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Opinion

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Why I won't be quitting Facebook

May 19, 2012

Editor's note: Omar L. Gallaga is a tech-culture reporter for the Austin American-Statesman and a technology contributor to CNN.com, NPR and Kirkus Reviews. (CNN) -- Flush with cash and drunk with power after its $100 billion IPO, Facebook ...

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Links from CouchFireSports.com May 19, 2012

May 19, 2012

Couch Fire Sports is the Best West Virginia Sports Blog That Keeps You Up to Date with WVU Sports Information and Other Interesting Topics...

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1984 is Here!

May 19, 2012

Alex covers the Obama impeachment bill, calls for a more invasive and "tougher" TSA, and the continued government crackdown on raw milk and takes your phone cal...

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Links from CouchFireSports.com May 18, 2012

May 18, 2012

Couch Fire Sports is the Best West Virginia Sports Blog That Keeps You Up to Date with WVU Sports Information and Other Interesting Topics...

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Travolta sexual battery lawsuit withdrawn, but case may go on

May 18, 2012

Los Angeles (CNN) -- The remaining plaintiff in the sexual battery lawsuit against John Travolta fired his lawyer, but the case could continue with another lawyer and another court, two lawyers told CNN on Thursday. Gloria Allred confirme...

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Every black hole contains a new universe

May 18, 2012

Our universe may exist inside a black hole. This may sound strange, but it could actually be the best explanation of how the universe began, and what we observe today. It's a theory that has been explored over the past few decades by a small group of physicists including myself. Successful as it is, there are notable unsolved questions with the standard big bang theory, which suggests that the universe began as a seemingly impossible "singularity," an infinitely small point containing an infinitely high concentration of matter, expanding in size to what we observe today. The theory of inflation, a super-fast expansion of space proposed in recent decades, fills in many important details, such as why slight lumps in the concentration of matter in the early universe coalesced into large celestial bodies such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies. But these theories leave major questions unresolved. For example: What started the big bang? What caused inflation to end? What is the source of the mysterious dark energy that is apparently causing the universe to speed up its expansion? The idea that our universe is entirely contained within a black hole provides answers to these problems and many more. It eliminates the notion of physically impossible singularities in our universe. And it draws upon two central theories in physics. The first is general relativity, the modern theory of gravity. It describes the universe at the largest scales. Any event in the universe occurs as a point in space and time, or spacetime. A massive object such as the Sun distorts or "curves" spacetime, like a bowling ball sitting on a canvas. The Sun's gravitational dent alters the motion of Earth and the other planets orbiting it. The sun's pull of the planets appears to us as the force of gravity. The second is quantum mechanics, which describes the universe at the smallest scales, such as the level of the atom. However, quantum mechanics and general relativity are currently separate theories; physicists have been striving to combine the two successfully into a single theory of "quantum gravity" to adequately describe important phenomena, including the behavior of subatomic particles in black holes. A 1960s adaptation of general relativity, called the Einstein-Cartan-Sciama-Kibble theory of gravity, takes into account effects from quantum mechanics. It not only provides a step towards quantum gravity but also leads to an alternative picture of the universe. This variation of general relativity incorporates an important quantum property known as spin. Particles such as atoms and electrons possess spin, or the internal angular momentum that is analogous to a skater spinning on ice. In this picture, spins in particles interact with spacetime and endow it with a property called "torsion." To understand torsion, imagine spacetime not as a two-dimensional canvas, but as a flexible, one-dimensional rod. Bending the rod corresponds to curving spacetime, and twisting the rod corresponds to spacetime torsion. If a rod is thin, you can bend it, but it's hard to see if it's twisted or not. Spacetime torsion would only be significant, let alone noticeable, in the early universe or in black holes. In these extreme environments, spacetime torsion would manifest itself as a repulsive force that counters the attractive gravitational force coming from spacetime curvature. As in the standard version of general relativity, very massive stars end up collapsing into black holes: regions of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Here is how torsion would play out in the beginning moments of our universe. Initially, the gravitational attraction from curved space would overcome torsion's repulsive forces, serving to collapse matter into smaller regions of space. But eventually torsion would become very strong and prevent matter from compressing into a point of infinite density; matter would reach a state of extremely large but finite density. As energy can be converted into mass, the immensely high gravitational energy in this extremely dense state would cause an intense production of particles, greatly increasing the mass inside the black hole. The increasing numbers of particles with spin would result in higher levels of spacetime torsion. The repulsive torsion would stop the collapse and would create a "big bounce" like a compressed beach ball that snaps outward. The rapid recoil after such a big bounce could be what has led to our expanding universe. The result of this recoil matches observations of the universe's shape, geometry, and distribution of mass. In turn, the torsion mechanism suggests an astonishing scenario: every black hole would produce a new, baby universe inside. If that is true, then the first matter in our universe came from somewhere else. So our own universe could be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe. Just as we cannot see what is going on inside black holes in the cosmos, any observers in the parent universe could not see what is going on in ours. The motion of matter through the black hole's boundary, called an "event horizon," would only happen in one direction, providing a direction of time that we perceive as moving forward. The arrow of time in our universe would therefore be inherited, through torsion, from the parent universe. Torsion could also explain the observed imbalance between matter and antimatter in the universe. Because of torsion, matter would decay into familiar electrons and quarks, and antimatter would decay into "dark matter," a mysterious invisible form of matter that appears to account for a majority of matter in the universe. Finally, torsion could be the source of "dark energy," a mysterious form of energy that permeates all of space and increases the rate of expansion of the universe. Geometry with torsion naturally produces a "cosmological constant," a sort of added-on outward force which is the simplest way to explain dark energy. Thus, the observed accelerating expansion of the universe may end up being the strongest evidence for torsion. Torsion therefore provides a theoretical foundation for a scenario in which the interior of every black hole becomes a new universe. It also appears as a remedy to several major problems of current theory of gravity and cosmology. Physicists still need to combine the Einstein-Cartan-Sciama-Kibble theory fully with quantum mechanics into a quantum theory of gravity. While resolving some major questions, it raises new ones of its own. For example, what do we know about the parent universe and the black hole inside which our own universe resides? How many layers of parent universes would we have? How can we test that our universe lives in a black hole? The last question can potentially be investigated: since all stars and thus black holes rotate, our universe would have inherited the parent black hole’s axis of rotation as a "preferred direction." There is some recently reported evidence from surveys of over 15,000 galaxies that in one hemisphere of the universe more spiral galaxies are "left-handed", or rotating clockwise, while in the other hemisphere more are "right-handed", or rotating counterclockwise. In any case, I believe that including torsion in geometry of spacetime is a right step towards a successful theory of cosmology. Re...

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Senator questions $18B for job training, as study suggest rampant waste, abuse

May 18, 2012

A study commissioned by Sen. Tom Coburn is casting doubt on whether taxpayers' $18 billion annual investment in federal jobs training programs is paying off. "The vast majority of money we spend in job training doesn't go to job training, it goes to employ people in those job training federal programs," Coburn told  Fox News. The 2011 Government Accountability Office study he commissioned, which examined programs in fiscal year 2009, found an overlapping and duplicative maze of 47 federal jobs programs run by nine agencies. Some were rife with mismanagement, waste, fraud, abuse and corruption. The study found: Some job training participants spent their days sitting on a bus. Some were trained for jobs that didn't exist. Others were paid to sit through educational sessions about jobs they already had. High school students were knowingly exposed to the cancer-causing agent asbestos as part of a job training program. Funds were misspent to pay a contractor for ghost employees and to purchase video games. Job training administrators spent federal funds on extravagant meals and bonuses for themselves. In one state, workforce agency employees took more than 100 gambling trips to casinos mostly during work hours. Coburn’s criticism comes in the heat of a presidential campaign in which President Obama has made funding job training programs a priority. He showcased one program last month at Lorain County Community College in the key swing state of Ohio. "Ninety percent of people who graduate from this program have a job three months later -- 90 percent," the president told an enthusiastic crowd. During that stop, he also tore into Republican budgets that would cut  funding for jobs programs. "What's the better way to make our economy stronger," he said, "give more tax breaks to every millionaire and billionaire in the country, or make investments in education and research and health care and job training?" Presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney, during a Feb. 24 town hall called for overhauling federal jobs training. "Let's take that money, give it back to the state, let you fashion your own programs so that you can train your own workers for the jobs of tomorrow," he said. Even a proponent of  federal job training programs, Andy Van Kleunen of the National Skills Coalition, admits there's room for improvement. "What we need to take a look at is what we know is working in our job training programs," he says. "Places where we have community-based organizations and colleges partnering with employer and local industries. That's really the most effective practice that we see across all of these programs." The GAO report found since 2004, only five of the 47 job training programs have bothered to find out if participants ever secured a job, leading the GAO to conclude, "Little is known about the effectiveness of most program...

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Betty White roast: Superlatives for the most super ninetysomething of all

May 17, 2012

(EW.com) -- Betty White's recent roast was handled with more delicacy than most. After all, America's adopted grandmother is 90 years old. That said, she's still intimidating, considering her boundless energy and eighth-decade career resurg...

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Internet greets Facebook's IPO price with glee, skepticism

May 17, 2012

(CNN) -- Friends may be priceless. But 'friending' is worth $38 a share. That's what Facebook set as the initial price when its stock begins trading on Wall Street Friday morning. That's at the top end of the range analysts were expecting a...

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Senators target Facebook co-founder for giving up citizenship, seek to impose taxes

May 17, 2012

Two top senators went after Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin Thursday over his decision to renounce U.S. citizenship, unveiling a proposal they claim would bar him -- or anyone -- from de-friending the United States in order to avoid taxes. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who unveiled the proposal alongside Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said their so-called "Ex-Patriot Act" would subject high-earning ex-Americans to a steep capital gains tax.  The bill was their answer to the move by Saverin last year to renounce his citizenship and move to Singapore. The decision, made public in...

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