Military veterans and volunteer guides come together for a week of muskie fishing

• Veterans and guides participating in this year's Operation Muskie

Veterans and guides participating in this year's Operation Muskie watch and listen as Wisconsin fishing guide Norm Wild demonstrates casting and muskie fishing techniques Monday at Walsh's Bay Store Camp on Oak Island of Lake of the Woods. Now in its sixth year, Operation Muskie pairs 20 veterans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan with 10 guides who volunteer their services to take the soldiers muskie fishing for four days. (Brad Dokken photo)

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OAK ISLAND, on Lake of the Woods ? The fish did what muskies often do, appearing beside the boat seemingly out of nowhere Monday afternoon, just minutes into Rich Thorpe?s muskie excursion on the Ontario side of Lake of the Woods.

The follow ? as it?s known in muskie-speak ? didn?t result in a hookup, but it set the stage for a week Thorpe and 19 other anglers won?t soon forget.

A master sergeant at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, Thorpe was one of 20 veterans selected to participate in the sixth annual ?Operation Muskie? on Lake of the Woods.

Walsh?s Bay Store Camp on Oak Island hosts Operation Muskie, which this year featured veterans from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Nebraska and Massachusetts. The event pairs the veterans with 10 topnotch muskie guides who volunteer their services for the week.

Operation Muskie wrapped up Friday morning.

?I sit in Boston dreaming to be up here in this ? I don?t know what you?d call it ? a sportsman?s paradise, a fisherman?s dream,? said Thorpe, a New Jersey native who was stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base from 2004 to 2010. ?You see the pictures, but you don?t really realize what you?re getting into until you get up here and experience it firsthand.?

How it started

According to Dick Pearson, a South Dakota muskie fishing authority and author of the book, ?Muskies on the Shield? and producer of a DVD with the same name, the idea for Operation Muskie developed from a soldier?s request to go fishing after a deployment to Iraq.

Pearson, who has a cabin on Oak Island and logs hundreds of hours fishing muskies, had sent copies of his books and DVDs to soldiers in Iraq and was corresponding with a few of the veterans.

He contacted Frank and Laura Walsh, island neighbors who own Walsh?s Bay Store Camp, to check on reserving a cabin.

Round up, 19 more veterans, they told him, and they?d turn over the camp for a week.

?We figured we could come up with 10 guides and 20 vets a year, so we decided to give it a try,? Pearson said. ?It was just an amazing experience and a tremendous success so we kept doing it.?

With this year?s Operation Muskie, organizers have entertained 120 veterans since 2008, Pearson said. All of the veterans have served deployments in either Iraq or Afghanistan, and Operation Muskie is a way of thanking them for their service.

?It?s an emotional thing for me,? Pearson said. ?It?s just so inspiring. You see the vets arriving, and I hate to use the word skeptical, but they?re looking, ?Where?s the catch, can it really be what it sounds like?? And by the end of the first evening, it?s a total different atmosphere. They?re happy, they?re laughing, they?ve caught a fish or they?ve had an experience.

?It?s just a great thing.?

Staying involved

Jeff Wiegand and Chris Green participated in the first Operation Muskie in 2008 and found the experience so moving they decided to stay involved. The veterans both were serving in Iraq when they heard about Operation Muskie and said being selected helped make the time overseas go by faster.

?It was so important to us and meant so much to us that we wanted to be part of this organization and provide other veterans an opportunity like we received,? said Wiegand, Sun Prairie, Wis., who was deployed to Iraq six times. ?It really has been life changing because we love it, helping take care of the veterans and giving them the opportunity and working with so many neat guides and Operation Muskie staff.?

Operation Muskie today is a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a board of directors and volunteers who help with everything from fundraising to soliciting donations of fishing gear and other supplies. An online auction is the big fundraising event of the year, and sponsors include companies, private individuals and anonymous donors.

Wiegand is fundraising director, while Green, of Edgerton, Wis., is veteran affairs adviser, overseeing the selection process and coordinating fishing licenses and other documents the veterans need to access Canadian waters.

The hard part, Green said, is notifying the veterans who aren?t selected. As many as 130 veterans have applied for Operation Muskie in a given year.

Operation Muskie covers all of the costs after the veterans get to Warroad, Minn., where they receive a sendoff from a color guard before making the trip by road to the Northwest Angle and by boat to Oak Island.

?It?s cool for us because we know the excitement they?re feeling,? Wiegand said. ?We try to make it where it?s not about catching fish ? it?s about the experience.?

That experience also includes sharing stories. Last year, a guide Wiegand described as ?rough around the edges? pulled him aside and became emotional about the stories he?d heard on the water.

The veteran shared war stories he?d never told anyone and thanked the guide for listening.

?The guide was like, ?wow, you?ll never pull me out of Operation Muskie,?? Wiegand said.

Guide perspectives

Paul Klein of Van Dyne, Wis., hosted Thorpe and Terry Larson of Farmington, Minn., on Monday afternoon. Head guide for Operation Muskie, the Wisconsin muskie fanatic has been involved since the first event in 2008.

?It?s just a great way to say thanks,? Klein said. ?It?s just an unbelievable experience and opportunity.?

Also guiding was Jim Best of Gilbert, Ariz., who has a cabin on Oak Island. Best, who owns a mortgage company, is Operation Muskie?s business adviser, and his wife, Pam, is treasurer.

?It?s been just a riot ? by far my favorite week of the whole year,? Best said. ?I thought about the military when I was younger. There wasn?t anything of importance going on at the time. One of my biggest regrets was not being part of the military, but I can?t say why. This is my way of being part of it.?

Best said he enjoys watching the dynamic between the veterans change throughout the week and hearing their stories, some of which he can?t repeat.

?By the end of the week, they?re best friends and exchanging phone numbers,? he said. ?When it comes down to it, they appreciate each other. The quality of these military guys is just unbelievable, and I?m not sure they all go into the service that way.?

With another Operation Muskie in the books, there?ll be a few months to regroup and reflect before fundraising and selecting veterans for next year begins.

Pearson, the event?s founder, said he never envisioned what Operation Muskie would become.

?We weren?t sure how to do things, but it just turned out to be magical, and it?s gone smoothly every year,? Pearson said. ?They?re just so happy to be here, and it?s such a life-changing event for some of them, and I would think most of them. I don?t think we?ve had a single complaint.?

Thorpe, who boated his first muskie Wednesday afternoon, said he felt right at home on Oak Island.

?The numbers of fish, the follows, the strikes, the scenery, the guides ? it?s been amazing, just unbelievable,? Thorpe said. ?You learn so much from them. We saw some monster fish. This place is absolutely incredible.?

? On the Web:

operationmuskie.com.

baystorecamp.com.

---

Dokken reports on outdoors. Call him at (701) 780-1148; (800) 477-6572, ext. 1148; or send e-mail to bdokken@gfherald.com.

Tags: lake of the woods,?outdoors,?updates,?fishing,?fish,?travel,?muskies,?veterans,?ontario

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Source: http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/267251/

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Our unlikely man in Moscow takes on Putin over human rights, spying and Snowden

Yuri Kochetkov / EPA file

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul leaves the Russian Foreign Ministry headquarters in Moscow, Russia, May 15 2013.

By Jim Maceda, Correspondent, NBC News

MOSCOW -- As fugitive National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden evaded capture in Hong Kong and fled to Moscow, disappearing in an airport transit lounge, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul was on the front lines of efforts to arrest him.

?

According to multiple accounts, McFaul tirelessly worked the phones and social media, focusing pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to "do the right thing" and hand over the 29-year-old?former NSA-contractor. Putin ? typically defiant ? refused.

It was an odd, confrontational role for a diplomat ??but then again, McFaul isn't a typical one.

Ever since the former Stanford University academic and Russia expert arrived?? about a year and a half ago ??in the Spaso House, the traditional residence for U.S. ambassadors, McFaul has been a lightning rod for Russian anger against the West, and specifically, America.

McFaul, a laid-back, 49-year-old Californian as fluent in Los Angeles Lakers basketball as he is in strategic nuclear arms, likes to say he is "no Cold War soldier."

But he hadn't even unpacked his bags when Russia?s main, Kremlin-controlled TV station Channel One ran a lead story about a group of opposition leaders lining up outside Spaso to meet the man who wrote a book titled "Russia?s Unfinished Revolution."

The reporter suggested McFaul had been appointed by President Barack Obama to finish that business.

McFaul has taken it all in stride: the angry chants of "Down with the U.S. Embassy" at pro-Putin demonstrations; the growing anti-Americanism of Putin?s third term as president; his crackdown on U.S. institutions like USAID and Voice of America; the evisceration of the anti-Putin movement and the jailing of its key leaders.

Recently, there has also been a?tit-for-tat over human rights, with Russians accused of abuses being banned from travel to the United States and Americans prohibited by the Kremlin from adopting Russian children.

Above it all is Russia?s military and financial support for Syrian strongman President Bashar Assad.

But, while many in the Obama administration have been criticized for doing little in the face of Putin?s surge, McFaul has turned into a prodigious blogger and tweeter, slowly winning over the hearts and minds of young Russians with his jovial chatter ??he often tweets in Russian.

For example, the tweet below in Russian says: "President Putin on Snowden: 'the faster he chooses the final destination point, the better it will be for us and for him.'"

?

At the same time, McFaul also knows how to pick his fights. When a group of so-called "private security" agents raided the offices of the non-governmental organization For Human Rights and forcibly evicted 71-year-old activist Lev Ponomaryov, leaving him covered in cuts and bruises, McFaul took to Twitter and called the move "another case of intimidation of civil society."

The Putin regime has responded in kind. In May, just as the U.S. ambassador had launched the#AskMcFaul hashtag, a question-and-answer session on Twitter, he was bombarded with questions -- too many to be unplanned -- about the news that Russian authorities had detained a U.S. Embassy employee named Ryan Christopher Fogle.

Fogle allegedly tried to recruit a Russian intelligence agent for the CIA. McFaul managed to ignore the online harassment and focus for a full hour on the positive: good cooperation in law enforcement; the "reset" in U.S.-Russia relations; and his love of the opera. Fogle was later released.

And, this week, even as his boss, Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, was named point man for U.S. efforts to arrest Snowden, McFaul has unleashed his rapid-fire tweeting during the latest stand-off over Snowden?s fate. ?

Reacting to Putin?s claim that he couldn't extradite the American because there was no such treaty between the United States and Russia, McFaul fired off this reminder: "Over last 5 yrs US has returned 1,700 Russian citizens to Russia w/ 500+ of them being criminal deportations" ??a?shrewd talking point followed by more chatter about basketball.

In the end, Snowden may well escape, finding asylum in Ecuador or elsewhere. But it won?t be for lack of effort from America?s unlikely man in Moscow, battling ??and taking the knocks ??from behind the scenes.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London, currently on assignment in Moscow.?

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Vanderbilt dismissed four football players from the team and kicked them off campus while the Nashville police investigate if a sex crime occurred in a campus dormitory. ...

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Egypt violence builds, American among dead

By Abdelrahman Youssef and Tom Perry

ALEXANDRIA/CAIRO (Reuters) - Two people, one an American, were killed when protesters stormed an office of Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood in Alexandria, adding to growing tension ahead of mass rallies aimed at unseating the Islamist president.

A third man was killed and 10 injured in an explosion during a protest in Port Said, at the mouth of the Suez Canal. Police on Saturday said the cause was unclear but protesters, believing it was a bomb, attacked an Islamist party office in the city.

Egypt's leading religious authority warned of "civil war" after violence in the past week that had already left several dead and hundreds injured. They backed President Mohamed Mursi's offer to talk to opposition groups ahead of Sunday's protests.

The United Nations, European Union and United States have appealed for restraint and urged Egypt's deadlocked political leaders to step back from a confrontation threatening the new democracy that emerged from the Arab Spring revolution of 2011.

The U.S. embassy said in a statement it was evacuating non-essential staff and family members and renewed a warning to Americans not to travel to Egypt unless they had to.

The Muslim Brotherhood said eight of its offices had been attacked on Friday, including the one in Alexandria. Officials said more than 70 people had been injured in the clashes in the city. One was shot dead and a young American man who was using a small camera died after being stabbed in the chest.

A Brotherhood member was also killed overnight in an attack on a party office at Zagazig, in the heavily populated Nile Delta, where much of the recent violence has been concentrated. Mursi's movement said five supporters in all had died this week.

"Vigilance is required to ensure we do not slide into civil war," said clerics at Cairo's ancient Al-Azhar institute, one of the most influential centers of scholarship in the Muslim world.

In a statement broadly supportive of Mursi, they backed his offer of dialogue and blamed "criminal gangs" who besieged mosques for the violence. The Brotherhood warned of "dire consequences" and "a violent spiral of anarchy".

It accused liberal leaders, including former U.N. diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei, of personally inciting violence by hired "thugs" once loyal to ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Opposition leaders condemned the violence. The army, which has warned it could intervene if political leaders lose control, issued a statement saying it had deployed across the country to protect citizens and installations of national importance.

In the capital, Cairo, tens of thousands turned out for rival events some miles apart and there was little trouble. An Islamist rally included calls to reconciliation. On Tahrir Square, cradle of the uprising against Mubarak, there was a festive atmosphere and a determination to shake Mursi on Sunday.

In Alexandria, as several thousand anti-Mursi protesters marched along the seafront, a Reuters reporter saw about a dozen men throw rocks at guards outside the Brotherhood office. They responded. Bricks and bottles flew. Guns were fired.

Officials said dozens were wounded by birdshot. The party office was ransacked and documents were burned, watched by jubilant youths chanting against Egypt's Islamist leaders.

In Port Said, a bastion of anti-Islamist sentiment, police had suspected an accident but later said a device exploded among protesters. Canal traffic has not been affected by violence.

CAIRO CALM

Islamists gathered round a Cairo mosque after weekly prayers to show support for Mursi. His opponents hope millions will turn out on Sunday to demand he step down, a year to the day after he was sworn in as Egypt's first freely chosen leader.

Mursi, backed by the Brotherhood, has dismissed such demands as an assault on democracy, setting up an angry confrontation.

"I came to support the legitimate order," said Ahmed al-Maghrabi, 37, a shopkeeper from the Nile Delta city of Mansoura whose hand bore grazes from street fighting there this week. "I am with the elected president. He needs to see out his term."

Some speakers reflected fear and anger among Islamists that opponents aim to suppress them as Mubarak did. But there was also talk from the podium of the need for dialogue - a concern also of international powers worried by the bitter polarization.

A few hundred opposition protesters gathered outside the presidential palace, a focus for Sunday's rally. Mursi has moved elsewhere. Thousands turned out after dark in Tahrir Square, waving national flags and sampling street food.

Abdelhamid Nada, a 32-year-old accountant, had come from the provinces with eight friends to camp out "until Mursi goes". "The Muslim Brotherhood has no plan at all," he said, standing by his white tent. "They don't have any economic plan, they don't have any social plan, they don't have any political plan."

STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE

The army, which heeded mass protests in early 2011 to push Mubarak aside, has warned it will intervene again if there is violence, and to defend the "will of the people". Both sides believe that means the military may support their positions.

The United States, which funds Egypt's army as it did under Mubarak, has urged compromise and respect for election results. Egypt's 84 million people, control of Suez and its peace treaty with Israel all contribute to its global strategic importance.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon urged Egyptians to respect "universal principles of peaceful dialogue". European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called for peaceful protests, building trust and a "spirit of dialogue and tolerance".

In Alexandria, opposition marchers said they feared the Brotherhood was usurping the revolution to entrench its power and Islamic law. Others had economic grievances, among them huge lines for fuel caused by supply problems and panic buying.

"I've nothing to do with politics, but with the state we're in now, even a stone would cry out," said 42-year-old accountant Mohamed Abdel Latif. "There are no services, we can't find diesel or gasoline. We elected Mursi, but this is enough.

"Let him make way for someone else who can fix it."

It is hard to gauge how many may turn out on Sunday, but even those sympathetic to Islamic ideas are frustrated by the economic slump and many blame the government.

Previous protest movements since the fall of Mubarak have failed to gather momentum, however, among a population anxious for stability and fearful of further economic hardship.

(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh, Alexander Dziadosz, Omar Fahmy and Alastair Macdonald in Cairo; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Peter Graff, Kevin Liffey and Jackie Frank)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-clerics-warn-civil-war-urge-calm-102131532.html

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Rolocule turns your iPhone and Apple TV into a Wii-style gaming system (video)

If you've ever wanted to hurl your iPhone through your TV while enthusiastically playing tennis, now's your chance. This week, Rolocule Games launched an iOS app -- Motion Tennis -- that turns your Apple TV into a Wii-esque gaming console. To connect devices to Apple TVs, the game relies on AirPlay Mirroring, which can be toggled on in the settings menu. Once your iOS device has been transformed into a tennis racket, you can control the action on your screen -- just be sure to strap the phone to your wrist, lest you become the poor sod to launch a new meme. If Wimbledon's whetted your appetite for more tennis, you can find the game on iTunes or watch the video after the break.

Filed under: Gaming, Software

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Via: AllThingsD

Source: iTunes, Rolocule Games

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Kerry plunges back into Mideast peace diplomacy

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry plunged back into the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Thursday, using Jordan as a base for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In is fifth visit to the region to try to restart peace talks, Kerry held a four-hour dinner meeting with Netanyahu that stretched into Friday morning. He was to have lunch with Abbas on Friday in Amman, and more meetings could be in the offing.

Kerry left Amman on Thursday evening in a convoy of nearly a dozen vehicles for the roughly 90-minute drive to Jerusalem. A Jordanian military helicopter flew over his convoy during the trip, according to a reporter who was allowed to make the trip with Kerry and his delegation.

Netanyahu was about an hour late, apparently telling Kerry that he was delayed because he had been attending a graduation ceremony for Israeli military pilots. They started talking around 9:30 p.m. local time in a suite at a hotel in Jerusalem and ended their discussion around 1:30 a.m. Friday.

There were no immediate readouts of the discussion from Israeli or U.S. officials.

U.S. State department officials say that while there are no scheduled plans for any three-way discussion during Kerry's trip, they are confident that both sides are open to negotiations, or at least sitting down together at the same table to restart talks that broke down in 2008.

Kerry, they say, will continue to try to find common ground between the two sides that would lead to a re-launching of peace talks. On this trip, Kerry is trying to pin down precisely what conditions Abbas and Netanyahu have for restarting talks and perhaps discuss confidence-building measures.

Beyond that, Kerry wants to talk about the positive outcomes, such as enhanced economic growth, of a two-state solution. But at the same time, the secretary, who has long-time relationships with officials from both sides, will remind them of what's at stake if the conflict is left unresolved, they said.

Earlier this month, in a speech to the American Jewish Committee Global Forum in Washington, Kerry warned of serious consequences if no deal is reached.

"Think about what could happen next door," he told the Jewish audience. " The Palestinian Authority has committed itself to a policy of nonviolence. ... Up until recently, not one Israeli died from anything that happened from the West Bank until there was a settler killed about a month ago.

"But if that experiment is allowed to fail, ask yourselves: What will replace it? What will happen if the Palestinian economy implodes, if the Palestinian Security Forces dissolve, if the Palestinian Authority fails? ... The failure of the moderate Palestinian leadership could very well invite the rise of the very thing that we want to avoid: the same extremism in the West Bank that we have seen in Gaza or from southern Lebanon."

So far, there have been no public signals that the two sides are narrowing their differences.

Abbas has said he won't negotiate unless Israel stops building settlements on war-won lands or accepts its 1967 lines ? before the capture of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in a Mideast war that year ? as a starting point for border talks. The Palestinians claim all three areas for their future state.

Netanyahu has rejected the Palestinian demands, saying there should be no pre-conditions ? though his predecessor conducted talks on the basis of the pre-1967 lines, and the international community views the settlements as illegal or illegitimate.

Earlier on Thursday, Kerry talked about the crisis in Syria and the Mideast peace process over lunch with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

In a statement, the Royal Palace said Abdullah told Kerry that he will continue trying to bridge the gaps in the viewpoints of Palestinians and Israelis. But he warned that Israel's "unilateral actions, which include continuous Israeli trespassing on Christian and Muslim holy sites, undermine chances for peace."

On Wednesday, an Israeli planning committee gave the final approval for construction of dozens of new homes in a settlement in east Jerusalem. The announcement, which was made the day before Kerry's visit, appeared to be an Israeli snub at the secretary of state's latest round of Mideast diplomacy.

Officials traveling with Kerry sought to minimize the significance of the announcement, saying the U.S. has repeatedly said that continued construction of settlements were unhelpful to efforts to restart the talks. The settlements are part of the Har Homa area of east Jerusalem. The Obama administration said it was "deeply concerned" back in 2011 when an Israeli planning commission approved 930 new housing units in the Har Homa neighborhood.

The Palestinian side condemned the announcement.

"Such behavior proves that the Israeli government is determined to undermine Secretary Kerry's efforts at every level," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

___

Associated Press writer Jamal Halaby in Amman contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-plunges-back-mideast-peace-diplomacy-154841578.html

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Phoenix, Las Vegas bake in scorching heat

PHOENIX (AP) ? A blazing heat wave expected to send the mercury soaring to nearly 120 degrees in Phoenix and Las Vegas over the weekend has settled across the West, threatening to ground airliners and forcing cities to set up cooling stations for the homeless and elderly.

The heat was so punishing that rangers took up positions at trailheads at Lake Mead in Nevada to persuade people not to hike. Zookeepers in Phoenix hosed down the elephants and fed tigers frozen fish snacks. And tourists at California's Death Valley took photos of the harsh landscape and a thermometer that read 121.

The mercury there was expected to reach nearly 130 through the weekend ? just short of the 134-degree reading from a century ago that stands as the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

"You have to take a picture of something like this. Otherwise no one will believe you," said Laura McAlpine, visiting Death Valley from Scotland on Friday.

The heat is not expected to break until Monday or Tuesday.

The scorching weather presented problems for airlines because high temperatures can make it more difficult for planes to take off. Hot air reduces lift and also can diminish engine performance. Planes taking off in the heat may need longer runways or may have to shed weight by carrying less fuel or cargo.

Smaller jets and propeller planes are more likely to be affected than bigger airliners that are better equipped for extreme temperatures.

The National Weather Service said Phoenix reached 116 on Friday, two degrees short of the expected high, in part because of a light layer of smoke from wildfires in neighboring New Mexico that shielded the blazing sun. Las Vegas still was expecting near record highs over the weekend approaching 116 degrees while Phoenix was forecast to hit nearly 120. The record in Phoenix is 122.

Temperatures are also expected to soar across Utah and into Wyoming and Idaho, with triple-digit heat forecast for the Boise area. Cities in Washington state that are better known for cool, rainy weather should break the 90s next week.

"This is the hottest time of the year, but the temperatures that we'll be looking at for Friday through Sunday, they'll be toward the top," said National Weather Service meteorologist Mark O'Malley. "It's going to be baking hot across much of the entire West."

The heat is the result of a high-pressure system brought on by a shift in the jet stream, the high-altitude air current that dictates weather patterns. The jet stream has been more erratic in the past few years.

Health officials warned people to be extremely careful when venturing outdoors. The risks include not only dehydration and heat stroke but burns from the concrete and asphalt.

"You will see people who go out walking with their dog at noon or in the middle of the day and don't bring enough water and it gets tragic pretty quickly," said Bretta Nelson, spokeswoman for the Arizona Humane Society. "You just don't want to find out the hard way."

Cooling stations were set up to shelter the homeless as well as elderly people who can't afford to run their air conditioners. In Phoenix, Joe Arpaio, the famously hard-nosed sheriff who runs a tent jail, planned to distribute ice cream and cold towels to inmates this weekend.

Officials said personnel were added to the Border Patrol search-and-rescue unit because of the danger to people trying to slip across the Mexican border. At least seven people have been found dead in the last week in Arizona after falling victim to the brutal desert heat.

In June 1990, when Phoenix hit 122 degrees, airlines were forced to cease flights for several hours because of a lack of data from the manufacturers on how the aircraft would operate in such extreme heat.

US Airways spokesman Todd Lehmacher said the airline now knows that its Boeings can fly at up to 126 degrees, and its Airbus fleet can operate at up to 127.

While the heat in Las Vegas is expected to peak on Sunday, it's unlikely to sideline the first round of the four-week Bikini Invitational tournament.

"I feel sorry for those poor girls having to strut themselves in 115 degrees, but there's $100,000 up for grabs," said Hard Rock casino spokeswoman Abigail Miller. "I think the girls are willing to make the sacrifice."

___

Carlson contributed in Death Valley, Calif. Also contributing were Robert Jablon in Los Angeles, Julie Jacobson and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas, Michelle Price in Salt Lake City, Cristina Silva and Bob Christie in Phoenix and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, N.M.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/phoenix-las-vegas-bake-scorching-heat-202602575.html

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Behold the First Images of the Official Lego Back to the Future Set!

Brick News has obtained photos of the official Lego Back to the Future set, including the minifigs for Marty McFly and Doc Brown. As you can see, it's more elaborated than the version approved by Lego Cuusoo. You'll be able to create all the three versions of the car using the pieces in this set.

It will be available on July 18, apparently, priced at ?35 in the UK?which will be about $50 in the US. [Brick News]

Source: http://lego.gizmodo.com/behold-the-first-images-of-the-official-lego-back-to-th-578288625

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CrunchGov Essential: How The Internet Helped Gay America Come Out Of The Closet

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NIH to retire most chimps from medical research

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The government is about to retire most of the chimpanzees who've spent their lives in U.S. research labs.

The National Institutes of Health said Wednesday that it will retire about 310 chimps from medical research over the next few years, saying humans' closest relatives "deserve special respect."

The agency will keep only 50 other chimps essentially on retainer ? available if needed for crucial medical studies that could be performed no other way.

The decision was long expected, after the prestigious Institute of Medicine declared in 2011 that nearly all use of chimps for invasive medical research no longer can be justified. What's not clear is exactly where all the retiring chimps will spend their final days, as NIH said more space in sanctuaries is needed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nih-retire-most-chimps-medical-research-171442499.html

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A House Divided

Andricia Hinckemann, Abel Jordaan, Emme-Lancia Faro and Phiwe Mathe at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa

Photo by Sonia Small/Kaleidoscope Studios

BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa?Billyboy Ramahlele heard the riot before he saw it. It was a February evening in 1996, autumn in South Africa, when cooling breezes from the Cape of Good Hope push north and turn the hot days of the country?s agricultural heartland into sweet nights, when the city of Bloemfontein?s moonlit trees and cornfields rustle sultrily beneath a vast sky glittering with stars. The 32-year-old dormitory manager at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein was relaxing in front of a wildlife program on the TV with his door open.

Suddenly, he became aware of a new noise. Could it be the trees, rustling in a gust? No, it was heavier, more like trampling. Could it be his TV? He switched it off. The noise grew louder.

Ramahlele got up and poked his head out the door. There he saw the students of the dorm he managed, which housed about 100 black males, some of the first blacks to attend the historically white university since it had integrated four years earlier. And he immediately saw the source of the noise: His boys were stampeding out of the dorm entryway and running toward central campus. Some of them were singing militant songs from an earlier era, when blacks fought against apartheid rule, including one that went?Kill the Boer, a nickname for white Afrikaners. Many were holding sticks or cricket bats.

They said they wanted to confront the white boys on campus. The whites, they claimed, refused to treat them as they should be treated in South Africa?s new democracy, and they wanted to put an end to their insolence once and for all. More than one boy opened up his jacket to show Ramahlele a gun tucked inside.

Racing alongside the group, Ramahlele wasn?t truly worried until he rounded the corner and saw, under the starlight, a line of white boys at least as long as his line of black students, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. ?It looked like an army flank,? he remembered. The whites were also holding cricket bats, cocked on their shoulders like rifles. Unlike his students, they were eerily silent?until, all as one, they opened their mouths and began to sing. The song was Die Stem, the old apartheid-era national anthem.

Ramahlele?s heart sank. He felt as though he might cry. ?The history,? he explained, ?is if they?re singing that, somebody is going to die.?

I first set foot on the University of the Free State (UFS) campus in February of 2010 to study Afrikaans. On paper, the school was integrated: 70 percent of the student body was black. But 15 years after the end of apartheid?the infamous system of racial separation and black oppression that lasted from 1948 until the coming of democracy in 1994?it felt as though apartheid had never ended. The white and black students still seemed to operate in totally different worlds. There were classes in Afrikaans for the whites and classes in English for the blacks, and separate choirs and church services for both. I almost never saw a mixed-race group of students. And they didn?t live together?there were all-white dorms and all-black dorms.

UFS is in the heart of the Free State, the traditional center of Afrikaner power, settled in the mid-19^th century by Dutch settlers who trekked inland in covered wagons from the Dutch East India Company?s colony at the Cape of Good Hope 600 miles southwest. They believed they had been sent to Africa by God to become a new people, the Afrikaners (?Africans? in Dutch), to tame the desert?like the Israelites in Canaan?and turn it into a garden. They plowed the region into a fertile grain belt, setting up a republic and naming a capital, pronounced ?BLOOM-fun-tayn,? meaning ?fountain of blossoms.? The city became a laboratory for the formation of Afrikaner identity. The Afrikaner National Party, the political party that designed apartheid, was established there in 1912. UFS, founded at the same time, was the first South African university to conduct classes in Afrikaans, the Dutch dialect the Afrikaners proudly formalized as part of their new Africa-based ethnicity.

I assumed that old-line attitudes demanding racial separation had never budged in this Afrikaner redoubt. But one day my Afrikaans teacher, Matilda, a warm, arty woman with flowing brown hair, told me there was a much more complicated and disturbing story behind the campus?s racial divide. ?Once, this place was the model of integration,? she lamented over coffee at the campus cafe. Leaning forward conspiratorially over her cup, she gave me a clue. ?Go to a dorm called Karee,? she said, ?and look at a set of photos hanging in the front hall. There, you?ll begin to understand what really happened.?

I went. Karee?named for a drought-resistant tree found in the South African desert?had been built in 1978, as apartheid rule was consolidating and Afrikaans-language universities were expanding. The photos my teacher had mentioned were class photographs. The first dozen or so showed only white boys arranged on the dorm stoop, mugging for the camera. Then, in 1992, a few blacks appeared. There was one looking proud in a mauve suit, and another in a yellow shirt, his hip popped out in a jaunty contrapposto, his lips stretched wide in an enigmatic smile. 1993, 1994, 1995: Every year there were more black students, intermingled with the whites.

And then, in 1997, one year after the riot Billyboy Ramahlele witnessed, something new appeared in the photo: two flags from the age of white supremacy in South Africa?one from the old Afrikaner republic and one from the apartheid state that followed it. They were jarring to see, held high by two white boys in the last row right over the head of a black boy in a wide-brimmed hat. Over the following years, the flags remained, but the black students in the photos disappeared. By 1999, the class photo was all white again, and it stayed that way until 2008, the last year for which there was a picture.

Those images became a consuming mystery for me. UFS hadn?t remained segregated after apartheid?s end?it had integrated and then resegregated later. I wanted to know why the white students raised those ancient flags, and why the black students had left Karee. I uncovered a tale of mutual exhilaration at racial integration giving way to suspicion, anger and even physical violence. It seemed to hold powerful implications well beyond South Africa, about the very nature of social change itself. In our post?civil rights struggle era, we tend to assume progress toward less prejudice and more social tolerance is inevitable?the only variable is speed.

But in Bloemfontein, social progress surged forward. Then it turned back.

Karee is one of about 20 dorms at UFS that house a few hundred students each. The large brick buildings are situated around the edges of the stately, tree-lined campus, like guardians of tradition, which is what they once were. They had legacy admission. If your mother or father had been in a certain dorm, you?d be in that one, too. In one dorm, freshmen wore striped coats. In another, everybody but the seniors walked in through the back door.

In the early 1990s, South Africa?s universities, all public institutions, were required to integrate as part of the country?s transition to multiracial democracy. Then-UFS President Francois Retief, who was tasked with incorporating black students into an all-white campus, worried about the dorms, he explained in the drawing room of his house in an old-age village on the edge of Bloemfontein. Retief seriously considered housing blacks separately from the whites. ?Our dorms were historically more like your fraternities,? he said. ?They had a lot of in-house culture. We called them?die huise [the houses] and their culture was?die tradisies?[the traditions].?

These traditions were arbitrary, but they distinguished one dorm from another and fostered a sense of group pride and belonging. Retief feared that his white students might be reluctant to let blacks partake in their long-standing dorm culture. In 1990, he polled the student body to ask their views. To his great surprise, 86 percent welcomed the idea of housing the new black students in the white dorms. So, starting in 1992, he did just that. And it was a ?roaring success,? he recounted. The first black students ?fit in exactly!?

Lebohang Mathibela was the boy in the mauve suit in the 1992 class photo on the wall in Karee and one of the first eight black students to live in a UFS dorm. Integration ?was beautiful,? he raved when we met at the main campus caf?. Dressed in a cheerful red T-shirt, Mathibela, now 42, hardly looked older than the 21-year-old in the photo, with cheeks as round as a cherub?s and a pealing laugh. Mathibela has had an accomplished career as a linguist, speaking all 11 official South African languages.

UFS wasn?t a natural choice for a black boy from Johannesburg, his hometown. There were two kinds of historically white colleges in South Africa: those that taught in English and those that taught in Afrikaans. (There were also historically black colleges, but they have generally been of lower academic quality.) The English universities cultivated a liberal, multicultural, anti-apartheid identity; they started admitting black students in the 1980s, when it was still technically illegal to do so. The Afrikaans colleges were reputed to be everything the ?English? ones weren?t: conservative, mono-cultural, isolationist. UFS was the most daunting because it was marooned in the grain belt. For most aspirational black college applicants in the 1990s, venturing to UFS would be like choosing Mordor to study.

But UFS was also known for nurturing Afrikaans as a poetic language. That?s what drew Mathibela. In elementary school, he had developed a deep affection for Afrikaans, which was a mandatory school subject under apartheid. It was a mystery to his friends and relatives. ?I decided to come to UFS because of my love of Afrikaans,? he said. ?My mom was so angry. She said to me, ?Other children are going to Wits [the University of the Witwatersrand],? ? Johannesburg?s premier English university. ?She says to me, ?You are not my son anymore!? ?

After he was placed into Karee, he proceeded to fall in love with UFS?s dorm culture. His favorite ritual was freshman initiation. He laughed as he described it to me, because he recognized that it seemed an unlikely memory to cherish. ?We queued blindfolded and half-naked,? he recounted. Seniors painted the freshmen?s bodies in red and yellow stripes to resemble the dorm mascot, a bee. Then they made each initiate drink tomato juice from a toilet bowl. ?It looked like vomit! It was horrible! Guys were really getting sick!? Finally, the freshmen were led to a ?huge drum filled with water, cow dung and grass.? A senior shouted at them to?dyk?dive! ?Then you get out. You?re dripping, smelling like cow dung.?

After the cow-dung dip, the black and white freshmen were instructed to go back to their rooms, shower, change into a jacket and tie, and head to the dorm courtyard, where smiling seniors were waiting to hand them a plate of barbecued meat and a beer. ?You are a member now,? they informed Mathibela. ?Color doesn?t count.?

?I felt proud,? he remembered.

Like Mathibela, most of the first black students to brave UFS were gung-ho about the dorm culture. UFS had been closed to them, and it was thrilling to be let in and to belong. Another former black student who lived in a mostly white dorm in the early 1990s told me he felt like he was ?ascending.?

Their enthusiasm made the white students feel as if they had something worth sharing, bolstering their sense of pride. Mathibela recalls that a white student named Coenraad Jonker pulled him aside. ?Where did you learn to speak such beautiful Afrikaans?? he marveled. ?You are definitely going to make it here.? White students even bent some of the dorm rules to make it easier on the black students.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/06/university_of_the_free_state_in_bloemfontein_s_segregation_how_the_legacy.html

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New Joyent Service Offers Analytics Without Having To Move Data

Data is really hard to move. It becomes pretty much intractable as it increases in mass. Sure it can be pulled out, but that takes time and bandwidth and incurs a host of costs typically associated with using a cloud service. To really get the most of all that stored data, it's increasingly apparent that moving it is not really a good idea. Joyent's new Manta Storage Service puts the compute together with the data in the cloud where it can be processed in one place. The compute is available directly on the object store, meaning that the data can be queried immediately without having to manage all the underlying infrastructure.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/vfuLxt2vOtE/

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Directed police patrols reduce gun crime

Public release date: 25-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Beth Kuhles
kuhles@shsu.edu
936-294-4425
Sam Houston State University

Sam Houston State study receives outstanding paper award

HUNTSVILLE (6/25/13) -- Gun possession arrests made by a concentrated, proactive patrol unit in the Houston Police Department were linked to significant reductions in subsequent crimes involving firearms, a study by Sam Houston State University found.

"These findings add to the growing evidence that supports the use of directed patrols to target illegal gun possession in high crime locations," wrote Dr. William Wells, who co-authored the study with Yan Zhang and Jihong Zhao at SHSU's College of Criminal Justice. "An interesting phenomenon observed in Houston and in other cities is that relatively small numbers of additional gun seizures (and gun possession arrests in the current analysis) generate meaningful results."

The study examined the Houston Police Department's Crime Reduction Unit (CRU), which targets high crime areas with concentrated patrols, frequent contacts with suspicious individuals, and arrests for drug and weapons offenses. An analysis of gun arrests and crime reports shows that the volume of gun possession arrests by the unit had a "significant impact" on offenses committed with guns.

The Houston Police Department introduced the CRU in November 2007, and the study measured results from November 2007 to August 2008. During that time, CRU units concentrated their work in defined, high crime areas across the city and made 197 illegal gun possession arrests.

The study, "The effects of gun possession arrests made by a proactive police patrol unit," was published in Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management and recently was presented the 2013 Outstanding Paper Award from the Emerald Literati Network, a group representing 290 academic journals and 2,000 books.

"Ultimately, an outstanding paper should have that special something something that raises it above all the others and which the editor and Editorial Advisory Board can recognize and define for the rest of us," according to Emerald's Web Site. The Outstanding Paper Award recognizes the contribution of something new to the body of knowledge, excellent structure and presentation, rigorous analysis, relevance to practice, and up-to-date knowledge in the field.

The full text of the study can be found at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=1363-951x&volume=35&issue=2.

"We're honored to receive this recognition for our paper and our study," said Dr. Wells. "We hope this recognition helps shine a light on research findings from multiple cities that show concentrated and focused police patrol work can reduce gun violence. When cities look for ways to reduce street gun violence they should consider using police patrol strategies and tactics that are supported by research."

###

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[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 25-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Beth Kuhles
kuhles@shsu.edu
936-294-4425
Sam Houston State University

Sam Houston State study receives outstanding paper award

HUNTSVILLE (6/25/13) -- Gun possession arrests made by a concentrated, proactive patrol unit in the Houston Police Department were linked to significant reductions in subsequent crimes involving firearms, a study by Sam Houston State University found.

"These findings add to the growing evidence that supports the use of directed patrols to target illegal gun possession in high crime locations," wrote Dr. William Wells, who co-authored the study with Yan Zhang and Jihong Zhao at SHSU's College of Criminal Justice. "An interesting phenomenon observed in Houston and in other cities is that relatively small numbers of additional gun seizures (and gun possession arrests in the current analysis) generate meaningful results."

The study examined the Houston Police Department's Crime Reduction Unit (CRU), which targets high crime areas with concentrated patrols, frequent contacts with suspicious individuals, and arrests for drug and weapons offenses. An analysis of gun arrests and crime reports shows that the volume of gun possession arrests by the unit had a "significant impact" on offenses committed with guns.

The Houston Police Department introduced the CRU in November 2007, and the study measured results from November 2007 to August 2008. During that time, CRU units concentrated their work in defined, high crime areas across the city and made 197 illegal gun possession arrests.

The study, "The effects of gun possession arrests made by a proactive police patrol unit," was published in Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management and recently was presented the 2013 Outstanding Paper Award from the Emerald Literati Network, a group representing 290 academic journals and 2,000 books.

"Ultimately, an outstanding paper should have that special something something that raises it above all the others and which the editor and Editorial Advisory Board can recognize and define for the rest of us," according to Emerald's Web Site. The Outstanding Paper Award recognizes the contribution of something new to the body of knowledge, excellent structure and presentation, rigorous analysis, relevance to practice, and up-to-date knowledge in the field.

The full text of the study can be found at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=1363-951x&volume=35&issue=2.

"We're honored to receive this recognition for our paper and our study," said Dr. Wells. "We hope this recognition helps shine a light on research findings from multiple cities that show concentrated and focused police patrol work can reduce gun violence. When cities look for ways to reduce street gun violence they should consider using police patrol strategies and tactics that are supported by research."

###

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/shsu-dpp062413.php

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Essar Energy full-year earnings beat expectations

(Reuters) - Essar Energy Plc reported better-than-expected full-year earnings as improving refining capacity at its core oil refineries -- Vadinar in India and Stanlow in Britain -- pushed up margins.

The London-listed power, oil and gas arm of privately owned Indian conglomerate Essar Group, said earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation, on a current price basis, was $1.34 billion (872.62 million pounds) in the year ended March 31, compared with a company-provided analysts' estimate of $1.17 billion.

The company this year moved its year-end to March from December, making the previous comparative period a 15 month one.

Full-year refining margins rose 88 percent to $7.96 per barrel of oil at the company's core Essar Oil business, which owns a network of 1,600 franchised gas stations across India.

Essar Energy's assets also include a 50 percent stake in Kenya Petroleum Refinery Ltd, and 2,034 mmboe of reserves and resources at its exploration and production blocks.

Essar Energy's shares, which have shed about 6 percent of their value over the past year, were trading up about 2 percent at 123 pence at 0704 GMT on Monday on the London Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Richa Naidu in Bangalore; Editing by Supriya Kurane)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/essar-energy-full-earnings-beat-expectations-061835169.html

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Ouya

By Will Greenwald

The Ouya is a story of an ambitious idea made manifest. After a successful Kickstarter to raise funds, this Android-based game system has finally seen release beyond development and backer-only versions. This little box is just $99.99 (direct) and comes with everything you need to play games on your HDTV. Sadly, it's also presently an ungainly mess of a consumer product that requires more work than it's worth to get the most out of it.

Before I go into the Ouya itself, an important note: Ouya plans regular software updates that could alleviate most complaints about the system. If those updates successfully fix the problems, we will re-evaluate the Ouya to reflect that. This review is based on the Ouya as it was released to the public at launch, with firmware from June 24, 2013.

Design
The Ouya is a tiny, 3-inch cube with corners that round inward near the base. It has grey sides and a black top with a circular power button with a glowing Ouya logo in the middle, which is the only button and indicator light on the device. The back side of the cube holds an HDMI output, micro and standard USB ports, a power port, and an Ethernet port if you don't want to use the built-in Wi-Fi.

The controller looks like a fairly standard gamepad, with two analog sticks, a direction pad, and four face buttons laid out in an Xbox 360 controller figuration, along with four shoulder buttons and a single Ouya button that serves as the menu button. Two AA batteries fit into cavities in the grips, covered by plastic plates that are held in place on the gamepad with magnets. There are no Start or Select/Back buttons, which I missed in certain games. Four lights on the top edge of the gamepad show if the controller is on and connected, and if multiple controllers are connected, which player that controller is. The middle of the gamepad holds a black rectangle that serves as a touchpad for controlling an on-screen cursor.

The controller sounds nice on paper, but it's sadly close to being outright junk. The touchpad is the worst touchpad I've ever used. It's over-sensitive but unresponsive, making the cursor fly around the screen with only little concern for what my finger is doing. It doesn't click, and it takes patience to tap the touchpad just right to make it register as a tap and not a swipe. The face buttons are nice and responsive, but the shoulder buttons and direction pad feel wiggly, and the analog sticks are overly loose and prone to dead zones and snapback. Ouya is planning an update that will allow the analog stick to control the on-screen cursor instead of the touchpad, which could greatly improve Web browsing and other cursor-based software.

You can connect other Bluetooth controllers to the Ouya, but the support and compatibility for them is inconsistent. I could pair the Moga Pro to the Ouya as an HID device, but that disables the right analog stick and makes the left analog stick act like a digital direction pad. I couldn't connect it in its full, non-HID mode.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/8vkBqL_qpkc/0,2817,2420825,00.asp

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Robo-pets may contribute to quality of life for those with dementia

June 24, 2013 ? Robotic animals can help to improve the quality of life for people with dementia, according to new research.

A study has found that interacting with a therapeutic robot companion made people with mid- to late-stage dementia less anxious and also had a positive influence on their quality of life.

The pilot study, a collaboration led by Professor Wendy Moyle from Griffith University, Australia and involving Northumbria University's Professor Glenda Cook and researchers from institutions in Germany, investigated the effect of interacting with PARO -- a robotic harp seal -- compared with participation in a reading group. The study built on Professor Cook's previous ethnographic work carried out in care homes in North East England.

PARO is fitted with artificial intelligence software and tactile sensors that allow it to respond to touch and sound. It can show emotions such as surprise, happiness and anger, can learn its own name and learns to respond to words that its owner uses frequently.

Eighteen participants, living in a residential aged care facility in Queensland, Australia, took part in activities with PARO for five weeks and also participated in a control reading group activity for the same period. Following both trial periods the impact was assessed, using recognised clinical dementia measurements, for how the activities had influenced the participants' quality of life, tendency to wander, level of apathy, levels of depression and anxiety ratings.

The findings indicated that the robots had a positive, clinically meaningful influence on quality of life, increased levels of pleasure and also reduced displays of anxiety.

Research has already shown that interaction with animals can have a beneficial effect on older adults, increasing their social behaviour and verbal interaction and decreasing feelings of loneliness. However, the presence of animals in residential care home settings can place residents at risk of infection or injury and create additional duties for nursing staff.

This latest study suggests that PARO companions elicit a similar response and could potentially be used in residential settings to help reduce some of the symptoms -- such as agitation, aggression, isolation and loneliness -- of dementia.

Prof Cook, Professor of Nursing at Northumbria University, said: "Our study provides important preliminary support for the idea that robots may present a supplement to activities currently in use and could enhance the life of older adults as therapeutic companions and, in particular, for those with moderate or severe cognitive impairment.

"There is a need for further research, with a larger sample size, and an argument for investing in interventions such as PARO robots which may reduce dementia-related behaviours that make the provision of care challenging as well as costly due to increased use of staff resources and pharmaceutical treatment."

The researchers of the pilot study have identified the need to undertake a larger trial in order to increase the data available. Future studies will also compare the effect of the robot companions with live animals.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/jFB6Ff3OGnY/130624075748.htm

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As court prepares affirmative-action decision, softer standards for men go unnoticed

Syracuse University graduates at the 2012 commencement on May 13, 2012 at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, New York.??

The Supreme Court is poised to release its opinion on an affirmative-action case that could forever change the way public colleges and universities consider race in admissions. But even if, as some predict, the justices issue a broad ruling slapping down the use of race in admissions, an open secret in higher education?that many colleges lower their admissions standards for male applicants?remains unchallenged and largely unremarked upon.

For years, the percentage of men enrolled in college has been declining, with women making up nearly 57 percent of all undergrads at four-year colleges last year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. While schools are prohibited under the federal Title IX law from discriminating based on gender, some admissions officials have admitted in recent years that male applicants get a leg up from colleges hoping to avoid gender imbalances on campus.

Jennifer Delahunty Britz, the dean of admissions at the private liberal arts school Kenyon College, was among the first to admit this when she wrote an op-ed titled "To All the Girls I've Rejected" in The New York Times in 2006.

"The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants," she wrote, adding that two-thirds of colleges report that more women than men apply for admission. "What messages are we sending young women that they must, nearly 25 years after the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, be even more accomplished than men to gain admission to the nation's top colleges?"

Delahunty Britz's acknowledgment opened the floodgates, and reporters began looking closely at schools that admitted a much higher percentage of male than female applicants.

Of course, these gaps don't necessarily mean that women are being discriminated against. It's possible that the male applicant pool is better qualified on average, though that's hard to ascertain when colleges generally resist releasing their admissions data.

The University of Richmond, a private liberal arts school, acknowledged in 2009 that it attempts to keep its gender balance at about 50-50, which meant women's admit rate was about 13 percentage points lower than men's over the previous 10 years. Admissions officer Marilyn Hesser told CBS that men and women had about the same standardized test scores, but that male applicants' GPA was lower on average. (The college's admission rate suddenly became more gender neutral the following year, in 2010-2011, when men's acceptance rate was only 3 percentage points higher than women's.)

The same year, the College of William and Mary, a public institution in Virginia, accepted 39.4 percent of its male applicants and 27.2 percent of female applicants. The school's admissions dean, Henry Broaddus, said men have slightly higher standardized test scores but lower GPAs than women, on average.

Broaddus defended the policy, insisting that William and Mary's female students want the college to to be gender-balanced and that colleges in general risk becoming less attractive to both men and women when the gender balance tips too far toward women.

"Even women who enroll ... expect to see men on campus," Broaddus said at the time. "It's not the College of Mary and Mary; it's the College of William and Mary."

In 2005, some trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reportedly wondered whether they should instate "affirmative action for men," to counteract the declining percentage of men on campus. (The school is more than 58 percent female.)

The stories prompted admissions consultants who charge $200 an hour to caution on their website that female applicants must try harder. "The best advice we can give female applicants is to follow the same advice we're giving everyone?only more strictly: start your college applications early, apply to an appropriate number and range of schools, and prepare each one of your applications carefully."

Interestingly, none of these revelations prompted a wave of lawsuits, or even much outrage, from feminist organizations or other groups. It's even more surprising because the issue is probably more clear-cut, legally speaking, than race-based affirmative action.

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 case that set current law around race-based affirmative action, the Supreme Court ruled that in order to achieve a "critical mass" of underrepresented minority groups, colleges can use race as a limited factor in admissions decisions. The court said at the time it believed affirmative action would no longer be necessary after 25 years, an argument the Supreme Court is now reconsidering with Fisher v. University of Texas, a case brought by a white student who was rejected by the university.

Many legal experts expect the court, which is more conservative now than it was in 2003, to rule against UT, which could mean public colleges could have to stop considering race in admissions as a way to increase on-campus diversity.

But with men, there's no "critical mass" argument to make. Men are outnumbered by women on campus, but not so vastly that they can be considered an underrepresented minority. The Constitution does allow for more discrimination based on gender than race. (The courts treat any classification based on race with strict scrutiny; gender-based classifications get a more relaxed degree of review.)

But Title IX pretty clearly forbids any admissions decision that discriminates based on gender, meaning Congress has already made gender-balancing admissions decisions effectively illegal. In the one known case on this issue, plaintiffs challenged the University of Georgia in 2000 for both race and gender admissions preferences, and a federal circuit court found that gender preferences were illegal and struck them down. The school declined to appeal.

Why haven't there been more lawsuits?

Gail Heriot, a conservative law professor at the University of San Diego and a member of the federal U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said it's partly the murky politics of the issue. Liberal, feminist groups tend to support affirmative action for racial minorities and could be wary of attacking gender preferences for men lest it leads to attacking racial preferences.

Meanwhile, conservative groups that reject race-based affirmative action would rather draw attention to the "boy crisis" they believe harms men than seize the chance to deal a blow to both race and gender admissions preferences.

Heriot began a commission investigation into whether colleges were discriminating against female applicants in 2009, but the eight-member panel voted to end it at the suggestion of a Democratic appointee in 2011. Several schools had refused to hand over their admissions data to Heriot, which made the investigation difficult.

Heriot dismissed the argument that women would rather attend gender-balanced schools, even if it means they had to get better grades in high school than their male peers to get in.

"It strikes me as a very troubling argument to say, 'Gosh, women want to be discriminated against,'" she said. "You're going to have to prove that to me."

She still believes that a case against gender preferences at public schools could win.

"I'm a conservative so I tend to be on the other side of issues from Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. But I'd be happy to argue this one to her. I think I have a shot," Heriot said.

Meanwhile, admissions officers who do not want to give a leg up to men are left to find other means to attract men to campus. Brandeis University (57 percent female) tried offering free baseball caps to its first 500 male applicants, according to Heriot.

Eric Felix, an admissions officer for the University of San Diego, a small liberal arts school that is 45 percent male, says he tries to encourage qualified men to apply by tailoring applications materials to them, highlighting the school's engineering programs and sports teams instead of the beautiful campus shots sent to women. He also visits all-boys schools and ROTC programs to recruit.

Felix, who said he does not use gender preferences, said male applicants can often make up for their on average lower GPAs through "noncognitive" factors such as leadership roles in extracurriculars. "We're only going to admit students that we feel are successful," Felix said. "Once you get to the nonacademic pieces then men start to shine, because they put an emphasis on extracurriculars."

Felix said that although men might not be an oppressed minority, they are often discouraged from emphasizing academics because they are expected to get a part-time job or join the military. Felix also argued that gender is part of diversity on campus.

"Students need to be able to interact with a diverse population, and part of that diversity is gender," Felix said. "If there's a discussion about rape and sexual assault in court cases [in class] and there's not men to add a voice, that's a conversation that's really missing."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/court-prepares-affirmative-action-decision-softer-standards-men-182205509.html

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