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NY court says lap dance isn't art

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 24 Oktober 2012 | 00.00

A SHARPLY divided court in New York says lap dances don't promote culture in a community the way ballet or other artistic endeavors do, and so shouldn't get a tax break.

The state's top court split 4 to 3. Dissenting justices conclude there's no distinction in state law between "highbrow dance and lowbrow dance," so the case raises "significant constitutional problems."

The lawsuit was filed by Nite Moves, an adult club in suburban Albany that was arguing its fees for admission and private dances are exempt from sales taxes.

The court majority says taxes apply to many entertainment venues, such as amusement parks and sporting events. It ruled the club has failed to prove it qualifies for the exemption for "dramatic or musical arts performances" meant to promote culture.


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US stocks plunge 1% on poor earnings

US stocks have opened more than one per cent lower after blue chips Dupont, United Technologies and 3M turned in disappointing quarterly earnings and cut their forecasts.

Five minutes into trade the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 166.39 points (1.25 per cent) at 13,179.39.

The broad-based S&P 500 sank 16.97 (1.18 per cent) to 1416.85, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 33.28 points (1.10 per cent) at 2983.68.

Dupont sank 6.7 per cent, United Technologies lost 0.6 per cent and 3M fell 3.3 per cent in the opening minutes.

Fighting the selling pressure, longtime laggard Yahoo jumped 3.8 per cent on its strong earnings rise.


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Missing girl's body found in recycling bin

THE uncle of a missing New Jersey girl is confirming that the 12-year-old's body was found in a home's recycling container.

Paul Spadafora thanked the community for helping to search for Autumn Pasquale.

Officials say the body was found in a recycling bin at a home in Clayton around 10 p.m. Monday local time.

That was about 48 hours after her family reported her missing and two hours after community members gathered blocks away for a candlelight vigil filled with both tears and hope.

No arrests have been announced in the case.


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Something fishy about naval robots

AN EEL undulating through coastal waters, powered by batteries and checking for mines. A jellyfish is actually a surveillance robot, powered by the atoms around it. Fins pick up intelligence while propelling a robot bluegill sunfish.

The US Office of Naval Research is supporting baby steps toward making those visions of the future a reality.

For instance, the jellyfish work in Texas and Virginia is focused on how the creatures move in water, and how to mimic or even surpass their abilities.

The robojellyfish is currently tethered to hydrogen and oxygen tanks, and ONR project manager Robert Brizzolara said he doesn't plan to try making it move autonomously yet.

There's plenty still to learn about basic hydrodynamics.

"We, as engineers, haven't created anything that swims nearly as well as a very basic fish," said Drexel University's James Tangorra, who is working on a robotic bluegill.

Partners at Harvard and the University of Georgia are studying the actual fish; he uses their findings to engineer imitations.

"There are great things we can learn from fish ... The way they propel themselves; the way in which they sense water."

Ultimately, the Navy wants "the next generation of robotics that would operate in that very Navy-unique underwater domain," said Jim Fallin, a spokesman for Space and Naval Warfare Systems Centre Pacific, which is doing separate work in San Diego. One aspect is finding long-lived power sources to let drones loiter a long time to collect information, he said.

Possible uses include spying, mapping, and mine detection and removal.

The Navy is not the only agency paying for such research. In 2007, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency offered small business innovation research money for an underwater robot that could navigate rivers, inlets, harbors and coastal waters to check for general traffic, obstacles, things on and under the bottom, and "specific vessels of interest."

The ONR studies are more basic. The grants aren't aimed as much at creating drones as at understanding how things move forward underwater, Mr Brizzolara said.

The Navy uses torpedo-shaped drones and tethered vehicles to detect mines and map the ocean floor. But propellers and jets can be easily tracked on radar and sonar. Robots modeled after water creatures could be both more efficient and harder to detect, and could move through perilous waters without endangering people, researchers say.

The work isn't all at universities. The Office of Naval Research opened a 50,000-square-foot robotics laboratory this year. A prototype dubbed Razor, developed at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, R.I., uses flippers for stealth.

Like the jellyfish work and the University of Virginia studies on manta rays, the eel research at the University of New Orleans is all about hydrodynamics. The spark is UNO professor emeritus William Vorus' theory that sinuous undulations, though a slow way to swim, should allow forward movement without creating a wake.

Brandon M. Taravella, who studied under Vorus and is now an assistant professor of naval architecture and marine engineering at UNO, sees the robot eel as a possible surveillance tool. But the Office of Naval Research's three-year, $900,000 grant is focused on making an eel and seeing whether it can swim without disturbing the water around it.

Other scientists have checked real eels, Mr Taravella said.

"It's pretty high-efficient ... but still has some wake. That's why we're not dropping eels into the tank."

Computer-generated models indicate just how a robot eel should move to get through the water without any drag. Creating one to do that is far from easy.

Like many of the other projects, this one is still in early stages. Most of the time, the nameless first-year prototype is hooked onto a metal pole called a mast, which is attached to sensors on a platform pulled by metal cables from one end of a 49-metre long towing tank to the other.

At the end of one session half of its batteries were removed and it was set into the water for a free swim toward the platform. When it hit one side or headed under the platform, Mr Taravella and graduate student Baker Potts guided it back by sticking canoe paddles in its way.

"This time it tracked straighter a lot better ... Remember? It was going in circles," said Mr Potts.

Mr Taravella said, "Year 2, we're hoping to have it remote controlled. By Year 3, we hope to have it fully autonomous," They'd also like it to wriggle up and down as well as side to side, letting it rise and dive.

MIT has a pike, a sea turtle and two generations of Charlie the Robotuna. Michigan State is working on a school of fish.

One aim is outdoing nature, at least as far as swimming goes, Mr Brizzolara said.

"We'd like to understand the very good performance that some sea creatures can achieve. But also we'd like to see if we can improve on that," he said.

"We can produce perhaps a better result than a sea creature that's been optimised by nature. We haven't done that yet. But that's one of our long-term goals," Mr Brizzolara said.

The research could have a broad range of uses, said Drexel's Tangorra. Part of understanding how fish move is understanding how their nervous systems pull together a wide assortment of information and impulses. And knowing how their fins work could improve other equipment used to control the flow of liquid, from big pumps and pipes to blood flowing in a body.

And, he said philosophically, "You don't look at a sunfish and say, 'Oh my gosh, this is the most incredible evolved device that ever came through.' But you look at it and see that evolution is a wonderful thing."


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Police admit botched gunman investigation

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 23 Oktober 2012 | 23.59

FRENCH police have unveiled a damning report that shows up several loopholes in the investigation of al-Qaida inspired gunman Mohamed Merah before his shooting spree in Toulouse.

The 17-page report by the police disciplinary unit IGPN said "several objective failures had come to light," including a "delayed coordinated reaction," as Interior Minister Manuel Valls vowed to "rapidly put into place the necessary adjustments."

Various units of the French police and intelligence bodies were working in a compartmentalised manner, the report said, slamming the French intelligence agency DCRI, which reports directly to the interior ministry, for "identifying the change in Merah's profile very late."

Merah, a self-described al-Qaida sympathiser, shot a rabbi, three Jewish schoolchildren and three French paratroopers in attacks in and around the southern city of Toulouse in March before being shot dead in a police siege.

The report said Merah, who has had at least 15 previous criminal convictions, attacked a neighbour in June 2010 who confronted him for showing her son a video depicting decapitation.

The lack of coordination resulted in the DCRI being unaware of this development, which could have led to increased surveillance on Merah, who turned into an Islamist hardliner in prison in February 2008, it said.

Merah's transformation to a radical only became apparent to the agency two years later.

And Merah's departure to Pakistan in August last year also went unnoticed because he transited through Oman, which is not part of the 31 destinations where outbound travel is monitored by French intelligence.

It called for tighter surveillance and better coordination between the various security agencies, including fiscal policing. Merah had a rented apartment in Toulouse despite having no declared income.

Separate reports from the DCRI show that Merah was under intense surveillance throughout 2011 but that agents decided to reduce monitoring.

They show that Merah, who had been under surveillance since 2006, was identified as a "privileged target" at the beginning of last year after returning from a trip to Afghanistan, where he was detained in November 2010.

Surveillance from March to July indicated he was in regular contact with "the radical Islamist movement in Toulouse", was showing "paranoid behaviour" and was receiving funds from extremists.

Merah travelled to Pakistan between August and October last year and met with DCRI agents upon his return.

French President Francois Hollande has vowed to beef up its anti-terrorism laws following the killings.

Plans presented to cabinet earlier this month would allow authorities to prosecute suspects for terrorism-related crimes committed outside the country, allowing France to target extremists who attend foreign training camps.


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Friend your boss at your peril

THOUSANDS of young Aussies might have to update their Facebook status from 'hired' to 'fired' sooner than they'd like.

Almost one-third of workers aged between 18 and 25 are friends with their boss on social media, a new survey has found.

But more than half them - 58 per cent - admit they've never cleared potentially career-damaging content from their profiles.

According to a worldwide survey by anti-virus company AVG, 13 per cent of working Gen Yers in Australia admit to posting abusive content about their boss or company after a bad day at work.

They're not nearly as angry as young employees in Italy, where 18 per cent express their emotions online.

Nor are they as fearless as the 80 per cent of Spanish young adults who say they've posted inappropriate images online. Only 28 per cent of Australians admit to sharing unsuitable pictures on social networking sites.

The survey also found that one in 12 young Aussies had been asked in a job interview about things they've posted online.

AVG's Australian security adviser Michael McKinnon said the level of comfort with social media was blurring the line between young people's professional and private lives.

"It seems obvious that posting abusive content about a boss or workplace is not very sensible, but it's important to understand that not only could it damage a person's existing career, it could negatively impact on future opportunities too," Mr McKinnon said.

The survey canvassed 4400 people in 11 countries.


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S.African miner fires 8500 staff

SOUTH African miner Gold Fields has fired 8500 workers who refused to halt an illegal stoppage at its KDC East mine, a spokesman says.

"All 8500 people who were on strike did not come back. They did not return to work, so we have issued dismissal letters to all of them," spokesman Sven Lunsche told AFP. Workers have 24 hours to appeal their dismissal, he added.

Workers at the last striking mine of the world's fourth gold producer in Carletonville, southwest of Johannesburg, had ignored an ultimatum to clock in at 4:00 pm (0100 AEST).

The firm let go 1500 strikers at its KDC West mine on October 18, though most later appealed their dismissal.

Mass dismissals are not unheard of in South Africa and are often part of a hard-ball negotiating strategy on the part of mine owners.

Tens of thousands of workers across South Africa's mining sector have been involved in a spate of illegal strikes over pay and conditions.

The stay aways have crippled production in a sector that fuels 19 per cent of South Africa's economy, prompting pressure from employers, government and even the workers' own unions.


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'Dead' Brazilian is guest at own wake

THERE was screaming. There was fainting. It doesn't happen every day: a car washer in Brazil walked into his own wake, where his distraught family was already weeping over their loss.

"People were so startled. Women were fainting, people started running all over the place," said Maria Menezes, one of the mourners at the event in Alagoinhas, in Salvador de Bahia state, G1 news reported.

Gilberto Araujo, 41, heard from a friend on the street that his family thought he was dead and was busy getting ready to bury him so he decided to head straight to the wake and clear things up.

"A friend of mine told me there was a coffin at the wake - and that I was inside it," Araujo said. "I told him: 'But I am alive! Pinch me!"

In fact, Araujo's family had been burying a corpse that looked startlingly like their loved one, a body that had yet to be formally identified, G1 reported.

"I am just beside myself with joy," a beaming Marina Santana told the network. "What mother who is told her son is dead is not going to be overjoyed when she sees her son alive again?"


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