রবিবার, ৩০ সেপ্টেম্বর, ২০১২

Jerry Greene: It's time to mock spam, make NFL picks

Spam. Never heard of it? Allow me to educate you.

The word is pronounced, er, "spam."

As a noun, it supposedly means "a canned meat product made mainly from ham." Ha. Actually, I think that's how it got its name, which stands for "spurious ham," hence Spam.

As a verb, it means "to send the same message indiscriminately to great numbers of (suckers) recipients on the Internet." Invariably, spam messages will want you to click on a link that probably will ask you innocent questions such as, "Where have you hidden all your money?" or "Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend a year in a foreign jail?"

And spam invariably makes promises. Let's see what's in my "spam folder," shall we?

?"View your arrest records here." Thanks, Mark, but I already know my arrest records.

?"Urgent ? Help me distribute my $12 million." This poor woman's husband died, and she has all this oil money that she wants to give away. Hey, I use oil! Maybe she'll give some to me!

?"Are these five foods polluting your brain?" This is my favorite. They wouldn't tell me the foods unless I clicked on a link, which I wouldn't do. But I'm guessing that I can name at least one of the deadly foods: Spam.

Fabulous Five Football Picks

Last week: Speaking of worthless spam, my picks went 7-9 straight up (27-21 for the season) and a mortgage-wrecking 5-11 against the spread (21-26-1). But at least I can try to avoid disaster this week, which is more than the replacement refs can say.

Miami (1-2) at Arizona (3-0) ? Cards favored by 6.5

If the Fish didn't have buzzards' luck, they wouldn't have any luck at all. Now they are truly Fish out of water in arid Arizona, facing a team that won by 4, then won by 12, then won by 21. There's some kind of mathematical formula for that, and the Fish won't like what comes next.

Jerry says: Cards by a progressive 31.

Cincinnati (2-1) at Jacksonville (1-2) ? Bengals favored by 2.5

Please note that after his preseason holdout, Gags RB Maurice Jones-Drew is off to his best start yet with 314 rushing yards in 3 games. So who wants to tell me again how much practice a good RB needs? Practice? We're talking about practice?! Now, the rest of the team, they need practice.

Jerry says: Bengals by 5.

Washington (1-2) at Tampa Bay (1-2) ? Yucs favored by 3

Yucs Interim Coach Greg Schiano said: "We've got to stop being known for the kneel-down play." How droll, Coach. The problem is that it is usually the other guy's kneel-down. Do you even practice it? But there could be a chance here because this looks like a truly awful game. Yucs can't score, but Native Americans can't stop anybody from scoring. Tough call.

Jerry says: Yucs but just by 1.

San Diego (2-1) at Kansas City (1-2) ? Chiefs favored by 1

Source: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/os-jerry-greene-cheap-seats-0930-20120929,0,2623653.story?track=rss

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Preserving old ships is dear to U.S. veterans, costly for museums

MOUNT PLEASANT, South Carolina (Reuters) - The Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum, a popular tourist spot in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor, is facing the same challenge as other U.S. Navy ship museums: keeping retired, once-storied warships afloat.

Its World War Two destroyer, the USS Laffey, just had a nearly $13 million restoration. The almost 70-year-old World War Two aircraft carrier, the USS Yorktown, will need eventual repairs at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

The USS Clamagore, a 1945 submarine at a dock nearby, could roll over in the next hurricane without extensive work to shore up its hull. While a veterans' group tries to raise enough money to save the sub, museum officials are making plans to have it towed to sea and turned into an artificial reef.

"Every ship cannot be kept as a floating museum," said Robert "Mac" Burdette, executive director at Patriots Point, which as the country's oldest aircraft carrier museum draws 230,000 visitors a year. "I wish they could. The money's not there in the world anymore."

The nation's 48 Navy ship museums are trying to balance preserving history and sentiment with the expense of maintaining huge, aging warships, a delicate act complicated by the fact that most do not get funding from the U.S. Navy or other government entities.

The ships need maintenance that was once done daily by hundreds of sailors, and a few need significant restoration to stay afloat. With the country strapped by budget woes, those ships may have to be sunk if money cannot be found.

At Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, the 1892 USS Olympia, a relic of the Spanish-American War and the world's oldest steel-hulled ship still floating, needs up to $20 million worth of work, said museum marketing director Hope Corse.

The museum does not have the money and cannot raise it, so it is looking to transfer the Olympia to one of two interested groups out of state, she said.

That solution is not ideal. The ship has not been hauled out of the water since 1945, and towing it would be expensive and risky, said Jesse Lebovics, museum historic ships manager.

REPAIRS PRICEY, BUT APPRECIATED

Other museums have funded costly repairs through loans from state governments or a combination of ticket sales, donations, grants and events. The Navy does not help finance the ships it began donating to museums in 1948, museum officials said.

"They have to fund the fighting ships, the ones that are still there," Burdette said.

In June, the USS Texas, a 100-year-old World War One battleship near Houston, sprang a leak. "And it led to many more leaks," said Andy Smith, ship manager for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which operates the ship museum. "We took on a lot of water."

Repair and environmental cleanup cost $2 million, Smith said. With funds that include a $25 million state bond, the ship will now get major repairs, he said.

South Carolina's Patriots Point is a state agency but receives no taxpayer dollars toward its $9.5 million annual budget, Burdette said. The museum was able to restore the Laffey over the course of three years with help from a $9.2 million loan from the state.

"It's beautiful," said 92-year-old Wilbert Gauding of Ravenna, Ohio, during a recent visit to the ship.

An original crew member, Gauding said he was a machinist's mate second class aboard the Laffey on D-Day, June 6, 1944. "We escorted the boats across the (English) Channel," he said. "We did a lot of shelling of the pillboxes on the beach over there."

"If you don't bring this home to the next generation, they'll forget what his generation did for us - the sacrifice they made for our freedom," said Gauding's daughter, Pat Goodhart, 63.

On the nearby Yorktown, rust streaks the hull and bulkheads. Belowdecks where the public is not allowed, painted green Xs mark corroded deck metal that might not bear a person's weight. Most of the flight deck and a number of steel hull plates on the 888-foot (270-metre) carrier will eventually need to be replaced.

To those who might suggest sinking the old warships rather than paying for the repairs, Burdette answers that doing so with the Yorktown could cost as much as $60 million. "We have married her for better or worse for a lifetime," he said.

Having opted to focus on raising money for its centerpiece exhibit, Patriots Point hopes to find a buyer who would pay to sink the Cold War-era Clamagore within the next few years in order to create an artificial reef and relieve the museum of that cost burden.

The decision upset hundreds of Clamagore veterans, who have responded by raising about $30,000 toward the $3 million needed to save the submarine.

They are not optimistic about the likely success of their efforts.

"I don't think we're going to be able to come up with the bucks," said veteran George Bass, 86, of Salisbury, North Carolina, who served for nine years on the Clamagore. "It means everything to us. It would be just like losing a member of your family."

(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/preserving-old-ships-dear-u-veterans-costly-museums-120730655.html

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শনিবার, ২৯ সেপ্টেম্বর, ২০১২

When your eyes tell your hands what to think: You're far less in control of your brain than you think

ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2012) ? You've probably never given much thought to the fact that picking up your cup of morning coffee presents your brain with a set of complex decisions. You need to decide how to aim your hand, grasp the handle and raise the cup to your mouth, all without spilling the contents on your lap.

A new Northwestern University study shows that, not only does your brain handle such complex decisions for you, it also hides information from you about how those decisions are made.

"Our study gives a salient example," said Yangqing 'Lucie' Xu, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in psychology at Northwestern. "When you pick up an object, your brain automatically decides how to control your muscles based on what your eyes provide about the object's shape. When you pick up a mug by the handle with your right hand, you need to add a clockwise twist to your grip to compensate for the extra weight that you see on the left side of the mug.

"We showed that the use of this visual information is so powerful and automatic that we cannot turn it off. When people see an object weighted in one direction, they actually can't help but 'feel' the weight in that direction, even when they know that we're tricking them," Xu said.

The researchers conducted two experiments. In the first, people were asked to grasp a vertical stick with a weight hanging from its left or right side. People easily reported which side they felt the weight was on, even when they had their eyes closed.

The researchers then used a set of mirrors to occasionally flip the view of the object so that it looked like the weight was on the left, when actually it was on the right. And although people were told to report on which side they felt the weight (with their hands), the visual image strongly influenced the direction that they felt the weight was coming from, especially when the weights were lighter.

In the second experiment, the researchers tried harder to convince people to ignore the visual information by carefully explaining the nature of the "trick."

"People still could not ignore the visual information," said Xu. "In fact, the effect even works on us, and we designed the experiment!"

Steven Franconeri, co-author of the study and associate professor of cognitive psychology at Northwestern, said the brain is constantly making decisions for us that we don't know about or understand.

"These decisions are usually smart and based on vast experience," he said. "In this study's example, your brain is automatically using visual information to tell your hands what they are feeling. We can show that these decisions are happening by manipulating the information your brain receives -- we mirror-reverse the visual information and your brain now tells your hands that they are feeling the reverse of what they are actually feeling. This inference is mandatory -- you feel it even if you know it's not true."

Franconeri said this is not a "bug" in the brain's operation.

"In the vast majority of cases, you want to 'delegate' decisions like this to the unconscious parts of your brain, leaving you free to focus on less straightforward problems, like following driving directions or enjoying your cup of coffee."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

  1. Xu Y, O?Keefe S, Suzuki S, Franconeri S L. Visual influence on haptic torque perception. Perception, 2012; 41 (7): 862 DOI: 10.1068/p7090

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/ZsB-2DO61PE/120928125258.htm

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