Do you dream of shredding away like a righteous axe-master, but fear you’ve missed your window of opportunity to actually, you know, learn how to play? Loog, a little electric guitar designed for newbies and kids, minimizes the intimidation factor by giving you just three strings to work with.
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/wYxiMOZw0a0/for-those-about-to-rock-a-cool-3-string-guitar-you-bui-1455429715Celebrating the holiday with her little ones, Alessandra Ambrosio took her kids to a fall fair in Santa Monica, California on Saturday (October 26).
The Victoria's Secret Angel and Anja made a devilish duo as mom wore a skin tight red top and matching legging with her denim cutoffs and devil horn headband.
Wearing a Dracula cape and an adorable red devil tail, baby Noah looked more lovable than scary at the event.
Just the night before, Alessandra enjoyed a more adult costume as she portrayed a sexy Queen of Hearts at the Casamigos Halloween party.
The children of the Ruseva family — at the heart of a story about a Roma child suspected of being kidnapped because she had blond hair and blue eyes — might not read to many as relatives. But they are.
The children of the Ruseva family — at the heart of a story about a Roma child suspected of being kidnapped because she had blond hair and blue eyes — might not read to many as relatives. But they are.
Last week, folks told us that that they found odd resonances in their lives with the stories of several Roma children in Europe who'd separated from their families. Like those blond, blue-eyed Roma children in darker-skinned, dark-haired families, people said that their own familial bonds had occasionally come under suspicion from strangers, who thought there was a "racial mismatch" between parent and child. When people see adults and children with different skin color or eye color or hair texture — the features we tend to think of as racial signposts — they still assume that there's something weird going on even though there are many explanations for why that might be.
This morning, I talked with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep about some of these instances of racial mismatch. (You can listen to our conversation above.)
After the previous thread, several folks chimed in with more stories about when the assumption of racial mismatch became more than annoyance and began to feel more like a threat.
A Georgia woman named Lauren Ware told us a story about a trip to McDonald's with her father when she was very young. A police officer who pulled her father over for speeding noticed that Lauren and her dad looked very different: She read as black, but her father, with his very light skin, green eyes and curly black hair, did not. "Do you know this man? Are you supposed to be with him?" the officer asked her. It didn't occur to her why the officer was suspicious about her relationship to her father until she was much older, she said — she just wanted some french fries.
A commenter named Lita Davis told us that her blond, blue-eyed cousin was briefly thought to be the missing Lindbergh baby in the 1930s — even though her cousin was a girl and black:
"I had a cousin who was an exact match for the missing Lindbergh baby back in the 1930s. Blonde, blue eyed, same age around 20- 24 months, hair and facial features... Was outside playing with other kids and someone called the cops because why would a blonde haired blue eyed kid be in a black neighborhood yard? Thing is, her parents were fair-skinned black people (who were obviously mixed with white). Then the Feds got involved and the local cops whisked HER off dragging her parents along as kidnappers. Yes, that was the big difference Charles Lindbergh's missing child was male, and yet no one stopped to ask questions — they just took her away. What happened was absolutely insane, but it was back in a time when black people had little to no representation in legal matters... Her parents were livid and scared all rolled up into one. Luckily since she was a toddler there was no permanent trauma for her. She went to law school and had a pretty good life."
Earlier this year, the police showed up at the door of a white Virginia man who had been seen at a Wal-Mart with his three young black girls; someone in the store thought something was amiss. The man and his wife — who is black — were taken aback. The three girls were their daughters: a 4-year-old and 2-year-old twins.
" 'Well, the customer was concerned because they saw the children with your husband and he didn't think that they fit,' " the wife told a local news outlet, relating what she had been told by someone from the store when she called to get an explanation. "And I said, 'What do you mean by they don't fit?' And I was trying to get her to say it. And she says, 'Well, they just don't match up.' "
But does the perception of racial mismatch ever tip anyone off to actual wrongdoing? We talked to Nancy McBride, a spokeswoman for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who told us that they'd rather people err on the side of being wrong and make the call than for a suspected missing child to remain missing. (She pointed to the Elizabeth Smart and Shasta Groene abductions as cases that were solved after strangers felt suspicious and called authorities.)
As well as the faulty assumption that the child is not related to the person he is with, there's another questionable idea undergirding that one: that the profile of an abductor is someone who is a stranger. Although McBride said they didn't keep demographic numbers on abductions — that is, the race of the supposed abductors and their abductees — the past several years of reports on AMBER alerts showed that few abductions are committed by true strangers unknown to the kidnapped child. Most abductions are committed by family members.
But what do those family members look like? You'd be hard-pressed to guess. According to the Pew Research Center, 15 percent of all new marriages in the U.S. are interracial.
In another survey, Pew found that 4 in 10 Americans said they had at least one step-relative — a family member to whom they're not biologically related.
The federal government's big study on adoptive families found that most adopted children in the U.S. are children of color, but nearly three-fourths of those kids have white adoptive parents.
And there's research that people with multiracial backgrounds are choosing only one identifier on the U.S. census — the way President Obama notably did — meaning that multiracial people may actually be undercounted in the official data.
As these phenomena become more common, how long will it take for our perception that members of a normal family will "look like" each other to catch up with the way American families really look?
FILE - In this file photo taken on May 26, 2004, Qais al-Khazali, then the top aide of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and leader of a militant group called Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, inspects the damage after overnight fighting against Iraqi army and US forces in Najaf, Iraq. The wave of attacks by al-Qaida and Sunni extremists that has killed thousands of Iraqis in 2013 so far, most of them Shiites, is provoking ominous calls from Shiite leaders to take up arms in self-defense. Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday, Nov. 1, 2013, said he wants American help in quelling the violence. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File)
FILE - In this file photo taken on May 26, 2004, Qais al-Khazali, then the top aide of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and leader of a militant group called Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, inspects the damage after overnight fighting against Iraqi army and US forces in Najaf, Iraq. The wave of attacks by al-Qaida and Sunni extremists that has killed thousands of Iraqis in 2013 so far, most of them Shiites, is provoking ominous calls from Shiite leaders to take up arms in self-defense. Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday, Nov. 1, 2013, said he wants American help in quelling the violence. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File)
FILE - In this file photo taken on Sept. 27, 2009, file, Haidar Talib, a member of a militant group called Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, embraces his 4-year-old son Mustafa as he is released from U.S. military custody in Baghdad, Iraq. The wave of attacks by al-Qaida and Sunni extremists that has killed thousands of Iraqis in 2013 so far, most of them Shiites, is provoking ominous calls from Shiite leaders to take up arms in self-defense. Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday, Nov. 1, 2013, said he wants American help in quelling the violence. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File)
FILE - In this file photo taken on Oct. 8, 2013, women walk past the aftermath of a car bomb attack in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Zafaraniyah in southeastern Baghdad, Iraq. The wave of attacks by al-Qaida and Sunni extremists that has killed thousands of Iraqis in 2013 so far, most of them Shiites, is provoking ominous calls from Shiite leaders to take up arms in self-defense. Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday, Nov. 1, 2013, said he wants American help in quelling the violence. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File)
In this photo taken Friday, Oct. 25, 2013, Iraqis walk past posters for Shiite people who were killed during recent attacks of Sadr city in Baghdad, Iraq. The wave of attacks by al-Qaida and Sunni extremists that has killed thousands of Iraqis in 2013 so far, most of them Shiites, is provoking ominous calls from Shiite leaders to take up arms in self-defense. Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday, Nov. 1, 2013, said he wants American help in quelling the violence. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
In this photo taken Friday, Oct. 25, 2013, a man walks past posters of Shiite people who were killed during recent attacks in Sadr city in Baghdad, Iraq. The wave of attacks by al-Qaida and Sunni extremists that has killed thousands of Iraqis in 2013 so far, most of them Shiites, is provoking ominous calls from Shiite leaders to take up arms in self-defense. Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday, Nov. 1, 2013, said he wants American help in quelling the violence. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
BAGHDAD (AP) — The wave of attacks by al-Qaida-led Sunni extremists that has killed thousands of Iraqis this year, most of them Shiites, is provoking ominous calls from Shiite leaders to take up arms in self-defense.
They generally insist they'll do it legally, under the banner of the security forces. But Iraq's young democracy is still struggling, nearly two years after U.S. troops withdrew, and the specter of armed Shiite and Sunni camps revives memories of the sectarian fighting that took the country to the brink of civil war in the mid-2000s.
Since April, bombings and shootings have killed more than 5,500 people. Averaging at least two a week, they target outdoor markets, cafes, bus stations, mosques and pilgrimages in Shiite areas.
Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who will meet with President Barack Obama on Friday, says he wants American help in quelling the violence.
Departing for Washington, he appealed for quicker delivery of offensive weapons such as helicopters that Baghdad says it needs.
In a guest column Wednesday in The New York Times, al-Maliki warned that al-Qaida "is engaged in a renewed, concerted campaign to foment sectarian violence and drive a wedge between our people."
He stressed that a "deeper security relationship" with the U.S. is needed.
Since late December, Iraq's minority Sunnis have been protesting what they perceive as discrimination and tough anti-terrorism measures against them by the Shiite-led government. The Sunni attacks followed a government crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in the northern town of Hawija in which 44 civilians and one member of the security forces were killed, according to U.N. estimates.
Now high-profile calls are being made for Shiites to play a role in their own defense by creating armed "popular committees," attached in some form to the regular security forces. The idea raises the specter of some of Iraq's darkest years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime, paving the way for long-repressed majority Shiites to seize power.
Iranian-backed Shiite death squads roamed Baghdad from 2006-2008, killing Sunnis by the dozens and dumping their often mutilated bodies on the streets or in the river in retaliation for the devastating bombings and suicide attacks blamed on Sunni insurgents.
It was a cease-fire by militia leader and anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, along with a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq and a series of U.S.-Iraqi offensives that helped quell the bloodshed. While Iraqis continued to face near-daily attacks, they hoped the days of rampant sectarian warfare were behind them. Now a politician, al-Sadr has urged calm among his followers and made no public statements about the calls to take up arms to protect Shiites.
Zuhair al-Araji, a Sunni lawmaker, pointed out that the insurgents are targeting not only Shiites but moderate Sunnis, and that arming Shiite groups would backfire. "We are worried that some militias will infiltrate these proposed committees and we will see grave consequences," he said.
But Jassim Mohammed al-Fartousi, whose 24-year-old son was among some 80 people killed in a suicide attack Sept. 21, reflects growing public demand for a response.
"The government and the security forces are incompetent," he said. "The popular committees will make us feel safe."
The civil war in neighboring Syria is also stoking the tensions as it takes on increasingly sectarian undertones, with many Iraqi Shiites traveling to the country to support President Bashar Assad's government against mainly Sunni rebels.
Qais al-Khazali heads a feared Shiite militia, Asaib Ahl al-Haq (Band of the Righteous), an Iranian-backed group that repeatedly attacked U.S. forces in Iraq and says it is sending fighters to Syria. He spent years in U.S. detention but was released after he was handed over to the Iraqi government.
Last year, the group decided to lay down its weapons and join the Iraqi political process, a move welcomed by al-Maliki. But addressing a conference of tribal leaders and clerics on Oct. 9, al-Khazali said his group needed to react to the "killings and destruction."
He said his "committees" would not participate in raids, but would cooperate with security forces in "patrolling their areas and setting up roadblocks."
Still, the security forces are supposed to be nonsectarian, and the suggestion of a Shiite militia in league with a Shiite prime minister's security forces is sure to heighten Sunni distrust.
Ali al-Moussawi, al-Maliki's spokesman, sounded lukewarm to the idea, saying the security forces "do not need armed committees; they need help with intelligence."
The law bans the formation of armed groups outside the state security forces, but the government made an exception for the Sunni militia formed by U.S. forces to fight al-Qaida.
Also calling for Shiite self-defense measures are Shiite lawmakers, one of them affiliated with al-Maliki's parliamentary bloc, and some clerics connected to parties with militant wings.
Earlier this year, Wathiq al-Batat, a Shiite cleric who was a senior official in the Hezbollah Brigades in Iraq, formed what he calls the Mukhtar Army to protect Shiites. He claims to have more than 1 million members, a number that has not been independently verified.
In an interview with the Beirut-based Iraqi satellite channel al-Sumaria last week, he said his militia was "well-intentioned" and wouldn't attack Sunnis as such, only "takfiri" groups, a term applied to Sunni radicals.
Al-Batat demanded that in order to be within the law, some of his followers should be integrated into the Defense or Interior Ministries to work with the security forces.
Despite some attacks on Sunni mosques following Sunni actions, Shiite reprisals are far less intense than they were in the tit-for-tat bloodshed of 2006-2007, when Sunnis would be snatched off the streets and killed and many families were driven from their homes.
But that may change if the "popular committees" come into being, some warn.
Hadi Jalo, a political analyst in Baghdad, said the government "could implicitly give the green light to some armed groups to help the security forces struggling to put an end to violence and to ease the pressure from the public."
Shwan Mohammed Taha, a Kurd who serves on the parliament's defense and security committee, warned such a move could prove a turning point.
"The atmosphere is already tense and such move will lead to the militarization of society and then to all-out civil war," he said.
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Follow Sinan Salaheddin on Twitter at www.twitter.com/sinansm.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-30-Iraq-Shiites%20On%20Edge/id-6e747fcabb994d62b6cab93a8b721c61
As it approaches its fifth birthday, Kickstarter’s star continues to rise, as the indie crowdfunding goliath announced yesterday that five million people have now collectively pledged nearly one billion dollars to its crowdfunding projects.
Today, in a somewhat surprising turn after yesterday’s milestones, it appears that an impromptu version of the “Management Shuffle” will be rolling into Kickstarter. In a blog post today, Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen announced that he will be stepping down from his role as CEO and will instead assume the role of chairman beginning January 1st.
Chen explained that the move will give him more time to pursue his own creative projects: “I’m looking forward to stepping away from the day-to-day to consider our path from a new perspective … [and] I’m also looking forward to having time to work on creative projects of my own, after all these years working on an engine to support them.”
But Chen isn’t the only co-founder to depart as part of the company’s management shuffle. Charles Adler, who “has long been itching to move with his family back to Chicago,” is also planning to leave his day-to-day role at the company and will assume the role of an adviser.
In Kickstarter’s version of the management dance (we’re still waiting for the music), when two co-founders step back, one must step forward. With Chen and Adler set to depart, Yancey Strickler, who has held a number of roles within the company, with community, communications and customer service among them, will be taking the reins as Kickstarter’s second CEO.
Considering that its leadership has remained largely unchanged over the years, the Management Shuffle represents a significant change for Kickstarter. Usually, when companies undergo signficant changes to its founding leadership team, it’s not a good sign. These kind of moves always produce speculation and a few worried looks, but Chen assured readers in his post today that the move shouldn’t have any impact on the company itself — or its mission.
In fact, Kickstarter PR Chief Justin Kazmark tells us that Chen plans to stay involved, both in company projects and by supporting Yancey in his transition to CEO. Instead, by assuming the role of Chairman, Chen is looking to use the position to gain a new perspective on the company’s trajectory and plans to spend a significant chunk of time focusing on the big picture and keeping Kickstarter close to its core mission.
In fact, Union Square Ventures co-founder and early Kickstarter investor Fred Wilson sees Chen’s fingerprints all over the impromptu management shuffle. Reflecting on the changes in a blog post today, Wilson quipped, “like all things that involve Kickstarter, this is a classic Perry move.”
The company and its CEO have always marched to their own drummer, and Kickstarter’s Management Shuffle is yet another example of this freewheeling mentality, Wilson explains. While its expected that the company’s investors would look to temper speculation and air on the side of its founders, Kickstarter has given them plenty of very legitimate reasons to do so. To illustrate the point, Wilson described the long-time CEO as an entrepreneur that was very “wary of taking money from VCs … and had no intention of taking the company public and no intention of selling it,” and was determined to put creators first.
Although he was initially skeptical of the founder’s motivations, they decided to invest anyway. Over time, the investor said that Chen ended up proving him wrong, and his perspective ultimately led to just as much, if not more, value creation — a model which remains in place today:
Four and a half years after launch, Kickstarter is a very important and sustainable business. It will continue to grow, it will continue to fund creativity, and it will continue to do things its own way. Kickstarter was built in Perry’s mold and the unique culture and mission of the Company are derived from him. I suspect his decision to step up to Chairman and allow the team to run the business day to day is Perry’s way of saying to the team that they have his confidence to lead Kickstarter into the future. Kickstarter will always be Perry’s work and we are very happy to be a part of it and be inspired by it every day.
As Om pointed out in his coverage of the management changes today, Kickstarter’s success can also be attributed to the role it plays (and how it’s taken advantage of) the industry’s macro shift away from infrastructure dominated by industrial manufacturing and “toward the maker economy.”
Ultimately, considering Kazmark also tells us that Kickstarter is in the process of expanding to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as long as the company can continue to represent the interests of creatives and creatively-inclined entrepreneurs as the shift to a Maker Model (and its own expansion into new markets) continues, it will be on the right track. Assuming these management changes go as advertised, of course.
For more, find Wilson’s post here and Chen’s announcement on the Kickstarter blog here.
NEW YORK (AP) — When big-name celebrities pair up with big businesses, customers often believe the adage: You are the company you keep.
Rap artist Jay-Z is learning that firsthand. He has complained this week that he's been unfairly "demonized" because he hasn't backed out of his collaboration with Barneys New York after the luxury retailer was accused of racially profiling two black customers.
Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, has said he's waiting to hear all the facts. Meanwhile, Barneys said on Tuesday that its initial investigation showed no employees were at fault in the two incidents in which customers complained that they were detained by police after making expensive purchases. NYPD disputes the store's account and said they were alerted by Barneys.
The controversy illustrates the problems that can arise when celebrities and companies team up.
The deals are lucrative: Companies like having big names on their roster and celebrities are always looking to expand their brand. Revenue in North America from celebrity merchandise lines, excluding products linked to athletes, was a $7.8 billion business last year, according to figures available from trade publication Licensing Letter.
But when either side is accused of wrongdoing, the negative publicity can cause damage to their partner's reputation.
"It literally shows you how vulnerable the celebrity business is on both sides of the equation," said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at The NPD Group, a market research group.
More often, it's the celebrities — not the stores — who are accused of bad behavior.
Late last year, for instance, Macy's was pressured by some customers to dump real estate mogul Donald Trump's line of $65 power ties after the billionaire verbally attacked President Barack Obama on social media following his re-election. One customer collected close to 700,000 signatures on a petition website signon.org. Macy's stood by Trump.
Another example: home maven Martha Stewart. After being convicted on federal criminal charges of lying to prosecutors about a stock sale, she served a five-month prison sentence that ended in 2005. Kmart, which sold her towels and kitchen accessories until 2009, continued to carry her line.
But experts say that the subject of race can stir up even more emotions, so there's less tolerance for slip-ups. "Everybody wants to be fair minded and not make generalizations about a group," said Marty Brochstein of the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association, a trade group.
Celebrity chef Paula Deen's empire, which spanned from pots to TV shows, began to unravel in June, within days of the public disclosure of a legal deposition in she admitted under oath to having used the N-word to describe black employees. In addition to losing TV shows and book deals, Deen lost valuable partnerships when Target and other retailers said they'd no longer sell her products.
Until now, Michael Stone, CEO of brand licensing agency Beanstalk, says it's been the norm for personalities to have moral clauses in contracts that let merchants back out. But Stone, who has reviewed 100 celebrity contracts, says he hasn't seen it the other way.
For Jay-Z's part, it's not clear what he'll do as he faces pressure from an online petition and Twitter messages from fans. NYPD disputes the store's account of the incidents and said they were alerted by Barneys.
Barneys is expected to start selling items next month by top designers, inspired by Jay-Z, with some of the proceeds going to his charity. Jay-Z is also working with the store to create its artistic holiday window display.
The Fed pointed to a somewhat weaker housing market in recent months.
The Fed pointed to a somewhat weaker housing market in recent months.
The Federal Reserve's message, at least for now, is to take a wait-and-see approach to the economy before tapering off on its bond-buying program.
In a statement issued after Wednesday's meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee said that while it has seen signs of "growing underlying strength in the broader economy" it awaits "more evidence that progress can be sustained."
As a result, the FOMC says it has "decided to continue purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month and longer-term Treasury securities at a pace of $45 billion per month."
The committee said it would keep the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent for now and anticipates keeping it there "at least as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6.5 percent" and inflation holds steady.
NPR's Neal Carruth points out a subtle but important difference from last month's statement, when the Fed said the housing sector was strengthening. On Wednesday, it changed it's tune slightly, saying, "the recovery in the housing sector slowed somewhat in recent months."
Stocks fell in volatile trading after the announcement.
The Associated Press reports:
"The Fed again noted that budget policies in Washington have restrained growth, but it made no mention of the 16-day government shutdown. However, the Fed no longer expressed concerns about higher mortgage rates, a concern it flagged in September.
"The Fed's policy decision was approved on a 9-1 vote with Esther George, the president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, dissenting as she has done at each of the central bank's seven meetings this year."
