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You can see Element perform March 10 at the Boom Boom Room in San Francisco, April 14 at the Shady Lady Saloon in Sacramento, and May 2 at Sacramento State.
A mysterious glitch in China led to one of the biggest-ever Internet blackouts on Tuesday, forcing massive volumes of Chinese Web traffic to U.S. servers belonging to a firm with a long history of protesting the government in Beijing and evading its censors.
The disruption, which crippled service for most of China’s roughly 600 million Internet users, began abount 3 p.m. in Beijing (2 a.m. EST) and lasted as long as eight hours, according to Compuware, a Detroit-based firm that monitors Web performance.
The official China Internet Network Information Center said the disruption was probably the result of a hacking attack, but Internet experts said that the cause appears to have been a flawed effort by Chinese Web censors — part of what is known as the Great Firewall of China — to block sites the government deems subversive.
But instead of censoring, the government appears to have momentarily shut down much of the country’s access to the Internet by mistakenly directing all of that Web traffic to servers controlled by Dynamic Internet Technology, a U.S. software company founded by anti-censorship activist Bill Xia.
Xia said in an e-mail that the disruption, which crashed his servers, was caused by China’s “hijacking system,” which is “part of China’s Great Firewall.” Xia, who moved to the United States from China in the late 1990s, sells software and services to Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, the U.S.-based organization Human Rights in China and Epoch Times, a newspaper published by the Falun Gong religious group.
This incident “both communicates the fragility of the Chinese Internet but it also reminds us how robust and resilient their censorship has been,” said James Mulvenon, director of Defense Group Inc.’s center for intelligence research and analysis.
The Great Firewall works in myriad ways to control what Chinese Internet users can see online, from obstructing searches on sensitive topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests to blocking entire Web sites, such as social media sites Facebook and Twitter.
The Chinese government blocks sites by exploiting a weakness in the infrastructure of the Internet. Let’s say a user is trying to reach a site by entering the domain name — for instance, Facebook.com — into a browser. Ordinarily, that request gets sent to what’s known as a DNS server, which matches the domain name to an IP address, a series of digits that computers can use to identify each other.
Internet experts say China’s Great Firewall works by redirecting traffic to erroneous or fake IP addresses. But in the case of Tuesday’s glitch, something seemed to go wrong.
A massive amount of traffic was diverted to 65.49.2.178, an IP address affiliated with Xia’s Dynamic Internet Technology, a group whose work is routinely censored by the Chinese government.
Heiko Specht, who helps track Web site performance for Compuware, was sitting at his desk in Munich when a customer alerted him to some problems in China. Specht ran some tests and saw that at least 80 percent of the common Web domains in China were not working.
“I almost fell from my chair,” he said.
Specht said that with sites such as PayPal down, it was impossible for many companies to conduct business. He estimates that between half and two-thirds of all active Internet users during this time were affected. China has the largest population of people online in the world, according to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center.
Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has continued to clamp down on freedom of expression, both among intellectuals demanding political reform and among international news organizations reporting on allegations of corrupted national leadership. This week the Washington, D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists issued a report detailing offshore tax havens used by relatives of the country’s top leaders, including Xi’s brother-in-law, and some of China’s wealthiest citizens.
Individuals in China and organizations outside the country have deployed a variety of strategies to circumvent the filters and censors. One free program called Freegate is produced by Xia’s firm. Once past the firewall, users in China can visit any blocked site.
“It’s just more of the cat-and-mouse game with the Chinese Internet,” said Mulvenon, the Defense Group director.
Xia rarely gives interviews. He is a practitioner of Falun Gong, which the Chinese government has been trying to stamp out for more than a decade.
Internet experts said the blackout this week should serve as a warning that efforts to weed out unwanted content can lead to a system-wide breakdown.
Collin Anderson, a Washington researcher on censorship who is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, says he has seen similar things happen in Iran.
As one of the most prolific and successful writers in the UK, Anthony Horowitz at this session spoke about his work and discussed his writing process. He also spoke about the creation of his characters and about writing continuations of his novels.
Anthony Horowitz was a session not to be missed at the Festival! His natural wit and charm made him an entertaining act and he was extremely interactive with the audience.
The rapper is defending himself, only this time he has a lawyer.
(AllHipHop News) A lawyer for rapper/actor Bow Wow is convinced the star was "wrongfully arrested" following an alleged altercation with his on/off girlfriend early on Saturday.
Bow Wow, also known by his birth name Shad Moss, was taken into custody in Atlanta, Georgia after clashing with Leslie Holden.
She called police on the 31-year-old, claiming he attacked her, while Moss argued he had been the victim in the incident.
They were both charged with misdemeanor battery as officers were reportedly unable to determine who had been the aggressor.
Super Bowl weekend took a turn for the worst for Bow Wow.
Now Moss' legal representative has addressed the arrest, insisting the star, who also features on the reality show "Growing Up Hip Hop: Atlanta" did nothing wrong.
"Shad Bow Wow Moss was wrongfully arrested earlier this morning for the first time after being beaten by an out of control intoxicated female, Ms. Leslie Holden, in an Atlanta condominium," read a statement issued by lawyer Joe Habachy.
He went on to claim that "the only two independent witnesses both corroborated his version of events indicating that Ms. Holden was simply out of control and was without a doubt the primary aggressor".
Both Moss and Holden were held on $8,000 bond, and have since been released.
Build your dream home on this beautiful 1.21 acre property. Private and surrounded by trees, this land is in an ideal location outside of city limits. Septic & well on property with power & city water available at the driveway. Power pole good for 30 years. Previously surveyed, 3 boundary markers located. Check out this opportunity before its gone!
Property is at the end of the Lane. Owner says it has a view of the bay. It would need clearing to see the view. .43 of an acre.Charleston Sanitation Sewer,electricity and city water are to the property next door.
Pain between your shoulder blades? Dull ache in your lower back? If you haven't experienced these symptoms yet, you probably will.
In fact, 80 percent of the population will suffer from a back problem at some point in their lives, according to the American Chiropractic Association. What can you do to help beat these back aches and pains? The remedy could start at home.
Many types of back pain, caused by a variety of reasons including heavy lifting and poor posture, can be eased without surgery. Find comfort at home by following these three easy ideas that may help to alleviate back pain and strengthen your back for the future.
1. Stretch away tension: Stretching is a great way to loosen muscles and relieve tension in your back. But be sure to consult your physician if you have any medical conditions, and move carefully to keep from straining or inflicting additional pain. This means warming up your muscles with a quick walk before you stretch, stretching slowly and steadily and only reaching as far as your body will comfortably allow.
2. Recline with support: Sitting in a reclined position is often an effective step in helping to relieve back pain, as it transfers weight and pressure off of your spine and allows your muscles to relax. Get comfortable in reclining furniture with total body and lumbar support, meaning that no extra stress is placed on any one part of the body, and be sure to fully recline and adjust the leg rest to the highest position. This will redistribute your weight and ease pressure on your lower spine -- 80 percent of doctors prefer for patients to recline with their legs elevated up high and their backs partially or fully reclined.
3. Apply "steamy" heat: As long as it's not within 24 to 48 hours of an acute injury, the next time you are feeling discomfort, apply a moist heat pack directly on the point of pain to help relax and loosen the surrounding muscles. Moist heat, as opposed to an ice pack, increases the flow of blood to the area, and thus can help speed recovery.
"I encourage patients to take steps toward a healthier back every day," says Dr. Dave David, a board-certified physician who has been practicing medicine for more than 30 years. "From utilizing at-home remedies to stretching regularly and utilizing reclining furniture with the right support, sufferers can oftentimes find soothing relief from current aches and pains and work to prevent future discomfort."
Back still bothering you? Contact your doctor to get checked out.
Single or unhappily married men may have an elevated risk of fatal stroke, according to a large study presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2010.
The findings are based on work in which researchers examined 10,059 men who were tracked from 1963 to 1997.
Among the men who in 1963 were single, 8.4 percent died of stroke in the following 34 years, compared with 7.1 percent of the married men. Considering age at death and adjusting for socioeconomic status and various health issues, single men had a 64 percent higher risk of fatal stroke than did married men.
Furthermore, in 1965, the married men had been asked to evaluate their marriages. In an analysis of the 3.6 percent of men who had reported dissatisfaction in their marriage, adjusted risk of a fatal stroke was also 64 percent higher, compared with men who considered their marriages very successful.
Johns Hopkins researchers say that with proper sterilization, recalibration and testing, reuse of certain medical equipment is safe.
- Eat a healthy diet: Focus on fresh fruits and vegetables and foods that are low in saturated fat and cholesterol. Limiting the amount of salt you ingest.
- Maintain a healthy weight. Being overweight can raise your blood pressure.
- Be physically active. The Surgeon General recommends that adults should engage in moderate physical activities for at least 30 minutes on most days of the week.
- Don't smoke. Smoking injures blood vessels and speeds up the hardening of the arteries. Further, smoking is a major risk for heart disease and stroke.
- Limit alcohol use. Drinking too much alcohol is associated with high blood pressure.
A three-year study of 1,145 pregnant women from an ethnically diverse population found that women who gained more weight than is recommended by the Institute of Medicine had a 50 percent increased risk of developing gestational diabetes mellitus.
Profoundly deaf children with cochlear implants rate their quality of life equal to their normal-hearing peers, according to new research.
In addition, the earlier a child is implanted with a cochlear device and the longer he or she wears the device, the better overall quality of life the child reports and the more successful the child is in school, according to the findings.
"Wearing cochlear implants doesn't seem to create greater psychosocial problems overall for their users," said Dr. Betty Loy, clinical research manager in the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery and lead author of the study.
The adverse affects of being overweight are not limited to physical function but also extend to neurological function, according to new research.
The study found that individuals with higher midlife body mass index scores had significantly lower general cognitive ability and significantly steeper decline than their thinner counterparts over time.
These statistics were compiled from a study of Swedish twins that took place over the course of nearly 40 years, from 1963 to 2002; the results were the same for both men and women.
A flamboyant entrepreneur who turned his classy Mercedes into this extraordinary one-off supercar which he’s now selling for a staggering £7 MILLION.
The Mercedes McLaren SLR is the one of the German company’s most exclusive cars and is known for its stylish design.
But Swiss businessman Ueli Anliker wasn’t satisfied with the car’s image and set about transforming the 200mph-plus Merc.
He employed a team of 35 who spent a total of 30,000 man hours and more than £3.5 million developing the outlandish ‘Anliker McLaren SLR 999 Red Gold Dream’.
However, it hasn’t been as well received as Mr Anliker would have hoped for, with Top Gear saying the paintwork could “burn a hole through your eyes and into your nightmares”.
The garish body has 25 layers of red paint with 5kg of gold dust worked into it.
And the car’s supercharged 5.4-litre engine has had power boosted from 640bhp to 999bhp – giving it a top speed of more than 210mph.
Inside, there are jewelled indicators, a gold-trimmed interior and steering wheel and ruby-covered switchgear.
In total there are more than 600 rubies within the car’s interior, which would have cost around £300,000 before the staggering overhaul.
Mr Anliker is now selling the Mercedes with a “minimum” price-tag of £7 million – making it the world’s most expensive vehicle for sale on the open market.
A spokesperson for Mr Anliker said: “Selling the vehicle has never been part of Mr Anliker’s motivation but he will consider a suitable offer.
The SLR was jointly developed by Mercedes in Germany and McLaren in the UK.
It went on sale in 2003 with production running until last year.
$5, and that’s my final offer. But only if you give me that Filipino prostitute and your funky red slippers with it!
Tat – Very pricy, but still just TAT!
68 years old, weathered skin, creases across his hands and grease stains under his fingernails, the thin lanky man heads to the parts counter to wait in line. There are ball caps for sale covered in dust and aisles of various oil, transmission fluid, and tractor seat covers under dim overhead lights, a few offices to the sides for sales, and several other folks ahead of him in line.
Each one of them is wearing a dirty hat, holding a broken part that they need to order to replace. There are bags under their eyes and friendly smiles on their faces. They don�t need another ball cap. No time to think about this kind of casual purchase. There is a tool at the home farm that must be fixed in order to bring in the hay. Only one part will be needed, if they are lucky.
After eight inches of rain in about three weeks� time, this is the scene at the tractor farm equipment store. The grass has grown beyond graze-able amounts so the excess must be hayed or it will go to waste. They wait patiently while the man behind the counter scans a schematic drawing with a million proprietary numbered parts on a 1980s John Deere hay cutter looking for the part number on the blades. There are eight of them on this cutter. Might as well get a few spares to keep in the barn for later. He�ll have to replace another one sooner or later. If the machines aren�t taken care of, they�ll break and put the brakes on the whole process that takes days even when all goes smoothly.
With the threat of rain, once the grass is laid down on the ground the urgency is visible in the crease between the farmers� eyes. They�ve got to get the grass dry, baled and out of the field before the next rain. No matter what the calendar might say � Memorial Day, Sunday, doctor�s appointment � everything must wait until it�s up and in the barn. Daylight hours and broken down equipment are the only barriers.
Of course, some have been known to finish after dark by the light of the moon and tractor lights. The calendar in the barn is still on January 2008, I guess because that�s the last time he had a chance to think about flipping the page and that maybe it mattered what day of the week it was. Nature and livestock know no schedule, only the routine of the days and then the seasons. Maybe someone will make a calendar that only has four pages to be turned each year, one for each season. The farmer might be able to keep up with that one.
One thing about making hay that makes it special is the family working together to make it happen. On our farm, Granny drives the flat bed we stack the bales onto around the pasture, the kids will be riding the flat bed stacking the bales that weigh half as much as they do, Papa and I will be driving the tractors raking and baling the hay, and my husband will be throwing bales from the field onto the flat bed to the kids. It�s an all-hands-on-deck kind of day.
Getting a couple hundred square bales into the barn loft requires a strong back and if you don�t have one already, you will soon enough. Haying square bales will keep age at bay! Best to start after the sun has had time to dry the nighttime dew and when it�s hot and dry out. Being directly in those conditions for hours at a time can take a toll on the body, however. But no farmer complains on this day. No complaints about the hay stuck to his or her sweaty skin on arms, neck or in his or her ears. We all know we�re lucky to have gotten so much rain to grow enough grass for hay that will last an entire year, and we�re thrilled to have a barn loft stocked to the brim. Just walking into the barn now, the fresh-cut hay smell is encompassing and fresh, like spring. Smells like a barn ought to.
Leaving the store with a small bag of precious metal in the shape of blades in his hands, the farmer begins the work ahead. Each piece of equipment he checks before making hay seem to have more places to grease than the last time! Zen and the art of tractor maintenance is a story well-known to any farmer. Good farmers can work a grease gun in their sleep and attach the PTO (power take off) with their eyes closed � heck, it couldn�t be any harder than with them open.
Hours will be put into greasing the four pieces of heavy complicated equipment, replacing missing nuts and pins, and tracking down new parts for those worn down, just to get the end result of hay from the waist deep grass waving in the wind like the ocean, and then into the barn lofts in round bales stacked 4 high for winter. This isn�t even mentioning the tune up on the tractor that should be done, before it�s required to haul each one of these four attachments across the hayfield, cutting, turning, raking it into rows, and finally, baling it. It�s labor-intensive and a whole lot easier if you happen to be 6� 4� and as strong as a linebacker. There aren�t many like that. Most are 68 years old with weathered skin, creases across their hands and grease stains under their nails. My kind of folks.
Each month, columnist Shelley Eagan offers a glimpse of the triumphs, tears and toils of farming. She raises grass-fed beef with her husband, Brian, and father, Steve Proffitt, on their farm in Kings Mountain.
Imogen Archer, Tilda Cobham-Hervey and Sam Althuizen in "52 Tuesdays"
A Sundance award winner for directing, Australian newcomer Sophie Hyde’s film concerns a 16-year-old girl’s efforts to define herself, triggered by her mother's gender transition.
Sophie Hyde’s debut, 52 Tuesdays, is a fictional story with the textured authenticity of a docudrama, following a teenage girl’s struggle to adjust as her mother embarks upon a female-to-male gender transition. Taking her cue from the title, the Australian director shot chronologically on that one day each week for a year, giving her cast script sections only a week at a time that pertained strictly to their characters. While some of the non-professional actors are a little stiff, cramping the film’s emotional breadth, the sensitively observed drama is distinguished by its structurally adventurous approach and the intimacy of its storytelling.
The events depicted in Matthew Cormack’s screenplay, based on Cormack and Hyde’s story, are frequently filtered through video shot by the characters, with that technology adding to the cinema verite feel.
Billie (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) starts a video diary after learning that her lesbian mother, Jane (Del Herbert-Jane), is beginning the long and psychologically taxing process of becoming a transgender man, adopting the name James. Needing life to be simplified during this transition, James sends Billie to live with his father, Tom (Beau Travis Williams), for a year, agreeing that they will meet once a week during set hours after school on Tuesdays. Billie’s confusion is increased by the hurt she feels at being the last to know; she’s way behind easygoing Tom and her uncle Harry (Mario Spate), who also lives with James and is more like a flaky big brother to Billie.
Having loved Jane unconditionally, Billie is less consistent in her feelings toward James. This compels her to seek out the company of two older schoolmates, Josh (Sam Althuizen) and Jasmine (Imogen Archer), who find room for Billie and her camera in their makeout sessions. Chopping off her hair into an androgynous pixie cut, Billie shyly begins exploring her own sexual identity, acting on her attraction to both of them. But while her video inquiry yields unguarded access to Josh and especially Jasmine, Billie reveals little about herself, inviting charges of exploitation and insensitivity, and causing tension in the romantic triangle.
James also withholds information from his daughter, keeping quiet about a relationship with work colleague Lisa (Danica Moors). But the more worrying challenge is his body’s rejection of testosterone, prompting depression and slowing down his physical transformation.
These are complicated issues, dealt with for the most part with intelligent restraint. For instance, Cormack’s screenplay waits until more than an hour into the film to have James open up to Lisa about the gradual path of self-discovery that led him to that point. He describes being a woman dressed up for the first time in male clothes and recognizing herself as “a beautiful man.” It’s perhaps the film’s most affecting scene.
Even if they risk tipping over into didacticism, James’ video recordings of meetings with other transgender people during a trip to San Francisco help contextualize the character’s experience, as does Billie’s web research into other children of transgender parents.
However, Hyde arguably overstates her themes of sexual fluidity and the rejection of strict binary gender definitions by having Billie butch up her look, putting Harry (an irritating character given to spouting on-the-nose dialogue) in touch with his feminine side, and even giving his young daughter, Frida (Audrey Mason-Hyde), a tomboyish style. Illustrating how much can happen in a year by punctuating each week’s meetings with a flash of world events – the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, a massive glacier split – also seems a tad obvious.
A slight imbalance in the way the characters are drawn inhibits the drama’s impact. James has held off on his transition for as long as possible, meaning it’s time to put his own needs first. Herbert-Jane, a non-gender-conforming individual who was a diversity consultant on the film before being cast, brings quiet depth to the role. It feels bracingly honest that James’ love for Billie doesn’t exclude frustration and even impatience with her difficult behavior.
But Cobham-Hervey, whose experience is in physical theater and circus, keeps Billie at a distance from the audience. Selfish and emotionally immature even by the standards of her age, she too rarely transmits genuine vulnerability. Josh and Jasmine are less walled-off, making their characters easier to like. The same goes for Tom, though the American-scooter-riding chef dad seems an impossibly perfect specimen of the evolved, mellow male.
Full of touching moments even if its emotional rewards remain somewhat muted, 52 Tuesdays feels highly personal and is never less than absorbing or sincere in its depiction of a non-traditional family navigating difficult changes.
DELAND, Fla. (AP) Anthony Lawrence completed 20 of 28 passes for 453 yards with three touchdowns to lead San Diego to a 47-16 victory over Stetson on Saturday.
Brian Riley and Justin Priest had 100 yards receiving for the Toreros (6-2, 4-1 Pioneer League). Jereke Armstrong had a 76-yard touchdown reception, and Riley also caught a touchdown for San Diego.
The Toreros never trailed and held a 27-9 halftime lead on the strength of all three of Lawrence’s touchdown passes.

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