Shark tag info might assist with rules

Many anglers will probably recall that this past fall and winter there was much talk about proposed shark fishing regulations that would increase the minimum size for sharks that may be kept by fishermen from the current 54-inch fork length to a whopping 96-inch fork length.

Since few anglers have or will ever land a mako of that size, and some species — such as the blacktip shark — never grow that large, such a regulation would effectively require that anglers release every shark they land.

The irony is that the proposal was not intended to provide additional conservation to species that recreational fishermen typically land, such as the makos and blacktips, but was supposed to help protect the dusky sharks that NMFS claims recreational anglers are bringing in. Even though dusky sharks have been a prohibited species for 12 years, it’s claimed that we fishermen continue to land them mistakenly thinking that they are some other “allowable” type of shark.

Needless to say, when the proposal was made, a lot of fishermen stood up to NMFS and claimed “hogwash” to both the new size limit and the assertions that we’ve landed the thousands of duskies they claim we have. Prompted by such a strong public outcry against the proposed regulations, NMFS backed off a bit and elected to “address the dusky shark overfishing and rebuilding plan in a proposed separate action,” which gave them some breathing room to consider alternative actions, rather than push their original plan through in time for the 2013 fishing season.

So the fight was neither won nor lost, it was just postponed until after the summer. Between now and then, you can bet that NMFS is hashing over its numbers and getting its ducks in a row so that “if” it deems it necessary to again propose such harsh restrictions on recreational anglers, it will be prepared to respond to whatever arguments come their way.

As I reported this winter, a huge part of the problem with shark management is and always has been the poor identification skills of fishermen. So many sharks are caught by anglers who go on to report that they boated or released one species when it was, in fact, something else altogether. The catch data fishery managers have used throughout the years are anything but spot-on accurate.

Anyone who targets sharks should make the effort to know what they might catch, but you can’t expect all anglers to be experts at shark identification. Many sharks are caught accidentally by those who have no intention of hooking a shark when they leave the dock. None of this is good, but it’s just the way it is.

To help alleviate some of the uncertainly of reported shark landings, this year, Maryland Department of Natural Resources will require all sharks caught and kept by recreational anglers be tagged in the same manner that bluefin tuna and billfish have been tagged during the last few years.

The process will require that before a shark can be unloaded from a boat, a catch-card will have to be filled out and turned in to an appropriate dock office or tackle shop. When the card is turned in, the angler will be given a plastic tag to put around the shark’s tail to indicate that the catch has been recorded and that it is OK to be removed from the boat.

Surely some anglers won’t be happy about having yet “another” regulation being thrown at them. But the hassle will be worth the effort because the information provided by the tagging program will help fishery managers to make decisions based on fact.

It’s as dazzling as a neon-lit cityscape and nearly as sprawling: Lucy Kirkwood’s epic new drama is rich, riveting and theatrically audacious. A co-production with Headlong, the tirelessly inventive touring company founded by Rupert Goold, it feels like an early statement of intent for Goold’s upcoming tenure as artistic director of the Almeida, which begins this September. Fizzing with wit and intelligent ideas, it’s handled with impeccable flair by director Lyndsey Turner. The results are stunning.

The play’s title is drawn from Niall Ferguson’s book The Ascent of Money, in which he considers globalisation and the uneasy relationship between behemoths China and the US. Kirkwood gives economic and cultural issues a human face – albeit one that shifts in and out of focus throughout the dragon’s-tail plot twists of her riveting theatrical thriller. The non-stop action begins with an image: that of the famous ‘Tank Man’, the lone, slight figure clutching two plastic shopping bags, who stood defiantly in the path of the tanks during the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989. Joe Schofield (Stephen Campbell Moore) is an American photojournalist who snaps a picture of that historic moment. Twenty-three years later, with trade relations with China a major issue in the American election campaign, Joe pitches the idea of a story investigating what became of this nameless hero to his hard-boiled newspaper editor (Trevor Cooper), and flies to Beijing in search of leads. En route he encounters Claudie Blakley’s Tessa, a British market researcher commissioned by a US credit-card company to find out what makes modern Chinese consumers tick.

The themes under consideration are thrillingly myriad. As well as the big socio-economic questions, Kirkwood’s shutter clicks away on ideas of personal and political responsibility and the power of the image, particularly in the internet age, when cyberspace – subject to repressive state control in China – is beset by trolling and self-important white noise, when every story or picture can easily be manipulated and newspapers are in decline. As Joe’s editor points out, no piece of journalism can run without space below for comments by “Assholes Anonymous” – “because God forbid an opinion should go unvoiced”. Joe’s photograph of Tank Man itself is ripe for exploitation, finding its way into Tessa’s client pitch – “Look,” she says, pointing out the figure’s dangling plastic carriers, “he’s been shopping.”

Es Devlin’s design conveys both the multiple locations and the layered complexity of the piece with slick skill. The set, a little like an oversized camera, is a giant rotating cube with sliding apertures; on to its sides are projected video images, by Finn Ross, that conjure scenes from both Beijing and the Big Apple with filmic detail and elegance, along with scores of reportage-style pictures on contact sheets – the kind of photographs from which the world creates its narratives and its history. This is theatre as epic in scope and visually impressive as the work of Robert Lepage – and if it’s also as occasionally diffuse, it makes up for it with smart-talking, film-noirish style. Kirkwood, for some years a dramatist of perspicuity, has here created a work of real brilliance. Scintillating.Read the full story at www.parkeasy-pgs.com!

Dialog Bluetooth chip boasts battery life of four YEARS

Anyone considering a smart wristwatch or fitness-monitoring wristband will be pleased to hear that Dialog Semiconductor has created a really tiny Bluetooth chip ideally suited to such applications.

The company is trying to brand the new chip SmartBond but can’t help using the less-media-friendly DA14580 when discussing the technical achievements involved in getting a Bluetooth stack into such diminutive dimensions. That size knocks power consumption down below 4mA when transmitting and receiving, and 600nA when on standby – a state in which Bluetooth Smart devices are expected to spend most of their time.

That four-year battery life is based on a 225mAh button cell powering a device sending 20 bytes of data a second; imagine an exercise wristband or shoe-mounted pedometer, which (Dialog informs us) would be limited to a couple of years using Bluetooth hardware from its competitors.

SmartBond isn’t really a Bluetooth chip; it’s an entire system, more comparable to a network card than a processor. The idea is to offload the radio processing into the embedded ARM allowing the device into which it’s fitted perform other parking guidance.

The idea that Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) will push the standard into the Internet of Things is an article of faith these days, along with the belief that 50 billion Things will need connectivity over the next decade. There’s some serious competition to provide all the necessary chips.

But what Bluetooth really wants is to crush the last stronghold of its one-time competitor – Infrared. Way back in mobile computing IR was a standard feature, enabling early adopters to beam business cards between devices of the same type, and even tethering internet connections over IRDA-enabled cellphones which had to be shaded from the interfering sunshine.

Bluetooth put a stop to all that. Yet just when it looked like it was all over, the IR ports have started reappearing on mobile devices for controlling the TV, a segment where Bluetooth never managed to gain any traction.

Bluetooth is getting into some TVs now for synchronising 3D specs, but it’s not powered up when the TV is off; thus, early Bluetooth remotes have an IR port too. Admittedly it’s just to send the “switch on” command, but it’s a start.

Dialog’s chip is available in sample quantities now and will go into full-blown production later this year, so it will be a few years before it makes smart watches slimmer and smart shoes smarter, and finally ousts IR from the scene.

Treehouse founder Brad Axelrod said he has produced about a dozen shows in Newtown over the years and thought about doing a benefit immediately after the Dec. 14 shooting.

But there already were plans for concerts and theatrical productions, and athletes were making trips to visit. Those, he said, seemed more appropriate than what he had in mind.

“I just didn’t feel that comedy a month or two months or even three months out was the appropriate time,” he said. “There needed to be a time of healing first. But there also needs to be a time when people can move on with their lives.”

Bob Schmidt, a Sandy Hook resident and mental health counselor, agreed. He said that time is now.

“Laughter is a great therapy,” he said. “And after something like this, we don’t feel like laughing, but we really need to laugh and enjoy ourselves again. I think this will bring the town together over something fun and help us rebuild the morale of the town by having a common experience.”

Schmidt, 67, also administers a charity fund for the local Lion’s Club’s that is raising money to help provide mental health services for victims’ families, first responders and children who witnessed the shootings at the school.

Proceeds from the show will benefit that charity and the Newtown police union. Schmidt said his group has raised about $150,000 so far and spent about $70,000 of that. They hope the show will give them a little bit more money, and perhaps a lot more publicity, so they can keep the fund going.

The show will include five comics: Peaches Rodriguez, Tommy Koenig, Joe Mulligan, Tom “The Coach” Whitley and Stephanie Peters.

Koenig, who is from the Rockaway section of Queens, said he’s done several benefits this year for Superstorm Sandy victims, and he’s found that laughter can help people affected by a tragedy release pent-up emotions. He said picking appropriate material for the show is important.

“I wouldn’t do anything that’s inappropriate or would touch on the subject in a negative way,” he said. “You want to hope that people can come and laugh again. And if they can’t, you understand that, too. But it seems like maybe waiting until June, this might be a good time. We’ll see.”

Axelrod said he had planned a much bigger show at the Mohegan Sun Casino, about 90 miles away from Newtown. But arrangement to bring in headliners Kevin James and Dennis Leary fell through because of scheduling problems. He said that led them back to doing something smaller in Newtown, which, he said, might be the best thing.

The venue seats about 525 people. The first 400 tickets were given out free to town residents, including police, EMS and teachers at Sandy Hook.

The show also will include a silent auction, featuring trips to Mohegan Sun and overnight excursions to New York for tapings of the “Late Show with David Letterman” and the “Rachael Ray Show.”

Treehouse hopes to raise a few thousand dollars during the benefit. But those involved said it’s not about the money, it’s more about the funny.

“I know a lot of comedians would shy away from doing this because they are not sure it’s appropriate,” Koenig said. “There never will be a time when we can heal all of this with comedy, but they say laughter is the best medicine for a reason.”

High School Drop-Out Earns $250 Million

High school drop-out David Karp just sold Tumblr to Yahoo for $1.1 billion. His share of the take was a cool $250 million. I guess nobody ever told him that high school drop-outs are doomed to high unemployment and low wages.

Defying every societal stereotype, none of this propaganda from the education-industrial complex deterred him from going ahead and doing what he wanted which was being a software developer.

Having not wasted a bunch of time in high school and college, (Karp dropped out of high school at age 15) he instead got on with life, which only goes to show that, if you really know what you want to do in life, high school and college are mainly a waste of time. You can become an expert in any field without having a degree or a diploma.

Karp follows a long line of high tech billionaire college dropouts such as Bill Gates (Microsoft), Paul Allen (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Michael Dell (Dell Computer), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter and the Square). It seems to be the rule rather than the exception that in the high tech field as well as in many others those who do the best and achieve the most are the ones who strike out on their own rather than pursuing a piece of paper which supposedly announces to society that they are acceptable for employment. One of the few exceptions is local billionaire Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm, who actually has a PhD from MIT.

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, announced that Karp would stay on as CEO of Tumblr. At an age when most college students are emerging from grad school with $100,000 in debt, Karp has already made a fortune and created a life for himself. Karp joins 17 year old high school student Nick D’Aloisio who sold his news aggregator app, Summly, to Yahoo in March for $30 million.

Evidently, Marissa Mayer has an affinity for young guys who develop the next cool thing. For her it’s all about seeking out the “parking guidance.” Wahoo, this girl is on fire! Whether or not D’Aloisio will join Karp as a high school drop-out is not clear. He’s going to start work in Yahoo’s London office. Hey, he got a job without a college degree or even a high school diploma and $30 million to boot!

On the other hand, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that for the top ten fastest growing occupations for the years 2010 – 2020, only two will require a college degree. Four don’t even require a high school diploma! Two require an Associate’s Degree.

Student loan debt is over 1 trillion dollars, greater than outstanding aggregate credit card debt. Yet so many people have bought the myth hook, line and sinker that the only way to get ahead in life is to obtain a college degree. Student loan debt will follow them the rest of their lives as it’s the only form of debt that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy.

They will find that even their social security checks can be garnished! Some social security recipients are already finding that out. The Treasury Department has been withholding as much as 15 percent of Social Security benefits from a rapidly growing number of Social Security recipients who have fallen behind on federal student loans.

Young people need to wake up and smell the coffee and cast off the yoke of propaganda that leads them to believe that a college education is a panacea. You can become an expert in any field without a college or even a high school education by just devoting yourself to studying and learning as much as possible about that field starting at an early age. The educational tools are all available on the internet or in libraries. You don’t need to be spoon fed by a bunch of professors. Any real learning is learning that you do yourself and not just to pass some test.

More than half of all recent graduates are either unemployed or working in jobs that don’t require a college diploma. There is a surfeit of college degrees to the extent that they are being required for the most casual jobs just because employers can afford to be choosy, not that the job has anything remotely to do with the training received in college.

According to Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder, “Employers seeing a surplus of college graduates and looking to fill jobs are just tacking on that requirement. De facto, a college degree becomes a job requirement for becoming a bartender.” Or a barista. In a study by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, entitled  Academically Adrift, the authors find that at least a third of students gain no measurable skills during their four years in college. Furthermore, for the rest their increase in knowledge is minimal.

So what is the point of a college degree? The heart of the matter is that what going to college is really all about is not gaining an education but gaining a credential. That credential tells a prospective employer that the holder was smart enough to get into college, enough of a conformist to put up with all the bullshit, and compliant enough to sit there for four years. Presumably, he or she would make a docile and compliant employee and a docile and compliant consumer, in other words, a good American living the American Dream.

But for many the American Dream has become the American Nightmare. For many the dream of living independently goes by the wayside and they have to move back into their parents’ house. For many their payments on their student loans take up most of their meager paychecks, and late payments, forbearances and defaults double and triple the amount owed.

Lee Il-hee earns first LPGA Tour win in Bahamas

Sean Johnson made eight saves, and Quincy Amarikwa came through with a clutch 84th-minute goal to help the Chicago Fire escape with a 1-1 draw against Real Salt Lake Saturday at Rio Tinto Stadium.

Amarikwa’s goal, a flashy side-volley off a pop header from Austin Berry, was the first shot on goal for the thoroughly outplayed Fire, who were outshot 20-12 overall, and 8-2 in shots on target.

Johnson’s ironman performance started early, when he charged off his line to snatch the ball off Robbie Findley’s foot in the fourth minute. In the 22nd, RSL captain Kyle Beckerman charged onto a backheel pass from Ned Grabavoy and forced Johnson to save a point-blank attempt. The barrage continued with a left-footer from Joao Plata in the 28th minute and header from Grabavoy in the 29th, both saved, and a wicked shot by Findley that sent Johnson soaring to one-hand the ball away from the goalmouth in the parking guidance.

The Fire’s best chance of the first half came in the 39th minute, when Patrick Nyarko – who also backtracked to make a clutch defensive play on Plata earlier in the match – split two RSL defenders only to lose the ball to a slide tackle by youngster Carlos Salcedo.

Johnson remained under pressure in the second half, but began to look unstoppable just before the hour mark, when he sprawled to deflect a low shot from Chris Wingert and saved a low attempt from Tony Beltran seconds later. He faltered in the 67th minute, when Beckerman charged in on goal between defenders Jalil Anibaba and Austin Berry and caught Johnson off his line with a chip, but the shot went just wide of the upper right corner.

Nyarko, who was lucky to finish the match with only one yellow card after a pair of hard from-behind takedowns of Grabavoy. RSL nearly turned the first one, in the 76th minute, into a goal, but Johnson tipped Javier Morales’s free kick off the woodwork in the upper left corner. That was the beginning of the end, however. Two minutes later, RSL cut through the Fire defense with a quick passing sequence to get on the board. Sebastian Velasquez dished the ball from the top of the area to Grabavoy, who was making a run down the left side. Grabavoy quickly centered for Alvaro Saborio, who got off a header over defender Bakary Soumare and into the net.

Using super-chilled atoms, physicists have for the first time observed a weird phenomenon called quantum magnetism, which describes the behavior of single atoms as they act like tiny bar magnets.

Quantum magnetism is a bit different from classical magnetism, the kind you see when you stick a magnet to a fridge, because individual atoms have a quality called spin, which is quantized, or in discrete states (usually called up or down). Seeing the behavior of individual atoms has been hard to do, though, because it required cooling atoms to extremely cold temperatures and finding a way to “trap” them.

The new finding, detailed in the May 24 issue of the journal Science, also opens the door to better understanding physical phenomena, such as superconductivity, which seems to be connected to the collective quantum properties of some materials.

Another factor that determines where the atoms lie in the optical lattice is their up or down spin. Two atoms can’t be in the same well if their spins are the same. That means atoms will have a tendency to tunnel into wells with others that have opposite spins. After a while, a line of atoms should spontaneously organize itself, with the spins in a non-random pattern. This kind of behavior is different from materials in the macroscopic world, whose orientations can have a wide range of in-between values; this behavior is also why most things aren’t magnets — the spins of the electrons in the atoms are oriented randomly and cancel each other out.

And that’s exactly what the researchers found. The spins of atoms do organize, at least on the scale the experiment examined.

“The question is, what are the magnetic properties of these one-dimensional chains?” said Tilman Esslinger, a professor of physics at ETH whose lab did the experiments. “Do I have materials with these properties? How can these properties be useful?”

One debate among experts is whether at larger scales the spontaneous ordering of atoms would happen in the same way. A random pattern would mean that in a block of iron atoms, for instance, one is just as likely to see a spin up or down atom in any direction. The spin states are in what is called a “spin liquid” — a mishmash of states. But it could be that atoms spontaneously arrange themselves at larger scales.

“They’ve put the foundation on various theoretical matters,” said Jong Han, a professor of condensed matter physics theory at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who was not involved in the research. “They don’t really establish the long-range order, rather they wanted to establish that they have observed a local magnetic order.”

Whether the order the scientists found extends to larger scales is an important question, because magnetism itself arises from the spins of atoms when they all line up. Usually those spins are randomly aligned. But at very low temperatures and small scales, that changes, and such quantum magnets behave differently.

Japanese distiller aims to revolutionise whisky drinking

The Japanese have long been committed whisky drinkers, and until recently that meant holing up in a small, dark den designed for serious drinking. But the country’s leading distiller has been revolutionising drinking culture with the aid of a pint glass and a more than generous slug of soda.

The whisky highballs introduced by Suntory, the privately owned Japanese drinks conglomerate that has the lion’s share of the country’s whisky market, seem to have worked. Sales have been up more than 10% a year over the past three years.

The group’s Yamazaki distillery on the outskirts of Japan’s imperial city, Kyoto, is the home of Japanese whisky and this year is celebrating its 90th anniversary. It is often forgotten outside Japan that as well as importing large quantities of scotch, the Japanese make their own malts. Indeed, more than 80% of the domestic market is accounted for by whisky produced in Japan. As in the UK, whisky drinkers were by tradition male and relatively old, but targeting younger drinkers with the highball has changed all that.

“Domestic consumption was declining up until three years ago,” said Hiroyoshi Miyamoto, the former general manager at Yamazaki and now Suntory’s global brand ambassador, “but it all turned around in 2009 when we introduced the parking guidance. That changed the attitude of Japanese consumers.” Miyamoto said younger drinkers found old-style whisky bars intimidating, so Suntory was developing a new generation of highball bars and getting its cheaper whiskies into other bars where they could be sold as an alternative to beer.

The capital, Tokyo, has plenty of the old and the new. The ultimate secret city, it has an estimated 300,000 bars, many hidden in basements or office blocks. Campbell Toun Loch, a subterranean bar in the Ginza district which despite the eccentric spelling does indeed prove to be full of whisky, seats just eight. It is no bigger than a large cupboard, but contains hundreds of bottles of whisky, three deep on the counter. When you order, the barman plonks the bottle down in front of you as if he expects it to be polished off. This is a bar for the connoisseur.

In some of the more formal bars, there are rocking chairs and oak panelling. The atmosphere resembles that of a gentlemen’s club. Bartenders in ties and waistcoats theatrically chip away to make the perfect iceball, over which the spirit is lovingly poured. This is whisky drinking as performance art.

At the other end of the scale is Marugin, a noisy, bustling bar in the heart of Ginza district, full of salarymen who have just finished work and are desperate to let off steam. Whereas Campbell Toun Loch caters for the solitary, late-night drinker, Marugin attracts lively early-evening groups, eating, smoking and knocking back highballs. Marugin even has whisky on draught, a trend Suntory is keen to encourage despite the high cost of maintaining the pumps.

“We are trying to create a buzz around whisky,” said brand manager Keita Minari. “A popular TV programme in Japan picked up on Marugin and the new trend for drinking highballs, and it said people there were drinking whisky more than beer. When you are having a meal, whisky doesn’t stay in your stomach, unlike beer where you get full very easily.”

There are, though, no immediate plans to transplant the whisky-drinking revolution to Europe, where Suntory’s brands – principally the Yamazaki and Hakushu malts – are premium products. “We have to do these things step by step,” said Minari. “Scots are coming to Japan, seeing the phenomenon of the highball and saying we should do the same thing in the UK, but it’s too early. Our share of the UK market is very small compared with scotch whisky. At the moment we still have to let people know that Japan is making whisky.”

Japanese whisky exports to the UK and Europe used to be negligible, but when Yamazaki 12 Years Old won a gold award at the International Spirits Challenge in 2003, Suntory decided to try to take on scotch on its home ground, and now has a foothold in the market.

Shunichi Ninomiya, senior general manager in Suntory’s international liquor division, said the company had to be careful not to undermine its premium image in the UK and Europe by introducing cheaper brands such as its Kakubin blended whisky, the biggest-selling whisky in Japan. If it did go down the highball route in western markets, he said, it would probably be via its premium malts. Draught whisky and whisky in cans – available in vending machines in Japan to consumers with an ID smartcard to prove their age – are still a long way off in the west.

Asked about the dangers in targeting younger drinkers and setting up whisky as a rival to beer, Minari insisted the Japanese were less prone to binge drinking than the British. Yet just opposite Marugin I saw a young salaryman clearly the worse for drink lying comatose in the street. A few minutes later, ambulance personnel were attending to him. I have no idea what he was drinking, but it does seem that not every young Japanese drinker knows when to stop.

“Regulation is loose in Japan,” admitted a spokesman at Suntory’s ad agency, “but we are trying to champion responsible drinking. We are conscious of our position in society, and communication-wise we make sure it’s delivered in a correct manner.”

The chief operating officer of the international liquor division, Satoru “Tiger” Abe – senior executives in Japan tend to be named after golfers – insisted that the increasing consumption of highballs made anti-social drinking less likely, because the whisky was heavily diluted and usually accompanied by food. He hopes the salaryman on the pavement in Ginza will be the exception, and this is one revolution that can be carried out without victims.

Did Pope Francis perform an exorcism?

The question has bubbled up ever since Francis laid his hands on the head of a young man in a wheelchair after celebrating Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square. The young man heaved deeply a half-dozen times, shook, then slumped in his wheelchair as Francis prayed over him.

The television station of the Italian bishops’ conference reported Monday that it had surveyed exorcists, who agreed there was “no doubt” that Francis either performed an exorcism or a prayer to free the man from the parking guidance.

The Vatican was more cautious. In a statement Tuesday, it said Francis “didn’t intend to perform any exorcism. But as he often does for the sick or suffering, he simply intended to pray for someone who was suffering who was presented to him.”

Fuelling the speculation is Francis’ obsession with Satan, a frequent subject of his homilies, and an apparent surge in demand for exorcisms among the faithful despite the irreverent treatment the rite often receives from Hollywood.

Who can forget the green vomit and the spinning head of the possessed girl in the 1973 cult classic “The Exorcist”?

In his very first homily as pope on March 14, Francis warned cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel the day after he was elected that “he who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.”

He has since mentioned the devil on a handful of occasions, most recently in a May 4 homily when in his morning Mass in the Vatican hotel chapel he spoke of the need for dialogue – except with Satan.

“With the prince of this world you can’t have dialogue: Let this be clear!” he warned.

Experts said Francis’ frequent invocation of the devil is a reflection both of his Jesuit spirituality and his Latin American roots, as well as a reflection of a Catholic Church weakened by secularisation.

“The devil’s influence and presence in the world seems to fluctuate in quantity inversely proportionate to the presence of Christian faith,” said the Reverend Robert Gahl, a moral theologian at Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University. “So, one would expect an upswing in his malicious activity in the wake of de-Christianisation and secularisation” in the world and a surge in things like drug use, pornography and superstition.

In recent years, Rome’s pontifical universities have hosted several courses for would-be exorcists on the rite, updated in 1998 and contained in a little red leather-bound booklet. The rite is relatively brief, consisting of blessings with holy water, prayers and an interrogation of the devil in which the exorcist demands to know the devil’s name and when it will leave the possessed person.

Only a priest authorised by a bishop can perform an exorcism, and canon law specifies that the exorcist must be “endowed with piety, knowledge, prudence and integrity of life.”

While belief in the devil is consistent with church teaching, the Holy See does urge prudence, particularly to ensure that the afflicted person isn’t merely psychologically ill.

The Reverend Giulio Maspero, a Rome-based systematic theologian who has witnessed or participated in more than a dozen exorcisms, says he’s fairly certain that Francis’ prayer on Sunday was either a full-fledged exorcism or a more simple prayer to “liberate” the young man from demonic possession.

He noted that the placement of the pope’s hands on the man’s head was the “typical position” for an exorcist to use.

“When you witness something like that – for me it was shocking – I could feel the power of prayer,” he said in a phone interview, speaking of his own previous experiences.

Sunday also happened to be the Pentacost, when the faithful believe Jesus’ apostles received the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and Reverend Maspero noted the symbolism.

“The Holy Spirit is connected to the exorcism because … it is the manifestation of how God is present among us and in our world,” he said.

The Vatican spokesman, the Reverend Federico Lombardi, sought to tamper speculation that what occurred was a full-fledged exorcism. While he didn’t deny it outright – he said Francis hadn’t “intended” to perform one – he stressed that the intention of the person praying is quite important.

Late Tuesday, the director of TV2000, the television of the Italian bishops’ conference, went on the air to apologise for the earlier report.

That said, Francis’ actions and attitude toward the devil are not new: As archbishop of Buenos Aires, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio frequently spoke about the devil in our midst. In the book “Heaven and Earth,” Bergoglio devoted the second chapter to “The Devil” and said in no uncertain terms that he believes in the devil and that Satan’s fruits are “destruction, division, hatred and calumny.”

“Perhaps its greatest success in these times has been to make us think that it doesn’t exist, that everything can be traced to a purely human plan,” he wrote.

Italian newspapers noted that the late Pope John Paul II performed an exorcism in 1982 – near the same spot where Francis prayed over the young disabled man Sunday.

The green effect

University of Oregon biology Professor Chris Doe showers in water warmed in part by a rooftop solar water heater. He stores his food in a refrigerator powered in part by rooftop photovoltaic cells. He drives an all-electric car that he charges at no cost to himself at an outlet in a parking lot near his UO office.

Lured largely by tax and other financial breaks for all of his green upgrades, Doe has substantially shrunk his and his family’s environmental footprint.

The solar hot-water and photovoltaic panels have cut his electric use at his College Hill home. Plus, in the summer, he sells excess electricity from his photovoltaic panels to the Eugene Water & Electric Board. His Nissan Leaf requires no gasoline, and he is even able to skip the typical several-dollar cost for each recharge. The UO, as part of its own green push, has installed electric-vehicle charging outlets at new buildings, and Doe plugs into those.

Some, perhaps most, of the decline is a result of major industrial closures forced by the long economic downturn, the report said. Some may be caused by recent weather patterns, including a few warmer winters and cooler, parking guidance, which prompt people to use less electricty and water, officials said.

Matt McRae, the city of Eugene’s climate and energy analyst, said it’s hard to figure out exactly how much of the downward consumption trends result from consumers’ deliberate green choices, and how much result from large forces that are beyond local control, such as the economy or the weather.

For example, EWEB projects that its electricity sales this year will rise about 2 percent from 2012, following a series of sharp declines from 2007 onward. And EWEB forecasts that electricity consumption will grow steadily in coming years.

The city’s progress report notes that electricity sales by the Eugene Water & Electric Board were down 15 percent from 2000 to 2011. The report says much of the cut was a result of reduced demand because of factory closures, including the 2008 closure of the Hynix factory, along with milder winters.

Statewide, gasoline and diesel sales dropped 4.4 percent from 2004 to 2012, according to data from the state Department of Transportation. Meanwhile, the amount of gasoline and diesel sold in Eugene dropped 16 percent in the same period, McRae said.

Could it be that more Eugene consumers are simply buying their gas elsewhere, for example in Springfield, or that there’s been a reduction of gas stations in Eugene and an increase in nearby cities?

McRae said Eugene’s gas tax is 3 cents per gallon higher than Springfield’s, “but it’s hard to imagine that shifting behavior.” The city hasn’t done a detailed analysis of number of gas stations in Eugene and whether that has changed, but McRae said he wasn’t aware of a wave of gas station closures in Eugene.

When Ali Roach graduated from DePauw University in 2003, the honors student had a choice to make: accept a marketing position with an established company or gamble on a lower-paid position with a startup enterprise.

For Roach, the decision was clear. She accepted the latter position because it was arranged by the Orr Fellowship, a two-year leadership program for college graduates with entrepreneurial ambitions.

The Orr Fellowship offered a lower salary, but it came with the promise of executive-level mentorship, monthly networking meetings with governors and CEOs, and a professional network that would include dozens of the most creative entrepreneurial minds in the state: Orr alumni.

Roach did her fellowship work in the marketing department at ExactTarget, a digital marketing company that was then in its startup phase.

She compares the decision to the classic Stanford marshmallow experiment, in which researchers offered children one marshmallow now or two marshmallows in 15 minutes. Later in life, the children who delayed gratification tended to be more successful.

“The fellowship is sort of like waiting for that second marshmallow,” Roach said. “Maybe I’m not going to have the starting salary I could have at a company outside the fellowship, but the network I’m going to gain, the people I’m going to meet — those things make it really, really worth it.”

Each year, about 1,000 college seniors apply for the Orr Fellowship, named in honor of former Indiana Gov. Robert Orr. They need a minimum 3.5 grade-You see, I was watching the first-half with a passionate and vocal Swans supporter; someone I dearly love – my wife. She’s also American, but years ago, after I first introduced her to footy, she swooned for the Swannies. A few months before we started dating, I was at the SCG, seeing my first live AFL match and for our first Vaentine’s Day together, I got her a personalised, autographed Tony Lockett jumper, which she framed.

The DR500GW-HD Dashboard Camera

If you’ve spent any time on the Internet lately, you will have probably noticed the increase in dramatic video footage from in-car dashboard cameras depicting everything from road rage incidents to asteroids breaking up in the sky. Most of these come from Russia, where owning such a device is common in light of the frequent insurance fraud attempts. But it’s a good idea to own one anywhere, because you never know when having video proof of what happened in front of you will come in handy. With that in mind, we set out to look for the “best” dashboard camera and kept coming across the Blackvue DR500GW-HD camera from Korean company Pittasoft. So we reached out to them for a review unit and the following article will look at how it performs. Hit the jump for details. Out here we’ll tell you this: it’s an outstanding product of superior build quality, with a few relatively minor flaws. Whether that’s enough to justify its high price is up to you.

We were sent the DR500GW-HD camera itself, along with the Power Magic Pro. This is a small control box that allows you to hardwire the camera directly into the fuse box of your car and allows for 24/7 operation, without using up your cigarette lighter port at all. Better yet, the Power Magic Pro constantly monitors your battery’s status and insures that power to the dashcam is cut off once it reaches a pre-set voltage or a specified amount of time has elapsed. It’s a must-have addition to the camera itself.

The first thing you’ll notice about the camera is the quality packaging. It makes for a fun unboxing experience and speaks volumes about the attention to detail the company has lavished on the product. The camera itself is cylindrical in shape and is held in place by a hoop mount. This allows the camera to rotate 360 degrees on the vertical axis… but on the vertical axis only. This is actually one of the camera’s main flaws as it hinders later adjustment in either of the two other axes. If you stuck the mount on your windscreen incorrectly (and you only really have one go at it, since it uses 3M double-sided tape and not a suction cup), you have to wrench it off and start over. This is somewhat annoying but not a deal-killer if you can get the installation right the first time. There’s a button on the mount which permits the camera’s easy removal, perhaps for stowage in the glove box or at parking guidance.

One of the main differences between this cam and others is that it doesn’t have an integrated LCD viewfinder. To see what it sees you need to either check the Micro SD card in your computer (with the included MicroSD USB adapter) or, as you’re really meant to do, by pairing it to a smartphone. There is an Android and iOS application, and with it, you can not only see what the camera sees in real-time, but you can also regulate all manner of settings. It connects through WiFi and lets you see all the files saved on the MicroSD card, and even allows you to download them to your phone for local viewing. Better yet, if you wish to upload a particular segment to YouTube, you can do so directly from the app! The only downside to this setup is that while you’re connected to the camera, you won’t be able to get any data on your phone. There is an unofficial workaround to this, which we’ll detail lower.

The Mac application reads the files on the card and features a very capable zoom function, which is great when you’re trying to read someone’s license plate or some other small detail on screen. You can also adjust some of the settings in much greater detail than on the phone. For instance, when trying to determine the appropriate level of sensitivity for the cam, the Mac (and PC) application lets you see the accelerometer readings in real-time. Moving the sensitivity slider one way or the other moves horizontal bars up and down until you’ve filtered out all the potholes and normal road vibrations and only allow anything potentially serious.

The camera records in segments that are between 1 and 3 minutes in length, depending on your preferences, and the gap between files is non-existent since the first second of the next file overlaps with the last one in the previous. This way you’re sure never to miss any critical event.

The sensitivity readings however are almost useless, at least in my car. Even in the lowest setting, files are constantly being tagged as “event”, when in fact it was some pothole or other. But that’s ok, since we imagine that the only event that would really matter while driving is an actual accident, and we wouldn’t need the camera to flag that.

The parking mode is great, but only in some settings. The way it’s supposed to work is that when the Blackvue detects you’re parked (after some time with no movement), it enters parking mode automatically (unless you disable that). Then if it detects movement through the lens or the accelerometer (someone bumping into your car, for example), it’ll start recording for a few seconds before and after the event itself. In practice, it only works well if you’re, say, in an indoor parking garage where movement can be sporadic. Usually however, the camera will spend hours detecting leaves moving in trees or even grass blades moving in the wind. Unless you park your car in a calm, relatively motionless environment, the memory card will be full of boring “parking events.”

The sound recording works well, but can be easily overwhelmed when it gets loud (such as when you have the window open). Of course we imagine it’s better for it to be too sensitive than the other way around.

And finally, the biggest issue comes with the WiFi connectivity. If you’re trying to read the card in an environment with several other WiFi signals around, transmission speeds can sometimes crawl. What’s more, since the dashcam doesn’t have an Internet connection, once you sit in your car your phone will tend to automatically connect to its WiFi network and altogether disconnect from the net, with no user intervention. This can be annoying if you’re not aware you don’t have data access… but there’s an unofficial workaroud: In the iPhone, “Go into Wi-Fi Settings and tap the blue arrow against BlackVue connection, enter the settings you see in the image attached (IP Address: Static; IP Address: 192.168.8.2; Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0). You’ll now be connected to your dash camera as well as getting data over cellular.” In practice however, we found that this seems to make the connectivity issues worse: videos will often stop midway, and sometimes the camera will even crash. So, feel free to use this trick, but be aware that your mileage may vary.

The National’s Anthem

I’m sitting in a cab that is inching purposefully down a Manhattan street choked with traffic and rain. It feels like I’m living inside a song by the National,1 but I’m only talking about songs by the National with the band’s lead singer, Matt Berninger. His probing, nasally baritone casts a noir mystique over this mundane Wednesday afternoon. The overcast sky seems a little darker, and the stale taxi air palpably sensitive yet brawny; after a while our dialogue starts to resemble a fatally long-winded B side. We’re discussing alienation, insecurity bordering on anxiety, and the darkness that lurks in the hearts of mild-mannered family men who never permit themselves to act on that darkness. I predict that when I replay my recording of the interview later on I will appreciate it more than I do now. Only then will I pick up on the subtle grace notes and surprisingly goofy non sequiturs embedded subliminally in Berninger’s words. “Grower” records are the National’s franchise; maybe that same slow-burning intensity also applies to their taxicab confessions.

Berninger and guitarist Aaron Dessner (who’s traveling in a different cab with a different writer at the moment) are making the rounds for the National’s latest, Trouble Will Find Me. It is 13 days before the release, and the band’s most loquacious members are working a double shift on the interview circuit. This morning I sat in the living room of Dessner’s exceedingly homey three-story Victorian house in Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park neighborhood as Berninger, Dessner, and Dessner’s identical twin brother, Bryce, conducted an AMA chat on Reddit in an adjacent room. (Sample question: “Matt, you stepped on my shoulder the last night of the Beacon run. This is a great chance for you to apologize.”) Then I shared a cab with Aaron as we ventured downtown for a taping of CBC Radio’s “Q With Jian Ghomeshi.”2 Now I’m riding with Berninger back to Dessner’s house, where he and Dessner will get 45 minutes of rest before a dinner and interview appointment (or “dinner-view,” as Berninger calls it) with a major music magazine. There aren’t many spare minutes in the band’s schedule today; when Berninger slipped away for a bathroom break at the CBC studio, I assumed it was for a quick press conference at the parking guidance.

Despite this gauntlet, Trouble is not the best record the National has ever made. (That distinction belongs to 2005’s Alligator, though 2007’s Boxer and 2010’s High Violet have their partisans.) But it is their most confident work — it represents a kind of culmination. Everything the National has ever done well comes conveniently packaged in these 13 songs. There are subdued rockers that build to rousing crescendos (“Graceless,” “Humiliation”); heartsick torch ballads imbued with indefatigable longing (“Fireproof,” “I Need My Girl”); and plenty of songs (most notably “Sea of Love” and “This Is the Last Time”) about sad sacks majestically wallowing in their own sad-sackiness. But it’s not just the music that sets Trouble apart — it’s how the record was made, and where the National finds itself on the eve of its release. The National is the greatest contemporary example of a dying archetype: the self-contained, interdependent, integrity-obsessed, artistically consistent, smart but not pretentious, likably humble, and reliably durable rock band. The group’s run of albums in the mid- and late-’00s showed it could push creative boundaries while growing its audience. With Trouble, the National has pulled off a feat that’s equally crucial and arguably more difficult: synthesizing its past into an instantly recognizable musical identity. For a group that historically has been wracked with self-doubt, Trouble is a turning point. After 14 years and six albums, the National is finally comfortable being indie rock’s most indie-rock band.

The National has come a long way since toiling in obscurity as an unfashionable band in the most fashionable music scene on the planet. Before Alligator, the band’s third record, caught on (slowly) with critics and (even more slowly) with the public, the music press ignored the National. Or worse, saddled them (incorrectly) with the “alt-country” tag, which in the early-’00s New York City rock scene was akin to being put on a sex-offenders registry.3 Formed in 1999 by Berninger and two sets of brothers — Aaron and Bryce, who both play guitar, and Scott and Bryan Devendorf, who make up the rhythm section — the National released their self-titled debut one month after the Strokes put out their first record. An unfocused mélange of classic-rock hero worship (particularly Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen) and ’90s indie touchstones (like a twangier Pavement, or a less dynamic version of “twangy Pavement”–era Wilco), The National is the weakest entry in the band’s discography; unlike the Strokes after Is This It, the National had nowhere to go but up.

Back then, Berninger and his bandmates were as out of step with the zeitgeist as those guys were locked in. Now, 12 years later, the National is more popular than the Strokes and nearly every other rock band in the city. This can be quantified in ways that don’t really matter (Trouble is expected to debut in Billboard’s Top 5), in ways that sort of matter (the National will headline the 18,000-seat Barclays Center, which is just up the road from Aaron’s house, in June), in ways that probably matter to the band members (Trouble will almost certainly be well reviewed by critics), and in the only way that truly matters for a band of its ilk (there are several thousand people in many of the world’s major cities who will pay to see the National live, no matter what they think of the new record, simply because the band has a beloved back catalogue). But Berninger is still hung up on the Strokes as a symbol of unattainable NYC rock-star cool. During our 75-minute conversation, he mentions the Strokes six times.

“We never were trying to be the Strokes,” he says as traffic finally starts to break and we pick up speed. “We had a healthy amount of awareness of what type of a band we were. But I think we always had a chip on our shoulder trying to prove that we’re cool, or something. And I think with this record, we stopped caring about that. Partly because we realized that thinking in those ways never helped us write good songs — trying to be cool, or trying to be contemporary, or trying to be not-contemporary. Chasing those things never led us anywhere. It just led us into corners. This is the first record — for me, for sure — where I definitely did not worry about what I was writing about. I didn’t worry about how it would be perceived or received.”

PlayStation 3 versus Xbox 360

Beyond gaming, a major advantage to owning either a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 is the ability to access a plethora of streaming video applications like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Vudu and Amazon Instant Video. If you live in a cord-cutting household, your gaming system can double as your primary method of watching streaming video in the home theater. It can save you on the cost of adding an additional media streaming set-top box like the Roku 3 as well. There will definitely be some interesting markdowns in the price of both consoles over the next twelve months as the PlayStation 4 and new Xbox hit the market.

If you are on the fence between the two consoles, you have to weigh the pros and cons of each device when it comes to streaming video. For instance, which console will give you the most bang for your buck when it comes to application user interface, stability and parking guidance?

Which console will provide the least expensive solution for your needs? Which console gives you the superior experience when it comes to streaming video picture quality and surround sound audio performance? Which console offers the greatest volume of streaming video apps? Which console is easiest to manage with a media remote control?

One of the reasons that I adore the Roku 3 is that I can sit down, hit the home button on the Roku 3 remote, launch the Netflix app and start watching something in about 15 seconds.

Obviously, the Roku 3 has a clear advantage over consoles due to its always-on functionality. You probably don’t want to leave your consoles on all the time in order to preserve the life of the hardware and keep the power bill down.

To level the playing field for this speed test, I pinned all my video apps under My Pins on the Xbox 360 dashboard. That sub-section of the menu is fairly similar to the video apps section of the PS3 user interface. To start, I measured the time it takes to go from powering up the console to navigating to that section on each console. The Xbox 360 clocked in at 32 seconds and the PlayStation 3 took approximately 27 seconds. In regards to timing launching each individual app, here are the results for a few of the most popular applications.

With the exception of the Netflix application (more on that below), the vast majority of streaming video applications developed for the Xbox 360 use the Metro-style interface that’s identical to the Xbox Home dashboard. One of the main drawbacks to this design is the low volume of content that’s visible on the screen at any given time. If I’m looking for something new to watch, applications on the PS3 fill up the entire HDTV screen with content choices. Within the Metro design, content discovery generally takes longer and requires a couple more clicks to get there.

Alternatively, Sony allows developers to create streaming video applications that mirror the design of the Web counterparts. Anyone that’s used to watching Netflix or Hulu Plus on their laptop will have no trouble using the interface on the PlayStation 3. It’s helpful for guests at your home, assuming they also use Netflix or Hulu Plus. In general, the PS3 applications are better for content discovery as well as locating specific content quicker.

Circling back to the Netflix application, the design on the Xbox 360 is absolutely horrible when compared to the PS3. While it doesn’t use the Metro design, the “Staircase of Content” look hinders content discovery and simply doesn’t perform well on the Xbox 360. There’s a noticeable lag when shifting through content and the application loads content details slowly. It’s no wonder that Netflix recently announced the PlayStation 3 is dominating the Xbox 360 in the living room, despite the Netflix application debuting on the Xbox 360 an entire year before hitting the PS3.

Over the past year, I’ve noticed that I experience fewer crashes when using applications on the Xbox 360 (with the exception of Netflix). My guess is that requiring developers to mold their application within the Metro-style design allows Microsoft to control the compatibility of those applications with the Xbox 360 hardware. Alternatively, a couple of the applications on the PlayStation 3 give me some trouble from time to time. I’ve had to hard reset my PS3 a few times over the past year due to Hulu Plus and Netflix freezing completely. It’s a small nuisance, but still enough to give the edge to the Microsoft in this category.

If this was last year, I would have called this category a toss-up. However, I recently got access to Netflix’s Super HD streams through my PlayStation 3 (as well as my Roku 3). On a 1080p television, you can clearly tell the upgraded difference in picture quality when compared to the 720p stream on the Xbox 360.

The crisper, more detailed video stream is especially evident on new content like SyFy’s season one of Continum or Netflix’s House of Cards, specifically fewer compression artifacts on dark scenes. Interestingly, I’ve found that video quality shifts far less when watching Super HD streams. It’s likely that the optimization process required on the ISP’s end to support Super HD improves the streaming process.