Woman burned alive in NYC apartment elevator

NEW YORK?? A woman burned to death in the elevator of her Brooklyn apartment building Saturday afternoon after a man ambushed her, sprayed her with liquid and set her afire with a Molotov cocktail, police said.

The unidentified man was waiting for the woman, who was in her 60s, when the elevator doors opened to her floor of the Crown Heights building. The man sprayed her with an accelerant and set her on fire, New York City police spokesman Paul Browne said.

"It was apparent he knew she was on the elevator," he said.

The brutal attack lasted about a minute and was recorded by two video cameras, including one inside the small elevator.

The assailant began to enter the elevator and sprayed the woman as the doors opened to the fifth floor where she lived, Browne said.

The woman, who had grocery bags in her arms, turned about 180 degrees and then crouched in an attempted to protect herself, he said. But the man sprayed her directly in the face and continued to spray her "sort of methodically" over her head and parts of her body as the bags draped off her arms. She turned around and retreated to the back of the elevator.

At some point, Browne said, the suspect then pulled out a barbeque-style lighter, used it to ignite a Molotov cocktail and then waited for a few seconds ? before using the flames to set her afire, causing the elevator to fill with smoke.

The man backed out as the woman fell to the floor of the elevator, Browne said, and seemed to pause before tossing the bottle inside the elevator onto the woman.

Browne would not comment on the motive in the killing, but said the suspect knew his victim.

Investigators believe the suspect fled down the stairs of the building, he said.

The suspect was dressed as an exterminator, The New York Times reported. He wore gloves; a protective mask was perched atop his head and he carried a container on his back.

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Investigators told the Times the suspect appeared burned on his face and hands so authorities were looking for him in local hospitals.

Neighbors reported a fire in the building, unaware that the woman, who police declined to identify, was burning to death in the elevator.

Neighbors identified the victim as Delores Gillespie, who was pronounced dead on the scene, the New York Daily News reported. There were no immediate reports of an arrest.

Five other people suffered minor injuries and were rushed to a local hospital, the Daily News said.

One neighbor told the Daily News that he heard loud screams before smoke started filling the hallways.

"It was high-pitched yelling," said the 29-year-old neighbor, who identified himself as John. "It sounded like it was coming from the fifth floor."

Gillespie lived on the building?s fifth-floor for years and appeared to be mentally ill and extremely paranoid, neighbors told the Daily News.

She complained that upstairs tenants stole from her. Her son, who neighbors said is also mentally ill, was staying with her, the Daily News reported.

Anyone with information in regards to this homicide is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS. The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers Website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or texting their tips to 274637(CRIMES) then enter TIP577.

? 2011 msnbc.com

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45711605/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

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Expensive Gear to Shower Upon Mark Zuckerberg [Gift Guide]

Unlike Tom from MySpace, Mark Zuckerberg is not your friend. But fuck it. Think about all the time you've spent on Facebook—for free! You should get him something nice. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/8eEpmJTNeKY/ridiculously-expensive-gear-to-shower-upon-mark-zuckerberg

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Obama to speak to Reform Jews (AP)

WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama will speak at the 71st General Assembly of the Union for Reform Judaism in Washington on Friday afternoon.

The Union for Reform Judaism says its progressive, inclusive approach unites 6,000 years of Jewish tradition and values with modern Jewish experience.

The URJ says it has nearly 900 member congregations in North America.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/religion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_preview

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Sony VAIO S Series: Mediocre Performance in a Thin, Sexy Chassis

The Sony VAIO S Series isn't the most powerful all-purpose laptop, but I like it--and not just because I have a soft spot for Sony. Although the VAIO S Series offers mediocre general performance and modest graphics speed, it's also light, thin, stylish, and very portable.

Our review model, priced at $1000 (as of December 14, 2011), sports an Intel Core i5-2430M processor, an AMD Radeon HD 6470M graphics card, and 4GB of RAM. It also has a 640GB hard drive, a DVD-RW optical drive, and built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0. This model runs the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium.

In our WorldBench 6 benchmark tests, the VAIO S Series earned a score of 112. This is a decent, but not excellent, score that puts the VAIO S Series right around the middle of our Top All-Purpose Laptops list. While the VAIO S Series should be fine for most basic work tasks and streaming video, it's by no means a graphics powerhouse or a gaming laptop.

In our graphics tests, the VAIO S Series' performance was acceptable. The system does have switchable graphics, which is a benefit for people who want to use this laptop for consuming multimedia and performing basic, nonintensive tasks (switching to integrated graphics will conserve battery life). In our Far Cry 2 graphics tests, the VAIO S Series managed a frame rate of 50 frames per second at the lowest quality setting (800 by 600 resolution), and a rate of 24 fps at the highest quality setting (same resolution).

Our review unit was the 15.5-inch VAIO S Series in black. The 15.5-inch model also comes in silver, while the 13.3-inch model comes in black, blue, pink, red, or white. The VAIO S Series' most desirable trait might be its portability: The 15.5-inch version weighs 4.3 pounds (5.2 pounds with accessories), and measures 14.9 inches wide by 10.1 inches long and just about 1 inch thick.

The VAIO S Series has a thin, squared-off chassis with sharp corners. The cover is a plain matte black, with a medium-size mirrored VAIO logo in the center. The hinge--which sticks out of the back of the machine by about a quarter of an inch--is plastic with a dark mirrored finish, and it feels a little flimsy. The rest of the exterior is simple, and exudes a minimalist aesthetic.

The interior is also pretty simple, consisting of a matte-black wrist rest, a black Chiclet-style keyboard, and a smooth touchpad with two discrete buttons. Several buttons and switches sit above the keyboard, however--and when you turn the laptop on, it also has a lot of lights to go with those buttons and switches. From left to right, the controls include a physical eject button (though the DVD-RW drive is tray-loaded), a switch for changing between the Intel integrated graphics and the AMD discrete graphics, an "Assist" button (which opens the Help screen), a Web button, and a VAIO button (which you can program to open different VAIO multimedia programs).

The keyboard is backlit and easy to type on, and it comes with a ten-key number pad. The touchpad, which supports multitouch gestures, is smooth and sensitive; its two discrete buttons are big and easy to press, if a little light on feedback.

Ports-wise, the VAIO S Series is fairly basic. The very smooth left side has only a headphone jack and an optical drive. The headphone jack is located all the way toward the back of the computer--which means that if your headphone wire is particularly short, you may have to maneuver around a bit. (I have to admit, though, that the last VAIO I owned had the headphone jack located on the front of the machine, which is a lot more annoying.)

On the front of the laptop is a Wi-Fi switch, which is always a nice addition. The right side of the system is crammed with ports and slots: You'll find two card slots (one for Sony Memory Stick and one for SD Card), a gigabit ethernet port, a VGA-out port, an HDMI-out port, one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, and a Kensington lock slot. I'm not a big fan of having all three USB ports on one side and next to each other, because USB peripherals are often bulky and can't be placed side by side. Sony probably should have included at least one USB port on the laptop's left edge, because that side has plenty of space.

The display is a bright, glossy 15.5-inch screen with a full HD native resolution of 1920 by 1080. The screen is just beautiful: It's crisp and clear, and it honestly almost took my breath away the first time I saw it. Unfortunately, it isn't perfect: At the lower brightness settings, the screen has a noticeably yellow tint, and skin tones are sometimes washed out.

The VAIO S Series is good for light multimedia usage. High-def streaming video plays smoothly, but the picture in full screen looks a bit soft. Audio playback is not very good. Though the speakers are loud, the sound is thin and lacking in bass. Music and voices sound almost like shrieking. I definitely recommend headphones with this laptop.

Sony includes a lot of software on its VAIO machines, which is good if you like Sony software, and not so great if you don't. The VAIO S Series comes packed with Sony's Media Gallery, VAIO Care, VAIO Gate, and PMB VAIO Edition photo/video management software. It also has other software, including Norton Internet Security, Adobe's bundle (Acrobat, Photoshop Elements, and the like), and Sony's Imagination Studio Suite.

The Sony VAIO S Series may seem like a mediocre all-purpose laptop, and it is one. But it's also thin, light, and quite portable, and it sports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Intel Wireless Display technology, and optional embedded mobile broadband. In other words, if you're looking for an all-purpose laptop that's stylish and easy to tote, the VAIO S Series might be the system for you.

Source: http://feeds.pcworld.com/click.phdo?i=5a3a899b53adb55e23f7654da5c38538

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Last.fm Discover delivers greener pastures of music discovery

Last.fm is going all HTML5 with Discover, a new music discovery service that lets you find artists through tag search and create playlists by dragging and dropping songs from the comfort of your browser. Once you've created a mix from the site's rolling fields of music, you can share it via Facebook and Twitter to show the world just how indie you are. Check out the new service at the source link below.

Continue reading Last.fm Discover delivers greener pastures of music discovery

Last.fm Discover delivers greener pastures of music discovery originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/14/last-fm-discover-delivers-greener-pastures-of-music-discovery/

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GOP rivals hope to court Cain supporters (AP)

WASHINGTON ? A day after Herman Cain shuttered his Republican candidacy for president, struggling GOP hopefuls looked to pick up the fallen candidate's tea party following and upset a primary dynamic that has pushed Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich to the forefront.

Gingrich's campaign, ramping up its operations in early nominating states, was meeting with former Cain aides and advisers now looking for jobs. While Cain's endorsement remained up for grabs, Gingrich and his rivals were looking to schedule one-on-one meetings this week with the former pizza executive.

Reps. Ron Paul of Texas and Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said Sunday they expected Cain supporters would fall in line behind them because of their messages on limited government, despite their low standing in the polls. Meanwhile, last-place rival Rick Santorum predicted he now had a good chance of winning the Iowa caucus.

While such brazen predictions are probably overstated, the 11th-hour press comes at a crucial time and could upset an already volatile race for the GOP endorsement. A month before the first vote is cast in the Iowa caucus and five weeks before the New Hampshire primary, most GOP candidates were looking to a week of heavy campaigning in Iowa ahead of the next debate, scheduled for Saturday. The stakes are possibly the highest for Mitt Romney, who could be hurt the worst if Cain supporters rally behind Gingrich.

"A lot of Herman Cain supporters have been calling our office and they've been coming over to our side," said Bachmann. "They saw Herman Cain as an outsider and I think they see that my voice would be the one that would be most reflective of his."

Likewise, Paul said he was optimistic that Cain's departure would reinvigorate his campaign.

"We're paying a lot of attention to that, because obviously they're going to go somewhere in the next week or so," Paul said of Cain's supporters.

Santorum predicted that his campaign would pick up steam in coming days.

"We have a very strong, consistent conservative message that matches up better with Iowans than anybody else. And we think we're going to surprise a lot of people," he said.

Once surging in the polls, Cain dropped out of the race Saturday after battling allegations of sexual harassment and a claim that he had a 13-year extramarital affair. The Georgia businessman has denied the accusations.

Gingrich, the former House speaker from Georgia, has so far been the biggest beneficiary of Cain's slide. A Des Moines Register poll conducted Nov. 27-30 and released late Saturday found the former House speaker leading the GOP field with 25 percent support, ahead of Paul at 18 percent and Romney at 16.

A separate NBC News/Marist poll showed Gingrich beating Romney, 26 percent to 18 percent, among Republican caucus attendees in Iowa.

Gingrich also is enjoying national popularity that could give him the momentum he needs to overcome deficiencies in the organization of his campaign. At the same time, Gingrich says he knows his surge in the polls could disappear if his opponents stage a comeback.

"I'm not going to say that any of my friends can't suddenly surprise us," Gingrich said at a recent town hall meeting in New York sponsored by tea party supporters.

Meanwhile, Romney is running strong in New Hampshire, which holds the nation's first primary on Jan. 10. Romney is also seen by most conservatives at this point as having the greatest chance of defeating President Barack Obama next year.

But Romney continues to be viewed with suspicion by many conservatives who say he has changed his stance on such critical issues as abortion and health care. Santorum acknowledged Sunday that Romney has embraced more conservative positions on issues.

"The question is, you know, what's the sincerity of the move and whether he can be trusted," said Santorum.

Bachmann said it was too soon to declare anyone a true front-runner because the dynamic in the race was constantly changing.

"We've got 30 days," she said. "That's an eternity in this race."

Reince Priebus, the Republican Party chairman, said Sunday that he was indifferent to Cain's departure and that it was "only natural" in the face of falling poll numbers and trouble raising money.

This week's agenda for the primary candidates included a stop in Arizona by Romney and a forum Wednesday by the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington, which is expected to attract Bachmann, Gingrich, Huntsman, Perry, Romney and Santorum. Gingrich was scheduled to meet Monday with real-estate mogul Donald Trump at Trump's New York offices. Trump, who briefly entered the primary race in the spring and drew considerable publicity when he questioned the validity of Obama's birth certificate, said he would moderate a Republican presidential debate in Iowa on Dec. 27.

Paul, who has clashed publicly with Trump, said he thought the GOP was making a mistake in giving Trump so much credibility.

"I don't understand the marching to his office. I mean I didn't know that he had an ability to lay on hands, you know, and anoint people," Paul said.

Paul and Bachmann spoke on CNN's "State of the Union." Santorum spoke on ABC's "This Week." Priebus spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111205/ap_on_el_pr/us_gop_campaign

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New Theory Explains How Objective Reality Emerges from the Strange Underlying Quantum World

Quantum theory is one of the most profound discoveries of humanity. In my view, it?s on a par with Cuban cigars and single malt whiskey. The theory has been hugely successful in showing us the inner workings of the universe. However, it is plagued by serious problems and provokes fiery debates, such as the giant argument that erupted on the Cosmic Variance blog a couple of weeks ago. One of these problems is the unanswered question of how the everyday macroscopic world emerges from its strangely behaving microscopic constituents.

Let me put it this way. Nobody doubts that the moon is circling the Earth even when we?re not looking. In the microworld, however, quantum objects can behave as if they were created by the mere act of observation. It goes like this: you open a box and you see an atom there. Can you infer that it was there the moment before you looked inside? The mind-boggling answer is NO! This was proven theoretically in 1964 by John Bell and later confirmed experimentally, beginning with the work of John Clauser and others in the early 1970s (described in a classic?Scientific American article by Bernard d?Espagnat). If the same were true for the moon, it would be like saying that the act of looking into the night sky made the moon appear.

So where does this leave us? Physicists believe that quantum physics should describe all objects big and small, yet the microworld is very different from the macroworld. We have to explain how the latter is the result of the former.

With some colleagues I recently proposed and then generalized a new solution. Interestingly, our explanation for how the classical world arises from the quantum world does not invoke ?decoherence? or any of the other mechanisms proposed before.

Decoherence is probably the best-known model introduced so far to explain how the microscopic world?s quantum weirdness disappears. Decoherence is the loss of information about a quantum state to the surrounding environment to the point where the state has lost many of its quantum properties. It had been believed that decoherence is ubiquitous in large systems and happens extremely fast. However, recent research done by my colleague at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore, Vlatko Vedral, indicates that decoherence can be much slower in large systems than was expected (more about this in Scientific American?s June cover story ?Living in a quantum world?).

In our recent paper, we take a different approach. We consider how measurements work in the macroworld, finding that some quantum features are simply unobservable. Most remarkably, this approach shows that something called quantum nonlocality disappears for objects big enough to contain roughly the Avogadro number of atoms?the number of atoms you?d expect in a few grams of matter.

The idea of quantum nonlocality goes back to a seminal paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (EPR) published in 1935. They described a simple thought experiment which showed that quantum theory cannot be reconciled with two common-sense and very reasonable assumptions about the fabric of reality, namely, locality (there?is no ?spooky action at a distance?) and realism (measurements reveal objective properties of physical systems).

Their ingenious test exploits the notion of ?correlations,? something that we encounter in everyday life. For example, if a clock in New York strikes midnight, then we know that at the same time a clock in Singapore strikes noon. The EPR experiment tests what kind of correlations one can observe between measurements performed on quantum particles, highlighting that quantum correlations can be stronger than the logic of locality and realism dictates. Since then, experiments have confirmed quantum theory?s predictions, forcing physicists to accept that the fabric of reality is nonlocal, nonrealistic or both!

The problem then becomes how to reconcile the local realism of the macroscopic world?the moon and other big objects really do follow these two common-sense assumptions?with quantum theory. We solve this problem: we show that macroscopic observables are always local realistic even when the underlying states are quantum.

When one measures large systems, it is impossible to do it precisely. For instance, if you have a gas in a container, you can measure its pressure, temperature, etc., but you cannot measure the velocities of all the particles of the gas. This translates technically to a limited set of observables that are average properties of the system.

Our result derives from this concept of macroscopic observables being a kind of average. There is a limit to the number of quantum correlations each particle can have with another, which is referred to as the ?monogamy? of quantum correlations. The concept is simple: if particles A and B exhibit correlations of the kind predicted in the EPR experiment then A and B can only have local and realistic correlations with other particles.

This monogamous behaviour extends to correlations between larger groups of quantum particles, which is the main idea behind our result. Imagine you are making a macroscopic measurement between two regions in space, A, containing quantum particles A1, A2, A3, etc., and B, containing B1, B2, B3, etc. The measurement samples all possible pairs. Due to monogamy, as you increase the number of particles, the overall strength of the correlations measured dilutes. For instance, A_iB_j may be strongly correlated but then A_i and any other B-particle exhibit only local realistic correlations (see figure). Analysing the statistics, we find that local realism emerges for macroscopic correlations without us needing to invoke any other mechanism.

This doesn?t mean there are no macroscopic quantum effects, just that any such effects will be too weak to demonstrate themselves in as bizarre a way as they do on the microscopic level. Whatever quantumness is present can never be strong enough to contradict local realism. It is, after all, reassuring to know that the moon is there when you don?t look at it. What the remaining quantumness in the macroscopic world means is unclear at this stage. The debates will surely rumble on.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=4f6223ab3a519cf9cc6ac506ce76d3dc

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