Washington State has finalized rules for recreational marijuana sales, joining Colorado in beginning to create a legal framework for the pot industry. Randy Simmons, deputy director of the Washington Liquor Control Board, says other states and even other countries are watching Washington's developing system very closely.
“The Ferris wheel is coming!”
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros frontman Alex Ebert is reassuring himself as much as he’s boasting about the second most visible attraction of the inaugural Big Top festival. Front and center is the actual big top -- a traditional circus tent complete with sawdust and bold primary colors -- under which the 12-member band will perform on a rotating stage.
Outside on the grounds of Los Angeles Historic State Park, food vendors, magicians and performers of all stripes will entertain the hundreds expected to show, bringing to life a dream Ebert has been mulling since founding his band in 2007. Now 35, it turns out Ebert attended an actual circus for the first time only a couple years ago.
“My primary relationship with the circus is through Dumbo,” he explains to The Hollywood Reporter on Big Top eve, acknowledging that, while one of the saddest animated movies of all-time, it was also “the best -- Dumbo had a major impact on me.”
PHOTOS: Mumford & Sons at The Hollywood Bowl
The idea for the four-day fest, which Ebert and Co. curated, falls in line with the classic big top trope. “The idea is to come into a town and simmer a bit,” says Ebert. “To hang out and eat lunch and play piano randomly in a saloon and then meet the families and see the shows. Then say sayonara and get on your camel and ride.”
Indeed, there will be plenty to see and hear at the Big Top -- although no animals -- where more than 25 bands are slated to appear. Among them: such under-the-radar acts as Torque Method, Fool’s Gold and Henry Wolfe. The criteria for bookings, says Ebert, was straightforward: they needed to be local, have previously played on a bill with Sharpe or “have a similar emotional and spiritual availability” to the concept of “the ideal music troupe experience.”
That includes the in-the-round performance Sharpe and crew have devised. On the night THR visited the band’s dress rehearsal (see photo below), they were testing out a stellar cover of Paul Simon’s “Graceland” as the players all faced each other (another cover planned: Nina Simone's "Ain't Got No"). “It may seem a bit exclusionary -- having our backs to the audience -- but for us to be able to face each other and also for the audience to catch every member's face as they turn around. ... It's fun.”
You could say Edward Sharpe, perhaps more than any other current band, has made untraditional venues a staple of its tours. “As much as we could,” Ebert half-apologizes – though there’s no need; the band has staged shows inside a train and in the London tunnels. Although, if Ebert had his druthers, he adds, “I would play no place -- just parking lots and parks and houses and rooftops and do it very DIY.”
STORY: Live Nation to Offer Locally Grown Foods
On the other hand, Ebert also has grand plans for his Big Top run, including a DVD or film to document the event and, hopefully down the road, creating “an entire town with its own money and commerce, with animals everywhere and people camping. A highly immersive collaborative experience.”
Ambitious much? Or just a big dreamer. If you’re Alex Ebert, likely a little bit of both. "This is supposed to be a traveling thing at some point," he adds.
But first things first: now that the tent is erected, freak show posters are positioned and vendors are taking their places -- all of which is being filmed for a future DVD release -- it's about appreciating what's directly in front of you.
"I'm blown away that we're doing this," says Ebert, who credits Zeros manager Bryan Ling for seeing the project through. "It's a huge undertaking and [takes] a lot of force of will. Because you don't have to do this. It's not a terribly big money maker, so why do it? The reason is to create a sense of being alive."
Twitter: @shirleyhalperin
The new Hadoop is nothing less than the Apache Foundation's attempt to create a whole new general framework for the way big data can be stored, mined, and processed.
It ought to not only further stimulate the way apps are written for Hadoop, but also allow for the creation of entirely new data-crunching methodologies within Hadoop that simply weren't possible because of its earlier architectural limitations. In short, it's good stuff.
What's been holding Hadoop back all this time? More important, where's it going from here?
Various criticisms of Hadoop have revolved around its scaling limitations, but the biggest constraint on scale has been its job handling. All jobs in Hadoop are run as batch processes through a single daemon called JobTracker, which creates a scalability and processing-speed bottleneck.
With Hadoop 2, the JobTracker approach has been scrapped. Instead, Hadoop uses an entirely new job-processing framework built using two daemons: ResourceManager, which governs all jobs in the system, and NodeManager, which runs on each Hadoop node and keeps the ResourceManager informed about what's happening on that node. (Each running application also has its own governor, ApplicationMaster.)
This setup is so unlike the previous MapReduce that Apache gave it an entirely new name: YARN, or Yet Another Resource Negotiator, with the new MapReduce running as one of many possible components for it. In fact, Apache claims that any distributed application can run on YARN, albeit with some porting. To that end, Apache's maintained a list of YARN-compatible applications, such as the social-graph analysis system Apache Giraph (which Facebook uses). More are on the way from other parties, too.
As radical as this approach is, Apache wisely decided not to break backward compatibility, so MapReduce 2 still has the same APIs as its predecessor. Existing jobs just need a recompile to work properly.
It's also hardly coincidence that YARN makes Hadoop far more cross-compatible with other Apache projects for massaging big data. Use one, and it becomes far easier to use the rest. Such a rising tide for Hadoop would help lift all of Apache's related boats.
The biggest win of all here is how MapReduce itself becomes just one possible way of many to mine data through Hadoop. Apache's own Spark, another candidate for porting to YARN, might be better suited to some kinds of work than MapReduce, so Hadoop 2 gives you more flexibility to choose the engine that's the best fit.
The two big Hadoop vendors, Cloudera and Hortonworks, both have their own discussions of how YARN is crucial stuff, even if they approach Hadoop from markedly different directions. Cloudera's Impala offers the ability to run low-latency SQL queries against HDFS-stored data, which makes them best suited to live analytics; Hortonworks has chosen to go with Apache's native Hive technology, which is best for data warehouse operations (like long-running queries with lots of join-type operations).
Porting apps to YARN isn't a trivial effort, though, so the payoff involved in reworking Hadoop this radically will be strongly based on how much gets deployed within the new framework. But the fact that both Cloudera and Hortonworks are solidly behind Hadoop 2 and haven't forked the product -- or stuck with its earlier iterations -- is major evidence Hadoop 2 isn't just smoke or mirrors. Or tangled yarn.
This story, "Hadoop 2: Big data's big leap forward," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.
By Kim Palmer
CLEVELAND (Reuters) - Cleveland Police Chief Mark McGrath announced on Tuesday that following an 11-month investigation his office will issue suspensions for 63 of the 104 officers involved in a 25-minute high-speed car chase that resulted in the fatal shooting of the driver and his passenger.
The officers will serve suspensions totaling 178 days, with the longest suspension 10 days, McGrath said, saying the officers were very honest and professional during the investigation.
The officers are being disciplined because of excessive speed, insubordination and failure to request permission to join the pursuit, he said.
On November 29, 2012, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams fled a traffic stop and led police on a chase that ended with 13 officers firing 137 rounds at the car Russell was driving. The chase involved 63 police cars, according to the investigation.
The 13 officers directly involved in the shooting of Russell and Williams were not among those suspended and still may face discipline and possible criminal charges.
McGrath said many of the officers involved told the investigation they joined the chase because they thought Russell and Williams were shooting at police and they thought "a police officer was in trouble."
Officers involved reported shots fired from Russell's car that investigators now believe were the sound of his 1979 Chevy backfiring.
They also thought Williams, the passenger, had a weapon in her hand during the chase, according to the investigation. The investigation found no weapon and no gunshot residue on Williams's hands.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said on Tuesday that county prosecutors have not yet decided whether to bring criminal charges against the 13 officers directly involved in the shooting.
Jackson also said although the investigation had taken 11 months, "justice was not delayed for the victims" and that his office was "not throwing officers under the bus for political reasons and we're not covering anything up."
A lawyer for the families of Russell and Williams could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
In March, the U.S. Justice Department launched a review of Cleveland police policies over the possible use of excessive force by officers.
Nine Cleveland police department supervisors were suspended, two demoted and one was fired due to the way they handled the incident, McGrath said.
(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Brendan O'Brien, Greg McCune and Leslie Adler)
Shadowplay
The ABC fantasy series Once Upon A Time is back with a new season that is set in Neverland (not to be confused with the spinoff series Once Upon a Time in Wonderland which will crossover with the 3rd season of the Neverland-set Once Upon A Time), which was set up in the season finale of the show back in the Spring. In that season finale episode, an villainous character called Shadow was introduced. Today we learn that shockrocker Marilyn Manson has been cast in the role of Shadow on the show. MM will only be providing the voice for Shadow since the character is computer generated but it seems significant to me that Manson was cast on the show at all. Read on to learn more.
Once Upon a Time’s journey into the dark recesses of Neverland has gotten pretty scary already, what with an evil Peter Pan running around. Now it’s about to get a whole lot creepier: ABC has confirmed exclusively to Rolling Stone that rocker Marilyn Manson will be joining the cast of the show in November. Manson will voice Shadow, a character whose voice will give life to the very essence of Neverland. “We’ve always been enormous fans of Marilyn Manson,” show creators and executive producers Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz told Rolling Stone. “We wanted to cast someone with the vocal ability to make our skin crawl.” This season on Once Upon a Time follows Emma, Rumpelstiltskin, Regina, Captain Hook and the rest of the Fairytale Avengers in Neverland as they look for Henry while battling the evil Peter Pan. The Shadow has appeared a few times already this season, and he’s not quite the mischievous, fun-loving character who appeared in the classic Peter Pan tales. This version of Shadow is more interested in kidnapping and soul-stealing – and with Manson’s voice added to the mix, he should become a skin-crawling part of Neverland.
I’m one of the only people I know that watches Once Upon a Time (mainly because I invested so much time in Season 1 and that loyalty carried over to Season 2) so, as a viewer, I’m very intrigued by Manson‘s casting. I’ve been an MM fan from the start so I’m glad to see that he’s getting new work these days. I know he has a guest starring stint on the HBO series Eastbound and Down and now with this casting in Once Upon A Time, it looks like MM is much more interested in pursuing a career in acting rather than in music. Once is one of those shows that I DVR and watch when I have nothing else to watch … so I have the new eps of Season 3 recorded, I just haven’t watched them yet. Now that I know MM will voice a character on the show, I guess I have to catch up so I can see how well he does on the show. Do any of y’all watch the show? If so, are you looking forward to hearing MM on the show?
[Source]
At Microsoft's huge Xbox reveal last spring, the company made a big hubub about the 300,000 cloud servers it would be adding to help speed up GPU and CPU heavy tasks. But in an interview with Gizmodo, Xbox Live Lead Programmer John Bruno detailed how it could change the way we think about gaming in the future.
Powerful cloud computing lets developers offload tasks like graphics processing and AI computation from Xbox One's local resources. "There is s thrust to turn more things server-side," Says Bruno. "Looking for ways to expand the power of the box." As we've noted before, this lets game developers build games bigger than what the hardware can support on its own. But it could be so much more.
In large measure, Xbox Live is about multiplayer gaming, and in effort to make its offering competitive, Microsoft is offering the benefits of its scalable dedicated server resources to all developers for free. This sounds like a lot of techno-babble, but it's a big deal. "We want Xbox Live to be the best place to play multiplayer games," says Bruno.
How does the Xbox Live cloud help? As the developer of Tinfall explained back in June, scalable, dedicated server resources vastly improve gaming experiences. They make multiplayer more reliable by preventing disconnects, and they also make sessions fair by eliminating any advantages a player hosting a game might have.
Big game studios can pay for their own server resources that are allocated regionally depending on who is logging on to play games where. Microsoft's offer of free cloud computing allows all developers to take advantage of big-ticket resources, even if they're not that big.
The lofty potential of Xbox Live's Cloud Computing is that it allows developers to evolve games and experiences over time. In a commonly cited example, Forza studies your driving style over time to evolve its AI.
But according to Bruno, this is just the tip of the iceberg. "It could change the way developers think about their franchises and their intellectual property." What if a game purchase was a constantly evolving experience that grew over time—more like what we're used to from software these days. We're talking about more than just patches and stability improvements. Bruno declined to comment on the future of business models, but he did note that it would be interesting to see developers grow their games over time. Imagine a world without expansion packs.
Bruno is obviously touting all of the benefits of Xbox Live's cloud in an effort to lure in both developers and customers. It remains to be seen how many people will actually take advantage of the possibilities on Xbox One. What' pretty certain, is that there's an opportunity, and that's always a good thing.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/how-xbox-lives-cloud-computing-could-change-gaming-for-1445530846A very old squished mosquito found in fossilized rock from Montana. Analysis of the insect's gut revealed telltale chemicals found in blood.
A very old squished mosquito found in fossilized rock from Montana. Analysis of the insect's gut revealed telltale chemicals found in blood.
PNASScientists who study why species vanish are increasingly looking for ancient DNA. They find it easily enough in the movies; remember the mosquito blood in Jurassic Park that contained dinosaur DNA from the bug's last bite? But in real life, scientists haven't turned up multi-million-year-old DNA in any useable form.
Fortunately, a team at the Smithsonian Institution has now found something unique in a 46-million-year-old, fossilized mosquito — not DNA, but the chemical remains of the insect's last bloody meal.
They started with a fossilized mosquito. If you think it's incredibly rare for a dinosaur to die and get fossilized for millions of years, imagine what it's like for a bug. Dale Greenwalt has. "Everything has to go exactly right to become fossilized," the retired biochemist explains.
Everything did go right in a little corner of Montana millions years ago. There's a rock formation there — mostly shale — that's a veritable bug cemetery. Greenwalt collects fossils there, as a Smithsonian volunteer. He spends weeks along a stream examining pieces of shale with a handheld lens, then hauls the loot back to the Smithsonian for more microscopic study.
How the bugs ended up in the shale, he says, is a process that only happened rarely. Millions of years ago, a mosquito, say, might land on a gooey mat of algae and microbes, floating on a pond. The mosquito gets stuck in the muck and dies. And then, Greenwalt says, "The algae and the microbes actually grow up and around and encase and envelope the insect."
That entombment protects the bug's corpse. The mat eventually sinks to the bottom of the pond. As sediment slowly covers it and becomes rock, the bug's impression is preserved in stone.
What Greenwalt and a team from the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History have discovered in one of those impressions is iron — a lot of it — as well as chemical compounds called porphyrins. They're found in what had been the mosquito's abdomen, and nowhere else in the impression. Nor are these compounds in the surrounding rock.
The tiny cache of iron and porphyrins was preserved inside the mosquito fossil for 46 million years. "It was exciting," Greenwalt says, "and everyone was jumping up and down because we knew this was exceedingly rare and important."
Fossil mosquitoes collected by Dale Greenwalt, a volunteer research collaborator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.The fossils were collected as part of a 5-year project to produce a research collection of fossil insects from the Kishenehn Formation.
Fossil mosquitoes collected by Dale Greenwalt, a volunteer research collaborator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.The fossils were collected as part of a 5-year project to produce a research collection of fossil insects from the Kishenehn Formation.
Courtesy of James Di LoretoThey were jumping up and down because iron and porphyrins are the brick and mortar of hemoglobin, the substance that carries oxygen in blood. What they had were the remains of the mosquito's last blood meal. Given the species of mosquito (something Greenwalt could tell from its shape), Greenwalt guesses that its last meal came from a bird; it's a species that preys on birds nowadays. He says the research is important because it demonstrates a technique that could turn up other chemical clues to ancient life.
The team describes the discovery in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Greenwalt says it was the Smithsonian's high-tech spectroscopy equipment — which can detect tiny amounts of any element — that made this possible. It's the kind of hardware you don't find in most paleontology labs.
The team plans to try their equipment out on more bugs. "We have fossil insects that are bright yellow, bright red [and] bright orange ... probably a whole array of different types of pigments," Greenwalt says. "I've got the next ten years of my life all planned out working at the museum."
Considering that Greenwalt is a volunteer at the Museum of Natural History — he's been retired from a career as a biochemist for years — that looks like a pretty good deal for the Smithsonian ... and for bug history.
Weeks after vowing that House Republicans would not capitulate to President Obama's demands for "clean" bills reopening the government and raising the debt ceiling, Speaker John Boehner led his caucus in doing exactly that. Only about a third of Republicans voted "yes" on the bill with Boehner, but Boehner's standing among Tea Party conservatives in his caucus may have actually improved.
Holy Grail! Our cup has runneth over with this great news!
It looks like Justin Timberlake and Jay Z will keep on their Suit & Tie, and have added Nas to their Rat Pack!
The trio will be featured on Nas' new album on a track entitled Sinatra In The Sands, and in a recent interview Nas explained how thrilling it was to record with the two Js:
Excitement…Excitement to work and be in the place that we’re all are at, musically. Those are the guys who lasted the test of time, and those guys are at the top of their game. They’re just company to be in. So that’s the whole vibe of that. And of course the title says it all.
Ugh, if the title says it all as promised, this song is going to be king of the hill, top of the heap, a number one!
[Image via WENN.]
Tags: collaboration, gifs, jay z, justin timberlake, music minute, nas, sinatra in the sands, single, song, team, track, up
You may edit this first post as you see fit.
Forever in my dreams, where dreamer flown,
To the world above and greatly renown.
For its constant bubble, scaling of height.
Into the dawning sea and eventful light,
To dream the dream of dreamer's love,
Yet we stall our mind to fiction above.
Belong to life and green-blue flow,
To reddish hearts that we greatly show.
When Microsoft said that it would release its Remote Desktop app for Android and iOS, it left many scratching their heads -- what, no Windows Phone version? There's no need to worry, though, as the company has just promised The Next Web that it's writing a client for its own mobile platform. Redmond ...Strobe lights, heels, and dizzying dance moves can be a dangerous combination, and Selena Gomez found that out during her concert in Fairfax, Virginia on Thursday (October 10).
While belting out her new single, "Slow Down," the 20-year-old songstress took a tumble, but quickly popped back up.
Taking the opportunity to shake a few fans' hands, Selena hardly missed a beat as the show continued without a hitch.
Though she famously dated Justin Bieber, Ms. Gomez seems to be resigning to a single life to focus on her career, tweeting, "Spending time with my cousin and her man... #3rdwheel #singleladyproblems #futurecatlady #werk."
Hello there, happy Friday! We have a government again! (Sort of.) You know you don't want to work anymore, and neither do we. Let's do nothing together. And by nothing, I mean let's discuss topics of your choice in the Kinja™ below.
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LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Shedding stark light on Nigeria's escalating war with Islamic militants, mortuary records from a single Nigerian hospital show the number of detainees who died in military custody more than tripled in June, the first month of a state of emergency in the troubled northeast region.
Overall, the records obtained by The Associated Press for the nine months from Oct. 5 to July 5 indicate that the military is killing thousands in its crackdown on the uprising in northeast Nigeria.
The records cover just one hospital, Sani Abacha Specialist Teaching Hospital in Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram, the movement fighting to uproot Western cultural influences from a country shared almost equally by Muslims and Christians. In the 30 days before the state of emergency was declared on May 14, 380 bodies were delivered to the hospital by the military. In the 30 days after, the number was 1,321.
For the whole of June, the number was 1,795, making it the worst month in the records seen by the AP, which has also witnessed many of the bodies being delivered to the hospital in military ambulances, escorted by armored cars.
The figure is much larger than the estimated number of Boko Haram fighters.
Nigerian government and military officials have refused to comment, and it's impossible to know how many of the dead had Boko Haram connections. But Nigerian law stipulates that even under a state of emergency, detainees are supposed to be brought before a magistrate within 48 hours and to have access to lawyers and family members.
A pastor said he was held at Maiduguri's Giwa Military Barracks after he and four other people were arrested because weapons were found hidden in the shoe factory where he works.
He described hundreds of naked people crammed into a cell meant for a couple of dozen. Once a day, he said, a soldier would throw a loaf of moistened bread into the cell to be brawled over. Some died of torture, he said.
He told the AP he was freed with the intervention of a Christian group, and his jailers' recognizing his prayers for salvation as Christian. He requested anonymity fearing military retaliation.
Amnesty International reported this week that hundreds are dying in detention: some taken from the cells and shot, some dying of suffocation or starvation.
The London-based human rights group said "credible information" from a senior Nigerian army officer indicated more than 950 people have been killed in the first six months of this year. The mortuary records seen by the AP list 3,335 bodies in that period, in just one hospital.
That figure alone is about nine times greater than the 400 civilians killed in Boko Haram attacks in the same period, according to an AP count of reported incidents.
However, Boko Haram has also done much to alienate public opinion. Fighters suspected of belonging to it have gunned down dozens of schoolchildren, some as they sat at their desks writing exams, and burned alive boarding school students locked into dormitories that were set ablaze.
The name Boko Haram roughly means "Western education is forbidden."
The group has also killed many more Muslims than Christians. In August, it gunned down 47 worshippers in a mosque. Last month it captured a muezzin, made him issue the pre-dawn summons to prayer and then killed at least seven elderly men who answered the call.
Local and international human rights groups say the troops deployed to combat Boko Haram are notorious for their excesses and have draconian powers to raid homes and detain people. They see a danger of a backlash from a poor population that feels marginalized and remote from the political center of Nigeria and its Christian president, Goodluck Jonathan.
The religions co-exist peacefully in the rest of Nigeria although fundamentalism, fueled by poverty and marginalization, has been growing among Christians and Muslims in the north.
Just days after the emergency was declared, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry noted "deep concern over credible allegations of gross human rights violations by Nigerian security forces." And in September, when he met Jonathan at the U.N., President Barack Obama "underscored the importance of countering terrorism via a comprehensive approach that creates economic opportunity and protects human rights," according to a State Department official.
On Thursday Nigeria was elected to a two-year seat on the U.N. Security Council. According to presidential spokesman Reuben Abati, President Jonathan believes it is "a glowing expression of support and encouragement for Nigeria's active participation in the promotion of peace, security and political stability in Africa and other parts of the world."
___
Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-18-Nigeria-Killings/id-e0b51e0bc9874e40abdb1c6fccfed9c5'What Does the Fox Say?'
FOX COSTUMES EXPLODE
... Thanks to Viral Video
Exclusive
There are going to be MILLIONS of foxes running around this Halloween ... 'cause the furry animal costumes are selling at record numbers this year -- and it's all thanks to that insane viral video "What Does the Fox Say," TMZ has learned.
By now, you're probably one of the 131 MILLION people who watched the bizarre, hilarious (yet strangely fascinating) video by the band Ylvis on YouTube (and if you haven't seen it, GET OUT FROM YOUR FOX HOLE!).
We spoke to 3 of the biggest costume outlets in the country -- Spirit Halloween, Buycostumes, and Amazon -- and we're told that fox costumes are exploding this year, crushing last year's sales.
In fact, one outlet says fox costume sales are up almost 40% from last Halloween ... and the number is expected to rise, with Halloween still another 2 weeks away.
But don’t worry – the costume retailers tell us they’re beefing up orders of bushy tails and pointy fox ears ... so it's not too late to jump on the bandwagon and join the skulk (see below).
Fox Fact: a group of foxes is called a skulk ... now you know.
Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!!!
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Want to understand Justin Bieber better? Join the club!
Luckily, the Biebs is laying out all the clues to the mystery of his heart in the brand new lyric video for his newest song All That Matters.
Is it meant to move Selena Gomez the way that Heartbreaker did? Or is it a message to his fans?
Ch-ch-check out the video (above) to see Justin pour his heart out in 3D!
Tags: 3d, all that matters, heartbreaker, justin bieber, lyric video, music minute, selena gomez
Mayor Cory Booker talks to supporters during a Senate election night victory party Wednesday in Newark, N.J.
Cory Booker's victory Wednesday in New Jersey's special Senate election didn't surprise anyone.
From the moment he captured the Democratic nomination in the reliably blue state, the Newark mayor was the heavy favorite to defeat Republican Steve Lonegan.
With his media savvy and national celebrity, the senator-elect is already a recognizable figure outside his home state.
But here are a few things you might not have known about Booker's election:
An Historic Election
When Booker is officially sworn in, he will become the ninth African-American in history to serve in the U.S. Senate, and just the fourth to have been popularly elected.
The last African-American elected to the Senate? Barack Obama, out of Illinois in 2004. The other two were Massachusetts Republican Edward Brooke in 1966 and Illinois Democrat Carol Moseley Braun in 1992.
The only current African-American senator is Tim Scott, the South Carolina Republican appointed by Gov. Nikki Haley last December after Jim DeMint resigned to head the Heritage Foundation.
New Jersey, A Republican-Free Zone
Counting Booker's victory, Democrats have now won 14 straight U.S. Senate races in New Jersey — the party's third-longest winning streak in the nation.
The last Republican Senate victory in the Garden State came in 1972, when Sen. Clifford Case won his third term (other Republicans were appointed to the Senate during this period, but not elected).
Hawaii and West Virginia are the only states with a longer GOP drought. A Republican Senate candidate hasn't won in Hawaii since 1970 or in West Virginia since 1956.
Booker vs. Obama
Booker won fairly comfortably Wednesday night, earning about 55 percent of the vote to Lonegan's 44 percent. Still, the score was closer than many expected — and Booker even lagged behind President Obama's state performance in 2012 when he won 58 percent to Mitt Romney's 41 percent.
Of course, it isn't a perfect comparison. Off-year or special Senate races garner far less attention than presidential contests, meaning dramatically lower turnout. And on top that, the election occurred on a Wednesday, rather than the traditional Tuesday.
The Never-Ending Campaign
Booker supporters shouldn't even bother to take down their yard signs: He's back on the ballot again in about a year.
While senators typically have a six-year respite between elections, Booker only gets a short breather — he won a special election to serve out the remainder of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg's term, which ends in January 2015.
That means Booker will be back on the campaign trail in no time, and that Democrats can expect more fundraising pleas from him in the coming weeks.
Google is working to improve the shopping experience from search results on mobile, and the most recent improvements are coming to the set of top links after making a search. The group of pictures and associated links under "Shop with Google" are known as Google Shopping results, and they're getting a little more real estate in the search results page now.
Now when you search for products that Google Shopping has results for, instead of just two or three images at the top, you'll get a side-scrolling list of several results that match your request. In addition, the images and titles will now be larger, making it easier to see at a glance.
Google claims that the new format will drive more traffic to the participating retailers, and it's pretty simple math to see why that would be the case. These are big changes to drive even more traffic to retailers before the critical holiday shopping season.
Source: Google Commerce Blog
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NEW YORK (AP) — A new report says funding for U.S. startups rose in the third quarter from year-ago levels, as venture capitalists poured money into a growing number of fledging software companies.
According to the report released Friday, total investments in startups rose 17 percent to $7.78 billion from $6.63 billion in the July-September quarter of 2012. The number of deals rose 7 percent to 1,005 from 937.
The software industry's $3.57 billion in funding accounted for the largest chunk of the total and marked a 77 percent jump from a year ago. It also marked the first time the industry passed the $3 billion mark in 12 years.
Software also accounted for the largest number of deals with 420, including nine of the quarter's 11 largest investments.
"It's an exciting time to be an entrepreneur with a software company," Mark McCaffrey, global technology partner and software leader at PriceWaterHouseCoopers U.S. said in a statement. "More venture capital dollars are going into more software deals than we've seen in the past decade."
McCaffrey added that innovative technologies in the software industry continue to become more valuable, prompting venture capitalists to increase their investments in the area.
Biotechnology came in a distant second place. Its funding fell 31 percent to $852.1 million for 123 deals, down one deal from the year-ago period.
The largest deal of the quarter was a $257.8 million infusion that went to San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc., which provides on-demand car service through iPhones and text messages. The money came from Google Ventures and TPG Capital LP.
Palantir Technologies Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based developer of analytics software, took second place with $196.5 million in funding from an undisclosed firm.
The MoneyTree study was conducted by PriceWaterHouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, based on data from Thomson Reuters.
Hunky time-traveling Ichabod Crane has made Chris Baker lose his head. Why is every other TV show an updated version of some classic fairytale or children’s story?
Ryley Walker.
Sometimes, friends of friends are the best way to discover new music. Or, at the very least, friends of artists you never want to miss live. This was the case with Ryley Walker, a close friend and frequent tour buddy of American Primitive guitarist Daniel Bachman. Walker would accompany Bachman in seriously raucous and psychedelic live sets only a couple years ago, and Bachman would tell me, "Just wait 'til you hear Ryley's stuff." Well, now it's here — and it's not at all what I expected.
With the charming swagger of jazz-folk troubadour Tim Buckley and the resonant, full picking style of Bert Jansch, "The West Wind" comes from Walker's first widely available release, a three-song 12". With acoustic guitar in hand and a voice like browned butter, Walker swings and sways in a lush string-and-piano arrangement right out of Buckley's Starsailor; it slowly picks up to a swirling gallop without bucking the rhythm.
The West Wind comes out digitally on Oct. 22 — and as a 12" EP on Nov. 29 — via Tompkins Square Records. Ryley Walker is currently touring Europe with Daniel Bachman.
A bloc of countries has issued a joint call for the creation of marine reserves in Antarctica.
The group, which includes the US, EU, France, New Zealand and Australia, saw their initial plans thrown out by opposition from Russia earlier this year.
But the new plan suggests significant scaling down of one reserve in the hope of securing agreement.
It will be submitted to a meeting in Tasmania next week.
The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), made up of 25 members with interests in the Southern Ocean, has been working since 2005 to establish marine protected areas (MPAs) in the region.
At a special meeting in July, plans to establish two giant reserves in the Ross Sea and in east Antarctica were tabled by a number of countries.
The Ross Sea proposal, supported by the US and New Zealand, would have banned commercial fishing in an area of 1.6m sq km.
The other reserve, supported by France, Australia and the EU aimed to protect 1.9m sq km on the Pacific side of Antarctica.
But Russia and the Ukraine questioned the legal basis of the plan that would have more than doubled the size of the world's marine reserves at a stroke.
Other countries, including Norway, China and Japan queried the science and the size of the proposed reserves and wanted the inclusion of a "sunset clause", which meant the decision could be reviewed in the future.
As CCAMLR operates on a consensus basis, the nations in favour of the plans were forced to withdraw.
Now ahead of the Commission's annual meeting in Hobart, the proponents of the reserves have issued revised plans and a call for their adoption.
Last month New Zealand and the US published details of a new Ross Sea plan. It cut the size of the reserve by 40% and left a question over the permanence of the arrangement.
While the proposal for east Antarctica was also revised, it remains essentially the same in terms of the area covered.
"The original bigger Ross Sea plan is now off the table," Paulus Tak from the Pew Charitable Trust told BBC News.
"It is now for a smaller area than was originally proposed. They are making the concessions to get the opponents onboard.
"Whether that will be a useful move for Russia and the Ukraine who put forward legal objections, remains to be seen."
In today's statement, the foreign ministers call on all members of the Commission to support the plans, saying that these regions are "widely recognised for their remarkable ecological and scientific importance".
They argue that the proposals before the Commission are based on "sound and best available science and will provide a unique laboratory for marine research, and will have profound and lasting benefits for ocean conservation."
However environmental campaigners like Paulus Tak are concerned that the proponents of the MPAs will make further concessions during the meeting.
"We call upon the states to maintain the ambition level, and as such each downgrading of the proposal is a matter of some concern from our side, but we want to see a successful outcome of these negotiations."
Another issue that could hold up the MPA proposal is the US government shutdown, which could prevent the American delegation from attending.
If that happens, the discussion on protecting the Antarctic could be held off for another year.
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Is the #Twinning idea a winner for Giuliana Rancic? Having a baby times three (baby Duke is still a little one, you know!) seems like a lot to handle, but Giuliana isn’t totally opposed to the idea of having two little babes arrive at once. Would it be work? Most definitely. But the always cheery celeb who just celebrated her son’s 1st birthday explains why it’d be OK.
OK! News: How Will Giuliana and Bill Celebrate Baby Duke’s First Birthday?
Watch: Giuliana and Bill’s Cutest Family Moments
The celeb recently opened up to Your Tango about parenting, love, and how her husband Bill helped her through her battle with breast cancer. When asked if she’d “freak out” if she had twins, she responded, “I mean … yeah. I used to always want twins and then I had one and went, ‘Whoa, that was hard.’ I don’t know how people with twins do it, but they find a way. To me, the more the merrier. So if we heard we were having twins, we’d high-five and then go, ‘Oh crap. What are we going to do now?’”
Click here to read the rest of the report from Your Tango!
Do you watch Giuliana and Bill’s show? Tweet @OKMagazine and leave a comment below!
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In Kill Your Darlings, Dane DeHaan (left) plays Lucien Carr, a man whose charm and wit quickly command the attention of the young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) in their time at Columbia University. John Krokidas' film chronicles the "Libertine Circle" they inhabited — Ginsberg's nickname — and the events that would shatter it.
In Kill Your Darlings, Dane DeHaan (left) plays Lucien Carr, a man whose charm and wit quickly command the attention of the young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) in their time at Columbia University. John Krokidas' film chronicles the "Libertine Circle" they inhabited — Ginsberg's nickname — and the events that would shatter it.
Kill Your Darlings
Rated R for sexual content, language, drug use and brief violence.
(Recommended)
With: Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, Michael C. Hall
Hollywood's been trying to get a handle on the Beat Poets for years. Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac led wild — and influential — lives. But films about them, like Naked Lunch and On the Road, have never really clicked with audiences. Kill Your Darlings may fare better, partly because it stars Daniel Radcliffe, and partly because the story centers as much on murder as on poetry.
It's 1943, time for student orientation at Columbia University, and incoming freshman Allen Ginsberg is on a quiet, dignified tour of the campus library when a student with the face of a choirboy leaps on a table with a book.
It's Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and the passage that student reads outrages the librarian enough to get him hauled away by guards, with Ginsberg — as played by Radcliffe with not a hint of Harry Potter about him — grinning broadly.
Truth be told, young Ginsberg is kind of smitten both by the handsome Lucien Carr and by his literary passion. He's soon hanging out with Carr in the dorm, talking poetry and fantasizing about a closer relationship.
Carr (Dane DeHaan), a young man who's anything but a choirboy, and entirely aware of the effect he has on others, soon introduces Ginsberg to a stoned young "Willie" Burroughs (a nice piece of impersonation by actor Ben Foster) and later to Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston). All of them are dreaming of changing the world, but not sure quite how to go about it.
Carr's formidable charisma becomes something of a problem when David (Michael C. Hall), his former lover and professor, won't let go.
Carr's formidable charisma becomes something of a problem when David (Michael C. Hall), his former lover and professor, won't let go.
They want to supplant Yeats' "Vision" with a "New Vision," but because they're college kids, their literary ambitions often take a back seat to drugs, drinking and pranks, including an elaborately planned but startlingly mild escapade at the Columbia library that gets them in all kinds of trouble.
Bigger trouble, though, is following Carr in the person of an obsessive admirer (Michael C. Hall), a former lover and professor who's long been writing Carr's papers for him — and who has recently been reduced to following him around like a puppy. How Carr deals with that situation gives the story its spine and also a startling climax.
First-time director John Krokidas doesn't make Kill Your Darlings terribly linear. When its heroes go on drug-fueled binges, so does his camera — at one point freezing other patrons at a jazz club in place so the amphetamine-buzzed poets can flit around them. And the director does some flitting of his own, through time with flashbacks, through space with abrupt switches in perspective, and through an eyebrow-notcher of a sequence that conflates three significant penetrations: Burroughs shooting heroin, Ginsberg's first sexual encounter, and the stabbing that will put a period on one fraught situation while creating another one entirely.
In writing circles, the phrase "kill your darlings" usually gets deployed by an editor as advice for a writer who's polished and labored over a favorite sentence so long that all the life has gotten squeezed out of it. "Kill your darling" means get rid of that treasured bit, and find a more natural way to say what you want to say.
The movie Kill Your Darlings is about budding artists who applied that advice to every element of their lives, abolishing rhyme and meter, declaring war on rules, traditions, even people who had the temerity to love them. They flail and they thrash, and Krokidas' film is just like them — as jazz-inflected and freewheeling as the Beat poetry these guys were about to unleash on the world. (Recommended)
