| Vumber Launches Virtual Phone Number Service on Paltalk.com
NEW YORK, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Vumber (www.vumber.com), the secure, two-way disposable calling service, today announced a new partnership with Paltalk (www.paltalk.com), the leading real-time, video-based community with over 4 million active members, to provide privacy-ensured virtual phone numbers to its user base. "Online dating and chat groups continue to be a fast growing trend, yet some participants are reluctant to share their personal phone numbers online," said Vumber Co-Founder Cliff Wener. "With Vumber, Paltalk members will have more privacy, control and freedom when providing phone numbers to one another." According to a study by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 11% of all American Internet-using adults - about 16 million people - say they have gone to an online dating website or other site where they can meet people online.
Young Peregrine Falcons Spread Their Wings. Six Peregrines Currently ...
(CSRwire) Belle and Stewart, the peregrine falcons raising their young atop Washington Mutual Tower, once again have an empty nest. All four of their offspring have now "fledged" and left the nest to learn to fend for themselves. Belle and Stewart, named after two downtown Seattle streets, have been nesting and raising their young atop the 55-story high-rise since 1995. Belle and Stewart's success in raising all four of their offspring to the fledgling stage is unmatched in their mating history, and rare among all falcons. Disease and injury takes the lives of many young falcons soon after birth. The natural survival rate for newborn falcons, or "eyasses," is one in three. Since March, Seattleites have watched Belle and Stewart successfully hatch and raise the young falcons via a color television monitor in Washington Mutual's Tower Financial Center.
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: The TED Conference
Previously, former President Bill Clinton asked the TEDsters to help bring health care to Rwanda. Singer/activist Bono asked the crowd to build a social movement of 1 million people benefiting Africa. And Google's Larry Brilliant asked everyone to build a global system to detect new diseases. This year, San Francisco's very own Dave Eggers, a Pulitzer-nominated novelist and community activist, received the TED Prize, along with cosmologist Neil Turok and religious scholar Karen Armstrong. But it was Eggers who stole the show. In a hilarious, rambling speech that had the crowd roaring with laughter and applauding in appreciation, the 37-year-old writer made his wish: "I wish that you - you personally and every creative individual and organization you know - will find a way to directly engage with a public school in your area and that you'll then tell the story of how you got involved, so that within a year we have 1,000 examples of transformative change." To help facilitate the process, Eggers has created a Web site, www.onceuponaschool.org, that will serve as a clearinghouse for people to chronicle their volunteer efforts.
Death exhibition challenges taboos
AN exhibition seeking to ease Chinese taboos toward death has opened in Hong Kong, featuring "green" paper coffins and multimedia artwork, including a coffin "simulator" giving users a 3-minute taste of death. There was no champagne or glitz at the "Experience Death Through Art" exhibition's opening today. Instead, the crowd was dominated by elderly Hong Kongers who sipped Starbucks coffee and milled around the death-themed exhibits with walking sticks. "In Chinese culture, death is still a taboo. Of course attitudes have relaxed in the past 10-20 years, but for many people, death is something better left unsaid," said Craig Au Yeung, the curator for the show. "I think death education is something that is very meaningful here (in Hong Kong)," Mr Au Yeung added.
Is Keith Olbermann the Next Edward R. Murrow?
There would be outrage from the on-the-air zombies now doing the news from the Land of the Living Dead. If the new concept caught on, they too would need to find something to say about the news they are mindlessly reporting. It would change the face of network TV news. TV is an art form that suffers from kleptomania. They would rather steal something that works than try anything original. So much attention will be paid to The O Factor that the other networks will be looking for their own Olbermanns, newsmen with differing values and opinions. After all, in Ed Murrow's day, right-wingers Fulton Lewis Jr. and Walter Winchell were also on the air. A whole new audience will emerge for the network evening news when it stops being, as Arianna Huffington put it, "the referee, pretending there are two sides to every issue." As Murrow suggested, there actually could be three, or even one.
Summit Up
We're trying to look out the window at the Corporate Suites today, but we can't see over the mini Mt. Everest of snow piled up next to the building. Maybe that's okay, though, since there really isn't anything to see outside besides blowing snow.
The snow stack in question - created by snow pushed off our flat roof in the hopes of avoiding a cave-in - looms ominously on the other side of the window from the desk of one of our ace reporters. Thank goodness, he's wearing an avalanche transceiver, just in case.
In general, we think snow is great. It's pretty, it's often soft, it can cover up a multitude of landscape design flaws, it's good to put on sprained ankles, and it's edible - always a plus for any substance.
It's not so much the snow itself that's starting to annoy us, we've decided, it's the gray sky and perpetual wind that we find psychologically challenging.
Can robots commit war crimes?
The idea of a robot being charged with murder raises provocative questions about punishment and the fairness of such measures. Elliot did not back down from taking other hard stances on issues. He made it clear that currently there was a clear legal burden for humans choosing to deploy systems lacking in sufficient judgment. He stated, "Weapons intrinsically incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets are illegal." Elliot stated that robots should only be allowed to autonomously wage war when they pass a "Military Turing Test." He explains, "That means an autonomous system should be no worse than a human at taking decisions [about valid targets]." The original Turing test, developed by computer pioneer Alan Turing, states that if a human is unable to tell in a conversation with a robot and a real human, which is the man and which is the machine, then the robot conversing with the human has achieved intelligence.
Denise Van Outen goes for a dip after fighting the flab
The Any Dream Will Do star has undergone a sea change in just 20 months after being snapped bulging out of her bikini in LA. See stunning pics of Denis on the beach Now superslim Denise, 33, sports a taut tum, waif-like waist and perfect pins as she frolics on a beach in the Maldives. Determined Denise worked hard to get herself back into shape after the unflattering picture appeared in the News of the World in May 2006. Her efforts paid off when she landed the role of raunchy bisexual Maureen in the West End musical Rent last October. Her run ended in triumph just before Christmas. But it was her role as a judge in the BBC1 reality show to find an new Joseph that was a real dream come true for Denise. She is now dating hunky winner Lee Mead after splitting from actor James Lance, 32, in August.
Watercooler Stories
CARTHAGE, Mo., Nov. 28 (UPI) -- A gun-toting grandmother in Missouri foiled a pair of would-be burglars.
Police, who did not release the 63-year-old woman's name, said she temporarily captured Faith Barrick of Carthage and a teenage boy, the Joplin Globe reported. The pair escaped when she went to her telephone to call police but two suspects were arrested three hours later based on the description she gave.
The grandmother was eating lunch with one of her grandchildren when she saw a woman in her yard, Lt. Aaron Richardson of the Jasper County Sheriff's Office said. She got her gun and waited while the teenager broke through her door.
Barrick contacted police before her arrest, claiming she had stopped at the woman's house because of car trouble and the woman pulled a gun on her, Richardson said.
McCain looks confident; Democratic race tightens
Look through the pages. The reliance on proxies like his wife is photographically documented. His rhetorical reliance on blackness is apparent on the first page, where front and center feature words who's author is no doubt Axelrod: There is no better advocate for African Americans than Barack Obama. Barack knows your story, because it is his story. The causes that you hold dear have been the causes of his life. Barack has spent his entire career fighting for justice — as a community organizer in the streets of the South Side of Chicago, as a civil rights attorney, a constitutional law professor, an Illinois state Senator and a U.S. Senator. In Chicago Obama was charge with rape when he was 17 years old charges droped after his dad payed off some cops ???? Crucial to Obama's primary success, are his advisers unabashed beliefs that they can turn our hopes and emotions to their advantage.
No quit GOP candidate Huckabee makes Houston stop
He also reiterated his insistence not to bow out of the race before McCain secures the 1,191 delegates needed to become the party's nominee. "Nobody has that yet," he said. "In something that really matters, you play it to the very end." .
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