A massive wildfire has burned nearly 500 homes near the Texas capital as thousands were forced to leave their homes. Texas governor Rick Perry visited evacuees from the Bastrop fire Monday. (Sept. 6)
Continue reading …Unannounced Nokia Symbian Belle handset is a mysterious phone within a phone (video)
September 6, 2011 No Comment
Half the fun of trade shows is when unexpected beans get spilled at PR stalls and here, my dear Watson, we have another intriguing example. A TechBlog.gr pundit picked up a new Nokia 700 at IFA and was confronted with a stored promo video depicting a totally different and unfamiliar high-end handset. It looks slightly curved like the N9 , runs the latest version of Symbian and possesses a rather attractive edge-to-edge LCD. The main gist of the promo is a wireless platform called Air Cloud, which apparently allows the phone to pair up with an audio system via NFC. Word on the street is this could be the N8′s successor — the so-called 801 — but there’s not a great many clues to back that up. In any case, check out the video after the break and savor that fleeting sense of infinite regress. Continue reading Unannounced Nokia Symbian Belle handset is a mysterious phone within a phone (video) Unannounced Nokia Symbian Belle handset is a mysterious phone within a phone (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …HSI 1" CERAMIC TOURMALINE IONIC FLAT IRON HAIR STRAIGHTENER Free Bio Silk Sample
September 6, 2011 No Comment
Type: Beauty Title: HSI 1″ CERAMIC TOURMALINE IONIC FLAT IRON HAIR STRAIGHTENER Free Bio Silk Sample See all customer reviews Product Description: The PROFESSIONAL HSI Flat Iron is great for transforming frizzy, dull hair into gorgeously straight, sleek locks. Aside from straightening, the PROFESSIONAL HSI Flat Iron curls and flips hair beautifully, its 1″ plates giving maximum control for all hair types. With flash quick heating and swivel cord, this iron provides great style without making a mess or taking too much time. Featuring new easier grip with ergonomic design for easier hold, THE STYLER Flat Iron also has versatile heat settings to provide you with total control for all your hairstyling needs. Moist ceramic heat with SOLID ceramic plates and coils will maintain even temperature. Features: Straighten, flip and curl your hair Adjustable temperature from 240 oF to 410oF (120oC – 200oC) to suit for all hair types Ceramic/tourmaline ion plates to give a shinier, silkier result in lesser time 1 inch plate width, wide enough for any hair length and hair types, yet narrow enough for bangs Transform frizzy, dull hair into gorgeously straight, sleek locks See the details
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Giant Crocodile Captured Alive By Philippine Residents. Giant crocodile captured alive in Philippines Raw Video: Giant Crocodile Caught in Philippines Jak1130 says: WOW – Giant crocodile captured alive in Philippines – Yahoo! News http://t.co/fCUfMlR via @ YahooNews
Continue reading …Watch: Charlize Theron Hangs Out with Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, and Marlene Dietrich for Dior J’Adore
September 6, 2011 No Comment
Dior’s new commercial for its popular scent J’Adore just dropped and it features long-time face of the brand, Charlize Theron. In it, Charlize sneaks incognito into the Versailles Hall of Mirrors for a fashion show. Along the way she meets icons and famous Dior fans Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, and Marlilyn Monroe (their famous faces are all CGI’ed in seamlessly–it’s a neat trick). She then dons… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Fashionista Discovery Date : 04/09/2011 23:27 Number of articles : 3
Continue reading …Jailed rioters need help to turn their lives around, says Boris Johnson
September 6, 2011 No Comment
Testifying before home affairs committee investigation into last month’s riots, mayor of London says those jailed for their part in disturbances must not be abandoned in prison London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, has said the huge number of people jailed after the riots cannot be abandoned in prison, and must be helped to turn their lives around. Testifying before the home affairs committee investigation into last month’s riots, which blighted 22 out of the capital’s 32 boroughs, Johnson said the cost to London alone was around £75m. He agreed with the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, who wrote a Guardian article blaming a “feral underclass” which a broken prison system had failed to rehabilitate. Johnson told MPs that with more than 2,000 people arrested and more than 1,000 convicted in London alone, it was vital that in prison everything was done to help those convicted turn their lives around. “One thing I do think the justice secretary is right to highlight is the importance, if you arrest such a huge number of people as we have and you put them into the criminal justice system, then you cannot simply abandon them there, you have to make sure they are educated in there.” Johnson said that 75% of those arrested had criminal records, while 83% had previous contact with police: “What was going to make you more likely to riot? It was previous contact with the police, and that’s the problem that we need to tackle.” The prime minister, David Cameron, lay great stress on gangs being behind the riots. But Johnson said just 20% of the 2,300 arrested so far had gang affiliations. The Conservative mayor, who faces a battle for re-election next year, said police were not asking to use weapons such as baton rounds and water cannon, and he dismissed the notion floated by Cameron that social media could be blocked in the event of future disturbances. Johnson said monitoring such sites helped police to gather intelligence. He said London had brought a high level of violence and disorder under control within days, while other cities such as Paris had failed to quell their riots for months. The mayor praised the leadership of the Metropolitan police and told the committee chairman, Keith Vaz, that the violence had surprised him and police chiefs. Johnson said: “It is self-evident, Mr Vaz, that there was a difficulty, there was a crisis on the Saturday, Sunday, Monday evenings, that caught everyone unawares. There is no doubt about that.” Johnson left the committee hearing to take part in interviews for the vacant post of Metropolitan police commissioner. The mayor said the four candidates were outstanding and the new head of Scotland Yard would be announced on Monday. Tim Godwin, the acting Met commissioner, is one of those candidates and he told the home affairs committee he wished he had more officers on duty when the first riots erupted in Tottenham, north London, on a Saturday evening, before spreading across the capital on Sunday and Monday evenings. “Sometimes you realise how thin the blue line is,” Godwin said, referring to the famous phrase about British policing. Rejecting calls for a change in the style of British policing, Godwin said the debate after the riots would have been different if people had been left in hospital after being seriously injured by baton rounds: “I take pride in the fact that we filled up prison places instead of hospital beds, and I think that’s the British way,” Godwin said. Godwin has worked on trying to slash the reoffending rates, and he told MPs he agreed with Clarke’s comments in the Guardian: “I think this is a wake-up call for the criminal justice system. “We have in London been seeking to speed up justice, make it more relevant, make it more relevant to communities, and that’s something that we need to do. “The amount of people who have previous convictions does pose questions for us.” Godwin said the speedy arrests and jailing of offenders had helped deter any repeat of the riots, and police revealed 500 officers were still working on hunting down the looters and that 20,000 hours of CCTV footage still had to be viewed. UK riots Boris Johnson Prisons and probation London Crime London politics Metropolitan police Police Vikram Dodd guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Poll: More than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling of economy
September 6, 2011 No CommentWith President Obama set to lay out his job creation ideas in a speech Thursday, a new Washington Post/ABC News poll has found that more than 60 percent of respondents disapprove of his handling of the economy. The president’s overall approval number sank to 43 percent, a new career low. Read the full story here.
Continue reading …A massive cloud of smoke is all that remains in the sky of United Flight 93 in a video shot by a nearby resident seconds after the plane went down on 9/11. The film has finally been released publicly 10 years after the 42 people on board went down in…
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Click here to view this media (h/t Heather at VideoCafe ) It is a truism rarely acknowledged in this country: the single most important infrastructure investment we can make for the future is in education. I’m not talking about retrofitting the buildings or constructing more classrooms. No, we provide for the future by educating our young people, preparing them to become productive members of society. Study after study shows that the higher one’s education level is, the higher the median income and the less likely one is to suffer unemployment . But we’re not doing that. No, in these austerity times, politicians clamor to cut services and jobs. Teachers are demonized . Vouchers are touted as the answer, when it’s simply a way to privatize profits away from public schools . Hell, some GOP would be happy if we eliminate the Department of Education altogether . A rare and welcome progressive appearance on the Sunday shows, Rep. Maxine Waters bemoans the disconnect between what politicians say we need to focus on and what they’re really doing about it: To tell you the truth, the plight of education in this country is shameful. Just a few days ago I learned that more cities, more states are reducing the number of education days down to four instead of five. And I could not help but stop and think, “Is this America? Is this the country that said and continues to say that education is a top priority?” Why are we not investing more in education? Why do we have dropouts? Why do we have educational systems that are failing? Why is it that we have a situation where many of our young people will not be able to compete in this high technological society because they’re not properly educated? And so, no, we do pay lip service to education. We don’t really invest in it, and that’s got to change. But let me just say this, Americans want to work. This joblessness is not only hitting the middle class, but it is hitting all classes. It is absolutely unconscionable what is happening in the minority communities. When we look at this no jobs haven’t been created in August and we find in the African-American community it has increased from 16 percent, 15.9, 16 percent, up now 16.7 percent, and now we’re going to talk about cutting government by $1.5 trillion, this new 12 committee membership that we have after the raising the debt ceiling debate? And that means that we’re going to lose more jobs, that means more people are going to be unemployed. The African-American rate will probably go up to about 20 percent. I don’t know how our country can sustain that kind of… Of course, David Gregory interrupts her at this point, because Lord know, the plight of the African American community doesn’t concern him. But then again, he has the gall to say that we only play lip service to the importance of education. You know, the same guy who only pays lip service to journalism and who spent the better part of the last two years telling his viewers that Americans cared about the deficit when poll after poll proved him a lying hack with a corporate agenda.
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An old song says, “Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.” The advice in this song is simple. Focus on the positive elements of your life. Don’t dwell on negative things that have happened. Is that the key to your future happiness? A fascinating paper in the September, 2011 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Erin O’Mara, James McNulty, and Benjamin Karney suggests that it isn’t as simple as that. They explore two key factors that affect whether you should think positively about negative experiences in the past. The first factor is controllability. Some negative things that happen to you are uncontrollable. A car accident, serious illness, or loss of a loved one is generally uncontrollable. There was nothing you could do about the event that happened, and you have little control whether something like that is likely to happen in the future. Other negative things are more controllable. If you have a friend who is mean to you, you can choose not to spend time with that friend again. If your job causes you stress, you can choose to do things differently at work, or even to change jobs. The second factor is the severity of the negative event. Some events are very negative. Losing a loved one or being abused by a romantic partner are highly negative events. Other events are not that awful. A flat tire on your car, or a miscommunication with your partner are negative, but not tragic. The authors of the paper first review evidence on uncontrollable events, and suggest that there is good reason to think that having a positive attitude toward uncontrollable events in the past is a good thing. Classic research by Shelley Taylor, for example, suggests that a patient with breast cancer will adjust better and suffer fewer symptoms of depression by being optimistic rather than by being pessimistic about her disease. The studies in this paper were particularly interested in controllable events. To explore this issue, the studies followed newlyweds for several years. They started by interviewing new husbands and wives about negative experiences they were experiencing. They also counted the number of symptoms of depression that the members of the couple experienced. For each negative experience (which could range from a miscommunication to emotional abuse), the individual rated how serious they thought it was. The interviewer also rated the seriousness of each event. That allowed the researchers to calculate the difference between how severe a person considered an event to be and the severity as rated by a more objective rater. That difference was a measure of how strongly the person was wearing rose-colored glasses for a past event. The researchers then followed couples for several years. In one study, they also interviewed the couples a second time 2 years after the initial interview to find out what kinds of negative events they were experiencing. So, what happened? People who thought positively about negative events that were not that severe generally showed a decrease in symptoms of depression over time. So, people who did not get that upset about the small things in life (like miscommunications) tended to feel good about life over time. People who thought positively about severe negative events, though, actually showed an increase in symptoms of depression over time. The reason for this increase is that these negative events were controllable. By minimizing the importance of things like emotional abuse, people opened themselves up to experience more of it in the future. The continued presence of severe negative events in a person’s life led to more symptoms of depression. What does this mean? It is important to be realistic about the controllable but negative events in life. You cannot find ways to eliminate the negative in life if you always accentuate the positive. If you are experiencing stress or abuse at home or at work, then the first step to changing the situation is being realistic about how bad it is. Then, you can work toward making your life better. On the other hand, life has lots of little stresses. It is easy to get caught up in the details of who is doing the most housework or the latest nasty thing said by your teenage child. For those situations, put on your rose-colored glasses and smile your way through them.
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