Anything Under the Sun: America's 9 Best Entry-level Jobs

REBLOG=>SavySeph

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Job hunters need to be mindful that there is always compromise between job security, career development or high pay in the job process. High paying jobs are usually at high risk for being automated or offers little growth potential over the next few years. Based on a study from WalletHub, the top 9 entry-level jobs scores well in all the three categories mentioned. CBS News had compiled their findings on 28 April 2015 to guide college students and high school seniors to consider which field to major in.

Job	Starting Pay	Median Pay	Qualification	Growth
9. Financial analyst	$51,848	$76,950	bachelor's degree in business, finance or related	-
8. Information security analyst	$55,310	$86,170	-	37%
7. Web designer	$53,041	$62,500	know programming and graphic design	20%
6. Software engineers	$62,522	$90,374	bachelor's degree in computer science	-
5. Environmental engineer	$57,266	$86,340	bachelor's degree in environmental engineering or related	15%
4 Attorney	$83,907	$133,470	law degree and pass a state's written bar exam	10%
3 Network Engineer	$61,744	$91,982	degrees in computer science or related	12%
2. Web applications designer	$54,586	$59,000	know developer languages such as PHP and HTML	12%
1. Training specialist	$47,621	$55,930	college degree and strong communication skills	15%

The starting annual salary and the median pay for all workers in the field are based on the latest information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The salary for software engineers were based on information on the employment site Glassdoor.com. Figures for network engineer and web applications designer were derived from the employment site Payscale.com. The job growth rate is projected from 2012 to 2022 by the BLS. A growth of 10 percent or higher is deemed as normal. A growth rate of 15 percent and above is consider rapid growth.

The information security analyst had the greatest potential growth of 37 percent. Their job entails a simple maintenance routine but once the system gets hacked, they will have to work round the clock to restore the system, pronto. I believe being a hacker is the best qualification for this job but there is no such thing as a certified hacker at the present moment. This may be the reason WalletHub did not list down the qualification for this job. The reason growth is not projected for financial analyst is unclear.

Growth rate for software engineers were not projected as this profession is a bit unusual. While the jobs in this field are plentiful, careers in the field may be short-lived. According to Bloomberg News, most software developers have left the profession by the time they're 40. The industry tend to favor younger engineers because of the impression that they will be more up-to-date with the latest trends.

Although the training specialist had a low income, it top because of job openings and growth potential. About one-quarter of Web designers were self-employed in 2012 but it is forecasted that employment in this field will grow by 20 percent. I believe the forecaster is expecting these self-employed individuals would grow and had the need for expansion.

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My Comments

Attorney pays well. It should help the millennials out of their financial dire straits (see my previous blog). The problem is the higher pay range are for those who secured the top spots. It is a dog eat dog world for law firms bidding for the high paying job in the market.

Seeking Enlightenment: Economic Crisis due to Childless Millennials

REBLOG=>Sophia Logica

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A rapidly aging society and a younger generation that is not willing to have kids is the formula for an economic Armageddon, CBS News 28 April 2015. Japan confronts this fate and their population is predicted to drop by one-third through 2060. Childbirth trend among Millennials is raising questions on the possibility America heading the same direction. According to a report from the Urban Institute, birth rate among American women in their 20s fell 15 percent in 2012 from 2007. This marked an abrupt change from three decades of relatively stable birthrates. The birth rate of women in the 20s is 948 births per 1,000 women.

Nan Marie Astone, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and one of the paper's authors, believes the recession prompted women in their 20s to opt against having children. The paper cited previous economic crises, such as the Depression in the 1930s, also coincided with low points for fertility in 20-somethings. The median age for a women's first birth is now 26 years old, compared with 21.4 years old in 1970, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Would millennial women start families once they feel more stable economically, as previous generations have done after periods of financial insecurity?

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My Comments

Millennials are endies. To qualify that statement I had to back track to last year’s blogs. Sophia’s blogged mentioned that the millennials were burdened with career instability, and high levels of student debt. Under those financial conditions they are not in the home owners’ market. At about the same time, I blog about ENDIes in London. An ENDI (Employed No Disposable Income) belonged to the millennials’ age group.

Strapped for money is the situation of the millennials or endies. Graduation would take a millennial to the mid-twenties. Before they could learn to perform their job effective, they would had been in the late-twenties. The aspiration of a graduate is to quickly pay off their student debt and move along to build their nest. Until they can be good at their jobs, career stability is nowhere to be found. “Get married, raise a family,” the norms of society echoed in their minds. They brushed it aside because they simply have other priorities.

Anything Under the Sun: John Key New Zealand Premier Hair Pulling Fetish

REBLOG=>SavySeph

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New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key ask for forgiveness from a waitress at his local cafe for repeatedly tugging on her ponytail. The waitress named Rosie criticized his behavior in a blog post. It began during last year's election season and carried on for a number of months and on several occasions. Eventually the cafe's manager made it clear to Key that his actions were uninvited, the CNN reported on 22 April 2015.

Key, told reporters that his behavior was in the context of "a bit of banter," but said that he had apologized when it was clear she was offended. "But if you look at it now, no. When I realized she took offense by that I just sort of immediately went back, gave her some wine, apologized and said I was terribly sorry," the leader added. Rosie’s blog wrote that she didn't directly make her objections clear verbally, her body language "screamed 'I don't like that.'" The blog also stated that the prime minister offered two bottles of his own JK 2012 Pinot Noir wine by way of apology.

Sue McCabe, chief executive of the National Council of Women of New Zealand, accepted that Key was joking and did not mean to offend, but criticized the premier in an open letter of the organization. "The fact that our Prime Minister has joined the list of people outed for sexism highlights how much sexism is a part of our culture. And it starts at the top. Up and down this country, day after day, people are touched without giving their consent. At one end of the scale, it is an unwelcome pull on a ponytail. At the other end, it's our shocking levels of violence against women."

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My Comments

Sexual harassment gets away with an apology because the offender is the prime minister of New Zealand.

Anything Under the Sun: Google’s Mobile Friendly Test

REBLOG=>SavySeph

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My Casino Gambling Tip is now a mobile friendly website. My next task would be to get XingCai Gambling Tales to be mobile friendly too. I had outlined the step involved to get it mobile friendly in my previous blog and will use the same procedure. The wave of mobile suffers had got Google to cater to them or lose page ranking. This would be a concern for webmasters until they fix the problem.

While Google had written to webmasters with some links to make a mobile friendly website, they provided no link to test the mobile-friendliness of the site. Using W3C tidy up could provide some additional help on the meta tags. After much surfing, I found certification from Google themselves. Visit this link and type in your website’s URL.

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My Comments

Kudos to google. They ask webmasters to change and come up with a performance measure.

On Empty Thoughts: FBI Ruse Violated Paul Phua Rights

REBLOG=>Guerrilla Gamblers

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"Law enforcement can't break something in your house and pose as repair people to get inside," David Chesnoff, defence attorney for Paul Phua Wei-seng's, said. Paul Phua was charged with illegally accepting bets on the World Cup Soccer. US District Judge Andrew Gordon said in a bluntly worded decision that "the government violated the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights" against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Gordon called the evidence collected last July from Paul Phua's high-security luxury villa at Caesars Palace "fruits of an unconstitutional search", and said it cannot be used if the government pressed forward with charges that Phua operated an illegal gambling business and transmitted wagering information. Chesnoff hailed the decision as a victory for freedom. The two charges each carry a penalty of up to seven years in prison.

Prosecutors said some US$13 million in bets had been wagered before the FBI, working with Nevada gambling regulators, raided three Caesars Palace villas where Phua, his son and several other people were staying. Agents seized computers, cellphones and cash. Phua, 50, was the last remaining defendant among eight people arrested in the case, including his son Darren Wai Kit Phua, 23. Darren Phua was the last of six defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges, forfeit large amounts of money and return to Asia under plea deals the Las Veags Sun reported on 17 April 2015.

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My Comments

This is a good lesson on playing by the rules or all efforts would have gone down the drain.

Anything Under the Sun: Think Small to Design Websites for Mobile

REBLOG=>SavySeph

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Deciding on picture size is my next task in getting my website to be mobile friendly. In my previous blog on this topic, I figured that reducing the size of navigation menu is a good place to start to design a website to fit mobile device. I used single word for title and double word for subtitle. This seems to work out some of the problem. I figure the next step would be to have a universal width for all pictures. Ideally the picture could be stretch or shrunk to fit across the multiple platforms without losing too much picture quality.

Given the size of webpages, stretching and shrinking a picture is not the real problem. Pictures who are magnify twice or reduce by half are never too shabby when it comes to quality. This should be enough do the trick to fit an image into a website. The bigger concern is manipulated images sometimes take a longer time to load. The 4G phones are great for speed but as the best for the current technology they are a minority user. Most people would have the lower 3G speed on their phones. The loyalist to old phone will still surf with 2G and there are still a number of these mobile surfers out there. These people will favor sites who were sufficiently fast for their devices.

I went window shopping for mobile phones using google and decided that I have 3 categories to please. Based on their minimum screen width, I simply name them mini (80 pixels), midi (321 pixels) and maxi (481). After throwing some math around, I decided that all images on my website will be 240 pixels wide. Shrinking 240 to 80 (the lower end of the mini) is one-third reduction. This will likely cause some problem in loading speed. For the higher end of the mini (320 pixels), the image is stretch less than 50% which is acceptable. For the 481 pixels width, there is no stretching of image. The image with text displayed by the side will be at least half of the screen.

I now had all my pictures resize to 240 pixels width. Going through the pictures one by one had been a tedious exercise. Some of my image were name by their sizes. A cat image, for example, had been named cat330x250. The 330 represent the width and 250 is for the height. I still maintain the old name of the image. It would sound silly but once something is publish it is not advisable to make changes. Keeping the old name will ensure that people who link my pictures will not get a blank image. I actually have three manga pages outstanding. These three cartoons are at least 600 pixels wide. The task will be to break them down to smaller pictures who are 240 pixels wide. The main picture that will adopt the old name while new pictures will carry the old name with a sequential numbering suffix.

Going through image by image can also make you see things from a different angle. I redraw two images. I hope the people who had link the old pictures prefer the new pictures. I had also came up with 5 new pictures. These are for the pages which previously did not have a picture. The remaining task, unless new development crops up, I will drop the navigation menu for the mini users.

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My Comments

Bravo, you have taken so much effort to do this.

3-Year-Old Shoots, Kills Baby Brother

A one-year-old boy was shot dead by his three-year-old brother on 12 April 2015. Chief Calvin Williams said, "It's a sad day for Cleveland. This fascination that we have with handguns, not just in this city but in this country, has to stop. This is a senseless loss of life." Investigation had not determined where the shooting came from and how it was left within reach of a child. Braylon Robinson was taken to a nearby hospital and later pronounced dead, the CBS News reported.

On Empty Thoughts: Beaten-up Child Molester Gets 25 Years

REBLOG>On Empty Thoughts: Beaten-up Child Molester Gets 25 Years

Guerrilla Gamblers' Original Blog

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Raymond Frolander was has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after he pleaded no contest to lewd and lascivious molestation of an eleven-year-old child at an apartment in Daytona Beach, Florida. The sentence was pronounce on the 18-year-old on 3 April 2015 by a Volusia County judge. Frolander was found unconscious at the time of the arrest resulting from being beaten up by the victim’s father.

The incident took place on 19 July 2014. The victim's father told police that he attacked Frolander immediately when he walked in and found Frolander abusing his son. The victim's father called 911 when Frolander was unconscious. Frolander was motionless on the living room floor when the officers arrive. He had several knots on his face from bruising and was bleeding from the mouth. The 911 dispatcher asked if any weapons were involved and the victim's father said "my foot and my fist."

The 11-year-old later told child protective investigators that Frolander has molested him since he was 8 years old. The father has not been charged with any crime. Daytona Beach Police Chief Mike Chitwood said, "Dad was acting like a dad. I don't see anything we should charge the dad with. "You have an 18-year-old who has clearly picked his target, groomed his target and had sex with the victim multiple times." Frolander was charged with sexual battery on a child under 12, CBS News reported.

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My Comments

He may be beaten up read good but it was not brutal. Although his face is slightly disfigure, there were no fractures to his skull. The police were right not to charge the dad of any crime.

Anything Under the Sun: My Mobile-friendly Website

REBLOG>Anything Under the Sun: My Mobile-friendly Website

ss's Original Blog

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Google wrote me a warning letter about 2 weeks ago asking me to make my website more mobile friendly. Google said the increase demand in mobile phone browsing had been tremendous. Well, it is not a warning for doing something that pissed google off. It was actually a concerned notification. Google anticipated that the wave of mobile surfers will get stronger with the passage of time and webmasters were advised to cater to their needs. If I were to take it as a friendly notice I don’t need to do anything. I choose to take it as a stern warning so that I will have to adapt before I get left out.

Heck! I don't have the slightest clue where to start. I hope I could just wave a magic wand with some code and bingo! Fortunately, google is a good place to start looking for those hocus pocus code. Knowing the right keyword to punch into google would help. Next comes the endless list of reading materials on the technology to make your website flexible to multiple devices. Climbing the steep learning curve was no fun. It’s just nothing but reading without having enough knowledge to start doing something.

I concluded that it was about starting small. Fit the small screen then the bigger ones and eventually the desktop. This calls for a re-engineering as my website was catered for desktop size. I have started with reducing the size of my menu. I used single word titles for the menu items to shorten it for mobile size. Sub menu items could use double or triple word titles. Whoopee, I managed nail down some of the problem. For screen smaller than 320 pixels wide, I may have to do away with the menu. I will get around to this but the next step would be resizing all my images. I am going to do a lot of experimenting to find a good size that could be stretch or shrunk to fit across the platform without losing too much picture quality.

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My Comments

It is hard to imagine that people still use 80 pixels width to surf. They must be using very durable devices.

Solar-powered Aircraft Lands in China

Setting off on 9 March from Abu Dhabi to circumnavigate the world, the Solar Impulse 2 (Si2) became the first ever single-seater solar aircraft to enter China in Chongqing airport early on Tuesday (31 March 2015) morning local time (1735 UTC). She made four stops before arriving in China. The distance of 1,468 kilometers from Muscat, Oman to Ahmedabad, India was the longest distance covered by a solar-powered flight. Another record was set for solar-powered flight with a speed of 117 knots (216 kilometers per hour) reached during the stretch from Varanasi, India to Mandalay, Myanmar.

With a width of about 72 meters, the Si2 is wider than a Boeing 747 jet. She only weighs 2.3 tons which slightly heavier than a sedan. She employed more than 17,000 solar cells on her wings to power up four electric motors. Solar Impulse 2 is expected to complete the 35,000 km journey within five months [see my previous blog]. It had charted an average speed is 70 kilometers per hour. The Si2 was created by Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg of Switzerland will take turns to pilot the plane in the round the world trip.

The flight from Myanmar to Chongqing took 20-and-a-half hours. Flying above the mountainous Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan meant a steep climb at the beginning of the journey. Flying at high altitude, Piccard had to wear an oxygen mask in the 3.8 square-meter, unpressurized cockpit as temperatures dropped to minus 20 degrees celsius on the 1,375-kilometer (854-mile) route. Strong low-level winds greeted the flight as it arrived in Chongqing. It flies next to the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing before heading to Hawaii. It is due back in Abu Dhabi in August after its journey of 12 stages, the Deutshe Welle reported.

Anything Under the Sun: Gambling Requires Skills

REBLOG>Anything Under the Sun: Gambling Requires Skills

SavySeph's Original Blog

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I tried to convince my readers that gambling requires skill. There are tons of researches that would conclude otherwise. In a recent (2012) study Professor Gerhard Meyer, of the University of Bremen's Institute of Psychology and Cognition Research, suggested that poker was chiefly a game of chance. There were 300 participants in Prof Meyer's research. They played 60 hands poker each, on tables of six. The players were classified as 'expert' and 'average' players based on their ability to make money from good, bad and average hands. The research found that 'expert' players lost less money on bad hands, but did no better than 'average' players on mediocre hands - and made slightly less on good ones. Prof Meyer concluded that 'poker players overestimate the skill factor in their play'.

A research studied 456 million hands of poker from a year's worth of online game. In just a few hands the better-performing players fared better half the time. Their success rate gradually increased until they played 1,471 hands. Given that frequency, they could do better at least 75 per cent of the time. Dr Dennie van Dolder, of the University of Nottingham's School of Economics, said the study showed 'skilled players will consistently outperform less skilled players if enough hands...are played.'

Researchers from the University of Nottingham, working with colleagues from Erasmus University Rotterdam and VU University Amsterdam, also noted that players who finished in the top one per cent in the first half of the year were 12 times more likely than others to repeat the feat in the second half. Writer and TV presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell, one of Britain's top professional players, has won more than £1.5m - including £400,000 at a single event. Dr van Dolder said, "It's up to legislators to decide whether the role of chance diminishes fast enough for poker to be considered a game of skill," the Daily Mail reported on 25 March 2015.

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My Comments

The taxman will surely be at the door of poker players when more researches concurs with this finding.

Middle-class Kids' Poor Academics

According to the Department of Education 40% of middle-class college entrants who were high school graduates in 2004 had obtained bachelor's degrees by 2012. This implies that the ability to maintain status quo or achieve upward social mobility on the economic ladder is endangered. A college degree used to be a stepping stone to the middle class. Today had become a prerequisite to sustain the status.

The reasons for the failure were not known as researchers focus were on lower-income children getting through college. The Department of Education tracks high school graduates for the year 2004 whose families earned between $46,000 and $99,000 for the first case periodically check on them until 2012. In the second study they kept track of freshmen in 2003 from families with incomes between $60,000 and $92,000 and check on them until 2009. Both stats found that fewer than half leaving with a bachelor's degree. The first case recorded 40 percent graduated while the second chalked 45 percent.

Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce said bachelor degree holders earn $2.3 million over their lifetime, on average. That's $600,000 more than someone with an associate degree and $800,000 more than those who left college with no diploma. "It's a lot harder to maintain your middle class status without a degree," Carnevale told CNN Money on 25 March 2015.

Jack of All Trades: China: Mummified Monk Statue Stolen

REBLOG> Jack of All Trades: China: Mummified Monk Statue Stolen:


Jack Omnitrade's Original Blog

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China claims that the Buddha statue, exhibited at the Hungarian Natural History Museum, was stolen from Fujian Province. This statue was a phenomenon because a 1,000-year-old mummified monk was found encased in it. The China Daily reported on 24 March 2015 that China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage had taken the necessary steps to retrieve the statue.

The mummified monk statue is now in the possession of a Dutch collector. The mummified monk statue made its debut when it first showcased at Drents Museum in the Netherlands last year. The mummy was discovered when a collector brought it to an expert for restoration. Subsequently a team of researchers and scientists was brought in to do a comprehensive study. CT scan show the mummy sitting on a bundle of cloth covered in Chinese inscriptions, revealing its identity as a Buddhist monk called Liuquan, the CNN reported on 23 March 2015.

China's Claim

According to the documents, the monk was a local man who gained a reputation for curing diseases and promoting Buddhist principles. He passed away at the age of 37. Pictures provided by the Da Tian Museum, Fujian and those taken during the exhibition were found to have identical facial expressions as well as scratches on the stomach and the hand. The shape, height and weight of the Dutch collector's statue matches the measurements provided by the Da Tian Museum. The same Chinese character is also carved on the cushion that the Buddha sits on. "There are five proofs of evidence that show that the Buddha statue is the relic stolen in 1995 from a Chinese ancestral temple in Fujian province's Yangchun village," said a spokesman of the Da Tian Museum in Fujian.

The Dutch Collector's Claim

On March 23, the Dutch collector issued a statement saying the statue was acquired in 1994 from a sincere Chinese friend in the art circles. The statue was shipped to his residence in Amsterdam from a workshop in Hong Kong in 1995. Coincidentally, a Buddha relic was reported stolen in China in 1995. The Chinese and Dutch governments will seek a diplomatic solution to address the issue.

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My Comments

CNN claims that, "It's unclear exactly when or how the statue made its way to a market in the Netherlands where a private buyer bought it in 1996." I think tracking how the statue left China would be as exciting. Looking for trails on how it get to Hong Kong from China should be the starting points for the Chinese cops. Back in 1996, they had no clue where to start when it was reported missing. Now they should have information on who the Dutch collector brought it from.

Anything Under the Sun: Twitter Bans Revenge Porn

REBLOG> Anything Under the Sun: Twitter Bans Revenge Porn:

SavySeph's Original Blog

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Revenge porn is spreading intimate photos or videos without the subject's consent. In a memo to employees last month, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said he was embarrassed about the company's reputation and took "personal responsibility" for the company's failure to address the problem. Costolo wrote, "We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years," CNNMoney reported on 12 March 2015.

The CDA 230

Section 230 Communications Decency Act (CDA 230) is perhaps the most influential law to protect the kind of innovation that has allowed the Internet to flourish since 1996. It states that, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." This gives immunity to online intermediaries that host or republish speech that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do, [Electronic Frontier Foundation]. CDA 230 makes America a safe haven for websites that want to provide a platform for controversial or political speech and a legal environment favorable to free expression. Propagating pornographic materials was not on the intention of the CDA 230. Costolo did the right thing by admitting shame.

Yishan Wong and Reddit

Revenge was not the motive behind last year's major hack of celebrity photos. These images were heavily distributed on Reddit, and the company was criticized for being slow to remove them. Yishan Wong, Reddit's CEO said there was no plan to change policy to keep Reddit's anything goes image. "We will try not to interfere - not because we don't care, but because we care that you make your choices between right and wrong," Wong said in a blog post. Later Wong resigned abruptly and Ellen Pao takes over as interim CEO CNNMoney 25 Feb 2015. Neither vengeance nor pornography are acceptable norms of society. Costolo must have taken Wong's sudden resignation as a warning.

Law against Revenge Porn

Revenge porn is a crime in Israel that faces a maximum sentence of 5 years imprisonment but the punishment had not deter the crime. In October 2013 California had passed law to make revenge pornography illegal but it was criticized for not being comprehensive. The law only prosecute if the distributor is the photographer. Posting your ex-girlfriend's selfie does not count. According to a survey by the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), up to 80% of revenge porn victims had taken the photos of themselves. The CCRI is a group founded by revenge porn victims and activists to push for legal reform in the United States. [CNN, October 2013].

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My Comments

On each of every women issue there will always be a view that will put the blame on women.

Solar-powered Plane Takes First Trip Round-the-world

First Solar Power Plane Circumnavigate the World

A solar-powered aircraft took off successfully from Abu Dhabi on 9 March 2015 in its first attempt to fly around the world without any conventional fossil fuel. Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg of Switzerland will take turns to pilot the plane dubbed Solar Impulse 2 (Si2). Piccard and Borschberg, co-inventors of the Si2, will visit India, China and America before flying back to Abu Dhabi through South Europe or North Africa. The activities of the Si2 will be monitored by her control center at Monte Carlo of Monaco the Xinghua reported. Conor Lennon, communications manager of the Si2 project, told Xinhua that the control center is in charge of "meteorological data monitoring, air traffic control, mission control and flight strategy control", adding that many promotional activities would take place during the aircraft's stopover in Nanjing, China.

Plane's Specifications

With a width of about 72 meters, the Si2 is wider than a Boeing 747 jet. She only weighs 2.3 tons which slightly heavier than a sedan. She employ more than 17,000 solar cells on her wings to power up four electric motors. Solar Impulse 2 is expected to complete the 35,000 km journey within five months.

Attempts to Fly

This first attempt to fly using power from the sun reminds me of the first successful attempt to fly by the Wright brothers. While Orville and Wilbur are always depicted as a two-man team chasing a crazy dream, Piccard and Borschberg had a great team to support them. As long as their communication do not fail, the Swiss would be rescued if there is any failure. Nonetheless, it is still a courageous project that these two Swiss are taking. Their success would make air travel cheaper in future. It may pave the way for Gene Roddenberry's USS Enterprise. Leonard Nimoy should had seen this before departing.