MURDER IS MY BUSINESS: Q&A w/ Joe Kaczmarek - Phawker


Photo by Jeff Fusco, all other photos by Joe Kaczmarek

BY JONATHAN VALANIA As a kid, Joe Kaczmarek started scheming to get on the other side of the yellow police crime scene tape the way party people scheme to get on the other side of the velvet rope. He was born into it. His ?nana? listened to the police scanner like people listen to the radio. Soon he had his own police scanner and every night he went to sleep with the hiss, crackle and pop of police dispatchers calling all cars ringing in his ears. To Kaczmarek it was beautiful music. When he grew up he wanted to be a cop, but there were no empty seats at the table so he settled for police dispatcher. It was the next best thing to being ?in the shit,? where all the action was. Cops and robbers. Murder and mayhem.? Fire and casualty. Damsels in distress. Kittens up trees. Trembling old ladies calling 911 to report things going bump in the night. Never a dull moment. It sure beat working for a living. When budget cuts pulled the plug on his dispatcher career, he picked up a camera and taught himself how to point and shoot. Armed with a police scanner, he made it his business to be at the right place at the right time. Soon the newspapers were buying his pictures and the cops were inviting him to cross the yellow crime scene tape and do his thing. That was 12 years ago and he hasn?t looked back since. In addition to the Daily News and Inquirer, his work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, USA Today,? and magazines and websites the world over. He usually sleeps through the day and works at night, when Killadelphia comes alive. Like famed New York City crime scene chronicler Weegee ? to whom he is often compared ? murder is his business and these days business is good. A little too good. Still, it sure beats working for a living.

PHAWKER: So let?s start at the beginning. How do you get into doing what you?re doing?

JOE KACZMAREK: I was a recently laid off police dispatcher for a suburban municipality sitting on Delaware Avenue listening to a police scanner and eating a chili dog. These men were painting a giant American flag mural on the side of the cold storage building near Spring Garden street and all of a sudden their scaffolding collapsed and they were all dangling from their safety harnesses. And their paint and everything fell to the ground, they were literally hanging from the side of the building and I just had to roll up the block about a hundred yards and I started taking pictures and then fire trucks arrived. Long story short they got everyone down safely and I took my photos over to the Philadelphia Daily News not knowing why, just I figured in the wake of 9/11, firemen and the photo editor looked at the film and he was impressed with what he saw. He said he was going to use some of my photos and then he handed me a box of film and he said ?go do it again, kid.? And I never looked back since.

My first photo that ran in the paper was of the mural arts flag scaffolding collapse and they ran it nearly a whole page in color. My mother was so proud of what I did and it was like a drug in my system ever since. I decided I am never messing around with anything else; this is going to be my career. And I proceeded to absorb every single bit of knowledge and information I could get from all the existing news photographers in town. At that time there was still a lot of the absolute best this city has ever seen still working for the dailies. And a lot of these guys took me under their wing. George Widman, Rusty Kennedy, George Reynolds, Jim MacMillan, of course, Pete Kane, a television photographer who spent like 30 years on the streets of Philadelphia? ? they all saw something in me and like I said, I never looked back. I honesty consider it a blessing. I finally figured out what I was meant to do in this life.

PHAWKER: Why were you listening to the police scanner? Old habits die hard?

JOE KACZMAREK: Listening to the police scanner was a habit that my nana instilled in me. Nana always listened to the police radio so when I was little I just took to it and so instead of wanting to watch TV at night before bed I wanted to listen to the police scanner. And the camera was a gift my dad gave to my mom back in the late 70s that she never really took an interest to and I kind of did and taught myself how to use it.

PHAWKER: What?s the make of the camera?

JOE KACZMAREK: The camera was a Ricoh 35 millimeter film body. It was a nice little camera. But in a day when everyone was learning to play with digital I was still a film guy running around with film. Then quickly I had to get serious and decide well if you want to do this you need the right tools to do it and like basically took a leap of faith and took a whole bunch of savings and invested it in this expensive camera equipment and it been a good investment and it?s never let me down. My mother always said when you want to go west you have to feed the horse. There are certain expenses that just come along in life that you got to cover if you want to do something.

PHAWKER: That?s pretty good, I like that.

JOE KACZMAREK: She was very encouraging through all of this. A classic mom, just knew I had the talent before anyone else did and always encouraged me and never let me sell myself short and I really do consider this a blessing. I had jobs before where I made money but I had no personal gratification and I was miserable and I always dreamed of having a job where I felt like I was contributing something positive to this world as opposed to just worrying about making ends meet. Before this, I was in check cashing and pawn shops and stuff like that so. So it was me being fed up with cash check stores and pawn shops and was like ?you know there has to be something more satisfying to do with myself? and that is where I started to check out law enforcement, see if I can get a job somewhere. Took a test here and there. Doors weren?t opening up at the right time and I took that police dispatching job just to get into the field and get a little experience from it. It?s kind of funny, all the steps, they added up along the way to what I am now. It?s funny when you look back on it.

PHAWKER: Are you from Philadelphia?

JOE KACZMAREK: Yes, originally. My grandmother owned a bar in Kensington for fortysomething years called Mary?s Tavern. And my dad grew up in Kensington and my mom was a Mayfair girl. I spent all my years here and I adore the place.

PHAWKER: So what is a typical day in the life of Joe Kazmarek? Or more accurately, a night in the life?

JOE KACZMAREK: There are two reasons I gravitate towards the night. Number one, I kind of own the city at night. There is no one else out there. The nighttime I think adds a bit of mojo to the photographs, makes them just a little bit different.

PHAWKER: That?s when most of the murder and mayhem happen, isn?t it?

JOE KACZMAREK: Yes, yes. It?s a different atmosphere out there at night. In the night time it seems like that crime is the only thing that?s happening in certain neighborhoods, literally. In the day time you can have the same type of scene, step away from the police tape and everything in life continues on as normal. I think that adds to difference a little bit at night. I like the night. I really do. And I equally hate the morning. I don?t know if it?s my love of the night or dread of the morning that keeps me out at night.

PHAWKER: What?s the worst thing you?ve seen or photographed?

JOE KACZMAREK: I?m at these scenes and people who are there, that?s the worst moments of their lives and every single time I am at one of these things I have to watch the effect of this violence on the dead?s family and loved ones. It?s just as bad as it gets. Every time we have to stand out there and listen to the screams, the crying, to the pleading with God. Then on top of that sometimes throw some [dead] kids into the mix and that?s a haunting day for me.

PHAWKER: So how do you deal with that? Are you able to leave that somewhere at the end of the day and go home?

JOE KACZMAREK: Yeah. My colleagues that share the task are always great to sit down and decompress with, have a beer. Just to talk about it and I think just talking about it is key to that process of getting it off your chest. It always stays with you. I mean my photographs, I can look at a photograph from 2002 and remember the entire incident and it?s like looking at a family member. It doesn?t go away but friends and family helps you decompress and file it in the appropriate place.

PHAWKER: How many murder scenes do you think you?ve photographed?

JOE KACZMAREK: If the city had 400 murders on the course of a year, I think it?s fair to say I?m there 40% of the time and I been doing this since 2001 so for 11 years. So it?s a hell of a lot of violence

PHAWKER: That?s more than 2000 murders scenes you?ve photographed. What do you think is the root cause of all this violence?

JOE KACZMAREK: It?s all disagreements stemming from coping with life whether it?s over a girlfriend or money or drugs. People trying to cope with everyday life and for some reason killing somebody seems to be the damn answer to their problems. I don?t think it?s fair to narrow it down to any one issue because it can be so random. One day I?ll be covering a domestic murder suicide, the next day it is clear that maybe one of the corner guys got gunned down as a result of illegal activities. Other times it?s just like a robbery. A robbery goes bad, someone gets scared, pulls the trigger and nothing was taken except for a life.

PHAWKER: Since you?ve seen so many of these murder scenes, surely you have some opinion on what if anything can be done to stem this violence.

JOE KACZMAREK: To be honest with you, I just kind of stand their looking at it like the apes [staring at the mysterious black obelisk] in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just ?What the hell? What the hell can you do with this?? Any type of disruption or interruption [in the violence] could be considered positive.

PHAWKER: And when you are standing around the murder scene, the victim?s cell phone rings constantly?

JOE KACZMAREK: Yeah. So you have this horrible scene and then some silly ring tone, like ?Shake Your Moneymaker,? is going off over and over. It?s bizarre to be standing there in such a grim environment and listening to a silly ringtone go off over and over again. The other thing is that at absolutely every homicide scene I been to there?s stray cats walking around. It?s something I see every time, every murder scene there is a stray cat walking through. Always. Always.

PHAWKER: You don?t think these cats are somehow involved?

JOE KACZMAREK: No. It?s just?this is the stuff I just hate.

PHAWKER: Tell me when you started shooting was that the first time you saw a murder victim?s body laying on the ground?

JOE KACZMAREK: Well I try not to encounter the disturbing or upsetting stuff too much. I feel like we?ve got this glass you can fill up with only so much negative stuff so I am very careful about what spills into the glass and fills it up. I don?t need to see upsetting things unnecessarily.

PHAWKER:? What were the realities of it that you weren?t prepared for?

JOE KACZMAREK: One thing that happens that the victim?s family and friends and even just bystanders always complain about is why the body has to just lay there for so long. In the beginning even I was like ?gosh why does it have to be like this? but unfortunately as a part of the investigating process, the deceased has to be out there in the street for an extended period of time.

PHAWKER: So how long are we talking about? An hour? Two hours?

JOE KACZMAREK: It could five or six [hours] depending on circumstances.

PHAWKER: How about the other side of things? Do you have any heartwarming or inspiring tales of things that you encountered, people doing good deeds, etc.?

JOE KACZMAREK: Oh my God yes. The people of Philadelphia are good people. I cannot stress that enough. So many times you go into a place you haven?t been at and it?s a rough community and you?re on guard and you?re alert and all of a sudden you meet some really warm, fuzzy, great people. It?s such a pleasure to be on guard for negative and experience the positive.? I?ll give you a great example. I?m at a scene about two or three months ago in Olney where somebody was killed during the filming of a rap video. The first reports were someone was shot in the head while someone was filming a rap video. Well later in the investigation it determined that there were guns fired but the person wasn?t shot, they were actually struck by a vehicle trying to get away from the gunfire. But in the confusion it took some time to figure this out. I was working a job with Morgan Zalot of the Daily news and I go to take a picture of a group of onlookers on the corner and this kid that is about eight years old holds his hands up like a celebrity and say ?Don?t take my picture, man? and then he runs over to Morgan and he throws his arms around her ? he barely comes up to her waist ? as tight as can be and screams ?Unless it?s with her!? And it just kills me and I am like absolutely I will not discourage this young man from talking to a pretty girl. I mean it?s something I can still not do in my 40s, OK? So stuff like that is just absolutely amazing. True blue Philadelphians through and through and I love them, I absolutely love them.

PHAWKER: So what about this notion of you being Philadelphia?s Weegee?

JOE KACZMAREK: I am very humbled by the compliment, but I will leave it to other people to decide. I am humbled because he is the first and the original. Probably the only thing I got in common with Weegee is the police radio and chasing crime scenes. Other than that, he was an innovator. It?s just like being a baseball player you know, whenever someone becomes ?the next Babe Ruth.? It?s like ?Really? Like what am I supposed to say to that?? It?s a great compliment, though.

PHAWKER: There?s a great Weegee exhibit right now at the International Center of Photography in New York city and in addition to all those great photographs they recreated his one room apartment ? basically a bed and a police scanner and his camera.

JOE KACZMAREK: From what you?re describing is sounds like not much has changed since Weegee?s days. It sounds like my life is just as compact and grim as his sometimes.

[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]

next iron chef next iron chef aquamarine iraq war iraq war san diego chargers san diego chargers

UK wants safeguards if euro zone forges bank union

[ [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 2]], 'http://yhoo.it/KeQd0p', '[Slideshow: See photos taken on the way down]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 7]], ' http://yhoo.it/KpUoHO', '[Slideshow: Death-defying daredevils]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['know that we have confidence in', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/LqYjAX ', '[Related: The Secret Service guide to Cartagena]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['We picked up this other dog and', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JUSxvi', '[Related: 8 common dog fears, how to calm them]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 5]], 'http://bit.ly/JnoJYN', '[Related: Did WH share raid details with filmmakers?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 3]], 'http://bit.ly/KoKiqJ', '[Factbox: AQAP, al-Qaeda in Yemen]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have my contacts on or glasses', 3]], 'http://abcn.ws/KTE5AZ', '[Related: Should the murder charge be dropped?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JD7nlD', '[Related: Bristol Palin reality show debuts June 19]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 1]], 'http://bit.ly/JRPFRO', '[Related: McCain adviser who vetted Palin weighs in on VP race]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['A JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GV9zpj', '[Related: View photos of the JetBlue plane in Amarillo]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 15]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/white-house-stays-out-of-teen-s-killing-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120411/martinzimmermen.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['Titanic', 7]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/titanic-anniversary/', ' ', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/b/4e/b4e5ad9f00b5dfeeec2226d53e173569.jpeg', '550', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['He was in shock and still strapped to his seat', 6]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/navy-jet-crashes-in-virginia-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120406/jet_ap.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]

[ [ [['did not go as far his colleague', 8]], '29438204', '0' ], [ [[' the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 4]], '28924649', '0' ], [ [['because I know God protects me', 14], ['Brian Snow was at a nearby credit union', 5]], '28811216', '0' ], [ [['The state news agency RIA-Novosti quoted Rosaviatsiya', 6]], '28805461', '0' ], [ [['measure all but certain to fail in the face of bipartisan', 4]], '28771014', '0' ], [ [['matter what you do in this case', 5]], '28759848', '0' ], [ [['presume laws are constitutional', 7]], '28747556', '0' ], [ [['has destroyed 15 to 25 houses', 7]], '28744868', '0' ], [ [['short answer is yes', 7]], '28746030', '0' ], [ [['opportunity to tell the real story', 7]], '28731764', '0' ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 7]], '28723797', '0' ], [ [['point of my campaign is that big ideas matter', 9]], '28712293', '0' ], [ [['As the standoff dragged into a second day', 7]], '28687424', '0' ], [ [['French police stepped up the search', 17]], '28667224', '0' ], [ [['Seeking to elevate his candidacy back to a general', 8]], '28660934', '0' ], [ [['The tragic story of Trayvon Martin', 4]], '28647343', '0' ], [ [['Karzai will get a chance soon to express', 8]], '28630306', '0' ], [ [['powerful storms stretching', 8]], '28493546', '0' ], [ [['basic norm that death is private', 6]], '28413590', '0' ], [ [['songwriter also saw a surge in sales for her debut album', 6]], '28413590', '1', 'Watch music videos from Whitney Houston ', 'on Yahoo! Music', 'http://music.yahoo.com' ], [ [['keyword', 99999999999999999999999]], 'videoID', '1', 'overwrite-pre-description', 'overwrite-link-string', 'overwrite-link-url' ] ]

new orleans weather new orleans weather sparkle sacagawea new hope baptist church associated press foster friess

China to US embassy: Stop telling people how bad the air is in Beijing.

Air quality in Beijing is notorious for being 'crazy bad.' The US Embassy in Beijing started tweeting air quality reports, but now China says it's unfair to judge it by international standards.

By Peter Ford,?Staff writer / June 5, 2012

A cleaner wears a face mask as she works in front of the giant portrait of former Chinese chairman Mao Zedong at Beijing's Tiananmen Gate on June 5. The Chinese government today warned the US Embassy in Beijing to stop telling the world how bad the air quality really is.

David Gray/Reuters

Enlarge

The Chinese government today warned the US Embassy in Beijing to stop telling the world just how bad the capital?s air really is.

Skip to next paragraph Peter Ford

Beijing Bureau Chief

Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.

Recent posts

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "off"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

For the past three years or so, the embassy has Tweeted the hourly readings from a pollution monitor on its roof, providing the only real time indicator of what we are breathing here.

Deputy Environment Minister Wu Xiaoqing, however, told reporters today that this was a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Only the Chinese government is allowed to measure and publish air quality information, he said.

The trouble with that is that I am not the only person in Beijing who has sometimes found it hard to reconcile the soupy grey fog that I often see outside my window with the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center?s insistence that pollution is ?light.?

The US embassy spokesman was unavailable to comment on Mr. Wu?s admonition, but @BeijingAir, its Twitter feed, was still posting at 6 p.m.; it found the air to be ?Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups.?

That is a definition taken from the US EPA, and Wu said it was not fair to judge Chinese air by American standards, which are stricter than Chinese ones, because of ?our current stage of development.?

This is not the first time the US Twitter feed has got into trouble. On Nov. 19, 2010, when the Air Quality Index soared above 500 ? the top of the US scale ? the reading was described in a tweet as ?crazy bad.?

The term appeared to have been inserted into the monitoring program by a programmer who never expected such an outlandishly high reading: Anything over 300 ?would trigger a health warning of emergency conditions? in America, according to an EPA website.

Nowadays, readings over 500 (20 times higher than World Health Organization guidelines) are described simply as ?beyond index.?

The Beijing municipality website publishes its own hourly readings of PM 2.5 tiny particulate matter, regarded as especially dangerous, but only 24 hours after the fact. It also publishes an average figure for air quality over the previous 24 hours, but does not characterize it as good, bad, or hazardous.

Wu?s warning to the US embassy will doubtless re-focus public attention on the real quality of Beijing?s air, which cannot be good for the authorities. What?s odd is that for the past few early summer days here the air has mostly been clear, and even gloriously sharp on one or two evenings.

If the embassy Twitter feed dies, we shall just have to go back to trusting our eyes and our noses. Just because we cannot put a scientific figure to it, doesn?t mean we don?t know what we are breathing.

roseanne barr president green party day 26 gronkowski new hunger games trailer sasquatch david choe

Erika L. S?nchez: I Grew Up Speaking Spanish, But Sometimes It Gets Rusty

I didn't learn to speak English until I was about four. And who do I have to thank for teaching me? Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus. Bert and Ernie. That's right-- "Sesame Street" taught this little Mexican how to speak English. In my living room on weekday mornings eating my Froot Loops, I learned that sharing was really freaking cool and that "C" was for cookie. And like most children, I grasped the language immediately. My little brain was malleable and ready to absorb anything. God bless PBS.

At home, I grew up speaking Spanish almost exclusively, but I was educated almost entirely in the English language. I first fell in love with poetry after reading Edgar Allen Poe. I can't even explain how my heart filled with glee when I read "MacBeth" or how haunted I was by the work of Emily Dickinson. It all sounded so beautiful. At 12, I decided to be a writer. I loved English so much that I majored it in college and then foolishly got a Masters degree in English Creative Writing.

But like many second generation Chicanas and Latinas, Spanish remains my language of strong emotion. When I get mad it's "?Ch**a tu madre!" When am surprised it's "?Dios mio!" When I'm annoyed with someone it's "?C?mo jodes!" When I hurt myself it's not "Ow!" but "?Ay!" Even my boyfriend has appropriated these phrases.

Sometimes I get nervous when I speak Spanish, though. Despite being a native and fluent Spanish speaker, I get overwhelmed when discussing something complex, such as literature in my native tongue. I feel stupid. I feel flustered even after speaking it my whole life, even after living abroad in Spanish speaking countries. My vocabulary is just much more extensive in English. It was the language in which I learned how to formulate complex ideas and arguments. It's the language in which I've done most of my reading and writing. I am also not as quick-witted in Spanish. When I lived in Spain, I sometimes felt that people didn't really get a good idea of what my sense of humor was like. I wanted to yell, "I promise I'm funnier than this! Please believe me! Here, please let me do a funny jig for you!"

Also, because I primarily speak English at work and at home with my boyfriend, my Spanish skills can get a bit rusty. Sometimes I forget the simplest of words and I am horrified by it. I'm all, "Yo quiero... eat. Dame ese... cup." Ok, it's not that bad, but it's embarrassing! I feel like I'm causing shame to my ancestors, like the ghosts of my brown and braided great-grandmothers will come scare the mess out of me when I am making a yellow cheese quesadilla.

But sometimes identity is messy, confusing, and contradictory.

I should learn to accept all it all and just laugh when I can't, for the life of me, think of the Spanish equivelant for "scalawag," when I notice I have an accent in both languages, or when my white boyfriend says, "Give me that chancla" without a shred of irony. It's all part of the dizzying American experience, isn't it?

?

Follow Erika L. S?nchez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@OhHellsNah

"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });

festivus festivus zeno melanie amaro new air jordans jeff dunham young guns

Israel to build 300 new West Bank settlement homes

JERUSALEM (AP) ? Israel's prime minister on Wednesday ordered construction of 300 new homes in a West Bank settlement, a move aimed at placating settler anger over the planned demolition of an illegally built outpost nearby.

The decision infuriated the Palestinians, who have refused to conduct peace talks while Israel expands its settlements on occupied land. It also risked drawing an international backlash.

Netanyahu has been grappling with a domestic crisis over the unauthorized settlement outpost of Ulpana. The Supreme Court has ordered the five apartment buildings in the outpost to be removed by July 1 after determining they were built on private Palestinian land.

Netanyahu has said he would honor the ruling, while Jewish settlers and their hard-line allies in Netanyahu's government have vowed to resist the order.

Netanyahu announced his decision shortly after parliament rejected an attempt by hard-line lawmakers to prevent the Ulpana demolition. The proposal sought to leave the buildings, home to 30 families, intact and instead compensate the Palestinian landowners. But under pressure from Netanyahu, the parliament resoundingly defeated the measure by a 69-22 vote.

Netanyahu opposed the bill, saying it would likely be overturned by the Supreme Court and generate harsh international criticism.

In order to blunt settler anger, Netanyahu has come up with a novel solution: Instead of demolishing the buildings, he plans on removing them from their foundations and transferring them to the nearby settlement of Beit El. In addition, he said he would build 300 more homes in Beit El.

"Israel is a democracy that observes the law, and as prime minister I am obligated to preserve the law and preserve the settlements, and I say here that there is no contradiction between the two," Netanyahu said.

"This formula strengthens settlements," he added. "''The court ruled what it did, and we respect its decision. In parallel, Beit El will be expanded. The 30 families will stay in Beit El and they will be joined by 300 new families."

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the new construction. "This is a very grave development, this undermines all efforts to revive the peace making between the two sides," he said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the planned construction "undermines peace efforts." He said, "We do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity. And, we want to see both parties refrain from these kinds of actions and to get back into negotiations."

An Israeli official said it was unclear how long the Ulpana move would take or how much it would cost. He said the plan is for the homes in Ulpana to be removed from their current location by the July 1 deadline. It is possible the residents will need temporary housing while the buildings are transferred. He spoke on condition of anonymity because final details still need to be worked out.

Netanyahu's plan has come under fire from various quarters. Critics say the move is unnecessarily expensive and complicated. Settlers reject any move of the buildings.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the new construction. "This is a very grave development, this undermines all efforts to revive the peace making between the two sides," he said.

There was no immediate reaction from Washington. The U.S., along with most of the international community, considers the settlements illegitimate.

About 2,000 settlers, nearly all of them observant Jews, with men wearing knit skullcaps and females in long skirts, demonstrated outside the parliamentary building ahead of Wednesday's vote, and some activists have begun hunger strikes to protest the planned destruction of Ulpana.

Settler leaders have promised to resist the order, though they say their opposition will be peaceful. Police said two arrests were made when young demonstrators scuffled with authorities.

"The Knesset chose destruction instead of construction. We will not be deterred. We will continue to build," said settler leader Dani Dayan.

Jewish settlements are at the heart of the current impasse in Mideast peace efforts.

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians broke down three years ago, and the Palestinians refuse to restart negotiations until Israel freezes settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, for a future state. With 500,000 Israelis now living on land claimed by the Palestinians, they say their dream of gaining independence is growing ever more distant.

Netanyahu says talks should resume without any preconditions and has rejected calls for a full settlement freeze.

packers giants game golden globe winners 2012 ricky gervais golden globes epidermolysis bullosa miss wisconsin law abiding citizen golden globes 2012

NYT: Airlines weighing fee for oversize carry-ons

Here's something that the big airlines really wish we wouldn?t discuss right now, with planes flying full, fares rising, fuel prices stabilizing and customers generally resigned to the air travel system:

Some domestic airlines are weighing the idea of discouraging passengers from lugging oversize carry-on bags onto planes by imposing a $25 charge, at the gate, on bags that exceed the posted size limits. Alaska Airlines, the No. 7 carrier in domestic market share, is already quietly doing just that, in fact.

Spirit Airlines initiated a major new approach to carry-on bags almost two years ago when it began charging passengers $45 to stash carry-ons in overhead bins. Spirit plans to raise that fee at the gate this fall to $100 per bag. But Spirit?s success in discouraging carry-ons has evidently resonated with the bigger airlines, at least on the subject of passengers who now gate-check oversize bags free.

?Everybody who flies knows that it?s just a mess boarding at the gate,? as passengers wait while carry-ons are stored on the plane, said Jay Sorensen, the president of IdeaWorks, which specializes in airline fee revenue strategies. Because of fees for checked bags, ?airlines have conditioned many travelers to just take a bag to the gate and let the gate agent or the flight attendant on board the airplane sort it out,? he said, adding, ?It?s a horrible system.?

Seldom do passengers, gate agents, flight attendants and airline management all agree on anything ? but all agree that the current system is awful. Along with the unpleasant airport security checkpoint drill, the glum ritual of boarding a crowded plane and hoping to find space in a crammed overhead bin is one of the two high-anxiety choke points in air travel. Many flight attendants tell me that the bin-storage problem is the part of their job that they dislike the most.

Airlines created the overhead bin problems in 2008 when they started aggressively imposing charges on checked bags. Airline revenue from checked bag fees has jumped, to $3.36 billion last year from a mere $464.3 million in 2007.

Adding a new fee for gate-checking some bags isn?t something an airline will approach lightly. I could practically see airline spokesmen cringe when I called to ask about tentative plans for charging for oversize carry-on bags at the gate.

But in discussing her airline?s gate-check policy, Marianne Lindsey, a spokeswoman for Alaska Airlines, said that ?items exceeding the free carry-on allowance will be charged $25 per piece and tagged for delivery to baggage claim at your destination.? At the boarding area, passengers can pay with cash or credit cards for gate-checking a carry-on bag that exceeds the regulation size, which is 10 by 17 by 24 inches.

At United Airlines, some supervisors have had talks with gate agents about charging customers for oversize bags. But United won?t discuss that.

?We don?t have any immediate changes planned,? said David Messing, a United spokesman. But, he added, ?We?re looking at how to prevent so many noncomplying bags from reaching the gate, as well as better ways to handle noncomplying bags that do reach the gate.?

An American Airlines spokesman, Ed Martelle, also declined to talk about this, saying, ?The Department of Justice does not allow us to discuss any possible future pricing on any fare or service charge that may, or may not, happen in the future.? A spokesman for Delta Air Lines, Morgan Durrant, said the same. US Airways did not respond to requests for comment.

  1. Don't miss these Travel stories

    1. The 11 greatest riverfront towns

      Riversides have evolved from places of shipping and commerce to tourist draws, with everything from windsurfing to pubs to cultural centers.

    2. It's a Snap: Travel photos from around the world
    3. TSA workers fired, suspended at Fla. airport
    4. Unruly 3-year-old kicked off Alaska Air flight
    5. Gorgeous hotels with history

Some airlines are already partly addressing the overhead bin squeeze by adding some space. American, for example, had bigger overhead bins installed as part of improved interior designs on the more than 130 new Boeing 737-800 airplanes that it began receiving last month to replace its old MD-80 planes. United is carving out some extra space by redesigning the doors on bins on the 152 Airbus planes in its fleet, Mr. Messing said.

But anyone who gets on a plane, or works on one, knows that bags the size of Winnebagos and the people who break rules by hauling them on board are a continuing nuisance. Assuming those bags can?t fit into bin space, they are now routinely gate-checked free (along with any spillover of regulation-size bags that can?t fit in full bins).

Charging for oversize bags at the gate will be challenging but, as Mr. Sorensen pointed out, carriers in Europe routinely do it. Still, what happens to that bag if a passenger can?t pay at the gate? And will airlines use the extra revenue to hire more gate agents to handle the logistics?

Mr. Sorensen said he thought it was inevitable that more airlines would charge for gate-checking oversize bags. But he said he suspected some carriers might be tempted to copy Spirit Airlines? success in simplifying the boarding process (and raising lots of revenue) by charging for all carry-ons that go in a bin. Allegiant Air also recently began following the Spirit policy on carry-ons.

The consumer uproar would be thundering. But, he said: ?They?re watching how Spirit Airlines boards, and realizing that Spirit has effectively removed roll-ons as a problem. So I?m not surprised that they?re internally discussing ways in which they can imitate that success.?

This story, Airlines weighing fee for oversize carry-ons, originally appeared in the New York Times.

matt lauer divine mercy chaplet albert pujols the shining mariano rivera mariano rivera jobs report

Nuclear weapon simulations show performance in molecular detail

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 5-Jun-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Emil Venere
venere@purdue.edu
765-494-4709
Purdue University

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - U.S. researchers are perfecting simulations that show a nuclear weapon's performance in precise molecular detail, tools that are becoming critical for national defense because international treaties forbid the detonation of nuclear test weapons.

The simulations must be operated on supercomputers containing thousands of processors, but doing so has posed reliability and accuracy problems, said Saurabh Bagchi, an associate professor in Purdue University's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Now researchers at Purdue and high-performance computing experts at the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have solved several problems hindering the use of the ultra-precise simulations. NNSA is the quasi-independent agency within the U.S. Department of Energy that oversees the nation's nuclear security activities.

The simulations, which are needed to more efficiently certify nuclear weapons, may require 100,000 machines, a level of complexity that is essential to accurately show molecular-scale reactions taking place over milliseconds, or thousandths of a second. The same types of simulations also could be used in areas such as climate modeling and studying the dynamic changes in a protein's shape.

Such highly complex jobs must be split into many processes that execute in parallel on separate machines in large computer clusters, Bagchi said.

"Due to natural faults in the execution environment there is a high likelihood that some processing element will have an error during the application's execution, resulting in corrupted memory or failed communication between machines," Bagchi said. "There are bottlenecks in terms of communication and computation."

These errors are compounded as long as the simulation continues to run before the glitch is detected and may cause simulations to stall or crash altogether.

"We are particularly concerned with errors that corrupt data silently, possibly generating incorrect results with no indication that the error has occurred," said Bronis R. de Supinski, co-leader of the ASC Application Development Environment Performance Team at Lawrence Livermore. "Errors that significantly reduce system performance are also a major concern since the systems on which the simulations run are very expensive."

Advanced Simulation and Computing is the computational arm of NNSA's Stockpile Stewardship Program, which ensures the safety, security and reliability of the nation's nuclear deterrent without underground testing.

New findings will be detailed in a paper to be presented during the Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks from June 25-28 in Boston. Recent research findings were detailed in two papers last year, one presented during the IEEE Supercomputing Conference and the other during the International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing.

The researchers have developed automated methods to detect a glitch soon after it occurs.

"You want the system to automatically pinpoint when and in what machine the error took place and also the part of the code that was involved," Bagchi said. "Then, a developer can come in, look at it and fix the problem."

One bottleneck arises from the fact that data are streaming to a central server.

"Streaming data to a central server works fine for a hundred machines, but it can't keep up when you are streaming data from a thousand machines," said Purdue doctoral student Ignacio Laguna, who worked with Lawrence Livermore computer scientists. "We've eliminated this central brain, so we no longer have that bottleneck."

Each machine in the supercomputer cluster contains several cores, or processors, and each core might run one "process" during simulations. The researchers created an automated method for "clustering," or grouping the large number of processes into a smaller number of "equivalence classes" with similar traits. Grouping the processes into equivalence classes makes it possible to quickly detect and pinpoint problems.

"The recent breakthrough was to be able to scale up the clustering so that it works with a large supercomputer," Bagchi said.

Lawrence Livermore computer scientist Todd Gamblin came up with the scalable clustering approach.

A lingering bottleneck in using the simulations is related to a procedure called checkpointing, or periodically storing data to prevent its loss in case a machine or application crashes. The information is saved in a file called a checkpoint and stored in a parallel system distant from the machines on which the application runs.

"The problem is that when you scale up to 10,000 machines, this parallel file system bogs down," Bagchi said. "It's about 10 times too much activity for the system to handle, and this mismatch will just become worse because we are continuing to create faster and faster computers."

Doctoral student Tanzima Zerin and Rudolf Eigenmann, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, along with Bagchi, led work to develop a method for compressing the checkpoints, similar to the compression of data for images.

"We're beginning to solve the checkpointing problem," Bagchi said. "It's not completely solved, but we are getting there."

The checkpointing bottleneck must be solved in order for researchers to create supercomputers capable of "exascale computing," or 1,000 quadrillion operations per second.

"It's the Holy Grail of supercomputing," Bagchi said.

###

The research has been funded by Lawrence Livermore and the National Science Foundation. The work also involves Lawrence Livermore scientists Greg Bronevetsky, Dong H. Ahn, Martin Schulz and IBM Austin researcher Mootaz Elnozahy.

Laguna was awarded a George Michael Memorial High Performance Computing Fellowship during the Supercomputing 2011 Conference in recognition of his work on the project. The Supercomputing Conference paper can be accessed online at IEEExplore or ACM Digital Library or from the research group's home page at https://engineering.purdue.edu/dcsl

Purdue researchers did not work with the actual classified nuclear weapons software code, but instead used generic benchmarks, a set of programs designed to help evaluate the performance of parallel supercomputers.

Writer: Emil Venere, 765-494-4709, venere@purdue.edu

Sources: Saurabh Bagchi, 765-494-3362, sbagchi@purdue.edu Donald B. Johnston, senior editor, press officer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 925-423-4902, johnston19@llnl.gov

Related website:
Surabh Bagchi: http://www.ece.purdue.edu/~sbagchi

PHOTO CAPTION:

Employees at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory work on a high-performance computer. Purdue researchers have collaborated with the national laboratory, using a similar high-performance computer to improve simulations that show a nuclear weapon's performance in precise molecular detail. (Photo courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

A publication-quality photo is available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/2012/bagchi-tlcc.jpg

Abstract on the research in this release is available at: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2012/120605BagchiWeapons.html


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 5-Jun-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Emil Venere
venere@purdue.edu
765-494-4709
Purdue University

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - U.S. researchers are perfecting simulations that show a nuclear weapon's performance in precise molecular detail, tools that are becoming critical for national defense because international treaties forbid the detonation of nuclear test weapons.

The simulations must be operated on supercomputers containing thousands of processors, but doing so has posed reliability and accuracy problems, said Saurabh Bagchi, an associate professor in Purdue University's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Now researchers at Purdue and high-performance computing experts at the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have solved several problems hindering the use of the ultra-precise simulations. NNSA is the quasi-independent agency within the U.S. Department of Energy that oversees the nation's nuclear security activities.

The simulations, which are needed to more efficiently certify nuclear weapons, may require 100,000 machines, a level of complexity that is essential to accurately show molecular-scale reactions taking place over milliseconds, or thousandths of a second. The same types of simulations also could be used in areas such as climate modeling and studying the dynamic changes in a protein's shape.

Such highly complex jobs must be split into many processes that execute in parallel on separate machines in large computer clusters, Bagchi said.

"Due to natural faults in the execution environment there is a high likelihood that some processing element will have an error during the application's execution, resulting in corrupted memory or failed communication between machines," Bagchi said. "There are bottlenecks in terms of communication and computation."

These errors are compounded as long as the simulation continues to run before the glitch is detected and may cause simulations to stall or crash altogether.

"We are particularly concerned with errors that corrupt data silently, possibly generating incorrect results with no indication that the error has occurred," said Bronis R. de Supinski, co-leader of the ASC Application Development Environment Performance Team at Lawrence Livermore. "Errors that significantly reduce system performance are also a major concern since the systems on which the simulations run are very expensive."

Advanced Simulation and Computing is the computational arm of NNSA's Stockpile Stewardship Program, which ensures the safety, security and reliability of the nation's nuclear deterrent without underground testing.

New findings will be detailed in a paper to be presented during the Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks from June 25-28 in Boston. Recent research findings were detailed in two papers last year, one presented during the IEEE Supercomputing Conference and the other during the International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing.

The researchers have developed automated methods to detect a glitch soon after it occurs.

"You want the system to automatically pinpoint when and in what machine the error took place and also the part of the code that was involved," Bagchi said. "Then, a developer can come in, look at it and fix the problem."

One bottleneck arises from the fact that data are streaming to a central server.

"Streaming data to a central server works fine for a hundred machines, but it can't keep up when you are streaming data from a thousand machines," said Purdue doctoral student Ignacio Laguna, who worked with Lawrence Livermore computer scientists. "We've eliminated this central brain, so we no longer have that bottleneck."

Each machine in the supercomputer cluster contains several cores, or processors, and each core might run one "process" during simulations. The researchers created an automated method for "clustering," or grouping the large number of processes into a smaller number of "equivalence classes" with similar traits. Grouping the processes into equivalence classes makes it possible to quickly detect and pinpoint problems.

"The recent breakthrough was to be able to scale up the clustering so that it works with a large supercomputer," Bagchi said.

Lawrence Livermore computer scientist Todd Gamblin came up with the scalable clustering approach.

A lingering bottleneck in using the simulations is related to a procedure called checkpointing, or periodically storing data to prevent its loss in case a machine or application crashes. The information is saved in a file called a checkpoint and stored in a parallel system distant from the machines on which the application runs.

"The problem is that when you scale up to 10,000 machines, this parallel file system bogs down," Bagchi said. "It's about 10 times too much activity for the system to handle, and this mismatch will just become worse because we are continuing to create faster and faster computers."

Doctoral student Tanzima Zerin and Rudolf Eigenmann, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, along with Bagchi, led work to develop a method for compressing the checkpoints, similar to the compression of data for images.

"We're beginning to solve the checkpointing problem," Bagchi said. "It's not completely solved, but we are getting there."

The checkpointing bottleneck must be solved in order for researchers to create supercomputers capable of "exascale computing," or 1,000 quadrillion operations per second.

"It's the Holy Grail of supercomputing," Bagchi said.

###

The research has been funded by Lawrence Livermore and the National Science Foundation. The work also involves Lawrence Livermore scientists Greg Bronevetsky, Dong H. Ahn, Martin Schulz and IBM Austin researcher Mootaz Elnozahy.

Laguna was awarded a George Michael Memorial High Performance Computing Fellowship during the Supercomputing 2011 Conference in recognition of his work on the project. The Supercomputing Conference paper can be accessed online at IEEExplore or ACM Digital Library or from the research group's home page at https://engineering.purdue.edu/dcsl

Purdue researchers did not work with the actual classified nuclear weapons software code, but instead used generic benchmarks, a set of programs designed to help evaluate the performance of parallel supercomputers.

Writer: Emil Venere, 765-494-4709, venere@purdue.edu

Sources: Saurabh Bagchi, 765-494-3362, sbagchi@purdue.edu Donald B. Johnston, senior editor, press officer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 925-423-4902, johnston19@llnl.gov

Related website:
Surabh Bagchi: http://www.ece.purdue.edu/~sbagchi

PHOTO CAPTION:

Employees at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory work on a high-performance computer. Purdue researchers have collaborated with the national laboratory, using a similar high-performance computer to improve simulations that show a nuclear weapon's performance in precise molecular detail. (Photo courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

A publication-quality photo is available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/2012/bagchi-tlcc.jpg

Abstract on the research in this release is available at: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2012/120605BagchiWeapons.html


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


jason trawick jerry lewis tampa bay bucs cowboys cowboys slim dunkin slim dunkin

FAQ: Is there any stock directly related to GOLD? | Gold Investment ...

Q: Is there any stock directly related to GOLD?

I want to invest in GOLD through the stock market. I don?t know what are the stocks almost similar to gold.

Answer:

try ABX. you need to buy actual gold bullion though if you want it as a hedge against inflation, not stocks. the reason is that you?re protecting your wealth in gold because you expect the value of the dollar to go down. you also don?t want to lose your purchasing power.

posts you may find of interest:

  1. Question: im afraid the stock market will crash and we will have high inflation how do invest in gold? goldsenze
  2. Question: Invest in Gold or Stock Market?
  3. If there is high inflation in the us where would be the best area to invest. Real estate, gold, china stock ?
  4. Question: Which would you invest in and why for 30 years, Stock Market or physical Gold and Silver?
  5. FAQ: Why invest in the stock market anymore?

Some brokers readily offering free stock market tickers are T.D. Proceed to Exit 16 (New Rochelle). Previous winners Gold standard awards. 2010 Winners Gold Standard for Fund Management JP Morgan Asset Management Santander Asset Management BlackRock Neptune Investment Management F&C Investments. gold investment leer mines Convenient Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium Investment GoldMoney. Convenient Gold & Silver Investment. Japanese yen, Swiss francs, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, New Zealand. gold investment grade coins companies in malaysia

sean hannity gold investment jacksonville fl? We have as an in 2011 . Double Eagle gold fight recalls previous U.S. default in 1933. Family's lawsuit to reclaim the legendary coins from U.S. Treasury is stirring passion among the numismatic community The 10 rare Double Eagle gold coins at the heart. gold investment in public bank buying for review and gold investment ira Good monthly subscription silver coin investment programs. Good monthly subscription silver coin investment programs. However, IRA plan holders investing in silver. Is Silver a Better Investment than Gold. dave ramsey gold investment Gold? Bad Investment 3 Reasons why I don?t buy Bullion. The recent hype about bullion and its rise to $1000/ounce has investors wondering if buying gold as an investment is a good idea. Gold bugs argue that the price of. gold investment news 2010 why is a good 2010 and gold investment companies guide India's gold purchase Adornment and investment The Economist. India's gold purchase Adornment and investment India is eager for the IMF?s bullion Nov 5th 2009 Delhi from the print edition.

jet crash in virginia beach john tortorella nicki minaj beez in the trap video food network good friday f/a 18 f 18 crash virginia