RolePlayGateway?

(This is very much a WIP- I am posting the most current draft which is the first, and I haven't finished it yet- And I am posting this here purely for critique and suggestions. Also, this is going to be a longer novel- already promising to be 100,000 words by the time I'm done. That said, Please tell me everything you think about it. Thank you for reading.)

Pronunciations

Phireem- (Fie reeem)
Psylch- (Silk)
Feagle (Fee ay gle)
Faire (Faire)
Tramice (Tram is (soft s))
Tamel (tam el (short a))
Jacobin (Jay co bin)

Simple Gifts

Prologue- Rumors of War
The two suns of Terrestria, Celeste and Supernal, began to make their descent into the horizon. They were approaching Equinox, promising some spectacular evenings during the days ahead; but for now the sunsets were normal. In the mountainous country of Tamel, the capital city of Elbin was starting to shut down. Merchants closed down their shops, soldiers returned to their barracks, families retired to their homes, and peasants scavenged for leftover scraps that would suffice for their next meal.

However, the castle was far from being inactive. Deep in its innermost chambers, General Harken stood in front of the table with a grave look on his weathered face, his h??ooves stamping on the ground every once in a while as he spoke.

?Tramice must fall!? He began to the ten or so officers around him. ?They are becoming too powerful! I?m sure you all know that they are trading with the Gorbians for better technology. Their economy is booming, their army is swelling, their warriors are powerful. Everything they try to do is successful! EVERYTHING! They may be friendly enough to us for the time being.? The mighty centaur grunted. ?Tell me, how long will that last?! When they grow strong enough, they will turn and destroy us!?

A man with eagle talons and wings laughed. ?So you?re suggesting we go to war with them now!?

Harken pounded the table with his fist. ?Exactly, Feagle! They are still weak, relatively. Our army is powerful. If we move quickly and strongly enough, they will not be able to withstand our forces!? His black hair swished back and forth as he looked from one officer to the other. ?And I know that you are capable to lead our army to a quick and successful victory!?

The others nodded and agreed with shouts. Harken raised his fist into the air. ?We will not be overpowered by the cursed Tramicites and their powers! We will triumph!?

?Long live Harken and the Tamelines!?
***
Chapter 1- Tramice

Two days later, rain had overtaken the entire countryside. The Forest of Loom soaked up the rain like a sponge, infusing the grass, trees, bushes, flowers, and everything with green with new energy. King?s Town, the capital of Tramice, was relatively inactive. Stone buildings had lanterns lit inside to keep families warm as old men told of legends and far-off wars.

Psylch sat on the ramparts of the great castle of Tramice, shielding herself from the pounding rain. Holding her hands up, she stopped the rain a few inches above her head, and then let it slide around her. She sighed. This is so boring! Nothing will ever happen while the rain is going down as hard as it is now!

Psylch turned her gaze across the quiet city. ?If only people were out and about, it wouldn?t be so boring! But of course, it?s raining too hard.? Looking up at the rain coming down in sheets, she thought, why don?t they let the Water Controllers take guard duty when the rain is here? They would probably enjoy it. The light coming from windows in the castle made Psylch jealous as they reflected in her green eyes. She sulked out loud, ?Aye, and they?re probably joking with each other and stuffing their faces, and here am I sitting out in the rain.?

?Having a pity party over there, Psylch?? a male voice shouted to her from a ways away. Psylch looked over to the voice?s owner, a man sitting under a ring of fire that he was constantly refueling to keep himself dry.

She scowled. ?And what if I am, Jacobin??

Jacobin shrugged. ?We?re in the same boat, I guess. Hey, would you like some fire? You?re probably cold.?

Psylch?s scowl disappeared as she replied, ?Really? That would be great!?

Psylch walked over to Jacobin slowly, still using her powers to keep dry. Within a couple of minutes she had reached Jacobin, who had a handful of fire ready for her. She pointed to the handful of fire and brought it closer to her.
?Thanks.?

Jacobin nodded. ?No problem.? He noticed the fire above him was swindling and refueled it. As Psylch headed back to her post, she brought both of her hands close to the hovering sphere of flame, and in doing so, let down her shield. In a few seconds her brown hair was soaked and the fire extinguished.

Jacobin?s reedy baritone rang out in laughter. ?For a Mind Controller, I would think that you?d know better than that, Psylch. I mean, I?m a Fire Controller and I knew about that.?

Quickly blocking the rain again, the scowl returned. He held up his hands in defense. ?Hey, it was a joke.? He formed another handful of fire. ?Here. You?ll need it for sure now.?

Psylch walked back and took the fire from Jacobin. He winked. ?Now, remember, just use one hand and-? before he could finish Psylch quickly gave him a small shove.

?Whoah!? The flames above him disappeared, he stumbled backwards, and his foot slipped. His waist struck the top of the wall, and he began to tumble over the side of the wall. Psylch gasped. ?Jacobin!? She reached out, trying to grab him as he fell. Her arms were just short, brushing his tunic, but unable to grasp it. As she lunged forward, Jacobin plummeted over the wall with a yell!

?No!? Psylch withdrew her arm, watching, and Jacobin suddenly stopped falling. She gasped. ?Wh-what?? she moved her arms like she were pulling a rope, and Jacobin floated back up. Jacobin looked up at Psylch. ?How are you doing that? I didn?t think you were able to manipulate humans!?

Once Jacobin was back on the wall safely, she trembled. ?I-?I didn?t know that either. At least you?re safe.?

Jacobin looked down over the wall and shuddered. ?Yeah? just don?t ever do that again!? he remade the ring of fire over his head, making it lower so he could dry himself off.

Psylch walked back to her post, without fire and with a lot to think about.
***

Phireem walked into a clearing in Loom Forest along with Faire, an old man with white hair but blue eyes that were still sparkling with energy. Faire walked briskly ahead of Phireem, saying, ?Ah, here we are!? He was wearing a waterproof covering, as was Phireem, so the pounding rain did little to affect either.

Phireem, a younger man with black hair and equally bright blue eyes, patted the plastic poncho-like covering as he followed Faire. ?Gorbian technology is certainly some of the most convenient things I have ever seen. Ah, I think I see what you wanted to show me.? Phireem pointed to a blue mist-like aura.

?Yes, exactly, Phireem. This is the portal, only visible to Fire Controllers such as you and me. It is very mysterious, but I have been able to gain much knowledge through what others have written about it.? He beckoned Phireem to come closer as they headed closer to the aura. ?This is Terrestria?s greatest secret. I am entrusting it with you, for I feel my days are running short.?

Phireem nodded, tears forming in his eyes and mingling with some of the rain streaming down his face as Faire continued. ?On the other side of this portal is another world, completely unlike Terrestria. From what I could gather, the people there are quite hostile to strangers. It also seems that they are like Lower-Order Tramicites, and none of the Higher-Order exists anymore. That being said, they also have Gorbian-like technology, perhaps even surpassing said tools. I would not recommend trying to enter that world unless some terrible tragedy befalls us.?

Phireem interrupted. ?Why is this such a big secret? Wouldn?t this be a good thing for all three countries and this other world? Another unique race to learn about and make ourselves better by sounds like only a good thing.?

Faire shook his head, spraying droplets of water. ?That is not true, Phireem. This world has billions of people, millions of warriors. They would think that Higher-Order people and the Tamelines something ?special?, so they would charge in, take us at will, cart all of us around and show us off to others to gain fame and popularity amongst their own people. They are cruel men, and would treat us as animals, slaves, and trinkets that they could kill whenever they think we are not profiting them enough.?

?So, it is a good thing there are no Fire Controllers on- what is that world called, Faire??

Faire shrugged. ?No one has been able to ask the inhabitants what they call their world, so we call it Oceania. As you were saying???

Phireem nodded. ?It is a good thing there are no Fire Controllers on Oceania, so that they cannot discover us. But is there a way to destroy the portal so we can prevent anything happening??

?No, there is not.? Faire stared into the portal. ?It is impossible to know how to use it without proper instruction anyway, so accidentally entering it is highly improbable.?

?Then why don?t we forget about the whole thing? Just call it some sort of myth and ignore the fact that there is another world that cannot reach us beyond it.?

?Because if Tramice ever falls, this is our only hope of escape. We cannot turn to either Tamel or Gorbia for protection if one decides it has seen enough of us. Although our army is strong, we have to be prepared for every possibility.?

Phireem stood in the soaked and softened earth, thinking. ?Okay? how do I open it??

Faire snapped his fingers, and flames blazed in both of his hands. ?I?m glad you asked. All you have to do is make your fire swirl like a whirlpool, or a tornado. It will not harm others here.? He twisted both of his hands, forming a small whirlwind of fire in front of both men. The rain slowed down his progress somewhat, but Faire continued diligently, adding fire and spinning it until the very air in the tornado seemed to crumble away, and in its place stood a window to Oceania. A verdant green field showed itself to Phireem.

?Wow! So that?s Oceania.?

?Yes, it is. Pick up that rock over there, young man, and drop it into this portal.?

Phireem held the fist-sized stone in his hands, and watched it fall through the portal into Oceania. Faire snapped his fingers, and all fire disappeared, as did the window to the field. No rock lay on the ground.

Faire smiled. ?As you can see, a rock from Tramice is now forever in that world.?

Phireem?s blue eyes stared at the matching mist that surrounded him. ?You must tell me more about this, my friend.?

Faire looked up. ?It appears the rain is ceasing. Come, and let us go back to King?s Town. I will tell you more about the portal.?

Both men exited the clearing, but the portal remained, shining mysteriously.

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RolePlayGateway

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French journalist expelled from north Mali

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) ? The Malian military says it has expelled a French journalist from northern Mali who had documented civilian deaths blamed on Malian soldiers.

Lt. Col. Nema Sagara said Thursday that Dorothee Thienot, who has worked for French newspapers, was ordered by soldiers to leave the northern town of Gao.

Sagara said that Thienot had been trying to "ruin the image of the Malian military" with her reporting.

Earlier this year, Thienot was the first to document a number of bodies of civilians who had been thrown into a well in the central Malian town of Sevare.

Human rights groups have since accused Malian soldiers of killing civilians they accused of having links to Islamic extremists.

Thienot says she returned to the capital of Bamako after soldiers showed up at her place and demanded she leave Gao.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/french-journalist-expelled-north-mali-131118507.html

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Viber exploit lets attackers bypass Android lock screens, for now (video)

If you're an Android user who prefers Viber for VoIP and messaging, you may not want to leave your phone unattended in the near future. Bkav Internet Security has discovered an exploit that will bypass the lock screen on Android phones new and old (including the Nexus 4) as long as pop-up notifications are active. While the exact actions vary from phone to phone, all that's really needed is an incoming message or two, a handful of taps and the back button to reach the home screen. App users can disable the pop-ups as a short-term workaround, although they thankfully won't have to do that for long when Viber promises that a patch is on the way. There's only a small chance that a malicious attacker will both get their mitts on your phone and know that you've got Viber installed, but we'd advise against using statistical probability as a security measure.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Via: Ars Technica

Source: Bkav

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/25/viber-exploit-lets-attackers-bypass-android-lock-screens/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Not 'brainwashed': American women who converted to Islam speak ...

S. Deneen Photography

Lauren Schreiber, 26, converted to Islam in 2010 after a study-abroad trip. She and others want to dispel stereotypes that have sprung up after news reports about Katherine Russell, 24, the U.S.-born wife of suspected Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

By JoNel Aleccia, Senior Writer, NBC News

When an American convert to Islam was revealed as the wife of the dead Boston bombing suspect, Lauren Schreiber wasn?t surprised at what came next.

Comments from former acquaintances and complete strangers immediately suggested that 24-year-old Katherine Russell, a New England doctor?s daughter, must have been coerced and controlled by her husband, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died last week in a firefight with police.

?She was a very sweet woman, but I think kind of brainwashed by him,? reported the Associated Press, quoting Anne Kilzer, a Belmont, Mass., woman who said she knew Russell and her 3-year-old daughter.

That kind of assumption isn?t new to Schreiber, 26, a Greenbelt, Md., woman who became a Muslim in 2010.

?The moment you put on a hijab, people assume that you?ve forfeited your free will,? says Schreiber, who favors traditional Islamic dress. ?

The Boston terror attack and the questions about whether Russell knew about her husband?s deadly plans have renewed stereotypes and misconceptions that U.S. women who have chosen that faith say they want to dispel.

?It?s not because somebody made me do this,? explains Schreiber, who converted after a college study-abroad trip to West Africa. ?It?s what I choose to do and I?m happy.?

Rebecca Minor

Rebecca Minor, 28, of West Hartford, Conn., converted to Islam five years ago. Wearing a hijab "reminds me to be a good person," she said.

Her view is echoed by Rebecca Minor, 28, of West Hartford, Conn., a special education teacher who converted to Islam five years ago. When her students, ages 5 to 8, ask why she wears a headscarf, she always says the same thing:?"It's something that's important to me and it reminds me to be a good person," says Minor, who is secretary for the Muslim Coalition of Connecticut.?

Muslims make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, according to studies by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. In 2011, about 1.8 million U.S. adults were Muslim, and about 20 percent had converted to the faith, Pew researchers say. Of those converts, about 54 percent were men and 46 percent were women. About 1 in 5 converts mentioned family factors, including marrying a Muslim, as a reason for adopting the faith.?

Accusations are 'harsh'
Women convert for a wide range of reasons -- spiritual, intellectual and romantic -- says Yvonne Haddad, a professor of the history of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at Georgetown University.

?Islam is attractive to women that the feminist movement left behind,? says Haddad, who co-authored a 2006 book, ?Muslim Women in America: The Challenge of Islamic Identity Today.?

Women like Lindsey Faraj, 26, of Charlotte, N.C., say that wearing a headscarf and other traditional Islamic garb in public often leads people to assume she sacrificed her American life to please a man.

?'You must have converted in order to marry him,' I hear it all the time,? says Faraj, who actually converted simultaneously with her husband, Wathek Faraj, who is from Damascus, about four years ago.?

She?s also heard people say that her husband is allowed to beat her, that she?s not free to get a divorce, that she and her two children, ages 4 months and 2, are subservient to the man. Such concepts are untrue, of course, she says.

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Lindsey Faraj, 26, of Charlotte, N.C., converted to Islam four years ago. She says it was thoughtful, heart-felt choice that changed her life.

?In the beginning, it did offend me a lot,? says Faraj, who grew up in a Christian family in Florida. ?But now as my sense of my new self has grown, I don?t feel offended.?

She?s able to joke, for instance, about the woman who screamed insults from a passing car.

?They screamed: ?Go back to your own country? and I thought, ?It doesn?t get more white than this, girl,?? says Faraj, indicating her fair features.?

Like all stereotypes, such views are steeped in fear, says Haddad.

?Accusations of brainwashing are harsh,? she says. ?They cover up the fact that we don?t comprehend why people like ?us? want to change and be like ?them.??

All three women say they came to Islam after much thought and spiritual searching.

Islam 'entered my heart'
Schreiber, who is a community outreach and events coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says she was drawn to the religion after meeting other Muslims on her trip abroad before graduating from St. Mary's College of Maryland in 2009.?

She grew up in an agnostic family where she was encouraged to discover her own faith.?

"It was, whatever you decide to do -- temple, church, mosque -- I support you finding yourself," says Schreiber. She's now married to a Muslim man, Muhammad Oda, 27, whose parents were both converts to Islam. She said came to the faith before the relationship.??

Faraj, a stay-at-home mom, says she never saw herself "as a religious person, in the least," but became enthralled after trying to learn more about Islam before a visit to see her husband's family.?

?The concept of Islam hit me,? Faraj recalls. ?It was just something that entered my heart.?

Minor, who is single, says she was intrigued by Islam in college, when she was?close friends with?a deployed?American Marine but had Muslim friends at school.

"I saw a huge discrepancy in the negative things I heard coming from my?(friend)?and the actions I could see in my co-workers," she recalls. After spending 18 months learning about Islam, she decided to convert.?

The response from family and friends has been overwhelmingly supportive, Minor says.?

"The more you can do to educate people about Islam, not by preaching, but by actions, the better," she says.?

Reports that Katherine Russell might have been embroiled in an abusive relationship, or that her husband intimidated her aren?t an indictment of Islam, Haddad says.?

"Abusive men come in all colors, nationalities, ethnicities and from all religions," she says. "No one says that Christianity teaches abuse of women because some Christian men are abusive."

Schreiber says she frequently gets comments from people surprised to see her fair skin and hear her American accent from beneath a scarf. She says she appreciates it when people actually ask questions instead of making assumptions.

?I just want people to know that there are American Muslim women who wear hijab by choice because they believe in it and it feels right to them, not because anyone tells them to.?

Related stories:?

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/26/17897741-not-brainwashed-american-women-who-converted-to-islam-speak-out

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Syrian church: 2 abducted priests still missing

BEIRUT (AP) ? The whereabouts of two bishops kidnapped in northern Syria remain unknown, Syrian church officials said Wednesday, a day after telling reporters that they had been released.

Bishop Tony Yazigi of the Damascus-based Greek Orthodox Church said Tuesday that the bishops, both working in the northern city of Aleppo, had been released. But later on Tuesday, the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate in the capital said in a statement on its website that it had not received "any official document indicating the (bishops') release."

Gunmen pulled Bishop Boulos Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Church and Bishop John Ibrahim of the Assyrian Orthodox Church from their car and killed their driver on Monday while they were traveling outside Aleppo. It was not clear who abducted the priests and who is holding them.

But Bishop Tony Yazigi, who is related to one of the abductees, said the gunmen are believed to be Chechen fighters from the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra group, one of the most powerful of the myriad of rebel factions fighting in Syria to overthrow the regime of President Bashar Assad. Yazigi declined to say what made it appear that Nusra Front was involved.

The main Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, condemned the kidnapping and blamed Assad's regime.

However, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, reported that foreign fighters had abducted the bishops near a checkpoint near Aleppo. The Observatory's chief, Rami Abdul-Rahman, said Wednesday that activists in the area where the bishops were kidnapped say the gunmen were foreign fighters from the Caucuses.

Pope Francis called for the rapid release of two bishops. In his appeal Tuesday, the pope called the abduction "a dramatic confirmation of the tragic situation in which the Syrian population and its Christian community is living."

There has been a spike in kidnappings in northern Syria and around Damascus in the past months. Residents blame criminal groups that have ties to both the regime and the rebels for the abductions of wealthy residents traveling to Syria from neighboring Turkey and Lebanon.

Opposition forces control large areas of land in the north and control whole districts inside Aleppo, Syria largest city.

The government still holds large parts of the northern city and its forces daily clash with the opposition fighters, who also control several border crossings with Turkey.

Syrian conflict began in March 2011 as peaceful uprising against Assad's rule. It turned into civil war after some opposition supporters took up arms to fight a harsh government crackdown on dissent.

More than 70,000 people have been killed in fighting, the United Nations says. Nearly 5 million Syrians fled their homes, seeking shelter in neighboring countries or in other parts of Syria where fighting has temporarily subsided.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-church-2-abducted-priests-still-missing-093521476.html

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Warriors cruise past Nuggets 131-117

DENVER (AP) ? David Lee went from Golden State's All-Star power forward and double-double machine to the Warriors' biggest cheerleader and strategic adviser during timeouts.

Mostly, though, he just sat back and enjoyed the show Tuesday night when the Warriors stunned the Denver Nuggets 131-117 to even their playoff series at a game each.

The Warriors hardly missed much of anything. Not many of their shots, and not even their injured All-Star, who is out for the rest of the playoffs with a torn right hip flexor.

Behind Stephen Curry's 30 points and 13 assists, the Warriors became the first opponent to walk off the Pepsi Center court a winner since the Washington Wizards on Jan. 18.

The Warriors also got 26 points from surprise starter Jarrett Jack, a career-high 24 from rookie Harrison Barnes in his debut at power forward and 21 from Klay Thompson.

Most importantly, the sixth-seeded Warriors, who became the second road team to win in the postseason following Chicago's victory at Brooklyn on Monday, wrested home-court advantage from the NBA's best home team.

"They were knocking down shots," Denver's Andre Iguodala said.

That's an understatement. They were knocking them down better than they ever had before in a playoff game, a franchise playoff-record 64.6 percent from the field (51 of 79).

Every one of the nine Warriors who took at least a shot made better than half of them.

"Man, they were knocking it down," Ty Lawson marveled.

"We are a very good shooting basketball team," Warriors coach Mark Jackson said. "We've got guys that can knock down shots. You talk about Klay Thompson and Steph Curry, in my opinion, they're the greatest shooting backcourt in the history of the game."

The third-seeded Nuggets were an NBA-best 38-3 at home during the regular season but needed Andre Miller's last-second shot to beat Golden State by a basket in the opener and extend their franchise-best winning streak to 24 games.

With Golden State losing Lee to a torn hip flexor and the Nuggets getting top rebounder and energizer Kenneth Faried back from a sprained ankle, this one looked like a mismatch, even Curry acknowledged.

And it was, only not the way the Pepsi Center crowd anticipated.

"We're a resilient team, said that all year. When guys go down, other guys step up," said Curry, who played through a tender left ankle after turning it late in the third quarter. "We showed that tonight. Big road win for us. We've got to go home and protect our homecourt."

Even without their All-Star, the Warriors outrebounded the Nuggets 36-26.

"We didn't do much of anything very well," Nuggets coach George Karl lamented. "I don't think I ever coached a game when a team got three 35-point quarters, maybe in my career. Ever."

The best anybody shot against Denver during the season was 54 percent, by the Los Angeles Lakers way back on Nov. 20, and the most points the Nuggets had allowed was 126 at San Antonio on Nov. 17.

Curry scored just one bucket, a 3-pointer, after turning his ankle but said he doesn't expect it to be an issue Friday night when the series shifts back to Oakland for Game 3.

Lawson and Corey Brewer each scored 19 points for Denver and Iguodala and Miller both had 18, but the Nuggets were playing catch-up from the middle of the second quarter and couldn't keep up with so many of the Warriors' shots falling, negating Denver's league-best transition game.

Lee led the league in double-doubles with 56 and had another before getting hurt in the fourth quarter of the series opener on Saturday. The Warriors were 3-18 without him over the last three seasons, but Jackson mixed and matched his lineup to make up for his All-Star's absence on this night, when Lee gave advice to his teammates during timeouts.

The Nuggets were hoping the return of Faried would help them reverse their 10-point disadvantage on the boards in Game 1. But he was rusty and the same problems that plagued Denver in the opener ? missing too many open shots, getting outmuscled on the glass and giving up open 3s ? haunted them once again and even more so.

Curry scored 15 points in the second quarter and hit four jumpers during a 14-5 run the Warriors used to grab control and take the air out of the Pepsi Center as they cruised into halftime with a 61-53 lead that would never be threatened in the second half.

Curry swished another sweet jumper to start the third quarter and the Warriors opened up a 17-point lead they would stretch to 20 in the fourth quarter.

"The game plan tonight was to keep the ball out of Stephen Curry's hands, but he came off (the pick-and-rolls) and had open looks and then he started finding people," Lawson said. "After that, we started scrambling and we can't play like that."

Asked if he thought the Nuggets were overconfident with Faried back and Lee down, Jack said: "They're confident for a good reason. They're a great team, especially playing in this building where they've only lost three games. I would be confident too. I don't think that's a shot at us, but they're back at full strength.

"If we were at full strength we'd be confident, as well. This by no means is a celebratory situation for us. We still have to come in and take care of business Friday."

Notes: Faried finished with four points and two rebounds in 21 minutes. ... Curry's 30-10 playoff game was the first for the franchise since Sleepy Floyd on May 10, 1987. He's the third NBA player since 2000 (Dwyane Wade and Chris Paul ? twice) to post 30 points, 13 assists and five rebounds in a playoff game. ... Carl Landry was introduced as a starter but Jack was summoned just before tip-off instead. ... Lawson had a career playoff-best 12 assists. ... With 14 points off the bench, Nuggets F Anthony Randolph had a career playoff-high 14 points. ... The last time the Nuggets surrendered 20-plus points to four players in a playoff game was on May 17, 1985, to the Lakers (James Worthy 28, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 27, Byron Scott 21, Michael Cooper 20).

___

Follow Arnie Melendrez Stapleton on Twitter: http://twitter.com/arniestapleton

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/warriors-cruise-past-nuggets-131-117-073740219--spt.html

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Stock index futures signal slightly higher open

PARIS (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Thursday, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.04 percent, Dow Jones futures up 0.16 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.15 percent at 4 a.m. ET.

Verizon Communications Inc will be in focus after sources said it has hired advisers to prepare a possible $100 billion cash and stock bid to take full control of Verizon Wireless from joint venture partner Vodafone Group Plc .

European stocks dipped in morning trade, halting a sharp rally started earlier in the week, as a raft of mixed corporate earnings dented investors' appetite for equities. <.eu/>

A flurry of U.S. companies were set to report results on Thursday, including Amazon.com Inc , Bristol-Myers Squibb , Coca-Cola Enterprises , ConocoPhillips Harley-Davidson , Starbucks United Parcel Service and Exxon Mobil Corp .

Chipmaker LSI Corp reported quarterly results above analysts' estimates and forecast current-quarter revenue largely above expectations at a time when weak PC sales and a slow economy have created uncertainty about demand for storage controllers.

U.S. life insurer Aflac Inc , which counts on Japan for almost 80 percent of its business, reported a better-than-expected 13 percent rise in quarterly profit but a weaker yen took a big chunk out of its premium income. 0dbxun>

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stock-index-futures-signal-slightly-higher-open-081750934--finance.html

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Insurance Experts Conjure an Indoor Hailstorm, Destruction Ensues

Across the United States this spring, many homeowners will hear rain's pitter-patter interspersed with the knocking, clanging sounds of hail. These balls of ice?typically pea-sized, but sometimes as big as baseballs or even grapefruit?cause about $1 billion in damage to property and crops annually, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Even the most battered home, however, probably can't compare to the one inside the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) Research Center in South Carolina.

Inside a giant test chamber, IBHS, an industry-funded group, recently conducted the first full-scale indoor hailstorm. A dozen multibarreled air cannons pelted a small model residence with more than 9,000 homemade, handcrafted hailstones. The 4-minute bombardment punctured shingles, dinged up metal roofing, and dented the gutters. It was part of IBHS's attempt to learn more about the effects of hail on building materials, and in turn help their clients better gauge insurance premiums based on materials homeowners elect to use. The test required about half a million dollars and years of prep work to create, among other things, a custom compressed-air firing system.

"This was something no one had ever done before on such a scale," says Tanya Brown, a research engineer at IBHS. "We spent years coming up with the firing system, developing the ice stones . . . this was not easy. It took a lot of trial and error."

For example, there's more to creating simulated hail than just freezing balls of water. Last year two IBHS teams traveled into the field and gathered more than 200 hailstones from nine storm sites. They measured the stones' predominant dimensions, mass, and hardness using an in-house compressive force instrument. Armed with this information and data from scientific literature, IBHS staff then set about concocting the right recipe for hailstones in the lab.

"What we found from the literature is that the density of real hailstones is much more variable and smaller than the density of pure ice," Brown says. The researchers figured if they could trap bubbles within the ice, air would take up some of the volume and thus lower the density. After some tinkering, the team found that a mix of 80 percent seltzer to 20 percent ordinary tap water created a good stand-in for real hail.

Then, as if making popsicles, IBHS staffers injected this mixture into molds and loaded them into freezers overnight. They made hailstones with diameters of 1 inch, 1 1/2 inches, and 2 inches?about the size of a quarter, a Ping-Pong ball, and a lime, respectively. Kim Elmore, a research meteorologist at the University of Oklahoma's Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies and NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory, said the researchers picked these sizes because of their ability to wreak havoc.

"Once you get to hail that's much bigger than an inch, it starts breaking things," Elmore says. "That's why we put the threshold for hail severity starting at 1 inch."

The firing system is a potato gun?like cannon made of PVC and powered by compressed air. A computer program and control box automate the firing sequence, but the hailstones have to be loaded manually through a gravity-fed hopper setup. Brown directed the teams that hand-loaded hailstones into the air cannons on the catwalk during the test run. "It was very, very loud up there," she says.

IBHS says it succeeded in getting the hailstones to zip along at the correct terminal velocity for each size stone?meaning, the velocity at which a stone could be expected to strike an object on the ground in real life. For a 1-inch hailstone, this works out to 51 mph, while the big bruisers?the 2-inchers?can hit a freeway speed of 76 mph.

The model home measured about 20 x 20 feet and rotated slowly on a platform during the simulation. To compare how different surfaces survive a hail assault, IBHS put asphalt shingles installed on an ordinary plywood deck over half the roof, and standing-seam metal over the other half. Two of the exterior walls featured fiber cement siding, while the remaining two had standard vinyl siding. The windows got a similar this-or-that treatment with both vinyl and aluminum frames. Rounding out this simulated home were a car, outdoor table, chairs, umbrella, and even a kid's toy truck. All bore the icy barrage.

As in real life, the hailstones in the simulation pounded the roof. Impact-resistant shingles suffered mostly cosmetic damage, while many of the standard shingles were so tattered they'd need to be replaced. Hail did not puncture the metal roofing, but did cause bigger, deeper dents to the metal placed over shingles. "We were able to look at damage patterns across the different roofing materials and create very realistic-looking damage," Brown says. "That let us qualitatively compare the performance of various materials."

To unleash even more realistic indoor hailstorms in the future, IBHS plans to develop an automated method for cranking out hailstones and to figure out how to tweak the hardness for a simulated hailstone, which for now cannot be controlled. Hardness is a major factor in the amount of destruction a hailstone ultimately leaves behind. "Ask anyone who has been around a lot of hail?you can easily tell the difference between the hard and the soft ones," Brown says.

To NOAA's Elmore, efforts like these by IBHS are probably the best approach to learning more about hail damage. "The only reason we do things in the lab is to have a controlled environment. We can't exercise control in nature?it just hands you what it's got."

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/natural-disasters/insurance-experts-conjure-an-indoor-hailstorm-destruction-ensues-15383940?src=rss

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Netflix shares jump as subscribers rise; margins seen following

(Reuters) - Shares of Netflix Inc shares are set to open 24 percent higher after the movie streaming service said it added more than two million U.S. subscribers in the last quarter, with analysts saying a push for exclusive content will boost margins in coming quarters.

Netflix shares have tripled in the past eight months, taking its share price to a sky high 137 times expected earnings, compared with a PE ratio of around 14 for others in the sector.

The shares traded premarket on Tuesday at $215.81, up from $174.36, after first-quarter results on Monday beat analysts' estimates.

Despite the already big jump, at least eight brokerages, including JP Morgan, BMO Capital, Morgan Stanley, Barclays and Oppenheimer & Co, raised their price targets on the stock by as much as $75 to as much as $250.

"Netflix is in an enviable position with its scale and can opportunistically bid on content not available to the company previously." Morgan Stanley analyst DeVitt said in a note.

However some analysts see the shares as overcooked. While upgrading its outlook for the stock, Wedbush Securities gave a 12-month price target of $65 and rated it "underperform."

Netflix now has 29.2 million U.S. customers for its $8-a-month U.S. streaming service, the largest part of its business.

"The solid performance in the March quarter combined with a better-than-expected outlook for the June quarter, aided by the upcoming release of 'Arrested Development: Season 4,' augurs well for the company in 2013 and beyond," BMO Capital Markets Corp analysts said.

"Arrested Development", dropped by network TV but later revived on Netflix, will premiere on May 26 with the entire 15-episode season available to stream online.

"Four billion hours were streamed in the quarter -- highlighting how the company's subscriber base is increasingly using Netflix for a growing share of their viewing trends," BMO said.

As well as boosting subscriber numbers, the push for exclusive content will likely boost margins in line with its premium TV network peers, compounding the effect, DeVitt wrote.

Netflix has been pushing for original shows and its February release of the series "House of Cards", a drama starring Kevin Spacey, generated plenty of buzz just as more and more viewers turn onto Internet video downloading.

"Netflix is racing to ramp up original hours of versatile programming in an effort to build a brand identity with different segments of the market," Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Vasily Karasyov said.

The big run up in Netflix shares has likely hit short sellers but there are still many betting against it.

The short interest position in Netflix for the most recent period was 13.4 percent of shares outstanding, compared with less that 2 percent for blue chip companies such as Google Inc and IBM Corp, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine data.

Short interest position in Netflix peaked in April 2008, with about 38 percent of its outstanding shares being shorted.

Investors who sell securities "short" profit from betting stocks will fall. Short-sellers borrow shares, then sell them, waiting for the stock to fall so they can buy the shares at the lower price.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Rodney Joyce)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/netflix-shares-jump-subscribers-rise-margins-seen-following-132023454--finance.html

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The Complicated Chinese Family Tree: A Video Guide | MetaFilter

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The Great Wall: worth some clicks. Nice kids, good presentations.
posted by mule98J at 10:35 AM on April 23 Oh wow this is awesome, and it looks like they sell posters too.

Funny aside, one of my friends has something like 9 brothers (and no sisters). In Chinese, you would normally refer to them as "oldest brother" or "second oldest brother" and so on. For some reason, they started doing this in English, and would say things like "Hey, how's two doing?"
posted by jasonhong at 10:37 AM on April 23 [1 favorite]

Pfft. Unrealistic--needs more canine little brothers/sisters in that family tree.

Trust me, they get lai sze and eat moon cakes, they're family.
posted by roquetuen at 2:49 PM on April 23

roquetuen, that's a cute comment :). Some of my Taiwanese friends call their pets "???" or "kids with fur", and do refer to them individually as "my daughter" or "my son".
posted by Alnedra at 11:53 PM on April 23

? Older Broadway stars get together to "preview" Downton A...??|??Shakuntala Devi, the Indian "h... Newer ?

Source: http://www.metafilter.com/127307/The-Complicated-Chinese-Family-Tree-A-Video-Guide

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FAA followed Boeing's lead on 787 battery testing

Boeing Commercial Airplanes Vice President and Chief Project Engineer Mike Sinnett is sworn in prior to testifying at a hearing investigating a battery fire aboard a Boeing 787, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Boeing Commercial Airplanes Vice President and Chief Project Engineer Mike Sinnett is sworn in prior to testifying at a hearing investigating a battery fire aboard a Boeing 787, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Boeing Commercial Airplanes Vice President and Chief Project Engineer Mike Sinnett listens during a hearing at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, investigating a battery fire aboard a Boeing 787. As airlines prepare to resume flying Boeing's beleaguered 787 Dreamliners, federal investigators looked Tuesday at how regulators and the company tested and approved the plane's cutting-edge battery system, and whether the government cedes too much safety-testing authority to aircraft makers. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

David Helson, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Investigator in Charge, seated right, speaks during a hearing investigating a battery fire aboard a Boeing 787, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, at the NTSB in Washington. Also pictured are Boeing Commercial Airplanes Vice President and Chief Project Engineer Mike Sinnett, seated second from left, and NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman, top third from left. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Boeing Commercial Airplanes Vice President and Chief Project Engineer Mike Sinnett, left, seats with unidentified Boeing officials during a hearing investigating a battery fire aboard a Boeing 787, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Boeing Commercial Airplanes Vice President and Chief Project Engineer Mike Sinnett listens at left, during a hearing investigating a battery fire aboard a Boeing 787, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. At right is NTSB chair Deborah Hersman. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Federal regulators let Boeing help write the safety conditions for the problematic battery system in its beleaguered 787 "Dreamliner," prescribe how to test it and carry out those tests itself, according to testimony and documents released at a hearing Tuesday.

As airlines prepare to resume flying the 787 after a three-month grounding, the National Transportation Safety Board is looking at how the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing and the company's subcontractors tested and approved the 787's lithium ion batteries, and whether the government grants aircraft makers too much leeway when it comes to safety.

Batteries aboard two 787s failed less than two weeks apart in January, causing a fire aboard one plane and smoke in another. The root cause of those incidents is still unknown.

"We are here to understand why the 787 experienced unexpected battery failures following a design program led by one of the world's leading manufacturers and a certification process that is well respected throughout the international aviation community," NTSB's Chairman Deborah Hersman said at the opening of a two-day board hearing.

"We are looking for lessons learned, not just for the design and certification of the failed battery, but also for knowledge that can be applied to emerging technologies going forward," Hersman said.

The 787, Boeing's newest and most technologically advanced plane, is the first airliner to make extensive use of lithium-ion batteries. Since the FAA doesn't have safety regulations for those batteries as installed equipment in planes, the agency and Boeing jointly developed the special safety conditions the plane's battery system should have to meet, according to documents and testimony.

The FAA also agreed to Boeing's proposed tests for the batteries, and the company and its subcontractors were responsible for performing those tests.

In one key test, a nail was driven into one of the battery's eight cells to create a short circuit. Based on the test results, Boeing concluded that a short circuit in one cell wouldn't start a fire or cause the battery's other cells to short. Yet that's exactly what NTSB investigators say happened in the battery fire in Boston, although they still don't know the origin of the short circuiting.

The test was "state of the art at the time," Mike Sinnet, Boeing's chief engineer for the 787, testified at the hearing. "In retrospect, we don't think it was conservative enough."

In March 2008, a year after the FAA gave final safety certification to the 787's battery system, a government-industry advisory committee recommended a more rigorous set of safety tests for the use of lithium batteries generally in planes. FAA officials, however, didn't change the tests required for the 787.

"We apply the regulatory standards as they appear in the special conditions," said Steve Boyd, manager of the FAA's airplane and flight crew interface branch. Boeing's tests were "reasonable," he said.

FAA officials also said the risks of using lithium batteries were well known at the time the agency was working on Boeing's certification request. Lithium batteries are more susceptible to uncontrolled temperature increases and to catching fire when they short circuit.

Eight months after the FAA approved Boeing's battery proposal, a fire erupted at a test facility in Arizona when a subcontractor overcharged the battery with the battery protection circuitry disabled, documents show.

That brought home to the industry the serious dangers of the batteries, the FAA said in a timeline supplied to NTSB.

The battery system was designed with four layers of protection against overcharging, and overcharging isn't suspected in the two January incidents, Sinnett said.

Lithium batteries weigh less, store more energy and recharge faster than conventional batteries, making them attractive to aircraft makers and their airline customers.

Boeing did some of the safety testing on the 787 battery system, but testing was also performed by a subcontractor, Thales of France, which made the 787's electrical system, and by battery maker GS Yuasa of Japan. The testing concluded there was no chance that short-circuiting would lead to a fire, and the odds of a smoking battery were one in every 10 million flight hours.

Instead, there were two battery failures when the entire 787 fleet had clocked less than 52,000 flight hours. The first came Jan. 7 aboard a Japan Airlines 787 parked at Boston's Logan International Airport shortly after landing from an overseas flight. Firefighters reported two small flames and dense clouds of white smoke streaming from the battery. It was an hour and forty minutes before they declared the incident under control.

Nine days later, a smoking battery aboard an All Nippon Airways 787 led to an emergency landing in Japan. The FAA ordered all U.S.-registered 787s grounded the same day, and aviation authorities in other countries swiftly followed suit.

The NTSB, which is investigating the Boston incident, may never be able to determine the root cause of fire. The inside of the battery was severely charred, leaving few clues for investigators.

Boeing has since developed and tested a revamped version of the battery system, with changes designed to prevent a fire or to contain one should it occur. FAA officials approved the revamped batteries last week and agreed to lift the grounding order. The company has been working furiously to install the new system on the 50 Dreamliners in service worldwide. Boeing has orders for 840 of the planes from airlines around the globe.

___

Follow Joan Lowy on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-04-23-Boeing%20787-Batteries/id-84e285ad5cb046a9bfcfde1328f1885c

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Netflix's 1Q subscriber gains catapult stock

In this Thursday, Aug. 23, 2012, photo, a Netflix envelop containing a DVD to be returned by mail is clipped onto a mailbox, in Springfield, Ill. Netflix reports quarterly financial results after the market closes, Monday, April 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

In this Thursday, Aug. 23, 2012, photo, a Netflix envelop containing a DVD to be returned by mail is clipped onto a mailbox, in Springfield, Ill. Netflix reports quarterly financial results after the market closes, Monday, April 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Netflix's move to compete against traditional cable-TV channels with original programming is pulling in more subscribers to its Internet video service and winning back investors who doubted the company's ability to cultivate distinctive entertainment.

The skepticism dissipated Monday with the release of Netflix's financial results for the opening three months of the year.

The first-quarter numbers revealed that Netflix Inc. added 2 million U.S. subscribers from January through March ? hitting the top end of the target set by the company's management. The growth left Netflix with 29.2 million U.S. subscribers to an $8-per-month service that streams movie and TV shows to Internet-connected devices.

The company picked up another 1 million customers in the dozens of international markets where it streams video, leaving Netflix with 7.1 million streaming subscribers outside the U.S. Even though the international operations are still losing money, Netflix said it will expand into an unidentified European market during the second half of the year.

Netflix's subscriber surge, coupled with signs that the company's profit margins are widening, delighted investors. The company's stock soared $42.48, or 24 percent, to $216.85 after the results came out. If the stock rallies similarly on Tuesday, it will mark the first time Netflix's stock has topped $200 in 19 months.

The stock had plummeted to as low as $52.81 last August as part of a devastating descent that began in July 2011 when Netflix outraged its U.S. subscribers with pricing adjustments. The change resulted in a price increase of as much as 60 percent for customers who wanted dual access to Internet video and a DVD-by-mail option that includes the latest theatrical releases. Investors also fretted as Netflix's losses on an international expansion piled up and the company's bills to license video mounted.

Now, it looks like Netflix CEO Reed Hastings ? an object of scorn when the company's stock was plunging ? might have known what he was doing all along. In the process, he appears to have regained the luster that made him a Wall Street darling while Netflix's stock was soaring toward its all-time high of nearly $305.

"I don't have a sense of 'I told you so,' or something," Hastings said in an interview Monday. "I have a sense of satisfaction that we are doing what we do best, which is steadily improving our service."

The latest strides came in the first quarter when as Netflix eked out a profit of $2.7 million, or 5 cents per share. That contrasted with a loss of $4.6 million, or 8 cents per share, last year.

If not for the costs for refinancing some of Netflix's debt, the company said it would have earned 31 cents per share. That figure topped the average analyst estimate of 18 cents per share.

Revenue rose 18 percent from last year to $1.02 billion ? about $7 million above analyst forecasts

Hastings envisions Netflix becoming as popular as any channel on cable or broadcast TV, with as many as 90 million subscribers. To realize that goal, he decided in 2010 that Netflix should become more like Time Warner Inc.'s HBO channel and develop more series that can't be seen anywhere else.

That was a big change for Netflix, which had primarily licensed content that have previously been shown in movie theaters and on traditional television networks.

Netflix took its first major leap in its new direction in early February with the debut of "House of Cards," a critically acclaimed series made exclusively for Netflix. The series, starring Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey, reportedly cost Netflix $100 million, amplifying fears the company was spending more than it could afford.

In another breakthrough, Netflix released all 13 episodes of "House of Cards" at once, raising the risk that many people would just accept the company's standard offer of a free month of service and then quit. But Netflix said fewer than 8,000 people resorted to what it calls "free-trial gaming" during the first quarter.

"I think we're focused on moving toward more and more exclusive content, which reinforces a reason to join Netflix and a reason to subscribe," Hastings said in a Monday conference call with analysts. Without providing specific numbers, Hastings said "House of Cards" had a "nice impact but a gentle impact" on subscriber growth during the first quarter.

Netflix is becoming so popular that too many people using the same account are trying to watch video at the same time. The company currently allows no more than two devices to watch at the same time. Netflix said Monday that is introducing a $12-per-month plan that will allow up to four devices using the same account to watch video. Hastings expects less than 1 percent, or fewer than 292,000, U.S. subscribers to upgrade to the more expensive plan. He also reiterated Netflix's intention to keep its standard steaming option at $8 per month.

Another original series, "Hemlock Grove," came out on Netflix last Friday. Although the horror series didn't get great reviews from TV critics, Netflix said Monday that the viewership of "Hemlock Grove" during its first weekend surpassed the numbers posted by "House of Cards."

Another Netflix exclusive, the resurrection of "Arrested Development," is scheduled for next month.

Neither "Hemlock Grove" nor "Arrested Development" is expected to be compelling enough to overcome a traditional lull that occurs in Netflix's subscriber growth during the spring, when warmer weather and longer daylight hours decrease people's interest in staying indoors to watch TV. The company expects to add 230,000 to 880,000 U.S. subscribers during the current three months ending in June.

As Netflix's Internet video service attracts more customers, the DVD-by-mail that once was the company's foundation continues to crumble. Netflix lost another 240,000 DVD subscribers during the first quarter, pushing the number of customers on that service below 8 million for the first time since 2007. Despite the downturn, the DVD service remains highly profitable.

The company, which is based in Los Gatos, Calif., expects its second-quarter earnings to at least double from the 11 cents per share posted at the same time last year. Management envisions earnings for the current quarter ranging from 23 cents to 48 cents per share. Wall Street is expecting 39 cents a share, according to FactSet.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-04-22-Earns-Netflix/id-79564afba84942e99ccf9907b6ffe521

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Making Internet Business Development Work Better

Making Internet Business Development Work Better

With the right SEO reporting tools, you can do some incredible things for your company's image and its organization online. You can quantify just about anything you might possibly want to know about how well you are currently doing, and you can begin the process of doing even better in a number of different ways. However, there is a lot more to running the online section of your enterprise than simply keeping the software working properly and monitoring what it says. You also have to use your mind and keep a few things in it.

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To learn more about the SEO process and its application, read this.

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The process of making your Internet business development work better is sometimes a tricky and complicated one, but this complication comes about less because of software and keyword issues and more often because of a difficulty in understanding people. When you have just about any kind of web properties, the only reason you should be appealing to the search engines at all is because of the way they help you to draw in potential customers. Once people have found your website, the search engine's role in the whole deal is done.

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Unfortunately, far too many business owners and managers are so obsessed with the search engines that they forget the fact that they are talking to people. When you work with your website content development from the frame of mind of speaking to people, you are going to be far more successful than you will if you are just stuffing your web properties full of keywords and the "right" phrases to draw "traffic." If you consider the people who visit your website and your other web properties to be nothing more than traffic, you are not going to speak to them properly.

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However, if you address the people who come to your web properties in an intelligent and enjoyable manner, you are going to reap the massive rewards that come along with being respected and appreciated. In much the same way as you speak to your customers in real life, you need to speak to them online if you are going to get your message across effectively. Trying to talk down to people or simply feeding them nothing but fluff is only going to turn them off and make them click out of your site as soon as they can.

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To learn more about the marketing angle of SEO, read this.

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The online world is full of marketers and wannabe marketers who think that they can simply stuff their pages full of the right keywords and draw business to themselves, and to a point they are correct. If you throw enough things against a wall for a long enough time, a few of those things are bound to stick. But just as some of those things will be disgusting, like rotting eggs, a lot of the clientele you will get if you take on a "shotgun" approach will be little more than the inevitable statistics of making something work if you try hard enough for long enough.

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The fact of the matter is, to make your web marketing work as well as it can, you have to adapt a voice that will work well for your customers. You need to speak to people in a way that they enjoy being spoken to, as opposed to simply telling them to buy over and over again and expecting them to comply because you are a disembodied voice on the Internet. The days when the Web was nothing but a store and a set of billboards are long over with, and people expect to be spoken to with a nod to their intelligence nowadays.

Source: http://blog.etech7.com/blog/bid/285937/Making-Internet-Business-Development-Work-Better

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Column: Time for sports to help us heal again

In so many ways, sports can bring out the worst in us.

The corruption. The greed. The destructive belief that winning isn't just the only thing, but something that must be achieved no matter the cost.

Then, there are times like these.

While Boston was locked down Friday, as authorities hunted for a suspect in the deadly bombing at what was supposed to be a joyous 26.2-mile run through the city's streets, we've already seen the cathartic effect of something so mundane as a hockey game.

Thousands of strangers, singing along in unison to the national anthem, when the Bruins took the ice only two nights after those cowards killed three innocent people at the Boston Marathon ? one of them an 8-year-old child ? and ripped off the legs of others.

Did anyone who saw that rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" not, at the very least, dab at their eyes for a moment, a sense of pride and defiance bubbling up in their chest?

Sports gives us our sense of community in times of grief. It's like our collective couch, helping to soothe our national pain.

"What people look for in sports in a moment of crisis is a sense of security," said John Smith, who teaches classes on the history of sports and its impact on society at Georgia Tech. "You're going to games with people who are going through the same thing you are. There's kind of a safety there. It feels good to have a sense of normalcy."

We've seen it many times before.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, baseball carried on with President Roosevelt's blessing and helped deflect a nation's attention from the horrors of World War II. After the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the games we play sent a resolute message that a nation would not give in to anyone's despicable agenda.

And now, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, we'll again call on sports to help bring out the best in us.

Rest assured, it's up to the task.

"Sports really are the most visible place where people can come together outside of churches," Smith said. "And, let's face it, arenas are bigger than most churches. I can think of no other place where so many people come out to show their support for people who are grieving, who have lost something, who are going through tragedy. The stadium is a place of congregation."

Boston's grieving is still in the early stages. That was quite apparent Friday when much of the city was brought to a halt by the successful search for one person.

The Red Sox were forced to postpone the opener of their series the Kansas City Royals because the city's transportation system was shut down and people were urged to stay home, all in hopes of flushing out the 19-year-old suspect who was captured hiding in a blood-spattered boat parked in a backyard.

The Bruins, after playing Wednesday, postponed their contest against the Pittsburgh Penguins, and later rescheduled it for early Saturday afternoon. The Red Sox and Royals will start play a few minutes later.

A city, a nation, a world will be the better for it.

"We're all looking forward to the next home game at Fenway Park," Smith said.

While we're at it, here's hoping the impact of this terrible week will be more lasting than past tragedies. Sports fans ? short for fanatics, as we've seen far too many times ? should use this as another learning moment, an opportunity to permanently tone down the hateful rhetoric that too often rules in our stadiums, on sports talk radio, and throughout the Internet.

There's nothing wrong with being a passionate supporter of the home team, as long as everyone remembers it's just a game. Frankly, we're not holding our breath on that one. Memories fade. The vitriol returns. But maybe, just maybe, the next time a Yankees fan wants to pour a beer over the head of a Red Sox rival ? or vice versa ? there will be a flicker of how they came together in the wake of 9-11, how they were united again after the Boston Marathon tragedy.

That's the most amazing thing about sports.

Roosevelt recognized the importance of baseball after America was plunged into a world at war. The easier path would've been to shut down, as many of the world's top sporting events did at the time. The Indianapolis 500 wasn't held from 1942-45. The Olympics were called off in both 1940 and '44. The Masters was canceled the last three years of the war.

But, when baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis went to the president for guidance on what course the national pastime should take, Roosevelt responded with his famous "green light letter."

"I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going," Roosevelt wrote.

Of course, there have been times when the games should not have gone on.

NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle decided to let teams play the Sunday after President Kennedy was assassinated. The decision was roundly criticized as insensitive to a grieving nation and would go down as the worst call of Rozelle's long, successful career.

In 1972, International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage thought he was doing the right thing by ordering the Munich Games to carry on after a horrific terrorist attack wiped out the Israeli team. He couldn't have been more wrong.

But, when handled with sensitivity, the decision on whether to play or not to play can have a profoundly positive impact.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, the NFL, Major League Baseball and college football all shut down for a week, a call that was undoubtedly influenced by Rozelle's misstep nearly four decades earlier.

When the games resumed, it wasn't just the right thing to do, but downright necessary to help the nation start moving forward again.

Ten days after the attack, baseball returned to New York with a poignant game at Shea Stadium. More than 41,000 turned out to watch the Mets beat the Atlanta Braves, essentially thumbing the Big Apple's nose at the terrorists.

"This is the way life gets back to normalcy," then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said at the time. "You can't just concentrate on the tragedy."

Boston has already received a dose of that healing salve.

It needs a lot more.

We'll all be the better for it.

___

Paul Newberry in a national writer for The Associated Press. Write to him at pnewberry(at)ap.org or www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/column-time-sports-help-us-heal-again-225712178--spt.html

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Red Sox and Bruins ready to resume play Saturday

Fans hold up a sign during the second period of an NHL hockey game between the Boston Bruins and the Buffalo Sabres in Boston Wednesday, April 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Fans hold up a sign during the second period of an NHL hockey game between the Boston Bruins and the Buffalo Sabres in Boston Wednesday, April 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

A Boston Bruins jersey with the number of Boston's area code and the words "Boston Strong" hangs in the locker of Bruins player Jay Pandolfo at TD Garden in Boston, Wednesday, April 17, 2013, after an NHL hockey game against the Buffalo Sabres in the aftermath of Monday's Boston Marathon bombings. (AP Photo/Jimmy Golen)

Boston Bruins hockey starters, including defenseman Dennis Seidenberg (44), stand next to a ribbon projected onto the ice at TD Garden in Boston, Wednesday, April 17, 2013, during a pregame ceremony in the aftermath of Monday's Boston Marathon bombings. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

BOSTON (AP) ? The Red Sox and Bruins were ready to return to action after a daylong manhunt for a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings brought major pro sports in the city to a standstill.

The Red Sox play the Kansas City Royals on Saturday afternoon following the postponement of Friday night's opening game of the scheduled three-game series at Fenway Park. No makeup date was announced.

The Bruins face the Pittsburgh Penguins, also on Saturday afternoon, in a meeting of two of the top four teams in the Eastern Conference. The game had been postponed from Friday night. The Penguins' scheduled home game against the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday night was rescheduled for Tuesday night.

The postponements came about four hours before the games were to start after authorities told people throughout Boston and some of its suburbs to stay indoors while they searched for the suspect. About three hours later, mass transit train service that had been shut down for much of Friday resumed.

Police had identified two suspects in Monday's bombings near the finish line of the marathon. One man was killed early Friday during a shootout with police. The other was taken into custody Friday night following a standoff during which shots were fired.

Boston College canceled all home athletic events for Saturday, including the annual spring football game.

The suspension of Amtrak train service forced the New England Revolution of MLS to change plans and travel by bus Friday morning for their game against the New York Red Bulls on Saturday night at Red Bull Stadium in Harrison, N.J.

Associated Press

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World finance officials seek ways to boost growth

WASHINGTON (AP) ? World finance leaders are searching for ways to promote better economic growth and stronger job creation while avoiding a dangerous slide into a global currency war.

Finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations were expected to wrap up their discussions with the release Friday of a joint communique.

The group, which includes Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, began its discussions Thursday night with a working dinner. Those talks were a prelude to broader discussions during the spring meetings of the 188-nation International Monetary Fund and its sister lending organization, the World Bank.

The G-20 joint statement was expected to repeat a pledge the group made at its last meeting in February that members would avoid using competitive currency devaluations to gain advantages in trade.

Lew, previewing the U.S. objectives going into the meetings, said he would press Europe to do more to support growth and would maintain pressure on Japan and China to avoid lowering the value of their currencies to boost their exports at the expense of the United States and other countries.

Lew said it was important that G-20 nations "avoid a downward spiral of 'beggar thy neighbor' policies," the type of destructive trade competition that worsened the Great Depression in the 1930s.

In Europe, countries are split over how much budget austerity to pursue, with some nations resisting a push by Germany for a strong emphasis on deficit reduction.

Referring to disagreements over the issue, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said Thursday that his government had chosen "to keep open the engine of growth." He said, "Germany understands that as prosperous as it is, as strong as it is, it also needs a strong France."

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said that the United States, Europe, Japan and China all need to make adjustments to their current economic policies in order to boost a still-struggling global economy.

"We need growth, first and foremost," Lagarde told reporters.

She said the U.S. and many other countries should focus more on growth and less on trimming budget imbalances this year while their economies are growing at sub-par rates.

Earlier this week, the IMF lowered its outlook for the world economy this year, predicting that government spending cuts would slow U.S. growth and keep the 17-nation area that uses the euro currency in recession.

Lagarde noted that the United States had avoided the "fiscal cliff" of across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts at the beginning of this year that could have derailed the U.S. recovery. But she said Washington had made a policy error by allowing $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts, known as a sequester, to take effect on March 1.

She said that a priority for Europe was "to fix its frayed banking system" and also where needed to moderate its austerity programs. Lagarde noted that Spain was struggling with high unemployment and therefore the country needed more time before pursuing aggressive deficit reduction.

Lagarde rejected a suggestion that the IMF had given conflicting advice to countries such as Britain by first praising their austerity programs and then contending they were too stringent.

She said the IMF had always cautioned that if economic growth started to falter, then a country needed to moderate its deficit-cutting programs.

"We very much stand by that" advice, she told reporters.

But Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA, an anti-poverty group, said the IMF's reduced economic forecast demonstrated "a kind of schizophrenia at the IMF" in which growth has been hurt "due to the austerity policies the IMF previously promoted."

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim told reporters that his institution welcomes creation of a new development bank being started by five of the world's emerging economic powers because new sources of capital are needed to meet the world's need to build new roads, dams and other infrastructure projects.

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa announced last month that they would create a development bank to help fund $4.5 trillion in infrastructure projects. The announcement was seen as a direct challenge to the World Bank, which has been accused by the developing world of having a Western bias.

___

Associated Press writer Desmond Butler contributed to this report.

Associated Press

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