Apps have done wonders for music creation, and now there’s mobile software from Casio that aims to make it even easier. The Chordana Composer app for iPhone creates a track basked on a melody that you create by singing or whistling two bars of a tune…
As the Super Bowl advertising blitz is about to descend upon us this Sunday, companies are eager to get as much value as possible from their 30 to 60-second ads, such as posting them early online for audiences to see before the big game. Well, McDonald’s is really thinking outside the box with their attempt, as their Super Bowl commercial … Continue reading
A woman arrested on suspicion of DUI made a memorable impression on officers for allegedly sitting naked on top of an empty bottle of whisky.
Justine King, 33, was arrested Sept. 30, after officers allegedly found her sitting naked from the waist down in a blue Chevrolet Malibu that she crashed, KDKA TV reports.
King’s pants were under the car’s pedals and she was sitting on a bottle of Black Velvet whisky, according to an affidavit filed Jan. 15 as part of the court case against her. The documents were obtained by The Smoking Gun.
Officers told King to put her pants and exit the vehicle. She allegedly responded, “I don’t have any pants! I left my home without them!” the affidavit said.
The report says King was finally pulled from the car, handcuffed and placed into a cab, all while being “extremely belligerent, kicking, pulling away, and struggling.”
The suspect initially refused to identify herself, telling authorities, “The government got my name. You ain’t getting it! Ask the government.” On the way to the station, officers said King kept “banging her head off the inside of the window panel.”
King was taken to a nearby hospital, but refused to take a blood test or put on pants, according to SundayWorld.com.
King was arrested on charges of drunken driving, resisting arrest, reckless driving, open lewdness, and disorderly conduct.
She is due in court Feb. 20 to be arraigned on those charges.
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The Trans-Pacific Partnership, now headed to Congress, is a product of big corporations and Wall Street, seeking to circumvent regulations protecting workers, consumers, and the environment. Watch this video, and say “no” to fast-tracking this bad deal for the vast majority of Americans.
ROBERT B. REICH’s film “Inequality for All” is now available on DVD and blu-ray, and on Netflix.
That, in turn, points to a top remaining priority for Obama: entrenching these initiatives to the point where even a Republican successor might hesitate to uproot them.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — African leaders have agreed to send 7,500 troops to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria, an African Union official said Saturday.
The move came after the council urged heads of state to endorse the deployment of troops from five West African countries to fight the terror group, said the head of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, Samil Chergui. African leaders who are members of the 54-nation African Union are meeting in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for a two-day summit that ends Saturday.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon earlier said he support the AU’s move to send a force to fight Boko Haram. Boko Haram is increasing its attacks as Nigeria prepares for Feb. 14 elections. Thousands have been killed in the 5-year insurgency.
African nations have opened up a new international front in the war on terror. On Thursday, neighboring Chad sent a warplane and troops that drove the extremists out of a northeastern Nigeria border town in the first such act by foreign troops on Nigerian soil.
Chad’s victory, and the need for foreign troops, is an embarrassment to Nigeria’s once-mighty military, brought low by corruption and politics. The foreign intervention comes just two weeks before hotly contested national elections in which President Goodluck Jonathan is seeking another term.
Chergui said Chad’s operation against Boko Haram was a result of a bilateral arrangement between the Chad and Cameroon.
“It is conducted as part of a bilateral agreement and arrangement between the two countries. The AU, however, will launch the force in the future,” he said.
Boko Haram attracted international outrage in April when it kidnapped 276 schoolgirls at a boarding school in the remote town of Chibok. Dozens escaped on their own, but 219 remain missing.
Suicide bombings in recent months by young girls has raised fears that Boko Haram is using the kidnap victims in its conflict, which has displaced more than 1 million people and killed about 10,000 in the last year, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
President Obama told House Democrats on Thursday to avoid reading The Huffington Post, ironically just before his own blog went up on the site. While Obama has mentioned his misgivings with HuffPost in the past, this time his criticism came in response to a question about his trade deals.
“The fact that president Obama’s got so worked up over analysis of the HuffPost criticizing his trade agenda, I think that it says something,” Global Trade Watch research director Ben Beachy told HuffPost Live on Friday. “I think what it says is Obama is having to reckon with the difficult reality that his trade agenda directly conflicts with and undermines his stated middle class economics agenda.”
HuffPost Washington Bureau Chief Ryan Grim told HuffPost Live that the site’s concurrence with Obama’s overarching goals are the very reason for its criticism of his trade policy, which some say would actually increase income inequality.
“When The Huffington Post, for instance, is so critical of Wall Street policy or somebody like Larry Summers or somebody like Antonio Weiss … [Obama] knows that we’re coming from a place of sympathy with the goals of expanding opportunity, of trying to reduce poverty,” Grim told host Marc Lamont Hill. “You’re generally finding agreements about the ends [but not the means].”
Beachy debunked the theory that the Trans-Pacific Partnership would create jobs and explained how it would likely result in a pay decrease for workers who make less than $80,000.
“[The plan would add] more offshoring incentives, which means a loss of manufacturing jobs. Since NAFTA, nearly 5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost,” he said. “Workers that are displaced have had to take pay cuts working retail, in restaurants, and that is increasing inequality. … The increasing inequality would outweigh any tiny economic gains for the median worker, and nine out of 10 of us … would actually get a pay cut from the TPP.”
Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation about Obama’s criticism of The Huffington Post here.
Like many who have survived into adulthood, I wince when I look back and recall some of the youthful antics I partook under the name of fun. Like a lad who graduates from cheap flavored whiskey to fine wine, I today prefer my fun with a dash of panache, a subtle aroma, and a delightfully delicate nose.
So, of course, it is a treat to discover Bermuda, if just for a weekend, the place that practically invented proper fun, and which now embodies it.
The demure 21-square-mile British dependency 650 miles off the North Carolina coast is less known than the more cheeky isles in the Caribbean, as it has always attracted a more sophisticated crowd, the cognoscenti tired of long, septentrional winters, a cast that likes to keep its haunts semi-secret. It is known more as the northern point in the Bermuda Triangle than for its earthly satisfactions.
The original Pan Am Clippers used to call here. I ease over on a Delta flight from Atlanta, and as we approach, from my window the islands of Bermuda look like cracks in the ocean; the sea a Crème Brûlée after the first blow of the spoon.
I take a short cab ride to the Rosewood Tucker’s Point Hotel and Spa, a sprawling 200-plus acre cliff-side resort on Castle Harbor, where I find my free-spirited, properly-travelled friend Lisa Niver in the middle of a round of golf. She is here for the week with friends; I have but the weekend, and her beam telegraphs that she has the better deal.
When she sinks the ball into a hole, a waiter appears with a glass of champagne to celebrate. That’s proper fun.
We next tuck in for afternoon tea, served promptly at 4 p.m., cucumber sandwiches, petits fours, and fresh baked apricot and fig scones served with kumquat jam and Devonshire clotted cream, all on a crisp white table cloth with silver service and fine china. Some fun traditions don’t change. It was here in Bermuda that 52 years ago Lisa’s parents took their honeymoon, and sipped tea in nuptial celebration.
But high-tea is just the prelude. We next head over to Tucker’s Bar, where Lisa’s parents once cheered, all dark-wood paneled looking more like The Explorers Club than a blue water drinkery. Here I try a dark ‘n’ stormy, rum mixed with Bermuda stone ginger beer, the signature drink of Bermuda. But Lisa cries foul, and holds up her rum swizzle, saying this is the national drink of Bermuda, and it packs a good punch to boot. But then the barkeep leans in and says, “No, no, no….the real drink here is the Yellow Bird,” and he pushes a glass filled with what looks like a Screwdriver, but instead of vodka , there are two types of rum. But then he winks and informs there are 60,000+ rum swizzle recipes, one for each resident of Bermuda, so actually, Lisa is right…the rum swizzle reigns.
It would be easy to sit and savor for hours, but it’s now dinner time. Adjacent to the bar is The Point Restaurant, wrapped in an 80-foot-long mural that looks hauntingly familiar. It turns out it is a work of art that for 45 years adorned the lobby of the Pan Am Sky Club in the Pan Am Building in New York City. Pan Am was a partner in the early days of Sobek, the adventure travel company I founded in the 70s, and I used to visit the Sky Club when passing through New York.
I walk around the room falling into memories. The mural depicts various ports-of-call of the early Pan Am Clippers, and I recognize most… Rio de Janeiro, Constantinople, Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor, the Port of London, and Lahaina, Maui are easily identified by their inimitable surroundings. But New York Harbor, Canton Harbor, the Gloucester Seaport in Massachusetts, and Beirut Harbor stump me. The real puzzler, however, is Bermuda’s Hamilton Harbor, which it turns out was added to the canvas a couple years ago, commissioned by the current owner, Ed Trippe, yes, the son of the man who commissioned the original piece, the legendary Juan Trippe, founder of Pan American World Airways.
Of course, I have to order the famous Bermuda fish chowder, a spicy seafood-and-vegetable stew spiced with a dash of Gosling’s Black Seal rum and Outerbridge’s Original Sherry Pepper sauce. Fish, to taste right, must swim three times — in water, in butter and in black rum, and it is swimming Olympic laps here. This is the national dish, and it is delectably textured and spicy. Yes, it is a well-seasoned soup, but more so, as it ignites Sherry Pepper Sauce’s leap into immortality.
After a couple of heavenly spoonfuls I am reminded that there are so many ways to cheat on food, and there are so many places that do.
But not here. Bermuda is a promise of authenticity and proper taste. Here is a fountain of food that is home-cooked and insanely savory.
Hoppin’ John, Hash, Peas and Plenty, Mussel pie, sweet potato pudding, Paw Paw Casserole, Guinea Chick, Banana Meatloaf, Wahoo salad, tantalizing fare, wet with contour and risk. In my short visit I try them all, and smack lips with every bite.
This island may have more churches per square mile than any other country on earth, but a good Bermudan meal makes me feel more charitable toward the world than any sermon. After this meal I think I’ll sell my house and give all the money to Oxfam.
And for dessert? Bermuda honey is the mead-iator between heaven and earth.
So, at the end of the day, I would say that the food of Bermuda is so deliriously yummy that palates are not merely shattered but planets spin out of orbit, constellations unravel in starbursts, and the very fabric of space-time is shredded by the sheer euphoric energy of exquisite taste.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I would say the food of Bermuda…it is properly good.
I wash down the last of the meal with the proper English tropic drink, a Bombay Sapphire G&T, and then tell Lisa, who plans to head out in search of the famous Gombey dancers of Bermuda, that I have to call it a day.
A golf cart glides me to my villa, under a set of brilliant stars that bend to create bears and dippers. The room has a bathroom the size of Somerset, and a bed like a cloud. So, I awake late the next morning alive and unworn ready for what is to be a full day.
Lisa and friends are split between the Fairmont Southampton and the Elbow Beach Resort, both spectacular properties on the Southwestern part of the island. Under a glade of blue sky I sink into the backseat of the taxi, and regard in admiration the orderly English hedges and hand-stacked stone walls that line the road. If it weren’t for the wild tropical foliage that weaves through the cracks and crawls along the tops of the walls, this could be the Scottish countryside.
Thirty minutes later I meet up with Lisa and sit for breakfast, whereupon she shares some of her proper adventures so far.
There is something romantic and quaint about a place that doesn’t allow visitors to rent cars. Instead, folks scoot. In tandem with Bermudian Rachel Snowden, a former television weather woman, Lisa has been zipping around the island on a rented scooter. One glorious day she started at the Royal Navy Dockyard in the morning and ended in St. George’s by the evening, a full traverse of the main island.
St. George’s was the first permanent English settlement on the island, and is steeped in history tied to the colonization of America and its eventual independence. At the time of the American War of Independence, the town of St. George saw its gun powder stocks mysteriously disappearing. Local Bermudians were stealing the gun powder, bringing it over the hill to Tobacco Bay, where boats transported it to an American ship just offshore.
On her scoots Lisa has been scoping out the jewelry, the various forts, cafes, and restaurants, and sampling the island culture. She shows me the heart earrings and bracelet she bought from Alexandra Mosher, famous for her Pink Sand jewelry. She shows off her Windows phone pics of cliff jumping, spelunking at Smuggler’s Cave, and her hula-hooping at Elbow Beach, where she also sampled the Rum Swizzle Specialty Spa Treatment. And, of course, she went to revel with the Gombey dancers, the men who perform the flamboyant masquerade dance that is a unique blend of African, Caribbean and British cultures.
Lisa wants to show me the nearby Warwick Long Bay beach, a magnificent half mile stretch of pink sands. Bermuda, she honeys, is so romantic even the beaches blush. It is here that couples come to discuss Ugandan affairs.
Against a backdrop of low grasses and grape and juniper trees sprawls a powdery stretch of sand festooned with little coves and black rocks (revealing Bermuda’s volcanic origins). The original seafarers here called this “Devil’s Island,” partially because of the imposing black rocks, but also the screeching and snorting they heard coming from the interior (birds and wild pigs respectively). But when, 400 years ago, an English sailing vessel was shipwrecked on this mid-Atlantic archipelago, and discovered it to be a piece of paradise, the island nation of Bermuda was born.
Lisa dances around the sand for a spell, and then offers to show me the harbor side capital, Hamilton. The houses are sherbet-colored, with unique stepped limestone roofs that collect all-important rainwater, as in Bermuda there are no lakes, rivers or streams.
We pass shops selling Shetland sweaters and linen doilies, and businessmen milling about in smart casual jackets, neckties, shorts, and knee socks. Yes, the cliché is true….people really do wear Bermuda shorts here, and proudly.
Here we meet Ronald K. Maughan, director of operations for The English Sport Shop, which has been outfitting islanders since 1918. Ronald says the shorts were invented when British forces in India during WWI were suffering from the heat in their long pants. “It was too hot, so they cut their trousers into shorts.” They were baggy and without any defining style, but they were cool, and the improvised clothing followed British forces to Bermuda, where it was decided that, given the temperatures, shorts were a smart item for one’s wardrobe.
But it’s the socks that make the outfit, says Maughan. Knee socks must reach just below the knee, no more than an inch, and must be folded over. Socks should match the jackets, contrasting with the shorts. It’s all very proper, and of course, this is the attire for proper fun.
Next door is The Pickled Onion bar, one of many establishments graced with the word onion. Why the fascination with the tear-inducing vegetable? It turns out Bermuda was for many years a major supplier of onions, and these days the locals are sometimes called onions.
It’s lunch time, so we head down the road to one of the best kept local secrets in Bermuda, The Black Horse Tavern, tucked in a remote corner of St. David’s island. Many of the locals maintain this is the most authentic restaurant for original local cuisine in Bermuda.
The place has a dusty rose exterior with green shutters and a glass covered balcony in the rear that looks over Smith’s Sound. I order the wahoo fish sandwich on raisin bread (why don’t they offer this in the States?) with sweet homemade coleslaw and ginger beer. Like many so many things here, the food is just not subject to immutable destiny, but alive to wild grace.
Ashley Harris, a local guide, joins our table and offers to show us about. With bellies full we wind to the top of St. David’s lighthouse, and then down to Tom Moore’s Jungle, also called The Walsingham Nature Reserve, 12 acres of preserved, privately owned land. Tom Moore, of course, is the island-friendly shorthand for Thomas Moore, the 18th century Irish poet who, for a short time, called Bermuda home. He wrote some of his most celebrated works here while resting under Bermuda’s most famous tree, the calabash. Ashley recites some of his poetry, and we nod in reverence, and then take a proper trek through the jungle, snaking around vines and through 
shafts of light penetrating the canopy. Bermuda’s tropical karst is on pocked display here, with caves and grottos winking, blind eyes the color of wet coal. Some of the dark eyes are dry, others filled with water, even tropical fish. We linger at the largest grotto in the area, and relish in the tranquility. The only sound is the drip, drip, dripping of water from the stalactites.
Our final stop for the day is at The Southlands Estate, which hosts the largest grove of rubber trees in Bermuda. The original Tarzan movies were filmed on a lake in Culver City, not far down the road from my house. The producers should have come here. Ashley demonstrates by grabbing a thin vine and swinging out over a small cliff. Soon she has the rest of us gyring about like baboons, thumping chests and letting out throaty Johnny Weissmullers at the apex of a swing.
Now, it’s off to the airport to head home. On the final stretch of roadway we pass The Swizzle Inn, where Lisa spent an evening as an anthropologist, studying proper fun with the locals. It’s a place spilling with fun, from the signage throughout (If you’re drinking to forget, please pay in advance), to their signature rum drinks, to their motto, “Swizzle Inn and Stagger Out.”
And that’s how I leave Bermuda…properly blissed, and ready to return for more.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Two pilots in a helium-filled balloon landed safely off the coast of Mexico early Saturday after an audacious, nearly 7,000-mile-long trip across the Pacific Ocean that shattered two long-standing records for ballooning.
The pilots landed 4 miles offshore in Baja California about 300 miles north of the popular beach destination of Cabo San Lucas, greeted by a team of balloon enthusiasts who assisted with the landing. The pilots came in low and dropped thick trailing ropes into the ocean to help slow the balloon before setting down in a controlled water landing.
Mission Control in Albuquerque was packed with balloon team members and the pilots’ families, as all eyes focused on a giant screen showing a map of the coast and the balloon’s location as it descended. They exchanged hugs and smiled with relief after it touched down.
Troy Bradley of Albuquerque and Leonid Tiukhtyaev of Russia lifted off from Japan Sunday morning, and by Friday, they beat what’s considered the “holy grail” of ballooning achievements, the 137-hour duration record set in 1978 by the Double Eagle crew of Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman in the first balloon flight across the Atlantic. They also easily exceeded the distance record of 5,209 miles set by the Double Eagle V team during the first trans-Pacific flight in 1981.
The pilots were said to be in good spirits at various times during the trip, but it was a grueling ordeal. The balloon’s capsule is about the size of a large tent — 7 feet long, 5 feet wide and 5 feet tall. They were flying at an altitude of at least 15,000 feet, requiring them to wear oxygen masks and bundle up against the 50-degree temperature inside the capsule. They had sleeping bags, a small onboard heater and a simple toilet.
The original route took the pilots on a path from Japan, across the Pacific Ocean and toward the Pacific Northwest before they encountered shifting weather patterns. They then made a sweeping right turn and headed south along the California coast for the Mexico landing.
By Saturday morning, the Two Eagles team had been in the air more than 160 hours and was smashing the distance record, having traveled nearly 7,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean.
“The technology has improved so much in the last couple of years. I don’t think there’s going to be any question about the records,” said Katie Griggs, a regional director with the nonprofit Balloon Federation of America.
The world has been tracking their progress online and through social media sites. Still, the official distance and time of the Two Eagles flight must be confirmed by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, which requires staying aloft 1 percent longer and farther than the previous record.
The balloon is outfitted with an array of monitors and other instruments that are tracking its course and compiling the data, using technology that didn’t exist in decades past, leaving some claims unproven.
The journey has been tough on the pilots, who have been on oxygen for days; high altitude can take a physical toll. But they’ve been managing to crack jokes when checking in with mission control and their families.
Before the landing, though, the team was all business.
“Right now we have a big job ahead of us to get this balloon down,” said the flight’s mission control director, Steve Shope.
No matter how many outlets — from trashy gossip rags to (supposedly) reputable entertainment magazines — make claims about Bruce Jenner’s current “journey,” as Kim Kardashian recently put it, citing however many anonymous sources “close to the family” (even if those sources turn out to be the family itself, which can often be the case), let’s remember that Jenner has said nothing about what is happening and this entire situation — whether it’s true that Jenner is transgender or not and whether it’s a strategic publicity campaign or leaked info or totally untrue — paints being trans and coming out as trans as something that’s rooted in and deserving of rumors and secrecy and shame and that isn’t good or helpful or healthy for any of us.
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