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Monday, October 28, 2013
Giveaway: A Framed Art.com Print (a $215 Value!)
Enter for your chance to win a framed print from Art.com in our giveaway this week.Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/XQ8h7jRtCRo/
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Arcade Fire On Its Brand New Beat
Arcade Fire's new album, Reflektor, comes out Tuesday.
JF Lalonde/Courtesy of the artist
Arcade Fire's new album, Reflektor, comes out Tuesday.
JF Lalonde/Courtesy of the artist
Fans of Arcade Fire might be feeling a bit of culture shock. The group has been called the world's most successful indie rock band — but its new album, Reflektor, explores the Haitian roots of band member Regine Chassagne.
She and her husband, frontman Win Butler, have worked with Haitian relief groups for years; the band has donated more than a million dollars to charities there. Speaking with NPR's David Greene, Chassagne and Butler say the seeds of the idea for Reflektor were planted on a trip they took to Haiti right after winning the 2011 Grammy for Album of the Year, in a total upset.
"And then there's people coming from the mountains to watch us play who've never heard The Beatles before," Butler says of the scene when the band arrived. "You realize, stripped of that context, what you're left with is rhythm and emotion and melody; it kind of gets back to these really of basic building blocks of music. So we kind of wanted to start from there and try and make something out of it."
Reflektor isn't a dance record through and through, but it does incorporate many specific dance rhythms — "Here Comes the Night Time," for example, evokes the Hatian street music known as rara in its faster moments. The title of that song, Butler says, refers to an uncanny sight that can often be seen at dusk on the streets of Port-au-Prince, large parts of which have no electricity.
"Everyone's kind of really hustling to get home because it can be kind of dangerous in a lot of neighborhoods; you have to get home before nightfall. And people have their bags of groceries and they're sprinting in the streets trying to get home," he says. "And then you see, like, three dudes in really sharp suits that are just stepping out to go out to a nightclub or something like that. You kind of have this duality where it's this really exciting atmosphere, but then also really dangerous at the same time.
Chassagne says that though the new album's themes are deeply meaningful to her, she hopes the band has created something that can be appreciated anywhere.
"I'm kind of stuck a little bit in both worlds, so I would like to make something that, basically, my mom could dance. She wouldn't dance to a New Order song, but she would dance to the Haitian beat," Chassagne says. "I want to kind of do something that everybody can lock into."
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GOP set to question Sebelius on health law
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sits on a panel to answer questions about the Affordable Care Act enrollment, Friday, Oct. 25, 2013, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sits on a panel to answer questions about the Affordable Care Act enrollment, Friday, Oct. 25, 2013, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
FILE - In this Aug. 1, 2012 file photo, Jeffrey Zients testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Barack Obama is calling Zients to help correct problems with the new federal health care website. The White House says Zients will assist a team that is said to be working around the clock on the site, www.healthcare.gov. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans plan to seek answers from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the Obama administration's troubled start for its health care website to buy insurance, and are raising concerns about the privacy of information that applicants submit under the new system.
GOP lawmakers said Sunday that the Obama administration will face intense scrutiny this week to be more forthcoming about how many people have actually succeeded in enrolling for coverage in the new insurance markets.
Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner is scheduled to appear during a House hearing on Tuesday, followed Wednesday by Sebelius before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The officials will also be grilled on how such crippling technical problems could have gone undetected prior to the Oct. 1 launch of that website, healthcare.gov.
"The incompetence in building this website is staggering," said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., second- ranking Republican on the panel and an opponent of the law.
Democrats said the new system needs more time and it can be fixed to provide millions of people with affordable insurance. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, said the system was "working in Kentucky."
But the federal online system experienced another problem on Sunday.
A component of that system that has been working relatively well experienced an outage. The federal data services hub, a conduit for verifying the personal information of people applying for benefits under the law, went down in a failure that was blamed on an outside contractor, Terremark.
"Today, Terremark had a network failure that is impacting a number of their clients, including healthcare.gov," HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said. "Secretary Sebelius spoke with the CEO of Verizon this afternoon to discuss the situation and they committed to fixing the problem as soon as possible."
Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, of which Terremark is a part, said: "Our engineers have been working with HHS and other technology companies to identify and address the root cause of the issue. It will fixed as quickly as possible."
Blackburn said she wanted to know much has been spent on the website, how much more it will cost to fix the problems, when everything will be ready and what people should expect to see on the site. Blackburn and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., raised questions about whether the website could guard the privacy of applicants.
"They do not have an overarching, solid cybersecurity plan to prevent the loss of private information," said Rogers, who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said when consumers fill out their applications, "they can trust that the information they're providing is protected by stringent security standards and that the technology underlying the application process has been tested and is secure."
The botched rollout has led to calls on Capitol Hill for a delay of penalties for those remaining uninsured. The Obama administration has said it's willing to extend the grace period until Mar. 31, the end of open enrollment, providing an extra six weeks. The insurance industry says going beyond that risks undermining the new system by giving younger, healthier people a pass.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who has urged the Obama administration to postpone the March 31 deadline, said she is concerned applicants would not have a full six months to enroll. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who is seeking a yearlong delay to the penalty for noncompliance, said there is a need for a "transition period to work out the things."
The administration was under no legal requirement to launch the website Oct 1. Sebelius, who designated her department's Medicare agency to implement the health care law, had the discretion to set open enrollment dates. Officials could have postponed open enrollment by a month, or they could have phased in access to the website.
But all through last summer and into early fall, the administration insisted it was ready to go live in all 50 states on Oct. 1.
The online insurance markets are supposed to be the portal to coverage for people who do not have access to a health plan through their jobs. The health care law offers middle-class people a choice of private insurance plans, made more affordable through new tax credits. Low-income people will be steered to Medicaid in states that agree to expand that safety-net program.
An HHS memo prepared for Sebelius in September estimated that nearly 500,000 people would enroll for coverage in the marketplaces during October, their first month of operation. The actual number is likely to be only a fraction of that. The administration has said 700,000 people have completed applications.
Blackburn spoke on "Fox News Sunday," Beshear appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," Rogers was on CNN's "State of the Union," Manchin was interviewed on ABC's "This Week" and Shaheen made her comments on CBS' "Face the Nation."
___
Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-28-Health%20Overhaul/id-eeb7156116774de7b0f82b6ff92af9cbTags: dexter Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball nadal grandparents day catherine zeta jones
First Listen: Swearin', 'Surfing Strange'
Swearin's new album, Surfing Strange, comes out Nov. 5.
Courtesy of the artist
Swearin's new album, Surfing Strange, comes out Nov. 5.
Courtesy of the artist
On their 2012 debut, the four members of Swearin' cohered around a consistent sound: fierce and fuzzy and improbably melodic, with choruses you couldn't help shouting along to once you could make out the words. But there was a tension in hearing things turn slightly sweet or slightly sharp, depending on who happened to be singing at the time. That the co-frontpersons, Allison Crutchfield and Kyle Gilbride, are also a couple made things all the more interesting, especially when they sang about love.
With Surfing Strange, out Oct. 29, Swearin' is up from two singers to three, and the personalities at play are even more distinct. Crutchfield's vocals are soft and rounded and tend to sink into their noisy surroundings, letting her tone and the heft of her breaths do as much talking as the words themselves. Gilbride is the best shouter of the bunch, with a nasal edge that could strip paint off hardwood and an acutely cute way of bending his vowels. Bassist Keith Spencer is the group's resident quiet Beatle, or perhaps its James Iha: His hushed turn in "Melanoma" is a spiritual cousin of "Take Me Down," dreamy and sad and sung as if through layers of cheesecloth. And though drummer Jeff Bolt's voice isn't heard, the prankster grin he's known to wear when Swearin' performs is palpable on these recordings as well.
The album opens with the pristine call of a strummed acoustic guitar and ringing bass. It's a moment that feels out of character until Crutchfield appears to deliver an onomatopoeic line — "The crunch of the black ice and the buzz of the semis" — that hints at something heavier. Suddenly, guitar feedback squalls, a kick drum rumbles and the entire ensemble crashes together to meet her challenge. This band does tension right.
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Rob Letterman to Direct 'Captain Underpants' for DWA (Exclusive)
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Nicholas Stoller and Rob Letterman
DreamWorks Animation is dressing down to its skivvies, tapping Rob Letterman to direct Captain Underpants, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively.
Nicholas Stoller has written the script for Captain Underpants, which adapts the popular kids books by Dav Pilkey.
Underpants centers on two fourth graders who are best friends and who draw comics that they sell on the playground. Their creation, Captain Underpants, becomes real when the duo accidentally hypnotize the school's mean principal who turns into an actual superhero.
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Scholastic first launched Underpants in September of 1997, and there are now more than 50 million Pilkey books in print in the U.S. alone. Eight Underpants books have been published in 19 countries, and several have debuted at No. 1 on various best-seller lists, including The New York Times and USA Today.
DWA development executive Damon Ross is overseeing the project, which does not have a release date.
Stoller may have started off on the raunchy side of the film business (he wrote and directed Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek) but has lately been spending time with the fuzzily funny Muppets, co-writing 2011's The Muppets and next year's sequel, Muppets Most Wanted. He is currently back in R-rated territory with his latest feature, Neighbors, which stars Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, hitting theaters in May 2014.
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Letterman is a DWA pro, having directed Shark Tale and Monsters vs. Aliens for the studio.
Letterman and Stoller worked together on 2010's Gulliver's Travels, the Jack Black comedy fantasy that Letterman directed (it was his live-action debut) and Stoller co-wrote.
Stoller is repped by UTA and Ziffren Brittenham. Letterman is repped by WME.
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TiVo to Roamio Users: Roam if You Want To
Ultimately, more devices will support out-of-home streaming, suggested Greg Scoblete, analyst for set-top box devices at Digital Tech Consulting. Still, "I think this is merely an interim step to a truly cloud-based solution -- think Netflix -- that doesn't rely on the vagaries of consumer hardware, apps or the kinds of networks you're streaming over," he said.
TiVo was one of the first to enable consumers to time-shift their TV viewing via DVRs, and now the company is targeting place-shifting capabilities as well with out-of-home streaming via the TiVo Roamio Pro and TiVo Roamio Plus DVRs.
The two Roamio devices were launched earlier this year, but this week the company announced that the functionality to record content to the living room and stream to a mobile device -- including smartphone and tablet -- is now available thanks to a new version of the TiVo iOS app.
"Until now, your shows have been locked up in your set-top box at home," said Jim Denney, TiVo's vice president of product marketing. "Now, with a TiVo Roamio DVR, whether it's a hotel in Denmark, the waiting room at the dentist office, when you're stuck at the airport, or at the gym, out-of-home streaming gives you the level of choice, control and freedom that consumers have come to expect."
Out-of-home streaming requires an Apple iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch device running iOS 5.1 or higher; streaming is supported to only one device at a time. Support for streaming over 4G/LTE and to Android devices is scheduled for 2014.
TiVo declined to provide further details.
Three Models
The TiVo Roamio combines the functionality of a DVR with that of a Slingbox as well as Apple TV or a Roku set top box, allowing users to watch live or recorded content remotely anywhere a user has WiFi. Users can also download the content to an iOS device anywhere so that low bandwidth or lack of WiFi is not an issue.
The Roamio devices also include TiVo's second screen dashboard that provides instantaneous personalized recommendations, remote scheduling and even mobile search and discovery.
The TiVo Roamio DVR Series is available in three models including the TiVo Roamio for US$199.99; TiVo Roamio Plus for $399.99; and the TiVo Roamio Pro for $599.99. These Roamio models feature four or six tuners and range from 75 hours to 450 hours of recording space for HD content.
'Playing Catch-Up'
While TiVo was among the first DVR devices on the market back in 1999, today most cable and satellite providers also include DVR and on-demand options. Moreover, the new Roamio functionality is merely catching up to what Sling has already offered.
"That's how I take it," said Greg Ireland, research manager for multiscreen video at IDC. "It is basically playing catch-up with Sling."
TiVo was "pushed to the side when cable boxes added DVRs," Ireland told TechNewsWorld. "TiVo added Web content into the boxes to differentiate what it did, but this is the next step. This is necessary catch up to be able to position the TiVo box as an enabler for your content when you want and where you want."
Place Shifting
While there has been the ability to time-shift content since the early days of the VCR, it is the DVR that really revolutionized viewing with the notion that coming in a few minutes late didn't mean you couldn't start watching the program from the beginning.
The next logical step was the ability to place-shift the content and take it with you. Such capabilities are already offered by Slingbox devices, which Dish Networks offers, as well as by cable networks and channels offering such as Comcast's Xfinity service and HBO Go.
"What we're seeing is a kind of ad-hoc technological solution to what really is a business model break-down: Consumers want their 'TV everywhere' -- on any device, over any kind of network no matter where they are," Greg Scoblete, analyst for set-top box devices at Digital Tech Consulting, told TechNewsWorld. "Unfortunately, the way content license deals work, not every piece of content can be viewed out of the home on devices that aren't TVs."
What that leads to is "the more cumbersome approach of trying to have third-party hardware, like the TiVo, distribute this content out of the home," Scoblete noted.
"Ultimately, more devices will support this kind of out-of-home streaming," he concluded, "but I think this is merely an interim step to a truly cloud-based solution -- think Netflix -- that doesn't rely on the vagaries of consumer hardware, apps or the kinds of networks you're streaming over." 
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“Post-Print” Startup Stateless Media Creates Short, Smart Documentaries For The Web
My recent conversation with Stateless Media’s Peter Savodnik was a bit discombobulating. He’s had what seems like a successful career in longform journalism, with publications in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and elsewhere. Yet he sounded awfully pessimistic about print — and as someone who makes his living as a writer, that’s not exactly what I wanted to hear.
On the other hand, Savodnik has a vision for what might replace the feature magazine articles that he used to write, and he’s pursuing it through his new company. (Stateless Media’s website describes the content as “post-print storytelling”.) Traditional media outlets, he argued, aren’t giving the younger audience “what they want.”
“We can lament the fact that people don’t want to read long, thoughtful stories, but that doesn’t change the facts on the ground,” he said. “I guess my very strong feeling is that we have a real opportunity here to reconnect with millions and millions of media consumers.”
The vehicle for that connection is something Savodnik has dubbed the “shortreal”, which is essentially an 11-minute online documentary. Stateless Media has released two shortreals thus far, one called “The Brothers Shaikh” (embedded at the end of this post) and a second called “Chutzpah“. And it just released the trailer for a third (which you can watch below), “Being Radler,” covering “the hunt for an East German spy.”
I thought “Chutzpah”, in particular, was well done — it addresses a familiar topic (politician Anthony Weiner), but in a fresh and entertaining way (and according to the Stateless Media site, it has been viewed 14,326 times).
But what makes a shortreal different from any other online video and actually worthy of a new buzzword? Savodnik argued that the aims are implicit in the name — a shortreal doesn’t take much time to watch (the 11-minute duration was chosen because it’s half the length of a 30-minute TV episode, minus the commercials) and it tells a true story. That storytelling, he added, is what’s missing from many documentaries, some of which are more concerned about being beautiful, while others are “cause-driven” and “predictable”: “We know from the start where we’re being led and what we’re going to think.”
“I have the utmost respect for that, but a story is a real story,” Savodnik said. “There are complicated characters who develop over time.”
The initial shortreals were directed by filmmakers Edward Perkins and Kannan Arunasalam. Perkins told me via email that even though he’s directed documentary films for the National Geographic Channel and behind-the-scenes featurettes for films include The Eagle and Searching For Sugar Man, shortreals are “fundamentally different from anything I have worked on before” because they combine “the best of investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking.”
“People have always wanted to hear great stories, and will continue to do so,” he said. “But the way in which they want to consume stories is changing. We want to give people people these stories exactly how and when they want them. On phones. On laptops. On tablets. And in a short 11 minute format that still explores complex issues, embraces ambiguity, and throws up surprises.”
Arunasalam said that a shortreal is closer to a short film than a documentary, “with a very cinematic look and feel.” He offered this explanation for how they’re put together:
For me, it’s an interesting dynamic between the investigative journalist and the filmmaker working together. Usually, as a filmmaker you’re on your own to tell the story. But here, the story is reported by the journalist, who does the investigating and the digging for characters and story-lines — so far mainly by Peter — and the responsibility of making the film rests with the filmmaker. With the Stateless Media approach, the skills of both filmmaker and journalist are fine-tuned to the storytelling process, to make the best possible film.
Stateless has been self-funded thus far, and it sounds like it’s still very much in the experimental stages — for example, Savodnik said he learned a lot from the production of “The Brothers Sheikh” that led to big improvements in “Chutzpah”.
The ultimate goal, he said, is to build out a team of filmmakers who create shortreals from around the world, and to turn Stateless Media into the destination site for that content: “Basically the stories that we like to tell are stories that are — I guess there’s no other way to put it — unexpected, stories that don’t fit into conventional frameworks.”
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Gomes, Red Sox beat Cards 4-2 to even WS at 2-all
ST. LOUIS (AP) — There's no telling how these wacky World Series games will end.
One night after a rare obstruction call, Jonny Gomes hit a decisive homer when he wasn't even in the original lineup and Koji Uehara picked off a rookie at first base for the final out.
An entertaining, even goofy World Series is tied at two games apiece following Boston's 4-2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Sunday night, which ensured the title will be decided back at Fenway Park.
"What's going on inside here is pretty special, magical," Gomes said.
Inserted into the lineup about 75 minutes before gametime, Gomes hit a tiebreaking, three-run shot off reliever Seth Maness in the sixth inning.
Felix Doubront and surprise reliever John Lackey, both starters during the regular season, picked up for a gritty Clay Buchholz to help the Red Sox hang on.
And of course, another bizarre ending: Uehara picked off pinch-runner Kolten Wong — with postseason star Carlos Beltran standing at the plate.
Of the 1,404 postseason games in major league history, the last two are the only ones to end on an obstruction call and a pickoff, according to STATS.
"It was the first time for me to end a game like that as far as I can remember," Uehara said through a translator.
Game 5 is Monday night at Busch Stadium, with Boston left-hander Jon Lester facing Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright in a rematch of the opener, won 8-1 by the Red Sox.
Gomes helped Boston get started in the fifth when he followed David Ortiz's leadoff double with a 10-pitch walk that tired starter Lance Lynn, who had faced the minimum 12 batters through the first four innings.
Stephen Drew's sacrifice fly tied the score 1-all, erasing a deficit created when center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury's third-inning error advanced Matt Carpenter into scoring position for Beltran's RBI single.
Ortiz, 8 for 11 (.727) in the Series after a three-hit night, was Boston's leader, smacking his hands together and screaming at teammates to get going when he pulled into second base on his double. Then, after the fifth inning, he huddled the Red Sox for a pep talk in the dugout.
"Let's loosen up and let's try to play baseball the way we normally do," Ortiz remembered telling them. "I know we are a better team than what we had shown. Sometimes you get to this stage and you try to overdo things, and it doesn't work that way."
Message heard.
"It was like 24 kindergartners looking up at their teacher," Gomes said, "He got everyone's attention, and we looked him right in the eyes. That message was pretty powerful."
Not long after, Gomes' drive put Boston ahead 4-1 in the sixth.
With adrenaline taking over, Gomes spiked an arm through the air as he rounded first base, yelled and banged his chest with his right fist twice. Teammates tugged on Gomes' beard for good luck when he got back to the dugout, including a two-handed pull by Mike Napoli.
Not exactly what Gomes expected when he arrived at the ballpark.
While talk of umpires' calls dominated discussion following two of the opening three games, this one turned on a manager's pregame decision.
John Farrell's original Red Sox lineup didn't include Gomes, but Victorino's back had been bothering him since Saturday, so Daniel Nava was moved from left field to right and from fifth to second in the batting order. Gomes was inserted into the No. 5 hole behind Ortiz.
"During batting practice, when I met with Shane today, he said, 'Yeah, put me in there. I'll find a way to get ready to start the game,'" Farrell said. "As we went through the other work, it became obvious he wasn't capable. And you know what? It turns out that his replacement is the difference in this one tonight."
Gomes had been 0 for 9 in the Series before the home run, and Red Sox outfielders had been 4 for 40 with no RBIs. Following Dustin Pedroia's two-out single and a four-pitch walk to Ortiz by Lynn, Maness threw five straight sinkers to Gomes, who sent the last one into the Red Sox bullpen in left as Matt Holliday kept running back only to run out of room.
"It was right down the middle," Maness said. "That's baseball, it happens."
Carpenter singled in a run in the seventh off Craig Breslow after pinch-hitter Shane Robinson doubled with two outs against Doubront on a ball that skidded away from Gomes. Junichi Tazawa came in and got Holliday to hit an inning-ending grounder to second, a night after allowing a tiebreaking, two-run double to Holliday.
Doubront got the win with 2 2-3 innings of one-hit relief. Lackey, the Game 2 loser and Boston's probable Game 6 starter, pitched the eighth for his first relief appearance in nine years, overcoming a two-base throwing error by third baseman Xander Bogaerts — Boston's seventh error of the Series — and a wild pitch.
With a runner on third, Lackey got Jon Jay to pop up and David Freese to ground out.
Uehara, Boston's sixth pitcher, got three outs for his sixth save this postseason, completing a six-hitter.
Lynn was the hard-luck loser, leaving with the score tied and two on for Maness, who allowed Gomes' homer on his fifth pitch.
It was a special anniversary for both teams. Exactly nine years earlier, the Red Sox completed a four-game sweep of the Cardinals across the street at old Busch Stadium for their first championship since 1918. And two years earlier, Freese hit a tying, two-run, two-out triple in the ninth against Texas and a winning homer in the 11th to force a Game 7, which St. Louis won the following night.
Buchholz, in his first appearance since the AL championship series finale on Oct. 19, fought through shoulder issues and his velocity topped out at 90 mph. He lasted a season-low four innings and 66 pitches before he was lifted for a pinch-hitter, but he allowed just an unearned run and three hits.
"We have guys with heart. Clay, he brought everything he's got," Ortiz said. "I have never seen Clay throwing an 88 mph fastball."
Fielding for the Red Sox became trouble again in the third when Carpenter singled to center with one out, and the ball appeared to take a high hop and roll away from Ellsbury. Carpenter sprinted to second on the second error of the Series by Ellsbury — who had just three during the regular season.
Beltran singled into center field two pitches later, making him 8 for 10 with 12 RBIs with runners in scoring position during the postseason.
There almost was another miscue in the fourth following a one-out walk to Jay. Freese bounced to Drew, and the shortstop grabbed the grounder on the run and flipped the ball with his glove high to Pedroia at second. He jumped and just got his left foot down in time to force Jay, who slid into him hard.
After Ortiz's double to the right-center field wall in the fifth, Gomes fell behind 0-2 in the count and then worked out his walk. Lynn appeared to be too fine with his pitches as he walked rookie Bogaerts, loading the bases, and Drew lofted a fly to medium left near the foul line.
Holliday's one-hop throw home hit the sliding Ortiz in the back and bounced away. Lynn recovered to strike out David Ross and induce an inning-ending groundout from pinch-hitter Mike Carp.
NOTES: St. Louis had been 8-0 this postseason when scoring first. ... Molina extended his Series hitting streak to seven games. ... Holliday argued with plate umpire Paul Emmel after he was called out on strikes in the fifth, and Cardinals manager Mike Matheny came on the field to make sure his left fielder didn't get ejected.
- Sports & Recreation
- Baseball
- Jonny Gomes
- David Ortiz
- Red Sox
- Clay Buchholz
- Carlos Beltran
- John Lackey
- Koji Uehara
- Seth Maness
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Sunday, October 27, 2013
Macys: Employees not involved in alleged race stop
NEW YORK (AP) — No Macy's employees were involved in the detention or questioning of a black actor who claims he was stopped because of his race while shopping at the flagship Manhattan department store, Macy's officials said Sunday.
Rob Brown, a black actor who works on the HBO series "Treme," has said he was detained nearly an hour by police on June 8 after employees contacted authorities about possible credit card fraud. The actor has filed a lawsuit.
In a statement, Macy's said there was no record of any employee contacting authorities about Brown's purchase. The store said police officers requested use of a room in the building and that request was granted.
The store said it was reaching out to Brown, and continuing to investigate the situation.
Brown's account comes after claims from two black shoppers said they were racially profiled at Barneys New York.
Trayon Christian sued Barneys, saying he was accused of fraud after using his debit card to buy a $349 Ferragamo belt in April. Kayla Philips filed a notice of claim saying she would sue after she was stopped by detectives outside the store when she bought a $2,500 Celine handbag in February.
As the criticism grew, Barneys said it had retained a civil rights expert to help review its procedures. The CEO of Barneys, Mark Lee, offered his "sincere regret and deepest apologies."
Kirsten John Foy, an official with the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network, said he would meet with Barneys officials on Tuesday to discuss the racial profiling allegations.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-10-27-US-Department-Store-Discrimination-Suit/id-ad25d3094cbf4912b66c2617ced0a095Category: Josh Freeman randall cobb miss america twerk Joanna Krupa
Hawaii Set To Take Up Gay Marriage In Special Session Monday
Hawaii's Gov. Neil Abercrombie announced the special session on gay marriage at the Hawaii Capitol in Honolulu in September. The session will begin Monday, Oct. 28.
Oskar Garcia/AP
Hawaii's Gov. Neil Abercrombie announced the special session on gay marriage at the Hawaii Capitol in Honolulu in September. The session will begin Monday, Oct. 28.
Oskar Garcia/AP
The next state to legalize same-sex marriage may be Hawaii, where the state's Legislature will begin a special session on the issue Monday. The governor called the session so that lawmakers could consider the Marriage Equality Bill, which would allow same-sex couples to wed.
NPR's Nathan Rott reports for our Newscast unit:
"The gay marriage debate is nothing new to Hawaii. In 1990, gay couples who applied for a marriage license there helped start the national debate that resulted in the Defense of Marriage Act, the law that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.
"Proponents for same-sex marriage, including Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, are trying to ride national momentum, pushing for legislation that would make Hawaii the 15th state to legalize gay marriage. They argue that the bill extends the state's Aloha spirit of equality and would spur tourism.
"Opponents of the bill have organized protests, saying that Hawaiian voters should decide the issue, not the state's lawmakers."
Gay marriage was in a legal gray area in Hawaii after 1993, when the state's Supreme Court ruled in favor of the unions. But a constitutional amendment that was adopted five years later took jurisdiction from the courts and gave it to the Legislature, which then banned same-sex marriages.
In Honolulu, this weekend has been marked by rallies organized by groups on both sides of the issue, Hawaii News Now reports. More rallies will take place Monday.
On Sunday, the Episcopal Diocese of Hawaii voted to support the bill — "the largest denomination to announce its support of an issue that has divided people of faith," The Honolulu Star Advertiser says.
If it is approved, the measure would take effect on Nov. 18. A public hearing on the matter will be part of the special session Monday, according to the Hawaii Legislature's website.
In addition to the 14 states where same-sex marriage is already legal, the District of Columbia has also recognized the marriages. As a recent map by The Washington Post shows, 35 states have enacted laws restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples.
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Box Office: 'Jackass: Bad Grandpa' No. 1 With $32 Million; 'The Counselor' D.O.A.
Paramount and MTV Films' Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa -- featuring Johnny Knoxville and child sidekick Jackson Nicoll -- easily topped North American box office after delivering a $32 million opening and dethroning blockbuster space epic Gravity.
After staying at No. 1 for three weeks, Warner Bros.' Gravity slipped to No. 2, falling 32 percent to $20.3 million. The 3D space epic will cross the $200 million mark domestically sometime on Sunday or Monday, and has now earned $364 million worldwide after topping the foreign chart for the weekend with $36.6 million, putting its international total at $164.4 million.
STORY: Box Office Lesson: Older Crowd Prefers Seasoned Stars, Shuns Youngsters
Bad Grandpa, the first Jackass film to have any sort of plot, stars Knoxville as signature character Irving Zisman, a crotchety 86-year-old, and Nicoll as 8-year-old grandson Billy. The outrageous duo embark on a hidden-camera road trip across America, performing stunts and punking people. Along the way they encounter, among others, male strippers, disgruntled child beauty pageant contestants and bikers.
The comedy opened well behind the last Jackass film (there are three in total). In October 2010, Jackass 3D debuted to a sizzling $50.4 million. Jackass: Number Two opened to $29 million in late September 2006, while the first Jackass, opening in late October 2002, debuted to $22.8 million.
Paramount vice chairman Rob Moore stressed that Bad Grandpa is a spin-off, versus a continuation of the gross-out franchise, and that it actually has much more in common with Borat than with the other Jackass films.
"The movie is executed ala Borat, where Knoxville's character is interacting with real people and doing crazy things," Moore said. He noted that Bad Grandpa played differently than other Jackass movies in drawing older moviegoers (69 percent of Jackass 3-D's audience was under the age of 25, compared to 37 percent for Bad Grandpa) as well as more females (44 percent, versus 39 percent).
Overseas, Bad Grandpa opened to an impressive $8.1 million from 16 territories, on par with Jackass 3-D and three times bigger than Jackass 2. The U.K. led with $3.2 million, bigger than the three Jackass films, followed by a stellar $3.1 million in Germany.
Jeff Tremaine returns to direct, and he produces alongside Knoxville, Spike Jonze and Derek Freda. Knoxville is the only Jackass regular to appear in the film, which received a B CinemaScore.
Ridley Scott's star-packed drama The Counselor, from an original screenplay by No Country for Old Men author Cormac McCarthy (his first), quickly fizzled, grossing an unimpressive $8 million to come in No. 4 behind Bad Grandpa, Gravity and Captain Phillips.
Moviegoers gave The Counselor a rare D CinemaScore despite Scott's pedigree and stars Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt. It may fare better overseas, where it began rolling out this weekend in a handful of markets, including Brazil.
The Counselor, starring Fassbender as a greedy lawyer who gets caught up with drug traffickers, received mostly negative reviews. Insiders say the film was a vanity project for Scott, but that it reportedly cost only $25 million to make, with talent taking a drastically reduced fee in order to work with Scott.
Scott, who has longtime ties to Fox, last directed Prometheus for the studio.
"The movie had some big grosses in big city, core runs, where audiences are more likely to be looking for challenging, provocative filmmaking," said Fox domestic marketing president Chris Aronson. The movie skewed notably older, with 85 percent of the audience over the age of 25.
Sony had two reasons to crow this weekend. Paul Greengrass' Somali pirate drama Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks, continued to enjoy a strong hold in its third weekend, falling 28 percent to $11.8 million to place No. 3. The drama has now earned $70.1 million domestically.
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, also from Sony, placed No. 5 in its fifth weekend, grossing $6.1 million to jump the $100 million mark in North America.
While The Counselor may have bombed, the Fox empire is succeeding at the box office with Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave. The Fox Searchlight film, expanding into a total of 123 theaters in is second weekend, zoomed up to No. 8, grossing $2.2 million for a 10-day total of $3.4 million. New Regency and River Road co-financed and produced the film alongside Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner's Plan B Entertainment.
The other big headline at the specialty box office was Abdellatif Kechiche's French film Blue Is the Warmest Color, which is opening to solid business in New York and Los Angeles for IFC Films, grossing $101,116 from four theaters for a location average of $25,279.
STORY: 'Blue Is the Warmest Color' Director Slams 'Arrogant, Spoiled' Star in Open Letter
The steamy lesbian drama is rated NC-17, meaning that no one under 17 is allowed in. However, the IFC Center in New York has announced it will allow in teenagers it deems appropriate, regardless of age (the ratings system is voluntary).
In recent days, the war of words between Kechiche and star Lea Seydoux has escalated, with the filmmaker calling her an "arrogant, spoiled child" who said "slanderous" things about him in an effort to gain attention following the film's Palme d’Or win at the Cannes Film Festival in May. "Thus after having been celebrated and glorified thanks to the Palme d’Or won by Blue Is the Warmest Color, she started to drag me through the mud with lies and exaggerations," he said in an interview earlier this week.
Twitter: @PamelaDayM
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Police: Chris Brown charged with assault in DC
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chris Brown was charged with assault after a fight broke out early Sunday near a Washington hotel, the latest problem for the Grammy Award-winning R&B singer with a snarled legal history.
Brown and another man were charged with felony assault in the altercation that started just before 4:30 a.m., D.C. police spokesman Paul Metcalf said.
The man who was attacked received treatment for his injuries at a local hospital and was released Sunday. Police wouldn't elaborate on his injuries but said the felony charge was based in part on the extent of the injuries. The victim's name wasn't released.
Christopher Hollosy, 35, was also charged with felony assault, police said. Police wouldn't say how Brown and Hollosy may have known each other.
Brown and Hollosy were being held pending a court hearing Monday, Metcalf said.
Neither Brown's publicists nor his attorney Mark Geragos responded to messages left Sunday.
Brown was in Washington to perform Saturday night at an event billed as a "Homecoming Weekend" party at a downtown club. Howard University was celebrating its homecoming, though a university spokeswoman said the party was not sponsored by or affiliated with the school.
Brown remains on probation for assaulting his on-again, off-again girlfriend Rihanna just before the Grammy Awards in 2009. The photos of Rihanna's bruised face caused outrage among many fans.
Brown pleaded guilty to one count of felony assault and received five years' probation.
His probation was briefly revoked earlier this year after a traffic accident. A hit-and-run charge was dropped against him, but the judge gave him 1,000 more hours of community service when he reinstated his probation.
Brown, who lives in Los Angeles and is originally from Virginia, has been involved in other altercations since 2009. Police have said a 2012 brawl at a New York nightclub began when members of the rapper Drake's entourage confronted Brown on the dance floor. Neither was charged in the fight that turned into a bottle-throwing free-for-all.
Brown also tussled with singer Frank Ocean and others during an argument about a parking space outside of a recording studio in Los Angeles, according to witness accounts given to deputies at the time. Ocean said he suffered an injured finger, but no charges were filed.
Brown's arrest could affect his probation in the Rihanna assault case. Brown is due back in court Nov. 20 in Los Angeles to update a judge on his probation. Prosecutors could seek a revocation of his probation or ask a judge to impose additional penalties.
Steve Cron, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, said prosecutors and a judge may wait to see how the Washington case plays out before taking any action against Brown.
"Just the fact that some guy says 'he hit me' doesn't mean he's in violation" of his probation, Cron said.
The potential penalties would depend on the exact wording of Brown's sentence, he said.
___
Associated Press writers Chris Talbott in Nashville, Tenn.; Anthony McCartney in Los Angeles; and Oscar Gabriel in Washington contributed to this report.
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New Women Alcoholics: 'Looking at Red Wine Like It's Chocolate'
Ann Dowsett Johnston vowed she would never be like her mother, a "poster girl" for alcoholism, who drank during the day and mixed her cocktails with Valium.
"I had no trouble in my 20s, 30s and 40s," she told ABCNews.com. "I was an award-winning journalist with a child at home and I drank a glass or two of wine when I came home from work, then I chopped vegetables and helped with the homework."
But when she hit menopause and took on a high-pressure job as vice-president of McGill University, working around the clock, her happy hour turned into "three, into four and five drinks a night."
Johnston, who is 60 and now lives in Toronto, said growing numbers of well-educated women are struggling with alcoholism and, in many parts of the world, particularly Britain, their rates of abuse equal that of men.
In her new book "Drink," she draws on personal experience and research to look at the rising number of women who abuse alcohol.
"I call myself, for better or worse, the poster girl of modern alcoholic female," said Johnston. "I didn't look like my mother's drunk."
"We have normalized drinking," she said. "We look at red wine like it's dark chocolate. We know the downsides of the tanning bed and trans fats, but not the downside of our favorite drug."
Several factors feed this trend, according to Johnston.
Women feel a "sense of entitlement that we can do everything a man can do," and the sociological revolution that tells women "they have to be perfect in every role, including perfectly thin, perfect parents and perfect at work."
Unlike men, who tend to abuse alcohol in social settings, women "uncork the bottle at home alone" and self-medicate their anxiety and depression, she said.
An analysis of national surveys shows that 47 percent of white women were regular drinkers in 2002, up from 37 percent a decade earlier. Among black women, the rate rose from 21 percent to 30 percent; among Hispanic women, from 24 percent to 32 percent.
"Our latest epidemiological surveys show that more than 5 percent of women in the United States have alcohol use disorders," said Dr. Deidra Roach, a health science administrator in the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism division of treatment and recovery research.
"The gap overall between women and men who have alcohol problems seems to be narrowing," she said. "Typically, we know from our population surveys that the people who consume the most are highly educated women with high incomes."
Though it is still speculative, the norms around drinking have changed "dramatically" in the last 40 years, Roach said.
"In the past, drinking to intoxication was looked at as unusual and you were a bad person," she said. "Now, heavy drinking among women is accepted -- and expected in some settings. Women go out for a night on the town with the intention of drinking to intoxication."
Alcohol is more available and more affordable, according to Roach, and advertisers are more "sophisticated," marketing alcohol pops and berry flavored vodka to women.
Drunk driving arrests are on the rise among women as are emergency room visits for alcohol-related accidents, according to traffic surveys.
Binge drinking is up among all age groups, and not just the college set. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10 percent of women between 45 and 64 say they binge drink; and so do 3 percent of those over 65.
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/women-alcoholics-red-wine-chocolate/story?id=20639212
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Chris Brown Arrested For Felony Assault: Report
Chris Brown is in trouble once again. The 24-year-old rapper has reportedly been arrested for a felony assault in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, Oct. 27, TMZ reports.
The "Don't Wake Me Up" singer allegedly attacked and began punching a man outside the W Hotel, the site reports. The incident occurred at around 4:30 a.m.
It appears that law enforcement does not believe that Brown was under the influence at the time, and he is currently in custody. The man attacked is now at a nearby D.C. hospital being evaluated.
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The "Forever" singer is currently on probation for the beating of now ex-girlfriend Rihanna from a 2009 incident the night before the Grammy Awards. During a recent interview with the UK Guardian, Brown opened up about "the Rihanna incident."
"I had to stop acting like a little teenager, a crazy, wild young guy," he said during the interview. "But at the same time, I learned from it, and it was almost like…I wouldn't say it happened for a reason, but it was something to trigger my mind to be more of a mature adult. To handle myself in situations, don't throw tantrums, don't be a baby about it."
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On Aug. 16, Brown was also sentenced to complete 1,000 more hours of community service. The Los Angeles District Attorney accused the entertainer of fudging with his community service hour records stemming from his hit-and-run accident in May.
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Tesco Hudl review: Can a supermarket chain put out a decent tablet?
One may seem like a paragon of modernity compared to its 94-year-old rival, but the UK's two biggest retailers have a lot in common. For starters, both Amazon and Tesco succeeded far beyond their original missions (bookseller and greengrocer, respectively) to become retail giants. Both understand the value of consumer data and exploit that information mercilessly. Finally, both sell dirt-cheap Android tablets in the hopes of maintaining a foothold in our living rooms, hearts, minds and, most importantly, wallets.
In the UK, there are around 50 million people who don't own a tablet or any other mobile computing device. That's the group of people that Tesco is going after with the Hudl, an Android tablet that's aimed squarely at "them" rather than "us." Priced at £119 ($191), but available for £60 ($91) if you redeem Clubcard vouchers, it's not a surprise that the company sold 35,000 units after launch. So, is it better than the Kindle Fire that it seeks to emulate? And when all is said and done, is this the device for which we'll be stuck doing technical support when the in-laws inevitably purchase it?
Hardware
If you had any remaining illusions as to the Hudl's target market, opening the box should dispel them immediately. The protective sticker that covers the display offers up helpful labels that direct you toward the various ports and buttons as if this were a "my first tablet." Peel that back, and you're left with a rectangle of glass with rounded-off corners, and a lid fashioned out of brightly hued plastic. Though our review unit came in royal blue, you can also snap it up in red, purple or classic black. Walk past it in a hurry, and you'd be forgiven for mistaking this for last year's Kindle Fire HD. We're not suggesting that the Hudl is a clone, but given the look, feel and placement of the speakers, there are plenty of commonalities between the two.
Delve further into the packaging and you'll find a 5-volt wall socket and a micro-USB cable, a few short instructional pamphlets and a voucher booklet offering you discounts when you use the Hudl to buy stuff. That includes free broadband for Tesco Homephone customers, 75 percent off your first five movie purchases and £15 off your first grocery shop of £60, among other offers.
Hardware-wise, there's a micro-HDMI port and a 3.5mm headphone jack running along the top; a power button, volume rocker and microSD slot down on the right side; and the micro-USB port jutting out the bottom. While the spec sheet promises that only microSD cards of 32GB or less will work on the device, we had no issue using a 64GB card. Continuing our tour, the left-hand side of the tablet is blank, while on the back you'll find a pair of stereo speakers mounted two-thirds of the way down the side, along with a 3-megapixel camera jutting out of the top corner. There's also a front-facing camera, which sits at the center of the Hudl's front bezel -- and unlike orientation-agnostic tablets like the Nexus 7, this one's clearly designed to be held in landscape.
You can stick this between your hands and try to bend it, but you'll struggle to get as much as a creak out of this device. Despite its bargain-basement price, the company has clearly worked hard to keep the build quality high. That shouldn't be a surprise, considering it was developed in partnership with Archos (it's the Archos HT7S3, trivia hounds) and manufactured by Keen High, which also produces hardware for Microsoft and HP. Under the hood, you'll find 16GB of internal storage and not much else, if we're honest. There's a Rockchip system-on-chip paired with Mali 400 graphics, 1GB of RAM, dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0. So, let's move on.
| Tesco Hudl | |
| Dimensions | 128.8 x 192.8 x 9.85mm (5.07 x 7.59 x 0.38 inches) |
| Weight | 0.81 pound (370 grams) |
| Screen size | 7-inch |
| Resolution | 1,440 x 900 (242 ppi) |
| Screen type | IPS LCD |
| Battery | Up to 9 hours |
| Internal storage | 16GB |
| External storage | microSD card (up to 32GB) |
| Rear camera | 3-megapixel AF |
| Forward camera | 2-megapixel fixed-focus |
| Video capture | 720p |
| NFC | N/A |
| Bluetooth | 4.0 |
| SoC | Quad-core Rockchip RK3188 w/ Mali 400 Graphics |
| CPU | 1.5GHz |
| RAM | 1GB |
| WiFi | Dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n |
| Wireless charging | No |
| Operating system | Android 4.2.2 |
| Details correct as of October 2013 | |
Display and audio
When reviewing a low-end tablet with a mid-range display, you've got to give praise where it's due, knowing the price that this is on sale for. After all, this display actually deserves a good deal of praise, but so much that we come off like we're fawning. The 7-inch, 1,440 x 900 IPS LCD panel has a perfectly acceptable backlight, a decent pixel density (242 ppi) and viewing angles that enable you to see the action from pretty much any position that physics allows.
One of our recurring gripes about most cheap Android tablets is that the speakers are badly placed, and often sound tinny and distorted at full volume. That is not the case here. While the overall volume is quieter than other slates we've used, the sound is crystal clear. To be fair, you won't be hosting any impromptu parties with this device, but given that so many pieces of hardware scrimp on this essential feature, we're pleased with what we've seen -- or rather, heard.
Performance and battery life
The Hudl's spec sheet makes for disappointing reading, filling our hearts with a sense of unmitigated dread. After all, it's rare that you'd be pleased to learn that your tablet has a Rockchip system-on-chip. No offense to the Chinese foundry, but its ultra-low-budget offerings will hardly give Qualcomm's and NVIDIA's CEOs night terrors. As you can see from the figures, this isn't a device that'll breeze through 3D titles, given that its GFXBench test was a paltry 4.1 fps. What is concerning, however, is that since you'd expect novice users to do plenty of browsing on this device, a SunSpider score of 1,403ms shows that little effort has been put into refining that experience (note: lower numbers are better on that test).
| Tesco Hudl (2013) | Nexus 7 (2013) | |
|---|---|---|
| Quadrant 2.0 | 5,371 | 6,133 |
| Vellamo 2.0 | 1,559.6 | 1,597 |
| AnTuTu 4 | 18,790 | 19,755 |
| SunSpider 1.0.1 (ms) | 1,403 | 602 |
| GFXBench 2.7 HD Offscreen (fps) | 4.1 | 40 |
| CF-Bench | 11,925 | 15,366 |
| *SunSpider: lower scores are better. | ||
Tesco promises that the Hudl can last around nine hours, but in our intensive rundown test, it lasted seven hours (seven hours and six minutes, to be precise). We don't want you to get the impression that's bad, however, as seven hours is actually a reasonable figure for a tablet of this size. While you shouldn't compare it to the Nexus 7 (which has a significantly brighter screen), this will be a useful companion while you couch surf in the evening. In fact, when work stopped, we would just keep this in our hands, tweeting, watching Netflix and generally making a nuisance of ourselves online -- and found that we got between five and six hours of run time before beating a retreat to the wall socket.
| Tablet | Battery Life |
|---|---|
Tesco Hudl | 7:06 |
| Microsoft Surface 2 | 14:22 |
| Apple iPad mini | 12:43 (WiFi) |
| Apple iPad (late 2012) | 11:08 (WiFi) |
| Amazon Kindle Fire HDX (7-inch) | 10:41 (WiFi) |
| Apple iPad 2 | 10:26 |
| ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime | 10:17 |
| Apple iPad (2012) | 9:52 (HSPA) / 9:37 (LTE) |
| Nexus 7 (2012) | 9:49 |
| Microsoft Surface for Windows RT | 9:36 |
| Apple iPad | 9:33 |
| ASUS Transformer Prime Infinity TF700 | 9:25 |
| Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 | 8:56 |
| Sony Xperia Tablet Z | 8:40 |
| Hisense Sero 7 Pro | 8:28 |
| Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 | 7:38 |
| HP Slate 7 | 7:36 |
| Nexus 10 | 7:26 |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 | 7:18 |
Nexus 7 (2013) | 7:15 |
| RIM BlackBerry PlayBook | 7:01 |
Software and services
In the same way that the Kindle Fire is basically a glorified in-store catalog, Tesco wants the Hudl to be your hook into its retail ecosystem. That means its home screen is full of widgets offering direct access to Tesco's grocery stores, Tesco Direct, Clubcard, blinkbox Movies and Music. These widgets can be easily dismissed, but we think the company's betting that once ordering groceries from your couch becomes a habit, you won't consider ditching them. The one thing you can't ditch is the "T" logo sitting in the bottom-left corner of the home bar. Here you'll also find shortcuts to Clubcard TV, Tesco Bank, Florence and Fred (Fashion), Tesco Wine and Tesco Phone Shop, as well as a store locator.
With the Hudl being very much a "family-friendly" device, designed to be left in close reach of the kids, the company needed to ensure that the Hudl could be tailored to be more child-friendly. The Getting Started app, which lives on the home screen, gives users a rundown on ways that they can do this. Unfortunately, unlike the Kindle Fire's Free Time, there's no automatic, one-stop shop for parental control. Instead, you get tutorials on which settings you need to change within the various apps, as well as Google Play shortcuts for apps like Famigo Kid Lock and Zoodle's Kid Mode. We're not sure if we like this approach, since, while it does offer parents very granular controls (Google Safe search, content filters, securing Google Play with a password, etc.), we imagine that some impatient adults would expect some more hand-holding.
Camera
It's tradition, or an old charter (or something) that every gadget reviewer must reheat the tired proclamation that people shouldn't use their tablets as cameras. Unfortunately for us, those arguments don't hold water when you see people showing up at tourist attractions carrying iPads. If we were to sum up the Hudl's imaging prowess in a single word, it'd be "dismal." With washed-out, pixelated images, we'd have honestly preferred it if Tesco (and Archos) beefed up the forward-facing camera and abandoned the rear shooter altogether.
Unsurprisingly, video recording doesn't fare much better. Our sample clips were blurry, shaky productions that failed to pick up clear sound. As you can see in the clip above, the quality here is terrible, and we wouldn't suggest you use this for anything but the most dire of emergencies -- and even then, the resulting clip probably wouldn't be admissible as evidence.
Accessories
Our review unit came with a black soft-touch folding case/stand, but everyone else will have to buy it separately for £15. The accessory does its job well, with sturdy plastic clips that hook onto the four corners of the Hudl and a case that divides in three to offer a more vertical or more horizontal position. There's also a magnetic flap inside that promises to hold the whole shebang together. We were happy to use the stand and you can be sure it'll keep the slate protected should you take it out and about. But we did find that the felt-like lining was a magnet for fluff and lint. In addition, Tesco is also selling kids headphones (£12), earbuds (£15), a micro-HDMI-out cable (£15) and various charging sets (£15 to £20) -- which you can buy in-store or from within the Tesco Direct app.
The competition
Looking at the price, not to mention the target audience, we're going to have to come back to the Kindle Fire as the Hudl's primary competitor. In comparison to the £119/£60 Hudl, the base-model Kindle Fire will set you back £119 with 8GB of storage and Special Offers (read: built-in ads). For that, however, you'll get access to the Amazon App Store (as opposed to Google Play), Lovefilm, IMDb X-Ray and all of the other services that the company offers. Unfortunately, you'll be stuck with that meager eight gigs of storage, as the Fire HD doesn't have a microSD card slot. And while you can access other stores' websites via the browser, you'll also lose your chance at super-convenient grocery shopping. Meanwhile, the Kindle Fire HDX with 16GB of storage will set you back £199 with Special Offers. It's clearly one whole price bracket higher than the Hudl, but for the extra cash you'll get a 323-ppi display, a Snapdragon 800 processor and Mayday live tech support.
As for other low-price 7-inch tablets? If you're not fussed at the idea of subscribing to one company's ecosystem, then you've got the £199, 16GB Nexus 7, which has a similarly pixel-dense display along with a superior 5-megapixel camera. And, given that it's a Nexus device, you'll be entitled to software updates direct from Google. In the same size bracket, there are also the other usual suspects. The 7-inch Galaxy Tab 3 will set you back £160; the first-generation iPad mini is available for £249; and the new model with a Retina display is priced at £319.
Wrap-up
There are certain things that Britain does well, and some things that, when it tries to stand equal to its American cousins, it fails miserably. The traditional canvas plimsoll, for instance, doesn't really grab the eye when placed next to a pair of Chuck Taylors. While plucky Brits can get excited over a six-episode season of a sitcom, those across the pond can enjoy anything between 13 and 26 in half a year. In a way, Tesco's Hudl feels like a slightly weak reworking of Amazon's Kindle Fire, designed to appease more provincial tastes. From a technology standpoint, therefore, we should be disappointed that there's not been much innovation here. You see, it's hard not to defer to Amazon's second- or third-generation Kindle Fire tablets, purely because that hardware is significantly more refined than Tesco's debut effort. Some may say that's unfair, but having used the Hudl extensively, we can't help but notice that everything the Hudl does, the Amazon tablet already does too -- and it does it better.
But you knew that was going to be the case, didn't you? This is a tablet from Tesco, for pity's sake. Except, when you begin to use it, something strange begins to happen. Despite all of its failings, this meager slate became our go-to piece of hardware for responding to emails and browsing Twitter. We had it playing movies on Netflix while we worked, and we rocked out to a playlist while cooking dinner. While its original purpose was to coax technophobes into the future, the Hudl is easy to use and, dare we say it, charming enough, that it might win over even the most hardened of gadget snobs. If you're a Tesco shopper and you've got Clubcard points that'll let you purchase this for £60, then it's a no-brainer. Buy this device. Go home and enjoy it. If you have no choice but to pay the full £120 price, however, then the Kindle Fire HD becomes the more persuasive option.
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The ocean is broken
The following article was reprinted with permission from The Newcastle Herald.
IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.
Not the absence of sound, exactly.
The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.
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And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.
What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.
The birds were missing because the fish were missing.
Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.
"There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.
But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.
No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.
"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.
"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."
But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.
North of the equator, up above New Guinea, the ocean-racers saw a big fishing boat working a reef in the distance.
"All day it was there, trawling back and forth. It was a big ship, like a mother-ship," he said.
And all night it worked too, under bright floodlights. And in the morning Macfadyen was awoken by his crewman calling out, urgently, that the ship had launched a speedboat.
"Obviously I was worried. We were unarmed and pirates are a real worry in those waters. I thought, if these guys had weapons then we were in deep trouble."
But they weren't pirates, not in the conventional sense, at least. The speedboat came alongside and the Melanesian men aboard offered gifts of fruit and jars of jam and preserves.
"And they gave us five big sugar-bags full of fish," he said.
"They were good, big fish, of all kinds. Some were fresh, but others had obviously been in the sun for a while.
"We told them there was no way we could possibly use all those fish. There were just two of us, with no real place to store or keep them. They just shrugged and told us to tip them overboard. That's what they would have done with them anyway, they said.
"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."
Macfadyen felt sick to his heart. That was one fishing boat among countless more working unseen beyond the horizon, many of them doing exactly the same thing.
No wonder the sea was dead. No wonder his baited lines caught nothing. There was nothing to catch.
If that sounds depressing, it only got worse.
The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.
"After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.
"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.
"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."
In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.
"Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it's still out there, everywhere you look."
Ivan's brother, Glenn, who boarded at Hawaii for the run into the United States, marvelled at the "thousands on thousands" of yellow plastic buoys. The huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets. Pieces of polystyrene foam by the million. And slicks of oil and petrol, everywhere.
Countless hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by the killer wave and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea.
"In years gone by, when you were becalmed by lack of wind, you'd just start your engine and motor on," Ivan said.
Not this time.
"In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of situation, out in the ocean.
"If we did decide to motor we couldn't do it at night, only in the daytime with a lookout on the bow, watching for rubbish.
"On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of a big car or truck.
"We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.
"We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through a garbage tip.
"Below decks you were constantly hearing things hitting against the hull, and you were constantly afraid of hitting something really big. As it was, the hull was scratched and dented all over the place from bits and pieces we never saw."
Plastic was ubiquitous. Bottles, bags and every kind of throwaway domestic item you can imagine, from broken chairs to dustpans, toys and utensils.
And something else. The boat's vivid yellow paint job, never faded by sun or sea in years gone past, reacted with something in the water off Japan, losing its sheen in a strange and unprecedented way.
BACK in Newcastle, Ivan Macfadyen is still coming to terms with the shock and horror of the voyage.
"The ocean is broken," he said, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.
Recognising the problem is vast, and that no organisations or governments appear to have a particular interest in doing anything about it, Macfadyen is looking for ideas.
He plans to lobby government ministers, hoping they might help.
More immediately, he will approach the organisers of Australia's major ocean races, trying to enlist yachties into an international scheme that uses volunteer yachtsmen to monitor debris and marine life.
Macfadyen signed up to this scheme while he was in the US, responding to an approach by US academics who asked yachties to fill in daily survey forms and collect samples for radiation testing - a significant concern in the wake of the tsunami and consequent nuclear power station failure in Japan.
"I asked them why don't we push for a fleet to go and clean up the mess," he said.
"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."
This article ran in the Newcastle Herald, which published a follow up after it gained traction worldwide.
- Nature & Environment
- Japan
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