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Well this is mildly terrifying: according to a new Pew study, the Facebook privacy mode a lot of us rely on for photos and status updates is, on average, anything but private. Time to reconsider your settings, everyone.
The finding is staggering—Friends of Friends can hit as many as over seven million people:
Facebook users can reach an average of more than 150,000 Facebook users through their Facebook friends; the median user can reach about 31,000 others. At two degrees of separation (friends-of-friends), Facebook users in our sample can on average reach 156,569 other Facebook users. However, the relatively small number of users with very large friends lists, who also tended to have lists that are less interconnected, overstates the reach of the typical Facebook user. In our sample, the maximum reach was 7,821,772 other Facebook users. The median user (the middle user from our sample) can reach 31,170 people through their friends-of-friends.
When you think friend of a friend, the IRL analogue comes to mind. Your buddy's buddy. That guy you met at a bar who seems okay. Your girlfriend's pals from college. They must be okay people, right? They're so narrowly removed from you, why not share all your photos with them?
Because 150,000+ people includes a hell of a lot of strangers you probably shouldn't trust, and certainly don't (and will never) know personally. You can read the study in its entirety below. [Pew] | <urn:uuid:30185797-48e4-477f-a00f-6322ee887baa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gizmodo.com/5882027/sharing-with-friends-of-friends-on-facebook-exposes-you-to-150000-people | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96376 | 314 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Here's my favorite set of questions - thanks to Steph Beer @Stepwise1.
Executive summary of the business project
What is your business idea? In what way is it creative and unique?
Who are your target customers? What test customers have you approached or could you approach? What is the value of those customers?
What market volume and growth rates do you forecast?
What competitive environment do you face?
What distribution channels will you use?
What partnerships would you like to enter into?
What are the sales, cost and profit situations?
What opportunities and risks do you face?
What is the picture on patents?
What are the social and environmental impacts of your business? In particular, what are the employment opportunities in regards to the development of the project?
What long-term goals have you set?
What additional stages of development are needed? List your next, concrete steps
Product and customer value proposition
What products / services are offered at what prices?
What is the status of the product / service development? What are the next steps? Do you have patents or licences?
Compare the strengths and weaknesses of comparable products / services.
How is your business organized? What is the network structure?
What do you make and what do you buy? (What are your core competencies and what do you outsource)?
Market/competitor analysis and own positioning
Which is the size of the market?
How is the industry developing (market growth)?
What are the key success factors?
Who are current and future competitors?
What is your positioning compared with key competitors?
What is the role of the different team members?
What experience or abilities does the team possess that will be useful for setting up your company?
How will you attract the right profiles and retain them?
What is the future management style of the operations?
What experiences or abilities are lacking? How will these gaps be closed?
Opportunities and risks
What other opportunities can be leveraged?
Project development phase
At what stage of the project development are you?
Have you registered your company? If so, when?
What are you current funding needs?
Please explain how you got to that amount.
How long do you estimate it will take for your business to become profitable? Provide details that explain your projections.
Level of personal funding: what is the percentage and amount that the project leader is investing in the company?
What are the other sources of funding? Specify each source, the percentage and the amounts.
Overall Assessment and motivations
In what ways do you consider your business to be creative? Summarize the creative aspects of your project in this question.
How will your business survive and grow in the next five years? Explain the main points that will ensure the sustainability of your company.
What is the main positive social and/or environmental impact of your business? Explain in concrete terms this impact and how you measure or plan to measure it.
Why should someone give you money?
What risks are involved with the market entry and how can they be controlled? | <urn:uuid:afc43efc-ee67-42b7-9e70-9b3bdbf395e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/22107/what-criteria-do-you-use-to-judge-the-viability-of-a-startup/22346 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936085 | 639 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Necol is the single mother of five children. She is extremely close to all her children and wants great things for their future. Necol found out about Reason to Give through the Lafayette Elementary School. She is hoping for some help with everyday items as well as help to send her two oldest children Willie Jr. and Holly to college.
Necol has endured many struggles throughout her life, and now as a single parent, she continues to fight for her family's survival through economic hardships. She has decided to put her past behind her and pursue an education for herself in order to be a role model for her children. It is obvious to us just from being around her family, that Necol's children love and respect her very much. She has sacrificed a lot for her family to give them a new start. Her strength and positive outlook on life is truly inspirational.
Willie Jr., 17, is hoping to go to college out of state and play basketball. He is excited to explore the world outside of Chicago and wants to pursue a degree in computer technology and business. He also dreams of playing in the NBA one day. Holly, 15, works hard in school and hopes to one day be a nurse or a doctor. She volunteers regularly for Reason to Give and also enjoys mixing her own music. Claudia, 13, wants to go to law school, and the two youngest boys, Luke, 10, and Joshua, 6, have the same dreams as many little boys: to be professional athletes.
Necol highlights the importance of education and giving back to the community to her children. Her family already actively volunteers in the community, and she hopes that once she is back on her feet, she will be able to help those who have been through similar struggles.
Necol is asking for winter wear, shoes, and school supplies for her family. She also needs basic household items such as small appliances and bedding. Necol hopes to get help for her family's education as well. She needs a computer for herself and her children to complete homework assignments and research college scholarships. She is also hoping to set up a college fund to help her children in pursuit of their dreams.
Necol and her five children are grateful for any help they receive from Reason to Give.
Reason To Give sources high quality, sustainable goods from reputable retailers who give back to society. We buy direct from local retailers, US-based businesses, Fair Trade companies and eco-friendly brands. So while they might not be the cheapest, they're certainly the most considerate. Still skeptical?Learn more. | <urn:uuid:adca744d-14a1-4949-a3de-9981c6cec333> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reasontogive.com/reasons/loving-mother-has-big-dreams-for-her-children | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986847 | 526 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Everyone is writing Valentine's Day themed posts this week and we are no exception. Being Kate's favourite holiday, we couldn't miss throwing our contribution on the pile as well!
We would like to quickly mention some of our favourite love-related books for little ones. If you are looking for something sweet to give to the child in your life that doesn't involve chocolate then look no further.
"If Kisses Were Colors" by Janet Lawler and Alison Jay (Penguin Young Readers).
If kisses were flowers, you'd have huge bouquets
of roses and daisies picked fresh every day.
We are huge fans of Alison Jay's work including her amazing books "A B C", "1 2 3" and "Picture This". Pair her quirky art with some beautiful sentiments and we're sold. New to board book format, "If Kisses Were Colors" is a touching poem perfect for newborns up to toddlers.
"Hug" by Jez Alborough (Candlewick Press)
Containing only three different words, most of the story is told with the vibrant and detailed pictures. Poor Bobo the monkey sees all the animal babies getting hugs from their moms and wants one too! Thankfully he is reunited with his mom with a great big hug and all the other animals get hugs too. This is a great book for spurring the imaginations of little ones!
"Where's My Sweetie Pie?" by Ed Emberley (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
This is one of our favourite lift-the-flap books on the market. With simple and bright illustrations by the legendary Ed Emberley, children have to find "my sweetie pie" throughout the book by checking behind each of the flaps. The flaps on the final page reveal a mirror to show that the child is the "sweetie pie". The art, rhyming text, interactive nature, and sweet sentiment make this a perfect book for the under two set.
Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Now go share a book with your kids..." | <urn:uuid:a4bf5519-48e7-4710-9422-375d82b3ac10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yummymummyclub.ca/blogs/drew-kate-tall-tales/archive/40/201102 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947416 | 421 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The online news portal of TV5
JAKARTA -- YouTube has begun restricting access to videos of an anti-Islamic film in the world's most populous Muslim nation, a government official said Sunday.
"Google, which is YouTube's parent company, emailed us on Thursday evening to say it had blocked Indonesia's access to 16 URLs related to the "Innocence of Muslims" videos on the site," Communications and Information Ministry spokesman Gatot Dewa Broto told AFP.
Extracts of the film were still available on the video-sharing website on Sunday, but Broto said Google was "making special effort" to prevent the film from being watched in Indonesia.
"We understand that it takes time for Google to block everything as people continue to upload those sensitive videos. We appreciate Google's cooperation," he said.
Broto said the government also wrote to Blackberry maker Research In Motion on Friday to filter the videos on its smartphones.
Indonesia is the Canada-based company's biggest market outside North America, with subscriptions expected to almost double to 9.7 million by 2015.
"We could access the videos on Blackberry too so we wrote to RIM to ask that it filter them, and RIM has been very cooperative," he added.
Besides Indonesia, Google has denied access to the video in Libya, Egypt and India.
In cities across the Muslim world protesters have vented their fury at the "Innocence of Muslims" -- an amateur film produced in the United States -- by targeting symbols of US influence ranging from embassies and schools to fast food chains.
Hundreds of Indonesians staged rallies against the United States on Friday and Saturday over the film, which portrays the Prophet Mohammed as an immoral sexual deviant.
In the worst violence triggered by the film, the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans were killed late Tuesday when suspected Islamic militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at the US consulate in Benghazi. | <urn:uuid:5ec5e911-6941-4289-bc92-f30be4e7bcad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.interaksyon.com/article/43327/google-blocks-anti-islam-film-in-indonesia---govt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958697 | 402 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Some Favorite Sites
Government/ Community Links
Mayor: Wait A Week To Trick Or Treat
by Paul Bass | Oct 30, 2012 1:03 pm
Superstorm Sandy may have spared New Haven the brunt of her wrath. But she may have also robbed the local kids of some candy.
In the storm’s wake, Mayor John DeStefano is calling on parents to keep their children home Wednesday night rather than allow them to go Halloween trick-or-treating.
Downed wires and ongoing power outages will probably still make some streets dangerous for kids to traverse at night, the mayor said at an 11 a.m. Tuesday post-storm update at City Hall.
“I don’t see any reason we should be putting our children at risk. I would suggest folks skip trick-or-treating and stay home and have a wonderful time,” DeStefano said.
“It’s the safe and right thing to do.”
(Update: The mayor’s press office sent out a release mid-afternoon Tuesday suggesting people trick or treat the following Wednesday instead.)
Click here for a roundup of the city’s plans and initial damage assessments from Monday’s storm. Downed trees and power lines caused havoc in City Point, Morris Cove and Fair Haven, but a last-minute westward shift in the storm spared New Haven from the scariest scenarios before Monday’s 11:53 p.m. high tide.
At Tuesday’s press conference, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro noted that DeStefano was ready to dispatch rescue teams to save people who ignored evacuation orders in case the flood waters had reached their feared levels. DeLauro noted that officials in “some parts of the country” told the holdouts they’d have to fend for themselves. She didn’t specifically name New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the official in question.
New Haven’s “Mayor prepared to move to save people’s lives,” she said.
DeStefano said he hopes that those who ignored evacuation orders don’t conclude “I didn’t have to go.”
“We had some rescues of knuckleheads in cars last night,” he said. “All of us had better things to do.”
The mayor warned people not to venture out unless absolutely necessary. He said city crews still need time to make the streets safe. | <urn:uuid:35b7630a-f2f0-4b53-b0ac-4ec09079d653> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/mayor_cancel_trick-or-treating/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938428 | 529 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Most Egyptians are against relations between Egypt and the Israeli regime and demand an end to the Camp David Accords signed by Tel Aviv and Cairo in 1979, a political analyst tells Press TV.
"Most of the Egyptians are against any relationship with Israel and they think Israel” is an occupying regime, Kamel Wazni told Press TV on Monday.
He made the statement after Egypt's Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) announced the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi had won the county's presidential runoff on Sunday.
People in Egypt "want the Palestinians to have their legitimate right to have their land and I think the Islamic Brotherhood, if they want to be legitimate, have to honor the wish of the Egyptian people," Wazni said.
Pressure from public opinion is rising on the new Egyptian president to reconsider the 'peace deal' with the Israeli regime and revoke the Camp David Accords.
"I do not know how long they will honor the Camp David agreement, maybe that would probably be in the first period of time but in the long run, if they continue to honor that, they will lose their credibility as real Islamic Brotherhood," the analyst said.
The victory of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate has stirred concerns in the Israeli regime with media and officials warning of a difficult and vague future for Tel Aviv-Cairo ties.
Israeli officials fear that Morsi's victory could bring an end to Egypt's peace treaty with Israel as well as bilateral economic and security agreements, which are of vital importance to Tel Aviv.
The Israeli media have described Morsi's victory as a 'dangerous development' for Tel Aviv.
Morsi picked up 13.2 million votes out of just over 26 million, garnering 51.7 percent of the vote.
His competitor, Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister under ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak, received 12.3 million votes (48.3 percent). | <urn:uuid:9ef619db-5b64-4fb3-8da9-4a844afead8c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://presstv.com/detail/2012/06/26/248023/egyptians-against-any-ties-with-israel/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963599 | 385 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Your daughter has just been in a car crash. She falls unconscious on her way to the hospital, but not before she is able to tell the paramedics the name of her doctor. This is vitally important because the emergency room won’t know that she’s an insulin-dependent diabetic with a penicillin allergy, but her doctor will be able to give them her relevant medical history.
Or, at least he would be if he’d renewed the tech support contract on his medical records software. He didn’t, though, and now his information—and your daughter’s—is locked away in a proprietary database he can’t access.
As unlikely and alarmist as this sounds, it could really happen. Intracare is the publisher of a popular practice management system called Dr. Notes. When some doctors balked at a drastic increase in their annual software lease, they were cut off from accessing their own patients’ information.
This situation is completely unconscionable. There can be no truly open doctor-patient relationship when an unrelated third party is the de facto owner of and gatekeeper to all related data.
In the short term, cases like the example above are all too possible, and simply unacceptable in every way. With today’s large practices built around large numbers of patients, many using multiple prescription medicines, these practice management systems are absolutely critical and can’t be permitted to be held ransom. Additionally, doctors in the United States are saddled with a giant bureaucratic tangle known as HIPAA. Even if a doctor and her software vendor are working happily together, the government may take a dim view of an outside party controlling access to patient records.
In the long term, patients could lose their own medical history as doctors migrate from one proprietary system to another by simply starting over rather than paying thousands of dollars for expensive data format conversion. Even if you have an excellent personal relationship with your doctor, a relocation or changes to your insurance could make you need a copy of your records to give to a new doctor’s office. Your old physician may know to monitor that funny looking spot on your shoulder, but might not have entered it into the new system he put in place since your last visit.
Finally, practice management software can be extremely expensive. Doctors have to pass these expenses along to their patients, increasing treatment costs for all involved.
Fortunately, the situation isn’t entirely bleak. New online communities are developing to build and market free software solutions. LinuxMedNews is a regularly updated online forum for discussing industry news. GPLMedicine is a similar site maintained by Fred Trotter, project manager for the Free software ClearHealth management system. A project by Canada’s McMaster University, OSCAR, became the first IT system certified by OntarioMD.
Although these don’t have the name recognition among the medical community of commercial ventures such as Dr. Notes, they’re available for testing and implementation—free of charge and usage restrictions—today.
If you are a doctor or other healthcare provider, you owe it to yourself and your patients to take a look at these forums and applications. At the worst, you’ll find them uninteresting and unuseful. However, you could also find ways to protect your patients’ and your own best interests—all while saving money.
If you are a patient, print a copy of this blog and hand it to your doctor next time you see her. She may not be aware that there are viable alternatives to the expensive, restrictive systems she’s been leasing. If she’s not interested, you’ve lost nothing. If she finds something useful, though, then you may have done a real service to yourself, your doctor, and your fellow patients. | <urn:uuid:c54910e9-bc07-4439-8199-8b2e127825cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/comment/558 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958418 | 782 | 1.75 | 2 |
Wish for immortality, that is. Something that unknowingly, and without understanding it, so much of our society longs for. Easy immortality though, to be fair. We wish to be immortal at the best and most able part of our lives. Not to be immortal and be… old. Or… ill. After all, where would L’Oreal be if we didn’t age.
*Caution – Torchwood plot spoilers!*
I am a big Torchwood fan. The new series needs to do a lot to satisfy die-hard fans of a quirky Cardiff-based and very British low-budget sci-fi drama, and as the story goes so far, this is good. The basic premise:
Nobody can die. Death is not an option.
Even those who should be dead are not. Something is keeping people alive despite accidents and illness; even severed limbs still contain life. The planet faces overpopulation within 4 months. Hospitals are full of people who are alive, but in terrible pain. Triage is reversed, there is no ‘golden hour’ for A&E patients during which their lives can be saved. They will not die anyway. Minor injuries are treated first to get them out of the hospital, whilst seriously injured wait. Just… wait.
The miracle day becomes a terrible day.
With this simple but dramatic change, the tables are turned on attitudes to death. From fearing death, from death being the enemy and to be avoided at all costs, suddenly death is the old friend people desperately want. Our craving for constant youth and for constant life seems ridiculous. In an instant an entire culture in the West designed around real-life death-avoidance finds the ground it stands on disappears.
We who follow Jesus are not afraid of death. We welcome it, in fact. In theory. When we read the book of Revelation, for example, we can see that death is not to be feared; the early church certainly wouldn’t have seen it that way. But it doesn’t swing so far that way that we end up craving death, like so many seem to – the sort of ‘passport to leave this earth and get to heaven’ mis-reading of Scripture. Jesus came to bring life and life in all its fulness – in this life and the one beyond.
So we do not fear death, though we may fear its consequences for those we leave behind. We welcome death, in it’s right time and place, because we know life is not designed to be immortal. The weariness and loneliness of Dr Who and Captain Jack are windows into the world of those who do not die. Even Jesus died.
Our story is of a life that dies but that does not stay dead. Our story is of resurrection that conquers death and all fear of death. Our Miracle Day is not the day people stopped dying, but the day one man died and was raised to life. Our story is not immortal life but eternal life, that begins here and now whilst we are mortal.
In Torchwood through one life all crave death; in Jesus, through one death we all gain life.
Watch the Torchwood: Miracle Day trailer here… | <urn:uuid:27eed97a-49bb-4361-8f5f-01d27e9319fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theblogofkevin.wordpress.com/tag/gwen-cooper/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951854 | 663 | 1.523438 | 2 |
At the Tokyo Motor Show, we're seeing the World Premiere of the Mitsubishi Concept PX-MiEV. And, in this case, just about every letter of its name has meaning. The "P" signifies "plug-in hybrid," Mitsubishi's take on hybrid technology that's capable of charging its battery from a remote source. The "X" stands for "crossover," the increasingly trendy genre that's not as trucklike as a conventional SUV, yet a bit more off-roadable than what we used to call "station wagons." (Come to think of it, we rarely drove them to stations anyway.)
The "MiEV" portion is actually a bit misleading. It's "M" as in Mitsubishi, fair enough. But the real MiEV is an "i" minicar, a Japanese kei car, with purely electric propulsion, the "EV" portion. To complete nomenclatural matters, the i-MiEV is the production version of this electrified kei. And see nearby for word of the World Premiere of Mitsubishi's i-MiEV Cargo.
The PX-MiEV is a full hybrid, i.e., capable of purely EV mode up to moderate road speeds. This propulsion is primarily front-drive, though it switches automatically to rear electric drive as well when sensors detect front-wheel slip. When the battery pack reaches its lower limit, the PX-MiEV transforms itself into series hybrid mode. Here, its 1.6-liter dohc inline-4 powers a generator which in turn provides electricity for the front and rear motors.
At higher road speed, the PX-MiEV operates in parallel hybrid mode, its gasoline powerplant helping to drive the wheels. The pair of electric motors provides a stability control feature as well as propulsion. (Note: This is unlike the purely series hybrid "extended-range electric" operation of the Chevrolet Volt.)
Like all hybrids, the PX-MiEV has regenerative coasting and braking, where energy is returned to the battery pack. As a plug-in, it can also recharge this battery through a suitable 100- or 200-volt electrical outlet or, if available, a dedicated high-power quick-charging station.
The PX-MiEV also has a "Smart Grid" feature, capable of storing energy on-board and later accessed for power home applications. It would also find use as a power source in periods of electrical outage, no trivial matter in a country like Japan threatened not infrequently by earthquakes. If battery level falls beyond a particular point, the PX-MiEV's gasoline engine automatically fires up. Last, the car has an auxiliary 100-volt AC socket in its rear luggage compartment, just the thing for quite civilized camping.
At this point, note, the PX-MiEV is termed a Concept car. But its alphabetical nomenclature contains so many promising features that I'd expect a production version before long. | <urn:uuid:378ac11a-b591-4913-84f6-84dc8a396385> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-shows/2009-tokyo-auto-show/mitsubishi-concept-px-miev?src=global_footer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94209 | 619 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Can you help
my tank has been runing for about 6 weeks
4 guppys always happy
Had 4 mollys but to died from white spot Got a bottle of white spot and things have been ok all fish look fine and the tank is looking lovely.
Loads of plants
Now my tests are
What should i do keep doing water change's
yes do a water change until they all read 0 nitrate can be present becuase it is not as harmful to fish as nitrite and ammonia
did you cycle the tank?
well yes we think but got told everything of a bloke in a pet shop ????? i know now to come here.:lol:
I think its is coming to the end of it as the last reading was worse.
I just read the post by amy you lot are great i will do a water change and teast it tomorrow night then put the results on here
Please do keep up with water changes until nitrite sticks to zero.
Could you also kindly illustrate how you did your white spot treatment?
will do mate doing one every 2 days
Got some anti white spot and added it to the water made the tank turn blue but was ok in about 1 hour did this twice like it says on the bottle .
i as vac the gravel as i am changing the water what do you think
How long did you keep the treatment there? What active ingredient was labeled on the bottle? Malachite green can potentially destroy the beneficial bacteria. Salt would be a safer alternative and both mollies and guppies are extremely tolerant to salt. However, as you do have plants, all your fish may require moving to a hospital tank with plastic.plants for hideouts to spare your live plants the misery of being badly damaged by salt. Kindly check my sticky thread for all fish diseases in the disease forum. White spot treatment and everything else you need to know about white spots have been covered well.
First thanks for the help
The two fish that had white spot are on died the rest look happy a no white spot in the tank there are 2 snails? must of come of the plants or java moss
The white spot was
interpet anti white spot
Got told is was a good one again i do know whats was the best one but like i say they look on we are only going to get guppys from now on LOL we like them
I am doing another water test later tonight so i will post what happening
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Get a Body Like Jean Claude Van Damme – Van Damme’s Diet and Workout Revealed!
He’s very well known for his physique and is fondly called as “Muscles from Brussels”. All his movies are of the action genre. These include Bloodsport and Kickboxer.
Building a body like his is no cake walk. One needs to build a healthy routine and follow it religiously. Apart from your intake, your workouts, amount of rest and supplement intake should be well planned. All this done, you bodybuilding process is on the right track.
Van Damme’s Bodybuilding and Dieting Tips
* Many food contains zero calories. Candies and sodas are such items and they should be avoided. Nutritious foods are those with high fibrous content. Eggs, soya products, fruits and vegetables are all very rich in fibrous content. A meal is eaten to increase the rate of metabolism which in turn burns fat. A slow and steady process of body building includes taking around 12 meals every single day.
* Cardio workouts have increased in importance from time to time. This because it increases metabolism and boosts your stamina levels. Cardio exercises can always be performed at home. Simple daily activities like walking, running, cycling and swimming count too. External help can be sought in the form of treadmills and stationary bicycles.
* There are many body weight exercises like pull ups, pushups, different types of dips and squats which help the body build stamina and strength. The most important aspect of the process of body building is rest. Adequate rest is pivotal to build a great physique. Van Damme performs a variety of exercises to maintain that awesome body he has. Bench presses, pull ups and curls are a few of these workouts.
* The whole process of bodybuilding involves a lot of sweat and endurance. The stamina in one’s body can be increased by the consumption of Nitric Oxide. This compound has an amazing effect on the body, preventing it from all kinds of diseases including cancer and heart attacks. Its elements include an anti aging substance which helps the aging process of the human body slow down.
Click Here To Read more about Nitric Oxide Supplements and Claim Your Free Trial Bottle —-> Nitric Oxide Supplement.
Free Samples available for limited time only. Get Your Supply Today! | <urn:uuid:20e83034-746f-4e95-9cce-db542cdd134e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.extremebodybuilding.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954283 | 492 | 1.53125 | 2 |
In 2011, I was introduced to an amazing young man named Jamie Hubley after reading a headline about his death, "Ottawa teen takes his own life because of severe bullying." When I was done reading, I was frozen in my bed and thought about the connections between my story and Jamie's. I decided to create my own project called "Bullying Ends Here." I had no clue how big this initiative would become.
Since Manitoba's religious schools receive over 50 per cent of their funding from the province, they are all being mandated to comply with the proposed legislation: Bill 18 -- required to implement an anti-bullying strategy that includes gay-straight alliances. Our rights cannot exist in a vacuum, isolated from the reality around them. Rights engage with other rights. Not only does our Charter have a built-in provision to permit the limiting of rights in certain situations, but also, the transactional nature of our public lives dictates that different rights will come into contact other rights. Those who oppose Bill 18 should read the Charter in its entirety; it doesn't stop at freedom of religion, nor is there a hierarchy of rights.
I was paralyzed in my bed. I remembered my dream to be a police officer because I wanted to help people and here was this young man, who wanted nothing more than to be accepted for who he was, taking his own life. I decided that I was going to be more than someone reading headlines, hoping the world became a better place. I decided to go out there and make a difference myself.
I am on a mission. My mission is to increase the messaging and information about positive mental health. I believe that the more we practice positive mental health, every day, the less chance there is that negative, debilitating, fateful thoughts, feelings or actions will transpire. There simply will not be room for those thoughts, feelings, and actions to take over.
Is it hypocritical for a bunch of historically anti-gay MPs all of sudden attempting to reach out to gay teens with an "It Gets Better" video? I believe the Conservative video is commendable, but only if it signifies a shift in attitude on the part of the party. What's really needed is for things to get better today.
Already there is speculation as to whether Gaddafi's death will boost the Obama's approval rating, which hit a new low last week of 41 per cent (his popularity soared to 60 per cent after the killing of Osama). I'd bet that Obama won't get too much bounce from this one: The Seal Team 6 operation that destroyed Osama was brave and laudable; by contrast, there was something deeply sickening about seeing the bloodied Gadaffi being set upon by a chanting mob. Reacting to these images, HuffPost contributor Tarek Fatah bemoaned the onset of an Arab Winter. On a less ghoulish note, in a blog published on Tuesday, entitled "Jamie Hubley Didn't Have to Die," lawyer Josh Scheinert implored Canadians to follow the "It Gets Better Project." And then lo and behold, a group of Conservative MPs got together and released an anti-bullying video, in memory of Hubley, entitled guess what? "It Gets Better."
Before we have another case like Jamie Hubley's on our hands, it's time for Canada to stand up loud and proud and say, "It gets better." Where is Prime Minister Harper's message that it gets better? I don't believe that Harper, his cabinet, the Conservative Party or other Members of Parliament are anti-gay. But I think their silence is deafening. | <urn:uuid:c4440ed1-c649-4178-82eb-e7c31140b6c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/tag/jamie-hubley | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971888 | 731 | 1.539063 | 2 |
By Steven Russolillo
Don’t look now, but German stocks are sitting at their highest levels in nearly five years.
Germany’s DAX 30 index finished on Tuesday at 7589.75, the highest closing value since Jan. 14, 2008. The index is up 29% this year, part of a broad rebound in European stocks as fears about the region’s debt crisis have waned in the second half of the year.
As WSJ reported last week, a steady inflow into German stock funds has played a role in this year’s massive run-up. Inflows into German stock funds rose 18% this year through September compared to the same time frame a year ago, according to the German Funds Association.
In general, the low-rate environment is pushing people into riskier assets, which has also helped give German stocks a boost. From WSJ:
German investors are rethinking their traditionally conservative investment strategies as they brace for a long stretch of low interest rates and the prospect of inflation.
They are increasingly straying from low-yielding German government debt and venturing into real estate, stocks and emerging markets.
The shift, though still in a nascent stage, marks a departure for many Germans, who historically have clung to safe assets and are regarded as some of the world’s most risk-averse investors. German households held nearly two-thirds of their wealth in currency and bank deposits as of the second quarter, according to Deutsche Bundesbank, the country’s central bank.
Yet some investors are worried that if they don’t venture beyond bank deposits or government bonds, their wealth will erode — albeit more gradually than in the period of hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic, the government established after World War I. Then, millions of Germans lost their savings as prices rose so quickly that a pound of butter once cost 6 trillion Deutschmarks.
For more MarketBeat and other streaming markets coverage from The Wall Street Journal, point your mobile browser to wsj.com/marketspulse. | <urn:uuid:5e38e3e7-1c27-462f-b637-a0579a9f8c53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/12/11/chart-of-the-day-german-dax-rises-to-pre-crisis-levels/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=marketsColBlog | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957606 | 428 | 1.523438 | 2 |
At the tender age of 26, Tea Obreht has published one of the biggest novels of the past year to great acclaim, although the book's fantastical elements will appeal to some readers more than others.
Obreht, who was born in the former Yugoslavia but moved to the United States when she was 12, has already been named as a 2011 National Book Award finalist and winner of the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction. "The Tiger's Wife" was also the first selection of the all-new Huffington Post Book Club, where reader discussions will continue until the end of January. Pretty impressive for someone not even within sneezing distance of 30.
The truly remarkable achievement of "The Tiger's Wife" is its complexity. Obreht weaves the story of a young doctor named Natalia strugging against ignorance in the Balkan countryside with two other threads that relate to Natalia's grandfather. One is about her grandfather's experiences with an escaped tiger in his youth, and the other is the tale of a "deathless man" whom her grandfather meets several times over the course of his long life.
Obreht describes the young doctor's experiences with inoculating children in gritty detail, but never misses an opportunity to wax poetic, such as in this description of her temporary quarters: "The place looked leftover, but not defeated. There was something determined about the way the blue paint clung to the shutters and the door and the broken crate full of lavender that was leaning against the side of the house."
When Obreht moves into the story of the tiger and his "wife," she effortlessly switches voices, as Natalia's grandfather recalls his childhood experiences with a deaf mute girl who has a mystical relationship with the escaped tiger. In other sections, Natalia's grandfather tells her the story of his periodic encounters with a man who cannot die.
"It is hard to believe that a man who has just been pulled out of a coffin where he has spent several days can look anything short of exuberant," the grandfather says. "But that's the extraordinary thing, he just looks very pleased, sitting there, with his hands in his lap."
The stories all refer to the tragedy of war, in both literal and allegorical ways, and the animals are representative of human struggles as well. I would highly recommend "The Tiger's Wife" for book clubs that enjoy a challenging story and for readers who don't mind a little magic mixed in with the usual death and drama. | <urn:uuid:0c0465f7-6200-4a7c-a8ee-3566fd761a56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://middletown-ct.patch.com/groups/opinion/p/the-tiger-s-wife-a-mix-of-grit-and-fantasy-9087e171 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984487 | 508 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Connecting Internships to JobsJanuary 26, 2012 at 8:32 am | Posted in Summer internships | 1 Comment
Tags: summer internships, Tech Internships
Internships.com CEO, Robin D. Richards, says “Internships are the new job interview. With seven out of every ten internships turning into full time jobs, choosing the right opportunity to pursue is critical.” The Web site offers search options, including All Opportunities, Internships, and Jobs to help your students find the best fit. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, technology giants have been expanding their summer-intern programs, while smaller tech companies are ramping up theirs in response to “woo summer interns.”
The article identifies several companies that might be excellent internship / job resources for your students:
- Facebook / Google: Facebook Inc. plans to hire 625 interns for next summer, up from 550 this year. Google hired 1,000 engineering interns this past summer, up 20% from the previous year. Yolanda Mangolini, Google’s director of talent and outreach programs, says the company is still figuring out its target for 2012, based on its overall staffing plan. Google generally extends offers to the majority of its intern class. “It is one of the primary ways we find full-time hires,” Ms. Mangolini says.
- Dropbox Inc.: The company plans to hire 30 engineering interns for next summer, up from nine this year, says engineering manager Rian Hunter, who adds the company wants interns to comprise one-third of its engineering team. The San Francisco-based file-sharing company this year dispatched its entire engineering team to recruit at more than a dozen colleges, up from just five schools last year. “More interns mean more opportunities to bring people to the company,” Mr. Hunter says, noting Dropbox is seeking people as young as college freshman.
- Bump Technologies: Interns allow you to “try before you buy,” says Bump Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Dave Lieb, who plans to hire as many as 10 for next summer. He says the 30-person company pays intern engineers about $10,000 for a roughly 12-week stint, similar to what other tech start-ups say they pay. Tom Greany, 23, a full-time software engineer at Bump Technologies, was originally a summer intern at the company.
- Venture Capitalists: Venture capitalists have begun doing some intern legwork for their companies. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, recruiting at 25 college campuses across the country, helped a cohort of its companies hire around 25 engineering interns for the coming summer through a new program called KPCB Engineering Fellows. Kleiner’s companies, including Klout Inc. and Twitter Inc., started notifying their new interns last week. “Competition for talent is so fierce,” says Kleiner partner Juliet de Baubigny. She says the firm may expand the program, which is currently for juniors in college, to others, including possibly high-school students. | <urn:uuid:0ed9cc39-b698-4c7d-8e28-d5858540ebb4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hirededucation.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/connecting-internships-to-jobs-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951858 | 641 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Today the distribution of printed media is viewed as a value added or ancillary service. Ancillary services have been identified as a key printing industry growth opportunity in a recent PIA/GATF report (Davis & Gleeson, 2005). Distribution is a customer service offering that starts when the job is scheduled. Efficient distribution involves the use of market expertise to negotiate freight rate and logistics services, routing, and overall compilation or management and organization of products and distribution. Other aspects of distribution include warehousing, shipping, inventory management, fulfillment and kit packing.
The objectives for Phase Two of this research project were to:
Four printing companies that offer distribution services participated in this phase of the research study. The participants were asked ten questions about distribution workflow, challenges, profitability, and future trends within their companies as well within the printing industry as a whole. | <urn:uuid:484520c7-7fc5-4a48-83ad-837d683ab0a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://print.rit.edu/research/show/105 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964912 | 173 | 1.734375 | 2 |
My kids are in the kitchen all the time to help cook. Even if they’re just stirring the pancake batter, the early exposure and incrementally increased responsibility helps them understand the basics of cooking. That means they’re not going to be the ones in college that have to call and ask how to bake a potato.
I have the same philosophy about computers. Expose kids early, and expose them to more than just using a computer to run apps. Think of it like learning about baking bread instead of just buying pre-sliced loaves. So when our ancient PC stopped working this winter, I knew that I wasn’t going to build another computer this time. She was.
She was relieved to find out that building a computer didn’t involve soldering.
I could have recycled my old case, but I figured that my daughter’s first build was not going to be on a case with a lot of sharp metal parts. We chose a nice case with plenty of room, cord management, and screw-less hard drive rails. I made the rest of the choices, but I talked through them with her so that she’d see why I chose the way I did.
I really tried to have her do as much of the work as possible. That’s the point, right?
There are a few things, like getting the screws loose on the case or seating the video card that just require some serious muscle power, but she tried to do those things, too. She was a natural at seating the processor, but she had to be coached into getting the RAM installed – as do most first time builders and upgraders. It took me a couple of tries to learn I wasn’t going to break the motherboard when I first started upgrading RAM.
We had to make a second trip to the store to get a DVD drive after everything was assembled. Turned out I couldn’t recycle the one from our old computer. It actually worked out pretty well, because we’d already gone through the process of installing things several times at this point. I handed the new DVD to her with no instructions and asked her what she should do. She replied that she needed to put it in the bay and hook it up to the power and “the brain.” And then she did it. She rocks.
I probably spent more money on that computer than I would have if I’d just shopped around and snagged a cheap refurb or spent longer finding deals on all the parts, but it is a nice system. More importantly, it’s the computer my daughter built, and that’s pretty priceless. | <urn:uuid:2332d662-9d84-4aa5-97a7-c3a09ed1f68e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wired.com/geekmom/tag/kid-projects/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984949 | 553 | 1.773438 | 2 |
We have heard the rumors before about an Apple watch but the rumor appears to be picking up steam as both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are claiming an iWatch is being built that will be based on iOS.
First up is the New York Times who is caliming that Apple is testing such a device at its headquarters as we speak. The device will reportedly have curved glass (likely Gorilla glass as they recently announced that curved glass was possible with their product) and is based on iOS. Nick Bilton states:
Apple is experimenting with wristwatch-like devices made of curved glass, according to people familiar with the company’s explorations, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they are not allowed to publicly discuss unreleased products. Such a watch would operate Apple’s iOS platform, two people said, and stand apart from competitors based on the company’s understanding of how such glass can curve around the human body.
Not to be outdone, the Wall Street Journal is citing their own sources who state that Apple is testing a device that will have smartphone like features and is currently talking to Foxconn about the device:
Apple is experimenting with designs for a watch-like device that would perform some functions of a smartphone, according to people briefed on the effort.
The device, if it ever sees the light of day, would be an interesting move for Apple for several reasons. Firstly, it would be a venture into wearable computing and second, it would be a new branch for iOS to expand.
Further, if Apple does build a watch, how will it position such a device? Surely it could be marketed as a companion to the iPhone or would it also work as a stand-alone device as well? There are a lot of ways to take the device and it could be Apple's next big project but until we hear more, anything is possible. | <urn:uuid:3198a9b2-1b32-494b-95d7-f5d7db9cb3c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.neowin.net/news/apple-is-bulding-an-iwatch-claim-two-independent-sources | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981769 | 387 | 1.609375 | 2 |
To view our current inventory of ships' boxed chronometers, click here!
This Fine Clock Has Been Sold. Thank you!
RARE ILLINOIS CLOCK CO. WW II U.S. NAVY
Carrying Case & Naval Observatory Certification
Presented is a WW II ILLINOIS Watch Co.
USN rated chronometer deck watch in a traditional three section varnished wood case with full gimbal
mounts. It is complete with its original carrying case, and last official U.S. Naval Observatory rating chart dated April
28, 1944 with maker's name and serial number 1389485 of 1897. The clock is noted as being in service with
the U.S. Maritime Commission - our merchant marine. After considerable research, and with help
from a number of collectors of Illinois Watch Co. pocket watches, we believe it to be one of only eleven
that are known to have survived the war.
What is special about this example is:
- A Naval Observatory rating sheet
- Excellent condition considering its age and war time service
- Complete with original carrying case
- Is keeping chronometer rated time
BRIEF HISTORY: Even though there is no mention of Illinois movements
serving in the military in WW II, two companies, M. Low and Roth Bros., both of NYC, were installing high quality
pocket watch movements in seagoing cases under USN contracts. The Navy bought all the could get of these until production
of the Hamilton 21 was ramped up to meet the wartime demand.
Marvin Whitney in his definitive work, Military Timepieces, discusses the small boxed
chronometers that were assembled early in the War by Roth Brothers, New York to satisfy this demand. Whitney
identifies companies such as Hamilton, Elgin and Waltham plus others, but does not include Illinois in his list. The
movements were repackaged in heavy weight brass tubs and fitted to plain chronometer style, five inch square, three
tier, gimbaled cases with a strapped carrying case included. All these pocket watches carried the name of the movement's maker
on the dial as their only identification. Roth also supplied similar movements in a bronze bulkhead (wall) mount
with its name prominently imprinted on the dial, but it did not put their name on any part of the assembly for those
in a chronometer style housing.
PROVINANCE: This clock was handed down in the same family from
grandfather to father to son. It was sold to help pay for a college education. As the son states, "it has sat in the attic
1897 MOVEMENT CONDITION: Is generally excellent for clock
of this age that has seen service at sea and is keeping time well within its rated rate. The 12 hour dial has some minor
grime on the face. The lacquered finish is about 90 percent original, but the brass has darkened under it in some areas. The
main spring is sound and the clock has run for 40 hours 10 minutes on one winding. After removing the bezel, there is a lever
at the two o'clock position which when extended allows the time to be set by the winding stem.
CASES CONDITION: Both cases are in sound condition. The carrying
case is made up of small billets of wood which was likely a wartime effort to save on material. Its interior is padded with
blue felt. The leather strap is well worn, but useable.
INSIDE CASE DIMENSIONS:
CARRYING CASE DIMENSIONS: 7 1/4" square
The superior example of a complete ILLINOIS
U.S. Navy chronometer with carrying case, and official papers should appeal to someone who desires only the most unusual and
Complete with carrying
International buyers welcome, but inquire first.
We have satisfied customers in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Chile,
China, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Iceland, Ireland,
Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Nova Scotia, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Singapore,
Spain, Sweden, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, USVI and the Eastern Caribbean.
WARRANTY: We guarantee that this clock will
be working on arrival and that our description is entirely accurate or your money back. The only conditions are that an email
authorization be obtained within three days, and that the instrument is returned in its original condition and packaging,
and insured for its full value. Unfortunately, shipping charges are not included in this offer and are non-refundable unless
we are at fault. This does not affect our policy on shipping damage which is discussed below.
SHIPPING & PACKING: The cost of shipping, packing, handling, and
insurance to your destination is an additional charge. You may email us beforehand. We price our shipping honestly, but
we expect to be reimbursed for the nominal cost of packaging materials and handling.
PACKAGING: We take great care in packaging
our clocks for shipment which includes bubble wrap, placing in a box, and then placing in a larger box surrounded by impact
absorbent material. However, we are not responsible, once it is turned over to the carrier. Full Value insurance is required.
In the event of damage due to shipping we will assist you in all respects even to filing a claim in your behalf.
Buy this magnificent ILLINOIS U.S. Navy rated ship's chronometer Now! It is a superior
example of a rare WWII timepiece, and a worthy addition for your desk, mantle, collection or as important gift.
ACCEPTED FORMS OF PAYMENT are Bank wire transfer,
cashier's check, money order, or personal check in which case the item will be held until cleared. No checks from overseas
buyers, no credit cards or PayPal accepted on this item.
Copyright 2008 by Land And Sea Collection™, All | <urn:uuid:2aaf2c53-7697-4614-acf3-1bb7292baa90> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://landandseacollection.com/id448.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942821 | 1,264 | 1.84375 | 2 |
"Medical technology allows us to live longer, but is it with the quality of life we want?" Dorio wrote after reading a column I wrote about my father's failing health. "The discussions are avoided and I believe physicians are responsible for this," Dorio went on. "For some, dementia sets in, but for those who remain cognizant of mind and body, life can dribble away. Who can say when enough is enough?"
There's virtually no honest political discourse about this, though, and it's not just politicians who have failed. It's those of us who live in denial, unwilling to have uncomfortable conversations with loved ones, only to suddenly find that it's too late.
When I got word that my father had fallen and broken his hip after many years of heart failure and other major medical issues, part of me was ready to say that's it, let's let him go. But he's the type who would fight for every breath. What if the surgery, which he eventually underwent, keeps him breathing two more years in a state that he considers worth living, even if I wouldn't make the same choice for myself?
Families should be having those conversations in advance of a crisis, said Dorio, who sees about 80% of his 300 patients in their homes and the remainder in the hospital. Dorio knows from experience that it costs less to keep elderly patients in their homes, where they prefer to be, than in hospitals or nursing homes. Palliative and hospice care reduce the number of ambulance runs, and in some cases, the amount of suffering, so the less costly route can also be the most humane.
"No one wants to be anywhere other than in their home," Dorio said of his terminal patients.
But doctors have to break the news no one wants to hear, Dorio said. They have to compassionately but directly tell patients they're very sick, that death is not optional, and help them determine what risks and discomfort they're willing to take for more time. Do they want to go on living when the fog moves in, when they no longer know what day it is, and loved ones become strangers?
"If you look on the board at the hospital, there might be 30 patients there and only a few of them have 'No Code Blue,' 'DNR.' Mine are often the only patients who have Do Not Resuscitate," said Dorio. "The majority are full code," meaning they want extraordinary measures taken to keep them alive in a crisis.
Dorio has full-code patients, too. We visited one in Henry Mayo Hospital, a 90-year-old woman who'd just had hip surgery. She was vibrant, with a sharp mind, and she has told Dorio that if she has any setbacks, she wants to fight through them. That's fine, he told me. At least they've had the conversation.
We also visited a brand new patient – a woman with mild dementia who'd taken a fall in her home, where she's cared for by a live-in aide and a daughter who's a nurse. Dorio spent more than an hour gently assessing the woman's condition, and he feared a lower back fracture, a hunch that scans would later confirm.
Not many people have the luxury, Dorio said, of a trained nurse in the family and the ability to pay for full-time in-home care. But he believes a redistribution of Medicare and private insurance funds, away from hospital and nursing home stays and toward more palliative and hospice care, would make it possible for more sick, elderly people to remain at home, with the people they love.
Dorio told me about a critically ill patient in his 80s who emphatically made clear that he wanted no extraordinary measures taken to save him, though he hoped to live long enough to see his granddaughter's bat mitzvah nine months away. Dorio encouraged the family to videotape his congratulations.
Six months later the patient deteriorated and was rushed to the emergency room, where he reiterated his desire not to be resuscitated. Only IV fluids and antibiotics for a blood infection were administered, and he faded over the next few days. But then he suddenly and unexpectedly recovered, only to lash out at Dorio for saving his life.
"I don't want to live this way," Dorio recalls him saying, and the man ordered that the antibiotics and IV drip be stopped. He died the next day.
Dorio later got a note from one of the man's daughters, saying the bat mitzvah video was "not only a wonderful remembrance, but kindled a determination in her daughter to move forward in life."
Making the rounds with Dorio in Santa Clarita, I found myself wishing I'd met him several years ago, when my dad was still relatively healthy. In my family, we've never found a way to discuss the complicated and unsettling questions of how much intervention my parents would want to prolong life, and under what circumstances they'd rather say goodbye.
It's a conversation we still need to have. | <urn:uuid:c9eab254-0e10-4555-bd7c-e03c5c18965d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.b1029.com/b1029/news/nationworld/la-me-1127-lopez-dorio-20111127,0,7648103.column | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984801 | 1,043 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Humane Society To Move Into Bigger Digs
It recently purchased an 11,000-square-foot building on Dundee Road.
Published: Sunday, March 10, 2013 at 12:06 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, March 10, 2013 at 12:06 a.m.
WINTER HAVEN | It's hard to show your best side, especially to potential family, when you live in cramped quarters.
So the dogs and cats residing at the Humane Society of Polk County would express their appreciation, if they could, at the prospects of heading to a much-improved home soon.
The Humane Society recently purchased an 11,000-square-foot facility on Dundee Road, which will more than quadruple its current size, allowing the group to take in more animals and increase services.
"We'll be able to house more animals, and hopefully we'll be able to do some fundraising here instead of renting out places to do our big events," said Lisa Baker, the executive director of the Humane Society of Polk County.
"And we'll be able to do dog training inside rather than out in the elements. It's going to be such a huge blessing. We're very excited."
The 4.7-acre property at 3195 Dundee Road, just a short drive from the current facility, is almost the same size as another property the Humane Society purchased on County Road 544, but it already has a building on site, which will save the society thousands of dollars.
In addition, its location on the heavily traveled Dundee Road improves visibility for the public.
"The property on (CR) 544 was such a big leap. Now people will be able to see the building, to see the layout, to see the location," said Suzie Moraco, president of the Humane Society's board of directors. "I think it's going to get people excited."
The Humane Society has been looking for a new home since the hurricanes in 2004 destroyed its old facility. When the economy went south, it became difficult to raise money to build on the property on CR 544.
So when Baker saw the warehouse on Dundee Road for sale, she was ecstatic.
"It was just a miracle that this warehouse outlet became available for sale for us," she said.
The Humane Society is Polk County's only no-kill animal shelter. Unlike the county shelter or the SPCA, it doesn't euthanize animals to make space, Baker said.
"When we take an animal in, we make a commitment to that animal to not put it to sleep and to get it a home," she said.
Because of this policy, space at the Humane Society is at a premium, making the new location even more important.
In the current location, the society usually has about 25 cats and 25 dogs in residence at any time. More space will increase the number of animals it can accept.
"It allows us to expand the services but do them in a different way," Moraco said. "It will make the animals happier, and it will make them more adoptable."
It's unclear when renovations to the warehouse will begin, but Baker and Moraco are excited to plan the design of their new "state-of-the-art facility," Moraco said.
They will be able to show donors exactly where the dogs and cats will be held and how much room they'll have, Moraco said.
And with the new location only about a quarter-mile from Veterinary Healthcare Associates, a general veterinary and emergency facility, Baker expects their relationship with the animal health center to grow, further improving the Humane Society's health services.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:24188ce2-6c46-4883-99a4-e37d86e32ba3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theledger.com/article/20130310/NEWSCHIEF/130319998/0/APN?Title=Humane-Society-To-Move-Into-Bigger-Digs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96132 | 792 | 1.515625 | 2 |
April 11, 2012
By: Melanie Berkowitz, Esq.
The power of the Internet and social media is evident in the recently passed Jumpstart Our Business Startups, or JOBS Act.
Touted as a way to help small businesses financing and startup companies to raise capital and find investors, the law enjoyed bipartisan support before the JOBS Act was signed by President Obama on April 5th, 2012.
Beyond Small Business Financing
If you’ve been reading about the law, you probably know that it greatly eases the regulatory burden on small companies looking to raise capital from small-time investors -- a mechanism known as “crowd funding.”
No longer will entrepreneurs-to-be end up stymied by the enormous costs (in both money and time) of filing ponderous SEC disclosures and other documentation prior to seeking investors.
Small Business Funding via Social Media
But the reach of the JOBS Act is far greater than the removal of regulatory barriers. Its passage coincides with the meteoric use of social media as a marketing tool, and while many small businesses are struggling to find their voice among the myriad of new media options.
The JOBS Act leverages the new media revolution and invites these small businesses and fledgling companies to create or expand their media presence by using the Internet to attract investors.
At a time when opening a Facebook account is as easy as getting a library card, many small businesses hope that raising capital will entail little more effort than creating a catchy status update and a couple of blog posts.
A company’s success in raising capital via the Internet is only going to be as strong as its new media policy overall, caution experts such as Jeremiah Sullivan, owner of Framework Media Strategies in Fords, New Jersey.
“If you have already been effectively using new media -- whether through social media sites, micro-blogging or other forms of content-sharing, potential investors are going to be much more likely to listen to your message when you ask them for money,” explains Sullivan.
I see a lot of small businesses using a more roundabout way to obtain financing -- by establishing themselves as an expert in their field first, and then seeking investors from a customer base that understands the company’s value first hand,” he adds.
Implementing an effective social media marketing strategy may be daunting for many small business owners, yet it will be crucial for companies looking to get the most out of their activities on the Internet.
What’s more, having a small business social media strategy in place before you start asking for money will give your company credibility and help you stand out from new enterprises that do not have anything of value to offer customers (and potential investors.) | <urn:uuid:98fa9c0d-329b-4c89-8fd5-c7337fb57aac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/small-business/news/jobs-act.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942893 | 560 | 1.835938 | 2 |
LED Parking Lights are just what all cars need. They provide a great amount of extra light on the road day and night. Along with the different colors to choose from; Xenon White, Ultra Blue and Brilliant Red, drivers will find LED Parking Lights are not only helpful but a nice touch up to their cars.
168 LED bulbs make a great complement to bright headlights. Because of its LED technology, these little bulbs will produce a far brighter light that regular filament stock bulbs. Not only that, LED also has a longer sustaining life. These bulbs will run as long if not run longer than your headlights!
LED Parking Lights will look amazing during the day and even more amazing at night. With its clean Xenon White or bold Ultra Blue/Brilliant Red colors, your friends and colleagues will be impressed and all you have done was spend a few bucks on two little bulbs. But just because they are little doesn’t make them less significant. LED bulbs are made specifically to be small yet powerful so even the car-dumbest drivers can install them without any trouble. The plug and play technology makes it quick and simple.
Notice how these little bulbs can shine just as bright as the HID headlights. They make a perfect combination to light up a brighter road for drivers at night. Better lighting means better vision and better vision means a better overall drive. So not only do these little bulbs make your car appear more sleek and stylish, they are also a huge help when driving at night. Lone drives at night can become tedious and uncomfortable but with the help of 168 LED bulbs, drivers can be ease with greater visibility and perform better. Each bulb is packed with little diodes of light and all it takes is a simple plug and play change to get them started.
Visit our friends!
A few highly recommended friends... | <urn:uuid:2b82645b-e5de-43e3-9f6c-d901e776d739> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ijdmtoy.com/BLOG/wordpress/2011/08/02/light-up-the-road-with-168-led-bulbs-for-2007-infiniti-g35/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963728 | 372 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The Hypocrisy Of Congress: As Big A Threat To The Internet As The UN They're Condemning
from the we-don't-regulate-the-internet,-except-when-we-do dept
It goes on to discuss other proposals to regulate parts of the internet, including CISPA and other online security laws. Of course, in each of these cases, the politicians in Congress will come out with a litany of reasons why it "makes sense" (or more accurately "we have to do something!") to pass these laws. But that pre-supposes that all those countries that Congress is now condemning for wanting more ability to spy on and control citizens don't have reasons to do so. Given the increasing evidence that the US government, via the NSA, is already spying on wide swaths of the population -- and Congress' apparent total lack of concern about this, it's incredibly hypocritical to pretend that the US government supports a free and open internet with privacy protections for citizens, when its own actions reveal something very, very different.
The fear that the ITU might be looking to exert greater control over cyberspace at the conference has led to a rare Kumbaya moment in U.S. tech politics. Everyone -- left, right, and center -- is rallying around the flag in opposition to potential UN regulation of the Internet. At a recent congressional hearing, one lawmaker after another lined up and took a turn engaging in the UN-bashing. From the tone of the hearing, and the language of the House resolution, we are being asked to believe that "the position of the United States Government has been and is to advocate for the flow of information free from government control."
If only it were true. The reality is that Congress increasingly has its paws all over the Internet. Lawmakers and regulators are busier than ever trying to expand the horizons of cyber-control across the board: copyright mandates, cybersecurity rules, privacy regulations, speech controls, and much more.
Earlier this year, Congress tried to meddle with the Internet's addressing system in order to blacklist sites that allegedly infringe copyrights -- a practice not unlike that employed by the Chinese to censor political speech. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) may have targeted pirates, but its collateral damage would have been the very "stable and secure" Internet Congress now wants "free from government control." A wave of furious protests online forced Congress to abandon the issue, at least for the moment. | <urn:uuid:67abee64-17aa-4f3f-9c91-ec9adbdade28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120619/22411019394/hypocrisy-congress-as-big-threat-to-internet-as-un-theyre-condemning.shtml?threaded=false | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959096 | 508 | 1.75 | 2 |
A wildly imaginative film that'll leave you screaming, "Ponyo!" for days.
It's not particularly close-minded or inaccurate to describe the Japanese approach to animation as somehow weird -- strangely, beautifully, playfully, colorfully, sometimes violently weird. This is true at least in as much as we can say as Americans, watching from our country half-way across the globe, and not at all a judgment considering how wonderfully weird it can be. But there are few Japanese filmmakers, if any, who have applied this style in a more universally heartwarming fashion than Hayao Miyazaki. The creator of such cross-over classics as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle, Miyazaki has charmed audiences in Japan for decades with his brilliantly drawn and dream-like fables.
To describe the story of his latest creation Ponyo is deceptively simple: A young boy name Suske discovers a colorfish fish, Ponyo, who magically becomes human. But when her desire to stay with Suske threatens the very balance of nature, their friendship must be tested before things can be set right. At its most basic level, this simple description sounds normal enough, though it leaves out details like the following: Ponyo only becomes human after tasting Suske's blood; Ponyo's father is an undersea wizard who looks like 1970s David Bowie; her mother is Mother Nature herself; Ponyo is a fish who loves ham sandwiches; the sea pursues Ponyo in the shape of giant whales made of water; Ponyo's meddling causes the moon to approach the Earth and raise the tides; Suske's mother works at a retirement home with some rather bizarre residents; a giant flood brings creatures from the age of the dinosaurs back to the surface.
Ponyo may indeed be Miyazaki's most narratively odd movie in quite some time – which is saying something, to be sure – but its design and tone are that of a child's bedtime story. The world of Ponyo is one seen through a child's eyes, operating by a child's rule, so logic be damned in favor of emotion and spectacle. Color is king here, painting every edge of the world, both above and below the surface of the sea. Ocean blues and Ponyo's pink scales offset the lush greenery of the island and its myriad of multi-colored flowers and foliage. But most importantly, the relationship between Ponyo and Suske, made of the boundless love and affection that children can share for one another, truly drives the film. Every adventure, every sequence, every magical moment is precipitated by their desire to stay together and their utter willingness to believe that magic is not only possible, but real.
The American voice cast leaves a little to be desired, offering that quasi-overacted quality to the English dubbing, though thankfully the children work wonderfully. This isn't to say that they may not be overacting as well, but only to say that it makes sense that children might react to the world with that broad, matter-of-fact delivery. The cast includes Tina Fey and Matt Damon as Suske's mother and father, as well as Liam Neeson and Cate Blanchett as Ponyo's mythical parents. But the real star here is the visuals, the colorful, lush hand-drawn animation that makes Miyazaki films such a feast for the senses. We wouldn't be so foolish as to say it's his best film to date, but Ponyo might just be his most imaginative, vibrant and family friendly tale in quite some time. | <urn:uuid:f187417c-769c-46e7-b235-463961189480> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/08/13/ponyo-review | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965491 | 730 | 1.648438 | 2 |
(NaturalNews) We here at Natural News
didn't think it would be long after voters in the states of Washington and Colorado approved measures legalizing possession and use of marijuana in November before the lawsuits would start.
In the weeks following passage of the measures, the Department of Justice announced it was considering suing both states
over their new laws, since marijuana possession and use remains a federal crime.
Other suits; however, are focused more on state and local jurisdiction, such as one filed by a number of marijuana collectives in the state of California. They have filed action against the police department for what they say are unconstitutional attempts to put them out of business, according to Courthouse News Service
Nine collectives, along with two other men, have filed suit against the Long Beach Police Department, seeking an injunction and damages for Fourth Amendment violations and "judicial deception," according to court documents.City using zoning laws and other tactics to shutter collectives: Complaint
Green Earth Center, the lead plaintiff, filed a federal suit against five of the department's officers, claiming that David Strohman, Oscar Valenzuela, Aldo Decarvalho, Chris Valdez and Douglas Luther conducted warrantless raids and otherwise searched their businesses with defective warrants that did not contain affidavits. The suit also claims the five officers secured some warrants by deceiving judges and then used the illegal raids to drive them out of business.
In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act
, which made it legal to use medical marijuana under certain circumstances. Marijuana
has since been prescribed to patients suffering from a variety of medical conditions, including glaucoma, as pain relief for cancer, multiple sclerosis and AIDS.
The collectives are charging that they were already in operation before Long Beach
authorities attempted to regulate them through a zoning law known as Chapter 5.87.
City officials reportedly informed the collectives that they had to enter a lottery to obtain one of a limited amount of permits in order to remain in operations.
"However, there is no provision in Chapter 5.87 for a lottery system. Chapter 5.87 provides that if the applicant demonstrates compliance with all of the requirements, a permit shall be approved and issued. Chapter 5.87 was amended multiple times, ultimately allowing only twenty-four collectives to service the medical marijuana needs of over [a half-] million persons," the complaint says.
The collectives, in their 39-page complaint, also say the California Court of Appeals has already found that the city's zoning law was unconstitutional and pre-empted by federal law.
"Upon remand, the city elected not to remove the invalid provisions, and instead implemented a complete ban of all medical marijuana collectives," said the complaint.
The medical marijuana providers also said any ban is also pre-empted by state law, citing three 2012 rulings from California appeals courts and one Superior Court.
Nevertheless, they maintain the city is still trying to close them down.Raids are plenty but arrests are few
"The defendants have systematically engaged in warrantless searches, warrants secured by judicial deception; administrative citations to the collectives and their landlords and other oppressive tactics, in an orchestrated scheme to close the collectives by any means in violation of the collectives' statutory rights," the complaint said.
The plaintiffs say that at first, Long Beach authorities cited employees and owners of the collectives as public nuisances, but when that tactic failed to gain steam, police
began raiding collectives without warrants or, in at least one instance, through a warrant secured by officers claiming it was operating for a profit.
"A medical marijuana collective is a group of qualified patients or caregivers who share or are motivated in a common interest. Medical Marijuana Cooperatives are non-profit organizations that are created by cultivators, an aggregate group of patients, or both to provide medical-grade marijuana to qualified patients," says this description of collectives from Proposition 215 Attorney
, a website explaining how the groups can operate.
In their complaint, the plaintiffs "cite more than a dozen raids, during which armed police officers arrested volunteers and seized marijuana, money, equipment and patient records," said Courthouse News Service
After the raids, "many collectives closed their doors," the complaint says, adding that police have conducted 100 such raids "yet seldom arrest anyone."
There will most likely be more suits - and countersuits - over marijuana use in the coming years, especially if state laws remain in conflict with federal laws over the issue.Sources:http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/01/04/53608.htmhttp://www.businessinsider.com/doj-might-sue-over-weed-laws-2012-12http://www.prop215attorney.com
Have comments on this article? Post them here:
people have commented on this article. | <urn:uuid:90cbe0c4-c324-4dbd-a1e7-ebeb3b07986d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.naturalnews.com/039153_marijuana_dispensaries_Long_Beach_lawsuit.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965298 | 1,007 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Romney Touts Business
Background in Presidential Bid
November 02, 2012
Former Massachusetts governor and Republican Party presidential nominee
Mitt Romney is running neck and neck with President Barack Obama in
advance of Tuesday's U.S. election. A profile shows more of the man who
would become the 45th president of the United States if he defeats Obama
on November 6.
The Republican ticket for 2012: Romney and Paul Ryan.
In his bid to become the USA's next president, Romney has highlighted
his business experience as ensuring his ability to fix the U.S. economy.
“I understand those things, and I want to bring that understanding to
make sure we can create good jobs for every American that wants a good
job,” said Romney.
If elected, Romney says he would lower taxes, cut government spending,
reduce the budget deficit and repeal the president's signature health
care law. He says he will create 12 million new jobs during his first
Romney made millions as a top executive with Bain Capital, one of the
world's largest private investment firms. He helped rescue the 2002
Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City from financial distress and served one
term as Governor of Massachusetts.
Romney fell short in his first try for the Republican nomination four
But he prevailed this year over more conservative rivals Rick Santorum
and Newt Gingrich and overcame doubts about his Mormon religion.
Romney now leads a party committed to defeating Obama in November, said
analyst John Fortier.
“Mitt Romney may not be the most enthusiastic candidate, but the
prospect of beating Barack Obama, a person that Republicans disagree
with very strongly, is a very strong motivating factor,” said Fortier.
On foreign policy, Romney said Obama has damaged relations with longtime
ally Israel, and has not been tough enough with Iran, China and Russia.
He has criticized the president for his handling of the attack on the
U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Four Americans died in that attack.
“And in dealings with other nations [Obama] has given trust where it is
not earned, insult where it is not deserved and apology where it is not
due,” said Romney.
Romney has focused on the weak economy. In his first debate with Obama,
Romney also promised a bipartisan approach to governing if elected.
Republicans and Democrats both love America but we need to have
leadership, leadership in Washington that will actually bring people
together and get the job done and [I] could not care less if it is a
Republican or a Democrat. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again,” said
Romney’s poll numbers rose after the first debate and many analysts say
the race is now too close to call.
Some analysts say the portrait that is painted of Romney will define the
outcome on November 6.
“There is a race to define Mitt Romney to the American voter and the
race is between the Obama people who want to define him negatively and
the Romney people who want to define him positively," said Peter Brown,
a Quinnipiac pollster: "The campaign that does the best job defining
Mitt Romney is going to win.”
Mitt Romney is 65 and has been married to his wife Ann since 1969, and
they have five sons. | <urn:uuid:7cd5b68e-d44c-46b0-a262-e039df226189> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.outlookseries.com/A0991/Science/3591_Romney_Business_Background_Presidential_Bid.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968577 | 702 | 1.5625 | 2 |
July 15, 1974
Screen: Dreams Rampant in ‘Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz’ uddy Kravitz (Richard Dreyfuss) is a an 18-year-old Canadian Jewish boy with the face of an angelic WASP. But he has his problems. He’s not only Jewish, he’s very poor. Also, the time is the mid-nineteen-forties, when the other comers who came before Duddy had already invented the light bulb, the radio, the Toni Home Permanent and Kleenex.
By VINCENT CANBY
“The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,” which opened yesterday at the Baronet and Forum Theaters, is the funny, fantastic and often moving story of Duddy’s adventures as he desperately tries to establish himself as a comer. By hook and by crook and by studying books like Willard Funk’s “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power.”
Duddy waits on tables, drives a taxi, smuggles dope, becomes a film producer (for his own Dudley Kane Enterprises), rents out pinball machines and dabbles in odds and ends of other occupations, including forgery.
“The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” is a Canadian production that was filmed mostly in and around Montreal. It was written by Mordecai Richler, the Canadian author who wrote the original novel, and directed by Ted Kotcheff, the Canadian film director, none of whose earlier films (“Outback,” “Life at the Top”) are anywhere near as good as this.
Perhaps because of the close collaboration between Mr. Richler and Mr. Kotcheff, and because of the obviously high regard the director has for the author and his work, the film looks very much live a novelist’s movie. Such an abundance of visual and narrative detail is essentially literary.
This could mean disaster for a movie but not this time. It’s true that the frantic pace and the cramming of so many incidents into the film results in certain problems: the continuity is often sketchy and some characters seem less like people than vivid apparitions.
Yet the manic, fragmented structure of the film is an almost perfect reflection of Duddy’s state of mind as he goes barging from one get-rich-quick scheme to the next, never quite sure where he’s headed nor how he’s gotten as far as he has without being arrested.
When Duddy latches on to Mr. Friar (Denholm Elliott), a perpetually sloshed, black- listed film director of dubious achievements, and sets up a company to film weddings and bar-mitzvahs, the movie takes on the air of a slightly lunatic fairy tale. Their first production, “Happy Bar-Mitzvah, Bernie!”, which we are allowed to see, is a riotously abrasive home-movie that cross-cuts between shots of Bernie’s nice, middle-class bar- mitzvah and shots of Zulu rites, Hitler, a circumcision ceremony, storm troops marching, the bar-mitzvah feast and a man eating razor blades.
It is superbly loony, a bit frightening and riveting, which is, I suspect, how we’re supposed to feel about Duddy who, as played by Mr. Dreyfuss (the intellectual schoolboy in “American Graffiti”), is part clean-cut con-man, part corrupted prophet.
“It’s little money-grubbers like Kravitz that cause anti-Semitism,” says a Jewish friend. His rich Uncle Benjy (Joseph Wiseman), who has a portrait of Trotsky on the wall, describes himself as a socialist and owns a blouse factory, calls Duddy “a pushy Jew boy” and says, “People like you make me sick.” But then a wealthy Jewish scrap-metal dealer who has befriended Duddy reminds him: “”It’s war. It’s war and the white man has all the guns.”
The film’s attempt to cover so much ground reinforces the feeling that we’re watching a kind of urban fable. I have no idea how much time passes in the course of the picture. Duddy’s successes and disasters follow upon each other as quickly as those of Dick Whittington. They seem almost magical.
This is responsible, I think, for the special appeal of “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” and differentiates it from the usual literature about unscrupulous ambition, most of which is pious and dull and goes without saying.
There’s not a bad performance in the film. In addition to the actors already mentioned, one should also cite Jack Warden who, as Duddy’s father, has an especially funny Richlerian monologue at the beginning of the film, Micheline Lanctôt, as the French- Canadian girl whom Duddy uses so meanly, and Randy Quaid (the prisoner in “The Last Detail”) as Virgil, an American gentile and epileptic who becomes one of Duddy’s most willing victims.
It’s Virgil’s fondest dream to unite the world’s epileptics into an organization that would be rather like the B’nai Brith, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Mattachine Society.
“The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” is an alternately sad and hilarious movie of dreams rampant.
Return to the Books Home Page | <urn:uuid:531da50b-a278-45f3-829a-f73ae0887a0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/21/home/richler-screen.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950674 | 1,218 | 1.53125 | 2 |
After a few minutes, they would wriggle their hands free, and the operator of the booth would pour a plaster compound into the mold, and have the customer return in 30 minutes for the finished piece.
My coworker didn't pay to have his hand cast, but instead did a little research online, and for Christmas obtained all the materials and did casts for all his nieces and nephews.
Since that time I've wanted to do it for my children, but for various reasons never did so. I decided I would try this out for mother's day - if I make four molds, one for each child, then make three castings from each mold I would have enough for a complete set of four for their mother and each grandmother.
This is a Mother's day present I can really sink my hands into!
Step 1: Requirements and Preparation
AlginateThis molding compound forms a rubbery elastomer within minutes of mixing with water. Captures impressive detail, while being flexible enough to prevent entrapment of the hand. It dries and shrinks over time, so it's not suitable for more than a few castings. I used ALG-390 from Special Effect Supply Corporation, which is a 3 minute set alginate.
Casting PlasterMany plasters are available for casting, you can even use the inexpensive local plaster you find in any hardware store. I used a particular formula called Hydrostone which features high strength, and high detail. This also came from FX Supply, as item HYD, and is a 20 minute set plaster.
Mold containersI used 1/2 gallon jugs, 1/2 gallon juice bottles, and 2 liter pop bottles. The only difference was that when I needed to cut away the mold, the plastic juice bottle and 2 liter bottles were a little harder to cut.
Hot waterA cold mold is uncomfortable, so start with hot water. By the time you get it mixed it should be at a comfortably warm temperature.
Machine screws and nutsIf you don't want to break the mold, you have to have something sticking out of the casting once it's hardened in order to pull it out. Can also be used to mount the finished piece onto another project.
Small pieces of cardboardUsed to hold the screws in place while the casting cures.
MixerI used a cordless drill and one egg beater. A regular mixer should work, and for large batches a jiffy mixer (paint mixing drill attachment) is recommended. Don't plan on mixing this by hand as there isn't enough time. Also note that the plaster is abrasive and may damage the beater.
ScaleThese materials settle and compress so they should be mixed by weight. However, the working range of the mixture is pretty good, and in a crunch I believe suitable result can be obtained from volume measurements which will be detailed below. I'm using a postal scale that can measure in tenths of ounces up to 10 pounds, which is the range needed for small hand molds and casts.
Containers & cupsYou'll want to stage your materials, measuring both the water and powder into separate containers, and then mix them together. Therefore you'll need containers suitable for holding the pre-measured materials. The cups are useful for scooping powder out of the supply buckets.
Watch or TimerYou'll need to time the molding process fairly carefully to obtain good results, so keep a timer handy. When you're elbow deep in any project it can be hard to accurately judge time.
Box knifeUsed to cut the molding container top off, and later cut the container away from the mold when you want to break the mold.
Long sharp knifeI found it necessary to cut and level the top of the mold so the cardboard holding the screws was level. A knife long enough to cut all the way through prevents tearing the mold.
ScissorsUsed to cut the top off the molding container, and is more convenient than the box cutter for some containers once the cut is started.
Pocket multi-toolUsed for a variety of tasks, depending on your skill and the tool it may replace several of the other tools.
Plastic forks, paper towelsNot necessary, but you may want them on hand for various tasks, such as scraping hardened molding and casting materials off various surfaces, cleaning spills, etc.
Please note that while the materials are not generally toxic (check with your supplier), you should not use any of these tools for food later.
Tool/Material layoutYou'll need a full table for your first time. It can be done in a smaller space, but room to work is helpful as you may be worried about time during the molding stage, and looking for a spot to set the water pitcher is a distraction.
A chair for the person whose hand is being molded is nice. People tend to shift their weight frequently when standing, which can cause a mold to be damaged while setting.
A utility sink is useful for later cleanup.
Assistants: This can be done alone, though in my case I had four eager assistants helping me by taking pictures, holding containers during mixing, and providing opportunities to practice my collision avoidance and balance during the process. | <urn:uuid:c24b612b-a509-41e9-9a9b-a3b8736b9564> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.instructables.com/id/Lifecasting---hands/meta-info | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961298 | 1,075 | 1.585938 | 2 |
WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary James D. Watkins said Friday that he would reject a federal judge's request that he testify in Ohio on the disputed terms of a $78-million pollution settlement with neighbors of the Fernald nuclear weapons plant.
Watkins said also in an interview that he would present to President Bush within two weeks a plan for restoring the nation's capability to produce a gas needed to make nuclear warheads.
The plan will include a recommendation that three currently idled military reactors in South Carolina be restarted and run for another 15 years to ensure a supply of tritium, a radioactive gas used to boost warheads' explosive power.
At issue in the Fernald settlement is whether the 14,000 area residents who sued the Energy Department, claiming emotional distress and diminished property values as a result of uranium dust releases from the plant, may still sue for contamination cleanup costs.
The department, which owns the plant, said Wednesday that the proposed settlement is intended to preclude any further suits over cleanup. The plant, known as the Feed Materials Production Center, is 18 miles from Cincinnati. | <urn:uuid:04957489-77a3-445a-ae8a-d24e7e9374af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.latimes.com/1989-08-26/news/mn-824_1_pollution-settlement | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950707 | 219 | 1.734375 | 2 |
The Office of Research Assurances (ORA) was formed in November 2008, with a mission to support research by facilitating and assisting researchers in identifying and maintaining research assurances.
ORA works in conjunction with faculty run compliance committees to review and approve research projects that involve animals, humans, potentially infectious materials, Select Agents and Toxins and recombinant DNA activities.
Ethical Companies Spread Open Approach: Survey
On March 16, 2011, Reuters reported, “Companies that embraced the spirit of full disclosure -- breaking bad news to their stakeholders promptly -- stood out on a 2011 ranking of the world's most ethical companies. That type of candor is important in a world that has been rocked by financial crisis and where investors are now watching the biggest U.S. insider-trading trial in years.
“The Ethisphere Institute, a New York-based think tank, on Tuesday released its fifth annual ranking of the world's most ethical large companies, which it expanded this year to 110 entries, which stand out for having strong policies on ethics and enforcing them. The list includes some of the world's largest companies, including General Electric Co, Statoil of Norway and Swiss Reinsurance Co Ltd.” MORE | <urn:uuid:6e611415-5e0c-4529-bcae-f24083bece0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uidaho.edu/ora/aboutus | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945002 | 249 | 1.515625 | 2 |
I got it in my head Monday I just had to dye eggs. Dave & I have never dyed our own Easter eggs together before, & I wasn't planning on eating eggs this week, but I wanted to try dyeing them naturally & share my experience before family & friends celebrate Easter this weekend. If you are dyeing eggs, I hope you will try doing them naturally.
I don't like artificial stuff in my food, & that includes dyes. Did you know synthetic food dyes have been known to cause hyperactivity in children? The UK requires a warning label on all foods containing artificial dyes. Often derived from coal-tar, they are toxic & carcinogenic (cancer causing) with a slew of specific health risk, such as tumors & nerve damage (see more risks listed here).
Using foods to dye your eggs is comparatively safe though -- no big deal if a little color leaks through the shell -- plus it's fun to see what colors arise from different foods. You definitely get more interesting variations this way. I think kids might enjoy this experiment & get a kick out of preparing the dyes with you.
There are a lot of foods that will work, but I made a challenge to find & use only what we already had on hand. Refer to the photo for our color - ingredient matches. I talk a little bit more about some of the foods we used, how we prepared them, & how they worked below.
The starred* ingredients were combined with water & boiled for an hour to extract the color. I did not strain the powders. The chlorella & turmeric I did not actually boil, because I realized I didn't want to wait for all the powders to boil. Instead, I poured steaming kettle water over, covered, & then let steep for 30 minutes to one hour. This seemed to work fine. The chlorella left a faint green on the eggs but this was mostly due to some of the powder sticking & then drying on the shell. I liked the light speckles. You could try boiling spinach or other greens for green. I'm not sure what makes bright green. Parsley also only faintly colored the egg a green-yellow-tan, similar to eggs you find in nature.
The teas I steeped as I normally would but for much longer to get deeper colors. I poured hot water directly over loose hibiscus then strained it once we were ready to dye. It created cool swirls & textures on the egg; this was Dave's favorite. Green tea also made neat textures. Red wine left crystals after dying, but our wine had been "breathing" for some time.
There aren't any specific recipes to follow. For fresh ingredients, I used a couple handfuls & covered to about an inch or two with water. I wanted to end up with about 2 cups of water (so keep in mind some will evaporate during boiling). For powders, I added a tablespoon or so. Just let it boil or steep until it is the color you want; I waited at least an hour. I also added about a tablespoon of vinegar to each before we dyed to help the shells absorb the color. We let the eggs soak overnight in the fridge.
Get creative! Cabbage water turns blue. Grape, pomegranate, or cherry juices would be awesome. I've heard boiled red onion skins work for violet-blue & yellow onion skins for orange.
Experiment, have fun, & let me know what you come up with! | <urn:uuid:f8918baa-cf6b-45a6-818e-aa4594a7bbe4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://colourmehappy.typepad.com/colour-me-happy/2012/04/diy-natural-dye-easter-eggs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969414 | 721 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The Democrats took over Congress pledging to curb the practice of earmarks.
They didn't quite succeed.
The omnibus spending bill they produced in December was filled with spending projects of a less-than-national character, most seen by no congressperson but the original politician who placed it in the bill. How many of these earmarks? Nine thousand or more, hitting over 11,000 for the year.
So, just another sad story of fiscal irresponsibility?
No. The story doesn't end when Congress cooks up a bill and sends it to the White House. And this time out there's a wrinkle in the politics of it all.
Sometime back Senator Jim DeMint asked Congress's research organization to prepare a report on the legality of these earmarks, and on the legality of the Executive Branch just ignoring them.
The researchers' verdict? Since most of this pork barrel spending is placed not in the bill itself, but in subsidiary explanatory reports, their status as law falls way short of constitutionality.
So the president could easily issue an Executive Order instructing his underlings simply to ignore the earmarks. They weren't placed in the omnibus bill as real laws, so it would be just fine to disregard them as the extra-legal finaglings they are.
This is not a veto. According to this line of research, most earmarks do not rise to the level of legality to require a veto. The proper response to off-the-books faux-authorizations to spend? A studied snubbing of each offending earmark.
It's not just DeMint's office that has counseled this course. A coalition of taxpayer organizations has urged the president to work up a little backbone and stand up to the spendthrifts in Congress. The groups sent a letter to the president, demanding . . . er, asking that he
follow through by issuing an executive order formally directing all Federal agencies to ignore non-legislative earmarks tucked into committee reports and statements of managers. Such an action is within your Constitutional powers, and would strike a blow for fiscal responsibility now while setting a valuable precedent for the future. | <urn:uuid:dbc4dfd3-9a7a-4b5a-8909-3f22cf5d404e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://townhall.com/columnists/pauljacob/2008/01/13/parking_pork_in_the_impound_lot | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959985 | 442 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The Susquehanna Education
Taking you from today to tomorrow.
When you look at yourself, you see the person you are today. At Susquehanna University, we imagine the leader you could become tomorrow. That’s why our educational experience is not just about book-learning. Even though we offer more than 50 majors and minors we invite you to broaden your horizons with a host of activities that go beyond the classroom and a Central Curriculum that’s designed to prepare you for whatever comes your way.
If you are driven to grow as a person of intellect and character, Susquehanna University is the place for you. Bring your interests, abilities and dreams. In return we’ll give you an experience that will propel you into your future.
The Susquehanna education experience will hone your written and oral communication skills. It will teach you to think critically. To become a problem solver. A team player. An ethical decision maker. In short, it will help you build the skills you need and employers want.
Are you ready to become a highly educated individual who is valued in the marketplace? Are you ready for a life of achievement, leadership and service? Then you’re ready for the Susquehanna education experience.
At Susquehanna University, we promise you will encounter:
- Passionate faculty members
- A collaborative, student-centered experience
- Exceptional facilities
- A welcoming community
- Results-oriented education
- Liberal Arts and professional balance
- Experiential learning
Skills you’ll learn at Susquehanna. Skills employers want.
- Written and oral communications
- Critical thinking and analytical reasoning
- Application of knowledge and skills in real-world settings
- Complex problem solving and analysis
- Ethical decision-making
- Teamwork skills
- Innovation and creativity
- Concepts and developments in science and technology | <urn:uuid:2d95df3a-6a6f-4fa0-9134-040f33f67860> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.susqu.edu/academics/39880.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940978 | 397 | 1.734375 | 2 |
No matter what home team you may root for this season, there's no denying the rich history of the Boston Red Sox and their home, Fenway Park, which celebrated its centennial in April. The July/August issue of NFPA Journal highlights the fire and life safety improvements to America's oldest professional sports stadium (as well as the smallest) in Major League Baseball.
Steven A. Adelman, the story's author and attorney focusing on litigation and risk management involving sports and enterainment venues, provides a thorough rundown of these upgrades as well as the growing importance of life safety at ballparks across the U.S.
Here's a snippet from his story:
I attended a Red Sox game recently after a few years away, and I was struck by the transformation that had taken place. I walked into Fenway through an entrance that had not existed when I was in college; I climbed roomy, well-lit stairs I had never seen before; I followed clear, well-placed signs; and I took in the game from a reasonably comfortable seat that fit my middle-aged body. Even with all of the obvious changes, though, it still felt like Fenway: the vast expanses of green, the loud and passionate fans, all the great history. I not only felt safe, I felt like I was home. | <urn:uuid:638388fb-cd89-42ee-b247-9287111931bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nfpa.typepad.com/nfpablog/2012/06/fenway-at-100-nfpa-journal-examines-the-iconic-ballparks-fire-and-life-safety-upgrades-.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986005 | 271 | 1.546875 | 2 |
WASHINGTON (WUSA) -- 9News' Andrea Roane, Monika Samtani and Jessica Doyle are honored to again emcee the Step Out Walk To Stop Diabetes at National Harbor.
They personally invite you to join their efforts to help stop a disease that afflicts 26 million Americans, an epidemic that continues to grow.
Why are Andrea, Monika and Jessica so involved with fighting diabetes? The reason couldn't get much more personal.
"It's all about family," says Andrea. Her mother has combated her diagnosis in recent years by making major lifestyle changes, such as losing 30 pounds. Today, her diabetes is under control.
Monika's father, a doctor, also suffers from diabetes. His recent lifestyle changes have involved getting more active. Monika says proudly, "he joined a gym!"
It's been a year since Jessica lost her father to diabetes. He spent nearly four decades managing his disease and suffered many complications from the illness including peripheral neuropathy, which caused him to lose all of the feeling in his feet and nearly constant shooting pains in his legs, blindness, bypass surgery on four blocked coronary arteries after a heart attack, kidney failure and an eventual partial leg amputation.
It's not to late for you to join Andrea, Monika and Jessica's team, Daddy's Girls, or to start your own team for the 5K Step Out Walk To Stop Diabetes on Saturday, October 20. The location is National Harbor Plaza. Registration and check-in opens at 8am. The program starts 9:30am and the walk will begin at 10am.
For more information, call 1-888-DIABETES. | <urn:uuid:61c99e8b-9e9c-43c7-ac55-38cc81a04b41> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wusa9.com/health/article/225614/28/Andrea-Roane-Monika-Samtani-Jessica-Doyle-Tell-Their-Personal-Stories-About-Diabetes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959578 | 340 | 1.5 | 2 |
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was hospitalized Sunday after doctors discovered a blood clot during a follow-up exam related to a concussion she suffered this month, her spokesman said.
She is expected to remain at New York Presbyterian Hospital for the next 48 hours so doctors can monitor her condition and treat her with anti-coagulants, said Philippe Reines, deputy assistant secretary of state.
"Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion," Reines said. "They will determine if any further action is required."
Reines did not specify where the clot was discovered.
Clinton, 65, was suffering from a stomach virus earlier this month when she fainted due to dehydration, causing the concussion.
Clinton spent the holidays with her family last week after working from home.
She was scheduled to return to work at the State Department this week after being sidelined for the past three weeks. Her illness forced her to bow out of testifying December 20 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Deputies Thomas Nides and Bill Burns appeared in her place.
The medical setback comes as Clinton is wrapping up her busy tenure as secretary of state, during which she has logged more than 400 travel days and nearly a million miles. She plans to step down from the post if and when Sen. John Kerry -- President Barack Obama's choice to replace her -- is confirmed by the Senate. | <urn:uuid:d76850bb-6868-4e14-8b25-ec8e8cb14ea7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.local10.com/news/politics/Spokesman-Hillary-Clinton-hospitalized/-/1895020/17952024/-/13yysad/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975874 | 299 | 1.601563 | 2 |
McMINNVILLE, Ore. ― T.J. Day Hall at Linfield College recently received a LEED Gold certification for sustainable building, awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).
The classic brick building underwent a $10 million green restoration, which was completed in the summer of 2011. Many original features were retained, but some elements are new. The interior lobby, for example, features a soaring space topped with clerestory windows that flood all three levels with natural light. Green elements include radiant heating and cooling ceiling panels; T.J. Day Hall at Linfield was the third building in Oregon to feature the unique, energy-efficient system.
The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building certification program is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of green buildings, and is based on a rigorous third-party review. In addition to ecological benefits, LEED-certified buildings are designed to improve the health and well-being of occupants.
Earlier this year, Linfield was featured in the Guide to Green Colleges, published by The Princeton Review. The guide profiles 322 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada that have an outstanding commitment to sustainable practices.
Linfield College is one of the few schools in the Pacific Northwest dedicated exclusively to undergraduate education. The school offers 47 majors and is recognized for arts, sciences and professional programs. Linfield has campuses in Portland and McMinnville, Ore. | <urn:uuid:af38efb6-75f4-4709-bdcb-419fe1e62621> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.oregonlive.com/business-watch/2012/09/portland-based_companies_recei.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965723 | 303 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Katie’s #24 Review #CBR4: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth is a “novel of manners” or a novel which focuses on social customs, often the customs surrounding marriage (think Jane Austen, for example). This particular novel focuses on high society in New York during the early 1900′s, a setting very familiar to the author, and was intended to highlight what she saw as the complete lack of anything worthwhile in that society. However, as the forward to my version pointed out, what still draws people to this book today is mostly the character of Lily Bart. Throughout the book we follow Lily’s attempts to marry for money, culminating in her fall from society when she is accused of being a man’s mistress. | <urn:uuid:85bfbf1a-f37a-4762-a4c3-9a58f3fa4d55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cannonballread4.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/katies-24-review-cbr4-the-house-of-mirth-by-edith-wharton/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977337 | 167 | 1.84375 | 2 |
DAKAR, Senegal, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Food insecurity and mass displacements may occur should regional forces intervene in Mali, members of the non-governmental organization community said.
The Economic Community of West African States said it was frustrated with events in Mali as it considered military intervention. The country was divided when Islamic rebels took control in northern Mali following a series of political calamities.
Members of NGO community told the United Nations' humanitarian news agency IRIN that more than 700,000 people could be displaced by military intervention in northern Mali.
"It is almost impossible to predict what is going to happen where and when -- everything is very broad," said Philippe Conraud, West Africa emergency coordinator with Oxfam, from neighboring Senegal.
Destruction of the infrastructure in Mali could restrict access to basic services and food insecurity would increase in the event of military intervention. Doctors of the World warns that malnutrition rates have doubled in one year in Mali.
Last week, Cheick Modibo Diarra resigned as prime minister after he was arrested in Bamako by soldiers who supported a coup this year.
Military leaders had said Diarra was in the way of political developments in the country.
|Additional Special Reports Stories|
TORONTO, May 25 (UPI) --A Canadian man has been charged with sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl in Toronto more than 20 years ago.
BURBANK, Calif., May 24 (UPI) --Baz Luhrmann's big-screen adaptation of the classic novel, "The Great Gatsby," has crossed the $100 million mark at the North American box office.
NEW YORK, May 24 (UPI) --U.S. stock indexes closed mixed on Friday, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing just above break-even on the New York Stock Exchange. | <urn:uuid:27a87fe1-4d5c-4511-b91d-eb4cae021432> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2012/12/19/Possible-Mali-interventions-worries-NGOs/UPI-50551355937917/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965818 | 378 | 1.5 | 2 |
TOKYO - The morning after a historic victory by Japan's opposition party in national elections, pressure already was mounting today for quick, definitive action on a host of problems facing the country, with jump-starting the economy at the top of the list.
The country is mired in its worst economic slump since World War II, caught in deflation and with unemployment at record levels. Widespread voter dissatisfaction with the ruling party's efforts at a turnaround led to a landslide victory for the opposition.
This morning's news broadcasts ran nonstop coverage of the election blowout, with winning politicians leading their supporters in cheers of "banzai" and solemn shots of grim-faced lawmakers that had been ousted. Every major newspaper fronted pictures of Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of the victorious Democratic Party of Japan and a near lock to become Japan's next prime minister.
But even before the final government tally of election results were released this morning, calls were being made for immediate action.
"Answer the expectations and responsibilities for change," said an editorial in the Yomiuri, the country's largest newspaper.
"The new government has presented showpiece policies but the source of funding remains unclear," said the Nikkei, Japan's main business paper, in its own editorial.
Hatoyama and his party - an eclectic mix of former members of the ruling party, socialists and progressives - face a daunting array of challenges, economic and demographic.
"This is a victory for the people," Hatoyama said. "We want to build a new government that hears the voices of the nation."
A grim-looking Prime Minister Taro Aso conceded defeat just a couple hours after polls had closed, suggesting he would quit as president of the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan for all but 11 months since 1955.
"The results are very severe," Aso said. "There has been a deep dissatisfaction with our party."
Japan's economy has been hit hard amid the global recession and falling demand for its exports.
The unemployment rate has spiked to a record 5.7 percent and younger workers have watched the promise of lifetime employment fade. Incomes are stagnant and families have cut spending.
The country also faces threats as its population ages, which means more people are on pensions and there is a shrinking pool of taxpayers to support them and other government programs.
Athens Banner-Herald ©2013. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:b82a91d0-7fe0-468e-a901-c4c7ea938d75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://onlineathens.com/stories/083109/nat_487980774.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977903 | 495 | 1.632813 | 2 |
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Published July 18, 2006
While basic office type computers can get away with crummy generic 350w power supplies, more powerful gaming systems certainly cannot. Doing so would result in serious system instability issues that can even place components such as the motherboard at great risk. High performance power supplies maintain a constant flow of power, and at the same time continue to deliver enough power.
Thermaltake offers a huge range of quality power supplies, designed for a wide range of different purposes. For example the Toughpower series consists of seven high powered units, all designed to deliver maximum performance. There is also the PurePower 350w power supply which features a completely passive design, meaning it is totally silent. The bulk of their power supplies form the PurePower series, in all there are ten power supplies ranging from 430w through to 680w. Today we will be reviewing a product coming from the Toughpower range, and is one of the bigger wattage items, outputting an impressive 750w.
Thermaltake claims that the working efficiency of the Toughpower 750w can reach up to 85%, thanks to a new design that makes use of top grade components. As was to be expected the 750w does carry a price premium simply because such highly rated units are hard to come by. At roughly $175, we still consider the Toughpower 750w is priced reasonably for an unit of its output and quality. There is also available a similarly designed unit rated for 600w output, also part of the ToughPower family, this unit is considerably more affordable at $130.
Despite being rated for such an extreme output, Thermaltake claims a very quiet operating volume for the 750w unit thanks to the use of a single 140mm fan. The unit features a single 20/24-pin power connector, one 4/8-pin power connector, dual PCI Express connectors, six 4-pin connectors, two 4-pin floppy connectors and six Serial ATA connectors. Furthermore, the unit features independent voltage circuit, over current, over voltage, short-circuit protection and Active PFC.
Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and breaking tech news. | <urn:uuid:786cbfea-e0c2-4c85-863e-13ad5e828cbd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techspot.com/review/5-thermaltake_toughpower_750w/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944547 | 450 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The Boneyard Creek is a smaller waterway (5,311 acre watershed) that runs through the cities of Champaign and Urbana, and the University of Illinois campus. The creek eventually feeds into the Saline Branch drainage ditch north of Downtown Urbana. Within the urbanized area, the Boneyard Creek has historically been covered or confined to a narrower sheet piled section to accommodate development.
The Master Plan focuses on the portion of the Boneyard Creek that runs through Downtown Urbana, specifically between Main Street and University Avenue (see aerial map). The Boneyard Creek cross-section is open along this corridor, however, it is not designed to take advantage of the creek as an amenity or to relate to adjacent uses and pedestrian connections. The City of Urbana sees real potential to turn the Boneyard Creek into an amenity to the Downtown environment. | <urn:uuid:6813ccdc-b028-4a46-b0fd-7b944bcaea78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://urbanaillinois.us/departments/public-works/about-public-works/engineering/boneyard-creek-master-plan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945081 | 181 | 1.835938 | 2 |
COLUMBIA, S.C.—It's getting nasty down in Dixie.
As the presidential balloting approaches in the key state of South Carolina, the campaigns for both parties have turned sharply negative. One reason is that the stakes are so high. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama need a victory to keep their momentum going on the Democratic side. So do John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson for the Republicans. (Rudy Giuliani isn't competing for the GOP nomination in South Carolina, preferring to put his resources into Florida, which holds its primary January 29, and states that hold their contests later.)
"They're getting ready to be very mean here, as usual," say a prominent Democratic leader in Columbia. Adds South Carolina Republican Chairman Katon Dawson: "We have a vetting process that is brutal."
With the Republican primary scheduled for this Saturday, and the Democratic primary the following weekend, perhaps a third of the electorate on both sides is undecided, and many other voters could change their minds before casting ballots, local party officials say.
Add the fact that for the past several presidential cycles, the GOP winner in South Carolina has gone on to win the party's nomination, and it's a recipe for the harshest state campaign yet in 2008. Even the issues are emotional, such as the economy, the Iraq war, healthcare, and, especially for Republican voters, illegal immigration.
The negativity has rapidly intensified, as it did in 2000 when John McCain was savaged by dirty tricks—such as false claims that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock—that contributed to his loss in the Palmetto State.
Recent examples of the negative trend:
• Robert Johnson, a Clinton supporter and founder of the BET cable TV network, said yesterday that Obama's campaign had distorted Clinton's remarks about how Martin Luther King Jr.'s goal of civil rights legislation was not achieved until Lyndon Johnson became president. Some black leaders took offense at Clinton's remarks as belittling King's accomplishments. The whole issue was wrapped up in efforts by both campaigns to court black voters in South Carolina.
• Johnson, speaking at Columbia College, also seemed to raise the issue of Obama's admitted teenage drug use when he said Bill and Hillary Clinton were working for civil rights "when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood—I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book." This was taken by Obama supporters as a reference to Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, in which he admitted using marijuana and sometimes cocaine in his youth. Johnson later insisted he was referring to Obama's community organizing in Chicago, not drug use.
• Bill Clinton caused a furor when he said last week that Obama's arguments that he opposed the Iraq war from the start—and by implication Obama's overall message of hope and change—were a "fairy tale." This resulted in a rebuke of the Clintons from Rep. James Clyburn, a senior black legislator from South Carolina who has been neutral in the Democratic race. "It is one thing to run a campaign and be respectful of everyone's motives and actions, and it is something else to denigrate those," Clyburn said. "That bothered me a great deal."
• A controversial "Christmas card" arrived in the mailboxes of Republican operatives over the holidays, falsely claiming to be from Romney. It included references to his Mormon faith. One reference said God favored polygamy (a practice that the Mormon Church abandoned long ago); another reference praised the Virgin Mary because she was "exceedingly fair and white." The mailing was seen as a way to remind GOP activists of Romney's religion, which many conservative Christians consider a big vulnerability or a cult. | <urn:uuid:110b0cc6-b255-4b1d-9da0-382103e8c1cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnews.com/news/campaign-2008/articles/2008/01/14/south-carolina-contests-turn-nasty_print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977514 | 759 | 1.648438 | 2 |
NEW DELHI: Basketball may not exactly be popular in India but the country has got enough talent and infrastructure to promote the sport, feels National Basketball Association's (NBA) director of international development, Akash Jain.
"India has got strong young talent which needs to be explored through right kind of coaching. There is a great passion for the game and kids are ready to learn," Jain said.
"There is a solid foundation for the sport. Most schools and colleges have the courts but there is still scope for development, particularly with regards to indoor courts.
"We have five indoor courts in India and we are in discussion with the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) to build more courts," Jain said.
Jain, who oversees the League's overall development in India, while emphasising the various initiatives taken by the NBA to promote the game said, "Currently we are more focused at grass-root level. We are building ways to foster the participation which is important for the game to develop."
The director stressed on the importance of technical know-how as a part of infrastructure development to propel the game.
"The NBA is committed to organise programmes for the kids and coaches for a sustained period of time, create clinics and impart hands-on knowledge to improve the skills of the coaches and players."
Asked whether the NBA is looking to build any specialised academies in India to spur the growth of basketball, Jain said, "We can explore the option in future."
On whether the NBA is planning to hold more leagues in the future on the lines of the 'Mahindra NBA Challenge', Jain said, "It is a community based programme and we are working with Federation to extend it to 10 cities in March."
The tournament was held in five cites across India this year in comparison to the previous year's edition, which witnessed three cities hosting the event.
Expressing his pleasure at NBA's association with the BFI, Jain said, "It has been a great partnership. The Federation (BFI) has been a core development partner and has been vital in the growth of the sport."
"NBA will continue consult and advice BFI on different prospects to grow the basketball in India."
Jain said basketball is an "inclusive game" and India has got the right kind of atmosphere for its growth.
Jain NBA will instill "passion and professionalism" among the budding prospects.
Jain said an exciting future awaits the game ahead. "The future is extremely bright and exciting. There is a great passion for the game. Youth are tech savvy and keen to learn and there is a huge young population which is helpful in building a sound fan-base," Jain insisted. | <urn:uuid:1d8a7750-e027-43b0-9da1-a64f746f08eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-02-04/interviews/28378147_1_basketball-federation-mahindra-nba-challenge-india | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96565 | 558 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Lies, Damned Lies and Project Metrics (Part 2)
In my previous column, I talked about the use of metrics in IT project management and the three qualities of an ideal metric: informative and preferably predictive, objective, and automated. The ideal set of metrics would tell you when your IT project is going to ship; these metrics would give you the same answer no matter who calculated them; and, in fact, the computer should calculate them for you or for anyone else who asks.
And then you woke up.
A predictive IT project metric (or a set thereof) would be able to measure—or at least estimate—the gap between where the system under development is now and where it needs to be to ship or go into production.
What you want to know, first and foremost, is the amount of time that will pass from now (“current spot”) to when the projects ships/enters production (“project end”). But that in turn depends on many factors, including:
The amount of invention (novel problem solving) that still has to occur.
The amount of discovery (e.g., running into roadblocks and dead ends) that still has to occur.
The adequacy of the current architecture, design and implementation.
The amount of actual coding that still has to occur.
The amount of quality engineering (testing, reviews, etc.) that still has to occur.
Any and all remaining external dependencies (availability of resources, availability of technologies, deliveries from vendors and other projects, etc.).
The talent, experience and productivity of your IT engineers and managers, as well as turnover among those employees.
The amount of business process re-engineering required to put this system into production, as well as the degree of resistance or cooperation among the affected business units.
The complexity, cohesion and comprehensibility of the overall system.
The amount of analysis (gathering relevant subject-matter information) that still has to occur.
This is not an exhaustive list, but it gives you an idea of the challenges you face. Imagine trying to derive all this information from counting the number of lines of source code created so far, or the number of object classes, or the number of open and closed defects. It just won’t work. And yet metrics such as those are commonly gathered, reported and relied upon as if they revealed anything meaningful about the project’s overall progress.
This list also doesn’t directly address such common problems as scope creep, conflicting requirements, changes in business or market needs, budget constraints, or internal politics. Still, the items in the list above could themselves be considered useful metrics; that is, if you could measure this information, you would have a very good sense of where the project stands.
These items would certainly be informative and even predictive—but it remains unclear how to make them “objective,” much less “automated.” In effect, we’re back to the “70 percent done” question and answer, though perhaps in more detail.
Now, I have known organizations that are quite skilled at predicting how long a project will take and how much it will cost. But these are organizations that confine themselves to niche markets and, in effect, implement the same application over and over again, using a rigorous and standardized methodology, usually with extensive up-front analysis and specification (particularly in user interface and functionality).
Even then there are no guarantees; look at the number of troubled and failed enterprise resource planning installations that appear in the news on a regular basis. And, of course, this is of little use for organizations that are creating one-off applications, either custom or commercial.
One solution, I believe, lies in a combination of two approaches: instrumentation and heuristics. By “instrumentation,” I mean creating a system whereby you can automatically track and monitor as many aspects and activities as possible of the entire software development or infrastructure project lifecycle. And by “heuristics,” I mean analyzing the information gathered via instrumentation to discover which characteristics best predict ongoing performance and completion of the project.
And we’ll talk about this in more detail next week. Until then, I’ll see you on the bitstream.
© 2008 Bruce F. Webster | <urn:uuid:c69c4fbf-3253-4514-aac8-e3cedbd5a48d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.baselinemag.com/print/messaging-and-collaboration/Lies-Damned-Lies-and-Project-Metrics-Part-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950918 | 895 | 1.546875 | 2 |
US seeks greater ethanol use despite efforts to cut it
* Overall biofuel target up 9 pct, corn ethanol up 4.5 pct
* Mandate due to rise to 36 billion gallons in 2022
* Foes lost bid last summer to cancel ethanol mandate
WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Corn ethanol would get a larger share of the U.S. gasoline market under a government proposal on Thursday while ranchers, environmentalists and the oil industry aim to kill the renewable fuels mandate altogether.
The Obama administration proposed a 9 percent increase in the so-called renewable fuels standard from 2012, in line with a 2007 law. Half of the 1.35 billion-gallon increase would go to corn ethanol and half to "advanced" biofuels that produce half the greenhouse gases of first-generation ethanol.
Overall, biofuels would be allotted 16.5 billion gallons of the fuel market for cars and light trucks. The mandate reaches 36 billion gallons in 2022, with half of the mandate going to new-generation biofuels.
Last fall, the administration denied a request from several governors from livestock and oil-producing states for a partial or total waiver of the requirement to use ethanol. Corn prices soared during the drought as ethanol makers, livestock producers, and grain exporters competed for a smaller supply.
"We're girding for a fight," said Bob Dinneen of the ethanol trade group Renewable Fuels Association. He said a campaign against the biofuel mandate already was under way.
There will be a 45-day comment period on the latest proposal after which the Environmental Protection Agency will issue a final ruling.
EPA SAYS CELLULOSIC TARGET IS REASONABLE
As part of its proposal, the EPA put the mandate for advanced biofuels at 2.75 billion gallons, including 14 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels, made from grass, shrub and trees.
The cellulosic target "is a reasonable representation of expected production," EPA said was in line with an appellate court decision last week that ruled against an unrealistically high production target.
EPA set its biodiesel target for this year at 1.28 billion gallons in an earlier, separate action.
Traders said Brazilian ethanol, made from sugar cane, and domestic biodiesel would compete to fill the advanced biofuels mandate. Biodiesel counts as an advanced biofuel.
In addition, EPA proposed a new voluntary program to assure the validity of Renewable Identification Numbers, known as RINs. Fuel companies can use RINs, each representing a gallon of biofuel, to meet the renewable fuel mandate.
Fraudulent RINs have been a problem in the biodiesel industry. EPA said it worked with the biofuels industry in developing its RINs proposal.
ETHANOL PRODUCTION FALLS DURING TOUGH YEAR
U.S. ethanol production fell during the second half of 2012 in the face of high corn prices, the drought-shortened crop and weaker demand for gasoline, the Energy Department said on Thursday. And ethanol prices in 2012 were down 8 percent from 2011's average.
The slump continued into this year. Ethanol production in the week ending on Jan. 25 was the lowest in two years and the four-week average pointed to ethanol production of 12.2 billion gallons this year, far below the mandate of 13.6 billion gallons.
"There's not a market. We're trying to build demand," said Dinneen of the RFA.
Three dozen ethanol plants, with 15 percent of industry capacity, were closed as of Tuesday. Analysts said comparatively low demand for gasoline meant limited demand for ethanol too.
Ethanol is a farm-state favorite, where it is embraced as a home-grown antidote for oil imports and a job-creating industry for rural America. About 40 percent of the corn crop is used in distilling ethanol.
Foes ranging from environmentalists to livestock producers and the oil industry want to end the mandate. They say it encourages soil erosion and pesticide runoff from farms and, by driving up the cost of livestock feed, affects beef, pork and chicken meat prices in grocery stores. | <urn:uuid:a9b9cd22-1f3b-481e-85d2-9c7afa9bf0ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnbc.com/id/100425377 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941906 | 862 | 1.804688 | 2 |
December 11, 2007
The Wages of AppeasementBy Christopher Chantrill
For conservatives the story of the recent National Intelligence Estimate is unbelievable. What would possess the analysts in the federal intelligence bureaucracy to issue a finding that Iran has abandoned its military nuclear weapons program?
Given the secrecy that surrounds all government ventures into nuclear weaponry we wonder how anyone can presume to know with "high confidence" whether Iran or any other nation has or has not a nuclear weapons program. And why would anyone so blatantly try to appease a revolutionary regime like the Islamic Republic of Iran?
The answer is simpler than you might think. In the view of the western educated middle class, appeasement works every time it is tried.
There is more. The policy of appeasement, consistently applied by the educated middle class throughout the past century, has proved to be the royal road to political power and influence -- for the educated middle class.
First they appeased the struggling working man, arguing that "people have needs." They built a welfare state and put themselves in charge. Then they moved American blacks, condemned to second-class citizenship by discrimination and racism, from the Southern plantation to the liberal plantation. Then it was traditionally marginalized women and gays. All the while establishing bureaucracies and programs administered by guess who?
So it is not surprising that the western educated middle class believes that the way to deal with Muslims in general and Iran in particular is through appeasement.
Appeasement may be the "rational" policy for Iran in their view. But it is not appropriate when dealing with western critics of the educated middle class. For them the appropriate liberal tactic is ruthless shaming.
You can see how the shaming works by examining the recent problems of two writers, Mark Steyn and Martin Amis.
In October 2006 Maclean's published an excerpt from Steyn's America Alone. In response the Canada Islamic Council is filing human rights complaints in Canada arguing that Steyn's Maclean's article subjected "Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt." Now lefty commentators are piling on. Blogger Jim Henley writes "I knew Steyn was a bigot," and Steyn has to respond.
British author Martin Amis is in similar trouble. In an interview in 2006 after the foiling of a plan to blow up several passenger jets in flight he said:
Lefty professor Terry Eagleton saw an opening and accused Amis of opinions like a "British National Party thug." Then author Rowan Bennett weighed in:
You can get a full rundown on the Martin Amis flap from the New York Times blog. Martin Amis was last heard of in the Guardian pleading "No, I Am Not A Racist."
Really, what's not to like? In order to show support for helpless victims of otherness intolerance you shame the neocon theocrats by putting them through the human rights meat grinder or by calling them racists.
It's easy to assume that all this NIE nonsense and literary name-calling is pure cynicism. But we should give our liberal friends the benefit of the doubt and allow that they actually believe that their policy of appeasing the enemies of the West is moral and just. There are people who really think that the problem is a deep "hostility to Islam and intolerance of otherness."
(What about liberals, their deep hostility to Christianity and their intolerance of Christian otherness?)
But wait, you say! Islam is different. Its doctrine of jihad is completely different from the militant working class of 1845 or the African American rioters of 1965. These people want to take over the world!
Maybe so. But you cannot expect your average progressive to abandon a political tactic that has worked so well for over a century on the say-so of a bunch of neocon theocrat bigots.
Our liberal friends want a world free from injustice and otherness; they believe that the right and just thing to do is always to appease the latest group that declares itself a victim.
So we should expect them to oppose the Bush forward strategy for the foreseeable future. They may back off a bit when a Democrat is in the White House. But Republican presidents can expect nothing but trouble.
Facing down the revolutionary thugs and boldly outdaring the dangers of the time is the conservative thing to do. We look at the world and want to make it safe for democratic capitalism. We believe that in a federal budget with two trillion dollars of pensions and social programs there ought to be $0.7 trillion for defense.
What will it take to change the minds of America's liberal intelligence community? Probably nothing short of electoral disaster. | <urn:uuid:4b7e8f2d-8ad4-42b1-86c5-0a1cc59b09a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/12/the_wages_of_appeasement.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948817 | 943 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Two productions of Dr Faustus on Bankside, presented by Little Goblin Productions at the Rose Theatre, and by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Summer 2011.
University of Lausanne
Neil Forsyth, "Review of Two productions of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus". EMLS 16.1 (2012): 13. http://purl.org/emls/16-1/revfaust.htm
Little Goblin Productions at the Rose Theatre. Director: Vince Tycer. With Christopher Diacopoulos (Faustus) and Cheska Moon (Mephistopheles).
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Director: Matthew Dunster. With Paul Hilton (Faustus) and Arthur Darvill (Mephistopheles).
- Some of the publicity for the campaign to save the Rose Theatre on London’s Bankside claims that Dr Faustus was first performed there in 1587 when the theatre opened. There is no evidence for this, but in the heat of the campaign it is an understandable confusion. In fact, the first recorded performance of Marlowe’s play in Philip Henslowe’s wonderfully useful diary (‘docter ffostose’, a spelling which may indicate how it was pronounced), was on September 30, 1594 by the Lord Admiral’s Men. That production was almost certainly at the Rose (Bevington and Rasmussen, 48-9), but there may have been earlier performances, and the whole question of the date of writing of the play is uncertain; it may have been written at any time between the success of Tamburlaine in 1587 and Marlowe’s death in 1593. Most recent editors, including David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen in the authoritative Revels edition, favour an early date for the play, c. 1588, but the first performances may not have been at the Rose (Bevington and Rasmussen, 1-3).
- The Rose Theatre Trust regularly allows theatre companies to perform in the tiny performance space it has made overlooking the excavated part of that ancient theatre (the dig lies underneath an insurance company building, and may be visited on Open Days). In the summer of 2011, Little Goblin Productions performed Dr Faustus in a production that contrasted strikingly with the spectacular version staged by the neighbouring Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre during the same summer. Of the latter, The Daily Express wrote: ‘It is the sheer stagecraft which wows the audience .... rude, robust, bawdy, magical and violent, it is a provocatively entertaining production.’ Even the more upmarket Spectator called it ‘a triumph of spine-tingling spectacle’. The contrast of the two versions has a great deal to do with the difference in the two spaces, but also with the money available to each. Above all, it became clear how variously the play itself may be read by two radically different directors.
- The Rose version of the play, directed by Vince Tycer, had a rather understated, almost meditative Dr Faustus (Christopher Diacopoulos), strongly contrasting with the flamboyant performance at the Globe, and an actress Cheska Moon, as Mephistopheles. We might expect an erotic charge between a female devil and the male lead, but the company avoided this. Instead, Moon’s interpretation was sinister, very obviously the focus of the action, dark and extensive eye makeup accentuating the whites of her eyes. As the play developed we became aware that the reflective but changeable Faustus was a deliberate contrast with this splendidly riveting devil. At the Globe, on the other hand, the two male leads, Paul Hilton and Arthur Darvill, came almost to look like twins, and explicitly dressed the same way, in black cloaks and maroon skullcaps.
- The darkened space at the Rose overlooks the watery foundations of the original theatre, marked out by a ring of red electric bulbs tracing the line of the walls down below. Within this historic but fragile space, the stage for the performance of the play, facing no more than three rows of seats for the audience, was set with a desk, a wooden trunk and a bookshelf containing dusty volumes and a skull. In this tiny playing area the audience was startlingly close to those blackened eyes, indeed to every facial expression. In the opening scene, Faustus could almost touch us as he picked up and threw aside each of those faded books. But at the Globe, with its large resources, the books were cleverly represented by a chorus of scholars morphing into insects and white-masked toffs. Spooky music of the spheres (by Jules Maxwell) anticipated the cosmic battle between good and evil, represented by The Good and Evil Angels (Charlotte Broom and Beatriz Romilly). The music and the spectacle were clearly supposed to give the impression that dark necromancy was at work. Wonderful and large false heads and men on stilts performed a lot of the stage business. Indeed Mephistopheles first appeared in a goat’s head. Faustus says ‘I charge thee to return and change thy shape/ Thou art too ugly to attend on me’, whereupon the head split open and the actor appeared. The goat later came back as Lucifer himself. All this splendid puppetry contrasted with a sublime dance of the spheres, the orbs of Galileo’s heaven. And soon a pair of bat-winged dragons carried Faustus and Mephistopheles off to Rome. Even Helen (Sarita Piotrowski), the face that launched a thousand ships, first came on as a Greek puppet. . Matthew Dunster, the Globe director, had given free reign to his designer, Paul Wills, to invent a magical fantasy world that is supposed to intoxicate the audience as much as Faustus himself. It was, at times, both terrifying and hilarious. Theatre as evil, evil as theatre.
- Yet somehow all this magical theatricality did not quite come off. Cinema does better dragons. Furthermore, in sticking to the 1604 text, Dunster followed what is by now a Globe tradition and gave full value to the low-life knockabout comedy, a parallel adventure in which Faustus's servant, Wagner (Felix Scott), becomes embroiled in a horse-trading adventure with a slow-moving clown Robin (Pearce Quigley), an ostler with a false nose (Richard Clews) and a crowd of villagers straight out of Breughel. Those among the groundlings standing close to the stage were squirted with water and even splattered with bits of masticated banana; there was urination (not on the audience), drunkenness and much lechery. Marlowe’s Latin, even the famous ‘O lente lente currite noctis equi’, was cut to give space to the ‘more accessible’ comedy, much of it perhaps written by a collaborator. Quigley exploited all the farcical possibilities as the groundlings cheered. One wondered occasionally as one enjoyed all this fun what had happened to Marlowe’s quasi-morality play primarily concerned with the serious business of salvation. An answer might be that all this triviality is what Faustus has in fact sold his soul for, and indeed Mephistopheles never does answer any of Faustus’s scientific or philosophical questions about the nature of the universe.
- Apart from one amazing ‘false’ beheading, the highpoint of the Globe spectacle was perhaps the parade of the seven deadly sins (one of Marlowe’s additions to his source). ‘Covetousness was a shrieking jewellery queen, Gluttony so fat and farting he could not stand up, and Lust a spreading vamp who consumed them all’, as Micahel Coveney put it in The Independent. Yet at the Rose, in that intimate space, those seven sins were all performed by one remarkable actress, Zimmy Ryan (who also doubled as the Emperor, the Duchess of Vanholt, and Helen). Her transformations were worth all the Globe’s expensive spectacle. Neither production quite managed the awe that one ought to experience at the end of the play, and neither fully allowed the sometimes extraordinary language to take us into Faustus’s gathering torment. Nevertheless, the minimal Rose production somehow captured more of that sense of doom.
- It is to be hoped that the important archaeological project at the Rose gets enough funding for the future, or at least that it can continue to host such fine little companies. However, as I write this piece, there is still no news as to whether the Rose Theatre Trust has succeeded in obtaining Heritage Lottery Funding for the generous sums that will be necessary to complete the excavation of the 40% of the Rose still buried near Southwark Bridge, and some of the publicity is pessimistic that the theatre will even be able to stay open. (Pictures and further information are available at the Rose Theatre Trust's website.)
- Bevington, David, and Eric Rasmussen, eds. Dr Faustus: The A and B Text (1604, 1616). The Revels Plays. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993. Print.
- Rose Theatre Trust. The Rose: Bankside’s First Theatre, 1587. Web. Accessed 29 Aug. 2011. < http://www.rosetheatre.org.uk/index.php>
Responses to this piece intended for the
Readers' Forum may be sent to the Editors at [email protected].
© 2012-, Annaliese Connolly and Matthew Steggle (Editors, EMLS). | <urn:uuid:e23d9173-faba-442f-acd0-12488f38d4ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/16-1/revfaust.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946607 | 2,026 | 1.601563 | 2 |
If you are new to the internet, there are many essential things you must know especially if your desire is to make money. Understanding web hosting tricks is very vital in order to be ahead of competitors in today’s world. Master these five tricks and see yourself on the top.
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Visit a reputable web hosting company for various hosting plans. | <urn:uuid:0bfc60fe-0db6-4b00-a9c4-69c614ad6760> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://joomla-admin.com/5-web-hosting-tricks-for-beginners-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95081 | 575 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Ask the Expert
Recovery and the Media Addiction and Treatment in Entertainment and News
July Recovery and the Media Addiction and Treatment in Entertainment and News
Ask the Expert:
Ronald Tannebaum- Co Founder, CEO and President of In The Rooms
Questions for Ask the Expert- July
Are there any books for young adults that reference to or have addiction and recovery as part of their storyline for teens, but aren’t too preachy or overly wholesome? My daughter loves to read books like Harry Potter, etc and I’d like to give her something cool to read that includes recovery as part of the story, though it doesn’t need to be a young character in recovery, nor does it need to be the primary subject of the book. Do you have any suggestions?
a. Black Out Girl - Jennifer Storm
b. Broken - William Cope Moyers
c. Stay Close - Libby Cataldi
d. Wasted - Mark Johnson
e. 800 Meters - Mikael D. Luman
I get pretty mad at some of the portrayals of people with addiction on some of the television shows. How can I let someone know that I don’t appreciate or like these portrayals? Who is the correct person to address such a comment to for television programs, either on network TV or cable?
You can write the programs Producer, Director and writers to address these issues. I feel that the entertainment industry portrays the active addiction rather than the Recovery Process and the portrayal is not authentic.
What are the online venues or resources for sharing one’s story of recovery (other than Recovery Month )? Are there any that are specifically geared to youth?
Answer: In The Rooms has a significant young online population 13 years and older.
Can you recommend some good movies that show realistic, but ultimately hopeful and inspiring, stories of addiction and recovery?
answer: The movie ‘Twelve’ is a terrific and authentic movie that shares the story of 12 young recovering addict’s and alcoholic’s journey from addiction into recovery. It is a powerful movie. It is in theaters now.
Are there any radio shows dedicated specifically to talking about addiction and recovery?
Answer: Yes there are many Recovery Shows and stations around the country. The In The Rooms Hour, every Sunday night from 9 PM to 10 PM on Holistic Lifestyles is one, others are: Radio Network, Blog Talk Radio, Recovery 101, Take 12 Radio with the Monty Man, and Holistic Lifestyles Radio with John Hollis. | <urn:uuid:2b9f3d09-cda4-4ffb-9dac-0c562c0a727a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.recoverymonth.gov/Resources-Catalog/2010/Ask-the-Expert/July-Recovery-and-the-Media-Addiction-and-Treatment-in-Entertainment-and-News.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93589 | 528 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Shark expert Ron Taylor dies; helped make ‘Jaws’
SYDNEY (AP) — Ron Taylor, a beloved Australian marine conservationist who helped film some of the terrifying underwater footage used in the classic shark thriller “Jaws,” has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 78.
Close family friend Andrew Fox says Taylor died Sunday after a two-year battle with leukemia.
Fox and his father, famed shark attack survivor Rodney Fox, worked with Taylor on shark conservation efforts for decades.
In 1974, director Steven Spielberg asked Taylor and his wife, Valerie Taylor, to capture footage of a great white shark for “Jaws.” Spielberg used Taylor’s footage in a now-iconic scene in which the shark in the film tears apart a cage holding one of the main characters.
© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:9a993743-0212-4adf-8aa2-31955e643409> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/sep/09/shark-expert-ron-taylor-dies-helped-make-jaws/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946442 | 198 | 1.546875 | 2 |
In Final Hours, M.T.A. Took a Big Risk on PensionsOK, time value of money calculated in, let's allow for 30 years of service before a worker draws on his pension at age 55. At even 6% a year earnings, that $20 million would grow to the grand total of $100 million.
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: December 21, 2005
On the final day of intense negotiations, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, it turns out, greatly altered what it had called its final offer, to address many of the objections of the transit workers' union. The authority improved its earlier wage proposals, dropped its demand for concessions on health benefits and stopped calling for an increase in the retirement age, to 62 from 55.
But then, just hours before the strike deadline, the authority's chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, put forward a surprise demand that stunned the union. Seeking to rein in the authority's soaring pension costs, he asked that all new transit workers contribute 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions, up from the 2 percent that current workers pay. The union balked, and then shut down the nation's largest transit system for the first time in a quarter-century.
Yet for all the rage and bluster that followed, this war was declared over a pension proposal that would have saved the transit authority less than $20 million over the next three years.
It seemed a small figure, considering that the city says that every day of the strike will cost its businesses hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues. But the authority contends that it must act now to prevent a "tidal wave" of pension outlays if costs are not brought under control.
The MTA (George Pataki and Michael Bloomberg) has an unfunded pension liability (meaning money they've borrowed from their workers' future to fund current operations) of $450 million. This, with a $1 Billion dollar operating surplus.
Why not just fund that extra $20 million now out of the surplus, instead of giving commuters an almost useless nine extra days of discounted fares on the rails and buses? | <urn:uuid:1a1ffed3-403a-4d17-8f4a-114928675ec7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://simplyleftbehind.blogspot.com/2005/12/measly-20-million-dollars.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951355 | 436 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Design Like No One Is Patenting — How SparkFun Stays Ahead of the Pack
- 6:30 AM
Electronics supplier SparkFun designs dozens of products a year and they haven’t patented a single one. It’s worked out pretty well so far.
SparkFun is a DIY hardware supplier. It makes its living by shipping kits and components like bread boards, servo motors and Arduino parts to a mixture of students, hobbyists, and professionals making prototypes. Most of the stuff they sell is sourced from other suppliers, but where the company has made its name is in a stable of its own custom parts and kits, the designs for which it gives away for free.
“Every time I hear that a class of 8th graders are learning how to blink LEDs I realize that we’re making a difference,” says CEO Nathan Seidle in a post celebrating the company’s 10th anniversary. “I also get the uneasy feeling that I could easily be replaced by a 15-year-old in a few years’ time.”
Always Designing the Next Thing
In an era of bloody patent warfare and venture capitalists obsessed with the secret sauce, this approach — common among maker suppliers — is striking. You can’t help but wonder if Seidle could worry less about those fifteen year olds, if he’d stop giving them all his secrets.
Not so, says says Lara Boudreaux, SparkFun’s Marketing Department Project Manager. “We find that people will copy your design no matter what you do,” she says. “You might as well just play the game and go ahead and innovate. It’s fun, it keeps us on our toes.”
Instead of relying on patents for protection, the team prefers to outrace other entrants in the field. “The open source model just forces us to innovate,” says Boudreaux. “When we release something, we’ve got to be thinking about the next rev. We’re doing engineering and innovating and it’s what we wanna be doing and what we do well.”
SparkFun’s rapid turnover model is one that echoes the fashion industry. Like the electronics world, fashion is rife with copycats and rip-off artists. And while the wolf of obsolescence is always at electronics’ door, the wolf of being out of style is always at the door for clothes. Like SparkFun, fashion designers don’t spend much time worrying about the copyists, they just keep releasing new looks.
“I’d never thought of that parallel myself, but in a way it makes sense,” says Boudreaux. “That being said, I think the innovation vs. style is an important distinction. I think it’s about more than staying ‘in style,’ it’s about staying relevant and filling the needs of the community. If SparkFun creates a breakout board for a new sensor and then the sensor is updated, we need to update the breakout board.”
Though Boudreaux is reluctant to accept the parallel, the open hardware model means that SparkFun’s existence depends not on any particular product, but on an ongoing relationship with customers that’s not too dissimilar to the loyalty commanded by a fashion house. By working hard to keep their service exemplary and listening to their customers, the team at SparkFun has developed a community of loyal users and fans, ready to find out what’s next. Their weekly new product posts (which recently passed episode 100) feel a lot like a fashion show, but for function. Besides, the company must see at least some value in their iconic red boxes and red PCBs.
Another way to understand SparkFun is through comparison is with the actions of the patent-hoarding giants. You can learn a lot about what a company cares about by looking at what they give away and what they protect.
Apple jealously guards its hardware designs, OS, and supply chain, while giving away the Darwin core and things like webkit. Google would love to give you free storage, high quality maps, document editing suites, and a pair of OSs, but don’t bother asking them to open up PageRank, Adwords, or their jealously guarded server setup. Facebook has opened up its computing infrastructure, but good luck getting a peek at its social graph.
SparkFun’s trick is that they are a hardware company that only kind of sells hardware. SparkFun’s actual value is in the community of fans and loyal customers that keep coming back, and the expertise under its roof in servicing their needs.
A Constantly Changing Inventory
SparkFun orders parts from 500 suppliers. Their catalog has about 2,500 items at any given time. “We introduce around 15 new products every week,” says Boudreaux, and they retire products at a similar rate, due to either low sales, or obsolescence — a common scourge in high-tech industries. Of the 2,500 items, about 400 are things designed internally. They introduce a new one of these just about every week, says Boudreaux. “We retire at a slightly slower rate, I’d say two to three products we design die every month, on average.”
To handle the pace of change, SparkFun needs to keep its inventory lean. “It’s something that we’ve struggled with and we continue to struggle with,” says Boudreaux. “We try to do small runs and order in small quantities. Especially something that’s going to be obsolete quickly.”
To help manage the demand, they use an in-house software system called Sparkle that, along with inventory and CMS management, tries to predict demand for different components and ensure they get ordered with sufficient lead time to account for how long it takes to get there.
How they ensure a steady stream of new offerings? “I would say the innovation (revisions and new releases) here at SparkFun is organic and not planned,” says Boudreaux, “But we do a few things to make sure we are keeping up.” The team monitors all costumer feedback from emails to the comment section that is present on every page of the company’s site. They also ensure that team members have time to tinker in the office, write tutorials, and visit hackerspaces and maker events. “For us, designing (and revising) widgets is the job.”
Though most ideas come from SparkFun’s dedicated engineering department, anyone in the company can suggest ideas and contribute designs. From there, the ideas run through an internal process of design, review, prototyping, testing and release.
“We want to get new product innovations into the hands of early adopters as soon as possible,” says Boudreaux, “They eat these products up, even if the products are not ready for the mainstream & educator community due to minimal documentation or stability.” Boudreaux describes a symbiotic relationship with these early adopters, where feedback helps SparkFun revised and improve products for use by the rest of the community. “We have to be willing to kill ideas that don’t work, take a lot of tough criticism, and move fast. If we stay agile, we stay relevant.”
Fast. But Not Too Fast
The risk of this rate of change is that SparkFun can end up outpacing some of their customers. For example, educators need to be able to rely on access to a stable product, so they can run a piece of curriculum and order new and replacement parts that still exist over the course of a year or longer. For this reason, SparkFun has started making products that step out of the frantic pace of innovation, such as their SparkFun Inventor’s Kit part of its selling point is SparkFun’s promise to keep it around.
“There’s balance in everything,” says Boudreaux, “Innovation does not necessarily need speed in order to create valuable change. Sometimes innovation works at a slower pace, but that does not mean it is any less valuable to those that benefit from it, and we are constantly balancing the needs of two very different customers.”
Meanwhile, the rest of the SparkFun catalog churns on, unprotected and unencumbered by patents; racing to get the latest, coolest things in the hands of its customers.
In a recent talk, Seidle likened the alleged protections that patents offer to IP Obesity. “If your idea is unique, easily copied, and can be sold for profit in a local market, it will be,” he argues. “Ok, but that’s what patents are for, right? I don’t think they help much. Patents can cost $30,000 to $50,000. And the USPTO is so backed up you’ll have to wait three to five years to even hear back on their decision. Ask yourself, how much does technology change in five years?”
“Maybe you think I’m naive,” he continues, “Maybe you think an open source company can’t be scaled above 150 people. That’s fine, I’m sure patents will work for you. But for myself, my 135 co-workers, 75 million dollars of sales, 600,000 customers and our 431 unpatented products wish you good luck.”
Want to take them on? You could do worse than poking through the company’s blog where they’ve been documenting production and business practices for years. Eventually, says Boudreaux, they even want to open source Sparkle. “It’s a wild ride,” she says, “but a fun one for sure.”
All images: Courtesy of SparkFun | <urn:uuid:48a03361-8f11-4171-bac7-4b5e4c61a8b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/sparkfun-10-years/?pid=1831 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946368 | 2,108 | 1.757813 | 2 |
When your nose is clogged, it makes you all-over miserable. The sinus pressure hurts your head, you sound like a dog panting through your mouth, and all that stuffiness makes it difficult to hear. You don’t need to turn to over-the-counter medicines that dry you out in the short-term but also leave you feeling like a space case. Who needs the unnecessary chemicals? Instead, clear your nose naturally with these three simple remedies.
1. Make it steamy
Steam can help loosen mucus and clear your airways. For minor congestion, just sipping on a cup of tea can help. Hold your nose over the mug and breathe in the fumes. For added relief drink peppermint tea, as peppermint is a known decongestant.
For more severe clogs, take a steamy shower. You’ve never had such a good excuse to get pruny! The hot steam will moisturize your nasal passages, and help you relax—an often difficult task with sleepless nights spent constantly reaching for the tissues.
You could also create your own steam tent. To do this simply set a pot of water to boil. Once it boils, turn off the heat. Then, hold a large towel over your head to keep the steam enclosed, stand over the pot and inhale deeply. The overload of steam should clear up your nose in no time. Just be careful not to scald yourself! Add a few drops of eucalyptus essential oil to the water for even more medicinal benefits. Eucalyptus has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and decongesting properties—all great features for relieving a stuffy nose.
2. Break out the neti pot
While some of you might cringe at the thought of sticking a pot up your nose, neti pots are strangely effective for nasal congestion. Flushing the nasal passages with warm salt water has been practiced in Asia and India for ages. It removes allergens, germs and general debris, while also helping to keep the nasal passages moist. The salt can also help prevent infection.
To use a neti pot, dissolve a quarter teaspoon of sea salt in warm water. Make sure to use distilled water or boil the water first and let it cool. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but once you get used to using a neti pot, you’ll get addicted. Neti pots can do more than temporarily relieve sinus congestion, with regular use they can ease the symptoms of seasonal allergies and leave you feeling open and clear all the time.
3. Fill up on fluids
We know you’ve heard this one before, but that’s because it works. Seriously, drink your water. Hydrating with lots of clear liquids, like water, broth and herbal tea, will help loosen and thin out the mucus. It sounds weird, but you want thin mucus so your sinuses won’t continue to clog. A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water can also help thin out mucus. Avoid coffee and other caffeinated beverages, which can dehydrate you. Also, skip the dairy, which can exacerbate the problem.
Follow Kirsten on Twitter @kirsten_hudson, Google+ and Pinterest. | <urn:uuid:78c4f3fe-bf7e-43ca-95c2-0d2ee23ad2dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.organicauthority.com/health/3-natural-ways-to-unclog-your-sinuses.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930458 | 677 | 1.835938 | 2 |
The Pro Football Historical Abstract
My 2008 book won the Nelson Ross Award, presented annually by the Pro Football Researchers Association for “outstanding achievement in pro football research and historiography.” I took the analytical methods that formed the basis of my annual football preview books and applied them to past players. The result is an exhaustive look at the history of pro football.
It begins with a look at how the game has evolved over the years. I delve into the changes in playing styles, and the rules, and how other external events affected the game on the field. The centerpiece is my rating and ranking of the top players at each position from 1920 to the present. I take a detailed look at nearly a thousand players, with new insight on their playing styles and their strengths and weaknesses on the field.
What the critics said about the book:
“The most ambitious and fascinating football book of the year… impressive in both scope and execution. Lahman’s insight into the styles of so many players across time makes for a lively, enlightening read. Highly recommended.”
– Library Journal (starred review)
“Lahman tries to do for football what Bill James once did for baseball.”
– USA Today
“An extremely interesting new book… sure to spark debate.”
– Gannett Newspapers
“The best football book of the decade.”
– Pro Football Researchers Association
The book is nearly 600 pages in hardcover. It’s available from Amazon and other bookstores.
ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia
There hadn’t been a pro football encyclopedia on the market since 1999, which was a little surprising when you consider the tremendous popularity of the game. Pete Palmer and I had been talking about producing a new one since the summer of 2000, and in 2006 we finally had our chance. Pete spent several years working with researcher Ken Pullis to develop a new statistical database, based on an exhaustive game-by-game reconstruction of the historical record. What we ended up with was the most complete, accurate, and up-to-date football database ever compiled. There are several new features in this book, things that haven’t been published anywhere before. The encyclopedia also incorporates some of my analytical work, based on my compilation of play-by-play accounts for games back to 1960. The biggest advance of all might be the price — Barnes & Noble is selling the book for as low as $17.96. Compare that to the $59.95 cover price for the last edition of Total Football, and you’ll see why we were so excited about bringing this book to market.
The critics loved the book. Sports historian John Thorn called it “an all-time great book from an all-pro team of experts.” Doug Drinen of pro-football-reference.com said “I have many football reference books on my shelf, but the ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia is the one I will reach for again and again.”
The second edition of the book included a number of new features, including a lengthy chapter I wrote on the evolution of football strategy. more…
Pro Football Prospectus
The annual Pro Football Prospectus was described by ESPN.com as a “paradigm-shifting work,” and former Green Bay Packers head coach Mike Sherman called it “one of the most comprehensive evaluations on the market.” I created this series in 2002 with co-author Todd Greanier, as a spinoff from the successful and popular Baseball Prospectus brand. We had a hard time attracting the same kind of following for pro football that those folks developed for baseball, mostly I think due to a lack of support from the publisher. It’s hard to market a book as a fantasy football guide when it doesn’t hit the store shelves until after most fantasy drafts have been completed. Still, there is some good work in the three editions of this book published each summer from 2002 until 2004. (The book was published with the title “Pro Football Forecast” in its 2004 edition).
Reference Books Edited
Reference books are a collaborative effort, especially when one volume contains 2500 pages. To date, I’ve had a major role in creating seven of these behemoths.
- 2007 ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia
- 2006 ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia
- Total Tennis: The Ultimate Tennis Encyclopedia
- Total Baseball (8th edition)
- Total Basketball
- Total Baseball (7th edition)
- Total Baseball (6th edition)
Other Books as Contributor
I’ve contributed content to more than a dozen other sports reference books and sports annuals over the past ten years, including…
- 2008 ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia
- 2007 ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia
- 2006 ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia
- 2005 ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia
- The Baseball Encyclopedia (2004)
- Deadball Stars of the National League
- Total Baseball Trivia (two editions)
- Sports Illustrated Sports Almanac (2000 & 2001)
- Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia (two editions)
- Big Bad Baseball Annual (1998 & 1999)
- Rotisserie Baseball Analyst (1990 & 1991)
- The Great American Baseball Stat Book (1988 & 1989) | <urn:uuid:b887600d-ded6-4d70-9bd3-20ee84698938> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.seanlahman.com/books/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943483 | 1,088 | 1.507813 | 2 |
How Good am I at Problem Solving?
The ability to problem solve is a
necessity for an Interior Designer. As an Interior Designer, you will encounter
glitches, and it is a must that you can deal with them. Many times, these glitches
will need to be solved on the spot.
Your organizational skills will come in
handy when you need to solve a problem as well. An organized workplace will
help you to have an organized mind. Thoughts have a way of being cluttered when
your work space is likewise.
Being able think quickly and under
pressure is a definite asset to problem solving. Your problem is not going to
get easier if it takes you too long to come up with a solution for it.
Actually, waiting can just give the universe more time to make the problem get
Can I Multitask?
Most jobs require a good ability to
multitask. None of these jobs requires it as much as Interior Design does. The
reason for this is because Interior Designers are often doing more than one thing
at a time. You can be giving instructions to your contractors, working with
your assistant on the fabrics, all while explaining it your client. This can
cause a little bit of stress, but if you are good at multitasking, it is not so
If you are not particular good at
multitasking, you need not worry. Some people have just never been put to the
test as far as that’s concerned. You may have had a relaxed job setting, or you
may have worked on an assembly line for a few years. Many jobs require you to
do regular tasks. They can be quite monotonous. If this sounds like you, I will
list a few tips on how to help you learn to multitask. | <urn:uuid:30a759ce-9393-4664-8c92-bd7639533f6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shvoong.com/exact-sciences/1675414-good-problem-solving-multitask/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969956 | 376 | 1.609375 | 2 |
The title pretty much sums it up. Read on here. The takeaway is that large companies are trying to find new markets for their $45000 machines. When will RepRap provide a viable option for small machine shops to avoid paying the BIG companies BIG money?
The Fortus 250mc is the company’s first cross-over system, combining the ease-of-use and affordability of a Dimension with the control of Insight Software. Insight Software drives the Fortus line of 3D Production Systems, and empowers users with added control of build speed, part accuracy and feature detail.
Yes, it is only available on Mac OSX. But now you have a reason to buy a Mac. I could not believe how much better this looks than all the other software I have used. I am just now digging into it, but from the blog post and the videos, as well as playing around with it on my MacBook…. it looks FAR SUPERIOR.
The Quadstepper motor driver board allows you to control up to 4 bipolar stepper motors simultaneously using logic level IO pins. Each motor driver has an output drive capacity of 35V and 2Amps. The board is capable of driving motors in full, half, quarter, eight, and sixteenth-step modes.
$500. Who would have thought!
A tiny knife cuts through one piece of paper at a time and selectively glues it to the underlying layer. Fascinating.
There are several videos available here… Some of it is just OK and some of it is really good. Bre sounds like a great guy. To those who are a bit jealous about the success of MakerBot, I say JUMP IN and get building!
Turning sand into glass with a sun powered 3d printer of sorts. It is primitive, but such a great idea. A really well done video here – a pleasure to watch. A bit more info here… but not much more.
- Compact, office-friendly, multi-material 3D printer
- World’s only technology able to jet 2 materials at the same time to produce advanced composite materials and up to 14 individual material elements in one part, in a single print run
- Available with the newly released Objet ABS-like and clear transparent material | <urn:uuid:ec96a3df-4273-43df-8f7e-d054f5df2169> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://printrbot.com/category/reprap-news/page/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944106 | 463 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Those of us who attempt to think with the Church’s social doctrines as well as her theological and moral teachings know the feeling well: we quote a papal statement at odds with a particular war, or critical of unfettered capitalism, and we are told "Well, that is just his personal opinion," as if the Pope’s opinion were merely one of many, with no more weight than yours or mine, and considerably less than Fr Neuhaus’ or Mr Bush’s.
It is a favorite tactic of the Catholic neoconservatives, when they cannot twist papal pronouncements to their own end, to make a fine distinction between infallible and fallible statements.
I am not saying that this distinction does not exist, but it seems to come glibly, with little reflection, to those whose own opinions are challenged or rejected by something the Pope has said.
This cavalier attitude toward Papal teaching is odd, especially when it comes to statements about particular wars, which after all are matters of life and death for huge numbers of innocents.
Stephen Hand, in a recent piece at the Traditional Catholic Reflections website addresses this, and the general tendency of the neocons over the last few decades to co-opt Church teachings for their own ideological ends, saying that this attitude is "…particularly troubling since papal prudential judgements have never been viewed as off-the-cuff soundbites but, especially relative to war, as very important rational conclusions based on 2,000 years of infallible Catholic moral principles and reasoning, and which the popes publish only after very careful and weighty analysis".
It has long been evident to those of us who have been observing them that the Catholic neoconservatives have no interest in sitting at the feet of the Church, our Mater et Magister, but rather are intent on leading Her around on their own ideological leash. Mr. Hand’s very fine and comprehensive critique can be read here. | <urn:uuid:92f3f333-6903-4d7a-b050-2171548ecbd2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/2007/05/20/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972307 | 401 | 1.570313 | 2 |
In the Spring of 2011, surgeon Cristiana Bertocchi finished a stint in
Côte d’Ivoire–Ivory Coast–working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
She served in the Abobo Sud neighborhood of Abidjan, one of the main
flash points in the country’s widespread violence. At the time of her
visit, the Ministry of Health hospital in Abobo Sud was the area’s only
fully-functioning hospital and one of the few in the city. Medical teams
there treated hundreds of emergency patients, most of whom had bullet
When emergency physician Ken Mwatha fell asleep after a shift, he
set in motion a chain of events that would change his life – and his
practice of emergency medicine – forever.
I want to save victims from cardiac arrest. I want to apply good CPR,
use the right tools to improve outcomes, and use only the medications
and processes that improve long-term restoration of neurologic function.
Unfortunately, as Jimmy Buffett would say, “I arrived a little too
Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP) is a well-recognized, severe
complication in cirrhotic patients presenting to the emergency
department (ED) with ascites. The prevalence of this disease varies
widely among study populations, with a range of 10% to 30% in
hospitalized patients with ascites, compared to 0% to 3.5% among
asymptomatic outpatient clinic populations.
Should the Joint Commission mandate all hospital employees get the flu shot?
With or without fiberoptic assistance, nasal intubation remains a
valuable technique in some emergency airway situations, despite its
overall decline in use. It is best in patients who are not critically
hypoxic and in whom there is obvious oral pathology making intubation
and ventilation through the mouth problematic.
In this series, much space has been dedicated to explaining the changes
coming to emergency medicine as hospitals try to qualify for federal
stimulus dollars, by demonstrating meaningful use of electronic health
records. But as these changes unfold, another tech revolution is taking
place in health care – the way patients interact with each other, and
with health organizations, using social media.
“It’s like a drug. First, it makes you feel better even though your
situation isn’t any different. Second, and worse, it’s addicting.” Chuck Shufflebarger, MD, said this to me about ambulance
diversion last summer as I was preparing a talk about concepts in
The emergency department is undoubtedly the area of the hospital that most frequently requires the services of interpreters. As of January 1, 2011, the Joint Commission requires the use of “qualified translators” in the emergency department 24/7.
In this installment of "Rick's Picks" Rick Bukata discusses a couple law suits resulting from excessive emergency department wait times. Should the Joint Commission step in? | <urn:uuid:d91d4b4d-84d1-4d12-800b-91f6337c0e9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.epmonthly.com/features/current-features/170/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930677 | 637 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Probably because it’s back-to-school time, there are lots of interesting higher education related items worth checking out today. Here are a few:
- I have a new op-ed on the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsbility Act, the bill that we’re told will save taxpayer money but will almost certainly cost us tens of billions. Meanwhile, the Associated Press published a big article on “spin” about the legislation that ignores supporters’ extremely dubious assertions about SAFRA’s true costs – the AP repeats the supposed savings line without question – but instead focuses on whether Pell Grant increases will be as large as some people hope .
- Over at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, they’re running a three-part series that’s really a lengthy email exchange among numerous experts, including myself, on controlling college costs. The central question is whether more government “transparency” requirements hold the key to containing skyrocketing college prices, or whether what we really need is to cut third-party payments. I think I’ve made it clear where I stand, but if you’re not sure (or even for some reason want other opinions) definitely take in the Pope series. Also, mark your calendars for a debate we’ll be having on this subject right here at Cato on October 6!
- William McGurn has an excellent commentary in the Wall Street Journal explaining that – shocker! – you can make a very good living without getting a college degree.
- I haven’t read it yet but have seen a summary, and if the summary is accurate a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that colleges and universities contribute no more to their local economies than “other forms of economic activity.” This puts another serious hole in the highly suspect argument that more public money for higher education is good because enriching colleges is better for everyone.
And that’s the ivy-ensconsed news for today! | <urn:uuid:2d69298b-b48e-42e4-8ba0-955b5fc72e7e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cato.org/blog/lots-higher-ed-stuff | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94653 | 415 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Barack Obama has suddenly cut Hillary Clinton's lead in Pennsylvania to single digits, based on a surge of support from young voters. But political experts caution that polls taken outside of Texas and Ohio right now may be irrelevant.
"If Clinton wins Texas and Ohio, she is going to gain some momentum and gain her support back in Pennsylvania," Democratic analyst Larry Ceisler said. "If she doesn't win both of them, I don't think there will be a race."
Clinton leads Obama here 49 percent to 43 percent, a new Quinnipiac University poll shows. That puts the race 10 percentage points closer than just two weeks ago, when a Quinnipiac poll showed Clinton up 52-36.
In that period, voters under age 45 have gone from favoring Clinton by 11 percentage points to preferring Obama by 17 points.
Many candidates who've relied on young voters to turn out at the polls have been disappointed. But analysts give Obama, riding momentum with a message of change and hope, good odds at motivating young supporters to show up and vote.
"Traditionally, you would be fairly risky if you bank on younger voters," said political scientist Chris Borick of Muhlenberg College in Allentown. "But this year seems to be an exception."
Ceisler doesn't doubt young voters will support Obama on April 22, but points out they won't be enough to hand the Illinois senator a victory in Pennsylvania, the nation's second-oldest state by percentage of population.
"If she comes out with two wins [Tuesday]," Ceisler said, "she will win Pennsylvania."
To overtake Clinton, Obama will have to hold onto his advantage with the youth vote and cut into Clinton's share of the senior citizen vote, said Robert Speel, a political science professor at Penn State University.
David Pepper, 22, a Muhlenberg College senior, is one of the younger voters who has helped Obama cut into Clinton's advantage. Classmates seem drawn by his Obama button.
"I've had over 20 people who came up to me wondering how to get involved," Pepper said, "and I do hear students talking about it all over the student union."
Amanda Serfozo, president of Emmaus High School Students for Barack Obama, said Obama appeals to young voters' desire for something fresh in politics.
"I just love his sense of what he wants in America," said Serfozo, who will turn 18 by November. "He just has this fresh perspective on how things should be run.
I think he can bring about real change just by connecting with people."
Clinton leads Obama statewide among women, whites, older voters and those without college degrees. Obama bests the New York senator among men, blacks and college graduates.
Another sign of volatility as the primary approaches: A quarter of each candidate's supporters say they might change their minds about whom to back.
A Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll released last week showed Clinton up 14 percentage points in Pennsylvania. A subsequent poll by Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster showed it a 12-point race.
Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., polled 506 likely Democratic voters from last Thursday through Monday. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Hillary Clinton's lead over Barack Obama in Pennsylvania is narrowing as the state's April 22 primary approaches.
Clinton's lead two weeks ago
Source: Quinnipiac University poll of 506 likely Democratic voters taken Feb. 21-25. Margin of error is plus/minus 4.4 percentage points. | <urn:uuid:23550b36-f032-4c39-b5ca-b1897c737ad0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.mcall.com/2008-02-28/news/4002175_1_obama-bests-obama-button-younger-voters | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960332 | 741 | 1.726563 | 2 |
February 3, 2010
Al Armendariz, SMU associate professor of environmental and civil engineering, was sworn in Tuesday, Feb. 2, as the Environmental Protection Agency's Region 6 Administrator.
The region includes Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, 66 Indian tribes and Texas — the nation's largest producer of industrial air pollution. Armendariz is taking over Region 6 as the EPA moves to toughen Texas pollution enforcement standards to meet federal Clean Air Act requirements followed by other states.
While on leave, Armendariz will retain his appointment with SMU's Lyle School of Engineering.
# # # | <urn:uuid:66488530-8655-4f7e-8c75-61b29beebcca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smu.edu/News/2010/al-armendariz-sworn-in-2feb2010 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939843 | 125 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Guidecraft Sit and Store Reading CenterItem#: HN-ID350
Foster your child's love of the written word and his or her hunger for knowledge with this innovative sit-and-store reading center from Guidecraft. This deluxe padded reading bench has a thick red cushioned seat and back with four individual cubbies below for holding everything from shoes to books and toys. There are also cubbies behind the bench seat and on the top of the bench. Crafted from birch plywood, this combination bench and cubby center will help your child get organized while giving him or her a special spot for reading and hanging out.
- Features comfortable red nylon seat and backrest
- Constructed from birch plywood
- Ideal for kids aged 3 years and up
- Built with cubbies below, above & behind bench seat
- Height of cushioned seat measures 14.5 in.
- Measures 48W x 25D x 30H in.
Bench with cubbies, Seat and back cushion
The Guidecraft Sit and Store Reading Center turns any area into a comfy reading nook. This combination bench and book holder features a thickly padded nylon seat and backrest that are a snap to clean. Seat height is 14.5 inches, and it is designed for kids three and older. There is plenty of book, toy, and shoe storage, too, with cubbies above, below, and behind the bench. It is constructed of birch plywood with a natural UV finish. Some assembly is required. Classroom reading environments are essential for learning.
Guidecraft was founded in 1964 in a small woodshop, producing 10 items. Today, Guidecraft's line includes over 160 educational toys and furnishings. The company's size has changed, but their mission remains the same; stay true to the tradition of smart, beautifully crafted wood products, which allow children's minds and imaginations room to truly wonder and grow.
Guidecraft plans to continue far into the future with what they do best, while always giving their loyal customers what they have come to expect: expert quality, excellent service, and an ever-growing collection of creativity-inspiring products for children.
Dimensions & Specifications
48L x 25W x 30H in. | <urn:uuid:01daf085-2b4a-42ca-9298-7fe8ae5d7c5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hayneedle.com/product/guidecraftsitandstorereadingcenter.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941987 | 463 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Water restrictions lifted at sheltered housing block in Lincoln
Water restrictions are being lifted at a sheltered accommodation block in Lincoln. They were put in place at St Botolphs Court last week after higher than recommended levels of the legionella bacteria were found in the pipework.
Laboratory tests show that work done to disinfect the water system has been successful. Residents will now be able to use the water for washing, bathing and food preparation, but restrictions on the use of showers will continue for the next few days.
Residents of the sheltered accommodationwere kept fully informed throughout the cleansing process and have been co-operative and supportive of the decisions we made. We supplied more than 2,500 bottles of water to be used for drinking, food preparation and general use, together with alternative arrangements for bathing and laundry.
Initial test results are clear but the health and well-being of our residents is of the utmost importance and we will not put them at any risk and as a final precaution the shower areas will therefore remain out of use for a few more days until we receive the formal results from the laboratory. We appreciate this incident has been disruptive to residents and on behalf of the City Council I would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused and thank residents for their patience and support throughou
t the whole process. Their safety has and always will be our main priority."
– John Bibby, Director of Housing and Community Services, City of Lincoln Council
Residents at a sheltered accommodation block in Lincoln are being provided with bottled water and off-site washing facilities after the bacteria legionella was discovered in the water system. Tonight they have issued a statement on the situation at St Botolph's Court, off the High Street.
"The City of Lincoln Council has announced that it intends to continue with the decontamination of the pipework at St Botolph's Court over the coming weekend. Residents of the sheltered accommodation have been kept fully informed and are aware of the decision."
– John Bibby - Director of Housing and Community Services, City of Lincoln Council
VIDEO: Legionella found at Lincoln sheltered housing
Almost 12 times the safe level of the deadly bacteria legionella, which can develop into Legionnaires disease, has been discovered in the water system of a sheltered housing block in Lincoln.
Elderly residents at St Botolph's Court have now been provided with bottled water and off-site washing facilities. Other residents in the area are being reassured the problem is contained to this one site. Kate Hemingway reports.
Legionella bacteria discovered in a Lincoln sheltered housing water system
Elderly residents at a sheltered housing block in Lincoln are being offered bottled water to drink and off site washing facilities after the deadly bacteria legionella was discovered in the water system.
The bacteria, which was discovered at St Botolph's Court, is particularly dangerous if it becomes airborne as it can be inhaled and develop into the life threatening 'Legionnaire's disease' and pneumonia.
A specialist company is currently chemically flushing out the affected pipework. | <urn:uuid:d9c6ab88-c09c-4b4a-abe5-dd66fbea4a29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/topic/legionella/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96758 | 614 | 1.828125 | 2 |
If you've been hiking local trails lately -- to Echo or Mount Lowe or somewhere off Chaney then you must have noticed. There's an awful lot of rattlesnakes around this year. More than I've seen in over a decade.
Apparently, due to the heavy rains a few years ago, we have a rattler baby boom in our local hills and mountains. Which is okay -- they'll feast on rodents and perform some other necessary tasks.
But just watch your step. Of course, when hiking you should always watch your step, but really watch it this summer.
Oh, and if you're not sure whether that sound you're hearing is a rattler or a sprinkler or some insect, listen to this.
Here's some first aid information just in case you're caught off guard.
Have you seen rattlesnakes recently while hiking in Sierra Madre? | <urn:uuid:e9a865d5-0921-4e21-92ec-a8134d668c3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sierramadre.patch.com/groups/breast-cancer-awareness/p/the-hills-are-alive-with-the-sound-of-rattlers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959578 | 181 | 1.554688 | 2 |
No one is in this alone. There is always someone to talk to. Always. Whether it be a counselor or maybe even an LGBT site. Projects like these give me hope. They help me stay strong. I hope everyone has the strength to pull through and realize it gets better. Because it truly does.
—Gloria M. (Brentwood, NH)
For those of you who cannot tell your parents or are afraid they will not understand, please know that there are parents out there who are thinking of you and who believe in you. We may not be related, we may not know you, but we are proud of you. We want you to be happy about who you are, to embrace your uniqueness. Seek out those who lift you up. Sometime the people who end up saving your life are those you have yet to meet.
—Jodi K. (Colgate, WI)
The message It Gets Better sends is important — it inspires, empowers and motivates young people to take a stand and work to create safer, more inclusive spaces on the campuses and in their communities for their fellow students, for other local LGBTQ young people and for future generations.
—Shane L. Windmeyer, M.S., Ed., co-founder and executive director of Campus Pride, the leading national organization for student leaders and campus organizations working to create a safer college environment for LGBT students.
Campus Pride Leadership Camp 2010 Slide Show An awesome week of LGBTQA Leadership development.
Back to school and finding a friend
From The Official Blog of Thomas Mitchinson, Illinois Committee on Publication
Yesterday was the first day of school in Naperville. I wish a very happy
school year to all the students, teachers and administrators.
I’d like to share this story that has inspired me for many years. It comes
from the book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen.
It is the story about Bill who was walking home carrying two sweaters, a
baseball bat, all of his books, as well as a glove and a tape recorder. Bill tripped, dropped everything, and a boy named Mark helped Bill pick up his stuff and carry it. They talked on the way home and had a lot in common.
After arriving at Bill’s house, Mark was invited in and they shared cokes and watched t.v. They saw each other from time to time and graduated from junior high. They went to
the same high school, and had brief contacts over the years. Just before high school graduation, Bill asked Mark if he remembered that day years ago when he helped him carry his stuff. When Mark replied that he did, Bill stated that he had cleaned out his locker that day – and was going home to take his mother’s sleeping pills and commit suicide.
Bill further stated that after spending that afternoon laughing and having fun, he dismissed the suicidal thoughts because he didn’t want to miss any other good times. The story ends with Bill stating, “So you see, Mark, when you picked up my books that day, you did a lot more. You saved my life.”
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, here is some advice on helping others: “Since people who are contemplating suicide feel so alone and helpless, the most important thing to do if you think a friend or loved one is suicidal is to communicate with him or her openly and frequently. Make it clear that you care; stress your willingness to listen. Also, be sure to take all talk of suicide seriously. Don’t assume that people who
talk about killing themselves won’t really do it. An estimated 80 percent of all those who
commit suicide give some warning of their intentions or mention their feelings
to a friend or family member.” In other words, be a Mark!
But what if you have no friends? Something I have found helpful for many years
when depressed or sad is that there is a higher power whose love for us in
unconditional. This Love comforts, consoles, and can bring happiness into our lives.
Poet John Newton wrote, “As a little child relies on a care beyond its own, Being neither strong nor wise, Will not take a step alone, let me thus with Thee abide, As my Father, Friend, and Guide.” That divine Friend, God, is here, willing to listen and to guide the lives of each one of us into life, not death.
You are important. You are needed. You are loved. Let God send a Mark into your life. There are fun times ahead for everyone!
Click on the link below: | <urn:uuid:e98e2163-8c01-41f3-affd-e2d3186d2dc2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.emergence-international.org/2012/08/back-to-school-and-finding-a-friend-daily-bread-08182012/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972587 | 972 | 1.609375 | 2 |
First Impressions: Yugioh Dungeondice Monsters
Play the role by rolling the dice. Listen as we tell you about one of the GBA's first strategy RPGs.
People used to play board games and card games all the time. I was reminded of that watching an episode of Freaks & Geeks not too long ago. My parents had Pit parties. Other people had games of Yahtzee. Your grandparents probably had Bridge clubs or hosted Hearts nights at the house. Check your hall closet -- if you live in the suburbs and are old enough to read this, chances are you've got at least one board of either Monopoly, Mousetrap, Mille Bornes, maybe Parcheesi or Backgammon, or a Pop-o-Matic Sorry!.
And then, videogames came along and pretty much made the family hour board game pretty laughable. But recently, they've been making quite a comeback. Games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon are giving gamers a new way to play old hardback games. Japan especially loves odd games with cards, boards, dice...They even love virtual computer representations of games they play in real life that represent other videogames. Let me repeat that -- they like playing videogames of playing videogames.
Such is the way with Yugioh, a jump manga series that's also spawned a card series and a separate videogame series (besides Dungeondice) called Yugioh Duel Monsters (soon to release YDM 5 on the GBA). And if you're confused at this point, good luck playing this mofo...
An agitating strategy game with millions of options per turn, Yugioh Dungeondice Monsters wasn't too friendly a play. Kind of like I said with Monster Guardians, I certainly won't say this game is completely without promise -- as much time with I spent with it (which was considerable because it's confounding gameplay was mesmerizing) I can't say I understood everything that happened from the Japanese text. But it became pretty obvious to me at some point when even the computer seemed it wasn't having any fun that this game isn't for everybody.
There are RPG aspects to the game -- collecting cards and strategically deploying and leveling up monsters -- but the game is mostly a strategy board game. You play every turn with choosing a set of cards, then a role of the dice, then a few moves in the strategic section. It's a little bit of everything that's NOT a videogame, as just about everything is luck and option-handling, but fans of the game series would at least appreciate having all the pieces in a game rather than scattered in their bedrooms.
Japanese gamers love the Yugioh series for the same reason Americans love Magic cards -- there are lots of cards to collect, and therefore lots of variables to the game. Yugioh also makes it a bit more interesting, because here you have to roll the dice to be able to deploy a card. In each turn, you choose from a set of monster cards and enhancers, then roll for points to buy your chosen cards. Points are kept like Yahtzee rolls, and you throw three dice every time -- only one will triumph every time, but there are so many variables here, you can even choose different kinds of dice.
It's when you finally accrue the points and enter the Strategy function that the game starts getting interesting. This is what you've probably seen the most of in screenshots -- an isometric map with monsters on it. That's because, when you finally get to buy one of your cards, you get to turn them into a monster that you drop onto the battlefield via a tetrad block. This provides some strategy, since some monsters move certain ways or provide different services (like more defense for your own wizard standing at the back). You have to think about where you'll put your beast's block where they'll fit (while still touching one of your own blocks to grow off of) and still be of some use to your offensive.
But this is where the game starts to fall apart. So you place these menacing monsters on a grid, and you'd like to march them into battle against your foe. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. In some games, pieces have limited moves. In this game, only a few limited monsters have a few limited moves while being further limited by being only able to move once every few turns. It's terribly frustrating to put a Dragon two feet away from an Ogre, then being forced 15 turns or so before you can have them battle.
The confusion about how to play doesn't just extend to the gamer. Even the computer seems to be lost in the game's interface. For some reason, it doesn't tell you which pieces are ready to do something important, so you have to bounce between them all (using the R shoulder button or the cursor) to find what's going on. You have to constantly scan the field to get simple tactical info. And so does the computer -- you watch it bounce between pieces and then suddenly realize there's nothing to do. And then it's your turn to do nothing. At some point, the battlefield is too full to put in new monsters, and then everybody's screwed, just sitting around and waiting for something to happen.
We expected the depth of this game from the qualified developers at KCEJ (home of Kojima and many other great minds), but figured the gameplay would be more involving. Sure, there were things that would have made it more fun that I missed in the options, but I spent hours with this thing... on the same game! It was just a continuous stalemate, and when I finally spent enough energy to get into a battle, I didn't have enough battle experience to know that a Dragon's fire breath bounces off the armor of the Slug-Thing. So I die. It was a visually sharp game from KCEJ in many instances -- sharp battlegrounds and some nice effects in the battles, but there was nothing going on with the monster's animation, and the dice rounds and cards were actually blurry for some reason. You spent just about all your time in these menus, and yet the graphics are not only weakest here, but they work against players who are trying to figure out what the heck monster it is they're choosing! If you can't tell if you're sending in a Centaur or a Skull Head, then how are you supposed to plan for a battle with the Mushroom Tree?
|Language Barrier: Japanese menus and Japanese gameplay. If you don't know the game of Yugioh, consider this game useless to you. Don't import.
First Impressions: How many hours have I played, and yet STILL nothing's happened besides one or two battles? Too much waiting, too few moves in a play to be strategic. Maybe I just didn't get it, but if I didn't get it, neither did the game's AI. Some dull graphics don't help. Don't import.
-- Marc Nix
Though this game is currently only available in Japan, it and the Game Boy Advance system can be purchased at import videogame sources such as Upstate Games. | <urn:uuid:0cf56138-47e3-410d-aa41-04b9de82b580> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ign.com/articles/2001/03/29/first-impressions-yugioh-dungeondice-monsters | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976462 | 1,473 | 1.59375 | 2 |
» Syndicated from TimeOutMom
Summer is upon us! School is letting out all across North America this month. You know what? Summer can also slip away fast and you can end up at the end of the summer wondering “What did we do?” “What school starts next week?” “Didn’t we want to go here or go there or do that?”
While I do believe in lots of fun free unplanned time in the summer for kids just to be free. I am also a planner at heart and love that free time within an overall structure. Last year, I came up with a plan for our family of how everyone could have input on how we were going to spend our summer having lots of fun.
SUPPLIES: Purchase two large poster boards; either foam core or thick cardboard. I know you could do this all modern-like on the computer, but trust me, it’s more fun and interactive with poster board and markers. This task is so much fun to generate ideas and brainstorm on big surfaces everyone can see at once with colorful markers and crayons. Plus you are going to put these up somewhere like the mud room or family office to keep on track this summer.
Step One: Plan out scope of summer
There are only so many days in the summer and that is immovable. Writing out all of the days of your summer is very important to this process. It was interesting to see that when there are only 97 days from June 1st to September 5th that includes 10 weekends, how this affects the planning process. This is very finite and this allows you to see a picture that only so much can be done in this time frame and not everything every single person wants to do can be done.
So write out each and every day of your summer in the following format: Monday, June 1st. The days of the week are important when planning around any parents that work and even getting deals and specials on weekdays at hotels or venues. Also, write in any activities that have already been planned at this point like summer camp or day camps or visits to relatives. Once this is done all the way through Monday, September 3rd (Labor Day), put this board aside.
Step Two: Brainstorming
Take this next poster board and divide it into columns – one column per person in the house. Be sure to include each and every person – parents and kids of all ages. We want to know what dad wants to do and even what a two or three year old wants to do. My youngest was 3.5 last summer and is 4.5 now and he sure has a whole lot of input on our family activities and what he wants to do!
Ask each person to write down or dictate to you every single thing they hope to do this summer that will fit in that column. This could be anything from going to the beach, to running through the sprinkler, to going on a picnic, to bigger things like going camping or to an amusement park. If you have any creative people in your house they may even want to add drawings/pictures next to their activities for fun and to help out the pre-readers. Have fun sharing, wishing, and dreaming!
Once everyone is done filling up their columns, ask each person to back to the board and circle their top top three things that if you were sitting around on Labor Day in September looking back on the summer… they would be most happy that they did that summer.
Step Three: Creating the Plan
So, now that you have everyone’s top three activities, see and discuss if these are feasible this summer within your family’s budget and overall vacation time for any working parents. Really listen to what your kids want and make sure they understand what is involved with some of the bigger trips and how that may influence the overall budget of the summer.
One mom I know was actually planning a big vacation using the entire summer’s budget going somewhere “big time” and then after she did this activity with the entire family. The kids really wanted to do much simpler and more frequent weekend-type getaways like camping!
Now, it’s time to marry the agreed upon activities with the actual structure of the dog days of the summer. So pull out your board with the actual days and dates available and write in when you are going to do those activities. You may need to re-group for this process if there are hotel arrangements to be made or work time to request off.
Post both poster boards up in a central location like your kitchen, or your mud room, or even your office. I post both and never throw away the brainstorming board because it’s great to see everyone’s individual ideas and you never know when you have some unexpected bandwidth to do something additional in the summer. Then you can just go over to the original brainstorming board and pick something from it.
The End Result
What we found is that there are good intentions and lots of wishes at the start of the summer, but what can we really do in ONE summer? How can we really do a variety of things for a variety of ages in our house? Now every single person in the family provided their ideas and input and we made sure that we did activities from each person’s wish list. Your summer plan can now be one that is realistic, successful, and filled with lots of fun!
What fun summer activities do you have planned for this summer? Have you asked each one of your children of all ages what THEY want to do this summer?
- Learning to Take Care of Yourself…. by Mandy
- Goldie Schon by For Crying Out Loud
- Tolerating Your Marriage by Mandy
- The Melnick Model of Joint Custody by John-Paul Boyd
- Having An Emotional Affair by Mandy
- Don’t Stay Married For The Sake Of Your Kids by Mandy
- Mobile Shared Co-Parenting Tools by The OFW® Blog
- Wisdom From Divorce: Ready To Meet Fabulous People by Mandy
- Want To Make Your Child’s Wedding Day Happier? by Guest
- Stephanie Escajeda by For Crying Out Loud
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A Word from our Sponsors | <urn:uuid:8ec37f17-6e34-410a-b9ce-dbd8192ca6de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bestforthekids.ca/family-time/kids-summer-activities-creating-a-plan-for-summer-fun | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965079 | 1,305 | 1.835938 | 2 |
A coroner has launched a blistering attack on the rules governing the reporting of suicide and has implored the Government to change legislation in his findings into the deaths of five young Maori men and women from the Eastern Bay of Plenty.
The findings related to the deaths of Jordan Leigh Gray, 17, Kelly Haze Karekare, 17, Te Horoto Araroa, 16, Alex Junior Taku Mahuta, 17, and Tegan McGregor, 20, all from Kawerau.
All died in the same manner between October 2010 and February 2011.
Bay of Plenty Regional Coroner Wallace Bain and youth suicide expert Candy Cookson-Cox found the deaths were not a cluster, but there was a cultural aspect to them.
Dr Cookson-Cox praised the people of Kawerau and the people involved for the "concerted effort" they had made to address the suicide issue.
Dr Bain said that in 2006, after suicide tragedies in the Waikato town of Putaruru, legislation was tightened around what could be reported on suicides.
"The Coroner highlights real concerns with the recent editorial in the New Zealand Medical Journal which greatly criticises the calls for more openness.
"Sir Peter Gluckman's views are referred to as leading to caution in the area of publication and the high risk of copy-cat suicides."
Dr Bain was concerned at claims by experts that there may be increased risks of suicide in New Zealand and said it was "alarming" that experts were suggesting that more openness could facilitate more suicides.
"The coroner stresses that these matters be resolved urgently within New Zealand so that coroners, the media, and communities of New Zealand have a clearer direction based on international best practice in suicide prevention as to publication and openness and the effects of suicidal behaviour."
He recommended the Government urgently put in place an evaluation aimed at assessing the extent of recent changes to media guidelines and its effect on suicidal behaviours.
Dr Bain also recommended the Government give urgent attention to the aspects in the Coroners Act that related to the definition of the "manner in which death occurred".
He said there should be more clarity around the direction to coroners that they could not allow publication unless they determined it was unlikely to be detrimental to public safety.
Last month Chief Coroner Neil Maclean called for suicide be "brought out of the shadows".
Judge Maclean said suicide had to be brought out of the shadows and he was worried by the increases in certain demographics.
"I am concerned that we seem to be making no impact - there has been no visible downward trend at all. Our job is to tell the public the facts - I am no more qualified to suggest an answer or a solution than anyone," he said.
Earlier this month, Coroner Sue Johnson urged the Ministry of Health conduct a national media campaign to throw light on how to recognise and deal with a suicidal person.
Prime Minister John Key has said youth suicide statistics are damning and the Government needed to do better.
the number of suicides recorded by the Coronial Services Unit in the year to June 30 was 547, down 11 on the previous 12 months;
74 per cent of all suicides in New Zealand were male;
increase in suicides in the 15-19 age group - from 56 to 80; and
28 per cent of people who killed themselves were unemployed.
Source: Coronial Services Unit
Where to get help
If it's an emergency and you feel you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
Youthline: 0800 376 633.
Lifeline: 0800 543 354.
Depression: Helpline 0800 111 757.
What's Up: 0800 942 8787 (noon-midnight). | <urn:uuid:cd485e6c-5be9-4ed9-a4a9-6e47daa01449> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nzherald.co.nz/news/print.cfm?objectid=10843193 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964101 | 772 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Bill Short wasn't worried about how he'd finance FiberTech, the Atlanta-area fiber optics company he wanted to purchase. The former banking professional had stellar credit and enough money to make a sizable down payment on the business, which was priced in the "low seven figures."
The rest, he imagined, he'd borrow. But when Short applied for an SBA loan, he was told the government body required at least 10 percent of the deal to be financed by the seller. Although Short hadn't considered taking a loan from the seller, he was happy to comply if the terms were right.
"Seller financing helps get the deal done," says Kent Reed, owner of Murphy Business & Financial Corporation, the brokerage firm that worked with Short. "It helps the buyer with less out of pocket. And it gives them more confidence in the deal if the seller's got some skin in the game."
Short wound up making a 40 percent down payment on FiberTech, borrowing 50 percent of the additional funds through an SBA loan and the remaining 10 percent from the seller. "It helped me to not have to put in that additional 10 percent," Short says. With the extra cash, he was able to boost the company's marketing efforts, invest in vehicles and equipment and ramp up staff from 14 to 20.
Since purchasing FiberTech in March 2011, Short has seen revenue increase by about 20 percent. We asked him for details of his seller financing deal.
Is the seller still involved with the business?
I bought 100 percent of the company from him, but he did agree to work as a consultant on an as-needed basis. For the most part, I haven't needed to engage him. But he still has a vested interest in the company until we pay off the note. That's one of the positives about seller financing: If a seller isn't willing to give you any financing, that might tell you something about what he thinks of the deal.
Is it important to have a good rapport with the previous owner?
When you are introduced to somebody who is trying to sell a company, one of the first questions out of your mouth is always, "Why do you want to sell?" As you go through the due-diligence process, you pretty quickly figure out what's going on. At some point you have to ask, "Do I trust this person, or don't I?"
What are your repayment terms?
It's basically a three-year, fixed-rate note. I make semiannual payments. Over three years, I'll pay him principal and 5.75 percent interest every six months.
How did your broker help negotiate this deal?
The broker spoke with the seller to let him know that it was normal in a transaction of this size for the seller to take back some of the note. It wasn't like it just came out of the blue from me. So the seller was probably anticipating that might be part of the offer. Now, if I came back and said, "I need 80 percent financing because I can't get any bank financing," I doubt he would have taken the deal. There were other people interested in the company at the time. I was only asking for 10 percent of the deal, and he gets full payout in three years, so I think he thought that was reasonable.
What advice would you offer to others interested in seller financing?
I strongly recommend that you have that conversation very early on to see if seller financing is an option. It really can make or break the deal. It might allow you to pay a little bit more for the company. For somebody who doesn't have access to a lot of capital, you could structure it so that if the company does well, the seller might even get a little bit of a scrape on the profits. Just don't make the note so short that you can't reasonably repay it. If you can't pay everything back, you may end up giving the company back. | <urn:uuid:79b77545-d259-4c1b-8748-1c31167343f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224458?cam=Dev&ctp=Carousel&cdt=27&cdn=224458 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985984 | 810 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Pearson, professor of musicology and trumpet at Winthrop, also directs the Collegium Musicum, an early music instrumental consort that performs at the annual Madrigal Feaste.
He studied trumpet with Terry Schwartz at Wheaton College, Ill., Keith Amstutz at the University of South Carolina, and Vincent Dimartino at the University of Kentucky, where he also received his Ph.D. in musicology in 1992.
His research interests include such topics as 18th-century German aesthetics, the evolution of 19th-century instrumental genres, and various other topics related to the history of brass instruments. His research has been published in the International Trumpet Guild Journal, The Instrumentalist, Music Research Forum, and VIII New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century.
In 1981 and 1983, Pearson traveled with a brass quintet in West Germany. While completing his formal education (1985-1992), his interests expanded to include historical performance practice from the Renaissance to the present. He has played recorder, krummhorn, and cornetto as a member of the Collegium Musicum at the University of Kentucky. As a member of Saxton's Cornet Band, he has performed solos on an 1862 pinched-rotary valve cornet at the Brass Band Festival in Danville, Ky. He is a featured soloist on the CD Saxton's Cornet Band: Live July 4th Concert at The Old Courthouse, St. Louis (1997). Pearson participated in the making of the movie Gettysburg (1992) and can be heard playing at the request of President Lincoln in the TNT made-for-TV movie The Day Lincoln Was Shot (1998).
Pearson's solo CD, The Festive Trumpet (Americus Records, 1998), contains previously unrecorded contemporary music for trumpet and organ. He performs regularly in various musical productions in the greater Charlotte, N.C., area. His professional affiliations include the International Trumpet Guild, American Musicological Society, Pi Kappa Lambda, and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. | <urn:uuid:5d22d546-6d3f-4923-a4a5-9e428110fbe4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.winthrop.edu/cvpa/faculty/default.aspx?id=12834 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948675 | 418 | 1.523438 | 2 |
As part of her push to increase Baltimore's population, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake plans to introduce legislation to the City Council next week that will provide generous tax breaks to builders of apartment buildings downtown and in six other neighborhoods.
"It will promote development in areas right now where the market might not have the proper stimulus," said Bill Henry, vice chairman of the City Council's taxation committee.
The tax credit proposal is one of Rawlings-Blake's most direct legislative efforts to increase the population and could prove to be a significant tool to reinvigorate underused buildings and stagnating sections of the city. Opponents wonder whether it is the best method of addressing high property taxes and if subsidizing residences is a smart move during austere times.
The legislation, which Rawlings-Blake is expected to introduce Monday, will provide a declining abatement over 15 years to developers of market-rate apartment buildings with 50 or more units, according to a memo the mayor's office recently sent to council members.
In the first two years following the issuance of an occupancy permit for the building, property taxes would be abated 100 percent. By year 13, the abatement would drop down to 20 percent. In between, the abatement would step down in 10 percentage point increments.
The credit would be available for buildings in a large swath of the city center and parts of Coldspring, Jonestown, Poppleton and Reservoir Hill. Portions of the high-traffic corridors of Belair and York roads also will be included.
The bill is being introduced under a Maryland law that allows jurisdictions to offer tax credits for buildings that are environmentally friendly, so any property receiving the credit must achieve a certification of LEED silver or higher.
Rawlings-Blake first floated the tax credit idea at the annual meeting of the Downtown Partnership in October as a way to boost occupancy downtown by converting commercial buildings to residential use. The partnership released a study last year that indicated strong demand for apartments in the city's core.
City Councilman Carl Stokes, who chairs the council's taxation committee, said he likes the current proposal, with its addition of some areas outside of downtown, better than the original. He plans to hold a hearing on the bill in early March, he said.
"The mayor wanted to find ways to extend this opportunity to beyond downtown," said Ryan O'Doherty, spokesman for Rawlings-Blake. "We did a careful analysis and looked at potential growth areas, and the mayor decided to make this inclusive of those neighborhood corridors."
City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young said he hopes the program expands to other neighborhoods, but acknowledged big apartment buildings wouldn't be a great fit in every part of Baltimore.
"We hear from citizens all the time: 'All y'all focus on is downtown. How about economic development in our neighborhoods?' So, this is very encouraging," Young said.
Christopher B. Summers, chairman of the conservative Maryland Public Policy Institute, said he would have preferred to see an across-the-board property tax cut for all city residents, a sentiment that Stokes echoed.
"They're letting government pick the winners and losers," Summers said.
The city's high property taxes are the real problem, agreed David Hillman, the head of Southern Management Corp., which developed and runs several luxury apartment buildings downtown using tax abatements that were negotiated individually.
But he likes the idea of taking the politics out of the process of getting an abatement and hopes legislation will give the city time to find a broader fix for its property tax troubles.
Providing tax breaks only to market-rate buildings also is likely to elicit criticism during the legislative process. Stokes said he would only support the bill if it mandated some affordable units.
The idea of giving tax breaks to market-rate units is "counterintuitive," said Mike McGuire, a community activist and builder. "These tax benefits are really just a cherry on top to make it more profitable," he said. | <urn:uuid:0d9fa43b-fa3d-4b49-b039-6c9bcbb95bd1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/real-estate/wonk/bs-bz-apartment-abatement-20130124,0,7096303.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966783 | 825 | 1.664063 | 2 |
SINCE the second iteration of Apple's svelte iPad tablet computer was unveiled to the public a little over a week ago, the blogosphere has been abuzz with predictions about the demise of the PC. With more than 100 tablet devices from over 60 different manufacturers now scrambling for a piece of the market that the original iPad staked out a year ago, pundits have been writing epitaphs for makers of laptops and other personal computers.
No question that Apple—having sold an estimated 17m iPads over the past 12 months—has put a serious dent in laptop sales, its own as much as any other maker's. Following the iPad 2's announcement on March 2nd (it goes on sale today, March 11th), Gartner, a technology research company based in Stamford, Connecticut, promptly slashed its forecast for this year's growth in worldwide laptop sales from 25% to less than 15%. Analysts expect some 50m tablet computers of various shapes and sizes will be shipped in 2011.
But your correspondent thinks talk of a “post-PC era” is rubbish. The phrase, uttered most famously by an ailing Steve Jobs during his brief appearance at the launch of the iPad 2, is typical of the caustic hyperbole computerdom has come to expect from Apple's iconoclastic leader. The surge in tablet sales signifies not the end of an era, but the emergence of yet another form-factor for personal computing—as happens every decade or so.
First there were just desktop computers. Then luggable laptops were added, followed by slimmer notebooks and, more recently, lightweight netbooks joined the fray. Along the way, various attempts have been made to get users to embrace tablet and palmtop computers as well. Overall, however, the PC has continued to follow its evolutionary trajectory from a 50lb (23kg) lump that dominated the desktop to a 1.5lb device that can be cradled in one arm or curled up with in bed.
Why now, when all previous attempts to introduce tablet or palmtop computers have fallen flat on their touch-screen faces? Your correspondent has toted both at one time or another, and admits they were hobbled by their clunky touch-screens, flaky operating systems and inability to cram enough computational horsepower within their diminutive form-factors while maintaining a useful enough battery life. Since then, however, smartphones—the natural inheritors of the palmtop mantle—have licked all those problems and more.
Take the latest generation of low-power gigahertz processors based on designs licensed from ARM Holdings of Cambridge, Britain, and used in mobile phones everywhere—and now in iPads and over half of all the other tablet computers on the market or about to be launched. The ARM processor is an advanced “reduced instruction-set computer” (RISC) that can trace its origins back to the MOS 6502 chip used by Acorn, a British computer maker, back in the early 1980s. ARM (short for Advanced RISC Machines) was spun out of Acorn in 1990, to create RISC processors that consumed little power for Apple and other customers. To date, over 15 billion ARM-based processors have been shipped by the company's 200 or so licensees.
ARM's attraction is that it owes no allegiance whatsoever to Intel's x86 architecture. As such, ARM processors incur no royalty fees to Intel. Nor do they need to be backwardly compatible with the x86 instruction set used by Intel processors and workalike chips from AMD and others. That is the key to the design's low power consumption.
Because modern x86 processors use far more efficient instruction sets than their ancestors, Intel chips nowadays include additional circuitry to translate their new instructions so that they can interpret legacy software. This extra circuitry means more transistors generating yet more heat. Not only do the chips themselves gobble power as a result, but they also need special cooling fans to keep their temperatures within their operating range, consuming yet more energy in the process. The result is that portable devices using them either require bigger batteries or suffer from a shorter life between charges.
By comparison, ARM processors are smaller and run at temperatures low enough not to need forced cooling. That makes them ideal for the cramped innards of smartphones and other handheld gizmos. Devices that use them get longer battery life. The processor in the iPad 2 has a pair of ARM cores working in tandem that deliver 10 hours of continuous use between charges. According to management consultants PRTM, three out of five tablets about to hit the market will use similar ARM-based processors.
But processors are not the only thing tablet computers have borrowed freely from smartphones. Thanks to innovations made by suppliers, touch-screens capable of displaying high-definition video have come down in price dramatically. Nowadays, ten-inch displays (like those used in the iPad and Motorola's Xoom) cost around $65 apiece; seven-inch versions can be had for less than $50.
In a similar vein, practically all tablet computers announced so far use operating systems developed originally for smartphones. The iPad's is based on iOS, the iPhone's operating system. Meanwhile, more than half of the other tablets being rushed to market have adopted the latest version (Honeycomb) of Google's free Android operating system. A quarter have licensed the Windows Phone 7 operating system from Microsoft. As for applications, the vast majority of tablet computers run software likewise written originally for smartphones. Apple's suppliers have already adapted some 60,000 programs (out of 350,000 iPhone programs offered by its App Store) for the iPad's much larger screen. After a slow start, Android apps for tablet-sized screens are now multiplying fast.
All this means that, compared with laptops, the price of entry to the tablet market is extraordinary low. As a consequence, nimble newcomers could well gobble up the business before established brands can get their acts together. The new entrants are going to have a significant impact on how established brands like Asus, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu, Toshiba and Samsung have traditionally marked up their digital goods—with retail prices typically set at three times the cost of manufacture. Needing next to no research and development, and with all the software free, back-street manufacturers around the globe will be able to enter the tablet business with only modest up-front costs. So, expect a bloodbath in pricing as dozens of low-cost Chinese assemblers crank out knockoffs galore for western retailers.
Your correspondent believes the tablet computer is on the verge of becoming the fastest product in the history of consumer electronics to be commoditised. It took little more than a year for e-readers to go from being premium products costing well over $300 to selling for $100 or less. Sharing many of the same components, but with vastly more suppliers bidding for a piece of the action, tablets will suffer even greater price attrition.
Despite its special charms and famously loyal customers, even Apple will feel the pinch. At least, the iPad maker has room to accommodate lower prices. A loaded iPad selling for $729 costs roughly $245 to produce, according to market researcher iSuppli. The same goes for Motorola's $799 Xoom, which is reckoned to cost the maker $278. But both contain high-end features that mainstream users will happily forgo in favour of rock-bottom pricing. As such, they are destined to become niche products for a minority willing to pay top dollar for bragging rights and other cravings.
Last weekend, your correspondent saw a harbinger of things to come—a perfectly competent Android tablet with a seven-inch screen selling at a local electronics chain for $139. He was almost tempted to buy one. The only thing preventing him from making an impulse purchase was the certainty that many more models would shortly be available at even lower prices. His silent prayer to the Chinese: send in the iPad clones! | <urn:uuid:72543cb6-c3f3-49a9-ade6-1fb0331e3902> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/03/tablet_computers_0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953525 | 1,626 | 1.664063 | 2 |
After Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency bought $85 million worth of basic personal and household goods for the storm's victims. For at least two years, FEMA warehoused it all - towels, shirts, pants, shoes, coffee makers, pillowcases, dinnerware, plastic food containers, cleaning supplies, etc. - at a cost to taxpayers of an additional $2 million-plus.
Throughout that period, nonprofit relief agencies in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama made repeated public pleas for donations of those sorts of items. ... But FEMA kept all its stuff under lock and key because "we were not notified that there was a great need for this particular property," a spokeswoman told CNN.
Thousands of Gulf Coast residents still could use some or all of those items. ... Mercifully, FEMA came to its senses and gave all the goods to people in need, and everyone lived happily ever after.
Just kidding; with a stroke of a pen, FEMA officials declared the $85 million in goods government surplus and distributed it to federal agencies and governments in 16 states, which gave the stuff away to bureaucrats, college professors and prisoners, among others.
FEMA officials expressed surprise and outrage after nearly three years of rank incompetence and untold billions in waste and fraud - they have that act down cold and promised a full investigation, meaning they will wait until the scandal disappears from the headlines before throwing some low-level bureaucrat under the bus. | <urn:uuid:5f57062d-a214-4d52-bbc8-c1f6062091bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tvnewslies.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=12268&view=next | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950741 | 289 | 1.84375 | 2 |
(PRWEB) July 04, 2012
As a current topic on game industry lips, it is no surprise that gaming veteran, Codemasters’ co-founder David Darling CBE, has released a blog post about the digital revolution and the fall of game consoles.
Darling wrote his article last night on the website of his new mobile gaming company, Kwalee, labeling games consoles as “old fashioned”.
Darling writes: “Consoles have become like dinosaurs heading for extinction”.
With physical media such as DVD and CDs dying out fast, it is not surprising that gaming is indeed moving to digital distribution, which Darling believes will end the console wars.
He explains, “Sony and Microsoft cannot let the retailers dictate game prices going forwards if they want to break free from the current over-priced model, their next consoles PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 need to be digital only, or they will fail.
“Once Apple add an App Store to Apple TV they could take over the living room games industry like they have taken over the handheld games industry with iPhone with flexible pricing and no distribution costs.”
Darling adds, “[Consoles] must adapt to a new environment where platforms like Steam, Facebook, Apple and Android App Stores are pushing innovation.”
Darling co-founded Codemasters in 1986, focusing on high quality “budget” games for 8-bit home computers. The company released low retail price titles dominating the market in the 80s.
His experience in computer, console, and now mobile gaming, provides Darling with deep knowledge and understanding of game development. Mobile gaming is fast becoming the fastest growing sector of the gaming industry, projected to become an $18 billion industry by 2018.
Darling writes: “Angry Birds has had more than one billion downloads. A sales figure totally beyond what can be achieved by boxed games. Giants like Apple and Google are taking over as the industry is transitioning from boxed to digital games.”
Mobile gaming is a demanding market, with an increase of smartphone owners. Consumers are beginning to abandon their consoles and divert their budgets from paying $50 on a boxed product, to a free or $1 games with optional in-app purchases.
Darling comments on the advantages of free-to-play games:
“Players can play more games for free and pay just for the content that they want.”
Darling adds, “Digitally distributed games can reach players all around the world quickly, cutting out physical production, warehouses, distributors and retailers. Therefore, it is no longer necessary to charge people huge prices to play video games.”
Arguably, Darling debates the importance of game reviews. If a game can be downloaded and played for free, will you have a need for game reviews when you can try the game yourself for free? He states to have learnt what players want, going to great lengths to produce exciting games, with a number of creative and ambitious multiplayer turn-based games under development.
“After all, digital distribution is only a delivery method. The important thing is making great games”
David Darling’s new company Kwalee, based in the centre of the Silicon Spa gaming community in Leamington Spa, focuses on social multiplayer mobile games. With iOS and Android devices offering gamers with numerous features that consoles can’t – such as touchscreen, cameras, GPS, accelerometers, built-in microphones etc. – like other developers, Kwalee’s games would not work on the console market.
To read David Darling’s full blog post, follow the link: http://kwalee.com/2012/07/03/jurassic-consoles/
Kwalee recently launched their latest iOS game, Pussy Flip, which is due to be available globally on the Apple App Store next month, unsurprisingly for free.
For more information and recent updates about Pussy Flip, visit facebook.com/flipkwalee
About: Kwalee is a company based in Leamington Spa that develop and publish social multiplayer games for iPhone and other mobile devices. Founded by David Darling CBE, co-founder of Codemasters, with decades of experience at the top level of the video game industry and contributions to many #1 games on numerous platforms in his CV. Kwalee is different. We seek to excite and entertain our customers with innovative new products that provide special experiences. Our ethos is based around a set of core values that put the customer first and which harness the creative skills of our staff to the maximum in order to do so. Kwalee is always very actively looking for those special people who want to join us in our exciting journey.
Check out kwalee.com for more information, Like us on facebook.com/kwaleeteam and follow us @kwaleeteam | <urn:uuid:8a5791ee-4a2a-4b47-9110-332d93990d3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/7/prweb9667247.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942307 | 1,017 | 1.828125 | 2 |
The National Corn Growers Association expressed severe disappointment today that the Senate allowed petty politics to trump prudent policy in the fight for the future of the ethanol industry. The passage of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s amendment to immediately repeal the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit represents a tax increase on fuel that will kill jobs in rural America and hit all consumers in the pocketbook, NCGA says.
“Today the Senate voted against rural America and domestic, renewable energy – and in favor of more foreign oil,” NCGA President Bart Schott, a grower from Kulm, ND, says. “Sen. Feinstein has unfairly hit at the heart of an important agricultural industry while remaining unified with subsidy-laden Big Oil.”
Schott points out that one comprehensive report found that subsidies for the oil industry total up to $280 billion annually, representing up to $2/gal. of gasoline. A recent legislative effort to eliminate $2 billion of these oil subsidies went nowhere in Congress, he notes, after organizations like the National Taxpayers Union painted it as a tax increase.
The ethanol industry supports more than 400,000 U.S. jobs, contributing more than $56 billion each year to the nation’s economy and $11 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue, Schott says.
“Last year, 81 senators voted to extend the blender’s credit for one year to allow us to move forward with a proposal to reform these incentives,” Schott says. “We have proposed such legislation and have shown a willingness to work with all parties on a solution, and we thank the senators who stood by their vote last year and stood by us in this week’s effort.”
Also Thursday, in a victory for corn growers and the ethanol industry, the Senate rejected a proposed amendment by Sen. John McCain that would have prevented the USDA from providing grants for blender pumps.
“This is good news because we want to do all we can to encourage fuel choice,” Schott says. “Blender pumps provide options for those with flex-fuel vehicles and can help the ethanol industry grow in the years to come.” | <urn:uuid:7d7a7b6f-bcb2-43e9-96f3-975a3a939eab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cornandsoybeandigest.com/energy/ncga-disappointed-politics-trumped-policy-ethanol-vote | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940892 | 453 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Gift: Wisdom- With the gift of wisdom, we see God at work in our lives and in the world. For the wise person, the wonders of nature, historical events, and the ups and downs of our lives take on deeper meaning. The matters of judgment about the truth, and being able to see the image of God.
Reading: Arise and go down to the potter’s house; there you will hear my word. (Jeremiah 18:2)
Observation: I missed this reading at Mass this morning, and for the first time in a long time, I hadn’t actually read the readings before Mass. We had a meeting with the young adults and chaperones from the Steubenville Youth Conference that we attended last weekend at our Pastor’s house and I got home about 10:30pm. I was pretty tired this morning, so I didn’t wake up until about an hour before Mass. My Dad and I were talking about the discussion from last night, and time just got away from me. Anyway, the reading is telling me that I need to be ready for what God is revealing to me in the places that I am called to go today.
Personification: Peace It is the fruit of peace that I hope to display in the times that I stand in front of God’s creation today. Wherever God may call me today, I hope I can remember that it is not only His creation, but the message of salvation for all who believe is present in it. Peace begins with a smile…
Prayer: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Help me to share that peace with everyone I meet today. I ask this, as always, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit. Amen. | <urn:uuid:f8456d46-64cb-413c-9e95-729e0134ea65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://catholicjournaling.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966705 | 376 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Posted by Kerry Bodine on September 14, 2012
Henry Ford purportedly quipped that if he had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said, “a faster horse.” It’s a well-trod line, one that’s guaranteed to receive nods and chuckles in any business meeting. We can all relate. After all, nothing’s really changed since Ford’s time. Customers today still can’t tell us exactly what they want or imagine products and services that don’t currently exist. No one in 2009, for example, was screaming for a computer that was smaller than a laptop and bigger than a phone — and yet the iPad has become one of the most successful consumer devices on the planet, spawning dozens of copycats.
But here’s the problem: Ford’s quote is a cop out. It bolsters our self-serving belief that we know what’s best for our customers. We hide behind Ford’s lesson, using it to justify our decision to not ask customers what they really want or need. Perhaps this approach worked in the early 1900s. But today, in the age of the customer, the balance of power has shifted from companies to consumers — and companies can no longer afford to make business decisions based on what they think they know about their customers.
One of the most effective ways to make sure you’re delivering products, services, and experiences that meet your customers’ needs is to actually bring them into your design process. I know this can sound like a shocking suggestion, so let me say it again. You should ask your customers to work with you on developing potential solutions to their biggest pain points. Designers call this co-creation.
I’ll admit it. Most people aren’t great at envisioning the future. (That’s why visionaries like Steve Jobs stand out.) But when they’re face-to-face with your design team, customers can provide valuable input, including firsthand accounts of what they need and want, the seeds of ideas for others to build upon, and feedback that can be incorporated into prototypes in real time. If Ford had taken the time to ask his customers what they wanted, in addition to “faster horses,” they probably would have told him they wanted to sit in more comfortable saddles, stay dry while traveling in rainstorms, and carry multiple suitcases with them. Their ideas, plus rapid iterations of prototyping and customer testing, might have gotten Ford to his Model T (or, perhaps, something better) even sooner.
So why don’t more companies practice co-creation? Many reject the idea outright because they fear they’re going to wind up with their own version of “The Homer,” the car that Homer Simpson designed when he got a job at his half-brother’s car company. With two glass domes, shag carpeting, and three horns that play the song “La Cucaracha,” this monstrosity of a vehicle looked like a cross between a spaceship and a Bentley. Not surprisingly, the car flopped, and the cartoon automaker went down with it.
But co-creation doesn’t mean kowtowing to every last customer wish and demand. If that was the case, we’d call it customer creation instead. Co-creation, when done well, will help you find solutions that meet you customers’ needs while also supporting your business objectives.
In our new book, Outside In, my coauthor Harley Manning and I describe how Fidelity Charitable used co-creation to explore ways to improve the mobile and online donor experience. In a single-day workshop, the company’s employees got just one hour to create pen-and-paper prototypes for ideas that they thought would fill a particular donor need. Charitable donors then joined the group for a mocked-up fundraising cocktail party (complete with virgin cocktails) that enabled them to test out the prototypes in a realistic setting. Through this process, the Fidelity Charitable team got multiple rounds of feedback that catalyzed it into action and focused the work on the most valuable solutions. | <urn:uuid:03b5cc20-642c-4792-b488-e22d9c6edca7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.forrester.com/kerry_bodine/12-09-14-co_create_great_experiences_with_your_customers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963514 | 872 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Torrential rain and hail the size of golf ball struck north-western China this weekend. Roads were blocked, houses collapsed, farmland destroyed and power supplies and telecommunications services disrupted by the extreme weather, said Xu Guangyao, director of the county's civil affairs bureau.
From China's Hunan province came reports that a bridge has collapsed. It is unknown how many people were on the bridge when it buckled and fell into the river at around 8:30am (local time).
Fire department official Su Tao told Xinhua that witnesses say they saw people falling into the water when the bridge collapsed. He says firefighters have not rescued anyone yet but some people have managed to climb ashore.
Nearly 3,500 homes have been destroyed, and about 29,000 people are sheltering in evacuation centres. Relief teams are said to have reached the affected area in Minxian county.
County officials said many roads had been blocked, homes destroyed and farmland ruined by the rainstorms.
The downpours were said to have lasted only about an hour but brought up to 70mm of rain in some parts.
Some 2,000 officials and 800 military personnel have been deployed to bring blankets and other relief materials to the affected zones.
The death toll had risen to 42 and 17 others remained missing as of 4 p.m. Sunday, May 13, 2012 after hail and torrential rains battered a mountainous county in northwest China, authorities said late Sunday.
The storms had affected 358,000 people in Minxian county, Gansu province, forcing the evacuation of nearly 30,000 local residents. Another 87 people had been hospitalized.
More rains are expected to hit the county on Monday, according to the local weather bureau.
Article is taken from: http://www.arknow.net/
Torrential rain and hail the size of golf balls brought death and destruction to northwest China | <urn:uuid:cd4612e4-e5ff-4034-956f-df87d466a358> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.geochange-report.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=187:torrential-rain-and-hail-the-size-of-golf-balls-brought-death-and-destruction-to-northwest-china&catid=39:latest-news&Itemid=57 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975076 | 385 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Capricorn is widely misunderstood to be ONE RIGID way because of Saturn, their planetary ruler. Most Capricorn’s in general tend to be somewhat reserved upon first meeting and appears aloof and even unfriendly, but in truth it’s because to please someone they do not know is not important to them.
It’s quite different when you are actively involved in a Capricorn’s life, though. They want their friends and family to be happy and will do anything in their power to help. Although our Rising sign has a large part in the kind of impression we make, Capricorn’s in general tend to make impressions that leave people thinking that Cap’s are one way, when they aren’t. Many people are VERY surprised to learn of a Cap’s true personality after taking the time to get to know them.
Common misconceptions are that they are always irritated, workaholics, cold, and manipulative. While all signs have their negatives, a lot of this given to the fact that Cap’s have a strong dislike of small talk, bs, liars, and frivolity—and it can offend people on a social level.
The side we don’t always see is how much they love their families, that they’re animal lovers, caring, giving, generous(to an extent), hugely creative, loyal friends and people, a strong moral code, and usually a wicked sense of humor.
To feel less misunderstood would be rather hard because that would mean changing the way you may naturally interact with people. One word of advice is to think of people that make you feel comforted and happy when communicating with them. What is it that they do that makes you feel that way? Hold on to that feeling and when meeting new people, remember that a smile goes a long way.
You’ll be just fine, deary
If there is one sign out of the entire Zodiac that is almost impossible to convince of something, it is Taurus.
Taurus is a sign that when making up their mind, they prefer to mull over it, take their time, and make sure it’s in their best interest. I wouldn’t say that they cannot be persuaded, but changing their mind about an issue requires time and patience, and knowing that it may never even happen. They can be quite headstrong, and while this usually works in their favor, it can also work against them from time to time.
If you want a Taurus to see your point of view, then that’s a better way of coming across, as opposed to trying to change their mind. Remember to come from a place of logic and sound proof. If it’s theoretical and abstract, or simply cannot be proven to them, it will be difficult for you. Speaking from experience also helps—knowing what you’re talking about— because while they may not change their mind, they will understand where you’re coming from, and be more apt to view you as credible.
I hope this helps, deary xoxo
Virgo’s do not take something to the next level until they feel that they can trust you 100%, that there is security and that they are investing their time wisely, so I’m not surprised about this!
Virgo’s can be possessive only if they feel they need to be, and Gemini’s can make signs that are unlike themselves feel rather jealous, possessive, and insecure. I don’t know all the details between you two, but Gemini and Virgo is a difficult pair to become long-lasting for this very reason.
To gain a Virgo’s trust:
Just make your intentions clear and that this is something you really want. By being sincere and open takes some of the pressure off of him allows him to make a better decision!
Good luck :)
I think Virgo’s have tremendous work ethic and determination to succeed in a competitive and creative field such as acting. You will be subjected to intense criticism but as long as you have your wits about you (and most Virgo’s do), you’ll make it with stable inner strength.
Yes, Capricorn’s can certainly get jealous. They are a possessive sign and are incredibly protective over what is “theirs.”
Of course, the varying degree of this absolutely depends on your personal planet placements in your birth chart, some Cap’s aren’t the jealous type at all (but most are).
Well, when Taurus is comfortable around someone, they show their care for that person in VERY typical ways. In a sense, they are the one of the most affectionate, thoughtful, and caring signs in the Zodiac.
The thing here is they have fine taste and truly put heart behind giving gifts, remembering important dates, and are very physical lovers. Their strongest sense is usually the sense of touch. Venus is their ruler which only adds to this element of being able to understand what other people want and what makes them feel good.
But if a Taurus is unsure about you, they will be standoffish, awkward, or guarded. They like to know before deciding how they feel about someone if it will be worth it for them.
Capricorn Sun + Scorpio Moon
Virgo’s are always associated with organization and being perfectionists. Which is true to an extent, however, sometimes they can be so pushed to be “put together” that they can actually be quite disorganized and all over the place. They excel when life is organized and when they feel prepared, but in their personal lives, it isn’t always the case. | <urn:uuid:82cbd7c5-7b82-4b46-b3f2-f9a64f7cc422> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://enchantedbytheuniverse.tumblr.com/tagged/earth+sign/page/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969084 | 1,203 | 1.570313 | 2 |
An Everlasting Tombstone
I originally intended to title this book The Road to Paradise, but eventually changed it to Tombstone. I had four reasons for choosing this title: the first is to erect a tombstone for my father, who died of starvation in 1959; the second is to erect a tombstone for the thirty- six million Chinese who died of starvation; and the third is to erect a tombstone for the system that brought about the Great Famine. The fourth came to me while I was halfway through writing this book, when a temporary health scare spurred me to complete the book as a tombstone for myself. Although my health concerns were subsequently put to rest, the risk involved in undertaking this project might yet justify its serving as my own tombstone. But, of course, my main intentions are the first three.
A tombstone is memory made concrete. Human memory is the ladder on which a country and a people advance. We must remember not only the good things, but also the bad; the bright spots, but also the darkness. The authorities in a totalitarian system strive to conceal their faults and extol their merits, gloss over their errors and forcibly eradicate all memory of man-made calamity, darkness, and evil. For that reason, the Chinese are prone to historical amnesia imposed by those in power. I erect this tombstone so that people will remember and henceforth renounce manmade calamity, darkness, and evil.
At the end of April 1959, I was spending my after-school hours assembling a May Fourth Youth Day wall newspaper for my school's Communist Youth League. My childhood friend Zhang Zhibai suddenly arrived from our home village of Wanli and told me, "Your father is starving to death! Hurry back, and take some rice if you can." He said, "Your father doesn't even have the strength to strip bark from the trees — he's starved beyond helping himself. He was headed to Jiangjiayan to buy salt to make salt-water, but he collapsed on the way, and some people from Wanli carried him home."
I dropped what I was doing and requested leave from our league secretary and head teacher. Then I collected a three-day meal ration of 1.5 kilos of rice from the school canteen and rushed home. Upon reaching Wanli, I found things radically changed. The elm tree in front of our house had been reduced to a barkless trunk, and even its roots had been dug up and stripped, leaving only a ragged hole in the earth. The pond was dry; neighbors said it had been drained to dredge for rank- tasting mollusks that had never been eaten in the past. There was no sound of dogs barking, no chickens running about; even the children who used to scamper through the lanes remained at home. Wanli was like a ghost town.
Upon entering our home, I found utter destitution; there was not a grain of rice, nothing edible whatsoever, and not even water in the vat. Immobilized by starvation, how would my father have had the strength to fetch water?
My father was half-reclined on his bed, his eyes sunken and lifeless, his face gaunt, the skin creased and flaccid. He tried to extend his hand to greet me, but couldn't lift it, just moving it a little. That hand reminded me of the human skeleton in my anatomy class; although it was covered with a layer of withered skin, nothing concealed the protrusions and hollows of the bone structure. I was shocked with the realization that the term skin and bones referred to something so horrible and cruel. A murmur escaped from his lips, his voice faint as he told me to go quickly, go quickly back to school.
My father had seemed fine just two months earlier — in fact, his legs had already shown signs of edema at the time, but I didn't know it was from malnutrition. He had been in charge of grazing his production team's buffalo. That buffalo was a lovely beast, robust and clean under my father's painstaking care. Although this little buffalo could not speak, its eyes were expressive, by turns intimate, worried, longing, or angry. It was able to communicate with my father through those eyes, and even I understood some of its expressions. Whenever I came back from school, I would ride the buffalo up the hill. Two months earlier my father had sent for me to come home. The production team had secretly slaughtered the buffalo and given our family half a kilo of the meat. Knowing my life was hard at school, my father had called me home to eat the buffalo meat. As soon as I entered the house, I smelled an alluring odor. But my father ate none of the meat. He said he had been too close to the buffalo, there had been an understanding between them, and he couldn't eat the meat. In fact, he was just making an excuse to let me eat all of it. I wolfed it down as he watched, his eyes glowing with kindness. Now I wondered had he eaten that buffalo meat whether his condition might not be so desperate.
I kneaded my father's hand, then hurried off with buckets on a shoulder pole to fill the water vat. Then I grabbed a hoe and went to dig up sprouts from where we had planted peanuts the year before. (The peanut sprouts from the year before had, during the spring, pushed out shoots that were much coarser than bean sprouts. It was said that they contained toxins and were inedible, but even so, they had been almost completely dug up by others.) I dug and dug some more, my heart full of remorse and guilt. Why had I not come back earlier and harvested some wild herbs? Why hadn't I come back earlier with some rice?
But all my self-blame was useless. I boiled congee from the rice I'd brought and took it to my father's bed, but he was no longer able to swallow. Three days later he departed this world.
From Tombstone by Yang Jisheng. Copyright 2012 by Yang Jisheng. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. | <urn:uuid:383e2fc4-c8de-41a3-a002-bf20720c3641> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npr.org/books/titles/164731635/tombstone-the-great-chinese-famine-1958-1962 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989833 | 1,283 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Judge Roy Hrab is suffering many a sleepless night because his dreams are haunted by the memory of watching too many Nickelodeon children's shows back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back.
"It's time for bed! But bedtime is also playtime when you're with your Nick Jr. friends!"
Nickelodeon is of the main sources of television programs for young kids. It airs shows that range from a primarily educational purpose to a principally entertainment focus. Sleepytime Stories is a collection of six episodes from six different Nickelodeon series (from its Nick Jr. and Noggin brands). The title suggests that episodes contained on the DVD will get your child ready for bed. Let's see if that's true. This DVD contains:
"Little Star" (Episode of Dora The Explorer): If you've seen one episode of Dora you've seen them all. In this installment, Dora and her monkey friend, Boots, help Little Star get back into the sky after she falls to earth. They need to get her back so that all earthlings can make a wish upon a star. This episode is connected to sleep by the thinnest of margins.
"Tickety's Favorite Nursery Rhyme" (Episode of Blue's Clues): Blue's clock, Tickety, has a favourite nursery rhyme. It's up to Blue's owner, Steve, and the audience to follow the clues and figure out the rhyme. I think that after Steve gave a thumbs-up to the camera for the fifth time in the episode, I had become annoyed to the point that I wouldn't be able to sleep for a while. I was right. This episode has nothing to do with sleep.
"Save the Three Little Pigs/Save the Owl" (Episode of Wonder Pets): The Wonder Pets are Ming-Ming (duck), Linny (guinea pig), and Tuck (turtle). The trio loves to sing. In this episode, the three pets rescue the Three Little Pigs from the Big Bad Wolf and then help a baby owl lost in a forest. This episode has nothing to do with sleep, although the owl is lost at night time.
"The Music Monster" (Episode of Jack's Big Music Show): There is a very non-scary monster named Henry. He wants to be scary so he can get into his family's photo album. He is assisted in this endeavour by Jack, Mary, and Jack's dog Mel. This episode has nothing to do with sleep. Are you seeing a pattern here?
"Sleep" (Episode of Yo Gabba Gabba!): This is a somewhat surreal and psychedelic show features DJ Lance Rock and his toys that sing and dance and other strange things. But guess what? Surprise! This episode is focused on sleep.
"Sprinkles' Sleepover" (Episode of Blue's Room): Our second surprise! Sprinkles is Blue's little brother and he's having trouble getting to sleep. He and Blue visit the other houseguests to see how each of them gets to sleep with the hope that Sprinkles will be able to find something that suits him.
The content of this release is benign children's fare. However, as the titles imply, only two of the six episodes address the theme of sleep. The other four have little or nothing to do with getting to sleep. Indeed, "The Music Monster" and "Little Star" may do more to get your kids hyped-up than calmed down. On the other hand, "Sleep" contains a couple of good and soothing songs dealing with sleep and "Sprinkles' Sleepover" is a pretty mellow episode.
The sound and video presentation are both crisp and clear and without flaw.
There are no extras.
Overall, there's no point to purchasing this collection if you're looking for a sedative for your kids. Also, the shows on this release contain very little content to keep adults engaged. However, if you're looking for a decent collection of harmless kids' programming then this will do. Just don't watch them all in one sitting, unless you're in the intended age bracket.
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Scales of Justice
• IMDb: Dora The Explorer
Review content copyright © 2008 Roy Hrab; Site design and review layout copyright © 2013 Verdict Partners LLC. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:2c82439d-a1e5-4b7f-85d8-cf811acd0005> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/sleepytimestories.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958524 | 943 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Commentary on the Bible, by Adam Clarke, , at sacred-texts.com
The sentiments of atheists and deists, who deny Divine Providence; their character: they are corrupt, foolish, abominable, and cruel, Psa 53:1-4; God fills them with terror, Psa 53:5; reproaches these for their oppression of the poor, Psa 53:5. The psalmist prays for the restoration of Israel, Psa 53:6.
The title, To the chief Musician upon Mahalath, an instructive Psalm of David. The word מחלת machalath, some translate the president; others, the master or leader of the dance; others, hollow instruments; others, the chorus. A flute pipe, or wind instrument with holes, appears to be what is intended. "To the chief player on the flute;" or, "To the master of the band of pipers."
The fool hath said in his heart - The whole of this Psalm, except a few inconsiderable differences, is the same as the fourteenth; and, therefore, the same notes and analysis may be applied to it; or, by referring to the fourteenth, the reader will find the subject of it amply explained. I shall add a few short notes.
Have done abominable iniquity - Instead of עול avel, evil or iniquity, eight of Kennicott's and De Rossi's MSS. have עלילה alilah, work, which is nearly the same as in Psa xiv.
Have the workers of iniquity - For פעלי, poaley, workers seventy-two of Kennicott's and De Rossi's MSS., with several ancient editions, the Chaldee, though not noticed in the Latin translation in the London Polyglot, the Syriac, Vulgate, Septuagint, Ethiopic, and the Arabic, with the Anglo-Saxon, add the word כל col, all, - All the workers of iniquity; which is the reading in the parallel place in Psa 14:1-7 : It may be necessary to observe, that the Chaldee, in the Antwerp and Paris Polyglots, and in that of Justinianus, has not the word כל col, All.
Have not Called upon God - אלהים Elohim; but many MSS. have יהוה Jehovah, Lord.
For God hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee: thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them - The reader will see, on comparing this with the fifth and sixth verses of Psa 14:1-7, that the words above are mostly added here to what is said there; and appear to be levelled against the Babylonians, who sacked and ruined Jerusalem, and who were now sacked and ruined in their turn. The sixth verse of Psa 14:1-7, "Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge," is added here by more than twenty of Kennicott's and De Rossi's MSS.
O that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! - I have already shown that the proper translation is, "Who shall give from Zion salvation to Israel?" The word salvation is in the plural here, deliverances: but many MSS., with the Septuagint, Vulgate, Arabic, and Anglo-Saxon, have it in the singular.
When God brinyeth back - When Jehovah bringeth back, is the reading of more than twenty of Kennicott's and De Rossi's MSS., with the Septuagint, Syriac, and Chaldee, and Justinianus' Polyglot Psalter.
For larger notes and an analysis, the reader is requested to refer to Psa 14:1-7; and for a comparison of the two Psalms he may consult Dr. Kennicott's Hebrew Bible, where, under Psa 14:1-7, in the lower margin, the variations are exhibited at one view. | <urn:uuid:2a8ef6e9-32db-4990-a4ac-3f8254c2ef70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cmt/clarke/psa053.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937913 | 882 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Maybe President Bush recently watched that Schoolhouse Rock video in which a curious boy asks a hopeful bill sitting on Capitol Hill how "even if the whole Congress says you should be a law, the president can still say no." Or maybe he discovered his veto pen while he was packing for his move out of the White House at the end of next year.
But I suspect the president's decision to stand up for fiscal responsibility by threatening to reject appropriation bills he considers too extravagant has something to do with the fact that his party no longer controls Congress. Likewise the legislative branch's sudden enthusiasm for challenging the president's expansive view of executive power. I was pleased by the Republican defeat in last fall's congressional elections, and so far my hope that blind partisanship would serve the cause of limited government seems to have been vindicated.
The Democrats say Bush's new interest in controlling spending is just a pose, that the amount of money involved is trivial. But for a president who has surpassed Lyndon Johnson in discretionary spending, who championed a huge expansion of Medicare, and who has vetoed only two bills in six-and-a-half years, even pretending to care about fiscal restraint is an improvement.
The Democrats' attempts to rein in executive power may be more consequential. In January, even before the new congressional majority held a single hearing on the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program, the Bush administration announced that it would henceforth seek judicial approval for monitoring international communications involving people on U.S. soil, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Complying with FISA, which the administration had insisted would jeopardize national security, somehow became feasible after the Republicans lost control of Congress. Now the Democrats want to know why the president thought obeying the law was optional. The Senate Judiciary Committee (with the support of three Republican members) recently issued a subpoena demanding Justice Department documents that may shed light on the administration's legal rationale for the warrantless surveillance program.
In a sense, we already know the rationale: When it comes to fighting terrorism, the president believes he has the constitutional authority to do as he pleases. But the substance of internal administration disagreements about the surveillance program's legality remains obscure. | <urn:uuid:0d4e57b3-14c8-417f-899f-7f914bbed073> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://townhall.com/columnists/jacobsullum/2007/07/04/divided_we_brawl_the_virtues_of_partisan_bickering | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967234 | 447 | 1.640625 | 2 |
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bugatti type 64
If you're one of the Autoblog faithful you might remember our story on the Bugatti Type 64 Coupe chassis on display at the Mullin Automotive Museum, one of just three built by the French carmaker before the death of Jean Bugatti. At the time, we told you the museum had plans to finalize the ...
Bugatti Type 64 Coupe Chassis - Click above for high-res image galleryBugatti buffs know that only one Type 64 was ever built way back in 1939. What they may not know is that an extra two Type 64 chassis were stamped at the factory in Molsheim but sadly never finished. That is, never finished ... | <urn:uuid:9fff72fc-e6fb-4d2e-9c78-d98f8b843302> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.autoblog.com/tag/bugatti+type+64/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951721 | 157 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Lately I’ve been blogging here and on my professional website, 4yourfamilystory.com, about how important it is to get everyone in your family involved in genealogy and family history. Somehow. But that's not always easy because they just don’t care about how you found out something. They just want to know the good stuff.
Also, most people are visual and many can be swayed by pretty and shiny things. [Even I’ve been known to do this. Can you blame me? Jewels? Hello?!?] And when it comes to genealogy and family history, stories with lots of pictures seem to be the bling that gets everyone’s attention.
And that’s okay. Don’t be frustrated by this. Go with it. Use it to your advantage. For example, if the only thing that captures your Uncle Jerry’s attention is the photo of his grandfather from World War I that you found, and he starts telling you stories about how it used to freak him out when his grandpa would forget to put his teeth in the morning and he (Uncle Jerry) had to go fetch his teeth from the drinking glass sitting on the nightstand next to grandpa’s bed, does it matter? How about when good ol’ Uncle Jerry suddenly remembers he has this box of grandpa’s up in the attic and he thinks there’s some stuff from World War I that he wouldn’t mind going up there and getting for you?
I don’t know about you, but I’d be showing the genealogy and family history bling to all of my relatives as much as possible. In fact, I’d shine up the bling a wee bit. You know, make people “Ooh!” and “Ahh!” over it. Make people talk about it. Make people talk about their family. Make people talk about their stories. Make people talk about their history. [Plus win points with the older folks in the family.]
So, by now you’re probably thinking, “I get it, Caroline. It’s okay if my family members don’t appreciate all the sweat and tears I put into my family history research, but how do I make my photos and stories into genealogy and family history bling?”
Well, you know for a while now that I do digital scrapbooking for my blogs. Some have commented on it, and many have asked me how I do it. I do a lot of it from scratch using Photoshop Elements 7, but that’s not easy. It’s taken me forever to figure everything out. Two big books and 3 years later, it’s still not easy, and I get distracted because there are too many options. It’s not something I’d recommend for the faint of heart.
But don’t despair. Several weeks ago, MyMemories.com contacted me and asked if I’d review their scrapbook software, My Memories Suite. Hello?!? That’s a no-brainer for me. Play with some scrapbook software given to me and in exchange give my honest unbiased opinion about it? Duh. “Sign me up,” was my reply.
And? Loved it. What I like best about it is that it’s intuitive and e-a-s-y. It’s made to do one thing. Digital scrapbook. Unlike photo editing software powerhouses like Photoshop, you jump in and create an album with however many pages you want then decide what kind of “output” you want. The “output” being:
- JPG image to export to your hard drive [and then other places like your blog]
- Interactive album
- iPod movie
- DVD video
That’s right. You create it once then you can use it many times in many ways. [We’re bound and determined to get those family members interested. Whatever it takes. Remember?]
Because I always have so many people ask how I did certain layouts on my blog, I decided to show you 4 different kinds of layouts that I did using My Memories Suite all using the JPG image export option. That’s right. Examples of how to bling up your genealogy and family history stories and photos on your blog.
1. One aspect that I like about My Memories Suite is that you have the option to use pre-made “Quick Pages” where all you have to do is enter the photo(s) and some writing [“Some” is the key word. Heaven forbid you make your family members read too much, right?] Anywho, this was kind of hard for me to do because I’m creative, and I don’t like giving up the control. However, once I did it, I realized it was kind of freeing not having to do anything but stick the photo in it and add some words. [Who knew?] The following is a photo given to me by a distant cousin [and I’m using it with permission]. It’s small and scanned at low resolution and orange-y, and as researchers you know that photos come to us in all shapes and sizes. So, with a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude [And OMG, it’s a photo of my 3rd great-grandparents enthusiasm.], I found a “Quick Page” layout ~"Splendor"~ that complimented the orange-y-ness. [So there.] I think it took all of about 3 minutes to do. [Seriously.] Now, you tell me. What family member isn’t going to ask me about this [Click image for a bigger view.]:
So, even if you aren’t creative, you have no excuses for not exhibiting some family history bling using Quick Pages on your blog. It’s so easy, even my Pug, Millie, could do it. [Okay. She can’t. It’s that whole no “poseables” thing. But? You have thumbs. No excuses.]
2. In this second example, I did a kind of hybrid layout using their "Ancestors Legacy" kit. It wasn’t completely “done” for me. I chose the photo layout part from a list in the software then added the digital paper and elements and drop shadows. So, I didn’t have to think about how or where to place the photos. That was done for me. [And doesn’t it look professional?] But I got to design, to create, and to play. You know, the fun stuff. I really enjoyed doing this. And doesn’t my Paw Paw [Yeah. Big Paw Paw’s 4th wife ~ after being his mistress. *rollingeyesheavenward* ] look absolutely gorgeous? [After seeing these pics, it’s not hard to see why Big Paw Paw’s wandering eye wandered onto her, is it?] [Click image for a bigger view.]
3. In this example, I decided to show the capabilities of the software without using any of their kits [either bought or the ones that come with the software]. You might recognize one photo that I posted previously on this blog. The one of the 2 views of a pocket watch. Since I did that post of my husband’s 2nd great-grandfather’s [A.O. Williams’] pocket watch, I received a photo of him from Great-Uncle Donald last year. So I cropped the photo of A.O.Williams in My Memories Suite, added it to the pocket watch photo, and added his name. And presto! An instant winner with the family, eh? [Click image for a bigger view.]
4. Now, for my last trick. I decided to show you how you can take a boring document [Well, not boring to me and you, but boring to our family members. Remember: document = reading = family members get bored.] and make it come alive. Here is Harve and Pearl Pointer’s original mortgage paperwork for their farm in Story County, Iowa. [Pearl was A.O. Williams’ daughter.] So, I added 2 pics of the farm [which is no longer there] and a pic of Harve and Pearl from about 6 years before this mortgage. Makes it real, doesn’t it? I challenge any family member to say “Whoop-de-do,” to this. [Seriously.] All photo placement and decorating was done by me using the "Family Memories Pack" kit that I purchased from MyMemories.com. [Click image for a bigger view.]
MyMemories.com has given me an extra My Memories Suite Scrapbook Software [RV $39.95] for one (1) lucky reader. [Feeling lucky?]
How to enter:
You must go visit MyMemories.com and do some “window shopping,” find the digital scrapbook kit that you absolutely positively cannot live without, come back here to Family Stories, and tell me in the comments below which kit you picked and leave me your email address. You can use the word "at" for @ and "dot" for "." to reduce spam. [I’ll need to notify you if you win. I’m not psychic. Unfortunately.]
Want some additional entries? [Optional]
Below are some additional ways to enter. Remember, though, these aren’t valid if you do not first go and pick the digital scrapbook kit of your dreams at the MyMemories.com store and tell me which one it is in the comments below. [I’m ornery like that.] Each one is worth 1 entry.
- Follow @FamilyStories on Twitter [1 entry]
- Friend me on Facebook [1entry]
- Follow my Family Stories blog through Google Friend Connect in sidebar [1entry]
- Like this blog post [at bottom of post] [1 entry]
- Tweet this blog post [at bottom of post] [You can tweet this blog post once per day, make a comment each time, & each 1 counts as an entry.] [1entry per day]
- Go make a relevant comment on my Why Aren’t We Doing It? #FGS2011 blog post on my other site, 4YourFamilyStory.com [1 entry]
- Like MyMemories.com on their Facebook page [Plus? They have a $5 coupon over there for their store.] [1entry]
- Follow the MyMemories.com blog on Google Friend Connect [1 entry]
- Follow MyMemories.com on Twitter [1 entry]
- Subscribe to MyMemoriesSuite YouTube Channel [1 entry]
Also? For each additional entry, you must enter a new comment. For example:
If you’ve picked “Ancestors Legacy Kit” as your fave from their store; followed me on twitter; liked the MyMemories Facebook page; and followed my blog on Google Friend Connect, then you’d make 4 separate comments and that would give you 4 entries into the contest.
Want 3 additional entries? For you overachievers, link to this contest blog post from your blog. [Don’t forget to make 3 separate comments leaving me a link to your blog post where you’ve linked to this blog post for these entries. And if you understand & complete all that, you definitely deserve 3 entries.]
If you already follow me on twitter or somewhere else that’s listed above, then that counts and just say you’re already doing it in a separate comment.
This contest begins Monday, 19 Sep 2011 and ends Monday, 26 Sep 2011. Winner will be announced Wednesday, 28 Sep 2011. [Or perhaps earlier if not many enter. But? Why wouldn't you enter?]
Don’t want to wait and see if you win in order to start making family history bling on your blog? Okay. MyMemories.com has given me a coupon to give to y’all worth $10 off the purchase of My Memories Suite Scrapbook software. Just enter in this code at checkout STMMMS76098 (For best results, just copy and paste it). And? You also get a $10 coupon for the MyMemories.com store when you purchase the software.
Wait. There’s more.
Don’t forget there’s a $5 coupon towards any of their kits in their store waiting for you when and if you go like the MyMemories.com Facebook page.
So. What are you waiting for? You only have to enter once by telling me your fave kit from the MyMemories.com store in the comments below. There will only be one randomly-picked winner. But remember: the more entries you make, the more chances you have of winning. Questions? Click the red “Contact” button in the left hand corner of your screen.
[Disclosure: MyMemories.com gave me a free copy of My Memories Suite software to use and review and to promote this giveaway. All of my opinions are my own. MyMemories.com is also providing a free copy of the software for the lucky winner of this giveaway.] | <urn:uuid:285b4e01-25a7-4370-8de8-e344656516a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yourfamilystory-cmpointer.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-memories-suite-giveaway.html?showComment=1316573384564 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951511 | 2,835 | 1.539063 | 2 |
- Fish Breeding
|creekperson ||05-08-2010 11:10 PM |
New here, looking to hatch Brine Shrimp eggs
Hi I am new to this Forum. I used to have many tanks of different sizes but somehow got away from it except for 1 small tank. I have dug out my tanks and all my fish stuff most everything is still in working order, even my brine shrimp net is good after 12 years in a box lol. any way I sold off all my old 1950's & 60's Aquarium magazines and 1 of them had a way to hatch brine shrimp eggs using an inverted plastic ( I used a 2 liter) bottle cant remember why and an exact recipe of salt water to hatch them. I remember the water had to stay at 82 degrees and the eggs had to be kept moving at all times. Does anyone know the recipe for the water? I think I fed them small fry liquid fry food when hatched. I still have a tube...what are the chances that it would still be good and I have a can of brine shrimp eggs still also. Was curious if their still good after all these years too. I used to raise Betta's and Angles and would like to try again. Thanks Creekperson and its nice to meet you all !
|Austin ||05-09-2010 07:06 PM |
Welcome to the forums! :) I don't know the exact amount of salt. But what I use, is I buy salt water from a saltwater fish store in a 5 gallon jug (my dad uses it for saltwater tank) and I just pour some into a container and the eggs hatch in it. Also if you buy some aquarium salt it may say the amount. I used to have one that said the amount for hatching brine shrimp. I just went to look for it but I used it all sorry. I'm sure someone knows.
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Search Engine Friendly URLs by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2 | <urn:uuid:4ccb39c7-f1d3-45a0-976e-6401dad54e35> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/printthread.php?t=42625 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960015 | 455 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Pregnancy in Sport
The ASC, with Sport Industry Australia, hosted the National Forum on pregnancy in sport in Sydney on 1 August 2001. Participants from all aspects of sport in Australia, including government, non-government, health, legal and industry sectors, took part. This resource is based on the conclusions of that forum, and on other expert contributions.
The Pregnancy in sport - guidelines for the Australian sporting industry are available for free as a related download below.
This publication is intended as an information source for the Australian sporting industry, its administrators, coaches, officials and other staff, employed or voluntary. It is not intended as, nor is it suitable to be used as, advice to sports participants. Pregnancy in sport is essentially a medical issue, and it is therefore vital that pregnant women who wish to participate in sport obtain medical advice before doing so. | <urn:uuid:c9911557-7751-4cc9-8736-76323abefd6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ausport.gov.au/participating/women/resources/pregnancy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94277 | 174 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Bobby Bradford @ 75
an Appreciation by
Bobby Bradford + James Newton, 1977 Mark Weber©2009
How can one begin to assess the numerous contributions of a great cornetist/trumpeter/composer/bandleader/educator? How can one also adequately offer a testament for an artist who is such a high quality human being and who profoundly touches so many lives?
Those of us who have been blessed to know Bobby Bradford for a number of years can attest to a probing, powerful intellect that assimilates the history of Jazz in a highly unique manner, drawing conclusions that are as innovative and provocative as one of his solos. His understanding of the history, coupled with his embracing of Jazz’s mandate for innovation, reveals itself in his teaching, playing and composing. I have profoundly admired his brilliant mind, up-tempo wit and his usual location of being two or three steps ahead of everyone else. Like Lester Bowie, he has achieved an individualistic incorporation of Louis Armstrong’s musical language and has placed that influence within the context of modern Jazz’s avant-garde movements. Like Sonny Rollins, J.S. Bach and Ornette Coleman, Bradford has a strong penchant for using musical sequences in both his compositional and improvisational languages. Also like Sonny Rollins, Bradford has a remarkable gift of musical memory. These gifts along with a boundless imagination have consistently enabled Bradford to deftly organize his improvisations. I am consistently stunned by the exquisite musical architecture instantaneously created in his solos. These improvisational edifices give room for his listening audiences to roam within them – exploring and discovering something new about him and themselves. Bradford’s rhythmical language is extremely diverse and his lyrical leanings give many of his solos an emotional depth that only the best practitioners in the music achieve. Bradford is Bradford - coming out of Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Fats Navarro, Charles Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young - yet still Bradford.
One crucial aspect of Los Angeles’ musical scene, from Bop to Free Jazz, was that one had to find his or her individual sound. It is impossible to confuse one note of Bobby Bradford with that of any other trumpeter or cornetist. His sound uses a smidgen of air, sometimes in a fashion similar to Ben Webster or Paul Gonsalves’ use of air, as an expressive part of the sub-tone sound. Bradford’s timbral specificity within his language (not the one sound fits all ideas approach) adds a vocal quality to his playing that exudes emotional sensitivity not often found within the context of new music.
Just as Horace Tapscott was during his lifetime, Bobby Bradford is an important musical and personal mentor for many in the Los Angeles basin. To this day his Mo’Tet ensembles continue to help to develop many younger and mature musicians. I first met Bobby Bradford in 1973 in Claremont, California while he was playing in Stanley Crouch’s group, “Black Music Infinity.” The front line of Black Music Infinity consisted of Bradford and alto/soprano-saxophonist Black Arthur Blythe. It was amazing to hear the two of them together. Looking back, I am convinced that it is still one of the most effective front lines that I have ever heard. Eventually the ensemble expanded, adding David Murray, trumpeter Walter Lowe, Mark Dresser and me. Bradford’s influence on all of us younger members of the ensemble was immense. He treated each of us as if we were his equal, although we were struggling mightily, trying to come to grips with the distance between what we were able to articulate and the precious gold that poured out of Bradford’s cornet and Blythe’s alto sax. I can clearly see his (and Arthur Blythe’s) imprint on all of us.
A few years later when Bradford opened up The Little Big Horn it became the place for the avant-garde community in the Los Angeles area. The grim realities of segregation that characterized much of the Los Angeles musical scene were left outside of Little Big Horn’s doors. For the most part, it had a feeling of hope and determination. It was clear that Bradford was highly respected in numerous communities and that this high standing was a force that united many. Bradford’s openness gave musicians and listeners a freedom that was rarely found in Los Angeles’ performing establishments. John Carter, William Jeffrey, Roberto Miranda, Vinny Golia, Mark Dresser, Tylon Barea, Diamanda Galas, Charles Owens, Alex and Nels Cline, Allan Iwohara, Azar Lawrence, Wayne Peet and many others were able to explore all that they artistically had to offer.
To discuss Bobby Bradford one must also reverentially look to clarinetist/composer John Carter. Bobby Bradford and John Carter performed exquisitely together for decades. They were very close friends, although musically they had very different personalities. When they came together to perform, their Texas roots emerged, both of them being masters of the Blues and Texas-Bop Traditions. The blues was an undercurrent in much of their music. Added to the Texas roots was a powerful focus on producing something new and fresh in every performance. John Carter called it “futuring”. Their groups were the example of how an ensemble can create in a way that the whole greatly exceeds the sum of the individual parts. Thank God for “futuring.” Thank God for Bobby Bradford. Happy seventy-fifth birthday Maestro Bradford! May many more birthdays come your way! | <urn:uuid:6cc70fd4-7419-4210-8f9b-f1d63fd05929> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD24/PoD24BobbyBradford.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969006 | 1,178 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Two cars in the garage, four bedrooms, three baths, 1.5 kids, a college fund for when they grow up, and a roast in the oven every Sunday — that's the American dream, right? We can't really help with the first five things, but the very last item on that list is something we can help with. And often, help really is needed, because people treat their oven like a magic box.
Sometimes, what comes out of that magic box, though, isn't very magical. Where do home cooks go wrong? Here, we will walk through the common mistakes that home cooks make when cooking a roast, whether it's a roast leg of lamb; a rich, fatty prime rib; or a humble pot roast that can be turned into many meals later on in the week.
To get some expert help, we turned to Alain Allegretti, chef and owner of Bistro La Promenade in New York City. After all, who better to ask than a classically trained chef serving traditional bistro fare? Allegretti offered six simple pieces of advice that may just surprise you. So what are you waiting for? Read up, and get ready to enjoy a succulent, juicy, and flavorful roast.
Take Off the Chill
"When preparing your roast, the meat should always be at room temperature," says Alain Allegretti, chef and owner of Bistro La Promenade in New York City. This is a common mistake among home cooks. If you don't take off the chill, the outside of the roast will cook much faster than the inside, potentially leaving you with a fully cooked exterior and a raw center, especially with a larger roast.
Choose the Right Salt
"While preparing, one of the biggest problems most home [cooks] have is using the wrong grain salt to season," says Allegretti. "Smaller roasts require a smaller grain of salt because it melts faster and is absorbed into the meat quickly. For larger roasts, like a prime rib, use a rock or sea salt to ensure a good crust, and a longer absorption time into the meat."
Hold the Pepper
"Do not use pepper in the beginning of your preparation. Pepper has a tendency to burn at high temperatures, and leaves a bitter taste," advises Allegretti.
More from The Daily Meal | <urn:uuid:9b7a4b26-5c1e-48c1-8054-0e6e4212f885> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/02/11/how-to-make-perfect-roast/?utm_campaign=%3Fcmpid%3Drss_latestnews_leisure | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95697 | 484 | 1.5625 | 2 |
In order for a purveyor/ slaughterhouse to control his sources of beef he must be the purchaser or grower of the beef. That is to say that the purveyor / slaughterhouse must have suffecient outlets to market his kosher and his non-kosher as well, as almost 90 % or more of the beef must be sold off as non-kosher (when you have a 20% kosher ratio-Glatt would be even less of a ratio).
Every Purveyor / Slaughterhouse must therefore operate on שבת ויום טוב וחול המועד including the trucking, plant (maintanence) etc. which involves many Halachic issues which we don't want to get into.
So actually we are left with a problomatic scenario; A Glatt / kosher purveyor that wants to control fully his beef sources must become a first & foremost a Non-kosher purveyor of beef, and in order to compete with the other larger non-kosher purveyors of beef he will also sell directly product labeled as Glatt or kosher (at a somewhat higher price) in order to make up the difference of his loss on the non-kosher, but he is actually owning & operating a NON-KOSHER slaughter-house,
(selling Glatt & kosher beef & poultry as a "side business").
The big question is "What does the strictly Glatt kosher purveyor do"? Most of the Glatt purveyors contract with the Non-kosher slaughterhouse to only take the small percentage of Glatt beef, the other 90% + of non-Glatt beef or non-kosher beef is left for the non-kosher slaughterhouse to get rid of. Therefore the Glatt purveyor is at a disadvantage as he can't control completly his beef sources. On the other hand he doesn't have to concern himself with Halachic issues of Shabbos, Yom-Tov, Chol Hamoed, מיסחר בדברים אסורים etc.
Allways check what type of Glatt purveyor is your supplier. | <urn:uuid:3f6b4c5f-deaf-4e2e-a6cd-d5da9541c0e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956786 | 475 | 1.53125 | 2 |
President Barack Obama is still in talks with congress to push for them to come to an agreement with his plan to allow tax hikes for people in the upper income bracket. His goal is to keep people that make less than $250,000 from enduring tax increases.
At accounting firms all across the Permian Basin, the constant concern is "How can I avoid the looming fiscal cliff?"
Managing Partner Mike Anderson at Armstrong, Backus and Company LLC Certified Public Accountants when referring to the fiscal cliff said, "A combination of less money in your pocket and my pocket because more money will be going to Washington.
In essence, if the President and congress don't come to a common ground, the U.S. economy could potentially spiral back into the recession from which we just came. Currently the executive cabinet's want is to have people in the middle class be exempt from the taxes, but as the deadline near, that will soon be un-avoidable.
"If he and congress cannot reach an agreement then in fact everyone's taxes is gonna go up," said Anderson.
Although there is more than a week left before the December 31 deadline, and there is still a possibility that an agreement will be made, tax payers are still doing what they can to absorb some of the impact of the potential tax hike.
"A general rule on which we are advising our clients to do today is to accelerate the receipt of income into the current year so that it will be taxed lower rates than if they receive it next year in 2013," said Anderson.
In the past few weeks, Anderson has given out that advice more often in an effort to keep people from spiraling fast down the fiscal cliff. | <urn:uuid:f5cd9d96-d014-400a-9132-930ce7da1d91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://permianbasin360.com/fulltext/?nxd_id=239822 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977382 | 346 | 1.796875 | 2 |
|Scientology Video Channel||
ANSWERING THE GLOBAL DEMAND
Since the release of the Dianetics and Scientology Basic Books and Lectures in 2007, Scientologists have flooded into their Churches in greater numbers than ever. Demand for the materials has grown exponentially and, as parishioners have progressed through those books and lectures, the numbers of new people coming in to find out about Scientology have likewise grown. Indeed, the Scientology religion is now enjoying its greatest expansion era in history, with public demand for L. Ron Hubbard books and lectures escalating across more than 200 nations, 150 cultures and in some 50 languages.
Meeting that demand has required facilities to provide books and lectures in any language, any quantity, with adequate speed and economy—no matter if it's 500 copies of a title in Swahili for Uganda or one million in English. No conventional printing house would have served—not with a 2,500-lecture library times 50 languages. Time frames could never have been met and printing costs for a relatively small number of books for new pioneer areas would have proven entirely prohibitive.
A new publishing strategy was needed and, under the direction of Mr. David Miscavige, that strategy was developed and put in place in early 2007—even prior to the release of The Basics.
All book and lecture CD production was established in-house, the entire line from inception to distribution: printing, foiling, embossing, laminating, CD replication, packaging and shipping. Occupying massive new headquarters, the Church’s publishing arms are now the world’s largest all-digital, print-on-demand facilities. Accordingly, their precision operations are visited regularly by industry leaders, as models of innovation and efficiency.
Bridge Publications manufactures all Dianetics and Scientology books, lectures and course packs for the Americas, Asia and the rest of the world, except Europe and the United Kingdom which are under the purview of New Era Publications in Copenhagen, Denmark. In combination, Bridge and New Era can print 1.3 million books and 1 million compact discs a week. Annually, that amounts to 67 million books and 52 million CDs.
Add in paperbacks and course packs, and the printed pages placed end to end would extend to the moon and back.
With digital printing and print-on-demand, production has soared and keeps pace with the demand. Eighty million L. Ron Hubbard books and lectures were distributed from 2004-2009 alone, more than in the previous 50 years—and 70 million from 2007-2010.
Moreover, with all Mr. Hubbard’s religious works now available to anyone the world over, what has ensued is no less than a renaissance for the Scientology religion.
L. Ron Hubbard's Books Win 18 Design Awards
In 2008-2009, Bridge Publications Inc. was recognized with 18 awards for excellence in design, printing and production. Awards for Mr. Hubbard's books included the Gold Ink Award 2008, American Inhouse Design Award 2008, National Best Books 2008 and Next Generation Indie Book Award 2009. | <urn:uuid:abfb0420-fbe5-4071-a1b9-86e988410085> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scientology.org/david-miscavige/scientology-publishing-houses.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938109 | 623 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Greed is good according to Gordon Gecko. Money makes the world go round and it's been said that anyone who says money is the root of all evil just doesn't have any. Every been behind on bills? When you are, you're not begging for sunshine and happy thoughts are you? Nope, you're wondering if you're going to have to sell rocks to the kids or start blowing people behind an alley. I like money and if I had enough I would swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck. I'm not saying your only goal should be to have money, but it's kind of necessary.
Biggie once said Mo' Money, Mo' Problems which might be true (I don't know because I'm broke), but I guarantee if you were to ask him to give it all away he would look at you with his one good eye and then slap you for being stupid. The phrase should just be "whatever your financial situation, mo' problems."
3. Captain Planet
This one has a ton of different reasons for being awesome. If you're a hippie, then you'll love Captain Planet because he promoted a green earth. He fought pollution, smog, radiation (where were you in Japan?), and all kinds of environmental dangers. One part I didn't understand was using child labor to help fight super villains. Seems kind of inappropriate to take third world kids and have them fight it out until they got their asses kicked enough to give Mr. Planet a call. Plus you give the Indian kid heart? What's he going to do with that? The villains were all "Eco-villains" that promoted poaching poor animals and polluting as much as possible. Side note: There were some heavy hitters who voiced the bad guys like Meg Ryan, Martin Sheen, Sting, and Jeff Goldblum).
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Turtles that are martial artists and eat pizza and are trained by a rat? SOLD. I was a huge fan when I was kid. I don't know how many Halloweens I spent dressed up as a turtle and pretended to do karate moves to the dog. There were the movies (ignore the third one), the comics which it was based, the cartoons, and of course the merchandise. Every kid in my generation watched Ninja Turtles and if they didn't, they probably ended up shooting the school or killed themselves because their lives sucked. The 4 turtles got transformed by goop and then a martial arts rat named Splinter trained them to be ninjas and they would shout phrases like cowabunga like they were all douchey California people. They also had a knack for overusing the word "dude," but it didn't matter because they were awesome. All the turtles were named after artists so there was Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello. Leo was the leader, Raph was the loose cannon, Mikey was the comic relief, and Don was the brains of the operation. They fought a ninja gang call the Foot Clan and their evil leader Shredder. Shredder wore badass armor and really hated turtles for some reason. Maybe his being Japanese and dressed in armor while living in New York had something to do with it.
1. The Green Power Ranger
Some people may not agree with this guy being number one, but this is my list so you can screw yourself. My favorite color is green to this day because of the green ranger. Everyday after school I would watch Power Rangers (the original, not the shitty ones after) and then reenact what I saw at school the next day. BTW, I recently re-watched the show on Netflix and it was truly terrible, but yet I couldn't stop watching. I'm still entertained by it. The Power Rangers were a group of kids from Angel Grove who a giant floating head in a cylinder decided that he wanted them to fight evil monsters that the evil Rita Repulsa brought to earth. He wanted "teenagers with attitudes" so he looked in a juice bar. Why not go to a detention center? Zordon has his ways. They get offered the powers and they finally decide they should even though Kimberly doesn't want to because her hair will get messed up in the helmet. Rita doesn't take kindly and every day sends a new monster to fight the rangers and then she throws her staff and makes the monster grow (which no one in Angel Grove seems to notice that a giant monster destroys their city everyday). The monsters were silly though. One was made completely out of eyeballs and they had a hard time beating it (why not throw sand on it?) So they have to use giant robot dinosaurs to defeat the monster which combine to become a mega zord.
After countless attempts, Rita decides to make a power ranger of her own. That's where the green ranger comes in. It happens to be the new kid Tommy Oliver (a shade of green btw), who is a bad ass martial artist who does flip kicks in the school hallway just to show he's awesome. He looks like the other rangers, except he has a cool chest piece on that blew my 3rd grade mind away because I thought it was the greatest suit I ever saw. So he beats the shit out of the power rangers and even gets a flute that calls the Dragonzord which makes Jason's T-Rex zord look like a pussy. They eventually help Tommy break a spell and he becomes a good power ranger. He's so amazing that very soon after he tells Jason to suck it and he's the new leader of the Rangers. Tommy became all kinds of other colored rangers like white, black, and red, but the green was his best and the most awesome out of the others.
The show itself had a ton of flaws, including it's slight racism (black ranger is a black guy who just dances, yellow ranger is asian, white ranger is the most powerful), but nonetheless the green ranger is my top reason why green is the best color. | <urn:uuid:f9e26647-3aee-4c36-9420-cee3241471d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.funnyordie.com/lists/7b5a87c58a/top-4-reasons-green-is-the-best-color | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985526 | 1,232 | 1.5 | 2 |
Quento for iPhone and iPad review
Quento is a fun little math game that is a great challenge for all levels and ages. The objective is simple: use the available numbers and operations to get the indicated result with the indicated amount of numbers. However, not only are you restricted to the available numbers and operations, but you have to be able to create the expression by dragging your finger over them in one swipe -- and order of operations matters!
Each puzzle is displayed as a 3x3 grid with five numbers and four operations. The operations are always addition or subtraction. Above the puzzle, you'll see the objectives, like to get an 8 with three numbers. Each level (number of numbers) has three goals and you get a star for each one you accomplish. Once you complete the level, you advance to the next one.
After you complete a few rounds, a new "Free Play" mode will unlock. In Free Play, you are simply given a number and your goal is to get the number with any number of numbers that you wish. There are no stars to earn or levels to complete -- you simply try to get the indicated number with no pressure.
Quento is a free game to download, but only includes levels for using 2 or 3 numbers in your expressions (about medium difficulty). To unlock puzzles using 4 or 5 numbers, you must make an in-app purchase of $0.99. If you get stuck on a puzzle, you can simply shake to give-up and start a new puzzle.
- Easy to understand
- Great design
- Universal for iPhone and iPad
- Puzzles only include addition and subtraction. It'd be great to add puzzles that include multiplication and division for an even greater challenge.
- On the iPad, the game is very small even though it's a "universal" app. Would prefer the puzzles to be displayed bigger since iPads are typically held farther away.
The bottom line
Quento is an excellent math puzzle game for all ages. Both young kids who are just learning to add and subtract and experienced mathematicians will enjoy Quento. Puzzle games like this are some of my favorite because, well, I'm a math nerd, and because they are great for your brain.
- Free - Download now | <urn:uuid:0ed189a7-c3fa-4487-883a-53010393dbb2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.imore.com/quento-iphone-and-ipad-review | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943687 | 463 | 1.820313 | 2 |
By Bruce Ash
September 3rd is Labor Day.
There is not a time in recent memory that
is as important to American income earners than this year's holiday because
creating good jobs is the essence of the upcoming Presidential election.
Job creation is the key to restoring America's greatness. Getting
Americans back to work increases tax revenues and reduces our deficit not the
President's extended unemployment benefits or his just issued executive
orders to add as many as 1,000,000 illegal aliens to the job rolls and
eliminating the work for welfare rules. The president's policies have led to a
dependency society and not a full employment society.
Barack Obama does
not believe in free markets. If he did believe in free markets we would have
seen an emphasis on less regulation rather than creating more onerous rules
from the energy sector to the financial industry. If President Obama understood
how business worked he would have followed his own advice that "you don't
increase taxes during a recession." More bad news - last month joblessness
increased in 44 states.
Early in his term, Barack Obama said if he could
not get the economy going by the third year "this would be a one-term
We all need to hold him to those words. | <urn:uuid:c4089f9a-cebf-4d99-a0c0-e41b8670c76f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://soaznewsx.com/The-Territory/ID/476/Celebrate-Labor-Day | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968334 | 265 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Cryostat section preservation
This is my first time to post, so forgive me in
Would anyone like to give me advice on cryostat
preservation? We are cutting 20-30um sections of mouse
brains which have either been perfused and postfixed
or just perfused. They have been cryoprotected in 20%
sucrose for some days, then frozen quickly in -80C
2-methylbutane while in a cryomold with OCT.
My question is: What is the best way to handle these
sections once they have been cut? We have been told to
let them dry for about a day then box them up with
some dessicant, put into a ziplock and then into -20
or -80 C freezer. This procedure has been suggested
for immunohistochemical staining.
For histochemical staining it has been suggested that
we simply store the sections in the refrigerator.
Is this correct? Do we need to keep slides in the
freezer with dessicant? Any help would be greatly
UT Health Science Center
<< Previous Message | Next Message >> | <urn:uuid:8315be1d-e3a7-4d75-9cc5-c52f3076a895> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.histosearch.com/histonet/Apr03A/Cryostatsectionpreservati.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934276 | 241 | 1.546875 | 2 |
This week in horror history saw the birth of two men who would change the face of the genre forever. Edgar Allen Poe, king of all-thing macabre and haunter of teen Goth dreams, was born January 19, 1809.
Nearly 150 years later director John Carpenter was born on January 16, 1948. Carpenter came out of USC film school with a number of other talented writers and directors. He was instrumental in changing the face of horror movie industry, making it the blockbuster business it is today, and creating what we know as the contemporary slasher. As a side note, there’s a fascinating book out there, Jason Zinoman’s Shock Value, that’s a great read if you want to know more about Carpenter and other directors of ‘70s horror classics.
“There’s a doctor present, Dr. Gatinau.”
One of my all-time favorite films was released this week, Cronenberg’s Scanners. If you haven’t seen it, please see it soon. It’s Cronenberg at his finest, combining corporate greed, sci-fi, societal fears, and body horror into a story that will make your head explode. Just like in the movie.
Also out this week in 1996, the ultra-cheesy, ultra-fun, biker-vampire bloodbath courtesy of Robert Rodriquez, From Dusk Till Dawn. George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino star as outlaw brothers who kidnap a family and head for a bar/stripclub on the border … of hell. Tarantino wrote it and was cast in the role of the psychotic, sexual predator Richie. Like most Rodriquez and Tarantino films, it’s chock full of a-list actors and genre favorites including Tom Savini as the biker Sex Machine.
Watch clips from the films below:
Released: January 14, 1981
Tagline: There are 4 billion people on earth. 237 are Scanners. They have the most terrifying powers ever created... and they are winning
Title: From Dusk Till Dawn
Released: January 19, 1996
Tagline: Vampires. No Interviews. | <urn:uuid:94ed9c34-efa5-4ea9-9db2-4840c1ab0b75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fearnet.com/news/news-article/week-horror-scanners-dusk-till-dawn-and-genre-greats | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93789 | 449 | 1.6875 | 2 |
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