Rev. Billy Graham released from NC hospital (AP)

ASHEVILLE, N.C. ? The Rev. Billy Graham was released from hospital Tuesday after spending six days recovering from pneumonia, his second bout with the lung infection in the past seven months.

Doctors decided to let the 93-year-old evangelist go home after he responded well to antibiotics and physical therapy to increase his strength, said Nancy Lindell, a spokeswoman for Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C.

Graham said he was grateful for the thoughts and prayers from around the world, according to a statement released by the hospital.

"I also appreciated the wonderful treatment I received here from such caring doctors and nurses, and feel I have made some new friends," Graham said. "But I am especially looking forward to seeing my home decorated for Christmas and spending the holidays with members of my family."

Graham was admitted Nov. 30 after suffering from congestion, a cough and slight fever. He was diagnosed with pneumonia.

He spent five days at the hospital with the same ailment in May. In October 2008, Graham was hospitalized after he tripped and fell over one of his dogs. Earlier that same year, he had elective surgery on a shunt that controls excess fluid on his brain. The shunt was first installed in 2000 and drains fluid through a small tube, relieving excess pressure that can cause symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease.

Graham has also suffered from prostate cancer and was hospitalized in 2007 for nearly two weeks after experiencing intestinal bleeding. His wife, Ruth Bell Graham, died in June 2007.

The evangelist has led a worldwide ministry that packed stadiums with believers and has counseled every U.S. president since Harry Truman. He published his most recent book, "Nearing Home," last month and plans to continue writing his next book, which he said will summarize his six decades of work.

Graham rarely appears in public now. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is run by Graham's son, Franklin.

Doctors used the six-day hospital stay for routine tests on Graham that he had already scheduled. They sent him home with orders to continue his therapy to increase his strength and mobility.

"We are gratified that he has had a good response to treatment and we're committed to good home care to continue his improvement," said Dr. Lucian Rice, Graham's personal physician.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111206/ap_on_re_us/us_billy_graham_hospitalized

mlk the big year the big year breast cancer walk breast cancer walk detroit tigers major league

Astronomers find fastest rotating star

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2011) ? The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope has picked up the fastest rotating star found so far. This massive bright young star lies in our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 160,000 light-years from Earth. Astronomers think that it may have had a violent past and has been ejected from a double star system by its exploding companion.

An international team of astronomers has been using ESO's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, to make a survey of the heaviest and brightest stars in the Tarantula Nebula, in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Among the many brilliant stars in this stellar nursery the team has spotted one, called VFTS 102 [1], that is rotating at more than two million kilometres per hour -- more than three hundred times faster than the Sun [2] and very close to the point at which it would be torn apart due to centrifugal forces. VFTS 102 is the fastest rotating star known to date [3].

The astronomers also found that the star, which is around 25 times the mass of the Sun and about one hundred thousand times brighter, was moving through space at a significantly different speed from its neighbours [4].

"The remarkable rotation speed and the unusual motion compared to the surrounding stars led us to wonder if this star had had an unusual early life. We were suspicious." explains Philip Dufton (Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK), lead author of the paper presenting the results.

This difference in speed could imply that VFTS 102 is a runaway star -- a star that has been ejected from a double star system after its companion exploded as a supernova. This idea is supported by two further clues: a pulsar and an associated supernova remnant in its vicinity [5].

The team has developed a possible back story for this very unusual star. It could have started life as one component of a binary star system. If the two stars were close, gas from the companion could have streamed over and in the process the star would have spun faster and faster. This would explain one unusual fact -- why it is rotating so fast. After a short lifetime of about ten million years, the massive companion would have exploded as a supernova -- which could explain the characteristic gas cloud known as a supernova remnant found nearby. The explosion would also have led to the ejection of the star and could explain the third anomaly -- the difference between its speed and that of other stars in the region. As it collapsed, the massive companion would have turned into the pulsar that is observed today, and which completes the solution to the puzzle.

Although the astronomers cannot yet be sure that this is exactly what happened, Dufton concludes "This is a compelling story because it explains each of the unusual features that we've seen. This star is certainly showing us unexpected sides of the short, but dramatic lives of the heaviest stars."

Notes:

[1] The name VFTS102 refers to the VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey made using the Fibre Large Array Multi Element Spectrograph (FLAMES) on ESO's Very Large Telescope.

[2] An aircraft travelling at this speed would take about one minute to circle Earth at the equator.

[3] Some stars end their lives as compact objects such as pulsars (see note [5]), which may spin much more rapidly than VFTS 102, but they are also very much smaller and denser and do not shine by thermonuclear reactions like normal stars.

[4] VFTS 102 is moving at roughly 228 kilometres per second, which is slower than other similar stars in the region by about 40 kilometres per second.

[5] Pulsars are the result of supernovae. The core of the star collapses to a very small size creating a neutron star which spins very rapidly and emits powerful jets of radiation. These jets create a regular "pulse" as seen from Earth as the star rotates around its axis. The associated supernova remnant is a characteristic cloud of gas blown away by the shock wave resulting from the collapse of the star into a neutron star.

More information

This research was presented in a paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, "The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey: The fastest rotating O-type star and shortest period LMC pulsar -- remnants of a supernova disrupted binary?," by Philip L. Dufton et al.

The team is composed of P.L. Dufton (Astrophysics Research Centre, Queen's University Belfast (ARC/QUB), UK), P.R. Dunstall (ARC/QUB, UK), C.J. Evans (UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory Edinburgh (ROE), UK), I. Brott (University of Vienna, Department of Astronomy, Austria), M. Cantiello (Argelander Institut fur Astronomie der Universitat Bonn, Germany, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, USA), A. de Koter (Astronomical Institute 'Anton Pannekoek', University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands), S.E. de Mink (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA), M. Fraser (ARC/QUB, UK), V. Henault-Brunet (Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, ROE, UK), I.D. Howarth (Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London, UK), N. Langer (Argelander Institut fur Astronomie der Universitat Bonn, Germany), D.J. Lennon (ESA, Space Telescope Science Institute, USA), N. Markova (Institute of Astronomy with NAO, Bulgaria), H. Sana (Astronomical Institute 'Anton Pannekoek', University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands), W.D. Taylor (SUPA, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, ROE, UK).

Recommend this story on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:

Other bookmarking and sharing tools:


Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by European Southern Observatory - ESO.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. P. L. Dufton, P. R. Dunstall, C. J. Evans, I. Brott, M. Cantiello, A. De Koter, S. E. de Mink, M. Fraser, V. H?nault-Brunet, I. D. Howarth, N. Langer, D. J. Lennon, N. Markova, H. Sana, W. D. Taylor. The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey: The fastest rotating O-type star and shortest period LMC pulsar -- remnants of a supernova disrupted binary? The Astrophysical Journal, 2011; 743 (1): L22 DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/743/1/L22

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/tTBo1yMYRDs/111205102424.htm

kinder morgan zachary quinto zachary quinto ashley judd brewers harbaugh the walking dead season 2

Report: Police went undercover to watch Occupy LA

(AP) ? Los Angeles police used nearly a dozen undercover detectives to infiltrate the Occupy LA encampment before this week's raid to gather information on protesters' intentions, according to media reports Friday.

None of the officers slept at the camp, but tried to blend in during the weeks leading up to the raid to learn about plans to resist or use weapons against police, a police source told the Los Angeles Times. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing.

The undercover work yielded information that some protesters were preparing bamboo spears and other potentially dangerous weapons in advance of an expected eviction by the LAPD, none of which were used, according to City News Service which first reported the story.

Police downplayed the significance of the undercover work since Occupy meetings were public and easily tracked.

LAPD Officer Cleon Joseph declined an Associated Press request for comment on the reports.

Occupy L.A. protester Mario Brito told City News Service he was not surprised by the revelation, but said it was "tantamount to 1950s McCarthyism."

Meanwhile, the city attorney's office filed criminal misdemeanor charges Friday against 27 more of the people who were arrested following the police sweep of the camp.

In all, 46 of the 291 people arrested during the raid have been charged with misdemeanor crimes of failure to disperse from an unlawful assembly. Some also were charged with resisting arrest.

The arrests came Wednesday during a pre-dawn raid on City Hall Park, where nearly 500 tents had been erected at the peak of an anti-Wall Street protest, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich said.

Fifty-eight posted bail or were released by police, Criminal Division Chief Earl Thomas told City News Service.

An additional 187 protesters were released without bail and without being charged, because they had no prior criminal records.

Bail amounts ranged from $5,000 for most of the defendants to as high as $20,000.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-12-03-Occupy%20LA-Arrests/id-6f57d500b61344b4b39f7f97e708c5b5

rambus rambus pabst blue ribbon pabst blue ribbon mac miller omarion gabby

Mexico drug war refugees escape to more bloodshed (AP)

VERACRUZ, Mexico ? Rafael Echevarria had a steady factory job, a modest home of his own, and enough cash to occasionally take his family to McDonald's. It was a good life until the drug war hit Ciudad Juarez, followed by two robberies at his house, extortion at his daughter's school, and finally, the shootout on the bus.

When the firing began, 6-year-old Valeria dove to the floor, breaking a tooth. There was so much blood from her mouth wound, her parents thought she'd been shot.

The next day, the couple and their two children boarded a flight back home to Veracruz, along with 1,600 others who had once moved north for work in foreign assembly plants and now were fleeing south in search of safety. The Veracruz state government paid for the flights, and assured the drug war refugees that there would be jobs, education and housing.

At the time, it seemed to the Echevarrias like the only solution.

Then the drug war followed them home.

Military offensives against the drug cartels and turf battles among crime syndicates have pushed the war into areas once considered quiet. A year after their hopeful flight, the Echevarrias are not only caught anew in a crush of violence, but still without the promised help.

In Juarez, the Echevarrias had a house and a van. In Veracruz, they've had to pawn their appliances and move to a concrete hut to make ends meet. The trade of solvency for safety was a fake choice, because in Juarez, Echevarria said, "We would have been living well.

"Now we're in a hole. And it's very difficult to get out."

The Echevarrias are among thousands of Mexicans who make up the internal diaspora trying to escape drug violence that seems to migrate rather than cease, with more than 45,000 troops fighting cartels and more than 40,000 dead by many counts.

Recent survey results by Parametria found that 1.6 million Mexicans have moved because of drug violence since 2006. One study by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre put the number at 230,000 in 2010, estimating that half fled to the United States.

Another study, by demographer Rodolfo Rubio at Colegio de la Frontera Norte, says 200,000 people left Juarez alone for other Mexican cities between 2007 and 2010.

Many of the affected are working class or poor who can't leave the country.

"People who have status or small medium-sized businesses don't have a problem going to the U.S.," said Genoveva Roldan, a migration expert at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez. "That's not the case for workers in the maquiladoras. They don't have that option."

Veracruz is a steamy, tropical mountain state that cultivates sugar cane and coffee. Curling along the lower dip of Mexico's Gulf coast, it is known for its scenic beauty, rich farmlands and busy port, one of Mexico's largest. But it was the lack of opportunity there that drove thousands of Veracruzanos northward beginning in the 1990s, when border factories started recruiting assembly workers with above-average wages and benefits.

Echevarria had grown up poor and left school in the ninth grade to help his father support the family. He joined the navy for a while, he says, and later became a taxi driver. But it wasn't enough to pay the bills.

In 2004, he and his wife, Alejandra Duran, decided they could build a better life in Ciudad Juarez for their two younger children.

There, Echevarria and his son, Cristian, found jobs working in the assembly plants that largely produce goods exported to the U.S. Cristian rose to quality control inspector in a factory that made printer cartridges. Together the two made about 14,000 pesos a month, nearly triple Mexico's average salary.

They bought a three-bedroom house on the southeastern outskirts of town, as well as a van.

"Juarez was a land that helped people," Duran said.

By 2008, the drug wars shattered the peace. Two rival cartels ? Juarez and Sinaloa ? began fighting for control of the lucrative smuggling corridor to the U.S. The annual murder rate nearly doubled from 1,600 in 2008 to 3,100 in 2010.

President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of soldiers to curb drug violence, and later federal police to patrol the streets and lead counterattacks.

Nonetheless, the Echevarria house was robbed twice. An uncle was attacked by a group of men trying to steal his car.

Then came the extortion. Valeria's teacher told the Echevarrias that gang members were asking for a weekly fee from the school.

It was hard to sleep, Echevarria said.

In early 2010, word got around that the Veracruz government was offering to evacuate the refugees and help them resettle.

The day after the bus shooting, the Echevarrias abandoned their house and left with a washing machine, a set of saucepans, a dining table, Valeria's dresser and her Disney princess chairs.

Once back in Veracruz, Cristian Echevarria got a job as a cashier in a convenience store, while his father decided to get a taxi driver's permit.

Valeria had stopped talking after the trauma of the bus shooting, instead spending her time drawing pictures of corpses in the graves that were found around their Juarez neighborhood. But she seemed to improve after enrolling in school.

Then-Gov. Fidel Herrera's administration also promised to transfer the title of Echevarrias' home in Juarez to a government-subsidized house in Veracruz.

That never happened. The phones to the offices set up to help the returning residents stopped working. A new governor, Javier Duarte, took office last December. Gina Dominguez, Duarte's spokeswoman, said the "social agenda" was going in a different direction.

"It was a good program on paper," she said. "But obviously the execution wasn't simple because it had to provide for everyone."

Herrera did not respond to requests for an interview.

Echevarria couldn't get help paying the 6,000 pesos for his taxi license plates.

Veracruz had long been a route for drugs and migrants coming from the south. For years it was dominated by the Gulf cartel, which had contracted with a gang of former army special forces ? the Zetas. Because the state and the port were controlled by one drug gang, it was quiet.

In early 2010 the Zetas split from the Gulf cartel, triggering a vicious war in the border state of Tamaulipas, just north of Veracruz. This year a government offensive to stop that drug war spilled the violence into Veracruz.

The bloodshed worsened in the last few months, when a third cartel thought to be aligned with Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, moved into Veracruz to try to take over drug operations.

The results of the cartel wars became visible to commuters in September, when a group of masked men stopped rush-hour traffic to dump 35 strangled bodies onto a main thoroughfare. Banners left at the scene claimed the dead were Zetas, though official reports have questioned their link to the drug gang. The victims included bricklayers, former police officers and a taxi driver.

The Echevarrias found themselves in a situation worse than the one they'd fled.

They had moved to a slum of concrete-block housing outside Veracruz to save 500 pesos a month in rent.

During a recent visit, Rafael came home looking pale, walked straight to the bathroom, and threw up.

"He has high blood sugar," said his wife. "He's under a lot of pressure because these are the worst years we've ever had."

The Echevarrias explained that they pawned their refrigerator and stove to pay for the taxi license plates, only to discover that driving a cab was no longer safe.

"They've kidnapped 10 taxi drivers. They asked me to sell drugs," Rafael said. "Yes, I'm scared. I need to provide for my family."

The Echevarrias now make far less than the average wage of $250 pesos a day, about $19.

Alejandra uncovered a saucepan filled with red rice. A loaf of bread sat on a plate. There was no milk. In a big black bag, they'd save plastic bottles collected from the streets to sell for 5 pesos a kilo.

Valeria, now 8, scratched at a rash on her neck. "I don't like it here," she said.

The family is ducking bullets again, but this time in their home.

Cristian said more than 20 men dressed as marines arrived a few weeks ago to their neighborhood, rifles in hand. Valeria heard the shots. Cristian pulled her into an inside room where the family waited.

In a separate attack, Cristian said, four of his childhood friends were killed and three others kidnapped.

The move to Veracruz was a mistake, he said.

When Cristian finishes high school in June, he will move back to their Juarez house and look for work. If he is successful, the rest of the family will join him.

The homicides there have dropped from 2,657 in the first 10 months of 2010 to 1,730 in 2011. They continue to fall.

Valeria doesn't remember the time when she wouldn't talk and only communicated with drawings, when she was a chipped-tooth girl who barely smiled.

But she has returned to drawing, this time a man dressed in a military uniform pointing a gun at another man with a pink spot on his belly. Three passers-by scream, "He's going to shoot!"

She titled it, "The governor saves the people."

_____________

Adriana Gomez Licon is a Mexico correspondent for The Associated Press. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/agomezlicon

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111204/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_drug_war_mexico_refugees

michael jackson trial carlos the jackal pittsburgh steelers steelers namibia namibia hell on wheels

Obama Turns To A New Campaign Phrase: 'Change Is'

WASHINGTON -- It's been a subtle alteration but an alteration nonetheless. In his past two campaign speeches, President Barack Obama has adopted a construct that puts particular emphasis on how his 2008 promise of change has resulted in practical life improvement.

At a fundraiser Wednesday night in New York City, the new line was on display, with the president deploying the phrase "Change is" on a dozen occasions.

"Change is the first bill I signed into law -- a law that says you get an equal day's work -- somebody who puts in an equal day's work should get equal day's pay."

"Change is the decision we made to rescue the auto company from collapse, even when some politicians were saying we should let Detroit go bankrupt."

"Change is the decision we made to stop waiting for Congress to do something about our addiction to oil and finally raise fuel-efficiency standards for the first time in 30 years."

"Change is health care reform that we passed after a century of trying."

And so on.

The formulation actually debuted at a Nov. 14 Obama campaign event at the Aulani Disney Resort in Hawaii, where he declared "Change is" on 10 occasions. Prior to that, Obama hadn't used the rhetorical device at all.

"It's an effort to take back the mantel of change that started around the west coast swing," said a Democratic strategist, who spoke about the new line on condition of anonymity, "to circle back to the fundamental point of the '08 campaign and to illustrate how that change has been accomplished."

The Obama campaign is downplaying the significance of the new phrase, arguing, correctly, that the president has always played up his administration's accomplishments while on the trail. But the revised frame is a bit different, giving more than a subtle nod to supporters that their investment in the 2008 campaign paid off. It was hardly coincidental that on Wednesday evening, the president prefaced the rift by declaring: "Three years later, because of what you did in 2008, we have already started to see what change looks like."

Though the talking point aims to get those who work in the policy-politics arena fired up, it's not without potential potholes. Obama aides often say that elections are choices, not referendums. And while the president does continue to spend a good chunk of his campaign speeches contrasting his vision of the future with that of the GOP, discussing the change he has achieved does invite people to assess his broader record.

That, of course, isn't a bad thing. But it can be tricky. Two prominent Democratic operatives -- pollster Stan Greenberg and strategist James Carville -- are fond of warning that the hardest thing to do is to run for reelection in a slowly recovering economy. The more you tout your accomplishments, they say, the more people wonder why they haven't felt the improvements.

'; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/01/obama-adopts-new-campaign-rhetoric-change-is_n_1124143.html

hamilton park brian wilson freedom writers lemony snicket lemony snicket jim thome jim thome

Former South African police chief loses appeal (AP)

JOHANNESBURG ? A top South African appeals court has rejected a former national police chief's appeal of his corruption conviction.

Mthunzi Mhaga, spokesman for the prosecution, says Jackie Selebi has 48 hours to report to prison officials following Friday's ruling.

Selebi was convicted in July after a nation beset by violent crime heard months of testimony that he accepted money and gifts in exchange for meeting a drug smuggler's business associates and tipping him off to investigations. A judge later sentenced Selebi, who also is a former Interpol president, to 15 years in prison.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_re_af/af_south_africa_top_cop

mitt romney columbus dispatch social security increase menagerie adderall muskingum county muskingum county

RIM writes off value of tablet inventory

NEW YORK (AP) ? Research In Motion Ltd., the struggling maker of the BlackBerry phones, is writing off much of its inventory of PlayBook tablets, since it has to sell them at a deep discount.

The Canadian company on Friday said it's taking a pre-tax charge of $485 million in the just-ended quarter to account for the declining value of the tablets. The model originally priced at $500 now costs $200.

A year ago, co-CEO Jim Balsillie said pent-up interest in the PlayBook was "really overwhelming." Companies are looking for an equivalent of the iPad of corporate use, he said.

In March, Balsillie said "The launch of the PlayBook may well be the most significant development for RIM since the launch of the of the first BlackBerry device back in 1999."

But when the tablet went on sale in April, reviewers puzzled over the lack of email software, saying the device seemed half-baked. RIM now promises updated software in February.

RIM said it shipped 150,000 PlayBooks to stores and distributors in the fiscal third quarter, which ended Nov. 26. "Sell-through," or the number actually bought by users, was slightly higher, reflecting sales of tablets shipped earlier. It shipped 500,000 in the first quarter and 200,000 in the second.

RIM also said it sold 14.1 million BlackBerrys in the third quarter, slightly better than analysts expected. It then expects sales to fall slightly in the current quarter, roughly in line with analysts' expectations.

The company provided preliminary revenue and profit figures for the third quarter that were lower than it previously projected, but not a surprise to analysts.

RIM said it expects earnings at the "low to mid point" of the $1.20 to $1.40 per share it previously forecast. Analysts polled by FactSet have on average been expecting $1.18 per share.

The company expects revenue slightly the below the $5.3 billion to $5.6 billion in its previous forecast. Analysts had been expecting $5.27 billion, on average.

RIM shares fell $1.76, or 9.5 percent, to $16.82 in morning trading Friday. The stock hit a seven-year low of $15.98 last month.

The PlayBook charge comes as analysts have started to conclude that RIM's management has no chance of really righting the ship. They've started to value the company not on its future prospects, but on how much it would be worth if acquired, broken up, or simply run down while keeping BlackBerry service going.

The company is also taking a charge of $50 million for an embarrassing October outage of email and Web services that lasted days for millions of overseas BlackBerry users. It briefly spread to the U.S. and Canada before the company was able to contain the damage.

RIM reports fiscal third-quarter earnings on Dec. 15.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2011-12-02-Research%20In%20Motion-Tablet/id-bbdd23d28d4f46e8a8144d8726644f02

houshmandzadeh houshmandzadeh bieber baby justin beiber dia de los muertos dia de los muertos david arquette

RIM BlackBerry Curve 9350 (Sprint)

Other smartphone platforms may get all the buzz, but BlackBerrys are as reliable as ever?if no longer cutting-edge. The BlackBerry Curve 9350 for Sprint ($49.99) is a good example. If you text or email a lot, want a physical keyboard, and want your phone to be as small as possible while remaining comfortable, the Curve 9350 is a shrewd budget purchase; just don't expect much in the way of leading features or third-party apps.

Design, Call Quality, and Apps
The Curve 9350 takes everything that made earlier Curves successful and packages it into a slimmer device. It measures 4.3 by 2.4 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.5 ounces. The 2.4-inch LCD sports an upgraded 360-by-480-pixel resolution. While it's not a touch screen, the trackpad makes it pretty easy to navigate the OS, and old BlackBerry hands will feel right at home. The four-row keyboard features raised keys and a gentle curve. I've always liked the keyboard on the Curve, and my hands aren't particularly small, but some may prefer the larger Bold instead.

The Curve 9350 is a dual-band EV-DO Rev. A (850/1900 MHz) device with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. There's no 4G WiMAX support. Voice quality is fine; callers sound clear and warm in the earpiece, and transmissions are also clear. Reception is average; I'm still waiting for a Sprint BlackBerry to match the Pearl 8130's reception strength from several years ago. Calls sounded fine through a Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset ($129, 4 stars) and voice dialing worked well without training over Bluetooth. The speakerphone is excellent, with plenty of gain and a clear, undistorted tone. Battery life was good at 5 hours 50 minutes of talk time.

RIM's BlackBerry 7 OS may be new, but it's mostly more of the same. On the plus side, you get an upgraded 800MHz processor, BlackBerry 7's new icon groups, and a good selection of preloaded software, including Slacker, Facebook, and Twitter apps, RIM's Social Feeds aggregator, and a vastly more capable WebKit browser than what earlier BlackBerrys came with. You also get all the usual BlackBerry-related benefits, such as push email for up to 10 accounts and plenty of remote management tie-ins for enterprise. But there's a serious lack of third-party apps in BlackBerry App World, and the ones that are there are no match for their Android and iOS counterparts.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
BlackBerrys excel at music and video playback, as long as you're okay with the obvious limitations of a small, non-touch screen. There's a standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack on top of the phone, plus a microSD card slot underneath the battery cover. My 32GB SanDisk card worked fine, and there's also 125MB of free internal memory. Prying the battery cover off is a little tricky, but you won't need to swap cards much: BlackBerry Desktop Software comes in both PC and Mac versions, and makes syncing iTunes playlists, transferring photos, and transcoding videos a snap. Music tracks sounded punchy through?Samsung Modus HM6450 Bluetooth headphones ($99, 4 stars), and standalone videos played smoothly in full screen mode.

Curves no longer suffer from low-end cameras, either: The 9350 has a 5-megapixel sensor, continuous focus, an LED flash, image stabilization, and geotagging. It's not the best 5-megapixel camera I've tested, but as long as you have sufficient light, you'll have no problem getting quality shots both indoors and outside. Shutter speeds are a bit slow, so you may want to snap a second photo as a backup for important pictures. Recorded 640-by-480-pixel VGA videos played smoothly at 30 frames per second, and the image stabilization is a godsend?particularly if you like coffee as much as I do.??

I still prefer the T-Mobile version of this device, the BlackBerry?Curve 9360 ($79.99, 3.5 stars), because of that model's UMA-based Wi-Fi calling. But Sprint has more coverage nationwide, so it's arguable if the Curve 9350 needs it. Regardless, the Curve 9360 is a nice upgrade if you have an older Curve or Pearl, or a particularly stubborn texting phone with handicapped software. Otherwise, Sprint has killer Android phones like the HTC EVO Design 4G ($99.99, 4 stars) and Motorola Photon 4G ($199.99, 4.5 stars), with the latter securing our Editors' Choice award. Both devices can run hundreds of thousands of third-party Android Market apps, and have much larger touch screens, faster processors, and 4G data speeds. There's also the Apple iPhone 4S?($199.99-$399.99, 4.5 stars), which features an absolutely gorgeous display and more apps than any other smartphone platform.

Benchmarks
Continuous talk time: 5 hours 50 minutes

More Cell Phone Reviews:
??? RIM BlackBerry Curve 9350 (Sprint)
??? Snapfon ez ONE-c (Unlocked)
??? Samsung Captivate Glide (AT&T)
??? Samsung DoubleTime (AT&T)
??? Samsung Focus Flash (AT&T)
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/DIZ4hEplaqc/0,2817,2396800,00.asp

disturbia ufc results nick diaz michael myers power outage snow storm snow storm

Bill Bush: The Secrets of Symbols: This Artweek.LA (November 28 - December 4, 2011)

2011-11-29-DIAZ_LG_VictoryOverDeath.jpg

Daniel Martin Diaz: Quantum Mysticism | Diaz unravels the mysteries that lie beneath unconscious thought processes that bring us closer to the secrets of symbols and their everlasting effect on our psyche. Inter-dimensional entities, sacred machines, time travel, sacred geometry, The Illuminati, alchemy, and the mysteries of higher consciousness are a wellspring of inspiration for this solo exhibition.

"One of my earliest memories as a child was the way death and religion played an important role in my family's life. My parents were born in Mexico with traditional beliefs, and their beliefs made their way into my subconscious. The fact that many of those beliefs seemed to render no logical explanation has also influenced me. These unanswered questions find a home in my work, which evokes the mystery, fear and irony of those vivid memories of my past. I do not claim to understand these questions. I just paint and let them reveal themselves to me."

Daniel Martin Diaz: Quantum Mysticism opens December 2 at La Luz de Jesus

2011-11-29-Twinshighres.jpg

Melissa Meier: Laced | A compelling array of multi-media works including recent signature assemblages and her newest body of work. Entitled Laced, Meier incorporates photographic portraits ritually altered to convey themes of power, repression, femininity and spirituality. Tenured and talented, multi-media artist, Meier consistently creates work that is visually captivating and psychologically poignant. Her work confronts social and spiritual issues by incorporating antique objects with vintage photographs (found in flea markets, antique stores and trash bins), into narrative assemblage. Extremely engaging, beguiling and haunting, these constructed works explore aspects of femininity, the perceived, projected, expected, and the actual and are often conceived through memories, dreams and fears.

Melissa Meier: Laced opens December 1 at Bleicher Gallery La Brea

2011-11-29-teske002.jpg

Edmund Teske: Portraits | Craig Krull Gallery presents an exhibition of photographs by Edmund Teske of legendary artists and the early L.A. art, music and experimental film scenes such as George Herms, Kenneth Anger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Jim Morrison. Teske's images, however, are never mere portraits. A true poet and photographic alchemist, Teske employed manipulative and chance darkroom techniques that the artist likened to Hindu philosophies concerning the interplay of natural forces.

Running concurrently are George Herms: Collages and Julian Wasser: Los Angeles. Herms combines aged, stained, and rusted detritus, always rubber-stamped with the four letters L-O-V-E (the E printed backwards). The collages in this exhibition are from the past 40 years, representing a few different bodies of work.

Julian Wasser: Los Angeles includes night scenes of the Sunset Strip in the 60s, images of key L.A. figures such as Joan Didion, Ed Ruscha and Jack Nicholson, as well as historic photos of the Watts Riots and Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel.

Edmund Teske: Portraits, George Herms: Collages and Julian Wasser: Los Angeles open December 3 at Craig Krull Gallery

2011-11-29-hliuDragonflieslg.gif

Hung Liu: Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk | Born and raised under the Mao Regime, Liu's life was adversely affected by the controversial Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. After graduating from high school in 1968, she was sent to the countryside to live among peasants where she was obliged to work daily in the rice and wheat fields for more than four years. A friend gave Liu a camera for safekeeping and she began to photograph portraits of local farmers and their families. Her new paintings are depicted using these images as reference and rendered into her signature painterly style with areas of heavily applied pigment balanced with thin washes. The use of her personal photography distinguishes this series from other bodies of work that have mostly been informed by found and often historical photographs. The paintings will be presented with some of the actual small format black and white photographs that were recently developed and retouched in the past three years.

Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk runs through December 22 at Walter Maciel Gallery

2011-11-29-asavageprogress.jpg

David Lloyd: Monas Hieroglyphica | This exhibition features large and medium-scale mixed-media paintings on canvas and wood, in a series that fuses together abstract imagery, words, representational figures and animals, illustrated scientific principals, surfing symbols and dimensional collage. Lloyd describes this current body of work as exploring the sublime and the ridiculous in equal parts, a combination of "serious mysticism and f-d up pseudo-science". Lloyd is influenced by what he sees as the intersection between the materialist/biological determinist point of view and the religious/spiritual point of view, and the way in which those two competing yet interrelated perspectives manifest across our personal and collective narratives.

David Lloyd: Monas Hieroglyphica closes December 4 at Gallery KM

For the most comprehensive calendar of art events throughout Los Angeles go to Artweek.LA.

?

Follow Bill Bush on Twitter: www.twitter.com/artweekla

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-bush/the-secrets-of-symbols-th_b_1119230.html

austin rivers ows kindle fire review community matt schaub fire island fire island