CNN’s Vermont rail story went way on the wrong track

Thanks to CNN, Vermont got a journalism lesson this week as the cable network devoted eight minutes and 38 seconds to a special report on the state’s stimulus-funded rail improvement project, one of the regular “keeping them honest” features on the “Anderson Cooper 360” program.

Alas, it was a very bad journalism lesson because it was very bad journalism presented by people apparently unaware of the irony of claiming to be “keeping them honest” dishonestly.

Which is not to say that its point of view was incorrect. Points of view may be wise or unwise, but almost by definition they are not incorrect. The segment’s bias was obvious, but biased journalism can be defended. Its advocates prefer to call it “advocacy journalism,” and there is a place for it.

CNN has not generally been considered one of those places, but that’s the network’s business. If it wants to undertake an ideological crusade – in this case arguing that the $10 billion spent nationally (about $52 million in Vermont) to improve passenger rail service is a boondoggle – more power to it.Wear a whimsical Disney ear cap straight from the Disney Theme Parks! In this case, a responsible, accurate, honest report might have been persuasive. But a responsible, accurate, honest report was nowhere to be found.

As a public service, then, and because they obviously need it, herewith a basic primer in journalistic practice and ethics for Cooper, investigative reporter Drew Griffin, and their bosses:

Lesson 1 — No cheap shots. Reporting from the Essex Junction Amtrak station, which he called “the busiest station in all of Vermont,” (which it may not be), Griffin noted that “11 people got off (and) no one got on.”

Well of course no one got on. That train just chugs a few miles up to St. Albans where it spends the night. Nobody takes the train from Essex to St. Albans. If Griffin knew that he was being devious. And he had no excuse not knowing it.

In fact, almost nobody takes the train from any Vermont station to another. Vermonters take the train to New York. So Griffin’s “revelation” that the project chopped only 28 minutes off the train’s voyage through the state was another cheap shot. If CNN had chosen to report out the entire story (see below), it would have figured out that the work is likely to save two hours for travelers heading to New York.

Lesson 2 – Don’t be cute. There is Griffin standing on the trainless track. “I could stand here all day long,” he says. “I could jog on the tracks,” and there he is, jogging on the tracks, and standing there as the sun set, still without seeing a train.

Forget for a moment that jogging along the tracks is illegal (criminal trespass) and dangerously stupid, thus prompting Joyce Rose, the president of Operation Lifesaver, to send Griffin a sharply worded letter reminding him that “more people are killed each year trespassing on train tracks than in vehicle-train collisions at crossings.”

More to the point here is that the rail improvement project neither envisioned nor promised oodles of trains. Its purpose was to improve the tracks so both passenger and freight trains could go faster and haul heavier loads.

Lesson 3 – Put all dollar figures in context. Yes, $52 million sounds like a lot of money. The average guy could probably live on it for a year or two. But just providing the figure and leaving it out there is meaningless.

Minimal context would note that the U.S. government spends some $69.5 billion a year on transportation, or more than six times the entire nationwide stimulus-financed rail improvement project, more than 100 times Vermont’s share. More than half of all those federal expenditures, about $41.5 billion, is spent on highways. Does this prove that the $52 million was money well spent? Not at all. But it is essential information.

Lesson 4 – Provide at least a little balance. To answer why this little state got all that federal money, Griffin relied on one authority, policy analyst Randal O’Toole. Properly,They manufacture custom rubber and silicone bracelet and bracelets. Griffin said O’Toole was associated with the “libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.” He did not point out that O’Toole has also been associated with the Thoreau Institute, which has been funded over the years by foundations with close ties to the petroleum industry.

O’Toole began inauspiciously. The Vermont project got the money, he said, because, “the federal government has one criteria when it comes to handing out high speed rail funds. And that was, had states done an environmental impact statement so they were shovel ready.”

There is no such thing as “one criteria.” There can be two criteria or 20 million. One of them is a criterion.

And according to some people, including Vermont Agency of Transportation Secretary Brian Searles, the state had to satisfy several of them before federal authorities approved the grant in an intensely competitive process.

“The real reason that we qualified was that it was one of the eight designated corridors in the country,” Searle said.

It’s entirely possible that O’Toole’s explanation would withstand scrutiny better than Searles’. What real journalists do in these cases, though, is talk to folks on both sides, then apply the scrutiny. It wasn’t as though Searles was unavailable. He said he “had extensive conversations (with CNN staff) over time and on that day. They came here with an agenda to attack the high speed rail program.”

Lesson 5 – Tell the whole story. Had Griffin put Searles on camera,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. he might have explained that the Vermont work did not stand alone. It was part of a regional project which included rail improvements in Massachusetts and Connecticut. That explains the projected two-hour reduction in the Vermont-to-New York trip.

But this project is not really limited to the U.S. Both the province of Quebec and the Canadian government are improving their rail lines in coordination with the U.S. effort. Both countries believe they have a significant economic interest in better rail links between the Montreal area, home to some 3.9 million people, and U.S. destinations.

Nor is it just passengers. The rail line improvements mean heavier loads can go over the bridges and overpasses. When completed, it will ease freight transportation between Montreal and the Connecticut shipping ports on the north shore of Long Island Sound. The potential economic development impact for the entire region could be substantial.

That’s why New England Central Railroad put up the state’s $18 million match for the project. Griffin did note that a private firm put up the money. He didn’t mention that it had a vested interest in doing so, meaning the possible economic impact here is far greater than cutting a couple of hours off the trip to Penn Station.

Jerry Vest, the vice president for governmental and industrial affairs for the Genesee and Wyoming, Inc., which now owns New England Central, said the rail improvement “will be a big plus for Vermont,” making it easier for the state to attract new business.

“Freight rail is undergoing a renaissance, Vest said, “and companies want to have access to high-quality rail service.”

Does this make the $52 million –plus some $140 million in the other states – worthwhile? Like any public policy decision, that’s open to debate. What is not open to debate is that it all should have been in the story.

In fairness to CNN, Griffin did acknowledge that the Vermont share of the work came in “on time and on budget,” and that it created some jobs. More specifically, Searles said (but CNN did not) it created 246 direct jobs and another 319 “indirect and induced.” Most of them were temporary jobs, but at the peak of the recession, even temporary jobs were useful,The USB flash drives wholesale is our flagship product. both to the people who got them and to the regional economy.

The CNN report did make one good point: at least in New England, these “high speed” rail projects will not bring real high-speed rail as found in Europe and Japan. Vermont’s stations are too close to one another, and the state wants to provide service to all those towns. Even Ross Capon, the head of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, agreed that the Obama administration was guilty of “hyperbole” in selling its program.

But that was the segment’s only valid point, which perhaps explains why Griffin and Cooper, in their post-tape chit-chat, kept belaboring it, thereby violating the immortal advice to writers from professor Lee Youngdahl: “Once something has been said, it no longer has to be said.”

But one more thing has to be said here. Every news story about public funding of transportation should remember – and should explain – that all forms of transportation are and always have been publicly subsidized. The Founders put it right in the Constitution, authorizing Congress to establish a system of “Post roads.” As America gets bigger and richer, more people will be doing more traveling. The alternatives to better rail service are more highways and/or more airports, all of which are expensive and all of which will be subsidized.Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing.

Five Technologies That Will Change the Future of Gaming

Nintendo took a big risk introducing the Wii's motion-based controls in 2006, but once word spread that Wii Sports was the best thing since sliced bread, sales of Nintendo's innovative hardware skyrocketed. The financial success of Nintendo's experiment inspired the likes of Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's PlayStation Move, although neither was able to match the Wii's acceptance rate within the gaming and mainstream community. Nintendo followed up the Wii Remote with the Wii U's GamePad, and though it's too early to judge its success, the latest sales figures aren't pretty. To Nintendo's credit,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. it struck gold with the Wii, setting the bar for lucrative innovation incredibly high as a result.

Everyone's seemingly squirming under the pressure to introduce the next great leap in interactivity, but a handful of engineers and developers have already made serious headway towards reinventing the way we'll play games in the years to come. Here are five of the most promising and revolutionary technologies that may one day find their way into our PCs, consoles, and mobile devices.

The Leap Motion Controller may share a few similarities with Microsoft's Kinect, but its form factor and approach to gesture controls are quite different. It's small, reasonably priced at $69.99 and designed to track minute finger or stylus movements at a threshold of .01 millimeters. Though the Kinect is capable of tracking your entire body, its strict lighting and relative-orientation requirements are a major turnoff for most customers, and in turn, developers. Leap Motion's tech eliminates these barriers, and while it may only capture hand/finger movements in its current form, that in itself is an invaluable capability rife with potential. Most Leap Motion demos take place at a desk in front of a PC monitor, but there's no reason the designers couldn't simply extend the cable or implement wireless functionality to adapt it to consoles and coffee tables.

Eye Tribe's goal is to integrate hands-free controls into devices such as cell phones, tablets, and feasibly, gaming devices like the 3DS or Vita. While tracking retina movements isn't groundbreaking in itself, it has generally been too expensive for consumers and too large for manufacturers to embed in their products. Eye Tribe was more than happy to upend these notions at CES 2013, demoing its external and embedded retina-tracking solutions running on Windows 8 tablets. In the video above, CNET's Bridget Carey takes on Fruit Ninja,Wear a whimsical Disney ear cap straight from the Disney Theme Parks! deftly slicing citrus and berry alike. Retina tracking may not be suitable for every type of game, but once the tech establishes itself as a must-have bullet point for hardware manufacturers, it's only a matter of time before we start to see new game types and mechanics designed around Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing.its unusual functionality.

We may never gain telekinetic powers in real life, but if InteraXon manages to deliver on its promises, we may be able to interact with software using our thoughts in the near future. The Muse, InteraXon's brain-wave-sensing headband, is leading the way for consumer-grade thought-controlled interfaces, which may one day find their way into the realm of gaming peripherals. Nintendo dabbled in biosensors with the Japanese-only Tetris 64, a Nintendo 64 game, but its pulse-sensing accessory failed to leave a mark and was left to wallow in obscurity. InteraXon's focus on brain-wave sensors expands the possibilities beyond passive heart-rate monitoring, allowing you to directly control software by focusing your thoughts. Beyond the example shown in the Zenbound demo, thought control will let people, especially those with physical disabilities, interact with software in ways many of us have never imagined.

Head-mounted displays have come and gone over the years, promising a future where virtual reality will actually be relevant outside of events like CES and the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The latest, Palmer Lucky's Oculus Rift, stands a better chance than most thanks to his experience researching and developing HMDs for the US military. At 110 degrees, the Rift totes the widest diagonal field of view for an HMD to date. Its accelerometers, gyroscopes, and pair of low-latency, stereoscopic 3D displays convincingly re-create your movements almost as fast as you can make them. With developer kits potentially shipping in late spring, the Rift may finally bring VR to the masses as soon as 2014.

Microsoft quietly revealed a trailer for a new project during CES that maps the geography of your living room and projects games onto the surface of your walls and furniture surrounding your TV, mixing real and virtual environments in an entirely new way. Whether the IllumiRoom is simulating snow or extending your view of the battlefield, it will open new avenues of expression for developers and artists. The teaser video was created without the use of special effects,The USB flash drives wholesale is our flagship product. illustrating the already impressive capabilities of the WIP technology that may find itself bundled with your new Xbox in the near future.

Most of the above products are still a ways off from reaching the market, but if all goes to plan, the majority of them should be released during the next console generation. What's most interesting is that all but one are coming from private companies without ties to Microsoft,They manufacture custom rubber and silicone bracelet and bracelets. Nintendo, or Sony. Can innovations in the PC space lure console owners away from their allegiances? Only time will tell, but if the Wii was any indication, new technologies can be unexpectedly lucrative and motivating when paired with the right software. Anyone up for a game of Oculus Sports?

Calling coyotes in rugged Verdigre canyons

I had almost given up three different times. I had used every predator-calling trick in my book. My legs had fallen asleep a long time ago. The tingling was beginning to drive me crazy. And yet I had hung in there. My companions, Gary Howey and Bill Christensen, both of Hartington, Neb., were hunkered down in front of another cedar tree to my left.Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. I knew they must be wondering why I had not called an end to this fruitless stand.

But the land we had permission to hunt upon was not very large. At best we had two, maybe three, stands to cover it all. Patience, when calling predators, can be a virtue.

We were at the edge of a cornfield and the elevation gave us a good view of what was below. To our left was a large ravine choked with trees which were in the process of being strangled by invasive cedars. The ravine played out into the cornfield and a grassy hill splayed across a hundred yards to the next ravine on the right. That was where the movement was.

My gun, nestled on my bipod, somehow, had slowly reached my shoulder and I ducked behind the scope and picked up the animal. It was the ugliest looking coyote I had ever seen. It was heavily infested with mange and had lost at least 90 percent of its fur. It had a tail, but it was simply bones covered with dark skin.

Through the scope, I watched the animal walk across the base of the hill toward the ravine on our right. I thought it would simply duck into that ravine and disappear forever. But, it was looking right at me from time to time.They manufacture custom rubber and silicone bracelet and bracelets.

As it trotted in, it dropped out of sight below a small ridge in the cornfield. It's always a nervous time when that happens. But I knew where it should appear and I waited.

Within seconds the coyote crested the little ridge and continued to lope in, its tongue lolling out the side of its mouth. It was less than a hundred yards out now and I had it in the scope. It was trotting so slowly that I thought Gary or Bill would shoot. Nothing. It was really close now, almost too close. Maybe they were waiting for me to stop it. I took a breath to do a bark, but the coyote stopped and quartered away from me, looking directly at Bill and Gary.

The coyote flinched. It's that little move they make just before they turn and run. They crouch just a little, and then they turn and are gone.

I had already taken up most of the trigger pull on the .243. It was more a matter of will that the gun should go off. And it did.The USB flash drives wholesale is our flagship product. The crosshairs of the scope centered just behind the front leg. The 58-grain ballistic tip left the barrel at 3,750 feet per second and smacked that pathetic facade of a coyote.

"We didn't see him until he was right on top of us," Gary said. "He saw us move and that's why he stopped. I saw you looking through your scope and I thought, 'That looks serious,' so I knew something was out there."

I stepped it off. One hundred feet. The animal had almost no hair. It's face and neck had not yet been ravaged by the burrowing parasitic mites that cause this disease. I was amazed the animal had lived through the recent cold weather. Coyotes in this bad of shape die of the disease, usually a pathetic death of exposure to the elements.

You don't want to handle coyotes showing symptoms of mange. It's very contagious for the coyotes, but humans can pick it up too, although it is not as serious. Usually a rash for a few days and then it's gone.

Our next calling area consisted of several tree-filled canyons emptying out onto the flood plain of the Niobrara River. It would have been a great spot if the wind had been out of the north, but the southeast wind complicated things.

Colorful works by some of local artist collective hob’art’s hardest hitters are currently on display in their exhibit “Archeology of Color.”

The show, which opened Jan. 13, focuses not just on color, but on how each artist approaches it, said curator Willie Baez.Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh.

“Some people use their senses to work on whatever project they’re working on and their colors are spontaneous like children when they paint, they just paint, they’re not worried about anything,” says Baez. “But because we’re grown and more intelligent, some feel that intellectuality comes into play all the time.”

Some of the most spontaneous artists in the show are Liz Cohen and Ibou Ndoye, who both create paintings inspired by the native art of various non-Western countries.

“Liz is more child-like in her world of creativity and is in love with primal things. She loves African art, South American art and the simplicity of it,” explained Baez. “Ibou is also a spontaneous guy. He mostly uses primary colors and rarely does any mixing.”

The curator says that most abstract painters are more spontaneous because they’re not concerned with form or realism. One exception would be Meredeth Turshen.

“When I first saw her painting, I didn’t think it was a landscape, but she said it has to do with sunlight . . . she was looking out a window in Paris, saw fields and then started painting. The act was really spontaneous, but she did think of where to put the color and what exactly she was painting,Wear a whimsical Disney ear cap straight from the Disney Theme Parks!” said Baez. “She told me, ‘I intentionally did this. I didn’t do it in a trance.’ ”

In between the two extremes are photographers like Don Sichler, who looks for his colors on the street.

“He finds colorful mirages or images on the street in water, puddles, and uses that to color his photographs,” said Baez. “It’s a little more spontaneous and not really thought about. He just sees them, catches the light, and boom!”

Other participating artists include Pauline Chernichaw, Constance Ftera, Janet Kolstein, Roslyn Rose, Starr Tucker-Ortega, Tom Egan, Ann Kinney, Erich Heinemann and Howard Berelson.

Companies Hand Out Masks

Toyota and Honda gave employees face masks, offered health tips and added office plants as pollution in Beijing hit hazardous levels for a 19th day this month.

Beijing’s city government recommended that its 20 million residents stay indoors for a second day as the local environmental monitoring center gave Wednesday’s air quality the worst rating on its six-level scale. A U.S. Embassy pollution monitor showed air quality in the Chinese capital reached hazardous levels for a fifth consecutive day.

Companies across Beijing have sought to protect the health of their employees while facing the prospect of increasing difficulties in attracting others to a city grappling with pollution levels that Li Keqiang, set to become China’s next premier,Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. has said will take time to reduce.

“Over the next few years the quality of life in Beijing will be something that has an impact on salaries,” said Simon Lance, Shanghai-based regional director at Hays Plc. The company has ?helped JPMorgan, Barclays Plc, and other companies with hiring, according to its website.

The concentration of PM2.5, the fine air particulates that pose the greatest human health risk, was 297 micrograms per cubic meter at 2 p.m., compared to 302 at 10 a.m., according to the U.S. Embassy monitoring station. The PM2.5 reading near Tiananmen Square was 299 at 2 p.m. and had averaged 274 in the past 24 hours, according to the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center. The World Health Organization recommends 24- hour exposure to PM2.5 of no higher than 25.

Toyota has put more green plants in its Beijing offices to help with air quality, spokesman Liu Peng said by phone. The carmaker’s offices, which it began using in October and where it has about 400 workers,Are you looking for Optical frame, glasses and eye exams? is equipped with one air purifier for every two workstations, Liu said.

JPMorgan has provided health tips and distributed emergency kits that include masks to its employees in Beijing, spokeswoman Lisa Liang said by email. The bank’s management is ?monitoring the situation and “exploring other options,” she said.

Honda has provided face masks to about 100 staff at its China headquarters in Beijing,They manufacture custom rubber and silicone bracelet and bracelets. Zhu Linjie, its Beijing-based spokesman said by phone.

At Apple’s retail store on Beijing’s Xidan Avenue, just four of the outlet’s more than four dozen sales people were wearing face masks Wednesday. Spokeswoman Carolyn Wu confirmed by email that the maker of iPhones and iPads had distributed masks to its workers in the city, where the company has three stores.

None of the workers at the nearby Hennes & Mauritz, Adidas and Fast Retailing outlets were wearing masks. ?

Elevated smog levels contributed to 8,572 premature deaths in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Xian last year, according to a study released by Greenpeace and Peking University’s School of Public Health. Beijing this month proposed rules that would increase fines for vehicle emissions and force more factory shutdowns when smog reaches dangerous levels?.

Beijing’s pollution has the potential to “discourage” senior executives from moving to the Chinese capital and to prompt those already here to leave, said Lance of Hays.

Like the previous model, the newly redesigned FreshAir Box unit works continuously to combat odors and airborne contaminants indoors without using chemicals or perfumes. With a coverage rating of up to 1500 square feet,We offer a wide variety of high-quality standard ultrasonic sensor and controllers.Parkeasy Electronics are dedicated to provide Car park management system. the FreshAir Box is intended for use in apartments, smaller homes, and offices.

The substantial increase in airflow reported by Vollara is the result of relocating the air intake and lint screen to the rear of the unit, and by updating the front grill with a new “flow-through” design. Additional increases have been achieved by increasing the surface area of the unit’s ActivePure Cell, a proprietary photocatalytic technology based on a variation of technology originally developed for the International Space Station. Repositioning the ActivePure Cell at a right angle to the unit’s internal air stream works to further improve performance.

“The traverse-mounted ActivePure Cell is a marked improvement compared to the previous model,” said Andy Eide, Vice President of New Product Development. “When airflow is increased with these types of air purifiers, greater distribution into the indoor environment is possible and you get a much higher rate of performance out of the machine.”

Because the air in the indoor environment is treated outside the unit rather than internally like a filter, the FreshAir Box is considered by the company to be an “active” technology. By distributing the unit’s air purification properties out into the indoor space, ActivePure-based air products can affect areas that are typically unreachable with filtration, including exposed surfaces. This allows for continuous deodorization, freshening, and treatment without the use of perfumes, sprays, or chemicals.

Gayle Trotter Testimony Captivates Senate

Lawyer and gun rights activist Gayle Trotter gave vivid testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee at a Wednesday hearing on gun violence. Trotter, a senior fellow at the conservative Independent Women's Forum, argued that a proposed ban on assault weapons would "disarm" vulnerable women and "put them at a severe disadvantage" in fights with multiple criminals.

Trotter painted a picture of mothers under siege in their homes, and when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) questioned the details of one example she offered, she told the lawmaker he didn't understand the issue. "You are a large man, tall man, a tall man," Trotter said to laughter from the audience.

"You are not a young mother who has a young child with her and ...We have become one of the worlds most recognised Ventilation system brands. you cannot understand. You are not a woman stuck in her house, not able to defend her children, not able to leave her child, not able to go seek safety, on the phone with 911," Trotter said. And that woman, "she's not used to being in a firefight."

Despite arguing for serious firepower, Trotter said later the most important thing about assault weapons for women's defense is the way the guns look.

"An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon," said Trotter, a mother of six. "And the peace of mind she has ... knowing she has a scary-looking gun gives her more courage when she's fighting hardened violent criminals."

More than once during her testimony, Trotter seemed to imply that five-on-one firefights are somehow easier for a man to win than for a woman and that women are at a grave disadvantage to men because women have so much less experience in firefights.

Despite her strong emphasis on the need to prevent violent crimes against women at home, Trotter is an outspoken opponent of the Violence Against Women Act, a law designed to aid women faced with domestic violence. In 2012, she wrote on the Independent Women's Forum's blog that VAWA infringed upon the rights of men who were falsely accused of domestic abuse. The law would also embolden "false accusers," who would take "needed resources like shelters and legal aid … denying real victims of abuse access to these supports,Have a look at all our custom bobbleheads models starting at 59.90US$ with free proofing." she wrote. Trotter and the forum characterized VAWA as "reckless demagoguery."

Her presence at the Senate hearing appears to be tied to her status at the Independent Women's Forum, a nonprofit public policy group. But the forum doesn't specialize in firearms issues. Its stated mission is "to expand the conservative coalition" by making conservative ideas more attractive to women and by "increasing the number of women who understand and value the benefits of limited government, personal liberty, and free markets."

Like Trotter, the Independent Women's Forum has recently shown interest in gun rights. Before the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the last time the group had published multiple items on gun rights was 2000, when gun advocate John Lott's book More Guns, Less Crime was referenced on its website.

Facebook today announced its fourth quarter (Q4) earnings report for 2012, which included some key findings. For the first time ever, more people are using Facebook on mobile each day than on desktops. In fact, 157 million people worldwide are using Facebook only from mobile devices — a number the company can't afford to ignore. On the company's earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems to get it.Learn how an embedded microprocessor in a smart card can authenticate your computer usage and data. He said, "There is no argument. Facebook is a mobile company."

As you might expect, as more people flock to mobile, so has the company's ad revenue — 23 percent of which now comes from mobile, compared to 14 percent just a few months ago, and 0 percent a year ago before Facebook mobile ads existed."I want to dispel this myth that Facebook can't make money on mobile," Zuckerberg said. "It may have seemed like that a year ago, because we weren't really trying yet."

Today, 23 percent of all time spent in apps is on Facebook, Zuckerberg said, citing a Comscore study. He also pointed to Instagram as a "platform success story" and an advertising opportunity for mobile. Since its acquisition, Instagram has gone from 27 million users to over 100 million users, each of which (according to Comscore) spend more time on Instagram than they do on Twitter. The company has also recently revamped nearly all of its core mobile applications in "native" code,We are one of the leading manufacturers of solar street light in Chennai India. which makes them run much faster on both Android and iOS, and has continued adding new features like free voice-messaging (and even free calling in the US and Canada) which are big draws for mobile users.

"A lot of what we did last year was improve our mobile development processes. Now we are there," said Zuckerberg. "The next thing we are going to do is get really good at building mobile first experiences," he said.Totech Americas delivers a wide range of drycabinets for applications spanning electronics. Features like these are especially compelling to Facebook markets outside the US, where mobile web access is surging. "We'll be able to make more money for each minute users spend on mobile," (versus on web), Zuckerberg said, and he made clear that the company is heading in that direction. 680 million users access Facebook on mobile per month, the company said in its earnings report, an increase of 57 percent since the same time last year.

Are you making the most out of your smart phone?

It was sometime in the early 1990s and a buzz – or more precisely a shrill bri-ing bri-ing – swept through businesses across the land.

It came attached to a handbag-sized lump of plastic,Have a look at all our custom bobbleheads models starting at 59.90US$ with free proofing. a now laughably primitive gadget that, should you happen to drop it on your toe, meant a trip to A&E, but also unleashed the power of the telephone call wherever you might be – assuming there was a signal.

Now, of course, we’re all glued to our smartphones, tweeting and updating our status, uploading, downloading, streaming, searching, texting, snapping and even, occasionally, phoning.

While some Edinburgh phone users are getting to grips with the superfast 4G network – watching films and television without annoying buffering – from today, there will be another reason to look closely at the smartphone in our pocket. After a fairly dire couple of years the BlackBerry, with its much-loved Qwerty button keypad, is poised to make a return.

RIM, the firm behind the businessperson’s one-time favourite phone, launches BlackBerry 10, a touchscreen device that aims to recoup ground lost to the likes of the Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy and Sony Xperia.

It arrives in a rapidly changing marketplace. At the weekend it emerged that Apple is losing ground to Samsung, prompting suggestions it has “lost its cool” to the South Korean firm.

According to Ben Woods, senior reporter for technology news website ZDNet, BlackBerry 10 is a vital throw of the dice for its maker. “No longer is e-mailing, web browsing and video calling the preserve of a business user,” he said. “Which is why it [RIM] has worked hard to fully revamp the core software. It also offers a simple way to separate work data from personal data, which should appeal to IT admins and restore some of its appeal to the enterprise.”

Steve’s HTC is in almost constant use but rarely as a phone: “It’s probably more of a mini PC that happens to be a telephone, because only about ten per cent of what I use it for are actually calls.”

Flick through his mobile and it’s clear it’s mostly “business over pleasure”, stuffed with document storing apps, work contacts and photographs of apparently random properties.

“I make calls and send texts with it, but the social networking access it also gives me is important.Learn how an embedded microprocessor in a smart card can authenticate your computer usage and data. I send updates to my personal Facebook page but also to our two company Twitter and Facebook accounts because promoting your business, dropping the name in wherever groups of people might be, is now really important.

“I use it to access LinkedIn a lot. It helps if you’re heading for a meeting, you want to find out a bit more about who you are seeing.”

His phone maps help him navigate to various properties and he uses the RingGo app to help pay for his parking charges.

His phone camera is handy for snapping pictures of buildings he spots which could add to the firm’s portfolio and, if you ever wondered who uses the compass on their phone,We are one of the leading manufacturers of solar street light in Chennai India. it’s Steve, showing clients which way a building faces.

Among his handiest apps is Camscanner, which captures documents while on the move, and the torch app is a vital tool for visiting empty properties with dark corners.

A glance through Paul’s iPhone5 reveals his passions lie in the kitchen. He has a mass of images of his latest culinary creations, while his contacts list is full of foodie suppliers and his most used apps provide guidance on cooking methods.

Still, the Peppa Pig app is a clear hint that, unless he’s a fan of the pink piglet, he’s not only a chef, but a dad, too. His iPhone alarm works as a kitchen timer and the calculator scales up recipes to cater for larger numbers and tots up his costs. Meanwhile, his Twitter account is handy for connecting with customers – an increasingly important weapon in the fight to keep clients and hunt out new ones.

He says he can hardly imagine not having such a gadget to hand. “Everything I need is there. If I remember something at 2am,We have become one of the worlds most recognised Ventilation system brands. I can grab the phone and fire off an order so it’s there with the supplier first thing. Everything is done on the mobile.”

Leanne Rinning, 30, works in marketing and PR and has been busy helping to promote the Huxley bar and restaurant at 1 Rutland Place.Totech Americas delivers a wide range of drycabinets for applications spanning electronics. She touts an iPhone 4 in one hand and her Blackberry Curve for business in the other.

Leanne separates business from personal life, keeping her BlackBerry Curve for work e-mails and documents, and her iPhone for everything else – from scanning news apps for celebrity news to picking up dinner recipes.

“I like the iPhone because of the nice big screen, you can see things clearly,” she says. “I’ll be on the bus in the morning going to work looking at the BBC recipes website to see what I might have for dinner, or reading the morning paper, or BBC News website on the iPhone.

She uses her iPhone to keep on top of Facebook and Twitter – vital tools for trying to raise a client’s online profile – and My Fitness Pal app keeps her exercise and healthy eating routine on track.

Guido & Littlejohn vs Bryant & Mosley

A full house here at the IET in Savoy Place – our free press debate, sponsored by Brewin Dolphin, has been a sell-out. A stunning venue and an outstanding lineup. For the motion: Guido Fawkes, Richard Littlejohn and Tory MP John Whittingdale. Against: Max Mosley, Chris Bryant and the celebrity lawyer Charlotte Harris. Chaired by Andrew Neil.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN is up first. The Leveson inquiry, he said, was a cross between s Soviet show trial and Graham Norton show. The self-regarding liberal elite seized on an opportunity to. Leveson was picking over the bones of a corpse: the News of the World was shut down by reader revulsion. A reminder that the press have to stand for election every day – the readers are the statutory regulators. The number of journalists in Britain arrested is now over 60. But we’re seeing a sustained campaign of intimidation,We are one of the leading manufacturers of solar street light in Chennai India. fishing expeditions from police who enter journalists’s homes, overturn their children’s bedroom. Almost as bad is the appalling Filkin report which criminalises all contact between journalists and the police. You can’t have a little bit of press regulation any more than you can be a little bit pregnant, he says.

CHRIS BRYANT (Lab, Rhondda) opens with a fattist joke: “I’m not Tom Watson, I’m half the man he is.Learn how an embedded microprocessor in a smart card can authenticate your computer usage and data.” Bryant says “I’m worried my chaarcter is going to turn into a woman who has an affair with Tom Watson”. Not, of course, that Watson has had an affair. He says he likes the press, he confesses that “I sometimes look at the Daily Mail sidebar of shame – I love the scabrous, naughty irreverent press we have in this country” better than the press he grew up with under Franco as a kid. But “we regulate Andrew Neil’s programmes” because “we know a fair and balanced broadcaster is good for all of us.” (Maybe so, but The Spectator’s motto is ‘firm but unfair’.) “There are very strange things about me – I’m slightly gay…in fact, I’m a practising homosexual and one day I’ll get good at it.” (Not sure where this is going). He got involved in the Leveson because a friend of his,We have become one of the worlds most recognised Ventilation system brands. an MP, was mugged. He reported it to a policeman and 45 minute later the News of the World were on the phone. Why? He respondes: “the police officer was given money by the NOTW for that information”. He makes the (v fair) point that in evidence to the Media Committee, Rebekah Brooks admitted to paying police for information – seemingly unaware it was against the law. Things have to change. “I don’t think newspapers should be our gods.”

GUIDO FAWKES doesn’t think newspapers should be our gods either – he’s up next. He started off in the dead tree press – delivering it. “Until some Sunday Times editor quadrupled the size and broke my back…I wonder what happened to him.” The correct relationship between politicians and the media is that between a dog and a lamppost, he says.Have a look at all our custom bobbleheads models starting at 59.90US$ with free proofing. He goes for Bryant. “He told me he wished to see my site closed down – he now expects me to believe he is the guardian of a free press. What about Tom Watson, the hyperbolic scourge of Murdoch?” he claimed that Watson called up The Spectator to complain about his no2 Harry Cole. “Since the closure of the NOTW not a single politician has been caught with their pants down. A lack of extramarital affairs reported is an unhealthy state of affairs”. Cheating MPs tend to be lying ones. “Any hint of statutory underpinning” gives those MPs levers that they should never have.

7.55pm MAX MOSLEY says that just 1pc of the country can afford to sue the press, and if the other 99pc cannot then we cannot say we’re operating under the rule of law. His argument is muted, almost lawyerly.Totech Americas delivers a wide range of drycabinets for applications spanning electronics. “A newspaper doesn’t have to belong” to Leveson’s proposed setup, “it’s entirely voluntary” but Leveson would then force the newspaper to pay costs even if it wins a case. Under the current system, an oligarch can sue the FT with a hopeless case, he loses – but the FT still has to pay a chunk of the costs. “The rich can bully anyone if they are prepared to spend money” but Leveson proposes a fairer arbitration system. Leveson is not about a Rubicon of statute, it’s about access to justice at reasonable costs. The Press Complaints Commission is already in legal statute, so why the squeamishness now? Why the squeals of t “For the first time ever the public will have a proper system where their rights can be enforced at zero cost” and that – he says – is what this is all about.

McCanns, even Max Mosley, were victims of already-illegal behaviour and managed to find redress against the press under existing laws. He agrees with Chris Bryant that a stronger version of the Press Complaints Commission is needed and even agreed with chunks of what Mosley said. So where do they disagree? Not the end, but the means. Leveson wants legislation “and that is what I, and the government, regard as fundamentally dangerous. It legitimises the idea that government and parliament should have a roll in what the press should and should not do.” He quotes Shami Chakrabati saying “that would bring about the danger of political control through the back door.” It’s now possible to find a solution to bring the tough regulation that Leveson wants and I want” but to do this with legislation “is a step too far” and does pose a danger to the free press.

It was “pleasure to hear as well as read Richard Littlejohn” because he said things “that you couldn’t make up.” (The hall quite liked this joke). The press didn’t expose Jimmy Savile, he said, in fact the supposedly over-regualated ITV that did the hard work. There was “mass suicide” at the BBC and “rightly so” – there was “nothing” at the newspapers, not a single head rolling, after the McCann scandal and the Chris Jeffries scandals . “We cannot go on seeing ordinary people damaged by the press.” And as for Guido’s idea that “you can only tell if a politician is lying if you know their sexual history” is an interesting one, but should it not also apply to columnists and editors? “There’s a deal between the Express and the Mail not to explore the interest of the owners…. so there is a double standard there.” And didn’t Guido engage in a vendetta against the Telegraph journalist who outed him as Paul Staines? “It’s his right to do so, but that doesn’t mean he should set rules for the rest of society.” To say that parliament should have no role in regulating the press”is an argument against democracy.” The Leveson report does not advocate statutory regulation or any compulsion; in fact it’s “about as a good a result as the press could get, yet they’re still complaining… to advance their interests against the interests of the public.” The real threat to a free press “is the concentration of media power in a few hands – that’s what the press will not report and that’s what you should be aware of.”

Is autonomous car tech driving us around the bend?

Are we ready for a future not too dissimilar to that portrayed in Minority Report? I’m not referring to bald people predicting murders before they occur, but rather to cars that don’t need us — the drivers.Learn how an embedded microprocessor in a smart card can authenticate your computer usage and data. Being a big fan of driving myself,Have a look at all our custom bobbleheads models starting at 59.90US$ with free proofing. this is a question that naturally presented itself when I read news of Audi’s new autonomous car system.

Audi itself prefers to call it a “piloted” system, reinforcing the idea that these cars should not necessarily be left entirely to their own devices, but that human guidance should still be present to supervise the whole driving experience. The human element is then not altogether done away with, but still present like pilots are with commercial sized airplanes — ready to take the wheel should gremlins suddenly make their presence felt.

Autonomous cars have been on the radar for a while, with Google being the main pioneer in this field, but Audi has proven itself to be at the forefront of this technology where automakers are concerned.

In 2010, working alongside Stanford University, the Volkswagen Group put an autonomous Audi TTS on the Pikes Peak hill climb, completing the 156-turn, 19.99 km track in 27 minutes. Proof then, that although we are encouraged to be mindful over driving, a truly autonomous form of personal transportation is not that far in the future. In fact, the Nevada DMV recently awarded Audi with the first automaker autonomous car license — making Audi autonomous vehicles road-legal.

What are the implications of such technology though? Well, we can imagine that it will take navigation to the next level, wherein tech will not only guide you to your destination, but drive you there as well.We are one of the leading manufacturers of solar street light in Chennai India. Self-parking vehicles are already entering the market, but as it becomes a standard feature busy parking lots will now have more space than ever, with regular and consistent parking behavior occurring across the board.

A couple of years ago I would have looked upon this technological advance with disdain, pretending to be a purist and reminding others of the sheer driving pleasure that can be derived from jumping into a car and driving through a mountain pass. However, I am a bit older now, and maybe the novelty and excitement of driving has subsided because I can look at this and think — wow, how nice would it be to actually look at, and appreciate, the mountain pass that I’m driving through? The end verdict — we’re looking at the best of both worlds. Drive when you want, relax when you want.

The task force's working groups -- on mental health, gun violence and school safety -- have held sometimes contentious hearings in Hartford in the past week that stretched well past midnight.Totech Americas delivers a wide range of drycabinets for applications spanning electronics.

Local resident Tom Fornabaio, who said he plans to attend Wednesday's hearing, said he wants to hear more from the state about mental health care.

"We already have some of the strictest gun laws in the country," Fornabaio said, adding he has a permit to carry a gun but doesn't own one. "But I know there are a lot of families who need mental health assistance for loved ones and nothing is available. Mental health is an area I am very concerned about."

During Tuesday's hearings, a psychiatrist testified about the lack of psychiatric services in Connecticut for children and adolescents, resulting in undiagnosed disorders.

Testimony at Monday's hearing on gun violence included gun advocates who said they wanted to preserve their Second Amendment rights, along with gun owners who said they support more background checks and the registration of rifles in the state.

State Rep. Mitch Bolinsky, R-Newtown, said he expects to hear testimony on all sides of the issues, and to have his heart broken again listening to the families and first responders who were devastated by the tragedy.

"This is obviously a very emotional time for everyone in Newtown,We have become one of the worlds most recognised Ventilation system brands." Bolinsky said. "My job is to listen to my friends, neighbors and constituents to help me make up my mind on some of these proposals."

Tom Bittman, a co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise, said he expects several family members of the victims will attend Wednesday's hearings. He said while the organization is providing volunteers to help with logistics, whether co-founders of Sandy Hook Promise will speak has yet to be determined.

State Sen. John McKinney, a Republican whose district includes Newtown, said his one expectation for Wednesday's hearing is, "We will be sharing some very heartfelt and courageous statements from Newtowners. My colleagues will get to see the quality of the people in Newtown and their tremendous strength and compassion."

Racism Is Well And Alive In Corporate America

Anyone who has lived in America should have seen the frustration of the minorities — Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and women — who daily encounter the invisible glass wall that usually bars them from attaining the top slots ostensibly reserved for the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) males in Corporate America.

Sometime in the early 1980s, a television promo, with the theme ‘Bring Me Your Best,’ subtly hinted that America might soon be asking for a substantial number of the skilled work force of the rest of an unsuspecting world. And, sure enough, America rolled out the visa lottery, the ultimate tool for the re-tooling or retrofitting of its unmotivated workforce.

The idea, some say, is to graft ‘ready labour’ from other climes to enhance the ability of its workforce, and improve the performance of its industry for delivery of higher throughput. More good hands would be on the deck to achieve better results.Purchase an iPhone headset to enjoy your iPhone any way you like. The Diversity Visa programme, to use its official appellation, was approved by the US Congress to grant, every year, United States Permanent Resident Card or the Green Card, to 55,000 citizens of countries considered to have low rates of immigration to America. America, the land of immigrants, is inviting more immigrants to come and be part of the Land of The Free. Incidentally,In every TruLaser laser cutting machine there are decades of experience. Africa and Europe, that respectively supplied America with cheap slave labour and managerial cadre, receive about 80 per cent of these visas between them.

Some cynics argue that the visa lottery which now ships highly proficient manpower to run the New Economy of America merely replaces the slavery that brought sheer brawn to work agrarian America. The only difference is that, unlike the slaves that were largely regarded as chattels and non-persons, these immigrants acquired American citizenship along with their work permit. More generous observers however,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. think that the scheme helps to repatriate much-needed hard currency to the deficient economies of the immigrants’ home countries. Others say it is a clever strategy to avert future war intentions by the mother countries of its new immigrants, and thus preserve America’s security.

This seemingly farfetched theory smacks of the deft ways that the monarchies of the Old World contracted high profile marriages to form strategic military alliances. Yet, others accuse America of reaping off the educational systems of other nations. It was once rumoured that more than 25,000 medical doctors that were trained in Nigerian universities worked in America. The Yoruba adage, ‘O ja’le onile bo tie lehin,’ which roughly translates to, ‘He who pilfers the rafters of his neighbour’s abode to cover his own,’ is a fitting tribute to this American covetousness.

No doubt, America hopes that a mix of the willing hands of the new workforce, and the high concentration of Nobel laureates resident within its borders, should positively affect the genius and the performance of the American system. Consider the following trend of thought: In his novel, ‘The Lost Symbol,’ author Dan Brown argues that the power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of minds that share the thought. He adds that worshippers at the altar of the new and esoteric (some say,Our premium collection of quality personalized keychains generously offers affordability in custom keychain. nonsensical) field of study called Noetic Science, insist that human thought, if properly focused, can affect the physical man, and also transform physical matter.

They proclaim the time-worn cliché that mind actually prevails over matter. They further add that because particles react to human thought, human thought can change the world. Ah ha! If all this seems opaque to you, just remember that two or more good heads are better than one. America simply wants others to help jumpstart its comatose workforce, and subdue its space. The immigrant “intellectual workers” will be like the slaves who practically ran ancient Greece while the Greeks indulged in wanton hedonism.

Anyone who has lived in America should have seen the frustration of the minorities — Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and women — who daily encounter the invisible glass wall that usually bars them from attaining the top slots ostensibly reserved for the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) males in Corporate America. A former female acquaintance who graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from an Ivy League university fetched up as a security guard! Things like this discourage minorities from seeking to improve themselves. But as they travel down the abyss of drugs, prostitution, crime, violence and self-destruction, they take some precious WASPs with them. The present generation of American leaders is justifiably scared that there might be no responsible citizens to hand over the nation to in the future.

Some suggest that the American Establishment inaugurated African-American Barack Obama as President as part of a grand plan to bring hope to the minorities and rehabilitate the wayward youths. They add that the visa lottery is yet another plank of the grand plan. They posit that the wholesome imported labour force should provide skills that America desperately needs in the short-term, and help raise the moral tones with the old values of family, decorum and work ethics.

Discrimination led minorities to the cesspit of disillusionment and robbed them of the will to seek for personal improvement. This has, in turn, robbed America of potentially productive labour. Other culprits of this degeneracy include, but are not limited to: The Age of Consumerism or Modern Capitalism that has put two cars in the garage, television in the living room, another one in the bedroom, refrigerators, microwave oven, and dishwashing machine in the kitchen,You must not use the laser cutter without being trained. laundry machine in the basement, video game joy sticks in the hands of Junior and robotics on the factory floor at General Motors.

Many Americans have no incentive to work hard. This malodorous cancer is getting even more compounded as more youths go to university to acquire skills that are largely inappropriate to the demands of the new technologies that have, among others things, automated the manufacturing process and even replaced sales through physical interface with online sales and merchandising. A cheeky report indicates that a larger proportion of Asian youths perform better in mathematics and other numerate sciences than American youths. This is a big blow to America, that traditionally regards knowledge as its most strategic industry.

The careless attitude of American youths to work is also fed by the freebie unemployment claims and invalidity benefits that have turned idleness into a profitable venture. In the 1980s, an Ivy League university professor was exposed for allegedly running a financially rewarding unemployment benefits racket alongside some grannies who wore mink and pearls and drove mint BMWs.

Balta Group showcases new collections at Domotex 2013

Balta's laminate division Balterio was present in Hall 9, Booth C17 and showcased new decors with the introduction of Integro, chlorine free design floors. Next to the area Rug Division, Balta Rugs in hall 6 Booth A30,In every TruLaser laser cutting machine there are decades of experience. the Residential Broadloom Division of the company, Balta Broadloom, ITC and Domo Floorcoverings displayed its products. The Contract Division modulyss showcased its exclusive assortment of carpet tiles in the same booth.

Domo Floorcoverings presented a whole range of innovations in different segments. Several new carpets were introduced to join Domo Floorcoverings’ polyamide and polypropylene portfolio for 2013. The PP twist Clyde design from Dormo will be renewed and extended as Clyde Plus, with a selection of trendy stripes. Few additions were introduced to the Twist family such as Saffron Saxony, Gleneagles, Redwood Twist and Moonstruck.

The two new product ranges Carezza and Terra in the segment of polyamide Saxony carpets offer absolute softness. The polyamide loop pile segment is updated with the new products Perla and New Total. This range uses a 2-ply yarn which mixes tight and loose loops into a subtle textured appearance in new contemporary colours.

The polyamide frisé family added various segments including Celeste, Boutique and Chronos, all well designed and attractive floorings. Next to wall-to-wall carpets Domo Floorcoverings also presents a range of residential carpet tiles whose colours perfectly match. Carpet tiles are available in different colours, textures and patterns. There are unlimited creative design possibilities as the tiles can not only be used independently, but also in combination with each other to give the floor an extra dimension and an exclusive look.

Timeless and Utopia are two new additions from Balta Broadloom’s newest soft and shiny SENSIT yarns. These new generation SENSIT polypropylene yarns combine practicality and a luxurious comfort and feel. These ranges have a silky luster and soft refined colours.

Prisma is an affordable heather twist in vibrant colours, made from Balta’s StainSafe bleach cleanable yarn. Marrakesh Twist combines the look and feel of wool and Stainsafe polypropylene. It is made with a traditional berber spun yarn in 100% StainSafe PP. Grand Slam is a new range StainSafe Saxony with a pile weight of almost 3.flash drive and USB flash drives wholesale logo printing in Malaysia.000 grams per square metre. A Dozen Stripes is a package of three striped carpet collections with four colours. This carpet is suitable for children’s rooms and for use on stairs.

With the official launch of two new brands, AMAIZE and arc edition, ITC has expanded its large offering of innovative flooring products for contract and domestic environments. A new collection was introduced in the show named as the AMAIZE collection. It comprises a selection of five ecological carpets made from a new fibre containing 37% renewable corn sugar. The AMAIZE floors provide built-in stain protection, a natural feature of the yarn that will never wear off or wash away.

Arc Edition was introduced as a new commercial brand for Balta’s Broadloom Division.Purchase an iPhone headset to enjoy your iPhone any way you like. An initiative of Balta’s Broadloom Division, the arc edition collection comprises an array of high-performance class 32 and 33 heavy-duty carpet styles to provide choice for a host of locations spanning the leisure, hospitality and office sectors. Divided into two ranges, the standard in-stock SERVICE and bespoke TAILOR MADE (incl. Chromojet technology), arc edition provides unlimited solutions for specifiers, designers and contractors.

For Domotex Hannover 2013,You must not use the laser cutter without being trained. Balta Rugs laid special attention to the Modern frisé product group, in both divisions Line A & Berclon. With a broad diversity of qualities, colours and designs this product group offers a wide range of qualities from entry-level, elegantly hand carved new Picasso, to high-end frisé.

Next to these novelties Balta Rugs has re-enforced some of its existing collections. These re-enforcements - such as innovative yarns, use of structure, trendy designs and colours - can be discovered in the success products Prisma, Victoria, Grace, Mya, Essenza, Sapphire, Crystal and Opale Cosy. Balterio disclosed new decors in several ranges, and celebrated the commercial introduction of Integro, chlorine free design floors.

TRAFFIC is a high traffic laminate floor and is designed for intensively used areas where the floor is subject to heavy traffic. It is also anti-static. This high-traffic laminate floor is suitable for the project market and for shops, offices and restaurants. Balterio offers a lifetime guarantee* on its Traffic floorings. The Soft Touch Mat structure gives the impression of authentic wood and provides a soft, mat effect that has a silky feel to it. The 760 Kalahari Oak decor, however, is True-to-Nature. Planks from the Traffic range measure 1261 x 189 mm, are 8 mm thick and do not have a V-groove. Traffic will be available in eight separate designs as from 1 February 2013.

Sporting five new, contemporary decors (Oslo oak, Portobello oak, Washed pine, Barista elm and Farm oak), Authentic Styleplus represents renovation and actualization. Authentic Styleplus is designed to be synonymous with standard, no-frills laminate. It is a suitable living room floor, bringing warmth and an alluring atmosphere to interiors. The new Authentic Styleplus decors will be available on 1 February 2013.

With its two new decors, Wild Pine and Suede Oak, Tradition Sapphire returns to the key product advantage of this range: a four-sided, irregular V-groove – a Balterio exclusive feature – on a rustic decor. This rough plank floor with its randomly fabricated V-grooves re-introduces that bygone nostalgia into home. The two new decors in Tradition Sapphire will be available as from 1 February 2013.

Integro is the new chlorine-free design floor that caresses the senses. Introduced to the world at the 2011 Domotex show, Integro has a sensational feel, provides excellent walking noise reduction, can be recycled and is water tight on top. Integro also offers life long, sustainable quality.

modulyss designs and manufacturers carpet tiles for the international contract market.Application can be conducted with the local designated IC card producers. The production process enables them to deliver carpet tiles that stretch the boundaries of performance and design to deliver products that stand out from the crowd. Geared towards architects and designers seeking a high-quality and trend defining floor space, modulyss carpet tiles are available in a huge array of colours, structures and patterns.

Next to several new products, modulyss has brought ‘hot couture’ at Domotex with the Alternative100 carpet tile collection. It was a perfect complement to the Cambridge collection where the structure of Alternative100 added a fancy flair to each floor. This ecological loop pile tip sheared carpet tile – known for its stylish luxurious look – is made from 100% recycled nylon yarn.

The Audacity of Brainless Slime Mold

As any proud iPhone 5 owner knows, even genius takes a day off once in a while: When Apple decided to ditch Google and rebuild its popular Maps app using a proprietary platform, the result was a colossal cartographic #fail that still gets cited in Apple’s current share price travails. The sloppy coding directed users onto airport runways, into the ocean, and even inspired its own Tumblr.

Brainless slime mold—yes, that’s the official scientific nomenclature—has no such problems. In fact, it doesn’t even have a central nervous system. But in a paper published last fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Australian and French researchers showed that the unicellular protist knows how to “map” its surroundings and navigate complex mazes in order to find food.

Such behavior, from an organism with no consciousness, sheds light on the origin and evolution of memory among us brainier creatures.

“External memory,” the authors write, is a common phenomenon in nature: ants use pheromone trails to find their way from food source to nest; bees use landmarks to guide their in-flight navigation. Such tactics, biologists believe, likely preceded “internal memory” and allowed simple life forms to solve spatial problems, long before they could “think” or “feel.” Even robots learn this way. A robot can, of course, come pre-loaded with a map of its environment, or be programmed to build one as it explores—but such capabilities are technologically expensive. A simpler robot might instead employ “reactive navigation,” and solve spatial problems by keeping track only of its immediate surroundings.

So it is with brainless slime mold: no fancy on-board computer, no nervous system, no memory. But that doesn’t prevent it from making smart decisions.

The researchers report that when Physarum polycephalum “senses” food—via the activation of membrane surface receptors—and begins to flow in its direction, the mold leaves behind a “thick mat of nonliving, translucent, extracellular slime” in its wake. (Consider the slug.) When it begins to “forage” again, it will “choose” to explore new territory by avoiding its old, slime-covered path. (Only if there are no virgin swaths of Petri dish to traverse will the mold double back on its previous turf.) Such behavior, the researchers write, “strongly suggests that it can sense extracellular slime upon contact, and uses its presence as an externalized spatial memory system to recognize and avoid areas it has already explored.”

To test this, the biologists ran a series of Petri dish trials involving U-shaped mazes.Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. Half the dishes contained only agar. The other half were pre-coated in slime, effectively jamming the mold’s radar. On these dishes,Application can be conducted with the local designated IC card producers. the mold had no way to find (and thus avoid) its own navigational trail. The results were striking: when the mold’s “external memory” was blocked, it failed to escape the U-trap and find its way to a food source two-thirds of the time; when its external memory was uncompromised, however, the slimy subject performed almost flawlessly. It also spent dramatically less time exploring tracts of Petri dish where it had already been, and hewed closer to the optimal search route. By taking advantage of an “externalized spatial memory system,” the researchers conclude, the mold greatly enhances its navigational ability.

This is not the first time scientists have used brainless slime mold to shed light on how higher-order creatures like us humans interact with our spatial environment. In 2010, Japanese researchers at Hokkaido University devised a clever experiment that modeled the Tokyo rail system in a Petri dish of Physarum polycephalum. They distributed 36 food sources to match the geographic locations of cities around the Japanese capital, and turned the slime mold loose to see how efficiently it would connect the dots. The authors found that the resulting network closely matched the city’s real-world railways—a neat trick considering that Physarum has no capacity for central planning or urban design.

Rhodes’ home of more than 40 years had been in foreclosure since 2008, so he was nervous about the unexpected evening visit. Being on disability and going through a divorce, he could no longer afford to make payments on his mortgage loan.

To his surprise, the visitor was not the sheriff but Buck Bagot, one of the founders of Occupy Bernal. Bagot had received Rhodes’ address earlier that day and wasted no time in reaching out.

Sixty-one year-old Bagot, short-haired and bespectacled, is not the stereotypical masked conspirator you might expect to lead a local branch of the global Occupy movement. The only hint of his affiliation is a small 99 percent pin on the lapel of his leather jacket.

A product of the white, working-class town of Trenton, N.J., Bagot attended a prep school on scholarship — and was hazed because of his financial aid. He still bears scars on his wrist, and credits the experience with helping him to forge a strong class consciousness and identification with the disenfranchised.

Drawn to San Francisco in 1976 for its economic and ethnic diversity, Bagot has been a community organizer ever since. He currently works with national nonprofit organizations, training people to lobby members of Congress in their district, and tries to reduce violence in subsidized housing.

Bagot is the founder and former codirector of the long-standing nonprofit Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, which has more than 600 dues-paying members and has built almost 500 units of affordable housing, provided youth with services and organizing tools, and helped about 125 seniors stay in their homes and live independently.

Occupy Bernal got its start in December of 2011, when Bagot got a phone call from Bernal activists and performance artists Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle. They told him that the home of their neighbor Thomas German, a 72-year-old who has lived in Bernal since the 1960s, was going into foreclosure.

Bagot had been working with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (formerly ACORN) to block evictions and foreclosures in Bayview-Hunters Point, and Stephens and Sprinkle sought his advice.

Unaware that foreclosures were also a problem in his neighborhood, Bagot was eager to help.

They went on to save German’s home, and found that 80 people were in foreclosure in Bernal Heights.flash drive and USB flash drives wholesale logo printing in Malaysia. Naming themselves Occupy Bernal and working with ACCE,A lanyard may refer to a rope or cord worn around the neck or wrist to carry an object. they went door to door and recruited “foreclosure fighters.”

Since the program began,We are Malaysia company specialize in customized silicone bracelet. Bagot says, no resident they have worked with has had their home auctioned off, and 10 have received affordable loan modifications.

“We’re not advocates, we are organizers,” he said. “We met our neighbors, helped them overcome the shame of being in foreclosure, helped them understand what had happened to them. They just thought they were all by themselves.”

This was the beginning of Occupy Bernal, which continues to focus on the issue of foreclosures in Bernal Heights. The organization involves as many as 80 people, 75 percent of whom were at one time faced with foreclosure themselves.

Inaugural has Falls Painting

Last week the iconic 1856 painting "Niagara Falls" served as an impressive conversation piece for President Obama's inaugural luncheon. A well-known classic of 19th-century American landscape portraiture, the Ferdinand Richardt work provided a distinctively Western New York presence at the Washington, D.C., venue. Thanks and appreciation are due Sen. Charles Schumer, who seems to have taken a special liking to the city of Niagara Falls and has worked hard on its behalf for many years, for honoring us by arranging to conspicuously display this symbol of local pride, front and center, at the national celebration.

One of the striking aspects of the Richardt is that it portrays the Falls in a natural setting surrounded by trees and green space, precisely in the way his contemporary, renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, intended it to be when creating his visionary plan for what was then called the Niagara Reservation.

A century later, Maid of the Mist owner James Glynn, along with his sidekicks at New York State Parks, felled the beautiful trees on Goat Island attending the mighty cataracts in order to construct toll booths and parking lots, opening up the reservation to car, bus and trolley traffic, effectively ruining the Olmsted plan.We are Malaysia company specialize in customized silicone bracelet. Fast-food purveyor Delaware North joined in, with the result that the present-day Niagara Falls State Park is cluttered with food booths, snack bars, busy trolley stops, parking lots, gift and souvenir shops, coin-operated binoculars and all manner of man-made contrivances including floodlights on the falls and fireworks. All of which served to change the natural wonder of Richardt's and Olmsted's day into an exploited, Disneyfied money machine benefiting Glynn, Delaware North and State Parks.

Just as Matisse was a pillar of the glory years of 20th-century modernism, when he, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque reinvented what painting could be, Veronese was a vital presence during that astonishing moment in the 16th century when he, Titian and Tintoretto—whose careers overlapped for nearly four decades, despite the differences in their ages—together defined the Golden Age of Venetian painting. And just as Matisse's paeans to the tension between the three-dimensional world and the flat canvas have been dismissed as "decorative" because of their glorious color and patterning, Veronese's lush figure groups have been similarly labeled, for similar reasons.

On this side of the Atlantic, it's easy to see just how wrongheaded this evaluation is in relation to Matisse. The stellar examples of his work in U.S. museums are abundant evidence of his power, rigor and inventiveness. But we can't properly take the measure of Veronese without a trip to Europe. Many of his most significant works remain in situ: fresco cycles, devotional works and enormous canvases, such as the Accademia's "Feast in the House of Levi" (1573) in Venice—the vast banqueting scene that got Veronese into trouble with the Inquisition, under its original title of "The Last Supper." Yet through April 14 at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, "Paolo Veronese: A Master and His Workshop in Renaissance Venice," a thoughtful survey drawn from works in North American collections, offers an excellent introduction to the artist.

Conceived and organized by Virginia Brilliant, the Ringling's curator of European Art, in cooperation with Frederick Ilchman, curator of paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in part to set the Ringling's important Veronese paintings in context, the show is the first comprehensive overview of Veronese's work in more than 20 years. Due to the usual difficulties in obtaining loans,Online shopping for luggage tag from a great selection of Clothing. there are some conspicuous absences, but the selection includes enough outstanding works to provide a sense not only of Veronese's evolution and achievement, but also of the range of his themes, the way he repeated and varied those themes, over time, and how, as a successful cinquecento artist, he worked with assistants. As a subtext, we gain an understanding of the American taste for Venetian masters.

A choice group of drawings offers an intimate view of the artist, as he worked out motifs, while a selection of prints reminds us of how Veronese's work was disseminated and adds images of European masterpieces not included in the show. A small, eye-testing sampling of "problem" pictures provokes consideration of their merits through comparisons with securely attributed works.

The installation is elegant and evocative, and there's a handsome catalog with enlightening essays by Ms. Brilliant, Mr.A lanyard may refer to a rope or cord worn around the neck or wrist to carry an object. Ilchman and other specialists, including the eminent David Rosand.

The show is organized thematically, but we first encounter the earliest included work, the Ringling's full-length portrait of Francesco Franceschini. Painted in 1551, before Veronese left the mainland for Venice, it presents an aggrandizing view of a plump, magnificently dressed young man from Vicenza.flash drive and USB flash drives wholesale logo printing in Malaysia. Nearby, an unidentified man in sober black, painted a quarter-century later and standing against pale, classicizing architecture, epitomizes the more restrained taste of La Serenissima with its miraculously varied textures, transparencies and sheens, within an uncompromising silhouette of inky darkness. No lack of rigor here—nor in a glowing, half-length, posthumous portrait of the hero of the battle of Lepanto, Agostino Barbarigo, all gleaming armor and brushy highlights, against a crimson curtain.

Mythological and religious paintings, including the Ringling's brilliantly colored "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" (c. 1572), are testimony to Veronese's ability not only to orchestrate gorgeous textures—fur, flesh, steel, damask—but also to stage complex scenes like a master theater director.

Large-scale protagonists occupy a shallow frieze across the canvas, with a substantial volume of space evoked by means of gesture, architectural settings, glimpses of landscape and, above all, relationships of opulent hues—burgundy, scarlet, salmon, creamy off-whites, dull greens, saturated ultramarine,Application can be conducted with the local designated IC card producers. chalky cerulean. Veronese is a virtuoso of gesture and posture, too. It's shocking to realize that the man embracing St. Lucy, in a late painting, is not her lover but her executioner, pressing a knife to her bosom. The lascivious sprawl of Actaeon, watching Diana and her nymphs bathe, implies that there's nothing accidental about the encounter. No wonder the angry goddess turned him into a stag—a punishment encapsulated in a larger, even more sensuous version of the story. Of course, this kind of sensuality made Veronese a specialized taste in early 20th-century America, suitable only for daring collectors.

The exhibition concludes with variations on the Baptism of Christ. We see Veronese fine-tune his conception in works from the late 1550s and from c. 1580-85, before we encounter a reprisal of the motif, painted c. 1590, after the master's death, and signed by "The Heirs of Paolo Veronese"—his sons and studio assistants, who carried on the tradition. Alas, it's disappointing. But for what Veronese was truly capable of, there's the last gallery's head of St. Michael, c. 1563-65, a fragment of an altarpiece, a marvel of loosely painted curls, tender expression and delectable color. It's decorative, but only in the sense that it delights the eye.

For many immigrants

Customers streamed out of the Home Depot parking lot, a fleet of vehicles from shiny four-wheel drive Cadillac Escalades to new Ford pickup trucks laden with cuts of lumber and stacks of drywall, appliances and gardening supplies.

A small group of day laborers clustered around the exit. Jose Perez, 22, along with about a dozen other men whistled, waved and shouted at passing vehicles, hoping to get some work. They’ll do just about anything,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. Perez said, from landscaping to putting together a swing set.You must not use the laser cutter without being trained. He looked concerned but resilient. He said he hasn’t found work in several days.

Then a gray Lexus rolled to a stop and an electric window slid down. The driver extended a manicured finger in Perez’s direction, her blonde perm hardly moving above large, dark sunglasses.

“I need someone who can do cabinets!” she shouted, and a group of five men scrambled toward the passenger side door.

They lingered in the road, bargaining with the driver in her fur coat. A few more moments passed, and she drove away, the five men still on the street in East Hollywood.

“She was offering $60 for the whole day,” Perez said, an incredulous smile on his face. “The lowest we’d go is $120. She sees a lot of people here, she thinks she can get it cheap.”

This brief intersection of the rich and the poor on the road to rising inequality in America happens every day in every corner of Los Angeles. It is a defining reality, particularly in cities like Los Angeles where immigrant workers, many of whom are undocumented, are constantly haggling to keep their pay somewhere close to a survival wage that will allow them and their families to eat — and to try to send some money home.

If they are successful, men like Perez are often taken west along Sunset Boulevard into the posh areas of Beverly Hills, Bel-Air and Brentwood to install appliances, paint walls, pour concrete and perform other assorted jobs on the estates of the wealthy or on contractors’ projects.Laser engraving and laser laser cutting machine for materials like metal,

But labor rights activists and the workers themselves, largely from Mexico and Central America, said the road to payday is often treacherous. Wages have been driven down by a poor economy and many impromptu employers exploit laborers’ lack of legal work status to withhold payment altogether, threatening to call police or immigration authorities if they complain.

Although Los Angeles has emerged as one of the immigration capitals of the United States, with immigrants now comprising a third of the city’s population and nearly half of its workforce, it has also become one of the country’s most unequal. Wealth and poverty are nothing new in the City of Angels, Santa Monica, Hollywood and Skid Row, but the growing chasm between rich and poor means that these days L.A. is looking more like a developing economy than the second-largest city in the world’s largest economy.A ridiculously low price on this All-Purpose solar lantern by Gordon.

The Gini coefficient of the L.A. metropolitan area, the standard measure of income inequality, is now .485, among the worst scores for America’s big cities.

That puts the level of inequality in this metropolitan area above the level of inequality in the country of China, which registers as high as .480. The US as a country has now hit .450 (up from .408 in 1997), though the US’s per capita income is still roughly three times that of China.

In China, as many as 250 million migrant workers now help power the country’s economic boom, flocking from impoverished countryside areas into cities. As in China, L.A.’s day laborers have come from poverty elsewhere and represent the bottom rung on the ladder toward prosperity. The middle rungs for which they strive include full-time employment, health insurance, a comfortable home, a good education for the children — the American Dream.

Yet tens of thousands of MexicanDid you know that custom keychain chains can be used for more than just business., Honduran, Guatemalan, Salvadoran and other immigrant day laborers are lucky if they can find work even 25 percent of the time. Jobs come with the requirement that the employee carry a social security number, a response to aggressive immigration enforcement policies that have continued under the Obama administration. Finding a full-time job is a nearly impossible dream.

“In the past, it was very easy to find permanent opportunities,” said Jeronimo Salguero program director at the CARECEN Day Laborer Center in the Pico-Union neighborhood, now a magnet for Central American immigrants. “At this time, it’s really, really bad. When I hear on the news that unemployment is improving, I want to invite them here to the center. Here it’s not 9 percent, it’s 80 percent. It really depends what neighborhood you’re looking at.”

Salguero immigrated to Los Angeles from El Salvador in 1990, near the tail end of the Civil War that gripped his country for more than two decades and killed at least 70,000 people.

“I didn’t want to come, to be honest,” Salguero said, smiling. “I didn’t want to come because I had dreams in my country. But my family had taken a big loan and we were in danger of losing our property.”

He discovered CARECEN — an acronym for Central American Resource Center which translates from Spanish as “they lack” — in 1998 as he tried to get US government permission to return to his home country to visit his ailing father.

The permission didn’t come through in time and Salguero wasn’t able to see his father before he died. But the well-built, easygoing 46-year-old said he felt a debt of gratitude to the organization, founded in the early 1980s by Salvadoran refugees.

After volunteering at the group’s headquarters for a year, he was offered a full-time position and began working his way up. Then in 2004, the City of Los Angeles asked CARECEN to manage the Day Laborer Center it planned to fund, near another Home Depot in the shadow of L.A.’s downtown skyscrapers.

2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid Review

The new for 2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid is in hot pursuit of becoming the most fuel efficient mid-sized sedan, picking up the pace right where the last model left off. However, the new Fusion uses a smaller gasoline engine, and lighter,Did you know that custom keychain chains can be used for more than just business.You must not use the laser cutter without being trained. more powerful lithium-ion battery. Total output is down slightly from the old model, but isn’t noticeable by any means, thanks to the equally slight change in weight.

Still, 188 total horsepower feels peppy and responsive, unlike other hybrids on the market including the Hyundai Sonata and Kia Optima. Of course a major difference between this car and the Korean vehicles lies with the transmission. Ford, like Toyota, has opted to use a CVT transmission to ensure smooth operation and transition of the two modes of power delivery. The result is acceptable for everyday driving with the Fusion switching seamlessly between gas and electric operation, and with power delivery being smooth and predictable. Furthermore, the updated hybrid powertrain allows the gas engine to shut off at higher speeds, meaning short cruises on the highway can use very little gas. However, like any other CVT, there is a definite rubber band effect when it comes to putting your foot down, and high-speed passing produces a ton of noise which penetrates into the cabin from the little 2.0-liter engine.

Braking is also crude, with face-deforming deceleration present from the first tap of the pedal. This same behavior was noticed in the Ford C-Max Hybrid that we drove a while back, but when the vehicle made the move to a plug-in hybrid, engineers smoothed out the braking feel considerably. It’s a shame that the same issue still plagues the Fusion Hybrid, but just like the C-Max hybrid, maybe there is hope for future models.

On-road manners of the Fusion Hybrid are wonderful, featuring superb handling, steering feel and feedback. It’s sporty and far from the floaty, disconnected feel found in the Toyota Camry Hybrid. The way that the Fusion behaves isn’t crashy or uncomfortable,Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. and gives the impression of handling like a much smaller vehicle.

Somehow the overall size of the Fusion is well hidden. It has ample space to accommodate passengers and even riding in the back seat isn’t as bothersome as the sloping roofline would indicate. The one area of complaint would be with the trunk, which has awkward proportions due to the hybrid technology residing in the rear of the vehicle. This robs four cubic feet from the regular Fusion, which is noticeable. The rear seats do fold down, giving some added cargo hauling capability to the hybrid.

Our Fusion tester came outfitted with the polarizing MyFord Touch system. As usual, the speed of the unit was questionable, but voice recognition and ease-of-use was solid. It’s worth noting that MyFord Touch’s approach to having four static shortcuts to the phone, climate, navigation and in each corners of the screen is great once you get used to it.Laser engraving and laser laser cutting machine for materials like metal,

Additionally, the two customizable color LCD screens which sandwich the speedometer are a great touch that really showcase the Fusion’s modern mentality. Since it’s a hybrid, Ford adds a bit more information, detailing the vehicle’s fuel-efficiency and drive mode. It’s now visually clear when the car is operating on EV power or not thanks to the tweaked EcoGuide setup. Another nice touch is the summary of your trip when you put the car in park and turn off the ignition, which details your driving habits and fuel consumption.

The Fusion is available with a slew of high-tech safety and convenience gadgets, like adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, active-park assist and lane-keep assist. Our tester was fairly bare-bones, and aside from the appearance package, which added sexy 18-inch wheels and a rear-decklid spoiler, came with MyFord Touch and a rear-view camera with (redundant) parking sensors. Our tester didn’t feature leather seating,A ridiculously low price on this All-Purpose solar lantern by Gordon. perhaps opting to continue a theme of eco-friendliness. The cloth seats do feature sporty-looking red stitching and still have a heat function, a useful addition in the middle of winter. Our modestly equipped tester, with the extra cost paint-job doesn’t break the bank at $31,375, which isn’t too far from the $27,200 base price. Of course, at $37,475, a fully loaded model is priced for the amount of tech and convenience features included.

Despite a hum-drum interior, the cabin doesn’t really detract from the overall presence of the car. It does strike you as a much more expensive and serious vehicle, with aggressive lines that highlight the front-end’s Aston Martin-like looks, and an overall design that makes the mid-sized sedan look down-right tough. It’s incredible to imagine that the Fusion once looked so bland and uninspiring, and that now, mid-sized sedans are receiving the love of designers. And it’s working, with bystanders and other motorists taking notice of Fusion.

But it very much is a Ford, and the evidence of its domestic origin is in the details. Build quality issues were found throughout our tester, even at just 1,600 miles young. Plastic interior bits were loose and rattled; the sunglasses holder was stuck up and needed extra encouragement to fold down; and a plastic panel behind one of the rear door handles popped off with no provocation. Even the hood prop was found to not be attached to anything.

These nagging issues might be isolated. They’re also not our major concern. The biggest problem we had with the Fusion was its fuel economy. After a week of driving in various conditions and with different driving styles, we were far off the EPA rated 47 mpg. Our best consumption number was 39 mpg, which is exactly on par with what the last generation Fusion hybrid earned in the combined EPA cycle. The numbers aren’t bad, but the expectations were set much higher. In comparison, the EPA rated numbers for the Toyota Camry sit right around 40 mpg, and are achievable in real world driving.

“I looked at Coach (Mike) McCoy, Philip Rivers, and then you add Ken Whisenhunt as offensive coordinator, I’m thinking to myself ‘This can’t be happening,’” he said sitting in his new office at Chargers Park. “It’s a great situation. I have found that when you find good leadership and good people, good things happen.”

The Chargers feel good about having that in place, starting at the top with McCoy. That’s why among a plethora of reasons, the Bolts new head coach proved to be the major selling point for Reich to come on board.

“There were a bunch of obvious reasons why this was a great opportunity,” he said. “The first is getting the chance to work with Coach McCoy. I’ve respected him and been an admirer of his work, and have gotten to know him a little bit over the last couple years. He’s a guy who has strong leadership skills. He has a very innovative offensive mind and is a winner. That was the primary reason why this was a great opportunity.”

“The first thing that jumps out is everybody knows him from the famous comeback in both college and the pros,” Rivers said, acknowledging a pair of monumental comebacks Reich orchestrated in college at Maryland and in the playoffs with the Buffalo Bills. “But I think obviously way beyond that, he had a 14-year playing career, and the knowledge that he’s got from standing in the pocket and making the throws, that’s important. I’m certainly looking forward to working with him. I’m certainly looking forward to getting to know him, building trust, having a lot of fun and winning a lot of football games.”