truesee's Blog

http://www.azcentral.com/video/791245979001

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0127/Think-you-know-the-Middle-East-Take-our-geography-quiz/1

$1M lottery ticket may go unclaimed in NC

The Associated Press

Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/02/15/2064308/1m-lottery-ticket-may-go-unclaimed.html##ixzz1E2lmUrbi

Monday, February 14th 2011, 2:26 PM

Jones/GettyKelvin Kwong and Ashley Tse pose for a photo as they announce their engagement before guests during a Valentines day engagement party at a McDonald's fast food restaurant in Hong Kong on February 14, 2010.

In the buzzing financial hub known for its fast living, young Hong Kong couples can now grab love on the run at the city's McDonald's outlets, which are offering a burgeoning new sideline: "McWeddings."

On Valentine's Day at a downtown McDonald's close to the financial district, the fast food joint was decked out with pink balloons, a "cake" stacked from apple pies, as well as a pair of tiny souvenir crystal M rings, for a surprise engagement bash thrown by Kelvin, a young model, for his girlfriend, Ashley.

The party is the first formal wedding event since the service was launched in January.

McDonald's says the concept isn't tacky and fills a niche in Hong Kong, where its restaurants are popular dating venues and the prices for more typical weddings run high.

"They date here, they grew their love here, so when they have this important day they want to come over here," said Shirley Chang, the managing director of Hong Kong's McDonald's outlets.

The McDonald's "Warm and sweet wedding package," at HK$9999 ($1282) a pop, includes wedding gifts, pink invitation cards emblazoned with golden arches, decor featuring the likes of Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar, and classic golden arches fare worth up to $385.

Additional items will cost extra, including a "white balloon" gown rental ($165), balloon corsage ($11), balloon wedding cake ($88), and a large pink McDonalds backdrop ($321).

"You can see the world changing, especially the young generation," Chang told Reuters.

"They're looking for out-of the-box thinking and ideas."

With two wedding parties confirmed for this year and around 70 other couples in talks, the American fast food giant is hoping this sideline will take off at a time of economic uncertainty, particularly with traditional Chinese weddings and banquets often imposing a huge financial burden on young couples.

"I think it's the best value for money," laughed Chang. "Definitely."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2011/02/14/2011-02-14_mcdonalds_mcweddings_offered_for_couples_who_want_affordable_wedding_at_fast_foo.html#ixzz1E1rHN9Yn

http://deadspin.com/#!5759842/tiger-woods-spits-on-the-green-golf-gets-all-offended

This may be the first spark of revolution in Iran

Analysis: If the people dont go home, the regime will have a problem, says veteran Israeli expert on Iranian affairs Menashe Amir.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2048138,00.html

DECKER: Obama's fake Christianity?

Liberals argue whether the president is an atheist

Brett M. Decker-The Washington Times8:34 p.m., Saturday, February 12, 2011

* FILE ** President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks at Northern Michigan University, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011, in Marquette, Mich. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

President Obama's coddling of Islam has many Americans questioning his national-security judgment, if not his intentions. In his administrations muddled response to the crisis in Egypt, one clear message came from all the president's men: A new government in Cairo has to include a whole host of important nonsecular actors, as stated by White House spokesman Robert L. Gibbs. The hitch is that in the Middle East, nonsecular means radical Islamist, like the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, in the middle of this global clash of civilizations, Mr. Obama's own religious disposition is being questioned  and not from the right, but the left.

On his HBO show Real Time on Friday, host Bill Maher said of Mr. Obama, I think he's a centrist the way hes a Christian  not really.   His mother was a secular humanist and I think he is. When Princeton University professor Cornel West challenged Mr. Maher's point about Mr. Obama's religion, saying, He changed his mind on the God question, brother Bill, the comic retorted, It's like when he says I struggle with gay marriage  you don't struggle with gay marriage, you're fine with gay marriage. Another guest  who insisted Mr. Obama has always been pretty centrist  helpfully reminded that Mr. Obama did go to church before he was a candidate for the presidency. That church, of course, was presided over by the racist, anti-American, hate-spewing Rev. Jeremiah Wright. 

Bill Maher can be a funny guy. His website flashes the crack, It doesn't make me un-American to say I'd rather live in Paris than in places where cheese only comes in individually wrapped slices. Aside from the fact that bashing France is a national pasttime and a pretty reliable measure of patriotism, a man who prefers unpasteurized fromage cant be all bad. That said, his humor has a very tangible dark side, especially when it comes to faith. In the past, Mr. Maher has called Christianity the ultimate hustle and ridiculed the fight of good versus evil as a shakedown: If God gets rid of the devil  and he could, hes all powerful  well, then there's no fear. There's no reason to come to church. There's no reason to pass the plate. 

Liberals hate it when anybody throws their own gaffes back in their faces. Media Matters can chuck bricks at us all they want for taking purported cheap shots at the president. This debate over Mr. Obamas religion is happening among his most ardent supporters, just like the birther flames being fanned by MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Hawaii's Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie. Mr. Obama's critics just sit back and laugh while Democrats do their dirty work for them. With friends like Mr. Maher, Mr. Obama doesn't need enemies.

Brad Knickerbocker

Staff writer
February 12, 2011 at 2:06 pm EST

Caliph: A successor of Muhammad as temporal and spiritual head of Islam.

Caliphate: What Glenn Beck warns could take over much of the western world.

Its not a conspiracy, Glenn Beck says, but just a group of like-minded organizations and individuals  from the Muslim Brotherhood to the AFL-CIO (with assorted other fellow travelers in a "red-green alliance")  working together to overthrow and overturn stability. And he has the charts, graphs, and a map to prove it.

If such protests become "contagious," he warns, they will "sweep the Middle East" then "begin to destabilize Europe and the rest of the world."

Becks latest theory about where the freedom revolution in Egypt is headed may resonate with his hard-core followers. But it has some conservatives wondering if hes gone off the deep end.

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and a regular Fox News commentator, welcomes the debate among conservatives over the political revolution in Egypt.

Its a sign of health that a political and intellectual movement does not respond to a complicated set of developments with one voice, he wrote recently.

But hysteria is not a sign of health, he continued. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. Hes marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.

In the conservative National Review, editor Rich Lowry called Kristols comments a well-deserved shot at Glenn Becks latest wild theorizing.

On PBSs Newshour Friday night, New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks contrasted Becks delusional ravings about the caliphate coming back with the conservative establishment, which saw [the end of the Mubarak regime in Egypt] as a fulfillment of Ronald Reagan's democracy dream.

For the first time, you began to see a lot of really serious conservatives taking on Beck and people like that, and saying, you know, your theories are just wacky, Brooks said.

Beck, whose signature image is being outraged at the left (tinged with conspiracy theories), apparently has decided to push his brand ever farther. Do his ratings have anything to do with that?

From January 2010 to last month, the number of his viewers dropped 39 percent  the steepest decline of any cable news show.

It's entirely possible viewers are simply tiring of the chalkboard and the high rhetoric, which has been notably higher of late, Business Insider reported earlier this month. And needless to say Beck is not the phenom he was a year ago, merely by dint of the country becoming more familiar with him.

Meanwhile, some 300 advertisers have asked not to be on his show  a trend that began when Beck called President Obama a racist.

As is typically his style, Beck doesnt address the arguments of his opponents but goes after them personally.

"People like Bill Kristol ... I don't think they stand for anything anymore," says Beck. "All they stand for is power. They'll do anything to keep their little fiefdom together, and they'll do anything to keep the Republican power entrenched."

And in his latest monologue about the new world order, Beck had this to say about his critics: You want to call me crazy? Go to hell. Call me crazy all you want."

All of this has become great fun for others in the commentariat.

Of course, the conspiracy goes deeper than Beck has yet revealed, writes Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic. I'm hoping that, in coming days, if the Freemasons, working in concert with Hezbollah and the Washington Redskins, don't succeed in suppressing the truth, that Beck will reveal the identities of the most pernicious players in this grotesque campaign to subvert our way of life.

I can't reveal too much here, Goldberg writes. But I think it's fair to say that Beck will be paying a lot of attention in the coming weeks to the dastardly, pro-caliphate work of Joy Behar; the makers of Little Debbie snack cakes; the 1980s hair band Def Leppard; Omar Sharif; and the Automobile Association of America. And remember, you read it here first.

http://shenews.projo.com/2011/02/would-you-volunteer-for-a-one-.html

'I'm robbing you, sir': 'Polite' robber arrested

A man accused of robbing a Seattle convenience store at gunpoint last weekend might have earned points with its owner by being polite.

GENE JOHNSON

Associated Press

SEATTLE

A man accused of robbing a Seattle convenience store at gunpoint last weekend might have earned points with its owner by being polite.

But saying "sir" probably won't impress prosecutors or federal authorities who say they have supervised him since he wrapped up a prison term for an earlier string of hold-ups.

The King County Sheriff's Office identified the suspect Tuesday as Gregory P. Hess, 65. He's a former Starbucks barista who has been on federal supervision since 2007, when he was released from prison after receiving a nearly six-year sentence for hitting five banks and a video store in the Seattle area.

His bail was set at $250,000. He is being held for investigation of robbery but has not been charged.

Hess was arrested after surveillance video of Saturday's robbery "went viral" and prompted several tips about the suspect's identity, said sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart.

The man in the video is seen telling White Center Shell station owner John Henry: "Could you do me a favor? Empty the till for me please and put it right here. . I'm robbing you, sir."

"Are you sure?" Henry replies.

"Yes, I'm sure," the man says.

"Why do you want to do that?"

"Because I need the money," the man answers. "I've got kids that need to be fed, sir. . I really am sorry to have to do this."

Henry offered the man $40, but the suspect declined it and took $300, promising to pay the money back later, if he could.

Hess worked for three years at a Starbucks in Seattle's Madison Park neighborhood before quitting in late 2002 because "he became dissatisfied with a change in direction the company had taken," according to documents filed in his federal case. Months later, he was robbing banks to pay for his rent and other expenses, including his "precious dogs."

The federal case, which includes a lengthy sentencing memorandum that delves into his unhappy childhood and adult life, makes no mention of Hess having children.

His method in the 2003 robberies earned him a mundane nickname from the FBI: the "Transaction Bandit." He sometimes asked a teller to make change for small bills, and once the drawer was open he demanded the money that was inside, showing the teller a pellet gun in his waistband.

He was arrested in those cases after former co-workers at the caf� saw his wanted photo in The Seattle Times and alerted authorities to his identity. He confessed soon after his arrest and was sentenced to 57 months in prison, plus $9,723 in restitution.

In asking for a light sentence, his lawyer cited a letter written by his sister, recounting their unhappy childhood at the hands of alcoholic parents.

The sister also said the two of them stole from grocery stores to feed themselves, his sister wrote. Hess eventually was sent to live with a foster family.

After serving his sentence, Hess enrolled in a culinary arts program at South Seattle Community College. Although he earned $800 to $1200 per month, he failed to pay restitution as ordered for nearly a year after his release, the court documents state.

The federal documents also note that he was convicted in 1967 of forging a check to pay his rent.

LINK TO PHOTO OF POLITE ROBBER: 

The new 747-8 jumbo jet: Up close and inside

Dominic Gates

Seattle Times aerospace reporter

Unlike the Dreamliner that Boeing rolled out in 2007 but didn't get off the ground for two-and-a-half years, the new 747-8 jumbo jet unveiled in Everett on Sunday is not an empty shell.

"We're going to roll out an airplane that's darn near ready to fly," Boeing commercial airplanes chief Jim Albaugh said in an interview. "I think it'll fly within three or four weeks."

An advance tour inside the giant passenger plane, the 747-8 Intercontinental, revealed final preparations for flight testing.

The flight deck is ready for the pilots to take the controls. A little label above the pilot's steering yoke reads: "Boeing 001. Flight test."

In the cavernous passenger cabin, Boeing has installed racks of computer equipment and dozens of interconnected black barrels so that during the upcoming flight tests, the water that serves as ballast can be pumped around to simulate various loads.

On the outside, the plane looks dramatic because of what Albaugh called "that bigger bump on top."

This latest model of the iconic jumbo jet, whose first version flew in 1969, has an extended forward fuselage hump with a row of windows that stretches all the way back to the wings.

The rival Airbus A380 superjumbo airliner, with its full-length double-decker passenger cabin, has a regular, more nondescript fuselage shape. But the curve of the 747-8 upper fuselage hump will be distinctive even to people unfamiliar with airplane types.

Boeing's marketing mavens developed a brash new burnt-orange sunburst paint scheme unique to the plane in Sunday's ceremonial rollout.

"We wanted to gain the world's attention and to give the message that this is not your father's 747," said Steven Myers, a senior designer with Boeing's Seattle-based design partner Teague.

A swooping horizon line along the side of the jet separates a predominantly reddish orange lower fuselage from the pearl-white upper fuselage. Silvery gray highlights and gold stripes fade into the main blocks of color.

A nonmetallic mica in the clear topcoat will sparkle in sunlight.

Inside the hangar where the plane had just been painted, Myers said Boeing chose the reddish color scheme to appeal specifically to the Asian customers that are expected to be the major buyers of this jet.

The stylized figure 8 on the vertical tail fin represents the model number, but also conveys the Chinese "lucky number" representing prosperity and wealth.

The fading effect was done by hand and the paint job took 10 days, said Bill Dill, Boeing's paint operations leader.

The plane that rolled out Sunday � 250 feet long with a 224-foot wingspan � is a VIP jet for a private buyer, so it will never have a conventional airliner interior.

After flight tests are completed it will be refurbished and customized for the buyer.

Right now, the long passenger cabin is carpeted and has some stow bins and sidewalls in place.

But orange wiring snakes along the floor to the racks of electronic boxes in the center. And the interior space is otherwise largely empty except for the squat, load-shifting water barrels fore and aft, connected by tubes.

At the back of the cabin, a device resembling a giant hamster wheel is installed, about four feet in diameter. During test flights this wheel reels in and out from the tip of the vertical tail a long tubular line attached to a cone-shaped sensor that takes air pressure readings well away from the fuselage.

Admiring the paint scheme his team had completed, Dill said of the Sunday rollout that "the queen is ready for the ball."

Even better, the hardware inside suggests the queen is also nearly ready for her working flight tests.

LINK TO PHOTO GALLERY:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/photogalleries/businesstechnology2014200928/

LINK TO VIDEO:

http://bcove.me/nxick68m

Super-small antennas, better cell-phone service

Daily News Staff and Wire Services

02/11/2011 08:19:35 PM

Updated: 02/11/2011 09:00:04 PM 

Wim Sweldens, the president Alcatel-Lucent's wireless division is seen holding a lightRadio cube, a small cell-phone antenna that can be deployed on lamp posts, buildings, and other places that can't accommodate a full-sized antenna. The cube integrates much of the regular workings of a conventional cell phone base station, seen behind Sweldens. (AP Photo/Alcatel-Lucent)         As cell phones have spread, so have large cell towers - those unsightly stalks of steel topped by transmitters and other electronics that sprouted across the country over the last decade.

Now the wireless industry is planning a future without them, or at least without many more of them. Instead, it's looking at much smaller antennas, some tiny enough to hold in a hand. These could be placed on lampposts, utility poles and buildings - virtually anywhere with electrical and network connections.

If the technology overcomes some hurdles, it could upend the wireless industry and offer seamless service, with fewer dead spots and faster data speeds.

Some big names in the wireless world are set to demonstrate "small cell" technologies at the Mobile World Congress, the world's largest cell phone trade show, which starts Monday in Barcelona, Spain.

"We see more and more towers that become bigger and bigger, with more and bigger antennas that come to obstruct our view and clutter our landscape and are simply ugly," said Wim Sweldens, president of the wireless division of Alcatel-Lucent, the French-U.S. maker of telecommunications equipment.

"What we have realized is that we, as one of the major mobile equipment vendors, are partially if not mostly to blame for this."

Alcatel-Lucent will be at the show to demonstrate its "lightRadio cube," a cellular antenna about the size and shape of a Rubik's cube, vastly smaller than the ironing-board-sized

The cube was developed at the famous Bell Labs in New Jersey, birthplace of many other inventions when it was AT&T's research center.

In Alcatel-Lucent's vision, these little cubes could soon begin replacing conventional cell towers. Single cubes or clusters of them could be placed indoors or out and be easily hidden from view. All they need is electrical power and an optical fiber connecting them to the phone company's network.

The cube, Sweldens said, can make the notion of a conventional cell tower "go away." Alcatel-Lucent will start trials of the cube with carriers in September. The company hopes to make it commercially available next year.

That would be welcome news in neighborhoods across the country, as the larger cell towers have sparked zoning fights from residents who deride them as eyesores and potential health hazards.

In the San Fernando Valley, for example, residents have been fighting cell tower proposals for years. In the past year they have met with some success defeating several proposals from T-Mobile to expand its network coverage.

In Northridge, residents have so far been able to convince city officials to block a proposed T-Mobile tower on top of a commercial structure at Saticoy Street and Louise Avenue, complaining it would be an eyesore, destroy property values and the radiation would pose a health threat.

Similarly in Sherman Oaks, residents last year convinced the South Valley Area Planning Commission to shoot down a separate proposal from T-Mobile to build a 49-foot-high tower on top of a three-story commercial building on Burbank Boulevard.

But for cell phone companies, the benefits of dividing their networks into smaller "cells," each one served by something like the cube antenna, go far beyond esthetics. Smaller cells mean vastly higher capacity for calls and data traffic.

Instead of having all phones within a mile or two connect to the same cell tower, the traffic could be divided between several smaller cells, so there's less competition for the cell tower's attention.

"If it is what they claim, lightRadio could be a highly disruptive force within the wireless industry," said Dan Hays, who focuses on telecommunications at consulting firm PRTM.

Rasmus Hellberg, director of technical marketing at wireless technology developer Qualcomm Inc., said smaller cells can boost a network's capacity tenfold, far more than can be achieved by other upgrades to wireless technology that are also in the works.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/special_packages/104415168.html

http://www.suntimes.com/3780202-417/teen-dies-of-illness-after-root-canal.html