Raising Kids that Craft (or not) | FIMBY

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I have crafty kids. It's just what we do.

This time of year especially. For weeks leading up to Brienne's birthday C?line sequestered herself away in our bedroom - one of the few rooms in our home with a door - to sew.

And now with the Christmas gift giving season upon us there will be a lot more secret sewing and crafting going on.

Recently, when we went to our friend's farm for the weekend the kids took a small bin of supplies and their favorite new craft book (mailed to us from the Netherlands by a FIMBY reader). Along the way, we bought felt at the fabric store, and the kids arrived ready to get on their crafting groove.

The kids were worried they wouldn't be able to speak to their French-speaking friends but we knew crafting could be the common language.

Ever since that visit C?line has been e-mailing back and forth with her friends en Fran?ais et en Anglais photos of the craft projects they are doing.

People have asked me how to encourage their own children to be creative and I have shared those ideas already here on my blog: have good supplies, be willing to make the time for it, be ok with the mess it will create (teaching your kids to clean up their mess will help with this).

(It's interesting to note that even though I don't do as many crafty things, especially sewing and paper memory keeping, as I used to when my children were younger, our kids continue to craft on their own initiative.)

I wrote a little book about how you can nurture creativity in your own life, and honestly, the same advice I give to moms' applies to kids and people in general. The advantage kids have is that when they start creating from the time they are little they don't have the same hang-ups adults do - fear of failure and perfectionism being too biggies.

Encouraging creativity is near and dear to my heart and it's something that comes up in most of my coaching and online teaching. I think it's one of my core life messages right now.

Based on your suggestions during the teleconference, I've even started doing my own art again - which is my life's passion, but I thought I had to put it on hold until my kids were older. Instead, now we're doing it together. Yes, our house is much more peaceful and I'm even getting my own "battery recharged".

As an educator, I believe creativity is an important part of learning. As a human being and a mother, I believe creativity is simply a part of joyful and wholehearted living (see Bren? Brown's book The Gifts of Imperfection for more on this).

I was asked the following question in a recent interview:

There is always a lot of discussion about the need for creativity in our lives, but not as much on the subject of why. What do you believe mothers gain, both as individuals and as parents, from fostering their own creative spirit.

Here's my answer:

Joy. When you tap into that creative activity (or activities) that both challenge you and help you express yourself you have access to a sweet spring of joy.

Not all moments are joy of course (writing ebooks is NOT all joy). But the main reason I both nurture creativity and tune into the creativity in my days, e.g. arranging pottery just so on the table and taking a picture to share on my blog, is for the pure joy of it. The joy of beauty. The joy of being alive and having a gift to share.

My children also get immense pleasure from their creativity. The actual making of things brings them joy. Showing and giving their art to family and friends. Playing with their handmade toys. They do it because it brings them joy.

I believe we were created for joy and pleasure. For relationship and beauty. Nurturing creativity puts us back in touch with this.

What if your kids don't craft or fill-in-the-blank?

There are so many things that can bring creativity, joy, pleasure and beauty into our lives.

Music is one of those things. Did you know that none of our children play a musical instrument?

Some people might think this is a shame but our children haven't expressed an interest to learn an instrument and we decided this wasn't going to be one of the requirements of their home education.

Did you also know that learning never stops and people can learn new things all the time?

What this means is that if our kids one day want to learn how to play a musical instrument they can! If they want to learn to speak Japanese they can! I don't have to teach them all these things when they are knee high, nor do I have to hire someone to do so.

I don't have to carry the burden of exposing our children to every good thing before they are eighteen, training their young minds to speak three languages and play two instruments. They have their whole lives.

It may be sacrilege to say this but you don't have to give your children the perfectly well balanced and well rounded upbringing. In fact, trying to do so would be impossible because none of us are perfect.

You can build your family life and home learning environment on your family values, your children's interests and natural talents, your interests and talents, and your overall goals for your children's education. Yes. You. Can.

When your children leave your home they will build on this foundation, carrying forward some of the values and teaching you instilled and then add entirely new pieces according to their own desires and life mission. And won't that be fun. For them and for us.

Damien and I have already talked about the twists and turns our family life will take when our children come of age and choose their own path. We're excited about it! We're going to learn so much.

I think the reason parents, especially homeschooling parents, feel we have to teach it all when our kids are young is because we must carry a belief deep-down (so deep it's hard to acknowledge) that learning stops when kids reach a certain age. Or if not learning, the ability to study something you're interested in and pursue your dreams.

That freedom stops when you are an adult and if you haven't learned how to sew or haven't wrapped your brain around Newton's Laws by the time your eighteen, well that's just too bad. It's all over. Because now real life starts, and don't you know "in real life you don't get to determine your own course of action, you have responsibilities". And if you want to learn Latin, well too bad. If your homeschool mom didn't teach it to you when you were twelve, it's all over for you.

Do you hear what I'm saying?

We create because it brings us joy. We make useful things, and some not so useful things, and we learn important skills. We make time for creativity in our homeschool curriculum because it is one of our family's core values.

Does this mean you have to craft with your kids? Not at all. Maybe you bake with them instead, or play musical instruments together, take dance classes, or spin wool from your own sheep. Maybe you speak Japanese in the morning and conjugate Latin verbs in the afternoon.

If this is what you love, what brings your family joy, and is inline with your family values - then do it! And do it with gusto. Do it well, do it often. Do it to the glory of your creator.

And teach your kids this with your example - we never stop learning. The door is always open. We never graduate, though we may pass some exams along the way to show certain proficiencies (trust me, I want that surgeon to have passed their medical school exams).

Our children's childhood, foundational as it may be, it not "it" in terms of their learning window of opportunity.

Release yourself from that burden. Release them.

And then go make something. Just for the fun of it.

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Source: http://fimby.tougas.net/raising-kids-that-craft-or-not

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In the word world, coding is the new black

By Virginia Heffernan

Great news: The New Yorker is hiring!

What are the requirements, you ask, to work at the greatest literary magazine in the English-speaking world? Do you need to have gone to Princeton and edited the august literary magazine The Nassau (b. 1848) before you were 22? Should you have edited Toni Morrison for a decade and done the definitive translation from the Turkish of Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk?s short stories?

No. Not even close.

You need to know computer code.

Or?rather?it would be ideal if you could code. And we know what that means. Your job at the literary magazine would not be fixing commas or assigning foreign stories. It would be running tech projects.

Nicholas Thompson, the editor of The New Yorker website, posted the tantalizing job listing on Friday. And just so you know, he didn?t whisper it at the Yale Club or the Round Table of the Algonquin Club. He didn?t try to see if someone?s clever ex-boyfriend from the Harvard Crimson and The New Republic wanted it first. Instead, Thompson posted the New Yorker staff opening to Twitter. And this is what he said: ?Hiring a digital project manager. Help us at @NewYorker run cool, ambitious tech projects. Ideally, code too. Ping me.?

If you?re making media in this world?prose, journalism, photography, graphics?you ought to know how to code. And you don?t need to type up a letter extolling the legacy of Janet Malcolm and E.B. White on buttery letterhead. Just ping @nxthompson.

Literary work?editorial work?is now computer work. We?ve known it, on some level, for years. But now it?s right there in the job descriptions. And Thompson?s might not have been such a striking tweet if it didn?t come two weeks after Wired magazine announced a new editor in chief. An eloquent TED talker from MIT with three best sellers about digital literacy and neuroplasticity?

No?not a writer at all. A creative director and project manager?a visual type, clean-shaven, in scarlet-and-pumpkin-colored textiles. Scott Dadich looks nothing like a hacker and he looks nothing like a writer. Because he?s not: He comes from, you got it, product design. His product was Wired?s extraordinary ?digital magazine??its iPad app. Three years ago, using Apple?s then-new platform, Dadich was able to put word and image in a digital disco and actually sell tickets. He became known in media circles as the savior of Cond? Nast?s floundering digital side.

Just to drive the savior point home, Evan Smith, Dadich?s old boss at Texas Monthly, told the New York Observer in 2010 that he considered Dadich ?some sort of combination of Jesus and Pele? in the realm of magazine design. When Dadich assumed the helm of Wired in mid-November, he said, ?I look forward to finding new opportunities to delight and surprise the Wired community, both with the stories we tell and in the ways in which we tell them.?

The stories we tell and how we tell them. The content is the form. And how we tell stories?distribute them, display them, monetize them even?is inextricable from the stories themselves.

What?s the lesson in this for the rest of us? Those of us who aim to make media?whether it?s music, magazines or movies? We must overcome our occupational allergy to product design and marketing and then, as soon as possible, we must learn computer code.

Whether we call it photography or prose or TV or graphics the media we now make is code. The Internet speaks in code; it thinks in code; it moves in code; it looks like code; its strength and value is code. When we write in English for the Internet, as I am now, we are making frosting rosettes and pretending we?re making cakes.

Writers and photographers must learn the new form, the same way that long-line poets of the past century had to learn short-line lyric poetry, because that?s what fit around the cartoons in The New Yorker. The same way Victorian scribblers working for daily papers had to cut their rambling sentimental stories and make room for ads. The same way, when television first appeared, playwrights had to drop their habit of blocking and drama and compose teleplays for three cameras.

We have to internalize what works and doesn?t work online, so that we don?t keep pitching articles that belonged in Time magazine in 2005, or albums that belonged on college radio in 1997. We do that, and then we expect technologists to cram them into new formats?apps or Internet radio or YouTube.

Writing code will be as much or more a part of making media as creating headlines and releasing singles. And, for the right people, who like being on the right side of history, it will be just as creative and much more fun.

Correction, 5:27 p.m. ET Nov. 30, 2012: A previous version of this column stated incorrectly that the New Yorker job was part of the magazine?s editorial staff. The new hire will work for the magazine?s digital staff.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/the-new-media-priesthood--the-word-people-now-work-for-the-code-people--211811636.html

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Building a platform part four | The Christian Century

We understand why we have to build a platform, the big ideas, and the small practices. Now we have our content developed (usually by writing a book), we?re ready to market.

Remember that authors are responsible for marketing. Whether you?re on a small press or a big press, if you want people to read your book, then you?ll have to sell it.?Lets be clear. I'm not a huge fan of capitalism, so "marketing" makes my skin crawl. I wish that someone else would do all of this for me. Any author would. But, I also felt called into ministry beyond the local church so I needed to get over my pride.?Unfortunately, no one is above marketing.?I did learn to reframe many steps into spiritual practices though.

So how do you do it? Here are a few suggestions. (Feel free to take these steps, personalize them, and use them for your next book proposal. The publisher is going to want a plan for how you'll market your book. These could help you with your brainstorming.)

Get a decent photo. I know, you?re not into glamor shots, but you simply have to have a good picture of your head. Don?t grab the fuzzy one someone tagged you in on Facebook. Don?t use the one you looked really good in twenty years ago. Don?t use the stock Olan Mills photo you had taken for the church directory. Get a professional photo taken. We may never look this good, but we need to try.

Develop a conference description. This is a paragraph that explains (1) what you?re going to say and (2) why it?s important.

Make posters, post cards, bookmarks and flyers. With the ease and relatively low expense of quality color copying, you can make this stuff yourself. Ask your publisher for a digital copy of your book cover, go to Zazzle, CafePress or Kinko?s, and create. I had three posters made?two to post and one I adhered to foam core so that I could use it as a display during book signings. You put them up at your church, a governing body office of your denomination, at local coffeehouses or bookstores.

Send postcards. This might get costly and digital postcards work as well, but if you can invest a bit, you can send postcards to resource centers and governing bodies. Try to send them to the people who will use them (not necessarily the head-honcho), which means you may send them to a Christian Educator rather than a pastor or to the Assistant to the Bishop rather than to the Bishop.

Use your connections. It?s always easier (and probably more effective) to send information to people who are connected to you in some way?no matter how thin the connection might be. That way, you can personalize your email or postcard. For example, I was working with campus ministry, so I sent emails to campus ministers.

There's power in the blog.?You might be trying to figure out how to the information into the hand of media giants, but don't forget your blogger friends. If you have a niche, often a good blog will be as effective as a big media splash, because you will be reaching a particular audience. Also, don't underestimate... sometimes the seminary student blogger can connect with more people than traditional media.?

Use your announcement as an opportunity for gratitude. If you hate marketing (as most authors do), make it into a spiritual exercise?an opportunity to thank God and thank others for the impact that they had on your life. For instance, if you grew up in a particular area, you can send a postcard to the committee members in the denominational body and thank them for the time and money that they put into supporting you. You can send news to your friends at your seminary, while remembering the ways they encouraged you to create. ?

Use your book signings as an opportunity for hospitality. I was a part of a writing group in D.C. Two of the members, MaryAnn McKibben Dana and Ruth Everhart, have published excellent books, and so they have thrown book parties for each other and hosted tables at Presbytery meetings for signings.

Use book signings to connect with old friends. If you went to seminary, and you have a lot of seminary buddies serving in a particular area, ask them if you can set up a book tour in their church basements, meet with clergy groups, and fill in a pulpit. Then take a week off of work and take a book tour to visit your friends. This will help you become comfortable with your material and give you feedback.

Make a video. If you?re an unknown entity in the speaking world, then people might be uncomfortable with inviting you to a conference. While your doing a church basement signings, you can have a video made to put up on YouTube. That way people can get an idea of your style and material.

Have helpful content. You may love to macram? as a spiritual practice, but that may not be what would help the most amount of people. But you could teach something about prayer, art and creativity.?If you?re a particular gender, ethnicity, age, or sexual orientation, you may want to hone your message in order say something to the whole church rather than only talking to a smaller group.?For instance, I didn?t write my first book to people under the age of forty, but I wrote it to the whole church to encourage intergenerational understanding, while focusing on younger generations.?

Ask, knock, seek. I hate doing this... but it?s important. If I knew that a particular group was having a conference, I wrote the conference organizer telling him or her that I was available, sending my course description and photo. I usually asked if I could set up a book signing, and they would invite me to teach a workshop. If you know someone who would put your name into the mix, that?s even better.?Once I did several workshops, then people began asking me to lead keynotes.

Host your own stuff. It?s a DYI sort of time. If you want to be on the radio, you can start your own podcast. If you want to speak at a conference, you can start one. It?s not always easy, but I helped to host God Complex Radio and the Unconference. And if I can do it, so can you.

There are a thousand other things that I could say about all of this, but hopefully this is enough to get you started. So go, create, and build your networks!

Source: http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2012-11/building-platform-part-four

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Looking For Effective E-mail Marketing Techniques ... - Businesses

Most people hear the words ?e-mail marketing? and instantly think of spam, closing their minds to the idea. It?s a tough job to create e-mail marketing campaigns that are engaging and get customers to buy, but it can be done. Read the following article to learn of methods you can use right away.

Every single person on your e-mail marketing list must request a spot on it, so never add anyone against their will. You will lose customers and possible even your website host if you engage in spam.

Utilize email previewers in order to take advantage of your preheader material. Preheaders are just the beginning line of text that comes from the body of the email, that is highlighted at the very top. Gmail and various other email providers use that line of text after the subject line, so it will grab the reader?s attention.

TIP! When you are following up with customers, you should try to send out a follow-up email with a message to remind them about your products. Invite them to shop at your store as well.

Be sure the emails you send are short and to the point. Your language should be as direct as possible. Your customers will appreciate that you value their time. It will also increase the chances of your readers reading all the way to the end of the email. Although your most important information should be at the top of the email, there are always important links and content near the end as well.

Only send emails to people that you know. Emailing random people is considered spam and could get you in trouble with your ISP or web host. They?ll wonder whether they are interesting in what you are selling or not. It?s likely that they?ll just delete your email, which simply wasted your precious time.

TIP! Use an interesting subject line so that people want to open the email right away. Your customers should be excited when they read the subject line, so they want to open the email.

Use few graphics when creating email promoting programs. Since some email programs block graphics, any email which contains a lot of graphics will not display correctly to recipients that have these types of email programs. Also, your emails may end up in the spam folder if they contain too many graphics.

Know your audience in order to have a marketing campaign that is successful. Think about what readers might want to see. Or, what they will like to read. Is there a way to turn these ideas into sales? Use these answers to chart a course for yourself.

Other articles you might like;

Source: http://elektrotehnickifakultet.com/looking-for-effective-e-mail-marketing-techniques-try-these-ideas.html

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Mystery Micrograph #02

By Psi Wavefunction?| November 29, 2012 |??

Share ?Email ?Print

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The previous Mystery Micrograph was of the surface of Blepharisma, a characteristically pink ciliate. You can see rows of the pigment granules responsible for the unusual colour. Not clearly visible throughout most of the image (only on the top side) are rows of cilia that are interspersed between the pigment granule rows (about every 5-7 rows are cilia). It?s a pretty cell to look at !

Now it?s time for another. To make this more ?fun?, I?ll leave out the scalebar for now. (Mwahaha!)

What is this, and whom is it a part of?

About the Author: Psi Wavefunction is a recent graduate of the University of British Columbia working as a researcher at Indiana University, Bloomington, and blogs about protists and evolution at The Ocelloid as well as at Skeptic Wonder. Follow on Twitter @Ocelloid.

More??

The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=0e2d05705fa6ed376f03a5439941890e

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Signed Brandon Inge Photo ? 8?10 ? Sports and Recreation

Signed Brandon Inge Photo - 8x10 Brandon Inge signed Detroit Tigers 8x10. Inge is the starting 3rd baseman for the Detroit Tigers. Was an All-star selection in 2009. In 2006 he broke the Detroit Tigers single season record for assists by a third baseman. Signed 8x10 photo comes with Famous Ink Sports Memorabilia Certificate of Authenticity and matching hologram.

More information

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Source: http://boyajianmarc.com/sports/2012/11/28/signed-brandon-inge-photo-8x10/

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Why Wuxi is not your ordinary Chinese city

Because city planners are hoping to turn Wuxi into a high tech hub, the air is breathable, the streets are broad, and many of the suburban districts look like a bucolic Google campus writ large.

By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / November 6, 2012

A man fishes outside the office of Wuxi's 5-30 incentive program which has brought dozens of foreign-educated Chinese scientists to the city. The city of 5 million people is unknown outside China, but it is seeking to escape its national image as one of the worst polluters in China.

Peter Ford

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Wuxi is one of those cities ? and there are dozens of them in China ? that almost nobody outside the country has ever heard of, but turn out to have nearly 5 million people living in them.

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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.

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What makes Wuxi even more striking is that the city fathers have pinned their hopes for the future on high tech. That means this is not the sort of town you imagine when you think, ?5 million people in a Chinese city.? The air is breathable (indeed the authorities are decommissioning coal-fired power plants near the center of the city), the streets are broad, and many of the suburban districts look like a bucolic Google campus writ large.

Things are not necessarily what they seem, however.

The city?s shiniest success story, until recently, was Suntech, the biggest manufacturer of solar panels in the world. But the company has been hit hard by a downturn in the industry, and saddled with debt has been laying off workers in the past few months.

Still, Wushi has other strings to its bow. While many other Chinese cities have made a name for themselves on the strength of a particular product (?Yiwu ? Sock Capital of the World?), Wuxi has broader appeal. For example it has focused on measuring instruments, which nowadays means digital measuring instruments, another high tech business with good export potential.?

Once, the worst polluter in China

But all this represents a bid by the city to escape its nationwide image as one of the worst polluters in China. For Wuxi built its prosperity on thousands of chemical factories along the shore of Lake Tai, the third largest freshwater lake in China.?

For years they have poured phosphates and other effluents into the lake, sucking out the oxygen and killing the fish and shrimp for which the lake was famous. In 2007 the waters of Lake Tai became so eutrophic they were covered with a thick layer of luminous green, foul smelling pond scum. More than 2 million people were deprived of cooking and drinking water for nearly a week. Each spring the scum re-forms, though rarely as badly as five years ago.

The local government has repeatedly promised to enforce stricter pollution controls, and repeatedly failed to do so, according to environmental nongovernmental organizations. In fact even as Lake Tai was fouling up in 2007, the best known local activist was being jailed for three years on what he insisted were trumped-up charges of fraud and blackmail. Since he got out of prison, reporting that he had been tortured, he has kept his mouth shut.?

(Read Peter Ford's piece on China's polluted lake)

It is not hard to see why. The authorities in Wuxi want to present the world with a clean, modern, international image that will attract traders and investors. And anyone who threatens to sully that image by drawing attention to inconvenient truths had better watch out.

( Interested in more? Read Peter Ford's piece on China's reverse Brain drain here.)

??The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting funded travel in China for this project. Multimedia and reporter blogs about the project can be found on the?Pulitzer Center website.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/GOoa4DDJa0c/Why-Wuxi-is-not-your-ordinary-Chinese-city

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Turkey lifts headscarf ban in religious schools

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey has lifted a ban on female students wearing headscarves in schools providing religious education, in a move drawing criticism from secularists who see it as fresh evidence of the government pushing an Islamic agenda.

Education has been one of the main battlegrounds between religious conservatives, who form the bedrock of support for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party, and secular opponents who accuse him of imposing Islamic values by stealth.

Those secularist fears were fuelled this year when Erdogan said his goal was to raise a "religious youth" and the AK Party, in power for the past decade, pushed through a reform of the education system which boosted the role of religious schools.

Under the latest regulation, announced on Tuesday and going into effect from the 2013-2014 academic year, pupils at regular schools will also be able to wear headscarves in Koran lessons.

Erdogan said the reform, which also ends a requirement for pupils to wear uniform, was taken in response to public demand.

"Let's allow everyone to dress their child as they wish, according to their means," he said at a news conference in Madrid on Tuesday.

"These are all steps taken as a result of a demand."

Rivalry between religious and secular elites is one of the major fault lines in Turkish public life.

Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party has tamed the influence of the military - the self-appointed guardians of secularism since the modern republic was founded in 1923 - over the past decade, but he denies an Islamist agenda.

Last month the military top brass attended a reception in the presidential palace alongside the headscarved wives of the president and prime minister, something that until recently would have been unthinkable.

DOGMA

The secularist newspaper Cumhuriyet said the latest reform was a step towards the Islamization of education.

"This will end with chadors," a headline in the paper said.

The latest reform followed a law approved in March allowing "imam hatip" schools specializing in religious education combined with a modern curriculum to take children from the age of 11 instead of 15.

The Egitim-Sen education sector union was critical of the move on school uniforms and the headscarf.

"The changes in the clothing regulations are important in enabling us to see the intense degree to which the education system is being made religious," the union said in a statement.

"Religious symbols which spread a religious lifestyle in schools and which will have a negative impact on the psychology of developing children should definitely not be used," it said.

But others voiced support for the reform.

Gurkan Avc?, head of the Democratic Educators' Union (DES), said it had removed a legacy of the September 12, 1980 military coup by changing the dress code.

"We will not be able to rescue the education system from the perverse consequences of the oppression, rituals, dogma and thinking of the 'cold war' period until teachers and pupils are liberated," he said.

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Greg Mahlich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/turkey-lifts-headscarf-ban-religious-schools-133348880.html

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Heyzap Expands Its Mobile Gaming Platform With Leaderboards, Where You Can Challenge Other Players

Heyzap continues to build out its social platform with the addition of player leaderboards that developers can add to their mobile games. Other companies have released their own leaderboard options, most notably OpenFeint ? except that the OpenFeint service is closing down on December 14, following its acquisition by GREE in April of last year. So there's a bit of a vacuum. Plus, co-founder Jude Gomila said Heyzap's version is more focused on friends' scores and more engagement.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/zv2pifl3qmM/

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Photos: See a roundup of the day's best images

If there's anything that Walmart didn't need on Black Friday weekend, it was a jaw-dropping headline about somebody dying in their parking lot after a run-in with a couple of employees. Unfortunately for the big box retailer, that's exactly what happened on early Sunday morning at a store in Lithonia, Georgia.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/photos/photos-of-the-day-1340925511-slideshow/

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Economist ?saw the future? in Valve hardware | Lazygamer .:: The ...

There have been rumours for roughly forever that Valve had started developing some sort of gaming hardware. since Gabe Newell?s public derision of Windows 8 and all those Steambox rumours, it?s not hard to imagine. From the sounds of it though, Valve?s hardware is more than you could imagine.

Yanis Varoufakis, an economist within the company wrote a long piece about his experiences within the company. that article?s been translated by by NeoGAF member Alexandros, and contains some pretty interesting information.

?You see, in addition to their game software, Valve has started developing hardware. Worried by Microsoft?s and Apple?s tendency to claim bigger and bigger cuts of their profits (in order to allow users access to Valve games through the computers that run their software),? he wrote.

?Valve has started experimenting with its own machines that give you the ability to run these games without a (Microsoft or Apple-controlled) computer.?

In the same article, he said he was under NDA so unable to say too much ? but he said a bunch of stuff anyway, revealing that Valve?s new hardware might be a little more ?way out? than anyone could expect..

?I?ve signed an NDA so I can?t reveal much more. I?ll just say that I really saw the future. (it?s not a small deal to see a virtual but highly realistic alien stand beside a real human in the same room with you, walk around the room and wink at you. And all that without a screen, a projector or even a computer near you?)?

What?the?hell? Virtual reality winking aliens? I?ll believe it when I see it, I guess.

Source: http://www.lazygamer.net/wtf-2/economist-saw-the-future-in-valve-hardware/

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Now It's Time to Get Really Serious About Vogue

We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: Mitt Romney, FINISH HIM!

Guys, guys, c'mon, settle down. It's time we have a serious talk about fashion. Seriously, fashion is so much more than pretty, over-priced clothes on the pages of a magazine ... it's about culture, and accents, and ladies who look mean talking with funny accents about how they're saving lives they're photographing people in clothes for the pages of Vogue. Well, it's something like that (we think): ?

RELATED: The Badass Bug Shotgun You Never Knew You Needed

RELATED: Let's Get Honest with 'The Avengers'

From fashion we now move on to zombies, which are so hot right now ... so hot that we're not even sure what's being sold to us, but we like it??

RELATED: 'Roseanne' Predicted Internet Addiction; A Weather Alert from Hell

RELATED: Even Batman Gets Tripped up by Apple Maps

So yeah, apparently people still use Chatroulette. Awww, remember Chatroulette? ?Well this guy is using it to read people's minds which is totally awesome. But there's still one burning question: exactly how many penises did this man have to see to perform his little trick? ?And was it worth it? Okay, fine, that's two questions ... but still!?

And finally, in the spirit of "Giving Tuesday," we're giving you this video montage of animals giving each other food:?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/now-time-really-serious-vogue-222950962.html

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Nook app packs new features on iOS and Android, makes UK debut

Barnes & Noble's Nook app has reached version 3.3 on iOS and Android, bringing a handful of new features in tow. Headlining the iOS update are screen magnification and support for Apple's VoiceOver feature, which can assist the blind and visually impaired by reading content aloud. The app has also been gussied up for the iPhone 5's additional screen real estate. Both Android and iOS flavors of the application pack language support for French, Italian, German, Spanish and British English -- and indeed they've now cozied up to the Nook's UK storefront following the arrival of the hardware in that land a few days back. If you're fixing to download the spruced up app, Barnes & Noble recommends syncing your library before making the leap.

Continue reading Nook app packs new features on iOS and Android, makes UK debut

Filed under: Software

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Via: Maccessibility, Daring Fireball

Source: iTunes, Google Play

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/27/nook-app-ios-android-update-uk/

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US defends 'enormous' climate efforts at UN talks

Organizers are seen on stage at the opening ceremony of the 18th United Nations climate change conference in Doha, Qatar, Monday, Nov. 26, 2012. U.N. talks on a new climate pact resumed Monday in oil and gas-rich Qatar, where negotiators from nearly 200 countries will discuss fighting global warming and helping poor nations adapt to it. The two-decade-old talks have not fulfilled their main purpose: reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet. (AP Photo/Osama Faisal)

Organizers are seen on stage at the opening ceremony of the 18th United Nations climate change conference in Doha, Qatar, Monday, Nov. 26, 2012. U.N. talks on a new climate pact resumed Monday in oil and gas-rich Qatar, where negotiators from nearly 200 countries will discuss fighting global warming and helping poor nations adapt to it. The two-decade-old talks have not fulfilled their main purpose: reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet. (AP Photo/Osama Faisal)

Organizers are seen on stage at the opening ceremony of the 18th United Nations climate change conference in Doha, Qatar, Monday, Nov. 26, 2012. U.N. talks on a new climate pact resumed Monday in oil and gas-rich Qatar, where negotiators from nearly 200 countries will discuss fighting global warming and helping poor nations adapt to it. The two-decade-old talks have not fulfilled their main purpose: reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet. (AP Photo/Osama Faisal)

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) attends the opening session of the United Nations Climate Change conference in Doha, Qatar, Monday, Nov. 26, 2012. U.N. talks on a new climate pact resumed Monday in oil and gas-rich Qatar, where negotiators from nearly 200 countries will discuss fighting global warming and helping poor nations adapt to it. The two-decade-old talks have not fulfilled their main purpose: reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet. (AP Photo/Osama Faisal)

DOHA, Qatar (AP) ? Anticipating an onslaught of criticism from poor nations, the United States claimed "enormous" strides in reducing greenhouse emissions at the opening of U.N. climate talks Monday, despite failing to join other industrialized nations in committing to binding cuts.

The pre-emptive U.S. approach underscores one of the major showdowns expected at the two-week conference as China pushes developed countries to take an even greater role in tackling global warming.

Speaking for a coalition of developed nations known as the G77, China's delegate, Su Wei, said rich nations should become party to an extended Kyoto Protocol ? an emissions deal for some industrialized countries that the Americans long ago rejected ? or at least make "comparable mitigation commitments."

The United States rejected Kyoto because it didn't impose any binding commitments on major developing countries such as India and China, which is now the world's No. 1 carbon emitter.

American delegate Jonathan Pershing offered no new sweeteners to the poor countries, only reiterating what the United States has done to tackle global warming: investing heavily in clean energy, doubling fuel efficiency standards and reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants. Pershing also said the United States would not increase its earlier commitment of cutting emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. It is half way to that target.

"I would suggest those who don't follow what the U.S. is doing may not be informed of the scale and extent of the effort, but it's enormous," Pershing said.

"It doesn't mean enough is being done. It's clear the global community, and that includes us, has to do more if we are going to succeed at avoiding the damages projected in a warming world," Pershing added. "It is not to say we haven't acted. We have and we have acted with enormous urgency and singular purpose."

The battles between rich and poor nations have often undermined talks in the past decade and stymied efforts to reach a deal to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C (3.6 F), compared to preindustrial times. Efforts taken in the absence of a deal to rein in emissions, reduce deforestation and promote clean technology are not getting the job done. A recent projection by the World Bank showed temperatures are expected to increase by up to 4 degrees C (7.2 F) by 2100.

Countries are hoping to build on the momentum of last year's talks in Durban, South Africa, where nearly 200 nations agreed to restart stalled negotiations with a deadline of 2015 to adopt a new treaty and extend Kyoto between five and eight years. The problem is that only the European Union and a handful of other nations ? which together account for less than 15 percent of global emissions ? are willing to commit to that.

Delegates in the Qatari capital of Doha are also hoping to raise billions of dollars to help developing countries adapt to a shifting climate.

"We owe it to our people, the global citizenry. We owe it to our children to give them a safer future than what they are currently facing," said South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who led last year's talks in Durban.

Environmentalists fear holding the talks in Qatar ? the world's biggest per capita emitter ? could slow progress. They argue that the Persian Gulf emirate has shown little interest in climate talks and has failed to reign in its lavish lifestyle and big-spending ways.

There was hope among activists that Qatar might use Monday's opening speech to set the tone of the conference. But Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, the president of the conference and a former Qatari oil minister, didn't offer any voluntary emission targets or climate funding for poor nations.

"Some countries, especially the one where we are sitting, have the potential to decrease their carbon emissions. They have the highest per capita emissions, so they can do a lot," said Wael Hmaidan, a Lebanese activist and director of the Climate Action Network.

"If nations that are poorer than Qatar, like India and Mexico, can make pledges to reduce their carbon emissions, then countries in the region, especially Qatar, should easily be able to do it. ... They still haven't proven they are serious about climate change."

Al-Attiyah defended Qatar's environmental record at a later news conference, insisting it was working to reduce emissions from gas flaring and its oil fields. Qatar is already doing plenty to help poor countries with financing, he said, adding that it was unfair to focus on per capita emissions.

"We should not concentrate on per capita. We should concentrate on the amount and quantity that each country produces individually," al-Attiyah said. "The quantity is the biggest challenge, not per capita."

The concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide has jumped 20 percent since 2000, according to a U.N. report released last week. The report also showed that there is a growing gap between what governments are doing to curb emissions and what needs to be done to protect the world from potentially dangerous levels of warming.

At the same time, many scientists say extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Sandy's onslaught on the U.S. East Coast, will become more frequent as the Earth warms, although it is impossible to attribute any individual event to climate change. The rash of violent weather in the U.S., including widespread droughts and a record number of wildfires this summer, has again put climate change on the radar.

"While none of these individual events are necessarily because of climate change, they are certainly consistent with what we anticipate will happen in a warming world," Pershing said. "The combination of these events is certainly changing minds of Americans and making clear to people at home the consequences of increased growth in emissions."

In Washington, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., urged the U.S. delegation at the talks to "heed the warnings from Sandy and other extreme weather supercharged by climate change."

"If the United States does not aggressively pursue sharp reductions in carbon pollution following the droughts, storms and other extreme weather events we have endured, the rest of the world will doubt our sincerity to address climate change," Markey said. "It's time to attack the carbon problem head on, and adapt to a climate already changed for the worse."

Many countries referenced Hurricane Sandy as a rallying cry for tough action to cap emissions, including a group of small island nations that said the monster storm may have jolted the world to recognize "that we are all in this together."

"When the tragedies occur far away from the media spotlight, they are too often ignored or forgotten," the island nations said in a statement.

___

AP reporter Karl Ritter contributed to this report.

__

Follow Michael Casey on https://twitter.com/mcasey1 and Karl Ritter on www.twitter.com/karl_ritter

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-11-26-Climate%20Talks/id-218b19d9d4cc4aa6b7d12f2096683d09

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Rolling into a Mobile Future - Online Gambling News

Mike ODonnell
November 26, 2012
No Comments

Mobile gambling is a big deal; it?s been that way for years. In 2006 we were being told that big things were about to happen in the mobile niche. So big in fact, that eventually mobile gambling wouldn?t be a niche in the iGaming industry, it would be the iGaming industry.

It?s now 2012 and despite all of the fuss regarding mobile innovation, it doesn?t really feel like we?ve progressed that far. Sure, the mobile gambling landscape now includes the impressive sights of HTML5, live casino games and linked multi-player and progressive networks, but there isn?t anything to blow the customer away.

In 2005 at the time of the inaugural Mobile Entertainment Awards, Matti Zinder, CEO of Spin3 commented: ?Juniper Research has projected the mobile gambling industry to be worth over $19 billion by 2009?.

Despite not quite being able to live up to those expectations, mobile gambling has continued to flourish. So far, growth has come on the back of one major benefit ? convenience. The fact that in most instances there are few alternatives to gambling on your phone or tablet has meant that the sector has grown exponentially in popularity.

In October 2012, Juniper Research predicted that the value of mobile gambling could reach $100 billion by 2017. That?s a pretty big increase but it?s one that?s believable considering some of the recent financial figures coming from the industry?s major players.

But if the mobile gambling industry is really going to meet these giant predictions, it?s going have to be more than convenient.

Irish Innovation

The most recent financial figures showing impressive mobile growth have come from Irish bookmaker Paddy Power. Released last week, their H2 2012 figures showed an impressive increase in the share of casino play from mobiles in the last five months ? up from 19% of revenue in June to 28% in October.

While many of their competitors have focused on building the best mobile sports product they possibly can, Paddy Power has shared the focus. As a result, they?ve already built a reputation for providing impressive mobile gaming solutions.?This is a reputation which is set to be further enforced following the release of Roller Casino ? an iPhone and iPad casino that can be found in Apple?s App Store.

Aside from being in the App Store, what sets this app apart from its contemporaries is that it actually makes use of the benefits of being a native app, something that many have talked about but few have put into action.

Ian MacLeod is Paddy Power?s senior marketing manager for special projects and has been involved with Roller Casino all through its relatively short 12 month journey from conception to launch. He explains that from the very beginning the focus was on creating ?not just another app?.

While this sentiment is always commendable, it?s a line we?ve heard all too often without the product being able to live up to the billing. But by playing Roller Casino you get a sense of relief that this won?t be the case this time. Slot bonus rounds require players to twist and turn their device, Roller Roulette allows the user to spin the reel and throw the ball in ? neither of which are ground-breaking ideas but both add an extra aspect of play that other mobile casinos do not.

MacLeod reveals that it?s these ideas that are driving the early success of Roller Casino.

He explains: ?The response to Roller Roulette has been encouraging and so we have a few concepts in progress around extending native functionality to give a new slant to other casino and slot games.?

Trusting in Technology

Another aspect where Paddy Power have been able to steal a march on their competitors isn?t with the product itself, it?s where the product can be found.

Being on display in Apple?s App Store puts Roller Casino in the eyes of many potential users they might not have had access to it otherwise. The benefits of being in the App Store are obvious but Apple?s stance on gambling hasn?t always been crystal clear and there have been problems.?MacLeod reveals: ?There have been many horror stories from gambling brands specifically about getting into the App Store but I am pleased to say it was a relatively smooth process for us. We made Apple aware of our intent to launch Roller early in the development process and complied with all their regulations throughout submission.

?In the majority, customers trust the App Store because of the app review process. It?s because of this process that casino fans can trust that it?s a fully safe and secure product.?

Trust has always been an issue in online gambling and being in the App Store is clearly a fine way of inspiring it. But was of the most potent ways of gaining instant trust is by brand recognition, an idea that for this project Paddy Power?s special project team has turned its back on.?MacLeod explains the thinking behind this move. He says: ?Roller and Paddy Power are complementary businesses and brands. We?d spotted the opportunity to create something new ? a casino app designed specifically for the iPad and iPhone. Intuitive, interactive immersive.

?We felt that as we?d designed something tailored and special, the experience deserved its own name to distinguish it from the other brands within Paddy Power PLC.?

So rather than being so very desperate to put their name alongside innovation, Paddy Power have taken the opposite approach. Their online competitors, who pride themselves so much on innovation, are unlikely to follow in a similar vein. But regarding the product itself, we can expect to many imitators appear.

If you have any further information related to this story that you would like to share with us privately please click here.

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Views and opinions expressed are those of the Author and do not necessarily reflect those of CalvinAyre.com

Source: http://calvinayre.com/2012/11/26/business/roller-casino-rolling-into-a-mobile-future/

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Egypt's stock market plummets after Morsi's decree

In this Friday, Nov. 23, 2012 photo released by the Egyptian Presidency, President Mohammed Morsi speaks to supporters outside the Presidential palace in Cairo. Egypt's official news agency says that the country's highest body of judges has called the president's recent decrees an "unprecedented assault on the independence of the judiciary and its rulings." In a statement carried on MENA Saturday, the Supreme Judicial Council says they regret the declarations President Mohammed Morsi issued Thursday. (AP Photo/Egyptian Presidency)

In this Friday, Nov. 23, 2012 photo released by the Egyptian Presidency, President Mohammed Morsi speaks to supporters outside the Presidential palace in Cairo. Egypt's official news agency says that the country's highest body of judges has called the president's recent decrees an "unprecedented assault on the independence of the judiciary and its rulings." In a statement carried on MENA Saturday, the Supreme Judicial Council says they regret the declarations President Mohammed Morsi issued Thursday. (AP Photo/Egyptian Presidency)

CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's benchmark stock index has plunged 9.5 percent halfway through the first trading session since the country's Islamist president issued decrees to assume near absolute powers.

Sunday's losses on the Egyptian Exchange's EGX30 index are among the biggest since the turbulent days and weeks after the ouster of authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak last year.

The fall follows the announcement Thursday by President Mohammed Morsi of a package of decrees that place him above any oversight, including judicial, and extend the same protection to two Islamist-dominated bodies: a panel drafting a new constitution and parliament's upper chamber.

Morsi says his measures are designed to "protect the revolution," but they triggered an uproar among non-Islamist political groups now vowing to press on with street protests to force him to back down.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-11-25-Egypt/id-c679aa60d2e04c4988e8a4dccc53920d

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A Few Secrets Of Attracting Customers Through Online Advertising ...

Internet has become the fastest means of communication among individuals across the world. It has also become the most effective means of connecting brand/business owners with their prospective customers. Online advertising also known as internet advertising or web advertising is one of the fast growing means of brand or business communication. This blog highlights a few secrets of attracting customers through online advertising.

Publishing unique articles or blogs about your business

It may surprise many brand or business owners, but it is true that publishing unique articles or blogs about your business helps in attractive various customers to your website thereby acquainting them about what your business offers. Ezine is one of the online publishing sites where you can publish your articles or blogs. A major advantage of publishing online articles or blogs is that it is usually free of cost and you can elaborately talk about your brand or business in detail. Customers who are directed to the publishing sites read the informative content. If the content sounds pretty interesting, they would be encouraged to adopt or buy the business or brand. Search Engine Marketing is one of the main tools of Internet Advertising. Writing articles and blogs and publishing them on various sites is also one of the main strategies of search engine marketing. Search engine optimizers make the most of this very strategy to promote their business among customers.

Making the most of Email marketing

Another secret of Web Advertising is to interact with customers through emails. Most of us do not forget to check our mail boxes. By presenting the brand message right through the inboxes of customers, advertisers can easily persuade them to go through the same. Email marketing is also a cost effective means of web advertising. Advertisers can sort out the mailing list of a particular email campaign and can target only those customers who will probably reach to the advertisement. A thorough demographic survey is however one of the assets of promoting a brand or business through email marketing.

Online advertising in any of its forms provides rich content and attractive graphic. Any visitor gets glued to the brand message because of such features. Most of the online ad campaigns convey interesting brand messages to customers which is why recall value is also pretty good through an online ad display. Banner advertising, virals, email and sms campaigns, PPC, pop ups etc. are some forms of online advertising adopted by brand owners to promote their products on web world.

Internet is a global platform for many products and services. Internet advertising is therefore the smartest means of brand communication. A brand or business advertised through online media can be accessed by customers from anywhere across the globe and also without any restraint of time factor. The message or information is available for 24 hours, 7 days a week, months and even for years. A website for a brand or business for example is one of the reliable means for anyone to access valuable information on the product or service. One can visit the website as many times as one prefers and also go through the information again and again. Repetitive readership is yet another advantage of creating an online presence of a brand or business.

About the Author:
MAD offers exclusive advertising solutions through Mobile and Internet media. Internet Advertising with MAD,Join the largest Web advertising Agency.MAD is a largest Banner advertising agency.

Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/A-Few-Secrets-Of-Attracting-Customers-Through-Online-Advertising/4274131

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Syrians want to know: 'Are you okay after Superstorm Sandy?'

With the sound of mortars in the background, Syrians in Aleppo express concern for our American correspondent and his storm-battered homeland.

By Tom A. Peter,?Correspondent / November 18, 2012

Syrian women work on their field in the village of Tarafat, Syria in October. Many Syrians have expressed concern for Americans hit by hurricane Sandy.

Manu Brabo/AP

Enlarge

I had just sat down to interview a commander of the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo and we were exchanging the normal pre-meeting pleasantries as some distant gunfire cracked in the background. After 20 months of conflict here, most artillery and gunfire goes unnoticed unless people are close enough to be directly affected.

Skip to next paragraph Tom A. Peter

Correspondent

Tom A. Peter is a journalist based in Kabul, Afghanistan where he covers news and features throughout the country. He has also reported for The Monitor from Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, and throughout the United States.

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With this as the backdrop for our interview, I was taken off guard when he asked if my friends and family were all right after Superstorm Sandy.

As a Californian living abroad, I was aware of Sandy. I had seen a few pictures of the aftermath, but I hadn?t even followed the Sandy news close enough to know that it had been classified as a ?superstorm,? as a opposed to a hurricane. Yet here was a man whose nation is being torn apart by a violent civil war that had claimed the lives of several friends and tens of thousands of Syrians, and he?d been following Sandy news.

I initially thought the comment was a one off, a lone hurricane watcher, perhaps he was a Syrian with an interest in meteorology. Yet it has happened again and again and everyone who asks knows that it was a superstorm, not a hurricane.

Working in the midst of a war like Syria, it?s easy to assume that for those involved the conflict, the situation is their entire life and there is little time for details, like a destructive storm thousands of miles away.But Superstorm Sandy is just one of the odd questions about America you might encounter in Syria as people try to take a mental break from the war.

One night, I found myself with a group of FSA fighters watching Jumanji on an Arabic movie station that gives Arabic subtitles. We got into a debate about whether the child actress in the film was a young Drew Barrymore or someone else. (It was a teenage Kirsten Dunst.)

A few days later, I sparked a heated discussion when I jokingly asked a Syrian activist wearing a glove on only one hand if it was a tribute to Michael Jackson. The person wearing the glove argued that while Michael?s music was impossible not to enjoy, it had been tainted by the scandals surrounding his personal life. His friend argued that art is not defined by the artist and Michael Jackson remains hands down one of the best singers ever, regardless of what happened off stage.

In all the conflicts I have ever covered, I find myself in these conversations.?Everyone tries to hold on to a normal world of news and pop culture to take them beyond their current hardships.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/WvLVWK1MHmY/Syrians-want-to-know-Are-you-okay-after-Superstorm-Sandy

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Pope elevates 6 cardinals to choose successor

Pope Benedict XVI makes his way through cardinals as he arrives inside St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican to preside over a consistory, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. Six new cardinals are joining the elite club of churchmen who will elect the next pope, bringing a more geographically diverse mix into the European-dominated College of Cardinals. The new cardinals are: Archbishop James Harvey, the American prefect of the papal household; Abuja, Nigeria Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan; Bogota, Colombia Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez; Manila, Philippines Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle; Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites in Lebanon, His Beatitude Bechara Boutros Rai; and the major Archbishop of the Trivandrum of the Siro-Malankaresi in India, His Beatitude Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Benedict XVI makes his way through cardinals as he arrives inside St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican to preside over a consistory, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. Six new cardinals are joining the elite club of churchmen who will elect the next pope, bringing a more geographically diverse mix into the European-dominated College of Cardinals. The new cardinals are: Archbishop James Harvey, the American prefect of the papal household; Abuja, Nigeria Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan; Bogota, Colombia Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez; Manila, Philippines Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle; Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites in Lebanon, His Beatitude Bechara Boutros Rai; and the major Archbishop of the Trivandrum of the Siro-Malankaresi in India, His Beatitude Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Benedict XVI makes his way through cardinals as he arrives inside St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican to preside over a consistory, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. Six new cardinals are joining the elite club of churchmen who will elect the next pope, bringing a more geographically diverse mix into the European-dominated College of Cardinals. The new cardinals are: Archbishop James Harvey, the American prefect of the papal household; Abuja, Nigeria Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan; Bogota, Colombia Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez; Manila, Philippines Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle; Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites in Lebanon, His Beatitude Bechara Boutros Rai; and the major Archbishop of the Trivandrum of the Siro-Malankaresi in India, His Beatitude Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Benedict XVI prays as he arrives inside St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican to preside over a consistory, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. Six new cardinals are joining the elite club of churchmen who will elect the next pope, bringing a more geographically diverse mix into the European-dominated College of Cardinals. The new cardinals are: Archbishop James Harvey, the American prefect of the papal household; Abuja, Nigeria Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan; Bogota, Colombia Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez; Manila, Philippines Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle; Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites in Lebanon, His Beatitude Bechara Boutros Rai; and the major Archbishop of the Trivandrum of the Siro-Malankaresi in India, His Beatitude Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Benedict XVI prays as he arrives inside St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican to preside over a consistory, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. Six new cardinals are joining the elite club of churchmen who will elect the next pope, bringing a more geographically diverse mix into the European-dominated College of Cardinals. The new cardinals are: Archbishop James Harvey, the American prefect of the papal household; Abuja, Nigeria Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan; Bogota, Colombia Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez; Manila, Philippines Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle; Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites in Lebanon, His Beatitude Bechara Boutros Rai; and the major Archbishop of the Trivandrum of the Siro-Malankaresi in India, His Beatitude Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Benedict XVI presides over a consistory in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. Six new cardinals are joining the elite club of churchmen who will elect the next pope, bringing a more geographically diverse mix into the European-dominated College of Cardinals. The new cardinals are: Archbishop James Harvey, the American prefect of the papal household; Abuja, Nigeria Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan; Bogota, Colombia Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez; Manila, Philippines Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle; Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites in Lebanon, His Beatitude Bechara Boutros Rai; and the major Archbishop of the Trivandrum of the Siro-Malankaresi in India, His Beatitude Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Pope Benedict XVI responded to criticism that the club of churchmen who will choose his successor is too Eurocentric, elevating six new cardinals from Colombia, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, the Philippines and the U.S. during a formal ceremony Saturday.

Benedict welcomed the prelates into the College of Cardinals during a short, hour-long ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica, telling them that their presence among the other red-robed prelates was a sign of the "unique, universal and all-inclusive identity" of the Catholic Church.

"In this consistory, I want to highlight in particular the fact that the church is the church of all peoples, and so she speaks in the various cultures of the different continents," he told the crowd.

The ceremony was both joyful and emotional: Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle, seen by many to be a rising star in the church, visibly choked up as he knelt before Benedict to receive his three-pointed red hat, or biretta, and gold ring. He wiped tears from his eyes as he returned to his place.

The archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria, Cardinal John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan, meanwhile, seemed to want to sit down and chat with each one of the dozens of cardinals that he greeted in the traditional exchange of peace that follows the formal elevation rite.

Benedict has said that with this "little consistory," he was essentially completing his last cardinal-making ceremony held in February, when he elevated 22 cardinals, the vast majority of them European archbishops and Vatican bureaucrats.

The College of Cardinals remains heavily European even with the new additions: Of the 120 cardinals under age 80 and thus eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope, more than half ? 62 ? are European.

Critics have complained that the "princes of the church" no longer represents the Catholic Church today, since Catholicism is growing in Asia and Africa but is in crisis in much of Europe.

The issue of numbers is significant since these are the men who will elect the next pope from within their ranks. Will the next pontiff hail from the southern hemisphere, where two-thirds of the world's Catholics live? Or will the papacy return to Italy, which has 28 voting-age cardinals, following a Polish and German pope?

While there's no rule that papal ballots are cast along geographic lines, the new cardinals do give an eventual conclave a slightly more multinational air: Latin America, which boasts half of the world's Catholics, now has 21 voting-age cardinals; North America, 14; Africa, 11; Asia, 11; and Oceana, one.

Among the six new cardinals is Archbishop James Harvey, the American prefect of the papal household. As prefect, Harvey was the direct superior of the pope's former butler, Paolo Gabriele, who is serving an 18 month prison sentence in a Vatican jail for stealing the pope's private papers and leaking them to a reporter in the greatest Vatican security breach in modern times.

The Vatican spokesman has denied Harvey, 63, from Milwaukee, is leaving because of the scandal. But on the day the pope announced Harvey would be made cardinal, he also said he would leave the Vatican to take up duties as the archpriest of one of the Vatican's four Roman basilicas. Such a face-saving promotion-removal is not an uncommon Vatican personnel move.

Harvey's departure has led to much speculation about who would replace him in the delicate job of organizing the pope's daily schedule and arranging audiences.

Aside from Harvey, Tagle, and Onaiyekan, the new cardinals are: Bogota, Colombia Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez; the Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites in Lebanon, His Beatitude Bechara Boutros Rai; and the major Archbishop of the Trivandrum of the Siro-Malankaresi in India, His Beatitude Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal.

Later Saturday after the ceremony, the cardinals received visitors in the frescoed rooms of the Apostolic Palace, which opens its doors to the general public for these special cardinal-making occasions.

Cardinals serve as the pope's closest advisers, but their main task is to elect a new pope. And with Benedict, 85, slowing down, that task is ever more present. For the second time, the consistory ceremony was greatly trimmed back, lasting just over an hour to spare the pope the fatigue of a lengthy ceremony.

He will, however, celebrate Mass on Sunday with his new cardinals.

While Benedict didn't mention the cardinals' primary task in his remarks, he did remind them that the scarlet of their cassock and hat that they wear symbolizes the blood that cardinals must be willing to shed to remain faithful to the church.

"From now on you will be even more closely and intimately linked to the See of Peter," he said.

The six new cardinals are all under age 80. Their nominations bring the number of voting-age cardinals to 120, 67 of whom were named by Benedict, all but ensuring that his successor will be chosen from a group of like-minded prelates.

Saturday's consistory marks the first time in decades that not a single European or Italian has been made a cardinal ? a statistic that has not gone unnoticed in Italy. Italy still has the lions' share of cardinals, though, with 28 voting-age "princes" of the church.

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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-11-24-EU-Vatican-New-Cardinals/id-95678c6515d542b1849dee3e35ef944c

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