Ilana Seymour News

The Action/Cut Best Documentary Winner: "Roosevelt's America"
Directed by Roger Weisberg & Tod Lending (Palisades, NY)
Synopsis: After 9/11, most Americans grew more suspicious of outsiders and expressed a growing desire to close our borders impacting on our traditional open door to welcome "the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free." This is a story of a Liberian refugee's inspiring journey against all odds.  After being tortured and narrowly escaping execution in Liberia, Rosevelt makes his way to America with his two sons to build a new life for his family.  After two years of struggle and sending money to his wife and daughter in Liberia, and after endless immigration obstacles, the family is reunited in Chicago, where they are finally able to enjoy the prosperity and freedom that drew them, as a last hope…to America.

The Action/Cut Short Film Competition was launched in 2004 due to the many requests from filmmakers and graduates from our Action/Cut Seminars. They kept asking what to do with their short films as there are few fests/competitions devoted to short films, and most of those do not have substantial prize packages to help the winning filmmakers move forward with their careers…which should be the whole point of winning awards and prizes at fests. Rosevelt

We hear that Tom Cruise and Katie are very happy with their new house but Tom was not so thrilled about the fact that the previous owners got a divorce. He doesn’t want anything like that to happen to HIS marriage, so Tom called in the Scientologists. He had them sweep the place of any leftover bad vibes and clear out any clinging negative spirits. Special flowers were planted in the garden. Maybe this hocus pocus is L Ron Hubbard’s version of feng shui.

Visiting Brethrens
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Next Sermon SpeakerBro. Frank Leong
Next Youth Fellowship VenueJoann Chan’s house
Upcoming Event(s)Youth Workshop and Camp to be held at Ipoh Church Building on 29 May till 1 June 2007. The theme set for this year is

The Doofus Is In! And Out Again {new window}

An Australian survey concerning vehicle ownership cost? As strange as it may seem, not only do we like knowing that Lexus is Japanese and Land Rover is British (…), but we also find interesting totally useless stuff like how many bucks will an Aussie block pay to own his 6cylinder Commodore or Falcon. For the record, your average Mike will pay 233.40 & 229.13 AUD par week respectively that translates to €142.1 & 139.5 and $191.2 & 187.7 again, respectively. The Royal Automobile Club of Victoria’s (RACV) conducted this particular survey and the calculations include the cost of financing the vehicle, depreciation (hence the high numbers we mentioned above), as well as operating costs including scheduled services, registration, insurance, fuel, tyres, etc. We don’t know why, but the Aussies only included Australian and Japanese carmakers along with a couple of Kia’s and Hyundai’s. Follow the jump (click “Read More…”) to check out analytical ownership costs per vehicle category.
Key to the tables Standing costs include those incurred on a periodical basis, such as depreciation in the value of the vehicle, interest on the loan, registration, driver’s license and RACV roadside assistance membership. Running costs include those that result primarily from usage of the vehicle, such as fuel, tyre replacement, service and repairs. Total Costs combine both Standing and Running costs. They are calculated as an average, based on costs incurred over the first five years of ownership and 15,000 km annual travel distance.

Via: RACV

I took the GREs today. As you may know, I did not really study for them that seriously. I did a few practice sections, and one full test, in which I got a better score on the quantitative section than I did on the verbal. Which is weird, because while I’m a rather verbose person on the one hand, I fear and loathe math on the other.

The GRE is a computer-based test, and has some weird quirks. The most notable is that the questions are path-dependent. If you do well on early questions, they start giving you harder ones. If you start missing questions, they become easier. I’m told they still throw in an assortment of difficulty levels regardless, for standardization purposes. But overall, the test adjusts to your ability level.

There are two main upshots to this. The first is that you can’t go back to check your work. Once you input an answer, that’s it, you’re moving on. This is somewhat annoying, especially for someone like me who works fast (and thus sometimes makes sloppy mistakes) but generally catches them on the read-over. But that’s not a huge deal. What is a big problem is that the difficulty-adjustment plays tricks on your mind. Now, I’m a pretty good test-taker. So let’s say I get a few answers right early. Now I start seeing some harder questions. Oh my God, these words don’t even look remotely familiar! This is so difficult! But wait, that should mean I’m doing well! Then, of course, a few questions pop up that seem easier. Good news? Nope–because now I’m convinced I got each of the last five wrong and the test as readjusted itself to “third-grader” mode. And so it goes, up and down, harder and easier. The entire ordeal is a recipe for paranoia.

But anyway, back to me. As I said, I did slightly better on the practice math than I did on the practice verbal (750 math, 740 verbal was my last practice test score). This translated very weird percentile-wise–the 740 was 99th percentile, but the 750 was 84th percentile. Nonetheless, even with a last-second review of trig with my engineering school-bound brother, I had a lot of trouble imaging I’d do better on math than verbal on the real test.

Because its computer-based, they can give you all your scores (except the writing section) right in front of you. My final score? 720 verbal….790 quantitative. For some perspective, not only is that higher than I got on my SAT (1510 versus 1500), my quantitative score on the GRE was higher than my verbal score on the SAT (780 in the latter case), after having taken a grand total of one true math class in the past three years.

Now I just have to figure out what that score means for grad school applications….

Picking up on their news story yesterday headed “Vanderburgh County diversion program to expand,” the Evansville Courier & Press editorializes today:There was a time when people who committed crimes while under the influence of drugs or alcohol would serve their sentences and then be released — right back into the environment that led them to jail in the first place.

Increasingly, however, the criminal justice system recognizes that alcohol and drug offenders need follow-up treatment and monitoring to prevent them from relapsing into the same criminal conduct.

That’s the rationale behind Vanderburgh County’s Day-Reporting Drug Court, founded and administered by Superior Court Judge Wayne Trockman. * * *

Initially, Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Stan Levco was opposed to placing drunken drivers in the Forensic Diversion program, but said he changed his mind after determining the program was run exceptionally well.

“I think they monitor them very well,” Levco told Courier & Press staff writer Kate Braser. “I am not expecting hordes of drunk drivers will get into this. It will be a very limited number every year.”

This development in the program comes as a summer study committee of the Legislature is looking at how to improve Drug Court and Forensic Diversion programs, and whether they could be expanded to more counties. There are now 25 such programs for adults and three for juveniles scattered across the state — meaning some Hoosiers can be sentenced to participate in them while others can’t.

The legislative study committee heard testimony last week from the city court judge in Greenwood, Ind., Lew Gregory, who started his own Drug Court program in that fast-growing Indianapolis suburb. Gregory said his program is very similar to Trockman’s.

Both programs can point to a track record of success, where records show participants are less likely to be arrested again for committing new crimes than for similar defendants who did not enter Drug Court.

Trockman cited a study showing the average costs to the criminal justice system for Drug Court offenders are about $6,700 less per person than for nonparticipants — most of the difference being in prison and probation costs.

Drug Court and Forensic Diversion is intended for a select group of people who suffer from the disease of addiction or some other mental disorder. It is not intended for violent predators and career criminals, who belong locked up in prison.

But Judge Trockman’s program has demonstrated real results in taking people who are on a downward spiral and redirecting them back into law-abiding lives. This is a model program, and state lawmakers ought to look at examples like Vanderburgh County’s as they consider how best to replicate drug courts elsewhere.

Amongst the many films that will play at Venice this year, “Atonement” is being billed as the most expected. Directed by Joe Wright, it has a script by Christopher Hampton (”Dangerous Liaisons”, “Total Eclipse” and the upcoming “Coco avant Chanel”) based on the award-winning novel by Ian McEwan.

The World War II drama is Wright’s second feature, although he has directed numerous dramas for British TV. Keira Knightley’s role is being tipped as a career-defining performance. Wright had famously berated the Bafta voters for not giving her the best actress for “Pride and Prejudice”.

See The Telegraph for an interview with Wright in which he talks about Knightley, budgets and filming Dunkirk.Get more scriptwriting news on Screenplay Europe now.

In the "The Doomsday Machine," a second-season episode of Star Trek, the starship Enterprise plays a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with an alien planet-killing machine described by Spock as "a robot, an automated machine of immense size and power", the function of which is to break down planets into rubble which it then consumes for fuel. Kirk believes that it is a doomsday machine, built by a long-dead civilization and was never meant to be used, much like the old H-bomb used to be on Earth.

In P.D. Smith's new book Doomsday Men physicists unwittingly mimicing Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film, Dr Strangelove, marched around their laboratories singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" (as did the eminent physicist Ernest Rutherford) in celebration of their super-weapon achievements to be used against the Axis Powers.  At the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, young scientists even parodied Goethe's great play, Faust, with leading physicists of the day in the roles of Mephistopheles, Faust and God.   

The eminent nuclear scientist Leo Szilard wrote that "the father of
the atomic bomb was no physicist – he was a dreamer and a writer" and
his name was HG Wells. Wells's The World Set Free, accurately imagined the atomic bomb. He credited the science fiction novel published in
1914, with first putting the idea of a nuclear chain reaction into his
mind. He was also impressed with Wells' book The Open Conspiracy for
World Government, and "joined" this movement along with
other Jewish scientists associated with the Manhattan Project.

Szilard was directly responsible for the creation of the Manhattan
Project. He drafted a confidential letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt
explaining the possibility of nuclear weapons, warning of Nazi work on
such weapons and encouraging the development of a program which could
lead to their creation. In August 1939 he approached his old friend Albert Einstein and convinced him to sign the letter,
lending the weight of his fame to the proposal, which led directly to the establishment of research into nuclear
fission by the U.S. government and ultimately to the creation of the
Manhattan Project.

Smith provides evidence of a Russian doomsday system right out of Star Trek, called €œ"Perimetr," that went operational in the mid-1980s, and is still active. In
his brilliant piece in Slate, journalist Ron Rosenbaum points out that
the "Cold War" might not actually be over: Vladimir Putin recently
announced that Russian nuclear bombers would recommence €œstrategic
flights potentially armed with nukes.

This doomsday apparatus," Rosenbaum continues, "which became
operational in 1984, during the height of the Reagan-era nuclear
tensions, is an amazing feat of creative engineering. According to
Tony Blair, if Perimetr senses a nuclear explosion in Russian territory
and then receives no communication from Moscow, it will assume the
incapacity of human leadership in Moscow or elsewhere, and will then
grant a single human being deep within the Kosvinsky mountains the
authority and capability to launch the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal.

In Dr. Strangelove, art foreshadows current history: the doomsday machine was a Soviet system that
automatically detonated some 50 cobalt-jacketed hydrogen bombs
pre-positioned around the planet if the doomsday system's sensors
detected a nuclear attack on Russian soil. Thus, even an accidental or
(as in Strangelove) an unauthorized U.S. nuclear bomb could
set off the doomsday machine bombs, releasing enough deadly cobalt
fallout to make the Earth uninhabitable for the human species for 93
years. No human hand could stop the fully automated apocalypse.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Related Galaxy post:

"Hunt for the Red October" A Sequel? -Russia Challenges West Under Arctic Ice

Story Links:

http://www.slate.com/id/2173108

http://arts.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article2849623.ece

The place I buy my plaster from is essentially a brickyard. They sell other things besides bricks, but most everything is brick or masonry related. Most of their business goes to trades people and they aren’t really set up to handle a brisk retail business.

When I go to buy the plaster I pull up to a small cinder block office building, and go in and tell a woman I need some plaster. She gets on an intercom and calls out to the yard that a customer is coming for plaster. She then tells me to drive to the second warehouse and someone will meet me there.

I drive through the gate and back to the second warehouse where two bored looking young men are leaning against pallets of different masonry products. There are a dozen different products in 50 and 80 pound bags on all of the different pallets. I tell them I want 3 Structo-Lite and 3 Diamond Finish plaster. There are no prices and none of the pallets are marked. They load up my truck and write up a tag. I then drive back to the cinderblock warehouse where the woman fills in the prices and totals, and I pay her.

I don’t remember what I got three years ago when I did my first plaster work in the upstairs bathroom. That room came out great and I had few problems. Then 2 years ago I did the kitchen and it didn’t go as smoothly. Some of the problems, which I won’t go in to, were unrelated to the plaster, but in general, it just didn’t go as smooth.

When I did the kitchen I bought the product in the picture above. It is the same as in the Worley PFD file. It is Structo-Lite Pre-Mixed Perlited Gypsum Plaster. Perlite is a volcanic mineral that has the interesting property that when it’s heated to 1600 degrees it pops like popcorn. It expands to 20 times it’s original size and is a common filler in masonry products. I still had most of one bag left over from the kitchen, and I was planning on using it up this time.

When I went to get more plaster this time I went through the same routine at the brickyard only this time they gave me a different product, or at least I think they might have. Below is what I got this time. It’s called Structo-Lite Base Coat. The ingredients are the same (Plaster of Paris and Expanded Perlite), but it seems to be a slightly different product.

Maybe it’s just my imagination, but this Base Coat Structo-Lite seems to be easier to mix and does not set up as quickly. After I finished my first bag of the of the Base Coat I got the old bag of pre-mixed perlited plaster and started mixing it in with the other type. I used 1/3 of the old and 1/3 of the new and 1/3 of the diamond finish plaster for the brown coat. Immediately I began to have the same problems I had in the kitchen. It’s just harder to work with.

After a few batches with the old Sturcto-Lite I decided it wasn’t worth it and I would just throw it away rather than deal with the problems it caused. The trouble is, I now don’t have enough plaster to finish the room. Also, the brickyard is only open Monday through Friday. My choices are to wait until Monday to finish, or muddle through with the old plaster I don’t like.

I’ve decided to use it anyway so I can finish up this weekend. I got about 4/5th of the way around the room when I realized I would need to use the old Structo-Lite. I had been at it for several hours today, and I decided to wait and finish up tomorrow. There is nothing worse than running in to problems at the end of the day. I’ll just start in fresh tomorrow and finish the room. I have a half of bag of the old and a half of bag of the new, so I’ll just mix them together and hope for the best. I should be able to get the brown coat finished and start the finish coat tomorrow.

Tomorrow I’ll post lots of pictures and more tips & tricks I’ve discovered.