interesting things
The former Obama regulatory czar talks about how he writes in half-hour intervals, and what the difference between academia and government is.
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via The Daily Beast – Latest Articles http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/17/cass-sunstein-how-i-write.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29
The media conglomerate, which announced last year that it would split its entertainment and publishing divisions, will name its entertainment division “21st Century Fox.”
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp media conglomerate, which last summer confirmed it was considering splitting its publishing and entertainment divisions, has announced it will name its entertainment arm “21st Century Fox,” a play on its 20th Century Fox movie studio.
21st Century Fox, whose new moniker replaces the previous announced Fox Group, will maintain a global portfolio of cable and broadcasting networks that includes, among many, Fox, FX, National Geographic, and Star; it will also house the aforementioned 20th Century Fox film studio.
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The Academy has invited Smash and Chicago producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron back to produce the Oscars. “In order to establish continuity with this year’s enormously successful show, we felt it was important to give these consummate professionals the green light now to begin creating another great evening,” reads the Academy’s statement. Though next year will be Seth MacFarlane-less, please recall Zadan and Meron did launch the classic “everyone who complained missed the joke, it was satire” argument in the wake of MacFarlane’s undesirable hosting stint.
Read more posts by Zach Dionne
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,oscars 2014
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,neil meron
via Vulture http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/oscars-craig-zadan-neil-meron.html
There were hundreds of heroes in the aftermath of Monday’s tragic bombing attacks in Boston. Doctors, police officers and even former NFL players responded with tremendous courage and saved lives. Carlos Arredondo — easily recognizable in photos and videos because of his cowboy hat — was one of those heroes and is prominently featured in two of the more memorable and traumatic images from Monday’s attack.
In the above photo, Arredondo can be seen apparently holding together the femoral artery or tourniquet of a victim who had lost both his legs in the attack. “I kept talking to him. I kept saying, ‘Stay with me, stay with me,’ ” Arredondo told the Press Herald.
And at the 1:45 mark of the video below, you can see Arredondo rushing to help victims just seconds after the first explosion.
But who is Arredondo? As several tipsters and and publications have noted, the 52-year-old has quite the past.
Arredondo was watching the race to support a runner who was running the marathon in honor of Arredondo’s son, Lance Cpl. Alexander S. Arredondo, who was killed in Iraq in 2004. When Arredondo was told (on his 44th birthday, no less) about his son’s death by a group of Marines, he didn’t believe them. From a 2007 New York Times article:
“I just screamed,” he said. “I said ‘No, no! It can’t be my son.’ “
Mr. Arredondo said he “lost it.” He ran to his garage and grabbed a gallon of gasoline and a propane torch.
He took a sledgehammer and smashed the government van’s windshield and hopped inside. As the officers tried to calm him, Mr. Arredondo doused himself and the van with gasoline and lit the torch.
There was an explosion, and the officers dragged Mr. Arredondo to safety. He suffered second- and third-degree burns over 20 percent of his body.
“I went to my son’s funeral on a stretcher,” he said.
The incident – and the 10 months he spent in the hospital recovering – spurred Arredondo to a life of activism protesting the war in Iraq. He drove around the country in his son’s truck, which was carrying a coffin and was decorated with pictures of his dead son at his funeral. “As long as there are marines fighting and dying in Iraq, I’m going to share my mourning with the American people…Every day we have G.I.’s being killed, and people don’t really care enough or do enough to protest about how the war is going,” he told the Times. “Some people say I’m dishonoring my son by doing this, but this is my pain, my loss.”
That loss grew exponentially four years later, when Arredondo’s surviving son killed himself at age 24, partly out of grief from losing his older brother. Now, Arredondo has again found himself in the midst of tragedy and again responded with resiliency and courage. Below is an interview with Arredondo taken after the bombings.
[Image via AP]
via Gawker http://gawker.com/5994736/cowboy-hat+wearing-hero-of-boston-bombings-is-famed-peace-activist
You’ve probably seen this now iconic photo of three Boston police officers and a man knocked down by the blast just after the bombs went off. As noted earlier, the man in question, 78-year-old Bill Iffrig of Lake Stevens, Washington, was a bit bruised but otherwise unharmed.
After the jump, a video interview this evening with Iffrig, just released by ESPN …
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via Talking Points Memo http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/04/that_older_man_knocked_down_in_the_photo.php
The Boston Globe’s Big Picture has the most stirring images from yesterday. A reader responds to what was probably the most gruesome photo to surface:
Please, please, I hope to find that the man in the wheelchair with the bilateral leg trauma (and amputations) has survived. He will be in every prayer I have the ability to pray. If you hear of him, please let us know.
He appears to be alive and stable. A little background on the young man here. By the way, the guy in the cowboy hat seen helping in the photo is also featured in this stirring Youtube, in which he recalls the carnage while shaking uncontrollably. He also appears to be the same guy holding up the American flag in the middle of the bomb site. His name is Carlos Arredondo and his remarkable backstory is here.
There was a late entry to the list of totally unacceptable reactions to the Boston Marathon bombing when Sean Hannity’s Fox News program opened with the following video clip. Apparently someone decided the footage from the tragedy wasn’t dramatic enough, so they set it to what Deadspin notes is the theme “I Am the Doctor” from the BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who. In a word, no.
Read more posts by Margaret HartmannCaroline Shin
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via Daily Intelligencer http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/hannity-turns-boston-tragedy-into-action-montage.html
Democrats were feeling pretty good last week after inking a bipartisan agreement on sweeping background checks for gun purchases and getting the votes to begin a Senate debate on new gun restrictions. But now they return to the Capitol at just the beginning of what will be a long, tough road to turn gun legislation into law.
First, the bill must survive this week’s planned debate in the Senate. And it’s still unclear whether the pact struck by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania to expand background checks has the 60 votes needed to pass. Indeed, it looks like it might not.
“Just because your leadoff hitter is on base in the first inning doesn’t mean you won the game,†a GOP Senate leadership aide said. “It just means your leadoff hitter’s on first base.â€
via Homepage http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/still-a-long-way-to-go-in-senate-on-gun-control-20130415
NBCNEWS: ‘YOUNG PERSON HERE ON STUDENT VISA’…
via DrudgeSiren.com – All Stories http://www.drudgesiren.com/allhl.php?id=164993&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+drudgesiren%2FoGpG+%28DrudgeSiren.com+-+All+Stories%29#h164993
As investigators try to figure out what happened today during the bombings at the Boston Marathon, they’ll turn to video taken at the scene of the explosions.
In addition to any closed-circuit television cameras lining Boylston Street and its surroundings, The Bureau Chief of Public Information, Cheryl Fiandaca, called for members of the public to send in video from near the finish line.
Once the police have the prospective evidence in hand, they’ll need to run forensic analysis on it. What we know from recent years is that the amount of evidence can be staggering large. For example, the Vancouver riot in early 2011 brought 1,600 hours of video streaming into that city’s police department. Just to watch all that video through one time is a substantial task, let alone examining it closely or trying to find events or people of interest.
Right now, there is no video software that can do this type of analysis, not even in a first-pass way. IARPA (DARPA for the intelligence services) put out a call for proposals in 2010 for this kind of “Automated Low-level Analysis and Description of Diverse Intelligence Video.” It described, in brief, the problem that investigators (or intelligence analysts) face:
Massive numbers of video clips are generated daily on many types of consumer electronics and uploaded to the internet. In contrast to videos that are produced for broadcast or from planned surveillance, the “unconstrained” video clips produced by anyone who has a digital camera present a significant challenge for manual as well as automated analysis.
So, at the moment, human investigators must watch and code each and every second of the video that they collect. While the Boston police may have the resources they need, chances are that they’re going to be swamped with video from the scene, given the number of spectators and the prevalence of cameras. This is the future we live in: Major events are photographed and recorded by hundreds of people.Â
Until we know more about the bombings, we don’t know under whose jurisdiction the investigation will come. The Federal Bureau of Investigation analyzes video within its Operatonal Technology Divison, inside the Digital Evidence Laboratory by the Forensic Audio, Video, and Image Analysis Unit (FAVIAU). In 2010, that unit had just 26 agents.
If Federal or local police do need help, they could reach out to Digital Media Evidence Processing Lab at the University of Indianapolis, which is run by the Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association.
The lab has 20 video workstations running Ocean Systems dTective forensic video software. It’s set up for training police in video forensics, but has been envisioned as a place that could serve as a headquarters for emergencies like the one in Boston.
After the Vancouver riots, police in that city brought the video they received from citizens to the lab. “Working around-the-clock shifts, analysts and technicians examined more than 5,000 hours of video while tagging more than 15,000 criminal events and individuals,” trade journal Evidence Magazine wrote in 2012. “The approach proved quite powerful. Whereas investigators required four months to process just 100 hours of video after the riots in 1994, the thousands of hours of video recorded in 2011 were processed and initially tagged in just two weeks.”
This will become the sad new ritual of mourning a tragedy: sending and processing the horrific memories of an event in hopes of finding evidence to bring criminals to justice.
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via Technology : The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/how-the-boston-pd-could-examine-the-videos-from-the-bombing/275008/
