GALLERY: Freedom by name, freedom by nature

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Topics: aged care, care services, freedom aged care, toowoomba

ALL it takes is a quick walk through the new $15million wing of Toowoomba retirement village Freedom Aged Care to see just how much the industry has changed in recent years.

Hundreds of prospective residents and their families got their first glimpse of the new 53-home extension at its official opening today.

The new addition brings the complex's total number of homes to 161, equating to a $44million investment by Freedom in Toowoomba since 2011.

Spokesman Patrick Smith said something "went wrong" with aged care about 30 years ago - nursing homes became more like hospitals and residents like patients.

New developments like Freedom's Village Ct complex have sought to right those wrongs.

"Freedom is full-care, but what makes it different is that all our residents have their own homes," Mr Smith said.

"They have their front door, their partner living with them and a few even have pet dogs.

"We try to maintain that sense of independence."

The nightly two-free-drink happy hour at the aptly-named Wrinkles Bar has proven a hit.

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GALLERY: Freedom by name, freedom by nature

Freedom Act to End NSA Data Collection Coming on Tuesday

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Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, right, is expected to introduce a bipartisan Freedom Act Tuesday aimed at ending the NSA's invasive data collection.

Patriot Act author Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., will likely introduce his bipartisan Freedom Act on Tuesday, which aims to end the NSA's bulk collection of Internet and phone records, and could set off a showdown in Congress between privacy rights and national security needs.

The specific date for the bill to be introduced will be Tuesday, Breitbart News reports.

[READ: Germany Joins Brazil Seeking U.N. Action Against Spying]

"The bill will be introduced sometime next week," says Ben Miller, a spokesperson for Sensenbrenner's office.

Sensenbrenner is preparing to a submit a bill called "The USA Freedom Act" with help from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, D-Mich.

The Freedom Act would end the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' communications records by amending Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Sensenbrenner was the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee when the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred, and was one of the original authors of the Patriot Act.

[READ: Surveillance Creates Rift Between U.S. and Europe]

The bill would also amend Title 4 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and section 702 of FISA to restrict surveillance to authorized international terrorism investigations. A privacy advocate to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would also be created in the bill to argue civil liberties concerns and appeal court decisions. The bill would also require the government to disclose FISC decisions that contain a significant construction or interpretation of the law. It would also increase the ability of Internet and telecom companies to disclose information about government requests.

The House defeated a proposed amendment to the defense appropriations bill by seven votes in July that would have restricted the NSA's collection of phone records and metadata, which portends a heated battle for the Freedom Act.

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Freedom Act to End NSA Data Collection Coming on Tuesday

Turn Fido into a K9 cyborg

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I am back where Im supposed to be, and my tracker is in power save mode.

That is the opening line of an email I receive multiple times a day from Saggio, my 3-year-old German Shepherd. No, he has not yet learned to type or use the Internet. (Hes not that smart.) Instead, his comforting correspondences come courtesy of Tagg, a small, Apple-white gizmo that attaches to his collar. I doubt he even knows its there. And he certainly has no clue that its getting in touch with people on his behalf. But there it is my dog now sends emails.

Like FitBit, or any number of other fitness trackers available for humans, Tagg keeps tabs on various aspects of its users life specifically, how much exercise Saggio receives each day and where the hell hes wandered off to. But unlike human gadgets, Tagg provides more than just bits of data for obsessed pet owners like myself to pour over it gives him a way to communicate with me that has never before been possible.

My dog has, in other words, become a cyborg. And Tagg and other similar products are only the beginning.

Big furry business Over the past 30 years, Americans have become mad about their pets. More than 74 percent of U.S. households purposefully share their dwelling with another species, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. Thats up from 56 percent in 1988, by the American Pet Products Associations (APPA) count. Some 55.7 million households have at least one dog, and 45.3 million have a cat (or 10) sulking around. We have, in total, 218 million pets in the U.S. not counting fish. My house, for example, is currently occupied by two humans, one dog, three cats, and one ball python a relic from my bachelor days that keeps my ophidiophobic fiance from going anywhere near my home office.

- Tagg CEO Scott Neuberger

The U.S. Department of Labor calculates that American pet owners spent $61.4 billion on our pets in 2011 more than what we spent on booze that year a number that some expect to rise by as much as $2 billion every year. Whats more, the money we spent on our pets was one of the few non-essential expenditures that remained consistent throughout the Great Recession, at about 1 percent of our total income.

Tagg is but one of an increasing number of technology companies tapping into that revenue stream. Theres FitBark, and Whistle, both of which monitor a dogs activity similar to Tagg. There are RFID chip-activated doggy doors. Smartphone-activated pet food feeders and webcams. Pet treadmills. Robotic litter boxes. Remote-controlled gophers. Automatic laser toys. And collars that let your pets post tweets to Twitter. The bevy of pet technology may seem absurd but it should surprise no one considering 63 percent of us view our pets as full fledged members of the family not animals at all, but people.

Theres this over-arching trend thats sort of dominated the whole industry for a bit of time now, this term humanization of the pet, says Tagg CEO Scott Neuberger. Theyre as close to human as they can get. In every way, were turning them into humans.

In a recent op-ed for The New York Times, Gregory Berns, author of How Dogs Love Us and a neuroeconomics professor at Emory University, asserts that the theory that dogs are humanlike may have a scientific foundation. Using MRI scanners, researchers discovered for the first time that dogs brains function surprisingly similar to our own so similar, in fact, that Berns argues for granting dogs limited personhood a sentiment with which many dog owners already agree, Im sure.

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Turn Fido into a K9 cyborg

Great white fear closes popular beaches

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WA News

A big great white has been detected off Perth beaches.

Beachgoers in the Hillary's area are being warned to use extra caution after a diver had his fins bitten off by a four metre shark on Saturday.

The man was diving near Little Island, just north of Hillarys, when the shark attacked.

Although he was not badly injured, the Westpac Helicopter was deployed however it failed to locate the shark, and Surf Life Saving WA have advised all swimmers in the area to use caution.

Earlier on Saturday, beaches north of Perth were reopened after being closed when a tagged great white shark was detected.

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Fisheries detected the tagged shark at the Floreat receiver just after 6am on Saturday morning, with Floreat beach immediately closed and swimmers at City Beach advised of the sighting.

The Scarborough receiver then detected the shark at 7.30pm, with the City of Stirling closing Scarborough Beach immediately.

The great white stayed offshore for an hour and a half, however all beaches were reopened by 10.30am.

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Great white fear closes popular beaches

Lifeguards hit beaches before summer

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Surf Life Saving New Zealand is frustrated basic water safety messages are being ignored.

Labour Weekend marks the start of lifeguards patrolling beaches, and they're gearing up for another busy summer.

Conditions were perfect at Orewa Beach today as young lifeguards were put through their paces. Four-thousand volunteer every summer and have to be brought up to speed.

"We're making sure their fitness is up to scratch, their rescue skills are there," says northern region Surf Life Saving manager Tom Burgess. All our lifeguards are trained in CPR and first aid, so we're refreshing those."

Mr Burgess says the public needs to be brought up to speed too. He's frustrated the same messages are ignored year after year.

"A lot of people know the messages but they don't respond to them because they don't see the hazards," he says. "They don't see the risks and a lot of people just get caught out."

The beach where swimmers get caught out most often is at Piha.

Last year 98 people drowned one of the lowest tolls since records began. But there's one statistic that's really worrying Water Safety New Zealand 80 percent of 10-year-olds can't swim well enough to save themselves. It means parents need to be extra careful when their children are near water.

"It's typically blokes over summer and small children that are going to cause the most issues," says Water Safety New Zealand chief executive Matt Claridge. "For parents, mums, wives, be the nag, be the one planting the message."

Males make up the vast majority of drownings, many of these on boats.

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Lifeguards hit beaches before summer

Sand needed in California city due to eroding beaches

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PORT HUENEME, Calif. For one California beach city, every grain of sand counts.

Port Hueneme, home to a naval base and about 20,000 residents, is starved for sand because Congress has not allocated enough money to help repair the city's badly eroded beaches, according to the Ventura County Star.

The city is supposed to receive extra sand every two years through nearby dredging by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But the most recent effort to pump 2.5 million cubic yards of sand enough to bury 40 football fields almost 30 feet deep wasn't done because of federal budget restraints.

"The solution to this problem is simple," said Mayor Ellis Green. "The federal government needs to fulfill its obligation and pump the sand that is now in the sand trap to our beaches."

The erosion problem is so bad that the ocean comes right up to a street on the west end of town, city officials said. The city's pier is about 6 feet below where it should be and could be damaged by powerful storms.

Last month, Gov. Jerry Brown signed two bills that would provide $2 million to help Port Hueneme fortify its beaches, but it's unclear if the funding will provide assistance this winter.

On Wednesday, a 4-pound bag of sand arrived at City Hall from Stockholm, Sweden, sent by a family who recently visited Port Hueneme. The family also posted a video online, hoping to inspire others to send sand.

Some city officials, however, were cautious the campaign might bring a granular avalanche.

"I sure hope this video doesn't go viral," the city's mayor pro tem, Jon Sharkey, told the newspaper. "I can just envision truckloads of sand coming up to City Hall."

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Sand needed in California city due to eroding beaches

Space, digitisation and storage. Astronomy Legacy Project has it all

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5 ways to reduce advertising network latency

Photographic plate image of the colliding galaxies NGC 6769, 6770, and 6771. These galaxies are located 190 million light years away. The photograph was taken September 21, 1954 using the 74-inch telescope at Radcliffe Observatory.

Nestled in a 200 acre campus in western North Carolina, the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) is home to possibly the worlds biggest library of astronomical photographic plates - some 220,000 images taken between 1898 and 1993.

The Institutes Astronomical Photographic Data Archive (APDA) team says there is much to explore with this photographic treasure trove, which represents perhaps 20 per cent of all the plates in North America.

It estimates the archive should contain at least 40 undiscovered novae but the images are fragile and their analogue data is difficult to access.

Nothing that an expensive but not astronomically so Optek digital scanner, a hired hand, and volunteer labour couldnt fix.

So, as is the way of the world, this non-profit institute has jumped on to Kickstarter to seek crowdfunding for the Astronomy Legacy Project (ALP) to take the "diverse and rich data set of 20th century astronomy into the 21st century digital world, according to director Michael Castelaz. He says unexplored astronomical research areas will emerge as "century-old analog data is made accessible in digital format online".

And once digitised, the archive will be shared with the world through the Astronomy Legacy Project website.

The APDA preservation project is seeking $67,000 in the first instance to digitise two collections held in the archive, and there is 24 days to go.

This way for Kickstarter.

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Space, digitisation and storage. Astronomy Legacy Project has it all

Star Citizen – Spaceship Anvil Aerospace Hornet F7C – Video

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Star Citizen - Spaceship Anvil Aerospace Hornet F7C
Bitte Videobeschreibung öffnen?? ············································································...

By: Simu Tipps

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Star Citizen - Spaceship Anvil Aerospace Hornet F7C - Video

Star Citizen – Hangar Module – Anvil Aerospace F7C-M Super Hornet – Quick Look – Video

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Star Citizen - Hangar Module - Anvil Aerospace F7C-M Super Hornet - Quick Look
So I ended up not only melting my original Hornet, but my Avenger and a couple skins as well. I think the end result is well worth it. The F7C-M is a refit of the F7C to bring it as close...

By: LemmingOfEvil

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Star Citizen - Hangar Module - Anvil Aerospace F7C-M Super Hornet - Quick Look - Video