Pop artist James Rizzi dies at 61

AAA??Dec. 28, 2011?1:12 PM ET
Pop artist James Rizzi dies at 61
AP

FILE - In this May 20, 2010 file picture US Pop Art artist James Rizzi stands in front of his work "In the Spirit of Peace", painted on a fragment of the Berlin Wall, during the opening of his exhibition "Rizzi's World - 60 Years of James Rizzi" in Bremen, northern Germany. James Rizzi, a New York-born and based pop artist best known for his playful and childlike three-dimensional sculptures, has died. He was 61. Rizzi's managers, Art 28 GmbH & Co. KG, based in Stuttgart, Germany, said in a statement on its website that the artist died peacefully at his studio in New York's SoHo district on Monday Dec. 26, 2011. They gave no cause of death. (AP Photo/dapd/Focke Strangmann,File)

FILE - In this May 20, 2010 file picture US Pop Art artist James Rizzi stands in front of his work "In the Spirit of Peace", painted on a fragment of the Berlin Wall, during the opening of his exhibition "Rizzi's World - 60 Years of James Rizzi" in Bremen, northern Germany. James Rizzi, a New York-born and based pop artist best known for his playful and childlike three-dimensional sculptures, has died. He was 61. Rizzi's managers, Art 28 GmbH & Co. KG, based in Stuttgart, Germany, said in a statement on its website that the artist died peacefully at his studio in New York's SoHo district on Monday Dec. 26, 2011. They gave no cause of death. (AP Photo/dapd/Focke Strangmann,File)

FILE - In this May 20, 2010 file picture US artist James Rizzi poses at an exhibition in Bremen, Germany. James Rizzi, a New York-born and based pop artist best known for his playful and childlike three-dimensional sculptures, has died. He was 61. Rizzi's managers, Art 28 GmbH & Co. KG, based in Stuttgart, Germany, said in a statement on its website that the artist died peacefully at his studio in New York's SoHo district on Monday Dec. 26, 2011. They gave no cause of death. (AP Photo/dapd/ David Hecker,File)

FILE - In this May 15, 2008 file picture US artist James Rizzi poses in Mainz, Germany, in front of a bus he has colourful painted. James Rizzi, a New York-born and based pop artist best known for his playful and childlike three-dimensional sculptures, has died. He was 61. Rizzi's managers, Art 28 GmbH & Co. KG, based in Stuttgart, Germany, said in a statement on its website that the artist died peacefully at his studio in New York's SoHo district on Monday Dec. 26, 2011. They gave no cause of death. (AP Photo/dapd/ Thomas Lohnes,File)

FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2001 file picture children pass the Rizzi-House, designed by U.S. pop artist James Rizzi, in Braunschweig, northern Germany.James Rizzi, a New York-born and based pop artist best known for his playful and childlike three-dimensional sculptures, has died. He was 61. Rizzi's managers, Art 28 GmbH & Co. KG, based in Stuttgart, Germany, said in a statement on its website that the artist died peacefully at his studio in New York's SoHo district on Monday Dec. 26, 2011. They gave no cause of death. (AP Photo/Fabian Bimmer,File)

NEW YORK (AP) ? James Rizzi, a New York-born and based pop artist best known for his playful and childlike three-dimensional sculptures, has died. He was 61.

Rizzi's managers, Art 28 GmbH & Co. KG, based in Stuttgart, Germany, said in a statement on its website that the artist died peacefully at his studio in New York's SoHo district on Monday. They gave no cause of death.

Rizzi was born in Brooklyn and studied art at the University of Florida. He returned to New York in 1974 and first made his name as a street artist.

He became known for his bright, cartoon-like drawings and 3-D constructions. In 1996 Lufthansa commissioned him to decorate a jet with pastel stars, birds and travelers.

Rizzi developed a large international following, especially in Germany. Last year a school in Duisburg was named for him.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2011-12-28-Germany-Obit-Rizzi/id-aeafb718f2f84a2fbfbe103d6aba5e90

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PFT: Brees breaks Marino's mark, but Brady's looming

AP

During Saturday?s loss to the Eagles, Cowboys owner Jerry Jone went down to the sideline to talk to head coach Jason Garrett, to make sure Garrett knew the Giants had won earlier in the day and therefore the Cowboys didn?t have anything to play for.

Some fans and media members have suggested that Jones was out of line by doing that, but Jones says he can?t understand why anyone would think the owner of a business shouldn?t be involved in every element of that business.

?It has amazed me to be criticized for really walking down on the floor of the company,? Jones said on KTCK-AM 1310, via the Dallas Morning News. ?The more involved your top management, the more involved ownership can be, I?ve always thought made the best way for it to work.?

Jones says he doesn?t act any differently on game days now than he did in the 1990s, and that it worked out pretty well then.

?You didn?t see that kind of criticism very early on, but we were winning Super Bowls,? Jones said. ?And it was the same exact way that we handled our decision-making and the exact same way that we handled our ultimate information gathering system. We?ve been doing it ever since I owned the team. The exact same way.?

Jones says he doesn?t tell Garrett who can play and who can?t, but he did want to make sure Garrett understood that quarterback Tony Romo didn?t need to take any chances by playing in an essentially meaningless game against the Eagles.

?That?s Jason?s decision, but he doesn?t need to be making that one by himself,? Jones said. ?So I wanted to, very briefly, step down there with just a few minutes gone in the first quarter, sit there and say, ?Here?s the lay of the land. Romo?s got a hand injury, but it looks like we?re going to have him for New York.??

And if Jones thinks his coach might not know the lay of the land, Jones is going to make sure his coach knows the lay of the land. That?s going to be the case as long as Jones owns the Cowboys.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/12/26/brees-breaks-marinos-record-but-bradys-not-far-behind/related

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JEFF ADAMS - ADVANTAGES OF INVESTING IN REAL ESTATE

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The best thing about investing in real estate according to Jeff Adams is that there are many preferences that are available to real estate investor allowing them to borrow funds whenever they want to purchase new property. It is valuable to ...

Source: http://spacestation-shuttle.blogspot.com/2011/12/jeff-adams-advantages-of-investing-in.html

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Close family ties keep cheaters in check: Why almost all multicellular organisms begin life as a single cell

ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2011) ? Any multicellular animal, from a blue whale to a human being, poses a special difficulty for the theory of evolution. Most of the cells in its body will die without reproducing, and only a privileged few will pass their genes to the next generation.

How could the extreme degree of cooperation multicellular existence requires ever evolve? Why aren't all creatures unicellular individualists determined to pass on their own genes?

Joan Strassmann, PhD, and David Queller, PhD, a husband and wife team of evolutionary biologists at Washington University in St. Louis, provide an answer in the Dec. 16 issue of the journal Science. Experiments with amoebae that usually live as individuals but must also join with others to form multicellular bodies to complete their life cycles showed that cooperation depends on kinship.

If amoebae occur in well-mixed cosmopolitan groups, then cheaters will always be able to thrive by freeloading on their cooperative neighbors. But if groups derive from a single cell, cheaters will usually occur in all-cheater groups and will have no cooperators to exploit.

The only exceptions are brand new cheater mutants in all-cooperator groups, and these could pose a problem if the mutation rate is high enough and there are many cells in the group to mutate. In fact, the scientists calculated just how many times amoebae that arose from a single cell can safely divide before cooperation degenerates into a free-for-all.

The answer turns out to be 100 generations or more.

So population bottlenecks that kill off diversity and restart the population from a single cell are powerful stabilizers of cellular cooperation, the scientists conclude.

In other words our liver, blood and bone cells help our eggs and sperm pass on their genes because we passed through a single-cell bottleneck at the moment of conception.

The social amoebae

Queller, the Spencer T. Olin professor, and Strassmann, professor of biology, moved to WUSTL from Rice University this summer, bringing a truckload of frozen spores with them.

Although they worked for many years with wasps and stingless bees, Queller and Strassmann's current "lab rat" is the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, known as Dicty for short.

The social amoebae can be found almost everywhere; in Antarctica, in deserts, in the canopies of tropical forests, and in Forest Park, the urban park that adjoins Washington University.

The amoebae spend most of their lives as tiny amorphous blobs of streaming protoplasm crawling through the soil looking for E. coli and other bacteria to eat.

Things become interesting when bacteria are scarce and the amoebae begin to starve. They then release chemicals that attract other amoebae, which follow this trail until they bump into one another.

A mound of some 10,000 amoebae forms and then elongates into a slug a few millimeters long that crawls forward (but never backward) toward heat and light.

The slug stops moving when it has reached a suitable place for dispersal, and then the front 20 percent of the amoebae die to produce a sturdy stalk that the remaining cells flow up and there become hardy spores.

Crucially, the 20 percent of the amoebae in the stalk sacrifice their genes so that the other 80 percent can pass theirs on.

When Strassmann and Queller began to work with Dicty in 1998, one of the first things they discovered was that the amoebae sometimes cheat.

Dennis Welker of Utah State University had given them a genetically diverse collection of wild-caught clones (genetically identical amoebae). They mixed amoebae from two clones together and then examined the fruiting bodies to see where the clones ended up. Each fruiting body included cells from both clones, but some clones contributed disproportionately to the spore body. They had cheated.

How can a blob of protoplasm cheat? The answer, it turns out, is many different ways.

"They might," Queller says, "have a mutation that makes an adhesion molecule less sticky, for example, so that they slide to the back of the slug, the part that forms spores."

"But there are tradeoffs," Strassmann says, "because if you're too slippery, you'll fall off the slug and lose all the advantages of being part of group."

Natural born cheaters

Mulling this over, Strassmann and Queller began to wonder if it would be possible to break the social contract among the amoebae by setting up conditions where relatedness was low and each clonal lineage encountered mostly strangers and rarely relatives.

Together with then-graduate student, Jennie Kuzdzal-Fick, they set up an experiment to learn what happened to cheating as heterogeneous (low relatedness) populations of amoebae evolved.

"At the end of the experiment, we assessed the cheating ability of the descendants by mixing equal numbers of descendants and ancestors and checking to see whether the descendants ended up in the stalks or the spores of the fruiting bodies," Strassmann says.

They found that in nearly all cases, the descendants cheated their ancestors. What's more, when descendent amoebae were grown as individual clones, about a third of them were unable to form fruiting bodies.

Many of the mutants, in other words, were "obligate" cheaters. Having lost the ability to form their own fruiting bodies, they were able to survive only by freeloading, or taking advantage of the amoebae that had retained the ability to cooperate.

This result, Queller and Strassmann say, shows that cheater mutations that threaten multicellularity occur naturally and are even favored -- as long as the population of amoebae remains genetically diverse.

What happens in the wild?

But the scientists were aware that obligate cheaters are either very rare or altogether missing among wild social amoebae. They had not found any obligate cheaters in the more than 2,000 wild clones they have sampled.

They also knew that in the wild, the amoebae in fruiting bodies are close kin, if not clones.

What prevents cooperation in wild populations from degenerating into the laboratory free-for-all? Could the difference be that the amoebae in the laboratory were distant relations and those in the wild are kissing kin?

Suppose, the scientists thought, one amoeba ventured alone into a pristine field of bacteria. As it grew and multiplied, making copies of itself, how long would it take for cheating mutations to appear (what was the mutation rate) and how successfully would these mutations proliferate (how strongly would they be selected)?

To establish the mutation rate, Strassmann and Queller together with graduate student Sara Fox ran what is called a mutation accumulation experiment.

In this experiment, amoebae that mutated didn't have to compete against amoebae that were faithful replicators. In the absence of selection, all but the most severe mutations were also reproduced and became a permanent part of the lineage's genome.

The scientists allowed 90 different lines of amoebae to accumulate mutations in this way.

"At the end," Queller says, "we found that among those 90 lines not a single one had lost the ability to fruit. So that's almost 100 lines, almost a thousand generations, so 100,000 opportunities to lose fruiting and none of them did.

"That allowed us, using statistics, to put an upper limit on the rate at which mutations turn a cooperator into an obligate cheater," he says.

The rate was low enough that if fruiting bodies were forming in the wild from amoebae that were all descended from one spore, cheating would never be an issue.

What this has to do with elephants and blue whales

But the scientists were inquisitive enough to ask another, bigger question. They used calculations invented for population genetics to ask how many times the amoeba could divide -- theoretically -- before cheating became a problem.

What if, they asked, we let an initial single amoebae divide until there were as many of amoebae as there are cells as a fruit fly and then transferred one amoeba and allowed it to divide until the daughter colony reached fruit-fly size, and so on?

What if we let the colonies grow to human size? To elephant size? To blue whale size? Would the cheaters bring down the whale-sized Dicty colony?

The answer, it turned out, was no.

A whale-sized Dicty colony is not the same thing as a whale, but nonetheless the experiments suggest how organisms, over the course of evolution, have sidestepped the cheating trap and maintained the levels of cooperation multicellular bodies demand.

"A multicellular body like the human body is an incredibly cooperative thing," Queller says, "and sociobiologists have learned that really cooperative things are hard to evolve because of the potential for cheating.

"It's the single-cell bottleneck that generates high relatedness among the cells that, in turn, allows them to cooperate, " he says.

Our liver cells have no kick against our sperm or egg cells, in other words, because they're all nearly genetically identical descendants of a single fertilized egg.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Washington University in St. Louis. The original article was written by Diana Lutz.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. J. J. Kuzdzal-Fick, S. A. Fox, J. E. Strassmann, D. C. Queller. High Relatedness Is Necessary and Sufficient to Maintain Multicellularity in Dictyostelium. Science, 2011; 334 (6062): 1548 DOI: 10.1126/science.1213272

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111215141615.htm

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Russia pledges at least $10 billion to save euro (AP)

BRUSSELS ? Russia, hoping to keep its largest export market from collapsing, will give at least $10 billion to the International Monetary Fund to help support the struggling euro currency, an aide to President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday.

Russian officials have said in the past that the country would offer up to $10 billion. But Arkady Dvorkovich, a Medvedev economic adviser, indicated the total may be greater because Russia has a big economic stake in the European Union, where a debt crisis is dragging down economies and the 17-nation eurozone.

"We are ready to contribute our part via the IMF. We are committed to do it. Ten billion dollars is the minimum commitment," Dvorkovich told journalists reporting from the 28th EU-Russia summit in Brussels, where other major issues included visa liberalization and the contentious Russian election.

Russia exports more to the EU than to any other market, and Russia is the EU's third-largest trading partner. Total trade amounts to euro245 billion ($318 billion). Russia also is the EU's most important source of energy imports, accounting for nearly a quarter of its natural gas consumption and 30 percent of its oil.

"We are strongly interdependent," European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said Thursday. Van Rompuy is hosting Medvedev for the twice-yearly meeting.

Russia's ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizov, said Medvedev would be ready for any questions about alleged election fraud in Russia's Dec. 4 parliamentary elections.

The EU has avoided overt criticism of the elections, which have sparked mass protests in Moscow and other cities. But European parliament speaker Jerzy Buzek called Wednesday for new free and fair elections and a probe into reports of fraud and intimidation.

"The voice of the people protesting on the streets for more than one week must be heard," Buzek said.

Still, economic issues were dominating the talks, which come as the World Trade Organization is set to approve Russia's membership. Russia ? the largest economy still outside the WTO ? had been trying to join for 18 years. A Swiss-brokered deal with Georgia last month cleared the last major hurdle for Russia.

The two sides also are set to launch, after years of negotiations, a set of joint steps that will lead to visa-free travel for Russian citizens ? a long-standing irritant in relations. The measures include the introduction of biometric passports, as well as improved border management to combat transnational crime, terrorism and corruption.

Chizov said Syria and Iran were also among topics of discussion. Russia has blocked a bid by the United States and EU nations to impose sanctions against Syria, where a government crackdown on dissidents has killed thousands, and opposes any further moves on Iran, whose nuclear program worries the West.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_eu_russia_summit

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Ke$ha Wanted 'Sleazy' Remix To Be 'Gangster'

Lil Wayne, T.I., Wiz Khalifa and Andre 3000 heat up latest version of the Cannibal track.
By Jocelyn Vena

Ke$ha
Photo: Jeff Kravitz / Getty

Ke$ha snagged four of the biggest rappers in the game for the latest remix of her Cannibal track "Sleazy." After getting Andre 3000 on a 1.0 remix, Ke$ha and producer Dr. Luke upped the ante for "Sleazy Remix 2.0 Get Sleazier" by adding Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa and T.I. to the mix.

"These were all kind of on my wish list of people to work with in the future," she told MTV News on Friday (December 16) about the remix, which was released earlier this week. "Dr. Luke and I had this idea that we wanted to just get them all on one track and make it as gangster of a track as we possibly could. It was kind of a little bit of a mission, and the fact that we pulled it off just in time for Christmas — I'm stoked about it."

Ke$ha said it was "totally a process" trying to get some of the busiest guys in the music industry to make time for the song.

"When I first got Andre 3000 on it, that was a dream come true ... then it was Lil Wayne. Then it was Wiz Khalifa. And each one of them it was like a victory," she said. Weezy was working in the same studio as the pop star, so she "bum-rushed" him to talk about the remix. "We got to talking, and he asked me what my sign was and we realized we could make some sick music together."

Once T.I. was onboard, Ke$ha knew it was time for them to put it out."Finally it was like, 'OK, that's pretty f---ing gangster ... mission accomplished.' "

And Ke$ha says she couldn't be happier with the finished product. "You can really tell they put their best into their lyrics. I'm really proud of the remix 'cause I feel like everyone is really f---ing going for it," she said. "All of their verses are really incredible."

Share your reviews of the "Sleazy" remix in the comments!

Related Videos

• MTV News Extended Play: Ke$ha

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1676172/kesha-sleazy-remix.jhtml

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Obama admin: 2.5M young adults gain coverage

FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2011, file photo, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius participates in an roundtable discussion on health information technology and job creation at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. The Obama administration says the number of young adults going without medical coverage has shrunk by 2.5 million since the new health care law took effect. A new analysis to be released Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011, finds the drop is two-and-half times larger than indicated by government and private estimates from earlier this year. The health care overhaul allows young adults to stay on a parent?s plan until they turn 26. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak, File)

FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2011, file photo, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius participates in an roundtable discussion on health information technology and job creation at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. The Obama administration says the number of young adults going without medical coverage has shrunk by 2.5 million since the new health care law took effect. A new analysis to be released Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011, finds the drop is two-and-half times larger than indicated by government and private estimates from earlier this year. The health care overhaul allows young adults to stay on a parent?s plan until they turn 26. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Young adults trying to get traction in a tough economy are getting a welcome assist: the new federal health care law has markedly improved their access to health insurance.

The number of young Americans ages 19-25 lacking health insurance has shrunk by 2.5 million since President Barack Obama's health care overhaul took effect, the administration announced in an analysis released Wednesday.

That drop is 2? times as large as the decline indicated by previous government and private estimates from earlier this year, which showed about 1 million had gained coverage.

The improvement comes even as the uninsured rate stayed basically stuck for those a little older, ages 26-35.

Under the health care overhaul, adult children can stay on a parent's plan until they turn 26, a provision that has proven popular in an otherwise divisive law.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the numbers show the law is making a big difference for families with adult children.

"Many of them gained coverage earlier this spring, meaning the law was there for young people as they graduated from college or high school and began their careers," she said.

Administration officials said there are a couple of reasons for the better-than-expected result.

First, there is more data available now than earlier this year. Secondly, analysts are slicing the numbers more precisely than the government usually does.

The health care law's main push to cover the uninsured doesn't come until 2014. But the young adults' provision took effect last fall, and most workplace health plans started carrying it out Jan. 1. Since then, families have flocked to sign up adult children making the transition to work in a challenging environment.

The overall fate of Obama's law remains uncertain, with the Supreme Court scheduled to hear a constitutional challenge next year, and Republican presidential candidates vowing to repeal it. But this provision seems to have gotten a seal of approval from consumers.

"The increase in coverage among 19- to 25-year-olds can be directly attributed to the Affordable Care Act's new dependent coverage provision," said the HHS analysis.

Using unpublished quarterly statistics from the government's ongoing National Health Interview Survey, analysts in Sebelius' policy office determined that nearly 36 percent of those age 19-25 were uninsured in the third calendar quarter of 2010, before the law's provision took effect.

That translates to more than 10.5 million people.

By the second calendar quarter of 2011, the proportion of uninsured young adults had dropped to a little over 27 percent, or about 8 million people.

The difference ? nearly 2.5 million getting coverage ? can only be the result of the health care law, administration officials said, because the number covered by public programs like Medicaid went down slightly.

Overall, nearly 30 million Americans are ages 19 to 25.

"From September 2010 to June 2011, coverage rose only among those adults affect by the policy," said the HHS report.

The National Center for Health Statistics has documented a broadly similar trend in its official publications, only it's not nearly as dramatic.

Administration officials said those statistics did not focus on the change from calendar quarter to calendar quarter, as does the new HHS report. Instead, they pool data over longer time periods, and that has the effect of diluting the perceived impact of the law, officials said.

Traditionally, young adults have been more likely to be uninsured than any other age group.

Some are making the switch from school to work. Others are holding down low-wage jobs that don't usually come with health care. And some ? termed the "invincibles" ? pass up job-based health insurance because they don't think they'll use it and would rather get extra money in their paychecks.

Other early coverage expansions in the health care law have not worked as well, including a special program for people with health problems turned away by private insurers. Many applicants found the premiums unaffordable.

Young adults are less expensive to cover than people who are middle-aged, and many companies have spread the extra premiums among their workers. Benefits consultant Delloite LLP has projected additional health plan costs in the range of 1 percent to 2 percent for covering young adults.

Before the health care overhaul, families with adult children faced a hodgepodge of policies. Some health plans only covered older children while they were full-time students. Others applied an age cutoff.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-12-14-US-Health-Overhaul-Young-Adults/id-04b07b94df494d9ba6180997e57eee19

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Fifth victim dies after Belgian attack: report (Reuters)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? A 75-year-old woman has died in hospital after being injured in Tuesday's mass-killing in Liege, Belgium, taking the total number of dead to six, including the gunman who killed himself, Belgian news agency Belga reported on Thursday.

Apart from the woman and gunman Nordine Amrani, boys aged 15 and 17, a 17-month-old toddler and a cleaning woman also died.

Belgian investigators found the cleaning woman, who appears to have been the first victim, at a warehouse used by Amrani. He killed her before heading for a central Liege square, where he attacked people around a bus station with an assault rifle and grenades.

Another 120 people were injured in the attack, and an additional 40 were treated for shock. Police and the prosecutor's' office in Liege declined to comment on Thursday.

(Reporting By Robert-Jan Bartunek)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111215/wl_nm/us_belgium_attack_victim

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Going mobile with your pets [infographic] - Holy Kaw!

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Source: http://holykaw.alltop.com/going-mobile-with-your-pets-infographic

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How Mitt Romney Tried to Erase the Evidence of His Governorship (The Atlantic Wire)

Shortly before leaving the governor's office in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney's administration spent nearly $100,000 of state money to purge computer and email records?in an?unprecedented?attempt to wipe out the paper trail of his tenure. His staff took home hard drives from state-owned computers and erased emails and other?communications?from state servers, complicating current efforts to retrieve and review the records of Romney's four-year term that ended in 2007.

Related: Romney's Task Today: Distance Himself from RomneyCare

It is not believed that Romney violated any laws, but according to state officials who spoke to Reuters, the move to scrub the digital archive of his?administration?was?unusually?thorough. Several members of his staff used their own money to purchase the hard drives of their state computers so that they could take them home after leaving their jobs. The staff also broke an existing lease on office equipment so that they could rent new "clean" computers at the end of their run, a move that cost the state $97,000 in additional funds.

Related: Reactions from the Right to Romney's Health Care Speech

Romney claims that whatever record remains of his time in office ? including possible details of what was erased ? are not subject to state disclosure laws. However, like regulations governing the destruction of digital records, Massachusetts law is vague on what is and isn't allowed. The court ruling most likely to cover any disclosure ruling is from 1997 (well before most state business was done on email) and the state's official records law has not been updated to deal with digital records, meaning Romney could benefit from?Massachusetts' failure?to adapt to the 21st Century.

Related: Jon Huntsman Will Drink for Peace

The loss or potential sealing of Romney's?Massachusetts?records could become a huge issue in 2012, should he secure the Republican nomination. Those were the only four years that Romney ever spent in public office and how he ran his state will be a focal point of scrutiny for both voters and the media, particularly when it comes to the passage of his state health care law.?Several news organizations are already working through freedom of information requests in the hope of combing through the historical record, but any legal complications regarding the release of those records ? or the fact that many of them no longer exist ? could delay any formal accounting of Romney's tenure until it's too late to make any difference. Sounds like that's just the way he would like it.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/atlantic/20111206/pl_atlantic/howmittromneytriederaseevidencehisgovernorship45773

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[OOC] Cirque du Nuit

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[OOC] Inferior Hearts

Forum rules
This forum is for OOC discussion about existing roleplays.

Please post all "Players Wanted" threads in the Roleplayers Wanted forum!

This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?Inferior Hearts?. Anything posted here will also show up there.

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

You may edit this first post as you see fit.

Horseygirl

Member for 2 years

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This sounds so cool! I think i might be interested! I'm writing up a female Spark now (and hopefully i'll have time to finish it!)

Last edited by BelleOceane on Sat Dec 03, 2011 8:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

BelleOceane

Member for 0 years

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Thank you! Can can reserve now and send in your writing example later if you want. ;D

Horseygirl

Member for 2 years

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Can I reserve female spark two or am I too late.

bananaramma

Member for 0 years

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yay! :D
By the way, what (specifically) do you mean by a writing example?

BelleOceane

Member for 0 years

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I want to reserve a vampire... do we send you the writing sample here or through PM?

jadedragon66

Member for 0 years

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May I reserve a Spark? Idc if male or female, but they sound like more fun to play.

We are all like fireworks. We climb, shine, and always go our separate ways and become further apart. But even if that time comes, let's not disappear like a firework, and continue to shine forever.
Capt. Hitsugaya Toushiro

Auricambrflaym

Member for 0 years

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And what do you want as a writing sample? backstory, something off the top of our heads, something from another rp that we do? kinda confused there.....

Auricambrflaym

Member for 0 years

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By a writing example, it can be a post that you've made before. I just want to get a feel of how long your posts are. ;)

Jadedragon: Either one, but I prefer pm.

Horseygirl

Member for 2 years

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neh, horsey.. can I just send you a post from the previous rps that I was in? :x
(and what happened to the one Animegirl made? I wasnt on for 2 days because I was busy and when I came back on, it seemed like nobody posted for like 4 days... I'm guessing it's dead :/ ? )

jadedragon66

Member for 0 years

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Sure. (And yeah, it died. I pmed people asking them to post, too, but they didn't. T.T)

Horseygirl

Member for 2 years

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Ok thanks! Oh....My posts vary in length depending on what's going on....... you want me to send one of my average length?

Auricambrflaym

Member for 0 years

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ahhh well that sucks. xP

hmm.. I need to start thinking of my character's personality ... suggestion~?

jadedragon66

Member for 0 years

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Well the vampires have grown up in a rich town, so he could be a little conceided.

Horseygirl

Member for 2 years

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not sure if i can play a conceded character too well..
question~~ can vampires eat/drink other than blood? like 'human' food?

jadedragon66

Member for 0 years

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Horseygirl did I get spark girl 2 reserved or did you miss that???

bananaramma

Member for 0 years

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Oh, i'm sorry. She's taken already. =(

Jadedragon: yeah. Normally they only have blood once a day, and after that eat like regular humans. It's just not as. . . yummy as blood.

Horseygirl

Member for 2 years

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I just sent my sample! hope it's alright and doesn't have too many spelling mistakes (Like i said, i'm overtired and probably shouldn't be trusted around computers)!

BelleOceane

Member for 0 years

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oh okay~ thank you for clearing that up :3

jadedragon66

Member for 0 years

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Atlantic hurricane season closes with 19 named storms

From Arlene to Sean, the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season had 19 major storms.?The season saw advances forecasters have made in providing local emergency managers with timely warnings.

The curtain has fallen on the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season ? one that enters the record books in a four-way tie for the third-largest number of named storms on record.

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The others: the 1887, 1995, and 2010 seasons.

Tropical Storm Arlene started things off in late June. By the time Nov. 30 arrived, the roster ended with 19 named storms, ending with Tropical Storm Sean in early November.

Indeed, the season might have topped 19 named storms, but forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami didn't catch a blink-and-you'll-miss-it storm in early September that quickly reached tropical-storm status, only to weaken hours later. It spent its brief life well off the US East Coast.

Forecasters noticed the storm as they performed their usual season's-end review of data on Atlantic-basin activity. The review also led to Tropical Storm Nate's promotion to Hurricane Nate.

Although the number of named storms was well above the long-term average of 11, the number of hurricanes and major hurricanes were only slightly above average, according to the center's post-season analysis.

RECOMMENDED: Five things you can do to keep safe in a hurricane

Still, for much of the US East Coast, it was a season to remember.

In late August, Hurricane Irene moved out of the eastern Caribbean and up along the US East Coast. It made landfall three times as it slid up along the East Coast: at Cape Lookout, N.C., at Little Egg Inlet, N.J., as a hurricane, and finally near Coney Island as a tropical storm.

The storm's winds and heavy rains assaulted a landscape along much of the coast and deep into New England whose trees were laden with leaves and whose roots were clinging to soils already saturated from previous rain storms. Storm-felled trees and limbs left 4 million customers without electricity.

From Maryland and Delaware through Maine, 10 states saw record flooding along rivers and streams from Irene's downpours, according to the US Geological Survey, which monitors stream flows.

"Irene broke the 'hurricane amnesia' that can develop when so much time lapses between land-falling storms," said National Weather Service director Jack Hayes in a statement.

All along its path from the Caribbean northward, Irene inflicted an estimated $10.1 billion in damage; the storm reportedly killed 56 people.

Tropical storm Arlene and tropical storm Lee added a combined 46 fatalities to a season that would reach $11.6 billion in damages throughout the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico, and 120 casualties.

The season also showcased the advances forecasters have made in providing local emergency managers with timely warnings. Still, efforts are underway to extend storm-track forecasts another two days beyond the current 5-day outlook while reducing the uncertainties in the forecast.

In addition, researchers have placed a heavy emphasis on understanding the drivers behind rapid changes in storm intensity. Last-minute shifts in strength, up or down, ahead of landfall can have a profound effect on the extent of coastline that needs evacuation.

The efforts are being driven in no small part by analyses showing that between 1900 and 2005, damage from landfalling tropical cyclones in the US doubles every 10 years. Costs are rising as more people move to vulnerable coastal areas, triggering the construction of homes, factories, office buildings, and other assets needed to sustain them.

The Monitor's Weekly News Quiz for Nov. 27-Dec. 2, 2011

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/r2afLajqfoU/Atlantic-hurricane-season-closes-with-19-named-storms

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Astronomers find 18 new planets: Discovery is the largest collection of confirmed planets around stars more massive than the sun

ScienceDaily (Dec. 2, 2011) ? Discoveries of new planets just keep coming and coming. Take, for instance, the 18 recently found by a team of astronomers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

"It's the largest single announcement of planets in orbit around stars more massive than the sun, aside from the discoveries made by the Kepler mission," says John Johnson, assistant professor of astronomy at Caltech and the first author on the team's paper, which was published in the December issue of The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. The Kepler mission is a space telescope that has so far identified more than 1,200 possible planets, though the majority of those have not yet been confirmed.

Using the Keck Observatory in Hawaii -- with follow-up observations using the McDonald and Fairborn Observatories in Texas and Arizona, respectively -- the researchers surveyed about 300 stars. They focused on those dubbed "retired" A-type stars that are more than one and a half times more massive than the sun. These stars are just past the main stage of their life -- hence, "retired" -- and are now puffing up into what's called a subgiant star.

To look for planets, the astronomers searched for stars of this type that wobble, which could be caused by the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet. By searching the wobbly stars' spectra for Doppler shifts -- the lengthening and contracting of wavelengths due to motion away from and toward the observer -- the team found 18 planets with masses similar to Jupiter's.

This new bounty marks a 50 percent increase in the number of known planets orbiting massive stars and, according to Johnson, provides an invaluable population of planetary systems for understanding how planets -- and our own solar system -- might form. The researchers say that the findings also lend further support to the theory that planets grow from seed particles that accumulate gas and dust in a disk surrounding a newborn star.

According to this theory, tiny particles start to clump together, eventually snowballing into a planet. If this is the true sequence of events, the characteristics of the resulting planetary system -- such as the number and size of the planets, or their orbital shapes -- will depend on the mass of the star. For instance, a more massive star would mean a bigger disk, which in turn would mean more material to produce a greater number of giant planets.

In another theory, planets form when large amounts of gas and dust in the disk spontaneously collapse into big, dense clumps that then become planets. But in this picture, it turns out that the mass of the star doesn't affect the kinds of planets that are produced.

So far, as the number of discovered planets has grown, astronomers are finding that stellar mass does seem to be important in determining the prevalence of giant planets. The newly discovered planets further support this pattern -- and are therefore consistent with the first theory, the one stating that planets are born from seed particles.

"It's nice to see all these converging lines of evidence pointing toward one class of formation mechanisms," Johnson says.

There's another interesting twist, he adds: "Not only do we find Jupiter-like planets more frequently around massive stars, but we find them in wider orbits." If you took a sample of 18 planets around sunlike stars, he explains, half of them would orbit close to their stars. But in the cases of the new planets, all are farther away, at least 0.7 astronomical units from their stars. (One astronomical unit, or AU, is the distance from Earth to the sun.)

In systems with sunlike stars, gas giants like Jupiter acquire close orbits when they migrate toward their stars. According to theories of planet formation, gas giants could only have formed far from their stars, where it's cold enough for their constituent gases and ices to exist. So for gas giants to orbit nearer to their stars, certain gravitational interactions have to take place to pull these planets in. Then, some other mechanism -- perhaps the star's magnetic field -- has to kick in to stop them from spiraling into a fiery death.

The question, Johnson says, is why this doesn't seem to happen with so-called hot Jupiters orbiting massive stars, and whether that dearth is due to nature or nurture. In the nature explanation, Jupiter-like planets that orbit massive stars just wouldn't ever migrate inward. In the nurture interpretation, the planets would move in, but there would be nothing to prevent them from plunging into their stars. Or perhaps the stars evolve and swell up, consuming their planets. Which is the case? According to Johnson, subgiants like the A stars they were looking at in this paper simply don't expand enough to gobble up hot Jupiters. So unless A stars have some unique characteristic that would prevent them from stopping migrating planets -- such as a lack of a magnetic field early in their lives -- it looks like the nature explanation is the more plausible one.

The new batch of planets have yet another interesting pattern: their orbits are mainly circular, while planets around sunlike stars span a wide range of circular to elliptical paths. Johnson says he's now trying to find an explanation.

For Johnson, these discoveries have been a long time coming. This latest find, for instance, comes from an astronomical survey that he started while a graduate student; because these planets have wide orbits, they can take a couple of years to make a single revolution, meaning that it can also take quite a few years before their stars' periodic wobbles become apparent to an observer. Now, the discoveries are finally coming in. "I liken it to a garden -- you plant the seeds and put a lot of work into it," he says. "Then, a decade in, your garden is big and flourishing. That's where I am right now. My garden is full of these big, bright, juicy tomatoes -- these Jupiter-sized planets."

The other authors on the The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series paper, "Retired A stars and their companions VII. Eighteen new Jovian planets," include former Caltech undergraduate Christian Clanton, who graduated in 2010; Caltech postdoctoral scholar Justin Crepp; and nine others from the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii; the University of California, Berkeley; the Center of Excellence in Information Systems at Tennessee State University; the McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas, Austin; and the Pennsylvania State University. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by California Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Marcus Woo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. John Asher Johnson, Christian Clanton, Andrew W. Howard, Brendan P. Bowler, Gregory W. Henry, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Justin R. Crepp, Michael Endl, William D. Cochran, Phillip J. MacQueen, Jason T. Wright, Howard Isaacson. Retired A Stars and Their Companions. VII. 18 New Jovian Planets. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 2011; 197 (2): 26 DOI: 10.1088/0067-0049/197/2/26

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111202155801.htm

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Cain's lawyer demands records from accuser

ATLANTA (AP) ? An attorney for Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has demanded cell phone records from an Atlanta businesswoman accusing Cain of an extramarital affair.

Cain attorney Lin Wood sent a letter Wednesday to a lawyer representing Ginger White asking that Cain's team be provided with cell phone records showing calls and text messages between White and Cain.

Wood said Cain wants those phone records, among other documents, so he can examine them for their authenticity and content.

In TV interviews, White has accused Cain of carrying on a 13-year affair that she said ended shortly before Cain ran for president. Cain has called the allegations "completely false" and has labeled White as "troubled" in a message to his supporters.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2011-12-01-Cain-Accuser/id-8580f649722a4cc98a23ee3a6adc5bf8

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Gingrich's unpredictability raises concerns

Republican presidential hopeful former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at the annual meeting of the Iowa Association of Electric Cooperatives, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, in West Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Republican presidential hopeful former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at the annual meeting of the Iowa Association of Electric Cooperatives, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, in West Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? At last, Rep. Phil Gingrey thought as he watched the most recent presidential debate. His candidate, Newt Gingrich, had moved beyond scolding journalists to talking ideas and looking like a contender. But then Gingrich seemed to embrace a form of amnesty for illegal immigrants. And Gingrey, who opposes amnesty like most conservatives, froze.

"I thought, 'Aw, I hope he's not really saying that," recalled Gingrey, R-Ga.

Unpredictability is as much a part of Gingrich as his signature snowy mane, a quality that has vexed anyone who has supported him for anything ? be it speaker of the House or president of the United States. The history professor from Georgia may have, as he claims, matured over three dramatic decades in public life. But one constant is a mercurial personality.

For many Republicans, it's a source of inspiration, charm and excitement in a year when conservatives are still looking for an alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and have driven Gingrich into the top tier of contenders for the GOP nomination.

Gingrich won a place in the history books as the force behind the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress. As speaker, he racked up some bipartisan trophies by working with President Bill Clinton to balance the budget and change the welfare system.

But melodrama has followed Gingrich up and down and back up the ladder of success, enough to raise the question in 2012: How steadily would Gingrich, a 68-year-old grandfather and Catholic convert on his third marriage, guide a nation hungry for confidence in its leaders and jittery over the stuttering economy?

"I don't claim to be the perfect candidate," Gingrich told WSC-FM this week. "I just claim to be a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney and a lot more electable than anyone else."

Gingrey agrees. But Gingrich's remarks on immigration left him with questions.

"I don't see how the party that says it's the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families which have been here a quarter-century," Gingrich said in the Republican debate. "I'm prepared to take the heat for saying let's be humane in enforcing the law."

On the one hand, Gingrey suggested, if that's the way Gingrich really feels about the issue, then saying so, rather than avoiding it, was "gutsy." And it may have drawn a useful contrast with Romney.

On the other, there's uncertainty: What is his position on the issue? After all, he has flip-flopped on other issues ? Medicare, Libya, health care reform and global warming.

"I hope he set the stage for us looking very hard at making sure we have a temporary worker program that's viable and has absolutely no hint of amnesty," Gingrey said in a telephone interview this week. "I need to have a conversation with him about that."

Gingrich has since said he was calling for a path toward legal residency ? not citizenship ? for illegal immigrants who have lived here peacefully for generations.

By any measure, stability is scarce on Gingrich's resume. During his speakership there were two government shutdowns, a well-publicized snit over his seating on Air Force One, his push for Clinton's impeachment while in an extramarital affair of his own, and lieutenants plotting his overthrow.

In 1998, shortly after winning re-election, Gingrich announced in a closed GOP caucus meeting that he would "bench" himself, and left Congress.

Throughout, there's been petulance, policy wobbles, and a tendency to cast himself in outsized terms.

This year alone, while painting himself an everyman and Washington outsider at heart, he's been forced to defend a six-figure shopping spree at Tiffany's and the $1.6 million he earned over the past decade as a history adviser ? not a lobbyist, he insists ? to mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

He irked conservatives by harshly criticizing Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to overhaul Medicare as "right-wing social engineering," then apologized but has since sent mixed signals on where he stands on the matter.

His senior campaign staff quit on him, en masse.

The drama has Democrats licking their chops at the prospect of Gingrich as the GOP nominee.

"I did not think I had lived a good enough life to be rewarded by Newt Gingrich being the Republican nominee," retiring liberal Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said this week. "It still is unlikely, but I have hopes."

The misfortunes of other Republican candidates ? Rep. Michele Bachmann, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, businessman Herman Cain ? left an opening for Gingrich's resurgence. Longtime politicos aren't making the argument that Gingrich's leadership is a neat or pretty thing to behold. But they're not counting him out of the wide-open nominating contest, either.

"I think he's got a pretty good argument to make about his time as speaker, in terms of results," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who served with Gingrich in the House and has not endorsed a presidential candidate. "The real purpose of a president, I think, is to find common ground with Congress to solve our problems. Newt has been in that mix."

Rep. Tom Price, another Georgia Republican who has endorsed Gingrich, suggested the former speaker has acquired the self-awareness to compete in the presidential arena.

"Newt has always been an idea machine, and I think he clearly appreciates the gravity of the situation before us," Price said. "There isn't any sense that this (nomination) is a fait accompli. There's an appreciation that there's a long road to go yet."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2011-12-02-Gingrich-Chaos%20Factor/id-9590d2c083a14d81895e90689dcee99b

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