When to contact Kickstarter backers for their shipping address:

http://www.stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter-lesson-69-the-address-update-email/

georgetakei:

Oh myyy. http://ift.tt/1aWhJQw

OH GEORGE YOU BAD BOY. :)

schwit1 writes "In 2006, climate change experts from Bangor University in north Wales found a very special clam while dredging the seabeds of Iceland. At that time scientists counted the rings on the inside shell to determine that the clam was the ripe old age of 405. Unfortunately, by opening the clam which scientists refer to as 'Ming,' they killed it instantly. Cut to 2013, researchers have determined that the original calculations of Ming's age were wrong, and that the now deceased clam was actually 102 years older than originally thought. Ming was 507 years old at the time of its demise."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Guardian correction notes the paper mistakenly demoted Chris Christie, and added almost 200 pounds to his frame:

Chris Christie was wrongly described as a Republican mayor in a Shorter cuts item (Weighty issue, 11 November, page 3, G2). He is governor of New Jersey, not a mayor. In addition, 24 stone was converted to 240kg. That should have been about 152kg.

Original Source

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: The time-travel rom-com About Time and time-travel family movie Free Birds have us revisiting older, better time-travel movies.

Primer (2004)

Time travel generally gets depicted in the movies as a form of magic. Characters might toss around jargon like “wormhole” and “flux capacitor,” but the idea is basically “abracadabra!” Almost without exception, the journey itself is instantaneous. Shane Carruth’s mind-bending Primer is having none of that. The time machine that its start-up wonks, Aaron (Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), accidentally invent in Aaron’s garage obeys the laws of physics (apart from the minor detail of impossibility). In order to travel back in time for, say, eight hours, they have to actually spend eight full hours in the machine—which means they can’t go back any further than the instant ...

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Kentuckians like to tell you that 95 percent of the world’s bourbon comes from their state. What they won’t tell you is that pretty much every last drop of that bourbon comes from a handful of conglomerate distilleries.

Very interesting. I knew that most of the big bourbon labels were owned by a few big companies, but I didn’t realize how many upscale labels were just longer-aged bottlings of the low- to mid-range bourbons.

I’ve saved the big tree image for future shopping reference.

∞ Permalink

This season, Colts punter Pat McAfee has emerged as a cult hero. In this episode of Breaking Madden, we push his ratings as high as they can go, and find out whether a punter can win a game all by himself.

Video games taught me much of what I understood, and misunderstood, about football as a kid. When I was seven years old, I was playing Tecmo Bowl with an older kid, and the play-calling screen introduced me to the word "punt."

Me: What's a punt?

Older kid: It's stupid.

Me: But what is it?

Older kid: You just kick the ball to the other team and then they have the ball.

Me: Why?

Older kid: I don't know. It's stupid.

I hadn't yet grasped the concept of field position, because when you are playing Tecmo Bowl with Bo Jackson's Raiders, completing a touchdown drive is as guaranteed and effortless as hitting the carriage return lever on a typewriter, and the concept of field position simply isn't taught. I was fascinated that the option to punt was even offered. I wondered, although not in these words, whether the act of meaningless, willful surrender was valuable in a way I was too young or stupid to understand.

We've all seen our share of miserable, 20-punt football games, and I hate them as much as anyone, but it's the only act in sports in which we intentionally sign away possession and our ability to score. It's unique, it requires a team to call in a specialist, and once in a while, it's extraordinary to see.

First note: see that 91-yard punt that's plotted in 1989? That, I was delighted to learn, was booted by Randall Cunningham. Second note: the NFL hasn't seen a 90-yard punt since 2001, and only five in the history of the league. It's easy to understand why. By definition, the punter has to punt the ball inside his own 10, and through a specific cocktail of power, accuracy, favorable wind, favorable bounce of a ball shaped to bounce at random angles, and ineptitude of the punt returner, he has to coffin-corner it at the other end of the field.

Or you can just fire up Madden, fool around with the settings, and blast a 99-yard punt with Pat McAfee on your first try.

Mr. McAfee is the subject of this week's BREAKING MADDEN for two primary reasons, both of which were previously documented in THIS WEEK IN GIFs. For most punters, a mis-handled snap spells absolute doom, but McAfee collected the ball, scrambled to elude a tackler, and managed to pull off a stellar punt while on the run.

@jon_bois it's an incredible honor fine sir

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) November 11, 2013

All right then, let's wreck some fools. This is a two-phase experiment.

PHASE I: PAT MCAFEE, PUNT-GOD.

The Madden NFL 25 version of Pat McAfee already boasts terrific ratings: he holds a 97 in kicking power, a 94 in kicking accuracy, and an overall rating of 94. Just for good measure, I cranked every single one of his ratings as high as they would go.

That means that McAfee is now the best in the league in terms of speed, acceleration, trucking ability, tackling ability, and every other skill that could possibly apply to him. I'm doing this because McAfee is not just going to punt. These are the rules:

1. I will play as the Colts in a night game against the Titans in Tennessee, just as they will this Thursday evening.

2. As the Colts, I will only call three offensive plays: punt, field goal, and fake punt pass. In other words, McAfee will be directly responsible for 100 percent of Indianapolis' scoring. (He has also been installed as the No. 1 kicker on the depth chart.)

3. On the "fake punt pass" play, McAfee will never be permitted to throw. He'll make improvised scrambles every time. He's going to own 100 percent of any and all touchdowns that might occur.

In addition, I tooled around with the game sliders and pushed the universal "Kick power" and "Kick accuracy" settings as high as they would go. This is not a simulation. This is a dreamscape of our greatest hopes and fears.

PHASE II: BUILD A PUNT TEAM FULL OF TWITTER USERS.

Special teams units are kind of tricky to edit in Madden, but I did manage to replace most of McAfee's punt team. His new friends are seven feet tall and weigh 400 pounds. They're mediocre 65/99s in every category, with the following exceptions:

99/99 in Strength, Hit power, Run blocking, and Tackling.
0/99 in Speed and Acceleration.

In other words, these guys are terrific blockers who also happen to be slow as the Dickens. They're far too slow to be of any help to McAfee if he happens to scramble upfield. Remember, he's doing as much as he can all by himself.

As usual, I found these players on Twitter.

if you would like to be in the next Breaking Madden, please tell me what you like to do for fun in Indianapolis

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) November 11, 2013

Here are the folks who will be blocking for Pat McAfee:

The Chevy Lumina was a sedan and a minivan, which makes it the most Indianapolis vehicle possible. Also, Did You Know: The Indianapolis expressway system is actually a stretch of asphalt that is 200 feet long and 7,500 lanes wide. You just merge from one end to the other, park on the shoulder, get out, and stumble across the mulch and granite to wherever you are going, which is also decorated with mulch and granite.

I've disparaged the city of Indianapolis more times than I can count, and here, my dear friend Pete affords me the opportunity to place it in context. I've called it "The City by the Land" and "Mashed Potatoes: The City." It really does have less going for it than other American cities of similar size.

But I live in Louisville, a smaller city 90 minutes south that sits in the same general forgotten chunk of flyover country. I love Louisville dearly, but whenever I travel to a metropolis, I get jokes. It happened again when I visited New York last week: "Louisville? Why the Hell would you ever live in Louisville?"

I want to check the geo-social elitism, and I want to effectively argue that Louisville is a special place, but when I'm in New York or Montreal or D.C., I just can't. They've got all the things. Louisville has, like, four things. And man, when I knock Indianapolis for only having one and a half things, I feel like a toddler throwing alphabet blocks at the family cat. In those times, I feel a pathetic sort of solidarity with Indianapolis -- a city that, like Louisville, sits on the side of America's abdomen in a region too nebulous to be part of the Midwest or South or anywhere at all.

Anyway.

Scrubs was as staggeringly boring as most sitcoms of the aughts, which would have been fine, except unlike the Everyone Loves Raymonds, it dug its hooks into some of my friends. I was exposed by proxy.

Forty years from now, I'll be digging through my attic with my grandkids, one of whom will stumble upon a small velvet box. He or she will open its hinged lid to find a medal as golden and glistening as the day it was stamped with the words: "DIDN'T ENJOY THE TELEVISION SHOW SCRUBS."

"Grandpa! Grandpa, how did you get this medal?" My lip will quiver, and my eyes will well with tears, and those tears shall be the wages of pride.

Honestly, for some of these selections, I just scrolled through my mentions and chose the tweets that gave me fundamentally Indianapolan images. Chevy Lumina? Yep. Scrubs? Yep. Motorola StarTAC phone? Oh, sure. 65 percent of Indianapolis is wearing one right now. In 2013, and on a belt clip, and via the belt that came with the cargo shorts.

Man, you ever try to force cottage cheese through a ball pump? Ain't easy.

I think this is completely natural, but one of the upsides of living in Indianapolis is that it's quite safe, as its mechanics move with the velocity of the sliding doors at the Target. Most of them are, in fact, the sliding doors at the Target. I'm anticipating objections from residents of Indianapolis, so fine. Yes. You also have multiple T.J. Maxx locations, and we're all very impressed.

This is good advice.

And this is precisely the level of go-gettedness I'm after. Lace 'em up, friend!

THE GAME.

This is what an opening kickoff looks like if you max out every possible kicking setting and statistic.

KABOOOOOOOOOOM

The game's physics don't actually allow the ball to fly higher than the top of the stadium; it appears to hit an invisible wall of sorts. If it didn't, I think this ball might have cleared the entire stadium.

With Super Pat McAfee, kickoffs suddenly became fun. I started trying to kick unofficial field goals off the tee, and I had no problem doing so.

I kind of need to use multiple angles to illustrate how magnificent this kick was:

That little speck floating across the sky is the ball. At the moment it cleared the uprights, it appeared to be 40 or 50 feet above the bottom bar. McAfee really might have been able to kick a field goal from a tee at his own goal line.

As longtime readers of BREAKING MADDEN know, this game tends to get kind of cranky if I fool around enough. It sure didn't seem to like it when I called "fake punt pass" a dozen times in a row. Keep your eye on the Titans' Ropati Pitoitua, who starts at the far left of this GIF:

Once the computer realized I was scrambling with McAfee, Madden said "the Hell with realistic physics" and made Pitoitua streak to the other side of the line at 50 miles per hour. And he missed the tackle entirely, too. Serves him right.

McAfee, for his part, was a HOSS.

Once he crossed the line of scrimmage, McAfee couldn't depend on anyone to make blocks for him, so he often had to be his own blocker. He could knock Titans over like bowling pins, and he could also dart his way down the field to gain 10-yard chunks at a time.

But on top of venturing past the line of scrimmage without any teammates, he was also running out of the punt formation, meaning he had to start running from far behind the line. It clearly telegraphed his intentions well ahead of time, and I just couldn't find a way to bust loose for a long run.

About those teammates ...

This is Mr. Hansen, proudly wearing Peyton Manning's old uniform number. The CPU was clearly so fed up with my silly adjustments that it stopped trying to create a realistic simulation, opting instead to crudely slam players into each other and have them run in place until they fell down. I'm telling you: if true artificial emotions aren't already here, they're on their way. My Xbox 360 might not be able to appreciate sorrow or wonder, but it sure knows how to get cranky.

So did the Colts' brand-new punt unit. Please see Mr. Gebow nonchalantly step out of bounds and timidly try to blend into the (opponent's) sideline as he makes his way to the Gatorade. WHILE THE PLAY IS STILL GOING ON.

Hydration is nothing to be bashful about, friend. Drink up! Ain't nobody gonna bite you! Shoot.

As the game progressed, Madden really started to throw a fit.

Mr. McAfee, if you're reading this, I am terribly sorry. I didn't intend for this to descend into the realms of horror.

Madden really let me know how it felt at the very end. This, it decided, was the "Play of the Game."

Lots of remarkable things happened over the course of the game, and Madden chose to select the play in which I intentionally ran my kick returner out of bounds in order to give McAfee as much field as possible. I am probably not going to purchase a GMC-brand vehicle!

At the half, the Colts led 16-0. McAfee had kicked three field goals, one from 60 yards out, and had also managed to scramble for an 8-yard rushing touchdown. In the second half, though, the Titans' offense woke up and tied the game at 16, and the Tennessee defense had finally managed to halt my fake-punt antics. I suddenly had a lot of trouble trying to advance the ball.

We headed to overtime. The Titans won the coin toss and kicked a field goal on their first possession, meaning McAfee and the Colts absolutely had to score.

And this is how it ended.

For more football video game miracles and catastrophes, check out our other episodes of Breaking Madden.

An anonymous reader writes "Starting with version 3.7, POV-Ray is released under the AGPLv3 (or later) license and thus is Free Software according to the FSF definition. 'Free software' means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them. Full source code is available, allowing users to build their own versions and for developers to incorporate portions or all of the POV-Ray source into their own software provided it is distributed under a compatible license (for example, the AGPL3 or — at their option — any later version). The POV-Ray developers also provide officially-supported binaries for selected platforms (currently only Microsoft Windows, but expected to include OS X shortly)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boston Herald

Obama naming Harvard Medical School physician Murthy as surgeon general Boston.com WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is nominating a Harvard Medical School physician as the nation's next surgeon general. Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy is co-founder and president of Doctors for America, an organization that says its mission is to ... Obama Selects Health Policy Advocate as Surgeon GeneralNew York Times Obama Will Nominate Vivek Hallegere Murthy as Surgeon GeneralTIME Obama intends to nominate Indian-American his Surgeon GeneralNDTV Politico -ModernHealthcare.com all 37 news articles »

I love @Hasselbeck -- he just walked up to set and asked when the Titans video tribute to him will take place tonight.

Seattle's only Heavy Metal Opera, Aeterno Elementum, is returning to the stage this November at the Historic Everett Theater. On November 15th, 16th, 22nd and 23rd, Ara’Kus Productions will once again be performing its dark, atmospheric tale of betrayal, fate, and the end of the world in Aeterno Elementum’s third successive year on stage. Featuring stunningly choreographed fights between fully armed and armored knights, live fire performance and a cast of talented actors all set to Ara’Kus’ soaring and epic operatic heavy metal music, Aeterno Elementum is a unique and provocative show that is as much experienced as it is seen. In a world crippled by corruption and cruelty, a priest will seek to purge the world of evil and restore purity, causing the rise of four immortal generals. Once men but now twisted and corrupted beyond recognition, the generals will lead an army of twisted undead thralls in a campaign that will see the world brought down. It is a tale of treachery, faith, greed, lust and cruelty that will highlight that most important of qualities: hope. Told through the haunting lyrics of the Ara’Kus band and choir, the powerful performances of the actors, and intense action sequences between armored warriors, Aeterno Elementum is an unforgettable experience. Doors are at 7:00pm, show begins at 8:00pm each night. All ages. Get your tickets here!

Movement seeks to "reclaim" ancient symbol from the Nazis.

In high school, I worked at a Renaissance Faire. And now, 15 years later, America seems to have jumped on the bandwagon as well. While I once huddled alone with "The Mists of Avalon," the 1983 revisionist Arthurian legend, the ersatz Middle Ages have perhaps never loomed so large in the pop cultural imagination.

LEMON FUCKING CURD:

fuckingrecipes:

THIS AIN’T YOUR WEAK-ASS SHIT THAT COMES IN A JAR, THIS IS THE REAL MOTHERFUCKER THAT TASTES OF LEMON AND SWEET CUSTARDY GOODNESS AT THE SAME TIME. FUCK. THIS IS A LEGACY RECIPE FROM BEFORE MRS BEETON HAD A COOKBOOK SO YOU KNOW THIS SHIT WORKS OUT.

TAKE THREE…

Life scientists now have a preprint server all their own! Like the similarly named arXiv, the newly launched bioRχiv is a place where scientists can upload their research papers the minute they're ready to share them with the world (that could be days, weeks or even months before their formal publication). But as the name implies, bioRχiv is for biological fields only.

Read more...

Artist Shanti Grumbine cuts intricate designs out of New York Times newspapers for her series “Kenosis.” Her designs are inspired by stained glass windows, illuminated manuscripts, and other ancient art forms.

In my project Kenosis, I utilize the erasure and excision of the New York Times Newspaper to elicit a sacred experience of the everyday. By physically removing content, I make space for what has been censored in media as well as what is lost in the translation of experience into words.

via Field Projects Gallery, Lustik

BBC News

Hundreds held over Canada child porn BBC News Police in Canada say 348 people have been arrested and nearly 400 children rescued during a three-year investigation into child pornography. At the centre of the inquiry was a Toronto-based firm that allegedly sold DVDs and streamed videos of naked ... Almost 350 suspects nabbed in huge child porn bustCBS News Hundreds of British paedophiles still at large as Project Spade fails to net any in ...Daily Mail Toronto man charged in huge worldwide child-porn bustToronto Star The Globe and Mail -The Independent -New York Times all 144 news articles »

Avant-garde songwriter Jamie Stewart’s project Xiu Xiu will release an album of Nina Simone covers on Graveface Records entitled Nina on December 3. Recorded with musicians Ches Smith, Tim Berne, Tony Malaby, Mary Halvorson, and Andrea Parkins, the record was inspired by a tour date opening for Swans in Austin, where Stewart and Swans frontman Michael Gira discovered a mutual love of Simone’s music. Below, the video for “You’d Be So Nice,” a version of Cole Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To,” which Simone recorded for the live album Nina Simone At Newport in 1960. If this first track is any indication, the album is sure to be full of loose and experimental takes on Simone's arrangements.

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If you're a fan of the DC Animated universe, you're probably familiar with the voices of Kevin Conroy (Batman) and Tim Daly (Superman). Daly, and his son Sam Daly, have a web show called The Daly Show, where we've previously seen the voice of Green Lantern, Nathan Fillion get up to some hilariously immature behavior. This time, Conroy gets to show us he could (and should) totally play a live-action Batman. Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

Pioneering fashion design house Alexander McQueen has teamed up with Damien Hirst on a collection of skull scarfs. Alexander McQueen has been creating beautiful skull scarves for ten years and this new series of 30 designs draws from Hirst's "Entomology" artworks. Above, photographer Sølve Sundsbø's short video celebrating the collaboration. "Alexander McQueen & Damien Hirst Scarf Collaboration"

In an "exception" to established police rules that frown on retail security work, the Mercury has learned, Portland cops have been collecting hundreds of dollars in overtime checks from downtown's new Galleria Target ever since it opened this summer.

The bureau's contract (pdf) with the department store, obtained through a public records request, was born out of planning for its grand opening festivities in late July. That's a normal arrangement: Businesses or nonprofits routinely pay police hundreds of dollars to help manage crowds, as we reported over the summer.

But unlike most contracts, tied to specific events, Target's arrangement with the city has been allowed to continue well beyond that roll-out period—and could stretch into 2014. As an example of how durable that relationship has become, work at the Target has been made available to officers for 21 of the 30 days on this month's calendar, for $63 an hour. The contract comes after the Mercury's reporting found an Occupy-related Bank of America contract, for some 40 hours a week, was allowed to continue for nearly two years.

That puts the bureau in a difficult position—something that top managers acknowledge. A policy directive enacted in 2009, under former Chief Rosie Sizer, discourages contracts that are "primarily a security function for the sole benefit of the establishment" and are "focused solely on the interests of the business." The change, unpopular at the time, was driven by Sizer's distaste for security work at the downtown Ross Dress 4 Less.

Chief Mike Reese's office, when asked about the contract, signaled a difference in philosophy between the two administrations. Sources say Reese, back when he was Central Precinct commander downtown, had worked closely to shape the Ross contract; it was seen as a way to cut down on call-outs to a shoplifting hotspot. But the 2009 directive, in any case, remains on the books (pdf) and officially in place.

"It is an exception," says Commander Bob Day, currently in charge of Central Precinct. Day not only approved the Target contract, but said he also took the extra step of running it past Assistant Chief Larry O'Dea, Reese's top aide in charge of bureau operations and patrol staffing. Indeed, notations on the contract obtained by the Mercury make clear Day waited to bless the ongoing work until hearing back from the chief's office.

"I'm fully aware that the directive is in place," he also said, saying my questions were "reasonable."

Asked how he squared the Target contract against the Ross directive (first reported years ago by Willamette Week), Day made two points: (1) The Target contract, he says, won't run "indefinitely." It will be re-evaluated at the end of the year, after the holiday rush. (By way of context, the bureau has an annual contract with Lloyd Center for overtime security work.) And (2) the nature of the police work involved is different than what Ross required.

Day says the Ross contract amounted to officers sitting around and busting shoplifters. As he sees it, cops working Target are supposed to get outside the building, patrolling sidewalks and not just the inside of the store. "Here it's more of a community-based approach," letting people get to see officers and managing crowds. That jibes with the language in the contract—although it does require officers to carry Target radios.

But Day also said something potentially controversial: that the work is also about patrolling for sidewalk violations—aggressive panhandling and obstructions. He said that helps police and the community but that it also "benefits Target to have positive, safe environment."

Tim Kerns, who negotiated the contract for Target, specifically mentioned crowd management when contacted by the Mercury. "That's the tip of the spear of their involvement here," he said.

Secondary employment contracts, as the bureau's policy manual calls them, are a strange thing overall. Though bureau officials must approve all contracts, modify their terms as necessary, and set overall policy, the Portland Police Association is charged with scheduling the officers who work the security jobs.

Daryl Turner, PPA president, called the Target contract "a community policing tool." He explained it as such: When people see officers outside downtown stores, "it makes people feel very comfortable. Therefore, people want to come in the store. They feel safer."

So far, through early November, PPA figures show officers have worked some 7,033 hours on 1,261 different secondary employment jobs.

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MIT has demonstrated a "Dynamic Shape Display" that can physically change shape to render 3D content. As Fast Company reports, the display is called inFORM, and it's a large surface that sits atop a series of pins, actuators, and linkages. By moving each actuator, inFORM can move the pin it's attached to up or down, allowing for a wide range of interactions.

A projector mounted above the surface provides context to the shapeshifting pins, giving them color and highlighting depth. In a video released by MIT, the table is shown moving a ball, mirroring a book, displaying 3D charts, and giving an extremely visible smartphone notification.

---

When used in conjunction with a Kinect sensor, inFORM gets a lot more interesting. The sensor is able to accurately map and interpret the position of 3D objects, and MIT's system uses that data to allow you to move the table's pins with just your hands. This can even work remotely, as demonstrated by the video, which shows an MIT staffer interacting with items via a video conference.

MIT says it's exploring "a number of application domains" for inFORM. Key areas of interest include 3D visualizations of CT scans and other medical uses, device interaction, and the manipulation of physical objects. It's also very interested in mapping and terrain models, which could be used by urban planners and architects to better visualize and share 3D designs. The MIT Tangible Media Group, which is responsible for inFORM's creation, says it's currently collaborating with MIT's Changing Places group to explore the possibilities for urban planners.

It's extremely impressive stuff, but it's just one step on a long path to what MIT calls Radical Atoms. First conceptualized over a decade ago, Radical Atoms are what MIT believes will be the future of interactivity. The idea is that we presently interact with computers through graphical user interfaces (GUI), while inFORM and other projects like it offer up a tactile user interface (TUI).

MIT likens TUIs to a digital iceberg: just the tip of the digital content emerges "above water" into the physical realm. Moving past TUIs, the end game is Radical Atoms, a future in which "all digital information has physical manifestation ... as if the iceberg had risen from the depths to reveal its sunken mass."

Get it while Google's still not entirely evil!

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

Wait what

Original Source

DJ Scott Melker’s The Melker Project has been putting out free mixtapes over the past year mashing up hip-hop artists with The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac. But his latest release is by far his best work, combining the 80’s pop styling of Daryl Hall and John Oates with Wu-Tang Clan, T.I. and other hip-hop artists for Ballin’ Oates. The first track mixes Wu-Tang’s “C.R.E.A.M.” with “Maneater,” and other highlights include “Kiss On My List” with Twista and Kanye West. It’s five tracks and 20-minutes of incredible mashup work that should get Hall & Oates stuck in your head for the next few days.

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Original Source