Freedom camping at bay could continue

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Christine Garey.

Councillors at yesterday's planning and regulatory committee meeting voted to continue the trial at least until June, when council staff are due to report back to the committee again.

That would show the impact of recent changes to signs and other measures, introduced following public complaints, designed to keep down the numbers of freedom campers stopping in the area.

Staff would also report on options to introduce additional trial sites next summer, after councillors worried having just one site on the peninsula had concentrated problems in one community.

The decisions - subject to full council approval - came despite a plea from community board chairwoman Christine Garey, who urged councillors at yesterday's meeting to end the Macandrew Bay trial.

The area beside Ralph Ham Park was designated as one of three overnight stops for freedom camping vehicles without toilets during the trial, as part of an easing of freedom camping rules across the city.

It was supposed to cater for up to five vehicles each night, but more than 15 stayed some nights, prompting complaints about campers' behaviour.

The board last month recommended the council end the Macandrew Bay trial at Easter, and find a new peninsula location to resume the trial in October.

Mrs Garey told yesterday's meeting that ''categorically'' remained the community's view, and any move to open up additional trial sites on the peninsula would ''simply spread the problem''.

She believed the real solution would be to develop a new Department of Conservation-style camping ground on the peninsula - something that was to be considered by the council, but not until next year.

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Freedom camping at bay could continue

Cris Cyborg earns $25,000 purse, 45-day medical suspension for Lion Fight 14 loss

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Cris "Cyborg" Justino may have fallen short on Friday night at Lion Fight 14, but she still topped opponent Jorina Baars in one major way: salary.

Cyborg, Invicta FC's current featherweight champion, earned $25,000 for her third foray into professional kickboxing, according to information released to MMAFighting.com by the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC).

By contrast, the still undefeated Baars took home a reported purse of $5,000 for her unanimous decision victory over Cyborg, which took place at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas NV.

The longer, taller and more experienced Baars battered a game Cyborg for five rounds, dropping the MMA fighter several times with a dazzling array of front kicks and knees to claim Lion Fight's inaugural women's welterweight title. Three ringside judges scored the contest 49-45, 48-45, and 49-44, all in Baars' favor.

"It's a different sport," a beaten but still smiling Cyborg said afterward. "I compete sometimes in jiu-jitsu as a world champ, and I tried to be a champ (in kickboxing).

"Who inside MMA that's a champion goes to fight Muay Thai? Nobody. But I love competing."

Cyborg also received a 45-day medical suspension from the NSAC following the conclusion of the bout, with no contact allowed until April 28, 2014.

A complete list of Lion Fight 14 salaries and medical suspensions can be seen below.

Lion Fight 14 salaries

Lion Fight 14 medicalsuspensions

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Cris Cyborg earns $25,000 purse, 45-day medical suspension for Lion Fight 14 loss

More rubbish than ever before found on UK beaches

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By Travelmail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 03:32 EST, 1 April 2014 | UPDATED: 05:55 EST, 1 April 2014

More litter than ever before is being thrown on to the UK's beaches with seafronts in Wales almost twice as dirty as the rest of the country.

Some 223,405 pieces of rubbish were collected from coastal areas in the UK last year, new figures show, with seafronts in Englands North West deemed the filthiest in the country.

As part of the annual Beachwatch Big Weekend 2013, volunteers picked up on average 2,309 bits of rubbish on every kilometre cleaned the highest amount in its 20-year history.

Rubbish: Volunteers collected the most litter from Gwynedd (pictured), Anglesey, and Denbighshire in Wales

That figured doubled for beaches in Wales, with more than 4,000 pieces found.

Plastic was the top of the list of litter items, with 48,813 bits collected, followed by caps and lids, polystyrene, crisp and sweet wrappers and string.

Lauren Eyles, Beachwatch Officer at the Marine Conservation Society, which organises the annual event, said: This is a disgusting tide of litter which is threatening the safety of beach visitors both human and animal.

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More rubbish than ever before found on UK beaches

Its Comedian vs. Computer in a Battle for Humor Supremacy

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Photo: Sam Gustin/WIRED

Over the years, weve become accustomed to computers besting humans in tests of raw intelligence. Deep Blue out-maneuvered world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, and in 2011 Watson trounced Jeopardy winners Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. Sure, computers can play the Sicilian Defense better and have a firmer grasp of obscure geographybut facts and analysis arent everything. We wanted to establish a different litmus test for computer supremacy, so we devised a new matchup between man and machine to establish once and for all whos funnier. Your contestants in the bout: stand-up comic Myq Kaplan versus Manatee the joke-telling computer.

Its perfect timing for such a duel. Computers in the comedy business are becoming an increasingly big deal. Last fall, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence held its first-ever symposium on artificial intelligence and humor. Comedic robots are making a splash at SXSW Interactive and garnering GQ profiles. And a few years ago, Manatee caused a political stir when pundits learned its designers at Northwestern University had scored more than $700,000 in federal stimulus funds to help develop it.

Its no surprise, really. The name of the game in the tech industry is making interactions between people and their gizmos ever more humanand human often equals humorous. That means everything from computer programs that make fun of themselves when they make a mistake to a GPS device that sarcastically acknolwedges when you ignore its directions. Just the facts, maam, isnt going to play as machines get more and more involved in our lives, says Northwestern University professor Kristian Hammond, who helped design Manatee and now develops news-writing computer programs for the company Narrative Science. Its all about making the communication between people and the machine a smooth, compelling interaction.

Theres another reason computer scientists are eager to tackle comedy: jokes are some of the toughest tests of their programs. If artificial intelligence programs are truly going to model human intelligence, they have to be able to grasp all the clever ways people make things funny.

In fact, scientists have been hard at work for decades designing robo-jokesters. Among the efforts are JAPE, the Joke Analysis and Production Engine; STANDUP, the System To Augment Non-speakers Dialogue Using Puns; LIBJOB, the light bulb joke generator; SASI, a sarcasm-detecting program; and DEviaNT, the Double Entendre via Noun Transfer program, which finds the perfect spots in natural language to insert Thats what she said. Plus, for computer programmers looking for just the right witty acronym for the next big comedy computer, theres the HAHAcronym Generator.

What have most of these attempts discovered? That up until now, computers have been able to tell jokes, but only really dumb ones. Consider the following computer-generated zingers:

What kind of animal rides a catamaran?

A cat.

What is the difference between leaves and a car?

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Its Comedian vs. Computer in a Battle for Humor Supremacy