Free Republic

Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell, a former model, agent, charm-school director and newspaper publisher who almost single-handedly opened the modeling profession to African-Americans, and in so doing expanded public understanding of what American beauty looks like, died on Feb. 28 in Manhattan. She was 91.

Surveillance video...shows a family of nine reportedly stealing from the Toys "R" Us..... young kids were instructed by their parents to undo security devices as the family walked out of the store....

"............[SNIP]..........."I've always considered myself more of a mathematician than a psychologist," says Mr. Greenspan. But after the Fed's model failed to predict the financial crisis, he realized that there is more to forecasting than numbers. "It all fell apart, in the sense that not a single major forecaster of note or institution caught it," he says. "The Federal Reserve has got the most elaborate econometric model, which incorporates all the newfangled models of how the world works—and it missed it completely." He says JP Morgan had put out a forecast three days before the crisis saying the economy was on...

Guide to Personal 3D Printers 3D Systems’ Cube 3D There is an emerging new category in the gadget world. The products are called 3D printers and although still evolving, they are becoming relatively affordable and quite workable. The term and the idea of a personal 3D printer came from the work of two MIT grad students who in 1995 modified an inkjet printer to deposit layers of plastic in a process sometimes referred to as additive manufacturing. RepRap was also early on the 3D printer scene with an open source 3D printer project that helped inspire an early 3D printer...

Simi model shedding the skin Faith leads Bisutti on more conservative path By Carissa Marsh COVERING UP—Simi Valley model Kylie Bisutti has made the decision to no longer pose in lingerie, citing her faith as the driving force behind her decision. Kylie Bisutti has shed her Victoria’s Secret angel wings in favor of more coverage, vowing to God and the world that she will not model lingerie again. “This is about me just reading the Bible more, me growing in my relationship with God and him opening my eyes up to the ways I was living and I wasn’t really...

Only days after the U.S. Department of Justice busted a huge international pedophile ring, French Vogue is once again tempting potential molesters by featuring minor girls in provocative poses in their magazine – this time using a heavily made-up 10 year-old in stiletto heels and a bodice cut to the waist.London’s Daily Mail is reporting that 10 year-old Thylane Lena-Rose Blondeau is the latest victim of French Vogue’s guest editor, Tom Ford, who put together another controversial issue last Christmas that featured heavily made-up little girls in provocative clothes and poses. Ford is close friends with photographer Terry Richardson, a...

A stunning set of maps from Doug McCune renders San Francisco crime as elevation. Land peaks and crests, according to the SFPD's 2009 incident data. The stories told here aren't especially surprising. Certain crimes, like car theft and assault, are more or less evenly distributed across the city (yes, even in Pac Heights), whereas others, like drugs (see below), are confined to specific areas--making for a sort of mini mountain range in the poorer parts of town. But as a concise guide to San Francisco, these maps beat anything Rand McNally prints. They ought to pass them out at the...

There's a time for reminiscing over your old photo albums. But unfortunately for Carla Bruni, now is not that time. Just as France's first lady tries to keep a low profile amid global headlines about the state of her marriage, another reminder of her somewhat racy past has propelled her straight back into the spotlight. Two photographs of Miss Bruni in her modelling days are up for grabs at an auction. In one, taken by the legendary Helmut Newton, the then 25-year-old leans against a mahogany piano, with her skirt riding up in a rather risque fashion. Another by Pamela...

Using a tweezers, the controls can be moved. All cables and linkages are in place to work the wing control surfaces as well. Young Park has since carved a pilot's face and hands from solid aluminum and built an articulated pilot to sit in the cockpit?Remember this as you look at the pics........... All the controls work as designed, by cables, chains, linkages and levers.Every single part hand made and fitted.

When she was 16, Crystal Renn signed a $250,000 modeling contract and moved to the city. But after starving herself for years to stay at 95 pounds, she gave it all up to become a plus-size model -- and finally, at size 12, achieved major success. With her memoir, "Hungry," due out Sept. 8, Renn tells her story to The Post. Nine years ago, when I was 14 years old, a modeling scout spotted me at an etiquette class in my hometown of Clinton, Miss., and pulled me aside to show me a photo of supermodel Gisele in a clingy...

Your unborn baby cast in bronze ... it's the new foetal attractionSophie Goodchild, Health Editor 02.01.09 A CLINIC is offering mothers bronze models of their unborn babies.The London Ultrasound Centre, near Harley Street, is the first in the country to offer the service, which allows parents to "celebrate" their babies in the womb.A 3D printer uses ultrasound images to build a cast of the child. The models cost £1,200, take up to two-and-a-half weeks to make, and are created when the mother is at a safe stage of pregnancy at 24 weeks.Doctors say the technology could also help improve...

Naomi Campbell, one of the most famous and beautiful women in the world, and known for her Intemperate behavior, will be immortalized in sculpture. She has been posing for photographer Nick Knight, who is using three-dimensional scanners to create the sculptures...

A model of 14 was banned from the catwalk in Australia yesterday amid continuing controversy over the sexualisation of young girls in the fashion industry. A photo-shoot of Monika Jagaciak by Australian Vogue was also called off after the editor said she had not realised the Polish teenager's age. Organisers of Australian Fashion week in Sydney banned all under-16s from the catwalk after furious public debate over the use of youngsters in an industry already under fire over anorexia and drug use. It follows a similar decision ahead of London Fashion Week last September and brings the Australian event into...

The accuracy of computer models that predict climate change over the coming decades has been the subject of debate among politicians, environmentalists and even scientists. A new study by meteorologists at the University of Utah shows that current climate models are quite accurate and can be valuable tools for those seeking solutions on reversing global warming trends. Most of these models project a global warming trend that amounts to about 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years. The study titled "How Well do Coupled Models Simulate Today's Climate?" is due to be published this Friday in the Bulletin of...

Natalia Vodianova: the Cinderella of the Volga 16:30 | 08/ 03/ 2007 MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Anatoly Korolev) – Natalia Vodianova, one of the world’s top ten models, currently lives in New York City. She is married to Justin Trevor Berkeley Portman, half-brother of the 10th Viscount Portman, a lord born and bred, and a millionaire to boot. Therefore, her children—her son Lucas and baby daughter Neva—indisputably belong to the British aristocracy. Unbelievably, this glamorous Russian lady was a provincial vegetable vendor a mere seven years ago. Her unmarried mother had a hard time raising three daughters, one of whom...

U.S. scientists are predicting we will soon enjoy precision climate modeling, offering detail and scale only imagined a few years ago. John Drake and David Erickson at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's computer science and mathematics division say it's possible for scientists to create meteorological models that take into account such things as the complete carbon cycle, terrestrial biology, El Ninos and hundreds of other factors. The goal is to provide what scientists call a fully integrated Earth system model that can be simulated every 15 minutes for centuries. "Before, we had to make compromises that ultimately limited the resolution...

Surprise! Computer Scientists Model the Exclamation Point Two Southern California engineers have created a mathematical theory of surprise, working from first principles of probability theory applied to a digital environment -- and the results of experiments recording eye movements of volunteers watching video seem to confirm it. Laurent Itti of the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering and Pierre Baldi of the University of California Irvine's Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics, will present their results December 7, at the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) Conference in Vancouver, B.C. Itti and Baldi went back to first principles in...

More than a century ago, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli observed, "What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens." Disraeli's maxim has become a mantra for current federal spending. Every year, Congress depends on the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to provide forecasts that will help the House and Senate set federal budget priorities for the current fiscal year and beyond. Six months later, when Congress is working on legislation that reflects these new priorities, CBO tells Congress that its forecasts were wrong. This is not acceptable. Forecasters justifiably point out that their numbers cannot be expected to...

    Reconstructing Columbia: How Computer Modeling Can Help Crash InvestigatorsBy Tariq MalikStaff Writerposted: 07:00 am ET26 February 2003 Crash investigators, poring over the remains of the Space Shuttle Columbia in the hope of finding the exact cause of its destruction, may find help in computer modeling - a tool that can electronically reconstruct the last minutes of an aircraft.Using three-dimensional computer models, investigators could rebuild the ill-fated shuttle based on information gathered from sensor logs, radar data and observations to give a more complete picture of what happened and when. The modeling tool is widely used by the National...

There have been several articles about this new paper on the Web. I chose the one below because it seems to be comprehensive and well-written. Climate Models Get SmudgedReport Assessing Impact of Soot on Global Warming Could Alter Control Strategies, Place Burden on Developing Nations -- and Create New Uncertainty in Climate Model Predictions A new study on the role that atmospheric soot particles may play in global warming suggests a new near-term control strategy, introduces a new element of uncertainty in climate models and shifts more responsibility for curbing pollution to developing nations such as China and India. Published...