Two mayors in South Florida set to face off in MMA bout for charity

Mayors in competing cities often place bets when there sports teams face off. Quite often, they offer the city's signature foods and gifts. For this year's Super Bowl, the San Francisco mayor spent a day in service in Baltimore after the Ravens won. But two mayors in south Florida are upending that tradition. They'll be the ones competing.

Carlos Hernandez, the mayor of Hialeah, and Michael Pizzi, the mayor of Miami Lakes, plan to square off for charity. It started as a discussion over dinner -- and a few drinks -- over who could beat each other up. It snowballed from there.

Hernandez, 52, says he has trained with the Gracies, one of MMA's most important families. Pizzi has another plan.

"Carlos is an athlete into aerobics," Pizzi said to MMA Junkie. "I'm of the Tank Abbott (and) Roy Nelson school of training, which is have a six-pack of beer, get off a bar stool and knock the guy out in the first three punches."

While Nelson does like to show off his belly, he's in a bit better shape than Pizzi says.

The two mayors haven't set a date for the bout yet as they are still looking for a promoter. The Miami Herald reports the fight will take place in Hernandez's home turf of Hialeah. Money they raise from the bout will go to programs benefiting children in each mayor's city.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/two-mayors-south-florida-set-face-off-mma-150241953.html

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Talkin' 'bout The Unspeakable Act | Movie Review | Chicago Reader

Movies that deal with incest are often couched in melodrama, dealing with hidden transgressions and shattered family roles. But The Unspeakable Act, which makes its Chicago premiere this week at Gene Siskel Film Center, is different. Written and directed by Dan Sallitt (a former Reader contributor), this hushed, discreet indie drama details the complicated relationship between two siblings of a tight-knit, upper-middle-class Brooklyn family. Seventeen-year-old Jackie (Tallie Medel), the bright and seemingly well-adjusted younger daughter, harbors romantic and sexual feelings for her 18-year-old brother, Matthew (Sky Hirschkron). He never openly reciprocates them, but they share an intimacy that complicates their other relationships.

The Unspeakable Act isn't presented as a case study of incestuous behavior, nor does it offer any insights into the psychology of incestuous desire. In fact it actively works against the Oedipal notions we bring to an incest story. In the grand tradition of French director Eric Rohmer, to whom Sallitt dedicates the film, The Unspeakable Act is a story in which transgression is considered but never acted upon.

As viewers, we constantly analyze and critique a movie's characters, basing our judgments on our own ideas of taste, ethics, and morality. We're conditioned to accept the strictest notions of right and wrong: good guys and bad guys; proper and improper behavior. The Unspeakable Act challenges these notions in part because Sallitt refuses to judge his characters; there are no good guys or bad guys, only believable, acutely rendered people whose shortcomings are innately human.

This is where the film deviates from most incest stories, which either exploit the act (Flowers in the Attic) or condemn it as despicable and detrimental to the family unit (Chinatown). With its muted cinematography and deliberate pace, The Unspeakable Act is anything but lurid, and the family unit is "impossibly close," as Jackie puts it. (Jackie and Matthew's father died a few years after Jackie was born, leaving them with their mother, an older sister, and an older brother who's since left the household.)

Despite the sensational subject matter, the drama is understated. Jackie casually spells out the conflict in the film's opening voice-over: "In the spring of 2011, at the age of 18, my brother Matthew got his first real girlfriend. I somehow thought that he and I had a unspoken agreement that we belonged to each other, which was really pretty stupid of me."

Instead of pushing Jackie and Matthew into taboo behavior, Sallitt situates them directly before it and explores the possible origin and meaning of their emotions; alongside the audience, he seems to be searching for a way to justify their mutual desire. This may bore or frustrate some viewers: the appeal of an incest story is the prospect of seeing repressed, taboo desires erupt into explicit sex and ensuing scandal. In The Unspeakable Act, the heart of the drama is not the transgression but the curious lack thereof.

Jackie's feelings, however fervent, stem from her arrested development. In addition to the new girlfriend, Matthew is also preparing to leave home for his freshman year at Princeton, and Jackie can't accept what may be the beginning of the end of their lifelong intimacy. Not until Matthew leaves does Jackie, faced with the reality that she can't spend her life with him, confront her emotions in a pragmatic fashion.

Talking to Mubi.com, Sallitt has described Jackie as "an unsolvable puzzle," someone whose impulses are plausible but paradoxical. She acknowledges the inconvenient nature of her desire but refuses to let Matthew go. She admits as much to him, glibly labeling his new romance as an attempt to "grow up and have mature, adult relationships and not immature, stunted ones like ours."

With her incongruous emotions, Jackie is impervious to psychoanalysis, as Sallitt illustrates in a series of nearly comical scenes involving a therapist. Jackie talks in circles, at one point describing herself as someone who loves to talk yet is painfully shy. This rigmarole culminates in her recollection of a dream that suggests her incestuous feelings are a form of narcissism; the idea offers some sense of thematic closure even as it opens up more avenues of her personality.

These oblique scenes are meant to suggest the impenetrability of human emotion. Sallitt's characters are intricate beings, and their issues, though grounded by the naturalistic performances, can seem so inscrutable as to be otherworldly. Jackie and Matthew's saga may never end, but the film must. Sallitt might have come up with some tidy conclusion, but he's comfortable letting this situation resolve itself the way most situations do: with time.

Source: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-unspeakable-act-dan-sallitt-gene-siskel-film-center/Content?oid=9682352

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Re: the Benghazi messages: Browse administration emails like an inbox

The 100 pages of emails that the White House released on Wednesday, which cover the administration's crafting of its talking points about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya, do not contain any clear indications of a political cover-up.

But they do indicate that the CIA, FBI, State Department and the White House operate with the same sort of office drudgery as workplaces across America. There are the same cascading CC lists, the guy who insists on formally addressing every email message to "Colleagues" and the incessant looping in of one more person as a decision impends.

The following interactive arranges the emails as a typical inbox, in date order. For the sake of simplicity, every email is included in one inbox instead of separate ones for different people. You can click the "From" or "Subject" bars to sort by those fields instead.

Because the emails were released as printed email messages that are too fuzzy to be cleanly digitized by a computer, Yahoo News is steadily converting them to searchable text. So far, this interactive includes the first 25 percent of the messages. Letters in square brackets indicate that a person's name was redacted and replaced by a handwritten acronym representing the organization he or she works for.

Update, 12:43 p.m.: Now includes Brennan edits and Victoria Nuland's push back.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/benghazi-messages-browse-administration-emails-inbox-153342167.html

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Hands-on with BBM Channels: BlackBerry's trojan horse social platform

"It's more like Tumblr." That's how one BlackBerry rep described BBM Channels to us, the company's new social networking service announced this past week at BlackBerry Live in Orlando. While Channels, alone, may initially seem like nothing new -- it's an iteration of a social communication model we've seem countless times before -- the service actually speaks more to BlackBerry's forward-facing strategy for BBM as a device-agnostic mobile solution. And, certainly, with the BBM messaging service heading to Android and iOS later this summer, BlackBerry only stands to gain from making its platform more robust, more engaging and more attractive to the big name brands, personalities and publications that draw followers.

Gallery: BBM Channels

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Software, Mobile, Blackberry

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/h9FT4IfmIH4/

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Dancing With the Stars Results: Who's in the Final Four?

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/dancing-with-the-stars-results-whos-in-the-final-four/

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Billion-year-old water could hold clues to life on Earth and Mars

May 15, 2013 ? A UK-Canadian team of scientists has discovered ancient pockets of water, which have been isolated deep underground for billions of years and contain abundant chemicals known to support life.

This water could be some of the oldest on the planet and may even contain life. Not just that, but the similarity between the rocks that trapped it and those on Mars raises the hope that comparable life-sustaining water could lie buried beneath the red planet's surface.

The findings, published in Nature today, may force us to rethink which parts of our planet are fit for life, and could reveal clues about how microbes evolve in isolation.

Researchers from the universities of Manchester, Lancaster, Toronto and McMaster analysed water pouring out of boreholes from a mine 2.4 kilometres beneath Ontario, Canada.

They found that the water is rich in dissolved gases like hydrogen, methane and different forms -- called isotopes -- of noble gases such as helium, neon, argon and xenon. Indeed, there is as much hydrogen in the water as around hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, many of which teem with microscopic life.

The hydrogen and methane come from the interaction between the rock and water, as well as natural radioactive elements in the rock reacting with the water. These gases could provide energy for microbes that may not have been exposed to the sun for billions of years.

The crystalline rocks surrounding the water are thought to be around 2.7 billion years old. But no-one thought the water could be the same age, until now.

Using ground-breaking techniques developed at the University of Manchester, the researchers show that the fluid is at least 1.5 billion years old, but could be significantly older.

NERC-funded Professor Chris Ballentine of the University of Manchester, co-author of the study, and project director, says:

'We've found an interconnected fluid system in the deep Canadian crystalline basement that is billions of years old, and capable of supporting life. Our finding is of huge interest to researchers who want to understand how microbes evolve in isolation, and is central to the whole question of the origin of life, the sustainability of life, and life in extreme environments and on other planets.'

Before this finding, the only water of this age was found trapped in tiny bubbles in rock and is incapable of supporting life. But the water found in the Canadian mine pours from the rock at a rate of nearly two litres per minute. It has similar characteristics to far younger water flowing from a mine 2.8 kilometres below ground in South Africa that was previously found to support microbes.

Ballentine and his colleagues don't yet know if the underground system in Canada sustains life, but Dr Greg Holland of Lancaster University, lead author of the study says:

'Our Canadian colleagues are trying to find out if the water contains life right now. What we can be sure of is that we have identified a way in which planets can create and preserve an environment friendly to microbial life for billions of years. This is regardless of how inhospitable the surface might be, opening up the possibility of similar environments in the subsurface of Mars.'

Professor Ballentine, based in Manchester's School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, adds:

'While the questions about life on Mars raised by our work are incredibly exciting, the ground-breaking techniques we have developed at Manchester to date ancient waters also provide a way to calculate how fast methane gas is produced in ancient rock systems globally. The same new techniques can be applied to characterise old, deep groundwater that may be a safe place to inject carbon dioxide.'

David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science, says:

'This is excellent pioneering research. It gives new insight into our planet. It has also developed new technology for carbon capture and storage projects. These have the potential for growth, job creation and our environment.'

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/xolmr4IPKJ4/130515131550.htm

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No Economic Recovery Without Small Businesses | Commentary ...

• By Jeff Stibel
• May 15, 2013, 5 a.m.

By some measures, the economy is fantastic. Interest rates are low. The Dow has been hitting record highs, only to exceed them the next day. The S&P 500 just topped its previous high from October 2007, well before the recession started, and home prices are rallying. The New York Times has called it a ?golden age for corporate profits.? Indeed, profit margins are at an all-time high.

Yet by other measures, the economy is still in peril. The March and April jobs reports showed barely enough jobs created to keep up with population growth and well less than the 250,000 needed monthly for a thriving economy. While there are signs of slightly decreasing unemployment, from 7.7 percent to 7.6 percent, that is largely because people have stopped looking for work. It is estimated that half a million people quit looking for work in the past year alone. The Center for Economic and Policy Research calculated that at current job growth rates, it will take until the year 2020 to reach stable employment.

What is happening is that we are in the midst of a false recovery ? the economy may have gotten out of the recession and into second gear, but it?s stalling in third. That is because economic recoveries, irrespective of any other economic indicators, always come down to jobs. Recoveries are not about corporate profits nor are they about stock market rallies. The current recovery has depended far too much on federal stimulus, government bailouts and unprecedentedly cheap money from the Fed. These cannot persist.

There is simply no such thing as an economic recovery without a jobs recovery. And historically, there has never been a jobs recovery without small-business growth. Small businesses typically employ more than half the workforce and create a full two-thirds of the new jobs in the United States. Small businesses provide investment, innovation, competition and entrepreneurial energy so essential to long-term, sustainable growth. So it presents a big problem that the National Federation of Independent Business? Small Business Economic Trends report for April 2013 showed that a net zero percent of small-business owners plan to hire in the near future. This is a huge blow to the economy.

While this is dismal news, it?s not irreversible. The solution is actually simple: First, we need to incentivize startup companies, especially those that create jobs. The number of startups has declined in recent years, in large part because their access to capital dried up, and that has had immediate negative effects on employment and longer-term effects on the future of innovation. To reverse this trend, we need to shift funding to new companies and tax credits to entrepreneurs. Small businesses need capital to grow. Traditionally Congress helped make this easier, by giving the Small Business Administration the resources to guarantee small-business loans. Yet at the very time this program must be continued and expanded, it is being starved. As a result of the sequester, the SBA loan guarantees program was cut. Congress should again fund this program, in addition to the Small Business Innovation Research grants that have helped launch many great American tech startups.

Second, small businesses need people. At the high end, tech startups look for workers with cutting-edge skills. Many other startups are founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Yet America?s immigration system is broken. Bipartisan efforts to update and improve this system are welcome and needed, and immigration changes should include provisions offered in the so-called Startup Act 3.0.

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Source: http://www.rollcall.com/news/no_economic_recovery_without_small_businesses_commentary-224803-1.html

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