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White fir, silver tip. Wagon rides for $3 per person (weather permitting), tree swing, and complimentary candy canes and hot chocolate. Note: dog friendly. Open 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily through Dec. 18.
2209 Shirland Tract Road, Auburn; (530)885-0489.
Douglas fir, Sierra redwood, Scotch pine. Hot apple cider and other treats. Open 8 a.m.-dusk Friday-Sunday.
3845 Buffalo Road, Auburn; (530)889-1991.
Scotch pine, incense cedar. Open 9 a.m.-4 p.m. daily.
8430 Dillard Road, Wilton; (916)687-8354; www.billysfarm.com.
Pines, cypress, plus fresh cut trees from Oregon. Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekends.
13211 Jackson Road, Sloughhouse; (916)682-2658; www.davisranchproduce.com.
Douglas fir, Monterey pine, Sierra redwood, incense cedar, among others. Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily.
Nine out of 10 Canadians want mandatory vaccinations, Jeff Semple reports.
A former vaccination skeptic is urging Canadian health officials to rethink their messaging around vaccine safety.
“I don’t think it’s really connecting to the heart of the issue, as to why people are hesitating,” said Tara Hills.
The Arnprior, Ont., mother told Global News that for several years, she chose not to vaccinate her children for diseases such as measles and whooping cough.
“Doubts began to arise in my mind, as different friends of mine were choosing not to vaccinate. And on social media, I started to hear disturbing stories of maybe this isn’t as effective, maybe this is actually very damaging, maybe there’s a big cover-up,” she recalled.
In 2015, seven of Tara Hills’ children contradicted whooping cough, a vaccine-preventable disease.
Hills’ story is indicative of the challenge facing public health officials working to persuade parents to vaccinate their children, according to Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd, a Canada Research Chair in Social Media Data Stewardship and the director of research at Ryerson University’s Social Media Lab.
Gruzd said many parents, like Hills, now turn to the internet, rather than their family doctor, for information on vaccination safety. “And if you just look at the availability of content on different social media platforms, quite often we see there is a dominance of anti-vaccination content,” he explained.
What’s more, he says, social media algorithms are designed to keep users engaged by showing similar content. “So, essentially, if you’re watching one video on vaccination, or especially if it’s anti-vaccination videos, you’re more likely to be recommended by the system to watch another anti-vaccination video, which is ...
WATCH: Toronto Public Health sounds alarm on vaccinations. Caryn Lieberman reports.
With the United States grappling with its worst measles outbreak in two decades, social media companies are facing growing pressure to crack down on misinformation surrounding vaccinations. Facebook announced last month that it will diminish the reach of anti-vaccine information on its website.
“The problem really was unchecked by [social media] platforms and unregulated for quite awhile. And only now are we realizing that this misinformation is being spread online,” Gruzd said.
To protect against an outbreak such as measles, 95 per cent of the population must have received two doses of a measles vaccine, in order to achieve what’s known as “herd immunity.” Canada’s national immunization rate, which varies depending on the disease, is estimated to be less than 90 per cent.
An Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News found that two-thirds (64 per cent) of Canadians worry about some of the side effects of vaccinations, even though public health officials stress that serious side effects are extremely rare. The poll also found that about three in 10 (28 per cent) Canadians receive t...
The poll of 1,001 Canadians, conducted between Feb. 27 and 28, was accurate to within ±3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
“[The internet] can be a difficult place where moms can get misinformed,” said Hills, adding that the often toxic tone of the vaccination discussion online doesn’t help.
UNVACCINATED, Part 3: Should vaccinations be mandatory for school-aged kids?
Dr. Shelley Deeks is the chief of communicable diseases, emergency preparedness and response at Public Health Ontario. She conceded that public health officials need to do a better job of sharing real-life human stories about the risks of not vaccinating their children.
“From the medical side, we often tell the facts and we give numbers, and the numbers don’t compare to these stories, and I think we need to do a better job of talking about situations where people with a vaccine-preventable disease dies,” Deeks said.
This is the fourth story in ‘Unvaccinated: Canada’s Public Health at Risk,’ a Global News series on the challenge Canada faces from dropping vaccination rates.
The members of Restless Heart - John Dittrich, Greg Jennings, Paul Gregg, Dave Innis, and Larry Stewart - have enjoyed one of the most successful careers in country music history, placing over 25 singles on the charts.
Restless Heart was brought together in Nashville back in 1984.
“We knew we had something," Jennings said in a 2017 interview with the Montgomery Advertiser. "We got together in that little rehearsal studio and sang and played together, and we knew there was something special there with the vocal blend."
With six consecutive #1 hits, four of their albums have been certified Gold by the RIAA, and they have won a wide range of awards from many organizations. Including the Academy of Country Music’s Top Vocal Group trophy.
"We were just very lucky to be at the right place and the right time, surrounded by good people who could push us in the right direction and found great songs for us," Jennings said. "It’s really the songs that have given us the longevity in the business."
Cognitive assistance plays a key role in supplementing abilities others may be missing, but technology still needs to catch up to help them move beyond basic functions, says visually-impaired IBM Fellow.
Cognitive technology and machine-learning capabilities are essential to help the disabled stand on their own, but further advancements are needed to help them beyond the basics.
The visually impaired now were able to perform more tasks than they did decades before the internet and mobile technology surfaced, said Chieko Asakawa, who was the first female Japanese to be named IBM Fellow back in 2009. She lost her sight at the age of 14 after an accident in a swimming pool damaged her optic nerve...
Asakawa, who joined IBM as a researcher in 1985, currently works with the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA, to identify ways accessibility technologies can help more people participate in society. Much of her work now centred on cognitive technology.
She explained that the visually impaired faced two primary difficulties in life-- accessibility to information and mobility, the first of which had changed dramatically over the past few decades.
Previously, without personal computers and the internet, she was unable to read newspapers, magazines, or books without help from someone else. While the emergence of audio and Braille books helped, copies were limited and she would have to wait, sometimes for months, before the Braille library was able to send a copy ...
The most significant development came when Braille went digital and web accessibility became pervasive, she said. Asakawa's research had supported various initiatives in this field, which included developing a word processor to create Braille documents and building a digital library for Braille literature.
More notably, she helped build a browser plugin that converted text on webpages to speech, enabling visually-impaired users to navigate the web using a numeric keypad. Developed in 1997, the IBM Home Page Reader supported multiple languages including French, German, and Japanese and widely adopted across the globe.
There also had been some advancement in the area of mobility, thanks to technologies such as GPS and beacons as well as mobile devices with voice command capabilities. Progress, though, remained inadequate and more improvements would be needed to help the blind attain true independence.
Asakawa's research here looked at how GPS could be used to guide the visually impaired, but the technology's accuracy, especially indoors, still was not up to par. Its potential, though, was promising.
In fact, IBM and Carnegie Mellon University developed a mobile app, called NavCog, which operated as a voice navigation system using sensors, or beacons, as well as cognitive technology to identify the user's location and direction. It then would send voice commands via the smartphone to guide users towards their desti...
IBM Research this month kicked off a pilot, alongside Japanese civil engineering firm Shimizu and real estate developer Mitsui Fudosan, to assess the NavCog system across three Coredo Muromachi shopping mall buildings located in the downtown district of Nihonbashi-Muromachi.
Some 220 beacons were installed to cover an area spanning 21,000 square metres. This encompassed an underground pedestrian walkway, which connected the three buildings, as well as several shops and restaurants and a movie theatre. The beacons were installed on ceilings and in existing gaps, so no changes to infrastruct...
A probabilistic model was created using machine-learning algorithms, which linked radio wave signals with likely pedestrian locations to facilitate navigation. The system used various sensors in the smartphone, such as accelerometer, gyroscope, and barometer, to improve navigation.
After a destination had been provided, the system would provide the shortest route while avoiding obstructions such as escalators and confusing turns. It would provide additional information to caution users about nearby obstacles or when they were about to reach a fork in the passageway.
During the pilot, data would be analysed for location accuracy, voice guidance timing, and ease-of-use.
According to Asakawa, the system currently had an accuracy rate of one to two metres. While this would need to be further improved, she underscored the importance of cognitive technology in enabling the blind to be mobile.
"We call this cognitive assistance, which means to supplement or augment abilities that others may be missing or abilities that are decreasing and weakening, such as those experienced by elderly people," she said.
She explained that IBM categorised cognitive technology into four key areas: localisation; computer vision or object recognition; data or knowledge; and interaction.
Pointing to the localisation component, she said the effectiveness of navigation systems could be significantly improved if the accuracy of the user's location could be narrowed down to an inch.
She added that object recognition also would need to be further developed and properly linked to the required data, such as a map or store details.
Until technology caught up, Asakawa's priorities remained primarily on addressing the mobility challenge, which continued to be the biggest hurdle for the visually impaired.
Asked what she would like technology to help her regain from her time as a sighted individual, she said it would be "nice to have" the ability to perceive colours again.
"I really enjoy visiting museums and looking at art and paintings, but those information has been lost," she said. "So perhaps we could find a way to describe artistic artefacts, colours, or sceneries and portraits through voice. Or we could tap some form of crowdsourcing, in which we ask people to describe and then sh...
This, she added, could open up opportunities for video analysis, among others, in the field of vision recognition. She also mooted the idea of a robotic guide dog, which would have vision recognition and machine-learning capabilities while requiring lower maintenance than an actual dog.
For now, however, such ideas remained low on her priorities and would remain so until the visually impaired attained absolute independence in terms of mobility.
"Now I still have to depend on someone, for instance, to tell me where the front desk or the gate is. There are still so many issues to address to be truly mobile," said Asakawa, who today aspires to be able to travel and go for walks alone.
Reiterating the importance of achieving true independence, she noted: "We need to change the mindset that the impaired can't or don't need to shop, just as previously when people didn't think we needed to use the web."
The goal was to reduce the amount of effort needed for the disabled to go about their daily lives, she said, adding that cognitive technology and artificial intelligence played a key role in facilitating this change.
Aug. 17 (UPI) -- Zazie Beetz mourned the death of Deadpool 2 stunt double Joi 'SJ' Harris on Instagram Wednesday by sharing a handwritten note.
"On Monday we tragically lost one of our own - Joi SJ Harris. My heart has been breaking the past two days and I have been searching what to say or do," the actress wrote in red on a white piece of paper.
"I know that what I feel is nothing compared to what her loved ones, friends + family, are feeling. My heart and my love goes out to her and them all. The cast and crew send peace, healing, and their deepest condolences," she continued.
Harris was in costume as Beetz's Deadpool 2 character Domino when she when lost control of her motorcycle and crashed through the glass of a ground-floor studio inside Shaw Tower which led to her death.
Production on the film resumed two days after Harris' death and star Ryan Reynolds led a moment of silence in her honor with the cast and crew, Us Weekly reported.
Reynolds previously commented on Harris' death on Twitter writing, "We're heartbroken, shocked and devastated... but recognize nothing can come close to the grief and inexplicable pain her family and loved ones must feel in this moment. My heart pours out to them - along with each and every person she touched in this w...
A Stratford production company is planning on shooting a documentary next year on the impact Stratford's theatrical development had on theatre around the world.
A Stratford production company is setting out to retell the story of a man who not only helped to put Stratford on the theatrical map, but also held the city up as an example to groups in other towns and cities embarking on their own theatrical dreams.
Thanks to $50,000 in funding from Northern Ireland Screen and the Canada Media Fund, Ballinran Entertainment will soon begin production on the documentary feature, Tyrone Guthrie: The Stratford Experiment, in association with the National Film Board of Canada, Belfast’s Finepoint Films, and Toronto-based White Pine Pic...
“Outside of theatre circles the story of Tyrone Guthrie has largely been forgotten,” wrote Craig Thompson, Ballinran’s founder, in an email from China, where he’s currently working on an unrelated project.
The idea for the documentary was inspired by the the National Film Board’s 1954, Oscar-nominated documentary, The Stratford Adventure, which shared the against-all-odds story of how a small town in rural Ontario was taking on the theatre world with a summer Shakespeare festival under the artistic direction of Guthrie, ...
“In 1953, as first artistic director of the Stratford Festival, Tyrone Guthrie pioneered a revolutionary new way of staging Shakespeare and other classic dramas,” said current artistic director Antoni Cimolino in a press release.
According to Thompson, the film will not be a biopic of Guthrie’s life. Instead, it will tell the story of his influence and how the success he fostered in Stratford continues to impact stage and screen across North America. Using the original film as a foundation, the documentary will highlight parallels between then ...
“If you look at the original, the story was balanced between what was happening in the community and the preparations for the new theatre festival. We will be taking the same approach but extending the story beyond Stratford,” Thompson said.
The film’s producers are planning to spend the next five months researching, planning, and raising money to complete the documentary. Shooting is expected to begin this October, and will take place in Stratford, the U.K., Ireland, Minneapolis, New York City, Hollywood, and other U.S. locations.
Thompson said the documentary will make use of immersive augmented reality to provide audiences with an interactive experience. The Stratford Experiment is expected to hit film festivals in the fall of 2020, which will be followed by theatrical, television, and streaming releases early the following year.
Cascade in Blue is a rock band from Rockville that has been together for the last two years. They are performing on Wednesday, June 21 at Rockville Civic Park. Visit http://www.myspace.com/cascadeinblue for more on the band.
Introduce the Band: Cascade in Blue is a six-piece art-rock band from Rockville. A wide range in ages creates a very unique dynamic of personalities and musical creativity. Each member is in a consecutive grade from a senior in high school through college.
Cascade in Blue blends violin, upright bass, electric bass, guitar, horns, piano, percussion and vocals to create a striking new sound that is reviving the spirit of artistic rock music.
How did you get your start or form the band? In 2001, the group began writing music as a three-piece indie-rock band called "The Dorian Mode." Lucas Carr (guitar/vocals), Andy Chervenak (electric bass/vocals), and Jonny Sickles (percussion) wrote, produced and recorded several demos from a homemade basement studio. Whi...
How long have you been performing for? The original members, Lucas Carr, Andy Chervenak and Jonny Sickles have been composing, recording and performing together for five years. As of the summer of 2006, all six members of Cascade in Blue have been together for two years.
What has been your best memory when it comes to music? After winning the Maryland Smoke-Free Battle of the Bands in the summer of 2005, Cascade in Blue was invited into the studio of 99.5 FM to help count down the top five songs of the day and perform live on the air. This was a surreal moment for the band to perform l...
Describe your sound: The rare instrumentation of violin, upright bass, electric bass, guitar, horns, piano, percussion and vocals, pinned with elements of rock, classical, folk, and jazz; combine to create a sound best described as Art-Rock. Audiences of all ages and cultures engage in the narrative of their intertwini...
Biggest musical influences: Each member grew up listening to very different types of music and therefore, each member brings a different influence to the band. Certain classic groups and musicians are agreed upon between members, such as Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, Radiohead, Herbie Hancock and Led Zeppelin.
Where have you toured? Cascade in Blue has performed in Chicago, Ill.; Milwaukee, Wis.; and Raleigh, N.C.
Anything special about the upcoming show? Cascade in Blue auditioned as a local music group at Strathmore last year and was invited back to perform for an outdoor concert. To perform at such a remarkable venue is exciting for both the band and for their fans that have supported them for many years. This concert kicks o...
Future Plans: The group plans to release its third full-length independent album in the summer of 2006, in hopes that it will spread the sound of Cascade in Blue to increasingly wider audiences.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's unfavorable ratings have reached new highs with voters, a Politico/Morning Consult poll has found. Fifty-three percent of Republican voters view Mueller negatively, up 26 points since last July. Among Democrats, a record 24 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Mueller, and among indep...
It looks like Nene's friendship with Cynthia Bailey may be done for good.
It looks like we’re in for a shocking ending to this season of Real Housewives of Atlanta and Nene Leakes is on a rampage at the show’s upcoming reunion.
“Y’all want to fire on me at this corner, I know I’m the one,” she says in the clip.
The explosive teaser shows her going on on everyone, including Andy Cohen.
“Do not keep pushing me over it, okay?” she snaps at one point.
We’re guessing Leakes isn’t happy about being pressed about her relationship with her husband, Gregg Leakes, who has been fighting stage 3 colon cancer throughout the season. Viewers saw the couple went on a roller coaster ride of emotions and the couple considered separating at one point in the season.
Sources provided PEOPLE with some insight into what had Nene Leakes in such a bad mood.
“It was an intense day of filming…Andy asked a lot of fair questions, really grilling NeNe about the way she’s been treating Gregg recently, and the women universally seemed to stand up for Gregg. You could tell she was angry about that. It felt like a betrayal to her,” a source told the outlet.
Nene is also pretty pissed at her former bestie, Cynthia Bailey, for allegedly inviting ex-cast member, Kenya Moore, to an event they were filming at this season.

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