'Dirty Dozen' trumpeter sidelined by dog bite

NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? Dirty Dozen Brass Band trumpeter Efrem Towns is recovering at home in New Orleans from a vicious attack by a dog in an Atlanta motel.

He missed performances in Colorado and New Orleans after the attack on Nov. 18, and tells The Times-Picayune (http://bit.ly/XOJoNr) that he doesn't know if he'll make the band's next scheduled gig on Dec. 28.

He and baritone sax player Roger Lewis say the dog surged from an open door after Towns knocked at Lewis' room.

Towns was transported to Grady Hospital, where he received 30 stitches in his groin.

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band formed in 1977, and is credited with creating the contemporary, funk-infused brass band sound. It's been featured on albums with David Bowie, Elvis Costello and the Black Crowes.

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Information from: The Times-Picayune, http://www.nola.com

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dirty-dozen-trumpeter-sidelined-dog-bite-000200806.html

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'Dallas' star Larry Hagman dies at 81

Tony Gutierrez / AP file

Actor Larry Hagman poses in front of the Southfork Ranch mansion made famous in the television show, "Dallas," in Parker, Texas, Oct. 9, 2008.

By NBC News staff and wire

Updated at 3:10 a.m. ET: Actor Larry Hagman ? who became a global icon playing the cunning J.R. Ewing in the television series "Dallas" ? died on Friday at the age of 81, NBC Dallas-Fort?Worth reported.

Hagman?was at Medical City Dallas Hospital when he died Friday afternoon from complications of his recent battle with cancer, the Dallas Morning News reported, citing members of his family.

Linda Gray, who played J.R.'s long-suffering wife, Sue Ellen, was with Hagman in Dallas when he died, the actress' spokesman, Jeffrey Lane, said in an email.?

Hulton Archive / Getty Images

"Larry Hagman was my best friend for 35 years," Gray said in a statement. "He was the Pied Piper of life and brought joy to everyone he knew. He was creative, funny, loving and talented, and I will miss him enormously."

'Surrounded by loved ones'
Despite his fragile health, the actor had returned to Texas from his home in California to film season one of TNT?s "Dallas" reboot and part of season two. The original show, in which Hagman played a conniving businessman who people loved to hate, ran from 1978 to 1991 on CBS.

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"Larry was back in his beloved Dallas, re-enacting the iconic role he loved most," the family said in a statement, the Morning News reported. "Larry?s family and close friends had joined him in Dallas for the Thanksgiving holiday. When he passed, he was surrounded by loved ones. It was a peaceful passing, just as he had wished for. The family requests privacy at this time."

A statement from Warner Bros. described Hagman as "a giant, a larger-than-life personality whose iconic performance as J.R. Ewing will endure as one of the most indelible in entertainment history."

"He truly loved portraying this globally recognized character, and he leaves a legacy of entertainment, generosity and grace. Everyone at Warner Bros. and in the 'Dallas' family is deeply saddened by Larry's passing, and our thoughts are with his family and dear friends during this difficult time," the statement added.

Earlier in his career, Hagman was known for his role as Maj. Anthony Nelson, the master-turned-husband of a beautiful genie played by Barbara Eden in the sitcom "I Dream of Jeannie."

In July 1995, he was diagnosed with liver cancer, which led him to quit smoking, and a month later he underwent a liver transplant.?

After giving up his vices, Hagman said he did not lose his zest for life.?

"It's the same old Larry Hagman," he told a reporter. "He's just a littler sober-er."?

Hagman was born on Sept. 21, 1931, in Texas, to?Benjamin Jack Hagman and Mary Martin.?His father was a lawyer who dealt with the Texas oil barons Hagman would later come to portray.

He was still a boy when his parents divorced and he went to Los Angeles with Martin, who would become a big name in Hollywood and a Tony winner on Broadway, where she starred in "Peter Pan" and "The Sound of Music."?

Hagman eventually landed in New York to pursue acting, making his stage debut there in "The Taming of the Shrew." In New York, he married Maj Axelsson in 1954 while they were in a production of "South Pacific. The marriage produced two children, Heidi and Preston.?

Getty, Reuters, Getty

'Big laughs, big smiles'
Hagman served in the Air Force, spending five years in Europe as the director of USO shows, and on his return to New York he took a starring role in the daytime soap "The Edge of Night." His breakthrough came in 1965 when he landed the "I Dream of Jeannie" role opposite Barbara Eden.?

After hearing of Hagman?s death, Eden paid tribute to him on Twitter and Facebook.

?Amidst a whirlwind of big laughs, big smiles and unrestrained personality Larry was always, simply Larry,? she wrote on Twitter.??Larry Hagman not just a great actor, not just a television icon, but an element of pure Americana. I'll miss him.?

In his later years, Hagman became an advocate for organ transplants and an anti-smoking campaigner.

He also was devoted to solar energy, telling the New York Times he had a $750,000 solar panel system at his Ojai estate, and made a commercial in which he portrayed a J.R. Ewing who had forsaken oil for solar power. He was a longtime member of the Peace and Freedom Party, a minor leftist organization in California.?

Hagman told the Times that after death he wanted his remains to be "spread over a field and have marijuana and wheat planted and harvest it in a couple of years and then have a big marijuana cake, enough for 200 to 300 people. People would eat a little of Larry."?

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Source: http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/24/15398595-larry-hagman-tv-villain-jr-ewing-on-dallas-dies-at-81?lite

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Don't be fooled! Great camera deals are harder to spot on Black Friday

Featured

4 days

Gary Merson , HD Guru

We?ve scoured the major retailers? Black Friday deals and found the most outstanding values for every member of the family. A 32-inch scree... Read more

19 hrs.

Devin Coldewey , NBC News

While there are plenty of deals and discounts to be had on TVs, phones,?laptops and other tech products, camera-wise, there aren't a lot of reasons to wait in line until midnight?after Thanksgiving dinner. That's because the year's best cameras ? many of which are?rounded up here?? simply?aren't subject to fire-sale pricing. The cameras you'll most likely?find in sales circulars?are cheapies to begin with, or are?nicer but older cameras that have to move because they're just taking up space.

Sure, you can get a Nikon D3200 for $600 at Best Buy on Friday, and that's a good deal on a relatively new camera. But this is the same good deal that's been going at B&H and other retailers for a while now. Same thing?goes for the unremarkable $649.99 Black Friday?price tag on the remarkable Sony NEX-5R with kit lens.?

The camera you'll see everywhere?with the biggest price cut is the?Canon T3.?Though it'll take decent pictures, it's a year old, was downmarket to begin with, and has long since been replaced by shinier hardware.?

What about the dozen or so point-and-shoots that cost less than a steak dinner? Many of them, particularly the?off-brands, will?perform worse than your phone's camera.

Only a few noteworthy point-and-shoots appeared as we combed Black Friday ads from top retailers. Canon's ELPH 110 HS and Samsung's?WB150F are both modest but decent little cameras?that usually go?for around $180, but will be selling for $130 at Best Buy?and Adorama respectively. Neither would be a bad camera to keep as a back-up, or to give to a photo-enthusiastic kid.

Another recommended?Canon, the SX260, lists for $299.99, so the fact that Best Buy and others are selling it for $199 is pretty great. It's definitely a deal ? especially with free case and memory card ??but the camera already sells on Amazon for $229.99, and we spotted one other?retailer selling it for $209.99.

Whether the motivation lies with?the retailers or the suppliers (or both), the price flexibility in the camera world?shows a desire to offload old inventory, not to?shed light on hot new cameras. Perhaps the assumption is that shoppers,?in the heat of the Black Friday or Cyber Monday?moment, won't have time to check the specs. Meanwhile, camera buffs will likely?pay more for hot devices like the Olympus?E-M5 or Sony RX100, so why offer them deep?price cuts?

But if you're a photographer ??or just shopping for one ? don't despair. Prices may not be plummeting on the best stuff, but?accessories are on sale, and camera bundles offer a new kind of value proposition. Who couldn't use an extra 16-gigabyte SD card? At under?$10 each in multiple sales they're a solid deal. And every photographer needs a couple external hard drives ? and you can get multi-terabyte ones for under $100 at Staples, Best Buy or Office Depot.

If you do decide to pick up a camera, even at fairly regular prices, keep an eye out for bundles. Sometimes in order to get around manufacturer ?pricing rules, shops sell a camera for an ordinary price but include a bunch of goodies to make up for the lack of savings.

For instance, here's that D3200 at Adorama for just under $600. But if you scroll a little further, here's the same camera with the same lens for the same price ? except you get a bag, a 16-gigabyte card, and some filters as well. Why is this? It's a mystery, but not the bad kind of mystery. Get the bundle. Even if there are things in there you don't think you'll use, it can't hurt to take it all and sort out what you'll keep once you get home.

And if you do?want to pick up a sweet new DSLR or fancy point-and-shoot, just remember that prices will?never go up, and tend to go down. Generally, the worst time to buy any camera is the month or so after it launches, but soon enough, the pricing does?start to ease downward, even if it doesn't drop like a rock. Just because the camera of your dreams isn't a doorbuster doesn't mean it's not delivering value. And in the Black Friday frenzy, when every slash of a price tag triggers a visceral reaction,?it's worth remembering that you sometimes have to pay more to get more.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC?News Digital. His personal website is?coldewey.cc.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/dont-be-fooled-great-camera-deals-are-harder-spot-black-1C7154889

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Out of the Closet | Lezlie Laws

I have to say more about the speech I gave to Sigma Tau Delta honorary society a few weeks ago.? I didn?t have much time to prepare that speech, so I just spoke what was alive in me at the moment.? And these days, I?m all over the topic of creativity?how to find it, use it, hone it to good purposes.? I was anxious because this topic does not fit the genre of ?speech-giving to students.??? Previous speakers gave fairly academic talks, speaking of the value of literature, the importance of the liberal arts, making yet another case, as I find? English teachers always do, for why the study of English is valuable in the 21st century. All good and important things to say, for sure.

But I knew, on some level, anyway, that I was doing something very different.? I knew I could talk to a smart group of English majors about one thing only:? the state of their creative lives.? I would go out on the skinny branches and say something very specific about how I think they should conduct themselves?not just for the sake of their own spiritual and creative lives, but for the sake of the world, which desperately needs people who tend to their souls, which is what you do when you?re being creative.? In essence, I knew I would finally come out of the closet.

The academic closet, that is.? In fact, it has been clear to me for a long time that I am no academic.? I don?t do research anymore, and I don?t write books anymore.? I still read, of course, and I still write, of course, but not about the themes and issues of literature.

So what have I been doing all these years? ?Who am I if I?m not an academic? ?I have become, slowly, almost imperceptibly at times, a creative technician of the soul.? A what?? Yes, a creative technician of the soul.? A person interested in the big questions of life and the myriad ways by which we can explore, probe, claim, and answer those questions.? A person who is more interested in the transformation of a spirit than the performance of a scholar.? This might be speaking blasphemy, and I am sad to say that for a long time that fear has kept me closeted.? Or at least relegated to the safety of my own idiosyncratic classroom where I have a group of students brave enough and willing enough to explore the big questions with me.

I chose this platform, a group of high achieving English majors and their parents, to speak the truth I have come to know only too late in my life, in the hopes that speaking this truth to them would allow them decades of productive, positive, enlightened living and working.

This speech is, of course, only an outline, a shorthand version of key notions I?ve been studying and practicing and teaching for years.? To many of my students, especially those in my creative writing classes, these practices will sound very familiar.? They are ideas that naturally apply themselves into the teaching of writing.? Many people see any type of creativity as a talent you are either lucky enough to be blessed with or not?a gift mysteriously granted or withheld by a volatile muse.

I have come to understand that this is not only not true about creativity, but it is a disheartening, even defeating notion.? Why try to be creative if you didn?t get the thumbs up from God?? And further, I am dedicated to sharing with others the very habits and attitudes that can actually help us train up our creative selves.

In the next phase of my teaching life, I will attempt to unpack each of these six techniques for those who have asked me to say more about these practices, what they mean, and how they can be appropriated by anyone, not just someone lucky enough to be touched by the muse.? And, I?ll address how to incorporate them into a life that?s already full with responsibilities and duties and obligations.

My experience shows me how easy it is to become overwhelmed:? Work, families, households, civic activities all claim a piece of our time.? And whether we ignore those claims, or over deliver on those claims, we?re all still affected at the soul level by the expectations of a world that says be smart, be on it, be under control, be successful, get it done.? Those subliminal messages keep us pretty hepped up, in one form or another.? And too often, the way we choose to respond to those messages can wear us out, or worse, do us outright harm?at the soul level if not at the physical level.? We do harm to the quiet, fragile creative spirit that wants to come out of the basement and live happily with the rest of the family, to be accepted as a full member of the community, and to be fed and loved and cultivated the way other parts of our being are.

How do we coax it out and help it thrive are the questions many of us struggle with.? And this is the very question that my work is all about.? A technician of the soul finds both the artfulness and the skillfulness (techne) it takes to hone up our creative spirit.

What?s Next?

In the months to come, I hope to offer you ways of changing habits and attitudes that support the emergence and flourishing of your creative spirit.? I want to share what I?ve learned from studying the creative masters, as well as from watching my own awkward steps toward creative living.? I hope that, together, we can all learn to integrate more fully the skills of living responsibly with the joys of flourishing creatively?the dedicated worker bee with the joy-seeking lightning bug.

Source: http://lezlielaws.com/2012/11/out-of-the-closet/

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France's Sarkozy placed under investigation

PARIS (AP) ? He faces the possibility of charges on allegations he took advantage of an aging heiress to get envelopes stuffed with illegal cash for his presidential campaign. His party is mired in an internal feud. And still France's conservatives see Nicolas Sarkozy as their best hope to return to power.

It's a sign of how polarizing the former president is for the French: Many were suspicious of his close ties to the wealthy and threw him out of office; supporters see him as the only person able to save the country's economy and wish he'd return. On Thursday, the former president was named a key ? and potentially indictable ? witness after 12 hours before a judge to answer questions about whether he accepted illegal campaign donations from the 90-year-old L'Oreal heiress, Liliane Bettencourt.

Bettencourt's former accountant told police she handed over ?150,000 ($192,000) in cash she was told would be passed on to Sarkozy's campaign treasurer. In July, a magistrate ordered the seizure of Sarkozy's diaries, including his calendars.

The sum, although it pales in comparison to U.S. campaign funding amounts, shocked many French citizens because spending on political campaigns is tightly limited here. Individual campaign contributions to candidates are limited to ?4,600 ($5,930), and no candidate can spend more than ?22 million ($28 million) on an entire presidential campaign. The French government reimburses some of that money to the winner.

By comparison, an estimated total of $4 billion (?3 billion) was spent on campaigning for this year's U.S. presidential elections, and in the final months of the campaign each candidate was pulling in upward of $100 million (?77 million).

The investigation that has snarled Sarkozy centers on the finances of Bettencourt, Europe's richest woman and the focus of a long-running family feud over her fortune. Bettencourt, who was reported to suffer from Alzheimer's disease, has since been placed under legal protection.

Sarkozy's election loss in May cost him his immunity from prosecution. By July, his offices had been raided. The Bordeaux prosecutor, Claude Lapland, told the Sipa news agency after Thursday's hearing that Sarkozy was given the status of what in France is known as an "assisting witness," with the possibility of facing charges later on allegations of abusing someone in an impaired state, swindling and abuse of confidence.

"Given the extremely strict rules and controls, illegal financing is completely impossible," said Claude Gueant, who was Sarkozy's campaign director at the time, chief of staff and later his interior minister.

Sarkozy entered the Bordeaux courthouse Thursday without notice after a decoy vehicle lured away the cameras hoping to catch him on the way in, according to the Sipa news agency. He and his lawyer met privately with the judge who will decide whether he faces charges.

Bettencourt's money was contested long before Sarkozy entered the picture. Her daughter accused a celebrity photographer of abusing her mother's alleged mental frailty - and bilking the elder heiress out of ?1 billion ($1.3 billion) in cash and artworks. The elder Bettencourt's ex-butler leaked details of household conversations, including one in which the mother seems confused about whether or not she gave an island in the Seychelles to the photographer as a gift.

The island has since been sold off to a wildlife preservation organization. The photographer and an asset manager for Bettencourt face criminal charges of taking advantage of the L'Oreal heiress. And Bettencourt herself has been placed under legal protection of her relatives, including the daughter who first brought the case to light.

As the scandal grew, the French economy stalled, and French voters tossed Sarkozy and his conservative UMP party into the political wilderness. And now the internal vote to replace the ex-president as party leader has descended into bitter allegations of questionable vote counts, leaving the party in chaos.

A poll released Thursday showed that a majority among the conservative UMP party think Sarkozy would be the best presidential candidate for the 2017 elections ? nearly double the percentages of those who backed the two men now wrestling for power.

The person mediating the party dispute is Alain Juppe, a former prime minister who was convicted in 2004 in an illegal party financing scheme and has since bounced back as a power broker in the conservative party.

Former President Jacques Chirac, another conservative caught in that same scandal, is the only French leader since World War II-era Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Petain to be charged or convicted of a crime.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/frances-sarkozy-placed-under-investigation-213228093.html

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Muscle powers spearing mantis shrimp attacks

ScienceDaily (Nov. 22, 2012) ? A hungry mantis shrimp may be the last thing that a passing fish sees before it is snatched from the water by the predator. Maya deVries from the University of California, Berkeley, says 'Spearer mantis shrimps stay in their sandy burrows and they wait for a fast-moving prey item to come by, but then they come out of nowhere and grab the prey with their long skinny appendages.' However, little was know about how these vicious predators unleash their lightning-fast attacks.

According to deVries, the spearing shrimp are closely related to smasher mantis shrimps, which pulverise the shells of crustaceans and molluscs with a single explosive blow from their mighty claws. Having decided to find out how the crustaceans unleash their deadly assaults, deVries says, 'We thought that the spearers would be just as fast -- if not faster -- than the smashers because they have a smaller time window in which to capture their prey.' deVries and her colleagues publish their discovery that Lysiosquillina maculata spearer mantis shrimps power their mighty spears with muscle alone while smaller Alachosquilla vicina spearer mantis shrimps use a more conventional catapult mechanism in The Journal of Experimental Biology.

Working with her PhD advisor, Sheila Patek, deVries took a short trip along the corridor to Roy Caldwell's lab to film some of his L. maculata mantis shrimps. Coaxing the nocturnal lobster-sized crustaceans to assault frozen prawns, deVries recalls that the animals were reluctant to attack; 'They probably didn't like the bright lights', she says. However, when the duo analysed the speed of the strikes, they were surprised that the spearer's harpoon speed was much slower than that of their smashing cousin's. Explaining that smashers can unleash strikes at speeds ranging from 10 to 23m/s, the duo were taken aback that L. maculata could only muster 2 m/s.

Smasher mantis shrimp store catapult energy in skeletal springs that they unleash during a deadly assault; therefore deVries analysed the trajectories of several L. maculata claws in action, and realised that the hefty crustaceans were not using the same mechanism. 'The spear has all the same components [as the smashers]', explains deVries, but she adds that the shape of some of the structures are subtly different and the spring did not deform to store energy prior to an attack -- possibly because it is too stiff -- preventing L. maculata from firing a ballistic attack. 'If the L. maculata movement is similar to other ambush predators that have muscle-driven strikes, it is possible that these guys are creating strikes with muscle movement', says deVries.

Next, deVries and Patek tested the reactions of another, smaller mantis shrimp, Alachosquilla vicina, to find out whether all spearing mantis shrimps have opted for muscle-powered strikes. Elizabeth Murphy filmed the animals snapping up brine shrimp however, it was obvious that the diminutive crustaceans were using a spring-loaded catapult to spear their nimble prey. The team could clearly see energy-storing deformations in the spring structure before the mantis shrimp unfurled their deadly assaults at 6m/s.

But the team were still puzzled by L. maculata's sluggish performance. Maybe the lab-based animals had become too unfit to produce explosive attacks? Traveling to Australia to film L. maculata hunting in the wild, the team were relieved to see that the animals' reactions were well within the range of speeds that they had measured in the lab. Adult L. maculata use muscle-powered attacks all the time.

Having confirmed that it is possible for the large shrimp to produce lightening-fast strikes without using a spring mechanism, deVries says 'We're trying to get more L. maculata in the lab to look at the complete size range in one species to see how the strike scales and to find out if there is a size threshold above which you can't have a spring-loaded strike anymore.'

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by The Journal of Experimental Biology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS. The original article was written by Kathryn Knight.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. deVries, M. S., Murphy, E. A. K. and Patek, S. N. Strike mechanics of an ambush predator: the spearing mantis shrimp. J. Exp. Biol, 215, 4374-4384; 2012 (in press)

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/Ntjz9YXkrGw/121122095431.htm

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Thread: Shop tow vehicle bedroom remodel - Family Woodworking

is done.

Here is how it looked before.

Here is how one end looks now, reusing as much of the original as possible. I did introduce a new concept to RV cabinetry construction though - GLUE!

It was a queen perpendicular with the back wall. It is now a single parallel with the back wall. I gained ~2 feet of floor space, lost one drawer and made another more shallow. All is good.

Now awaiting the new mattress.

Tomorrow, tools get stacked and packed into the shop trailer. Order will come much later. Now the goal is to get out of here.

Source: http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?28937-Shop-tow-vehicle-bedroom-remodel

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