text:
Nightshade est une superhéroïne créée par Dave Keller et Steve Ditko apparue dans Captain Atom  daté de  et publié par Charlton Comics. Elle a servi d'inspiration pour le Spectre Soyeux, personnage des Watchmen d'Alan Moore.

Charlton
En 1965, Dick Giordano, directeur éditorial de Charlton Comics, décide de créer une collection de comics de super-héros. Après Judomaster, Peacemaker arrive en 1966 Nightshade de Dave Kaler et Steve Ditko. Elle apparaît dans le numéro 82 de Captain Atom où elle aide le Captain à combattre The Ghost. Elle revient dans le numéro 85, encore une fois pour aider Captain Atom contre The Ghost. Enfin, à partir du numéro 87, elle a sa propre série publiée dans le comics Captain Atom. Cependant cela dure peu et le numéro 89 marque sa dernière apparition car Charlton Comics cesse alors de publier des histoires de super-héros.

DC Comics

Watchmen
En 1986, Alan Moore écrit un scénario mettant en scène les héros de Charlton dont DC Comics a racheté les droits. Cependant, les responsables de DC préfèrent que Moore change les personnages afin de pouvoir utiliser les personnages originaux dans l'univers DC. Nightshade devient alors l'inspiration du Spectre Soyeux bien que des éléments de Phantom Lady et de Black Canary aient aussi été utilisés.

Univers DC

Références

Personnage de comics DC
Personnage de fiction créé en 1966


text:
On-Line Korean Course
Press & Statements
National Meeting Marks Anniversary of Young Communist League of Korea
NewsNational Meeting Marks Anniversary of Young Communist League of Korea
A national meeting for marking the 90th anniversary of the Young Communist League of Korea was held at the Central Youth Hall Sunday.
Present there were Choe Ryong Hae, officials concerned and officials of youth league, youths and students.
Jon Yong Nam, first secretary of the Central Committee of the youth league, said that with a scientific insight into the requirements of the developing revolution, President Kim Il Sung founded the Young Communist League of Korea on August 28, Juche 16 (1927).
At a significant meeting of proclaiming the formation of the Juche-oriented youth organization, the President made a historical speech "On the Occasion of the Founding of the Young Communist League of Korea" in which he clearly indicated the nature and the fighting task of the league, thus providing a militant banner for effecting an epochal turn in developing the Korean revolution and the youth movement, the reporter said, and went on:
With his outstanding ideological and theoretical activities and energetic leadership, leader Kim Jong Il firmly defended the youth movement ideology and leadership exploits of the President and developed them in depth, thus opening up golden days of the Juche-oriented youth movement.
Kim Jong Il set August 28 as the Youth Day and provided energetic leadership so that the youth of the new generation would carry forward the cause of the Juche revolution that started on Mt Paektu, by inheriting the glorious history and tradition of the Korean youth movement.
The Korean youth movement that was pioneered and advanced along the path of victory by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il has greeted the days of fresh surge of its development thanks to respected Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.
The reporter called for waging a more dynamic struggle for the final victory of the socialist cause of Juche, the steady strengthening and development of the glorious Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism youth movement and the bright future of the great Paektusan youth power under the leadership of Kim Jong Un.
DPRK Celebrated Songun Day
Taean Heavy Machine Complex
Art Performance Given by Trade Union Members
An art performance was given at the Central Hall of Workers Wednesday by the winners of vocal and instrumental soloist contests among officials and members of the trade unions to…
3rd Committee of Korea Space Association Held
The 3rd Committee of the Korea Space Association was held at the Sci-Tech Complex on Wednesday. It discussed the matters of successfully hosting the "symposium on space science and technology-2017"….
Canadian Rim Hyon Su Released
Rim Hyon Su, a Canadian civilian, was released on sick bail according to the decision of the Central Court of the DPRK on August 9, 2017 from the humanitarian viewpoint….
DPRK – Country Free of Taxes
It has been 43 years since the tax system was totally abolished in the DPRK. On March 21, 1974, the law "On abolishing the Tax System" was promulgated at the…
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text:
Oakland dental surgeon charged with molesting children, child pornography
Matthias Gafni Feb. 26, 2020 Updated: Feb. 26, 2020 10:44 p.m.
This booking photo shows suspect Cassidy Migan Lavorini-Doyle.
Photo: Contra Costa District Attorney's Office
An Oakland dental surgeon faces charges he molested two underage girls, attempted to kidnap a woman and filmed a young girl engaged in a sex act, according to a charging documents filed in Contra Costa County.
Cassidy Migan Lavorini-Doyle, 36, faces seven felony counts after his arrest in December. Lavorini-Doyle is charged with human trafficking of a minor for a sex act when he tried to persuade two girls to engage in a commercial sex act. He is also accused of molesting both girls.
On Dec. 6, Lavorini-Doyle allegedly attempted to kidnap a woman and falsely imprison her, according to the records. He also was charged with possessing child pornography and using a girl in the filming of pornography.
Lavorini-Doyle has pleaded not guilty. Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office spokesman Scott Alonso said the case and investigation are "still very active."
A spokesman for the California Dental Board said Wednesday they are aware of the allegations and are investigating.
There is no trial date set yet for the oral surgeon, who worked out of a downtown Oakland office. A judge in late December said there was enough evidence at a preliminary hearing to proceed with a trial.
Matthias Gafni is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mgafni
Matthias Gafni
Follow Matthias on:
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Matthias Gafni joined The San Francisco Chronicle as an enterprise reporter in February 2019. He investigates stories in the East Bay and beyond. For almost two decades, Gafni worked for the Bay Area News Group – San Jose Mercury News, East Bay Times and Vallejo Times-Herald -- covering corruption, child sexual abuse, criminal justice, aviation and more. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and graduated from UC Davis. He lives with his wife and three kids in the East Bay.
Suspect in theft of Maki the lemur ordered released, told to stay away from San Francisco Zoo
COVID's deadly toll: More than 300,000 Californians died in 2020, at least 30,000 more than average
Former Newsom aide Nathan Ballard pleads not guilty in domestic violence case involving wife, daughter


Rushed out less than nine months after the surprise success of Dire Straits' self-titled debut album, the group's second album, Communiqué, was the last to feature Mark Knopfler's brother David who then chose a solo career.The laid-back shuffles and intricate, bluesy guitar playing, cemented their sound and "Lady Writer" provided a follow up hit. On 180 gram with audiophile worthy sound.
Mastered from the original analogue and digital masters by Bernie Grundman and Bob Ludwig.


text:
Q: I cannot get the data from my snapshot to load into my tableView cells  ref = Database.database().reference()
 ref.child("Clubs").observe(.value, with: { (snapshot : DataSnapshot) in
        print("clubs: \(snapshot)")

        if let childSnapshot = snapshot.value as? [String : AnyObject] {
        print("myClubs: \(childSnapshot)")

From this point, i am unable to get the "name" and "bannerImage" to load into my tableView
if let clubName = childSnapshot["name"] as? String, let banner = childSnapshot["bannerImage"] as? String {
   print(clubName)
   print(banner)

   let club = Club(name: clubName, image: banner)
   print("new club success: \(club)")

   self.nightClubs.append(club)
   self.tableView.reloadData()
}

A: Use  this:-
 ref = Database.database().reference()

   ref.child("Clubs").observe(.value, with: { (snapshot) in
    print("clubs: \(snapshot)")

    if(snapshot.exists()) {
        let array:NSArray = snapshot.children.allObjects as NSArray

        for obj in array {
            let snapshot:FIRDataSnapshot = obj as! FIRDataSnapshot
            if let childSnapshot = snapshot.value as? [String : AnyObject] {
                print("myClubs: \(childSnapshot)")

                if let clubName = childSnapshot["name"] as? String, let banner = childSnapshot["bannerImage"] as? String {
                    print(clubName)
                    print(banner)

                    let club = Club(name: clubName, image: banner)
                    print("new club success: \(club)")
                    self.nightClubs.append(club)
                }
            }
        }
                    self.tableView.reloadData()

    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Willard G. Oxtoby
pp. v-vi
Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) v-vi
In Memoriam: Wilfred Cantwell Smith
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a Canadian who taught for most of the first half of his career at McGill University in Montreal and for most of the second half at Harvard, died February 7, 2000, in his native Toronto at the age of eighty-three. His wife and companion of sixty years, Muriel, survives him, as do five children and a dozen grandchildren.
Smith, a Protestant Christian and clergyman, played an influential role among both academics and church bodies in advocating open dialogue and personal encounter with the adherents of diverse religious traditions. As one of his students, Professor John Ross Carter of Colgate University, put it, "Before I met Wilfred, I had studied Buddhism as a system. Under him, I came to appreciate the faith of Buddhists as persons."
As an undergraduate, Smith studied Middle Eastern languages at the University of Toronto. He then studied theology in Cambridge, England, and taught during the early 1940s at Forman Christian College, Lahore, in what was then India but is now Pakistan. He became involved in the vital contemporary life of Muslims, and in the Hindu-Muslim-Sikh interface in the Punjab. The partition of India along communal lines in 1947 reinforced his strong sense of the moral urgency of interreligious understanding.
After completing a Ph.D. degree at Princeton University with a dissertation on modern Islam, Smith took up the chair of comparative religion in McGill University's Faculty of Divinity and soon organized McGill's Institute of Islamic Studies, which he directed until 1963. The institute was innovative in two respects. First, it treated Islam as the faith of millions in southern Asia today, where the numerical majority of Muslims live, in contrast with the emphasis of most Orientalist scholarship on classical Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literature. Second, it strove to include roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Westerners in both its faculty and its student body.
Though he had already made seminal contributions to comparative studies, Smith moved fully into that realm when in 1964 he took over the directorship of Harvard Divinity School's Center for the Study of World Religions, and later, of Harvard's entire graduate program in religion in arts and sciences. Through two decades, until his 1984 retirement, the world religions Ph.D. graduates emerging from Harvard, including a significant cohort of specialists in Buddhist studies, were inspired by Smith to focus on the faith dimension of the traditions they studied.
Religious bodies turned to Smith for scholarly advice. To take one important example, he served in 1967 on a commission on world mission of the United Church of Canada. As a result of his input, the commission's report, adopted by the denomination, [End Page v] affirmed God to be working creatively and redemptively in the religious traditions of humankind. Some view this as the first declaration by any church to go so far in the entire history of Christianity.
Numerous responsibilities and honors came to Smith. He became president of practically every organization to which he belonged, such as the American Academy of Religion, the American Society for the Study of Religion (which he said was his favorite), the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, and the Canadian Theological Society. His writings have been translated into many languages, as diverse as Spanish, Turkish, Urdu, and Korean. He received a dozen honorary degrees, was elected to the Royal Society of Canada, and less than a month before the end of his life was inducted in a special bedside ceremony as an Officer of the Order of Canada, the nearest honor that country has to a title of nobility awarded for merit.
Smith was primarily a historian, ever fascinated by process and change. He observed it not only in the societies and traditions of world culture, but in the conceptual vocabulary with which we describe it. His landmark book, from this point of view, is TheMeaning and End of Religion(1963), in which he traced both the emergence of the view of particular traditions...


This is a pristine condition 1967 370-12 Byrds, like the 8MH guitar. It has caused quite some controversy on the net these past few weeks! It is also signed by Roger McGuinn. Gary Martin of the Blackouts has owned this guitar since 1980, and it is 100% stock.
This guitar has appeared in the newsgroup several times when it was spotted doing some of its rare live appearances on stage.
condition 1966 330 which actually belongs to my 12 year old daughter Cassie."


Transcribed to HTML by Jeff Kenney.
You can download a free Real Audio player or obtain help. It is possible that the Real Audio™ sound clips provided on this page are a different version from that appearing on the actual album.
Copyright © 1995-2003, Martin and Lisa Adelson, All Rights Reserved.


text:
ε Fornacis (Latinised as Epsilon Fornacis) is the Bayer designation for a high proper motion binary star in the southern constellation of Fornax. It is faintly visible to the naked eye with an apparent visual magnitude of 5.89. Based upon an annual parallax shift of 31.06 mas, the system is located roughly 105 light years from the Sun. At that distance, its visual magnitude is reduced by an interstellar absorption factor of 0.09 due to dust.

This is an astrometric binary star system. The best fit to the radial velocity data yields an orbital period of roughly 13,770 days (37.7 years) with an eccentricity of around 0.28. The semimajor axis of their computed orbit is about 13 au, or 13 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun. The primary, component A, is an evolved K-type subgiant star with a stellar classification of , where the suffix notation indicates the absorption lines of iron and the carbon-hydrogen bond are abnormally weak. However, classifications earlier than Gray et al. (2006) consistently showed it as type G5 IV, matching the subgiant categorization.

The primary has an estimated 91% of the Sun's mass, but has expanded to 253% times the Sun's radius. It has a quiet (inactive) chromosphere and is most likely an old star with an age over 12 billion years. The star is spinning slowly with a projected rotational velocity of 1.1 km/s. Since leaving the main sequence, it has increased in luminosity to 4.5 times that of the Sun, which is being radiated from its outer atmosphere at an effective temperature of 5,068 K.

Based upon its estimated orbit, the secondary, component B, has at least  times of the Sun's mass.

References

K-type subgiants
Fornax (constellation)
Fornacis, Epsilon
CD-32 1430
023227
14086
1134
Astrometric binaries

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Alawar Games has just launched Sky Kingdoms, a match-3 marble popper set in a "breathtaking fantasy world suspended above oceans and mountains." Use your cannon to fire colored spheres at rolling marbles to create matches and destroy the orbs while collecting coins to unleash power-ups. Download Sky Kingdoms, write a review, or talk about it in our forum.


Jesus regularly went away to a solitary place to rest and renew himself. Often, he exhorted his students to do the same with him as their guide. As present-day students of Jesus, it is important for us to follow our Lord in this practice of spiritual retreat. Here at Freemason Street, we regularly offer opportunities to spend time in rest, reflection, and prayer.
Call the church office for information on our Prayer Retreats.


Look no further than Garlands Florist for birthday gifts! Liven up any birthday party with a festive birthday flowers or surprise them with a cheerful "Happy Birthday" bouquet! We offer birthday flower delivery to Vancouver, BC or nationwide.


Find Better Ideas, Faster ® with a custom predictive tech trend report, our PRO Dashboard and 80+ categories of premium trend reports.
The Predictive Tech Trend Report hones in on analytical technology, its uses and applications in the marketing world to better understand consumer behaviors. Systems like data mining are uncovered and its effectiveness explained. It also looks into the uses of predictive technology in professional, health and entertainment products and services. Finally, such smartphone technology like predictive typing and digital personal assistants are explored.
This report is curated for marketing professionals, data analyzers and demographic experts. The knowledge gained from this report would also bolster app developers and device designers. Finally it's a great tool for retailers to better understand how to use predictive technology to their advantage to understand consumer behavior. The Predictive Tech Trend Report is a collection of information to guide professionals on how to use analytical and data-synthesizing technology to their advantage.


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IT, Media
Fuel and energy
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Five Residents, Who are Considered Involved in the Smuggling of People, were Detained in Germany
One of the screenwriters of «The Simpsons» David Richardson died
The Creators of the British Series «Peaky Blinders» Have Announced the Start of Filming for the Final Season
Suspect was Detained in the Theft of Nancy Pelosi's Laptop During the Riots in the Capitol
The 2021 Ice Hockey World Championship will not Be Moved from Minsk to Another City
Physical activitySportSport objects
OREANDA-NEWS. Rene Fasel, the head of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) said that the transfer of the 2021 World Cup from Minsk to some another city is not being considered now.
Fasel said that "the main option is to host the World Championships in Minsk and Riga in 2021 under the conditions pointed by the IIHF. At the moment, other options are not being considered."
In December, the IOC banned the participation in all events of the organization, including the Olympic Games, to the President of Belarus, the head of the National Olympic Committee (NOC) Alexander Lukashenko, his son Viktor and Dmitry Baskov, who heads the country's Ice Hockey Federation.
Then Fasel explained that the International Olympic Committee cannot influence this IIHF's decision on the venue of the contest.
Shortly before this, the IIHF proposed to change the location of the tournament, and to move it from the capital of Belarus to another city due to the political situation in this country connected with the August presidential elections in the country.
The pandemic also threatens the holding of competitions in Minsk. "The situation with the coronavirus in Belarus does not meet the international standards that the World Cup has to comply with, but the government has promised to do everything according to the IIHF rules," Fasel said.
Fasel said last week that the Council of the International Ice Hockey Federation will make the final decision on the venue for the World Championship at its meeting in late January.
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text:
Chinese Giant Ping An Looks Beyond Insurance To A Fintech Future
Shu-Ching Jean Chen Contributor
Forbes Asia
This story appears in the June 2018 issue of Forbes Asia. Subscribe to Forbes Asia
Jessica Tan is Ping An's deputy CEO, COO and CIO. (Photo: Ore Huiying/Bloomberg)
Ping An Insurance is China's biggest insurer, with $94 billion in premium revenue. It reigns supreme as the industry No. 1 by profit and return on equity. Its market capitalization, at $180 billion, is 74% larger than the country's old standard, China Life, and 64% above the largest listed pan-Asia insurer, AIA. By this measure it is the world's largest insurer except for Berkshire Hathaway.
To make sense of these startling numbers -- and of Ping An's rise to No. 10 on the Forbes Global 2000 list -- look beyond the stodgy insurance business and into the realm of high technology, whose tentacles reach into every aspect of commerce in China and eventually show up in the mobile handsets of Chinese consumers.
Moving with the times
Ping An has early-mover advantage in mobile apps and underlying technologies from artificial intelligence and blockchain. Spreading across Ping An's vast territory in finance, encompassing insurance, banking and asset management, are ten startups it has spawned in the last six years.
The engine and incubator is a wholly owned fintech offshoot, Ping An Technology, which leads the FinTech Top 100, a global survey by consultancy IDC, as China's top player, ahead of rival Hangzhou-based Hundsun Technologies backed by Ant Financial. The effort bridges financial big data with healthcare management.
Ping An's Good Doctor has around 30 million monthly active users. (Photo: Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg)
From this wellspring came startups including peer-to-peer lender Lufax, set up in 2012, fetching a valuation of $18.5 billion in a fundraising two years ago; Ping An Good Doctor, a healthcare portal with 30 million-plus monthly active users whose recent IPO raised $1.1 billion in Hong Kong; and Ping An Healthcare And Technology, a mobile app for booking hospital visits used by 800 million customers across 70% of cities in China.
To consumers, the offer is often free mobile apps. But there's a business-to-business app: OneConnect, linking 2,400 banks and non-financial institutions and valued at $7.4 billion in its last funding round.
See more: China's Ping An, Germany's Allianz Top The World's Largest Insurers
Tech queen
Ping An insurance has a market capitalization of $180 billion. ( Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg)
Ping An's technology czar is Jessica Tan, a 41-year-old Singaporean who travels back each week to see her family from her base -- and the group's tech center -- in Shanghai. She joined in 2013 from McKinsey after 13 years as a consultant and is the group's No. 2 after founder and CEO Peter Ma. Formally, Tan is deputy CEO, COO and chief information officer.
Ma set up the company in 1988 with a dozen people and founding shareholders China Merchants Group and ICBC, China's largest bank (and today No. 1 on the Global 2000). As early as 1994, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs came in as foreign investors, the first in a mainland Chinese financial institution. In 2002, HSBC bought in to be its single largest shareholder but later disposed of its entire 16% stake to the Charoen Pokphand Group for $9.4 billion, making the Thai conglomerate its largest shareholder.
When Tan was relocated by McKinsey from the U.S. in 2003, Ping An became her first client through the HSBC link. With a master's degree from MIT in electrical engineering and computer science, she since has overseen the growth of Ping An's tech team from 3,000 to over 22,000. It competes in a field that includes China's technology giants -- Alibaba has Ant Financial and Tencent has its WeChat platform -- but Tan says Ping An's insurance scale gives it an edge.
She spoke to Forbes Asia from the company's international office in Hong Kong's IFC skyscraper (as edited):
Forbes: How do you benchmark with an insurance company or a finance company that combines with technology?
Jessica Tan: It does not exist. Six years ago, we put all our systems on the cloud -- this is unthinkable. No organization in the world was doing this. No financial institution in the world comes even remotely close to what we are doing. We have been very lucky in our being in China, a big, high-growth market with reasonable margins. We could afford to invest 1% of our revenues into R&D, which is 10% of our profit every year, on new technology for ten years, above and beyond whatever traditional insurance companies and banks do on their IT expense.
We are not afraid to take calculated bets. It is very difficult for such a large organization to adopt this kind of culture. We are number one in AI medical imaging, for instance, with more than 95% accuracy in the authoritative LUNA rankings for imaging in two categories for lung diseases, ahead of Alibaba Health. Chinese doctors spend on average, per patient, three to four minutes, especially in top-tier hospitals. Informal statistics show 30-odd percent of misdiagnoses or missed early detection -- we drop it down to only 8%.
We started developing this technology two years ago. By the end of this year we should cover 35 different types of illnesses and about 600 million patients. In April, Shanghai's Ministry of Health signed with us to ensure quality of diagnosis and service. With this agreement, all hospitals in Shanghai must connect to our system in real time. This is a huge impact on the quality of people's diagnoses, and it saves costs and lives.
Forbes: How much of the group's revenue or profit can be attributed directly or indirectly to its online initiatives, including all the online platforms or apps? Tech is formally only 1% of revenues.
Tan: Two measures: The first is the 16.4% of group profit contribution directly from the ten tech [startup] businesses. The other is the 36% to 40% of new financial customers coming from the mobile apps. No financial institution in the world has this: 436 million internet users, 166 million financial services customers.
Forbes: What's behind Ping An's transformation into a technology-based insurance group? How did it get started?
Tan: Five years ago we already had our own proprietary facial recognition team; four years ago we started working on voiceprint. Whatever the language, Spanish or Sichuanese, as long as we have 20 seconds of your voice, we can translate it into a mathematical matrix as unique as your thumbprint. Our brain can only remember the voices of about 150 people. Our system can recognize unique voices of 100,000 people.
In the last three years, our system has been trained to recognize micro-expressions, the tiniest movement of our eye muscles and around the lips, within milliseconds. We use this in our real-life loan interview done on the mobile app by our credit assessors who ask random questions just to see if a borrower is lying -- more than 80% positive prediction rate.
As a financial services and healthcare provider, we need to verify who the customers are when everything is done on the mobile. The MIT computer science-artificial intelligence lab dedicated a professor to work on a project with us over the past four years.
Wang Tao, chairman and chief executive officer of Ping An Healthcare and Technology Co., left, and Peter Ma, chairman and chief executive officer of Ping An Insurance Group Co., during the listing ceremony for Ping An Healthcare at the HKEX in May. (Photo: Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg
Forbes: How do you pick businesses to focus on?
Tan: A big problem in China is the lack of affordable, good-quality primary care, very different from Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore, where one can just walk into a medical center to see a doctor. Offline, we built a technology platform that set standards for outside clinics -- 65,000 of them now -- to standardize customer records, set pharmacy and medication and procurement standards, with links to social security.
In the city of Chongqing, where over 60% of people are likely to contract chronic inflammatory lung disease, with the ministry of health's in-depth study of health records we built an AI-powered system to predict the likelihood of a person of getting this disease based on records, including home-life conditions, such as a house with an open chimney (three times more at risk) as opposed to a modern ventilation system.
Forbes: Much of the group's technology is homegrown. How have you managed to pool talent, the right strategy and execution? Do you have an incubation center in Shanghai?
Tan: We no longer have an incubation center. We have top-down and bottom-up approaches. The top-down is at the beginning to identify where we want to be. Then we set up a company. The bottom-up is the management team tasked to get the business off the ground. We close down underperforming companies.
We can bring a lot to auto insurance -- we are China's second-largest auto insurer and its largest auto-dealer financier and the largest in car financing. We bought New York-listed Autohome two years ago, the only business we did not build from scratch. We turned it into a car portal from an advertisement media company, increasing its size by 3.5 times in two years.
In smart cities, we worked in Shenzhen to ease traffic congestion. Last year traffic jams during Golden Week lasted 21.7 hours. This year it was zero, after the Shenzhen traffic police used our technology for congestion management.
A traffic jam in Shenzhen, ahead of China's National Day holiday in September 2014. (Photo: VCG via Getty Images)
Forbes: You have a core competence in handling city traffic?
Tan: Our insurance claims ratio is the lowest in the industry, helped by our AI capabilities covering 360 Chinese cities. In a car accident in China, drivers -- a lot of them first-time drivers -- have to stay there for traffic police to handle the liability allocation.
Our investigators would arrive at the site within five to ten minutes 90% of the time, even faster than an ambulance or police -- no small feat. Our AI capabilities can predict where accidents are likely. We analyze the past 20 years of auto claims for what the likelihood of accidents is at different times of the day and week, and weather conditions. We are building a platform for accidents in all cities. We will be consolidated onto this platform, and drivers can, instead of waiting for the traffic police, take pictures of the accident and upload them with our AI modules analyzing the degree of damage, and determining the liability -- as straightforward as you can get.
About 90% of cases can be streamlined. We built these services over 20 years in a repository for claims for everything, from the cost of every auto part in different cities and the labor cost involved and fraud. Car mechanics helped construct these models.
Forbes: How would you prevent the contagion effect of risks spreading across various financial units -- banking, insurance, online lending, brokerage?
Tan: Each of our units has its own regulators, with capital ratios for each of them publicly available and run as separate legal entities to answer to their own regulators. You can say they are operated independently.
Forbes: Cross-selling is a feature of Chinese finance.
Tan: China is not like a developed market where people tend to cherry-pick individual services. The 1.4 billion people in China have varying degrees of financial-services awareness, capability and trust. Each of our apps has a magic gate to this one portal, which links hundreds of [our] systems. Our view is: "One customer, multiple products, one-stop shop, one account."
But we have strict rules about cross-selling by cold calling. One business unit cannot give away the customer information to another unit. Our insurance agents, 1.39 million of them, build trust with policyholders and that can lead to the sale of the Ping An credit cards, for instance. We don't cross-sell, per se, because it is unthinkable for a person -- even our life insurance agents -- to be proficient in so many products. That is why everything is on the app, and we try to make sure that everything can be done online.
Forbes: Right now, China is imposing new regulations on financial conglomerates. On the other hand, the market is opening up to new foreign investment. Would this have the potential of changing how Ping An operates?
Tan: I am not in a position to speculate on regulatory or future regulatory matters.
Forbes: Do you plan to expand outside of China?
Tan: We believe our models and technology can be replicated. Foreign banks are using our OneConnect services, good for retail risk assessment. Our OneConnect and Lufax, the peer-to-peer lender, already opened an office in Singapore.
Ping An is No. 10 on the Forbes Global 2000 list (Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg)
Forbes: What's the end goal? What shape will Ping An take down the road?
Tan: Over the next ten years our strategy is very clear: to have our core financial services businesses continue to grow. We want to provide financial services as well as technology expertise. When we first started to do this, frankly, there was internal debate and worries that we would be helping our competitors. Peter [Ma] was very strong in saying that we want to serve the entire market, we don't want just ourselves to be very good. This is something that we stuck to throughout the past ten years, and we will continue to do for the next ten years. Our consumer lending was completely offline four years ago. Now it's completely online.
At my former employer, McKinsey, there were in the past very clear sectors -- functional, vertical and horizontal. These days everything is blurred. Technology has reached into all parts of business and is changing it. Technology used to be a sector of its own -- now it pervades everything. When we set up insurance, we learned from AIA and other models. The things that we are creating now didn't previously exist.
Forbes: Chairman Ma founded Ping An with investment from state-owned China Merchants Group in the mid-1980s. Does the state still have influence?
Tan: Peter was a human resources manager at China Merchants, but we were not a state-owned company. We have no representatives from the government on our board -- we are completely a publicly listed company. In state-owned enterprises, there are state representatives in the management -- we never have had any shareholder in our 30 years send representatives to the management team but they have board representation, and we do have government stakes investing in us because we are a very good investment.
Shu-Ching Jean Chen
I cover regional corporates and entrepreneurs for Forbes Asia magazine as a contributing correspondent. Previously, I was a staff writer with Forbes, producing stories f...


He has dodged bullets at the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and was one of the first reporters to enter Kabul as the Taliban regime fell in 2001, famously disguising himself in a burka. John Simpson is one of Britain's best-loved newsmen, yet to his family and friends he is increasingly a source of frustration.
For the BBC world affairs editor's fondness for frontline reporting has come at a cost: he is profoundly deaf in his left ear, having joined the growing ranks of Britons suffering from noise-induced hearing loss.
'I've never liked big parties much anyway, but now I avoid those things wherever I can,' admits John, who lives in London with his second wife, Dee Kruger, a television producer, and their five-year-old son Rafe.
But being deaf does have some small advantages. 'When my wife asks me to take the rubbish out, for example, sometimes I don't catch that,' he laughs.
At his last check-up, John had 70 per cent hearing loss in his left ear. 'It's got worse over the years, possibly because I do a lot of flying,' he says.
Senior audiologist Crystal Rolfe, of the charity Action on Hearing Loss, explains that loud noises can damage the ear in two ways. 'If you're exposed to loud noises, it damages the sensory hair cells lining the cochlea [part of the inner ear] and these are irreplaceable. Long-term exposure to low-level noise will cause these hairs to degenerate over time, but a very loud bang from an explosion can damage them much more quickly.
Damage to the eardrum affects low-pitched sounds, so the quality of the sound will be reduced. The eardrum can be damaged simply by sticking a cotton bud in your ear, adds Rolfe. It may heal on its own or you may need a timpanoplasty, where surgeons repair the drum.
Due to the damage to John's ear, he has been advised a hearing aid would not be helpful – although this isn't true for everyone with noise-induced hearing loss.
Despite his deafness, John is showing no sign of giving up war reporting and was recently seen on our screens broadcasting live from the conflict in Libya.
He asks his director and cameraman always to speak into his right ear, and has earpieces made for this ear so he can hear questions from anchormen in the studio in Britain.


text:
visit www.vertcaptech.com
How Solar Reduced a California Farm's Electric Bill by 75 Percent
Today's farmers are increasingly using the sun's energy to grow more than just fruits and vegetables. Solar power systems have become a new solution for reducing the energy costs of water pumps, refrigeration, vineyard wine processing, and many other energy-intensive agriculture applications.
According to a 2009 USDA survey, nearly 8,000 farms had installed solar electric systems for various agricultural uses, and that number has no doubt increased significantly over the last several years, since solar installation prices have fallen by 60 percent.
Solar with Agriculture Case Study: Vignolo Farms, Delano, CA
One of the latest agricultural producers to go solar is Vignolo Farms, a family owned potato, pistachio, almond, and grape farmer based in California's San Joaquin Valley, where 80 percent of California table grapes are grown.
The Vignolo farm's annual electric bill was hundreds of thousands of dollars due to various aspects of operations. One of the biggest energy expenses came from the farm's state of the art cold storage and packing facility, an essential building, but costly in terms of energy usage.
After a comprehensive evaluation of Vignolo's utility bill, solar potential, and financial options using a proprietary financial analysis tool, REC designed, engineered, and installed a 1.07-MW ground mount solar PV system (partly shown below) on a four acre field adjacent to the cold storage facility.
The Vignolo's new solar array now offsets 75 percent of the storage facility's electrical power usage. With local rebates, the 30 percent federal investment tax credit, and other tax incentives, the Vignolo family will see a payback in the 5th year. By choosing a capital purchase, the Vignolo family is expected to save millions of dollars over the solar system's 30 year expected lifetime.
While saving on operating costs was important, the family also considers itself to be stewards of the land. They're proud that their new solar system will substantially reduce their farm's carbon footprint and contribute toward their goal of energy independence.
Solar Benefits for Rural Farms
Solar is also increasingly financially beneficial to rural farms that rely on expensive propane, oil, or other fossil fuel generators, or those that are considering paying for grid power lines to be extended.
With today's new solar plus energy storage technologies, rural farms can now install a cost-effective off-grid solar energy solution that is quiet, sustainable, and not dependent on an expensive delivery of fuel that has fluctuating prices.
If the farm would rather preserve its capitol, today's solar PPA financing can also eliminate up front costs for both solar and storage, while giving agricultural and dairy producers a lower cost solution for bringing more electricit and its many applications to their land.
VERT Capital and Technology ⋅ Solar Energy ⋅ california farm, power, solar, solar energy, solar pv reduced electric bill ⋅ No comments
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text:
Q: Spring Security UserDetailsService throws UsernameNotFoundException In the Spring Security, they automatically match input username and password with the DB saved username and password. It returns bad credential when password is not matched. However, in my code, as long as I know, if the username also does not match with DB saved username they should return bad credential. However, in my code, bad credential are shown only when username is correct and password is wrong and when username is not in DB it throws usernmaenotfoundexception.
I know I wrote usernamenotfoundexception in loaduserByusername. However, should it be first to check from DB whether username is matched and if it is wrong then bad credentials should be returned? I found userdetailservice from internet and most of people wrote the code this way. Then how should we know id not matched.,,?
Thank you so much
UserDeatilSerivce.java
package com.group6.shopping.security;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.UserDetails;
import org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.UserDetailsService;
import org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.UsernameNotFoundException;

import com.group6.shopping.members.dao.MembersDAO;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;

public class CustomMemDetailsService implements UserDetailsService{

    @Autowired
    MembersDAO membersDAO;

    @Override
    public UserDetails loadUserByUsername(String memId) {
        System.out.println("loaduserByusername");
        CustomMemDetails members = null;

        try {

            members = membersDAO.getMemById(memId);

            if(members == null) {
                 throw new UsernameNotFoundException("username " + memId + " not found");
            }
            System.out.println("**************Found user***************");
            System.out.println("id : " + members.getUsername());
            return members;

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return members;

    }

}

security-context.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:security="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-4.3.xsd">

    <security:http pattern="/resources/**" security="none"/>

    <security:http>
        <security:intercept-url pattern="/everyone/**" access="permitAll"/>
        <security:intercept-url pattern="/member/**" access="hasRole('ROLE_MEMBER')"/>
        <security:intercept-url pattern="/admin/**" access="hasRole('ROLE_ADMIN')"/>
        <security:form-login login-page="/everyone/login"
                             login-processing-url="/everyone/login/loginProcess"
                             default-target-url="/"
                             authentication-failure-handler-ref="loginFailureHandler"/>
        <!-- 최대 한 개의 세션만 생성되도록 -->
        <security:session-management invalid-session-url="/everyone/login">
            <security:concurrency-control max-sessions="1"
                                          expired-url="/everyone/login"
                                          error-if-maximum-exceeded="true" />
        </security:session-management>
    </security:http>

    <security:authentication-manager>
        <security:authentication-provider user-service-ref="customMemService">
            <security:password-encoder hash="bcrypt"/>
        </security:authentication-provider>
    </security:authentication-manager>

    <bean id="bcryptPasswordEncoder" class="org.springframework.security.crypto.bcrypt.BCryptPasswordEncoder" />
    <bean id="loginFailureHandler" class="com.group6.shopping.security.LoginFailureHandler"/>

    <context:component-scan base-package="com.group6.shopping.security" />
    <bean id="customMemService" class="com.group6.shopping.security.CustomMemDetailsService" />
</beans>

LoginFailureHandler.java
package com.group6.shopping.security;

import org.springframework.security.authentication.BadCredentialsException;
import org.springframework.security.core.Authentication;
import org.springframework.security.core.AuthenticationException;
import org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.UsernameNotFoundException;
import org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AuthenticationFailureHandler;

import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import java.io.IOException;

public class LoginFailureHandler implements AuthenticationFailureHandler {

    @Override
    public void onAuthenticationFailure(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, AuthenticationException exception) throws IOException, ServletException {
        String msg = "";

        if(exception instanceof UsernameNotFoundException){
            System.out.println("username error");
            msg = "Wrong id or password. Please re-enter";
        }else if (exception instanceof BadCredentialsException){
            System.out.println("bad credential");
            msg = "Wrong id or password. Please re-enter";
        }

        request.setAttribute("msg", msg);
        request.getRequestDispatcher("/everyone/login?error").forward(request, response);
    }
}

A: I had miss understanding of spring security flow. It actually checks id and password after userdetailservice is ran. So, I just delete throws new UsernameNotFoundException and return new CustomMemDetails();
then in login failure handler.java just check exception is DisabledException


text:
* Movies
* Horror
* Comedy
* Entertainment
* Hollywood
GARDEN PARTY MASSACRE nabs Official Selection of the RIP Horror Film Festival
Big laughs are heading to the screen as Horror/Comedy GARDEN PARTY MASSACRE becomes an Official Selection of this year's RIP Horror Film Festival
By: PIX/SEE Productons
OfficialSelection-RIP-2
* Hollywood - California - US
* Awards
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - May 12, 2017 - PRLog -- Audiences will have the chance to be one of the first to see Gregory Blair's much-anticipated independent horror/comedy GARDEN PARTY MASSACRE at the RIP Horror Film Festival—one of Los Angeles' most popular genre film festivals. festivals
The film--Blair's follow-up to his award-winning DEADLY REVISIONS--is a fast-paced, wacky romp in the vein of Shaun of the Dead and Tucker and Dale vs. Evil involving a friendly backyard gathering that goes awry when an unexpected guest arrives. With a pickaxe. And an attitude. It's a hilarious brew of murder, mirth and mayhem that Search My Trash Filmsite declared "Hilarious!"
The RIP Horror Film Festival (a member of the Independent Cinema Foundation & Festival Academy) is run by founder L.J. Rivera and has been going strong for years. It offers horror fans and filmmakers a plethora of screenings, panels, celebrity guests, parties and awards, priding its ongoing effort to include both established and up-and-coming horror producers, directors and actors to the proceedings.
"I'm very excited to be a part of the festival," Blair said. "I've been before and it's always a terrific vibe: the mood is festive and infectious, with everyone feeling welcome and celebrating in the spirit of family--a family of people who are passionate about a genre that is often misaligned and misunderstood. I think GARDEN PARTY MASSACRE will fit right in."
Opportunities to get the film screened at other festivals are in motion and more cities and venues will be announced in the coming months. Fans can be a part of that process by going to http://www.GardenPartyMassacreFilm.comand making a donation in a festival's name; the donated funds will go directly to that festival's entrance and related fees. "We can't guarantee we'll get accepted to every festival, of course," Blair reminds us. "But we'll do our killer best!"
GARDEN PARTY MASSACRE is a PIX/SEE Productions film starring Andy Gates ("Grimm"), Nichole Bagby ("ON The Rocks"), Lise Hart ("Deadly Revisions"), Gregory Blair ("Love That Girl"), Dawna Lee Heising ("Samurai Cop2: Deadly Vengeance"), Matt Weinglass ("Jimmy Kimmel Live!") and David Leeper.
See the official trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELkslgjz2hE
The GARDEN PARTY MASSACRE Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/GardenPartyMassacre
The GARDEN PARTY MASSACRE Twitter:
https://twitter.com/GardnPrtyMasacr
: ***@2writers.com
: Movies, Horror, Comedy
: Entertainment
: Hollywood - California - United States
: Awards
PIX/SEE Productions News
Gregory Blair and FANG Win Big at the Lucky Strike Film Festival!
Hilarious Hit Comedy/Horror film GARDEN PARTY MASSACRE Hits Amazon Prime October 15th!
Gregory Blair and FANG are highlighted at the Lucky Strike Film Festival!
BEASTS OF THE FIELD, Starring Gregory Blair Has World Premiere at E-Town Film Festival!
Comedy/Horror film GARDEN PARTY MASSACRE Nabs Two Indie Horror Online Skulle Award Nods!
Lennar's Woodhaven in Alhambra Grand Opens February 8 - 243 views


text:
Who'd You Rather: Hawks Matchup Possibilities
Four teams vying for final spot pose different issues to Hawks' Cup chances
Published at 12:09 pm on April 18, 2013
With the Anaheim Ducks' loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Wednesday night in California, the Chicago Blackhawks clinched the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, giving them home-ice-advantage throughout the conference playoffs.
With that milestone achieved, the Hawks can now focus on getting guys healthy for what will be a truly grueling stretch of playoff hockey, but who the Blackhawks will ultimately play is still very much up in the air.
There are currently four teams vying for the eighth playoff spot in the West, with the Columbus Blue Jackets currently holding a two point edge over the Detroit Red Wings. The Wings have a game in hand, however, so they can't be discounted just yet.
The Dallas Stars, four points back, have two games in hand on Columbus, and also play a game against the Red Wings in Texas on the final day of the regular season. Finally, the Phoenix Coyotes are still gasping for air in the race, but they are six points back of Columbus with two games in hand as well.
Patrick Kane 4 hours ago
Patrick Kane Gets 1,000th Point, Blackhawks Beat Jets 5-2
Out of those four teams, which one should the Blackhawks be hoping grabs the number eight seed in the playoffs?
Columbus:
The Blue Jackets are a team that the Blackhawks have dominated in recent years, including sweeping the season series this year, but it is still a matchup that could give the Hawks a problem. Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky has been playing out of his mind down the stretch, and when you couple the possibility of a hot goaltender stealing a series with the fact that the team has won five games in a row, you have a recipe for a pretty tough first round series.
Detroit:
The Red Wings also were swept in the season series by the Blackhawks, and have not looked at all like a team that has made the playoffs in 21 consecutive seasons. Their road record is 10-9-3, and they have gone 3-5-2 in their last 10 games. If they make the playoffs, it will be without very much momentum, so this could be a good matchup for Chicago.
The Stars have played the Hawks tough for the most part this season, and are against all odds still in the playoff picture despite trading away several key pieces, like Derek Roy and Jaromir Jagr. Despite this, their defense, one of the worst in the West in giving up 126 goals in only 42 games, has to look pretty appetizing to a Hawks team that leads the West by a country mile in goals scored.
The Coyotes are likely done in the playoff race, but the one thing that is odd about them is that their road record, often a strength, is a huge detriment this year. They are 5-9-6 on the road in 2013, so it wouldn't be a stretch to see them as a team liable to go down 0-2 in short order in a playoff run.
And the "winner" is….
Out of the teams realistically in playoff contention, the Hawks should be rooting for the Stars to grab that eighth seed. Yes, Kari Lehtonen can make life difficult on the Hawks, as he did early in the season, but the team's overall defense and lack of real scoring punch would make them an easy target for a Hawks team that excels in both areas.
Detroit and Columbus have not beaten Chicago this year, but both teams played the Hawks tough in several regular season contests, and could be a stumbling block early on as the Hawks try to win a Stanley Cup title.


text:
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] military combatants (2)
army officer (American revolution) (2)
army officer (US, 1784-1860) (1)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] architecture and landscape (2)
[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] politicians in American or USA (2)
political figure (2)
army officer (American revolution) x
political figure x
Armstrong, John (1717-1795), soldier, surveyor, and member of the Continental Congress
Robert Grant Crist and Patrick G. Williams
Armstrong, John (13 October 1717–09 March 1795), soldier, surveyor, and member of the Continental Congress, was born in County Fermanagh, Ulster, Ireland. The identities of his Scotch-Irish parents and circumstances of his youth are unclear, but his father may have been named James. A trained surveyor, John Armstrong evidently received some education fairly early in life. Sometime in the mid-1740s Armstrong immigrated to America, settling initially in Delaware and then in Pennsylvania, where he worked as a surveyor. It was probably at some point after his arrival in America that he married Rebeckah Armstrong. The couple had two sons (the younger, ...
Smith, Daniel (1748-1818), revolutionary soldier, statesman, and surveyor
Robert E. Corlew
Smith, Daniel (17 October 1748–16 June 1818), revolutionary soldier, statesman, and surveyor, was born near Aquia Creek in Stafford County, Virginia, the son of Henry Smith and Sarah Crosby. The eldest of twelve children, he attended the College of William and Mary and then studied both law and medicine. However, he also learned the use of surveying instruments while still a teenager, and the demand for frontier surveys kept him occupied principally in that profession for most of his life....


text:
\section{Introduction}
The renormalization group (RG) based technique of  ``lattice
matching" via block transformations relates physical quantities on different lattices. It thus provides a method for computation of a physical quantity at different lattice spacings (couplings).
To apply it one needs to implement RG block transformations on the approach to the
Wilsonian Renormalized Trajectory (RT). This can be done in various ways. One way is numerical
implementation of the RG blocking by Monte Carlo RG (MCRG) techniques. This is the method that has mostly been used in the literature. Another approach is to implement blocking by explicit RG recursion relations that can, to varying degree, be explicitly carried out by numerical-analytical means. This is the method followed here. Specifically, we employ explicit RG recursion relations of the ``potential moving" type. These block transformations (decimations) are of course approximate
but can, in principle, be systematically improved.  They turn out to be surprisingly effective.
In the following we apply lattice matching of these decimations to obtain critical couplings and string tensions for the $SU(2)$ and $SU(3)$ pure gauge theories. A more
detailed account has appeared in \cite{CT}.

\section{RG blocking recursions and lattice matching}
{\it RG blocking recursions}\
We start by assuming a general plaquette action $A_p(U_p,n)$ on lattice of spacing $b^na$ given in terms of the character expansion of its exponential:
\begin{equation}
\exp \left(-A_p(U_p, n)\right)
   = \sum_j\;d_j\, F_j(n)\,\chi_j(U_p) \; . \label{exp}
\end{equation}
The sum is over all inequivalent irreducible representations labeled by $j$, with
characters $\chi_j$ of dimension $d_j$.
The action itself is, of course, completely specified by the set of $F_j(n)$ coefficients, and vice versa,  and of the general form:
\begin{equation}
A_p(U_p,n) = \sum_j \;{1\over  d_j} \beta_j(n) \, {1\over 2 l_j}[ \chi_j(U_p) + \chi_j(U_p^{-1})]     \label{actexp}
\end{equation}
with $l_j=1$ for self-conjugate and $l_j=2$ for non-self-conjugate representations. (For
$SU(2)$, in particular, $l_j=1$ for all $j$.)

It is useful to define an effective coupling $g^{(n)}$  characterizing a given action of the form (\ref{actexp}):
\begin{equation}
\beta^{(n)} = {2N\over g^{(n)\,2}} \equiv  \left. 2N {d^2 A_p(e^{i\theta \hat{m}\cdot t}, n) \over d \theta^2}\right|_{\theta=0} \,. \label{effcoupl}
\end{equation}
Here $\{t\}$ are the $SU(N)$ generators and  $\hat{m}$ a unit vector.
((\ref{effcoupl}) is of course independent of the direction $\hat{m}$).
In the perturbative regime this reduces to the usual definition of gauge coupling.
In the non-perturbative regime any definition of  a `coupling' is of course some scheme-dependent choice. We adopt (\ref{effcoupl}) to track the RG recursion flows; it
provides an efficient parametrization of the renormalized trajectory below.

The lattice block step $b^n a \to b^{n+1}a$ may now be formulated as a prescription for
the character expansion coefficients $F_j(n+1)$ in terms of the $ F_j(n)$'s:
\begin{equation}
F_j(n+1) = \left[ \int\, d U\;
\left[ \sum_k\;d_k\, F_k(n)\, \chi_k(U) \right]^{\zeta^{(d-2)}}
     \,{1\over d_j}\,\chi_j^*(U)  \right]^{r^2}  \;.   \label{recur}
 \end{equation}
To complete the prescription we must specify the renormalization parameters $\zeta$, $r$. We take
\begin{eqnarray}
\zeta &  = & b\left[1 - c \, g^{(n)\,2} \right]          \label{decpar1} \\
r & = & b \left[ 1 - c \, g^{(n)\,2} \right]  \,      \label{decpar2}
\end{eqnarray}
with $c$ an adjustable decimation parameter to be tuned for optimization as explained below.
It is convenient to work with normalized coefficients
$f_j=F_j/F_0$ by factoring out the trivial representation coefficient in (\ref{exp}).
Effective couplings (\ref{effcoupl})
are also conveniently computed directly in terms of the $\{f_j\}$.

{\it RG flows and lattice matching}\
Consider now a general lattice system described by an action $A(K)$  with set of couplings $K = \{K_i\}$. Successive RG blockings  by a scale factor $b$ generate a
flow in action space: $K \to K^{(1)} \to K^{(2)} \to \cdots \to K^{(n)} \to \cdots $,
where  $K^{(n)}=\{K^{(n)}_i\}$ denotes the couplings after $n$ blocking steps.
\begin{figure}[ht]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{lat12-2.eps}
\end{center}
\caption{Flows towards the RT from two different starting couplings $K$ and $K^\prime$.}
\end{figure}
If flows from $K$ and $K^\prime$ reach the same point on RT after
$n$ and $n^\prime$ steps, then the corresponding lattice correlation lengths $\xi$, $\xi^\prime$
and spacings $a$, $a^\prime$ are related as
\begin{equation}
\xi^\prime = b^{-(n- n^\prime)} \xi \qquad
a^\prime = b^{(n-n^\prime)} a \, . \label{latspace1}
\end{equation}

To identify such pairs of couplings we need ascertain that after $n$ and $n^{\, \prime}$ RG steps, respectively,  the same point is reached on the RT.
This can be done in either of two ways:
(i) show that the corresponding actions coincide: $A(K^{(n)}) = A(K^{\,\prime (n^{\,\prime})})$.
This requires that one obtain the blocked action at each step; or
(ii) show that the expectations of every operator, measured
after performing the corresponding number of blocking steps from the initial two actions, agree.
Either way, identifying such pairs $(K,\, n)$, and $(K^\prime, \, n^\prime)$
is referred to as two-lattice matching \cite{H1}.

If blockings  are performed numerically by MCRG, the second method appears  easier to use. Obtaining the blocked action can be difficult, whereas it is possible, at least in principle, to generate a
Boltzmann-weighted configuration ensemble for the blocked action by instead blocking the configurations of an ensemble generated from the original action. These can then be used to measure observables \cite{H2}.
In practice, of course, due to lattice size limitations, only a rather small number of block steps is possible by MCRG, so getting close enough to the RT is not guaranteed.
As a general observation, the location of the fixed point being block definition dependent, appropriate fine-tuning of any decimation free parameters can be crucial for achieving rapid approach in few steps.

Here we employ two-lattice matching with RG block transformations implemented by the recursions (\ref{recur}) described above. They can be explicitly evaluated to any desired accuracy on lattices of any size, so no inherent limitations due to finite size arise.
The blocked action resulting after each RG step is explicitly obtained, so it can used to
ascertain approach to the RT and perform two-lattice matching. The transformations contain one parameter (cf. (\ref{decpar1}) - (\ref{decpar2})), which should be fixed
for matching optimization.

A basic feature of our decimations is that, regardless of the choice of the
initial plaquette action, a single step suffices to generate an action
of the form (\ref{actexp}) generally containing a large (infinite) set of representations.
This is important as flow in such a large-dimensional interaction space makes it possible to avoid getting stuck at (finite-dimensional) lattice artifact boundaries.
Furthermore, MCRG construction of blocked actions \cite{T1mcrg} shows that one-plaquette terms
with a large number of characters are the most relevant action terms for long-scale dynamics.
This is precisely the type of action resulting from our decimations, and may be the reason for their apparent efficacy in computing long-distance dynamics observables as seen below.

In the following the starting action for our decimations ($n=0$) will always be taken to be the fundamental representation Wilson action. (Other choices such as mixed actions containing
several representations can be treated in exactly the same way.)
One finds that the flow under successive decimations reaches a unique RT irrespective of such a choice, though of course the number of steps needed to reach it depends on the initial point in action space. With the fundamental Wilson action as the starting action the approach is found to be very rapid as illustrated in Fig. \ref{RGf1}.
\begin{figure}[ht]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=0.6\textwidth]{RGFlows4.eps}
\end{center}
\caption{Flow from the $SU(2)$ fund. Wilson action with $\beta=4$ (green dots) and $\beta=2.5$ (red dots) showing rapid approach to the RT. First three non-trivial (normalized) expansion  coefficients shown. \label{RGf1}}
\end{figure}

The effective coupling (\ref{effcoupl}) provides a good way to label points along the RT.
If, starting from some
Wilson action coupling $\beta$, after $n$ steps the point $\beta^{(n)}(\beta)$ lies on the RT, subsequent RG steps generate a sequence of points $\beta^{(n+1)}$, $\beta^{(n+2)}, \cdots$
hopping along the RT.  With scale factor $b=2$, and for all large and intermediate values of $\beta^{(n)}$, the effective beta function is varying slowly enough
for a linear interpolation to provide an excellent approximation to the RT points lying between pairs of neighboring points $\beta^{(n)}, \beta^{(n+1)}$.

The decimations become exact in the $\beta\to \infty$ limit. Computation of the step scaling function (beta function) from the decimations in the weak coupling scaling region reproduces the perturbation theory prediction to within $2\%-3\%$.  We next use them to obtain
critical couplings and string tensions by lattice matching for the $SU(2)$ and $SU(3)$ gauge theories.

\section{Critical couplings and string couplings by two-lattice matching}
\subsection{Critical couplings}

At physical temperature $T=1/aN_\tau$, lattice with temporal extent $N_\tau$, spacing $a$ and lattice with $N^\prime_\tau$, $a^\prime$ are related by:
\begin{equation}
a^\prime = {N_\tau \over N^\prime_\tau } a \,.\qquad  \label{latspace2}
\end{equation}
If after blocking $n$ and $n^\prime$ times, respectively, the two flows
reach the same point on the RT, using (\ref{latspace1}) this implies
\begin{equation}
   n - n^\prime = \log_b \left({N_\tau \over N^\prime_\tau}\right) \,. \label{latspace3}
\end{equation}
So, at $T=T_c$ one has
\begin{equation}
\beta^{(n)}(\beta_c(N_\tau)) = \beta^{(n^\prime)} (\beta_c(N^\prime_\tau)) \,.\label{eqeffcr}
\end{equation}
This suggests the following simple matching procedure. \\
 (i) Assuming  $\beta_c(N_\tau)$ known for one $N_\tau$,
take
\begin{eqnarray}
n& = & \log_b N_\tau  + m  \nonumber \\
n^\prime & = & \log_b N^\prime_\tau  + m \label{nchoice}
\end{eqnarray}
Integer $m=0,1, \ldots$ is chosen so $n,n^\prime$ large enough to be on the RT.
(If the so-chosen $n$ or/and $n^\prime$ turn out to be non-integer, one performs $[n]$ and $[n]+1$ steps, where $[n]$ is the nearest integer to the chosen $n$ from below, and uses interpolation
for the RT points in-between as mentioned above.)\\
(ii) With $n$, $n^\prime$ and $\beta_c(N_\tau)$ given, solve (\ref{eqeffcr}) for $\beta_c(N^\prime_\tau)$. This means that the starting point of the flow on the $N^\prime_\tau$ lattice is adjusted
to satisfy (\ref{eqeffcr}).
\subsection{String tensions  ($T=0$)}
A similar procedure allows one to obtain string tensions by matching.
Assume that two RG flows from starting Wilson action at $\beta_0$ and $\beta_1$ end up at the same RT point after $n_0$ and $n_1$ steps, respectively. Then one has
\begin{equation}
\beta^{(n_0)}(\beta_0) = \beta^{(n_1)}(\beta_1)  \label{eqeffst}
\end{equation}
and
\begin{equation}
a_1\sqrt{\sigma} = b^{(n_0 - n_1)} a_0 \sqrt{\sigma}  \label{eqst}
\end{equation}
Suppose $a_0 \sqrt{\sigma}$ known.
Choose $n_0$ large enough to be on the RT.
Determine $n_1$ so that (\ref{eqeffst}) is satisfied.
$ a_1\sqrt{\sigma}$ is then obtained directly from (\ref{eqst}).

\subsection{Numerical results}
It is important to maintain high accuracy in working with the expansions (\ref{exp}) under
blocking iteration. For $SU(2)$ we typically use fifty group characters in the expansions (\ref{exp}). This implies for, say, $\beta=5$ omitted higher character coefficients $f_j=F_j/F_0$, and accompanying bounds on the series remainder, of the order of $10^{-45}$. For $SU(3)$ we truncate (\ref{exp}) at characters $j\equiv (p,q)$ with $p\geq 20$, $q\geq 20$; this implies remainders at $\beta=10$ of less than $10^{-12}$.

The scale factor is always taken to be $b=2$. The adjustable parameter in the decimation recursions (\ref{recur}) - (\ref{decpar2}) is $c$, which we set at $c=0.10$ in the case of $SU(2)$ and $c=0.24$ in the case of $SU(3)$. With no other parameters present, straightforward numerical evaluation of the recursion relations can then be carried out.

We take one value of $\beta_c(N_\tau)$ from MC data, which serves to fix the
scale and apply the procedure above to obtain critical coupling values
for other lattices. Results for $SU(2)$ are shown in Table \ref{TablebetacrSU(2)}. Two sets of computed $\beta_c$ values are shown  in
Table \ref{TablebetacrSU(2)} (columns 1 and 2) corresponding to two different choices of the MC data point (underlined entries). The table also shows comparison with the values obtained by MC simulation \cite{LTW} - \cite{Hetal}  in each case (column 3). The agreement is
very good - at the $2\%-3\%$ level.
Results for critical couplings in the $SU(3)$ gauge theory are displayed in Table \ref{TablebetacrSU(3)}.  Agreement with MC simulation data  \cite{LTW}
is again very good, typically within a few percent.

\begin{table}[htb]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|c|@{\hspace{0.5cm}}c@{\hspace{0.5cm}}|@{\hspace{0.5cm}}c@{\hspace{0.5cm}}|@{\hspace{0.5cm}}c@{\hspace{0.5cm}}|}
  \hline

  $N_\tau$ &  $\beta_c$ & $\beta_c$&$\beta_c$(MC) \\
  \hline
  3  & 2.1875 & 2.1957& 2.1768(30) \\
  4  & 2.2909 & \underline{2.2991}& 2.2991(02) \\
  5 & 2.3600 & 2.3683 & 2.3726(45)  \\
  6 & 2.4175 & 2.4258  & 2.4265(30) \\
  8 & 2.5097 & 2.5180 & 2.5104(02) \\
  12  & \underline{2.6355} & 2.6440 & 2.6355(10) \\
  16  & 2.7275 & 2.7361 & 2.7310(20)\\
  32  & 2.9487 & 2.9574   &   \\
  \hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Critical couplings $\beta_c(N_\tau)$ for $SU(2)$ computed from lattice
matching of decimations. Column 1 and 2 show the values obtained for two different choices
(underlined entries) of the one data point taken from MC data (see text). Column 3 shows the values
from MC simulations for comparison. \label{TablebetacrSU(2)}}
\end{table}

\begin{table}[htb]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|c|@{\hspace{0.5cm}}c@{\hspace{0.5cm}}|@{\hspace{0.5cm}}c@{\hspace{0.5cm}}|@{\hspace{0.5cm}}c@{\hspace{0.5cm}}|}
 \hline

 $N_\tau$ & $\beta_c$ & $\beta_c$ & $\beta_c$(MC) \\
 \hline
  4  & 5.6501 & 5.6329 & 5.6925(002) \\
  6 & \underline{5.8941} & 5.8773  & 5.8941(005) \\
  8 & 6.0773 & 6.0595 & 6.0010(250),6.0625(18)  \\
  10  & 6.2018 & 6.1837 & 6.1600(70)\\
  12 & 6.3084 & 6.2900  & 6.2680(120),6.3385(55) \\
  14  & 6.4015 & \underline{6.3830} & 6.3830(100)\\
  16  & 6.4845 & 6.4658 & 6.4500(500)\\
  32  & 6.9024 & 6.8829 &  \\
 \hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Critical couplings $\beta_c(N_\tau)$ for $SU(3)$
computed from lattice matching of decimations and comparison with MC simulation data.
Same format as in Table 1.}
\label{TablebetacrSU(3)}
\end{table}
String tensions in $SU(3)$ obtained by the method above are displayed in the same format in Table \ref{TableSTSU(3)}. Very similar results are obtained for $SU(2)$ \cite{CT}.
Good agreement with MC data \cite{Hetal} - \cite{EHK}
is again obtained in all cases.

Consideration of fermionic observables by similar RG recursion methods is a rather more demanding
proposition. Some preliminary attempts are reported in \cite{CT1}.

\begin{table}[ht]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|c|@{\hspace{0.5cm}}c@{\hspace{0.5cm}}|@{\hspace{0.5cm}}c@{\hspace{0.5cm}}|@{\hspace{0.5cm}}c@{\hspace{0.5cm}}|}
  \hline

  $\beta$ & $a\sqrt \sigma $ & $a\sqrt \sigma $  & $a\sqrt \sigma $(MC) \\
  \hline
  5.54 & 0.5580 & 0.5878  & 0.5727(52) \\
  5.6  & 0.5070 & \underline{0.5295}  & 0.5295(09), 0.5064(28)\\
  5.7  & 0.4205 & 0.4264  & 0.4099(12), 0.3879(39)\\
  5.8 & 0.3486 & 0.3508   & 0.3302(15) \\
  5.9  & 0.2919 & 0.2931 & 0.2702(19) \\
  6.0   & 0.2465 & 0.2433  & 0.2269(62), 0.2209(23)\\
  6.2  & 0.1698 & 0.1671  & 0.1619(19), 0.1604(11)\\
  6.4 & \underline{0.1214} & 0.1180  & 0.1214(12), 0.1218(28) \\
  6.5 & 0.1010 & 0.0983  & 0.1068(09) \\
  6.8 & 0.0616 & 0.0599  & 0.0738(20) \\
  \hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{String tensions $a\sqrt \sigma $ for $SU(3)$ computed from lattice matching of decimations. Same format as in Table 1. \label{TableSTSU(3)}}
\end{table}
\vspace{0.3cm}
This work was partially supported by the NSF under NSF-PHY-0852438.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


Yeah, I read a lot of books! So what – they're all good!!
Atomic Robo: Flying She-Devils of the Pacific (of 5) – Another fantastic all ages mini featuring a robot created by Nicolas Tesla.
Before Watchmen: Night Owl (of 4) – Straczynski, Len Wein, and a couple of Kuberts.
Mind the Gap – A few weeks late but worth the wait!
Spider-Men – BMBendis and Sarah Pichelli bring the universes together!
Fatale #6 – The first volume is available NOW!
FF #19 The kids take their second Field Trip — To Africa! Meet the Science Club of Wakanda. And the Future Foundation gets a brand new member.
New Deadwardians #4 – Not your average zombie comic!
TMNT #11 – Unique and solid, every issue.
Whispers #3 – Sam has looked into the face of pure evil, and he heard it speak. The problem is – the voice won't go away. Desperate to rid his mind of it, Sam devises a morally questionable plan.
Wolverine and the X-Men #12 – Bachalo is back! Beast fights dirty. **This takes place prior to the events of AVX: Round 6.
I, Vampire – Not your average vampire comic! The Van Helsings fight vampires with napalm!
Teen Titans – Now with 100% more dinosaurs!
Defenders TP Vol 1 – Matt Fraction – If you read my blog often you'll know Defenders is one of my favorite new ongoings from Marvel. Consistently good story and art with Dr. Strange, Silver Surfer, Red She-Hulk, Iron Fist, and Namor Mackenzie.
Fatale TP Vol 1 -Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips deliver their best work to date in this crime/noir/mystery/cosmic horror masterpiece, colored by the magnificent Dave Stewart.
Morning Glories TP Vol 3: PE – If you like suspenseful mysteries like Lost, grab this prep-school-with-a-secret by Nick Spencer!
Mystery Society TP – Titus' pick!
Manhattan Projects #4 – The blockbuster FEEL GOOD, BAD SCIENCE series continues!
Prophet #26 – This issue is written and drawn by Brandon Graham of King City. You like cats and spys? Read King City!!


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NASA Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of Skylab
This sketch of Skylab was drawn by George E. Mueller, NASA associate administrator for Manned Space Flight. This concept drawing was created at a meeting at the Marshall Space Flight Center on Aug. 19, 1966.
View larger image NASA will commemorate the 40th anniversary of America's first space station Monday, May 13, with a televised roundtable discussion featuring Skylab astronauts, a current astronaut and agency managers planning future space missions.
The discussion, open to NASA employees and the public, will begin at 2:30 p.m. EDT in the James Webb Auditorium of NASA Headquarters at 300 E St. SW in Washington. The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.
Participants will include:
-- Owen Garriott, science pilot, Skylab 3
-- Gerald Carr, commander, Skylab 4
-- Kevin Ford, commander, International Space Station Expedition 34
-- D. Marshall Porterfield, director, Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications Division, NASA Headquarters
-- Jason Crusan, director, Advanced Exploration Systems, NASA Headquarters
Media representatives who want to attend must call 202-358-1100 no later than noon May 13. Anyone unable to attend the event in-person may ask questions during the program via Twitter or Google+ using the hashtag #asknasa.
NASA launched Skylab on May 14, 1973. It was the nation's first foray into significant scientific research in microgravity. The three Skylab crews proved humans could live and work effectively for long durations in space. The knowledge gathered during Skylab helped inform development and construction of the International Space Station, just as the research and technology demonstrations being conducted aboard the ISS will help shape a new set of missions that will take Americans farther into the solar system.
For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling and downlink information, visit: www.nasa.gov/nasatv.
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The eight-day holiday of Chanukah ended last Saturday. My kids had vacation from school, but my husband took my 8-year-old to visit my father-in-law for a week. For about two weeks my apartment felt like a revolving door, between various guests and my kids' schedules.
It's hard to manage a kitchen in changing circumstances. Several times, I overcooked and struggled to finish it all.
I also had a major kitchen accident. In the middle of a cooking session, I noticed that a jar of noxious silver polish had fallen on its side and leaked onto a cabinet shelf. The liquid soaked into unopened bags of sugar and salt, which then spilled all over the floor. A lower cabinet shelf, the counter and everything on them were also dripped on. It took us over two hours to clean up.
Keep non-food items separate from food items. The polish was backed into a corner and shouldn't have tipped over. In fact, it's been there for over ten years without incident. But still.
Fortunately the damage turned out to be minor.
I wrote a guest post on 12 Tips for Saving Water in the Kitchen for the environmental blog Green Prophet.
On Sunday, I posted Ten Tips for Saving Water, Money and Energy in Your Dishwasher, including frugal replacements for dishwasher supplies.
On Tuesday (when I thought it was Wednesday), I posted a universal recipe: How to Make Patties from Anything and Everything.
To my readers those currently celebrating Christmas and the New Year, I hope they are all you wish for. May your food preparations go smoothly, with delicious results.


text:
Time to give Aitken a second chance
Johnson's August 3) Delivering campaign pledges – in so far as he can without a durable majority
Javid. Sometimes when you lose, you win?
Sponsored Post: James Lowman: Breaking the cycle of violence against shopworkers
Chloe Westley: Khan poses, tweets and postures – while London is ravaged by four murders in four days
Johnson. Not the Prime Minister we deserve. But the Prime Minister we need right now.
Predictably, the first word used by media outlets such as PA, BBC, ITV, the Observer, the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Times in reporting that Jonathan Aitken had been appointed by the CSJ to look into prison reform, was "disgraced". Once the media have settled on your prefix it's nigh on impossible to shake it off.
It was seven years ago when Aitken walked out of Belmarsh with an electronic tag attached to him. He'd served seven months of an eighteen month sentence for calculated perjury. Since then he's spent his time reading Theology at Oxford, looking into prison reform and talking to Christain groups about his experience. A convicted bank robber, who became Aitken's best friend during his time in prison, said:
"We were expecting an arrogant ex-Tory minister who felt hard done-by and who was going to be a complete pain in the arse… but it was the opposite straight away. He was one of the chaps."
Aitken wrote about his prison experience in his second autobiography Porridge and Passion. He "rediscovered the Bible" and came out a humble man with a new perspective on life:
"To be humbled makes you look at every aspect of yourself. There is relief in being who I am. Nothing can embarrass me, as everyone knows everything about me."
The key thing here is partly what David Cameron is getting at when he talks about politicians' right to have private lives before they worked in the public square. Yes we should reserve the right to judge the character of our politicians when they have an extra-marital affair, receive undeclared payments, and anything that causes us to question their trustworthiness. But if it is clear they are genuinely reformed characters then they should be given a second chance. George W Bush did all sorts of things in his youth but when he became a Christian the American people not only accepted the new man he'd become, but saw him as a regular guy in a way that isn't normally possible for a President's son.
"I found my prison experience a painful one, but also an eye-opening one and an enriching one and, at the end of the day, a positive one. There are so many things are good about our prisons. It is a decent system, badly run because of enormous pressures. But most prison officers and prison governors are in my experience – there is the occasional bad apple – good people struggling to do a good job under huge pressures. I want to start from a position of qualified admiration for what they do already." and:
"It is a cause dear to my heart for obvious reasons. I don't regard this as any kind of Aitken comeback. I regard it as a job to be done and an assignment. This is something I can contribute to, not that this is some sort of ladder for me… This isn't an ego trip for me. This is a job to be done. I have a very good team who I think will help to do it well."
His policy group, to be launched formally tomorrow, will include former Chairman of the Youth Justice Board Professor Rod Morgan and Guardian columnist Erwin James – a former life-sentence prisoner.
More than 200 members of Thanet South association wanted him to stand as their parliamentary candidate in 2004 but this was blocked by Michael Howard. One thing that seems to have been forgotten by the press is that he did back UKIP a few months later, although he didn't get actively involved in it (it still exists, by the way).
To me, the one real blip since being convicted was his support for the Government in dropping the Serious Fraud Office's investigation into Saudi arms deals, especially considering the reason he was disgraced in the first place. He actually said that even if the allegations were true, it was still worth dropping the investigation in the interests of good relations. He said this shortly after being appointed Honorary President of Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
Still, kudos to Iain Duncan-Smith for offering him this new role:
"Everybody deserves a second chance, that is the whole philosophy of the Centre for Social Justice. I am a profound believer in never writing people off. We are now using Jonathan's experience as a way of getting the most from him and him making a positive contribution to society… Jonathan is steeped in the world of politics, he is steeped in the world of prisons. He can therefore travel quite lightly between the two. We asked him and he seemed over the moon."
The CSJ's media adviser, Nick Wood, says:
"One of the things that Iain is keen on is that people leading political groups should have some direct experience of the subjects they are working on. I think Jonathan Aitken certainly has the experience of jail and he has shown a great deal of thought and interest in it since."
Aitken himself puts it succinctly: "sometimes poachers make good game keepers".
Law and order Policy Groups
Time is running out for Corbyn as well as May
Johnson's August 2) Finding support among opposition MPs – or at least trying to – before any no confidence vote
Johnson's August 1) He must spend time in Scotland
Is the Official Secrets Act fit for purpose?
The next Prime Minister should scrap the Office for Tackling Injustices
Hunt is cooler under fire during the Neil grillings. But how much difference will they really make?
33 per cent? 45 per cent? 71 per cent? What's the true leadership election turnout?
Hustings in Maidstone. Johnson offers glutinous harmony while Hunt is "the better Jeremy".
Trump Actually
62 comments for: Time to give Aitken a second chance


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Home>All Posts>Reviews>Blu-Ray / DVD Reviews>'Independence Day,'...
'Independence Day,' 'Deadpool,' 'The Boy,' more on Home Entertainment
Blu-Ray / DVD ReviewsNewsReviews Angela Dawson|May 9, 2016
INDEPENDENCE DAY. (DVD Artwork). ©20th Century Fox.
Compiled by ANGELA DAWSON
Front Row Features
In advance of the long-anticipated sequel due out this summer, the original doomsday sci-fi spectacular "Independence Day" arrives in a special two-disc Blu-ray combo pack Tuesday May 10.
Director Roland Emmerich, producer Dean Devlin and an all-star cast including Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman join forces to deliver a mind-blowing encounter between powerful aliens and the human race. When massive spaceships appear in Earth's skies and blast destructive beams of fire down on cities all over the planet, a determined band of survivors must unite for one last strike against the invaders before mankind is destroyed. Released theatrically in 1996, the action-packed sci-fi epic won an Oscar for Best Special Effects the following year.
Special features on the "Attacker Edition Gift Set" two-disc commemorative anniversary edition include a newly restored extended and original theatrical cut versions, an all-new 30 minute documentary, a digital HD code, a limited edition alien ship replica and a collectible booklet. The regular two-disc Blu-ray edition includes the two restored cuts, the documentary and the digital HD code. The DVD includes the restored theatrical cut and the digital HD code.
"Deadpool" arrives on Blu-ray and DVD Tuesday May 10. Directed by Tim Miller, the offbeat superhero comedy stars Ryan Reynolds, Ed Skrein, Morena Baccarin, T.J. Miller and Gina Carano.
Reynolds plays Marvel's super-but-no-hero motormouth title character. Deadpool's gimmick, aside from possessing a Wolverine-style healing factor that renders him essentially unkillable, is his habit of constantly wisecracking to himself and the audience during bouts of insanely acrobatic combat. He not only is fully aware that he's a character in a story, but also gleefully acknowledges genre conventions and pop culture ephemera.
The ironic self-awareness isn't the only thing that sets "Deadpool" apart from typical superhero flicks that aren't anywhere near as self-mocking or brazenly tongue-in-cheek. "Deadpool" also has so much bloody violence and profuse profanity that it easily earns its "R" rating.
First-time feature director Miller brings the same manic spirit to several ridiculously hyper-violent fight scenes that feature gunplay, decapitations, strangulations, explosions and conflagrations. The screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick combines dark humor with a kind of surreal, self-referencing absurdity.
Viewers discover in flashbacks that Deadpool started out as ex-military underachiever Wade Wilson, whose mercenary gigs were limited to tasks such as discouraging a teenage girl's stalker. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, Wilson agrees to undergo an experimental treatment that will force him to "mutate or die." Wilson refers to this part of his backstory as "a horror movie," and that's no exaggeration. His chief tormentor Ajax/Francis (Skrein, star of the rebooted "Transporter") who underwent a similar procedure and emerged devoid of all feeling, sadistically tortures Wilson into a grotesque husk of his former self…but with a healing factor that lets him survive anything from gunshots to stabbings to amputations. Fortunately, Wilson survives with his sense of humor intact.
Baccarin plays Wilson's unsuspecting fiancee Vanessa, who naturally ends up as a damsel in distress and T.J. Miller plays Wilson's bartender friend Weasel.
Whether viewers find the quip-spouting Deadpool endlessly entertaining or "relentlessly annoying" (as Francis puts it), he's definitely a one-of-a-kind character.
Blu-ray extras include deleted and extended scenes, a gag reel, audio commentaries and more.
A young American woman uncovers the menacing nature of the British family she cares for in "The Boy," a suspense thriller debuting on Blu-ray, DVD, and On Demand Tuesday May 10, from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. It also is available on Digital HD.
William Brent Bell (The Devil Inside) directs the film that stars Lauren Cohan (Maggie on AMC's "The Walking Dead").
Cohan plays a young American woman named Greta who takes a job as a nanny in a remote English village. She soon discovers that the family's 8-year-old is a life-sized doll that they care for just like a real boy, as a way to cope with the death of their actual son 20 years prior. After violating a list of strict rules, a series of disturbing and inexplicable events bring Greta's worst nightmare to life, leading her to believe that the doll is alive.
Hollywood's current obsession with the serial killer mastermind Charles Manson shows no signs of waning. "Manson's Lost Girls" is a chilling drama based on the heinous crimes of Manson, who led a murderous cult in the late '60s. The Lifetime original movie arrives on DVD (plus Digital) Tuesday May 10 from Lionsgate.
Jeff Ward stars as Manson, with supporting performances by MacKenzie Mauzy ("Into the Woods"), Eden Brolin ("Ruby Sparks") and Greer Grammer ("Awkward") as the circle of teenage girls who fell under his demonic spell and helped carry out his brutal killings. It is available on DVD for the suggested retail price (SRP) of $14.98.
Told through the eyes of real "Manson girl" Linda Kasabian, "Manson's Lost Girls" takes viewers on a month-long journey with the women who were drawn to the sisterhood and communal lifestyle founded by the now imprisoned cult leader. As Manson's dark and twisted preoccupations are revealed, viewers will witness how free love turned into burglary and then spiraled into senseless mass murder.
Scooby-Doo Shaggy, Velma and the rest of the Scooby-Doo gang come to life in LEGO form in "LEGO Scooby-Doo!: Haunted Hollywood," a new animated feature available Tuesday May 10, available in a Blu-ray Combo Pack and on DVD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.
Get ready for hilarious hijinks in Tinseltown as Scooby and his friends head to Hollywood where they visit the legendary Brickton Studios, a historic Hollywood movie studio. While visiting the lot, the gang is surprised to find the once powerful film studio has fallen onto hard times. Neglected and in disrepair, Brickton, which has lost its luster, now faces threats of closure and an impending sale to greedy developers who want to tear it down.
To top it off, the Mystery Inc., gang discovers that the studio's backlot is haunted by the ghost of Boris Karnak, a famous, old-time movie actor who has been making ghostly appearances in the roles he once made famous, including the Headless Horseman, the Mummy and the Zombie. The ghostly sightings have frightened away the cast and crew of Brickton's latest film production, which was the studio's final effort in trying to save the company from going under. Now with production halted on the movie, which was supposed to rescue Brickton from its demise, it looks as though the famous backlot is destined to fall into the hands of the developers after all.
The Blu-ray combo pack includes a Digital HD copy and retails for an SRP of $24.98 and on standard DVD for $19.98. The Blu-ray and DVD releases will include an exclusive LEGO Scooby-Doo! Mini figure, while supplies last.
The wolf pack is back in action when "Alpha and Omega: Dino Digs" arrives on DVD (plus Digital), Digital HD and On Demand Tuesday May 10 from Lionsgate. In the sixth installment of the "Alpha & Omega" franchise, Humphrey and Kate move to new grounds and discover Amy, an affable dinosaur who is unfamiliar with the new world. The animated feature will be available for an SRP of $14.98.
After Kate, Humphrey and their three pups are forced to relocate their den, they discover Amy, a friendly raptor that magically came to life after being uncovered during a big dig. The pups and their forest friends show Amy the wonders of their new world, and must work together and try to stop the diggers from unearthing the dangerous T-Rex before it is too late.
"A Sort of Homecoming" arrives Tuesday May 10 on Digital HD and On Demand. Thinking her high school days were long behind her, Amy built a new life as a news producer in New York. But when her high school debate coach asks her to return to Louisiana, she is flooded with memories of her unforgettable senior year of high school. Through a series of flashbacks, Amy relives her younger self as she and her debate partner Nick take on the highly competitive national debate circuit.
Directed by Maria Burton, the heartwarming drama stars Laura Marano ("Superbad"), Katherine McNamara (The Scorch Trials") Kathleen Wilhoite ("Pay It Forward"), Michelle Clunie ('Teen Wolf") and Parker Mack ("Faking It").
Tags:Alpha and Omega: Dino Digs, Deadpool, Independence Day, Scooby Doo! Haunted Hollywood, The Boy
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Angela Dawson
Editor/Co-owner
Angela Dawson is the editor and co-owner of frontrowfeatures.com. An award-winning journalist, she has covered Hollywood since 2000. Her interviews with actors, directors, writers, authors and musicians have run in numerous outlets. She is the author of the novel "Generations: A Greek Family Odyssey" available on Amazon.com.
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Angela Dawson is the editor and co-owner of frontrowfeatures.com. An award-winning journalist, she has covered Hollywood since 2000. Her interviews with actors, directors, writers, authors and musicians have run in numerous outlets. She is the author of the novel "Generations: A Greek Family Odyssey" available on Amazon.com. Read Full


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