Mon, 01 Oct 2007 06:35:48 GMT

Mary Louise Parker Joins African Baby Adoption Club

Source:www.usemycomputer.com

Another African infant, a girl this time, has had the good fortune to be adopted by another well-to-do American celebrity.

Mary Louise Parker, the star of one of my favorite TV shows, "Weeds", has adopted a baby girl from Africa.

So we now have another celebrity joining Angelina Jolie and Madonna, both of whom are rumored to be considering additional adoptions.

This is an interesting trend, and regardless of the reason why this "fad" has started, at least this time the "Hollywood" types are doing something that truly benefits those less fortunate than themselves.

Of course we have to remember that Mia Farrow has adopted 11 kids and has 4 of her own, so these ladies have a ways to go if they want to claim any records. Posted by: jim      Read more     Source

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:06:04 GMT

Goings on in Babelsberg.

Busy days for the studios that once saw the likes of Lang and Dietrich working here. Tom Tykwer has now begun shooting The International with Clive Owen, Naomi Watts and Armin Mueller-Stahl, reports the AP (in German).

Fatih Akin up following up his The Edge of Heaven (opening here in Germany on Thursday; it's Germany's pick for the Oscar race) with, would you believe, a Western, for which he's building a replica of Ellis Island in the studios (the story moves west after the immigrants arrive). The DPA (German Press Agency) reports.

And in Die Welt, Peter Zander's got a shamelessly speculative piece about what might happen when Nicole Kidman arrives in Babelsberg to begin work on Stephen Daldry's adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's The Reader. Tom Cruise, you see, will still be here, working on Valkyrie. Sheesh. Posted by: dwhudson      Read more     Source

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:57:19 GMT

F-18 Fly By During Swim Call

Via Liveleak - Quoted - "We had a swim call in the Gulf of Thailand on deployment and an F-18 from the Abe Lincoln flew right over us." Posted by: Zinzi      Read more     Source

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:23:34 GMT

Earn Money Doing Nothing, Really

Yuwie is a social networking site that will pay you to do what you do on a social networking site. What's even better is that you'll also get paid for what your friends do. If you refer some friends and they sign up for Yuwie, you'll get paid for their page views too.



Every time someone you refer signs up and does something on Yuwie, you get paid. When you update your site, create blog entries, send messages, you get paid. When other people view your profile, look at your videos or photos or send you a message, you get paid. Get the picture. You also get paid a percentage of your referrals page views up to 10 levels.

If you're one of those people who have a lot of friends, you could really make some money on this site.

Post your thoughts about Yuwie. Posted by: Linda Roeder      Read more     Source

September 25, 2007, 9:50 PM CT

Toll charges reduce travel time

A smart introduction of a variable toll charge, with different rates at different departure times, reduces traffic jams. Even small toll charges can exert a large effect on the total travel time, concludes Dutch researcher Dusica Joksimovic.

Joksimovic developed a simulation model that can help policy makers to estimate the consequences of various toll charges. The model predicts, where, when and how much toll must be charged for the desired policy outcomes, such as reducing the total travel time of all travellers or maximising the toll incomes (revenues). Based on a toll value entered, the model iteratively calculates the impacts on road congestion and the total toll incomes and searches for an optimal composition of the toll charge.

The model contains many variables. For example, it takes into account the different characteristics of travellers. People who want to be at a preferred destination by a given time are more inclined to pay more during rush hours than people who want to travel as cheaply as possible and are flexible with respect to their arrival time. A flexible toll charging system in which car drivers must pay more at peak times than off-peak times leads to less traffic jams, but also maximum toll incomes.

Various factors play a role in the problem of toll charges: the government wants to minimise both the total travel time of all travellers and harmful environmental effects whilst at the same time maximising toll incomes to pay, for example, for roadworks. Individual motorists mainly want to make their journeys as quick and cheap as possible. These considerations lead to a complex decision model in which the various variables are dependent on each other. The instrument that Joksimovic developed during her doctoral research can provide policy makers with a quicker insight into the outcomes of policy measures......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

September 25, 2007, 9:04 PM CT

Online game feeds music search engine project

UC San Diego electrical engineers and computer researchers are working together on a computerized system that will make it easy for people who are not music experts (like the senior authors mom) to find the kind of music they want to listen to without knowing the names of artists or songs.

In a new paper, the scientists demonstrate that the online music game they created provides crucial data for building the back-end of a music search engine that allows users to type in words in order to find songs.

When my mom gets up in the morning and is like, I need some energy to go jogging, she has no clue what title or artist is going to help her with that, said Gert Lanckriet, the UCSD electrical engineering professor overseeing the project.

What Gerts mom needs is a Google for music a search engine for music that lets you type in regular words like high energy instrumental with piano, funky guitar solos or upbeat music with female vocals, and get songs in return.

One option for creating this kind of natural-language music search engine is to manually annotate as a number of songs as possible but this is expensive and limits the depth and breadth of the search engines reach. Another option is to train computers to do the song annotations.

The UCSD scientists have, in fact, built such a system over the last two years. They call it a computer audition system. You feed it songs and it annotates them, thanks to a series of algorithms they created. Once a song is annotated, you can retrieve it using a text-based search engine. But before the system can start annotating songs, it has to be trained via a process of machine learning. Getting enough data to properly train the system to label a wide range of music accurately is difficult......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:36:58 GMT

Venture Capital Hits Private Education in China

With improved quality of life, economic growth, the demand for professional skills, and a growing amount of money in the pockets of the average Chinese citizen, it was probably only a matter of time before venture capital came to the education industry. That has finally happened in China this month.



The Carlyle Group put US$20 million of venture capital funds into NeWorld Education Group. The Shanghai-based education firm specializes in language instruction - particularly Japanese. The Carlyle Group's investment flowed through its Carlyle Asia Growth Partners III (CAGP) subsidiary.

NeWorld has over 60 training centers in China and a 30% share of China's Japanese language market. Japanese is the second most popular foreign language for Chinese students, after English. Posted by: Greg Cruey      Read more     Source

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 03:10:57 GMT

Whipped

I mentioned yesterday that the stouter grass whip was a casualty of my work clearing the hillside when we were last at Roundrock. Here you see the evidence.

This is the second time it has broken like this. The first time was many months ago when I had conscripted my twins to clear some of the brush on the side of the dam. Like everywhere else in the Ozarks, that is a rocky surface, and I think whichever of my sons using the whip at the time hit a rock just right and sheered the pin that held the end of the blade in place.

The whip sat forlorn in the garage for several months as I contemplated taking it back to the big box hardware store to have it replaced. Then, somehow, the thought came into my head that I could fix the whip rather than replace it. As I studied the matter, I saw that all it would involve is a nut, a bolt, and maybe a washer or two. These I had. I even had acquired the skill to assemble them sometime in my life.

And so I did. And the whip worked perfectly for many months, bringing instant, slicing obliteration to plenty of offending scrub at Roundrock.

Until Sunday when it broke again, in the same manner and in the same place. I suppose I struck one Ozark rock too many as I was eagerly whipping the little hillside above the lake. One moment the scrub was falling before me and the next I saw the blade swinging free as the whip came on an upswing. The nut, the bolt, and the maybe a washer or two were gone, lost in the stubble.

Fortunately, I had a second grass whip with me. Libby’s is of a different design and is much lighter, so I can swing it longer. But it is designed for lighter duty like plain grass and not scrub. This slowed me down some, but I managed to get the work of the day done (with Libby’s help wielding the loppers).

And so I now know how to repair the broken whip. This time perhaps I’ll use a lock nut. But before I do, I think I’ll go back to that big box hardware store and have a look at the grass whips there.

I noticed that the surviving grommet rivet that holds the other end of the blade in place does not hold it tightly. There is maybe a quarter of an inch of space that the blade can float on while it’s in use. When I had put the bolt and nut on the other end of the blade, I snugged it as tight as I could. But now I wonder if this float is part of the design. It may be assembled that way deliberately so that it can absorb the sudden shock of striking a stone. That makes a kind of sense to me.

So I’ll have a look at other grass whips of this design and see. Then I’ll make my repairs based on what I find.

If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Missouri calendar:

• Watch for lightning bug larvae (glowworms) in low water.

Posted by: Roundrockjournal      Read more     Source

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:04:41 GMT

Tastes like chicken

Mushroom season came late this year. We finally got some rain toward the end of August, and now the mushrooms seem to making up for lost time.

One of our young visitors last Sunday had never seen a wild mushroom before, and was agog when I pointed out one of the common brown ones that dot the forest floor. “I love mushrooms! Can you eat these?” He was full of excited questions.

I told him that some were edible, but not these ones. I pointed out a few species I recognized, including the death cup. I described how it could dissolve the liver within 48 hours, leading to an agonizing death. “But there are a few species we eat,” I said. “Mostly giant puffballs and chicken mushrooms, and sometimes the odd chanterelle, oyster mushroom or morel.”

“Oh, you grow your own mushrooms?” The concept of wild food was taking a little time to sink in.

“No, they grow themselves,” I said. “We just pick them.”

My mother took both youngsters up to the spruce grove at the top of the hollow for a picnic lunch. Virtually the whole time, she said, they were clamoring over the wild mushrooms that lined the trails, picking them and breaking them apart to see what they looked like inside. Then on the way back down to the house, one of them spotted a log covered with orange.



“Look! What’s that?”

“Oh, wonderful! Chicken mushrooms!”

The kids were ecstatic. Their newly acquired mushroom-breaking skills suddenly had a purpose! They filled their arms with the fleshy shelf fungi and staggered back to the house.

I heard the news a short while later. We had a large gang to feed, and I had already defrosted chicken to make chicken tarragon, but I had wanted a vegetable side dish, too. It looked as if we’d be having chicken and chicken mushroom in the same meal.



I concocted a stir-fry with about a half a pound of chicken mushroom strips, a couple of sweet red peppers, and one yellow squash cut into half-moons. The sauce consisted of garlic, ginger, tamari, rice wine, oyster sauce, and five-spice powder. It was, if I may say so, delicious. My cousin Jeff — usually a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy — surprised me by taking seconds. “It tastes like chicken, but you can definitely tell the difference,” he said.

Chicken mushroom, also known as sulfur shelf (Laetiporus sulfureus) grows on rotten logs or at the base of dead trees. The other week, my mother found some growing directly out the ground, presumably on a dead root. On wetter years, we can find it as early as June. We’ve never found it twice at the same spot, so we have to keep our eyes open. Taste varies, depending on the freshness of the mushroom and probably also on genotype. But as Wildman Steve Brill puts it,

If there’s one mushroom to start with, this is it. The chicken mushroom is easy to recognize, with no poisonous look-alikes. It’s common and widespread, it has a long season, and it can be huge.

Brill also tenders some culinary advice:

To adapt it to traditional chicken recipes, include a source of protein (i.e., grains or beans) to make the dish filling, plus some olive oil or vegetable oil, because unlike chicken, this mushroom contains no fat.

Unless the mushroom is so young and tender it almost drips with juice, it's better to cook it in moist heat (i.e. in soups, stews, or in grains) than to cook it in oil.

The only thing you have to remember is to remove the stem — that is, roughly two inches at the base of the fan. Also remove any rove beetles you might find hiding between the fans (though they are probably edible, too).

Here are a couple recipes I’ve had success with. The first is adapted from the original Moosewood Cookbook’s recipe for spaghetti squash; the second uses actual spaghetti. Both fall under the general heading of “comfort food,” which is pretty much my specialty in the kitchen. “Comfort food” means that things get mixed together in big bowls, plopped into big casserole dishes, and baked until bubbly (ideally in a small toaster oven, to save electricity). Butter and cheese are your friends.

Chicken Mushroom and Spaghetti Squash Casserole

Bake or boil one medium spaghetti squash. While that’s going on, saute in olive oil or butter one large onion, sliced; two to three cloves of minced garlic; one sweet pepper, cut in thin strips; and about a pound of chicken mushrooms, also cut into strips. Add a half teaspoon dried oregano and a full teaspoon basil — or more, if you have access to the fresh herbs. Add salt and pepper to taste, as they say.

When the squash is cool enough to handle, scoop out the stringy flesh and put it in a big bowl along with the saute. Mix in a cup or more of ricotta and an equal amount of grated mozzarella. Stir it all together and plop it into a greased, three-quart casserole. Top with a shit-load of bread crumbs, and bake at 350F about 40 minutes — the last ten without the lid.

Chicken Mushroom Tetrazzini

First, unless you already have some leftover chicken gravy in the fridge: Melt at least four tablespoons of butter on medium heat. Add a third of a cup of flour, half a teaspoon salt, and a dash of black pepper, and let it bubble for half a minute. Then add a 15-oz can of low-sodium chicken broth and stir until thick. Add a cup of milk or light cream and continue stirring until it thickens again. Remove from heat.

Saute about three cups of chicken mushroom pieces in olive oil until soft. (Or follow Brill’s advice and steam it, if you must.) Meanwhile, blanch, peel and sliver a handful of almonds.

Remove leftover whole wheat spaghetti from refrigerator (or cook fresh: roughly 6-8 ounces of dry noodles). Cut into shortish pieces.

Get out two big bowls. In one, mix the noodles with half of the sauce. In the other, mix mushrooms, slivered almonds, and a cup of fresh or frozen green peas with the other half of the sauce. Starting with the noodles, alternate layers of these two mixtures in a greased, three-quart casserole, two layers of each. Top with Parmesan (yes, you can use the cheap powdered kind — I always do) and bake as above (350, 40 minutes, whatever).

*

All this talk about wild chicken mushrooms reminds me of Wallace Steven’s fun, albeit baffling, poem, “Bantam in Pine Woods.” According to the puts it, it’s now in the public domain, so here it is. Get someone to read it out loud at the supper table while you’re tying into your chicken mushroom casserole. Hilarity may or may not ensue.

Bantam in Pine-Woods

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.

Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.
Your world is you. I am my world.

You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,

Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.
Posted by: Vianegativa      Read more     Source

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 03:39:00 GMT

The Bubble.

"Popular gay filmmaker Eytan Fox, whose previous two films, Yossi and Jagger and Walk on Water, enjoyed healthy limited-run success in the US, returns with The Bubble, and again proves that his strengths lie in establishing tender, fraught human relationships within volatile settings," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE. "Yet in shuttling these fragile souls through stock tragic frameworks, he sometimes undermines them, both personally and politically; though The Bubble makes for a mostly impassioned liberal plea, Fox's need to spin its central gay romance into a star-crossed present-day West Bank Story leads him to fall into some unnecessary stereotyping. Which is unfortunate since there's so much loveliness in The Bubble."

Updated through 9/10. Posted by: dwhudson      Read more     Source