Friday, January 25, 2013

I Can't Stop Looking at These GIFs of Illegal Activities

These illustrated GIFs by artist Stephen Vuillemin are incredible. They're rife with illegal or borderline-illegal activity, and many are in French. Even if you're a total prude and you don't understand a lick of French, you won't be able to look away. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/fDKLdrg_cqk/i-cant-stop-looking-at-these-gifs-of-illegal-activities

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Design of character profiles.

Metamorphosis: Chapter One

''...Hell can't hold me, demons can't stop me, the Gods can't scare me, and love...Ha love can't bind me. I gave up my humanity for what? to be sent back to hell...''

Owner:

Game Masters:

This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?Metamorphosis: Chapter One?. Anything posted here will also show up there.

Topic Tags:

Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.

If you have asked for me to design your characters profile or re-design it or whatever, all links to images will be left in this thread as I can't be bothered to send it over Private Messages. :D

User avatar
EternalSonata.
Member for 1 years



I think you should just leave links here to the software you use it will be easier on yourself, instead of making it for everyone. Besides you must get bored of making them. Also thanks again for the links you gave me they were helpful.

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Krillen
Member for 1 years



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Biden: Limit on magazine rounds a bigger priority

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013, to introduce legislation on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition feeding devices. Congressional Democrats are reintroducing legislation to ban assault weapons but the measure faces long odds even after last month's mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn. The measure being unveiled Thursday is authored by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who wrote the original assault weapons ban. That law expired in 2004 when Congress refused to renew it under pressure from the National Rifle Association. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013, to introduce legislation on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition feeding devices. Congressional Democrats are reintroducing legislation to ban assault weapons but the measure faces long odds even after last month's mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn. The measure being unveiled Thursday is authored by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who wrote the original assault weapons ban. That law expired in 2004 when Congress refused to renew it under pressure from the National Rifle Association. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Omar Samaha, holds a picture of his sister Reema Samaha, who was killed in the Virginia Tech. shootings, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington to introduce legislation on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition feeding devices. Congressional Democrats are reintroducing legislation to ban assault weapons but the measure faces long odds even after last month's mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn. The measure being unveiled Thursday is authored by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who wrote the original assault weapons ban. That law expired in 2004 when Congress refused to renew it under pressure from the National Rifle Association. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

(AP) ? Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he's more concerned about limiting the number of rounds in a gun magazine than about banning assault weapons that account for a small percentage of gun deaths.

Biden argued that the shooter at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., could have been slowed down if he had fewer rounds in each magazine and had to change clips more often. "Maybe if it took longer, maybe one more kid would be alive," Biden said during an online video chat on Google Plus.

The vice president led a White House gun control task force in the wake of the Newtown shooting last month. President Barack Obama said last week after Biden completed the review that he wants Congress to require background checks for all gun sales and ban both military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. The president conceded passage will be difficult, with support for gun ownership rights strong among lawmakers.

Biden says he wants a ban on assault weapons, even though he acknowledges they don't account for a large portion of gun deaths in America. He says a ban would solve part of the gun violence problem, particularly for police who can be outgunned by criminals with assault weapons.

"It is not an answer to all the problems," Biden said. But he said he views an assault-weapons ban as "a rational limitation on what type of weapons should be owned."

Biden's comments came on the same day that a group of Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, reintroduced legislation to ban assault weapons and magazines over 10 rounds. At a news conference backed by police officials, mayors and crime victims, the lawmakers acknowledged the heavy lift ahead to get the legislation through Congress.

"If anyone asks today 'Can you win this?,' we don't know, it's so uphill," Feinstein said. She said it only would happen if voters got behind the measures and called on their lawmakers to act.

Feinstein authored the original assault-weapons ban in 1994 which expired 10 years later when Congress, under pressure from the National Rifle Association, refused to extend it. There is debate about its effectiveness during the years it was in effect, in part because of loopholes that allowed gun manufacturers to work around it. Feinstein's new version is more comprehensive in defining what kinds of weapons are banned.

The NRA responded that the new bill would infringe on the Constitutional right to bear arms and that instead the focus should be on prosecuting criminals and improving the country's mental health system. "The American people know gun bans do not work, and we are confident Congress will reject Sen. Feinstein's wrong-headed approach," the NRA said in a statement.

At Feinstein's press conference, nearly a dozen different kinds of high-powered weapons were displayed that would be banned by the bill, including the kind of Bushmaster used in the Connecticut shooting.

The assault weapons ban in particular is seen as unlikely to make it through Congress, because of opposition by majority Republicans in the House and concerns from moderate Democrats in the Senate. Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has cast doubt on its prospects. Some advocacy groups are focusing their attention instead on expanding background checks, which is seen as more doable politically.

Feinstein said those Democrats with concerns about the legislation needed to ask themselves what their silence would mean.

"Sandy Hook is more eloquent testimony than any of us could possibly give," she said. "If members of this body are so insensitive to what happened to those small bodies from that Bushmaster when it all becomes known, America is hopeless."

Biden is launching the White House's promotional tour on gun control Friday with a trip to Virginia, a state that has experienced its own school shooting tragedy yet maintains an avidly pro-gun tradition. His office said Biden will hold a roundtable discussion in Richmond with experts who worked on gun safety in the wake of the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech.

Biden will be accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Jim Cole and other administration officials, as well as Sen. Tim Kaine and Rep. Bobby Scott, both Virginia Democrats.

___

Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-01-24-Gun%20Control/id-4ae48b430fd44c0c87392e30df143ccd

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BitTorrent working on file-sync app: sounds like Dropbox, calls itself Sync

BitTorrent working on filesync app sounds like Dropbox, calls itself Sync

BitTorrent has announced that it's working on its very own file-synchronization app -- and it's already looking for a limited number of test subjects for its pre-Alpha stage. So far, the premise is to offer identical copies of your files on all machines, all sounding pretty similar to how you use iCloud, Skydrive or Dropbox, although there would be no cloud-caching. According to GigaOM, files will be protected by 256-bit encryption, with native test apps for Mac, Windows and Linux (alongside NAS integration) already in testing. There's no mobile version just yet, but BitTorrent has stated that it's "committed to mobile across the board," and, well, it's still pre-Alpha. If you're up for trying another file sync service, the company is recruiting willing participants over at the source.

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Comments

Via: TNW

Source: GigaOM, BitTorrent

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/25/bittorrent-file-sync-app-sync-testing/

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Flood insurance talks 'advanced' - AOL Money UK

Source: http://money.aol.co.uk/2013/01/24/flood-insurance-talks-advanced/

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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Openframeworks: C++ for Processing Coders - GAFFTA

Logistics:

Dates: Saturday & Sunday, January 19th ? 20th
Times: 11am ? 5pm
Course Length: 12 instructional hours
Cost: $20/instruction hour, $240 total, $216 for GAFFTA Members
Location: GAFFTA, 923 Market Street Ste. 200, San Francisco, CA 94103

Overview:

openFrameworks was developed for folks using computers for creative, artistic expression, and who would like low level access to the data inside of media in order manipulate, analyze or explore.

openFrameworks is an open source C++ toolkit designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation. The toolkit is designed to work as a general purpose glue, and wraps together several commonly used libraries. The code is written to be massively cross-compatible. Right now we support five operating systems (Windows, OSX, Linux, iOS, Android) and four IDEs (XCode, Code::Blocks, and Visual Studio and Eclipse). The API is designed to be minimal and easy to grasp. Simply put, openFrameworks is a tool that makes it much easier to make things with code.

// Topics of the workshop include:

1 ? Introductions, pretty/shiny pictures, creative uses of programming, and tools/frameworks for creating. How to download/install OF on Mac/Linux/Windows, and getting the bundled examples compiled for the first time. How to start a new project. Differences between C++ and Java, in terms of philosophy, syntax, casting types, atomic variable types (int, float, double, the ?unsigned? keyword), and MAYBE pointers.

2 ? Drawing pixels, lines, polygons, and typography in 2D and 3D

3 ? Animation, playing back video, rendering frames to a PNG sequence, and

4. Reacting to input from mouse, keyboard, microphone, and webcam

6 ? Utils: file system, logging, time, format conversion, threads, network, talking to other languages (inter-process, and embedding scripting engines)

7 ? Mixing and mingling: using other APIs. Addons: introduction to addon system and demonstration of a few popular addons

8 ? More Addons: more demonstrations of more popular addons

9 ? How to write your own Addon for OpenFrameworks

10 ? OpenFrameworks for iOS and Android

11 ? Working with a Kinect and Shaders, and exploring visuals effects and generative art

12 ? Algorithms: Writing your own sort, lists, hash-maps, trees, and advantages of C++ over Java. Researching methods and using the internet to find answers.

// Required equipment:

A portable computer with your IDE of choice installed; we recommend (XCode or Code::Blocks). Download openFrameworks for free at http://www.openframeworks.cc/download/.

// Prerequisites:

A comprehensive understanding of Processing or another coding framework.

Instructors

Josh Nimoy

Instructor

I am a silicon valley unicorn. I make software art. I communicate between engineers and artists. I think a lot about issues of programming for non-programmers. I am best known for my generative computational aesthetics for Disney?s TRON:Legacy. My most contagious meme is BallDroppings. My most visible work is commercial. My art shows in serious galleries and museums. I believe creativity is a serious force of business and humanity, capable of much more than mere entertainment, consumer manipulation, and intellectual invigoration. It is nutritious, healing, and magical.

Reza Ali

Instructor

Reza is a computational designer/creative technologist/multi-faceted hybrid engineer who is interested in everything from design to biology to entrepreneurship. He is interested in human computer interaction (interaction design), architecture/product design, software, mobile technology/hacking, generative visuals, algorithmic art, data visualization, audio-visual interactive immersive environments, new media tools for DJs/VJs/Performers, Trans-Architecture, photography, graphic design, user interfaces, electronics, 3D animation, modeling, rendering and scripting. Some of his goals are to create content and interactive controllers for multimedia performance systems, to create new and fun models of interaction, to create form/visuals/sounds though algorithmic processes, to create real-time computer graphics for virtual worlds, and to explore the realm of science and mathematics to make complex phenomena understandable and intuitive. He hopes to change the world by making a difference in how people use technology, design products and experience new media art and entertainment.

For some latter half of 2010 and early 2/3 of 2011 he lived in LA and worked for various companies, including Motion Theory under Mathew Cullen, Kaan Atilla, and Chris Riehl and at Nokia Research Center under Rebecca Allen (Founding Chair of Design Media Arts @ UCLA). All the while he freelanced for POSSIBLE (created an audio-visual VJ app for Deadmau5), and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (created an iPad app, iCubist, that augmented the museum?s Analytic Cubist Exhibit featuring works from Picasso and Braque). Reza gave presentations and talks at Nokia Design, Google Data Arts Center, NIME 2010, and NIME 2011. His work was featured in two books, Visual Complexity by Manuel Lima and Generative Art by Matt Pearson and numerous times online at www.creativeapplications.net. On his spare time he worked on a gallery installation, and various other personal new media art projects.

In 2010 Reza earned a Master of Science in Multimedia Engineering (with a focus in Visual and Spatial Arts) from the Media Arts and Technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His advisors were George Legrady (Data Visualization Artist), Casey Reas (Co-Creator of Processing, MIT Media Lab), and Matthew Turk (MIT Media Lab). Before his move to Santa Barbara, California in 2008, he graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with two B.S. (One in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, and minors in Electronic Art and Product Design) studying under Curtis Bahn, Shawn Lawson and Kenneth Conner.

Source: http://www.gaffta.org/2013/01/18/openframeworks-c-for-processing-coders/

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Saturday, January 19, 2013

To Flip Or Rent - Comparing Real Estate Investing Strategies

When evaluating a residential property ? let?s say it?s a single family home, experienced investors may choose to consider a variety of ?exit strategies? when deciding what to do with that property. For purposes of this article, let?s say that an investor is considering the purchase of a 3 bedroom 2 bath residence and wants to determine whether they will to keep it for rental or flip quickly to another buyer for cash.

What's your exit strategy? ? Mopic - Fotolia.com

What?s your exit strategy? ? Mopic ? Fotolia.com

Each investor will have their own criteria for making a strategy choice. But as I?ve said many times, it?s best to choose a strategy that will be supported by the underlying market fundamentals. The fundamentals are the circumstances that you cannot change about a property. For example ? the location of the property is a fundamental issue. You can?t change it. Interest rate activity is also a fundamental that has a widespread impact on the market. If interest rates are rising, it may be more difficult to sell, and when interest rates are low, as they are today, your cash flow from rental could be higher. So a key part of the decision making process is looking at the fundamentals.

Let?s compare a scenario in which we are going to decide whether to keep the subject property and rent it for monthly cash flow, or whether we?ll just sell it outright for a cash profit.

Here is a fundamental question: Where is your financing coming from?

Are you a qualified buyer who can get a long term loan with alow interest rate? Or are you a credit challenged buyer who cannot qualify for a low cost mortgage, but can get a hard money loan for 6 months? One buyer may get cheaper money, with a long time frame for repayment, but another buyer may only qualify for a short term hard money loan at 12% interest, that must be paid back in 6 months or less.

In this case, the fundamental money issue would determine that buyer one, who can qualify for cheap money, might prefer to hold the property for rental because his financing costs are low; he has a long time frame to work with, and his cash flow will be much better with that cheap money. Holding for rental or a lease-option strategy could yield tens of thousands of dollars in net cash flow over time, and eventually, when the property is paid for, the investment becomes a money printing machine.

On the other hand, what if you can?t get that cheaper bank loan, and have to go with a private, hard money loan. This loan is usually via a private, sometimes professional lender, who is willing to loan about 65% of the After Repair Value, to buy and fix the property. But this loan comes with a 12% interest rate, and 5 points at closing. (a point is 1% of the loan amount)

This money is not cheap, and you have to have it all paid back within 6 months. If you can?t get the long term financing, you must sell the property as quickly as possible, in order to pay off the hard money loan. So, the likely choice of exit strategy would be to ?flip?, i.e. resell the property, to another buyer as soon as possible. If you negotiated a good price for the property, you should be able to sell it for a quick profit. The amount of cash profit will depend on how good of a job you did figuring out what the property will be worth after the repairs are completed. This is the After Repair Value.(ARV)

Let?s say the ARV of the property is $100,000. A hard money lender will loan you about $65,000 to buy and repair the property. You are a good negotiator, and you buy the property for $45,000, then allow $20,000 for the repairs. (including all holding costs as well). If your total investment is $65,000 and you then sell the property to an owner occupant buyer for $85,000, you?ll pocket a gross profit of $20,000. If you can do that before your loan deadline you?re good to go.

As an alternate, you can get the property under contract for the same price, then find an investor who wants to do the rehab himself. You decide to accept a quick cash profit of $5,000 and sell your $45,000 property to the other investor for $50,000 just two weeks after getting it under contract. That is $5,000 in two weeks, versus $50,000 from cash flow over 10 years.

The choice depends on the fundamentals that control the specific situation. When deciding whether to hold for rental or to flip quickly to another buyer for quick cash, this decision is often determined by your access to financing. Other investors may have access to both cheap money and hard money. In this case they may choose to hold the best properties for rental, while flipping the less desirable properties to another investor.

Creative financing strategies are also very popular these days, because millions of former homeowners now have a bankruptcy or foreclosure on their credit. Many others have a wage garnishment for other debts. Since the recession began, more than 7 million people have fallen victim to unemployment or reduced income. These folks still have options as well for buying a home to live in or a home for investment. It?s all a matter of knowing what strategies are best for you, and that decision is based on what fundamentals are in play. These choices are different for each person, but there are choices and opportunities out there, for anyone who takes the time and makes the effort to discover what they are.
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Donna S. Robinson is a real estate investor, author and investing coach located in Atlanta, GA. Follow her on twitter at donnaconsults, Facebook.com/RealtyBizConsulting and watch her videos on youtube. Her latest book, Basics of Real Estate Investing, is now available for Kindle on Amazon.com

Source: http://realtybiznews.com/to-flip-or-rent-comparing-real-estate-investing-exit-strategies/98718436/

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Make Your Next Innovation Jam Work - Harvard Business Review

Jamming has become a popular way to unearth innovations ? bringing together people of many different backgrounds to creatively brainstorm around a company's competitive challenges, expressed as "problem statements." Yet although the process is widely hyped, many companies struggle to make them work.

If your company is one, you may be interested in our experience at the European Center for Strategic Innovation. We've been comparing how innovative companies structure and conduct jamming sessions and we've identified a set of practices that successful jammers all seem to share:

1. They work in self-defined, small sub-teams

In a classic experiment, researchers ran a lottery. Half the participants were randomly assigned a number. The others were asked to write down a number. Just before drawing a winning number, the researchers offered to buy back the tickets. Intriguingly they found that they had to pay five times more to people who had chosen their own numbers. It's dramatic proof that when we choose for ourselves, we are far more committed to the outcome.

How does this apply to jamming?

Well, it turns out that in many companies jamming participants are simply assigned a challenge or a problem to work on. If that's what you're doing now, then stop. Let participants choose what they want to work on instead. You'll see much more creative energy.

And keep the jamming teams small. A big mistake is to think that you need to let everyone get involved, but academic research consistently shows that people tend to prefer working in small teams. In any team, members need to get to know each other and define their norms of working together. If time is tight ? as it is with jamming ? you want to accelerate this part of the teaming process and you can't do that with a big team. In general we find that teams of four offer enough diversity and engage quickly with the challenges they select.

2. They define the problem statement clearly

In many of the cases we found that the reason for failure in jamming lay in a weak definition of the problem or challenge a team was addressing. Often, in a desire to get the ball rolling or maybe because of the leadership's own imperfect understanding of their company's problems, jamming teams are often given broad, ill-defined problem statements. These are usually jargon-heavy and can be interpreted in different ways, which is sometimes thought useful because it initially helps achieve buy-in.

But for jamming to pay dividends, problems need sharp definition, even if this requires more effort up-front. The business, technological, and other challenges that are encapsulated in a jamming team's problem statement all need to be clearly understood in the same way by everyone otherwise each team member will end up trying to solve a different problem. Pretty quickly the whole jamming process will break down.

I saw just this dynamic in a jamming session we tracked at a European sportswear company. Here the problem statement was simply "look for growth opportunities." The result was an existential discussion around the meaning of growth and an identification of all the potential drivers. People never got near to framing a concrete plan for actually growing. Since expectations going into the process had been very high, the sense of disappointment was doubled. Jamming sessions are over for now at this company.

3. They train, train, train

Just like competitive swimmers train both in the pool (to be good at the actual swimming) and in the gym (to improve stamina and muscle tone), jammers need to practice not only problem definition and brainstorming but also spend time engaging with creative thinking tools that they can apply in their ideation processes.

For example, SIGG, a Swiss producer of aluminum bottles, used a "random words" exercise in a jamming session. This involves selecting two or three words or pictures out of a hat and then looking for analogies, associations, and other links to the problem statement. At first, jammers are usually skeptical. How does the word "flower" or its image relate to the brand positioning of an aluminum bottle. But then an association to colors and colorful life come out, which led to the idea of a new product line of colored bottles..

In addition to the pure creativity tools, we also found that the training in the use of strategic innovation frameworks ? Blue Ocean Strategy, for example ? dramatically improves the business relevance of team outputs.

4. They are ready to play

Many scholars have argued persuasively that more fun makes a better, more creative workplace. Fun and creativity go together. If your office is not a fun place, therefore, you need to think about protecting your jamming from the company's culture. Take it off-site to someplace that feels different enough for participants to be ready to risk a bit of playfulness. And when you're there, factor in some time for pure play (play needs practice too): bring in a conjuror or a clown to make people laugh and break down their reserve.

A global German chemicals company, for example, once brought a divisional team off-site for a Jamming session. Problem statements were focused on the theme of sustainability, so they picked a hotel with one of the best carbon footprints in the country. The meeting room was decorated with colorful drawings and objects. At one point the facilitator made the group take a 15-minute break to practice juggling with three balls. The mood carried over into the rest of the sessions as participants "juggled" their business ideas.

Note the role of the facilitator here as a master of ceremonies. He or she needs to be smart about how to play that role. One that pokes fun rather at others makes people afraid to play. And of course, you can have too much of a good thing; at the end of the day the team is there to work. A wise facilitator knows when to move from play back to the business in hand.

Companies that struggle with jamming tend to give up on it after just one or two attempts. That's a pity, because when you get the process right jamming can be a great source of new ideas and its effectiveness grows exponentially the more you use it. So before you give it up, try it one more time ? but try it our way instead.

Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/learning_how_to_jam.html

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Why cheese plants are full of holes

Swiss cheese plants' iconic leaves help them to avoid stress, according to a US scientist.

Their familiar hole-riddled leaves allow the plants to capture sunlight more regularly, his research suggests.

The counterintuitive idea explains how such plants can survive in shady rainforests.

Commonly grown as house plants, they are found in the wild from southern Mexico to Colombia.

Many theories have been suggested for the unusual perforated leaves.

One is that the holes in the leaves allow the plants to resist hurricane winds, by letting the wind pass through. Another that they allow better temperature regulation or water to run through the plants down to its roots. Some have suggested the holes somehow camouflage the plants, hiding them from herbivores.

But these ideas have rarely been scientifically tested.

Now research by graduate student Christopher Muir at the University of Indiana, in Bloomington, US, suggests the holes are an adaptation to the plants' rainforest habitat.

His findings are published in the journal The American Naturalist.

Leaves compared

The Swiss cheese plant Monstera deliciosa lives in the dark understory of tropical rainforests. It relies on capturing unpredictable shafts on sunlight, known as "sunflecks", in order to photosynthesise for energy.

Mr Muir questioned whether the sunflecks could explain the unusual leaf shapes so he used mathematical models to compare leaves with and without holes.

He found that both leaf shapes benefit equally from the same amount of sunlight.

Although a leaf with holes will miss some sunlight, because it filters through the holes, solid leaves with the same surface area actually take up less space, so their access to sunlight is restricted.

Mr Muir's models revealed that a leaf with the same surface area, but riddled with holes, would contact sunlight more regularly because it takes up more space.

He suggests this regularity makes the altered leaf shape more reliable, causing the plant less stress giving it the best chance of survival.

But young Swiss cheese plants do not need holes in their leaves, according to Mr Muir.

Monstera deliciosa grows differently at different stages of its lifecycle; a relatively rare attribute among plants.

It is an epiphyte, or air plant, with aerial roots which attach to host trees, enabling it to climb. When young, the plant produces small leaves that are held close to the host tree's trunk.

The young plants are closer to the forest floor, where fewer flecks of sunlight reach. The poor quality of the light here means that holes do not benefit the plant, Mr Muir predicted.

Only as the plant matures does it grow taller, reaching parts of the understory with more flecks of sunlight.

Then the leaves become larger, develop holes and are held away from the trunk, where they have a better chance of capturing the sunlight necessary to survive.

"They parasitize the trunk and branches of their host plants to climb higher in the canopy where there is more sunlight," Mr Muir told BBC Nature.

Mr Muir's mathematical models suggest that leaf holes work best for plants that grow fast in shady areas, where flecks of sunlight are at a premium.

He suggests that biologists now test the idea by growing plants under different light conditions in the laboratory, simulating those found in the rainforest understory.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/21059874

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Is Beneful dog food killing dogs? - the Way of Cats

This is a warning? because the FDA is not issuing a recall.

This is a call to action? because Purina is not pulling Beneful off the shelves.

Veterinarians have reported bacterial infections, liver and kidney failure and high toxins in pets that have been brought in related to Beneful dog food illnesses.

This problem is not in a single region but across the country. The number of reported cases, mainly from October 2012 through January 2013, has been increasing and currently there are 220 incidents listed on the consumer affairs site alone. With pets dying after eating this food, the following questions must be asked.

Purina?s Beneful dog food killing dogs nationwide; No recall issued by FDA

Now, Snopes is not saying this is true? and they are not saying it?s not true, either.

Here?s a link from Consumer Affairs, describing 267 incidents with Beneful.

Boycott Purina-Beneful

Is Purina turning a blind eye to what their Beneful product is doing?

To me, this is all the more reason to feed grain-free. The incidents mention aflatoxins. These can grow on improperly stored grains.

Sadly, Purina was a company NOT affected by the Melamine Scandal of 2007. But I find these giant corporations less and less trustworthy.

And that is their own fault.

    Got here from a Link or Search?
    There?s more to The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See my LATEST CAT ADVICE.

Thanks for stopping by! Find me on Facebook. To get my monthly eNewsletter, sign up here to get my FREE eBook, Ten Cat Tricks (Every Human Should Know.)

Source: http://www.wayofcats.com/blog/warning-about-beneful-dog-food/22798

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Friday, January 18, 2013

Halo 4: The Flood Reborn

Halo 4: The Flood Reborn

The flood were destroyed 4 years ago, and Master Chief is in a different galaxy than the starship "Steel Gunfire". But after a crash, something happened...

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This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?Halo 4: The Flood Reborn?. Anything posted here will also show up there.

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Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.
This is the auto-generated OOC topic for the roleplay "Halo 4: The Flood Reborn"

You may edit this first post as you see fit.

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Epicnukeguy
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Thursday, January 17, 2013

Grand Gulf Energy targeting higher Louisiana oil production

Pdf Thursday, January 17, 2013 by Bevis Yeo

(ASX: GGE) is participating in the drilling of a well targeting up to 500,000 barrels of oil in the East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana.

The Port Hudson-1 well is designed to encounter several U Wilcox sands and is expected to produce at initial rates of about 250 barrels of oil per day.

Dry hole costs are estimated to be about $1.2 million with Grand Gulf?s 15% share fixed at $232,000. Completion and facilities costs are expected to add another $70,000 to this figure.

The Port Hudson project was generated from re-processed, proprietary seismic. The sand deposition is uniform in the area targeting multiple individual sands ranging in thickness from 10 to 25 feet.

Pipeline facilities are present in the area and the well is likely to be put on production within two months of completion.

?

Proactive Investors Australia is the market leader in producing news, articles and research reports on ASX ?Small and Mid-cap? stocks with distribution in Australia, UK, North America and Hong Kong / China.

Source: http://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/38365/grand-gulf-energy-targeting-higher-louisiana-oil-production-38365.html

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Boise State loses to No. 19 New Mexico in overtime

by Todd Dvorak

Associated Press

Posted on January 16, 2013 at 10:11 PM

BOISE -- Tony Snell scored 22 points and Hugh Greenwood added 15 to lead No. 19 New Mexico to a 79-74 overtime victory over Boise State on Wednesday night.

Snell and Greenwood dominated the overtime, teaming for nine of the Lobos' 16 points. The win was the third straight for the Lobos (16-2, 3-0 Mountain West Conference).

Derrick Marks scored 27 points on 10-of-20 shooting for Boise State (13-3, 1-1), which saw its seven-game winning streak snapped and have yet to beat New Mexico since joining the Mountain West last season.

Greenwood put the game into overtime when he took advantage of a Boise State miscue on defense and drove a wide-open lane for a layup, tying the score at 63 with 54 seconds left.

In overtime, New Mexico forced turnovers and poor shots. Snell's baseline jumper with 2:25 left put the Lobos up 71-66.

Source: http://www.ktvb.com/home/Boise-State-loses-to-No-19-New-Mexico-in-overtime--187238191.html

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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Events of the Characters!

Era of the Creatures: The End of Humans

Humans were kaput, so they got wiped out. That simple. With humans out of the way, the creatures that were in hiding can come out and rise to a great era. There are territory issues, naturally. (Evils wanted)

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Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.
Hello Everyone! This is the thread that is going to list the happenings of what's going on in the events. This is for the people who are new, want a refresher, who are just plain bored, have not been gone a while... The list might go on.

I will be placing the list in this post, so there isn't a bunch of pages and sorts if it gets to that. I will let everyone know in the regular OOC when this gets updated! Thank you!

  • The Akashinu create their plans to take over the nearby village, the Shira-yuri have gathered to go to said village to recruit, unsuspecting of the attack that is going to happen when night falls.
  • Before the fight, the Shira-yuri are in a tavern or somewhere in the village. There will be a time-skip soon to jump to the fight. I will be making this time-skip when I believe everyone is ready.
  • Before the fight, the Akashinu are somewhat away from the village, gathering their people.

If anyone has any ideas to clear or fix this up, go right ahead and Pm me! :D

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xDarkTiger Rose
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Sunday, January 13, 2013

iPhone 4S vibration sounds odd: Defective or just a change?

I just got an iPhone 4S, an upgrade from my iPhone 4. I'm using it and one thing I'm noticing is the vibration is weird. Not sure if it's defective or just different.

Anyway, the quick vibration when plugging into a power source sounds much quieter, to the point of almost being unnoticeable. However, when there's a long vibration for a call or an alarm, the phone makes an audible buzzing sound in addition to the vibration. For the long vibration, the vibration sounds louder but softer than my 4.

So did Apple just change the vibrator, or is something wrong with my phone? I guess my main worry is that this change in vibration could be a signal that the motor is going and I don't want to have that happen.

Source: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1524479&goto=newpost

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