This robot arm picks up semi-liquids, blows my mind

Every once in a while I see a piece of technology that seems so implausible that it couldn?t possibly exist, yet it does. This robot arm with a Teflon sheet attached is just such a piece of tech. It?s so slick that it can pick up a splash of semi-liquids like ketchup or mayonnaise without even changing the shape of the puddle.

The uses for the SWITL, as it?s called, seem pretty widespread, with the company behind it envisioning applications in packaging delicate materials like meat as one option. All I know is that I?ve watched it several times and I still cant believe how smooth it works and how the ?gel? materials stay in the same organic shape. It?s truly remarkable.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/06/14/this-robot-arm-picks-up-semi-liquids-blows-my-mind/

worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk lebron james twitter jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show lasso of truth

Looking Out for Mobile Data

In 2004, three students at the University of Southern California shook up the world of mobile phones. The three hackers?John Hering, Kevin Mahaffey, and James Burgess?found a vulnerability in certain Nokia cell phones' Bluetooth connection to wireless headsets, which could let eavesdroppers listen in on phone calls. But, according to Hering, Mahaffey, and Burgess, Nokia didn't take the problem seriously because Bluetooth communications have such a short range?generally about 30 feet. To drive home that the flaw needed fixing, the trio created a rig to sniff signals from more than a mile away. They mounted the hardware on a rifle stock, dubbed their contraption the "BlueSniper rifle," and demonstrated it at the Defcon security conference that year.

"It was our belief that these devices would become the future of computing at some point and that software and software vulnerabilities were a big deal," Hering says now. "And our goal was to change the mindset of those people tasked with building the software."

Hering and his partners are continuing to forge their own path in the emerging field of mobile security with the company they founded in 2007, now called Lookout Mobile Security. Traditional computer-security companies, which sell subscriptions for software intended to protect PCs from spyware and viruses, have been predicting for years that similar scourges will soon begin to infect mobile phones. But malware on smart phones is not a significant problem yet, as the Lookout team realized. So instead they focused on helping consumers secure their devices in other ways. The Lookout app allows data on a phone to be managed remotely, for example, or it can locate a lost or stolen phone. The app (which is available on Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile phones) also lets people oversee the other applications on their phones according to specific security criteria, such as which programs use the phone's location data. "We decided to build a software product," says Mahaffey, who serves as chief technology officer. "We did not want to sell through fear."

The basic version of the app is free; Lookout makes money by selling a premium version. The company says its software has 10 million users; a "low single-digit" percentage of them pay for the premium version. Lookout itself employs 55 people and has raised $36.5 million in funding.

The company has focused on details such as streamlining the user interface of its app, and developed it expressly for mobile devices, rather than retrofitting business-computer software, says Chenxi Wang, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. "What Lookout has done, which is remarkably simple but somehow has eluded the other vendors, is the fact they've designed their products for the iPhone-age consumers," she says.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=4be1d10854e5df258328abe00f7d9fae

nyc school closings scelestious stephanie seymour and son david nelson the chipmunks seattle public schools worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk

This robot arm picks up semi-liquids, blows my mind

Every once in a while I see a piece of technology that seems so implausible that it couldn?t possibly exist, yet it does. This robot arm with a Teflon sheet attached is just such a piece of tech. It?s so slick that it can pick up a splash of semi-liquids like ketchup or mayonnaise without even changing the shape of the puddle.

The uses for the SWITL, as it?s called, seem pretty widespread, with the company behind it envisioning applications in packaging delicate materials like meat as one option. All I know is that I?ve watched it several times and I still cant believe how smooth it works and how the ?gel? materials stay in the same organic shape. It?s truly remarkable.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/06/14/this-robot-arm-picks-up-semi-liquids-blows-my-mind/

lights out nyc school closings scelestious stephanie seymour and son david nelson the chipmunks seattle public schools worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell

The Find My iPhone service has been ported to iCloud

Earlier today evidence was discovered that the Calendar portions of MobileMe had already begun being ported over to the iCloud domain and rebranded. We did some digging here after the news and discovered that the Find My iPhone service seems to have been ported over as well.

The screenshot above is from the confirmation email that Find My iPhone sends you when you send a message to a lost phone that you?re trying to locate. The email is clearly branded with the iCloud logo.

When you view the origin of the iCloud logo you can see that it is coming from the iCloud domain as well. This indicates that the message originated on the iCloud servers. This would seem to verify that the Find My iPhone service has been ported to iCloud and that it is highly likely that we will see pretty much all of the web services that we use now with MobileMe getting the same treatment.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/06/14/the-find-my-iphone-service-has-been-ported-to-icloud/

issaquah school district the game tv show lasso of truth terrence j most popular thanksgiving side dish the game bet lights out nyc school closings scelestious stephanie seymour and son

The Caucus: Republican Debate Prep: What to Watch For in New Hampshire

2:13 p.m. | Updated The first Republican presidential debate of the 2012 campaign, held in South Carolina several weeks ago, produced precious little drama, in part because some of the major candidates chose not to participate.

Monday night?s debate is likely to be different.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and the front-runner in the Republican race to challenge President Obama, will make his first appearance in a national debate in this campaign. During this, his second, attempt at the nomination, Mr. Romney is all but ignoring his rivals and focusing his comments on Mr. Obama. But as a result, he enters the debate with a target on his back.

Taking aim will be Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, who has made it clear in recent weeks that he intends to cast the Republican contest as a choice between Mr. Romney and himself. In remarks over the weekend leading up to the debate, Mr. Pawlenty assailed what he called ?Obamneycare,? a reference to the similar health care plans designed by Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney.

Yet it remained unclear how aggressively Mr. Pawlenty planned to criticize Mr. Romney. Asked by reporters on Monday whether he would use the term ?Obamneycare,? Mr. Pawlenty said, ?Probably not.?

?During the debate, I?ll certainly respond to any of the questions that come up, but the point wasn?t to take a swipe at Mitt Romney,? Mr. Pawlenty said. ?The object isn?t to stir some kind of internal rift in the Republican Party. The focus here is to get Barack Obama out of the White House.?

But others are eager to disrupt the Pawlenty-Romney dynamic.

Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, is eager to make an impression on the national stage. And after last week?s staff defections, Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, is hoping to demonstrate that he remains a viable alternative to Mr. Romney and Mr. Pawlenty. Neither Ms. Bachmann nor Mr. Gingrich participated in the first debate.

A few notables will remain absent from the debate, which takes place at the Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., and begins at 8 p.m. Eastern time.

Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, says he?s still about 10 days away from an announcement and is skipping the debate. Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, is conducting a bus tour but has not said whether she will run for president. And Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, is said to be seriously thinking about a run, but will not be in New Hampshire on Monday night.

Another candidate who won?t be in New Hampshire on Monday is Mr. Obama, who will be in Florida instead raising money for his re-election campaign. But his views will be well represented at the debate site by Robert Gibbs, his former press secretary, who will conduct television interviews throughout the evening to respond to the expected Republican attacks. Mr. Gibbs said he planned to arrive in New Hampshire Monday afternoon.

So what will happen on Monday night? Debates have a way of surprising us ? candidates make a gaffe or deliver a clever line that reverberates through the campaign. Sometimes several candidates find a way to gang up on a single rival (Mr. Romney?), and other times it feels as if everyone is on his own.

If you want to do some debate prep of your own, here are a few things to think about.

* Romney vs. Obama. Everything Mr. Romney has done in the past month suggests that he intends to portray himself as the inevitable choice of Republicans to challenge Mr. Obama, especially on the economy. In his announcement speech in New Hampshire a week ago, Mr. Romney said: ?Barack Obama has failed America. When he took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse. And he made it last longer.?

On Monday, he doubled down on that message, releasing a striking Web video that mocks Mr. Obama?s recent comment that ?there are always going to be bumps on the road to recovery.? The video shows people laying down in the middle of a road before standing up, looking into the camera, and saying, ?I?m an American, not a bump in the road.?

Look for Mr. Romney to try to keep the focus on Mr. Obama during the debate Monday night. But will his rivals let him do that?

* Pawlenty vs. Romney. Mr. Pawlenty remains toward the bottom of the early political polls as he has struggled to increase his name recognition. He and his advisers clearly believe that the best way to remedy that problem is to go after Mr. Romney.

To that end, Mr. Pawlenty has increasingly focused his campaign rhetoric on Mr. Romney, the front-runner. His ?Obamneycare? comment on Sunday is the latest attempt to wound Mr. Romney in the eyes of conservatives who are already suspicious of him for having served a term as governor of one of the most liberal states in the nation.

The only question for Monday night is whether Mr. Pawlenty goes after Mr. Romney in his first answer, or if he waits until later in the debate.

* Bachmann?s Introduction. Ms. Bachmann is not yet an official candidate in the race, but she has been acting like one. In her first debate appearance, the often bombastic, conservative lawmaker is hoping to present herself as a serious, viable alternative to the other candidates in the field.

Ms. Bachmann relishes her appeal to religious conservatives and the Tea Party movement (she is a founding member of the Tea Party caucus in Congress). But she has made a few stumbles in rolling out a likely campaign, including a video-based speech to Iowa Republicans that was widely panned.

Her challenge Monday night? To look presidential without losing the edge that makes her popular with her base.

* Newt?s Return. Mr. Gingrich skipped the first Republican debate and has had a difficult month since. He angered Republican leaders by calling their budget proposals ?right-wing social engineering.? He was mocked for having a $500,000 line of credit at Tiffany?s. And virtually his entire staff quit last week after Mr. Gingrich and his wife took a two-week vacation cruise instead of campaigning.

The question for Mr. Gingrich is this: Can a strong debate performance help reassure donors and supporters that his campaign is not teetering on the edge of collapse?

* The Lesser Knowns. Three other candidates will be on the stage Monday night. Representative Ron Paul of Texas is often a crowd pleaser, especially with libertarians. Herman Cain, the former chief executive of Godfather?s Pizza, sees Iowa as a place where his conservative views might gain traction, but he could use the New Hampshire debate to present a broader appeal. And Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, is hoping that his second debate performance will boost his name recognition.

* The Sideshow. Debates are primarily an opportunity for candidates to reach a large audience as they seek to offer a contrast with their rivals. But it also serves as a reason for outside groups to drive their messages in an environment rich with national news media. Monday will be no exception.

The Democratic National Committee has assembled a ?rapid response? team in Manchester; Brad Woodhouse, the committee?s communications director, sent a Twitter message Monday morning that he was ?heading to Manchester, N.H., for the G.O.P. debate.? Ahead of the event, the committee sent an e-mail with a Washington Post story about Mitt Romney. The subject line of the e-mail: ?Mitt Romney. ?Whoever that is.? ?

Other liberal groups based in Washington are also heading north for the debate. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee will run an ad on broadcast and cable television attacking Republicans for what they say are attempts to end Medicare. Another group, Protect Your Care, will do the same, showing ads that say ?Stop the Republican Plan to Cut Medicare.?

The groups hope to use the debate as a way to weaken the Republican nominee, whoever that is. Their target? The viewers that tune into the debate, but also the national reporters who will write about it.

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting from Manchester, N.H.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=6c0baf25986b91920e112513e500bb0b

david nelson the chipmunks seattle public schools worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk lebron james twitter jimmer fredette thomas tew rum

Obama Seeks to Win Back Wall St. Cash

The guests were asked for their thoughts on how to speed the economic recovery, then the president opened the floor for over an hour on hot issues like hedge fund regulation and the deficit.

Mr. Obama, who enraged many financial industry executives a year and a half ago by labeling them ?fat cats? and criticizing their bonuses, followed up the meeting with phone calls to those who could not attend.

The event, organized by the Democratic National Committee, kicked off an aggressive push by Mr. Obama to win back the allegiance of one of his most vital sources of campaign cash ? in part by trying to convince Wall Street that his policies, far from undercutting the investor class, have helped bring banks and financial markets back to health.

Last month, Mr. Obama?s campaign manager, Jim Messina, traveled to New York for back-to-back meetings with Wall Street donors, ending at the home of Marc Lasry, a prominent hedge fund manager, to court donors close to Mr. Obama?s onetime rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton. And Mr. Obama will return to New York this month to dine with bankers, hedge fund executives and private equity investors at the Upper East Side restaurant Daniel.

?The first goal was to get recognition that the administration has led the economy from an unimaginably difficult place to where we are today,? said Blair W. Effron, an investment banker closely involved in Mr. Obama?s fund-raising efforts. ?Now the second goal is to turn that into support.?

The president?s top financial industry supporters say they are confident that the support Mr. Obama needs will ultimately be there, despite the financial industry?s unhappiness over his efforts to tighten regulation of their businesses. But it is clear that those supporters will have to work much harder to win over the financial services industry than they did in 2008, before Wall Street?s bust, the subsequent clashes over policy and the sometimes bitter personal differences that lingered afterward.

Executives at large investment banks, a group that gave generously to Mr. Obama in his last campaign, are remaining on the sidelines for now. Only a small handful of such donors have appeared in Mr. Obama?s joint campaign filings with the Democratic National Committee, though officials there said more would appear in the coming weeks.

Some traditional heavy hitters in Democratic Wall Street fund-raising have stepped out of the game. They include Maureen White and her husband, Steven L. Rattner, a founder of the Quadrangle Group, whose Fifth Avenue living room was a critical conduit between Wall Street and Democratic candidates in the years before Mr. Rattner joined the Obama administration to help restructure the auto industry. The couple did not resume their old role after Mr. Rattner left government, and he was caught up last year in an investigation into kickbacks to New York?s state pension fund.

And even as some criticize the president for listening too closely, they say, to Wall Street on issues like the 2008 bailout and financial regulation, he has suffered some unusually public defections and criticism by some former Wall Street supporters, who view his policies and rhetoric as unfair to their industry. Many are Republicans whose support last time around burnished his image as a post-partisan problem solver.

And as Mr. Obama seeks to rebuild, Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, is using his background as a venture capital executive and his policy proposals to woo financial-industry donors.

Last week, Mr. Romney held three fund-raisers in Greenwich, Conn., and New York, including a reception hosted by Anthony Scaramucci, a hedge fund manager who donated to Mr. Obama in 2008. Mr. Scaramucci said he wanted a president who embodied pragmatism and middle-of-the-road solutions. In 2008, that candidate was Mr. Obama, he said; today, it is Mr. Romney.

?He seemed like he was going to be a transformative candidate,? Mr. Scaramucci said of Mr. Obama in an interview. ?I?m really not an ideological guy, and I think the country right now needs more practical, less partisan people.?

To offset those defections, Mr. Obama?s campaign has deployed a corps of loyal Wall Street supporters who have fanned out to defend the president?s record and stoke fatigued donors. They include Robert Wolf, the chief executive of UBS Group Americas; the hedge fund managers Orin S. Kramer and Eric Mindich; and Mark T. Gallogly, a co-founder of Centerbridge Partners.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=93f5dafc158836293985238c521f011e

thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show lasso of truth terrence j most popular thanksgiving side dish the game bet lights out nyc school closings scelestious

Samsung planning to mass produce AMOLED displays next year

Samsung wants to mass produce flexible Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) displays next year. The electronics giant also hopes to introduce smartphones and wrist watches with these flexible displays as soon as Q2 2012, according to the Korean website etnews.

To reach its goal, the Korean company has set up a joint venture with Ube Kosan, a Japanese company that can deliver the required plastic substrate material. Samsung will be ramping up production with a new 1000mē plant, for which construction is expected to be finalized this year. Unsurprisingly, there is already speculation that the Samsung Galaxy S III will feature these displays.

The displays in question can be bent or rolled up like a piece of paper. Although they are still part of a new technology, Samsung has done enough testing to be confident that they can be used by consumers on a daily basis.

Last month, Samsung researchers designed and built a prototype of a seamless foldable AMOLED display. The display's mechanical and optical robustness were tested by performing 100,000 folding-unfolding cycles. The relative brightness at the junction decreased by just 6 percent, which is hardly recognizable by the human eye and so the deterioration can be considered negligible.

The AMOLED displays we'll see from Samsung next year will not be foldable that many times. Most flexible displays, which are becoming increasingly more viable and interesting to mobile companies, are bendable or rollable to avoid the creases that occur from folding a material completely in half. Some believe that foldable displays could be the future of mobile devices as they solve the problem of minimizing the size of the device while simultaneously maximizing the size of the display.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44218-samsung-planning-to-mass-produce-amoled-displays-next-year.html

lasso of truth terrence j most popular thanksgiving side dish the game bet lights out nyc school closings scelestious stephanie seymour and son david nelson the chipmunks

F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds

The F.B.I. soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.

The F.B.I. recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes. Among them, Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that it was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents? power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing.

?Claiming additional authorities to investigate people only further raises the potential for abuse,? Mr. German said, pointing to complaints about the bureau?s surveillance of domestic political advocacy groups and mosques and to an inspector general?s findings in 2007 that the F.B.I. had frequently misused ?national security letters,? which allow agents to obtain information like phone records without a court order.

Valerie E. Caproni, the F.B.I. general counsel, said the bureau had fixed the problems with the national security letters and had taken steps to make sure they would not recur. She also said the bureau, which does not need permission to alter its manual so long as the rules fit within broad guidelines issued by the attorney general, had carefully weighed the risks and the benefits of each change.

?Every one of these has been carefully looked at and considered against the backdrop of why do the employees need to be able to do it, what are the possible risks and what are the controls,? she said, portraying the modifications to the rules as ?more like fine-tuning than major changes.?

Some of the most notable changes apply to the lowest category of investigations, called an ?assessment.? The category, created in December 2008, allows agents to look into people and organizations ?proactively? and without firm evidence for suspecting criminal or terrorist activity.

Under current rules, agents must open such an inquiry before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database. Under the new rules, agents will be allowed to search such databases without making a record about their decision.

Mr. German said the change would make it harder to detect and deter inappropriate use of databases for personal purposes. But Ms. Caproni said it was too cumbersome to require agents to open formal inquiries before running quick checks. She also said agents could not put information uncovered from such searches into F.B.I. files unless they later opened an assessment.

The new rules will also relax a restriction on administering lie-detector tests and searching people?s trash. Under current rules, agents cannot use such techniques until they open a ?preliminary investigation,? which ? unlike an assessment ? requires a factual basis for suspecting someone of wrongdoing. But soon agents will be allowed to use those techniques for one kind of assessment, too: when they are evaluating a target as a potential informant.

Agents have asked for that power in part because they want the ability to use information found in a subject?s trash to put pressure on that person to assist the government in the investigation of others. But Ms. Caproni said information gathered that way could also be useful for other reasons, like determining whether the subject might pose a threat to agents.

The new manual will also remove a limitation on the use of surveillance squads, which are trained to surreptitiously follow targets. Under current rules, the squads can be used only once during an assessment, but the new rules will allow agents to use them repeatedly. Ms. Caproni said restrictions on the duration of physical surveillance would still apply, and argued that because of limited resources, supervisors would use the squads only rarely during such a low-level investigation.

The revisions also clarify what constitutes ?undisclosed participation? in an organization by an F.B.I. agent or informant, which is subject to special rules ? most of which have not been made public. The new manual says an agent or an informant may surreptitiously attend up to five meetings of a group before those rules would apply ? unless the goal is to join the group, in which case the rules apply immediately.

At least one change would tighten, rather than relax, the rules. Currently, a special agent in charge of a field office can delegate the authority to approve sending an informant to a religious service. The new manual will require such officials to handle those decisions personally.

In addition, the manual clarifies a description of what qualifies as a ?sensitive investigative matter? ? investigations, at any level, that require greater oversight from supervisors because they involve public officials, members of the news media or academic scholars.

The new rules make clear, for example, that if the person with such a role is a victim or a witness rather than a target of an investigation, extra supervision is not necessary. Also excluded from extra supervision will be investigations of low- and midlevel officials for activities unrelated to their position ? like drug cases as opposed to corruption, for example.

The manual clarifies the definition of who qualifies for extra protection as a legitimate member of the news media in the Internet era: prominent bloggers would count, but not people who have low-profile blogs. And it will limit academic protections only to scholars who work for institutions based in the United States.

Since the release of the 2008 manual, the assessment category has drawn scrutiny because it sets a low bar to examine a person or a group. The F.B.I. has opened thousands of such low-level investigations each month, and a vast majority has not generated information that justified opening more intensive investigations.

Ms. Caproni said the new manual would adjust the definition of assessments to make clear that they must be based on leads. But she rejected arguments that the F.B.I. should focus only on investigations that begin with a firm reason for suspecting wrongdoing.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4a935b6d854a1641ef1c616e87d6ee9a

nyc school closings scelestious stephanie seymour and son david nelson the chipmunks seattle public schools worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk

Blog - Mathematics Reveals New Approach To The Perfect Putt

With a creak of the knees, you bend a fraction closer to the ball. You identify the gradient of the green, size up the distance to the hole and estimate the length and grade of the grass. Following a couple of finely judged practice swings, you're ready to sink the perfectly judged putt.

That may be the time honoured way. But it turns out you've got it all wrong. According to Robert Grober, a physicist at Yale University in New Haven and a world expert on the science of golf, there's a much better way to line up a putt.

Grober's new insight comes from a simple mathematical analysis of the problem. To understand this insight, imagine a flat green with a small drop (ie at a small gradient to the horizontal. Now imagine a ball sitting a few feet from the hole on a line that is perpendicular to the fall.

Obviously, the place to aim for is slightly above the hole, so that the fall steers the ball to its target. And that's about as far as golfers have got with this problem. But Grober has gone further. He places other imaginary balls on an equidistant arc around the hole and then plots the targets to aim for for each one.

Now here's the the surprise: it turns out that each of these targets lies within a small diamond-shaped area just above the hole. And for longer putts against steeper gradients, the smaller and further away from the whole this diamond becomes.

Grober says this insight can be put to immediate use: "While these computational results may seem esoteric, in fact they suggest a very simple technique for reading putts that can improve the probability of properly choosing the proper target line."

Instead of determining a target line for a single putt, golfers should determine the target line for several equidistant putts along a 30 degree arc around the ball. The point (or small area) where these target lines coincide, is the place to aim for.

As Grober puts it: "By considering a family of putts all known to share the same target point, the golfer increases the probability of correctly identifying the target point, and thus the correct target line."

Simple really. From now on, it'll be impossible to miss.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1106.1698: The Geometry of Putting On a Planar Surface

Print Favorite Share facebook twitter
-->

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=da192434247159c96358f792eeb08b1d

seattle public schools worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk lebron james twitter jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show

Obama Seeks to Win Back Wall St. Cash

The guests were asked for their thoughts on how to speed the economic recovery, then the president opened the floor for over an hour on hot issues like hedge fund regulation and the deficit.

Mr. Obama, who enraged many financial industry executives a year and a half ago by labeling them ?fat cats? and criticizing their bonuses, followed up the meeting with phone calls to those who could not attend.

The event, organized by the Democratic National Committee, kicked off an aggressive push by Mr. Obama to win back the allegiance of one of his most vital sources of campaign cash ? in part by trying to convince Wall Street that his policies, far from undercutting the investor class, have helped bring banks and financial markets back to health.

Last month, Mr. Obama?s campaign manager, Jim Messina, traveled to New York for back-to-back meetings with Wall Street donors, ending at the home of Marc Lasry, a prominent hedge fund manager, to court donors close to Mr. Obama?s onetime rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton. And Mr. Obama will return to New York this month to dine with bankers, hedge fund executives and private equity investors at the Upper East Side restaurant Daniel.

?The first goal was to get recognition that the administration has led the economy from an unimaginably difficult place to where we are today,? said Blair W. Effron, an investment banker closely involved in Mr. Obama?s fund-raising efforts. ?Now the second goal is to turn that into support.?

The president?s top financial industry supporters say they are confident that the support Mr. Obama needs will ultimately be there, despite the financial industry?s unhappiness over his efforts to tighten regulation of their businesses. But it is clear that those supporters will have to work much harder to win over the financial services industry than they did in 2008, before Wall Street?s bust, the subsequent clashes over policy and the sometimes bitter personal differences that lingered afterward.

Executives at large investment banks, a group that gave generously to Mr. Obama in his last campaign, are remaining on the sidelines for now. Only a small handful of such donors have appeared in Mr. Obama?s joint campaign filings with the Democratic National Committee, though officials there said more would appear in the coming weeks.

Some traditional heavy hitters in Democratic Wall Street fund-raising have stepped out of the game. They include Maureen White and her husband, Steven L. Rattner, a founder of the Quadrangle Group, whose Fifth Avenue living room was a critical conduit between Wall Street and Democratic candidates in the years before Mr. Rattner joined the Obama administration to help restructure the auto industry. The couple did not resume their old role after Mr. Rattner left government, and he was caught up last year in an investigation into kickbacks to New York?s state pension fund.

And even as some criticize the president for listening too closely, they say, to Wall Street on issues like the 2008 bailout and financial regulation, he has suffered some unusually public defections and criticism by some former Wall Street supporters, who view his policies and rhetoric as unfair to their industry. Many are Republicans whose support last time around burnished his image as a post-partisan problem solver.

And as Mr. Obama seeks to rebuild, Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, is using his background as a venture capital executive and his policy proposals to woo financial-industry donors.

Last week, Mr. Romney held three fund-raisers in Greenwich, Conn., and New York, including a reception hosted by Anthony Scaramucci, a hedge fund manager who donated to Mr. Obama in 2008. Mr. Scaramucci said he wanted a president who embodied pragmatism and middle-of-the-road solutions. In 2008, that candidate was Mr. Obama, he said; today, it is Mr. Romney.

?He seemed like he was going to be a transformative candidate,? Mr. Scaramucci said of Mr. Obama in an interview. ?I?m really not an ideological guy, and I think the country right now needs more practical, less partisan people.?

To offset those defections, Mr. Obama?s campaign has deployed a corps of loyal Wall Street supporters who have fanned out to defend the president?s record and stoke fatigued donors. They include Robert Wolf, the chief executive of UBS Group Americas; the hedge fund managers Orin S. Kramer and Eric Mindich; and Mark T. Gallogly, a co-founder of Centerbridge Partners.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=93f5dafc158836293985238c521f011e

lights out nyc school closings scelestious stephanie seymour and son david nelson the chipmunks seattle public schools worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell