The Kiowa Warrior is slated to retire in 2025, the Chinook in 2035, and both the Apache and Black Hawk will be gone by 2040. We thought we had a suitable replacement for all of these platforms in the Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche. But then, this next-gen stealth chopper vanished in a puff of bureaucratic smoke.
NASA’s spacecraft Orion just survived its very first test flight . The shiny, new space capsule will one day carry a human crew to Mars or to an asteroid—wait, which is it? Amidst the hype, there’s still an unforgivable confusion about what comes next.
A fire extinguisher is only as useful as you’re able to easily find it in an emergency. And being stashed under the kitchen sink means there’s the risk it’s not only hard to access, but might need recharging as well. So Greg Mockett created a camouflaged fire extinguisher shaped like a bottle that can be left on your kitchen counters so it’s never out of sight or out of mind.
Imagine you’re part of a big brand like Target. How do you convince customers you’re cool? If you’re not waiting around for one of your employees to become a viral teen hearthrob , how about thrusting them into a virtual reality world? In the latest example of VR advertising , Google and Target have teamed up to let shoppers explore a winter wonderland as they stride down the aisles.
We know Verizon goes to extreme lengths to field test its network – but it turns out the carrier is also pretty tough on all of the devices it offers. Nestled in cozy Bedminster, New Jersey lies Verizon’s labs, where it subjects new phones to a batte…
A candle can be a romantic addition to any home or dinner table, where the kind of warmth and charm that it exudes will certainly be able to melt even the most hardened of hearts through a particular romantic overture or two. However, silk curtains billowing in the wind with a candle located right beside it might just catch fire, and no one would want a tragedy like that to happen. The idea of an electric candle is definitely not new, but here we are with the £19.99 Playbulb Candle that offers a new take on an old method.
The Playbulb Candle is actually a color-changing mood light, where it can be controlled by your smartphone. What makes the Playbulb Candle special is the fact that it is a far lower fire hazard compared to the traditional candle, doing away with the risks associated with flames, having smoke darken your freshly painted ceiling, and not having any kind of dribbly wax to contend with. There are also smart sensors which enable you to blow it out in the same way a candle works. Not only that, you can also enjoy a little aromatic ambience thanks to the embedded scent diffuser. The the Playbulb Candle is battery powered and portable, it is ideal not only for indoor, but for outdoor use as well.
[ Playbulb Candle offers a new take on an old method copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Last night, I stepped into Marquee night club in New York City. David Guetta was on the set list. People were dressed their best, lights were flashing, and I had a fresh glass full of booze in hand. I should have been excited, but instead my head just hurt.
Am I getting old? Are clubs just getting louder?
In either case, Dubs solved my problems. Read More
CHICAGO (AP) — A summer jobs program that engaged mentors to help troubled kids stay on track is linked with a big reduction in youth arrests for violent crimes.
The results suggest that a low-cost public program can reap big benefits. But they also support arguments that employment alone cannot resolve poverty-related ills.
Study author Sara Heller, an assistant criminology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the research offers one possible way to prevent violence among disadvantaged youngsters, and it’s a strategy that other cities should consider. “It means adolescence isn’t too late” to change destructive behavior, Heller said.
The study was released Thursday by the journal Science.
Working with the University of Chicago Crime Lab and police data, Heller studied the city’s eight-week program the year it launched, 2012, and followed participants for up to about a year after their jobs ended. They were compared with a control group of teens not involved in the program.
About 1,630 kids were involved, all from violence-prone Chicago schools. Most were black and from low-income families. They were randomly assigned to the jobs program or the control group.
Kids in the program worked 25 hours a week as camp counselors, community garden assistants, office clerks and similar jobs. They earned minimum wage – $8.25 an hour, or an average of $1,400 for the summer, received bus passes if needed, and one daily meal. The cost to the city was $3,000 per kid.
Participants all had job mentors, adults who kept in close contact and helped them work out transportation troubles, conflicts with supervisors or family struggles that could have kept them from going to work and being successful on the job.
About half the jobs participants also got lessons from counselors in managing social and emotional difficulties, and setting goals. This extra help didn’t affect the rate of violent-crime arrests, which was about the same as the jobs-only group.
In the end, there were 43 percent fewer violent-crime arrests among the jobs group during the follow-up than among the control group.
Adjusting for factors involved in the study design, violent-crime arrests among the jobs group totaled 37, or an average of about 5 arrests per 100 participants. By contrast, violent-crime arrests totaled 82 in the control group, or about 9 per 100 kids. The crimes were mostly assaults.
There was no difference between the two groups in arrests for crimes involving property or drugs, although rates were low.
Heller said previous research also found employment has little effect on non-violent crime. Reasons are unclear but violence often results from “interpersonal conflicts,” which Chicago’s program aims to help kids overcome, she said.
Patrick Owens says he had run-ins with the law and wasn’t doing well in school until he got involved in the summer program two years ago. Now 19 and a freshman at Central State University in Ohio, he says job mentors helped set him straight.
They offered motivation, and the program “gave me something to look forward to,” Owens said. “It made you want to work harder to just do something positive for yourself.”
Robert Apel, a Rutgers University expert in the link between employment and crime, said the study results “are certainly encouraging, and worth close scrutiny.”
Previous evidence on summer jobs programs is scant but suggests they don’t have promising results, partly because they tend to offer more menial tasks than in the Chicago program, he said.
But Apel said what made the Chicago jobs program a success might have had little to do with the work, and may have been the mentoring.
Dr. M. Denise Dowd, an ER physician and injury prevention researcher at Children’s Mercy Hospitals in Kansas City, said the mentors likely provided crucial guidance to keep kids on the job and regulate disruptive behavior. Knowing there’s an adult who cares can give at-risk kids resilience to deal with adversity, Dowd said.
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Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org
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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner
In the second installment of my interview with Rick Kinsel, Executive Director of the Vilcek Foundation, Kinsel offers advice for artists based on over twenty years of experience in the art world. His work in both the for-profit and not-for profit sectors includes time at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Coty, Inc. Rick is part of the first group of Visual Arts Curators supporting the launch of Pen and Brush’s new programming.
To learn more about Pen and Brush’s open call for literary or visual art submissions please visit PenandBrush.org.
Janice Sands (JS): What advice would you like to give to emerging artists?
Rick Kinsel (RK): The emerging artist has to develop his or her vision from scratch, and then choose very carefully just how and when to place that vision before the world. My advice to the emerging artist is to think very carefully before making that first move, since with so many young artists out there, you really only get one chance to make that great first impression.
JS: What about mid-career artists?
RK: The mid-career artist, by comparison, faces an equally difficult set of challenges. He or she needs to keep his vision before the public, remaining recognizably him-or-herself, while innovating enough within that vision to not seem repetitive or tired. The mid-career artist is basically a comeback artist every time he or she has a show — the challenge is in reinventing the self and the vision in a way that keeps people who already know your work interested in what you are doing now. Behind the scenes, meanwhile, he or she has to be both an impresario and a businessperson: setting the stage for the art to be recognized and applauded, and at the same time, managing what is essentially a small business.
JS: In your experience, what is the common denominator shared by successful working artists?
RK: In reviewing the winning applications for the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise each year (an annual prize awarded to emerging immigrant artists and scientists), the common denominator I witnessed across all spectrums of the arts — from filmmaking to literature to music — was the single-minded commitment of artists to their craft.
These people work incredibly hard, are passionate every day about what they are doing and they never let up in the pursuit of their dreams. In order to be successful, many of the prizewinners had foregone the possibility of a stable income, a secure home life and, in some instances, had even put off having children. Nearly all of them had put in years of hard work before achieving any sort of recognition.
JS: What changes or trends have you seen that have had an impact on artists in the past 20 years?
RK: I think that the youngest members of our society are increasingly worried about making their way in the world, and their anxiety is shaping the way that some of them approach being an artist. For example, many younger artists are focusing from a very early age on creating a business model for their art practice, and that’s something new.
In the earlier years of this century, art was the opposite of a business — it was a calling or vocation. Today, though, fame, critical recognition and monetary rewards are all things our society is obsessed with… and artists are no exception. Andy Warhol celebrated those ideas in his work and embodied them in his career as an artist, and over the past twenty-five years, many other artists have followed his example — artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. But I’d like to think there are other, perhaps better, ways of being an artist, and I hope that in the coming decades we’ll see a return among younger artists to something larger and more lastingly important than fame and fortune.
The themes that most interest me as a curator are ones that address social and political injustice, as well as the impending ecological crisis faced by the entire planet. Social and political themes are ones that we have supported strongly at the Vilcek Foundation over the years, and that I personally will continue to support whenever I have the curatorial opportunity.
Whenever I cover a case in the Supreme Court, I play the mental game, “What would I do if I were the lawyer? And the lawyer on each side?” [OK, I confess … I do miss litigating cases …]
Right now there is an incredibly important case before the US Supreme Court called King v. Burwell.
If the defendant (HHS Secretary Burwell) loses, Obamacare will be in deep, deep, deep trouble. How deep? I don’t know how Obamacare will survive since a decision for King would strip much of the funding/subsidies in the Obamacare law. Without the funding and subsidies, and with both Democrats and Republicans seeking to get rid of the medical device tax which is a significant source of revenue to the healthcare law, Obamacare essentially goes belly up. People can’t afford it and there is no revenue to finance it.
So what’s the issue? Whether subsidies and tax credits can go to those in states that did not set up exchanges — and instead the federal government stepped in and set up the exchanges. How many states did NOT set up their exchanges? 36.
The plaintiff (King) says the express language in the Obamacare statute says that the subsidies/tax credits were put in to the statute for a specific purpose — to lure states into creating their own exchanges. And if the states did not set up their own exchanges? No subsidies/tax credits for them. The plaintiff says the clear language limiting to states that set up their exchanges was not an accident nor an oversight but deliberate.
The Obama administration essentially says the language was in-artfully drafted, an accident, that the subsidies/tax credits were meant for every state, regardless who set up the exchange. It says that the Supreme Court should not just read the language limiting the money to states that created their own exchanges, but to put the issue in a broader context to include the intent of Obamacare, which was healthcare for everyone. If the statute is read more broadly by the Supreme Court, the Obama administration has a bigger chance of winning.
It boils down to this … if the Supreme Court goes beyond the words, what WAS the broader intent?
So … what would I do? If I were King’s lawyer, and with the chance the Court could take a broader view than the strict words, I would want the Supreme Court to consider the statements of Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare. Gruber states that the intent of the subsidies (the plaintiffs view) was ONLY for states who created their own exchanges and not for states where the exchanges were created by the federal government.
Here’s what Gruber is quoted as having said:
“What’s important to remember politically about this is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits — but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill,” he said. “I hope that that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together.” [January 2012/Noblis] [click here]
The foregoing is powerful language (proof) about the intent – eliminating states that did not set up the exchange was not just a mistake but deliberate. You would think that a home run for plaintiff King but not so fast. There is a problem for the plaintiff and a significant one. Gruber’s statements are beyond the record — they are not in any of the record that the Supreme Court will be reviewing when it makes its decision. Because it is ‘beyond the record’ it is irrelevant to the Court’s decision. It would be improper for the Court to go beyond the record in reaching its decision. Why isn’t the Gruber language in the record and powerfully argued? It did not circulate after the record was closed.
So..what would I do? I would either file a motion to supplement the record in the Supreme Court or I would ask that the case be remanded to the lower court where I would make that same motion. Courts don’t like records being supplemented but I would say this is a unique situation.
And if I were the lawyer for the Obama Administration? I would say ‘too late!’ All the Gruber comments were in the public domain at the time the record was open…even on YouTube and that the King lawyers blew any chance to supplement the record. “You snooze, you loose.”
So what is going to happen? And how will the Supreme Court decided this case? Your guess is as good as mine…but this sure is an important case!
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click here for a good article with more background
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
