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Boneheaded Bike Thieves Done In by Cyclist's GoPro Helmet
We all know GoPro cameras can provide some spectacular shots, but who knew it could be a crimefighting device?
This South African man was out for a bike ride when he was confronted by two armed men who wanted his bicycle. Little did they know his helmet had a GoPro camera on it that helped identify the thugs.
Police later apprehended the men.

subset: commoncrawl


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DETROIT (AP) - Acclaimed crime novelist Elmore Leonard is recovering at a hospital following a stroke last week.
Leonard's longtime researcher, Gregg Sutter, said Tuesday that family members are guardedly optimistic about the 87-year-old author's condition.
Leonard lives in suburban Detroit. He has written 45 Westerns, crime novels and mysteries.
Sutter says Leonard has been at work on No. 46.
Many of his books - notably "Out of Sight," "Get Shorty" and "Be Cool" - have become films. "Life of Crime," which is based on Leonard's "The Switch," is to be screened at the Toronto Film Festival next month.
Leonard was given an honorary National Book Award last year.


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In this powerful book, Warren shares the three purposes of Christmas and how they can solve your greatest needs. From the beginning, this book will touch your heart and open your mind to the rewards of accepting God's Christmas gift to us--His Son, Jesus Christ.
This is a challenging review for me to write simply because this tiny book with beautiful photography meant so much to me this year.
- It reminded me that our family's focus must be on Jesus.
- It encouraged me to give control over my life to God.
- It renewed for me the hope of God's most precious gift--my Savior.
I'm no sure I can get my husband to read it, but I feel it would make a difference in his way of thinking too. Even we Christians get so caught up in trying to manage our lives that we forget everything we do and everything we have comes from God. We scramble about trying to make things work, when all we need to do is give our lives fully to God and let Him figure it out.
Warren definitely has a beautiful gift for words. I enjoyed this book from beginning to end and look forward to reading more of his work.
Publisher: Howard Books; 1 edition (November 4, 2008)
Language: English
I borrowed this book from my local library. This review contains my honest opinions, which I have not been compensated for in any way.
I read this book for the following challenge:


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Living in a bubble
Turn on Christian radio or TV or attend church in the Western world and you will no doubt hear pastors lamenting the decline of Christian morality in society.
These pastors will probably present the need for the world to turn to Jesus Christ. Many will also speak openly against abortion, homosexual behaviour and other social ills, and lament the increasing anti-Christian legislation and the elimination of Christianity in society.
Many American pastors will suggest the following as the cause: 'It happened when prayer and the Bible were taken out of schools—when abortion was legalized—when the Ten Commandments were taken out of schools and courtrooms' … and so on.
Notice, though, that all the above relate to spiritual and moral issues. I suggest that therein lies the real problem. All these issues are really symptoms of something far greater, more sinister and far-reaching than most imagine. In fact, the church, not the world, is ultimately responsible for destroying the very spiritual/moral aspect of the culture that they now recognize is in tatters.
The church is desperately trying to retain and rebuild the spiritual and moral aspects of Christianity, but it really is a lost cause—unless the church recognizes the fact that the Christian message no longer has a 'physical reality' to connect to. I mean, simply, that the church, by and large, has disconnected the Bible from the reality of history, which is foundational to the moral and spiritual matters they so desperately want the world to accept.
Ever since the Garden of Eden, there has been a battle over the authority of the Word of God. Paul warns us in 2 Corinthians 11:3, 'But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.'
In other words, the devil is going to try to do today what he did to Eve (and Adam), getting them to doubt the clear Word of God. He asked them, in essence, 'Did God really say that?' (Genesis 3:1).
Through the ages, different methods have been used by the devil to cause people to doubt God's Word.
Unfortunately, most in the church have been blinded to Satan's particular methodology in the modern era; in effect, they have even helped the Evil One undermine the authority of the Word of God.
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the idea of long time periods for forming the fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers was becoming popular. This, in essence, is where the idea of millions of years for the age of the earth really developed, and is the key to understanding Satan's strategy today. Sadly, many church leaders have succumbed to the idea of 'millions of years', and thus have reinterpreted the Bible to fit these eons of time into the biblical text. The Days of Creation were thus reinterpreted to mean long periods of time. And the Flood of Noah's day was relegated to being just a local event; the Bible's geology was replaced with secular geological history.
When Darwinian evolution became popular, many church leaders then replaced the Bible's biology (the creation of distinct 'kinds') with secular biological evolutionary ideas. Then the Bible's anthropology (the creation of the first man from dust and first woman from his rib) was replaced by secular anthropology: man descended from some ape-like ancestor. Eventually, the Bible's astronomy was replaced by secular cosmology such as the 'big bang' idea, and so on.
The church, by and large, progressively gave up the literal history in Genesis and began to capitulate to secular history. As they did, church leaders still wanted to cling to the spiritual and moral aspects of Christianity. So, for the most part, the church held to these (e.g. the message of Christ and the Gospel, Christian morality, etc.), while also teaching its congregations (and the world) that the secular history of the universe could be embraced—so long as God was still somehow involved.
For a while, this seemed to work. But the church's disconnecting of the spiritual and moral aspects of Christianity from biblical history (which involves geology, biology, etc.) had two major consequences:
A 'door' was unlocked, something that told the church and the world that the Bible's history in Genesis was not important, and that it could be reinterpreted on the basis of secular history. Future generations progressively pushed that 'door' open more and more, resulting in a growing lack of trust in God's Word.
The world that had been influenced by Christian morality began to recognize that if the Bible could not be trusted in its history, then it made little sense to trust it as an absolute authority in regard to spiritual and moral things. Thus, the world began to abandon Christian morality, and built a different worldview more consistent with the secular history.
The following series of diagrams illustrates this sequence of events:
A. The Bible is not just a book about salvation and morality; it is a book of history. This history encompasses biology, geology, anthropology, astronomy, etc. The Bible is not a science textbook as such (these change every year, after all!), but it does reveal the true history of the universe, enabling us to build the big picture of history in regard to biology, geology, etc., so the evidence of the present can be correctly interpreted.
It is this history, represented as a frame around the Bible, that in fact is foundational to the spiritual and moral aspects of Christianity—holding all of these things together.
B. Everything that the Bible teaches (including all those great accounts of biblical history we are familiar with—Daniel, Noah's Flood, the Gospel, etc.—is connected to this history (and its science). Noah's Flood, for instance, connects to geology, biology and anthropology.
C. Most of the church, however, teaches biblical history as just a group of 'Bible stories' disconnected from this history—i.e. outside the frame. For instance, Sunday school teachers would say they don't teach geology, biology, etc. in Sunday school, as, in their view, these subjects should be taught in school, not church.
Most students (as well as adults) growing up in church look on it as just teaching spiritual and moral things as part of biblical history, but not dealing with geology, anthropology, etc.
But the majority of students from church homes attend government-run schools where they are taught a history (involving geology, biology, anthropology, astronomy, etc.) that blatantly contradicts biblical history. What is the consequence?
Research indicates that around 70% of teenagers involved in church youth groups will walk away from the church once they leave school, or shortly after.1
Generations of church-going students, once indoctrinated to believe the world's history concerning geology, biology, etc., have become more consistent in realizing that if the Bible's history cannot be trusted, then, ultimately, neither can the message of salvation nor morality that is based in biblical history.
When the church began to adopt the world's geology back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a 'bubble' began to form around the church. This 'bubble' represents the disconnect between the Bible and its history, which history is what holds everything together.
If the Bible's geology (e.g. a global Flood, and that dead things could not have existed before sin, thus there was no fossilization of animals and man before sin, etc.) is replaced with the secular view of millions of years of death before man, then this is disconnecting the Bible's 'spiritual things' (including the message of the gospel) from the physical history that is foundational to it. If the Bible can't be trusted in geology, this unlocks that 'door' to question other parts of the Bible. Thus, the Bible can't be authoritative or absolute, and fallible man can use his ideas from outside the Bible to reinterpret God's Word. This 'cancer' has permeated the church and society, with the result that the world is increasingly rejecting Christian morality and salvation.
D. Progressively, this same sort of slide occurred with anthropology, astronomy, biology—in fact all areas of reality.
In our modern time, the church now is represented as totally enclosed in a bubble. The church has adopted/sanctioned the secular accounts of history, but still tries to cling to the spiritual and moral aspects of Christianity.
But this bubble, with its morality and message of salvation, cannot exist inside this secular framework—it is the wrong basis.
E. Thus, the true situation is that the church in its bubble is really outside this framework of secular history, teaching these Bible stories as disconnected from real history.
Now all those who are inside the secular framework of history have begun (consciously or unconsciously) to conclude that what the church teaches must be just opinions or stories—not absolute truth, as none of it is ultimately connected to real history.
F. Those inside the secular framework begin to construct a worldview that is now consistent with this secular history. If you believe man is just an animal, then that affects your view of abortion. If Genesis is not literal history, then marriage could be defined any way you wanted to—two men or two women.
Even for those in Sunday school, church youth groups, etc., if they have been told that you can reinterpret the Bible's history on the basis of man's theories, then surely you can also do this with morality. Why stop at the physical world? Why not reinterpret the moral world also?
Thus, in the world (and even the church), there begins to be a rise in the acceptance of abortion, homosexual behaviour, adultery, etc.
G. Now the church (particularly its older generation) is looking at the world and is horrified at the increasing immorality and rejection of Christianity.
The church, from its 'bubble', battles the world in opposing social ills, and just tells the world to 'trust in Jesus'. But as much as the church tries, it is losing the culture, because it lost the 'war' a long time ago.
Because the church gave up the real history of the world and yielded it to the secular, it lost the foundation for the spiritual and moral things it has tried to cling to.
This is why, as you sit in most churches, turn on Christian TV or radio, you will find most Bible teaching is within this 'bubble'. Most in the church do not understand that we need to re-establish the teaching of geology, biology, anthropology, etc. (from a big picture perspective—not necessarily the technical details) in Sunday schools, youth meetings and, most of all, from the pulpit.
Until the church understands that it needs to regain and defend its true history, and reconnect the Bible's spiritual and moral things to this history, we will continue to be shocked by how fast the church continues to lose its influence.
As Jesus said in John 3:12, 'If I have told you earthly things, and you believe not, how shall you believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?'
- Pinckney, T.C., We are losing our children! <www.nehemiahinstitute.com/articles/index.php?action=show&id=8>, 19 March 2003. Return to text.


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Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - The arrest of a Kansas man accused of trying to bring what he thought was a car bomb into a Wichita airport marked the culmination of a months-long undercover sting in what has become a successful and widely used domestic counterterrorism tactic.
Court documents detail Terry Lee Loewen's alleged conversations with undercover FBI agents over six months. The discussions began with vague sentiments about his desire to commit "violent jihad" against the U.S. before turning into a detailed, concrete plot in which the agents recruited him to use his airport access to plant a bomb in a martyrdom operation.
Loewen, a 58-year-old avionics technician who worked at the airport for Hawker Beechcraft, was arrested Friday on charges including providing support to al-Qaida and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He remains jailed, and prosecutors expect to take their case to a grand jury Wednesday.
The case resembles a string of investigations conducted by the FBI since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that have prompted controversy over whether law enforcement's tactics involve entrapment and violate civil liberties.
One such case involved an undercover agent pretending to be a terrorist who provided a teenager with a phony car bomb, then watched him plant it in downtown Chicago. In Boston, a man was sentenced to 17 years in prison for plotting with undercover agents to fly remote-controlled planes packed with explosives into the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.
The FBI insists the stings are a vital, legal tool for averting potentially deadly terrorist attacks _ and juries have returned tough sentences.
Dan Monnat, a prominent Kansas defense attorney who isn't representing Loewen, said the 21-page criminal complaint against Loewen doesn't contain enough information to find his guilt or evidence of FBI entrapment. But he questioned the FBI's tactics.
"If the fragile mental state of an otherwise upstanding individual is exploited to commit a crime that the individual otherwise would not have taken steps to commit, how does that make us safe and why spend taxpayer money on prosecution?" Monnat said Saturday.
"If that is what happened here, we have to ask ourselves: Is grooming terrorists the best use of our taxpayer money for security? If the person otherwise would never have taken further steps in furtherance of terrorism, what is the point?"
But entrapment defenses have failed in various cases. In a 2009 case in New York, a federal judge said she was not proud of the government's role in nurturing an alleged conspiracy in which four men were convicted in a plot to bomb synagogues and shoot down military planes with missiles. The men were each sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In an unsuccessful appeal, the defense argued the men were harmless dupes led astray by an FBI informant who infiltrated a mosque. With the encouragement of the informant, one of the men hatched the scheme to blow up the synagogues in the Bronx and to shoot down military cargo planes with missiles.
The appeals court found the government's tactics didn't rise to the level of "outrageous misconduct."
Court documents don't specify what initially led investigators to Loewen, though he allegedly told an undercover agent during one online exchange: "hey I read Inspire magazine; I believe in staying informed." Inspire, an English-language online magazine, is produced by al-Qaida affiliates. It includes such things as bomb-making instructions and endorsements of lone-wolf terror attacks.
He also allegedly told the undercover agent he'd downloaded tens of thousands of pages about jihad, martyrdom operations and Sharia law, and printed out an al-Qaida manual _ online activity that often draws law enforcement's attention.
U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom declined to discuss the case Saturday. But in May, he told students during an event at Wichita State University that authorities monitor extremists groups' websites, including Inspire magazine.
"Do not go to this website," Grissom said. "You will be on our list."
In Loewen's case, court documents paint an undercover operation in which Loewen and two FBI agents posing as conspirators ultimately hatched a plot to place a vehicle full of explosives at the Wichita airport. He allegedly timed it to cause "maximum carnage" and death, according to an FBI affidavit.
In early October, one undercover agent told Loewen he'd just returned from overseas after meeting with individuals connected with al-Qaida, and that the "brothers" were excited to hear about his access to the airport. When the agent asked if he'd be willing to plant a bomb, Loewen allegedly told him the plans were "like a dream come true for me, and I never expect things this good to occur in my life."
Over the coming months, he allegedly conspired with the agents. Loewen, who once claimed to know nothing about explosives, assisted an undercover agent assemble a bomb _ but with inert explosives _ using components he took from his employer. Two days later, an undercover agent picked Loewen up at a local hotel, went to another location to get the fake bomb and drove to Wichita Mid-Continent Airport.
Loewen was arrested early Friday as he twice tried to use his badge to gain entry to the tarmac.
In a letter dated Wednesday that prosecutors say Loewen left for a family member, Loewen said he expected to be martyred for Allah by the time the letter was read. He wrote that his only explanation was that he believed in jihad for the sake of Allah and his Muslim brothers and sisters, though he said most Muslims in the U.S. would condemn him.
"I expect to be called a terrorist (which I am), a psychopath, and a homicidal maniac," the letter said.
The Wichita Eagle newspaper, citing police, reported Saturday that Loewen has had at least one brush with the law, a concealed-carry violation at the airport in 2009.
Loewen has been described by a relative and a neighbor as a good person who largely kept to himself. His wife attended his initial court appearance Friday but refused to talk with reporters, as did his attorney.
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


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Mass of Bishop Guimarães, C.SS.R.
As part of the celebrations of tenth anniversary of the Episcopal consecration of Bishop Rifan, Bishop Fernando José Monteiro Guimarães, C.SS.R. visited the Apostolic Administration of St John Mary Vianney. Bishop
Guimarães, C.SS.R. is the bishop of Garanhuns in Brazil. While on his visit he celebrated Holy Mass in the Traditional Right at the Church of the traditional Redemptoristines in Sao Fidelis.
Preparing for Mass
The prayers at the foot of the altar. These photos are taken from behind the Nuns' grill.
Lavabo inter innocentes manus meas
I will wash my hands among the innocent
Holy Communion.


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Hialeah ( HY-ə-LEE-ə; American Spanish: [haʝaˈli.a]) is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. With a population of 223,109 as of the 2020 census, Hialeah is the sixth-largest city in Florida. It is the second largest city by population in the Miami metropolitan area, which was home to an estimated 6,198,782 people at the 2018 census. It is located west-northwest of Miami, and is one of a few places in the county—others being Homestead, Miami Beach, Surfside, Bal Harbour, Sunny Isles Beach, and Golden Beach—to have its own street grid numbered separately from the rest of the county (which is otherwise based on Miami Avenue at Flagler Street in Downtown Miami, the county seat). The city is notable for its high Hispanic proportion, which at 94.0%, is the second-highest proportion of Hispanic Americans out of any community in the United States outside of Puerto Rico, and the highest proportion among incorporated communities outside of Puerto Rico.
Allapattah, Allapattah Neighborhood Association, Beverly Terrace, Biscayne Neighborhoods Association, Blanche Morton City Of Hialeah Neighborhood Service Center, Bonterra Homeowners Association, Bright Park, Bucky Dent Park, Carol City, City of Miami Neighborhood Enhancement Team (NET) Administration, Coral Gate, Country Lake Manors Community Association (ASPEN), Country Lake Park, Dade County Human Services Department, Downtown Miami


text: American authorities are examining whether the leader of a post-revolution terror network in Egypt played a role in the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the investigation. Muhamed Jamal Abu Ahmed has been detained by Egyptian authorities; however, the FBI has not yet had access to him, the official said. Asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the case, the official says Abu Ahmed came to authorities' attention after the attack and has remained there for "a long time." The source would not comment on what led to Abu Ahmed or on any possible intelligence shared between the United States and Egypt, but an Egyptian security official told CNN there was cooperation between U.S. government officials and Egyptian security authorities. Abu Ahmed, a well-known jihadist, was released from jail after the downfall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He's believed to be the driving force behind a new terror group seeking to align with al Qaeda, the two officials said. He was arrested by security forces in the province of Sharkia two weeks ago in a house rented under a different name, according to an Egyptian security official. He had two machine guns, ammunition and a laptop. His temporary detention has been extended to 15 days for further investigation. He admitted that he had traveled to Libya several times during the revolution there and joined the resistance but denied any connection to the attack on the consulate or affiliation with al Qaeda, the Egyptian official said. Egyptian intelligence officers believe he has an affiliation with a terrorist cell in Cairo's upper-class Nasr City, where five suspected terrorists were captured after a fierce gun battle with security forces in October. The cell became known as the Nasr City cell. Explosive belts, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, hand grenades, rockets and ammunition were found in the flat when the five suspects were arrested. The cell is accused of planning to blow up government buildings, the Interior Ministry and embassies and to assassinate high-profile political figures, according to their statements to authorities and information retrieved from their laptops. They are also accused of unspecified connections to the Benghazi embassy attack. Muhamed Jamal Abu Ahmed and the five suspects will face trial in a security court soon. Abu Ahmed, 45, who holds a master's degree in sharia law, was imprisoned during the Mubarak era on charges of "conspiring to topple the regime," but was not convicted. He was released from prison after uprisings began on January 25, 2011, and eventually toppled Mubarak. He speaks English, stands about 5-foot-7 and maintains a thick beard. But the U.S. government suspects he may have led a terrorist ring in Libya and provided training and funding for them before ordering them to attack the U.S. Consulate. He denies such charges and claims he was fighting alongside the rebels in Libya. Most of the weapons retrieved in the Nasr City flat are not new in Egypt, but the rockets and explosive belts alarmed the security officials. An influx of weapons arrived mainly from Libya and Sudan during the security vacuum that followed the uprising. Meantime, another possible suspect, Tunisian Ali Ani al Harzi, remains detained in Tunisia. He was picked up in Turkey following the attack on the U.S. Consulate. After weeks of attempting to gain access to al Harzi, the FBI finally met with him in the presence of Tunisian authorities. However, al Harzi refused to talk with American investigators, according to the U.S. official.


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I have a newish 3 storey townhouse (3 years old) which has suddenly developed a serious damp problem in the ground floor utility room. Last two weeks brown staining like a cut tree trunk (layered) to about 2 feet off the floor and i can put my thumb through the skirting board which feels like putty.
Had 2 seperate damp proofing companies and one plumber in to check it out and they say there is most likely a leak in the plumbing due to cheap materials and also that the actual brickwork/flooring has not been damp proofed properly by the builders and all are willing to provide written reports to that effect. This house built buy one of the largest home building companies in the midlands.
Builders warranty lasts 2 years so expired last year and NHBC don't want to know either as it's internal and not a load bearing wall, ground drainage etc.....
Have an appointment with the builders next week to discuss.
Do i have any rights to get them to fix it or provide part payment towards it for improper building in the first place.
Don't really want to get the solicitors involved as it will cost more than getting it fixed in the first place.


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In the aftermath of President Obama's tenth pivot to jobs and economic growth in less than five years, liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank suggests that Obama is out of "fresh ideas" and that his current message is a "turkey" and a tired "rerun."
by Dana Milbank
"I don't normally do this," President Obama's senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer wrote in the subject line of an e-mail blast to reporters Sunday night.
This was tantalizing. What would this top White House official be doing? Singing karaoke on the North Lawn? Getting a "POTUS" tattoo on his arm?
Reality was rather more prosaic. Pfeiffer was announcing the rollout of a series of economic speeches Obama would begin on Wednesday — roughly the 10th time the White House has made such a pivot to refocus on jobs and growth. What would set this one apart is that Obama would be reprising a speech he made eight years ago, when he first became a senator; Pfeiffer included a link to clips from that speech, set in part to mood music from the Canadian electronica group Kidstreet, the same music used in an Apple ad last year.
But even a reincarnated Steve Jobs would have trouble marketing this turkey: How can the president make news, and remake the agenda, by delivering the same message he gave in 2005? He's even giving the speech from the same place, Galesburg, Ill.
White House officials say this will show Obama's consistency. "We plead guilty to the charge that there is a thematic continuity that exists between the speech the president will give in Galesburg, at Knox College on Wednesday, and his speech in Osawatomie [Kansas, in 2011] and his speech back at Knox College in 2005," White House press secretary Jay Carney said.
Yes, but this also risks sending the signal that, just six months into his second term, Obama is fresh out of ideas. There's little hope of getting Congress to act on major initiatives and little appetite in the White House to fight for bold new legislation that is likely to fail. And so the president, it seems, is going into reruns.
In fairness, the 2005 speech was on the timeless theme of the need for education, training, regulations and tax changes to preserve the middle class. "The true test of the American ideal," he said then, is "whether we build a community where, at the very least, everyone has a chance to work hard, get ahead and reach their dreams."
That message was so good he repeated it in 2011 in Kansas, where he said, "This country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules."
But while that message remains relevant, Obama is now facing a Republican opposition that, by House Speaker John Boehner's own account, is measuring its success by how many laws it can undo. There's no longer serious talk about a grand bargain that could reform entitlement programs and the tax code. Legislators and administration officials have little hope of doing more than short-term skirmishing over the debt ceiling and mindless spending cuts in the "sequester."
If he's to break through the resistance, Obama will need some bold new proposals. That's why his speech returning to the oldies would seem to confirm that the White House has given up on big achievements.
To build interest in the new series of speeches, the White House scheduled an invitation-only briefing (RSVP required) for Monday, then set cloak-and-dagger ground rules requiring that the briefers not be quoted, even anonymously. Reporters protested, but they needn't have worried: The official who gave the briefing made clear that there would be no new policies announced, at least not major ones and not initially.
Pfeiffer told me Tuesday that the president, in his series of speeches, will eventually get around to ideas about "some things Congress could do, things they should do but probably won't in the near term, and executive actions the president can take himself."
I admire Pfeiffer's pluck in trying to generate enthusiasm for what is largely a news-free initiative. And it's smart politics for Obama to keep his emphasis on economic matters. But it would be easier to rally enthusiasm if he gave supporters something big, bold and new to reach for, rather than leftover proposals coupled with lofty ideals.
"It will be a pretty good speech," Obama told activists this week at a gathering of Organizing for America, an outgrowth of his campaign. "But as we've learned, I've given some pretty good speeches before, and then things still get stuck here in Washington, which is why I'm going to need your help."
True, but with three years to go in his presidency, Obama needs to help his supporters help him — by giving them the power of fresh ideas.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Dana Milbank is a liberal columnist for the Washington Post.


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Nominations Sought for 2014 IEEE/SEI Watts S. Humphrey Software Process Achievement Award
• Article
October 1, 2013—Nominations are now open for the 2014 IEEE/SEI Watts S. Humphrey Software Process (SPA) Award. Since 1994, the SEI and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society have cosponsored the SPA Award. This award recognizes outstanding achievements in improving an organization's ability to create and evolve high-quality software-dependent systems. It is based on achievement and not necessarily made every year, and multiple awards may be made in a year.
The SPA Award competition is open to all software professionals who participate in software development, support, or management, and are employed by and participate in the software work of an organization that produces, supports, enhances, or otherwise provides software-intensive products or services.
Achievements recognized by the SPA Award can be the result of any type of process-improvement activity. They need not have been based on a specific framework, model, or body of software engineering principles, practices, techniques, or methods.
The SPA Award may be presented to an individual, group, or team. Nominees are most often employees of an organization that produces, supports, enhances or provides software-dependent systems. However, the nominee's work may have been undertaken in other contexts. The nominee's organization may be for-profit, not-for-profit or non-profit;may be industrial, academic, government organizations or foundations;and need not be based in the United States.
The SPA award is named for Watts S. Humphrey, known as the "Father of Software Quality." Humphrey, following a long career with IBM, served at the SEI from 1986 until his death in 2010. He dedicated the majority of his career to addressing problems in software development including schedule delays, cost increases, performance problems, and defects. During Humphrey's tenure at the SEI, he and his team identified characteristics of best practices in software engineering that began to lay the groundwork for what would eventually become the Software Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and, eventually, CMMI. In 2005, Humphrey received the National Medal of Technology for his work in software engineering.
"We have found by applying to software the principles that made the industrial revolution possible, software engineering teams can achieve improvements in quality, predictability, and productivity that exceed our wildest dreams." –Watts S. Humphrey
"Past winners have compelling stories that show not only how their process improvement activities have increased their ability to deliver better quality software on time and within budget," said John Goodenough, SEI fellow and longtime member of the SPA Awards Committee. "They also demonstrate how they are sustaining the introduction of disciplined software engineering practices throughout their organization."
In many cases, Goodenough explained, the winners are organizations that have grown significantly over several years. As a consequence, their approaches to instilling a disciplined engineering culture are often instructive in terms of the costs incurred, the benefits obtained, and the overall effectiveness of their indoctrination strategies. "Winners are not just highly effective software engineering organizations today;they have structures and practices in place to insure that this effectiveness is maintained and improved in future years. They are committed to continuous improvement, and as award winners, they show why this commitment pays off in business success."
Award winners will receive an engraved plaque commemorating their achievement. Presentation of the award will be made at a practitioner and researcher community event at which the winner will be invited to keynote. Award recipients will also produce an SEI technical report describing their accomplishments, experiences, and lessons learned.
Past winners of the Watts S. Humphrey Software Process Achievement Award include
- 2009 Infosys Technologies Limited
- 2006 Productora de Software S.A. (PSL)
- 2004 IBM Global Services, Australia: Application Management Group
- 2002 Wipro: Software Process Engineering Group
- 1999 Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center: Aircraft Management Test Software & Industrial Automation Branches
- 1998 Advanced Information Services, Inc.: Development Group
- 1997 Hughes Electronics: Software Process Improvement Team
- 1995 Raytheon Company: Software Engineering Process Group, Equipment Division
- 1994 Goddard Space Flight Center: Software Engineering Laboratory
For more information about the Watts S. Humphrey Software Process Award, please visit http://www.sei.cmu.edu/process/casestudies/processawards/.
To nominate an individual or group for a Humphrey SPA Award, please visit http://www.computer.org/portal/web/awards/spa and click the Nominate link.


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Foundation helps families who lose babies to birth defects
An ornately decorated tree in the foyer of the Women's Care Center at Haywood Regional Medical Center will help families who have lost children at, or shortly after, birth because of birth defects.
Jonathan's Christmas Tree and the numerous hand-painted ornaments displayed on it were donated by Terry Thompson of Waynesville. Thompson has collected the ornaments over the past 20 years, but there were too many to put on one tree.
"I had decided to donate a tree with the ornaments to the Women's Care Center so new mothers and their families could enjoy them," said Thompson, owner of Vin Wine and Tapas Bar in Waynesville. "When I heard about the Classic Wineseller Foundation, I thought what a good way to help start the fund-raising for that effort," she said.
Classic Wineseller employees started the foundation Dec. 1 as a tribute to baby Jonathon, the son of employee Rachel Whitmire, who died shortly after birth on Dec. 1, 2006.
"I found out last September that my baby had polycystic kidney disease. I had no amniotic fluid, so my baby's only nourishment was through the umbilical cord," Whitmire said. "Knowing my baby would not live, I had to carry him full term until December."
Jonathan lived for about one hour, just long enough for his mother to say goodbye.
Four years earlier, the baby of another Wineseller server, Jenna Ray, lived only six months after birth. The entire time the baby was alive, Ray stayed at his side in the hospital.
Classic Wineseller owner Richard Miller saw the anguish and financial difficulty both women had gone through after the death of their babies. He wanted to do something that would help families in similar situations, so he helped get the Classic Wineseller Foundation started.
"All employees donate $1 every shift they work to the foundation throughout the year, which comes out of their paycheck before taxes. We also are planning to seek grants and have a benefit dinner to raise money," Miller said.
The goal is to raise at least $10,000 each year for the foundation, he said.
Employees of Classic Wineseller will oversee the foundation and will meet periodically to decide grants, he said. The money will provide assistance to families whose financial resources are limited.
"Rachel will serve as president of the foundation and my only veto will be used, for example, if I think too much money is being allocated to one application," Miller said.
The foundation members will put Jonathan's Christmas Tree up each year and will take it down and store it at the end of each Christmas season.
For inquiries about the foundation or to make a contribution, call Richard Miller at 828.452.6000 or write to The Classic Wineseller, 20 Church St., Waynesville, N.C. 28786.


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Opera Chic is back tonight from a late night passed at Conservatorio G. Verdi where she basked in the glory of Grigory Sokolov's piano recital in the white belly of that huge auditorium on via Conservatorio. The program consisted of Franz Schubert's Sonata in C minor D 958 which was played technically beyond-perfect, and suffused with tenderness and a wide range of color. The usual thirty-two minute composition (with four movements) took much longer under the careful caress of Sokolov, clocking-in at around forty. His pedal work is outstanding...his legato, his staccato, his transpositions...everything. He is appassionato in the fullest sense, and this performance quickly erased all prior memories of Barenboim's momentous (but hey, kinda sloppy and heavy-handed) recital two nights ago at La Scala.
The second half of the program was, um, okay...a selection of Aleksandr Nikolaevich Skrjabin works with only a few standouts (not at the fault of the superb Sokolov, but my own incapacity to really get into Skrjabin). One "mistake" (we use this ironically) of Sokolov was launching directly into the astounding, trompe l'oeil splendor of "Opus 9 Prelude and Nocturne for the Left Hand", which demonstrated so much of his endless talent and received so much applause, that the following four program pieces sent the entire audience into proper applause etiquette confusion, with half the auditorium tepidly applauding, and the other half shushing them during each subsequent piece. jokes on us all. Again, his presentation of the Skrjabin work for the left hand was insane, his right hand hanging idly at his side. His phrasing and mastery of mixing legato with brighter staccato and spirito was beyond words. He used the voice of his left hand to mind-bogglingly sound like two. The Sonata No. 3 Opus 23 was also a standout, leaving the remaining works (Due Poemi Opus 69, Sonata No. 10 Opus 70, and Vers la flamme Opus 72) a bit of a chore (OC wanted the delicious encore already).
Six bis were given, starting with a sweet andante Frédéric Chopin's Prelude in E Minor, and then including another Chopin waltz, Liszt, Beethoven, Brahms, which all brought standing ovations. Opera Chic is just glad she was able to catch this great pianist play live in such a beautiful city that cherishes its musicians.
btw, we found one of Jessica's 2005 Sokolov performance reviews on a Sokolov website, and we love this quote: "And although he's a big bear of a man, he can be as graceful as a ballet dancer (take the hand crossings in the Schubert) and create sounds as delicate as a hummingbird." It's a wonderful quote because it's true! He's just perfect.
Now here's a picture of some random ladies mobbing the vendor in the lobby of Conservatorio after the show for Sokolov discs vvvvvvv


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You've seen more new Strats in the last 20 years than Simon Cowell has auditioned hopeful starlets. When it comes to the guitars, however, there are no embarrassed downward glances, much less any mouth-grasping gasps at the sheer awfulness on display: Fender's 'bad' days are over.
Yet just as He Of High Trousers can spot the spark that elevates the exceptional from the mediocre, so it's obvious to any serious Strat fan that the new range of American Vintage models elevates things yet again. Here we examine the '59. Case open, olfactory and visual senses in overdrive, exactly what do we have here?
To some people (weird, unhappy people), all Strats look the same. Others (ahem) suffer nightmares about incorrectly contoured bodies, the wrong number of pickguard screws, wrong logos and - shiver - a 22nd fret.
Solace for the afflicted comes first here in the to-die-for curves and radii of the '59 body - a fine example of How It Should Be for the most elegant and ergonomic guitar design of all time. Meanwhile, if the Faded Sonic Blue finish doesn't make your heart skip a beat, well, then you're probably one of the people at the top of the previous paragraph.
The new all-nitrocellulose 'Flash Coat' lacquer from Fender is a significant step on from some nitro finishes of recent times. It still feels like lacquer, that is to say 'stickier' than modern polyurethane or polyester, but not over-soft like a lot of new Gibsons.
It's also not mirror-flat like some modern finishes, but we'll take it just as it is. Our experience is that thin, well applied nitrocellulose finishes enable classic guitars to sing better than thicker poly finishes.
The colour tint on the maple neck is minimal, too, so it doesn't look like it's been on the fake tan as it would with Fender's Classic Series instruments, leaving an unsightly, anaemic mark should you suffer a chip.
Every indication says that it's going to age gracefully, but as we've found out to our cost during the review process, this guitar does mark, chip and dent with alarming ease.
The feel, however, is pure bliss. Fender's sales sheets down the decades would indicate that, ultimately, more people like smaller neck profiles than big ones. Thus, the first and second issue American Vintage instruments (early 1980s, late 1990s) didn't feature the full girth and tapers of the true vintage necks.
Thankfully as far as we're concerned, Fender has completely reshaped the neck to better reflect the original guitar. The '59's neck is slimmer (21mm at the 1st fret, 24.4mm at the 12th) and more D in shape, altogether more 'modern' feeling than the V. We really do like the taper on it, too - the increase in thickness as you go up the neck really adds to the authentic feel.
The fingerboard edges are beautifully 'rolled'. Plenty of manufacturers do this as it simulates years of playing up and down the neck by gently sanding off the edges. If you're a fan of old guitars, it's hard to see how you wouldn't prefer this to a new square-edged 'board, and the '59 has a flat-bottomed rosewood slab.
The playing radius is vintage-style 184mm (7.25 inches), which by today's standards is very curvy. Coupled with small frets it means the eyebrows-to-the-sky moment as bigger bends choke out.
It's worth remembering that big string bends were far from the norm, certainly in the 1950s. So, raise up the action a little, put a bit more relief in the neck and now we're cooking. Some people can't deal with it. Others - SRV, Mike Stern, Matt Schofield - insist(ed) on setting up their guitars like this.
It might seem like yet another tiny detail, but this guitar has a proper bone nut, too. In our opinion, all these details add up visually and tonally.
For instance, The first three-ply pickguards at the end of the 1950s used a nitrate material where the middle, black layer bled into the white layers somewhat, giving a greyish green tinge.
The '59 has a modern remake of this, with the rare 10-hole format, but it doesn't look much like an original as we know them now (probably because they're all 50-plus years old!). In any case, it all looks right here, from edge bevels and screw types, to sizes and positions. It also has a full metal shielding plate beneath the guard.
Fender has played it straight down the vintage line with the bridge, all the way down to newly tooled saddles complete with 'PAT.PEND.' stamps. Similarly, the team has taken it to the nth degree with pickups, too, by finding and analysing originals to recreate them anew and the '59 uses Alnico V magnets with Heavy Formvar wire.
Even the tone caps are new and period correct, with authentic-looking 'ZNW1P1' 0.1 microfarad 'brown phonebook' caps.
It's a moot point in the face of such efforts, but lots of players choose a lower value cap for more subtle tone changes. Fender can't really win - whatever it does, somebody will want something different!
There is a meaty fullness and depth of tone in a vintage-style Strat with all the right bits, that is pretty much non-existent in the entry-level models. Bridge pickups don't sound puny, the in-between sounds don't fall away to nothing, and so it is here.
We've tried every combination of Strat spec and materials over the years, and it seems that the thin finishes, correctly selected timbers, the right hardware and electronics genuinely do all play their small yet crucially important roles in getting that classic, big-but-clear sound. Take any one of them away, and the Strat starts sounding not necessarily worse, but different.
Relative to the other new Strats in the range, like the American Vintage '56, the '59 is sweeter sounding overall, and has a little more presence with cleaner sounds. It's more 'Stratty' in the in-between sounds, too, which is to say with a more noticeable dip in the mids for that hollow sound.
We're splitting hairs, though, because the fact is you could play anything from The Shadows, through The Beatles, Hendrix, David Gilmour, SRV and plenty more besides on any one of these guitars.
The more interesting observation is how universally grown up and convincing it sounds in any classic Strat environment, not least when compared with any number of Fender's similar looking guitars for far lower prices.
On a personal note, this writer has played an American Vintage Strat as his number-one guitar, from new, for over a decade. Having changed the pickups in that guitar, we can say we'd feel no need whatsoever to do it in with this model. And we have to concede that the neck feels better, too: grr.


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Blackburn's new owners had plenty to cheer as Morten Gamst Pedersen's brace ensured they made a winning start with a 2-0 win over Aston Villa.
Rovers, playing for the first time since being taken over by Indian company Venky's, took the lead in stoppage time at the end of the opening period at Ewood Park thanks to Pedersen's delightful looping free-kick.
The Norwegian then struck again midway through the second half to wrap up a comfortable victory for Sam Allardyce's side.
Venkateshwara and Balaji Rao, the directors of Venky's, came on to the pitch to greet Blackburn's fans before kick-off and received warm applause.
Once things got under way Rovers' players seemed eager to please the new owners as well, with Jason Roberts sending a dangerous ball into the box in the opening few minutes that was cleared away.
The home side then won a free-kick just outside the area which was laid to Christopher Samba, only for the captain to skew his effort wide.
Villa went on the attack almost immediately after, though, and Paul Robinson did well to save Stewart Downing's low drive with his feet.
The visitors went close again when Barry Bannan drilled wide and Robinson was called into action once more around the quarter-hour mark, pushing Ashley Young's shot away after the England winger had tied Michel Salgado in knots.
Blackburn regained possession and former Rovers defender Stephen Warnock made a great intervention to take the ball away from Roberts as he bore down on goal.
Gael Givet then sliced an attempt over the bar after a failed clearance by Villa.
Allardyce's team were starting to impose themselves a little more and Pedersen's dead-ball deliveries began to cause problems, Roberts meeting one free-kick but was unable to keep his header down.
El-Hadji Diouf got his header closer to the target four minutes before the break but Brad Friedel claimed it and Stephen Ireland nodded over at the other end.
Rovers then snatched the lead just before the interval through another Pedersen free-kick, the midfielder curling a strike perfectly just over Friedel and in.
Having brought on Pascal Chimbonda for Givet at half-time, Rovers found themselves almost immediately under pressure after the restart as Ashley Young had one shot palmed away by Robinson and then saw his header come back off the crossbar.
Play switched though, and Roberts lashed one wild effort high and wide before picking out Phil Jones, who beat one man but could only fire into Friedel's arms.
Pedersen unleashed another dangerous free-kick which several of his team-mates were just unable to get on the end of and then Roberts put Diouf through, but Richard Dunne did just enough to ensure Friedel could deal with the Senegalese forward's shot.
The hosts appeared to be threatening another goal and in the 66th minute it duly arrived, Pedersen again providing the finish after getting his foot to Ryan Nelsen's drive following a scramble at a corner.
Villa boss Gerard Houllier responded by bringing on Robert Pires in place of Ireland, the French veteran making his first Premier League appearance since 2006.
Diouf had a chance to make it 3-0 but headed over and Robinson did well again to deny Downing.
Nathan Delfouneso then came on for the ineffective Gabriel Agbonlahor, while Allardyce withdrew Pedersen, sending on Herold Goulon for his debut.
Delfouneso was unable to get any direction on a header soon after and Ashley Young protested that Jones had handled in the box.
His appeal was waved away by referee Michael Oliver, though, and Rovers hung on to secure the three points.


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Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear Solid, is not only working on a new game, he's also working on a new game engine. Oh, and he's also hiring up for the "next" Metal Gear. Busy guy!
But Kojima's also been nice enough to provide a peek into what's going on at his studio, Kojima Productions.
Above is motion capture test work, using a new, presumably, in-house system. It's really hard to tell if this motion capture is good or bad. Previously, Kojima has showed more detailed images from its new game engine, which might probably give a better ballpark idea of what to expect.
Then again, these latest motion capture images look pretty raw, so the final result will probably be much better. They're just test images. And, as I previously mentioned, it's cool that Kojima is being so open about what he's working on.
That being said, I look at this. And then I look at that recent Kara tech demo from French developer Quantic Dream. And then I look at this, and then I look again at the Kara tech demo. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
Yes, Metal Gear Solid 4 looked amazing — for its time. And yes, the photo real furniture Konami posted from the new game engine looks great right now. More importantly, as Kojima has stated repeatedly, he is very interested in helping Japan regain its world-class footing. He's hungry. The bar is higher and higher for when Kojima Productions shows off its next finished production, whether that is a polished tech demo or a finished game. The stakes are higher still. If anyone knows that best, it's Hideo Kojima himself.
モーキャプ新システム [@Kojima_Hideo]


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The Awe Delusion
What does the magnificence of the universe
have to do with God?
After 64-year-old Diana Nyad completed her 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida in September 2013, she was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey on her Super Soul Sunday show in what was to be a motivational reflection on the triumph of will over age. When Nyad announced, "I'm an atheist," Oprah responded quizzically: "But you're in the awe." Puzzled, Nyad responded: "I don't understand why anybody would find a contradiction in that. I can stand at the beach's edge with the most devout Christian, Jew, Buddhist—go on down the line—and weep with the beauty of this universe and be moved by all of humanity. All the billions of people who have lived before us, who have loved and hurt and suffered. So to me, my definition of God is humanity and is the love of humanity." What Oprah said next inflamed atheists: "Well, I don't call you an atheist then. I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery, then that is what God is."
This is the soft bigotry of those who cannot conceive of how someone can be in awe without believing in supernatural sources of wonder. Why would anyone think that?
A partial answer may be found in a 2013 study by psychologists Piercarlo Valdesolo of Claremont McKenna College and Jesse Graham of the University of Southern California, published in the journal Psychological Science. Research had shown that "awe" is associated with "perceived vastness" (like the night sky or an open ocean) and that "awe-prone" individuals tend to be more comfortable with uncertainty and are less likely to need cognitive closure in some kind of explanation. They "are more comfortable revising existing mental schemas to assimilate novel information," the authors said in their paper. For those who are not awe-prone, Valdesolo wrote in an e-mail, "we hypothesized that the uncertainty experienced by the immediate feeling of the emotion would be aversive (since they are probably not the kinds of people who feel it all the time). This was rooted in theoretical work which argued that awe is elicited when we have trouble making sense of the event we are witnessing, and this failure to assimilate information into existing mental structures should lead to negative states like confusion and disorientation." To reduce the anxiety of awe-inspiring experiences, people who are not prone to awe engage in a process I call "agenticity," or the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents.
To test this hypothesis, Valdesolo and Graham divided subjects into three groups. One group saw a video clip of an aweinspiring scene from the BBC's Planet Earth, another watched an emotionally neutral news interview by the late 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, and the last group viewed a comedy clip from the BBC's Walk on the Wild Side. Subjects then took a survey that measured their belief in God, belief "that the universe is controlled by God or supernatural forces, such as karma," and their feeling of "awe" while watching the video clip. Subjects who saw the Planet Earth video experienced the most awe and, while in this state, greater belief in both God and supernatural control. The researchers concluded: "The present results suggest that in the moment of awe, some of the fear and trembling can be mitigated by perceiving an author's hand in the experience."
What are the larger implications of these findings? "We showed that feeling the emotion (which even low awe-prone people are capable of) elicits uncertainty and a subsequent desire to resolve that feeling by explaining events in terms of purpose-driven causal agents," Valdesolo explained. "One interesting hypothesis might be that the dispositionally awe-prone are less likely to show our effect since the uncertainty that they feel is not aversive."
This brings me back to Diana Nyad and those of us who find our spirituality in the awe of the natural world without a need for supernatural agenticity. Instead of fear and trembling, we feel wonder and gratitude in discovering that the author's hand is nature's laws and nothing more, but also nothing less.


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Latest Article|September 3, 2020|Free
::Making Grown Men Cry Since 1992
8 min read
Summer blockbuster time is long over. The fall movie doldrums are coming to an end. That can only mean one thing: The holiday movie season is about to start. For the next couple of months, Hollywood studios like 20 th Century Fox, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks will begin jamming as many computer-animated, 3D cartoons into the cineplexes as possible. At the same time, the Weinstein Company will begin its annual carpet-bombing campaign of Oscar contenders. So what will it be, moviegoers? Singing cartoon chipmunks or staid biopics about old British people?Remember: All opening dates are subject to change.
November 11 Immortals Visionary director Tarsem Singh ( The Cell, The Fall ) turns his attentions to Greek mythology and does it up 300 -style. In 3D! J. Edgar Leonardo DiCaprio hooks up with director Clint Eastwood to tackle this decades-spanning biopic about controversial FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover. Jack and Jill Adam Sandler, never one for subtlety, gives up entirely and dresses in drag to play a family guy and his annoying twin sister who's visiting for the holidays. Martha Marcy May Marlene Critics are falling all over themselves to praise Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's little sis Elizabeth for her portrayal as a naive but increasingly paranoid young woman who escapes from an abusive cult. The Skin I Live In Pedro Almodóvar ( Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Kika, All About My Mother ) turns down the camp to helm this psychosexual horror drama about a looney plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas) and his unwilling guinea pig (the flawless Elena Anaya). Take Shelter Michael Shannon ("Boardwalk Empire") stars as a farmer plagued by apocalyptic visions who questions whether to hide his family from a coming storm.
November 18 Happy Feet Two The tap-dancing, computer-animated penguins from Happy Feet return for … more tap dancing, one presumes. Like Crazy Critics can't quite decide who they love more: Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene or British newcomer Felicity Jones in this lovely, low-key romance about long-distance lovers. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1 So, um, moody high schooler Bella is finally getting married to one of the vampires. Which pisses off the werewolves. Or so I gather.
November 23 Arthur Christmas From Aardman Animations (makers of the "Wallace & Gromit" series) comes this computer-animated tale of Santa Claus' geeky young son, who tries to save Christmas for one overlooked little girl. The Artist This mostly wordless romantic comedy from France about a silent movie star who worries about the arrival of "talkies" has been the toast of this year's film festival circuit. A Dangerous Method Director David Cronenberg ( The Fly, Dead Ringers, The Brood ) deals with some slightly less bloodthirsty doctors in this biopic about the tangled, three-way relationship between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and a sexy crazy lady (Keira Knightley). The Descendants Alexander Payne ( Sideways ) directs, George Clooney stars in this tale of a Hawaiian landowner who tries to reconnect with his two daughters after his wife is sidelined by a boating accident. Hugo Martin Scorsese directing a kids' film? Why not? Based on the award-winning book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, the film spins the steampunk-inspired tale of an orphan who lives in a Parisian train station in 1930. He uncovers a mystery involving his late father, filmmaker Georges Méliès and a humanoid automaton. The Muppets Writer/star Jason Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall ) tries to breathe life back into the Muppet franchise with this classic, ensemble-style flick in which Kermit and company mount a long-overdue Hollywood comeback. My Week With Marilyn Michelle Williams ( Blue Valentine ) takes on the iconic role of Marilyn Monroe in this pic about the star's brief, tense interaction with Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) during the making of The Prince and the Showgirl . Piranha 3DD All sense of decorum is abandoned in this blood-and-boob-filled sequel to 2010's 3D monster hit. … By the way, guys, 3DD breasts would be mighty weird looking.
December 9 New Year's Eve The romantic comedy Valentine's Day made a lot of money, so producers picked another holiday and rounded up yet another massive ensemble cast (Sarah Jessica Parker, Jessica Biel, Ashton Kutcher, Robert De Niro, Katherine Heigl, Sofía Vergara, Zac Efron, Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Duhamel, Alyssa Milano, Hilary Swank. Lea Michele … I could go on). The Sitter A college kid on suspension (Jonah Hill) gets roped into babysitting the neighbor's kids, resulting in an evening far raunchier than anything in 1987's Adventures in Babysitting . Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Gary Oldman stars as John le Carré's famed spy George Smiley in this Cold War thriller about Soviet spies inside MI6.
December 16 Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked in 3D If you can't work it out from the titular pun, I'm not gonna spell it out for you. Carnage The hit stage play God of Carnage comes to the big screen with Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christopher Waltz and Kate Winslet as two sets of parents having a "cordial" meeting concerning their children's schoolyard fight. The Iron Lady Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher? Sounds like a home run. Or whatever they do to win the game in cricket. Sherlock Holmes: a Game of Shadows Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law return as Holmes and Watson in another rollicking, if not strictly historically accurate, adventure of the world's best consulting detective. Young Adult Diablo Cody (she of Juno fame) pens this comedy about a soon-to-divorce writer (Charlize Theron) who returns to her small, Minnesota hometown looking to rekindle a romance with her high school boyfriend (Patrick Wilson).
December 21 The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn Adventurous boy reporter Tintin—the famed creation of French writer/artist Hergé—comes to life as a computer-animated, motion-capture cartoon courtesy of director Steven Spielberg. There's pirate treasure! The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo The art-house exploitation hit goes Hollywood with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara ( The Social Network ) taking over the lead roles from … those Danish people whose names we can't pronounce. Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol Tom Cruise is back for more spy-fi tomfoolery. On the plus side, Jeremy Renner ( The Hurt Locker ) is being groomed to take over the franchise.
December 23 In the Land of Blood and Honey Angelina Jolie writes and directs this dark, Romeo and Juliet -style story about a Bosnian and a Serb who fall into a relationship during the Bosnian War. There's rape and torture! We Bought a Zoo Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson do just what the title says in this true-life-inspired comedy-drama from director Cameron Crowe ( Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire ).
December 25 The Darkest Hour Aliens invade. In Russia. In 3D. Why should L.A. get all the fun all the time? Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close A 9-year-old amateur inventor / jewelry designer / astrophysicist / tambourine player searches New York City for the lock that matches a mysterious key left by his father who died in the Sept. 11 attacks. Tom Hanks is the dad. You will probably cry. War Horse Steven Spielberg (who's having a busy holiday season) directs this adaptation of the sensational stage play about a young British farm lad who goes on a quest to find his pony, which was drafted into service on the front lines in World War I.
December 28 Albert Nobbs Not content to let that Meryl Streep bitch hog all the accolades for her U.K. accent, Glenn Close ties on an Irish brogue to play a 19 th -century woman who poses as a man to work as a butler in a posh Dublin hotel.


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- This event has passed.
The Poetry Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge
A Benefit for Poets House
Jun 9, 2014 | 6:00 pm
Event Navigation
Join us for this beloved Poets House tradition that celebrates the poetry of New York City. We'll parade from City Hall across the bridge, enjoying readings by Mark Doty, Thomas Lux, and Vijay Seshadri, among other renowned voices. This year, poet Naomi Shihab Nye will join us as we honor her with the Elizabeth Kray Award for dedicated service to poetry.
Poets House is also delighted to welcome Anita Norman, a Tennessee high school student and winner of the Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest–sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts–who will share her recitations.
Festive dinner at 26 Bridge Street in DUMBO to follow.
Rain Plan
The Walk will go on!
The weather forecast is spotty, but it looks likely we'll have a dry evening. Registered walkers are requested to check-in between 6:00-6:30pm at the small park south of the Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street in Manhattan. We will move forward with an abbreviated version of our Walk. We will exit the Bridge and head directly to dinner at 26 Bridge Street. We recommend you pack an umbrella or raincoat!
If you prefer to skip the Walk and would like to meet us at dinner, please arrive at 7:45pm at 26 Bridge Street.
Here are directions if you would like to go directly to the dinner venue:
By subway: Take the F line to York Street. Exiting the subway, walk downhill toward the water on Jay Street for 3 blocks, then turn right onto Plymouth Street. Walk one block on Plymouth Street, turn left onto Bridge Street.
Taxi: The cross streets are John Street and Plymouth Street. (Bridge Street is parallel with Jay Street, one block east.)
View Google Map here
All proceeds help make possible the hundreds of free and affordable public programs Poets House presents each year.
Tickets begin at $250. ($225 for Poets House Members). Reservations are required.
All proceeds benefit Poets House. To purchase tickets on-line, click here. For more information or to make reservations by phone, call (212) 431-7920×2830 or e-mail email@example.com
- Date:
- Jun 9, 2014
- Time:
6:00 pm
- Event Category:
- Poetry Walk


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Fred Wilson, internet-famous VC and principal of the well-regarded Union Square Ventures, is long Bitcoin. The investor read the article in December's issue of Wired (basically, Is Bitcoin Over?) and concluded that Bitcoin hasn't peaked, despite a streak of bad news and a depressed value–it's merely moving along the Gartner hype cycle, moving from the "trough of disillusionment" into the "slope of enlightenment." In other words: a spike of overinflated interest is followed by a drop in traction which is followed by steady, healthy growth. "The hype cycle model rings so true to me because it maps out what has happened with the commercial Internet over the past fifteen years," Mr. Wilson blogged. "In 2002/2003, so many people thought the Internet was "over" as an investment opportunity. And they were wrong."
Betabeat was not aware of Mr. Wilson or USV's interest in Bitcoin–Mr. Wilson says he's mentioned the ecurrency "a number of times" on the blog, though a search turned up none. But apparently the Flatiron VCs have been interested in Bitcoin for a while, and even considered a "Bitcoin specific investment" earlier this year. (We'd guess that would be a Bitcoin startup, of which there are many, rather than a speculative currency buy.)
"So it seems to me and my colleagues at USV that an alternative currency with roots in peer to peer networks and based on an algorithm that is transparent to everyone is an idea whose time has come," Mr. Wilson wrote. "The question remains if the Bitcoin algorithm or some other algorithm (possibly a derivative of the Bitcoin algorithm that deals with some of Bitcoin's weaknesses?) will ultimately win out. That's an important issue that has a lot to do with when this space becomes investable."
Investor interest beyond the Goldman IT techs trading on their off time would be a serious indication of Bitcoin's sustainability. Bitcoin readers: do you know of any tech investors putting money into Bitcoin?