firehose

The NFL reversed course Tuesday, reinstating Brandon Browner fewer than three months after he was suspended indefinitely.

Cornerback Brandon Browner was reinstated from his indefinite suspension by the NFL on Tuesday, resolving the conflict before it made its way into the legal system. Browner announced the news on Twitter:

I received wonderful news today. The NFL has reinstated me, and I now have the opportunity to prove to the fans and my teammates how important this sport is to me. I realize now more than ever that being part of the NFL is not a right, but a privilege. I am grateful that Commissioner Goodell and my agent were able to resolve this issue in a positive, productive manner so I can continue my career, provide for my family, and help my team win a Super Bowl. Thank you to all who have gone out of their way to show their support. I will live up to your expectations of me.

Browner was expected to file a lawsuit against the NFL in federal court this week, according to ESPN. He was suspended in December for violating the league's substance-abuse policy, and went on to miss the remaining two regular season games and the playoffs for the Seattle Seahawks.

Browner didn't dispute the positive test. Instead, he and his agent were planning to challenge the suspension because he was playing in the Canadian Football league, not the NFL, when he failed to report for mandated testing. As a result, Browner argued, he should not have been elevated to Stage 3 of the league's testing program and put within "one strike" of an indefinite suspension.

The NFL initially held strong in its stance, denying Browner's appeal. Something apparently changed in the months since, however, with the threat of a lawsuit possibly playing a significant role in the NFL's decision to lift the suspension.

Browner will now become an unrestricted free agent on March 11. Had the suspension remained in place, Browner's agent said the lawsuit would have been filed to seek financial damages resulting from Browner's inability to become a free agent. Before suspending him indefinitely, the NFL reportedly offered Browner a reduced nine-month suspension, but Browner held his ground. That decision ultimately proved wise for the 29-year-old cornerback.

Coffee Stain Studios, the indie developers behind bizarre Joystiq fixation Goat Simulator, have revealed a release date for the odd little game: April 1 - appropriately, April Fool's Day. Alongside the release date, the developers have also revealed...

An anonymous reader writes "Back in 2012, Android accounted for 79 percent of all mobile malware. Last year, that number ballooned even further to 97 percent. Both those data points come from security firm F-Secure, which today released its 40-page Threat Report for the second half of 2013. More specifically, Android malware rose from 238 threats in 2012 to 804 new families and variants in 2013. Apart from Symbian, F-Secure found no new threats for other mobile platforms last year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Honor Harrington: Officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy of the 401st century, tactical genius, and star of 13 best-selling scifi/military books by David Weber. Now Honor comes to conquer comics with help from Image and Top Cow. (Read our exclusive interview with Weber .) But Honor's tale isn't the only scifi epic in this week's comics…

Read more...

As a disabled person who wears leg braces and uses a wheelchair, finding clothes I can even wear has always been a challenge.

Trousers and shoes are the worst. My clothes shopping experience usually involves a lot of sighing at the endless rails of skinny jeans, leggings and high heels before returning home to search for boyfriend jeans on eBay (to pair with Ugg boots on days when my feet can’t handle any other shoes, naturally). Anything to stop me having to spend every day in sweatpants. Wide-legged trousers are always a welcome change, but don’t get me started on harem pants or those deceptive dropped-crotch trousers that were popular a couple of years ago. Sure, they fit over my braces, but at what cost? Accidentally cosplaying as a member of X-Factor-era One Direction?

As I grew up, I began to think that standing out can be a wonderful thing, that having an awkward or different looking body opens up all manner of possibilities of challenging what a “normal” or “natural” body should look like. I started dressing in bolder clothes. Clothes that helped tell the world who I was, clothes that challenged the stereotype of disabled people as a pitiful, unattractive, sexless homogeneous mass. It made me feel great. After all, clothes are supposed to be fun, right?

It turns out I needn’t have bothered. The latest on-trend, anti-trend trendy trend is here, and it’s called normcore, coming soon to your local independent vegan cafe. The tagline: Normal, the New Different! (or something.)

Normcore, as Fiona Duncan puts it in NY Mag, is a “self-aware, stylized blandness.” It’s Uniqlo windbreakers, unbranded sweatpants and nondescript running shoes. “Embracing sameness” is postured as a way of freeing yourself from the tyranny of a world where looks are everything. Normcore offers “a blank slate and an open mind” to those who swap their skinny jeans for straight up dad-jeans.

“Brilliant,” you might think. “No more try-hard posturing and letting our clothes do the talking.” Normcore is an equalizer.

The only problem? Not all bodies are created equal. Or, to be more precise, not all bodies are not valued equally. To approach the situation in any other way is bullshit.

What passes for a self-aware rejection of fashion on one person will be seen in a completely different way on another body. I think back to activist Eddie Ndopu’s brilliant article on what clothing means to him as a self-described “black queer crip,” and how he uses fashion as a way of challenging ableist assumptions of disabled people’s place in the world. As he puts it: “Sweats and clothes labeled ‘frumpy’ engender pity. And that is why I refuse to wear them in public.” Normcore may be one form of resistance, but dressing to the nines is his.

Original Source

Map of China by Stereotype

Selfies have always been a must among fighter jocks and you can find thousands taken by military pilots in the most unusual flight conditions. However, selfies taken while launching missiles are much more rare because firing activities involving the launch of an air-to-air missile don’t take place too often.

The Partnership for A Healthier America Innovation Challenge is fast approaching, and we’d like to give you some insight into the challenges we’ll be tackling over the course of the weekend on the issue of Childhood Obesity.

The Challenge: Childhood Obesity
The first area we’re focusing on in the challenge of childhood obesity has to do with the food experience children have during their school days, which often accounts for 2/3 of their daily nutritional intake. Additionally, the school is where food culture is socialized through peer interaction; cafeteria choices; nutrition and health classes; and examples set by counselors, teachers, coaches, and staff. The school day offers a major opportunity for educating kids about appropriate food choices and how to form healthy habits.

Information about food can be made available in a variety of different contexts during the school day. Some of these touch-points include, but are not limited to*:

• Cafeteria
• Classes
• Counseling/Advisement Sessions
• Sports, Clubs, and After-School Activities

*Additional touch-points will vary by school/district/state.

The Opportunity
These educational touch-points are sorely underused, so PHA is challenging participants to create a comprehensive educational program that taps into these avenues.

Some core questions to consider prior to the event:

1. How can we help teachers/staff make the entire school day healthier?
2. What role can technology play in creating a continuous healthy experience throughout the school day with contiguous transitions between individual classes/activities?
3. How does a practice become a normalized part of culture? How can we design with this in mind?
4. How can we infuse information about nutrition into the already existing curriculum in an exciting and fun way?

Building within the already existing frameworks of education in the US is key to successful implementation, as many schools – especially those in underprivileged areas – do not have the funding, resources, staff, or bandwidth to implement large, costly changes. Keep the end user in mind at all times.

Example Solutions

• A digitally interactive program for 3rd graders that combines grocery shopping with lessons on healthy eating.
• A role-playing game for middle school students where XP and leveling up are gained through accrual and appropriate usage of healthy food items.
• A mobile app that combines individualized nutrition programs and quantified self data metrics with counselor oversight.

While not all schools will be able to adopt accredited versions of these potential solutions, we would like to build with the purpose of a half-credit elective available as an option.

Contextualizing Data and Resources
In order to be prepared for the weekend, we recommend that participants do some (light!) background research on causes and resources available. The list below contains data and current applications that can potentially be forked for use in creating solution curricula.

• Chore Wars: A RPG for getting chores done.
• PHA: Resources. Explore all of the resources section.
• PHA: 2013 Progress Report.
• National School Nutrition Standards Overview.
• National School Lunch Program (NSLP) History.
• NSLP Overview.
• School Breakfast Program.
• Healthy Schools Policy Campaign.
• Free and Reduced Price Lunch Eligibility Guidelines

Happy hacking, and see you all in DC next week!

steampoweredcupcake:

b-ryyy:

88floors:

Joseph Begley lights up rooms in a cheeky way with ‘Slap It’

A quick pinch or squeeze of the ‘slap it’ lamp by London-based designer Joseph Begley brightens up rooms with its warm glow. made from realistic feeling silicone, the cheeky light responds to pressure sensors when it is touched, directly turning it on or off.

Ok can I have

i want a few of every color in a room and have a bunch of people over for a buttslapping rave where we have to make the room flash by slappinbutts

Girlfriend!

New Subway Map-Themed Game in Development: Mini Metro!

This looks extremely promising, especially since development on Third Rail seems to have stalled (no updates on progress since mid-last year). It’s being developed by small New Zealand-based studio, Dinosaur Polo Club (great name and logo!). Here’s the preamble from their website:

Mini Metro is a minimalist subway simulation game about designing efficient subway networks. The player must constantly redesign their line layout to meet the needs of a rapidly-growing city.

The game, currently available as a rough and ready alpha version (that’s pre-beta, folks!), currently has four maps — London, New York, Paris and one other that I haven’t identified as yet. Each map in the game looks like that of its real life equivalent, right down to the colours used to represent routes: a neat touch! That’s London seen in the mesmerising GIF above.

In short, I want to play this right now. Hurry up and take my money.

Developer’s Project Site | Devblog

A man with 18 cats has remodeled his 4-bedroom, 2.5 bath home in Goleta, California into a feline playground paradise, complete with a spiral stairway, aerial walkways, climbing poles and a brand new HVAC system. The remodeling was done by Trillium Enterprises, who describe the home as a “Garden Oasis“.

A peaceful place to getaway from it all; this four bedroom, two and a half bathroom home has been transformed into an oasis full of life. Plants, animals, playful colors, and every electronic gadget you can think of has been incorporated into every aspect of this home. From the underwater camera in the Koi pond, to the built in cat walks and fully integrated appliances this home meets every imagination.

The renovation cost about $35,000. While this may seem excessive to some, the fact is that he’s giving 18 cats a very happy home.

images via Trillium Enterprises

via Daily Mail

It looks ... plausible, actually.

By way of Cut4, we learn that Brian Wilson now throws a knuckleball:

Man, that thing is filthy. The knuckleball, too.

We’re ALL wesen here.

If Ted and The Mother are alive and happy in 2030, it’s understandable, if a little eccentric, that he’s regaled his kids with eight years’ worth of stories about how he became the person who ultimately would fall in love with their mom. If she died young, though, why would he spend 90% of his breath telling them about Slap Bets and Robin Sparkles videos rather than the stories he lived through with their dead mother?

Original Source

catbushandludicrous:

Fact: If there were a button I could press to make Sir Patrick Stewart a regular fake news correspondent I would never stop pressing it

supuru:

julessonoferis:

Derping and posing.

[video]

i think the best thing about this video is that he whistles the EVA theme at the end
i fucking kid you not

Big Bird is a pelican who was separated from his flock during a storm and washed ashore on the banks of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. The staff of Greystoke Mahale, a nearby resort, took in the wayward pelican and taught him how to fly again.

He didn’t fly for some weeks but with encouragement he got the idea. We aren’t sure how much flying he may have already done before arriving here but he was pretty shaky in his next attempts on the beach. We would run up and down flapping our arms and simulating flight for him. He would look on curiously until one day he showed us how it was done! It was short and uncontrolled and we would look away when he was landing as he seemed to not distinguish between ground and air speed coming in way too fast and endangering our beach furniture.

He finally got it right and with a GoPro strapped to his beak, Big Bird took flight.

images via Greystoke Mahale, GoPro

via GoPro

submitted by chonkyt [link] [22 comments]

v3rgEz writes "TV streaming service Aereo expected broadcasters would put up a fight. The startup may not have seen the Justice Department as a threat, however. The Justice Department has now weighed in, saying in a filing that it's siding with major broadcasters who accuse Aereo of stealing TV content. In its filing, the Justice Department noted it doesn't believe a win for broadcasters would dismantle the precedent that created the cloud computing industry, as Aereo has previously claimed. The case is expected to go before the Supreme Court in late April."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

submitted by seffend [link] [3 comments]

Economic Times

Could century-old theft explain mystery of gold coins? CNN (CNN) -- Chief Clerk Walter Dimmick was convicted of stealing six bags of gold coins -- worth $30,000 -- from the U.S. Mint in San Francisco in 1901. More than 100 years later, a California couple unearthed a secret stash of coins, with a combined face value ... Australia's Perth Mint gold sales rise in Feb, silver fallsReuters Stash of $10 million in buried gold coins offers lesson in property and tax lawABA Journal Questions raised over $10m treasure troveNews24 San Francisco Chronicle -KTUU.com -Los Angeles Times all 175 news articles »

Branding may have finally reached its Mannerist phase.

Planetary Interactive G.I.S.-on-the-Web Analyzable Database

Twenty-five years ago, miles of marshy land and grasses separated the small fishing outpost of Buras, Louisiana, from the Gulf of Mexico. But years of erosion – along with the one-two punch of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita – have washed away much of that barrier. Today, the islands, inlets, and bays that once defined the coastline of Plaquemines Parish have begun to melt together.

Like all coasts, the land around the Mississippi River is constantly evolving. In past centuries, that process was slowed by the annual flooding of the River's vast delta, which brought new sediment to replace what was lost.

But climate change, coupled with better engineering (which brought effective channeling and stronger levees), have turned this coastline into one of the most rapidly eroding areas of the U.S. In the area around Buras, gone are the formerly distinct waterways of English Bay, Bay Jacquin, and Scofield Bay, leaving a vast expanse of water between the mainland and the barrier islands.

  The area south of the town of Buras, Louisiana, in 1990 (left) and today (right). NOAA has retired the names English Bay, Bay Jacquin, and Scofield Bay, acknowledging the vast water that now separates Buras from the barrier along Pelican Island (NOAA Chart 11358)

Each year, this part of the coastline loses around 16 square miles of land, according to David Muth, the state director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Mississippi River Delta Restoration Project. And until quite recently, even the most advanced maps of the area did little to reflect the changing environmental reality.

But in the last few years, renewed mapping efforts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have begun to catalog these changes. These new maps show water where there was once marshy land, and bays where there were once small inlets.

And in the last few years, more than 30 of the region's names – including English Bay, Bay Jacquin, and Scofield Bay – have been officially retired from the map. Meredith Westington, chief geographer at NOAA's Office of Coast Survey, keeps a running list of these newly extinct places handy on her desk. Though communities have become attached to the names of their nearby landscape, she explains, that it just "doesn't make sense to leave some island name in the chart where there’s no island there anymore."

  Coastal erosion has dramatically changed the size and shape of Adams Bay and Bastian Bay, once far more distinct waterways (NOAA Chart 11358).

These marshy regions of coastal Louisiana aren't normally the types of areas that attract close attention from NOAA, which focuses on larger ports with more significant commercial navigation traffic. But following Katrina and Rita, reports of debris prompted an unusual amount of new surveying efforts, according to Mike Espey, who oversees these projects as the chief of the Applications Branch of the Remote Sensing Division of NOAA's National Geodetic Survey.

In the old days, mapmakers used on-the-water travel or interviews about local terminology with Bayou fishermen to get the lay of the land. Now, Espey’s office uses a combination of aerial photographs and satellite images to catalog the new geography of this rapidly eroding region.

This, Espey explains, makes it possible to track changes to these tiny and navigationally insignificant areas. Since much of the surveyed land is marshy and ill-defined, these maps tend to mark where vegetation has stopped growing, more than anything else. The changes to these most recent charts are still nowhere near the finest scale of detail possible.

"The official maps are really trying to catch up."

Still, the land loss we can see is stark. "You're kind of seeing a culmination of decades of changes," Westington says. "And it looks very dramatic."

In many cases, the names lost forever from the maps represent places that have long since ceased to exist. "You’re cruising along and the water will be three, four feet deep, and the GPS will say you’re on land," Muth says. "The official maps are really trying to catch up, but land loss is so fast in certain parts of the coast that no one can keep up. You can have a piece of land out there that retreats 20, 30, 40 feet a year."

Bob Taylors Pond, one of the names officially put on the historical list, has become a part of Zinzin Bay (NOAA Chart 11361).

The latest surveys are still being processed, and already Westington's office has decided to retire ten additional names that appear on even NOAA's most recent set of charts. And future changes to the landscape could alter these maps even more. Soon, far larger bodies of water – like the several-miles-across Barataria Bay and Terrebone Bay – may lose their natural barriers and combine. And land rebuilding efforts, outlined in the state's 2012 Coastal Master Plan, could lead to new deposits of sediment, and eventually new land, in other parts of the river's vast delta.

No matter what, the map will certainly change again. "Because deltas are so dynamic, they're either building or they're eroding," Muth says. "The idea that you can pick a point in time and say, 'This is how we want the coast to look,' is, first of all, the wrong way to think about it. And second of all, it creates an impossible situation."

Top Image: Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser stands on a remnant of Cat Island, which has largely eroded into Barataria Bay, in Plaquemines Parish, La., in April 2013  (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert).

omgtsn:

pleased to meet you i’m birb