April 1, 2008 -- SUPPORTERS AND providers of commercial CME are anxious as the influential Institute of Medicine (IOM) mulls conflicts of interest in medical research...
A new exhibit of Chinese artists opens at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this week. The exhibit highlights a common theme in modern Chinese art: the conflict between the individual and the collective. China recently surpassed France as the world's third largest art market and prices are rising quickly.
NO DIRECTION HOME
Private Benjamin gets discharged. Arielle is now a civilian.
Israelisms goes to Sundance!
The fate of our kidnapped soldiers is confirmed as our nation mourns their deaths.
Samir Kuntar reveals the truth. The conflict with Lebanon/Hezbollah/Iran is not over. Their bloodlust continues.
The implications for Gilad Shalit.
Olmert: Game Over!
The Kuntar Video
What the Arab world had to say and what the international community didn't.
March 1, 2008 -- The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict By Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes W. W. Norton 192 pages, $22.95. FOR...
Ecrivain, géostratège, spécialiste des "guerres irrégulières", Gérard Chaliand passe plusieurs mois par an en Afghanistan, notamment pour le Center for Conflict and Peace Studies (CAPS), un centre d'études qu'il a contribué à mettre en place, à Kaboul, avec des chercheurs afghans.
April 1, 2008 -- Although the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty identified the responsibility to prevent as the single most important...
Mai multe grupuri de Mos Craciuni americani sunt in conflict, fortandu-i astfel pe multi dintre acestia sa se imparta in functie de care grup este mai puternic. Ostilitatile dintre barbosi au degenerat pe internet, in acest caz pe Elf Net, un chat pe care Mosii schimba informatii despre cate centuri mai sunt in stoc si despre cum sa-si vopseasca barbile.
June 1, 2008 -- [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Amongst the first European manufacturers to have entered the observation drone market were Sagem with the Crecerelle (itself...
HOUSTON, Texas, July 18 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) -- Hot on the pages of Oprah's O Magazine July 2008 issue is a stunning diamond cuff bracelet by online jewelry sensation WhiteFlash.com. Wearing the bold piece in the July feature story "Hello, Sexy!" was Judson O'Hair (page 196) a 41 year old technology sales executive who has admitted to loosing her sensual edge when it comes to style. 
The captivating feature story redefines the meaning of the phrase "inherently sexy" by transforming four everyday working women's looks and uncovering their hidden inner bombshell.
Known for featuring wearable and transitional stylish accessories and fashions, Oprah's O Magazine hit the mark by selecting the show-stopping cuff for Judson to wear in her final "reveal" when she transformed from everyday mousey into seductive red carpet diva.
Featuring 10 carats of stunning bezel set "A Cut Above" diamonds in a slinky fabric-like 18K gold cuff, the bracelet typified her new found fearlessly bold inner self. 162 Whiteflash ACA diamonds adorn this bold bracelet.
No stranger to helping to create red carpet looks for Hollywood's trendsetting divas, WhiteFlash.com has dressed many notable celebrities such as Jessica Alba, Jessica Simpson, Elizabeth Banks, Lindsay Lohan, Gina Davis and Adrianne Curry.
For more versatile and unique styles to transform your look, visit www.WhiteFlash.com or www.dreamsofafrica.org for Whiteflash's view on conflict-free diamonds.
All trademarks acknowledged. No celebrity endorsement claimed or implied.
Copyright © 2008 Send2Press® Newswire, a unit of Neotrope®
TAGS: Send2Press Newswire, WhiteFlash diamond jewelry, conflict free diamonds
FishbowlLA:More On LAT Departures
FishbowlNY:Fewer Than 8.3 Staffers to Touch a WSJ Article
FishbowlDC:Hume To Step Down From "Special Report" After The Election
TVNewser:How Greta Got Brett Favre to Go On the Record
PRNewser:Six Reasons Why You Should Keep PR Going in a Recession
GalleyCat:Conflict of Interest at The New York Times
UnBeige:New Museum Announces International Triennial for Emerging Artists
AgencySpy:DRAFTfcb NY - With $8M in Layoffs, Is It Morphing Into a Pharma Shop?
MobileContentToday:Cell Phones As "Mom-Avoidance Devices"
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
June 10, 2008 -- VMware ThinApp Agentless Application Virtualization Enables "Package Once, Deploy Anywhere" Non-Disruptive Virtual Applications PALO...
April 7, 2008 -- Byline: David Ricketts Individuals who resign from trustee boards in a bid to avoid conflicts of interest, could do more harm than good, a...
Rumors and conflicting reports are flying about what the government may do to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Marketplace's Bob Moon explains the mixed signals that have investors worried about another crisis in the mortgage meltdown.
This show is to answer questions from parents, students and guardians about how to prepare for a successful school year. We will look at strategies for conflict resolution, study habbits,how to survive registration,the internet,homework and general questions.
School starts the first full week of August, and it's time to update the calendar 5 minutes of schedule gathering 5 minutes of calendar updating 5 minutes of checking for important dates and/or conflicts Thanks for listening, and please rate the show if you enjoyed it :)
A colossal marble head of the Roman emperor Hadrian has been installed at the British Museum ahead of a major exhibition that opens later this month.
October 1, 2007 -- The FSA has slammed groups running closed and open with-profits funds under its Treating Customers Fairly policy. In a letter to chief...
What do you do if you only have a 386 PC on your desk and need to sate this craving for world domination? Why, play Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator, of course. And this is exactly what I did back in 1994, when I had been stuck for hours on end manning the editorial offices of the college paper.
Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator, or simply Conflict, is a turn-based government simulation game designed by David Eastman and published by Virgin Interactive in 1990. Although available for DOS, Atari ST, and Amiga, I played it only on DOS on (yes, you guessed it) the 386.
The game is set in fictional 1997, when the prime minister of Israel has just been assassinated, leaving the player to run the country as the new head honcho. The player’s objective is to cause the defeat of the neighboring four states, either by invasion or political destabilization. What, no options for peace? Haha.
For those who have forgotten how to play the game, and those who have no idea whatsoever about what I’m talking about, here’s a little gamplay backgrounder, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Each game turn represents one month in real time. Each turn the player decides what diplomatic, espionage and military actions to take with regard to the other countries in the game, and then ends the turn. The game engine then runs and the results of the turn occur (each turn begins in fact with some information about what has occurred in the previous turn being presented as a screen of newspaper headlines). The actions available to the player are broken up into two phases: diplomatic/espionage and military.
Diplomacy
Each country in the game has a diplomatic relationship with every other country in the game, with that relationship varying from military pact (best) to war (worst), through a number of stages: Excellent (military pact), Profitable, Beneficial, Favorable, Satisfactory, Workable, Indifferent, Lamentable, Deplorable, No relations, At War.
Each turn the player directly sets Israeli diplomatic policy with regard to the other countries in the game. Diplomatic policy is very simple: Israel is either trying to improve the diplomatic relationship, keep it as it is, or make it worse. The action change in the relationship for a turn depends upon Israeli policy set against the policy of the other country; if both are trying to improve, the relationship will improve by one step. If either tries to make the relationship worse, it will deteriorate by one step. Otherwise, it remains steady.
When a relationship is Indifferent and Israel decides to reduce the relationship in the diplomatic phase, or if the relationship is at Lamentable or Deplorable, Israel can declare war and invade.
When a relationship is at Profitable, the player can choose to request a military pact. If this is given, then if Israel goes to war with a country which also has a border with the allied country, that country will in turn reduce its relationship to Lamentable and then declare war. (Note however there is no such obligation placed upon the player, who can simply ignore wars his pact partner enters into).
Espionage
Each country’s government has a stability rating. If that rating falls to the lowest value, the government collapses and the country is out of the game. Each turn, for each country in the game, Israel can choose to work to reduce the stability of the Government, keep it as it is, or increase the stability of the government. Stability ratings are: Very solid, Firm, Moderately solid, Good, Fair, Fragile, Weak, Very weak, Dangerously weak, Close to revolution.
Also, each country has a level of insurgency, which represents how well-organized the insurgent forces are. Insurgency ratings are: Ready for action!, Guerilla Force, Strengthening, Ineffective, Disorganised Rabble, and Non-existent.
If a country’s stability rating is Weak or below or if the insurgency the country is at Guerilla Force or better, Israel can opt to consider extreme measures, which are to attempt assassination of the country’s leader or start a coup. If this attempt succeeds, the country collapses and is out of the game.
However, if the assassination attempt fails, Israel is detected and relations with that country and with the West sour. Also, if an attempted coup fails, the insurgent forces are usually destroyed. A coup is very unlikely to succeed unless the insurgents are very strong and the government is very weak, so a premature coup which destroys the insurgency can be a useful strategy for helping a government (often much more effective than disrupting a fast-growing insurgency).
Once diplomatic and espionage policy is set, the player moves on to the military actions. It is not possible to come back to diplomacy and espionage once the player has completed diplomacy and espionage and moved to military actions.
Military
The player has two tasks to perform: the first is to spend the defense budget, the second is to set military actions with regard to the other countries in the game.
Each turn, the player receives a budget to spend on weaponry. The size of the budget seems to depend on the level of hostility in the surrounding countries; if Israel is at war, or if another country is in the process of reducing diplomatic relations to declare war, the budget is large (300 million plus, per turn). If the level of hostility is low, and life is peaceful, the budget is small (100 million).
As such, the defense budget awarded by the game is an indicator of the policy intent of neighboring countries; if they’re peaceful, the budget will be small, if one or more countries is bent on war, the budget will be large.
Weapons are bought from the USA, United Kingdom, France or a private arms dealer. (Each country sells weapons that it itself produces, except the private dealer, who is a South African providing access to Russian weaponry.) Each source offers a different range of weapons with different prices and most countries will only offer better weapons once a reasonable number of purchases have already been made (which establishes that a relationship has been built up). Not all countries offer all weapons; for example, anti-SAM helicopters are only available from the USA and the private dealer.
Whew! Information overload! Let’s talk about Conflict again in a later post. In the meantime, let’s see if Conflict will work on my Pentium IV Core2Duo.
When I used to play the RPG Vampire the Masquerade in both tabletop and LARP forms, there was a vampiric ability called Presence. It allowed the user to influence the emotions and actions of others. In terms of social networking, it might have been nicknamed the drama power. To this day, I still believe it actually exists on LiveJournal. Probably reaching back to the date when “friend” overcame “befriend” as the popular verb form and it’s opposite “unfriend” gained even more use in day to day language.
Web 2.0/Social Networking provides us a different type of Presence though, the ability to appear omnipresent in a way. But it can also send very confusing signals about one’s activities, location, online attention span, etc. I signed up for ping.fm which is a service that can send a status message, microblog (140 characters) or an actual blog post to many different services. Effectively it updates your status/messages on all services at once. I still can’t tell whether this is a good thing or just annoying, since if people are following you on those many services, they’re pretty much getting spammed when you send a multi-update, especially those using SMS notifications.
Other services strive to act as the lighthouse in the Marvel title Excalibur which exists simultaneously across the multiverse. They will update your actual profile information across multiple services so that you remain the same on facebook, myspace, hi5, etc. While I think that would be a great way to keep your online social (friendly) and networking (work-related) profiles in line, I usually keep most of mine pared down to the basics anyway.
The most popular of them all, I think, are the multi-account instant messenger clients like Adium (my fave at home) and meebo (my fave at work). I think these are great. One application, all your chat buddies, click a button and your away/present status is set for all services.
Unfortunately… these apps make it all too easy to abuse what might be considered online etiquette? People log onto an IM client and are always marked “away” which is like the real world equivalent of getting into work early and shutting your office door. No one knows if you’re really there and screening or if you’re completely not there. Better yet is the “idle” status which lets people know you were there, but you’ve gone off to tend to something more important… in some cases for up to 3 days at a stretch. I’ve recently decided that if someone is always away, they’re effectively “offline” to me, so no whining why don’t I ever send you a message, ok?
But what’s truly fun is when the IM “away” status conflicts with one’s other social network status messages.
Recently I was chatting with this guy, let’s call him Joey Jo-Jo Junior Shabadoo, on OkCupid. It’s a “dating” site, which seems more a place for people to sit around and fill out quizzes all day on a site that isn’t Facebook. He seemed nice, so we started using AOL instant messenger. He asked me to add him on Facebook, I did. He asked me if I wanted to go out this past week. I was so inclined, so he figured we’d naturally chat again during the week and make plans.
Now since that one IM session, he was marked away 100% of the time. So I left one message, the IM equivalent of voice mail, and figured he’d get back to me. Nothing. But at the same time, his Facebook status is changing, he’s uploading photos, playing with applications and making updates to twitter. So contrary to his IM status, he’s not “away” or “idle”, he’s either ignoring me or ignorant. Neither of which really bugs me, aside from how stupid it looks.
Didn’t expect this entry to devolve into a dating rant, did ya? 
I’m sure that this is the kind of thing that causes social networking drama in those much younger than me, but for me it’s just kinda dumb. In the real world this would be like giving someone your phone number, home and work address and access to CCTV monitors tracking your movements right after saying, “I’ll call you,” when you have no intention of doing so. I’d much rather you do this:
Isn’t it just easier in the long run? This just gives me a lesson in continuing to keep my online and real-world interactions a little more coordinated. Or at the very least, if I plan to go off the grid for whatever reason, to stay off the grid and not put forth the appearance that my online persona is suffering from MPD. 
To my friends out in San Diego today, Happy Pride!
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October 1, 2008 -- The Arab-Israeli Conflict - A History, by David W. Lesch. Oxford University Press, 2008. 495 pages. $38.95, paperback. Professor Lesch has tried, in...
I was already half way finished with a summer night song compilation for Naturalismo when I was tagged by the wonderful folks over at When you Awake to compile a list of 7 songs for summer. After trying to make an entire mix albums worth of songs, I quickly realized that the seven I had stood on their own and no more were needed. I originally intended the mix to capture that feeling of the end of the day when the lazy golden sun turned and gave way to the bluish hue of dusk. I think the compiled list of songs still capture that feeling…
Download Edvard’s Seven Songs of Summer Mix
Tracklist:
or Listen to a track or two from it here:
1. Unknown 78 - Ukelele Song
Unspeakably entrancing.
2.Animal Collective - Prospect Hummer
I’ve been listening to this non-stop over the past few weeks, I think this song and the rest of the Prospect Hummer EP are some of the most beautiful music recorded.
3. Brinsley Schwarz - Nightingale
A random find from a few months ago that I’ve been addicted to. Take the better harmonies of the Band but replace their country twang with more of a bluesy picking style. Easily one of my favorite new finds of the last year.
4. Canned Heat - Going up the country (From 7″)
As cliche’ as it might be, this is probably the perfect summer driving song.
5. Bill Quick - Beautiful people
Lots of conflicting information about Bill Quick online, from what I gathered, Mysterious Bill Quick was son of North-American dad and Venezuelan mum (Hm, sounds familiar…), and landed in Madrid in the early 70s, spending most of his time playing music and manufacturing leather belts and other stuff that he later sold at the popular Rastro flea market in Madrid, regardless-this is an amazing folk song and the vocals are stunning.
6. Lucky Dragons - Wooden Cave Loop
This pretty much captures where my music interests have been leading me more and more towards. I’ve been listening to a lot of Sacred Harp singing records lately and my favorite track is this one from 1911 where a single guy records his vocals onto multiple tracks then loops them all into this beautiful harmony. This is the modern equivalent.
7. Bulent Ortacgil - Kediler
This guy is the Caetano Veloso of Turkey.
March 31, 2008 -- Byline: Bob Garfield In a gem of a movie called "Roger Dodger,'' there is an exchange in which an embittered adman played by Campbell Scott...
November 15, 2007 -- The October 18 letter from Miami-Dade County's budget director hit Joseph George like a punch to the gut. Scurrying around trying to get the new...
On Sunday, Taliban militants waged the deadliest assault on U.S. and NATO troops in three years, highlighting the challenge of the ongoing armed conflict. A New York Times Magazine reporter and a counter-insurgency expert measure the complexity of the conflict.
![[Ninja] We must fight! [Porcupine] So, it's your belief that violence is an acceptable means to conflict resolution? [Ninja] Sure. It's worked for centuries! Why stop now?](http://piximix.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/07/13/pxp_cmc0388.jpg "Pixipets 388")