While it hasn't said how much of its site is pornographic material, it's enough that just about every knucklehead on the Internet has commented about Tumblr's many porn blogs.
Tumblr's porn content makes some people think that Yahoo's $1.1 billion acquisition was a waste because premium advertisers don't want to advertise against pornographic content.
On today's call with analysts, Marissa Mayer was asked about Tumblr's porn. Sort of. An analyst said, how will you deal with content that is not "brand-safe," which is code for porn.
Her answer: Targeting. She hopes to use good targeting to keep ads away from NSFW content.
A Tumblr backer explained it further to Peter Kafka at All Things D saying, "Non-story. Tumblr is the Internet. It?s a dashboard follower model, opt-in."
In other words, just like all of the Internet has some porn, so too does Tumblr. There is plenty of advertising on the non-porn content of the web, and there will be advertising on Tumblr's non-porn content.
Also, Tumblr is an opt-in model. The user chooses who she is following, and what content is pumped into her Tumblr feed. Advertisers are advertising to users more than they are against content.
Yahoo will do its best to make sure ads don't follow porn, but if that were to happen it's more a statement on the user than it is on the content.
I've been single for a while now. Sure, I've shared a text relationship or two, some (non-alcoholic) drinks, went on some dates -- and I even thought I was falling in love at one point.
Until I woke up and reality kicked me in my cute (new -- but that is another story) little ass.
What I mean, is that a lot of women (and even men) who come out of bad relationships and are automatically tripping over their own feet when meeting or being introduced to someone who is remotely nice to them, and shares similar likes and dislikes -- or, in my case isn't a criminal and has a job.
Coming out of an abusive marriage/relationship, I have done this once or twice myself: thinking the next man I met was the right man. That is so far from the truth. Just because the next, new person is a little bit better than -- or does things different than -- the ex doesn't always make them Mr. or Ms. "Right." Just because he or she texts you a couple of times a day, tells you they are "different," promises you the world, or takes you out on three consecutive dates until he (or she) tries to sleep with you doesn't make that person right.
And now that I've figured out what was behind the saying "Love when you are ready, not lonely," I want to share it with the world!
Please do not date someone out of sheer loneliness; don't get into bed with just anyone because they say all the right things. Don't sell yourself short and believe everything you hear from a man or woman.
Those annoying words, "the proof is in the pudding," that our parents used to mutter are actually true.
Hell, don't tell my mom this... But a lot of the things she said and the advice she gave me turned out to be true.
If you go into any relationship blinded by the attention and the newness of it, it's dangerous for both you and the other person. You must look before you leap -- but, more importantly, you must look before you love.
If Buccaneers coach Greg Schiano ever gets tired of having to tell people Josh Freeman is his starting quarterback, someone should probably mention to him that it?s kind of his own fault.
Schiano started singing like Tammy Wynette again in relation to Freeman Monday, the day after he was quoted as saying he was ?not against? the notion of starting rookie Mike Glennon instead.
?We have a starting quarterback, and it?s Josh Freeman,? Schiano said, via Stephen Holder of the Tampa Bay Times.
According to the report, Schiano said he?s trying to be honest, and doesn?t mean to put pressure on Freeman by saying such things in the national media.
?I guess nationally, they don?t sit here with me every day like you guys [local media] do,? Schiano said. ?From the day we arrived, our whole program has [been based on] competition, . . . That?s what we believe in. It?s the most competitive sports league in the world. It?s competition, and I love it.
?But we have our starting quarterback, and it?s Josh Freeman. I?m not looking to find another.?
If he really wanted to clear things up, he could always, you know, stop leaving the door open a crack every time he talks about Glennon.
Or, if he wanted a stronger statement on Freeman and how much he loves him under center, he could give him a new contract to replace the final year of his rookie deal.
But it doesn?t appear at the moment that Schiano intends to do either.
And that?s fine, as long as everyone?s clear about the implication sent by those actions.
He likes Freeman, right up until the point he decides he doesn?t.
So Schiano?s apparently going to have to keep clarifying all the things that he keeps saying, whether to the national or local media.
In what can only be called an exodus, WordPress? co-founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg posted on his blog Sunday night that over 72,000 new blog posts were imported within a single hour. This is a massive spike considering that WordPress usually just sees 400 to 600 imported posts on most Sundays. It's a tiny percentage of Tumblr's 50.9B posts but it's an important consideration that Tumblr - and now Yahoo - cannot ignore.
LEXINGTON (AP) - Carol Connell remembers well the gift she gave Sara Ylen, a friend seemingly forced to bear too much misery. Ylen, a Michigan mother of two young boys, said she was battling cancer just a few years after a man was convicted of her rape.
?It was a little box, a very ornate box, to hold a prayer. She needed God to look over her,? Connell said, recalling the 2008 lunch when she gave Ylen the jewelry. ?Sara was visibly touched.?
Connell now can?t help but wonder whether Ylen was showing gratitude or simply perpetuating years of jaw-dropping deceit.
Ylen?s community, which had come to admire her as the subject of a newspaper?s award-winning 2003 series about surviving a rape, rallied when her cancer diagnosis became public. Churches sold Super Bowl sub sandwiches and auction items to raise money. Friends cut her grass, bathed her at her modest home and provided hot meals. An insurance company paid nearly $100,000 for hospice care.
Now the 38-year-old is charged with fraud, false pretenses and using a computer to commit a crime after state police found no doctor who diagnosed cancer. The charges come as those who regularly helped Ylen reel from the news that the man who spent nearly 10 years in prison for her rape was released last year, after newly discovered evidence cast doubt on whether she?d ever been attacked.
?The fact that she?s lived this long is a miracle. But maybe it wasn?t a miracle after all. ? I?m just baffled. Is she the biggest con artist in the state of Michigan or the victim?? Connell said.
The fraud case isn?t Ylen?s only concern. In a neighboring county, she is charged with making a false report of rape just last year, even using makeup to create bruises.
Ylen and her attorney, Dave Heyboer, have not returned phone messages seeking comment. The Associated Press went to a Lexington address listed in court documents, but she no longer lives there.
The two cases against Ylen come years after she first emerged in the public eye in the Port Huron area, 60 miles northeast of Detroit.
In 2002, Ylen told police she had been raped in broad daylight in a Meijer store parking lot more than a year earlier.
There was no surveillance video, physical evidence or witnesses. James Grissom, an off-duty Meijer employee with a past sex-related conviction, was charged after Ylen said her attacker, like Grissom, had a skull tattoo. He was found guilty in 2003 and sentenced to at least 15 years in prison, an enhanced punishment because Ylen said her attacker gave her a sexually transmitted disease.
Next, Ylen told her story to the Port Huron Times Herald. She said she wanted people to see her as a ?victor,? not a ?victim.? Readers inspired by ?Sara?s Story,? as the series was titled, started a fund to send her to community college.
But it didn?t take long for Ylen?s story to start unraveling. Authorities learned she claimed to have been kidnapped and raped while visiting her parents in Bakersfield, Calif., just months after the alleged parking lot attack back in Michigan. No charges were filed.
?My daughter likes to have a lot of attention,? her father, Dale Hill, told Bakersfield officers in a 2001 police report that wasn?t uncovered until after Grissom?s trial. Hill told the AP this week that he hasn?t spoken to his daughter in years and didn?t know anything about her recent claims.
After years of appeals, a judge in 2012 ruled that the police report could have changed the outcome of Grissom?s trial and ordered a new one, saying Ylen appeared to have ?concocted incredible stories? in California.
Prosecutors dropped the case without a second trial, and Grissom was freed in November.
As Grissom?s appeals were moving through the courts, Ylen was telling people she had developed cancer from a disease transmitted during the assault. She was back in the newspaper, supported by friends, including a state police sergeant, who believed she was on the verge of death in 2009.
?Job of the Old Testament had nothing on Sara Ylen,? wrote Times Herald columnist Mike Connell, who is married to Carol Connell, referring to a pious man who repeatedly suffered misfortune.
Just about a year ago, Ylen was in a wheelchair at a Croswell Wesleyan Church auction and spaghetti dinner that raised $10,800.
?I thought I was doing something good for someone who had cancer. It?s like a bad ?Lifetime? movie,? said event organizer Sue Birtles. ?I?ve heard that some people want their money back. ? I?m working on forgiveness.?
Mercy Hospice, which visited Ylen at her home, declined to comment on her care but said in a statement that any terminal illness typically ?must be certified? by a patient?s doctor before services are provided.
Ylen?s ex-husband, Jim, declined to comment on the criminal charges against his former wife, but divorce records indicate he had long doubted her tales of woe. The couple were married in 1993, separated in 2007 and divorced in 2011.
The marriage ?broke down due to the wife?s complex lies and deceit involving fictitious rapes, kidnappings, pregnancies and illnesses ? all attempts to control others by complaining of physical symptoms,? Jim Ylen?s attorney, Aaron Cassell, said in a court filing.
Sara Ylen told her husband the name of her cancer doctor, but he later learned there was no physician by that name in Michigan, Cassell said. And she wouldn?t let him join her at medical appointments, even after driving hundreds of miles to Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Zion, Ill. The clinic says Sara Ylen never was a patient there, according to records reviewed by the AP.
Psychologist Daniel Kachman evaluated Ylen as part of the divorce case and told the judge: ?Often feeling dependent and dejected and fearful of rebuff, she may either withdraw from painful social relationships or decide to adapt the role of martyr.?
Mike Connell, the newspaper columnist, said he regrets not treating his own doubts more seriously.
?Sara is innocent until proven guilty, but if she did pull off an elaborate con, consider what genius it required,? he said in an email. ?She has a brilliant mind. I recognized that straightaway.?
? Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NEW YORK (AP) ? The man who police say hurled homophobic slurs at a gay man on a Manhattan street before firing a single fatal shot to his head appeared in court Sunday to face a charge of murder as a hate crime.
Elliot Morales, who appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court, is also charged with criminal possession of a weapon and menacing, according to the complaint filed Sunday by the Manhattan district attorney's office.
Authorities said the Greenwich Village resident used a silver revolver to kill 32-year-old Mark Carson early Saturday as he walked with a companion in Morales' neighborhood.
Morales was ordered held without bail pending another court appearance on Thursday. His attorney, Reginald Sharpe, could not be reached for comment.
On Saturday, seconds before opening fire in the lively Village streets just after midnight, police say Morales followed Carson and a companion through the Village, asking if they "want to die here," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
Police said Morales then yelled anti-gay slurs before shooting Carson point-blank in the face in a neighborhood long known as a bedrock of the gay rights movement.
Morales was soon arrested a few blocks away.
He has a previous arrest for attempted murder in 1998, police said. Details of that arrest weren't immediately clear.
Saturday's shooting scene is a few blocks from the Stonewall Inn, the site of 1969 riots that helped give rise to gay rights when patrons reacted to police harassment.
Saturday's violence follows a spate of recent bias attacks on gay men in New York, but this was the first deadly one. Kelly said police were looking into possible links between the incidents.
The shooting stunned a city where, in many neighborhoods, same-sex couples now walk freely holding hands. It also comes at a time when the gay marriage movement is gaining momentum in many parts of the United States. Twelve states have legalized same-sex marriage, including New York in 2011.
The Iocane Powder trick really does work! As this slick educational short from the SciShow explains, you've got two choices when it comes to treating deadly, deadly snake bites: you can either hopefully make it to a hospital in time to counter the toxins with dozens of expensive vials of delicate anti-venom, or you can slowly inoculate yourself against their effects?effectively turning yourself into a poison-immune mobile anti-venom factory. Where do I sign up? [SciShow]
PARIS (AP) ? Thieves ripped a safe from the wall of a hotel room near the Cannes Film Festival and made off with around $1 million worth of jewelry, in a brazen late-night burglary just hours after the screening of a film about break-ins at the homes of Hollywood celebrities, French officials said Friday.
The apparently well-planned robbery at the Novotel hotel took place in the room of an employee of Chopard, the Swiss-based watch and jewelry maker and festival sponsor that was hosting a splashy gala event in a far ritzier hotel around the same time, officials said.
Chopard has loaned jewelry to A-list stars who walk on the festival's famed red carpet under rapid-fire flashes of photographers' cameras. Already this year model Carla Delevingne and actress Julianne Moore have walked the carpet in Chopard gems.
"The jewels stolen are not part of the collection of jewels that are worn by actresses during the Cannes film festival," Chopard spokeswoman Raffaella Rossiello told reporters in a brief statement Friday.
Cmdr. Bernard Mascarelli, a judicial police spokesman in the nearby city of Nice, said he didn't know the exact type of jewelry taken, or its exact value. "Numbers have been put forward that we're still trying to verify, but the figure of $1 million ... we're in that range," he said. Jean-Michel Caillau, a state prosecutor in nearby Grasse who is leading the investigation, said early estimates were that the loot could have been worth as much as $1.4 million.
Rossiello countered that, saying: "The value of the pieces stolen is far lower than those in the figures circulating in the media." She did not say why the jewelry was brought to the Novotel during the film festival, or take reporters' questions.
The theft was believed to have taken place sometime between 7 p.m. Thursday and 3 a.m. Friday, said Mascarelli, when the Chopard employee returned to the hotel room and noticed the damage. Mascarelli said he did not know whether the employee had been attending a Chopard gala that was running late into the night at the 5-star Hotel Martinez across town, where the company has a suite during the festival.
News of the robbery sent journalists scurrying to the Novotel, a business hotel about a 15-minute walk from Cannes' seafront promenade. Dozens of police were involved in the investigation, and police vehicles could be seen outside the hotel Friday afternoon. Authorities were going over hotel surveillance cameras and questioning potential witnesses who might have seen any culprits.
"It seems pretty unlikely to us that it was just one person," Mascarelli said. "Apparently this (hotel guest) was someone who was targeted because it wasn't someone who had been seeking attention. ... There must have been either inside complicity, or people who were in contact with this person and knew that the person had jewels," he said.
Melissa Levine, a spokeswoman for Accor, the French hospitality giant behind Novotel, declined comment about the case.
On Thursday night, Chopard hosted a star-studded gala, and the festival screened Sofia Coppola's "The Bling Ring" ? a deadpan drama about celebrity-obsessed teenagers in Los Angeles who break into the homes of Paris Hilton and other stars. It's based on a true story about high-school students who, after seeing online when certain stars are expected at a premiere or other event, take the opportunity to steal items from their homes.
Chopard manufactures the crystal and gold Palme d'Or trophy awarded each year to the festival's top film. Festival organizers would not disclose the Palme's whereabouts Friday, but said it was kept in a safe place. They had no comment on the robbery.
___
Eds: Greg Keller in Paris and Jill Lawless in Cannes contributed to this report.
In this April 11, 2013 photo, Biju Nair, principal clown at Rambo Circus, looks at a mirror before a performance on the outskirts of Mumbai, India. Nair who literally ran away and joined the circus at the age of 10 says he scours YouTube for videos of international clowning acts to give him new ideas with help from other performers who know how to read and write, since he never learned. Circuses around the world may struggle to compete with an ever-increasing array of entertainment options, but India?s once-widespread industry in particular has gone through cataclysmic changes. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
In this April 11, 2013 photo, Biju Nair, principal clown at Rambo Circus, looks at a mirror before a performance on the outskirts of Mumbai, India. Nair who literally ran away and joined the circus at the age of 10 says he scours YouTube for videos of international clowning acts to give him new ideas with help from other performers who know how to read and write, since he never learned. Circuses around the world may struggle to compete with an ever-increasing array of entertainment options, but India?s once-widespread industry in particular has gone through cataclysmic changes. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
In this April 11, 2013 photo, a circus artist wears a Spiderman costume before a performance at the Rambo Circus on the outskirts of Mumbai, India. Circuses around the world may struggle to compete with an ever-increasing array of entertainment options, but India?s once-widespread industry in particular has gone through cataclysmic changes. In the 1990s, there were 300 circuses operating throughout the country. That number has now dwindled to about 30, says circus manager John Matthew, and many of those are in financial trouble due to rising costs of renting field space, shrinking revenues and - crucially - two Supreme Court rulings that took away two of the industry?s main attractions. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
MUMBAI, India (AP) ? In the early morning heat and dust, daily practice at the Rambo Circus is in full swing. A trapeze creaks as two performers perfect their throws. A Colombian daredevil shouts to his colleagues scrambling atop a giant set of spinning wheels called the Ring of Death.
Looking on with worry is circus manager John Matthew. For 38 years, he has been in the business of entertaining people throughout southern India. But there's little to smile about these days. The big top set up in a desolate field outside Mumbai seats 3,000 people. Recently, there have been less than 100 tickets sold.
While circuses in other countries struggle to compete with an ever-increasing array of entertainment options, India's have faced a cataclysm.
In the 1990s, 300 circuses operated throughout the country. That number has dwindled to about 30, says Matthew. And many of those are being hammered by the rising rents for field space, shrinking revenues and ? crucially ? two Supreme Court rulings that took away the industry's main attractions.
"After 10 or 15 more years, there may not be any circus at all in India," Matthew says, sitting at a folding table outside the canvas tent he uses as both office and living quarters.
Circuses once held legendary status in India as entertainment for everyone from princes to pariahs. The biggest names pitched their tents in town centers, drawing huge crowds night after night. The modern circus here is a 130-year-old tradition that according to local lore began when a southern rajah's horse trainer was taunted by the leader of a visiting Italian show, who said India couldn't build its own circus. The trainer, Vishnupant Chartre, founded The Great Indian Circus within months, spawning a national love affair with clowns, wild animal acts and death-defying feats.
In the 1990s, India's Supreme Court banned the use of wild animals in circuses, citing widespread neglect of lions, bears, monkeys and panthers. Then, two years ago, it banned child performers.
"There are instances of sexual abuse on a daily basis, physical abuse as well as emotional abuse. The children are deprived of basic needs of food and water," the activist group Bachpan Bachao Andolan said in the lawsuit charging exploitation of young children that led to the ban.
Matthew, however, disagrees with both court bans. He remembers fondly his early days in the circus when there was a menagerie of trained tigers, elephants and other exotic animals that were the main draw for audiences.
"We loved our animals, and our business depended on them. So we took good care of them," he insists. Now, the circus only has four elephants, and Matthew says the Ministry of Environment is considering taking them away too.
As for child labor, he says, circuses used to give a skill and livelihood to poor children unable to go school.
Biju Nair was once one of those children. At age 10, he literally ran away and joined the circus.
Fleeing an abusive home, he stowed away on a train to Mumbai ? then called Bombay ? and wandered the streets. Hungry and desperate, he wandered into a circus and was given a plateful of food and a job as a ticket taker. In his teens, he used to sneak into the tent to watch the performance, particularly fascinated by the clown acts. Eventually, he persuaded the clowns to teach him their trade.
Now 42, Nair is the principal clown at Rambo Circus, a job he takes pride in. He says he scours YouTube for videos of international clowning acts to give him new ideas with help from other performers who know how to read and write, since he never learned.
"It's a hard life in many ways, yes, but it gave me a chance," he says. "And there is a good feeling in making people laugh."
Still, he is glad his two children, who live with his late wife's parents in Kerala, are getting an education in school, instead the circus.
Nair, too, doesn't see much of a future for circuses in India now that child apprenticeships are banned. Skills like acrobatics and tightrope walking have to be taught young, he says, but there are no students anymore.
"You don't just wake up at 20 and learn to do these things," he says.
With a shortage of homegrown performers, Indian circuses have turned to foreign acts. That's how the three Colombian performers and their Ring of Death come to the Rambo Circus
In the midday lull between practice and the afternoon's performance, 26-year-old Colombian Jhean Carlos lounges in the plywood cubicle the travelling crew builds for him each time they set up camp. The generator-powered air conditioner signifies his status as the star of the show.
The Colombians mostly keep to themselves, because they speak only Spanish. When the staff really needs to communicate with them, they use a computer translation program.
Carlos says he's a fourth-generation circus performer, and in his home country, such performers have benefits and insurance against injury and illness. That impresses Nair, who makes just 8,000 rupees ($150) per month with no benefits other than housing in a shared canvas tent. But Nair and most Indian performers say Rambo is one of the better circuses in India.
Three months ago, the circus added an Ethiopian acrobatic troupe.
Girma Yidnekachew, who learned tumbling and contortion at a charity school for Ethiopian street children, says his country has an oversupply of performers and a shortage of circuses. He answered an Internet ad and came to India with some acrobat friends. Here he makes $600 per month
"It's not the money," says Yidnekachew, 23. "I like being inside the ring. It makes people happy."
In addition to the expense of importing acts, Matthew has to contend with rising rent for the land to set up his big top and camp.
Indian academic Nisha Poyyarath Rayaroth, who studied circus culture for her doctorate at the University of Delhi, says circuses she visited all complained about access to land. The central government once instructed cities to accommodate travelling entertainers, but that support ended in the 1990s.
"Nowadays in many major cities, for example, New Delhi, circuses have to set up shop in grounds in the outliers of the city, without sufficient facilities," Rayaroth says. Those locations also limit audiences.
At Rambo Circus' temporary home, a 1 p.m. performance is cancelled because of poor ticket sales, but the 4 p.m. show has an audience of about 250, mostly parents with young children.
The show leads with the Ring of Death, with Carlos leaping in and out of the spinning rings. The Ethiopians come out dancing to an African beat, tumbling and contorting as the audience claps along in rhythm.
Biju the clown is a crowd-pleaser with his repertoire of pratfalls and fart jokes and a roundup inviting all the audience's children to jump rope with him. The show winds up with the trapeze act, and the audience gasps and applauds.
As the crowd files out, Matthew allows himself a small smile.
Art installation? Trick photography? Nope, just a little restoration project going on at Utah's Provo Temple, which was badly damaged in a fire in 2010. Thankfully, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is salvaging the 112-year-old building with a little architectural levitation.
Engineers gutted the ruined interior, and lifted the structure onto scaffolding about 40 feet in the air in order to save the facade and add a two-story basement below. The old church didn't have to be moved at all. It appears to be floating, but there's no religious trickery going on?just a pretty amazing feat of engineering. [ThisIsColossal]
So you want to build the Enterprise. Don't we all! Well good news: according to some quick, messy, napkin math, it's possible. Kind of. The bad news? It's going to be stupid expensive. But not unfathomably so! Start scrounging up your space-pennies.
One little constraint
Since we can't predict the future, or even come close to gauging the cost of development for revolutionary new inventions or substances like warp and impulse drives, shields, and teleporters, we're going to stick to what we know. It might not make us a real Enterprise, but it's about as close as you're going to get.
So where do we start?
First we have to pick our Enterprise. Obviously, with Star Trek: Into Darkness coming out, we're going to go with the one from that universe, from a size perspective anyway. According to some stats we got back when the original Star Trek reboot came out a few years ago, we know the new Enterprise?or as the Star Trek wiki calls it: USS Enterprise (Alternate Reality)?is 725.35 meters, 2379.76 feet, or roughly half a mile long. So, huge. And while the exact measurements vary, other sources give us a height of 625 feet, and a saucer diameter of 1,000 feet. She's a big girl.
Photo: Paramount
Raw materials
The closest thing we have to compare this to in the real world is probably a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. The new Gerald R. Ford-class suckers will be bigger and more expensive, but we haven't finished one of those yet, so we'll stick with a Nimitz-class, specifically the George H.W. Bush, the most recent?and last?of the Nimitz breed.
Photo by: Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nicholas Hall/US Navy
At 1,092 feet long, the GHWB comes in at just under half the length of the Enterprise. And with a 252 foot wide flight deck, it's a fair bit thinner. But there's a lot of empty space in the Enterprise, whereas aircraft carriers are more like solid chunks. Getting really specific with a starship's actual volume would involve some annoyingly real math and measurements we don't have, but we can safely assume it would take about two GHWBs-worth of material to build a suitably sized, Enterprise-shaped brute when you stretch it all out. Make it air-tight and we'll call it a spaceship.
Unlike the Nimitz-class cruisers before it, which cost about $4.5 billion, the GWHB cost more like $6.2 billion thanks to modern day perks, and we need two. And we're just getting warmed up.
Running Total: $12,400,000,000
Some assembly required
Photo: Paramount
According to the first JJ Abrams Star Trek film, the specific Enterprise we're talking about here was built in Iowa. We'll assume it's getting the ISS treatment: Build it on Earth as a series of trivially sized modules that get assembled in orbit.
This is where the real cost comes in. If we go by the numbers from SpaceX, the Falcon Heavy can transport stuff to space for the low, low price of about $1,000 per pound. A GHWB worth of stuff weighs about 114,000 short tons. So a pair of them are 228,000 short tons, or 456 million pounds. Multiply that by $1,000 dollars per pound and... Yeah. We're talking $456 billion just to get this into orbit, or $468.4 billion for an Enterprise-shaped space station, total. And that's not including labor.
That's a lot of scary zeros, but really it's not too too bad. This year, the United States defense total budget expenditure was $3.803 trillion. So it's not like we don't have the cash.
Construction cost (ex-labor): $456,000,000,000
Running Total: $468,400,000,000
Tea, Earl Grey, hot
Now that we've got our big, hulking shell assembled, it's about time that we start filling it up with some awesome tech. One of the (many) iconic technologies in the Star Trek universe is the ubiquitous replicator, making pesky things like staying fed a piece of cake. Sometimes literally. We don't have anything close to the kind of build-anything-from-anything replicators from the series, but we do have something called the Replicator. The Replicator 2, as a matter of fact. Even better.
While MakerBot's Replicator 2 is stellar 3D-printing tech here on Earth, the thought of outfitting our enormous, enormously badass Enterprise with just one seems ludicrously cheap and lame. That being the case, let's set it up with a suite of 50 and just pretend we've got five that are 10 times the size. One MakerBot Replicator 2 retails for a scant $2,200, so we're talking an acquisition cost of (a still scant) $110,000. We need stuff to print with too, though. Let's say 45 kilograms (100 pounds) of plastic, assorted colors. MakerBot plastic is $48 to the kilo, so that's $112,160 in printers and ink.
The shipping weight of each Replicator 2 is 37 pounds, or 1850 pounds total, plus our 100 pounds of plastic which brings us to 1950 pounds. Launch that into space ($195,000) and now we're talking.
We looked into estimating the cost of something like one of Organovo's crazy Bio-Printers, but they couldn't help us out with any kind of number regarding price or weight, so we had to leave it out.
Total Replicator Cost: $307,160
Running Total: $468,400,307,160
Hit the (Holo)deck
Microsoft has a promising little at-home holodeck on the way with its IllumiRoom tech, but while that'd be great in your living room, we can probably spring for something a little fancier on our Enterprise. How about the CAVE 2, complete with 320 degree, panoramic 3D LCD display?
This isn't exactly a retail product, so we'll have to piece together the cost (and weight) in broad strokes. The awesome curved, 3D TV we saw at CES has recently been priced at around $14,000 and we'll need 72 for a total of $1,008,000 in TVs. We also need 36 "high performance PCs," that are maybe $3,000 a piece? And also a setup of 10 motion tracking cameras that we'll just say costs about $10,000. We wind up at $1,126,000 for procurement.
After a little black magic involving shipping weights and wild estimation, we can guess that this rig weighs somewhere around 5,378 pounds. As for software development, well, you're you're going to have to program you own games. Sorry.
Holodeck cost: $6,504,000
Running Total: $468,406,811,160
Fire photon torpedoes!
But really that's only half the battle. Or really it's none of the battle; this thing can't shoot yet. The GHWB already had some armaments that are theoretically on our Enterprise now, but they are pansy Earth-weapons. We need photon torpedos and phaser arrays.
When it comes to photon torpedos?well, we don't have photon torpedos. But tactical nukes seem pretty close, preferably in missile form. The UGM-133 Trident II is a modern-day ballistic missile that can rock a nuclear warhead. And, it can be launched from a submarine which means it's pretty much a torpedo, right? Kinda? Sorta? Regardless, it seems like it could be strapped to?and fired from?a spaceship just fine.
Photo: Department of Defense
It's pretty unclear how many photon torpedoes the Enterprise?specifically the reboot Enterprise?has, but we know the USS Voyagerwas designed specifically for scientific missions and had 38, so that seems like a fair bare minimum. Each Trident II costs $30.9 million to make, and weighs 129,000 pounds. So that means the cost of buying one "photon torpedo" and getting it into space is $159,900,000. The whole kit of 38 will cost us $6,076,200,000.
The Navy's LaWS system cost $40 million to develop and build, so we'll peg the sticker price at maybe $15 million per unit, for a total cost of $90 million for all six. The Navy's been tight-lipped about how much they weigh though, so we'll have to pull something really iffy out of the air and say each is about as heavy as a radar-guided Phalanx machine-gun bank just because that looks kind of similar-ish. So that's 13,600 pounds each, or 81,600 pounds of gear (total) to blast into space.
Phaser Bank Cost: $171,600,000
Running Total: $474,654,611,160
Man Up
And what good is any of this if the ship is a ghost town? While it's technically not a cost of building the Enterprise per se, we'd be remiss if we didn't at least briefly consider the cost of manning this beast. Who knows exactly how many people man the Enterprise, including all the (hundreds of?) low-level nobodies, so we'll just set it up with a skeleton command crew.
Photo: Paramount
Going by a list of notable crew members, we can figure we need?at minimum?11 people on this thing. Luckily for us, a recent agreement between NASA and Russia pinpoints the cost of flight-training a 'naut and shooting him/her into the great void at $70.7 million. So assuming our cadets already know how to do their jobs, and only need a little space-training, that gives us a transportation cost of $777,700,000
Of course, you also have to pay these guys and keep them alive. Recent estimates put the cost of keeping a soldier in Iraq for a year at between $850,000 and $1.4 million, so let's go with the higher end of that spectrum since we're talking exclusively about officiers and they are also going to space. That nets us a $15,400,000 additional personnel cost.
Lastly, they've got to be fed and watered and whatnot. In 2008, NASA awarded a roughly $3.5 billion dollar contract to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp to perform that very same job of ferrying cargo, except to the ISS. That seems like a perfect estimate so let's just steal that wholesale as our supply cost.
Personnel and supply cost: $4,293,100,000
Running Total: $478,947,711,160
To boldly go...nowhere
Now that our Enterprise can defend itself, the only think left is to make it move. Unfortunately, that's pretty impossible under even the vaguest realism constraint. Warp drives, while they are being researched, aren't close to existing. And impulse drives?essentially fusion rockets?aren't much closer; we almost had a fission rocket once, but it got mothballed.
More recently, there's also been discussion of an impulse drive that could actually run on something stunningly like dilithium crystals: deuterium (a stable isotope of hydrogen) and Li6 (a stable isotope of lithium). This engine doesn't exist yet though. And it'd likely require some very delicate orbital-construction that we can't really hack yet.
That being said, we're going to have to call it quits here, with our weaponized, Enterprise-shaped space-station, which is pretty damn cool in its own right.
Grand Total: $478,947,711,160
(Or: 12.59 percent of 2013 US Defense expenditure total budget)
May 16, 2013 ? Many species pair for life, or so the story goes. In reality, there is quite a bit of cheating going on. Both male and female partners may have "affairs" outside the pair bond. In such cases, how is a male to know if the chicks he's feeding are really his? Depending on the species, males have different strategies. They may try to ensure paternity by increased surveillance and fighting off the competition, or by having more frequent sex with their long-term partners. Others react by physically punishing unfaithful females or by reducing parental care once the -- potentially unrelated -- offspring has arrived.
Herbert Hoi and colleagues of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, together with scientists from the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, carried out experiments with reed warblers to see how a situation of potential infidelity affects later paternal investment in the chicks and whether it does in fact lead to extra-pair mating. They found that the males aggressively try to chase off competitors and to keep potentially "double-dealing" females in line. But whether or not they manage, they turn out to be caring fathers once the babies are born. The findings were published in April 2013 in the online journal PLOS ONE.
Reed warblers are socially monogamous, defend their territory, and both parents care for the offspring. Scientists of the Konrad-Lorenz-Institute of Ethology of the Vetmeduni Vienna for the first time tried to experimentally test the behaviour of reed warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) after a potential act of "cheating" by the female. How does the male treat a competitor, and how does an "affair" affect care for the brood? To answer these questions they simulated an increased risk of adulterous behaviour in female reed warblers by briefly introducing a caged extra male to 31 reed warbler pairs during the female's fertile period. In addition they played back recorded songs of randomly selected warbler males from the area. The scientists then observed nest building activity and feeding of offspring, and determined chick paternity through DNA analyses.
When the going gets tough
From previous observations it was known that male territory owners will aggressively try to chase away intruders (conspecific males) as soon as they detect them. This territorial behaviour is interpreted as a paternity guard. Herbert Hoi and his colleagues observed that all males tried to attack and chase away the caged intruder. When the female appeared to show interest in the intruder, the male behaved considerably more aggressively, both to the intruder and to his female partner. Almost half of the females did not even approach the newcomer. Herbert Hoi explains, "We think that the males are more aggressive when their partners are watching because first, it only pays for the male to show off when the "babe" is watching him, and second, he certainly has more reason to fear being cuckolded or even losing his partner when the newcomer approaches his female."
A "cuckoo" in the nest
Hoi and colleagues found that many nests housed nestlings fathered outside the pair-bond. This was the case both in the experimental and in the control group. Those females that had been observed to show interest in the intruder were also later found to be more likely to have extra-pair chicks in their nest. In addition, the results suggest that larger females seem to be more promiscuous.
Cuckolded males are caring fathers
The researchers then looked at whether offspring care was affected by paternity uncertainty. The results were surprising: Males seem to readily procure food for the chicks, regardless whether they are their own or not. Females, however, cared significantly less for their young if they had been faced with the simulated intruder. Perhaps the female's potential infidelity had no effect on the male's subsequent feeding investment because he cannot distinguish his own from an extra-pair chick. On the other hand, females who perceived their males as unable to repel an intruder quickly enough and therefore as a "weakling," then invest less in the joint offspring. The only chance a male has to ensure successful paternity seems to be to quickly get rid of potential competitors.
Drew Pearce has been on quite a roll over the last few years. The screenwriter has lent his talents to a number of high-profile upcoming projects, including Guillermo del Toro?s Pacific Rim, Sherlock Holmes 3, and, most recently, the blockbuster smash Iron Man 3, which he co-wrote with director Shane Black.
Now, Pearce has agreed to take on another massive franchise: Mission: Impossible. According to a new report, Pearce has been hired to write Mission Impossible 5, the sequel to 2011?s Mission: Impossible ? Ghost Protocol.
The Hollywood Reporter was the first to break the news, noting that the film is expected to shoot in the fall after filming Tom Cruise films The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Ghost Protocol was the most successful film in the Mission: Impossible franchise, and Tom Cruise?s most successful film ever, so it will be a tall order for Pearce and company to come up with something that builds on that success. Since it?s Mission: Impossible, though, you can expect plenty of globe-trotting spy action.
With Pearce on board now, and?Tom Cruise officially signed on for the film, it?s likely that a director?s announcement is coming soon. Christopher McQuarrie, who directed Tom Cruise in last year?s Jack Reacher, has been a lead contender to direct the film for some time, but he may be busy with other projects, including the submarine thriller Ice Station Zebra.
Screen Rant?s Ben Kendrick gave Mission: Impossible ? Ghost Protocol a four star review, calling the movie ?an in-your-face action adventure with a number of enjoyable performances and exciting set pieces.? Hopefully, Pearce can bring some of the same impressive action sensibilities he showed in Iron Man 3 to earn a similar review for MI5.
What do you think of Drew Pearce scripting Mission: Impossible 5? Is it a good choice, or were you one of the people who didn?t like Pearce and Shane Black?s take on Iron Man 3 (like Screen Rant Editor-in-Chief Kofi Outlaw in last week?s podcast)? Let us know in the comments.
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Mission: Impossible 5 is expected to hit theaters in 2015.
May 15, 2013 ? Using a powerful combination of microanalytic techniques that simultaneously image photoelectric current and chemical reaction rates across a surface on a micrometer scale, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have shed new light on what may become a cost-effective way to generate hydrogen gas directly from water and sunlight.
Their quarry is a potentially efficient, cost-effective, photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell -- essentially a solar cell that produces hydrogen gas instead of electric current. "A major challenge with solar energy is dealing with solar intermittency," says NIST chemical engineer Daniel Esposito. "We demand energy constantly, but the sun's not always going to be shining, so there's an important need to convert solar energy into a form we can use when the sun's not out. For large-scale energy storage or transportation, hydrogen has a lot of benefits."
At its simplest, a PEC cell contains a semiconducting photoelectrode that absorbs photons and converts them into energetic electrons, which are used to facilitate chemical reactions that split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen gases. It's not that easy. The best PEC cell has been demonstrated with an efficiency around 12.5 percent,* says Esposito. But, "it's been estimated that such a cell would be extremely expensive -- thousands of dollars per square meter -- and they also had issues with stability," he says. One big problem is that the semiconductors used to achieve the best conversion efficiency also tend to be highly susceptible to corrosion by the cell's water-based electrolyte. A PEC electrode that is efficient, stable and economical to produce has been elusive.
The NIST team's proposed solution is a silicon-based device using a metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) design that can overcome the efficiency/stability trade-off. The key is to deposit a very thin, but very uniform, layer of silicon dioxide -- an insulator -- on top of the semiconductor -- silicon -- that is well-suited for doing the photon-gathering work. On top of that is a polka-dot array of tiny electrodes consisting of platinum-covered titanium. The stable oxide layer protects the semiconductor from the electrolyte, but it's thin enough and transparent enough that the photons will travel through it to the semiconductor, and the photo-generated electrons will "tunnel" in the opposite direction to reach the electrodes, where the platinum catalyzes the reaction that produces hydrogen.
The MIS device requires good production controls -- the oxide layer in particular has to be deposited precisely -- but Esposito notes that they used fabrication techniques that are standard in the electronics industry, which has decades of experience in building low-cost, silicon-based devices.
To study the system in detail, the NIST team scanned the surface of the device with a laser beam, illuminating only a small portion at a time to record photocurrent with micrometer resolution. In tandem with the beam, they also tracked an "ultramicroelectrode" across the surface to measure the rate of molecular hydrogen generation, the chemical half of the reaction.** The combination allowed them to observe two bonus effects of the MIS photoelectrode design: a secondary mechanism for hydrogen generation caused by the channeling of electrons through the oxide layer, and a more efficient transport of electrons to the reaction site than predicted.
The NIST team calculates an efficiency of 2.9 percent for their device, which also exhibits excellent stability during operation. While this efficiency is far lower than more costly designs, they note that it is 15 times better than previously reported results for similar silicon-based MIS devices, and the new data from their microanalysis of the system points towards several potential routes to improving performance. The detailed results are found in Nature Materials.
Notes:
* In the 90s by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) has begun taking orders for its new SHIELD hand-held video game console, which is expected to beginning shipping next month. The device was introduced at this year?s Consumer Electronics Show in January and allows users to play online games designed for the Android operating system from Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).
The device is Nvidia?s first entry into the video game console market, and is priced at $349. That is roughly in the same ballpark as Nintendo?s Wii U console, the PlayStation 4 from Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) due out later this year, and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT).
Nvidia?s SHIELD also allows users to watch streaming videos, access streaming music and use other Android apps just like an Android phone or tablet. If SHIELD has an advantage going into the market, this is it. The universe of Android apps now totals about 700,000.
The SHIELD sports a 5-inch flip-up multitouch display, which is no bigger than the largest mobile smartphone screens. The appeal of the device to gamers is the hand-held console, replete with familiar buttons, which offer more control over the gaming experience than what is available on a smartphone. The device can also be connected to a PC that uses Nvidia?s GeForce GTX graphics cards.
Whether Nvidia?s device will appeal to hard-core gamers is the big question. Shares of Nvidia are up about 1.7% this morning, at $14.48 in a 52-week range of $11.15 to $15.22.
As expected, there was nothing revolutionary about the boatload of upgrades introduced at today?s Google I/O conference, but that doesn?t mean there wasn?t a whole lot of very cool stuff announced.
By Ken Y-N ( May 15, 2013 at 00:42)
? Filed under Entertainment, Mobile, Polls
A recent survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, was the seventh regular video usage survey.
Demographics
Between the 17th and 19th of April 2013 1,079 momembers of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private mobile phone and smartphone-based questionnaire. 57.7% of the sample were female, 3.2% in their teens, 20.3% in their twenties, 37.1% in their thirties, 26.5% in their forties, and 12.9% aged fifty or older.
I watch mobile video occasionally, mostly streaming cat videos from YouTube?
Research results
Q1: How often do you watch video on your mobile phone, smartphone? (Sample size=1,079)
Often (to SQ1)
14.5%
Occasionally (to SQ1)
44.4%
Just once or twice (to SQ1)
27.1%
Never
12.0%
Cannot watch video on mobile phone
2.0%
Q1SQ: What kinds of video do you watch video on your mobile phone, smartphone? (Sample size=927, multiple answer)
Mobile phone streaming
63.3%
Playback of video shot on own phone
33.4%
Mobile phone download
33.0%
Playback of video emailed by friend
11.7%
Video transferred from PC
8.3%
Other
3.3%
Since the first time the survey was conducted in September 2011, the percentage of video watchers has increased steadily. Looking at individual trends, the streaming percentage has remained roughly constant, but the other major categories, playback of own video, of downloaded video, and of emailed video have all been on a downward trend.
In what can only be called an exodus, WordPress? co-founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg 
A recent survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, was the seventh regular video usage survey.