IRS video: Dancing workers. Wrong-footed agency.

IRS video, produced for the same 2010 conference as a heavily criticized IRS 'Star Trek' parody, shows IRS employees line dancing. Congressmen and the agency itself call the IRS video an inappropriate use of taxpayer money.

By Alan Fram,?Associated Press / June 1, 2013

This still image is from a video featuring IRS employees dancing on a stage. The agency released the IRS dancing video Friday, May 31, 2013, in response to a request from Rep. Charles Boustany (R) of Louisiana of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Internal Revenue Service/AP

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In the latest black eye for the Internal Revenue Service, the agency provided Congress on Friday with another video featuring its employees, this one showing about a dozen of them line dancing on a stage.

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The video of the?IRS?workers practicing their dance moves, which lasts just under three minutes, comes weeks after it was revealed that agency workers produced two other videos parodying the "Star Trek" and "Gilligan's Island" TV shows.

The latest recording cost about $1,600 and was produced to be shown at the end of a 2010 training and leadership conference held in Anaheim, Calif., said?IRS?spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge. At a time when most government agencies are coping with across-the-board spending cuts by furloughing workers and finding other savings, that conference has become the target of a report a Treasury inspector general plans to release next week.

The report, called "Collected and Wasted: The?IRS?Spending Culture and Conference Abuses," will be the subject of a hearing Thursday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, that panel said Friday.

The?IRS?is also under fire by lawmakers and the Obama administration for targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status for tough scrutiny between 2010 and 2012. That screening, revealed May 10, has led President Barack Obama to replace the agency's acting chief, and two other top officials have also stepped aside.

All three videos were provided in response to a request by a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La.

"The outrage toward the?IRS?is only growing stronger," said Boustany, who chairs the Ways and Means oversight subcommittee. "Clearly this is an agency where abuse and waste is the norm and not the exception."

In a written statement, the?IRS?said the video was "unacceptable and an inappropriate use of government funds." It said the agency has new policies in place "to ensure that taxpayer funds are being used appropriately."

Eldridge said the dance video was recorded at?IRS?offices in New Carrollton, Md., outside Washington, D.C.

In the video, various workers comment as colleagues practice their dancing in the background to music that sounds like "Cupid Shuffle," a 2007 hit by the performer Cupid. In the version obtained by The Associated Press,IRS?employees' names have been erased.

At one point, one woman says, "And I thought doing the 'Star Trek' video was humiliating."

That "Star Trek" video was produced for the same 2010 conference. The agency called the "Star Trek" video, which lasted six minutes and featured employees dressed as characters from the popular show, a mistake.

The "Star Trek" and "Gilligan's Island" videos cost about $60,000 combined to make, the?IRS?said in March.

The "Gilligan's Island" parody was used at the beginning of a 12-hour video the?IRS?used in 2011 to train its workers on various tax issues, Eldridge said. The entire video was used to train 1,900 workers who assist taxpayers over the phone and in offices around the country, she said.

In a separate statement, Danny Werfel, the?IRS' new acting commissioner, called the 2010 conference "an unfortunate vestige from a prior era."

He added, "While there were legitimate reasons for holding the meeting, many of the expenses associated with it were inappropriate and should not have occurred."

Werfel said the?IRS?has since instituted spending restrictions that include scaling back travel and training expenses by more than 80 percent since 2010.

"Taxpayers should take comfort that a conference like this would not take place today," Werfel said.

In a statement, the Treasury Department ? of which the?IRS?is part ? said it puts "the highest priority on protecting taxpayer dollars." It said it would work with Werfel as he reviews his agency's operations and tries to "restore public confidence in the?IRS."

The 2010 conference was attended by 2,600?IRS?workers from 350 offices around the country that handle tax returns for small businesses and self-employed individuals, Eldridge said.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/t9-WwOmVrmM/IRS-video-Dancing-workers.-Wrong-footed-agency

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91% Frances Ha

All Critics (80) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (73) | Rotten (7)

The dialogue and editing are zippy and generally charming, combining with the tart observations of 20-something culture to create a nice frisson.

A black-and-white salute to the French New Wave (the score is borrowed from Georges Delerue, composer of many a Truffaut and Godard film) that manages to be very much of this moment ...

The movie's a love letter to an actress and her character, but by the end you may feel like an intervention is more in order.

The obvious love of New York City echoes Woody Allen at his best. But "Frances Ha" is very much its own film, a story of life and love and messy rooms.

Baumbach ... makes the film a celebration of Gerwig's coltish, goofball appeal.

Late-blooming 20-somethings have never been so perfectly captured -- and Gerwig has never been more appealing -- than in this funny, tender, life-affirming movie.

Frances Ha is endearing, kind and, in many ways, Noah Baumbach's best movie to date.

It's a film that bears all of the zingy dialogue and sharp characterizations of Baumbach's other films ("The Squid and the Whale," "Greenberg") but with more of a generosity of spirit towards its characters.

Funny and touching, Frances Ha may very well be the most eloquent take yet on a generation in flux.

The light Frances Ha provides skittish moments of heartbreak and confusion on the humorous path to adulthood, but it sends a comforting message that our fate may use the same language as our dreams even if it doesn't tell the same story.

Easily Baumbach's warmest and most upbeat film to date.

Mostly the movie is the best showcase so far for Gerwig's brand of lovely klutziness (and)a contemporary everywoman appeal that's impossible to dismiss, making Frances' self-absorption easier to swallow and tasty, too.

One of the most appealing films of the year to date -- and it may well end up being the most appealing indie release of the entire year

This is a tough one, but I must recommend it, if you are at all inclined to witness creativity at its unconventional best.

"Frances Ha"? More like Frances Bah!

Gerwig dances the Millennial Limbo

...caters to the Gerwig persona while also sanding off the edges of Baumbach's usual bitterness.

"Frances Ha" is about the inevitability of adulthood; it can be postponed, but it can't be avoided.

[a] fresh-faced and spirited black and white comedy...

If Frances has a chance, there's hope for us all.

The near-incomparable Greta Gerwig gives Frances a fire, an exuberance, and a three-dimensional uniqueness that ensures the viewer never sways from her side.

It gives you two choices: find it delightful or don't: there is no unique, self-guided option. As frustrating as that conundrum may be, it's still hard not to take option one.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/frances_ha_2013/

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Mars pebbles prove water history

31 May 2013 Last updated at 08:01 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

Scientists now have definitive proof that many of the landscapes seen on Mars were indeed cut by flowing water.

The valleys, channels and deltas viewed from orbit have long been thought to be the work of water erosion, but it is Nasa's latest rover, Curiosity, that has provided the "ground truth".

Researchers report its observations of rounded pebbles on the floor of the Red Planet's 150km-wide Gale Crater.

Their smooth appearance is identical to gravels found in rivers on Earth.

Rock fragments that bounce along the bottom of a stream of water will have their edges knocked off, and when these pebbles finally come to rest they will often align in a characteristic overlapping fashion.

Curiosity has pictured these features in a number of rock outcrops at the base of Gale Crater.

It is confirmation that water has played its part in sculpting not only this huge equatorial bowl but by implication many of the other landforms seen on the planet.

"For decades, we have speculated and hypothesised that the surface of Mars was carved by water, but this is the first time where you can see the remnants of stream flow with what are absolutely tell-tale signs," Dr Rebecca Williams from the Planetary Science Institute, US, told BBC News.

The American space agency first announced the discovery of the pebbles in September last year, barely seven weeks after Curiosity had landed in Gale.

Researchers have since been studying the robot's pictures in more detail and have now written up a report for Science magazine - the first scholarly paper from the surface mission to make it into print; and the study reinforces the initial interpretation.

It describes the nature of the outcrops, and estimates the probable conditions in which their sediments were laid down.

The pebbles range in size from about two to 40mm in diameter - too big to have been blown along by the wind.

These clasts, as scientists will often call them, are cemented together in a sandy matrix to make a rock type referred to as a conglomerate.

In many places, the clasts are touching each other, and the pictures show examples of so-called imbrication - an arrangement where elongated pebbles stack like a row of toppled dominos. It is a classic sign of past river activity.

Precisely dating landforms on Mars is not possible, but the rock outcrops seen by the rover are almost certainly more than three billion years old.

Curiosity's pictures have enabled the team to make some informed statements about the speed and depth of the water that once flowed across the crater floor.

"We estimate that the flow velocities were walking pace, approximately - it's not something we can absolutely reconstruct, but it gives us a rough idea, and these are minimum values," explained Prof Sanjeev Gupta from Imperial College London, UK.

"And we can also say that the water depths ranged from ankle-deep to waist-deep.

"This is the first time we've been able to do this quantification [on the Red Planet]. It is routine to do this on Earth, but to do it on Mars by looking at ancient rocks is just remarkable."

The pebbles come in a variety of dark and light shades, further indicating that they have been eroded from different rock types and transported from different locations.

Using its Chemcam remote-sensing laser, the rover was able to detect feldspar in the lighter toned clasts.

Feldspar is a common mineral on Earth that weathers quickly in the presence of water.

This suggests past conditions were not overly wet and that the pebbles were carried only a relatively short distance - probably no more than 10-15km.

This fits with satellite observations of what appears to be a nearby network of old rivers or streams spreading away from the mouth of a channel that cuts through the northern rim of Gale Crater.

This valley - or Peace Vallis as it is known - is the probable route down which the water flowed and later dumped its load of rounded gravels.

Curiosity is due to drive back on itself in the coming weeks as it makes for the big peak, Mount Sharp, at the centre of the crater.

Scientists hope this will take the vehicle past similar rock outcrops so that additional pictures can be obtained.

"What's exciting is that when we made this discovery our highest resolution camera - the hand-lens camera, Mahli - hadn't even been commissioned. It has now. So, if we find similar rocks on the way to Mount Sharp, we will be able to get much better images with fantastic detail," said Prof Gupta.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22708902#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Why GOP Scandal Mongers Can't Have Nice Things (talking-points-memo)

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Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/309637152?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Stilly Is A One-Button GIF Maker For iPhone That's Even Easier Than Vine

Like GIFs? Tumblr? Got an iPhone? $2.00? OK, good, then you'll probably like this new app called Stilly which is either the most ridiculous thing ever or the most fun you're going to have all weekend. The app, in a nutshell, turns anything you capture with your iPhone's camera into a jiggling, wiggly, color-flashing GIF. Well, you know, kind of!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/QbPMGr0Y-lE/

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Early Brain Response To Words Predictive For Autism

As an autistic person, I think that "person first" language is offensive. Saying "person suffering from autism spectrum disorder" implies that autism is not a fundamental part of who I am, but is instead something inhuman that should be removed from me.

No, person-first language is something that parents insist on. These are the same type of parents who post YouTube videos about "what autism is like", when in reality, they've never experienced autism, but instead have only experienced interaction with an autistic person. Autistic people don't suffer from autism. They suffer from other people.

As for whether autism is real, it absolutely is.

I am not a child. I exhibited the symptoms of autism long before the world wide web existed, so I didn't and my parents didn't get a fad diagnosis. We didn't know what it was. Everyone just thought that I was a genius, because of teaching myself to read and do math and memorize large amounts of information and fix things, but most people didn't realize that I had severe sensory issues and overwhelming social cognitive deficits. This is not just normal what people call "shyness" or social anxiety. Throughout my life I have had major issues because, far from trying to handle social situations and failing, there have been a lot of times when I didn't realize that I was supposed to interact, and there have been many types of social interaction that I didn't even have concepts of. When I was very young I was considered absolutely brilliant, but I also did a lot of things completely incorrectly. For example, I attended the wrong classes for a significant part of a school year because I never communicated that I was in the wrong classes, so none of the teachers realized it. I didn't understand that people formed networks with each other or attempted to socialize outside of school. I attended high school and college and never asked anyone for a reference, not because of fear, but because I didn't know that anyone did, and didn't have any concept of why they would.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/MyhF_N48sD8/story01.htm

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How Mindfulness Can Save Your Relationship - Huffington Post

In my recent blog, "The Many Benefits of Mindfulness," I outlined how a mindfulness practice has been scientifically proven to improve our mental and physical health. The win-win effects of incorporating mindfulness into your life just seem to keep growing and expanding, interweaving into every area of our lives. Mindfulness practice doesn't just enhance our individual well-being. In fact, it's now being shown to have a positive impact on interpersonal relationships. A 2004 University of North Carolina study of "relative happy, nondistressed couples" showed that couples who practiced mindfulness saw improvements to their "relationship happiness." In addition, they experienced healthier levels of "relationship stress, stress coping efficacy, and overall stress."

Mindfulness is a skill we can acquire, a compassionate practice we can integrate into our lives, allowing us to have an easy, always available, method to calm ourselves down when distressed. Mindfulness increases our awareness of what we are experiencing and allows us the space to decide how we want to act in our daily lives. It is easy to picture how enhancing these abilities within ourselves would lead to better outcomes in our relationships.

Imagine, for example, being triggered by your partner. Picture yourself in that heated moment when everything just feels overwhelmingly wrong: anger is bubbling over inside you, combined with intense distress. Now imagine being able to feel your emotions without reacting in the moment. Imagine observing the emotions and thoughts that are arising without getting caught up in them -- being able to keep your emotional balance. This allows you to think about how you would like to respond in the situation vs. how you would instinctively react. Mindfulness is a means by which we can get to know our thoughts and stay connected to our feelings without falling victim to inappropriate, intense reactions based on unresolved issues from our past.

When it comes to leftover emotional pain from our earliest relationships, no one will trigger us like our romantic partner. How many times have you found yourself saying something in a moment of distress that you later deeply regret? How is it we find ourselves lashing out at the person we value the most? Ironically, our closest relationships tend to present us with the biggest challenges in our lives. New connections stir up old feelings from our past. Relationships test us in many ways, redefining how we see ourselves and the world around us. In addition to bringing us joy, finding love can cause us a great deal of anxiety and sadness. In romantic relationships, we make ourselves vulnerable to the good will of our relationship partner. Our fears of being hurt in this vulnerable state can make us more reactive, and we run the risk of self-sabotaging, not acting in our best interest in relation to the ones we love.

Mindfulness presents a valuable tool for facing the daily challenges of staying close to our partner. It allows us to become more centered and calm, so we can talk things out instead of spiraling into a screaming match. When we are on the defensive with our partner, overreacting to every word they say, we fail to really hear what's going on with them. What are they experiencing? What has triggered their upset? What are they really saying to us or asking of us?

A typical conversation between a couple may involve one partner remarking, "You used to be up for anything. You were so lively when we met." This may spark a defensive response in the other partner: "What? You're saying I'm not spontaneous anymore? You think I'm boring? What about you? You never get off the couch!" This type of angry and accusatory response tends to have a snowball effect. "I never said you were boring, and now you're calling me lazy? I work day and night to make you happy. You're so ungrateful."

Couples tend to key off each other when they are triggered. In that "flipped lid" state, their resentments toward each other start to spill out. At this point, the higher functions of their brain are offline and the emotional centers are firing out of control. Strong, exaggerated, hostile statements fly back and forth. Yet, if either could be more mindful in the interaction, they would take pause before responding. They could notice that they are triggered and angry and then choose to do something else, take a break and do an activity that will help them calm down. This may mean taking a few deep breaths or a long walk.

This will allow them to get their "lid" back on and react in a more constructive manner. It's important to take time to reflect, to notice the feelings but to consciously choose how we deal with them. This frees us to take actions in our own self-interest and to not cause our partner unnecessary hurt. Once we have centered ourselves and calmed down, we can communicate clearly and from the heart.

Mindfulness isn't about denying or burying our emotions. It's simply about cultivating a different relationship to our feelings and experiences, in which we are in the driver's seat. We can see our feelings and thoughts like a passing train roaring through the station, but we alone choose if we want to get on board.

When we learn to observe our experiences in this manner, our thoughts and feelings start to flow through us like waves, but as mindfulness expert Dr. Donna Rockwell points out, we can feel solid like a mountain in who we are and how we respond. As Dr. Rockwell said in her recent interview for PsychAlive.org, "What mindfulness does is it creates this space; it takes us out of the catastrophe. And as a couple working together in a mindfulness way ... there's a lot more heart available. There's a lot more understanding possible than this need to defend."

Meditation is an extremely effective way to get to know our thoughts by slowing down and paying attention. It helps us become familiar with our mind. Ultimately, it allows us to recognize the many "critical inner voices" that, without us even knowing it, we would typically allow to rule our lives. As we get to know these "voices," we can start to act against them, not permitting them to color our perceptions of ourselves or our partner.

When we know ourselves, we become stronger in our relationships. As mindfulness expert Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn notes, mindfulness is about paying attention to the present moment on purpose and without judgment. If we stay in the moment with our partners, we are far less likely to build a case against them, to catalog their flaws or turn against them at the drop of a hat. Instead, we can take each moment as it comes. We can cultivate empathy, insight, and morality within ourselves and extend these compassionate attitudes to those we love.

As we become more mindful, we achieve a greater sense of inner peace that is beneficial to us and the world around us, especially the people close to us. We alleviate the unhealthy levels of stress and tension that we carry with us in our daily lives. In addition, as we exercise the muscle of putting our attention where we want it, we gain more power over our thoughts, but even more so over our actions.

When we find someone we care for, a person with whom we know that, whatever each of us brings to the table, our relationship is worth working on, then half the battle is won. Mindfulness practices will better enable you to truly go after what you want, not only in your relationship, but in your personal goals. It's an ongoing practice that can help you to become the person you want to be every day for the rest of your life.

Read more from Dr. Lisa Firestone at PsychAlive.org.

Join Dr. Lisa Firestone on June 4 for a free webinar, "Becoming the Real You."

Learn about Dr. Lisa Firestone's latest book, The Self Under Siege: A New Model of Differentiation.

For more by Lisa Firestone, click here.

For more on emotional wellness, click here.

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Follow Lisa Firestone on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PsychAlive

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-firestone/mindfulness-relationships_b_3333709.html

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