Y Combinator-backed Verbling, a site that aims to connect language leaners with native speakers via live video chat, has raised $1 million from DFJ, Learn Capital, Start Fund, Inspovation Ventures, SV Angel, Meck Investments, Ace & Company and others. The new funding will be used towards hiring. Here’s how Verbling works. The site allows you to sign up and choose the language you want to learn. Once you join the site, you are automatically paired with a language speaker who is fluent in the language you wish to learn. The site encourages users to talk to a number of different speakers within each session.
WASHINGTON ? Photographer Annie Leibovitz says she has come back from some dark days and revived her creativity with a new photography project now on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum that marks a departure from her popular celebrity portraits.
Two years ago, Leibovitz was facing millions in debt and a mismanaged fortune that nearly cost her legal rights to some of pop culture’s most memorable images she created. The ordeal was a good lesson in managing her business, Leibovitz said, but left her “emotionally and mentally depleted.”
On Tuesday, she led a tour through the photographs she says renewed her inspiration with a few road trips through U.S. history. The idea grew out of a book she had wanted to make with her partner, Susan Sontag, with a list of destinations and an excuse to visit them. After Sontag died, she eventually revived the idea with her young children.
It began with a six-hour drive to Niagara Falls during her financial troubles only to find out her credit card had been rejected at a hotel and their rooms had been given away. While they found another place to stay, Leibovitz was upset wanted to go home. But she agreed to go to a lookout point over the waterfalls with her kids.
“I was sitting off to the side, feeling a little down, and I saw my children mesmerized, studying the falls,” she said. “And I walked over, stood behind them … and I took this picture.”
It’s a snapshot anyone could have taken, she said: an image that captures the blue-green water before it plunges over the falls. Soon she began thinking of other places to visit.
The images that would become “Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage” include depictions of landscapes and people, but no faces. Instead, Leibovitz photographed historic objects and scenes, including the homes of “Little Women” author Louisa May Alcott, essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, entertainer Elvis Presley and others.
“I was swept away when I walked into these places,” she said. “I found myself taking pictures and not thinking about any consequences. I was seduced.”
There were obstacles, though. One was coming to terms with photographing objects, she said, and finding a way to give them some emotion. She began creating close-up images, as with a nightdress worn by Emily Dickinson when she was known for roaming around her house in a nightgown. Leibovitz zoomed in on the intricate detail.
“That is not my kind of picture. I mean, I don’t ever come in tight like that,” Leibovitz said. “It’s not me.”
It’s also her first all-digital photography show. Leibovitz said she is still learning about new technology and about herself.
“This is an amazing time to be a photographer,” she said. “I discovered things about myself which were really comforting, that the work had a deep well, that it wasn’t going to go away.”
She also learned it was a mistake to leave her business affairs to others to manage.
“I mean, I had a great ride,” she said. “I was like a girl who went out and took pictures, and everyone else took care of everything else. Now I really do need to take care of everything.”
Leibovitz didn’t discuss the status of her debt but said she has good business advisers. “I’m back, for all intents and purposes,” she said.
Her travels for “Pilgrimage” produced images of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s couch, sharpshooter Annie Oakley’s heart-shaped shooting target, Presley’s Harley-Davidson and a TV he once shot with a gun at Graceland.
As a nod to Sontag, Leibovitz visited the home of Virginia Woolf, one of her partner’s favorite writers, where she was happy to learn such a brilliant person could have such a messy studio, she said.
Andy Grundberg, guest curator for the show and a dean at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, said Leibovitz is presenting cultural history in a new way.
“She’s trying to convey a sense of people without the people actually being there in front of the camera,” he said of Leibovitz’ travels. “She was kind of bushwhacking through our cultural legacy and figuring it out as she went along.”
In some cases, one destination would lead to several others. Leibovitz was fascinated with the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which led her to find Lincoln’s top hat at the Smithsonian, models for Lincoln’s statue in the studio of sculptor Daniel Chester French, and to a concert gown of Marian Anderson, who sang at the memorial when she was shut out of a segregated concert hall.
Leibovitz eventually compiled the project into a book that evolved into the new exhibit. The show is on view in Washington through May 20 and then will travel to U.S. museums through 2014.
Leibovitz said she pursued her new project to protect her lucrative portrait work and to go back to it revived.
“It’s a project I did for myself. I wanted to be seduced into a photograph and not make it up,” she said. “And I wanted to take my time.”
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Smithsonian American Art Museum: http://americanart.si.edu
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Brett Zongker can be reached at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat
You?ve seen the advertisements about 4G cell phone speeds all over, but Verizon Wireless will tell you that only their 4G LTE network is truly FAST.
Now, as reported by CNN, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile are getting their ?4G networks? just as fast as Verizon Wireless? 4G network.
The phone/tablet ?in this picture is the Samsung Galaxy Note, available on AT&T?s networks.
If you?re on a 4G network but are not experiencing fast speeds, here?s a few reasons why you might want to upgrade your phone to the faster 4G network.
Video conference ? While on the road it?s now even more practical to conduct a live video conference with one or more people.
Fast video download ? When you visit your next hot prospect or customer you can now safely download or stream video and know that it will look good when you show it to them. You can do more than show paper documents or talk to them, you can show them video.
Remote file access ? accessing remote files (from an online server or on premise service in the office) is even a better experience as the files will download fast
These are just three reasons why you might want to consider upgrading your phone to ensure it?s operating on the fasted 4G network possible. Keep in mind that being on a 4G network does not mean you?ll get 4G speeds all the time. If you?re in a place that only offers 3G ? that?s what you?ll get at that time.
TUESDAY, Jan. 24 (HealthDay News) — People without jobs who have health insurance are less likely to get medical care or prescription drugs than people with jobs who have such coverage, U.S. health officials reported Tuesday.
During the depths of the recent recession, unemployment reached 9.6 percent, a level not seen since 1983. Because health insurance affects access to care and most people rely on getting insured through their employer, researchers wanted to look at the effect of unemployment and lower income on access to health care, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Insurance without a job is a difficult position to be in,” said report author Anne Driscoll, a senior fellow at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
In the study, Driscoll and her colleague, Amy Bernstein, wanted to find out whether having private, public or no insurance mattered if you were employed or unemployed.
They found that private insurance, which experts think is the most comprehensive, was no guarantee of better health care.
“If you had private insurance but weren’t employed, you had worse mental health, worse physical health and were less likely to get prescriptions you needed or care that you needed than if you had a job,” Driscoll said.
Cost of care appears to be the overriding factor why having private insurance and no job was associated with lack of access to care, she said.
“Because you don’t have a job, deductibles and co-payments are the reasons you can’t use your insurance to the fullest. You’re better having insurance than no insurance, but it’s not a panacea. A job and insurance is the most advantageous category to be in, not just being insured,” Driscoll said.
For their study, the authors used data from the 2009 and 2010 U.S. National Health Interview Survey and compared the health insurance status, health and access to health care of employed and unemployed adults aged 18 to 64.
Highlights of the report include:
48 percent of unemployed adults had health insurance, compared with 81 percent of employed adults.
More of the unemployed had public insurance than those employed.
The unemployed had worse physical and mental health than the employed, whether they had insurance or not.
The insured unemployed were less likely to get medical care because of cost than the insured employed.
The insured unemployed were less likely to get prescription drugs because of cost than the insured employed.
The uninsured were less likely to get medical care and prescription drugs because of cost than people with public or private insurance, regardless of whether they had jobs or not.
The unemployed were more likely to be black, have less than a high school education and have an income below the poverty level.
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a visiting professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, doesn’t hold out hope that health care reform will make things better for the unemployed.
“During the recession, the use of health care plummeted. We had a 19.5 percent drop in primary care in the United States,” she said.
This study shows that even if people lost their jobs and held onto their insurance, they couldn’t afford to use health care, Woolhandler said.
“That’s a uniquely American issue because we have such high co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services that people can’t afford to use care,” she said.
Woolhandler noted that health care reform will help some people because the number of uninsured is expected to be cut by over half.
“While there will still be 23 million uninsured after health reform is fully implemented, it’s a whole lot less than it would be otherwise,” she said.
But, having health insurance will not mean that you can afford care if you lose your job, Woolhandler added.
“It will be a little worse after health reform, because the new policies that will be offered will be quite a bit skimpier than an employer policy is now. And there will be high co-pays, high deductibles. So even if you hang on to your insurance you likely won’t be able to afford care,” she said.
More information
For more on health insurance, visit the Commonwealth Fund.
BILLINGS, Mont. ? Test results from huge piles of woodchips that were being sold from a Montana Superfund site for use in landscaping show they contain some asbestos, but at levels so low federal officials said they measured no danger to humans.
The results obtained Friday by The Associated Press appear to offer a rare bit of relief for the town of Libby, where widespread asbestos contamination has killed an estimated 400 people and sickened 1,750.
The tests followed concerns raised by residents, local officials and business owners who bought loads of the wood chips to spread around their homes, in parks and for use as erosion control. Thousands of tons were shipped out of the Libby area, and the sales went on for years before federal regulators stepped in last year to halt the practice.
But the new results from the Environmental Protection Agency found no asbestos in air tests designed to mimic human exposure from spreading the wood chips. The agency said a “very low level” of asbestos was found in one of 15 chip samples.
“It was all good news,” said Rebecca Thomas of the EPA’s regional headquarters in Denver. “There simply is no measured exposure.”
It remained uncertain whether sale of the wood chips will resume. The head of the local economic development agency that was selling the material cited lingering uncertainties over the dangers posed by Libby’s asbestos because the EPA has yet to complete its risk assessment for the town.
Initial results from that pending study on the toxicity of Libby asbestos has found even minute amounts of the asbestos fibers can cause non-cancerous illnesses.
“We might not allow it to be taken until the final results are out on the tox study,” said Paul Rummelhart, executive director of the Kootenai River Development Co., which controls the abandoned timber mill that contains the sprawling, open-air piles of wood chips.
Libby councilman and landscaping business owner Allen Olsen said he won’t use the wood chips despite the results.
Olsen, who used the material by the truckload in the past, said he has developed a mistrust of the EPA in the decade that it has overseen the cleanup in Libby that cost more than $370 million to date.
“I absolutely, positively will not sell it or let a person have any of it,” Olsen said Friday. “There’s just been too many controversies.”
Samples of the wood chips and bark were first collected in 2007, and subsequent tests found asbestos in four of 20 samples analyzed under an electron microscope. The EPA at the time did not attempt to quantify how much asbestos was present.
The AP reported last July that more than 15,000 tons of the chips and bark were sold or distributed and much of that material shipped across the country, despite evidence it contained an unknown level of asbestos.
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This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?The Third Robotech War?. Anything posted here will also show up there.
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Robotech, sign me up.
I’m a dreamcatcher but only nightmares I caught.
ZeroTolerance
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Alright then, post your character if you wish
Lufia
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Sign me up good man, I’m up for some serious Robo-ass whooping!
BTW, where’s a good place to look for pics of the Mechs? I can’t find any with all 3 forms.
Commisar_Gaunt
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Y Combinator-backed Verbling, a site that aims to connect language leaners with native speakers via live video chat, has raised $1 million from DFJ, Learn Capital, Start Fund, Inspovation Ventures, SV Angel, Meck Investments, Ace & Company and others. The new funding will be used towards hiring. Here’s how Verbling works. The site allows you to sign up and choose the language you want to learn. Once you join the site, you are automatically paired with a language speaker who is fluent in the language you wish to learn. The site encourages users to talk to a number of different speakers within each session.
You?ve seen the advertisements about 4G cell phone speeds all over, but Verizon Wireless will tell you that only their 4G LTE network is truly FAST.
