Aerodyne Bicycle

Schwinn Stationery Aerodyne Bicycle

If you want to get fit and healthy with exercise, but are not one to go outdoors, the Aerodyne bicycle can be a great alternative. If you do not know what I’m talking about, the Aerodyne bicycle is stationery bike made by Schwinn. This piece of exercise equipment allows you to get the exercise motion of cycling without even leaving the comfort of your own home.

You see, the Aerodyne bicycle is a great alternative to regular cycling if you would like to stay at home. It is a fairly affordable piece of exercise equipment. If you are a stay at home mom, or perhaps a wahm work at home mom, than you know how convenient this can be for one who may be tied to the house. Watching your children can put a strain on your time at the gym or going for a jog outside. While this may not be a big hassle for mom’s the world over because they really do love their children and family, the Aerodyne bicycle can give you that extra convenience.

Cycling is great for exercise because you can get a great cardio and aerobic workout without putting excess stress on your knees and leg muscles. The Aerodyne bicycle has different settings. And not only is the Aerodyne bicycle convenient, but it boasts the name of the famous company Schwinn…if you don’t know Schwinn, you don’t know cycling, right?

Exercise with the Aerodyne bicycle can be convenient also when the weather outside is not so pleasing. If you live in extremely hot areas, or perhaps the opposite…areas where there is a lot of rain and/or snow, outdoor exercise is not always an option. With the Aerodyne bicycle, you can cycle anytime you want without bothering anyone…that’s right, day or night, or even early in the wee hours of the morning, you can ride the Aerodyne bicycle all you want.

My father has always wanted an Aerodyne bicycle, or something close to it. He uses the one at his workplace. I’m going to wait for a great clearance sale or something close to a great sale before I get an Aerodyne bicycle as a gift for my father on a special occasion.

Original Source : http://hawaii.bloggerunleashed.com/shopping/schwinn-stationery-aerodyne-bicycle/

Dont Date Him Girl

DontDateHimGirl.com is a global online public forum where women can anonymously discuss and share their bad dating experiences with the world. The website, inspired by a conversation between close friends, is designed to give women a free online method to find out if the man they're dating is a cheater.^[1] Membership to the site is offered to anyone with a functioning email address; the website passively accepts postings from members and publishes them without review. As of September 2006, the site listed profiles of over 15,000 men and receives up to a quarter of a million hits a day. The site is owned by Tasha Joseph; a companion site, DontDateHerMan.com is planned for the future.^[2]

About DontDateHimGirl.com and Tasha Cunningham

The website's terms of use include clauses that inform users of the service they are solely responsible for their posts and they are forbidden to post inaccurate or defamatory information.^[3] Members are able to anonymously post the name, photograph and a brief profile of a man they have dated using the link "Add a Post". Tasha has called the site a "dating credit report" for women as there are postings authored by women who've had good dating experiences with a man and those women who say they have not had a good experience. Website users interviewed for an article in the New York Times found the website helpful and a welcome way to double-check the truthfulness of online dating profiles. ^[2]

When interviewed, Tasha has stated that the site does not attempt to contact any of the men who are discussed on the site and that she feels no responsibility to ensure the veracity of the sites content. ^[4] Men can rebut postings made about them by logging on to the site and creating an account to post their comments.

In 2007, Cunningham created The DDHG Empowers Fund, a national, multi-issue women's fund, dedicated to investing in the futures of women and girls, helping them develop their voices, skills and talents. The fund focuses on programs and initiatives that empower women in all areas of their lives. DDHG Empowers is funded, in part, by advertising revenue from the website.

Cunningham has been honoured by both former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush for creating The Embrace-A-Child Project in 1991, a program that helped disadvantaged youth in Broward County, Florida by pairing them with high school students in a mentorship capacity.

Cunningham has written for many publications including the Miami Herald, Black Entertainment Television and the BlackEnterprise.com. She's a current contributor to a number of websites including DivineCaroline.com. Cunningham is a Sustaining Member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and sits on the Advisory Board of the Russell Life Skills Foundation, headed by former Miami Dolphin player Twan Russell. The foundation promotes children's literacy.

Original Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dontdatehimgirl.com

Adrenaline Rush Can't Dodge Texas Police

Dodgeball Team Can't Dodge Texas Police


A group of Carrollton, Texas teenagers is headed to a national dodgeball competition this summer. But they're having trouble finding a place to practice.

Now the Adrenaline Rush Dodgeball Team is in trouble with the law.

Timothy Poon, Scott Strittmatter and the rest of their dodgeball team have only two months left before heading to the World Dodgeball Competition in Las Vegas.

"We can't play anywhere in Carrollton now. The cops said if they see anyone playing dodgeball, whether it's us or any other group, they would write all of them a ticket," Poon said.

One player already got a ticket for prohibited use of a public park. The group was playing dodgeball on a tennis court in Carrollton.

"We're not doing anything wrong. No one's doing drugs; no one's drinking out here. We're just having fun," he said.

"When our parks department went out to do some inspections, we found quite a bit of damage. So we warned the kids," said Sgt. Jack Adams, Carrollton Police Department. "They continually had to warn them and warn them. Eventually we had to issue a citation for them playing out there."

Carrollton police say city tennis courts are for tennis only. The sign on the court states no bikes or roller blades are allowed.

"Football fields get used for soccer and football and marching band," said Strittmatter. "Ice skating rinks get used for hockey and figure skating, why cant we use dodgeball for a tennis court?"

They've also been kicked off a court in Addison. "We want to keep em in an area where they're enjoying our city facilities, but at the same time not damaging them," said Sgt. Adams.

Carrollton police say the parks and recreation department is working quickly to find a resolution. For now the players will have to find another place to practice.

Original Source : http://cbs4denver.com/watercooler/Adrenaline.Rush.Dodgeball.2.749967.html

Pop Singer Taylor Dayne Gets Probation

Pop singer Taylor Dayne has been ordered by a US judge to serve two years' probation for reckless driving, after she was arrested in March.

Ms Dayne launched a comeback in 2005, which was chronicled on VH1

The 46-year-old star, best known for her 1987 song Tell it to My Heart, did not appear in court. Her lawyer pleaded no contest on her behalf.

Beverly Hills Superior Court Judge Richard Stone has also told Ms Dayne to finish an anti-drunk driving programme.

The singer was let off the initial charge of driving under the influence.

According to the district attorney spokeswoman, Sandi Gibbons, prosecutors decided the reckless-driving charge was more appropriate.

The singer launched a comeback in 2005, which was chronicled on the VH1 series Remaking: Taylor Dayne.

Original Source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7459221.stm

Loggerhead Sea Turtles

Trophic ecology

The species feeds on mollusks, crustaceans, fish, jellyfish, and other small to medium-size marine animals, which they crush with their large and powerful jaws. As with other sea turtles, females return to lay their eggs on or near the same beach where they hatched. Unlike other sea turtles, courtship and mating usually do not take place near the nesting beach, but rather along the migration routes between feeding and breeding grounds.

Life history

Baby Loggerhead Sea Turtle.

Loggerhead Sea Turtle laying eggs.

In the Mediterranean, Loggerheads mate from late March to early June. The female nesting season is at its peak in June and July, but this depends on the nesting beach. The clutch may vary from 100 to 126 eggs. Each egg is roughly the size and shape of a golf ball. The average interval between nesting seasons is two to three years.

Loggerheads are the most common sea turtle to nest in the United States. With the largest concentration of nests in south Florida, they nest from Texas to Virginia to North Carolina, requiring soft sandy beaches, where there is little light; although statistics collected in Florida since 1998 indicate the lowest nesting levels Florida has seen in 17 years, where nesting rates have declined from 85,988 nests in 1998 to approximately 45,084 in 2007. ^[3]

After approximately 60 days, the hatchlings emerge usually at night when protection from predation is greater. Usually following the brightest light to the ocean's edge, an artificial light, such as from a home can lead them astray. Once in the ocean they use ocean currents to travel to the Sargasso Sea using the Sargassum as protection until they mature^{[citation needed]}.

An alternative to migration for many loggerheads is hibernation to varying degrees as the water cools. By February they are submerged for up to seven hours at a time, emerging for only seven minutes to recover. Although outdone by freshwater turtles, these are the longest recorded dives for any air-breathing marine vertebrate^[4].

Most loggerheads that reach adulthood live for longer than 30 years, and can often live past 200 years. They are immune to the toxins of a Portuguese Man O' War as the turtles have often been seen feeding on them.

Etymology and taxonomic history

Two subspecies are recognized: Caretta caretta gigas, is found in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and C. caretta caretta, the Atlantic loggerhead, also found in south Italy and the Greek islands of Zakynthos, Kefalonia, Crete and the Peloponese and in Dalyan in southwestern Turkey. (see article; June Haimoff).

Importance to humans

Loggerhead Sea Turtles were once intensively hunted for their meat and eggs, along with their fat which was used in cosmetics and medication. The Loggerhead Sea Turtles were also killed for their shells, which are used to make items such as combs. As a result both subspecies are now internationally protected.

Conservation

Loggerhead Sea Turtle escapes from fishing net through a TED (Turtle Excluder Device).

Today the main threat to the adult loggerheads lies in shrimp trawls and crab fishing nets, to which many loggerheads annually fall victim. Furthermore, adults are often injured by speedboat propellers and by swallowing fishing hooks or getting caught in nets. Internationally animal protection organizations take pains to monitor and protect the turtles' nesting grounds in Turkey,^[5] Greece, Bonaire and Costa Rica. The turtles can also be found around the Italian islands of Lampedusa and Linosa, off the coast of Sicily, and in Calabria, where it is particularly endangered. Furthermore, the turtles are known to nest on the beaches of the Northern part of Cyprus, especially Alagadi Beach.^[6]

Loggerhead Sea Turtle nest roped off as part of the Sea Turtle Protection Project on Hilton Head Island

In many places during the nesting season workers search the coastline to find evidence of nests. Once found a nest will be uncovered and the eggs carefully counted, if the nest is dangerously located the eggs will be moved to a better spot. Plastic fencing will be placed at or near the surface to protect the eggs from large predators such as raccoons or even dogs. The barrier used is large enough to allow the hatchlings to emerge without difficulty. The nests are checked daily for disturbances, several days after there is indication that the eggs have hatched the nest will be uncovered and the tally of hatched eggs, undeveloped eggs, and dead hatchlings will be recorded. If any hatchlings are found, they are either taken to be raised and released, or taken to research facilities. Ones that appear strong and healthy may instead be released to the ocean. Typically those that lacked the strength to hatch and climb to the surface by that point would have died otherwise.

Hatchlings require the travel from their nest to the ocean in order to build up strength for the journey ahead, so interfering by helping it to the ocean actually lowers their chances of survival.

Original Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loggerhead_Sea_Turtle

Navy Federal Credit Union

Navy Federal Credit Union now all-inclusive at navyfcu.org

Navy Federal Credit Union announced today the expansion of its field of membership to include all branches of the armed forces. The benefits of Navy Federal membership will now be available to all Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Air Force active duty, reserve, and guard personnel and all Department of Defense (DOD) civilians who serve this great Nation.

"There are two reasons why we are doing this," said Cutler Dawson, President/CEO, Navy Federal Credit Union. "First, we have a long and proud history of serving the men and women of the Department of the Navy and their families. In today's military environment, however, all branches of the armed forces share resources, conduct joint operations, serve on the same bases, and use the same exchanges, commissaries, and medical facilities. So we believe the time is right to extend that legacy of service to all of the men and women of the Department of Defense and their families."

"Secondly," continues Dawson, "we believe all members will benefit. As our active duty Navy and Marine Corps members relocate to new duty stations, they will discover that we are expanding our branch network into areas where, until now, we haven't had a physical presence. And, as new Army and Air Force members relocate, they will also find that we plan to open branch offices near many of their installations. Adding new members is good news for our credit union because membership growth allows us to offer an even broader array of products and services at highly competitive rates. Most importantly, we will continue to provide the world-class service our members deserve and have come to expect."

Dawson said the credit union's name will remain the same as will its commitment of remaining true to the credit union roots and tradition of service. "We are always mindful that the trust our members place in Navy Federal Credit Union is our most valuable asset," added Dawson.

During 2007, Navy Federal increased its worldwide network of branches by 25% and hired 2,600 new employees to continue to provide service excellence. As a financial leader, the credit union found it essential to enhance its world class member service by opening more branch offices to provide greater convenience to its growing membership. Plans are underway to more than double the number of full service branches by 2012.

Navy Federal, a 2008 Fortune 100 Best Companies to work for(R), has over 7,300 employees, allowing the credit union to enhance products, services, and programs for members. "Our employees are the reason why we are so successful," said Dawson. "We are privileged to provide exceptional service to our members and proud to serve the men and women of the United States Military."

Navy Federal Credit Union is the world's largest credit union with over $35 billion in assets, 3 million members, 150 branch offices, 40,000 ATMs and more than 7,300 employees world-wide. The credit union serves all Department of Defense (DOD) military and civilian personnel and their families. For additional information about Navy Federal, visit: www.navyfederal.org.

Website: http://www.navyfcu.org/

Original Source : http://sev.prnewswire.com/banking-financial-services/20080527/DC2347327052008-1.html

Who is Jerry Manuel?

If there's one guy more low-key than former Mets skipper Willie Randolph, it's interim manager Jerry Manuel.

Manuel, 54, is considered to have a Zen-like approach to the game, and finds inspiration from the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandi and Leo Tolstoy.

"A lot of what Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi talked about was truth, and in a roundabout way, that's all the players want -- truth," Manuel told the New York Times in 2007.

Manuel was the AL Manager of the Year in 2000 when he led the White Sox to a division title. The White Sox finished 95-67 that season but were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Seattle Mariners. In six seasons at the helm for the White Sox, his record was 500-471 (.515). His clubs finished second four times. Despite his reputation as a good communicator, he was unable to find another managing job. He was hired by Randolph before the 2005 season as the first-base coach.

Manuel was drawn into controversy after the 2006 season when Cliff Floyd told Newsday's Ken Davidoff that Willie Randolph was "confused" during the ninth inning of Game 7 of the NLCS against the Cardinals. Floyd was sent up as a pinch-hitter with first and second and no one out. Floyd said that Randolph deferred to Manuel because Randolph wasn't sure whether Floyd should bunt or swing away. Manuel, according to Floyd, told Willie to let him swing. Floyd struck out. Randolph later disagreed with Floyd's version of the what happened, but did not get into specifics.

Manuel's professional playing career lasted 14 years but only resulted in 127 major-league at-bats. He batted .150 with three home runs. He is the father-in-law of former major-leaguer Rondell White.

-- Hank Winnicki

Original Source : http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-spmanuel0618,0,6563035.story

Tsutomu Miyazaki Hanged In Japan

Japan hangs 3 convicted murderers

TOKYO (AP) — A serial killer who mutilated the bodies of four young girls and reportedly drank the blood of one of his victims was among three convicted murderers executed in Japan on Tuesday for crimes an official called indescribably cruel.

Tsutomu Miyazaki, 45, whose rash of grisly killings in the late 1980s triggered calls for tighter restrictions on violent pornographic videos, was hanged at a detention center in Tokyo, Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama said.

Miyazaki burned the body of one 4-year-old and left her bones on her parents' doorstep. He also wrote letters to the media and victims' families taunting police. Japanese newspaper reports said he ate part of the hand of one of his victims and drank her blood.

The two others executed Tuesday were Shinji Mutsuda, 45, who had been on death row for the murder and robbery of two people, and Yoshio Yamasaki, 73, who was convicted of killing two people for the insurance money, the Justice Ministry said in a statement.

"I ordered their executions because the cases were of indescribable cruelty," Hatoyama said. "We are pursuing executions in order to achieve justice and firmly protect the rule of law."

Japan, one of the few industrialized countries that has capital punishment, has picked up the pace of executions over the past year amid rising concerns about violent crime.

The three executions brought to 13 the number of death row inmates hanged in the past six months under Hatoyama, an outspoken supporter of the death penalty. Only one inmate was executed in 2005.

Amnesty International Japan protested Tuesday's hangings and said the pace of executions in Japan is quickening. In a statement, the group also demanded Japan abolish capital punishment.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said there is no need for a change.

"There is no other policy than to maintain the current policy," Fukuda said Tuesday. "There are people who want to abolish it, but that is a minority view. The majority want it to be maintained. I feel there is no need to change it, but we must also keep an eye on world opinion."

Hatoyama, who took office last August, denied his ministry was purposely picking up the pace of hangings. Three men were executed in December, three more in February and another four in April.

In 1997, Tokyo District Court found Miyazaki guilty of killing four girls aged 4 to 7 years old in 1988 and 1989, and sentenced him to death. The Tokyo High Court upheld the sentence in 2001, and the Supreme Court followed suit on Jan. 17 this year, exhausting Miyazaki's appeals.

Miyazaki was also convicted of the abduction and sexual assault of a fifth girl.

The murders and Miyazaki's arrest dominated Japanese headlines, along with the discovery that his home was filled with a collection of thousands of violent pornographic videos, animated films and comic books stacked floor-to-ceiling.

The case triggered concerns that many young people had become desensitized to human suffering through the repeated viewing of graphic images in videos and comics.

Mutsuda also was hanged at the Tokyo detention center for killing two men and robbing them of $278,000 in 1995 and 1996. Yamasaki was executed in Osaka for murders committed in 1985 and 1990.

Japan has 102 death row inmates after Tuesday's hangings, the ministry said.

The government began to release the names of those executed and their crimes in December, easing its secret policy in an apparent move to gain understanding and support for capital punishment.

Despite international criticism of Japan's death penalty, there is little opposition to the policy domestically.

Original Source : http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hwp7Q7pJ5MIZrvoFsAIZJDyKm1HAD91BN7I00

Spore

Six and a half minutes.

That's how long it took me to create my first kooky, adorable critter using the Creature Creator for Spore, Will Wright's new sim game due out this fall. I started off with a default "body" -- a sort of shapeless lump of virtual plasticine -- and used the mouse to pull and stretch it around a bit. Then I added a head, and spent a few seconds smooshing that back and forth, first trying out a long-nosed look, then crushing it down to a pig-like snout.

A pig! A freaky mutant pig! Hey, I liked that idea.

Within seconds, I'd added a couple of legs to the body, and figured out how to push them downward so they seemed suitably stumpy; then, a couple of hooves and Bambi-like eyes later, I was done. My little virtual pig stumbled around the screen, grunting and oinking while I admired my work.

And like I said, it took only six and a half minutes.

Think for a second about how remarkable this is. When it comes to art and design, I am your Average Joe. I have only rudimentary sketching and visualization skills, and precisely zero experience with CAD software that animators use to craft Pixar-like animals. Yet in less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee, I had created a completely awesome-looking 3-D creature.

Spore's Creature Creator, in other words, is doing something quite interesting and unexpected: It's de-skilling 3-D design.

I say de-skilling in the positive sense. What I mean is that Spore is democratizing the art of 3-D design.

We probably shouldn't be surprised by this effect, because videogames have been de-skilling the world for decades now. Games propagate technology stealthily, quietly and gradually taking all sorts of skills that only pros used to possess and spreading them across the population.

Think about the whole concept of using your mouse to navigate files and icons on your computer. A mere few decades ago, this task -- using a physical interface to manipulate a virtual one -- was so opaque and weird that only computer-science pros could grasp it. Then videogames came along and, in barely a few years, trained an entire generation of kids worldwide in eye-hand-machine coordination. Steve Jobs' original Macintosh would have been DOA without videogames; they de-skilled the art of mouse manipulation.

There are dozens of other examples of this. Role-playing games have trained millions of gamers in highly complex resource and inventory control. Basically, they've made screwing around with databases fun. Or think about conducting a big raid in World of Warcraft, where you need to deploy virtual team-management skills and diplomacy worthy of the Cuban missile crisis. Previously, this was the concern of only very high-level employees at multinational corporations -- but now 13-year-old kids are doing it.

Wright is the undisputed reigning master of creating games that contain subterfuge training. Ever wonder how The Sims became the world's top-selling game of all time? It's not because people actually play it. Most longtime Sims fans quickly tire of creating families.

No, what hard-core fans love is The Sims' elegant "house-design" engine -- which they use to painstakingly craft sprawling, monster homes, customized to the level of individual tile patterns they hand-draw in cracked versions of Photoshop. The Sims isn't a game: It's the world's most popular architectural CAD package.

Original Source : http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2008/06/gamesfrontiers_0616

Mozilla Firefox 3 vs. Internet Explorer

Firefox 3 has steadily been on the tail of Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)'s Internet Explorer as the number two browser of choice. With the final release of RC2 version 3, could Firefox become the IE slayer?

The answer the Test Center found -- not quite yet. Firefox has made some really great strides over previous versions with this release. There are an abundance of new features which can really give IE 8 (which is still in beta) a run for the money.

Test Center reviewers installed IE 8 beta and Firefox 3.0 on the same box -- a Vista SP1 machine with a 1.80 GHz processor and running 2 GB RAM. Firefox installed without incident.

Favicon-based action is one of the features in Firefox 3.0 that the Test Center looked at first. As with IE, in the URL bar an icon representing the particular Website resides next to the site's URL. Click that icon in IE 8, what happens? Nothing. Click it in Firefox 3.0 and a user gets detailed information about the security of the Website. The favicon pops open to a box that reports if the user's connection is encrypted or not, if the user visited that site previously and will list any cookies or saved passwords the site may be storing on the computer. Although it is possible to gather this type of information from IE, the ease of just one-click giving up detailed information about a site, is definitely a win for Firefox.

Bookmarking has become more sophisticated as well in Firefox 3.0. Pages can be bookmarked with a single click from the location bar, which really works about the same in IE 8. More impressive, is the ability to associate "tags" with bookmarks. With tags, bookmarks can be categorized by keywords not just organized by folders.

"Smart" bookmarking gives a quick list of all items recently bookmarked or tagged. Security appears to be beefed up in this release of Firefox. Reviewers purposefully infected the test PC with some particularly annoying adware programs. IE infection was immediate, but Mozilla was able to stave off the malware. The pornographic pop-ups and site redirections that occurred after installing the malware became a nuisance in IE 8 but did not happen with using Mozilla.

In addition to this apparent heartier resistance to malware, Firefox 3.0 integrates with anti-virus applications and will notify AV software when downloading .exe files. There is also native malware protection; the application will give warning when accessing sites that contain malware.

The customization possibilities with Firefox 3.0 are endless. There are add-ons for everything from external download managers to language translators. This version also supports associating Podcasts and Videocasts with media playback tools.

Firefox 3.0 can now detect a site using high-level EV SSL certificate security. The URL bar will turn green in the location bar. However, IE has had this feature since a version update in early 2007.

Other features like Auto Complete are more robust in Firefox 3.0 and others like resume-able download are pretty much non-existent in IE.

Feature-wise, Firefox has leaped ahead of IE. However there is still an issue where it is lacking and that's in performance.

Although one particular benchmark, Firefox 3.0 scores higher under Sunspider's JavaScript benchmarking tool than IE (IE 8 11648.6 ms versus Mozilla at 4281.4 ms) that only showed that Firefox was better at handling Java scripting.

Reviewers opened a few really graphics-intensive sites in both browsers. And what is more graphics-intensive then sites aimed at children? Time to load was tested in both browsers for Disney's Web site, and the Nickelodeon channel's site. Opening www.nick.com, IE took 10 seconds to fully load, Mozilla took 20. Loading the home page for Disney.com; IE was 21 seconds to load and Mozilla was 46 seconds.

The browsers were also tested against http://www.papervision3d.org/, a site that uses Adobe (NSDQ:ADBE)'s Flashplayer. IE 8 had no problems loading and navigating through the site. Mozilla took almost a minute to load and then continuously froze while navigating. The application eventually crashed. In the business environment, performance of a browser usually has an edge over features and customizations, especially since users are usually limited by usage policy as to what they can or can't do in a browser anyway. If performance issues consist with Firefox, it will probably not be feasible for most businesses to migrate from IE which come bundled with the OS anyway.

The bottom line: With a host of improvements and features (some not even available in IE) plus its enhanced malware security, Firefox will continue to singe the stranglehold IE has in the browser space. Whether it can reduce IE to ashes, remains to be seen.

Original Source : http://www.crn.com/software/208403208