Microsoft Announces Three Windows 8 Editions

In a blog post published on Monday, the Windows team announced three editions of its upcoming Windows 8 platform: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT.

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Handmade Harpsichords Are Lovely to Behold [Video]

Craig Tomlinson is an artist in many different ways—a woodworker, a metal craftsman, and a gold-leafer with a finely-tuned ear for music. Featured in a short documentary made by filmmaker Morgan Inglis, Tomlinson lovingly hand-crafts gorgeous harpsichords. More »

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Obama calls Romney's immigration stance "troublesome" (reuters)

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On the things we like to call ?sexuality? ? The Loyal Opposition to ...

Finally, after a day of travel all of the North end of South Korea, I am back at dorm room apartment. ?Oh, the life of an expatriate lecturer, one gets to live in a ?dormitory? well into their early 30s. ?Anyway, after vowing to move this blog anyway from abstractions, and mix things up a bit.

I am getting married to a wonderful woman: I was?hesitant in some ways for a variety of reason, and I am hesitant to talk about my views on the contradictions within our concept of marriage. ?With a caveat, I opposed the idea of marriage for most of my early 20s and did, again, after my first divorce. ?My ex-wife and I are actually still great friends and both did and didn?t divorce for the common reasons: ?it was not infidelity, it was lifestyle incompatibility and money issues that stem from said incompatibility. I used to joke that I being a ?Married male of any orientation should be a different gender category from an unmarried one.? ? I still, actually, feel that way in a sense.

Now, I am also a believer that no marriage arrangement is entirely natural: both polygamy and monogamy come with some strain and tension with most individuals inclinations and thus cannot be said to be or not be natural unless the social and environmental constraints are accounted for in a realistic fashion. ? I also a believer that very little avoidances of marriage are entirely without their aleinations even in a particular context, in Northern Europe where divorce and marriage are no longer common, the unmarried relationships often assume a form resembling in almost all domestic aspects a marriage. ??Christopher Ryan?and Cacilda Jeth? document pretty convincingly that most narratives on sexuality have had a present bias and a pretty?moralistically?bleak view of libidinal economy, even in good works by Darwin and so forth. ?The book ?Sex at Dawn? which is often taken as a defensive of polyamory can be properly be read as a defense of contextual relationships.

That said, both the abstracted notions of sex on sees in liberal-radicals like Judith Butler (who would never use that phrase) as well as hyper-conservative notions on sees in most people who defend traditional values as ?biological? is highly problematic. ? Traditional values may have been biological in a specific context, but it takes more than will-power for a traditional context to make sense. ?In this sense, it?is?not without problems to see our current openness about sex and hook-up culture as a form of liberation. ?It seems to me that it makes the real objects of sex taboo and also allows us to turn people into objects in lieu of taking about the real objects of sex.

I use ?objects? and not object because I think both ?radical? and ?conservative? discourse about sexuality is entirely reductive to a stupid degree: if sex were about merely procreation then we would have ?heat? cycles to ensure pregnancy like, well, most other males, and if it were merely about pleasure then ?the female orgasm would not be so elusive. ?Evolution is a harsh mattress and not a teleologically consistent one: ?it?s an ad hoc universe ?in the biological sphere. (This, of course, makes speaking about ?nature? coherently almost in possible? Even nature has a context).

This is not to deny that there are real limits to human sexuality and real battles fought over it. ?But in a way, our dialogue on what the ?meaning? of sex is may be incoherent to the point of?schizotypal because a decoupling of social context and biologic context, but a severing into a dialectical tension that which is not in fundamental contradiction in its unalienated state.

Wait, here I revere to tendencies I dislike about philosophy writing, the tendency to over-abstract: ?people love and people fuck for a variety of different reasons in ?a variety of different contexts. ? Almost none of us are comfortable with that because some form of ?other? enjoyment indicates a lack created by our ability to articulate.

What is it Lacan says? ?Lack is created by language. ?Before we speak, we cannot?postulate?that which is not?

So I?ll try to avoid name dropping, with the caveat that Foucault?s basic premise that sexuality is a socially situated, seems to be more or less right. ?The problem is, as always, that our conceptions of biological and social are falsely separated: ? while I am critical of the metaphor as ?nature? as a ?machine,? I ?do fundamentally think that social structures and biological structures are in a feedback loop. ?I desire someone both because I have a genetic impulse to desire them, but how I desire them and what forms that relationship takes are, in no small part, socially shaped. ? The real dialectical conflicts come when social notions no longer fit biological reality, even if biological reality has changed for essentially social reasons.

Technology changes who you are. ?How can you not think it changes your relationships to people?

This leads to all sorts of issues: ?I am gay or straight or bisexual? ?How is that it appears that while sexuality is definitely determined by social pressures and yet we cannot castigate certain practices out of existence? ? Does it make sense to get married?

In my personal life this plays out in a lot of strange ways: ?I am getting married to a woman because I love her. ?Now, I realize in the grand scheme of things, even from personal experience, love is a weak reason for marriage. In fact, it?s not even a good predictor of martial happiness. ?The information on arranged marriages startlingly conflicts with the notion that peer-love marriage is a good means for contentment for most people who are belong a certain social class and income range. ?Even the sexual revolution, interestingly, has been more positive for upper middle class women and men who seem to benefit from?promiscuity? then still get into relatively stable marriages (of varying degrees of openness) whereas the poor who often value marriage more as a social good see fewer marriages and fewer of its benefits? ? ?I love a few women quite deeply, and yet I choose one of them because I love her and it seems conductive to that kind of social relationship.

In a way, just talking about fucking is avoiding the a lot of the larger issues here isn?t it.

Nothing in modernity seems to be without its contradictions. ?Particularly in sex where anything viewed long enough and believed in general in mass culture seems to be fraught with outright contradictions. I, as I stated, am no exception: the polyamorous man entering into a relationship that is rooted in monogamy. Doing so willingly and knowing from personal failure the dangers involved, and yet when I am honest with myself even in my most polyamorous moments my relationships have been based on fundamental rules and commitments that are both from my partners and the larger social?milieu. Sometimes, I find it more than a little ironic that liberals for all their emphasis on social importance ?and social contextualization, take a completely individualistic view on love and sex.

Funny how so many refuse to look honestly at the contradictions in their lives: dialectics, as I understand it, is a way to look at one?s contradictions honestly and try to move past them. ?Most people, however, from the pain of cognitive dissonance cannot do this: doing this in one?s most intimate relationship is even more traumatic.

But it is spring time, after all, and thus we like to think we should talk about love.

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Bat-killing fungus is a European import

White-nose infection ups arousal rate during hibernation, depleting energy stores

Web edition : 5:45 pm

The same fungal species wiping out hibernating American bats also strikes their European kin ? although it doesn?t kill them. But that?s not because the European strain of the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome is less virulent, a new study finds.

?The European version is even nastier than the North American one,? says Craig Willis, a wildlife biologist at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba. The surprise finding emerged from a trial in which he and his colleagues infected 36 healthy Canadian little brown bats with the fungus Geomyces destructans.

Half of the animals got fungus isolated from North America, the others fungus from Europe. All animals quickly developed white-nose syndrome, a disease named for the telltale mask of threadlike fungal growths it leaves on bat faces. Harder to see but more devastating, G. destructans eats through the skin of a bat?s wings and begins digesting inner tissue.

Bats receiving the European strain of the fungus died about a month sooner than those infected with the American strain, Willis and his colleagues report online April 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These findings suggest the American strain is a recent immigrant from Europe, Willis says. Because the na?ve populations the strain encounters in North America die so easily from infection, he suspects that the American strain of the fungus has evolved to be less deadly.

Jeff Foster, a wildlife disease ecologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, agrees. His team recently compared the entire genetic blueprint of G. destructans from both continents, confirming they are nearly identical. But slight genetic variability showed up among strains from throughout Europe, he notes, ?whereas those from North America showed none.? That suggests the fungus only recently arrived in America.

Periodically, hibernating bats rouse, burning fat to briefly bring their temperature up to normal. Willis?s new study found that compared to healthy bats in the lab, those infected with the American fungal strain roused three times as frequently ? and those with the European strain four times as often ? during hibernation.

This explains why white-nose victims became emaciated, Willis says, with some too weak to rouse at all: ?They just run out of fuel.? Uninfected bats, by contrast, remained relatively fat and healthy throughout the trial.

Up to nearly 7 million North American bats have succumbed to white-nose syndrome since late 2005, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated in January. And the disease continues to spread.

On April 2, the Missouri Department of Conservation announced the disease had hit its state, the first time it has crossed the Mississippi River. The infected animals were sick but still alive, says pathologist Carol Meteyer of the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisc.

Petitions to list three bat species ? including the little browns ? for protection under the Endangered Species Act are now under consideration, says national white-nose syndrome coordinator Jeremy Coleman of the FWS in Hadley, Mass. On April 6, his agency issued $1.4 million in contracts to Willis and others to further study the disease. ?We need to know what the post?white-nose world means and what the prognosis is for the future,? Coleman says.

Found in: Environment and Life

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College of Business ? NMSU student group cultivates tomorrow's ...

April 9, 2012 by Janet Perez, NMSU News Center

NMSU-CEO members Shanta Thoutam (standing) and Brittain Catron look over a business plan at the Arrowhead Center?s student incubator, Studio G. (NMSU photo by Janet Perez)

With corporate America still sluggish in its hiring, college students are taking steps to create their own job opportunities.

At New Mexico State University, obtaining the tools to create those employment opportunities includes membership in the College Entrepreneurs? Organization. The group has more than 240 chapters on university campuses across the world, and its mission is to inform, support and inspire college students to be entrepreneurial and seek opportunity through enterprise creation.

The CEO-NMSU chapter was dormant for a few years before re-activating last fall. Just like the old group, the revitalized chapter welcomes students from all of NMSU?s colleges in recognition that entrepreneurs come from a variety of backgrounds. The group also works to create a network with local and regional business owners.

?We are reviving the program to really spur interest in entrepreneurship among all college students, no matter what major,? said Sara Sanders, entrepreneurship director at the Arrowhead Center, NMSU?s economic development hub. ?These students are primarily interested in starting their own company one day. They go to an annual conference in order to learn about entrepreneurship from different experts, participate in mini-competitions such as an elevator pitch competition, and they also have many great speakers. I was in the group when I was a student at NMSU.?

For MBA candidate Brittain Catron, the CEO-NMSU group provides welcome resources for his upstart business, Blue Caliber Innovations. Catron?s company has created a new product called the Jimmy Hook, which will allow users to clasp tools to their wheelbarrows.

?My undergrad was in chemical engineering, but I couldn?t find a job,? he said. ?For me, I?m just trying to pursue avenues where I can use both my engineering and business skills. I think that being an entrepreneur is in large part a networking career. You need to be out there mingling and mixing and seeing things from different perspectives, and this club really offers a chance for students from all different backgrounds to come together for the purpose of promoting small businesses. Hopefully a good number of us will be the next group of entrepreneurs in New Mexico.?

Shanta Thoutam, president of the CEO-NMSU group, graduated from NMSU in 2004 with a master?s degree in electrical engineering. She worked for a semiconductor company in Austin, Texas, for five years before being laid off. She?s back at NMSU to pursue her doctorate in electrical engineering and also plans to earn an MBA. Currently, she is working as a technology commercialization associate at the Intellectual Property Office at NMSU and volunteers at the Arrowhead Center.

?In this economy, everybody wants to start up a company,? she said. ?Lately, we see very young people coming up with startup companies and making millions of dollars, and eventually those companies are acquired by bigger companies.?

The CEO-NMSU group recently received a look at what steps entrepreneurs have to take in order to successfully acquire venture capital for a startup. Last month, an NMSU-CEO team consisting of Thoutam, Catron, and Patrick Waggoner participated in the Camino Real Venture Competition in El Paso. For the competition, student teams presented business plans based on innovative technologies to a group of judges that included business people, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. The teams submitted written business plans to the judges prior to the event and then conducted 60-second elevator pitches and PowerPoint presentations of their plans.

The CEO-NMSU business plan was based on the algae biodiesel research being conducted at the university. The CEO-NMSU team?s company wanted to introduce a thriving biodiesel economy to southern New Mexico. The business model emphasized a novel process of simultaneously extracting and converting wet algae to biodiesel that has become available through the Intellectual Property Office at NMSU. The CEO-NMSU team also detailed what products and services the company offered, market analysis and strategies, operations and management, financial statements, offerings, and exit strategies.

Ten teams competed in the event, with the NMSU and University of New Mexico student CEO groups tying for third place.

?Overall, the competition was an interesting and exciting learning experience for all three of us,? Thoutam said. ?We met excellent competing teams and venture capitalists who brought an enormous amount of expertise with them to the competition. This competition was a good platform to learn about how VCs judge business ventures before pouring their capital into them. All of the teams received invaluable feedback from the VCs and we hope to put the knowledge to use when we dive into real-time entrepreneurship.?

For more information on the CEO-NMSU group, email Thoutam at ceonmsu@gmail.com or sthoutam@nmsu.edu.

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1 killed as Texas beach party turns violent

By msnbc.com staff

At least one person was killed and three hospitalized late Saturday when shots rang out at an unauthorized party that brought thousands to Surfside Beach, south of Houston,?officials said.

Brazoria County Sheriff Charles Wagner told The Facts newspaper that the injured were taken by medical helicopter to hospitals.

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?We have one confirmed dead,? Wagner told the newspaper. ?We?re still trying to figure out what happened and where it happened.?

Traffic going to and from the island was blocked, making it difficult for emergency responders to reach the scene, television station KTRK reported.

Witnesses told The Facts that the party started pleasantly but turned violent even before the shooting.

Durron Williams told The Facts he saw the body of a man face down in the beach sand and fled, like many other party-goers.

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Some brought victims to the Surfside Beach Police Department, Wagner told The Facts.

Word of the party had spread earlier in the day on Twitter. A website advertised a ?bring your own everything? beach party with volleyball, beer pong, flag football, wet T-shirt contest, tug-o-war and DJs.

The party was advertised for noon to 7 p.m. but the shooting was reported around 9 p.m., officials said.

?There was a lot of drinking and a lot of weed,? Alante Wade of Spring told The Facts.

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