Freedom Foundation – Fighting Labor Union Political Manipulation – Video

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Freedom Foundation - Fighting Labor Union Political Manipulation
Freedom Foundation #39;s Tom McCabe and Scott Roberts speaking at an event held in Vancouver, Washington on April 23, 2014. Hosted by Lynda Wilson (R), candidate for Washington State Representative...

By: Lew Waters

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Freedom Foundation - Fighting Labor Union Political Manipulation - Video

'The German Doctor' is underplayed, which makes it even scarier

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'Doctor' follows a doctor calling himself Helmut Gregor living in a South American village who, the audience discovers, is actually notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

Its appropriate that The German Doctor, set in Patagonia in 1960, resembles a monster movie even though we encounter no ghouls or goblins. The monsters here are strictly of the human variety. Based on a novel by the films writer-director, Luca Puenzo, the film is a fictional imagining of how a German doctor, calling himself Helmut Gregor (lex Brendemhl), insinuates himself into the South American village where he has taken up residence. As becomes clear all too soon, the good doctor is Josef Mengele, the notorious perpetrator of hideous human experiments at Auschwitz.

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The village is peopled with blond, German-speaking residents; a local school has photos of alumni beside a Nazi flag; and mysterious hydroplanes are constantly landing and taking off from a nearby lake. The spacious hotel housing Mengele is run by Eva (Natalia Oreiro) and Enzo (Diego Peretti), whose 12-year-daughter, Lilith (Florencia Bado), is unusually diminutive for her age a source of fascination for Mengele, who convinces her reluctant parents to submit to genetic research, developed in his home-grown lab, to grow her bones.

Since the real-life Mengele, who fled to South America along with numerous other Nazi war criminals, was obsessed with eugenics, it makes sense that the Mengele of this film would be fixated on Lilith, whom he deems a perfect specimen. Because Lilith is constantly taunted by her schoolmates, she is flattered and excited by Mengeles promise to make her grow. Only Enzo seems suspicious of Mengele almost from the start. His growing horror at what is slowly unwinding matches our own, especially when Eva becomes pregnant with twins. Twins were another Mengele fixation.

For people whose movie memories of Mengele conjure up Gregory Peck in The Boys From Brazil, The German Doctor will probably seem old-fashioned and underplayed. Puenzo doesnt allow her actors, most notably Brendemhl, to go all histrionic on us which, of course, makes everything seem even scarier.

Within its straightforward limits, The German Doctor is highly effective, but it doesnt stray beyond those confines. It doesnt do more than sketch the network of collaborators and criminals in this creepy community or delve more than superficially into Mengeles life history. That the film doesnt attempt to provide a psychological analysis of him I find commendable. Some monsters, at least in the movies, are beyond analysis.

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'The German Doctor' is underplayed, which makes it even scarier

Najib Witnesses MoU Signing Between MaGIC And Two American Organisations

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CYBERJAYA, April 25 (Bernama) -- Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak tonight witnessed the signing of memorandum of understandings between the Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) and Stanford University and UP Global to foster and develop a vibrant entrepreneur eco-system in Malaysia.

Strongly backing the MaGIC concept, Najib said he believed in young people for their passion, energy and creativity.

"Hence opportunities and the ecosystem have got to be created for them to succeed.

"This is the just the beginning of a success story. We want to churn out young entrepreneurs who can command the world stage in the future," he said in his speech.

MaGIC, the one-stop centre which will provide all necessary facilities for entrepreneurs, aimed to transform Malaysia into a dynamic entrepreneurial nation by enabling domestic and international entrepreneurs to successfully start and grow their businesses.

Two of Stanford University's world-class schools, the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford School of Engineering, will collaborate with MaGIC.

Meanwhile, the partnership with UP Global is designed not only to increase the level of entrepreneurial activity and new company creation in Malaysia but also to develop Malaysia as a global startup hub and a center of activity for South East Asia.

Other collaborations that would complement MaGIC's efforts would be between the Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences.

The collaboration would serve as a launching pad for the Bio-Entrepreneurship Programme which aimed to create an environment to enhance the commercialisation of bio-based products and services by local biotechnology researchers and entrepreneurs.

In addition, Malaysia Venture Capital Management Bhd (MAVCAP) also marked the kick-off of its third outsourced partner programme (OSPR) with its first OSP3 partner, Elixir Capital Management, a Silicon Valley-based fund manager to launch the ECM Strait Fund.

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Najib Witnesses MoU Signing Between MaGIC And Two American Organisations

Ray Fisher is Cyborg in Batman Superman 2016, Hobbit Battle of the Five Armies – Beyond The Trailer – Video

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Ray Fisher is Cyborg in Batman Superman 2016, Hobbit Battle of the Five Armies - Beyond The Trailer
Ray Fisher has been cast as Cyborg in Batman vs Superman 2016! Plus the final Hobbit movie becomes The Battle of the Five Armies! http://bit.ly/subscribeBTT Beyond The Trailer host Grace...

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Ray Fisher is Cyborg in Batman Superman 2016, Hobbit Battle of the Five Armies - Beyond The Trailer - Video

Caribbean dream

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Beach at Cabo San Juan Guia. Photo: Andrew Bain

From its mountains to beaches, this corner of Colombia offers plenty, writes Andrew Bain.

Not all lost cities in the South American mountains are at Machu Picchu. High in the northern reaches of Colombia, in the coastal Sierra Nevada range, a pair of lost cities lies hidden in dark jungle. Around them, monkeys scamper through the canopy, hummingbirds hover beside flowers, and poison frogs hop about the undergrowth. It's one of the most evocative mountain wildernesses in South America.

The Sierra Nevada is the world's highest coastal mountain range, rising to more than 5700 metres above sea level. A great portion of it is protected by Tayrona National Park, considered by many to be Colombia's finest national park.

Kogi village. Photo: Andrew Bain

People come mostly for its beaches - locals proudly and regularly tell you that these Caribbean beaches were once rated the second most beautiful in the world - but it's in the mountains behind the beaches that the haunting remains of two lost cities, Ciudad Perdida and Pueblito, furnish the jungle.

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Hardy travellers come to trek to Ciudad Perdida, an ancient city rediscovered by a treasure hunter in 1875. The trek is a journey of around five days on foot, wading across the Buritaca River seven times and sleeping and eating in basic conditions in indigenous villages.

Pueblito yields more easily and can be reached on a day hike that also takes in a number of the beaches. From Santa Marta, which is claimed as South America's oldest city, it's a short drive to the roadside village of Cabalazo, where I begin walking. Jungle teems down the mountain slopes, and inside this snarl of growth it feels almost as though you could lose a city in a week.

Hiking through Tayrona National Park. Photo: Andrew Bain

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Caribbean dream

Time again to Ride the Beaches

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Bicyclists cruise in Venice during during Ride the Beaches in 2011. (Herald-Tribune archive / 2011 / Dan Wagner)

Janice Hajek, a Clearwater cyclist, travels to Venice each April for Ride the Beaches.

She brings friends. She stays for the weekend. Its her favorite bike event in Florida.

The location, at Sharkys and at the beach, is fantastic, she says. And the route is fabulous, south of Venice and Manasota Key. And the food is good and you can sit and look around and look at the beach.

Hajek, 65, is looking forward to snacks during the ride, too. Marc Alton, the chef who founded the event, makes Sharky Bars out of Rice Krispies, chocolate, raisins and nuts. Theres nothing Hajek doesnt love about Ride the Beaches. Well, almost nothing.

The love bugs oh, god, I hope theyre not out this year, she says, laughing. We hated it that one time, but it was funny.

Riding SAG

David Reynolds, who owns Real Bicycles in Venice, says his bike shop always participates in Ride the Beaches.

Every employee will be going thats how it works around here, he says. Last year, we rode trikes adult tricycles and carried water and tubes. We ride SAG Support And Gear.

Volunteers with Ride the Beaches have already painted red, white and blue shark symbols at intersections throughout Venice. These colorful markers point cyclists toward 15-, 35- and 70-mile bike routes around town.

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Time again to Ride the Beaches

Local team gives artificial intelligence artistic boost

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BEIRUT: Many of us have had that moment walking down the street, catching the glimpse of an artist sketching a scene in front of him. Wanting to see things through his eyes, we stop to watch the process, eager to understand what makes him tick yet careful as we approach from behind so as not to break his concentration. I tried to recreate this fascination, says Guillaume Crdoz, a Beirut-based architect from Paris who, along with his Lebanese wife Souraya Haddad-Crdoz, runs a 3-D printing operation in Beiruts Geitawi district.

At last months Design Days Dubai, the annual international fair held in the Emirati metropolis, Crdoz, along with Nareg Karaolaghnian, a fluid mechanics engineer and professor at the American University of Beirut, unveiled their new invention: a robot that draws sketches based on images seen and then processed by a computer. The project, which took two months to complete from start to finish, tapped into Arduino, an electronics platform for artists, for the programming, while the body was created with Crdozs 3-D printer.

The concept is as frightening as it is impressive. Could a robot replace the creativity of a human artist? For now, no, but with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, professional sketch artists could be facing competition in the coming years.

The robot, which the men named the Obsessive Drafter for its rapid and repetitive strokes, is an unassuming apparatus that looks more like an elevated camera on wheels than a machine capable of processing detailed three-dimensional images and sketching their likeness.

Though it doesnt resemble a human in shape, the machine nonetheless has certain attributes that most artists possess: three joints, at the base, the middle and then at the end, or the wrist, which turns, bends and rotates the pencil as its sketching.

You still feel theres someone. The computer connects the picture and draws you, says Crdoz, who had the Obsessive Drafter sketch his face for a demonstration in Dubai.

As much as the work is a testament to the advancement of both 3-D printing and computer programming, Crdoz says that it is not an invention he intends to market but merely a piece of art he wanted to share with the public. In the coming months, he and Karaolaghnian will continue to develop the Obsessive Drafter to give it more precise sketching capabilities.

He also wanted to prove that such a complex machine could be made at a low price, one of the advantages of 3-D printing, which now allows once unthinkable feats such as children designing their own toys as well as the production of some products at a low cost.

Then, years ago, this could have only been done by a big company with a good-sized research budget. Now its completely available, Crdoz says. Before the 3-D printer, artists would make molds of everything. Now the little guys without money can sell [their products] on the first day. This will soon be a lot more common.

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Local team gives artificial intelligence artistic boost