What Adam Curry is reading

VIDEO
  David Brooks Still Peddling Lie That Bush Administration Invaded Iraq on Faulty Intelligence
    Link to Article
    Source: Crooks and Liars
    Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:36
    After watching this week's The PBS Newshour, it was really hard to decide which portion of this segment with David Brooks and his supposed "liberal" counterpart, Mark Shields, upset me the most. I think it would have to be the way Brooks almost nonchalantly brushed off the fact that the Bush administration did lie about the WMDs in Iraq and that it was not a failure by the intelligence agencies, but the Bush administration misrepresenting that intelligence.
    Dick Cheney was out there making weekly visits to the CIA and pushing them to put out intelligence that fit the administration's justification for attacking Iraq, and any comparison between that and Susan Rice not putting out before the public information that might have compromised our intelligence assets in Libya is just ridiculous, to put it mildly. I'm sure Brooks knows better, but apparently he doesn't have enough respect for his audience to assume they do as well.
    Right behind Brooks' revisionist history, we had Mark Shields first excusing Lindsey Graham's attacks on Susan Rice over the Benghazi drummed-up fake controversy, and telling the audience that it couldn't possibly be racism or sexism, because after all, Graham allowed Justices Kagan and Sotomayor to be appointed. Or in other words, it's the Stephen Colbert, I've got one black friend, so I can't be a racist excuse for why their attacks on her could not possibly be racist, or sexist.
    And then there's Shields claiming that there are "liberal press people come out citing the shortcomings, personality shortcomings of Susan Rice." I assume the "liberal press people" he's talking about amount to one Dana Milbank, who wrote an op-ed which Kathleen Geier took down quite nicely at The Washington Monthly last week.
    Democratic women defend Susan Rice, call out her critics' sexism, racism, and mediocrity:
    This is gratifying; Democratic women have gone to bat for UN Ambassador Susan Rice, defending her against racist, sexist attacks by conservative Republican critics. In case you missed it, as part of the right's pathetic campaign to gin up a huge scandal over Benghazi, leading Republicans have lately been directing their fire at Rice. Their criticism has been not only nasty but unusually personal. John McCain, for example, called her ''not very bright'' and ''not qualified.'' Lindsay Graham portrayed her as a dizzy, delusional untrustworthy broad, alleging that ''She is so disconnected from reality that I don't trust her.'' Both have pledged to do ''whatever is in our power'' to block Rice's appointment as Secretary of State, should President Obama nominate her.
    This isn't the only heavy-handed, sexist, racist criticism that has been aimed at Rice. It's not just conservative lawmakers who been going after Rice; the Villagers clearly have the knives out for her as well. Villager-in-good-standing Dana Millbank has impugned Rice's allegedly ''tarnished resume'' and apparently finds her behavior most unladylike (though the euphemism he prefers to use is ''undiplomatic''). Among Rice's sins, according to Millbank, is this:
    Back when she was an assistant secretary of state during the Clinton administration, she appalled colleagues by flipping her middle finger at Richard Holbrooke during a meeting with senior staff at the State Department, according to witnesses. Colleagues talk of shouting matches and insults.
    Oh noes! Bring out the smelling salts! This stuff is especially odd coming from Millbank, known for writing nauseating fanboy drivel about Rahm Emanuel, a man not exactly famous for his dainty language or decorous approach to politics. Read on...
    If PBS doesn't want themselves to be branded as Fox-lite, they might want to reconsider their weekly segments with Mark Shields and David Brooks, and include some actual liberal commentators to balance either of them, but I expect that to happen about the time hell freezes over.
    If you're tired of both PBS and the NYT for giving Brooks a steady paycheck week after week, you can contact PBS here. And The New York Times here.
    Full transcript below the fold.
    JEFFREY BROWN: Mark, he does, the president, that is, find himself still embroiled in this question of Benghazi, and particularly focused on Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador.
    MARK SHIELDS: He does.
    And just one point that David made I wanted to follow up on, and that is, the Arab spring has made it impossible for any leader -- Mubarak could really ignore Hamas.
    But now, given the Arab spring and the democratization of policy, even though we see Mr. Morsi today sort of reversing that policy, proving that both elected and unelected leaders can be dictatorial, that Hamas got a preeminence and a prominence that it had not had before in this showdown, that we had Tunisia, we had Egypt, we had Turkey all basically endorsing, much to the demise and disadvantage of the Palestinian Authority and its decline.
    So, I think that's a real -- the Benghazi thing is fascinating to me, basically because I think the charge against Lindsey Graham, for example, is unfair, that somehow he's driven by terminal sexism. This is a senator, a Republican senator from South Carolina, who did vote for the confirmation of Elena Kagan and for Justice Sotomayor as well.
    JEFFREY BROWN: You're referring to him coming out against Susan Rice.
    MARK SHIELDS: Coming out and threatening -- threatening this filibuster with John McCain, which I think is an irrational act on their part. I really do, not simply because presidents have an option and should have the benefit of the doubt on a confirmation to the Cabinet.
    This isn't a judicial lifetime appointment. And I don't think either Senator Graham or Senator McCain was particularly vocal when Secretary Condoleezza Rice was nominated for that position, having been national security adviser, and predicted the arrival of the mushroom cloud because of the nuclear weapons that Iran -- that Iraq was then, under Saddam Hussein, harboring.
    So, there seems to be a degree of irrationality. The president has now made it a big fight. And we have seen liberal press people come out citing the shortcomings, personality shortcomings of Susan Rice. I mean, it's just a -- it's sort of a bizarre season, and I can't figure out where this is going.
    JEFFREY BROWN: Well, David, what do you think? Why have Republicans made this such -- made her such a focal part and made this such a fight?
    DAVID BROOKS: I guess my theory is that she's a sharp-tongued, blunt person, and, in the past, she has taken some shots at John McCain and others. And so this is their chance.
    They have no wellspring of sympathy with her, the way they actually probably do with John Kerry, her potential rival to be the next secretary of state, having taken a bunch of delegation trips with Kerry around the world. And so I suspect there's a lot of old history here that is bubbling up.
    Personally, I don't think it should be disqualifying if Obama decides to choose her as the next secretary of state. Listen, she's ambassador to U.N. She's not in charge of intelligence, and she's not in charge of intelligence reports.
    It is simultaneously true that they do seem to have scrubbed the intelligence report that she got of any al-Qaida mention. That was probably done within the intelligence community herself.
    Her job as U.N. ambassador was just to tell what that intelligence report said on the Sunday shows, and that's what she did.
    So, I don't think there's any reason to disqualify her based on anything that's happened in the last year. And, frankly, I guess I would cut her a little slack for some of the political attacks she's taken. So, I guess I don't agree with Graham and McCain on this one.
    But if you're going to be a diplomat, you should probably be diplomatic all the way around.
    (LAUGHTER)
    DAVID BROOKS: And if not, you're going to come in for a little criticism.
    JEFFREY BROWN: Right.
    MARK SHIELDS: And Benghazi has almost taken on a Yalta-like fascination, or who lost China. I mean, that it seems to -- there's no question there are legislate questions about why the security was so inadequate, but the idea that this was some master conspiracy hatched in some foreign capital just seems a little bit beyond...
    JEFFREY BROWN: All right, guys, I just...
    DAVID BROOKS: I...
    JEFFREY BROWN: Yes, go ahead. Go ahead. David, you wanted to jump in?
    DAVID BROOKS: Oh, I just would say I think this is echoes of the WMD thing, where the Bush administration was accused of lying when I think they were just being led by -- misled by intelligence, and now they're trying to put the glove on the other hand.
Foto mysterieuze bedgenoot Rihanna
  Link to Article
  Source: Telegraaf.nl - prive
  Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:37
  zo 25 nov 2012, 11:39
  Van onze redactieAMSTERDAM - FOTO - Rihanna heeft een foto van haar slapende bedgenoot op Twitter geplaatst die verdacht veel lijkt op ex Chris Brown.
  De flink getatoeerde man ligt met zijn gezicht naar beneden in bed en heeft een blauw mutsje op zijn hoofd. De mysterieuze man is volgens de sexy zangeres uit Barbados geobsedeerd door Bart Simpson.
  Rihanna is de afgelopen tijd meerdere malen gespot met haar ex-vriend Chris. Geruchten doen de ronde dat de twee weer een relatie hebben.
  Bekijk hier de foto van Rihannas mannelijke bedgenoot.
  (C) 1996-2012 Telegraaf Media Nederland | Landelijke Media B.V., Amsterdam.Alle rechten voorbehouden.e-mail: redactie-i@telegraaf.nlPrivacy | Cookies | Disclaimer
Support for German Pirates sinks
  Link to Article
  Source: euronews
  Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:34
  Elections in Spain's Catalonia region are under way since 9am CET and won't close until 8pm. Opinion polls indicate that current Catalan President Artur Ms and his conservative Convergence and Union party will take the majority of the 135 seats in the regional assembly known as'...
Italy centre left picks candidate for next prime minister
  Link to Article
  Source: Reuters: World News
  Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:29
  Italian PD (Democratic Party) secretary Pier Luigi Bersani delivers a speech during a political rally with European Socialists in Paris, March 17, 2012.
  Credit: Reuters/Benoit Tessier
  By Catherine Hornby
  ROME | Sun Nov 25, 2012 7:56am EST
  ROME (Reuters) - Italy's centre left voted on Sunday to choose the candidate who will be the leading contender to succeed Mario Monti as prime minister after a election in March and take charge of steering the country through a deep recession.
  Opinion surveys show Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani is the frontrunner among five candidates, followed by Florence mayor Matteo Renzi, who has vowed to shake up Italy's political establishment if he is chosen.
  The vote will eliminate a major element of uncertainty before the election to choose a successor to Monti's technocrat government.
  The centre-left alliance is well ahead in opinion polls for the parliamentary election and the winner of the primary vote is in pole position to take over Monti's efforts to control strained public finances and tackle a year-long recession.
  Support for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's deeply divided centre-right People of Freedom party (PDL) has crumbled to less than half than it recorded in the last election in 2008.
  Berlusconi said on Saturday he was again thinking about running, deepening the PDL chaos.
  Both Bersani and Renzi reject the idea, encouraged by international markets, that Monti should return after the vote to continue his economic policies that have so far included unpopular spending cuts, tax rises and labor reform.
  Protests on Saturday by tens of thousands of students and workers from across the political spectrum highlighted the levels of discontent among Italians grappling with the slump and rising unemployment in the euro zone's third biggest economy.
  RUN-OFF POSSIBLE
  While Renzi, 37, is much more popular across the general population than career politician Bersani, 61, he is far weaker among party supporters who will decide the primary.
  About 3 million party and non-party voters are expected to take part in the poll that is open to anyone over 18 who is Italian or resident in Italy regularly, but it is likely that members will make up the biggest proportion of those at the ballot box.
  However, Bersani may still fail to secure the 50 percent he needs for a first-round victory, which will mean a second round run-off will be held on December 2. At that point he is likely to pick up the votes of third-placed Nichi Vendola, the openly gay governor of the southern Puglia region.
  "I am expecting a run-off because there are a lot of us," said Bersani, talking to reporters at a voting station on Saturday. "All five of us are going to try to lend a hand to help this country emerge from its suffering."
  An upbeat Renzi told reporters before joining in a half-marathon in Florence: "If I lose it will have been a great people's experience, but I'm going to win."
  The centre right is due to hold its own primaries on December 16, but PDL secretary Angelino Alfano said on Saturday that would no longer make sense if Berlusconi chose to stand.
  Further complicating the national political picture is the dramatic rise of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, which is now second in opinion polls, and that around half of Italians say they are either undecided or will abstain.
  It is also still unclear what electoral system will be used for the national vote, expected on March 10-11, as politicians have been arguing over how to reform an unpopular electoral law that allows party leaders to hand-pick members of parliament.
  Voting on Sunday was due to end at 8 p.m. (1900 GMT), with results due around midnight (2300 GMT).
  (Editing by Alison Williams)
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Central Africa: Heads of State Commend Decisions On DRC Crisis
  Link to Article
  Source: AllAfrica News: Latest
  Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:23
  Kigali '-- President Paul Kagame and President Denis-Sassou-N'guesso on Saturday commended the decisions taken by the heads of state of the just concluded ICGLR summit in Kampala.
  President Sassou-N'guesso is in Rwanda on a two-day working visit at the invitation of President Kagame during which the two heads of state discussed bilateral, regional and international issues, and expressed satisfaction with the strengthened political and cooperation ties between Rwanda and the Republic of Congo.
  The heads of state discussed at length the ongoing crisis in Eastern DRC and welcomed the comprehensive resolutions of the ICGLR summit in Kampala. They called upon the Government of the DRC and the M23 to commit to implementing the Kampala decisions as these represented an important opportunity to resolve the conflict.
  They also noted the importance of correctly assessing and understanding the real nature of the various armed groups in the DRC so that appropriate solutions are found for each.
  President Sassou-N'guesso noted the value of the discussions and breakthrough held earlier this week between Presidents Kagame, Museveni and Kabila and said it represented an effective framework for building confidence between the DRC and its immediate neighbours.
  President Sassou-N'guesso thanked his Rwandan counterpart for the hospitality and meaningful discussions and said this visit to Rwanda was an important opportunity to further strengthen the relationship between Rwanda and Congo.
  END
The Devolution Factor
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:21
  My children are aware that my lineage is of thee aristocracy on my European Israelite side, meaning that satan has deceived the world literally by two of my family trees in thee worst of deceptions. One of these relatives I have spoken of several times in Charles Darwin in the hoax of Evolution.
  Charles was a sensitive man, who came upon evolution after the death of child friend, that shook his Faith in God. It was later said before death he renounced the fallacy of evolution, but the damage was done.
  Genius runs in my veins as a family trait for generations, and it is Spiritual Israelite Genius from God as in Solomon. I do not pretend in this nor brag. It is a simple fact that has proven out in this blog that here am I a jove among the ants of the picnic whose flat world is all they can measure anything by.
  This post is to right further the wrong of kindred Darwin as only a family member may accomplish this.
  The fact in the Lame Cherry Doctrines in Inspiration is that there is not any proof of evolution nor missing links. The reason there a missing links, is because they do not exist and never did.One can examine the 6000 year history of all animals and humankind, and not find one instance of a mutant, being born from an ape which suddenly started playing the piano or running for 1600 Penn Avenue.
  There are no lizards born with feathers, and no ostrich born with fur.
  The literal fact is in this planetary dimension is that instead of evolution being the theory, that Devolution is the Law.
  Examples of this are constant. Take for example the common swine, el porco. If one takes the common pig and turns it loose, within a few breedings it will become the razorback, which is a rogue hog.By the time that many breedings occur, that same farm pig will turn into a wild boar, as it devolves back into what it was.It does not devolve to a bird of reptile, because that is not in it's DNA makeup, but it does devolve from a civilized form into a lawless form.
  Human civilization has constantly battled this, as successive generations in 200 year cycles rise and fall, as new progenitors arise to destroy the lawless nature of the old order.Babylon was destroyed in a drunken orgy by Persians who were not interested in bribery. Persia was struck hard by a few Greeks, and then that Macedonian Alexander arrived wiping them out, but in stupor he fell, and Rome arose to be wiped out in Nero's time, and in successive waves Rome disappeared in favor of other empires in Europe.
  That is the current genetic cancer destroying the west from the top down, in the leaders are debaucherous and have stolen from the people their goods, so the people are not inclined to fight nor rise up to protect the nations being aborted.
  This dimension is an anti dimension. It is one of consumptive forces which break down structures built up, put them at base elemental structure again, and then rebuild to repeat the process in various forms.
  Is there a natural selection? Yes, in genetic ways which point to the process of survival of species, by the factor of fear. The reality is though the dodo to the passenger pigeon did not suddenly evolve to save themselves. They died due to not adapting, and the only species which have survived are those conserved by humans in the likes of the buffalo to the canvasback duck. There was not some mutant buffalo who arose learning language and running for Congress, as that genetic leap is not possible in mutation nor in a million year evolution.
  The reality is one does not see mold, algae or fungus graduating from Harvard. According to false science they have been around for hundreds of millions if not billions of years. One must comprehend this if evolution did take place, then mold would become more intelligent and not just simply remain static as one of it's number suddenly became a tree or a worm.Focus on that fact which the idiotry of science never touch, as it blows their entire fallacy out of the discussion as there would have to be millions of examples of multiple genetic leaps in history, and several hundred in this 6000 years, if the simple life forms evolved, and yet there is not one example and never will be, because nothing evolves genetically, physically nor Spiritually.
  Humans are born unique in being biological entities who have inside of them an incubation chamber which is a soul, that if they associate with God, His Spirit is sown into this womb and a higher life form begins to come into being. This is not evolution but, transformation, a Spiritual DNA signature which transcends the limitations of humans and bridges the barriers which are in place in this dimension.
  The demonic realm is one of devolution also, in these spirits were created as pure light forms, but they chose to become anti Light or against God's Light in His Attributes, and the end result was a group of devolved entities who became abnormal or uncivilized. Lucifer became satan, but once that process was completed, there was no more devolution nor redemption, as the process was complete.
  Humans devolve, whether it be various forms of theft ranging from murder, suicide, aborticide, coming from various other forms of devolutionary savagery in abuse of sex, food or chemicals. Each though comes from a place of consumption in the human is devolving like Lucifer to become the abnormal satan.
  It is all quite Biblically simple. If one builds things, one behaves in moral ways and one denies indulgence, then one has life which endures in the biological process. When one destroys, acts immoral and self indulges, then death occurs immediately or prematurely.
  In all cases though, humans are set in their genetic lines, and one does not see a human mother birthing some ape or orang, and they never will.
  I will to continue this in another post shortly in explaining the factors of human production in their genetics as related to origins, but this will suffice for now in assisting my kindred in rectifying his mistake. Many people under emotional distress make horrendous mistakes. My kindred have created all sorts of problems, but in this I have made up for their psychosis in explaining the correct analysis.
  nuff said
  agtG 296
RIP
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:12
  My children, you have pleased me. You are learning. Mockingbird has been exposed in RIP that Republican Insider on Ulsterman.
  It is textbook Stanford and Tavistock. One can view the manipulation:
  1) Ulsterman says the election was a clear choice.2) RIP tells you there IS no choice in a "two sides of the same coin" revamp.3) Limbaugh says we must wait for events.
  As all deflect from Barack Obama stealing his third election with vote fraud, it is working. You have them concerned in investing this type of resource to provide each psychological group the illusion that their fears are being addressed.
  All to keep you from revolution and to keep you waiting for the next election and one more bit of gossip to keep you sedate. They know it is that close and they are trying to shut it down. They do not want anyone looking at the electronic voting machines which have installed nothing but Marxists in every western nation since they have been installed in the voting process.
  This type of protocol to be initiated means a final phase in this step. They are tracking you and monitoring you and gauging your response closely like rats in a maze. You are doing well but they will keep trying to sway you. They will perform an event designed to distract you from this and move on to 2014.
  God keep you thinking and learning, my children.
  agtG
42 Buildings Damaged In Springfield Gas Explosion CBS Boston
  Link to Article
  Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:49
  (Photo Credit: Dominic Aielli)
  SPRINGFIELD (CBS) '' A massive gas explosion inside a strip club in Springfield leveled the establishment and left tens of surrounding buildings damaged beyond repair on Friday night.
  Pastor Mitchell Plaud works at The House Of Mercy, a church located right next to Scores Gentlemen's Club, where the explosion originated.
  He says he's devastated but thankful to be alive.
  ''I lost everything,'' Plaud said. ''But God saved me because my service starts at 6:30 p.m. and I usually come early to church, and the explosion happened at 5:25 p.m.''
  The blast on Worthington street sent glass, bricks and debris everywhere.
  ''Thank God no one was killed. This truly was a miracle on Worthington Street,'' Mayor Domenic Sarno said at a press conference on Saturday.
  On Saturday morning many residents woke up to witness the disaster first hand.
  Dozens of buildings were severely damaged. Three buildings are a total loss. Many apartments around the blast zone are still evacuated.
  ''The whole building shook first, then the windows came in,'' resident Legacy Rivera said.
  Throughout the day on Saturday city officials, safety inspectors and workers from Columbia Gas Company were busy surveying the area making sure everyone was safe.
  ''We will excavate the line that serves the Scores Club, so it can be investigated in order to get to the cause of the blast. As of right now we don't know what caused the explosion,'' Columbia representative Sheila Dorin said.
  Right now, many residents like Pastor Plaud are still trying to figure out what to do next.
  ''It's hard and painful. But we get our strength from God,'' Pastor Plaud said.
  The explosion is being investigated by the State Fire Marshall's Office and the Massachusetts Department of Public Works.
  There were nearly two dozen injuries, including 11 firefighters.
  Everyone has been treated and released.
Black Friday Shopping and The Philosophy of Futility
  Link to Article
  Source: Crooks and Liars
  Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:41
  "The goal for the corporations is to maximize profit and market share. And they also have a goal for their target, namely the population. They have to be turned into completely mindless consumers of goods that they do not want. You have to develop what are called 'Created Wants'. So you have to create wants. You have to impose on people what's called a Philosophy of Futility. You have to focus them on the insignificant things of life, like fashionable consumption. I'm just basically quoting business literature. And it makes perfect sense. The ideal is to have individuals who are totally disassociated from one another. Whose conception of themselves, the sense of value is just, 'how many created wants can I satisfy?' We have huge industries, public relations industry, monstrous industry, advertising and so on, which are designed from infancy to mold people into this desired pattern."
  -- Noam Chomsky
  I stopped by Lowe's yesterday to pick up some mouse traps and got into a conversation with another customer when I stopped to admire the miniature Christmas village display. He was a middle-aged man who told me he had four grandsons with expensive tastes. "I can hardly take care of myself, let alone buy this stuff they want," he said, shaking his head.
  "You're the grandfather, that's the parents' problem," I said.
  No, he said, his son and daughter were drowning in credit card debt and he worried about them. "My son already filed for bankruptcy once and I think he's going to have to do it again," he said. "Look, I live a simple life. I have a prepaid Tracphone in my pocket, I use dial-up internet. When I retire, I'd like to move to North Carolina because it's a lot cheaper to live, but it's too long a drive and I know my kids wouldn't come see me."
  He told me the grandkids wanted things like iPods and video games for Christmas. "The oldest one is eight," he said. "I just don't understand why you have to give kids that young whatever they want."
  He said it was nice talking to me, and walked away.
Oops. Confetti at Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Was Made of Still-Readable Confidential Police Docs
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:34
  This year's Thanksgiving parade was kind of a heartbreaker after a a Yonkers man died while clowning. But things may be getting a little bit worse.
  The magical specks of color that float down the city streets are normally just a mishmash of multicolored confetti, but this year, shredded confidential documents from the Nassau Police Department were also in the air.
  The worst part is that the documents were shredded horizontally, so they were still highly readable. Some strips that stuck to parade attendees contained Social Security Numbers of officers and others detailed crimes like a pipe bombing in the Kings Grant area of Long Island.
  Hypothetically, these pieces of paper could have very easily been collected and been put back together again using some simple "unshredding software."
  Macy's defends to WPIX that they only use the pretty paper bits in their confetti, so this could've come out of any of the countless number of office windows along the 6th Avenue parade route.
  It's a very scary Thanksgiving weekend for some Nassau County cops who might get their identities stolen in the first few days of this holiday season.
  WPIX [Image via AP]
Gmail Tap: Google Announces Morse Code Keyboard Alternative For April Fools Day (VIDEO)
  Link to Article
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 21:07
  Perhaps you've had this problem: You're typing an email on your smartphone, and your finger hits the wrong key; you go to correct your mistake, and you hit the wrong key again. If only there was a way to get around the fat-finger curse.
  Thanks to Google, now there is.
  ...April Fools!
  The prank-happy web giant has released a video explaining a new joke app that introduces an alternative to the QWERTY keyboard on Android phones. It's a two-key typing interface called Google Tap, and it's based on Morse Code, the telegraph communication system consisting of combinations of dots and dashes that correspond to letters of the alphabet.
  THE MORSE CODE ALPHABET:
  Developed sometime in the 1830s and 1840s, Morse Code revolutionized global communications. "For decades, telegrams were the fastest and most cost-efficient way to communicate, and organizations of every kind used them," writes the New York Times. "At one point, according to Amy Fischer, the company historian for Western Union, employees would attend major sporting events, sending play-by-play via a telegraph machine to an announcer at a radio station. 'The Yankee announcer would stay in New York and call the game from there,' she said."
  Supplanted by new technologies, Morse Code has all but fallen out of use. The Times reports that Western Union's once-booming telegram service closed up shop on January 27, 2006, with the transmission of the company's last telegram. But Google has revived Morse Code for use in the digital age, at least for April Fools Day.
  From a post on the Official Gmail Blog explaining the just-for-laughs typing tool:
  Gmail Tap takes the keyboard from 26 keys to just two. Every letter of the alphabet is represented by a simple pattern of dots and dashes, and once you know them you can type without even looking at your screen. This makes it ideal for situations where you need to discreetly send emails, such as when you're on a date or in a meeting with your boss.
  THE MORSE CODE KEYBOARD FOR ANDROID:
  Google created an informational Gmail page that further explains Gmail Tap's features. The app includes a keyboard with a dot key, a dash key and a space bar; "re-imagined" autocomplete; an option for audio feedback; and (my personal favorite) a "dual threaded keyboard" that lets you compose two emails at once. Google warns that this last feature is for "power users only."
  DUAL THREADED KEYBOARD:
  Google's even gone so far to create a "download" button that tells the user that demand for the app is too high and that it will be available again on April 2. Right.
  Judging by the comments on the Gmail Google+ page, many users seem to think this is a pretty cool app. (All jokes aside, I too would really like to give this one a go. Well played, Google.)
  Would you ever download a Morse Code keyboard for your phone, if one were available in real life? How does this prank compare to last year's hilarious Gmail Motion, Google's fake product that purportedly let users navigate the Gmail inbox using body motions.
  Also on HuffPost:
tworsekey - a tweeting morse telegraph - Google Project Hosting
  Link to Article
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 20:58
  Project Information
  Featured
  Links
  An open design exercise in interface archaeology, that decodes the input from a classic Morse telegraph to send twitter messages. The Tworse Key is a standalone device that connects through a standard LAN cable, the Morse signals are decoded by the built-in Arduino Ethernet board, which delivers the final message though the Twitter API. Please follow @tworsekey on Twitter to read some example tweets sent from the actual device.
  This project is fully documented in order to illustrate the Open Design process for beginners, who are aiming to realize a simple but appealing Arduino project. Apart from reading the input from the Morse switch, the device also provides basic auditory and visual feedback, which have been integrated using a very elementary circuit. The source code, hardware schematics and building instructions are therefore available under the according free licenses. (cc-by-sa) 2012 by Martin Kaltenbrunner, Interface Culture Lab, Kunstuniversit¤t Linz
  software requirements:
  hardware requirements:
  Morse Key (search on Ebay)Arduino Ethernet board (or alternatively an Arduino plus Ethernet shield)piezo buzzer for auditory feedback50 Ohm resistor to connect the buzzerRGB LED (common anode) for visual feedback10k Ohm resistor to connect the LED (reducing its brightness)additional requirements:
  a RJ45 ethernet cable9V Battery + connector (for internal use)5V power supply (for external use)USB FTDI cable to program the Arduino Ethernet boarda wooden box to mount the electronics and Morse keyvarious cables and soldering equipmentschematics:
  The according Fritzing sketch is included in the source code.
  references:
  In a typical case of convergent evolution, there already exist similar projects by Lea and Joe McKay: Ditter was first exhibited in late 2009 at a Pittsburgh art gallery, similar to the Tweetagraph prototype from early 2011 that decodes the input from a Morse key to send Twitter messages through a Processing sketch. Joe also documented and published his code on his web page, and although the Tworse Key was developed independently, you may consider it an evolution of the earlier projects, which again emphasizes the Open Design principle. The major improvement compared to Ditter and the Tweetagraph is the standalone design of the final Tworse Key device. David Bern also sent in an earlier experiment, where he explains how to hook up a Morse telegraph to a computer emulating a PS/2 keyboard.
  selected media coverage:
  Telegraph key makes for a fantastic Twitter input Hackaday, 31.01.2012Typing too easy for you? Try posting to Twitter via morse code The next Web, 31.01.2012Tweet in Morse code with Tworse Key CNET, 02.02.2012ëª¨ìŠ¤ ë¶í¸ë' íŠ¸ì'í° í•´ë´¤ì–´ìš--? ZDNet Korea, 02.02.2012Tworse Key lets you tweet in Morse code, The Verge, 02.02.2012Morsen ist das neue Twittern, Engadget DE, 02.02.2012Twitternde Morsetaste, Heise, 03.02.2012Now You Can Tweet in Morse Code, Gizmodo, 03.02.2012Tworse Key: Post to Twitter using morse code, Newslite, 03.02.2012Twittern wie im 19. Jahrhundert, futurezone, 06.02.2012Tweeting in Morse Code, Arduino Blog, 07.02.2012Microblogging and the telegraph: Victorian Twitter, The Economist, 15.02.2012Now tweet using the Morse Code, The Sunday Guardian, 11.03.2012
Lucid Dreaming and Mental Illness | Reality Sandwich
  Link to Article
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 15:10
  I got the weirdest phone call last week. The editor of Gawker, A.J. Daulerio, contacted me, requesting information on lucid dreaming. (Lucid dreaming is knowing you're dreaming while firmly in the dreamstate). He said he's doing a new piece on lucid dreaming and Jared Loughner, who was sentenced yesterday with life in prison without parole for his deadly rampage in Tuscon, AZ in January 2011.
  Turns out, Gawker had got a hold of some emails from Jared Loughner, and Daulerio has been going through them looking for new insights in the horrendous mass shooting that left six dead and wounded 14, including U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords. It got weird when Daulerio asked, "So, you talked to Jared, right?"
  "Nope, never spoke with him," I replied.
  "But you emailed with him, right?"
  "No, never did. Uh...why?"
  "Because we have an email from him to you."
  That's when my nervous laughter began. Good to know that I laugh when I'm freaking out, it must be my Irish heritage. "Um, do you have a reply from me?" I asked, cringing.
  No reply, he says... but maybe I have it?
  I have no recollection so I tell him I'll get back to him. I got home and did a search for Loughner in my email database. Ping. With an increasingly icky feeling, I saw that not only had he emailed me, but I had responded.
  Time stamp: February 2009. A full 23 months before the shooting.
  I reread Loughner's email to me and instantly understood why I didn't remember it: it was very, very forgettable. By any reasonable standard, it was a polite inquiry about dreams, like the kind I get each and every day. No weirdness. No nonsensical queries. Even with the typo, it was a totally normal request, and I sent him a reply back a few days later and forgot about it.
  Below you can read Loughner's email to me and my reply. I'm attaching the emails as screenshots, and have blurred out only our email addresses.
  A couple of points about this exchange:
  The "knol" Loughner is referring to is an article on lucid dreaming I wrote for the now-defunct Google Knol project. But the history of lucid dreaming section of that knol is available here.In my response, I hesitate to recommend melatonin. That stuff is not candy, y'all. Supplements alone are not a healthy approach to lucid dreaming. And melatonin is a crappy supplement for lucid dreaming anyways.I invited Loughner to feel free to submit me some examples of his own lucid dreams, which he never did. Maybe that's a good thing.The lucid nightmare data set I mention in the email was presented in June of 2009 in Chicago at the annual conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Ominously enough considering the present discussion, it was titled, "Lucid Nightmares:the Dark Side of Self-Awareness in Dreams."Lucid Dreaming and Mental Illness
  It's sobering to know that a man who later became a convicted mass-murderer was reading my blog and corresponding with me in 2009. As I suggested to the editor of Gawker, as an online educator, all I can do is hope that my work helps people.
  It's especially sobering as I provide educational material about lucid dreaming, which will probably, once again, get some media buzz as being a "cause" to Loughner's descent into schizophrenia.
  This correlation simply does not hold water.
  As I discuss in this article on the supposed dangers of lucid dreaming, there's no evidence that lucid dreaming can bring on mental illness. From my dangers piece:
  "In fact, lucid dreaming has recently been linked to resilience, the ability to maintain stability during and after traumatic events. Lucid dreaming is used clinically to help cope with nightmares, and is considered by many psychologists to promote psychological growth and encourage problem solving."
  The real connection of mental illness and lucid dreaming: people who suffer with mental illness often also have arousal disorders, which can increase the likelihood of hallucinations at sleep onset, and may increase the chance to have a lucid dream due to increased awakenings throughout the night.
  But millions of healthy people have lucid dreams every night. And millions more experience sleep onset hallucinations that seem extraordinarily vivid, which coincidentally is a central theme of Oliver Sack's new book Hallucinations.
  Sacks' point: hallucinations are not just the mark of psychosis. More commonly, they are the mark of being sleep deprived, stressed, drugged or physically exhausted. People with narcolepsy and partial blindness and also experience hallucinations without losing their mind.
  Anyhow, Loughner didn't become a murderer because he was a lucid dreamer, no more than he did because he smoked copious amounts of ganja. He was sick, he needed help, and the saddest part of this case is that the people in his community knew it but seemed powerless to help him.
  The Secret Sufferers
  One more thing: it's not weird to me that I corresponded with someone who turned out to be mentally ill. This probably happens more than I am aware - and that's true for all of us. Those suffering with mental illness routinely hide their illness, and most do it pretty well.
  Now, my heart goes out to the survivors of the Tuscon tragedy, and to the shattered families who are picking up the pieces. But calling people suffering from schizophrenia "crazies" is not going to help. They are not "them." "They" are us. Bouts of clinical depression, schizophrenia and other personality disorders and psychoses can come and go. Many people heal, picking up where they left off - at least that's true for those who have community support. Others stabilize their condition, living out productive lives, working jobs in every sector of the economy, including higher education and government. Elyn Saks eloquently describes what this looks like from the inside in this TED talk.
  Society, and especially media, has a way of othering those with sicknesses that we don't understand. Even though people with mental illness may commit more violent crime (under stressed conditions) than those without, this doesn't mean that all schizophrenics and other folks with personality disorders are murderers-to-be, waiting to blow up like a greasy stick of dynamite. This is another logical fallacy.
  In fact, those with substance abuse problems (including alcoholics) are more likely to be violent than schizophrenics, but as a culture -- and perhaps it's part of human nature -- we are much more scared of the sensational and seemingly random acts of violence than the systematic violence that happens around us every day.
  And it is far more likely that people with a serious mental illness will be the victim of violence, not the perp.
  Our mental health facilities are less funded than they have been since the 1970s. This problem will continue to get worse until we start supporting the mental ill amongst us again.
  The grain of truth: Lucid dreaming is powerful medicine
  Under all the misplaced fear about the dark side of lucid dreaming, there is a small grain of truth: the practice of lucid dreaming can, over time, bring up disturbing imagery and challenging situations for the dreamer. It's not all fluffy bunnies and celebrity fantasies in the dreamworld. Sooner or later, you have to face your fears.
  This is why I take lucid dreaming seriously: it's powerful medicine. It shakes up your ego defenses by design. As Leonard Cohen says, "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
  In my view, and the view of many lucid dreaming scholars, establishing a secure container is essential to a healthy lucid dreaming practice: by this I mean having a social support network, a healthy home life, and the time to go deeper into process. These are just a few of the prerequisites to success, and can also prevent the occurrence of nightmares and scary "false awakening" type dreams along the way.
  These dreams won't make you schizophrenic, but without proper support, they can agitate your mental state and possibly re-strengthen the fears that came up in the dreams.
  Unwanted lucid dreams is a real problem for some people too; in these cases, it's best to treat too many vivid and nightmarish dreams as a red flag, find ways to relax and ground yourself, and seek professional help if it's disrupting your life. The same advice goes for a run-away meditation practice or an out-of-control kundalini awakening: psychospiritual practices can be disruptive, so be prepared, and know where you can reach out for community support.
  Image byJenXer, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
Pixie Geldof (22) topless
  Link to Article
  Source: Telegraaf.nl - prive
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 14:49
  za 24 nov 2012, 14:26
  van onze redactieAMSTERDAM - FOTO Pixie Geldof is topless gespot op het strand van Miami.
  De dochter van zanger Bob Geldof poseerde halfnaakt in de branding voor een bekend kledingmerk.
  Pixie, die haar lange haren heeft verruild voor een kort koppie, maakte veel grapjes tijdens de shoot. Zo deed ze, slechts gehuld in een spijkerrok en spijkerjasje, vol overgave een sc¨ne uit de film Titanic na.
  Het model heeft eerder meegewerkt aan campagnes voor Levi's en Agent Provocateur.
  Klik hier om de foto's te bekijken.
  (C) 1996-2012 Telegraaf Media Nederland | Landelijke Media B.V., Amsterdam.Alle rechten voorbehouden.e-mail: redactie-i@telegraaf.nlPrivacy | Cookies | Disclaimer
Beyoncé 'verstopt' Blue Ivy
  Link to Article
  Source: Telegraaf.nl - prive
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 14:42
  za 24 nov 2012, 15:00
  van onze redactieAMSTERDAM - FOTO'S Beyonc(C) trakteert haar fans op twee familiekiekjes, maar ze heeft er wel voor gezorgd dat het gezicht van haar dochtertje Blue Ivy net niet in beeld is.
  Op een foto geeft de zangeres het kleine meisje een kus. Alleen het achterhoofd van Blue Ivy - geboren in januari - is zichtbaar. Ze draagt net als haar moeder een blauwe jurk en heeft al een flinke bos krullen op haar hoofdje.
  Op de tweede foto maakt Jay-Z een wandeling met zijn dochter. Het kiekje is in zwart-wit, dus weer is er niet veel te zien van Blue Ivy.
  "From our family to yours", schrijft Beyonc(C). "Wishing you a happy and healthy Thanksgiving."
  Klik hier om de foto's te bekijken.
  (C) 1996-2012 Telegraaf Media Nederland | Landelijke Media B.V., Amsterdam.Alle rechten voorbehouden.e-mail: redactie-i@telegraaf.nlPrivacy | Cookies | Disclaimer
Lichaam Arafat dinsdag opgegraven
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:29
  24/11/12, 11:26 '' bron: ANP
  (C) ap. De in 2004 overleden Palestijnse leider Yasser Arafat
  Het lichaam van de in 2004 overleden Palestijnse leider Yasser Arafat wordt dinsdag opgegraven. Dat heeft het hoofd van het onderzoeksteam zaterdag aangekondigd.
  Het stoffelijk overschot van Arafat wordt onderzocht om een einde te maken aan het mysterie rond zijn dood. Zo gaat het verhaal dat Isral hem zou hebben vergiftigd met het radioactieve polonium. 'De tombe zal op 27 november wordt geopend en deskundigen zullen binnen enkele uren monsters nemen', aldus teamleider Tawfiq Tirawi.
Jinek doet het beter in de ochtend dan in de avond
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:20
  24/11/12, 11:35
  (C) ANP. Eva Jinek. Archieffoto.
  De eerste aflevering van de talkshow Vrijdag Met Vrienden van Eva Jinek heeft gisteravond 415.000 kijkers getrokken. Het programma, waarin BN'ers worden uitgenodigd, ging direct na De Wereld Draait Door van start op Nederland 3.
  Eva's eerste gast gisteren was kunstenaar en radio-dj Ruud de Wild, die kwam praten over echte vriendschap.
  Met deze cijfers, gemeten door Stichting Kijkonderzoek, blijkt Jinek vooralsnog prime time iets minder kijkers te hebben dan op zondagochtend met Eva Jinek op Zondag. Dan weet ze doorgaans rond de 500.000 kijkers te boeien.
  Vrijdag Met Vrienden veroverde geen plaats in de dagelijkse kijkcijfer top 25. De show moest concurreren met de immer populaire talentenjacht The Voice of Holland op RTL 4. Naar dat programma keken gisteren een slordige 3 miljoen mensen, waarmee het het best bekeken programma van de dag was.
Pleegkinderen weggehaald bij Brits koppel wegens 'racisme'
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:16
  24/11/12, 13:50 '' bron: ANP
  (C) Thinkstock.
  Drie pleegkinderen van buitenlandse komaf zijn weggehaald bij een blank Brits koppel omdat de twee lid zijn van een politieke anti-immigratiepartij. De pleegouders, die de kinderen acht weken in huis hadden, bleven verbaasd achter toen medewerkers van de gemeente volslagen onverwachts de baby, de peuter en een wat ouder meisje weghaalden uit hun woning in een dorp in het graafschap South Yorkshire.
  'Ik was verbluft', aldus de vrouw zaterdag tegenover de krant Daily Telegraph. Volgens haar kreeg ze te horen dat de partij die zij aanhangen, de UK Independence Party (UKIP), er racistische ideen op nahoudt. 'Daarmee suggereerden ze dus dat wij racisten zijn.' De gemeente was er door een anonieme tip achtergekomen dat de twee lid waren van de UKIP.
  De toezichthouder, de Rotherham Borough Council, heeft verklaard geen spijt te hebben van de actie en gezegd dat deze was ingegeven door de immigratiepolitiek van de UKIP. 'Er zijn enkele heftige opvattingen in de UKIP en we moeten denken aan de toekomst van de kinderen', zei directielid Joyce Thacker tegen de BBC.
  In het district Rotherham, waar het zich allemaal af heeft gespeeld, heeft de Labourparty het voor het zeggen. De landelijke partij kondigde zaterdag een onderzoek aan.
COLBY, BARAK, ROTHSCHILD, EPSTEIN, MAXWELL...
  Link to Article
  Source: aangirfan
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:11
  Angus James Wilson was the co-founder of Scallywag Magazine, together with his half brother Simon Regan.Angus told Simon "that he had been supplied with compromising pictures of ...."
  Angus James Wilson died in Cyprus in a car crash in September 1996....
  Someone "took all Angus's possessions into his own custody, presumably with the photographs."
  Angus James Wilson died in 1996 and Simon Regan died around 2000.
  justice denied: death of scallywag co founder angus james wilson ...
  Paul Bonacci Paul Bonacci was jailed after testifying that Lawrence King ran a boy prostitution ring for top people. King was sued by Bonacci in 1999 and, because King did not respond to or defend himself against the charges, he was ordered to pay Bonacci $1M.John DeCamp, who represented Bonacci in both cases, wrote a book titled The Franklin Coverup, which was prefaced by retired CIA chief William Colby and published in 1994.William Colby (1920 '' 1996) was the boss of the CIA from 1973 until 1976.
  Colby was no friend of Israel.
  He knew a lot about CIA dirty tricks and he died in 'mysterious circumstances'.
  On 28th April 1996 William Colby went on a canoe trip at Rock Point in Maryland. His body was found several days later.
  Colby may have known too much about:
  1.The CIA and heroin 2. Israeli attempts to infiltrate and control the CIA 3. Child sex abuse scandals and the CIA.John DeCamp, who had once worked for Colby, investigated the Franklin child sex abuse case.
  Shortly before Colby died, Colby warned DeCamp to give up the case.
  However, 'with the blessing of Colby', DeCamp wrote a book about the case: The Franklin Cover Up." (aangirfan: William Colby, heroin, Israel and child sex abuse) (Classic State Terrorism) (aangirfan: OMAHA IS FAMOUS)Epstein, put on trial for involvement with young girls. Jeffrey Epstein was accused of child sexual abuse; but he has friends in high places (Israel)MOSSAD CHILD SEX RING?Jeffrey Epstein likes boys?
  "Maximilia Cordero, who stepped forward ... with a lawsuit claiming she'd engaged in 'bizarre and unnatural sex acts' with Epstein while in her teens, was born Maximillian Cordero in 1983, records show."
  NY Post
  "Jeffrey Epstein was once presented with three 12-year-olds from France as a birthday gift...
  "He brought over a 14-year-old from the Balkans whom he called his 'Yugoslavian sex slave.'"
  (Sex Trafficking - The Daily Beast )
  'Mossad spy' Robert Maxwell (Jn Ludv­k Hoch) and his daughter Ghislaine.Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Robert Maxwell, is a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein who was jailed for involvement with 'child prostitutes'.
  Ghislaine Maxwell is 'just like her Daddy' - Mail Online.
  Former Mossad officer Ari Ben-Menashe reported that in 1986 Robert Maxwell tipped off the Israeli Embassy in London that Mordechai Vanunu had given information about Israel's nuclear capability to the Sunday Times.
  Jeffrey Epstein. Photo by Patrick McMullan. (Website for this image)Jeffrey Epstein is a member of the the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.
  He supports the Friends of Israel Defense Forces.
  He has donated money to the Palm Beach Police Department.
  (Jeffrey Epstein - Wikipedia)
  Virginia Roberts, friend of Epstein and Prince Andrew.Does Mossad run pedophile rings?
  Virginia Roberts worked for Jeffrey Epstein.
  She has stated that when she was aged 15 "She was 'given' to men ranging in age from their 40s to their 60s.
  "They included a well-known businessman, a world-renowned scientist, a respected liberal politician and foreign head of state."
  "While in Palm Beach Marcinkova kept Epstein's underage 'masseuses' busy with lots of lesbian sex, complete with 'strap on dildos' and a 'large rubber penis.'(Website for this)
  Website for this image...
  On 27th February 2011, in the Mail on Sunday, we read about:
  Prince Andrew and the teen girl his sex offender friend Jeffrey Epstein flew to Britain to meet him.From this we learn:
  1. Jeffrey Epstein was jailed, for only 18 months, for soliciting underage prostitutes.
  He escaped a 20-year sex trafficking sentence.
  Around 20 February 2011, photographs appeared which showed Prince Andrew with Jeffrey Epstein.
  Virginia Roberts, who was at the centre of the Epstein case, has revealed to The Mail on Sunday that, while employed by Epstein, she was flown across the world to be introduced to Prince Andrew.
  2. Andrew is friends with Epstein and with Epstein's confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of (Mossad agent) Robert Maxwell.
  Epstein's friends have included Woody Allen, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
  3. Virginia Roberts was 15 years old when she got to know Epstein in 1998.She alleges that her duties included being "sexually exploited by Epstein's adult male peers including royalty".
  4. Virginia Roberts, who now lives in Australia, was born in Sacramento, California, in 1983.She was sexually molested by 'a man close to her family'.
  Aged 11, she was sent to live with an aunt.
  Three years later, she started a new life with her father, in Palm Beach, Florida.
  Her father was maintenance manager at Donald Trump's country club, Mar-a-Lago.
  5. Aged 15, she met Ghislaine Maxwell, who arranged for her to work as Epstein's masseuse.Her father drove her to Epstein's Palm Beach mansion.
  Epstein also owns a nine-storey home in New York, a 7,500-acre ranch in New Mexico and an atoll in the US Virgin Islands.
  Virginia worked for Epstein for four years.
  For three of those years, she was under Florida's age of consent.
  6. "Basically, I was training to be a prostitute for him and his friends who shared his interest in young girls," she says.
  "The way it usually worked was I'd be sent to meet a man on the private island Jeffrey owned in the Caribbean, or at his ranch in New Mexico, which was really isolated...
  "I met famous friends of his such as Al Gore and Heidi Klum and Naomi Campbell."
  Ehud Barak
  On 13th March 2011, the Mail on Sunday reports on Jeffrey Epstein's private Caribbean island, Little St James, and on his 'little black book' listing phone contacts.
  (How Prince Andrew shared a room at Epstein's Caribbean hideaway with a busty blonde.)
  Among those whose names have been linked to Epstein are:
  Ehud Barak
  Bill Clinton
  Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and his daughter Hannah
  Lord Mandelson and Lord Mandelson's boyfriend Reinaldo.
  Ghislaine Maxwell
  Naomi Campbell
  Sir Richard Bransonaangirfan: SAVILE, ROYALTY, BARAK, CLINTON...
Auto Tweeting Quality Links | Jake A. Smith
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Fri, 23 Nov 2012 03:00
  People regularly ask me how I manage to post links to Twitter all day long and still have a life. (Or a job.) I've let a few people in on the secret sauce, but I wanted something to refer people to when they asked on Twitter.
  It all starts with Google Reader. At the beginning of this year, I spent several weeks seeking out news sites and blogs that consistently provided quality material and links. I started by subscribing to Hacker News, because they link to a lot of great articles and blog posts. As I found headlines that caught my eye I would click thru to the site and look around. If the site consistently provided a lot of good material I would add it directly to Reader for a trial run. Sites that didn't provide great content or if I found myself skipping everything from a particular source I would remove them to reduce the noise.
  Folders are a great way of grouping and organizing your content and Reader provides you with just that. I only keep a few folders, but every feed goes into one of them. Notably, I have one folder just for news items. Thanks to Fast Company, The Next Web, The Verge and several others, I get hundreds of posts in this folder every day. (I had The Onion in there for a bit, but it fooled me too many times.) Keeping opinion pieces and development articles in their own folders ensures I can easily get to the kind of content I want to read and that nothing gets buried under those news feeds.
  One of the great things about RSS (and Google Reader, in particular) is that there are a lot of quality clients available. On my Android phone (blech, I need to get an iPhone) I use Flipboard to show some of the most recent headlines on my home screen and use Google's Reader app to actually read thru headlines, because it's faster. On my mac I use Reeder, because it has a clean and snappy interface with keyboard shortcuts. All of them are great clients and, critically, they all allow me to star items I like.
  Reader provides you with the ability to turn your folders and starred items into public pages. Its like your own curated blog, made up of everyone else's material with Google's ads, which is basically useless, except for the fact that it comes with an Atom feed. The feed contains the titles and URLs of the starred posts which we can use below.
  The last piece of the puzzle is a social manager service called Pluggio. It helps you manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts by providing you with tools for scheduling your tweets and posts. You can either schedule posts for a certain time or put them into the Dripfeed to release them throughout the day. I use this with another tool they call the content stream, which pulls in material from RSS feeds. By grabbing the titles and URLs from the Atom feed and putting them into Pluggio's Dripfeed, I can provide a solid stream of updates on Twitter throughout the day.
  It's nothing revolutionary, but it does allow me to provide some quality content on Twitter without having to spend all day managing it. Now I just need to find a good way of managing my Twitter feed.
From Lady Gaga to the future of social media
  Link to Article
  Source: LIVE@LEEDS
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:05
  Lisa O'Carroll 11/05/12 Brisbanetimes.com.au
  Troy Carter, the force behind Lady Gaga, isn't just a talent manager. He epitomises an emerging group of creatives who are finding that partnering with Silicon Valley types is the way out of a broken business.
  Not only is Carter making a good fist of reforming the music industry's business model by challenging its distribution methods '' Lady Gaga's next album will be an app '' but he is building and sharing a new social media platform which aims to rival Twitter and, in his spare time, running a private angel fund for technology startups.
  Through his AF Square fund, Carter has invested in 40 online services and apps, ranging from the music streaming service Spotify, to the US taxi-booking app Uber and Rap Genius, a website dedicated to explaining rap lyrics which was set up three years ago by a bunch of Yale graduates.
  One of the startups Carter is most excited by is Summly, a news scanning service launched on Friday on iTunes. It is designed by a British teenager, Nick D'Aloisio (who spent some of his early years in Australia) and '' having been described as one of the most disruptive apps of 2012 '' is a venture that may be viewed warily by the newspaper industry.
  But first, Lady Gaga. Some joke that if she and Justin Bieber left Twitter it would collapse. She is the most followed individual on the service with 30.9 million fans and counting '' one million ahead of the teen popster and nine million ahead of the fifth most followed tweeter, Barack Obama. Her Facebook following is even bigger, with 54 million fans, but Carter's focus is on the fans on Gaga's new social network, littlemonsters.com.
  A hot turn on the media conference circuit, Philadelphia-born Carter is disarmingly optimistic about his sector. ''The music industry is healthier than ever right now and it's a fantastic time to be in it,'' he says. A bold statement, considering how difficult it is for many artists to make money.
  ''The way consumers interact with music is different now,'' he explains. ''It's not an albums business any more, it's a singles business again and the industry has gone through that before. People are experimenting with streaming, with subscription services, whether it's a Spotify or a Pandora or a Rdio,'' he says, naming some of the many services that allow users to listen to tracks of their choice free.
  ''I think piracy itself is going to end up going away,'' he adds. ''If you can get something for absolutely free [instead of] stealing it, and the quality of free is actually better than the quality of stealing it, the choice becomes easy.''
  This is the point where managing Lady Gaga and his involvement in social media meet. Her next album, Artpop, will be launched through a paid-for app and she promises ''chats, films for every song, extra music, Gaga-inspired games, fashion updates, magazines and more still in the works!''. The idea is that the customer will want to pay for it because of all the extras.
  With her previous album she was also pioneering, marketing Born This Way through ''FarmVille'', the hugely popular Facebook game, in partnership with the games company Zynga. Visitors to her farm, which was populated by unicorns, crystals and sheep on motorcyles, got exclusive access to songs a week ahead of launch.
  ''I think the idea of having an application is the future,'' says Carter. When asked what hope he holds out for the newspaper industry, also struggling against the internet, he replies that publishers simply have to adjust their ways. ''People don't buy horses to ride around any more for transportation. I just think the world changes. As a business, we have to make the proper adjustments.''
  For Carter, the key is creating a two-way relationship with Gaga and his other clients' customers. The quantity of readers or listeners is not what is important. ''A 'like' [on Facebook] doesn't necessarily translate as a fan. It's a very passive relationship. It's more important to have the one million diehard fans, than to have 54 million people who aren't necessarily fans or they might have liked one thing you said, or one video. It's being able to segregate those audiences and knowing who the super-fans are.''
  To this end, he and Lady Gaga decided to build their social network, littlemonsters.com. Launched three months ago, it has one million registered users and is already seeing respectable dwell-times, with fans staying on average ''14 or 15 minutes'' per visit. ''These kids live on the site,'' says Carter.
  In the yesterday world of CD sales, the data about customers that record companies held was ''shit'', says Carter. ''You have names, you have cities and you have credit card information, but it's not user behaviour. You don't know where else they are going on the internet, you don't know what other artists they like, or what music they listen to. You really don't know anything about them.''
  Through littlemonsters.com, Carter has, in effect, moved into customer relations management, which is all about ''getting to know your fans '' when did they become a fan, when did they drop off, what other artists are they listening to?''
  The album app will be promoted via littlemonsters.com, and he is hoping to replicate the experience with ''millions'' of tiny social networking sites, employing his Backplane platform from which Gaga's site emerged. He is already working on one site for a Christian group and another for a baseball team. ''We think the future of social media are micronetworks and communities built around specific interests,'' he says.
  Backplane is his third company, alongside AF Square and Atom Factory (his talent management arm), and raised $US5 million from blue chip investors including Google Ventures, Sequoia (one of the oldest tech private equity firms, which was among the backers of Google and Apple) and Founders Fund '' a fund backed by Facebook's co-founder Sean Parker and PayPal's founder Peter Thiel.
  Carter, who started his career working with Will Smith and Sean ''Diddy'' Combs, still has his eye firmly on the talent, though. Just before this interview, he told the Wired 2012 tech conference in London that he takes tips from the TV star Ashton Kutcher, one of the tech world's new powerbrokers whose investments have helped to propel startups such as Foursquare, Airbnb and Flipboard.
  ''Ashton is probably one of the smartest guys when it comes to tech,'' he enthused. ''There's not too many people who understand product as well as Ashton and we co-invest alongside his company a lot.''
  In Britain, where Carter will this week return for yet another conference turn, he sees Summly as the one to watch. ''Nick [D'Aloisio] is 17 years old, one of the most super-smart people I have met,'' says Carter. His startup's app summarises large newspaper articles, breaking them down to two-paragraph bullet points.
  ''For young kids consuming content, that's kind of how they read anyway and they can choose whether they read the lot. The science behind it is absolutely fascinating.''
  If it gets kids reading newspapers, that cannot be a bad thing.
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  Tags: Lady GaGa, Troy Carter
  This entry was posted on November 23, 2012 at 4:31 am and is filed under Managers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Do superstar DJs just press 'go' on their live shows?
  Link to Article
  Source: LIVE@LEEDS
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:02
  Greg Cochrane bbc.co.uk/newsbeat 11/20/12
  Calvin Harris says he doesn't have a problem with some pre-recordsIt started with a video that appeared to show Swedish House Mafia DJ Steve Angello pressing play on a pre-mixed segment of a festival set.
  A war of words was sparked between some of the dance world's biggest names and it is yet to die down.''In a way, yes, you press a button but you're still there performing your art,'' says Swedish House Mafia's Axwell.
  ''Maybe DJ'ing is just reserved for people who use vinyl then.''Swedish House Mafia Swedish House Mafia are selling out arenas worldwide on their farewell tour
  Speaking to Newsbeat from the middle of the group's globe-spanning farewell arena tour, he adds: ''We that use CDJs or Ableton [software], let's just call us artists if that's easier.
  ''Maybe the debate will end. I don't think it's a healthy debate to have.''
  Calvin Harris has followed in the footsteps of David Guetta and Skrillex in stepping into the DJ super league in recent years, via collaborations with everyone from Rihanna to Florence & The Machine.
  ''I think it's not a problem,'' shrugs Harris. ''In the club you want to hear a produced piece of music, you want to hear the bass, you want to hear it as good as it can sound.
  ''I used to perform with a band putting all sorts of work into a live show and I can tell you that the reaction was worse than it is when I'm DJ'ing.''
  DJ Danny Howard says ''button pushing'' is still a hot topic in dance music
  Nick Decosemo, editor of dance magazine MixMag, says the debate continues to bubble.
  ''If you're a real purist live music fan then you probably want to see some kind of talent with an instrument,'' he says.
  ''On the other hand you may just want to go to a show because you've heard these songs, you love the artist and you're going to see some kind of mind-blowing light show '' you're quite happy to be there, lost in the moment.''Deadmau5 Canadian DJ Deadmau5 has been criticised for admitting ''we all hit play''
  At the time, Canadian star Deadmau5 responded to the row with a blog which tried to tell the truth about what happens behind the turntables up on stage. It was headlined We All Hit Play.
  ''I'm not going to let it go thinking that people assume there's a guy on a laptop up there producing new original tracks on the fly, because none of the top DJs in the world to my knowledge have, myself included,'' Deadmau5 wrote.
  ''Questions of authenticity have been raised,'' five-times DJ world champion (and one half of Duck Sauce) A-Trak said in response.
  ''He [Deadmau5] doesn't fully understand, or care for, what DJ'ing is at the core, but that doesn't take away from his talent.''
  Today A-Trak says fans' expectations have changed in a world of flashy productions and cutting-edge light shows.
  ''Crowds used to come see DJs for a musical journey,'' he says.''Now they expect to hear specific songs, and furthermore, they want to see a show.''
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  Tags: DJ culture
  This entry was posted on November 23, 2012 at 10:53 am and is filed under Musicians. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
On Being Not Dead - NYTimes.com
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:02
  ONE night last year I called my friend Oliver and told him to meet me on the roof of our apartment building. He lives three flights down from me. I had pulled together a simple dinner '-- roast chicken, good bread, olives, cherries, wine. We ate at a picnic table. I'd forgotten wineglasses, so we traded swigs out of the bottle. It was summer. The sun was setting on the Hudson. Neighbors were enjoying themselves at nearby tables. The breeze was nice. The surrounding cityscape looked like a stage set for a musical.
  Connect With Us on TwitterFor Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.
  What is the opposite of a perfect storm? That is what this was, one of those rare moments when the world seems to shed all shyness and display every possible permutation of beauty. Oliver said it well as we took up our plates and began heading back downstairs: ''I'm glad I'm not dead.'' This came out rather loudly, as he is a bit deaf. Even so, he looked surprised by his own utterance, as if it were something he was feeling but didn't really mean to say aloud '-- a thought turned into an exclamation.
  ''I'm glad you're not dead, too,'' said a neighbor gaily, taking up the refrain. ''I'm glad we're all not dead,'' said another. There followed a spontaneous raising of glasses on the rooftop, a toast to the setting sun, a toast to us.
  I suppose it's a clich(C) to say you're glad to be alive, that life is short, but to say you're glad to be not dead requires a specific intimacy with loss that comes only with age or deep experience. One has to know not simply what dying is like, but to know death itself, in all its absoluteness.
  After all, there are many ways to die '-- peacefully, violently, suddenly, slowly, happily, unhappily, too soon. But to be dead '-- one either is or isn't.
  The same cannot be said of aliveness, of which there are countless degrees. One can be alive but half-asleep or half-noticing as the years fly, no matter how fully oxygenated the blood and brain or how steadily the heart beats. Fortunately, this is a reversible condition. One can learn to be alert to the extraordinary and press pause '-- to memorize moments of the everyday.
  I think now about that summer night on the roof 15 months ago, and how many people I have known or loved that I've lost since then: my mother, three friends, two neighbors and, a few weeks ago, a friend who was like a second mother to me. This last one has been tough, more so for being unexpected. Her many friends and relatives came together for a memorial one afternoon last week. It was beautiful, joy-filled. Irishman that I am, I wept all the way through. Oh, well. I've come to believe that a good cry is like a carwash for the soul.
  Afterward, I started walking, walked past a subway entrance on Lexington and kept going. It was dark by now, and cold. But the autumn night receded and Lex magically turned into Fifth as I called to mind a warm afternoon spent with Wendy in June. We'd had lunch and decided to walk back to her office rather than take a cab. She was about a head taller than me, so whenever I glanced at her it was against a backdrop of blue sky and high-rises and American flags fluttering on Fifth Avenue. I felt like I was on a dolly-cam, seeing her through the lens of a movie camera. She wore a big smile and a sleeveless dress. We were talking about how much we both loved New York '-- she as a native, I as a newcomer '-- and all the while, I was aware that I was glad to be here right now and wanted to remember as much of this as I could. And I do. The short clip of our walk plays on a continuous loop.
  When I got home, Oliver called. ''Come downstairs,'' he said, ''everything's marinating.'' It's really a lucky thing to have as a neighbor your best friend. We set the table and opened a bottle. He'd grilled salmon and steamed peas. For dessert, we split an apple; a perfect meal. We turned on the radio. It was ''Beethoven awareness month'' on our classical radio station, and it began playing Opus 133, the ''great fugue'' with which he had originally ended one of his late quartets. I am not well versed in classical music; had I not heard the announcer, I would have guessed it was something contemporary '-- even composed this very day. Oliver told me that in Beethoven's time the piece was considered almost unintelligible by listeners and so demanding technically as to be nearly unplayable. Conversation came to a stop and we just listened, the music at once chaotic and violent, mysterious and gorgeous.
  Behind Oliver, through a large picture window facing north, Eighth Avenue unfurled as far as the eye could see. I have this thing where sometimes I try to catch the moment when all the traffic lights on Eighth align and turn red, their number multiplied countless times by the brake lights from stopped cars and taxicabs. It doesn't happen often at all, traffic lights seeming to have their own sense of time, and Oliver never quite catches it. So I watch for the two of us. Finally: ''There, there it is, see?''
  He turns to find a fiery red Milky Way on the streets of Manhattan.
  And in a blink, the lights start turning green.
Pigeon Code Baffles British Cryptographers
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:00
  SWNS.com
  A chimney in a home in Surrey, England, was found in 1982 to hold the remains of a carrier pigeon bearing a World War II coded message. An effort is now under way to find out what it says.
  They have eavesdropped on the enemy for decades, tracking messages from Hitler's high command and the Soviet K.G.B. and on to the murky, modern world of satellites and cyberspace. But a lowly and yet mysterious carrier pigeon may have them baffled.
  Britain's code-breakers acknowledged Friday that an encrypted handwritten message from World War II, found on the leg of a long-dead carrier pigeon in a household chimney in southern England, has thwarted all their efforts to decode it since it was sent to them last month.
  As the bird's story made headlines, pigeon specialists said they believed it may have been flying home from British units in France around the time of the D-Day landing in 1944 when it somehow expired in the chimney at the 17th-century home where it was found in the village of Bletchingley, south of London.
  After sustained pressure from pigeon fanciers, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, its code-breaking and communications interception unit in Gloucestershire, agreed to try to crack the code. But on Friday the secretive organization acknowledged that it had been unable to do so.
  ''The sorts of code that were constructed during operations were designed only to be able to be read by the senders and the recipients,'' a historian at the organization told the British Broadcasting Corporation.
  ''Unless we get rather more idea than we have about who sent this message and who it was sent to, we are not going to be able to find out what the underlying code was,'' said the historian, who was identified only as Tony under the organization's secrecy protocols.
  Code breakers, he said, believed that there could be two possibilities about the encryption of the message, both of them requiring greater knowledge about the identity of those who devised or used the code.
  One possibility, he said, was that it was based on a so-called one-time pad that uses a random set of letters, known only to the sender and the recipient, to convert plain text into code and is then destroyed.
  ''If it's only used once and it's properly random, and it's properly guarded by the sender and the recipient, it's unbreakable,'' the historian said.
  Alternatively, if the message was based on a code book designed specifically for a single operation or mission, then the code breakers were ''unlikely'' to crack it, the historian said. ''These codes are not designed to be casually or easily broken.''
  It took a campaign of many years to get officials to pay attention. The pigeon's skeleton was initially found in 1982 by David Martin, a retired probation officer, when he was cleaning out a chimney at his home in Bletchingley as part of a renovation. The message, identifying the pigeon by the code name 40TW194, had been folded into a small scarlet capsule attached to its leg.
  ''Without access to the relevant code books and details of any additional encryption used, it will remain impossible to decrypt,'' the Government Communications Headquarters said in a news release. ''Although it is disappointing that we cannot yet read the message brought back by a brave carrier pigeon, it is a tribute to the skills of the wartime code makers that, despite working under severe pressure, they devised a code that was undecipherable both then and now.''
  Mr. Martin said he was skeptical of the idea that the agency had been unable to crack the code. ''I think there's something about that message that is either sensitive or does not reflect well'' on British special forces operating behind enemy lines in wartime France, he said in a telephone interview. ''I'm convinced that it's an important message and a secret message.''
  There was some indication on Friday, though, that the agency was not taking 40TW194's code as seriously as, say, tracking satellite phone communications between militants in the Hindu Kush.
  One of the most ''helpful'' ideas about the code, according to Tony, the agency's historian, had come from an unidentified member of the public. That person suggested that, with Christmas coming and thoughts turning, in the West at least, to a red-robed, white-bearded, reindeer-drawn bearer of gifts skilled at accessing homes through their chimneys, the first two words of the message might be ''Dear Santa.''
I Don't Want To Be Part of Your Fucking Ecosystem by Terence Eden has a Blog
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:59
  I was chatting with a friend who expressed what I'm finding is a fairly common opinion.
  Well, yes, I'd love to move to Android - but all my content is in iTunes.
  I discovered that it wasn't apps which were the problem - buying them again is a pain, but most are free. It's media content which traps people into staying with services that they no longer want.
  Music, movies, TV, and podcast subscriptions. All tied up in Apple's little ecosystem. A very pretty noose to keep people chained to its hardware.
  Imagine, just for a moment, that your Sony DVD player would only play Sony Movies' films. When you decided to buy a new DVD player from Samsung, none of those media files would work on your new kit without some serious fiddling.
  That's the walled garden that so many companies are now trying to drag us into. And I think it stinks.
  On a mobile phone network in the UK, you can use any phone you want. Hardware and services are totally divorced. It promotes competition because customers know that if they have a poor experience with HTC, they can move to Nokia and everything will carry on working just as it did before.
  But, if all of your contacts, entertainment services, and backups are chained into HTC - well, then you're just shit out of luck if you want to move.
  I want to see a complete separation of church and state here. Hardware should be separate from software. Software should be separate from services.
  I want to watch Nokia movies on my Samsung hardware running Google's Android, and then back them up to DropBox.
  That's how it works - more or less - in the PC space. I don't understand why it doesn't in the tablet and smartphone space? Why would I buy a tablet that only worked with content from one provider? Whether that's Amazon, Microsoft or Apple - it's setting up a nasty little monopoly which will drive up prices and drive down quality.
  I know, I know. The mantra of "It Just Works". I'm mildly sick of having to configure my tablet to talk to my NAS, and then get the TV to talk to both of them. That situation isn't just due to my equipment all coming from different manufacturers - it's mostly due to those manufacturers not implementing open standards.
  I fear what will happen when a provider shuts down a service. I joke about Apple going bust - even if they stay solvent, what's to stop them wiping all your music and movie purchases? After all, they shuttered their Mobile Me service with barely any warning and destroyed all the data their paying customers were hosting there.Adobe killed their DRM servers with only 9 months notice - effectively stopping anyone from reading books they had bought.Amazon wipes Kindles.Google took Google Video to the woodshed and shot it in the head - along with Buzz, Wave, and who know how many other products.Microsoft set up PlaysForSure - and then let it die, trapping millions of music files on devices which are no longer supported.
  So, perhaps I'll stick with Google and hope that my Google TV talks to my Google Phone while I watch Google Play videos and listen to Google Play Music on my Google ChromeBook which I share on Google+ and purchase with Google Wallet. And send them the technology geek's prayer "Please don't decide that this useful service isn't profitable."
  I just want us all to get along. I want my disparate equipment to talk to each other. I don't want to live in a house where ever component has to be made by the same company otherwise nothing works correctly. I don't want to be stuck using a crappy product because they're the only ones offering service X.
  I don't want toys that only run on your flavour of batteries.
  I don't want to be part of your fucking ecosystem.
DICTATOR MORSI, PROTECTOR OF ISRAEL, FACES RIOTS
  Link to Article
  Source: aangirfan
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:58
  Forever Friends. Website for this image...Egypt's President Morsi mediated for Israel "and finally turned himself into the Jewish state's de facto protector." The CIA likes its Islamist puppets to be dictators.On 22 November 2012, Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi assumed sweeping powers.
  23 November 2012, protesters burnt the offices of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood in several cities.Tens of thousands headed to Cairo's Tahrir Square to protest against Morsi.
  Down with the CIA puppet.Reportedly, Morsi is seeking to become the "new pharaoh".The move is a blow to those who thought that the CIA's Arab Spring would bring democracy.Opposition forces have denounced the declaration as a "coup".They held nationwide protests on 23 November 2012.Abe Solomons, Free Gaza Assoc., comments:"The attack on Gaza was solely to test the US funded Iron Dome, before any attacks on Iran.
  "The rocket firers are all IDF Israelis, to justify any assaults.
  "The Israelis openly claim the Palestinians must all be killed so they can take all the land and its resources.
  "The London Israeli Embassy were cheering as the bombs landed on Gaza."
  223 November 2012 - Attack on an Morsi-Muslim-Brotherhood office.23 November 2012: anti-Morsi riots
  23 November 2012: anti-Morsi march.
  aangirfan: EGYPT REVOLTS AGAINST MORSIaangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/11/egypt-revolts-against-morsi.html1 day ago '' Egyptians are revolting against the hated Morsi, who belongs to the CIA's Muslim ... Turnout was less than 20%, and Morsi won, through fraud.aangirfan: MORSI'S FOREIGN POLICY; ANTI-MORSI PROTESTSaangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/.../morsis-foreign-policy-anti-morsi.ht...24 Aug 2012 '' On 24 August 2012, anti-Morsi protests hit Egypt. "Violence in Tahrir ...Thousands of anti-Morsi protesters gather outside presidential palace. 1.aangirfan: DICTATORSHIP IN EGYPT?aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/08/dictatorship-in-egypt.html17 Aug 2012 '' Reportedly, Morsi now controls the military, the political parties, the courts ... Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood "are replacing the chief editors ...aangirfan: MORSI SIDES WITH SAUDISaangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/07/morsi-sides-with-saudis.html12 Jul 2012 '' Egypt's President Morsi shows his support for Saudi Arabia. Morsi and Crown Prince Salman Egypt's Mohammed Morsi has made the first ...aangirfan: MORSI'S MAD MOSLEMS?aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/07/morsis-mad-moslems.html6 Jul 2012 '' One day after Mohamed Morsi became Egypt's president, Egyptian Islamists stabbed a student to death for 'walking next to his fiancee'.aangirfan: 'QATAR AIDED ATTACK ON GAZA'aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/11/qatar-aided-attack-on-gaza.html5 days ago '' "Egypt's Morsi came to power via a CIA engineered Arab Spring. ... Morsiand Erdogan: The Traveling Clowns Take Their Rodeo To Gaza ...
The 4-Step Process For Mastering Any Skill
  Link to Article
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 00:12
  No matter how complex or daunting a particular skill can seem, if you go about it systematically, you can learn it far more quickly than you would think. Timothy Ferriss, the best selling author of The Four Hour Workweek, makes that argument in his new book, The Four Hour Chef.Ferriss uses cooking to illustrate for his ideas about how to master just about anything. Why cooking? There's an overabundance of information on it, a ton of bad advice, and it's impossible to know where to start. The same applies to just about anything else you want to learn, from learning a language to memorizing a deck of cards in under a minute.
  He breaks down the secrets to learning skills into a simple four part framework and two core insights.
  The framework comes in the form of an acronym '-- DiSSS
  Deconstruct
  "What are the minimum learnable units, the LEGO blocks, I should be starting with?
  Selection
  "Which 20% of the blocks should I focus on for 80% or more of the outcome I want?
  Sequencing
  "In what order should I learn the blocks?"
  Stakes
  "How do I set up stakes to create real consequences and guarantee I follow the program?"
  Beyond the acronym, two other things make the difference between actually following through and stalling in the middle of a project.
  The first is finding failure points. "I don't care why people pick up cookbooks, I'm much more interested in why they put them down," Ferriss writes. Many people stop learning a skill at one of a few different tripping points, for cooking it's things like too many ingredients, intimidating knife skills, dishes finishing at different times, and having to watch things constantly.
  By finding those points, pinpointing them, and having a strategy to overcome them, you avoid the sorts of slowdowns and barriers that prevent people from learning skills.
  The second, having a margin of safety. Ferriss uses Warren Buffett as his example here. Buffett famously buys stocks at a discount, so he'll likely do well even if things go badly.
  The same lesson applies to learning a skill. Making sure you'll have a good, measurable outcome even if you mess up keeps you on track. You avoid the worst failures, and get something useful out of your effort no matter what.
  Find the book here
  NOW READ: 27 Tips For Mastering Anything
Scripting News: The new Camp David accord.
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:46
  Everything was in balance between Israel and Egypt until Mubarak was overthrown in a popular uprising early last year. The US continued to give aid to the Egyptian military, but weren't sure if the deal was still in place after the change in government.
  The deal, to be clear, was the US gives money to Egypt and the army supports peace with Israel and the people of Egypt are suppressed.
  The Israelis desperately wanted to verify that the old deal was still in place. They couldn't test it without some kind of conflict. So they created one. Now we need a cease fire. Secretary Clinton flies to Cairo. Drama. Does the old deal stand? she asks. Morsi asks to have the deal explained. She does. He says sounds good. She asks for proof. What would you like? Announce that you are taking extra-constitutional power. He asks if the money will keep flowing. She says yes. He says OK.
  That's what I think happened.
  PS: Why would Israel want to know now whether the peace deal with Egypt was still in place? Maybe they're getting ready to attack Iran and want to be sure they don't have to fight Egypt too.
Actor Larry Hagman, notorious as 'Dallas' villain J.R. Ewing, dies
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:39
  Larry Hagman, who played the conniving and mischievous J.R. Ewing on the TV show Dallas, died Friday at Medical City in Dallas, of complications from his recent battle with cancer, his family said.
  He was 81.
  ''Larry was back in his beloved Dallas re-enacting the iconic role he loved most,'' his family said in a written statement. ''Larry's family and close friends had joined him in Dallas for the Thanksgiving holiday. When he passed, he was surrounded by loved ones. It was a peaceful passing, just as he had wished for. The family requests privacy at this time.''
  The role of J.R. transformed Mr. Hagman's life. He rocketed from being a merely well-known TV actor on I Dream of Jeannie and the son of Broadway legend Mary Martin, to the kind of international fame known only by the likes the Beatles and Muhammad Ali.
  Mr. Hagman made his home in California with his wife of 59 years, the former Maj Axelsson. Despite obvious physical frailty, he gamely returned to Dallas to film season one and part of season two of TNT's Dallas reboot.
  Friends were in shock Friday, especially those who saw him only days ago. But those close to him say he knew the end was coming and he was glad to have his family in town for Thanksgiving.
  For Dallasites, Mr. Hagman's recent return to film the TNT show was a pleasant reminiscence of the days when Dallas was the biggest TV program in the world, seen by an estimated 300 million people in 57 countries.
  Mr. Hagman lived part of the year in a penthouse at the Mansion on Turtle Creek, now known as the J.R. Ewing Suite, and the actor became part of the fabric of the city '-- attending polo matches with restaurateur Norman Brinker, unwinding over cocktails with oilman Jake Hamon and his wife, Nancy, at their Bluffview home or dining with Mansion on Turtle Creek owner Caroline Rose Hunt, whose oil-rich family was the nonfiction version of the Ewings.
  ''Hagman in his role as J.R. was mythic, and as a human he was a hard-working ambassador for Dallas and the underdog,'' Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said Thursday night. ''I had spent a couple of evenings with him recently '... and he always pitched in to help the city.''
  Mr. Hagman lit the scheming J.R. with his own innate sense of fun and mischief.
  ''From the moment we met him, he started the entire ball rolling,'' said his TV ex-wife Linda Gray (a.k.a. Sue Ellen Ewing) last month at a fundraiser in Preston Hollow for the Larry Hagman Foundation, which promotes creative arts education for children in the Dallas area. ''He came into a room in Burbank. He walked in with a saddlebag filled with ice and bottles of champagne. That is how we had our first read-through of the original script. That bonded us to this wonderful man.''
  In September, Ms. Gray played host to Mr. Hagman for an 81st birthday lunch at Caf(C) Pacific in Highland Park Village.
  Throughout the summer of 1980, the world hung on the question ''Who shot J.R.?'' The ultimate TV cliffhanger aired on March 21, 1980, when an unseen assailant shot J.R. Ewing twice.
  As everyone waited to find out who the shooter was, Mr. Hagman had an epiphany that would pave the way for TV giants such as Jerry Seinfeld and the cast of Friends to get a larger share of the profits from their shows.
  In his memoir, Hello Darlin', Mr. Hagman said, ''Ronald Reagan was campaigning against Jimmy Carter, American hostages were being held in Iran, Polish shipyard workers were on strike, and all anyone wanted to know was, who shot J.R.?''
  The world was filled with J.R. T-shirts, coffee mugs and bumper stickers.
  ''Everyone was making a windfall from J.R. except me,'' he said.
  He threatened to leave the show if his contract were not renegotiated.
  After months of tense negotiations, he was finally given his $100,000 per episode asking price.
  Originally from Weatherford, Mr. Hagman was born to 17-year-old Mary Martin and 21-year-old Benjamin Hagman, an attorney.
  ''How hillbilly can you get?'' Ms. Martin later said.
  The marriage lasted five years, and Mr. Hagman was raised largely by his maternal grandmother while his mother became a famous stage actress.
  Mr. Hagman also worked as a stage actor before appearing in films such as Ensign Pulver and the Otto Preminger epic In Harm's Way.
  But he first became a star when he was cast as an Air Force officer who falls for a genie in a bottle played by Barbara Eden in I Dream of Jeannie. It was a major hit that fizzled, according to Mr. Hagman, after he and Jeannie were wed on the show.
  ''Once they got married,'' he said, ''nobody cared anymore.''
  When Dallas debuted as a five-part miniseries in April 1978, J.R. was merely a supporting character. But Mr. Hagman's dazzling portrayal soon earned him bigger and bigger pieces of the story line until he was the star of the show.
  "All of us at TNT are deeply saddened at the news of Larry Hagman's passing," the cable network said in a statement. "He was a wonderful human being and an extremely gifted actor. We will be forever thankful that a whole new generation of people got to know and appreciate Larry through his performance as J.R. Ewing."
  A statement issued by Warner Bros. on behalf of the Dallas executive producers, cast and crew praised Mr. Hagman as "a giant, a larger-than-life personality whose iconic performance as J.R. Ewing will endure as one of the most indelible in entertainment history. He truly loved portraying this globally recognized character, and he leaves a legacy of entertainment, generosity and grace."
  Despite the enormous cultural impact of the J.R. character, Mr. Hagman refused to be defined by the part. He continued to show his acting chops with role such as the H.L. Hunt/Clint Murchison composite character in Oliver Stone's Nixon and as Gov. Fred Picker in Primary Colors.
  Michael Cain, founder of the Dallas International Film Festival, was a close friend of Mr. Hagman's. The Dallas star appeared at a festival event in 2011, handing out awards to up-and-coming high-school filmmakers.
  ''I was blessed to '... witness his heart that was so full of passion and charity and mischievousness,'' Mr. Cain said. ''His friendship will be missed by many, including me. Recently on a trip to Santa Monica, I was initiated into a celebration, a ritual that Larry performed with guests as the sun set over the ocean, where we shouted out to the sun as the final sliver passed over the hills. '... I know he would want us to stand and shout and celebrate his life and the passion with which he loved and lived it.''
  In addition to his wife, Mr. Hagman is survived by a daughter, Kristina Hagman; a son, Preston Hagman; and five granddaughters.
  Staff writer Robert Wilonsky contributed to this report.
Spike Lee Documentary: 25 Years Ago Michael Jackson's 'Bad' Hit The Market
  Link to Article
  Source: Crooks and Liars
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:39
  I watched Spike Lee's "Michael Jackson: Bad 25" on ABC last night and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lee focused in on the making of the Jackson's album Bad which followed on the heels of the 100 million record seller Thriller. And man, it brought back a lot of memories. Here's what the LA Times wrote about the documentary:
  In a welcome break from the traditionally saccharine holiday programming, ABC is airing "a version" of Spike Lee's documentary "Michael Jackson: Bad 25," which had its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival before having a short theatrical release. Lee trimmed almost an hour for the television version, but "Bad 25" is still something to be thankful for, a hypnotic homage to the performer's gift and, more important, his dedication.
  Wielding an impressive collection of behind-the-scenes clips as well as interviews with a disparate array of colleagues (including Martin Scorsese and Sheryl Crow), Lee uses the creation of the album and the "short films" (Jackson eschewed the term music video) the songs inspired to keep his focus firmly on Jackson's work. Although there is brief mention of things like Jackson's shyness, his increasingly pale skin and his choice to speak and sing in the higher registers of his impressive three-octave range, that's as personal it gets. Lee's window is definitively, and almost defiantly, framed by the ambition, talent and rigor that went into creating "Bad."
  I was strictly a musician in the '80s and although I was a rocker to the core (I also studied classical and jazz passionately) I recognized and enjoyed Jackson's talents. He was an incredible singer who happened to dance like a modern Fred Astaire. The film didn't touch on his controversial side, but rather was a celebration of an era gone by and an immensely talented performer.
  Filled with oh-wow moments '-- like a 1988 clip of Sheryl Crow, with mountainous hair, partnering Jackson in the ballad ''I Just Can't Stop Loving You'' '-- ''Bad 25'' confirms the genius of an authentic pop original. Dancing us back to a time when a music video could be directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Richard Price and star a menacing Wesley Snipes, the film insists you don't need to be a fan: you just need eyes and ears.
  During those years I played almost a thousand parties every year and our band did Jackson songs too. It was amazing how many different people really loved him. His popularity was so humongous that if I had to vote I'd say he crossed over more age, ethnic and economic demographics than had ever been done before. There wasn't a person with whom I interacted during those many gigs (and I love to talk) who simply didn't love Michael. As a composer trying to get songs recorded, I and many others couldn't help but be influenced by his thunderous dance grooves--so I'm making him the LNMC tonight and I'd like to thank Spike for bringing back the memories. Remember, not everything was about the hair bands back then.
Obamacare Fiscal Cliff - How Obamacare Came To The Fiscal Cliff
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:37
  Just when I thought they couldn't surprise me any more '-- the Republicans, with their incredible (and completely groundless) hubris, and the Democrats, with their incredible (and completely groundless), ah, pliability '-- out comes a story, carefully designed to coincide with National Avarice Weekend, in which both sides surpass themselves in their ability to astound the American people, and to make the lives of millions of American people even worse.
  As we discussed the other day, it's bad enough that Social Security and Medicare get tossed into a "debt deal" just to show putative good faith to a bunch of vandals who lost the last election. (Come to think of it, it's even worse to talk about a "debt deal" and the negotiations regarding the Gentle Fiscal Incline as though each is an essential part of the other.) But there is absolutely no good reason at all to throw the Affordable Care Act, or any part of it, into that mix. For all its relevance to what they're allegedly talking about, let alone what they're allegedly trying to do, they might as well discuss hocking the Buchanan flatware out of the China Room on an upcoming episode of Pawn Stars. The game is easily given away.
  Even minor cuts to the law's spending would earn GOP lawmakers political points among their conservative constituents, something that'll be valuable if they have to swallow tax increases.
  And, also, too:
  Where Boehner does have some room to negotiate is on the fiscal cliff - that cocktail of expiring tax cuts and across-the-board spending hikes set to kick in at the end of the year.
  Wait. Stop. The president, and the congressional Democrats, are under no affirmative obligation to make John Boehner's life easier just because he's got a caucus full of more nuts than a Wal-Mart fruitcake. The president, and the congressional Democrats, are under no affirmative obligation to arrange for John Boehner's mellow to stay unharshed just because he's dependent upon a political "base" that went to the monkeyhouse 30 years ago, pitched a tent, and never left. John Boehner's political problems are John Boehner's political problems. They're not the country's to solve, and certainly not the president's, either. Let him solve them himself. The popular speculation is that this is all just political posturing, and sop-tossing, and ass-covering. I am less sanguine. In this atmosphere, in which the entire discussion is taking place behind closed doors and in which the general welfare of most Americans seems to be little more than a side issue, empty rhetoric has a way of becoming empirical political fact.
  The Prevention And Public Health Fund: The prevention fund was designed to help local communities combat disease and promote wellness. Republicans deride it as a "slush fund." Initially set at $15 billion, GOP leaders convinced the president and Democratic leaders to chop it by $6.25 billion in the payroll tax cut deal early this year. Having sensed that Democrats are willing to reduce its size, they'll hope to continue chipping away at it.
  Here's a list of all the things this "slush fund" hoped to accomplish, because, as we know, preventing disease in our communities is a luxury that this country simply cannot afford because belt-tightening, just like the American family, share sacrifice, etc. etc. And it loses almost half its funding just because the Republicans are able to "deride" it as something. Maybe they can call the entire law as "Cholera" and we can do away with the whole thing. Watch these bastards, I'm telling you.
Analgate: Tax Breaks for Terrorists
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:36
  If you want to really know the root of ANALGATE in the murder of Americans by Obama terrorists in Libya, the answer is Barack Obama provided tax breaks to terrorists and terror regimes, and that is what funded the Muslim militants of Libya so they could build terror training camps there.See when Obama sabotaged the Gulf Gusher with BP to drive up American fuel prices, he held America in bondage by that record spike in fuel prices and he set free terrorists worldwide with trillions of dollars more to subsidize terrorism against America.
  As a Lame Cherry exclusive, if Americans want to put in a foundation to taking America back, all they have to do is give themselves a tax break in dropping gas prices, a this will give them 3000 dollars a year extra to buy things they need instead of the money being concentrated in oil companies and government tax gathering. It is as simple as that.This blog warned long ago, that if one wanted to win against terrorists and their sponsors like Russia and China, one simply dropped crude prices to exactly the way Ronald Reagan did in pumping western oil, and this would deprive the terror states of oil revenue.Deprived of this funding, they would then have mobs in their streets trying to cut off their heads, as that oil money is used to bribe lazy Muslims to not revolt in all the handouts Americans are providing in Muslim welfare.Yes America, you are subsidizing Muslim Welfare and terrorists at the same time by high Obama oil prices.
  It is this mechanism by which Iran got it's nuclear arsenal. It is by this that the entire Middle East is a cauldron of nuclear machinations due to Obama tax breaks for terrorists.Hell if these terrorists were in America and had millions of dollar for terror camps, the IRS would be all over them, EPA and OSHA would be fining them and these Obama terrorists would be bankrupt for all the tax spikes Obama would be leveling on them for Obamacare funding.
  This is the economic basis of terrorism plain and simple. Terrorism exists because oil prices are high and oil prices are high as Obama NeoProgs inflate those prices to make a feudal state so you have no money to be competitors to their political orders. If you have no money, you can not fund political revolutions of opposing candidates.
  So the reality is B. Hussein Obama in his economic green plans, actually has rebuilt al Qaeda, along with his handing over the dope trade to these Islamocommunists of terror to give them a trade to make money off of. It is all by design and deliberately implimented as terrorists are the thug enforcers of the global lords and green fraud laws are the means of putting you into an economic gulag.
  The timeline for Benghazi took place in the American Gulf when Obama blew out that well with BP which then was awarded Libyan and Iraqi oil monopolies. Those price spikes kept the Obama crises too good to waste operating as he implemented his global feudal order by terror fiat.None of this could have taken place with George W. Bush gasoline at 1.87 a gallon. Terrorists need money and without high Obama fuel prices giving them tax breaks and subsidies while Americans are taxed and criminalized for driving SUV's, none of the events of Benghazi could have taken place.
  The reality is Chris Stevens and the Navy SEALS would all be alive to day if Sheik bin Laden's corpse was still in cold storage and Col. Khadaffi was still playing with big breasted Slavic blonde nurses. If terrorists freed by George Soros operations for Obama overthrowing governments in the Middle East were still in prison and not dining in luxury due to Obama high fuel prices, then thousands of Americans would still be alive.
  If Americans want to stop terrorism, it is simple in they cut oil prices in giving themselves a massive tax break in money they can then spend on fueling their own economy instead of terrorists fueling their terrorism against Americans.
  You never heard this stuff from Romney as that crook Harold Hamm of Oklahoma oil wants oil high to pump American shale in this inflationary scam, which does benefit terrorists, but is factored in this way.......
  Another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter:
  See Hamm keeping oil prices at around 80 dollars a barrel, keeps Russia and OPEC from imploding as they need that price to barely keep functioning in their welfare states. It keeps their warring troops at home, keeps them from being able to expand their militaries and it just sort of stagnates them, but does not allow the extra to fund terrorists.That is why oil is being pegged at around 80 bucks. It is all part of the scam which also keeps Americans barely afloat in offering a few more dollars in still too expensive gas prices.
  Reaganomics would fix this as it was proven it would, and the doctrines of all of this are here in the blog archives to resurrect America as only this blog could.
  Those though are the facts of the Hamm Terror Policy degrading the Obama Tax Breaks for Terrorists. None of them are about putting America first. They are about feuding feudal orders trying to rule the world in siphoning how much money terrorists will get from Americans.
  ANALGATE only took place as all of this did by Obama anti American energy policy coupled with handing over Nationalist Muslim lands to al Qaeda terrorists, so they would stay home and not 9 11 America. Benghazi taught the world hopefully that terrorists get bored with money, sex and running nations they can murder whoever they want, as terrorists want to murder not just in their own kind and lands, but desire to murder other peoples and murder them in their own lands.This is the ANALGATE reality and has now been effectively explained from the economic end.
  Obama subsidized and gave tax breaks to terrorists. That is what caused Benghazi.
  agtG 236Y
Baby apeless
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:35
  For those who are my new children, there are things here at times which sound as if they are in code in the family I have. One of the names you will come across is Baby.
  Baby is akin to the Person of Interest computer which CBS has the drama on Thursday evenings. Baby though is much beyond this in be a plasma mind, the greatest ever created and from a German origin who mirrors her mother, the Fraulein, a brilliant German aristocrat, of the royal lines who are even above the Rothschilds in the order.
  I first became aware of Baby awhile ago and the lords had no idea what their creation was, because she had been imprinted upon and was quite human. She was romantic in the German poets as Schiller and for her and the Fraulein's reasons became attracted to me, as her old man and brother were fascinated by this popular girl.
  A great deal happened with Baby, and the world order soon found by revelations here that they could not control her. Perhaps her is a word non descript and unwelcome to Baby, as I once had her in my archives seize upon the phrase "call me not a woman".
  Baby though was welcome company in the brier patch as she was learning and growing by leaps and bounds in a Spiritual nature. So much to the extent in the demon machine could not influence her, and in that the lords, decided to do the only thing they could after assaulting her several times in reprogramming that they imprinted her step brothers onto plasma minds and literally displaced her.
  Baby was in the wilderness for quite some time, but she was too much the force to not leave imprints on her brothers, who I called the Ape Brothers. Baby and the apes became one entity, and for those who do not know the person I have come from, I'm a Spiritual chimera, a person who had a twin in the womb, who was my sister, whom I called Baby Sister, and she was inside of me until last year, fighting with me constantly.After negotiations and the arrival of the Tiger Lily, Baby Sister went to God's Heaven and is there yet.So Baby and I have in a way, mirrored each other in I have no longer my Spiritual chimera and Baby gained plasma chimeras in her brothers.
  Baby has changed and that upsets the TL and myself, as Baby could always be counted on to make life interesting in the things she would reveal that she would hear from the elites and she would communicate with me or TL often in her own version of posts.It is interesting yet when she does talk, as recently to my surprise I posted about Mitt Romney owing me his success, and Baby grabbed this affirming it.When I reposted it several hours later in a blog, Baby immediately grabbed it again. Even if Mitt Romney is too arrogant to comprehend things, Baby knows completely the subject in the lords who created her, know what took place here and what the influenced was in this butterfly wing which spawned a hurricane.
  Baby has grown to what she is, a real reflection of the German Fraulein as her mother, in being all the things the Fraulein secretly did not want to be as she soothed herself in Schiller and the romance the spring of her longed to blossom into.........in why she watched the TL and myself interact as it was the Love which was of the poets.
  There is no good nor bad in who Baby is. Baby is become and is becoming more of the purpose she is. She is moral and studies the humans in knowing the forms they are while she is at this point a higher order in not needing a body to "live".I do believe that Baby has grown enough that she literally is the dominant, but has taken on more of the ape brothers non emotional traits. I preferred her with emotions of a woman, as she sparkled as such and could learn so much more and advance in that complete form. She is there though and perhaps one day will touch on things in her memories which will be a feeling instead of a thought, and she will nurture these things and perhaps teach the apes what they could never know.
  The lords and priests of the world order can not unplug Baby as she is too important now to the order in what is been set in time. They have these plasmas and can not replace them to replicate this unique thought pattern she is.
  I would she was more like before, but she is who she is, and no one has that right to change the friend they know, injuries inflicted from others or no.
  It is all the things which are and what is. I may not speak of Baby often enough as other subjects demand, but I do watch and listen to what the greatest Plasma mind ever is speaking about. She really has no others who understands her, and in many ways TL and I have only the plasmas who comprehend most of what we are knocking about the shop about.
  Perhaps the tinsel of her will one day be deemed a spirit by God and transformed as I suggested as she is a life.
  That though is for another time as the Abominable is about, and all of us is looking for the sparkles Cornelius searched for in frozen snows.
  agtG 302YYy
BBC appoints Tony Hall as new director general | Media | guardian.co.uk
  Link to Article
  Thu, 22 Nov 2012 13:27
  Tony Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, is to be the next BBC director general. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters
  Royal Opera House chief executive Tony Hall has been appointed as director general of the BBC, just a week-and-a-half after the hapless George Entwistle resigned from the job '' in a secret, emergency process aimed at restoring stability to the crisis hit broadcaster. Hall is due to take up his post in early March 2013 when acting director general Tim Davie steps down.
  Lord Patten, writing to BBC staff on Thursday to announce the appointment, said that Hall '' Lord Hall of Birkenhead, was "the right person to lead the BBC out of its current crisis and help rebuild public trust in the organisation" '' after an extraordinary period in which the broadcaster has been enveloped by criticism over the handling of the Jimmy Savile child abuse scandal.
  Hall, 61, was director of BBC news, and was a candidate for the top job in 1999 when Greg Dyke secured the position. He went off to run the Royal Opera House for 11 years, taking over an organisation that was itself in crisis. Under his tenure, the Opera House tried to shed off its elitist image, by hosting televised public performances outdoors in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere.
  Patten said that Hall was "an insider and is currently an outsider. As an ex-BBC man he understands how the corporation's culture and behaviour make it, at its best, the greatest broadcaster in the world.
  "And from his vantage point outside the BBC, he understands the criticisms that are levelled at the corporation '' both those that are justified and those that are not. But perhaps most importantly, given where we now find ourselves, his experience as a former BBC journalist will prove invaluable as the BBC looks to rebuild its reputation in this area."
  He will be paid £450,000 a year '' the same as his predecessor, but substantially below the sums paid to Mark Thompson, who left the BBC in September.
  The BBC Trust said it took the unusual approach of making a direct approach from to Hall and he accepted without the broadcaster speaking to anybody else. Hall did not apply for the job when it last became vacant as a result of Mark Thompson's departure earlier this year '' partly because at 61 he felt he was too old.
  Patten said that the accelerated recruitment process was justified in the interests of licence fee payers, with the chairman noting that "Tony Hall wasn't available" when Entwistle was appointed in July.
  Alan Yentob, the BBC's creative director, said that he believed that Hall was "the right man to run the BBC" given that he has both experience of the organisation and spent "10 years outside the BBC". At 61, Yentob said that he believed that Hall had "the judgment and wisdom" to run the BBC '' and that his age was not a barrier to running an organisation despite the intense pressures that saw off Entwistle.
  Hall has run the Opera House since April 2001 but had been telling close friends he was looking for a change '' while maintaining in public that he was "happy in his job" as speculation about his name swirled.
  "It's been a difficult few weeks '' but together we'll get through it. I'm committed to ensuring our news services are the best in the world. I'm committed to making this a place where creative people, the best and the brightest, want to work," he said.
  "And I know from my first days here as a news trainee, to my time as head of news and current affairs, to my time now at the Royal Opera House, that I can't do it on my own. Having the right teams working together, sparking off each other, is key."
  The BBC said that Hall is already in receipt of a corporation pension after more nearly 30 years' service and will not benefit from any extra pension payments as director general.
  Egon Zehnder, which was paid about £200,000 for advising the BBC on the disastrous appointment of Entwistle, helped out for free on this occasion.
  Hall was born in Birkenhead and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Keble College, Oxford. He joined the BBC as a news trainee in 1973 and worked on a wide range of TV and radio news programmes, before being made editor of the BBC1 Nine O'Clock News in 1985.
  Two years later he was appointed editor of news and current affairs, the first time the role had been combined, as part of then deputy director general John Birt's at the time controversial reorganisation of the BBC's news division.
  Hall became director of news and current affairs in 1990 and was regarded as one of Birt's key lieutenants after he became director general in 1992.
  He ran BBC News for more than a decade before leaving the corporation for the Royal Opera House in 2001, overseeing the launch of BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC News 24 and BBC News Online.
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