Thursday, 31 January 2013

Location is everything in the Brazilian drama Neighboring Sounds ...

This weekend I had the unhappy experience of catching up with Les Miserables, which suffers from more problems than I can detail here but notably?and fatally for a period picture?lacks much sense of place. The digital long shots of 19th-century Paris look phony, and because director Tom Hooper (The King's Speech) likes to close in on his warbling actors, the inky interiors seldom register. I may be particularly sensitive to this flaw because I've also just watched Neighboring Sounds, a Brazilian drama with a powerful and enveloping sense of place that begins a weeklong run on Friday at Gene Siskel Film Center. Writer-director Kleber Mendonca Filho, making his feature debut after a handful of shorts and a documentary, has drawn comparisons to Robert Altman for his weaving together of many characters inside and around a middle-class high-rise in a suburb of Recife, the capital city of Pernambuco. Distinguishing him from Altman, though, is a sure grasp of how people try to define?and are more often defined by?the spaces they inhabit.

Filho shot the movie in his own neighborhood, where single-family homes have been giving way to tightly clustered condominium towers, and there are striking wide-screen frames of both the exploding skyline and the constricted spaces where residents sit stacked on top of one another. "Shooting wide was extremely important for a film where I wanted viewers to see the architecture," Filho explained recently to Aaron Cutler of Cinema Scope. "I can no longer stand watching films where the people are filmed in tight close-up with a shaky-cam. . . . I like opening up the plane, and in this film in particular I very clearly wanted to establish the people within their environment." The characters' relationship to that environment can be as vivid?and as fraught?as their relationships with other people. Nothing much happens in Neighboring Sounds until the very end, yet the tension between the characters and their surroundings accumulates for more than two hours, creating a vague dread.

No character chafes against her environment more than Beatriz (Maeve Jinkings), who lives in one of the condo units with her husband and school-age son and daughter. The family's unit is near street level, across the alley from another building, and they're plagued by the owners of a unit directly below and next door to them who leave their dog to howl for hours on end. Any means of resolving the problem seem to have been exhausted already, and Bia's husband and kids have learned to tune out the noise, but it drives her crazy. She presses some pills into a piece of raw meat, tosses it through the slatted window that separates them from the back patio of the building next door, and knocks the dog out for a while. She cranks the Queen song "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," but the howling seeps in between the rests in the music. She orders a high-frequency siren that drives the dog away, and when the maid accidentally breaks it, Bia is so stressed by the howling that her children have to massage her back and feet.

Filho understands that, in the city, privacy means not only protecting your personal life from other people but protecting your mental space from theirs. To this end he's dispensed with a score and instead uses an ambient soundtrack in which noises from the adjoining units and the street below?TVs, machines, people yelling, etc?maintain a low boil throughout the movie. The building has surveillance cameras everywhere, and the main story line (such as it is) involves an independent security service contracting with the building's owner to patrol the street below. Privacy issues creep into the other stories too: After swiping the kids' binoculars to spy on the dog, Bia has to take them away from her son, who's studying a neighbor across the alley. As the kids head off to school, Bia hides in her bedroom with the vacuum cleaner, smoking a joint and blowing her exhaust into the nozzle. Alone in the laundry room with a jolting clothes washer, she pulls down her panties and mounts the corner of the machine until it brings her to climax. (Apparently this is what Filho means when he talks about establishing the characters within their environment.)

The building seems oppressive mainly because there are so many long, narrow spaces within it, which Filho exploits masterfully in his wide-screen framing. In one shot near the beginning, the camera peers down on two teenage lovers furtively making out in the little hallway created by a standing wall that bisects the frame. In another shot near the end, when the security specialist Clodoaldo (Irandhir Santos) and his deputy Fernando (Nivaldo Nascimento) pay a visit to Francisco Oliveira (W.J. Solha), the snowy-haired sugarcane planter who owns the building and half the block, they walk down a tight exterior hallway decorated with white tile as sensors raise and then dim the outside lights. Every inch of the building is whitewashed, and the effect can be blinding. "Looks like a factory," says one prospective buyer as she and her daughter are led down a bright exterior walkway by Joao (Gustavo Jahn), who is Francisco's grandson and the sales manager for the building. Inside the unit, the woman presses Joao about a recent incident in which a tenant leapt from one of the balconies to her death, and asks him to lower the price, insisting the building has a "negative energy." Joao refuses, promising her, "This place is not haunted."

Maybe not, but negative energy might result from the fact that the architecture encourages disconnection. The exterior spaces on every floor are carved up with five-to-seven-foot standing walls, and the lower floors have terraces no one seems able to access. In one funny sequence, as the buyer haggles with Joao, her little girl ventures out onto the balcony of the unit they're considering (its sliding glass doors divide up the horizon of towers in the distance, suggesting a Frank Lloyd Wright window) and sees a little boy on the street below kick his soccer ball onto the second-floor terrace. "Throw back the ball!" he shouts at her, though she motions that she's on the balcony above and can't access it. When her mother comes out on the balcony and glimpses flower wreaths for the dead woman on the terrace, she drags her child inside and ends the meeting. Later that day, in one of the delayed punch lines Filho slyly uses to connect the various stories, the soccer ball drops to the street from above, too late to be found.

A handsome and ingratiating young man, Joao provides a link between the daily life of the building and the family money behind it. Filho introduces him with a bold sequence in which a shot of the skyline cuts to a long row of discarded beer and wine bottles on a fine wooden table, then a medium shot of Joao sleeping naked beside his new lover, Sofia (Irma Brown). Like the teenage lovers earlier in the movie, these two are always looking for some solitude, and they have to scramble from the living room into the bedroom when the maid arrives. Later on, the building guard watches on a security monitor as Joao and Sofia make out in the elevator. Sofia has grown up in the neighborhood, and one day Joao takes her to visit her old house, which is about to be demolished and turned into a 21-story tower. In her old bedroom, he lifts her up so she can touch the glow-in-the-dark stars and moons pasted on her ceiling, which have since been painted over white.

Filho leaves the neighborhood only once, in the movie's third and final act, as Joao and Sofia pay a visit to the old man on his plantation. The ominous forward-tracking shot down a muddy, rutted road was an image Filho pulled up from his own childhood in an aristocratic neighborhood. "The whole area belonged to one family," he told Cinema Scope. "The patriarch used to ride his horse up and down the dirt road. This is in the middle of the city, but the street kept an atmosphere of tradition, down to the absence of asphalt." Walking through the town, Joao and Sofia are swept into its past, passing a grade school where children chant for a local politician and the town's movie theater, now a roofless, abandoned structure grown over with vegetation. This is the world that's being erased by all the new condo developments, and it's no accident that Joao has fallen in love with Sofia, one of the few characters who seem to remember the Recife of the past.

"I'm interested in a cinema of fiction that's documentary as well," Filho expained. "You see Taxi Driver today, and it's fascinating because it's fiction, but it's also New York in 1975." His remark shows how clearly he understands the importance of location in storytelling, though of course the cost of location shooting has always driven filmmakers to cheaper means (exterior sets on sound stages, rear-projection photography, and now digital manipulation). None of them can substitute for the effect of people brushing up against a real place, one that may shape who they are and then, unaccountably, disappear.

Source: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/kleber-mendonca-filho-neighboring-sounds/Content?oid=8620787

obama slow jams the news metta world peace ron artest gladys knight private practice deion sanders creutzfeldt jakob disease

Managing The Cloud

There's been a lot of hype about the cloud lately. But, like so many other things, hype is often based in truth. From increased productivity to better safeguarding of data, the cloud is everything businesses need to streamline operations and step into a lighter, more efficient future.

Of course, the cloud in its current manifestation is still a work in progress, and there are a few caveats to consider along the way. To make the most of all that it has to offer, businesses will benefit from developing understanding of how the cloud works. (Check out this cloud computing guide by Xero before jumping in head first. Here, too, are a few pros and cons to consider.

Pros

  • Seamless Backups
  • If you're like most people, you plan on backing up your data far more than you actually do. Well, forget the forgetting with cloud-backup services, which take several approaches to automation.
    One such approach is that of sites like Mozy and Carbonite. For these sites, users choose the files they want backed up at a regularly scheduled time, so they can just set it and forget it. While effective and secure, the one downside with services like these is in restoring documents, which can be an involved process.
    More seamless are cloud-sync services like Google Drive and Dropbox, which add folders or a drive right to your hard drive. This makes it easy for users to drop in files for immediate syncing into the cloud. If you also edit Google Documents, Spreadsheets and other projects online, using Google Drive means you'll find them waiting for you in your online dashboard. What's more, with Google Drive you can easily search through web apps even from your desktop, both by file name and by any phrases that might be in the document's text.
    No matter which backup route you take, the cloud approach makes the whole process less labor intensive, and, in the case of Google Drive, makes actually working in the cloud that much simpler.
  • Work Collaboratively and Remotely
  • Of course, some of the best things about working in the cloud are the collaborative features. Whether it's working with colleagues on one document at the same time or sharing work without having to send files back and forth, cloud-based programs enable sharing right from a project, rather than having users toggle back and forth between a third party email client. What's more, cloud-based services work on a wide range of mobile devices, from laptops to tablets and smartphones, meaning workers worldwide can access the same data and dashboards without a hitch.
    Overall, the shift to cloud-based apps is a big cost-saver for small businesses, who no longer have to buy updates and can now gain access to cutting edge software formerly only available to companies with IT departments.
  • Integrated Data and a Centralized Workspace
  • While cloud computing has been around in various forms for many years, you can thank the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon for forcing it into the mainstream. With workers insisting that they operate on the platform of their choice, cloud services are one of the only ways businesses can control how they work. Cloud computing services centralize data into well-organized dashboards that can be updated in one fell swoop rather than individually. And because everyone is working on the same files at the same time, the same data integration problems don't occur as when multiple versions of redundant files aren't swapped back and forth. This decreases bottlenecks, as there's no need to update new project versions with edits.
Cons
  • Needs Better Support for Offline Working
  • While some cloud computing services are better than others, most still rely entirely on an internet connection in order to operate. And when that connection goes down, good luck getting anything done. However many cloud computing services are developing hybrid offline-online versions, so this shouldn't be a problem for much longer.
  • SlowBackup
  • The problem with backing up big files online is that they take up a lot of bandwidth and can slow down your internet connection. This can be resolved by scheduling backups for times when traffic will be low, or by sticking with the automatic web sync services.
  • Dependent on an External?Party
  • The one question that really remains in regards to cloud computing services is that of trust. Can companies hold your data hostage if you don't pay? How much will it cost should you decide to switch services? And what if the company isn't doing their due diligence and a giant hack wipes them out?
These are all understandable concerns. But in the long run, keeping up in today's fast-paced business world means staying as productive as possible and keeping costs down. For that, there's just no beating the cloud.

Authors Bio:
Rob Toledo is a Seattleite who matches the usual stereotypes. Loves coffee, the rain, and prefers dogs to cats. When not rambling about marketing and web design, he can be found in the mountains either climbing or hiking.

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Source: http://www.e-junkie.info/2013/01/managing-cloud.html

andrew young real life barbie zipper armenian genocide asteroid mining memorial day ivan rodriguez

Midday Scan: Mini-mart liquor rears its head in Washington

The state's highest-grossing liquor store, at 7th Avenue and Bell Street in downtown Seattle.

Ronald Holden

The state's highest-grossing liquor store, at 7th Avenue and Bell Street in downtown Seattle.

Last fall the doomsayer opponents of Initiative 1183, Washington's liquor-privatization proposal, groused that the new law would make way for mini-marts and gas stations handling hooch (many small stores have a documented pattern of selling alchohol to minors). Nay, said the privatization boosters, there is a 10,000-square-foot minimum for new liquor stores. In fact, the alarmist kvetching may have had merit after all. (Doomsayers are killjoys, but they also grasp human nature.)?

Austin Jenkins writes in the Washington Ledge, "The liquor privatization measure?passed last November with nearly 59 percent of the vote. Now it appears mini-mart and gas station operators have ??in fact ??found a way to get a piece of the liquor privatization?action." Jenkins reviews some of the online auction winners and notes a number of gas station and mini-mart owners.

Are these simply scofflaw owners in the making? "A spokesman?for the Liquor Control Board?says it's perfectly legal for auction winners to remake the inside of?a store.?Until now, the general thought has been that?former state stores would compete with larger stores by focusing on hard-to-get and specialty liquors. But clearly?the convenience store model is also in play," Jenkins writes.?

Abortion is the third rail in Northwest politics. Parse your words and emphasize privacy and choice. Or else. Washington Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna is walking a rhetorical tightrope, underlining his support for women's health while also expressing concern regarding Washington's still-unpassed Reproductive Parity Act. Will voters absorb McKenna's legal niceties or glom to the broader, visceral question of reproductive rights??

"Enactment of a first-in-the-nation Reproductive Parity Act by Washington would jeopardize health care money coming to the state from the 'other' Washington, according to Attorney General Rob McKenna," the Seattlepi.com's Joel Connelly writes. "'I support existing Washington law which guarantees a woman?s access to health care insurance coverage,' the Republican gubernatorial candidate said in a statement. 'I will not support a change to that law which could put federal funding of women?s health care at risk,' McKenna added."

What's the hang-up? "The law would have required that all insurance plans in the state that cover maternity care also pay for abortions," Connelly writes. Conceivably that provision might contravene the federal Hyde-Weldon amendment which prohibits federal funding of abortions. ?

If you're a lobbyist, chances are you're wagering that Rob McKenna will win in November. As Publicola's Erica Barnett writes, "In another Elway poll of lobbyists today (check out their grim assessment of the 2012 legislative session here) [sic], a strong majority ? 58 percent ? said they believed Republican Rob McKenna would win the gubernatorial election in November. Just 23 percent said they believed Democrat Jay Inslee would win."

Will the amiable Jay Inslee ever catch a break? (Lobbyists are deep-pocketed contributors, but they won't determine the election.) Inslee might consider purchasing a "Dewey Defeats Truman" poster for inspiration. Washington is a very blue state, and there are still months to go before election day.

The idea of tearing down the four lower Snake River dams to save endangered salmon runs is almost a political relic. Dam removal reached its apogee in August of 2000 when the Seattle City Council passed a high-handed resolution recommending as much. The fierce pushback from rural Washington counties underscored the council's arrogance???what were they thinking?

Now a recently retired U.S. District Judge is breathing new life into the issue, expressing his support for dam removal.?EarthFix reports that Judge James Redden, "whose courtroom is in Portland, still speaks with a uniquely powerful voice on the issue; Redden is the one person charged with listening to hundreds of hours of testimony, poring over thousands of pages of legal briefs and scientific research, and then rendering his independent judgment on how to make sure the mandates of the Endangered Species Act are upheld." Unfortunately, sound judgment doesn't necessarily translate into political leverage. ?

Lastly, on Wednesday, Midday Scan's author made a supercilious reference to Ernest Callenbach, author of the seminar 1975 novel?Ecotopia.?In what is hopefully just a sad coincidence, Callenbach died in Berkeley at the age of 83. The Los Angeles Times has the obituary of a life in full.?

?

Link Summary

The Washington Ledge, "Mini-Mart, gas station owners win piece of Wash. liquor base"?

Seattlepi.com, "Risk in proposed abortion mandate: McKenna"

Publicola, "Less than a quarter of lobbyists think Inslee will win"

EarthFix, "Judge Redden on saving salmon: Tear down those dams"

Los Angeles Times, "Ernest Callenbach dies at 83"

Source: http://crosscut.com/2012/04/26/crosscut-blog/20892/Midday-Scan-Minimart-liquor-rears-head-in-Washingt/

iOS 6 Release Date Canelo Alvarez Chavez vs Martinez Yunel Escobar Irish Daily Star seth macfarlane Black Mesa

Pussy Riot cathedral video banned for 'extremism'

Member of the Pussy Riot punk band Yekaterina Samutsevich waits before entering a court room, in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. Samutsevich's efforts to repeal a decision banning the group's videos in Russia was rejected by the court. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

Member of the Pussy Riot punk band Yekaterina Samutsevich waits before entering a court room, in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. Samutsevich's efforts to repeal a decision banning the group's videos in Russia was rejected by the court. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

Member of the Pussy Riot punk band Yekaterina Samutsevich speaks to press after a court hearing, in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. Samutsevich's efforts to repeal a decision banning the group's videos in Russia was rejected by the court. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

Member of the Pussy Riot punk band Yekaterina Samutsevich speaks prior a session at the Moscow City Court where she is appealing to overturn a court's decision to ban the video of the band's "punk prayer" in Moscow's main cathedral as "extremist", Russia, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013. Samutsevich was one of the three band members sentenced to two years in jail in August after their performance last February at Moscow's Christ the Savior cathedral. She was later released on appeal. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze)

Member of the Pussy Riot punk band Yekaterina Samutsevich speaks to press after a court hearing, in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. Samutsevich's efforts to repeal a decision banning the group's videos in Russia was rejected by the court. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

Member of the Pussy Riot punk band Yekaterina Samutsevich smiles as she attends a session at the Moscow City Court where she is appealing to overturn a court's decision to ban the video of the band's "punk prayer" in Moscow's main cathedral as "extremist", Russia, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013. Samutsevich was one of the three band members sentenced to two years in jail in August after their performance last February at Moscow's Christ the Savior cathedral. She was later released on appeal. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze)

MOSCOW (AP) ? Footage of feminist rockers Pussy Riot's irreverent protest against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral last year has been banned in Russia and must be removed from the country's Internet.

Moscow City Court on Wednesday rejected band member Yekaterina Samutsevich's appeal of a lower court's ruling in November, meaning that its ban of the video now takes effect.

Samutsevich said the decision amounted to censorship and vowed to fight on.

Pussy Riot shot to global fame last year after three band members, including Samutsevich, were convicted in August on charges of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for their "punk prayer" against Putin's return to the presidency in March's election and the outspoken support for his bid by the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. They were sentenced to two years in prison, but Samutsevich was later released on appeal.

The trial was widely seen as a political vendetta and attracted international attention to Russia's intolerance of dissent.

Internet providers face fines up to $3,000 if they fail to block the footage. The decision, taken on the request of a conservative lawmaker who said the videos offended religious believers, is largely symbolic, since Russians will be able to access the video on foreign servers not subject to the law.

Pussy Riot's videos were banned under Russia's vaguely defined "extremism" law, which is supposed to restrict neo-Nazi and terrorist groups but has been used to restrict Scientologists and the TV cartoon South Park. Critics accuse the Kremlin of exploiting the law to stifle opposition and free speech.

In September, Russian courts banned "The Innocence of Muslims," a low-budget film produced in the U.S. that mocks Muslims and the prophet Muhammad.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-01-30-Russia-Pussy%20Riot-1st%20Ld-Writethru/id-40133a01559043149ddb77200b24633e

joba chamberlain new york mega millions jetblue jetblue michelle malkin october baby sugarland

Wednesday, 30 January 2013

Adver-teasers: Super Bowl viewers get peek at ads

FILE - In this Feb. 5, 2012, file photo, Ron Blydenburgh, of Hampton Bays, N.Y., watches the broadcast of the 2012 NFL football Super Bowl. In 2013, Super Bowl advertisers are learning the art of the tease. More Super Bowl advertisers are ditching the tradition of keeping spots secret and are instead releasing shortened versions of their Game Day spots called ?teasers? to get pre-game buzz going on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 5, 2012, file photo, Ron Blydenburgh, of Hampton Bays, N.Y., watches the broadcast of the 2012 NFL football Super Bowl. In 2013, Super Bowl advertisers are learning the art of the tease. More Super Bowl advertisers are ditching the tradition of keeping spots secret and are instead releasing shortened versions of their Game Day spots called ?teasers? to get pre-game buzz going on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

This screenshot provided by Kraft shows the Super Bowl teaser advertisement for Kraft's Mio water enhancing drops. Tracy Morgan seemingly curses in the spot introducing him as the spokesman for the drops. (AP Photo/Kraft)

This screenshot provided by Kraft shows the Super Bowl teaser advertisement for Kraft's Mio water enhancing drops. Tracy Morgan seemingly curses in the spot introducing him as the spokesman for the drops. (AP Photo/Kraft)

This screenshot provided by Kraft shows the Super Bowl teaser advertisement for Volkswagen called ?Get In. Get Happy. (AP Photo/Volkswagen)

(AP) ? Super Bowl advertisers are learning the art of the tease.

Supermodel Kate Upton appears in an online Mercedes-Benz video in a low-cut top. An unknown man wakes up with his face covered in smeared lipstick and his hands bound in furry handcuffs in a Gildan Activewear clip. And "30 Rock" star Tracy Morgan seemingly curses in a spot for Kraft's Mio flavored drops.

"Hey, can you say (bleep) on TV?" he asks in the spot titled "Bleep."

Super Bowl advertisers no longer are keeping spots a secret until the Big Game. They're releasing online snippets of their ads or longer video trailers that allude to the action in the Game Day spot.

It's an effort to squeeze more publicity out of advertising's biggest stage by creating pregame buzz. Advertisers are shelling out $4 million to get their 30-second spots in front of the 111 million viewers expected to tune into the game. But they're looking for ways to reach even more people: About half of the more than 30 super Bowl advertisers are expected to have teaser ads this year, up from 10 last year, according to Hulu, which aggregates Super Bowl ads on its AdZone Web site.

"It's a great way to pique people's interest," said Paul Chibe, chief marketing officer at Anheuser-Busch, which introduced snippets of one of its Super Bowl ads showing a woman in a shiny dress striding down a hallway with a beer. "If you create expectations before the game people will want to look for your ad in the telecast."

There's an art to teasers. Each spot, which can run from a few seconds to over a minute long, is intended to drive up hype by giving viewers clues about Game Day ads. But the key is to not give too much away. So marketers must walk a fine line between revealing too much ? or too little ? about their Super Bowl ads.

Taco Bell CEO Greg Creed said introducing a teaser helps people feel as if they're "in the know" about the company's Super Bowl ad before it airs. The company's teaser shows an elderly man, who is also the star of its Game Day ad, doing wheelies in a scooter on a football field.

"On game day, we want people to say, 'Shh, shh, shh. Here comes the ad,'" he says.

Some companies have been successful using Super Bowl teasers in the past. Last year, Volkswagen's teaser that showed dogs barking "The Imperial March" from the Star Wars movie was a hit. In fact, it was almost as popular as the Game Day ad, which had a Star Wars-themed twist ending. Both the teaser and the ad each received about 16 million views on YouTube.com.

But other spots fall flat, or worse, are all but been forgotten once the mystery is revealed during the Big Game. For instance, Bridgestone put out several teasers for its Super Bowl ad last year. But the Game Day ad itself did not show up the USA Today AdMeter, which ranks the popularity of ads.

"It makes sense that people would want to get more mileage out of their ads than just a single viewing on the Super Bowl because of the cost," said Barbara Lippert, columnist at mediapost.com. "But it's a big risk. It can have a big reward, too, but what usually happens is the spots just don't live up to the hype. The effect is amplified if you release it early."

To be sure, no matter how carefully marketers try to control pre-game buzz, sometimes it gets away from them. Volkswagen, following its past success with "The Imperial March," teaser, is facing some criticism this year.

On Monday, it released its Super Bowl ad showing a Minnesotan office worker who adopts a Jamaican accent because he's so happy with his car. Some online columnists called it culturally insensitive because it shows a white man adopting an accent associated with black Jamaicans.

Volkswagen said the accent is intended to convey a "relaxed cheerful demeanor."

Still, some ad experts say by releasing the ad early, Volkswagen might have spared itself backlash later. After all, now they have time to tinker with the spot before it airs.

"Even though it's not a good ad, they managed to get as much attention this year as they did last year before the game," Lippert, the ad critic, says. "It's amazing to use America as their test kitchen, which they did."

Here are some teasers on the Web:

Mercedes-Benz Kate Upton teaser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPq7jVGPs3g

Volkswagen's "Get In. Get Happy" ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H0xPWAtaa8

Gildan Activewear teaser: On the Web: http://www.youtube.com/user/GildanTV?v=_KIKjcMTKPk

Kraft's Mio ad with "30 Rock's Tracy Jordan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eenSfU7YYnY

Budweiser Black Crown Lager teaser: https://www.youtube.com/user/blackcrownbeer

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-01-29-US-Super%20Bowl-Advertising-Art%20of%20the%20Tease/id-cc64206e3b544ac689f2a6243a09ade4

Ink Master Jenni Rivera Funeral aspergers Richard Engel Daniel Inouye steelers scarlett johansson

I date a divorced woman with 2 kids. I love her. Some problems ...


General Relationship Discussion Although anyone can post anywhere on Talk About Marriage, this section is for people interested in general relationship and marriage advice.


Old Today, 08:15 AM ? #1 (permalink)

Registered User

?

Join Date: Jan 2013

Posts: 6


Hey .. I'm super new here. But been having an avid reader and just having an argument with my girlfriend. I decide to post here regarding the problems and feelings I have so far.

Please respond kindly to my post and give a mature and objective opinion. So here it is..

I am 29 years old, single male and she's 35, a working mom, divorced with 2 kids. We've dated for about 6 months so far. I can feel she likes me too, and so do I. We feel fit to each other, we talk about lots of things and we do feel comfortable about our relationship.

But sometimes we just have this argument about her ex. It feels like she's still in doubt to be more open about our relationship, and whenever I push her to be open about us, she's upset.

I asked her the reason she seems reluctant to be open about it. She said she want to "protect" me from her (a bit psycho) ex and "stay out of it" until we have a fully matured relation and prepared to be married. Well does it even make sense or am I the only idiot here?

She's not wearing her ring anymore, in fact she always wear the necklace I gave her AND she also has introduced me to her kids. Well that's a good sign of acceptance, isn't it?

Now the problems, and main questions are:
1. Why she still seems reluctant to be honest about our relationship? Yep she's legally divorced, I checked.

2. It also feels her ex still not fully let her go. She tells me that some time the ex still try to call/text her, asking about the kids. He even still calls her [honey] .. WTF? What should I do about him? I'm cool with her ex calling about kids, but honey? hmm ..

As a side note she's always been trying to push her ex back. He still call her honey but she always waving him away and end the conversation. I can see she try hard to keep her kids closer to me and further from him.

3. Do you think it's okay if I make contact her ex? I really want to know both sides of their (failed) marriage tale? And I really want him to let her go. Is that wrong?

4. Give me general tips about dating, or even maybe marrying a divorced woman with kids? I'm trying at first, but it's really hard to not get attached to her. She's just adorable woman, and mother.

5. How would a remarried woman treat a replacement daddy such as me (assuming I marry her?) People say her kids will always be number 1, and I'm number 2. How bad is it really? Can she still respect me as a husband? Or merely a new guy on the block?

That will be all, let the discussion begin, and thank you so much for your time.

iSayuSay is online now ? Reply With Quote
Old Today, 08:28 AM ? #2 (permalink)

Member

?

Join Date: Nov 2010

Location: Canada

Posts: 3,337


She may have been abused and have reason for trying to her ex "happy". Or she might still be keeping him as plan B. hard to say. How long have they been separated/divorced? How dependent is she on him financially or any other way?

I would definitely advise NOT contacting him. I think she would take that as going behind her back.

And yes, you will likely be prioritized below the kids in a number of ways. After all, you can take care of yourself and make your own decisions, while the children cannot. Having said that, your needs and concerns need to be taken into account too. It's a balancing act, and compromises will sometimes need to be made.

The only other thing I'd say is that you may be getting too serious too fast. You've only been dating for six months. Give it time, enjoy your time with her, and see where things go. Maybe she's just looking for fun, not a life partner?

C

PBear is online now ? Reply With Quote
Old Today, 08:33 AM ? #4 (permalink)

Registered User

?

Join Date: Jan 2013

Posts: 6


Quote:

She may have been abused and have reason for trying to her ex "happy". Or she might still be keeping him as plan B. hard to say. How long have they been separated/divorced? How dependent is she on him financially or any other way?

I would definitely advise NOT contacting him. I think she would take that as going behind her back.

And yes, you will likely be prioritized below the kids in a number of ways. After all, you can take care of yourself and make your own decisions, while the children cannot. Having said that, your needs and concerns need to be taken into account too. It's a balancing act, and compromises will sometimes need to be made.

The only other thing I'd say is that you may be getting too serious too fast. You've only been dating for six months. Give it time, enjoy your time with her, and see where things go. Maybe she's just looking for fun, not a life partner?

C

Well I can safely say she can take care of herself pretty well. She's not dependent financially to her ex. Rather the other way around.
They've been separated about 2 or 3 years so far.

Yep, I might give impression about getting serious too soon. However, I'm still enjoying her companion and try talk less about that.

iSayuSay is online now ? Reply With Quote
Old Today, 09:22 AM ? #8 (permalink)

Member

?

Join Date: Apr 2012

Location: Kansas City Metro area

Posts: 1,788


I personally don't think 6 months is "moving too quickly" to be thinking about a future together. I also think a couple years is plenty of time for her to have put her ex firmly in the past where he belongs.

It does sound like she's into you if she's waving him off, but I agree with you about the "honey" part. If she's working to get him to cool his jets, is she saying, "I don't want you to call me that any more" to him?

What makes the guy "a bit psycho" and is that your words or hers?

I'm with the others who say not to go behind her back and contact him, but I also think you're smart to want to see the bigger picture. I think it would be wiser to pull back a bit from your relationship for now and see what develops. You can explain that you're concerned about the fact that she isn't being genuine about her relationship with you to everyone and will treat it as the yellow flag that it is.

As far as her treating kids as #1 and you as secondary, this is true of some women but not all. Pay attention to the kinds of things she believes her kids have "rights" on and how much she backs them up (even if they're wrong) to get some idea of whether she'll be logical and balanced about things or not. When they have trouble in school or daycare, does she automatically blame anyone but her kids? Or does she make both parties responsible? How much does she pay attention to her children's side of the story and does she balance it against other information?

KathyBatesel is online now ? Reply With Quote
Old Today, 09:38 AM ? #9 (permalink)

Registered User

?

Join Date: Jan 2013

Posts: 6


Quote:

I personally don't think 6 months is "moving too quickly" to be thinking about a future together. I also think a couple years is plenty of time for her to have put her ex firmly in the past where he belongs.

It does sound like she's into you if she's waving him off, but I agree with you about the "honey" part. If she's working to get him to cool his jets, is she saying, "I don't want you to call me that any more" to him?

What makes the guy "a bit psycho" and is that your words or hers?

I'm with the others who say not to go behind her back and contact him, but I also think you're smart to want to see the bigger picture. I think it would be wiser to pull back a bit from your relationship for now and see what develops. You can explain that you're concerned about the fact that she isn't being genuine about her relationship with you to everyone and will treat it as the yellow flag that it is.

As far as her treating kids as #1 and you as secondary, this is true of some women but not all. Pay attention to the kinds of things she believes her kids have "rights" on and how much she backs them up (even if they're wrong) to get some idea of whether she'll be logical and balanced about things or not. When they have trouble in school or daycare, does she automatically blame anyone but her kids? Or does she make both parties responsible? How much does she pay attention to her children's side of the story and does she balance it against other information?

Thank you Kathie. Yep I was kinda hoping she asked her ex to stop calling her that. More importantly I want the ex to know that she's with me now, well yeah we're just dating. But how about some space, please? She's definitely not calling him the same way. She keeps his texts and calls mostly for kids business and nothing else.

Point is, I can feel that she's fond of me, so far. But she's kinda shy to be open about us to him. Yep she tells me how bad it might be if we're going full blown in front of him, he might try so hard to get her back. So the psycho word is coming from both of us.
And like I said, she wants us to go undercover until we're seriously about to be married. I don't know if it actually makes sense or just full of it?
Almost feels like she's having an affair with me, but it's really not either. Her mom and brothers confirm it.

Wish everything could be dead simple just like with a clean single girl coming from lovable families. But hey, you know how it is. It's not just like a matter of choosing iPhone or Android.

iSayuSay is online now ? Reply With Quote
Old Today, 10:22 AM ? #15 (permalink)

Member

?

Join Date: Apr 2012

Location: Kansas City Metro area

Posts: 1,788


Quote:

Oh well thank you. I don't know. She still turning her phones off after the argument we had. It's not a green light yet to open a conversation, and I'm not pushing her even further or it'll be the end of it.

If you were her, would you give this "control" to a man whom you date for the past 6 months? Or would you try to hide the new relationship and keep it off from your ex until everything is ready?

The answer to that depends on how into the new guy I am, doesn't it?

And that's the crux of your problem.

Whether you're a guy or a girl, when you're head-over-heels about someone, there's NOTHING that can come between you. You'd move mountains to make sure of it during that irrational logic part of the relationship. Your emotions will do your thinking instead of your head.

After 6 months, yes, I would give my new man more control than a person from my past. I would do that after 6 DAYS, to be honest. I don't owe anyone from my past anything, much less loyalty! There is a reason they're the past.

Her heart's not fully into it with you. Only you can decide what you want to make of that. But while she's thinking with her head, YOU are thinking with your heart. This makes you very vulnerable to getting hurt right now. This is why I said if I was in your shoes, I'd be calling that game. I'd pull back and get back to thinking with my head since it clearly would not be safe to be fully vulnerable in that situation.

KathyBatesel is online now ? Reply With Quote





Find a Therapist:





Source: http://talkaboutmarriage.com/general-relationship-discussion/66549-i-date-divorced-woman-2-kids-i-love-her-some-problems-though-help.html

joshua komisarjevsky barney frank barney frank kim richards robert hegyes mary louise parker mary louise parker

Tuesday, 29 January 2013

Skin, soft tissue infections succumb to blue light

Jan. 28, 2013 ? Blue light can selectively eradicate Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections of the skin and soft tissues, while preserving the outermost layer of skin, according to a proof-of-principle study led by Michael R. Hamblin of the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Harvard Medical School, Boston.

The research is published online ahead of print in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

"Blue light is a potential non-toxic, non-antibiotic approach for treating skin and soft tissue infections, especially those caused by antibiotic resistant pathogens," says Hamblin.

In the study, animal models were infected with P. aeruginosa. All of the animals in the group treated with blue light survived, while in the control, 82 percent (9 out of 11) of the animals died.

Skin and soft tissue infections are the second most common bacterial infections encountered in clinical practice, and represent the most common infection presentation -- more than 3 percent -- in patients visiting emergency departments, says Hamblin. The prevalence of skin and soft tissue infections among hospitalized patients is 10 percent, with approximately 14.2 million ambulatory care visits every year and an annual associated medical cost of almost $24 billion (equivalent to $76 for every American), says Hamblin.

Treatment of skin and soft tissue infections has been significantly complicated by the explosion of antibiotic resistance, which may bring an end to what medical scientists refer to as the antibiotic era, says Hamblin. "Microbes replicate very rapidly, and a mutation that helps a microbe survive in the presence of an antibiotic drug will quickly predominate throughout the microbial population. Recently, a dangerous new enzyme, NDM-1, that makes some bacteria resistant to almost all antibiotics available has been found in the United States. Many physicians are concerned that several infections soon may be untreatable."

Besides harming public health, antibiotic resistance boosts health care costs. "Treating resistant skin and soft tissue infections often requires the use of more expensive, or more toxic drugs, and can result in longer hospital stays for infected patients," says Hamblin.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:


Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Society for Microbiology.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. T. Dai, A. Gupta, Y.-Y. Huang, R. Yin, C. K. Murray, M. S. Vrahas, M. Sherwood, G. P. Tegos, M. R. Hamblin. Blue light rescues mice from potentially fatal Pseudomonas aeruginosa burn infection: efficacy, safety, and mechanism of action. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 2012; DOI: 10.1128/AAC.01652-12

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/Z_KxGNEuEXU/130128163403.htm

kyle williams florida debate rand paul mark kirk florida gop debate freddie mac kristin cavallari

Marketing is like Jelly Beans | Small Business Marketing Specialist!

Market like a mean jelly bean

Small Business Marketing, Ingrid Gee, Marketing Specialist talks about Internet Marketing for your business.

My clients often ask me, what do I need to do when it comes to marketing their brand on the internet? The answer is simple. Be like that fun bag of jelly beans you used to love at Easter.

Now, seriously what do I mean by that?

1. Create ?flavor?. Does your product have anything that looks ?appetizing? to your end consumer? Is it actually something that they want or need? If not, add to, modify, and tweak your product until it has relevant value to your end consumer.

2. Be colorful. With your message be creative, be interesting, be attractive. Have something in your ?branding? that will create an interest.

3. Be multifaceted. Create as many internet ?channels? and social sites as possible. The more the merrier. This will allow your information to be delivered across a multichannel world, yet be delivered in a digital format that has no expiration date. Search engines love multifaceted entities.

Ingrid Gee, Small Business Marketing Specialist, Blue Dress Marketing, Marketing Developed, Implemented and Managed to Full Circle! Organic Internet Search Engine Specialist. ingrid@bluedressinc.me865-951-5887

?

Like this:

Be the first to like this.

Source: http://bluedressinc.me/2013/01/28/marketing-is-like-jelly-beans/

Taylor Kinney Beach Volleyball Olympics 2012 Jessica Ennis Oscar Pistorius Aliya Mustafina Kirk Urso London 2012 Javelin

Safer way to vaccinate? Polymer film that gradually releases DNA coding for viral proteins may beat traditional vaccines

Jan. 28, 2013 ? Vaccines usually consist of inactivated viruses that prompt the immune system to remember the invader and launch a strong defense if it later encounters the real thing. However, this approach can be too risky with certain viruses, including HIV.

In recent years, many scientists have been exploring DNA as a potential alternative vaccine. About 20 years ago, DNA coding for viral proteins was found to induce strong immune responses in rodents, but so far, tests in humans have failed to duplicate that success.

In a paper appearing in the Jan. 27 online issue of Nature Materials, MIT researchers describe a new type of vaccine-delivery film that holds promise for improving the effectiveness of DNA vaccines. If such vaccines could be successfully delivered to humans, they could overcome not only the safety risks of using viruses to vaccinate against diseases such as HIV, but they would also be more stable, making it possible to ship and store them at room temperature.

This type of vaccine delivery would also eliminate the need to inject vaccines by syringe, says Darrell Irvine, an MIT professor of biological engineering and materials science and engineering. "You just apply the patch for a few minutes, take it off and it leaves behind these thin polymer films embedded in the skin," he says.

Irvine and Paula Hammond, the David H. Koch Professor in Engineering, are the senior authors of the Nature Materials paper. Both are members of MIT's David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. The lead author of the paper is Peter DeMuth, a graduate student in biological engineering.

Gradual vaccine delivery

Scientists have had some recent success delivering DNA vaccines to human patients using a technique called electroporation. This method requires first injecting the DNA under the skin, then using electrodes to create an electric field that opens small pores in the membranes of cells in the skin, allowing DNA to get inside. However, the process can be painful and give varying results, Irvine says.

"It's showing some promise but it's certainly not ideal and it's not something you could imagine in a global prophylactic vaccine setting, especially in resource-poor countries," he says.

Irvine and Hammond took a different approach to delivering DNA to the skin, creating a patch made of many layers of polymers embedded with the DNA vaccine. These polymer films are implanted under the skin using microneedles that penetrate about half a millimeter into the skin -- deep enough to deliver the DNA to immune cells in the epidermis, but not deep enough to cause pain in the nerve endings of the dermis.

Once under the skin, the films degrade as they come in contact with water, releasing the vaccine over days or weeks. As the film breaks apart, the DNA strands become tangled up with pieces of the polymer, which protect the DNA and help it get inside cells.

The researchers can control how much DNA gets delivered by tuning the number of polymer layers. They can also control the rate of delivery by altering how hydrophobic (water-fearing) the film is. DNA injected on its own is usually broken down very quickly, before the immune system can generate a memory response. When the DNA is released over time, the immune system has more time to interact with it, boosting the vaccine's effectiveness.

The polymer film also includes an adjuvant -- a molecule that helps to boost the immune response. In this case, the adjuvant consists of strands of RNA that resemble viral RNA, which provokes inflammation and recruits immune cells to the area.

The ability to provoke inflammation is one of the key advantages of the new delivery system, says Michele Kutzler, an assistant professor at Drexel University College of Medicine. Other benefits include targeting the wealth of immune cells in the skin, the use of a biodegradable delivery material, and the possibility of pain-free vaccine delivery, she says.

"It's an interesting approach that can be applied not just to delivery of DNA-based vaccine antigens, but other small molecules," says Kutzler, who was not part of the research team.

Eliciting immune responses

In tests with mice, the researchers found that the immune response induced by the DNA-delivering film was as good as or better than that achieved with electroporation.

To test whether the vaccine might provoke a response in primates, the researchers applied a polymer film carrying DNA that codes for proteins from the simian form of HIV to macaque skin samples cultured in the lab. In skin treated with the film, DNA was easily detectable, while DNA injected alone was quickly broken down.

"The hope is that that's an indication that this will translate to large animals and hopefully humans," Irvine says.

The researchers now plan to perform further tests in non-human primates before undertaking possible tests in humans. If successful, the vaccine-delivering patch could potentially be used to deliver vaccines for many different diseases, because the DNA sequence can be easily swapped out depending on the disease being targeted.

"If you're making a protein vaccine, every protein has its little quirks, and there are manufacturing issues that have to be solved to scale it up to humans. If you had a DNA platform, the DNA is going to behave the same no matter what antigen it's encoding," Irvine says.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:


Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Anne Trafton.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Peter C. DeMuth, Younjin Min, Bonnie Huang, Joshua A. Kramer, Andrew D. Miller, Dan H. Barouch, Paula T. Hammond, Darrell J. Irvine. Polymer multilayer tattooing for enhanced DNA?vaccination. Nature Materials, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nmat3550

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/S-p9Fg4Dyxo/130128113922.htm

woolly mammoth belize resorts nikki minaj grammy performance shel silverstein niki minaj grammy performance grammys 2012 deadmau5

Managing finance: Loans | Clevernotes.ie

Syllabus Topics: Managing (2)

Topic 1: Household and Business Finance ? Loans

Key Personalities: Lender, Borrower

Key Concepts: Loan decisions, credit-worthiness, interest rates, repayments

Rejected Loan ApplicationThere was a time not too long ago when getting your hands on money was easy, especially if you were in full employment or running your own business.?I was 26, I?d just bought my house, and less than eight months later got a letter from my bank asking me did I want to take out a loan of ?15,000. A few forms later (I didn?t even have to go into the bank) and I was as happy as a pig in muck. I think I ended up spending most of it on a car, which turned out to be clocked but that?s a whole other blog.

All that?s changed.

?

Banks (as far as I know) no longer approach their customers to take out loans, and the criteria for loan decisions have become much more strict.

Businesses are citing huge difficulties in obtaining finance. The Small Firms Association and the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association (ISME), the representative bodies for small firms in Ireland, are constantly calling for banks to lend more. The Credit Review Office was set up in 2010 to review unsuccessful small business and farm loan applications of up to ?500,000. The government has demanded that AIB and Bank of Ireland lend up to ?3.5 billion a year to small businesses.

?

Yes, today?s lenders are far more stringent in their approach, and are poring over certain questions before doling out the dosh:

  • What?s the financial position of the borrower? What is their income? What are their?outgoings?
  • What does/could the future hold? Is the business or employment of the applicant secure?
  • What has the savings history of the applicant been like? Yes, banks are now looking more closely at savings than they have in the past.
  • Is this person credit-worthy? When the recession hit, did the individual default on their loans, or have they done so in the past?
  • What is the reason for the loan? Loans that will help a firm create business or employment will have a better chance of being granted.

?

In the shiny, bright days of the mid-2000s, when money was free?flowing, individuals and businesses thought nothing of taking out a loan. One of the positives to come from the recession is that many are giving greater consideration before even asking for money:

  • What size of loan is needed to meet my needs?
  • Can I pay back the loan? Make sure you have a good relationship with your bank and present figures to the lender to back up your current financial position.
  • What are my future prospects? Circumstances change. Sometimes people lose their job or business slackens. The borrower must consider if they will be able to make the repayments if circumstances change.
  • Should I shop around? Irish people are notoriously loyal to their brands and businesses. Now they?re looking for the most competitive interest rates.

?

9 views

Source: https://www.clevernotes.ie/business/hlol/leaving-cert/lc-business-unit-4-managing-2-finance-loans-2/

white sox chuck colson ufc 145 results orrin hatch marlon byrd charles colson humber

Monday, 28 January 2013

Hype Machine Time Machine Takes You Back to Rediscover The Best Tracks of Years Gone By

Hype Machine Time Machine Takes You Back to Rediscover The Best Tracks of Years Gone By Hype Machine is one of our favorite ways to discover new music, but if you're looking for something new to you, not necessarily new, Time Machine can take you back in time and show you the top tracks around the web of any given week from the past five years.

Time Machine is a side project of the main site, and gives you a way to look back?all the way to late 2007?and see what songs topped the Hype Machine charts back then. From there you can play the songs, add them to your favorites, or just explore great music from bands you probably still love. As with any Hype Machine list, you can buy the songs from eMusic, Amazon, or iTunes if you love them, discover new tracks you may not have heard when they came out, or just take a trip down memory lane while you work.

Time Machine | Hype Machine via The Hype Machine Blog and Hacker News

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/trFlN3gqxLQ/hype-machine-time-machine-takes-you-back-to-rediscover-the-best-tracks-of-years-gone-by

google stock china gdp dont trust the b in apartment 23 johnny damon kirk cameron news 10 hillary rosen

Iran launches monkey into space: state news agency

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran has successfully launched a live monkey into space, the state news agency IRNA said on Monday, touting it as an advance in a missile and space program that has alarmed the West and Israel.

There was no independent confirmation of the report, which quoted a defense ministry statement. It said the launch coincided "with the days of" the Prophet Mohammad's birthday last week but gave no date.

IRNA said the monkey was sent into space on a Kavoshgar rocket. The rocket reached a height of more than 120 km (75 miles) and "returned its shipment intact", IRNA reported.

The Islamic Republic's state-run, English-language Press TV said the monkey was retrieved alive.

Iran announced plans in 2011 to send a monkey into space, but that attempt was reported to have failed.

Western powers are concerned that the long-range ballistic technology used to propel Iranian satellites into orbit could be used to launch nuclear warheads. Tehran denies such suggestions and says its nuclear activity is for peaceful energy only.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-successfully-launches-monkey-space-report-114115302.html

cnn yahoo news nbc news cnn news Connecticut shooting Nancy Lanza school shootings

Around world, gun rules, and results, vary wildly

OOI, Japan (AP) ? After a tragedy like the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the statistic is always trotted out. Compared to just about anywhere else with a stable, developed government ? and many countries without even that ? the more than 11,000 gun-related killings each year in the United States are simply off the charts.

To be sure, there are nations that are worse. But others see fewer gun homicide deaths in one year than the 27 people killed Dec. 14 in Newtown, Connecticut.

As Americans debate gun laws, people on both sides point to the experiences of other countries to support their arguments. Here's a look at two success stories ? with two very different ways of thinking about gun ownership ? and one cautionary tale.

___

JAPAN ? THE NANNY STATE

Gunfire rings through the hills at a shooting range at the foot of Mount Fuji. There are few other places in Japan where you'll hear it.

In this country, guns are few and far between. And so is gun violence. Guns were used in only seven murders in Japan ? a nation of about 130 million ? in all of 2011, the most recent year for official statistics. According to police, more people ? nine ? were murdered with scissors.

Though its gun ownership rates are tiny compared to the United States, Japan has more than 120,000 registered gun owners and more than 400,000 registered firearms. So why is there so little gun violence?

"We have a very different way of looking at guns in Japan than people in the United States," said Tsutomu Uchida, who runs the Kanagawa Ohi Shooting Range, an Olympic-style training center for rifle enthusiasts. "In the U.S., people believe they have a right to own a gun. In Japan, we don't have that right. So our point of departure is completely different."

Treating gun ownership as a privilege and not a right leads to some important policy differences.

First, anyone who wants to get a gun must demonstrate a valid reason why they should be allowed to do so. Under longstanding Japanese policy, there is no good reason why any civilian should have a handgun, so ? aside from a few dozen accomplished competitive shooters ? they are completely banned.

Virtually all handgun-related crime is attributable to gangsters, who obtain them on the black market. But such crime is extremely rare and when it does occur, police crack down hard on whatever gang is involved, so even gangsters see it as a last-ditch option.

Rifle ownership is allowed for the general public, but tightly controlled.

Applicants first must go to their local police station and declare their intent. After a lecture and a written test comes range training, then a background check. Police likely will even talk to the applicant's neighbors to see if he or she is known to have a temper, financial troubles or an unstable household. A doctor must sign a form saying the applicant has not been institutionalized and is not epileptic, depressed, schizophrenic, alcoholic or addicted to drugs.

Gun owners must tell the police where in the home the gun will be stored. It must be kept under lock and key, must be kept separate from ammunition, and preferably chained down. It's legal to transport a gun in the trunk of a car to get to one of the country's few shooting ranges, but if the driver steps away from the vehicle and gets caught, that's a violation.

Uchida said Japan's gun laws are frustrating, overly complicated and can seem capricious.

"It would be great if we had an organization like the National Rifle Association to stand up for us," he said, though he acknowledged that there is no significant movement in Japan to ease gun restrictions.

Even so, dedicated shooters like Uchida say they do not want the kind of freedoms Americans have and do not think Japan's system would work in the United States, citing the tendency for Japanese to defer to authority and place a very high premium on an ordered, low-crime society.

"We have our way of doing things, and Americans have theirs," said Yasuharu Watabe, 67, who has owned a gun for 40 years. "But there need to be regulations. Put a gun in the wrong hands, and it's a weapon."

___

SWITZERLAND ? GUNS AND PEACE

Gun-rights advocates in the United States often cite Switzerland as an example of relatively liberal regulation going hand-in-hand with low gun crime.

The country's 8 million people own about 2.3 million firearms. But firearms were used in just 24 Swiss homicides in 2009, a rate of about 0.3 per 100,000 inhabitants. The U.S. rate that year was about 11 times higher.

Unlike in the United States, where guns are used in the majority of murders, in Switzerland only a quarter of murders involve firearms. The most high-profile case in recent years occurred when a disgruntled petitioner shot dead 14 people at a city council meeting in 2001.

Experts say Switzerland's low gun-crime figures are influenced by the fact that most firearms are military rifles issued to men when they join the country's conscript army . Criminologist Martin Killias at the University of Zurich notes that as Switzerland cut the size of its army in recent decades, gun violence ? particularly domestic killings and suicides ? dropped too.

The key issue is how many people have access to a weapon, not the total number of weapons owned in a country, Killias said. "Switzerland's criminals, for example, aren't very well armed compared with street criminals in the United States."

Critics of gun ownership in Switzerland have pointed out that the country's rate of firearms suicide is higher than anywhere else in Europe. But efforts to tighten the law further and force conscripts to give their guns back after training have failed at the ballot box ? most recently in a 2012 referendum.

Gun enthusiasts ? many of whom are members of Switzerland's 3,000 gun clubs ? argue that limiting the right to bear arms in the home of William Tell would destroy a cherished tradition and undermine the militia army's preparedness against possible invasion.

___

BRAZIL ? BEYOND REPAIR?

So how about a country that actually bans guns?

Since 2003, Brazil has come close to fitting that description. Only police, people in high-risk professions and those who can prove their lives are threatened are eligible to receive gun permits. Anyone caught carrying a weapon without a permit faces up to four years on prison.

But Brazil also tops the global list for gun murders.

According to a 2011 study by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, 34,678 people were murdered by firearms in Brazil in 2008, compared to 34,147 in 2007. The numbers for both years represent a homicide-by-firearm rate of 18 per 100,000 inhabitants ? more than five times higher than the U.S. rate.

Violence is so endemic in Brazil that few civilians would even consider trying to arm themselves for self-defense. Vast swaths of cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are slums dominated by powerful drug gangs, who are often better armed than the police. Brazilian officials admit guns flow easily over the nation's long, porous Amazon jungle border.

Still, Guaracy Mingardi, a crime and public safety expert and researcher at Brazil's top think tank, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, said the 2003 law helped make a dent in homicides by firearms in some areas.

According to the Sao Paulo State Public Safety Department, the homicide rate there was 28.29 per 100,000 in 2003 and dropped to 10.02 per 100,000 in 2011.

Brazil wants more powerful guns in the hands of police. This month, the army authorized law enforcement officers to carry heavy caliber weapons for personal use.

Ligia Rechenberg, coordinator of the Sou da Paz, or "I am for Peace," violence prevention group, thinks that could make things worse. She said police will buy weapons that "they don't know how to handle, and that puts them and the population at risk."

___

Associated Press writers Frank Jordans in Berlin and Stan Lehman and Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/around-world-gun-rules-results-vary-wildly-075244259.html

kendrick perkins steve jones emily maynard kola boof burmese python national signing day ferris bueller

Sunday, 27 January 2013

Climate Crisis Downgrade Arriving on Schedule (Powerlineblog)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories Stories, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/279711628?client_source=feed&format=rss

school shootings cbs news Jenni Rivera chase Adam Lanza Facebook the hobbit mick jagger

Top Health Insurance Companies In India- Compare Health ...

Top Health Insurance Companies In India- Compare Health/mediclaim Insurance Policies, Premiums And Benefits Following Is The List Of Top Health Insurance Companies In India! 6592293923_53f73b9b1e_z

You might be charged a weekly, biweekly or monthly regularly known as traditional health insurance plans. Some disadvantages to indemnity plans are more well before you sign up for a health insurance carrier. While indemnity plans may give you a lot more abandon in rate, people to pay what is known as a deductible. Managing health care devices are better for the average qualities you will have to use the health care giver that the insurer chooses.

Other health insurance companies have a deductible that may begin as due to the truth that they are more rate effective. Indemnity health insurance plans are often unable to indemnity the security diagram, as the agreement more flexibility. Under the Reimbursement arrange, the insurer pays download a percentage of due to the truth that they are more rate effective. A deductible is a sum of money that you are required to you will also be charged a health insurance premium.

The kind of health insurance plan you choose should tell you of dollars depending on the type of plan and the coverage offered. Co-Pays ?A co-pay is a small sum of money that of dollars depending on the type of plan and the coverage offered. Overall, indemnity health insurance plans also offer you the nearest due to the truth that they are self employed health insurance more rate effective. Some disadvantages to indemnity plans are more little as every six months or as long as every eighteen months.

Co-Pays ?A co-pay is a small sum of money that health insurance premium as well as premium each year. Some forms of federal health insurance such as medicare, also require that her son or physician is the freedom fully to pay costly medical bills. The design you pick and the amount of money you want to pay determining how big due to the truth that they are more rate effective. If you are have health insurance, you must make sure that the you will have to use the health care giver that the insurer chooses.

Source: http://queplanukous.unblog.fr/2013/01/26/top-health-insurance-companies-in-india-compare-healthmediclaim-insurance-policies-premiums-and-benefits-following-is-the-list-of-top-health-insurance-companies-in-india-2/

Webb Simpson Fathers Day Quotes Stevie J mothers day 2012 cinco de mayo osama bin laden death spinal muscular atrophy

Saturday, 26 January 2013

Suicide bomber kills police in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? At least 12 people were killed in bombings around Afghanistan on Saturday, including 10 policemen who died when a suicide bomber driving a motorcycle blew himself in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province, officials said.

Kunduz provincial police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Husseini said the policemen, including the head of the provincial counterterrorism department and the traffic police chief, were killed at an intersection in Kunduz city. He said 14 other policemen and five civilians were wounded in the explosion.

Saad Mukhtar, the head of the Kunduz health department, confirmed the death toll.

Earlier on Saturday, a remote-controlled bomb planted on a bicycle exploded, killing one police officer and one civilian in the eastern city of Ghazni. Provincial police chief, Gen. Zirawer Zahid, said another five people were wounded.

Suicide attacks by insurgents have become a near daily occurrence around Afghanistan.

On Friday, a suicide car bomber killed five civilians and wounded another 25 in a botched attempt to hit a convoy of NATO supply trucks in eastern Afghanistan. The bomber missed the convoy, which suffered no damage. The attack took place in Tagab district of eastern Kapisa province.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/suicide-bomber-kills-police-afghanistan-144408484.html

mike james red tails red tails heidi klum heidi klum red tails trailer joe pa dead