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I'll be doing a series of photo reviews of various restaurants here and there.
Photo: Liina Vahter
Leib: resto ja aed (this translates as Bread: restaurant and garden) is probably one of the most atmospheric and stylish outdoor dining areas in Tallinn right now. We've had an exceptionally lovely summer with long, warm, light nights, and not much rain - and I've had the pleasure of spending few evenings at this place. The photos here are taken in late July, when my dear friends Emma & Michael were visiting from Edinburgh and I was keen to show that summers in Estonia can be so much nicer and warmer and drier than they were ever in Scotland :D
Leib was opened earlier this summer, when a group of young food and wine enthusiasts took over the former Scottish Club. There are two guys behind the restaurant - Kristjan Peäske (one of the best sommeliers in Estonia) and Janno Lepik (has worked in London's Babylon and Rhodes WI), and their mission is to serve simple food that's made from best and freshest ingredients and doesn't cost a fortune.
They've done well. The food is excellent and indeed, not over-priced. The service is extremely friendly and confident, the atmosphere really enjoyable. I'm worried a lot of the charm is based on their excellent outdoor seating area, but I do hope the place is just as charming when they move indoors for the cooler months.
Rabbit fritters with red wine mayonnaise:
The bread:
Puff pastry tart with rocket/arugula and ricotta cheese:
Fish of the day: pan-fried European perch with sautéed vegetables:
Pan-fried free-range chicken breast (may sound simple, but finding a free-range chicken in Estonia is quite a feat!):
Strawberry soup with ice cream:
Crème brûlée with rye bread crumbs:
Caramel kissel with blackcurrants and oats:
On a previous visit I enjoyed a cold clear tomato broth with herbs and curd cheese pudding with crispy rhubarb sauce, grilled lamb's liver. Definitely worth a visit, whether it's just the food or a glass of wine with something light alongisde. You'll find Leib's contact details here.
Eesti lugejatele: Nami-Nami foorumis on Leib: resto ja aed teema siin, nende Facebooki fännilehe leiate siit.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Leib: Resto & Aed (Tallinn restaurant review)
7 comments:
- Katherine Martinelli said...
This restaurant sounds so good I wish it was near me! And I'm impressed you were able to take such good photos at dinner, brava!
- 8:23 pm, August 29, 2011
Sounds lovely...
- 10:49 pm, August 29, 2011
- Meatloaf said...
That's good review, informative.
- 10:29 am, August 31, 2011
- Cat Lady said...
Yum yum! Those photos are bringing back lots of nice memories Pille.
- 12:11 pm, September 02, 2011
- Kat said...
Me käisime ka just, mina sõin tallemaksa (mmmmm) ja S sõi lõhet. Magustoiduks creme brulee ja karamellikissell. Kõik peale kisselli oli suurepärane, ei ole jõundud enda pilte veel üles panna.
- 1:10 pm, September 03, 2011
- Scott at Real Epicurean said...
That strawberry soup looks delicious.
- 11:22 am, September 09, 2011
- Alanna Kellogg said...
Wow. Oh wow oh wow. : - )
- 5:52 pm, May 20, 2014
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Join Hermie in this double-dose of fun as the garden bugs learn that the rules werent just made to be broken!
In Buzby, the Misbehaving Bee, the garden is all abuzz thanks to its newest resident: Buzby, the self-proclaimed king of bees, who refuses to follow any of the Garden Golden Rules. Soon Buzby has managed to bug every citizen of the gardenand Hermie and his pals dont know what to do. But through an unexpected act of kindness (not to mention some intervention from the real King of the garden), Buzby finally learns that nobody is too cool for the rulesand that rules are actually pretty helpful!
In Buzby and the Grumblebees, newly reformed rule-follower Buzby receives a visit from his niece Beebee and his nephew Buddy. But the two little bees are full of bad behavior, and Buzby enlists the help of Hermie and his friends to show the kids all kinds of bugs behaving badly. And the two quickly see how uncomfortable things become for everyone when bugs dont get enough sleep or clean up after themselves. Soon Beebee and Buddy decide that behaving in the hive is the only way to fly!
Featuring the voice talents of Tim Conway, Don Knotts, Vickie Lawrence, and Melissa Disney, these stories will keep kids and parents rolling with laughter and learning in love.

subset: commoncrawl


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You know how in a basketball video game, you'll intentionally let the computer tie it up so you can nail the buzzer-beater? The NBA was like that yesterday.
Which was your favorite? Derek Fisher, doing it like he's done it so many times before, only this time off the dribble drive runner?
Andrew Bogut with the tip in off the inbounds lob from Luc Richard Mbah a Moute?
Rudy Gay's more convention three from the corner to send it to overtime?
Or Raymond Felton's three that bounced off the rim four or five times before going through?
It's been said that you don't need to watch basketball games until the last five minutes. Maybe we should make that the last five seconds.


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EXCLUSIVE: Alexa Chung's New Ads For Madewell
The British trendsetter and the American-chic brand pair up for their second outing
Courtesy Madewell
When Alexa Chung and Madewell announced their partnership in 2010, the mix of Chung's downtown-girl style and Madewell's casually cool aesthetic made perfect sense — and fans seemed to agree, snatching up her first collection as soon as it hit shelves.
Now the two have paired up again for the second Alexa Chung for Madewell collection, beginning with a campaign shot in and around Austin, Texas, to reflect the feel of a road trip. The photos also nod to the city's ties to up-and-coming bands, which reflects Chung's "heavy inspiration of girls in bands who live their looks," according to the company's statement.
Says Kin Yung Lee, head of Madewell Design, of the collaborative shoot: "We were all so in sync. Since it's the second collection, it was like old friends getting together and creating something — and having a great time in the process!" Like what you see in the ads? The second Alexa Chung for Madewell collection will hit stores and Madewell.com on Sept. 22.
–Alex Apatoff


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Reviews by Brittany Shoot
Brittany Shoot is a freelance writer, editor, and critic based in Copenhagen and Boston. Her work has been published by Salon, The New York Times, Bitch, make/shift, RH Reality Check, ZNet, and AlterNet, and she's worked for WhoRunsGov, a project of The Washington Post. She has a master's degree from Emerson College and loves Scandinavian thrift stores, dance-punk, her 1987 diesel Mercedes Benz, and taking photographs with vintage film cameras.
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Treat Everything You Perceive as a Dream.
Tag Archives: Lojong mind training
Today's Lojong mind training
First, Train in the Preliminaries.
Lojong mind training: (almost) daily training in Tibetan Lojong
Courtesy of Lojongmindtraining.com, on every odd-numbered day, we will be introduced to Lojong mind training, a Tibetan tradition of mind training.
As mentioned on Wikipedia, Lojong is a practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition based on a set of aphorisms formulated in Tibet in the 12th century by Geshe Chekhawa. The practice involves refining and purifying one's motivations and attitudes. The proverbs that form the root text of the mind training practice are designed as a set of antidotes to undesired mental habits that cause suffering. They contain both methods to expand one's viewpoint towards absolute bodhicitta, such as "Find the consciousness you had before you were born." and "Treat everything you perceive as a dream.", and methods for relating to the world in a more constructive way with relative bodhicitta, such as "Be grateful to everyone." and "When everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up."
One seminal commentary on the mind training practice was written by Jamgon Kongtrul (one of the main founders of the non-sectarian Rime movement of Tibetan Buddhism) in the 19th century. This commentary was translated by Ken McLeod, initially as A Direct Path to Enlightenment. This translation served as the root text for Osho's Book of Wisdom. Later, after some consultation with Chogyam Trungpa, Ken McLeod retranslated the work as The Great Path of Awakening.
Two significant commentaries to the root texts of mind training have been written by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (founder of the New Kadampa Tradition) and form the basis of study programs at NKT Buddhist Centers throughout the world. The first, Universal Compassion is a commentary to the root text Training the Mind in Seven Points by Geshe Chekhawa. The second, Eight Steps to Happiness is a commentary to the root text, Eight Verses of Training the Mind by Geshe Langri Tangpa.
In 2006, Wisdom Publications published the work Mind Training: The Great Collection (Theg-pa chen-po blo-sbyong rgya-rtsa), translated by Thupten Jinpa. This is a translation of a traditional Tibetan compilation, dating from the fifteenth century, which contains altogether forty-three texts related to the practice of mind training. Among these texts are several different versions of the root verses, along with important early commentaries by Se Chilbu, Sangye Gompa, Konchok Gyaltsen, and others.
Geshe Thupten Jinpa (Scholar and chief translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama), as written on http://www.mandalamagazine.org/archives/mandala-issues-for-2008/february/mind-training-the-tibetan-tradition-of-mental-and-emotional-cultivation/, says about Lojong mind training:
Compassionate Action
Whatever metaphysical explanation we might personally find satisfactory on the fundamental question of why we are here, a fact that is indisputable, at least for a spiritually-minded person, is that we have to use our life in a way that is most constructive. As Buddhists understand it, this is to cultivate the compassionate dimension of our human psyche and engage in compassionate action. There is a wonderful passage in the work of the eighth-century master Shantideva, where he writes that the fully-enlightened Buddhas have for eons reflected on what is the highest and most valuable thing to do, and they have found that other than helping others, there is nothing else. This really captures the key value that is promoted in Buddhism — the welfare of others. What we should seriously think about is that each of us is not an island: Each of us is a being with a history, a family, a social connection, so if you sit down and think through how many lives are interconnected with your life, you will begin to see a network. Then ask yourself: Have I affected these lives in a constructive, positive way? If the answer is "Yes," then your life is going in a more meaningful direction. If the answer is "No," then you have a serious and an urgent task at hand.
[…] But in our habitual self-centered way of doing things, instead of accomplishing what we are trying to seek, we achieve the contrary — suffering and pain — and by re-orienting, and re-structuring the way which we see the world and relate to others, then we will be able to fulfill this fundamental aspiration to achieve happiness. Even if you ask people who are not religiously inclined, especially if they are parents, if there is one thing they would like to reach their children, almost everyone says, "I would like the child to be happy and a good person." Almost everyone!
[…] At some level we all know that if we try very hard to be happy, it just does not work. Happiness is experienced when we lose ourselves, and all of us know this from our experience. I am not just talking about pleasure or sensation, I am talking about that deep sense of fulfillment, that deep sense of satisfaction, and one of the characteristics of that experience is a loss of sense of self or ego. And so I would like to assure you that if we pursue our life in the restructured way that the mind training teachings are recommending, then we will also find what we are all seeking: happiness.


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IBM and Stanford University have announced a major research drive in the field of Spintronics, a new field of nanotechnology that researchers hope will turn electronics on its head, in the same way the invention of the transistor did, 50 years ago.
As more of the ever smaller transistors get packed on to every chip, the power consumption and overheating problems increase. Moving current around just generates too much heat, and the faster you want to move it, the more power you need, and the hotter things get.
The joint venture between Stanford and IBM is called "IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center" or SpinAps, for short. The deal is quite simple: IBM provides the seed money, Stanford supplies additional research brains, and they split the intellectual property (IP).
Spintronics provides an alternative to the traditional die method of processor manufacturing, by sidestepping the issue of current altogether. It focuses instead on the spin, or magnetic alignment, of individual electrons. An electron's spin can be in one of two states: either up or down, and it is this binary nature that makes it the subject of a whole lot of computer science research.
It is possible to control the magnetism of a material by aligning the spins of its consituent electrons, and applying magnetic fields to the material affects the movement of electrons differently, depending on their spin. The aim of the joint venture is to fully understand and control these properties. This, the scientists hope, will lead to properties like low power switching, and non-volatile storage.
If the team manages to make it work, the potential is enormous. It could lead to even smaller and more powerful processors, without the need for a heatsink the size of Wales.
In a statement on the company's webiste, IBM's boffins burble excitedly about creating "new materials and devices with entirely new capabilities - such as reconfigurable logic devices, room-temperature superconductors and quantum computers". Now that is a bit of IP worth having, even if commercial products are not expected to appear for another five years. ®
Related stories
Supercool atoms and quantum computing
Boffins discover upper limit of HD write speed
Reversible computing is the only way to survive Intel's heat
Moores Law retains grip on IT statute books: IBM


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« March on Washington Inspires Educators, 50 Years Later | Main | Transparency Watch: Will We See Ed. Dept.'s Waiver Data Analysis? »
Arne Duncan Attaches More Strings to NCLB Waiver Renewals
Two years after offering states waivers under the No Child Left Behind Act, the U.S. Department of Education is expecting states to up the ante on teacher quality if they want another two years of flexibility.
Barring a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the current version of the law, this waiver renewal process marks the last opportunity for the Obama administration to put its stamp on the ESEA and shape a future law.
To get a two-year extension of their waivers, states must reaffirm their commitment to college- and career-ready standards and tests, and to implementing differentiated accountability systems that focus on closing achievement gaps, according to new state guidance issued today.
States getting a waiver renewal must also continue implementing new teacher-evaluation systems by the 2014-15 school year—but the waiver renewals would take these requirements a step further. States must, by October 2015, use teacher-evaluation data to ensure that poor and minority students are not taught by ineffective teachers at a higher rate than their peers. This issue of teacher distribution is a very important one to civil rights groups.
What's more, under a renewal, states and districts must improve the use of Title II funds for professional development, with a requirement that districts spend the money on "evidence-based" programs and link them to new college- and career-ready standards. (Importantly, "evidence-based" is not defined.)
So far, 41 states, the District of Columbia, and a group of eight districts in California have flexibility waivers under NCLB. Thirty-five of them were approved in the first two rounds, which means their waivers expire at the end of the 2013-14 school year. These 35 will be the first to go through the renewal process.
Renewal applications will be accepted in three phases, beginning Jan. 2 and ending Feb. 21. The renewal applications will be judged internally, and not turned over to outside peer reviewers, department officials said on a press call today.
"We want to be sure to provide states with the flexibility they need to continue to implement their reform efforts," said Deborah S. Delisle, the assistant secretary for the office of elementary and secondary education, in the call. But, she added, "We want to ensure states continue to meet a high bar."
In addition to the new requirements on teacher quality, the waivers wade farther into one other new territory: district-level accountability. The district-role in intervening in low-performing schools has been identified as a weakness in federal frameworks, and so the waiver renewal process requires states to develop a "high-quality plan" for holding districts accountable for their efforts in turning around struggling schools.
The waiver renewal process seeks to beef up existing key areas as well:
Standards and tests—The department wants to ensure states are on track with implementing college- and career-ready standards and assessments, including backup plans for states that may have dropped out of the Common Core State Standards or common-testing consortia.
Student goals—Amid complaints that states must set "annual measurable objectives," or AMOs, for schools and districts but do little to enforce them, the guidance seeks to boost the power of the AMO. States will need to spell out exactly what their plan is for intervening in schools where subgroups of at-risk students miss those AMOs (or graduation-rate targets). These AMOs often exist outside of a state's regular school-grading or accountability systems.
Low-performing schools—Federal officials are keenly interested in states' and districts' plans for long-term interventions in "priority" schools, which are in the bottom 5 percent for student performance.
Worth noting is that federal officials are requiring states to consult with key stakeholders (such also as teacher unions) as part of the renewal process, as they did in their initial applications.
Interestingly, the guidance also reveals that the department is in the process of analyzing data in all waiver states to confirm that schools and subgroups are being properly identified and supported under state accountability systems. Those results will be used as part of the renewal process, and federal officials are saying they may make states change their accountability systems if flaws are found.
Federal officials are also forewarning that this is the only waiver renewal that will give states a free pass on student outcomes.
"After only a year and a half of implementation, it is too early to use student outcomes in making renewal decisions," the guidance reads, "however the Department anticipates that any future extension of these waivers will be outcomes-driven, based primarily on whether or not [a state] has improved student achievement and made progress towards closing achievement gaps."
But it's unclear just how much weight is behind this warning. The first round of renewals will expire at the end of the 2015-16 school year, by which time the Obama administration will be in its twilight.
Among education-policy experts, the waiver renewal process raises more questions than answers.
"After reading the guidance, it strikes me that the big question—since changes in student performance won't be considered—is how will the department determine whether each state's implementation is faithful and strong enough to warrant renewal," said Andy Smarick, a partner at Bellwether Education Partners in Washington. "The department now finds itself in a very tricky situation. Hold states' feet to the fire on rigorous implementation and run the risk of being seen as heavy-handed; allow states to slide by and raise the ire of those who say meaningful accountability has been gutted."
Anne Hyslop, a policy analyst at the New America Foundation who has been closely tracking the waivers, said the department is pretty much staying the course here. "I think at the end of the day we are going to see every state get a waiver renewal," said Hyslop, noting that it's far easier for the department to effect change by working with states than by revoking their waivers.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa and the Senate education committee chairman, reiterated his call to put a reauthorization of the bill on the floor of the Senate this fall. "This new phase of extending existing waiver agreements is an urgent reminder that Congress must act," he said.
U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, called this waiver renewal process a "critical juncture."
"During the renewal process, I will continue to focus on ensuring that the core principles of equity and civil rights in education are upheld," he said. "In particular, I will be taking a close look at whether schools will be held accountable for graduating students, whether students with disabilities are taught to and assessed on the same standards as their peers, and whether schools take significant action when students are not achieving at grade level."
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., wasn't happy at all. The top Republican on the Senate education committee rekindled his criticism that the Education Department is becoming a national school board. Of Duncan, he said: "He still has states over a barrel, so he's claiming even more detailed control over everything from when and how they evaluate their teachers to which schools they identify as low-performing, and he's forcing them to complete what looks like hundreds of extra pages of paperwork."


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Edit: I assume everyone figured out this is an April Fool's Day post. I'll leave it up for posterity. Enjoy your Xanaxparagus!
The House of Representatives and Senate have both passed a new piece of legislation concerning the intersection of agriculture and pharmaceuticals. A group of members of the House and Senate agriculture and drug industry committees met in secret earlier in the week to draft the bill. The omnibus bill replaces the existing Farm Bill, which was up for reauthorization this year.
While activists have long critiqued previous iterations of the Farm Bill for things like subsidizing corn and other commodity crops linked to diseases of civilization, and not going far enough enough to support sustainable farmers or people experiencing food insecurity, the new legislation is likely to raise ire. But it might be worth a second look.
The controversy is sprouting because the Pharm Bill approaches food from a medical –– or really pharmaceutical –– perspective. Under the bill –– and under the watch of new so-called "adrugcultural" corporations –– growers will receive subsidies for partnering with drug companies to genetically modify their crops to include commonly-prescribed medications. This means next year's markets could bring us products such as Xanaxparagus, Amoxicelery, Priloseckle Pears, Broccodin, Lipitorpedo Onions, Cialeriac, Lexasprouts, Ibuprofennel, Viagrapes, and more.
Unsurprisingly to many activists, giant agricultural biotech corporation Monsanto is involved, partnering with Pfizer to develop and offer a fertilizer called Fertilepfizer to all participating farms. Fertilepfizer is available for free the first year. Although if it's not paid for after that, it self-destructs, taking the nutrients of surrounding soil with it. Any farmer with traces of Fertilepfizer on his or her field must pay for it.
Many of my fellow local and sustainable food advocates have already responded with alarm to news of the Pharm Bill. But, despite my concerns about the Fertilepfizer component, I worry they may be reacting too hastily. Americans, after all, need their prescription drugs. Now Americans can get their medications –– organic, of course –– sourced from within 100 miles of home. Besides, we all know Americans don't eat enough fruits and vegetables. This might be a way to get people to eat their amphetagreens. To make lemonade out of lemons. Or to make something out of lemons; citrus fruits haven't been modified in experiments yet, so we don't know what. Maybe Ritalemonade.
Seriously, though. For those trying to remember to take Vicodin with dinner, why not just take Vicodinner? For those taking birth control pills, what if they came in the form of peas: seven per pod, four pods per month? Wouldn't that be easier to remember? And couldn't this bring down costs of prescription drugs, something of concerns to Americans across all party lines?
I don't know all the details yet about other parts of the Pharm Bill; it's 31,242,366,889,463.4 pages long, after all.
And not everyone is so optimistic about the changes. Some farmers are reacting to the news as an opportunity to increase revenue. Others are pledging to fight back. Still others are already reeling from the news with despair, showing signs of depression, anxiety and hopelessness. Not wanting to abandon them in such a condition, the new adrugcultural companies are promising they have a pill –– or a bean –– that will help.
To read the full text of the 2012 Pharm Bill, go here.
(Thanks to Danyel and Sandra for additional research on this issue.)


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Architecture Faculty Library
Architecture Faculty Library:
History of Architecture and Conservation
Building Construction and Design
Historic Building Conservation
Building Typologies, Building Planning and Realisation, Spatial Design
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Should Apple TV switch to the iPhone OS? The Apple TV was introduced in late 2006 but debuted alongside the iPhone at the Macworld 2007 keynote. Since then, the iPhone has become a huge, mainstream success and the Apple TV... well it reamins just a "hobby".
Technically, Apple TV is included under Apple's iTunes + iPod offerings, and it's been referred to as a big iPod for your TV. While low end iPods continue to run their embedded OS, the iPod touch and upcoming iPad run versions of the iPhone OS, Apple TV, by stark contrast, originally used a special version of Mac OS X Tiger. Though it has been updated to 2.x and 3.x over the years (and gotten a price cut to boot!), it remains in a sort of no-mans land, with more functionality than an iPod nano but far less than a proper Mac OS X machine like the Mac Mini.
The set-top box market is nebulous at best, but Apple chose to engage it -- much as it has the equally nebulous tablet market with the iPad, so we wonder if they wouldn't do better engaging it on the same terms -- with the iPhone OS and its 150,000 apps.
There would be problems to be sure. Right away the Apple TV's 1280x720 screen resolution is much greater than the iPhone's 480x320, and wider if shorter than the iPad's 1024x768. Ideally, the Apple TV should go to 1920x1080 to match other, modern display resolutions as well.
Apple is using optional pixel-doubling to let iPhone apps run "full-screen" on the iPad, and these were reportedly blurry and jaggy in early demos. Pixel-quadruplers would likely be even less kind. True resolution independence could be an answer to this, but we'll have to wait and here if Apple addresses that with iPhone 4.0 (perhaps in March).
The bigger problem would be control. The iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad all handle interactions via capacitive multitouch input -- you use your finger on the screen. I don't think there's a single 52" multitouch capacitive HDTV on the market. Apple has patents for Wii-mote style motion controllers that could fake fingers (if not touch) but they also have the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad -- all of which could (and already do via the Apple Remote app) serve as pretty good controllers. Hey, if your house has multiple devices, it could even handle multiple controllers...
So where does that leave us? Right now the Apple TV is an okay bridge to iTunes Store media -- music, movies, and TV content -- but leverages not at all the massive App Store ecosystem. Right now the Apple TV can do the equivalent of the iPod and YouTube apps on the iPhone, but can't show you your Calendar or Contacts, doesn't have Safari or Email, doesn't even have widgets like Stocks or Weather. And it doesn't have 150,000 other apps -- including games! -- that running the iPhone OS could bring it. Really, it's little more than a souped-up iPod classic tethered to your TV.
Sure there would be problems implementing the iPhone OS on the Apple TV, but there would be benefits as well.
So what do you think, should Apple TV be switched to the iPhone OS?
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Communicating with coworkers, social networks, and friends across the Web is getting more complicated by the week. Some friends use e-mail, your garage band members stick to Yahoo! Messenger, and you probably spend half your day keeping an eye out for your boss while you swap between an Excel spreadsheet and Facebook to stay in touch with your Web 2.0 acquaintances. Right now, keeping pace with all these groups requires some serious multitasking skills, but the developers at dotSyntax believe things can be easier. With a new cross-platform product called digsby poised as a universal communicator between IM, e-mail, and social networks, they're off to a strong start. Even better, we have 5,000 invites for those who want to try the private beta.
Right now, digsby is Windows-only, but Mac and Linux clients are on their way (you can sign up to be notified of their arrival). Upon first run, it's clear that dotSyntax's developers chose to use the typical instant messaging UI as the basis for digsby. The application primarily looks and works like a chat client, and there are both pros and cons to this approach that we'll explore in a minute. Adding accounts to digsby is simple, and there are three separate categories for IM, e-mail, and social networks to help maintain a distinction and keep things organized. Contacts, of course, are listed in digsby's main window, each with links to IM, e-mail, and SMS. E-mail and social network accounts have the options of displaying new message and event summaries either in the contact list, in the system tray, or both.
As is par for the instant messaging and communicator courses these days, digsby provides a fair amount of customization. Users can choose between a number of overall application skins and chat styles that suit their tastes and needs, and users will undoubtedly be able to create and download more once the app goes public and its community picks up steam. Fortunately, even the layout of digsby's main window can be reorganized as well, presenting users with the option of placing social networks above IM contacts, or e-mail accounts at the very bottom of the window.
Social networking
Once e-mail and social networking accounts are added to digsby, users are able to click their entries (either from the contact list or the system tray) and view a pop-up window containing their latest messages, notifications, and events. For now, digsby supports Facebook and MySpace for social networking. From the social networking pop-up, users can click a notification to be taken directly to the page of that user or particular event. There are also default links at the top to go straight to things like one's profile, inbox, photos, etc. This social networking integration is pretty handy, as it cuts down on the need to continually visit web sites or find another one-trick pony to do the same thing. While it would be nice to see digsby integrate even further by allowing things like sending in-network messages right from the application, digsby is, of course, limited by the restrictions social networks place on their APIs.
E-mail support
Digsby handles e-mail pretty well, though there is some room for improvement. Support is baked in for Hotmail, Gmail (including Google Apps accounts), Yahoo! Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, POP, and, surprisingly, IMAP. Adding one of the major accounts listed will allow users to display the same pop-up summary of recent messages and interact with them. Messages can be marked as read right from within digsby for the webmail accounts as well as IMAP accounts, allowing users to quickly shuffle through e-mail and knock out the easy ones without starting up a desktop client or signing into their full webmail account. Clicking to open a message from a webmail account will open the default browser, automatically log in, and go straight to that message.
This is another convenient luxury that unfortunately doesn't extend to non-webmail accounts. Clicking to open a message from a POP or IMAP account simply does nothing (which begs the question of why it appears for these accounts at all) as most service providers don't offer the same message-linking APIs as Gmail or Hotmail, though clicking "Mark as Read" works for IMAP messages. While one possibility to overcome this quirk is opening the default e-mail client (never mind revealing the specified message), digsby is in a bit of a bind here because there is no guarantee that the user has added the same account to the client in the first place. Considering this unknown aspect, a more integrated and digsby-like solution would be to offer a sort of integrated, slimmed down e-mail viewer. This would allow non-webmail users to also utilize digsby as a communications hub and avoid starting up a desktop client when they don't need or want to. Another minor quibble is that e-mail accounts cannot be given custom names, forcing users to look through a potentially long list of clunky e-mail addresses when checking in on their accounts.
Instant messaging
As the centerpiece of digsby, instant messaging is refreshing and well thought out. All the major protocols are supported, including AIM, MSN (or Windows Live Messenger), Yahoo!, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber. The default buddy list layout is strikingly similar to Apple's iChat AIM client, and a few UI perks really make it an enjoyable experience. For example, offline contacts are hidden out of the box, there is no default sound turned on for sending a message (though you can turn one on in preferences), and windows automatically snap to screen edges. Digsby, of course, does tabbed chatting, complete with the ability to drag a chat out into its own window. Clicking a contact reveals a pop-up window with options to IM, send a file, e-mail, or SMS, highlighting digsby's aspirations to be a universal communicator. Unfortunately, it appears that digsby does not yet integrate with Windows apps like Windows Address Book or Office 2007 to pull relevant contact information, so clicking the e-mail button on an AIM contact, for example, will default to sending a message to their AOL/AIM account (which many users don't even know exist). It would be great to see this bridge built for digsby, though; after all, a universal communicator needs to be able to universally communicate, right?
One particularly pleasant aspect of instant messaging with digsby is the surprisingly interactive pop-up notification for new IMs. Users can reposition the pop-ups to keep them out of the way or simply disable them altogether, but they are especially handy because you can click on the notification to type a quick reply. This is incredibly handy if you're trying to focus on work but still need to carry a conversation. Unfortunately, these pop-up notifications are not yet customizable on a per-contact basis; you either allow notifications from all new messages from all contacts, or you turn them all off. More fine-grained control over digsby's alerts and notifications like this will hopefully be added in a future beta.
Another perk of digsby's implementation of IM is that users can create a chat widget at digsby's site that can be placed anywhere else on the web. This allows site visitors to chat with you directly from your site; ideal for blogs, stores, or any kind of social networking where interactivity can be useful.
There's no support for Twitter or Pownce yet, but it may be integrated in future versions depending on user feedback.
The future of digsby
As far as a revenue model, the dotSyntax developers were mum on details. Ars Technica spoke with Steve Shapiro from the digsby team on this and other topics, but exactly how digsby will generate revenue is a closed topic for now. Obvious solutions include some kind of in-app advertising (perhaps added into the summary pop-ups for e-mail and social networking), or keeping a basic version free while selling a Pro version with more features.
Overall, digsby's attempt to be a one-stop shop for communication is an initial success. Plenty of bugs and other quirks exist to due its beta nature, as the developers openly admit that they wanted to get it out into the wild and finish polishing the 1.0 based on user feedback. digsby can get a bit resource-intensive, starting typically with around 60MB of memory but eventually gobbling over 100. While digsby may be limited by the APIs of social network and webmail providers, an ideal evolution as a universal communicator would include more powerful e-mail interaction, built-in social network publishing, and A/V chat. Digsby could benefit greatly from allowing users to draft a quick Gmail message, with the full power of their contact list right beside them, without having to actually load up the site to pull down all that JavaScript. Tying into media tools like Picasa and iPhoto to give users easy picture and movie publishing would also be a welcome addition.
If you don't want to take our word for it, though, and feel like taking a digsby beta for a spin yourself, we have 5,000 invites on a first come, first serve basis. Simply head over to the digsby.com account registration page and enter invite code "arstechnica," create an account, and download a copy to get started.


text: Shoot - Finish - Goal - Sundays nights - Fall 2018 Please complete form below (in full) to register: Participant Name* Participant Date of Birth* Selected Program(s)* Parent's Guardian's Full Name* Phone Number* Main Contact Email* Address* Pertinent Medical Information* Soccer Experience* Recreational YesNo Competitive YesNo Skills & Abilities* Total_BeginnerAdvanced_BeginnerIntermediateAdvanced I am the parent/legal guardian of the participant. Click yes to agree.* yesno I agree to the terms and conditions in the Waiver & Release. Click yes to agree.* yesno Date of agreement* Waiver and Consent In consideration of your participation in Future Girls Soccer as a player or any other capacity, I, the undersigned, hereby release, discharge, relinquish, give up, forego, waive and otherwise completely exonerate Future Girls Soccer, its directors, players, coaches, representatives, sponsors or others acting on behalf of Future Girls Soccer, of any liability, responsibility, culpability, or other basis upon which they may otherwise be liable for any such injury, illness, disability, incapacitation, death or other physical ailment which might arise in connection with my participation in Future Girls Soccer activities. This is intended to be a full release, waiver and relinquishment, giving up, foregoing, and discharging any and all claims or damages of any kind, character or description against Future Girls Soccer and any of its agents, directors, officials or other acting on its behalf as might arise during or as a result of my participation in the activities of Future Girls Soccer and I further specially assume all risks arising as a result of my participation in Future Girls Soccer activities. I hereby release Future Girls Soccer, its staff and sponsors, from responsibility and liability for any injury or illness that my child may sustain during this activity, knowing that reasonable precautions for the health and safety of the children will be taken. In the event of an emergency, I hereby authorize an adult leader of this event, as an agent for me, to consent to any x-ray examination; medical, dental or surgical diagnosis; treatment; and hospital care advised and supervised by a physician, surgeon, or dentist (as appropriate) licensed to practice under the laws of the province of Ontario, either at a doctor's office or any hospital. I expect to be contacted as soon as possible. The parents/guardians are responsible for any additional expense that may result from such services. I hereby give permission to Future Girls to use photographs, social media and any other media representation of myself and my family members at the discretion of Future Girls Soccer for promotion and/or advertising. I release Future Girls, its officers, directors, volunteers and the staff from any and all responsibility/liability that may arise as a result of the use of such photos/media. This instrument is signed by me voluntarily and I will hold all parties mentioned herein and each of them free and clear from any responsibility by any reason of my participation or otherwise being involved with Future Girls Soccer and will hold each of the parties mentioned herein safe and otherwise harmless from any claims, court costs, attorneys' fees or other expenses whatsoever caused by any suit or injury for damages brought by me or by anyone on my behalf. Refund Policy For any cancellation which occurs on or before the end of the third session, all fees refunded except handling fee. No refund for weather related cancellations If parent or daughter is not happy for any reason a full refund minus a handling fee will always be provided. Yes, I Accept Partners


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Outside the progressive town of Taormina, Sicily, Rough Guides writer Kiki Deere finds phallic fun at a penis-themed café.
My long hair brushes against an erect penis as my hand firmly grips onto a dark phallus that protrudes from the bannister. Rows of excited male members line the windowsill, while others seemingly pop out of each corner of the room. I even spot a rather large one on the balcony. As my eyes adjust from the scorching sun outside, a thinner, smaller one suddenly pops into my field of vision.
At first glance I could be in the setting of a kinky porn film, or even a female brothel. Yet, I am in neither. I am in an Italian café called Turrisi.
The menu is in the shape of a penis and, feeling rather peckish, I eagerly open it. I am immediately confronted with an image of a courgette and two tomatoes, which happily sit side by side in the shape of the male organ. This could nearly be an Italian version of The Sun's Page 3, I think to myself.
A group of middle-aged ladies giggle at a very large penis which royally sits in the middle of their wooden table, while their husbands uncomfortably shift in their seats, not knowing where to look.
At first glance this café - where wooden penis statuettes, stone male members and all manner of phallic memorabilia dot the premises - may seem vulgar. However, there's a lot more to this laid-back spot in Castelmola, a small village perched on a hill just above Taormina.
Massimo, the café's third generation owner, tells me more about the establishment's curious history. "The bar was opened in 1947 by my grandfather" he tells me. "At the time, it wasn't exactly a bar as it is now, it was more of a post-war bazaar, a souvenir shop-cum-cafe, where customers were served almond wine, traditional to this part of Sicily. This area was historically a winery for the Greeks, where wine was sweetened to be transported."
I sip on my alcoholic almond drink, which nowadays is mostly produced using white wine. Massimo goes on: "In the mid-19th century, Taormina, and in general this area of Sicily, was far more progressive than many other parts of the country and even Europe".
Indeed, poets, writers, painters and actors were attracted to the area for its natural beauty: the glistening warm waters of the Mediterranean; the Greek ruins; Mount Etna gracefully sloping in the distance, at times lit up by bright rivers of lava that gently snake its sides. In the mid 19th century, Taormina and the surrounding area became a magnet for artists wanting to retreat to a calm and peaceful location which would provide inspiration for their work.
"Painters looked back back to the Hellenistic period, depicting nudes, many of which were carried out here in Castelmola" he continues. "The German photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden, for example, chose this area as the setting for many of his nudes of young boys. The lax liberal ways of bohemian artists and openness to sexual trends were a manner of life here, and my grandfather wanted to show this through the bar's decor."
The area certainly must have been a liberal corner of the peninsula. I couldn't quite imagine my Italian grandmother sipping a coffee here in the 50's, among a select collection of phalli pointing in all directions.
The furniture and objects displayed were all commissioned by the family and carried out exclusively by Sicilian carpenters and blacksmiths. Massimo reveals that an even larger collection remains behind closed doors. "Certain valuable objects are best not displayed. You'd be surprised to hear how many people try and steal objects here. I even had to install cameras last year".
I soon learn that in the 1990's, a regular client saw a group of men fleeing the bar with a rather large member - so large it was clearly not their own - and stuffing it into the car before quickly driving off. The witness took down the number plate and the police were soon called to the scene. The car was tracked down and the thief - a lawyer from Catania - soon returned the stolen object saying that he and his friends had been "taken over by the moment". I chuckled at the thought of a Sicilian lawyer fleeing with a large penis in hand.
Indeed, the bar and the eclectic collection of phalli has gained such popularity that many have tried to recreate this atmosphere in other locations. However, removing the café from its historic context is impossible. "The café, with its decor, is rooted in a well-defined historical, social and cultural context. It was born here not by chance, but because there were certain factors which led to its creation, right here, and right then, in 1947."
Behind me, a statue of the town's patron Saint seems out of place, innocently standing out among a collection of erotic memorabilia. "This is Sicily, this is our history", Massimo tells me, indicating above to an age-old wooden cart decorated with intricate arabesques which hangs from the ceiling.
A visitors' book, a large tome, lies open on a stand. Intrigued, I flick through and read some comments. Most appear to be drawings. Customers, some more artistically skilled than others, express their delight with infantile drawings of the full package, some enriched with stringy hairs sprouting out of cartoon testicles. Clients and regulars have become such prolific artists since the first book was displayed in 1952 that Massimo now has over one hundred tomes stacked away.
Although Massimo despairs at where to place the next volume, he is grateful for his clientele's comments and drawings. In fact, the café's logo and menu cover were both inspired by clients' art. Each little detail here seems to have been thought through. As I later wash my hands in the bathroom upstairs, my reflection looks back at me in a penis shaped mirror. Even the tap has been carefully chosen - the two round handles are testicles, while the water sprout is a perfectly designed phallus, which automatically spurts water in an accurate replica of bladder-emptying delight.
Massimo later presents me with a folded business card, which I slip into my pocket and forget about until a few hours later, when I reach for my hotel key. I flip it open and a small paper penis flings out towards me - it is, naturally, erect, and serves as a gentle reminder of Castelmola's exciting history.
You can explore more of Sicily and Italy with the Rough Guide to Italy and more.


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US - Wag The Dog• Rense.com
US - Wag The Dog
By Wayne Madsen
President Obama anxiously kept the media and the world waiting on the evening of May 1 for what later turned out to be his announcement that he ordered a US Navy SEAL team to attack the compound of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Obama claimed that the SEALs had shot and killed Bin Laden in a firefight.
The reason for the delay of Obama's announcement, according to WMR's sources, had nothing to do with national security but to alert Obama's student supporters at George Washington and Howard universities in Washington, DC to marshal a group of Obama fans to gather at Lafayette Park in front of the White House in a "flash mob" to stage a pep rally for Obama after his announcement. The "Wag the Dog"-inspired demonstration was planned by Obama's political adviser David Plouffe.
MS-NBC's dutiful bleating Obama sycophant, Rachel Maddow, showed a flash mob gathered in Lafayette Park shouting "USA! USA!" while she proceeded to lambast Pakistan for providing sanctuary to Bin Laden and other top Al Qaeda leaders. Of course, Maddow was merely parroting the new neocon line that Pakistan must be the next nation to be rendered like a kosher chicken in the Maddow kitchen.
Plouffe, of course, arranged for brand new American flags to be distributed to the college students for the widely-televised "impromptu" demonstration. The new, just unfolded American flags appeared faster than the new Libyan royalist flags showed up in Benghazi, Libya after the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi.
The Obama vs. Osama television show continued into the weekend, with the Pentagon releasing a video, said to be captured, along with tera-bytes of other computer data, from Bin Laden's ramshackle lair in Abbottabad. But the White House originally said that Bin Laden's compound was a $1 million dollar "mansion." Obama's counter-terrorism adviser John O. Brennan, the former CIA official who helped craft the agency's kidnapping, rendition, and torture program, was responsible for much of the White House bombast, which later had to be recanted by White House press secretary Jay Carney. It was Brennan's firm, The Analysis Corporation, which had rifled through Obama's passport files at the State Department in January 2008. It now appears that it is Brennan who is Obama's current CIA control officer, the latest in a series of CIA handlers who have "run" Obama since his days at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
It is now apparent that the phony "hit" on Osama was known to only a few White House, CIA, and Pentagon officials, particularly the Air Force, which appears to be under the control of the cabal that is waging a devious information war on behalf of a continued war agenda by the Obama administration. Just two hours after Obama was said to have authorized the "hit" on Bin Laden, RAI television of Italy caught Obama handing a piece of paper to Air Force General Burke E. "Ed" Wilson at Cape Canaveral, Florida where the President landed after touring tornado-ravaged Alabama. After slipping Wilson the piece of paper, the general hands another piece of paper back to Obama. The fact that Obama was using a courier system, keeping whatever was on the pieces of paper away from the official White House communications systems, including the extremely limited access Planning and Decision Aid System (PDAS) that is used to support the operational capabilities to the Joint Staff at the Pentagon and and Combatant Commanders (COCOMs), indicates that Obama, the Air Force cabalists, and the CIA did not trust other elements of the Department of Defense and even the White House Communications Agency to be aware of the plans for Pakistan. Anyone with access to the White House communications systems would have "all-source" and "multi-compartmented" access and requisite security clearances. It is noteworthy that PDAS was used by Vice President Dick Cheney and a limited group of other officials to communicate during the 9/11 attacks.
A White House staff photograph issued after the assault on Bin Laden showed Air Force Brigadier General Marshall B. "Brad" Webb operating a laptop, which was said to be involved with providing a live video feed of the attack on Bin Laden's compound from the SEAL team in Pakistan. Webb is the assistant commanding general of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, also home to the Army's Civil Affairs & Psychological Operations Command, which, in the past, has supplied interns who helped craft news stories for CNN's Atlanta headquarters and National Public Radio in Washington.
Senior administration officials gathered in the White House Situation Room were shown intently looking at scenes of the attack on a video screen. Later, it was revealed that the live video feed had gone down prior to the photograph being taken. WMR has learned from news photographers in Washington that the Situation Room photograph was carefully stage-managed by White House staff. Standing among the senior administration officials was the gaunt figure of Brennan, a man who exudes as much warmth as the "cigarette smoking man" in the X-Files.
Webb is a 2008 graduate of the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in Greensboro, North Carolina. As previously reported in WMR's exposé of Obama and his family's past ties to the CIA, the CCL, according to CIA files, was linked to the CIA's Political Psychology Division, and renamed the Political Psychology Center in 1984 by another individual with Obama, Webb, and Brennan in the Situation Room, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In 1984, Gates was the deputy director for intelligence of the CIA.
CIA records show that past graduates of CCL training programs include former National Security Agency (NSA) director Admiral Noel Gayler, and William Verity, Jr., the former chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a director at Business International Corporation (BIC) in Manhattan. BIC, a known CIA front company, employed Obama for about a year after his graduation from Columbia in 1983. Verity became Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan administration after Malcolm Baldrige was stormed to death by his horse during a rodeo. CCL is also linked to the Tavistock Institute of London, the "group think" organization that specializes in the type of flash mob operation that took place outside of the White House on the evening of May 1, in addition to operations that support "sock puppet" inundation of Internet sites that question official government story lines.
The Tavistock Institute has long been linked with the CIA's MK-ULTRA and Projects BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE mind control and brain-washing operations, conducted by the CIA's top scientist for such matters, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. Much of the records about MK-ULTRA and other CIA programs were destroyed on the order of CIA director Richard Helms in 1972. BLUEBIRD documents describe what the CIA was trying to accomplish with behavioral modification in the early 1950s: "Can we 'alter' a person's personality? Can we devise a system for making unwilling subjects into willing agents and then transfer that control to untrained agency agents in the field by use of codes or identifying signs?" In other words, the movie "The Manchurian Candidate," was not purely a fictional account within the CIA's research and scientific community. One of Helms's five favorite universities for the CIA's behavioral science program was the University of Hawaii, the alma mater of Obama's mother, Kenyan father, and Indonesian step-father.
Obama and Brennan will undoubtedly gain further control over the Pentagon when Leon Panetta, an Obama loyalist, transfers from the CIA to the Secretary of Defense office. Another Obama loyalist is Air Force chief of staff, General Norton Schwartz, who may be tapped to become Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Neocons in Washington affectionately call the general, "Nortie" Schwartz. The former Air Force Secretary's chief adviser, John P. Wheeler III, was an integral part of the Air Force chain-of-command through his work on the Air Force's cyber-warfare and related information warfare programs. Wheeler continued his cyber-warfare work at MITRE Corporation after leaving the Pentagon.
Wheeler would have also worked with Dr. Lani Kass, a former Israeli Air Force officer who skyrocketed into a major position in the Air Force hierarchy. Whatever Wheeler knew about the de facto alternate Air Force chain of command went with him to the grave. Wheeler's body was discovered in a Wilmington, Delaware landfill on New Year's Eve last year. Although ruled a homicide, Wheeler's widow has accused Wilmington and Delaware law enforcement law enforcement officials of dragging their feet in the investigation of her husband's death. Delaware's Attorney General also happens to be the son of Vice President Biden, Joseph "Beau" Biden III.
The Lies of Abbottabad
The entire story of the raid on Abbottabad has been a series of lies and half-truths:
Bin Laden was first said to have resisted with weapons. It was later revealed that Bin Laden offered no resistance. Bin Laden, or the man who may have served as his double in U.S. intelligence-produced video tapes since 2001, was also reported to have offered to surrender before he was shot and killed.
According to Brennan, Bin Laden was said to have been buried at sea in accordance with Islamic traditions. Yet, Islamic scholars and clerics said if someone dies on land, they must be buried on land.
Obama administration officials stated that Pakistan was not informed of the operation beforehand. Yet Abbottabad residents reported that Pakistani government officials ordered residents of the military cantonment town to turn off their lights and remain indoors at the same time U.S. and Pakistani helicopters were first spotted by residents in the area.
SEAL team members and the CIA were not able to get a voice recording of "Bin Laden" before he was killed. Nor could a height be determined of Bin Laden because the strike force had no tape measure. After Brennan stated there was a 99.9 percent certainty that from DNA and other forensics that the man killed was Bin Laden, a military official at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, where the "Bin Laden" body was transported, said the degree of certainty was 95 percent. In other words, certainty decreased, not increased, after a more thorough post-mortem examination at Bagram. The comparative DNA used to identify Bin Laden was said to have been obtained from Bin Laden's sister, after she died from cancer. However, Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the house Intelligence Committee, later said DNA samples were used from a number of Bin Laden's relatives.
Facial recognition technology used on Bin Laden's corpse at Bagram drove the degree of certainty down to 90 percent.
Brennan stated that US forces also killed Bin Laden's son Khalid in the attack. The White House later said it was another Bin Laden son, Hamza, who was killed. Bin Laden's wife, Amal al-Sadeh, was reported by the White House to have been shot and killed while trying to shield Bin Laden. The story was later changed to her being shot in the leg while lunging at one of the SEAL team members.
Obama refused to release photos of Bin Laden's body, the burial at sea (from which a determination of the height of Bin Laden could be made since the body was said to have been buried in a simple shroud from a lower deck of the USS Carl Vinson,or the actual military assault on the compound.
The compound was originally reported to have been a $1 million mansion. The photographs after the attack show a much less stately abode, one that has been estimated at worth $250,000 or less. Local residents reported they never heard the occupants of the compound speak Bin Laden's native Arabic but only Pashto.
And why would a primarily Pashto-speaking household have a cable or dish satellite television feed that offered only Arabic-language news channels in a primarily Urdu- and Pashto-speaking community? A close look at the elderly "Bin Laden" channel surfing his television shows only Arabic language stations being offered for favorite selection, except for the rock music station DJTV from France, BBC World, and Al Jazeera English.
In addition to Al Jazeera Arabic, Bin Laden's channel surfing favorite options starting from 001 include BBC Arabic, Al Arabiya, Iqraa TV from Saudi Arabia, Al Hiwar from London, ANB TV from Lebanon, Dubai TV, Al Emarah from the UAE, MBC Maghreb, France 24 Arabic, Future TV from Lebanon, Al Anwar TV from Kuwait, Deutsche Welle Arabic, Al Alam from Iran, Sharjah TV, Qatar TV, Saudi 1 TV, Kuwait TV, Libya TV, Sudan TV, Oman TV, LBC Lebanon, and Al Wakrah TV from Qatar (Sports). Pakistan TV (PTV) offers an Arabic service but it was not one of Bin Laden's favorites. In fact, Bin Laden's channel options are more in keeping with those offered in the Gulf states, perhaps Qatar where the U.S. Central Command has a large base that includes psychological warfare elements.
What's next? Hint: You won't like the answer
After neocons and Obama faux liberal Democratic media dragoons began to blame Pakistan for harboring Bin Laden, these same circles began calling for sanctions on Pakistan, as well as seizing Pakistan's nuclear weapons so that they could not fall into the hands of "Al Qaeda" or Bin Laden sympathizers.
The dubious WikiLeaks had previously provided an indication of the staged raid on and killing of Bin Laden. On April 25, five days before the raid on Abbottabad, The Daily Telegraph (UK), known to pander to neocon interests, published an article stating that according to State Department cables it obtained from WikiLeaks, enhanced interrogation of 700 detainees at Guantanamo revealed that Al Qaeda would unleash a "nuclear hellstorm" on the West if Bin Laden were ever captured or assassinated. Five days later, after Bin Laden was killed, there were immediate concerns raised by neocons, many reflecting media talking points originating from Tel Aviv and New Delhi, about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. The report had the added effect of legitimizing Brennan's rendition and torture program, since the information allegedly was derived from the use of torture. The case was being made for the "ticking nuclear bomb" scenario previously used to convince doubters of torture whether they would still be opposed to the technique if it meant that a ticking nuclear bomb could be located and disarmed.
The CIA and its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), have long been involved in helping to produce movies in Hollywood to further the propaganda and mind control goals of the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon. Frank Wisner Sr., the creator of Project MOCKINGBIRD, pressed a number of Hollywood moguls into service to support the Cold War propaganda efforts of the CIA. Among those recruited for MOCKINGBIRD were producers Daryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox, Howard Hughes of RKO, and Cecile B. DeMille of Paramount, as well as director John Ford. "Predictive programming" was a major component of MOCKINGBIRD's propaganda operations. Many of Steven Spielberg's and Jerry Bruckheimer's movies point to the strong possibility that Wisner's Cold War operations in Hollywood continue to this day.
In fact, since 1996, the CIA has maintained an Entertainment Liaison Office that interfaces with Hollywood on film production. The office's first director was Chase Brandon, a 25-year veteran of the CIA's Clandestine Service who also happens to be a cousin of actor Tommy Lee Jones.
Alan Watt defines "predictive programming" as "the power of suggestion using the media or fiction to create a desired outcome." The WikiLeaks cables about an Al Qaeda nuclear attack was not the only predictive programming operation that occurred in April.
It should be recalled that on March 4, 2001, Fox aired an episode of the X Files spin-off, "The Lone Gunmen," in which the actual scenario for the 9/11 attacks was revealed. In the episode, a Boeing 727, en route to Boston, was hijacked by a shadowy group of U.S. government plotters intent on crashing the plane into the World Trade Center and blaming it on an anti-American despot to drag the United States into war and increase weapons sales. The plot was called "Scenario 12D." The Boeing had its autopilot commandeered from the ground. Unlike the actual 9/11 events, the control of the plane was restored at the last minute to the pilot. "The Lone Gunmen" series was canceled in June 2001.
On April 1, Hollywood released a movie, filmed in Canada and without the support of the Chicago Film Office, Chicago Police Department, or Illinois Film Office, called "Source Code." Film credits do thank the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, both owned by neocon interests, for their assistance. David Axelrod, Obama's former political adviser who is currently running Obama's re-election campaign, is a former reporter and columnist for the Tribune. Axelrod reportedly continues to exercise political influence over the newspaper. The movie's theme is that a "lone wolf" terrorist builds a nuclear dirty bomb and is planning to detonate it in a white van parked in downtown Chicago with an estimated death count of 2 million people. Before the terrorist detonates the bomb, he blows up a morning Chicago commuter train after it departs the Glenbrook station, killing all aboard. The train bombing and dirty bomb are said to be one of a series of attacks in Chicago.
Although the doubled-decked commuter train is called "CCR Chicago Commuter Rail" in the film, it is clearly a Chicago Metra commuter train. The bomb is detonated by two cell phones attached to a bomb. The plot is discovered by a top secret remote viewing program, code named "Beleaguered Castle" run out of Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. One of the series of playing cards that is used to put the remote viewer in trance state is the Queen of Spades. In the film, "The Manchurian Candidate," the trigger card is the Queen of Diamonds. One of the passengers on the targeted commuter train, a professional comedian, is heard telling a joke about "Barack and Michelle."
The remote viewing program in "Source Code" is called "Beleaguered Castle." The Chicago Water Tower is often called "The Castle."
Among the computer files seized from Bin Laden's compound was intelligence that indicated that in February 2010, Al Qaeda was making plans to attack America's rail system. Attacks on rail hubs and rail lines and bridges were said by Homeland Security officials to be in the "aspirational phase."
Chicago appears to replacing New York as the "aspirational" target for the next false flag terrorist attack, one that will all but assure Obama's re-election.
Obama's former chief of staff, the mercurial Rahm Emanuel, will be sworn in as Mayor of Chicago on May 16. Emanuel's team will include a number of individuals who would relish the idea of a false flag terror attack in America's "Second City."
"Al Qaeda" files, Hollywood predictive programming, and dubious WikiLeaks cables setting the stage for an attack involving Chicago's rail transit system.
After spending $45 million in federal funds on the Project Shield, designed to cover Cook County with stationary and mobile security cameras, the cameras have been found not to work, according to a February 16 article in the Chicago Sun-Times. The FBI is supposedly investigating the security debacle.
Emanuel's police superintendent is Garry McCarthy, the deputy commissioner of operations of the New York Police Department under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Before he became the police chief of Newark, New Jersey, McCarthy threatened two Palisades Interstate Parkway policemen for issuing his daughter a parking ticket in 2005. McCarthy and his wife were arrested after they confronted the officers who issued their daughter the ticket. McCarthy was also handcuffed during the confrontation withe the two officers. McCarthy and his wife were later convicted for obstruction of traffic during their melee with the police officers. McCarthy's bombast certainly matches that of Emanuel.
Emanuel's head the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications is Gary Schenkel, a 29-year veteran of the Marine Corps. According to the December 23, 1999, Chicago Sun-Times, Schenkel, a sharpshooter, "was one of 80 Marines spending three days in Chicago touring bridges and sewers as they studied how to work in urban combat zones" in 1998. The Chicago operation was part of the Marine's "Urban Warrior Advanced Warfighting Experiment." Schenkel took part in similar exercises during the late 1990s in Oakland-Alameda, California; Jacksonville, Florida; New York City; and Charleston, South Carolina. Schenkel headed up the Federal Protective Service (FPS), part of the Department of Homeland Security, in the George W. Bush administration. During his tenure as chief of the FPS, agents of the Government Accountability Office were able to sneak bomb making components into federal buildings with security levels just below those implemented for the White House.
William Daley, the brother of outgoing Mayor Richard Daley, is serving as White House chief of staff. Presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett was born in 1956 in Shiraz, Iran. Her father, William Bowman, a geneticist and pathologist, is believed by some Iran experts to have been a CIA clandestine services officer. The Bowmans moved from Shiraz to London in 1961 and to Chicago in 1963. Shiraz was a hotbed of support for Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, ousted by the CIA in 1953 in Operation Ajax.
Dr. Bowman was reportedly part of a U.S. program that sent Americans to Iran to help with economic development, a program that is similar to the CIA program that saw Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, providing economic assistance and training to Indonesians following the 1965 CIA coup against President Sukarno. In the case of Bowman, he and the Americans were likely providing more than assistance to Iranians. Shiraz was not only a center of support for ousted Prime Minister Mossadeq but also a major center of activity for Iran's Tudeh (Communist) Party, which called for nationalization of Iran's oil industry. A decade before Stanley Ann Dunham was helping to finger Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) members for Indonesian army death squads, Bowman, possibly assisted by his wife, were in a location where Tudeh and pro-Mossadeq forces could also be identified for the dreaded Iranian secret police, the SAVAK, which set up shop with assistance from the CIA and Mossad in 1957. Nemazee, a supporter of the Shah, was born in India to Iranian parents and was a resident of Washington, DC in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Bowman's cover was the Nemazee Hospital established in Shiraz by Mohamed Nemazee. On August 29, 2009, Nemazee's son, Hassan Nemazee, chairman of Nemazee Capital and brother-in-law of Britain's ambassador to France, was arrested for defrauding Citibank and other banks of $292 million in loans. Nemazee Capital also had a past partnering agreement with AIG, the CIA-linked insurance giant that Obama arranged to bail out with federal money. Namazee was convicted last year of fraud was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison. Hassan Nemazee was nominated by President Clinton to be U.S. ambassador to Argentina but Clinton suddenly withdrew the nomination amid congressional opposition. Hassan Nemazee was a major donor to the presidential campaigns of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and forked over $50,000 to President Obama's Inaugural Committee.
On April 14, 2011. WMR reported on a flurry of suspicious maritime liens filed against the U.S. Department of Treasury by leading Chicago and Illinois officials: "WMR has discovered that although less than 100 maritime liens had been filed in Cook County since 1985, since March 28 of this year, 11 maritime liens have been filed in Cook County against the U.S. Treasury Department.
Such a development could be easily explained away, except when examining the names of the maritime lien filers in the order that they were filed. It is not known who some of the individuals are who filed the liens since March 28, but they are also listed:
W. Smith (unknown affiliation)
Lisa Madigan (Attorney General of Illinois)
C. Wallace (unknown affiliation)
Richard Michael Daley (outgoing Mayor of Chicago)
Chicago Police Department
Thomas G. Byrne (Commissioner of the Chicago Streets & Sanitation Department; ex-Chicago Police Department)
Catherine Hennessy (affiliation unknown)
Pat Quinn (Governor of Illinois)
Milton R. Sees (former Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary)
Jesse White (Secretary of State of Illinois)
Ernie Dannenberger (Director of Vehicle Service Department of the Illinois Secretary of State's office)
Filing maritime liens against the US Treasury Department might indicate the future movement of U.S. Navy and/or Coast Guard vessels into Chicago's ports. However, the question looms: As Rahm Emanuel prepares to take over as mayor of Chicago, why was there a sudden flurry of maritime liens filed by top city and state officials a few weeks after Emanuel captured the mayor's seat in the election?"
According to the "intelligence" gleaned from the captured "Al Qaeda" computer files from Abbottabad, attacks on the U.S. rail system were planned for September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the plane attacks on the United States. A handwritten note from February 10, 2010, mentions the possibility of rail attacks on a train on a bridge on the the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001.
Chicago should remain ever-vigilant against its new mayor and his cronies, suspicious Israelis masquerading as art students, office/furniture movers, kiosk vendors, and those who speak fluent Arabic and who claim to be security consultants, as well as suspicious financial transactions, and security training exercises planned for the city, especially those involving the Chicago Transit Authority and Metra. The London 7/11 attacks on London transit targets were conducted during an anti-terrorism exercise. One thing that can be said about the architects of false flag terrorist attacks is that they seldom stray from their master playbook. End.
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Hacking Chinese Resources
Click one or more tags to show relevant resources. Follow @ChineseLinks on Twitter, to get notified about new resources!
31 resources found.
The Chairman's Bao (simplified news for language learners)
The Chairman's Bao offers news in Chinese, written for language learners sorted by HSK level. Each news article comes with text and audio. There's also a live dictionary which you need to sign-up t... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 5 years
慢速中文 Slow Chinese (Cultural Podcast for Chinese Learners)
A great resource collections with over 100 episodes, all with transcripts. The audio is, as the name implies, rather slow, which makes it more accessible than more rapid, native content. The episod... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 6 years
锵锵三人行 is my favourite TV program. It's also one of the best ones for language learners, mostly because of its focus on talking, availability of transcripts and variety of both guests and topics. Th... Read more.
Zoe – almost 7 years
Chinese Breeze: Graded Chinese Readers
A series of graded readers for early stage reading. The levels progress from 300 to 500 to 750 words. The stories contain a lot of repetition to ensure learning but at the same time tell more e... Read more.
kdgbalmer – almost 7 years
Language learning through Video (FluentU)
FluentU offers authentic as well as learner-oriented videos for learning Chinese. A neat interface allows you to use an excellent pop-up dictionary and other useful features to watch and learn from... Read more.
lazylink – over 5 years
Chinese Learn Online (CLO)
Learn Chinese Online with CLO - Go from absolute beginner to intermediate learner with our step by step, progressive audio lessons in Mandarin Chinese Read more.
Adam_CLO – over 6 years
Du Chinese (mobile app for Chinese reading practice)
This is a reading app that contains a number of lessons for beginner, intermediate and advanced students. Apart from the reading material, there is also recorded (not synthesised) audio. The app al... Read more.
Olle Linge – almost 5 years
意见中国 经济学家访谈录 网易财经 (Economics interviews and discussions with transcripts)
This site offers a large number of in-depth interviews and discussion about economics. Each episode is around 20 minutes and there are currently 151 episodes available. Excellent for anyone with an... Read more.
Olle Linge – about 6 years
Learn Chinese with CSLPOD
CSLPOD offers a large library of audio for all levels and the audio is available for free (you can subscribe for some other services, such as vocabulary explanations, sentence drilling and some exe... Read more.
Olle Linge – about 6 years
Skeptoid: 民间神话背后的科学根據
This is the Chinese version of the popular Skeptoid.com podcast that deals with urban legends and myths from a scientific perspective. The Chinese version is well-produced and the content is transl... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 6 years
Duolingo: Learn Spanish, French and other languages for free
Finally, Duolingo added a En->ZH course. As Duolingo is the most popular gamification learning app, the learning experience is relatively streamlined and tested. The monetarization aspect leads to ... Read more.
stefanwienert – almost 3 years
Escape 逃出去 (text adventure game for Chinese learners)
The following text is from [my article about the game](http://www.hackingchinese.com/escape-text-adventure-game-chinese-learners/). There is also [a trailer introducing it on YouTube](https://youtu... Read more.
Olle Linge – about 4 years
Chinese Podcasts (collection of reviews and links)
Exploring and reviewing all the Chinese podcasts available; learn Chinese podcasts, Chinese language podcasts, English podcasts about China. The aim of this site is to explore the Chinese podcasts ... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 5 years
Practise asking directions and navigating through a city (WordSwing)
Ever feel lost when trying to listen to navigation directions? Well, all you need is more practice. In this activity you listen to step-by-step directions, and at each step you must select the r... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 5 years
百家讲坛官方频道 (YouTube video lectures with subtitles)
This is a popular education channel which presents lectures of different kinds, where experts share their knowledge with ordinary people (which is quite different from lectures at universities held... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 5 years
The Bible in Chinese (with audio)
This site offers the Bible in many languages, including Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese). There are two versions, one with drama and one without. You can also see the text while you listen (or just... Read more.
Olle Linge – about 6 years
Melnyks (Podcast / Audio Course)
This website offers theme-based, progressive and easy online lessons. Audio course with full PDF transcripts, worksheets, mobile apps, videos and more. From what I can see, the first 100 lessons ar... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 6 years
Chinese: A Modular Approach (FSI Language Courses)
This course is designed to give a practical command of spoken Standard Chinese. Nine situational modules form the core of the course. Each core module consists of tapes, a student textbook, and a w... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 6 years
听故事学中文 (Learning Chinese through Stories)
This podcast is mostly free and offers podcasts entirely in Chinese, as opposed to many other podcasts which sometimes are more in English than Chinese. I particularly like that they have split the... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 1 year
Learn languages online for free with Mondly - Language learning made easy, fun and free
Mondly is a mobile app very similar to Duolingo (which does not support Chinese). Pro: * more or less straight course to take, no distractions * It has several languages besides Chinese. Th... Read more.
stefan-wienert – about 3 years
Starcraft 2 Mandarin (all unit voices in Chinese, YouTube)
This is a YouTube channel that contains all (?) audio from the units in the Chinese version of StarCraft 2. First, I think it's pretty cool that they've translated so thoroughly and such a large vo... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 5 years
Culturelab (watch Chinese film, TV and music with subtitles and a pop-up dictionary)
This is a new site that offers Chinese television, film and music videos with the subtitles and a pop-up dictionary. This lowers the barrier for anyone who wants to approach real Chinese. The site ... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 5 years
柴静雾霾调查:穹顶之下 (Under the Dome, documentary)
This is the Chinese documentary that has gone viral recently, discussing air pollution in China. This documentary is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles (simplified). Excellent reading and listening ... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 5 years
This is a language learning game that features among other languages Mandarin Chinese (at first only Japanese was supported). It aims to teach you about 400 words by having a virtual character walk... Read more.
Sebastian Rasmussen – about 6 years
Talkify (online text-to-speech, including Mandarin)
This is an excellent tool that provides free text-to-speech (TTS) for inserted addresses, meaning that you can listen to news articles or blog posts while reading them. You could also rip the audio... Read more.
Olle Linge – about 6 years
FourTones (Web music game for learning Chinese)
This game helps you learn tones. You will see the lyrics of Chinese songs approaching you and you're supposed to select which of them actually belong to the lyrics you're hearing. It's a reasonably... Read more.
Olle Linge – about 6 years
Global Language Online Support System (with Chinese lessons)
This page offers several hundred lessons for Chinese about different topics, including both reading practice and listening. They also have some learning activities, including quizzes. I have tried ... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 6 years
TeSL星海2冠軍賽 | Sen Vs San
This is the final match in the Taiwan E-sports League in StarCraft II between Taiwan's long-time champion Sen and a Korean guest player San. Note that even though watching games and sports in Chine... Read more.
Olle Linge – almost 7 years
TutorMandarin: Online Mandarin Tutor
TutorMandarin is an online Chinese tutoring software and service. Students take 1-on-1 classes with professional Mandarin tutors on PC, Android, or iOS. Full courses from Beginner to Advanced, Spok... Read more.
hanpingchinese – almost 3 years
Into the Haze (迷雾中) - Text adventure game for Chinese learners
Into the Haze is an interactive text adventure game for Chines learners. Your brother is missing and you need to enter a city covered in a poisonous haze to find him. The story is presented through... Read more.
Olle Linge – about 3 years
This is one of the major broadcasters of StarCraft 2 games in China. Apart from having lots of news about the game, they also stream matches, both live and in video format. Almost all content is in... Read more.
Olle Linge – over 6 years


text:
Kieth Kiel posted this photo to Facebook with the following description:
I shopped at Publix tonight at Ormond Towne Square and saw this random act of kindness by a Publix employee. I took it quickly and I found out the employee's name later from his manager. An old man could not reach down to tie his shoe so not only did Gage tie the one but he did the other as well; all with a smile. I thought he should be recognized for his actions. Here is the picture I snapped on my iPhone.
So far the post has been liked over 11,000 times and shared almost 2,500 times.