South Park was unable to meet its deadline for the first time in its 240+ episode history because of a power outage. That's 17 straight seasons of somehow making things work on a short deadline until now. What a bummer!
Source: http://gizmodo.com/a-power-outage-made-south-park-miss-an-episode-for-the-1446782189This portrait looking down on Saturn and its rings was created from images obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 10, 2013. It was made by amateur image processor and Cassini fan Gordan Ugarkovic. This image has not been geometrically corrected for shifts in the spacecraft perspective and still has some camera artifacts.The mosaic was created from 12 image footprints with red, blue and green filters from Cassini's imaging science subsystem. Ugarkovic used full color sets for 11 of the footprints and red and blue images for one footprint.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/G. Ugarkovic [high-resolution, seriously click this]
Caption: NASA
A gypsy woman holding her child poses for photos at a gypsy camp near the town of Farsala, some 280 km ( 173 miles) north of Athens, Greece, on Sunday, Oct. 20 , 2013. Greek authorities on Friday, Oct. 18, 2013 have requested international assistance to identify the four-year-old girl found living in a Gypsy camp with a couple arrested and charged with abducting her from her birth parents. A police statement says the child was located Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2013 near the town of Farsala, central Greece, during a nationwide crackdown on illegal activities in Gypsy camps. (AP Photo/Nikolas Giakoumidis)
A gypsy woman holding her child poses for photos at a gypsy camp near the town of Farsala, some 280 km ( 173 miles) north of Athens, Greece, on Sunday, Oct. 20 , 2013. Greek authorities on Friday, Oct. 18, 2013 have requested international assistance to identify the four-year-old girl found living in a Gypsy camp with a couple arrested and charged with abducting her from her birth parents. A police statement says the child was located Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2013 near the town of Farsala, central Greece, during a nationwide crackdown on illegal activities in Gypsy camps. (AP Photo/Nikolas Giakoumidis)
Gypsy children pose for photos at a gypsy camp near the town of Farsala, some 280 km ( 173 miles) north of Athens, Greece, on Sunday, Oct. 20 , 2013. Greek authorities on Friday, Oct. 18, 2013 have requested international assistance to identify the four-year-old girl found living in a Gypsy camp with a couple arrested and charged with abducting her from her birth parents. A police statement says the child was located Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2013 near the town of Farsala, central Greece, during a nationwide crackdown on illegal activities in Gypsy camps. (AP Photo/Nikolas Giakoumidis)
A gypsy child plays with his bicycle , at a gypsy camp near the town of Farsala, some 280 km ( 173 miles) north of Athens, Greece, on Sunday, Oct. 20 , 2013. Greek authorities on Friday, Oct. 18, 2013 have requested international assistance to identify the four-year-old girl found living in a Gypsy camp with a couple arrested and charged with abducting her from her birth parents. A police statement says the child was located Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2013 near the town of Farsala, central Greece, during a nationwide crackdown on illegal activities in Gypsy camps.(AP Photo/Nikolas Giakoumidis)
Gypsy children pose for photos at a gypsy camp near the town of Farsala, some 280 km ( 173 miles) north of Athens, Greece, on Sunday, Oct. 20 , 2013. Greek authorities on Friday, Oct. 18, 2013 have requested international assistance to identify the four-year-old girl found living in a Gypsy camp with a couple arrested and charged with abducting her from her birth parents. A police statement says the child was located Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2013 near the town of Farsala, central Greece, during a nationwide crackdown on illegal activities in Gypsy camps. (AP Photo/Nikolas Giakoumidis)
Gypsy children pose for photos at a gypsy camp near the town of Farsala, some 280 km ( 173 miles) north of Athens, Greece, on Sunday, Oct. 20 , 2013. Greek authorities on Friday, Oct. 18, 2013 have requested international assistance to identify the four-year-old girl found living in a Gypsy camp with a couple arrested and charged with abducting her from her birth parents. A police statement says the child was located Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2013 near the town of Farsala, central Greece, during a nationwide crackdown on illegal activities in Gypsy camps. (AP Photo/Nikolas Giakoumidis)
FARSALA, Greece (AP) — Gypsies stroll about prefabricated homes in their camp, many of them smiling and seemingly carefree. But there is worry and resentment here.
Their community is at the center of a child abduction case, with a Gypsy, or Roma, couple accused of abducting a blonde, blue-eyed girl who is thought to be about 4 years old.
The Roma, a poor people in a country devastated by an economic crisis, try to make a living in the camp on the outskirts of the central town of Farsala by selling fruits, carpets, blankets, baskets and shoes at local markets. They say they are already considered by some to be social outcasts, thieves and beggars.
Now, they fear they will be stigmatized as child traffickers. The president of the local Roma community, Babis Dimitriou, hopes there is no backlash against the 2,000 Roma living in the community.
The case "doesn't reflect on all of us," he told The Associated Press on Sunday.
A 40-year-old woman and 39-year-old man have been charged with abducting a minor after police raided the camp Wednesday looking for drugs and weapons. A suspicious prosecutor who accompanied police on the raid thought it was odd that the girl looked nothing like her parents.
DNA tests proved the couple isn't the girl's biological parents. The man and woman will appear in a court Monday. Police have launched an international appeal to find the biological parents of the girl, who is known as Maria in the camp. She is being cared for in Athens by a charity.
Many Gypsies are wary of media attention and resentful of what they say is neglect by the state. The only thing authorities have provided, they say, is the prefab houses that replaced the tents they were living in eight years ago.
What the local Roma seem keen to convey is that their community is not involved in either child abductions or trafficking.
But regional police chief Lt. Gen. Vassilis Halatsis said authorities have found "dozens" of child trafficking cases involving Bulgarian Roma in Greece.
"We know these cases exist, but they involve Bulgarians, not Greeks like us. There are no transactions involving children here," Dimitriou insists, adding that the 40-year-old woman, who had registered Maria as her own child, "cared for her even better than for her own children."
Another resident of the community, who lives with the Roma but is not one of them, takes their side.
"There is no buying and selling of children here ... The other Roma are not to blame. These are family people. After this event, the police have been searching everyone. Isn't this racist?" 42-year-old Christos Lioupis said.
But Halatsis said people take advantage of a flawed birth registration system to declare multiple children to receive state handouts.
The couple accused of abducting the girl had used multiple identities to register 14 children in three different cities, of whom only four have been identified, Halatsis said. An examination of the birthdates of the children shows that the woman, at one point, was giving birth every four months, he said. Overall, the couple received 2,500 euros ($3,420) per month in state assistance.
"We are dealing with a very unusual case. Usually, parents report a child's disappearance and we look for the children. In this case, we have the child and we are looking for its (her) parents," Halatsis said. "So far, we have had calls from France, Poland, even the United States. We are looking at each case, to see if the ages match, and if there are similar features. DNA testing will follow."
"At this point, we can't say there is a child trafficking network involved, but we are looking at this possibility," the police chief said. He added that there have been documented cases of Greek childless couples buying children of Bulgarian Roma for up to 15,000 euros (about $20,500).
Making public the names of the couple that harbored Maria would give a boost to the search for her parents, Halatsis said. But that is up to the judicial authorities.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-20-EU-Greece-Mystery-Girl/id-22895605267c4d69a0e7d70c895de8b0When you become a parent, you suddenly realize everyone has an opinion on how that job should be done, from well-meaning in-laws to strangers who walk up to you in the mall and lecture you about the health benefits of breastfeeding. (True story.) It can be a bit overwhelming. A new startup called MommyCoach wants to help parents and, as the name implies, specifically mothers, learn from experts on a range of topics related to their new lives, sharing not only tested parenting advice, but also information on subjects like food and nutrition, health and fitness, life and work, and more.
The company was founded by CEO Christophe Garnier in partnership with children’s class and activity facility Kidville, which has an equity stake in the company. Garnier is a serial entrepreneur who previously co-founded a kid-focused flash-sales site called Totsy (assets acquired by Modnique after investors turned down a $100 million acquisition offer in 2012, Garnier says), and a digital marketing agency called mSmart before that.
He explains that the idea to build yet another service targeting moms came directly from the time he spent at Totsy. “I was in constant communication with the mother’s audience [at Totsy],” says Garnier. “We were getting a lot of feedback and questions from moms, and a lot of the questions we were getting were not really related to what we were doing, which was retail. It was odd.”
After Totsy’s shutdown, he began researching the “mom’s Q&A” market, so to speak, and found that the majority of the big-name sites like BabyCenter or CafeMom, for example, were relatively static. These sites and those similar to them largely consisted of articles for parents to read, and if they were interactive, it often involved a forum where moms talked to other moms for advice and support.
“There is no way to talk to a qualified expert or professional about a very specific problem and get a very specific answer,” Garnier says. “That’s the goal of MommyCoach.”
At launch, MommyCoach offers a database of a couple of hundred “coaches” who are vetted ahead of their approval by a panel of four moms: licensed therapist Tammy Gold, nutritionist Keri Glassman, personal trainer Lindsay Brin, and life and work expert Lara Galloway. These coaches can then offer online video chat sessions of 30 or 60 minutes in length to interested moms on a variety of topics, from the pre-parenting days during pregnancy to life/work balance or stress reduction techniques – which we all know is what comes after.
Coaches price their own sessions, starting at $20 per session and up. In the near future, group classes will also be made available, allowing for more affordable rates.
In addition, to encourage user engagement on the site, MommyCoach gives out rewards from a selection of 25 brands, like 1800Flowers, Bulu Box, Bluum, Sproutkin, ThredUp, and other online businesses. Moms earn the points by completing sessions, inviting friends, writing reviews of their sessions, and other activities.
The idea of expert marketplaces is not new. There are those focused on education, teaming up developers, learning new skills, getting legal help, self-improvement, and more. But it’s fair to say that there’s not a market leader in the “parenting coach” video chat space at this time. There’s also some question as to whether there ever will be – after all, the thing about parenting is that it’s a major time suck when done well – setting aside an extra 30 minutes to an hour could be tough for moms, and especially working moms. And getting them to pay for sessions on a web filled with free advice for the googling is another challenge for a startup like this to overcome.
The site today is also skewed toward topics of the self-help variety, with only one of the top four overall categories (parenting and education, health and fitness, diet and nutrition, life and work) truly focused on the business of parenting, the developmental stages, and the problems that arise therein. While health, fitness, diet and “empowerment” matters are also important to moms (or anyone, really), they probably account for too much of the site’s content at present.
Meanwhile, MommyCoach is short in coverage on those more serious subjects that parents spend hours researching online regarding the behavioral and medical sides of childcare. For instance, there are only five “child behavior” specialists listed right now, and these experts are at best licensed therapists, which can still be a hit-or-miss experience. The site is also lacking the medical opinion provided by doctors who contribute to competitors’ sites, or are well-known enough to establish brands of their own.
So while the service will be useful for a broad range of topics, it’s not yet comprehensive. But Garnier says that MommyCoach will broaden its reach as early as next year to address some of these holes – the site is only launching in beta for now.
New York-based MommyCoach is backed by angel investors including Rob Keve (Fizzback), Allen Morgan (Klout, Fab), Mark Kingdon (Twitter, Refinery29) and White Star Capital (Summly, DollarShaveClub), as well as Spark Labs and its founder.
MommyCoach is creating the first Live Video SaaS platform allowing independant coaches & experts to take their practice to the digital world, therefore boosting their business and giving them access 100,000’s of new potential clients nationwide. Through our consumer site mommycoach.com, we are building a marketplace of coaches & certified experts that will allow all mothers to access them at an affordable price and using a high quality live video experience. Based in New York City, MommyCoach is funded...
In an odd turn of events, director Michael Bay was attacked on the set of "Transformers: Age of Extinction" on Thursday (October 17).
According to police, two brothers who own a business in the area where the motion picture is filming approached Mr. Bay and demanded money for the loss or revenue their shop was suffering as a result of the shoot.
When the threat got them nowhere, the men then assaulted the super-director, leaving him with injuries to the right side of his face.
Bay did not seek treatment, and the perpetrators were arrested and charged with suspicion of blackmail and assault.
Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac joins Peter Cohen, Richard Devine, and me to talk about Apple's October 22 event, their new, and fashionable, head of retail, and more! Join us!
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/wiAl_7Zars4/story01.htmNEW YORK (AP) — Her body weak, her voice rich and strong, Maya Angelou sang, lectured and reminisced as she accepted a lifetime achievement award Thursday night from the Norman Mailer Center.
The 85-year-old author, poet, dancer and actress was honored during a benefit gala at the New York Public Library, the annual gathering organized by the Mailer Center and writers colony . Seated in a wheelchair, she was a vivid presence in dark glasses and a sparkling black dress as she marveled that a girl from a segregated Arkansas village could grow up to become a literary star.
"Imagine it," she said, "a town so prejudiced black people couldn't even eat vanilla ice cream."
Angelou was introduced by her former editor at Random House, Robert Loomis, and she praised him for talking her into writing her breakthrough memoir, the million-selling "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." The key was suggesting to her that the book might be too hard to write.
The people who knew her best, she explained, understood that "if you want to get Maya Angelou to do so something, tell her she can't."
Angelou, a longtime resident of North Carolina, will be back in Manhattan next month to collect an honorary National Book Award medal.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Junot Diaz and the late author-journalist Michael Hastings also received prizes Thursday. Hastings' widow, Elise, teared up as she accepted a journalism award on behalf of her husband, who died in a car accident last summer at age 33.
She recalled that Hastings, best known for a Rolling Stone story about the U.S. war in Afghanistan that led to the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, felt a kinship with for the brilliant and troublesome Mailer. When the couple fought, she said, he would point out that in "comparison to Mailer he was a great husband," a reference to a notorious incident in which Mailer stabbed his wife.
Hastings was a "dissident, a cynical idealist and a breathtaking writer," she said.
The dinner event was the fifth gala for the Mailer center, named for the celebrated author who died in 2007 and dedicated to helping writers "across all genres who seek artful ways to express themselves and provoke meaningful discussion about our society."
Previous honorees include Toni Morrison, Keith Richards and Robert Caro.
