Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg are fighting their way out of an elaborate CIA scheme in 2 Guns, and Hank Azaria is once again hoping to take down the little blue guys in The Smurfs 2. These are the movies to check out -- will you be grabbing your popcorn and seeing one of them this weekend?
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Every so often you read a news article so revealing that it triggers this thought: I wonder if we'll look back on that story in five years and say, ?We should have seen this coming. That story was the warning sign.?
For me that article was a July 25 piece in the Washington Post about how jilted mistresses of corrupt Chinese government officials have become the country's most important whistle-blowers ? turning to the Internet to expose the antics of senior bureaucrats. The Post detailed the case of a 26-year-old named Ji Yingnan, who had been engaged to wed Fan Yue ? a deputy director at the State Administration of Archives ? until she discovered that he had been married with a son the entire time they were together.
To get her revenge, Ji ?has released hundreds of photos online that offer a rare window into the life of a Chinese central government official who ? despite his modest salary ? was apparently able to lavish his mistress? with no end of luxury items, the Post reported. The first time ?they went shopping, Ji said, the couple went to Prada and paid $10,000 for a skirt, a purse and a scarf. A month after they met, Fan rented an apartment for them that cost $1,500 a month and spent more than $16,000 on bedsheets, home appliances, an Apple desktop and a laptop, according to Ji. Then he bought her a silver Audi A5, priced in the United States at about $40,000, she said. ... 'He put cash into my purse every day,' said Ji in a letter to the Communist Party complaining about Fan's behavior.?
It gets better. The Post reported that ?a well-known Chinese blogger who has posted Ji's photos and videos on his website said he spoke with Fan last month. Fan told the blogger that he didn't spend as much money as Ji claims, saying it was less than $1.7 million but more than $500,000. 'This woman is not good. She is too greedy,' the blogger, Zhu Ruifeng, said Fan told him.?
It was less than $1.7 million. That's good to know. This guy is a senior bureaucrat in the state archives. What sort of illicit activity was he up to in the file rooms to earn that kind of cash? Every government has corruption, including ours. But China's is industrial strength. My colleague David Barbosa last year exposed how then Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's mother, son, daughter, younger brother, wife and brother-in-law had collectively amassed $2.7 billion in assets. But when you see how much money a deputy archives director was able to amass ? and how brazenly he spent it ? you start to wonder and worry.
When I visited China in September, I wrote that I heard a new meme from Chinese businesspeople whom I met: ?Make your money and get out.? More than ever, I heard a lack of confidence in the Chinese economic model. We should hope that China can make a stable transition from one-party Communism to a more consensual, multiparty system ? and a stable diversification of its low-wage, high-export, state-led command economy ? the way South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Singapore have done. Its huge savings will help.
The world can ill afford a chaotic transition in China. With the United States stuck in slow growth, Europe mired in stagnation and the Arab world imploding, China has been a vital economic engine for the global economy. If China's sagging growth and employment rates meet rising discontent with corruption by officials ? trying to get their own while the getting is still good ? we will not have a stable transition in China. And if one-sixth of humanity starts going through an unstable and uncertain political/economic transition, it will shake the world.
It would be great if Chinese reporters, bloggers, citizens groups and, yes, Internet-empowered mistresses could expose corruption in ways that help make that transition both necessary and possible. But these virtuous civil society actors will succeed only if they find allies in the Communist Party who understand the risk to stability, and to their party's future, posed by runaway corruption.
The Ji and Fan story is very entertaining. But if it is just the tip of an iceberg of corruption that destabilizes China, it won't be a laughing matter. How Chinese officials behave or misbehave not only will affect us ? from the value of our currency to the level of our interest rates to the quality of the air we breathe ? it might be the biggest thing that affects us outside of our own government.
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Beach housers know board games are more than a rainy-day diversion or after-dark boredom buster. Unlike, say, the Kennedys' Cape Cod-style football matches, they allow us to indulge our competitive spirit without risking bodily harm. Plus they induce waves of nostalgia because playing is such a traditional pastime. (Some of my own best memories are rooted in checker tournaments with an adored grandfather who always let me beat him.) Above all, board games create the perfect opportunity for family bonding. With that said, playing them at our place is a dicey proposition. Occasionally it's the games themselves that pose a problem. Risk, for example, is too time consuming; Snakes and Ladders too luck dependent; and Mouse Trap unnecessarily complicated (especially when key pieces are lost). Since our beach house collection qualifies as vintage, other games are outdated. Take Trivial Pursuit: we have the "Genus Edition," circa 1982, which means we must revert to a time-warped world where Italians buy things with lira and Czechoslovakia is still a country.
More often than not, however, the problem lies with my foursome. While I do buy into the whole "folks who play together stay together" philosophy, I'm also aware that family game sessions are frequently accompanied by a familiar refrain: "Mooom, I wanna go first." "Mooom, he took my purple piece." "Mooom, she cheated." "Can somebody get a damn timer?!" On Pictou Island, this common irritant is compounded by individual quirks that have made former favorites un-playable.
Monopoly was the first to be crossed off the list due to my son's megalomaniacal approach. He would amass color-coded property cards like a pint-sized Donald Trump on amphetamines, showing no mercy in the process. On his way to yet another win, his concentration never wavered. Nor did his conscience: indeed, I imagined him gleefully bankrupting widows, evicting orphans, and erecting hotels in ecologically-sensitive areas (a scary prospect considering he genuinely intends to be a real estate developer!). Clue was the next game to be retired, and the blame for that goes to my daughter.
As a little girl she liked to play it by her own rules -- then she began playing it by herself. Spending hours alone in the loft, she developed a variation called Clue Murder Chase. I'm not sure exactly what was involved, yet I suspect Miss Scarlet was repeatedly thwacking Colonel Mustard with a wrench while waving a candlestick and a revolver. Encouraging this game might have led her to become another Agatha Christie. Then again, it might have landed her in prison, in which case even her brother's stockpiled "Get Out of Jail Free" cards would prove useless.
Life is off the table as well, thanks to my husband. One reason is that it simply wasn't designed for grown men; his fingers weren't nimble enough to properly slot all the pink and blue pegs that represent people into those tiny plastic cars. His fumbling efforts messed up the board, annoying the rest of us. The bigger issue was that, as hubby took his turns, I worried he was having a mid-life crisis. You see, the choices he made in the game of Life ran completely contrary to the path he has actually taken. The fact that he invariably assumed the role of Enrique the Hairdresser didn't help.
My kryptonite is Scrabble. Having been an English professor and now being a writer, I consider myself a "word person." My family would say "show off." Worse still they thought I was a vocabulary snob, when I was really just a purist. Although game manufacturer Hasbro does condone slang use, I still refused to accept "RV," "OK" and "TV," leaving my opponents PO'ed. I, in turn, got frustrated by the realization that players weaned in an age of spellcheckers seemed unable to correctly string letters together without one. ("Mom, is ankshuss a word?" No. But you thinking it might be causes me great anxiety.)
Hmmm... on second thought, maybe touch football is a safer alternative after all.
Next: 7 Tips for Board Games at a Vacation Home
<<Previous Week: Eating the Pictou Island Way
Photo by Shutterstock.
Source: http://news.travel.aol.com/2013/08/01/beach-house-diaries-board-games/
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ANDERSON, Ind. ? Myers and Ford Autoworld executives and city officials Tuesday turned the first shovelfuls of dirt for a redevelopment project that will transform an abandoned industrial brownfield into a sleek, new automotive superstore by next year.
The new dealership buildings will occupy about 48,000 square feet of space on the former General Motors Plant 11 site at South Scatterfield Road and 32nd Street, but the total project footprint when complete next year will be about 250,000 square feet.
Autoworld President Mary Jamerson expects to invest $7.5 million in the new dealerships and eventually create up to 30 new jobs.
Flanked by key members of her Myers Autoworld and Ford Autoworld dealerships staff, Jamerson said she is thrilled to be part of a rebirth of a part of Anderson that has struggled since the departure of General Motors.
?It?s a milestone for our company and a milestone for our community that we can bring this once-prosperous land back to prosperity again for our community. We?re excited,? Jamerson said. ?I can promise you that no building in the world will be built with more loving hands than these.?
Mayor Kevin Smith said Jamerson?s decision to relocate her dealerships on industrial brownfield land actually marks the reuse of more than 200 acres that represent prime land for development on ?one of the highest traffic count roads that we have in the city.?
Jamerson?s decision to build on the former GM factory site activates the state?s last-granted CRED ? Community Revitalization Enhancement District ? zone, which has gone unused for nearly 8 years.
In a CRED district, the city can collect any sales tax that would normally go to the state ? up to a maximum annual amount of $750,000 ? and use that money to build infrastructure within the district, making it more attractive to other developers.
That?s one of the things that will occur as Jamerson?s new dealerships begin to take shape.
Anderson will invest approximately $1.5 million in improvements on Scatterfield Road, including at least three commercial access points; and will also invest $1 million to relocate electric and other utilities, said Greg Winkler, interim economic development director.
?What this project that Mary Jamerson has brought to the city allows us, as a group of citizens, to capture revenues that we would not have had otherwise,? Smith said. ?Mary Jamerson and her team are at the forefront of that.?
Jamerson said she hopes to have the dealerships under roof by winter, and open sometime early next year.
After that, the company plans to donate one of its current buildings on North Broadway to Ivy Tech Community College, which plans to use the location for its automotive training facility.
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What's next A date for construction to begin was not specified, but Mary Jamerson, president of Myers Autoworld and Ford Autoworld, said she hopes to have the dealerships under roof by winter, and open sometime early next year.
Source: http://heraldbulletin.com/local/x710302087/Myers-and-Ford-Autoworld-break-ground-on-new-dealerships
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A judge administers the Oath of Allegiance ceremony to sixty area residents, representing 25 countries, during a naturalization ceremony at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services building in Centennial on July, 2, 2012. (Denver Post file photo)
WASHINGTON ? A who's who of top Republican donors in Colorado sent a letter Tuesday beseeching Colorado's GOP delegation to embrace comprehensive immigration reform and provide a path to legal status for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
The seven donors have collectively contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to both the Republican party and to Colorado's four House Republicans' re-election efforts in the past two years.
"Doing nothing is de facto amnesty," the letter said. "We need to take control of whom we let in our country and we need to make sure everybody plays by the same rules."
Among those who signed the letter were NexGen Resources CEO Charlie McNeil, who between 2011 and 2013 contributed $107,000 to various candidates and the party, M.D.C. Holdings CEO Larry Mizel, who contributed $212,000 between 2011 and 2013, and Marilyn Ware, former ambassador to Finland and former chair of American Water Works, who donated $167,000 between 2011 and 2013 to Republican candidates and the party.
"It's something I've believed in for a very long time. We definitely are motivated to get the message to the congressional delegation," said Laramie Energy II CEO Bruce Payne, who has donated $26,000 from 2011 to 2013 to Republicans and the party. "I just believe these are the exact kind of citizens we want here. They came here at extreme risk to themselves to improve their lives, and that's the American dream."
The letter says "doing nothing" is "not the path for the Republican party."
"Immigrants are often entrepreneurial, family-minded and guided by faith. These are Republican values," the letter says. "These are Colorado values."
The donor letter does not mention the Senate immigration bill that passed with a bipartisan majority in June and gives a 13-year path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
That measure faces no real future in the GOP-controlled House, and leaders say they may take a piecemeal approach to solving the problem.
Colorado's four Republicans have varying ? and even changing ? beliefs on immigration reform.
Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, told a group of immigrant rights advocates gathered at a Catholic church Sunday he supported an earned pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented people.
Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, said he supports proposals that strengthen border security and enforcement first. He said he supports a strong guest worker program in areas such as agriculture and construction.
"After that ? and only after that ? can we begin to look at next steps for those who are here without documentation," Gardner said.
Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, was mum Tuesday about whether he believes in a pathway to legal status for anyone.
"The House is currently in the process of putting forward an immigration reform plan of its own, and as we progress, I believe both parties need to work together with the goal of achieving a solution," he said.
Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, did not respond to the letter Tuesday.
Allison Sherry: 202-662-8907, asherry@denverpost.com or twitter.com/allisonsherry
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A Free-Reprint Article Written by: Bill Platt
Article Title:
The Six Degrees of Internet Marketing
See TERMS OF REPRINT to the end of the article.
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The theory behind the Six Degrees of Separation is that all
people on earth can be connected together in as little as
six steps. Now, I know what you might be thinking at this
juncture... That sounds fun and interesting, but what does
that have to do with Internet Marketing? That is a great
question that I am going to answer for you in this
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The Six Degrees of Internet Marketing
Copyright (c) 2010-2013 Bill Platt
Writing Puzzle
http://WritingPuzzle.com/
The theory behind the Six Degrees of Separation is that all
people on earth can be connected together in as little as six
steps.
The concept was made fun in the 1990's, with the creation of The
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (oracleofbacon.org) - which is a
website that documents how nearly all actors in Hollywood can be
connected to Kevin Bacon through no more than six people. I
played with the site earlier today and the Hollywood actors and
actresses I tested all connected to Kevin Bacon in only two
steps... That was interesting. Even Lucille Ball connected to
Kevin Bacon in only two steps.
Now, I know what you might be thinking at this juncture... That
sounds fun and interesting, but what does that have to do with
Internet Marketing?
Great question.
Undertakers and Wedding Planners know something that most people
do not realize. With a few exceptions like Michael Jackson and
Billy Mayes, most people will only have up to 300 people attend
their wake or wedding. As a result, the average undertaker and
wedding planner will only bring 300 chairs to the festivities.
That's neat... But what does this have to do with Internet
Marketing?
Great question. ;-)
If you really have 300 friends and you can tell them about your
business, and your 300 friends share your business message with
their 300 friends, then in very short order, you will have
communicated your business' sales message to 90,000 people!
If only your friends, friends would tell their friends about your
business, then your message will have reached 27 million people!
At this point, your friends' friends' friends would only need
to tell 222 of their own friends about your business, in order to
have every person on this planet know your name and what your
business could do for them.
But, what does this have to do with Internet Marketing ?!?
Great question.
The good news about your business begins with you. You must tell
people about your business with energy and gusto. If you
advertise your business with energy and enthusiasm, then your
friends may be willing and able to share your message with their
friends, and on and on...
But if you keep your mouth shut around your friends... You will
never be able to reap the benefits of the Six Degrees of
Separation!
Getting people to talk about your business always begins with
your own enthusiasm for your business - enthusiasm about how you
can help others achieve their goals and solve their problems.
If you are embarrassed to tell your friends about your business,
then there must be something wrong! If you are embarrassed, why
are you in that business?
Bring enthusiasm to your advertising, and show people how you can
help them to achieve their goals and solve their problems. In
doing so, you will attract people to your business by the
boatload.
My primary website has +20,000 unique visitors come to it each
and every month. The average person reads 8 pages when they land
on my website.
My website does as it should. It shows people how I can help them
achieve their goals and to help them solve their problems.
Because of this fact, my website continues to grow on its own,
even in months where I don't have the time to continue build on
my advertising momentum.
Although my advertising has been successful and my enthusiasm
remains palpable, I can assure you of one more thing... I could
not have done it without my friends...
About one year ago, we conducted an internal audit of my
business. What I learned is that after Google search engine
traffic, my second highest source of regular, monthly traffic was
a large number of my online friends/acquaintances who were
recommending my business to their friends and acquaintances!
Dozens of my online friends are sharing the story of my business
with all of their online friends. A few dozen might seem to be a
low number, but to be honest, not all of my friends are into
online marketing. The majority of my friends do not realize the
freedom offered to me by my business... Sure they know that I
haven't held an outside job in four years, but they don't quite
understand how I do it or why I do it.
To this day, I have one friend who calls me once a week to tell
me about the job openings he has discovered in the course of his
week... For the first year or so, I told him every time that I
was happy doing what I am doing and I would not be applying for
those jobs. These days, I just thank him for sharing the
information with me. ;-)
I have been operating an online business since 2001. Before 2001,
I thought I was operating an online business, but the IRS says
that if you don't make money with your business, it is a hobby.
I hobbied for a number of years, then I wrapped my head around
how to successfully advertise my business. For the first four
years of my business, I worked a 60-hour per week job, then I
went home and worked my business until I collapsed from
exhaustion.
Then in March 2005, my online income had topped my offline income
for more than twelve months, so I took the dive and quit my job.
I have never looked back.
If you can bring yourself to wrap your head around how to
successfully advertise your business online, then you could very
well join me and my online marketing friends, associates and
customers as full-time online business owners.
Getting the word out about your business is the first step, and
whether you know it or not, your friends can help you, but only
when you are willing to help yourself by displaying a very real
confidence and belief in your business and your products and
services.
----------------------------------------------------------
At http://WritingPuzzle.com/ you will find more training materials for article
marketers. If you are more interested in writing and publishing books, then
you may find http://ProfessionalBookMarketing.com/ to be your perfect
cup of tea. Bill Platt has been teaching other writers how to create content
that gets the reader's attention and how to promote themselves online, since
early 2001. Subscribe to his mailing list here:
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Facebook, having finally created momentum with is mobile advertising initiative is plumbing another source of mobile revenue: Gaming.
The strategy essentially expands the model under which Facebook gets revenue from third-party app advertisements. When a user clicks on an advertisement for an app, Facebook gets a share of that "in-app" revenue.
By offering game developers a distribution platform in exchange for a cut of their revenue up front, Facebook has found a side door into the in-app revenue stream.
The social networking giant said on its developers' blog that it had launched a mobile games pilot program at the Casual Connect conference in San Francisco today. TechCrunch reported the news earlier today.
Facebook said the platform is "a new pilot program to help small and medium-sized developers take their mobile games global." Facebook offers new developers an launching pad for their games and a captive audience of nearly 800 million monthly users (260 million of which play games on the site).
Facebook has already had roughly 10 developers sign onto the platform, according to TechCrunch. These include educational games maker Brainbow, Kiwi and Space Ape.
Companies: FB
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/vertical_46/~3/cKAQoLZU3CE/facebook-launches-mobile-games.html
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