Thursday, 31 May 2012

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Sunday, 20 May 2012

Nuclear Plants Could Fuel Hydrogen Future

Gundremmingen_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Using hydrogen as a clean, renewable source of energy could free us from fossile fuels. But hydrogen atoms don't exist alone in nature; they're always bound to another atom. Think of water, which has hydrogen and oxygen. Splitting hydrogen atoms from the oxygen takes power. And if that electricity comes from a natural gas or coal planet, well, we're just back to where we started.
But scientists say that using nuclear power could be the answer. Ibrahim Khamis, of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria, said heat from nuclear power plants -- already used to make steam that powers turbines for electricity -- could be used to make hydrogen.
BIG PICS: Wind Power Without The Blades
Nuclear power plants aready produce heat and change water to steam on a massive scale, Khamis said. They also provide the electricity to electrolyze the water. Current plants could use a low-temperature electrolysis, taking advantage of low electricity prices during the plant’s off-peak hours to produce hydrogen. Future plants could be designed specifically for making hydrogen, using a more efficient high-temperature electrolysis process. There's also research into using heat and chemicals to break down water, and you could link a power plant to that.
The IAEA has a Hydrogen Economic Evaluation Programme (HEEP) in place, with software designed to help member countries evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of hydrogen production this way.
While this sounds promising -- there are 435 nuclear plants operating in the world today -- there are downsides. One is building more nuclear power plants in the first place. The Fukushima nuclear disaster made many nations wary of doing that, and some countries, such as Germany, are abandoning nuclear energy altogether.
BLOG: Small May Be Beautiful For Nuclear Power
Then there is the issue of water use. Most electrolysis assumes fresh water, and that's not always a renewable resource. Seawater would be better, but nuclear power plants aren't designed to use it as a coolant. Nuclear power plants currently use far less water than irrigation or even households (the power industry accounts some 3 percent of fresh water use, according to the United States Geological Survey) but that would change if a sizable portion of the water were being converted to hydrogen.
Either way, there is still a lot of work to be done on the economics of this proposal – the cost of energy to extract hydrogen has been one of the (many) stumbling blocks to adopting it as a fuel. Using nuclear power plants might offer a way around that – and cut greenhouse gas emissions as well.

Big Question for 2012: The Great Pyramid's Secret Doors


Kheops-PyramidImage: The Great Pyramid of Giza. Credit: Nina/Creative Commons
Will the mystery over the Great Pyramid's secret doors be solved in 2012?
I dare say yes. After almost two decades of failed attempts, chances are now strong that researchers will reveal next year what lies behind the secret doors at the heart of Egypt's most magnificent pyramid.
New revelations on the enduring mystery were already expected this year, following a robot exploration of the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum.
But unrest in Egypt froze the project at its most promising stage, after it produced the first ever images behind one of the Great Pyramid's mysterious doors.
Now the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), once led by the controversial yet charismatic Zahi Hawass, is slowly returning to granting permits for excavations and archaeological research.
WIDE ANGLE: BIG QUESTIONS FOR 2012
"As with other missions, we have had to resubmit our application to be allowed to continue. We are currently waiting for the various committees to formalise the approval," project mission manager Shaun Whitehead, of the exploration company Scoutek UK, told Discovery News.
"Once we're allowed to continue, I have no doubt that we can complete our work in 2012," he added.
Built for the pharaoh Cheops, also known as Khufu, the Great Pyramid is the last remaining wonder of the ancient world.
SCIENCE CHANNEL VIDEO: Pyramid Fail
The monument is the largest of a family of three pyramids on the Giza plateau, on the outskirts of Cairo, and has long been rumored to have hidden passageways leading to secret chambers.
Archaeologists have long puzzled over the purpose of four narrow shafts deep inside the pyramid since they were first discovered in 1872.
Two shafts, extend from the upper, or "Kings Chamber" exit into open air. But the lower two, one on the south side and one on the north side in the so-called "Queen's Chamber" disappear within the structures, deepening the pyramid mystery.
Snake_camera
Image: Snake camera entering existing hole in first blocking stone. Courtesy of Djedi Team.
Widely believed to be ritual passageways for the dead pharaoh's soul to reach the afterlife, these 8-inch-square shafts remained unexplored until 1993, when German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink sent a robot through the southern shaft.
After a steady climb of 213 feet from the heart of the pyramid, the robot came to a stop in front of a mysterious limestone slab adorned with two copper pins.
NEWS: Giza Pyramids Align Toward City of Sun God
Nine years later, the southern shaft was explored on live television. As the world held its breath, a tomb-raiding robot pushed a camera through a hole drilled in the copper pinned door -- only to reveal what appeared to be another door.
The following day, the robot was sent through the northern shaft. After crawling for 213 feet and navigating several sharp bends, the robot came to an abrupt halt in front of another limestone slab.
As with the Gantenbrink door, the stone was adorned with two copper pins.
BLOG: The Great Pyramids’ Amazing Non-Mysteries
The current Djedi project, a joint international-Egyptian mission named after the magician whom Khufu consulted when planning the layout of his pyramid, has gone further than anyone has ever been before in the pyramid.
The project began with a exploration of the southern shaft, which ends at the so called "Gantenbrink's door."
A robot, designed by Rob Richardson at the University of Leeds, was able to climb inside the walls of the shaft while carrying a "micro snake" camera that can see around corners.
Unlike previous expeditions, in which camera images were only taken looking straight ahead, the bendy camera was small enough to fit through a small hole in a stone door at the end of the tunnel.
Hieroglyphs
Image: Hieroglyphs written in red paint on the floor of a hidden chamber in Egypt's Great Pyramid. Courtesy of Djedi Team.
This gave researchers a clear view into the chamber beyond -- one that had not been seen by human eyes since the construction of the pyramid. Images of 4,500-year-old hieroglyphs written in red paint began to appear.
According to some scholars, the markings are hieratic numerical signs that record the length of the shaft. The theory has not been confirmed by the researchers.
"Our strategy is to keep an open mind and only draw conclusions when we have completed our work," Whitehead said.
The Djedi team was also able to scrutinize the two puzzling copper pins embedded in the door to the chamber.
NEWS: Pyramid Hieroglyphs Likely Engineering Numbers
Images showed that the back of the pins curve on themselves, possibly suggesting an ornamental purpose.
Equipped with a unique range of tools which also included a miniature "beetle" robot that can fit through a 0.74-inch diameter hole, a coring drill, and a miniaturized ultrasonic device that can tap on walls and listen to the response to help determine the thickness of the stone, the Djedi team was ready to continue the pyramid's exploration last August. But the political turn of events in Egypt halted the project.
Whitehead is confident that the robot will reveal much more once the team is allowed to resume their research.
"The plan is the same as it always was. We will completely survey the shafts leading from the Queens Chamber and look beyond the first and second blocking stones in at least one shaft," Whitehead said.
"Even if we do not look further beyond the blocking stones, accurately mapping the shafts will be a fantastic result and will provide significant clues to determine the purpose of these unique archaeological features," he concluded.

Kitesurfers To Cross From Alaska to Russia



CB helicopter_1
A team of kitesurfers from Europe landed in Nome, Alaska, this week and are en route this weekend to the tiny town of Teller where they will set up base camp and prepare to make a world record: kiteboarding across the Bering Sea, a 56 mile stretch of Pacific Ocean between Alaska and Russia.
Bering-homeThis is the Maurice Lacroix Bering Strait Expedition's second year attempting the record. The Bering Strait has a reputation for foul weather and last year even the calmer summer months of July and August proved unrelenting. Alaskan fishers of course are all too familiar with this type of ocean turbidity.
Deadliest Catch
Still the kitesurfing team is hoping to try again, though rough seas are already testing their mettle. The barge with their chase-boats had to wait two days in deeper water for storm waves to pass, before it could safely enter the Nome harbor.
"It’s Mother Nature playing havoc with our schedules," reported Swiss kitesurfer Geza Scholtz on the team's daily blog. The three kitesurfers on the team who will work together and with their safety crew during the crossing are Geza and his brother, Andre Scholtz, and entrepreneur Constantin Bisanz of Austria, founder of an online shopping club with operations in multiple European countries.
CB portrait suit and kiteboard
WIDE ANGLE: Bering Sea
“For this risky expedition, the focus lies on team spirit, trust, and the desire to overcome extreme obstacles, but it is also fun. The same goes for my business challenges – founding and establishing companies,” Bisanz said in a press release.
Early this year, for $220 million, Ebay acquired Bisanz's German company brands4friends, earning him the title "German Entrepreneur of the Year" from the Harvard Business School Association.
Now Bisanz and the Scholtz brothers face near-freezing water temperatures and a crossing they expect will take six to eight hours. From Nome the team is driving their equipment to Teller, population 180, where they will see first hand how the body of water they face is acting this time of year.
With luck they will have winds strong enough to ferry them across the strait, but not too strong to keep them stuck on shore. Maybe something like this:
Diomede

Saturday, 19 May 2012

Never Mind the Apocalypse: Earliest Mayan Calendar Found

The oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the Guatemalan rainforest.
The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 -- the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn't a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said.
WIDE ANGLE: Will the World End in 2012?
"The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future," said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. "Numbers we can't even wrap our heads around."
A Brilliant Surprise
The newly discovered calendar is complex indeed, featuring stacked bars and dots representing fives and ones and recording lunar cycles in six-month chunks of time. But it wasn't these mathematical notations that first caught the archeologists' eye. William Saturno, an archaeologist from Boston University, was mapping the ancient Maya city of Xultun in northeast Guatemala in 2010 when one of his undergraduate students peered into an old trench dug by looters and reported seeing traces of ancient paint.
The discovery was "certainly nothing to write home about," Saturno told reporters on Thursday (May 10), in advance of releasing details of the murals in this week's issue of the journal Science. Paint doesn't preserve well in the rain forest climate of Guatemala, and Saturno figured that the faint red and black lines his student had found weren't going to yield much information. But he felt he had a responsibility to excavate the room the looters had tried to reach, if only to be able to report the size of the structure along with the paint finding.
As Saturno continued along the old trench to the back wall, he was shocked to run into a brilliantly painted portrait: a Mayan king, sitting on his throne, wearing a red crown with blue feathers flowing out behind him. Another figure peeks out from behind him. On an adjoining wall, three loincloth-clad figures sit, wearing feathered headdresses. One is captioned "Older Brother Obsidian," or "Senior Obsidian," a still-mysterious title. Next to the king, a man painted in brilliant orange wearing jade bracelets reaches out with a stylus, likely identifying him as a scribe. He is labeled as "Younger Brother Obsidian," or perhaps "Junior Obsidian."
It's Not the End of the World
These paintings -- covering the west and north walls of the small, 6-foot-by-6-foot room -- weren't the only surprise Xultun had to offer. On the east wall, someone had painted a series of small, complex hieroglyphics. This, the researchers soon realized, was a calendar.
ANALYSIS: 2012 Doomsday Poll Brings Out the Believers
The calendar seemed to have been added after the murals were completed, as some of the numbers cover up painted figures on the wall. It's almost as if an ancient scribe got sick of flipping through a document to find his timekeeping chart and decided to put it on the wall for at-a-glance reference, Stuart said.
"It's kind of like having a whiteboard in your office where you're writing down formulas that you want to remember," he said.
The Maya recorded time in a series of cycles, including 400-year chunks called baktuns. It's these baktuns that have led to rumors of an end-of-the-world catastrophe on Dec. 21, 2012 -- on that date, a cycle of 13 baktuns will be complete. But the idea that this means the end of the world is a misconception, Stuart said. In fact, Maya experts have known for a long time that the calendar doesn't end after the 13th baktun. It simply begins a new cycle. And the calendar encompasses much larger units than the baktun.

"There were 24 units of time they actually could have incorporated into their calendar," Stuart said. "Here, we're only seeing five units and they're still really big."
In one column, the ancient scribe even worked out a cycle of time recording 17 baktuns, the researchers found. In another spot, someone etched a "ring number" into the wall. These notations were used to record time in a previous cycle, thousands of years into the past. The calendar also appears to note the cycles of Mars and Venus, the researchers said. Symbols of gods head the top of each lunar cycle, suggesting that each cycle had its own patron deity.
"There was a lot more to the Maya calendar than just 13 baktuns," Stuart said.
Scratching the Surface
This ancient "wall calendar" is a major find, because the first known calendar and astronomical tables before this time came from the Dresden Codex, a book that dates to the 11th or 12th centuries. Most likely, Saturno said, the wall calendar and the Dresden Codex both arose from earlier books that long ago rotted away.

Private Spacecraft: Five Most Promising Spaceships

The private spaceflight company SpaceX is set to launch its Dragon capsule toward the International Space Station on Saturday (May 19). If all goes well, Dragon will become the first commercial vehicle ever to dock with the orbiting lab.
But it may not be the last. Dragon is just one vehicle in a new generation of private American spaceships on the horizon. Some aim to launch tourists and scientists to suborbital space, while others are vying to fill the orbital cargo- and crew-carrying void left by the retirement of NASA's iconic space shuttle fleet in July 2011.

The list of future private space travel projects started out short, but has steadily grown longer in in recent years. In addition to SpaceX, at least one other company - Orbital Sciences Corp., of Virginia - has a NASA contract to provide robot cargo ship deliveries to the space station. Companies like XCOR Aerospace and Virgin Galactic have their sights set on the suborbital spaceflight market, while Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas hopes to build its own private space stations

British WWII fighter found in Egyptian desert 2012

As German Gen. Erwin Rommel chased British forces across the North African desert, a stray Royal Air Force fighter crashed in the blistering sands of the Egyptian Sahara on June 28, 1942. The pilot was never heard from again. The damaged Kittyhawk P-40 -- a couple of hundred miles from civilization -- was presumed lost forever.Until now.
In what experts consider nothing short of a miracle, a Polish oil company worker recently discovered the plane believed to have been flown by missing Flight Sgt. Dennis Copping. And almost 70 years after the accident, it's extraordinarily well-preserved.
The fighter's "state of preservation is incredible," British military historian Andy Saunders told CNN. "The thing just landed there in the desert and the pilot clearly got out. ... It is a complete time capsule really (and) an exceptionally rare find. These things just don't happen."
Most of the plane's fuselage, wings, tail and cockpit instruments remain intact. For safety reasons, Egyptian officials have removed its ammunition and guns.
See additional photos
Copping's plane -- authorities have not confirmed his identity, though it has been widely reported in British newspapers -- crashed after the 24-year-old pilot got lost while trying to fly it from one RAF base to another for repairs to its front landing gear, which wouldn't retract.

Copping, part of the RAF's Egyptian 260 Squadron, was trying to get the American-built plane back in fighting condition in the run-up to what would prove to be the pivotal Battle of El Alamein.
The young pilot, according to Saunders, apparently became disoriented during the flight and headed in the wrong direction. Another RAF pilot flying nearby "tried all sorts of things" to get his attention, but Copping "bizarrely" ignored a series of warnings, Saunders said.
By the time Copping realized his mistake, he was too low on fuel to turn around. Several pieces of evidence at the crash site -- including a parachute believed to have been used as shelter from the sun -- indicate the strong probability Copping survived the landing. He almost certainly could not, however, survive the blazing Sahara heat for long.
Copping "would have stayed by the aircraft initially," Saunders noted. While the plane's glass valve radio was likely knocked out of commission by the crash, "the parachute gives him shelter and a means to be identified from the air. The guy also would have had a little silver signaling mirror to attract passing aircraft and a pistol with a limited number of flares."
Why would Copping leave the wreckage? "Maybe he got desperate when he saw nobody was coming for him, and thought (the) only way to survive was to walk out" and look for help, Saunders speculated.
RAF pilots in North Africa at that time didn't have much in terms of rations. Copping's supply would have been very limited, assuming he had food or water at all.
Pilots were "flying with very basic life support systems," Saunders said. "His chances of survival were not good."
As Copping's story becomes known, British authorities are hoping to bring his plane back to the United Kingdom and put it on display at the RAF Museum in London. Museum representatives are working with the British Embassy in Cairo and Britain's Ministry of Defence on a possible recovery operation.
"It's an incredible story," said museum spokesman Michael Creane. "It's a perfect story in so many ways. It's incredible the plane sat there in this untouched part of the world for so long. ... We're dedicated to recovering it as fast as we can. This would be a fantastic asset."




Thursday, 17 May 2012

Top Casinos In The World

1. The Venetian Macao, Macao, China
Square feet                   —-        546,000
Gaming machines          —-        3,000
Table and poker games —-        870
Restaurants and bars     —-        24
Hotel rooms                  —-        3,000
The Venetian Macao Resort Hotel of Asia has become one of the biggest casino for gamblers throughout Asia. It is being controlled by Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands (LVS), it was the first biggest casino in Macao. It gives you the glance of luxury and weird combination of all attractions and facilities.
2. City of Dreams Resort, Macao, China
Square feet                   —-        420,000
Gaming machines          —-        1,350
Table and poker games —-        520
Restaurants and bars     —-        14
Hotel rooms                  —-        1,400
This casino recently opened as City of Dreams belongs to Melco Crown Entertainment’s Lawrence Ho & Australian billionaire James Packer. This resort located across the street from the Venetian on the Cotai Strip.
3. Foxwoods Resort Casino, Ledyard, Conn.
Square feet                   —-        340,000
Gaming machines          —-        7,000
Table and poker games —-        400
Restaurants and bars     —-        29
Hotel rooms                  —-        824
America’s biggest casino opened in 1986 in western Connecticut, Foxwoods is a big complex of 6 casinos with almost 18 different types of table games, including 100 for poker. It is managed by the Mashantucket Pequot. It is on the driving distance of New York and Boston. In addition to casino the resort has one of the world’s largest halls.
4. Casino Ponte 16, Macao, China
Square feet                   —-        270,000
Gaming machines          —-        320
Table and poker games —-        150
Restaurants and bars     —-        3
Hotel rooms                  —-        423
Web site: ponte16.com.mo
The Ponte 16 is a world class casino and entertainment resort located along with the Inner Harbor of Macao, which is the older part of the city. It is near to the Macao’s traditional buildings.
5. Tusk Rio Casino Resort, Klerksdorp, South Africa
Square feet                   —-        266,330
Gaming machines          —-        257
Table and poker games —-        12
Restaurants and bars     —-        2
Hotel rooms:                 —-        500
This is located in Southern Hemisphere and biggest casino in area, and most popular casino in South Africa
6. MGM Grand Macao, Macao, China
Square feet                   —-        221,952
Gaming machines          —-        835
Table and poker games —-        410
Restaurants and bars     —-        12
Hotel rooms                  —-        593
This resort located near some of the elder Ho’s casinos on the Macao peninsula and have plans for further expansion, including a future Mandarin Oriental hotel. It has 35 story building, This resort officially opened in 2007 owned and operated as a joint venture between MGM Mirage and Pansy Ho Chiu King, who is the daughter of local casino mogul Stanley Ho.
7. Sands Macao, Macao, China
Square feet                   —-        229,000
Gaming machines          —-        750
Table and poker games —-        1,000
Restaurants and bars     —-        7
Hotel rooms                  —-        51
The Sands Macao hotel located in peninsular Macao and designed by the Paul Steelman Design Group & opened in 2004.
8. MGM Grand Las Vegas, Las Vegas
Square feet                   —-        170,000
Gaming machines          —-        2,300
Table and poker games —-        178
Restaurants and bars     —-        20
Hotel rooms                  —-        5,044
MGM Grand Las Vegas, Las Vegas one of the largest luxury hotel in the world first opened in 1993 as a Hollywood themed resort and operated by publicly traded MGM Mirage (MGM), it has 293 foot high complex with five outdoor pools, waterfalls and rivers.
9. Casino Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
Square feet                   —-        165,000
Gaming machines          —-        1,000
Table and poker games —-        26
Restaurants and bars     —-        7
Hotel rooms                  —-        1,000
Casino Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal is a major landmark in Portugal’s capital city and the largest casino in whole Europe. The Lisboa opened to the public in 2006 and owned by Estoril-Sol, whose major stakeholder is Hong Kong based gambling mogul Stanley Ho, who also operating a Lisboa in Macao.
10. Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa, Atlantic City
Square feet                   —-        161,000
Gaming machines          —-        4,100
Table and poker games —-        285
Restaurants and bars     —-        17
Hotel rooms                  —-        2,002
Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa, Atlantic City may also called “little village” but it is the largest resort in Atlantic City. It opened for public in 2003 and is owned by Marina District Development Corp. a subsidiary of Boyd Gaming (BYD) which operates many casinos in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana and Mississippi.

List of Biggest Sea Port in the World

Sea ports are the main biggest part of world business. In this Top 10 List we are going to input a post about top 10 biggest sea ports in the world. We know that many people don’t know about the sea ports. In this Top 10 List we bring short description about the top 10 port in the world.
1. Shanghai (China): In this Top 10 List we keep Shanghai in the 1st place. It is the biggest sea port in the world. Having a total of five working areas, the port of Shanghai became the biggest port in the world, surpassing the port of Singapore. The port of Shanghai is a source of great economic activity in the Yangtze River area which has helped further the economic status of regions like Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Henan
2. Ningbo-Zhoushan (China): In our Top 10 List it is the 2nd biggest port, also in the world. The port is expected to have a huge boost in the form of the construction of a new terminal – the Jintang Dapukuo, consisting of five berths which are expected to be completed by the year 2014.
3. Singapore (Singapore): In the Top 10 List of biggest sea ports we keep Singapore in the 3rd position. The Singapore port is connected to over 600 ports spread around more than a 100 countries. In terms of its handling, the ship port handles a fifth of the global cargo containers and is responsible for the transit of nearly 50% of the global crude oil supply.
4. Rotterdam (The Netherlands): In the Top 10 List of biggest port in the world we keep Rotterdam in the 4th place. This port is in Netherlands. It is the biggest sea port in Europe.
5. Tianjin (China): In the Top 10 List of biggest port in the world we keep Tianjin in the 5th place. It is also the third largest port in China. Situated at the River Haihe, the Tianjin port in China is ranked fifth in the list of biggest ports in the world. At present it is connected to over 400 ports in nearly 200 countries across the world, a figure which is expected to rise by the next four years.
6. Guangzhou (China): In the Top 10 List of biggest port in the world we keep Guangzhou in the 6th place. This port is located in China. The port forms the mainstay for the industrial belt found in the Guangxi, Yunnan, Hunan and Jiangxi regions. The port of Huangpu also forms a part of the Guangzhou port.
7. Qingdao (China): In the Top 10 List of biggest sea port we keep Qingdao in the 7th place. This port is also located in China. Facing Japan and South Korea, the world leaders in the shipbuilding business, the Qingdao port is a natural harbor and has connectivity with over 450 ports in over 130 countries.
8. Qinhuangdao Port (China): In the Top 10 List of biggest sea port in the world we keep Qinhuangdao Port (China) in the 8th position. Statistically at present, the port is the biggest coal lading port globally and internally, accounts for nearly 50% of the country’s coal transportation between the North and the South.
9. Hong Kong: In the Top 10 List of biggest port in the world we keep Hong Kong in 9th position. A natural harbor, the Hong Kong port has been very instrumental in the economic furtherance of the city of Hong Kong. In the year 2010, the port accounted for 23.7 million.
10. Busan (South Korea):  The Port of Busan, also known as Pusan, doubles as South Korea’s largest port and its second-largest city. In our Top 10 List it is the 10th biggest port in the world; the port of Busan is situated at the Naktong River and forms a major commercial getaway between the Pacific Ocean and the countries belonging to Eurasia.

National Football League (NFL)

The National Football League (NFL) is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league globally. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing its name to the National Football League in 1922. The league currently consists of thirty-two teams from the United States. The league is divided evenly into two conferences – the American Football Conference (AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC), and each conference has four divisions that have four teams each, for a total of 16 teams in each conference. The NFL is an unincorporated  association, a federal nonprofit designation comprising its 32 teams.
Current season or competition:
2012 NFL season
National Football League 2008.svg
Sport American Football
Founded August 20, 1920
in Canton, Ohio, United States
Commissioner Roger Goodell
Inaugural season 1920
No. of teams 32
Country(ies) United States
Most recent champion(s) New York Giants (8th title)
Most titles Green Bay Packers (13 titles)
TV partner(s) CBS
Fox
NBC
ESPN
NFL Network
Official website NFL.com
The headquarters of the National Football League at 345 Park Avenue, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, USA.

The regular season is a seventeen-week schedule during which each team plays sixteen games and has one bye week. The season currently starts on the Thursday night in the first full week of September and runs weekly to late December or early January. At the end of each regular season, six teams from each conference (at least one from each division) play in the NFL playoffs, a twelve-team single-elimination tournament that culminates with the championship game, known as the Super Bowl. This game is held at a pre-selected site which is usually a city that hosts an NFL team.
The NFL is the most attended domestic sports league in the world by average attendance per game, with 66,960 fans per game in 2010–11. Although not as frequently as the other major professional sports leagues in the United States, the NFL still is not immune to labor disputes, such as the players' strikes of 1982 and 1987, and more recently a lockout in 2011, though the latest did not result in the cancellation of any regular-season games.

History

In 1920 representatives of several professional American football leagues and independent teams founded the American Professional Football Conference, soon renamed the National Football League. The first official championship game was held in 1933; before then, there was no playoff system, and instead the team that finished with the best regular season record was awarded the league title. By 1958, when that season's NFL championship game became known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played", the NFL was on its way to becoming one of the most popular sports leagues in the United States. In 1965, football supplanted baseball as the most popular televised sport in America.The merger with the American Football League, agreed to in 1966 and completed in 1970, greatly expanded the league and created the Super Bowl, which has become one of the most watched sporting events in the world, and is second to association football (soccer)'s UEFA Champions League final as the most watched annual sporting event worldwide.

Official rules and notable rule distinctions

Although rules for NFL, college, and high school American football games are generally consistent, there are several differences. In addition, the NFL frequently makes rule changes because of exploits on the field by a single coach, owner, player, or referee.
Some of the major rules differences include:
  • A pass is ruled complete if both of the receiver's feet are inbounds at the time of the catch. In college and high school football, only one foot is required to be inbounds.
  • In the NFL, a player is considered down when he is tackled or forced down by a member of the opposing team (also known as "down by contact"). In college football, a player is automatically ruled down when any part of his body other than the feet or hands touches the ground or when the ball carrier is tackled or otherwise falls and loses possession of the ball as he contacts the ground with any part of his body.
  • NFL players in certain positions are normally ineligible to catch passes. As an aid for game officials to enforce this rule, players wear uniform numbers based on the position they play. (see below)
  • Unlike college and high school, the NFL has a two-minute warning, an automatic time-out that occurs when two minutes of game time remain on the game clock in each half or OT of a game.
  • Also unique to the NFL, the game clock never stops after the offense completes a first down in order to reset the first down chains.
  • Two-point conversion tries are attempted from the two-yard line, whereas in college football they are attempted from the three-yard line.
  • In college football, the defensive team may score two points on a point-after touchdown attempt by returning a blocked kick, fumble, or interception into the opposition's end zone. The NFL does not allow this, and instead a conversion attempt is automatically ruled as "no good" when the defending team gains possession of the football.
  • There are several differences in enforcing penalties. For example, defensive pass interference results in the ball being placed at the spot of the foul. In college football, the same penalty is capped at maximum of 15 yards.
  • In the NFL, overtime is decided by a 15-minute sudden-death quarter during regular season games and can still end in a tie if a tie remains. Starting with the 2012 season, each team gets one possession to score unless one of them scores a touchdown on its first possession. Sudden death rules apply if both teams have had their initial possession and the game remains tied. During college football's overtime, each team is given one possession from its opponent's twenty-five yard line with no game clock. The team leading after both possessions is declared the winner. If the two college teams remain tied, additional overtime periods are played.
  • For instant replay, NFL teams are given two replay challenges per game, and can be awarded a third one if the other two are successful. Replays of scoring plays, the final 2:00 of each half and all overtime periods are instead initiated by the official in the replay booth. Also, as of the 2012 season, all turnovers will be reviewed by the replay official. In college football, teams are only originally allocated one replay challenge (and can get a second one if successful), and the replay official can initiate reviews of all plays.

Season structure

Since 2002, the NFL season features the following schedule:
  • a 4-game exhibition season (or preseason) running from early August to early September;
  • a 16-game, 17-week regular season running from September to December or early January; and
  • a 12-team single-elimination playoff beginning in January, culminating in the Super Bowl in early February.
Traditionally, American high school football games are played on Friday nights, American college football games are played on Thursday nights and Saturdays, and most NFL games are played on Sunday. Because the NFL season is longer than the college football season, the NFL schedules Saturday games and Saturday playoff games outside the college football season. The ABC Television network added Monday Night Football in 1970, and Thursday night NFL games were added in the 1980s.

Exhibition season

Following mini-camps in the spring and officially recognized training camp in July–August, NFL teams typically play four exhibition games from early August through early September. Each team hosts two games of the four. The exhibition season begins with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, so those two teams play five exhibition games each. Historically, the American Bowl(s) were played prior to the NFL scheduling regular season games abroad and those teams faced this similar predicament.
The games are useful for new players who are not used to playing in front of very large crowds. Management often uses the games to evaluate newly signed players. Veteran starters will generally play only for about a quarter of each game to minimize the risk of injury. Several lawsuits have been brought by fans, against the policy of including exhibition games in season-ticket packages at regular season prices, but none have so far been very successful.

Regular season

This chart displays an application of the NFL scheduling formula. At the end of the 2008 season, the Browns (in green) finished in fourth place in the AFC North. Thus the Browns in 2009 had to play all the other AFC North teams (in blue) twice; all the AFC West teams (another division within its own conference) once; all the NFC North teams (a division in the other conference) once; and the Bills and the Jaguars, who also finished in fourth place in their respective AFC divisions during that previous season.
Following the preseason, each of the thirty-two teams embark on a seventeen-week, sixteen-game schedule, with the extra week consisting of a bye to allow teams a rest sometime in the middle of the season (and also to increase television coverage). The regular season currently begins the Thursday evening after Labor Day with a prime time "Kickoff Game" (NBC currently holds broadcast rights for that game). According to the current scheduling structure, the earliest the season could begin is September 4 (as it was in the 2008 season), while the latest would be September 10 (as it was in the 2009 season, due to September 1 falling on a Tuesday). The regular season ends no later than January 3, in any given year.
The league uses a scheduling formula to per-determine which teams plays whom during a given season. Under the current formula since 2002, each of the thirty-two teams' respective 16-game schedule consists for the following:
  • Each team plays the other three teams in their division twice: once at home, and once on the road (six games).
  • Each team plays the four teams from another division within its own conference once on a rotating three-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road (four games).
  • Each team plays the four teams from a division in the other conference once on a rotating four-year cycle: two at home, and two on the road (four games).
  • Each team plays once against the other teams in its conference that finished in the same place in their own divisions as themselves the previous season, not counting the division they were already scheduled to play: one at home, one on the road (two games).
Although this scheduling formula determines each of the thirty-two teams' respective opponents, the league usually does not release the final regular schedule with specific dates and times until the spring; the NFL needs several months to coordinate the entire season schedule so that, among other reasons, games are worked around various scheduling conflicts, and that it helps maximize TV ratings.

Playoffs

The NFL Playoffs. Each of the four division winners is seeded 1–4 based on their W-L-T records. The two Wild Card teams (labeled Wild Card 1 and 2) are seeded fifth and sixth (with the better of the two having seed 5) regardless of their records compared to the four division winners.
The season concludes with a twelve-team tournament used to determine the teams to play in the Super Bowl. The tournament brackets are made up of six teams from each of the league's two conferences, the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC), following the end of the 16-game regular season:
  • The four division champions from each conference (the team in each division with the best regular season won-lost-tied record), which are seeded one through four based on their regular season won-lost-tied record (tie-breaker rules may apply).
  • Two wild card qualifiers from each conference (those non-division champions with the conference's best record, i.e. the best won-lost-tied percentages, with a series of tie-breaking rules in place in the event that there are teams with the same number of wins and losses), which are seeded five and six.
In each conference, the No. 3 and No. 6 seeded teams, and the No. 4 and No. 5 seeds, face each other during the first round of the playoffs, dubbed the Wild Card Playoffs (the league in recent years has also used the term Wild Card Weekend). The No. 1 and No. 2 seeds from each conference receive a bye in the first round, which entitles these teams to automatically advance to the second round, the Divisional Playoff games, to face the winning teams from the first round. In round two, the No. 1 seeded team always plays the lowest surviving seed in their conference. And in any given playoff game, whoever has the higher seed gets the home field advantage (i.e. the game is held at the higher seed's home field).
The two surviving teams from the Divisional Playoff games meet in Conference Championship games, with the winners of those contests going on to face one another in the Super Bowl in a game located at a neutral venue that is usually either indoors or in a warm-weather locale. The designated "home team" alternates year to year between the conferences. In odd-numbered Super Bowls, the NFC team is the designated "home team", with the AFC team serving as the home team for even-numbered games.
The NFL is the only one out of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States to use a single-elimination tournament in its playoffs; Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League all use a "best-of" format instead.

Pro Bowl

The Pro Bowl, the league's all-star game, has been traditionally held on the weekend after the Super Bowl. The game was played at various venues before being held at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii for 30 consecutive seasons from 1980 to 2009.
However, the 2010 Pro Bowl was played at Sun Life Stadium, the home stadium of the Miami Dolphins and host site of Super Bowl XLIV, on January 31, the first time ever that the Pro Bowl was played before the championship game. The game returned to Honolulu in 2011 and 2012, though both games were still played before the Super Bowl.
On April 26, 2012, Chris Mortensen of ESPN reported that the Pro Bowl was likely to be suspended for the 2012 season and beyond. According to league sources, Commissioner Roger Goodell was dissatisfied with the lack of competitive effort by players in that game, although he did not bear any ill will toward the players due to safety issues. Mortenson also reported that if the game is shelved, a Pro Bowl balloting process will continue because many player contracts include incentive clauses that are triggered by Pro Bowl selections.

Calendar

Though the NFL only plays in the late summer, fall, and early winter, the extended off season often is an event in itself, with the draft, free agency signings, and the announcement of schedules keeping the NFL in the spotlight even during the spring, when virtually no on-field activity is taking place. A typical calendar of league events is as follows, with the dates listed being those for the 2012 NFL season:
  • February 22 – Pro Football Hall of Fame Game opponents announced.
  • February 24 – March 2—NFL Scouting Combine: Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, Ind.
  • February 25—Deadline for Clubs to designate Franchise and Transition players.
  • March 13—Veteran Free Agency signing period begins. Trading period begins.
  • March 26–28—NFL Annual Meeting: Dana Point, Calif. Usually accompanied by announcement of scheduling and opponents for first game and opening-weekend night games.
  • Early April: Teams begin voluntary workouts.
  • April 17: 2012 schedule announced.
  • April 26–28 – NFL Draft: New York City.
  • May 21–23—NFL Spring Meeting: Chicago, Ill.
  • June 24 – June 27—NFL Rookie Symposium, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
  • Mid-July (varies by team, fifteen days before first preseason game)-- Training camps open.
  • August 5 – Pro Football Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Canton, Ohio, including Hall of Fame Game.
  • August 9–13—First full Preseason weekend.
  • August 28—Roster cut down from 80 to maximum of 75 players.
  • September 1—Roster cut down from 75 to maximum of 53 players.
  • September 5–10 – Kickoff 2012 Weekend (Week 1 of regular season)
  • October 28 – International Series game (Wembley Stadium, London).
  • November – Pro Bowl balloting and flexible scheduling for NBC Sunday Night Football begin.
  • November 22 – Thanksgiving games.
  • December 30, 2012—End of regular season.
  • January 5, 2013 – Playoffs begin.
  • January 20 – AFC Championship Game and NFC Championship Game.
  • January 27 – Pro Bowl.
  • February 3 – Super Bowl. 

    Teams

    Current NFL teams

    Bills
    Dolphins
    Patriots
    Jets
    Ravens
    Bengals
    Browns
    Steelers
    Texans
    Colts
    Titans
    Broncos
    Chiefs
    Raiders
    Chargers
    Cowboys
    Giants
    Eagles
    Redskins
    Bears
    Lions
    Packers
    Vikings
    Falcons
    Panthers
    Saints
    Buccaneers
    Jaguars
    Cardinals
    Rams
    49ers
    Seahawks


    The NFL consists of thirty-two clubs. Each club is allowed a maximum of fifty-three players on their roster, but may only dress forty-five to play each week during the regular season. Reflecting the population distribution of the United States as a whole, most teams are in the eastern half of the country; seventeen teams are in the Eastern Time Zone and nine others in the Central Time Zone.
    Most major metropolitan areas in the United States have an NFL franchise, although Los Angeles, the second-largest metropolitan area in the country, has not hosted an NFL team since 1994.
    The Rams and the Raiders called the Los Angeles area home from 1946–1994 and 1982–1994 respectively. On August 9, 2011, the LA City Council approved plans to build Farmers Field which could be home to an NFL team. It is unknown which team, if any, will move to the venue.
    Unlike Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, the league has no full-time teams in Canada, although the Buffalo Bills play one game per year in Toronto. There has been discussion of possibly bringing the NFL to Toronto, the largest city in Canada. In addition, as of 2012, the St. Louis Rams will begin hosting one of its regular season games in London, England as part of the International Series, making the NFL the first U.S.-based sports league to have one of its teams establish a home stadium outside North America.
    The Dallas Cowboys are the highest valued American football franchise, valued at approximately $1.6 billion and one of the most valuable franchises in all of professional sports worldwide, currently third behind the Los Angeles Dodgers of MLB, sold in March 2012 for $2 billion, and English soccer club Manchester United, which has an approximate value of $1.8 billion at current exchange rates. Since the 2002 season, the teams have been aligned as follows:





















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Wednesday, 16 May 2012

The Advantage of Dictatorship: Being Free of Personal Responsibility


the-dictatorAll the dictators in the world are created by us because we want somebody else to tell us what to do. There is a very subtle reason for it: when you are told by somebody else what to do, you don’t have any responsibility for whether it is right or wrong. You are free of responsibility; you don’t have to think about it; you don’t have to be worried about it. The whole responsibility goes to the person who is giving you the orders to do something.
People like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Ronald Reagan are not just there in their powerful positions because of any quality of theirs. They are there because millions of people want to be told what to do–without anybody dictating to them they are at a loss. We create the dictators.
Adolf Hitler was almost crazy, but a nation, one of the most intelligent nations in the world which has created a great tradition of philosophers, thinkers, theologians of the first rate… Even in this century Germany has produced people like Martin Heidegger, who is perhaps this century’s greatest philosopher–but he was also a follower of Adolf Hitler.
It seems almost incomprehensible that a man of the qualities of Martin Heidegger… I have looked into all the philosophers of the world; Martin Heidegger seems to have such a genius, such a great originality in approaching things from absolutely new directions—but he was a follower of Adolf Hitler; he supported him. I was wondering what could be the reason—and the whole nation supported that madman. The reason is that nobody wants to have any responsibility. But the moment you lose your responsibility—you think it is a burden, somebody else takes it—you also lose your individuality, you also lose your freedom.
Your responsibility is not separate from your freedom, your individuality. Once you drop your responsibility on somebody else’s shoulders, you have reduced yourself into a nonentity. Of course, now nobody will blame you if something goes wrong, but you have lost your soul.
People condemn the dictators, but nobody thinks what the psychology is, how dictators are created, who creates them? We are the people who create them, and we create them in the hope that they will take the responsibility. But we are not aware that with the responsibility goes our freedom, goes our individuality,goes democracy, goes freedom of thinking or expression—everything.
We have lost our soul the moment we put our responsibility into somebody else’s hands. And there are people who enjoy to dominate, to dictate; these are insane people.
So it is a strange situation. People want to be unburdened of responsibility, and of course there are a few people who are ready to take all the responsibilities, because they are also taking all your freedom. They are taking all your rights, your very individuality; they are people whose only will is for power. They have a different kind of insanity, but it seems to be very fitting. There seems to be a certain synchronicity between the people who want to get rid of responsibility without knowing that they are getting rid of their very soul,and the other insane people, who love only one thing, power.
I want individuals to be absolutely free, responsible, alert, aware, neither allowing anybody to dictate to them; nor allowing themselves to dictate to anybody. It has to be a beautiful communion. It is not based on any dictatorial ideology. It is based, basically, on ultimate freedom.
And if freedom is the ultimate goal then it should be your first step too, because only the first step will lead you to the last step. It is not possible that your whole life you are just a beast of burden, doing things that people tell you to do and then suddenly one day you will become enlightened. That is not possible.
You will have to take all the responsibility for what you are doing. And you will have to grow in your consciousness and awareness so that only the right flows through your actions, so that whatever you do beautifies the commune, helps people. This is a gathering, not a crowd; it is a brotherhood, not a factory.
Don’t be too much concerned that you may go wrong. It is always good to go wrong sometimes. Just don’t go wrong again on the same point—do something else, some new wrong. Always be in search of some novelty. Mistakes are absolutely needed for learning, but one should not commit the same mistake again.
And everybody has to be aware of it: nobody is responsible for you. And you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. Even if you commit something wrong there is a famous law, Steward’s Law: “It is easier to be forgiven than to get permission.” And remember another law; it is dangerous, so never follow it: It is called Jacob’s Law: “To err is human. To blame it on someone else is even more human.”
Don’t do it, ever. To err is human and to accept your responsibility is the dignity of a human being. Don’t go on thinking what to do – do something! Parkinson’s Law is: “Delay is the deadliest form of denial.”
Don’t delay. Do something that seems appropriate in the situation and congenial to your spirit. And it is not that you have to go on doing continuously; doing is not the goal of life. Being is the goal of life. Doing is only to support your survival so that you can find your being. So don’t wait for somebody else to tell you.
But all these centuries that man has passed through, this has been the case—always looking to the politicians, looking to the priest; looking to neurotic-type people who proclaim themselves prophets, the son of God, messengers of God… People who don’t want to take any responsibility immediately fall into their trap.
All your prophets, and all your messengers of God are so ordinary. Your holy scriptures are not even worthy to be called great literature; it is third class journalism, nothing much more. And they are bringing laws and rules and regulations for you and people have accepted all kinds of nonsense just in order not to seek and search themselves.
To avoid search, to avoid seeking, people have even avoided thinking – somebody should do the job for them! The people who have been giving you your moral codes, your ethics, your life styles are the people who remind me of another law, Maud’s Law: “A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking.” All the conclusions that your prophets have given to you are nothing but where they got tired of thinking.
Just the other night, I was looking at a beautiful story. I became interested because it was saying why Moses and all his Jews, his followers, went on wandering in the desert for forty years. So I became interested because it seemed the man was going to give some idea why. The idea suggested was that they had lost a quarter so they looked all over the desert; it took forty years. Nobody knows whether they found the quarter or not; I don’t think so.
The people you have been following are great people, great in their neuroses. This rule will explain it to you. Woop’s Rule for Drinking – they have given you ideas for everything: “I always drink standing up because it is much easier to sit down when I get drunk standing up, than it is to get standing up when I get drunk sitting down”.
Avoid these thinkers. They have dictated to humanity for long enough. Now, stand up on your own two legs. Remember that you are alone, there is no God, there are no messengers, and there is no dictator. You have to be decisive about your own life. It is your life and you have to live it according to your own style. Only then you can make your life a celebration; otherwise it is burdened with so many rules and regulations that you cannot dance with that much burden.