Pictured, from left: Candle scene; scene chooser (iPad); fireplace scene.
NEW YORK, New York - December 2, 2010 - Award-winning Windows Mobile software house Conduits Technologies, Inc., announced today the release of iCelebrate ~ Christmas 2.0, an application for the holiday season that pairs vibrant, animating yuletide scenery and the very best of streaming Internet holiday radio stations for iPad, iPhone (retina display optimized) and iPod Touch.
iCelebrate ~ Christmas provides you with five gorgeous, animating holiday scenes, access to beloved modern, traditional, country, smooth jazz and spiritual Christmas music from top holiday Internet radio stations, and Twitter integration to let friends and family know that you are listening to holiday favorites. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year!
iCelebrate is a universal app that runs on all devices running iOS 3.1 or higher. It features HD graphics when running on iPhone 4 and iPad, is multitasking aware (to stream songs in the background on iOS 4.2), and is AirPlay enabled for Christmas music playback on Apple TV.
The set-up of iCelebrate ~ Christmas is simple: choose a holiday music genre (modern, traditional, religious, smooth jazz or country), choose a holiday scene to pair with the music (a luminescent Yule log; lovely candles and ornaments; a story-book white Christmas; a stunning trio of twinkling Christmas trees; and at last, a snow globe with a friendly snowman), and then press play! Candles will flicker, stars will shimmer, lights will twinkle, and stockings will sway over a brilliant fireplace - all to the beat of the music! Sugar plums, candy canes and gingerbread houses sold separately!
If you associate iCelebrate ~ Christmas with your Twitter account, embedded song titles will be tweeted to your Twitter stream.
iCelebrate ~ Christmas is now available for $0.99 at the iTunes App Store where you can locate it under the 'iCelebrate' or 'iCelebrate Christmas' search terms.
For more information, including screenshots and Internet radio station information, visit the Conduits website at http://www.conduits.com.
Conduits develops commercial applications for Windows Mobile and iPhone, including the award-winning Pocket Player (an alternative media player), Pocket Slides (a fully-featured presentation solution), Pocket Artist (a drawing and image manipulation program), and seven other Windows Mobile products. iScratch Myself (a humorous picture and target-based game) for iPhone and iPod Touch was just released in November 2009.
iCelebrate ~ Christmas is a trademark of Conduits Technologies, Inc.. Microsoft, Windows and/or Windows Mobile are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Apple, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, and/or Apple iTunes are trademarks or registered trademarks of Apple, Inc.. Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.


The sharp tech downturn on Nov 29 wiped away 4 months of outperformance for our model portfolio, which dropped 392 bp vs. the S&P500 and 106 bp vs. the tech components of that index in a single trading session. Since July 20, the portfolio is up 350bp vs. the broader market, but is now down 70bp against the tech benchmark. While the long-term performance of our 15-stock portfolio has been excellent, the high correlation between many constituents leaves it vulnerable to occasional painful adjustments like this. Enterprise SaaS software currently makes up a third of our portfolio, and, while we are enthusiastic for all the names, the correlation in their performance to each other and to the portfolio suggests that their impact is redundant. With MSFT and CRM as core elements, and with WDAY and NOW less correlated, lower in market cap, and thus, more likely to be acquired, we have decided to remove ADBE, which trades at P/S premium to WDAY despite materially lower growth. In its place, we are adding CIEN, which has launched an intriguing chip platform for optical SDN functionality and should benefit from aggressive 5G spending from global carriers and an upgrade cycle to 100/400Gbps systems.
Our model portfolio was badly hit by last week's tech sell off. At market close on Nov. 28, our 15-stock model portfolio had outperformed the S&P500 by 743 bp and the tech components of that index by 34 bp since the last update on July 20. Subsequently, the sharp downturn in tech stocks erased much of our upside vs. the overall market, and brought returns below the tech benchmark. Leading the drop were the SaaS software and AI-lined chip names that had extraordinary performers prior to last week.
Historical performance has been excellent but volatile. The purpose of our portfolio is to identify stocks likely to be beneficiaries of paradigmatic change in the TMT space, with a distant investment horizon in mind. Our overarching research thesis points to a "Cloud/AI Era", driven by platform leaders – GOOGL, AMZN and MSFT – and benefiting forward-thinking companies in digital, SaaS, new semis, and 5G. This approach has led to generally strong performance – the portfolio is up 3910 bp vs. the S&P500 since inception 6 years ago – but has been prone to periods of extreme volatility. We tie this to overconcentration in specific themes and to high correlation amongst our stock selections.
The overweight on SaaS software is likely excessive. With considerable overlap from companies with efforts in multiple themes, we have 4 cloud/AI platforms, 4 digital media, 5 SaaS software, 3 AI/cloud components, 2 5G tech, 2 e-commerce, 1 autonomous transportation and 1 disruptive carrier. While we remain enthusiastic for the potential of our SaaS names (MSFT, CRM, ADBE, WDAY and NOW), having a third of the portfolio with the same primary growth driver gives the group too much emphasis, contributing to the wrenching moves. With core holdings (GOOGL, AMZN and MSFT) participating across multiple themes, we are comfortable with our other weightings, although we seek new, high-quality names in 5G, e-commerce and self-driving.
ADBE's correlation makes it redundant. Amongst our SaaS stocks, we see MSFT as a strategic core holding. Of the others, there is a temptation to replace WDAY after the tech sell-off amplified the reaction to WDAY's poorly timed 3Q17 earnings release, taking the stock down 13% in 3 days. However, we believe this reaction is overdone, with strong growth and guidance overriding nits about billing details and the downturn leaving it at lower multiples than its peers. Instead, we are removing ADBE, despite it having appreciated 124% since we added it 2 years ago. While we still believe that it can post upside surprises against expectations, it sports lofty valuation metrics and it is highly correlated with the portfolio and MSFT, making it the best candidate for replacement.
Self-driving, 5G, AI hardware. Our portfolio addresses near-term opportunities created by the longer-term paradigmatic shifts of the Cloud/AI era. SaaS is one of these, but there are several others that are worth stronger representation in the portfolio. For self-driving, we considered automotive component suppliers – IFNNY, RNECY, TXN, etc. – with upside from a global transition to a shift to electric vehicles and from automated driver assistance technologies. While we are well represented in hyperscale/AI components with NVDA, XLNX and QCOM, we considered adding a semiconductor design tool name – e.g. SNPS, CDNS, etc. At the end, we chose to increase our exposure to 5G, believing that global carrier spending in 2018 will well above current expectations.
Replacing ADBE with CIEN. CIEN missed the tech rally over the past few years, repeatedly cycling between $16 and $24, and currently sitting toward the upper end of that range. This relatively weak performance tracked to weak results as the optical equipment market troughed. However, we see three positive factors that should lift the stock well above this level. First, there are clear signs that carrier capex for 5G will be more aggressive than earlier assumptions (http://www.ssrllc.com/publication/5g-rising-global-carrier-competition-to-drive-capex/) and that optical systems for backhaul will be a key element. Second, the introduction of 400Gbps speeds appears likely to spur upgrades for long-haul optical systems. Finally, CIEN has introduced an ASIC DSP that enables much more flexible provisioning of bandwidth, mirroring the move to SDN architectures for data networking. This solution could become a standard for hyperscale operators, particularly as CIEN has licensed the chip to systems level rivals.
The big sell-off of high-value, high-beta tech stocks hurt our model portfolio far more than it did the broader market and our benchmark, the tech components of the S&P500. We had ended the day Tuesday having outperformed that benchmark by 34 bp, and the whole index by 743 bp, since the last update in July. In 3 trading days, we dropped 492 bp vs. the S&P and 182 bp vs. the tech components. Over the 6 years that we have published the portfolio, its performance has been excellent but marked by volatile responses to periodic shifts in sentiment.
This volatility is, in part, an inevitable condition of a concentrated portfolio of 15 large cap TMT stocks chosen for their exposure to the major growth themes arising from our research. Still, given that few of our clients would be comfortable with such risk, we examined our selections to see if we could reduce the volatility a bit without sacrificing our self-imposed mandate to choose names that illustrate our thesis of generational paradigm change to a Cloud/AI era of technology.
To this end, we considered two related issues. First, does the portfolio, as constructed, give reasonable weight to the major investment themes that we have championed? With considerable overlap from companies with efforts in multiple themes, we have 4 cloud/AI platforms, 4 digital media, 5 SaaS software, 3 AI/cloud components, 2 5G tech, 2 e-commerce, 1 autonomous transportation and 1 disruptive carrier. In this context, we are a bit too heavily weighted toward SaaS software and short on suggestions for 5G, ecommerce, self-driving and e-commerce.
Second, are the stocks of our portfolio overly correlated with one another? Normalized for performance against the tech benchmark, our stocks average 24% correlation – perhaps we can do better. 11 of our names had positive correlations to the overall model performance over the past two years. Given the generally strong performance of the portfolio over that time, that is not necessarily a bad thing. Still, the correlations show how much the volatility of highly correlated stocks like NVDA and ADBE can swing the overall portfolio.
Given this, we have decided to remove ADBE, reducing our weighting on SaaS software and addressing correlation concerns. We stress that we still believe ADBE is likely to outperform relative to expectations, but its valuation is relatively rich and its $81B market cap makes acquisition at a significant premium unlikely vs. other SaaS names. In its place, we are adding CIEN. Optical stocks have been mired in a global downcycle, but 5G and an upgrade cycle to 100/400Gbps systems is beginning to yield fruit and some welcome investor optimism. CIEN has also introduced an ASIC DSP that extends SDN-like flexibility to the optical domain. Radically, CIEN will supply this chip to its systems rivals in a bid to establish it as a standard. We believe this architecture will be very well received by hyperscale platform operators, giving it a third impetus for growth.
Expectations for CIEN are modest, as is its valuation – at a forward P/E of less than 11x it is the cheapest stock in our portfolio. Moreover, the correlation of its relative performance to the rest of the portfolio is negative 0.55, perhaps a partial antidote to our overall volatility.
In the 4 months since we last updated our 15-stock large cap model portfolio, the equally weighted shares are up 350 bp vs. the S&P500, but down 70 bp against the tech components of the broader index. This performance is sharply skewed by the last three trading sessions, which saw our portfolio down 431 bp. Had we published the update at the close on Tuesday, November 28, we would have been up 743 bp against the S&P and 34 bp against the benchmark. Given the risky nature of our portfolio selections, which are chosen as emblematic of our thesis of a generational sea change to a Cloud/AI era of computing, sharp changes – both up and down – have been common across a long-term record of excellent relative performance (Exhibit 1, 2 & 3).
Within the portfolio, QCOM (23.7%), ADBE (19.7%), CRM (14.7%), MSFT (14.7%) and AMZN (13.0%) all delivered double digit gains, while KEYS (4.0%), GOOGL (3.3%), NFLX (1.8%), TMUS (-0.4%) and WDAY (-2.5%) were the relative laggards. QCOM's upside performance was driven by the hostile interest taken by AVGO, while TMUS's weak showing included a negative reaction to the failure of discussions with S to yield a merger. NFLX suffered a bit from DIS's decision to withdraw its programing from the streaming platform to jumpstart its own similar service in 2019. We are not concerned, as we believe NFLX strength stems from its strong strategy with original programming building on a considerable first mover advantage. Similarly, we remain confident that KEYS will appreciate once 5G spending gains steam in 2018, and that GOOGL will make strides in both IaaS cloud hosting and autonomous transportation even as its advertising franchises continue to take global share.
The biggest hit from the late November drop was on WDAY – which compounded things by releasing good, but perhaps not quite good enough, results and guidance on Wednesday and fell 13% through Friday. We expect that the relative fall for WDAY would not have been nearly so precipitous without the backdrop of the overall market action. High flyers NVDA (-7%), NFLX (-7%) and XLNX (-6%) suffered the next most serious wounds from the drop.
Can We Fix Our Volatility?
Given the purpose for our portfolio – a concentrated list of high conviction names representative of the investment themes generated by our thematic research – volatility is an occupational hazard. Our selections are skewed to high-beta, high-multiple stocks positioned to benefit from the emerging "Cloud/AI Era" that we believe is replacing the device-focused "PC Era" that preceded it (Exhibit 4). The portfolio comprises 15 names, each with equal weight (rebalanced at each update). We think of Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft as our "core" holdings, although our construction does not give them greater emphasis than the other stocks. While we are enthusiastic for all the other stocks in the portfolio, perhaps a change or two could provide better stability without sacrificing long-term potential returns.
(TMUS), one traditional IT company looking to evolve into a Cloud/AI butterfly (IBM), one 5G testing company (KEYS) and an e-commerce juggernaut (you know who). Ideally, we would replace one of our SaaS names with a company well positioned for opportunities in an area where we are a bit light – e.g. e-commerce, self-driving, AI assistants, or 5G.
The second factor in our volatility is the correlation between the relative performance to the market of the various names in the portfolio (Exhibit 5, 6, 7 & 8). Ideally, all would appreciate vs. the benchmark, but if one or more stocks were to slip, other stocks might pick up the slack. If all the stocks are correlated, any rise or fall is amplified. Our portfolio constituents average a 0.24 correlation to the group. Looking more deeply, 10 of the stocks are positively correlated, while five are negatively correlated. NVDA's extraordinary performance gives it outsized influence over the total returns despite equal weighting, thus the near perfect correlation to portfolio returns. Still, if a highly correlated name were swapped for a negatively correlated one, without sacrificing opportunity, performance might be less volatile.


text:
Kalvin Phillips' Net Worth: His salary, investments, endorsements, and more
by FS Desk
in Football, Sports News
Kalvin Phillips posing during his Manchester City presentation
Kalvin Phillips is an English professional footballer who plays for the Premier League club Manchester City and the England national team. The midfielder started his youth career at Leeds and was loyal to the club until this year.
Kalvin Phillips made his senior debut for Leeds in 2012 and played for the English club for 7 long years. He was a vital piece in their midfield because of his sharp passing vision and quality on the ball. A Leeds academy graduate, Phillips was vital for the veteran coach Marcelo Bielsa and played an important role in winning the Championship in 2019-20.
Kalvin Phillips joined Pep Guardiola's side in 2022 for a transfer fee worth $45 million with add-ons. He made his league debut against West Ham as the Englishman came in for Rodri in the premier league.
Kalvin Phillips made his international debut in the UEFA Nations League against Denmark. He was also named England's 2020-21 Men's Player of the Year.
Read more-Aaron Ramsdale's Net Worth: His salary, investments, endorsements, and more
Kalvin Phillip's net worth, salary, and endorsements in 2022
Kalvin Phillips applauding the English crowd after a match
Kalvin Phillips' has been playing in the Premier League before joining City. His net worth is estimated to be around $9 million. The midfielder earns around a staggering amount of a $150,000 weekly salary.
Kalvin Phillips is brought in by Pep to give the City midfield more depth in terms of squad quality. Kalvin Phillips has signed a 6-year-long contract with Manchester City.
Good to be back on the pitch tonight. Loved my #UCL debut 💙 pic.twitter.com/rEflfE1RIM
— Kalvin Phillips (@Kalvinphillips) September 6, 2022
Phillips, a Leeds academy graduate has been playing as a box-to-box midfielder since the start of his career. His defensive and attacking abilities make the midfielder a constant threat to the opposition players.
Kalvin Phillips' personal life
Kalvin Phillips in action for Manchester City
Kalvin Phillips has been a Leeds fan since his childhood. Born in Leeds itself, Kalvin Phillips has been there for his boyhood club until recently.
Philips is currently dating model Ashleigh Behan for some time now. The couple lives together in Manchester, England, and has often been seen hanging out together around the country.
Can't wait to join back up with the lads and represent my country again 🦁🏴 pic.twitter.com/IIGLOJjrZW
— Kalvin Phillips (@Kalvinphillips) May 24, 2022
Despite being such a good midfielder, Phillips hasn't really settled in the City environment as the player is not getting sufficient minutes. Do you think Gareth Southgate would pick him in a squad stacked with midfielders?
Read more-Bukayo Saka's Net Worth: His salary, investments, endorsements, and more
Tags: Kalvin PhillipsManchester City
FS Desk
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by Aravind Raj

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Happy Ramadan — Party On!
As everyone knows, we are now six days into the ever-so-holy month of Ramadan, in which the faithful must fast during daylight hours, non-Muslims must show respect for Islam, and Muslims may proclaim jihad against Christians and other infidels.
Below is another insider's view of Ramadan, this time from an Iranian. It was published in Jyllands-Posten on August 14, translated from the Danish by Henrik Ræder Clausen, and then posted at Europe News:
by Mehdi Mozaffari
The demand for discipline, otherwise seen only in the military, is the hallmark of Islam and not merely limited to Ramadan fasting. Every Muslim is a soldier himself, required to believe in one god, one book and one true prophet. Muslims constitute the army of Allah (jundAllah).
Ramadan is, without doubt, the nicest month in the Islamic calendar. One fasts, and one feasts. This corresponds, in a way, to celebrating Christmas, New Year and Easter all at once. For a full month, one eats festive meals twice a day: In the morning before daybreak and once again after sunset, when breaking the fast (iftar).
It is impressive that Muslims all over the world meticulously follow exactly the same rituals during the fasting: One does not eat, drink, smoke, and any kind of sexual activity is prohibited. In the evening, one takes revenge and does everything much more than in an ordinary month.
Ramadan is also the month to visit family and friends, invite each other, illuminate bazaars, mosques and homes, and one is in general having a good time. Also for the children, Ramadan is feast. Some children, not even old enough to be required to fast, do so anyway, and in the evening they play at home or in town, and in particular they indulge in the amazing variety of cakes and sweets, some of them created only in the context of Ramadan.
The advantage of Ramadan is that it crosses social borders and is practised in all social classes; even poorer families celebrate in their ways, getting some help and assistance from others. Muslim governments, governors and mayors hold lavish celebrations.
Ramadan is also the most important Islamic month, which apart from the fasting also implies a series of other rituals. One reads the quran and other religious texts more than usual. One participates in religious ceremonies, where the preachers are holding sermons fit for the occasion. The most important about Ramadan is that the quran was revealed to Muhammad on a night called "Night of Destiny" (Laylat ul-Qadr), which is more valuable than a thousand nights.
Possibly the most interesting here is the purpose of Ramadan. Some Muslims believe that it is for health reasons, that is some kind of weight loss diet. This thesis, however, does not quite hold up under scrutiny. First, it turns our that Muslims eat a lot more during Ramadan, and further it probably wasn't very popular, at the time of Mohammed, to be slender — particularly for women.
Ramadan had a different and more serious purpose, namely to create a stringent discipline, a moral and physical preparation among the men and women who more or less voluntarily had become part of the newly created Umma.
The demand for discipline, which is otherwise found only in the military, is a hallmark of Islam and not restricted to Ramadan fasting. Every Muslim is a soldier in himself, required to believe in one god, one book, and one true prophet.
Muslims constitute the army of Allah (jundAllah). This starts out with submission, implying that one submits fully to the orders of Allah and his messenger, and is always ready to mobilize. And, as demanded by the quran, believing Muslims must be prepared to sacrifice everything they own in the name of Allah: Their property, their families, and ultimately their own lives.
According to the quran, Shaheeds (those who died for the Cause of Allah) are not dead, but instead gain V.I.P. status with Allah. A Muslim has not much freedom for himself, for around the clock he is to fulfill a series of duties ordained by Allah, and all the time have Allah and the prophet Muhammad on his mind. Body and soul are to be permanently at the service of Allah.
It is with a similar purpose that prayers are to be made five times a day. Once before sunrise, once at noon, once in the afternoon, once at sunset and once in the night, Muslims are to submit themselves in a certain direction: Towards Mecca. Further, it is recommended to pray at night, and not to forget Allah while sleeping.
Drinking alcohol, gambling, drawing humans or animals, or creating sculptures is all prohibited, for the exact reason that consuming alcohol and gambling can influence and distract one into forgetting Allah. Drawing and sculpturing is a crime against Allah, who is the only creator.
Before the modernization of Muslim countries, legalizing soccer, volleyball etc., the only legal sport was horse racing, which had the dual purpose of making Muslims into a better cavalry.
In a way, one can say that the original training of Muslims was even harder than what the US Marines are taken through.
In this entire process, the mosque plays a central role. 'Mosque' (masjid) literally means 'Place for submission'. Originally, the mosque was both the seat of government, barracks where weapons were stored and booty shared, as well as the place for prayer (salat). Minarets were used both for call to prayer and to defend the mosque against intruders.
To be a Muslim, a soldier of Allah, is definitive.
The door into Islam is wide open. It is fully sufficient to publicly declare belief in Allah as God and Muhammad as the Messenger of God (shahada). It is striking that the same word, shahada, which is the Islamic declaration of faith, also means martyrdom. This also implies that Islam has but one door, that of entry. There is no corresponding door of exit, nor even an emergency exit. Leaving Islam corresponds to a soldier deserting from the battlefield, the punishment for which is execution.
The entire system is based on reward, punishment and fear. For the good Muslim, the reward consists in being admitted to Paradise in the life after death. Conversely, the punishment is harsh, in this world as in the next, where one will burn in the eternal fire.
This is a threat supposed to have significant dissuasive effect. The eternal hell (jahannam) is mentioned 72 times in the quran, and some believe that Dante got his inspiration from this. This eternal hell whose systematic torture and painful burning ('azab) is mentioned 145 times in the quran. In brief, everyone not submitting to and not participating in the army of Muhammad — bad Muslims as well as non-Muslims — is destined for a painful burning, a Holocaust of sorts.
It is beautiful that all 114 suras of the quran, except for sura 9, have the positive and peaceful opening verse: "In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful". It can be hard to understand how it could be the same 'gracious' and 'merciful' God who let those not believing in him burn in the eternal fire.
It is encouraging, however, that not all Muslims are literal, and that many Muslims have changed. As long as Muslims use Ramadan as a feast, a time to socialize and enjoy each other, it can be beautiful. Ramadan is also an occasion to reflect on the message of Muhammad, his strategy and his aims.
Any attempt to demilitarize the original message of Islam can only be of benefit to Muslims and the world at large. Just imagine if one day we could condense the message of Muhammad and the quran in one single sentence, stay with that, and leave behind the rest.
A beautiful sentence, full of significance, love and tolerance:
"In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful."
Happy Ramadan!
Some Muslims believe that it is for health reasons, that is some kind of weight loss diet.
Hahahaha... The article mentions subsequently that mahoundians gain weight during their fasting- and binge-eating madness, and that should be obvious to anyone, except those practicing this nonsense for a month that is, since they don't bother to hold their stupid beliefs to anything that might even remotely smell of science regarding the impact of their fasting on one's metabolism.
In a nutshell, the human body adapts quite fast to signs that calories might not be coming in the amounts it's used to by reducing its metabolism; when one's metabolism slow down, burning off extra calories instead of storing them as bodyfat becomes harder. Take one's body becoming more energy efficient and stuff it with a ton of calories from the worst possible sources (the sweets and the deep-fried stuff mahoundians love at this time of the year) and bam... You got them fattening out as fast as they possibly could.
Of course an "all-knowing" imaginary alter-ego of a bedouin pedophile should have known better than to turn the pre-islamic month of the year when the Arabian tribes took a break from slaughtering each other into one of fasting madness, due to its impact on one's physique and health. But, since mahoundianism and science go as well together as trying to adopt a healthy lifestyle and having four meals a day at Carl's Jr., we just couldn't have expected such considerations to be taken when they thought up this whole nonsense.
It's just too bad that mahoundians cannot even think critically about this for a minute to see that it's yet another bit of evidence that allah is nothing but a big lie.
Beach Girl said...
Don't know where my comment went but here it is again sort of.
Far far away at a university many light years ago in time, we had leased several dorms to a company that was training young men from Saudi Arabia.
Well, along came Ramadan about which we knew nothing. One morning one of our employees whose job it was to empty the trash and clean the dorms called me and said he was driving over to drive me to the dorms because there was something I needed to see.
It seems that alcohol is no respecter of the ideology of supremacy of college boys regardless of what ideology they supposedly follow.
With no religious police and no mullahs breathing down their necks, the Saudi students got drunk as skunks and would have put a pure die-hard hard drinking American fraternity to shame.
Alcohol is no respecter of Islam and those young men weren't either. I won't go into the disgusting details. Suffice it to say that after my walk-through of the dorms accompanied by our male employee, we called a cleaning crew and turned the mess over to them. We charged the contracting agency and I suppose someone passed out the aspirin.
For those male students, Ramadan meant drinking until they passed out and doing what follows extensive alcohol consumption.
I suppose Mohammed and Allah as well showed their wrath through the pounding headaches the students no doubt had.
I can't criticize the students but examples of Mohammed they may not have been and respecters of Islam they certainly were not but they had a story to tell or share with each other even if they could not share it with anyone else.
I hardly knew the word, Islam, then. But I witnessed how superior its followers can be, brought down in the dirt with a bottle of alcohol in their hand. In retrospect now it is a fond memory of "boys being boys" and of how the teachings of their childhood proved once again that alcohol can be a leveler of man...
Yes, happy Ramadan indeed...
Crossing the Red Line
El Cid Versus the Mosque, Part 9
"The Retarded Islamic Culture"
Qadaffi Demands Tribute from the EU
"When I See Him, He's a Dead Man"
Prospero Goes to Washington D.C.
Dr. Pearl's Contemplation
No News Sunday Fanfare
A History Lesson on America's Spiritual Yearnings
The Thin-Skinned Need to Grow UP
The Immigration Brake or the Pensions Brake?
Seismic Shifts in Vienna, Part 2
Election Season in Sweden
How to Handle a Threatening Email
Advancing Ecumenical Understanding
"A Jihad Has Already Been Launched in This Country...
The Collapsing Cordoba House of Cards
The Ottawa Terror Bust
Sharia-Compliant Education
A Rare and Precious Opportunity
Breaking the Fast in Morocco
Sharia by a Sleight of Hand
Confronting Ignorance About Islam's Political and ...
Who is the Enemy?
The Sin That Believes in Nothing
Arab Opinion on the Ground Zero Mosque
The Media Myth of Córdoba
The Holy Father and Turkish Incoherence
Cultural Reconciliation Through Pork
Multiculturalism on Steroids
The Battalions of Islam
Are They Lying to Us?
Updating the Flag
Indonesia Looks Askance at Geert Wilders
Stop the Victory Mosque
The Persistent Myth of Srebrenica
Racist Attacks on Germans — In Their Own Country
Secret Slush funds for Mosque Opponents
The Koran: A "Holy Book" or Hate Literature?
Turning the Truth Upside Down
Not Charlie Brown's Summer Camp
On the Shariah Trail
Hassan II: "A Secular Muslim is Not a Muslim"
Everyday Life in North Korea
The Experts Get It Wrong — Again
Religious Tolerance, Egyptian Style
If You Don't Build It, They Won't Come
The Koran and the Psychopathology of the Prophet (...
Wedded Bliss, Glaswegian Style
Obama vs. The Survivors of 9/11
The Husseinization of Lower Manhattan
A Brazen Muslim
Summer Reads
Goodbye to the Veil — But Keep the Koran
Geert Wilders is on a Roll
Sabotaging Our Miserable House
Welcome to Vollsmose — NOT
The Dutch Ummah Comes to Ground Zero
"Nobody Will Stop Me"
The Persecution of Baha'i in Iran
The Trouble Spots of Berlin
Fjordman: On the Illusion of a Moderate Islam
Islam and Inbreeding
Omar Khadr on Trial at Gitmo


In a previous post, we went through the TensorFlow code for a multilayer perceptron. Now we will discuss how we train the model with TensorFlow, specifically in a TensorFlow Session.
We will use Aymeric Damien's implementation in this post. I recommend you skim through the code first and have the code open in a separate window. I have included the key portions of the code below.
Let's take a look at the portion of code that works inside a TensorFlow session first.
This runs the optimiser and cost operations with the input x = batch_x, y = batch_y. We're feeding the model the input, hence feed_dict.
_ is the variable we use to hold what gets returned by running the optimizer in the Session. We don't need to save that output since the optimiser alters the model's weights and biases directly, so we save the optimiser's returned value to _.
c is the variable we save the cost to.


Mini Veggie Omelets - Breakfast around our house on weekday mornings means quick & simple! It's hard enough to get out of the house with a toddler and make it to daycare and work on-time and in one piece let alone make extravagant breakfasts!!
Garlic Powder or Ground Mustard if you wish!


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Waupaca County, WI is located between Stevens Point and Appleton in the central part of the state with the Wolf River flowing through it. Waupaca is known for its boating, fishing, hunting, biking, hiking, arts, culture, golfing, Ice Age Trail, parks, public lake, wildlife, bird watching, snowmobiling, skiing, ice skating which also has Mud Lake Bog State Park, Keller Whitcomb Creek Woods State Natural Area, Wallace Park, Tellock€™s Hill Woods State Natural Area, Skunk and Foster Lakes State Natural Area, Swan Park, Wolf River State Fishery, Mukwa State Wildlife Area, Poppy€™s Rock State Natural Area, Partridge Lake, White Lake plus a couple communities including; Sheridan, Chain O€™ Lakes King, Weyauwega, Manawa, New London, Iola, Marion, Clintonville and Waupaca. It€™'s surrounded by 6 other Counties; Marathon, Shawano, Outagamie, Winnebago, Waushara and Portage. On this page you will find Campable Properties, Camping Property, Campsites for Sale, RV €" Recreational Vehicles, Campers on Land for Sale, Popup Campers, Park Models, Campgrounds, Truck Camper, Real Estate for Camping and more located in the county listed by real estate agents. More information on Central Wisconsin.
Resorts / Campgrounds for Sale in Waupaca Cty, WI.


Herbalism is the oldest form of healthcare known to mankind. Herbs had been used by all cultures throughout history. It was an integral part of the development of modern civilisation. Primitive man observed and appreciated the great diversity of plants available to him. The plants provided food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. Much of the medicinal use of plants seems to have been developed through observations of wild animals, and by trial and error.
As time went on, each tribe added the medicinal power of herbs in their area to its knowledge base. They methodically collected information on herbs and developed well-defined herbal pharmacopoeias. Indeed, well into the 20th century much of the pharmacopoeia of scientific medicine was derived from the herbal lore of native peoples. Many drugs commonly used today are of herbal origin. Indeed, about 25 percent of the prescription drugs dispensed in the United States contain at least one active ingredient derived from plant material. Some are made from plant extracts; others are synthesized to mimic a natural plant compound.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 4 billion people, 80 percent of the world population, presently use herbal medicine for some aspect of primary health care. Herbal medicine is a major component in all indigenous peoples' traditional medicine and a common element in Ayurvedic, homeopathic, naturopathic, and traditional oriental, and Native American Indian medicine. WHO notes that of 119 plant-derived pharmaceutical medicines, about 74 percent are used in modern medicine in ways that correlated directly with their traditional uses as plant medicines by native cultures.
Major pharmaceutical companies are currently conducting extensive research on plant materials gathered from the rain forests and other places for their potential medicinal value.
Substances derived from the plants remain the basis for a large proportion of the commercial medications used today for the treatment of heart disease, high blood pressure, pain, asthma, and other problems. For example, ephedra is a herb used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for more than two thousand years to treat asthma and other respiratory problems. Ephedrine, the active ingredient in ephedra, is used in the commercial pharmaceutical preparations for the relief of asthma symptoms and other respiratory problems. It helps the patient to breathe more easily.
Another example of the use of a herbal preparation in modern medicine is the foxglove plant. This herb had been in use since 1775. At present, the millions of heart patients know the powdered leaf of this plant as the cardiac stimulant, digitalis, that keeps them alive.
Herbal Medicine can be broadly classified into various basic systems: Traditional Chinese Herbalism, which is part of Traditional Oriental Medicine, Ayurvedic Herbalism, which is derived from Ayurveda, and Western Herbalism, which originally came from Greece and Rome to Europe and then spread to North and South America. The DaVinci Natural Health Centre uses mostly Western Herbalism in the treatment of a wide range of disease processes.
Interest in the United States had been growing in recent years from the reported success stories from the use of herbs. For example, St. John's Wort is widely used in the treatment of mild depression without the need for Prozac. St. John's Wort does not have the side effects that Prozac may have. There are a number of herbs that are very useful for reducing cholesterol, blood sugar levels in cases of diabetes, improving memory and cognitive functioning in cases of Alzheimer's and senile dementia, etc.
At the DaVinci Holistic Health Centre each patient will be carefully evaluated and a tailor-made herbal formula will be prescribed to address the disease processes of the specific patient. On many occasions herbal formulas containing a variety of herbs are freshly mixed for each patient. This is the art of Natural Medicine at its best - a specific remedy for each patient!
Dr. Georgiou is a qualified Master Herbalist from the UK and a member of the Association of Master Herbalistis, UK and the British Herbal Practitioners Association, UK. He is also a naturopath and has a Doctor of Science in Alternative Medicine.


The first change in Precise Pangolin will be an increase in the size of the release, up from 700MB to 750MB, which will mean that the release will no longer fit on a CD but will need a DVD or flash drive during installation.
On the desktop the Unity interface is to remain. This is to be expected despite the fact that there have been numerous complaints about the new interface. For many the switch to the new Canonical-created Unity interface was forced on them at a time when Unity felt incomplete. But, over the past year the interface has matured significantly and Mark Shuttleworth is adamant that Unity will remain the default desktop.
Among the expected improvements in Precise Pangolin are improvements to the Ubuntu Software Centre. Over the past couple of releases the software centre has added a host of new features, including user ratings. Likely improvements will include plugin support, an option for videos and better support for application syncing across PCs.
The most ambitious plan of all, however, will be the attempt to reduce Ubuntu's start time from around 10 or 11 seconds to just two seconds. If developers can do this it would be a massive achievement. Ubuntu's start-up time has hovered around the 10 second mark for many years now. Cutting eight seconds off that is highly ambitious.
Although Unity will be the default desktop environment, Precise Pangolin will also ship with Gnome 3.2 as an alternative. Gnome 3.4 is scheduled to be released a month before Precise Pangolin but with this being an LTS release the developers will be more conservative than with other releases.
On the media player front Precise Pangolin will revert to Rhythmbox as the default. This will replace Banshee which was the default for a short while, but compatibility issues forced developers to switch back to Rhythmbox.
The primary focus of Precise Pangolin is on quality and both Mark Shuttleworth and Jason Warner, Canonical's desktop manager, have emphasised the need for this 12.04 release of Ubuntu to polish up and complete the major platform changes that have been introduced since April 2010.


Franklin Square is a residential neighborhood of condominiums in Wilmington, North Carolina. Each condominium measures around 850 square feet with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. The community is popular for couples and small families who get just the right size place and investors who use them as an inexpensive rental. Click on the listings below to see pictures, features, amenities, school information, and more. Interested in viewing a home or have questions? Please don't hesitate to contact us. We can help you with this community or any other in the Greater Wilmington real estate market.


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The Pentagon has screened every Saudi trainee in the US. This is what they've found.
By Meghann Myers
Crime scene tape surrounds a building on Naval Air Station Pensacola after a shooting at the base Dec. 9 killed three sailors and injured eight others. (FBI Photo.)
The Defense Department has completed a mandatory review of all international military students attending training in the U.S., but officials declined to say whether any of the heightened background checks have turned up information related to the Dec. 6 shooting by a Saudi Arabian national at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.
No immediate threats were discovered, director for defense intelligence Garry Reid told reporters in a phone interview Thursday, but officials did not elaborate on whether the checks uncovered any information related to the shooting.
"The intent of this review is to determine where we can modify the current process, to improve collaboration and sharing of IMS security-related information, from the initial point of IMS nomination through arrival in the United States, enrollment in the training program, gaining access to U.S. military bases and across the entire IMS training cycle," Reid said.
Following the tragedy, Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist released a memo giving DoD 10 days to review its screening process, with an eye toward getting the procedures in line with the same background checks and ongoing insider threat protection that U.S. citizens are subject to when joining the military or visiting bases regularly.
The Pentagon screened all current international students using an expedited process that includes checks on government and commercial databases, as well as publicly available activity, like social media accounts.
Those checks will continue for all current IMS students and for those who have been approved but haven't reported for instruction yet, Reid added.
Service chiefs back training of foreign military students after deadly Florida base attack by Saudi pilot
Military officials said it is too early to label the attack as a case of terrorism.
By Leo Shane III
"Within the federal government, we are in the midst of the most significant reform of the background investigation process in decades, adopting new technologies and improving our awareness of personnel security threats," he said.
Going forward, according to a senior defense official who spoke on background because of the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation around the shooting, DoD will take a more active role in screening international students. Previously, the State Department has taken the lead, as the agency responsible for issuing visas, along with the Homeland Security Department.
"We will recommend adding additional measures that we apply to other groups, including our own personnel," the official said.
More than 300 Saudi trainees at Pensacola have been grounded since the shooting. While they have been allowed to continue classroom training, they are not yet allowed to fly again, as the review has been ongoing.
"Given the holiday break, I would be surprised if that happens in the next week or so," the official said.
About Meghann Myers
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.
pensacola shootingnavy shootingforeign military studentssaudi arabia flight studentforeign aviation training


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Android News / All News / Upgraded ZTE Axon 7 With 6GB RAM & 128GB Storage Lands In US
Upgraded ZTE Axon 7 With 6GB RAM & 128GB Storage Lands In US
By Mihai Matei
ZTE has announced an upgraded version of the ZTE Axon 7 for the US market, sporting more RAM and on-board storage, along with the addition of a pressure-sensitive display which the manufacturer apparently calls "Force Touch". The device is currently sold in the United States through ZTE's official website, with some media outlets adding that the upgraded model is available in "limited quantities."
While the regular ZTE Axon 7 is equipped with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of on-board memory, the upgraded model now carries 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Otherwise, the refreshed variant is powered by the same components as the original ZTE Axon 7, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 System-on-Chip, an Adreno 530 graphics processor, and a generous 20-megapixel rear-facing camera with sapphire lens, OIS (optical image stabilization), EIS (electronic image stabilization) and PDAF (phase-detection autofocus), and dual-LED flash. An 8-megapixel sensor resides on the front panel and the device is powered by a non-removable 3,250mAh battery which can take advantage of Qualcomm's Quick-Charge 3.0 technology. Interestingly enough, however, it appears that the refreshed model is also equipped with a pressure-sensitive display; a technology dubbed "Force Touch" by ZTE. The name should sound familiar to Apple users, given that the Cupertino-based company uses both Force Touch and 3D Touch technologies in a handful of its products. Either way, a "Force Touch" display allows users to access additional contextual menus by hard-pressing on the display – for instance on an app's shortcut in order to summon a special menu featuring options specific to the said application. In any case, the ZTE Axon 7 refresh carries a 5.5-inch AMOLED panel covered in Gorilla Glass 4, boasting a resolution of 2560×1440. Last but not least, the handset runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with MiFlavor UI 4.0 on top.
As for the smartphone's retail price in the US, the updated ZTE Axon 7 with an additional 64 GB of on-board storage and 2 GB of RAM is available for $499 unlocked. Meanwhile, the original ZTE Axon 7 with 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage and a non-Force-Touch display is priced at $399, whereas the ZTE Axon 7 Mini carries a price tag of $299. More details can be found on ZTE's official US website.
Blanket Your Home In WiFi With the NETGEAR Orbi Mesh WiFi System For $279
Mihai has written for Androidheadlines since 2016 and is a Senior Writer for the site. Mihai has a background in arts and owned a couple of small businesses in the late 2000s, namely an interior design firm and a clothing manufacturing line. He dabbled with real-estate for a short while and worked as a tech news writer for several publications since 2011. He always had an appreciation for silicon-based technology and hopes it will contribute to a better humanity. Contact him at [email protected]


text:
#include "modules/perception/lidar/lib/detector/cnn_segmentation/spp_engine/spp_engine.h"
#include "modules/perception/base/object_pool_types.h"
#include "modules/perception/lidar/common/lidar_log.h"
#include "modules/perception/lidar/common/lidar_timer.h"

namespace apollo {
namespace perception {
namespace lidar {

void SppEngine::Init(size_t width, size_t height, float range,
                     const SppParams& param, const std::string& sensor_name) {
  // initialize connect component detector
  detector_2d_cc_.Init(static_cast<int>(height), static_cast<int>(width));
  detector_2d_cc_.SetData(data_.obs_prob_data_ref, data_.offset_data,
                          static_cast<float>(height) / (2.f * range),
                          data_.objectness_threshold);
  // initialize label image
  labels_2d_.Init(width, height, sensor_name);
  labels_2d_.InitRangeMask(range, param.confidence_range);
  // set parameters of dynamic map
  params_ = param;

  // initialize feature size
  width_ = width;
  height_ = height;
  range_ = range;
  // bind worker
  worker_.Bind([&]() {
    data_.confidence_pt_blob->cpu_data();
    data_.classify_pt_blob->cpu_data();
    data_.heading_pt_blob->cpu_data();
    data_.height_pt_blob->cpu_data();
    return true;
  });
  worker_.Start();
}

size_t SppEngine::ProcessConnectedComponentCluster(
    const base::PointFCloudConstPtr point_cloud, const CloudMask& mask) {
  Timer timer;
  data_.category_pt_blob->cpu_data();
  data_.instance_pt_blob->cpu_data();
  double sync_time1 = timer.toc(true);
  worker_.WakeUp();
  size_t num = detector_2d_cc_.Detect(&labels_2d_);
  if (num == 0) {
    ADEBUG << "No object detected";
    // Later will decide if return this function here
  }
  double detect_time = timer.toc(true);
  worker_.Join();
  double sync_time2 = timer.toc(true);
  // labels_2d_.FilterClusters(data.confidence_data,
  //    data.confidence_threshold);
  // 2018.6.21 filter use category data to reserve long range objects
  // should be reverted after retrain model
  labels_2d_.FilterClusters(data_.confidence_data, data_.obs_prob_data_ref[0],
                            data_.confidence_threshold,
                            data_.objectness_threshold);
  double filter_time = timer.toc(true);
  if (data_.class_prob_data != nullptr) {
    labels_2d_.CalculateClusterClass(data_.class_prob_data, data_.class_num);
  }
  if (data_.heading_data != nullptr) {
    labels_2d_.CalculateClusterHeading(data_.heading_data);
  }
  if (data_.z_data != nullptr) {
    labels_2d_.CalculateClusterTopZ(data_.z_data);
  }
  double chz_time = timer.toc(true);
  // 2. process 2d to 3d
  // first sync between cluster list and label image,
  // and they shared the same cluster pointer
  clusters_ = labels_2d_;
  for (size_t i = 0; i < point_cloud->size(); ++i) {
    if (mask.size() && mask[static_cast<int>(i)] == 0) {
      continue;
    }
    // out of range
    const int id = data_.grid_indices[i];
    if (id < 0) {
      continue;
    }
    const auto& point = point_cloud->at(i);
    const uint16_t& label = labels_2d_[0][id];
    if (!label) {
      continue;
    }
    if (point.z <=
        labels_2d_.GetCluster(label - 1)->top_z + data_.top_z_threshold) {
      clusters_.AddPointSample(label - 1, point, point_cloud->points_height(i),
                               static_cast<uint32_t>(i));
    }
  }
  double mapping_time = timer.toc(true);
  // 5. remove empty clusters
  clusters_.RemoveEmptyClusters();
  double remove_time = timer.toc(true);

  AINFO << "SegForeground: sync1 " << sync_time1 << "\tdetect: " << detect_time
        << "\tsync2: " << sync_time2 << "\tfilter: " << filter_time
        << "\tchz: " << chz_time << "\tmapping: " << mapping_time
        << "\tremove: " << remove_time;

  return clusters_.size();
}

size_t SppEngine::ProcessForegroundSegmentation(
    const base::PointFCloudConstPtr point_cloud) {
  mask_.clear();
  ProcessConnectedComponentCluster(point_cloud, mask_);
  AINFO << "Foreground: " << clusters_.size() << " clusters";
  return clusters_.size();
}

size_t SppEngine::RemoveGroundPointsInForegroundCluster(
    const base::PointFCloudConstPtr full_point_cloud,
    const base::PointIndices& roi_indices,
    const base::PointIndices& roi_non_ground_indices) {
  mask_.Set(full_point_cloud->size(), 0);
  mask_.AddIndices(roi_indices);
  mask_.RemoveIndicesOfIndices(roi_indices, roi_non_ground_indices);
  mask_.Flip();
  // at this time, all ground points has mask value 0
  for (size_t i = 0; i < clusters_.size(); ++i) {
    clusters_[static_cast<int>(i)]->RemovePoints(mask_);
  }
  clusters_.RemoveEmptyClusters();
  return clusters_.size();
}

}  // namespace lidar
}  // namespace perception
}  // namespace apollo

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
link to the published version: IEEE Computer, June, 2015
accesses since May 7, 2015
FAREWELL TO AIR GAPS: Part I
One of the most fundamentally misguided ways to protect a networked infrastructure is to introduce an air gap. The US has been diligently mastering the art of crossing them for over thirty years.
THE LARGEST NON-NUCLEAR EXPLOSION IN HISTORY
Eager to send détente into an early grave, Ronald Reagan seized the opportunity to take advantage of the intelligence provided by French President Francois Mitterand's KGB spy, Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, codenamed "Farewell" by the French domestic intelligence agency. Mitterand offered the 4,000 KGB documents (the "Farewell Dossier") that Farewell supplied to President Ronald Reagan in 1981, which by some accounts triggered a spectacularly kinetic CIA response.
The entire affair was documented by Gus Weiss ( https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol39no5/pdf/v39i5a14p.pdf ), who served as a special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense as well as Director of International Economics for the National Security Council. According to Weiss, the Soviets under Brezhnev viewed détente as a means to ensure a much needed economic breathing room to enable them to improve their economy. To expedite the improvement, the Soviet Council of Ministers and the Central Committee established KGB Directorate T to find and retrieve Western targets-of-opportunity (read: stolen intellectual property). The new operating arm, Line X, was charged with the oversight and management of the acquisitions produced by the KGB and GRU.
The adversaries of Line X and the forces behind it were the Western/NATO economic agreements and export policies. Needless to say, Nixon, Kissinger and their Western cohorts weren't keen to provide the Soviets the keys to the kingdom, so nuclear secrets, certain sophisticated manufacturing techniques and semiconductor technology, and sensitive trade secrets were verboten, and the corresponding products, weapons, advanced computers, machinery and the like were embargoed. However, that didn't hold up Line X and the KGB. Line X populated visiting Soviet delegations with KGB agents to learn all that they could about agriculture, manufacturing, defense and whatever else they could get their hands on. What they didn't learn from direct inspection, they tried to buy. What they couldn't buy directly, they'd try to purchase through third parties. Failing that, theft was still an option. This was technology transfer Soviet style during the Cold War: a continuation of the atom bomb spying effort, but this time with economic objectives, that continued to some degree until Ronald Reagan found out about it from Mitterand.
In his capacity with the NSA, Gus Weiss read the Farewell documentation and determined that the Soviets were acquiring trade secrets in technology at breakneck speed. "Our science was supporting their national defense," he reported. The CIA extracted from Farewell a Line X shopping list, and with the approval of then Director William Casey in 1982 and the help of the FBI, decided to help the Soviets in their shopping by seeing that they got "improved" versions that "would appear genuine, but would later fail." In this way, defective computer chips, flawed parts, and misleading and/or bogus technical information were "seeded" with vendors known to sell to the Soviet Union.
This much is known from Weiss' report (above). But it gets much more interesting. Enter Thomas Reed, Gerald Ford's Secretary of the Air Force and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, and a member of Reagan's National Security Council. Reed and Weiss were both with the National Security Council when the Reagan-Casey-CIA-FBI intrigue began in early 1982.
Reed picks up Weiss story line in his 2005 book, At the Abyss (Presidio Press, 2005). On this account, the Soviets needed some software for their trans-Siberian pipeline stretching from Siberia to Eastern Europe. They dispatched a KGB operative to a Canadian software supplier. Farewell notified U.S. intelligence, the FBI works with the Canadians to "enhance" the software which is then sold to the KGB operative and delivered to the KGB. According to Reed, the software had a Trojan horse which allowed the West to regulated pump speeds and settings, valve openings, and internal pipeline pressures – read: far beyond safe limits. Needless to say, this flawed software produced the desired result of disrupting the operation of the pipeline. In fact, it is alleged to have produced what some claim was the largest non-nuclear explosion in the history of the world to that point (estimated at three kilotons of TNT). When the explosion was registered, Weiss apparently told the NSC not to worry about it but gave no explanation. Reed claims that Weiss told him the story and provided him with his notes shortly before his mysterious death on November 25, 2003. While some authors dispute whether the hack resulted in the actual explosion, it wasn't for want of effort on the part of the Reagan administration. So far as I can determine no authoritative source has been found that disputes the rest of Reed's account.
But there's more. Weiss' obituary wasn't published by the Washington Post for twelve days. Perhaps others were looking for the notes. Incidentally, some of his notes appeared on the CIA Website under is name on April 14, 2007 ( https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/96unclass/farewell.htm ), over two years after Reed's disclosures in his book that removed any cover of secrecy. What is more, the trans-Siberian pipeline part of the story is not included in Weiss' published CIA notes. Add to this his strong opposition to the Iraq war and you have the stuff of which great conspiracies are made. I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Thomas Reed remains a strongly partisan loyalist to Reagan and his politics, so it may be that his account is biased and somewhat sanitized – i.e., it is entirely possible that there is much more to the story than Reed reports.
MALWARE ARCHEOLOGY AND STUXNET
To get us all on the same page, the officially unconfirmed US/Israeli cyberattack against the Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Natanz that was reported in 2010 was never called Stuxnet internally. The codename used by the planners when they presented the idea of a cyberattack on Iran to the George W. Bush administration was "Operation Olympic Games." Stuxnet was a name given much later by investigators external to the project who juxtaposed fragments of contained filenames.
Stuxnet archeology has produced sufficient digital artifacts that several conclusions may be drawn. First, Stuxnet actually shares some of the architecture and codebase with the remote access Trojan and infostealer, Duqu ( www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_duqu_the_precursor_to_the_next_stuxnet.pdf , Figure 2.1, pp. 4 ff) and the espionage hack, Flame. In fact, the early versions of Stuxnet (circa v.0.5) are thought to be derivative of the Flame Platform ( https://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2012-052811-0308-99 , while the later versions (circa v.1.0) are also derivative of the "Tilded Platform" – so-called because investigators found the fact that the contributors tended to start filenames with tildas noteworthy. Other malware based on "Flame" and "Tilded" malware are certain to remain in circulation in some form. Kim Zetter (sidebar) convincingly documents that while Flame and Duqu are derived from the Flame and Tilded code bases, respectfully, Stuxnet borrows from both (Zetter, ch. 15), and in different proportions over time. For a variety of reasons that Zetter documents, Kaspersky Labs' Costin Raiu believes that the cyber-aggressors that started Stuxnet borrowed heavily from the Flame Platform code and then shifted to the Tilded Platform a few years in development due to the simplicity and tightness of the latter code. David Sanger (sidebar) speculates that the complex Flame code was a U.S. artifact and used when Stuxnet was in the experimental stage, while Duqu/Tilded Platform code was primarily an Israeli product. It was only after Operation Olympic Games was authorized by George W. Bush that the two teams began sharing code. There is considerable evidence for this, not the least of which is that Flame and Duqu vastly differ in terms of sophistication, suggestive of different teams with different skill levels. It should be noted that the Stuxnet payload (the part that was directed at specific industrial controllers) seems to have remained relatively constant over time, suggesting that it was developed first and held in reserve while awaiting an opportunity to launch. Absent leakers or whistleblowers we may never find out the full extent of the Flame and Tilded-Platform cyber-mischief of which Flame, Duqu and Stuxnet were a part, although it is known since 2012 that the Flame arsenal of attacks has expanded to include a hack of Microsoft Windows Updater – a feature that was not present in Stuxnet-era Flame and Tilded Platform exploits. So the Flame exploit continued to evolve after Stuxnet was exposed. Much of the current analysis must end with some speculation, of course, since state-sponsored developers don't use networked version control repositories like GitHub!
The details of the Stuxnet worm have been well documented by scores of security analysts at this point ( https://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf ; http://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/ ). It is well known that Stuxnet targets a very narrow range of SCADA industrial control systems running Step7 software by corrupting programmable logic controllers (PLCs) using two specific frequency converters, causing them to direct the connected systems to operate outside safe limits to the point of self-destruction (sound familiar?). The SCADA systems themselves are controlled by Windows computers, so the attack vector is indirect via Windows PLCs which are likely isolated from the Internet by means of an air gap. More specifically, Stuxnet is a cyberweapon that targets the Siemens Step-7 PLC software running on Windows computers (more accurately WinCC or Siemens PCS 7 software) which in turn controls Siemens Simatic S7 industrial controllers with S7-315 or S7-417 frequency converters used by the IR-1 family of uranium centrifuges. That last sentence is a mouthful! But it highlights the fact that the payload of Stuxnet was precisely targeted. The particular S7 controllers used with these centrifuges were Siemens SCADA controllers of which so much concern has arisen in recent years. SCADA was specifically introduced as a cost-saving measure to replace the hardwired and telemetry control systems of the 1950s and 1960s. They effectively reduced the cost of control if one discounts negative externalities from the total cost of use as they were designed without robust security in mind.
That's what Stuxnet did. Of course, that doesn't explain how it accomplished the feat. To understand this, one needs to re-visit the archeological record. The earlier Stuxnet version (~ v.0.5, circa 2005-7 – see https://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/stuxnet_0_5_the_missing_link.pdf ) was not Internet-enabled, and only propagated through shared Step 7 project files on Windows computers. Unlike its more effective descendant, v.0.5 manipulated the input and output valves on the centrifuges. While excessive pressure would have produced damage to the centrifuges, it was less effective and dramatic than v. 1.0 which actually manipulated centrifuge rotors to the point of spinning out of control. v. 1.0's injection method was also more sophisticated, using existing Windows vulnerabilities to propagate the worm through a LAN, removable USB storage devices, network file shares, Windows remote procedure calls, printer spools, or the Internet itself. The initial injection of v.0.5 was accomplished by the Autorun exploit on a Flame Platform via infected USB drives carried to Natanz by four Iranian subcontractors – a relatively simple injection strategy compared to v.1.0. Interestingly, the payload for v.0.5 didn't change in subsequent versions suggesting that the weaponized Simatic S7/SCADA attack code was likely mature by the time the Presidential decision was made to proceed to the final stages. Symantec also assesses the payload code to be far superior to the injector and call-home code, which many have used to identify the nationality of the teams. As an interesting aside, v0.5 used four command and control servers to update the code all of which claimed to be from the Media Suffix advertising agency whose tag line was "Believe What the Mind Can Dream" – the mantra for what I'll call post-modern, neo-conservative, malware epistemology.
The detailed technical reports on Olympic Games/Stuxnet are consistent in their recognition of its aggressiveness and capabilities – when measured in terms of breadth and depth, it certainly qualifies as revolutionary. Not only was it a hydra-headed near zero-day exploit and the first known rootkit to target PLCs, Stuxnet also deployed a sophisticated injector into the S7 processes. It was also a self-replicator par excellence that worked within LANs, peer-to-peer communications, removable storage, network shares, and I/O streams. It used a sophisticated covert command and control interface, an advanced form of anti-malware sonar for most of the popular security products available, strong encryption to hide its binaries, and had an embedded playback mechanism to spoof normal operation.
While not as complicated as Flame, Stuxnet was a serious contribution to the art of cyber warfare and in fact unique as a cyber-kinetic attack tool. Attacking the infrastructure of sovereign nations alone put it in a league of its own. This has not escaped the attention of political leaders and state-supported technologists of every stripe. Not only did it set a new standard for hacking into industrial control systems, it also raised the bar in the global cyber arms race. While the inevitable retaliatory attacks by anti-Western interests will be labeled by the mass media as naked cyber-aggression (as the bogus claims surrounding the Sony hack make clear – see my Cyber Chutzpah: The Sony Hack and the Celebration of Hyperbole, Computer, February, 2015), the cyber-aware globalists will always regard the U.S. and Israel as mentors. Future cyber-kinetic attacks will predictably involve failures of power grids, water supplies, and transportation. This cyber-genie is now out of the bottle.
The point we need to take away from the Siberian Pipeline Hack and Stuxnet is that air gaps have been ineffective for well over thirty years. An air gap joins security-through-obscurity as a classic examples of what I've called Faith-Based Security: a security that is based on faith alone (see my "Faith Based Security," Communications of the ACM, April, 2008).
Next month: we'll investigate what, if any, lessons we've learned.
The discovery of the worm now known as Stuxnet by a small security company in Belarus called VirusBlokAda ( http://anti-virus.by/en/index.shtml ) is itself an interesting story that is now part of cyber-lore. The Stuxnet authors went to considerable lengths to develop security suite sonar to thwart discovery by security software produced by the major vendors. But VBA was too small to be on their radar. An Iranian reseller for VBA reported events-of-interest by several customers that couldn't seem to rid themselves of malware infection. He alerted VBA who in turn uncovered a kernel-level rootkit operating on customer's computers. Further analysis discovered an injector based on Windows .LNK files carried by USB flash drives ( http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/41732 ). VBA had unknowingly uncovered the first few layers of Stuxnet because the sonar was effective against more widespread security software.
.LNK files are simply file shortcuts or symbolic links to local files. If the local file is an executable, activating the link causes the executable to load and run. Actually the Stuxnet v.1.0 .LNK exploit began life as a Microsoft feature. Not content to allow users access to a distracting array of file extensions, Microsoft has shipped Windows with the extensions to known file types (e.g., .DOC, .PPT) suppressed. To see the common file extension (recommended) the user has to disable this option in the folder options panel. What is more, even if you disable this suppress feature, Windows will still suppress system reserved file extensions like - you guessed it - .LNK. These file extensions are not file system links and hence not suppressed in Windows Explorer, but rather in the Windows Registry. By default the Registry entry for .LNK is "NeverShowExt." The same applies to URL, PIF, SHS, etc. extents as well. So, this "feature" was already weaponized by Microsoft: if .LNK file extensions are suppressed, it might appear as an innocuous file (e.g., <file.doc.lnk> would appear as <file.doc> ) concealing that this doc file will execute something other than MS Word. The Stuxnet .LNK injector took advantage of a design flaw in the IconHandler within the Windows Shell that incorrectly parses .LNK files. The IconHandler allowed the execution of the executable linked to the icon instead of just displaying the icon on USB devices (see "Icon Loading Vulnerability" in https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/ms10-046 ). VBA analysts spotted this attack vector and hence gained credit for the Stuxnet discovery, although they did not reverse engineer the code enough to reveal the payload. That would be done by Symantec ( https://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf ) and others. While the injector was designed for Windows, the payload was specifically designed for the industrial controllers.
The .LNK injector was novel – not a zero-day, but novel. Autorun was the default injector for removable storage and media before the mid-2000s. Since responsible security consultants had recommended disabling Autorun by 2000, it was becoming ineffective by the time that v.0.5 was released, so the Stuxnet authors jettisoned it in favor of the newer and more sophisticated exploits. Unlike v.0.5 v.1.0 used a multi-exploit . In all, Symantec and Kaspersky identified five different infection hacks: the Autorun exploit in v.0.5, the .LNK hack for v.1.0 and later, and three elevation-of-privileges exploits due to vulnerabilities in Windows keyboard file handler, print spooler, and task manager. In addition, Zetter documents eight different propagation tactics once the malware was installed on one computer: (1) the .LNK hack described above that would continue to work on new USB targets, (2) infecting Step 7 project files, (3) exploiting a security-through-obscurity defect in the way Siemens handled user-authentication, (4) injecting malware into shared Siemens databases, (5) a peer-to-peer exploit on LAN file sharing that worked much the same way as software updaters do, (6) installing a covert file sharing server on each infected machine for redundancy, (7) spreading via network file shares, and (8) a Conficker-style Trojan horse vulnerability that had already been reported and a patch created, but not necessarily installed. Of these (1) and (2) were the most critical. The newness of the exploits, together with the complexity of the code and the multitude of attack vectors distinguishes Stuxnet from other malware and made it the current gold standard of cyber warfare.
For technical information about Stuxnet, the most detailed reports that I've found are the Symantec references I've already mentioned. However, the long-term importance of Olympic Games/Stuxnet isn't to be found in the malware itself, but in the political context surrounding it. The two best sources that I have found are David E. Sanger's Confront and Conceal (Broadway Paperbooks, 2012, particularly ch. 8) and Kim Zetter's Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon (Crown, 2014). Sanger's book puts Operation Olympic Games in the context of the political climate of the latter George W. Bush and early Barack Obama administrations. It highlights the allure of kinetic attacks that do not involve the immediate risk of American lives. As such, Olympic Games may be thought of as a tactical sibling to the current U.S. drone war whose ideological ancestry dates back to the covert CIA operations in the Middle East (Operation Ajax) and Central America (Operation PBSUCCESS) by President Eisenhower.
Zetter's book is also contextual, but the context is cyber warfare rather than political. Her book is an excellent investigation of Stuxnet from the perspective of malware archeology and epistemology. Both books are important contributions and required readings for those who wish to understand state-sponsored perspectives on cyberspace. Ralph Langner's 2011 talk ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7UVyVSDSxY ) on Stuxnet and industrial controllers offers a convenient alternative.


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Faldo/Norman The 1996 Masters: A Duel That Defined An Era
12.17pm 20th December 2013	- Media
Faldo/Norman by Andy Farrell publisher: Elliott & Thompson price: £14.99 hardback publication date: 27 March 2014.
From the author of the award-winning '100 Greatest Ever Golfers', comes a detailed account of one of the most gripping final rounds of a golf tournament ever played.
Going into the final round of the 1996 Masters, Greg Norman led by six strokes. Having missed chance after chance throughout his career, this finally seemed to be the year that the 'Great White Shark' would win the green jacket. But playing alongside him in the final pairing of the final day was the one man who always seemed to get the better of the Australian when it really mattered. What followed was one of the most excruciating collapses in sporting history.
Faldo/Norman provides a blow-by-blow account of the riveting final round of the 1996 Masters over 18 chapters, weaving in the story of the entire tournament, the state of golf at the time, and the history of both players' careers and rivalry. For a decade Norman and Faldo, in their different ways, dominated the game, and their epic meeting at Augusta would prove to be the end of a golfing era.
Andy Farrell is a highly experienced golf journalist and author of The 100 Greatest Ever Golfers, for which he won the Golf Book of the Year Award at the British Sports Book Awards in 2012. A paper-back edition of the book was published in July and there is also a Kindle edition.
Westwood wins AGW Golfer of the Year award
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Golf Monthly gears up for growth in 2021
Sports Publications unveil new website for Alwoodley Golf Club


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Black Country FestivalMusicDining outTheatre & ComedyWeekendAttractionsCompetitions
Album Review: Seal - Standards
By Leigh Sanders EntertainmentPublished: Nov 10, 2017 Last Updated: Nov 10, 2017
He has been in the music business 30 years, but Seal still has the ability to surprise.
The cover for Standards
This, his 10th record, has gone slightly left-field. He has given us seven of his own, plus two cover albums made up of his favourite soul numbers from over the years.
Now, he has delivered a third covers compilation, but looking at a different era of music altogether.
"This is the album I have always wanted to make," he said in an interview. "I grew up listening to music from the Rat Pack era, so recording these timeless tunes was a lifelong dream. It was a true honour to collaborate with the same musicians who performed with Frank Sinatra and so many of my favourite artists, in the very same studios where the magic was first made."
And many will argue whether anybody can truly recreate the magic of some of those timeless hits, but the 54-year-old Londoner gives it his best shot.
Seal is heading back out on tour
Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Cole Porter - they all have their material showcased on the record, and Seal's velvety vocals do them justice. He even finds time to throw in a couple of Christmas numbers on the special edition.
Simone's I Put A Spell On You is actually a pretty dark track at times. But Seal's vast vocal range allows the song to rise to lighter climes and gives it a fresh hopefulness. Accompanied by a big band sound the brass accompaniment takes some of the pressure off the vocals and proves a nice foil.
Another surprise success is his version of Charlie Chaplin's Smile. His softly softly approach brings a calmness to the tune. It's a Hollywood soundtrack number of the Michael Bublé persuasion.
And to be fair to Seal, his vocals aren't too dissimilar to those of Dean Martin himself when covering festive hit Let It Snow. It is a good standard higher than the usual supermarket Christmas music fare many artists produce when attempting such a cover.
It will be interesting to see how this fits in with his originals when he takes it on tour next year. But if he delivers his between-song patter with the same friendly nature as this he will have the crowds eating out of his hand.
Seal sets off on his Standards Tour in 2018, including a date at Birmingham Symphony Hall on Wednesday, February 21.
Birmingham entertainment
By Leigh Sanders
@LSanders_Star
Senior sub editor for the MNA portfolio and entertainments writer leaning towards features and reviews. Get releases to me at leigh.sanders@expressandstar.co.uk
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Features | 14 hours ago
Wolverhampton | 1 hour ago


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DaViD Boulet's Profile
DaViD Boulet
Blu-ray Guru
Last Activity: Today 02:41 PM
in2video2
David, thought I'd try catching up with you again. We used to be linked as friends and regretably I lost our link. Take care.
bonnermartin
Are they going to release any of the old 3D movies on 3DBlu-ray. I saw your comment on Kiss me Kate and would like to add that; The 1953 movie of Kiss me Kate which was short in 3D with stereo sound see; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045963/
was filmed in 1.37:1 with an intended ratio of 1.75:1 see; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045963/technical
was shown at a New York Cinema in 3D last year see; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045963/...nest/168768798
Has been digitally restored for DVD with 5.1 sound see; http://www.amazon.com/Kiss-Me-Kate-K...0679084&sr=8-3
The DVD release should have been in widescreen but wasn't (When are studios going to realize that the most common screen aspect ratio is 16:9 and produce for it)
There are many 3D movies from the 50's that I would love to see on Blu-ray 3D
Bonner Martin
kiskiboy97
Hi David! Thanks for the kind words and the help with the 3D tech. It's a kind of learn-on-the-fly thing, so any help is appreciated. I still think it's important to mention what viewers today can expect to see with the current releases and on the newest tech, but indeed, I do hope it reaches a point where it's seamless.
Thank you David for accepting my invitation to be a Friend. I'm sure we will keep in touch. I can be reached privately at com whenever you feel the need. Take care and thank you once again.
Leon.
Robert Siegel
David, thought I would write you, Penton on his insider thread stated if we come up with a list of Columbia classics that he will present it to the proper person at Sony (important person, as he said). Here's the link I hope you chime in with your wanted titles. We are just posting titles now and will create a poll after a while and give it to Penton. Thanks Rob
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread....=1#post2796527
About DaViD Boulet
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LOSSLESS audio... something that belongs on EVERY Blu-ray Disc. Every one.
If it's not 1.5 screen widths or less, it's not "Home Theater" -it's TV.
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Established back in 1986 with a single cricket-shoe inspired sneaker to its name, multi-faceted Italian clothing brand, Hogan, boasts an illustrious history of creative collaboration.
Recognised across the fashion world for its uncluttered creative approach and unique, low-fi aesthetic - Hogan has this year launched one of its most experimental projects to date.
Artribe – Hogan's latest, street-art inspired venture - was established back in July with a graffiti sprayed event in Milan's Pidaglione D'Arte Contemporanea. It was here that Hogan began its enduring creative journey with the New York City-based, self-titled 'muralists', Tats Cru – who, for the most recent portion of the Artribe outing, have adapted their collective spraying skills to a series of Hogan sneakers.
Setting out with a view to combine the cream of the wall-based art world with their distinctive design agenda, Hogan commissioned Tats Cru to leave their mark upon a selection of pristine white, leather lace-ups - transforming Hogan's sartorial staple into a high-style objet d'art with an urban edge.
With a view to 'validate graffiti as a legitimate art form', Tats Cru have adorned ten pairs of Hogan's sneakers with a series of flame throwing patterns, New York City skylines and a whole host of high-colour embellishments.
Ever on the inside track, Wallpaper* were first in line to learn more about Hogan's innovative project – and when we heard about the exclusive online auction planned for Hogan's prestigious pairs of sneakers, we thought it only fair to share the news.
Going live on the online platform of choice,eBay , from the 10th of December for 6 days only - the auction will give fast fingered sneaker enthusiasts the opportunity to buy one of ten pairs of 'Olympia', from Hogan's artistically-inspired Artribe collection.
With all proceeds from the auction going to DOCVA – a charity which has long advocated artistic research around the world - Artribe is not only a project truly worth it's creative salt, it's a philanthropic one to boot.


The Caine College of the Arts is named in recognition and celebration of the generous contributions made by members of the Caine family to the arts at Utah State University and in northern Utah.
Students accepted in good standing by the University are eligible for admission to the Caine College of the Arts. Because of limitations of faculty or space, some programs within the college limit enrollment in their professional programs. Please see the departmental sections in this catalog and the department head or director of the appropriate unit for information regarding these limitations and/or requirements in addition to the University admission and graduation requirements.
The Caine College of the Arts participates in the Interdisciplinary Studies Major, Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science , which offers flexibility for qualifying students who cannot find an existing degree that meets their needs.
The Department of Art and Design's primary goal is to prepare undergraduate students for careers in art history, art education, and studio art, as well as the applied and fine arts. Requirements in eight different emphasis areas address the specific needs of each career. The Department of Art also serves the University community by offering courses in the University Studies program and by offering training for students in related degree programs. For further information see Department of Art .
The Department of Music offers specific sequences of courses leading to professional preparation in music education, music therapy, and performance/pedagogy. The department also provides public musical service to the University and the community.
The specific objectives of the programs in music for the music major are fourfold: (1) to prepare licensed music teachers to serve effectively in elementary and secondary schools; (2) to prepare musically talented students for careers as professional performers and/or studio teachers; (3) to prepare board-certified music therapists to serve in educational and therapeutic settings; and (4) to prepare music students for graduate study in their areas of specialization.
The department of Theatre Arts supports the missions of Utah State University and the Caine College of the Arts by cultivating artistic and academic excellence, by contributing to the cultural enrichment of the university and surrounding communities through live theatre production, and by fostering respect for the arts through advocacy and professionalism.
Undergraduate students admitted to its programs are offered a solid foundation in general theatre studies, a working knowledge of the theatre and production practices, and specific training in acting, design, production technology or theatre education. The department also offers graduate study in design for the theatre.
For additional information see Department of Theatre Arts .
The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art is the major center for the exhibition of the visual arts in northern Utah. Emphasizing the breadth of artistic expression and the history of art in the western United States, the Museum's permanent collections include Twentieth Century American sculpture, ceramics, paintings, graphic arts, photographs, and American Indian arts. Selections from the collection are always on view and are rotated periodically to reflect the continuing growth and refinement of the collection. In addition to installations of its permanent holdings, the Museum organizes temporary and traveling exhibitions and serves as a venue for exhibitions of national and international stature. Artist talks, films, docent tours, and educational activities are additional dimensions of the Museum's programs which are designed to interpret, present, and foster the development of the visual arts.
As a component of Utah State University, the Museum provides educational opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students pursuing professional careers in the museum field. Through on-the-job training, independent study, and internships, students participate in collections care and management, exhibition development, installation design, and educational programming. Research and publication are also integral parts of the Museum's educational offerings, and students, along with faculty and other scholars, pursue projects which are relevant to the permanent collections and exhibitions.
Named for its benefactor, the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art was made possible through an insightful and generous gift from the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation. Designed by internationally acclaimed architect, Edward Larabee Barnes, the 20,000-square-foot structure includes offices, a workshop, library, storage facilities, and five exhibition galleries.
For more information, write or call: Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, 4020 Old Main Hill, Logan UT 84322-4020, (435) 797-0163, FAX (435) 797-3423.
For non-specific department majors please select "Display programs for this school/college".


After Brutalism inspired AW13, Kristian Steinberg continues to study the way societies expresses themselves through architecture and the way buildings urge us to identify with the agenda they represent. Perhaps therein lies the reason why Romans themselves often fail to see past the Fascist history of the grand exhibition area EUR (Esposizione Universale Roma). Benito Mussolini engaged top architects of the time to embark on a project as grand as any from the Roman past, to show the world what Rome was, is and will become. When Kristian visits the area on his trip to Rome, he is stricken by the early modernism that still looks relevant and by the way it interprets landmark buildings from the antiquities in a way that is at least as innovative and impressive as the original and most importantly doesn't try to replicate, but rather takes its own bold direction. Palazzo Della Civilità summarises this notion the best and has earned the nickname "The Square Colosseum".
The AW14 collection sees inspiration from classical sculpture turned into an architectural embrace of the male body. The concepts of smart and casual are irrelevant as Kristian merges sporty and tailored looks and focuses on textures, proportions and the anatomy of the male body.
He introduces materials like cork, and by featuring it alongside digital prints of marble, plays with the idea of organic looking sculpture and organic matter looking rather sculptural. The colour pallet is unusually dark and only really allows one bright shade though the black, grey and sepia – the turquoise. It brings a sense of unruly fun into an otherwise cool and somewhat serious collection. Kristian selects materials with no compromise to quality and designs with the fabrics in the driving seat. AW14 features top Italian wool and jersey as well as luxury merino in all the hand made knitwear.


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The ElliQ eldercare robot is finally available
Originally published by TechCrunch on March 15, 2022
The astute TechCrunch reader will quickly note that we've been covering Intuition Robotics for five years now, dating back to the eldercare robotics' crowdfunding campaign way back in February 2017. Most of the coverage since then has found the Israeli company raising even more money across various rounds, without actually answering the most important question: when? Specifically, when is the ElliQ robot going on sale?
Seems the product is finally ready for prime time. What can I say, robots take a long time, and the company has spent several years beta testing. Intuition just announced that ElliQ is officially available today, through the product's site. As is the wont of the robotics industry in 2022, the device will be available through a subscription plan — RaaS, if you will. That starts with a $250 upfront fee and then runs $30 a month (if you go in for an annual subscription).
Eldercare has long been a key robotics focus in Japan, but has had issues gaining a foothold elsewhere. Here in the States, a smattering of startups are getting on board, including Labrador Systems, while smart home device makers like Amazon and Google have begun building related functionality into their systems.
Image Credits: Intuition Robotics
I tend to think of ElliQ as something along the lines of the sadly discontinued Kuri or Jibo, focused specifically for an older audience. Rather than actually assisting with the chores like Labrador, it's designed to keep older adults engaged. The company says average users engage with the product 20 times a day for a combined 20 minutes or so. Meaning, it's not designed for the engagement level, of say, TV, but rather something more along the lines of frequent, brief check-ins.
"After years of hard work this day has finally come," co-founder and CEO Dor Skuler said in a release. "Over the course of the pandemic, we've seen the devastating effect that loneliness can have on the older adult population. At the same time, we've seen ElliQ be incredibly helpful to our beta users and put a smile on their faces."
There's a range of content available through the device, including workouts, health info from the Mayo Clinic, check-ins with loved ones and transportation through Uber Health, among other things. Effectively, assistance and engagement are the two things here for people who are independent enough to live on their own, but require a bit more help/support.


Charlotte Thiis-Evensen uses new media to create unique and empathetic human narratives. She utilizes a form of documentary based on the lived experience of named individuals, often working from the artist's own circle of acquaintances, community members, or children and teenagers. She is interested in producing work that explores questions of personal freedom.
Thiis-Evensen's photography, video, performance and installations are riveting in their calm observations of human relationships.
Charlotte Thiis-Evensen studied at The Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. She has shown her work internationally as well as at local institutions such as the Lillehammer Art Museum, OSL Contemporary, and Kunstnernes Hus. Her films are screened at festivals in France, Germany, Spain, Norway, and elsewhere.


Why Shen Loves it: Add a touch of opulence to your home with this Golden Burlesque large scented candle from Fornasetti. Featuring the face of Lina Cavalieri with rich gold embellishments, it houses Fornasetti's signature Otto fragrance inside. Blending notes of thyme, lavender, cedarwood and incense, this striking fragrance is housed inside 100% vegetable wax which is allergen and pesticide free. A wonderful gift idea, there are many more candles also available from the iconic Italian brand. A fusion of Fornsetti's signature art forms and indulgent home fragrance, the vessel has been hand crafted and decorated in Italy and the fragrance exclusively created in Grasse, France, the home of luxury perfume.
"Otto" is the signature scent of the Fornasetti Profumi collection. The scent is sophisticated and unique; transcending time, season, gender and borders. Created by master perfumer Olivier Polge it makes use of ingredients that are of personal significance to Barnaba Fornasetti – Mediterranean herbs that were found in and around the family home, woods often utilised in interior designs or pieces of furniture created by Fornasetti. Other more ethereal ingredients – such as incense – conjure a spirituality or sense of dreamscape that is often present in Fornasetti graphic poetry.
Fornasetti scented candles are hand-poured in England and made of a vegetal wax blend. This ensures a regular scent diffusion, and a long-lasting and clean burn for up to 240 hours.


Contempory dining venue but room enough to drink as well, there is a variety of drinks including a cocktail list, 5 real ales & craft beers on draught.
The real ales included Bombardier and then 4 from micros. The food includes a street food platter.
Mainly set out with square tables at an angle throughout the one one space between 2 streets, there are chandeliers & wood floor with silver grey walls.
Not much inside or out but the extra marks for the quality and choice of drinks, great to see a chain make this much effort.
A typical Slug with regards to the decor, but it's very different from most on the ale front. There are 5 handpumps on the bar serving Oakham Inferno, Bombardier and 3 changing guest usually from local breweries. The barstff were very friendly and chatty on my Thursday evening visit. My pint was in great condition and there was a small CAMRA discount. This pub is in the CAMRA GBG2013. It won't suit everyone, but the ale is very good. It's nice to see a Slug becoming a regular in the GBG.


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GARRY FEGAN:
the former hit man is hiding out in New York, having cut all ties wiht his old life. But he made a fatal mistake: he spared the life of Bull O'Kane, a ruthless gang leader who will stop at nothing to get his revenge.
THE TRAVELLER:
a merciless assassin who kills without pity or remorse, The Traveller is hired by O'Kane. His instructions are to find - and terminate - Fegan, and O'Kane knows the perfect bait to lure Fegan back to Belfast.
JACK LENNON:
his family have disowned him and his colleagues don't trust him. But when he discovers that his ex-partner and young daughter are helpless pawns caught up in O'Kane's thirst for vengeance, Lennon must enter into a desperate alliance if he is to save them both.
Terrifyingly authentic, shiveringly good
Fast-paced, coolly plotted
James Ellroy and Val McDermid were among admirers of Stuart Neville's corpse-filled debut The Twelve, and his follow-up Collusion is another mesmerising Belfast blood bath. The Traveller and O'Kane are memorably grotesque creations and Neville's violent showdowns rival those in Jacobean revenge plays
John Dugdale, Sunday Times
A second novel that not only lives up to the promise of the first, but actually exceeds it
Brisk, addictive and possessing an expert sense of when to play the "supernatural" card, Collusion is a worthy successor to one of last year's best thrillers
John O'Connell, Guardian