To read Ms. Paley’s fiction is to be awash in the shouts and murmurs of secular Yiddishkeit, with its wild onrushing joy and twilight melancholy. For her, cadence and character went hand in hand: her stories are marked by their minute attention to language, with its tonal rise and fall, hairpin rhetorical reversals and capacity for delicious hyperbolic understatement. Her stories, many of which are written in the first person and seem to start in mid-conversation, beg to be read aloud.
More than 50 pit bulls seized from Michael Vick’s property must be claimed by today, or they could be euthanized.
Federal prosecutors filed court documents last month to condemn 53 pit bulls seized in April as part of the investigation into dogfighting on Vick’s property. No one has claimed any of the dogs, which are being held at several unspecified shelters in eastern Virginia.
Federal prosecutors declined to comment Wednesday on the seized dogs. Typically, when confiscated property goes unclaimed, the government asks the court to have the items declared forfeited. In this case, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson will make the final decision on the dogs’ fate.
“There’s no dispute over who owns the dogs,” said Daphna Nachminovitch, a spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “Obviously this is not going to be a process where someone steps forward and says, ‘This is my dog, can I have her back, please?’ ”
Although Hudson, who also is handling Vick’s criminal case, will determine what becomes of the pit bulls, Nachminovitch said it’s likely that they will be euthanized because they’re not adoptable as pets.
“These dogs are a ticking time bomb,” she said. “Rehabilitating fighting dogs is not in the cards. It’s widely accepted that euthanasia is the most humane thing for them.”
Flexitarian Cookbook
Believe it or not, it's possible for vegetarians and meat-lovers to share a meal. Chef Peter Berley provides recipes that work equally well meatless or meat-full in a new cookbook called The Flexitarian Table. Flexetarianism is part-time vegetarianism, with an emphasis on grains, lean proteins, and beans.
The Flexitarian Table is available for purchase at amazon.com
Imagine you’re a film distributor, handling an experimental movie by one of the country’s most iconoclastic directors. The subject is an enigmatic occasional recluse who is being portrayed by four actors, an actress and a 13-year-old boy. Where do you open that film?
If you’re very lucky, you get to book it at Film Forum, perhaps the most exclusive art-house cinema in Manhattan.
WONDERWALL (1968)
An eccentric, lovable scientist falls in love with the girl next door - in an unusual way. Set in 1960's London, Wonderwall tells the story of a reclusive professor who becomes obsessed with a stunning model called Penny Lane. A psychedelic fantasy steeped in voyeurism, this film features a musical score by George Harrison with musical contributions from Eric Clapton and Ravi Shankar. Dutch designers The Fool, were set designers for the movie.
I like this film; but I like strange, psychedelic films so view it with caution it that's not your usual fare. It may remind you somewhat of Jodorowsky or Fellini. It's been showing on television lately and you can also get it at Netflix and at Yahoo!.
Unfortunately, these more aggressive throttling methods can’t be circumvented by simply enabling encryption in your BitTorrent client. It is reported that Comcast is using an application from Sandvine to throttle BitTorrent traffic. Sandvine breaks every (seed) connection with new peers after a few seconds if it’s not a Comcast user. This makes it virtually impossible to seed a file, especially in small swarms without any Comcast users. Some users report that they can still connect to a few peers, but most of the Comcast customers see a significant drop in their upload speed.
The throttling works like this: A few seconds after you connect to someone in the swarm the Sandvine application sends a peer reset message (RST flag) and the upload immediately stops. Most vulnerable are users in a relatively small swarm where you only have a couple of peers you can upload the file to. Only seeding seems to be prevented, most users are able to upload to others while the download is still going, but once the download is finished, the upload speed drops to 0. Some users also report a significant drop in their download speeds, but this seems to be less widespread. Worse on private trackers, likely that this is because of the smaller swarm size