text:
What does it take to stand out in the crowded world of music? Good songs? The right look? A record label and management who know what they're doing? Maybe. Or you could just have a preposterous name and save yourself all the trouble. With the beginning of each new year, The A.V. Club keeps a list of funny, dumb, terrible, or otherwise noteworthy band names that we encounter. Plenty of these bands barely have a web presence, much less a manager, and they stood out way more than others who have a "team" working for them. Our advice: Ditch all of it and choose a name like Nihilist Cunt. You're welcome.
New for 2013: Want to suggest an addition to next year's round-up? Email firstname.lastname@example.com.
Kind of genius
- Singer Josh McLeod explained to LA Weekly: "Farting is funny, barfing is painful, so those two verbs seem to fit well with the music we make. It also sets a very low bar when people come to see us, so it actually helps, because it sounds like an 11 year old's punk band." He adds later that "Fifty percent of the people literally can't pronounce those two words combined."
Ring Video Doorbell (Wired)
Two-way talk function
No need to leave the couch to answer the door anymore. Just pull out your phone and check the Ring app to see who's there via the 1080p camera.
- Lyrics from "Skot Thompson": "I know your name / I'm gonna fuck you up! / Skot Thompson!"
Bad name, terrible band photo
- They may sound like another metal/screamo band, but they call it "melodic wondercore."
- Not to be confused with whispersofwonder.com/.net, "Discovering the wonder of God's love in everyday life."
Can anything top this incredibly douchey band photo?
Why yes, its mind-blowingly terrible video:
- The band's website describes its sound as "alchemic death metal," or as its Facebook page says: "The overall view is ApotheCarrioN; A deranged Alchemist with an affinity for Metempsychosis, the transition of the soul and the process of new life in a new vessel." Although its influences are "Inner Madness combined with Ill-Tempered Disgust," the first line on ApotheCarrioN's bio is "We are a professional minded band with a 'Do it yourself' mentality." Ill-tempered disgust, yes, but professionally so!
- The band's Facebook page claims frontman Joe Deninzon has been called "the Jimi Hendrix of the violin," but a quick Google search of that phrase brings up a couple dozen results for violinist Eileen Ivers, upon whom The New York Times supposedly bestowed that very title! And The Washington Post called her "the future of the Celtic fiddle"! There's only one way to settle this: a "Devil Went Down To Georgia"-type duel. (Although maybe Jimi Hendrix was the Jimi Hendrix of the violin.)
- "When you think of thumping futuristic beats mixed with full on yet stylish electro, one name stands out from the rest: Hypster." So true. Hypster is also the name of a playlist-oriented social-media site.
- "The current recordings on this page are demos and are merely meant to show roughly what we sound like. Once we have actual band recordings you will be blown away!" Band interests: "Ice surfing and church burning of course."
- Not to be confused with The Bananarchists from Orange County. (Band interests: "Del taco is pretty good.")
- That's "the gulf between the author of ironic wit and the reader who doesn't get it," according to the band's Facebook page. Also: "Sarchasm's beginning months were spent writing, rehearsing, fine-tuning and refining what would become what their parents call their 'classic Sarchasm' songs."
- The name is a portmanteau of the Charlie Parker song "Ah-Leu-Cha" and Zapatistas, the Mexican revolutionary movement. It's also very difficult to spell and pronounce, which is always a good idea when naming your band.
- Album: O' Hell, Shine In Thy Whited Sepulchres. Check out "Inurnment Of Fleshless Disembodied Remains," if you're not too sick of hearing it at wedding receptions:
- Lyrics for "Out There," posted on its Facebook page: "Hit the floor, look up high at the sky / feel small, motherfucker? / feel like a speck? / feel like dust? / feel like something not worth living, motherfucker?"
The devil
- Album: Galloping Blasphemy
- Bio: "Relentless blasphemy, unholy sacraments of evil made by dwellers of the twilight, horrors that will make priests vomit in agony, abominations that the prophecies of old kept hidden!!! SATAN'S WRATH is the only band in the world in communication with thy master through ceremonial black magic and necromantic rituals."
- Bandcamp URL: fuckvnecks.bandcamp.com
- Song titles: "Leave Your V-Neck Home," "Skate Against The Church," none longer than 46 seconds.
Dark name, bro
Darkness By Oath
Psychology Of Genocide
- Featuring ex-members of Cookie Mongoloid! Live video of "Fuck Mac World":
Burning Streets
The Suicide Of Western Culture
- Songs: "This Is The Last Time I Shake Your Hand," "A Forest Of Greyhounds Hanged," "Love Your Friends, Hate Politicians"
Disfiguring The Goddess
- Two "bands" claim the name—quotation marks because one admits "DTG will never ever play a show. It's not a real band." Another is a death-metal band from California who has songs with names like "Feeding Of Nihility" and "Abrogation's Crown"
- About: "Que paso juicehead?"
Strengthen What Remains
Looking At My Enemy
Addiction To Affliction
Nihilist Cunt
- Song: "Relationshits"
- The name apparently comes from an Alfred Hitchcock quote.
- They changed their name to UBT. Lame!
Traumatic Anal Devastation
- Best known for interrupting a Newt Gingrich rally in Las Vegas in February with their music, which a staffer for the former House Speaker described as "the sound of a tank driving through a minefield." Well done.
- Description: "OFFENSIVE BRUTAL OLD SCHOOL DEATH / BLACK METAL….if your asshole isnt [sic] stretched and the smell of Putrescence does not infest your genitals, then we are doing something wrong."
Blood Shit
Neon Piss
Piss N' Blood
- Song titles: "The Weight Of The World And Every Dress You Wore," "Wishlist For The Drowning," "Kiss Like A Miracle," "The Temptation That Is You," "We Were Dancing An Hour Before We Met"
- Bio excerpt: "With no local saxophone-driven rock scene to latch onto, the Troop ventured into the wild."
- If your name were The Kiss Tried To Smack Me, you'd use an acronym too.
- Bio: "Johanna Stahley and Owen O'Mahony make music together. They are really good friends, but sometimes Johanna wants to kill Owen."
- From Portland, Oregon, as if that weren't obvious.
- Winner, Longest Band Bio: 1,371 words, which doesn't include the individual bios for all three members, which clock in at 1,537, 2,893 (the singer's, of course), and 1,235 words each. That's 11,036 altogether. For comparison, the Led Zeppelin Wikipedia page is only 6,845 words.
- From San Francisco, of course. It's the work of Greg Charles, whose smooth love songs seem constructed from karaoke backing tracks. He thanks listeners in a seven and a half minute video on his site, where he stands in front of green-screen footage of San Francisco and spends the better part of a minute rattling off all the countries he apparently has fans in. It almost seems like the work of Tim & Eric, especially when he mentions that A Nice Vibe is No. 1 on something called the San Francisco Pop Chart—um, on ReverbNation, a website for musicians to promote their work. That's probably where A Nice Vibe's supposed No. 8 on the "U.S. Pop Chart" happened too, considering Billboard has no record of A Nice Vibe. Best to take the "Grammy nominated" note on its Facebook page with a grain of salt, too. A press release from A Nice Vibe's label, Cut The Bull Entertainment, explains "The album has already put him on the Grammy ballot list in five categories for the nomination process." So it was a on a list for the ballot for nominations? What an honor! All of this nonsense is the result of Cut The Bull's Al Walser, who recently made headlines for somehow gaming his way to a Grammy nomination.
- Album: Suffocating In The Swarm Of Cranes
Blessed Feathers
The History Of Apple Pie
Peanut Butter Lovesicle
Maidens Sorrow
- According to the ReverbNation chart, Maidens Sorrow is No. 3 on the punk chart for Ione, California! Get on it, Cut The Bull Entertainment!
Forever Came Calling
A Heavy Feather
- Album: You're The Lotion On Darkness As It Punches Light In The Face
The ReMINDers
Drowning With Our Anchors
Laughing Prophets Of Doom
- "Four laid back dudes in a loose partyin' mood making some pop punk!" Was that bio written by @DadBoner?
- You probably remember their song "Fist Fuck The Pope."
Mothercountry Motherfuckers
Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire
Crooked As Fuck
Fat Fuxxx
- Winner, Google Evasion Award
- "The songs creak with the thaw of an old church pew drawing joy in wandering harmonies and stories that are sewn by hands covered in earth, filling the bones of the songs as ambience backlights the fluttering travels of shared existence."
We Killed The Lion
A Fucking Elephant
- Twitter bio: "A Fucking Elephant sounds like drug induced crime. Harsh sonic destruction, dope soaked and wow." Sample tweet: "Greg made it through an entire interview without talking about Korn."
Wrinkle Neck Mules
The Dogs Divine
Ultraviolet Hippopotamus
- "Described as 'brightening the future of the jam band scene,' Ultraviolet Hippopotamus mixes tight, funky jams with new dance beats, heartfelt lyrics, compelling composition, eccentric effects and a vibrant light show for an incredible, one-of-a-kind musical experience."
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs
- If your real name was Orlando Higgenbottom, you'd perform under some goofy name too.
Stealing Sheep
The Japonize Elephants
Thousand Foot Whale Claw
Proper names
- Bio: "Gordon sent Aaron some riffs. Aaron loved the riffs, and they called Nick. Tyler has arrived to bring the thunder. The band is now real and damn near uncriticizeable."
Hoodie Allen
You Can't Win, Charlie Brown
- Band members, according to Facebook: "EVERYONE THAT HAS EVER GIVEN ME ANY IDEAS OR INSPIRATION. THIS INCLUDES THE BEATLES, EDGAR ALLEN POE [sic], AND MY DOG, SO CONGRATULATION [sic], EVERYONE IS A PART OF RUN DMT!"
- Song: "Sluts N Coke"
- Band Interests: "melancholy, ennui, snails, broth"
Band or Alice In Wonderland character?
Band or loan application?
You Die!
The Need!!
You Blew It!
- Bio: "Donna told me she loves me then I told her I love cake."
- Songs: "Your Is The New You're," "Shirts Off, Party On," "When Life Hands You Lemmings"
- "Young women, hillbillies, and fellow Doritos enthusiasts rejoice: Worship This! are here to give you that lovin' feeling."
Tic Tic Boom!
Hey Chica!
Duck. Little Brother, Duck!
- All 15 songs on Survival Is Not A Workout use proper names with parentheticals, like "Courtney Taylor Taylor (How Sexy Is Your Soul?)," "Steve Jobs (All Is Fun Until Someone Gets Stabbed)," and "Dov Charney (Neon Cotton Wormhole)."
Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate)
Tiger! Tiger!
- Not to be confused with Tiger, Tiger
- "Formed in 2007, this Bay Area band has been most accurately illustrated as the Ramones meets Funkadelic with Betty Davis on vocals."
Brevity is the soul of nothing
For Fear The Hearts Of Men Are Failing
- It's a line from "No Depression" (or "No Depression In Heaven") by the Carter family (and made famous by Uncle Tupelo). As the group explains on its website, "It feels full of existential angst. It also sounds fucking metal! This combination aptly describes the sound of our band. We are fucking ridiculous."
Jingle Punks Hipster Orchestra
- Ever wondered what Nirvana sounds like re-imagined for a string ensemble? Or "Lisztomania" by Phoenix? Or The White Stripes "Seven Nation Army"? Pretty great, actually.
The Akabane Vulgars On Strong Bypass
- They're from Japan, so maybe that name makes sense there? "The Akabane Vulgars on Strong Bypass connect to their audience and to share the emotional feelings and passion between band and audience."
The Experimental Tropic Blues Band
Rebuilding The Rights Of Statues
- Album: Watch Out! Climate Has Changed, Fat Mum Rises… They're Chinese, so presumably that title kills in their homeland. Also: They're pretty good.
- Winner, Best URL: cokedick.com
Yes, this kind of thing still happens
- Under "Biography" on its Facebook page: "We're too lazy to fill this out." For "Description": "WE'RE A PUNK BAND, BRO."
Movie/TV references
- "Universal love and dedication for music that ensures it's quilaity." [sic] Its "influences" section on Facebook lists more than 400 artists.
- "Remember that time in The Wicker Man when Nicolas Cage is wearing a bear suit and strait [sic] up punches a chick."
- Sadly, none of its music includes a salute to the greatest hemisphere on earth, the Western Hemisphere! The dancingest hemisphere of all!
The Cast Of Cheers
Pwin Teaks & The Children Of The New H's
- Well, the first part is a TV reference. The second part? No idea.
Cosby Sweater
Danny Glover And The Lethal Weapons
- Songs: "Glover Sex Scottums Scrotum," "If The Glovers Are United"
Back To The Future references
Ronald Reagan? The Actor?
We Don't Need Roads
- Two bands vie for this name on Facebook: one from Chicago and another that looks like a bunch of teenagers (one of whom drew a logo in English class).
Coming to season four of The Walking Dead
Sabertooth Zombie
Zombie Death Fuck
Tribute bands
Our Name Is Jonas
Mick's Jaguar
- "Mick's Jaguar is the best Rolling Stones revival band to come out of Gowanus Bklyn. All members of the band are over 30, overweight, and enjoy dining at the Pizza Hut/Taco Bell/Dunkin Donuts combo spot around the corner from the practice hut… Real bands hate us."
Will never be spelled or pronounced correctly
- Helpfully provides a phonetic pronunciation on its Twitter page: "en-goo-zoo en-goo-zoo"
That's pun-tertainment
- "Earnest music for people who actually feel things"
Brass Hysteria
Left To Write
Prey For Sleep
Hear Kitty Kitty
- Features a member of Ugly Kid Joe! Singer Nikita also plays in an all-female cover and called Damezig.
- Songs: "God Hates Punks," "Scumshot," "Fuck Work"
NO XTRA LTTRS/spaces/extra spaces
- Alas, they've broken up.
- Song title: "To Light Alone I Bow"
Juno What?!
- "the leading practitioner of high-energy disco booty jams, and live electro-funk"
…Whatever That Means
Annoying gimmick names (or annoying-gimmick names)
- Pronounced "Oh." Under "Members" on Facebook: "CRaZY aSS BiTCH LiVeS iN a CaVe. MaKeS THRee SoNGS a YeaR WHeN NoT CRYiNG."
- Pronounced "ADD"
First Person
My Bloodshed Kills
My Name Is You
I Killed Everyone
Why I Hate
Can I Get An Amen
Second Person
You Won't
Father You See Queen
Build Us Airplanes
Burn The Remains
Go Tell The Eskimo
Run With The Hunted
Don't Flirt With Puppy Killers
- The name apparently comes from Of Mice And Men?
Um, okay, sure
- The drummer of this band is 11 years old.
Trademark Da Skydiver
The Mendition Of The Quay
- "The Mendition of the Quay has arrived to save the world from false psychedelia."
Pure Bathing Culture
The We Shared Milk
The most festive demonstration ever
See, it's political commentary
- About: "We are GUANTANAMO DOGPILE AND WE'RE HERE TO SHIT ON YOUR FACE!!!!!!!!!!!!"
As featured in Looper
Also the name of a Thomas Kinkade painting
Sexy times
- "In an industry flooded with highly homogenized 'music', AGR strives to be a little bit 'different'. Frontman/vocalist/guitarist Skunk Manhattan, bassist/vocalist Chef Bull RD, and drummer Rex combine their talents and influences together to create a distinct style of 'different rock music'". [sic] We're not "sure" these guys "get" what quotation marks "mean."
The moon
Today The Moon Tomorrow The Sun
Moonmen On The Moon, Man
Mansions On The Moon
When in doubt, repeat
- URL: brightbrightbright.com
Wizards & shit
- Genre: "Glory Metal"
The Crazy Dogggz Memorial Section
Catz N' Dogz
Skin & Bonez
- Not to be confused with the belt-maker.
Most generic/appropriate name in history
Kay There House Builder
Diamond Terrifier
Expensive Looks
- Biography: "akin to creations of early garage titans and wonders transfused with codeine-soaked acid jams, the smoothly ethereal yet grimy sounds reveal the inner-workings of towering, crashing polar shifts." Um, ok.
- The band logo is two shockers, as seen in the video for "Cocaine Off A Baby":
- Their Facebook bio has some charming Engrish: "ZZZ's formed last year and performs the 1st show immediately after several times of session. Their peculiar sound calls a rumor immediately, though there is little number of times of their show, their demo EP and Tapes at each record shop in Japan is sold-out." And "They lead community life with backpackers by the guesthouse which is likely to break at any moment." Good to know!
- The band that does the theme to Justified. It combines bluegrass and hip-hop:
- Classiest splash page of this year's bands.
Kissy Sell Out
A Lot Like Birds
Dinner And A Suit
Cosmic Suckerpunch
Jimmy At The Prom
Dirge Within
Skipping Girl Vinegar
Nü Sensae
Shy Around Strangers
- "Shy Around Strangers is a great band name in its own right, but what makes this three-piece's namesake even more apropos is their mission to make the music itself the public face and persona of the band." Someone thinks it's a great name?
Dumptruck Butterlips
Super Water Sympathy
- The band describes its sound as "a synthesis of classic symphonic ambience with modern ethereal anthems"
Balance And Composure
Naw Dude
Mom Jeans
Moron Mountain
- Album Alcoholic Lesbian Velociraptor features songs like "Shit, Secret Jew Dick" (which opens with an Annie Hall sample) and "668 (Neighbor Of The Beast)"
- Genre identification: "Techno Pagan Dopamine Party." It's the project of multi-instrumentalist Taara Tati, who's prone to posting pronouncements on her Facebook wall like this one: "we are the metaphorical animations of nature"
Not In The Face
Ex-Easter Island Head
Smile Empty Soul
3 Dudes & A Mullet
The Janitor And The Bum
Jokes For Feelings
Christ Vs. Krishna
3 Pill Morning
Goodbye Good Sense
- Bio: "Goodbye Good Sense is a delicious experimental melodic explosion of guitar wave hard candy with a juicy center of head-bobbing technical pitter-patter from the skins driven by a thick outer-shell of bass lines and yummy textures that dissolves surely, but sweetly." Sadly, that's not the end of that metaphor in their bio.
- Not to be confused with this Short Attn Span, an "Excellent, Lively even Zany Covers Band with Great sound & Personality. Ideal for Pubs or Your Special Function."


text:
Net::SIP::SDP - Parsing and manipulation of SDP data for SIP
my $sdp = Net::SIP::SDP->new( sdp_string );
my @media = $sdp->get_media;
Net::SIP::SDP can parse and manipulate SDP data.
It's not a general purpose SDP class (like Net::SDP) but designed to work with SDP data contained in SIP packets and for easy extraction and manipulation (for NAT etc) of media information contained in the SDP.
The class is also designed for easy creation of SDP bodies in the context of the rest of Net::SIP::*.
# creation based on media data
my $sdp = Net::SIP::SDP->new(
{ addr => '192.168.0.1' },
{ port => 2012, proto => 'RTP/AVP', media => 'audio', fmt => 0 },
{ port => 2014, proto => 'RTP/AVP', media => 'video', fmt => 0 },
# parse from string
my $sdp = Net::SIP::SDP->new( sdp_string );
# extract all media data
my @media = $sdp->get_media;
# and replace them with new addr + port (for NAT)
my @new_media,;
foreach (@media) {
my ($port,@socks) = create_rtp_sockets( '192.168.178.1', $_->{range} );
push @new_media, [ '192.168.178.1', $port ];
$sdp->replace_media_listen( @new_media );
Default constructor. Depending on kind of arguments branches into new_from_string or new_from_parts. See there.
Creates object from STRING containing the SDP data. Raises an exception (e.g. die()) if SDP is invalid.
Creates object from specification. %GLOBAL describes the global keys, usually only a common addr for all media but any of the keys defined in RFC2327 can be used.
@MEDIA is a list of hash references, one hash for each media part. These hashes can contain as keys the one-letter keys specified in RFC2327 and/or special keys for constructing the 'c' and 'm' line:
If the SDP should contain multiple values for the same key in the same media section on can specify the value for the key as a \@list instead of a string (this is often the case for 'a' lines).
Returns string representation for object.
Returns 'application/sdp'
Returns list of all media described in the SDP. If the caller expects an array the result will be a list, otherwise a reference to a list.
Each element of the list is a hash with the following keys:
[ 0,10,5 ]
WARNING! You should never manipulate the values you got from this function, because this might affect the objects internals.
Replaces the exisisting media in the object with new media. Useful for NAT.
NEW_MEDIA is ether an array or a reference to an array. Each element in the list consists of the new [ addr,port ] mapping for the matching media entry.
The number of entries in the list should be the same as the number of media entries in the object ( see get_media ). If this is not the case it will die().
Returns the RTP payload id for NAME (e.g. "telephone-event/8000"). INDEX is the index into the list of media information, matching the list returned from get_media. INDEX can also be 'audio','video'.., which will then lookup at the first matching entry in the media list.
To install Net::SIP, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm Net::SIP
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Net::SIP
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Corn cobs could be the new 'green' fuel at Willmar plant
WILLMAR -- Willmar Municipal Utilities will test a new "recipe'' for producing energy: corn cobs and coal. The utility's power plant will conduct a test burn of cobs and coal later this winter. If the test burn is successful, corn cobs could help...
WILLMAR -- Willmar Municipal Utilities will test a new "recipe'' for producing energy: corn cobs and coal.
The utility's power plant will conduct a test burn of cobs and coal later this winter. If the test burn is successful, corn cobs could help the utility comply with the state's renewable energy mandate and help boost local farm income.
"Burning cobs may be able to help us meet our renewable energy goals and support the local economy at the same time,'' says Bruce Gomm, Willmar Municipal Utilities general manager.
The state is mandating all utilities, by 2025, have at least 25 percent of energy needs met by renewable sources. Willmar hopes generating power from biomass such as corn cobs, as well as its $10 million wind turbine project, will help meet the mandate.
The test burn, slated for February, will determine if cobs burn satisfactorily with coal and if the process is effective and efficient, explains Jon Folkedahl of Willmar, a consultant working with the utility on the corn cob project.
Second, the test will provide data for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in issuing a permit that will allow Willmar to permanently burn cobs and coal.
Meanwhile, Willmar is seeking an interim permit to allow the test burn, according to Folkedahl.
Corn cobs have an energy value of 75 percent to 80 percent of Powder River Basin coal, which Willmar buys and burns at the local power plant, located near downtown.
"That's really good,'' says Folkedahl. "For biofuels, it's right at the top of the list.''
There are several reasons for adding corn cobs to coal, according to the University of Missouri, which is burning cobs to generate electricity at its campus power plant:
- Cobs are abundant in the corn belt.
- Cobs are not used by most farmers.
- Cobs decompose slowly in the soil and offer little value as residue cover.
- Cobs have low sulfur and ash content, and have good heating value.
Folkedahl says cobs are considered a renewable fuel because cobs are recycling carbon dioxide already in the air.
"When people talk about green energy and renewable fuels, that's really the key is that the carbon dioxide released is not fossil, it's recycled,'' he says.
The first step for Willmar is to collect the cobs. Folkedahl said approximately 500 tons of cobs would be needed to provide data to satisfy MPCA.
The collection process, which began Oct. 29 on 650 acres of corn land farmed by Ryan and Lonnie Fosso of Pennock, is about two-thirds complete. The Fosso farm was also the site in mid-October of cob harvesting by Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company for fuel at the plant in Benson.
The Fossos have been good to work with, says Vernon Flamme of North Bend, Ind., who's combining the corn and collecting the cobs for Willmar.
The corn is combined normally, but a special machine pulled by the combine collects the cobs and blows the leaves and stalks out the back. Trucks are hauling and piling the cobs on a runway, just west of County Road 5, at the old city airport.
Flamme invented the cob collector, which he named the Cob Caddy. This year, Flamme sold the patent for the machine to Vermeer Corporation, which renamed it the Cob Harvester.
Flamme supports the use of corn cobs as a biomass fuel for power plants.
"There are a lot of these coal-fired plants in the country and the beauty of the cob is it doesn't take any fertility or anything away from the land,'' says Flamme. "So why not save them and make energy out of them for the country?''
The cobs will be burned at the rate of about 20 percent cobs to 80 percent coal, according to Folkedahl. Once all emission controls are in place, the utility hopes to burn as much as 75,000 tons of coal and 25,000 tons of biofuels, particularly corn cobs, which would require 20,000 to 40,000 acres of corn to be harvested for cobs in the area.
Initial rates peg the cost of cobs between $30 and $60 per ton. The utility is paying the Fossos $40 per ton.
"We hope that we can start out small and as the market for corn cob grows, farmers will invest in the harvest equipment and eventually the utility will be able to reach that biofuels goal,'' Folkedahl says.


text:
Shrinking staffs imperil missions at key agencies
By STEPHEN LOSEY
The 0.5 percent decline in the federal workforce last year — the first in five years — may not seem like much. But at the agencies where the cuts are most pronounced, the impact is big.
The Social Security Administration — which saw its staff shrink 6 percent last year — warned Congress last month it cannot keep up with swelling workloads as baby boomers retire and more Americans file for benefits.
At the IRS, which also saw a 6 percent staffing cut last year, fewer tax enforcement agents translates to $4 billion a year in uncollected revenues, according to the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees. The IRS has also cut customer service staff who help people pay their taxes.
"Everything is taking longer," NTEU President Colleen Kelley said in an interview. "There are fewer examinations being done, fewer employees to help taxpayers get on payment plans, and the IRS is collecting less revenue, which means less money to fund every other agency."
In most cases, agencies are cutting their workforces to help meet budget constraints. At some places, that means freezing hiring and not replacing employees who retire. At others — such as the IRS — buyouts have been offered to trim the ranks.
With the White House and Congress facing increasing pressure to cut the deficit — and steep cuts looming in January as part of the sequestration process — budgets are certain to get even tighter. And some experts fear Congress will continue cutting budgets without scaling back agencies' missions, which will force some agencies to cut staffing to dangerous levels.
"If you keep ratcheting down, at some point something breaks," said John Palguta, vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service. "That is, unless you have a clear plan [to end certain missions or significantly change how agencies operate], and I'm not seeing a lot of clear plans. What's being done is kind of ad hoc — you do what you need to keep things running."
Palguta said the government has seen the tragic results of cutting back on agency staffing and funding before.
"Unfortunately, it keeps going until we run into a [Federal Emergency Management Agency] that can't respond to [Hurricane] Katrina, or the 9/11 Commission says part of the problem was that we didn't have enough people in intelligence agencies to pick up on the 9/11 threat," Palguta said.
SSA cuts hours
SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue told the Senate Finance Committee on May 17 that staffing cuts are already hurting his agency's ability to serve the public. To deal with a nearly 4,500-employee decline in 2011, SSA had been relying on overtime and having employees stay late to interview and help members of the public.
But budget cuts have forced SSA to cut out most overtime. SSA's $11.5 billion fiscal 2012 budget is about $1 billion less than Obama requested, and about $400 million less than the agency had in fiscal 2010. As a result, Astrue said, SSA began closing field offices to the public a half-hour early each day to make sure employees finish up their interviews during their regular work hours.
And Astrue fears he may be forced to cut staffing even further — between 2,500 and 3,000 employees this year and another 2,000 or more in fiscal 2013. That would force SSA to close its offices even earlier next year, he said.
"I recently visited our Springfield, Mass., office, and the waiting room was filled to capacity," Astrue said. "The office has lost 11 employees, 19 percent of its staff, in the last few years. We are doing what we can to assist this office, including implementing a video connection with another office, but few offices have excess capacity to help."
Astrue said SSA has tried to pursue automation whenever possible, but much of SSA's work still requires people. And even though a new telephone system that can more efficiently route callers to SSA employees is being rolled out, Astrue fears a lack of staffing will seriously hurt SSA's ability to answer calls. He expects the percentage of busy signals will double from 3 percent in fiscal 2011 to 6 percent in fiscal 2012, and the average time it takes to answer a call will increase from three minutes to nearly five minutes.
Astrue has been trying to beat down SSA's backlog in the last several years, but said progress has slowed over the last year.
Less taxpayer help from IRS
Kelley said the IRS' ability to serve the public has also been hampered by its nearly 7,000-employee cuts. About 40 percent of those cuts, or nearly 2,800 employees, came from the ranks of customer service workers who answer phone calls from the public or help people face-to-face in taxpayer assistance centers.
And with fewer employees staffing taxpayer assistance centers, Kelley said, lines are growing. As at SSA, the IRS has shortened hours at its assistance centers to deal with the reduced staffing, Kelley said.
"Many locations stop giving numbers [to walk-in taxpayers] at 1:30 or 2, because the line is so long they knew it would take till 5 to service all of them," she said.
Kelley said 107 of the IRS' 398 assistance centers now have two or fewer employees. Some smaller locations don't have even a single employee assigned full-time, she said, so they only open one day a week when an employee from another center can come in. This particularly hurts elderly taxpayers who rely on the IRS' help to file their taxes, she said.
Kelley said the IRS this year told the public it was cutting assistance center hours in some places, and encouraged them to try to get their questions answered over the phone.
But the IRS' call centers have also had trouble. Beth Tucker, the IRS' deputy commissioner of operations support, told the Senate Finance Committee April 26 that IRS employees answered 11 million calls from the public during this year's tax season, down from 13 million a year before. And 68 percent of taxpayers were able to get an IRS employee on the phone this year, down from 75 percent last year.
"This is largely a result of reduced budget resources provided in the FY 2012 budget as enacted, which means fewer assistors available to answer taxpayer phone calls," Tucker said.
Hiring freeze at Justice
The Justice Department's hiring freeze has particularly hit its Offices of the U.S. Attorneys and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Justice has been under a partial hiring freeze since January 2011, and said in an email to Federal Times that the freeze will likely continue into fiscal 2013.
"Throughout this process, the goal has been to retain staffing levels necessary to maintain the core missions of the department without furloughs or reductions-in-force," Justice said. "We recently authorized the hiring of 514 positions for U.S. attorneys to fill critical shortages in district offices throughout the country so as not to have negative effects on our core mission activities. We want to make sure that in tight budget times, we keep a close eye not only on how many people we hire, but where we hire them."


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Welcome to the Lost Girl Blog
I'm Kassandra, currently I work in marketing but secretly I want to be a writer. I am not sure when that happened but at some point I realized I could get just as lost in my own stories as I could in someone else's. This blog is a mishmash of my life which can include anything from excerpts from my writing (when I am feeling brave) to ridiculous rants (all the time) and even the occasional beauty review (cause I am a proud Sephora VIB Rouge member).
For once in my life I do not have a plan and will let this blog evolve into whatever it is meant to be.
For inquiries email: firstname.lastname@example.com


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S&P To Face Fraud Suit Over Mortgage-Backed Securities
The U.S. Justice Department plans to file a civil suit this week accusing the credit rating company Standard and Poor's of fraud. Standard and Poor's is the company that famously downgraded U.S. debt in 2011. This investigation focuses on S and P's actions before the financial crisis. The civil action accuses S and P of fraudulently inflating the ratings of mortgage investments, setting them up for the crash that lead to the great recession. The investigation is the focus of today's Business Bottom Line, and here's NPR's Jim Zarroli.
JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: The suit involves mortgage-backed securities that were packaged and sold in huge numbers by Wall Street firms. Companies like Standard and Poor's were supposed to rate these securities on behalf of investors and tell them whether they were safe to buy.
But the suit said the company knowingly issued ratings that were overly optimistic.
Guy Cecala is publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance newsletter.
GUY CECALA: Basically, all of the ratings services put Triple-A ratings on mortgage-backed securities that subsequently went into default, and turned out to be anything but Triple-A rating.
ZARROLI: The suit says Standard and Poor's portrayed its ratings as independent and objective, but they were anything but. Critics have long maintained that the ratings companies had a, kind of, built in conflict of interest - they got paid by the very investment banks that issued most of the mortgage-backed securities. So companies like Standard and Poor's couldn't afford to be too honest in their ratings, or they'd lose out on what had become a very lucrative business. Whatever the motive, ratings companies kept handling out Triple-A ratings and investors kept snapping up the securities they rated.
Economist Lawrence White, of NYU's Stern School of Business, says this added fuel to the fire that was the housing boom.
LAWRENCE WHITE: My best judgment is there was going to be a boom anyway, but the favorable ratings accentuated the process.
ZARROLI: In the years since then the ratings companies have been investigated by state and federal officials. A Congressional committee released emails, suggesting that analysts at the rating agencies were pressured to soft-pedaled the risks they saw in some securities. In a statement released yesterday, Standard and Poor's acknowledged that, like everyone else, it didn't fully understand what was going on in the housing market in those days; and in hindsight, it may have rated some securities too highly. But is says the idea that it knowingly defrauded investors is entirely without legal or factual merit.
Securities lawyer Jacob Frenkel says investigators don't seem to have found enough evidence to build a criminal case against the companies.
JACOB FRENKEL: If any criminal enforcement authority would be able to meet its burden of proof in a criminal case, we likely would have seen a criminal case. That just does not appear to have existed.
ZARROLI: Instead the Justice Department, together with state officials, filed civil charges against Standard and Poor's, which require a lower burden of proof than criminal charges. And for now, at least, the department is not targeting the other two major ratings companies, Moody's and Fitch.
Again, Guy Cecala.
CECALA: I don't think there's any question that you can find evidence S&P, as well as Moody's and Fitch, mishandled the way they place ratings and looked at the collateral of these mortgage-backed securities. What's sort of a surprise is that it's taken the government and/or the states this long to take any action.
ZARROLI: The lawsuit was filed after repeated attempts by U.S. officials to reach a settlement with Standard and Poor's. The New York times reported yesterday that the Justice Department demanded a settlement of at least a billion dollars, which would have wiped out all the annual profits of Standard and Poor's parent company McGraw Hill.
The company balked at that big a settlement, and U.S. officials decided to press ahead with the suit.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
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Aug. 4, 2011— -- The mother of Marla Cooper, the woman claiming to be the niece of D.B. Cooper, also believes that her brother-in-law is the infamous skyjacker, and has provided further details about the man who could be the daring culprit in the decades-old case.
Marla Cooper recently came forward to the FBI with evidence that she believes proves that her uncle Lynn Doyle Cooper is the famed D.B. Cooper, the man hijacked and threatened to blow up a commercial plane flying to Seattle in 1971, then parachuted to the ground with $200,000 in hand.
Her mother, Grace Hailey, told ABC News that she doesn't remember much about that Thanksgiving in 1971 where her brother-in-law returned to the house in Sisters, Oregon, but she believes he could be the hijacker. Hailey's statements are one reason why the FBI thinks the tip from Marla Cooper is credible.
"I've always had a gut feeling it was L.D.," Hailey told ABC News. "I think it was more what I didn't know is what made me suspicious than what I did know, because whenever the topic came up it immediately got cut off again."
Hailey says that L.D. grew up in Sisters and was familiar with the area where the hijacker jumped -- a fact that is consistent with the FBI's theory that D.B. Cooper knew the Pacific Northwest. He was also a war veteran, which matches the theory that the hijacker had a military background.
L.D. Cooper was a logger and an outdoorsman -- tough enough, Hailey believes, to leap out of plane into the wilderness. His soundness of mind, her daughter feels, is a different story.
"I think a man who was willing to jump out of airplane, in the middle of an ice storm over a forest, doesn't have his wits about him," Cooper told ABC News.
Marla Cooper has told ABC News that she has provided the FBI with a guitar strap and a Christmas photo of a man pictured with the same strap who she says is her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper.
She is working on a book about her belief that her uncle is the hijacker, but that is not her main motivation for coming forward.
"I contacted the FBI as soon as I was sure that what I was remembering were real memories," she said. "There's a crime that's taken place that hasn't been solved and I'm the only one, as far as I know who knows what happened."
Marla Cooper told ABC News that L.D. Cooper was a Korean War veteran, but he was not a paratrooper. She thinks he lived in the northwest, had children and died in 1999. She said he remained isolated from his family.
Steve Dean, the assistant special agent in charge of the criminal division of the Seattle FBI office, confirmed Wednesday to the Seattle Times that Marla Cooper had contacted the bureau and turned over items to assist in the investigation.
She says that the family saw L.D. the following Christmas in 1972, after his hospital stay -- which was when the picture she provided to the FBI and to ABC News was taken. After this her uncle quickly faded from their lives.
One key reason she is convinced that her uncle was D.B. Cooper is his sudden disappearance from the family after that Thanksgiving.
"I definitely think it was strange that he kind of disappeared like that," she said, adding that she does not think he was a bad man. "I don't think he was evil, and I think he regretted it."
He worked with leather and made the guitar strap that she has turned over to the FBI.
The FBI is now searching the guitar strap they received for fingerprints at their forensic lab in Quantico, Va., which will be checked against partial fingerprints obtained from the hijacking. Meanwhile they are hunting for evidence to prove L.D. Cooper was on that plane in 1971.
"It's a very unique case...Agents have been actively assigned to it and it's passed on from generation to generation...of agents that have worked leads as they have developed," said Brad Garrett, an ABC News consultant and former FBI profiler.
Garrett said the FBI is likely examining the life of Marla Cooper's uncle for more clues that he could be the infamous D.B. Cooper.
"Does this guy's background actually fit someone that could have pulled this off because this guy did have a proficiency in a 727 plane, how low it would fly, how slow it would fly and that you could jump out the back of it," Garrett said.
D.B. Cooper, Infamous Skyjacker
The real identity of D.B. Cooper has been a mystery since November 24, 1971, when a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient Airlines plane bound for Seattle from Portland. He ordered the plane to land and demanded a $200,000 ransom and a parachute.
After he received the money in $20 bills and the parachute, he ordered the plane to take off for Mexico. Cooper then did the unthinkable when he lowered the back stairs and jumped out of a speeding 727, thousands of feet over the Pacific Northwest during a raging storm.
He disappeared, despite a massive manhunt that has become the stuff of legend and even a 1981 movie. Throughout the years many leads in the case have became dead ends, and it remains the only unsolved hijacking in U.S. history.
The case was reignited when a male suspect's name was given to the FBI by a law enforcement agent, as was a guitar strap. Sources familiar with the case confirm that it was Marla Cooper who prompted the latest flurry of investigation.
So far no fingerprints have been found on the guitar strap, and the F.B.I. will not officially comment on the case.
Family Secrets Could Crack Mystery
Marla Cooper says that as an 8-year-old she recalled her two uncles planning something suspicious at her grandmother's house in Sisters, Oregon -- not far from where D.B. Cooper jumped from a plane with the cash one day later.
"My two uncles, who I only saw at holiday time, were planning something very mischievous. I was watching them using some very expensive walkie-talkies that they had purchased," she said. "They left to supposedly go turkey hunting, and Thanksgiving morning I was waiting for them to return."
A day later, Northwest Orient flight 305 was hijacked, and her uncle L.D. Cooper came home claiming to have been in a car accident.
"My uncle L.D. was wearing a white t-shirt and he was bloody and bruised and a mess, and I was horrified. I began to cry. My other uncle, who was with L.D., said Marla just shut up and go get your dad," she said.
Marla Cooper is now convinced there was not a car accident, but that her uncle was injured crashing to earth in a parachute. She says that she also remembers a discussion about the money that day.
"I heard my uncle say we did it, our money problems are over, we hijacked an airplane," she said.
It later became clear, however, that there was no money. It is believed that the hijacker lost much of the cash as he came crashing down.
Marla Cooper says that her two uncles wanted to return to search for the cash, but her father refused. She believes this was because the FBI search was just beginning to take shape.
After that Thanksgiving Day she never saw her uncle again. She was told he died in 1999.
In 1980, the case was put in the spotlight once again, after a young boy found $5,800 in $20 bills from the ransom money decomposing along the banks of the Columbia River.
According to Marla Cooper, two conversations with her parents initially made her suspicious. The first was in 1995 with her father just before he died.
"My father made a comment about his long lost brother, uncle L.D. And said he thought he was still alive but hiding from the FBI, and I questioned why he would be hiding … he said don't you remember he hijacked that airplane?" she said.
At the time she was unable to embrace such an incredible story. But in 2009 it came up again while speaking with her mother.
"A couple years ago my mother made a comment, another comment, a similar comment that she had always suspected that my uncle L.D. was the real D.B. Cooper," she said.
She said that her uncle was obsessed with the Canadian comic book hero Dan Cooper, and even had one of the comic books thumb-tacked to the wall. She added that she thinks her uncle didn't expect to survive the hijacking.
The FBI also obtained a partial DNA sample from the black JCPenney clip-on tie Cooper left on the plane before jumping out. The FBI extracted the sample in 2001.
FBI spokesman Fred Gutt told the Seattle Times Monday that little contradictory information has emerged that would rule out the possible suspect. The FBI has determined a guitar strap that belonged to the man is not conducive to lifting fingerprints. But the case agent is trying to obtain other items with better surfaces to lift fingerprints, Gutt said.Gutt said Wednesday the case isn't a high priority, but the information can't be ignored.


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Nigella Lawson and Husband Divorcing After Photo Scandal
Charles Saatchi is seeking a divorce from his wife, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, after 10 years of marriage, Britain's Daily Mail reports. The move comes weeks after pictures were published that allegedly showed Saatchi choking Lawson during an argument at a restaurant.
Saatchi claims the divorce was prompted by Lawson's unwillingness to defend him in the wake of the scandal. "I am sorry to announce that Nigella Lawson and I are getting divorced," he told the Mail. "I feel that I have clearly been a disappointment to Nigella during the last year or so, and I am disappointed that she was advised to make no public comment to explain that I abhor violence of any kind against women, and have never abused her physically in any way."
Charles Saatchi: Argument with Nigella Lawson was a "playful tiff"
In a statement to the Mail, Saatchi admits that his hands were around his wife's neck, but insists the gesture was not a violent one. "We are instinctively tactile people," he told the Mail. "Difficult as it may be to believe, for those who have seen the pictures, there was no pressure applied to her."
Further, Saatchi claims that Lawson was also abusive during their marriage. "This is heartbreaking for both of us as our love was very deep, but in the last year we have become estranged and drifted apart," he tells the Mail. "The row photographed at Scott's restaurant could equally have been Nigella grasping my neck to hold my attention - as indeed she has done in the past."
According to the Mail, Lawson, 53, and Saatchi, 70, have not spoken since the restaurant incident, for which Saatchi received a police caution. The paper also claims Lawson will learn of the divorce filing through reading it in the Mail.
Lawson has one daughter, Cosima, and one son, Bruno, from her first marriage to the late journalist John Diamond.
View original Nigella Lawson and Husband Divorcing After Photo Scandal at TVGuide.com
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New Public Map Tiles and Antiquity À-la-carte 3.0 Beta
February 3, 2014 in News, Site Information, Updates
The AWMC is proud to announce the release of a series of geographically accurate, publicly accessible map tiles (http://awmc.unc.edu/wordpress/tiles/ ), suitable for use in nearly any web mapping application or GIS software suite. These tiles are hosted on Mapbox servers courtesy of ISAW, and are created by Ryan Horne from AWMC data produced by Richard Talbert, Jeffrey Becker, Ryan Horne, Ross Twele, Audrey Jo, Ray Belanger, Steve Burges, Luke Hagemann, Ashley Lee, and others.
Offering the first (and at the time of this writing, only) geographically accurate base map of the ancient world, the AWMC tiles conform to the broad periodization presented in the Barrington Atlas, with different selectable water levels for the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, and Late Antique Periods. In addition, we also model inland water, rivers, and other geographical features as they appeared in antiquity. The base tiles are culturally agnostic, allowing them to be used to represent the physical environment of nearly any ancient society in the Mediterranean world. In addition to the base map and geographical tiles we also present the Roman road network, generally following the Barrington Atlas with additional work by the AWMC. Like all of our other electronic offerings, our new tiles are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) license and remain absolutely free for personal, academic, and non-commercial use.
For guidelines on how to use the tiles in an application, please visit http://awmc.unc.edu/wordpress/tiles/map-tile-information. These tiles are a "living" data set, and will be constantly refined to reflect the ongoing work of the AWMC. We welcome feedback on any aspect of this work and we encourage the community to suggest enhancements, fixes, or any other comments on our dedicated site.
You can see the tiles in action in our API (see, for example, the Urban Area of Rome), the new Beta Version of Antiquity à la Carte 3.0, and at the Pleiades Project.
Along with our tiles, The Ancient World Mapping Center is also releasing a beta version of Antiquity à la Carte 3.0 (http://awmc.unc.edu/awmc/applications/carte-transitional/). The application, engineered by Ryan Horne, builds upon the two previous iterations of À-la-carte, which appeared in Spring 2012 and October of the same year. Continuing to draw upon the work of the Ancient World Mapping Center and the Pleiades Project, the updated version will incorporate the new AWMC Mapping tiles, along with the expanded features first introduced in v. 2.0. Until the beta version is stable with all of the previous functionality enabled, À-la-carte version 2.0 will remain operational at http://awmc.unc.edu/awmc/applications/alacarte/ . In the meantime, we welcome any feedback on the beta version as we endeavor to create an application that is useful to the ancient world community. We are particularly excited that our new tiles allow us to feature modern data alongside our ancient offerings, which will open many new possibilities and applications for À-la-carte.


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How to get a free mammogram
The statistics are sobering. A woman is diagnosed with breast cancer every two minutes in the U.S. A woman dies of breast cancer every 13 minutes. Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women ages 40 to 59.
According to the American Cancer Society, an estimated 226,870 women and 2,190 men in America will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer this year. A mammogram, which is an X-ray of the breast, is the best tool to find breast cancer early, according to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization.
Barriers to screening
An annual mammogram can detect cancers before tumors can be felt by hand and can reduce death rates for women over age 40, says Shawn Farley, a spokesperson for the American College of Radiology. As vital as testing is, research shows that cost is a significant barrier. Not everyone is adequately covered by a health insurance plan.
"The need to level the playing field regarding this potentially lifesaving testing is critical. No one wants to lose a loved one simply because they cannot afford a mammogram," says Dr. Sandy Goldberg, founder of A Silver Lining Foundation, which partners with community, advocacy and health care organizations to help make cancer screenings available to those who can't afford them.
The National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was created to improve access to breast cancer screening among the underserved. Since 1990, more than 10 million screening exams have been done for 4 million women, resulting in the detection of more than 50,000 cases of breast cancer and likely saving many lives. However, with recent CDC funding cuts, only one in five eligible women has access to the test, says Mona Shah, associate director of federal relations at the American Cancer Society Action Network.
"Many more lives could be saved with adequate funding for the program," she adds.
According to Goldberg, "the pool of free programs is becoming much smaller, more programs are needed."
Mammograms can show changes in the breast up to two years before a patient or doctor can feel them. They also can prevent the need for extensive treatment for advanced cancers and improve chances of saving the breast. Early detection can mean catching cancer when it is most treatable. Mammography has helped reduce breast cancer mortality in the U.S. by nearly one-third since 1990, according to the American College of Radiology.
Find free or low-cost mammograms
Despite limited access to low-cost medical insurance, mammograms should not be pushed to the bottom of women's must-do lists. The cost of mammograms varies around the country, but can range from $100 to more than $150, not including the fee for the radiologist, says Goldberg.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act makes breast cancer screening and coverage for treatment available and accessible by requiring health plans to cover preventive services and eliminate insurance copays. But what if you're one of the millions of people without health insurance? You still can find help.
Here's where to turn:
- "Start with community health organizations in your area," says Dr. Carol Lee, chair of the American College of Radiology Breast Imaging Communications Committee. Ask about special programs. Also, hospital social workers may be able to provide guidance.
- Inquire at nonprofit hospitals. For example, SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., offers free mammograms for women age 40 and older who don't have insurance.
- Go online to find the National Cancer Information Center (NCIC), or call 1-800-422-6237.
- The National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP) provides access to critical breast and cervical cancer screenings for the underserved in the U.S.
- Go to cancer.org, the site of the American Cancer Society, or call 1-800-227-2345.
- The American Breast Cancer Foundation's Key to Life Program provides financial assistance to uninsured and underinsured women and men of all ages for breast cancer screening. The toll-free hotline is 877-539-2543.
- Search online for a local Susan G. Komen for the Cure affiliate.
How often should women have mammograms? "Starting at age 40, or if a close relative has been diagnosed, then 10 years earlier than [the relative's] diagnosis," says Goldberg. Wherever you go for a mammogram, look for a Food and Drug Administration certificate and accreditation by the American College of Radiology.
According to Andrew Becker, a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society, mammograms will detect about 80 percent to 90 percent of breast cancers in women without symptoms. Although there is some disagreement among doctors about how many lives are saved, "nearly all experts agree that mammography saves lives."
The original article can be found at Insure.com:How to get a free mammogram


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From a trebling of web traffic within sixty seconds of Channel 4 mentioning the Celebrity Big Brother URL on-air, to 59 million hits in a day to a restaurant web site advertised during the US Super Bowl, advertisers, broadcasters and technologists are falling over themselves to exploit a massive — and growing — opportunity.
In my latest piece for GigaOM Pro, published today, I take a look at some of the ways in which the elastic nature of Cloud Computing is being exploited in order to support the increasingly rich interplay between on-screen and online content.
As more of us watch television whilst also able to get online with a laptop, tablet or smartphone, the opportunities for further interaction – and the prospect of extreme spikes in traffic within seconds of an on-screen prompt – grow by the day. There are some interesting examples of early success here, but it remains an opportunity that is still a very long way from being fully understood or exploited.
Thanks to Tom Lounibos at SOASTA, Andy Parker at Channel 4, and everyone else who took the time to speak with me as I prepared the piece.
Image '138/365: It's not Rocket Science FUTAB' by Christopher Thomas, shared on Flickr with a Creative Commons license.
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Just like the Emmy's, Golden Globes and Music awards there are awards for bloggers who but effort, thought and heart into their blog(s). This year is the second year that My Sardinian Life has been nominated for the 2013 Canadian Blog Awards.
My Sardinian Life was nominated for Best Travel and Expat Blog. It would be fantastic to bring home the gold this season, and only you can help me do that.
To vote, just click the following link 2013 Canadian Blog Awards then scroll down the to the bottom of the page. Under Best Travel and Expat Blog click on My Sardinian Life.
Voting closes on February 22nd, 2014 so hurry before it's too late.
A special thanks to Jonathan Kleiman who took copious amounts of time to organize this award for Canadian bloggers across the globe. Jonathan is a Toronto Business Lawyer and a Small Claims Lawyer and his side gig is organizing fantastic blogging awards. So, thank you Jonathan. I appreciate all the hard work you've done in the last year to make this award a reality.
So, what are you waiting for? Go on and vote. I am eternally grateful.


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One of the first questions I asked HTC when I saw the HD2 was "will it come with Android?" Don't get me wrong, I'm a WinMo user from way back, but with that 4.3-inch screen, it's perfect for Google's OS.
If these leaked photos of the HTC Supersonic are anything to go by, then it seems HTC has enough sense to do a similarly-specced phone, but with Android. Like the HD2, the screen is 4.3-inches, and internally there's meant to be a 1GHz Snapdragon chip, and a 5.0-megapixel camera. The extremely blurry photos turned up on the Android Mobile OS site, with the sneaky-snapper claiming it'll be carried by Sprint and will be a WiMAX device, but curiously it'll only be running Android 2.1, though HTC's brilliant Sense skin will be prominent on it.
We don't like to put too much faith in all these grainy leaked pics, but if it's true, the Supersonic will be my next phone for sure. [Android Mobile OS via Android Community Slashgear]


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Story highlights
NEW: Islamist militants regard such shrines as idolatrous and thus prohibited
NEW: The landmark sites are at the heart of Timbuktu's culture and are featured in postcards
The attacks are the latest targeting historic landmarks in northern Mali
In May, elderly men kept watch over other sites after militants burned another tomb
The United States is condemning the destruction of two more tombs in northern Mali as international outrage grows over Islamist militants' attacks on historic and religious landmarks in the nation.
Islamists ordered residents to leave the area and started razing the tombs in Timbuktu this week, witnesses said.
"They were shooting in the air to warn people of going near and entering the area," local resident Allimam Oumar said of the Tuesday attacks. "The militants think the shrines are idolatrous."
The tombs – a common feature on Timbuktu postcards – are the latest in attacks on landmarks listed as U.N. World Heritage sites.
Opinion: Timbuktu tomb attack is an attack on our humanity
Islamic militants have gone on a rampage for months, destroying sacred tombs in the city and vowing to target more. In May, elderly men kept watch over the main library after Islamists burned a different tomb in another attack in Timbuktu.
"We are outraged by the continued destruction of these World Heritage sites and the ongoing intimidation of local populations," said Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department . "We … call for all parties to protect this invaluable cultural heritage for future generations. This is an assault not just on Mali but on the heritage of all Africans."
Chaos have rocked Mali since a military ruler overthrew the democratically-elected president in March, shaking one of West Africa's most stable democracies.
The coup leader stepped down in May and transferred power to a civilian transitional government, but uncertainty looms.
Ethnic Tuareg rebels and other Islamist militants have taken advantage of the uncertainty to seize control of the northern portion of the country, including Timbuktu.
Ansar Dine, an al Qaeda-linked group claiming control of the city, is blamed for the attacks on historical landmarks.
The picturesque city of Timbuktu is considered an important destination for Islamic scholars, and features ancient and prominent burial sites.
Islamist militants regard such shrines as idolatrous and thus prohibited in their religion. They especially target Sufi shrines, which they believe are sacrilegious. Sufism is a mystical dimension of Islam considered offbeat and frowned upon by Islamic hardliners. The Sufis, who brought Islam to much of sub-Saharan Africa, dance, pray and preach using drama and humor.
In a similar attack in 2001, the Taliban destroyed ancient Buddhist relics in Afghanistan.
Mali separatists ready to act over destruction of tombs
Experts say the mud and wooden structures dating to the 15th century are at the heart of Timbuktu's culture.
"Timbuktu is no ordinary town. The fabled "City of 333 Saints" is an ancient desert crossroads and a historic seat of Islamic learning and faith," said Irina Bokova, who heads the U.N. cultural body, UNESCO.
Attacks on such landmarks translates to the loss of history and the values associated with such sites, according to Bokova.
"It is an attack against the physical evidence that peace and dialogue is possible. This is condemned uniformly by religious leaders across the world," she said.
Last week, the United Nations called for sanctions against the Islamist fighters and warned it is considering a proposal by West Africa states to deploy troops in the troubled country.
It also urged U.N. member states to submit names of those with ties to al Qaeda in northern Mali.
West African leaders proposed plans to deploy troops from member states to Mali, but the Security Council said it needs more details before it can make a decision on the request.
The transitional government has said it is working toward restoring stability in the north.
CNN's Steve Almasy contributed to this report


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In part one of our series on particle smashers, we described how accelerators either bring together two light particles (like protons) to study new particles, or two heavy nuclei (like gold) to study the interactions of their components. In both cases, the action takes place in a truly infinitesimal space. If you think about how we normally image something—by bouncing photons off it and seeing how they're changed—it's clearly not possible to actually image one of these collisions using this approach, even if we knew precisely where or when a collision would take place.
Yet, somehow, we manage to create the sort of iconic images of collisions like the ones shown above. The detectors in colliders like the Large Hadron Collider and Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider work by looking at some of the items that come rocketing out of the collisions, producing the sort of traces shown here. Given that data, it's possible for physicists to work their way backwards in order to figure out what went on in the collision itself.
Inside a detector
Some of the easiest collision products to detect are photons. As any digital camera would show, we've gotten quite adept at detecting photons electronically. Photons are also relatively easy to deal with because they've got no mass, and all of them move at the same speed. The big uncertainties about a photon are its energy, which is fairly easy to detect, and the direction of travel.
|All about particle smashers
|Part I: Everything you ever wanted to know about particle smashers (but were afraid to ask)
|Part II: How huge particle detectors actually detect tiny particles
|Part III: The software brains behind the particle colliders
After that, things get a bit trickier. Most of the big detectors at Brookhaven's RHIC and ATLAS and CMS at the LHC have muon trackers. Muons are negatively charged, and a bit like a heavy version of the electron. They're also relatively stable, having a typical life span in the microsecond range. The weight and charge make them relatively easy to detect, since they will easily bump electrons off the atoms of the detector hardware, starting a charge cascade.
A similar thing is true for electrons and some of the other particles; pretty much anything that interacts with regular matter comes out of these collisions will have enough energy to trigger scintillation (flashes of light triggered by physical collisions) or electron cascades as the particles make their way through the detector, with the strength of the effects being proportional to the energy of the particle.
Many detectors also incorporate hardware that creates a powerful magnetic field, typically either a solenoid, a toroid, or, in the case of ATLAS, both. Those fields will cause charged particles to take a curved path through the equipment. That not only lets us know that they're charged, but the curvature will be proportional to the mass and energy. Putting everything together can provide a reasonably complete catalog of what comes out of an interaction.
For those of you who'd like to follow the LHC at home, Symmetry Breaking has put together some short guides on how to read ATLAS and CMS displays.
Reconstructing an event
But it's not enough to simply know a given particle was present; you also have to know how it got there. For example, there are no muons in the particles (protons and gold nuclei) that take part in the collisions here. But many of the particles that are produced during the collisions have decay pathways that produce muons. So, by tracking the muons, it's possible to identify where and when one of these particles has decayed.
This is where computing power can play a significant role. Given an indication of a particle's path through the detector hardware (or a photon's direction), it's possible to work back to where it originated, either in the collision itself, or as part of the decay of one of the particles that rocketed off from the collision. So, for example, ATLAS' Howard Gordon said that a Higgs boson has a potential decay pathway involving the production of two photons of characteristic energy. Tracing these photons to a point outside the immediate collision could be interpreted as a sign of a Higgs particle that travelled a bit before decaying.
If everything goes as expected, the software should produce a whole catalog of the full collection of photons and particles, as well as their masses, energies, and points of origin. That, in turn, can identify when and where a single particle decayed into multiple progeny.
The challenges involved in doing so is what allows a degree of specialization between the detectors. As Gordon described it, ATLAS has higher-resolution photon detectors and is able to do better vertex-tracing (figuring out the sites of secondary decays). CMS is better at figuring out what energy a given particle carries. In the same way, the STAR detector at Brookhaven is used to produce a full catalog of the massive collection of particles that spray out of the quark-gluon soup, while PHENIX attempts to identify those particles that make it out of the fireball without interacting with something else (Brant Johnson of the PHENIX team compared his instrument to the Hubble in its ability to peer deep into the collision).
Obviously, some of the things we're interested in seeing are going to be really tough to detect directly. There's a chance that the LHC is going to produce dark matter, which is infamous for its disinterest in interacting with regular matter except via gravity—and it's never going to produce enough of it for us to detect it that way. What we can do, however, is look for what's termed "missing transverse energy." Because of the conservation of momentum, a particle barreling out of the collision in one direction has to be balanced by an equivalent energy heading off in the opposite direction. A consistent pattern of events like this can provide evidence for the existence of particles that don't interact with the detectors.
Hopefully, this gives you some idea of how physicists use building-sized detectors to create a record of the particles and energy that flow out of the collisions that take place in these accelerators. In tomorrow's final installment, we'll take a brief look at what's involved with sorting through all the records of collisions to find the ones we're actually interested in.
And, if you're still unsure of what to make of the detectors, ATLAS' Howard Gordon highly recommends having a listen to the LHC Rap.


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This is outdated information. The DDC project has moved to http://discus-lang.org
Consider the following function:
makeGetSet :: forall a. a -> (() -> a, a -> ())
makeGetSet x
= do box = Just x
get () = case box of { Just z -> z; }
set z = box#x #= z
(get, set)
This function allocates a box which can store a value, and returns a tuple of functions to get and set that value.
As the function is polymorphic, we can create boxes of whatever type we would like:
main ()
= do getSet :: (() -> Int, Int -> ())
getSet = makeGetSet 5
out $ fst getSet () -- prints '5'
snd getSet 23 -- update the box
out $ fst getSet () -- prints '23'
The trouble comes when we create a box containing a value of polymorphic type. Without closure typing we could define:
getSet2 :: forall a. (() -> [a], [a] -> ())
getSet2 = makeGetSet []
When a list is empty, we can treat it as being of any type
(forall a. [a]), but suppose we update the box containing it at two different types...
snd getSet2 [23]
snd getSet2 ["trouble"]
out $ fst getSet2 ()
The type of
getSet2 has
forall a. at the front, so there is nothing to stop us from calling the set function at both
[Int] and
[String], but what should the type be when use the get function in the last line?
Dangerous type variables
Ultimately, the problem illustrated above arose because there wasn't a mechanism to track the sharing of data between successive calls to
getSet2. When
makeGetSet was evaluated it created a shared mutable object (the
box) and then returned functions that had this object free in their closure.
In Disciple,
makeGetSet has the full type:
:: forall a %r0 %r1
. a -> Tuple2 %r1 (() -(!e0 $c0)> a) (a -(!e1 $c1)> ())
:- !e0 = !Read %r0
, !e1 = !{!Read %r0; !Write %r0}
, $c0 = ${box : %r0; box : %r0 $> a}
, $c1 = ${box : %r0; box : %r0 $> a}
, Base.Mutable %r0
In this type, we see the new closure term
(box : %r0 $> a). This term says that the closure contains an object named
box which is in a region
%r0, and the type of the object includes a variable
'a'. When
%r0 is
Mutable we say that
a is dangerous, and dangerous variables are never generalised when they are free in the (outer most) closure of a function.


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Cast brass component. This casting will arrive with an oxidized copper antique finish as shown.
Locking jump rings allow you to quickly create sturdy and durable connections without solder. Simple twist open and closed like an ordinary jump ring, but after closing, snap the lock in place and you have a super secure connection. So many uses!


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Mayan Family Mexican Restaurant
When it comes to real, authentic Mexican brunch, lunch, dinner, and cocktails, look no further than Mayan Mexican Restaurants' selection of regional recipes from south of the border.
Mayan Mexican Restaurant has been serving the the highest quality Mexican food since 1996. With each bite, our patrons are able to taste the authentic Mexican cuisine. Our chefs and bartenders create unique Mexican flavors with every dish, cocktail and dessert that we make from scratch. Our mission has been simple: To provide our guests with a fun dining experience and delicious food straight from our family's recipe. Stop by and visit us today!
Business Name:
Mayan Family Mexican Restaurant
2120 Marvin Rd NELacey Washington 98516United States
(360) 456-8222
About Lacey
Lacey is a city in Thurston County, Washington, United States. It is a suburb of Olympia with a population of 53,526 at the 2020 census. Lacey is located along Interstate 5 between Olympia and the Nisqually River, which marks the border with Pierce County and Joint Base Lewis–McChord. == History == Lacey was originally called Woodland after settlers Isaac and Catherine Wood, who claimed land there in 1853. By 1891, the town of Woodland had a large enough population to apply for a post office.
Neighborhoods in Lacey, Washington
Adelaide, Beachcrest, Burbank, Cain Road, Carlyon North, Castlewood, Central Tacoma, Chautauqua, Clarkdale, Clinton Park, Downtown, East Bay Drive, Eastside, Essex, Five Corners
Things to do in Lacey, Washington
Our Newest Profiles


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- carbanion carbonium ion ionization hydrogen ion heavy ion
ion, any atom or group of atoms that bears one or more positive or negative electrical charges. Positively charged ions are called cations; negatively charged ions, anions. Ions are formed by the addition of electrons to, or the removal of electrons from, neutral atoms or molecules or other ions; by combination of ions with other particles; or by rupture of a covalent bond between two atoms in such a way that both of the electrons of the bond are left in association with one of the formerly bonded atoms. Examples of these processes include the reaction of a sodium atom with a chlorine atom to form a sodium cation and a chloride anion; the addition of a hydrogen cation to an ammonia molecule to form an ammonium cation; and the dissociation of a water molecule to form a hydrogen cation and a hydroxide anion.
Many crystalline substances are composed of ions held in regular geometric patterns by the attraction of the oppositely charged particles for each other. Ions migrate under the influence of an electrical field and are the conductors of electric current in electrolytic cells.


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Prince William and Kate Middleton pose for photographs in the State Apartments of St James Palace on November 16, 2010 in London, England. After much speculation, Clarence House today announced the engagement of Prince William to Kate Middleton. The couple will get married in either the Spring or Summer of next year and continue to live in North Wales while Prince William works as an air sea rescue pilot for the RAF. The couple became engaged during a recent holiday in Kenya having been together for eight years. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
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Oy oy oy!
OK. Here goes with a now-serious commitment to blog every day, Will it work? As they (I?) say, youneverknow …
SEATTLE — So I got into a spirited conversation with Mariners lefty Ryan Rowland-Smith the other day, and, as often happens with me, usually with my wife but occasionally with baseball players, I ended up feeling like an idiot and later apologizing.
Ryan's Australian, not to mention a great guy, and I had been doing some couch-covering of the World Baseball Classic in March and noticed that the coach of the WBC's Australian team, Jon Deeble, had spouted off some very strong opinions during the course of the press conferences that had caused several reactions: 1. Laughter; 2. Something along the lines of "Who does this guy think he is? and 3. A mixture of 1 and 2.
Ryan didn't pitch in the Classic because he dedicated himself to staying in Arizona for Spring Training and preparing for a spot in the Mariners rotation. But he was on the Aussies' Classic team in 2006 and their Olympic Team that won a silver medal in Athens in 2004. He loves Jon Deeble and credits him for helping his baseball career in enormous ways.
So when I asked Ryan if he thought Deeble was out of line with some of his comments … well, let me reveal those comments before I proceed.
Background info: The Aussies were up against what appeared, on paper, to be a very good Mexico team, with a roster packed with current and former Major League stars including Adrian Gonzalez, Jorge Cantu, Oliver Perez, Erubiel Durazo, Scott Hairston, Alfredo Amezaga, Jerry Hairston Jr., Rod Barajas, Joakim Soria, Karim Garcia, Augie Ojeda, Miguel Ojeda, Dennys Reyes, Rodrigo Lopez, Ricardo Rincon, Elmer Dessens and Jorge Campillo.
In other words, going up against this team in the first round, in Mexico City, of all places, was a tough assignment for the Aussies and one in which not many "experts" were giving them a chance.
So naturally the Aussies pounded Perez and the Mexicans, 17-7, mercy-ruling them after eight innings and putting up 22 hits. After the game, Deeble had his first say to the assembled media:
Q. Is this the biggest game in Australia baseball history?
JON DEEBLE: Is it? No.
Q. Which would be the biggest?
JON DEEBLE: No, this is not the biggest game. We won a silver medal in Athens, and we beat the Japanese Olympic team twice in Athens. It's another game. It's another game today.
Q. A big possibility is that you have to face Mexico again to try to reach the next round. I know everything went OK today, but what did you learn to face Mexico again?
JON DEEBLE: I'll answer your question in two parts. There's a possibility we'll play Mexico. You guys say that all the time. There's always been a script written that we're going to play South Africa tomorrow, so let's not get the horse in front of the cart, OK?
But we respect Mexico. They've got a great baseball team, there's no doubt about it. We respect them, and tonight we got our heads in front. But we do respect their ballclub. They've got a good ballclub, there's no doubt about that. We've just got to play the same as we played tonight if we face them again, if we face Cuba, who knows. The fact that you guys keep writing scripts of where we're going to play astounds me.
My (stupid) point to Ryan based on these comments was that it was a bit silly of Deeble to treat the Aussies as a team that was not a huge underdog in this game when looking at the rosters.
I mean, what was the media supposed to think going into a game like this, in Mexico City, when the Australian contingent of Major League talent included not a single big-league star and a handful of guys with limited experience in The Show and a bit more experience in the Minor Leagues?
But Ryan's (smart) point was something along the lines of this: "What's he supposed to say, then? 'Yeah, you're right, we're not as good as they are?' Who in their right mind would say that? Plus we had already proven what we could do in international baseball and you don't realize how disrespectful and annoying it is after a while to have the media constantly telling you that you're supposed to believe you're not as good as other teams."
Only after I re-read what Deeble said did I realize how wrong I was to even insinuate that the Aussie coach was doing anything other that motivating his team and answering to what had to have become the unbelievable chafe of a news media bent on patronizing the Australian team like a bunch of Cinderellas.
Then again, Deeble wasn't done being defiant. And in my conversation with Ryan, neither was I … in being dumb.
That's because I also mentioned Deeble's comments after Australia's next game, a tough 5-4 loss to (you guessed it) heavily favored Cuba. Here they are:
Q. It was a tough loss tonight. What do you think you've proved in this tournament already?
JON DEEBLE: We've proven that we can match baseball with anybody in the world, and we knew that before coming in tonight. You know, this is a great ballclub. We've got — our country has got great baseball players. We don't get the respect from everybody. It's about time that changed, and it starts with you people.
Q. I think it was in the top of the second inning that Cuba batted in an order that was certainly not consistent with what we had as a pre-game lineup, and you seemed to be confused by it. Can you explain from your perspective what happened with that batting change?
JON DEEBLE: I'll tell you honestly, I'm so disappointed in the Cubans and the disrespect that they showed us by giving us a lineup and bringing out another one. I think it's disgusting, I think it's disgraceful, and I think something should be done about it because they continue to do it, they continue to get away with it, and I think it's totally disrespectful. Something needs to be done because they continue to do it, and nobody ever does anything about it. It just blows my mind. From the manager's point of view, totally disrespectful.
Q. A player from Mexico, he said in the last game, it only coincidence your victory. How do you say about that? He said that you won only by chance, by accident.
JON DEEBLE: We'll have another accident tomorrow (laughter). You don't get 22 hits by accident.
As for the Cuba thing, Ryan assured me that they pull stunts like this all the time in international baseball, which is ludicrous but now believable. I can't imagine why that would be allowed, but, hey, I'm just a writer. And after reading Deeble's comments and hearing from Ryan how great of a baseball guy he is, I take back anything I might have said or thought about what I originally believed to be "popping off" during the WBC press conferences.
Unfortunately, the feel-good story ended after that big win over Mexico After the Cuba loss, Mexico beat Australia, 16-1, in the next game to knock the Aussies out of the tournament. But obviously the team from Down Under proved a lot more than the fact that they belong on the field with the best clubs in international ball. Their manager proved he won't back down from anyone and will support his players 100 percent all the time.
And for Ryan, who played for Deeble and might play for him again in a similar circumstance, it's easy to see how national pride can turn into Major League passion. All you have to do is watch one heated World Baseball Classic game to figure that out.
After catching up on all of this, I went back to Ryan and apologized for misconstruing Deeble's comments and coming to the wrong conclusions about them. He laughed and shrugged it off. "No need to apologize, mate."
I would imagine our conversations will return to less confrontational topics such as my honeymoon in his amazing country Australia, where I spent three luxurious days on the perfect Hayman Island, saw a koala in the wild near the Great Ocean Road, and somehow unknowingly spent $938 on two tickets to an Eagles concert in Melbourne.
True story.
And on to today's top five:
1. Checking the Bonnaroo schedule for the 78th time, knowing I'll be there in four days
2. The fantastic melody that makes up for the insipid-yet-heartfelt lyric in "Bound By Love" by Gran Bel Fisher (what happened to him, by the way?)
3. Rowan starting to say the word "Happy"
4. Our new, big house (although we're not moved in and it needs some work)
5. Johnsonville mild Italian sausages on the grill (which will happen tonight)
More blog shenanigans tomorrow, live from San Diego/Newport Beach/Interstate 5 in between as Youneverknow is a one-man traveling band at Strasburg-a-palooza '09! Dig it!
—Doug Miller


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The Sign of Five Under-watched Television Series or A Study in…Five Under-watched Television Series
Hi, my name is DonnyBagg and I am a blogger and it has been 6 months since my last post. I assume that the lengthy hiatus taken by (almost) all of the factoseintolerant authors will have been enough to shake … Continue reading
Posted in movies, uncategorized Tagged Adult Swim, Afsal Hamid, Ansari, Auto Buds, BBC, Bendict Cumberbatch, bobbies, Claire Danes, Cross, cut down before its time, Damien Lewis, David, David Cross, Eugene Mirman, Fey, Fresh Air, Gatiss, Golden Globes, Green, H. Jon Benjamin, hiatus, Huebel, Hugh Laurie, Hurwitz, Idris Elba, IMDB, Jeffery Tambor, Jeremy Brett, Jerry Minor, Jessica Walter, Jon Glaser, Judy Greer, Kerrigan, Mandy Patinkin, Martin Freeman, Morena Baccarin, netflix, P. Jackson, Ravich, Reed, Richie, Robert Downey Jr., Ruth Wilson, Scheer, Shore, Showtime, Swardson, Temple Grandin, the colonies, Thompson, Todd Berry, Tony Hale, werewolf, Whedon, Woliner 2 Comments