Friday, May 1, 2015

Jack of All Trades: US Military Self-guided Bullet

REBLOG=>Jack Omnitrade

The U.S. military had made great progress in developing a self-steering bullet. The .50-caliber bullets are fitted with optical sensors at the tip to follow moving targets. The bullet’s system is name EXACTO (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance) and is develop by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The "smart bullets" passed their most successful round of live-fire tests to date, the CNN reported on 29 April 2015.

self-guided bullet

Videos supplied by DARPA show the bullets making sharp turns in mid-air as they pursue their targets. "This live-fire demonstration from a standard rifle showed that EXACTO is able to hit moving and evading targets with extreme accuracy at sniper ranges unachievable with traditional rounds. Fitting EXACTO's guidance capabilities into a small .50-caliber size is a major breakthrough and opens the door to what could be possible in future guided projectiles across all calibers," said Jerome Dunn, DARPA program manager. Exacto can help shooters compensate for high winds. Give shooters greater range and accuracy makes American troops safer.


Guerrilla Gamblers' Comments

There is no free lunch. Good things usually cut both ways. There is no doubt that the accuracy makes American troops safer but there will be no difference if the enemy had the same ammo. Good but dangerous products are like double edge swords. In due time psychopath killers will get hold of this bullets. With the 9/11 incident, I would not be exaggerating to put forth the idea of a coordinated attack. All Bin Laden’s successor or ISIS needs to do is to put a few guns on the key people and a nation would be in turmoil. Let’s say a gun is aimed at Barack Obama (president), Joe Biden (vice president) and Ashton Carter (defence secretary) at the same time. There is a price for everything and there will leakage somewhere. So, I won’t boast about this invention.


My Comments

"With great power comes great responsibility", Ben Parker told Spiderman. In just one instance that Spiderman failed to act, the loss was his beloved uncle. Even now there would be spies after the blueprint of this weapon. Entrepreneurs and players in the military field will do their own research and development to produce this wonder bullet to make a buck. Now the President needs more bodyguards who are willing to take the bullet for him. I am not paranoid - 9/11 was real.

Time Is a Thief: College Savings Plummets

REBLOG=>Amenda Steel

Fate had an indiscriminate and random way to liberating money from your wallet. A car break-down that cost 20% of your disposable income or a roof leak of similar extent will put you on a tight budget for the month and depreciate your savings. Bad luck or unexpected expenses is usually quoted for failure to save. Sharing the blame would be the escalating cost of living. These common reasons the man on the streets frequently hears but backing them up with research will give it better credibility.

Last year an average of $13,408 was set aside for college by parents but it was reduced to $10,040 this year. Savings for all purposes, including retirement and emergencies, also plunged to $98,867 from $115,604 last year. Sallie Mae, a corporation that offers financial products to help families save and plan for college, engaged market research company Ipsos to conduct a research to account for a 25% drop in saving for college.

Graduation Day

Ipsos interviewed 1,988 parents of children under 18 for the survey between Jan. 14 and Jan. 28. "The biggest reason for the decrease in savings are the increase in the cost of living and having unexpected expenses come up," said Michael Gross, head of the higher education practice at Ipsos. About half the parents are saving for college. For families with incomes between $35,000 and $100,000 the rate fell to 46 percent this year from 51 percent last year.

The outlook on investing in higher education for children is still good. 90% parents believe that college is an investment in their children's future. 84% believe their children will earn more with higher education. 78% think that a college degree is more important now than in the past. General savings accounts remain as the most widely used vehicle to save for college funds. It was used by 48% of the savers. 23% used checking accounts and 27% used 529 plan.

The 529 plan is tax-advantaged instrument for saving for the future higher education expenses of a designated beneficiary. It was named after the act (Internal Revenue Code 26 U.S.C. § 529) that legislated it. The 539 plan is popular high-income savers. 49% used it. It only manage to draw 20% of middle-income and 17% low-income savers. 40% of those who do not save for higher education were unaware of the existence of 529 plans.

Parents who don't save overestimate the amount of financial aid their children will receive. Scholarships and grants typically cover about one-third of the total average cost of college, according to a corollary Sallie Mae study. About two-thirds of those who don't save believed their child would get scholarship help to cover college costs.

Martha Holler, a Sallie Mae representative said the act of creating a plan for college savings seems to boost the odds of success. The 2015 Saving for College survey found families with a plan saved 46 percent more than families without a plan. Parents began to save when their oldest child was 6.5 years old. This the time where the initial expenses of infancy and the toddler years are over, Reuters reported on 29 April 2015.


My Comments

Like the Greeks, parents who skipped saving a few times are attributing it to Lady Luck. In no time Lady Luck will cause more turbulence. For a modern day analysis, saving will affect the economy because it is a component of Gross National Product. Reduce saving can hurt investment. Okay there is no need to go through elementary macroeconomics.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

America's 9 Best Entry-level Jobs

Job hunters need to be mindful that there is always compromise between job security, career development or high pay in the job process. High paying jobs are usually at high risk for being automated or offers little growth potential over the next few years. Based on a study from WalletHub, the top 9 entry-level jobs scores well in all the three categories mentioned. CBS News had compiled their findings on 28 April 2015 to guide college students and high school seniors to consider which field to major in.

Job Starting Pay Median Pay Qualification Growth
9. Financial analyst $51,848 $76,950 bachelor's degree in business, finance or related -
8. Information security analyst $55,310 $86,170 - 37%
7. Web designer $53,041 $62,500 know programming and graphic design 20%
6. Software engineers $62,522 $90,374 bachelor's degree in computer science -
5. Environmental engineer $57,266 $86,340 bachelor's degree in environmental engineering or related 15%
4 Attorney $83,907 $133,470 law degree and pass a state's written bar exam 10%
3 Network Engineer $61,744 $91,982 degrees in computer science or related 12%
2. Web applications designer $54,586 $59,000 know developer languages such as PHP and HTML 12%
1. Training specialist $47,621 $55,930 college degree and strong communication skills 15%

The starting annual salary and the median pay for all workers in the field are based on the latest information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The salary for software engineers were based on information on the employment site Glassdoor.com. Figures for network engineer and web applications designer were derived from the employment site Payscale.com. The job growth rate is projected from 2012 to 2022 by the BLS. A growth of 10 percent or higher is deemed as normal. A growth rate of 15 percent and above is consider rapid growth.

Job Hunting

The information security analyst had the greatest potential growth of 37 percent. Their job entails a simple maintenance routine but once the system gets hacked, they will have to work round the clock to restore the system, pronto. I believe being a hacker is the best qualification for this job but there is no such thing as a certified hacker at the present moment. This may be the reason WalletHub did not list down the qualification for this job. The reason growth is not projected for financial analyst is unclear.

Growth rate for software engineers were not projected as this profession is a bit unusual. While the jobs in this field are plentiful, careers in the field may be short-lived. According to Bloomberg News, most software developers have left the profession by the time they're 40. The industry tend to favor younger engineers because of the impression that they will be more up-to-date with the latest trends.

Although the training specialist had a low income, it top because of job openings and growth potential. About one-quarter of Web designers were self-employed in 2012 but it is forecasted that employment in this field will grow by 20 percent. I believe the forecaster is expecting these self-employed individuals would grow and had the need for expansion.

Seeking Enlightenment: Economic Crisis due to Childless Millennials

REBLOG=>Sophia Logica

A rapidly aging society and a younger generation that is not willing to have kids is the formula for an economic Armageddon, CBS News 28 April 2015. Japan confronts this fate and their population is predicted to drop by one-third through 2060. Childbirth trend among Millennials is raising questions on the possibility America heading the same direction. According to a report from the Urban Institute, birth rate among American women in their 20s fell 15 percent in 2012 from 2007. This marked an abrupt change from three decades of relatively stable birthrates. The birth rate of women in the 20s is 948 births per 1,000 women.


crying baby

Nan Marie Astone, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and one of the paper's authors, believes the recession prompted women in their 20s to opt against having children. The paper cited previous economic crises, such as the Depression in the 1930s, also coincided with low points for fertility in 20-somethings. The median age for a women's first birth is now 26 years old, compared with 21.4 years old in 1970, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Would millennial women start families once they feel more stable economically, as previous generations have done after periods of financial insecurity?


My Comments

Values have a part to play in our actions today. The previous generation believe in the family and even extended families especially for Italians. People today are like a little nucleus of their own. There was happily ever after of yesterday. Today is happily never after. Broken families and high divorce rate are a common thing.

Pest in Midst: Dinosaur with Multiple Species Traits

REBLOG=>XingCai Tang

Scientists have discovered remnants of a strange dinosaur with an unusual combination of traits in southern Chile. It was named Chilesaurus diegosuarezi to honor the country where it was unearthed and the 7-year-old who spotted the first fossils. "The skeletal anatomy of Chilesaurus gathers characteristics of different dinosaur groups, like a floor is composed of mosaics of different shapes and colors. No other dinosaurs exhibit such a combination or mixture of features," said paleontologist Fernando Novas of the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires. The modern-day version of such misfit is the platypus, an egg-laying, duck-billed mammal from Australia, Reuters reported on 27 April 2015.




Chilesaurus it is a member of the same dinosaur species as Tyrannosaurus rex. Its skull and neck bear a resemblance to those of primeval long-necked dinosaurs, and its vertebrae those of primitive meat-eating theropods which are the largest land meat-eaters in Earth's history. Strangely enough Chilesaurus ate only plants, given a beak and leaf-shaped teeth and two blunt fingers on each hand. It is a two-legged created with a bird-like pelvis. Unlike the three-talon feet of most theropods, Chilesaurus had a wide feet with four toes. Four nearly complete skeletons frames were found to establish these typical misfit traits. It was relatively small, reaching up to 10.5 feet (3.2 meters) long, although most specimens found were more the size of a turkey. It lived in a region crisscrossed by rivers approximately 145 million years ago.


 Right jaw and teeth of the Chilesaurus diegosuarezi

University of Birmingham paleontologist Martín Ezcurra said, "The most interesting (aspect) about Chilesaurus is the story that it tells about how evolution works, 'Convergent evolution' is a process in which two unrelated species or groups acquire similar characteristics from living in similar environments or having a similar behavior," He used the example of having the wings of a bat and a bird. For 'mosaic convergent evolution,' it involves different parts of the body resembling those of other unrelated species.


My Comments

The more fossil we unearth, the harder it would be for experts to explain evolution. Very soon the theory of evolution will just fall apart. It would be easier to explain explain that the Chilesaurus came from a big bang than to fit it into evolution theory. After we finally believe the earth cam from a big bang.

Friday, April 24, 2015

Google’s Mobile Friendly Test

My Casino Gambling Tip is now a mobile friendly website. My next task would be to get XingCai Gambling Tales to be mobile friendly too. I had outlined the step involved to get it mobile friendly in my previous blog and will use the same procedure. The wave of mobile suffers had got Google to cater to them or lose page ranking. This would be a concern for webmasters until they fix the problem.

Google Mobile Friendly Certification

While Google had written to webmasters with some links to make a mobile friendly website, they provided no link to test the mobile-friendliness of the site. Using W3C tidy up could provide some additional help on the meta tags. After much surfing, I found certification from Google themselves. Visit this link and type in your website’s URL.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

John Key New Zealand Premier Hair Pulling Fetish

New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key ask for forgiveness from a waitress at his local cafe for repeatedly tugging on her ponytail. The waitress named Rosie criticized his behavior in a blog post. It began during last year's election season and carried on for a number of months and on several occasions. Eventually the cafe's manager made it clear to Key that his actions were uninvited, the CNN reported on 22 April 2015.

John Kay

Key, told reporters that his behavior was in the context of "a bit of banter," but said that he had apologized when it was clear she was offended. "But if you look at it now, no. When I realized she took offense by that I just sort of immediately went back, gave her some wine, apologized and said I was terribly sorry," the leader added. Rosie’s blog wrote that she didn't directly make her objections clear verbally, her body language "screamed 'I don't like that.'" The blog also stated that the prime minister offered two bottles of his own JK 2012 Pinot Noir wine by way of apology.

Sue McCabe, chief executive of the National Council of Women of New Zealand, accepted that Key was joking and did not mean to offend, but criticized the premier in an open letter of the organization. "The fact that our Prime Minister has joined the list of people outed for sexism highlights how much sexism is a part of our culture. And it starts at the top. Up and down this country, day after day, people are touched without giving their consent. At one end of the scale, it is an unwelcome pull on a ponytail. At the other end, it's our shocking levels of violence against women."

Carpe Diem: Seize the Day: Willie Nelson's Pot

REBLOG=>Phil Andows

Willie Nelson, renowned for singing about the merits of smoking pot in country and western music, is making his own brand of marijuana. The product features "high quality strains of marijuana," and will be on the shelves as "Willie's Reserve". It will be grown and sold in Colorado and Washington where it is legal to get stoned without a doctor's note, CNN Money reported on 20 April 2015. The motivated singer said, "I am looking forward to working with the best growers in Colorado and Washington to make sure our product is the best on the market". He founded the company out of a desire to get involved in the growing market for legal pot, Elaine Schock spokeswoman for "Willie's Reserve" told CNN Money.


Willie's Reserve picture from CNN

Nelson,81, had gone a long way for pot. He has been an outspoken supporter of marijuana legalization and an advocate for industrial hemp production. Nelson will focus on the quality of the products, encouraging responsible use and pushing for legalization. "He will serve as more than a figurehead. His values and vision set the bar for everything the company does," Schock said. A new song, "It's All Going to Pot" which Nelson duets with Merle Haggard was on April 20 to coincide with his announcement. It will make 4/20 (April 20) an unofficially declared National Weed Day. In time to come the song may be the anthem for the National Weed Day but Nelson is not the first musician to lend his name to a marijuana brand. Last year, the estate of Jamaican reggae icon Bob Marley struck a deal with a private equity firm to market and sell marijuana and other products under the name "Marley Natural."



Amenda Steels' Comments

"It's All Going to Pot" may not be the Weeds Day’s anthem as there will be too many contenders.


My Comments

I think "Puff the Magic Dragon" makes a good Weed Day's Anthem.

Seeking Enlightenment: Naked Wedding Celebrations

REBLOG=>Sophia Logica

The South China Morning Post's article dated 24 March 2015 refers to it as "naked wedding celebrations" but it is actually a social protest. Ten couples, some were married for many years, took part in the event. The couples were covered in body paint and dressed only in undergarments for the event at Hangzhou Paradise amusement park in Zhejiang province. They are rejecting modern Chinese value that placed greater value on materialism as a criteria for marriage instead of love.


Couples in body paint and dressed only their underwear hold naked weddings in Zhejiang province

Materialism makes me think of Karl Marx. Operating under a demand driven economy, China like to think of themselves as a communist state. The term has no place for economic class struggle but after decades of opening to this system, people in China would aspire to own a house or a car before they get married. A naked wedding involves a couple marrying without possessing a house or car.


My Comments

Given the current economic climate, getting a house and a car is not an easy task. This is a way to preserve the marriage institution.

On Empty Thoughts: FBI Ruse Violated Paul Phua Rights

REBLOG=>Guerrilla Gamblers

"Law enforcement can't break something in your house and pose as repair people to get inside," David Chesnoff, defence attorney for Paul Phua Wei-seng's, said. Paul Phua was charged with illegally accepting bets on the World Cup Soccer. US District Judge Andrew Gordon said in a bluntly worded decision that "the government violated the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights" against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Paul Phua

Gordon called the evidence collected last July from Paul Phua's high-security luxury villa at Caesars Palace "fruits of an unconstitutional search", and said it cannot be used if the government pressed forward with charges that Phua operated an illegal gambling business and transmitted wagering information. Chesnoff hailed the decision as a victory for freedom. The two charges each carry a penalty of up to seven years in prison.

Prosecutors said some US$13 million in bets had been wagered before the FBI, working with Nevada gambling regulators, raided three Caesars Palace villas where Phua, his son and several other people were staying. Agents seized computers, cellphones and cash. Phua, 50, was the last remaining defendant among eight people arrested in the case, including his son Darren Wai Kit Phua, 23. Darren Phua was the last of six defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges, forfeit large amounts of money and return to Asia under plea deals the Las Veags Sun reported on 17 April 2015.


My Comments

Judge Andrew Gordon must be pissed at wasted time and resources when he said "fruits of an unconstitutional search"

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Filling Bottles: Employers Ask Illegal Questions

REBLOG=>Sue DaJi

One out of three surveyed didn't know the following questions are illegal to ask in a job interview:

  • What is your political affiliation?
  • What is your race, color or ethnicity?
  • How old are you?
  • Are you disabled?
  • Are you married?
  • Do you have children or plan to?
  • Are you in debt?
  • Do you social drink or smoke?

The finding was based on a nationwide survey of more than 2,100 hiring and human resource managers released Thursday by CareerBuilder, which commissioned Harris Poll, the CBS News reported 10 April 2015.


Job Application

Discrimination of some form can be detected in the question asked. Not included in the list above is location. It is okay to ask if applicants are willing to relocate but not where the applicant live. This can be construed as a prejudice towards a certain residential address. Inquiring about long-term plans is acceptable but asking when interviewees plan to retire can be deems as biases to age.


My Comments

Hiring an employee is the biggest pain.

Pest in Midst: Asian Beer Market

REBLOG=>XingCai Tang

A legislative bill had been tabled to ban the sale of alcohol in Indonesia. The two Islamic parties supporting the bill cited “the protection of the children of the nation” as the reason. Bestowed with the world’s largest Muslim population, the parties recommended draconian jail sentences for offenders. Tourism officials are concerned about the economic effects of extending an alcohol ban to tourist spots like Bali.

Asia Bear Consumption

A recent Nielsen survey found that just 2.2 percent of Indonesians over 20 had consumed alcohol in the past 12 months. Beer sales have increased by more than 50 percent over the past decade. The overall consumption is considered small for a population of over 250 million. Breweries giants Diageo, Carlsberg and Heineken are bracing for the worst in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country. On the brighter side, the beer market for China is growing fast and expected to overtake the United States by 2017 the Reuters reported on 14 April 2015.


Sophia Logica's Comments

Humans are not the most logical creature because wrecking their brain seems to be a popular form of recreation. Heck, I do it too.


My Comments

In contrast animals don't wreck their brains for fun. If you start pouring beer to your pet's water container, your pet will keep a distance from it the moment the come to sniffing range. Religion was invented to guide us to behave with animal instincts.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Time Is a Thief: Unusual Cargo Force Flight to Land

REBLOG=>Amenda Steels

The pilot of Alaska Airline flight 448 requested an emergency for priority landing when heard screaming and banging from the cargo compartment. The flight took off at 3:15 p.m. Pacific Time in Seattle. After 14 minutes in flight the aircraft had to turn back and land in Seattle-Tacoma International.


Alaska Airline in Flight

After the plane landed a ramp agent, an employee of Menzies Aviation, was found inside the front cargo hold. According to Alaska Airlines the cargo hold is pressurized and temperature-controlled. The employee told authorities he had fallen asleep. The worker appeared OK but was taken to a hospital as a precaution the CBC News reported 13 April 2015.


This is going to cost the Airline dearly and it would certainly be investigated. It is hard to imagine that one can fall asleep without fellow workers realizing it. Did the employee actually sneaked into the cargo hold intentionally? Once he realized the compartment was pressurized and temperature-controlled he panicked and start banging away. Upon being rescued, he conveniently use sleeping-on-the-job as an excuse.


My Comments

They should have more safety procedure to enter and exit pressurized and temperature-controlled cargo hold in future.

Light and Easy Talk: 3-Year-Old Shoots, Kills Baby Brother

REBLOG=>Veronica Glowsome

A one-year-old boy was shot dead by his three-year-old brother on 12 April 2015. Chief Calvin Williams said, "It's a sad day for Cleveland. This fascination that we have with handguns, not just in this city but in this country, has to stop. This is a senseless loss of life." Investigation had not determined where the shooting came from and how it was left within reach of a child. Braylon Robinson was taken to a nearby hospital and later pronounced dead, the CBS News reported.


My Comments

There are many unreported negligence of this nature. The question is when majority opinion will do something about it.

Think Small to Design Websites for Mobile

Deciding on picture size is my next task in getting my website to be mobile friendly. In my previous blog on this topic, I figured that reducing the size of navigation menu is a good place to start to design a website to fit mobile device. I used single word for title and double word for subtitle. This seems to work out some of the problem. I figure the next step would be to have a universal width for all pictures. Ideally the picture could be stretch or shrunk to fit across the multiple platforms without losing too much picture quality.

Given the size of webpages, stretching and shrinking a picture is not the real problem. Pictures who are magnify twice or reduce by half are never too shabby when it comes to quality. This should be enough do the trick to fit an image into a website. The bigger concern is manipulated images sometimes take a longer time to load. The 4G phones are great for speed but as the best for the current technology they are a minority user. Most people would have the lower 3G speed on their phones. The loyalist to old phone will still surf with 2G and there are still a number of these mobile surfers out there. These people will favor sites who were sufficiently fast for their devices.

I went window shopping for mobile phones using google and decided that I have 3 categories to please. Based on their minimum screen width, I simply name them mini (80 pixels), midi (321 pixels) and maxi (481). After throwing some math around, I decided that all images on my website will be 240 pixels wide. Shrinking 240 to 80 (the lower end of the mini) is one-third reduction. This will likely cause some problem in loading speed. For the higher end of the mini (320 pixels), the image is stretch less than 50% which is acceptable. For the 481 pixels width, there is no stretching of image. The image with text displayed by the side will be at least half of the screen.

Terminologies in Casino Gambling Tips

I now had all my pictures resize to 240 pixels width. Going through the pictures one by one had been a tedious exercise. Some of my image were name by their sizes. A cat image, for example, had been named cat330x250. The 330 represent the width and 250 is for the height. I still maintain the old name of the image. It would sound silly but once something is publish it is not advisable to make changes. Keeping the old name will ensure that people who link my pictures will not get a blank image. I actually have three manga pages outstanding. These three cartoons are at least 600 pixels wide. The task will be to break them down to smaller pictures who are 240 pixels wide. The main picture that will adopt the old name while new pictures will carry the old name with a sequential numbering suffix.

Going through image by image can also make you see things from a different angle. I redraw two images. I hope the people who had link the old pictures prefer the new pictures. I had also came up with 5 new pictures. These are for the pages which previously did not have a picture. The remaining task, unless new development crops up, I will drop the navigation menu for the mini users.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Paedophiles Lurks in Dark Net

Hardcore pedophiles evade detection by concealing their identity using dark net. It is accessible via a browser that masks users' identities by encryption. It has millions of users and thousands of websites. It works on a network of more than 6,000 computer servers span around the world that redirect signals to hide users' locations.

Dark net was originally developed by the U.S. military. To help protestors in China, Russia and Iran evade censorship, it is still partly funded by the U.S. government but pedophiles had abused this facility. A recent British study found that 80 percent of traffic to sites located only on the dark net were related to child pornography.

Hans Guijt and his colleagues at Terre des Hommes Netherlands, a child protection organization, attempted to trap pedophiles. The created digital puppet called Sweetie that looks and sounds like a 10-year-old girl from the Philippines. "In the 10 weeks' time that we were active on the Internet we were hit by more than 20,000 people, 20,000 men mainly, who were trying to get in contact with us to engage us in sexual activities," Guijt told CBS News. He added that they can't be so easily caught because they're using the dark net the CBS News reported on 9 April 2015.

10-year-old digital puppet, Sweetie

Greg Virgin, a former NSA employee turned cyber security consultant, who's now helping U.S. child protection groups is trouble by this awful realization. "We found one site where users openly advertised the ages of the children they were interested in," Virgin said. "The average youngest age they were seeking for girls was zero years old. And the average age for boys was one."

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Filling Bottles: Which Diet Plans Really Pay Off?

REBLOG=>Sue DaJi - Wrote

Which weight program pay-off and which ones does not work? Researchers at Johns Hopkins had done the work for you and they published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on 6 April 2015. They reviewed clinical trials on the biggest players in the commercial weight-loss programs, including Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and Nutrisystem, Medifast and OPTIFAST, the CBS News reported.


John Hopkins researchers studied 4,200 cases and found only a handful met the requirement of reliability. Diet plans that worked are those which were reinforced by data instituting that participants on average lost more weight after one year than people who were either dieting on their own were. Medical contributor Dr. Holly Phillips told "CBS This Morning" that she is always flabbergasted when asked which plans works. With this research she can now give a scientific answer.


weight loss

This research will serve as an advice to two-third of the American population who were are obese. Before ditching out hundreds of dollars on packaged meals, nutrition shakes, or counseling sessions, they could consult this research which ones are most effective in the long run. American are expected to spend $2.5 billion on commercial diet plans and services in 2014. Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig were highlighted as those that were effective. Nutrisystem was good but lasted only 3 to 6 months. The "very-low calorie programs" namely; Health Management Resources (HMR), Medifast, and OPTIFAST showed the benefits diminished by the 6-month mark. Atkins helps but not as much as with some competing diet programs. The Ornish diet was excluded because it is primarily focused on heart health rather than weight loss.


Dr. Phillips said the most successful plans had in common: it incorporated social support and teamwork. "The only diets that work are those that you stick with, and if you have some companionship along the way, you're more likely to do it," she said. The Zone diet was not reviewed by the researchers because unlike other weight-loss plans in the study, Zone does not include any behavioral or social support.



My Comments

This research is going to get a lot of people going to Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. It is a good time to buy Jenny Craig shares.

On Empty Thoughts: Beaten-up Child Molester Gets 25 Years

REBLOG=>Guerrilla Gamblers - Wrote

Raymond Frolander was has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after he pleaded no contest to lewd and lascivious molestation of an eleven-year-old child at an apartment in Daytona Beach, Florida. The sentence was pronounce on the 18-year-old on 3 April 2015 by a Volusia County judge. Frolander was found unconscious at the time of the arrest resulting from being beaten up by the victim’s father.


Raymond Frolander

The incident took place on 19 July 2014. The victim's father told police that he attacked Frolander immediately when he walked in and found Frolander abusing his son. The victim's father called 911 when Frolander was unconscious. Frolander was motionless on the living room floor when the officers arrive. He had several knots on his face from bruising and was bleeding from the mouth. The 911 dispatcher asked if any weapons were involved and the victim's father said "my foot and my fist."


The 11-year-old later told child protective investigators that Frolander has molested him since he was 8 years old. The father has not been charged with any crime. Daytona Beach Police Chief Mike Chitwood said, "Dad was acting like a dad. I don't see anything we should charge the dad with. "You have an 18-year-old who has clearly picked his target, groomed his target and had sex with the victim multiple times." Frolander was charged with sexual battery on a child under 12, CBS News reported.



Veronica Glowsome Comments

He may be beaten up read good but it was not brutal. Although his face is slightly disfigure, there were no fractures to his skull. The police were right not to charge the dad of any crime.


My Comments

Pictures makes things look unfair. Veron had gone through, "Why the victim's father is not procuted?" Then again we think Frolander should not get 25 years after being beaten like that. From the victim being 8 until 11 years of age is a very long time. Frolander could be charged with many counts of sexual abuse.

Monday, April 6, 2015

Time Is a Thief: POW Vivisection Display at New Kyushu Museum

REBLOG>Time Is a Thief: POW Vivisection Display at New Kyushu Museum

Amenda Steeles' Original Blog

A newly opened Japanese museum exposed evidence of war crime during the World War II. The museum is situated on the campus of Kyushu University in Japan. The museum, opened on April 4, features the history of medical science of the university in the past 110 years. A total of 63 items on display. The notable exhibits at the museum showed the evidence of eight US pilots vivisected by professors of the university in 1945.


The victims were eight airmen of the U.S. B-29 bomber. The aircraft was downed near the border between Kumamoto and Oita prefectures. According to the exhibit, several professors injected diluted sea water into the pilots and dissected their lungs and other organs to observe how long the victims would live after the operation, the Japan Times reported on 4 April 2015.




All eight pilots eventually died. One professor committed suicide when the war ended. The other 14 faculty members were either sentenced to life-in-prison or handed the death penalty for committing war crimes. The school treated the topic as a taboo and avoided mentioning it in public over the years. At a meeting of professors at the School of Medicine in March, the university agreed to face up to the campus' 'dark history.'



My Comments

It is good of the professors to tell the truth. Now they don't have to hide.

Carpe Diem: Seize the Day: Revenge Porn Operator Gets 18 Years

REBLOG>Carpe Diem: Seize the Day: Revenge Porn Operator Gets 18 Years


Phil Andows' Original Blog

Kevin Bollaert, who was convicted of 27 felonies for operating a "revenge porn" website in California, was sentenced Friday to 18 years in prison. He had been found guilty in February of six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft. He created a website that allowed people to post lewd images of people without their knowledge. The sexually explicit material, primarily of women, was routinely posted by angry former boyfriends and ex-husbands, authorities said. It contained their real names and links to their Facebook profiles.


Kevin Bollaert

Bollaert used another website solicited payments from people who wanted to have their photographs deleted. He charged $250 to $350 for taking down the photos. The site made about $30,000 the attorney general's office said. "Sitting behind a computer, committing what is essentially a cowardly and criminal act will not shield predators from the law or jail. We will continue to be vigilant and investigate and prosecute those who commit these deplorable acts," Attorney General Kamala Harris.


Bollaert defense attorney admitted her client made moral transgressions but wasn't legally responsible for the 10,170 photos submitted in the year the websites operated, the CNN reported on 3 April 2015. Bollaert's father apologized to the victims during Friday's hearing, saying "how sorry we are here today because of a shameful, stupid, inappropriate thing my son did. My heart goes out to all of you."



My Comments

I hope this will deter this form of crime.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

My Mobile-friendly Website

Google wrote me a warning letter about 2 weeks ago asking me to make my website more mobile friendly. Google said the increase demand in mobile phone browsing had been tremendous. Well, it is not a warning for doing something that pissed google off. It was actually a concerned notification. Google anticipated that the wave of mobile surfers will get stronger with the passage of time and webmasters were advised to cater to their needs. If I were to take it as a friendly notice I don’t need to do anything. I choose to take it as a stern warning so that I will have to adapt before I get left out.

Heck! I don't have the slightest clue where to start. I hope I could just wave a magic wand with some code and bingo! Fortunately, google is a good place to start looking for those hocus pocus code. Knowing the right keyword to punch into google would help. Next comes the endless list of reading materials on the technology to make your website flexible to multiple devices. Climbing the steep learning curve was no fun. It’s just nothing but reading without having enough knowledge to start doing something.

I concluded that it was about starting small. Fit the small screen then the bigger ones and eventually the desktop. This calls for a re-engineering as my website was catered for desktop size. I have started with reducing the size of my menu. I used single word titles for the menu items to shorten it for mobile size. Sub menu items could use double or triple word titles. Whoopee, I managed nail down some of the problem. For screen smaller than 320 pixels wide, I may have to do away with the menu. I will get around to this but the next step would be resizing all my images. I am going to do a lot of experimenting to find a good size that could be stretch or shrunk to fit across the platform without losing too much picture quality.

My Mobile Size Home Page

Seeking Enlightenment: Trans-Siberian Highway

REBLOG>Seeking Enlightenment: Trans-Siberian Highway
Sophia Logica's Original Blog

Motivated by China's plan to rebuild the silk road, Russia Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin has proposed a plan for a massive trans-Siberian highway to link America. Yakunin said the road would connect Russia with North America via Russia's far eastern Chukotka region, across the Bering Strait and into Alaska's Seward Peninsula, the CNN reported based on the Siberian Times dated 23 March 2015. According to the Alaska Public Lands Information Centers, the shortest distance between mainland Russia and mainland Alaska is approximately 88 kilometers (55 miles).

Trans-Siberian Highway

The project is dubbed the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development (TEPR). It will put up a new train network and oil and gas pipelines alongside the existing Trans-Siberian Railway. The distance between Russia's western and eastern borders is roughly 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles). The main route of the Trans-Siberian railway runs from Moscow to Vladivostok and covers 9,258 kilometers.

The main obstacle would be the isolated region of Alaska. Nome would be the nearest town after crossing the Bearing Strait. The next major city would be Fairbanks which is separate by 836 kilometers (520 miles) of desolate terrain. Being the second largest city in Alaska, Canada and 48 contiguous U.S. states can be reached by road. On the European side CNN fancifully calculated the trip from London to Alaska via Moscow might cover about 12,978 kilometers (8,064 miles). Assuming a road to Nome were ever built a fantasy road trip from London to New York might cover 20,777 kilometers (12,910 miles).


Phil Andows' Comments

Vladimir Yakunin never said anything above connecting Nome to Fairbanks because this is not their sovereignty. CNN, seem5s to enjoy sneering at Yakunin where this stretch of road is concern. When Alaska studied the feasibility of connecting Nome, there was no reason for it due to its seclusion. If there is a possibility to trade with the Russian, it would be a different ball game.


My Comments

Phil, I think Alaska had no choice but to connect Nome. If the Silk Road is establish, America will miss out on a land route to Asia. If the Russian come up with their part, Alaska will connect Nome. The question is the 55 miles across Bearing Sea. By contrast the Golden Gate at San Francisco is only 3 miles long.

Jack of All Trades: Lincoln Continental Makes a Comeback

REBLOG>Jack of All Trades: Lincoln Continental Makes a Comeback:

Jack Omnitrade's Original Blog

Lincoln Continental is making a comeback. It is poised to restore its lost glamor decades ago. The Continental is about the same length as a Mercedes-Benz S-class or long-wheelbase BMW 7-series. Cadillac’s new flagship sedan is the other contender in the high-end luxury cars market that will give the Continental a run for its money.

The Lincoln Motor Company, Ford's luxury division, mostly sold improved versions of Ford cars with little difference apart from the design and some added features. Ford boasts that the Continental has a new turbocharged engine not available in any Ford brand car. Lincoln has a reclining rear passenger seat with a foot rest. A fold out table with an attached tablet computer and a champagne cooler were added to its features.

Lincoln Continental

Lincoln Continental’s backwards-opening rear doors was a stylish icon of the Kennedy era. The Continental name also resonates among Chinese car buyers, according to Ford executives, despite the fact that Lincolns only went on sale there last year, the CNN reported on 30 March 2015.


Guerrilla Gamblers' Comments

I was fascinated by the backwards-opening rear doors when I visited North America.

Lincoln Continental

My Comments

I love the classic Guerrilla Gamblers showed above. Since Lincoln Continental is doing well in China, it will spread to other parts of Asia.

Light and Easy Talk: Solar-powered Aircraft Lands in China

REBLOG>Light and Easy Talk: Solar-powered Aircraft Lands in China:

Veronica Glowsome's Original Blog

Setting off on 9 March from Abu Dhabi to circumnavigate the world, the Solar Impulse 2 (Si2) became the first ever single-seater solar aircraft to enter China in Chongqing airport early on Tuesday (31 March 2015) morning local time (1735 UTC). She made four stops before arriving in China. The distance of 1,468 kilometers from Muscat, Oman to Ahmedabad, India was the longest distance covered by a solar-powered flight. Another record was set for solar-powered flight with a speed of 117 knots (216 kilometers per hour) reached during the stretch from Varanasi, India to Mandalay, Myanmar.


With a width of about 72 meters, the Si2 is wider than a Boeing 747 jet. She only weighs 2.3 tons which slightly heavier than a sedan. She employed more than 17,000 solar cells on her wings to power up four electric motors. Solar Impulse 2 is expected to complete the 35,000 km journey within five months [see my previous blog]. It had charted an average speed is 70 kilometers per hour. The Si2 was created by Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg of Switzerland will take turns to pilot the plane in the round the world trip.


Solar Impulse 2 in Flight

The flight from Myanmar to Chongqing took 20-and-a-half hours. Flying above the mountainous Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan meant a steep climb at the beginning of the journey. Flying at high altitude, Piccard had to wear an oxygen mask in the 3.8 square-meter, unpressurized cockpit as temperatures dropped to minus 20 degrees celsius on the 1,375-kilometer (854-mile) route. Strong low-level winds greeted the flight as it arrived in Chongqing. It flies next to the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing before heading to Hawaii. It is due back in Abu Dhabi in August after its journey of 12 stages, the Deutshe Welle reported.



My Comments

I wish Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg a successful and safe trip. The future of fuel powered by the sun depends on it.

Pest in Midst: Mercury was Painted Black

REBLOG>Pest in Midst: Mercury was Painted Black
XingCai Tang's Original Blog

The planet Mercury reflects much less light compared to our own moon, which is about the same size. This had scientist bewildered for a long time. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Brown University and the Planetary Sciences Institute say they may have found the solution. Megan Bruck Syal, a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore, said that it was "effectively painted black".

 Planet Mercury

Mercury is the planet that is closest to the sun. Compared to the moon, there is are much more carbon dust flung off from comets close to the sun. The researchers say Mercury is surrounded by 50 times the amount of carbon dust than our moon. For ages scientist believes that microscopic meteorites spawned from carbon-rich comets may have contributed enough dark-hued carbon to reduce the amount of reflected light.

Tests using a big NASA gun made to simulate planetary impacts on a small-scale seem to show the theory is plausible, the authors say. "We show that carbon acts like a stealth darkening agent," said Peter Schultz, a professor emeritus of geological sciences at Brown University. "From the standpoint of spectral analysis, it's like an invisible paint," the CNN reported on 31 March 2015.


My Comments

They should use the big NASA gun to estimate how long will it takes for Mercury to go totally dark.

Monday, March 30, 2015

Gambling Requires Skills

I tried to convince my readers that gambling requires skill. There are tons of researches that would conclude otherwise. In a recent (2012) study Professor Gerhard Meyer, of the University of Bremen's Institute of Psychology and Cognition Research, suggested that poker was chiefly a game of chance. There were 300 participants in Prof Meyer's research. They played 60 hands poker each, on tables of six. The players were classified as 'expert' and 'average' players based on their ability to make money from good, bad and average hands. The research found that 'expert' players lost less money on bad hands, but did no better than 'average' players on mediocre hands - and made slightly less on good ones. Prof Meyer concluded that "poker players overestimate the skill factor in their play".

A research studied 456 million hands of poker from a year's worth of online game. In just a few hands the better-performing players fared better half the time. Their success rate gradually increased until they played 1,471 hands. Given that frequency, they could do better at least 75 per cent of the time. Dr Dennie van Dolder, of the University of Nottingham's School of Economics, said the study showed 'skilled players will consistently outperform less skilled players if enough hands...are played.'

Researchers from the University of Nottingham, working with colleagues from Erasmus University Rotterdam and VU University Amsterdam, also noted that players who finished in the top one per cent in the first half of the year were 12 times more likely than others to repeat the feat in the second half. Writer and TV presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell, one of Britain's top professional players, has won more than £1.5m - including £400,000 at a single event. Dr van Dolder said, "It's up to legislators to decide whether the role of chance diminishes fast enough for poker to be considered a game of skill," the Daily Mail reported on 25 March 2015.

Light and Easy Talk: Middle-class Kids' Poor Academics

REBLOG>Light and Easy Talk: Middle-class Kids' Poor Academics

Veronica Glowsome's Original Blog

According to the Department of Education 40% of middle-class college entrants who were high school graduates in 2004 had obtained bachelor's degrees by 2012. This implies that the ability to maintain status quo or achieve upward social mobility on the economic ladder is endangered. A college degree used to be a stepping stone to the middle class. Today had become a prerequisite to sustain the status.


The reasons for the failure were not known as researchers focus were on lower-income children getting through college. The Department of Education tracks high school graduates for the year 2004 whose families earned between $46,000 and $99,000 for the first case periodically check on them until 2012. In the second study they kept track of freshmen in 2003 from families with incomes between $60,000 and $92,000 and check on them until 2009. Both stats found that fewer than half leaving with a bachelor's degree. The first case recorded 40 percent graduated while the second chalked 45 percent.


Middle-class Kids

Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce said bachelor degree holders earn $2.3 million over their lifetime, on average. That's $600,000 more than someone with an associate degree and $800,000 more than those who left college with no diploma. "It's a lot harder to maintain your middle class status without a degree," Carnevale told CNN Money on 25 March 2015.



My Comments

Living in the digital age had cause them to be a pampered generation.

Pest in Midst: The Great FireWall of China

REBLOG>Pest in Midst: The Great FireWall of China:

XingCai Tang's Original Blog

Today China can be deemed as successful in their massive internet surveillance and content control task. The Great FireWall of China had managed to keep out any content that do not go in tandem with government policies. Although VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks had been used to get around the firewall, recent crackdown by the authorities had shut them down. Roseann Rife, the East Asia research director of Amnesty International, anticipated that the success of the Chinese model will attract buyers from countries like Russia or Egypt.


China Internet Censorship

Back in Jan 1999, MIT Media Lab founder and technology pundit Nicholas Negroponte declared that a "healthy disrespect for authority" was required for any successful Internet industry. A year later, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton announced that "liberty will spread by cell phone and cable modem" and that any attempt to control the Internet in China would be "like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall." Things certainly had changed now, the CNN on 25 March 2015.


While Napoleon Bonaparte was wise not to awake the "Sleeping Giant", arrogant Bill Clinton certainly did not learn for it. Where there is a will, there will be ways and China should not be underestimated. With one-third of the world's population, China had more web users than the population of the United States. What they had is human capital and given time they will find a solution.



My Comments

I agree with Negroponte that a "healthy disrespect for authority" was required for any successful Internet industry. There is a little rebel in everyone. In the Chinese case, it is take it or leave. A censored internet is better than no internet at all.

Carpe Diem: Seize the Day: Redheads Lack Sunlight

REBLOG>Carpe Diem: Seize the Day: Redheads Lack Sunlight:


Phil Andows' Original Blog


If sun tanning darkens skin tone, then insufficient sun should result in fairer skin and red hair. This was discovered by scientist after having studied the gene evolution of 1,000 people from Spain. "The 'ginger gene,' or 'V6OL allele,' showed up 50,000 years ago after humans left Africa for colder climates. This gene made human’s skin lighter, as they were exposed to less vitamin D from the sun" [Irish Central, 26 March 2015].



Irish Central referred to another study by the BritishDNA found on the Mail Online two years ago. The BritishDNA study was based on data from 2,343 people who have undergone DNA tests to learn more about their ancestry. They created the first-ever map detailing the distribution of red-headed genes. They looked at three different variants of the MC1R gene which causes red hair; those with 151-Cysteine-red have a 70,000 year old variant that probably arose in West Asia, those with 160-Tryptophan-red are descendants of someone who probably also lived in West Asia 70,000 years ago, and 294-Histidine-reds belong to a much younger group who come from a European who lived about 30,000 years ago. The BritishDNA concluded that for a child to develop red hair, both parents must be carriers of one of these red-hair gene variants. But even then there is only a 25 per cent their child will be born ginger.



Map on redheaded genes concentration by BritainsDNA



Irish central also points to ScotlandsDNA Project in 2012 that found the Celts flaming red hair was caused by the weather. The experts believe that the gloomy climate in Scotland has seen a deliberate genetic adaptation. The red hair helps to take advantage of sunny days and allows the body to absorb more vitamin D. Unfortunate, redheads suffer more discrimination per head of population than ethnic minorities. The Centre for Equality Policy Research said that, "A job applicant with ginger hair is seven times more likely to be rejected than a dark-haired applicant, and eight times more likely than a fair-haired applicant."




My Comments

Scientist says red is a color that ignites anger. I suspect this as the reason they get reject for job vacancies.

Filling Bottles: Islamic Ring in Viking Grave

REBLOG>Filling Bottles: Islamic Ring in Viking Grave:

Sue DaJi's Original Blog

Vikings ties with the Islamic caliphate existed during the 9th century. Ancient texts and tales recorded the Vikings sojourn to the Islamic caliphate but they usually include references to "giants and dragons". A finger ring excavated during the late 19th century that was inscribed with Arabic letters indicate such ties and researchers led by Stockholm University biophysicist Sebastian Wärmländer are re-examining it.


The Ring Excavated at Birka

The ring was excavated Swedish grave in the town of Birka, on Björkö Island, about 19 miles (30 kilometers) from Stockholm. The town was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1993 because it was an important Viking trading center. Arabic Kufic writing was inscribed on the ring. The letters appear to read "AL_LLH," researchers say, which they interpret as meaning "for/to (the approval of) Allah." It is only ring with an Arabic inscription ever found at a Scandinavian archaeological site, the CNN reported on 19 March 2015.


The ring belong to a women clad in traditional Viking attire but her ethnicity was unknown due to the decomposed state of the bones in the grave. "It is not impossible that the woman herself, or someone close to her, might have visited -- or even originate from -- the Caliphate (which then stretched from Tunisia to the borders of India) or its surrounding regions," the researchers said.



My Comments

Since this goes as far as India, the giants could refer to gigantic animals. The elephant can be seen as a giant horse. For a wild guess they regarded the giraffes as dragons.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Seeking Enlightenment: The Corporate Spy Game

REBLOG>Seeking Enlightenment: The Corporate Spy Game:

Sophia Logica' Original Blog

Insider threat is an expansive affair for companies where information is vital for business. "In an embarrassing episode for Morgan Stanley, the bank dismissed an employee earlier this year for taking information about an estimated 350,000 clients of its wealth-management division [Bloomberg 12 March 2015]." The dangers of hiring a Trojan Horse is ever-present in this business.


The Trojan Horse

Professional Input

This Bloomberg article had given some insights on corporate espionage. It reported that about 20 companies sell tools to monitor employee behavior. Dune Lawrence, Bloomberg's journalist, interviewed some players that sells software to spy on your employee. Most of them were former FBI agents and their inputs can be used to understand the espionage game.


Financial Stresses

Stroz Friedberg, a New York-based consulting firm, specializes in digital forensics. They use linguistic and behavioral analysis techniques developed by the FBI. It evaluates the content of employees e-mails and other communications. Warning will be triggered if terms indicating financial stresses were encountered. "Late rent" or "medical bills" are cited as instances of keywords the software seeks.


Behavioral Patterns

Employees activities were monitored to create a profile of each employee and establish a "normal" behavior. Suspicious activities will be flag when there is a deviation from the norm. An algorithm is used to place to risk score for users based on what danger they may pose to the organization. Employees getting ready to leave with highly sensitive data start doing things they hadn’t before, such as changing their e-mail habits or downloading thousands of documents from a database.


Privacy Issues

Edward Stroz, founder Stroz Friedberg and a former FBI agent, says companies have found this idea too intrusive in the past but the perception had changed in the past year. Like it or not, competitors will send spies to get information from the inside. They also prey on dissatisfied employes or those with financial stresses. Some form of monitor is better than none at all. Conscience had Securonix, a spy on employee software firm based in Los Angeles, raising the question on how much is too much. Dune Lawrence recorded Igor Baikalov, a former security executive at Bank of America and chief scientist at Securonix, with this dilemma.



My Comments

Call it paranoia if you like but it is better to take precaution than to be sorry. Some of these losses are in millions. Employees who work in industries where information is costly should accept that their privacy would be invaded.

Jack of All Trades: China: Mummified Monk Statue Stolen

REBLOG> Jack of All Trades: China: Mummified Monk Statue Stolen:

Jack Omnitrade's Original Blog

China claims that the Buddha statue, exhibited at the Hungarian Natural History Museum, was stolen from Fujian Province. This statue was a phenomenon because a 1,000-year-old mummified monk was found encased in it. The China Daily reported on 24 March 2015 that China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage had taken the necessary steps to retrieve the statue.


The mummified monk statue is now in the possession of a Dutch collector. The mummified monk statue made its debut when it first showcased at Drents Museum in the Netherlands last year. The mummy was discovered when a collector brought it to an expert for restoration. Subsequently a team of researchers and scientists was brought in to do a comprehensive study. CT scan show the mummy sitting on a bundle of cloth covered in Chinese inscriptions, revealing its identity as a Buddhist monk called Liuquan, the CNN reported on 23 March 2015.


CT Scan of Mummified Monk Statue

China's Claim

According to the documents, the monk was a local man who gained a reputation for curing diseases and promoting Buddhist principles. He passed away at the age of 37. Pictures provided by the Da Tian Museum, Fujian and those taken during the exhibition were found to have identical facial expressions as well as scratches on the stomach and the hand. The shape, height and weight of the Dutch collector's statue matches the measurements provided by the Da Tian Museum. The same Chinese character is also carved on the cushion that the Buddha sits on. "There are five proofs of evidence that show that the Buddha statue is the relic stolen in 1995 from a Chinese ancestral temple in Fujian province's Yangchun village," said a spokesman of the Da Tian Museum in Fujian.


The Dutch Collector's Claim

On March 23, the Dutch collector issued a statement saying the statue was acquired in 1994 from a sincere Chinese friend in the art circles. The statue was shipped to his residence in Amsterdam from a workshop in Hong Kong in 1995. Coincidentally, a Buddha relic was reported stolen in China in 1995. The Chinese and Dutch governments will seek a diplomatic solution to address the issue.



My Comments

The Chinese will get back their mummified monk Zhang LiuQuan. The issue would be the compensation for the current Dutch owner.

On Empty Thoughts: Behold the Teddy Bunny

REBLOG> On Empty Thoughts: Behold the Teddy Bunny:


Guerrilla Gamblers' Original Blog

Tianshan had been known by kung fu fiction fans to be the home for endless generations of invincible swordsmen. Endowed by majestic landscape, this is the favored choice of movie makers for continuous sword clashing in midair as the actors hang down the cliff from suspended strings. Now Tianshan holds another Chinese treasure – the Ili Pika. I guess you can call this creature a teddy bunny. It is rabbit that looks like a teddy bear – a fantastic combination for cute.


Ili Pika

There are less than 1,000 of these cute little teddy bunnies around which make them rarer than panda. These mammals are natives to the Tianshan on the mountain range in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China, says conservationist Li Weidong. Initially they were named Ochotona iliensis, in 1983. He estimates its numbers have declined by almost 70% since its discovery. "I discovered the species, and I watched as it became endangered. If it becomes extinct in front of me, I'll feel so guilty," Li told CNN.


The Ili Pika were 20 centimeters in length. They live on sloping bare rock faces and feed on grasses at high elevations. Global warming had affected their habitat. The altitude of permanent snow has risen in the Tianshan due to rising temperatures and receding glaciers. The teddy bunnies were forced retreat to mountain tops. Initially they inhabit at elevations between 3,200 to 3,400 meters. Now they have retreated to elevations of 4,100 meters. Li said.




My Comments

Teddy Bunnies of Tianshan, China is an explosive combination for cute, but they face extinction.

Time Is a Thief: The Ancient Tentacle Erotica

REBLOG> Time Is a Thief: The Ancient Tentacle Erotica

Amenda Steels' Original Blog

Tentacle erotica is a type of pornography that integrates traditional pornography with some elements of bestiality. They come under hentai titles with tentacle creatures having sexual intercourse with female characters. Fantasy, horror, or science-fiction themes were used to provide the storyline. Creatures with tentacles in erotic setting existed before animated pornography. The famous woodblock print by Hokusai Katsushika appeared in 1920. It was entitled “the Dream of the Fisherman's Wife”.


Shunga or erotic art were seen as sexual guidance for young couple during Hokusai’s times. It was the Japanese Karma Sutra enjoyed by men and women of all classes and superstitions and customs supports this claim. Samurai used shunga as an amulet against death. Merchant treat them as talisman to protect their warehouse from fire. [Source Wikipedia]. Shunga is literally translated as spring art. For Japanese spring refer to the blossom period and it was traditional to present a bride with ukiyo-e depicting erotic scenes from the Tale of Genji.


picture from wikipedia

The picture was rated third sexiest works of art ever by the Guardian. Pablo Picasso was took second place in the Guardian's rating.Ironically Picasso was greatly influence by Hokusai. Picasso painted his own version in 1903 that has been shown next to Hokusai's original in exhibits on the influence of 19th-century Japanese art on Picasso's work [Source Wikipedia].


Western critics such as Edmond de Goncourt and Jack Hillier interpreted the work as a rape scene. Based on the text above the image, the woman and the creatures express their mutual sexual pleasure from the encounter. Scholar Danielle Talerico is in the opinion that de Goncourt and Hillier would have seen it apart from the Kinoe no Komatsu collection and without understanding the text and visual references, depriving it of its original context.



My Comments

I looked at Picasso which was ranked second place by the Guardian and it seems to fall shot of Hokusai.

picasso

Ranked on first place was Egon Schiele. I must agree that Schiele semi-nude portrayals have a filthy quality, depicting women with not only lust and adoration but a dirty-minded frankness that transports his art from the merely beautiful to the wildly erotic. It is something to look at and just laugh.


Egon Schiele

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Twitter Bans Revenge Porn

Revenge porn is spreading intimate photos or videos without the subject's consent. In a memo to employees last month, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said he was embarrassed about the company's reputation and took "personal responsibility" for the company's failure to address the problem. Costolo wrote, "We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years," CNNMoney reported on 12 March 2015.

The CDA 230

Section 230 Communications Decency Act (CDA 230) is perhaps the most influential law to protect the kind of innovation that has allowed the Internet to flourish since 1996. It states that, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." This gives immunity to online intermediaries that host or republish speech that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do, [Electronic Frontier Foundation]. CDA 230 makes America a safe haven for websites that want to provide a platform for controversial or political speech and a legal environment favorable to free expression. Propagating pornographic materials was not on the intention of the CDA 230. Costolo did the right thing by admitting shame.

Yishan Wong and Reddit

Revenge was not the motive behind last year's major hack of celebrity photos. These images were heavily distributed on Reddit, and the company was criticized for being slow to remove them. Yishan Wong, Reddit's CEO said there was no plan to change policy to keep Reddit's anything goes image. "We will try not to interfere - not because we don't care, but because we care that you make your choices between right and wrong," Wong said in a blog post. Later Wong resigned abruptly and Ellen Pao takes over as interim CEO CNNMoney 25 Feb 2015. Neither vengeance nor pornography are acceptable norms of society. Costolo must have taken Wong's sudden resignation as a warning.

Revenge Porn Online

Law against Revenge Porn

Revenge porn is a crime in Israel that faces a maximum sentence of 5 years imprisonment but the punishment had not deter the crime. In October 2013 California had passed law to make revenge pornography illegal but it was criticized for not being comprehensive. The law only prosecute if the distributor is the photographer. Posting your ex-girlfriend's selfie does not count. According to a survey by the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), up to 80% of revenge porn victims had taken the photos of themselves. The CCRI is a group founded by revenge porn victims and activists to push for legal reform in the United States. [CNN, October 2013].

Don't Eat Three Meals A Day

REBLOG> Carpe Diem: Seize the Day: Don't Eat Three Meals A Day:
Phil Andows' Original Blog

"Civilized" Eating Habits.

The Europeans continued to eat at ridged times when they settled in America. Their meals were made up of light meal in the morning, a heavier cooked meal at midday, and a meal similar to the first later in the day. In contrast, the native eating times and portion varied according to the season. Since this eating pattern is similar to animals, the settlers reasoned that the natives were uncivilized.


Change in Lifestyle and Eating Habits

Meat was added to breakfast and dinner as the settlers prosper. The industrial revolution brought people away from their homes and turned lunch into a casual affair. The cooked meal was shifted to dinner when the people get back from work. Although lunch and dinner were switched, the amount of food consumed daily did not change.


three meals image


The Heavy Breakfast

From an active farming lifestyle to a sedentary one, "People were still eating these giant country breakfasts," says Carroll. Soon, doctors reported that more of their patients were suffering from indigestion. Nutritionist suggested a lighter breakfast and the Kellogg brothers took this opportunity to promote corn flakes as a healthy alternative to heavy breakfasts. As time progresses breakfast became known as a meal for health food. Fruit-grower associations began their ad campaigns to choke the world with newly discovered vitamins.


Science Indifferent to Breakfast

Breakfast gets glorified and the interested party warn about skipping the most important meal of the day. This doctrine continues until today but science showed otherwise. A 2014 study by the University of Bath showed that breakfast had zero effect on metabolic rate. The University of Alabama concurred the finding with a similar study. These researches affirm a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2010. In the study one group ate three meals a day, while another ate six with the same total calorie count. No weight or hormonal differences between the groups were found. Similarly in 2014, University of Warwick researchers found no difference in metabolism between a group of women that ate two meals a day and another group that ate five.


Fasting Improves Metabolic Rate

As it turn out research are proving that fasting improves metabolism. Mark Mattson, a neuroscientist at the National Institute on Aging, has observed mice for over two decades. He found that mice who skip feedings are leaner and live longer than who don't fast. The fasting mice also have more robust brain cells. Mattson theorizes that caloric deprivation acts as a mild stress to trigger the self-defense. This wards off damage from aging, environmental toxins, and other threats. In another research, Satchidananda Panda of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, shown that periodic fasting may also prevent heart disease. Panda observed that mice consuming all of their calories within an eight-hour window were less likely to develop metabolic diseases like diabetes than those who ate whenever they pleased.


Back to Nature

Wooh the civilized settlers regiment were wrong and the dictated by nature indigenous were right. While eating dinner with your family to keep your girlish figure becomes a myth, it is very essence that keeps family together.




My Comments

Eating two meals will encourage fasting. I would make sense to pace it out accordingly. You can divide you day into three base on the time you awake and go to sleep. Take you first meal after one third of your day had passed and your second meal after two third of your day.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

New Human Species

REBLOG> Seeking Enlightenment: New Human Species:
Sophia Logica's Original Blog

Discovery at Penghu

Local fishermen in the Penghu Channel, 15 miles off the Taiwanese coast, netted in a jawbone with large teeth.

penghu

Comparing the Discovery

The jawbone doesn't seem to match any other genus of early humans.


comparing penghu
Picture from Dr. Yousuke Kaifu, an anthropologist at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo showing the jawbone discover in Penghu (center, Homo Erectus' jawbone from Java (left), and Homo Erectus jawbone from China (right).

The Penghu 1

The jawbone name "Penghu 1" by experts is believe to it existed in a time range of 200,000 to 10,000 years ago.
penghu timeline
Source : MailOnline

My Comments

With thie wide jaw they may be trace to the Red Deer Cave People in China.

Red Deer Cave People

Above is an artist's impression from MailOnline.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Filling Bottles: Put Yourself in Her Shoes

REBLOG> Filling Bottles: Put Yourself in Her Shoes:

Sue Daji's Original Blog

International Women's Day Celebration

Men across China sprinted with high heels in a race on 8 March 2015. This nationwide activity took the metaphor literally. The event was organized in good spirit as men would not acquired an empathy by wearing heels. The event managed to gather some participation from gutsy man who show up in good sport. One particular mall throw in some obstacles on the race track to make it more fun.


men running in high heels for women's day

Source China Daily


XingCaiTang's Comments

They should make men do house chores for one day next year.



My Comments

Babysitting should be included in the chores.

Jack of All Trades: Beware of Wrong La Plagne Ski Resort

REBLOG> Jack of All Trades: Beware of Wrong La Plagne Ski Resort:

Jack Omnitrade's Original Blog

La Plagne on Search Engine

The La Plange is a famous alpine ski resort in France. Just type La Plange on your search engine and the list will point you it. Some of the images that show on the search engine can enchant you. This seem like a must visit for a skier.


La Plagne Ski Resort


La Plagne on GPS

Looking up La Plagne on the GPS will result in some ambiguity. There are 3 La Plange listed on the GPS in France. A bus driver found out that choosing the wrong one was be a costly mistake and 50 Belgian tourists paid the price for his error on 9 March 2015.


The Pathetic Story

The Guardian reported that the bus driver made a 750 mile (1,200km) detour. The bus driver took the road leading to La Plagne village in the south of France near Spain, some 400 miles (600 km) southwest of the ski resort. The pathetic tourist reached their destination in the Alps 24 hours late.



My Comments

I guess as long as you get someone to move the bus it does not matter if he does not know the road.

Light and Easy Talk: Solar-powered Plane Takes First Trip Round-the-wor...

REBLOG> Light and Easy Talk: Solar-powered Plane Takes First Trip Round-the-wor...:

Veronica Glowsome's Original Blog

First Solar Power Plane Circumnavigate the World

A solar-powered aircraft took off successfully from Abu Dhabi on 9 March 2015 in its first attempt to fly around the world without any conventional fossil fuel. Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg of Switzerland will take turns to pilot the plane dubbed Solar Impulse 2 (Si2). Piccard and Borschberg, co-inventors of the Si2, will visit India, China and America before flying back to Abu Dhabi through South Europe or North Africa. The activities of the Si2 will be monitored by her control center at Monte Carlo of Monaco the Xinghua reported. Conor Lennon, communications manager of the Si2 project, told Xinhua that the control center is in charge of "meteorological data monitoring, air traffic control, mission control and flight strategy control", adding that many promotional activities would take place during the aircraft's stopover in Nanjing, China.

Si2 takes off at Abu Dhabi

Plane's Specifications

With a width of about 72 meters, the Si2 is wider than a Boeing 747 jet. She only weighs 2.3 tons which slightly heavier than a sedan. She employ more than 17,000 solar cells on her wings to power up four electric motors. Solar Impulse 2 is expected to complete the 35,000 km journey within five months.


Si2 project team at Monaco

Attempts to Fly

This first attempt to fly using power from the sun reminds me of the first successful attempt to fly by the Wright brothers. While Orville and Wilbur are always depicted as a two-man team chasing a crazy dream, Piccard and Borschberg had a great team to support them. As long as their communication do not fail, the Swiss would be rescued if there is any failure. Nonetheless, it is still a courageous project that these two Swiss are taking. Their success would make air travel cheaper in future. It may pave the way for Gene Roddenberry's USS Enterprise. Leonard Nimoy should had seen this before departing.



My Comments

This is exciting. I think the wings needs to be redesign in future. They need to capture more solar energy to make it go faster and eventually carry more passengers.

The Silk Road

REBLOG> Seeking Enlightenment: The Silk Road:
Sophia Logica's Original Blog

The Silk Road's Recent Development

China's proposals to build a modern-day trading route on the skeleton of the ancient traders' trail, known as the silk road, have been welcomed by its neighbor. The China Daily reported on 9 March 2015 that the project had led to misunderstanding and criticism. Oppositions fear this ambitious and long term project would be derailed. The Polish were supportive of the project and pledge to be part of the project. First secretary of the Polish embassy in Beijing, Wojciech Jakobiec, said "for us, the Silk Road Economic Belt is an especially important project, and we would like to participate in it."

Europeans Understanding of the Silk Road

Based on UNESCO's understanding, silk road was a recent term. They traced it to German geologist, Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen. He called the trade and communication network Die Seidenstrasse (the Silk Road). The silk road is sometimes used in the plural term because the network extend to a web of sea and land routes.

Map of The Silk Road

Baron Coining Silk Road Don't Jive

With due respect to the UNESCO, I do not think that the silk road is a recent term. The Baron lived from 5 May 1833 – 6 October 1905. UNESCO had established that silk was a monopoly of China and found its way to Rome "at some point during the first century". Such and important route could not have been named in 1877 [see Wikipedia] by the baron. I believe it had some reference to it since if was even in existence until the 17th century.

China Reference to the Silk Road

The Chinese had referred to the silk road as "silu" form as far as the recording of their chronicles existed. That goes back to the time that the prominent Chinese diplomat Zhang Qian of the Han Dynasty (206BC—220AD). The UNESCO article also concur with this date. Since this is not about conquest there was not much to hide. The Chinese account had not been inconsistent with the accounts of those they had traded with.

The Meaning of Silu

Out of curiosity, I looked up the translation for "silu". Actually I was not surprised it meant silk road. Si is the word for silk while lu is the Chinese word for road. It is whimsical to think that such a simple name is coined up in 1877 when people who traveled the road to buy or sell silk for ages would refer to it as silk road for simplicity.


My Comments

Tracing history is not easy. What makes if even harder is facing the inconsistency that people point out. Sometimes this can just mess up your entire story and you have to redo the whole thing again.