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At 91 Stan Lee is what you might call a superhero emeritus. His epic adventures are mostly behind him and his powers are on the wane. (He can't hear or see so well, and a pacemaker regulates his heart.) But the comic-book writer who dreamed up Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Hulk, Iron Man and the Fantastic Four still works five days a week, travels wherever convention geeks gather and tops each autograph with his trademark "Excelsior!"
The son of poor Jewish immigrants from Romania, Stanley Martin Lieber (he later shortened it legally) never became the novelist he aspired to be while growing up on New York's Upper West Side. But fantasizing about radioactive arachnids, magnetic force fields and vixens such as Black Widow gave him a great living and a legacy that will outlive us all.
In 1939 Lee's uncle helped get him an assistant's job at Timely Comics, a company the boss, Martin Goodman (a relative of Lee's), later renamed Marvel. Showing early promise providing text for Captain America, Lee was installed as a Marvel editor at the age of 18, an "interim" gig he ended up keeping until 1972. For much of that time Lee plodded away in the Marvel writers' bullpen to the point of burnout. Only after his wife, Joan, a British former model, pushed him to create characters "the way you've always wanted to" did Lee's career take off.
Between 1961 and 1965, in one of pop culture's most remarkable creative bursts, Lee, working with freelance artists including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, created the key characters in what became known as the Marvel Revolution. (Kirby's estate would later sue for pieces of that action.) Superheroes were no longer two-dimensional goody-goodies but quirky, angst-ridden and flawed. The Fantastic Four bickered. The Hulk and the X-Men struggled with their alter egos. Even Spider-Man, a character who came to Lee—or so the story goes—as he observed a fly walking up a wall, was a wreck inside.
Today Lee's creations are enjoying their widest audiences ever. After declaring bankruptcy in 1996, Marvel powered back with blockbuster movies, digital entertainment and, yes, more comic books. Disney acquired the company for $4.2 billion in 2009, though, surprisingly, Lee didn't see a dime of that. By then he had formed his own company, POW! Entertainment. But he will always be Mr. Marvel.
Contributing Editor David Hochman, who last interviewed Sean Hannity, spent a couple of days with Lee at his Beverly Hills offices. "Stan has the sandpaper growl of a bygone era, but he's remarkably sharp, plugged in and quick with a comeback. We should all be as cool as Stan Lee at his age."
LEE: So Playboy wants to know all about my sex life?
PLAYBOY: If that's where you would like to begin.
LEE: It's interesting. Years and years ago the magazine was considering doing one of these interviews with me, but I guess it wasn't the time. One of your editors said, "We know Stan Lee. We love Stan Lee. Stan Lee is a friend of Hef's. But Spider-Man is more famous than Stan is." Does this mean I'm finally bigger than Spider-Man?
PLAYBOY: The case can certainly be made. The characters you created decades ago dominate pop culture. Iron Man 3 was the highest-grossing film in 2013. Marvel's The Avengers was 2012's biggest. X-Men: Days of Future Past could easily rule 2014. Not to mention TV, publishing, merchandising and gaming. How do you account for the continued success of these vintage superheroes?
LEE: It's because I wrote them so magnificently, don't you think? Actually, I have a theory. May we become philosophical?
PLAYBOY: Please.
LEE: It's an extension of the fairy tales we read as kids. Or the monster stories or stories about witches and sorcerers. You get a little older and you can't bother with fairy tales and monster stories anymore, but I don't think you ever outgrow your love for things that are fantastic, that are bigger than you are—the giants or the creatures from other planets or people with superpowers who can do things you can't.
The added appeal of so many of these characters is that they were extraordinary but ordinary at the same time. That made them relatable. The Fantastic Four had unusual powers, but they were also a kind of family with foibles. Mr. Fantastic, for instance, could be a real bore. And Spider-Man was like a lot of teenage boys—confused, troubled. He had problems trying to make his way in the world and coping with being a superhero. The Thing and the Hulk were disoriented monsters—monstrous freaks, as it were—which gave them a certain amount of pathos. The X-Men were magnificent misfits. Then you had Daredevil, who was blind but could do things better than most sighted people. I did not create Captain America, but I attempted to make him more than just a strongman who fought the bad guys. I tried to give him a personality and his own fears and hang-ups and frustrations. Or how about Doctor Strange? I love that guy, a surgeon whose hands get shattered in an accident. He has to struggle to find his way and eventually learns magic in the ancient mystical tradition. He becomes the most powerful magician the cosmos has ever known. They haven't made a Doctor Strange movie yet, but they will.
So you see, comic books to me are fairy tales for grown-ups. Iron Man, the Avengers, Spider-Man and all the rest are popular for the same reason "Jack and the Beanstalk" is still popular after a million years. They're good stories about characters that are like us but also larger than us. That's the end of my philosophy lesson. It should be carved in stone.
PLAYBOY: From a creative standpoint, what were you experiencing during that intense period from 1961 to 1965 when you wrote The Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spider-Man,The Avengers—which included the characters Thor, the Hulk, Iron Man and Loki—Daredevil and The X-Men, among others?
LEE: To be honest, I could have done it earlier; I could have done it later. It was only because my boss asked me to do it. For instance, after I had done Fantastic Four, Martin, my publisher, said, "Give me another bunch of heroes." He also wasn't thrilled that our competition, DC Comics, had the Justice League. So I did what I knew how to do. I created another group of characters.
First I had to come up with an origin. How does this group get their superpowers? Well, the Fantastic Four had been clobbered by cosmic rays. The Hulk was hit with gamma rays. Incidentally, I had no idea what cosmic rays or gamma rays were, but they sounded good. And they were the only rays I knew. I had run out of rays, so what the hell was I going to do for this new group? I took the cowardly way out and said they were born that way; they're mutants. In fact I called them the Mutants. Martin hated the name, so we changed it to the X-Men. At a certain point we had every variety of superhero with every possible origin tale and power.
PLAYBOY: Yet somehow they all lived in New York City.
LEE: Oh, that was convenient for me since I lived there myself. To me, these characters existed only if I could picture them around town. Tony Stark, Iron Man, for example, was very wealthy and lived in a mansion on Central Park. The Fantastic Four lived in the Baxter Building, which was farther downtown. They could then guest star in one another's books. One day I wrote a story in which Spider-Man, who lived in Forest Hills, Queens, decides he's not making enough money being a superhero and thinks maybe he'll join the Fantastic Four. There might be a buck in it for him. So he goes to the Fantastic Four headquarters and swings into the window. He says, "I want to join you guys." They say, "We're not looking for anybody." So he doesn't join them.
I had fun with all these characters because I literally knew where they lived, as well as what their personalities were. All that was left for me to do was make up the villains, which was even more fun than making up the heroes. Until I ran out of animal names, I was okay. There was the Lizard, the Scorpion, Doctor Octopus, the Vulture, the Rhino.
PLAYBOY: It sounds like fun, but the pressure must have been intense. By 1968 Marvel was putting out 50 million comic books a year.
LEE: Pressure is not the word. I was always on the precipice. If anything went wrong, I'd fall. You see, I was not only the head writer but I was also the editor. It was my responsibility to make sure the books were sent to the printer on time. If we ever missed a printing date, we had to pay for that printing time anyway, which would be thousands of dollars.
Some months we were doing 40, 50 books. And not only superheroes. You had all those other types too—My Romance, Her Romance, Their Romance. My publisher loved Westerns with the word kid in them, so I had Two-Gun Kid, Texas Kid, Rawhide Kid, every other kind of kid. In those days I was just grinding out stuff.
PLAYBOY: What's your role at Marvel today?
LEE: Mostly I'm just a pretty face they keep for the public. My entire career, I treated Marvel like one big ad campaign, with slogans like "Make mine Marvel," "Welcome to the Marvel age of comics" and so forth. After a while, I became Marvel's ambassador to the world. I've lectured in every city in the country probably two or three times. I've been to China, Europe, Japan, Australia and every place in between. Today, my main focus is my own company, POW! Entertainment, which stands for Purveyors of Wonder, and we have projects we're doing independent of Marvel. We have a television movie, another movie we're doing with partners in China, as well as one in India. We're doing a line of children's books and Stan Lee's Superhumans series on the web.
I have no standing at Marvel where I decide what projects get made or who gets hired, and certainly none at Disney, which now owns Marvel. I'm a guy they hire as a writer or producer and also to go to conventions and do things like that.
PLAYBOY: Just to be clear, you don't own any rights to the characters you created.
LEE: I never did. I was always a Marvel employee, a writer for hire and, later, part of management. My role at Marvel is strictly honorary. Marvel always owned the rights to these characters. If I owned them, I probably wouldn't be talking to you now.
PLAYBOY: Disney paid more than $4 billion for Marvel a few years ago. Did you at least get a Tony Stark–like helicopter in the deal?
LEE: I'll tell you something that just happened. My daughter was looking at the internet the other day and read that Stan Lee has an estimated $250 million. I mean, that's ridiculous! I don't have $200 million. I don't have $150 million. I don't have $100 million or anywhere near that.
PLAYBOY: Don't you think you should?
LEE: No.
PLAYBOY: George Lucas created fewer characters but could buy a country now if he wanted.
LEE: Yeah, but George Lucas did it all by himself. He came up with the ideas. He produced the movies. He wrote and directed them and held the rights to the merchandising. It was all his. In my case I worked for the publisher. If the books didn't sell, the publisher went broke—and a lot of publishers did go broke. Marvel took a gamble doing what it did. The artist and writer took a gamble hitching up with the publisher by hoping the books would sell.
You have to understand that growing up during the Depression, I saw my parents struggling to pay the rent. My father was always unemployed, and when he did have a job, he was a dress cutter. Not very much money there. I was happy enough to get a nice paycheck and be treated well. I always got the highest rate; whatever Martin paid another writer, I got at least that much. It was a very good job. I was able to buy a house on Long Island. I never dreamed I should have $100 million or $250 million or whatever that crazy number is. All I know is I created a lot of characters and enjoyed the work I did.
PLAYBOY: One of the greatest Marvel characters has been Stan Lee. You appeared in the comic strips, in a column called Stan's Soapbox and in Hitchcock-like cameos in the Marvel movies.
LEE: I even played one character modeled after Hef, in Iron Man. They were all fun to do. The one I got the biggest kick out of was probably in the Fantastic Four movie when I wasn't invited to the wedding of Sue and Reed, and they wouldn't let me in. I said, "But I'm Stan Lee," and the security guy pushes me aside.
PLAYBOY: Where does the comic-book Stan Lee end and the real you begin?
LEE: Honestly, what you see is the real me, particularly if what you see is a wonderful, adorable, interesting, exciting kind of guy. Then, boy, they've got me pegged. Please say he said that with a laugh.
PLAYBOY: Kidding aside, one issue dogs you and affects your legacy—the perception that you get too much credit for characters you created with artists such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. You have gone out of your way to acknowledge their contributions and authorship, but the controversy lingers. Can anything be done to settle the situation and do right by these guys once and for all?
LEE: I don't know what you mean by doing right by them. I always tried to show them in the most favorable light, even in the credits. There was never a time when it just said "by Stan Lee." It was always "by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko" or "by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby." I made sure their names were always as big as mine.
As far as what they were paid, I had nothing to do with that. They were hired as freelance artists, and they worked as freelance artists. At some point they apparently felt they should be getting more money. Fine, it was up to them to talk to the publisher. It had nothing to do with me. I would have liked to have gotten more money too. I never made an issue of it. I got paid per page for what I wrote, the same rate as the other writers—maybe a dollar a page more.
If you ask me, should they have been paid more? Then you have to say, shouldn't John Romita have been paid more? Shouldn't Gil Kane have been paid more? Shouldn't John Buscema have? They were all great Marvel artists. In other words, if somebody draws a strip and it becomes successful, do you go back? I don't know. That's the reason I've never been a businessman and never want to be a businessman. I don't know how to deal with those things.
PLAYBOY: You were part of Marvel management for many years.
LEE: That's true. And twice, not once, I offered a job to Jack Kirby. I said to him, "Jack, why don't you work for Marvel with me?" I was the art director at the time. I said, "You be the art director. I'll just be the editor and head writer, and you'll have that security." He wouldn't do it. He didn't want to. I would have loved him to work side by side with me. I used to marvel at the way Jack drew. He would draw something as if it had appeared in his mind and he was just tracing what he had thought of already. I never saw a man draw as quickly as Jack did. "Come work with me, Jack," I said. But he said no. He didn't want a staff job. With him, as with Ditko, I don't see where they were unfairly treated.
PLAYBOY: Kirby died in 1994. Do you remember the last time you saw him?
LEE: I'll tell you, the last thing Jack Kirby said to me was very strange. I met him at a comic-book convention right before the end. He wasn't that well. He walked over and said, "Stan, you have nothing to reproach yourself about." He knew people were saying things about me, and he wanted to let me know I hadn't done anything wrong in his eyes. I think he realized it. Then he walked away. I went to his funeral, by the way.
PLAYBOY: What was that like?
LEE: Well, it was terrible. I mean, he shouldn't have died so young. [Editor's note: Kirby died at 76.] I stayed in the back row because I didn't want anybody to see me. It was Jack's funeral. His wife, Roz, saw me. She knew I was there. Then I left, and that was it. Jack was a great guy and so is Steve. I'm sorry anybody feels there's any acrimony. I loved them both.
PLAYBOY: Steve Ditko is in his 80s now but hasn't made a public appearance in decades. Have you talked to him?
LEE: I met him maybe 10 years ago. I was at the Marvel office. We talked for a while, very friendly. I said it would be great if we could do something together again. I would have liked that. I never knew why he quit in the first place. It might have had to do with the fact that I was trying to tell him how to do the stories. With the Green Goblin we didn't know who the character really was. I wanted him to turn out to be Harry Osborn's father. Ditko said, "No, I don't want it to be. It should be somebody we don't know." So I said, "Steve, the readers have been following the series for the longest time, waiting to find out who he is. If it's somebody they've never seen they'll be frustrated." Anyway, I couldn't convince him and he certainly couldn't convince me, so that might have been what drove him away. But he never told me and we don't see each other anymore.
PLAYBOY: On another note, a company known as Stan Lee Media recently sued Disney for $5 billion, claiming it was owed the rights to your characters. This must be irritating.
LEE: It is incredibly irritating, because people think it's me. I did have a company called Stan Lee Media, but it went belly-up. The fellow running it is now in jail. It was an unfortunate situation. For some reason people have spent years and God knows how much money claiming I gave Marvel the rights to the characters. Again, I never had the rights to the characters. The whole thing is based on sand. Unfortunately, I can't get them to stop using my name.
PLAYBOY: Let's shift gears. Ben Affleck got mixed reviews a decade ago when he played Daredevil. What do you think about him being the new Batman?
LEE: I think he's terrific. Daredevil wasn't as successful as some of our other movies, but I think it wasn't written or perhaps directed as I had conceived it. The movie is darker, and they made so much of him and the church. That wasn't the Daredevil I knew. But Ben ought to do a great job as Batman. People say he's too old. Listen, from my perspective, he's still a very young man.
PLAYBOY: Where do you stand on Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man versus Andrew Garfield's?
LEE: When I first saw Tobey Maguire in the role, I thought, Here's the absolute perfect Peter Parker. When I saw Andy Garfield in the role, I thought, Andy's the most perfect. They're both great and they're both different. It's not like they cast the first guy off the street for these parts. People much smarter than I am about these things are casting these movies. They do a fantastic job.
PLAYBOY: What did you think when Garfield raised the idea in an interview last year that Spider-Man might be gay?
LEE: Listen, I can't control what actors say or how they behave. I can only comment on how they act, and like I said, Andy's terrific in the role. I don't have a line in the sand about Spider-Man. I guess if he were fat and flabby and didn't look anything like a superhero, you might hear from me, but there's too much money invested in these films for them to goof around with casting or the basic conception of who these characters are.
PLAYBOY: Which actress has impressed you most in the Marvel movies?
LEE: Jessica Alba was the girl in Fantastic Four, right? She was terrific. I really liked her. Who was the girl in X-Men with the short hair, very pretty?
PLAYBOY: Halle Berry.
LEE: Lovely girl. I spoke to her for a while and really enjoyed her performances.
PLAYBOY: Of all the women in the comic-book world, who would you have wanted to go on a date with?
LEE: I never thought of that. See, I'm going to tell you something you may not be aware of: They were fictitious characters.
PLAYBOY: But some were sexier than others.
LEE: To me, the sexiest of all was Mary Jane in Spider-Man. I loved the idea. The way I'd written it, Spider-Man's aunt May was continually trying to get Peter Parker to meet the niece of her next-door neighbor. "She's such a nice girl. I think you'd like her." Well, to a teenage boy, hearing she's a nice girl is the biggest turnoff in the world. Peter, as I remember, kept avoiding meeting her. One day I made it the last panel of the story. He couldn't avoid it anymore. He said, "All right, I'll meet her." He opens the door and there's this hot-looking babe who says to him, "Face it, tiger, you just hit the jackpot." I don't know why they didn't put that in the movie. I just love that whole idea. "Face it, tiger, you just hit the jackpot." He sees this sizzling girl, and he'd been expecting some drab nobody.
PLAYBOY: The Marvel bullpen was such a boys' club. You guys must have had fun behind the scenes thinking about which characters were having sex with each other and who had the biggest codpieces.
LEE: Obviously we always talked about Mr. Fantastic and how great he would be for any woman, with the ability to stretch the way he could. But that was about all.
PLAYBOY: These were colorful characters conceived in colorful times. Were psychedelics or other drugs involved?
LEE: I'm not aware that any of the artists took drugs. It would shock me to learn that Kirby, for instance, was taking drugs. Or John Romita or Gil Kane. These guys were family men, hardworking guys, and they were simply that talented. Almost any of them could have been major movie directors. When an artist draws a panel, he has the widest choice. He can make it a close-up shot, a long shot, an overhead shot, a strange angle, a head-on shot. And they would make these creative decisions quickly and under major deadline pressure. Drugs? I don't think they would have survived. They certainly never came into the office in a different mood, looking a little spaced out or whatever. And I definitely wasn't doing drugs. I was never into them, and I know nothing about them.
PLAYBOY: Did you ever try marijuana?
LEE: No. I hardly ever smoked a cigarette. I bought these thin cheroots because you didn't have to inhale. I would puff on them, but I eventually gave them up because I was burning holes in my sweaters. People read into the fact that I called the character Mary Jane, but honestly, I had no idea it was a nickname for marijuana. I never understood why people take drugs. They're habit forming and they can kill you. I didn't need anything to pep me up or make me feel more creative, and I didn't need them to help me with women.
PLAYBOY: There's a curious rumor online that you and Mick Jagger would occasionally go to bars together to see who could pick up women faster and that often it wasn't Mick Jagger.
LEE: Oh, it's not true. But I will say, a woman will go with any recognizable celebrity even if you're the ugliest celebrity in the world. That's just the law of fame. I did pretty well in my day. I had a Buick convertible four-door Phaeton that used to impress the girls. But you can't compete with rock stars. I've spent time with Aerosmith and Alice Cooper and Kiss. Gene Simmons actually put his blood into a vat of ink so we could say the Kiss comic books we created were printed with his blood. That's the kind of thing girls are looking for.
PLAYBOY: You've been married to your wife, Joan, for almost 70 years. What's the secret to a lasting marriage?
LEE: Marrying the right girl. We get along fine even though we both have strong personalities. My wife, whom I adore, is half Irish and has a very hot temper. I remember years ago we were arguing over something and she got angry. She said, "I'll show you!" and picked up the Remington Noiseless Portable typewriter I'd used to write The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man and all the rest, and banged it against the floor. It shattered into a million pieces. I like to tease her and say, "Joanie, if we had that typewriter now, do you know what we could auction it off for?"
PLAYBOY: Do you have Amazing Fantasy #15, the comic book in which Spider-Man debuts, hidden in a vault somewhere?
LEE: No. I never collected them. In those days we didn't think of it. When we were doing these books we never knew the artwork or scripts would have any value. We were in a small office. The original pages were very big and thick, and a book then had, like, 48 or 64 pages. After the book was printed, the printer would send the original pages of artwork and all the color proofs back to us. We had no room for them. We gave everything away. Some kid would come up to deliver sandwiches from the drugstore and we'd say, "Hey, kid, on your way out, take these pages and throw them somewhere." If one of those guys had brains enough to save some stuff, he'd be a very lucky man right now.
PLAYBOY: Fewer kids read comic books today than they did in the heyday. Does that make you sad?
LEE: I didn't know they weren't. Really? See, I'm not much of a scholar about what's happening. I just do my own thing. But it's not only comic books. Everything's changing. Everything's being done on computer or iPhone or iPad. The whole language is changing. Words end up abbreviated because of texting.
PLAYBOY: Do you have any advice for comic-book-store owners?
LEE: If I were a comic-book-store owner, I'd be wondering how I could get into electronic comics, digital comics or anything else. It's not just comic-book-store owners I'm worried about. I'd be concerned if I owned any bookstore. But I don't know. I'm old-fashioned. I hope there will always be a little comic book for kids and teenagers and grown-ups to hold, because nothing replaces the experience of turning those pages, of smelling those pages. But yes, everything is changing. In 10 years we probably won't recognize this world. Thank goodness we have other media. It's what keeps these characters alive.
PLAYBOY: Let's talk about the new Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television series. Is it close to your original conception?
LEE: It's a funny thing about S.H.I.E.L.D. I started it because there was a popular TV show at the time, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and I wanted to come up with a special group of my own. I called it the Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division. I thought it was kind of cute. They've given the word new meaning now. To me, the greatest part about S.H.I.E.L.D. was Nick Fury, and I hope we get to see a lot of him on the show. He'd been in an earlier comic book of mine, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, and when I retired him, I got so many letters asking where he went, I brought him back as a colonel. He was the toughest son of a bitch I ever created, and Kirby did a wonderful job with him.
PLAYBOY: Many people don't know that your younger brother, Larry Lieber, helped create Iron Man and other characters. How come he never got more acclaim?
LEE: Larry was always a good writer and a good artist. He could do almost anything I asked him to do. He scripted not only the first Iron Man but also the first Thor, and he still does the daily Spider-Man newspaper strips. The only problem is that Larry could be a perfectionist. It wasn't that he was faster or slower than other artists, but he had a hard time letting go of his drawings unless he was 100 percent satisfied with them. He always worked on things even after I said they were great. I think it just made the whole process a little harder for him.
PLAYBOY: Which Marvel character has surprised you the most in terms of its success?
LEE: Probably Iron Man. But much of that success is because of the movie. I didn't know what to think when Robert Downey Jr. was announced as Iron Man. I couldn't picture him. When I created the character, I kind of thought of Howard Hughes because he was an adventurer, an inventor, a millionaire in those days, and he was strange. To me Downey wasn't a superhero; he was Chaplin. But the instant I saw him I said, "He's Iron Man." I think it's the greatest bit of casting ever.
Of all the characters I've done, Iron Man is the most popular with women. I get it. He's a billionaire and he's handsome and glamorous, plus he needs somebody to look after him. He's got a weak heart. "Oh, if only I knew a man like that." We got more fan mail from women for that book than any other. And now the movie has made him our most popular character after Spider-Man.
PLAYBOY: Let's go back to the start of your career for a minute. Do you remember the first comic book you ever wrote?
LEE: It was a prose story in one of the Captain America books, a two-page story set in type. Nobody read those stories. That's why they let me do one. But you couldn't call a comic book a magazine and get the magazine postal rates unless you had two pages of type. One day I was hanging around filling inkwells and erasing pages for the guys, and someone said, "Hey, Stan, we need a two-page story." So I wrote one. And that was that.
PLAYBOY: You went off to the Army in World War II and wrote military pamphlets with an elite group that included Frank Capra, William Saroyan and Theodor Geisel. What's your standout memory?
LEE: That Dr. Seuss was slow. In the comic-book world, you live and die on your speed, but Geisel was slow. Most of them were slow. I was writing faster than all of them. One day the major who was in charge of our unit said, "Sergeant, will you work a little slower? You're making the other guys look bad." I wrote all these training films about things I had no knowledge of. I remember I did one film, The Nomenclature and Operation of the 16 mm IMO Camera Under Battle Conditions.What got the most attention, though, was something I wrote about venereal disease.
PLAYBOY: You wrote a sex manual?
LEE: No, they needed me to help the enlisted men avoid disease. They were always getting VD. So they had what they called prophylactic stations, little one-room buildings with green lights inside. After you'd had carnal knowledge of a female, you would go to the pro station and get disinfected in the most horrible way. My mission was to tell the troops to go to the pro station after they'd had sex. So I drew a little cartoon of a soldier. There's the green light. Over his head there's a dialogue balloon that says, "VD? Not me!" They printed a couple million of them. I figure we probably won the war based on that.
PLAYBOY: Is it true you continued to work for Marvel that whole time?
LEE: That's right. Whenever I was free I'd write something new. I bought a car with the money they sent me while I was in the Army. I used to pal around with a lot of the officers. Some of them were my best friends, majors and captains, even though I was an enlisted man. I wasn't supposed to pal around with them, so I'd wear an olive drab sweater so the rank didn't show. We went out and drank and had fun. But I was never a less than responsible driver.
PLAYBOY: Speaking of that, do you remember the moment you thought up the phrase "With great power comes great responsibility"?
LEE: The honest-to-God truth is I thought I made it up for Uncle Ben to say. But then somebody wrote to tell me Voltaire had said it in French a couple of centuries before. I never read Voltaire. I don't speak French. I just liked the way it sounded.
PLAYBOY: When did you first realize you'd created a worldwide sensation with your characters?
LEE: There were a lot of moments. We'd get letters from all over and then visitors, including some famous ones. I remember being visited by Federico Fellini. He came in and said he wanted to meet me. I'll never forget. I had a tiny office at the end of a long hall. I get a call he's coming and see Fellini walking toward me, accompanied by four of his assistants, all dressed the same in black raincoats, all in descending order of height. Fellini was the tallest, and behind him were the four others. It was the funniest sight. I wanted to talk about him and the movies he'd made, 8½and all the others. He wanted to talk about Spider-Man. Years later he was nice enough to show my daughter around Italy and take care of her. It would have been interesting to collaborate with him. He would have been good with X-Men. Fellini and Magneto would have been an interesting combination.
PLAYBOY: In the next X-Men movie, the 1970s X-Men meet the modern-day team. Do you ever worry someone's going to screw up your original characters?
LEE: I don't even think about it. I know they'll usually come up with something interesting, and if they don't, something else will come up. The nice thing about stories is you can always find another angle that'll be good. To be honest, I let go a long time ago. I let go of these characters around 1972 when I became publisher. I was never a real publisher because publishers are businessmen and I'm not. But as publisher, I stopped writing the books, for the most part. All these characters eventually find their way.
PLAYBOY: The Hulk has always been especially difficult. Even the popular 1970s TV show with Lou Ferrigno is more camp than classic.
LEE: They've tried a green Hulk and a red Hulk and a blue Hulk. Everybody tries something, but I think everybody does it wrong. In the last movie he looked pretty good, and the actor was pretty good. But they made him too big and started changing his color. It's such a simple thing. It's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the way I conceived him. He's a scientist who turns into a monster. He hates the monster, and he wants to cure himself of turning into it. The monster hates the scientist and doesn't want to become that weak nothing kind of guy. He likes being the Hulk. To me, as a writer, I could play with that and come up with a million plots. For some reason, Hollywood keeps making the Hulk this big, crazy brute. One day somebody should go back to the basics.
PLAYBOY: Are you excited to see Avengers: Age of Ultron?
LEE: Excited? Sure. But I have to be honest. I don't have any idea who the hell Ultron is. He was a character developed after I stopped being involved in the Avengers story. I was asking some guys in the office who Ultron is, but then my phone rang and I got busy and never found out. Marvel introduced so many characters and strange situations, it's hard to keep track of them all.
PLAYBOY: True, but why haven't we created new superheroes? We still mostly rely on yours and a handful of others, such as Superman and Batman, to save the day.
LEE: Well, publishers don't need new ones now. They needed them when I was doing them. My publisher would say, "Hey, Stan, that last one sold very well. Dream up another one—or four—for me." Now they don't have to say that. All they have to say is "When are we going to find the time to make a movie out of Ant-Man or publish another edition of Silver Surfer?" We have plenty of material in reserve that audiences love. And you know Hollywood appreciates a sure thing. There aren't enough opening weekends or TV channels or bookstore shelves for all the titles Marvel alone plans to put out. It's not just Captain America, Fantastic Four, Daredevil and the rest. We have dozens to draw on, and fans are always asking, "Stan, when are they going to come out with a Black Panther movie?" Incidentally, I would love to see a Black Panther movie myself. I know they're working on one. But then fans will say, "What about Ant-Man? Or the Inhumans? Or the Annihilator?"
PLAYBOY: After decades of events such as Comic-Con and now your own Comikaze comic-book expo, you must get tired of geeky fan questions.
LEE: I enjoy the questions and always try to give a funny answer. For example, they'll say, "Who could win, the Hulk or Galactus?" I'd say, "It depends on who's writing the story." "What makes you work so hard and do all these stories?" I tell them greed. Even if I've heard the question 800 times before, I always try to give them an answer they don't expect. Like "What superpower would you want?" I say, "Luck, because if you have that you have everything." Actually, that one I believe.
PLAYBOY: You mentioned Ant-Man a minute ago. What's the status of the movie version?
LEE: It's coming along. [Editor's note: The film, directed by Edgar Wright and featuring Hank Pym, played by Michael Douglas, and Scott Lang, played by Paul Rudd, is scheduled for July 2015.] What's terrific about Ant-Man is that he's small and can do a lot of things a normal-size person can't, but he's also incredibly vulnerable. The most important thing with any hero is he has to be vulnerable. If it's somebody who could never be hurt, that's no fun. One of the problems I always had with Superman was, how can I worry about him? You can't kill him, you can't hurt him. But with a guy as small as Ant-Man, there are so many things he can do, but every minute of his life he's in danger. There's this tension of thinking he'd better get big again fast. To give you another example, in the movies Batman has gotten more vulnerable in recent years, and it's made him more interesting.
PLAYBOY: Speaking of Batman, what was a night on the town like with your friend and Batman creator Bob Kane?
LEE: He was always late, first of all. We'd make a dinner reservation for 7:30, and Bob and his wife would get there at eight o'clock or 8:30. If we were half an hour late, they'd come half an hour later. It became a game. They were always later than we were. Then we'd sit down, and within a few seconds he'd say to the waiter, "You know who I am? I'm Bob Kane. I draw Batman. Look, I'll show you." And he'd draw a little Batman. He was happy being who he was. You can't fault it. He was never on time for dinner, but he loved Batman and loved being recognized for it, and we'd have a great time talking up these characters. I've had a lot of good times.
PLAYBOY: Has it been an easy life for you?
LEE: Life is never completely without its challenges. I have a new heart valve that was put in a couple of years ago. I have a touch of asthma. I get tired sometimes. But I haven't had a lot of angst. I mean, certainly early in my career, before The Fantastic Four, I struggled. I felt I was never going to get anywhere. Even afterward, I was embarrassed to say I wrote comic books for a living. I had a lot of shame about that. Even when I made a good living, my dad didn't think of me as a success. He was pretty wrapped up in himself most of the time. Some of that rubbed off on me. I was always looking at people who were doing better than I was and wishing I could do what they were doing—Steven Spielberg or a writer like Harlan Ellison, or even Hugh Hefner. Part of me always felt I hadn't quite made it yet.
PLAYBOY: Did you ever go to therapy?
LEE: Never had time, no. But if someone asked me for an evaluation of myself, I'd say I'm a particularly normal, levelheaded guy. I'm just a guy who likes what he does.
PLAYBOY: You started your career writing obituaries. Have you ever thought about what you'd like yours to say?
LEE: I know mine is already written. It's sitting there in the New York Times computers somewhere. It's all ready to go. You can't stop it. I've had a happy life. I don't want anyone to think I treated Kirby or Ditko unfairly. I think we had a wonderful relationship. Their talent was incredible. But the things they wanted weren't in my power to give them.
I'm always looking ahead, even at this age. You know, my motto is "Excelsior." That's an old word that means "upward and onward to greater glory." It's on the seal of the state of New York. Keep moving forward, and if it's time to go, it's time. Nothing lasts forever. Hell, I'm 91 years old. If I have to go while I'm talking to you, I've had a long enough life. I'd hate to leave my wife and my daughter, but heaven knows it's beyond me. And I don't even really believe in heaven.
PLAYBOY: In the 700th issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker dies in a battle with Doctor Octopus.
LEE: Yeah, but he won't die. They'll bring him back, or it'll turn out he didn't really die. It's like Sherlock Holmes. I loved Sherlock Holmes when I was younger, and there were so many versions. He always made it out of every situation. You never run out of ideas.
PLAYBOY: Maybe there will be a zombie version of Spidey.
LEE: Zombies are puzzling to me. They're all the rage now, but I never understood them. Think about it: If I were dead and could come back to life, I wouldn't go around trying to kill people. I'd be saying, "Wow! I'm the luckiest guy in the world. Isn't this terrific? Hello, you wonderful person. Let's go out and have fun." If I go out in a flash but then somehow make it back, I'm not going to be angry. There's going to be a great big celebration.
This article appears in the April 2014 issue of Playboy.
Photography by Lorenzo Agius


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London, UK – Personal Injury Solicitors London, found at http://www.personalinjurysolicitorslondonuk.co.uk, operate as a no win no fee solicitors London service for individuals who have experienced accidents or personal injuries. Able to support individuals in a variety of accident scenarios, the injury claim solicitors endeavour to pursue accident claims efficiently and offer their legal advice with the best interest of the client in mind.
Personal injuries or accidents that qualify for accident claims vary widely, from accidents at work, to those that occur on other commercial properties or on public transport. Dealing with the aftermath of an accident can be daunting and unfamiliar for the majority of individuals who experience them, and in those times, finding a reputable and knowledgeable injury claims solicitor is essential.
The injury claim solicitors of Personal Injury Solicitors London service a variety of injuries individuals have faced – such as those experienced as a result of car or work accidents – and offer claims advice suited to meet the needs and compensation requests of the individual client.
To receive advice and make a claim, individuals must first simply call the 24/7 helpline for a free consultation, during which they can be expect to answer questions regarding the incident. The solicitors operate only with accredited, reputable firms and provide their assistance with knowledge gained through years of experience offering advice needed to settle a variety of litigation matters for individuals that have experienced accidents in both public places or at work. Furthermore, through their no win no pay policy, the solicitors of the service work on the guarantee that they will not be paid if the client compensation claim is unsuccessful.
"We have extensive experience offering our expertise in a number of different personal injury scenarios," one spokesperson for the service comments. "We strive to provide honest claims assistance, and meet each client with both the knowledge and understanding needed in order to best help them achieve success with their compensation claim."
Personal Injury Solicitors London provides legal representation borne out of years of experience helping individuals receive compensation for their personal injuries. Through the specialised service and honest communication the solicitors are able to offer their clients, the service has gained a positive reputation in London and surrounding areas for their efficient claims advice and representation services.
Media Contact
Company Name: Personal Injury Solicitors London
Contact Person: Jason Tweedy
Email: email@example.com
Phone: 02038115808
City: London WC1V 7QT
Country: United Kingdom
Website: www.personalinjurysolicitorslondonuk.co.uk

subset: commoncrawl


text: DAC AKRITI, A consistent amalgamation of extravagance, solace, and style mix to give away really modern outlook towards life. These Residential Apartments in Chennai are wonderfully crafted bearing in mind all your needs. DAC AKRITI in PAMMAL is constructed by DAC Promoters, a customer friendly construction firm that always focuses towards delivering the best to its customers. DAC Promoters has gained the name and fame in constructing marvellous Apartments in Chennai with the use of high-class building material that enhances the looks of the property along with increasing its life span. DAC AKRITI offers 2 BHK and 3 BHK Apartments at one of the prime locality in Chennai. With proper ventilation and uncluttered wide space, DAC AKRITI makes you feel blissful right from the moment you enter in your beautiful Apartments at PAMMAL. DAC AKRITI is one such property in PAMMAL, Chennai where luxury comes with affordability and the inhabitants enjoy the perks of living in one of the best localities of town. The Apartments in DAC AKRITI are deliberately constructed so as to provide easy access and transportation to other parts of the city by wide roads. The amenities in DAC AKRITI will definitely make your life pleasant. Some of the amenities installed within this property are 24Hr Backup Electricity, Car Parking and Vaastu, FengShui.


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Rain Forest Fabrics has a large selection of quality cottons, flannels, and fashion fabrics. We also carry notions, and other sewing supplies.
We have an APQS Millie offer long arming as well.
Timeless Treasures
Regular price
Fabric is sold in increments of a quarter metre and cut in one continuous piece. If you would like to order one metre enter 4 in the "Quantity" box above.
1/4 metre = 1
1/2 metre = 2
3/4 metre = 3
1 metre = 4
each addition number is another 1/4 metre
8 would be 2 metres.
Collection: Quilting cottons
Print name: Knit one purl two knitting chickens. grey
Weight/Material/Width: Quilting, Cotton, 44/45 inches


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AMC renews 'The Walking Dead' for a third season
LOS ANGELES — AMC has renewed zombie drama "The Walking Dead" for a third season, the network announced Tuesday.
Currently in its second season, the series has brought in impressive ratings in the coveted 18 to 49 demographic. This season's 90-minute premiere, which aired Oct. 16, drew 7.3 million total viewers — with 4.8 million in the 18 to 49 demo.
In addition to the ratings success, the renewal is more good news for the show considering how the recent exit of series creator and executive producer Frank Darabont called to question how the show would perform under the leadership of Glen Mazzara.
The series follows a group of survivors, led by police officer Rick Grimes, after a zombie apocalypse as they search for security.
The 13-episode second season will take a break over the holidays, with the remaining six episodes returning in February.


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In "Friends with Kids," platonic friends Jason (Adam Scott of "Parks and Recreation") and Julie (writer/director Jennifer Westfeldt) decide, for lack of a better option, to have a baby together. Westfeldt says the decision might happen more often than we think.
"Since working on this film, both writing it and shooting and editing, I've had so many people come up to me and say, 'Oh my God, a friend of mine propositioned me in just that way!'" says the 42-year-old actress/filmmaker. "I think it's not a bad solution; I think as long as there's love and commitment in a relationship and love for a child, a lot of non-traditional approaches can work."
In fact, Westfeldt's managers, a man and woman who are not romantically involved, recently had a baby together too. In the film, of course, a baby eventually complicates things between Jason and Julie, who are eager to avoid the way parenting harms the romance between their coupled friends (Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig, Chris O'Dowd and Maya Rudolph). Westfeldt, who has been dating Hamm and been friends with Scott for almost 15 years, chalks the cast's overlap with "Bridesmaids" to "a wonderful coincidence."
At the Trump Tower, Westfeldt ("Kissing Jessica Stein," "Ira and Abby") talked about the surprises that come with kids, her desire to challenge the status quo and if Hamm has adopted any Don Draper-like qualities over the years.
What is the rasher decision: Platonic friends deciding to have a kid together (like in "Friends with Kids") or a woman who says, "Maybe I'll become a lesbian" when she's not finding a man (like in "Kissing Jessica Stein")?
[Laughs.] Gosh. I don't know. I guess there is this current running through the three films I've done, and they all sort of ask the same question about, "Why can't we do it differently? Why can't we change the rules?" If the person you find that you connect with the most just happens to be a girl, so what? Why can't I do that? In "Ira and Abby," if half of marriages end in divorce, don't you have as good a shot with a stranger as you have with someone you've known forever? And in this one, if many relationships have a strain to their romance with parenting and that transition, why not do it with your best friend and keep romance with someone else?
So what's the most extreme?
Gosh. What do you think is the most extreme?
I'm just here to ask the questions.
I think they're all sort of extreme in their own way and yet they also make sense to me. I think I'll have to think about that answer and get back to you.
People have been having children since humanity began.
That's why we're all here, right? Someone did that for us.
Why are people still so surprised by the impact when kids come along?
I think probably because everybody has this view of it as being the most incredible, joyful, amazing thing. Which it is, obviously, but people I think underestimate the challenge too, and the strain and the massive life shift that you have to make. The sacrifices, the compromises; it's a game changer and it's one that lasts forever. And most of my dear friends…, after they've had kids, when they've first become parents, they say, "This is the most inexplicable, most amazing love I have ever experienced, and it's also the hardest thing I've ever done." And I think that last bit is what surprises them. They expected the other, that the love is just beyond description, but I think that the challenges people don't really talk about them as much.
Jason and Julie have some fun playing a "Would you rather?" game in the movie.
[Laughs.] Yes. A very morbid one, right?
So let's do some of our own.
All right. Bring it on.
Would you rather go skydiving naked or wrestle an octopus?
I think skydiving naked. That would be kind of exciting. Without a camera. [Laughs.]
Live on the moon or eat only chicken fingers for a year?
I have no interest in living on the moon, so I'm going to have to go with chicken fingers.
Act in a movie written by monkeys or direct a cast of only monkeys?
I love monkeys. I love all things monkey. That would be fun for me to direct a movie with monkeys.
What can we expect from the family film spinoff, "Kids with Friends"?
Oh God! God. Jeez. I don't know. I didn't know there was going to be a spinoff, but I'd like you to get started on that and we can just be in discussions and we'll figure it out. We'll hatch something fun.
That seems like a firm commitment.
OK. Yeah. We'll talk about it later, we'll email through and maybe next year in a better winter we'll shoot it.
What aspects of Don Draper have you seen oozing into Jon over the years?
[Laughs.] I hope not any! I think obviously he accesses whatever darkness is in him to bring that character to life, and I definitely utilize that here in this film too because I think he's obviously a phenomenal actor. But one of those rare actors who makes darkness and the pain underneath that really compelling. So it felt like an interesting way to use him in this film to see him and Kristen as sort of the sexiest, the hottest, the most romantic couple, and their partnership deals with the most strain in relationship to parenting.
How much do your films present your own views of marriage and kids? You've been in a relationship for almost 15 years. Are people still pressuring you about marriage?
Yeah, absolutely. I'm an Aquarian, so that's a very renegade sign. We like to do things in an unusual fashion. That is borne out of my life choices so far, being with the same man but unmarried and not having kids yet and all that jazz. I don't know, in terms of my writers' voice it does always interest me; why does the status quo have to be the status quo? Why can't two consenting adults do whatever they want to do as long as they don't hurt anyone or break any laws? [Laughs.] It does interest me, shifting things and changing the system.
Do you think you'll ever get tired of the title of "boyfriend"?
Yeah, we never quite know what to say. It's odd to say girlfriend or boyfriend after this many years and we sort of feel like an old married couple: a house and a dog and a will, all that stuff. I don't know, there's not a great term, right--significant other, better half.
So let's invent one.
Yeah, we might need to invent one. Do you have a good idea?
Permanent … Man …
[Laughs.] "He's my permanent man." That doesn't really roll off the tongue.
No, it doesn't.
I gotta brainstorm on that, too. We have a lot of things to get back to.
On the use of Wilco music in "Friends with Kids": "Well, I just love Wilco. Really all the music in the film represents artists I really, really love and respond to. But there's something about Jeff Tweedy's voice and the sound that they have that felt very much like the soundtrack to our movie. It felt like it represented the character of Jason, Adam Scott's character, to me, it hit that vibe. And that tone. I love everything they do. But there's something about their music, it's moving and emotional but it's also super hip and cool but not in a too cool for school way."
On Chicago: "I love Chicago, a few of my best friends are from Chicago. I've been here four times mostly for press and one time to visit friends but I love this town. I know I've never been here in the dead of winter, which I hear is less fun. Just probably eat my way through the town because it's known for great restaurants, right? I think I'd have to do the deep dish pizza, I'd have to check it all out."
Watch Matt on "You & Me This Morning," Friday at 7:30 a.m. on WCIU, the U
email@example.com. @mattpais


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The following is a guest post by Richard Stiennon who will be my guest on the May 7th, 2010 PI Window on Business segment "Surviving Cyber War" on Blog Talk Radio at 12:30 PM EST.
Note: This is the second guest post by Richard in the Procurement Insights Blog. The first "Look to how the Cold War was won, not how it was maintained, for a cyber strategy" was published on April 21st, 2010.
Today's hearing on the nominations of Keith Alexander to head CYBERCOM (and Admiral Winnfield to head NORAD and NORTHCOM) were the first time that operational responsibilities of CYBERCOM have been discussed in a public forum. The Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin (D Michigan) began by posing three scenarios to Lt. General Alexander:
Scenario 1. A traditional operation against an adversary, country "C". What rules of engagement would prevail to counter cyber attacks emanating from that country?
Answer: Under Title 10, an "execute" order approved by the President and the Joint Chiefs would presumably grant the theater commander full leeway to defend US military networks and to counter attack.
Title 10 is the legal framework under which the US military operates.
Scenario 2. Same as before but the cyber attacks emanate from a neutral third country.
Answer. Additional authority would have to be granted.
Scenario 3.
"Assume you're in a peacetime setting now. All of a sudden we're hit with a major attack against the computers that manage the distribution of electric power in the United States. Now, the attacks appear to be coming from computers outside the United States, but they are being routed through computers that are owned by U.S. persons located in the United States, so the routers are in here, in the United States.
Now, how would CYBERCOM respond to that situation and under what authorities?"
Answer: That would be the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI.
Alexander: "that's probably the most difficult [scenario] and the one that we're going to spend the most time trying to work our way through."
These were great questions and Alexander's answers are short and to the point and you cannot blame him for not being completely specific because this is uncharted territory. In his opening remarks Senator Levin questioned Keith Alexander's suitability because his background has been in military intelligence, not combat command. I for one think this is a good thing for someone leading a military CYBERCOM. Military metaphors can be dangerous when confronting Internet threats.
Keep in mind that CYBERCOM is a joint operation made of many components. Here are a few of them from Surviving Cyberwar:
The creation of a Cyber Command under the Strategic Command (STRATCOM) led by the head of the National Security Agency (NSA, the US intelligence agency), Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, who will have both roles (USCYBERCOM and NSA). The cyber units associated with each branch of the military will be under his operational control. These include the Army, Navy, Marine Corp, and Air Force cyber commands as well as supporting other combat commanders.
The Cyber Command will support the Director of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which in turn has input into a Joint Operations Center that will be the core of operations under the command of a Deputy Cyber Commander.
CYBERCOM officially "stood up" in October 2009. It was pre-dated slightly by the US Air Force's creation of the Air Force Cyber Command based at Lackland Air Force Base outside San Antonio, Texas, August 18, 2009.
The newly designated 24th Air Force staff will provide combat-ready forces trained and equipped to conduct sustained cyber operations, integrated within air and space operations. The Air Force 688th Information Operations Center and the 67th Network Warfare Wing were combined under the new 24th Air Force.
Source: http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123163831
On October 1, 2009, the US Navy announced the creation of an "Information Dominance Corps" within the Fleet Cyber Command that would include 44,000 personnel and that 1,000 new cyber warriors would be hired or trained. That many personnel represent all of the Navy's intelligence, computer, and information operations staff, combined to take advantage of the new awareness of cyber space as a war fighting domain. The organization is aligned with the Cyber Command. Note that the new title reflects the US military's stated goal of "Information Dominance." The leader of this new corps bears the title: Director of Information Dominance.
Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g05UQUihs3X-AFGirrDnIsQtqdtw
The US Army has yet to announce an over-arching cyber command. Their significant Information Operations (IO) and Network War Fighting capabilities are being coordinated by the the 1st Information Operations Command, which works with (but does not command) the Army personnel working with Joint Task Force – Global Network Operations. IOC also works with National Security Agency (NSA), and Joint Functional Component Command-Network Warfare, Army Network Operations (NetOps) forces assigned to the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command/9th Signal Command, as well as Network Warfare (NetWar) forces assigned to the Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM). With computer, network, and information resources disbursed throughout a military command the need for centralization is having a real impact on the organization of the US military.
In September 2009, the US Marine Corps published a position paper indicating they are preparing their own response to the challenge of cyber war operations. The paper states that the US Marine Corps "needs to take full advantage of potential offensive opportunities in the cyberspace domain and to minimize the asymmetric, critical vulnerabilities created by our reliance on networked communications. The Marine Corps should develop a comprehensive understanding and approach to cyberspace operations that fully integrate all aspects of computer network operations, information assurance, and network operations under a single command or proponent."
Source: http://www.marines.mil/news/messages/Pages/MARADMIN0535-09.aspx
Outside the military, the National Cybersecurity Division (NCSD) within the US Department of Homeland Security bears responsibility for overall cyber security in the United States. It oversees US-CERT and coordinates activities between public and commercial security groups as part of their mandate. In addition DHS operates the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, which is concerned with protecting critical information infrastructure. One more organization, the National Cyber Security Center, is a very small office. Its first head, Rod Beckstrom, resigned after its first year amid the confusion at DHS and the White House over how to centrally coordinate the many organizations within the Federal government that deal with cyber security. It is still unclear how these DHS and White House cyber security offices will work with the DoD Cyber Command.
About Richard:
Richard Stiennon is the founder of IT-Harvest, an independent IT security analyst firm, and the author of the security blog ThreatChaos.com. He is a holder of Gartner's Thought Leadership award and was named "one of the 50 most powerful people in Networking" by Network World Magazine. He lives in Birmingham, MI.
Richard's Book:
This book examines in depth the major recent cyber attacks that have taken place around the world, discusses the implications of such attacks, and offers solutions to the vulnerabilities that made these attacks possible. Through investigations of the most significant and damaging cyber attacks, the author introduces the reader to cyber war, outlines an effective defense against cyber threats, and explains how to prepare for future attacks.
Remember to use the following link to tune into both the On-Demand and Live "Surviving Cyber War" broadcast on May 7th, 2010 at 12:30 PM EST.


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A letter writer recently asked: How did taxes get such a bad name?
In defense of taxation, she went on to quote French minister Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot from more than two centuries ago: "The expenses of government, having for their object the interest of all, should be borne by everyone, and the more a man enjoys the advantages of society, the more he ought to hold himself honored in contributing to these expenses."
In reality, taxes are not intrinsically bad. We agree there is a shared responsibility to pay for government and its benefits.
But what gives taxes a bad name is how government wastes our tax dollars. Admittedly, this is more a problem in Washington with $100 hammers and $600 toilet seats which the average Joe or Josephine can buy for a few bucks at the local hardware store.
Another reason taxes are so despised is that what you want to spend tax dollars on is waste of money, but what I want to spend money on is deserving.
But perhaps the best singular reason for opposing taxes is that by the time you add all of them up, they claim too much of what should otherwise be in your wallet.
As a result, we are of the opinion that taxes would get a much less bad rap if they were spent as intended and in amounts responsibly determined.
Take for example the gas tax here in New Hampshire. Under the state constitution, gas taxes are largely targeted "for the construction, reconstruction and maintenance of public highways."
This makes it much easier to support an increase in the gas tax in combination with a well thought-out spending plan by the Legislature and governor.
Readers may remember that we editorially supported the raising of the toll rates at Hampton on Route 95 to help pay for high-speed tolling.
We see tolls and the gas tax as user fees that generally require the money to be spent as first intended.
Such is not the case with too much of the tax money we send to Washington. The "Bridge to Nowhere" may be a limited example, but it leaves a bad taste in our mouth and makes us that much more unwilling to dig deeper when Uncle Sam comes calling.
But this doesn't mean we are unwilling to pony up for Uncle Sam — under the right circumstances.
We often criticize Congress for giving taxpayers a free ride while the nation went deeper in debt to fight multiple wars. Where was the War Bond drive or a discussion of tax levies that would sunset once the bills incurred by our multiple wars were paid?
Even today, as the nation stares at a massive national debt and deficit, we can imagine supporting some increase in taxes as suggested by the Simpson-Bowles Commission.
But we, like many taxpayers, need assurances that the money will be used as intended not skimmed for some pet project tucked into a bill at the last minute or wasted on overpriced products and services.
As we see it, ridding the nation and our state of the ongoing economic malaise has more to do with the credibility of Congress and our state Legislature than it does with loving or hating taxes.


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This show has now closed.
From the deranged pen of Harry Hill comes I Can't Sing!, a hilarious new musical based on The X-Factor.
It goes behind the microphones and under the judges' desks at the biggest show on earth and reveals the (not necessarily accurate) tale of heartache and laughter which keeps millions of us glued to TV's top talent show week after week.
Irreverent, anarchic, yet strangely touching, this spectacular musical comedy features a host of new and deliriously funny songs that can't fail to delight, whether you're a fan of The X Factor or a sceptic.
On the surface it's the story of one girl's journey in search of triumph in the final round of the X-Factor. But the fun of I Can't Sing! is all in the getting there.
The show's bursting with Harry Hill's trademark side-splitting silliness and matchless skills at taking the mick - so expect to see the X-Factor's regular panellists getting mercilessly ribbed.
As well as hilarious songs there's a veritable sideshow's worth of barmy oddities on display, including a singing hunchback, a man on an iron lung and a talking dog. In short, it's a West End musical like nothing Theatreland has ever played host to before.
I Can't Sing! The X Factor Musical Tickets


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2013 Black Friday Deals, Steals and Business Hours in Abilene
Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. Primarily because of all of the insane savings the local and national retail stores offer. As we get closer to Black Friday stores will begin to unveil their discounts and hours of operation.
Just bookmark this page and check back as we'll update the info as frequent as it's made public.
Here are some of the stores we'll keep you updated on:
- Dillards
- Target
- Best Buy
- Walmart
- Kohls
- JC Penny
- Sears
- Radio Shack
- Lowes
- Home Depot
- T.J. Maxx
- Ross
- and many more
Here are some predictions for this year's Black Friday.


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Antitrust Case Filings
Antitrust Case Filings
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View the list of NAICS and SIC industry codes used by the Division. To view all industry codes, visit Census.gov.
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(Pocket-lint) - If nothing else, 2011 has been an exciting year for phones that aren't the iPhone. Android continues its evolution, new handsets are popping up all the time and many of them are stunning. Two of the biggest this year are the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and this, the Motorola RAZR.
It's a new design, but a really old name. But it's got form because the original RAZR sold by the boatload. Pre-iPhone, it was the phone that everyone had to have. So is the new RAZR the phone that everyone will want to be seen with, or is it just another massive Android phone?
Going for the iPhone
It's clear from the design of the RAZR that Motorola has the iPhone in its sights. Indeed, the phone has a lot of the less desirable quirks of the iPhone. For example, it uses a micro SIM, which is a massive pain for anyone who switches SIM cards a lot - phone reviewers, say - and it's got a non-removable battery too. In reality, neither of these things will put many people off buying the phone, although both are less than desirable.
On the plus side, the RAZR beats the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus in one crucial regard. It has expandable memory. There's 16GB of in-built storage, which is pretty generous, equalling that of the Nexus and there's a microSD slot too, which can add another 32GB. If you love music, then that's about as good as things get.
Something we can't quite put our finger on
The RAZR is certainly a unique looking device. It's large, which is the first thing you notice. It fits in a man's pocket well, but Pocket-lint's significant other noted it was far to big for a lady. Your mileage will vary, of course, but if you want something small, this isn't the phone for you.
And that's part of the usability problem. Like all big phones, we found it a struggle to hold the phone securely in one hand, and reach across the whole phone with our thumb. To use the phone one-handed, you really have to balance the handset on your fingers and it's a bit precarious.
The good news is that the Kevlar back is pretty good at keeping it in place. It has a softness to it that means it grips your hand well. It's certainly preferable to phones with a smooth back, like the Samsung Galaxy S or the slippery HTC Sensation XL, which lacks that extra friction. Plus, with this being a material used in body armour, it might keep you safe on the streets too.
Around the phone you'll find various controls. The main android buttons - of which there are four - are capacitive touch and work really well. There's a standby button on the right of the device which wakes the phone, or puts it to sleep. Then, below that, there's a volume rocker switch, which is tricky to find during calls. At the top, there's Micro-USB and mini HDMI out along with a sensibly-located headphone socket.
On the left of the phone, a flap conceals the micro SIM slot and the microSD reader.
There's a camera, LED flash and speaker on the rear. This location means that watching video and listening to audio out-loud can be muffled by careless finger placement, and it's yet another phone where we needed to use our hand as a deflector to get sound from the back of the device, out to our ears - at the front.
Call quality
An often overlooked feature of mobile phones is how they handle phone calls. We know, crazy.
On the positive side, this Motorola is actually a very comfortable phone to hold against the side of your face. The size is, somehow, just right. It's big, but it feels like a proper phone. The lip, on the rear cover, really helps you to keep a grip of it too, which adds to the experience.
On the downside, the earpiece seems to have a rattle to it, so even at modest volumes, the sound seems to distort slightly when the other person raises their voice. We didn't seem able to stop this no matter what we tried.
Back on positives though, the call quality is clear and crisp, and we had no problem hearing the people we called. What's more, the earpiece was loud enough, something we have found not to be the case on some modern handsets.
The vibration/rattle distortion of the earpice is really little more than a minor worry. It could even be limited to our review sample. Overall, there are more positives to the calling experience than negatives.
Audio quality and music
The Motorola music app is good. There is access to all your own music, via a simple user interface borrowed from the stock Android one. There are also Internet radio stations, and access to DLNA servers. There's a podcasting section too, but the selection doesn't include the Pocket-lint podcast, and thus is little value to humanity.
Sound quality is excellent too, something neglected in several previous Motorola phones - the Milestone 2 is the worst sounding phone we've ever heard. You get EQ settings too, that make a real difference and sound great.
Also included, is Motorola's MotoCast. A PC client allows you to access music from your computer, on your phone, either via Wi-Fi networks, or 3G. It works on both Windows and Macs, and the app is free. Although the app on your phone is limited to Motorola devices, you can use it on old phones too, including the original Milestone.
This sounds like one of those very cool things that is very exciting when you first hear about it, but with data caps being quite restrictive these days we can't see it getting much use out and about. And in your house, you're likely to be near enough to your computer to just use it, instead of the phone.
Photos and video
We've loaded the image gallery below with some images taken by the Motorola RAZR. Photos can be good, in good light. There is certainly a decent amount of detail in many of the images, with reasonably natural, if a little muted, colour.
Turn down the lights, and focusing becomes more troublesome, and you're less likely to get a well-focused shot, and much more likely to get a lot of camera shake and noise.
Video is a little disappointing, and this should be considered 1080p in name only. The quality reminds us more of a 8mm video camera from the 90s. There is that quite washed out look, and overwhelming greyness which just doesn't impress us. Highlights also blow out severely too, which gives it a further, old fashioned look.
With both video and photos you do get to use Motorola's decent camera app. There's an LED light, which can be used as either a flash or video light. You also get control over the exposure for both photos and videos. There are effects too, which are wholly pointless but might prove a diversion if you're bored.
More useful, on video, is the "audio scenes" mode, which allows you to set the sound up to suit the environment you're in. There's a wind reduction mode (quiet at the back) which aims to cut out the booming sound you get from wind outside. You can also choose how much sound you pick up from the front and rear of the camera. As a result, interviews can be balanced to include both people, but you can also opt for sound only from the front of the phone too - pointing out, toward your main subject.
Gingerbread, not Ice Cream Sandwich
Possibly the biggest faux pas of the RAZR is that it is being sold with Google's older operating system pre-installed. Most people are excited to see Ice Cream Sandwich, and are likely to be put off by the previous version running on this phone.
However, this isn't a massive deal in day-to-day life. While no one can argue that ICS brings with it a lot of advancements, and is a brilliant update to Android, Gingerbread remains an excellent operating system. The big advantage of it is that a lot of people are aware of how it works now, and where to find everything.
Of course, with Motorola Mobility having been acquired by Google, it's fair to assume that future flagship Android handsets will be made by Motorola, not HTC or Samsung. It's also quite likely that this phone will be the last major release to feature the whiff of Motorola's MotoBlur overlay.
However you feel about the OS, this is likely to be make or break for a lot of people. Bear in mind too, that although it doesn't ship with ICS, the RAZR will get it early next year. So if you must have the latest, there's not long to wait.
We also want to give a shout out to the included keyboard app too. It's awful. Really, we can't understand why handset manufacturers think they can better the stock keyboard from Gingerbread - the Ice Cream Sandwich one is great too. So download a third-party version if you want a better time of it.
In your inbox
One of the things that Motorola offers, on this phone, is the chance to have Twitter, Facebook email (but not Gmail) and SMS messages bundled in to one place. This sounds useful, but it really isn't. One of the things that Windows Phone 7 offers, that we like, is the opportunity to merge certain messages in to one place. This means that our work and main personal email can be combined. What we do not want, is for Twitter DMs and Facebook chats to be chucked in to the mix too.
We don't know why Gmail can't be included in the unified inbox, but given most Android users will also be Gmail users, this is infuriating and renders the whole affair pointless.
Not quite as fast as we expected
One of the things we really were baffled by was the speed of the phone in use. We didn't feel that the RAZR was as quick as a dual-core phone should be. In fact, thinking back to the Atrix, we aren't sure it feels as fast as that phone did.
Having said that, Motorola has put another layer of, largely unnecessary, shine on the user interface. Moving reflections appear on widgets and buttons as you switch home screens and the whole interface has been tweaked to give the phone a unique look and feel. Perhaps disabling these features, switching to a different launcher would help give it a speed boost. Perhaps Ice Cream Sandwich will bring better performance too, especially if Motorola goes for a more basic Android interface.
Do make sure you use the weather live wallpaper Motorola provides though. It's a beautiful piece of design that animates based on the weather in your region. It no doubt uses power, but to see fog and rain appear in a silhouetted Forest still gives us a little thrill when we unlock the phone.
The RAZR specification is decent. There's a 1.2GHz dual core processor (It's a Cortex A9, also found in the iPhone 4S) and graphics are provided by a PowerVR SGX540. There's a generous 1GB of RAM too, which should keep things from slowing down too much.
Battery life
Here we have some good news. In normal use, generally at one location all day, but with phone calls, text messages, web and email access and the occasional chukka on Tiny Tower, we could get a full day out of the phone. Drop the gaming, and this phone outlasts virtually every other Android handset on the market. This all assumes you don't turn on the power-draining "social" hub features.
The power source is a 1750mAh battery, which is a little above average for a mobile phone - the largest tends to be 1800mAh. Which might explain why we were not disappointed by its performance.
We don't usually feel confused by a phone. But the Razr offerers so much with one hand, then bats it away with the other. We like the unusual design. Motorola hasn't just "done an Apple" and built a clone phone. What it's done is thought about the style and design, and put together something that impresses from the moment you hold it.
We like the screen, although we're not crazy about AMOLED, we quickly found that it was bright, clear and detailed. The 256ppi 4.3-inch screen is not, technically, that high resolution, but it didn't look especially coarse to us, and we soon settled in to its typical AMOLED green tone. Gamers will love the vibrancy of the colours too, which are very impressive. We still think that the iPhone and HTC Sensation have the best screens on the market - the iPhone wins, because of its high resolution IPS display - but the Razr doesn't disappoint either.
If the battery life wasn't good, we'd moan about the lack of removable power, but we don't have any major longevity issues. We hate the micro SIM, but that's just the onward march of progress.
The speed, for us, is a worry. Why do we see stuttering when returning from the menu to the home screen. The stock text message app is a little oppressive too, with its dark colours and basic layout. We suggest you check out Go SMS in the Market, if you want something more stylish and customisable.
The Motorola customisations are fine, for the most part. The messaging app for email and social networks is reasonable, but we don't like all of our interactions jumbled up in to one place, so, long-term, we wouldn't actually use it.
Many thanks to Clove, who lent us the Motorola Razr for review.


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Ephesians 4:16 New Living Translation (NLT)
16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
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THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web
This past year, I contributed a chapter to an anthology book of best practices for working with SQL Server 2012 entitled Pro SQL Server 2012 Practices (http://www.apress.com/9781430247708). As authors, for publicity we decided to do summary reviews one another's chapters. There are lots of great technical sounding chapters, but when I picked, I picked a chapter that I hoped to help me learn more about a process that is not in my favorite normal design or coding techniques area. Of the parts of the software development process I despise, release management is definitely one of them. As an architect, my primary love in software development starts with design, and starts to really drop off during testing. And I certainly did learn more about the process… TJay Belt (https://twitter.com/tjaybelt) wrote his chapter on release management. (I should also divulge that I have been friends with TJay through SQL PASS for quite some time, along with many of the authors of the book too.)
TJay does a great job of describing the process of release management, talking about the process he uses and even admitting mistakes he and his teams have made along the way as well. The focus of the chapter is very much from the point of view of the releasing DBA role in the process (most of the book is very DBA centric topics) and contains a lot of tremendously good advice about getting release management right starting with having great documentation and a rollback plan be able to restart or put a release on hold if things go awry. In addition, he covers many of the the topics around the entire process of coding/releasing software, including version control, proper (and quite reasonable) documentation, coding standards, and most of all a set of well-defined processes that all of the varied players in the process have agreed to and work on as a team.
My favorite part of the chapter was the approximately four pages of thought provoking questions that should be covered when doing a release, ranging from understanding the databases that will be affected, capacity planning, tuning, standards, code, jobs, etc. etc. Great food for thought for defining or refining your own release process.
Of course, one of the concerns of a book with lots of different topics is that you don't get tremendously deep coverage of any subject (and this is also true in my chapter on database design.) However, in some ways this liberates the writer from having to cover every detail and instead provide a thoughtful discussion of the overall release management process. This is very much a blessing, because every organization is different and already has some process in place already. Maybe your defined process is awesome or awful, but this chapter can help you think of ways to refine your process. You are left to find your own tools and processes to meet your company's needs, but what you get is quite thought provoking and will likely be useful whether this is your first time doing a release, or if it your hundredth.
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Thursday: Light Cloud
Friday: Light Cloud
Raspberry Pi
Welcome to DragonTail Mapping
This site provides a showcase for mapping related data based on open streetmap as well as live weather data using the Raspberry Pi. My weather station is located in Neston, Cheshire, England.
Data is collected using a Maplin USB Touch Weather Station. The weather station is linked to a Model B Raspberry Pi running pywws python software. See the tutorial to setup your own.
Now with links from The Guardian's, A dozen things to do with a Raspberry Pi C Net's, 24 fun things to do with a Raspberry Pi The Frequencycast show Podcast No 82 Wired 8 Cool Raspberry Pi Projects EEWeb Magazine
NEW - My Pi is tweeting the weather @Weather_Pi


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Jennifer from Irish Tigers!!! Thank you to all who entered!!!
Saturday, February 2, 2008
And the winner is....
Posted by Mom to 5...Daughter of the King at 8:59 AM
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You have won the womens devotional from the book nook! Please email your address to email@example.com and it will be sent shortly!
- February 2, 2008 at 10:45 PM
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Prayer in Counselling and Psychotherapy
Exploring a Hidden Meaningful Dimension
Peter Madsen GubiGubi argues that philosophically, all counselling can be regarded as prayer, particularly when working at relational depth; that prayer plays an important part in maintaining many mainstream counsellors' well-being and, with considered ethical awareness, prayer can be integrated ethically into counselling when working with people of faith. Learn More2007, Paperback / softback, 9.21in x 6.22in / 234mm x 158mm, 224pp, $34.95ISBN: 978-1-84310-519-02007, Ebook, PDF, 224pp, $34.95ISBN: 978-1-84642-751-0
Working Relationships
Spirituality in Human Service and Organisational Life
Neil PembrokeIn this illuminating and thoughtful text, Neil Pembroke shows how relationships form the heart of chaplaincy, nursing and social care practice. Developing ideas from Martin Buber and virtue theory he shows how authentic, compassionate self-communication forms the basis of relatedness in human services work. Learn More2004, Paperback / softback, 8.98in x 5.98in / 228mm x 152mm, 184pp, $34.95ISBN: 978-1-84310-252-62004, Ebook, PDF, 192pp, $34.95ISBN: 978-1-84642-050-4
In Living Color
An Intercultural Approach to Pastoral Care and Counseling Second Edition
Emmanuel Y. LarteyThe meaning of pastoral care in modern multicultural societies is challenged and re-examined from a pluralistic, global perspective in this book. Lartey stresses the importance of recognizing different cultural influences on individuals in order to effectively counsel, guide and empower them. He provides a concise history of pastoral care. Learn More2003, Paperback / softback, 8.98in x 5.98in / 228mm x 152mm, 192pp, $26.95ISBN: 978-1-84310-750-72003, Ebook, ePUB, 192pp, $26.95ISBN: 978-1-84642-398-7
Spiritual Caregiving as Secular Sacrament
A Practical Theology for Professional Caregivers
Ray S. AndersonThe author explores spirituality in the context of the individual and of society, and discusses how those practicing pastoral or health care can deal with the issues raised outside of any religious ideas or practice. Anderson shows how professionals can help people move towards a more positive state in the face of pain, distress and illness. Learn More2003, Paperback / softback, 9.17in x 6.18in / 233mm x 157mm, 192pp, $29.95ISBN: 978-1-84310-746-02003, Ebook, PDF, 192pp, $29.95ISBN: 978-1-84642-384-0


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The squared Bessel process with $\delta$-dimension for $\delta>0$, denoted by $BESQ^\delta(y)$, is given by $$d Y_t = \delta t + 2 \sqrt{Y_t} d B_t, \ Y_0 = y\ge 0$$ where $B_t$ is BM under $(\Omega, {\cal F}_t, P)$. Consider $\tau = \inf[ t>0: Y_t = 0].$
(Claim). $\tau = \infty$ almost surely.
(Proof). Let $X_t = Y_{\frac 2 \delta t}$. Then, $$d X_t = 2 t + 2 \sqrt{X_t} d W_t, \ X_0 = y,$$ where $W_t = B_{\frac 2 \delta t}$ is BM under $(\Omega, {\cal F}_{\frac 2 \delta t}, P)$. In other words, $X_t$ is $BESQ^2(y)$ w.r.t. time-scaled filtration under the same probability measure. Therefore, {0} is polar set of $X_t$, so is of $Y_t$. END.
However, it gives a contradiction to the fact that $\tau = 0$ for $BESQ^1(0)$ due to the properties of 1-D BM. Where is the gap of the above proof?


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I have lived my entire adult life in Canton South, which isn't really saying much. We have generations of families living here. One only has to look at all the young teachers who have returned home to raise their families here and carry on the Wildcat tradition.
I, too, am struggling to pay my bills and maintain my home, and while I would love to leave my family a financial legacy, I know that the best gift I can give them is a first-rate school system.
I have six grandchildren attending Canton Local schools. Can I really play a part in denying them a great education? Keep in mind that if Canton South High School withers, so do property values. Vote yes on Issue 46.


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When the US government shut down file-sharing site Megaupload, it also grabbed the service's US-based servers, located at Carpathia Hosting and other companies. That inspired legal demands from Kyle Goodwin, an Ohio man who makes his living videotaping high school sports events, and wants his files back. But the government shot back with a brief suggesting that Goodwin wasn't exactly "innocent," since he'd also uploaded allegedly pirated music files to his account.
Now Mega wants to intervene in the dispute between the government and Kyle Goodwin—and government lawyers want to keep Megaupload well out of it. In a brief filed yesterday, prosecutors say that while it's fine for someone from Megaupload to be a witness in Goodwin's case, the service absolutely should not be allowed in as a party to the case.
In this new brief, the government accuses Megaupload of trying to use Goodwin's case as a way to battle over its own criminal case—while it actually delays that case from moving forward.
"Megaupload seeks to intervene in this civil dispute, where it lacks standing, to pre-litigate the pending criminal case, where it has not appeared," write government lawyers in their brief. "Here, Megaupload seeks to circumvent numerous procedural rules, as well as basic legal principles, by selectively appearing as a party in one civil proceeding that parallels the criminal prosecution, while seeking to stay all others."
Megaupload chief Kim Dotcom and his lawyers got very interested in Goodwin's case, after it led to documents being unsealed, which they believe aid their case greatly. Getting involved as a party in Goodwin's case would allow Megaupload's lawyers to better attack the warrants that resulted in criminal action.
The US is still trying to get Dotcom extradited from New Zealand—so far without success. Meanwhile, Dotcom has launched a new service called Mega; it was unveiled at a splashy party last month at the Dotcom Mansion.