Tips For Galleries From the Insurance Company

We called up the art insurance company AXA ART to ask what Sandy-affected galleries can expect in the days ahead. A rep tells us they?re currently moving artworks to a warehouse, where they?re performing ?art triage,? so cheers to that. They also gave us a few tips for dealing with the aftermath. New gallerists in particular will want to look at this:

1. Photograph your rooms and?document any damages to works of?art.

2. Furniture is particularly vulnerable?when flooding occurs. Decorative?wood elements may become loose or?detached. Check for loose, damaged,?or deteriorating wood. Arrange to have?these pieces of furniture treated by a?conservator as soon as possible.

3. If objects are wet, gently blot off?excess moisture with towels or blotting?paper. Remove wet backings, mats,?and frames.

4. Remove any remaining wrapping?on outdoor objects and rinse the?sculpture with clean water.

5. Move works to an air-conditioned?area. If there is no power, move works?to a lighted area with air movement.?Mold develops quickly in high humidity,?high temperature, and darkness?but cannot survive in well-ventilated?conditions.

6. A fine layer of salt may have been?deposited on works during the storm.?Carefully dust secure works with a soft?brush and wipe metal objects with a?soft cloth.

7. Contact a conservator as soon as?possible, as early treatment can reduce?damages to paintings, sculpture, and?works on paper.

8. In the event of a loss, contact?your broker or insurance company?immediately.

Source: http://www.artfagcity.com/2012/10/31/tips-for-galleries-from-the-insurance-company/

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Wall Street reopens after being shut for two days

(AP) ? Wall Street is getting back to work.

Trading resumed on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday after being closed for two days because of Hurricane Sandy. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ran the opening bell.

The exchange is running on backup generators since power is out in large parts of downtown Manhattan.

The last time the exchange was closed for two days for weather was in 1888.

The market got off to a good start after the shutdown.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 70 points to 13,177 shortly after the opening bell.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose five points to 1,417. The Nasdaq composite slipped two points to 2,985.

General Motors rose 4 percent to $24.10 after reporting earnings that beat Wall Street's forecasts.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-10-31-Wall%20Street-Open/id-b47ec30185d54892bb6a75eea9a2a882

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Something Wicked This Way Comes | DarkMedia.com

by Alex McDermott:

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Horror is big business these days. From huge events like ZomBCon in Seattle, Washington to the plethora of novels, films, comic books, and toys, fear is definitely in demand! Zombies, werewolves, vampires, and everything in between stalk us from the shadows and we can?t get enough. But when the screen goes dark or you close that last page, do you ever stop to ask yourself a simple question? Why? Why are we so fascinated with monsters and horror? As I sat late one evening staring into the darkness, I asked myself that very question. Adolf Hitler. Rwanda. The Holocaust. The Zodiac Killer. Son of Sam. Richard Ramirez. There is real horror in the world. Why do we seek it out in fiction? Why do we want invented nightmares? As the minutes ticked by and the shadows crept up on me, I decided to go to the source. Every horror author must have that moment too! It?s that moment, late at night with a glass of wine, when he or she pauses at the keyboard, stares out into the darkness and asks that simple question. Why are we so fascinated with monster and horror?

Scott. M. Goriscak, author of Dead and Decaying, believes that ?being frightened is the most incredible emotion one can experience.? To Goriscak, horror ?fuels unpredictable reactions both mentally and physically.? Fear is the most powerful unknown. People experience ?sensations every day in the forms of love, hate, happiness etc. The difference in our everyday emotions is that we most likely create the situations resulting in the emotion we seek.? Because it?s so powerful, ?fear of the unexpected and the surprise of the unknown lets our imagination wander and our hearts race. The fear of the unknown allows our imagination to flirt with the danger without knowing our outcome.? There?s a momentary thrill when we see that shadow in the corner and feel the stab of fear.

Our fascination with horror comes from ?an inherent desire to be evil,? according to Mikel Classen, author and owner of NetBound Publishing. He believes there is an ?attractiveness to the dark side, to monsters and creatures of horror.? They have ?power, strength, and abilities, we in the everyday world sometimes envy.? Horror, Classen argues ?allows us to experience these things without acting on them. We get to look into dark corners and truly see the monster in the closet, experience what it is to be a vampire, tear off our human fa?ade and turn into a crazed flesh rending werewolf.? He points out that we all have those times when there?s a certain amount of appeal in digging into the beast within. ?Deep down inside,? he says, ?we all have a dark side, one that begs to come out, horror allows that to happen, vicariously live through characters created for us satisfying that need.? For Classen, horror is ?about getting a raw visceral experience, wrapped in a tale of the odd, strange and curious while not having the fear of the consequences, such as pacts with the devil and prison terms.?

For some it?s the allure of the dark side, but for others it?s the release that horror offers. Joshua Cook, creator of Zombie A.C.R.E.S. says his love of monsters comes from a combination of things, including a feeling of security over the fear. He says that while he?s enjoying ?what scares the crap out of me, I?m immersed in a world of fear that is beyond my control.?? He points out that we the readers are ?helpless to the artist? while we?re immersed in the work. Afterwards, he says, he feels a ?sense of security. Yeah, I am still scared,? he argues, ?but in a secure environment.? Fear, he believes, is the strongest of all human emotions. ?Some may say it is survival, but what is it that makes us want to survive so bad?? Cook believes it?s our fear of dying. Our fear of the unknown as he puts it. It?s ?our fear of being forgotten after we leave.? Cook believes that the horror genre taps into these primal feelings of fear and survival. He says that?s what gives us the ?adrenaline rush while we are watching Barbara get chased by the graveyard zombie or Jigsaw attack his latest victim.?

For some, horror gives humanity a place to explain terrible things. Fiction becomes a medium to rationalize the Hitlers, the serial killers, and the real-world nightmares. Author Blaze McRob says that ?for me, it?s a means of trying to explain real world life. He believes that if we ?substitute a non-existent creature in the place of a real world combatant, it enables us to grasp the complexities of what is with what isn?t while leaving the mind open to ways of elimination.? We are better able to cope with the seemingly irrational acts of serial killers in our own world through the world of fiction. He points that ?writers hold great power: powers greater than other humans because we are able to expel the bad things from our souls and eliminate those who would or have done us harm.? The words on the page become a release of inner demons. Authors have the ability to ?wipe the slate clean, writing about means of revenge we would never employ in real life.? Like Classon?s visceral experience that keeps him out of prison, McRob sees horror fiction as an outlet. ?The spouse who is on the receiving end of a brutal or cheating partner can,? he argues, ?turn the tables with his/her words and become the winner in the game of a failed union. The abused is now the conqueror, subjecting the abuser to retribution.? But for McRob, there is an even more powerful allure to horror. He states that ?the number one reason for people believing, or wanting to believe in monsters? is religion; that great opiate to render the masses capable of domination because of fear.? He points out that ?if one fears the power of Satan, will he not fear the power of demons and other creatures under the spell of the Dark One? Will this not lead people to seek their solace within the auspices of the church or seek the direct help of God?? Horror fiction, according to McRob, gives humanity a path for rooting out evil. ?Since the beginning of time,? he argues, ?humankind has been told of the evil lurking about them and the need to sacrifice humans and animals on altars to keep others safe. Once more: a case of the High Priests gaining authority by means of spreading these tales of evil-doers.? Fiction was an ancient tool to ensure survive and that instinct has remained deeply embedded in our cultural and religious psyche. But, McRob states, maybe what we want to believe in comes not from fear, but ?because these monsters have become heroes in a way, able to do what we can merely aspire to achieve.? The immortality of the vampire is seductive. The wanton destruction of the werewolf feeds our inner beast! This allure of the monster has become a staple in horror today.

The vampire, and its immortal gift, has become the object of erotic fantasies and teen romance. Vampire cops protect humanity with their preternatural skills. Author Robbie Anderson argues this allure is a double-edged sword that keeps us ?coming back as we look into the abyss.? He believes that monsters ?represent the dark and the light of our inner selves.? He says we ?see their strength, their abilities, and we fear that power.? But, he says, ?we also want it for our own. We want to live forever. We want to run savage through the woods unbridled by human restrain.? He argues that ultimately though, ?we understand that humanity continues because of our order. Because of our restrain. Without it, we fall into chaos.? The monster, therefore, ?represents humanity?s ability to conquer the beast.? He points out that the classic horror stories almost always end with the death of the creature and ?the redemption in the power of humanity.? He believes ?we create stories to reaffirm and validate our ability to conquer the beasts. Horror is our way of ensuring we kill the monsters? something we never seem to be able to do in real life.?

Like Andersons?s primal need to destroy evil, Greg F. Gifune, author of Gardens of Night, believes horror is ?essentially a primal thing that goes back to the origins of Man.? For Gifune, monsters and horror ?generally represent the darkest parts of the human experience? He believes it?s in that ?connection where our fascination and love-hate relationship with fear is born and thrives.? He argues that many of our fears are a ?residue of sorts, from earlier times when being human and being alive was far more dangerous than it is today? although with the direction much of the world is headed in lately that might be open to debate.? Again, like Anderson, Gifune believes there is a ?symbiotic relationship? that ?evolves between the monsters and horror, and us.? He speculates on the possibility of a greater monster than the human kind. He asks us to consider if there a greater horror than the horror ?born of and disseminated by human beings?? He believes that ?because [most] human beings are also capable of boundless love and compassion, we?re able to keep those barriers between ?us? and ?them? at least somewhat intact.? He argues that ?we are the monsters. We are the horror. Yet we?re also the saviors and the remedies for both.? He believes, like Anderson, that ?we slay the monsters. We conquer the horror. Because in the end, those monsters need us and we need them. They keep us honest.? Like many of the horror authors here, he too stresses that ?in the entertainment realm, we create monsters and horrors and people are drawn to them so that we can touch the night, touch the evil, and maybe even understand it from a safe place where there?s no real chance to be consumed or hurt by it.? He says that ?in doing so, we?re reminded of what we are, and what ?they? are. We?re fascinated by monsters and horror, near as I can tell, because we see ourselves in ourselves in both. And then, happily, we don?t.?

Like Joshua Cook, author Kendra Daniels sees horror as our primal fear of the unknown. Through fiction, she argues, we take the monsters ?out of the closet, into the light of day, where we can understand them, and take away some of the very real fear of them.? We read about them, digest the terror they create, and ultimately grapple with that fear. She believes that ?familiarity? breed[s] contempt. The more we know about the things we fear, the less we fear their power to harm us.? Like many of the authors, Daniels argues that horror helps us come to terms with real world nightmares so they do not have the power to paralyze us with fear.

Eric S. Brown, author of Bigfoot War and Last Stand in A Dead Land turns the entire argument on its head! Instead of the intense imagery or mastery of fear, he believes we love horror for the sheer fun. Horror and monsters, he argues, are ?a form of escapism that allow the reader/viewer to leave the world behind for a bit and experience something beyond the norm.? We vanish into worlds that cannot exist to fuel our imagination. At its most extreme, apocalyptic themes go ?beyond that and gives one the fantasy of the struggle against impossible odds and being one of the last left alive.? We envision ourselves as that ultimate hero bringing order to chaos as we kill off the zombie hordes. Brown points out that this ?shows us what we humans are capable of in the extreme whether that be good or evil.? Horror becomes a reflection of our inner selves.

Thomas Scopel, author of Twitch, Lickety-Split and numerous other works, readily admits he has no idea why we love horror! Fear has always fascinated him, starting with the classic Romero zombie film Night of the Living Dead. After that, he acknowledges that he became a ?bonifide horror junkie? [but] instead of sticking a needle laced with drugs into my veins, I stuck horror novels, magazines, comic books, and movies in through my eyes, hoping to acquire that utmost feeling again.? He reflects on that feeling, that moment, when you realize you are truly afraid. You return to the novels, the movies, and the comic books looking for that feeling again. For Scopel, that began with Romero. But, he stresses ?just as I started considering whether or not I would ever acquire that fear feeling again, it happened. I was probably eleven or twelve and it came in the form of The Exorcist.? That adrenaline rush of fear, real fear, returned. We love the ?next great scare? and he argues, ?fear can be exciting, invigorating and dreadfully encompassing. It can be the cause of hearing odd sounds that aren?t really there or force a person to offer a second glance into that dark corner, unsure of whether they hadn?t see something lurking there.? We look twice when we?re afraid. He also says that ?it can bring on clenched teeth and nail biting, tense muscles and a queasy stomach. It can be the cause for one to look away or put the book down, intent on never reopening it.? He believes some people fall in love with those feelings and fear therefore ?is something that is fully welcome!?

Ordered society tells us that monsters are inherently evil. We must turn away from them and reject them in order to maintain our humanity, but author Nomar Knight believes this then becomes the very reason we see them out! He argues that we are ?intrigued when monsters are unmasked and revealed for being human. Once the initial shock begins to fade as we recognize our capacity to commit atrocities, questions begin gnawing at our minds.? Horror draws on the darkest parts of humanity and reflects it back to us, forcing us to reconsider our fragile beliefs. Knight says that he?s always been ?intrigued when someone was motivated to kill, especially if that person was drawn in by vengeance.? It?s not about excessive gore and pure violence. Instead, ?there?s something special in getting others to act against their nature? to get a daughter to endorse the physical torturing of her mother, to witness someone who has been pushed to the brink explode not with callous violence, but with calculated malice, thereby taking away what was most precious to the enemy.? Horror allows us to act out our ?darkest fantasies through fascinating characters, all the while being thankful that? real life hasn?t always been riddled with horrific events.?

Like Knight, Todd Card, author of Hell Cometh, argues that it?s the fantasy element that draws people to horror. Only he believes that it is not our darkest fantasies come to life, but ?the created world of monsters and fictional horror distracts us all from the heinous murderers, rapists, dictators, ethnic cleansing, slavery, and war around us.? The real world is saturated with very real monsters and terrors and Card points out that we absorb these nightmares on a daily basis. We choose an escape from it. According to Card, some choose art and others ?drinking and drugs.? For Card, horror is the healthy fantasy world to disappear from the real terrors ?the human race have created around us.? For some, horror comes from the past. Author David Thomas points out that his native country of England is ?awash with legends and urban stories,? some true and some fiction. These stories fuel the imagination and tap into something Thomas believes moves beyond the mundane world around us. He argues that ?there?s something more? than the concrete and there?s a ?feeling of reading a good horror story? that cannot be put into words! The myths and legends themselves came from someone?s imagination and they continue to live in modern horror as well. Our fascination with monsters is, therefore, nothing new!

Like many authors, Lisa McCourt Hollar emphasizes the thrill that horror creates. One of her most vivid memories is her first real horror movie in sixth grade! She said she was ?scared to death [but] yet I couldn?t take my eyes from the screen.? The fear mingled with tense anticipation and she ?had to see what happened next and when the heroine gouged the eyes out of the villain, I was so excited.? It was that visceral thrill Knight described; our darkest fantasies come to life through fiction.We turn away, then look back knowing we shouldn?t. McCourt Hollar describes it as a ?high? much like Card does. It?s a healthy drug. As she watched her first film, her ?blood was pumping? and her ?heart was racing.? Like any good drug, it left her wanting more!

Like Card, Carole Gill, author of The House on Blackstone Moor, points out that we ?exist in a world that has given us wars throughout time, the Holocaust, various genocides, mass murders, psychotic killers, bigotry in all shapes and sizes and degrees, slavery, abuse of children, women, men and the elderly.? We know evil is very real and we need to ?find a way to deal with it.? We must synthesize it in order to maintain our sanity. According to Gill, the ?worst monsters are the human ones. They are the genuine evil that exists in the world and always has done.? Fiction creates a single monster, the embodiment of evil, and most importantly, is capable of being destroyed. Gill does not ?condone [evil] nor do I celebrate it.? Horror fiction allows us to kill the beast that we cannot always do in real life. She argues that ?we fear it so greatly we want to see it up close (in fiction and film)?thereby understanding it better or tearing it down and ?making it less than it is? so we no longer fear it.? Horror, Gill believes, ?reflects our fear of the world around us.? Through fiction, we do battle and conquer the evil in order to cope with it in real life.

B.E. Scully, author of Verland: The Transformation and The Knife and the Wound It Deals, brings all of the complex arguments together when she says:

The monster is the creature that has been cast into the shadows, that has been expelled from the brightly lit world of so-called certainty and order. And from those shadows, the monster howls; we hear this howl?and recognize it?and howl back, or along with it, our repugnance and fascination as inextricable, as indistinguishable, as we are from the monster itself. I?ve been drawn into that shadow world from the first time I wondered what lurked at the end of dark drainage pipes, or waited in the small hours of night for the creatures that live and breathe in darkened spaces and secret places. Then quick, turn on the light and dispel the shadows! But only long enough for the monster to rest, to allow us our quiet moment before again unleashing the ancient, primal howl?

Why are we fascinated with monsters and horror? The very people that bring these creatures to life cannot agree! There seems to be the common theme of real world versus fiction. We need to live in the fantasy in order to continue to face the dark elements within ourselves. When our faith is shattered, our peace disturbed, and our world seems as if it?s never going to be the same, we turn to fiction. The stories reaffirm our belief in humanity. We win. They lose. The darkness is vanquished. The sun comes up. When the sun sets, another story begins.

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.
H. P. Lovecraft

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Join the conversation! We?d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Please also take a moment to sign up for email updates on all the latest from the Dark. There?s more where this came from! You can find DarkMedia on Facebook, Tumblr on Twitter at @DarkMediaOnline, and on our very own (free) social network, DarkMedia City.

Source: http://www.darkmediaonline.com/something-wicked-this-way-comes/

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EmailSuccess Helps Businesses Avoid Costly Newsletter Errors

Email marketing is a widely used tool among all types of businesses, but these campaigns can only garner results if they appeal to consumers and don?t contain critical errors. Now, companies have options to help ensure their customers don?t receive emails littered with errors and sub-par content.

EmailSuccess

EmailSuccess is a free, automated tool for helping businesses test their email marketing campaigns to make sure they are error free and optimized for target audiences.

Felix Ngassa, Email Marketing Specialist for EmailSuccess says:

?We are convinced it will cause a change in the email marketing world both from the point of view of agencies who will be able to easily test and improve their emails, and also for client marketing professionals who will no longer judge an email campaign just from the attractiveness of the designs and content but will easily evaluate other critical aspects.?

Ngassa said that the company has helped companies avoid all kinds of costly errors, from sizing that looks off to not including unsubscribe links and other necessary aspects of email newsletters.

The tool points out errors and suggested changes ranging from critical importance to minor suggestions. The analysis goes over email content, design, and technical factors.

So emails that contain broken links, faulty code, missing images, or incorrect structure, would then have another layer of checks to go through before being sent out to customers. Ngassa said that the EmailSuccess tool includes over 250 automated tests to find these types of errors.

There are plenty of tools available to help companies create and distribute email newsletters quickly and easily, but relying one team members to go through all the necessary checks before sending out such an email could lead to errors that make a company look unorganized and unprofessional.

There are different plans and pricing available, ranging from a free basic plan to an agency plan costing $149 per month. Pricing depends on how many tests a company plans to run and if any extra features are necessary.

The company is based in Italy and is part of Diennea MagNews, a company that specializes in email marketing and digital communication services and technology.


About Annie Pilon

Annie Pilon Annie Pilon is a freelance writer specializing inmarketing, social media, and creative topics. When she?s not writing for her various freelance projects or her personal blog Wattlebird, she can be found exploring all that her home state of Michigan has to offer.

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Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/10/emailsuccess-test-email-marketing.html

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San Diego VA Loan Limits Increased $40,000 for The Rest of 2012

Veterans seeking to purchase a home in San Diego County are encouraged to get pre-approved for a San Diego VA loan before 2013.? With the passage of the Honoring America?s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act, qualified veterans can receive guaranteed San Diego VA home loans as high as $518,750, up from the previous San Diego VA loan limit of $477,000.

The increased loan limits will apply to all San Diego VA loans closed before January 1, 2013.? The VA is expected to adjust this limit after this period when it receives new median home price data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The next few months present an unparalleled opportunity for you to take advantage of San Diego mortgage rates as low as 3.25% for a 30 year loan, 3.305% APR.? Fifteen year rates are presently as low as 2.75%, 2.849% APR for qualified borrowers.

A VA loan is an assumable loan, so if you wish to sell your home to another qualified veteran, they may be able to take responsibility for your mortgage.? If you wish to prepay your San Diego VA loan you may do so without a penalty.

Even if the loan limit is decreased in the next year, the VA will continue to honor the higher loan limit if the pre-approval was based on a sales contract or Uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA).

No down payment or mortgage insurance is required

VA loans require no down payment up to $518,750 in San Diego.? Closing costs, origination fees, and appraisal fees are strictly controlled by law.? If the real estate contract is structured appropriately, the closing costs may be completely paid for by the seller.? The VA also makes available methods to assist you should you have difficulty making payments in the future.

The San Diego VA Loan Program does not require mortgage insurance, in contrast with San Diego FHA or conventional loans.? Because the VA guarantees the loan, third party mortgage insurance is not required.? This may save you hundreds a month on mortgage insurance premiums.

There is a variable VA funding fee which may be lowered if the down payment is 5% of the loan or more.?? A typical funding fee for an Active Military first time buyer is 2.15% of the loan amount, and this amount may also be financed.?? For reservists or subsequent use this funding fee will be higher.

Most active duty personnel, veterans and reservists are qualified

If you have served in the military, are an active duty member, a Reservist or National Guard member, or a surviving spouse, you may qualify for a San Diego VA loan. An active duty member may qualify after six months of service, while a reservist or National Guard member who has not served on active duty may not qualify until six years of service have passed.? Reservists or National Guard members with 181 days or more of active service may meet all requirements for the San Diego VA Loan Program.

In order to receive a San Diego VA loan, you will need to obtain a Certificate of Eligibility (CoE) from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.? You should submit an application online, through the mail, or through your home loan lender.

Loan applications will require credit and income verification

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs does not provide the loans.? Instead, the VA guarantees that the loans will be repaid to the lender, so you will still need to apply and secure a loan from a bank or San Diego mortgage broker like The Mortgage Planners.

Although the VA does not use your credit score to determine eligibility, your credit history will affect your application in other ways.? The lender will examine your credit activity in the past 12 months to determine if you are up to date on your financial responsibilities.? In most cases, a decent credit history in the past year will permit approval. A higher credit score may also allow a lower rate on your mortgage.

The San Diego VA Loan Program will require proof of employment going back at least two years.? Your income will be analyzed to determine if your income can support repayment and if you are likely to remain employed through the first three years of the mortgage.

Loans exceeding the VA loan limit only require 25% of the excess loan amount

If you would like to purchase a property that exceeds the $518,750 limit set by the San Diego VA Loan Program, you can still receive a guarantee on the loan up to the limit. The amount of loan above that limit will require a 25% down payment.? For example, if your desired home costs $618,750, then you will need to make a down payment of only 25% of the excess loan amount which is $25,000.

If you are planning on purchasing a home in San Diego County and you are eligible for a VA loan, we encouraged you to discuss your options with us.? As a trusted San Diego mortgage broker, we offer a free pre-purchase consultation were we can discuss all your options and if a VA loan is right for you.? You can call me at (619) 312-0612 to schedule a meeting or apply for a quick quote at the top of the page.

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Source: http://www.sandiegomortgagenews.net/san-diego-county-va-loan-limits-jump-40000/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=san-diego-county-va-loan-limits-jump-40000

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Refresh Roundup: week of October 22nd, 2012

Refresh Roundup week of October 22nd, 2012

Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

Continue reading Refresh Roundup: week of October 22nd, 2012

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Miners take "rail-veyors" and robots to automated future

SUDBURY, Ontario (Reuters) - In an office trailer parked outside a mine shaft in northern Ontario, operator Carolyn St-Jean leans back in her chair and monitors a machine loading nickel-rich ore into rail cars deep underground.

Once filled, the automated train will snake through a series of narrow tunnels, emerge from a rocky outcropping, then loop past St-Jean's window and dump its payload for sorting.

Vale SA, the Brazilian company that owns the mine near this nickel-rich Canadian town, has spent nearly $50 million in two years to install and test the "rail-veyor." The company believes the transport system will revolutionize how it builds and extracts new mineral deposits.

The equipment is made locally by Rail-Veyor Technologies Global Inc. It is one of many mining technologies that developers hope will allow future production to be run almost entirely by people safely above ground.

Such advances may prove crucial as easy-to-exploit deposits run dry and miners drill deeper in more remote places to supply China, India and other emerging economies. The technology could make mining cheaper and safer, avoiding the need to dig wide tunnels and hire large numbers of expensive, skilled workers.

"As we go deeper, if we continue to apply existing thinking and existing technologies, it's a death spiral" for company profits, said Alex Henderson, who heads Vale's technology team in Sudbury.

"We need to begin to look at a step-change in mining rather than just incrementally improving our existing processes."

The rail-veyor is one such step-change. At the test site, it has halved the time to build a mine, and Vale expects a 150 percent boost in production rates before year end.

In Australia, Rio Tinto Ltd, one of the world's largest miners and an automation pioneer, is rolling out a fleet of self-driving trucks and trains at its iron ore operations. Vale, BHP Billiton and Chile's Codelco are in hot pursuit.

Gold miner AngloGold Ashanti is eyeing automation in South Africa, where miners spend hours each shift traveling up and down shafts and ounces of gold are left behind in support pillars each year.

Organized labor has made its peace with the automation drive, although there were some concerns that robots would displace humans.

"We're ok with automation, it's part of the changing times and it's a good thing for productivity," said Myles Sullivan of the United Steelworkers Canada, whose workers ended a year-long strike at Vale over bonuses and wages in 2010.

700 STORIES UNDERGROUND

New challenges in mining are driving technological changes. Large, accessible deposits have all but disappeared. Resources of tomorrow are in far-flung corners of the globe or hundreds of meters beneath the surface.

Add a shortage of skilled labor - expected to worsen as the baby-boom generation retires - and mining costs have surged.

While soaring demand means higher metal prices, rising costs are crimping profits. Canada's S&P/TSX Mining share index has fallen more than 38 percent since the beginning of 2011.

Experts say mining companies must change how they operate.

Making that shift is not easy for an industry steeped in tradition, especially when change doesn't come cheap. Rio Tinto is spending more than $500 million on train automation alone.

"This is a very conservative industry that has been very productive over the last 30 years doing it the way they're doing it now," said Douglas Morrison, chief executive of the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI), an industry-funded research center in Sudbury.

"But is the old way going to work for us into the future? I think probably not, so we need to make some changes."

After decades of production, the nickel mines around Sudbury are getting deeper and deeper. At Vale's Creighton mine, the No. 8 shaft drops nearly 8,000 feet into the ground - equivalent of a 700-story condo tower.

At that depth it is very hot, around 50 degrees Celsius (120 Fahrenheit), so tunnels must be pumped full of cooled air to make temperatures manageable for people and heavy machinery.

"The bigger issue is when we get much deeper we start to generate our own earthquakes - very small earthquakes - these are called 'rock bursts,'" said Morrison.

Smaller tunnels and new ways of digging can hopefully reduce the danger of these rock bursts, which create a safety concern and slow development.

Rio Tinto is working with CEMI on automated tunnel borers, currently used to build subway and sewer tunnels. By cutting through the rock instead of blasting, Rio aims to quadruple its underground advance rates to 20 meters a day.

But while automated tunnel borers will build shafts and tunnels more quickly, massive mining equipment still handicaps the industry, which is where Vale's rail-veyor comes in.

A train hauling 50 tonnes of ore uses a far smaller tunnel than a truck with the same load. By taking the massive trucks and scooptrams - large vehicles with shovels on the front - out of the equation, Vale can build more compact and stable tunnels.

The rail-veyor, built on tracks that zig-zag down to the deposit, actually eliminates the need for expensive shafts and may eventually move people and equipment, along with ore.

Vale's Henderson believes the technology - which the company plans to roll out in five upcoming projects - is a game-changer that will help usher in a new era of mining.

"Just as the scooptram was the key enabler for the mechanized era, is the rail-veyor a key enabler for the next?" he said.

MAN VS MACHINE

What that "next era" will look like is still up for debate. Some innovators believe robots will do most of the labor in mines of the future, as in automobile assembly plants. This would ease likely shortages in skilled labor in many countries.

Over the next decade Canada's mining sector will need more than 100,000 skilled new hires to sustain even modest growth, according to the Mining Industry Human Resources Council.

In Australia, the labor crunch is already so intense that truck drivers can make upwards of $100,000 a year, with turnover rates at some mines still near 40 percent.

"One of the biggest problems that the mining industry faces worldwide is trained personnel. We can't get them," said John Meech, director of CERM3, a mining research center at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

"One of the ways we are going to have to deal with that is to automate the systems so that the human becomes the supervisor, rather than the direct means of control."

It is a concept already used at remote open-pit mines in Australia, where Rio's new fleet of driverless trucks can be run from a control room hundreds of miles away.

Canada's Nautilus Minerals Inc is using automated rovers to explore the ocean bed for mineral deposits that underwater robots will eventually mine.

In addition to boosting productivity, the advances will enhance safety. As labor leader Sullivan says, "so long as there's underground mining, there will be women and men working underground."

Safety is the focus at a converted schoolyard just outside Sudbury, where a duo of mine rescue robots roll through a makeshift obstacle course. Their thick tires grind over logs and through mud pits.

Designed by Canada's Penguin Automated Systems Inc, the equipment is being tested by Codelco at its Andina copper mine in Chile, doing dangerous jobs like checking stability after blasting and surveying tunnels at risk of flooding.

"Our mining industry is not quite there yet in Canada and it needs to get there to be competitive with the rest of the world," said Penguin Chief Executive Greg Baiden. "It comes back to the culture. Who wants to do it? Who wants to be first?"

(Additional reporting by Bhaswati Mukhopadhyay in Bangalore; Editing by Frank McGurty, Janet Guttsman and David Gregorio)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/miners-rail-veyors-robots-automated-future-110815981--sector.html

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91% Holy Motors

"Holy Motors," from French filmmaker Leos Carax, is the best avant-garde film of 2012 so far. But that's not saying much, as it's been a terrible year for avant-garde film. Despite its title, "Holy Motors" really isn't about cars. It's somewhat about technology, with limousines probably meant to represent traditional celluloid cameras -- so big and bulky that they are a challenge to handle. But oh so wonderful. Big wonderful machines. Stretch limos can barely turn a corner in the old sectors of great cities like Paris and New York. But doesn't everyone's heart skip a beat just a bit when they enter one? First and foremost, "Holy Motors" is about people, as was the case with Carax's first film, "Boy Meets Girl" (1984). This is an avant-garde artist with a deep-feeling heart and a deep sensitivity to the people around him. Holy Love. Amen to that. The film documents a day in the life of a man named Oscar. (Perhaps this is a tribute to American cinema and its big, grand Academy Awards. Holy Glamour.) Played spectacularly well by the protean Denis Lavant, Oscar is carted around all day in a white stretch limo, taken to a series of appointments throughout Paris. At each appointment, he becomes a different character. His limo is a dressing room, where he applies make-up and elaborate disguises to become his next character. The first one is an old, crippled woman begging for money on the street. Another is a revolting barefoot troll (half-man, half-beast) who interrupts a high-fashion photo shoot and kidnaps the model (who is played by Eva Mendes). Every sequence is quite thrilling, and each one is so different from the others. Most breathtaking of all is the sequence where his movements are recorded in a stop-motion studio, for use in what appears to be a pornographic video game. Gradually it becomes clear that these appointments are elaborately planned, and everyone he interacts with during each scene is also an actor. While donning his next costume in the limo, he is also reading a file that someone else has prepared, a summary of what his next character will be doing. We even meet a man who appears to be something like Oscar's employer, who critiques Oscar's performances. Oscar announces that he has been having more difficulty staying in character because the cameras have gotten so small that they cannot be seen. This is when "Holy Motors" started to seem like a comment on digital filmmaking. At my screening at the New York Film Festival, Carax was in attendance, as was Kylie Minogue, who has a small role in the film. (I initially thought this was Minogue's first time acting. But not so. She has appeared in a number of television shows and films, including "Moulin Rouge," where she played the Green Fairy. Who knew?) Carax spoke for about a half-hour after the screening, and it became even more clear that "Holy Motors" was primarily meant as an allegory about 21st-century filmmaking and the demise of traditional cameras. At one point, he said the new cameras today are not really cameras. "They're more like computers," he said. He feels sad about the rise of digital filmmaking, claiming that it "looks terrible." But "Holy Motors," which was shot 100% on digital, looked gorgeous. Gradually during his remarks, the object of his ire shifted. What really angers him is that he's been unable to make a film since 1999. He had several projects collapse at the last minute because producers won't back him. This has nothing to do with the 21st century or changing technology. This is the age-old problem of cinema being enormously expensive. If anything, it's gotten easier in the digital age because the new technology costs so much less. It's no surprise to me that Carax finally was able to get a project green-lighted now that digital has triumphed. To me, Carax has digital to thank. Furthermore, I suspect that "Holy Motors" is going to succeed well enough financially that he's going to get another project green-lighted in 2013. Holy Digital. While I appreciate Carax's work and consider myself a fan, I wouldn't put him in my pantheon. There's something still just a bit underwhelming about his work.

October 14, 2012

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/holy_motors/

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Elder Law, Drug and Device Laws and Insurance Laws: Contents of ...

Individual Responsibility: Subtitle F, Part I, is ironically entitled ?Individual Responsibility?. I say ?ironically titled? because Mitt Romney, who believes 47% of the US population takes no individual responsibility, wants to repeal this provision. This is the provision that was upheld by the United States Supreme Court. Under this provision, individuals are fined $750 on their personal tax return if they do not purchase minimal essential health care coverage during a calendar year. This is phased in at a rate of $95 for 2014 and $315 for 2015. If an individual goes one month without minimal coverage the fee is 1/12 of this amount. ?Minimal Essential Coverage? includes Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, Tricare, Veteran?s plans, and plans for Peace Corp volunteers. It also includes employer-sponsored plans, individual plans and grandfathered plans. Although the penalty is collected on your income tax form, the law expressly prohibits the Federal government from filing criminal charges against you if you don?t pay the penalty and also prohibits the IRS from filing liens and levies against your property to collect the fee. The US Supreme Court debated as to whether it was constitutional for the government to require you to purchase health insurance, and this provision was upheld under Congress?s taxing power. Beginning in 2014, your insurer will send you a formal notice of your coverage for tax purposes. Employers shall also be required to file a return regarding coverage of their employees and also to provide notice to their employees. Assisted Suicide: The law continues on with a prohibition of discrimination against individuals or health care entities on the basis that they refuse to execute assisted suicide, mercy killings or euthanasia. Expansion of Medicaid. The law initially required the states to expand Medicaid by offering it to anyone with an income of %133 of the federal poverty line but the United States Supreme Court struck down this requirement. It is now optional for the states. Children?s Health Insurance Plan (CHIPs): The law enhances funding for this federal program to assist the states in providing health insurance for Children.

Source: http://scschurr.blogspot.com/2012/10/contents-of-obamacare-part-v.html

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