Category: News

It was disappointing to find out that the beta for Final Fantasy XIV Online would be limited to the PC version only. However, that was the case before. The newly-opened signup page for the PC version (yep,

Eco Factor: Zero-emission compact car powered by batteries.

Swiss automobile and concept powerhouse Rinspeed has announced that the company will be showcasing a compact city car, dubbed the UC?, at the Geneva Motor Show. The compact vehicle is just 2.5m in length and is intended to help avoid gridlock in inner cities.

(more…)

A Lot of Helping Going On

By Judy Standafer

The first semester of school has been a busy semester of people helping others in the school.  At the beginning of the school year, Joanie, the principal’s wife, visited from Washington and helped the early readers in their SFA class.

My class learned all about the periodic table for science and below Katherine helps Helena make a large periodic chart for the hallway.

Our own VBC and AEC president, Ellen, helped to make the school Halloween carnival a success.

As we got ready for Thanksgiving, my junior high math class helped the intermediate class do a scale drawing of turkeys. Tia is asking Molly where to begin drawing.

5 year old Chelsea Ida helps Molly and Alicia learn the body systems by offering to have her body traced to draw and label organ parts.

Both my science classes pretended to be surgeons and nurses.  Nurse Julia helps Surgeon Cynthia with her gloves as assistant surgeon Katherine looks on. Nurse Sean helps surgeon Stacey and assistant surgeon Angela with a tough spot working on a hinge joint.

Julia shows visiting district office personnel how the smart board works with an interactive knee replacement surgery.

And finally, the junior and high school help with a practice run of the Christmas Café to open to elders and parents the following two days. Tia takes Lloyd’s order.

It feels good to help each other no matter how old you are.

While there are questions as to how separated the “church” and “state” part of the newspaper business has been, it seems to be disappearing almost entirely these days. We already talked about one paper that was starting to have editorial staff report to ad sales staff, and now we’ve been alerted to a story about a journalist in Colorado who was apparently (at least according to his side of the story) let go for writing a column critical of local ski resorts, who are major advertisers in the paper:

Berwyn said Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz called him at the paper and expressed displeasure with the column.

“I don’t remember his exact words, but the thing that stuck in my mind was ‘This calls into question our ability to work with you,’” said Berwyn. “That was sort of the main thing that stuck in my mind.”

Berwyn says Jim Morgan, the publisher, was concerned that Vail Resorts would end their advertising relationship with the newspaper.

When describing what Morgan said to him, Berwyn said, “he went on to talk about the business situation of the Summit Daily and how it was a business, how they had to watch out for the bottom line.”

Now, I’ve never really believed that the church and state parts of the news business were really that separated, and I actually don’t have a huge problem with the two sides understanding where the other is coming from. But, if you’re going to deal with such a situation, then you have to know that the scrutiny is going to be even stronger over anything that smacks of bias or favoritism. And stories like this raise serious questions about the credibility of The Summit Daily as a news gathering operation. And, without credibility, it’s hard to get readers, and without readers, it’s going to be hard to get advertisers — even if some of those advertisers are pissed off about a random column here or there. If the paper had stuck up for its author, telling Vail that its credibility was more important than a few ads — and Vail had still threatened to pull its ads — then the paper could have told its readership what happened, and built up even stronger credibility with its audience (and that, in turn, could create additional ad revenue from elsewhere).

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Daily Random Recipe

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 1/4 cups water
  
• 2/3 cup maple syrup
  
• 1/2 cup brown rice syrup
  
• 1/2 cup raw cashew pieces
  
• 1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
  
• 4 T agar flakes
  
• 3 T arrowroot or cornstarch
  
• 1 T vanilla extract
  
• 1 t salt
  
• 1 lb / 450 g tofu, drained and crumbled (firm, regular is recommended, but others work just as well in my experience)
  
• 1 prepared cheesecake crust
  

METHOD:
Preheat your oven to 350F/180C. Place all of the ingredients, except the tofu, in a blender or food processor and mix until smooth and creamy. Pour half of the mixture into a bowl and set it aside.

Gradually add half of the crumbled tofu to the mixture in the food processor, and blend once again until completely smooth. Pour the mixture carefully and evenly into a prepared crust. Do the same again with the remaining tofu and reserved mixture. Smooth out the top with a rubber spatula.

Bake for 1 hour, cool at room temperature, and then chill at least four hours before serving. The top will crack while cooling, just like ‘real’ cheesecake.

NOTES:
This recipe was recently posted and is the best i’ve tried. I believe it came from ‘The Uncheese Cookbook’ by Joanne Stepaniak. I keep meaning to buy it one of these days.

Serving suggestions: Top with fresh berries, peach slices, or a fresh compote.

Substitutions: In place of flaked agar – 2 t powdered agar. In place of brown rice syrup – barley malt syrup, or dark corn syrup.

Kitty deserves some fancy duds for the holidays, so why not treat her to one of these stylish holiday collars from Pattern and Paw. Or for a little more glitz and glam, check out these bejeweled beauties from Cool Cat Collars. They also have a sweet little snowflake ID tag that they will engrave with your cat’s information.

Napoli, Italy | Unique Collections

Roman sexuality was a big problem for the 19th century archaeologists and curators responsible for excavating and preserving the remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Romans in general, and citizens of Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum in particular, had a robust appreciation for the erotic in both art and everyday objects. The enormously endowed god Priapus was a common household motif for good-luck, recreated in everything from frescoes to penis-shaped wind chimes to perky oil lamps. Stories from mythology painted on walls were full of sexual encounters, secret trysts, and naughty satyrs. All of this was widely and commonly accepted on a level even modern society would have trouble accepting, let alone Victorians.

The looting of Pompeii began in the late 1700’s, under the direction of Charles of Bourbon (better known as Charles III of Spain), who was after fashionable antiquities for his private collections. When Napoleon’s brother rolled into town in 1806 the French regime drew up the first organized plans to excavate the city in entirety which continued when control of Naples reverted to the Bourbons under Ferdinand I.

As was common for excavations of the period, frescoes were stripped from the walls and small decorative objects, furniture, and statues were removed for safe storage, study, and display elsewhere. In this case they were relocated to the National Museum (Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli).

In 1816 a limited edition French guide to the collection – with illustrations of course – began making rounds. Confiscated and largely destroyed by French authorities, it eventually became a highly sought after collector’s item.

When Ferdinand’s son, Francis I, visited with his wife and young daughter in 1819, he was shocked by the explicit imagery and ordered all items of a sexual nature be removed from view and locked in a secret cabinet, where access could be restricted to scholars (and male visitors willing to bribe the staff).

In Pompeii itself, metal shutters were installed and locked over erotic paintings, accessible to tourists for an extra fee – men only, of course.

All of this fervor only served to make the collection more famous, and it became a right of passage of sorts for European gentlemen to view the secret collection on their Grand Tours.

Amongst dozens of stone penises, phallic wind chimes, and naugthy mosiacs, one item became the most famous: The Goat. This piece de resistance was a detailed carving of a satyr having intercourse with a female goat, her cloven feet pressed up against his chest as she gazes back at him at him with some fondness.

In 1849, the collection was bricked off and remained famously off limits to women, youngsters, and the general public with the exception of brief periods of liberal minded policy under Garibaldi, and briefly again in the in the 1960’s.

It was finally opened to the public in 2000 and moved into a separate gallery in 2005.

Tired of boring side dishes? This holiday recipe uses Hass avocados to liven up traditional au gratin potatoes. Serve this dish on Christmas or anytime you want something a little bit different.

Cook time: 40 minutes
Serves: 4

Image: © Courtesy of the Hass Avocado Board

Ingredients:

• Non-stick cooking spray, as needed
• 2 cups fat-free, reduced-sodium chicken broth
• 1 (8 oz.) package reduced-fat cream cheese, placed at room temperature and cubed
• 1 (4.9 oz.) package Au Gratin Potato mix
• 1 green onion, thinly sliced
• 1 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves, chopped
• 1 ripe Fresh Hass Avocado, halved, seeded, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1 cup grated Jarlsberg cheese, divided

Instructions:

1. Do not follow package instructions.
2. Prepare an 8 x 8 inch baking dish, pan or similar sized oval casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray.
3. In a medium sauce pan, bring broth to a boil over medium-high heat. Remove from heat and stir in cream cheese and contents of Au Gratin Potato seasoning packet.
4. Mix in dry potatoes, onion, thyme, avocado and 1/2 of the Jarlsberg cheese.
5. Pour into baking dish, making sure that all potatoes are submerged in the liquid.
6. Bake in 350 degrees F oven for 30 minutes.
7. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top and bake an additional 15 minutes.
8. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

*Large avocados are recommended for this recipe. A large avocado averages about 8 ounces. If using smaller or larger size avocados adjust the quantity accordingly.

Recipe courtesy of the Hass Avocado Board

Post from: Blisstree

Holiday Hass Avocado and Au Gratin Potatoes

Standard Time [standard-time.com] involves about 70 workers who built a large (4x12m), wooden “digital” time display. Which they then updated in “real time”. All of this resulted in a unique urban screen that involved about 1,611 tedious changes within 24 hour period.

“The spectator looking at Standard Time does not only see the time, but also the people constructing it. People who, with a stoic sense of duty, are wasting time on an apparently useless activity that fulfills only one function: to display time.“

The concept reminds me of a combination of Digital Ceiling Clock with the real-time updates from the RE:ID project. Via Thijsma.

Watch a documentary video below.

The “Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program” program solicitation says that it’s part of the “Institutional Integration (I3)” program, which immediately made me think of the i3 programs that Isaac wrote about here. I sent him an e-mail saying, “the i3 RFPs are starting to be released!”

“Not so fast, young Skywalker,” he replied (young Skywalker is how the Emperor and Darth Vader refer to Luke in Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi): the Department of Education must be running out of acronyms, because I3 is different from i3. The first stands for “Innovation through Institutional Integration,” while the second stands for “Investing in Innovation Fund.” The only difference between the two acronyms is the capitalization of the letter “i.” Maybe someone is taking lessons from Steve Jobs.

I can’t be the only person who is going to be confused, given the similarity. Since millions of potential acronyms exist out there, how does the Department of Education come up with two nearly identical acronyms for programs that already sound similar? If they must recycle an acronym, they should pick ECOMCOM (Emergency Communications Control), the central mystery in the pretty good 1964 film, Seven Days in May.

Perhaps the Department of Education is using Unix-style case-sensitive acronyms, in which you have to pay attention to whether you’re getting a capital-I cubed or a lower-case-i cubed. As the Wikipedia entry on filenames says, “In most file systems in Unix-like systems… upper-case and lower-case are considered different, so that files MyName and myname would be valid names for different files concurrently in the same directory.” When you’re thinking Department of Education, think Unix, with all the user friendliness that entails. Consider this a public service announcement that clarifies the difference.

With Japan finally getting its hands on the (seriously) highly-anticipated Final Fantasy XIII, a lot are worrying that copies might be sold out even before they get to the queue. However, Square Enix president, Yoichi Wada, provides

Congratulations to Kay (comment #662), winner of the carrier from Sheraton Luxuries! We hope you and your kitties enjoy the new carrier!

The Digital Imaging Business Unit of Jenoptik´s Optical Systems division will showcase some extracts from it´s product portfolio.
• ProgRes® Cameras –
Imaging solutions in micro- and macroscopy for applications in industry and science for image analysis, documentation and archiving
• Imaging Modules –
CCD and CMOS board-level cameras offer highest performance and best image
quality for integration into complete imaging solutions.
• Light Modulators –
Based on liquid crystals or integrated-optical waveguides our light modulators are utilized for modulation of amplitude, phase, polarization and spectrum as well as for pulse shaping, pulse rate reduction and fast switching of light from laser sources.
The Digital Imaging Business Unit develops, manufactures & supplies systems and components for life sciences as well as lighting & energy applications, system solutions and modules for digital image capture, improvement and processing for commercial, industrial and scientific applications as well as digital microscopy.

PGC filtered hoods feature our unique humidity control system that enables the user to attain unsurpassed levels of RH/temperature control and uniformity.
These hoods are designed to accurately produce those temperature and humidity conditions required for applications that demand filtered air.
Applications are found in such diverse industries as pharmaceutical development and manufacturing, electronic components, food, semiconductor, paper and pulp, and wherever precise humidity and temperature replications are required.
Additionally, PGC’s SmartPad microprocessor controller is a user-friendly system that provides optimum accuracy and control. The SmartPad is equipped with direct readings in both temperature and humidity. It also features 40-segment programming for automatic cycling and ramping and soaking excursions. High-low or deviation alarms as well as digital communications ports are standard features.
The interior chamber is constructed of very durable, corrosion resistant stainless steel. Low watt density heaters are used that also contribute to the unit’s longer life.
Systems include ports for testing filter efficiency, iris opening for working within chamber without disrupting temperature / humidity control, and dampers for setting chamber pressure (negative or positive). System includes free logging software.
Lastly, all PGC equipment is exhaustively tested at your specified condition before being shipped to ensure trouble-free operation.

Nominal bore : 6, 7, 12, 19, 25, 32 and 50 mm

Working pressure : up to 250 bar (dependent on nominal bore and material), in part also suitable for vacuum

Media: water, compressed air, diverse fluids, fuel, lubricating greases / hydraulic oils

Materials: steel and brass with different surface coatings, stainless steel 1.4404 / 1.4571 or similar

Special features : unlocking safety device, many types of connections, ring grips for larger nominal bores

There are many people out there who are greatly troubled by the way the FCC “enforces” efforts against broadcast indecency — with some even questioning whether or not it’s even constitutional for the FCC to act as a public arbiter of indecency. It looks like the FCC has just hired one such person, in the form of Duke telco law professor Stuart Benjamin. Since I consider myself among those who question how indecency fines can fit with a First Amendment, this seems like a good thing — but the reporting on it, at the link above, only focuses on the complaints about this hire. But the complaint comes from the Parents Television Council, whose main claim to fame is flooding the FCC with bogus complaints about “indecent” programming from people who didn’t even see whatever it is they’re complaining about. So you can understand why they might complain. If they lose the ability to create moral panics, it’s harder to keep going.

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Heads up, SOCOM fans! SCEA has announced the the much awaited Cold Front expansion pack for SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation will be available tomorrow for download in North America on the PlayStation Network.