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Story highlights
Wealthy Americans at the turn of the 20th century built elaborate homes to show off their status
Many of these estates required servants to support the homes and grounds
Inspired by their European counterparts, rich Americans collected European art
Few of us can imagine living the opulent "Downton Abbey" lives of the fictional Crawley family at the turn of the 20th century.
There were servants to address one's every material need, dinner in white tie and lavish gowns, and rules designed to keep the upper crust on top and the lower classes in their place. You almost have to see the sprawling estate to believe that the lifestyle existed, yet the trip to visit Highclere Castle, the estate used by the television show in rural England, may cost more than the less well-to-do American can afford.
There's no need to cross the pond to get a taste of that life. Although the United States did not have lords or ladies living on grand estates, there were American millionaires who made their fortunes by harnessing the resources of a new country. With an eye to the style of their European counterparts, they built mansions on extensive grounds to show off their power and wealth. So if you're entering a period of "Downton" withdrawal, consider a peek into America's historic high life.
The places where masterpieces are born
"These homes represented the creation of immense wealth at the turn of the century in the United States, the kind of wealth acquired through fundamental commodities like water, gold, oil and food," said Katherine Malone-France, the National Trust for Historic Preservation's historic sites director of outreach, education and support.
"These estates represented the taste and sophistication of their owners, as well as the skills and labors of those who built them and worked in them. These places were icons then and now, and they make for great television and fantastic places to visit as historic sites, because they contain all of those complex, compelling and interwoven stories."
The new American wealthy didn't have hundreds of years to build their fancy homes and reputations, yet the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and other wealthy families built houses to last for generations. These are just a handful of the homes where they were living large around the same time as the "Downton Abbey" story lines.
Downton Abbey creates tourism boom
The Rockefellers: Hudson Valley, New York
With the economic engine that is New York nearby, it makes sense that the country's new wealthy would build their homes and country homes in the city's suburbs and nearby Hudson Valley. The Vanderbilts, Roosevelts and Goulds all had homes in the area.
Completed in 1913, Kykuit was the home of Standard Oil founder and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and the next three generations of his family. The six-story home, now a National Trust for Historic Preservation property operated by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is open to the public for tours.
Make sure to tour the gardens to see New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's 20th-century sculpture collection, including the works of Alexander Calder, Henry Moore and Pablo Picasso. Kykuit's elaborate gardens also feature classical sculpture, pavilions, fountains and Hudson River views.
The Douglas family: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Like the fictional Crawleys, the Douglas family was touched by the sinking of the Titanic.
Although the Brucemore estate was built for wealthy widow Caroline Sinclair and her six children in 1886, the Sinclair family lived there just 20 years. The George and Irene Douglas family and its descendants, known for Douglas & Co. and Quaker Oats, lived there from 1906 to 1981.
It was George's brother Walter who perished on the Titanic. Reports say his wife, Mahala, asked him to join her on a lifeboat. He replied, "No, I must be a gentleman" and went to join a group of men waiting for later lifeboats. His body was recovered later and identified by his monogrammed shirt.
Visitors can tour the 21-room Queen Anne style mansion and grounds.
The Booths: Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
The Canadian-born owner of an ironworks company, George Booth settled in Detroit when he married Ellen Warren Scripps, the daughter of the founder of the Detroit News. The Booths purchased a rundown farm in Bloomfield Hills to turn into their summer home and eventually built a new year-round home, Cranbrook House, which was completed in 1908.
George Booth became a leading patron of the American Arts and Crafts movement in the early 20th century, and it showed in the designs he chose for his home and the art he collected. The couple also started six education and arts institutions on their property, including the famous Cranbrook Academy of Art.
While still alive, they deeded the house, much of its contents and the surrounding property to the Cranbrook Foundation they created, living the rest of their lives not as owners but under a life trust at Cranbrook House. It is the oldest surviving manor home in the metro Detroit area.
The Vanderbilts: Asheville, North Carolina
George Vanderbilt didn't care for the city life as much as the rest of his family. So it was no surprise that after he visited the mountains of North Carolina, he eventually built his 250-room estate in Asheville. The Biltmore was completed in 1895, when he was still single. Vanderbilt married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser in Paris in 1898, and the couple raised their only child at Biltmore.
Descendants of the Vanderbilts still own and operate the estate as a for-profit company, and the home is now open to the public for tours. There's a 10,000-volume library, a bowling alley, a banquet hall featuring a 70-foot ceiling, an indoor pool and the artwork of Pierre Auguste Renoir and John Singer Sargent, among others.
Architect Richard Morris Hunt modeled the house after three 16th-century French chateaux. With more than 30 bedrooms, it's still shy of the 50 plus bedrooms at Downton's Highclere Castle. Still, Biltmore seems more than adequate for a house party.
Don't miss the butler's tour if you want to see how the other half lived on the estate. Modern guests can stay at an inn built in 2001 or a historic cottage that once served as the gardener's house.
The Bourns: Woodside, California
Filoli was completed in 1917 as the country estate for Mr. and Mrs. William Bowers Bourn, San Franciscans whose money came from water and gold. Filoli is just 30 miles outside San Francisco.
The European influence can be found all over the property: Tuscan columns in the portico, art from the Bourns' travels to Europe and even some of the house's walls. (The house library was copied from the library at Denham Place, a 1690s home in England.)
The expansive formal gardens were designed and constructed between 1917 and 1929. The next owners lived in the house until 1975, when the house and formal gardens were donated to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The Berwinds: Newport, Rhode Island
Downton fans might remember that the mother of American-born Cora, the countess of Grantham, had a home in Newport. That's where rich Americans summered, and it's where visitors can tour several grand homes at a time.
Mr. and Mrs. Edward Julius Berwind, who made their money in coal mining, built the Elms as their summer residence in Newport. Now one of the famous Newport Mansions and a National Historic Landmark, the Elms was finished in 1901. Unlike some residents of fictional Downton, who grudgingly adapted to modern conveniences like telephones and electricity, the Berwinds had the Elms outfitted with the latest modern conveniences. The house was among the first in Newport to be fully electrified with no gas backup. There was even an early ice maker.
The couple's art collection featured 18th-century Venetian and French paintings and Renaissance ceramics.
To get a good sense of life among the servants, the Preservation Society of Newport County, which owns and operates 10 historic properties in Newport, added an Elms servant life tour last year.


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Back in August, when I was the first to report that Nintendo Power would be ceasing publication at the end of the year, I was largely able to compartmentalize my personal feelings about the move in favor of reporting on the facts. But today, when I saw the above image of the magazine's final cover (left)—one that pays loving homage to that iconic Issue 1 cover from 1988 (right)—it really hit me how much the death of Nintendo Power represents the end of an era.
I didn't subscribe to Nintendo Power until its second year in print, after I finally convinced my parents to get me an NES. I haven't actually read an entire issue cover-to-cover for about 15 years now (timing that roughly corresponds to when I got unlimited Internet access in my home). But for a period of about ten years in my youth, Nintendo Power (along with GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly) served as my main introduction to the larger world of video games.
At the time, the large screenshots and previews of titles that I would probably never own were the main draw. But looking back, I feel like the most important thing I found in those glossy pages was a feeling of connection to the larger world surrounding the games themselves.
It's difficult to remember now just how hard it was to feel like a part of a wider community of gamers before the advent of the Internet. Sure, all my friends were Nintendo-mad as well, and we'd go so far as hosting local Nintendo-themed parties and tournaments. But that's nothing like today—I can play a game of Super Smash Bros. Brawl with a stranger thousands of miles away, or argue about the relative merits of the Wii U with someone in Istanbul. If our little cul-de-sac was one of thousands of islands of disconnected Nintendo fans, Nintendo Power was the vital, monthly cargo drop of supplies that allowed us to survive and thrive as up-and-coming gamers.
The things I remember most about those golden days of Nintendo Power aren't the individual reviews or previews (though I wore out the issue with the multi-page Battletoads feature). They're the letters section, which shared the opinions of other, regular gamers, and the occasional reports on events like the Nintendo World Championships. The high scores lists that made me realize my skills needed work and the "Classified Information" section opened up a world of hidden Easter eggs. The monthly "Top 20" was my first exposure to the business side of video games, while the annual awards first made me care about game criticism (don't laugh, I was eight years old). Even the comics helped, as they thickened the light-as-air stories behind some of these games into something more engaging and real.
Perhaps most of all, I recall those larger-than-life covers that were the first thing I saw when I opened the mailbox, covers that really captured the essence of a game without reducing it to a screenshot. This was especially true in those early years of the magazine, when the design team was allowed to get really creative with the imagery (anyone else remember the disturbing Castlevania II cover?)
Sure, most of the actual writing in those early days of Nintendo Power was thinly veiled marketing copy that I was too young and naïve to pick up on; the current, Future-published incarnation of the magazine resembles those early issues in name only. And I realize that the game industry and the publishing industry have largely grown past the point where a dead-tree magazine focused on a single console maker can succeed (while we're at it, R.I.P. PlayStation: The Official Magazine).
Still, the way this final cover brings the entire Nintendo Power run full circle can't help but bring back bittersweet memories of a time that feels much closer than 25 years past. So here's a final, nostalgia-tinged sendoff to a magazine that served not just as a monthly delivery of gaming information, but as a vital, pre-Internet connection to a burgeoning community that would grow up to be lifelong gamers.

subset: commoncrawl


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NEW YORK (AP) — Best-selling author Tom Clancy, whose wildly successful technological thrillers made him one of the biggest publishing phenomena of his time, has died. He was 66.
Author Tom Clancy died Tuesday in Baltimore at age 66. (Image source: Facebook)
Clancy arrived on best-seller lists in 1984 with "The Hunt for Red October." He sold the manuscript to the first publisher he tried, the Naval Institute Press, which had never bought original fiction.
A string of other best-sellers soon followed, including "Red Storm Rising," ''Patriot Games," ''The Cardinal of the Kremlin," ''Clear and Present Danger," ''The Sum of All Fears," and "Without Remorse."
Clancy had said his dream had been simply to publish a book, hopefully a good one, so that he would be in the Library of Congress catalog. Four of his books, "The Hunt for Red October," ''Patriot Games," ''Clear and Present Danger," and "the Sum of All Fears" were later made into movies, with a fifth based on his desk-jockey CIA hero, "Jack Ryan," set for release later this year.
Born in Baltimore on April 12, 1947 to a mailman and his wife, Clancy entered Loyola College as a physics major, but switched to English as a sophomore, saying later that he wasn't smart enough for the rigors of science.
Ironically, his novels carried stiff doses of scientific data and military detail.
After graduation in 1969, he married his wife Wanda and joined her family's insurance business, all the while scribbling down ideas for a novel.
In 1979, Clancy began "Patriot Games," in which he invented his hero, CIA agent Jack Ryan. In 1982, he put it aside and started "The Hunt For Red October," basing it on a real incident in November 1979, in which a Soviet missile frigate called the Storozhevoy attempted to defect.
In real life, the ship didn't make it, but in Clancy's book, the defection is a success.
By a stroke of luck, President Reagan got "Red October" as a Christmas gift and quipped at a dinner that he was losing sleep because he couldn't put the book down — a statement Clancy later said helped put him on the New York Times best-seller list.
It led to a string of hits, both on the page and in Hollywood blockbusters. He even ventured into video games with the best-selling "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier," ''Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction" and "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent."
The latest Jack Ryan movie, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Chris Pine, is set for release in the U.S. on Christmas Day. Keira Knightly plays Jack Ryan's wife and Kevin Costner plays his mentor at the CIA.
Clancy resided in rural Calvert County, Md., and in 1993 he joined a group of investors led by Baltimore attorney Peter Angelos who bought the Baltimore Orioles from businessman Eli Jacobs.
Clancy also attempted to bring a NFL team to Baltimore in 1993, but he later dropped out of the effort.
This post has been updated.


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Alex Rodriguez, others suspended by MLB for drugs
NEW YORK — Alex Rodriguez was suspended through 2014 and All-Stars Nelson Cruz, Jhonny Peralta and Everth Cabrera were banned 50 games apiece Monday when Major League Baseball disciplined 13 players in a drug case — the most sweeping punishment since the Black Sox scandal nearly a century ago.
Ryan Braun's 65-game suspension last month and previous punishments bring to 18 the total number of players disciplined for their relationship to Biogenesis of America, a closed anti-aging clinic in Florida accused of distributing banned performing-enhancing drugs.
The harshest penalty was reserved for Rodriguez, a three-time Most Valuable Player and baseball's highest-paid star. His suspension covers 211 games, starting Thursday, and he is expected to appeal.
The New York Yankees slugger admitted four years ago that he used performance-enhancing drugs while with Texas from 2001-03 but has repeatedly denied using them since.
Rodriguez was suspended under both the drug agreement and labor contract.
MLB said the drug penalty was for "his use and possession of numerous forms of prohibited performance-enhancing substances, including testosterone and human growth hormone over the course of multiple years."
His penalty under the labor contract was "for attempting to cover up his violations of the program by engaging in a course of conduct intended to obstruct and frustrate the office of the commissioner's investigation."
Rodriguez has until Thursday to appeal, and if he does so, he will remain eligible to play until a decision by the arbitrator.
"Those players who have violated the program have created scrutiny for the vast majority of our players, who play the game the right way," baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said. "We continue to attack this issue on every front — from science and research, to education and awareness, to fact-finding and investigative skills."


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Power Rangers Super Ninja Steel 5-Inch Figure - Lion Fire Armor Red Ranger
Power Rangers Super Ninja Steel 5-Inch Figure - Lion Fire Armor Red Ranger
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When I first encountered Catherine Opie's photographs some time ago, I was delighted and intrigued by her work; her attention to detail, sensitivity toward color and composition, and fearless documentation of queer subcultures left an impression on me as an artist and thinker.
And so it was with equal delight, if not perhaps slight confusion, that I came face to face with her football series for the first time (on view in Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape). For Opie, these photographs were a more traditional approach to photography in subject matter and style: crisp and colorful photographs of an American tradition. But, as I soon realized, there was far more to these photographs beyond their initial aesthetic viewing pleasure. As these photographs continued to grow on me, I realized that Opie's portraits of high school footballers became, in part, a critique of the way in which our culture constructs masculinity.
The subjects of these portraits are not men, nor are they boys; they are teenagers in transition, and it is with acne, braces, and a youthful awkwardness that they come to inhabit the hyper-masculinized footballer's uniform and identity. They do not quite fit into their roles as footballers, or as men, but it is clear that they have made a choice about where they stand. Or has this choice been made for them? The portraits possess a quiet dignity as well as an underlying critique of that very dignity with which these teenagers hold themselves.
Henry William Crouch, Intern, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department


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Monday, April 26, 2010
Your alternative career
I am pretty happy with my choice of PM&R as a specialty. Right now, I'd say I'm about 90% happy with that choice. But.... about 10% of me kind of wishes I had become a neurologist.
I took neurology as a rotation before PM&R and I really loved it. It was one of the few rotations where I didn't mind putting in ridiculously long hours. I won't get into all the things I liked about it, but suffice to say, a lot of people tell me I should have become a neurologist. I think it's because I'm a HUGE NERD. Why I didn't become a neurologist is a long story, but like I said, I'm 90% happy with my decision as of now. But if I weren't a physiatrist, I would definitely want to be a neurologist.
So your challenge is to complete the following sentence:
If I wasn't a ____________, I would probably be a ___________.
Feel free to complete the sentence even if neither of the blanks can be filled with a medical specialty. (Example: "If I wasn't a lawyer, I would probably be a zookeeper.") And feel free to explain your answer. What you are NOT allowed to do is say something like, "I love being a urologist so much that I can't imagine doing anything else, and if the field didn't exist I'd just have to throw myself off a bridge!" I mean, yes, you could say it, but I'll secretly think you're full of it.
50 comments:
If I weren't a classical singer, I would probably be a physician. I don't know if that counts, since the process is currently in progress!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 26, 2010 at 8:42 AM
If I wasn't an oncologist I would probably have done pathology. I love the way cells tick and what makes them normal and abnormal. That said I think I would miss the patient contact and the relationships.ReplyDelete
If I wasn't a doctor I'd probably be a playschool presenter.ReplyDelete
(Not sure if playschool is a world wide phenomenon) I was torn between doctoring, flying and acting...still trying to work out how to combine all three and often feel frustrated at the lack of creative outlet. Although I have just started writing some lessons and case studies for medical students and thats pretty good for the creative juices!
If I wasn't a doctor I would be a recreational therapist!!!!! These are the people who visit people in hospital and nursing home with the therapy animals and play games with them.ReplyDelete
Also when my kids finish school, I want to spend half the year being a cruise ship doctor and half the year with doctor without orders or some other aid organization.
If I wasn't a pediatrician, I'd be a photographer. Or a wedding planner. Or the fashion police.ReplyDelete
- IndyMomApril 26, 2010 at 10:34 AM
If I wasn't planning to become a doctor and I was still single and childless I would be a high end, NY party planner. I love organizing events and meeting new and interesting people.ReplyDelete
I am happier being a mom that is going to be a doctor though. I do not know how fulfilled I would feel planning parties the rest of my life. Also, when the party is over, it is over.
OK, now *I* feel lame for my neurologist comment, because everyone else is coming up with other jobs. Probably if I wasn't a doctor though, I'd be an actuary or something, which is incredibly not-exciting.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 26, 2010 at 11:04 AM
If I wasn't a med student, I would be a storm chaser (#1), a mountaineer (#2), travel writer (#3), or Alaska River guide (#4).ReplyDelete
MS3 Mommy
If I weren't a neurosurgeon, I'd be a volcanologist. What an awesome thing to study the raw forces of nature! Hawaii's Volcanoes National Park is endlessly fascinating to me.ReplyDelete
If I weren't a pharmacist, I'd be a librarian, or a chef. Of course, cooking is like pharmacy is like labwork, so I'm not sure if that truly counts as a job change. All those books! I might never get anything done, because I'd be reading all the time....ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 26, 2010 at 12:55 PM
If I weren't a medstudent (soon to be resident -> boards in a week where I live!), I'd be a music therapist or an anthropologist.ReplyDelete
As for the specialty, if I weren't going in peds, I'd be an anesthesiologist.
If I wasn't a pathologist I'd probably be an astronaut. I always wanted to spend a huge chunk of my life in outer space. I got a nice scholarship to a college to enter their aeronautical engineering program, but I chickened out at the last minute 'cause I was only 16 and that college was too far away from home.ReplyDelete
If I wasn´t a student working on medical school, I would, well, I don´t know. Probably flipping burgers somewhere or otherwise working in a restaurant of some kind.ReplyDelete
If I wasn't a corporate lawyer, I would probably be a doctor, or a professional matchmaker, or a tourguide. I love reading your MIM posts, setting up friends, and showing people my city. It's hard to be passionate about drafting contracts all day, even though it pays well and it's low stress.ReplyDelete
If I weren't a PA, I'd be a pastry chef or a wedding planner or a independent bookstore/cupcake shop owner.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 26, 2010 at 2:19 PM
Well, this is funny in the context of your post. I am a neurologist (pediatric) and if I had known about PM&R (specifically peds) when I was in school, I might have chosen that! That said, though, I do like my job. Or I could do home renovation!ReplyDelete
If I weren't an emergency physician, I'd be an ob/gyn. Or FP. And if I weren't a physician at all... in reality, I'd probably be a journalist. In my dreams, I'd be a children's book author :).ReplyDelete
Great post, Fizzy, as always!
Well, if we're counting dream jobs, I'd probably be a writer.ReplyDelete
If I weren't a vet student, I would be an aerial dancer/acrobat -- stationary trapeze and silks. (Actually I'd probably be a cell/molecular biology researcher, since that's the other thing I am in real life, but if money were no object and I could do anything besides veterinary medicine, it would be the circus. At least for 3 or 4 months out of the year!)ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 26, 2010 at 4:00 PM
If I wasn't a junior doctor, I would probably be a physiotherapist or midwife. In my dreams I'd be an interior designer or maybe a journalist or a baker...unfortunately i'm not the most creative of people.ReplyDelete
(I'm in Scotland, we do two years of junior house officer jobs-like intern year- before choosing something to stick with for life...or a few years anyway)
I also spend a lot of time thinking of other potential careers but some how medicine sticks...
I've met many physicians who have chosen to pursue non-clinical career opportunities because of their dissatisfaction with clinical medicine. It's really not a bad option.ReplyDelete
If I weren't a medical student, I'd probably be either a kindergarten teacher, a crazy social activist, or a toy store proprietor.ReplyDelete
If I wasn't a medstudent, I'd be a farmer. I'd raise my own sheep, spin the yarn into wool, and knit. Oh, and grow my own veggies too:)ReplyDelete
If I weren't in primary care, I'd be a pediatric neurologist. Or a pastry chef. Or in my best dreams, the caretaker of a Caribbean Island.ReplyDelete
If I were not a anesthesiology resident, I would have been an CRNA. If I were not a doctor, I would have been a comparative morphologist (how extremely geeky is that?). If I were to have my dream, dream job, I would be a photographer.ReplyDelete
If I were not a anesthesiology resident, I would have been an CRNA. If I were not a doctor, I would have been a comparative morphologist (how extremely geeky is that?). If I were to have my dream, dream job, I would be a photographer.ReplyDelete
Great question! I had once saidReplyDelete
But maybe I'll paint or do pottery instead.
If I weren't a surgeon, I would be an architect-- with a heavy hand in interior architecture and design. I enjoy constructing, creating and craftmanship.ReplyDelete
Within the med-iverse, if I weren't a surgeon I would be a psychiatrist. And if *that* part of me couldn't be a psychiatrist, it would be an anthropologist.
If I wasn't a pedi resident I'd have been a child psych resident. If I wasn't a resident at all (and how AWESOME would that be?!?), I'd be in the food industry in some fashion.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 26, 2010 at 9:12 PM
Funny, I'm always joking with my husband about this: If I weren't an endocrine fellow, I would be a roller coaster tycoon. It's actually a (very addictive) computer game I used to play for hours on my rare days off during residency. Seriously though, I've always daydreamed about how fun it would be to design amusement parks and roller coasters for a living.ReplyDelete
I think about this often...as I am not sure I still want to be a doctor. I have a lot of choices, but right now the top 3 are....If I were not a doctor, I would be a teacher, a librarian, or a rabbiReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 26, 2010 at 11:50 PM
If I weren't a med student, I would become a full time flower farmer. There something magical about digging my hands in the soil, watching little seeds come turn into magestic flowers. Not real sexy, I know. But there is nothing that a day in the garden can't fix after a crazy week in school.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 27, 2010 at 5:27 AM
If I was not an (aspiring) physician, I would be a ballet dancer.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 27, 2010 at 8:01 AM
If I were not a physician I would be a professional crossword puzzle creator and competitive Scrabble playerReplyDelete
If I weren't a political science professor, I would own my own restaurant.ReplyDelete
I *love* how the alternative universe here has so much pastry, so many gardens, wonderful weddings, beautiful interiors and lots of roller coasters!
Love it! One of my favorite games is "Fantasy Back-up Career". I have an art degree, but artist isn't one of them. Maybe a political cartoonist.ReplyDelete
1. Next Food Network Star 2. Stand up comedian (especially for bar mitztvahs. I am great with fart jokes). 3. Own a small bakery / restaurant called "Almost Healthy" 4. Pundit. If I was a rapping pundit, I could be Pun-ditty. 5. Politican. I would have to run in Chicago or New Jersey, though, because I have a lot of skeletons in my closet.
- CourtneyApril 27, 2010 at 2:01 PM
If I wasn't a medical student (aspiring ob/gyn), I would be an organic farmer and raise my own livestock, and open my own restaurant that focuses on seasonal, fresh food... also, I'd offer weddings/ events on my beautiful farmland, in my huge flower garden....ReplyDelete
If I weren't a psychology graduate student, I would either be a baker or a college librarian. I love to bake - it's how I relax and it's fun to see other people happy because of something I made. College librarian appeals to me because I could spend all day pretending I never left college, surrounded by books and showing the young'uns that research is cool.ReplyDelete
Oh, forgot to add: my two "grad school seemed like such a good idea at the time" backup careers are joining the circus (I think I could handle being the snake lady) or being a truck driver (assuming I can ever learn to drive something larger than my Civic).ReplyDelete
If I weren't an airline pilot, I would be a writer-physician.ReplyDelete
If I wasn't persuing medical school, I would be a pastry chef with my own farm (vegies/fruits/sheep/pigs maybe even a cow or 2...my kids drink a lot of milk!), would love to write a book, be a science teacher, start a baby/kid food company....oh some many things so little time!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 29, 2010 at 11:02 PM
If I wasn't a future ob/gyn I would be a police officer.ReplyDelete
If I wasn't a family physician I would rescue animals, teach kindergarten, write books or cut hair...eeewww, never mind, I wouldn't cut hair.ReplyDelete
- Kellie (General Surgeon)May 3, 2010 at 4:07 PM
If I weren't a general surgeon, I'd be either a dermatologist or an interventional radiologist. Both would still get me on the procedure side of things, but especially derm, a better lifestyle. If I weren't a physician, I'd probably be an operating room scrub technician which is what I was in the military and really enjoyed it.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousMay 4, 2010 at 12:09 AM
If I weren't a med student I'd be a stay at home mom. Since having my daughter I've unearthed the extremely crafty side of myself and have LOVED sewing clothes and toys for her, blogging, scrap booking, cooking and doing it all with her in a sling on my hip...ReplyDelete
If I wasn't a med student I would be the voice of reason on Real Housewives of NYC. lol. Oh and a wedding planner/ supermom/ ridiculously fit because I would go to the gym EVERYDAY.ReplyDelete
If I wasn't a general practitioner, I'd be a gossip columnist in a trashy tabloid or women's magazineReplyDelete
- Laura BJune 1, 2010 at 9:12 PM
If I wasn't going to be a med/peds resident, I would be a chef/baker. Or a photographer, or a comic book inker. Or a novelist, or a stay at home mom and all of the above!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJune 3, 2010 at 6:02 PM
If I were still a doctor: if I wasn't an ER doc, I would probably be a radiologist.ReplyDelete
Outside of medicine: if I weren't a doctor, I would probably have become an engineer.
LOL. I don't know what in the world made me choose emergency medicine since it's clear to me now I would have fit into a data-oriented profession better than a people-oriented one. But at this point (after 9 yrs of practice), it suits me and I do enjoy it very much.
If I were not a physician, I would have been an outdoor educator or professional mountain guideReplyDelete


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Double homicide suspect held to answer to charges
YREKA – Emotions were strong last Thursday in the Siskiyou County Superior Court when family members of the two men who were fatally shot in Scott Valley on June 30 attended the preliminary hearing for the alleged gunman, Earl Richard Stanfield.
Following the hearing, which was held to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to hold Stanfield to answer to the charges, Superior Court Judge Karen Dixon ruled that the charges against Stanfield will be upheld.
Stanfield, 56, of Yreka, is charged with two counts of murder and one count of malicious discharge of a firearm from a vehicle. He faces a special allegation for the intentional discharge of a firearm that resulted in great bodily injury and a special circumstance for committing multiple murders.
Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office (SCSO) officials who conducted the homicide investigation testified at the hearing that the incident occurred at a party outside of Fort Jones on Indian Creek Road.
Based on interviews with witnesses, deputies testified that Stanfield, who was reportedly intoxicated, had been involved in altercations with several individuals at the party.
Stanfield allegedly left the Scott Valley party on his motorcycle, traveled to Yreka to pick up his firearm, and drove back to the party in his truck. At that time, Stanfield allegedly shot Fort Jones resident Darrell Henderling, 52, and Yreka resident Ronald Minard, 29, in the chest area.
The friends and family members of the victims reportedly restrained Stanfield until authorities arrived at the scene. Both victims were pronounced dead when rescue personnel responded.
Stanfield's public defender Lael Kayfetz pointed out witnesses told officials that her client had been in several altercations that night, and he had been "badly beaten." She said Stanfield was "disoriented" and confused."
Siskiyou County District Attorney Kirk Andrus said," There is no affirmative offense and The People have proven to our burden that this was not a case of self defense."
Ultimately, Dixon ruled that Stanfield will be held to answer to the charges.
She ordered for him to continue to be held in the Siskiyou County Jail without bail and she scheduled him to reappear in court on Dec. 18 for further proceedings.
According to Andrus, if Stanfield is convicted of the charges, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.


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Tourism reaches beyond beaches in NH, Maine, Vt.
CONCORD, N.H. — While plenty of tourists will be heading to northern New England's ocean and lake locations this summer, others will be exploring options beyond the beach.
In New Hampshire, a new interconnected all-terrain vehicle trail system dubbed "Ride the Wilds" will officially open June 15, capping years of work by more than a dozen off-road vehicle clubs that worked with state agencies and local communities to link 1,000 miles of trails across Coos County.
New businesses are springing up along the route, and existing restaurants, motels and shops are hoping for a much-needed economic boost from riders who plan multiday trips, said Harry Brown, president of the North Country OHRV Coalition.
"They're wicked exited," he said.
In Colebrook, Corrine Rober and her husband recently launched Bear Rock Adventures, offering ATV tours and vehicle rentals. She already has heard from potential customers interested in renting ATVs for up to a week at a time and said she is looking forward to exposing them to the wildlife, agriculture and scenic beauty surrounding the trails.
"It's about getting people to see that ATV-ing is far more than just going out and messing around in the dirt. It's a family activity, and it can expose people to areas they otherwise would never experience," she said.
The new trail system comes several years after the opening of Jericho Mountain State Park in Berlin, the state's newest and the only one in New England developed for ATVs and snowmobiles. Building on that success, the state Legislature this year passed a pair of bills aimed at attracting more off-road vehicle enthusiasts to the state: One would allow the construction of a separate obstacle course for modified trucks and jeeps at the park, and the other would allow larger, two-passenger motorized vehicles on state-owned trails.
In Maine, there's also been a push in recent years to promote nature-based tourism, in part to drive visitors to far-flung areas where tourism isn't as big as it is along much of the seacoast.
Tourists are being lured to outer areas through attractions such as the Downeast Fisheries Trail in eastern Maine, which showcases the state's maritime heritage; the Maine Huts and Trails network of trails and huts in western Maine; and a statewide bird-watching trail. Whitewater rafting, lakeside cottages and thousands of miles of trails for ATV riders and snowmobilers also have given rural regions economic boosts.
"The shift toward nature-based tourism is getting out into Washington County or Aroostook County," in far eastern and northern Maine, said Charlie Colgan, an economist at the University of Southern Maine's Muskie School of Public Service.
"It's another geographic evolution from the 1880s, when Portland was selling itself as the gateway to what you escaped to out of Boston and New York," he said. "It was far away, but you could still get there."
Building a nature-based tourism industry requires having reasonable amenities in accessible locations, he said. While some people want an Appalachian Trail-like experience where they can hike with a backpack and sleep in a tent, others want to go for hikes but also sleep in a bed and eat in a restaurant, he said.
"The good thing is there's a huge diversity of markets that serve nature-based tourism that Maine's well-positioned to deal with," he said.
In Vermont, this summer will bring a new addition to the nation's oldest long-distance hiking trail, the 270-mile Long Trail that runs the spine of the Green Mountains and includes numerous huts and backcountry campsites along the route. After decades of planning and fundraising, crews will break ground on a 200-foot suspension footbridge over the Winooski River.
The Green Mountain Club, which maintains the trail, has sought to establish a safe, appropriate and permanent route over the river since 1912, when it established the first stretch of the trail, said Dave Hardy, director of trail programs.
"It's a big deal," he said. "We've been looking to relocate the trail and build this bridge since the beginning."
With more than 200,000 people using the trail each year, hiking has become a major economic driver for the state, club officials said. The group also plans to repair the last stretch of the Long Trail and Appalachian Trail that were closed because of damage from the remnants from Hurricane Irene in 2011.
And for those who don't want to pick just one state, all three states plus New York and parts of Canada are connected by the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, which links 740 miles of remote waterways.


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5-year-old shoots 2-year-old sister in Kentucky with rifle he got as a gift
BURKESVILLE, Ky. – In southern Kentucky, where children get their first guns even before they start first grade, Stephanie Sparks paid little attention as her 5-year-old son, Kristian, played with the rifle he was given last year. Then, as she stepped onto the front porch while cleaning the kitchen, "she heard the gun go off," a coroner said.
In a horrific accident Tuesday that shocked a rural area far removed from the national debate over gun control, the boy had killed his 2-year-old sister, Caroline, with a single shot to the chest.
"Down in Kentucky where we're from, you know, guns are passed down from generation to generation," Cumberland County Coroner Gary White said. "You start at a young age with guns for hunting and everything."
What is more unusual than a child having a gun, he said, is "that a kid would get shot with it."
In this case, the rifle was made by a company that sells guns specifically for children — "My first rifle" is the slogan — in colors ranging from plain brown to hot pink to orange to royal blue to multi-color swirls.
Kristian's rifle was kept in a corner of the mobile home, and the family didn't realize a bullet had been left in it.
"It's a normal way of life, and it's not just rural Kentucky, it's rural America — hunting and shooting and sport fishing. It starts at an early age," said Cumberland County Judge Executive John Phelps. "There's probably not a household in this county that doesn't have a gun."
In Cumberland County, as elsewhere in Kentucky, local newspapers feature photos of children proudly displaying their kills, including turkey and deer.
Phelps, who is much like a mayor in these parts, said it had been four or five years since there had been a shooting death in the county, which lies along the Cumberland River near the Tennessee state line.
"The whole town is heartbroken," Phelps said of Burkesville, a farming community of 1,800 about 90 miles northeast of Nashville, Tenn. "This was a total shock. This was totally unexpected."
Phelps said he knew the family well. He said the father, Chris Sparks, works as a logger at a mill and also shoes horses.
The family lives in a gray mobile home on a long, winding road, surrounded by rolling hills and farmland that's been in the family since the 1930s. Toys, including a small truck and a basketball goal, were on the front porch, but no one was home Wednesday.
There's a house across the street, but the next closest neighbor lives over a hill.
Family friend Logan Wells said he received a frantic call telling him that the little girl was in an accident and to come quickly.
When he got to the hospital, Caroline was already dead. "She passed just when I got there," Wells said.
White said the shooting had been ruled accidental, though a police spokesman said it was unclear whether any charges will be filed.
"I think it's too early to say whether there will or won't be," Trooper Billy Gregory said.
White said the boy received the .22-caliber rifle as a gift, but it wasn't clear who gave him the gun, which is known as a Crickett.
"It's a little rifle for a kid. ... The little boy's used to shooting the little gun," White said.
The company that makes the rifle, Milton, Pa.-based Keystone Sporting Arms, has a "Kids Korner" on its website with pictures of young boys and girls at shooting ranges and on bird and deer hunts. It says the company produced 60,000 Crickett and Chipmunk rifles for kids in 2008. The smaller rifles are sold with a mount to use at a shooting range.
Keystone also makes guns for adults, but most of its products are geared toward children, including books and bright orange vests and hats.
"The goal of KSA is to instill gun safety in the minds of youth shooters and encourage them to gain the knowledge and respect that hunting and shooting activities require and deserve," the website said.
No one at the company answered the phone Wednesday.
According to the website, company founders Bill McNeal and his son Steve McNeal decided to make guns for young shooters in the mid-1990s and opened Keystone in 1996 with just four employees, producing 4,000 rifles that year. It now employs about 70 people.
It also has a long list of testimonials from parents who talk about how grateful they are to be able to go shooting with their children.
Sharon Rengers, a longtime child advocate at Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, said making and marketing weapons specifically for children was "mind-boggling."
"It's like, oh, my God," she said, "we're having a big national debate whether we want to check somebody's background, but we're going to offer a 4-year-old a gun and expect something good from that?"
Associated Press writer Janet Cappiello in Louisville contributed to this report.


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"Observation Camp, Wari Bunder. Cooking for caste-men (Hindus from Cutch Mandvi)"
Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH, The University of Cambridge)
Publication Date2018-09-27
Wellcome Collection
MetadataShow full item record
Unknown author "Observation Camp, Wari Bunder. Cooking for caste-men (Hindus from Cutch Mandvi)" [digital image]. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/282547
The third pandemic of plague (in its bubonic and pneumonic clinical forms) struck the globe between 1894 and 1959. As Yersinia pestis spread from country to country and from continent to continent, it left behind it not only a trail of death and devastation, but also a vast visual archive. It was the first time that plague would reach and establish itself in all inhabited continents. But it was also the first time that any epidemic would be photographed. As plague spread from harbour to harbour, and amongst cities, towns and villages, so did photographs of the pandemic through reproductions in the daily and illustrated press. Rather than forming a homogeneous or linear visual narrative, these photographic documents provided diverse perspectives on the pandemic, which, more often than not, were not simply different from region to region, but in fact conflicting within any single locus of infection. Moreover this photographic production came to establish a new field of vision, what we may call "epidemic photography" which continues to inform the way in which we see, depict and imagine epidemics and their social, economic, and political impact in the age of Global Health.
The plague pandemic spread to British India in 1896 where it continued to strike at cities, towns and villages for 30 years, leading to ten million deaths. The initial outbreak affected Bombay (Mumbai), but soon spread further to Pune and Karachi, reaching Kolkata the following year. Colonial government actions to control and treat the plague outbreak were extensive, but generally ineffective and harsh in the first stages. A campaign of quarantines, isolation camps, travel restrictions, demolition and disinfection of buildings was pursued, leading to massive resistance which forced colonial authorities to revise their epidemic control policy. Several international plague commissions operated in India in the first years of the epidemic, including commissions from Russia, Austria, Germany, Italy and the Institute Pasteur. The latter made a major contribution through Paul-Louis Simond's discovery of the implication of the rat's flea in the transmission and spread of the disease. The photographic record of the outbreak in India is international and covers a range of topics, including anti-plague measures, clinical symptoms, and the depiction of plague hospitals.
Plague, Camp, Hinduism, Contacts, India, Bombay
Spatial Coverage
India, Bombay
Temporal Coverage
Host Item: Moss, C., Captain, fl. ca. 1897. The Bombay plague epidemic of 1896-1897: work of the Bombay Plague Committee. Photographs attributed to Capt. C. Moss, 1897
The database "Photographs of the Third Plague Pandemic" was funded by an European Research Council Starting Grant (under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme/ERC grant agreement no 336564) for the project Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic, led by Dr Christos Lynteris (PI); The Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH) of the University of Cambridge (2013-2018). The project would like to thank its postdoctoral researchers, Drs Lukas Engelmann, Nicholas H. A. Evans, Maurits Meerwijk, Branwyn Poleykett and Abhjit Sarkar, and its administrators Mss Teresa Abaurrea, Emma Hacking and Samantha Peel for their contribution to this database.
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.29911
All Rights Reserved
Licence URL: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
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For the latest updates to Global Public Square, including show information and Fareed's Take, visit the new GPS site on CNN.com.
Fareed is being dishonest by implying that the Gita Bhagavad is the ONLY source of law in Hindooism. Many things don't appear directly in Gita Bhagavad but are considered a part of hindoo law and hindutva jurisprudence. The sources second only to Gita B are the Ramayana tales, and as an Indian, Fareed knows this to be true. And in Ramayana several examples are given Lord Shiva ordering the killing of those who mock or satirize him in poetry or other forms. These sanctioned killings forever enshrined the practice of death to blasphemers as a legitimate part of hindutva law. Those who are denying this are being willfully dishonest or are simply ignorant. Here is a small list of examples from the puranas which give these terrorists the backing they need in hinduism for their acts.
When the Apostle returned to Veranasi after his raid on Benares, word spread that he had killed some of the men who had satirized and insulted him. The poets who were left spread in all directions.
kama sutra:597
Isn't it funny that after all these years of being a thieving asshole, you still can't imitate people; you were marginally better in the beginning. What a waste of an IQ, as Dr. David says.
Also interesting is your gender identity crisis manifesting at the ripe old age of 45.
Where in the world is Joey Isotta-Franchini?
Good morning @ banANUSy. How do? We decided to retire one of our names yesterday likd we did rupert philip and others. What gives? Tell me.
'You obey a stranger who encourages you to murder for booty. You are greedy men. Is there no honor among you?' Upon hearing those lines Lord Shiva said, 'Will no one rid me of this woman?' Modi, a zealous Hindoo decided to execute Lord Shiva's wishes. That very night he crept into the writer's home while she lay sleeping surrounded by her young children. There was one at her breast. Ganesha removed the suckling babe and then plunged his sword into the poet. The next morning in the mandir, Shiva, who was aware of the assassination, said, 'You have helped Lord Shiva and His Apostle.' Ganesha said. 'She had five sons; should I feel guilty?' 'No,' the pundit answered. 'Killing her was as meaningless as two goats butting heads.'
Fareed has been a victim of hindoo atrocities in India. Poor guy could not find his roots in India. The hindoos erased his past. Because his family was subjugated by Hindoos. They were harassed. They were kept enslaved. There will be a class action suit filed against India by muslims of Indian origin for these crimes. I feel pity for Fareed.
Yes. Am thinking sedation might be in order. Am actually pretty sure of it.
Let's see. Adam is about 5'8" tall and weighs roughly 276 lbs. Roughly. Very roughly for BMI 40 is very rough on even a man. How
women do it is amazing.
So. How many elephant gun tranquilizer darts would it take to sedate Adam. 250mg Seroquel should do the trick each night.
Woo hoo! Got me a cow tag. Adam. You're it.
Shat yo. I could tranquillize Adam and it would only cost the US taxpayer about $350 per day for me to do just so. Plus I have several hundred others just like Adam to tend to. Little wonder I live in a 3 million dollar mansion and attend The Crystal Cathedral. With my name near the top.
Oh holy mary mother of god bless my efforts to drug people. Amen. Plus I get rich in the meantime. Not a bad deal for a greedy old dope pushing MD. Not to mention my many fat nurses. Some who are a bit flirtatious.
Doctor? Doctor. Doctor. Doctor?
I got the Jeezus in me!
I got the Jeezus in me!
I got the Jeezus in mey hey!
Coffee nose. Lmao
A freaking football team stole my train of thought! Woo hoo. Go Patty's.
Mommy? My giney tingles.
You did what? 4 altar boys in one night? That will cost you 50 Hail.Mary's and one BJ.
What say I have some Vanilla Swiss Almond in the Oval Office you little porker.
Come to me my pretties. Eh hey hey.
So they moved this virtual dump .... to where? Across the block.
LOL. Great move!
Notice how the usual cast of character(s) vanished to emerge under different names(s). Ha Ha Ha
"Out terms of Service and Privacy Policy have changed." Really? To what? We shut the right to Freedom of Expression!!! CNN could not tolerate to see the face of reality in the mirror let alone its own face. We call it counter journalism.
Ahhhhhh..... Hypocrisy!
Lol did you notice one of the character's start quoting Ramones? I mean how distasteful can you get!
Guessing Hannah is a newbie here or would know by now how much more disgusting.
You guessed wrong. Hannah is Adam.
Yes. During the course of normal love making endorphins that would otherwise attack your heart get burned up. That simply is not the case with one armed bandits.
You spelled your username 'Philip Douglas' wrong.
Like Jack Murphy is a real name.
It's what was said. Not who said it you idiots.
Has conservative genuflection at the altar of Sarah Palin finally come to a halt?
Nope. Ain't barely even got around Billy Clinton's anal warts.
What Whitewater and fat intern.
Michelle's legs really aren't that hairy.
Gonna round up all them thar terrorists and drag them to justice old west style.
Who? Ok. What?
Enough with the beer, Billy.
if any


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Sandy Froman, a gun rights advocate who was formerly the president of the NRA, debated gun background checks with Brady Campaign president Dan Gross at the AC360 town hall on gun violence.
Gross told Anderson, "The reality is that when you go to a gun show you can see what really happens in this country, which is, under the guise of being licensed firearms dealers, people are selling guns to people that they don't know and people who could very well be criminals, be dangerously mentally ill, and people who would be caught if they went through a federally licensed firearm dealer."
Anderson asked Froman, currently an NRA board member, if the NRA has changed its position on universal background checks. In 1999 during a House Judiciary committee hearing, current NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre stated, "We think it is reasonable to provide mandatory instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show. No loopholes for anyone."
Froman confirmed. "Yes, the NRA has changed its position. And the reason its changed its position is because the system doesn't work. The NICS system is not working now. We have to get that working before we can add any more checks to that system. It's already overburdened," she said. "Let's get it working. Let's make sure the 23 states that aren't reporting the names of people who are mentally ill and have violent tendencies, let's get those reported and into the system and then we can take a look."
"I don't understand why you can't do both," Gross responded. "The reality is yes regarding the 60 percent of gun sales that require background checks are there things that we can do to improve that? Yes. Should we be committed to it, should we invest resources in it? Yes."
Senior Fellow of the Independent Women's Forum Gayle Trotter, who was also a guest on the program, said guns are an "undue burden on a fundamental constitutional right" for private sales.
Post by: Anderson Cooper
Filed under: Gun Control • Guns • Town Hall: Guns Under Fire
guns do not kill are we going to put a law on knifes people kill with those how about bats oh wait a kid was killed with a car so we need to put a stop to cars .this is getting out of control .the reason were free is because of guns,we would be under English rule or German or japan rule if not for guns.it is our right to have and carried guns .if some dont like guns then let them go to a county were there are no guns and be ruled by a dictator
Anderson Cooper goes beyond the headlines to tell stories from many points of view, so you can make up your own mind about the news. Tune in weeknights at 8 and 10 ET on CNN.
Questions or comments? Send an email
Want to know more? Go behind the scenes with AC361°


text:
Cisco has appealed to the European Union's General Court, asking for the European Commission's approval of Microsoft's takeover of Skype to be made conditional. The network infrastructure company wants the EC to ensure "standards-based interoperability in the video calling space."
Regulatory bodies gave Microsoft's takeover of Skype the go-ahead last year, with the deal finalized in October. Cisco says that it does not want to block the merger entirely, just restrict it and require Microsoft to make Skype play nicely with other voice and video calling systems.
Skype's video and voice chat protocol is entirely proprietary and undocumented. Skype also uses a range of different codecs (including the proprietary, Google-owned VP8 and the open H.264). This makes Skype's network of users almost completely isolated, and unable to communicate directly with any other VoIP or video system.
Skype does have a product, Skype Connect, that can bridge between Skype and SIP-based telephony systems for voice communications, and at various times has offered facilities to bridge to other PBXes. But for the most part, it has no interoperability with any other voice or video systems.
The same is broadly true of Microsoft's pre-Skype systems: Windows Live Messenger, and Lync. Though there are provisions to bridge Lync to SIP telephony systems, both Lync and Messenger are largely sealed systems.
Skype is the most widely-used voice and video call system in the world, with users numbering in the hundreds of millions, and even more able to use Skype technology through the integration with Facebook. Messenger is similarly the most-used instant-messaging system, and Lync is growing fast.
The lack of interoperability extends to Cisco's own voice and video telecoms system. Cisco's video conferencing systems are built around industry standard protocols: SIP, H.263, H.264, and others. The company has also worked towards the standardization and development of interoperable multivendor implementations of some of its value-added features, such as its Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP).
Cisco says that the different codecs used by the different Microsoft/Skype products is a particular problem. Differences in call setup can be handled relatively easily by simple bridge software. But different codecs require the bridge to also transcode the video, converting between formats, which increases complexity and hardware demands, and also compromises quality. A consistent set of codecs (with consistent bitrates and other quality parameters) would eliminate the need for this costly conversion.
Cisco attempted to enter the consumer video calling market with its ill-fated ūmi line: $500 home video-conferencing systems that surprisingly failed to set the world alight. Lack of interoperability with the consumer space's most popular video calling system made ūmi a tough sell.
Without the Microsoft takeover, Cisco would have had little ability to break into this market and compete with the heavily entrenched Skype. But with Microsoft purchasing Skype, Cisco has a rare opportunity to force legislative oversight and attach new conditions to the behavior of the combined entity. If the courts were sympathetic to Cisco's requests and demanded that Microsoft and Skype switch to using standard protocols in standard ways, Cisco's products would gain access to hundreds of millions of new users.
This explains why Cisco is not arguing for the deal to be canceled outright: with the merger blocked, Microsoft and Skype would remain free to keep their systems proprietary, with no possibility of the imposition of conditions.
The European Commission made its decision last year, but unlike the comparable Department of Justice decision, EC decisions can for a limited time be appealed. That appeal window will close soon.
European Commission spokesman Antoine Colombani said that the Commission will defend its decision in court, and a Microsoft spokesperson said, "The European Commission conducted a thorough investigation of the acquisition, in which Cisco actively participated, and approved the deal in a 36-page decision without any conditions. We're confident the Commission's decision will stand up on appeal."
Listing image by Image courtesy of Cisco


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COVID-19: Vaccine information and additional resources | Medicaid: The program is changing and you must take steps to keep your UNC Health providers.
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text:
Pa. couple deny mistreatment of adopted Russian teen
COLLEGEVILLE, Pennsylvania – A couple from the Philadelphia area say they are shocked and hurt by accusations of mistreatment by an adopted son who left and went back to Russia.
Alexander Abnosov, 18, who was renamed Joshua Salotti when he and another youth were adopted five years ago, told Russian state-controlled media that his adoptive family treated him badly and that he lived on the streets of Philadelphia and stole just to survive.
Russia's Channel 1 and Rossiya television reported this week that Abnosov had returned to the Volga river city of Cheboksary, where his 72-year-old grandmother lives. He complained to Rossiya that he fled home because of conflicts with his adoptive mother, who was "nagging at small things," and said he stayed on the streets for about three months.
"My reaction to that, it's very hurtful because we poured our lives into these boys," Abnosov's adoptive father, an emotional Steve Salotti, told a Philadelphia TV station.
The Kremlin has stoked anger in recent months over the treatment of Russian children adopted by Americans in order to justify its controversial ban on U.S. adoptions. The ban came in retaliation for a new U.S. law targeting alleged Russian human-rights violators.
Steve and Jackie Salotti of suburban Collegeville told WPVI-TV that they adopted the two 13-year-old boys in 2008 after raising three children of their own, and tried to raise them as typical American children, with fishing trips, barbecues, pets and Christmas presents.
All went well, they said, until Josh turned 18 and went on a trip back to Russia, where he was introduced to drugs and alcohol. They said they noticed a change in his behavior and established house rules including no drugs or alcohol, drug testing, no disrespectful talk to them or to teachers, counseling and a curfew.
Their other adopted son agreed to abide by the rules, the couple said, but Josh eventually left and went back to Russia, where he made public accusations of mistreatment.
"With the press pounding on the door and Russia putting these programs on the television, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing," Steve Salotti said.
The couple hired a lawyer to help them handle what is expected to become an international political firestorm between the U.S. and Russia.
Family attorney Charles Mandracchia said it was "outrageous" that his clients were "being made out as villains."
"Why the Russian government or the American government would allow this to happen is beyond me," he said.
"Russia's going to do what Russia's going to do," Jackie Salotti told the TV station.
But while the couple said they are angry and saddened by the rift between the two countries, "it doesn't change the fact that we're concerned about our son and what's happening to him in this," Steve Salotti said.
An estimated 60,000 Russian children have been adopted by Americans in the past two decades, but at least 20 adopted children have died. Incidents of alleged mistreatment have been reported widely in Russia and helped to drive resentment over adoptions.


text: Nicholas Jarecki makes an auspicious directorial debut with this taut and alluring suspense thriller about love, loyalty, and high finance. Arbitrage buying low and selling high depends on a person's ability to determine the true value of any given market. It's a talent that has made billionaire hedge fund magnate Robert Miller the very portrait of success in American business. But on the eve of his sixtieth birthday, Miller finds himself desperately trying to sell his trading empire to a major bank before the extent of his fraud is discovered. When an unexpected bloody error challenges his perception of what things are worth, Miller finds that his business is not the only thing hanging in the balance.


text:
ECE497 Project: Kinect
Team members: Yue Zhang, Xinyu Cheng, Xia Li.
- 1 Executive Summary
- 2 Installation Instructions
- 3 User Instructions
- 4 Highlights
- 5 Theory of Operation
- 6 Work Breakdown
- 7 Future Work
- 8 Conclusions
Executive Summary
I believe that almost every college students have played a game called "Greedy Snake" in our childhood. At that time, we played it on the cellphone, on the computer or on the PSP. However, we are always using the keyboard to control the games we played. Now, our final project could bring you something new, that is a "Gesture Controlled Greedy Snake". It means that, using the gesture, the keyboard is never required to play the game. Amazing? Read the following wiki to know how we make it happens!
Basically, we are using the Kinect from Microsoft and the Beagle Board XM from Texas Instrument to accomplish our gesture game. The program for the game is programmed on the QT-Linux. Besides, we use the cross compiling to compile the program to make the game run on the beagle board.
After our previous work, our "Gesture Greedy Snake" is completed, and works pretty good. The snake can be controlled by our gestures smoothly. The game reminds us a different style of childhood memory.
Installation Instructions
1 x Kinect
1 x BeagleBoard xM
1 x DVI to HDMI wire
1 x Monitor
1 x Keyboard
1 x Mouse
The source files for the project can be downloaded from https://github.com/Astroricks/Snake-Game-with-Kinect-on-BeagleBoard-xM . Once you have set up the developing environment as in the following instructions, you can download the files, playing with the game or making changes.
We are using the drivers provided by Omek. The driver files can be found at the Beckon™ SDK 2.4 – BeagleBoard-xM Edition installation page, and a developer's guide is provided at the documentation page. (You may need to register first.) Instructions in this blog are also very useful.
Although the developer's guide introduces how to do the installation and configuration, we have found that it takes much longer than we originally thought, and errors came out occasionally. It seems that the developer's guide is not very well organized and not detailed enought anyway. So we arranged our instruction and configuration procedures as below:
1. Download the image package and burn it into the SD card
Download the image package Beckon-Image-2.4.19872.tar.gz as mentioned above onto your Linux PC. Then extract it by entering
host$ tar -xvzf <ImageFileName>
Run the following command to make sure you have bash installed.
host$ sudo apt-get install bash
Insert your SD card using a card reader/writer. Run the following command:
host$ sudo bash mkcard.sh /dev/<sdX> beagle-omek
Note: This action will wipe out and rewrite the SD card so make sure the files in it are backed up. The name of the SD card can be viewed in Disk Utility. If you mistakenly use the main OS device name this script can erase your entire OS.
2. Run the sample application
Plug the sensor into the BeagleBoard-xM USB port. Ensure the mouse and keyboard are connected to the BeagleBoard-xM USB port. Connect the BeagleBoard-xM to the monitor with an HDMI cable. Connect the BeagleBoard-xM power supply and wait for the boot process to reach the login prompt, login as user root (no password is required). Now it's ready to run the sample applications on the BeagleBoard-xM.
Note: Details about running the samples can be found in the developer's guide from page 9 to 11. The Kinect will react properly only if the player is within an appropriate distance (about 1m - 5m).
Note: The following instruction is about how to set up the environment for developing. If you don't want to do the development, you can just skip that.
3. Setting up your Linux development PC
Download Beckon-SDK-2.4.19872.tar.gz and extract it onto your host PC (this is the actual SDK which contains headers, libraries, documentation, makefiles, etc...) The SDK provides the tools to develop a motion-tracking and gesture-based application that can run on the BeagleBoard-xM. After developing the application, cross-compile it onto the Linux PC and then copy the image onto the BeagleBoard-xM via external USB storage.
1) Download the Linux ARM cross toolchain:
For 32-bit Ubuntu you will want to download this file: http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/toolchains/angstrom-2011.03-i686-linux-armv7a-linux-gnueabi-toolchain-qte-4.6.3.tar.bz2
For 64-bit Ubuntu you will want to download this file: http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/toolchains/angstrom-2011.03-x86_64-linux-armv7a-linux-gnueabi-toolchain-qte-4.6.3.tar.bz2
Extract the downloaded archive into your system root directory:
host$ sudo tar -xvjf <ToolchainFileName> -C /
Note: If you extract the archive into a different directory, you should adjust the following instructions as well as the samples' makefiles accordingly.
2) Install the Qt embedded SDK for Angstrom/BeagleBoard:
Now that you have your cross compiler installed, you can compile Qt with it. First thing to do is to install zlib library:
host$ sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev
Then download the Open Source LGPL version of Qt libraries 4.6.2 for Embedded Linux here.
Note: Newest version of Qt libraries can be found here. We didn't test it since the 4.6.2 version works fine.
Extract the file you just downloaded:
host$ tar -xvzf <DownloadFileName>
You need to create a new make.conf. Run the following line to make a new mkspecs directory for the BeagleBoard Processor.
host$ cp -R <DownloadDirectory>/mkspecs/qws/linux-arm-g++/ <DownloadDirectory>/mkspecs/qws/linux-DM3730-g++/
Edit the qmake.conf file found in <DownloadDirectory>/mkspecs/qws/linux-DM3730-g++/ and overwrite it with the following lines.
# # qmake configuration for building with arm-linux-g++ # include(../../common/g++.conf) include(../../common/linux.conf) include(../../common/qws.conf) # modifications to g++.conf #Toolchain #Compiler Flags to take advantage of the ARM architecture QMAKE_CFLAGS_RELEASE = -O3 -march=armv7-a -mtune=cortex-a8 -mfpu=neon -mfloat-abi=softfp QMAKE_CXXFLAGS_RELEASE = -O3 -march=armv7-a -mtune=cortex-a8 -mfpu=neon -mfloat-abi=softfp QMAKE_CC = /usr/local/angstrom/arm/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/bin/gcc QMAKE_CXX = /usr/local/angstrom/arm/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/bin/g++ QMAKE_LINK = /usr/local/angstrom/arm/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/bin/g++ QMAKE_LINK_SHLIB = /usr/local/angstrom/arm/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/bin/g++ # modifications to linux.conf QMAKE_AR = /usr/local/angstrom/arm/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/bin/ar cqs QMAKE_OBJCOPY = /usr/local/angstrom/arm/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/bin/objcopy QMAKE_STRIP = /usr/local/angstrom/arm/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/bin/strip load(qt_config)
Now run the configure command (see this website for more details if needed):
host$ cd <DownloadDirectory>
For 32-bit Ubuntu:
host$ ./configure -opensource -confirm-license -prefix /opt/qt-arm -no-qt3support -embedded arm -little-endian -xplatform qws/linux-DM3730-g++ -qtlibinfix E
For 64-bit Ubuntu:
host$ ./configure -opensource -confirm-license -prefix /opt/qt-arm -no-qt3support -embedded arm -little-endian -platform qws/linux-x86_64-g++ -xplatform qws/linux-DM3730-g++ -qtlibinfix E
Once this is complete you can run make and make install (make may take some hours):
host$ make host$ sudo make install
3) Install and set up Qt Creator:
Go to http://qt-project.org/downloads to download Qt. Get the latest version of Qt for Linux/X11; be sure to get the appropriate 32bit or 64bit version. Once downloaded go to the download directory and execute the following using your download file name:
host$ chmod u+x <QtCreator.bin> host$ ./<QtCreator.bin>
Update:The free version Qt Creator can not be used in this project since it doesn't have cross-compile option with it.
After Qt Creator is successfully installed, start Qt Creator. Go to: Tools > Options > Build & Run > Tool Chains, select Add -> GCC and insert the full compiler path below:
Then go to: Tools > Options > Build & Run > Qt Versions, select Add and provide the following full path to qmake
Press Apply and OK.
4. Setting up the BeagleBoard-xM
All of the Qt files that you need to move to the BeagleBoard can be found in the /opt/qt-arm/lib directory on your Linux Build System. Copy all the files out of your build system's /opt/qt-arm/lib directory and put those into the BeagleBoard-xM's /opt/qt-arm/lib directory. You can get the files to the Beagleboard by either networking, using a usb drive or plug the SD card into your Linux Build System.
User Instructions
Building and running samples
To build QtTracking Sample:
1. Start Qt Creator.
2. Go to: File > Open File or Project, select the QtTracking-SDK.pro project (from Beckon-SDK-{version}/samples/QtTracking) and click Open. Select Embedded Linux instead of Desktop.
3. Click Finish.
4. Go to Projects tab (on the left), In Qt version select Qt [4.x.x (qt-arm)]/.
5. Run Build -> Build Project command.
The result executable can be found in the Beckon-SDK-{version}/bin directory.
To run the QtTracking Sample:
1. Mount or copy the bin directory to the BeagleBoard.
Note: Run the reset.sh script inside the "bin" folder of the SDK before each sample run, to reset the DSP.
Run the following:
beagle$ ./QtTracking-SDK –qws
Note: Developer's guide has more instructions on running the sample
The Snake Game
The Snake Game can be downloaded from https://github.com/Astroricks/Snake-Game-with-Kinect-on-BeagleBoard-xM. To play with it you should copy the folder to the root directory of SD card. Since what we did is combining the Snake Game source code into the Tracking Sample, running this application would be the same way as running the samples.
We suggest playing with the following command:
beagle$ cd Tracking_Sanke/bin/ beagle$ ./QtTracking-SDK –qws -upper
When the application is running, we suggest pressing the "setting" button first to enable the wall-cross mode, which could make it not so easily "game over". To start the game, you need to press Up Arrow(or Arrows of other directions) on the keyboard. And the player would get a better playing experience if he/she stands in front of the Kinect with a distance of about 1.5m - 2m. The player should control the snake with his right hand moving up and down, left and right.
Our project is about how to use Microsoft Kinect Sensor to play snake game by the motion of you right hand(You can modify the codes to change to any part of your body if you would like to). We set a score section to record the highest score. Anybody who want to break our record are welcome(Currently the record is holding by Xinyu Cheng at 260). We've created a play demo and uploaded it to YouTube:
Play snake game with Kinect sensor on BeagleboardxM
Theory of Operation
The Main Idea
We are using the kinect as the sensor of our project. The provided algorithm of the kinect make it possible for us to get the coordinate of many joints of the body. In this case, we can judge the position and the motion of our hands or any other joints. Then, we can use the direction we get from the previous judgement to control the Greedy Snake. Our project is running with the idea.
The Technics Used
Technically, we can use QT to design our program and then cross-complie our project to the beagle-board. The Greedy Snake is an open-source QT game, and the tracking of the joint can be accomplished from modifying the Omek SDK. We have to modify both of their codes to connect the two parts together.
The Control Strategy
Judging gestures simply from the changing of coordinate is hard and may lead to mistakes commonly. To improve the playing experience, we combined two methods to guess which control direction the player wants to make.
1. Compare the current coordinate with the last time. When the date is refreshed, we can compare the current coordinate of player's right-hand withe the last time value. If the difference between the coordinates of x or y is larger than the threshold, it is reasonable to think that the player may want the snake to make a move in this direction.
2. See where the hand locates. After making a upward movement, it has a high possibility that the y coordinate locates in the up area. Similar situation appears in other movement directions. So by checking the current value of the x and y coordinates we can know which direction the player want to make move.
Only when the same direction is implied by both methods, we move the snake in this direction. It seems that this control strategy works pretty well.
Work Breakdown
Yue Zhang
- Researched how to Burn the correct Image to the Beagle Board.
- Configure the Beagle Board to control the kinect.
- Implemented the motion based algorithm which makes the application runs more smoothly.
- Programmed for the part of motion algorithm.
Xinyu Cheng
- Researched how to configure the QT programming environment.
- Accomplished the cross-compiling on QT.
- Programming for the connection between the Snake Game and the Kinect SDK.
- Designed and Implemented the coordinate based algorithm.
Xia Li
- Researched how to run the provided SDK demo.
- Speed up for the demo.
- Designed the motion based algorithm.
- Programmed to improved the accuracy and speed of the game.
Future Work
Now, our game can work pretty good and smoothly. The future work for the project will mainly about the following aspects:
- Improve the user interface, make the game looks more pretty.
- Improve the game rules, to make it more interesting.
- Improve our algorithm for the direction judgement, to make the game runs more smoothly.
- Display the motion of our hand on the window, to make the user more clear about the motion of their hands.
Conculsionly, our project works pretty good. Our Greedy Snake game runs very good and brings a lot of fun for us.
During the develop process, we met lots of difficulties, we tried to solve them one by one. The first problem we met is how to build the connection between the kinect and the game. We tried very hard to debug our program step by step, then finally found the bug and fixed it.
We can still do something more to improve our project. Like we have talked about in the "Future Work" part, we can try to improve the GUI of our game to make it looks more pretty, and improve our display inforamtion and the algorithm for the game to make it easier for users to play. So, to make the game perfect, there is still a long way to go.
Embedded Linux Class by Mark A. Yoder