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.

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

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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.

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?

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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

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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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.

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."

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Amenda Steels' Comments

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

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My Comments

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

Seeking Enlightenment: Naked Wedding Celebrations

REBLOG=>Sophia Logica

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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.

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.

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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

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"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.

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.

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My Comments

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

Filling Bottles: Employers Ask Illegal Questions

REBLOG=>Sue DaJi

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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.

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.

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My Comments

Hiring an employee is the biggest pain.

Pest in Midst: Asian Beer Market

REBLOG=>XingCai Tang

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

Time Is a Thief: Unusual Cargo Force Flight to Land

REBLOG=>Amenda Steels

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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.

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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."

Filling Bottles: Which Diet Plans Really Pay Off?

REBLOG=>Sue DaJi - Wrote

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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.

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.

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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

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.'

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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

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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.

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."

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My Comments

I hope this will deter this form of crime.

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.

Seeking Enlightenment: Trans-Siberian Highway

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

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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).

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).

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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.

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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

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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’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.

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Guerrilla Gamblers' Comments

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

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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

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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.

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.

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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

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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".

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.

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My Comments

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