Split (1)

train · 1.8M rows

text stringlengths 115 558k
February 20, 2013 12:00 AM \| Danny Cowan Edmund McMillen's The Basement Collection arrives at retail on March 8th with a substantial number of extras, along with one last-minute surprise addition: a full copy of the documentary film Indie Game: The Movie. McMillen recently revealed that the bundle will include DRM-free copies of The Basement Collection for Windows, Mac, and Linux, along with a Steam code, a 36-page art book, a Steven sticker, and soundtracks for all featured games. Also included are 15 never-before-seen minutes of footage from Indie Game: The Movie and other bonuses like digital sketchbooks and comics. That's a lot of stuff! The Basement Collection's retail bundle can be preordered from Merge Games for $17.99.
This post is long overdue, but long story short, the baby is well into her 6th month. I’ve been counting by weeks, counting 4 weeks as a month, theeeen I realized doing that would get Sloane to 12 months one month before her one year birth date. Which is just awkward and confusing for everyone. So I’m officially shifting to counting her age by months. Which means, this last post about this was baby at 5 months. Which means my wish that she would stay 6 months for a long time came true, kind of. Anyways, heeerrree she is! 6 months. ^^^ Lately, she does this thing where she stares at you, hard, like she does, until you look over at her and then she breaks out into the biggest, widest, truest smile. When I am cooking and she is hanging out in her contraption thing, sometimes I look over and find that she is standing still, looking at me, waiting for me to turn around, and then she is all ‘HI MAMA!!!!’ not with words; with her face. When K. is around, she is often staring at him, waiting, and as soon as he looks back at her, it's sunshine on her face. ^^^ It always makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when baby has been taking a nap, and she is laying somewhere where I can see her sleeping, and then get surprised when I look over at her again and her eyes are open and she is just quietly laying there, surveying her surroundings, nary a peep. Blink blink. ^^^ She is showing more will, and it is so funny to see this tiny person get all worked up in a huff because she wants more pureed mango. I guess she has no other way to communicate right now that she wants more, so it’s a lot of "eh eh eh eh eh eh." ^^^Watching her employ all sorts of tactics to try to get her hands on something out of reach is fascinating. ^^^The other day I was giving her a bath and she could not get enough of the thin rod of water coming down from the bathtub faucet. She fixated on trying to grab the rod with her hands and we both zoned out for a while, watching her tiny hands attempt to conquer water. ^^^When I drink a glass of water, she stares me down as if I am doing the most.fascinating.thing. Come to think of it, you can’t help get sort of an inflated sense of yourself, with this tiny creature always watching your every move as if you are doing something awesome. Like this morning, I was putting on my boots, and she could not get enough of it. ^^^If you stand her up and she has just eaten a good meal and is feeling particularly happy, she will do this sort of dance where she stamps her feet – left, right, left, right – with a bounce. A jig of sorts. ^^^She has started on solids, she likes it, and it makes me giddy to introduce her to a new food each week. Also, I started to notice that when I tell her to “use your hands”, she grabs the spoon and complies. I, of course, declared her a genius on the spot. ^^^One tooth has emerged. It’s the middle one on the bottom, and she likes to clench her jaw with her one tooth and do a repetitive biting motion with her mouth. ^^^She is still utterly fascinated by Rusty. He is pretty unconcerned about her. ^^^I love holding her little hand.
My watch battery stopped on Thursday, and I haven't yet gotten around to replacing it. At home, I have enough clocks, and when I've been out, I have my cell phone. But I much prefer to have my watch. Unfortunately, it's one of those styles that requires the special tool to get the back open to replace the battery. At Target, the jewelry counter staff used to be able to take care of it (after all, I bought the watch there) -- but the last two times I needed a battery, the person who could do it wasn't available. So I've been going to the little specialty watch shop to get replacement batteries. It's pricey, but they can take care of it in about 5 minutes. But how long is a watch battery supposed to last? I feel like I've been burning through these batteries in an awfully short time. Less than a year, for sure. Is this part of the specialty watch shop's racket? Or could it be something about my now-aging watch? I have to start grading my first set of long papers from my undergrad course today. They've done shorter assignments, but this is the real test of their writing and analysis. I'm procrastinating a bit on the grading, as I always do -- which breaks down into the following reasons: (a) resentment of the task itself; (b) fear of boredom during the task; (c) resentment of what feels like my students invading my weekend (grading is an oddly social experience for me, I usually feel drained afterwards as though I've been conversing with my students for hours -- which, in a sense, I have been); (d) fear of finding out just what my students don't know; (e) fear of not getting anything else done. (Obviously, I'm using "fear" in a very general sense -- Fiore says that most procrastination comes from fear or resentment. Mine surely does.) Actually, it's useful to spell it all out like that to see just how ridiculous my procrastination is. Especially (e) -- after all, if I just get the grading done, then I'll have time to do other things. Necessary Tasks Today: - grade papers (at least two-three hours' worth) - read novel for this week's teaching (includes taking notes which slows me down) - note-taking for current research project - house cleaning & laundry - bills, household paperwork, etc - phone my mother (which I can hopefully multitask while cleaning) - take dogs to park - get some "free reading" at public library - go to the gym - something with pasta for dinner?
Best Practices for Improving Community Health In order to make a difference in the health of our communities, we make our resources available to our colleagues, partners, and community members. The following resources provide access to planning and communications tools, medical training opportunities, health care initiatives, clinical protocols, and health care research. For Community Health Care Activists - Farmers Markets Resource Guide Farmers Markets make certain that high-quality reasonably priced fruits and vegetables are available in many of the communities we serve. Learn how to develop a farmers market or find one in your community. For Policy Makers
Joshua Bell and Leonard Slatkin help open IU Jacobs School of Music 2008-09 season in September FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 28, 2008 BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music continues to nurture and present the world's greatest musicians. With four new IU Opera and Ballet Theater productions, in addition to the usual hundreds of other performances, the Jacobs School offers another ambitious season in 2008-09. Two internationally distinguished Jacobs faculty talents join forces to kick off the orchestral season on Sept. 17 as Leonard Slatkin conducts the IU Philharmonic Orchestra and violinist Joshua Bell at 8 p.m. in the IU Auditorium. The program will include John Corigliano's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (The Red Violin), which Bell will perform in his first concert as an IU faculty member. It's rare that movies spawn concertos, but such is the case with The Red Violin Concerto, which premiered in September 2003, following Bell and Corigliano's collaboration on Francois Girard's 1998 movie The Red Violin. In anticipation of the concert and in partnership with the Ryder Film Series and the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, a free screening of the film will be offered Sunday, Sept. 14, at 7 p.m. at the Buskirk-Chumley in downtown Bloomington. A special guest is expected to welcome moviegoers and give background information on the film. The Sept. 17 program will also include Beethoven's Overture to Egmont, Op. 84, and Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber. Free reserved seating tickets will be available from both the IU Auditorium and Musical Arts Center (MAC) box offices, as well as through www.music.indiana.edu beginning Sept. 8. Slatkin will return to the IU Philharmonic podium on Feb. 18. IU Opera Theater will introduce its 60th anniversary season with the opening night performance, Sept. 26, of Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata. Impressively, this will be the 400th production for IU Opera. Fabulous sets and costumes from Professor C. David Higgins will be featured in this all-new manifestation, conceived and staged by returning guest director Tito Capobianco, with resident conductor David Effron. "The production will be stunningly beautiful," Higgins said. "It is going to be very elegant and firmly rooted in the traditional operatic style, but rather than using costumes from the period, we have costumes that echo the silhouette of the period, with more of a haute couture look. There will be lots of reflective surfaces, and I can't tell you how many chandeliers." Additional performances of La Traviata, one of the most popular works in all of opera and Verdi's favorite among his operas, are scheduled for Sept. 27, and Oct. 3 and 4. Other fall productions include guest maestro Klauspeter Seibel and resident stage director Vincent Liotta collaborating on Otto Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor, a brilliant comic romp faithful to William Shakespeare's story about the fictitious knight Sir John Falstaff. Sergei Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges will round out IU Opera Theater's fall semester. A gloomy prince, a sorceress, a wicked prime minister and an even more wicked princess star in this fantastical farce with guests Robert Wood, conductor, and Nicholas Muni, stage director. During its third season under the direction of acclaimed choreographer and pedagogue Michael Vernon, IU Ballet Theater will present its fall ballet, "Ballets of Our Time," Oct. 10-11. The innovative program will feature Sweet Fields, with choreography by dance icon Twyla Tharp and early American music from the Shape Note and Shaker traditions, in collaboration with the IU Choral Department. Vernon will premiere his new ballet Endless Night -- inspired by a William Blake poem -- with music by Philip Glass played by the Kuttner Quartet. The evening will close with the perfect example of George Balanchine's neo-classic choreography, The Four Temperaments, with music by Paul Hindemith, featuring pianist Susan Chou. In December, Bloomington holiday tradition The Nutcracker will feature Vernon's all-new choreography, which debuted last year. IU Opera Theater opens its spring season in February with another new production, Jules Massenet's Cendrillon, conducted by guest Ronald Zollman, debuting set and costume designs by C. David Higgins. Guest director Chuck Hudson will stage this production, based on the fairy tale Cinderella. The last two productions of the 2008-2009 opera season, while presented in late February and early April, are in settings almost 2,000 years apart. Taking place in 48 B.C., George Frideric Handel's Giulio Cesare will be conducted by guest and IU alumnus Gary Thor Wedow and stage directed by Canadian guest Tom Diamond, making his IU Opera debut. Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella, set in 1927, has guest conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos and Jacobs stage director Vincent Liotta at the helm. Jacobs faculty member and internationally renowned baritone Timothy Noble will star in this closing production. March brings this season's spring ballet, "Variations on a Russian Theme." A new and updated version of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake will feature staging by Vernon and Cynthia Gregory, the most celebrated American ballerina of her time, whose portrayal of the Swan Queen is still recognized as definitive. "Variations" will also include a world-premiere ballet by choreographer Matthew Neenan. April 4 marks the return of IU's Singing Hoosiers for the popular music group's annual concert at the IU Auditorium, while the annual Big Band Extravaganza will swing the MAC on April 25 with IU jazzmen David N. Baker and Brent Wallarab. Some of the many recitals to look forward to are IU Distinguished Professor Menahem Pressler and Friends (Oct. 2), Jacobs Dean Emeritus Charles Webb, piano, with Jacobs Professor Alexander Kerr, violin (Oct. 7) and the return of the Orion String Quartet (Nov. 3 and April 13). Other highlights of the season include a host of classical, jazz, band and choral concerts by students, faculty and guests. The breadth and number of performance opportunities at the IU Jacobs School of Music are unparalleled in college music study, with the school offering more than 1,100 performances a year, including seven fully staged operas on a stage comparable in size to that of the Metropolitan Opera House. For a complete listing of the season's events, go to http://www.music.indiana.edu/events. For more information about IU Opera and Ballet Theater performances, visit http://www.music.indiana.edu/opera. To learn more about the IU Jacobs School of Music, go to http://music.indiana.edu.
The 7 Step Plan to To Maximize Your Startup eLearning Strategy There are many different ways in which an eLearning strategy can be developed, and plenty of metrics that can be used to determine its effectiveness. But ultimately there’s one bottom line which needs to be used when judging the true value of an eLearning strategy – its return. Effective courses will bring about a return on the investment you made. Too often, though, companies embark on eLearning without ever seeing any real return on the investment. Therefore, we've created this Seven Step Plan to Effective eLearning and whether you use it to create your first strategy, or you use it as a way of analysing the different stages of your existing strategy, we hope that you will agree that these seven steps form the foundation for every single effective eLearning program which does generate a worthwhile return. Whether you are just getting started with eLearning or you want to brush up on the basics, this post can serve as your essential guide to success. So let’s get stuck in. 1. Set realistic goals Consider what you really want to achieve through eLearning. What are you trying to convey with the course? Inform? Educate? Educators call this backward design. You begin by determining the essential skills learners need and design learning targets and activities based on those goals. Embarking on eLearning efforts without understanding your end goal sets you up for failure. If your courses don’t have a purpose, then you’re wasting your money and efforts! Decide what you're going to accomplish and how you're going to get there and write that information down. 2. Understand your learner When you know your learners, their nerepeds and their concerns, you make your courses learner driven, which creates successful learning environments. Learners who feel their needs aren't being met, rarely invest themselves in the process and your investment fails from the outset. The best way to avoid this is through careful market research at the beginning of the project. So, start to get to know your learners and what they need and expect from the eLearning experience. Then, tailor content to fit both the knowledge students have, and the knowledge they seek in a course. eLearning programs should focus at all moment on the learner and what they need to do with all of the information. 3. Create engaging and quality content. This flows naturally from setting realistic goals and understanding your learner. The insights you learn from these two steps will form the basis for your content and help you strategize how to engage learners in your eLearning courses. Quality trumps quantity any day. You can only maximize what you are creating that is good and relevant to your audience. You must get in their head, know their objectives, what keeps them up at night and how you can help them solve problems. If you know why they should give a rip about what’s in your course then it should be fairly easy to create eLearning courses that will help them solve problems in their daily work. You can never go wrong by investing in learners and their needs. 4. Develop a clear communication plan. Nothing frustrates learners more than a lack of communication during the learning process. Develop a plan of what you will communicate to your learners and when you will do it. Base these communications on your end goal and deliver the messages in ways your learners want to receive them. Also develop a strategy for responding to learner inquiries including who will respond and how. Be sure to maximize the investment you are making in building relationships by continuing the conversation with learners. 5. Solicit learner feedback. Effective eLearning goes through a constant process of reflection and revision based on various data points including learner feedback. Your learners can provide valuable insight into the success of eLearning by telling you what they learned, how they have implemented what they learned and the results of those efforts. Use your learners to discover those successes as proof of the ROI of eLearning. 6. Remain flexible. The benefit of eLearning is precisely its flexibility but too often companies lose sight of that key asset. It's important for effective eLearning to react to changing circumstances. When it comes to eLearning, there is no "one size fits all" or edicts etched in stone. Retain the key advantage of eLearning by remaining open and flexible. 7. Measure your eLearning programs. Another key benefit of eLearning is the ability to track exactly what a learner does in a course. You can measure enrollment, the pace learners move through a course, course completion and scores. This data will then inform the effectiveness of the course. Companies can use the information to make changes to content, assess learning goals or determine the impact a course had. Are you ready to reap the benefits of eLearning? Your company can definitely reap the benefits of eLearning if it implements effective eLearning programs. Thus, follow these basic steps and see a greater return on your eLearning investments!
In 57 years, at least 50 million people in India have been displaced by dams, mines, thermal power plants, corridor projects, field firing ranges, express highways, airports, national parks, sanctuaries, industrial townships, even poultry farms. They continue to pay the price for India's 'development' “We were shown many dreams 50 years ago. Now, we have no right to dream,” Vimalbai, about 70, speaks of the experience of displacement, of being uprooted by a ‘development’ project and then not even being given the promised rehabilitation. In 2004, Vimalbai and many others ousted by the Koyna hydroelectric power project in Satara district in Maharashtra , completed 50 years of living uprooted lives. Two generations of families in Satara have now suffered the trauma of displacement forced by the government of an apparently independent India . A third generation is gearing up for the unending battle for rehabilitation and other resettlement doles, in a State that claims to have ideal rehabilitation legislation in place. The Koyna dam, one of the first major mega dam projects after 1947, submerged 105 villages, sweeping out over 100,000 people from their homes in the plains. They were promised free power, an equal share in progress, and proper rehabilitation. People were paid meagre or no compensation. The Maharashtra government is still to resettle the oustees. Fifty years on, the families who were asked by the then leaders to make a sacrifice for the ‘progress’ and ‘development’ of the country, are asking, "Why?” Koyna is only one example of the destruction of the ‘development’ model pursued so relentlessly in India . L C Jain, former member of the Planning Commission, talks about millions uprooted from their pasts for an elusive future, for some vague ‘greater good’. Jain quotes the Mid-Term Appraisal 2000 of the Planning Commission to note, "25 million persons have been displaced since 1950 on account of developmental projects, of which 40% are tribal. Less than 50% have been rehabilitated. The rest have been pauperised by the development process." These may be conservative figures. Because displacement is usually only understood as direct displacement from land, such figures exclude many groups who are affected but who do not own land. The rehabilitation schemes don't cover landless labourers, fisherfolk and artisans. They ignore thousands outside the designated submergence zone or project areas. Yet all these are also people whose life-support systems are crushed by development projects. In the past 57 years of planned ‘development’, the people displaced by development projects -- dams, mines, thermal power plants, corridor projects, field firing ranges, express highways, airports, national parks, sanctuaries, industrial townships, even poultry farms --account for over 50 million Indians. A vast majority are landless and marginal farmers, mostly tribal, dalit or other economically backward communities. One study suggests that roughly one in every ten Indian tribals is a displaced person. Tribals constitute 8% of the country's population, and more than 40% of the displaced persons. In coastal Guhagar in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra , numerous fisherfolk were forced to move out of their age-old hamlets in the last ten years after losing their fishing rights to a dubious project called Enron. The project was pushed amid talk of murky deals, violating all norms and rules. The Dabhol power plant didn't directly displace large numbers of people. But indirectly, it snatched the livelihoods of many people, despite their persistent protests. Hundreds of miles away, in central India , the tribals displaced by the Bargi dam -- the first big upstream dam built on the Narmada near Jabalpur in the 1990s -- are still to come to terms with the impact of the project on their lives. The dam gulped more land than it could ever irrigate. It displaced more people than the planners said it would. Bargi has become a symbol of planning blunders. The government of Madhya Pradesh has no more money to construct the canals or to produce hydro-electricity. Over 50,000 people are estimated to have moved out of their hamlets – deemed ‘illegal’ by the government -- in the forests around the huge reservoir. Those who stayed, struggle to survive, day after day. Women eke out a living selling dry wood. Men migrate looking for work. Communities have been shattered, family bonds have crumbled. "The government could neither irrigate the land nor could rehabilitate us," says Munnibai, an oustee of the Bargi dam, who now lives in a rickshaw-wallahs’ colony along Jabalpur 's Rani Taal, a historic lake that is now a drainage tank. Thousands of such villagers relocated to Jabalpur when their wait for rehabilitation did not yield any result. The farmers of Bargi now pull cycle-rickshaws or work as labourers. Ranibai, who once owned vast stretches of farmlands in the Narmada Valley , is a domestic worker in Jabalpur . Along the serpentine Narmada , displacement is a key word. Ten years from now, probably some of the oldest cultures in India will have been submerged, when all the 30 big dams, 300 medium and 3,000 small dams are built on this single river. At least 100,000 people have been living with the ghost of an under-construction big dam on the Vainganga river in Bhandara district for the last 20 years. The project is estimated to cost Rs 4,000 crore, 12 times its original estimates. And there are no signs of it being completed. "We ceded our lands ten years ago, and are yet to get compensation or alternative land. We don't know when we will be rehabilitated," says Gangarao Kularkar, head of village Kharada, in the submergence zone. Travel northeast-ward to Jharkhand, where millions of people have had to move out of the way for fast-track industrialisation over the last 50 years. Almost nobody knows where and in what condition the displaced adivasis of Jharkhand live today. Tata Nagar has its foundations on a civilisation bulldozed away by the industrial czars of the nation. Jadugoda, where rich uranium deposits are a much-prized possession of nuclear India , has seen the population of the Santhal tribe systematically brutalised for three decades. Scores of men, women and children face serious health hazards from radiation. About a dozen villages around the uranium complex are devastated. While India was taking pride in the country’s nuclear tests, children were dying due of unchecked hazards in the area. A beleaguered Santhal population awaits rehabilitation while paying for a project they did not ask for or support. "If you can't travel to Hiroshima , come here to see what it means to be at the receiving end of a nuclear bomb," says Rameshchandra Mardi, a social activist in Jadugoda. On the border of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, in the Singrauli region, over 200,000 people have been displaced on different occasions. First by the Rihand dam, then by a series of thermal power plants of the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), followed by mining projects of the Central Coalfields Limited (CCL). Singrauli has illuminated the lives of many in the urban centres, but has seen its natives groping in endless darkness, grappling to overcome the trauma of displacement. Thousands of people, who once farmed here on their land, today steal coal from the yards of NTPC or from running trains. Some have been ‘rehabilitated’, but most don't have any avenue to earn a living. Dana Clark, a US attorney with the Centre for International Law, has closely monitored developments in Singrauli, especially the role of the World Bank. She remarks: "...The story of the suffering of the villagers in Singrauli is shocking and should lead to a comprehensive review of people whose lives have been destroyed in the name of development." Singrauli has been described as the local circle of Dante's Inferno. At the entrance of the inferno there was a sign, “Abandon hope all who enter here.” This seems appropriate when you enter the dingy and congested resettlement sites in Singrauli. Displacement by mines or thermal power plants is perhaps less visible than the forced movements of people triggered by dams. The acquisition takes place in phases. The would-be oustees are the last ones to know about their eviction by mines. This gives them little or no chance of resistance or coming together to bargain for a better rehabilitation package. Often, the government acquires land for say, a thermal power plant, in the public interest and later hands it over to a private company to build a cement factory. Or it constructs a dam for irrigation but diverts the water of the dam to private industrial zones when the project gets completed. In Maharashtra, a study done by a legislative committee in 2001 found that only about 18% of the water from irrigation projects actually gets used for agriculture. As things stand today, there's no region in the country where people haven't been displaced by development projects. And there's no region in the country where you would find people rehabilitated according to their aspirations and priorities. The Nagarhole National Park in Karnataka is another example. About 5,000 tribal families – including aboriginal tribes--- were thrown out of the forests they tended for centuries, after the World Bank approved a loan for the conservation project. When I visited Nagarhole in 2002, the tribals living on the fringes of the forests were still to come to terms with the radically different market economy they have been forcibly exposed to. Many now work for meagre wages as coolies at nearby coffee plantations. Many tribals have sold their children as domestic workers for the urban rich over the past decade. In Nagpur , Maharashtra , a multi-crore multi-model cargo hub project is a threat looming over the villages on the outskirts of the city. If cleared by the central government, the project, estimated at Rs 30,000 crore, will displace at least 50,000 people. In Baloda Bazar near Raipur in Chhattisgarh, villagers ceded vast stretches of their immensely fertile paddy farms for mushrooming cement factories, against a promise of good compensation and jobs. No promises were kept. Today, the once-rich farmers pull bicycle rickshaws around Mantralaya in Raipur . This is India ’s 21 st-century catastrophe. A planning and development apocalypse. Where millions pay a price for the benefits of the political and economic elite. Where victims are still, oddly, described as ‘beneficiaries’. Where laws that throw people out are cruel, colonial and arbitrary. Where the policies of rehabilitation give little or no respite to those evicted. Where terms like ‘national’ or ‘public interest’ at once put these laws and policies beyond question. And yet, goes the argument, displacement is ‘inevitable’. “The nation needs to progress fast-track. So millions must pay a price.” But who sacrifices for whom? Why do the have-nots always pay a price for the better-off in India in the name of ‘development’? (Jaideep Hardikar is a journalist based in Nagpur . He was awarded the K K Birla Foundation Media Fellowship in 2001-02, the NFI National Media Fellowship in 2002-2003, and the Sanskriti Award for Journalism in 2003.) InfoChange News & Features, January 2005
Spike is a flipping keyboard for iPhone. It is a case combo that adds a flip-out physical keyboard to an iPhone 4/4S. There have been many physical keyboard options recently for iPhone users who are not happy with touch screen typing. The options have ranged from full-sized Bluetooth like the Jorno folding keyboard to cases with integrated keyboards like Nuu Minikey. The Spike keyboard case combo of SoloMatrix has a hinged physical keyboard which flips up to give easier access to the full touch screen. There have been rumors of Apple presenting an iPhone with a physical keyboard over the past few years. The prototypes never turned into reality as the keyboards were found to be bulky and a waste of screen presence. Spike comes in two varieties. The first type has the bottom half of the case containing the mini QWERTY keyboard. This has to be removed physically and rotated half circle to reveal the keyboard. The second type of keyboard can be flipped out from the rear of the phone without the need of pulling the case apart. SoloMatrix has taken care in designing the Spike keyboards as it wanted to complement the design of the iPhone rather than a design to stick out like a sore thumb in the same way as the other keyboards have looked up to now. The solution was in coming up with the keyboard as a part of the protective case itself. Both varieties of the keyboard keep clear the iPhone’s home buttons and the volume controls and they do not require a Bluetooth connection or any other external power source. With this combination of a protective case and an attractive price, SoloMatrix will make the Spike appeal to people with thicker thumbs and who are looking out for a keyboard experience like the one provided by BlackBerry.
Real hot girls Our website is a absolutely free dates internet service helping free single russian ladies find real men for flirting or long distance relationship. Sign up totally free to contact new good ladies and start love ad today! Our site is best live online date web service, with hundred thousand of beautiful, single ladies waiting to meet you now. Register absolutely free and look single ladies videos and chats! Our ladies are pretty and looking to contact friends! Post romantic text messages or live chats with beautiful sexy singles now! If you're looking for love relationship, our chat site is one of the top free online dating sites worldwide. The most visited russian free chat site for free single men and real girls! With charge free live online date it is absolutely free to find single women by using our live online dates internet service. We have video free of many ladies, free to download. Here the on line dating service begins with our web site. All girls on new dating site have many images photos and free videos. We at our professional dating agency want you to find pen pals and good relationships. Search through ten thousand romance ads of beautiful, mature women searching to contact best match. Our free site will advise easy fun web solutions: live chats and hot video. All of these women are real and ready to meet you. Sign up in our professional dating agency and contact your hot lady just now! We have hundred thousand of photo ads to browse, free single gentlemen and girls who are searching for dating or happy relationships. Our perfect women are not women models like another online dating sites have. With hundreds of hot singles searching for real love relationship, this is the best web service to finding soulmate for you. Every year, ten thousand of new singles find flirting on our dating site. Start your charge free picture profile, add new fotoalbum and meet beautiful girls! With our internet services you may contact single and good women. With your charge free personals ad, you can view photo images and profiles of pretty women. Our free website is 100% charge free, and most visited free site. Meet your special lady today - register free of charge right now! Our russian singles site is one of the best sites in the web. You have access to hundreds of attractive russian women single ads and all romantic messages absolutely free! Our date site offers a unique dating service to hot singles who are seeking love online. All these girls from Russia are the most visited and looking for real gentlemen. With our dating agency you may meet real mature girls. Start a free ad and browse russian girls profiles, your potential live match for free of charge. The women on our hot site are really free single, looking marriage. Never pay for live online dates, online chat with single free perfect women here charge free. Our hot site is the unique and secure dates databases you may find. On line date, international relationships and even romance marriage! At our free date site we have local singles online database and date online services where you may find pretty real ladies. Most recent ladies have huge collections of super images photos, charge free to access. If you're single and looking for loving relationships with hot woman - our dating website has the most visited dates services. Browse ten hundred of single ads and find your free perfect match. Our manager will help you find successful relationship or dating. You may give a woman any contact information in your sample letters to her. Copyright © 2013, Inga-club.com. All rights reserved.
What a wonderful photo! Paula has done it again; she sure knows how to make us all love nature even more than we already do. "Boulder River" displays a good composition, containing very interesting elements in the fore, mid, and background sections of the shot and connecting them all via the flow of this beautiful river. Its most stunning feature, in my opinion, is the richness and variety of the color green that is being displayed, ranging from yellowish tones in the moss to bluish tones in the water. Additionally, the pools of sitting water in the foreground increase the sense of clean, undisturbed, and pure nature. If I had to describe this photo in only one word then it would be FRESH! Well done Paula, Thank you, Ingo, for taking the time to write this review! I am glad that you like this image, as it is very dear to me. The beauty that I saw as we hiked along the river beckoned me to come back many more times in the future for further exploration (and of course pictures).
More and more electric racecars are entering the mainstream, which means great things for the advancement of electric vehicle technology. But most don’t attempt this kind of a feat: Alister McRae and Tim Coronel want to take an electric version of their McRae Pro Dakar 4×2 buggy for a 14-day sprint across the grueling deserts and mountains of Argentina and Chile. These photos of the gas-powered buggy’s ride last year give some idea of what they’re up against. The Dakar Rally is a tough race for any car, a 5500-mile run across blazing hot desert dunes. The video above shows just how punishing the conditions can be. But McRae, the brother of late rally driver Colin McRae, and experienced European racecar driver Coronel, believe their buggy is up to the challenge. The McRae Pro Dakar EV will feature a lithium ion battery and 268-horsepower motor, and the car will use regenerative braking and innovative energy recovering shock absorbers to extend the EV’s range.
A broken-down cargo ship in waters off the Australian coast drifted out-of-control towards the Great Barrier Reef recently, threatening one of the largest and most diverse ecosystems on the planet. The Great Barrier Reef, which is also a World Heritage-listed site and a recognized maritime nature reserve, was put in jeopardy by the stricken vessel as crews on board worked to stabilize the engine and avert a potential environmental disaster. The bulk carrier, the Hong Kong-registered ID Integrity (oh the irony), reportedly broke down north of Cairns after it suffered “an engine breakdown”. According to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), the ship which was originally traveling from Shanghai, began to drift towards the Shark and Vema reefs on the outskirts of Australia’s most famed attraction. At the time, AMSA said in a statement: ”The crew is currently attempting to repair the engine, in the hope that the vessel will be able to resume its passage. Contingency planning is under way in case the crew cannot get the engine restarted.” AMSA also responded by deploying a Emergency Towage Vessel (ETV) called Pacific Responder from its routine training duties in the Torres Strait. While the ship was en route, AMSA attempted to slow down the ship by releasing ballast water, allowing for a safe distance between the vessel and Shark Reef. Multiple tugs were also called in to respond to the drifting ship. Luckily, the ID Integrity was secured and the drifting ship stabilized preventing any further drift towards reefs. It is now en route to the repair port of Townsville, but will from there be take to Cairns for further work. Discussing the near miss, a spokesman from AMSA said, “the successful outcome from this emergency response was the result of proactive and cooperative management between AMSA and the owners of ID Integrity. The existing emergency response measures AMSA has in place were effective in managing the risk of a potential grounding and the owners reacted in an appropriate and timely manner.” A close shave indeed, especially as it is not the first time a ship has almost crashed into the reef. In April 2010, a Chinese-registered coal carrier called The Shen Neng 1 leaked tonnes of heavy fuel oil and threatened an ecological disaster. The damage is still visible today with a 3km long scar in the reef where the vessel was stranded for nine days. via Discovery News
Wednesday, May 23, 2012 The boys get out of school Friday. I'm ready, I love having my kiddos home! Here are a few of them, they didn't all fit in the photo. More to come. Ü This is one of the purses from the Tres Chic Handbags tutorial available on the right hand side bar or the tutorials page of this blog. One of my all time favorite patterns I've created. The card beside it is 3x3 in size, so you can see that the purse is about gift card size. It's time for our second session! This time featuring stamp sets from the brand new Stampin' Up! Annual Catalog. We are bringing back all the things you said you loved about the membership and adding several new features as well. The fun starts June 18th! Come join us HERE. Posted by Inking Idaho at 5:00 AM
How Still We See Thee Lie: Oh, little town of Bethlehem How still we see thee lie Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by If Mary were bedding down in Bethlehem today, I think that she would complain that the city isn’t what the song said it would be. I doubt she would find Bethlehem itself particularly little or describe its nights as still. In fact, Mary might find it difficult to get a “deep and dreamless sleep” since life in Bethlehem continues well after nightfall. Perhaps she and Joseph would try to fall asleep amidst the sounds of wedding celebrations, fireworks, World Cup victory parties, and family dinners. But my guess is that Joseph’s family would never leave Mary alone. Mary and Joseph would probably be kept up late by relatives insisting on stuffing them with mountains of food and tiny cups of Arabic coffee. But if Mary and Joseph weren’t staying with family, I am certain that they would find plenty of room in whatever inn they might choose. The holy family could have its choice of many lodgings: they could check into the Bethlehem Hotel, a spacious, western-style establishment. Or perhaps the Intercontinental, a five-star palace that would put the most spacious stable to shame. Mary could lay down on a soft bed and drift off to a strange sound: silence. Joseph would find that the flood of pilgrims and tourists who once came to Bethlehem has all but disappeared. If Bethlehem lies still today, it’s because its economy is slowly dying. If Mary and Joseph came to Bethlehem today, they wouldn’t find it to be the thriving, historic, multi-faith community it once was. Bethlehem lies only five miles south of Jerusalem, but at the end of those five miles stands a 25ft high cement wall marking the beginning the West Bank and the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. This wall and occupation form the nightmare that is destroying Bethlehem’s economy and disturbing this little town’s deep sleep. Bethlehem suffers quietly under unjust structures imposed by the Israeli military occupation. Bethlehemites face land confiscation, the destruction of their olive groves, home demolitions and movement restrictions which make normal economic development impossible. The wall surrounding Bethlehem prevents goods from entering and leaving, cuts farmers off from their land and even surrounds important religious monuments. It also deters pilgrims from visiting one of the world’s oldest Christian communities. Today pilgrims on their way to the many religious sites in Bethlehem, including Rachel’s Tomb, Ruth and Naomi’s Field, Shepard’s Field, and of course the Church of the Nativity, must become intimately familiar with the wall. Visitors have to pass through an Israeli military checkpoint. They must wait in line, show their passports, and consent to any searches the Israeli army requires. This ordeal would turn many tourists away, but most give up before getting this close. Potential visitors are deluged with rumors of violence and high prices in Bethlehem. Most organized tours wiz tourists into Bethlehem on buses for a quick stop at the Church of the Nativity and than back to Israel, all in the course of about an hour. Many tours leave Bethlehem out of their itinerary all together. As a result, thousands of Christians visit the Holy Land each year without seeing the site of Jesus’ birth. Bethlehem’s survival would still be in jeopardy if its tourist sector were still thriving. But without the visitors who used to drive Bethlehem’s economy, residents have very little hope. The Christian community in Bethlehem is rapidly emigrating, not because of religious discrimination but because of the economic conditions imposed by the Israeli occupation. Not long ago, Christians formed a majority in Bethlehem. If emigration rates remain constant, some say in 20 years Bethlehem will have no Christians left. The truth before the world is stark: the location venerated as Christ’s birth place is being destroyed. One of the oldest Christian communities is slowly being driven out by a brutal military occupation that strikes at all Palestinians, regardless of faith. Nothing is safe under occupation, even Jesus’ birthplace. In the year 2002, the Israeli army invaded Bethlehem and lay siege to the Church of the Nativity. The church remains riddled with bullet holes today. Even for a person like myself, a Quaker who places no special emphasis on “holy places”, these bullet holes are like holes in my heart. I hope that they are holes in a veil through which God’s presence can come more readily into our beautiful, mundane world. I want to believe that’s what they are, but I worry that they are just another hole in the fabric of Palestinian society. Bullet holes in the Church of the Nativity My only hope is that the broken hearts of Christians and other good people who learn of Bethlehem’s plight will be the holes through which God’s love can work in our lives. The Christmas story can’t end in Bethlehem; it needs to find new life in the hearts of people all over the world who are ready to take action to stop the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. The prince of peace, a child who grew up to disrupt the status quo with his message of love and justice, was born in Bethlehem. May he be born in our hearts again today. For more information on the ongoing situation in Bethlehem and ways to help, visit Open Bethlehem at www.openbethlehem.org
I’ll try to set my post apart slightly by providing a detailed explanation. When this blog was still on Tumblr, I blogged about embedding GitHub Gists in Tumblr posts. Doing so has a few advantages: scripttags throughout your body. You just include links ( a-style) to your Gists and then a single script—referenced at the bottom of the document—does all the magic. !importantor making sure your selectors are more specific than theirs. Back in those days, if I wanted a Gist in a post, I would make a new Gist for every piece of code I wanted to include. That got ugly, though, so I decided I would start making a single multi-file Gist per post, where each “file” was a separate piece of code to be used in the post. This required a few changes to the script. In a previous post, due to a lack of browser support for CSS media queries (in both mobile and desktop browsers), I came to the unfortunate conclusion that… Whether you baseline for desktop and use media queries to dynamically assign styles for mobile, or you baseline for mobile and use media queries to dynamically assign styles for desktop, you’re going to leave a non-trivial number of browsers out in the cold. And then came Respond.js. Dapper is a great, new (kind of), tiny database object mapper for the .NET framework. Its footprint is a single file. Drop it in your project and it adds a handful of extension methods to the Dapper’s focus is on speed. According to the project’s home page, it’s barely slower than hand-coding your own mapping with a SqlDataReader. What those few milliseconds buy you, though, is automatic mapping to your POCOs. Speed isn’t free, though. But I’ll get to that part later. jQuery Templates is a plugin to jQuery (requiring at least version 1.4.2), so your page will need to reference both jQuery and the templates plugin (in that order). Open up www.colly.com or lanyrd.com and (assuming you’re using a modern browser) watch what happens as you resize your browser window. As the window size changes, the page’s layout morphs to accomodate the window size. CSS includes a nice feature to target styles to particular media metrics, width being one of them. In real-time, the browser will apply different styles based on the various queries defined in the stylesheet. It’s an incredibly useful feature for targeting your style not only to smaller desktop browsers but to mobile devices as well. $. Plugins are defined within the module function by declaring functions on the $.fn objects. Functions declared on $ are selector-independent and can return whatever the developer chooses. Functions declared on $.fn are selector-dependent and should return a jQuery object to maintain jQuery’s chainability.
British driver Mark Dwyer (Lola T400) topped a truly international podium after the first MSC F5000 Tasman Cup Revival series race at the Formula 1™ Qantas Australian Grand Prix meeting in Melbourne today. Dwyer was untroubled to win today’s 8-lap race, crossing the finish line just over 20 seconds ahead of Australian Aaron Lewis (Chevron B24) and Kiwi, David Abbott (Lola T430). After qualifying on Thursday, high hopes were held for local young gun James Davison (Lola T332), son of former F5000 racer Jon, and grandson of four-time Australian Grand Prix winner Lex Davison. But after joining Dwyer on the front row of the grid for today’s race Davison managed less than a lap before his car’s magneto cried enough. Another highly-rated category newcomer, MotorSport eNews publisher Chris Lambden (McRae GM1) was also in the wars on the opening lap, clashing with fellow McRae driver Aaron Burson as the paired braked for the first turn and ending up - with Burson - in the gravel trap. While all this was going on Phillip Island Classic race winner Greg Thornton (Chevron B24) and local Andrew Robson (Lola T332) slotted into second and third place respectively with Aaron Lewis fourth and David Abbott fifth. That’s the way the race could well have finished too had Robson not been slowed and eventually stopped by a fuel starvation problem and Thornton not ended up in a gravel trap after an unsuccessful move on race leader Dwyer. With both Thornton and Robson out Lewis inherited second place, Abbott third, with Darcy Russell (Lola T330) leading home an all-Australian mid-field pack consisting of Tony Floreani (Elfin MR5), Bryan Sala (Matich A50), Paul Zazryn (Lola T332), Chris Hocking (Matich A53), Peter Brennan (Lola T332) and Bill Hemming (Elfin MR8 AC). Further back a second multi-national battle see-sawed back and forth, this one eventually settled in favour of South African Greg Mills (Sana RD11) from Kiwi Peter Burson (McRae GM1), Aussie Mike Glynn (Lola T400), Kiwi Warwick Mortimer (Surtees TS5) and Australian Paul Trevethen, the latter behind the wheel of one of three Australian-built Elfin cars in the field. Top Kiwis Stu Lush (McRae GM1) and Stan Redmond (Lola T332) showed pace early on, particularly Lush in the car Chris Hyde drove at the Melbourne event last year, but neither finished, Lush with an ignition problem, Redmond after an off-track excursion. This weekend’s 2010/11 series finale meeting sees two eight lap races for the popular MSC F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series cars, with the second at a similar time tomorrow (Sunday). The globe-trotting Kiwis behind the successful New Zealand-based MSC F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series will then return home to prepare their cars for shipping to the UK to take on Mark Dwyer, Greg Thornton and the like on home ground over a two-round North vs South series over consecutive weekends at the end of June and beginning of July. With NZ F5000 Association Media Release: Image: Fast Company/Alex Mitchell.
I am pleased to announce that Dean Whinery has agreed to occasionally write blog posts for us. What follows is his bio of sorts, so that you know the person behind future posts. Please make him feel welcome... Born in East L.A., I lived in South-central LA until the family moved to Whittier during hgh school sophomore year. Sold newspapers on corners and in industrial areas of South-central. One of my sometimes customers was a big fellow in a paper hat who sold chili dogs from a small stand. Years later, whenever the founder of Carl's Jr. saw me, he would give me a gold card for a free meal at any of his restaurants. In late 1949, I joined the biggest Boy Scout troop that I've seen to this day, 12 patrols of 12 Scouts each. Associated with it were two very large Cub Scout packs, Sea, Land and Air Explorers, and a Rover unit.Something happened during Scout Week, 1950, and all these units were disbanded. I moved to a small troop where marching was the only thing we did. Finally, I latched onto a troop sponsored by the Goodyear factory 10 blocks from home, and several of my friends joined too. After re-doing Tenderfoot, total of three times, I reached Second Class Scout and was troop Quartermaster. We were a growing troop, and were the largest in the district before long. We camped almost every month. When we got a new SM, a good ol' boy from Kaintucky, he asked me to be SPL for a troop that had become 96 Scouts. He discovered that I could pronounce "all the Mexican" names that were just tongue twisters for him, and the nicknames just confused him. I was SPL for two years. In 1953, still a Second Class Scout, I saved up the "huge" $50 Jamboree fee and was an APL at the event on Irvine Ranch, Calif. That fall, having finally learned to swim, they pinned on a First Class badge, followed in a few months with the Star rank. We had attended council summer camp for two years, patrol cooking and a total fee of $15 for a 7-day week. My last year we camped in Kings Canyon National Park. where I found myself surrounded on evening by bears while trying to take a cub's picture. I was an Explorer for about a year, but did not stay with Scouting during my last two years of high school. I spent one summer as a counselor in a private $ummer camp. Then I was an ASM who, in his 18th year, took two dozen Scouts to Cherry Valley, Santa Catalina Island. Since that time, as a volunteer, I have been ASM, SM, or committeeman, for troops in California, Arizona, and in Munich, Germany. Also have volunteered in Cubbing, Exploring and Venturing, and have served as UC, ADC, and DC, and was SM for JLT. In 1969, at the personal invitation of the National Council's PR director, I was a photographer at the Jamboree in Idaho, where I had a long chat with Olave, Lady Baden-Powell, and was a tiny part of security operations at the 2005 Jamboree. At 21 I had earned the Scouter's Training Award, and in Germany (63-65) did the 10-day outdoor segment of the "old-old" Wood Badge, where one of the staff had been a trainee of Green bar Bill in the late 40s. Eventually, I acquired the SM, Commissioner, and CM Training Keys, as well as most of the later Cub training recognitions. I've been to Philmont twice for special conferences, and at one time carried three certifications from National Camping School. I also did Cub Scout Leader Trainer Wood Badge, and a couple of years ago, Powder Horn. My peers have honored me with the District Award of Merit and Silver Beaver. I also hold the International Scouter's Award, reflecting, in part, my time as Counselor for my Lone Scout son in the middle of Mexico. After a 30-year career in the newspaper business, I was hired as PR man (and bunch of other hats) for a BSA council, and eventually was "lead secretary" in the Camping Department, staying there for about five years before moving on to another council and its Hispanic Outreach Program. While a "camping secretary"...with a NCS camp director certification...I was honored to have an evening with Bill Hillcourt who was visiting our camp. I'm "retired" now, registered as a volunteer with Direct Service because my "official address" is in a mountain village in the middle of Mexico, and serving as Associate Advisor of a fine coed Venturing Crew in California. Many years ago, I was surprised to be introduced at a Blue and Gold Dinner as "our District Commissioner. He has all the answers." I quickly recovered and told everyone, "I don't have all the answers, because I haven't heard all the questions yet." New comments will not show up until they have been manually approved, do to problems with spam. Meet Dean Whinery@Chandu Our Troop #30179 here in Clinton Township, MI has participated in the 100th anrevinsay birthday in a bag community service project. Our troop consists of 9 11th graders at CVHS who put together 9 birthday bags!The bags include cake mix, frosting, can pan, paper plates, paper napkins, candles,plastic sliverware, invitations, streamers, balloons, gift bags, wrapping paper, thank-yous, and banners. Show Control Box
From Stories of Redemption to Candid Personal Reflection, Hear People in the Public Eye Say Things You've Never Heard Before About How Their Lives Changed in 2009 NBC saves the best dish for last this Thanksgiving with a look at the most fascinating, inspirational, heroic and notorious figures, and most-talked about stories of 2009. Taylor Swift, Nadya Suleman, Susan Boyle, Kobe Bryant, and Captain Chesley Sullenberger all speak out in new and revealing interviews with NBC's Matt Lauer in an hour-long primetime special airing at 9:00 p.m. ET. From candid reflections and stories of redemption to surprising talk about how fame has affected their personal lives, viewers will get to see people in the public eye saying things they've never heard before. Below are excerpts from the special. If used, attribution must be given to: "NBC's People of the Year," airing on Thursday, Nov. 26 at 9 p.m. ET. Sullenberger on "Rock star sex":
This 4 1/4" x 6 1/2" cabinet photo shows May Lillie & Pawnee Bill dressed in the western clothing they wore to perform in Pawnee Bill's Wild West Show. The photo has been hand-colored(most likely by a member of the family)as I purchased this also at the estate sale of May Lillies niece. It has a couple of nicks in the photo and altho hard to read lists the photographer as JAMES 883 8th.Avenue.N.Y. Add this to your wild west show photo collection of cabinet photos as altho it has been colored by a member of the family I have not seen this one before. This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 07 December, 2010.
Simulation software maker ANSYS announced today that VNIIGAZ, the Scientific-Research Institute of Natural Gases and Gas Technologies and a subsidiary of Moscow-based gas exploration company Gazprom, is using ANSYS simulation technologies to support its business …VNIIGAZ is using multiphysics simulation software from ANSYS to improve reliability and drive technological innovation in the pipeline equipment used to transfer oil and gas. The company also is applying Simulation Driven Product Development to simulate emergency scenarios in an industry that is especially hazardous. In its research and development efforts, VNIIGAZ uses ANSYS structural mechanics, fluid dynamics and explicit dynamics analysis tools to perform studies on erosion and combustion, stress-strain analysis, strength and fatigue analysis, and studies of internal and external loads in gas pipelines. One specific application involves modeling the physics of equipment damage, thereby facilitating the development of new damage prevention strategies and technologies. Extensive risk-assessment simulations are planned to explore scenarios such as gas explosions and the spread of fire to help maintain and improve operational safety at Gazprom. More in the release. (The image shows deformation of pipes and soil mass under different points of fracture in a casing starter.)
MEMPHIS, Tenn. - In their opening game of the season the Pirates posted big numbers in the second and third period to defeat Rhodes 12-6 on Friday night. The game was close in the first quarter as each team posted two goals in the frame. Austin Fox got his first goal as a Pirate just over three minutes into the game. Rhodes responded with two goals to take a brief 2-1 lead, but Jackson Timian's goal, assisted by Jeremy Tufnell, with just 11 seconds on the clock tied the score heading into the second quarter. SU turned up the heat in the second with five goals while the defense went on lock down, allowing just one Lynx goal to lead by four, 7-3, at halftime. A man-down goal by Jamie Long 1:15 into the third quarter kicked things for for SU and brought their lead to five, 8-3. Rhodes pushed back with back-to-back goals to cut into Southwestern's lead, but the Pirates were too mighty as they added four more goals to arrive at the 12-6 final. Southwestern dominated the shot count 46-20 and converted on all 25 clear attempts. Fox and Michael Villa led the scoring with three goals each while Long added two goals and a team high three assists in the win. The Pirates start the year at 1-0 while Rhodes drops to 0-1. Southwestern travels to Conway, Ark. to face former SCAC-rival Hendrix on Sunday.
Life with Suicide The Together Forever Series ~First in Series~ Suicide has no closure Callen, is a freelance writer, and has an advice column in her local newspaper. She is also an artist with her own art gallery, “By The Edge.” Andrew, is a highly sought after fashion stylist and is in charge of the fashion department of ” SLS Portfolio Pro” Magazine. When Callen and Andrew meet, it’s an instant connection and love at first sight. They start a new life together and move into their own custom made home a year into their relationship. After suffering the loss of an unborn baby, life changes for them. With a sorrowful heart, and a life time of deep rejection from his mother and family, not even Callen could save him. Unfortunately, Andrew succumbs to suicide. Callen now has to move on without the love of her life and is hit with tragic circumstances and must face her destiny, and what’s to come for her and her future. Born in Pointe-Claire, Quebec, Sandra has enjoyed working as a fashion and hair stylist and has studied interior decorating before becoming a professional writer. When her husband committed suicide in 1997, it completely changed her life. She started writing her journey through surviving suicide herself and how she survived her husband’s suicide. She began writing as a creative outlet to mourn her husband’s death, with poetry and novels. Now, Sandra has been recognized for her talent as a freelance writer and will have three novels in this first series “Together Forever”. Sandra resides in, Burnaby, Britsh Columbia, with her family, her future husband, and her two teenage children. Her imagination goes far. She plans to continue to write and publish books for the future.
Looking for a great alternative to expensive advertising? Try it! this button will tell you more it! is popping up all over the place. Check the map to find it! near you. it's interactive, baby! The major brands are doing it. You'll be amazed how affordable it is! get your own TV channel!
Article 6 of 11 in Understanding Your Car Insurance Policy Medical payments coverage in your auto insurance policy pays for injuries incurred to people while they are in your car. It covers people riding in your car, you and your family if you are hit by a car while you are walking, or you if you are injured while riding in someone else's car (after the limits of the driver's insurance are reached). KEEP IN MIND: This is not a medical insurance policy. This is very basic coverage that only covers injuries related to vehicle accidents, and typically only up to a certain dollar limit that you can increase by paying more money in your premium payments. Not all states require you to have auto insurance medical coverage, so make sure you know your state's minimum requirements before getting an insurance quote. Click here to see your whether or not your state requires PIP coverage Protecting Yourself with Auto Insurance Medical Coverage Even if your state does not require medical coverage in your auto insurance policy, consider having this coverage if you are going to be transporting others frequently. Whether your passengers are family or friends, you will want to make sure they are protected in case of an accident. Auto accidents can happen to even the most careful drivers, and if you frequently use your vehicle to drive others around then you will want to be sure that you are protected by auto insurance medical coverage in your policy. Medical coverage in your auto insurance policy could provide the necessary payments to cover any medical costs after an accident. No Fault States and PIP Some states do not take who was at fault for the accident into account. In these no-fault states there is a form of medical expense coverage called Personal Injury Protection or PIP. In addition to medical bills, PIP covers lost wages, certain services (such as child care) that the covered individual is unable to perform, and some funeral expenses. Some no-fault states also allow you to make your health insurance your primary medical coverage, reducing your premiums for PIP significantly. Your Medical Bills Whether you are filing a medical payment claim with your own car insurance company or settling with someone else's insurance carrier, you should be aware that none of your medical providers can submit the medical bills on your behalf. Any bill you want paid by a specific insurance company, must be sent directly to that company. Even if claims representatives from two companies are communicating, they can not exchange medical bills. From the beginning of treatment for your injury, be certain to ask every facility that is treating you to provide you with a copy of the bill, and keep a copy or the original of each one in case one is misplaced at the insurance company or lost in the mail. It is important to be aware that there may be a reimbursement clause or duplicate payment clause or both. These clauses apply if you collect an Uninsured or Underinsured Motorist Bodily Injury Settlement, or Auto Bodily Injury Settlement for the same bills as those submitted for your medical payment claim. The clause, also known as subrogation, will require you to repay your insurance company for any bills they paid that you later received payment for. You can't recover twice for the same bill. TIP: When settling an injury claim, be aware of the possibility that you will need to repay your insurance company if the settlement money you are receiving pays for a bill that has already been taken care of by other types of coverage in your auto insurance policy. As with any type of auto insurance coverage, you will need to compare car insurance quotes and determine what level of medical coverage fits your budget. To receive a quote on your auto insurance with medical payments coverage include, click here to visit the Free Advice quote center where you can get several reputable agents in your area give you a free no obligation quote. Read More Articles That Explain Your Car Insurance Policy
By Stuart Green On a macro level, the perennial foe of the airline industry, “oil prices,” continues to negatively impact profitability. Expected fuel increases have led IATA to downgrade the global profit outlook for 2013 to $3 billion, with a 0.5% profit margin. Europe remains the biggest drag on global profits while the US, Asia Pacific and the Middle East are all in the black. Although higher fuel costs will more than halve profits this year in Asia, the region’s relatively strong economies and changing demographics will continue to generate more rapid growth in travel and cargo. Despite this mixed economic picture, airlines continue to embrace a blend of traditional and digital platforms to “get bums on seats” and enhance the experience for their customers. Airline customers are increasingly experienced flyers and growing ever more discriminating and demanding. As a result of ongoing industry deregulation, improved technologies, and the emergence of new business models, consumers have more choices than ever. Interested in shopping around for the best deal and the most attractive package of services, consumers routinely ignore more traditional marketing channels, pushing airline brands to find new ways to reach and engage them. Virgin America recently established a dedicated, interactive website to bring its brand experience to life. Branded by the airline as an “immersive digital portal,” the site offers an interactive, virtual tour through a Virgin America cabin. At the site, customers can submit Instagram images of their Virgin America experience and post messages and Tweets with the hashtag #myVXexperience. The brand has also set up a #myVXexperience pinboard on Pinterest to share customer submissions to that platform's audience. Delta has a new sponsorship deal with Chelsea Football Club, following similar partnerships with the Atlanta Braves and the Minnesota Twins American baseball teams. As part of this new partnership, the first Sky360 lounge outside the US will open at Chelsea's home stadium in London. The Stamford Bridge lounge will host VIP guests of official Delta partners on match-days providing a Delta-branded experience through features such as airline-style tickets inviting attendees to "check-in" for matches and an LED-lit runway leading guests to a dedicated entrance to watch football games. China’s outbound tourism is growing at 20% per annum. As a result, airlines, airports and tourism destinations around the world are rolling out the red carpet to make Chinese travelers feel special. Frankfurt airport now offers a personal shopping service where attendants speak fluent Mandarin and are familiar with the culture and preferences of the passenger. Services include helping passengers make purchasing decisions through translation of products, getting refunds on VAT, and escorting them through security checks and onward to departure. Additionally, Frankfurt airport launched a Chinese version of its mobile app and is looking into introducing personal shoppers for Russian passengers. Mobile boarding passes, compatible with Apple’s new Passbook functionality, are being rolled out around the world. Apple’s new Passbook is a digital wallet that can store boarding passes, movie tickets and membership cards. Passengers of United, Delta, Malaysia Airlines, Lufthansa and Virgin, upon arrival at the airport, get an image of their boarding pass on-screen, which can include information such as gate changes or seat assignment. Uses will include proactive management and dissemination of timely information to flyers, such as rebooking options, updated baggage tracking, reimbursement vouchers and storing coupons for ancillary services like premium lounge access. "There must be a holistic vision for each airline brand that not only drives all experiences, but is also grounded in deep consumer insights" Digital platforms are now the norm with airlines around the world using mobile phone applications and social media networks to advertise, engage, build customer databases and sell travel deals/fares. The more savvy airlines are using social media to drive real results for their business through mobile marketing campaigns, managing customer service management, crisis management as well as experimenting with new social media platforms to attract new customers and widen their communities. However, building brand value will require a genuine integration between the online and offline experience. As well as meeting short-term sales goals through social marketing, there must be a holistic vision for each airline brand that not only drives all experiences, but is also grounded in deep consumer insights around how people choose and why they remain loyal.
1. The Ducks are still going to win the President’s Trophy. They are going to have a shocking last three quarters of the season. 2. Phil Kessel has written in his diary that he plans to score 700 goals this year for the Leafs. Needless to say, Brian Burke secretly reads all of his players’ diaries, and he totally believes that Kessel shouldn’t have any trouble accomplishing this plan. 3. Scott Clemmensen blamed everyone else on the Panthers for his lousy goaltending thus far, but the real reason for it (beside the fact that he’s not a very good goaltender) is that he’s lost his focus because he spends his games wondering if Team USA has called to ask him to start for them at the Olympics yet. He is considering carrying his cell phone out on the ice with him, just so he can take the call in person when it comes. 4. We have purchased the Phoenix Coyotes for just four easy installments of $49.95. We promised Gary Bettman that we wouldn’t relocate them, but that was a lie — we’re planning to move them to New Jersey, where they will play under our Christmas tree, as a gift to Boomer. It’s the sort of once-in-a-lifetime gift-giving opportunity that a true hockey fan can’t resist. 5. The tiff that resulted in a Flames player shouting “you’re selfish” to Dion Phaneuf was the result of Robyn Regher wishing to let all his teammates try his new recipe for Jungle Party Nuts, an homage to the Brazilian snack he loved as a child. 6. Vinny Lecavalier isn’t just having a slump. He’s having a Hooters Baby. Or, perhaps more accurately, a Mrs. Thunderbug Baby. 7. Milan Lucic would have you believe his broke his finger doing something cavemanly like fighting or clubbing baby seals, but the truth is, he broke it wrestling with Fancylynne, his pet hermit crab. 8. Scott Gomez can’t figure out why everyone in his new city talks funny. 9. His new city can’t figure out why he can’t play responsible defense. 10. Craig Anderson is actually being played this season by identical triplets named Craig, Chris and Conrad. Craig by himself is only one third as good as the entity currently known as “Craig Anderson”. 11. Linda Staal had a curse placed on her by a mysterious crone 30 years ago. The curse was that she would bear strapping sons who would all see great early success in their chosen fields, but would quickly suffer steep declines, taking their coworkers down with them. It’s happening already with Hooters and the Canes, so the Pens and Rangers should probably start worrying that they’re next. 12. Carol Niedermayer had a curse placed on her by a mysterious crone 45 years ago. The curse was that she would bear strapping sons who would see great success in their chosen fields, but they would both be doomed to finish their professional lives in North Jersey. It’s happening already. 13. Scott Niedermayer has been wearing a Devils sweater under his Ducks one all this time. But we still hate him anyway. 14. The Minnesota Wild have been tanking this season in protest about Pierre McGuire not being hired for their GM position. 15. Zach Parise had a curse place on him by a mysterious crone yesterday. The curse is he’s never going to score again. 16. Ryan Getzlaf is planning to time the release date of his debut album, “Getzi Warbles: The Voice Of An Angel”, with the Olympic gold medal game. He is hoping that Team Canada will not make it that far in the tournament, so he can be in Regina for the release party. 17. A scientific study based in Stockholm studied the meekest of the meek and discovered, without a smidgen of doubt, that Jonathan Toews is the single most pick-on-able human on the face of the Earth. 18. There are no fewer than six NHLers with tattoos of unicorns. Remarkably, Jonathan Toews is not one of them. 19. Until he read #17 on this list, Toews had an appointment to get a unicorn tattooed on his bicep over the Olympic break. 20. The reason for Ryan Miller’s remarkable start to this season is that he finally got the joke of the play on words “Miller Time”. He now chortles to himself every time he puts on his mask, and has discovered that he plays better when his frown has been turned upside down. He is considering unveiling a new play on words for the playoffs, something like “Miller Lite”, which could be a joke about how much weight he loses during the course of a season. 21. Jeff Carter is among those wishing the Coytoes would relocate; he finds the lack of Fuddruckers establishments in the Phoenix GMA makes it a troubling city to play in. 22. The Sharks had high hopes for what Dany Heatley would bring to the table on the ice, but have been pleasantly surprised at what he’s brought off the ice — namely, the Senators’ traditional season-long, ongoing Tiddlywinks tourney. All of the Sharks players give him the credit for their excellent team-building, but he demurs that he is nowhere near as good a Tiddlywinks organizer as Jason Spezza. 23. Mike Richards will join the Twitter masses as soon as he can get an army of ghost-writers who will write pithy jabs at Holmgren in exchange for free Kenora Township garbage tags. 24. Anze Kopitar is a distant relative of Jay Pandolfo’s, by marriage. 25. Shea Weber’s father wanted to name him “Sean”, but his mother wanted to name him “Xerxes”. That’s why his middle name is “Shxerxesan”. 26. Ryan Miller isn’t convinced that “Shxerxesan” isn’t a play on words. 27. The popularity of Movember is well documented among hockey teams this year, but the Devils plan to blow everyone’s minds with their own 11th-month facial hair plan next year. The team will continue to follow team rules and thus will celebrate “No-vember”. 28. Ryan Miller isn’t convinced that “No-vember” isn’t a play on words. 29. Making fun of Ryan Miller is like picking low-hanging fruit. 30. Ryan Miller is very confident “low-hanging fruit” is a play on words. 31. Steven Stamkos is a figment of everyone’s imagination. The easiest way to defend against him is to say directly to his face, “You have no power over me.” 32. At the recent GM meetings, three of the GMs participating in a secret ballot voted for more head shots in the NHL. 33. Fabian Brunnstrom had an action-packed summer vacation. While thumbing through a box of discounted sheet music at an antiquarian book store in Europe, he discovered a note scrawled on what appeared to be an original libretto for “Le Nozze Di Figaro” that hinted at a shocking secret, hundreds of years old. The note led him to team up with Athena Thwakwalker, a long-legged, raven-haired musicologist from the University of Austria, in a race against time and the Operati to save humankind from a terrible evil. He was able to save the world and get the girl before training camp begun. (And he bought an original libretto of “Figaro” at a bargain basement price because the bumbling shopkeeper didn’t know what treasure he was selling.) 34. John Tavares’s addiction to saltwater taffy could very well be his undoing. 35. It is purely coincidence, but every single player on the Thrashers roster is terrified of amphibians. 36. While discussing innovative ways to increase revenue to help pay for some of their massive player contracts, Red Wings management put serious thought into introducing a third color so as to be able to make a snazzy third jersey. The choices came down to “Sea Pine”, “Lavender Mist”, and “Electro-Cobalt”, before cooler heads prevailed. 37. Duncan Keith cheats at Bananagrams. 38. In researching this post, we discovered that TJ Oshie, if he could be any animal, would be a unicorn (scroll down to the Q&A at the bottom of the page). That doesn’t mean that he’s one of the six or more players with unicorn tattoos, though. But it also doesn’t mean he isn’t.
Chronic prostatitis/pelvic pain syndrome, noninflammatory, is a common form of prostatitis. It causes pain in the pelvic area, where the prostate is located, without symptoms of general illness, infection, or Chronic prostatitis/pelvic pain syndrome, noninflammatory, was formerly called prostatodynia. December 3, 2011 E. Gregory Thompson, MD - Internal Medicine & J. Curtis Nickel, MD, FRCSC - Urology How this information was developed to help you make better health decisions. To learn more visit Healthwise.org © 1995-2013 Healthwise, Incorporated. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated.
The University of Missouri System does not support any programs to countries for which the U.S. Department of State has issued Travel Warnings (current list). According to the U.S. Department of State "Travel Warnings are issued when the State Department recommends that Americans avoid a certain country." In an effort to ensure the health, safety, and security of its students and its constituents, the University of Missouri adheres to these recommendations. If a student or constituent chooses to study in one of these countries against the advice of the University, he/she will not be registered as an MU student and will not have access to university support, resources, or facilities during that time. Students returning to MU will need to complete an MU "Request to Re-enroll." This form is available in MU academic advising offices, in the Office of Admissions office or online. There is no charge for this process. The approval of a student's "Request to Re-enroll" is the prerogative of the individual student's MU College, School and/or Department. Students planning to study abroad or participate in any program in a country with a DOS Travel Warning are advised to talk with their academic advisors prior to leaving MU. Students wishing to earn credit for study in a country with a DOS Travel Warning need to present their transcripts to the MU Office of International Admissions in order to attempt to transfer credit. Prior credit approval will not be granted. Published by the International Center, N52 Memorial Union, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211 \| Phone: 573-882-6007 \| Fax: 573-882-3223 \| E-mail: email@example.com © — Curators of the University of Missouri. DMCA and other copyright information. All rights reserved. An equal opportunity/ADA institution.
[Freegis-list] GeoServer 1.4.0 Released jan-oliver.wagner at intevation.de Wed Dec 20 15:42:03 CET 2006 On Tuesday 19 December 2006 18:59, Chris Holmes wrote: > The GeoServer Project is pleased to announce the release of version > 1.4.0. The big push has been the transition of GeoServer's architecture > to a more modular, programmer friendly environment based on Spring > (http://springframework.org). And from the user perspective there are > several improvements for scalability and stability, along with many > little fixes so that everything 'just works'. Isn't Spring licensed under Apache 2.0 and GeoServer under GNU GPL? Note, that these two are incompatible. Doesn't this raise some trouble? Did I overlook something? Jan-Oliver Wagner: www.intevation.de/~jan \| GISpatcher: www.gispatcher.de Kolab Konsortium : www.kolab-konsortium.de \| Thuban : thuban.intevation.org Intevation GmbH : www.intevation.de \| Kolab : www.kolab.org FreeGIS : www.freegis.org \| GAV : www.grass-verein.de More information about the Freegis-list
What treatments can effectively cure equine gastric ulcers? For too many horse owners, that is the $64,000 question -- almost literally, it seems! To make matters worse, attempts to answer the question are often rife with controversy. Below is an introduction to the most common pharmaceutical treatments, as well as some natural alternatives. Omeprazole is a proton pump inhibitor that halts the production of stomach acid, allowing ulcerated tissue to heal. Omeprazole’s key weakness is its susceptibility to rapid destruction by gastric acid. This means that omeprazole will be most effective if administered in conjunction with ingredients that protect the drug long enough to permit its absorption into the bloodstream. Omeprazole is available in a variety of forms: GastroGard and UlcerGard -- These Marial products are formulated specifically to ensure the desirable absorption of omeprazole by the equine body . The prescription version, GastroGard, boasts a body of research proving effectiveness in curing equine gastric ulcers. Non-prescription UlcerGard is labeled as a preventative and is therefore subject to less rigorous research and inspection than its Rx twin, but it appears the contents of the tubes are indeed identical; only the recommended dosages differ. Unfortunately, at $30 or more per dose, a month or more of treatment is beyond the reach of many a horse owner’s pocketbook. Prilosec -- This human form of omeprazole does not contain the necessary protective carrier and is, therefore, ill-suited to use in equines. However, anecdotal evidence suggests some horses have enjoyed at least some benefit from the administration of Prilosec. Compounded omeprazole -- Compounded medications consist of a mixture of ingredients, presumably combined with a particular effect in mind. Compounded omeprazole, therefore, includes some omeprazole in combination with other ingredients. The actual quantity of omeprazole in such compounds varies widely – some say omeprazole may comprise anywhere from 20% to 90% of the compound – and this variation would seem to account for the diversity of results achieved through its use. Though available for about one tenth the price of GastroGard, compounded omeprazole may not permit bioavailability of the critical drug, and it may not be shelf stable. The results of a University of California, Davis, study indicate that GastroGard is more effective than compounded omeprazole for curing equine gastric ulcers and preventing their recurrence. Some have questioned the validity of this research, saying it is limited, flawed, and influenced by Merial as a funding source. Long-term, low-dosage use of GastroGard/UlcerGard is frequently recommended for prevention of EGUS recurrence in ulcer prone horses. Aside from the financial burden of such a regimen ($7-$10 USD per day), however, it bears remembering that horses produce gastric acid for a reason. Stomach acid aids in the breakdown of dietary protein and destroys potentially harmful bacteria. Protracted suppression of stomach acid, therefore, may result in inefficient use of dietary protein and/or predispose the horse to stomach tract infections. In humans, long term acid suppression leads to poor absorption of Vitamin B12; this may or may not be a factor in equines. Administered orally in the form of pills dissolved in water to form a paste, sucralfate adheres to existing gastric ulcers, reducing pain and continued deterioration. However, it has no proven curative effect, and because it adheres only to ulcerated tissue, it will not serve as a preventative for horses that do not already have ulcers. Ranitidine is a histamine receptor antagonist that suppresses acid secretion but does not block acid production. It is somewhat effective for curing equine ulcers and is considerably cheaper than GastroGard, but must be administered every 8 hours and is only effective if training is suspended for the duration of treatment. For these reasons, ranitidine is typically rejected as impractical. A 2005 study at Murdoch University in Australia indicates that ranitidine is less effective than omeprazole at curing EGUS. The internet is rife with anecdotes touting the effectiveness of various alternative cures for equine gastric ulcers. Unfortunately, research to support such claims is sadly lacking. Below are links to a few options, some of which are presented in an alarmingly pseudoscientific manner, but all of which have their own contingent of proponents: Okra Pepsin E3 Chamomile tea and slippery elm bark powder Aloe , sometimes in combination with MSM or slippery elm bark Certainly chamomile, aloe, and slippery elm all have ancient reputations as soothing substances. Both slippery elm bark and okra form a mucilaginous gel reputed to calm and protect the stomach lining. Chamomile has long been used as an anti-inflammatory antibacterial agent, thanks to the natural chemical chamazulene; it also contains A-bisobal, which is believed to hasten the repair of damaged tissues. Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM), a naturally derived sulpher product with anti-inflammatory properties, is frequently used to treat joint problems in equines; some believe it may also enhance the curative benefit of aloe or other substances by increasing absorption through enhanced circulation. All these alternatives appear to be low risk, and anedcotal evidence suggests that they may have at least some efficacy in horses with EGUS. For details, consult your local witch doctor. Draw your own. When Aaruba was diagnosed with ulcers, I followed my vet's recommendation to administer a full course of GastroGard. Its positive effect was obvious after only five days, but when the 30-day treatment ended, the ulcers recurred almost immediately. Others report more complete success with GastroGard, and still others say compounded omeprazole or alternative treatments benefited their horses. The choice is up to you, your vet, and your bank account. Regardless of how you treat them, chance are you'll need to take steps to prevent recurrence of EGUS. The next post in this series will compare a variety of supplements billed as ulcer preventatives. Introduction: Equine Gastric Ulcer Series Strategies for Prevention of Equine Gastric Ulcer Syndrome Equine Ulcer Supplement Options EGUS, Endurance, and the AERC A Fair Question: Equine Athletes, Equine Ulcers Bringing it Home: EGUS Prevention at In the Night Farm Sheer Brilliance: Aloe and MSM as Alternative Therapy for EGUS Q & A: Aloe and MSM as Alternative Therapy for EGUS The Good Bad News: Gastric Ulcers in Equines Has this series been helpful to you? Subscribe to The Barb Wire
Douglas H. Clements Four-year-old Leah was playing Thinkin' Things (Edmark Corp., Redmond, Wash.) (fig. 12.1). She needed to find a "fripple with stripes and curly hair but not purple." She had the mouse posed over a purple fripple and said, loudly, "Not purple!." Then she moved to a green striped fripple and said, "Ha! I think this is the right one? No!" After another search, she hovered over a correct choice. "Is this one? Yes! then I click on it." Leah's talking aloud indicated that she is not only learning about attributes and logic but also developing thinking strategies and "learning to learn" skills. Fig. 12.1. The person at the door asks the child to find a "fripple" with certain attributes. If the child clicks on a fripple without those attributes, an announcer intones, "That fripple is not exactly the one the customer wants!" If the fripple is correct, it bounces through the door. The program records the level of difficulty the child was on, so that appropriate problems are presented in the next session. (Published by Edmark Corp., Redmond, Wash.) Technology can change the way children think, what they learn, and how they interact with peers and adults. It can also "teach the same old stuff in a thinly disguised version of the same old way" (Papert 1980). The choice is ours. Changes in Perspectives Just a decade ago, only 25 percent of the licensed preschools had computers. Now almost every preschool has a computer, and the ratio of computers to students has dropped from 1:125 in 1984 to 1:22 in 1990 of every preschool; also, the amount of time children use these computers may vary widely. We can, nevertheless, expect most children to have one or more computers in their preschools and homes in the twenty-first century. We must think carefully, however, about how we choose to use computers with preschoolers. During the current decade, research has moved beyond simple questions about technology and young children. For example, no longer need we ask whether the use of technology is developmentally appropriate. Very young children have shown comfort and confidence in using computers. They can turn them on, follow pictorial directions, and use situational and visual cues to understand and reason about their activity (Clements and Natasi 1993). Typing on the keyboard does not seem to cause them any trouble; in fact, it seems to be a source of pride. Thanks to recent technological developments, even children with physical and emotional disabilities can use the computer with ease. Besides enhancing their mobility and sense of control, computers can help improve self-esteem. One totally mute four-year-old, diagnosed with mental retardation and autism, began to echo words for the first time while working at a computer (Schery and O'Connor 1992). However, access is not always equitable; children attending schools with high poor and minority populations, for example, have less access to most types of technology (Coley, Cradler, and Engel 1997). Further, the unique value of technology as a learning device is no longer in question. For instance, by presenting concrete ideas in a symbolic medium, the computer can help bridge the two. Research shows that what is "concrete" for children is not merely what is "physical" but what is meaningful (Clements and McMullen 1996). Computer representations are often more manageable, flexible, and extensible. One group of young children learned number concepts with a computer felt-board environment: They constructed "bean-stick pictures" by selecting and arranging beans, sticks, and number symbols. Compared to a real bean-stick environment, the computer environment offered greater control to students (Char 1989). The computer manipulatives were just as meaningful and easier to use for learning. Learning Mathematics and Science All this does not mean, however, that all computer experiences are valuable. The "valuable" experience most often depends on the computer software children are using. For all types of software, the research picture is moderately positive. Young students make significant learning gains using computer-assisted instruction (CAI) software (Kulik, kulik, and Bangert-Drowns 1984; Lieberman 1985; Niemiec and Walberg 1984; Ryan 1991) -- more specifically, the type of software that presents a task to children, asks them for a response, and provides feedback. Leah's Thinkin' Things -- find a "fripple" -- is an example of such software. Most CAI programs, however, are just plain drill on number and arithmetic. Although even these can raise children's skill levels, drill should not be our only goal, or even our main one. Instead, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) recommends that we "create a coherent vision of what it means to me mathematically literate both in a world that relies on calculators and computers to carry out mathematical procedures and in a world where mathematics is rapidly growing and is extensively being applied in diverse fields" (NCTM 1989, p. 1). This vision de-emphasizes rote practice on isolated facts and emphasizes discussing and solving problems in geometry, number sense, and patterns with the help of manipulatives and computers. For example, by using programs that allow the creation of pictures with geometric shaped, children have demonstrated growing knowledge and competence in working with concepts such as symmetry, patterns, and spatial order. A child in June Wright's school, Tammy, overlapped two triangles with opposite orientations (one facing left, the other right) and colored selected parts of the resulting figure to create a third rectangle that did not exist in the program! Then she challenged her friend to make a triangle just like it. Not only did preschooler Tammy exhibit an awareness of the challenge it would be to others (Wright 1994). Using a graphics program with three primary colors, young children combined them to create three secondary colors (Wright 1994). Such complex combinatorial abilities are often thought of as beyond the reach of young children. Instead, the computer experience led the children to explorations that broadened the boundaries of what they could do. Computers also help by providing more-powerful and flexible "manipulatives." For example, Mitchell wanted to make hexagons using the pattern-block triangle. He started off-computer and used a trial-and-error approach, counting the sides and checking after adding each triangle. Using the computer program Shapes (Dale;e Seymour Publications, Fairfield, N.J.), in contrast, he began by planning (Sarama, Clements, and Vukelic 1996): He first placed two triangles, "dragging" them and turning them with the "turn too." Then he counted with his finger around the center of the incomplete hexagon, visualizing the other triangles. "Whoa!" he announced, "Four more!" After placing the next one, he said, "Three more!" Whereas off-computer, Mitchell had to check each placement with a physical hexagon, the intentional and deliberate actions on the computer led him to form mental images; that is, he "broke up" the hexagon in his mind's eye and predicted each succeeding placement. Young children can also explore simple "turtle geometry." They direct the movements of a robot or screen "turtle" to draw different shapes (LCSI, Montreal, Canada). One group of five-year-olds was constructing rectangles: "I wonder I can tilt one," mused one boy. He turned the turtle with a simple mathematical command, "L1" (turn left one unit), drew the first side, then was unsure abut how much "turning" was necessary at this strange new heading. Finally he figured that it must be the same turn command as before. He hesitated again, "How far now?. . . Oh, it must be the same as its partner!" He easily completed his rectangle (see fig. 12.2). The instructions he should give the turtle at this new heading were initially not obvious. He analyzed the situation and reflected on the properties of a rectangle. Perhaps most important, he posed the problem for himself (Clements and Battista 1992). Fig. 12.2. A first grader builds up his ideas about rectangles by programming the Logo turtle to draw one that is tilted. This boy had walked rectangular paths, drawn rectangles with pencils, and built them on geoboards and Peg-Boards. What did the computer experience add? It helped him link his previous experiences to more-explicit mathematical ideas. It helped him connect visual shapes with abstract numbers. Perhaps most important, it encouraged him to wonder about mathematics and pose problems in an environment in which he could create, try out, and receive feedback about his own ideas. Such discoveries happen frequently. One preschooler, working in Logo, made the discovery that reversing the turtle's orientation and moving it backward had the same effect as merely moving it forward. The significance the child attached to this identity and his overt awareness of it was striking. Although the child had done this previously with toy cars, Logo helped him abstract a new and exciting idea for his experience (Tan 1985). When simple turtle environments are gradually introduced, young children understand and learn from them. They transfer their knowledge to map-reading tasks and interpreting right and left rotation of objects (Clements 1983/84; Cohen and Geva 1989; Kromhout and Butzin 1993; Watson, Lange, and Brinkley 1992). Older children extend their number capabilities. Three five-year-olds determined the correct length for the bottom line of their drawing by adding the lengths of the three horizontal lines that they had constructed at the top of a tower: 20 + 30 + 20 = 70 (Clements 1983-84). Another way of using Logo, emphasizing science, also encourages inclusion. With LEGO-Logo (Lego Dacta, Enfield, Conn), children use the Logo language to control LEGO creations, including lights, sensors, motors, gears, and pulleys. Papert (1983) observed some Boston children playing with LEGO and computers: The boys started by making trucks right away. The girls made a house. At first, the girls traded motors for things they could use to decorate their house. They were not interested in the mechanical, Logo-controlled aspects. Then, one day there was a light in one of the rooms in the house. The Logo code was simple -- "on wait 10 off wait 10." Later there were several lights, than a lighted Christmas tree turned by a motor. This was a soft transition. The girls found their own way into the full use of LEGO-Logo. With Logo, fantasy, technology, mathematics, science, and personal ways of knowing can come together in natural connections rather than remain separate, specialized subjects. One boy puts it well: "If we didn't have the computer, what could we use to say that the electricity should flow and then it should stop? Where would we put our knowledge: We can't just leave it in our heads. We know it, we think it, but our programs would stay in our heads" (Winer and Trudel 1991). The Computer's Role in the Home and Preschool What is happening in homes and schools? Unfortunately, most children use computers only occasionally -- and usually only when their teachers want to add variety or rewards to the curriculum. Unfortunate children use mostly drill-and-practice software, their teachers stating that their goal for using computers is to increase basic skills rather than develop problem-solving or creative skills (Becker 1990, Hickey 1993). However, this is changing: More fortunate young children are becoming more likely to have computers in their classrooms. More early childhood teachers are choosing open-ended programs based on developmental issues (Haugland 1997). Placing computers in kindergartners' classrooms for several months significantly increases children's skills; placing them in the home yields greater gains (Hess and McGarvey 1987). However, in the home, children more often play computer games than use instructional software. This is especially unfortunate. We need additional software and programs that bridge the school-home and entertainment-learning gaps. When children do use computers, how do they interact? Contrary to initial fears, computers do not isolate children. Rather, they serve as potential catalysts for social interaction. Children spent nine times as much time talking to peers while on the computer than while doing puzzles (Muller and Perlmutter 1985). Researchers observe that 95 percent of children's talking while using Logo is related to their work (Genishi, McCollum, and Strand 1985). Children prefer to work with a friend rather than alone, and they make new friends around the computer. There is greater and more spontaneous peer teaching and helping (Clements and Nastasi 1992). As estimated, near the turn of the century the ratio of children to computers will be 10:1, which meets the recommended minimal ratio. In classrooms with proportionally fewer computers, aggressive behavior ma be increased (Clements and Nastasi 1993; Coley, Cradler, and Engel 1997.) Children's interactions at the computer are affected by the software they are using. Open-ended programs like Logo foster collaborative groups characterized by patterns of goal setting, planning, negotiating, and resolving conflicts. Drill-and-practice software can encourage turn taking, but it also engenders a competitive spirit. Similarly, gamelike programs with aggressive content can engender the same qualities in children (Silvern and Williamson 1987). Games involving cooperative interaction can improve children's social behavior (Garaigordobil and Echebarria 1995). A computer simulation of a Smurf environment (Forman 1986). This may be due to features of the computer; in the computer environment, the Smurf characters could literally share the same space ad could even jump "through" one another. The forced shared space of the computer program also caused children to talk to one another more. In addition, computers may engender in advanced cognitive type of play among children. In one study, "games with rules" was the most frequently occurring type of play among preschoolers working at computers (Hoover and Austin 1986). So already prevailing patterns of social participation and cognitive play were enhanced by the presence of computers. In a similar vein, children are more likely to get correct answers when they work cooperatively, rather than competitively, on educational computer games (Strommen 1993). Changes in the Adults' Role The nature of computers changes the adults' role as teacher, sometimes subtly. With careful attention to establishing physical arrangements, giving assistance, selecting software programs, and enhancing learning, adults can do much to optimize computers' advantages. By altering the physical arrangement of the computers in the classroom, teachers can enhance their social use (Davidson and Wright 1994). Placing two seats in front of the computer and one at the side for an adult can encourage positive social interaction. Placing computers close to one another can facilitate the sharing of ideas among children. Computers that are centrally located as "learning centers" in the classroom invite other children to pause and participate in the computer activity. Such an arrangement also helps keep adults' participation at an optimum level because they are nearby to provide supervision and assistance as needed -- substantial initial guidance that tapers off -- but are not constantly so close as to inhibit the children (Clements 1991). Adults also have to find a delicate balance in providing assistance. Teachers and parents should give "just enough" guidance, but not too much. Intervening too much or at the wrong time can decrease peer tutoring and collaboration. (Emihovich and Miller 1988). Without any adult guidance, however, children tend to jockey for position at the computer and use it in a turn-taking, competitive manner (Silvern, Countermine, and Williamson 1988). Adults' roles have to change in accordance with the changing needs of children. Initially, adults may need to be more demonstrative, assisting children with problem solving, goal setting, and planning. However, once children have gained confidence and expertise, adults can recede to being observers and facilitators, ready to help when needed (Clements and Nastasi 1992). Even more than with print materials, adults have to review and select software materials carefully. For example, drill-and-practice software, although leading to gains in certain rote skills, has not been as effective in improving the conceptual capabilities of children (Clements and Nastasi 1993). Discovery-based software that encourages and allows ample room for exploration is more valuable in this regard. Adults must find software that challenges children to solve meaningful problems. The computer should do what textbooks and worksheets do not do well -- it should help students connect multiple representations and use animation appropriately. It should encourage multiple solution strategies. Finally, adults must carefully enhance children's learning. Effective adults will structure and guide work with rich programs to ensure children from strong, valid mathematical and scientific ideas. They know that children work best when given open-ended projects instead of the option merely to "free explore" (Lemerise 1993). Children spend more time and actively search for diverse ways to solve designated tasks, such as fitting various sizes of shoes onto computer characters' feet (see fig. 12.3). Those who are encouraged only to "free explore" soon grow disinterested. Fig. 12.3. In "Little, Middle, and Big," children match shoes to characters by size. If they click on the spider, they are given an assigned task, which delighted three-old Julie when she worked o the activity. (From Millie's Math House, published by Edmark Corp., Redmond, Wash. Reproduced with permission.) Effective adults also raise questions about "surprises," or conflicts between children's intuitions and computer feedback, to promote reflection. They pose challenges and tasks designed to make the mathematical or scientific ideas explicit for children. They help children build bridges between the computer and other experiences. In particular, they connect computer work closely with off-computer activities. For example, preschoolers who are exposed to developmental software alone show gains in intelligence, nonverbal skills, long-term memory, mental activities, in comparison, gained in all these areas and improved their scores in verbal, problem-solving, and conceptual skills (Haugland 1992). Also, these children spent the least amount of time on computers. A control group; that used drill-and-practice software were on the computer three times as much, but showed less than half the gains that the on- and off-computer group did. The importance of guiding children to see and build mathematical ideas embedded in software cannot be overemphasized. Most children experience only the surface features of rich programs without such guidance. For example, two preschoolers were trying to fill a shape they made with Kid Pix 2 (The Learning Company, Novato, Calif.) (fig. 12.4a). They were frustrated out on their own that they needed to close the shape. But it was their teacher who encouraged them to talk about their experience, describing "closed" and "not-closed" shapes using the dynamic "filling" action of the computer. Later, their teacher challenged them to figure out which of several shapes were closed (fig. 12.4c) and to find other closed and not-closed shapes in their world. Fig. 12.4. Two girls were filling their building with colors and chose the last area (a). However to their surprise, the "paint can" filled the entire area (b). Later, the teacher made up some other closed and not-closed shapes for these children to explore wit the paint can (c). (The program is Kid Pix 2. Kid Pix is a registered trademark of The Learning Company, a division of Mattel, Inc., © 1999. All rights reserved. Used with permission.) Effective adults allow children to use their own approaches. They take advantage of the computer's ability to engage people of different background, styles and sexes (Clements 1987; Delclos and Burns 1993). They also see the computer as a new medium for understanding children. Observing the child at the computer provides adults with a "window into a Child's thinking process" (Weir, Russell, and Valente 1982). Research has warned us, however, not to curtail observations after only a few months, that beneficial effects sometimes appear only after a year. Ongoing observations also help us chart children's growth (Cochran-Smith, Kahn, and Paris 1988). Some effective teachers see computers as an opportunity to become pioneers of change -- making dramatic changes in their professional roles and, because they know their children best, creating imaginative computer programs. Frustrated by the lack of good software, Tom Snyder used the computer to support his classroom simulations of history. Mike Gralish, an early childhood teacher, used several computer devices and programs to link the base-ten blocks and the number system for his children. Today, both these gentlemen are leading educational innovators (Reil 1994). To become effective computer educators and keep up with growing changes in technology, teachers need extended in-service training. Research has established that having less than ten hours of training can have a negative impact (Ryan 1993). Other research has emphasized the importance of hands-on experience and warned against brief exposure to a variety of programs rather than an in-depth knowledge of one (Wright 1994). Some early childhood educators feel anxious about using computers; others believe that technology and humanistic education are incompatible. Because of these factors, both extended and intensive experiences are recommended. Visions of Young Children, Computers, Mathematics, and Science One can use technology to teach the same old stuff in the same way. Integrated computer activities can increase achievement. Children who use practice software about ten minutes a day can learn simple skills. However, if the gadgets are computers, the same old teaching becomes incredibly more expensive and biased towards its dullest parts, namely the kind of rote learning in which measurable results can be obtained by treating the children like pigeons in a Skinner box . . . I believe with Dewey, Montessori, and Piaget that children learn by doing and by thinking about what they do. And so the fundamental ingredients of educational innovation must be better things to do and better way to think about oneself doing these things. (Paper 1980, p. 161) We believe, with Papert, that computers can be a rich source of these ingredients. We believe that having young children use computers in new ways -- to pose and solve problems, draw, and do turtle geometry -- can help them learn and develop mathematically and scientifically. Becker, Henry J. "How Computers Are Used in United States Schools: Basic Data from the 1989 I.E.A. Computers in Education Survey." Journal of Educational Computing Research 7 (1990): 385-406. Char, Cynthia A. Computer Graphic Feltboards: New Software Approaches for Young Children's Mathematical Exploration. San Francisco: American Educational Research Association, 1989. Clements, Douglas H. "Current Technology and the Early Childhood Education, vol. 2: Issues in Early Childhood Curriculum. Edited by Bernard Spodek and Olivia N. Saracho, pp. 106-31. New York: Teachers College Press, 1991. __. "Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Logo Programming on Cognitive Abilities and Achievement." Journal of Educational Computing Research 3 (1987): 73-94. __. "Supporting Young Children's Logo Programming." Computing Teacher 11 (1983-84): 24-30. Clements, Douglas H., and Michael T. Battista. The Development of a Logo-Based Elementary School Geometry Curriculum. Final report: NSF Grant no.: MDR-8651668. Buffalo, N.Y.: State University of New York at Buffalo; Kent, Ohio: Kent State University, 1992. Clements, Douglas H., and Sue McMillen. "Rethinking 'Concrete' Manipulatives." Teaching Children Mathematics 2 (1996): 270-79. Clements, Douglas H., and Bonnie K. Nastasi. "Computers and Early Childhood Education" In Advances in School Psychology: Preschool and Early Childhood Treatment Directions, edited by Maribeth Gettinger, Stephen N. Elliott, and Thomas R. Kratochwill, pp. 187-246. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995. __. "Electronic Media and Early Childhood Education." In Handbook of Research on the Education of Young Children, edited by Bernard Spodek, pp. 251-78. New York: Macmillan, 1993. Cochran-Smith, Marilyn, Jessica Kahn, and Cynthia L. Paris. "When Word Processors Come in the Classroom." In Writing with Computers in the Early Grades, edited by James L. Hoot and Steven B. Silvern, pp. 43-74. New York: Teachers College Press, 1988. Cohen, Rina, and Esther Geva. "Designing Logo-like Environments for Young Children: The Interaction between Theory and Practice.: Journal of Educational Computing Research 5 (1989): 349-77. Coley, Richard J., John Cradler, and Penelope K. Engel. Computers and Classrooms: This Stratus of Technology in U.S. Schools. Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service, 1997. Davidson, Jane, and L. June Wright. " The Potential of the Microcomputer in the Early Childhood Classroom.: In Young Children: Active Learners in a Technological Age, edited by J. L. Wright and Daniel D. Shade, pp. 77-91. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1994. Delclos, Victor R., and Susan Burns. "Mediational Elements in Computer Programming Instruction: An Exploratory Study." Journal of Computing in Childhood Education 4 (1993): 137-52. Emihovich, Catherine, and Gloria E. Miller. "Talking to the Turtle: A Disc of Logo Instruction," Discourse Processes 11 (1988): 183-201. Forman, George. "Computer Graphics as a Medium for Enhancing Reflective Thinking in Young Children." In Thinking, edited by Hohn Bishop, Jack Lochhead, and D. N. Perkins, pp. 131-37. Hillside, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986. Garaigordobil, Maite, and Agustin Echebarria. "Assessment of a Peer-Helping Game Program on Children's Development." Journal of Research in Childhood Education 10 (1995): 63-69. Genishi, Celia, Pam McCollum, and Elizabeth B. Strand. "Research Currents: The Interactional Richness of Children's Computer Use." Language Arts 62 (1985): 526-32. Haugland, Susan W. "Effects of Computer Software on Preschool Children's Developmental Gains." Journal of Computing in Childhood Education 3 (1992): 15-30. __. "How Teachers Use Computers in Early Childhood Classrooms." Journal of Computing in Childhood Education 8 (1997): 3-14. Hess, Robert, and L. McGarvey. "School-Relevant Effects of Educational Uses of Microcomputers in Kindergarten Classrooms and Homes." Journal of Educational Computing Research 3 (1987): 269-87. Hickey, M. Gail. "Computer Use in Elementary Classrooms: An Ethnographic Study." Journal of Computing in Childhood Education 4 (1983): 219-28. Hoover, J., and A. M. Austin. A Comparison of Traditional Preschool and Computer Play from a Social/Cognitive Perspective. San Francisco, Calif.: American Educational Research Association, 1986. Kromhout, Ora M., and Sarah M. Butzin. "Integrating Computers into the Elementary School Curriculum: An Evaluation of Nine Project CHILD Model Schools." Journal of Research on Computing in Education 26 (1993): 55-69. Kulik, C. C., J. Kulik, and Robert L. Bangert-Drowns. Effects of Computer-Based Education of Elementary School Pupils. New Orleans, La.: American Educational Research Association, 1984. Lemerise, Tamara. "Piaget, Vygotsky, and Logo." Computing Teacher (1993): 24-28. Lieberman, Debra. "Research on Children and Microcomputers: A Review of Utilization and Effects Studies." In Children and Microcomputers: Research on the Newest Medium, edited by Milton Chen and William Paisley, pp. 59-83. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1985. Muller, A. A., and M. Perlmutter. "Preschool Children's Problem-Solving Interactions at Computers and Jigsaw Puzzles." Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 6 (1985): 173-86. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics. Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989. Niemiec, R. P., and H. J. Walberg. "Computers and Achievement in the Elementary Schools." Journal of Educational Computing Research 1 (1984): 435-40. Papert, Seymour. The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. New York: basic Books, 1993. __. "Teaching Children Thinking: Teaching Children to be Mathematicians vs. Teaching about Mathematics." In The Computer in the School: Tutor, Tool, Tutee, edited by Robert Taylor, pp. 161-96. New York: Teachers College Press, 1980. Reil, Margaret. "Educational Change in a Technology-Rich Environment." Journal of Research on Computing in Education 26 (1994): 452-74. Ryan, Alice W. "The Impact of Teacher Training on Achievement Effects of Mircocomputer Use in Elementary Schools: A Meta-analysis." In Rethinking the Roles of Technology in Education, edited by N. Estes and M. Thomas, pp. 770-72. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993. __. "Meta Analysis of Achievement Effects of Microcomputer Applications in Elementary Schools." Educational Administration Quarterly 27 (1991): 161-84. Saram, Julie, Douglas H. Clements, and Elaine Bruno Vukelic. " The Role of a Computer Manipulative in Fostering Specific Psychological/Mathematical Processes." In Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the North America Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, edited by E. Jakubowski, D. Watkins, and H. Biske, pp. 567-72. Columbus, Ohio: ERIC Clearinghouse for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education, 1996. Schery, Teris K., and Lisa C. O'Connor. "The Effectiveness of School-Based Computer Language Intervention with Severally Handicapped Children." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 23 (1992): 43-47. Silvern, S. B., and P. A. Williamson. "Aggression in Young Children and Video Game Play." Applied Developmental Psychology 8 (1987): 453-62. Strommen, Erik F. "Does Yours Eat Leaves? Cooperative Learning in an Educational Software Task." Journal of Computing in Childhood Education 4 (1993): 45-56. Tan, Lesley E. "Computers in Preschool Education." Early Child Development and Care 19 (1985): 319-36. Watson, J. Allen, Garrett Lange, and Vicki M. Brinkley. "Logo Mastery and Spatial Problem-Solving by Young Children: Effects of Logo Language Training. Route-Strategy Training, and Learning Styles on Immediate Learning and Transfer." Journal of Educational Computing Research 8 (1992): 521-40. Weir, S., S. J. Russell, and J. A. Valente. "Logo: An Approach to Educating Disabled Children." BYTE 7 (September 1982): 342-60. Winer, Laura R., and Helene Trudel. "Children in an Educational Robotics Environment: Experiencing Discovery." Journal of Computing in Childhood Education 2 (1991): 41-64. Wright, June L. "Listen to the Children: Observing Young Children"s Discoveries with the Microcomputer." In Young Children: Active Learners in a Technological Age, edited by June L. Wright and David D. Shade, pp. 3-17. Washington, D. C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1994. Time to prepare this material was partially provided by National Science Foundation Research Grant NSF MDR-8954664, "An Investigation of the Development of Elementary Children's Geometric Thinking in Computer and Noncomputer Environments." Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Other Articles by Douglas H. Clements:
As of 8:04 PM 05/24/13 All times are local (Market data is delayed by at least 15 minutes). Key Executives - wyndham worldwide corp (WYN) \|Stephen P. Holmes \|\|19 Relationships\|\|Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Executive Committee\|\|55\| \|Thomas G. Conforti \|\|No Relationships\|\|Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President\|\|53\| \|Geoffrey A. Ballotti \|\|No Relationships\|\|Chief Executive Officer of Wyndham Exchange & Rentals and President of Wyndham Exchange & Rentals\|\|50\| \|Eric A. Danziger \|\|No Relationships\|\|Chief Executive Officer of Wyndham Hotel Group and President of Wyndham Hotel Group\|\|57\| \|Franz S. Hanning \|\|No Relationships\|\|Chief Executive Officer of Wyndham Vacation Ownership and President of Wyndham Vacation Ownership\|\|58\| Board Members - wyndham worldwide corp (WYN) Executive Committees* - wyndham worldwide corp (WYN) *Data is at least as current as the most recent Definitive Proxy. Sponsored Financial Commentaries
Diversified Consumer Services Company Overview of Morehouse College David Cooke III Trustee, Morehouse College \|Age\|\|Total Calculated Compensation\|\|This person is connected to 1 Board Members in 1 different organizations across 0 different industries.\| See Board Relationships BackgroundDr. David Cooke, III is the Trustee at Morehouse College. He is the Associate Professor of Biology at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. Corporate Headquarters830 Westview Dr Sw Atlanta, Georgia 30314-3773 Board Members Memberships EducationThere is no Education data available. Other AffiliationsThere is no Company Affiliations data available. Annual CompensationThere is no Annual Compensation data available. Stocks OptionsThere is no Stock Options data available. Total CompensationThere is no Total Compensation data available. \|There is no Competitor Compensation data available.\| Post a JobJobs - Green Bay, WI \| UnitedHealth GroupPosted: May 22 - Minneapolis, MN \| Wise Executive SearchPosted: Apr 17 - Summit, NJ \| Merck & CoPosted: May 25 - Ravenna, OH \| Springleaf Financial ServicesPosted: May 22
As Mitt Romney’s new running mate on the Republican presidential ticket, Paul Ryan is going to have a lot of explaining to do when it comes to jobs policy and federal spending plans. But one thing that may not get much attention — at least in the mainstream media catering to typical voters — is Paul Ryan’s strategy on investing. According to Ryan’s 2011 financial disclosure statements released by The Center for Responsive Politics, the Wisconsin legislator has a portfolio that most of us retail investors can relate to: a diversified group of large cap stocks. And his portfolio largely beat the market, based on older reports. Among tech stocks bought in 2011 include leaders Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Priceline.com (NASDAQ:PCLN) — up 55%, 24% and 20% respectively his year. If Ryan is still holding, he’s getting paid nicely. The American people should also know he has held profitable stakes in some big banks, including Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and (gasp!) Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS). Whether the U.S. taxpayer made the right move getting into these Too-Big-to-Fail entities doesn’t matter — Ryan made shrewd investments that are paying off nicely. Ever the long-term planner, though, Paul Ryan isn’t just letting it ride in equities. He has a variety of bond investments and diversified, low-risk mutual funds from Fidelity and Edward Jones, among others. Quirkiest of all, however, is a miniscule investment in the social media company Twitter. Not directly, of course. Ryan has a stake in the T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund (MUTF:PRNHX) that invests in small, hot tech companies. His indirect stake when you do the math is only worth about $50 or so, according to CNNMoney. Sure, it’s been a good year for the stock market so maybe this is reading too much into Paul Ryan’s investing acumen. But it sure is fun. Jeff Reeves is the editor of InvestorPlace.com and the author of “The Frugal Investor’s Guide to Finding Great Stocks.” Write him at firstname.lastname@example.org or follow him on Twitter via @JeffReevesIP. As of this writing, he did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
This is Jenni and I in M&S, buying hats. Reblogged from That's What She Said.. May 19, 2012, 3:01pm I’d like all of this. England summer wear. July 30, 2011, 9:28am Will you all please just follow my new blog, while its hot, and before I’m too drunk to lose interest in it. There are boobs!* Lets be friends who follow each other, on Tumblr, Twitter, off cliffs, whatever you like. *There are no boobs. June 02, 2011, 4:05pm This is the other blog that Jenni and I our working on.. The assholes guide to fashions; Red Trousers. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and this week I decided to make my thoughts a reality, by buying a pair of obnoxious red trousers. I was excited about the potential to twin them with a pair of brogues and a nice white shirt. It plagued my every thought, the possibilities of red trousers, block colours and sheer fabrics, I was a mad woman “hey, do you think I could wear red trousers with this blazer, or would I look like I worked at a holiday camp in the 70s?”, “what if I wore my hair up?”, “Blue nail varnish might be problematic”. May 27, 2011, 1:42pm Well isn’t this a nice outfit. I hate her for it. April 18, 2011, 1:56pm March 13, 2011, 11:09pm This is my redundancy outfit. To really make it work you need to be wearing it for like, 4 days solid. It’s probably tear stained, but in that comforting way. You need the toothbrush as oral hygiene is important even if you’re not eating, because you can’t, because you’re crying. [N.B. This outfit is an inaccurate representation of what is actually being worn, but no one wants to see holey, dirty, mismatching, back-to-front fashions, if they did they’d be reading Perez]. [N.B.II - not even going to link to his blog] February 20, 2011, 10:48am This is what I want to look like, all the time. Everything about her outfit makes me happy, look how well those trousers are ironed. I think I’d fit quite well in the 20s.. Drinking, driving, being a snob. Everything was silly and decadent. None of that bloody war nonsense. February 13, 2011, 4:58pm
The Hunger Games is no stranger to propaganda, but the posters in Panem look a little different. After all, why would the Capitol tell you to stay in school or use your words when you can win bloody glory in the Arena? College Humor devised these parody posters (perhaps putting the "mock" in Mockingjay?), imagining the insane prescriptions President Snow would hand down to the people of Panem. Katniss does get her revolutionary Rosie the Riveter turn, but otherwise, we're all reminded to stand up to bullies with a sharpened stick. I'd hate to see what the pool rules are in the Capitol.
Nestled in Chile's Elqui Valley, Elqui Domos is perfectly situated for a spectacular view of the night sky. To cater to astronomers looking to revel in the region's starry vistas, the hotel hosts its very own observatory, as well as rooms with windows pointed skyward. The above video was made by photographer James Florio, who spent six months taking more than 23,000 photos to make this series of time-lapse segments. In addition to more mundane hotel amenities like wifi and a pool, Elqui Domos features seven geodesic dome rooms with detachable roofs, four skylit cabins, and its very own observatory hosting Schmidt–Cassegrain telescope (plus plenty of telescopes for guests). You can also enjoy your space porn in the outdoors on nighttime horse rides. Incidentally, Elqui Valley is also known for its vineyards, so you can enjoy the terrain (not to mention the terroir) and the skies at the same time.
Uncle Don’s Barnyard Friendly Farm animals to pet & feed with many farm toys and activities for the whole family to enjoy! Open Tues. thru Sat. 10am – 5pm, June 25th – Aug 31st, rain or shine. Giggle while you ride a wiggle car, race on the pedal carts, & zoom down a 40-ft popeline slide. There is the outdoor farm theme playground, haytunnel, farm library, sandboxes inside & out and of course all our farm animals will be waiting to see all their friends. We have goats, ducks, chickens, rabbits, sheep, pigs, llamas, miniture donkey, and some cows. Our gift shop will be filled with Ertl farm toys, Terri’s baskets, Ioka’s Pure Maple Syrup & Specialty Maple Products, Judy’s jam, Ioka’s Natural Beef, and more. Summer birthday packages & group rates available. * Birthday Parties. * 40 foot pipeline slide. * Hay tunnel and hay piles inside the barn. * Giant sandboxes both inside and outside. * “Molly Milk-Me,” the mechanical cow. * A farm book library with a quiet place to sit and read. * An outdoor farm-theme playground. * Lots of farm toys * adult pedal carts * wagon train ride. * wiggle cars. * duck racer. * tryke track. * A picnic area. 2012 Admission Charge: Children (2yrs – 12yrs) – $7.75 Adults & children 13yrs+ – $7.25 Seniors (55+) – $6.25 Children UNDER 2yrs. old FREE Season passes available.
A Christian law firm is defending nearly 20 tea party organizations from apparent intimidation by the Internal Revenue Service. As reported recently on OneNewsNow, at the beginning of 2012 tea party organizations across the country began receiving letters from the IRS requesting more information related to their applications for designation as 501(c)(4) non-profit organizations. The letters were apparently sent out after six liberal Democratic senators sent a letter to the IRS commissioner requesting that he investigate whether certain 501(c)(4) groups are engaging in substantial campaign activity, including opposition to any candidate. The Associated Press says documents provided by some of the groups show the IRS wants painstaking details about the groups’ postings on Twitter and other social networking sites, information on donors and key members’ relatives, and minutes of meetings. The IRS will not comment on specific cases, but says it simply wants to gather enough information to decide if the groups qualify for tax-exempt status. This would require the organizations not to be involved primarily in activities that could influence an election. David French is a senior counsel at the American Center for Law & Justice, which is representing at least 16 tea party organizations targeted by these letters. He says there appears to be a coordinated effort to intimidate these groups during an election year. “Quite frankly for a lot of these groups, it’s intimidating,” says French. “And to be clear, these are not groups that have been accused of any wrongdoing. They’re simply groups applying for a status that has been routinely granted to hundreds and hundreds of other groups.” Read the article here. (but not the occupiers! who paid for nothing, cost taxpayers a fortune, took donations and spent with no oversight.) He has a point (although not the one he’s trying to make), what Maher said is a million times worse. Bill Burton, the former Obama 2008 campaign press secretary who went on to found the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA, appeared on Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC show Thursday, trying to distinguish between the rhetoric used by HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher and conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh. Maher recently donated $1 million to Priorities USA. Mitchell asked Burton how Maher has gotten away with what he said about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin while Limbaugh was condemned for his own ill-advised remarks. “Well, a couple of things,” Burton said. “First of all, obviously, some of those things were vulgar and inappropriate and said over the course of years of a comedian’s life. It’s not language I would use or language we would use at Priorities USA.” “But the notion that there is an equivalence between what a comedian has said over the course of his career and what the de facto leader of the Republican Party said to sexually degrade a woman who led in a political debate of our time, is crazy,” Bill Burton told MSNBC. “There’s no just similarity about what Rush Limbaugh said, lying about the argument that Miss Fluke was making — a law student at Georgetown — and what a comedian has said in the past.” But he’s perfectly happy to be the arbitrator when it’s a conservative making the comments. I think the points that you made as you were asking your question are the ones that I will make. We are not, and cannot be, the arbitrator of every statement that everybody makes in the policy and political arena. As a general matter, obviously language that denigrates women is inappropriate and I think I would point you to what the president said when he was asked about this at his press conference which was he chooses to lead by example, or to try to. He chooses to, in the pursuit of a more civil discourse in our public space, he chooses to try to practice that civility himself. And he calls on everybody to do just that.” CAIR Press Release 3.7.12: The Oklahoma chapter of the terror-linked CAIR (Council on Islamic-American Relations) called on Fairview Baptist Church in Edmund, OK to drop its anti-Islam agenda, citing the ‘Islamophobic views’ of a church speaker who claims that Barack Obama is an undercover Saudi Arabian Muslim plant in the White House. The keynote speaker of tonight’s event at Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Okla., is AVI LIPKIN, an infamous Islamophobe who alleges among other things that Muslims worship the devil and that all Muslims want to kill Christians and Jews. “This kind of bigotry and hysteria only serves to fuel the growing chorus of anti-Muslim sentiment that is unfortunately spreading in the Heartland,” said CAIR-OK Executive Director Muneer Awad. “We respectfully request that the church drop this speaker and other hate-mongers, and offer it’s congregants a sincere opportunity for dialogue and information about Islam and Muslims.” Awad said Fairview Baptist Church is known for hosting anti-Muslim speakers such as Gen. William Boykin, who believes that Islam does not deserve religious protections under the First Amendment, and Bridgette Gabriel, who is scheduled to speak at the Edmond church in April, and claims a “practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah, who abides by Islam, who goes to mosque and prays every Friday, who prays five times a day — this practicing Muslim cannot be a loyal citizen to the USA.” Pastor Paul Blair of the Fairview Baptist Church issued the following reply,“The Council on American Islamic Relations has been proven in US Federal Court to be the propaganda arm of the Muslim Brotherhood operating in America. They are on record as having a stated goal to overthrow western civilization and replace our current rule of law with Islamic law. Their ties with terrorist organizations are well established by the United States government and it is shocking that the current Department of Justice is not prosecuting them.” Read the article here. (we need to send all islamic assholes back to the sands of some 7th century land like yemen) Surely the owner must be some islamic dirtbag…. By: Vince, Flopping Aces From the moment that Barack Obama threw his hat into the ring for President, Democrats have been accusing those who disagree with him of being racists. They are of course being disingenuous, pernicious and at the end of the day, most importantly, wrong. But what if they weren’t? Let’s say somehow the entire universe of conservatives was made up of racists… so what? Does it change the veracity of their stated disagreements with President Obama? If it were in fact the case that conservatives hate him because he is black does that mean that their well thought out, reasonable and clearly articulated reasons for opposing him are somehow less valid? No, of course it doesn’t. This issue makes me think of hate crimes. I’ve never been a supporter of hate crime legislation. Not because I like crimes or hate, but because it’s the act that makes something a crime, not the real or imagined hate. If someone beats up someone else because of their race or sexual orientation or religion, they should be prosecuted for assault, period. Is a victim any less injured or dead because the perpetrator assaulted them for their money instead of their – fill in the blank characteristic? No, obviously not. That’s ridiculous. The criminal justice system should deal with the crime and not worry about trying to look into the soul of the criminal. Race has been an issue swirling around Barack Obama since he first declared his candidacy and then continued once he became President. There was the whole Jeremiah Wright deal and Obama’s spending two decades in his church but somehow inexplicably never hearing a single racist comment. There was his knee jerk reaction that the Cambridge police department “acted stupidly” without knowing the facts of the case. There was his attorney general dropping voter intimidation charges against the demonstrably guilty New Black Panther Party. And just last month the President revived African-Americans for Obama. Can one imagine the outrage if Mitt Romney created a Whites for Romney organization? To the degree that race is an issue for President Obama, it’s either been because he is making it so or because his party is using it as a red herring to deflect criticism of their agenda. The most obvious example of the latter was during the ObamaCare debate when the Democrats famously accused protesters of using racial epithets and spitting on black congressmen. The late Andrew Breitbart did a good job of dispensing with those charges. That brings us to the basic element of liberal politics. Their default position towards anyone who opposes Barack Obama and the Democratic Party’s socialist agenda is to accuse them of being racist and that is supposed to be the end of the conversation. In that kind of an environment a conservative simply cannot win – how do you disprove something for which the mere accusation itself is seemingly enough to prove guilt? You can’t. My suggestion therefore is to take a different tack altogether: Don’t try. Rather, I suggest playing the hypothetical card. Instead of trying to disprove the undisprovable, instead suggest: “Ok, let’s pretend I am what you have painted me to be, and let’s assume that’s not going to change… now let’s talk about the issues.” Read the article here. President Obama’s White House website is reviving his 2008 campaign slogan, “Yes we can,” by pointing to one of the president’s green energy loan programs as an outgrowth of that campaign mentality. “In 2008, Presidential candidate Barack Obama declared ‘Yes We Can,’” Emily Niehaus of Community Rebuilds posted, under the headline “Taking Part in a Yes We Can America,” to the White House blog. “I, along with millions of other Americans, was inspired by this approach to politics. I understood this message to be a partnership request.” Niehaus explains that she founded Community Rebuilds to construct energy-efficient housing for low-income familes, in keeping with the Yes We Can slogan, but she couldn’t have done it without government subsidies. “The green building industry was suffering from a lack of green builders,” she said. You know this is true at your house! Dear Mr. Green, would you please sing your hit song “Fuck You” to Obama? Thanks. Barack Obama will continue on the fundraising trail next week, where he will try to roll in the dough alongside Grammy-winning artist and “The Voice” host Cee Lo Green. According to Party Time, the Sunlight Foundation’s database of congressional and presidential fundraisers, Obama will spend next Friday with the hip-hop star at an up to $10,000-a-head fundraiser in Atlanta at Tyler Perry Studios. The African American Leadership Council, a DNC group, is planning the affair. The $10,000 asking price includes a “photo line,” while $2,500 gets guests into a VIP reception. General Admission tickets start at $500, but a limited number of $250 tickets were made available to young donors. A campaign official reports that 1,000 guests are expected to attend. Wife told me there was a leak in the bathroom. Well played woman, well played! Thanks to a new policy that government officials are “pretty sure will eliminate the possibility of love affairs,” thousands of male civil servants in northern Indonesia will no longer receive paychecks. Instead, their wives will get their salaries. The administration of Gorontalo, a small province in the island of Sulawesi, recommended earlier this year that workers transfer their salaries to their wives because of increasing complaints about marital infidelity. The transfers are now mandatory. Gorontalo Gov. Rusli Habibie said the policy was “imperative to promote openness between officials and their wives and thus could prevent corruption practices among Gorontalo civil servants,” according to the Jakarta Post. “Men are usually unable to control their behavior if they have too much money in their pocket,” administration spokesperson Rifly Katili said. According to Katili, more than 90 percent of the 3,200 civil servants in Gorontalo support the policy and voluntarily transferred their salaries to their wives when the government first suggested the idea. “I’m pretty sure this will eliminate the possibility of love affairs that undermine families,” Katili added. Some employees were nonchalant about the new requirement. See more HERE How weird can the United Nations get? (LA Times) — A UNESCO commission Thursday condemned the violence against civilians in Syria but did not remove the embattled nation from its human rights committee, as the U.S. and other nations had hoped. The United States and other countries want Syria removed from the group’s Committee on Conventions and Recommendations, which handles human rights issues, because of the crackdown by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad during the yearlong uprising against his government. The U.S. “is profoundly disappointed that this resolution does not call for outright removal” of Syria from the committee, Ambassador David Killion said, according to the Associated Press. The commission of the executive board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization voted 35-8 to condemn the crackdown on civilians in Syria. The resolution is scheduled to go before the executive board’s plenary session Friday. Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) spoke on the House floor about the numerous frivolous and harmful apologies President Obama has made on behalf of the United States, while disregarding or even refusing to acknowledge some of the most important current events. Unions engaging in deceptive and shady behavior? — Now I’ve heard it all. Via Daily Caller: During the past year, politically aggressive front groups founded by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have been partnering with regional “Occupy” groups to pressure businesses and politicians, The Daily Caller has learned. The organizations — including This Is Our DC; Good Jobs, Great Houston; Good Jobs, Better Baltimore; Detroit’s Good Jobs Now; Fight for Philly; One Pittsburgh; Good Jobs LA; and Minnesotans for a Fair Economy — employ “flash demonstrations” and other tactics to deluge their political targets with protesters, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. TheDC first reported Monday on the secretive ties between these organizations and the SEIU. Their elaborate and sometimes lavish protests, some with expensive-looking production values, advance the giant labor union’s interests without exposing the SEIU directly to criticism from the public. Since Monday, TheDC has identified another organization in this network: “Working Washington,” whose Seattle-based website mentions nothing about its SEIU ties. That site, however — like those of the other front groups — is hosted on a server that TheDC traced back to the SEIU. In keeping with the SEIU’s pattern, Working Washington’s corporate registration filed with the state government in Olympia, Wash. lists Secky Fascione as its registered agent. On her LinkedIn profile, Fascione identifies herself as an “Organizing Coordinator at SEIU.” Only us older people can truly appreciate this one….
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER TO JUAN WILLIAMS: You think that the administration is withholding information that could serve them? This is an administration that when they did the raid on bin Laden, SEAL Team Six, and they had a ton of information — a lot of that should never have been released, which served them well — they released it almost immediately in a scandalously open way because it exposed a lot of methods and a lot of our people. This is not an administration which has shown itself to be a keeper of secrets that would actually help it. And the drone attacks, and all of this. It leaks whenever. And here we know that they know stuff. What happened in the nine hours when they had real-time information of what was happening? Where was the president? Why wasn’t he directing actions? Who were the ones who countermanded any assistance? Where was the president when that happened? All that, the president knows. And it won’t serve him and that’s why he’s not saying it, he’ll wait until after the election or after he’s forced, otherwise you will not hear it. This is not an administration which is loathe to release stuff, even if it will hurt our national security, which will help them.
iPhone/iPad educational app for kids! 123 Kids Fun Games Lite is a charming application, where you can find educational and funny activities. 🐻 Alphabet - LEARN & PLAY! - Learn the first letters of the alphabet - each letter comes with a sound, pronunciation and an interactive activity (NEW graphic design) - Play Alphabet Game! (Basic version) 🐻 Numbers - LEARN & PLAY! - Learn how to count numbers – each number comes with a sound and a funny illustration. - Play Numbers Games! 🐻 Music - PLAY! - Try our drums, piano and xylophone! 🐻 Hit Balloons - PLAY! - Play a simple game where you have to hit all the balloons. In addition you will find the photo section. It allows one to take a photo of Daddy, Mommy and your Child (Children) to create a simple album of the application’s "owners" :) 123 Kids Fun Games paid version has more activities and at this moment it's one of the largest apps for kids on AppStore to learn the English language for the youngest of children. ==-=-=- www.123kidsfun.com ==-=-=-
News tagged ‘VNC’ Yesterday MuscleNerd uploaded a video of an iPhone 3GS that runs the iPhone OS 4 (beta version). Along with a new OS it also runs Veency, an unauthorized VNC-app for the iPhone (so it can be runned only on jailbroken devices). iUSB Tunnel is a simple gui that brings together ssh, tethering and vnc applications in one application. with iUSB Tunnel you can access your iPhone over usb on a Windows machine using ssh, tethering and vnc. Best of all its a lightweight program and portable so you can run it from a usb stick if you want. It comes loaded with WinSCP, Putty, Firefox Portable, iTunnel, TightVNC and UltraVNC so you don’t have to download those programs. You probably remember a video that we showed you a while ago: communication of the iPhone and the Apple Wireless keyboard via Bluetooth. That video was described by all as a fake. So the author created another video. Both the keys and the display are in camera focus at the same time, iPhone is in Airplane Mode (so WLAN is intentionally off here) and it uses a simplified mechanism for key event injection (so there is no “VNC running on localhost” icon any longer). I believe this video is not a fake, but where is bluetooth icon ...? For both Mac and Windows: - Wireless touchpad - PowerPoint clicker - Control your media - Multi-touch access to Task Switcher - Automated discovery Specially for Mac: - Zoom your Mac screen - Multi-touch access to Expose No install required on Mac, although free modified Vine Server will give you access to media keys (Play/Pause, etc.). For Windows, free modified TightVNC server will also give you access to media keys. Citrix is porting XenApp to the iPhone. XenApp is a remote Windows application that is presently available for Mac, Windows and some mobile platforms. XenApp allows users to remotely log into their corporate networks to access their Windows applications. The functionality seems similar to existing VNC clients for the iPhone, but Citrix's XenApp apparently transmits window display information rather than the raw graphics (wikipedia Here are some of the features: - Launch applications on your iPhone - Reply to emails, text messages, and more - Rearrange icons - Lock/Unlock your iPhone - Browse through Photos and Contacts Of course you cannot do two finger gestures with this app. All other actions can be done with the click of your mouse. The only area in which Veency fails tragically at is when opening any video recording application on the iPhone. Be sure to restart your iPhone after installing Veency and connect to the server using a Wi-Fi connection. We recommend using UltraVNC or TightVNC to connect your Windows desktop. If you're using a Mac, we recommend Chicken VNC. Here is a video demonstration:
Suttons Bay Public Schools will ask a local Indian tribe to fill a budget gap for this year. The district anticipates a shortfall of about $400,000. Superintendent Mike Murray will speak with leaders of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians tomorrow. Almost a third of the students in Suttons Bay are members of the tribe. Murray says Suttons Bay is transitioning to more of a cyber school model. The district in Leelanau County even has a growing number of high school students downstate that take classes online from Jackson. But Murray says the school will receive little money for more than 30 of those students until next year. That's one reason they have a cash flow problem this year even though they are confident about the future. "We're going to emerge from this, we think, as one of the stronger schools in the next ten years in the state." The amount being asked for from the Grand Traverse Band is a little more than 5 percent of district's budget. Murray says under the current law, if a school finishes the year with a deficit equal to five percent of its budget or more, the state will be more likely to appoint an emergency financial manager.
The Broadcasting Committee is a sub–committee of the Central Communications Board. Some information provided by www.churchservices.tv relating to Church Telecoms and live streaming of church services. These are links to PDF documents. \|– churchservices.tv explained \| – Our Service and offering to Christian Churches – Introducing the Churchtelecom Set Top Box – Reclaiming the Parish – our vision For submissions of the Broadcasting Committee, please visit: For more information on the remit of the Broadcasting Committee, please click here. To read PDF files, you will need at least version 5.0 of Adobe Acrobat Reader, please click here to download the latest version.
I recently tweeted the following: “No data is better than bad data…” really? if you have no data, how do you know it’s bad data? doh. This prompted a surprising number of DM’s, follow-up emails and even two in-person conversations. Everyone wholeheartedly agreed with my tweet, which was a delayed reaction to a response I got from a journalist who works for The Economist who in a rather derisive tone tweeted that “no data is better than bad data.” This is of course not the first time I’ve heard this statement so lets explore this issue further. The first point to note is the rather contradictory nature of the statement “no data is better than bad data.” Indeed, you have to have data in order to deem it as bad in the first place. But Mr. Economist and company clearly overlook this little detail. Having “bad” data requires that this data be bad relative to other data and thus having said other data in the first place. So if data point A is bad compared to data point B, then by definition data point B is available and good data relative to A. I’m not convinced that a data point is either “good or bad” a priori unless the methods that produce that data are well understood and can themselves be judged. Of course, validating methods requires the comparison of data as well. In any case, the problem is not bad versus good data, in my opinion. The question has to do with error margins. The vast majority of data shared seldom comes with associated error margins or any indication regarding the reliability of the data. This rightly leads to questions over data quality. I believe that introducing a simple lykert scale to tag the perceived quality of the data can go a long way. This is what we did back in 2003/2004 when I was on the team that launched the Conflict Early Warning and Response Network (CEWARN) in the Horn of Africa. While I still wonder whether the project had any real impact on conflict prevention since it launched in 2004, I believe that the initiative’s approach to information collection was pioneering at the time. The screenshot below is of CEWARN’s online Incident Report Form. Note the “Information Source” and “Information Credibility” fields. These were really informative for us when aggregating the data and studying the corresponding time series. They allowed us to at least gain a certain level of understanding regarding the possible reliability of depicted trends over time. Indeed, we could start quantifying the level of uncertainty or margin of error. Interestingly, this also allowed us to look for patterns in varying credibility scores. Of course, these were perhaps largely based on perceptions but I believe this extra bit of information is worth having if the alternative is no qualifications on the possible credibility of individual reports. Fast forward to 2011 and you see the same approach taken with the Ushahidi platform. The screenshot below is of the Matrix plugin for Ushahidi developed in partnership with ICT4Peace. The plugin allows reporters to tag reports with the reliability of the source and the probability that the information is correct. The result is the following graphic representing the trustworthiness of the report. Some closing thoughts: many public health experts that I have spoken to in the field of emergency medicine repeatedly state they would rather have some data that is not immediately verifiable than no data at all. Indeed, in some ways all data begins life this way. They would rather have a potential rumor about a disease outbreak on their radar which they can follow up on and verify than have nothing appear on their radar until it’s too late if said rumor turns out to be true. Finally, as noted in my previous post on “Tweetsourcing”, while some fear that bad data can cost lives, this doesn’t mean that no data doesn’t cost lives, especially in a crisis zone. Indeed, time is the most perishable commodity during a disaster—the “sell by” date of information is calculated in hours rather than days. This is in no way implies that I’m an advocate for bad data! The risks of basing decisions on bad data are obvious. At the end of the day, the question is about tolerance for uncertainty—different disciplines will have varying levels of tolerance depending on the situation, time and place. In sum, making the sweeping statement “no data is better than bad data” can come across as rather myopic.
My grandmother is sick. In fact, she’s dying after a frustrating, heartbreaking battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. She’s suffered from it for a few years now, going from someone who didn’t need a calculator to maintain the books at my family’s business for 50-plus years to not knowing who any of us are. Of course, I remember many things about her, which I shared with her recently in a note I have no idea whether she understood let alone internalized. Yet we do these things not as much for the ill as for the living. Fortunately, my grandmother instilled in me her tough work ethic, never quit, never settle for anything less than the “A” mentality. That’s what leads me to this past Saturday’s inaugural HITS series Olympic triathlon in La Quinta. In the moment this race meant nothing. Ultimately though, it may come to mean everything. For a week I teetered on whether I should race or stick around Los Angeles, waiting for the inevitable. I visited my grandma during the week a couple times and saw that she was resting comfortably and without pain. I made the hard choice to race knowing it was only a couple hours drive back to LA if things went south quickly. Steph stayed at home for this race just to support the family in case that happened. I drove down to La Quinta with mixed emotions. It was selfish to race, yet I knew there was nothing else I could do but wring my hands. In that regard, racing was the best thing I could do given the circumstances. The one promise I made to myself driving down to the event was simple: This one was for Grandma. That meant nothing but my absolute best effort, no excuses. No dumb errors. Just me, the course, and a ton of fury. RACE DAY RECAP I almost broke my self-promise before the race ever started. The night before I unexpectedly developed a stomach ache, an extreme rarity for me. So much that I had to rush out from our Fortius pre-race team dinner to retrieve some Pepto Bismal from the store. Minutes before getting ready to race, twinges of that ache returned, prompting me to pop some Pepto tablets I brought just in case. Then, I went from stomach to headache, as the water temperature in Lake Cahuilla was a crisp 58 degrees. Upon wading into the literally breath-taking water, my head froze and became tight at the temples. Great, my Grandma is reaching me with guilt even from LA, I joked to myself. Then the race director blew the whistle, and all aches and pains vanished. I swam smoothly and confident, avoiding the mistakes I had made at the Turkey Tri with sighting and paced myself properly. The water temp eventually felt terrific, and though there was chop on the return loop of the two-lap swim, I swam consistent and never without breath. The result was a 1:36 pace, a full 10 seconds faster on a freshwater course than the Turkey Tri and my freshwater PR by 7 seconds (IMAZ ‘10, 1:43 pace). Since I’m still not wearing a race watch, I had no idea how my day was faring. I didn’t know at the time I had just PR’d my swim, but I did know that I wasn’t swimming at the middle of the pack for a change. I seemed to be out with the first 15 people, which was new for me. Unfortunately, I left some time on the clock because my fingers and toes were so cold that I struggled with my new Rocket Science Carbon wetsuit and putting on my cycling shoes. Still, I clocked out of T1 in 2:14. Not great, but not bad either. I rocketed out of the transition area, pedaling past several people trying to catch their breath on the bike after a hard swim. The first half of the bike course was with the wind, which was picking up to between 12-15 mph by my estimates. Again, I didn’t have my watch so I had no idea of my pace. All I knew was that I needed to pedal hard, DO NOT STOP PEDALING HARD. This race was for Grandma, and it was the last race of the year. I was going to leave everything I had on this course. If I wasn’t absolutely exhausted and drained physically and mentally then I didn’t race hard enough. Then I started picking people off, one after another. I must have passed about 10 people before someone passed me, a beefy guy in my age group. He rode alongside and I implored him to work together (not draft) to keep each other going strong. He did that all right, passing by me and never looking back. When I reached the bike turnaround, I realized why I had passed so many people: the tail wind. As was the case at IMAZ last year, the turnaround was a rude awakening. The wind slapped me in the face. Hard. The next 12 miles were an exercise in sheer will as I became demoralized and contemplated quitting my frantic effort. I was being blown all over the course, like a tiny paper boat on a lake in a windstorm. Many of the people whom I passed on the way out to the turnaround passed me on the way back. All seemed bigger, taller, more built, better bikes, better equipment. Minutes before, I thought maybe I had a shot at my first podium. Minutes later, I realized today would be the same race as all the others…just on the outside of the elites looking in. At one point I screamed in frustration to nothing in particular. Then I remembered Grandma, in that bed. And all the lessons she had taught me. She helped raise me to be better than this. To study hard even when nobody is looking. To always go for the “A”, no matter what. I found my second wind in the headwind, and pushed onward back to T2. Again, at this point I thought my personal race for a USAT slot was over and had no idea once again I had PR’d on the bike, averaging 21.7 mph. As I came out of T2 in 1:08, still not feeling my toes (no socks once again), I shouted at Coach Gerardo, “Am I still in the running?!” He said definitely and that motivated me enough to make one last push for the 10k run. Despite my feet feeling more like stumps, I felt fresh and focused on the run. Almost light on my feet. Having no watch freed me to just run how I felt and as fast as I could sustain. There were enough people in front of me to constantly have a “rabbit” to chase, which helped propel me forward. The main rabbit was a 54-year-old guy whom I just couldn’t quite catch on the first 5k. He constantly stayed about 15 yards ahead of me no matter what I tried. Then, an even older guy whizzed by me. I tried to stay on his heels but he was just gone, blowing by the 54-year-old. Another moment of deflation…geez I can’t even catch these guys more than 15 years older than me! Still, I kept at it, focusing on my grandma and simply pushing myself to do this for her, and for me. It’s the last race, her last race, just keep going. At the turnaround, I saw that I was ahead of the guy on the bike whom I was trying to work with before he left me. How did that happen? He must have had a slow T2. Then, next thing I know he’s on me. And ahead of me. I’m on his heels. I don’t want to lose this guy! No age sticker on his calf, so he could very well be in my group. I’m not going to let him beat me, no matter what. I chase for a couple blocks, wondering if anybody on this street is in as much pain as I’m in. My breathing is hard. I can’t feel my toes. My quads are begging me to stop the pounding. Am I going to have a heart attack? I have a secret fear about that during every run, that I’m going to drop dead on the spot. It scares me. Does anyone else think that too? It turns out the guy in front of me gave in to doubt and pain. He grabbed his calf and suddenly stopped, hobbling over to the side of the road to stretch. I didn’t stop. I didn’t even look at him. I didn’t bother to ask if he was OK. That’s not like me but I was in the heat of the moment and possessed. Angry. Defiant. Motivated. He didn’t work with me, I wasn’t working with him. He went too hard on the bike, that’s his problem. Next up was the 54-year old. I drew closer, and closer, finally on his back. I’m drafting and then realize he’s slowing and I’m gaining power and steam. I’m 1.5 miles away from the finish. It’s time to kick. I pull alongside and told the man to get on my back and that we could pace each other to the finish. I didn’t think I could sustain my pace, knowing I had two hills to climb, and wanted company to share in the misery. I kept running, pushing. Then after the first hill I turned slightly around to see who was chasing. Was the older man with me? Nobody. I was on my own. I ran as if I wasn’t alone. There was no telling where I was ranked in terms of competitors. I felt like I was in the top 5 in my age group but maybe I could pass more people. Besides, I wasn’t after Top 5 today. I wanted more. So I kicked it up once more, with everything I had left. All I could think about was both my grandparents and everything they had done for me. Everything they had taught me. The examples they had set. I pounded through the final corner, up a hill, down a hill, a sharp left and a sharp right into the finisher’s chute. Gerardo, Mark and Caritta are there, along with Carly, to cheer me in. I swear I hear the announcer call my name and say, “Ryan, from Sherman Oaks, finishing at 2:21.” Here’s the thing though, my PR is 2:26:45. There’s no way I beat my previous best when I was in Ironman shape by five minutes. Right? Seriously!? I’m training half as much! Well, I did. And I had broken my personal best 10k time too with a 42:58 (previously 43:43). That’s a sub-7:00/mi pace. As I write this final 2011 season recap, I can share that after reviewing the full results this morning, once again I’m on the outside looking in at a USAT Nationals slot. Again, by one place (there’s a math error with the finisher in front of me as my time is faster than his but it still wouldn’t matter). I finished top 10% overall among all finishers, but top 14% in my age group. Fourth out of what appears to be 28 in my age group. Maybe 29 with the leg cramp guy, who finished less than a minute behind me but still with no age attached to his results. Instead of dwelling on what I missed out on again, I’m just so happy to have done my grandparents proud. To have lived up to what they taught me. To have showed them, and myself, that never giving up is the prize in itself. This race changed me a lot. I truly raced my heart out and nothing felt better even though I came short of my personal goal. I can’t be upset if I PR’d by five minutes and it still wasn’t going to get me to Nationals. I can live with that. I ran unhinged and got faster as a result. I’ll get faster next year. I’m making progress every day. And I’ve got great teachers, alive and gone, who inspire me. I’m having more fun than ever too. I’ll miss my grandmother so much. But she’ll be with me. She’ll be with me every time I want to stop short of reaching my potential. Thank you, Grandma. I love you.
I’m very pleased to welcome to my Literary Sofa Glass Geishas author Susanna Quinn, who has generously decided to reveal the plot secrets that helped her get published. I follow on with a few thoughts on plot and a mini-review of her book, which is one of my Top 10 Summer Reads 2012. Over to Susanna… Ah, plot. A piece of cake for some, a great hurdle for many. When I wrote Glass Geishas, I spent more time plotting than writing. In fact, Glass Geishas had around 5 different plots during the eight years I tried to get it published, all lovingly written, and less lovingly rejected. What was so different about the final version of Glass Geishas, which was plucked from the slush pile and accepted by a major publisher? I’d learned the archetypal secrets of great plotting. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice – they all follow plot archetypes. How can you use plot archetypes to write a novel? Here are my three top tips: 1. Pick a classic story you love, and unpick its major scenes Classic stories are classic for a reason. They have plots (and characters) that resonate deeply within the human psyche. Almost all classic stories fit into ‘formulas’ for story success that the movie industry follows religiously. When you unpick a classic story scene-by-scene, you begin to understand its key elements – what and where the plot turning points are, why there is (or isn’t) a happy ending and where the major story lies. Write the major scenes of your favourite classic story on note cards. You should have no more than twenty of them – if you’ve written more, think about scenes you could cut without losing sense of the story. If you were explaining the story to someone who’d never heard it, what would they absolutely need to know? 2. Plot your novel based on the scenes you’ve unpicked For every note card you have, think of an equivalent scene that fits whatever story you’re trying to tell. You may find your story becomes something completely different, which is fine. I guarantee that by fitting your plot around a classic story, you’ll be creating a plot that really moves people in all the right ways. This might sound like cheating, but it worked for Bridget Jones’s Diary, which closely imitates Pride and Prejudice. There are countless other bestselling novels that loosely imitate classic plots. 3. Know the purpose of your plot We write stories for a reason. Yes – characters are interesting. Yes – we get some emotional knowledge and satisfaction from deep and meaningful heroes. But ultimately, you’re writing a plot for a purpose. What is that purpose? It’s to communicate one key, fundamental message: human beings can only survive by helping each other, and selfish people will always fail. If you think this sounds corny, American Psycho, in its own brutal way, communicates exactly this value. A selfish character is doomed to failure, just as a good character will be helped to succeed. Once you know why you’re plotting, you’ll notice your stories taking on great direction and purpose. You begin to understand why things have to happen a certain way, and how your plot takes readers to a satisfying conclusion. Can you guess which archetypal plot I used to write Glass Geishas? You can find out more about Susanna and Glass Geishas here and follow her on Twitter: @bookgroupauthor More on plot Thanks very much to Susanna for sharing her secrets of success! I always enjoy hearing how other writers approach the task of plotting (if they plot at all, that is). There are so many ways of doing it, between the two extremes of writing a first draft with no fixed ideas at all and seeing where it leads, to meticulously planning a whole novel in minute detail before even starting to write. Susanna’s strategy interested me and I can identify with parts of it. I employ the index card approach for major developments, ending up with one per chapter (30 in my first manuscript). I find this helps with the shape and pace of the story but the finer details don’t come to me until I think about each individual chapter, and it’s usually kick-started by a piece of dialogue. I’ve never consciously referred to the classics though! There’s some great material for discussion in Susanna’s piece: Do you enjoy novels based on a familiar plot? Is it cheating? Do you agree with her about the fundamental dynamics between good and bad characters? What makes for a ‘satisfying conclusion’? If you’re a writer, how do you go about plotting? As one of the more commercial titles on my Top 10 Summer Reads and the story of young women working in the nightclub business in Tokyo, Glass Geishas may appear deceptively light at first. As an experienced journalist, Susanna Quinn writes in a smooth and very readable style and the story has real tension and momentum, albeit stretching credibility at times. Steph is an engaging protagonist – admirably feisty and resourceful when she’s not being infuriatingly naive – all very believable of a character in her early 20s. I chose this book above all for its eye-opening exposure of a place and culture I previously knew very little about. Exotic night-time Tokyo and the sleazy workings of the Japanese sex industry were brought to life in shocking and vivid detail. Clearly Susanna Quinn really knows this world – she certainly knows how to pull the reader in; I found it worryingly, horribly compelling. Having already read all of my Top 10 Summer Reads, in my next post I reveal which books I’ll be reading by the pool on my holiday in France, and why.
Last Updated: 2013-01-14 20:33:17 UTC by Richard Porter (Version: 3) Overview of the January 2013 Microsoft Out of Cycle patches and their status. \|#\|\|Affected\|\|Contra Indications - KB\|\|Known Exploits\|\|Microsoft rating(*)\|\|ISC rating()\| Security Update for Internet Explorer Internet Explorer 6,7,8 We appreciate updates US based customers can call Microsoft for free patch related support on 1-866-PCSAFETY We use 4 levels: - PATCH NOW: Typically used where we see immediate danger of exploitation. Typical environments will want to deploy these patches ASAP. Workarounds are typically not accepted by users or are not possible. This rating is often used when typical deployments make it vulnerable and exploits are being used or easy to obtain or make. - Critical: Anything that needs little to become "interesting" for the dark side. Best approach is to test and deploy ASAP. Workarounds can give more time to test. - Important: Things where more testing and other measures can help. - Less Urgent: Typically we expect the impact if left unpatched to be not that big a deal in the short term. Do not forget them however. - The difference between the client and server rating is based on how you use the affected machine. We take into account the typical client and server deployment in the usage of the machine and the common measures people typically have in place already. Measures we presume are simple best practices for servers such as not using outlook, MSIE, word etc. to do traditional office or leisure work. - The rating is not a risk analysis as such. It is a rating of importance of the vulnerability and the perceived or even predicted threat for affected systems. The rating does not account for the number of affected systems there are. It is for an affected system in a typical worst-case role. - Only the organization itself is in a position to do a full risk analysis involving the presence (or lack of) affected systems, the actually implemented measures, the impact on their operation and the value of the assets involved. - All patches released by a vendor are important enough to have a close look if you use the affected systems. There is little incentive for vendors to publicize patches that do not have some form of risk to them. (**): The exploitability rating we show is the worst of them all due to the too large number of ratings Microsoft assigns to some of the patches. Post suggestions or comments in the section below or send us any questions or comments in the contact form richard /at/ pedantictheory.com For Hire. Posted with Permission New Comments closed for all Diaries older than two(2) weeks Please send your comments to our Contact Form
Praise be to Allaah. These spots are not counted as menstrual blood and may be the result of physical exertion, sports activities or other than that for which you should consult your doctor. They do not indicate pregnancy as far as we know. What you need to do is wash away the blood from your body and clothing and pray. For further benefit, see the answer to question 38624. Menstruation is a matter Allah has decreed for the daughters of Adam and during it the woman is not required to pray or fast. What a young girl experiences of uneasiness and emotions during menstruation is normal and affects most women, especially those who are younger. A woman may dislike menstruation and be turned off by it since she needs to be careful of the blood, leave salah and not touch the Quran, however, those feelings do not harm her as long as she acknowledges the Shari’ah rulings and their wisdom; this is called a natural disliking. It is like a person disliking the use of cold water for wudhu or fighting, while accepting and submitting to the laws of Allah, as the Exalted says (what means): “Fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you. But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah Knows, while you know not.” [2:216] And similar to this is a woman’s dislike of having a co-wife while she believes in the permissibility of polygyny and does not object to the law of the Law-Giver and His wisdom. So natural dislike towards something does not incur a sin, as long as the slave submits to the laws of However, the more a slave’s Iman (faith) increases and the greater his understanding of the laws and wisdoms of the Shari’ah become, the more content they become and their hearts become accepting. They praise Allah for things which are pleasing as well as hardships; so the slave goes where he is ordered and stops where he is ordered and when hardships befall him, he comprehends what they contain of rewards and good and becomes calm and happy. This is not the case with everyone, and one who has not reached this level will not be held accountable for it. We ask Allah to increase you in Iman (faith), knowledge and guidance. And Allah knows best.
Island Associates Warranty Island Associates offers the following warranties on paving stone installation: Manufacturer’s Lifetime Warranty on the paving stones - Should a paving stone, installed according to our installation guidelines, prove defective, it will be replaced without cost - This Warranty is good for as long as the original purchaser owns the property on which the paving stones were installed. Island Associates offers a 2 year warranty on the installation - Protection against workmanship & other installation concerns - This Warranty is good for five years from the date of installation on which the paving stones were installed using the Island Associates Installation System. Island Associates offers a 1 year warranty on planting installations
"poor audio; lousy support" Poor audio quality. Incoming calls go to VM. No response to questions from Softtonic. Many VoIP providers do not know about this device. Providers provide no help, but they aren't expected to about the device. - Slick interface. Great potential. Can record calls. - Poor customer support. - 08 Jul 2011 If you're moving to Mac, don't be surprised to find that not all of your Windows programs have a... See more If you've got a large file or a bunch of files you need to send to a friend or family member, it can... See more
OCTOBER 15, 2001 VOLUME 9, NUMBER 16 Many patients approaching the end of life feel very strongly that they would not want to be kept alive by feeding tubes, artificial breathing machines or other devices. Signing appropriate advance directives helps, but there is no guarantee that they will be located, properly understood and followed in every case. Discussions with family members, caregivers and medical providers can dramatically increase the likelihood that the patient’s wishes will be carried out. Consider, for example, the case of Delores Cameron. She had been married for over 40 years to James Cameron, but she had two sons from an earlier marriage. In 1995 she signed a living will, using the form provided by the Alabama Legislature. It directed that “artificially provided nutrition and hydration” should be withheld if she were ever in a persistent vegetative state. In March of 2000, after a series of strokes, Ms. Cameron became completely unresponsive. She was cared for in an Alabama nursing home, and fed through a feeding tube. Mr. Cameron directed the nursing home to remove the feeding tube. Ms. Cameron’s sons filed a lawsuit to prevent removal of their mother’s feeding tube. After five days of hearings lasting over two months, the judge ruled that Ms. Cameron’s wishes should be honored, and her sons appealed. They made two arguments that serve as a warning for other patients who execute living wills, durable powers of attorney or other advance directives. First they argued that Ms. Cameron was not really in a persistent vegetative state. Although one physician testified that she was slightly responsive to some stimulation, two others insisted that she lacked “thought, sensation, purposeful action, social interaction and awareness of self and environment.” The sons also insisted that it was impossible that their mother really understood the meaning and effect of her living will when she signed it. If she had realized that it would have meant withdrawal of a feeding tube, they argued, she would not have signed the pre-printed form. They did not provide specific evidence of her wishes, but doubted that she had intended to sign the living will. The Alabama Supreme Court decided that Ms. Cameron’s wishes should be followed—but only if the evidence of those wishes was “clear and convincing.” The trial judge had not used that phrase, so the case was sent back for a further hearing. Knight v. Beverly Health Care, August 31, 2001. Would it have helped for Ms. Cameron to discuss her wishes with her sons in advance? The financial and emotional cost of legal proceedings might have been avoided if family members had talked over the documents and their meaning before Ms. Cameron’s final illness. The moral of Ms. Cameron’s story: It is not enough to just sign a directive—family members should be informed and wishes discussed in advance.
An anonymous reader writes "The Register takes a look at spam touting everything from Viagra to phishing sites being sent from Fortune 1000 networks. Oracle was found to have a machine pushing out a PayPal phishing scam, and BestBuy had a system sending thousands of spams a month. The Washington Post's Security Fix blog also is tracking this story, finding stock spam being pumped from ExxonMobile and from American Electric Power, among others. Another machine at IndyMac Bank was the source of spam touting generic prescription drugs. From the story: '...an IT engineer with American Electric Power, said the stock spam came from a bot-infected computer belonging to a contractor at one of its power generator plants.'"
The rose diagram illustrates how frequently and how strongly the wind blows from different directions through a typical southern hemisphere winter. The largest spokes point in the directions the wind most commonly blows from and the shade of blue suggests the strength, with deep blue showing the strongest winds. It is based on 5066 NWW3 forecasts of wind since since 2006, at 3hr intervals, for the closest NWW3 model node to A-Bay, located 28 km away (17 miles). There are too few recording stations world wide to use actual wind data. Invevitably some coastal places have very localized wind effects that would not be predicted by NWW3. According to the model, the dominant wind at A-Bay blows from the SW. If the rose diagram shows a close to circular outline, it means there is no strong bias in wind direction at A-Bay. On the other hand, dominant spokes illustrate favoured directions, and the more deep blue, the stronger the wind. Spokes point in the direction the wind blows from. Over an average southern hemisphere winter, the model suggests that winds are light enough for the sea to be glassy (light blue) about 10% of the time (9 days each southern hemisphere winter) and blows offshore 51% of the time (44 days in an average southern hemisphere winter). In a typical southern hemisphere winter winds stronger than >40kph (25mph) are expected on 9 days at A-Bay IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.
Election ManifestoGerard Counihan profesorSs [at] blabla.es For intermediate level and up It is election time again, and this time the students have to compile a list of "demands" or "proposals". First off, get them to present suggestions for society in general. I got these, some of which have to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt-all in good fun: - More jobs - Monthly minimum payment to young people - Less pollution - Safer streets - Less cars on the streets - Less politicians - More money for education - Less students per class - Late opening for bars - Less football on TV - Less soap operas on TV - Less ads on TV - Less gossip programmes on TV - More films on TV - More taxes for the rich Someone should counter each suggestion, with a sentence like: - Yes, but ... For example, to "Less taxes", I got: - "Yes, but taxes are used, for example, to build and repair roads." To "More taxes for the rich", I got: - "And who will create jobs?" Get students to use their imaginations. Everyone has to participate, no matter how humble their proposal. You could also sound out the students on their proposals for English classes, night life, TV, parents and so on. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. V, No. 2, February 1999
Updated 06/21/2012 08:38 PM Catholic diocese battles mandate The Syracuse Roman Catholic Diocese has launched what it calls a "Fortnight for Freedom." It's part of an ongoing battle over a federal mandate that the church says violates its teachings. But YNN's Bill Carey says that while church leaders have launched their protest against Washington, they're facing some protests of their own. To view our videos, you need to install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now. Then come back here and refresh the page. SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- To Bishop Robert Cunningham, there is little room for debate. This, he says, is a matter of conscience. His church stands against the use of contraception. Cunningham sad, “We believe that acts of married love should be open to the creation of new life. That loving couples should cooperate with God in the creation of new life. And anything that impedes that action we would be opposed to.” In the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. The Bishop and the faithful celebrating Mass and delivering a message that to force the church to provide insurance coverage for contraception at any of its facilities, schools, nursing homes, hospitals, social service agencies, would be wrong. “Our culture is moving from being a God-fearing nation to becoming a God-less nation. And this is a very fundamental. It's a tipping point for all people of faith. Not just Roman Catholics,” Harvey Simmons said. The Bishops have tried to frame this as an argument over religious freedom. That any government order would force them and other Catholics to go against the teachings of their own church. But as the Bishop prayed inside, other Catholics gathered outside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. They argued that Cunningham and other church leaders do not speak for them. That they support use of contraception and feel its long past due that the church offer needed coverage to its workers. “Faithful Catholics. We want to be able to celebrate our beautiful liturgy. To believe in the gospels. And somehow, the Bishops seem to say we can't do that unless we do it their way. That's just not going to work anymore,” protester Rachel Guido DeVries said. The protesters say the vast majority of Catholics in the United States no longer support the church stand on birth control. Their voices, they argue, will eventually be heard. “Change always comes from the margins, from the bottom. That's how the Church has existed for 2,000 years. So we're just in line with the tradition,” said Rev. Fred Daley, the All Saints Church Pastor. “There will always be those who follow and there will be some who walk away because the teaching is hard. But I think we still need to defend and to teach and to proclaim what we believe the true teaching of the church is,” Cunningham said. The debate between church and state may eventually be resolved. The debate within the church will likely go on. The Thursday mass launching the "Fortnight for Freedom" drive marks the beginning of two weeks of events planned by the Syracuse Diocese to drive home its religious freedom argument. The campaign will end on the 4th of July.
I was able to connect to the VPN using wireless Internet but this Internet access is no longer available to me. I have now subscribed to Cable (LAN) Internet. VPN is not working in this. Could someone step me through how to set up VPN with cable Internet? Thanks. December 10, 2008 7:22 PM December 11, 2008 6:51 PM
Saturday, 22 September 2012 Junior Hockey Shows Leadership This week the OHL made a major rules announcement designed to put an end to one-dimensional fighters. But they weren’t the only junior league implementing progressive measures that will reduce fighting in the game. The USHL, CJHL and WHL all had press releases recently with a similar direction, if perhaps different approaches. The OHL got the lion’s share of press for their rules which are intended to crack down on serial fighters (reported here). Under the new rules, a player who has more than 10 fights earns an automatic two-game suspension for every additional bout until his 15th fight. After 15 fights they will be banned two games per fight and the team fined a $1,000. If a player is deemed the instigator, and he’s had 11 or more fights, it’s a four-game ban. This rule is clearly targeted at the one-dimensional player who is on the roster simply to drop the gloves and cause mayhem on the ice. There will be no impact on more than 90% of the players in the OHL and those who are seen as goons will have clean up their act and depend on hockey skills to make an impact on scouts. Even Ty Blicke, who led the OHL in fights with 37 last season, sounds like he will focus on playing more and dropping the gloves less. “I stand by the league’s decision,” said the Windsor Spitfires forward. “I’m actually excited about it. It’s a challenge for me to show people who have been calling me words like goon, that I’m a hockey player first. A few journalists pointed out that you could have teams going after an opposition player who is sitting at 10 fights in an effort to goad him into dropping the gloves and earning a suspension. I think that’s unlikely because that player will be protected as long as he is not the instigator. The new OHL rule states that if you are not a willing combatant, and the other player is assessed an instigator penalty, then the fight doesn’t count towards his totals. If the player on the edge is goaded into starting the fight then he will be penalized and suspended. So if he has no self-control then he deserves the suspension. I think this part of the new rule has some benefits as it will be more likely that refs will call instigator penalties in order to protect those who are attacked. The instigator rule is not called as often as is deserved but I think you’ll see an increase in its application this season. Meanwhile the CJHL has also toughened a similar rule to the one just rolled out by the OHL (reported here). First implemented in the 2010-11 season the CJHL rules in the Alberta, B.C., Manitoba, Maritime and Saskatchewan leagues have called for a two-game suspension to kick in after 7 fights. A change for this year has reduced that limit to 5 fights and a second instigator during the season also triggers an automatic ban. The leagues involved in the trial included the AJHL, BCHL, MJHL, MHL and SJHL while the CJHL's other five leagues have an automatic ejection for fighting. A year before the CJHL rule kicked in there were 1.02 fights per game across the five leagues which signed on for the pilot project and 140 players received at least 6 fighting majors. There was an immediate impact in '10-11 as only 13 players received a suspension for exceeding the fight threshold but the number increased to 50 last season, prompting the league to lower the threshold to 5 fights. While I applaud CJHL president Kirk Lamb for making the rule tougher I think his positioning in the press was ill prepared. He stated that he believes the tougher rules will reduce fighting to what it was initially intended for — as a way to stick up for teammates. I don’t believe that any hockey executive should be comfortable with the position that revenge is acceptable in the sport. The same day as the OHL announcement saw new rules from the USHL that was targeted at both fighting and violence (reported here). The USHL identified certain minor penalties as dangerous, such as elbowing, head contact, kneeing, etc. These will be monitor and reviewed along with major penalties – both fighting and non-fighting – throughout the course of the season. Players accumulating multiple penalties will be notified and addressed by the Commissioner’s office with an eye toward early intervention and education, and multiple penalties in any category will be subject to supplementary discipline. I like this approach for several reasons. It should identify those players who have a tendency for violent play and not just goons who get into fights. By tracking those plays that are classified as dangerous it should isolate players who are focused on causing harm versus playing the game of hockey. I like the approach of the league getting involved early when a pattern develops with a player and calling them in for a review. If that type of enforcement is consistent then players will start to change their behaviour or find their junior careers ending early. I hope that the USHL also releases an update after the season on the impact of this new rule. I’d make the assumption that fighting should decrease and I would like to see if there is any change in other dangerous minor penalties. I would also assume that the league will become safer overall. Partly because of the USHL looking at all types of infractions in a collective manner, and because it’s my belief that fighting causes more violence contrary to the popular myth of “enforcement”. The WHL also made a minor announcement that staged fights will result in an immediate suspension (reported here). This is the official text from their website: Adoption of a staged fighting rule. Should a fight occur following a face-off during a game, it will be considered a staged fight. Should a staged fight occur during a pre-season, regular season or playoff game, the players involved shall each receive an automatic game misconduct in addition to the major penalty. Should one player clearly initiate or instigate the fight, only that player will receive the game misconduct in addition to a minor penalty for instigating the fight. Should the linesmen intervene and prevent the fight from starting, the players involved will each receive misconduct penalties. I’m not sure how much of an impact this will have on the WHL, the junior league with the highest fights per game. What if they simply wait 10 seconds or 20 seconds and then fight. Is that staged? This appears to be a weak response by the WHL to some of the more progressive moves by the other 3 leagues. I’m somewhat removed from regular articles on this league, something I should work on this season, but it appears to be stuck firmly in the fighting culture and lagging behind. Junior hockey is moving in the right direction and I don’t think they’re finished. We should expect to see penalties increased, fighting limits reduced and suspensions lengthened over the next few years. Hockey fans that want to see fighting banned from the sport would like to see a more rapid progression, and perhaps for some of the junior hockey executive leadership to rub off on some NHL GMs and coaches. I mean if they all agree that fighting will be taken out of the game eventually, why not just take action immediately? I guess we’ll settle for a slow evolution, led by the young teaching the old.
Well i havent been on this in a while lol been mainly working on my youtube page and things like that baseball season is starting up again which is always good :) so ill be coaching playing so pretty much ill be busy which is good since i get bored real easy lol …. Just an update on Xbox360 ive been playing Final Fantasy 13-2 which is very good lol and also MW3 im 13th prestige now i could be higher but i started to play sports games for a while lol well thats about it for the gaming lol if u want to play just hmu Gt : Burrstify Well xbox is getting boring on mw3 due to kids being real bad and no one really plays anymore so hears a message for tumblr ppl :P idc if ur a girl or a guy hmu on xbox gt : Al Bhed Potion dont worry im good haha 7th prestige :P umm yeah :D LOL its funny because my gt on Xbox is Al Bhed Potion from ffx and ppl always call me a terrorist because they get mad at me lol so i guess add me if u want to play i do good all the time lol and mainly play snd …. and also cant wait for the remake of ffx for the ps3 :) !!!! Robin from Arkham City! Okk so this isn’t me but i randomly join a match while this guy is recording u will see me join GT:ITzWilliee and you will hear him talking about how i kill him so much lol its funny :D Ohhhh Tumblr , Facebook , and Xbox why are you so fucking boring. Why cant you juss be fun everyday like wow cant be consistent for once in my life i would like to be on these things and have back to back good days on them. Xbox used to save me from anything bad or from being bored lol no its juss shit so please MW3 and the New Assassins Creed hurry and come out already…………
We think our ITM Showcase Events are uniquely user-friendly for several important reasons. THE ITM EXPERIENCE Firstly, before the bands perform, you’ll have a chance to “hang out” with many of our featured vocalists, musicians, bandleaders, chat with other guests, and do so in a low-pressure, no-sell, comfortable setting. Secondly, each band’s performance will run about 30 minutes and, when possible, will perform a song (or two) that you have requested to hear from their song list. Thirdly, because we know how important it is for you to find the “right” band, you will see, hear, and experience the bands exactly as they will be performing at your Wedding, Gala, Mitzvah, or Special Event. Unlike many of our competitors, we don’t try to dazzle you with hi-tech special lighting effects or specially enhanced sound reinforcement systems. Why not? Well, in all honesty, 99% of the time, these eye-catching staging effects and concert sound enhancements, won’t be used at your Wedding, Mitzvah, or even Gala Event. After years of experience, we know that most venues just can’t support the electrical requirements, or don’t have the space for these kinds of concert equipment, and, most importantly, with the tight timeframe for multiple vendor arrival, entry, and set-up, there just isn’t sufficient time to coordinate and execute a concert-style set-up. SHOWCASE EVENT SITES To make our Showcase Events as convenient as possible, we usually hold them every three weeks, on a mid-week night (always after rush hour traffic!) and rotate locations around the Delaware Valley. This way, because our clients usually begin their band search about a year before their event, there’s usually a Showcase Event you can attend without committing to extensive travel. MORE INFORMATION & REGISTRATION To learn more about ITM Showcase Events click on CONTACT US. We hope to meet you soon and show you why—Great Parties Begin with ITM!
The tag started with a good old TH # 8 manila which I inked. The mat is from K & Company and I distressed the edges with my scissors. Next I used a Versamark pen to add some ink in the corners so I could add gold embossing powder. Once embossed, I added some Glossy Accents and sprinkled on gold microbeads. Next I added a half oval of some more of the K & Co. paper. I used more Glossy Accents to draw a random pattern around the edge and sprinkled on some copper glitter. We start a new challenge this week at the ADFD blog and we want you to use "found" paper. That means ticket stubs, book pages, gum wrappers, whatever you can find to repurpose and use on your project. I used a piece of a place mat. LOL Yep, that's what I said. :-) See! Pretty lady comes next. One of my close friends is half Korean and her mother always refers to my daughter as "Pretty Lady". Now this looks nothing like my daughter other than the pale complexion. :-) I "tore" her out and added a little ink and Rub 'n Buff to the edges. That fun little "Sassy" is part of a paper strip that has that printed over and over. It was in some of the Making Memories Vintage Findings collection that was out about two years ago. I inked it and added three little pearls on the corner below a fun piece of funky fiber I had in my stash. The bird and little piece at the top with the metal rose (also from that same MM collection) are some chipboard pieces I found in the Michaels $1 bins. The top one is embossed with gold and the bird had Glossy Accents added to his swirls, was inked and then edged with Rub 'n Buff. I think that covers everything. LOL I was really inspired to get into this tag by a new challenge that was just started by Linda Coughlin, The Funkie Junkie. It's called Frilly and Funkie and their very first challenge is to make something in your favorite vintage style. Now some of you newbies might think this is a bit out of my usual realm, but to be honest it's what I started out with when I started crafting online. All those frilly frou frous and fun products were staples in my mini albums. I miss playing with all that stuff so this was a perfect opportunity to drag it all out. So pretty lady is going to play and I hope you'll join us at ADFD for our challenge this week. Tammy will have another great freebie for you to play with if you don't have any ADFD images. I'd like to enter this tag into the following challenges: Craft Us Crazy--altered items and/or anything but a card The Outlawz POM--anything goes Simon Says Stamp--anything goes Frilly and Funkie--your favorite vintage style Craft-room Challenge--bling and glitter/sparkle Creative Craft Challenge--anything but a card Party Time Tuesday--anything goes Bunny Zoe's--shabby chic/vintage Make It Monday--anything goes Simon Says Stamp and Show--tag Secret Crafter--shabby chic/vintage Have an amazing weekend! - Paper: Inkssentials #8 Manila tag, K & Company, Canson 90 lb. watercolor paper - Stamp: A Day For Daisies "Befuddled" - Ink: Distress inks, Versamark pen - Tools: Nestabilities Classic Ovals, Marvy Uchida heat gun - Miscellaneous: Martha Stewart gold microbeads, Ranger gold embossing powder, Michaels $1 bin chipboard pieces, Anitique Gold Rub 'n Buff, Making Memories metal rose, garment pin, and "Sassy" strip, Doddlebug Design copper glitter, seam binding and fiber from my stash, Recollections pearls, Glossy Accents
Winx Club: The Secret of the Lost Kingdom Movie (a J!-ENT DVD Review) July 24, 2012 by Dennis Amith The popular Italian animated series “Winx Club” has a tremendous fan following and for the first time, the first film “The Secret of the Lost Kingdom Movie” will be available on DVD in the U.S. Also, included are seven bonus episodes! Overall, a positive animated series for fans, the young at heart or for parents looking for an enjoyable series with cool heroic female characters for their young daughters. DVD TITLE: Winx Club: The Secret of the Lost Kingdom Movie DURATION: MOVIE (86 Minutes) + 7 Episodes (2 hrs. and 38 minutes) DVD INFORMATION: Full screen format, Dolby Digital – English Stereo RATED: PG (Violence) RELEASE DATE: July 31, 2012 Directed by Iginio Straffi Written by Sean Molyneaux and Iginio Straffi Produced by Joanne Lee Line Producer: Francesco Mastrofini Art Direction: Vincenzo Nisco, Corrado Virgili Featuring the Voices of: Molly C. Quinn as Bloom Amy Gross as Stella Alejandra Reynoso as Flora Romi Dames as Musa Morgan Decker as Tecna Keke Palmer as Aisha Matt Shively as Prince Sky Adam Gregory as Brandon David Faustino as Helia Sam Riegel as Riven Charlie Schlatter as Timmy Will Blagrove as Navu It’s graduation day at Alfea, but Bloom has something on her mind. She’s determined to find her birth parents – no matter what! Now, on a fantastical movie journey that takes her and the Winx Club to a strange planet with evil lurking around every corner, Bloom will learn to trust her true friends…and herself! In Italy, the “Winx Club” is an animated and franchise hit. Since 2004, the animated series was created by Iginio Straffi, President and founder of Italian-based animation studio, Rainbow S.r.l. and so far, there have been a total of six seasons, three films and many video games as well as books, toys, and clothes. Suffice to say, “Winx Club” has been a big hit in its native country. In America, while the series has been featured in Canada, 4Kids Entertainment had the distribution rights and changed the entire dialogue and music, and also altering the visuals and situations of the original series. And would continue to distribute the series through 2007 after the third season. In 2011, Nickelodeon has aired four one-hour specials to summarize the first two seasons and have aired the third and fourth season of “Winx Club”. And now will be co-producing with rainbow S.r.l., the fifth and sixth season of the animated series. The fourth season began airing on Nickelodeon since May 2012 with the fifth season to be announced at a later time. While the first three seasons were released on DVD in the U.S., the three films have not been released in America. But now, the first film titled “Winx Club: The Secret of the Lost Kingdom” (2007) will be released on DVD for the first time along with seven bonus episodes of season 4 of “Winx Club: The Power of Believix” on August 2012. What is “Winx Club” all about? “Winx Club” revolves around a group of teen fairies attending attending school. The primary antagonist is Bloom, who lives with humans in the city of Gardenia and while living a normal life, she later discovers she has magical abilities and powers. She then learns that she is a fairy and joins Alfea, the school for fairies in the Magical Dimension. - Bloom is a fairy who was raised by human parents, while her parents were considered missing. A fairy of the Dragon Flame and the most powerful of the Winx, her power is the hope that can defeat the evil of the Trix. She is also the princess of the planet Domino and is believed to be the last survivor of the planet. and is dating Sky. - Aisha is the Fairy of Waves and has the power of controlling water and “Morphix”. She is the princess of the planet Andros and her personality is wild and rebellious. She is dating Nabu. - Flora is the Fairy of Nature and draws her power from flowers, plants and trees. She is often happy and is quite intelligent. She is dating Helia. - Stella is the Fairy of the Shining and the princess of Solaria. She is carefree, loves to chat and wants to be the center of attention. She is dating Brandon and is best friends with Bloom. - Musa is the Fairy of Music and has the power of melody. She is down to Earth but can be pessimistic. She is dating Riven. - Tecna is the Fairy of Technology and her power is derived from technology. She is logical, rational but is not good at expressing her emotions. She is dating Timmy. While each fairy is trying to find out how to work as a team and utilize their powers, there is an evil group known as the Trix that want to take away Bloom’s power. What is “The Secret of the Lost Kingdom Movie” about? For the film “Winx Club: The Secret of the Lost Kingdom”, the film takes place after the third season and Bloom and her friends are searching for her parents, King Oritel and Queen Marion. For a fairy to graduate, they must write their own ending and for Bloom, her ending would be to find her parents. Believing they are alive, Bloom seeks the blacksmith known as Hagen, the person responsible for forging her father’s sword. But Hagen tells her that he has been trying to find her parents but have not sensed the sword and chances are, they are not coming back. Bloom has a hard time dealing with the fact that her parents may be dead. And to make things worst, her boyfriend Sky is leaving with another fairy for a mission that he is unable to talk about. So, while the other fairy’s have their boyfriends nearby, Bloom doesn’t. But while she is sleeping, she has a dream of her sister Daphne telling her to keep searching and her parents are still alive. She givs Bloom a mask and tells her it will help her see Domino before it is destroyed and also tells her about the Book of Fate that their father has, which tells the story of the history of Domino. And with her new resolve to find her parents, the sword of King Oritel begins to glow and the Ancestral Witches, who believed that they destroyed all surviving people of Domino, now wants to know why the sword has activated and feel they must kill the survivor. So now Bloom and her fairy friends go off on an adventure to find her parents. VIDEO & AUDIO: “Winx Club: The Secret of the Lost Kingdom Movie” is presented in letterbox format. The CG animation was probably a big step in bringing the animated series to the CG realm and while not as high budget or detailed as other CG-animated films, I doubt that children would mind. I think the fact that the characters are in CG, most children would be excited by that. Created in Italy, the series has its own distinct style. From its character design to the backgrounds, but it’s a colorful animated series and I actually like the pixie style of character design and that it is different compared to what we usually see in the U.S. and also from Japan. But as expected on DVD, you are going to have some artifacts, jagged edges, softness, etc. But the film does look good on DVD, as does the seven episodes from the TV series. I doubt most children watching this series will be picky about its picture quality. As for audio, the series is presented in Dolby Digital English Stereo, Italian dub is not included on this DVD. “Winx Club: The Secret of the Lost Kingdom Movie” comes with the first seven episodes “Winx Club: The Secret of the Lost Kingdom Movie” comes with a slipcover case. I must admit that prior to watching “Winx Club: The Secret of the Lost Kingdom Movie”, I was not aware of this series. And because it was shown on Nickelodeon, I was thinking maybe this is a series for toddlers or young girls. But I realize that this is an animated film with a series that attracts people of all ages, similar to what Nickelodeon had done with the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” but with fairies, magical transformations and yes, smooching between the female fairies and their boyfriends. While this film may draw comparison to the recent Disney “Tinkerbell” films, the Winx Club was released before the “Tinkerbell” films and has been a major hit in Italy. From merchandise such as toys and video games, the series has been ongoing since 2004 and with the series on television in America and the release of the animated film, I can see how this series would attract viewers through its accessible storyline but also for the fact that the female characters are the heroes, not their boyfriends and I think it’s cool to have a series featuring a group of heroine’s and a series that young girls can enjoy. First, let’s discuss “Winx Club: The Secret of the Lost Kingdom Movie”. The film is in CG as opposed to the animated series which is not. While the film was created back in 2007 and being released now on DVD for the first time, it may not be as detailed as a lot of high budget or current CG animated films are today, but for young children, I think that girls will like these characters, their personalities and special powers. For the character of Bloom, she is a girl who desperately wants to find her parents. And being told that they are probably dead, she continues to have hope and together with their friends, they journey together to help her find her parents but also using their special powers to take on several antagonists. In some ways, there is a similarity to an older Japanese animation known as “Sailor Moon” with its magical girl transformations and yes, even Sailor Moon’s butterfly transformation and the longing for a boyfriend and each girl having their own distinct personalities but working together as a group despite their differences. But this series and film does show the importance of friendship and working as a team. While I did mention these girls do have boyfriends and yes, there is kissing, parents will have to decide if they mind this or not. Personally, I don’t mind it and it’s not as the characters are engaged in major liplocking, but these young fairies are excited to have supportive and caring boyfriends and show their affection with a quick kiss. As for the animated series, because the film does go into the graduation of the fairies (previous episodes featured when they attended the Alfea school), the fourth season known as “Winx Club: The Power of Believix” focuses on the fairies now as new teachers at Alfea. The first seven episodes of this 26-episode season is included as part of the special features (these episodes were shown on Nickelodeon on May through June 2012). The series features Bloom and friends going against new antagonists known as the Wizards of the Black Castle. These evil men are looking for the last fairy and they think it’s Bloom. But with this group so powerful and now trying to steal more magic, they set their eyes on Earth to find the last fairy. So, to stop the Wizards of the Black Castle, Bloom and the fairies must team up and get accustomed to Earth life but also taking on other evils such as a monster that is causing all Pixies to vanish and to stop the problems and havoc that the Wizards of the Black Castle have created on Earth. As for the DVD, the film and the animated series does have it’s own separate distinct look but in terms of storyline, I do feel it’s a series that young girls or the young at heart can enjoy. You really don’t find animated series showcasing heroines but the fact that you have quite a few, if the boys can have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men or Justice League, then why not have a group of female characters with special abilities? So, I feel that “Winx Club” is a positive animated series that showcases teenage fairies with special abilities, their own skills and personalities and a storyline that compliments those characters quite well. And for parents, it is rated PG because there are bad antagonists and some violence but nothing that is too scary. I think that children 8 or older should be fine with watching this animated series. And there are no bad habits that children can learn from this series (as opposed to certain habits that my son had learned from another Nickelodeon show ala “SpongeBob SquarePants”. Overall, for “Winx Club” fans, you get one film plus seven episodes on one DVD. If you are a fan or a parent wanting an animated DVD for your daughter, “Winx Club: The Secret of the Lost Kingdom Movie” is recommended! J!-ENT has not received any compensation from the company for this post. J!-ENT has no material connection to the brands, products, or services that are mentioned in this post. For Product Reviews: For product reviews, J!-ENT has received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free by the company which in no way affects our reviews positive or negative. We only recommend products or services we have tested/reviewed and believe will be good for our readers. Some of the links in our posts are "affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, J!-ENT will receive an affiliate commission. J!-ENT is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
the poet as novelist I just spent a wonderful two days with Robert Coover, visiting us as a Writers House Fellow, our first of three this spring (next up is Joan Didion). The reading Bob gave last night was riveting. He read all languagy stuff - prose-poems, really. Antic, thick with sound, featuring some of his many imitative American voices. I wanted him to do an encore of "The Fallguy's Faith," his brilliant 1.5-page piece about Humpty Dumpty, which reads like a gone-awry thesaurus of American idioms around falling and fallen. Fortunately Bob Coover came back this morning and I had the opportunity to interview him and moderate a discussion with others, both there at the House and about 35 people watching the live video stream. And I asked him to read the Humpty piece this morning. Here are your links: our Coover page with links to video of the reading and the interview, and audio-only mp3's of both; a few photographs from Coover's 3-hour session with the students in my Fellows seminar; the text of Vince Levy's introduction to Coover at the Monday night reading. photographs of the visit (by John Carroll)
Think about how Communicators and PR professionals used video ten years ago…Video News Releases…B-Roll provided to broadcasters, Satellite Media Tours…Those tactics were as effective as possible at the time in telling your brand’s or organization’s story but still hit-and-miss in nature and a demanded huge resources. Now think about the changes in communications in the past ten years. Not only has new technology forced us to change, but also forced a major shift in how people (not targets!) want to see your story. We’ve moved from audiences to communities, from broadcasting to engaging, and from telling to sharing. Video is arguably the most powerful way to share, engage, and be a part of any community. How are you using it to tell your story? PRSA Chicago is hosting a panel discussion on March 20 with 3 pros who will share their experience as well as tips and tactics to help you make videos the most effective tools on your workbench. Our panelists include: Gregory Lipman, Senior Vice President, Digital Content Director, Edelman Digital Ed Lamoureaux, Senior Vice President, WestGlen Communications Clifton O’Neal, Senior Director of Communications, TransUnion When: Tuesday, March 20, 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Where: Maggiano’s Little Italy, 516 North Clark Street, Chicago Sponsored by MSL Chicago
If you suffer a traumatic accident or injury, would you want to go to a trauma center that gives you the best possible chance to save your life? Seems like an easy decision. Yet in Florida, a robust public debate is under way about adding more trauma centers to the already outstanding trauma network — and what’s lacking in the debate is a careful look at what actually saves lives and produces the best outcomes for patients. The planned proliferation of trauma centers by the University of South Florida and HCA will not benefit trauma patients. Proponents say adding centers will save lives, but the clinical data do not support that assertion. A recent peer-reviewed study by faculty from USF and the University of Florida, using data from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, shows that mortality from head trauma is 9 percent higher in low-volume trauma centers like those planned by USF/HCA. Why do high volumes decrease mortality? Surgical teams in high-volume trauma centers see so many trauma cases that they become experts at caring for patients at critical moments — when well-oiled teams are essential and when every decision must be the right one or people die. TRAUMA PATIENTS DECLINING Here’s the good news about trauma care in Florida today: The number of trauma patients thankfully has been declining in recent years due to prevention programs led by our state’s trauma centers. Trauma patients already have access to existing trauma centers where they are well cared for by highly skilled personnel. Florida law requires that the Florida Department of Health take the need for new trauma centers into account before approving them. However, two separate judicial decisions have now found that the department did not consider the required need-based, data-driven criteria when it granted trauma center status to six new low-volume USF/HCA trauma centers. This lack of hard data on what trauma patients need has also been cited by an independent American College of Surgeons panel commissioned by DOH. In a preliminary report on Feb. 5, that panel concluded DOH did not gather the relevant evidence needed to make approvals. The panel recommended an immediate moratorium on approving any new trauma centers. Adding more trauma centers in Florida now is especially problematic given the state’s oft-stated goal of reducing health care expenses. These centers will add more than $100 million per year to health care costs in Florida — costs that will eventually be borne by all of us in the form of increased insurance premiums. We will be paying more to treat the same (or fewer) trauma patients statewide with, based on ACHA data, no better and often worse clinical outcomes. It is encouraging that DOH is now convening hearings, including the expert American College of Surgeons panel and hopefully a newly constituted Trauma System Advisory Council, to create a new set of rules to govern the allocation of trauma centers. Florida’s safety net hospitals, which shoulder most of the responsibility for trauma care in our state, applaud these efforts and stand ready to work with DOH toward reaching the best decisions for patients. The goal in all aspects of health care is to improve patient outcomes while lowering costs. Florida’s trauma program should share that vision. Tony Carvalho is president of the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida, which represents the state’s leading teaching, children’s and public hospitals.
Five significant announcements by the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville over the last two weeks highlight what is perhaps an underappreciated aspect of the clinic’s contribution to health care: a focus on research. Four of the announcements concerned the publication of important research studies. The fifth announced that the National Institutes of Health had given the clinic a five-year, $7 million extension on a grant to do research on Parkinson’s disease. “We make up just under 10 percent of total operations on this campus,” said Thomas Brott, the clinic’s director of research. Brott leads a staff of 394 people, including 34 members of the faculty of the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, 10 senior research fellows, 48 research fellows, 16 research associates, 12 research collaborators, 8 research trainees and 36 special project associates. The Jacksonville clinic is involved in 125 clinical trials in support of Food and Drug Administration investigations of new drugs or medical devices and 232 other clinical trials. The research budget is about $50 million annually, Brott said. Neuroscience was chosen as an area of research focus when Mayo opened its Jacksonville campus in October 1986. Cancer research was designated a second area of focus about a decade ago. While Brott is a physician, most of the researchers have doctorates in science, including the leaders of the two main labs, Leonard Petrucelli, chair of the Department of Neuroscience, and Panos Z. Anastasiadis, chair of the Department of Cancer Biology. Their jobs include helping identify potential research subjects and then seek funding from government and private sources. “You are as successful as your funding portfolio,” Brott said. “… Our ability to be funded hangs on our ability to be innovative. The diagnosis and prevention of tomorrow is the research of today.” “We’re like independent contractors,” Anastasiadis said. “We have our ideas and we compete with other scientists for funding.” But Mayo itself does provide funding for research, especially in the initial phase of projects. For instance, Anastasiadis, after talking to some of Mayo’s oncologists, learned that in some patients who had been given the drug Avastin to shrink brain tumors, the tumors would often grow again and spread throughout the brain for reasons no one understood. Using money provided by Mayo, his Department of Cancer Biology began researching the problem. Later, the department received grants from the National Institutes of Health to continue that research. Last week a study published in the Feb. 14 online issue of PLOS ONE reported that researchers had learned why it happens and had also discovered that pairing Avastin with another cancer drug, dasatinib, can stop that lethal spread. Anastasiasdis was co-author of the report. Two days earlier, Petrucelli’s Department of Neuroscience had its own study published online Feb. 12 in the journal Neuron. That study, on which Petrucelli was senior author, discovered an abnormal protein that accumulates in the brains of many patients affected with two common neurodegenerative disorders — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and frontotemporal dementia. By identifying the abnormal protein, the study uncovered a potential new biomarker to help clinicians to confirm diagnosis of the diseases. Meanwhile, two other studies published recently came not out of research labs but as the result of clinical trials in which Mayo physicians in Jacksonville participated. One, published in the latest online issue of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, found that when high-definition imaging tools were used in colonoscopies, the colonoscopies revealed potentially precancerous polyps in a higher percentage of individuals at average risk of colorectal cancer than was found using traditional methods. The other study, published Wednesday, and co-authored by Mayo Jacksonville surgeon C. Donald Smith, reported that a new device called the LINX Reflux Management System, when implanted around the esophageal sphincter of patients, proved highly effective at reducing the symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease. Mayo research “is first and foremost driven by the needs of our patients,” Petrucelli said. “Mayo is a great place to be if you want to do research that has an impact on patients,” Anastasiasdis said. That means Mayo patients, like the participants in those two studies, sometimes become part of a research project. “It can be a simple as giving a blood sample,” Petrucelli said. Brott, who has been at Mayo for 15 years and director of research for six years, was a leading investigator in studies during the 1990s that identified that the drug tPA as an effective treatment for stroke if administered in a timely manner, a lifesaving breakthrough. He was the principal investigator for the Carotid Revascularization Endarterectomy vs. Stent (CREST) trial, which found both approaches had excellent safety and long term results for patients with warning signs for stroke as well as for patients without such warning signs. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2010. email@example.com, (904) 359-4413
The appeal hearing for Yong Vui Kong ended a couple of minutes ago. After two stays of execution, the 3-judge Court of Appeal has reserved its judgment after hearing the arguments put forth by Vui Kong’s lawyer, M Ravi. The judges thanked M Ravi for updating them on the current international practice with regards to the death penalty. [My thanks to Seelan for this update] I was at the hearing today which began at 10am. The Court of Appeals chambers was as cold as the mandatory death penalty which the Singapore government so efficiently practices. Over 50 people were squeezed into the small public gallery. I saw Vui Kong escorted into the chambers by four police officers. He followed the proceedings via the mandarin translation by a court interpreter. He seemed just like any other 21 year old with his spiky hair and the sides shaved. But unlike any other 21 year old, he’s facing the hangman’s noose. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay longer. When I left about an hour into the proceedings, i looked at Vui Kong who was seated behind a glass partition with two police officers on his left and right. I wondered what was going through his mind knowing this hearing was all about, to put it bluntly, to hang or not to hang and if it’ll be the last time i’ll be seeing him….alive. Post updated Mar 16, 2010 with a photo of Vui Kong’s legal team courtesy of Choon Hiong and MSM reports on the appeal hearing: Lawyers for Yong Vui Kong argue country’s policy of mandatory execution in drug cases is a breach of human rights Automatic execution for drug smugglers is inhumane and disproportionate, a court in Singapore has heard, as a 21-year-old challenged his death sentence for bringing heroin into the country. Lawyers representing Yong Vui Kong, a 22-year old Malaysian, argued that the mandatory death sentence violates international standards and human rights laws. Singapore executes anyone found guilty of importing more than 15g of drugs. It is one of the few countries in the world to impose mandatory death sentences for drug offences. “This is a young man, only 22, who committed a non-violent offence,” said Saul Lehrfreund, co-founder of the Death Penalty Project, a London-based legal program that appeals against death sentences. “The court in Singapore has no choice by to impose death by hanging, regardless of the individual circumstances of the case. In this day and age that just seems ludicrous.” Kong, whom lawyers describe as “impoverished and vulnerable”, was due to be hanged last December until lawyers obtained an emergency reprieve. He was convicted in 2008 of smuggling 47g of heroin into Singapore. The case is regarded by experts as an important challenge to the country’s death penalty and has attracted media attention across Asia, where executing people for drug offences remains controversial. Taiwan recently absolished the mandatory death penalty. China, which continues to execute prisoners for 68 different offences including 44 non-violent crimes, allows judicial discretion in sentencing drug-related cases. Singapore has seen a big decline in its use of the death penalty since having the highest execution rate in the world in the 1990s, but the government is resisting any change to the law. Singapore’s attorney general, Walter Woon, has argued that parliament has the power to show mercy in individual cases. Kong was refused mercy in December, and his lawyers are arguing that the courts and not the executive should have the discretionary power. “It can’t be right that an administrative body not amenable to judicial review effectively becomes the sentencing body,” said Lehrfreund. “There is a clear global trend away from sentencing people to death without taking their age, vulnerability and other powerful mitigating factors into account.” Court metes sentences within parameters set by Parliament: AG SINGAPORE – Should the death penalty be an automatic punishment for drug traffickers? The debate came up during the appeal of convicted Malaysian drug mule Yong Vui Kong yesterday, which saw the Attorney-General make a rare court appearance in which he weighed in on the question. Yong’s lawyer, Mr M Ravi, told the Court of Appeal that a mandatory death penalty is not in line with customary international law because it is “cruel and inhumane”. He said the court should have the discretion to look at the different circumstances concerning individual drug traffickers before deciding on meting out the death penalty. “When you sentence someone for 15g of drug and someone for 100kg, that’s a difference and discretion should come in,” Mr Ravi said, adding that 93 per cent of the countries in the world do not have a mandatory death penalty. Only 14 countries have such a punishment, he noted. To this, Justice Andrew Phang pointed out: “It’s not a numbers game. It’s a qualitative issue as well.” The prosecution, led by Attorney-General Walter Woon – in one of his last court appearances as the country’s top prosecutor before he steps down on April 10 – said that if there was to be any change to the law on mandatory capital punishment, it could only be effected by the legislature, not the judiciary. “The Parliament sets the parameters within which the court gives sentences. It’s the function of the prosecution and the court to give effect to the will of the Parliament,” said Prof Woon. “The decision to grant clemency is a matter of policy, and therefore not susceptible to judicial supervision.” The harsh punishment, he added, was needed to protect Singaporeans from the harm of drugs. And while one is free to campaign for the removal of the mandatory death penalty, there is a parliamentary process for the issue to be aired, Prof Woon noted. The Attorney-General also noted that Yong had been given every chance to put forward his case. He was tried and had exhausted his right of appeal, and he had filed a clemency plea which was rejected by the President. The Court of Appeal will give its decision at a later date. Yong, 22, was sentenced to death in November for trafficking 47g of heroin and was to have been hanged in December. But days before the sentence was to be carried out, Mr Ravi obtained a rare stay of execution from the High Court – a decision the Attorney-General’s Chambers had opposed, as it said the court did not have the power to put off Yong’s execution after the President had rejected his clemency plea. Yong had originally filed an appeal against the conviction and sentence, but withdrew it last April. THE fate of a condemned drug trafficker given another shot at an appeal remains in the balance following arguments made against and for the death penalty by his lawyer and the prosecution before the highest court in the land. The Court of Appeal, which heard the intense legal debate for more than 2 1/2 hours before a packed courtroom yesterday, said it would deliver its decision on Yong Vui Kong’s case at a later date. The session saw legal heavyweights in attendance on both sides. Attorney-General Walter Woon, flanked by seven prosecutors, argued the case himself. Yong’s lawyer, Mr M. Ravi, had a three- man research team from London, led by a Queen’s Counsel, which flew in specially for the hearing. They are doing the case pro bono. Yong, 22, was convicted by the High Court in 2008 of trafficking in 42.27g of heroin and given the death sentence, mandatory for offences involving more than 15g of the drug. He filed an appeal but told his lawyers later to withdraw it, one week before the hearing in April. In December last year, represented by Mr Ravi, he was given the chance to file a new appeal. The Court of Appeal said it had a duty to hear new legal arguments even after a criminal case had come to a close, especially if it involved the death penalty. Yesterday, Mr Ravi made several arguments against the mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking. He argued that this was unconstitutional as the sentence was imposed without allowing a judge to take into account mitigating factors. He also argued that the mandatory death penalty was not in line with customary international law. Citing decisions by Britain’s Privy Council, Mr Ravi argued that it was now generally recognised that the mandatory death penalty was cruel and inhuman. He said only 14 countries in the world had the mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking, which left 93 per cent of the world frowning on such a punishment. He argued that since the prosecution had the discretion to decide if an accused person should face capital or non-capital charges, judges should have the same leeway in deciding whether or not to pass the death penalty. But Professor Woon argued that the mandatory death penalty was not unconstitutional, that the practices of various states showed there was no international consensus that it contravened customary international law. He noted that at least 31 countries still retained the mandatory death penalty for various crimes. These included China and India which account for ‘half of humanity’. As for whether the mandatory death penalty was inhuman, Prof Woon argued: ‘It’s not for the Privy Council sitting in London to decide for the rest of humanity.’ He noted that the role of the courts was to interpret the law laid down by Parliament. ‘Any change should be made by Parliament, and not by the courts.’
It’s Fall Craft Week in this portion of the internet universe, which is going to have us all in Michaels every night this week. (If you could see the gems landing in my inbox! Send yours to firstname.lastname@example.org.) And now, the results of my annual pumpkin torture session: Missoni! Yes, Missoni-inspired pumpkins. I decided I needed pumpkins to match my plates. (For the “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown Party” that I still need to plan.) Aren’t they fun? They’re also simple and quick. I did them in about an hour, not including dry time. It’s just paper and glue. (You could also paint, which might look better, but that sounds hard.) Republic designer Audrey Tate even made zigzag templates for you to download. Pumpkin One, Pumpkin Two, and COLOR! (Not pictured.) Get a pumpkin, real or fake. If you’re going to all this trouble, it’s nice to keep your pumpkin around for a few years. I’ll show you how to make the faux look real. (My missonis above? Fake. Yep! And some of the pumpkins next to them are real. Tough to tell, isn’t it?) PUMPKIN ONE: This pumpkin was $10 at Target. I like that the ribs and surface are uneven, like a real pumpkin. Next, take the pumpkin outside, and paint it. The perfect white pumpkin paint is Krylon Fusion in Dover White. This takes minutes, since Fall in Arizona means HOT weather and quick-drying paint. This is optional, but I think this paint looks more real than the finishes that come on the faux pumpkins.If your faux pumpkin is orange, I’d paint that, too — in a satin finish, whatever color you want. If you have a real pumpkin stem on hand — which is the trick to making these look authentic — then pry off the plastic stem before painting. If you don’t have one, tape off the plastic stem. Next, download, print and cut your zig zags. Use regular-weight paper. You’ll probably need three or four print-outs to go around the pumpkin. I cut the zigzags above into two portions for my Target pumpkin: one zig zag larger than the other. Next, coat the back of the cutout with Mod Podge in Matte. Stick it on your pumpkin, and top with another coat of Mod Podge. Let dry. Continue around the pumpkin until it’s finished. TIPS: Some inks will get smeared by the Mod Podge, and you’ll have grey glue smudges on your white pumpkin. Just wipe them off while still wet with a damp paper towel. TO MAKE IT LOOK REAL: (Remember, you have pried off the fake stem.) I learned this trick from Lynne Bonnell, the velvet pumpkin queen. Buy pumpkins with good stems, and save the stems after Halloween. Pry or cut them off your pumpkins, and let them sit out in a ventilated area, like your garage, and dry until next year. When dry, scrape dried squash off the bottom of the stem, and attach to a faux pumpkin with Quick Grip adhesive. If you want a stem right now, glue won’t hold it, but there is a way: buy a pie pumpkin, hack off the stem, cut all the squash off the bottom, and use an awl to poke a hole in the bottom of the stem about two inches deep. To attach, stick one end of a toothpick into the top of your faux pumpkin, and attach the stem to the other end. Handle with care. Next year, glue it on. PUMPKIN TWO: It was difficult to get the spacing even between my zigzag rows, so for the second pumpkin, I used Audrey Tate’s template and printed it on cream-colored paper so that the in-between spacing was already in place. If your pumpkin is orange, print the template on orange paper. And remember that you can make your zigzags go any direction you want. Do you have a fall craft to share? Send me pictures: email@example.com
To the Editor: Dr McDonald and colleagues1 and Dr Leape2 discussed the recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report about medical errors.3 I am concerned, however, that deaths due to errors may mean different things to different people. Specifically, I question some of the scenarios that Leape notes as examples of errors leading to death. He cites 3 examples: a stroke in a patient with atrial flutter, a patient with a ruptured bowel who was not taken to surgery, and a patient with hypoxemic brain damage due to hemorrhagic shock from splenic rupture. These are not what I think of when I think of errors in the hospital. All of these examples strike me as evidence that medicine is still an art. These are examples of medical judgments that were, in retrospect, wrong. Physicians make dozens or hundreds of such judgments every day, and some of these are sometimes incorrect. Without knowing the details of the cases, I can only speculate about why the patient with atrial flutter did not receive anticoagulants, why the patient with intestinal obstruction was observed rather than immediately taken to the operating room, and why the splenic rupture was not recognized. It is not difficult for me to suggest reasons why these things happened. They may indeed represent cases of gross negligence, but they also may represent cases of quite appropriate judgment made on the basis of what was then known about the individual patients. I hope that these are not the errors that we think we can correct by simply improving the "processes" of care.
Since 1963 the AMA has organized and subsidized more than a dozen seminars in medical writing. These have ranged in length from one day to eight weeks, and have been attended by many dozens of physicians and medical students. Between August 1967 and August 1968, the AMA staff members who have been responsible for organizing the sessions and for doing a major portion of the teaching, Lester S. King, MD, and Charles G. Roland, MD, wrote a series of communications for The Journal. These works were derived from the experience gained conducting seminars; a total of 25 articles appeared, under titles such as "Monotony," "Jargon," "Verbs," and "Why Not T and 'We'?" The entire group of essays, with some additional material in an appendix, is now available as a paperbound book.1 Anyone wishing to obtain a copy may do so by sending his check for $1 to the Order-Handling
If you had to guess how many tickets were issued in the City of Boston in 2011, what would you think? The answer? 1,324,610. If you had to guess how many will be issued in 2013, what would you think? Well, the city has a “target” number of tickets, and that number is 1,450,000! (City Budget 2013) So, how is that supported? There are 197 “parking meter supervisors” for a line item budget of $8,497,003 – that is $43,131 per worker, per year, to write tickets. At an average of $25 per ticket, that is 1725 tickets per year for each meter supervisor to “break even” on their salary (by levying additional taxes on citizens through fines). But, like any good business, the City would like to write more than 1725 tickets per meter supervisor. In fact, in 2013 they project a total of 1,450,000 tickets. Taken across 197 supervisors that is 7360 tickets per worker, per year! To take this further, fines in general are included, and thus depended on, as $65,140,000 in revenue for 2013! Have you ever thought that they might operate under a quota? How else could you interpret these facts? Where does it end? I would offer a simple solution – private property rights. The city could auction parking spaces to businesses and residents. Ownership of parking by a private entity will ensure their efficient usage. Newbury street parking? Solved. Residential parking? Solved. Arbitrary parking enforcement by government employees? Solved. Additionally, the current “need” to pay parking meter supervisors, clerks, admins (the Assistant Parking Clerk makes $107,091 per year!), and executive assistants (at $111,140 and $100,901), to name a few, would go away. Under the current system, even non-drivers incur the tax burden to support the beaurocratic structure of the parking department. Instead of spending money on what they would like to, they are coerced into supporting a blizzard of orange "VIOLATION" envelopes. While the private property solution is based on sound principles, admittedly, it is a different way of approaching this problem. However, it takes bold leadership to let the people govern themselves, and I doubt the City Council would let go of a $65 million budget item.
My little girl is getting one of her molars in and has not had a great appetite. My approach to feeding her has been based on baby led weaning, which basically means allowing her to make her own food choices (although she is primarily gluten free, with some spelt). I just provide her with the best quality foods and she eats what she wants. So far it has worked out great. She has an amazing palate! Her favourite foods include avocados, hummus, broccoli and sweet potatoes.....let's hope this keeps up! The only time she has trouble with eating is when she is teething. I always approach this by giving her lots of variety and continuing to let her make her own choices. One thing that I know she will eat no matter what, is homemade sorbet (made with only frozen fruit). I wanted her to have some quality nourishment today and as a nutritionist I understand the importance of quality fats for brain development so I got creative. Here is what I came up with and it was a total hit for the whole family, even daddy who doesn't really like avocados :) It was hard to name this creation. It is not sorbet like I normally make with just fruit because of the fats but I can't really call it ice cream either. So it is a.... Creamy Mango Strawberry Frozen Delight - 1 cup frozen mango cubes (great source of beta carotene, vitamin C, fibre, B6) - 4-5 frozen strawberries (get organic if possible - great source vitamin C, manganese, folate, fibre, antioxidants) - 1/2 avocado (healthy fats, folate, vitamin K, fibre) - 2 heaping tbsp of hemp seeds (amazing source of plant protein, fibre, omega 3's, chlorophyll) - 2 tbsp of coconut milk (great source of energy and quality saturated fats - important for growing brains) - 1 tbsp pure maple syrup - source of minerals (you could also use honey here) Add all ingredients to a high powered blender and blend until well creamy. If you don't have a high powdered blender use a food processor. Enjoy! Even better when served up in a monster bowl :)
I just finished reading this paper, which describes the situations in which Japanese allows a dative subject and a nominative object. For example, the verb 分かる can be used like this: "彼" is the subject but is marked with "に" instead of "が", and similarly "英語", the object, is marked irregularly with the nominative particle "が" instead of the usual "を". According to the paper, this happens in Japanese when a verb 1) licenses this case marking and 2) the verb is transitive (there is an object). There are two parts to my questions: 1)The 可能形 licences dative subjects: This is still ruled out for intransitives, so 5a in the paper shows that you cannot say 「*赤ちゃんにもう歩ける」. Does this change if we add another argument such as a location? Can I say 「人間にはその道が歩けない」 (let's say it's covered in lava or something). 2) The paper also mentions that there are exceptions to this rule, one of them being certain kinds of questions. Can anyone think of a Japanese question with a transitive verb or a verb that doesn't normally allow a dative subject, but which has a dative subject anyway?
Hadn't posted in a while, so I thought I'd post some pics of what has kept me distracted from J-tin. It's a 1984 Honda NH125 (Aero 125 in the US, Lead 125 in other markets). Yeah, it's a scooter... oh well... It's 125cc two stroke, oil injected, variated (cvt), mid sized scooter. When I picked it up, it looked like this. It was a mess. Cracks everywhere in the plastic, cracked carb, missing the air box. Just a mess. It ran well enough to know it had compression and didn't make any bad noises, but it wasn't really rideable. I replaced the stock 19mm carb with a 28mm Oko, the stock 2 pedal reeds with a 4 pedal unit. There are no off-the-shelf performance parts for this bike in the US, so I had to fabricated an adapter plate to mount the new intake/reeds/carb on the engine. Stock it was rated at about 55mph top speed. After the carb/intake swap and a few other little mods, it does 70mph with no problem. The gas mileage has suffered though. I think it only gets about 40mpg now, but I haven't really kept track of it. I fixed all the cracks in the plastic with a plastic welder and hit it was some rattle cans. I didn't like the stock gold and grey, so I went with white and red - a color scheme that was available in some markets and I think makes the bike look 10x better. I also replaced the stock 3.50x10 tires with 100/90-10 in the front and 130/90-10 in the back. On my first long ride after it was done, it suffered some teething problems with the new carb and the throttle stuck wide open and the kill switch refused to kill it and I laid it down. The bike only got a few scratches as my arm broke it's fall. Ground my elbow down to the bone. Ouch and yuck. So I bought a fully armored Joe Rocket Honda CBR jacket for future rides - I was just wearing a long sleeve shirt when I went down and my elbow was my only real injury. It's pretty fun. It's no JNCC, but it's close for about 1/10th the price and 1/4 the garage space (I have less than $800 into it so far - including the bike).
We All Try. I'm 22 years old, I'm a dude who likes dudes. You will find a lot of different things that i fancy, or might be scared of. My type of men & alcohol. I am just trying to show the many sides of me:) Foto's of Me:)
Followers of pianist Matthew Shipp’s music know that it is cerebral, actualized only in improvisation. In Night Logic, Shipp collaborated with Arkestra alto saxophone player, Marshall Allen, and longtime colleague, bassist Joe Morris. According to the liner notes written by poet Steve Dalachinsky, whose contribution qualifies him as the fourth member of the group, “...the tracks… encompass…Shipp’s basic organizational principle of the suite, having the music flow as one organic body…” And flow it does… each musician contributing to the dynamic that moves the music through an amazing gravity-less space to produce sound that dances with the light. Allen plays three different instruments: alto sax, flute and EVI (electronic valve instrument). A major voice in the trio, he plays the alto and the flute with a lyrical clarity, especially in solo or duet, and the EVI, as if it were filtering extraterrestrial messages. The musicians pair off and single themselves out. The tempos stay within set parameters. The way in which the music postures itself in color and character is crucial to the shape and atmosphere of the sound-scape. In the title track, Shipp’s openness with the sounding board of the piano elicits Allen’s initial flute playing. The resulting conversation brings out Shipp’s damped light-fingeredness on the keyboard; and when Allen squeaks and whines on his alto, Morris struts his bowing. The transitions from one track to another are invisible in keeping with the album’s primary concept. The listener’s awareness is fundamental to hearing the instrumental changes, the responsiveness of one musician to the other as each plays into earshot and falls away into a distant proximity. Shipp’s work on the piano adds nothing but a consistent sparkle to the musical gestalt. Morris’ low-tone one-note arco coda to the album returns the music to its inescapable earthly origins.
Christian Andre Scott aTunde Adjuah: Scott Free? The New Orleans trumpeter seeks equilibrium On the cover of his recently released album, Christian Andre Scott aTunde Adjuah stands in classic Mardi Gras Indian regalia—a beige full-body suit that explodes with feathers, sequins and gems—and regards the horizon with a gaze of steely invitation. It’s clear before you press “play” that Christian aTunde Adjuah, his sixth effort as a leader, intends to feed you strong doses of declarative urgency and historical conviction. The 29-year-old trumpeter, whom you probably know simply as Christian Scott (he adopted the two Ghanaian appellations last year), prefers to keep his eyes on the future and his fingers rooting through the soil. Most of the musical traditions he taps into originate in West Africa, and come to him through his experiences growing up in New Orleans’ Upper Ninth Ward. As children, Christian and his identical twin brother, Kiel Scott, lived in a duplex with their mother and maternal grandparents. Their father, a visual artist whose own dad was a jazz drummer, lived nearby. “Our family is full of artists and teachers, which I think we all feel are kind of the same thing,” Kiel tells me. When Scott and I meet up in Harlem, where he now lives with his fiancée, it’s a few days prior to Christian aTunde Adjuah’s U.S. release on July 31. As usual, his look is doggedly debonair: He’s wearing a gold-plated, oversized necklet, which he picked up in Thailand, over a loose-fitting black T-shirt and fitted jeans. His hair has been shaved into a sort of fade-cum-pompadour, with a laurel pattern etched into the closely trimmed curls on either side of his head. “I grew up in a house where you’re constantly being nurtured. When I walked in the door, my grandmother or my mother would ask me what happened during the day, and if I mentioned something that sparked an idea in them they would do everything in their power to make sure that I knew as much about that as possible, and that I explored that,” Scott says. “When I was 7 or 8 years old, my grandfather was forcing my brother and me to read Hegel.” But, as in any effective work of jazz or blues, the bounty was mingled with the bitter. “By the same token, you’d turn around and he’s giving you boxing gloves and showing you how to throw a right-hand lead,” Scott says of his grandfather. “It’s a very historic place, but at the end of the day the New Orleans that I grew up in was really a ruin. It’s post-crack New Orleans. You better believe that affects a city and a community’s culture. You had to fuckin’ fight when I was growing up. If you didn’t, if the guys knew they could punk you ... then they knew: ‘This motherfucker can be broken.’ … I wasn’t about to get caught up in some gang.” The Mardi Gras Indian tradition provides what Scott calls “the first line of defense for all the oppressed people in New Orleans.” Which would make his family a sort of assembly of commanding officers. Donald Harrison Sr., Scott’s grandfather and the central figure in his household, was the Big Chief, the patriarch, of four different Mardi Gras Indian troops over the course of his life. In 1997, he became the first big chief to receive the Mayor’s Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Arts Council of New Orleans. His son (Scott’s uncle) is the internationally renowned alto saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr., who earned acclaim in the 1990s for coining a new subgenre in jazz, nouveau swing. The style subtly inflects the cymbal patterns of classic bop with Mardi Gras Indian rhythms on the bass drum and snare. Today, Harrison splits time between homes in New York and New Orleans, where he is the big chief of a Mardi Gras Indian troop called the Congo Square Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group. The Mardi Gras Indian subculture dates back to the 19th century. It centers on “masking Indian,” or masquerading in ornate, self-made Native American regalia while performing buoyant, ebullient songs built on West African drum patterns and call-and-response vocals. Mardi Gras Indian troops are generally all African-American, with membership of around a dozen. The custom stems from Louisiana blacks’ deep-rooted affinity for Native American Indians, who often gave them refuge during the days of slavery. Every year on Mardi Gras Day and St. Joseph’s Day, the various Indian “gangs” wander throughout the city and do musical battle with one another. (For a long time, the confrontations went beyond dancing, singing and modeling costumes, with violence being a frequent blemish on celebrations, but this hasn’t been an issue for decades.) In many neighborhoods, these biannual gatherings are the Super Bowl, the battle of the bands and the city council meeting, all tailored into one event. From the time they were 5 years old, Christian and Kiel were members of Donald Sr.’s gang, the Guardians of the Flame, and each of the twins held an important position. Kiel served as the flag boy, responsible for hoisting the troop’s banner, and Christian was the spy boy. “The spy boy is the bravest person in the gang, arguably other than the chief, because the spy boy is the person who goes out ahead of the gang and searches for other gangs to confront,” Kiel says. “All of the other members of the gang are together as a group, and they’re moving through the streets masquerading and playing and singing as a group. … The spy boy really had to be the person who, frankly, could handle themselves alone. Christian, as a little kid, had that temperament.” Scott’s early boldness finds new life today in his music. “It’s very similar to being that spy boy,” Kiel says. “It’s a guy that’s ahead, a guy that’s not seeking comfort in the group. He’s basically dealing with uncharted territory.” When he was 11, Scott started studying jazz with Donald Jr., who was originally associated with the 1980s’ neo-conservative Young Lions movement but demonstrated a catholic approach in his subsequent solo output, incorporating the influence of hip-hop, funk and especially the music of the Crescent City. In New York, a few years before he started giving lessons to Christian, Donald befriended a young man named Christopher Wallace and helped teach him vocal phrasing; Wallace would later dub himself the Notorious B.I.G. and become one of the most influential MCs in hip-hop history. After just a few lessons, Donald recognized a wellspring of natural talent in his nephew. So he offered some pointed advice. “One thing I told him was not to listen to any trumpeters from my generation, because I knew that if he did that people would say he was imitating those guys. I knew he had the talent to go further back and put his own ideas together,” Harrison says. “I think I was right, because he just sounds like Christian.” Over the past few months it’s become especially vogue, in a conveniently hopeless kind of way, for musicians and commentators to insist on abandoning the word “jazz.” There are loads of decent reasons why that idea ought to be entertained. But it seems ironic that almost all of the albums most central to the discussion have indisputably belonged in other categories anyway. Think in particular of the Robert Glasper Experiment’s Black Radio and Nicholas Payton’s Bitches. Both of those records could comfortably be labeled R&B, as could countless other albums recently released by jazz-trained musicians. The exhilarating thing about Scott at this point in his career is how quickly he slips in and out of musical approaches, and avoids inhabiting any single, predefined idiom. But a newly blazed trail doesn’t always reach a destination, and when Scott is letting an idea drift along without forcing it to take shape, things can sound inert and interminable. When he hits on something that’s original and tautly rendered, though, he often makes bitingly present, self-possessed music. In 2010, Scott released Yesterday You Said Tomorrow, his fourth album and the first to fully cash in on his potential. It was a bristling, politically attuned record that achieved a humid, three-dimensional sound with help from the legendary producer Rudy Van Gelder. Over the course of its 10 instrumental tunes, Scott spoke to the spectrum of injustices that plague American life, especially for blacks in institutionally abandoned areas: police brutality, mass incarceration and the perpetual calamity of gun violence. His music has always been assertive, but Christian aTunde Adjuah—featuring the same quintet as on Yesterday, except with a new pianist—moves things up a level. There’s the album cover, with Scott in his ornate Indian attire. Then there are the song titles, which range from the political (“Vs. the Kleptocratic Union [Ms. McDowell’s Crime]” and “Jihad Joe”) to the self-saluting (“Who They Wish I Was” and “New New Orleans [King Adjuah Stomp]”), and sometimes let the two run together (“Pyrrhic Victory of aTunde Adjuah”). Finally, there’s the record’s length. To make a double-album is to set oneself a major trap, and at 23 tracks and almost two hours, the snare here is major. One of the first things you notice on this record is that drummer Jamire Williams is back to investigating ancient patterns, and he’s doing it with more unswerving conviction than he did on Yesterday. Guitarist Matthew Stevens, always the sidekick to Scott’s lead, continues to offer a heavy dose of nebulous tension. His sound is a speck in the lens, always pulling against the polyrhythmic thrust of Williams’ drumming. The album insists on buoyant vamps rather than Yesterday’s atmospheric buildups. On “Danziger,” inspired by the New Orleans police’s shooting of six men on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina, Scott offers up the most invigorating recorded solo of his career, and ends the song in a frenzied, skittering dissipation. It is chillingly resonant with the piece’s inspiration. It’s no surprise that at over 10 minutes, “Danziger” is both Christian aTunde Adjuah’s longest track and its most affecting. The album would benefit from some deeper-digging treatments of individual tunes, and fewer overall. It lacks Yesterday’s pointedness and discipline. But it’s hard to separate Scott the imperfect self-editor from Scott the trenchant, thrilling performer. “The thing about Christian is that he feels 100 percent convicted about every single thing that he says. So to some people, that comes off as pushy or forceful or whatever, but number one, he really means it; number two, he’s thought about it a lot and really come to a conclusion; and number three, he’s really, really passionate about it,” says Lawrence Fields, the quintet’s pianist. “He’s not doing it for show and he’s not doing it to try to force an opinion on people or anything. It’s just really, strongly what he believes.” “One of the things that bothers me about a lot of musicians is that I know that on a daily basis they see a lot of fucked up things going on, and they have feelings about those things,” Scott tells me. “But as opposed to writing about that, you see songs on people’s albums called ‘Red Chair.’ Man, I don’t give a fuck about a red chair. … When people look back 30 years from now and try to figure out what we had to say, or how we felt about anything, they won’t know, because the music is being littered with ‘Red Chair.’ I don’t speak for everybody else, but I’ll be damned if when I’m done in this world nobody knows what I was thinking about.” Virtually every song Scott writes draws on some tangible, real-world motivation, often a political one. That doesn’t mean he always gives his band the nitty-gritty. “Sometimes, the minute we look at the title, we know what the song’s about,” says Kris Funn, the quintet’s bassist. “Maybe we’re just successful at interpreting his intent most of the time.” But at the recording session for the latest album, when they were playing “Dred Scott”—inspired by the famous slave who sued for his freedom before the Supreme Court and lost, then suffered a grueling death by tuberculosis—something was missing. “We had recorded the song maybe three or four times. It was an intense tune,” Funn recounts. “He just stopped the whole session and shit got serious. … He pretty much gave us a 10-minute biography of Dred Scott, and said, ‘Now put yourself in those shoes, and put an instrument in your hands. And however that makes you feel, put that in your playing.’” On album opener “Fatima Aisha Rokero 400,” Scott didn’t need to spell things out in the studio. He’d been telling the story on the road for months, of the 400 women who were raped in the Sudan as part of a government-backed campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing. Scott feels a personal connection to the atrocities; in junior high school, he walked into the bathroom to find three boys raping a girl. He and a classmate were in the middle of intervening, he says, when he found that the girl was one of his best friends. Playing songs like “Danziger” and “Cease Fire,” which he recorded on 2007’s Anthem, Scott taps the too-familiar feeling of losing loved ones to gun violence. One day when he was about 10 years old, he and his brother were on their way to meet their friend, Byron, at a park. They planned to give him a cassette by the popular hip-hop MC Nas. The sound of shots clattered through the air—someone had sprayed the entire park with bullets. “We get there,” Scott remembers, “and we see everybody laid out, and [Byron] is bleeding and shit. And of course you don’t know what to do; you’re a kid. You’re just sitting there, holding your friend, trying to figure out what to do.” A few years later, Nas would release a song called “I Gave You Power,” imagining himself as a gun that refused to keep shooting (“He pulled the trigger but I held on/It felt wrong”). On Yesterday, Scott performed his own song, “An Unending Repentance,” which imagines the combined remorse that all the guns in the United States would feel, were they made animate. After that day in the park, “over the course of those next 10 years, pretty much once every two or three months somebody new would die,” Scott says. Byron’s death “affected me greatly, because that was my friend. But they were all my friends. I remember being a little boy, and the old people would say, ‘By the time you’re 18 years old, all your friends are going to be dead or in jail.’ And you think that’s a joke when you’re a kid. You almost get mad at them for saying something dumb like that. When you get to be 14 years old and you see it happening, that affects you.” Art is not meant to provide an answer, and so neither is the artist. Scott wrote his own liner notes for Christian aTunde Adjuah, but they don’t speak directly to the topics of his tunes. “For me, I’m not saying you need to feel a certain way about any given issue, or saying you need to be on one side or the other of a dynamic,” he tells me. “I’m just saying that people need to discuss it, because we need to figure out how to attack these issues. Scott dedicates a portion of the liners to discussing a harmonic framework that he had introduced on Yesterday, and that seems to give musical life to his interrogative goals. He calls the idea “forecasting cells,” and he built it a few years ago, after working in the band of modal piano luminary McCoy Tyner. It revolves around using a succession of open-ended chords with perfect fourths at their core, so that each implies both a question and a resolution. By emphasizing a constant flow of modulation, it demands that soloists keep inquiring. In art and in society, complex truths can’t really be found—not in one fell swoop, for sure—so the best hope is to ask a series of rigorous questions and triangulate a broader conclusion. On Christian aTunde Adjuah, the forecasting-cells approach is fully fleshed out; on some of the tracks, Stevens and Fields play what is essentially a series of hybridized suspended chords, sending an indeterminate, pregnant angst throughout the album. It’s a harmonic feeling we associate with alternative rock, and Stevens’ guitar helps to support Scott’s claim that Christian aTunde Adjuah isn’t a jazz record. (He prefers to call it “stretch” music.) Forecasting cells can feel invigorating at times, bathetic at others, especially when the melodies are minimized to fit the harmonic paradigm, or the soloists accommodate it by repeating themselves. One song on which it works smartly is “Pyrrhic Victory of aTunde Adjuah,” a terse, rollicking rumination on the trumpeter’s identity. In taking on two West African names, Scott has embraced an alternative practice that became popular in some African-American artistic circles during the 1960s and ’70s. At that time, groups developed across the country to promote consciousness of African history and life from before the infusion of slave traders from the north. Steven L. Isoardi writes in The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles, “Identity as African-derived offered access to a history and its cultural riches that could be tapped and adapted to gain understanding and to forge solutions to contemporary problems.” Scott has similar feelings. “I accept the fact that ‘Scott’ is a part of my lineage and a part of my history, and I’m not the type of person who has the view that the name is inherently bad, negative or evil just because it comes from someone who owned my family. But at the other end of that, I also recognize that my history goes beyond America,” he says. “I’m not really interested in anyone being able to point at me and say that I’m the descendent of someone [who owned slaves], or of the property of that person. … Because who wants to navigate the world as that, if they’re really thinking about it?” He has not changed his name legally, and is not insisting that anyone stop referring to him as Scott. The power of inertia works best when commercial interests are involved, and his record was released by the Concord Jazz label as Christian aTunde Adjuah, by Christian Scott. No major album review or article so far has called him anything other than Christian Scott. And in his everyday life, he’s encountered enough resistance from across the ideological and racial spectrum to know he’s forcing people out of their comfort zones. “When I’m doing performances and they jump onstage and say, ‘Welcome, Christian Scott,’ some of it is people forgetting, and some of it is people being uncomfortable with being able to pronounce the name, and some of it is them not caring,” he tells me. Even in the band “they make fun. They’ll mispronounce it because they think it’s funny … and I realize the fun is happening because they’re uncomfortable. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s what everyone does.” Elsewhere, he says, the resistance goes way past all that. He’s received a smattering of hate mail ever since his music started directly engaging with political issues, around 2007, but the messages have seemed to grow more furious with the name change. “When I see some of the things that people write to me, that stuff lives somewhere I’ve never been,” he says. “I mean really horrible, awful shit.” But fear at the fringes is always the sibling of substantive social dialogue, which remains his main goal. “At the end of the day, I think we’re all mirrors for each other,” he says. “It just becomes about a choice. Some people look in the mirror, they see something they don’t like, and they immediately make strides to change that. Other people look in the mirror and say, ‘Well, that’s just what that is today.’” He hopes to keep pulling people into that first category, one tune at a time. Originally published in October 2012
01/14/13 Community Articles Dark circles under the eyes, or panda eyes, affect almost everyone and doesn't discriminate in gender or age group. Nevertheless, it oftentimes starts in adulthood and might get worse while you grow older. While generally a cosmetic problem rather a medical... We currently don’t have a bio for this person. soccertile07 joined the JazzTimes community on Jan 14, 2013
Tribute to my recently deceased cat, Cleopatra Jones Price (1996-2009). “Calico Power,” 2009. Cat stickers on Bristol Vellum, 8 x 10″. Tags: cats, collage Posted in Recent Work \| No Comments » You are currently browsing the Recent Work, Jeffrey Allen Price blog archives for September, 2009. Recent Work, Jeffrey Allen Price is proudly powered by and Comments (RSS).
I specialize in (click an option to read more): - Content marketing - Generating targeted traffic to your website to increase leads and sales. - Blogging - I’ve written hundreds of posts on on topics including: money, personal finance, business, careers, travel, and related subjects. - Copywriting - I help your take your websites to the next level to get target clients and customers excited about who you are and why they should buy from you. This is what I truly love to write about, and making my clients happy makes me smile, too. Click one of the options above to see some of my work around the web that I’ve done for previous clients. Interesting in discussing working together now? Contact me at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Saturday, December 27, 2008 Cecilia Bartoli -Anch'il mar par che sommerga (Vivaldi) Cecilia Bartoli's singing on this is amazing. I have never put a video up before. I thought this being the holiday season some music would appropriate. It's a quick-time movie so if you don't have this plug in the video wont play. Her control of the phrasing in this Vivaldi piece is outstanding. When she moves through those arpeggios it is one of those moments in music when you just have smile, it feels so good to hear her do this. I love how she looks like she is in total ecstasy when she sings. This is high art, this kind of perfection and flawless technique that is also married with soul and passion, high art.
Click here to listen to today’s Daily Power Prayer for Being Motivated by Love!: I so often share about how I’ve learned that I don’t do anything without a clear motivation. I don’t make a cup of coffee without motivation. Not one thing do I do without motivation. I realized decades ago that I could make the world a better place simply by being more loving. Since then, I’ve been really focused on doing the best I can every day. It was real slow going at the beginning, but I feel I’ve hit my stride at last! As you may know, I started my spiritual studies in the mid-80’s with Eric Butterworth and Shakti Gawain. I moved to Los Angeles in 1994 and found Rev. Michael Beckwith and Agape right away. I became a licensed Science of Mind Practitioner in 2000. I finished my Ministerial training at Agape in 2006, the very same year I began studying A Course in Miracles. All of these studies taught me SO much about my spiritual nature and the Oneness of all life – on an intellectual level. I was so grateful when I finally realized that I needed to take it into my heart and truly live the teachings. And that has made all the difference. Now, my motivation is simply Love. I live to Love. I AM that I AM. If you like my blog, please click on the facebook LIKE and SHARE buttons at the top of the page! Thank you!
Welcome to the Jeremiah Burroughs Homepage! I hope you will find many things on this site which will help you to know God better, love Jesus Christ more, and glorify Him in practical ways. This site is being continually updated, so check back often. Also, the links to the left will give you samples of the writings of this great Puritan preacher. (Thanks to Monergism.com for giving me a headstart with these links.) I am currently working on a biography of Burroughs. The more I get to know the man, the more I appreciate his writings. Time and again, I am discovering that his sermons were not mere intellectual speculation, but were borne out of the very difficult circumstances through which he lived. To quote his friends, “Reader, you have these sermons twice printed; once in the practice of this holy man and once again in these papers which we present to you in this preaching style” (from A Treatise of Earthly-Mindedness, Soli Deo Gloria, 1991, p. iii). Burroughs was a living sermon, exemplifying what he taught, and teaching what he had lived. The following introduction is adapted from the introduction to the biography in progress: “I should mention that I owe a great debt to Jeremiah Burroughs. It was his book, “The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment” that greatly impacted my life. In a time when my sin and my problems seemed to be undefeatable foes, Burroughs showed me a view of the Almighty that left me relieved, refreshed, and revitalized. It was Burroughs who said, “A Christian should be satisfied with what God has made the object of his faith (i.e., Jesus Christ). The object of his faith is high enough to satisfy his soul, were it capable of a thousand times more than it is. Now if you may have the object of your faith you have enough to content your soul”. He went on to say, “Since God is contented with Himself alone, if you have Him, you may be contented with Him alone, and it may be, that is the reason why your outward comforts are taken from you, that God may be all in all to you. It may be that while you had these things they shared with God in your affection, a great part of the stream of your affection ran that way: God would have the full stream run to Him now.” It was Burroughs who was my first introduction to the writings of the 17th century British Puritans, and their writings have also left me deeply affected. Men like Burroughs were first-rate thinkers; they could take a truth from Scripture, and meditate on the implications and ramifications of that truth, and come back with a veritable treasure trove of jewels, which they then share with their readers. However, their words were not, as they are often mischaracterized, “stale intellect”. Rather, Burroughs and his fellow Puritans were preachers of the highest rank. They would present a truth, apply it practically to the life of the hearer, and then exhort with passion and conviction. The adage which is often ascribed to the Puritans is true; they preached with “light and heat”; They would illuminate the head, then preach warmly to the heart. In my opinion, no Puritan did this better than Jeremiah Burroughs. Given the wealth of writings left to us by all the Puritans, I’m sure many will disagree; but for God-centered, Cross-exalting, practical, warm instruction and exhortation, I feel Burroughs is unparalleled. His writings are also very accessible. With some Puritans (such as John Owen), the level of thought is so lofty, one must often re-read a single paragraph multiple times to really absorb its meaning (though it is certainly worth the labor to read it). Not so with Burroughs. His ability to communicate deep truths in an understandable way is likely why he was one of the most popular preachers of his day. And it is likely for this reason that his books are still being printed and sold, over 360 years after his death.” So enjoy the site! It is my prayer that, as you read, your heart will be stirred and challenged as mine has time and again by his sermons. Yours in Christ,
A Global Association of Orthodox Jewish Believers in Messiah Yeshua A vision to establish the institutions of yeshivot and battai din to meet the greatest needs of the believing orthodox Jewish community of disciples of Messiah Yeshua worldwide. This vision includes the creation of an Orthodox Jewish Rabbinical Yeshiva, an Orthodox Jewish Beit Din, a global Messianic Knesset, and an online communication and collaboration hub, by providing for rabbinic ordination (smicha), Jewish education, Jewish conversion (giyur), peer review, accountability, and the communication channels needed to support the body of disciples of Messiah Yeshua and all Messianic Jews worldwide. Posted in Community \| Comments Off Where is Jewish Conversion found? In how Abram became Abraham. We learn from Torah that conversion to Judaism is a confirmation of an already existing reality: that one is already Jewish before they come to convert. What the LXX translators understood happened in Esther 8:17, was the very same concept Paul was warning his Galatian disciples against in Galatians 2. If one believes Paul was warning his Galatian disciples against Jewish conversion, then one must also believe the LXX translators were describing that Jewish conversion was happening in Esther 8:17. If one calls it Jewish conversion in Galatians 2, then one must agree that the LXX translators would have called it conversion in Esther 8:17. There are several Rabbis in the Messianic movement who have high levels of smichah, but they are scattered and isolated. I believe that we need to be uniting these leaders so that they can form a Beit Din to oversee the conversion process within a believing community, so that those who are seeking conversion out of proper motives can do it without denying their faith. A Jewish understanding of Peter’s vision of the sheet with both clean and unclean animals, where he is told to “rise, kill, and eat,” with an explanation derived from an understanding of parasha Tazria. The key to understanding the vision is knowing the difference between tamai and tahor, and akathartos and koinos. The vision is not about making unclean animals, like a pig, clean. On the contrary, it’s about making clean animals (gentiles) that became defiled with contact with unclean animals (idolatry), clean again (by faith in Messiah Yeshua). What does it mean to keep the Covenant? It means to accept HaShem as your King and obey Him. Posted in Giyur \| Comments Off The difference between “old covenant” and “new covenant” is used by scripture to differentiate between the unregenerate sinner, and the regenerated saint. It is the difference between their individual relationship to the Torah. Many people ask how to convert to Judaism through the Jewish sect of HaDerech, also known as The Way, or Messianic Judaism. Yes, it is a sign of the Covenant, in that it is a sign as to Who the Messiah is, in that he does not come by human effort, and that He is the “seed of the woman” prophesied in Genesis 3:15. The ruling of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, in Hebrew, Greek, and English, instructing new converts to Judaism from the nations to immediately cease from four activities engaged with idol worship. Posted in Rulings \| Comments Off
I recently was introduced to a quirky new t-shirt collection. with all of the 2008 campaign happenings happening, it is fun to go retro with retro campaign tees. retro campaigns, inc. is a small, los angeles-based company, whose aim is to recall unique characters from American politics. from kennedy in 68 to democrats for reagan, there are many old school political statements to make. all of the designs are printed on high-quality, sweat-shop free american apparel shirts. and a portion of the profits will be donated to SaveDarfur.org. Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Posted by Jess Zaino Worldwide, Inc. at 7:56 AM
An Enterprising Life: Leonard Frank Photographs from 1900-1944 Available for travel beginning in 2013 Next year we will practise havoc in that green trench -- the saws will yammer their naggie dirge, the donkeys will gather the corpses, the land will be hammered to stumps and ruin - Peter Trower, “The Ridge Trees” With support from the Young Canada Works (YCW) Building Careers in Heritage Organizations program and Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), the Jewish Museum & Archives of British Columbia (JMABC) has digitized approximately 2,500 photographs from the Leonard Frank Photos Studio fonds. The project enables the digitization of approximately 2,500 Leonard Frank photographs; focusing on his logging industry photographs from 1900-1944 first made famous in Cyril Leonoff’s publication An Enterprising Life: Leonard Frank photographs 1895-1944 (Talonbooks, 1990). At the completion of the project, the photographs will be made available online on the JMABC website and Artefacts Canada, hosted by the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN). Exhibits have the opportunity to present a biography of Frank’s life and a representative selection of photographs focusing on the mining and logging industries of British Columbia from 1900 -1944. Leonard Frank is renowned as one of the greatest photographers in Western Canada. When Leonard Frank (1870-1944) emigrated from Berne, Germany to British Columbia in 1894, it was to seek his fortune in gold. The beginning of Frank’s photography career is attributed to chance – the winning of a crude camera as a raffle prize at the Alberni mining camp. Frank began his career as a professional photographer in the late 1890s while living in Alberni, BC. In 1917, he moved to Vancouver where he pursued his profession with the Commercial Photo Company and later founded the Leonard Frank Photos Studio. Frank photographed significant events and developments in British Columbia’s history. For more information, email email@example.com or call (604)257-5199. Three men and saw standing in front of Douglas fir tree with undercut, near Port Alberni, BC, 1919. Photographer: Leonard Frank. Source: Jewish Museum & Archives of BC; LF.38826
May 24, 2013 May 22, 2013 They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman May 20, 2013 Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man? Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting May 13, 2013 Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church May 10, 2013 Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be May 8, 2013 Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility May 6, 2013 May 3, 2013 Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine April 29, 2013 Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots? Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA April 26, 2013 Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty April 24, 2013 Jewish World Review Oct. 1, 2007 / 19 Tishrei 5768 Gingrich bows out, thankfully Debra J. Saunders Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich talks a great game. He gives good quote. Consider this vintage Gingrich sound-bite in the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week: "I am fed up with the excuses we're given for spending too much, doing too little and not being honest about reality. I think we need to have the moral courage, and frankly the psychological courage, to understand that politics is not a game. I am for a clean break." In that spirit, Gingrich told Fox News last Sunday that he felt "a responsibility to run" for president if his supporters can muster $30 million in campaign pledges. The fantasy ended Saturday, when a spokesman announced that Gingrich would not be running for president in 2008. Instead, he will remain head of the tax-exempt group American Solutions. It's just as well. He would have been the wrong choice at the wrong time for the Republican party. It's true, Gingrich put together a brilliant campaign to win Republican control of the House in 1994. Since he resigned as speaker in 1998, he has used his gift of gab to say things incumbents are too careful to say. Of late, Gingrich has become a go-to guy for GOPers dissatisfied with George W. Bush, and journalists in search of a quick quote hitting Bush on his handling of the Iraq war or, for example, a Republican who called early on for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. All that attention can go to a man's big head and Gingrich does have a big head. So it's no small wonder that Gingrich hasn't figured out that he comes across as charming and thoughtful only because he no longer is in office. When Gingrich was speaker, and his rhetoric often did not comport with his conduct in power, he came across as a windbag. Like most voters, I do not want to judge a man harshly on his personal life and marriage. But there are candidates pick your fave who make it impossible to look away. Gingrich did so as he talked up "family values" while stepping out on his second wife and courting the present and third Mrs. G. When the GOP was out of power, Gingrich was the firebrand who took on entrenched Democrats who had turned the House into their own private club. But when he assumed the speakership, he turned into the very type of politician he had once assailed. Gingrich maneuvered around House rules that prohibited members from accepting speaking fees from special interests, by allowing Atlantic Richfield Company to bankroll a 1997 speaking trip to London. The Gingrich entourage included his wife and two aides. In five short days they burned through more than $40,000. Unbowed, Gingrich explained to the Washington Post, "Every American should make this trip." Speaker Gingrich was forced to admit that he had written "inaccurate and misleading" letters to the House ethics committee which earned him a whopping $300,000 fine. The committee had been looking into the questionable tax-deductible status of donations to fund a college course he taught, "Renewing American Civilization." It was more than ironic that America's Cato could not teach a simple course on this country's "core values" without being greased to the tune of $300,000 to $450,000 in donations. The worst of it is that Gingrich misbehaved in such a blatant manner even though he knew that Democratic leaders were gunning for him. He all but handed them the bullets, and let a Clinton roll him. Gingrich also had a starring role in the 1995 federal government shutdown, which turned out to be a political disaster for the GOP. And he didn't help himself when he told reporters that he maneuvered the shutdown in part because he was angry at a perceived snub from President Clinton. The Newter believes Clinton failed to show him and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole sufficient courtesy by having them exit Air Force One by the rear stairs. The New York Daily News summed up the story well with the headline, "CRY BABY." Later, although Gingrich argued Republicans were "committed to making government leaner, more efficient and cost effective," his House passed such big-spending measures as a landmark pork-laden public works bill. The out-of-control growth in government under Bush that so angered the GOP base was in play in Casa Gingrich. When you look at the reasons voters rejected the GOP in 2006 - profligate spending, corruption and hypocrisy it's would have been hard to argue for a Gingrich candidacy. He had his chance and he blew it. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Comment JWR contributor Debra J. Saunders's column by clicking here. Debra J. Saunders Archives © 2007, Creators Syndicate Richard Z. Chesnoff Frank J. Gaffney Victor Davis Hanson A. Barton Hinkle Judge A. Napolitano Cokie & Steve Roberts Debra J. Saunders J. D. Crowe Ask Doctor K
May 24, 2013 May 22, 2013 They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman May 20, 2013 Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man? Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting May 13, 2013 Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church May 10, 2013 Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be May 8, 2013 Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility May 6, 2013 May 3, 2013 Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine April 29, 2013 Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots? Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA April 26, 2013 Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty April 24, 2013 Jewish World Review July 10, 2009 / 18 Tamuz 5769 The Bankrupt Party of Porkulus Let there be no doubt: Democrats are the party with two ideas: borrow and spend. The only vigorous internal debate on the left revolves around two questions: How much and how much more? Even as the first trillion-dollar stimulus craters, the debt-o-crats are floating yet another grand act of generational theft to create the illusion of jumpstarting the economy. Call it Spawn of Spendulus. Return of the Porkulus Beast. Crap Sandwich Redux. White House economic adviser Laura D'Andrea Tyson told an international economic conference: "We should be planning on a contingency basis for a second round of stimulus." Team Obama flack Robert Gibbs says the president isn't "ruling anything out, but at the same time he's not ruling anything in." Despite the inconvenient fact that less than 10 percent of the initial stimulus has been spent (or misspent), congressional Democrats remain "open" to the idea of digging a deeper fiscal hole for your children and grandchildren. Porkulus One was a massive payoff to special interests and political constituencies (and dead people!) disguised as a job generator. A General Accounting Office analysis this week revealed that stimulus dollars allocated to states and localities are not being spent on what they're supposed to be spent on. States are making up their own criteria for spending. The most economically distressed parts of the country are getting shortchanged. School and transportation bureaucrats are using the money to preserve their own jobs instead of "stimulating" others. And assessments of the stimulative effect of the package are a joke. As House Republicans noted: "The administration has essentially 'rigged the game' of reporting the tangible effects of its stimulus program by creating an immeasurable metric 'jobs created or saved' that no one can disprove." Irked by the mounting evidence of stimulus failure, Vice President Joe Biden griped at a spending event on Thursday: "This ain't about swimming pools and Frisbee parks and polar bear exhibits. This is about stuff that not only passed the test of jobs, but passed the smell test. … All the talk about how we're gonna waste all this money, that's a dog that ain't barked yet. And it's not gonna bark on my watch." Yet last month, Sen. Tom Coburn exposed 100 smelly stimulus projects worth $5.5 billion, including $3.4 million for a wildlife "eco-passage" in Florida to take animals safely under a busy roadway; nearly $10 million to renovate an unused train station; and a $2 million "weatherization" contract awarded to a Nevada nonprofit recently fired for doing the same type of work. After failing to recognize the inevitable and inexorable political forces that turned the stimulus into the mother of all Beltway boondoggles, media outlets are now playing catch up: USA Today reported this week that "counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration's $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain." ABC News reported this week that the failed stimulus tracking website run by the White House, Recovery.gov, will get an additional $18 million taxpayer-funded injection to support a "redesign." The Washington Examiner's David Freddoso points out that the contract was awarded to a Maryland firm whose donors have contributed $19,000 to Maryland's House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. The Washington Times reported this week that "as much as $16.1 million from the stimulus program is going to save the San Francisco Bay area habitat of, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse" in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's backyard. And despite all the initial focus on basic infrastructure needs, Land Line magazine reported this week that "even with federal stimulus spending that put shovels in the ground on new infrastructure projects, analysts predict an overall decline of 4.3 percent on infrastructure in 2009." The same underhanded, transparency-defying, earmark-stuffing process that marked the porkulus beast is dominating every other pricey piece of legislation hurtling through the Democrat-led Congress. The Waxman-Markey "cap and trade" bill that passed the House two weeks ago contained bribes galore including a $50 million hurricane research center for Florida Democrat Alan Grayson and a $3.5 billion economic development "sweetener" package for Ohio Democrat Marcy Kaptur. The current health care takeover proposals feature a crucial payoff to Big Labor a golden exemption from any tax on union members' generous health care benefits. The friends and patrons of Obama may be making out like bandits. But for everyone else, the Democrats' ideological bankruptcy comes at a nauseatingly steep price. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Comment on JWR contributor Michelle Malkin's column by clicking here. Michelle Malkin Archives © 2009, Creators Syndicate Richard Z. Chesnoff Frank J. Gaffney Victor Davis Hanson A. Barton Hinkle Judge A. Napolitano Cokie & Steve Roberts Debra J. Saunders J. D. Crowe Ask Doctor K
If there's one thing all of Western culture can agree on, it's that old folks having sex is hilarious! Or cute! Or heartwarming! And today the Times of London reiterates that senior sex is awesome. But when did we start becoming so interested in geriatric lovemaking, even if only as a punchline? Why, really, do we care? Pop culture, thankfully, provides a road map. In the good ol' days, old folks tended to be depicted as asexual grandparents, whether maternally sweet or comically domineering (See: Endora, Mrs. Howell, Granny Clampett.) Enter the 60s: Beautiful at any age. Harold and Maude breaks barriers aggressively. The 80's brought us The Randy Oldster. Who's the Boss's Mona and Golden Girls' Blanche are man-eating old women who want to have sex, constantly, with anyone in pants. Setup, punchline. For sitcom writers it never (pun intended) got old. The 90's, meanwhile, gave us the male version: Grumpy Old Men. In the modern age, "Old Love" tends to fall into two camps: Heartbreaking and Heartwarming (Valentine's Day, any life insurance ad) or "Funny and Embarrassing," (Everybody Loves Raymond.) Even seriously distressing stories like the bans on nursing-home sex to prevent the spread of STDs or studies on the sex lives of older people get snickers or headlines like this one: Sexed-Up Seniors Do It More Than You Think (to say nothing of the website Old People are Funny). Even when there's a dramatic impetus for not one, but two productions of Romeo and Juliet that reimagine the protagonists as geriatrics, it's rendered as gimmicky thanks to societal context and ingrained ageism. Even as one writer lets us know that sexy senior citizens have "never had it so good," there seems to be a bittersweet contradiction in place: Even as lifestyle and medicine allow sex to be a part of our lives for basically all of our lives, the reality might be that sex, despite being for "everyone," is still explicitly associated with youth. The fetishization of youth has grown apace, and as a result "sexiness" has never been more narrowly defined. We might have Second Chance: America's Most Talented Senior premiering here, and talks of a seniors-only competition in Scandinavia, but, amazingly enough, this doesn't seem to translate to much respect. Or fewer old-sex snickers. The good thing is, after a lifetime of actual living, the old can probably just roll their wise eyes.
Source: Veterans Today By Veterans Today A video analysis of Alex Jones accounting for statements made that are grossly in contradiction to reality and fact. Is the once seen as independent and influential Jones serving an agenda. For open discussion, please comment on the video below at Veterans Today [or here, of course . . . ~J]:
Our café is miles above all others (well, 1,000 feet actually). What better way to take in Chicago than relaxing over a coffee or wine at our award-winning Lavazza Espression café. With cuisine designed by 3-star Michelin chef Ferran Adrià, and our award-winning ambience, it’s the perfect place to bring guests. Here’s a hint for locals - buy our Sky High Annual Pass for just $79 to enjoy unlimited entry to 360º views, 365 times a year and 10% off at the café. (Admission fee applies.) Our coffees are as famous as the view. Wrap your lips round an Espesso™, the coffee you can eat (TIME magazine named it one of the best inventions of 2006!). Light and mousse-y, it's like eating coffee clouds. Seriously, Chicagoans come up here just to enjoy coffee and read the newspaper with our FREE Wi-Fi service. After all, it was Luigi Lavazza who invented the concept of the blend, the complex art of mixing coffee of different origins, in 1895. So it’s a real caffeine high! Come up for a low key drink. Stay for a high impact view Staggering views demand a stiff drink! But never fear, we’ve just added a new way to help you unwind – we now serve beer, wine and spirits in our Lavazza Espression café. Enjoy the spectacular floor to ceiling views while sipping on a glass of wine, beer or one of our gorgeous cocktails. And with our delicious Italian appetizers, why not have a bite to eat too? Check out our bar menu. Our café menu is a cuisine high The three key factors to fine food are fresh, fresh and fresh! Each morning we bake melt-in-your mouth pastries, cookies and Frittatta Panino – an Italian omelette. Then, during the day, if you feel like an insalate (salad) or grilled Panini, we’ll make it right in front of you. Even our menu is fresh and innovative! Check it out. That’s because we collaborate with famous chefs like Ferran Adrià and Moreno Cedroni to enhance your epicurean experience. (It’s easy to find our café…just follow your nose!) Down to earth food for kids Got milk? Kids all over the world love the basics - and when you've got a gang to feed you don't want it to cost a fortune. So we have lots of favorites like grilled cheese sandwiches, chips, cookies, gelato - even milk! We also do boxed lunches for school trips and parties for aspiring astronauts or princesses in the sky. And the good thing is, you can enjoy your coffee while the kids take in the sights with their own interactive multimedia Sky Tour! Planning an event? We cater for every taste Few venues can compare with the magnificent views and equally impressive food at JHO. We cater for private events such as kid's birthdays or wedding and corporate events such as dinners for 200 or cocktails all around. You can chat to us and we'll create your own menu, or here are a few menu and drinks packages to get your mouth watering. Save with our Sky High Annual Pass Grab a Sky High Annual Pass and you and a friend can come visit us as often as you like! Enjoy FastPass entry 365 times a year, fun with our interactive multimedia Sky Tour, unlimited wind at our open-air Skywalk and 10% discount at our Lavazza Espression café, gift shop and on Fun Photos. So stop by for a novel location for your next business meeting or a great place to bring visitors and show off Chicago. We're open from 9am until 11pm (last admission at 10:30pm), 1,000ft high on the 94th floor.
Our first attack of the souks was with our guide, who kindly took us around to all of the quality shops. Our goal was to avoid all of the kitschy tourist traps and find the authentic pieces and antiques. Above – what the souks looked like on Friday morning – their version of a closed weekend morning. Above, a stark difference from morning to afternoon. Although still relatively quiet, the souks came alive after 3pm… When the call to prayer sounded, our guide dumped us in a massive rug emporium where we saw two women at the hand of a centuries-old loom. Trying my hand at the tedious technique, I soon learned the patience and willpower these women must have to complete one rug, let a lone hundreds in their lifetime. Waiting on our guide to return from the mosque, we wandered about the shop where we got a second hand high from the fumes of hash coming from the workers’ mouths. They rolled out rug after rug until we ultimately shut them down and scuttled out of the place gasping for fresh air. No rugs in hand. The rest of our afternoon continued, the only successful purchase was an antique bamboo and camel leather rug from the family owned and celebrity frequented Porte d’Or – where my friend got the price so low the rug would ‘cry all the way to London’ (according to the owner). With such an unproductive day and feeling as rushed as we did (we had a hammam appointment), we vowed to return again to following week.
Critiquing Rob Bell’s Love Wins, Mike Wittmer writes, A real rescue beats an imaginary rescue every day of the week, because it involves actual risk. . . . It’s one thing to pretend that we’re drowning or being chased by bad guys; it’s entirely different to actually be lost at sea or dodging bullets. Real-life rescues always have the most at stake (142–43). Wittmer continues by explaining that Bell’s view Makes an exceptionally bland story. There is no drama. No deep conflict requiring resolution. No compelling need for a satisfying denouement. Where is the insurmountable problem that must be overcome? Where’s the cliff we might fall off? Where’s the foreshadowed death that can be avoided only by intervention from the outside? Nothing is ever really at stake in Bell’s tale of limitless happy endings. It has even less suspense than a child’s bedtime story. . . . I appreciate that the looming threat of hell can make us uncomfortable, but if we eliminate this from the Scriptures we deflate the true and even more astonishing biblical story. A world without the real possibility of hell, of eternal death, would increasingly resemble the contrived world of the film The Truman Show, comically and tragically unrealistic. If the cross teaches us anything, it’s that this is a wild, dangerous world. If the Son of God can be crucified, then anything is possible here. A world which killed Jesus may well have a large number of murderers headed for hell. The stakes are that hight (145–46). We need to see that we have the real story. We need to feel what G. K. Chesterton writes when he says, “In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he might be eaten by cannibals” (Orthodoxy, 206). When the world was at stake the Father gave the Son that the world might be redeemed. Chesterton again, “Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point—and does not break” (Orthodoxy, 209). Chesterton says that Christianity’s “main advantage is that it is the most adventurous and manly of all theologies” (Orthodoxy, 201). To read of the manliness of Christ and the courage of God in putting everything on the line by not sparing his own Son, see Mark 15:1–39. Here’s my attempt to exposit the passage: Mark 15:1–39, “Crucified, Dead, and Buried.”
The Indianapolis Star has put its downtown headquarters up for sale. “We need space that inspires us to be creative and digitally focused as we continue to pursue great journalism that makes an impact and is a positive force on our community,” says the publisher’s memo to staff. From: Crotchfelt, Karen Sent: Friday, July 27, 2012 2:31 PM To: Messages to INI Subject: Important Announcement about the Penn St. building As part of the strategic transformation of our company we have decided, after 104 years, to put our downtown building on North Pennsylvania Street up for sale. The Penn building has been a wonderful part of our history, but it no longer suits the size or needs of our staff. We need space that inspires us to be creative and digitally focused as we continue to pursue great journalism that makes an impact and is a positive force on our community. We are committed that Star employees will relocate to a new location downtown still to be determined. We hope to find space that inspires our future and welcomes our community to be a partner in the conversation. We have no timeline for a sale or for a move. Now that the announcement has been made, we will begin to define our needs for a move and consider all options. CBRE has been retained to represent us in the sale and to help us determine our relocation plans. Jeff Luebker [Jeff.Luebker@cbre.com] is our contact at CBRE. Please let me know if you have any questions.
BuzzFeed’s reported earlier today that @ComfortablySmug — the guy who purposely tweeted false Hurricane Sandy information last night — is a hedge fund analyst named Shashank Tripathi. He also is — or was — campaign manager for Republican U.S. House candidate Christopher R. Wight. Tripathi tweeted this tonight: I wish to offer the people of New York a sincere, humble and unconditional apology. twitter.com/ComfortablySmu… — ComfortablySmug (@ComfortablySmug) October 31, 2012 * “I hope they throw the book at you,” and other reactions to his tweet (@ComfortablySmug) * Tweeting fake news in a crisis: Illegal or just immoral? (gigaom.com) * Meet Hurricane Sandy Twitter villain @ComfortablySmug (buzzfeed.com) * Some Twitter heavyweights retweeted his misinformation (theatlanticwire.com)
Vibop makes your videos shine with just a few clicks. Add an animated intro, a vintage filter, a cartoon look, a silent movie theme, and dozens of other effects. Brighten dark images and fix a shaky camera. Fun, fast, and easy, Vibop will take your memories to the next level! Friday, January 27, 2012 YouTube: Vibop by NewBlue I'm proud to announce that we launched a new YouTube.com/create partner, Vibop:
Today’s winner of Conscientious’ Journalistic Race to the Bottom Prize is - surprise, surprise! - Britain’s BBC. Check it out: Rapist scoops 7m on Lotto Extra - that’s two completely pseudo-news item in one big story. A sex offender and a lottery winner, all in one. Well done, BBC!
Light Up Nuvali - 12/30/12 Yeah I know, the shoes doesn’t make sense in my outfit. I just wanted to wear something comfortable for that night. Last December 30, 2012, Nuvali Santa Rosa Laguna had a Sky Lantern Parade held at the EvoLiving Center wherein you will be surrounded with eco-friendly stuffs. It was actually my first time to watch something like this. It’s really magical! Or it’s just me I guess. But seeing these lanterns fly above the sky together is really fascinating. Good thing I was able to convince my parents to watch. I wasn’t able to buy a lantern though, but probably next year’s sky lantern parade I will surely try to light my own. It was a nice experience before the year ended. He leads my path Today, me, my mom and dad go to Nuvali. We had a family bonding; taking family pictures, eating together, talking endlessly and laughing like there’s no tomorrow. I’m really thankful to God for my parents. I promise to be strong for them and to give back the love and care they had given me. I know that God will lead me to the right way in order for me to reach my goal. He’s really awesome. Princess by Heart I made this image as my cover photo on facebook a few months ago. I’ve always like the Keep Calm and Carry On phrase including the crown on top of it. So, I have decide to make my own and instead of putting the keep calm text I replace it with my name. So that’s the result of it, simple but elegant. I’ve thought of putting a crown on top of my name because I know in my heart that I am my mom and dad’s princess. They have given me their love and support in everything that I do. They took care of me like I’m an expensive gem that should be handled with care. I’m really thankful to God for giving me loving parents like them. Amazingly Beautiful Mother Nature Computer Business Association (CBA) members had a team building at Tanay, Rizal entitled, Building up Synergy for 3 days and 2 nights, the CBA members had a lot of fun activities that they will never forget. The project managers of this event had researched very well because we really had a nice venue. We can all feel the fresh air and can see a great scenery. Btw, the name of our venue is The Sierra Madre Hotel and Resort. The venue has a really nice falls. (L-R) Marti - Ashley - Me while the members are having an activity I can’t stop laughing while watching them. All of them are complaining because the grass made them feel very itchy. The NO-talking game. They must only follow the one in front of them. With my talented Assistant. This picture was taken on our last day. We don’t want to leave yet but we have classes to catch up. Having a team building is a great way on building relationship with other people. As what I’ve observed, whenever I’m attending a team building I gain friends. And I guess I’m not the only one who think that. As part of an organization you must know everyone, not only know them but be friends with them. I’ve also learned that we must understand how to create and develop experience of team work. Because everyone must contribute to the overall success of the organization. Credits: Photos Grabbed from Evan Valdoz and Bianca Villas DLS-CSB SMIT Honors Convocation 2012 Last October 5, 2012 the Honors Convocation for School of Management and Information Technology (SMIT) was held at the School of Design and Arts theater. I was invited to be part of the program flow of the said event. My friends are also going to receive their awards as well. together with my two achiever friends (L-R Jelo and Arianne) + Marcus We also had a picture with our very own CBA Adviser Mr. Oliver Liwanag We’re actually showing the CA sign. CA stands for Computer Applications which is our major in the degree we’re taking. With my friend Arianne Sarte I really am tired after that day. But I’m so proud of all the students who were able to achieve high grades. Their efforts and hard works pay off with the plaque they received during their convocation. I’m pretty much sure that their parents are so proud of them. It’s my honor to serve them during that day. I hope that all of the students out there will also do their best to get good grades and make their parents proud. Education will be one of the best gift that we’ll give to our parents. Let us make them feel that the money they spent on our education is worth it. About this girl meets world a student at the De La Salle - College of St. Benilde, blogger, an aspiring photographer and a creative entrepreneur. Dreams of having her own business. -- Fashion is part of my life.She loves to travel and this blog is my personal diary. “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” - Coco Chanel Theme Credits"That Minimalist Tumblr Theme" Theme by: Jole Mole Powered by: Tumblr©
This job has been closed, and is no longer taking applications. The Inside Sales Associate promotes and sells West products through outbound and inbound telephone calls to existing and potential legal professionals. The Inside Sales Associate will be responsible for meeting/exceeding sales and telephone activity target objectives as established. This individual is expected to leverage existing contact base, network and prospect for new opportunities and consistently apply superior salesmanship to win competitive opportunities. The Sales Associate will be provided opportunity for future career growth based on exceeding assigned sales and activity goals within a defined timeframe. - Sells West products and services through outbound and inbound calls by securing direct sales and increasing revenue by up selling and cross selling. - Must be able to achieve and exceed company and personal sales and telephone activity goals through negotiations and product offering within set parameters. - Gathers and logs all call information, sale orders, and profile activity on the West computer system correctly and accurately, ensuring proper marketing source are credited appropriately. - Individually manages call lists and territory assignments. - Conducts High Volume Throughput (HVT =call activity) time efficiently and effectively to meet daily metrics expectations. - Assumes other responsibilities as required or requested by Inside Sales Management. - Must be able to build, maintain and enhance client's experience through consultative conversation while asking leading questions and offering superior product knowledge coupled with excellent customer service - Works with organizations throughout Thomson Reuters to ensure customer accounts are handled efficiently and accurately and customer issues are resolved in a timely manner. - Enhances department and organization reputation by taking ownership for exceeding established goals and accomplishing new and different requests. - Obtains customer and competitive information during daily contacts and distributes as appropriate so as to develop sales strategies. - Maintain a working knowledge of company products, special sales programs and marketing efforts within the sales division. - Actively participates in meetings, training sessions and individual professional development and skill building. - Actively contributes to and works responsibly in a team environment. - Adhere to ethical standards contained in the Thomson Reuters Code of Conduct while servicing customers and meeting department goals. - Minimum of 2 years successful sales quota attainment experience - Demonstrated sales success preferred - Experience in prospecting/cold calling environment required - Strong organizational and time management skills coupled with the ability to embrace change - Pipeline management skills in the CRM environment required - Proficient in Microsoft Office applications - Excellent verbal and written communication skills - Demonstrated knowledge of proper telephone etiquette and professional attitude and integrity - College Degree in business, sales or related field required. - Legal industry knowledge or experience, a plus In addition to competitive pay and benefits, Thomson Reuters offers specific sales and product training to ensure our employees have the abilities to meet and/or exceed expectations. At Thomson Reuters, we deliver intelligent information quickly and efficiently, so professionals have knowledge to act. We combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, scientific, healthcare, and media markets, powered by the world's most trusted news organization. At Thomson Reuters, we believe what we do matters. We are passionate about our work, inspired by the impact it has on our business and our customers. As a team, we believe in winning as one - collaborating to reach shared goals, and developing through challenging and meaningful experiences. With over 50,000 colleagues in more than 100 countries, we work flexibly across boundaries and realize innovations that help shape industries around the world. Making this happen is a dynamic, evolving process, and we count on each employee to be a catalyst in driving our performance - and their own. As a global business, we rely on diversity of culture and thought to deliver on our goals. To ensure we can do that, we seek talented, qualified employees in all our operations around the world regardless of race, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, age, or any other protected classification under country or local law. Thomson Reuters is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. Intrigued by a challenge as large and fascinating as the world itself? Come join us. To learn more about what we offer, please visit careers.thomsonreuters.com More information about Thomson Reuters can be found on thomsonreuters.com
Marketing / PR jobs in TEFL Find the latest Marketing / PR jobs in TEFL to view and apply for now with Guardian Jobs. To have your ideal Marketing / PR job in TEFL sent to you the day it's posted, sign up for Jobs by Email. Join our Guardian Higher Education Network today and make sure you keep up to date with all you need to know in your industry. Sort by: Most recent Salary - Competitive plus benefits Guardian News & Media Ltd is one of the most successful and innovative media organisations in the wo... - Employer: GUARDIAN NEWS AND MEDIA - On Application A dynamic, diploma qualified EFL teacher with at least 5 years experience to join our friendly, well-established British Council accredited school. - Employer: ANGLOLANG ACADEMY OF ENGLISH - Depending on Skills and Experience Exciting ELT Senior Editor role for blue chip publisher. - Employer: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS - Depending on skills and experience Exciting Assistant Product Manager role for blue chip publisher. 7 days left Chief Innovation Officer www.berwickpartners.co.uk/IT Apply Here For Exciting Opportunity In London, c £85,000 Plus Benefits Teach in Saudi Arabia www.jobsataramco.eu/Teaching For A Great Package And A Superb Lifestyle, Teach At Saudi Aramco Exciting Tutoring Busines www.kipmcgrath.co.uk/ Own your own teaching business. Enjoy the time to see real results!

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.