রবিবার, ৩০ জুন, ২০১৩

The Beautiful Visualization of Relationships in Your Favorite Movies

The Beautiful Visualization of Relationships in Your Favorite Movies

Movies exist in their own world, with their own rules, with the characters having their own relationships. And though we may know every one of those characters, they might not all be connected together. These visualizations show how characters connect with each other in a beautiful constellation. You can almost gauge a movie by how its characters connect.

Take for example, Forrest Gump (a movie everyone knows but not everyone loves). Forrest is obviously the central character who is connected to everyone. Some of his connections, like Jenny and his mother have their own networks, while other lesser characters, like JFK, just exist on their own. The network, created by Movie Galaxies, clearly shows each character's relationship with each other.

The actual graphs in Movie Galaxies, which is the brainchild of Jermain Kaminski and Michael Schober, allows you to zoom in and out to see the character names for each node. The size of the node relates to how connected the character is which in turn shows how central the character is to the movie. You can see more of their fascinating work here. Try and find a pattern!

The best thing, perhaps, from these visualizations is to see how different movies explore relationships. Take the simplicity of 2001: A Space Odyssey:

The Beautiful Visualization of Relationships in Your Favorite Movies

Versus the extremely complicated but visually stunning Babette's Feast:

The Beautiful Visualization of Relationships in Your Favorite Movies

Here is Avatar:

The Beautiful Visualization of Relationships in Your Favorite Movies

And the Matrix:

The Beautiful Visualization of Relationships in Your Favorite Movies

And Blade Runner:

The Beautiful Visualization of Relationships in Your Favorite Movies

Source: http://gizmodo.com/the-beautiful-visualization-of-connections-in-your-favo-615731743

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Chicago volunteers rescue pets abandoned by OK tornadoes | WGN ...

Volunteers returned to Chicago overnight, after helping pets displaced by last month?s Oklahoma storms.

pawschicagoMembers of the no-kill animal shelter ?PAWS Chicago? left Friday, and brought back dozens of pets from shelters there.

It was their second such trip to Oklahoma.

Many of the animals were abandoned after the tornadoes hit.

Some of the pets could be available for adoption tomorrow.

Source: http://wgntv.com/2013/06/30/chicago-volunteers-rescue-pets-abandoned-by-ok-tornadoes/

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Penguins' Bylsma to coach US Olympic team in Sochi

Pittsburgh Penguins coach Dan Bylsma listens to a question during a news conference in Boston, Thursday, June 6, 2013. The Penguins are down 3-0 to the Boston Bruins in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals in the NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs. Game 4 is scheduled for Friday. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Pittsburgh Penguins coach Dan Bylsma listens to a question during a news conference in Boston, Thursday, June 6, 2013. The Penguins are down 3-0 to the Boston Bruins in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals in the NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs. Game 4 is scheduled for Friday. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

FILE - In this Jan. 14, 2013, file photo, Pittsburgh Penguins head coach Dan Bylsma outlines a drill during an NHL hockey practice at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh. USA Hockey hired Bylsma on Saturday, June 29, 2013, as the coach for the U.S. Olympic men's hockey team at the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

Dan Bylsma has never coached hockey at the international level. The Pittsburgh Penguins coach does, however, know how to win while juggling a roster dotted with superstars.

That was good enough for USA Hockey to select Bylsma as coach of the U.S. Olympic men's hockey team at the 2014 Winter Olympics on Saturday, hoping the free-flowing style he teaches translates well to the wider rinks that await in Sochi, Russia in February.

The 42-year-old Michigan native didn't hide from the glaring hole in his resume moments after being introduced. When asked how he was going to build on his limited experience in international coaching, Bylsma quickly offered a correction.

"I don't have any experience," Bylsma said with a laugh. "So 'very little' is wrong."

The next eight months should take care of that as the U.S. vies for its first gold medal since the "Miracle on Ice" in 1980.

The U.S. won silver in 2002 at Salt Lake City and was runner-up to Canada in Vancouver three years ago, losing 3-2 in overtime when Penguins star Sidney Crosby beat U.S. goaltender Ryan Miller 7:40 into the extra session.

Bylsma, who won the 2009 Stanley Cup with Crosby, was watching the game from a restaurant when he saw his captain take a pass from Jarome Iginla and race in on Miller to produce one of the most iconic moments in the history of the sport.

"I got off of my chair because I had a pretty good notion he was going to put that home for the win," Bylsma said.

NHL officials will meet with the players' association, the International Olympic Committee and International Ice Hockey Federation in New York on Monday to iron out an agreement allowing the league's top players to compete in Sochi.

Once approved, Bylsma will have to find a way to slow down Crosby and 2012 NHL MVP Evgeni Malkin, who is expected to play for his native Russia.

"I'm also a little bit concerned (Crosby) knows me as a coach, my strengths and my weaknesses he's going to bring that to the attention of the Canadian team," Bylsma said.

Nashville Predators general manager David Poile, who will serve in the same capacity for Sochi, called Bylsma "one of the very best coaches in the league."

Bylsma played nine years as a defensive-minded forward for the Los Angeles and Anaheim from 1995-2004 before moving into coaching. He replaced Michel Therrien as Penguins' coach in February 2009 and guided Pittsburgh to the third championship in franchise history.

He won the Jack Adams Award as the NHL Coach of the Year in 2011 and helped the Penguins post the best record in the Eastern Conference during the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season. Pittsburgh advanced to the conference finals before being swept by the Boston Bruins. The Penguins rewarded Bylsma with a two-year contract extension through 2017 a week after their season ended.

The process of building the Olympic team will begin with an orientation camp in Washington D.C. in late August.

Poile expects the core of the team that won silver in Vancouver to return but allowed changes need to be made. The U.S. has historically struggled in Olympic competition overseas. The last time the U.S. team medaled at an Olympics outside of North America came in 1972 when it won silver in Sapporo, Japan and hasn't medaled at an Olympics in Europe since 1956.

"We can't be the same type of team because we haven't had success over there," Poile said.

Bylsma's system should help. The Penguins are regularly among the highest scoring teams in the NHL thanks in part to a talented core and a style of play that focuses on puck control and pressure. It's made Pittsburgh one of the most feared teams in the league. Now Bylsma hopes to do the same in the Olympics.

"We have one goal in Sochi," Bylsma said, "and that's to go over there and win gold."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-06-29-OLY-HKO-Bylsma-US/id-14172030fce846608cb2f052d8c63c77

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Judge temporarily block parts of tough new Kansas abortion law

By Jeff Black, Staff Writer, NBC News

A Kansas judge said Friday that two doctors who sued to stop a new state law restricting abortion have not presented a compelling enough case to prevent the law from taking effect on Monday, but she did agree to temporarily block two parts of the statute.

Shawnee County District Judge Rebecca W. Crotty issued a temporary injunction?on a portion of the law that changed the definition of a medical emergency and another that required abortion providers to post a statement on their websites saying the state?s materials on abortion are "scientifically accurate."

The first part required women seeking an abortion to observe a 24-hour waiting period, but Crotty said the provision effectively eliminated "any meaningful exception for medical emergencies." Crotty said the second portion was a potential restriction on free speech.


Kansas? sweeping anti-abortion law, passed in April, says life begins at fertilization, forbids sex-selection abortions and bans Planned Parenthood from providing sex education in schools.

In addition, the measure requires women to learn about fetal development before having an abortion, including a statement that abortion ends the life of ?whole, separate, unique, living human beings.

Planned Parenthood has also filed a narrower federal lawsuit challenging Kansas? abortion law.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663306/s/2df31d84/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A60C280C191941420Ejudge0Etemporarily0Eblock0Eparts0Eof0Etough0Enew0Ekansas0Eabortion0Elaw0Dlite/story01.htm

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শনিবার, ২৯ জুন, ২০১৩

'Twisted light' shown off in fibre

Link Information - Click to View

'Twisted light' shown off in fibre
A novel way of packing more data in optical communications by using "twisted light" is shown to work in optical fibres - with terabit-per-second rates.

Source: BBC News
Posted on: Friday, Jun 28, 2013, 8:32am
Views: 11

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128843/_Twisted_light__shown_off_in_fibre

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Get This Man Up To Speed: PC Gaming Right Now | Rock, Paper ...

By Jim Rossignol on June 28th, 2013 at 4:00 pm.


I don?t know your name, Man, but you came up to me at Rezzed and said the most surprising thing (for someone who had bought a ticket to a PC games event). You said this: ?I haven?t played any games since about 1998. I think the last game I bought was Half-Life. What should I play to get myself up to speed with gaming today??

Caught off guard, I just vaguely gestured at the show floor, and said ?uhh?. Eventually I recommended you read this website. But wow. Okay. This article is for you.

And, given our audience, possibly you alone.

So. PC gaming right now. The man needs a snapshot. How do we fill him in on the past fifteen years?

Let?s see if we can hit the main themes in a single article.

We?ll start with where you left off, then.

Half-Life.

FOOTNOTES TO HALF-LIFE

Half-Life?s great trick was trigger scripted events to take place right in front of you in the game world, capturing your attention and filling the game with drama. It was linear, but the inertia of events propelled you forward. Getting this right was why Half-Life was so compelling, and it?s a trick that has dominated not just shooters, but all kinds of games, for quite some time.

To catch up with this trend you?ll probably want to play the sequel, Half-Life 2, as well as Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which pretty much wrote a template for how the tricks invented by Half-Life created a modern template for the spectacle shooter genre, which currently takes a place in the PC genre map that is something akin to the action movie in Hollywood. The formula is well understood, and it shifts millions of units. It?s a bit shallow, but we try not to judge it too harshly, because so many people have so much fun with it.

To see the other areas that the scripted shooter explored, you might want to look at the Bioshock games. They?ve taken pretty much the same structure as Half-Life and draped incredible set design over it. They departed from the dreariness of much of what we?ve become over-familiar with to create games set in parallel histories. And they?re quite the spectacle because of it.

Things have, more recently, started to depart somewhat from the first-person script. Take a look at things as diverse as Portal 1 & 2, and the STALKER games for a taste of that.

GUNS AND OTHER ANIMALS

There was another fork in the road that was widening into a highway at around the time you left off gaming, Man. That was the rising popularity of playing games over the net. I don?t know how familiar you were with that in the late ?90s, but games like Half-Life very much took to the proliferation of broadband connections, and began to support large communities around their multiplayer aspect. If you were gaming in the ?90s you would have already seen this happening with games like Quake, but the scene began to mature around specific mods, or alternative games built on the framework provided by a commercial game. Half-Life spawned one of the most important mods of all, Counter-Strike. That was a multiplayer game where a team of terrorists took on a team of counter-terrorists, and they had no tools for negotiation, only guns. I?m not sure if I?d recommend you played that now, to be honest, but it sort of informs everything that we play that has men and guns in today.


If you want to get a taste of the broad spectrum of men with guns online on the PC, I?d say look at Team Fortress 2 ? cartoony, friendly, lots of of teamplay depth ? and Battlefield 3 ? which has a much more serious vision of multiplayer combat, with destructible environments, vehicles, and tonnes of progress-enabling systems ? and Arma 3, which sits at the very far spectrum of these things, at where battlefield simulations designed to train real soldiers meets our sphere of entertainment.

Games that exist solely because of the net now make up a huge many-headed hydra of things, which I can?t possibly hope to chart here. Suffice to say that one of the games that dominates the world today will basically be incomprehensible to 1998?s brain. It?s called League Of Legends, and has its roots in a game called DOTA, which was a mod of another game. DOTA 2 turned up recently too, and they?re huge, byzantine competitive multiplayer things that are neither strategy nor action. If you want to understand games now, then you should play them. Just don?t expect to understand them.

Anyway.

THEIR HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS

Playing online meant more than shooting people in contained arenas of various sizes. It also meant pretending to be an orc. Or an elf. Or sometimes a cat person or a Wookiee. Everquest really kicked off this cycle, but since it came out in March 1999, I?m imagining you missed it. You can?t have missed the game which took its level-treadmill, quest-driven, world-exploring, team-up-with-people in a population of thousands template, and then printed money with it: World Of Warcraft. If you have missed that, then you must have actually been in a deep freeze since 1998, because it has had millions of players, and captured the imaginations (and wallets) of the largest number of PC gamers in history. Since you can now play the first twenty levels for free, and those early levels are actually kind of fun, you should definitely take a look, if just to catch up with where the rest of us are. Even if we say we don?t like WoW, most of us have played it, and understand its habits.


The most important thing to take from World Of Warcraft is, I suppose, that it?s not representative of everything that the online RPG is doing. Sure, it?s probably representative of about 70% of the online games you can play these days, but it doesn?t do all that much to explore the terrain. If you are looking for games that really start to investigate the potential of having thousands of people in the same game space then I?d recommend the sci-fi plenty of Planetside 2, and the austere and brutal micro-managment spacecraft-collecting game, Eve Online.

LONELY CHOICES, LOOTS WITH FRIENDS

We still have normal, offline RPGs in 2013, too. Sort of, anyway. You?ll probably want to see where those went in the hands of companies like Bioware and CD Projekt. Bioware invented a new genre of RPG called Guns & Conversation, of which the best example is probably the Mass Effect games, which in themselves represent the past decade?s best attempt at an original space opera saga. For fantasy things, try Skyrim.


To really contrast now and then, though, you should probably play The Witcher 2. It is a game that falls quite some serious distance from the PC RPGs you might have seen in 1998, being heavy on action, and completely full of graphics.

It seems fair to say that this entire genre of wizards and numbers (as well as the ones I previously mentioned around Everquest and World Of Warcrat) was influenced by another trend, too, which was the popularity surrounding Diablo. Yes, Diablo from 1996. Remember that? Turns out it would create its own genre, know as the ?action RPG?, and spawn an endless army of imitators. It?s worth playing Torchlight 2 and Diablo 3 to see how that game idea has been carved by a million tiny chisels into a supersonic version of its original self.

YOU SHOULD TOTALLY PLAY A TOTAL WAR GAME

They?re quite the thing, and meld both turn-based strategy and real-time battlefield strategy into one shambling titan of a game. The latest one is called Rome 2, and it will be out soon. If anything represents one of the pillars of PC gaming in 2013, that does.

SPORTS GAMES AND THAT

Sports and racing games still exist. They look fifteen years better than they did when you last looked at them. I can?t personally recommend any.

THE OTHER BLOCKBUSTER

I could write, and probably have written, several essays-worth of material on the other thing that is going on in PC games right now, and that?s confusingly bannered under the ?indie? movement. It isn?t really a movement, and it doesn?t have banner at all. Instead it?s a sort of change in focus away from big studio development of the kind that brought you Half-Life, and back to a lot of smaller groups and individuals finding ways to make and sell games themselves.

This has been characterised by some level of experimentation. It?s hardly all original stuff, but it is certainly diverse, and has been increasing moment over the past decade. The highlights of this journey are many, but particularly interesting waypoints are Darwinia, which created a strange sort of tactical adventure out of Tron-like visuals; Braid, which was a highpoint in a scene of mechanically inventive rehashes of the platform game; World Of Goo, which showed just how broad and silly the puzzle game can be when in the hands of artists, and then there?s, well, there?s Minecraft.


Minecraft is the great outlier. It has sold eleven million copies on PC and was made largely by one man. None of those copies came in a box, either, which is another thing which underscores this whole change in how games are made and consumed in 2013. Now that the need for packaging has evaporated, you can shop for and buy, more games than ever before, including Minecraft and games like it. The fact that eleven million people paid online to get hold of Minecraft is proof that nothing is certain: it?s a game about making and unmaking a world out of blocks that might actually have seemed crude in 1998.

The march of time, you see, doesn?t mean everything happens when it should. It just happens, and then we try to digest it. If you play nothing else to sample where games are in 2013, play Minecraft.

IT?S YOUR TURN, RENAISSANCE

Perhaps the weirdest thing about 2013 is that you won?t just recognise some of the types of games from your gaming in the Nineties, you?ll even recognise the names. The past is back, and people want to play it. Only they don?t actually want to play the past as it was, but as it could be, if it?s properly formatted into the visual and aesthetic standards of now or the future. What I mean is: we?re currently in the thrall of the most intense wave of nostalgia the gaming world has ever known, and that means remakes. Old game types are being dug up and redone for 2013. Games that were buried in the 1990s somehow live again, raised from the dead by new trends in fund-raising and the hunger for things as they were the last time you played PC games.

Even point and click adventures are undergoing a renaissance, for some reason. /I know/, but I didn?t say 2013 was actually a better place than 1998, so you have to take the rough with the smooth.

Probably the most important of these modern reworkings is XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which is a virtuoso modernisation of the brilliant turn-based series you might well be familiar with. If you want to know where everyone?s brain is right now, you cannot afford not to play that.

And now, mysterious yet inquisitive Rezzed attendee, I am spent, and must throw open the floor to our readers.

What should this chap be playing if he?s to catch up with the past decade and a half, readers?

Source: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/06/28/get-this-man-up-to-speed-pc-gaming-right-now/

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Perry, filibuster star clash over Texas abortions

DALLAS (AP) ? A battle over proposed abortion restrictions in Texas became a personal grudge match Thursday between conservative Republican Gov. Rick Perry and a Democratic state senator whose lengthy, one-woman filibuster catapulted her to sudden, national political stardom.

During a speech to the National Right to Life Conference, Perry singled out state Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth, saying that her life story proves all children born into difficult circumstances deserve not be aborted.

"She was the daughter of a single woman, she was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas Senate," Perry said. "It's just unfortunate that she hasn't learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters."

In comments to reporters afterward, he went even further, saying that he was glad Davis' mother didn't chose to have an abortion.

"What if her mom had said, 'I just can't do this. I don't want to do this,'" Perry said. "At that particular point in time I think it becomes very personal."

Davis shot back in an email statement after Perry's speech: "Rick Perry's statement is without dignity and tarnishes the high office he holds."

"They are small words that reflect a dark and negative point of view," she said. "Our governor should reflect our Texas values. Sadly, Gov. Perry fails that test."

Davis starting working at 14 to help support a household of her single mother and three siblings. By 19, she was already married and divorced with a child of her own ? but she eventually graduated with honors from Harvard Law School and won her senate seat in an upset.

On Tuesday, Davis' marathon speech and raucous outbursts from abortion rights protesters in the state Senate that kept lawmakers from approving sweeping restrictions that could make abortion all but impossible for many women in the second-largest state.

Those efforts ran out the clock on the midnight deadline Tuesday to pass legislation during a special legislative session Perry called to tackle abortion and other key issues. But on Wednesday, he called a second, 30-day extra session and put tighter abortion rules at the top of the agenda he sets for lawmakers.

The extra session has delayed Perry's expected announcement on whether he will seek a fourth full term as governor in elections next year. Davis is up for re-election then too, but some Democratic activists are urging her to seek the party's gubernatorial nomination.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/perry-filibuster-star-clash-over-texas-abortions-175240836.html

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PFT: Photo shows Hernandez with gun in '09

Falcons Stadium ChurchesAP

The Atlanta Falcons? plans for building a $1 billion replacement for the Georgia Dome are running into a bit of a roadblock.

According to WXIA-TV in Atlanta, negotiations to purchase the land necessary for the new building have reached a standstill. The city has been in talks with Friendship Baptist Church over the price of the land occupied by the church just south of the Georgia Dome that is needed for the new stadium. However, disagreements over the price to be paid have ended progress toward a solution.

Per the report, the city offered $13.5 million for the land and later raised their offer to $15.5 million. However, the church is asking for $24.5 million to agree to move. The end result is a stalemate devoid of progress.

Lloyd Hawk, Friendship Baptist Church?s board of trustees chairman, said the church needs to be compensated fairly for the price of land and the costs of relocating.

?We?re not going to incur new debt to do that and we?re not going to diminish our savings to do that,? Hawk said.

The church has asked for a mediator or in-person meeting with the mayor to attempt to find a suitable deal for both sides but the city currently seems unwilling to do so. In the meantime, the church?s focus is on serving their patrons first and not the wants of the Falcons.

?If they feel five or six million dollars makes a difference in a billion dollar project, that?s their prerogative,? Hawk said.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/06/26/photo-emerges-of-hernandez-posing-with-glock-in-2009/related/

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শুক্রবার, ২৮ জুন, ২০১৩

WHITE HOUSE NOTEBOOK: Obama gets lessons on Goree

GOREE ISLAND, Senegal (AP) ? President Barack Obama says he learned some lessons on a visit to Goree Island, where he toured a slave house and gazed out at the Atlantic Ocean through what's known as the Door of No Return. It's the point on this Senegalese island from which Africans were said to have been shipped to the Americas and into indentured servitude generations ago.

The son of a Kenyan man, Obama said the tour helped him, and the family members who accompanied him, to "fully appreciate the magnitude of the slave trade." He was joined by first lady Michelle Obama, daughters Malia and Sasha, his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, and a niece, Leslie Robinson.

The president said Thursday's trip also reminded him of the importance of standing up for human rights worldwide.

"This is a testament to when we're not vigilant in defense of human rights what can happen," Obama said after the tour. "Obviously, for an African-American, an African-American president, to be able to visit this site, I think, gives me even greater motivation in terms of human rights around the world."

Obama spent about a half-hour touring the salmon-colored slave house, including seeing the small holding rooms that separately held male and female Africans before they were loaded onto ships bound for the Americas. He spent about a minute peering through the Door of No Return, and went back for a second long look after his family had a chance to peek out too.

___

What's a motorcade called when it travels on water? Try a floatercade.

Obama arrived on the island aboard La Signare, a 73-foot, blue-and-white launch decorated with Senegal's green, yellow and red flag and a banner that said "Welcome President Obama."

There were six boats in all, including smaller boats for Secret Service agents and other security officials, White House staff and the media.

U.S. reporters traveling with the president dubbed the flotilla a "floatercade."

___

Tourists who come to Goree Island usually spend most of their time trying to avoid trinket-sellers and peddlers who swarm visitors from the moment they set foot off the ferry, plying them with beaded necklaces and offers of guided tours.

But the city went to great pains to clean up in anticipation of Obama's visit. Sandy lanes were swept clean of trash. The beach appeared to have been raked. Even the peddlers seemed to have been part of the cleanup effort too.

Instead of the usual mob, only a few hawkers greeted a ferry that docked the day before Obama arrived.

___

Before arriving on the island, Obama, who is a lawyer, told a meeting in Dakar of judges from the region that he disappointed his late grandmother by going into politics.

She wanted him to be a judge.

Still, even though he let her down her by becoming a politician, he said she would be happy to know "that a group of judges are willing to meet with me even if I'm not one myself."

___

As Africans awaited news about the health of ailing former South African President Nelson Mandela, Michelle Obama urged a group of middle school students to draw on his strength as they grow up to possibly become leaders in their own right. Mandela, 94, who fought against his country's former system of white-minority rule and was imprisoned for 27 years, is in critical condition in a South African hospital.

Mrs. Obama urged the students to make their lives worthy of the sacrifices of people like Mandela.

"I want you to think about this. If President Mandela could hold tight to his vision for his country's future during the 27 years he spent in prison, then surely you all can hold tight to your hopes for your own future," she told the students at Martin Luther King Middle School in the Senegalese capital of Dakar.

"If President Mandela could endure being confined to a tiny cell, being forced to perform back-breaking labor, being separated from the people he loved most in the world, then surely, all of us, we can keep showing up and doing our best ? showing up for school each day, studying as hard as you possibly can," she said. "Surely, you can seize the kind of opportunities Mandela fought for for all of us. Surely, you can honor his legacy by leaving a proud legacy of your own."

___

Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi in Senegal and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow Julie Pace on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jpaceDC

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-notebook-obama-gets-lessons-goree-204027642.html

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Beyond Ethanol: Drop-In Biofuels Squeeze Gasoline From Plants

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128822/Beyond_Ethanol__Drop_In_Biofuels_Squeeze_Gasoline_From_Plants

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The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Do I Wanna Know?

Yes, yes you do.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/the-weirdest-thing-on-the-internet-tonight-do-i-wanna-587012845

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WRITING ON THE ETHER: Let's Review Criticism | Porter Anderson

Porter Anderson, PorterAnderson.com, Writingon the Ether, Ether for Authors, London on the Ether, Jane Friedman, Ed Nawotka, Philip Jones, Publishing Perspectives, The Bookseller, books, ebooks, author, agent, Amazon, publishing, The FutureBook

  1. More Critics Than You Can Shake a Fist At
  2. Art vs. Entertainment / Criticism vs. Reviewing
  3. Why Ask Why?

?

Do you follow tennis? Observe the shaking of the fist.

Most of the world-class athletes at the All-England Club right now (including those being sent home alarmingly early) are not fistfight folks. But have a look: fist pumps.

In almost any Wimbledon match, male or female, you?ll find the players shaking their fists,?normally after winning points. As if at any moment, they might deck their opponents or punch out the ball kids.

Nobody follows these athletes more happily than I do. But that pumping of the fist looks showy at best on these immaculate, gifted, hard-working, smart people. It?s largely a ritual, a mannered iteration of a once-genuine gesture. It?s what you do with the hand not holding the racket. On one, it looks more like he?s shaking dice. On another, it looks like she?s grabbing fireflies. And, hey, it looks no better on the fans in the stands, these lovely, mild-mannered, bespectacled, brolly-toting rain dodgers?fist pumping?

It?s a cultural affectation. The shaking of the fist.

Could that be what?s become of literary criticism, too?

A significant disadvantage of the world of book recommendation is that we never hear about books that don?t live up to their promise. The bad books. Yes, I?ve heard the ?We don?t have time for bad books? argument, and while that works for recommending titles to genteel associations, it stinks when it comes to creating and maintaining a lively culture.

Porter Anderson, PorterAnderson.com, Writingon the Ether, Ether for Authors, London on the Ether, Jane Friedman, Ed Nawotka, Philip Jones, Publishing Perspectives, The Bookseller, books, ebooks, author, agent, Amazon, publishing, The FutureBook

Bethanne Patrick

In?Why Literary Criticism Still Matters?at Virginia Quarterly Review, ?Bethanne Patrick?begins asking some important questions to which we?re paying too little attention these days.

Think of literary criticism as a round robin of matches being played on the outer courts of the big tournament. The industry! the industry!?is fixated on its Centre Court melodrama.?While we watch traditional major players slip and slide, fall on their grass and suffer mortifying injuries, we aren?t focused on what?s happening to literary criticism.

Patrick?s good questions lie under the header ?Internet democratization.? Many good things have accrued from the digital dynamic. But the recommendation culture, in and of itself, may not be one of them, not entirely, if it?s allowed to replace real criticism.

Patrick, a critic, herself (as am I), writes:

This isn?t necessarily a problem for publishers. Publishing is a business, not an arts collective. This is a problem for authors and readers. If we want to have a balanced and literate literary culture, we have to be ready to name good books and bad books?and even to name the good and the bad within a single book, which is what the best book critics do on a regular basis.

Let?s look at a couple of changes that you and many others might have noticed only in sidelong glances on our way to the larger, central debates of the disruption.

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It?s not uncommon for some readers to be adamantly put out with me when I bring up entertainment as distinct from what I call more ?serious? work.

I?m perfectly happy for you to dive now to the comments section to tell me off, simply for having raised the topic. I might as well have just yelled ?pull!? on a skeet shoot. The next sound you?ll hear is the guns going off and clay pigeons exploding.

It may help if I offer you a graphic provided by Jane Friedman, the former Writer?s Digest publisher who now is VQR?s digital editor and host of Writing on the Ether. In teaching university media studies courses, Friedman has found it useful to include this diagram from the textbook Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication?by Richard Campbell, Christopher R. Martin, and Bettina Fabos.

The intent of this diagrammatic representation of various influences in culture is to flatten them onto one plane, so entertainment-oriented elements are no ?lower? than elements that might be classified as classical, ?serious? elements. This view categorizes cultural inputs as ?familiar,? ?unfamiliar,? ?comforting,? ?challenging,? ?conventional,? and ?innovative.? It has some useful points of connection for those who normally chafe at suggestions that one cultural influence is more valuable or ?higher? than another.

And if you want to hold your fire, however, I?ll tell you a bit more of what I mean and why I bring it up.

  • By ?serious,? I mean material intended to help us explore meaningful, life-defining elements of our experience. Most of the time, I prefer serious work in all forms, from television to film and books and music, visual art, dance, the works.
  • By ?entertainment,? I mean material the primary purpose and intent of which is to create a feel-good experience?perhaps through humor, pathos, nostalgia, etc. It usually trades in populist values and idioms. One reality show begets five others.

?

There was a useful phrase used for many years around Broadway theater. A musical comedy was said to be ?for the tired businessman.? And it was entertainment.

This was an age in which tired businesswomen were woefully overlooked, I?m afraid. Hence the gender reference. But the understanding was that the tired business person was the primary audience for long lines of beautiful women wearing fishnet hose and singing ?We?re in the Money? while kicking their right legs in perfect unison. And the crowd loved it.

Next door, a usually smaller Broadway house might have a production of Medea. The people attending that one, provided it was Eurpides? doing of the story, saw the titular character kill her own children as an act of vengeance against her feckless husband Jason. The tired business person, it was assumed, would either be asleep by the time the kids were tossed over the parapet, or, if awake, would want to be next door watching women kicking their right legs instead.

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Over time, let?s say since the middle of the last century, there has been a trend in all forms, not just theater, toward more entertainment, less serious work. Many exceptions everywhere, of course. But in time, and in virtually all media, the drift toward more entertainment-oriented work has been bolstered by the digital dynamic.

As I?ve written many times, digital is about distribution. Its energy seeks the widest distribution possible, through new-media technology. And this is one reason why entertainment offerings usually find bigger audiences than serious-art offerings: there?s a wider audience for the distribution of entertainment. ?


A couple of decades ago, a parallel turning point arrived for criticism. Those of us who were working in news media as critics were asked to start using star ratings, thumbs up or down, cartoons of little people jumping up and down or sulking, whatever?graphic representations of the gist of critical reviews.

This was the digital dynamic arriving in criticism. Just as art and entertainment were starting to grow farther apart, real criticism and ?reviewing? began to divide.

?Reviewing? became heavily consumer-oriented. How many thumbs up?

?

Critics found, of course, that many readers stopped reading their reviews. They just counted the thumbs ?way up,? the stars, etc. Reviewers were asked to tell their readers to ?go? or ?don?t go? to a film or concert, to ?read? or ?don?t read? a book.?

Actual criticism never seeks to tell users what to do. Instead it takes the work at hand and analyzes it in terms of what its creator(s) intended to do. What did this author mean to achieve? Did he or she achieve it??how? how not? how well?. VQR As Bethanne Patrick writes, emphasis mine:

Showing that books can contain good and bad but still be worth reading is just one of the ways in which critics benefit the reading public, and they also help readers place books in context. Is this book the next Holy Bible? The next Great American Novel? A blockbuster thriller? Yes, no, maybe? And why? What makes it so?

The user of criticism is then left to decide whether the analysis makes the work worth looking into. And he or she then decides whether the work is ?good? or otherwise. Criticism asks you to think for yourself, not be told to ?read this? or ?don?t read that.? Of course, this is why some people don?t care for it. They like others to do the thinking and tell them what to do. ?


Much as our culture neglected to nail the distinction between a ?cinema? and a ?theater??and thus we talk of going to a ?theater? to see a film?we didn?t do a very good job of distinguishing criticism from consumer reviewing.

In the same way that some authors rankle when told they?re working in entertainment while another set of authors is closer to art, there are consumer reviewers who don?t care for a clear understanding of what they do and how it differs from what true critics do.

I believe that what Patrick is writing about in her piece, ?Why Literary Criticism Still Matters,? helps us acknowledge a more recent and different divide opening up at our feet: criticism/reviewing vs. recommendation.

?

Patrick seems to pull critics and consumer reviewers closer together: they?re both surrounded, after all, by the recommendation culture. I think the functions of critics and reviewers remain different. ?I do think that she has an important point to make about the recommendation culture: It is unrelievedly biased toward the happy, the upbeat, the enthusiastic.

And it seems to be forming a third energy. As usual, we?ve eschewed giving this the clear terminology we need. We?re calling people of the recommendation culture ?reviewers,? too.

If the tired business person provided his or her opinion of Medea?s Greek chorus or the sequins on the synchronized legs? shoes, would we name those tired business people ?reviewers?? Probably. We?re like that. We wouldn?t want the tired business people to feel they were any less deserving of a career title than someone who?d actually made a career of it?even though they were less deserving, of course. And we?d never think of going the opposite direction and calling critics business people. ?


So now we have three things, all called ?reviewers.? They are:

(a) literary critics;

(b) consumer reviewers; and

(c) recommend-ers, the customer-appraisers.

Patrick writes:

If we don?t have reviews that tell us the truth?alongside recommendations that provide enthusiasm?then we have less information about how to spend our wild and precious reading lives. You can?t read every book, but even the small bits you read about as many books as possible increase your worldview.

What she?s describing?aside from ?our wild and precious reading lives,? which I love?is the fulfillment of yet another old line from ?legitimate? criticism: ?Everybody?s a critic.?

?

Thanks to that Internet ?democracy,? everybody can (and on many days, it seems, does) weigh in with his or her opinion. About everything. Everything. The usefulness of the customer recommend-er is perfectly clear.

The patron who has tried the vacuum cleaner and gives it some stars and adds comments that only another vacuum cleaner shopper could love is performing a community and retail service.?There is a genuine place and purpose for the customer?s appraisal, the recommendation culture at work, no question. Porter Anderson, PorterAnderson.com, Writingon the Ether, Ether for Authors, London on the Ether, Jane Friedman, Ed Nawotka, Philip Jones, Publishing Perspectives, The Bookseller, books, ebooks, author, agent, Amazon, publishing, The FutureBook

Many see hope in the Amazonian?acquisition of Goodreads because the problems Amazon has had with falsified customer reviews in the past may be, to some degree, ameliorated if Goodreads-vetted reviews from that avid community of 18 million recommending people are surfaced onto Amazon sales pages (with each member?s permission, of course).

Customer appraisal is all but required for decent online sales. It has a place and purpose. Nothing except sock puppetry need be held against it as a cautionary concern. It?s also about as far from actual literary criticism as my frolics around a badminton net are from what those fist-pumping tennis pros do at Wimbledon.

Back to Table of Contents ?

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So, to review, we seem to have managed to divide all this galling opinion-slinging into three parts:

(a) literary criticism;

(b) consumer reviewing; and

(c) recommendation, customer-appraisal.

That being the case, one of the most disturbing issues Patrick?s piece raises is found in this question:

Where does book reviewing end and book marketing begin?and does this question even still matter to the business of publishing?

?

?

For her, this is the fundamental issue, and it?s a good one. What is one form of reviewing or another, and what is merely salesmanship?

For me, however, the real question in her addendum is this: does this question still matter to the business of publishing??

If anybody?s putting together a list of Worst Moments in the Digital Disruption, I?d vote for the long, slow realization for journalists that diluted and starred reviews were just fine with the public, along with glitzy, hairsprayed ?Live-Action Eyewitness (as opposed to Earwitness?) News You Can Use.? The dumbing down of current affairs.


Many of us in the news media once believed that the population supported fair reporting and in-depth investigation. So, as our corporate executives reconfigured our newsrooms to respond to the Live-Action Nosewitness commercial interests of advertisers, we watched the windows, waiting for the pitchforks. Many of us felt sure the users would soon rise up, toss the hairspray over the parapet after Medea?s brats, and liberate us to return to journalism?s traditional separations of editorial and advertising. With this rescue, we felt sure, would come a restoration of rigorous literary criticism.

The cavalry never came over the hill.

?

We learned, in fact, that the wider public, for the most part, were not concerned about the principles of genuine journalistic performance. There?s a good chance, we know now, that they never even understood the concept of a truly free press.

And as digital news-you-can-use shallowed out into chit-chatty info-tainment, we had to concede that the public, in fact, doesn?t care. Info-tainment is ?good enough.? Just make a fist and shake it bit, and that?s ?good enough? as a faint reflection of what once was a fight.

?

In book publishing, what Patrick is asking gets at the worrisome center of the same issue: do readers today care whether they have access to criticism? Or even to consumer reviews? Or is the recommendation culture ?good enough?? She writes:

In a world of recommendations only, we don?t have to worry about conflicts of interest. Books are not pharmaceuticals or food; we don?t need a federal agency to vouch for their contents or effects?No one is going to get hurt if a book recommendation is based solely on the recommender?s love for the author.

She?s saying, then, that fair play and the disinterested stance once prized and protected by critics, their editors, and, surely, a handful of discerning readers, no longer are a concern.

Porter Anderson, PorterAnderson.com, Writingon the Ether, Ether for Authors, London on the Ether, Jane Friedman, Ed Nawotka, Philip Jones, Publishing Perspectives, The Bookseller, books, ebooks, author, agent, Amazon, publishing, The FutureBook

Jacob Silverman

In his earlier VQR piece, The Art of the Negative Review, Jacob Silverman wrote that self-assigning critics are automatically likely to produce positive criticism because they?re choosing works they feel are valuable to bring to their readers? attention. He includes, for example, Time magazine?s Lev Grossman, writing:

Grossman pointed out that he?is?the books desk at?Time?magazine?no one else writes or edits books coverage there?so he feels a sort of obligation to champion good literature and chooses his review subjects accordingly.

And regardless of how reviews might be assigned, the best news is that in some cases, real criticism, of course, still is published at all.

Porter Anderson, PorterAnderson.com, Writingon the Ether, Ether for Authors, London on the Ether, Jane Friedman, Ed Nawotka, Philip Jones, Publishing Perspectives, The Bookseller, books, ebooks, author, agent, Amazon, publishing, The FutureBook

Emily St. John Mandel

I?m always glad to recommend the work of Emily St. John Mandel at The Millions, not only because her voice as a critic is so amply informed by her experience as an author, herself, but also because the character of her review work is distinctive?given to the work at hand, yet set within the context of a thoughtful point of view.

And here is where I?ll disagree, respectfully, with Bethanne Patrick. When, in her first line, she writes of ?objective literary criticism,? she?s naming a unicorn.

Porter Anderson, PorterAnderson.com, Writingon the Ether, Ether for Authors, London on the Ether, Jane Friedman, Ed Nawotka, Philip Jones, Publishing Perspectives, The Bookseller, books, ebooks, author, agent, Amazon, publishing, The FutureBookNo journalist is objective, least of all the critic,?whose job it is to form and promulgate an opinion. I?m guessing Patrick means fair. Experienced critics are adept at giving work a full hearing, at starting from what the author intends and evaluating the results on the terms of the attempt. They?re never objective. They?re trained, however, to be fair. You can see this at work in the critical writings of Mandel, too.

Porter Anderson, PorterAnderson.com, Writingon the Ether, Ether for Authors, London on the Ether, Jane Friedman, Ed Nawotka, Philip Jones, Publishing Perspectives, The Bookseller, books, ebooks, author, agent, Amazon, publishing, The FutureBook

Kyle Minor

Or see Kyle Minor?s?criticism of the critics,?Today in silly book reviews: Let?s all fight about Alice Munro at Salon. In that piece, bisected as it is by a Drugstore.com ad, Minor writes:

The critic of the sainting sort might shower the writer with unqualified praise, declare her a genius, and ignore or explain away the writer?s shortcomings ? or declare them to be virtues. The other kind of critic might decide that the surest path to deflating the balloon of hyperbole isn?t merely letting a little air out the bottom. No, it might be more satisfying ? and attention-grabbing ? to spray it with a flamethrower.

Porter Anderson, PorterAnderson.com, Writingon the Ether, Ether for Authors, London on the Ether, Jane Friedman, Ed Nawotka, Philip Jones, Publishing Perspectives, The Bookseller, books, ebooks, author, agent, Amazon, publishing, The FutureBookThis is critic-on-critic action, rhinos clashing on the veld, the sweaty and purposeful shaking of a ranking fist at another. In fact, Minor gets in some jabs at just about all of us. For example:

Martin Amis, in a New Yorker review of a story collection by Don DeLillo, said: ?When we say that we love a writer?s work, we are always stretching the truth: what we really mean is that we love about half of it. Sometimes rather more than half, sometimes rather less.?

By the time you finish Minor, Wimbledon will be over. (The Salon piece is longer even than an Ether post, I?m pleased to tell you.)

But you?ll know more than you did when you started, about literary criticism, its zip-line way of sailing down one theme and back up another, its pile-ups of preferred phrasings, an art performed on an art. You?ll know a bit more about what we?re losing, about what?s being given away in our shrugging acceptance of terms, like ?reviewing,? applied to marketplace jargon and shopping-cart flattery.

?

And most of all, you?ll know a bit more about the lack of consciousness that characterizes so many changes in our culture on digital drive-time.

We?re generally unaware of these cultural slips and slides on the grassy court of our progress?this value brought to its knees, that tradition flat on its ass, something important retired in early-round competition. It doesn?t matter, get out of the way. We?re?mobile. We?re social. We?re subscribing. And we?re trying to get a few more ?likes? onto the page before somebody drops a one-star in the locker room and runs.


If you asked one of these tennis champions I like so much? He might not even remember. ?Shake my fist? I did? Come on. Show me the tape.??

One of the things literary criticism does?hell, consumer reviewing might even manage from time to time?is??make us aware of a trend, a surprise, a turn taken, a discovery made.

But mostly, we just shake a little recommendation at it.

What do you think? Is that really good enough??

Back to Table of Contents

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Main image: iStockphoto ? BuddyM

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Gorilla taunting: If you want to go to Hogwarts, be nice to zoo animals

Children taunting a zoo gorilla got their just dues when the animal decided to best them at their own game.

By Elizabeth Barber,?Contributor / June 27, 2013

A gorilla scared a group of children cruelly taunting it.

Children who apparently have never read Harry Potter, and who don?t know that only non-magical kids are mean to zoo animals, were fittingly scared when a gorilla decided it had grown weary of their taunting.

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In the now viral video, a group of children yell ?You?re ugly!? at a gorilla sitting placidly near the glass at a Dallas zoo, beating their chests in an imitation of more enthusiastic gorillas they might have seen on television. The gorilla watches them, calmly accepting their criticism.?

But suddenly the gorilla has had enough. Well-versed in the art of surprise, as well in the benefits of deadpan facial expressions, it lunges toward the glass and presses its hands and face to the window. The kids scream. And the gorilla saunters off, turning back for one last disapproving look at the appropriately terrified kids.

The kids had it better than Harry Potter?s Dudley Dursley, who taps the glass on a bored boa constrictor?s cage and then later gets his due, ending up sealed behind the glass (in the movie version, at least; in the book, the snake just slithers around his ankles).

Harry, the superstar wizard who goes on to save the whole world, is more restrained with the snake: no tapping, just a casual, pleasant conversation with the exasperated animal about how a little privacy would be nice, sometimes.

The apparent moral: people who tap on glass are non-magical. If you want to go to Hogwarts, be good to gorillas.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/7irLrVHReec/Gorilla-taunting-If-you-want-to-go-to-Hogwarts-be-nice-to-zoo-animals

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Turkey seeks to tighten grip on Twitter after protests

Twitter

6 hours ago

Twitter logo

Twitter

ANKARA ? Turkey said on Wednesday it had asked Twitter to set up a representative office inside the country, which could give it a tighter rein over the microblogging site it has accused of helping stir weeks of anti-government protests.

While mainstream Turkish media largely ignored the protests during the early days of the unrest, social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook emerged as the main outlets for Turks opposed to the government.

Transport and Communications Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters on Wednesday that without a corporate presence in the country, the Turkish government could not quickly reach Twitter officials with orders to take down content or with requests for user data.

"When information is requested, we want to see someone in Turkey who can provide this ... there needs to be an interlocutor we can put our grievance to and who can correct an error if there is one," he said.

"We have told all social media that ... if you operate in Turkey you must comply with Turkish law," Yildirim said.

Twitter declined to respond to the government request on Wednesday, but a person familiar with the company's thinking said it had no current plans to open an office in that country.

Turkey successfully pressured Google into opening an office there last October after blocking YouTube, a Google subsidiary, from Turkish Internet users for two years.

While Ankara had no problems with Facebook, which had been working with Turkish authorities for a while and had representatives inside Turkey, Yildirim said it had not seen a "positive approach" from Twitter after Turkey issued the "necessary warnings" to the site.

"Twitter will probably comply, too. Otherwise this is a situation that cannot be sustained," he said, without elaborating, but he stressed the aim was not to limit social media.

Identification sought
An official at the ministry, who asked not to be named, said the government had asked Twitter to reveal the identities of users who posted messages deemed insulting to the government or prime minister, or that flouted people's personal rights.

It was not immediately clear whether Twitter had responded.

Facebook said in a statement that it had not provided user data to Turkish authorities in response to government requests over the protests and said it was concerned about proposals Internet companies may have to provide data more frequently.

'Provocateurs'
In the midst of some of the country's worst political upheaval in years, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has described sites like Twitter as a "scourge," although senior members of his party are regular users. He has said such websites were used to spread lies about the government with the aim of terrorizing society.

Police detained several dozen people suspected of inciting unrest on social media during the protests, according to local reports.

Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D. C., Twitter's Chief Executive Dick Costolo said on Wednesday that he had been observing the developments in Turkey, but he emphasized that Twitter had played a hands-off role in the political debate.

"We don't say, 'Well, if you believe this, you can't use our platform for that,'" Costolo said. "You can use our platform to say what you believe, and that's what the people of Turkey ... are using the platform for. The platform itself doesn't have any perspective on these things."

Turkey's interior minister had previously said the government was working on new regulations that would target so-called "provocateurs" on social media but there have been few details on what the laws would entail.

One source with knowledge of the matter said the justice ministry had proposed a regulation whereby any Turk wishing to open a Twitter account would have to enter their national identification number, but this had been rejected by the transport ministry as being technically unfeasible.

'Country Withheld Content'
Last year, Twitter introduced a feature called "Country Withheld Content" that allows it to narrowly censor tweets considered illegal in a specific country, and it caused some concern among users.

Twitter implemented the feature for the first time in October in response to a request by German authorities, blocking messages in Germany by a right-wing group banned by police.

Turkey said last year that it had won a long-running battle to persuade Google-owned YouTube to operate under a Turkish Internet domain, giving Ankara more control over the video-sharing website and requiring the company to pay Turkish taxes. In October, Google opened an office in Istanbul.

Turkey banned the popular website for more than two years in 2008 after users posted videos the government deemed insulting to the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Rights groups have long pressed Turkey to reform strict Internet laws and analysts have criticized the ease with which citizens and politicians can apply to have a website banned.

Turkey cites offenses including child pornography and insulting Ataturk to justify blocking websites.

Turkish users have increasingly turned to encryption software to thwart any ramp up in censorship of the Internet.

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2dd79a1e/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Cturkey0Eseeks0Etighten0Egrip0Etwitter0Eafter0Eprotests0E6C10A463395/story01.htm

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Miley Cyrus Dishes About Liam, Snoop And Haters Boosting 'We Can't Stop'

Miley tells Jimmy Kimmel she and Snoop are 'more alike than you would think.'
By Jocelyn Vena

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1709610/miley-cyrus-good-morning-america.jhtml

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Inbee Park takes early lead at US Women's Open

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. (AP) ? Top-ranked Inbee Park took the early lead in the first round of the U.S. Women's Open as she tries to make history by winning the first three majors of the year.

Park had just one bogey in a 5-under 67 for the best score of Thursday's morning groups. Caroline Hedwall of Sweden was a shot back, with six players at 2 under.

Concerned about bad weather, tournament officials moved up the tees, and with the rain holding off, Park was able to play aggressively.

"I never had practiced from those tees, so I was a little bit shocked when I went to the tees," Park said.

Not that she was complaining.

She repeatedly gave herself short putts, and the way she has excelled in her short game lately, Park cruised to a low score.

"So instead of hitting like 5-irons, we were hitting 9-irons, and that was making the course much easier," she said. "I was actually able to go for some pins and give myself a lot of opportunities today. I made a lot of putts and didn't leave much out there."

No player has won the first three majors in a season with at least four majors. The 2008 U.S. Women's Open champion, Park has already won five times this year, including her last two tournaments.

Starting on No. 10, Park birdied her first hole, then started racking up pars. She made the turn at 2 under before birdies on three of her next four holes.

At 5 under, Park briefly struggled with her tee shots, needing to save par on Nos. 5 and 7. On No. 6, her 15th hole of the day, she had to lay up out of the tall grass and settled for her lone bogey.

Park got herself back to 5 under on the par-5 No. 8 with a chip shot to about 5 feet for an easy birdie putt.

Hedwall was at 5 under heading into her final hole, No. 9. But she hit over the green into the rough, then just missed her par putt to finish with a 4-under 68.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/inbee-park-takes-early-lead-us-womens-open-171813820.html

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This Beautiful Map Is Made Up of Microscopic Cells

This Beautiful Map Is Made Up of Microscopic Cells

This map may look like a fairly reasonable representation of the world?but that's all the more impressive when you realise it's actually made up of microscopic cells from parts of the body that cause problems for people who live in each country.

Accordingly, North America is built from fat cells because of obesity, while Europe is represented by brain cells to represent neurodegenerative disease. Poor old Greenland? Its sperm cells signify the country's infertility problem.

Put together by Odra Noel, an artist and trained as a doctor, the map i on show from 2 July at the Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition in London. [New Scientist]

Image by Odra Noel/Scientific Art/odranoel.eu

Source: http://gizmodo.com/this-beautiful-map-is-made-up-of-microscopic-cells-595303592

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Morsi warns Egypt could be 'paralysed' as clashes rage | Morocco ...

CAIRO, June 26, 2013 (AFP)

Islamist President Mohamed Morsi warned on Wednesday that political divisions in Egypt ?threaten to paralyse? the country, as at least one person was killed and scores were hurt in clashes between his supporters and opponents.

In a televised speech to mark his turbulent first year in power, ?Egypt faces many challenges. The polarisation has reached a stage that could threaten our democratic experience and paralyse the nation.?

Just hours before he spoke, Islamists had been holding a rally in his support in the Nile Delta city of Mansura when opponents began throwing rubbish at them and fighting erupted, a security official said.

In addition to the one person killed, another 237 were hurt, the health ministry said.

Two of the injured were taken to the intensive care unit of Mansura International Hospital with live bullet wounds, medics there said.

The clashes come amid widespread tension ahead of planned anti-Morsi rallies on Sunday, at which the opposition will again demand that he step down and that early elections be called.

Organisers of a campaign dubbed Tamarod (rebellion in Arabic) say they have collected more than 15 million signatures in support of a snap presidential election.

And with Islamist parties having called for their own rallies to support the president on Friday, there are fears of more unrest.

Gatherings for and against the president were being held around the country on Wednesday, but confrontations only erupted in Mansura, a security official said.

In Cairo?s Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the 2011 revolt that toppled president Hosni Mubarak, hundreds of anti-Morsi protesters gathered to watch the president?s speech.

Some have announced they will begin a sit-in there.

Others gathered outside the defence ministry, waving Egyptian flags and chanting against the president.

In Alexandria and several Nile Delta provinces, Islamist groups have held rallies in support of him.

Morsi promised reforms and called for dialogue in a bid to placate protesters ahead of Sunday?s rallies.

He insisted he was working for the goals of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011,? which he is accused of failing.

?For the revolution to reach its goals, there must be reforms at the root,? he said.

Morsi repeated his call for dialogue with the opposition, amid deep tension and anxiety ahead of the Sunday protests to call on him to step down.

?We Egyptians are able to overcome this phase and overcome the challenges? All I ask of you now is to sit and discuss? to look for the positives and build on them; and to fix the negatives.?

The president admitted to making mistakes and vowed to correct them.? ?I have made many mistakes, there is no question. Mistakes can happen, but they need to be corrected,? he told a packed auditorium.

Morsi?s supporters say he is an elected president who is working to root out decades of corruption in state institutions. Any attempt to remove him from office would be a coup against democracy, they say.

His opponents accuse him of concentrating power in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood from which he hails and of failing the aspirations for freedom and social justice that inspired the revolution against Mubarak.

Egypt?s powerful army, which has been on the sidelines of politics since Morsi?s election, warned it would intervene if violence breaks out in the country.

The military has brought in reinforcements of troops and vehicles in key cities in order to protect vital establishments in case of potential unrest, security officials said.

Source: http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/06/95732/morsi-warns-egypt-could-be-paralysed-as-clashes-rage/

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On a technicality, Hong Kong and China extradite themselves from Snowden

The case of NSA leaker Edward Snowden was one that neither Hong Kong nor Beijing wanted to get involved in. With a stalling maneuver, Hong Kong let Mr. Snowden flee US extradition.

By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / June 23, 2013

A giant screen at a Hong Kong shopping mall shows Edward Snowden, the former contractor accused of leaking information about NSA surveillance programs. He left Hong Kong on Sunday.

Vincent Yu/AP

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By allowing Edward Snowden to leave Hong Kong Sunday, hours after the United States sought to extradite him, the government there has rid itself ? and Beijing ? of an awkward diplomatic and legal problem.

Skip to next paragraph Peter Ford

Beijing Bureau Chief

Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.

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Indeed there are strong suspicions in the former British colony that the Hong Kong authorities deliberately gave the fugitive NSA whistleblower time to get out.

The US extradition request, filed on Saturday, ?did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law,? the Hong Kong government said on Sunday, so it had asked Washington for ?additional information.?

In the meantime, there was ?no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong,? the statement added. On Sunday morning, Snowden boarded a plane bound for Moscow, accompanied by legal advisors from the anti-secrecy group Wikileaks according to a post on the group?s Twitter account.

His final destination was unclear.

?I suspect it was ?wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you?ve got 48 hours to get out of Dodge City?,? says Kevin Egan, a Hong Kong lawyer with experience of extradition cases. ?When the government got the clarification it had sought, it might not have been able to let him go.?

?Snowden managed to get away because Hong Kong decided to stall,? adds Claudia Mo, a lawmaker with the pro-democracy Civic Party. ?The matter was too tricky for Sino-American relations ? so Beijing gave instructions he should be given time to leave.?

Snowden had said he planned to challenge any US extradition attempt in Hong Kong courts, declaring his faith in the city?s rule of law. But he faced the possibility of having to stay in jail throughout the court proceedings, which could have taken several years according to local lawyers.

His case was a thorny one for Beijing, anxious to improve relations with the United States and embarrassed by the US fugitive?s presence in Hong Kong, but unable to intervene openly in Hong Kong?s judicial process under the ?one country, two systems? principle that safeguards Hong Kong?s courts.

Hong Kong?s top official, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying had promised that the case would be handled ?in accordance with the laws and established procedures of Hong Kong.? But the politically sensitive case ?would have been quite a test for our rule of law,? says Ms. Mo. ?It would have been a very thorny issue and it is all for the best for both Hong Kong and Beijing that he has gone.?

?This was not a case that Hong Kong or Beijing ever wanted to get involved in,? agrees Mr. Egan. ?The best thing for both of them was for Snowden to leave.??

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/DTvJw4WYO4c/On-a-technicality-Hong-Kong-and-China-extradite-themselves-from-Snowden

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Why low-end phones are so important: Mobile user base grows to 1.17 billion in China

BEIJING (Reuters) - A U.S. businessman held captive by about 100 workers in a Beijing factory said on Wednesday he was hopeful of a resolution to a row about pay in the next day or two. Chip Starnes, president of the Florida-based Specialty Medical Supplies, said from behind his barred office window that the workers were demanding severance packages identical to those offered to 30 recently laid off employees - even though there weren't going to be any more layoffs. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/why-low-end-phones-important-mobile-user-grows-115051910.html

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