High Schooler's Unbelievable Dunk Is Viral Video Gold

What you are about to see is, by all appearances, actually real. Unexplainable, preposterous, utterly indescribable -- but real.

[More from Mashable: This Brutal College Football Hit May Be the Best Tackle Ever]

The video embedded above, which took over the sports Internet on Wednesday, shows Victor Dukes -- a high school sophomore in Jonesboro, Ark. -- quite literally taking flight to throw down a vicious one-hander while looking down at the rim and injuring some poor wannabe defender in the process.

It purportedly comes from a matchup between Dukes' Nettleton High squad and intrastate opponent Manila High, at something called the NEA Tournament -- all of which checks out.

[More from Mashable: Ray Lewis to Retire as Twitter Pays Homage to the NFL Legend]

The video must be seen to be believed, but here are a several reasons why it's an all-time classic dunk clip:

• The earnest play-by-play man's giddy call: "Oh, my goodness ... He just injured a player with a dunk!"
• Dukes somehow gains more altitude with a mid-jump after-burst, which looks physically impossible but is in fact not unprecedented in basketball history.
• Victor Dukes is a sophomore in high school.
• The moment at :06, where we can pause the video to see Dukes looking down at the rim.
• The fact that the teammates of the poor kid who got so epically dunked on are considerate enough to help him up from the floor instead of doing something like this.
• The moment at :10, where said attempt fails and the kid slumps back to the ground in a pained, humiliated, wholly defeated pile of posterization aftermath.
• Did we mention that this kid is just a high school sophomore?

Maybe we'll have to add him to this video roundup someday:

1. Derrick Rose

The Chicago Bulls point guard starred at the Windy City's Simeon Career Academy in high school before playing one season of college ball then getting picked first overall by his hometown pro team in the 2008 NBA Draft. He was league MVP in 2011, and is currently on the road to recovery from a serious knee injury.

As a high schooler, he was the top-ranked player in the country. This video, which has over 2.6 million YouTube views, makes it easy to understand why.

Click here to view this gallery.

Thumbnail image courtesy RitterCommunications via YouTube

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/high-schoolers-unbelievable-dunk-viral-video-gold-195649189.html

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Squaremouth's 5 Tips to Avoid Missing Out On Travel Insurance ...

Travelers often choose to protect their vacation dollars with travel insurance in case an unexpected event interferes with travel plans. Unfortunately, there is one momentous mistake frequently made when buying policies. According to travel insurance comparison site Squaremouth, waiting too long to purchase a policy after making an initial trip deposit can cause many valuable and sought-after benefits to become unavailable.

Squaremouth has released the following tip sheet to help travelers prepare their 2013 vacation plans. Travelers who find themselves in these common scenarios often wish they had purchased their policies months earlier.

1. There?s a hurricane
Although 2012 didn?t see an unusually active hurricane season, several named storms wreaked havoc on the travel plans of many. Travel insurance policies often include cancellation and interruption coverage for hurricanes, but only if a policy is purchased before the naming of a storm. ?It can be disappointing when a traveler buys a policy just after a tropical storm is named and discovers that hurricane and weather benefits have been voided,? says Chris Harvey, Squaremouth?s CEO. ?It is imperative that policies are purchased while a hurricane remains unforeseen.? As soon as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration names a storm, the available hurricane benefits are rescinded for subsequently purchased policies.

2. A common carrier goes on strike
When a common carrier goes on strike, travel insurance benefits may cover associated losses, but only on policies purchased before talks of a strike are made public. Over the summer, travelers across the country anxiously awaited negotiations to curtail the potential strike of United Airlines pilots. When employees of a common carrier strike, it can mean disaster for scheduled travel, causing unexpected delay and cancellation expenses; however, policies purchased early enough may protect travelers from such losses.

3. A travel supplier becomes bankrupt
In light of the shaky economic climate, the potential bankruptcy or financial default of travel providers is a factor that travelers must consider. In October, the sudden bankruptcy of Club ABC, a private travel club, left many travelers with significant losses and no recourse. ?Financial default? benefits are included in many travel insurance policies, but will only cover losses if policies are purchased before indication of a supplier?s insolvency becomes public.

4. Vacation time is revoked
It is disheartening when the need to work during scheduled time off arises, and nonrefundable trip costs can leave would-be travelers with significant losses. Fortunately, a ?cancel for work reasons? benefit is included in the trip cancellation coverage of many policies ? but the benefit may be time-sensitive. Some policies require plans to be purchased within 15-30 days of initial trip deposit in order for the benefit to take effect. Reimbursement for associated losses would not be available for policies purchased after revocation of vacation time.

5. Coverage is needed for pre-existing conditions
According to Harvey, emergency medical coverage for pre-existing conditions is the number one reason to purchase policies early. ?Many policies have pre-existing condition coverage available,? says Harvey. ?But often, travelers don?t realize that this coverage is only available if benefits are purchased within 14-30 days of an initial trip deposit.? For emergency medical care that is needed due to a pre-existing condition, purchasing a policy early can mean saving tens of thousands of dollars. ?Out of all the reasons we advise travelers to make early policy purchases, pre-ex coverage has the most potential value, by far,? adds Harvey.

There is usually no difference in premium between policies purchased the same day as initial trip deposit and policies bought the day before scheduled departure. However, when factoring in availability of the time-sensitive benefits described above, the differences in policy value can be substantial.

About Squaremouth
Squaremouth is America?s fastest-growing travel insurance comparison site, providing the tools to instantly quote, compare and buy policies from every major provider. The company is headquartered in St. Petersburg, FL, with offices in Fort Wayne, IN. For more information on Squaremouth or its extensive network of partner sites worldwide, visit www.squaremouth.com.

About our Zero Complaint Guarantee
The cornerstone of Squaremouth?s commitment to customers is the guarantee to remove any provider with a customer complaint that cannot be resolved to Squaremouth?s satisfaction. Squaremouth offers the broadest selection of insurance, with an emphasis on quality, follow-up care, and independent evaluations from insurance industry watchdog, AM Best.

Squaremouth offers products from the following travel insurance providers:
Air Ambulance Card, AMEX Assurance Company, Azimuth Risk Solutions, LLC, CSA Travel Protection, Global Alert Administrators, HCC Medical Insurance Services, HTH Worldwide, IMG, ?iTravelInsured, John Hancock Insurance Agency, Inc., MedjetAssist, MH Ross Travel Insurance Services, RoamRight, Seven Corners Inc, Travel Guard, Travel Insurance Services, Travel Insured International, Travelex Insurance Services, TravelSafe, Trawick International, USA-ASSIST Worldwide Protection, and VacationGuard.

AVAILABLE TOPIC EXPERTS:
Chris Harvey
charvey@squaremouth.com
Toll-free (800) 240-0369 x 6103
Direct (727) 490-5802
Chrisharvey.com
LinkedIn
Google+

Jenna Gravino
jgravino@squaremouth.com
Toll-free (800) 240-0369 x 6112
Direct (727) 502-6849
LinkedIn
Google+

Related press releases:

Source: http://blogs.squaremouth.com/press-room/squaremouths-5-tips-to-avoid-missing-out-on-travel-insurance-benefits/

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Ed's Beer Site: A family tree of English hops

For those of you not lucky enough to be sent a Charles Faram calendar here's a scan of the goodie that came with it: "The family tree of English hop varieties".

You'll notice that Fuggles only appear as a picture at the bottom and won't actually be found in the family tree. I forget the details but crosses made with Fuggle as a parent lacked a required disease resistance, though I've a feeling this may have changed recently (and Cascade, the American hop that's the mother of Endeavour, has Fuggle in its ancestry).

Goldings have fared better and three of the Goldings clones feature in the family tree, but right at the top is BB1, a wild hop from Manitoba, a region of Canada, but that's another story.

Source: http://edsbeer.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-family-tree-of-english-hops.html

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TED Blog | Seeds for healthy cells, candy for cancer cells: TED-Ed ...

02 January 2013

Making this TED-Ed video required (a) a lot of knitting and (b) a ton of boxes of Nerds.

When it came time to animate the lesson ?How do cancer cells behave differently from healthy ones?? from educator George Zaidan, our TED-Ed animators had a crazy idea for how to make cell division come alive ? using seeds and beans to animate what healthy cells look like as they divide in an orderly pattern and brightly colored candies to show how cancer cells divide quickly and wildly. They also had a good idea for how to show the way cells make up organs of the body?yarn, some knotted, some spooled, some purled and some crocheted.

Sure, cancer doesn?t sound like the most fun topic for an animation. But this lesson explains how chemotherapy works, and why it has such terrible side effects ? showing how cancer?s strength is also its weakness. And because the process of making this animation was so fascinating, we asked director Biljana Labovic and animator Lisa Labracio to tell us about how they arrived at this approach.

Nerds? Seeds? Tell us a bit about the visual inspiration and your choice of materials.

Biljana:??It?s all about growth.??That line from the script inspired me to start thinking how I could make cells physically GROW. Materializing them out of something physical seemed like a good starting point, and seeds seemed like a perfect symbolic material to represent the idea of growth. So I started looking at different type of seeds. Some were too small or too big to animate. Eventually, I expended into grains to create a variety of colors, textures and sizes to play with. I went from white couscous to dark azuki beans, and stayed in the range of brown tones ? natural food colors. Combining the seeds and grains allowed us to create a variety of different looking cells, but we ended up using only two ? hair cells and liver cells.

Once we animated the healthy seed cell, I wanted apply the same philosophy and visual style to creating a cancer cell. The first thing that came to my mind was candy ? food full of processed sugar. My original idea was to use different kinds of jelly beans, but they were a little too big compared to our seeds, so I decided to go with Nerds. Their texture and size was much easier to handle for animation. In contrast to the natural seeds and grains, the colors were very unnatural. In addition, we later digitally adjusted the colors to make them feel even more off.

How did you turn the individual pieces into moving, dividing cells?

Lisa:?I began by watching several microscopic videos of cell division, which I used as a reference to create a hand-drawn line animation to serve as a guide for my stop-motion animation. With the cancer cell, for example, the purple candies were gathered together as the nucleus, which were surrounded by multi-colored candies as the cytoplasm. Using a series of tools ? including chopsticks and tweezers ? I moved the candy bits individually into each position of cell division. After each cell was in place, I would take a picture. All of these steps were done by hand, with a camera and stop-motion software to capture the individual frames.

Did you have to do more digital animation?

Lisa:?I shot all of the stop-motion animation against a green screen. This was important, because later when you see several cells dividing on screen at once, I was able to duplicate animation in order to fill the screen with cells. Then, in the scene where we portrayed the effects of chemotherapy on liver, hair, AND cancer cells while all were simultaneously dividing, I was able to shoot the individual cell divisions, and composite them as a whole. This saved me from having to organize and shoot all of that animation under the camera at once, which could literally take weeks! Also, the cell membranes ? which were doilies for the healthy cells and plastic plates for the cancer cells ? were animated and incorporated with the cell animation in the computer.

How did you design the human body?

Biljana:?I started to think of the human body and organs as a very delicate creation and, once again, I wanted to use natural organic materials for everything healthy. Yarn came to mind. I was going through some stock footage of yarn patterns and knitted or crouched ornaments, making a parallel to how each organ is a carefully ?knitted? object. I came across a multi-colorful twined ball of yarn and this perfectly represented the brain. Then we put knitted gloves for the hands. Our artist Celeste ?digitally crocheted? a few organs like the stomach and lungs using Photoshop. We took photographs of twisted yarn for the intestines, etc.?The rest of the body had a nice wavy purl pattern representing the blood flowing.

What were you hoping to communicate to your young TED-Ed audience with this video??

Biljana:?During the early development period for this animation, I was reading a lot about cell division, cancer and chemotherapy, but I was also thinking a lot about healthy lifestyles and foods, and how to convey that message in this video. I was hoping that I could inspire our young audience, perhaps even subconsciously, to be more aware of the food they eat ? especially processed sugar. Interestingly enough, the conversations and debates over healthy diet and vegetarianism vs. eating meat exploded on our YouTube channel within minutes of the video being posted. The message apparently came through.

Source: http://blog.ted.com/2013/01/02/seeds-for-healthy-cells-candy-for-cancer-the-stop-motion-tricks-behind-this-ted-ed-lesson/

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ALIEN SPACESHIPS TO ATTACK EARTH IN MARCH 2013 ...

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What fiscal cliff? Holiday shoppers shrug off budget debate

(Reuters) - The "fiscal cliff" drama that dominated the news and spooked businesses and financial markets did little to dampen spending by shoppers this holiday season.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows nearly three-quarters of Americans said the debate around the fiscal cliff had no impact on their holiday spending. Fewer than 20 percent of those polled said they spent less during the season than they did in the 2011 holidays, according to the poll.

Holiday season sales overall - including December sales data from several chains due this week - were likely good, but not great. The expected rise in 2012 holiday spending is poised to show the smallest year-over-year gain since the recession led to a sales drop in 2008. Various estimates suggest that U.S. sales in November and December combined grew at a low single-digit pace, slower than in 2011 and 2010.

The fiscal cliff was a nearly constant topic in the news, as the country waited to see if politicians in Washington would reach a deal to avoid $600 billion in automatic spending cuts and tax increases.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Congress approved a bill that would raise taxes on the wealthy and preserve certain benefits. The vote averted immediate pain like tax hikes for almost all U.S. households, but did not resolve the issue of raising the federal debt ceiling and fights over the budget in coming months.

Seventy-three percent of those polled in the final days of December said concerns about the fiscal cliff did not affect their holiday spending at all, according to findings from an Ipsos poll conducted for Reuters. Back in mid-November, before the holiday season kicked into full gear, 58 percent of those polled had said the fiscal cliff was not affecting their holiday plans.

Only 15 percent of those polled in late December said they spent less during the 2012 holiday season because of the fiscal cliff. In mid-November, 28 percent said that they planned to spend less because of the fiscal cliff.

Fifty-seven percent of those polled said that they spent the same amount on holiday shopping in 2012 that they did in 2011. Nineteen percent said that they spent less than they did in 2011, while 17 percent said that they spent more.

The poll findings are from an Ipsos poll conducted for Thomson Reuters from December 27 to December 31, with 765 American adults interviewed online. Results are within the poll's credibility intervals, a tool used to account for statistical variation in Internet-based polling. The credibility interval was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The poll is the latest in a series that Ipsos conducted during the holiday season.

COSTCO APPEARS STRONG, TARGET UNDER PRESSURE

Taking a look at various retailers, discount chains as a group likely saw the strongest sales growth last month, while profits at some retailers may have taken a hit from the need for sharp discounts to clear merchandise from shelves.

"Value and promotions drove consumers to the malls," according to Jharonne Martis, director of consumer research for Thomson Reuters. "Big discounts and promotions could cut into retailers' profit margins."

Costco Wholesale Corp is expected to post a 6.5 percent rise in December same-store sales. While Costco holds the highest estimate of any of the 17 chains included in the Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S tally of analysts' forecasts, the expectations are still below the 7 percent growth the chain posted in December 2011.

Still, some analysts are concerned about December sales from Target Corp. The discount chain appeared to struggle with efforts such as its highly touted collaboration of holiday gifts with Neiman Marcus, which Target marked down by 50 percent even before Christmas.

Target forecast a low single-digit percentage increase in December same-store sales. Jefferies analyst Daniel Binder said he expects such sales were just flat to up 1 percent, while JP Morgan analyst Christopher Horvers cut his expectation to a 0.5 percent increase after calling for a 2.5 percent rise.

Overall, analysts are looking for 3.7 percent same-store sales growth for December across 17 chains, down from 4.2 percent growth in December 2011, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Such sales rose a disappointing 1.6 percent in November. In December 2008, same-store sales fell 3 percent, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

"December's results will reflect a modest slowdown in overall spending over the past two months ... but the world is not ending," JP Morgan's Matthew Boss said in a note this week.

The weakest December same-store sales are expected to come from teen apparel chain Wet Seal Inc.

Monthly same-store sales tallies exclude major players such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Home Depot Inc and Best Buy Co Inc, as well as online leader Amazon.com Inc.

(Reporting by Jessica Wohl in Chicago; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fiscal-cliff-holiday-shoppers-shrug-off-budget-debate-181036846--finance.html

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Vacation Rental Property Owners And Pet Friendly Properties

Within the Vacation Rental property sector there are many market segments. Many vacation rental providers ignore them and simply treat the market as a whole. An attitude of ?here is a property, rent it?. In theory that is ok, but when everyone is doing it, you need to find a way to stand out from the crowd. If you are lucky enough to have an amazing property then it may speak for itself but those who are trying to rent an ?average apartment or condo? may need to try harder.

All over the world human beings have one thing in common, their love of pets. Of course this does not apply to everyone but many, many people own at least one. They provide pleasure, security and many other rewards but most pet owners also accept the responsibility that goes with them. When they go on holiday they need to do something with their pet(s).

For some, that might mean leaving their pet in a suitable establishment. Many exist for cats and dogs but even that does not suit everyone. Some people simply do not want to be separated from their pet and where they go ?they go?. Dog ownership in different countries varies. In Spain there are huge numbers of dog owners with small breeds. Their dogs travel with them, most travel domestically so air travel is no barrier. Refusing pets in Spain will close the door to many bookings.

This can be good or bad news depending on the property owner. There is furniture, carpets, rugs, linen etc to think about and the idea of someones fluffy pooch leaving its hair everywhere might seem bonkers. But for others who may have furnished their property in a more practical manner there is an opportunity.

Pet friendly properties are no different than non-pet friendly ones with respect to ?type? of property. It is more of an attitude and thought about practical considerations. Anyone?s property can be pet friendly you just need to give it some thought. Basics like suitable drinking dishes for a cat or dog. Welcome packs can include a tin of cat or dog food. Cat litter tray and cat litter. Plastic bags so that owners can clear up excrement from outside areas. How about providing a dog or cat bed? Maybe include information in your ?information pack? about good walks for dogs and also contact details for the local vet as well as the local doctor. The more care you provide for the pet the more likely the same guest will return again.

Make sure you tell people. Good vacation rental agents will have their websites and computer systems setup so that pet friendly properties are clearly identified. This is not just a ?yes or no? setting. It should include the size of pet. There is a big difference between a small dog and a big one.

Size matters especially with dogs. You must specify in advance the size of dog you will accept and make sure that you include in your terms and conditions, relevant information relating to compensation for damages caused by a pet. Check insurance terms and conditions too. When a small terrier jumps on a sofa not a lot happens. It is slightly different when an old english sheepdog does the same.

Length of stay is important too. If someone is going to stay for a month or even two (very common in southern Europe) then their pet can become a big issue. To put them in kennels will cost a lot of money and it is for a long time. You can charge a premium for accepting a pet so this is not a ?cost? issue.

Community rules need checking before you take the plunge. Does the community permit pets? Some do not. This maybe a rental property but the same rules usually apply to guests as well as to the property owner.

More savvy vacation rental agents will include pet friendly sections on their websites or even specialised mini-websites with only their pet-friendly properties. Find one covering your area and see if they have any specific requirements.

Don?t forget pets are not just cats and dogs. Occasionally parrots, hamsters, snakes and reptiles will travel with the family on holiday. For some a pet is just like a child and they will move heaven and earth for them.

So if you want to stand out from the crowd consider pets and make your property ?pet friendly?. You may find it already is and you just need to tell people.

Source: http://www.streetarticles.com/vacation-rentals/vacation-rental-property-owners-and-pet-friendly-properties

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