My Blog 2

It was, perhaps, the strangest demand in political history: “The middle photo is taken from Hungarian porn. Stop using fake photos to ‘trick’ people into supporting your lost cause.” This Nov. 18, 2014, tweet from a now-defunct Twitter account run by the U.S. State Department offered an early glimpse into a new front in the future of war: trolling. The message was the outgrowth of an effort the department had launched in 2011 to track and counter terrorist propaganda, first against al Qaeda, then against the fast-growing Islamic State that had spun out of its Iraqi remains. The campaign may have sounded sensible, but it soon backfired. Instead of cheering on the online battle against extremism, Twitter users piled on with more questions than the staid Foggy Bottom bureaucrats manning the account were prepared to answer. “How did the State Dept. know it was Hungarian porn?” @SpaSuzy asked. “dude … it’s really weird you know so muc...

Hurricane Michael strengthens to Category 4/5storm with est. 190+ mph winds         Hurricane Michael survivors scramble for food, water as death toll rises   While crews continued the search Saturday for thousands reported missing after  Hurricane Michael ravaged Florida's Panhandle , those  devastated by the storm were left scrambling for food and water – trying to put the pieces of their lives back together. The death toll from the  monstrous storm  has risen almost daily as crews made their way into  some of the areas hit hardest . The storm killed at least 17 people, including one in Mexico Beach. Recovery  remained painfully slow Sunday  : Gas was in short supply, power outages were rampant and search teams continued their arduous tasks.  • 'Like a bomb crater': Pilots survey damage • Can Florida tourism recover? Michael, worst hurricane to hit US in 50 years, t...

These Amateur Astronomers Found Dark Sky Paradise on a Tiny Vermont Hill Nearly every spot on Earth is, effectively, a planetarium. Wait for the sun to go down, hope for a cloudless sky, and look up. The show’s been running every night for 4.5 billion years now. But for the best stargazing, some places are clearly better than others. There’s the great observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, 13,796 feet above sea level; there’s the University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory in Chile, at a nosebleed altitude of 18,500 feet. And then there’s Stellafane, a cluster of permanent telescope observatories built near a bubble-gum pink clubhouse on Breezy Hill in Springfield, Vermont. The “Hill” part gives away that this won’t be the site of the next multi-million dollar university observatory — at just shy of 1,300 feet, Stellafane can’t compete with those famous high-altitude spots. As the sun starts to set, people set up their telescopes, ma...

HBO's John Oliver on US-Saudi Relations, Kashoggi Disappearance HBO: Following the alarming disappearance of a Saudi journalist and political dissident, John Oliver examines America's uncomfortably comfortable relationship with Saudi Arabia. ...Theory about who killed journalist Kashoaggie During the 1970s and early 1980s, 90s and early 2000s I was working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for a total of sixteen years. My job was medical laboratory manager at King Faisal Hospital and Research Centre, in the country's capital, Riyadh. My job was Telecom Systems Engineer at on the country's capital, Riyadh During the time I was there, King Faisal Hospital was the pre-eminent hospital in the Middle East. The hospital was situated on the palace grounds of King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. King Faisal was a reformer in the Kingdom. He had instituted reforms that were popular with some and unpopular with others in the royal family. He was speaking to a crowd, about his...

... Ten (10) Rules for Authros, Writers; Especially - Novelists Number Eight Just Makes Me Sad, don't I look sad? 1. The reader is a friend , not an adversary, not a spectator. 2. Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money. 3. Never use the word then as a conjunction —we have and for this purpose. Substituting then is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many ands on the page. 4. Write in third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly. 5. When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it. 6. The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than The Metamorphosis. 7. You see more sitting still than chasing after. 8. It’s doubtful that anyone with ...

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Ask Any: Man wants to prevent roommate hitting rock bottom Dear Amy: I’m a man in my late 60s, living in the City of Orlando FL with a friend, who is about the same age. We’ve been roommates for a couple of years. We knew each other from college and the armed services. My roommate, “Charles,” was seeing a woman until about three weeks ago, when she broke things off. Despite this being a fairly brief relationship, Charles took it very hard and started drinking very heavily. Charles only started dating and drinking one or two years ago, so it feels a little like he’s going through phases more typical of a college student, but his behavior now is amplified by his ability to afford liquor. It’s at the point where he starts drinking in the morning thru to the evening and brings a bottle or flask with him when we hang out in public. He seems to have a high tolerance and can hild his liquor and at some point he claims to get sober. Needless to say, it...