TALLAHASSEE, FL—Agreeing that the young phenom has what it takes to escape responsibility for his actions in the big leagues, a group of NFL scouts confirmed Tuesday that they are incredibly impressed by a local college quarterback’s proven...
NEW YORK—Noting that he has been with them “forever” and is taking good money away from younger, hungrier colleagues, executives at WebTrender Media have been quietly exploring options for getting rid of 24-year-old veteran employee Jaso...
since it worked last time, I'm going to say there's no way we win this game, either
The Saints bucked a trend last week by winning on the road, and they face a tougher road challenge in Seattle. The Seahawks are big favorites, according to the NFC Divisional playoff betting lines at Odds Shark.
The Seattle Seahawks are 15-1 SU and 12-4 ATS over their last 16 games at home and are currently going off as an eight-point home favorite against the New Orleans Saints.
The Seahawks have been dominant at home and have won five straight playoff games in Seattle over the years. They have won and covered five of seven meetings with the Saints in recent times.
Seattle finished the regular season with the NFC's top record, going 13-3 SU and 11-5 ATS to lock up home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Allowing just 14.4 points per game and 273.6 yards per game, the Seahawks separated themselves from the pack with the best defense in the NFL.
Ranking eighth in the NFL in scoring offense with 26.1 points per game and fourth in rushing with 136.8 yards per game, Seattle has a strong offense to go along with its elite defense.
New Orleans entered last week's game against the Philadelphia Eagles with a 1-5 SU and 0-6 ATS record in their previous six road games. But as a three-point underdog against a hot Eagles team, the Saints had an excellent day on the ground while rushing for 185 yards. New Orleans came away with a 26-24 upset on a last-second field goal.
That was just the Saints' fifth playoff cover in 15 tries dating back to 1988, according to the Saints-Seahawks betting report.
Drew Brees's road struggles continued as the star quarterback passed for just 250 yards with two interceptions, but the team found a way to win on the road.
When these two teams met in Seattle in Week 13, the results were disastrous for New Orleans. Seattle dominated the game in every facet to win 34-7 as a 6.5-point favorite. That game went UNDER the total, which is right in line with both teams' recent trends.
The total has gone UNDER in seven of New Orleans' last eight games as well as in each of Seattle's last five games.
There will be no shortage of motivation for revenge on the New Orleans sideline in this one. On top of being humiliated earlier this season, the previous meeting between these two teams came in the postseason of 2010 when the Seahawks stunned the Saints as a 10-point underdog at home.
But in the postseason every team is motivated, and the Saints are going to need more than just revenge on the mind to pull off another road upset this week.
Tucked away in a shrouded corner of Razer's booth at CES 2014 lies Project Christine, a stackable, customizable PC that looks unlike any gaming machine you've ever seen.
The idea behind Project Christine is simple: Remove the hassle and expense of ...
A new report from Finland says that people with metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, cholesterol, sugar, etc) do not follow dietary recommendations.
The saturated fat part is funny because this morning’s PoliticoPro Agriculture notes that the American Butter Institute (yes, such things exist) proudly announces that Americans are consuming more butter.
The Butter Institute’s press release, according to PoliticoPro, says:
Margarine and other spreads are no longer viewed as healthier alternatives…since 2002, Americans have increased butter consumption by 25 percent. In 2012, per capita consumption reached 5.6 pounds a year, a dramatic increase from the 1997 low of 4.1 pounds.
Fun fact: When a fake URL is mentioned on a TV show, the show’s network is required to actually purchase the URL, for whatever reason. It’s a quirk that Conan O’Brien and Stephen Colbert have taken advantage of from time to time, to hilarious effect. It’s also something that Law & Order dealt with over and over and over throughout its 20 seasons. Using URL search engine WhoIs, Internet user Jeffrey Thompson put together a list of all the domains mentioned on the long-running show, all of which are awkward, hilarious, and so, so dated. The list is below, but fair warning: It’s incredibly fun to imagine NBC parent company General Electric sitting on sites like UpYourButt.net and TheBaronMuchHumpin.com.
Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Wanda Sykes, and J.B. Smoove, Conan O’Brien, Todd Barry, Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, Robert Smigel, Chuck Sklar, Rick Shapiro
'As C.K. explained to Jay Leno, he still owes money from Tomorrow Night to his investors—some $10,000 apiece to Chris Rock, Jon Stewart, Denis Leary, Spike Feresten, and Brett Butler. So make sure to pitch in your $5, so they can finally get paid back.'
Long before he became the sort of Emmy-winning director that cable networks pretty much turn themselves over to, Louis C.K. directed a movie full of his comic friends that came and went without making much of a ruckus. A movie that wasn’t Pootie Tang—that had lots of ruckus—but rather C.K.’s directorial debut Tomorrow Night, which screened at 1998’s Sundance Film Festival, then faded into legend immediately thereafter. But now, according to an interview he gave on Monday’s Tonight Show, C.K. plans to self-release it on his website sometime next month, pricing it at the $5 standard that C.K. has adopted like a Subway of comedy.
Besides being of interest to Louie fans, Tomorrow Night features pre-fame performances from Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Wanda Sykes, and J.B. Smoove, Conan O’Brien in a small cameo as himself, and fellow funny people Todd Barry, Matt Besser, ...
If a T-rex were released in New York City, how many humans/day would it need to consume to get its needed calorie intake?
Tony Schmitz
About half of an adult, or one ten-year old child:
Tyrannosaurus rex weighed about as much as an elephant.[1]This always seemed a little off to me; my mental image of elephants is that they're in the same size range as cars or trucks, whereas T-rex, as Jurassic Park showed, is big enough to stomp on cars. But a Google image search for car+elephant shows elephants looming over cars just like the T-rex in Jurassic Park. So, great, now I'm also afraid of elephants.
No one is totally sure what dinosaur metabolism looked like, but the best guesses for how much food T-rex ate seem to cluster around 40,000 calories per day.[2]Food calories (kcal). Sources: This and this, and this with some notes from this and distraction from this.
If we assume dinosaurs had metabolisms similar to today's mammals, they'd eat a lot more than 40,000 calories each day. But the current thinking is that while dinosaurs were more active (loosely speaking, "warm-blooded") than modern snakes and lizards, very large dinosaurs probably had metabolisms that more closely resembled komodo dragons than elephants and tigers.[3]For big sauropods, we know this must be the case, because otherwise they would overheat. However, there's a lot of uncertainty surrounding T-rex-sized dinosaurs.
Next, we need to know how many calories are in a human. This number is helpfully provided, by Dinosaur Comics author Ryan North, on this wonderful t-shirt. Ryan's shirt tells us that an 80-kg human contains about 110,000 calories of energy.
Therefore, a T-rex would need to consume a human every two days or so.[4]Although a T-rex would likely be willing to eat several days to weeks worth of food in one meal, so if it has the option, it might eat a bunch of people at a time, then go for a while without eating. The city of New York had 239,736 births in 2011, which could support a population of about 1,000 tyrannosaurs. However, this ignores immigration—and, more importantly, emigration, which would probably increase substantially in this scenario.
The 33,000 McDonald's restaurants worldwide sell something like 15 billion hamburger patties per year,[5]They stopped reporting the "x billions served" number on their signs, but this website has some extrapolations. for an average of 1,245 burgers per restaurant per day. 1,245 burgers is about 600,000 calories, which means that each T-rex only needs about 80 hamburgers per day to survive, and one McDonald's could support over a dozen tyrannosaurs on hamburgers alone.
Ands if you live in New York, and you see a T-rex, don't worry. You don't have to choose a friend to sacrifice; just order 80 burgers instead.
And then if the T-rex goes for your friend anyway, hey, you have 80 burgers.
Tutorial: Aligning and Spacing Elements Using “Invisible” Artwork
A pretty simple trick this week, but one that I use all the time.
If you need elements to be aligned precisely to another object, and always an exact distance away from that object, simply use a rectangle with no fill and no stroke (an “invisible” object) to define the required alignment and spacing. It won’t be visible in your final artwork, but can be seen in Illustrator’s Outline view for precise adjustment as required.
In the example above (from my redesign of Portland, Oregon’s transit map), I needed to make sure that the blue parking symbol was always spaced correctly relative to the station label type. I placed one symbol where I wanted it, then drew an “invisible” rectangle from the centre of the circle across to touch the edge of the type and align with the type’s baseline. I also duplicated and flipped this rectangle across to the left, so that I could align the symbol to left-aligned text when required. Once I’d done this, I simply grouped the symbol with its two new invisible rectangles and copy-and-pasted it wherever it needed to go: accuracy guaranteed every time!
The image shows how the artwork looks in Preview view (top), and Outline view (bottom): press Cmd/Ctrl-Y to toggle between the two view modes.
It’s easy to forget that technologies take a long time to reach the masses even in rich countries like the US. But a new poll from Gallup suggests that the one thing that takes even longer than adoption of new technologies is the abandonment of old ones.
Just look at these numbers—58% of Americans still own a VCR, a device first introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1977. Sure, that’s down from 88% in 2005, but it shows that a majority of Americans are holding onto a device designed to play a media format that isn’t even available anymore.
Only 41% of Americans own a video game console, which means that on the whole, Americans are 40% more likely to have a VCR at home. Perhaps Netflix should rethink its focus on streaming?
Americans are almost as likely to own a tablet computer like an iPad (38%) as they are to own a video game console, which shows that there is still huge potential for growth in tablets. And as a whole, American households are still more likely to have a non-smartphone (45%) than a tablet, video game console, or access to a streaming service like Netflix.
Old technologies don’t die, it seems, so much as linger on far past their expiration date.
I was all set to give you a Game of the Year video, where I would detail my Game of the Year. The year being last year and the game being the game I liked the best that year, that year being last year – 2013. But then I played a couple of new games, and then all bets were off and I had to have a rethink. What a world, what a world. So the video is coming, but I just need to be sure of my choice first. In the meantime, can I give you a blow-by-blow account of a new game?
RAMPAGE
Haha! Blow-by-blow! Hahaha! That was actually really funny, but only if you know the game already or are enjoying a second read of my column. I always like to layer my columns with jokes that can only be appreciated on multiple readings. So when you return to this column in a few years, you’ll be doubled over by this point, for sure. Blow-by-blow. Incredible.
Rampage is a game for 2-4 players, and it involves becoming a giant monster and attacking a city and its population. Do you do this by carefully planning approaches and laying out strategies many turns in advance? No. Do you do this by managing a sophisticated “Monster Economy”, generating resources and finding synergy between various game powers? No. You do it by dropping and flicking and blowing bits of wood all over the fucker.
The city is full of little wooden people. These little people are stacked inside “buildings”. These buildings are pieces of card, stacked up high, with little wooden people between the floors. Your monster is a big hunk of wood. There is also a separate disc of wood representing your monster’s feet. You flick your monster’s feet to move around the city. When you get close enough to a building you can lift your monster’s body, hold it high above the game board, and then drop it onto the building. If you make floors fall clear of the building, you can eat them. If, at the end of your turn, there are little wooden people out in the open with no cover – GET THEM CHOMPED.
Also available in wood – vehicles. Available to throw, I mean. If your monster is in a city area with a vehicle, you can rest that little wooden vehicle on your monster’s head and FLICK it across the board. You can knock down buildings this way, and also knock down other monsters. Yeah, you can attack each other. Of course you can!
You can also BLOW. (When you re-read my column, this information will make the initial “blow-by-blow” comment extremely comical, guaranteed.) Blowing represents your monster breathing fire or something. I dunno. Anyway, you can rest your chin on your monster’s head and blow as hard as you can, blowing people and buildings and other monsters all over the place. What other game lets you put your chin where the action is? (Apart from the game we call SEX, I mean, where your chin is often near your opponent’s anus. Sorry, not opponent – co-op partner.)
So, amazing, right? Sounds fun. Dropping monsters, flicking monsters, throwing vehicles, breathing fire, eating buildings and people. Sounds great, right? And it is! But is there more to it than that?
IS THERE MORE TO IT THAN THAT?
“Hi, James Purefoy here. When I first read the script for Solomon Kane, available on Bluray now, I said to myself “But is there more to it than that?” This is the question every actor must ask himself. This is the question that brings an actor closer to the truth of his character, which in this case was Solomon Kane, the main character of the film Solomon Kane. Sorry, have to go now, my bath is running and there are two women in it.”
THERE IS MORE TO IT THAN THAT
There is more to it than that. Your monster has teeth. Whenever he eats people, he can eat as many people as he has teeth. But teeth can be broken, as anyone who has ever been hit in the face with a baseball bat by the Pope will testify. When another monster knocks you over, a tooth breaks. When you flick yourself off the board like some kind of idiot, a tooth breaks. Oh, and then there are those escaping people…
When people escape from the city (by being blown off, knocked off, etc) they are placed on a little track that dishes out penalties. These can break your teeth too. This track comes in two varieties – one is a single track for all the people, and the other is a little bit more thematic. Little green people who escape are the army. When their track fills, there is one kind of penalty. When the Blondes escape, there is another. WAIT, WHAT?
THE BLONDES?
Yeah, that was the only part of the game I disliked. A whole CHARACTER CLASS OF ESCAPING LITTLE FAKE PEOPLE called BLONDES.
BLONDES.
What year is this? 2013?
Anyway, moving on…
IS THERE EVEN MORE TO IT THAN THAT?
“Sorry, I’m still in the bath.”
YES, THERE IS EVEN MORE TO IT THAN THAT.
There are cards too. Character cards. Power cards. Secret Power cards. If your monster is a PACIFIST, he gets a bonus for eating the army. Hahahahahaha! Makes no sense. Great, though. The characters give each player different scoring targets, which is good, right? Powers like CLIMB let monsters make move flicks from the top of buildings and stuff. There’s a lot of variety in the cards, and it gives the game a lot more legs. Maybe twenty or so legs, which is quite enough legs for any body.
At the end of the game the stuff you’ve eaten scores you points. The people you eat are scored by sets of different colours, and then there are your card bonuses and stuff. In truth, the scoring is a little bit tricky for younger players, but if you’re about forty or something, and you probably are, you’ll work it out eventually.
IN CLOSING
This is a really good game. It’s something different, and joins Cube Quest as an essential light dexterity game in my gaming “Red Room”. It’s not the BEST dexterity game ever – that game is Ascending Empires. But it does what it sets out to do really well. It lets you smash shit up and have a little think about how well you’re going to score. And it looks beautiful!
RECOMMENDED. See you next time! And now watch money raining on Hugh Jackman’s son.
Imagine you're at the Vatican, hanging out with Pope Francis today. "Hey pope," you might ask, "How was your Epiphany on Monday?" referring, of course, to the feast day that marks the end of the 12 Days of Christmas. In response, Pope Francis might simply show you the above photo.
AP/Handout from Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano
In other words, pretty great.
Francis visited a living nativity scene on Monday evening, where this photo was snapped. At some point, things got a bit crazy and Pope Francis ended up with a baaaaaaby lamb around his neck. The imagery itself is also a biblical reference to the gospel of the Parable of the Lost Sheep, about a shepherd who leaves his flock of sheep in order to find a single one that got lost. The shepherd carries the sheep back home on his shoulders. Which, as it turns out, has a pretty good tie-in message to his Epiphany sermon, which was all about reaching out to estranged Catholics:
‘I would like to tell all those who feel far from God and the church — and I say this respectfully to those who are afraid or indifferent: The Lord calls you and wants you to be part of his people and does so with great respect and love!’’
The pope also talked to some kids and ducks at the living Nativity scene in St. Alfonso Maria de' Liguori parish church near Rome, adding even more images to his already impressive collection of photo moments:
AP/Handout from Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano
Ursula K. Le Guin appeared on OPB’s Think Out Loud in May 2013.
Michael Clapp / OPB
In the fiction category, Ursula K. Le Guin is nominated for the Ken Kesey Award for her book The Unreal and The Real. The prolific author is up against Amanda Coplin, nominated for her first novel, The Orchardist.
“Ever since I was a kid, I romanticized being a writer and being, you know, someone legitimate in the world of literature,” says Coplin.
Coplin says her book describes a landscape she loves in North Central Washington. It’s the place she grew up.
Whitney Otto and Roger Hobbs were also nominated for the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction. Thirty-two writers were nominated across seven categories in the Oregon Book Awards.
Winners will be announced March 17 at the Gerding Theater in Por
After Portland police called a bomb squad about a suspicious device, the object was taken away to be examined and destroyed.
Police were called Monday morning to look at something that was left at a building in North Portland. The object was on the steps of the Hereford House Food Pantry, on North Hereford Avenue.
After officers looked at the object, they called the Metropolitan Explosives Disposal Unit to the scene. That unit took the device to a safe location.
A friend recently said: "I want to learn how to code. How and where do I start?"
I want to learn how to code - Do I go to Ikea or grow my own tree?
It's like woodworking. You can START by growing a tree, then chopping it down and finishing it, sanding it, before you make a table. Or you can go to Ikea. More likely you'll try something in between.
Modifying a WordPress theme is going to Ikea. Writing you own web framework is growing a tree first because you don't like the existing trees. You have to decide where on the spectrum you want to be, from being a custom furniture maker from the Woodright's Shop or someone who assembles prefabricated pieces made by someone else.
Ok, where do I start?
Very cool. I'm always happy when folks want to learn to code. The Facebook thread continued with the usual suggestions:
Then the more interesting questions started to get to the root of the matter.
What's the difference between a Coder, a Hacker, a Programmer, a Developer, and a Computer Scientist?
These words might all mean the same thing to you. Perhaps you hear geek, nerd, and dweeb, but we all know these have very important differences. Knowing the differences also can give you a sense of how deep you want to go on your coding adventure.
Coders - Can pretty much figure out it. It'll work, but it won't be pretty.
Hackers - usually low level folks, skillful, with detailed understanding of some area deeply, often scarily deeply.
Programmer - Write code and understand algorithms. Often work alone and well.
Developer - Are the best generalists, can use lots of different systems and languages and get them to talk to each other. Are true and broad professionals, work with people, and communicate well.
Computer Scientist - Need to be able to prove how computers work, at a theoretical level. Are usually math people also.
If you are closer to one of these already you can get an idea of which direction to head.
Are we assuming web programming?
Everyone on the thread assumed some kind of web programming, which makes sense, since nearly everyone's on the web in 2013. However, just a few years ago we might have sat our friend down and made a Hello World app at the console, or perhaps loaded up Visual Basic, dragged a button, and MessageBox'ed Hello World.
Is Markup Code? Lots of people said "learn HTML and CSS," but I don't think that's coding in the classical sense. As a gateway to JavaScript and Web Services, I think it's a good place to start. The thing is, though, that while not every app is a web application that makes HTML in a browser, most applications are connected applications in some way. Apps consume data from services, send notifications, texts, emails and tweets. Nearly every application is distributed in some way, even if it's just a simple app that calls a web server for some data.
If you want to be a coder today, or, let me go further and say if you want to be an effective coder, you will want understand the web and what really happens when you type twitter.com in your web browser. Just like you should understand how trees grow if you want to be a carpenter, how engines work if you want to be a race car driver, or where the water comes from if you want to be a plumber. Heck, you should really understand all of these things if you want to be an effective human. ;)
What do we really mean by "I want to learn to code?"
What's the question under the question? Does she want to make websites? Design them? Does she want to make mobile applications and take them on the go? Does she want to create a gadget that will text her when she leaves the garage door open too long? These are all very different endpoints and there's lots of great ways to get started if we dig in a little.
Interested in Web Development?
Any of the many "Learn to Code" sites mentioned above will do fine.
You can totally jump in to the web, learn a little JavaScript and start making web apps, and you should. But as with everything, if you've got deeper interest, there are a few different paths to going further. Do a little research into the breadth of possibilities available to you, and you just might try a slightly different path.
Razer, the company known for their gaming peripherals, announced at CES today their "Christine" project that is a PCI Express modular design. All components are individually packaged and allows anyone to easily assemble a PC...
"The U.S. version of Hard will tell the tale of “a Brentwood housewife who inherits her husband’s failing porn company,” which she then runs while attempting to keep it secret from her gal pals. (It’s like Weeds, but with dicks.)"
Having been founded upon the bedrock of bare cheerleader breasts on 1st & 10, and each year since innovating creative and prestigious television what got boobs in it, HBO has officially reached the point where it’s explicitly making porn. Or rather, a show about porn, according to the channel’s need to contextualize gratuitous nudity in order to make its subscribers feel like they’re also getting some culture. And so Variety reports that HBO will remake the “porn comedy” Hard, a series that hails from France—the country that practically invented sex as art, as borne out by all those tits you see in the Louvre.
The U.S. version of Hard will tell the tale of “a Brentwood housewife who inherits her husband’s failing porn company,” which she then runs while attempting to keep it secret from her gal pals. (It’s like Weeds, but with dicks.) Developing the show are ...
While Peter Jackson's vision of Middle Earth may be the dominant one right now, artists have long put their own spin on J.R.R. Tolkien's world. Dresden Codak cartoonist Aaron Diaz shares his own visual interpretation of Tolkien by illustrating each character of The Silmarillion, as well the book's characters and creatures.
Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes: "Facebook settled out of court over displaying ads that told you which of your friends had 'liked' a product or service, and another lawsuit is currently pending over the use of minors' pictures specifically in similar ads. (Not to be confused with another recently filed lawsuit alleging that Facebook converts private messages into public 'likes'.) Google+ tried to limit its liability by only showing the faces of users over 18 when showing which friends 'like' a page. I'm all for more privacy for social networking users, and if it's true that Facebook has been silently marking users as publicly 'liking' a page because they mentioned the page in a private message, the plaintiff's lawyers ought to clean them out for that one. But in cases where you willingly and knowingly 'liked' a page, Facebook and Google+ ought to be able to tell that to your friends in advertisements, without being sued for it." Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.
Jelly is an app created by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Ben Finkel that allows users to search for information by asking friends. Users can take photos and ask questions of their immediate friends, and if they know they can provide the answer. If they don’t, they can forward your question to another friend who may be an expert on the topic. Jelly is currently available to download from Google Play and the iTunes App Store.
ANN ARBOR, MI—A study released Thursday by sociologists at the University of Michigan has found that 90 percent of the biological parents of adopted children ages 6 to 12 are millionaires who own sprawling mansions with huge backyards.
Tucked away in a shrouded corner of Razer's booth at CES 2014 lies Project Christine, a stackable, customizable PC that looks unlike any gaming machine you've ever seen.
The idea behind Project Christine is simple: Remove the hassle and expense of ...
AP/Handout 
