text:
In Lucy Suchman's marvellous essay on 'Situational Awareness' in remote operations she calls attention to what she calls bioconvergence:
A corollary to the configuration of "their" bodies as targets to be killed is the specific way in which "our" bodies are incorporated into war fighting assemblages as operating agents, at the same time that the locus of agency becomes increasingly ambiguous and diffuse. These are twin forms of contemporary bioconvergence, as all bodies are locked together within a wider apparatus characterized by troubling lacunae and unruly contingencies.
In the wake of her work, there has been a cascade of essays insisting on the embodiment of air strikes carried out by Predators and Reapers – the bodies of the pilots, sensor operators and the legion of others who carry out these remote operations, and the bodies of their victims – and on what Lauren Wilcox calls the embodied and embodying nature of drone warfare ('Embodying algorithmic war: Gender, race, and the posthuman in drone warfare' in Security dialogue, 2016; see also Lorraine Bayard de Volo, 'Unmanned? Gender recalibrations and the rise of drone warfare', Politics and gender, 2015). Lauren distinguishes between visual, algorithmic and affective modes of embodiment, and draws on the transcript of what has become a canonical air strike in Uruzgan province (Afghanistan) on 21 February 2010 to develop her claims (more on this in a moment).
And yet it's a strange sort of embodying because within the targeting process these three registers also produce an estrangement and ultimately an effacement. The corporeal is transformed into the calculative: a moving target, a data stream, an imminent threat. If this is still a body at all, it's radically different from 'our' bodies. As I write these words, I realise I'm not convinced by the passage in George Brant's play Grounded in which the face of a little girl on the screen, the daughter of a 'High Value Target', becomes the face of the Predator pilot's own daughter. For a digital Orientalism is at work through those modes of embodiment that interpellates those watching as spectators of what Edward Said once called 'a living tableau of queerness' that in so many cases will become a dead tableau of bodies which remain irredeemably Other.
There is a history to the embodiment of air strikes, as my image above shows. Aerial violence in all its different guises has almost invariably involved an asymmetric effacement. The lives – and the bodies – of those who flew the first bombing missions over the Western Front in the First World War; the young men who sacrificed their lives during the Combined Bomber Offensive in the Second World War; and even the tribulations and traumas encountered by the men and women conducting remote operations over Afghanistan and elsewhere have all been documented in fact and in fiction.
And yet, while others – notably social historians, investigative journalists and artists – have sought to bring into view the lives shattered by aerial violence, its administration has long mobilised an affective distance between bomber and bombed. As I showed in 'Doors into nowhere' and 'Lines of descent' (DOWNLOADS tab), the bodies of those crouching beneath the bombs are transformed into abstract co-ordinates, coloured lights and target boxes. Here is Charles Lindbergh talking about the air war in the Pacific in May 1944:
You press a button and death flies down. One second the bomb is hanging harmlessly in your racks, completely under your control. The next it is hurtling through the air, and nothing in your power can revoke what you have done… How can there be writhing, mangled bodies? How can this air around you be filled with unseen projectiles? It is like listening to a radio account of a battle on the other side of the earth. It is too far away, too separated to hold reality.
Or Frank Musgrave, a navigator with RAF Bomber Command, writing about missions over Germany that same year:
These German cities were simply coordinates on a map of Europe, the first relatively near, involving around six hours of flying, the second depressingly distant, involving some eight or nine hours of flying. Both sets of coordinates were at the centre of areas shaded deep red on our maps to indicate heavy defences. For me 'Dortmund' and 'Leipzig' had no further substance or concrete reality.
Harold Nash, another navigator:
It was black, and then suddenly in the distance you saw lights on the floor, the fires burning. As you drew near, they looked like sparkling diamonds on a black satin background… [T]hey weren't people to me, just the target. It's the distance and the blindness which enabled you to do these things.
One last example – Peter Johnson, a Group Captain who served with distinction with RAF Bomber Command:
Targets were now marked by the Pathfinder Force … and these instructions, to bomb a marker, introduced a curiously impersonal factor into the act of dropping huge quantities of bombs. I came to realize that crews were simply bored by a lot of information about the target. What concerned them were the details of route and navigation, which colour Target Indicator they were to bomb… In the glare of searchlights, with the continual winking of anti-aircraft shells, the occasional thud when one came close and left its vile smell, what we had to do was search for coloured lights dropped by our own people, aim our bombs at them and get away.
The airspace through which the bomber stream flew was a viscerally biophysical realm, in which the crews' bodies registered the noise of the engines, the shifts in course and elevation, the sound and stink of the flak, the abrupt lift of the aircraft once the bombs were released. They were also acutely aware of their own bodies: fingers numbed by the freezing cold, faces encased in rubbery oxygen masks, and frantic fumblings over the Elsan. But the physicality of the space far below them was reduced to the optical play of distant lights and flames, and the crushed, asphyxiated and broken bodies appeared – if they appeared at all – only in their nightmares.
These apprehensions were threaded into what I've called a 'moral economy of bombing' that sought (in different ways and at different times) to legitimise aerial violence by lionising its agents and marginalising its victims (see here: scroll down).
But remote operations threaten to transform this calculus. Those who control Predators and Reapers sit at consoles in air-conditioned containers, which denies them the physical sensations of flight. Yet in one, as it happens acutely optical sense they are much closer to the devastation they cause: eighteen inches away, they usually say, the distance from eye to screen. And the strikes they execute are typically against individuals or small groups of people (rather than objects or areas), and they rely on full-motion video feeds that show the situation both before and after in detail (however imperfectly). Faced with this highly conditional intimacy, as Lauren shows, the bodies that appear in the cross-hairs are produced as killable bodies through a process of somatic abstraction – leaving the fleshy body behind – that is abruptly reversed once the missile is released.
Thus in the coda to the original version of 'Dirty Dancing' (DOWNLOADS tab) – and which I've since excised from what was a very long essay; reworked, it will appear in a revised form as 'The territory of the screen' – I described how
intelligence agencies produce and reproduce the [Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan] as a data field that is systematically mined to expose seams of information and selectively sown with explosives to be rematerialised as a killing field. The screens on which and through which the strikes are animated are mediations in an extended sequence in which bodies moving into, through and out from the FATA are tracked and turned into targets in a process that Ian Hacking describes more generally as 'making people up': except that in this scenario the targets are not so much 'people' as digital traces. The scattered actions and interactions of individuals are registered by remote sensors, removed from the fleshiness of human bodies and reassembled as what Grégoire Chamayou calls 'schematic bodies'. They are given codenames ('Objective x') and index numbers, they are tracked on screens and their danse macabre is plotted on time-space grids and followed by drones. But as soon as the Hellfire missiles are released the transformations that have produced the target over the preceding weeks and months cascade back into the human body: in an instant virtuality becomes corporeality and traces turn into remains.
There are two difficulties in operationalising that last sentence. One is bound up with evidence – and in particular with reading what Oliver Kearns calls the 'residue' of covert strikes (see his 'Secrecy and absence in the residue of covert drone strikes', Political Geography, 2016) – and the other is one that I want to address here.
To do so, let me turn from the FATA to Yemen. The Mwatana Organisation for Human Rights in Sa'ana has released a short documentary, Waiting for Justice, that details the effects of a US drone strike on civilians:
If the embedded version doesn't work, you can find it on YouTube.
At 6 a.m. on 19 April 2014 a group of men – mainly construction workers, plus one young father hitching a ride to catch a bus into Saudi Arabia – set off from from their villages in al-Sawma'ah to drive to al-Baidha city; 20 to 30 metres behind their Toyota Hilux, it turned out, was a Toyota Land Cruiser carrying suspected members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
That car was being tracked by a drone: it fired a Hellfire missile, striking the car and killing the occupants, and shrapnel hit the Hilux. Some of the civilians sought refuge in an abandoned water canal, when the drone (or its companion) returned for a second strike.
Four of them were killed – Sanad Hussein Nasser al-Khushum (30), Yasser Abed Rabbo al-Azzani (18), Ahmed Saleh Abu Bakr (65) and Abdullah Nasser Abu Bakr al-Khushu – and five were injured: the driver, Nasser Mohammed Nasser (35), Abdulrahman Hussein al-Khushum (22), Najib Hassan Nayef (35 years), Salem Nasser al-Khushum (40) and Bassam Ahmed Salem Breim (20).
The film draws on Death by Drone: civilian harm caused by US targeted killing in Yemen, a collaborative investigation carried out by the Open Society Justice Initiative in the United States and Mwatana in Yemen into nine drone strikes: one of them (see pp. 42-48) is the basis of the documentary; the strike is also detailed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism as YEM159 here.
That report, together with the interview and reconstruction for the documentary, have much to tell us about witnesses and residues.
In addition the father of one of the victims, describing the strike in the film, says 'They slaughter them like sheep'…
… and, as Joe Pugliese shows in a remarkable new essay, that phrase contains a violent, visceral truth.
Joe describes a number of other US strikes in Yemen – by cruise missiles and by Hellfire missiles fired from drones (on which see here; scroll down) – in which survivors and rescuers confronted a horrific aftermath in which the incinerated flesh of dead animals and the flesh of dead human beings became indistinguishable. This is a radically different, post-strike bioconvergence that Joe calls a geobiomorphology:
The bodies of humans and animals are here compelled to enflesh the world through the violence of war in a brutally literal manner: the dismembered and melted flesh becomes the 'tissue of things' as it geobiomorphologically enfolds the contours of trees and rocks. What we witness in this scene of carnage is the transliteration of metadata algorithms to flesh. The abstracting and decorporealising operations of metadata 'without content' are, in these contexts of militarised slaughter of humans and animals, geobiomorphologically realised and grounded in the trammelled lands of the Global South.
Indeed, he's adamant that it is no longer possible to speak of the corporeal in the presence of such ineffable horror:
One can no longer talk of corporeality here. Post the blast of a drone Hellfire missile, the corpora of animals-humans are rendered into shredded carnality. In other words, operative here is the dehiscence of the body through the violence of an explosive centripetality that disseminates flesh. The moment of lethal violence transmutes flesh into unidentifiable biological substance that is violently compelled geobiomorphologically to assume the topographical contours of the debris field.
By these means, he concludes,
the subjects of the Global South [are rendered] as non-human animals captivated in their lawlessness and inhuman savagery and deficient in everything that defines the human-rights-bearing subject. In contradistinction to the individuating singularity of the Western subject as named person, they embody the anonymous genericity of the animal and the seriality of the undifferentiated and fungible carcass. As subjects incapable of embodying the figure of "the human," they are animals who, when killed by drone attacks, do not die but only come to an end.
You can read the essay, 'Death by Metadata: The bioinformationalisation of life and the transliteration of algorithms to flesh', in Holly Randell-Moon and Ryan Tippet (eds) Security, race, biopower: essays on technology and corporeality (London: Palgrave, 2016) 3-20.
It's an arresting, truly shocking argument. You might protest that the incidents described in the essay are about ordnance not platform – that a cruise missile fired from a ship or a Hellfire missile fired from an attack helicopter would produce the same effects. And so they have. But Joe's point is that where Predators and Reapers are used to execute targeted killings they rely on the extraction of metadata and its algorithmic manipulation to transform individualised, embodied life into a stream of data – a process that many of us have sought to recover – but that in the very moment of execution those transformations are not simply, suddenly reversed but displaced into a generic flesh. (And there is, I think, a clear implication that those displacements are pre-figured in the original de-corporealisation – the somatic abstraction – of the target).
Joe's discussion is clearly not intended to be limited to those (literal) instances where animals are caught up in a strike; it is, instead, a sort of limit-argument designed to disclose the bio-racialisation of targeted killing in the global South. It reappears time and time again. Here is a sensor operator, a woman nicknamed "Sparkle", describing the aftermath of a strike in Afghanistan conducted from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada:
Sparkle could see a bunch of hot spots all over the ground, which were likely body parts. The target was dead, but that isn't always the case. The Hellfire missile only has 12 pounds of explosives, so making sure the target is in the "frag pattern," hit by shrapnel, is key.
As the other Reaper flew home to refuel and rearm, Spade stayed above the target, watching as villagers ran to the smoldering motorbike. Soon a truck arrived. Spade and Sparkle watched as they picked up the target's blasted body.
"It's just a dead body," Sparkle said. "I grew up elbows deep in dead deer. We do what we needed to do. He's dead. Now we're going to watch him get buried."
The passage I've emphasised repeats the imaginary described by the strike survivor in Yemen – but from the other side of the screen.
Seen thus, Joe's argument speaks directly to the anguished question asked by one of the survivors of the Uruzgan killings in Afghanistan:
How can you not identify us? (The question – and the still above – are taken from the reconstruction in the documentary National Bird). We might add: How do you identify us? These twin questions intersect with a vital argument developed by Christiane Wilke, who is deeply concerned that civilians now 'have to establish, perform and confirm their civilianhood by establishing and maintaining legible patterns of everyday life, by conforming to gendered and racialized expectations of mobility, and by not ever being out of place, out of time' (see her chapter, 'The optics of war', in Sheryl Hamilton, Diana Majury, Dawn Moore, Neil Sargent and Christiane Wilke, eds., Sensing Law [2017] pp 257-79: 278). As she wrote to me:
I'm really disturbed by the ways in which the burden of making oneself legible to the eyes in the sky is distributed: we don't have to do any of that here, but the people to whom we're bringing the war have to perform civilian-ness without fail.
Asymmetry again. Actors required to perform their civilian-ness in a play they haven't devised before an audience they can't see – and which all too readily misunderstands the plot. And if they fail they become killable bodies.
But embodying does not end there; its terminus is the apprehension of injured and dead bodies. So let me add two riders to the arguments developed by Lauren and Joe. I'll do so by returning to the Uruzgan strike.
I should say at once that this is a complicated case (see my previous discussions here and here). In the early morning three vehicles moving down dusty roads and tracks were monitored for several hours by a Predator controlled by a flight crew at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada; to the south a detachment of US Special Forces was conducting a search operation around the village of Khod, supported by Afghan troops and police; and when the Ground Force Commander determined that this was a 'convoy' of Taliban that posed a threat to his men he called in an air strike executed by two OH-58 attack helicopters that killed 15 or 16 people and wounded a dozen others. All of the victims were civilians. This was not a targeted killing, and there is little sign of the harvesting of metadata or the mobilisation of algorithms – though there was some unsubstantiated talk of the possible presence of a 'High-Value Individual' in one of the vehicles, referred to both by name and by the codename assigned to him on the Joint Prioritised Effects List, and while the evidence for this seems to have been largely derived from chatter on short-wave radios picked up by the Special Forces on the ground it is possible that a forward-deployed NASA team at Bagram was also involved in communications intercepts. Still, there was no geo-locational fixing, no clear link between these radio communications and the three vehicles, and ultimately it was the visual construction of their movement and behaviour as a 'hostile' pattern of life that provoked what was, in effect, a signature strike. But this was not conventional Close Air Support either: the Ground Force Commander declared first a precautionary 'Air TIC' (Troops In Contact) so that strike aircraft could be ready on station to come to his defence – according to the investigation report, this created 'a false sense of urgency' – and then 'Troops in Contact'. Yet when the attack helicopters fired their missiles no engagement had taken place and the vehicles were moving away from Khod (indeed, they were further away than when they were first observed). This was (mis)read as 'tactical maneuvering'.
My first rider is that the process is not invariably the coldly, calculating sequence conjured by the emphasis on metadata and algorithms – what Dan McQuillan calls 'algorithmic seeing' – or the shrug-your-shouders attitude of Sparkle. This is why the affective is so important, but it is multidimensional. I doubt that it is only in films like Good Kill (below) or Eye in the Sky that pilots and sensor operators are uncomfortable, even upset at what they do. Not all sensor operators are Brandon Bryant – but they aren't all Sparkle either.
All commentaries on the Uruzgan strike – including my own – draw attention to how the pilot, sensor operator and mission intelligence coordinator watching the three vehicles from thousands of miles away were predisposed to interpret every action as hostile. The crew was neither dispassionate nor detached; on the contrary, they were eager to move in for the kill. At least some of those in the skies above Uruzgan had a similar view. The lead pilot of the two attack helicopters that carried out the strike was clearly invested in treating the occupants of the vehicles as killable bodies. He had worked with the Special Operations detachment before, knew them very well, and – like the pilot of the Predator – believed they were 'about to get rolled up and I wanted to go and help them out… [They] were about to get a whole lot of guys in their face.'
Immediately after the strike the Predator crew convinced themselves that the bodies were all men ('military-aged males'):
08:53 (Safety Observer): Are they wearing burqas?
08:53 (Sensor): That's what it looks like.
08:53 (Pilot): They were all PIDed as males, though. No females in the group.
08:53 (Sensor): That guy looks like he's wearing jewelry and stuff like a girl, but he ain't … if he's a girl, he's a big one.
Reassured, the crew relaxed and their conversation became more disparaging:
09:02 (Mission Intelligence Coordinator (MC)): There's one guy sitting down.
09:02 (Sensor): What you playing with? (Talking to individual on ground.)
09:02 (MC): His bone.
09:04 (Sensor): Yeah, see there's…that guy just sat up.
09:04 (Safety Observer): Yeah.
09:04 (Sensor): So, it looks like those lumps are probably all people.
09:04 (Safety Observer): Yep.
09:04 (MC): I think the most lumps are on the lead vehicle because everybody got… the Hellfire got…
09:06 (MC): Is that two? One guy's tending the other guy?
09:06 (Safety Observer): Looks like it.
09:06 (Sensor): Looks like it, yeah.
09:06 (MC): Self‐Aid Buddy Care to the rescue.
09:06 (Safety Observer): I forget, how do you treat a sucking gut wound?
09:06 (Sensor): Don't push it back in. Wrap it in a towel. That'll work.
The corporeality of the victims flickers into view in these exchanges, but in a flippantly anatomical register ('playing with … his bone'; 'Don't push it back in. Wrap it in a towel..').
But the helicopter pilots reported the possible presence of women, identified only by their brightly coloured dresses, and soon after (at 09:10) the Mission Intelligence Coordinator said he saw 'Women and children', which was confirmed by the screeners. The earlier certainty, the desire to kill, gave way to uncertainty, disquiet.
These were not the only eyes in the sky and the sequence was not closed around them. Others watching the video feed – the analysts and screeners at Hurlburt Field in Florida, the staff at the Special Operations Task Force Operations Centre in Kandahar – read the imagery more circumspectly. Many of them were unconvinced that these were killable bodies – when the shift changed in the Operations Centre the Day Battle Captain called in a military lawyer for advice, and the staff agreed to call in another helicopter team to force the vehicles to stop and determine their status and purpose – and many of them were clearly taken aback by the strike. Those military observers who were most affected by the strike were the troops on the ground. The commander who had cleared the attack helicopters to engage was ferried to the scene to conduct a 'Sensitive Site Exploitation'. What he found, he testified, was 'horrific': 'I was upset physically and emotionally'.
My second rider is that war provides – and also provokes – multiple apprehensions of the injured or dead body. They are not limited to the corpo-reality of a human being and its displacement and dismemberment into what Joe calls 'carcass'. In the Uruzgan case the process of embodying did not end with the strike and the continued racialization and gendering of its victims by the crew of the Predator described by Lauren.
The Sensitive Site Exploitation – the term was rescinded in June 2010; the US Army now prefers simply 'site exploitation', referring to the systematic search for and collection of 'information, material, and persons from a designated location and analyzing them to answer information requirements, facilitate subsequent operations, or support criminal prosecution' – was first and foremost a forensic exercise. Even in death, the bodies were suspicious bodies. A priority was to establish a security perimeter and conduct a search of the site. The troops were looking for survivors but they were also searching for weapons, for evidence that those killed were insurgents and for any intelligence that could be gleaned from their remains and their possessions. This mattered: the basis for the attack had been the prior identification of weapons from the Predator's video feed and a (highly suspect) inference of hostile intent. But it took three and a half hours for the team to arrive at the engagement site by helicopter, and a naval expert on IEDs and unexploded ordnance who was part of the Special Forces detachment was immediately convinced that the site had been 'tampered with'. The bodies had been moved, presumably by people from a nearby village who had come to help:
The bodies had been lined up and had been covered… somebody else was on the scene prior to us … The scene was contaminated [sic] before we got there.
He explained to MG Timothy McHale, who lead the subsequent inquiry, what he meant:
The Ground Force Commander reported that he 'wouldn't take photos of the KIA [Killed in Action] – but of the strike', yet it proved impossible to maintain a clinical distinction between them (see the right hand panel below; he also reported finding bodies still trapped in and under the vehicles).
His photographs of the three vehicles were annotated by the investigation team to show points of impact, but the bodies of some of the dead were photographed too. These still photographs presumably also had evidentiary value – though unlike conventional crime scene imagery they were not, so far I can tell, subject to any rigorous analysis. In any case: what evidentiary value? Or, less obliquely, whose crime? Was the disposition of the bodies intended to confirm they had been moved, the scene 'contaminated' – the investigator's comments on the photograph note 'Bodies from Vehicle Two did not match blast pattern' – so that any traces of insurgent involvement could have been erased? (There is another story here, because the investigation uncovered evidence that staff in the Operations Centres refused to accept the first reports of civilian casualties, and there is a strong suspicion that initial storyboards were manipulated to conceal that fact). Or do the shattered corpses driven into metal and rock silently confirm the scale of the incident and the seriousness of any violation of the laws of war and the rules of engagement?
The Ground Force Commander also had his medics treat the surviving casualties, and called in a 9-line request ('urgent one priority') for medical evacuation (MEDEVAC). Military helicopters took the injured to US and Dutch military hospitals at Tarin Kowt, and en route they became the objects of a biomedical gaze that rendered their bodies as a series of visible wounds and vital signs that were distributed among the boxes of standard MEDEVAC report forms:
At that stage none of the injured was identified by name (see the first box on the top left); six of the cases – as they had become – were recorded as having been injured by 'friendly' forces, but five of them mark 'wounded by' as 'unknown'. Once in hospital they were identified, and the investigation team later visited them and questioned them about the incident and their injuries (which they photographed).
These photographs and forms are dispassionate abstractions of mutilated and pain-bearing bodies, but it would be wrong to conclude from these framings that those producing them – the troops on the ground, the medics and EMTs – were not affected by what they saw.
And it would also be wrong to conclude that military bodies are immune from these framings. Most obviously, these are standard forms used for all MEDEVAC casualties, civilian or military, and all patients are routinely reduced to an object-space (even as they also remain so much more than that: there are multiple, co-existing apprehensions of the human body).
Yet I have in mind something more unsettling. Ken MacLeish reminds us that
for the soldier, there is no neat division between what gore might mean for a perpetrator and what it might mean for a victim, because he is both at once. He is stuck in the middle of this relation, because this relation is the empty, undetermined center of the play of sovereign violence: sometimes the terror is meant for the soldier, sometimes he is merely an incidental witness to it, and sometimes he, or his side, is the one responsible for it.
If there is no neat division there is no neat symmetry either; not only is there a spectacular difference between the vulnerability of pilots and sensor operators in the continental United States and their troops on the ground – a distance which I've argued intensifies the desire of some remote crews to strike whenever troops are in danger – but there can also be a substantial difference between the treatment of fallen friends and foe: occasional differences in the respect accorded to dead bodies and systematic differences in the (long-term) care of injured ones.
But let's stay with Ken. He continues:
Soldiers say that a body that has been blown up looks like spaghetti. I heard this again and again – the word conjures texture, sheen, and abject, undifferentiated mass, forms that clump into knots or collapse into loose bits.
He wonders where this comes from:
Does it domesticate the violence and loss? Is it a critique? Gallows humor? Is it a reminder, perhaps, that you are ultimately nothing more than the dumb matter that you eat, made whole and held together only by changeable circumstance? Despite all the armor, the body is open to a hostile world and can collapse into bits in the blink of an eye, at the speed of radio waves, electrons, pressure plate springs, and hot metal. The pasta and red sauce are reminders that nothing is normal and everything has become possible. Some body—one's own body—has been placed in a position where it is allowed to die. More than this, though, it has been made into a thing…
One soldier described recovering his friend's body after his tank had been hit by an IED:
… everything above his knees was turned into fucking spaghetti. Whatever was left, it popped the top hatch, where the driver sits, it popped it off and it spewed whatever was left of him all over the front slope. And I don't know if you know … not too many people get to see a body like that, and it, and it…
We went up there, and I can remember climbing up on the slope, and we were trying to get everybody out, 'cause the tank was on fire and it was smoking. And I kept slipping on – I didn't know what I was slipping on, 'cause it was all over me, it was real slippery. And we were trying to get the hatch open, to try to get Chris out. My gunner, he reached in, reached in and grabbed, and he pulled hisself back. And he was like, "Holy shit!" I mean, "Holy shit," that was all he could say. And he had cut his hand. Well, what he cut his hand on was the spinal cord. The spine had poked through his hand and cut his hand on it, 'cause there was pieces of it left in there. And we were trying to get up, and I reached down and pushed my hand down to get up, and I reached up and looked up, and his goddamn eyeball was sitting in my hand. It had splattered all up underneath the turret. It was all over me, it was all over everybody, trying to get him out of there…
I think Ken's commentary on this passage provides another, compelling perspective on the horror so deeply embedded in Joe's essay:
There is nothing comic or subversive here; only horror. Even in the middle of the event, it's insensible, unspeakable: and it, and it …, I didn't know what I was slipping on. The person is still there, and you have to "get him out of there," but he's everywhere and he's gone at the same time. The whole is gone, and the parts – the eye, the spine, and everything else – aren't where they should be. A person reduced to a thing: it was slippery, it was all over, that was what we sent home. He wasn't simply killed; he was literally destroyed. Through a grisly physics, there was somehow less of him than there had been before, transformed from person into dumb and impersonal matter.
'Gore,' he concludes, 'is about the horror of a person being replaced by stuff that just a moment ago was a person.' Explosive violence ruptures the integrity of the contained body – splattered over rocks or metal surfaces in a catastrophic bioconvergence.
I hope it will be obvious that none of this is intended to substitute any sort of equivalence for the asymmetries that I have emphasised throughout this commentary. I hope, too, that I've provided a provisional supplement to some of the current work on metadata, algorithms and aerial violence – hence my title. As Linda McDowell remarked an age ago – in Working Bodies (pp. 223-4) – the term 'meatspace' is offensive in all sorts of ways (its origins lie in cyberpunk where it connoted the opposite to cyberspace, but I concede the opposition is too raw). Still, it is surely important to recover the ways in which later modern war and militarised violence (even in its digital incarnations) is indeed obdurately, viscerally offensive – for all of the attempts to efface what Huw Lemmey once called its 'devastation in meatspace'.


text:
CB Canada
Join our mission Quickbooks is a mission-driven, global financial platform company that gives everyone the opportunity to prosper. With products like TurboTax, QuickBooks and Mint, we're using technology to build solutions to challenging financial problems for millions of people around the world. Overview Do you have a minimum of 3 season of paid Tax Preparation experience, with a minimum of 30 tax returns per tax year? If you're a tax professional, we need you to help our customers complete their taxes using TurboTax. You'll advance our goal of "Powering Prosperity Around the World" by providing expert guidance and explanations of tax and technical terms to our customers. You'll also play an important role in our effort to enhance our brand by delighting our customers and empowering them to prepare their taxes. Job Requirements: What you'll bring Minimum 3 season of paid Tax Preparation experience, with a minimum of 30 tax returns per tax year required. Prior tax preparation experience in a tax practice or retail setting required. College degree a plus. The ideal candidate will have a background in business, finance, accounting, or tax Knowledge of tax laws, tax concepts and familiarity with form 1040 and schedules PTIN required Ability/motivation to expand expertise and obtain a tax credential or certification – Intuit offers a program to obtain your EA Strong customer service skills with ability to empathize and instill confidence Ability to work within a team to assist in preparation of accurate tax returns in a timely manner Strong Research skills and the ability to quickly use online resources to find answers Critical thinking and problem solving Persistence and determination How you will lead This is a seasonal position providing assistance to customers both assisting them in preparing their own returns and/or fully preparing customer tax returns Compiling/preparing tax returns for TurboTax Customers Gathering/organizing and accurately entering customer data in the federal and state tax returns for review Communicate directly with the customer as needed Coordinate customer meetings and follow-up Communicate updates to credentialed tax experts on assigned customers Will help customers who are working on their tax return with both product/software inquiries, as well as with tax questions and calculations Apply defined practices, procedures and company policies to troubleshoot and resolve product and tax support customer inquiries Will interact with customers utilizing strong written and verbal skills as well as deep customer empathy

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Early-morning Rockford shooting injures two people
Staff Writer
Rockford Register Star
ROCKFORD — Two people were injured by gunfire early Saturday morning in the 1200 block of Clover Street.
Police received the call shortly after 4 a.m. and were sent to a home in the area for a shooting victim. The person had been shot in the right elbow.
A second shooting victim showed up later at a local hospital with a gunshot wound to the left foot. Police said the victims were leaving a house party when shots were fired.
The injuries are believed to be non-life-threatening. No arrests have been made yet, but the incident is still being investigated.


text:
- Publisher: TAITO Corporation
- Genre: Action
- Released: 23 Sep, 2010
- Size: 19.0 MB
- Price: $6.99
- Mini-game style of gameplay we've come to know and obsess over.
- Lots of plants to fuss over.
- Outfit rewards for dedicated players.
- A lot of mini-games feel like padding without purpose.
- The voice-acting is no longer a joke; it's painful to listen to.
While not as sharp as Cooking Mama, Gardening Mama still has that 'just one more round' style of gameplay that can waste more time than you intended.
- Full Review
- App Store Info
Sure, Cooking Mama is a whiz in the kitchen and can whip you up a meal of almost any kind in short order, but how does she spend her down-time? Well, it turns out that Mama is a gardening fanatic and in Gardening Mama you'll help her to dig, water and propagate plants of many different sorts while earning new outfits for her to wear around the house.
For those familiar with the Cooking Mama franchise this title isn't going to be too surprising; however if you're new to the Mama series, each plant will go through a variety of steps, requiring you to complete minigames that use various gestures to imitate the processes you're going through. Some of these mini-games, like spraying bugs and viruses or fertilizing plants can be quite clever, however most are fairly rote and repetitive chores of copying gestures until you succeed.
The graphics are also typical for the Mama series, using the clear and colorful cartoonish style that makes it easy to work out what to do with minimal instructions. Though, speaking of minimal instructions, the game does seem to assume prior familiarity with the franchise, giving no basic tutorials to explain what's going on or how the game progresses.
Strangely, Gardening Mama just doesn't share the same simple charm of the Cooking series, with the mini-games feeling more like an excuse to pad gameplay than being a simplified simulation of the real thing (creating rainbows comes to mind immediately). Not a bad casual title, but definitely more appealing to fans than newcomers.
DescriptionFinished cooking? Get gardening!
At last, "Gardening Mama" is now available for iPhone/iPod touch!
Inspired by the hit home console release, this mobile adaptation features a bountiful helping of leafy greens from the original game as well as plenty of never-before-seen plants!
-Featured Game Modes-
* Let's Get Growing!
Show off your green thumb by caring for over 20 types of garden favorites, including veggies, flowers, herbs, and fruit!
Try your luck growing apples, sunflowers, basil, and even durian: the King of Fruit!
Easy, intuitive controls make tending your garden a snap!
* Make It Fancy!
Arrange a beautiful garden and be rewarded with a variety of in-game presents!
Accessorize Mama with new clothes, glasses, hats and more!
Popular the world over, the hit cooking action game "Cooking Mama" is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch!
This edition features a generous helping of dishes from the home console series as well as plenty of never-before-seen cuisine!
The "Cooking Mama" controls have also been optimized for use with the iPhone and iPod touch, ensuring a fresh play experience for even veterans of the home console releases!
"Cooking Mama" includes two fun game modes: "Let's Cook," where players make meals with Mama, and "Cooking Contest," where players can freely practice a variety of recipes and techniques.
*For customers who have upgraded to new iOS devices, you may transfer your previous device's Gardening Mama save data by backing up the older device to iTunes, then restoring to the new device.
Downloading Gardening Mama directly to your new device is not sufficient to transfer previous devices' game save data.
What's New in Version 1.1.0"Cooking Mama World" page have been added to the top menu.
Now you can check the latest Cooking Mama series available on App Store!


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Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur is the most solemn holy day in Judaism. It is a day of atonement (prayer, repentance and fasting) observed in some way by nearly all Jewish people. Observant Jews refrain completely from all food and drink on Yom Kippur. Most of the day is spent in the synagogue.
- "Before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, there was an elaborate ceremony of confession and repentance led by the high priest and including the sacrifice of a goat, the scapegoat." (Leviticus 16.)
Just prior to the beginning of services on the eve of Yom Kippur, the congregation recites Kol Nidre, or "all vows". This Aramaic prayer is an appeal to God to forgive vows unfulfilled that do not affect any other person. Vows affected include only those made to oneself, or between oneself and God. Anti-semites have tried to use the prayer to malign Jews as untrustworthy.
Honest self-examination, communication with one's Maker, commitment to become a better person — all these are encouraged throughout the year in various religious systems, but there is one day on the Jewish calendar that is tailor-made for such activities: Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement... Yom Kippur is celebrated on the tenth day of Tishri, i.e., ten days after Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. [1] The holiday is instituted at Leviticus 23:26 et seq.
Although it is not a Federal holiday, in Texas (which does not have a large Jewish population) it (along with Rosh Hashanah) is an "optional holiday" which state employees may observe (subject to staffing needs).


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Ever since there have been smooth enough road surfaces to paint on, cycle racing fans have expressed their devotion to their favoured rider, and many other emotions, by scrawling across the asphalt along the course.
Archive images of the Tour in the fifties and sixties all reveal the hastily applied names of the cycle stars of the time along with words of encouragement, with 'Allez!', meaning 'Go!' in French, proving a popular early example.
Dutch and German fans are reportedly the biggest culprits these days, which tallies with the passion they show on race day - the Dutch in particular occupying their own corners of race stages and creating a sea of orange, their enthusiasm legendary.
Road graffiti is an opportunity for supporters to make their feelings known above the deafening hysterics of the gathered masses. The climbs are the most popular locations for such a medium of encouragement, because that's when the riders will notice the words the most, when they are crawling up a mountain with their eyes transfixed on the few feet of road ahead. For the riders, it's also the time when they appreciate the sentiment the most.


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RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) – Bodyguards for Iraq's deputy prime minister wounded two people when they fired warning shots at Sunni protesters who pelted his convoy with bottles and stones on Sunday, witnesses said.
The incident took place in the city of Ramadi in the western province of Anbar, to where Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq had travelled to address people in an attempt to defuse sectarian tensions.
Thousands of Iraqi Sunnis have taken to the streets and blocked a main highway over the past week in protest against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whom they accuse of discriminating against them and being under the sway of non-Arab neighbor Iran.
"Leave! Leave!" the protesters shouted at Mutlaq, himself a Sunni, who has been a frequent critic of Maliki.
"It's only now Mutlaq comes to attend the protest and after seven days. He came to undermine the protest," Saeed al-Lafi, a spokesman for the protesters, told Reuters.
Mutlaq's guards opened fire to disperse the crowd after they threw objects at his convoy. Two people were wounded, the witness said.
In a statement following the incident, Mutlaq said some "rogue elements" at the protest had tried to kill him.
"Upon the deputy prime minister's arrival, the protesters greeted him with great warmth … but some rogue elements which seek to divert the protesters from their legitimate demands carried out a cowardly assassination attempt against Doctor Mutlaq," it read.
Protesters are demanding an end to what they see as the marginalization of Iraq's Sunni minority, which dominated the country until the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.
They want Maliki to abolish anti-terrorism laws they say are used to persecute them.
Echoing slogans used in popular revolts that brought down leaders in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Yemen, protesters have also called on Maliki to step down.
"Is this the way to deal with peaceful protesters? To shoot them? This is really outrageous," said protester Ghazwan al-Fahdawi, displaying empty bullet casings from shots he said had been fired by Mutlaq's guards.
In the northern city of Mosul, the provincial council called a three-day strike to press Baghdad to release women prisoners and stop targeting Sunni politicians.
Protests erupted last week in Anbar province after troops loyal to Maliki detained bodyguards of his finance minister, a Sunni.
That happened just hours after President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd seen as a steadying influence on Iraq's tumultuous politics, was flown abroad for medical care.
In a televised interview late on Sunday, Maliki said there were foreign agendas behind the protests and urged protesters to go home.
"You wanted to convey your message, it has been received, and that is enough because if this goes on it will complicate matters."
The Arab League described recent developments as "worrying" and called for dialogue in a statement released on Friday.
A year after U.S. troops left, sectarian friction, as well as tension over land and oil between Arabs and ethnic Kurds, threaten renewed unrest and are hampering efforts to repair the damage of years of violence and exploit Iraq's energy riches.
(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Sufyan al-Mashhadani in Mosul and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Robin Pomeroy)


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Another post in my ongoing series of How-To segments on how to get old games to work on Windows 7. Starcraft 1
Thanks to the guys at Blizzard this tutorial doesn't involve that many steps. Basically all we have to do is download the latest version of Starcraft and do a simple registry hack to fix the color mode. All the hard work with permisions and such are done for us by the new Blizzard installer.
First off this is for the first Starcraft game, and the goal for this tutorial is to have this game 100% playable without having to run this game as admin, or by using any weird compatibility settings (well except one small reg key). Second, this method does not require any of the original discs so if you lost it or if you have annoying cousins that like to break or scratch your discs, you can still install Starcraft. Third, in order to use this method you absolutely NEED a VALID Starcraft 1 CD-Key!! This will not work with pirated or generated CD-Keys. None of my tutorials are designed to work with pirated games. If you want to pirate this game go ask somewhere else!!
Step 1. Install Starcraft from Battle.net
While there may not be many steps, they sure are time intensive. If you already know how to install this game from battle.net or you don't like the battle.net way and want to do it by yourself, then you can just skip on ahead to step 2 which fixes the color issue.
- Ok in order to download anything from Battle.net you need an account there. If you don't already have one, go there now to set one up, they are free.
- Now that that's done and you confirmed your E-mail address and all that nonsense, you gotta find your Starcraft CD-Key.
- Ohh you did find it? Great now go here to enter it in so you can download Starcraft: Anthology. Anthology is just what they named Starcraft: Broodwar. Which is nice cause I didn't buy BroodWar I only bought Starcraft, but here I am getting the expansion for free, thanks Blizzard!! Ok hopefully it took your CD-Key and now there should be an option to download it for Windows. Be sure to copy your NEW CD-Key as this is the only one that works on the Battle.net version of Starcraft.
- Can't find your CD-Key? Well thats too bad, but all is not lost you can still buy one from the same site. Here's a link. Be sure to choose Starcraft: Anthology.
- If you just bought the game it basically does the same thing and gives you a link to download the installer. Be sure to copy the cd-key so you can use it with the installer.
- When you click on the link for the game it downloads the installer that downloads the game's installer, I know it sounds dumb but that's how this stuff usually works. Choose a place where you want to download the installer and click next, this process is pretty much the same as any MMORPG downloader so you just have to sit and wait for it to download.
- The actual installer is fairly simple, basicly just click next and enter in the new CD-Key when it asks. Then when every EULA is accepted and all the Nexts pressed, you wait for it to install, once it's done there should only be a few Nexts left. Then BAM a link shows up on your desktop and Starcraft is now ready to go…
BUT WAIT!! Now the graphics are all weird, WTF?? Ohh wait, it plays fine in the playable part of the game, only the menus are messed up. That should be good enough right?? NO!! Only lazy people stop here! If you're like me and demand FULL compatibility, go to the next step.
Step 2: Compatibility hack.
Ok before I start this I am going to explain what these files do and why they are needed. If you have windows XP you do not need this hack and the game should already work fine for you. I don't think Vista needs this either so try the game first before you do this.
Ok all these files do is activate a hidden compatibility mode that is only needed for a few games. It tells Windows that this game requires a custom pallet for it's 256 color mode. Windows is supposed to detect this automatically, but for some reason it doesn't work well with a few games, this is a very intermittent problem so there are many different things that might set it off and just as many things that might fix it. This is the one trick that seems to always fix it.
- There are two reg files, one for 32bit versions of windows, and one for 64bit versions. Only open the reg file for the version of windows that you have. If it's Windows 7 you probably have 64bit. But if you only have 3gigs or lower for ram it's probably 32bit. If you choose the wrong one it shouldn't do anything bad, I just don't want to add unnecessary clutter to your registry. Right click and save link as to download…
- Just open the file and allow the changes to be merged into your Registry.
And there you go, the game should now work fine. Sometimes you have to restart in order to see any difference. This same trick should also work with Diablo II, but I have yet to test that and you also need different reg files. So that's probably what I'm going to work on for my next tutorial.


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First it was the iPod. Then the iPhone. And now those Chinese cloners are pirating Steve Jobs himself! Oh you Chinese scoundrels you!
Deadly Mississippi Tornado Kills More Than 2 Dozen | Extreme Earth
Watch Steve Jobs unveiling a new iPhone application for the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway. Well, he's not Steve, but his twin. His evil Chinese twin. Or maybe the evil one is the other one. Or just an actor that goes by the name Law Kar-ying. I don't know. I'm confused now. [WinandMac via 9to5]


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MIAMI SHORES, Fla. -- Third-ranked Barry beat No. 4 Hawai'i Pacific 5-2 on Saturday to improve to 18-1.
It was the Bucs' second win against a top-five ranked opponent this season. Barry's lone loss came to NCAA Division I No. 63 North Florida.
"It was a very good performance," said Barry coach Avi Kigel. "We knew coming in this would be a very tough match. Doubles was the key, I think, in the beginning. We were able to squeeze [out one] at No. 1 to go up 2-1 after doubles. And then very competitive singles, but we were able to pull it through and get the win. I'm very happy about the performance."
Paired with Blanka Szavay for the first time, Barry's Kimmy Twelker keyed a late comeback in a 9-7 win against Karen Ramirez and Celina Goetti at No. 1 doubles. The Bucs trailed 7-6 in the match, but the late rally sent Barry into singles play with momentum.
"We knew they could play really well together, but we didn't know how it was going to work," said Kigel of the Twelker-Szavay combination in a marquee match. "To go ahead up 2-1 after doubles, it's a great feeling. Less pressure, so it was huge for us."
All-American Emma Onila returned to the Buccaneers' lineup this weekend after a two-week absence, and delivered key wins in doubles and singles. She and Linda Fritschken, ranked No. 1 in NCAA Division II, blanked Vivian Hansen and Lea Kruse-Utermann, 8-0, at No. 2 doubles. Onila, ranked No. 8 in the nation in singles, was a 6-0, 6-2 winner against 34th-ranked Goetti at the No. 2 flight.
"In the doubles, I felt really good with Linda, really confident," Onila said. "My volleys were really on point. I just felt like I haven't missed any days off. In my singles, I was just focusing more on being calm, doing my best and staying in the match, and not getting upset because I've been away for so long. I'm just happy that I'm progressing."
Twelker also defeated Hansen 7-5, 7-5 at No. 5 singles to improve to 9-0 this year. Her doubles play, however, may have been the most instrumental part of the match.
"It was important for us because it's always better for us to be up 2-1 than be down 2-1," said Onila of Twelker and Szavay's pairs victory. "It was really important for them to pull it off at the end. The support always helps."
Barry's Karina Goia, ranked 19th in singles, beat Ramirez 6-3, 6-4 at the No. 1 spot. She improved to 14-0.
Ranked No. 31 in the nation, Fritschen was leading Magdalena Smejova 6-4, 5-3 at No. 3 singles when the Bucs secured their fifth point to clinch the match.
"At this point, we just have to continue, and hopefully everybody stays healthy," Onila said.
HPU picked up its first win at No. 3 doubles when Lorena Gheorghe and Smejova defeated Barry's 13th-ranked duo of Elisabeth Abanda and Goia, 8-3. Gheorghe beat the ninth-ranked Abanda 6-1, 6-1 at No. 4 singles.
Barry improved to 13-0 against nationally ranked teams this season. The Bucs are 11-0 at Buccaneer Tennis Center this year.
"We're playing well," Kigel said. "We're one of the best teams in the country. We know that, but we have to play really well, and be there mentally to go all the way. A lot of things can happen, but we definitely have the talent."


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When did you first feel connected to cycling?
As a kid, I lived in the middle of nowhere, so if you wanted to go into town you had to ride a bike. Later, I got my first good bike—a white and red Schwinn Le Tour with stem-mounted gear levers. Then I got a mountain bike and a BMX bike, and wound up building trails all around the house.
But eventually acting pulled you away from riding. What has it been like returning to cycling as an adult?
Psychologically, getting back on the bike really helped me. It was hard to weather the success of Grey's, but I found I could go for a ride and get centered. Cycling also taught me a lot about managing discomfort. When you leave your comfort zone, you learn how to manage your emotions and to stay focused.
I've heard your wife has taken up riding. Do you two go out training together?
Riding has been the best thing for my marriage. My wife is really fit—she drops me all the time—but I get her on the descents. On the bike, we can get a workout and a therapy session. When you're on a ride, you calm down, you start to breathe, then you start to be clearer about your thought processes and what's bothering you; it just floats up to the surface.
You're close with pros like Tom Danielson and Levi Leipheimer. In fact, you seem tighter with cycling stars than stars here in Hollywood. Why?
We all came from small towns, broke away, and had success in our professions. It's nice to have that community, that fellowship. I never feel like I totally fit in here. Hollywood is always posturing; it's a place that doesn't allow people to open up because others will prey on it.
You hang out and train with those guys, and help each other at charitable events. Have you ever seen them race in person?
Yeah, I went to the US Pro Challenge last summer, and I couldn't get over the pace. I got a much greater appreciation of the beauty of the sport. There's a poetry in it, when you're that close to so many competitors and you're dancing with them.
You already own an auto-racing team. Would you fund a cycling team?
If I were a team owner in cycling, it would be a women's team. There's a great story happening and it's just not being seen. They need bigger sponsorship and more events. And it's important for women to see other women racing.
You seem pretty serious as a rider—you're leaner, training with pros, shaving your legs. Do you have goals as a cyclist?
Yes, leg shaving has done wonders for my riding; now that I'm celibate it's easier to focus on my training plans. Seriously, I want to ride a century; that's my goal. My longest ride so far is 75 miles.
You've got a lot going on outside your day job. What's next?
I'd love to open a bike shop in Malibu that's a hangout for cyclists. There's nothing like that out here. Tommy, Levi, and I have fantasized about it; I just need to find a space that would allow me to break even. I really want to create some community for local cyclists.
A lot of these projects seem to be about building community—whether it's for riders or people with cancer. What's behind that?
Since I was young, I've loved belonging to something. You can get that on a bike, especially if you're riding for a cause. There's a huge desire for community and purpose—so many people feel alone and isolated. In my case, I need to do something positive with my visibility. Getting involved in cycling and the Dempsey Center was a turning point for me. My life has had more direction after that.
Star Power
The headliner of Grey's Anatomy is using cycling to build community
When did you first feel connected to cycling?
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Noe Valley's Bell Market closing Sunday
The Bell Market in Noe Valley is set to close at 4:00 pm on Sunday, Feb. 15, according to signs posted on the store. I went in there last night to buy some baby food (for the cat — I don't have any babies) and they were totally out of what I wanted. A look around the store revealed that many shelves were already bare, with empty banana cartons lining the empty bottom shelves.
Curbed SF has been saying that Whole Foods is taking over the location. Their most recent post on the matter says the location is expected to open in the fall, leaving more than six months for renovation to take place.


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Because of last night's rain, you have one last chance to see "Seven Deadly Seas" TONIGHT at 8 pm. Go early and catch this hard-to-replicate combination: left to right Cape Race, Gazela, and Mary A. Whalen … as seen from the entrance to the Brooklyn Passenger Terminal in Red Hook.
Big doings also are happening for Pegasus, here with a happy tour group. Pegasus and Lehigh Valley 79 will be docked in Brooklyn Bridge Park starting later this week.
Uh . . . shoes of future mariners?
Contemporary mariners work aboard such vessels as
JoAnne Reinauer III
and (right to left) Twin Tube— a supply boat–and CSL Atlas, cousin of my longlost Alice O. By the way, Atlas brought in the beginnings of the upcoming winter's supply of road salt . . or was that table salt??
Colleen McAllister and other vessels labor away at the sisyphusian task of dredging.
R/V vessels like Blue Sea do their own research/education work. Here RV Blue Sea is on the high and dry as a preparation for a new season.
Jay Michael frequents the sixth boro, and
in parting, this sloop (Margaret A ?) passes a fuel barge.
Unfortunately, I missed yesterday's lobsterboat races up in Portland, Maine, and I have to wait til 2011 to see them. But you can still get to the 18th Annual Great North River (aka sixth boro) Tugboat Race on September 5. See you there.
Tomorrow … yes … another few days' gallivant. Details later.
All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated: Check out this Newtown Creek shipping post by Restless.


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Gov. Christie fumes over sequester
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Monday ripped Washington, D.C., for failing to get a deal to avert the sequester, charging "real leadership" was AWOL.
"I don't understand it, I don't understand why they haven't fixed it already. It seems to me that it should be pretty easy to fix. Real leadership would get this fixed. Get everybody in the room and you fix it and you don't let them leave until you fix it," said the Republican. "That's what real leadership is; not calling a meeting two hours before the thing's going to hit to have a photo-op in the driveway at the White House. That's not real leadership. Fix it!"
Christie called on the audience at his press conference to explain Washington to the reporters because he himself had no idea what the nation's lawmakers were up to.
( Also on POLITICO: 3 sequestration scenarios)
"If anybody in this room thinks they understand Washington, D.C., please come on up, stand behind the podium and you give the answers, because I don't have the first damn idea of what they're doing down there," Christie said.
"The worst thing about sequester in my view is that they're not spending any time talking about entitlement spending, which is where we need to focus on over the long haul to make a big difference in terms of our long-term fiscal health as a country and I'm disappointed in that but, you know, if you stacked up all the things that disappoint me about Washington, D.C., it would be pretty tall," he added. "We have big problems in this country to fix and we're not dealing with it."
Christie, known for his blunt speech, told reporters that he wasn't really concerned about the sequester, but more about how "broken and dysfunctional" Washington is.
"If the federal government can't cut one cent out of a dollar and not bring the economy and the country to its knees, then the government is in awful shape to begin with," Christie said. "The fact is that you're talking about, in this fiscal year, 42 billion dollars in a 3.6 trillion dollar budget…We've done much harder things in New Jersey, in much shorter periods of time and dealt with our budgetary problems, and the federal government should get real about starting to deal with their budgetary problems."


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Abode Project 3 hole kitchen tap in chrome finish. 4 in 1 features with Filtered Boiling Hot, Hot, Cold & Cold Filtered Water. Safety HotKey and PROBOIL3 under counter unit included.
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Photo: John Troth/Audubon Photography Awards
Birds Need You Now
With three billion lost since 1970 and two-thirds of North American species at dire risk from climate change, birds are telling us that their survival—and ours—depends on immediate action.
Your donation will be securely processed. The National Audubon Society is a
not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Our federal tax ID number is 13-1624102.


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At mining companies, managers can increase control over the extraction processes and processing of ore through technological developments. However these have to provide the best in operational and energy efficiency and offer best practice facilities in terms of preventive maintenance: especially so in the case of drives for large motors. These are vital for mining machinery, such as mills, pipeline pumps, conveyors and ancillary machinery. As such, their continuous reliable operation is paramount, posing a major challenge to manufacturers of such drives, both to optimise the performance of their products, and to ensure that, in the event of problems, drives are covered by comprehensive warranties.
In 2004, WEG launched the MVW01 medium voltage frequency inverter. The success of this unit has resulted in its wide application, allowing technicians and engineers from heavy industries to benefit from a simpler and safer controller for medium voltage drives. Based on leading-edge technology, which dramatically reduces the chances of break-downs and accidents, the MVW01 has come to be regarded as a reference of accuracy, robustness and ease of handling.
The MVW01 is fully featured and meets all global standards, consolidating its first choice selection for the control and protection of induction motors in heavy applications. The drive is an exact synergy of hardware and software technology, providing excellent performance to driven loads regardless of their nature.
In the same way as low voltage inverters, the MVW1 is user-friendly and has a simple design. The power circuit of the inverter consists basically of diodes, plastic film capacitors and 6.5 KV state-of-the-art IGBTs, which form a multi-level structure.
This design is very important when considering a device of this size, because it minimises the number of electrical connections on the power circuit, reducing electrical losses and the possibility of failure.


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Christina Skirvin
Senior Media Strategist/Planner/Buyer
On "Marketing Champions," our host speaks with experts within the marketing community. This week Lee Goff sits down with Christina Skirvin, Media Buyer & Planner.
BluHorn Media Planning and Buying Software is an affordable, easy-to-use tool that advertising agencies, media buyers/planners, and digital media directors and strategists use to plan media, buy media, analyze media, report media, and reconcile programmatic, digital and traditional media buys. BluHorn integrates with Nielson, Comscore, BluHorn Programmatic , and QuickBooks; saving you time and money. While other tools on the market like MediaForce, GaleForce Digital, Advantage, Strata, and FreeWheel may require contracts, BluHorn remains a cost-effective solution with no contract requirements. Contact us BluHorn Media Buying software todayat BluHorn.com.


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More than fair: General manager boasts tickets for 138th Rochester Fair are best bargain 'round
ROCHESTER — "Dare to compare our pricing with other fairs," challenges the Rochester Fair website, as it reveals the entry costs for the 138th annual Fair, which runs from Friday, Sept. 13 to Sunday, Sept. 22.
The admission cost per person this year is $14, and includes a bracelet for all the mechanical rides, with one exception — the brand new Speed XXL, for which there is an extra charge.
Those doubting souls who do go online to check out the price of other fairs, such as Deerfield and Fryeburg, will find that the claim made by General Manager Mark Perry — that Rochester Fair is the best bargain around — is accurate, for other fairs are charging $20 or $25 for ride bracelets.
Some folks, in recent years, have complained that because they never go on the rides, they're being unfairly impacted by a pricing scheme that now incorporates the cost of a ride bracelet into the gate fee. Very good news, in this department. For everyone wanting to stroll through the animal barns and view the exhibition halls, admission is free from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Monday through Friday. Thus, senior citizens or mothers with children in strollers, for example, can walk in the gates at no charge, or drive in for a parking fee of $5, and stay as long as they like. There is no 1 p.m. curfew. The free mornings at the fair will be sponsored by Federal Savings Bank.
There is also an opportunity, for those who enjoy the rides, to shave a couple of dollars off the entry fee, by purchasing tickets in advance for $12 each at Holy Rosary Credit Union on Brock Street. These discounted tickets will go on sale on Monday, Aug. 19 and be available through Thursday, Sept. 12.
"We are bringing in an extreme ride this year, completely new to New England," said Perry, warning that it is too radical for children.
"It is getting off the boat in New York harbor," said Perry, last Thursday. "We will be just the third fair to have it."
This thrill ride, which, according to Perry, represents an $800,000 investment for the midway operator, Fiesta Shows, is called the Speed, and is like a huge spinning propeller, taking eight passengers at a time whirling up to 120 feet above the ground, and winging them down again.
"It gives the passengers and experience of 3.5 Gs," said Perry.
Not for the weak-hearted, Perry expects teenagers to love it.
"This answers people who say we don't have cutting edge rides. The Rochester Fair is the only place in New Hampshire or Maine that thrill seekers will have a chance to try it out," said Perry, adding that he's delighted Fiesta Shows made the investment. The surcharge, for this one ride, is $5 a pop on top of the regular ride bracelet that comes with admission.
In recent years, the fair has moved into the digital age, and streamlined its entry process for the hundreds of categories in the rings, barns and halls. People are encouraged, from now and over the coming days, to record their entries on line at the fair's website dev.rochesterfair.com. For traditionalists, the official entry book is still available and can be picked up at the Fair office.
Entering, online, is the preferred method though, and one reason for it being so, is the problem of legibility with hand written forms.
"We may think people are entering quilts when they are entering chickens," laughed Perry, noting that another problem arises when some younger people, only familiar with type, try to read cursive writing, beautiful copperplate though it may be.
The official 10-day program is already online, and among the standout events are the Magic Trunk ventriloquist, the Chainsaw Chix — a lady chainsaw carver — and, also new this year, Calef's Country Store.
"Joel is bringing the store with him," said Perry, referring to Fair Ambassador Joel Shelburne, who is a long time employee of the Barrington store with a statewide reputation.
Circus Hollywood and the popular racing pigs are also returning.
Back this year, by popular demand, on each Saturday evening, are the School Bus Demolition Derbies.
"Last year's event was a runaway hit," said Perry, who has been buying up school buses from all over in recent weeks.
"Most are out of the Boston school system, and all were in use until June, this year," said Perry.
"This event is absolutely outrageous. Hilarious. These things are tough, built like tanks. They show how safe your kids are," said Perry.
The only place from which to clearly view the demolition derbies (including the regular car events of the two Sunday afternoons) is the grandstand, and there is a surcharge for admission.
The official sponsor of the derbies is Berwick Iron and Metal, and they haul off the dead buses at the end of the events.


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The world's first mobile phone powered by Google's Android OS is making waves before it is even available in stores. T-Mobile, the US carrier that gets the G1 Android phone first, has announced that "heavy demand" has claimed all presale units. If the current smartphone market trends are any indication, the future may be bright for the G1 and other Android phones.
Revealed after much hype on September 23, the HTC-built G1 phone for T-Mobile brings a new smartphone formula to the table, one founded upon Google's open-source Android OS for mobile phones. The device offers key features like Google app integration, an open Android Marketplace for finding and installing new software, applications that can run in the background, and even Amazon's MP3 music store for purchasing DRM-free music on the go. In the increasingly competitive smartphone marketplace, the open-platform G1 is an almost exact antithesis to Apple's alluring iPhone—the device that arguably set the standard for more powerful handsets, but one that is also completely locked down by its manufacturer.
T-Mobile began taking preorders for the G1 after its announcement, and the carrier quickly ran out of the initial batch. The carrier is now claiming that G1 presales are better than anticipated, since HTC tripled production for launch day and preorders have been filled for those as well. T-Mobile told Ars that preorders will be taken through October 21 for delivery at a later date.
Actual sales figures from the preorder rush are not being disclosed yet, however. There is no word on exactly how large T-Mobile's initial batch of G1 phones actually was, but HTC announced recently that it plans on selling 400,000 to 500,000 units during the fourth quarter of the year. It also disclosed that T-Mobile is planning to order as many as two million G1s "in the near future." A T-Mobile spokesperson would only tell Ars Technica that "we expect T-Mobile G1 will be a very popular device, particularly with the holiday season on the horizon."
HTC's aspirations for the G1 may not be far off. The iPhone, which had enormous buzz surrounding its launch in June 2007, sold 273,000 units in its first weekend on the market, but took about two and a half months to sell a million units. There is more than one winner in the new smartphone race, though, as sales of all smartphones are up. BlackBerry overtook Nokia in the US in the second quarter of 2008, the iPhone snagged nearly 30 percent of the US smartphone market in only a year, and Windows Mobile grew its global market share from 11 to 13 percent in Microsoft's last fiscal year ending June 30, 2008.
Along with Android's appealing features and promising prospects, these numbers spell opportunity for the G1 to carve out a respectable niche. Though Android's current lack of Exchange support may prevent it from landing any business purchase orders, its open platform means that a third party is welcome to build support and open that door for businesses. That kind of open access will certainly be a key to Android's long-term prospects.


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I look forward to the food forest being more grown up at this time of year -meaning that the the food forest will have more shrubs and trees, making shade, mulch, and cycling more water. I wish I had more of these things right now. But besides being patient, there are several things I am doing to speed up the growth, and make this dream of an established food forest a reality.
First priority is to introduce more species and plants to fill in the huge gaps between the trees. This is what happens in nature where fields begin reverting back to forests from grass. The species in the open field change from grasses, to woody perennials like goldenrod (Solidago species), then to blackberries (Rubus species), multiflora roses (Rosa multiflora), and dogwoods (Cornus controversa), until oaks and the like begin to establish themselves.
By the time the forest trees start to grow up, there is a thick mulch of blackberry and multiflora canes, nicely manured by all the animals attracted there by the multiflora rose hips in the winter, and blackberries in the summer. Nature is not a "Veganic" gardener.
That being said, when I say 'adding species,' I do mean adding animal species as well as plant. I have moved our chicken pens across some of the more open places in the food forest, and the effect on the grass has been amazing. Rather than scraggly short stuff, I have lovely swaths of emerald green -nearly a foot taller than the grass next to it; all the green grass growing in the exact shape of the chicken pens.
This extra grass makes more food my rabbit. She can eat exclusively in-system grass and clover, providing lovely "bunny gold" for adding to the mulched beds.
This mulch has been helpful in killing of the scraggly grass under my trees, since to get rid of any sizable patch with mulch I need all the grass I can get.
Mulching to kill grass illustrates the best way to work with these newly introduced species of plants and animals: keep the life moving. In other words, cycle the life as fast as you can, keep all the species of plants and animals as dependent on each other as you can. That is how an ecosystem is built; through the interaction of a lot of species. If you have grass, mulch with it -or feed it to an animal, wild or domesticated. Whatever the case, keep those nutrients active!
Comfrey and nitrogen fixers are most of what I am planting under the trees, along with some Jerusalem artichokes here and there. They compete with the grass masterfully, and at the same time make more biomass.
Whatever I do, there is a lot to be done, not the least of these being to stand back and observe, so I had better get back out there.


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Why Do Mormons, Including Mitt Romney's Wife, Love Pinterest?
Earlier today, Mitt Romney's official Twitter account linked to his wife Ann's profile on the social network everyone is talking about, Pinterest. Ann Romney is now the most famous Mormon on Pinterest—but far from the first. Pinterest is so popular with Mormons it's practically the Utah of social networks. Why? Let's investigate.
On one level, it's not surprising that Pinterest, the social bookmarking service where users curate images by 'pinning' them with links and commentary to themed boards, is a hit with Mormons. Its first rule is "Be nice." Pinterest is the most inoffensive, white-bread place on the internet, a gated community of perfectly curated boards sprinkled with Etsy-made children's toys and food blog recipes, sheltered from the blasted racist hellscape of the rest of the web.
But Mormons are not typically thought of as early adopters of technology. Long before Pinterest became the subject of fascination and derision by the culture at large, it was the talk of the Mormon blogosphere. You may have started to see a torrent of Pinterest notifications in your Facebook timeline in the last few weeks, but way back in September 2011 a writer at the Mormon Women's blog The Exponent was talking about her "whole mess of friends who absolutely love Pinterest." (Mary Romney, Mitt's daughter-in-law, apparently joined Pinterest in September.) Among the earliest coverage by a mainstream media outlet was a post the Salt Lake City Deseret News' MormonTimes blog.
There's no traffic stats for Mormons and Pinterest, but observers both inside and outside the Church note the preponderance of Mormons on Pinterest.
"[Mormons] were a group I noticed the most in the beginning," said longtime Pinterest user Gillian Lanyon, who curates the Pinterest board I am Fascinated by Mormons. Pinterest features a page for popular images posted by users, and in the early days of Pinterest, "you would even see quotes from Church leaders (poster-style, and in beautiful typefaces of course) in the top rankings for pins," Lanyon said. (Lanyon isn't Mormon, just fascinated by them.) You can see the continuing popularity of these Mormon memes by searching Pinterest for, say, Mormon leader Dieter Uchtdorf.
"I actually found out about Pinterest a couple of months ago from my sister in-law (who is also a Mormon)," said Kae Fisher, a 25 year-old Mormon Pinterest user from Sacramento, who took the time to email with me even though her 14 month-old girl is "sick and SUPER whiney."
"After awhile, I started noticing my other Mormon friends on Facebook talking about the site and posting pictures of things that they've learned and made from Pinterest," she said.
On an ex-Mormon forum, one poster complained in September that "Mormons are taking over Pinterest"
"I don't know how to block/remove them," she wrote. "Of course, there's the obvious—post something offensive and they'll remove themselves—but I don't want it to get back to my mother."
One reason for Pinterest's Mormon base is simply demographic. Pinterest's demographic sweet spot is young new mothers, which includes a lot of Mormon women, as they get pregnant early and often. Mommy bloggers blew up Pinterest like early Pitchfork blew up the Arcade Fire, and a number of powerhouse mommy blogs, like Taza and Husband, are run by Mormons. (They're also big on Pinterest).
The focus on homemaking means Mormon women are also more inclined to pursing crafts and cooking, two of the more popular topics on Pinterest. One of Ann Romney's first boards includes recipes of low-fat turkey burgers and a "Gluten-free desert pizza" that looks too gross to post on the internet, much less eat. Kae Fisher cites her involvement in the Mormon women's organization the Relief Society as teaching her the skills she uses Pinterest to foster.
"I know of so many women who are so talented in areas such as sewing, knitting, scrapbooking, baking., etc. largely due to this program," she said. "The creative side of me came from learning from others in this program. Pinterest is like the head websites the Mormons turn to for creativity, I think."
But there's also a cultural drive among Mormons to cultivate and share an image of domestic bliss—and Pinterest is the perfect packaging vehicle for that aim. Pinterest traffics in that relentless, almost eerie perfection that has made Mormon Mommy blogs popular even among non-Mormons, and Mitt Romney barely popular with Republicans. Mitt Romney's daughter-in-law, Mary, had one such blog, until she took it down today amid media attention.
"I think what we're thinking is that our whole dogma is called the Plan of Happiness, and our blogs kind of reflect that drive and appeal to happiness," Mormon mommy blogger Courtney Kendrick told BuzzFeed earlier today. Mormons have taken to social media to share their happiness with special zeal; there's a whole page dedicated to "Sharing the Gospel Online" on the Church of Latter-Day-Saint's site.
But Mormons have not embraced Pinterest whole-heartedly. Even the small bits of the web's incivility that seep in trouble some of them. Back in September, when Pinterest was probably even nicer than it is today, the Exponent blogger was disturbed by the "slut-shaming, body-hate and other symptoms of misogyny" she saw there. "Sure there isn't a *ton* of this sort of negative content, but I find myself continually surprised at it's prevalence," she wrote.
The Mormon writer and Pinterest fan Rosalynde Welch, in what is the best piece of writing about Pinterest I've read, warns of the sins of Pinterest:
Self-fashioning in full view of others, free from the constraints that discipline our desires in the real world, can become an exercise in prideful status-seeking. A recipe for oreo-wrapped-in-cookie-dough-covered-in-brownie-batter may be a crime against good taste and cardiovascularity, but my mocking re-pin is the sin. The Pinterest-self is a self on display, not a self in relation, and therein lies the vice. Therein, too, lies insecurity and crippling anxiety, because an identity based entirely on the display of images—actual images or metaphorical "image"—is inherently fragile, vulnerable to attack from every corner.
An identity based entirely on image? Yep: Mitt Romney is the unofficial Pinterest candidate.
Image by Jim Cooke.


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Goldoni, Carlo
Goldoni, Carlo kär´lō gōldô´nē [key], 1707–93, Italian dramatist. He was enamored of comedy from childhood, having sketched his first comic drama at eight. He took a degree in law at Padua but thereafter devoted himself to the theater. He created a new Italian character comedy, considered artistically superior to the old commedia dell'arte. This he achieved by building on the old comedy of masks, but amplifying written parts; by judicious imitation of Molière and adaptation of classical themes; and by applying his own excellent comedic sense. Goldoni wrote more than 260 dramatic works of all sorts, including opera. Among the most notable of his 150 comedies are La locandiera (1753, tr. The Mistress of the Inn, 1856), Il ventaglio (1763, tr. The Fan, 1911), Il burbero benefico (1771, tr. The Beneficent Bear, 1849), and La buona figliuola (1756, tr. The Accomplished Maid, 1767), which was set to music by Niccolò Piccinni. Toward the end of his life he was supported in France by a royal pension that was cut off by the Revolution. He died in poverty.
See Goldoni's memoirs (1787, in French; tr. by J. Black, 1926); biography by H. C. Chatfield-Taylor (1913); study by H. Riedt (tr. 1974).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Italian Literature: Biographies


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Short-stay visa – Schengen visa C Type
A short-stay visa (C Type) is an authorisation permitting a foreigner to enter and temporarily stay in the territory of the Republic of Slovenia/Schengen Area under the conditions specified in the Visa Code.
The visa is issued in the passport (or other travel document) of a foreigner in the form of a visa sticker. Successful applicants, including children, are issued an individual visa sticker. If a child does not have his or her own travel document and is inscribed in a parent's travel document, two visa stickers are issued in the travel document of the parent.
A short-stay visa (C Type) may be issued by any Schengen country. A short-stay visa (C Type) allows an individual to:
• Transit through or stay in the territory of the Schengen Area for up to 90 days in any 180-day period, and
• Transit through the international transit areas of airports in the Schengen Area.
The Schengen Area covers 26 countries ("Schengen countries") without internal border controls. These countries are currently the following: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
If you have a valid visa issued by a Schengen country, you may also visit any other Schengen country, unless you have been issued a visa with limited territorial validity, which is shown in the visa sticker.
The visa shows how many times you may enter the Schengen Area (one, two, or multiple entries). If your visa is only valid for one entry, you should remember that if you leave the Schengen Area, for example to go to the UK, Ireland, Croatia, Russia, or Turkey, you cannot re-enter the Schengen Area without a new visa. It is therefore important that you state in your visa application how many times you will be travelling in and out of the Schengen Area during your visit.
If your visa is valid for more than one entry (a multiple entry visa), you are allowed to stay in the Schengen Area for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. The stay can be divided into as many separate trips as you wish. The validity of a multiple-entry visa is up to 5 years.
The application process for obtaining a short-stay visa (C Type) for entry into the Republic of Slovenia is subject to the Schengen rules applicable to all Schengen countries.
Legal sources:
• Regulation (EC) No 810/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 July 2009 establishing a Community Code on Visas (Visa Code)


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Facebook's entry into the world of "social search" has Google playing a bit of catch-up. The next step of Google's strategy to keep its overall search dominance is being unveiled today, with the company tapping the pulse of its users a bit deeper by mining their activities at other websites and mobile apps for search gold—all with their permission, of course.
This morning, Google is unveiling a new feature tied to its recently launched Google+ Sign-In platform—an online identity-management feature that allows users to log in to websites and mobile applications using their Google account. Google+ Director of Product Management Seth Sternberg told Ars that Google was working with a select group of partner developers to pull activity information from their apps into Google Search, adding a social element to search results associated with their brands.
Launched in February, Google+ Sign-In is Google's effort to compete head-on with similar social identity services such as "Connect with Facebook" and Twitter's OAuth-based sign-in service. It replaces Google's previous sign-in service, tied to the company's social platform, but gives users the same security features associated with their Google account—including two-factor authentication.
The integration of partner applications with Google+ through the sign-in service extends to sharing activities in a way similar to what Facebook's platform does through "like" buttons and other activity reporting tied to its login service. Based on the privacy setting selected by the user, the apps share activity directly with other Google+ users with "interactive" posts sent to their notification stream—inviting them to join in watching a movie in Flixter, for example, or buy something "shared" directly with them through Fancy.
The integration goes even further for users with Android devices. When someone registers on a website with Google+ Sign-in, "if they have an Android phone," said Sternberg, "on the Web we say, 'hey, we notice you have an Android phone—would you like the Android app?' And if the user says yes, then the app is automatically downloaded onto their phone without them ever touching their phone."
The wisdom of crowds
The feature unveiled today takes the "sharing" aspect of Google+ Sign-In further. In partnership with a group of early Google+ Sign-in adopters—Deezer, Fandango, Flixter, Slacker Radio, Songza, SoundCloud and TuneIn—Google will soon begin aggregating Google+ user activities within those sites and mobile apps, using that data to change how search results for those partners are displayed. Things that are popular within those partner sites will be displayed directly within the results, allowing users to get direct access from Search to the most popular actions on partner sites. The data will be displayed to all Google search users—not just those who have registered a Google+ account.
The activities of Google+ users in these sites and applications are "streaming to Google search," Sternberg said, "letting you know what people are doing in these apps and telling you what is most popular in these apps. It should, we hope, bring even better context to what people are doing within (these apps) to the search experience."
For example, this is how the right column of search for Fandango looks on Google Search today—with the Google Knowledge Graph box for Fandango:
With the addition of Google+ activity aggregation, the same search will display the movie tickets that are the most popular purchases by Google+ users, and the results will look like this:
Soundcloud results will change in a similar fashion, showing what songs are popular with Google+ users:
At launch, these changes will only show up on desktop Web searches, Stermberg said, and will be limited to searches on partners' names. But given the work Google has already done around exposing common search tasks for "entities" with Google's Knowledge Graph, it's not a stretch to see how this sort of activity mining could be applied to other partner sites, as well as to generic searches on topics associated with partners. It's the promise of that sort of traffic-driving engine that Google is hoping will grease the skids for developers' adoption of Google+ Sign-In, and draw users into using Google+ even more as a social platform.