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Wednesday, March 6, 2013
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Kerry: Dennis Rodman's no diplomat
FILE - In this Feb. 28, 2013 file photo, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, and former NBA star Dennis Rodman watch North Korean and U.S. players in an exhibition basketball game at an arena in Pyongyang, North Korea. Rodman showed Kim Jong Un some of the finer points of basketball, and the North Korean ruler was so impressed he raided the country's stock of fine food and drink for a party that lasted well into the night. "Guess what, I love him,'' the clearly smitten Rodman said. "The guy's really awesome." (AP Photo/VICE Media, Jason Mojica, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 28, 2013 file photo, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, and former NBA star Dennis Rodman watch North Korean and U.S. players in an exhibition basketball game at an arena in Pyongyang, North Korea. Rodman showed Kim Jong Un some of the finer points of basketball, and the North Korean ruler was so impressed he raided the country's stock of fine food and drink for a party that lasted well into the night. "Guess what, I love him,'' the clearly smitten Rodman said. "The guy's really awesome." (AP Photo/VICE Media, Jason Mojica, File)
DOHA, Qatar (AP) ? Former NBA star Dennis Rodman may be the only American ever to have met and spent time with North Korea's reclusive leader but U.S Secretary of State John Kerry isn't giving him any diplomatic kudos.
Kerry said Tuesday that the ex-Chicago Bulls player "was a great basketball player, and as a diplomat, he was a great basketball player."
"That's where we'll leave it," he told NBC News in an interview in Qatar, where he is wrapping up a nine-nation tour of Europe and the Middle East
Rodman made headlines last week with a visit to hermetic North Korea, sat next to youthful autocrat Kim Jong Un at an exhibition basketball game and gave the dictator, who threatens to end the truce with South Korea, several compliments about his leadership.
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Tuesday, March 5, 2013
CONSUMER WATCH: Standard Insurance Doesn't Cover Fuel Leak ...
Posted on: 6:16 pm, March 4, 2013, by Dave Bohman, updated on: 08:11pm, March 4, 2013
UNION COUNTY ? A family in Union County wondered how they would pay for an expensive cleanup when their heating oil tank sprung a leak.
The family learned the hard way their homeowner`s insurance policy did not cover damages from a fuel tank leak, so they turned to Action 16 Investigative Reporter Dave Bohman for help.
Ronda Steen returned to her house outside Lewisburg Feb 15th. , to a sickening odor.
?The smell burned your eyes,? said Ronda.? ?It was just hard to breathe.?
She just had her heating oil tank filled.
?Three days after i filled it, it read `Empty,`? she added.
She then learned her tank sprung a leak.
An environmental cleanup company found about 200 gallons of home heating oil from the leaky tank seeped into the soil and into the basement walls.
The Steen home is insured by Allstate which arranged to clean up and remove contaminated dirt.
But the company also told Ronda, her policy doesn`t cover the cleanup costs and she?d have to pay for it.
?What is the sense of paying money to an insurance company, if you have no coverage, but for maybe a fire?,? Ronda asked.
Ronda Steen?s friends at a local church saved the family from a homeless shelter, arranging for the family to stay in a dorm room at a nearby college.
But the situation had the Steen?s nervous, as they live on a $1,200 a month disability check.
?I`ll be honest, it sent me to tears, and talking about it, it still does,?
We called Allstate.
A spokesman confirmed standard homeowner`s insurance does not cover fuel tank leaks but he added Allstate?s Board of Directors authorized the Steens to be a hardship case, and the company will pay for the cleanup.
The Steen`s hope to be able to move back in later this month, and hope people with older heating oil tanks either check their tanks, or their insurance policies.
The Insurance Information Institute tells us most homeowner policies only cover fuel spills if the company inspects the heating oil tank before writing a policy.
Unless the home is new, it means most homeowners will have to either buy a new tank, or buy extra insurance, otherwise, they?ll be forced to pay for a very expensive cleanup out of pocket if their tank springs a leak.
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Friday, March 1, 2013
Geneticists Estimate Publication Date of The Iliad
This story was originally published by Inside Science News Service.
(ISNS)?Scientists who decode the genetic history of humans by tracking how genes mutate have applied the same technique to one of the Western world's most ancient and celebrated texts to uncover the date it was first written.
The text is Homer's "Iliad," and Homer -- if there was such a person -- probably wrote it in 762 B.C., give or take 50 years, the researchers found. The "Iliad" tells the story of the Trojan War -- if there was such a war -- with Greeks battling Trojans.
The researchers accept the received orthodoxy that a war happened and someone named Homer wrote about it, said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Reading in England. His collaborators include Eric Altschuler, a geneticist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, in Newark, and Andreea S. Calude, a linguist also at Reading and the Sante Fe Institute in New Mexico. They worked from the standard text of the epic poem.
The date they came up with fits the time most scholars think the "Iliad" was compiled, so the paper,?published in the journal Bioessays,?won't have classicists in a snit. The study mostly affirms what they have been saying, that it was written around the eighth century B.C.
That geneticists got into such a project should be no surprise, Pagel said.
"Languages behave just extraordinarily like genes," Pagel said. "It is directly analogous. We tried to document the regularities in linguistic evolution and study Homer's vocabulary as a way of seeing if language evolves the way we think it does. If so, then we should be able to find a date for Homer."
It is unlikely there ever was one individual man named Homer who wrote the "Iliad." Brian Rose, professor of classical studies and curator of the Mediterranean section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, said it is clear the "Iliad" is a compilation of oral tradition going back to the 13th century B.C.
"It's an amalgam of lots of stories that seemed focused on conflicts in one particular area of northwestern Turkey," Rose said.
The story of the "Iliad" is well known, full of characters like Helen of Troy, Achilles, Paris, Agamemnon and a slew of gods and goddesses behaving badly. It recounts how a gigantic fleet of Greek ships sailed across the "wine dark sea" to besiege Troy and regain a stolen wife. Its sequel is the "Odyssey."
Classicists and archeologists are fairly certain Troy existed and generally know where it is. In the 19th century, the German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann and the Englishman Frank Calvert excavated what is known as the Citadel of Troy and found evidence of a military conflict in the 12th century B.C., including arrows and 5 feet of burned debris around a buried fortress. Whether it was a war between Troy and a foreign element, or a civil war is unknown, Rose said.
The compilation we know as the "Iliad" was written centuries later, the date Pagel is proposing.
The scientists tracked the words in the "Iliad" the way they would track genes in a genome.
The researchers employed a linguistic tool called the Swadesh word list, put together in the 1940s and 1950s by American linguist Morris Swadesh. The list contains approximately 200 concepts that have words apparently in every language and every culture, Pagel said. These are usually words for body parts, colors, necessary relationships like "father" and "mother."
They looked for Swadesh words in the "Iliad" and found 173 of them. Then, they measured how they changed.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=aad360a4a42438b0cc7ff7e2bb749ddd
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Movie review: 'Jack the Giant Slayer' | Advocate Magazine
From left to right: Eddie Marsan, Ewan McGregor, Nicholas Hoult, and Stanley Tucci get their adventure on in ?Jack the Giant-Slayer?.
At first blush, Jack the Giant Slayer would appear to be nothing more but the latest in what?s becoming a long and lackluster line of hipster re-imaginings of classic fairy tales; in truth, it?s something those films have failed to be: entertaining.
Where Snow White and the Huntsman and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters were content to coast on Twilight-esque tortured romance and crude tongue-in-cheek genre mash-up, respectively, director Bryan Singer (Valkyrie, the forthcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past) and his cadre of screenwriters (which includes Christopher McQuarrie) wisely keep their tale simple and old-fashioned.
Singer and company waste no time in getting the story going and keeping it rolling briskly through a 115-minute running time, quickly setting the stage with a flashback that sets up the ?story (via an animated sequence that unfortunately looks like an intro from a ?90s-era CD-ROM fantasy game) of an idyllic kingdom and the race of banished giants who would love to crush it. Anyone who heard the classic fairy tale as a child knows the basics: A hapless young farmer, Jack (Nicholas Hoult, Warm Bodies) acquires some magic beans which sprout into a towering beanstalk, climbs the aforementioned vine, rescues a damsel (in this case, a headstrong princess played by Eleanor Tomlinson), slays a giant or two, and lives happily ever after.
The details are elaborated upon and tweaked a bit to give this version an epic feel, but the key elements remain unchanged: Princess Isabelle is in a pre-arranged engagement to conniving nobleman Roderick (Stanley Tucci) who, of course, covets the throne. A chain of events culminates in Isabelle propelled skyward upon a beanstalk. Jack joins the rescue party let by captain-of-the-guard Sir Elmont (Ewan McGregor)?which finds itself in the land of some very disgruntled giants.
Bill Nighy and John Kassir provide the voices for two-headed giant Fallon.
They?re a suitably nasty bunch, in every sense of the word, led by two-headed Fallon (played primarily by Bill Nighy, with the smaller and less articulate head voiced by the former Crypt Keeper himself, John Kassir), and the CGI work involved is largely pretty impressive.
There?s an impressive ? and much-appreciated ? economy of storytelling on display; Singer?s only goal is to show us a good time, and does so quite well, zipping us from point A to point B with flair and without pretension or self-indulgence. He?s worked on this scale before, and his approach plays like Peter Jackson without the excess. Truth be told, in some ways Jack trumps The Hobbit, especially during the ubiquitous final battle that centers around a brutal castle siege.
However, Singer?s fantasy world is a bit generic in look and feel, and its inhabitants are painted in broad strokes: The heroes are suitably heroic and the bad guys are an exercise in scene-chewing evil ? especially Tucci, who borrows liberally from the Princess Bride school of medieval villainy (that?s good thing). Hoult and Tomlinson are a safe, by-the-book screen couple, yet that are far more engaging and endearing than Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth proved to be. McGregor channels his inner Errol Flynn as the swashbuckling Elmont, with a snazzy haircut to boot. McShane is usually more fun when he?s being bad, but he plays rat bastards and scumbags so often that it?s refreshing to see him cast as a stern but patient father figure.
All in all, for a movie about men vs. giants in a box office arena where size usually does manner, Jack the Giant Slayer holds its own quite well.
Source: http://lakehighlands.advocatemag.com/2013/02/movie-review-jack-the-giant-slayer/
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Trupanion Becomes Sole Provider of Lifetime Pet Insurance Coverage to American Humane Association Hero Dog Awards Winners - Class of 2011 and 2012
Lifetime pet insurance coverage will help ensure that these hero dogs will receive the best veterinary treatment available if they become sick or injured.
Seattle, Wash. (PRWEB) February 27, 2013
Trupanion, a trusted pet brand and proven industry leader in pet insurance, today announced they have become the sole provider of pet insurance for the American Humane Association Hero Dog Awards category winners for 2011 and 2012. These winning dogs will receive coverage for 90 percent of the cost of treating injuries and illnesses they may develop throughout their lifetime.?We are thrilled that our hero dogs will be insured for the rest of their lives, allowing them the opportunity for long-term health and happiness, while easing the burden of financial care for their guardians,? said Dr. Robin Ganzert, President and CEO of American Humane Association. ?Trupanion offers a comprehensive and simple policy that we feel is a perfect choice for our hero dogs and their guardians.?
Pet insurance offers the financial support pet owners need when faced with high medical costs related to unexpected accidents and illnesses or long-term care, allowing pet owners the ability to approve ?Plan A? veterinary care for their beloved pet instead of declining treatment or opting for a less-effective treatment option based on cost. Pet insurance can give pet owners the peace of mind that if the unexpected occurs, they are covered.
?These hero dogs represent all pets that offer us companionship, loyalty, and unconditional love every day, and we are honored to have them as part of the Trupanion family,? said Darryl Rawlings, Trupanion?s Founder and Chief Executive Officer.
Trupanion was the proud sponsor of the Service Dog category at the 2012 Hero Dog Awards and has an ongoing partnership with the American Humane Association?s Second Chance? Fund, which helps animals that are the victims of abuse or neglect.
The winning dogs are as follows:
MILITARY DOG CATEGORY
2012 Winner: GABE (Columbia, SC) ? Retired MWD Sgt. Gabe has served our country since 2006, completing over 210 combat missions with 26 explosive and weapons finds in Iraq. Since retiring in 2009, MWD Sgt. Gabe has earned over 40 awards and coins of excellence for his heroic work and spends his free time educating children on the value of respect and staying in school. Gabe was named the top American Hero Dog for 2012.
2011 Winner: MWD BINO C152 (Las Cruces, NM) ? Dutch Shepherd Bino served the U.S. Army?s 35th Military Police Detachment at Ft. Gordon, Ga., as a Narcotics Detection/Patrol K-9 for almost 11 years. He deployed in Iraq for 14 months, as well as serving special missions with the Border Patrol. Upon retirement, Bino learned a new skill set as a post-traumatic stress disorder Demo Service Dog.
GUIDE DOG CATEGORY
2012 Winner: TABITHA II (South Bend, IN) ? Guide dog Tabitha is more than just a guide dog to her former guardian, Ann Drake, who lost her sight as an adult. Tabitha guided Ann back to a place where she found the confidence that she had lost and overcame the fears of her new life.
2011 Winner: ROSELLE (Novato, CA) ? On September 11, 2001, Roselle and her guardian were working in the World Trade Center on the 78th floor of Tower One when the airplane crashed into the building. Roselle guided her guardian to the stairwell and traveled down 1,463 stairs. After leaving the building, they were across the street from Tower Two when it collapsed. Despite the dust and chaos, Roselle remained calm and totally focused on her job, guiding her owner to safety. Roselle was named the top American Hero Dog for 2011.
LAW ENFORCEMENT/ARSON DOG CATEGORY
2012 Winner: JYNX (Shillington, PA) ? Law Enforcement-Arson K-9 Jynx desperately worked to try and pull his guardian Sgt. Kyle Pagerly and another officer out of harm's way as a crime suspect opened fire during a routine warrant delivery. Sgt. Pagerly was killed in the line of duty leaving behind his pregnant wife. If not for the swift and heroic efforts of K-9 Jynx, more officers would have lost their lives that night.
2011 Winner: SADIE (Westminster,CO) ? A nationally certified accelerant detection K-9, Sadie works in the Major Crimes Unit of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. She has worked approximately 400 fires, and has assisted in cases resulting in numerous arrests.
HEARING DOG CATEGORY
2012 Winner: TATIANA II (Plantation, FL) -- Tatiana II was matched with handler Cristina Saint-Blancard in 2011 as her hearing dog but quickly turned into her life-saving hero. Cristina suffers from asthma which is exacerbated by frequent ear infections and one night found herself completely without breath. Tatiana II was quick to notice something was wrong and ran into the next room to alert Cristina's family, saving Cristina?s life.
2011 Winner: HARLEY (Fountain Hills, AZ) ? Harley?s human companion was 52 and had been hearing-impaired all his life when Harley arrived. He had lost his self-confidence after missing so much of what had been said around him and through sound work, Harley taught him to regain that confidence.
SEARCH AND RESCUE DOG CATEGORY
2012 Winner: SOOT (Charleston, WV) ? West Virginia Search and Rescue K-9 Soot, didn't know he had a big job ahead of him when he was adopted by Lorraine Burdette. Soot's training in air scent, scent discrimination, and certified search and rescue wilderness training gave him the tools he needed to rescue a 78-year-old diabetic hunter lost in the wilderness on a cold December morning.
2011 Winner: SAGE (Hagerman, NM) ? Sage passed the FEMA Canine Readiness Evaluation at 18 months and served her community and her nation from that day until she passed away in 2012. Sage?s missions included recovery efforts following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, searching for missing or captured U.S. soldiers in Iraq (for the U.S. Army), and numerous local missing-person searches.
SERVICE DOG CATEGORY
2012 Winner: HOLLY (Magna, UT) ? Seizure alert Service Dog Holly never takes her attention away from her guardian, Shanna Wilkinson, who suffers from epileptic seizures. Together Holly and Shanna travel all over the country and teach elementary students the importance of Service Dogs.
2011 Winner: ZURICH (Des Plaines, IL) ? Zurich, a Canine Companions for Independence certified service dog, was the loyal companion of Patricia Kennedy from 2004 to 2012, when Patti sadly passed away. During their time together, Zurich learned to retrieve everything, even the neighbor?s TV remote control, to help Patti with her daily life.
THERAPY DOG CATEGORY
2012 Winner: STELLA (Mt. Kisco, NY) ? Therapy Dog Stella and her guardian Marissa Levy, dedicate their time to bringing love and joy to the residents at Richmond Community Services, a not-for-profit organization that cares for developmentally disabled children and adults. Stella is unfazed by disabilities and diseases, befriending and with time, unconditionally loving, all she meets.
2011 Winner: STACEY MAE (Guffey, CO) ? Stacey Mae, a four-year-old greater Swiss Mountain Dog delivered teddy bears and stuffed animals to children in hospitals and adults in nursing homes. She received and distributed over 2,000 teddy bears and stuffed animals and visited nursing homes 2-3 times a week before passing away unexpectedly in 2012.
EMERGING HERO CATEGORY
2012 Winner: DANIEL (Nutley, NJ) ? Daniel, a beagle from an Alabama shelter on "death row," did the unimaginable in 2011 when he survived the most inhumane form of euthanasia, the gas chamber. Since adopted by his loving guardian, Joe Dawyer, Daniel the "Miracle Beagle" has used his second chance at life as an advocate for shelter adoptions and humane euthanasia legislation across the United States.
2011 Winner: RICOCHET (Escondido, CA) ? Ricochet surfs with special needs children and people with disabilities for therapeutic purposes. As a surfing dog, she has inspired people all over the world, encouraging them to be who they truly are, focus on what they can do, and turn negatives into positives.
For those hero dogs that have passed away, a donation will be made by Trupanion in the dog?s name to the charity of their choice.
The Hero Dog Awards were created by the American Humane Association to celebrate the devoted relationship between dogs and people. The annual national competition searches out and recognizes America?s Hero Dogs ? often ordinary dogs who do extraordinary things, whether it?s saving lives on the battlefield, rescuing the lost or stranded, or simply offering much-needed companionship each and every day.
About Trupanion?
Trupanion is an industry leader in pet insurance, offering cat and dog insurance in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico with the mission of delivering financial peace of mind to pet owners. Trupanion offers a simple, customizable pet insurance policy with 90% coverage for diagnostic tests, surgeries, medications, hospital stays, and alternative therapies for the treatment of accidents or illnesses. Trupanion?s policy includes coverage of hereditary and congenital conditions with no payout limits per incident, per year, or over the lifetime of the pet.
Trupanion is underwritten by the American Pet Insurance Company, which has earned a Financial Stability Rating? of A, Exceptional, from Demotech, Inc. Trupanion is a founding member of the North American Pet Health Insurance Association (NAPHIA), demonstrating a commitment to high standards and transparency in all actions and products. For more information call 800-569-7913 or visit Trupanion.com. You can also follow Trupanion on Twitter or Facebook.
About American Humane Association
American Humane Association is the country?s first national humane organization and the only one dedicated to protecting both children and animals. Since 1877, American Humane Association has been at the forefront of virtually every major advance in protecting our most vulnerable from cruelty, abuse and neglect. Today we?re also leading the way in understanding the human-animal bond and its role in therapy, medicine and society. American Humane Association reaches millions of people every day through groundbreaking research, education, training and services that span a wide network of organizations, agencies and businesses. You can help make a difference, too. Visit American Humane Association at http://www.americanhumane.org today.
Heather Kalinowski
Trupanion
800-569-7913 3124
Email Information
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/trupanion-becomes-sole-provider-lifetime-pet-insurance-coverage-110222411.html
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Part 2: American Assumptions about Orientation and Identity | Real ...
This essay is the second in a series about Gay Marriage and Proposition 8.
Our culture?s approach over the past fifty years is quite different from any ancient world model. Rather than treating an individual?s complicated mix of social, emotional, and sexual feelings as aspects of that person, we divide the population into separate straight and gay identity groups (with the notion of bisexuality as a footnote, typically lumped in as a subset of the gay identity group).
We believe in these distinct identity groups partly because our culture increases the distance between opposite-sex and same-sex orientations. Especially among men in our society, the stereotypes which accompany that divide help to mask the natural spectrum of emotions beneath. In order to avoid appearing gay, a straight modern American man is expected to limit expressions of affection for other men more than in any ancient culture and to shy away from deep same-sex emotional investment.
On the other hand, gay men are permitted (even expected) to invest emotionally in women and to express physical affection but to frame such feelings and actions in a non-sexual way, as generalized flamboyance rather than opposite-gender affection. The reluctance of straight men to acknowledge or develop natural same-sex attachment allows them to ignore their share of such feelings, while the expectation of flamboyance allows gay men to feel drawn toward women without re-questioning their sexuality.
But creating two sharply delineated orientations out of the broad and malleable spectrum of human affinities and impulses is only half the work of constructing sexual identity groups. The division of our population into gay and straight identity groups also depends on our belief that a person?s private feelings and perceptions are a determining aspect of their identity. In a sense, the shift to believing in sexual identities is rooted in a shift to viewing identity as something to be sought in experimentation and subjective experience. If we?re prepared to search for identity in musical tastes, certainly the far more intense experiences of sexuality or even just sexual fantasy should be considered a core aspect of self. Sexual orientation is powerful as a source of identity in modern American culture because we care so much about people?s tastes, personal memories, and self-explorations.
Again, the importance of sexual orientation to identity is hardly a given across cultural lines. Sexual orientation is less compelling as a core determinant of identity in cultures that treat identity as largely tribal and hereditary. It also means less in a covenantal culture, where a person is defined not by his/her desires, but by the promises he or she makes and keeps.
But we live in a culture where sexual orientation is considered a core part of individual identity and a strong distinction is still made between gay and straight people. And because we see straight and gay as separate identity groups, it?s often difficult to differentiate between attitudes about same-sex relationships and attitudes about gay people.
The third in this series will publish shortly.
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James Goldberg's family is Jewish on one side, Sikh on the other, and Mormon in the middle. Goldberg co-edits the Everyday Mormon Writer literary website, teaches composition and creative writing courses at BYU, and blogs at Mormon Midrashim. His debut novel, The Five Books of Jesus, was published in September 2012.Source: http://realintent.org/part-2-american-assumptions-about-orientation-and-identity/
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