• By Todd McEwen
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• Jun 12, 2011 - 11:10 AM
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Dufferin Relay for Life raises $131K

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Battling cancer can last a lifetime, but raising money to help find a cure took less than a day.
On Friday (June 10), Dufferin County’s second annual Relay For Life welcomed residents to a 12-hour fundraiser and festival at the Orangeville fairgrounds to celebrate the lives of cancer survivors and its victims, while raising money for the Canadian Cancer Society.
More than 300 supporters and 55 teams walked through the night, and helped raise an estimated $131,000 in pledges and donations, a number Lynn Lowe, chair of Dufferin County Relay For Life, was thrilled to see.
“It’s phenomenal,” she said. “The teams really came to bat this year and the team totals were just fantastic.”
Last year, the event raised $53 million across Canada and just more than $100,000 in Dufferin County. Lowe said she was confident they could beat their previous total this time around, and was proud to see a large number of younger supporters at this years event.
“We had a great youth presence,” she said. “It’s amazing how many of those guys stayed up and partied all night long and just kind of kept this energy going.”
The opening ceremony allowed local cancer survivors to perform a lap in a course lined with homemade lanterns, to a surrounding and cheering crowd consisting mostly of the teams, united in outrageous fashions, that were responsible for the money raised.
“Last year (the teams) got a taste of (Relay For Life),” Lowe said. “But this year so many teams put forth such a great effort.”
From dusk until dawn, multiple bands entertained the committed crowd while various meals and selections of food were continuously served throughout the night.
Games such as a three-legged race and wheelbarrow races were among the activities that kept the festival alive during the wee hours of the night and into morning.
“Cancer does not stop for nighttime,” Lowe said. “Relay For Life is overnight because cancer never sleeps.”
Orangeville District Secondary School student Alexander Watchurst addressed the crowd early on, thanking the volunteers and committee members for organizing Dufferin County’s second Relay For Life, a cancer fundraiser Watchurst has been attending and supporting since 2003.
“When people deal with cancer, they feel alone,” Watchurst said. “But events like Relay For Life can bring together people in only a way that people who have faced cancer can understand. It brings them together to feel like a family.”
Having been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia at two years old, Watchurst battled cancer during the early stages of his life. He was forced through treatments for the better part of three years, and at age five, was told he had overcome the disease.
“I was told I could go back to living a normal live,” he said. “But there’s always the risk afterwards that you could relapse and the cancer could come back.”
But the time he spent in hospitals motivated the 18-year-old to continue the fight against cancer, and since his first encounter with Relay For Life in Brampton, it’s been a cause and event he’s proudly supported with his friends and family.
At this year’s event, Watchurst’s team, The Watchurst Basement Dwellers, personally raised $13,000 in pledges and donations and placed first for most money raised among the 55 teams. But Watchurst was just happy to see the community band together through the fundraising process.
“It’s so amazing to see a small community like Orangeville bring in all that money and come together and create such an empowering event,” he said.
Next year’s event will be held in June as well, and Lowe says as of next week, her and the committee will be preparing for Relay For Life 2012.
For more information on how to volunteer or get involved with future Relay For Life events, visit www.relayforlife.ca/dufferin.

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Mark Zuckerberg
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Facebook Says It Doesn't Know Whether The Emails From The Guy Who Says He Owns 50% Of The Company Are Fake

Facebook 700,000,000

BOOM: Facebook Just Nuked The Case Of Paul Ceglia -- The Guy Who Claims He Owns 50% Of Zuckerberg's Stake In The Company

Earlier today, Facebook responded in full to the lawsuit brought by Paul Ceglia, the upstate New York wood-pellet salesman who says Mark Zuckerberg gave him half of the company 7 years ago.
Facebook's response was, in short, a big can of whup-ass.
Last month, when Paul Ceglia filed an amended complaint with dozens of purported emails backing up his story, we thought Facebook might have to dole out a humongous settlement to make Ceglia go away.
Facebook immediately denounced the emails as fake, of course, but the emails didn't read fake, and Facebook did not offer a compelling explanation for how Facebook knew the emails were fake (at the time, it may not have had one). And based on some of Mark Zuckerberg's other behavior as a 19 year old, it seemed conceivable that Ceglia's claim--as preposterous as it sounded--might actually be plausible. Especially because a major law firm, DLA Piper, had examined Ceglia's evidence and concluded that Ceglia's claim was genuine.
Well, after today, we suspect the folks at DLA Piper are wishing they had never heard of Paul Ceglia.
Last fall, after Ceglia filed his original complaint, Facebook did a few things.
First, they hired the investigation firm Kroll to investigate Ceglia and see what else they could dig up on him. Ceglia, of course, had already been charged with fraud in connection with his wood-pellet company, which wasn't an asset to his case, but, hey, everyone makes mistakes, and maybe Ceglia really had intended to deliver the wood pellets that he took cash deposits on.

Paul Ceglia
Image: Classmates.com www.classmates.com
Well, Kroll found that Ceglia had once tried to sell a Florida orange grove he didn't own. Kroll found that Ceglia had sold several plots of land in Florida on eBay that Ceglia represented as "buildable" that weren't buildable and were later declared worthless. Kroll found that, to jack up the prices of these worthless land sales, Ceglia had engaged in shill-bidding on eBay. Kroll found that Ceglia had forged government documents to aid in the Florida land sales. Kroll found that Ceglia had sold land that he didn't own in New York State and pretended to sell land that he did own--taking the money and keeping the land.
In short, Kroll basically found that Ceglia is a career con-artist.
The second thing Facebook did, after Ceglia filed his amended complaint with the purported emails last month, was hire an investigator to analyze Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard email account (the one through which he had presumably corresponded with Ceglia).
The investigator found approximately 175 emails between Zuckerberg and Ceglia in the relevant period, but none of Ceglia's purported emails.
The investigator also found emails showing that, far from Ceglia getting screwed by Zuckerberg (which the purported emails show), Zuckerberg got screwed by Ceglia! Specifically, the real emails, which are still resident in Zuckerberg's Harvard email account, show that Zuckerberg did contract development work for Ceglia and that Ceglia never paid him for it.
Given that Zuckerberg's Harvard email system did not contain the emails that Ceglia filed in his amended complaint, there's only one possible way Ceglia's claim can be genuine: If Mark Zuckerberg selectively deleted every one of the emails cited in the complaint. While this is theoretically possible, it seems highly unlikely--especially in light of the story told by Ceglia's purported emails.

Nice try, fella.
In those "emails," a nervous Mark Zuckerberg is trying to back out of his deal with Ceglia by offering to return the $2,000 Ceglia gave him to develop "the face book."
In the real emails, the one the investigator just found in Harvard's email system, a nervous and grovellingly apologetic Paul Ceglia can't come up with the $11,000 he owes Mark Zuckerberg for developing Ceglia's site, which was called StreetFax.
And Facebook didn't stop there. Facebook also hired a document analyst to examine the "contract" that Ceglia produced last summer. The document expert said the contract is an "amateurish forgery."
And Facebook hired a linguistic expert to analyze the language used in the real Zuckerberg-Ceglia emails (found in Zuckerberg's Harvard email system) and compare it to the language used in the Ceglia emails. The expert concluded that Mark Zuckerberg is not likely the author of the "Mark Zuckerberg" emails that Ceglia produced.
And so on...
Basically, Facebook went nuclear on Paul Ceglia, and they've blown him and his claim to bits.
Facebook filed all this evidence in support of a motion for "expedited discovery," in which they will be allowed to seize all of Ceglia's computers, forensically analyze them, and prove beyond any doubt that Ceglia forged both the "contract" and the "emails." (At which point, in addition to losing his case, Ceglia could easily be charged with criminal fraud and put away for a long while).
Facebook wants the "expedited discovery" in part so Ceglia can't drag the case out and force a settlement, which may well have been his and his lawyer's plan all along.
(Facebook can't go public with litigation like this hanging out there.)
This afternoon, after Facebook launched its missile, the major law firm that gave credence to Ceglia's claim and evidence, DLA Piper, released a statement. The statement said the following:
"Mr. Ceglia welcomes the opportunity to expedite discovery in this case and disagrees with the opinions within the filing, which have been made by those who have not examined the actual contract at issue in this case or any of the other relevant evidence."
Note the wording: "Mr. Ceglia welcomes the opportunity to expedite discovery..." Not DLA Piper. Mr. Ceglia.
That wording suggests one of two things:
Either DLA Piper is already wishing it had never met Ceglia and is distancing itself from him (in preparation for cutting its losses and dropping the case),
or
DLA Piper is doubling down and planning to file a motion against expedited discovery in an attempt to draw the case out and force a settlement.
Either way, based on the evidence Facebook filed today, we're done. Unless DLA Piper and Paul Ceglia can provide an extraordinarily compelling explanation for why we should ignore all of what we learned in Facebook's response, we're going to draw the same conclusion that Facebook has: Paul Ceglia is an inveterate scam artist and this claim is a fraud.
See Also: BOOM: Facebook Just Nuked Paul Ceglia's Claim

Lawyers for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg just introduced a new pile of evidence in their case with Paul Ceglia, the man who claims to own 50% of Zuckerberg's Facebook stake.

The new evidence/allegations are seriously damaging. Ceglia could end up in jail for this.

We've pulled out the key pieces from the new court filing via Forbes' embed of the filing.

In short, Facebook's attorneys say the contracts are "amateurish" forgeries produced by a serial scam artist.

They've also analyzed Mark Zuckerberg's emails from the period and found no trace of the emails Ceglia used to make his case -- emails that Facebook has always contended are fake.

They are asking the court to speed up the discovery phase of the trial, allowing them to seize Ceglia's computers and prove indisputably that, once again, he has committed criminal fraud.

PLEASE READ, PASS ON AND REMEMBER NEXT ELECTION. THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Here is what our Premier has done for Ontario in the past seven years. Remember...he had a no tax increaseelection message/campaign. He has increased all the licensing fees from your car to your boat including fishing and hunting. He introduced the health care premium (not called a tax) and some couples pay as much as $1,500.00 a year. He has put an ECO tax on many containers such as paint cans and window washer fluid most and people still don't realize it until they see the bill - he kept that one real quiet. He put a disposal tax on all electronics. He put the disposal tax back on tires. And now he has passed the HST tax - the largest tax on the province ever and the only other tax in Ontario that ever came close to this in the past was the health care premium. He passed this bill even though 76% of the people in Ontario were against it. This HST will provide the Province with an additional THREE BILLION dollars a year. Soon, July 15th, we will all have our S.M.A.R.T. Meters on which we will have to pay perpetual rent and will end up doing our laundry in the middle of the night. We are also going to pay big time for air conditioning from now on because when we need it the most it will be in the prime time of usage. Let us not forget the E-health scandal with 1.2 billion dollars wasted and paid out to friends and relatives. What was Mr. McGuinty's answer to this? Well, if the people of Ontario don't like it, they can show it in the next election.? Nice attitude. This after he fired the CEO and then gave her a severance package of $300,000 - not bad for only being on the job for seven months. And what about the SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS windmill power plant contract that he awarded to KOREA ? One would think there was some place in Canada or North America that could have built these. He also closed the emergency rooms in Port Colburne and Fort Erie because there is not enough money. There have been two deaths since then because by the time they got to St. Catharine's it was too late. But he then awards a hospital in Toronto three million dollars - of course, that was in the riding where there just happens to be a by-election to replace George Smitherman! He has taken the richest most prosperous province in Canada down to one of the 'Have-Nots' and, over the past six & one half years, has increased the budget deficit from $5.6 Billion dollars to TWENTY SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS and he still has a year and a half to go. And don't forget his nice little salaryincrease of $40,000.00 a year - millions of people in the province don't earn even half of that. Have we forgotten all the MP'S who also got a 14% increase? And now that they've hadtheir increases he comes out with a new budget to freeze all provincial employees wages for two years - a bit late don't you think. He increased the hydro tax by 10% in April of 2010. He has increased the tax on liquor and wine by 10% in May of 2010. He continues to permanently 'blight' landscapes across the province with unsightly wind turbines. But, Mr. McGuinty will retire with his nice comfortable pension and all his benefits paid. I hope this gets passed around the province of Ontario and everybody remembers the way we got screwed by Mr. McGuinty and the Liberal party and - remember - not one Liberal MPP had enough guts to vote against any of the above. Wake up Ontario ....!! And all pensioners got no raise at all over the past 18 months!!!!!!!!!

Harold Camping speaks during a taping of his show 'Open Forum' in Oakland, Calif., Monday, May 23, 2011. (AP / Marcio Jose Sanchez)

View larger image In this photo, members of the Calvary Bible Church of Milpitas appear at the closed Family Radio station offices of Harold Camping in Oakland, Calif., to offer support to victims of the radio evangelist, who claimed that the ascension into heaven of the Christian faithful would happen on Saturday, May 21, 2011. (AP / Dino Vournas, File)

Updated: Mon May. 23 2011 19:56:48

CTV.ca News Staff

Oops, he did it again.

A Christian radio host who predicted the apocalypse would come last Saturday, now says he made a mistake and it will occur on October 21.

California preacher Harold Camping said the Rapture will come five months to the day after May 21, his original prophecy.

The 89-year-old said he felt so bad his prediction didn't come true on Saturday, he sought refuge in a motel with his wife.

Camping made the statement to the press at the Oakland headquarters of his media empire, Family Radio International.

He also predicted the apocalypse would happen in 1994, but blamed the world's survival then on a mathematical error.

Camping had stated there was no way the Rapture would not start on Saturday at 6.p.m, and told the San Francisco Chronicle he was "flabbergasted" his doomsday prophecy didn't come about.

Camping preached some 200 million Christians would be saved and those left behind would die in a series of plagues until Earth was destroyed in a fireball on Oct. 21.

While his latest prediction was mostly met with online ridicule, some believers took it quite seriously. One man in New York spent his life savings on advertisements warning of the coming doom.

Camping's media empire has assets of more than $100 million and had $18 million in donations in 2009.

Not-for-profit financial organization NACHA, which oversees an electronic payment system called the Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network, has issued an immediate release today in response to a surge in spam e-mails part of a phishing attack.

The release, posted to the official NACHA Web site, reads:

Random individuals and/or companies may have received a falsified e-mail with the subject title "Rejected ACH Transaction." This e-mail appears to be from NACHA - The Electronic Payments Association telling them that there is a problem with an ACH transaction they have originated. The e-mail includes a link which redirects the individual to a fake web page which appears like the NACHA website and contains a link which is almost certainly executable virus with malware.

NACHA urges consumers to ignore these e-mails and not to click the link, which it says is likely associated with a virus.

This week I learned that one of my flat screens was broken and would not turn on.

We've heard it before: nice guys finish last. And when it comes to sexual attraction, it appears the rule holds.

A new study finds that women are more attracted to the brooding, "bad boy" rather than happy-go-lucky guys.

Now before you go asking, "They needed a study to tell us that?!", hear us out. The University of British Columbia researchers who worked on the study say there's an inherent contradiction in this finding.

They note that in almost every social interaction -- including those involving sexual attraction -- smiling is actually considered essential. But when it comes to first impressions, women seem to prefer men who look either sullen or boastful.

The study from UBC's Deptartment of Psychology involved more than 1,000 men and women who were asked to rate how sexually attractive they found hundreds of pictures of people of the opposite sex.

The pictures showed men and women engaged in standard displays of happiness (broad smiles), pride (raised heads, puffed-up chests) or shame (lowered heads, averted eyes).

When they asked the women which images they found sexiest, the women tended to be least interested in the smiling, happy men. They instead preferred either those who looked proud and powerful, or moody and ashamed.

In contrast, men were most sexually attracted to women who looked happy, and least attracted to women who appeared proud and confident.

Alec Beall, a UBC psychology graduate student and one of the study's co-authors says it's important to remember that the study was meant to explore first impressions of sexual attraction.

"We were not asking participants if they thought these targets would make a good boyfriend or wife – we wanted their gut reactions on carnal, sexual attraction," he explained in a news release.

He notes that previous studies have found nice personalities and positive emotions are highly desirable in relationship partners. But when it comes to sexual attraction, women seem to like their men "complicated."

Why would women like men who looked ashamed? Prof. Jessica Tracy of UBC's Deptartment of Psychology, who also worked on the study, has a theory.

She says displays of shame suggest the men are aware of social norms and appeasement behaviors, which suggests they are trustworthy, a trait that is valued by both sexes.

As for why the women preferred the men who raised their arms in pride, that one was a bit easier to explain.

First off, the pride expression accentuated the men's physical features, such as upper body size and muscularity, which may have helped to make the men more sexually attractive.

As well, evolutionary theories suggest females are often attracted to male displays of pride because they imply status and competence. Smiling, on the other hand, is often linked with a lack of dominance.

Men may have preferred the smiling women because happiness is considered a particularly feminine-appearing expression.

And like it or not, traditional gender norms call for men to be dominant and strong, and women to be submissive and vulnerable.

"Generally, the results appear to reflect some very traditional gender norms and cultural values that have emerged, developed and been reinforced through history, at least in Western cultures," Tracy said in the news release.

"These include norms and values that many would consider old-fashioned and perhaps hoped that we've moved beyond."

The study appears in the online edition of the American Psychological Association journal Emotion.

To the shock and distress of a handful of ultra-devout Christian believers...America and a world that had signally failed to end.

Instead of a series of earthquakes hitting successive countries at 6pm local time and heralding The Rapture – in which millions of the Faithful would ascend to heaven before the Second Coming of Christ – planet Earth simply carried on and, mostly, kept calm.

Middle East peace remained unresolved, political turmoil hit a few countries and bypassed many others. But by and large the world's toiling billions, as usual, just got on with their lives.

The non-event was a great disappointment to hundreds of followers of a hitherto obscure California-based religious group called Family Radio, which had lavished millions of dollars on a worldwide advertising campaign proclaiming yesterday as Judgment Day.

The group is centred on the teachings and broadcasts of prophet Harold Camping, an 89-year-old self-styled expert in the scriptures who told his followers that his interpretations of the Bible had uncovered the true date of the end of the world. Camping, who lives in the northern California town of Alameda, has previous form on this. He got the date wrong in 1994 when he said the world would end that year, and later explained its continued existence by saying he had made a mathematical error.

But what made this prediction different was the lavish spending that accompanied it. Camping and his followers spent more than $100m worldwide on billboards and posters, financed by the sale and swap of radio stations. Advertising popped up across America and the globe from Iraq to Lebanon to Israel to Jordan, the Philippines to Vietnam, where thousands of the Hmong ethnic hill tribe gathered together on the Thai border in anticipation of the event. The campaign was backed up by Camping's radio show, which can be heard worldwide, and a website that featured, naturally, a countdown clock. Yesterday that clock was at zero underneath the banner headline: "Judgment Day: the Bible guarantees it."

Camping's followers became a familiar sight in cities such as New York, wearing T-shirts proclaiming their beliefs and handing out leaflets in subway stations. On Friday they were at Manhattan's Union Square station, attracting a throng of fascinated gawpers who posed for pictures with them. They handed out their Judgment Day booklets and chatted amiably enough, given their conviction that the End Times were about to arrive.

But as yesterday approached many told reporters they would spend the time huddled in their homes with their families. They planned to pray for their loved ones and hope to be among the lucky few taken up into heaven and spared the global calamity the rest of us would have to put up with for the (much shortened) rest of our lives. Camping himself, who wound down his radio operations ahead of time, said he would watch events unfold at home on television.

Unfortunately for them, nothing happened; a fact that caused much hilarity on Twitter and elsewhere as the 6pm deadline passed in New Zealand, then Australia, Europe and finally America.

"Harold Camping Doomsday prediction fails; No earthquake in New Zealand," read one posting on Twitter. "If this whole end-of-the-world thingy is still going on... it's already past 6.00 in New Zealand and the world hasn't ended," said another. The jokes were global. "Through Croydon; devastation, pestilence, drawn, emaciated faces of the walking dead. No sign of the Rapture though," cracked someone evidently not a fan of the south London town. Another Twitter user suggested people scatter empty pairs of shoes and discarded clothes on their lawns to simulate those lucky few now living with God.

Perhaps not surprisingly, atheists and other non-believers used the opportunity as a way to mock the religious. Various parties were planned across the US. In Fayetteville, North Carolina, the local chapter of the American Humanist Association held a party last night to celebrate the Earth's survival and planned a music concert. The American Atheists held "rapture parties" in places such as Wichita, Kansas, Fort Lauderdale in Florida and even just a few miles from Family Radio itself at a conference centre in Oakland. New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg used a press conference to assure citizens that post-Rapture his administration would not pursue parking tickets or late library books.

But other non-believers and cynics saw an opportunity to make money rather than jokes. There has been a mini-boom in firms and individuals offering to look after the pets of those who believed they were about to be raptured. Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, set up by New Hampshire atheist Bart Centre, has about 250 clients who paid $135 (£83) for insurance policies that guarantee Centre and others will care for their animals when they ascend. Others paid out to sign up with websites that would send out farewell letters to friends and relations left behind.

But there is a serious side. Camping seemed entirely genuine in his beliefs, enough to spend a small fortune promoting them. While others may be making money out of believing in Doomsday, Camping is not one of them. Many experts have worried about the psychological impact on his followers who are suddenly confronted with the collapse of their belief system. Some Christian pastors planned to gather outside Family Radio to counsel any distraught members who showed up wondering why they – and the world – were still there.

Camping himself admitted he had pretty much staked everything on his fervently held belief. "There is no plan B," he told Reuters late last week. Which is a shame. As the day progressed in California last night with no global mega-quake in sight, he and his followers needed one.