We live in an imperfect world, full of imperfect beings, but if everyone declared that they had nothing to hide, would that make us better people? It’s a question that one man is hoping to answer by opening up every aspect of his life to the world’s…
The route to market for a new product is seldom straightforward, as smart lock start-up August has found, but after several months of delays the Yves Behar-designed door furniture is finally shipping. Announced more than a year ago, back in May 2013, August – which can be controlled remotely from your iPhone or Android device – was intended to ship … Continue reading
Time Warner Cable has begun bringing internet services back online, after sweeping outages robbed subscribers across the US of their broadband service for several hours. The downtime affected TWC customers in 29 states, and is being blamed on a significant infrastructure issue encountered earlier this morning. “[An] issue with our Internet backbone created disruption with our Internet and On Demand … Continue reading
Cloud storage provider Dropbox has updated its Dropbox Pro service, streamlining storage to a single 1TB plan, and making it easier to secure files and remotely manage content. The tweaks include password-protected shared links, which mean that even if someone else gets access to an URL for a shared file, they’ll still need to have the password you set in … Continue reading
Is there no end to the amount of Star Wars related merchandise for the masses to continue purchasing from time to time? I suppose the answer is a definite “No”, especially when you come up with something that is as creative as this $34.99 Star Wars Light Saber BBQ Tongs. The name of this unique addition to any kitchen of a Star Wars fan more or less gives the game away, where the BBQ tongs have been specially modeled after Darth Vader’s lightsaber – during the time of Episode IV as it sports a side button that will offer some classic lightsaber sound effects whenever it is pressed.
I know that a hungry person is an angry person, but then again, this is no reason not to remain civilized and wait for one’s food to be cooked prim and proper, as well as take your turn just like everyone else who I suspect, is also equally hungry and cannot wait to get his or her stomach filled. This is definitely a grilling implement for a more civilized age, where you as the chef, might even get too distracted to indulge in a little bit of lightsaber role play before you actually manage to cook the entire bucket’s worth of meat for your family. Shame on you then, but the memories – ah, those will always be remembered. Thankfully, the Star Wars Light Saber BBQ Tongs will feature a heat-resistant plastic handle and its sound effects will be powered by a couple of AAA/LR03 batteries. Not quite digital, but it gets the job done.
[ Star Wars Light Saber BBQ Tongs ensures the undisciplined hungry are kept at bay copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
It’s ironic that during August, Happiness Happens month, Robin Williams, one of our most poignant and memorable American comedians has committed suicide. On my Facebook page each day this month, I’m sharing suggestion on how to instill happiness in each day of your life. To many, this might seem cosmetic, but happiness is something that not only must be nurtured every day, but is felt at our core.
As Aristotle said: “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” The opposite extreme is depression, like that felt by Williams when making the decision to take his life.
My first experience with suicide was my grandmother’s, when I was 10 years old. I found her lying peacefully in her bed with an empty bottle of sleeping pills on her bedside table. I was too young to understand the possible ramifications of depression and dealing with the demons of one’s childhood. But now, as a sexagenarian, I get it. I understand how, through illness and pain, that someone can become so sad they find no reason to go on. It’s important to remember as well that addictions are only the symptom of the problem, not the cause. People reach for drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, and other dependencies as a way to treat their deep sadness, not the other way around.
The Dalai Lama wrote a wonderful book called, The Art of Happiness. In it, he makes clear that essentially, it’s the quest for happiness inspires us to awaken in the morning. Wars happen because everyone wants what they want, and believe that getting it will make them happy. Fights happen for the same reason. I cannot help but believe that if we all did our part in our own little world then, happiness would spread in the same way that a contagion might spread through a culture. On that basis, The Dalai Lama offered the following tidbits of information as key to happiness: ask yourself if you need something; think about the fact that our enemies can be our teachers, and compassion brings peace of mind. In the end, we learn that like meditation and yoga, the art of happiness is attained through regular practice. It’s work. It’s a daily effort to seek what brings you joy.
Maybe at some point, people like Williams give up the fight because they do not have the energy to fight any more, but it is the fight and quest of those who refuse to give up which inspire and fire our own lives. So, when someone tells me they are unhappy, the first thing I tell them is to interconnect, get out in the world; do something for someone else, get out of yourself and surround yourself with positive people who make you feel good. This will make a big difference.
Earlier on Huff/Post50:
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The bound bodies of two people were found in a Philadelphia river Wednesday, and a third man who said he managed to free himself is being treated at a hospital for stab wounds, police said.
The bodies were found in the Schuylkill River in Fairmount Park just before 4 a.m. Wednesday, Chief Inspector Scott Small said.
“Both of the dead bodies had duct tape wrapped around their face. They also both appeared to be bound, their wrists and ankles. They also appeared to be tied or tethered to some piece of debris, some sort of weight used as an anchor to take them under water,” he said.
Small said a 20-year-old man with stab wounds was taken to a hospital in stable condition.
Small said the surviving victim reported that he was thrown into the back of a van in another part of Philadelphia, and the other two victims were already in the van. He said he was robbed and stabbed before all three were tossed into the river, but he was able to free himself and climb out of the river.
“At this point, the only motive we have for the abduction and stabbing of our 20-year-old victim who’s alive is robbery,” Small said. “He claims when he was thrown in the back of the van and tied up and stabbed he was robbed of an undisclosed amount of money. He further states that the two other victims were already in the back of the van – he was not with the two other victims – so we don’t know if the two other victims were related to the robbery.”
Small said the other two victims were pronounced dead at the scene, and both remained unidentified.
“We’re not even certain if they’re males,” he said.
Small said he would not disclose the place where the surviving victim was abducted, but police hoped to use surveillance video from that location to identify the van.
Despite what you may have heard, there are actually many black and Hispanic workers at tech companies. They’re just not paid much, and they mostly don’t get the same benefits as white and Asian employees.
Black and Hispanic workers make up 41 percent of private security guards, 72 percent of janitors and 76 percent of maintenance workers in Silicon Valley, according to a report released Tuesday by Working Partnerships USA, a labor-affiliated nonprofit that works on behalf of temporary employees.
While software developers in the Valley make more than $60 an hour, the median wage for workers guarding buildings, cleaning toilets and trimming hedges on tech campuses ranges from $11.39 to $14.17 an hour, according to the report.
At that rate, a janitor working full-time wouldn’t even be able to afford rent on an average apartment in Santa Clara County, where Silicon Valley is located, the report said.
The findings come at a time when tech companies are under scrutiny for their evident dearth of white-collar diversity. Facing pressure from activists who say the industry should recruit more black and Latino employees, several tech companies released data this summer showing the lack of those minorities in their workforces and the prevalence of white and Asian men, and pledged to do better. At Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Google and eBay, the portion of U.S.-based tech workers who were either black or Hispanic ranged between 3 and 4 percent, Working Partnerships’ report said.
“These twin dynamics — lack of access to high-end tech jobs, and lack of adequate wages in contracted service jobs — have a profound impact on the communities that are left behind by Silicon Valley’s flagship industry,” the report reads.
Such low-wage workers are not counted on tech company payrolls, because they work for contractors. Thus, they aren’t eligible for the benefits offered on the tech campuses where they work. In Santa Clara County, for example, 88 percent of computer and math jobs offer paid sick days, while only 41 percent of building and ground cleaning jobs and 45 percent of security jobs allow employees to take at least one paid sick day, the report said.
Charles Wilson is one of the workers whom Silicon Valley’s perks and benefits don’t quite reach. Wilson, who is 32 and black, makes $12 an hour as a security guard patrolling the campuses of IBM and Seagate, a data storage company in Cupertino.
Wilson says he doesn’t get health benefits or paid sick leave. So when he sprained his ankle recently, his only option was to ice it down, go to work and “hope I don’t have to get into a fight or chase anybody,” he said.
When his roommate had to move out because of a medical emergency, Wilson said, he could no longer afford an apartment in San Jose and was forced to move back in with his mother.
“These companies make billions of dollars a year and want to pretend they can’t pay the people who clean up after them or safeguard their lives, because it would be some sort of economic hardship,” he told The Huffington Post. “But that is untrue.”
The Working Partnerships report found that 36 percent of black households and 59 percent of Hispanic households in the county surrounding Silicon Valley fall below the “self-sufficiency line,” a term used to describe the amount of income that a family requires to meet its basic needs.
Giving a raise of $5 per hour to 10,000 contracted workers would be enough to lift a security guard from the median wage to self-sufficiency. Such a move would cost less than 0.1 percent of the $103.7 billion the tech industry made in profits last year, the report said.
The report is based on government data for Santa Clara County and workforce data released by tech firms. It doesn’t give details on how many low-wage workers work for tech companies, because those companies haven’t released information on their contracted workforces.
Working Partnerships’ findings are another sign that the wealth being created by the tech industry has not trickled down to the low-wage workers who support those companies and live in the surrounding communities. A recent article in USA Today highlighted the struggles of shuttle drivers who ferry tech workers between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Earlier this year, demonstrators blocked industry shuttle buses and congregated outside a Google engineer’s home to protest what they said were rising rents created by the tech industry’s success.
The New Adult genre burst onto the scene despite decades of publishing theory that said stories set during the “college-age years” were a literary dead zone. The authors who decided to self-publish rather than change their stories disagreed, and hordes of readers who gobbled those stories up proved that those authors were correct. Now New Adult is booming in both indie and traditional publishing spheres.
As a reader and an author, I’m delighted by the change. I never understood why the years between 18 and 25 were largely disregarded in fiction, especially romantic fiction set in modern times. After all, some of the most significant events in my life happened during that time frame: getting my first job, my first apartment, getting married, breaking up, getting back together, the death of a friend, and the list goes on. Many other people experienced a plethora of “firsts” during that same time frame, so with all the emotional highs and lows, the New Adult genre is ripe for great stories.
Thanks to the creation of the New Adult genre, I was finally able to tell the story I wanted to tell exactly the way I envisioned it: through the eyes of a twenty-year-old heroine who’s falling in love for the first time while also trying to find her way in life when, quite literally, it seems that heaven and hell are against her.
If I love a genre enough to write in it, you can bet that I love it enough to read in it, too. Here are some of my favorite New Adult novels and the reasons why I couldn’t put them down. As per the current market, they’re all contemporaries, but with more authors making the jump to New Adult paranormal, mystery and sci-fi, I can’t wait to see what is in store in the future.
Jeaniene Frost is the author of The Beautiful Ashes.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A former hit man for Pablo Escobar who confessed to hundreds of murders as head of the Colombian drug kingpin’s army of assassins has been freed from prison despite protests by his many victims.
The press office for the agency overseeing Colombia’s prison system says John Jairo Velasquez walked free Tuesday night from a maximum security prison north of Bogota. A judge determined him eligible for parole after 22 years behind bars for plotting the murder of a former presidential candidate. The candidate, cartel-fighting politician Luis Carlos Galan, had been heavily favored to win the 1990 election.
Known as “Popeye,” the 52-year-old Velasquez was among Escobar’s most-trusted lieutenants at the apex of Colombia’s drug violence. He joined the capo’s Medellin cocaine cartel before he turned 18.
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