master activate: December 2012

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Christian Ponder thought wedding in Wisconsin would 'limit the attention on us'

Minnesota Vikings quarterback Christian Ponder was all smiles after playing the Detroit Lions at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minn., on Sunday, November 11, 2012. The Vikings won 34-24. (Pioneer Press: Ben Garvin)

Vikings quarterback Christian Ponder should know by now that the NFL spotlight shines on almost everything a player does.

As his roller-coaster second pro season winds down with less-than-stellar personal statistics, Ponder mistakenly figured it would not become public if he slipped away to Hudson, Wis., with ESPN reporter Samantha Steele for a private marriage ceremony on Monday, Dec. 17.

"We were hoping not," Ponder said at the Vikings' Winter Park headquarters on Wednesday. "That wasn't the plan."

Public records came to light within 36 hours, however, forcing Ponder to deal with questions, crack jokes and downplay any impact of his decision to marry just six days before a game against the Houston Texans that he earlier referred to as "probably the biggest game of my career."

Despite passing for fewer than 100 yards in three games this season, Ponder has maintained his confidence and an upbeat attitude while helping lead Minnesota into playoff contention with an 8-6 record going into Sunday's game in Houston. In October, he deflected the stir when it came to light that he and Steele were dating, and on Wednesday he insisted his marriage will not affect his play.

Getting married did not prevent him from going to Winter Park both Monday and Tuesday for film work, as he always does.

"Obviously, it's a big deal," Ponder said, "but it wasn't a distraction at all."

Ponder, 24, and Steele, 27, were married in the St. Croix County Courthouse on Monday,

choosing to drive across the border because "we were hoping it would limit the attention on us," he said. It was a private ceremony with no teammates or family members involved.

"Just us," Ponder said.

"We tried to keep the attention away from us and just went over to Wisconsin and had it done," he said. "So it was quick, but it was good."

Ponder said some people in Minnesota might not be pleased he snuck into another state for his wedding, but so be it.

"We're going to have a big ceremony sometime in the offseason and be able to enjoy it," he said," and hopefully some people from Minnesota will be able to be down there."

Ponder is from Colleyville, Texas, and Steele is from Arizona, but the quarterback did not say where or when the public ceremony would take place.

Someone wanted to know if he is taking his wife's name and now will be known as Christian Steele.

"That would have been good," Ponder said. "Like a pro wrestler."

Steele also exhibited a sense of humor.

After some posts on Twitter wondered if she might be pregnant, she tweeted via @Samantha_Steele: "All reports of a babybump are false and offensive. All reports of a foodbump are true and offensive :)"

Ponder was asked why, with just two games remaining in the regular season, he and Steele chose this week to get married.

"It was important to us to get it done before the holidays," he said. "A lot of personal reasons went into it."

Vikings coach Leslie Frazier said he knew Ponder's wedding was "on the radar."

"Happy for him," Frazier added. "He's a young man; I'm sure he put a lot of thought in it, consulted with the right people. So, happy for him."

Ponder, who has a quarterback rating of 78.6, ranks 26th in the NFL in passing yardage with 2,527 yards in 14 games, reiterated that his marriage won't be a distraction to him or his teammates.

Agreed, said punter Chris Kluwe, whose personal life regularly veers away from football-related topics.

"We have lives away from the football field," Kluwe said, "and I think I've been kind of the example of that. Football is what we do for our job, but that doesn't define us as human beings. We fall in love, get married, have kids, same as everyone else."

Kluwe says Ponder has put in the work all season to perform his best, and that won't change.

"It's the NFL," Kluwe said. "We all go out there and try to do our best every single time."

Vikings safety Harrison Smith didn't find out about the wedding until Wednesday morning, and said, "It that's what he wanted to do, that's great for him. I wish him the best. Congrats to him."

It was five minutes into Ponder's weekly meeting with the media before the elephant in the room was mentioned, and the first follow-up question asked how he compares getting married to getting drafted in the first round by the Vikings in 2011.

"Tough question," he said with a smile. "I liked being drafted No. 1. We'll see how this marriage thing goes."

As the laughter died down, Ponder wondered aloud: "Is this on film? Is this on camera? Good."

He, too, was laughing, fully aware that not much can happen to a pro football player without it being noticed.

Source: http://www.twincities.com/sports/ci_22223807/christian-ponder-thought-wedding-wisconsin-would-limit-attention?source=rss

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Chinese Director Xie Fei Slams Censorship

Well-known Chinese director Xie Fei published an open letter online on the 15th of December. He says he sent a movie in to be censored four months ago, but still hasn't got a response about his so-called ?problem movie?.

Xie Fei says in looking around the world, there are very few countries like China with such heavy censorship, including large administrative departments from higher to lower levels. He says it?s a staggering waste of tax payers' money.

He also says that the Film Board's so-called comment, that ?The Film Classification System doesn't suit socialist countries,? is ridiculous.

Chinese author Tie Liu believes that this is the difference between democratic and autocratic systems.

[Tie Liu, Chinese Author]:

?Democratic countries take a system of accountability, questioning responsibility. Authoritarian countries take the pre-trial system, and censorship is called the pre-trial. A news article, a book, a movie, before it is published, must go through the pretrial procedure. After the pretrial, it could be shot dead and would no longer be published.?

Xie Fei graduated with a degree in film directing from the Beijing Film Academy. He has directed many films, including ?Black Snow?, ?Woman Sesame Oil Maker?, and ?A Mongolian Tale?, which have won international awards. Xie Fei also played the role of art director and producer in this year's Mandarin film ?Feng Shui?.

At the end of his open letter, Xie Fei referred to the words of the past Chinese film master Zhao Dan: ?Literary (Arts) will become hopeless if they are controlled too tightly.? The comment has resonated with many people, especially Web users.

Source: http://ntdtv.org/en/news/china/2012-12-18/chinese-director-xie-fei-slams-censorship.html

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Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Plant sniffs out danger to prepare defenses against pesky insect

Dec. 17, 2012 ? A plant may start to prime its defenses as soon as it gets a whiff of a male fly searching for a mate, according to Penn State entomologists.

Once tall goldenrod plants smell a sex attractant emitted by true fruit fly males, they appear to prepare chemical defenses that make them less appealing to female flies that could damage the plants by depositing eggs on them, the researchers said.

"It's become increasingly clear in recent years that plants are responsive to odors," said Mark Mescher, assistant professor of entomology. "But previous examples of this are all plant-to-plant. For example, some plants have been shown to respond to the odor of insect-damaged neighbors by priming their own defenses. What's new about this is that it seems that plants may sometimes be able to smell the insects themselves."

A tall goldenrod plant's reaction to these odors also appears to make it less attractive to other insects that might feed on it, according to the researchers, who reported their findings in the current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In a field study, the researchers exposed some plants to the odor of the male fly and then counted the number of exposed and unexposed plants on which female flies laid eggs by noting the distinctive scarring that occurs when females puncture the stem to lay their eggs inside, Mescher said.

The researchers found that females were significantly less likely to lay eggs on plants exposed to the male emission and about four times more likely to lay eggs on plants in a control group that were not exposed to this odor cue.

Compared to the control group, other herbivores, such as beetles, also caused significantly less damage to of the tall goldenrod plants exposed to the fly emissions, both in the field and in laboratory experiments.

"It would seem that the plant senses the odor of the fly," Mescher said. "Then, it primes its defenses so that it can respond faster to the threat."

Over years of evolution, the true fruit fly has established a close relationship with tall goldenrod, according to Mescher, who worked with Anjel Helms, doctoral student in ecology; Consuelo De Moraes, professor of entomology; and John Tooker, assistant professor of entomology.

The male fly, which in the Northeast usually emerges in mid-May, perches on the upper leaves of the tall goldenrod plants and emits a chemical blend that may act as an attractant to the female flies, which emerge later, according to Tooker. Once a female mates with the male, it deposits its eggs in the stem of the plant.

Tooker said that the female flies lay their eggs only in tall goldenrod plants, so there is a close association between the two species.

A few weeks after the fly's eggs hatch a bulbous growth, called a gall, appears on the stem of the tall goldenrod plant. The gall does not kill the tall goldenrod, but Tooker said the galled plant does not produce as many seeds as ones without galls. Its seeds also tend to be smaller and less likely to germinate.

"It seems that plants that are able to anticipate an attach by the fly and defend themselves against this damage will be more successful, producing higher quality seeds for the next generation," Tooker said. "So there must be a strong advantage for plants that can perceive the fly odor."

The researchers are not sure how tall goldenrod plants are able to detect the odor of the fly.

"Our understanding of plant olfaction in general remains quite limited," said Mescher.

But, the researchers said they believe that other plants may use insect odors to detect danger and prepare defenses.

"I suspect that this may be happening in many plants," said Tooker. "But we don't yet know how widespread it is."

The National Science Foundation supported this work.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Penn State.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

A. M. Helms, C. M. De Moraes, J. F. Tooker, M. C. Mescher. Exposure of Solidago altissima plants to volatile emissions of an insect antagonist (Eurosta solidaginis) deters subsequent herbivory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1218606110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/OnrZT5F-YWw/121217140747.htm

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Rep. Tim Scott picked to replace DeMint in Senate

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) ? Gov. Nikki Haley appointed Rep. Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate on Monday, making him the South's first black Republican senator since Reconstruction in a state whose politics is steeped in the history of slavery and Civil War.

"It speaks to the evolution of South Carolina and our nation," Scott, 47, said of his appointment to fill the seat vacated by Sen. Jim DeMint, a conservative who reigned his post with four years left in his second term to head a right-leaning think tank.

Haley, a daughter of Indian immigrants who became South Carolina's first female and minority governor in 2010, acknowledged making history with her appointment, but she stressed that she picked Scott for his conservative values.

"He earned this seat for what I know he's going to do in making South Carolina and our country proud," she said.

Scott, 47, will be sworn in Jan. 3. Senate Republicans welcomed the appointment, which comes more than a month after Republicans' poor performance with minorities in the election forced soul-searching in the party to broaden its appeal.

He'll become only the fourth black Republican in Senate history and the only black Republican in Congress, after Rep. Allen West of Florida lost his re-election bid last month.

"This is truly an historic moment for the Palmetto State from a governor who's broken more than a few barriers in her own career," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., one of two Hispanics in the Senate, called Scott "a passionate, thoughtful and sincere advocate for the people of South Carolina and for limited government principles."

Scott is certain to be front and center when Republicans talk about fiscal matters and other issues vital to the conservative base. It remains to be seen what committee assignments he will get. He had served on the House Rules Committee.

Scott's selection culminates a fast rise through South Carolina politics. Just four years ago, he was chairman of the Charleston County Council. The 2008 election made him the first black Republican in the South Carolina Legislature in more than a century, and in 2010, he won his seat in the U.S. House from his conservative coastal district with 65 percent of the vote.

Outside the Statehouse where Scott spoke, a statue still stands of post-Reconstruction former governor and U.S. senator Ben Tillman, who unapologetically advocated lynching any black who tried to vote. Another statue depicts the late Strom Thurmond, who still holds a record for a 24-hour filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

But Scott has never dwelled on his race.

"I've never heard on the campaign trail, 'Besides the fact you're black or because you're black, here's what we want of you.' They asked me questions about values and issues, and that's an amazing thing. It speaks to the evolution of South Carolina and our nation," Scott said.

Scott will serve for two years and then face an election in November 2014. That would give South Carolina two Senate elections: one for Scott and the other for two-term Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.

"I have no doubt he'll fly through 2014," Haley said of Scott.

Scott said he still believes in term limits and would likely limit himself to two terms in the Senate, starting with 2014.

After asking for a moment of silence for the victims of the Connecticut school shooting, Scott said he accepted the challenge of trying to help the country through troubling times.

"Our nation finds itself in a situation we need backbone. We need to make some very difficult decisions," Scott said. "I learned early in my 20s that if you have a problem with spending, there's not enough revenue to make up for it. We have a spending problem in America."

Scott grew up in poverty in North Charleston. His parents divorced when he was 7, and he remembered his mom working 16 hours a day to support him and his brother.

"To the single moms out there, don't give up on your kids. It may get tough. It may be challenging, but all things are truly possible," he said.

In high school, he said he was failing four courses and in danger of "flunking out of high school" until he met the late John Moniz, a conservative entrepreneur who ran a Chick-fil-A beside the movie theater where Scott worked.

They became friends and Scott said Moniz taught him important values and basic business principles.

Scott earned a degree in political science from Charleston Southern University, which is affiliated with the South Carolina Baptist Convention and touts how it integrates faith into learning and serving.

Graham, South Carolina's senior senator, said Scott has a unique opportunity to inspire others and be a leading voice for the conservative cause.

"When it comes to trying to explain what America's all about, I could not tell a better story than the story of Tim Scott," Graham said. "Tim is what America's all about."

The governor won't name a replacement for Scott. By state law, U.S. House vacancies are filled through a special election.

___

Associated Press Writer Donna Cassata in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rep-tim-scott-picked-replace-demint-senate-172547063--politics.html

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On 'Catfish,' Kya Gets Her Happy Ending

But not the way you might expect — Nev Schulman and Max Joseph take MTV News behind latest episode.
By Katie Atkinson

Nev Schulman and Max Joseph
Photo: MTV News

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1699050/catfish-recap-kya-episode-6.jhtml

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