Doral police arrested Christian David Guevara and charged him with strong arm robbery. They say he threw a 17-year-old girl to the ground and took her iPhone when she wasn’t able to produce cash he demanded. ||||| For 17 years, Juan Reinaldo Sanchez served as a bodyguard to Fidel Castro. But when he became disillusioned with the Cuban dictator’s hypocrisy and tried to retire in 1994, Castro had him thrown in prison. Sanchez made 10 attempts to escape the island, finally making it to Mexico by boat, then across the Texas border in 2008. Now he reveals all in his new book, “The Double Life of Fidel Castro.” In this excerpt, Sanchez explains how he lost faith in the revolution — and “El Jefe.”

 The end of 1988. A day like any other was coming to a close in Havana. In a few minutes, my life would be overturned.

 Fidel had spent his afternoon reading and working in his office when he stuck his head through the door to the anteroom, where I was, to warn me that Abrantes was about to arrive.

 Gen. José Abrantes, in his 50s, had been minister of the interior since 1985 after having been, notably, the commander in chief’s head of security for 20 years. Utterly loyal, he was one of the people who saw El Jefe daily.

 While they met, I went to sit in my office, where the closed-circuit TV screens monitoring the garage, the elevator and the corridors were found, as well as the cupboard housing the three locks that turned on the recording mikes hidden in a false ceiling in Fidel’s office.

 A moment later, the Comandante came back, opened the door again, and gave me this instruction: “Sánchez, ¡no grabes!” (“Sánchez, don’t record!”)

 The interview seemed to go on forever . . . one hour went by, then two. And so, as much out of curiosity as to kill the time, I put on the listening headphones and turned Key No. 1 to hear what was being said on the other side of the wall.

 Disillusioned

 Their conversation centered on a Cuban lanchero (someone who smuggles drugs by boat) living in the United States, apparently conducting business with the government.

 And what business! Very simply, a huge drug-trafficking transaction was being carried out at the highest echelons of the state.

 Abrantes asked for Fidel’s authorization to bring this trafficker temporarily to Cuba as he wanted to have a week’s vacation in his native land, accompanied by his parents, in Santa María del Mar — a beach situated about 12 miles east of Havana where the water is turquoise and the sand as fine as flour. For this trip, explained Abrantes, the lanchero would pay $75,000 — which, at a time of economic recession, wouldn’t go amiss . . . Fidel was all for it.

 But he expressed a concern: How could they ensure that the parents of the lanchero would keep the secret and not go and blab everywhere that they had spent a week near Havana with their son, who was supposed to live in the United States?

 The minister had the solution: All they had to do was make them believe their son was a Cuban intelligence officer who had infiltrated the United States and whose life would be gravely endangered if they did not keep his visit to Cuba absolutely secret. “Very well . . .” concluded Fidel, who gave his agreement.

 It was as if the sky had fallen in on me.

 I realized that the man for whom I had long sacrificed my life, the Líder whom I worshipped like a god and who counted more in my eyes than my own family, was caught up in cocaine trafficking to such an extent that he was directing illegal operations like a real godfather.

 The Comandante, with his talent for dissimulation, went back to work as if nothing was amiss. One has to understand his logic. For him, drug trafficking was, above all, a weapon of revolutionary struggle more than a means of making money.

 His reasoning was as follows: If the Yanks were stupid enough to use drugs that came from Colombia, not only was that not his problem — as long as it was not discovered, that is — but, in addition, it served his revolutionary objectives in the sense that it corrupted and destabilized American society. Icing on the cake: It was a means of bringing in cash to finance subversion.

 And so, as cocaine trafficking increased in Latin America, the line between guerrilla war and trafficking drugs gradually blurred. What was true in Colombia was just as true in Cuba. For my part, I never managed to accept this twisted reasoning, in absolute contradiction to my revolutionary ethics.

 Sham Trials

 In 1986, when economic aid from Moscow was starting to dry up, Castro founded the MC Department (for moneda covertible, or “covertible currency”), which traded in goods — illegal and legal — for hard currency from third parties, principally Panama.

 The MC Department soon acquired another nickname, the “Marijuana and Cocaine Department.”

 But the Americans became suspicious of Cuba’s drug dealing, and scandal loomed. Fidel decided to take action to nip any possible suspicion about him in the bud. He used the official daily paper, Granma, to inform its readers that an inquiry had been opened.

 Among the arrested were the respected revolutionary general Arnaldo Ochoa and the minister I had overheard talking to Castro, José Abrantes.

 The Machiavellian Fidel, while declaring himself “appalled” by what he pretended to have discovered, claimed that “the most honest imaginable political and judicial process” was under way.

 Obviously, the reality was completely different. Comfortably installed in his brother Raúl’s office, Fidel Castro and Raúl followed the live proceedings of Causa No. 1 and Causa No. 2 on the closed-circuit TV screens. Both trials were filmed — which is why one can today see large sections of it on YouTube — and broadcast to every Cuban home, though not live: The government wanted to be able to censor anything that might prove embarrassing.

 Fidel even had the means to alert the president of the court discreetly, via a warning light, whenever he thought a session should be interrupted.

 And during breaks, the president of the court, the public prosecutor and the jury members would swarm out onto the fourth floor of the ministry to take their instructions from Fidel, who, as usual, organized and ordered everything, absolutely everything.

 The Videotape

 At the end of these parodies of justice, Gen. Ochoa was condemned to death. José Abrantes received a sentence of 20 years of imprisonment.

 After just two years of detention in 1991, he would suffer a fatal heart attack, despite his perfect state of health, in circumstances that were, to say the least, suspicious.

 There followed the most painful episode of my career. Fidel had asked that the execution of Ochoa and the three other condemned men be filmed.

 And so, two days later, on a Saturday, a chauffeur arrived at the residence, where I was, to deliver a brown envelope containing a Betamax cassette video. Castro’s wife, Dalia, told Fidel’s men they should watch it.

 The video had no sound, which made the scenes we began to watch even more unreal. First, we saw vehicles arriving in a quarry at night, lit by projectors.

 I have often been asked how Ochoa faced death. The answer is clear and unambiguous: with exceptional dignity.

 As he got out of the car, he walked straight. When one of his torturers proposed to put a band over his eyes, he shook his head in sign of refusal. And when he was facing the firing squad, he looked death square in the face.

 Despite the absence of sound, the whole excerpt shows his courage.

 To his executioners, who could not be seen in the footage, he said something that one could not hear but which one could guess. His chest pushed out and his chin raised, he probably shouted something like, “Go on, you don’t frighten me!” An instant later, he crumpled from beneath the bullets of seven gunmen.

 Castro made us watch it. That’s what the Comandante was capable of to keep his power: not just of killing but also of humiliating and reducing to nothing men who had served him devotedly.

 His Brother’s Keeper

 After Ochoa’s death, Raúl Castro plunged into the worst bout of alcoholism of his life. He had taken part in the assassination of his friend.

 He turned to vodka, which had long been his favorite drink.

 There was doubtless another factor involved: having watched the elimination of his counterpart, Abrantes, Raúl could logically fear that he, too, would be hounded from his position of defense minister.

 The government No. 2 was dead drunk so often that the ministers and the generals could not have failed to miss it. The Comandante decided to go and lecture his younger brother.

 I heard Fidel admonishing his brother, launching into a long, moralistic tirade.

 “How can you descend so low? You’re giving the worst possible example to your family and your escort,” began the Comandante. “If what’s worrying you is that what happened to Abrantes will happen to you, let me tell you that Abrantes no es mi hermano [is not my brother]! You and I have been united since we were children, for better and for worse. So, no, you are not going to experience Abrantes’ fate, unless . . . you persist with this deplorable behavior.

 “Listen, I’m talking to you as a brother. Swear to me that you will come out of this lamentable state and I promise you nothing will happen to you.”

 Sure enough, shortly afterward, Fidel spoke out in praise of Raúl, applauding his integrity and his devotion to the Revolution. Raúl, for his part, carried on drinking vodka, but in far more reasonable quantities.

 From “The Double Life of Fidel Castro: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Lider Maximo” by Juan Reinaldo Sanchez with Axel Gyldén.

 Copyright © 2015 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.

Summary: – Fidel Castro, ragtag communist revolutionary? Not according to a new book that chronicles his alleged luxurious lifestyle and drug-smuggling into the United States. A former bodyguard to Castro, Juan Reinaldo Sanchez—who fled Cuba in 2008 and has made similar allegations before—describes them fully in The Double Life of Fidel Castro: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Lider Maximo. In a juicy New York Post excerpt, Sanchez claims that he overheard Castro meeting with a loyal general, José Abrantes, about drug trafficking: "What business!" Sanchez writes, with co-writer Axel Gylden. "Very simply, a huge drug-trafficking transaction was being carried out at the highest echelons of the state." According to the book, Castro and Gen. Abrantes discussed smuggling cocaine into the US. Castro's reasoning: "If the Yanks were stupid enough to use drugs that came from Colombia, not only was that not his problem ... it served his revolutionary objectives in the sense that it corrupted and destabilized American society," the book reads. Sanchez also accuses Castro of covering up his involvement by engineering sham trials that led to the deaths of two devoted officers, including Abrantes; this fueled the alcoholism of brother Raul, who feared he would be next. Imprisoned in Cuba for two years before fleeing, Sanchez has already accused Castro of secretly living a luxurious life that includes an 88-foot yacht and a Caribbean getaway island, the Miami Herald reported last year.


Vintners in the Napa Valley have begun to evaluate the damage to their cellars following Sunday's 6.0-magnitude earthquake, which rocked American Canyon and its immediate environs at 3:20 a.m. Damage is being reported across the valley, and many winery tasting rooms will be closed today and possibly tomorrow.

 In downtown Napa, winemaker Alison Crowe of Garnet Vineyards says she and her family were "literally thrown out of bed" when the quake hit.

 "It was very violent," says Crowe, mother to William, 3, and Bryce, 1. The family lives in an renovated 1898 farmhouse which sustained no structural damage, but they are currently without electricity. "We're making pancakes on the barbecue outside."

 NAPA, CA - AUGUST 24: A worker looks at a pile of wine bottles that were thrown from the shelves at Van's Liquors following a reported 6.0 earthquake on August 24, 2014 in Napa, California. A 6.0 earthquake rocked the San Francisco Bay Area shortly after 3:00 am on Sunday morning causing damage to buildings and sending at least 70 people to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) ( Justin Sullivan )

 While Crowe's home collection -- 100 bottles of the winery's premium pinot noir and chardonnay -- were "undamaged and still resting snug on their sides," initial reports from the winery's American Canyon warehouse indicate that "a lot of bottles" were lost there, says Crowe, who chose not to disclose the name of the warehouse until the owners make an official statement.

 The loss was even bigger at Napa's City Winery, a venue for music, winemaking and the culinary arts, which opened this past spring in the historic Napa Valley Opera House. According to owner Michael Dorf, the winery's restaurant has been flooded with inches of water. Liquor and wine bottles tumbled and crashed to the floor and food fell off shelves throughout the kitchen.

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 "Most likely, all the other restaurants along Main Street suffered similar issues," Dorf said via e-mail.

 In total, Dorf estimates the loss of wine at 300 to 400 bottles, including some rare wines purchased at auction, as well as more than 200 pieces of Riedel stemware. At this time, the venue and main structure appear undamaged, he says, but they are canceling tonight's concert of (NVOH and Lucky Penny) and are unclear when they will reopen. Men Without Hats is supposed to perform on Monday.

 When Crowe heads to work on Monday, she will double-check the winery's barrels and tanks for damage but is confident that the quake will not interfere with harvest, which is currently in full swing in parts of the valley.

 "Everyone's going to gear up and get right back to work," she says. "It's a blessing that we've had this recent cool weather because it has actually slowed things down a bit. I took my first load of Carneros pinot noir in (last Friday) and wasn't planning on crushing harvesting more fruit until this Friday. We lives in the lap of Mother Nature here so we know that we're not in control but sometimes it takes something as big as an earthquake to really open your eyes."

 Check back for futher updates throughout the day.

 NAPA, CA - AUGUST 24: Workers clean up piles of bottles that were thrown from the shelves at Van's Liquors following a reported 6.0 earthquake on August 24, 2014 in Napa, California. A 6.0 earthquake rocked the San Francisco Bay Area shortly after 3:00 am on Sunday morning causing damage to buildings and sending at least 70 people to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) ( Justin Sullivan )

 Follow Jessica Yadegaran at Twitter.com/swirlgirl_jy. ||||| Napa damaged, more than 100 hurt in Northern California quake

 (08-24) 20:45 PDT NAPA -- A magnitude-6.0 earthquake struck the North Bay early Sunday, injuring more than 100 people, causing extensive damage to dozens of buildings in downtown Napa and Vallejo and sparking a fire that destroyed sixhomes, authorities said.

 The quake, the largest in the Bay Area since the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, struck 3 miles northwest of American Canyon at 3:20 a.m., the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was felt as far away as Chico and Fresno, the USGS said.

 Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for California and said state resources would be mustered to areas affected by the quake, including Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.

 Hardest-hit was Napa, about 6 miles northwest of the quake's epicenter. Walt Mickens, CEO at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa, said 172 people were treated Sunday at the hospital, including a 13-year-old identified by neighbors as Nicholas Dillon. He was hurt inside his family's home on Eva Street when a chimney fell on him during a slumber party, and was airlifted from Napa to the UC Davis Children's Hospital in Sacramento, where hospital spokeswoman Phyllis Brown said he was in serious condition.

 In all, Mickens said, 12 people were admitted to Queen of the Valley and treated for injuries related to the quake, the majority with broken bones. By late Sunday, just one person remained in critical condition at the hospital; the others were in serious or stable condition.

 The majority of other injuries were cuts and bruises from broken glass and falling objects, he said.

 Many residents were unable to return home Sunday evening because of damage sustained in the quake. Napa officials said 33 buildings have been red-tagged, meaning residents cannot return to them until authorities determine they are safe, and they are only one-third of the way through assessing buildings.

 Napa Mayor Jill Techel was among the displaced. She returned from a conference in Monterey on Sunday morning, and said when she when she first arrived downtown, she felt, "scared and sad."

 "My neighbors are staying strong but you can see tears right behind their eyes," she said.

 Throughout the region, said State Office of Emergency Services Director Mark Ghilarducci said, about 90 to 100 homes have been red-tagged. Officials won't have a tally of how many people have been displaced until late Sunday, Ghilarducci said, when they begin showing up at emergency shelters.

 "We have a handle on what's happening at this point," he said at a late afternoon news conference, adding that state officials do not yet have damage cost estimates and are deciding whether to apply for federal disaster assistance.

 State geologist John Parrish said all the region's bridges have been checked and are safe. Measurements taken from the Carquinez Bridge revealed the span took quite a hit during the quake, but sustained no damage.

 While officials warned residents to be prepared for aftershocks, Parrish said the biggest risk had passed by Sunday afternoon, as the highest probability of aftershocks is within the first hour after a quake. In all, he said, 50 to 60 aftershocks were recorded, the largest a magnitude 3.6.

 "We feel it unlikely now that there will be a large follow-up earthquake to this one," Parrish said Sunday afternoon. "We do not expect there will be much larger aftershocks, but we expect they will continue for several weeks." Parrish said the soft ground in the Napa Valley helped mitigate damage by absorbing some of movement.

 Still, said Ghilarducci, "It took half day to get our hands around the complexity of the event," due to power outages.

 In all, 70,000 Pacific Gas & Electric Co. customers lost power in the quake, but by early evening, the utility had restored power to the majority. A PG&E statement said about 7,300 customers in Napa County remained in the dark. Most customers can expect to be back online by the end of Sunday, according to the utility.

 Sixty water mains and at least 50 gas lines also broke in the quake. PG&E said 439 people called to report gas leaks Sunday, and by early evening, the vast majority had been investigated. Beginning Monday, the utility plans to fan out across the impacted areas to conduct courtesy gas safety checks.

 There were also problems in Vallejo, where officials said 41 buildings were damaged, including businesses, several homes and a church. On one residential block, nearly every brick chimney had collapsed, including two that fell on a car.

 "It's bad any way you look at it, but it could have been a heck of a lot worse," said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa.

 Napa City Manager Mike Parness said that "most of the (Napa) Valley is operating as normal" and that most of the damage was confined to a few locations. But officials said it will be weeks until those areas are cleaned up.

 Officials at Queen of the Valley set up a triage tent in the back parking lot of the emergency room. In the first hours after the quake, ambulances were arriving every few minutes dropping off patients.

 A fire at a Napa mobile home park on Orchard Avenue destroyed four homes and damaged two others as firefighters improvised to put out the blaze, with a water main broken and unavailable.

 In downtown Napa, bricks, concrete chunks and broken glass littered the streets. About 15 buildings were red-tagged, , and numerous other buildings were yellow-tagged and were open only on a limited basis, officials said. Most of the yellow-tagged buildings suffered damage such as broken windows, Parness said.

 Most of the windows were blown out of the air traffic control tower at the Napa County Airport. The structure was spared major damage, but it will be unusable for several weeks, said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

 Across Napa, dozens of unreinforced chimneys toppled, tilted or leaned precariously from houses.

 "It was just like a train hit the house," Cathy Hunt said as she surveyed a pile of bricks that used to make up the chimney of her home on the 500 block of Montgomery Street.

 At Napa Barrel Care, a wine warehouse just south of the city, Carole Meredith surveyed an array of tumbled barrels.

 "We're physically fine but we're emotionally shell-shocked," Meredith said. Although it is too soon to know the extent of loss, she said, "there is a lake of wine on the floor."

 Because wines from the bountiful 2013 vintage are mostly still in barrel, "there's just going to be huge losses," said Meredith, who owns the Lagier Meredith winery on Mount Veeder. "This is going to be a really expensive earthquake for the wine business."

 At the Don Perico Mexican restaurant on First Street, there were no outward signs of problems on the exterior of the building. But inside, a pile of bricks stood several feet high.

 At the Bounty Hunter restaurant down the street, broken wine bottles littered the floor. But the eatery's "holy grail" case, containing prized bottles worth up to $80,000, remained intact.

 "It's a disaster, but we'll clean up," said employee Will Wright. "We'll get through it."

 Andrea Griego of Napa said the quake knocked over her bedroom dresser, temporarily immobilizing her.

 "It was so scary," said Griego, who suffered a large bruise and cut.

 Napa's Old County Courthouse and the post office were among the buildings that sustained damage. Emergency workers usually stationed there were moved to the sheriff's office.

 Residents and city officials said the toll would have been far greater had the quake struck on Saturday, when thousands of people were downtown enjoying the Napa Blues, Brews and BBQ event in downtown Napa.

 Although damage appeared to be worst in Napa, there were also problems elsewhere.

 In downtown Vallejo, a large chunk of bricks fell off the First Methodist Church at Sonoma Boulevard and Virginia Street. Several older homes near the church lost their chimneys.

 Glass covered buckled sidewalks on a six-block stretch of businesses on the west end of Tennessee Street, the city's primary link to the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Sixteen water mains in the city were broken, city officials said.

 On Georgia and Virginia streets on downtown Vallejo, several buildings were evacuated after a 19th-century brick building partially collapsed. The city engineer was on scene investigating, but fire officials said the building, the former City of Paris department store, would likely be demolished.

 Building owner Buck Kamphausen, who is also the city mortician, said the building was under renovation. The roof of collapsed into the roof of a neighboring building, falling through to the floor. No one was injured.

 Officials were blocking off the sidewalks on both Georgia and Virginia streets. Firemen said the extent of the damage would likely not be known until Monday, as many of the shops on the commercial strip were closed Sunday and owners had not come to survey the damage.

 The First Methodist Church on Sonoma and Virgin streets also suffered damage to its bell tower.

 On Fern Street, a leafy block in the city's Garden District dotted with 1920's bungalows, residents were surveying the slew of collapsed brick chimneys and starting to clean up.

 At the end of the block, a brick building that houses a Real Estate brokerage was red-tagged. Brick mason Marshall Foster was using a jackhammer to take down the top half of a damaged chimney at one home.

 "It was like something exploded," said Annette Millhollin, whose chimney, along with her neighbor's, tumbled onto her driveway, crushing her Oldsmobile.

 Chris Mariano, who lives next to the brokerage firm, said it "felt like a bomb went off," when the quake struck at 3:20 a.m., knocking down all the dishes in his home. "It went on forever," he said. "I've never been in a quake that close to the epicenter."

 There were widespread reports of power outages, gas leaks and flooding in the North Bay.

 In addition to the power outages, Napa'stwo water treatment plants were undamaged, but water-main breaks knocked out service to some areas. The water that is available is safe to drink, Napa officials said.

 Still, the recovery could take "a week or so because we have a lot of things to get buttoned up," said Napa's director of public works Jacques LaRochelle.

 Caltrans checked the Bay Area's toll bridges after the quake and found them to be safe. On Highway 121 in the North Bay, 30 feet of asphalt was cracked, but the road was open.

 Scientists said the quake was 6.7 miles deep and may have hit on the West Napa Fault. It was the largest in the Bay Area since the 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta quake killed 62 people on Oct. 17, 1989.

 The U.S. Geological Survey initially said the quake measured magnitude 6.0, then upgraded it to 6.1 later in the day.

 One of the worst scenes of damage was at the Napa Valley Mobile Home Park at 1040 Orchard Ave. near Mark Way, where a fire burned at least four homes. A broken water main hobbled firefighters' efforts to control the blaze.

 Water trucks were brought to the scene, enabling firefighters to control the blaze before 6 a.m. There were no injuries.

 The cause of the fire was unknown. PG&E said its natural-gas lines were not responsible.

 Ray Kauffman, 68, said that as soon as he saw the smoke at one of the mobile homes, "I went home to get my crescent wrench but I couldn't get to it."

 "The flames were too much when I got there," Kauffman said as he looked at the remains of his neighbor's home.

 A woman who asked to be identified as Theresa said she had trouble getting out of her boyfriend's home because it shifted off the foundation. She went across the street and watched the home burn to the ground.

 "It was really scary," she said. "We were really lucky to get out. We lost a kitten, CoCo."

 Firefighters extinguished two other residential fires in Napa, officials said.

 Throughout the Bay Area, many people were jolted awake by the quake. Others who were already up were similarly jarred.

 Erica Gregory, who was brewing coffee while working by herself at the 24-hour Shell gas station on Highway 29 in Vallejo, said items started to fly off the shelves when the quake hit.

 "It was nerve-wracking," Gregory said. "You just have to stand there and take it."

 Lily Atkinson, 10, said she was playing solitaire when her bed, and then her entire room, began shaking.

 "I grabbed onto my head and held on for dear life," she said.

 In Benicia, several miles from the epicenter, the quake was strong enough to knock pictures off mantles.

 Darryl Sismil, owner of Marin Computer Service in Santa Rosa, described the tremor as "just a rolling sensation. It felt like I was on a boat in the bay."

 At the 24-hour Napa Valley Casino off Highway 29 in American Canyon, the quake interrupted a hand of Texas Hold 'Em.

 "I didn't know what to do," said Sunshine Hamilton, adding that her "legs were shaking" from the experience. "Everybody ran outside, so I ran outside too. No one grabbed chips or anything like that."

 They sat outside for about 10 minutes before returning inside to finish the hand.

 Les Flynn was asleep with his son on a buddy's couch in Napa when the quake hit.

 "I had my little boy on the couch so I threw myself over him because the there was s- falling on the couch," Flynn said. "It was crazy, everything was shaking off the walls. The whole house was just rolling."

 San Francisco Chronicle Science Editor David Perlman and staff writers Suzanne Espinosa Solis, Joe Garofoli, Melody Gutierrez, Kristen V. Brown, Greta Kaul, Jill Tucker, Mike Lerseth and David R. Baker contributed to this report. ||||| NAPA, Calif. (AP) — The San Francisco Bay Area's strongest earthquake in 25 years struck the heart of California's wine country early Sunday, igniting gas-fed fires, damaging some of the region's famed wineries and historic buildings, and sending dozens of people to hospitals.

 A Napa firefighter inspects mobile homes that were destroyed Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, at the Napa Valley Mobile Home Park, in Napa, Calif. A gas fire destroyed four homes at the park after an earthquake... (Associated Press)

 A mailbox is all that remains of one of four mobile homes which were destroyed in a gas fire Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, at the Napa Valley Mobile Home Park, in Napa, Calif. A large earthquake caused significant... (Associated Press)

 Steve Brody inspects damage to the interior of his mobile home after an earthquake Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, at the Napa Valley Mobile Home Park, in Napa, Calif. A large earthquake caused significant damage... (Associated Press)

 Nola Rawlins drinks coffee in the office of the at the Napa Valley Mobile Home Park Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, in Napa, Calif. Rawlins home was one of 4 destroyed by a gas fire at the mobile home park, the... (Associated Press)

 Police cars block the street outside a heavily damaged building following an earthquake Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, in Napa, Calif. A large earthquake caused significant damage in California's northern Bay... (Associated Press)

 Jorge Sanchez looks over damage to the main post office following an earthquake Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, in Napa, Calif. A large earthquake caused significant damage in California's northern Bay Area early... (Associated Press)

 Jean Meehan looks over the damage to her JHM Stamp and Collectibles store following an earthquake Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, in Napa, Calif. A large earthquake caused significant damage in California's northern... (Associated Press)

 Nina Quidit cleans up the Dollar Plus and Party Supplies Store in American Canyon Calif. after an earthquake on Sunday Aug. 24, 2014. Quidit and her husband were woken up in the early morning hours by... (Associated Press)

 Nina Quidit cleans up the Dollar Plus and Party Supplies Store in American Canyon Calif., after an earthquake on Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014. Quidit and her husband were woken up in the early morning hours... (Associated Press)

 Steve Brody inspects damage to the interior of his mobile home after an earthquake Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, at the Napa Valley Mobile Home Park, in Napa, Calif. A large earthquake caused significant damage... (Associated Press)

 Janelle Dahl and her son Austin clean up broken bottles of wine in a tasting room after an earthquake at Dahl Vineyards Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, in Yountville, Calif. A large earthquake rolled through California's... (Associated Press)

 A youngster rides his scooter over a sidewalk buckled by an earthquake Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, in Napa, Calif. A large earthquake caused significant damage and left at least three critically injured in... (Associated Press)

 Winemaker Tom Montgomery stands in wine and reacts to seeing damage following an earthquake at the B.R. Cohn Winery barrel storage facility Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, in Napa, Calif. Winemakers in California’s... (Associated Press)

 Part of a brick wall is missing from a building after an earthquake Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, in Napa, Calif. Officials say an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.0 has been reported in California's... (Associated Press)

 Grace Hardy cleans up wine bottles at nakedwines.com in Napa, Calif., following an earthquake Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014. Winemakers in California’s storied Napa Valley woke up to thousands of broken bottles,... (Associated Press)

 An awning for Carpe Diem wine bar sits among rubble in Napa, Calif., following an earthquake Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014. A large earthquake caused significant damage and left at least three critically injured... (Associated Press)

 The magnitude-6.0 quake, centered near the city of Napa, an oasis of Victorian-era buildings nestled in the vineyard-studded hills of northern California, ruptured water mains and gas lines, hampering firefighters' efforts to extinguish the blazes that broke out after the temblor struck at 3:20 a.m.

 Dazed residents who had run out of their homes in the dark and were too fearful of aftershocks to go back to bed wandered through Napa's historic downtown, where boulder-sized chunks of rubble and broken glass littered the streets. Dozens of homes and buildings across the Napa Valley were left unsafe to occupy, including an old county courthouse, where a 10-foot wide hole opened a view of the offices inside.

 College student Eduardo Rivera said the home he shares with six relatives shook so violently that he kept getting knocked back into his bed as he tried to flee.

 "When I woke up, my mom was screaming, and the sound from the earthquake was greater than my mom's screams," the 20-year-old Rivera said.

 Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for southern Napa County, directing state agencies to respond with equipment and personnel. President Barack Obama was briefed on the earthquake, the White House said, and federal officials were in touch with state and local emergency responders.

 The temblor struck about six miles south of Napa and lasted 10 to 20 seconds, according to the United States Geological Survey. It was the largest to shake the San Francisco Bay Area since the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta quake struck in 1989, collapsing part of the Bay Bridge roadway and killing more than 60 people, most when an Oakland freeway collapsed.

 Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa, where an outdoor triage tent was set up to handle the influx, reported treating 172 people in the emergency room, although hospital officials could not say how many of them were there for bruises and cuts suffered in the quake and how many for more routine injuries and illnesses.

 Twelve people were admitted for broken bones, heart attacks and other problems directly related to the earthquake, including an adult who remained in critical condition on Sunday night and a 13-year-old boy.

 The teen was hit by flying debris from a collapsed fireplace and had to be airlifted to the children's hospital at the University of California Davis hospital for a neurological evaluation. He condition was listed as serious, hospital spokeswoman Phyllis Brown said.

 Napa Fire Department Operations Chief John Callanan said the city had exhausted its own resources trying to extinguish at least six fires after 60 water mains ruptured, as well as transporting injured residents, searching homes and collapsed carports for anyone trapped and responding to 100 reports of leaking gas.

 Two of the fires happened at mobile home parks, including the one where four homes were destroyed and two others damaged, Callanan said. A ruptured water main there delayed efforts to fight the blaze until pumper trucks could be brought in, he said.

 Nola Rawlins, 83, was one of the Napa Valley Mobile Home Park residents left homeless by the fire. No one was injured in the blaze, but Rawlins said she lost all her jewelry, papers and other belongings.

 "There were some explosions, and it was burning. Everybody was out in the street," she said. "I couldn't get back in the house because they told everybody to go down to the clubhouse, so I didn't get anything out of the house."

 U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, who represents Napa, said federal and state officials had conducted an aerial survey of the area, but they wouldn't have a cost estimate for the damage until they can get on the ground and into buildings. He said that while Napa suffered the worst of it, there also was significant damage about 17 miles south on Mare Island in Vallejo, a former naval shipyard where a museum and historic homes were declared uninhabitable.

 "It's bad any way you calculate it. But it could have been a heck of a lot worse," Thompson said.

 While inspecting the shattered glass at her husband's storefront office in downtown Napa, Chris Malloy described calling for her two children in the dark as the quake rumbled under the family's home, tossing heavy pieces of furniture for several feet.

 "It was shaking, and I was crawling on my hands and knees in the dark, looking for them," the 45-year-old woman said, wearing flip flops on feet left bloodied from crawling through broken glass.

 Sunday's quake was felt widely throughout the region, with people reporting its effects more than 200 miles south of Napa and as far east as the Nevada border. Amtrak suspended service through the Bay area so tracks could be inspected.

 Vintner Richard Ward of Saintsbury Winery south of Napa watched Sunday afternoon as workers righted toppled barrels and rescued a 500-pound grape de-stemmer that the quake had thrown to the ground.

 "That's what happens when you're a mile from the epicenter," said Ward, who lost 300 to 400 bottles in the winery's basement.

 The grape harvest was supposed to start overnight Monday, but it would now be pushed off a few days, he said. Had the harvest started a day earlier, the quake would have caught the workers among the heavy barrels when it struck, Ward said.

 Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, told an afternoon news conference some 90 to 100 homes and buildings were deemed not habitable.

 A Red Cross evacuation center was set up at a church, and crews were assessing damage to homes, bridges and roadways. The Napa Unified School District said classes were canceled for students Monday and that students would not be allowed to return to schools until they were checked.

 "There's collapses, fires," said Napa Fire Capt. Doug Bridewell, standing in front of large pieces of masonry that broke loose from an early 20th-century office building where a fire had just been extinguished. "That's the worst shaking I've ever been in."

 Bridewell said he had to climb over fallen furniture in his own home to check on his family before reporting to duty.

 Pacific Gas and Electric spokesman J.D. Guidi said some 30,000 customers lost power after the quake hit, but that number was down to around 7,300 later in the day, most of them in Napa. He said crews were working to make repairs, but it was unclear when electricity would be restored.

 The depth of the earthquake was just under seven miles, and it was followed by numerous small aftershocks, the USGS said.

 On Sunday night in Southern California, a small, magnitude-3.3 earthquake hit off the region's coast.

 The U.S. Geological Survey says the temblor struck at 7:50 p.m. and was centered about 5 miles southwest of San Pedro and 6 miles southeast of Rancho Palos Verdes. There were no initial reports of damages, police said.

 ___

 Associated Press writers Juliet Williams in Napa, Tom Verdin in Sacramento, Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco and Courtney Bonnell in Phoenix contributed to this report.

Summary: – Northern California is assessing the damage after the region's worst earthquake in 25 years and while no deaths have been reported, at least 100 people have been injured, more than 10,000 are still without power, dozens of buildings have been wrecked—and there is a heck of a lot of broken glass in the Napa Valley wine country. Huge numbers of bottles and barrels of wine were ruined as yesterday's 6.0 magnitude quake caused widespread damage across the valley, the San Jose Mercury-News reports. Wineries say the quake will cause serious losses, but the harvest now under way shouldn't be affected. The US Geological Survey believes total damage could be more than $1 billion. More: Authorities say that across the region, around 100 homes have been red-tagged as unsafe to return to until authorities declare them safe—and they are only a third of the way through the process of tagging buildings, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. There have been more than 50 aftershocks but state officials say that they now consider a major follow-up quake unlikely, reports the Los Angeles Times. Three of the injured are in critical condition, including a 13-year-old boy injured by debris from a falling chimney, according to the AP. Some 172 people were treated in the emergency room of the Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa after the quake, though it's not clear how many of them were there for quake-related injuries. A USGS geophysicist says that despite the damage, the earthquake was "truly small" compared to some that California has experienced. "We owe wine country in part to earthquakes" that created the terrain, he tells the New York Times. "We all want to enjoy the fruits of the quakes, so we all have to prepare for the downside, too."


August 20, 2011

 Toronto, Ontario

 Dear Friends,

 Tens of thousands of Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my home, my spirit, and my determination.

 Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.

 I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.

 I recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and our program, and move forward towards the next election.

 A few additional thoughts:

 To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer.

 To the members of my party: we’ve done remarkable things together in the past eight years. It has been a privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice, universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left behind. Let’s continue to move forward. Let’s demonstrate in everything we do in the four years before us that we are ready to serve our beloved Canada as its next government.

 To the members of our parliamentary caucus: I have been privileged to work with each and every one of you. Our caucus meetings were always the highlight of my week. It has been my role to ask a great deal from you. And now I am going to do so again. Canadians will be closely watching you in the months to come. Colleagues, I know you will make the tens of thousands of members of our party proud of you by demonstrating the same seamless teamwork and solidarity that has earned us the confidence of millions of Canadians in the recent election.

 To my fellow Quebecers: On May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to replace Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better was by working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians across the country. You made the right decision then; it is still the right decision today; and it will be the right decision right through to the next election, when we will succeed, together. You have elected a superb team of New Democrats to Parliament. They are going to be doing remarkable things in the years to come to make this country better for us all.

 To young Canadians: All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.

 And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

 My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

 All my very best,

 Jack Layton ||||| Family, friends and colleagues are remembering NDP Leader Jack Layton as news starts to sink in that the politician known for his warmth and personality has died.

 Friends and political foes alike praised Layton on Monday for his warmth, optimism and respect for opponents.

 People who squared off politically against Layton, including former prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, as well as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae, all spoke warmly about the NDP leader's commitment to Canadians.

 Layton, who led Canada's Official Opposition, died early Monday morning at his Toronto home after a battle with cancer. He was 61.

 Layton's wife, Olivia Chow, and his children, Sarah and Michael Layton, issued a statement announcing his death.

 "We deeply regret to inform you that the Honourable Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, passed away at 4:45 am today, Monday August 22. He passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by family and loved ones," the statement read.

 State funeral Saturday

 Layton will be honoured with a state funeral Saturday in Toronto, senior NDP officials have told CBC News.

 The government protocol office is working with the NDP and family of the NDP leader on exactly what the funeral will be.

 Condolence books will be set up in Ottawa on Parliament Hill and in Toronto at city hall. Others will be located in NDP constituency offices across the country.

 On Monday, mourners, many bearing flowers and other tributes, arrived at Layton's Toronto constituency office. Friends and areas residents also arrived at his home on the quiet side street where he lived with Chow.

 Social media was used to quickly organize public tributes, including gatherings on Parliament Hill, and a rally in Toronto. Later Monday evening, several hundred people came together for a vigil outside the Vancouver Art Gallery.

 On Monday evening, hundreds of people were near the Centennial Flame at Parliament Hill, many leaving flowers, cans of Orange Crush that symbolize the NDP's official colour, and notes. The crowd, many bearing candles, sang O Canada as the sun set.

 The family released a letter from Layton to Canadians just after noon.

 Layton had been battling new cancer

 Layton's death comes less than a month after he announced to the country that he was fighting a new form of cancer and was taking time off for treatment. Layton had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in late 2009 and underwent treatment for it. He continued working throughout that time and also battled a broken hip earlier this year. Layton used a cane for much of his time on the campaign trail this spring as he led the NDP to a historic victory on May 2.

 His party claimed 103 seats, and was propelled to official Opposition status. Layton and his party were getting used to their new roles in Parliament but he did not appear to be in good health near the end of June. He said he felt pain and stiffness, he underwent tests and they confirmed he had a new form of cancer. He did not disclose what kind of cancer.

 Layton's chief of staff, Anne McGrath, said Monday that Layton's condition took a quick turn for the worse Sunday night.

 She spent a few hours with him Saturday and had a sense that he was losing a battle, but says his campaign slogan – don't let them tell you it can't be done – was also a personal slogan.

 "It is a huge loss. It is a huge loss for me personally, but it's a huge loss also for our party and our country," she said.

 McGrath worked with Layton for nearly a decade.

 "There's no question that my heart is broken," she said.

 McGrath said Layton was thinking about what it would mean for the party if he died. When they spoke on Saturday, they talked about upcoming events like the party's annual caucus retreat in September and what Parliament would be like if he weren't there.

 Layton always liked to be presented with options, McGrath told Evan Solomon on CBC's Power & Politics, including a plan for what would happen if he died.

 "He was very, very practical and he was very much wanting to know that we were going to be able to continue and we were going to be strong," she said.

 After the news of Layton's death emerged shortly after 8 a.m. ET, friends, colleagues and Canadians reacted quickly and with shock, sadness and tears. The flag on the Peace Tower was lowered to half-mast.

 Harper saddened by news

 Layton's last letter "My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world," Jack Layton writes just days before his death. Read more

 Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Layton will be remembered for the force of his personality and his dedication to public life.

 Speaking from the foyer of the House of Commons, Harper said the two leaders had always talked about getting together to jam.

 "I will always regret the jam session that never was. That is a reminder, I think, that we must always make time for friends, family and loved ones, while we still can," he said.

 In a statement earlier Monday, Harper saluted Layton's contribution to public life and said it would be sorely missed.

 "I know one thing: Jack gave his fight against cancer everything he had. Indeed, Jack never backed down from any fight," he said.

 Tributes to Layton poured in from across party lines. Rae said the news took his breath away and that Layton's death is not just a loss for the NDP, but for all Canadians.

 "It's a loss for the country because he was a political guy who believed strongly in politics and who had a lot of resilience and a lot of guts," Rae told CBC News.

 NDP colleagues shocked

 Longtime NDP leader and MP Ed Broadbent told CBC News he sensed the end was coming, but was still shocked when he got the call Monday morning.

 "In each and every election, he moved us forward ... he wanted a reason in politics," Broadbent said.

 "Canada has lost a great politician. A man who believed in working for the public good. And I've lost a personal friend."

 Interim NDP Leader Nycole Turmel spoke of one of Layton's favourite quotes from Tommy Douglas, the founder of the CCF, the NDP's forerunner. Layton included the quote in every email he sent: “Courage my friends, ‘tis never too late to build a better world.”

 "Jack was a courageous man. It was his leadership that inspired me, and so many others, to run for office," Turmel said in her statement.

 "We – members of Parliament, New Democrats and Canadians – need to pull together now and carry on his fight to make this country a better place."

 NDP deputy leader Libby Davies, fighting back tears, said Layton's death is "an incredible loss."

 "Jack was not only a great leader of the NDP, he's someone that Canadians across the country came to love. We feel a tremendous sense of loss and grief," she said.

 Davies said Layton brought a sense of humanity to Canadian politics and in his career and his life, especially his battle with cancer, "he gave it his all."

 "We have only love and respect for everything that he did and he leaves some really important legacies in Canadian politics," she said.

 The NDP appointed Turmel to take over for Layton temporarily. Layton wanted to be back at work in time for Parliament's fall session in mid-September.

 Jack Layton, speaking at the NDP's 50th anniversary convention in June, led his party past the Liberals to become the Official Opposition during the spring election. Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press Douglas' daughter, Shirley, says Layton was the same whether he was in a crowded room or meeting people one-on-one.

 "Everywhere I've gone, people said 'You know, we've got a leader who cared'," she told CBC News.

 Douglas says she's worried about Chow.

 "That's the one person I keep thinking about all morning," she said. "They were so close and when a marriage that is as close as that one ... it's a terrible thing to see that marriage broken apart by this. I just couldn't say enough to her. She's a tremendous woman on her own."

 The leader of the Official Opposition announced on July 25 he was stepping away from the job to concentrate on his cancer treatment. He told Canadians he had recently been diagnosed with a new form of cancer, in addition to the prostate cancer he had earlier battled.

Summary: – Jack Layton has died of cancer barely three months after leading the New Democratic Party to its strongest-ever result in Canada. The 61-year-old, who shocked the country only a few weeks ago when he announced he was stepping aside as the official opposition leader because of health issues, died yesterday of an undisclosed form of cancer and will receive a state funeral, the CBC reports. Tributes to Layton, who led the social democratic party for nine years, have poured in from across the political spectrum. After his death, Layton's family released a final letter to Canadians in which he addressed his battle with cancer and his vision for a better Canada. "To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope," he wrote. "Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer."


xkcd.com Randall Munroe

 Contact:

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 press@xkcd.com -- Press questions, etc (may take a long time to get to me).

 Note: You are welcome to reprint occasional comics pretty much anywhere (presentations, papers, blogs with ads, etc). If you're not outright merchandizing, you're probably fine. Just be sure to attribute the comic to xkcd.com.

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 xkcd.com updates without fail every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

 Who are you? I'm just this guy, you know? I'm a CNU graduate with a degree in physics. Before starting xkcd, I worked on robots at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. As of June 2007 I live in Massachusetts. In my spare time I climb things, open strange doors, and go to goth clubs dressed as a frat guy so I can stand around and look terribly uncomfortable. At frat parties I do the same thing, but the other way around. What else do you do? Occasionally produce a few extra comics such as a pair of comics for IBM's A Smarter Planet initiative (also archived here as they are released).

 Encourage people to get out and meet each other in, hopefully, interesting places via geohashing.

 Host a gallery of photos inspired by comic #249.

 Who else are you? Server maintenance and most of the coding for these sites is done by my friend davean, who tries hard to remain invisible but can be reached at davean@xkcd.com. Designer Christina Gleason also helps with posters, books, and various side projects. What does XKCD stand for? It's not actually an acronym. It's just a word with no phonetic pronunciation -- a treasured and carefully-guarded point in the space of four-character strings. Where did all this start? I was going through old math/sketching graph paper notebooks and didn't want to lose some of the work in them, so I started scanning pages. I took the more comic-y ones and put them up on a server I was testing out, and got a bunch of readers when BoingBoing linked to me. I started drawing more seriously, gained a lot more readers, started selling t-shirts on the site, and am currently shipping t-shirts and drawing this comic full-time. It's immensely fun and I really appreciate y'all's support. Why can't I read the whole comic mouseover text in Firefox? They can be read with extensions like Long Titles, or by right-clicking on the images and going to 'properties', then clicking and dragging to read the whole thing. This is a bug in Firefox, Mozilla Bug #45375. It has been outstanding for many years now.

 Note: It looks like it's been fixed in Firefox 3.0. Now, as an added tweak, to keep the tooltips from expiring while you're reading, you can use this. Can we print xkcd in our magazine/newspaper/other publication? If it's a not-for-profit publication, you need no permission -- just print them with attribution to xkcd.com. You can post xkcd in your blog (whether ad-supported or not) with no need to get my permission. How can I find the date a comic was posted? The posting date is in the mouseover text on the archive page. Is there an interface for automated systems to access comics and metadata? Yes. You can get comics through the JSON interface, at URLs like http://xkcd.com/info.0.json (current comic) and http://xkcd.com/614/info.0.json (comic #614). How do I write "xkcd"? There's nothing in Strunk and White about this. For those of us pedantic enough to want a rule, here it is: The preferred form is "xkcd", all lower-case. In formal contexts where a lowercase word shouldn't start a sentence, "XKCD" is an okay alternative. "Xkcd" is frowned upon. What is your favorite astronomical entity? The Pleiades. Back to main ||||| Invasion of the tiny plastic people! Lego figures set to outnumber HUMANS by 2019

 A graph produced by a physics graduate in Virginia, compared human population predictions and the forecast production of Lego figures

 At the end of 2006, Lego said there were four billion figures in existence, but the number is expected to rise to almost eight billion in 2019

 The first Lego figurine went on sale in 1978 and had no race, sex or specific role, as these would be determined by a child's imagination

 Since 1978, millions of tiny plastic people have been populating the Earth.

 And now it is predicted that there could be a miniature Lego figure for every person on Earth in 2019.

 According to a mathematical online comic, Lego has been making its little people at such a rate that they will outnumber the human population by the end of the decade.

 A physics graduate from Massachusetts, who is behind the web comic Xkcd.com has calculated that the predictions for the global population and predictions for the number of Lego Figurines will match up in 2019 and the little plastic people will go on to out-number humans

 The first Lego figurine went on sale in 1978 and since then, billions have been produced

 At the end of 2006, the company announced there were four billion miniature figures in existence, being played with by children across the planet.

 Now, a physics graduate from Massachusetts, who is behind the web comic Xkcd.com has calculated that the predictions for the global population and predictions for the number of Lego Figurines will match up in 2019 and the plastic people will go on to out-number humans.

 If the predictions are correct, there will be almost eight billion people and the same amount of Lego figures calling Earth home in 2019.

 Lego said in 2008 that it has made 400 billion Lego bricks since the company began, which is enough for 62 each for every person in existence at that time.

 According to a mathematical online comic, Lego has been making its little people at such a rate that they will outnumber the human population by the end of the decade. Here, s model maker at Legoland Windsor puts the finishing touches to a wall made up of over 6,000 Lego figures

 LEGO MINIFIGURE TIME LINE

 1978: The first minifigures are launched for the themes Town, Space and Castle

 1978: Two months after the appearance of the first minifigures the first female minifigure arrives on the scene and she's a nurse

 1989: Minifigures change their facial expressions. Now they can be either good or bad

 1997: The minifigure comes to life in the computer game PANIC ON LEGO ISLAND as an animated character

 1998: The minifigure makes its first appearance in a specific role - as Star Wars characters

 2003: For the first time in the history of the minifigure its yellow facial colouring is replaced by a more authentic skin colour

 2004: Lego licensed products no longer have yellow faces – Harry Potter, for example, assumes a more natural skin tone

 2010: Minifigures are launched as collector’s items

 The first Lego figurine went on sale in 1978 and since then, billions have been produced, making them the world's biggest population group, according to the company.

 The mini figure has been modelled after celebrities from Stephen Spielberg to Santa Claus and enjoyed various careers, including astronaut, policeman, racing driver, warrior, pirate, skater and scientist as well as taken on the role of fictional characters like Spider-Man, Harry Potter and Yoda.

 Lego said that when the mini figure first appeared, it was decided that its face should have only one colour - yellow - and that its facial features should be happy and neutral.

 However earlier this year, robot experts at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, studied all 6000 minifigures from 1975 to 2010 and found that from the early Nineties onwards, Lego's mini-figures' facials expressions have been diversifying from consistently happy smiles to expressions reflecting greater conflict.

 The first figures had no sex, race or specific role, as these would be determined by a child's imagination and it was not until the launch of Lego Pirates in the 1980s that the figures were given differing facial expressions.

Summary: – Today's oddest factoid: There may be 7 billion humans on the planet, but by 2019 a species of tiny plastic people will outnumber even us: Lego figurines. Randall Munroe, the physics grad behind the webcomic xkcd, has compared Lego production forecasts with human population predictions to determine that by 2019, there will be nearly 8 billion tiny, yellow people around—up from 4 billion in 2006—a number that will outstrip the human population. It's all the more impressive considering Lego figurines have only been on sale since 1978, the Daily Mail reports.(Click to see why some of those Lego people may appear angry.)


Published on Nov 6, 2017

 Donald Trump and the Japanese prime minister, Shinzō Abe, feed fish on the second day of the US president’s five-nation tour of Asia. Standing beside a pond brimming with colourful koi in the Akasaka palace in Tokyo, the two men upended their wooden containers and dumped the entire contents of fish food into the pond Fishy business: Trump and Abe dump fish food into precious koi pond

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 Guardian Culture ► http://is.gd/guardianculture ||||| US president and Japanese host give fish a large feast on second day of former’s five-nation tour of Asia

 Donald Trump and the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, have taken a forceful approach to feeding fish on the second day of the US president’s five-nation tour of Asia.

 Standing beside a pond brimming with colourful koi in the Akasaka palace in Tokyo, the two men began spooning out fish food before appearing to lose patience and emptying their wooden containers with a shake.

 The palace’s large collection of koi have been viewed by a succession of world leaders, including Margaret Thatcher. It is not known whether the former British prime minister was as aggressive as Trump when it came to feeding the pond’s inhabitants.

 White House reporters, keen perhaps to pick up on a Trump gaffe, captured the moment when he upended his box on their smartphones and tweeted evidence of his questionable grasp of fish keeping. However, other footage made clear that Trump was merely following his host’s lead.

 Abe is seen grinning, as is a woman in a kimono standing to one side. Next to her, Rex Tillerson – perhaps grateful for a moment of comic relief after he was named in the Paradise Papers – could not suppress a laugh, according to witnesses.

 Some speculated that a poor palace employee would be dispatched to the scene to clean up the mess as soon as the two leaders disappeared inside.

 Trump and Abe are not alone in misjudging the fishes’ appetite. According to the Aquascape website, overfeeding is the most common mistake made by keepers of koi.

 “This can make your fish sick, and excessive amounts of waste that strains the limits of what can be biologically reduced, results in a decline of water quality,�? the site says.

Summary: – It's probably one of the most-repeated phrases when teaching kids about how to feed fish: just a pinch. It's a directive President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe most definitely did not follow while the two visited the Akasaka palace's koi carp pond Monday. The Guardian reports that the men began by spooning a bit of food in before "appearing to lose patience" and essentially dumping the contents of the boxes they held into the pond. While some in the media were quick to pounce on Trump for the apparent gaffe, the Guardian notes that video footage shows he was simply imitating Abe's approach.


A former executive with Tiffany & Co. stole a little blue box bounty from the jeweler's midtown Manhattan headquarters and resold it for more than $1.3 million, federal authorities said Tuesday.

 Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun was arrested Tuesday at her home in Darien, Conn. She was to appear later in the day in federal court in Manhattan to face charges of wire fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property.

 As vice president of product development, Lederhaas-Okun had authority to "check out" jewelry from Tiffany to provide to potential manufacturers to determine production costs. Authorities allege that after she left Tiffany in February, the company discovered she had checked out 164 items that were never returned.

 According to a criminal complaint, the missing jewelry included numerous diamond bracelets in 18-carat gold, diamond drop and hoop earrings in platinum or 18-carat gold, diamond rings in platinum, rings with precious stones in 18-carat gold, and platinum and diamond pendants.

 When confronted about the missing jewelry, Lederhaas-Okun claimed that she had left some of it behind at Tiffany and that some had been lost or damaged, the complaint said. But an investigation found that Lederhaas-Okun resold the goods to an unidentified international dealer for more than $1.3 million, it said.

 Bank records showed that since January 2011, the dealer wrote 75 checks to her or her husband for amounts of up to $47,400, the complaint said. Investigators also recovered purchase forms signed by Lederhaas-Okun that said the items were her personal property.

 Authorities allege Lederhaas-Okun purposely checked out items valued at under $10,000 apiece to avoid detection. The company takes a daily inventory of all checked-out items worth more than $25,000.

 If convicted, Lederhaas-Okun faces up to 20 years in prison. The name of her attorney wasn't immediately available.

 Tiffany representatives declined to comment Tuesday. ||||| A former Tiffany exec was busted by the feds this morning in the theft of more than $1 million worth of bling from the famed jewelry company.

 Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun, who oversaw product development for the blue box bauble business, allegedly resold the valuable trinkets to an unidentified Midtown jewelry company and concocted a series of stories to account for the loss.

 The loot included more than 165 pieces, including “numerous diamond bracelets, platinum or gold diamond drop and hoop earrings, platinum diamond rings, and platinum and diamond pendants,” according to the feds.

 Lederhaas-Okun, 46, was nabbed by the FBI this morning at her home in ritzy Darien, Conn., and charged with wire fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property.

 The charges carry a maximum punishment of 30 years in the slammer.

 “As alleged, Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun went from a vice president at a high-end jewelry company to jewel thief,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said.

 “Her arrest shows that no matter how privileged their position in a company, employees who steal will face the full consequences of the law.”

 According to a profile posted on linkedin.com, Lederhaas-Okun started working at Tiffany as an assistant buyer in 1991 and rose through the ranks over the following years.

 She was canned in February “as part of an overall downsizing at the jewelry company,” according to court papers.

 A Tiffany spokeswoman said: “In deference to the US Attorney’s investigation, we are not in a position to comment at this time.”

 Lederhaas-Okun is due in court later today.

Summary: – It's not the kind of jewelry heist screenwriters dream about, but this alleged plot seems to have gotten the job done: A former executive at Tiffany's is accused of taking 165 pieces of jewelry, pretty much one piece at a time, and then reselling them to an international dealer for about $1.3 million, reports AP. Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun had access to the loot as part of her job as VP in charge of product development. An investigation found that she checked out from storage everything from diamond bracelets to precious stones to gold earrings, items that somehow never found their way back to the company. Her excuses about things getting lost or damaged didn't stand up to scrutiny, especially when authorities found 75 hefty checks written by the unidentified dealer to her or her husband. (The New York Post says the dealer is a company in Midtown Manhattan.) The 46-year-old suspect, who lost her job at Tiffany's during downsizing in February, faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.


CONCORD, N.H.—It was not the news that South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham went on TV to make. Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, who like the rest of Washington was exploring every angle of the Hillary Clinton e-mail kerfuffle, asked Graham if he had a private e-mail address.

 "I don't e-mail," said Graham. "No, you can have every e-mail I've ever sent. I've never sent one."

 That went viral, funny enough, on the weekend of Graham's first trip to New Hampshire as a potential presidential candidate. After a marathon town-hall meeting in Concord's Snow Shoe Lodge, the Republican held a gaggle with reporters, and Fox News lobbed a question about the e-mail. Graham repeated himself: He did not use e-mail. He preferred to talk on the phone.

 "The next president of the United States needs to be good with people, not just technology," he said.

 http://youtu.be/RoNHHaL2Phs

 After that exchange, Graham responded to a question about Clinton with a joke: "If she could do it again, she'd do the Lindsey Graham thing, and not use e-mail." As he headed to his car, I asked Graham to explain his communication methods, a subject that truly baffled a press corps that walks around with smartphones welded to hands.

 "What I do, basically, is that I've got iPads, and I play around," Graham explained. "But I don't e-mail. I've tried not to have a system where I can just say the first dumb thing that comes to my mind. I've always been concerned. I can get texts, and I call you back, if I want. I get a text, and I respond not by sending you a text, but calling you if I think what you asked is worthy enough for me calling you. I'm not being arrogant, but I'm trying to jealously guard myself in terms of being able to think through problems and not engage in chat all day. I've had a chance to kind of carve out some time for myself not responding to every 15-second crisis." ||||| University of WisconsinArchive-It Partner Since: Aug, 2007Organization Type: Colleges & UniversitiesOrganization URL: http://archives.library.wisc.edu This collection currently includes two distinct sub-collections: The UW-Madison Collection and The Stem Cell Research Archives Project.The UW-Madison Collection includes University of Wisconsin Web sites that document many aspects of campus life including university administration, colleges, departments, and major campus organizations, student life, research, buildings, and special and ongoing events. We also crawl UW System and Colleges administration and UW Extension Web sites.The Stem Cell Research Archives Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries collects, preserves, and provides access to records of stem cell research at UW-Madison and reactions in Wisconsin to work accomplished or underway at UW-Madison.For more information about these collections or UW campus history, visit http://archives.library.wisc.edu or contact uwarchiv@library.wisc.edu. On Wisconsin! ||||| How does he find out that there’s been a last-minute change to his scheduled meeting? How does he know whether his Amazon.com order has been dispatched? What does he do when he forgets the password for his Spotify account? These questions plagued me upon hearing that South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham has never sent an email.

 Graham, who was a U.S. congressman for eight years before becoming a senator 12 years ago, laughed about his email habits before adding, “I don’t know what that makes me.”

 More Politics

 We know: It makes Graham part of the 9 percent of American adults who say they have never sent or received an email in their lives. That number comes from a report published by the Pew Research Center in April 2012 that used survey data to analyze the way American adults use the Internet.

 It’s not just Graham’s public role that makes his avoidance of email surprising, it’s also his demographic characteristics. Only 3 percent of college-educated respondents said they had never used email (Graham graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1977, the same year the U.S. Postal Service recognized electronic messaging as a threat to its revenue). Graham’s annual salary of $174,000 also makes his non-emailing unusual, since more affluent groups are more likely to have used email: 85 percent of respondents whose household income was less than than $30,000 per year said they had used email compared to 97 percent of those earning $75,000 or more. Being white also increases the probability that an American will have used email at some point in his or her life.

 In fact, the only thing that makes Graham’s communication habits less surprising is the fact that he’s approaching 60 years of age. Older Americans are less likely to say they have used email. But still, 90 percent of adults in Graham’s age group have sent or received at least one message, and even among those age 65 and over, that number is 86 percent.

 Pew also asked why people emailed or didn’t. About a third of all respondents who didn’t use the Internet or email said it was because they were just not interested, and another 12 percent said it was because they don’t have a computer. Other responses included “it’s a waste of time” (7 percent of respondents), “too old to learn” (4 percent) and “worried about viruses/spyware/spam” (only 1 percent).

 It’s not yet clear why the senator has chosen to abstain from email. Maybe Graham just really, really cares about the U.S. Postal Service — after all, he did sponsor a bill in 2003 to rename a branch in his home state the Floyd Spence Post Office Building. I assume he received the good news that the bill passed via a stamped letter. ||||| 15% of American adults do not use the internet at all, and another 9% of adults use the internet but not at home.

 As of May 2013, 15% of American adults ages 18 and older do not use the internet or email. Asked why they do not use the internet:

 34% of non-internet users think the internet is just not relevant to them , saying they are not interested, do not want to use it, or have no need for it.

 , saying they are not interested, do not want to use it, or have no need for it. 32% of non-internet users cite reasons tied to their sense that the internet is not very easy to use . These non-users say it is difficult or frustrating to go online, they are physically unable, or they are worried about other issues such as spam, spyware, and hackers. This figure is considerably higher than in earlier surveys.

 . These non-users say it is difficult or frustrating to go online, they are physically unable, or they are worried about other issues such as spam, spyware, and hackers. This figure is considerably higher than in earlier surveys. 19% of non-internet users cite the expense of owning a computer or paying for an internet connection .

 . 7% of non-users cited a physical lack of availability or access to the internet.

 As in previous surveys by the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project, internet use remains strongly correlated with age, educational attainment, and household income. One of the strongest patterns in the data on internet use is by age group: 44% of Americans ages 65 and older do not use the internet, and these older Americans make up almost half (49%) of non-internet users overall.

 Though they themselves do not go online, these self-described non-internet users often report that the internet touches their lives:

 44% of offline adults have asked a friend or family member to look something up or complete a task on the internet for them .

 . 23% of offline adults live in a household where someone else uses the internet at home, a proportion that has remained relatively steady for over a decade.

 at home, a proportion that has remained relatively steady for over a decade. 14% of offline adults say that they once used to use the internet, but have since stopped for some reason.

 Overall, most adults who do not use the internet or email do not express a strong desire to go online in the future: just 8% of offline adults say they would like to start using the internet or email, while 92% say they are not interested. We also offline adults whether they would need assistance going online if they did wish to do so, and found that only 17% of all non-internet users say they would be able to start using the internet on their own, while 63% say they would need assistance.

 Even among the 85% of adults who do go online, experiences connecting to the internet may vary widely. For instance, while 76% of adults use the internet at home, 9% of adults use the internet but lack home access. Groups that are significantly more likely to rely on internet access outside the home include blacks and Hispanics, as well as adults at lower levels of income and education. Finally, while most home internet users have broadband in some form, 3% of all adults go online at home via dial-up connections.

 About this survey

 The findings in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from April 17 to May 19, 2013, among a sample of 2,252 adults ages 18 and older. Telephone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish by landline and cell phone. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. More information is available in the Methods section at the end of this report.

Summary: – Lindsey Graham, take heart: Up to 15% of Americans don't use email either and may not go online at all. The South Carolina Republican revealed yesterday during a conversation about Hillary Clinton's emails that he had never sent an email before. "I don't know what that makes me," he said on Meet the Press. Well, drawing on a Pew Research Center report from 2012, Five Thirty-Eight says that 9% of American adults haven't sent an email either. And a Pew report from last year says 15% of American adults don't go online for email, surfing, pinging, posting, or whatever. What's really unusual about Graham's email stance is the fact that he doesn't fit into the non-email group's demographic. Per the 2012 report, just 3% of Americans with a college education say they haven't clicked "send" before—while Graham left the University of South Carolina in 1977 with a bona fide degree. And his $174,000 salary makes him more affluent than most non-email users; 97% of Americans making at least $75,000 say they've used email compared to 85% of people banking under $30,000. Whites are also more likely to have sent an electronic message. Only Graham's age (he's 59) makes him a closer demographic fit, but even then, 90% of adults in his age range say they've sent email before. So why doesn't he? "I've tried not to have a system where I can just say the first dumb thing that comes to my mind," he tells Bloomberg.