It has come to our attention that you recently used a fake, mocked-up version of our technology editorial “blog” property TechCrunch in a personal prank.
Furthermore, it has come to our attention that your friend, a Mr. “Olivier M,” was in fact fooled by the aforementioned prank — or so it seems, based on the email entitled “Personal information in your website”, which was sent to TechCrunch Editorial “Tips” earlier this week (please see Attachments A, B, and C).
Mr. Smith, as you know, AOL acquired TechCrunch back in 2010. Yet from what we understand, you failed to ask anyone at AOL’s Brand Group for permission to use our intellectual property.
It’s possible that you’re sweating as you consider the legal ramifications of your actions, but don’t worry — you’ll note that this letter isn’t from AOL Legal.
More importantly, contrary to popular opinion, we here at AOL Management have a finely tuned sense of humor. Indeed, we laugh long and hard every time a journalist makes a joke about dial-up Internet or CDs. We understand that such jokes derive their humor from AOL’s longstanding association with the aforementioned dial-up Internet and CDs.
With that in mind, please consider permission to use TechCrunch branding and imagery to be retroactively granted in this case, because you are funny, subject to certain conditions (please see Attachment D). Indeed, you may tell your friends that AOL welcomes all use of TechCrunch branding and imagery for such friend pranking purposes, subject to the aforementioned conditions.
Sincerely, AOL Management
cc: AOL Legal
Attachment A: Image Of Fake TechCrunch Sent To Us By Pranked Reader
Attachment B: Actual Correspondence From Pranked Reader (“Olivier M”) To TechCrunch Editorial
Attachment C: Explanatory Correspondence From TechCrunch Editorial To “Olivier M”
Attachment D: AOL Guidelines For Parodic Use Of TechCrunch Branding
[message truncated due to length]
May 24, 1985
April 12, 2009, NYSE:AOL
AOL is a global advertising-supported Web company, with display advertising network in the U.S., a substantial worldwide audience, and a suite of popular Web brands and products. The company’s strategy focuses on increasing the scale and sophistication of its advertising platform and growing the size and engagement of its global online audience through leading products and programming. History of Aol: AOL was founded in the early 1980’s as Control Video Corp, with an online service, Gameline, for the Atari 2600 console. ...
Should Apple bring iOS 7's new, clarified, deferential, depth-driven look and feel OS X? For the last few years Apple has worked diligently and deliberately to bring iOS nomenclature and metaphors back to the Mac, and create a more consistent experience between their two platforms. Right now, however, iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks couldn't look more different.
iOS 7 has an all-new physics and particle engine, making it feel like a collection of objects in space, and work more like a video game, as well as a completely new paint job with icons and interface elements the likes of which we've never seen on an Apple product before. They've both had their richly rendered textures removed, but where Mavericks lost the old leather, it didn't lose it's Aqua-era gloss, at least not entirely, and it didn't gain any of the new print-inspired look, at least not yet.
Macs are often said to enjoy a halo effect from iOS devices -- people buy iPhones and iPads and then start considering the Mac s well. For the last few years, no matter how different the two platforms, the interfaces looked familiar enough that the Mac was approachable to iOS users in a very direct and comforting way.
Likewise, Jony Ive is now vice president of all design, not just hardware, and not just iOS. It's not unreasonable to think his grand digital plans will eventually encompass future versions of OS X, as they're about to do to iOS. After all, even the best designer and design teams in the world can't do everything at once.
So here's the question -- do you think the new iOS 7 design language will be brought back to the Mac? Will the next version of OS X once again be made familiar to iPhone and iPad users? Should there once again be a single, unified look and feel to Apple's products going forward?
Vote in the poll up top and then tell me why or why not in the comments below!
With two goals just 17 seconds apart in the final moments of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final, the Chicago Blackhawks win 3-2 for their second NHL championship in four seasons.
By Jimmy Golen,?AP Sports Writer / June 24, 2013
Chicago Blackhawks defenseman Johnny Oduya (27), of Sweden, hugs Chicago Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford (50) after winning Game 6 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Finals 3-2 against the Boston Bruins, Monday, June 24, 2013, in Boston.
Charles Krupa / AP
Enlarge
An NHL-record unbeaten streak to start the lockout-shortened season.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
Three straight victories to clinch the title.
From beginning to end, the Chicago Blackhawks skated away from the rest of the league.
Bryan Bickell and Dave Bolland scored 17 seconds apart in the final 1:16 and the Blackhawks staged a stunning rally to win Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final 3-2 on Monday night for their second NHL championship in four seasons.
Jonathan Toews returned from injury to add a goal, and Corey Crawford made 23 saves for Chicago in the first final round between Original Six teams since 1979.
"I still can't believe that finish," Crawford said. "Oh my God, we never quit."
Patrick Kane, whose overtime goal in Game 6 beat Philadelphia to win the 2010 championship, was voted the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as playoffs MVP.
"It was the best year of my life, just playing with these guys," Kane said.
Toews scored his third goal of the playoffs to tie it for the Blackawks at 4:24 of the second of Game 6 ? exactly two minutes after teammate Andrew Shaw was penalized for roughing.
"In 2010, we didn't really know what we were doing," Toews said. "We just, we played great hockey and we were kind of oblivious to how good we were playing.
" This time around, we know definitely how much work it takes and how much sacrifice it takes to get back here and this is an unbelievable group. We've been through a lot together this year and this is a sweet way to finish it off."
Boston, needing a win to extend the series to a deciding Game 7, came out aggressively and led 1-0 after one period on Chris Kelly's second goal of the playoffs. The Bruins outshot the Blackhawks 12-6 in the first period but the margin dropped to 18-15 through 40 minutes.
Each team got one of its best players back when Toews and Boston alternate captain Patrice Bergeron returned to the lineup after leaving the Blackhawks' 3-1 win with injuries on Saturday.
Toews scored when he got past Boston defenseman Zdeno Chara along the boards in the neutral zone. Chicago's captain skated up the right side and fired a hard shot from the right faceoff dot that beat goalie Tuukka Rask between his pads.
It looks like the battle for affordable smartphone flagships is heating up. Hot on the heels of TCL / Alcatel's tasty $280 Idol X comes word of Gionee's ELIFE E6, also boasting a 5-inch 1080p display, 1.5GHz quad-core processor (MediaTek MT6589T) with 2GB RAM and 13-megapixel BSI camera with flash. In addition to these main specs, the Chinese handset allegedly packs a 5MP front-facing shooter and 2000mAh+ battery, runs Android 4.2.1 (Jellybean) and features a svelte 8mm profile. Gionee is officially expected to launch the ELIFE E6 in Beijing on July 10th for somewhere between $320 and $360. Availability is unknown, but with MediaTek's SoC supporting both 42Mbps HSPA+ and TD-SCDMA (no LTE here, folks), this phone is likely destined to China, India and other APAC nations.
BEIJING (AP) ? An American executive held in his Beijing medical supply plant by angry workers said Tuesday's he's waiting for his lawyers to arrive to resolve a compensation dispute that highlights tensions in China's labor market.
Chip Starnes was enduring a fifth day of captivity at the factory in the capital's northeastern suburbs that makes products for Coral Springs, Florida-based Specialty Medical Supplies.
About 100 workers are demanding generous severance packages identical to those offered 30 workers being laid-off from the company's plastics division. The demands followed rumors the entire plant was being closed, despite Starnes' assertion the company doesn't plan to fire the others.
"There's been no solution is terms of anything between us and them," Starnes told The Associated Press from his office. He said he was waiting for his lawyer to arrive and then would "start to work on some sort of solution to the issue one way or another."
A local union official representing the workers in talks with Starnes, Chu Lixiang, said the workers were demanding the portion of their salaries yet to be paid and a "reasonable" level of compensation before leaving their jobs. Neither gave details on the amounts demanded.
Chu said Starnes hadn't paid the workers for two months. She said they feared the plant was closing and that he would run away without paying severance.
Starnes said that since Saturday morning, about 80 workers had been blocking every exit around the clock and depriving him of sleep by shining bright lights and banging on windows of his office.
The standoff points to long-ingrained habits among Chinese workers who are sometimes left unprotected when factories close without severance or wages owed.
Such incidents have been rarer as labor protections improve, although disputes still occur and local governments have at times barred foreign executives from leaving until they are resolved.
Starnes, 42, said he'd been coerced into agreeing to meet workers' demands by Tuesday.
Starnes said the company had gradually been winding down its plastics division, planning to move it to Mumbai, India. He arrived in Beijing a week ago to lay off the last 30 people. Some had been working there for up to nine years, so their compensation packages were "pretty nice," he said.
Some of the workers in the other divisions got wind of this, and, coupled with rumors that the whole plant was moving to India, started demanding similar severance packages on Friday, Starnes said.
Edward Snowden, who leaked information about top secret NSA surveillance programs, reportedly is headed to asylum in Ecuador. US officials still hope to prosecute Snowden on espionage charges, but that may be difficult given US relations with Ecuador.
By Brad Knickerbocker,?Staff writer / June 23, 2013
Journalists stand next to the Ecuador Ambassador's car while waiting for the arrival of Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping US surveillance programs, at Sheremetyevo airport, just outside Moscow Sunday.
Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr/AP
Enlarge
The saga and travels of Edward Snowden took another turn Sunday with reports that he is headed for asylum in Ecuador.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
Why Ecuador?
Most obviously, the South American country is friendly to WikiLeaks. That?s the whistleblower organization whose founder Julian Assange has spent the past year holed up in Ecuador?s embassy in London, trying to avoid questioning about alleged sexual offenses in Sweden.
WikiLeaks has been instrumental in spiriting Mr. Snowden out of Hong Kong ? reportedly en route via Moscow and Havana to a place of more permanent refuge in Ecuador with a WikiLeaks official accompanying him.
Ecuador's ambassador to Russia said he expected to meet Snowden in Moscow on Sunday, Reuters reports. What?s more, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has good ties with WikiLeaks and is in a politically confident mood after his recent landslide re-election.
Along with Cuba and Venezuela (which had been thought to be Snowden?s ultimate destination) Ecuador is a member of ALBA ? the??Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America? ? an alliance of leftist governments in Latin America that pride themselves on their "anti-imperialist" credentials.
US officials had been scrambling to bring Mr. Snowden back to the United States for prosecution on charges of espionage following his leaking of details about top secret National Security Agency surveillance programs targeting telephone and Internet metadata, including some data on US citizens.
In a criminal complaint unsealed Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., Snowden was charged with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person. The latter two offenses fall under the US Espionage Act and can bring up to 10 years in prison.
TORONTO (AP) ? Jose Bautista hit a tiebreaking home run in the eighth inning and the Toronto Blue Jays won their 10th straight game Saturday, beating the Baltimore Orioles 4-2.
Maicer Izturis hit a solo homer in the fifth and Bautista had a two-run drive for Toronto, on its longest winning streak since a 10-game run late in 2008. The Blue Jays, who are 14-4 this month, are one victory from matching the franchise record. Toronto had 11-game winning streaks in 1987 and 1998.
The Blue Jays led 2-1 heading into the eighth but Taylor Teagarden tied it with a homer off reliever Darren Oliver.
Orioles starter Miguel Gonzalez left after Munenori Kawasaki hit a one-out single in the bottom half. Darren O'Day came on and got Rajai Davis to ground into a fielder's choice, but Bautista followed with a two-out homer just inside the left-field foul pole on a 3-2 pitch. The homer was his 16th of the season.
Oliver (3-1) worked one inning and Casey Janssen finished for his 17th save in 18 chances.
Gonzalez (5-2) allowed three runs and three hits in 7 1-3 innings. The right-hander, who won his previous three starts, lost for the first time since May 3 at the Los Angeles Angels.
The Blue Jays opened the scoring in the first when Melky Cabrera drew a leadoff walk, advanced to third on Adam Lind's two-out single and scored on a wild pitch.
The Orioles tied it in the fifth after Chris Davis reached on second baseman Emilio Bonifacio's error. He went to second on a grounder and scored on Travis Ishikawa's single.
Izturis put the Blue Jays back in front by homering on the first pitch of the fifth.
Baltimore left the potential tying run stranded at third base in the seventh but knotted it at 2 in the eighth on Teagarden's one-out homer.
Blue Jays starter Chien-Ming Wang left to a standing ovation after giving up one run and five hits in 6 1-3 innings. The right-hander, who walked none and struck out two, has a 2.61 ERA in three starts with Toronto.
NOTES: Blue Jays RHP Kyle Drabek (elbow surgery) is set to begin a minor league rehabilitation assignment with Class-A Dunedin on Saturday. ... Orioles C Matt Wieters got the day off, while Chris Davis started at DH. He doubled and scored a run, but struck out to end the game. ... Baltimore RHP Freddy Garcia is expected to start Sunday's series finale against RHP Josh Johnson, meaning LHP Zach Britton will start for the Orioles against Cleveland on Monday.
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) ? Syrian media say a bomb has gone off behind a bakery in the capital Damascus, causing casualties.
The Sunday blast hit the Ruken al-Deen neighborhood, the state SANA news agency reported.
It said the bomb caused casualties, but did not say how many.
President Bashar Assad's forces are on the offensive against rebels in districts outside Damascus that are used as launching pads to attack the capita .
A doctor told a courtroom this week in Los Angeles that Michael Jackson went without "real" sleep for 60 days leading up to his death. The testimony raises questions about how long a person can survive without shut-eye, and whether it matters what type of sleep a person slips into when they snooze.
Jackson had been receiving nightly infusions of propofol, a surgical anesthetic, for two months to treat his insomnia as he prepared for a series of comeback shows.
Even if the drug made Jackson feel well rested, it would have sent him into a rather superficial slumber each night, said Dr. Charles Czeisler, a Harvard sleep scientist who testified at the trial against the pop star's concert promoter this week, according to CNN. [Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders]
Czeisler reportedly told the courtroom that propofol suppresses rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. If Jackson hadn't died primarily of an overdose of the anesthetic (and another sedative) on June 25, 2009, the lack of REM sleep may have eventually killed him, Czeisler said.
"It would be like eating some sort of cellulose pellets instead of dinner," Czeisler was quoted as saying by CNN. "Your stomach would be full, and you would not be hungry, but it would be zero calories and not fulfill any of your nutrition needs."
Is REM sleep important?
While sleep deprivation over time has been linked to obesity and chronic diseases, such as diabetes and breast cancer, it's difficult to pin those side effects on a specific aspect of sleep, and not all scientists agree that REM sleep has crucial restorative powers in itself.
"There's no evidence that REM sleep deprivation by itself will kill anyone," Dr. Jerome Siegel, professor of psychiatry at UCLA, told LiveScience.
REM sleep is characterized by heightened brain activity and is the state when dreams are at their most intense. The phase is thought to originate in the area at the base of the brain called the pons. Oftentimes damage to this critical part of the brain spells death. However, there are some cases of people who have survived an injury to this region and are living normal lives, but without ever experiencing REM sleep again, said Siegel, who is also affiliated with the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.
Israeli researcher Peretz Lavie followed a patient who had lost REM sleep after a brain injury. The man went to law school and became the puzzle editor for Tel Aviv newspaper.
And if it's true that a lack of REM sleep can kill you, then no one should be taking MAOIs and SSRIs, common classes of antidepressants, Siegel said; these drugs have been known to inhibit the dream-making state of slumber.
The Jackson case does underscore what little scientists know about the purpose of sleep, let alone a specific phase. One thing researchers do know is that people are more alert when they wake up from REM sleep.
"You can see an evolutionary advantage for having this state that allows you to be alert when you're awakened," Siegel said.
How long can you stay awake?
Randy Gardner holds the record for the longest a person has ever voluntarily gone without sleep, staying awake for 264 hours (about 11 days) when he was 17 for a school science fair project in 1965.
No person has ever definitively died from lack of sleep alone, and it's ethically dicey to explore those boundaries in the lab. Last year, a 26-year-old Chinese man attempting to watch every game of the European Cup reportedly died after staying awake for 11 days. Reports at the time suggested he was drinking alcohol and smoking throughout the sleepless soccer-watching binge, making it difficult to rule sleep deprivation the primary cause of death.
In famous experiments in the 1980s at the University of Chicago, scientists kept rats from sleeping by jolting them awake every time they nodded off. The animals consistently died within two weeks, but Siegel thinks their deaths may have had more to do with the surge of the stress hormone cortisol and increase in blood pressure every time they were woken up than the sleep deprivation.
"What they're dying of is being repeatedly awakened which is quite different from sleep deprivation," Siegel said. "If you stay up all night, none of this happens."
Follow Megan Gannon on Twitterand Google+.Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Released June 22, 1993, Exile in Guyville not only launched the contentious career of Liz Phair ? it also turned the indie rock establishment on its head. It brought more attention to the burgeoning music community in Chicago (Windy City acts like Smashing Pumpkins and Urge Overkill also had major releases that year), which drew ire from the community?s mainstays (legendary producer Steve Albini bashed Phair in a letter to the Chicago Reader, claiming she was ?more talked about than heard, a persona completely unrooted in substance, and a fucking chore to listen to?). Twenty years later, and despite Phair?s various (and perhaps less well-loved) follow-ups, Exile in Guyville remains a modern classic and a landmark feminist recording. To celebrate 20 years of Guyville, we asked a few writers to share their thoughts about what made Phair?s debut?such an important record.
At the time,?Exile in Guyville?was received as being a groundbreaking debut for a relatively unknown (but ambitious) young singer / songwriter, but there was one, perhaps minor, hiccup: If you didn?t understand the reference to the Rolling Stones?s?album Exile on Main Street,?you would totally miss the ballsiness of what Liz Phair was doing. It came out during a time when the Riot Grrrl movement was in full swing and people were extremely receptive to alternative views on feminism, and in Phair?s case, her willingness to speak bluntly about her own sexuality. Since then her motives have at times been questionable, but within that era, the album and her message was daringly refreshing.
? Laina Dawes, author of What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman?s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal
I never related to the Rolling Stones, never even liked them that much ? too much of it seemed to be about Mick Jagger?s dick, which didn?t interest me because he expected it. So when?Exile in Guyville?dropped, I didn?t initially get the reference, that she was proffering a woman?s perspective on?Exile on Main Street, but I did pick up on the outsize swagger she?d stomped all over it, a deeply feminine, deeply feminist response to all Jaggbo?s testosteroney antics. ?Fuck and Run? was its marquee number, a commitment-phobe earnestly confronting the downside of Stones-esque groupie whoring (and a chick at that, lest you think we can?t beat the boys at their own headgames). ?Never Said? was the single cause it?s the best, a glib dismissal of a gossip girl, hands in pockets and an easy side-eye. And ?Divorce Song,? with its wan resignation, showed how freaking generous the whole affair was. The sound is so perfectly??90s, so embodying of a time when women were bossing up so tough you could even trash-talk on acoustic guitars (!) ? and the ?90s were rad because Phair was the kind of powerful, unapologetic girl lots of cool boys at that time wanted to get with. But the album endures ?cause it?s about how perfectly flawed and beautifully screwed up one woman can be, with zero apologies. I still don?t care about the Stones.
? Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, writer and editor
I?m revealing my age here, but Liz Phair was the first time I heard the backlash before I heard the music. At the time, this seemed strange. Around when ?Supernova? was on MTV rotation, I was getting serious into music magazines, ?zines, not going outside, and the then very, very burgeoning music website world. (R.I.P. Addicted To Noise.) Said backlash doesn?t need to be recounted in much detail here. Even if you don?t already know it, you already know it (basically, sex appeal=no talent). Anyway, I picked up Whip-Smart at a used CD store and loved it, even though it took me longer than I care to admit to realize, ?Oh wait, her and Julia Roberts were the same age at summer camp. That makes more sense.? (I mean, it didn?t take that long, just a bit longer than it should have, which is to say not instantaneously.)
But no one was asking about Whip-Smart, were they? (Still a solid album, by the way. I also ride for Whitechocolatespaceegg, though insist that you check out one of the outtakes compilation floating around the Internet, so you can get a better sense of what was going on with that album.) During the summer before I left for college, I Columbia Housed The Velvet Underground & Nico, Stereolab?s Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Gang of Four?s Entertainment, and I want to say Sleater-Kinney?s Dig Me Out, though that can?t be right. Horses maybe? It was time to Know My Shit before I went to college, because that?s the insufferable type of young person I was. There?s worse ways to be insufferable. (That my college listened exclusively to the Dave Matthews Band is a trauma I will write about some other time.)
That devouring of the Snob Curriculum became a regular thing. One Christmas, I asked for a few more albums to complete the gaps in my knowledge. There was some early R.E.M., Paul?s Boutique, and Exile in Guyville. I put that one on first. Originally, I was just going to listen to it for a few songs and then throw on some other albums. I think I listened to the entire thing in one sitting. It?s that kind of album. Once I heard that opening chime of ?6?1?? what else could I possibly do?
Exile in Guyville became that album for me my sophomore year. And boy, did I need it. I won?t get all Thought Catalog about it. Suffice to say their were a number of young ladies whom I liked, and who seemed to like me, and then they quickly realized that I was the most awkward person on the planet. It happens. And Liz was there for me. (Note to self: write a think-piece about how Liz, Tori, PJ, and some other ladies kept me from becoming a misogynist.)
Did I, a person not yet of drinking age, believe with all of my heart, 100%, that the line, ?I can feel it in my bones / I?m going to spend my whole life alone? applied me? Yes. Of course I did. And I?m glad I did and I?m glad I was wrong, because there?s a time in your life when you should feel ridiculous things ridiculously strongly, and there is nothing in the world more beautiful than realizing one day that your entire perspective on everything changed and you?re not even sure how it happened or why. (Also, don?t think that choice of song means those relationship misfires were particularly salacious. If only.)
It doesn?t happen very often, but occasionally an artist will write a great song that goes beyond being a great song. It?s a song that channels an elemental idea so powerfully it becomes a modern hymn. (Word to The Verve.) ?Fuck and Run? is one of those songs. Long before we had worried features about out-of-control campus hook-up culture and what the untangling of sex and love meant for society, Liz Phair told us the plain truth about a loneliness so powerful it seems like it will always be there.?She was both right and wrong about this and everything else on Exile in Guyville because she was smart enough to know that there were no real answers to be had. But of course that?s not the point. The point is that she was brave enough to stare all of this down for us. Because of her, we can never say that we didn?t see this all coming. And for that we will all owe her forever.
? Michael Tedder, managing editor of The Talkhouse
Because I am just a walking, talking archetype, it only took me about two minutes to track down the journal where I?d been moved to write an overwrought, stream-of-consciousness entry the first time I heard Liz Phair?s Exile in Guyville, from which I will now quote directly and only slightly ashamedly. ?Hearing this album feels like unearthing some very plain and simple truth that has been on the tip of your tongue this whole time but has seemed to small or obvious to articulate. It took its time to find me, but that?s OK, I don?t think I would have understood it when I was 18,? I wrote, at the wise old age of 19.
When I think of Guyville now I think of this thing I read and vehemently underlined in an interview with Peggy Orenstein a few years ago, about how the great lie pop culture sells young girls is that female sexuality is something to be performed rather than felt internally. But the gospel of Liz Phair ? tough-talking and vulnerable in the same breath ? is that it can be both of those things, and that a perfectly sane person can oscillate between feeling 6?1? and 5?2?, moment to moment, depending on how the sun is hitting her shadow.
Twenty years later, it still bears that annoying curse of female genius: Guyville is actually lot more universal than its reputation would have you believe. Is it an unflinchingly honest record about being a girl? Yes, that?s part of it, but it?s also an instruction manual on how to be a thinking, feeling ? and with any ounce of luck ? loving human being. If I ever get to be Lord Empress of the Universe, I will embroider its best lines on all the throw pillows and on the day he hits puberty give a personally gift-wrapped copy to every boy.
? Lindsay Zoladz, staff writer at Pitchfork
Liz Phair knew how we felt, or told us how to feel if we didn?t know. She knew what it was like to be frustrated about living with people you hated, what it was like to be pressured to perform, to impress. But most of all she knew how important sex was, how it felt to need it, how necessary and urgent a crush could feel. Liz gave us permission to do stupid things and consider them adventures. You could make mistakes and grow up to consider them funny. You could be imperfect and obviously horny and you could sing wrong notes sometimes and you could still be, in your way, important. ?Heal my disgust into fame and watch how fast they run to the flame.? Liz?s prayer had worked for her. We sang along so loud. We hoped it would work for us, too.
? Emily Gould, author of And the Heart Says Whatever
I can?t remember the first time I listened to Exile in Guyville ? it was sometime in high school ? but what I do remember is the way it permeated my entire freshman year of college (and that was in 2001, eight years after the album?s release). Most of my friends throughout college were guys, but I also had a small group of female friends that would occasionally reconvene and compare notes after various misadventures, judging and taking care of each other in equal measure. We (and especially one particular friend and I) listened to Exile in Guyville a lot, full-on obsessing over ?Fuck and Run.? We were only 17 or 18 or 19, and yet, like Liz sang, we could feel it in our bones: we were gonna spend our whole lives alone. We picked apart the lyrics and put them in our AOL Instant Messenger away messages. We looked at our own one-sided hookups and casual relationships and misdirected affections and felt so deeply that what we wanted instead was ?all that stupid, old shit, like letters and sodas? ? even if we weren?t thinking hard enough about what we?d have to give up to go back to that ?50s malt shop. We committed Liz?s advice to memory: ?It?s harder to be friends than lovers / And you shouldn?t try to mix the two / And if you do it and you?re still unhappy / Then you know that the problem is you.? It?s been a long time since I?ve seen any of those girls, but every time I listen to ?Fuck and Run,? I?m transported right back to college and I think about all of them and I hope they?re doing OK.
? Judy Berman, Flavorwire Editor-in-Chief
I was ten years old when Exile in Guyville was released, and growing up without an older sibling in a rural Virginia town meant that I thought that U2 and Dave Matthews Band were the coolest, most original bands on the planet. (No one at my high school liked DMB, shockingly, so that added some credibility that immediately went away once I got to college.) When I was a freshman year in the fall of 2001, I bravely installed LimeWire on my computer and began downloading the artists I thought I should know. A friend recommended Liz Phair to me; the only thing I could find online was ?Perfect World,? a great song from her underrated third album. So I caught a bus and went out to buy Exile in Guyville, which I had come to learn was her best album.
It blew my mind. It was raw and crude and dirty and angry, and at 18 I was all of those things. Well, I thought I was; I was mostly just awkward and angry about it. But that didn?t stop me from relating entirely to the lyrics in songs like ?Divorce Song,? ?Mesmerizing,? and, of course, ?Fuck and Run,? although there wasn?t much fucking to run from back then. I became obsessed with Liz Phair; I bought all of her albums, downloaded all of the bootlegs I could find, even argued with the cooler kids at the campus radio station who claimed her self-titled pop album was a sell-out.
Three months after college, I moved to Chicago. A year later I started dating a guy for the first time, and it didn?t take long for my first relationship to fizzle out in a melodramatic fashion. The next one did the same thing, and it was harder because that relationship lasted longer and I felt more strongly about it. I was completely out and dating, looking for love in the proverbial bad places. And that?s when a random return to Guyville made it all click for me: I suddenly got it in a way that I never did in college, back when I was just relating to emotions that seemed vaguely similar to my own. I was suddenly the same age as Phair was when she recorded the album (not to mention living in the same city and experiencing those dreary, lonely winters), and the themes of optimism and sexual longing and romantic disappointment and shame ? all tightly bundled up together in 18 brilliant songs ? finally hit me in the gut and in the head.
Years later, as I near my 30th birthday and find myself a bit more settled, listening to Exile in Guyville sparks more nostalgia than anything else. As I listened to it again on the way to work this morning, I was nostalgic for the emotional turmoil I went through, but also for the album that expressed the notion that I wasn?t on my own, that my feelings and worries were valid simply because they had also been experienced by someone else. I?ve talked to many people about how Guyville saved them and gave them comfort, and knowing it?ll always be there even when I don?t need it is a pretty great reassurance.
CAIRO (AP) ? Jon Stewart took the guest's seat Friday on Egypt's top satirical TV show, modeled after his own program "The Daily Show."
Stewart was brought to the set wearing a black hood and introduced by host Bassem Youssef as a captured foreign spy.
Stewart, wearing a scruffy beard, spoke briefly in Arabic as the studio audience gave him a raucous welcome.
"Please sit down, I am a simple man who does not like to be fussed over," he said in Arabic to laughter.
Youssef, host of the show "Al-Bernameg" and one of Egypt's most popular TV presenters, has been questioned by prosecutors on accusations of blasphemy and insulting the president. Stewart defended his counterpart and friend in one of his monologues after Youssef was interrogated earlier this year, and Youssef has appeared as a guest on the popular New York-based show.
Stewart, who is on a summer-long break from anchoring the Comedy Central fake newscast is in the Middle East making his first movie. He expressed admiration for Youssef in Friday's episode, which was recorded earlier this week during a visit to Cairo.
"Satire is a settled law. If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke, then you have no regime," Stewart said, adding that Youssef "is showing that satire can be relevant."
True to form, Youssef began the weekly show with a series of jokes about Islamist President Mohammed Morsi's appearance and address at a rally last weekend hosted by his hard-line Islamist backers.
The president, Egypt's first freely elected leader, announced at the rally a complete break of diplomatic relations with the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Youssef, however, criticized Morsi for remaining silent and wearing a stone face while one of the rally's organizers denounced as non-believers opposition protesters planning massive, anti-government demonstrations on June 30, the anniversary of the start of the president's term.
Stewart said he was overwhelmed with the generosity of Egyptians but took a jab at Cairo's horrendous traffic. "I flew in three days ago and I have just arrived to do the show," he joked.
Youssef ? known as Egypt's Jon Stewart ? was interrogated in April for allegedly insulting Islam and the country's leader. His questioning drew criticism from Washington and rights advocates. A trained heart surgeon, Youssef catapulted to fame when his video blogs mocking politics received hundreds of thousands of hits shortly after the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.
Unlike other local TV presenters, Youssef uses satire to mock fiery comments made by ultraconservative clerics and politicians, garnering him a legion of fans among the country's revolutionaries and liberals. He has 1.4 million fans on Facebook and nearly 850,000 followers on Twitter.
During his hiatus, Stewart will be directing and producing "Rosewater" from his own script, based on a memoir by Maziar Bahari. This Iranian journalist was falsely accused of being a spy and imprisoned by the Iranian government in 2009 while covering Iran's presidential election.
ST. LOUIS (AP) ? Three runs down with none out in the first, Derek Holland and the Texas Rangers were in trouble. The lefty participated in the comeback by keeping the bat on his shoulder, and he found his stride on the mound, too.
Holland coaxed a two-out walk off Tyler Lyons to fuel a four-run second-inning rally that put the Rangers back in business, and the Rangers went on to beat the St. Louis Cardinals 6-4 on Friday night.
"Some of the guys were giving me a hard time with me and my swing," said Holland, who's 0 for 5 at the plate this season but with a pair of walks. "The main thing is to go out there and try to see as many pitches as you possibly can, and try to get his pitch count up.
"Lucky for me, I got the walk," he added.
Nelson Cruz snapped a ninth-inning tie with a two-run single through a drawn-in infield in the opener of a series between 2011 World Series opponents.
Neal Cotts (4-1) escaped a bases-loaded jam in the eighth when Jon Jay tapped out on a full-count pitch and Joe Nathan finished for his 23rd save in 24 chances. All of Cotts' decisions have come this month.
Left fielder David Murphy robbed Carlos Beltran of an extra-base hit and saved a run with a running catch at the wall in left-center to end it.
Allen Craig had two hits and two RBIs, plus he made a handful of outstanding plays at first base for the Cardinals. Joe Kelly worked five scoreless innings after Lyons was yanked in the second.
The opener of the three-game series drew a sellout of 45,228 to Busch Stadium, where the Cardinals closed out the '11 Series with wild wins in Games 6 and 7.
"For me it's just a game on our schedule and you have to play it," Rangers leadoff man Ian Kinsler said. "Obviously, there are memories of the stadium and memories of the field and stuff like that, but this is a different year and we're trying to win a series and continue to play good baseball."
This game had some of the drama that made that series one of the best in recent memory.
Rookie Trevor Rosenthal (1-1) struck out two in a perfect eighth but gave up two hits, botched a sacrifice attempt for an error and threw a wild pitch to the backstop in the ninth. Rosenthal's throw to second baseman Matt Carpenter covering first was off-line and off-speed and Andrus knocked the ball free.
"It looked like his glove, jersey and everything hit at the same time," manager Mike Matheny said.
Both managers insisted the matchup between 2011 World Series opponents was just another series, with Matheny noting both rosters have changed a lot and the Rangers' Ron Washington saying he's been over the gut-wrenching feeling left by those two final losses in St. Louis since the start of spring training in 2012.
Holland struck out the side in the seventh and retired the final 12 in order. Holland allowed three doubles and a walk to the first four hitters in the Cardinals' three-run first but gave up few hard-hit balls thereafter.
Andrus was in a 2-for-25 slump before his two-run single in the second chased Lyons, who lasted 1 2-3 innings. A.J. Pierzynski and Mitch Moreland opened the innings with doubles for a run and Nelson Cruz greeted Kelly with an RBI single to cap a four-run rally that put the Rangers up 4-3.
After winning his first two career starts for a rotation hit hard by injuries, Lyons is 0-3 with an 8.19 ERA in four outings.
"It just kind of snowballed on him a little bit," Matheny said. "He had trouble getting it in the zone and when he brought it back in he was already in favorable counts for the hitters."
Kelly was 5-7 in 16 starts last year after replacing injured Jaime Garcia and made one spot start earlier this month, and could replace Lyons.
A move might happen quicker to help the bullpen.
"If it arises, I mean, I'll take the ball and I'll be ready to give this team the best chance to win," Kelly said.
Matheny said a move might happen quicker to help the bullpen.
The Cardinals jumped on Holland in the first with three doubles and a walk the first four at-bats with Beltran driving in a run and Craig getting two RBIs. Pete Kozma doubled to open the second, advanced on the first of Kelly's two sacrifice bunts, and scored on a passed ball.
NOTES: The Rangers' top pitching prospect, lefty Martin Perez, will be recalled from Triple-A Round Rock to make his second career start Saturday. Perez is 5-1 with a 1.75 ERA in the minors. Washington said talk about an extended stay in the rotation was very premature. The Cardinals' Shelby Miller (8-4, 2.08) leads NL rookies in ERA. ... Moreland (hamstring) was activated from the 15-day DL earlier in the day and RHP Josh Lindblom was optioned to Triple-A Round Rock.
Before you read this blog post, navigate to your favorite search engine, type in ?Detroit petroleum coke,??and peruse the results for a moment (don?t forget to come back and keep reading).
If you?re new to this issue, you might be able to quickly piece together a story about a ??three-story pile of toxic by-product?? that has helped ??Detroit?s riverfront gain national attention? amidst ?growing outrage, and calls for action?? from ?worried residents.? You may see that even with ??study results released?, concerns linger? and ??unanswered questions?? remain as to the ecological and human health risks posed by the growing pile of oil refinery waste on the banks of the Detroit River. On the other hand, you could be left thinking the headlines are making a big deal out of something that is ??not hazardous?? or even ??not that much of a problem at all?. And maybe the bright side of the issue is that it ??helps a struggling coal plant stay in business.?
If you dig in beyond the headlines, you get the full story (or at least what journalists, activists, and politicians know at this point):
The Marathon oil refinery in southwest Detroit started refining petroleum from the Alberta oil sands last fall. That refining process creates petroleum coke as a waste product?petcoke, if you will. Residents don?t think it looks as cute as it sounds, however, especially when it?s piled three stories high on the banks of the Detroit River. While a black mountain of Canadian oil waste waves its welcome to travelers crossing into the U.S. over the bridge from Windsor, Ontario, residents on both sides of the border are waving their fingers at Koch Carbon, Detroit Bulk Storage, and Marathon for their roles in creating an eyesore and potential public health problem. Samples have been collected and tested, public meetings have been held, bills have been introduced, articles have been written, and some of the petcoke has begun meandering back to Canada to be burned in a Nova Scotia powerplant.
It?s kind of a mess. An environmental, political, economic, and social mess that is, unfortunately, all too familiar to Detroit residents.
Detroit resident Jos? Luis Barrera, like other frequent visitors to Riverside Park, wonders what effect the petcoke piles will have on him and his family. After showing off his friend's catch for the day, he talked about hearing reports on the radio and wondering whether the petcoke could be responsible for the ?death-like smell? he experienced one day and the more frequent train traffic he has heard in the middle of the night. Riverside Park sits between the two petcoke piles along the Detroit River.
Since the headlines first appeared this spring, I?ve been following the fate of the petcoke from my home 40 miles away in Ann Arbor. So, I know which questions have been raised and investigated publicly?where it came from, who owns it, and where it?s going?but how many of those answers were reaching local residents?
I went down to Riverside Park, nestled between the two piles of petcoke on the bank of the Detroit River, to find out.
When I asked fishermen, -women, and ?kids lined up along river what they had heard about the petroleum coke pile around the corner, answers ranged from ??petroleum what??? to ??illegal dumping? and it might hurt the water?? (to which another resident replied, ?It better not hurt my fish!?).
Longtime southwest Detroit resident and frequent Riverside Park patron, Jos??Luis Barrera, has seen and heard about the piles, and he?s still waiting for answers to two questions: (1) is it hazardous, and (2) why is it here?
Well, Jos??Luis, you couldn?t have chosen more pertinent or more perplexing questions.
Is it hazardous?
Short answer: it depends.
The long answer is past the scope of this blog post, but let?s at least try to scratch the surface here.
Stephen Boyle has been actively asking and answering questions about petcoke. He explained the intricacies of the EPA?s hazardous waste guidelines at a recent community meeting while sporting a t-shirt from HELPPA.org that calls attention to the broader issue of oil sands development.
Is it technically classified as a hazardous material? Not according to the EPA (Canada hasn?t thought about it yet). Marathon?s own Material Data Safety Sheet explains that petcoke itself is not classified as a hazardous waste by the EPA, but it could be when ?discarded, spilled, or disposed of.? Stephen Boyle, an activist with Detroit Coalition Against Tar Sands (D-CATS) interprets the EPA?s language to mean that this particular pile of petcoke is indeed hazardous waste because it?s being stored on land while it waits for the next step in its lifecycle (check out Section 261.4.12(i) to try your own interpretation).
Is it a hazard, though? As in, could it possibly do harm? Yes. It?s a big pile of carbon-sulfur-selenium-vanadium chunks sitting next to a river. Use your imagination to consider what kind of harm could be done through an action of your choice (everything from coke-eating birds to kids playing King or Queen of the Mountain is acceptable here).
So, maybe the more relevant question is how much of a risk it poses for the citizens and creatures of Detroit and Windsor. What is the probability of harm actually being done? Answering that question means looking more closely at that pile of petcoke and tracing where the pieces and particles go, how they get there, and what effect they have along the way and at their final destination (be it a person, plant, animal, or powerplant plume miles away).
My own search through the literature didn?t reveal any studies on the environmental exposures and outcomes of a petcoke pile exactly like this, but a recent study coming out of the oil sands area of Alberta saw trace metal uptake in algae and aquatic invertebrates when petcoke was used in constructed wetlands. But that?s a story for another day.
Why is it here?
Short answer: Detroit Bulk Storage put it there.
The long answer here is worth digging into. This deeper question has been at the center of countless environmental justice debates over the years, and it still pops up despite recent strides in bringing environmental justice considerations into planning and policy.
While it has grown from being focused on the disproportionate amount of toxic waste stored or dumped near minority and low-income communities to taking a more holistic approach to environmental health and community well-being, environmental justice developed its roots while answering this question across the U.S.
Dr. Dorceta Taylor, leading environmental justice scholar and advocate at the University of Michigan, points her students towards five main arguments for why hazardous material so often shows up in the backyards of people of color:
Deliberate discrimination: Minority and low income communities are deliberately targeted to host such lovely amenities as PBC dumpsites and incinerators.
Just plain economic common sense: If a company has the choice between cheap land with easy access to transportation and more expensive land that may be far from transportation and workers, which do you think it will choose?
Path of least resistance: A 1984 report on resistance to waste-incinerators in California identified characteristics of communities that were least likely to put up a fight. Among those characteristics were low income, low education, and lack of civic involvement. While the report did not explicitly encourage companies to seek out these neighborhoods for all their waste-dumping needs, the implications were clear for many industries.
The old chicken-or-egg question: Which came first?the polluting industry or the people? Maybe residents choose to move close to hazardous facilities for jobs or cheap rent. That may happen, but studies have revealed more complexity than that, with neighborhood dynamics changing in response to the new facilities moving to town.
Zoning and residential segregation: Historical housing discrimination has set up a system in some cities that puts low-income residential areas near industrial districts or has placed barriers to residency in non-industrial neighborhoods by stipulating lot sizes, excluding multi-family dwellings, or enforcing owner-occupancy rules.
So, what?s going on in southwest Detroit? Which of these patterns might? help explain this growing pile of petcoke, beyond the long line of buying, selling, and transporting that moved the coke from the refinery to the lots by the river?
Let?s consider some facts. The area around the petcoke piles is home to:
An oil refinery, a steel plant, a major international shipping route and bridge crossing, freight infrastructure, cheap vacant land, and Michigan?s most polluted zipcode;
A largely Black and Hispanic population that saw more hospitalizations from asthma between 2007-2009 than the average combined rate for the tri-county area;
A housing and zoning structure based on historical discriminatory practices;
A network of community organizers, activists, concerned citizens, and representatives at all levels of government that is actively working to understand the situation, educate each other, and create change.
So, again?.why is this pile here?
A dwindling pile of petcoke near W. Jefferson and S. Clark in Detroit awaits the next leg of its journey after making its way from the oil sands of Alberta to the oil refinery of Detroit. Where to next??
Maybe this question is also a bit too complex for this post. To figure out why a pile of petroleum coke is growing near W. Jefferson and 14th Street in Detroit requires first asking broader questions that breech international and academic borders?questions of policy, science, history, and human nature.
As organizers and activists acknowledge, this petcoke pile is just one very visible piece in the intricate system of global resources. It?s a system that connects people, profits, smoke plumes, and piles of waste where the physical realities of shared water, soil, and air meet the systemic realities of disproportionate burdens and benefits all along the trail of the energy source.
The good news for Detroit residents like Jos?? Luis (who is probably still waiting for satisfying answers to his original questions) is that things are moving in Detroit. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, urged by lawmakers and residents, is now working to ensure the petcoke storage meets state standards for air and water quality management.
While permits could change the nature of petcoke storage in Detroit, the long and short-term ripple effects from this incident could be felt by residents of Detroit, the Alberta oil sands, and everywhere in between. The obvious and not-so-obvious questions will keep coming from those residents. We just might have to follow more than the news headlines to find the answers?
To Learn More:
Petroleum Coke: The coal hiding in the tar sands
Detroit Petcoke News and Resources
Principles of Environmental Justice
Thanks to the residents who let me interrupt their fishing and to the activists and experts who shared stories and insights.
The car of Libya?s interim leader came under fire in Tripoli as he left a chaotic session of the national assembly disrupted by protesters, without causing casualties, the interior minister said Wednesday.
?The car of the General National Congress speaker (Mohammed al-Megeryef) came under fire as assembly members left in a state of total confusion? on Tuesday night, Ashur Shwayel told a press conference.
The demonstrators who disrupted the session of the General National Congress, the highest authority in Libya, in effect making Megeryef the country?s interim leader, were armed and some carried explosives, said the minister.
Dozens of protesters insisting the national assembly adopt a bill banning from politics associates of former dictator Moamer Kadhafi blocked MPs from leaving the meeting room in a southern suburb of Tripoli.
The official news agency LANA, quoting an assembly official, said Megeryef?s car came under heavy gunfire. It was unclear if the attack was ?an assassination bid or a collateral incident,? the official said.
The bill is controversial because it could put more than 30 members of the General National Congress out of office, including al-Megeryef and even Prime Minister Ali Zeidan.
Proposed in December, the bill would ban from politics all officials of the Kadhafi regime and their associates.
Only earlier on Tuesday, the national assembly building was returned to its members after a month-long occupation by former rebels demanding compensation for injuries in the 2011 revolution that ousted Kadhafi, a security official said.
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan presidential hopeful Uhuru Kenyatta opened an early lead as the east African nation counted ballots on Tuesday in an election that brought out millions of voters despite pockets of violence that killed at least 15 people.
The deputy prime minister, who faces international charges of crimes against humanity linked to the last election, was ahead of Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
But Kenyatta could still be overhauled as the count goes on in a vote Kenyans hope will restore their nation's image as one of Africa's most stable democracies after the bloodshed five years ago.
Although voting passed off broadly peacefully with a big turnout, the real test will be whether the candidates and their backers accept the result, after the disputed 2007 vote touched off ethnic blood-letting that killed more than 1,200 people.
"Nobody should celebrate, nobody should complain," election commission chairman Isaac Hassan told journalists, saying work was going on to resolve glitches and speed up the count. "We therefore continue to appeal for patience from the public."
The commission says provisional results may not be tallied until Wednesday, meaning an official declaration will not come until then or later.
Kenyatta's lead has held overnight but more than 60 percent of polling stations have yet to report. Odinga's camp said counting in their strongholds had not been completed yet and a debate over the fate of a sizeable number of rejected votes could help shift the balance.
The United States and Western donors have watched the vote closely, concerned about the stability of a nation seen as a regional ally in the fight against militant Islam.
They also worry about what to do if Kenyatta wins, because of the charges of crimes against humanity he faces at the International Criminal Court (ICC) related to the violence five years ago.
With memories still fresh about the lethal mayhem after the last election and its dire impact on the economy, many Kenyans are determined not to see a repeat and, like their candidates, have pledged to accept the outcome.
INVESTOR RELIEF
"People want peace after what happened last time," said Henry Owino, 29, a second-hand clothes seller who voted in Nairobi's Kibera slum where violence flared five years ago. "This time the people have decided they don't want to fight."
Investors breathed a sigh of relief after voting passed off broadly calmly, strengthening the Kenyan shilling against the U.S. dollar. Analysts said a first-round victor would be preferred to a run-off, which would prolong uncertainty.
The inspector general of the Kenyan police, David Kimaiyo, told a news conference he would not allow demonstrations anywhere in the country over the delay in releasing the election results because of concerns protests could turn violent.
According to the election commission's provisional tally, Kenyatta's lead of 54 percent of votes to Odinga's 41 percent counted by 1.40 p.m. (1040 GMT) based on a tally of almost 5 million votes, giving him a better chance of straight win, which requires a candidate to secure more than 50 percent of votes.
But with turnout estimated by the election commission at more than 70 percent, a total of about 10 million or more votes must be tallied in the nation of 14.3 million eligible voters. In no one wins outright, a run-off is tentatively set for April.
"There were a lot of jitters around the elections," said Dickson Magecha, a senior trader at Standard Chartered Bank. "But there are indications we might see a first-round victory, which is good for political risk, and the vote went on peacefully without any major hitches."
William Ruto, Kenyatta's running mate who also faces ICC charges of crimes against humanity, called the vote "free, fair and credible". During voting he said: "We shall cooperate with the court (ICC) with a final intention of clearing our names."
CREDIBILITY
Odinga's party said it was still confident it would get back into the race as the counting continued, but also pointed to irregularities in the process, hinting at legal challenges ahead. Odinga had questioned preparations before the poll.
Frank Bett of Odinga's CORD alliance cited late voting at one polling station hours after the formal close, voters casting ballots more than once in some areas and a failure of electronic voter registration systems in some places. "These we find to be placing in jeopardy the credibility of this process," he said.
The election commission acknowledged a polling clerk had been caught issuing extra ballots and said manual voter lists were used where the electronic registration system failed. But it has said there were no significant problems in voting.
Raising the stakes in the race, Odinga could be facing his last crack at the presidency after narrowly missing out in 2007 to now-outgoing President Mwai Kibaki, who has served a maximum of two five-year terms.
Kenya's African neighbors, whose economies felt the shockwaves last time, have watched intently. Some landlocked states stockpiled fuel and other material, worried that Kenya's vital trade route could again be cut if violence flared.
But violence on election day was limited to pockets in the north and east of the country, with the worst on the coast.
At least 15 people were killed in two attacks by machete-wielding gangs in Mombasa region hours before the vote on Monday. Police officers blamed them on a separatist movement, the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC), suggesting different motives to the ethnic killings after the 2007 vote.
The MRC denied any role.
The European Union observer mission said turnout was high even at the coast where the attacks took place.
To try to prevent a repeat of the contested outcome that sparked the violence after the December 2007 vote, a new, broadly respected election commission is using more technology to prevent fraud and increase transparency.
Alongside the presidential race, there were elections for senators, county governors, members of parliament, women representatives in county assemblies and civic leaders.
(Additional reporting by Joseph Akwiri in Mombasa, George Obulutsa, Beatrice Gachenge, Duncan Miriri, Kevin Mwanza and James Macharia in Nairobi; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Pravin Char and Giles Elgood)
Before we remodeled our kitchen, I, of course, looked through all of the home improvement magazines. I was dead set on Corian cabinets. We live near Wayne, NJ, so I researched Wayne Kitchen Remodeling, and found Rich?s Kitchens, Inc. Not only do they carry this brand of cabinetry, each member of the staff is an accredited Corian fabricator and installer. I have never been so happy about a kitchen before in my life! The wonderful staff at Rich?s Kitchens helped me create my dream kitchen, and I love it!
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, March 6th, 2013 at 3:10 am and is filed under home and garden.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Contact: Tyler Stiem t.stiem@projectseahorse.org 604-827-5142 University of British Columbia
Marine scientists and the world's top nature photographers are teaming up to reveal for the first time the beauty of a rare double-barrier reef in the Philippines and the imminent threats it faces with the help of citizens around the world.
One of only six double-barrier reefs in the world, Danajon Bank is an important evolutionary birthplace of fish and other animal species found all over the Pacific Ocean today. However, Danajon Bank suffers from overfishing and other human pressures, and is home to nearly 200 threatened species.
Expedition: Danajon Bank will send a team of conservationists and award-winning photographers to document this "centre of the centre" of biodiversity, with the ultimate goal of legally protecting the fragile reef system.
To help fund the expedition and a series of public exhibitions of the photographs, the team today launches a four-week, $30,000 crowdfunding campaign on http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/expedition-danajon-bank. The expedition will take place April 5-15, 2013.
"Not many people have heard of Danajon Bank. We plan to change that," says Prof. Amanda Vincent, director of Project Seahorse, a UBC-Zoological Society of London initiative. "Crowdfunding is a fantastic way to raise funds and inspire the public to take ownership of issues such as marine conservation, so we thought: why not start there?"
"There really is no better way to communicate the urgent need for marine conservation than through images that hit you in the head and the heart," says Thomas P. Peschak, an International League of Conservation Photographers Fellow and one of the expedition photographers. His rsum includes multiple BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year and World Press Photo awards.
"We hope to inspire people and policymakers in the Philippines and around the world to take up our cause."
###
Watch a video about Expedition: Danajon Bank at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/expedition-danajon-bank.
BACKGROUND | EXPEDITION: DANAJON BANK
The Expedition: Danajon Bank team also includes world-renowned photographers Luciano Candisani, Claudio Contreras, and Michael Ready. Project Seahorse co-founders Amanda Vincent (UBC), Heather Koldewey (ZSL) and Nicholas Hill (ZSL) will act as scientific advisors.
In April, the expedition team will blog from the field at danajon-bank.tumblr.com, and you can follow their exploits on Twitter @projectseahorse and @ilcp.
Beginning in June, the photographs will be shown in a series of public exhibitions in Chicago, Hong Kong, Manila and London and published in a new book.
For more information and to support the expedition, visit http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/expedition-danajon-bank or contact Project Seahorse at t.stiem@projectseahorse.org or 604-827-5142.
Coral Reefs and Danajon Bank
Coral reefs are among the fastest-diminishing ecosystems in our oceans, due to overfishing, pollution, and climate change. One of only six double-barrier reef formations in the world, Danajon Bank is home to 196 threatened species and ecosystems, including Anacropora spinos, a highly endangered coral, and the Tiger-tail seahorse (Hippocampus comes), which is listed as vulnerable.
Danajon Bank is also home to hundreds of thousands of people, who depend on it for food and livelihoods. Unfortunately, overfishing, pollution, and development threaten both the future of the ecosystem and the fishing communities who depend on it for survival.
Danajon Bank encompasses many of our oceans' most important and threatened marine habitats, including not only coral but mangroves and seagrasses. Its biodiversity, and the threats it faces from human activity, make it a powerful example of the beauty of the world's coastal marine ecosystems and the threats they face in the 21st century.
Project Seahorse
Project Seahorse is an award-winning marine conservation group based at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and Zoological Society of London. Project Seahorse works to protect seahorses in order to support ocean conservation more broadly, generating cutting-edge research and using it to inform highly effective conservation interventions. Project Seahorse benefits from a marine conservation partnership with Guylian Belgian Chocolate and John G. Shedd Aquarium, Chicago. For more information, visit seahorse.fisheries.ubc.ca.
International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP)
iLCP's mission is to further environmental and cultural conservation through photography. The non-profit's programs are built on the participation and contributions of its 100+ Fellows, an elite group of the world's top wildlife and nature photographers who, in addition to displaying remarkable photographic skills, have each demonstrated a deep commitment to conservation efforts around the globe. iLCP's Conservation Photography Expeditions have been covered by National Geographic (most recently as the cover story of the August 2011 issue), Outside Online, American Photo, The Guardian, ABC Nightline, Huffington Post, Tree Hugger, and numerous blogs that cater to people who care about the world we live in and the conservation challenges it faces. For more information, visit http://www.ilcp.com
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Tyler Stiem t.stiem@projectseahorse.org 604-827-5142 University of British Columbia
Marine scientists and the world's top nature photographers are teaming up to reveal for the first time the beauty of a rare double-barrier reef in the Philippines and the imminent threats it faces with the help of citizens around the world.
One of only six double-barrier reefs in the world, Danajon Bank is an important evolutionary birthplace of fish and other animal species found all over the Pacific Ocean today. However, Danajon Bank suffers from overfishing and other human pressures, and is home to nearly 200 threatened species.
Expedition: Danajon Bank will send a team of conservationists and award-winning photographers to document this "centre of the centre" of biodiversity, with the ultimate goal of legally protecting the fragile reef system.
To help fund the expedition and a series of public exhibitions of the photographs, the team today launches a four-week, $30,000 crowdfunding campaign on http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/expedition-danajon-bank. The expedition will take place April 5-15, 2013.
"Not many people have heard of Danajon Bank. We plan to change that," says Prof. Amanda Vincent, director of Project Seahorse, a UBC-Zoological Society of London initiative. "Crowdfunding is a fantastic way to raise funds and inspire the public to take ownership of issues such as marine conservation, so we thought: why not start there?"
"There really is no better way to communicate the urgent need for marine conservation than through images that hit you in the head and the heart," says Thomas P. Peschak, an International League of Conservation Photographers Fellow and one of the expedition photographers. His rsum includes multiple BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year and World Press Photo awards.
"We hope to inspire people and policymakers in the Philippines and around the world to take up our cause."
###
Watch a video about Expedition: Danajon Bank at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/expedition-danajon-bank.
BACKGROUND | EXPEDITION: DANAJON BANK
The Expedition: Danajon Bank team also includes world-renowned photographers Luciano Candisani, Claudio Contreras, and Michael Ready. Project Seahorse co-founders Amanda Vincent (UBC), Heather Koldewey (ZSL) and Nicholas Hill (ZSL) will act as scientific advisors.
In April, the expedition team will blog from the field at danajon-bank.tumblr.com, and you can follow their exploits on Twitter @projectseahorse and @ilcp.
Beginning in June, the photographs will be shown in a series of public exhibitions in Chicago, Hong Kong, Manila and London and published in a new book.
For more information and to support the expedition, visit http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/expedition-danajon-bank or contact Project Seahorse at t.stiem@projectseahorse.org or 604-827-5142.
Coral Reefs and Danajon Bank
Coral reefs are among the fastest-diminishing ecosystems in our oceans, due to overfishing, pollution, and climate change. One of only six double-barrier reef formations in the world, Danajon Bank is home to 196 threatened species and ecosystems, including Anacropora spinos, a highly endangered coral, and the Tiger-tail seahorse (Hippocampus comes), which is listed as vulnerable.
Danajon Bank is also home to hundreds of thousands of people, who depend on it for food and livelihoods. Unfortunately, overfishing, pollution, and development threaten both the future of the ecosystem and the fishing communities who depend on it for survival.
Danajon Bank encompasses many of our oceans' most important and threatened marine habitats, including not only coral but mangroves and seagrasses. Its biodiversity, and the threats it faces from human activity, make it a powerful example of the beauty of the world's coastal marine ecosystems and the threats they face in the 21st century.
Project Seahorse
Project Seahorse is an award-winning marine conservation group based at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and Zoological Society of London. Project Seahorse works to protect seahorses in order to support ocean conservation more broadly, generating cutting-edge research and using it to inform highly effective conservation interventions. Project Seahorse benefits from a marine conservation partnership with Guylian Belgian Chocolate and John G. Shedd Aquarium, Chicago. For more information, visit seahorse.fisheries.ubc.ca.
International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP)
iLCP's mission is to further environmental and cultural conservation through photography. The non-profit's programs are built on the participation and contributions of its 100+ Fellows, an elite group of the world's top wildlife and nature photographers who, in addition to displaying remarkable photographic skills, have each demonstrated a deep commitment to conservation efforts around the globe. iLCP's Conservation Photography Expeditions have been covered by National Geographic (most recently as the cover story of the August 2011 issue), Outside Online, American Photo, The Guardian, ABC Nightline, Huffington Post, Tree Hugger, and numerous blogs that cater to people who care about the world we live in and the conservation challenges it faces. For more information, visit http://www.ilcp.com
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Mr. Smith, as you know, AOL acquired TechCrunch back in 2010. Yet from what we understand, you failed to ask anyone at AOL’s Brand Group for permission to use our intellectual property.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 5-Mar-2013
Share ] 