Rory McIlroy has won the 2014 British Open at Royal Liverpool for his third career major victory. Heading into the final round with a six-stroke lead, the 25-year-old from Northern Ireland shot a 71 to finish 17-under par.
Rory McIlroy is 2014’s Champion Golfer of the Year.
Congratulations to the newest winner of #TheOpen. pic.twitter.com/I40xYB7EXZ
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) July 20, 2014
Diablo III fans will recognize this sword prop right away. It’s El’Druin – The Sword of Justice – and it was designed directly from the digital art files for the game. That means it looks like the one Tyrael uses to flay baddies in the game.
The thing measures over three feet long. Sadly, it’s made of plastic that is hand-painted to look like metal, but on the other hand that means it doesn’t weigh 20 pounds. The replica has a pulsating blue light in the hilt that looks all fancy and sh*t.
Just think how cool this will look the next time you cosplay in a knight costume or feel the need to sword fight your friends over the last shot of Jager at your next LAN party. It’s available from ThinkGeek for $59.99(USD).
If I ever get a sword, I plan to name it the Blade of Infinite Stabbing.
This is Amazon’s first electric bike deal of the day, and I’m fairly confident we’ve never seen a discount from anyone else. Like a regular bike, except electric, these Jetson Electric Bikes are eco-friendly, come in 12 colors, and are $500 off today. I’m partial to the Purple or Hunter Green, and of course the Black. Jetson is a Brooklyn-based company, and I’ve been told the bikes top out at about 20mph. [Jetson Electric Bike Gold Box]
The security research firm Cloudmark issued a sweeping warning about iMessage spam this week. Apparently, the cost of straight up sending regular text messages is encouraging spammers to use Apple’s free service. And they’re going after affluent people in major U.S. cities hard right now.
We’ve known for years that the RIAA acts like a bunch of hypocritical bullies with nothing better to do than pick on the helpless . But wow. The latest report about how the lobbying organization is now bullying small music sites that not only have zero revenue but also pay licensing fees is just pathetic.
Want to see a textbook definition of irony? Look no further than Indexeus, a search engine that primarily exposes the info of malicious hackers caught up in the very sort of data breaches that they inflict on others. As it was originally structured,…
Forty-five years ago today, three American astronauts – Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins – made history with the Apollo 11 mission, putting human feet on the moon for the first time. Today’s anniversary of the moon landing sees NASA relive the 1969 manned lunar mission with an online rebroadcast, while it also looks ahead to new ventures for … Continue reading
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed a package of tax breaks Thursday designed to boost charitable donations by seniors, private foundations and procrastinators.
One provision provides tax breaks to people over 70 who make donations from their individual retirement accounts. Another reduces excise taxes on private charitable foundations.
Procrastinators would be able to claim tax deductions for donations made after the end of the year, as long as they were made by April 15. Other provisions provide tax breaks for landowners who donate land for conservation purposes, and businesses that donate food to food banks.
The White House threatened to veto the bill because it would add $16 billion to the budget deficit over the next decade. In a statement, the White House criticized House Republicans for supporting tax breaks that mainly benefit wealthier Americans while refusing to help low-income families by extending unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed.
The vote was 277-130 to pass the bill. Fifty-six Democrats joined 221 Republicans to vote in favor of the bill.
“The good will of the American people is unmatched, and we should do everything we can to encourage Americans to give more, enabling charities, nonprofits, foundations and schools across the country to expand their reach and serve those most in need,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Sue Santa of the Council on Foundations said the bill “could strengthen charitable giving and give certainty to both donors and to the foundations.”
The bill now goes to the Senate, where it is likely to get caught up in a debate over how to deal with a package of temporary tax breaks that expired at the beginning of the year. More than 50 temporary tax breaks expired in January, including several provisions in the bill passed Thursday.
The Republican-led House has voted to make a handful of them permanent, leaving the fate of others uncertain.
The Democratic-controlled Senate is taking a different approach. Instead of making them permanent, senators have been working on a package that would extend nearly all the temporary tax breaks through 2015.
The impasse is likely to last until after congressional elections in November.
The provision to benefit late donors has been popular as a way to boost donations for natural disasters that happen around the beginning of the year. In 2010, Congress extended the deadline to donate to relief efforts for earthquakes in both Haiti and Chile.
Under current law, donations must be made by Dec. 31 for taxpayers to claim the deduction on that year’s tax return. Santa said extending the deadline to donate until April 15 would provide a natural time for donors to give — when they are filling out their tax forms.
The provision would save taxpayers $2.8 billion over the next decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the official tax scorekeeper for Congress.
The biggest tax break in Thursday’s bill affects donations from individual retirement accounts. If you have an IRA, you must start taking minimum distributions six months after you turn 70. The amount depends on your age and the amount of money in your IRA.
For traditional IRAs, those distributions are taxable.
A temporary tax break that expired in January allowed seniors to avoid paying taxes on those distributions by donating them to charity. The bill passed Thursday would renew the tax beak and make it permanent.
The exemption is capped at $100,000 a year.
The tax break is popular among seniors with the means to make donations, Santa said. It would save them $8.4 billion over the next decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
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Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap
Talk about a picture being worth a thousand words.
Political cartoonists Peter Brookes and Michael Ramirez just made two of the most powerful statements about Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 using hardly any words at all. Brookes works for the London Times, and Ramirez is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
See their art for yourself:
London Times editorial cartoon on Putin and #MH17 pic.twitter.com/6PnVfgoEwg
— Tom Wright (@thomaswright08) July 19, 2014
RT @trscoop: ‘The BLOOD on his hands’ – Devastating Michael Ramirez cartoon on Putin and the http://t.co/slSPrqciyC pic.twitter.com/H5zUQJeQiS
— Jen Kuznicki (@jen5309) July 19, 2014
(h/t: Mediaite)
These questions originally appeared on Quora.
Answer by Zach Gilford, Actor, The Purge: Anarchy
Q: What scene from The Purge: Anarchy did the actors enjoy shooting the most?
A: My favorite scene – and this is for selfish reasons — is this quick little scene in the apartment where Kiele and I are just talking to each other. We shot the movie pretty chronologically and we had been running around, doing all this crazy stuff for forever, and it was towards the end of the actual shoot, and you know, I got to shoot this movie with my wife, which was really fun. And this scene is the first chance we got to take a breath and just sit and act with each other as opposed to just running around together. So it’s kind of a special little moment because you don’t get to film with your spouse that often but it was also just a feeling of in the mix of making this crazy movie I get to take a beat and say, “Ah, I’m going to act for a minute, I’m going to do a scene.” And I thought it really paged a very different scene. And that’s another thing that’s so great about James. He and I talked about it a little and were like I feel like the scene was written this way, but this is not totally how it was written, but we presented it to him and he said, “Oh my God, you’re totally right, that makes the scene so much better.” He was always like that, he was so open to making it feel authentic and it shows in the final product. The director, James DeMonaco, was super collaborative and very empowering of everyone, and I think he collaborated with everyone from props to lights to actors. I think everyone really enjoyed working with him.
Q: What messages is The Purge: Anarchy trying to convey to the audience?
A: I think it is the same as the first film, which is just a look at how inherent violence is to human nature or not. And I actually think this one has a more positive outlook on human nature because it is about people who band together and put themselves at risk for strangers. They have lots of opportunities when they can just go off on their own but they stick together. And yes, there is safety in numbers but they put themselves literally in the line of a bullet at times to protect the unborns. But there is also the very political commentary about a government that would set this up and this great literalization of how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s a society now where the rich can do whatever they want. They hire people to kill, they can forge the security system, they can be part of the purge or not and don’t really worry about what is going to happen to them. And the poor literally have to scrap to stay alive. They hide in dumpsters or put up a board across their door and hope that destiny doesn’t have someone break their door down. I think it is a very interesting literalization of how surviving in today’s society is literal surviving as opposed to a livelihood.
Q: What was the most challenging scene to shoot in The Purge: Anarchy?
A: There was a scene in the movie where rats jump onto Kiele’s leg, and so for that they used trained rats, but in this particular scene without the specially trained rats, we were in an alley and there actually were for every take like 10-20 rats creeping up on us. It was disgusting for all of us, and I think there was more intensity in that scene than any other one because we just wanted to get to the end of the scene so that we could run out of the alley, so that we didn’t get eaten by the rats! It was like in that movie Willard where it was so gross. I don’t remember the exact amount of takes we did, I don’t think we did too many, but it was still gross.
Q: How did the lead actors become involved with The Purge: Anarchy?
A: I read the script and very coincidentally had just seen the first film 2 weeks beforehand and I liked it and thought it was really cool. I thought it was shot really well and the look of it was awesome. It definitely showed this claustrophobic kind of home invasion movie, which I think was very conscious but I know a lot of people were like “What! That’s not what I thought it was going to be, I thought it was going to be out on the streets and chaos!” Anyway, so I read the second script and it was just like that and it delivered on what everyone expected and it’s so perfectly named The Purge: Anarchy. I read the script, and I liked it but I didn’t know what the style was going to be until I sat down and talked to director James DeMonaco about it. He gave me his take on it and I got to know him a little bit better and he is truly one of my favorite directors I have ever worked with. And also he’s just a great person, him and I were talking for about an hour and the casting director popped in and was like, “We have other stuff to do!” And James responded, “We could talk all day!” And from that very moment, he claims that he was ready to give me the part, but Michael Bay, who’s one of the producers of the film was like “no, we have to see him do it; we have to see him on tape.” So I went in and made a tape with James and then he said, “Ok, yeah he can have the job.” So that’s how I got involved and it was fun and when you look at the finished product I think James did a great job and I think it’s a much better movie than some people expect it to be. Its definitely a lot more high-concept than it is at face value.
More questions on Quora:
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