants to construct larger turbines, which may increase the cost efficiency of each turbine and reduce the price of energy. Until now a major issue has been that the weight of the blades in large turbines is too high. The large and well-established wind turbine generator manufacturers deal with this and other issues in their own research and development teams. Bladena provides small wind turbine generator and wind turbine blade manufacturers without in-house research and development departments with a unique opportunity to utilise the latest research to optimise their blade design.

"Simply put, Bladena employs the latest knowledge and technologies from DTU to empower companies who design and produce wind turbine blades. We have worked systematically to implement all the knowledge gained in the last ten years by e.g. co-founder of Bladena, Researcher Find Mlholt Jensen during his tenure at Ris DTU. This research has now been transformed from a fault finding tool to something we can use to prevent faults from occurring in the first place", explains Mr. Sren Horn Petersen, GEO of Bladena, and adds that Bladena has already been approached by potential customers.

Besides comprehensive insight and knowledge of the structure of wind turbine blades, seven specific inventions have been transferred to the new company. Among these the so-called IKEA cross a structural element that can stabilise the blade in much the same way as the metal cross you mount on the back of a shelving unit. Increased stability of the blade results in saved materials and reduced weight. The customers will thus have a better and more reliable solution, and a more cost-effective blade.

At DTU, the principles and effects of inventions such as this have been demonstrated over the last decade funded partly by Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster and partly by Region Zealand whose aim it is to fund projects that can transcend the gap between research and commercial application.

"However, the research had reached a stage where the time had come to transfer the ongoing work to a spin-out company", says President of DTU, Anders Bjarklev, and continues:

"One of the foremost tasks of the University is to ensure that research from DTU benefits society. At DTU we engineer groundbreaking solutions, and a spin-out like Bladena is a good example of how our innovative researchers create the basis for new jobs in the manufacturing industry." Bladena will be based in Ringsted and is financed by two private investors as well as innovation funds from CAT*.

On Bladena's board of directors are competent resources from CAT and the investors, and Sren Horn Petersen, CEO of Bladena, anticipates a close collaboration with DTU in the future:

"We see ourselves as bridge-builders who can disseminate knowledge to society but also bring value to the academic world in the form of specific knowledge of real issues and needs in the wind Industry"

###



[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/rnlf-nsc122211.php

safe and sound botticelli monkey bread x factor winner footlocker julia gillard julia gillard

Friday, December 23, 2011

SSF4 AE: China tourney footage featuring Sako, Poongko, Xiao Hai

Posted by Nyoro on Dec. 22, 2011 at 10:29 a.m.

Hitcombo managed to find several videos of the Chinese SSF4 AE tournament that had its results recorded several days ago. Click on this story to see information and results and hit the jump to see all the videos with Sako's Ibuki, TH|Poongko's Seth and Xiao Hai's Yun.

Source: http://eventhubs.com/news/2011/dec/22/ssf4-ae-china-tournament-footage-featuring-sako-poongko-xiao-hai/

elliot la galaxy la galaxy david blaine jordy nelson hot chelle rae guile

Friday, December 16, 2011

Jackson daughter tells 'Ellen' about acting dreams (omg!)

In this Dec. 13, 2011 photo released by Warner Bros., talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, right, welcomes Paris Jackson, daughter of the late pop star Michael Jackson during a taping of "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" in Burbank, Calif. The episode will air on Thursday. (AP Photo/Warner Bros., Michael Rozman)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Michael Jackson's daughter says she was inspired to be an actress after seeing her father in the film "Moonwalker."

"My dad was in the movie 'Moonwalker' and I knew he could sing really well, but I didn't know he could act," Paris Jackson told talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, according to a transcript of the episode to air Thursday. "I saw that and I said, 'Wow, I want to be just like him.'"

The film featuring Jackson's signature dance move and other videos was released in 1988.

Paris said her father encouraged her and did improvisation sessions to develop her skills. The 13-year-old has been cast alongside Larry King in a film based on a new children's book, "Lundon's Bridge and the Three Keys," which is in early stages of development.

The Internet Movie Database, known as IMDB, shows the film is tentatively scheduled for a 2013 release, although filmmakers have not presented the teen's proposed acting contract to a Los Angeles court as required because she is a minor.

Paris also talked about the lengths that her father took to protect her identity for an episode that will air on Thursday.

She said she has had a normal childhood, thanks to her father's decision to place her and her two brothers in masks when they were in public.

She said no one recognized her when she began attending school after her father's death in June 2009.

"I was like, yes, I have a chance to be normal," she said.

The pop superstar protected his children's identities, dressing them in costumes and covering their faces when they were in public. They have since been in the public eye, appearing onstage at their father's televised memorial service, the Grammy Awards and other television appearances.

She said she initially thought wearing the mask was stupid, but later came to realize that it was for her and her brothers' protection.

___

Online: http://ellen.warnerbros.com/

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/omg_rss/rss_omg_en/news_jackson_daughter_tells_ellen_acting_dreams193927302/43906957/*http%3A//omg.yahoo.com/news/jackson-daughter-tells-ellen-acting-dreams-193927302.html

neverland shaun white phoebe prince marlins marlins sugar bowl kourtney kardashian pregnant

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Wreaths headed to Arlington National Cemetery

Robert F. Bukaty / AP

Traffic moves by a parked convoy of tractor-trailers carrying wreaths on Sunday in Portland, Maine.

By Clarke Canfield, Associated Press

PORTLAND, Maine -- Twenty years ago, wreath company owner Morrill Worcester and a dozen other people laid 5,000 wreaths on headstones at Arlington National Cemetery. It was Worcester's way of giving thanks to the nation's veterans with leftover unsold wreaths.

This year, Worcester has arranged for up to 100,000 wreaths to be placed on gravesites at the military cemetery Dec. 10 in his biggest wreath-laying undertaking yet.

A convoy of more than 20 trucks left Worcester Wreath Co. in the eastern Maine town of Harrington on Sunday to begin the six-day journey to the cemetery in Arlington, Va., outside Washington, the final resting place for hundreds of thousands of veterans and a tourist site that draws 4 million visitors a year. Along the way, there'll be ceremonies at schools, veterans' homes and in communities in Maine, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland.

Worcester never expected the wreath-laying effort to grow from a single tractor-trailer carrying a few thousand wreaths to 84 big rigs delivering wreaths to Arlington and hundreds of locations. Besides the Arlington ceremony, his Wreaths Across America organization has also organized more than 700 other ceremonies at veterans' cemeteries and monuments across the country and overseas involving 225,000 wreaths.

Robert F. Bukaty / AP

Morrill Worcester applauds veterans at a ceremony at Chevrus High School Sunday in Portland, Maine.

?

"We haven't really tried to push it; it's really just grown on its own," Worcester said. "We have a hard time keeping up with it."

Worcester, who has never served in the military, came up with the idea of a wreath-laying ceremony 20 years ago when he found himself with an extra 5,000 wreaths in December, too late to bring to market. He decided upon Arlington National Cemetery, which he had visited as a child.

After that first year, Worcester continued donating wreaths and holding ceremonies at the cemetery. The event remained relatively small with little fanfare until a photo, showing thousands of green wreaths with red ribbons nestled against headstone on a snow-covered ground, made its way around the Internet about five years ago.

After that, Worcester got thousands of emails and letters from people wanting to donate, and inquiries from others asking how they could hold wreath-laying ceremonies of their own to pay tribute to those who have served in the military. So he and his wife founded the nonprofit Wreaths Across America to take in donations and organize hundreds of wreath-laying ceremonies at veterans' cemeteries.

Wreaths Across America put 24,000 wreaths on Arlington headstones last year, and initially hoped to put them on virtually all 220,000 headstones this year. That initiative fell short, but Worcester said he's still pleased that they'll be able to put out 100,000 of the laurels.

Of the 325,000 wreaths in all of this year's ceremonies, Worcester is donating 25,000. His company makes the rest, but they are paid for through donations from groups and individuals and through corporate sponsorships.

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/04/9205390-thousands-of-wreaths-headed-to-arlington-national-cemetery

mississippi personhood mississippi personhood issue 2 ohio issue 2 ohio election results 2011 election results 2011 board of elections

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Police arrest Occupy protesters in Washington, Portland

The Occupy movement is turning its attention to housing, with activists occupying homes being foreclosed on and attempting to take control of vacant properties. NBC's Michelle Franzen reports.

?

By The Associated Press

Police cracked down on anti-Wall Street protesters on the East and West Coasts over the weekend, arresting demonstrators in Portland, Oregon and in Washington, D.C.

In Washington, U.S. Park Police arrested more than 20 people in a downtown park Sunday, Occupy DC said, after protesters assembled a wooden structure authorities later declared to be unsafe.

Protesters have been camped for weeks at McPherson Square and began assembling the structure overnight for shelter during the winter, Occupy DC said on its website.


Several climbed on top with a couple of hundred others looking on and chanted, "Give us water, give us food, document what is happening."

Lieutenant Robert Glover of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department told the protesters the structure was unsafe and illegal and police were not forcing protesters from the park.

"We are not looking to push this thing further," he said.

Related story: Foreclosed homes are next Occupy target

Portland police arrested 19 people who were trying to occupy a downtown park, including one man charged with criminal mischief and trespassing for climbing onto the roof of City Hall, police said.

Some 300 people had attempted to gather in Shemanski Park, beginning late on Saturday night, and then marched through the city's streets, police said.

Protesters who have been demanding economic justice for average Americans who they say suffer while the government bails out Wall Street firms have been getting arrested in recent weeks as officials try to disassemble their encampments.

In several cities, officials have cited dangerous health and safety conditions and the cost of added policing and other security measures in a time of tight budgets.

An unidentified male was reported dead at the Occupy Denton camp at the University of North Texas campus, according to a post on the university's Facebook page. It was unclear when and how the person died, and campus police were investigating, it said.

The Portland demonstrators said on Sunday they will lobby the city for a location to pitch their tents.

Several people held a vigil outside Portland City Hall, asking that a ban on camping in parks be lifted. They said they plan to stay until the city's rule is changed.

"This will be an ongoing nonviolent effort to maintain focus and attention to the issues of inequality that 99 percent of America face as the result of corporate greed and corruption," they said on their website.

Protester Kip Silverman said the demonstrators' civil rights were being "trampled on" by the city.

"We have a certain expectation for how government and the people should work together in Portland, and it is not happening right now," he said.

More than 300 arrests were made in Los Angeles last week as police cleared an Occupy encampment.

The movement began in a downtown park in New York City, but protesters were cleared from that site two weeks ago.

Oklahoma City protesters got a temporary restraining order from a judge last week to avoid being forcibly ousted.

In Seattle, however, a judge on Friday rejected a bid by activists to block their eviction from a community college, clearing the way for the city to remove them as early as the next few days.

? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/05/9224372-police-arrest-occupy-protesters-in-washington-portland

anagram 180 degrees askew cory smoot do a barrel roll jimmy kimmel tilt

Monday, December 5, 2011

The Xbox Metro Update Nudges Microsoft?s Console Closer To Set-top Hegemony

Screenshot Bing SearchThe upcoming Metro update to Microsoft's Xbox, shipping tonight and arriving on your console some time this week, pushes Microsoft's gaming product away from the traditional run-and-gun of gaming consoles and into a new realm: that of the home media center. While the Xbox existed as a media center before, allowing you to download video and music content and stream content from your home computers, this new update makes it easier to find disparate pieces of content, whether its from Microsoft's own video/music store or another source or directly from the Internet through YouTube and various partner services. The update also allows Windows Phone users to control the Xbox remotely, adding items to the queue and looking up content to send to the TV while other content is playing. In short, this update isn't about the games, it's about content.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hrfPnxX_FH4/

alexander the great act alabama football 21 jump street 19 kids and counting 2011 election results 11/11/11

Video: Decision 2012



>> on decision 2012 , let's bring in cnbc's chief washington correspondent john harwood . we witnessed plenty of surges in this race. you had bachmann, perry, cain, all had their turn. how does gingrich's rise differ, if at all?

>> reporter: it is a bigger threat to mitt romney because of how close it comes to when voting starts in january. because of newt gingrich 's national track record as the leader of the 1994 republican revolution , gingrich starts way behind in organization to convert popular support into delegates and money for tv ads and mitt romney has just begun to advertise.

>> we heard it a moment ago, some white house attacks seem to presuppose romney as the nominee. might that change?

>> reporter: i wouldn't expect the white house to change tactics at all. they clearly fear mitt romney more than any other republican candidate. they believe as democrats do generally that the background and record of newt gingrich makes him an easy target, but we have seen that the white house doesn't always calculate those things correctly as we saw in 1980 when president jimmy carter 's aides wanted to run against ronald reagan .

>> john harwood , appreciate the insight. thanks.

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45543653/

slaughterhouse cypher last man standing gary johnson gary johnson jim thorpe pa jim thorpe pa

Sunday, December 4, 2011

98% The Muppets

All Critics (139) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (136) | Rotten (3)

You can rest easy - if you have previously loved the Muppets, you will likely currently love The Muppets.

The chorus of one of the songs declares, 'I've got everything that I need, right in front of me.' For 120 minutes, that's precisely how I felt.

[Filmmakers] hew close to the essential innocence informing the Muppets' silliness.

The Muppets is a triumph of simplicity, innocence and goofy jokes. It's a triumph of felt.

A mixed bag then: The Muppets isn't the best or the worst of Kermit's big-screen capers. At least it's a reminder that here's one frog who isn't about to croak.

It's nice to see the band back together. And when Kermit busts out the banjo for "Rainbow Connection," you might even go for your lighter.

The movie is better when the muppets are front and center and not the humans

Actor-writer Jason Segel happily plays a supporting role and lets a new generation be introduced to Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, and Animal.

Admittedly, there are a few misfires every once in a while, but with its barrage of self-referential humor, breaking through the fourth wall jokes, imaginative cameos and satirical winks at Hollywood conventions, The Muppets is a comedy lover's dream.

Longtime Muppet fans will undoubtedly have more fun than young ones, but for the most part, it's a witty, delightful romp.

... older folks raised on the late Jim Henson's brainchildren will be charmed ...

Not all nostalgia is created equal.

One of the movie's real pleasures is the 'reality' of its puppety ethos -- our awareness that Segel and Adams really are talking to Kermit and Piggy, and not to a blank space that will be filled in later by an animator.

There's still an endearing sweetness that permeates The Muppets.

The Muppets marks a triumphant return for these beloved characters. This movie made me feel good all over.

A bit flat and never quite as madcap or wacky as the TV show or early films, The Muppets hits enough right notes to be a pleasing welcome back for longtime fans and a lovely introduction for those deprived of Muppets magic.

It is a film that works for...fans who remember what the Muppets were but it's also a great way of establishing who the Muppets are.

Wonderful! Delightful! Utterly charming!

Frequently hilarious and quite poignant, especially when Kermit reminisces about his long lost friends while crooning a wonderful little ditty called "Pictures in My Head"

It is with immense pleasure that I can report that Disney's Muppet reboot movie is an absolute delight.

The whole thing is ultimately too in awe of its own characters, respecting them without pushing them, to feel as fresh and sharp as The Muppet Movie.

Here's a cruel suggestion: Leave the kids at home. After all, what grownup weaned on a steady diet of Muppets wants to interrupt a jaunt down memory lane by having to escort weak bladders to the bathroom or hungry mouths to the concession stand?

Dear Muppets: Thank goodness you're back. And thank goodness for the pens of Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, who wrote this brilliant screenplay to get you back on the big screen where you belong.

Where have they been? Young or old, there's nothing better than spending a few hours with the Muppets.

its mixture of nostalgia, postmodern humor, and all-around generosity may be exactly what is needed to endear the Muppets to a whole new generation

More Critic Reviews

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_muppets/

world series game 2 world series game 2 libya bay area news lettuce recall lettuce recall zanesville ohio

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Slovakia: Visualising Business Registry Data with Vorsr.sk ? Global ...

Vorsr.sk [sk] is a tool for visual exploration of Slovakia's business registry. It treats the information?as one big social network, grabbing the newest data live from the current registry database and delivering up-to-date connections of searched for individuals.?The business registry contains information about all Slovak people who own a business, own part of one or are board members.

Following is an interview with Slovakian Michal Habala, who together with a colleague came up with the idea for Vorsr.sk?in August 2008, using JUNG, an open-source Java project by a couple of students from the University of California.

Sample data visualisation from Vorsr.sk

Sample data visualisation from Vorsr.sk

Global Voices (GV): How much time did it take to launch Vorsr.sk?before it went live? What were people's first reactions?

Michal Habala (MH): At the beginning we thought that it would be ready in a few weeks/months but when we saw the data quality in the business registry we decided to go deeper and implement data cleansing algorithms and other functionality. This and the fact that it is not a commercial project (it was always balanced between all our free time activities) meant that the beta version for public testing was released 18 months after we started. But I think it was worth it; the reactions are always very good, as we can present some results, which you would never be able to see in any other relevant project or tool.

GV: How did the idea change from day one? What are your users saying and how are you adapting to their needs?

MH: This tool is in never-ending development driven basically by our users. Every time we get an impulse from our users to add some functionality, we begin to analyze this request and try to make it happen.

GV: What are your plans for the near and distant future?

MH: The tool is evolving in time and now we are introducing a Czech version (beta version here) and probably in two months we are looking to introduce a Czechoslovak version (from both countries). This could be the first European project which provides information from joint business registries to the public (and it?s completely free).

GV: What is/was your main obstacle while developing and running the project?

MH: Probably poor data quality in the business registry. We tried to make this tool without downloading the data to our databases, so in Slovak it runs as an online wrapper of the business registry. This approach has its positives (like no problem with request limits and always up to date data) but recently we discovered that this approach has some limitations, which we want to overcome. This is mainly the data loading time and stability of the business registry, which is continuously getting worse. Even though we like the concept of using government services as data sources for our tool, we have to face the fact that these services have a long way to go before they can be used in such way.

GV: Was there anyone angry at you after you launched this project?

MH: I think that people still don?t get it what they can do with this tool. Most of our users just look at their own business and do not go deeper. Partly it?s our fault because we don?t pay much attention to the promotion of results yet. But we are going to change that and embed some introductory (tutorial) videos and results-showing videos in our home page. Then I can imagine that some business people would be annoyed that we used their case to present our tool. But in general I think there?s nothing to be worried about, it?s all public data already accessible through the public business registry.

GV: What will be new in the beta version?

MH: The beta version is completely new inside. There was some major object and internal structure redesign, which will improve stability, the speed of the applet and will allow us to easily integrate other countries and add other sources of information. Also some GUI [Graphical User?Interface] redesign and new graph analyzing algorithms. So it will be quite new in the end, but we are talking about a wait of probably one year.

GV: I find this tool currently hard to use - there is lots of Java, it's quite slow in my browser. Don?t you lose some of your audience because of these issues?

MH: I know that Java is source consuming and therefore the whole tool is slower in browsers with large amounts of data loaded, but this tool was never meant to be used this way. It was designed to be a small applet for visualizing small graphs online loaded from the business registry. When we saw that big business cases are really big and you have to load very large graphs to see the context, we decided to make a real tool from it. The first step to overcome the speed issue was enabling the install of it as a desktop application, which runs faster. Another step is to release a new version with optimized algorithms (i.e. the beta version mentioned earlier). But at the end, it will never be a click-and-see component for everyone, it?s a tool and when a user wants to use it he/she has to accept its demands.

GV: What are the promotional plans? Do media and journalists use it?

MH: We don?t have information as to whether any media use it. I think that there are some media people among our users but that?s all. I have to say that we underestimated the value of promotion. We are mainly programmers but we have to face the fact that every project needs a promotion plan.

GV: Is there any business person who wants to sponsor you?

MH: This goes hand in hand with the question before I think. No promotion means no sponsor. On the other hand we are getting promo support from the Fair-play Alliance in Slovak Republic and now also from people of the Kohovolit.eu portal in the Czech Republic for which we are very thankful.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this interview.

Source: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/12/02/slovakia-visualising-business-registry-data-with-vorsr-sk/

les miles les miles beyonce dance for you video beyonce dance for you video asu football asu football arkansas lsu

Could natural nuclear reactors have boosted life?

While modern-day humans use the most advanced engineering to build nuclear reactors, nature sometimes makes them by accident.

Evidence for a cluster of natural nuclear reactors has been found on Earth, and some scientists say our planet may have had many more in its ancient past. There's also reason to think other planets might have had their own naturally occurring nuclear reactors, though evidence to confirm this is hazy. If they did exist, the large amounts of radiation and energy released by such reactors would have had complicated effects on any life developing on this or other worlds, experts say.

Natural nuclear reactors occur when deposits of the radioactive element uranium build up in one spot, and eventually ignite a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction where uranium divides, in a process called fission, producing other elements. The reaction releases a powerful punch of energy.

This energy could prove beneficial and highly detrimental to developing life, depending on the circumstances.?

Only example
The only known examples of natural nuclear reactors on Earth were discovered in the Oklo region of Gabon, Africa, in 1972. French miners discovered that the uranium samples they extracted were depleted in the rare isotope uranium 235, the only naturally occurring material on Earth capable of sustaining fission reactions. It was as if the material had already gone through a nuclear reaction and been used up.

In fact, that's the scenario most supported by studies. Scientists think a concentration of uranium 235 there went critical around 2 billion years ago and underwent fission, just as it does inside man-made nuclear reactors.

"As far as we know, we only have evidence of natural reactors forming and operating at the one site in Gabon, but that demonstrates that it's possible, and our calculations suggest it was much more probable earlier in Earth's history," said Jay Cullen of the University of Victoria in Canada.

Cullen and Laurence A. Coogan, a colleague at the University of Victoria, researched how likely these reactions were when Earth was much younger, based on how much uranium in a given area is necessary for the material to go critical and start a self-sustaining fission reaction. They found that during the Archean epoch, between around 2.5 billion and 4 billion years ago, natural nuclear reactors could have been relatively frequent.

"It certainly seems more than likely that these sorts of reactors would have been much more common in the Earth's early history because the amount [of uranium] you need is actually quite small," Cullen told Astrobiology Magazine.

However, because there is such a poor geologic record left from so long ago, scientists have very little way of confirming this idea.

The spark of life
If natural nuclear reactors were present on early Earth, they could have had interesting effects on any nascent life.

The ionizing radiation released by a nuclear reaction can damage DNA, the precious instruction code built into every cell of life. If organisms were living too close to the site of a reactor, they could have been wiped out completely. However, life hanging out on the outskirts of a nuclear reactor might have received a smaller dose of radiation ? not enough to kill it, but enough to introduce mutations in its genetic code that could have boosted the diversity in the local population.

"The ionizing radiation would actually provide some genetic variation," Cullen said. ?That?s the quantity that natural selection is going to act upon, and it might help to promote change in organisms with time. I think that most people view ionizing radiation as a bad thing, but that?s not always necessarily so."

Furthermore, the nuclear reactors themselves could have provided an even greater boon to life by giving it the spark it needed to originate in the first place, some scientists think. Zachary Adam, now a graduate student at Montana State University in Bozeman, suggested the possibility in a 2007 paper in the journal Astrobiology, which he wrote? as a graduate student at the University of Washington.

Scientists don't know for sure how life got started on Earth, but they think it required some kind of burst of energy to start it off. This energy would have been required to break the bonds of simple elements such as carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, so that they could recombine to form the first complex organic molecules.

Other researchers have suggested that a strike of lightning might have provided the requisite energy, but Adam thinks that the energy released by a natural nuclear reactor might have provided the catalyst.

"I think it is at least as possible as other ideas, if not more plausible, but I realize everyone is partial to their own ideas," Adam said.

Life elsewhere?
If natural nuclear reactors might have helped life arise on this planet, it's also possible they've played a role in seeding life elsewhere.

So far, scientists' limited knowledge of the geology of extrasolar planets means they can't say how common natural nuclear reactors might be on other worlds. Adam said that some elements on early Earth that might have helped these reactors form don't seem to be as abundant on the surfaces of other planets.

For example, the moon's tidal forces on Earth, which used to be stronger than they are today due to the moon's closer proximity long ago, played a vital role in causing heavy minerals like uranium 235 to collect in dense patches on beaches, Adam said. The Earth had also differentiated into separate layers, including a crust and a mantle, which helped to separate out and concentrate the heavy radioactive elements.

These characteristics, especially crustal differentiation like that on Earth, don't seem to be as common among the other planets of the solar system, Adam said.

But not all experts are pessimistic about natural nuclear reactors on other worlds.

Plasma physicist John Brandenburg of Orbital Technologies Corp. analyzed results from NASA's Mars Odyssey Orbiter, which surveyed the surface of the Red Planet with various instruments, including a gamma-ray spectrometer. Brandenburg says the gamma-ray results show evidence of an abundance of radioactive uranium, thorium and potassium, especially in one particular spot on Mars, which he attributes to a major nuclear reaction taking place there around half a billion years ago.

"Basically it looked as though Mars was covered with a thick layer of radioactive substances, and also the atmosphere was full of radiogenic products," Brandenburg said. "It's kind of a no-brainer at that point. There appears to have been a large radiological event on Mars and it appears to have been violent."

If such a huge nuclear event did occur, it would have been disastrous for any budding Martian life.

"It would have been a terrible catastrophe," Brandenburg said. "Whatever biosphere was on Mars at the time probably suffered a massive extinction event, and it really set back life on Mars."

However, many Mars geologists have greeted Brandenburg's proposal with skepticism.

"This hypothesis is not likely to be true," the University of Arizona's William Boynton, principal investigator for Mars Odyssey's gamma-ray spectrometer, wrote in an email. "Yes, we did find both thorium and uranium, and they are natural elements found everywhere. The amount varies, but the explanations are very mundane."

Boynton said he doubts that natural nuclear reactors like the ones in Gabon are common elsewhere.

"The natural reactor in Africa is real, but the reason it was of so much interest is that it is so rare," Boynton said. "I would say it is all but impossible that any natural reactor has happened anywhere else in the solar system. It may be it has only happened once on Earth!"

This story was provided by Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program.

? 2011 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45524978/ns/technology_and_science-space/

gunner kiel baby lisa baby lisa paranormal activity wvu football meteor shower tonight district 9