Attorney: Zimmerman should be released again

As NBC's Kerry Sanders reports, George Zimmerman's legal team says newly-released video of Trayvon Martin's killer re-enacting the shooting with investigators helps support their claim of self-defense.

By msnbc.com staff and news services

George Zimmerman, charged with second-degree murder in the killing of black teen Trayvon Martin, poses no threat to the community and should be released a second time on bail, his attorney said in a court motion released on Monday.

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Defense attorney Mark O?Mara asked that Zimmerman be granted bond as he awaits a trial in the 17-year-old Martin's shooting death during a confrontation in February in a gated community in Sanford, Fla. O?Mara says Zimmerman isn't a flight risk and stayed in touch with law enforcement during his initial release on bail.

A judge will consider the request at a second bond hearing Friday.

Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty, claiming self-defense.

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Zimmerman recounts shooting Martin in vivid detail

The neighborhood watch volunteer was granted a $150,000 bond in April but it was revoked earlier this month after prosecutors accused Zimmerman and his wife of misleading the court about how much money they had raised from donations to a website created by Zimmerman. Prosecutors say the couple?had raised at least $135,000 from the website.

During the hearing, Zimmerman's wife, Shellie, testified that the couple had limited funds to use for bail since she was a fulltime nursing student and he wasn't working. Zimmerman did nothing to correct her as she testified by telephone due to safety concerns. Prosecutors say jailhouse calls between Zimmerman and his wife a few days before the hearing show the neighborhood watch volunteer instructing his wife on how to transfer funds raised by the website to her account.

Zimmerman's wife, Shellie, was later charged with making a false statement.

"Mr. Zimmerman's failure to advise the court of the existence of the donated funds at the initial bail hearing was wrong and Mr. Zimmerman accepts responsibility for his part in allowing the court to be misled as to his true financial circumstances," O'Mara wrote in the motion.

Trayvon Martin killed by single gunshot fired from 'intermediate range,' autopsy shows?

Key events in the Trayvon Martin case?

4 months after Trayvon Martin shooting, Sanford police chief fired

O'Mara also will ask Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester to reconsider his decision to make public all of Zimmerman's jailhouse calls and the statement of an unnamed witness. O'Mara said most of the calls aren't subject to the state's public records laws and the witness statement is irrelevant and could prejudice a potential jury.

Attorneys for two sets of media groups, one of which includes NBC Universal (msnbc.com is a joint venture of NBC and Microsoft), filed motions Monday arguing there was no need for the judge to reconsider his decision.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook

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Employment - Wisconsin.gov - Employment - Job Seeker - Detail Page

Job Details ? Marian University ? Job Title Preschool Teacher? ? H.R. Contact Lisa Zedler? ? Contact Phone (920)923-8081 ? Job Description Marian University invites applications for a part-time preschool teacher to serve as a teaching member with the Teacher/Director in the Early Childhood Center. This is a nine-month position at 60% time.? ? Qualifications Bachelor?s degree. DPI certification in Early Childhood Education, Elementary or Special Education. (If certification is not in Early Childhood Education, transcripts will be evaluated for related courses that meet the education requirements for Center accreditation.)? ? Requirements Must be a minimum of twenty-one years of age. Experience of 80 working days as a full-time child care teacher or assistant child care teacher or 120 working days as a half-time worker or volunteer in a licensed day care center, a kindergarten or an early childhood program approved by the department. Willingness to support the Mission and Core Values of the University.? ? How to Apply Submit a letter of application, resume and name, address, and telephone number of three references to: Mail: Human Resources, Marian University, 45 S. National Avenue, Fond du Lac, WI 54935 E-mail: muapplicants@marianuniversity.edu FAX:(920) 923-7658 For more information see: www.marianuniversity.edu Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Transforming lives through academic excellence, innovation and leadership. Marian University is a community committed to learning, dedicated to service and social justice and joined together by spiritual traditions EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER Strongly Committed to Diversity Any offer of employment will be contingent upon the receipt of criminal background and reference check information; and the determination that the candidate remains eligible and suitable for employment. ? ? Employer Marian University 45 S. National Avenue Fond du Lac, WI 54935? ? Job Address Same as the employer address. ? Website http://www.marianuniversity.edu ? ? Description Marian University is a Catholic university in the Agnesian tradition. Founded in 1936 by the Congregation of Sisters of St. Agnes and based in Fond du Lac, Wis., the University lives its core values as a community committed to learning, dedicated to service and social justice, and joined together by spiritual traditions. An applied liberal arts institution, Marian offers more than 50 undergraduate and graduate programs at its main campus and a variety of adult accelerated, master?s and doctoral degree programs in facilities throughout Wisconsin. The size of the university permits a very favorable student-faculty ratio, one of the lowest among Wisconsin campuses. Marian?s programs are designed to meet a full range of pre-professional and professional academic needs, including business, education, the arts, sciences, nursing and criminal justice.? ? ?

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Is Venture Capital Broken? - Scott Anthony - Harvard Business Review

12:21 PM Thursday June 7, 2012 ?|?Comments

A recent report by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation raises serious questions about the degree to which venture capital deserves emulation.

The report, provocatively titled "We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us" [PDF], summarizes its findings thus:

Limited Partners ? foundations, endowments, and state pension funds ? invest too much capital in underperforming venture capital funds on frequently misaligned terms. Our research suggests that investors like us succumb time and again to narrative fallacies, a well-studied behavioral finance bias.

One of those narrative fallacies relates to the most basic thing that investors care about: results. Most of the funds in which Kauffman invested failed to beat public market indices, despite the higher-risk nature of their work. Kauffman found that larger funds in particular provided disappointing returns.

Kauffman didn't say it was opting out of venture capital. Rather, it plans to seek smaller funds, shift some of its money towards public equities, and co-invest in later-round deals with seasoned investors. It also called on investors to work to better align investor and venture capitalist incentives.

Within Innosight, where I lead venture investing, the report led to an invigorating debate about the industry. We debated two possible stories behind some of the report's statistics.

The first story relates to plain old-fashioned competition. Over the past decades, foundations, pensions, and other investors have poured money into venture capital, particularly in the United States. The number of funds has exploded. If one assumes that the number of great startup ideas is relatively stable at any given time (a contentious but simplifying assumption), increased supply has to decrease returns. A result that is exacerbated by the simultaneous decrease in the cost of innovation and the rise of new approaches, like Y Combinator's systematic incubation factory, Kickstarter's crowd-funding platform, and super angels like Ron Conway. Barriers to entry are decreasing and disruptive entrants are surging, a recipe that both Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen could agree augurs poorly for industry returns.

The alternative and potentially more troubling story is that the venture capital approach is fundamentally flawed. The industry has unquestionably helped to support the formation of world-changing companies such as Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Google, Facebook, and countless others. Yet over the past decades, venture capitalists have shown signs, despite all their experience and skills, that they've gotten better at what they do.

Maybe that's just the way it is. You can't know ex-ante which idea is the right one. If that's the case, though, it would be far better to simple spur more Y-Combinator-like incubators that follow the Steve Blank gospel of getting out of the building and iterating to discover product/market fit.

A related possibility is that a majority of venture capitalists use flawed theories of startup success. Clayton Christensen likes to describe how, in the early stage of theory development, people make predictions based on observed correlations. For example, people observed that things that flew had feathers. So people hoping to fly created large feathered wings. More advanced theories pinpoint causal mechanisms. For flight, that was Bernoulli's Principle, a theory that explained the concept of lift and why modern aircraft are not covered in feathers.

Much of the venture capital industry seems stuck in the feathers-and-wings stage of theory development. Many successful venture capitalists observe directional patterns. "Every time I have succeeded," they might think, "I've backed an 'A team,' that has targeted a hot market space." There's no doubt that's true, but that is a statement of correlation, not causality. Even worse, the narrative fallacy means that people are likely to construct stories about the past that might not have been precisely true, making future predictions even more dubious.

Google Ventures is an intriguing example of a venture organization putting more science behind its correlative analysis. As detailed in a recent Fast Company article, it has a team of statisticians crunching data to determine patterns of success in startups. For example, its team found the perceived wisdom that failure is beneficial isn't backed by data. Almost 30% of businesses founded by someone who had succeeded once succeed again, versus 15% of businesses founded by someone who failed once.

The Google Ventures approach has its limits. Without understanding why a pattern exists, making reliably accurate predictions is hard, at best. This is where good business theory comes in. Work by Christensen and other innovation thought leaders has built a body of theory about why certain ideas succeed and others fail. Other academics, in particular Noam Wasserman at the Harvard Business School, have provided useful theories to inform the critical choices facing entrepreneurs.

It's not hard to see the venture capital industry trifurcating. There will always be top-tier firms who give their seal of approval to a select group of startups. Expect to see continued growth among incubators that support fast-cycle iteration. And in between, look for a rise of companies that take the Google Ventures approach even further to approach the funding of startup companies scientifically. The rest? Well, Darwin has a way of working out such problems.

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Google shows off new backpack-worn Street View capture tool, may eventually rent them out

It looks like Google's Street View will soon be expanding to even more places than it already covers. The company has today taken the wraps off a brand new capture tool it's dubbed the Street View Trekker, which can be worn on a person's back in order to map and photograph areas that are too difficult for even a bicycle or snowmobile to reach. Naturally, it's Android-powered, and it packs two batteries that Google says will last a full day -- although its 40-pound weight will likely necessitate a few breaks during that time. No word on when we'll see the first results from it, but Google intends to take to National Parks, the Grand Canyon, castles, ruins, and more -- even the ski slopes, as seen in another picture after the break.

Update: We just spoke with Luc Vincent more in-depth about the new backpack, and what we learned is after the break.

Gallery: Google Street View Backpack hands-on

Continue reading Google shows off new backpack-worn Street View capture tool, may eventually rent them out

Google shows off new backpack-worn Street View capture tool, may eventually rent them out originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jun 2012 13:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook App Center for mobile leaks out on iOS, uses peer pressure to clinch the sale

While Facebook said it would deliver a version of its App Center store for mobile, it was shy on how that would work. An early iOS tester (since confirmed by TechCrunch) apparently didn't want to wait for an official explanation and slipped out a handful of shots: they show a mobile-optimized store that will look familiar to anyone who's picked up an iPhone or an Android phone in the past few years, but with an appropriately social bent. Friends' recommendations come front and center, and are so prominent that they take precedence over the app description; we're wondering if Facebook isn't pressuring us into downloading apps like it's a schoolyard dare. Facebook is still reluctant to say when App Center will hit pint-size proportions for everyone, though the largely complete-looking test version gives us hope for a quicker launch.

Facebook App Center for mobile leaks out on iOS, uses peer pressure to clinch the sale originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  TechCrunch  | Email this | Comments

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What $40,000 gets you in presidential fundraising

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? If you have $40,000 to spend, President Barack Obama's campaign has a deal for you.

Write a big check, and you'll get you a picture with the president and a chance to swap political strategy with him ? all while enjoying a gourmet meal at the lavish home of a Hollywood celebrity or Wall Street tycoon. And if you get the campaign even more money, you might just end up with a plum post as a U.S. ambassador or an invitation to an exclusive White House state dinner.

Obama not your preference? No problem. Mitt Romney is offering donors perks that include everything from a private dinner with him to seats at the fall debates.

Welcome to the world of high-dollar presidential campaign fundraising.

Five months before the November election, both candidates are stacking their schedules with big-money fundraising events from coast to coast as they look to stockpile cash for the height of the campaign. On Wednesday, Romney was courting donors in Texas while Obama was holding four fundraisers in California that were expected to yield at least $4.6 million.

Access to the most exclusive Obama events usually sets donors back a cool $40,000. That means the upper limits of campaign fundraising are reserved for a privileged few, given that the median household income in the U.S. was $49,445 in 2010, according to the Census Bureau.

Some donors who paid the pricey tab for access to Obama fundraisers this year have been seated at exclusive dinners at the Los Angeles home of actor George Clooney or the New York townhouse of billionaire hedge-fund owner Marc Lasry. Next week, actress Sarah Jessica Parker will host a fundraiser with the president and Michelle Obama at her Manhattan home.

The president typically kicks off the high-dollar events with a version of his standard campaign speech. But the big perk for donors is the private question-and-answer session that follows. Sometimes the president grabs a microphone and fields questions from the center of the room; other times, he hops from table to table to hold small group discussions with his top fundraisers.

And of course, there's a chance to take a picture with the president.

While the press corps traveling with Obama usually is present for his opening remarks, the campaign kicks reporters out of the room before he starts taking questions.

Republicans have hammered him for attending glitzy, celebrity-filled fundraisers while the economy is still struggling to fully rebound from recession. But the White House says wealthy donors are not the core of Obama's support.

"President Obama has vast numbers of small donors who support his campaign," spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday. "The fact that the president enjoys that kind of support speaks to what his policies are. He's out there fighting for the middle class."

The Obama campaign has held dozens of fundraising events where tickets run less than $40,000. But smaller donations come with fewer perks and far less direct engagement with the president.

In San Francisco on Wednesday, a $5,000 contribution bought an opportunity to hear Obama speak at a 250-person luncheon. But a $35,800 ticket gave 25 donors the chance to talk politics with the president at a private round-table event.

Tickets to hear Obama speak at a 600-person gala in Los Angeles later Wednesday started at $1,250. A $2,500 ticket to the same event guaranteed better seats. And a $10,000 ticket came with the chance to shake the president's hand and pose with him for a photo.

On the Republican side, donors can expect to spend a minimum of $2,500 per person to hear Romney speak at a reception. And those who make a $10,000 personal donation or commit to raise $25,000 gain access to a smaller reception and a picture with the likely GOP nominee.

Fork over up to $50,000 and a Romney supporter may get a private dinner with him.

Romney's bundlers, who give the campaign all the money they collect from multiple donors, also are handsomely rewarded. Among the perks afforded to those who bundle at least $250,000 is access to the Republican convention, an election night event and a weekly briefing from the campaign. Bundlers who raise up to $500,000 also get access to the presidential debates in October.

Among the most exclusive opportunities offered to Romney bundlers: a summer retreat in Park City, Utah, later this month.

Presidential candidates can raise up to $50,800 from an individual donor as long as the money goes into a special fund that divvies up the proceeds among the candidate's campaign, his national party, state or local party committees and any other political committee.

For some wealthy supporters, as well as bundlers, a seat at a fundraiser is just the start of what they're after. Big campaign contributions can often be seen as a down payment for future access to the White House or a role in the administration.

Dozens of top Obama donors from the 2008 campaign received ambassadorships, including posts in France, Spain and Switzerland. Other prominent supporters have been awarded positions on presidential advisory boards.

Tens of thousands of dollars can also buy top donors invitations to swanky White House events. More than 30 bundlers made the guest list for Obama's recent state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Obama is hardly the first president to grant special status to big money donors. Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton both reserved seats at exclusive state dinners for supporters who made substantial financial contributions to their re-election campaigns. And if Romney is elected, he'll likely do the same, as well.

Clinton said during his presidency that high-dollar donations bought supporters a "respectful hearing if they have some concern about the issues." But he said: "Nobody buys a guaranteed result."

___

Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn, Steve Peoples and Kasie Hunt in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow Julie Pace on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

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Netflix Replaces Apple as Nation's Top Internet-Movie Business ...

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IHS formerly known as Screen Digest has reported that revenue generated from Americans who buy/rent movies online more than doubled up to $992 million in 2011.

Netflix passed Apple in 2011 to become the nation?s leading supplier of movies streamed over the Internet, according to IHS revenue data released on Friday.

Last year, U.S. revenue generated by subscription video on demand soared 10,000 percent to $454 million,? IHS accounts this to Netflix?s decision to partially split its DVD and online-streaming services.

Netflix claimed just 1 percent of the total online movie business in 2010, but leapt to 44 percent last year. Apple, which leads the ?transactional? business as opposed to subscription, saw its revenue share fall from 61 percent in 2010 to 32 percent last year.

IHS says Netflix is so dominant in the SVOD category that it?s nearest competitor, Hulu, is only 10 percent its size.

The transactional side of the online movie business, Apple iTunes and? competitors was also up 75 percent to $273 million.

Electronic sell-through, which IHS notes is more profitable for the studios than are the online rental models, grew by only 2.4 percent last year to $236 million.

The online movie business on whole more than doubled to $992 million last year,? IHS expects it to double again this year.

IHS says ?the big growth story? of 2011, though, was Walmart?s Vudu, which captured 8.2 percent of the transactional market, up from 2.8 percent the year prior.

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You Can Get Health Insurance No Matter What Your Current Finances

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Real Estate Alliance: ?2.5million worth of property sales in one week ...

REA Seamus Carthy, Chartered Surveyors & Auctioneers confirmed this week to the Roscommon People a significant uplift in the level of both sales and letting transactions in both the commercial and residential property market over the last 12 months. Since May 2011, Seamus Carthys office ? REA Carthy has experienced increased activity in the property market on a week by week basis. Last week alone, REA Carthy agreed the sale of over ?2,250,000 worth of property including Commercial Units in Athlone & Roscommon Town, Residential Properties in Counties Roscommon, Galway and Mayo, Agricultural Land in Counties Mayo & Roscommon and also agreed the leasing of Public Houses in Co. Roscommon & Co. Mayo. Offering experience on all sectors of the property market with many notable recent sales, Seamus Carthy is now seeking further properties for Sale to include in particular Commercial Buildings, Agricultural Land, Public Houses/Guesthouses and All types of Residential property.
More information: Seamus Carthy, REA Carthy
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Games & Community: Andy K on Story-Games.com | Giant Fire ...

This interview is part of a series on Games & Community. I ask people for their thoughts and offer my own on various gaming communities, both digital and meat-based.

Today I sit down with Andy Kitkowski, the creator and moderator of Story Games, a humble but popular forum built to discuss tabletop roleplaying games of all stripes. I wanted to find out where it came from, where it?s headed, and what kind of a community it is. This interview was conducted via text chat, only minor spelling/grammar edits have been made.

What?s Story Games, in its own words?

?This site is a place to loosely describe Role Playing Games. Specifically, new ways to play RPGs and new ways of approaching the hobby. This site is meant to be a relaxed, non-threatening, non-confrontational environment to discuss the above.?

?

via story-games.com

Giant Fire Breathing Robot: Can you tell me a little bit about the history of Story Games? What was the idea behind it? What hole did you see in gaming discussion that you wanted to fill?

Andy: So yeah, Story Games actually was born in two places: my love of side-chatter at the then-active game development forum called The Forge, and extreme procrastination. The Forge was very focused on game development and publishing, such that all other talk was off topic.

However, once a year there was a week-long ?birthday forum?, where people would come to talk about themselves, and sure there was ?normal chat BS?, but a lot of the talk was about:

-what games do you like
-what are some play tips you have
-what was the best experiences with gaming you had
-what do you do to create atmosphere

So, game play (not design) discussion sandwiched between stuff like ?what religion are you? and ?do you do martial arts??

Anyway, it was a really awesome week of really looking into the act of play instead of the (what I?d later start finding kind of myopic) look into design in that community, and realized that I wanted to have a ?The Forge Birthday Forum? that never ended. So I put down some money and time and made one.

The other half, as I mentioned, was my extreme procrastination. For example, I love my job, but the reason I excel at it and never get bored is because there?s an ?always explosion occurring, a crisis lurking around every corner? type of workload that keeps me engaged and interested.

For example, a few years previous to SG I was writing my own Sorcerer (the RPG) supplement, and then as a distraction I said ?Hey, there?s no RPG awards for small-press games,? so created the Indie RPG Awards (which are still kinda going on). And the ?24 Hour RPG Design Challenge.? And later on, hosting a few years of ?Iron Game Chef.?

GFBR: I didn?t know you made the Indie RPG awards and the 24 hour design challenge!

Andy: Yeah, both of those were like two years before SG or so. But at the time I created SG back in 2006, I was working on the official translation of a Japanese RPG into English. Now known as my personal white whale, that game (Tenra Bansho Zero) is finally two hairs from production and release, but at the time it was taking a lot of my brain space, and it was exhausting. So I basically made SG to fulfill a need, a need to blow off some steam. And procrastinate.

So SG and its 6 year span is what Steven Pressfield calls in his great book ?The War of Art? capital-R ?Resistance.? I did it at the time because it was something I wanted to see happen. But at the same time, I did it because Tenra Bansho was stressing me out and I needed to blow off some steam. And I perhaps went a little too far, given that TBZ is finally about to come out some 6 years after that act of Resistance was created.

GFBR: I?m not familiar with that concept of ?Resistance.? I?m getting a picture of the stress of one project pushing you in an equal-yet-opposite direction into another project. Something like that?

Andy: Yeah, that?s pretty much it. Although not necessarily Another Project, it can also be things like Playing Video Games to blow off steam but far too much steam-blowing for the amount of work (guilty), getting caught up in talking about the project rather than working to complete it (guilty), little acts of basically self-sabotage that don?t seem that way at the time.

GFBR: Cool, that sounds really fascinating. So, has Story Games been what you envisioned it to be?

Andy: More or less, exactly! It?s basically a low-maintenance low-volume gaming (game play) discussion site. There?s been an uptick in ?stuff that has to be moderated, or stuff that makes me feel uncomfortable, or stuff that makes me want to roll my eyes and pull the plug,? but it comes and goes in waves, once about half a year or so. Otherwise, where I used to myself go to Story Games in conjunction with other various RPG forums and sites for discussion, I realized that SG (and outlets like Google Plus) are pretty much where 99% of my game discussion is fulfilled.

Oh, a third reason SG was created: I wanted a small server/laboratory for understanding Linux and MySQL, because I?m kind of a systems admin in real life and wanted to do stuff for fun on the side to get my skills up a bit. That?s why I put in all the money and time into SG initially and haven?t asked for cash to upkeep it: It?s always been a lab to get me used to the fun side of being a computer tech. So there?s that minor point as well. Otherwise, I would have simply bought time on an existing forum site somewhere instead of doing almost everything myself.

GFBR: I was wondering that. It?s basically all you then. Do you see Story Games existing indefinitely into the future?

Andy: That?s a question I ask myself sometimes!

I?ve always stated that SG is always an experiment, that I reserve the right to pull the plug at any time and all (which is probably the main reason I haven?t asked for money; I?d feel bad about taking folks? cash then at some future point burning it all down). Not so much as a ?I?m setting a fire to my own house in spite!?, but because pretty much from the start I saw SG as kind of an ongoing Buddhist sand mandala. And all sand mandalas eventually get blessed, carefully swept up and removed from existence. Actually, I?d probably have been surprised to know that SG would last more than 3-5 years.

But at this point, if I decided that The Experiment Is Now Over, I?d probably offer the reigns (control of the database, name etc.) as I walked away rather than sweeping it away. A lot of folks get pleasure from SG, to the point where it doesn?t feel right for me to just declare it Over.

GFBR: It?s taken on a life of its own.

Andy: But it might be a good idea to remind folks that that stance has never changed; it was never planned to last forever. It may one day go away, and that decision lies with me.

However, one thing that is interesting is Google Plus. I?m gunshy about directing people to G+, because Google has been closing down various moderately successful projects on a whim for dumb reasons (the shit we expect from ?Other Companies?), but G+ as an institution is about like two hairs away from being an alternative Story Games replacement. If in the next five years things change, who knows; we might see SG change into a forum/area of G+.

GFBR: Interesting. Well, you?ve kind of been messing with the format already, right? You spun off dedicated game-design talk into Praxis. It?s been pretty slow when I show up there, but what do you think of how that?s working so far?

Andy: Yeah, and also Kit la Touche has volunteered to help with the forum software upgrade to Vanilla 2, which will happen in the next few weeks. Praxis definitely worked, but not for the reasons you might think.

Praxis was always meant to be a dumping ground for Shit I Didn?t Want Clogging Up Story Games. In that regard, it succeeded. But if people legitimately wanted to use it to discuss the intricacies of game design divorced from play? well, I?m not sure about that. I myself only visit to approve members and maybe browse some topics once a month or two or so.

SG at the beginning was mostly people from The Forge, so a bit of ?what I?m designing now? talk was inevitable. Actually, it was fine, and kinda fun too.

But as more and more and more people from outside kept showing up (and in turn the game play discussions becoming far more interesting, and not echo chambers), a lot of people mistakenly saw SG as ?the place to talk about my game I?m working on.? In fact, for a time about half the new members had that as their Join Message: ?Hi, my name is X, and I want some feedback for a game I?m working on.?

Which, still? okay. But for a few months a lot of the threads were choked with new (mostly) and old users wanting to talk about their game, or design it ?in the forum? (like basically using SG as a Game Design Livejournal; not really participating at all in other discussions, just posting like to a blog).

So Praxis was created, and all ?from the ground up? game design discussion was pushed over there. Every once in a while a thread or two sneaks onto SG, but most of the time it?s in relation to a bigger question about play, so it?s ?okay? in my book.

GFBR: So Praxis is more about making Story Games what you want it to be than about making Praxis into any particular thing.

Andy: Exactly. For the longest time, I just told people, ?Look, you want to talk game design, go to The Forge or somewhere else.? And I kept getting responses of, ?But I don?t like it there? or ?But I like the community and responses here more? and the like. For a long time I was just like, ??so? Take it elsewhere?.

But then after a while I thought, ?Hey, these guys are designers AND active members here. And they are asking to keep the design stuff tied here because they love it here, which says a lot about their motives and trust in this site. So hell, if I make it clear that the Design portion of the site is an offshoot for those who want it and it won?t get the same amount of eyes, and they?re cool with that, and it takes me no time or energy or real money to do it, who am I to fight that?? and thus it was created.

GFBR: It?ll be interesting to see if traffic and use of Praxis go up when the Forge closes.

Andy: Yeah. And I?m currently thinking about how Praxis might fit into Vanilla 2.0.

In the new forum software, you can actually have a ?top page? where it doesn?t just show every single category (think ?sub forum?) of discussion, but you can group them together. So I am considering later re-adding Praxis (game design) into SG proper: Same logins, etc. Still, with all game design topics on their own sub-forum sub-page, but much more closely tied to SG proper than Praxis is now.

GFBR: Ah, that would be cool. So, this might be a stupid question, considering the splash page for Story Games and all, but: do you view SG as a community?

Andy: Yep. The word Community has a lot of weight and a lot of baggage, but if you don?t think too hard on it (are we all friends? do we all share opinions on the same subject?), it totally is a community. As soon as you log in and look at some thread starters, and go ?Oh, that thread title doesn?t grab me but Member X starter it, and she always says cool stuff, I?ll check it out? or ?Huh, I see that that thread is started by Member Y. I?ll avoid it for now, it?s likely not of interest to me/that member is contentious so I?ll stay out,? then you?re in a community.

And even more so when a community has Japanese style Off-Kais or meetups: ?Story Games (Location)?, ?Camp Nerdly?, etc,; places where locals get together and play some games. I wish I had programming skill (I?m a sysadmin, I deal with hardware not software), but if I were to say ?in which ways do you want to make SG a more ideal forum?? it would be through creating more Off-Internet community.

So, not just ?I want to mod more so that everyone is happier Online,? but rather ?I want to create tools both technically and socially to help the forum members meet up and organize in real life away from the Internet.?

GFBR: Something like forum software marrying Meetup.com.

Andy: Yeah? though Meetup is so categorically tied to Regions: Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill stuff is totally divorced from Charlotte, Washington DC, Richmond or Charleston. It?s very hard, but I?m trying to go the other direction: from the broad ?Story Games Members? to the more regional ?finding people you?d be able to walk/drive/travel to meet.? It?s utterly difficult. I?m open to ideas though!

GFBR: Speaking of community, I know there?s periodic discussion about Story Games having issues being a welcoming place for women and people of color. What are your thoughts on that?

Andy: Too many thoughts on it. Unfortunately.

GFBR: Sure. It?s a big topic.

Andy: Essentially, I want Story Games to be more open to diversity away from the stereotypical white male gamer. To be more open to women and people of color.

So with the help of the other admins/mods I gathered, we have dug deeper into ways to go about doing this. You will actually start to see some changes in the way patterns of communication happen at SG, and see some new rules to boot about how this will go about. One of them ? an ingenious one utilized by the Italian version of Story Games ? will go live likely this week (it?s called ?Slow Down?; look for it).

To put this in context, very recently there?s been one of those ?six month dust-ups,? where the community exposes some of its worst issues and behaviors, and people within the community kick at it with criticism for true, legit reasons while others kick at it to increase the drama that ?punching the beehive? brings.

In short, there?s been some kind of bad-natured things that have happened recently, and I want to make sure that they are minimalized or destroyed. And there?s been a lot of poor interpretation of how communication should happen, of what ?The Zen? is, and a focus away from RPGNet?s ?laundry list of rules and gotchas that are used to hand down judgment both well and very, very poorly.?

So there?s definitely a need for some changes, and they?re finally coming. Mostly because of the work that John Stavropolous (mostly!) and I have been doing in looking into how to make the community better by following the good and bad examples of other sites we?ve been involved in.

GFBR: That?s good to hear; I?m excited to see the changes.

Andy: On the other hand, there?s some problems in that some people online have a very specific ideal of a kind of use of the psychological term ?safe space,? and want to see Story Games become a True Safe Space for people.

But that cannot happen, unfortunately. This means that we have to have mods thoroughly read and interpret every single thread and post that happens on SG (this isn?t an exaggeration or hyperbole, this is a direct request from a few people). That just can?t happen.

More darkly, there?s a lot more under the surface.

Some of the biggest proponents for ?safe spaces? or ?making a more welcoming community? (through rules enforcement, etc.) basically either come from communities that were absolutely destroyed by those very behaviors they want to see at SG; and in some cases, were some of the greatest misusers of such rules or conventions in order to play social status games with peers and friends.

I?ve seen firsthand normal people (not ?deep to the bone racists,? but ?folks new to talking online and not familiar with delicate issues?) treated like shit and bullied by peers, so that peer could look good to their friends. On a forum that tried to be a true safe space through social rules and behaviors, I watched my gay friends get silenced, my women friends get silenced, my black friends get silenced, because someone with a dark heart and an ability to carefully navigate social rules wanted to take them down a peg in public or in private, and used those very tools of inclusion and support to silence.

Or bending those rules to silence folks who didn?t share the same exact opinion, stance etc. as they did. Or because someone didn?t recognize them as the expert they wanted to be thought of. It has literally swiss-cheesed communities, caused them to implode. Communities that were normal or good, where the leaders made sure everyone had a chance to speak without being Silenced.

GFBR: I can tell you?ve thought a lot about this.

Andy: Another thing that we see is blatant American/western monoculture: Americans, Canadians want to have an open and international discussion site, but when Europeans and Asians come in with very different opinions and stances that do not correspond to what we were taught in the west, sparks really fly. ?How dare you not know and think exactly like us Americans do on issues of gender and race???? etc.

GFBR: Huh. Come to think of it, I?ve definitely thought that and probably said it. In one way or another.

Andy: Now, don?t get me wrong, sometimes there are just some wrong-headed dudes from other countries that need to talk less and listen more!! But there is a lot of cross-cultural issues going on, and I?ve seen a lot of folks get hammered on from folks in America, the UK or Canada because their opinion or stance comes from a very different background.

That?s where I?m coming from on that: I really do want to make Story Games more of an inclusive place. But I?d rather pull the plug on it myself than implement rules used by internet socialites to play bullshit status games.

?Hey, I?m glad you implemented these rules designed to weed out sexism and racism. Now I?m going to use them to shut down this conversation because some guy I don?t like is posting. Then I?m going to use them to shut down this thread because the black woman speaking has different opinions of being black and female than I do, and I want to be recognized as the Real Expert on this.?

Sorry, that sort of behavior as I mentioned has directly lead to the death of communities, and endless needless suffering. So that?s about it on that!

GFBR: No, that?s a lot of good thoughts! Again, I?m excited to see what you and your mod team are working on implementing.

Andy: Note: those rules I mention will be coming slowly, one is coming in 1-2 weeks, and more in the coming months (we all have day jobs and real-world commitments, etc. Some people genuinely forget that!).

GFBR: Do you have any other thoughts on Story Games that we haven?t touched, Andy? Anything else you?d like to discuss or put into the aether?

Andy: For me, Hmmmm.

* Story Games is still laid back, still getting new members pretty much every day, but at the same time I?m hoping to keep it small.

* I?ve actually considered making it an unofficial rule that you should try to meet other members at local meetups if there are any near you, to increase the community feel and increase goodwill among members. It?s really hard to think of someone as an asshole, when you?ve met them, shook their hand or played a game with them.

GFBR: Oh yeah, definitely.

Andy: Many people say ?I?m Just a Lurker!? when they meet me or others. However, I think that lurkers are as real a member as an active poster. While I?d encourage those folks to say something if they have input, none of us (the admin team) stratify people by ?active member? or ?lurker who just posts a little.? If you?re reading the site, you?re a member.

And to that end, we?re going to be doing some new things in the future to underscore that fact: guest posts and stuff off of Story Games, looped back in. More emphasis on people continuing discussions from threads on their own private channels like blogs or other venues (I almost want to encourage every member to start a G+ account, even if it is inactive).

But if you?re reading the site, yeah, you?re a member, and we do consider those peoples? opinions when considering the direction of the site.

Finally, the Resistance is coming to an end: Tenra Bansho Zero (that game I procrastinated on translating by creating SG) is about a month away from being listed on Kickstarter (and then after that, a couple more Japanese games that I?ve been translating with Matt Sanchez or others), my White Whale is almost harpoon?d. Many folks have asked to donate to SG to keep it going, because they like it, etc. I?ll be pimping it heavily later, but I?d say that if you still want to donate to S-G, throw a buck or two at the TBZ Kickstarter when it comes out. I?think that?s about it from my side.

GFBR: Thanks for your thoughts, man. And thanks for Story Games. I remember when I was a brand-new gamer back in 2009, I joined SG in awe and trepidation. I was actually intimidated to post! It?s funny looking back on that.

Andy: Heh.

GFBR: It?s been a really good community to be a part of, though. It?s spawned a lot of thought and play and connection with people in the real world.?Thanks for taking two hours to talk to me!

Andy: No problem man!

GFBR: Talk to you later.

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Epsom salt acne - Health and Fitness

Medical Treatment: Acne lotions are available which have vitamin A. Metabolic changes, continuous pressure on skin like wearing helmet etc, are also some of the possible causes of acne. Benzoyl peroxide can also be used as a treatment. Food allergies are sometimes responsible for acne. According to an article found in VITAJOURNAL, the magazine put out by Trivita, the makers of Nopalea Juice, one teenager found all sorts of relief for his acne by drinking treatment Nopalea Juice. So if you? ve been through the works of acne remedies ? Accutane, Differin, minocycline, benzoil peroxide, salacylic acid, you name it ? and you are looking for an all natural alternative, green tea is inexpensive and readily epsom available. As an acne remedy, green tea has no harmful side effects. The worst it can do is help protect you from cancer, so go ahead, give green tea a shot! Benzoyl peroxide was first used back in the 1920s when it was developed in the Revlon laboratories by Jack Breitbart. Tomatoes are rich in vitamin salt A, which prevents excess production of sebum that causes acne. The only ? evidence? comes from a few unscientific tests. To eliminate the symptoms like acne redness, we usually choose the best acne management depending on our skin type. Surgical treatment Exciting breakthroughs in the surgical treatment is acne the choice of top cosmetic surgeons. On the positive side, those few individuals who have acne into their 40s may well grow out of it. 7. These glands produce an oily substance called sebum that is used to naturally moisturize and lubricate the skin. While almost all young people experience epsom salt acne acne at least once, it? s been reported that 47% of those in their 20s and 30% of those in their 30s had acne. Regulating and controlling sugar intake is also as beneficial. Watch a video that shows you exactly what you must Do in order to maintain your pores clear epsom salt acne and clean, what you should do to find out how to get acne topical rid of acne marks and why at You will also learn acne scar topical treatment how to reverse the acne situation if you have already done those things that should NEVER scar be done. Prolonged remissionswere evidentafter the end of therapy. There are a few natural steps which the canny sufferer can follow to alleviate the symptoms and even potentially lead an acne free life. Another thing that you should prevent in your diet in order to be free of acne and acne marks is refined sugars and carbohydrates. What causes acne redness? These sites are supposedly there to provide you with information, and them not providing a list of ingredients is always a bad sign.

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Record NM blaze studied for forest management

Firefighters from the Granite Mountain Hotshots of Prescott, Ariz., cut a fire line along a mountain ridge outside Mogollon, N.M., on Saturday, June 2, 2012. The crew is part of an effort to manage and contain the Whitewater-Baldy fire which has burned more than 354 square miles of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. (AP Photo/U.S. Forest Service, Tara Ross)

Firefighters from the Granite Mountain Hotshots of Prescott, Ariz., cut a fire line along a mountain ridge outside Mogollon, N.M., on Saturday, June 2, 2012. The crew is part of an effort to manage and contain the Whitewater-Baldy fire which has burned more than 354 square miles of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. (AP Photo/U.S. Forest Service, Tara Ross)

Firefighters from the Granite Mountain Hotshots of Prescott, Ariz., cut a fire line along a mountain ridge outside Mogollon, N.M., on Saturday, June 2, 2012. The crew is part of an effort to manage and contain the Whitewater-Baldy fire which has burned more than 354 square miles of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. (AP Photo/U.S. Forest Service, Tara Ross)

Firefighters from the Granite Mountain Hotshots of Prescott, Ariz., cut a fire line along a mountain ridge outside Mogollon, N.M., on Saturday, June 2, 2012. The crew is part of an effort to manage and contain the Whitewater-Baldy fire which has burned more than 354 square miles of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. (AP Photo/U.S. Forest Service, Tara Ross)

Crew members from the Granite Mountain Hotshots of Prescott, Ariz., cut a fire line along a mountain ridge outside Mogollon, N.M., Saturday, June 2, 2012, in an effort to manage and contain the Whitewater-Baldy fire which has burned more than 354 square miles of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. Unlike last year's megafires in New Mexico and Arizona, this blaze is burning in territory that has been frequently blackened under the watchful eye of the Gila's fire managers. (AP Photo/U.S. Forest Service, Tara Ross)

A firefighter from the Granite Mountain Hotshots of Prescott, Ariz., clears brush along a ridge line outside Mogollon, New Mexico, Saturday, June 2, 2012, in an effort to manage and contain the Whitewater-Baldy fire which has burned more than 354 square miles of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. Unlike last year's megafires in New Mexico and Arizona, this blaze is burning in territory that has been frequently blackened under the watchful eye of the Gila's fire managers. (AP Photo/U.S. Forest Service, Tara Ross)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) ? From the air, the smoke from a massive wildfire stretches as far as the eye can see, spreading across the rugged country in southwestern New Mexico where the nation's wilderness movement was born nearly a century ago.

On the ground, firefighters talk about the steep canyons that keep them from directly attacking what has become the largest blaze in New Mexico's recorded history and the largest currently burning in the country.

Things might look bad. But to land managers and scientists, the record-setting blaze represents a true test of decades of work aimed at returning fire to its natural role on the landscape ? a test that comes as many Western states grapple with overgrown forests, worsening drought and a growing prospect for more megafires.

The Whitewater-Baldy fire has destroyed a dozen cabins while marching across more than 356 square miles of the Gila National Forest. A pair of lightning-sparked fires grew together to form the massive blaze.

Unlike last year's megafires in New Mexico and Arizona, this blaze is burning in territory that has been frequently blackened under the watchful eye of the Gila's fire managers.

Starting in the early 1970s, the Gila has been leading the way when it comes to implementing such an active fire management strategy. Instead of immediately dousing flames in the wilderness, forest managers have let them burn as long as conditions are favorable.

The question that the Whitewater-Baldy fire is expected to answer is whether that strategy will pay off with more natural, less intense fires.

"There's a great opportunity here to study a fire like this," said Matthew Rollins, the wildland fire science coordinator with the U.S. Geological Survey's National Center in Virginia.

"The opportunity exists to look at how this fire has behaved differently in terms of vegetation mortality, effects on wildlife and fish habitat and water quality," Rollins said. "We can study how it burned in the wilderness relative to areas with other types of fire management strategies and other types of ignition patterns."

So far, the word from the fire lines is that the majority of the 228,000-acre blaze has burned with low to moderate intensity, not the kind of near-nuclear strength that was exhibited last year with the Las Conchas blaze in northern New Mexico. In that case, entire mountainsides were vaporized, leaving nothing behind but the white ashy skeletons of what used to be trees.

And as for those unburned pockets within the fire's boundaries, Rollins said he believes many of those spots have experienced low-intensity fire numerous times over the last century to make them more resilient.

Previously burned areas have also helped slow the flames on the fire's eastern flank.

"The fact that this is wilderness and the wilderness of the Gila has seen a lot of fires, we are comfortable with allowing it to burn. What we do is monitor it and help steer it around to keep some of the impacts lower than they would otherwise be on their own," said Danny Montoya, an operations section chief with the Southwest Incident Management Team.

Montoya said the rugged terrain has forced firefighters to attack the flames indirectly by starving the fire of fuels along its perimeter.

The smoke also has prevented direct attack from the air. Several helicopters and small planes are helping ground crews with backburn operations.

While a burn severity map has yet to be released, members of the incident management team are estimating that only 20 percent of the fire has burned at high intensity.

Last week, the fire made a 60,000-acre run in one day, scorching mixed conifer at high elevations as the flames were pushed by gusts of up to 60 mph.

That kind of fire can be devastating, experts said.

With fire behavior ranging from active to extreme, it will be some time before the scientists can get on the ground to see how the Gila has fared. Until then, they are working on gathering the decades of research done on the Gila, which is home to the world's first designated wilderness. It was the father of the wilderness movement, forester and conservationist Aldo Leopold, who pushed for the formation of the Gila Wilderness in 1924.

Tree ring data that dates back to the 1500s tells of the forest's fire history and the age of its trees. The perimeters of the Gila's fires along with information about their severity and vegetation mortality for the last century have also been compiled by the U.S. Forest Service.

There's also more ecological data from the federal Joint Fire Science program that can be used for comparisons.

"I think it's going to be a success story for the use of fire for managing forests," Rollins said. "It might not look like it on TV right now, but we haven't had any fatalities or dramatic housing loss like we see in Southern California or it burning so dramatically close to communities like last year's Las Conchas fire."

Experts agree that the Gila will see changes regardless of the severity of the fire. In the worst spots, aspens and other shrubs are expected to take over.

"When we're punching multi-thousand-acre holes in areas of ponderosa pine and drier mixed conifer types with no seed sources surviving, it's very difficult for those conifers to be re-established," said Craig Allen, a USGS ecologist based at Bandelier National Monument in northern New Mexico.

Fire managers are also expecting flooding. As the Las Conchas fire showed, steep denuded areas resulted in walls of water washing down canyons during the rainy season.

Residents in Glenwood are already worried about the prospect of flooding, and federal wildlife managers are concerned about what sediment and ash in the waterways could mean for the native Gila trout.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is also monitoring two packs of endangered Mexican gray wolves that are situated to the north and east of the fire. Last year, wolves in Arizona were able to escape the massive Wallow fire with their pups, but it's unclear how mobile the packs in New Mexico are since their pups are much younger.

The fire is about 17 percent contained, which much of that being on the fire's northern and northwestern flanks.

On Saturday, the more than 1,200 firefighters who are battling the fire continued to build lines to corral the flames before more threatening winds and dry conditions developed.

"We're going to continue fighting this fire aggressively without putting our firefighters in danger," fire information officer Lee Bentley said. "We're getting as much of a black line as we can around this fire."

___

Follow Susan Montoya Bryan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanmbryanNM

Associated Press

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Accusers' credibility possible Sandusky strategy

BELLEFONTE, Pa. (AP) ? A simple question could be the key to the case against Jerry Sandusky: Will the young men who contend the former Penn State assistant football coach sexually abused them be viewed as credible witnesses?

Legal experts say that's often the case in criminal trials, but even more in a case with allegations that go back many years and little or no forensic evidence.

"In any case I've tried like this, the people who are the accusers have to come across exceedingly well," said veteran Harrisburg defense attorney Matt Gover. "And the defense has to demonstrate a theory to the jury that there's motive for them to lie or fabricate."

Jury selection in Sandusky's trial is to begin Tuesday morning in a central Pennsylvania courtroom.

Prosecutors allege Sandusky engaged in a range of sexual abuse of 10 boys over 15 years, charges he has repeatedly denied. Eight of those 10 alleged victims have been identified by investigators, and most, if not all, had been prepared to take the stand at Sandusky's preliminary hearing, which he waived at the last minute in mid-December.

Sandusky's lawyers have sought potentially damaging material from the alleged victims' pasts, including any history of making up stories, criminal arrests and psychological problems.

The defense will have their grand jury testimony to compare against whatever they say on the stand at trial, and have indicated they will try to show some of the accusers have collaborated, hoping to cash in through civil litigation.

"Joe Amendola has said during some of the hearings that the defense is going to turn on a claim that some, if not all, of these victims had motives to fabricate these allegations," said Wes Oliver, a law professor at Widener University School of Law in Pennsylvania.

John E.B. Myers, a law professor at the University of the Pacific in Sacramento and author or editor of eight books on child abuse, said the core issues in the Sandusky case are the same as many others.

"I think the overall issue is and always has been the child's credibility," he said, adding that the issue of memory will come into play, since the alleged victims are now adults.

Legal and scientific research also shows an interesting fact about juries in abuse cases, Myers said. "The one thing the literature is clear about is that women tend to believe children more than men do," he said.

The sex abuse case led Penn State's board of trustees to fire the legendary Joe Paterno as head football coach; leaders later said he hadn't done enough after he fielded an abuse allegation from a team assistant. The university's president was also ousted, and two administrators were charged with lying to a grand jury. At word of Paterno's firing, students rioted in the streets of State College, and Paterno's treatment remains a sore spot for many alumni and fans.

The expected testimony of Mike McQueary, an assistant coach who was a graduate assistant a decade ago when he says he witnessed what appeared to be Sandusky sexually assaulting a boy, could be a critical part of the prosecution's case.

Sandusky's lawyers will undoubtedly try to undercut his credibility through the use of his grand jury testimony, his testimony at a hearing in the related perjury case of the two university administrators, and statements about what he saw at the time and in the intervening years.

Prosecutors recently had to amend the charges against Sandusky to allege that the incident McQueary said he saw occurred in February 2001, not in March 2002 as previously indicated.

"One of the real questions, it seems to me, that the prosecution has to face is whether they put McQueary on" the stand, Oliver said. "If the jury is left with the impression that the independent witness is making up stuff, then why would people who stand to benefit from this not make stuff up?"

The attorney general's office will have to counter any contradictions or gaps in their witnesses' memories with a demonstration that they do recall the heart of the matter ? the alleged criminal acts for which Sandusky will be on trial, said David A. Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor. The existence of multiple accusers should help prosecutors, he said.

"View it as silt in a riverbed," Harris said. "Their testimony will build up in layers. So even if there are individual problems with the testimony of particular witnesses, the picture will fill in as a whole."

Prosecutors, who unlike the defense have had access to the accusers during trial preparation, presumably know where any weaknesses in their testimony will be, and have developed a strategy to counter them, Harris said.

A. Charles Peruto Jr., a veteran defense attorney in Philadelphia, said Sandusky's lawyers can try to attack witnesses' credibility through cross-examination ? looking to shoot holes their testimony ? and by presenting evidence and testimony establishing witnesses had motives to lie.

"You're not going to have all eight (testify) in a credible manner," Peruto said. "I don't believe that there's going to be eight victims painting a picture. It's never that easy for the prosecution. Some of them get cold feet, some of them really mess up on details, and the way the details are driven home by the lawyers is going to make a difference."

Peruto said any conventional wisdom that the charges are a slam-dunk could work against the prosecution.

"You can never count a jury as a layup in any case," he said. "The more potential jurors read the case is ironclad for the prosecution, the more potential for rebellion."

Before they deliberate, jurors will probably get an instruction from the judge that tells them they can believe all, some or none of a given witness' testimony, Gover said. He said the existence of multiple alleged victims will be a powerful tool for the prosecution, recalling a trial in which he represented a defendant a year ago in a sexual abuse case with four accusers.

"When you have one victim on the stand crying, that's one thing," Gover said. "When you have four on the stand crying it's incredible. And it was devastating." His client was convicted.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Begos in Pittsburgh and Michael Rubinkam in Allentown contributed to this report.

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