NASA still not hiding aliens: Triangular 'UFO' debunked (+video)

Footage captured by NASA shows Venus, Earth and, on the opposite side of the field-of-view, a?briefly?mysterious triangular object headed our way.

Once again, alien conspiracy theorists have attempted to use publicly available NASA images to prove that the space agency must be engaging in an elaborate UFO cover-up. And, once again, they've been foiled by the laws of physics.

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This time, they called attention to?peculiar new footage?captured by a telescope onboard NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft ? one of a pair of probes parked on either side of the sun which, together, provide a 360-degree view of the inner solar system. The footage shows Venus, Earth and, on the opposite side of the field-of-view, a mysterious triangular object headed our way.

"Comparing it for size to the planetary objects that are seen in this telescope, if my calculations are correct, that thing is enormous," said YouTube user "BeePeeOilDisaster" in his video commentary on the footage, which was captured Dec. 27 -29. Talk of a cover-up quickly followed when, a few days later, NASA scientists updated the STEREO website to display newer images.?

This is not the first time?alien hunters?have found what they believe to be enormous UFOs in images captured by the STEREO probes. [Mysterious Planet-Size Object Spotted Near Mercury]

But this time, the team of scientists who work with data from the probes decided to address the claim directly. In?a post on the STEREO website, the researchers offered up an explanation of the triangular feature in the December footage. The researchers say it's no more than a trick of the light.

"The answer lies on the exact opposite side of the image," the scientists wrote. "At the same time as this strange-looking feature starts being visible, the very bright planet Venus enters the [telescopic camera's] field-of-view from the lower left."

The scientists note that Venus and the triangle, opposite each other across the middle of the camera plane, stay in step as they move. "This is not a coincidence. The strange-looking geometrical 'object' is actually an internal reflection of?the planet Venus?within the telescope optics. This effect has been seen many times before."

In this optical effect, incoming light reflects back and forth off lenses and mirrors inside the telescope; the shape of artifacts produced by this scattered light ? usually triangles and circles of various sizes ? depends on the relative orientations of those lenses and mirrors.?

Another example of internal reflection, this time of light from planet Earth, can be seen in?a STEREO-B image from May 2007. More examples of internal reflection and other optical and data-processing artifacts are displayed on the scientists' "Image Artifacts" Web page, along with explanations of the various effects.

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Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/LbY_7SaN6ow/NASA-still-not-hiding-aliens-Triangular-UFO-debunked-video

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IMF sees euro zone GDP down 0.5 percent in 2012: ANSA (Reuters)

MILAN (Reuters) ? The International Monetary Fund expects the euro zone economy to contract by 0.5 percent this year and warns that tensions arising from the bloc's debt crisis threaten global growth, Italian news agency ANSA reported on Thursday quoting a draft of the World Economic Outlook (WEO).

The figure is 1.6 percentage points lower compared with the IMF's September forecast, ANSA said.

The IMF is due to publish next week its latest WEO report.

ANSA said the IMF saw a growth of just 0.3 percent in Germany this year, accelerating to 1.5 percent next year.

Similarly, France was expected to grow by 0.2 percent this year and 1 percent the next.

Both Italy and Spain, according to the draft document, would record two years of negative growth. The Italian economy was expected to shrink by 2.2 percent this year, the Spanish by 1.7 percent.

The GDP contraction should slow to 0.6 percent next year in Italy and to 0.3 percent in Spain, ANSA said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120119/bs_nm/us_imf_weo_ansa

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Searching for someone to play a princess role in a 1x1 RP!!

RolePlayGateway is proudly powered by obscene amounts of caffeine, duct tape, Wordpress, Moodle, phpBB, AJAX Chat, Mantis, and the efforts of many dedicated writers and roleplayers. It operates under a "don't like it, suggest an improvement" platform, and we gladly take suggestions for improvements or changes.

The custom-built "roleplay" system was designed and implemented by Eric Martindale as of July 2009. All attempts to replicate or otherwise emulate this system and its method of organizing roleplay are strictly prohibited without his express written and contractual permission; violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

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David Coates: Republican Politics and the Unemployment Conundrum

In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the world discovered by Alice was one in which every aspect of reality was inverted. Big things were small. Small things grew big. The Cheshire cat faded into a grin. One side of a mushroom made you grow. The other made you shrink. It was also a world in which the Queen of Hearts had a simple solution to everything. "Off with his head!" Likewise in the world currently being created by the incessant chatter of Republican presidential wannabes, small characters want to be large, grinning is a substitute for substance, and all solutions are simple. In the inverted world of Republican primaries, our present scale of unemployment is entirely Obama's fault. Through the looking glass on offer from Romney and company, there was no unemployment before Obama shrank the economy by excessive spending, burdensome taxation and intrusive business regulation. Down the rabbit hole into which they would have us fall, a Republican Queen of Hearts can end unemployment at a stroke by taking those three evils away.

Oh that life was that simple, but it is not.

The Obama record on job-creation, spending, taxation and business regulation is not as the Republicans describe it. Nor are the causes of unemployment as straightforwardly remediable as they suppose. The clash on the record is well documented. That on the underlying causes of unemployment is less so. So instead of judging the job plans of any of the leading Republican candidates against a mythology of their own making, let's instead examine them against the real causes of American job loss since 2008. Let's set the tax-cutting, program-pruning, de-regulatory aspirations of Romney, Gingrich, Santorum and Paul against the full story of why this economy is no longer the job-creating machine it was in the 1990s. That story is multi-layered and interconnected. The Republican policy proposals are not; and in that gap between story and solution lie all the reasons why a Republican victory in November's general election can only make the unemployment problem in America significantly worse.

1. On the surface and in the most immediate sense, we face an unemployment problem that is cyclical rather than structural. People have lost their jobs and their homes because of a recession triggered by inadequately regulated housing and financial markets. The resulting attempt to slow the recession by public spending added significantly to a federal deficit already large because of earlier tax cuts and an unfunded war; and the depth of the recession was such as to take that federal deficit to a level unprecedented in modern peace-time. If our current political debate engages adequately with any layer of our present difficulties, it does so with this one. Republicans endlessly deny that unregulated markets caused this crisis and are forever attempting to label the recession as Obama's own, the better to obscure the degree to which the recession began when a Republican was in the White House and was brought on by an ill-regulated financial system. The Democrats have the better of the argument here. It is not difficult to demonstrate that this was a recession inherited by Obama rather than created by him, that it was a recession rooted in deregulation rather than over-regulation, and it was a recession eased rather than deepened by a Keynesian response. Unfortunately for Obama, however, it is also easy to demonstrate that the modesty of his administration's policies -- his failure to simulate enough or to reform housing policy sufficiently radically -- has indeed helped to prolong unemployment and weaken consumer demand. And if that is so, the immediate restoration of American employment would appear to require an increase in the very federal spending and Fed largesse that existing levels of public debt make it ever harder to justify and to finance. Level 1 of a four level conundrum.

2. What then compounds the continuing weakness of the American labor market is unemployment of a structural kind. The United States faces a global economic order that is undergoing rapid change. The much-vaunted strengths of the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism -- with its low levels of state regulation of business on the one side, and its thin layer of job protection on the other -- have left more and more Americans vulnerable to unemployment, and more and more American industries vulnerable to foreign competition. That competition has come from low wage economies in which state direction of industry is more prevalent and from welfare-based capitalisms with established track records on skill enhancement and high value-added manufacturing excellence. American jobs have gone off-shore. American wages have stagnated under the weight of foreign competition; and American living standards have been maintained only by (and to the degree that) America's overseas competitors have been prepared to reinsert their trade surpluses back into circuits of American finance. The long-term recreation of American prosperity requires, therefore, the regeneration of well-paying manufacturing jobs here in the United States, a recreation made more difficult by the weight of financial interests in the contemporary U.S. economy, and the propensity of U.S.-based corporations to outsource more and more of their basic production to state-guaranteed low wage labor markets overseas. Level 2 of the conundrum.

3. If that were not enough, the search for renewed and sustained American employment has to operate against the backdrop of two previous searches -- two previous social compacts between capital and labor -- each of which was temporarily successful but both of which have now failed. American prosperity in the immediate post-war period was generated by a compact between highly-productive American manufacturing firms and well-unionized semi-skilled American labor, a compact which raised working class wages in the United States to unprecedented (and globally unmatched) levels for a generation. In that first growth period, generalized prosperity trickled up, not down. The second, triggered by the Reagan Revolution, turned the U.S. economy into a job-creating machine by combining business-sector deregulation with a state-led weakening of American labor. Profits soared, wages stagnated, low-wage work proliferated, and American living standards were protected only by the vast majority of adult Americans working longer hours, regularly refinancing their homes, and relying on the general availability of cheap credit. In that second growth period, generalized prosperity trickled down, not up. Inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth increased. Rates of upward social mobility declined, and eventually the pace of job creation slowed to a trickle. The oil crisis and productivity slowdown of the 1970s ended the first growth period and laid the grounds for the second. The collapse of the housing bubble and the credit-crunch of 2008 ended the second, and made vital the search for a third. Any serious political project to renew American prosperity, therefore, has to do more than generate short-term employment growth. It has to find a way out of the wreckage of the Reagan Revolution, a route to a new social compact between capital and labor in America. Level 3 of the conundrum.

4. Any serious political project to renew American prosperity has also to recognize, and retreat from, the huge costs of empire. We are not simply at the end of a growth period. We are also fast approaching a moment -- seen in every major imperial system since at least the Romans -- at which imperial overreach generates unacceptable levels of resistance abroad and unacceptable levels of economic and social distress at home. In the last seven decades, the United States has spent vast treasure abroad: wars in Europe, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan; and bases established and maintained in every area of the global system outside the communist bloc. Policing the capitalist half of the cold war global system cost vast quantities of American resource, human and material. Policing it created spaces in which competitor economies could and did grow. Policing it distorted and weakened the structures of the economy at home. Policing it generated a domestic culture vulnerable to hubris, accustomed to greatness, and prone to self-delusion. The costs of empire are now everywhere visible in post-9/11 America, but cannot yet easily be conceded by the vast bulk of a political class (and an electorate) whose political memory is far shorter than the seven decades of American global leadership. Ron Paul always strikes a chord with his audience when he speaks of this need to draw back troops and commitments, but is just as regularly and immediately dismissed as a serious political contender by the media and the Republican leadership because he does so. Finding a route out of empire into a post-imperial security and prosperity is America's most basic long-term need. It is also the one that an imperial political system of the kind that has built up in Washington since 1941 is least equipped adequately to address.

Even with a Democrat in the White House, politics in Washington now has the feel of Nero fiddling while Rome burnt. Alienation from the superficiality of the daily political circus, combined with the inability/unwillingness of that circus to address some/all of the layered issues within which we all are obliged to live, is likely -- unless Barack Obama lifts his game -- to lock America into a series of one-term presidents. For in such circumstances of political denial, campaigning is so much easier than governing. As Mario Cuomo once said, the first is poetry, the second is prose. When those in power will not address the totality of the problems which surround them, then those out of power are easily able to point to the surface manifestations of the underlying problems, offer a superficial analysis of their cause, and win easy and brief power themselves: before inevitably falling victim to the next wave of cheap critics set in motion by their own failures to deliver when in office.

The only politics that will eventually sustain itself is one that is willing to go the full nine yards, and tackle all four levels of the conundrum simultaneously. That quality of politics is not on offer anywhere in the Republican Party these days -- even Ron Paul hits Level 4 but has nothing sensible to offer on the other three. Maybe on the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, there are stirrings. But we are still waiting, even from them, for a genuine New Deal. We are waiting, and time is running out.

For a fuller outline of this argument, see David Coates, Making the Progressive Case: Towards a Stronger U.S. Economy. First posted with full academic citations at www.davidcoates.net

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-coates/gop-unemployment_b_1210230.html

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Wall Street gains 1 percent as IMF gives Europe hope (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Stocks jumped to their highest since July on Wednesday as the International Monetary Fund sought to help countries hit by the European debt crisis, while forecast-beating earnings from Goldman Sachs dispelled some worries over bank profits.

The stronger-than-expected earnings from Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) followed disappointing results from Citigroup (C.N) on Tuesday and JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) last week.

Goldman shares shot up 6.8 percent to $104.31, while the S&P financial sector (.GSPF) rose 1.7 percent, leading the S&P 500 higher.

The banking sector has outperformed the broader market so far this year, but the financials sector was the S&P 500's weakest-performing one last year.

While the Goldman results supported financial shares, the IMF's willingness to bolster its crisis-fighting resources gave the sector a big push. Financials had suffered throughout 2011 on worries that Europe's debt crisis would hit banks globally.

"Any time liquidity is added to the financial system, it gives financials a little bit of breathing room, and it will result in higher prices for the banks," said Kevin Caron, market strategist at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co, in Florham Park, New Jersey.

The IMF is seeking to boost its war chest by $600 billion to help countries reeling from the crisis, even though some nations insist Europe must first do more to support ailing members, according to sources.

Home builders' shares surged after data showed U.S. homebuilder sentiment unexpectedly jumped in January to its highest level in 4-1/2 years. The PHLX housing index (.HGX) climbed 3.1 percent, while the Dow Jones home construction index (.DJUSHB) rose 4.4 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) rose 96.88 points, or 0.78 percent, to close at 12,578.95. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) added 14.37 points, or 1.11 percent, to 1,308.04. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) climbed 41.63 points, or 1.53 percent, to close at 2,769.71.

XILINX AND ALTERA UP LATE

After the bell, shares of chipmakers Xilinx (XLNX.O) and Altera (ALTR.O) rose following their earnings reports. Xilinx was up 7 percent from its close of $35.30 and Altera was up 5.1 percent from its close of $40.72.

An index of semiconductor shares (.SOX) climbed 5 percent during the regular session. Intel (INTC.O) is expected to report results on Thursday.

Despite the optimism over the IMF, investors watched cautiously as Greece and its creditors resumed negotiations on terms of a planned debt swap, hoping to overcome an impasse in talks and stave off a painful default.

The benchmark S&P 500 closed above 1,300, a key resistance point that analysts said signal more room to rally if the index stays there.

Within the tech sector, Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) jumped 3.2 percent to $15.92 a day after co-founder Jerry Yang said he was severing all formal ties with the company he started in 1995. Shareholders had blasted Yang for impeding investment deals that could have transformed the Internet media group.

In other bank results, Bank of New York Mellon Corp (BK.N) slid 4.6 percent to $20.30 after the world's No. 1 custody bank said fourth-quarter earnings fell.

Another big custody bank, State Street Corp (STT.N) slid 6.6 percent to $39.95 after saying it accelerated an expense- control program, a sign it still sees continued weakness in global capital markets.

Financial results will remain in the spotlight, with reports from Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) later this week. Bank of America's stock gained 4.9 percent to $6.80 and Morgan Stanley's shares were up 6.8 percent at $17.35.

"As we've seen, investment banking revenues have been very weak, and we think that's going to be a trend that continues and (there's) also a lot more exposure to Europe in those banks," said Dan Neuger, portfolio manager, head of U.S. and Europe active equities for PineBridge Investments in New York, which has about $70 billion in assets.

In terms of investing, "we don't like the large money-center banks. That's one area we've been away from," he said. "Where we think there is more value is in the regional, more domestically focused smaller banks."

Volume totaled about 7.3 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Amex and Nasdaq, above the daily average of 6.68 billion.

Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a ratio of 4 to 1 while on the Nasdaq, More than three stocks rose for every one that fell.

(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch, Additional reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120118/bs_nm/us_markets_stocks

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Hamels seeking 'elite' contract

January 17, 2012, 10:05 pm

One contract watch is over for Cole Hamels and another is just beginning.

Hamels and the Phillies avoided an arbitration hearing when they agreed to a one-year, $15 million contract on Tuesday (see blog).

The Phillies already had control of Hamels? rights for 2012. The only mystery was how much of a raise would he get from the $9.5 million he made in 2011. Now that the numbers are official, things are about to get really interesting for Hamels and the Phils.

The 28-year-old lefty will be eligible for free agency at the end of the 2012 season and the big question is: Will he become the Phils? next $20-million-per-year talent, joining Ryan Howard, Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay in that stratosphere?

Agent John Boggs would not put a number on his client?s value on Tuesday night, but he sure made it sound as if that?s what it?s going to take for the Phillies to retain Hamels beyond 2012.

?At the appropriate time, Cole is looking to be compensated as one of the premier left-handed pitchers in baseball,? Boggs said in a telephone interview from his San Diego office. ?Without putting a number on it, we?ll leave it at the fact that he?s an elite pitcher. Look and see what elite pitchers are compensated with. Hopefully at the end of the day we?ll be able to get something done with the Phillies that will reflect that.?

A quick look at some of the top lefties in baseball shows a number of contracts with average annual values of at least $20 million. One of them belongs to Lee, whose AAV is $24 million.

While Boggs did not want to put a specific number on Hamels? value, he made it clear that he does not consider Jered Weaver?s five-year, $85 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels to be a valid comparable for his client. Weaver, who is a year older than Hamels and has similar career numbers, signed the deal in August. It carries an AAV of $17 million.

?I don?t think it?s a parallel,? Boggs said of Weaver?s deal. ?That contract is great for Jered. I understand it. But he took a different path and left a lot of money on the table. He came up through the Angels system and grew up in their backyard. He?s pitching where he grew up. That situation appeals to him. It?s a similar situation to when I had Tony Gwynn.

?Without getting into specifics of what we?re looking for, the Weaver situation is unique to Weaver.?

So the Phils would appear to have their work cut out for them in their quest to retain Hamels longterm. General manager Ruben Amaro Jr. does not talk about the specifics of contract negotiations, but he did say he will continue to speak with Boggs and try to get a longterm deal done. Boggs said he was planning to visit with Amaro during spring training in Clearwater. The Phils have exclusive negotiating rights with Hamels until five days after the 2012 World Series, and Boggs said he hadn?t considered setting any deadlines.

If Hamels stays healthy in 2012 and continues to improve ? he had a career-best 2.79 ERA and finished fifth in NL Cy Young voting in 2011 ? he will have plenty of suitors on the free-agent market. But his preference at this time is to get something done with the team that drafted him in 2002.

?When you?re this close [to free-agency] you have mixed emotions,? Boggs said. ?But Cole has come through the Phillies organization, and if you asked him his preference, more than likely he?d want to remain with the Phillies. That?s how it would be going into the negotiations, but every negotiation is different. Everything depends on our perceived value of what Cole is worth and what their perceived value of him is. That will dictate if a long-term deal gets done. We?ll always give the Phillies every opportunity to secure him.?

Also Tuesday, the Phils avoided arbitration with utility infielder Wilson Valdez, who signed a one-year deal worth $930,000, up from $560,000 in 2010.

Hunter Pence is the team?s lone remaining arbitration-eligible player and the two sides have exchanged figures. Pence filed for $11.8 million while the team came in at $9 million. The two sides could negotiate an agreement -- $10.4 million is the midpoint -- or go to a hearing during the first two weeks of February. If a hearing is needed, a panel of arbitrators will pick either the player?s figure or the team?s figure. Pence went to the table last year and won a $6.9 million salary from the Houston Astros. He is not eligible for free agency until after the 2013 season.

E-mail Jim Salisbury at jsalisbury@comcastsportsnet.com

Source: http://www.csnphilly.com/blog/phillies-talk/post/Agent-expects-elite-contract-for-Hamels?blockID=633252&feedID=704

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Android A to Z: What is fastboot?

What is fastboot? In Android, fastboot is a special diagnostic and engineering protocol that you can boot your Android device into.  While in fastboot, you can modify the file system images from a computer over a USB connection.  It's a powerful, nerdy tool that deserves to be broken down into terms we all can understand -- let's try and do that.

Not all phones have a fastboot mode that the user can access.  It's turned on with Nexus devices by default (as well as a few other phones and tablets) and has been enabled by independent Android developers and enthusiasts on some other phones.  It also requires more than what ships with the Android SDK, and different USB drivers for Windows computers.  Fastboot runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux and all the information about setting it up can be found in the forums if you're interested.  Once set up, you boot your phone to fastboot and you can flash image files to your phone's internal memory.  Flashing a custom recovery like ClockworkMod is a popular use case, as is resetting it all back using factory images after we're done breaking things.  The images you flash don't need to be signed with a particular key, so just about anything will try to flash -- even if it shouldn't be used, so use care.  There are other commands you can use with fastboot, and they're a bit more advanced.  Things like erasing partitions and overriding kernel command line options can be done, and this makes the tool very useful for developing hardware and software solutions that may need customized booting procedures.  With a little bit of knowledge, and the right Android hardware, fastboot can be a great tool.

Previously on Android A to Z: What's an ETF?; Find more in the Android Dictionary

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/uUzDAdNL-84/story01.htm

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