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__label__wiki	0.807747	0.807747	Aid ban still in place in Somalia, Islamist militants say. Scenes from Somalia: Famine, drought and terror.Somalis Stream Into Kenya, Fleeing Famine Aid ban still in place in Somalia, Islamist militants say - CNN.com Scenes from Somalia: Famine, drought and terror As the people of Somalia struggle against the worst famine the world has seen in a generation, the global response to their suffering has been deplorable (click here for slideshow).Somalia is facing what is now considered the world's worst hunger crisis in over two decades - a famine that has put 11 million people across the region at risk of starvation.The most devastating drought to hit eastern Africa and the horn in 60 years, combined with rising food prices, has driven the child malnutrition rate to 55% while the number of infant deaths has reached six a day, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).Barbara Jackson of CARE International said the situation in Somalia is the most catastrophic she's ever seen in her 22-years of field experience. Jackson also pleaded to the world community on behalf of those victimized by the famine:"The level of suffering they have endured is beyond our imagination and they require immediate assistance. Everyone I met had the same message, 'Please tell the world for us, that we need help, and that we need it now. We cannot last much longer'."The global response to the emergency has been extremely disappointing to many humanitarians. An appeal late last year for $535 million to address the growing food shortage is still more than $250 million short.But reaching this requirement will simply satisfy the immediate need and not address the underlying causes of the crisis. Until that happens, Somalia's long-term prognosis looks frightening.Continue reading on Examiner.com Scenes from Somalia: Famine, drought and terror - National Geopolitics Somalis Stream Into Kenya, Fleeing Famine Terrorists, Obama Policy Hinder Famine Aid To Somalia Jul 22, 2011 NPR(Morning Edition) — In the Horn of Africa, about 11 million people lack sufficient food amid the worst drought in 60 years. The U.N. has declared a famine in southern parts of war-ravaged Somalia, where thousands of refugees are moving into Kenya seeking food, medicine and shelter at already crowded camps. The crippling drought in the Horn of Africa has affected about 11 million people in a region straddling Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. But it's Somalia that has been hit hardest. This week, the United Nations declared a famine in two parts of the lawless nation - Lower Shabelle and Bakool in the south. Thousands of Somalis are crossing the border into semi-arid northeastern Kenya, in search of shelter, food and medical care. They are streaming into the giant Dadaab refugee complex, which is the world's biggest collection of camps.For the new arrivals, life is grim. They start off at what are called spontaneous settlements, which have sprung up all over the outskirts of the camps. The one in Dagahaley stretches endlessly in inhospitable, sandy ground, with a howling wind whipping up the dust.The U.N. says 80 percent of the new arrivals are women and children. The Somalis are crossing into Kenya at a rate of about 1,000 a day. Many spend their first few days living out in the open, with precious little shelter except for scattered thorn trees.The Somali refugees who have had a little time to establish themselves at the camp construct makeshift homes out of tree branches, covered in plastic sheeting printed with the names and symbols of humanitarian agencies. Men and women drag the branches or hoist them onto donkey-drawn carts. Then they begin manually tying strips of cloth and weaving them in between the branches to stabilize the precarious structures they call home.Despite the difficult beginnings, the new refugees say life is better here than facing famine, drought and conflict in Somalia, because there is peace in Kenya.For the past 20 years, when refugees first began crossing into Kenya to escape the conflict and clan fighting back home, Somalia has been without a functioning central government.Many call it a failed state. The transitional national government controls only small parts of Somalia, including a section of the capital, Mogadishu, with the help of peacekeeping forces from the African Union.Other parts of the country are in the hands of the powerful anti-Western militant al-Shabab group, which has ties to al-Qaida and is on the United States' terrorism watch list.Al-Shabab threw out international relief agencies and allowed them back into the country only this month. But aid organizations, and the U.S., are concerned about safe access.The White House has also expressed concern that any food aid for drought-stricken Somalia may fall into the hands of and benefit the militants. Saruuro Aden traveled on foot from Dunsoor, near Baidoa in southern Somalia, across the Kenyan border with her four children. She said they walked for 10 days."Famine, drought — as well as conflict — all added up has forced us to leave Dunsoor," says Aden, speaking on the outskirts of Dagahaley camp this week, five days after she arrived. "I encountered lots of problems, including an attack. All the money I had, all the clothes, everything was taken away from me. We don't know who the attackers were. It was at night," she says."They took only our personal effects, but we women were not sexually assaulted," she adds. Other female Somali refugees have reported that they were raped or abused by attackers.Before heading off to look for firewood, Aden turns and says, "We have no food, we have no shelter. We have no clothes. We are just out there in the open, in the wind. We need water. We need life."Dadaab settlement is run by the U.N. refugee agency. It was built to house 90,000 people in the early 1990s, when the conflict in Somalia broke out. That number has swelled to almost 400,000, plus the more than 30,000, say the Kenyan authorities, in June and July.Somalis are in search of help offered at the camps, provided by the U.N. and dozens of relief organizations — including some from the U.S. and all over the world.Many of the women have trekked with severely malnourished children. Dr. Humphrey Musyoka, who works at the field hospital of the U.S.-based aid agency International Rescue Committee in Hagadera camp, says they have seen a fourfold increase of cases admitted for severe malnutrition since the influx of the recent arrivals."This leaves the children quite vulnerable, especially in the situation where food security is not guaranteed," he says. "We have seen children die - maybe, over the last week or so, two to three children. Those are the very severely ill children." Musyoka says the main reason they are seeing the deaths of some children is because the patients arrive sometimes too far gone for the medical teams to be able to help."We are getting very many late arrivals, even into our nutrition program. So there is only so much we can do to salvage this kind of situation," he says. Hawa Hassan, who is about 80 years old, cradles her 3-year-old grandson, Adan Abdon, in her arms on an IRC hospital bed at Hagadera.With large, limpid eyes, it is clear Adan is suffering from acute malnutrition, with the telltale oversized head on his wasted, wizened body. He hardly whimpers. He does not smile or react. Adan's mother died of hunger, his grandmother says, during the 30-day walk from southern Somalia. "All our animals died in the drought," she says, "so that was the end of our livelihood. We had to leave Somalia and walk to Kenya - with my grandchildren, including Adan, and you can see he is so very, very sick."That is the problem, laments Abubakar Mohamed. He is the deputy field coordinator across town at another hospital run by the emergency medical charity MSF — or Doctors Without Borders — at Dagahaley camp.Himself a Somali-Kenyan, Mohamed says the plight of the new arrivals is pitiful and no fault of their own."The groups that we are receiving now are the groups that were left behind after the anarchy of Somalia - civil strife [in the 1990s]," he says.Mohamed, who has been working at Dadaab refugee settlement since it opened more than two decades ago, says the first arrivals then were the victims of conflict, politics and poor leadership in Somalia.He adds that the new refugees, though, "had no business in politics." "Today, they are the victims of natural calamities like famine. They had no choice," he says. "So, unlike in the other times, it was politics, now it's a different scenario: innocent people who are suffering — not politicians, not armies, not military [but] real human beings, farmers, nomads who have had a tough time in Somalia." The Kenyan government is under pressure from the U.S. and others to open up an additional camp, Ifo-2, to accommodate some of the recent influx of Somalis. But Kenya argues that the refugees would be best served being assisted back home, on the Somali side of the border.It also points out that Kenyan nomadic herders and farmers across the arid and semi-arid north of the country are suffering from the same drought as the Somalis, and that resources and pastureland are limited.Kenya says it fears that members of the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab may surreptitiously cross into Kenya with the refugees, and spread terror on that side of the frontier. Challenges Delivering Aid To Somalia Responding to the famine in Somalia will be a challenge for donor nations. U.S. officials say the trouble is that al-Shabaab, an Islamist group on a U.S. terrorism blacklist, controls part of Somalia, making it too dangerous for aid workers. But some aid groups say U.S. policy in the region is also preventing them from doing the kind of lifesaving work they want to do. Joel Charny of InterAction, which represents 190 humanitarian organizations, says U.S. sanctions on al-Shabaab make matters more complicated, and the U.S. government just doesn't trust aid groups enough to make the right decisions. "Al-Shabaab has made life very difficult for our community in south-central, but it is not across the board and it is something we can negotiate on a case-by-case basis. And that's all we are really asking to do," Charny says. Listen to the full story from NPR's Michele Kelemen In Somalia, new famine born of out of old failures... The US Treasury Department announced on Friday tha... Somali: More aid needed; Troops gain new ground Genocidal politics and the Somali famin/The blame ... AMISOM / TFG Forces contain extremist threat to hu... Worst President Ever "Obama Meets West African Le... Mama Soul Visits refugee camp in capital Mogadishu... New Somalia Minister of Finance Abdinasir Mohamed ... Ex-Recruit Speaks Out on Al-Shabaab Experience, Me... Indicted Al-Shabaab Recruiter Continues Jihad on F... Top Al shabab officials killed in an ambush milita... Kenyan policeman killed by Somali rebels Chairman King opening statement at 3rd radicalizat... Al Qaeda-linked militants Al shabaab apprehends 30... Somali PM charges aid agencies with not properly h... 12 suspected Qaeda militants killed in south Yemen... Conflict Zone Slows Aid For Somalia's Famine Victi... Al Shabaab: Recruitment and Radicalization within ... East Africa Famine: How to Help Far right domestic terrorism on par with foreign t... It is time for every one to notice the doubleface ... Somali people suffer from Islamist cruelty and fam... AMISOM supplies vehicles to Somali government.AMIS... Images of a nation in mourning :Norway gunman warn... a right-wing extremist, a Christian, a nationalist... Norway attack: Likely suspected groups Former Defense minister Somali MP released by Ethi... Compare and Contrast : Another Famine in 2011, Ano... Aid ban still in place in Somalia, Islamist milita... Somalia: The Possibility of Balkanization US to send aid to Al-Shabaab held areas in Somalia... update. Al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab Terrorist Mili... King plans third Islamic terrorism hearing; Will e... Somalia’s New Cabinet Approved Demolition of buildings continues in Abudwak Dist... AU calls for urgent help to the drought displaced ... Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali on Wedn... Al-Shabaab's stranglehold on Somalia U.S. officials fear al Qaeda faction is making gai... Access to Al-Shabab-Dominated Somalia Difficult Terror training fraud Part 1 - Part 2 also Pham t... Somali President, Speaker’s Guards’ Clash Wounding... Somalia: What went wrong for Farmajo,the complete ... Opama Somalia Missguided policy, al-qaida Somalia ... Minnesota Omer Abdi Mohamed, 26 pleads guilty to a... Young Somalis seeking dialogue :Assimilation, ster... 21 Ships Are Held Captive By Somali Pirates -- Pir... Al Qaeda's Yemen branch has aided Somalia militant... Al-Qaeda: teenage Brit killed leading terror unit ... US House Africa, Global Health and Human Rights Su... Ethiopia’s war with Somalia never ends:Ethiopia’s ... BOOK REVIEW: Understanding the Somalia conflagrati... Somalis flee drought-afflicted town :Latest video ... Somalia: The Ethiopian Factor part # 3 INSIDE SOMALIA-THE FRONTLINE : A NTV VIDEO FEATURE... Somali terror group linked to Al Qaeda 'recruited ... The Soldier: War in a Time of Warlords and Extremi... As U.S. wars wind down, drones gain new prominence... Somali forces detain Al shabaab suspects in southe... Security beefed up in Abud-wak,Al-Shabaab compels ... omali National Television (SNTV) Reaching Europe, ... America's Expanding Presence in Somalia Somali-Americans from Minnesota Leave to Wage Jiha... Islamist rebels seize two aid workers in southern ... 23 US senators press Pentagon chief on US plans to... 1 million Euros for refugees - Merkel : East Afric... Somali pro-government Moderate Islamist Sufi group... U.S. official: CIA interrogating terror suspects i... Somali Diaspora News: Recognizing Somali Community... Post Belatedly Recognizes Growing Internal Terrori... Somaliland: The Myth of Clan-Based Statehood . E... President Museveni Pays Tribute to The 7/10 Bomb V... secret underground prison in Mogadishu ? Intellig... MP - Big Internal Rifts Erupted Within Al Shabaab Federal government isn't touching Arkansas terrori... Italy to give 1 million euros to Somalia aid effor... Museveni Versus al Shabab:Uganda's Museveni calls ... Somali beauty (Amira Ahmed is Half somali-Half phi... Communique released from AU Summit in Kigali 7 soldiers die in battle for Mogadishu Panetta says U.S. is 'within reach' of defeating A... RW C/weli: wuxu ka diiday Sakiin ma ka yeeli doona... President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and high-leve... Closing Statement by H. E. Zahra M. Ali Samantar, ... Muslim activist in Minnesota struggles as one-man ... Town of Afmadow al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab Terrori... Somali trio charged by US in yacht murder of Chris... Homegrown Terrorist Convicted, Inspired by Al Qaed... Rep. Royce, Terrorism Chairman, on the Consequence... Somali detainee linked to Qaeda cleric: US. Obama ... Govt: We started new plans in combating Al shabaab... Clinton ready to test Al-Shabaab's promise allowin... Uganda warns of attacks on bombings anniversary. H... Speech by Somali State Minister at the Office of t... Punches Thrown in Minneapolis Mosque:Abubakar As-S... Somali arrested by U.S. sought to expand al Shabaa... Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed iyo lataliyaashiisa update US drones or planes, hit three al-Shabaab ... Rwanda to host conference on Somalia peacekeeping	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line389
__label__wiki	0.57686	0.57686	The Men Who Bleed Crabs The blood of the horseshoe crab is worth more per weight than gold. The Freaky meets the people who bleed crabs for a living. Beaufort Beach, South Carolina. Fisherman Jerry Galt is a man on a time-critical mission. He has just 2 hours to find something that’s been lurking beneath these waters for hundreds of millions of years. “We come on the full moons when the tides are tall and they’re coming up to spawn to lay their eggs,” says Jerry. If Jerry can find it, he will be a lot richer, and he’ll also be playing a crucial part in saving the lives of millions of people. 10 minutes later he has struck gold. “How about this historic creature, they make horror movies out of things like this !” he says excited. The strange creature he has caught in his net is a horseshoe crab – a living fossil that dates back 450 million years – that’s way before dinosaurs made their first appearance. “These are amazing creatures,” says Jerry. “They look like a spider from underneath as you can see, they’re harmless to a pinch, these sharp spines can impale you if you fall on them.” Like Spring Break teenagers on heat, thousands of these crabs gather on this beach every year to cop off. The crabs come up on these high tides during the full moon tides and lay their eggs (and spawn) In between the moons, the eggs incubate and hatch. And they don’t have trouble finding a partner in the dark because they have 10 eyes. Tonight Jerry manages to gather up approximately 600 horseshoe crabs. “They’re only up on the beach for a couple of hours before and after the tide so we have to hustle to catch them,” he says. These crabs are normally caught and used for bait to catch eels but not tonight. These crabs have a weirder purpose. “When I arrived here to deliver the crabs, it was like, what is this place?” says Jerry. Jerry is talking about the cutting edge medical facility that he delivers his crabs to. Thanks to a magic ingredient that’s ensured their survival all these millions of years, they’ve become a highly valuable scientific asset. What the scientist’s want is the horseshoe crab’s blood. – which is freakily coloured blue. Our blood is red because it is iron rich, the crab’s blood is blue because its rich in copper. But its not the colour that interests the scientists it a special enzyme within the blood. An enzyme that saves millions of lives every year. The enzyme is an incredible detector of bacteria. “There is an immune system in the crab’s blood that is very primitive yet very effective.” Says Dr Norman Wainwright, head scientist at the crab lab. He shows me a vial. “In this vial is an enzyme extracted from the crabs blood,” he says. “Now if we drop a tiny amount of bacteria into this enzyme, watch what happens.” He takes a syringe and drops in a tiny drop. Incredibly the vial solidifies. “The blood cells, when they come into contact with bacteria, release high concentrations of enzymes and these enzymes cause a blood clot,” explains Dr Wainwright. What’s amazing is the enzyme can detect bacteria at less than one part per trillion.That’s like a pinch of salt in over 2 million gallons of crab chowder. “This extremely sensitive enzyme reaction in the blood is a fantastic tool for us to determine the level of cleanliness of drugs and medical devices,” says Dr Wainwright. This test is used by pharmaceutical manufacturers to ensure their drugs and equipment are free from bacteria.No other test is as cheap or reliable. And that’s why the crab’s bllod is so precious and why one quart of the crab’s blood is worth over $15000 dollars. The blood is extracted from a chink in the crab’s armour – the fleshy hinge at the root of its tail and near its heart. “I assure you they come to no harm, not hurt in any way” says Dr Wainwright. Each crab donates around 100 ml, which is a third of its blood. The blood is then purified and from it the enzyme extracted. Finally, the enzymes are freeze dried into vials which are sold to doctors and hospitals the world over. It’s a highly involved process that Dr Wainwright and his crab bleeding team carry out on thousands of crabs every week. The horseshoe crabs are a part of a multi million dollar industry. And these scientists are blood mining the medical equivalent of gold. After donating their blood, fisherman, Jerry releases the crabs 70 to 80 miles away from where they were caught. This ensures they aren’t picked up and re-bled again too soon. “They regenerate the blood within 30 days,” explains Jerry. “…similar to us humans, weird how closely related we are weird kind of way. It’s really nice to be part of such a noble fishery, it’s one thing to feed humanity, it’s another to keep it safe and healthy … “ Scarlett Johansen Trawls Scottish Streets for Men Dictator Flagpoles Man Gets Paid by NASA to Sniff Trainers US Navy Investigate Sky Penis The crabs that are purple Water Jetpack Can this toy defy gravity? Man balances on a nail The Real Dirk Diggler – The Shocking Tale of 70’s Adult Movie Star John Holmes The Delivery Bar where men can experience the pain of child birth Huge Australian Dust Cloud Blocks out the Sun Sinkhole swallows couple Crazy Looking Caterpillars of the USA The Weird Family That Don’t Feel Pain 4 thoughts on “The Men Who Bleed Crabs” Kris Flodin says: 15% of the blood donors don’t survive and the areas where they are released can become stinky with rotting carcasses. Who would like to live next to a drop off pond? Horse island residents get ready! rFC says: These ancient creatures are absolutely magnificent. However, they do not need to be bled anymore. There is a synthetic and sustainable alternative called recombinant Factor C. This is the same enzyme as in the horseshoe crab, but produced in a bioreactor. Buzzboy says: Never heard of this before. Fascinating. The place looks like something out of a science fiction film. BLUNTRY says: What an astonishing article. I had no idea that crabs save lives! Leave a comment. Cancel reply	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line393
__label__wiki	0.526564	0.526564	« Android version for PKR.com’s PKR 3D Poker app SkillOnNet launches Voodoo Dollars in partnership with NextGen Gaming… » Revenues growth predicted for Perform Group British digital sports media specialist Perform Group has issued a pre-close trading update relating to its financial performance for the six months to the end of June and showing that it expects to post a year-on-year increase in total revenues of around 37 percent. Feltham-based Perform Group is the firm behind the LiveSport.tv on-demand and live sports video application integrated on Facebook along with the Goal.com website and signed a deal in March to acquire leading Dutch sports site Voetbalzone.nl. Perform Group revealed that it expects to report total revenues of around £92 million for the six months to June 30 while it has already been contracted some £166 million in business for full-year 2013, which represents a rise of 26.7 percent year-on-year. April saw Perform Group establish the new Perform Sporting News Limited joint venture with print and digital news provider American City Business Journals Incorporated and it declared that this enterprise is already ranked as one of the top five ventures in its sector with ‘good progress’ being made in terms of ‘business integration’ alongside ‘positive advertising market reaction’. Perform Group stated that 2014 license renewal negotiations for its Watch&Bet live video streaming service had already begun with ‘positive early progress so far’ while the re-branding and re-launching of Goal.com across multiple platforms has resulted in ‘markedly enhanced user experience, improved natural search referrals and increased page views per visit’. “We are pleased to report that our good performance has continued across [the first half of our financial year] with year-on-year revenue growth of circa 37 percent,” said Oliver Slipper, Joint Chief Executive Officer for Perform Group. “£166 million of revenues are contracted for 2013 and we are on track to deliver another year of strong revenue growth. “We continue to execute against our growth strategy. In [the first half] we invested in new content and expanded our geographic presence, both organically and through acquisition, in particular in the United States and Canada. These investments, together with additional investment in [the second half], in content, partnerships and further acquisitions will materially strengthen our market position and drive our long-term sustainable growth.”	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line396
__label__wiki	0.662485	0.662485	Our Lady Peace Detail 'Somethingness' Album, Share New Video They are selling copies of the upcoming LP through PledgeMusic By Alex Hudson Canadian rock lifers Our Lady Peace haven't released a full-length since 2012's Curve, but that's about to change. Their new album Somethingness will be out on February 23. This new album follows the Somethingness Volume I EP, which came out back in fall. They're teasing the full LP with a video for the Volume I single "Nice to Meet You," starring YouTube star Matthew Santoro as a ride-share driver. Frontman Raine Maida said in a statement about the new song, "'Nice to Meet You' is based on the premise that we are all inherently 'good', but sometimes it takes a minute to reveal itself, and we are forced to wait or be patient to see that good." Watch the music video down at the bottom of the page. OLP have begun selling their new record through PledgeMusic. It's available on CD, vinyl, digital download and in a variety of deluxe bundles. See the tracklist below, along with OLP's tour schedule for the upcoming trek with Matthew Good. Somethingness: 1. Head Down 2. Nice to Meet You 3. Ballad of a Poet 4. Hiding Place for Hearts 5. Drop Me in the Water 6. Missing Pieces 7. Falling into Place 8. Let Me Live Again 9. Last Train 03/01 St. John's, NL – Mile One Centre 03/03 Moncton, NB – Casino New Brunswick 03/05 Halifax, NS – Scotiabank Centre 03/07 Montreal, QC – MTELUS 03/08 Ottawa, ON – The Arena at TD Place 03/09 Hamilton, ON – FirstOntario Concert Hall 03/10 London, ON – Budweiser Gardens 03/12 Buffalo, NY - Rapids Theatre 03/13 Oshawa, ON – Tribute Communities Centre 03/15 Toronto, ON – Massey Hall 03/16 Toronto, ON – Rebel 03/17 Orillia, ON – Casino Rama 03/20 Winnipeg, MB – Burton Cummings Theatre 03/23 Calgary, AB – Grey Eagle Event Centre 03/24 Cranbrook, BC – Western Financial Place 03/26 Edmonton, AB – Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium 03/28 Prince George, BC – CN Centre 03/30 Kelowna, BC – Prospera Place 03/31 Abbotsford, BC – Abbotsford Centre More Our Lady Peace Related Concerts Aug 06 @ 2:00PM - Titans Of Rock Grand Forks @ James Donaldson Park 54-40 \| Our Lady Peace \| Randy Bachman & Burton Cummings \| Starship \| Three Dog Night More Related Concerts Our Lady Peace's Summersault Festival Returns with Bush, Live, Dear Rouge Our Lady Peace's long-dormant Canadian festival Summersault is set to return this summer, and the lineup for the 2019 event has just been re... 'I'm Going to Break Your Heart' Reveals the Creative Tensions of Chantal Kreviazuk and Raine Maida Directed by Annie Bradley and Jim Morrison Legend has it that Chantal Kreviazuk and Raine Maida (of Our Lady Peace) first met at a Pearl Jam concert in 1996. The two Canadian musician... Ottawa's CityFolk Announces 2019 Lineup with Robert Plant, Leon Bridges, the Strumbellas Ottawa festival CityFolk will return to Canada's capital city from September 12 to 15, and organizers have now unveiled this year's initial... Raine Maida and Chantal Kreviazuk (Moon Vs. Sun) The Exclaim! Questionnaire You might not know Moon vs. Sun, but you definitely know the people behind it. Since finding initial fame in the '90s, Raine Maida and Chant...	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line401
__label__wiki	0.610538	0.610538	Chest-beating at the Palace EDITORIAL 05/31/2010 Chest-beating at the Palace The economy is booming and there is no other person to credit it to other than Gloria and her policies focused on the economy. This is of course another Palace line and such a predictable line that most Filipinos saw coming the moment the National Statistics Office announced a 7.3 percent growth rate in the first quarter. The growth push is as predictable as the Palace mouthpieces of Gloria, however. Money funneled into the economy by politicians itching for a government seat and recover what they had spent and maybe even earn a rich profit in the process, was the main source of the gross domestic product (GDP) expansion during the period. It was practically all election money and the ever reliable remittances from Filipinos working abroad that were responsible for what the Palace has been trumpeting as Gloria’s crowning glory prior to her stepping down on June 30. Manufacturing temporarily rose out of a slump as a result of the election campaign period where the many paraphernalia that defaced the city for nearly a year were churned out by factories. Services, mainly fastfood businesses, also benefited from the election windfall. UP School of Economics professor Benjamin Diokno also cited the government’s rush to complete the so-called State of the Nation Address projects, which are major infrastructure projects which Gloria had listed in her 2006 Sona to support her Strong Republic thrust, as another source of growth. For the nine years under Gloria, the economy had undergone a roller-coaster ride but as Gloria would say, it never went into a contraction. Of course, there were times when suspicions arose that some tweaking was being done with the statistics when growth would show a growth of less than one percent to avoid a technical recession. For now the most stable source of economic output is the money being sent home by Filipino diaspora, which if seen in a different light, is labor resources sapped out of the economy. The Palace has been bragging about Gloria’s policies centered on the economy that has been responsible for the strong growth in the quarter but the challenge would be for anybody in Gloria’s stable to name at least two defining policies of the supposed Glorianomics..... MORE Fraud marks the spot Piracy stifling Asian software industry, say experts Questions, questions, questions! An Aquinorroyo II Cross your fingers Midyear blues Chest-beating at the Palace EDITORIAL 05/31/2010... Fraud marks the spot FRONTLINE Ninez Cacho-Olivar... Piracy stifling Asian software industry, say exper... Questions, questions, questions! C.R.O.S.S.R.O.A.... An Aquinorroyo II DIE HARD III Herman Tiu Laurel ... Cross your fingers HE SAYS Aldrin Cardon 05/31/2... Midyear blues SHE SAYS Dinah S. Ventura 05/31/20... Impound PCOS machines, flash cards — poll observer... JPE to ensure proclamation of winners by June 15 ... Chinese envoy confident of Northrail’s second life... Erap-Binay camps welcome military, police votes 0... NPA ambushes gov’t troops; 5 soldiers go ‘MIA’ 05... Senate sessions resume today, but legislative work...	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line410
__label__wiki	0.59801	0.59801	Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS Links 22/03/2009: $200 GNU/Linux Sub-notebooks, Metapad Becomes Free Software Posted in News Roundup at 9:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz Devices/Embedded Free Software/Open Source Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day TuxRadar by the numbers Linux users make up 34.47% and Mac users are 9.19%. Here’s the full list: 1. Windows: 55.11% 2. Linux: 34.47% 3. Macintosh: 9.19% 4. iPhone: 0.45% 5. Unknown: 0.35% 6. iPod: 0.14% 7. FreeBSD: 0.08% 8. SunOS: 0.07% 9. Android: 0.05% 10. SymbianOS: 0.03% 11. OpenBSD: 0.01% Linux will never rule the desktop, and here’s why: If you draw a line giving the rate at which Linux is taking over the desktop you’ll see it’ll take several years from now to become the biggest operating system on desktops. This is never going to happen, because the desktop as it is will die long before we reach this point. The good thing is Microsoft will probably die with it! As hardware will keep getting cheaper and cheaper and smaller and smaller in the coming years, I don’t see any application left for PC’s so the desktop will probably die. And guess what will be running on 90% of the dedicated devices? Most probably it’s a version of a certain free and flexible open source operating system. I can’t wait for the year the desktop dies! Sun’s share in the EDA space has been steadily declining since the hey days of the 80’s. It appears that Linux is the eventual winner for EDA operating systems. I wish IBM well in their pursuit of Sun. And yesterday I realised another thing. My Gentoo machine is complete its feel almost of I am going to get bored. I got a chill because what is there next after Gentoo “Linux from scratch” , luckily I am busy with B.Sc Computer Science, so there is a new field to keep me busy programming. Installing Linux on my girfriend’s laptop: an overview I could go on and on like this, because there’s still some tweaking and configuring to be done, but the main things are installed and are working just fine. She already used it a couple of times, telling me she didn’t notice the difference with Windows. In contrast, OpenSource software is designed, built, and deployed in an entirely different manner. Yes, there are committees, or small groups that actually are making most of the decisions, but these groups are generally open in their communication and anyone can get involved. The decision making process is fundamentally different for OpenSource than it is for Commercial software. Synapse Brings Elegant Jabber/Google Talk to Linux Linux only: It will only ever truly support Jabber/XMPP/Google Talk, but Synapse, a new alpha-level IM app, is a pretty—and pretty efficient—way to chat if you’re all about open-source communication. Calibre: iTunes for e-books? Calibre is a cross-platform, open-source library for your e-books that can also sync them to your e-book reader. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it offers a massive range of individual book customizations, as well format conversion and newspaper-style RSS feed grabbing, but lacks a slick interface that would go a long way towards convincing skeptics that it’s a powerful tool. Six Latest Firefox Addons You Should Check Out We all love Firefox for the sheer number of extensions that can be added to it. There are plenty of brilliant yet unpopular extensions that have been written about before. Kernel Space A Working X Input 2 Implementation This morning, however, Peter Hutterer (of MPX fame) has his first working X Input 2 implementation. ATI Linux Drivers Gain Support For Unreleased RS880 AMD’s current flagship offering when it comes to integrated ATI graphics is the Radeon HD 3300 / 790GX. This IGP was introduced last fall as a minor refresh to the Radeon HD 3200 / 780G Chipset. As something new for consumers to consider, soon it looks like AMD will be introducing the RS880. The RS880 will likely have a marketing name within the Radeon HD 4000 series and will be their fastest integrated graphics solution, well, for now. Arch Linux Review Arch Linux is a rolling release distribution, meaning there is no specific dates for new releases, it is continously developing, it is almost always at the bleeding edge, with the most updated versions of packages. This means you only have to install once, and then just keep updating arch, and you will always have the most “recent release”, this is one of the aspects I like the most about Arch Linux Arch Linux is a great distro, it has almost always the latest package versions available, it is optimized to run on modern computers, and is a great option for the Desktop user, it may requiere a little of work to make it work, but do not be afraid it is actually easy to make it, you just need some time. SAM-Linux, PCLinuxOS’ Ugly Duckling? Running SAM2008-claw-rc1 is still a very enjoyable experience proving once more that SAM-Linux is definitely not an ugly duckling. PCLinuxOS 2009.1 userbar My Distro is Better Than Yours…. Not! The way to strengthen Linux is to work for the developers of the distro that you like, to strengthen the community and to help others. The way to strengthen the position of your favourite distribution is to promote it with good public relations and to advertise its merits. Stay positive and we all get better. Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 134 Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #134 for the week March 15th – March 21st, 2009. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu 9.04 Beta Freeze in effect, LoCo Team information request, Ubuntu Server: KVM call for testing, MOTU Release Charter, QA Team next testing day, Ubuntu Drupal 6.3.0 released, Ubuntu India re-launches User Forums, Ubuntu Honduras begins to work, FossConf 2009 – Madurai and Ubuntu Tamil Team, Announcing Eucalyptus, Ubuntu Forums nuts and bolts, Daniel Holbach: Time to Party, Soren Hansen: gtk-vnc and virt-viewer mozilla plug-in, Thierry Carrez: What I want Ubuntu Server to be, What is Qimo?, Ubuntu Podcast #22, Server Team Minutes: March 17th, QA Team Minutes: March 18th, Behind MOTU Interview: Roderick Greening, and much, much more! Debian 5.0 ScreenShots Now Debian does not include all of those extra packages that you are use too. But Debian does a great job of keeping it lean and simple, and if you want you can use the handy apt-get util to get the extra’s that you need. Please enjoy the ScreenShots below… Distro Review: Debian Lenny Ok it’s time for another distro review and I’m a bit overdue with this one but I’m a big fan of Debian and the dedicated community who develop it I make no secret of that. When I reviewed Etch (4.0) last year I declared that if I were to finally grow up and settle down with just one distro this would be the one. I like the fact that it’s not backed by any commercial entity and sticks closely to it’s Free Software principals. After some delay version 5.0 Lenny was finally released this Valentine’s Day, how appropriate but would it still be true love? There was only one way to find out… Scientific Linux 5.3 Troy Dawson has announced the release of ScientificLinux 5.3, a distribution built from source software packages for RedHat Enterprise Linux, but enhanced with additional applications andtools: “Scientific Linux 5.3 has been released forboth the i386 and x86_64 architectures. Absolute Linux 12.2.2 Was Released Paul Sherman, the creator of Absolute Linux, a Slackware-based Linux distribution, has announced yesterday, March 19th, the release of Absolute Linux 12.2.2. Among others things, changes were made to the Linux kernel that is now at version 2.6.28.7 and to the installation that now uses ext4 as the default filesystem. Ext3 and ReiserFS are of course still available for those who don’t yet trust the hype surrounding ext4. Denix v.0.5 Full Welcome to the Incognito Forum Another distribution has joined LinuxQuestions.org. Please welcome Incognito. I’d like to thank anonym for working to get the forum setup and for participating here at LQ. LinuxKidX – An educational Linux Distribution to children LinuxKidX is a LiveCD with possibility to install on hard disk based on Slackware Linux. The distribution has few games suite to kids from 2 to 12 years old. Clonezilla 1.2.1-47 Igelle PC/Desktop v0.6.0 Igelle PC/Desktop is a graphical desktop operating system for Intel (x86) compatible personal computers, including desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, etc. It features the usual features and applications found in modern desktop operating systems/environments, in an attractive and lightweight configuration. K-DEMar 4.8 OpenGEU 8.10 Luna Serena The power and flexibility of Ubuntu and Gnome. The magnificence and beauty of E17. Perfect and fast even for a Virtual Machine. Finally a fully functional Enlightenment Desktop. OpenGEU: when a Gnome reaches Enlightenment. Ututo 2009 GParted 0.4.3-4 Parsix GNU/Linux 2.0r0 `Boss Skua` is out! Happy Spring! Happy Spring! Happy Nowruz! After several months of testing and development, the final version of Parsix GNU/Linux 2.0 code name `Boss Skua` is out. Parsix 2.0 ships a brand new kernel based on Linux 2.6.26.8 with extra patches and drivers, the live CD compression system has been upgraded to version 3.4 which brings higher compression rate, UnionFS is default for live CD mode, several bugs have been fixed and several packages updated. Zenwalk Gnome 6.0 has been released ! Zenwalk Gnome 6.0 is out! We are proud to announce the release of Zenwalk 6.0 Gnome Edition! As always, Zenwalk features the latest Linux technology, featuring Linux kernel 2.6.28.7 and the Gnome 2.26.0 Desktop Environment. Embedded Linux Training Event to be Held on May 6 – 8 in Maynard Massachusetts Arduino hardware hacking: Part 1 Arduino is cool. It’s cool because it’s a tiny device – about three inches by two inches – that comes with a USB port and a programmable chip. It’s cool because you can program it using a very simple programming language known as Wiring. The Arduino programming IDE is available under the GPL for Mac OS X, Windows and, of course, Linux, so the only things standing between you and your own pet hardware project are an Arduino board, a cool idea, and of course a Box O’ Tricks – some neat little parts you can plug into the Arduino to make it do more interesting things. Sprint Launches the Palm Treo Pro… Really Sprint has introduced Palm’s latest Windows Mobile smartphone… for real this time. The Treo Pro offers mobile broadband, Wi-Fi, a keyboard, and a GPS receiver. Sub-notebooks TomTop sells 7″ Xburst Netbooks for USD209 CPU: XBurst 400 MHz CPU 32 Operation system: LINUX Memory: 128M RAM Linux Netbooks – Cheap is good It is shortly that netbooks have taken consumer-level Linux for both personal and professional reasons. With the increase in demand for these ultra-small netbook computers, Linux has a fair chance to attract its consumers. Linux is offered as a standard on many netbooks. They are a paradigm changer and their USP is the price and openness which the user experiences. Netbooks provide a real opportunity for Linux to market and gain the mind-share. Open-Xchange to Launch Open Data Cloud Data and personal content exists in many different silos across the Internet, amd getting them all into a single interface and sharing them is no easy task. One potential solution to the problem is set to be demonstrated next week by open source software vendor Open-Xchange with an approach that uses semantic microformats as a mechanism for sharing and publishing data in a collaborative manner. Open source middleware: the time may be ripe Another advantage to the open source approach is that products get designed and tested based on the input of a broad community. “FUSE and ServiceMix are developed in a very diverse community,” Debbie says. “Because of that, you see a lot of requirements come in from people that are in different types of environments. So, inherently, you’re going to be able to support a lot of different technologies. It really does require you use open standards, and align by the standards.” FLOSS Weekly 61: Arduino Guests: Massimo Banzi for Arduino. Massimo Banzi is the co-founder of Arduino with partners David Cuartielles, Gianluca Martino, Tom Igoe, and David Mellis. Banzi is the CTO of Tinker.it!. He has worked in Milan and London on projects for companies such as Prada, Artemide, and Adidas. For four years he functioned as an associate professor at the Interaction Design Institute Ivera. Beyond his private endeavors, he has been a guest speaker and teacher of workshops throughout Europe. Free Software Everyone Should Know About For photo editing needs, The Gimp makes a pretty good Photoshop replacement. It can do many of the same things. Granted, it’s nowhere near as robust as Photoshop, it will surprise many of the most skilled “shoppers” out there. Kineo Open Source updates Moodle build with new extensions Kineo Open Source is pleased to announce that they are extending their standard hosted Moodle build, with a number of useful third party extensions. THREE reasons to upgrade to openoffice.org3 If you’re still using openoffice.org 2.X… oh, waitaminute, you don’t know what openoffice.org is? It’s a free (free as in “free beer” and also free as in freedom!) office suite: writer for letters, theses, etc (think “Word”); impress for presentations (think “powerpoint®”); calc for spreadsheets (think “Excel®” or “1-2-3®”); draw for, uh, drawings… Writer’s Tools extension for OpenOffice.org Writer’s Tools is a set of utilities designed to help OpenOffice.org users perform a wide range of tasks. Using Writer’s Tools, you can back up documents, look up and translate words and phrases, manage text snippets, and keep tabs on document statistics. Department of Defense to Open Source Corporate Management Information System The DoD’s Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) announced today a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between DISA and OSSI, a US-based non-profit membership organization. Open source firms register confidence in UK government policy But Shine also suggested that the government’s commitment was part of a larger national move towards open source software owing to the state of the British economy. Research and Markets: Will Government Open Source Mandates Deliver Savings, or Increase Costs? We have seen a recent upsurge of news and blog posts regarding various government agencies worldwide investigating, moving toward, or (increasingly) requiring open-source-based software for their systems. Three key reasons dominate the rationale for these moves: -Expectation of reduced software costs; -Expectation of reducing or eliminating vendor dependencies; and -Expectation of improved standardization that will reduce future costs of software development, integration, and maintenance. metapad turns ten Today marks the 10th aniversary of the first public release of metapad (see the history page if you don’t believe me). To celebrate I have finally, after long promise, released the source code for metapad. That’s right, now metapad is officially open source and available on GitHub. Not just freeware but truly “free software”, as is defined by the FSF. MIT OpenCourseWare: Teaching the world for free By any measure, MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative, which seeks to “open source” education by making course ware from premier institutions available online to all for free, is a success. U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology Technology is changing the way students learn. Is it changing the way colleges teach? Not enough, says George Siemens, associate director of research and development at the University of Manitoba’s Learning Technologies Centre. While colleges and universities have been “fairly aggressive” in adapting their curricula to the changing world, Mr. Siemens told The Chronicle, “What we haven’t done very well in the last few decades is altering our pedagogy.” Foster plan for open source education The bill, H.R. 1164, is now before the House Education and Labor Committee, chaired by California Democrat George Miller. Its full name is The Learning Opportunities with Creation of Open Source Textbooks Act of 2009. CollabNet-Sponsored Subversion Open Source Community Releases Subversion 1.6 The CollabNet-sponsored Subversion open source community today announced the general availability of Subversion 1.6, the world’s leading software configuration management (SCM) tool for distributed teams. Major new features in the latest release include the ability to detect tree conflicts, improved management of credentials, and reduced repository space requirements. The new software is available immediately as a free download at subversion.tigris.org, and more information is available at www.open.collab.net/products/subversion/whatsnew.html. Google Summer of Code Announces Mentor Projects As everyone should already know, Google is running the Summer of Code again this year. For those who don’t know, GSoC is where Google funds student’s to participate in Open Source projects and has been running for 5 years, bringing together over 2600 students and 2500 mentors from nearly 100 countries worldwide. Community Live: Newcastle Maker Faire, March 14-15, 2009 The chaps from BBC backstage were showing off some cool bits and pieces from the BBC’s R&D department, including an open source multi-touch sensor which makes cunning use of a web-cam and can just about manage to track 10 fingers (though not so easily on the prototype they were showing because the surface was so small). They also showed a _very_ clever software image stabilisation system which worked with the picture stream from dumb, but high definition cameras. Programming for Kids with Basic-256 on Ubuntu My first introduction to computers and the world of programming was through languages like GW-BASIC, QuickBASIC, and ANSI C. As a kid, I inherited an 8086-based PC from my father, along with a few operating system manuals and programming references. Later on, I spend endless hours playing with Apple II computers in elementary school. This was probably the single biggest influence on my future professional life, as it taught me that I could easily make a computer do exactly what I wanted. Lawmakers Clueless About BitTorrent and P2P The entertainment industry managed to convince the French government to draft a law that will make it possible to disconnect people from the Internet, if they receive more than two copyright infringement warnings. Sadly, most of the politicians who plan to sign the law into action have no clue what they’re dealing with. Bhaskar Chakravorti, business theory visionary (SF) 06 (2005) [Embedment notice: your Web browser does not support the <video> tag. Firefox 3.1 supports it.] Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating. Permalink A Single Comment Send this to a friend Eye on Microsoft: Miscellaneous Links Posted in DRM, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 8:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz Microsoft kills Windows Mobile honeycomb VOLE HAS CHANGED the distinctive honeycomb interface on the new Windows Mobile 6.5 following shedloads of complaints. Dear Microsoft, Fix Digital Rights Issues on Xbox 360 Because the DRM used on the Xbox 360 is based off of the hardware ID the content was downloaded on and one’s Gamertag, I now must be online for your server to authenticate me, and unlock my content. In essence, all my DLC is being held hostage until I get online, get a new unit, or both. Why? I am so glad you asked. After swapping my Elite hard drive to a 360 that does work, two of my Gamertags have become corrupted, seemingly in a blink of an eye. The hardware that the DRM is tied to cannot even play the games needed to use said DLC, and the Gamertags that my content is tied to are corrupt. A third Gamertag on the same hard drive, which has purchased nothing, is perfectly usable. The Conficker Worm: April Fool’s Joke or Unthinkable Disaster? Conficker is a program that is spread by exploiting several weaknesses in Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Various versions of the software have spread widely around the globe since October, mostly outside the United States because there are more computers overseas running unpatched, pirated Windows. (The program does not infect Macintosh or Linux-based computers.) An estimated 12 million or more machines have been infected. However, many have also been disinfected, so a precise census is difficult to obtain. Diebold Admits Audit Logs in ALL Versions of Their [Windows-based] Software Fail to Record Ballot Deletions CA SoS Bowen described the Diebold audit logs as “useless”. Permalink Comments off Send this to a friend Quick Mention: Microsoft Sued Again for Patent Infringement (BackWeb) Posted in Microsoft, Patents, Windows at 7:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz Summary: BackWeb sues Microsoft over software update methods MICROSOFT CAME under another patent strike just before the weekend. BackWeb Technologies Ltd. said Friday it filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. San Jose-based BackWeb (Pink Sheets:BWEBF) is seeking damages, an injunction and a declaration by the court that Microsoft’s software update technologies infringe BackWeb’s patents. Forbes has some more details. There was another patent lawsuit against Microsoft approximately a week and a half ago, in addition to TomTom's. █ Permalink 9 Comments Send this to a friend A Deeper Look at TomTom’s Patent Case Against Microsoft Posted in Courtroom, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, GPL, Kernel, Microsoft, Patents, TomTom at 7:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz Can Microsoft navigate its way out of this one? Summary: A detailed overview and some analysis of TomTom’s countersuit LAST month we wrote about Microsoft's case against TomTom and a few days ago we put forth some quick initial coverage of the counter action from TomTom. The whole situation is reason for realisation that Microsoft bullies "open source". The following excellent analysis from Andy Updegrove says that this aggressive strategy will break Microsoft apart from the inside. He also writes: The reason the licensing question matters is the message that it sends: Microsoft has for years been approaching vendors alleging that it owns 235 patents that it claims are infringed by popular open source software, and that several dozen of these patents are infringed by any software distribution based upon the Linux kernel. These discussions are always behind the scenes, but when Microsoft succeeds in reaching agreement with a significant vendor, and especially a Linux vendor (like Novell), Microsoft makes an announcement, and puts another notch in its gun. The next time it visits a vendor – or even an end user – that list gets to be longer, and the person receiving the next visit is tempted to think that there must be a basis for all those other companies signing on the dotted line. So, it would appear, the smart thing would be to get in line as well. It all started with Novell, which came to Microsoft to sign the patent deal. In fact, watch this OpenSUSE talk from FOSDEM [Ogg]. It’s all about patents, so a preliminary assessment leaves a bad taste. But anyway, that’s where we are today and Microsoft’s patent aggression against Linux began just a couple of weeks after the Novell deal when Steve Ballmer made some rude remarks. To repeat them from the source: In mid-November, shortly after the pact was announced, Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer said companies that sell or run Linux, but aren’t covered under the Novell deal, are illegally using Microsoft’s IP. “We believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability,” he said. He said in a later meeting: “I do think it clearly establishes that open source is not free.” Going back to the TomTom case, there are many new Slashdot comments and also LinuxToday comments. Carla Schroder, the editor of LinuxToday, cautiously called TomTom’s response a “dual GPL dodge” when she wrote: So, is this turning into a joint venture GPL dodge? Jeremy Allison says that “It isn’t a case of cross-license and everything is ok. If Tom Tom or any other company cross licenses patents then by section 7 of GPLv2 (for the Linux kernel) they lose the rights to redistribute the kernel at all.” So rather than tiny TomTom heroically standing up to the big mean Borg, it looks more like business as usual. One reader, Frank Earl, responded to Carla by making a correction and rightly adding that TomTom ought to have gone for the jugular (or roots) of software patenting. This depends on whether or not TomTom settles that way. These things often do NOT end up being cross-licensing deals once they get into the courtroom pissing match we see here. It’s only a problem if they cross-license. My regret is that they led with more patents instead of running the Bilski decision up the flagpole first. With Bilski, MS’ stuff is abjectly invalid and wouldn’t pass muster on a review at this point because the USPTO’s already rejecting things like that out of hand, citing that decision as being a reason for unpatentabilty. CNET stresses that TomTom’s defensive counterstrike does not directly defend Linux and therefore it does not resolve the problem; it pushes it away which is a form of procrastination. TomTom fights back, but not over Linux I just wish that it were fighting over FAT, not GPS. Both sides have engaged exceptional counsel, as Groklaw notes, but I doubt that the case will ever get to trial. Very few lawsuits ever make it so far, and the counsel on both sides will get paid handsomely to resolve the case at the lowest possible cost, which invariably means an out-of-court settlement. That, too, doesn’t work in favor of open source. I think that it’s fair to say that open source would benefit–whatever the outcome–from seeing Microsoft’s patents put on trial as they relate to Linux. Not only does TomTom’s countersuit ignore the Linux-related patents, but given the likelihood that the suit will settle, it’s likely that open source will be hurt, not helped, by the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) ignited by the lawsuits. Where are those 42 patents from Microsoft anyway? If TomTom uses a classic Linux (kernel), as argued by a guru of gpl-violations, then why did Microsoft narrow down its claims so significantly? Still, Microsoft has not backed off its claim that it owns 42 patents used in the creation of the Linux kernel, and its suit against TomTom indicates that the company intends to defend that claim in court, if necessary. Here is another take, this time from IDG: GPS device maker TomTom has shot back at Microsoft with a claim of patent infringement, after the software giant raised concerns in the Linux community with a recent lawsuit against TomTom. That concerned Linux supporters, who worried that Microsoft might make good on past statements that it owns many patents for technologies used in Linux. But Microsoft said open source is not the focal point of its suit against TomTom. The case is about TomTom’s specific implementation of the Linux kernel, Microsoft said. Mr. gpl-violations has already refuted Microsoft’s argument that TomTom has a “specific implementation” of Linux. He did inspect the code, too. It’s interesting to find that Microsoft sent its claim to the International Trade Commission (ITC), which seems to indicate that it’s the old embargo strategy, whose purpose is to strangle competitors and pressure them into unwanted deals very quickly. Microsoft filed its claim with the ITC, as well as a civil suit in federal court in Seattle, after the companies were unable to reach a patent-licensing agreement. Microsoft did the same thing when it attacked Primax using patents. As Mary Jo Foley points out, TomTom is no easy nut for Microsoft to crack though. Maybe it’s because of the GPL. It looks like TomTom isn’t backing down from its refusal to become one of the growing list of companies signing cross-patent licensing agreements with the Softies…. And it looks like TomTom’s suit isn’t deterring Microsoft from its original complaints, either, based on the company’s statement on TomTom’s countersuit. ITWire has amassed this list of the patents at play: The four patents cited in the suit filed by TomTom are: US Patent 5,902,350: Generating a maneuver (sic) at the intersection through a turn lane; US Patent 5,938,720: Route generation in a vehicle navigation system; US Patent 6,600,994: Quick selection of destinations in an automobile navigation system; and US Patent 6,542,814: Methods and apparatus for dynamic point of interest display. Some more new references regarding the countersuit are included below for completeness and future use: TomTom sues Microsoft on patent infringement TomTom Countersues Microsoft In US Over Alleged Patent Breach “TomTom sues Microsoft TomTom Countersues: Linux And Microsoft Going To War (MSFT) “TomTom countersues Microsoft TomTom Countersues Microsoft for Patent Infringement TomTom chooses a moderate limited hang out route “They Started It!” — TomTom Countersues Microsoft TomTom fires back with patent infringement suit against Microsoft While I have no idea what is happening behind the scenes with the two companies, it appears that TomTom is one of the first to stand up against Microsoft’s use of patents to throw its weight around. The attention centering around the Microsoft filing is in relation to TomTom’s use of the Linux kernel to implement its file naming system. Many believe that this is the first blow from Microsoft in an all-out war against Linux. Whether or not this is the case, TomTom won’t be rolling over and settling behind closed doors back the looks of it. TomTom Tells Microsoft To Get Lost The February suit brought by Microsoft said that TomTom was using part of its GPS technology that relied on the Linux OS. That assertion raised eyebrows in the Linux community. For the past several years, Microsoft has claimed that it owns the patents to technology used in Linux. The open-source community has gone back and forth with the company, and recently Microsoft said it was willing to work out some kind of agreement with developers. Microsoft has said that the TomTom suit is not targeting open-source software. And Here Comes The Patent Nuclear War: TomTom Sues Microsoft Back For Infringement For years, people in the software industry have noticed that patents have become the nuclear stockpiling of the tech industry. Lots of companies feel the need to stock up on as many patents as possible, not for any good reason — but to have something to scare people off from suing, knowing that they’ll get sued right back. As one person wrote, “it’s your turn, Microsoft.” █ Patents Roundup: Red Hat Again; EPO and USPTO Debated Posted in America, Deception, Europe, Patents, Red Hat at 6:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz Rest on your laurels and you will lose your rights Summary: Another quick look at AMQP and some developments in major patent systems ONE ISSUE on our minds at the moment is the Red Hat situation because we are hoping to receive answers to some questions which were raised in: Red Hat Fights Fire with Fire The Other Side of Red Hat: Pieter Hintjens on AMQP and Patents Novell, Red Hat, and Software Patents: Strike II A regular reader drew our attention to this press release from Microsoft which pretty much intersected with Red Hat’s “Welcome to AMQP, Microsoft” (on the same date, 9:34 AM). Clearly enough to some observers, Red Hat claims leadership in AMQP and it knew about this announcement from Microsoft in advance (they collaborate in other areas). Jeff Gould, who hates Free software with passion and always promotes Microsoft, pushed it into Slashdot’s front page using his eternal sockpuppet/pusher, “AlexGr”. AlexGr writes to tell us that Microsoft apparently has plans to embrace a little known messaging standard called AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol). Red Hat, a founding member of the AMQP working group, was very excited about the news and wrote to welcome Microsoft to the party. This is an issue that will be debated a little later. Red Hat does point out that “Because this [joining of Microsoft] will be of concern to many people—particularly in the open source community—it is worth pointing out one of the legal ramifications of Microsoft joining AMQP. There is a strong IP provision in the contract for joining the AMQP working group. Anyone joining the AMQP working group must freely license IP that is used by AMQP—AMQP is and will always be an open standard that is free to implement. By joining the AMQP working group, Microsoft has signed this contract. So, there is no threat of Microsoft holding the AMQP standard hostage via patent threats.” We are actually a lot more concerned about the patent systems which, according to this new article, continue to leave too much room for patenting of software, i.e. algorithms (even post-Bilski). It is easier to obtain patent protection for computer software and/or business method type inventions in the US as opposed to Europe, as the US criterion of a “useful, concrete and tangible result” is easier to meet than the corresponding European “technical effect” or “technical character” requirement. An invention consisting of software that controls a machine, for example, would most likely meet the technical effect requirement in Europe and would also certainly be patentable subject matter in the US. Europe wants to poorly resolve its software patent pains, which are partly to do with ambiguity and loopholes. The Register concurs with previous reports and suggests that further loopholes may be created that facilitate software patenting. The European Commission has reiterated its demand for the creation of a single European patent. It said the absence of such a protection is hindering the growth of technology companies in the European Union. Whether patents are becoming a little passé and give way only to litigation, that may be hard to tell. Earlier this year, the EPO had laid of some staff and it tried to claim a rise in patent quality. This tune is being propagated by IP Watch right now. In a trend appearing in other patent offices around the world, patent applications at the European Patent Office continued to rise in 2008, but at a slower rate toward the end of year. At the EPO, this was coupled with the lowest percentage of granted patents in its history. Over in the United States, the bad 'reform' receives support from a state senator. His endorsement was predictable though because of the man’s prior role. Senator Orrin Hatch, a leading proponent of a bill to overhaul the patent process, predicted it will pass and contain language making it more difficult to show misconduct in applying for patents. The Senate version of the patent reform bill does not currently include language making it harder to strip a patent holder of a patent if they erred in the application process, known as “inequitable conduct” in the patent world. This bill does not address patent quality; it’s about damages and it’s about patent trolls, which it does not even put an end to. To give an example of the sad state of the USPTO, Georg Greve of the FSFE found this one: “Painting kit and related method” According to the Daily Herald, those who can afford to challenge patents may — just may — be able to shoot down existing patents. Aruba says another Motorola patent rejected by patent office Aruba Networks Inc., which is involved in a patent battle with two Motorola Inc. units, says the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has kicked out one of the patents under which it’s being sued. The patent office rejected all claims of Motorola’s patent 7,173,923, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said in a statement March 17. So why was it granted in the first place? It’s worth adding that Aruba makes products with Linux and even Microsoft uses Aruba's goods. Microsoft is very pleased with Aruba’s Linux-based solution which it has deployed in its own facilities, according to its own people. On the one hand, this Aruba case shows that patent lawsuits are worth fighting against. The patent which attacks Amazon's Kindle, on the other hand, won’t be so easy to extinguish, according to Wired. Interestingly enough, the patent filed in 1999 was approved in November of 2007, the same month that the first Kindle launched. And all of the hype and sales estimates have likely encouraged Discovery to finally take action. The problem might not be individual lawsuits. Lawsuits are enabled by a system that leads to them. It is a system that encourages ownership of anything under the sun which is to blame. This is good for lawyers. Patents are the blood in their system, so the more patents, the merrier. The more lawsuits, the merrier too, so it’s about disputes and conversations, not engineering. █ “There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.” —Bertrand Russell IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: March 21st, 2009 Posted in IRC Logs at 3:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz Enter the IRC channel now Guest Editorial Team Community: Get involved Supporting the Efforts Support Techrights Spread TechBytes Billwatch Resurrected Billwatch Articles Database Billwatch Quotes Database Billwatch Snippets Database – Part I Billwatch Snippets Database – Part II Billwatch Snippets Database – Part III Billwatch Snippets Database – Part IV Comes vs. Microsoft Companies to Avoid Foire aux Questions (French) Get the Facts: Microsoft/Novell Deal How to Use This Web Site Introduction to Patents (in Videos) IRC Archives Making the Move to GNU/Linux Microsoft Critique: Resources ODF Resources OOXML Abuse Index Pages Archive Patent TrollTracker Resurrected Samba Resources Site Archives (Download) Site Wiki The Free Software Credibility Index Twitter and Identi.ca Why Boycott? 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__label__wiki	0.533643	0.533643	← Behind the NBA Three Point Contest: Increasingly on the mark NBA Rankings: All Star Breaks and Last Call before the Trade Deadline → Was Isiah Thomas one of the greatest point guards ever? February 18, 2013 \| Filed under: Basketball Stories and tagged with: Dennis Rodman, Detroit Pistons, Isiah Thomas You know, Dave has taken swings at some big names over the years. I can’t help but wonder if his Detroit fandom has kept Isiah Thomas off limits. Of course, by the time Dave got around to analyzing and writing about basketball Isiah had gone from an “all-time great” point guard to one of the biggest failures in NBA management. And, that’s helped Isiah’s legacy in a way. You see, Isiah Thomas simply isn’t anywhere near the same level as other point guards greats. Let’s just do a simple test, what if we look for point guards since 1978 with more wins than Isiah Thomas. Isiah is ranked 24th! Is that “good”? probably. All time great though? Nowhere close. Isiah does have one thing to his credit. He played over 35,000 minutes, which is pretty rare. What if we restrict our list to players with 30,000 or more minutes and then examine by per-minute rank. How’s Isiah fair then? Isiah still ends up ranked 13th, right behind Derek Harper. In fact, if we check Isiah’s career totals, he ends with a WP48 of 0.099. What’s that mean? It means he was exactly average. Now, a long career of average play is in fact quite impressive (just ask Kobe) but it does not make you one of the top point guards of all time. Let’s do a quick review of Isiah’s career to see what happened. Wins per 48 Minutes 1982 0.0 0.000 1984 11.7 0.187 1994 -0.3 0.000 To recap. As a rookie, Isiah Thomas was useless and contributed no wins. As a sophomore, he played average. Then in third season he had a breakout year! He earned his team over 10 wins, was ranked top 15 in the league and was the second best point guard behind Magic Johnson! In 1985, he topped himself. He was 4th in the league, behind only Magic, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan! Not bad company to be in. He dropped from the ranks of top 15 in 1986 (the competition was fierce) but remained a top 3 point guard behind Magic and Mo Cheeks. After 1986 though, Isiah slid to being an average player. He stayed slightly below average through 1992. Finally in 1993 he stopped even being near average and in 1994 he played his last season as a negative player. So, the reality about Isiah is that he was a top point guard, but only for three seasons. Unlike the careers of other players like John Stockton or Jason Kidd, he just didn’t keep playing well enough, long enough. The key behind Isiah’s perceived greatness is threefold. Yay Points! Did someone mention overrated scoring? First, he was able to score lots of points and get lots of assists (two important things for point guards.) But what’s important to note is that Isiah was never that efficient at shooting. His career True Shooting percentage was 51.6%. And only in his 1986 did his True Shooting percentage exceed 53%. Isiah also was very prone to turning the ball over. Career wise, he ended at just under 4 turnovers a game. Now, from 1984-1986, that was fine, because his assists were between 11 – 13 a game! But after that stretch he fell closer to 8-10 a game. Isiah’s inefficiencies were hard to notice, but impacted his performance. The Isiah I used to know They used to be close Next, Isiah actually did play that well. As I mentioned for a brief three seasons, Isiah was as great as people think he was his full career. And we’ve noticed that a player’s reputation can often blind people to how good they still are. Kobe is not the player he once was. Kareem and Shaq both fell apart but people still thought they were important pieces. Isiah fell apart much sooner than we’d have expected, but his reputation let people overlook that he was missing shots and not getting as many assists. Indeed, he made the All-Star game every year of his career! We’ll give the voters a little credit, he did not make the All-NBA team after 1987. He was still earning MVP votes up until 1991 though. Count the rings! Finally, Isiah did win two NBA titles in 1989 and 1990. Of course, the real credit goes to underrated stars Dennis Rodman and Bill Laimbeer. That said, winning titles in the late 80s let him stay relevant The fact that he was considered for the 1992 Dream Team being an example. The thing about Isiah is that he’s hard to explain. You see, he followed the classic age curve flawlessly. He started slowly as a rookie, improved and was looking great heading into his prime. Except, at age 25, when most players hit their peak, Isiah degraded. It’s one of the most bizarre things to notice. You see, Isiah SHOULD have been an all-time great. Had he played another few seasons at that level and slowly degraded, he’d easily have been a top 5 or top 10 point guard. Except, his degradation was swift and at an unexpected time. I’d love inside analysis from Pistons fans. The key point I can make is that, even reviewing Isiah’s own numbers, it’s clear he was not the same player from 1987-1990 as he was from 1984-1986. The question is why? And the answer to that could reveal why Isiah ended his career a far cry from an all-time great. -Dre Here’s the list of point guards with better win totals than Isiah Thomas Mark Jackson Maurice Cheeks Terry Porter Fat Lever Nate McMillan Rod Strickland Muggsy Bogues Mookie Blaylock Derek Harper Written by Andres Alvarez Visit my Website Follow me on Twitter 27 Responses to "Was Isiah Thomas one of the greatest point guards ever?" Arthur North says: I’ll say it. Isaiah Thomas will have a better career than Isiah Thomas. Claudio Gomez says: Nice post, thank you very much. I keep on looking for such data, but I have never found a WP48 all-time ranking in which we can see players from different eras compared, without the distortion of having the old players with lots of games ranked on top. Is there such a thing? How does Kevin Johnson of the Suns stack up to this group? Tommy Grand says: “So, the reality about Isiah is THAT HE was a top point guard, but only for three seasons.” Great article, typos notwithstanding. Julien Rodger says: One interesting fact is that Isiah’s last All-NBA team was in 87, and he never finished top 10 in MVP after 87 either. This is especially striking considering the media’s best player on an elite team gets lauded in those awards, especially MVP. It’s a league where friggin Jermaine O’Neal and Peja have top 5 MVP years cause someone had to get votes for that team success. Billups and Parker finishing top 5 is a good comp for PGs. If Isiah was considered true superstar he’d have cruised to top 5 rankings in the late 80s. Only other possibility is a voter vendetta against him. Jonny Jetmore says: Julien- Peja was actually quite productive during the 2004 season, when he finished fourth in MVP voting. He was second in the league in points per game while also being second in the league in effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage. His ability to score a lot of points on very high efficiency deserved a lot of credit, although I suspect the credit he received from the media had less to do with his efficiency and more to do with him keeping the Sacramento Kings as one of the top teams in the league that year in spite of their “star” Chris Webber (who was always given a bit too much credit for the early 2000s Kings’ several year period of near contention) missing most of the season. Peja only seems like an odd choice for an MVP candidate in retrospect because he never had a season that good again. Anyway, I find it interesting that many basketball fans now realize that Iverson’s scoring was much less impressive than it looked because he did it on very low efficiency, but very few notice that Isiah’s shooting percentages were often similarly bad. I think Isiah’s two championships have caused people to view him as an all-time great and overlook the serious flaws in his game, even though he won those championships largely because of the great defense and rebounding that Rodman and Laimbeer provided. http://wagesofwins.com/2007/06/20/looking-back-at-the-bad-boys/ http://wagesofwins.com/2008/08/23/chauncey-billups-and-isiah-thomas/ Just wanted to note… I did write about Isiah in the past. Above are two posts on the subject. wiLQ says: “it’s clear he was not the same player from 1987-1990 as he was from 1984-1986. The question is why?” In 1987-88 his steals, assists and free throw attempts plummeted and he never reached previous levels again which to me suggests a loss in athleticism. A year earlier he played a lot of playoff games for the 1st time in his career so maybe he couldn’t properly recover after that? Or maybe he had some kind of nagging injury? It’s possible considering his famous Game 6 on severely sprained ankle because it suggests a) there could have been something wrong with it before and b) he could have hidden very well previous minor problems with health. Another theory is… change of pace. During his 3 very good seasons Pistons played at around 105 possesions per 48 minutes and later they slowed down to 98, then 95 and finally to around 92! Splitting on ball duties with Dumars could also be a big factor. Interesting. My theory would be that Isiah was better in the playoffs than the regular season after 1986. Isiah maybe became more concerned about staying healthy/involving others on the team during the regular season knowing that they would reach the post-season without his max effort during the regular season then showing up in the post season against higher competition. Isiah Thomas post season win per 48 Season WS/48 86-86 .091 FmrNBAfan says: Numbers don’t even remotely tell the whole story. The only legitimate way to define Isiah Thomas was to watch him. Few could “take over” a game as completely as Thomas could, or be the dominant player, night in and night out. No stat defines that — none. As for his “dropoff,” someone has already mentioned that it coincided with the arrival of Joe Dumars. It’s hard for a guard to run up numbers with a back-court mate like that. Thomas wanted to WIN, even at the expense of stats. “If you have to work really hard to justify your conclusion, you probably have the wrong conclusion.” What I see here is number-crunchers working really hard to denigrate a player whose greatness shone on the court. I was linked here from Basketball Reference, and I’m sorry I was. You won’t see me here again. Andres Alvarez says: Former? NBA Fan, While I love the narrative you’re telling, I don’t buy it. Have you watched every NBA player to see if they take over games as well? I doubt it, that’s a lot of games to watch. Additionally, how many NBA players the opportunity. Could T-Mac or Grant Hill with better teams have taken over more games? Possibly. As to the hard work? Not really, the post didn’t take that much work. It’s pretty simple, as a scoring point guard, Isiah was inefficient and turned the ball over. Those things lose games. I enjoy wanting to believe a player is as good as your eyes say. Sadly, our eyes are terrible judges. How old are you ? did you see this man play, the dude was as great as it gets at that position. ITs real simple why you see Thomas’s numbers dropoff. Chuck Daley and Thomas came to the understanding that for the Pistons to win rings he couldn’t dictate each and every possession. That means not filling up stat sheets. He still lead the teams in scoring and was the go to guy, but he sacrificed shots, points, and even assist for the team. THATS why he is an all-time great. He could have filled up stat sheets for 12 years but then he would have been a career loser like Stockton, Nash, Mark Jackson, and many others. He is stil the ONLY PG to lead his team to a Finals WIN in the Modern Era(1979). Thats what advanced stats, sabermetrics, dont show. Thomas completely changed his approach to games, he could only take the Pistons so far him being the show. Chris Paul has figured this out too, and has some great parts for himself in LAC. Notice Paul’s scoring and assist are WAY down from his NO days when he was lighting up stat sheets, and putting on a one-man show everynight, but those NO teams were DOA, put it frankly people were SHOCKED that team extended the Lakers to 6 games in a series 2 years ago, but this LAC team is poised for a title run, and EVERYONE knows its because of him. But 20 years from now someone who didn’t watch the game or see what happened will make some improved stat to prove he wasn’t as an effective player anymore. I’ve taken 3 graduate level stat courses, I get what your saying, but I also played Basketball, coached, or officiated on the HS level for 15 years and i’m not even 30 yet. Players roles can change dramatically from year to year. We had a guy in our League burst onto the scene as 10th grader averaging 20 a game. But followed up his 11-12 grade year only averaging 16pts. Well one big reason was the team started scheduling way tougher opponents even going out of State for games. The biggest reason however was as a 10 grader all the guys on the Varsity was 5’10-6’2″ so him being the most talented he scored more. By the time he was a senior they had 4 guys over 6’4″ so they went to a flex style offense because of so many size advantages at every position, so basically anyone could get easy layups on the low-block cross-screen. Now you could see the talent was still there and he still was heavily recruited, and went to a major school. But looking purely at stats he wasn’t as good but his teams were playing in the State Finals but didn’t win his 11/12 grade year. BUT the year he averaged 20 they were bounced out of the tourney 1st or 2nd round. Also, there is a logical reason with Thomas ALL-NBA numbers dropping off. It directly coincided with him agreeing with Dennis Rodman and his Bird comments. Christian, that’s a nice story but the fact doesn’t check out. Thomas’ usage rate and turnover % didn’t change much throughout his career. In fact if anything his usage rate was very tiny bit higher later in his career. His raw stats went down mainly because the team played at a slower pace and he played slightly less minutes not because he used less possessions in comparison to the team’s total possessions. Also believe it or not, advanced metrics do show Chris Paul is as good as ever. His WinsProduced/48 minutes this season is the 2nd highest of is career, higher than all of his NO days except 08-09. Such is common in sports. Nice narratives but simply not true when you dig into the facts. Guys like Iverson and Thomas were great because they could post average numbers while making the opposing team spend a lot of defensive energy on them. Both of them played on hard nosed defensive teams that needed someone who could shoulder the load. The point is had Iverson and Thomas been guarded like your average NBA player they would be going off 30 a night. As their careers went on, their bodies broke down, and teams came up with better plans for containing both Iverson and Thomas, but that doesn’t mean they could just leave them open or give the space. The ability to make a good shot out of a bad shot is valuable, or even an average shot out of a bad shot. One day there will be a lot more information on defense, probably soon now that teams like the Knicks are spending on camera’s that show you how good of a percentage people shoot when they are a certain height off the floor, that show how much energy defenders spend defending certain players, what your body temperature is when you make a shot, what it is when you dunk, what it is when you’re defending Lebron James, and what it is when you’re defending Jamal Crawford. Theo Long says: When i judge a players greatness stats (especially in basketball) don’t tell the whole story. when i judge a player i use the “eye test” and my eyes told and continue to tell me he’s one of the 5 greatest players ever. I love how the writer left out the fact that the pistons from 81-86 as bad if not worst defensively as the denver nuggets. thomas stats went down from 87 on due to the fact that he had better talent around him and he generally paced himself in the regular season but always raised his game in the postseason, he didn’t start to physically decline till 91. thomas was cp3 before cp3 to based an article i could say basing this article solely on “win shares” laughable but honestly its just plain ignorant. I’d like to clarify a point on your “ignorance” remark to me. My graduate studies were in computer vision. This involved a fair bit of work with the psychology department and actually examining how human vision works. Some of the key takeaways? You have a blind spot in each eye due to how the hardware is set up. The number of objects you can actively track is limited. You don’t actually update imagery as fast as you think, you have a little window about the size of a thumbnail moving really quickly and your brain will fill in the gaps. Your brain will tune out re-occurring stimuli. Your vision is tuned for about five feet in front of you (the range you can pick stuff up.) What’s more, your memory is pretty limited in what it can keep, and how you remember things is pretty iffy too. In short, falling back on the eye test to me? Well based on my decent background of the subject, it doesn’t do much for me. Hope I’ve cleared up the idea that I’m ignorant on the subject. shoobydooby says: Basketball is a team sport. Any player that did not win a championship in a team sport can never be sure there wasn’t something about their individual game that somehow sabotaged the team effort (Editor’s Note: This is somewhat spurious. You’ve restricted all “championship worthy” players to those that have won titles.). The only way to prove you were capable of playing on a championship team is to do it ). So I don’t buy advanced stats here, because we have no idea how Fat Lever or Steve Nash, for instance, would have performed under the pressure of an NBA Finals because their teams haven’t even made it there, despite MVP awards or better win-share or true-shooting numbers. Isiah Thomas was NCAA Final Four MVP and NBA Finals MVP, meaning he did it at the highest level against the highest competition under the most pressure. Check the list of players who can say the same. Ask yourself if you would rather look back on a career with Nate McMillian’s (really?) or even Mark Jackson’s memories (Editor’s Note: I have provided stats supporting that I would. You have provided no counter-arguments.) John Stockton admired Isiah Thomas so much he asked him to nominate him into the Hall of Fame (Editor’s Note: Former greats may not be great talent evaluators. See Michael Jordan on Bobcats…). I remember Thomas scorching him head-to head to the point where Karl Malone lowered the boom. Perhaps what I am saying is flattening someone’s career into per-minute averages and win-shares doesn’t account for ‘great moments’ and Isiah had more of them than anyone but Magic on this list.(Editor’s Note: Please quantify this. I doubt you have actually counted great moment in all of these player’s careers.) This article is ridiculous! You must not have ever watched the man play! Isiah was a dominate player throughout his career. Your opening argument is ludicrous… in Isiah’s first season as an NBA player, the Pistons won 18 more games more than than the year before drafting him! That’s an incredible turnaround. Magic and Bird didn’t improve their teams THAT much. My point is Isiah was instantly an impact player. And you really don’t know what you’re talking about in this whole article. You have the gumption to suggest Isiah only had three greats seasons, and that he was slightly below average from 1986 on… Are you drunk? We wins the second of his NBA All-Star MVP awards in 86 and goes on to the NBA finals for 3 straight years winning back to back titles! The Pistons were the first team to do that besides the Lakers and and the Celtics… In fact Larry Bird’s Celtics NEVER won back-to-back titles. That’s how difficult that can be. Isiah was the best point guard in the league… I’m not asking anybody to agree with me… Even Dr. J goes on to say, “Pound for pound, inch for inch, Isiah was the best ever.” Your calculations are ridiculous. The stats don’t show the real story… Jerry Stackhouse, Benard King, Gilbert Arenas for example, all have known how to create great stats, score 30ppg… even lead the league in scoring… but were any of them ever as dominate as Isiah??? I think not!… This whole article is preposterous! Isiah was the man, and even then underrated… once the whole Rodman statement about Bird blew out of proportion Isiah’s personal accolades took a hit, because media members vote on who get All-NBA selections… Isiah unfairly suffered a hit, but not because his ability to effectively dominate disappeared. Why is it ‘spurious’ to only count championship-worthy players as players who actually did it? How do the numbers magically know that someone you evaluate highly like Nate McMillian would have performed well under the most pressure against the highest possible opponent? When they lost to the Bulls in ’96 it may have been something McMillan was doing out there that cost the series, no? The only way to PROVE you can be part of a championship team’s winning chemistry is to DO it, period. We SUPPOSE players like Charles Barkley or Dominique Wilkins may have won with different teammates but we most certainly do not KNOW it. Responding to the request that I ‘quantify’ Isiah Thomas’s great performances vs. Nate McMillan or Mark Jackson feels ridiculous. Everyone saw them, they led to championships, and yes, I actually did provide counter-arguments as to why i would rather have Isiah Thomas’s career memories, as in the memories of winning it all in the NBA twice and in the NCAA, finals MVP in both. Those are things every player wants to be part of. You’d rather look back at your individual decimal numbers, huh? I totally get why someone like McMillan’s superior height, defense and lower turnovers would make him look better on paper, but I’m not willing to jump in all the way and come to vastly different conclusions than the game of basketball did because of it. Look, I do value this kind of analysis but to me you guys are going to have to get better at listening and addressing peoples’ disagreements, because you come across as smug and dismissive of everyone else. I scored a 1400 on my SATs too, y’know, and my disagreement with this conclusion is not even mathematical, it is philosophical. You’re whole premise is to look at the game of basketball like a GM (and I admit as a GM I’d hire some of you guys right away . . . until you tell me to draft a Nate McMillian over an Isiah Thomas) but statistically 99.99% of us are not GMs . . . we are basketball FANS. That means this is entertainment for us, not science, and if we love scoring it is because it is a beautiful thing to watch. And so was Isiah. . . . Just imagine how clunky all those all-star games would have been with Nate Mcmillan in there ;) shoobydoop says: Another thing that occurs to me is that it is possible that rather than simply benefitting from Rodman and Laimbeer’s abilities to win championships (as the article suggests the numbers show) that Isiah might well have contributed to their abilities himself. That is, it is entirely possible that Dennis Rodman was only able to get floor time because of the scoring ability/floor game/leadership of the Pistons’ guards. John Salley once said that he would never have been able to miss a game with migraines (like Scottie Pippin) because he would have been too scared to answer to Isiah. Point being, if Isiah aided in the development somehow of Dennis Rodman as a Hall-of-Fame caliber player, your numbers have no way of measuring that. You can measure Rodman’s numbers with or without Isiah and compare them, but you cannot trace the cause of a players development accurately. The numbers treat each individual as having innate measurable ability that is not partially created by other players (past or present) and common sense would tell us that is not how the world works. If true, not only would Isiah deserve credit for some of Rodman’s numbers with the Pistons but with the Bulls as well, since we could say Isiah’s contribution to Rodman’s growth as a player lasted beyond the days they played together. I may be naive but I don’t see how statistics will ever be able to capture that. We simply don’t know if Rodman elevated Thomas or the other way around. jack sprat says: As Julien suggests, Zeke was anything but popular around the league. Both he and the Pistons were, in fact, loathed. (I assure you, we Detroiters loved that fact.) Now, as to his “decline”, I suspect that that’s reflective of his growing disdain for the very notion of the everyday grind of the NBA schedule. More than once, he noted that he phoned it in on many a night, saving it up for the big occasion. Whereupon, he almost always came through. With the singular exception of one wayward inbounds pass, he was money when it most mattered. So much so that Kevin Mc Hale once remarked, in all seriousness, that Isaiah was the very best player in the league at the buzzer. I’ll take the grudging respect of those Celtics teams, whom Zeke and Company eventually ran to ground, over the dyspeptic rumblings of statisticians. Basketball is a very nearly zero-sum game, where hogs can and do gobble up their own team’s statistical wiggle room. Think of it clearly, how nearly every game could just as easily be played for just the final five or fewer minutes. That’s when legends are made, not merely born. Isaiah Thomas did, indeed, lose his edge, but that didn’t occur in any sense meaningful to him until sometime after their first playoff loss to MJ and the Bulls, when Zeke’s first step finally left him. Crack on his attitude about the first 43 minutes of meaningless games, if you must, but easy on his legacy. Most of the guys who are supposedly “ahead of” him aren’t worthy of rinsing out his headbands. One way Carmelo Anthony is like Michael Jordan says: […] Isiah Thomas was on two championship teams and played in 11 All-star games. During his time managing the Toronto Raptors, Toronto went 52-123. He was a bit better as a coach in Indiana, going 131-115 in three seasons before being fired. A couple years later, Thomas was hired by the Knicks to serve as their President of Basketball Operations. With Thomas as President, the Knicks went 180-288 across six seasons; during the last two seasons, Thomas was also the Knicks’ coach. Not only were the Knicks terrible on the court, they also usually had the highest payroll in the NBA. Famously, Thomas’ preferred strategy was to acquire as many “scorers” as possible. In other words, more scorers — or what Melo wants — has been tried in New York very recently. […] How good was Isiah? If Isiah and Michael Jordan was the same height Isiah would have been better than Jordan. No need to argue with ignorant people. Timothy White says: This article is GARBAGE! Isiah was one of the all-time greats! If you nitpick Jordan enough, you could use statistics to lie and say he wasn’t an all-time great. What a way to twist statistics in your favor to prove a nonsensical point. The guy leads the team to 3 straight championship series, but he’s not an all-time great? To give Laimbeer and Rodman that much credit for winning those championships shows your lack of understanding of basketball.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line418
__label__cc	0.555655	0.444345	House effects A lot of the points I made in my essay on how not to report polls boiled down to not taking a poll in isolation. Not making the outlier the story, only comparing apples to apples, not cherry picking – they all boil down to similar things, especially on voting intention. In the last couple of days I’ve watched people getting overexcited over two polls. Yesterday’s ICM poll provoked lots of Tory excitement on Twitter and comments about the Labour lead falling and it being a terrible poll for Labour and so on. ICM’s poll, of course, did not show Labour’s lead falling at all – it showed it steady for the fourth month in a row. ICM’s methodology merely produces consistently lower leads for Labour due to their methodological approach. Saturday night had the usual flurry of excitable UKIP comments on Twitter about being on the rise and being the 3rd party after the Survation poll was published, conveniently ignoring the fact that 95% of polls this year have had them in fourth – often by a very long way. There was, needless to say, no similar excitement over UKIP being on 4%, 11 points behind the Lib Dems, in the ICM poll yesterday. Different pollsters have different approaches, on things like weighting, likelihood to vote, how they deal with don’t knows, how they prompt and so on. While all the pollsters are politically neutral, these do have some consistent partisan effects – for example, ICM’s methods tend to produce the highest levels of support for the Liberal Democrats, YouGov’s methods tend to produce the lowest levels of support for the Liberal Democrats. The graph below shows an estimate of the partisan house effects of each polling company’s voting intention methodology, calculated by comparing each company’s poll results to the rolling average of the YouGov daily poll (1) YouGov, ICM and ComRes’s online polls tend to show the highest shares of the vote for the Conservative party. However, in the case of YouGov this is cancelled out by a tendency to also show the highest levels of support for Labour, so the result is that ICM show the lowest Labour leads while YouGov tend to show some of the highest Labour leads after Angus Reid and TNS. For the Liberal Democrats, ICM show far higher support for the party than any other company, averaging at plus 3.3 points. Next highest is Survation and ComRes’s telephone polls. At the opposite end of the spectrum YouGov tend to show significantly lower Liberal Democrat support. It would take a much longer post to dissect the full methodology of each pollster and the partisan implications, but to pick up the general methodological factors that contribute to the house effects: How pollsters account for likelihood to vote. Some companies like YouGov and Angus Reid do not take any account of how likely people say they are to vote away from elections(2). Companies like ICM and Populus weight by how likely people say they are to vote, so that people who say they are 10/10 certain to vote count much more than someone who says their chances of voting are only 5/10. At the opposite end of the scale from YouGov, Ipsos MORI include only those people who are 10/10 certain to vote, and exclude everyone else from their topline figures. Other twists here are ICM, who also heavily downweight anyone who says they didn’t vote in 2010, and ComRes, who use a much harsher likelihood to vote question for people voting for minor parties than for the big three. Most of the time Conservative voters say they are more likely to vote than Labour voters, so the more harshly a pollster weights or filters by likelihood to vote the better it is for the Tories. How pollsters deal with don’t knows. Somewhere around a fifth of people normally tell pollsters they don’t know how they would vote in an election tomorrow. Some pollsters like YouGov simply ignore these respondents. Some like MORI ask them a “squeeze question”, something like “which party are you most likely to vote for?”. Others estimate how those people would vote using other information from the poll, such as party ID (ComRes) or how those people say they voted at the previous election (ICM and Populus). These adjustments tend to help parties that have lost support since the last general election – so currently ICM and Populus’s adjustment tends to help the Liberal Democrats and, to a lesser extent, the Conservatives. In past Parliaments it has helped the Labour party. How the poll is conducted. About half the current regular pollsters do their research online, about half do it by telephone. While there is no obvious systemic difference between online and telephone polls in terms of support for the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats there is a noticable difference in support for UKIP, with polls conducted online consistently showing greater UKIP support. This may be to do with interviewer effect, with respondents being more willing to admit supporting a minor party in an online poll than to a human interviewer, or may be something to do with sampling. How the poll is weighted. Almost all pollsters now use political weighting of some sort in their samples. In the majority of cases this means weighting the sample by how people said they voted at the last election – i.e. we know 37% of people who voted in Great Britain in 2010 voted Tory, so in a representative sample 37% of people who say they voted at the previous election. It isn’t quite as simple as that because of false recall – people tend to forget their vote, or misreport voting tactically, or claim they vote when they didn’t actually bother, or align their past behaviour with their present preferences and say how they wish they had voted with hindsight. Most pollsters estimate some level of false recall in deciding their weighting targets, Ipsos MORI reject it on principle with the effect that proportionally their samples tend to contain slightly more people who say they voted Labour at the last election, and somewhat fewer who say they voted Lib Dem. How the poll is prompted. As discussed at the weekend, almost all companies prompt their voting intention along the lines of Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, Scots Nats/Plaid if appropriate and Other. Survation also include UKIP in their main prompt, leading to substantially higher UKIP support in their polls. All these factors interact with one another – so you can’t look at one in isolation. For example, MORI’s sample tends to be a bit more Labour than other parties, but their turnout filter is harsher than most other companies which disadvantages Labour and cancels out the pro-Labour effect of not weighting by past vote. ComRes’s online polls tend to find a higher level of UKIP support than many other companies, but their harsh filter on likelihood to vote for other parties cancels this out. They also change over time – so while re-allocation of don’t knows currently helps the Lib Dems, in past years it has helped Labour (and when originally introduced in the 1990s helped the Tories.) Inevitably the question arises which polls are “right”. The question cannot be answered. Come actual elections polls using different methods all tend to cluster together and show very similar results – polls have a margin of error of plus or minus 3%, so judging which methodology is more accurate based on one single poll every five years when all the companies are within the 3% margin of error is an utter nonsense. Realistically it a more a philosophical question than a methodological one – the reason pollster show different figures is that they are measuring different things. YouGov don’t make second guesses about don’t knows and assume everyone who says they vote will. Their figures are basically how people say they would vote tomorrow. In comparison ICM weight by how likely people say they are to vote, assume people who didn’t vote last time are less likely to do so than they say they are, and make estimates of how people who say don’t know would actually vote. Their figures are basically how ICM estimate people would actually vote tomorrow. They are two different approaches, and there is not right answer as to which one to take. Shouldn’t a pollster actually report what people say they’d do, rather than making second guesses about what they’d really do? But if a pollster has good reason to think that people wouldn’t behave how they say they will, shouldn’t they factor that in? No easy answer. Given these differences though, when you see a poll, it is important to remember house effects and to look at the wider trends. A poll from ICM showing a smaller Labour lead than in most other companies’ polls isn’t necessarily a sign of some great collapse in Labour’s lead, it’s more likely because ICM always show a smaller Labour lead than other companies (ditto a great big Labour lead in an Angus Reid poll). That said, even a big Labour lead from ICM or a small Labour lead from Angus Reid shouldn’t get people too excited either, as any single poll can easily be an outlier. As ever, the rule remains to look at the broad trend across all the polls. Do not cherry pick the polls that tell you what you want to hear, do not try to draw trends from one company to another when they use different methods and don’t get overexcited by single outlying polls. (1)House effects were calculated by using the daily YouGov poll as a reference point. I took a rolling 5 day average of the YouGov daily poll, and compared that to each poll from another company. This was used to calculate each company’s average difference from the YouGov daily poll. Then it was calibrated to the average for difference for each party, so that YouGov wasn’t automatically the mid-point!) (2) YouGov do take into account likelihood to vote during election campaigns, using roughly the same approach as Populus Filed under: Methodology, o 99 Responses to “House effects” nickp Approval -38 Interestingly, the massive lead in restof the south has shrunk to 5…but in Mid/Wal there is suddenly a mere point in it. Economy, Pensions & Health are the issues most likely to affect individuals, while Economy, Immigration & Health are the perceived issues affecting the countr(ies). This is the bigger end of the Lab score and the lower end of the Tory. If they move any further apart it would be worrying for the Tories, I think. Can Lab break 45? Will we see any Con below 30? Are the LDs being overscored? carfrew @nickp Or given the lack of prompting, UKIP underscored? Apologies if this has been discussed in the past ,but if UKIP were prompted, what would be the expected effect on their poll rating? And how much does it tend to add for those that get prompted? Stuart Dickson SHEVII, – “To be honest with you my gut feeling is UGov is getting closer than the others.” You Gov actually had the worst performance in the polling leading up to the Scottish general election in May 2011. The “winner” was in fact Ipsos MORI. And they were not slow to advertise the fact: Ipsos MORI press release: ‘Top of the pollsters!’ http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2780/Top-of-the-pollsters.aspx Some other links regarding “winning” polling firms: ht tp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_in_the_Scottish_Parliament_election,_2011 ht tp://www.scotlandvotes.com/blog/page/2 ht tp://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/975 ht tp://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2011/05/09/the-holyrood-polling-race-the-result/ Great informative article (again). And the graphic conveys so much. Re latest YG poll – probably MoE for Lab lead. Nothing out of the ordinary. However, I guess Cons will be happy the lead is not increasing (it’s remarkably stable) as they retain faith it can be overturned by the next GE. Lab supporters will be happy the lead is broadly stable, and nothing it seems LD or C can do eats into it permanently. LD supporter(s)…I can’t find anything for you to feel optimistic about. NC’s announcmenet abotu the rich paying more in tax seems to me designed to placate/headoff unrest at the LD conf. A bit of red meat for the activists to chew on and not sink their teeth into the leader. I think the ICM/Guardian polls look the most intuitively right to me. Can Lab break 45? One would think it possible since LDs have been lower before. One wonders where the floor is… according to Mr Kellner LDs have lost around a fifth of their hardcore vote but obviously as more leave the remainder are progressively more devoted and it’s not uncommon for the more invested to only see sainthood in their leaders; to be fair some of the LD voters who haven’t bailed yet are possibly suffering Stockhom Syndrome by now… Up to round about now, LDs have always had something to hold out for. AV at first, later Lords reform, and various other things like the green thing in between, but as each thing fails to be delivered, there’s going to be less reason to hold out. Two-and-a-half years is a long time to put up with nothing much really to look forward to… a change of leader’s about the only thing left. A bit of red meat for the activists to chew on and not sink their teeth into the leader. Conjures up visions of Cleggburger and chips! How many activists are there left anyway? Does anyone have the latest membership figures for LDs ? crossbat11 What’s this? A 12% Labour lead? It’s time I ran that nice warm bath again! Do I detect the merest hint of a little sarcasm here? @Ozwald How many activists are there left anyway? Now there’s a thing. Presumably given the exodus of leftie LibDems, the remainder of the activists ought to contain a much greater proportion of right-wingers. Is this going to have an impact on campaigning? Would right-wing Lib Dems feel more comfortable targetting Tories? Or be more effective at it? crossbat No. I think both parties are unloved, and I have never quite believed that over 40% love Ed and his team, at least so far. Capital withdrawal from Spanish banks hit a record 7.5% of GDP in July, mirroring the same pattern as pre bail out Greece, while Portugal saw shrinking tax revenues and seems certain to need another bail out soon. Everywhere you care to look, conventional austerity has failed. Entirely expected, utterly predictable, and thoroughly depressing. The UK example being the most depressing, as we really did have a swathe of alternative paths to take, but chose to ignore them in favour of a sterile ideology. I’m struck this morning by the execrable press coverage that the government, and Cameron in particular, is receiving today. The July borrowing figures achieved far more news coverage than is normal for normal PBR monthly stats, and while the three previous months had also shown a rising deficit, it was the July numbers that really seemed to wake up the media world that something was wrong. At the time I pondered whether this was a turning point, and a week or so on I’m beginning to firm up in that view. The deficit was Cameron’s chosen performance metric on his own selected battleground – and he is now publicly failing. Even though I anticipated a Cameron led government being a bad experience and one that was largely devoid of principle or competence, I didn’t expect to be witnessing the smell of a dying administration just two and a half years in their first term. The scale of the internal collapse of moral and discipline is striking, and while the 2015 general election results may not seem altogether too bad for the Tory party, I expect the effects on them will be shattering. Glad you liked reading it . Yes-the conclusions must be difficult for you……….as for me ! Not sure about your parallels with Heath. All politicians have “the best interests of the state at heart”-it’s just that their policies & competency don’t always match their objectives. I’m not sufficient a political historian to find a parallel for Clegg-perhaps he is just another example of Powell’s dictum. I don’t share your affection for Heath. Yes he introduced many commendable welfare benefits, but his brief , disastrous flirtation with Keynsianism […], and failure to deal effectively with Trades Unions […] & political power play , led to ….we all know what. Heath suffered greatly from the loss of Macleod. Dunno. I have given up trying to work out what LDs now stand for. If over half of LD MPs lose their jobs in 2015 then perhaps grass roots members will have more influence, and then maybe set about rebuilding their party image? @MikeN So you think old Cleggy is belatedly acquiring some cojones? I doubt it somehow; it’s more likely to be some empty positioning gesture before the Lib Dem conference. As a policy, it will come to nothing, rather like most of the “progressive” initiatives he thinks he’s foisted on the Coalition.. However, in his “wide-ranging” interview in today’s Guardian he did suggest that the boundary changes were indeed dead. He suggested that there was no point the government putting them to a vote in the Commons because “they weren’t going to happen”. So when is a parrott a dead parrott? Has the old bird breathed its last or is it a Cleggite dead parrot; merely resting. How can we ever tell with the old flip-flopper? “So you think old Cleggy is belatedly acquiring some cojones? I doubt it somehow; it’s more likely to be some empty positioning gesture before the Lib Dem conference.” I def think it’s all about heading off dissent/unrest at the LD conf. I’m sure LD activists will fall for this further NC nonsense. I have an image of LD activists aboard the sinking Titanic as a small group of musical instument players playing some happy clappy tune lead by their glorious leader. It’s quite often the case that parties may get away with stuff because other factors may muddy the waters and make it difficult to apportion responsibility. Tories have the misfortune of being in a position where that is increasingly not the case. They were already on dodgy ground because Labour left them with growth, but on top of that the Euro “crisis” has not come to pass and even if it does it’ll probably be too late. Meanwhile as you point out there’s not enough movement on the deficit and austerity is failing elsewhere. In addition to running out of excuses, I do wonder about the extent of impact of another factor: a change in heart towards the coalition in the Murdoch press, owing to Leveson, Cable’s supposed war on them, and the knock on effect of encouraging other media to do likewise. BBC do tend to take their lead at times form what’s hot in the other media possibly to avoid charges of bias. @crossbat11 So when is a parrott a dead parrott? Has the old bird breathed its last or is it a Cleggite dead parrot; merely resting. It’s pining for the Lords… Great piece of analysis by Kellner over on the YG site. I have repeated at various times since the 2010 GE that the LD leadership totally misunderstood where it’s support came from. NC’s nonsense about replacing Lab demonstrates this lack of understanding. There is only outcome when a party leader makes such a crass strategic mistake and shows such appalling misunderstanding. The sooner the party gets rid of him the quicker they can recover. swampmongrel Interesting piece. Given that ICM reallocate ‘don’t knows’ based on their behaviour at the previous election, can somebody tell me if ICM polls were more favourable to Labour (than other firms) from 2005-2010? I guess I could find out myself but I’m sure you geeks all over it already! I quite like the ICM methodology as it seems to control better for the ‘mid term blues’ or ‘swing back’, whatever you want to call it, effect. Roger Mexico For the record last night’s YouGov was the following: Lab 44 Lib Dem 10 UKIP 8 SNP / PCY 3 BNP 1 Respect 0 Another 12 point lead, which seems to be the top of the 8-12 current range. Non-voters 25% including the usual high-teens percentage of 2010 Conservatives, around 10% of 2010 Labour and mid-high-twenties for the 2010 Lib Dems. Government Approval was 23 – 61 = -38. I suspect the few lower figure we saw during the Olympics and after were a passing fad and we’re seeing a reversion to the previous level just ‘under’ 40. Only MoE movement on the Issues trackers as far as I can see. Tables are here: http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/n4sezu4now/YG-Archives-Pol-Sun-results-280812.pdf Fair enough. Might depend a little on which MPs… R Huckle It is interesting to note that on two recent occasions, where Labour have had increased leads of 12%, YG/The Sun have delayed releasing the poll data. I presume that this is just allowing more time for the data to be checked ? http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/n4sezu4now/YG-Archives-Pol-Sun-results-280812.pdf If the poll is within the scope of being normal, within the range of 10% +/- 3%, then I am not sure why they would delay it. As for the poll, I am getting a sense that Labour might now go through a period of having larger leads and that they could well break through the 45% barrier. In regard to the cabinet reshuffle, I think Cameron will only make a few changes, with more changes to made within the junior ministerial ranks. My prediction is for Theresa May to swap with George Young. Baroness Warsi may be dropped and replaced by Michael Fallon. But that is about it. Cameron won’t replace Osborne, having only just said he will remain chancellor until 2015. But I think the Treasury minsterial team will be changed, with Laws coming back to replace Alexander. statgeek @ Anyone really. Where can I find data on electorate numbers for MoE population calculations? For example I can see Scotland’s 2011 election wiki has 1,989,222 for the seat votes and the turnout is supposedly 50%, so can estimate 3,978,444. It’s a little approximate though, and I wondered if there’s a source for the other YG areas (London, RoS, Mid & Wal, North). I assume that a sum total of the sub-areas will amount to the UK electorate. Lab lead over 10 YouGovs: 10.1% Frequency: 9%(4), 10%(3), 11%(1), 12%(2). AmbivalentSupporter I think taxing the rich would be a great idea, but I also think those earning over £40,000 should be taxed and contribute more too. That way, those earning over £40,000 could help subsidise tax breaks for those at the bottom (and let’s face it, £40,000+ is the kind of salary that the majority of people in this country can only dream of!) These wealthy few should contribute more than at present IMO. Neither will happen though. I agree with CrossBat – it’s just hot air and the Tories will reject it anyway, especially now the Libs are rejecting the boundaries. paulcroft My predicted 45/31 is coming soon and it will be a breakthrough – provided Ed M. talks sense at the conference and the Tories keep talking …. well, Tory. @ Billy Bob MAD data for 30 [email protected] Con: 33.2 Lab 43.1 Lead: 9.9% Pretty close. The UK data has been fairly static now for weeks. In fact, so static that there are no outliers in the 30 Lab samples, and one outlier in the 30 Con samples (one instance of 35). This amounts to 98.3% of samples included for calculating the lead. Even 28 of the 30 Lib samples are included (two instances of 11 excluded). I’ll not bother with the regional crossbreaks though. :) @statgeek I don’t do stats I’m afraid, I have been looking at the broadbrush headline figures, posting the odd two-week rolling average. Looking back over the last 10 weeks on YouGov Labour’s lead does seem to have been very gradually edging up: Splitting it into two five-week chunks, moving from 7-11% > 8-12%, or from a ten-poll average of 9.2% > 10.1% I am not sure lab getting above 45 and the UKPA being 45/31 amounts to a breakthrough. Welcome that it would be imo for a Labour majority to be the most likely outcome this would need to be that position after the 2014 conference season. Yougov seems pretty static around a lead of circa 10 points. Nothing seems to be shifting at the moment. I think Yougov is pretty much spot on with the ‘true’ lead of around 7 or 8 points (if you take into account likelihood to vote). Wonder how Nick Clegg and the Libs refusing the boundary changes will change the nature of the coalition. Presumably it will make the Tories a bit more forceful and they won’t have to please/placate the Libs so much anymore. “Do not cherry pick the polls that tell you what you want to hear” Why not? Not only does it do wonders for the spirits, but I also recommend the cathartic effect of adjusting any Angus Reid poll to compensate for their 6% underestimate of the Labour vote at the GE. Shame they only publish every two months or so. Still, on the bright side, given all that’s happened, is there any indication of a shy LD effect to go along with the shy Tory thing? I wonder if we don’t let the ‘shy’ tag mislead us. This isn’t so much about about some sort of love that dare not speak its name as reluctance. People, being realists, tend to vote not for the best but for the least worst option. Many of those who voted in 2010 are currently saying they are unsure or won’t both next time, but in practice most will, either for Party they find least unattractive or to keep out the Party they find worst. The Lib Dems not only have the highest level of ex-voters who are currently homeless, they are also the traditional choice of those with nowhere else to go. As you can see from last night’s poll, there are a lot of these – as is usual in mid-Parliament. So there is still a lot of potential there for more Lib Dem votes. I think as well that they may actually be less damaged by the coalition than some may think (or hope). If you look at the tables that Peter Kellner used in his piece that Colin pointed to: http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/x1q4z0wfrp/YG-Archives-Pol-Prospect-RespectPolicy-230812.pdf you can see that the most common belief about “the impact of the Liberal Democrats on the current coalition” is that Overall, the impact of the Liberal Democrats has NOT BEEN SIGNIFICANT either way (YouGov’s caps) at 30%. Only Conservatives think it has been negative and even 32% of “Lib Dem deserters” think it has been “slightly positive”. Most of the really virulent opposition comes from Labour supporters who would never have voted Lib Dem except tactically. And even the tacticians may have second thoughts when they are effectively voting to elect a Tory MP just to spite the Lib Dems. So there are a lot of potential Lib Dem voters out there, but they are ‘reluctant’ rather than ‘shy’. It also depends on what both the Lib Dems and Labour do between now and the next election. The Lib Dems need to get rid of Clegg who is tainted beyond redemption. This might even have been true is he had played his hand very well rather than rather badly – and getting worse judging by today’s farce. But Labour also need to convince the public as well. Most of their complaints at the moment seem to be against slightly more extreme versions of policies they themselves introduced. If they don’t persuade voters that they have changed and have new ways of dealing with the country’s problems, they may find voters drifting back to the Lib Dems or failing to vote at all. The answer is you probably can’t. Only Northern Ireland seem to keep central figures for up to date electorates. If you want to work from 2010 electorates, try googling “uk general election 2010 results spreadsheet” and you’ll get loads. Pippa Norris’s site at Harvard has regions and electorates on it, though whether her regions are the same as what you want (or indeed anyone’s regions are like anyone else’s) is another matter (somewhere in a corner Martyn is gently weeping). All that said, if you only want them for MoE calculations it’s pretty meaningless, because once you are dealing with fairly large ‘population’ sizes, it makes very little difference to the actual result. Sample size and the even the value of the percentage you are trying to estimate have a bigger effect. Try it using an MoE/Confidence Interval calculator such as the one here: http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm Those recommending that Clegg be axed could reflect that, had he lost to Huhne, the latter would now be leader…………..ahem…. I voted for Huhne (environment, economy and I thought he was presentable). I just forgot about the human frailty bit but they all suffer from that. It just depends whether and when this is discovered, if ever. Think John Major and Edwina Currie. The ‘new’socialist’ Clegg voted for a 45 to 40 tax break a few months ago. The 45% was supposed to be ‘temporary’ but not that temporary. You could not make it up could you? @Colin I think to portray Heath as being responsible for the failure to deal with TU issues is somewhat unfair. he tried to bring in a sensible regime for dealing with these matters but was rejected at the polls when he asked voters to back him. What we have today was what he envisaged. In fact I believe that election was lost, as usual, on the lack of a FGF in voters’ minds. I meant 50 to 45, got a bit carried away with thoughts of marital infidelity. @Howard Your secret is safe with us ! I do agree with your comment that “you could not make it up”. Amber Star “Personally I don’t think we should put this boundary thing to a vote because it isn’t going to happen,” he [Nick Clegg] said. He also said Laws will be back in cabinet after the reshuffle. That should be put a few tenths, if not an entire point onto the Labour %. His proposal for a wealth tax is being called “the poltiics of envy” by a Tory backbencher who is said to be ‘influential’. I guess it depends how wealthy one would have to be because Nick Clegg is not short of a few quid himself. Maybe the Tory chap meant ‘political envy’; Clegg envies Labour’s 30 point lead over the LDs ;-) The discussion as to how many LD activists are ‘right wing’ is an interesting one. ‘Not many’ from my personal knowledge. I can think of hardly any in my constituency and I have met most of them. ABT would describe them best, some being well to the left of trade union type Lab supporters, especially on social issues and environment.. Some are (were) SDP and there is indeed a ‘Stockholm syndrome’ effect described by an earlier contributor (see above somewhere). ABT is still alive and well in LD ranks. There was a small rump of people a decade ago with whom I had little in common. I decided that they were ex-Whig types as they were all well off and actually looked down on what Auberon Waugh used to call the ‘garagiste’ element of the Tory party. They are all dead or in care homes now. Don’t you know that 99% of statistics are made up (including this one)? ;) @Amber Star I can’t quite understand how our old friend Mr Laws seems to ride blithely above the MPs expense scandal as if he was some sort of victim of it as opposed to being, in fact, one of its more substantial miscreants. Where does all this ” poor old David, great loss to the Government can’t come back soon enough” stuff come from? Am I missing something? We should forgive Jacqui Smith a wry smile when she sees his political rehabilitation and likely rapid return to the Government’s front bench. @Amber, I wonder if the Labour politicians who talk of taxing the rich more would personally agree to paying more tax themselves? Given their history with regards to how they treated the rich/bankers/wealthy in government and/or expenses, I guess not! Oh well….you should lead by example as they say! The Libs, Tories and Labour are all the same in that regards. As we are ‘all in this together’ will we also see Lib/Tory MPs make more personal contributions to the public purse too? I doubt it! David Laws: “The Liberal Democrat MP was thought to have been a millionaire but was claiming up to £950 a month to rent a bedroom from a political lobbyist. Furthermore, his live-in landlord remained the same when he moved from one south London property to another. ” He claimed £950 a month to give to his live-in boyfriend. His utterly laughable defence, even more laughably accepted by his HoC peers, was that he “had to claim” to hide his sexuality. Pah. Nobody “has” to claim anything, especially millionaires. Nobody ever got exposed for not claiming something. The absence of a claim is difficult to stumble over. If he is brought back, might as well Coulson come back, and let him and Huhne carry on from jail, if they should end up there. If there is no really dramatic change over the next two years then the bast slogan the lib dems will be able to come up for the election pamphlet with is “It would have been even worse without us” I doubt it will help them a lot. @Roger Mexico I agree there may be reluctant Lib Dems out there, but this does not mean there are not any shy ones also. If there appear to be Tories unwilling to associate themselves publically with Tory policies, then the same might well apply given their close association with said policies. Then again there might not…. I just wondered if the polling gurus had tried to measure this or take it into account. I agree that many people may well vote for the least worst option. However the problem for the LDs now in this regard is given in Mr. Kellner’s article: “The problem the Lib Dems face is the opposite of the benefit they enjoyed at the height of Cleggmania two years ago. Then, for a short while, millions of voters projected their own idea of the perfect political party onto the Lib Dems and said they would vote for them. Today, many voters project their idea of the LEAST perfect party onto the Lib Dems and say they will cast their vote elsewhere. Unless the party dispels this mixture of confusion and aversion, it will struggle to revive.” … which rather puts a hole in the idea of them being the least worst option or, as you put it, “the traditional choice of those with nowhere else to go.” On the issue of the impact of LDs on the coalition… it may be that overall people think it’s neutral and that LD deserters think it’s slightly positive, but there are three problems with this. Firstly that being neutral or slightly positive simply means the Tories mostly got their own way. Which is nnecessarily a good thing for an LD voter. Secondly, it involved trashing the LD manifesto. Thirdly, some may accept there’s little impact on the coalition but they may have preferred no coalition at all. Not having much impact on the coalition is more of a negative than a positive, one might venture. Regarding what LDs need to do: sure, ditching Clegg is an option, but Kellner’s piece gives more information on this. Kellner split the problem up into four areas: Ideology, policies, branding and leadership. LDs have issues in all four areas. – Ideology is an issue because the left think the LDs too much to the right, and the right think them too much to the left. A difficult circle to square. – policy is an issue for a similar reason as ideology. Not a surprise since policies tend to reflect ideology, or voter perceptions of ideology are liable to be influenced by the policies. Again, the left think LDs are too much to the right because of support for Tory policies, but the right think them too much to the left again. This is what is known as being between a very big rock and a very hard place. – Branding is an issue because, to quote kellner again “Most people – and huge majorities of Lib Dem deserters – say they don’t know what the party stands for, and think then party has broken its promises. Less than one voter in three agrees that ‘by entering the Coalition, the Lib Dems have managed to get real liberal policies put into action’ – and most of these are either already Lib Dem supporters or pro-Coalition Tory voters.” So people don’t know what they stand for, not surprising as most don’t think they’ve managed to implement LD policies, and they don’t trust them either. – Leadership is an issue because Clegg’s polling is dire, and on several dimensions: Especially note that the polling on Clegg is worse with LD deserters. All of this is bad from the point of view of recovering the deserters, or anyone frankly. Kellner doesn’t say this, but you may note the role of trust underlying much of this. Clearly it’s explicitly the case with respect to branding and to Clegg himself, but it also impacts on perceptions of ideology and policy since at present the LDs will find these perceptions difficult to correct without trust. They may come up with a spiffing manifesto but how many would believe it? Hard to see how LDs can correct the trust issue before the election and after the election they may not get another chance to prove that they will in fact deliver on their promises. As for Labour and the need to convince the public, current polling suggests they don’t have to do much convincing. Or at least, nowhere near as much as the Tories and Lib Dems. It’s pretty obvious it’s by no means a done deal for Labour and aside from the issue of any improved performance by the coalition that mat occur Labour have to put policies out there that are attractive and hope that they don’t screw up and there is not the unforeseen etc, etc… Worth noting that Labour have already ditched their leader associated with failure, courtesy of the Lib Dems. Oh the irony, and one wonders how many Lib Dems may come to wish it had been the other way around: that Brown had stayed and made Clegg resign. True since the polling suggests both Labour and Conservative supporters think the LDs have impacted negatively on the coalition and the rest don’t think they’ve impacted much at all. Great post. I’m surprised Pollsters don’t use any latent variables like home ownership, education etc… to weight probability of voting, or are there no reliable ones? Michael – housing tenure is used very frequently as a weighting variable. Education too sometimes (YouGov use education to sample by but not as a weighting variable). Thanks Anthony. « ICM/Guardian – CON 34, LAB 39, LDEM 15 New YouGov and TNS BMRB polls » 3 Dec 42 33 12 4 Con +9 3 Dec 42 32 12 3 Con +10 30 Nov 42 33 11 3 Con +9 30 Nov 45 32 15 3 Con +13 Poll Graphs European Polls Scottish Polls 2015 Voting Intention Historical Voting Intention 2014 Referendum London Polls Mayoral Voting Intention 2012 Historical Polling AV Referendum 2011 Messagespace	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line424
__label__wiki	0.787767	0.787767	UKScreen \| Anonymous – Review Home / Reviews / Anonymous – Review UKScreen Rating: Anonymous – Review - Review By: Jason Korsner - - No Comments Release Date: 28th October 2011 Rating: 12A Director: Roland Emmerich Starring: David Thewlis, Edward Hogg, Jamie Campbell Bower, Joely Richardson, Rafe Spall, Rhys Ifans, Sam Reid, Vanessa Redgrave, Xavier Samuel Country: UK, US Running Time: 130 mins As she neared the end of her long reign, Queen Elizabeth the first (Vanessa Redgrave) had no sons – none that she could tell anyone about, anyway. Her chief advisor William Cecil (David Thewlis) knows more about her past indiscretions than she does, having despatched a handful of illegitimate children to the shires – among them, the son of nobelman Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans) who would strictly be the next in line to the throne. Elizabeth fell for the much younger De Vere years earlier when she watched and enjoyed a play he’d written – but as he got older and assumed the responsibilities of a nobleman, he could no longer be seen to be a man of words, in a court led by Cecil, who feared the power literature could have on the people. But De Vere was still writing on the quiet – he just couldn’t publish under his own name. In his efforts to find another writer to publish his bitingly satirical plays, the best he could come up with was a lowly, self-publicist of an actor called William Shakespeare. As Cecil’s grip tightened on Elizabeth’s court and fears grew over whether the throne would have to be handed to James of Scotland, De Vere’s plays became more succesful and Shakespeare enjoyed increasing fame. But as De Vere’s son looked increasingly likely to be revealed as the rightful heir to the English throne, his cover as the true writer of the plays attributed to Shakespeare is threatened, potentially undermining his political ambitions. And Cecil’s continued plotting to get one of his own family members on the throne further weakens De Vere’s position. This is perhaps not the kind of subject matter you might expect to see from the director of Independence Day, Godzilla, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, but that being the case, Roland Emmerich certainly manages to take the bard’s words off the page and turn them into a big film. The scale of the sets – and set pieces – is more dramatic and cinematic than you might expect in a film about a writer. Much of the press about Anonymous has understandably been about the controversy over how it challenges Shakespeare’s authorship of the works that bear his name, but in truth, it’s more of a political thriller about the succession of the English throne as Elizabeth the First nears the end of her long reign. The authorship of the plays is almost a side issue, but it does provide us with one of the film’s more colourful characters – the rather odious and selfish self-publicist the literary world has come to revere more than god himself. After a weak show in One Day, Rafe Spall is on top form here, stealing every scene he’s in. But that’s not because of a weakness of the other key performances – Rhys Ifans is necessarily understated, hiding under his Elizabethan facial hair and eschewing the accent that his become his trademark to fit perfectly into the Tudor era. This is a film about how Edward De Vere sought anonymity, something difficult to achieve for someone with such talent, influence and standing. Emmerich handles the political intrigue well and the pacing is brisk. He’s not presenting this fantasy as a document of history, and as such, criticising its accuracy seems somewhat churlish. It’s a sumptuous and flamboyant romp – challenging history, certainly, but challenging the political back-stabbing of the Elizabethan court as much as it challenges our understanding of the works of Shakespeare. With rather too many characters – all looking the same under their Tudor locks – and too much flitting back and forth in time, occasionally leaving us wondering where we are, it’s slightly confusing and intentionally controversial but thoroughly entertaining. Opens nationwide 28th October 2011 Tagged with: Anonymous • David Thewlis • Edward Hogg • Jamie Campbell Bower • Joely Richardson • Rafe Spall • Rhys Ifans • Roland Emmerich • Sam Reid • Vanessa Redgrave • Xavier Samuel Red Lights – Review White House Down – Review War Horse – Review The Fifth Estate – Review The Zero Theorem – Review Thanks for Sharing – Review Life of Pi – Review The Look of Silence – Review	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line425
__label__cc	0.640374	0.359626	electric guitar pickup design theory \| electric guitar tuner download Delay and Echo: Adding back in one or more copies with enough delay that they are distinguishable. This was sometimes done with tape loops, so that sounds would be heard repeated a number of times. Digital delay has made possible much more flexible delay and echo effects. I just noticed that no-one has mentioned Robben Ford – another master of both technique and taste and a certain contender for my top ten list, fighting for a place in the same space as Larry Carlton and John Scofield. (John Mayer can certainly play, but for me, any of those three offers at least as much technique, and a wider range of accomplishments, than JM – check out their various versions of “I don’t need no doctor”). Hendrix was known for a lot of things.The beautiful chord embellishments on Little Wing, the grit of the solo in Voodoo Child screaming off of his strat pickups, his cover of the Dylan song All Along The Watchtower, and the backwards solo in Castles Made of Sand, but known as a great innovative guitar player over and over again. His short but explosive career influenced numerous artists for many years past his death and continues to influence musicians today. To make such a difference in such a short amount of time truly earns Jimi a spot as number two. But…then you may ask, “Who is deserving of number one?!” The late 60s and 70s produced even more bizarre and berserk creations. The birth of Mayfield and Mullen’s VOX King Wah pedal sealed its place in guitar history during overbearingly long, Clapton-esque guitar solos. The 1978 Pro Co RAT, whose design was a re-imagining of the Arbiter Fuzz Face, arose partly from error: A botched resistor band created a harsher, clipped audio waveform. Its use has supported nearly all “alternative” rock genres in the last 30 years: 80s punk, American indie rock, Grunge (the RAT played a crucial part in Cobain’s quiet-loud-quiet-loud composition), not to mention Britpop and grindcore. I guess since he’s not even on the list no one has heard of him. But in my opinion, he is much better than many of those who are at the top of this list. Just listen to his Second Winter album and you will see the light. “Everything we do is about music,” Juszkiewicz says. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s the making of music with instruments or the listening of music with a player. To me, we’re a music company. That’s what I want to be. And I want to be number one. And, you know, nobody else seems to be applying for the job right now.” Not a bad article, but I’d go even cheaper. As a long time guitar and bass player (no longer gigging) and father, with guitars high and low cost in the house, I would advise parents to get a new Yamaha, Epi, or Squier (or a good used one of those) for a couple hundred $ or less and a decent Fender or Vox,, Spider, etc modeler amp for the same and see what happens. It has been hard to keep my kids interested, hurts the fingers, and my guitars have low action and play like butter. It isn’t like Rock Star! Reportedly 90% drop out in the first year, and by the time you are my age maybe 99% have quit! Lot of used stuff in the closets out there! So go to a decent store or a friend who plays and seek their help and advice. And get it set up by someone who knows what they are doing. My current favorite setting out and being played a lot is a 1996 Korean Squier Strat Deluxe, used for $99. So if they say spend over $400 total amp and guitar, ask someone else! They lose value real fast! The fourth type of system employs string-through body anchoring. The strings pass over the bridge saddles, then through holes through the top of the guitar body to the back. The strings are typically anchored in place at the back of the guitar by metal ferrules. Many believe this design improves a guitar’s sustain and timbre. A few examples of string-through body guitars are the Fender Telecaster Thinline, the Fender Telecaster Deluxe, the B.C. Rich IT Warlock and Mockingbird, and the Schecter Omen 6 and 7 series. It was saved in the 1980s primarily thanks to the high-quality supply chain provided by its Japanese contract manufacturers — and thanks to some blank checks written by its Japanese distributors, who couldn’t bear to see an American icon destroy itself through greed and short-sighted mismanagement. Japanese vendors even designed Fender’s new Mexican factory, establishing that operation’s consistently high standards. Reverb is one of the most fundamental effects for electric guitar, which is why it is already built into most amps. Reverb adds natural sounding depth to your sound. Used extensively in the recording world, electric guitars do not sound “right” without it. Just a little makes the guitar have more of a natural sound and decay, but you can go to the extremes and get cavernous depth to your sound. Plate and spring are the most common types, but with so many makers coming up with new sonic “spaces” to play in, finding your reverb sound is a priority. Let’s get it straight. Froo – Shawn – Tey. If you don’t know him, he’s the lead guitarist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Frusciante is the author of the brilliant chord progression on Under the Bridge, the haunting intro to Californication and the simplistic solo and riff on Otherside. If you’re the casual listener of the Chili Peppers, then you may wonder why John has made it so far up this list. But a tad of a closer look will reveal that his simple catchy riffs are the tip of the ice berg. One can catch a glimpse at his technical skill in the Dani California solo. A bit deeper and you’ll run into Lyon 06.06.06 in one of the B Sides. John takes his influences (Page, Hendrix) and mixes his own nuances into a sound that’s pleasantly different, but melodically having the same effects on you. A track to look out for on his solo work – Ramparts – showcasing four or so guitars layered upon each other in an introspective orchestra. { “thumbImageID”: “Deluxe-Strat-Electric-Guitar-Daphne-Blue/517231000265000”, “defaultDisplayName”: “Squier Deluxe Strat Electric Guitar”, “styleThumbWidth”: “60”, “styleThumbHeight”: “60”, “styleOptions”: [ { “name”: “Daphne Blue”, “sku”: “sku:site51273888000725”, “price”: 299.99, “regularPrice”: 299.99, “msrpPrice”: 499.99, “priceVisibility”: “1”, “skuUrl”: “/Squier/Deluxe-Strat-Electric-Guitar-Daphne-Blue-1273888000725.gc”, “skuImageId”: “Deluxe-Strat-Electric-Guitar-Daphne-Blue/517231000265000”, “brandName”: “Squier”, “stickerDisplayText”: “Top Seller”, “stickerClass”: “”, “condition”: “New”, “priceDropPrice”:””, “wasPrice”: “”, “priceDrop”: “”, “placeholder”: “https://static.guitarcenter.com/img/cmn/c.gif”, “assetPath”: “https://media.guitarcenter.com/is/image/MMGS7/Deluxe-Strat-Electric-Guitar-Daphne-Blue/517231000265000-00-60×60.jpg”, “imgAlt”: “” } , { “name”: “Pearl White Metallic”, “sku”: “sku:site51273888000834”, “price”: 299.99, “regularPrice”: 299.99, “msrpPrice”: 499.99, “priceVisibility”: “1”, “skuUrl”: “/Squier/Deluxe-Strat-Electric-Guitar-Pearl-White-Metallic-1273888000834.gc”, “skuImageId”: “Deluxe-Strat-Electric-Guitar-Pearl-White-Metallic/517231000847000”, “brandName”: “Squier”, “stickerDisplayText”: “Top Seller”, “stickerClass”: “”, “condition”: “New”, “priceDropPrice”:””, “wasPrice”: “”, “priceDrop”: “”, “placeholder”: “https://static.guitarcenter.com/img/cmn/c.gif”, “assetPath”: “https://media.guitarcenter.com/is/image/MMGS7/Deluxe-Strat-Electric-Guitar-Pearl-White-Metallic/517231000847000-00-60×60.jpg”, “imgAlt”: “” } ] } {savingPercent=0.00, isPreOrder=false, pimStatus=R1, storePhoneNumber=(718) 278-7777, isFreeShipping=true, visibilitySalePrice=29.99, typeCondition=New, statusText=In stock, isPriceDrop=false, displaySku=582144000000000, skuPriceVisibility=1, stickerUrlLink=null, availableDate=Fri Apr 27 04:46:19 PDT 2018, stickerURL=null, serialized=false, listPrice=29.99, isShipsInternational=true, name=, storeCity=Long Island City, partNumber=00-31446, MSRP=29.99, inventoryStatus=1000, storeName=Guitar Center Queens, newPrice=29.99, condition=New, status=instock, stickerText=Top Seller, stickerClass=null, YourSaving=0.0, MSRPRange=false, availableInStoreOnly=false, salePrice=29.99, warranty=false, storeId=812, displayId=1273887984078, stickerDesc=Top Seller, isOnSale=false} 29.99 USD Effects units are available in a variety of formats or form factors. Stompboxes are usually the smallest, least expensive, and most rugged effects units. Rackmount devices are generally more expensive and offer a wider range of functions.[8] An effects unit can consist of analog or digital circuitry or a combination of the two. During a live performance, the effect is plugged into the electrical “signal” path of the instrument. In the studio, the instrument or other sound-source’s auxiliary output is patched into the effect.[9][10] Form factors are part of a studio or musician’s outboard gear.[11] Entire contents Copyright © Musician’s Friend Inc. Musician’s Friend is a registered trademark of Musician’s Friend Inc. All Rights Reserved. Publisher does not accept liability for incorrect spelling, printing errors (including prices), incorrect manufacturer’s specifications or changes, or grammatical inaccuracies in any product included in the Musician’s Friend catalog or website. Prices subject to change without notice. For a beginner, it is easier to learn and memorise the notes on a piano because they repeat in the same pattern across all the keys. To make things even easier, most piano teachers will start off with teaching only the white keys for adults (a total of 7), or all black keys for kids (total of 5). Once those are mastered, then the rest of the notes come into play. It is also easier for beginners to understand musical patterns on a piano. When you read sheet music and the notes move downwards, you know you’re moving to the left along the piano keys. Intervals, which are the measurable distances between notes, are very easy to identify. This makes it easier to play pattern-based songs in your first month of lessons. Although they just released the Gibson 2016 line, Gibson’s first production electric guitar, marketed in 1936, was the ES-150 model (“ES” for “Electric Spanish” and “150” reflecting the $150 price of the instrument). The ES-150 guitar featured a single-coil, hexagonally shaped pickup, which was designed by Walt Fuller. It became known as the “Charlie Christian” pickup, named for the great jazz guitarist who was among the first to perform with the ES-150 guitar. The ES-150 achieved some popularity, but suffered from unequal loudness across the six strings. The Jackson Dinky is a modern classic, but their newer JS1X Dinky Minion is an even smaller, cooler playing experience – one which is perfect for beginners (especially if you have smaller hands). It features a 2/3 scale Super Strat double-cutaway body made of solid poplar, with a 22.5” scale length. As you may expect from Jackson, it comes in a range of eye-catching colors, such as Ferrari Red and Neon Orange. The playability is great, with a fast-playing bolt-on slim maple neck, featuring a rosewood fretboard and 24 jumbo frets. As we mention in the full JS1X review, this cool electric guitar is voiced by two Jackson-designed humbuckers, with simple controls, to offer a decent rock tone. when it comes to music which is ART, and art is SUBJECTIVE. i don’t even know how people can define best. if you wanna go off technical skills alone quit spitting out metal guitarists as most classical guitarists would BURY them any day. Learn the key of A. You’re already two thirds of the way there! The key of A consists of A in the first position (I), D in the fourth position (IV), and our old powerhouse friend E in the dominant fifth position (V). Here’s how to play the D chord: Português: Tocar Acordes de Guitarra, Español: tocar acordes de guitarra, Deutsch: Akkorde auf der Gitarre spielen, Italiano: Suonare gli Accordi con la Chitarra, Français: jouer des accords à la guitare, Русский: играть аккорды на гитаре, 中文: 弹吉他和弦, Nederlands: Gitaarakkoorden spelen, हिन्दी: गिटार बजाएँ, Tiếng Việt: Chơi Hợp âm Ghita, ไทย: จับคอร์ดกีตาร์, 日本語: ギターでコードを弾く Zen guitar is not about scales and memorizing chords. Instead, it is a masterpiece of why to play guitar, helping you get through the times where learning guitar gets frustrating, and believe me, it will at some point get frustrating. But if you can get through that and push on, you’ll be rewarded with mastery of an instrument that will give you personal fulfillment and a lifetime hobby that brings achievement and satisfaction. { “thumbImageID”: “Les-Paul-Studio-Deluxe-IV-Electric-Guitar-Caribbean-Night/J43876000002000”, “defaultDisplayName”: “Gibson Les Paul Studio Deluxe IV Electric Guitar”, “styleThumbWidth”: “60”, “styleThumbHeight”: “60”, “styleOptions”: [ { “name”: “Caribbean Night”, “sku”: “sku:site51500000024615”, “price”: 1449.99, “regularPrice”: 1449.99, “msrpPrice”: 1449.0, “priceVisibility”: “1”, “skuUrl”: “/Gibson/Les-Paul-Studio-Deluxe-IV-Electric-Guitar-Caribbean-Night-1500000024615.gc”, “skuImageId”: “Les-Paul-Studio-Deluxe-IV-Electric-Guitar-Caribbean-Night/J43876000002000”, “brandName”: “Gibson”, “stickerDisplayText”: “Top Seller”, “stickerClass”: “”, “condition”: “New”, “priceDropPrice”:””, “wasPrice”: “”, “priceDrop”: “”, “placeholder”: “https://static.guitarcenter.com/img/cmn/c.gif”, “assetPath”: “https://media.guitarcenter.com/is/image/MMGS7/Les-Paul-Studio-Deluxe-IV-Electric-Guitar-Caribbean-Night/J43876000002000-00-60×60.jpg”, “imgAlt”: “” } , { “name”: “Iced Tea”, “sku”: “sku:site51500000024608”, “price”: 1449.99, “regularPrice”: 1449.99, “msrpPrice”: 1450.01, “priceVisibility”: “1”, “skuUrl”: “/Gibson/Les-Paul-Studio-Deluxe-IV-Electric-Guitar-Iced-Tea-1500000024608.gc”, “skuImageId”: “Les-Paul-Studio-Deluxe-IV-Electric-Guitar-Iced-Tea/J43876000001000”, “brandName”: “Gibson”, “stickerDisplayText”: “Top Seller”, “stickerClass”: “”, “condition”: “New”, “priceDropPrice”:””, “wasPrice”: “”, “priceDrop”: “”, “placeholder”: “https://static.guitarcenter.com/img/cmn/c.gif”, “assetPath”: “https://media.guitarcenter.com/is/image/MMGS7/Les-Paul-Studio-Deluxe-IV-Electric-Guitar-Iced-Tea/J43876000001000-00-60×60.jpg”, “imgAlt”: “” } ] }	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line426
__label__wiki	0.629557	0.629557	Today's Posts">Today's Posts The iPod is all but forgotten by Apple now, but 15 years ago it forever changed us This is a discussion on The iPod is all but forgotten by Apple now, but 15 years ago it forever changed us within the iPod forums, part of the iPod, iPhone, iPad Forum category; I’ve always loved music, and am old enough to have lived through every generation of portable music player, from the original cassette Walkman on. The ... iPod, iPhone, iPad Forum Thread: The iPod is all but forgotten by Apple now, but 15 years ago it forever changed us sparkyscott21 [OP] I’ve always loved music, and am old enough to have lived through every generation of portable music player, from the original cassette Walkman on. The transition from cassette to CD made little difference: you still only had one album loaded at any one time, and carrying others was a pain. The same was true of the very first mp3 player, the MPMan, which I bought in 1998. The first hard drive-based mp3 player was the Personal Jukebox in 1999. It beat the iPod to market by two years, but was large, heavy and hard to use. Even as an early adopter of technology, I was only briefly tempted. It was the launch of the iPod fifteen years ago yesterday that changed everything for me. That tagline of ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ said it all: you could now carry a substantial proportion of your entire music library on you at all times. And that changed the way that I — and millions of others around the world — listened to music … The iPod was incredibly small and light for the time, and the scrollwheel meant that it was actually practical to scroll through the 100-ish albums you could store on it. Firewire meant that you could also transfer those albums onto it in a reasonable time in the first place. Pre-iPod, I’d ripped a dozen or so of my favourite albums, and I’d rotate through those on my MPMan, perhaps once a week. It was too fiddly to do it more often than that. By the time I was on album twelve, I was ready for album one again. With the iPod, I set about the tedious task of ripping my entire CD collection and transferring what was, at the time, most of them onto my iPod. For the first time, I wasn’t stuck with the choice of whatever album was currently stored on my player, nor did I have to decide in advance what I was in the mood for — I could choose my music on the go. That was just a joy. In 2003, I upgraded to the 3rd-generation model, with a 30GB hard drive. That meant I could hold my entire music collection on the device. That changed the way I listened to music not just while walking, but also while driving. Cars in those days had cassette players, and you could buy a 3.5mm headphone adapter for them: a 3.5mm jack at one end and a fake cassette at the other end. Slot the fake cassette into your car unit and you could play music from your iPod. Ok, now I feel really old … So then I had my entire music collection available in the car too. Finally, it also changed my music setup at home. I soon realised it was easier to select an album on my iPod that it was to grab and insert the CD, so I plugged my iPod into my hifi system and it became my home music player too. The CDs sat on the shelves gathering dust. Apple Music was a second revolution in the way I listen to music, in a way that Spotify never was. Thanks to religiously training it with the Love and Dislike buttons, the For You recommendations are so good that most of the time I don’t move from that tab. Actively selecting from my own music library has become the exception rather than the norm. These days, you have to hit the search button before Apple’s website will even admit that the iPod exists, and its 15th anniversary passed yesterday without a flicker of acknowledgement from the company (par for the course). But it was the iPod that lead to the iPhone, and it was iTunes that led to Apple Music. Judging by eBay prices, the iPod Classic models are highly sought after these days! Apple's Dr. Dre apologizes for past abuse of women, says he's a changed man By sparkyscott21 in forum Off-Topic iOS App Store search forever changed with this awesome new tool By sparkyscott21 in forum iOS Apps Apple threatened to remove the best iOS 8 widgets in the App Store… and then changed By sparkyscott21 in forum Apple News Twelve years ago today Apple began selling iPod How Ten Years Has Changed the iPod Wow... What a difference!! By sparkyscott21 in forum Apple Discussions -- Apple Forum v1 -- .Mobile Style. AppleForums.net is not affiliated with Apple Computers, we are an Apple enthusiast site only.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line437
__label__cc	0.722608	0.277392	Pure Hell - These Boots Area Made For Walking / No Rules - 7" Pure Hell - These Boots Area Made For Walking / No Rules 7" (Formed in Philadelphia in 1974 Pure Hell were the first all African-American punk band. The band was a huge influence on Bad Brains, friends with the New York Dolls, and shared a stage with Sid Vicious, but due to management issues were only able to release this one single before breaking up in 1978. The single and their one unreleased album, which has finally seen the light of day, show that Pure Hell were not only ground breaking for their skin color but for their snotty and gritty post-glam punk sound. Another classic American KBD single from Radiation Reissues) Radiation 8.00	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line438
__label__wiki	0.856219	0.856219	Assessing Latest PLAAF Air-Defence Activities In TAR This year’s series of annual PLAAF exercises within that portion of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) in Tibet Military District (TMD) that faces the Sino-Indian Line of Actual Control (LAC), which commenced in late March 20016 and are still continuing, have witnessed significant accretions, with the most notable among them being the introduction of a solitary KJ-500 turboprop-powered airborne early warning and control (AEW & C) platform, plus the deployment of LY-80 MR-SAMs in place of the HQ-12 ADK-12 KS-1D MR-SAMs. It may be recalled that the PLAAF has since 2010 been deploying Su-27SK/Su-27UBK/J-11A heavy-MRCAs belonging to the Shizuishan-based 6th Air Division’s 16th Air Regiment, and J-10As from the Mengzi-based 44th Air Division’s 131st Air Regiment (based in Luliang) out to the dual-use airports at Lhasa Gonggar (facing Sikkim and northern West Bengal) and Ngari (facing Ladakh in Jammu & Kashmir) twice every year during summertime and wintertime for two-week-long deployment periods. These used to be accompanied by corresponding deployments of the HQ-12 ADK-12 KS-1D MR-SAMs of the PLAAF’s Chengdu-based 11th Anti-Air Artillery Brigade (Unit 95607), which has three Regiments--21st, 22nd and 23rd--are equipped with the HQ-64/LY-60D E-SHORADS, and HQ-12 ADK-12 KS-1D MR-SAMs. The latter were deployed at fixed launch-sites located at Lhasa Gonggar and the dual-use Shigatse Airport. Since late 2012, the 651st Independent Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade, based at Nyingchi, began taking over from the HQ-12 ADK-12 KS-1Ds of the 11th Anti-Air Artillery Brigade’s 22nd Regiment. The 651st comprises a Regiment of LY-80 70km-range MR-SAMs (containing 16 TELs each loaded with six MR-SAM vertical launch-cells), a Regiment of 18 tracked PGZ-04As (each armed with four FN-6 VSHORADS launchers missiles and four 25mm cannons), a Regiment of FM-90 SHORADS, and a composite battalion that has 108 FN-6 VSHORADS/MANPADS launchers, 24 Type 73 towed 37mm anti-aircraft guns and 18 towed twin 35mm PG-99 ‘Giant Bow’ anti-aircraft guns. Also included are LIMAN ground-based jammers, JY-27A VHF-band anti-PGM volume-search radars as part of the LY-80 MR-SAM Regiment, YLC-18 S-band 3-D acquisition radars for the FM-90s (now replacing the older LSS-1/Type 120 L-band 2-D low-altitude acquisition radars), YLC-6 S-band 2-D low-level air-defence radars for the FN-6 VSHORADS/MANPADS launchers, Type 73 anti-aircraft guns and 18 PG-99 ‘Giant Bow’ anti-aircraft guns. As for airspace surveillance radars, there is one JL-3D-90A L-band 3-D airspace surveillance radar operated by the PLAAF at the Ganba La radar station southwest of Lhasa, plus another one north of Shigatse Airport. These are joined by three Army-operated YLC-2V 3-D S-band acquisition radars located around Ngari Airport, Qamdo Bangda Airport, and at PLA SIGINT Stations north of Bum La. The PLAAF’s Air-Defence Reporting Centre for monitoring TAR’s air-defence identification zone (ADIZ) is located at Ganba La. In future, the PLAAF will also begin making use of dual-use airports immediately north of Arunachal Pradesh, these being Qamdo and Linzhi. Going hand-in-hand with these developments are increasing efforts by both the PLAAF and the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) to undertake joint air campaigns that since 2011 have been rehearsed under the ‘Shaheen’ series of joint exercises. It may be recalled that the ‘Shaheen’ series of bi-annual exercises commenced in 2011 when, for the first time ever as part of EX Shaheen-I, a PLAAF contingent with four Su-27UBKs from the 8th Flight Academy (also known as ‘Blue Army Aggressors’) deployed to Rafiqui air base in Shorkot, Pakistan. This exercise, lasting for over two weeks starting March 11, saw the PAF fielding its Mirage VEFs and F-7PGs executing various various air-to-air and air-to-ground combat scenarios. The PLAAF’s 8th Flight Academy operates Su-27UBKs and Su-30MKKs that simulate enemy air force tactics during dissimilar air combat training exercises. The PLAAF possesses three such ‘Blue Army Aggressor’ squadrons (the first of which was raised in June 1987), with the other two flying J-10A M-MRCAs and J-7E light interceptors. All three squadrons operate under the PLAAF’s Canzhou-based Flight Test and Training Base in Hebei province. The second joint air exercise—EX Shaheen-II—was conducted between September 3 and 22, 2013 at Hotan air base in the Hetian Prefecture of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. For this, the PAF flew in its F-7PGs and Mirage-IIIEPs. This was for the first time in the PLAAF’s history that a foreign air force had conducted a joint exercise inside China’s airspace. Participating PLAAF assets included J-10As of the Hotan-based 109th Brigade, JH-7As of the Urumqi-based 37th Air Division Division’s 110th Brigade, J-8Fs from the Hotan-based 109th Brigade, and Su-27SKs and Su-27UBKs from the Korla-based 111th Brigade. The third such bilateral air exercise—EX Shaheen-III—was held at the PAF’s Rafiqui air base in the northeastern province of Punjab between May 5 and 28, 2014. The PLAAF sent four J-10A/B M-MRCAs along with a detachment of air-defence controllers and ground-support crew, while the PAF deployed up to eight of its JF-17s and Mirage-VEFs. EX Shaheen-IV was conducted at the Yinchuan air base in the Southern Command (previously part of Langzhou MR) between September 12 and October 4, 2015. During these exercises, three different types of frontline combat aircraft from each of the two air forces were fielded—this being a first. In addition, the PLAAF for the very first time deployed one of its KJ-200 turboprop-powered AEW & C platforms, while for the PAF this was the first time that it went for air exercises outside China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (which falls under the Lanzhou Military Region). The PLAAF’s combat aircraft assets taking part in the exercises included J-11A heavy-MRCAs and Su-27UBKs belonging to the Shizuishan-based 6th Air Division’s 16th Air Regiment, J-10As from the Mengzi-based 44th Air Division’s 131st Air Regiment (based in Luliang) and a detachment of JH-7A bombers from the Urumqi-based 37th Air Division Division’s 110th Brigade. The PAF sent two JF-17 Thunder light-MRCAs, two Mirage-IIIEP tactical interdictors and two F-7PG light interceptors, which were accompanied by an IL-78MKP aerial refuelling tanker. EX Shaheen-VI began on April 9, 2016 and lasted till April 30. During this exercise, the PAF for the first time deployed its ZDK-03 Karakoram Eagle AEW & C platforms (from which the KJ-500 is derived) for airborne battle management missions. Posted by Prasun K. Sengupta at 6:25 AM 188 comments: NORINCO-Built Medium/Main Battle Tanks Explained & How They Stack Up Against India's India's T-72CIA Medium Battle Tanks There exists considerable confusion about the design lineage and technologies of medium and main battle tanks developed and produced over the years by NORINCO of China. The slides below will help clear several confused narratives that have been circulating over the past two decades. Point to be noted is that so far, no one in China has been able to develop water-cooled diesel engines for armoured vehicles that generate more than 780hp. The consequent reliance on air-cooled diesel engines of Ukrainian origin makes it virtually impossible for any NORINCO-built medium/heavy battle tank to be used for high-altitude manoeuvre warfare anywhere within the area of operations of Tibet Military District, especially in eastern Ladakh and Aksai Chin. Type 85 Medium Battle Tank Type 90II Al Khalid Medium Battle Tank Type 90II VT-1A Medium Battle Tank Type-96A Medium Battle Tank Type-99B Main Battle Tank ZTQ-105 Medium Battle Tank The IA’s OP-PLANs India’s military posture against China in Ladakh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh is to maintain full strategic defence with minor tactical offensive capabilities. Given the politico-operational compulsions, difficult terrain, and the PLA’s track record, it is clear that the Indian Army (IA) was, until the previous decade, was doing an onerous task. For instance, Sikkim has an area of approximately 8,000sqkm, measuring 113km north to south, and 64km from east to west with heights rising up to 28,000 feet. Militarily, the state is divided into north and east Sikkim. Due to a central massif, north Sikkim is further divided into the Muguthang Valley in the west, the Kerang Plateau in the east, and north-east Sikkim. The Lachung, Lachen and Muguthang Valleys in north Sikkim prevent any lateral movement. Of the 14 passes along the 206km-long Sikkim-TAR border, six are all-weather, implying that these are open throughout the year. Three each of these passes are in north and east Sikkim, these being Kongra La, Bomcho La, Sese La, Nathu La (at 14,438 feet in east Sikkim), Batang La and Doka La. Unlike the passes in north-east and east Sikkim, the passes on the watershed border in north Sikkim are fairly wide and motorable. Being windswept, they remain relatively free from snow and are open throughout the year. The watershed and the adjoining Tibetan Plateau are devoid of any cover. The terrain in north and north-east Sikkim is more difficult, rugged and formidable, with the altitude rising suddenly and steeply (one can travel from 5,000 feet to 14,000 feet in just about 60km) than east Sikkim, where surface communications are better developed due to its proximity to the northern West Bengal plains. India’s 435km-long border with Nepal includes a 125km border between Nepal and Sikkim, of which about 50km is most inhospitable. Consequently, the only available area with existing land and air transportation networks that can host armoured/mechanised/tactical aviation/UAV assets is northern West Bengal, from where they can be swiftly deployed to bolster the IA’s positions opposite Bhutan’s Dolam Plateau. Any PLA move into Dolam means that India’s border with China gets distorted at Sikkim’s tri-junction with Bhutan. It also means that the PLA moves a few kilometres south from where they originally were. It brings them closer to northern West Bengal’s Siliguri Corridor. China has always laid claim to Dolam. On the east the Dolam Plateau is skirted by the Amo Chhu stream that flows north-south from the Chumbi Valley to Bhutan and then enters West Bengal at Jaldhaka where the state government has a hydel project. The tri-junction is roughly equidistant from the two Indian Army posts at Doka La (bordering Bhutan) and Batang La (bordering China). Dokala overlooks Dolam, which is at a lower altitude. The Dolam Valley is a largely-barren 20 sq km plateau that is ideal for armourted manoeuvre warfare, just like the terrain in eastern Ladakh. In Ladakh, the IA has since mid-1999 witnessed persistent PLA transgressions-in-strength at the Depsang Bulge, Trig Heights, Spanggur Gap and Chip Chap Valley in northeastern Ladakh. During wartime, the PLA’s probable intention would be to enter from the south of the Karakoram Range and cross the Shyok River from the east. The PLA has also moved motorised forces into Charding Nalla since 2009 and they could eventually threaten the Manali-Leh route. China thus is estimated to want to push Indian control to the left of Shyok River in the north and left of the Indus River in the east, possibly to establish both rivers as natural boundaries. In Chushul, the aim is to reach Luking to take control of the entire Pangong Tso Lake. This three-pronged strategy would make India defenceless both in the Indus Valley and the Nubra Valley. In mid-2009, India’s Ministry of Defence approved the IA’s plans for raising three independent armoured brigades (each inclusive of two tank regiments with T-72 Combat Improved Ajeya medium tanks and one mechanised infantry regiment with BMP-2K Sarath ICVs). While each tank regiment has since early 2014 been equipped with 58 T-72CIAs, the mechanised infantry regiments each possess 70 BMP-2Ks. Of these three new Independent Armoured Brigades, one is located in Ladakh (under the Leh-HQed XIV Corps), another in Uttarakhand and the third in Kalimpong under the XXXIII ‘Trishakti’ Corps that is HQed in Sukna near the city of Siliguri. The Brigade in Ladakh is responsible for the protection of passes like Lanak La, Kongka La, Rezang La, Chang La and Jara La. In Uttarakhand, the Brigade is responsible for securing the passes in Mana, Niti, Kungri Bingri, Darma, and Lipulekh. In Sikkim, the third Brigade is responsible for securing the Dolam Plateau. These formations are being supplemented by a string of Advance Landing Grounds (ALG) capable of accommodating the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) C-130H-30 Super Hercules transport aircraft, newly-built Army Aviation Corps bases capable of housing LUHs and Rudra helicopter-gunships, plus a string of rear-area MALE-UAV air bases operated and owned by the IA. Also, new border roads/bridges and railway lines are being built not just for facilitating the movement of armoured/mechanised formations (transported mostly by wheeled transporters), but also field artillery howitzers like the soon-to-be-acquired LW-155/M-777 ultralightweight howitzers that will be used for providing indirect fire-support for 99 Mountain Brigade, which is part of the 6 Mountain Division, the formation that is in charge of protecting India’s borders in Uttarakhand with China. For securing the Shipki pass in Himachal Pradesh, an existing mechanised infantry battalion has been deployed there and will come under IX Corps, headquartered at Yol in Himachal Pradesh. The IA’s independent armoured brigades in Ladakh, northern West Bengal and Uttarkhand will thus be supported in wartime by not just ISTR assets like MALE-UAVs (numbering more than 50), but also by at least 45 Rudra helicopter gunships armed with PGMs like the HELINA, an equal number of LUHs, and 145 LW-155/M-777 UFHs, with air-maintenance of rear-area logistics networks being provided by the IAF’s C-130H-30s, CH-47F Chinooks and Mi-17V-5s. For localised air-defence, both the IA and IAF have since 2011 deployed their respective stocks of manportable air-defence radars to forward locations along the Sino-Indian LAC to keep track of the PLA’s routine airspace transgressions—something that should have been done as far back as 2008. While the IAF’s DRDO-developed and Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL)-built S-band Aslesha three-dimensional radars have been deployed at Nyoma, Chushul and Fukche, the Army-specific Bharani manportable radars have been deployed at Demchok and Pangong Tso in Ladakh, as well as at two locations in Uttarakhand and Sikkim. The Aslesha, which weighs 250kg, uses low-probability-of-intercept frequencies to look out for terrain-hugging tactical UAVs and helicopters over mountainous terrain out to 50km. The IAF has to date ordered 21 of them, and first deliveries took place in January 2008. On the other hand, the Bharani is a two-dimensional L-band gapfiller system now in series-production for the Army. It has a range of 40km and can track up to 100 airborne targets. To date, 16 Bharanis—meant to be used in conjunction with SHORADS like the SpyDer-SR—have been delivered. For theatre-wide deep surveillance across the LAC, the IAF already possesses EL/M-2060P pod-mounted synthetic aperture radars, as well as the first two of 11 Bombardier 5000 jets equipped with belly-mounted SAR sensors and ELINT sensors—all of which have given the IAF far superior ISTR capabilities when compared to those available to the PLAAF. New Tank EX Avatar? (to be concluded) Assessing Latest PLAAF Air-Defence Activities In T... NORINCO-Built Medium/Main Battle Tanks Explained &... High-Altitude Manoeuvre Warfare: Perpetuating Unpa... Prasun K. Sengupta	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line447
__label__cc	0.558665	0.441335	Scientific Name:Canis latrans Geographical Range:From Alaska through Canada into Central America Habitat:Forests, farms, woodlands Diet in the Wild:Omnivorous, mostly mammalian. The coyote will eat birds, snakes, leaves of balsam fir and white cedar, strawberry, apple, and sasparilla. Conservation Status:Not protected. Location in the Zoo:Located in the Texas Wild area under the Brush Country exhibit. Coloration varies from grayish brown to a yellowish gray. The throat and belly are whitish and the tail is half the body length of the coyote. The tail is bottled shaped with a black tip. Coyotes are smaller than gray wolves but larger than foxes. Social Organization: Coyotes are not as likely to form packs like wolves. However, hunting can be done alone, in pairs, or as a family, depending on the prey. An interesting fact is that the coyote will sometimes form a partnership with the badger. The coyote will use its sense of smell to find a burrowed rodent, and then the badger uses its claws to dig it up. Both the coyote and the badger will share the victim. Special Adaptations: The coyote is continuously trying to be killed by humans through either hunting or poison but the coyote rarely takes the poison bait because it usually prefers to catch and kill its own prey. Humans are also having a hard time hunting it because it likes to stay around large herds of deer or antelope, which are only easily located in national parks. Reproductive Behavior: Courtship lasts usually for about 2 to 3 months. Once a female has chosen her partner, they may remain together for several years but not usually for a lifetime. The gestation period is from 60 to 63 days. The usual litter size is 6, but can range from 1 to 19. Coyotes give live birth, but when the coyote pups are born, they are born blind. The pups are fed by regurgitation of food by both parents. Male pups usually leave the den between 6 and 9 months, while the females usually remain with the parents. The pups reach the average adult size by 12 months. Coyotes mate with domestic dogs and sometimes with the gray wolf. Coyotes at the Fort Worth Zoo: There were two coyotes at the zoo, a tan female and a black male. The animal above is a younger pup. Page Author: Brad Polenz Polex18@attbi.com Sources and Links: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu Erik Tokar, May 2000. Johnson, George and Raven Peter. Biology Sixth Edition. McGraw-Hill Publishing 2002: 642. Editors Cornish, Charles; Selous, F.C.; and Ingersoll, Ernest. The Standard Library of Natural History. “Vols. I-III Living Animals of the World.” The University Society, Inc 1908: 88-89. Hall, Raymond. Mammals of North America. Vol. II. Wiley-Interscience Publishing 1981: 923-924. http://www.triggfoxhound.com/coypic/coypic.htm Steve Peck, 2002. WhoZoo Home WhoZoo Animal Index Mammals at the Fort Worth Zoo	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line456
__label__wiki	0.668465	0.668465	Home » Arlen Roth » SACD2105 My Account \| Cart Contents \| Checkout Burt Bacharach: This Guitar's In Love With You $15.99 our biggest collection yet! Casino Royale (duet Doug Smith & Mark Hanson) The Look Of Love (Wayne Johnson) Promises , Promises (Doug Smith) What's New Pussycat? (Greg Hawkes) Do You Know The Way To San Jose (David Cullen) Alfie (Laurence Juber) What the World Needs Now (Al Petteway) I'll Never Fall In Love Again (Eltjo Haselhoff) (They Long To Be) Close To You (Tommy Emmanuel) I Say A Little Prayer (Nick Charles) Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head (Jim Earp) (There's ) Always Something There To Remind Me (Mike Dowling) Walk On By (Mark Hanson) Wishin' And Hopin' (Arlen Roth) This Guy's In Love With You (Laurence Juber) What The World Needs Now Is Love (duet Doug Smith & Mark Hanson) Featuring 6 GRAMMY winning guitarists, and former Rock stars (Greg Hawkes from The CARS and Laurence Juber from Paul McCartney and WINGS) plus legendary players from around the world , Tommy Emmanuel and Nick Charles from Australia , Eltjo Haselhoff from the Netherlands and International Guitar Champion Doug Smith! The world class melodies of Burt Bacharach are given world class arrangements by these guitar masters! Various Artists, "This Guitar's in Love with You," Solid Air Records 2014 This latest addition to Solid Air Records' composer-themed guitar anthologies is one of the strongest in the series. The contributing artists exhibit strong empathy with the music of Burt Bacharach, no doubt due to their exposure to his and lyricist Hal David's hits when they saturated the radio in the 1960s and Seventies. The disc begins with "Casino Royale" by Mark Hanson and Doug Smith, first popularized by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Wayne Johnson follows with a bossa nova take on "The Look of Love", played on nylon string and double-tracked, with light percussion added. Johnson phrases the melody beautifully and adds some nice improvised lines. David Cullen plays "Do You Know The Way to San Jose?" on nylon string as well, recalling Dionne Warwick's recording, adding a number of guitaristic elements, such as artificial harmonics. Tommy Emmanuel's "(They Long to Be) Close to You" is a natural highlight, incorporating effective dissonances and a nod to stride piano, while still evoking The Carpenter's iconic performance. "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" receives a beautiful Mexican-influenced interpretation by Mike Dowling. Laurence Juber's two numbers, "Alfie" and "This Guy's In Love With You" are masterful. His jazzy DADGAD chord voicings grace "Alfie", while "This Guy'" retains the romantic feel of Herb Alpert's blockbuster 1969 hit, yet at the same time unmistakably LJ. Other artists include uke master Greg Hawkes, Al Petteway, Eltjo Haselhoff, Nick Charles, Arlen Roth, and solos by Mark Hanson and Doug Smith, each adding variety and quality to the album. Hanson and Smith team up again to close the disc with a reprise of "What the World Needs Now Is Love", played with exceptional skill and taste. This disc deserves the same level of critical attention received earlier by Solid Air's Pink Guitar tribute to Henry Mancini (which won a Grammy) and will surely be loved by guitarists and nonmusicians alike. Patrick Ragains MINOR 7th.com from VINTAGE GUITAR Magazine Dec '14 With a catalog that boasts such top-drawer acoustic pickers as Laurence Juber, Tommy Emmanuel, Ed Gerhard, and Pat Donahue, Solid Air hit on a format of having a dozen or so guitarists contributing tracks to a central theme. These have included the music of Leiber and Stoller, Cole Porter, Elvis, and Henry Mancini, which won a Grammy. It might smack of gimmickry if the quality weren't so high and the individual arrangements so interesting. Ripe for such treatment, of course, is the music of Burt Bacharach. Most are solo performances, although Wayne Johnson is double-tracked on the beautiful bossa nova The Look Of Love, and Casino Royale features a duet by Doug Smith and Mark Hanson that borders on Baroque. Hanson also explores the possibilities of Walk On By; Juber delivers stunning performances of Alfie and the title tune; and Emmanuel leaves pyrotechnics behind for a lovely reading of Close To You ... Dan Forte VARIOUS ARTISTS: This Guitar's in Love with You By Frank Kocher, February 2015 Solid Air Records has been recording music by a collection of talented acoustic guitarists, with discs by nationally known artists as well as theme projects like music by Elvis, Cole Porter, and Leiber and Stoller, played by a group that includes local aces Jim Earp and Wayne Johnson. This Guitar's In Love With You is the latest, a generous 16-track offering that focuses on tasty arrangements of Burt Bacharach standards, finger-picked on wooden Johnson plays The Look of Love on nylon strings, with a light, lyrical jazz approach that feels perfect for one of Bacharach's best-ever compositions. Earp's song is Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head? and it has the vibe of the slack-key tuning style heard on his Aloha Guitar CD, maintaining a steady bass line, chords, and melody simultaneously. Other highlights on the disc include a rousing, picked rendition of Promises Promises by Doug Smith, and former Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes on ukulele playing What's New Pussycat? Other artists on hand also include Laurence Juber, who plays both Alfie and This Guy's in Love with You, Arlen Roth Wishin' and Hopin' , Australia's Nick Charles I Say a Little Prayer, and Tommy Emmanuel They Long to Be) Close to You. Throughout, the technical proficiency is off the charts, and since the music is all the same well-known pop, the music here plays like the work on one artist (who would likely be the world's best finger-picking guitarist). For lovers of guitar, it is a can't-miss. This product was added to our catalog on Sunday 25 May, 2014. Just Between Frets: Groovemasters Vol. 11 Alec Stone Sweet 2PACK! Doug Smith COMBO! Peter Finger SUPER PACK GROOVY Groovemasters Combo PACK! Nick Charles SUPER Pick!	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line459
__label__wiki	0.65959	0.65959	The Demonologist Detective Damien Seryph investigates a string of murders that connects to a group trying to bring forth the 4 King Demons of Hell. Damien’s past connects him to those involved… Genre: Horror, Thriller Thollaikatchi Thollaikatchi is an upcoming Tamil romantic comedy film directed by M.Sadiq Khan. The film stars Ashwin Kakumanu and Janani Iyer in lead roles with Subbu Panchu, Konjam Nadinga Boss fame… The Sunday Night Slaughter An anthology horror film featuring three stories involving demons, cannibals, psychopaths and demigods all intertwined, taking place in the final 31 days of earth. 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The remains of humankind live in a post-apocalyptic environment divided into only two social classes: the ruling king and the oligarchs who inhabit the Representative Building and… Country: Spain, Portugal Genre: Comedy, Science Fiction In 1984, a young programmer begins to question reality as he adapts a dark fantasy novel into a video game. A mind-bending tale with multiple endings. Genre: Drama, Mystery, Science Fiction, Thriller, TV Movie Utharavu Maharaja Upcoming Tamil movie With their golden era long behind them, comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy embark on a variety hall tour of Britain and Ireland. Despite the pressures of a hectic… Country: UK, Canada, USA Nathicharami A widow struggles with the dilemma of her own growing sexual needs, and her desire to remain faithful to the memory of her late husband. A Banana? At This Time of Night? Hisashi Tanaka (Haruma Miura) is a medical student in Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan. He does volunteer work and gets to know Yasuaki Kano (Yo Oizumi) at the hospital. Yasuaki Kano has… Coconut the Little Dragon 2: Into the Jungle This is going to be the best holiday ever. Coconut The Little Dragon is thrilled about going to summer camp with his best friends Oscar and Matilda. But due to… Genre: Animation, Family the four heroes created by Alexandre Dumas: D’Artagnan (Pierfrancesco Favino), Athos (Rocco Papaleo), Aramis (Sergio Rubini) and Porthos (Valerio Mastandrea). Today I am an ungrammatical cattle breeder, a lustful castellan,… The Last Six Degrees of Celebration “The Last Six Degrees of Celebration” will be the most touching, kind and magical of all, because your favorite characters will say goodbye to the audience. The film almanac will… The Legend of the Christmas Witch During the day Paola is an ordinary primary school teacher, but at night, she turns into…The Christmas Witch, a magical creature who brings gifts to the good kids. One night,… Country: Italy, Spain In 1944, a courageous group of Russian soldiers managed to escape from German captivity in a half-destroyed legendary T-34 tank. Those were the times of unforgettable bravery, fierce fighting, unbreakable… Minha Vida em Marte Take Point On the day of the U.S. presidential election in 2024, a team of elite mercenaries embark on a secret CIA mission to abduct North Korea’s politician in an underground bunker… A young girl from London moves to Africa with her parents where she befriends a lion cub. Challenge of Five Gauntlets A desperate family has exhausted all avenue’s to save their gravely ill young child…..except one. They seek help in the form of a relic historian/adventurer (Kane) to track down “Buddah’s… A Violent Desire for Joy Region of Occitania, France, 1792. As the storm of revolution devastates the country, young monk Gabriel and his companions live peacefully in the Franciscan monastery of Saorge, near the Italian… Love Affair Married Couples Carpool Love Affair Married Couples Carpool 2018 A Faithful Man Marianne leaves Abel for Paul, his best friend and the father of her unborn child. Eight years later, Paul dies and Marianne returns to Abel. However, things have changed for… In Your Hands A young man from a modest family gets the chance of a lifetime to reveal his hidden talent for piano but can he find the strength and courage to live… Young lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg teams with her husband Marty to bring a groundbreaking case before the U.S. Court of Appeals and overturn a century of gender discrimination. Torvill & Dean Biopic of the British ice dancers and British, European, Olympic and World champions, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. The Bachelor 3 Jimmy is getting married and he gathers his buddies for the legendary bachelor. All is surprisingly normal this time and the wedding day is here. But something will disturb this… Dramatised origin story of one of Germany’s most beloved contemporary comedians. The story revolves around Zyra Paez, whose relationship with Carl Mauricio has failed. She decides to give their relationship one more try, but soon finds herself filled with doubt over… Dino King 3D: Journey to Fire Mountain Speckles, a ferocious tarbosaurus and his young son junior, mourning the loss of their family in an epic battle, roam the lands in search of food, adventure and peace. Under… Country: South Korea, China Genre: Adventure, Animation Subscribe to GoMovies mailing list to receive updates on movies, tv-series and news Watch full movies onlineFree movies onlineMovietubeFree online movies fullMovie2kWatch movies 2k	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line465
__label__cc	0.706156	0.293844	Home Forums > Main WW2 Talk Forum > The War at Sea > LANDING CRAFT COLOURS FOR D-DAY. Discussion in 'The War at Sea' started by Norm D., Jun 27, 2015. operation overlord Michel Sabarly Member Suzanne, In case you did not notice, it is possible to edit one's posts for some time after having written them, by clicking 'Edit' at the bottom of one's post (but one has to be logged in to see it). I'm using this feature all the time because I am a lousy typist . For Serial 293 the Landing Table dated 19 Mar 44 (i.e. an early, if not the earliest, version of the LT) gives 89 men from 3 Commando, including 2 men 10 (IA) Commando, plus one MC airborne. There might (must) have been later modifications. I am not sure whether the 80+2 men Trux lists is a typo or comes from a more recent version of the LT or other docs (Commando embarkation lists hopefully? ). Michel Sabarly, Feb 21, 2019 Suzanne Vernon Member Hi Michel - not sure of you can read the tiny print .....it describes how many crew and troops on a LCI s ? is this correct ? what are your thoughts? hope you can advise Suzanne Vernon, Feb 21, 2019 sorry for the amateur posting ....but trying to quickly get this on to catch you! ddaycolin Member Hello Suzanne and Michel, Sorry I've been out of reach for a while. I was abroad in January and I had a foot operation in February and am still armed with with a stick but moving around much better. I'll have to look through some documents to see whether they could be of help to you. Below I have posted three the 1st hand accounts from members of 3Tp 3 Commandos and 2 from the crew of LCI(s) 501. Lt Keith Ponsford said "We suffered remarkably few casualties. They included: ‑ Lt Ted Leks, Cpl White, L/cpl. Johnson, Troopers Dunlop and McMillan." So, no report of fatal casualties. The heaviest casualties were on LCI(s) 518 and 509. Your question about (Lt?) L.W. Bridger. He was in Signals Advanced HQ of 1st Special Service Brigade. They landed (I'll check later) at 0755 on extreme East of Queen Red (from a 4Cdo LCA I think). They had quite a few casualties. Lt Kennedy I think and others. Should be in their war diary. I met L W Bridger at the Standing down ceremony of the Commando Association at the RM Barracks in Portsmouth in late 2005. So there you have a possible connection between Bridger and your Uncle Charles. For Suzanne Vernon from Colin Henderson 1st hand accounts from commandos and crew of LCI(s) 501 collected from Lt Keith Ponsford, Stan Scott, Sgt Jim Synott, Will Jullien, A.B LCI(s) 501, Fred Scholes. I corresponded with them for a few years Below are extracts from a book I have written on Commandos on Sword and which I hope to publish this year or beginning of next. 3Tp 3Cdo lands from LCI(s) 501 at 09 :10 Fred Scholes (Motor mechanicLCI(s) 501) We hit the beach at a good rate of knots giving the Commandos a dry landing. The bottom of the craft stopped and the upper deck strained forward giving the interior stanchions a permanent lean. The starboard rudder broke off leaving a hole in the steerage compartment. 3 Troop (bicycles) of 3 Commando had already formed up before LCI(s) 501 hit the beach Stan ‘Scottie’ Scott (3 Troop 3 Commando LCI(s) 501) And we had bicycles, fold up bikes and all that and we come off our landing craft. The first bloke, Johnny Dowling, Scouse, DLI, from Liverpool, the second one, ‘tall’ McMillan, he's about 6 foot bloody four. McMillan, he's either Coldstream or Scots Guards, he was number two, and number three me. And we are all loaded with these blooming bikes. Now, each bike had a rucksack on it with three 3 inch mortar bombs and they weighed 10 pound each, that's 30 pound plus the other bits of kit and a bicycle you're lugging, right. No lightweight. Suddenly there was an explosion Bang goes the ramp. Well, Johnny Dowling went one way, McMillan went back in the hogging, in the sea , and I went over there somewhere. On the bows of 501, Will Julien was one of the ramp party. Once the ramps had been put out he was greeted with a surprising sight. Will Julien (LCI(s) 501) No sooner had we put the ramps out than three or four Germans appeared at the bottom of the ramps. They had a white flag and wanted to surrender. Looking behind me I saw our Skipper 'Johnny' Walker pull out his colt and I thought My God he's going to shoot them! The Germans who wanted to surrender seemed anxious to help Johnny Dowling who had been blown into the sea Johnny Dowling was picked up by two Germans and they run back on the bloody boat with him, two prisoners, McMillan got fished out of the sea by a matelot with a gaffe and someone said to me " Get up Scottie, you're not hurt". So I got up, picked me bike up, up the beach. The sight of burly commandos about to bound down the ramps with their bicycles and equipment probably helped the other Germans to change their minds - but not to give up on the idea of a ticket to England. Will Julien also noticed somebody else at the bottom of the ramps. There was a photographer in the sea at the bottom of the ramps taking photos. Suddenly a shell exploded and he disappeared but then immediately afterwards I saw him again [or another photographer ?] continuing to take photos. This photographer was probably the one for whom Private Bert Beddows had been detailed to act as bodyguard. Bill Beedle had also seen this photographer earlier in the wardroom of LCI(s) 535 and Jack Bartle had seen him taking some shots from the starboard side of LCI(s) 535. Back on LCI(s) 501, 3 Troop of 3 Commando were having a hard time manoeuvring their bicycles. Lt Keith Ponsford (3 Troop 3 Commando LCI(s) 501) The landing from our boat was almost dry but particularly slow. The bikes proved a great hindrance at a time when speed was essential. However, although the boat was a sitting target, as were our men , they struggled up the beach. We suffered remarkably few casualties. They included: ‑ Lt Ted Leks, Cpl White, L/cpl. Johnson, Troopers Dunlop and McMillan. Sgt Jim Synnott was one of the 3 Troop Sergeants Sgt Jim Synnott (3 Troop 3 Commando LCI(s) 501) We landed near the blockhouse which is still there today with a house on top. This was on my left and I cleared the beach of all 3 Troop Personnel. I left Lewis, my Lieutenant, on the beach. Dunlop, one of my men, had a broken chain on his bike. I told him to push on as he had three 3" mortar bombs. Once clear of the beach, Jim Synnott had something of a shock I saw the Abbé de Naurois [the French Commando Chaplain] brandishing his Colt .45 and firing at some Germans. I said “You, a priest, shooting people. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” and he replied “God defends those who defend themselves ! » (INLAND) Stan Scott (3 troop 3 Commando) We came on to the road at Colleville, what is now Colleville-Montgomery, and like Ossie [Osborne] says “ What's the first thing you did after coming out of that flooded area, all that marsh because some of us were up to our knees, some of us were up to our waist and we was lugging this ruddy bike all the time and we got on the road, eventually, he said "What's the first thing you did?” I said, "I don’t know, we got on our bikes and went down the road”. He said, "No you didn't, think about it, we had to clean our bikes, get all the mud and the grass all that out of the pedals and all that, out of the chains and wheels. We did that and then we went. And from there on, from Colleville right down to Le Port which is a little village as you go further down, turn left, down to Peggy Bridge. Report on the Activities of 3 Troop, No 3 Commando in Normandy, on "D" Day - 6 June 1944 (signed by Lt K. D Ponsford) Once across the swamps the Troop infiltrated inland along hedges and fields until our forward tanks were contacted. A path fit for cycling was reached near ST AUBIN d'ARQUENAY (0977). Jim Synnott of 3 Troop indicated on a D Day map the actual route followed by 3 Troop 3 Commando once they had finished cleaning their bikes. It led round the north of Colleville and joined the main road just before St Aubin D’Arquenay I'll have to check how to upload Synott's map... The ‘path’, according to the route traced by Jim Synnott was in fact the main road between Colleville and St Aubin d’Arquenay. Manhandling the heavily laden bicycles over this distance from before Colleville must certainly have been exhausting but it gave 3 Troop the opportunity to get ahead of quite a few formations that were sticking to the main road. ddaycolin, Mar 5, 2019 4jonboy likes this. Colin I hope your foot is getting better! I look forward to your book. Can u clarify the numbers of crew in board LCI S 501. Also if my uncle was very fresh faced newbie straight from training from Achnacarry into troop 3 ... he wouldn't of been familiar to these guys? The letter from Bridger acknowledged he didn't know Chas but did wonder why he wrote the fateful letter. I have the confusion of Chas address in his letters.. noting HQ signals on it. But he wasn't trained as signals according to his war records..he did a basic course before joining Commandos. Peter Young refers to Chas being there one minute then gone. He died early on post beach. But the leads on the names and accounts you have given might reveal something more or a photo if I keep searching like I do over and over. I will no doubt have many more questions for you Colin... so thank ful for your reply. X Suzanne Vernon, Mar 6, 2019 James Angert New Member I have been trying to assist my wife's family trying to learn more about her Uncle, AB Sidney Wilson and his part in D-Day. What we know: He joined Combined Operations and was stationed on River Hamble. He remembered their CO as LCDR George Timmerman which if my research is correct would put him in Flotilla 202. On D-Day he was involved in landing Royal Commandos, followed by Canadian Forces to Juno Beach Mike Section. He also participated in OP INFATUATE. With that info I have been trying to narrow down which specific landing craft he was assigned to, when I learned on this website that Les Jordan has put together a rather extensive list of the crewman aboard these landing craft. If it is not too much trouble I would ask that the list be reviewed to see if AB Sidney Wilson is listed. My wife is British and I am American. I have always been fascinated by D-Day. My Uncle came ashore with the 29th Infantry Division, at Omaha Beach aboard LCI(L)-94. I would love to be able to narrow down which specific vessel her Uncle served on. Jim Angert James Angert, Jul 2, 2019 Hello Jim, Les Jordan lists an AB S.F. Wilson as a member of the crew of LCI(S) 525, which was the Craft of Acting Temporary Lieutenant-Commander Georges Gustave Charles Louis Timmermans, R.N.R. (seniority 14 July 1941), 202 LCI(S) Flotilla Officer. Can you confirm the middle name of your wife's uncle? Michel Sabarly, Jul 2, 2019 Wow!, thank you, must be the same, Uncle's middle name was Frank. Does the listing also have him on the same vessel for the OP INFATUATE? Please excuse my belated answer. Unfortunately Les Jordan's listing is for D Day only, so I am unable to say whether A/B S.F. Wilson was still on LCI(S) 525's crew list on 1 Nov 44. It is however probable that he stayed in the same craft. Your wife should apply for her uncle's Service Record to learn more about his wartime service. Michel Sabarly, Aug 1, 2019 Thank you for all your help. I have reviewed the form to request A/B Wilson's service record and saw that it is a requirement to include full name, DoB & service number. We are working on it, but not sure if we know his service number. Don't suppose Les Jordan's listing included that level of detail. I have been searching online, but so far have been unable to locate any photos of LCI(S) 525 or it's crew, aside from Timmermans. Thank again for all your help. James Angert, Aug 3, 2019 No, Les' list does not have the Service Number, or rather, the "Official Number" as it was then known. But surely with the full name and DoB they should be able to find the right Record, provided your wife's uncle did not lie on his age! Tricky Dicky Don'tre member Subject to the payment of an administration fee and provision of a copy of a death certificate (except where death was in service), certain information can be provided from the records of service of service personnel on request under the publication scheme. Nowhere does it say you need a service number - also a death certificate normally will provide the date of birth for that person. If you need help finding death certificate details just ask, that is of course assumimg he did not die in service Tricky Dicky, Aug 3, 2019	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line467
__label__wiki	0.784045	0.784045	A question... ...and an answer? That lovely wilderness in Gowanus will soon be another Whole Foods. There goes the neighborhood. [BSr] Brawl at Arthur's Tavern. [Eater] On the Death of Coney Island: "we should've seen it coming." [LM] Test-tasting the mozzarell' of Grand Street. [LC] Memories of performing arts high school. [ITHNY] Ridgewood Theater to become a supermarket. [Curbed] 14th and A still not looking good after fire. [EVG] New York Accent As is often reported, the New York City accent is vanishing. Some people are even paying good money to unlearn it, much like Radio Days' Sally and her diction lessons. Bronx-born filmmaker Heather Quinlan is working on a documentary all about it. If These Knishes Could Talk is both, as Heather says, "an homage to my father and grandparents, who had wonderful accents I don’t hear anymore, and also to celebrate that which makes New York so unique." Heather and I chatted over email. I asked some questions, she answered. Pete Hamill, author: "Hold ya horses." People in your film talk about a "Manhattan accent," yet we rarely hear about that. Usually it's the Brooklyn, Queens, or Bronx accent that gets the attention. What is the Manhattan accent? There is no borough-specific accent. Italians in Brooklyn will tend to sound like Italians in the Bronx or Italians in Staten Island. (With the exception of some slang here and there, but then you get into dialect which is a whole other ballgame.) This is especially true nowadays because people rarely stay put in one neighborhood or one borough anymore, so there's more accent intermingling. Where the difference lies is in ethnicities. New York accents sound different in Jewish neighborhoods (think Woody Allen), Puerto Rican neighborhoods (Rosie Perez), Irish neighborhoods (Jimmy Cagney), Italian neighborhoods (Al Pacino), etc. Though again, your ethnic background does not necessarily determine your accent. Rudy Giuliani is an example of an Italian-American whose New York accent is not Italian, but Irish, since he grew up in an Irish neighborhood. I will say that, to me, a "Manhattan accent" is one that's very upper-crust, think FDR or the Rockefellers. And that is a New York accent that has essentially disappeared, as it's now thought of as affected or phony. Jackie O. is another example. Fred Austin, Katz's owner: "Toity-toid and toid." How do you think the death of New York accents might be related to shifts in class and ethnicity? I think because Manhattan especially has become such a wealthy borough, you don't hear the accent much there at all, and that will probably be even more so in the next several years. Also, the wave of immigrants from within America have pushed the accent further into the outer boroughs. Our way of life is much more insular now. We're no longer families with 10 kids who need the support of neighbors to help with the kids, help find jobs, help navigate our way through a new country. So therefore there's less sharing of food, culture, stories, etc. People keep to themselves more. The people I know in my neighborhood are more the old-timers than the people in my building. As to how the new wave of immigrants will affect the accent, only time will tell. Speaking of immigrants from within America, we often hear about people from the Midwest coming to the city and bringing their cultures with them. Do you think the future New York accent could eventually sound like the people in the movie Fargo? Will future linguists define the city's accent as one that includes phrases like, "Oh, yeah, you betcha"? I've noticed among New Yorkers that there's a kind of bogeyman idea about Midwesterners, that they'll come in droves and take over our bodegas and delis and force us to eat pastrami on white and talk like Sarah Palin. And if someone is complaining about New York, a common put down is: "Why don't you move back to Ohio?" Always Ohio. Like Ohio is the equivalent of Siberia, but with less culture. But, no, I don't think we'll end up sounding like Fargo in another 20 years. I don't know how we'll sound, though. The only constant in New York is change, and sadly, sometimes that means the accent. Toity toid and toid, for example, something that's cited as the quintessential New York expression, is rarely heard today. A lot of that had to do with film and TV. All in the Family brought New Yorkese across the country, but people found they were being made fun of for it, labeled bigoted or dumb, so a lot of the old timey New York ("little goil") started to fall off. Same thing these days with "fuhgeddaboutit." I know a lot of tough guys whose feelings get kinda hurt because people make fun of them for saying that. Scorsese movies and The Sopranos had the same kind of effect on the Italian New York accent that All in the Family did on the Irish one. Amy Heckerling, director: "Kish mein tuches." What do you think we lose when we lose the traditional New York accent? Part of the film that I've been working on focuses on the new New York--in a lot of ways a safer city, but in a lot of ways it's lost its edge. And I don't mean that I long for the days when New York was like Escape from New York. But I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way, that there is no room for the working class in the city anymore. James McBride, a writer who I interviewed for my movie, calls New York a "hedge-fund ghetto." In developing and developing, Bloomberg has told New Yorkers this city now belongs to people with money. Part of the reason I have knishes in the title of my film is because A) I really love knishes, and B) it symbolizes a part of New York that feels like a throwback. In much the same way the accent now seems like a throwback. A lot of the New York accent is the unspoken part, the confidence, the brashness. If we lose that and the accent, then I feel like we lose a lot of our identity, and that intangible character and charm that's all wrapped up in words. I also think this has to do with America being a much more politically correct place, and New York is not the accent of political correctness. Watch the movie trailer here. Eagle-eye photographer Brian Rose discovers the origin of the mysterious Houston Wall. Going way back beyond its long history as a street artist's canvas, the wall was once part of a handball court--as seen in On the Bowery. [Brian Rose] This 1981 doc on the Chelsea Hotel will break your heart. [Stupe] The owner of the new Polonia: "my staff and myself are hoping that the old customers which really enjoy to nag and complain will find somewhere more suitable to their liking. Besides, we are starting to attract a younger, career-oriented crowd." [EVG] Celebrate the history of the Bowery, Tues night at Dixon Place. [TIX] Longtime tenant battles her new landlord--the Italian-American Museum. [TLD] Checking in with the Rag & Bone mural. [BB] Swimming out to Rat Island and the Pelham Pesthouse. [ENY] Check out Lisanne's art show in Gowanus. [FIB] "Academics have a word for what the [East Village] has become: a nightscape. Bars and restaurants were once peripheral to the main drag's primary economic drivers: supermarkets, coffeehouses, boutique shops, record stores. But in post-industrial cities, nightlife has grown into an industry in its own right... it means the creation of a Party District." [CNY] Moskowitz & Lupowitz Don't ask me why, but lately I've had the 1950 Pincus Sisters rendition of the Moskowitz and Lupowitz radio jingle in my head. This is odd, considering I wasn't alive in 1950, I don't speak Yiddish, and I never visited the Romanian-Jewish restaurant that stood on the corner of 2nd Street and 2nd Avenue until 1966. source unknown The restaurant (where “the finest Jews come to eat”) was founded in 1909 by Romanian immigrants (Joseph Moskowitz was a child prodigy on the cymbalom and went on to a somewhat illustrious music career). It was known as a sophisticated hotspot--the tables were covered in linen, the waiters wore black ties--and thus became a favorite of Yiddish actors and many celebrities of the time, like Milton Berle, Eddie Cantor, and Sid Caesar. Artie Shaw with M&L's Anzelowitz, Live & Be Well Its listing in the 1939 Federal Writer's Project guide to the city, under Jewish food, notes that lunch could be had for 55 cents and dinner from 85 cents. NYC Guide LaSalle Academy bought the property in 1966 and moved in soon after. The building might be the same, but if it is, it's been changed so thoroughly that it's unrecognizable from its history. (That arched window to the far right, though, still remains at Anthology Film Archives.) Cushman, from Dino's You can buy one of their 1962 menus from ebay for $100 and imagine enjoying a meal of Calf's Brains and Pickled Herring, Gefilte Fish, Stuffed Cabbage, Chicken in the Pot, and a dessert of Stewed Prunes. Moskowitz & Lupowitz was one of the only fancy Jewish restaurants on the Lower East Side and maybe it's on my mind because of the whole Octavia's Porch opening. The owner of the new Avenue B business calls it "the city's first culturally Jewish restaurant with a sophisticated approach to feature global tastes and flavors." But Moskowitz & Lupowitz was here long before Octavia's. They were culturally Jewish, sophisticated, and globally flavored. Octavia's will be serving many of the same dishes, like Kreplach, Gefilte Fish, and Chicken Livers, and they'll be doing "artisanal" tricks like making caramel matzo and pouring it over ice cream. Still, I doubt they'll have a Yiddish radio jingle such as that once sung by the Pincus Sisters for Moskowitz & Lupowitz. What's the ugliest building in the EV? [EVG] Guss' Pickles on LES now an upscale cigar shop. [Racked] What's the most hideous Thanksgiving window display in Brooklyn? [NYS] Get eccentric beauty and bath supplies at Ray's. [LC] Could the beautiful industrial holdout Kleen-Stik building be getting ready for Ludlow hipster living? [Curbed] A poetry publisher is born in Brooklyn. [LM] Behind Ray's grade B. [Scoopy] RCN and Chico have words about the recent blue-washing of the Obama mural and future plans for the wall. [DNA] Susan Stetzer on the old and new East Village: “It was a much stronger, much closer community then. Everyone knew everyone, and they weren’t necessarily people like you.” In a neighborhood known for its activism, she added, people used to meet one another at conferences for one cause or another, or while handing out petitions on tenants’ rights. “Nowadays, if someone’s giving out something,” she said, “it’s for a sale.” [NYT] Gingkos In November, the gingko trees on East Eleventh Street are even more thrilling in the dark than in the day. Lit by lamplight, they glow while music plays from the windows of the music school. Usually violins or piano. I remember walking down this street years ago, when the streetwalkers used to stroll and ask for a light or the time, then ask for a date. I lit their cigarettes and looked at my watch. I never went with them. Walking under these trees today makes me think about those girls and wonder where they are now. There's something arresting about these golden gingkos. They make you stop, look up, and be still. Major Polonia overhaul planned by new owner--at least he's in the family. [Eater] Check out vanished music venues of the city. [WNYC] "A New Yorker is someone who longs for New York, and looks askance at the Americans flooding in these days, that unstoppable wave." [LOM] Keith Haring designs on baby bibs at Duane Reade. Enough said. [BB] Coney businesses considering crappy compromise. [Gothamist] Realize your dream to open a bookstore-cafe on the LES. [EVG] Don't bother seeing Bright Lights, Big City. [FP] In a blog interview, me and Grieve chat about breakfast, books, bars and other things. [ILNY] Arm-wrestling in a Queens basement. [CR] Looking back at black-and-white New York in Blast of Silence. [Restless] A sad goodbye to Paul's Daughter of Coney. [ATZ] Walking upper Amsterdam. [FNY] The future of two historic buildings on E. 4th. [EVG] How to speak in 1938 New York. [SC] Speaking of speaking, check out the Bowery slang. [BB] Grace Church and the birth of the bread line. [EVT] The death of the corner bar--in the 1920s. [ENY] Fedora's Black Leather When we learned that a popular restaurateur would be taking over the Fedora, we heard about his intentions to "keep most of the cherished design details" in place, along with the accessible atmosphere. Of course, we've been watching closely and eagerly to see what transpires. The Feast recently aired an interview with the new owner, complete with a tour of Fedora's gutted interior. In it, he explains some of his plans. The floor is going from red tar to marble stone. The original bar from the restaurant's speakeasy day is being refurbished and replicas of its details are being created to extend the bar to twice its length--and from 6 bar stools to 16. All those bar stools will have black leather seats. A "black diamond-tufted leather banquette" will wrap around and extend down the length of the opposite wall. And the chairs will also be black leather. All in all, there will be quite a bit of black leather. The only black leather I recall from the old place was in photos on the wall of a leather guy named Fernando. photo by Carol Gardens Of course, as we've been reminded again and again, the new Fedora is not the old Fedora and we should not expect it to be. The new place will serve French cuisine and will be much more upscale. Still, I find myself often wondering if Fernando and his furry self will make the cut as the new owners decide which of Fedora's photographic artifacts to carry over. Sweaty leathers and pubic bush go nicely with diamond-tufted banquettes and foie gras, no? Fedora's Goodbye A Night at Fedora A Regular Remembers Faux-dora Fedora's Last Days Fedora Returns Vintage sleaze from 1950s Christopher Street. [VS] In a follow-up to my story about the vanished Chico mural, DNA talks to an RCN spokesperson who says, "The bottom line is the building had illegal graffiti on it and we cleaned it up — period." [DNA] ...and Grieve finds an RCN tweet about "regular maintenance." [EVG] Dan Clowes teams with Alexander Payne to bring his misanthopic Wilson to the big screen. [Deadline] Sad, single-girl bedbug story: "bedbugs aren’t really that big a deal. But they are, I maintain, one of the lonelier afflictions out there." [NYT] Visiting Esposito's pork store in Carroll Gardens. [NYT] When I walk up Second Avenue in the East Village, through the frat-bar gauntlet, I get an overwhelming feeling of deja vu. It's not the pig. It's not the memory of vanished Dick's Bar. It's something else...I can't quite put my finger on it... Can anybody help me figure out why something here seems so strangely familiar? Coffee porn fetish jumps the shark as Brooklyn shop calls beverage "coffee porn in a cup." [NYO] Patti Smith scores a National Book Award for Just Kids. Recalling her days at Scribner's, she says, “Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.” [NYT] Here's a better prize giveaway than cupcakes--bedbug eradication services. Apply now! [RS] Meanwhile, sour chocolate milk runs wild in the East Village. [EVG] Looking back at Wanamaker's great fire. [EVT] Cool blog for vintage Times Square cinephiles. [TOS] Remembering the Palladium Ballroom. [92Y] Shots from Sophie Crumb's gallery opening. [SG] The gorgeous City Hall loop is now legal--don't get off that train. [NYO] Looking back at the last days of Coney. [GAF] Fran Lebowitz on keeping kids in strollers until they're past puberty: "Babies" The Williamsburg mom who told the Times she wanted more and more chain stores, setting off firestorms of blogospheric rage, called up a Williamsburg boutique to say she was misquoted and just "kidding about Dunkin' Donuts and Food Emporium, etc." [CB] A new mural for Houston St. [BB] What will the Bowery look like in 2033? [EVG] As old theaters become chain stores, a new indie theater is born from an old bodega. [Gothamist] Inside the last Greek synagogue. [13] Playing chess in the rain. [NSC] After a long wait, Doughnut Plant really moving in to the Chelsea. [Eater] Rally today to save the Greek Revival houses of E. 4th St. [GVSHP] Check out a Tenement Talk tonight on the Bowery's past, present, and future. [TLD] A slice of the old city still found on West 30th. [FNY] "American history vanishing before my eyes." The closing of Paul's Daughter at Coney: photo by Single Linds Reflex You could live above Trash & Vaudeville. [EVG] Walking the New Yorker Art Walk. [Blah] Looking up at some bridges between buildings. [Restless] Tomorrow night: Shteyngart talks about LES Lit at the Educational Alliance. [TLD] Chopin Theater Thanks to reader Grand Street for calling our attention to the New York Times' recent slide show of city movie palaces--after they've become chain stores. For the second time in a week, the paper manages to find someone who loves chains so much they want more and more. The first time was a newcomer to Williamsburg, a woman who loves Duane Reade and begs the universe, “Please, can you bring in Dunkin’ Donuts too. I also want a Bank of America.” In the movie palace slide show, the Times gets a quote from a 24-year-old woman in Greenpoint who said "she was glad the Chopin Theater had become a Starbucks. 'I’m terrified of movie theaters these days because people are getting bedbugs in them,' she said. 'I also like pumpkin spice lattes.'" Let's take a look back at what she's glad has vanished. The good folks at Cinema Treasures give the history of the Chopin Theater. Formerly the American Theater, hence the eagle, it opened in 1914. By the 1930s there was a billiard hall--and bowling alley--on the second floor. Here it is in 1939 playing 1938's Prison Train. NYPL, 1939 One commenter to Cinema Treasures recalls, "the American was Greenpoint's premier 'Dish Nite' venue. I do not know the number of plates, saucers and gravy bowls that my mother, grandmother and aunt collected during the 50's and 60's. People in my family are still eating off them!" (If you don't know from Dish Night at the movies, listen to this lady.) circa 1960s, American Classic Images By the early 1970s the Chopin was playing Polish films and running some live shows, including performances by bands like Jay and the Americans. (See Miss Heather's before and after shot.) from RobertR's photobucket Before it was a Starbucks it was a Burger King. In the former billiard hall, there was a Polish disco called "Club Exit." The club became rowdy, sometimes violent, and closed in January 2010. 1972, American Classic Images While undoubtedly many people in Greenpoint are happy to see a Starbucks here instead of the old Chopin, some in the neighborhood still want a movie theater. "Give us a movie house," begs one subway graffitist, a voice crying out in the wilderness. Photo: New York Shitty Rally tomorrow to save EV townhouses from the wrecking ball. [UNY] Help convince Landmarks to save the last Federal rowhouse on the Bowery--and a man's home. [CFR] Tonight: Join photographer Marlis Momber to discuss the changing Loisaida. [EVG] A new Walker in the City recalls Old Helen the Greek and the Penny Man. [WIC] Meet Jim Jarmusch at Anthology. [AFA] Would you reveal your bedbug history to a new landlord? [Gothamist] “Everyone’s getting sucked into the whole bedbug pandemonium,” Mrs. Silver said. [NYT] "...the typical artist will still be unable to afford to move in. But the sudden re-awakening of the artist-in-residency requirement is making it hard for SoHo to keep up its real estate vibe." [NYT] Chico's 6th & C This past spring, when the graffiti mural on the Lora Deli at 5th and D was painted over, we worried about the nearly block-long Chico mural on the wall owned by RCN Cable along Avenue C at 6th. Last week, it was covered completely in blue paint. At the time of the Lora Deli's white-washing, I took some photos of the Chico mural, figuring one day, probably soon, it would vanish. I didn't think it would last six months. It was a large piece, starting with a pair of Puerto Rican and American flags, followed by an exuberant F-Train with a giddy graffiti artist cheering from the open window. all mural photos from April 2010 Next came a GOODBYE to George W. Bush (or is that John McCain?), a giant white-haired beast with a comb-over, shown bursting from the globe, paired with a spewing oil well. A big red X cements the sentiment: Good riddance. At the corner came a triumphant Obama, smiling before the backdrop of a bright American flag. That was another time, when the blush of victory was still new, before the Tea Party, before Palin's reality show, and the rest of it. Around the corner, on 6th, was an ad for Manny's Auto Repair, a dog with a skateboard, the bountiful fruits of the 6th Street Community Center, and finally a quintessential New York collage of Liberty, Yankee Stadium, Brooklyn Bridge, the skyline, Staten Island Ferry, Flushing's Unisphere, and more. It's all gone now. I don't know why it went or what will come next to this wall. Was it too political in the current climate? Too ragtag for the newcomers of Alphabet City? Maybe it's only temporary and Chico will do a new mural. He's been pretty active this year, and he has changed the wall over time--here's a shot of it taken before the Obama moment, back when the bus shelter was pre-Cemusa'd: this photo: LuciaM, May 2008 Often I have asked the universe, "Who are the monsters who actually want the city to turn into a big mall? The ones who beg for more chain stores? Do they even exist?" Well, yes, they do--and the New York Times talks to one who says, "Please, can you bring in Dunkin’ Donuts...I also want a Bank of America.” Curbed's commenters (mostly) rip her a new one. [via Curbed] Paul McDonough's photos of 1970s NYC. [Lens] Save this EV willow tree from condo people! [EVG] Save the Bowery with Poor Baby Bree. Get tickets here. The bedbuggers weigh in on so-called BB repellent. [BBF] Today, artists recreate bohemian apartments. [Eater] You have to be cool to eat at Sam's. [Eater] Crisp's Effects At this year's Mix Festival, Quentin Crisp's East Village apartment has been recreated, brought back to life by Crisp's great-nephew Adrian Goycoolea and Crisperanto curator Phillip Ward. The installation, entitled "Personal Effects," is open until November 14. I talked with Mr. Goycoolea via email and asked him a few questions. all photos courtesy of Adrian Goycoolea Q: I remember seeing Crisp walking the streets of the East Village, sitting in the window of the Cooper Square Diner, and the sight of him made me feel that I was in the presence, however fleeting, of the extraordinary, not the mundane. What was it like to have this extraordinary person as your great-uncle? A: Quentin was indeed an extraordinary person and his figure always loomed large in our family narrative. Personally, he was the closest thing I had to a grandfather as all of my actual grandparents had died before I was born or when I was very young. I first met him when I was six or seven years old, when we moved to the New York area (OK fine, I admit it, NJ) and I was taken by his style and wit even at that age. While growing up, I often saw him at various family gatherings (weddings, christenings, etc.) and then when I was living in NY I would regularly have lunch with him at the Cooper Square Diner because I was working right around the corner from his house at Anthology Film Archives. When people find out that I am related to him, they often ask me "What was he really like?" He was no different with us than he was with strangers. He was always performing. It was who he was. This is partly what I was interested in exploring with this installation--the relationship between the public and the private. Q: Your University of Sussex bio says that your work "addresses issues of location and identity." How do you see the location of the East Village as connected to Crisp's identity? Was it simply the place where he lived, or do you see the East Village (and its identity at the time) as expressive of something specifically Crispian? A: The East Village was where Quentin spent the happiest years of his life. It was here that he felt truly accepted by the world at large. He loved the openness and personality of New York, particularly the Lower East Side. Although he is as English as you can be, New York really was his spiritual home. He felt a real affinity for the way New Yorkers express themselves, their varied and unique senses of style. Here he finally felt surrounded by others like him who viewed the city streets as a stage. Q: How do you see that locational identity as changed, or not? Where might the "Crispian" still exist in the city? A: Well, I no longer live in NY (I now live in England, ironically) and coming back to the East Village I am shocked by the changes I see. Whole Foods on Houston? The distinct lack of junkies on Tompkins Square Park or winos on the Bowery, no more CBGBs, etc. It has all become so much more gentrified and commercialized. It's a shame. Quentin would not approve. Since I don't live here anymore it's hard for me to say where you can find neighborhoods that have that old East Village feel. Red Hook perhaps? I suppose it would have to be somewhere that mixes immigrant communities with artists, but that still has not attracted the attention of the affluent. Q: Tell us about your title--Personal Effects. What inspired that choice? A: After Quentin died in 1999, I helped clean out his apartment with his good friend Phillip Ward (who is now the executor of his estate and runs Crisperanto: The Quentin Crisp Archives) and it was here that we first discussed collaborating on this installation. I gave this piece its title because the objects in this room are made up of many of his actual personal effects, and the video monitor plays a film loop I made that utilizes family home movie footage of him. I felt that the title also referred to my great-uncle's lesser known personal life. I am interested in his apartment because it can be understood as being his backstage area, his dressing room. It also speaks to my dual understanding of Quentin as both an influential public figure and a beloved family member. Q: In the photos, I see a plain room, a bit shabby, cluttered--there is nothing "extra-ordinary" about it visually. And yet Crisp always presented himself, sartorially speaking, as unique and eye-catching. What do you make of that seeming contradiction? A: He strongly believed in doing as little housework as possible so as to focus that energy on self reflection and self realization. So although he had an impeccable self presentation, his apartment was filthy and disordered. But this is what I find fascinating about his apartment. In a sense one feeds the other. He would not have been the man he was if he did not live like he did. They are two sides of the same coin. He was not at all interested in interior decor, he was interested in personal decor. Q: For the real-estate aware among us, we are often exposed to images of apartments in the "new" East Village--they tend to be spare, filled with modern furnishings, and various luxuries. I see Crisp's apartment as a vanishing "type" of living space in the East Village, and in the city as a whole. What might be lost as these bohemian living quarters vanish? A: Yes, that's true. People who have viewed the installation so far have talked about how few of these sorts of living spaces are around anymore. They find it comforting to be in, as it feels authentic. I think that it's indicative of the overall homogenization of Manhattan. As these bohemian apartments disappear so do the creative personalities that live in them, much to the detriment of the cultural life of the island as a whole. In fact, Quentin saw this coming, he always said that eventually "Manhattan will one day become an island fortress for the rich." I think that this is what we are seeing now. Labels: art/books/film, east village, lower east side "Marc Jacobs is the Michael Bloomberg of the West Village and also its Sam Walton." [NYT] How obnoxious are New York food fetishists? Very. [NYT] Growing up in Brooklyn today--with Rick Moody. [NYT] The Ageloff Towers burning. [EVG] Looking back at the original Swing Street. [13] New Scribbler As the Scribbler seems to have stopped adding commentary to the 10th Street wall, having filled every available white space, a new Scribbler offers similar communication in spots across the East Village. The New Scribbler worries about the treatment of the mentally ill, Obama, the economy, just like the Original Scribbler. But this graffitist is also worried about new strains of the influenza virus, the possibility that diabetes is being used as a form of genocide, and torture at the hands of the CIA. Brainwashing and witchcraft, stem cell cures, Obama's relationship to Big Pharma--it's all unholy and undead. Stripping and pornography, NAMBLA, and "2 trillion to bail out Jews" during World War II--"what in return? What about us?" It's the voice of the American far right, gone mad, scribbling its way in small letters across the city. A lawyer for the embattled businesses of Coney says: No way they're leaving. [Grub] For fans of the old Fedora, see what the inside looks like today. [Eater] from ricksterbot's flickr On Public Speaking, Fran Lebowitz speaks: "They are making this city for tourists. Let me assure you that Bloomberg would be just as happy if all of the citizens of the city just left and sent him our tax money." [BB] A list of 25 books from 2010 set in and about NYC. [WOBA] Landmarks says no thanks to new Meatpacking tower. [Curbed] Looking way back at the spirit of E. 5th St. [EVG] Bobo wins Village Paper space--and a long-quiet corner will now be something else. [Eater] Bulldozing the Bank of Coney Island. [ATZ] Taking a look at Red Square, the building that helped launch hypergentrification in the EV. [FNY] Can we save the city from this t-shirt and all it signifies? Shack Effect As the "Shacking of America" continues, Shake Shack is "gentrifying the only good pizza in town," according to a Fulton Mall pizza man who just got the boot. Developers and the City have been dying to gentrify the Fulton Mall, and now it's happening with the simple addition of a single, powerful burger chain. The whole thing reminds me of the intentional introduction of alien species. In this practice, humans introduce a foreign species into an existing ecosystem where they hope to gain something from the introduction. Economic gain is the number one reason for doing so. Often, the alien species becomes an invasive species and takes over. Kudzu is one example. The mongoose in Hawaii is another. Originally used as biological control agents, invasive species breed prolifically and spread, destroying major elements of native flora and fauna. I'm not sure what it's called when this is done with businesses in cities, but it seems a lot like the same concept at work: Put a Shake Shack at Fulton Mall and watch the gentrification spread. I wonder if that was also the point of placing one this summer on the corner of Crack and 8-Ball off Times Square. It isn't news that the burger chain moved onto this corner previously occupied by the Playpen and its 1916 vaudeville theater, but it is shocking to stumble upon it, suddenly there, clogged with giddy tourists. It made me worry about the effect it will have on the nearby businesses. To the north, there's Smith's, a dive bar somewhat recently turned flatscreen-style sports bar, but still sporting some of the more beautiful neon signage in town. Gone is their weird, meat-cluttered steam table for self-served "hand-carved sandwiches," and overall, something darkly Times Squarish has been lost from Smith's. This happened about a year ago and that's already a loss. In this 2004 shot, you can see that old-timey meats like FRESH BRISKET and KNOCKWURST were still on the menu. Now they're pushing their burgers to compete with Shake Shack. South of the Shack, cheek by jowl, is one of the last substantial chunks of seedy Times Square, a pair of XXX joints huddled together like endangered bonobo chimps, pretending the end isn't near while they go on humping. Directly next to Shake Shack there's Lace, "A Gentleman's Club," and next to that is Gotham City. Both of them have live, mostly nude girls. At Lace it's dancers, and at Gotham you can find women in booths upstairs, above the lingerie section. They sit on stools and ask you if you want a show ($30 for masturbation). I believe this "live peep" is the very last of its kind in Times Square. Just look at that naked lady neon sign. That it still exists, in the New York of 2010, is nothing less than a miracle. Do you think the powers that be will permit these establishments to continue next to the shiny new Shack with its endless flow of, as Eater once called them, "Midtown office drones, the burger bloggers, the Shack fanatics, the Intercontinental Hotel guests, and the Theater-going tourists"? We know what happens when popular, higher end businesses are introduced into a neighborhood. Like the mongoose and gypsy moth, they have a powerful effect on the ecosystem. We've seen the ripples from the "McNally Effect" and the "Marc Jacobs Effect." These phenomena move fast. So keep your eye on this block of Times Square, because I fear we will soon see the Shack Effect in action. The clock is ticking. "I Shake Shack NY" Check out the new EVTransitions--a blog after my own heart. [via EVG] Visit the Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge and its lovely dancers--it recently shuttered after 100 years. [EVG] On the Bowery returns to Film Forum--don't miss it: 11/19 - 25. [FF] See BAN's Bowery exhibit on the same day for an all-Bowery afternoon. [GSN] Remembering when the Deuce was still dirty. [TASOL] A way-too-large percentage of Gothamist readers prefer today's Olive Gardeny version of Times Square to the classic. I don't get it. [Gothamist] Quentin Crisp's East Village apartment gets recreated--at MIX. Thanks to reader Andy Reynolds for sending in this music video from 1984: "In the Evening" by Sheryl Lee Ralph. It begins in a graffiti- and trash-strewn Astor Place subway station, where a bag lady dressed in pink chiffon and cat-eye glasses is defending a precious box of red shoes from a pair of thugs who wake her from her cardboard bed. After fighting them off, she emerges to Astor Place, passes the old newsstand recently replaced, and heads down St. Mark's. Outside the vanished Dojo, she digs through the trash and finds an image of her other, more glamorous self--the woman she becomes "in the evening." I ate many meals from Dojo's, but commenter Flower Power at NYPL recalls in the 1960s when it was "an ice cream store that sold treats with drug names like Panama Red or Acapulco Gold ice cream. Kids showed up with dreams in their eyes and safely slept on the sidewalk lined up like sardines." From Dojo, the bag lady hustles past the former All-Craft Foundation (once the Dom and Electric Circus), a "resource for people in recovery" from drugs, with its distinctive stairs painted with warnings: NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES, NO POT SMOKING. The All-Craft disappeared in 2000, stranding "hundreds of people who relied daily on the center for sobriety meetings, support, and community. Among them are an impressive blend of punk-rock stylists and senior citizens, Wall Street risers, and down-on-their-luck drifters." Today it's a strip mall with a Chipotle, Supercuts, and luxury, bamboo-floored lofts. From there, the bag lady runs to her crappy apartment in burnt-out Alphabet City. "New York," she sings, "life in the city can be so hard." In her squat, she transforms into a sequined lady of the night. The dance sequence ensues. In the end, she awakens to daylight in an empty, echoing Times Square that is nearly unrecognizable. The famous Bond clothing store is still there--with a GOING OUT OF BUSINESS banner hanging on its face. The disco lady turns back into a bag lady and scurries away, into the lost city, to struggle through another day in that tough town. Labels: art/books/film, east village, times square New York Dive African Art, Etc. Lost Bohemia	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line471
__label__cc	0.747703	0.252297	Another year is nearly behind us. What a year it's been! It's been filled with triumphs and challenges, but that's life for you. I hope everyone has a safe holiday and a fabulous New Year! I'll wrap up 2008 with this quiz that's been floating around. 1) What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before? Learned to shoot and enjoy off-roading 2) Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I like goals better than resolutions, in 2008, our goal was to buy a house. And we did. Next year’s goal is to pay down debt. 3) Did anyone close to you give birth? A friend in Chicago, but I haven’t met Lina yet. Seen lots of pics, though. 4) Did anyone close to you die? Yes, my grandma. 5) What countries did you visit? None, we stayed in the US this year. 6) What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? less stress from financial concerns… damn, condos and layoffs. 7) What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? April 26, I flew in Mike, Amy and Nicky to surprise my mom for her 50th birthday. 8) What was your biggest achievement of the year? Buying our dream home 9) What was your biggest failure? Gaining weight, after keeping it off last year. 10) Did you suffer illness or injury? No! thank goodness. 11) What was the best thing you bought? 12) Whose behavior merited celebration? Frank’s, he helped me keep things in perspective. 13) Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? 14) Where did most of your money go? Paying double mortgages and the Jimmy. 15) What did you get really, really, really excited about? Buying our house and when my sister, nephew, brother, and brother-in-law visited. And restaurant week, can’t forget that one. 16) What song will always remind you of 2008? All Summer Long by Kid Rock 17) Compared to this time last year, are you:- happier or sadder? Happier, but a bit more stressed - thinner or fatter? Fatter, unfortunately - richer or poorer? Poorer. 18) What do you wish you'd done more of? 19) What do you wish you'd done less of? Worry and use credit cards 20) How will you be spending New Year? Not sure exactly, but we’ll watch the fireworks and I’m certain there will be time spent in the hot tub. 21) Did you fall in love in 2008? I did, with Frank over and over again. Mushy, I know. 22) How many one-night stands? Marriage gets in the way of those. 23) What was your favorite TV program? The usual, original series on Showtime, HBO and FX, but this year I discovered Mad Men. Let’s go with that. 24) Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? No person specifically, just hate the condition of the housing market. 25) What was the best book you read? Can you believe I didn’t read any books this year? Sad, I know. 26) What was your greatest musical discovery? That most new music still sucks. 27) What did you want and get? Our house and an elliptical 28) What did you want and not get? Our condo to sell 29) What was your favorite film of this year? Not sure, but Tropic Thunder, Slumdog Millionaire and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button were among the best that come to mind. 30) What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? 28, we had dinner at Carnevino and went to Bellagio to watch the fountains and check out the spring display. 31) What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Selling the condo 32) How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? Whatever fits. 33) What kept you sane? Frank and hope 34) Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Kirby from Lipstick Jungle 35) What political issue stirred you the most? 36) Who did you miss? Mike, Amy and Nicky. 37) Who was the best new person you met? Jake and Alysha 38) Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008: Real Estate is not a safe investment. Hell, it’s not even an investment. Not that I’ve experienced, anyway. 39) Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: I can't complain but sometimes I still do Life's been good to me so far – Joe Walsh Sides and after dinner treats From baking Toffee Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour ¼ tsp baking soda ¾ cup unsalted butter, softened ¾ c firmly packed light brown sugar 2 cups English toffee bits 1 ¾ cups pecans, chopped 6 oz chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet) Preheat oven to 350 F. Line baking sheets, apply non-stick cooking spray if necessary. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl. Set aside. In a mixing bowl, beat butter and sugars at medium-high until light, about 2 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each. Beat in vanilla. At a low speed, add the flour mixture, mixing until blended. Use a wooden spoon to stir in pecan, toffee chips and chocolate chips. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets, space cookies 2 inches apart. Bake, one sheet at a time, 14 to 16 minutes, until the edges start to turn golden brown. Let the cooking cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Mint Snowball Cookies 1 ¼ cups sugar, divided ¾ cup vegetable oil 10 oz mint chocolate chips or M&M’s Preheat oven to 350 F. Line baking sheets. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Combine 1 cup of sugar and oil in another bowl. Mix well. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Gradually add flour mixture, until blended. Stir in mint chips or M&M’s. Shape into balls and roll into remaining sugar. Bake 8 to 10 minutes. I posted the recipe for Oreo Truffles before. I melted Ghiradelli chocolate chips for mine, white and semi-sweet. They were a huge hit, especially the ones dipped in white chocolate, but those didn't last long enough for a photo. That's all for the treats. Now for the sides I tried. Neither were great, but both turned out. Beer bread was easy as can be, but we didn't care for the flavor and the bread was really dense. Next up is Pasta Fagioli I followed the recipe for the most part, but I subbed kidney beans, added celery and carrots, and used chicken stock in lieu of water. Frank wasn't thrilled by it, he only had one bowl, but I've eaten for lunch each day this week. So I planned to share recipes today, but I forgot them at home. Ah well, tomorrow, maybe? Surprisingly, we caught another good movie last night. Two in one week, imagine that! We saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It reminded me of a blend of Forrest Gump and Titanic, but with an original twist. Southwest is running 50% off fares to/from Las Vegas. Purchase December 30 through December 31, 2008, midnight pacific standard time. Travel January 13 through March 11, 2009. Travel valid all days of the week. The deal was too good to pass up, I booked a trip to Chicago over Valentine's weekend. It'll be good to see the family and eat yummy treats. Thanksgiving 2007 was the last time I was there. Tomorrow is New Year's Eve and I still have no clue what we're doing. Frank might be working all day and night, but he won't know until sometime tomorrow. My mom might come by, but she doesn't want to make the trip if we plan to stay home. It's all up in the air. By the way, where did 2008 go? It flew by, didn't it? I'm happy to report warmth has finally returned to the Vegas Valley. 56 degrees is our high today, it should hang around for the next 10 days or so. It's a welcomed change. Owed photos From Bob's collection: Then, the following day, I was able to join them for more off-roading fun. We checked out trails off of Fort Apache. Looking out toward Henderson. From Cave Trail and the strip One of the trails leads to this cave. We found a good place to shoot We continued on the trails until we realized we had a flat. Frank said, let's drive up a little further until the trail straightens out... We never could have imagined coming across a slab of concrete in the middle of the desert, but we did. A rock must have punctured the sidewall. We have a terrible history with flats, the gods were shining on us this day, a change has never been easier. We were back on the trail in no time. Our last stop was a retention basin where we had a load of fun cruising through the water. It didn't take long to dirty the new tire. A Quiet Christmas We had a nice holiday. Christmas eve, we had my mom and Blaine over for dinner. I made an untraditional dinner, but it was delicious. We had parmesan salad, smoked gouda stuffed pork chops, my grandma's potatoes and cornbread casserole. It would've only been better with some greens, but mom doesn't eat them, so I didn't bother. We finished with snow tunnel cake for dessert. We played cards and spent the rest of the night in the hot tub. Frank worked Christmas day, but I took my mom and Blaine to see Encore. We also went to Bellagio to see the Christmas Display. My mom and Blaine, later, stayed downtown at the Plaza to play tourist. Frank's uncle came by, we visited for a bit, and exchanged gifts. He headed home, then Frank and I left to go to the Orleans, we had Fuddruckers for dinner and then caught a movie. We saw Slumdog Millionaire. It was very good, it's not often we see something worth mentioning. It was nice to have a long weekend. I really enjoyed it. I cleaned and did laundry as usual, but I also shopped the clearance sales, put away christmas decorations, baked and scraped the fruit off the kitchen windows. From House photos So long fruit! Now, I only have the peacock next to the front doors to remove. I have another long weekend coming up for the New Year. Maybe I'll tackle the peacock then. I hope all of your holidays are filled with love, laughter, plenty of good eats and sweet treats. The photo above was taken by Bob, my brother-in-law, last Friday. He and Frank went off-roading near Red Rock. Beautiful, isn't it? Encore Opening Monday we stayed at Treasure Island. We received a promo that allowed us to book for $49/night. We've been meaning to stay there for ages, finally we got a rate that was too good to pass up. We tried to upgrade to suite, but none were available. Instead, we had a room on the 25th floor. It was nice, the bed was especially comfortable. From TI We had dinner at Venetian's Grand Lux. You can never go wrong Buffalo Chicken Rolls, A Wedge salad, or Chicken Parmesan. It was delicious, as always. We watched the Bears win, but we lost our bet. We had the Bears and the over. Encore opened it's doors to the public at 8pm. We headed over thru Wynn at after 9pm. There was a long line to enter Encore, Frank showed security our Red Card and they let us through. Encore was very crowded. It was tough to find an open slot or video poker machine. Bars were three people deep. Table games were packed. The $100 craps game had a ton of action. We checked out all the areas that were open. We couldn't get back to see Sinatra, since a private event was being held in the restaurant. The property is beautiful, especially the gardens and natural light. There are butterflies everywhere, the mosaic ones in the floor are gorgeous. Tomorrow, I plan to head over and give it another look without all the crowds. I took photos, but excuse the quality, it was tough to get good shots while keeping up with the flow of the crowds. Most of the snow has melted We're due for more precipitation this afternoon, but thankfully, temperatures have warmed up and we should not see snow fall in the valley. Chances are the mountains will get a nice dusting. Which I'm totally good with, I love snow - from a distance - the snow covered mountains are just beautiful to see. We had a great weekend. Frank and Bob went off-roading on Friday, they went to Potato Ridge in Red Rock and by Trail 9 between Summerlin and the town of Blue Diamond. They encountered about 8" of snow and came across a number of snowmen, even a snow frog. Bob made snow angels. He took pictures, I told him he has to share them with me when he gets home. Saturday, I was able to go off-roading with them. We hit trails near the house. Most of the snow had melted. It wasn't a very clear day, but I managed to get some shots of snow covered mountains out toward Henderson. My photos didn't upload properly so I'll have to share those later. We found caves, we played in the wash and did some shooting. It wasn't all fun and games, though. We also got a flat tire, a rock scraped up against the side wall. Shockingly, we found a slab of concrete in the middle of the desert that made the changing of the tire fairly easy. It was a bit of a miracle. Saturday night we had dinner at Japonais inside Mirage. Dinner was tasty. We had eel and avocado, and shrimp and salmon maki to start. Then, Bob had tuna for an entree, Frank had duck and I had shrimp and scallop skewers. We also had sides of truffle potato puree and broccolini in butter and lime. All was great, except the broccolini. We all agreed mine version (I made it the night before) is better. After dinner, we made football bets at TI. My pick of the week was the Titans. I let Frank convince me to bet a money line parlay with the Patriots, Houston and the Jets, instead of a straight up bet. I was kicking myself once I realized that it was the final home game for Seahawks coach (Houston was a bad call, too). Fortunately, Frank's parlay card came in, said and done we made $5. Sunday was all about football. We hosted a party. Served munchies and pulled pork sandwiches for lunch. And Oreo Truffles for dessert. The white chocolate ones were a bigger hit than the chocolate. I used chips instead of baking chocolate. After the games we had dinner at Amore. Then, we went bowling at Southpoint. I have my own ball, at one point Bob asked how long I've had it. My initial reaction was not long, but then I thought about it, it was a Christmas gift from Frank about 9 years ago. How'd that happen? Time sure does sneak up on you. All in all, it was a fun visit. Bob is currently on his way back to Louisville. Frank and I will be checking out the opening of Encore tonight and we'll be staying at Treasure Island. It should be a good time. A fantastic meal is a great start to any trip Bob's flight got in at 5:20, almost an hour delay. Not too bad considering McCarran closed the day before. We went to the house from the airport. When we arrived, Bob immediately grabbed a handful of snow. He's never touched Vegas snow before. We gave him the tour, then played Nertz to kill time until dinner. At seven o'clock, we headed over to Palazzo (it's much easier to park there than at Venetian). We were seated right away for our 7:30 reservation at Delmonico. Warm, light, yeasty bread got us started. Then, an amuse bouche of shrimp salad on a crostini was delivered. Next, Bob selected lobster fritters and I chose butternut squash ravioli with duck confit and hazelnuts in a brown butter sauce for shared appetizers. The fritters melted in my mouth, they were delicious. A lobster dish I actually enjoyed. We hadn't even gotten to the Caesar salad and we were already giddy with delight. We split the tableside Caesar for two, three ways, there was plenty to go around. It was excellent as always. Entrees followed, spicy shrimp and andouille fettuccine for Bob, bone in ribeye and twice baked potato for Frank and I chose the special, petite filet and rosemary shrimp with blue cheese smashed potatoes and wild mushroom reduction. Fantastic. We were much too full for dessert, but Frank and Bob had a few cups of Jamaica Blue Mountain french press coffee. The perfect end to a fabulous meal. As always, service was exceptional. We returned home and played Nertz, while the hot tub heated. Bob and Frank went out for a soak and I reluctantly went up to bed. I wished I didn't have to work in the morning. Ah well, there's more fun to be had this weekend. More snow in the desert I'd swear I was having flashbacks to winter commutes in Chicago on my drive home yesterday... only they were real and I was in Las Vegas. Blizzard like conditions, everything was covered in white. The major difference was there was also flooding. Oddest thing I've ever seen, I tell ya. Once I finally got home, a couple trees were down from the weight of the snow. I couldn't get into my drive way because my trees hung too low. I had to shake them to remove snow. My poor palms practically touched the ground. They couldn't stand up to the wet snow. From Snow All flights were grounded yesterday, fortunately McCarran reopened this morning, Bob's due in at 4:30 today. He picked a great time to escape the cold, heh. Clark County school have a snow day. But otherwise it's business as usual in this winter wonderland. The phones at work have been ringing off the hook, everyone seems to have roof leaks. Snow is great for business, who knew? The news was reporting that this is the most snow the valley has seen since 1979. It's wild that so many people likely have never experienced anything like this before. I'm behind in sharing dinner recipes I've tried out so I thought I'd do one big post to cover them all. Slow Cooker Pulled Pork, I used a 3 lb pork shoulder, a can and a half of diet root beer, I set the slow cooker on low and let it cook for 9.5 hours. I drained it, shredded it and added Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce to taste. I served it on potato buns. The pulled pork sandwiches were really good and they couldn't be easier to prepare. Best Chicken Ever, I reduced the butter and used light sour cream, but otherwise followed the recipe. It was hardly the best ever, but it was decent. Doubtful that I'd make it again, if I did, though, I'd add additional spice. The chicken was pretty bland. Creamy Pasta with Tomato, Bacon and Ricotta, I used green pepper and followed the recipe. I tasted the sauce as it reduced, I think I would've preferred to leave out the ricotta. Frank agreed, I'll try it again sometime without it. Pork Chops stuffed with Smoked Gouda and Bacon, I've shared this one before. However, now that the weather has turned cooler, I tried them in the oven at 375 degrees. They turned out even better than on the grill. It's currently my favorite dish to make. Spicy Garlicky Spaghetti Squash, this was a new one for me. I've never had spaghetti squash before, never even heard of it, until I came across the blog post. It came out pretty well. We thought it was fine, but didn't like it enough to make it a keeper. Mexican Rice, I followed the recipe mostly, however, I used canned tomato, boxed reduced sodium chicken stock and I left the rib of the jalapenos. It was great, but hot, and we like heat. Next time, I leave out the ribs as suggested. The last two recipes were shared by friends. Wendy's Nacho Chicken Bake 1/2 c chunky salsa (I make my own) 1/4 c light sour cream crushed tortilla chips 1/2 c light shredded cheese Preheat oven to 400. Slice three slits into each breast, top with sour cream, salsa and tortilla chips. Bake 20 minutes, add cheese and bake another 10 minutes. It was very tasty, I made the Mexican Rice to go with it. It was a great meal. Johnny's Eggplant Parmesan 2 cans of tomato sauce (Contadima) Scant of milk Parmigiana cheese Italian breadcrumbs (Progresso) Slices of Provolone or Mozzarella Mixture of the following: garlic salt, dried parsley, oregano, onion powder, salt, black pepper, and parmigiana cheese. Cut eggplant into 1/4 inch slices. Put paper towels down and put eggplant on towels and sprinkle some salt on eggplant and then put something heavy on the eggplant to press out the bitter juice in the eggplant. Beat 2 eggs and a small amount of milk in a bowl. Next spread breadcrumbs over a paper plate. Dip sliced eggplant in to egg mix then press both sides in the bread crumbs and put on plate. When all done put extra virgin olive oil in large frying pan about 1/16 inch deep, med heat. Brown both sides. Season eggplant after first turn with spice mixture. Layer fried eggplant into a casserole dish, then add one can of tomato sauce, sprinkle more parmigiana cheese and then some thin slices of cheese. Add another layer of eggplant, followed by another can of sauce and more cheese. Bake at 325 degrees for 40 to 50 minutes. I've never had eggplant parmesan before, so I had no basis for comparison. We liked it, though, Frank would like me to make it again. Anticipating the return of good tv Saying farewell to good tv is bittersweet. I’d much rather see a favorite show end before it jumps the shark, but I still hate to see them go. We freshly had to part ways with Vic Mackey and the rest of the gang at the barn. It’s is shame to have one less great series in a sea of trite and predicable television shows. Fortunately, there are still a handful of series out there that are well-written, directed and/or acted. We recently wrapped up seasons of Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Californication, Dexter, and Entourage and Mad Men drew to a close not long ago. We weren’t disappointed. I’ve got to say Dexter was especially great this season. I thought season two was weak, but they made up for it in season three. If they could only off Deb, all would be right. She’s just awful. I won’t offer any spoilers; I know many wait for episodes on DVD. The holidays always bring a hiatus of sorts to tv land, and this year’s no different. Our dvr gets a vacation the next couple weeks. But then, we’re back in business come the New Year. Nip/Tuck’s new season premieres January 6th. Big Love and Flight of the Concords return on January 18th. United States of Tara premieres January 18th; it’s the new comer I’m most looking forward to watching. Then this spring two of my absolute favorite shows will finally be back, Curb your Enthusiasm and Rescue Me. Snow in the desert Areas of Summerlin had quite a bit of accumulation. Kids made snowmen and had snowball fights. Even by my house, Frank said the neighborhood kids were playing in the snow. The ground was covered when I got home. I thought it would've melted by then. The mountains looked spectacular this morning covered in snow. I wished I had my camera with me on my drive into work. Here are some photos Frank took at the house yesterday when the snow really started to fall. Frank confirmed we have big snowflakes falling at the house. I told him to take pictures. Sheesh! Another year of snow. Haven't went a single year without seeing it. I thought when I moved to the desert, snow would be a thing of rare occurrence, but for the last five years, we've had a dusting. At least it melts quickly. ...and feel like it, too. It was a chilly weekend and Saturday we had ridiculously wicked winds. Today's no better, we've already reached our high of 40. I've already watched the mercury drop a few degrees. The sky is blanketed in what I know to be snow clouds. You can barely make out the mountains. It reminds me of a winter day in Chicago when I look outside. My mom called to tell me it's snowing in Pahrump, her yard is covered, it's the most accumulation she's had there. I've heard flakes were falling in Summerlin. I live close to where they were reported so I bet there's been flurries at my place. My office is near the strip, it's only rained here, so far. It's only been a couple days and I'm already ready for the cold to clear out, but I won't get reprieve anytime soon. 40's are forecasted the rest of the week. It figures, a couple weeks ago, I was bragging to Bob, my brother-in-law, about our warm weather. He flies in from Louisville on Thursday afternoon. He'll stay with us until Monday, it looks like we might see the 50's by the end of his visit. I'm happy to report, I've finished all of my holiday shopping and Christmas cards are in the mail. This week I need to get a box together to be shipped to family in Chicago. Then, I'm pretty well set. I'm not sure what our plans will be this year. I'm working Christmas Eve, but I'll be off the following two days. Frank is off Christmas Eve, but works everyday after until the 29th. My mom's still off due to her injured back. I imagine we'll get together, we'll likely head out to her place after I get off work Christmas Eve. I have ingredients for all kinds of cookies and other sweet treats. I'm anxious to try new recipes, but I haven't had the time to bake. I've tried a few new dinner recipes, I'll have to share those. Wishing I could rewind Too bad life wasn't more like a DVR. I wish I could fast forward through the tedious chores and routines, and then rewind to relive special times and moments. Particulary, times like this... Frank and I spent two wonderful and much needed nights relaxing at the Signature at MGM Grand. Sadly, there was no annual trip for us to Mexico this year, but the Signature did wonders to fill that void. We’ve stayed there a few times before, but this was our first time staying two nights and booking thru Luxury Suites International (they offered suites at $89/night with a two night minimum). Frank had to work Sunday, I dropped him off; returned home, packed and waited until 3 o’clock neared. I checked in, our suite was located in Tower 3, on the 15th floor. The room was no different than those we’ve had before, but the view offered a different perspective since previous stays were on higher floors in Tower 2. From Signature Service was top-notch, no waiting at valet or check-in, even my bags were delivered in record time. I got situated, and waited for Frank to arrive. He took the monorail over from work; the $5 ride was pricey, albeit quick and convenient. I greeted him at the door, happy vacation! Let the fun begin. He settled in, we lounged about and napped. Frank dozed a bit longer than me, I had to wake him so we could make our 7:30 reservation at Craftsteak. We got dressed, and headed over to MGM. Even though, we had a reservation, the hostess tried to seat us in the bar dining area. We mentioned we preferred the main dining room; she took us back to the podium, after a short wait we were led to our table. Service from then on was very good; we never had an empty glass and dishes rolled out without delay. We each selected the fall tasting menu ($75) and we opted to have the wine pairings ($30) which were complimentary for locals (a promotion running through the end of the month). They started us off with a Chardonnay and six buns in a small pan. The bread was alright, it was topped with salt and a bit dry. The first course was lobster bisque; it was rich, with large chunks of lobster. It was likely the most tender lobster I’ve had, but I still thought it was chewy. It seems I have not acquired a taste for lobster. I always try it when given the opportunity, but I haven’t found a dish I’ve liked yet. Frank had a few more bites than me before we placed it aside to dig into the next sampling – Caesar salad, roasted red pepper and prosciutto. We agreed that the salad was pretty weak, at least the romaine leaves were crisp. The latter two were excellent; we especially enjoyed the prosciutto, it melted in our mouths. The next wine was Cabernet Sauvignon; it was the first red we enjoyed. The main course included Kobe sirloin, Angus skirt steak, Diver sea scallops, sweet potato puree, Jerusalem artichokes, and sautéed spinach. The scallops and the sweet potato puree were the standout dishes. We were really disappointed by the Kobe sirloin, the flavor was good, but the cuts were tough. The first few pieces I had were tougher than the skirt steak. The skirt steak was better than we expected, tender and we liked the marinade. Frank didn’t care for the Jerusalem artichokes or spinach, I thought they were so-so. Dessert was the final course, paired with a Moscato wine. The first selection was molten lava cake and espresso gelato. The cake was fair, but I loved the espresso gelato. It was fantastic. The other selection was vanilla ice cream and mixed fruit crisp. It was delicious. Overall, our second Craftsteak experience was better than the first. We’ve had years in between visits, I noticed the regular menu had been completely redone. Still we failed to see what warrants the praises the restaurant receives. There are too many other steakhouses that offer better tasting quality meats and more creative menus. We don't believe Craftsteak deserves a third chance. We have no intentions to return. We were desperate to walk around after dinner. We rarely have alcohol with a meal so to leave a restaurant buzzed and stuffed, it was a weird feeling. Frank threw $20 into a quarter slot that caught his eye. He doubled his money, he moved on to the next slot, he doubled it again and this continued until he turned that original $20 into $190. With that dinner was paid for and we went back to the room. No reason to jeopardize his good fortune. We hopped in the tub, relaxed and had a fun filled night. Feeling completely and utterly content, we crashed listening to the jazz channel. Monday, Frank was up before me. I laid in bed and enjoyed the view while he showered. I started my day with a bubble bath, and watched TV while I soaked. I showered, and then returned to bed to find Frank sleeping. I was flipping channels when Frank muttered something about breakfast; he picked up the phone and placed our order. I answered the door, and told the gentleman there was no need to set up the meal, just leave it and go. We had a nice breakfast overlooking the strip. Frank had a ham & cheese omelet and I had French toast. I wanted banana French toast, but Frank didn’t specify when he placed the order. It was tasty, but not too filling. We lounged in bed the rest of the morning. Sometime, after noon, we dressed and wandered over to MGM. We stopped at CBS studios and watched a show and gave our opinion. It’s nice to way to kill sometime. We got coupons for their store and other outlets in the food court. After that we made our way to the casino. We played video poker at the bar. Frank hit 4-of-kind for $100 before I got my money in the machine so we took his winnings and walked away. He played a few slots and he was winning, he decided to try his luck with dollar slots. He kept on winning. He was up to $200 in no time. We sat down at a $5 blackjack table. We both got killed. Back to slots. He won back what we lost at the tables. We gambled more, he won, and I lost, all at the dollar level. We never play dollar slots or video poker so we felt like high rollers. We were even, and hungry so we thought we grab a bite at Diego but the restaurant was closed (it’ll reopen 12/19/08). We ended up grabbing lunch at Delights, the café inside the Signature. We split a turkey sandwich, broccoli cheddar soup and a bag of chips. We spent far too long away from the bed, so we had to correct that. We decided to order a movie. We saw most movies on the list, but we missed Pineapple Express in theaters so we ordered that. There was no sound so we had to call engineering up to the room. We had to get dressed, I was a bit annoyed. Frank apologized. It was a quick and simple fix. We undressed and climbed back into bed. We watched the movie; I dozed off in the middle. What I saw of it, I thought it was terrible. Frank said I missed nothing and it was bad. We relaxed until our dinner reservation at Fiamma neared. Before we headed down, we opened up a bottle of champagne I brought along. We each had a glass; we let the bottle chill on ice, and we left for Fiamma. We were seated right away. We practically had the restaurant to ourselves. The crowds really thinned out from Sunday to Monday, only handfuls of cowboys remained. Service was prompt and friendly. Again, we opted to have the fall tasting menu ($49) and complimentary wine pairings ($30) for locals. The first wine was a Prosecco, Frank and I really liked it. I could’ve drunk that all night. We got started with heavily seasoned pita bread soaked in olive oil. It was really tasty. For the first course, Frank selected calamari. It was tender and buttery. It was excellent. I had Carpaccio, it too, was delicious. But I wanted more of Frank’s calamari. It was just too good. Next, we were given a glass of Chianti. We had it before, but didn’t care for it. This, however, was much better tasting. I liked it, but Frank still wasn’t fond of it. Entrees were Short Rib Ravioli and Linguini with Prawns. Each was delicious, but we really enjoyed the linguini. Frank regretted not ordering it for himself. It was beautifully prepared, a great blend of rich and smoky flavors, and the pasta was cooked to perfection. Dessert was tiramisu and a selection of sorbets, paired with Moscato wine. The tiramisu was very good, but the sorbets were just awful. Neither of us liked the flavors – blood orange, cranberry and another deep red variety. Little pumpkin tarts were also delivered with the bill. Aside from the sorbets, everything was fantastic. We’re considering returning before the month’s end. After dinner, we gambled a bit more. I continued to lose; Frank played his winnings so we’d end up even. It was fun playing at the dollar level. It made the thought of winning even more exciting. We stopped at Haagen Dazs on the way back to our room. That was a tasty treat. I also ran into the CBS store, used my coupon to buy some SpongeBob stuff to send to my nephew for Christmas. We lounged in bed, drank champagne and enjoyed the lights twinkle outside the window. We talked about how fabulous this stay has been and how we dreaded it ending. Eventually, I dozed off. I think Frank was right behind me. Winds were crazy strong overnight. I woke up a couple times from hearing the wind howl. By Tuesday morning, the strong winds cleared out the clouds. Finally, there were sunny crisp blue skies out the window. It was wild to look out at all those buildings, most weren’t there, including the one I was standing in, when we first visited in 1997. After staring in awe for a bit, I started my day the same as the day before, with a soak in the tub followed by a shower. Frank woke shortly afterwards, he did the same as I, while I packed our belongings. Sadly, our time at the Signature was nearly up. We ordered room service again, this time we specified banana French toast. When the food arrived we quickly noticed the French toast was no different than the day before. They no longer have the banana French toast; we had an old room service menu. I wish they would’ve mentioned that when the order was placed, I would not have ordered it again. Breakfast was still good, although, I admit, I was a bit disappointed I'm going to miss the banana French toast. As we finished up breakfast there was a knock at the door, it was 11 o’clock and they were ready to turn the room over. We told them to give us a few minutes and we’d be on our way. We headed out for the last time, picked our car up at valet and headed home. It was a fabulous getaway. It was our best stay, yet. I’m not sure when we can get back there, but I know it’s not soon enough. Review: Golden Greek Restaurant We had a great stay at the Signature. I'm going to make you wait for those details, but in the meantime I'll leave you with this... We were undecided on what to have for dinner last night. We needed to grab a bite before heading over to our friend's house. We passed by the Golden Greek (formerly Romy's Cafe) at Sahara and Durango. We've been meaning to try it for sometime, it's been months since we've had a gyro, it was an easy choice at that point. When we arrived we were warned that a large party would be dining shortly so space was limited. No problem. We looked over the menu and selected saganaki to start, followed by the gyro plate and souvlaki. Both were served with green beans, rice and greek fries. The food was excellent, the bill was $45. It was the most authentic Greek food we've come across in Vegas. However, we still haven't gotten around to Opa! for comparison. Service was good at first, but tapered off as the staff got distracted by the large group. Even so we won't hesistate to return. My week off flew by, it felt like a long weekend, not nine days away from the florescent lights, keyboard, phone calls, and paperwork. My first two days off were spent painting trim and doors; the bedroom and bathroom downstairs are now fully complete. I also replaced all the gold hardware with brushed nickel. It’s a welcomed improvement. I cannot wait until every gold fixture is phased out of the house. The next few days we spent in Laughlin. We came home Wednesday, but most of the day was spent juggling vehicles. We picked up the Jimmy from the Trans repair shop across town. We ran to Jiffy Lube to pick up my car, the collision shop did a good job with repairs. I was happy. It’s practically as good as new; it would be if my interior still smelled like new car instead of glue. The local Enterprise location was closed by the time we got my car, they’d remain closed until Friday, so we opted to return the Nitro to the Rental Car Facility near McCarran. Between the running around and rainy weather it was a complete waste of a day. At least we topped it off by relaxing in the hot tub. I swear that’s a cure all… Thursday, I cleaned and cooked, while Frank watched football. It was my first attempt at cooking a turkey. I’m happy to report it was a success. It was moist and flavorful. Wish I could say the same for my mashed potatoes and stuffing (or dressing, since I don’t put it in the bird). The flavor of the stuffing was dead on, but the texture was off. Last year, I made it at my sister’s for her thanksgiving feast and it came out fine. Not sure what the deal was. I don’t think I let the potatoes cook long enough; the texture was way off there, too. Overall, we had a nice meal. My mom stayed with us the next couple nights. We hit a few stores on Black Friday. My greatest finds were at Home Depot. The sales seemed pretty weak this year. There wasn’t much that I was interested in. Frank and I trimmed the palms in the backyard, and the rest of the day and Saturday we spent quality time with my mom. She injured her back in Oct; she’s been out of work and stuck at home. She appreciated the company and the change of scenery. Sunday was my last day off, I spent it cleaning house, doing laundry, decorating for Christmas and I cleaned out the garage. Frank watched football. We capped the night off with dinner at Stratta. I really thought I’d get more done and have some down time, but that didn’t happen. It would have been really tough to go back to work this week if I didn’t have our staycation at the Signature next week to look forward to. Last week it rained for two days straight. We had the wettest Thanksgiving Day on record. It was very dreary, and a bit chilly. It was nice to see the sun again on Friday. By Sunday, temperatures warmed up, our high was 71. Not bad for November 30. The 70's hang around through tomorrow. I told Frank the lingering warmth is a birthday gift from Mother Nature. I met him on my lunch break, he loved cruising with the windows down, wearing shorts, and sandals. It's the warmest birthday he's ever had. He's 29 today, hard to believe since it seems like yesterday he turned 18. Time sure does fly. To celebrate we had dinner at Stratta inside Wynn, last night. We ate there twice before during restaurant week, but this was our first time ordering off the menu. We started with bread and pesto, followed by fried artichokes. Yum! Frank ordered veal parmesan with pasta and a side of asparagus. I had seared scallops and a side of broccolini. Both were great! They have the best desserts in town, so we couldn't resist. Frank got tiramisu and a cappuccino, they had a birthday candle for him to blow out. I had chocolate toffee cake. Heavenly! After dinner he gambled a bit since he had free play at Wynn. No wins, though. Laughlin... Is a lot more fun as tourist than as a resident. We headed down on Monday. We stopped at Lucille's BBQ in Henderson on the way. We drove by the old condo, the blinds I hung are still there. The complex hasn't changed a bit. After the drive through town, we checked into the Colorado Belle. Rooms were no different. Nothing special, but you can't beat it at $9/night. The casino had minor changes, like a complete conversion to TITO; it was less dusty, too. We casino hopped, bet on MNF, and spent most of the night at Riverside. We watched the game at the bar, drank beers, and played keno. We had dinner at Casa Serrano. It was tasty as always. We wrapped up the night with more blackjack and video poker. I couldn't win, but luckily Frank won enough to cover my losses. Tuesday we had the breakfast buffet ($8 for two). Frank played poker, I played keno, then we hit the outlet mall. We bought a few things before seeing Role Models at the theater there. It was funny, we enjoyed it. If it weren't for one guy we could've had the theater to ourselves. We drove over to Arizona to see what had changed in Bullhead City. They opened a few new stores and places to eat. We had mexican again for lunch. We went back to the hotel, killed a few hours in the room. We went to Golden Nugget we gambled before dinner at Salt Grass. We played video poker, after I won some cash on penny slots. I lost my $20, Frank was still playing, he won $100 on a 4-of-a-kind. I dug out five quarters from my purse and dropped them in the machine. I was dealt two Aces and a pair. I went to hold them, but Frank stopped me and said only hold the aces. I did and.... this popped up From Laughlin win I won $213.50!!!!!!! That's my biggest win in years! I was very excited. It took a long time for me to cash out since it wasn't ticket in/ticket out, but I didn't mind. We had dinner at Salt Grass. We weren't terribly hungry so we just ordered appetizers and Frank had a salad. We saw the comedy show at River Palms afterwards. Tickets were $14 and we had a 2-for-1. Can't beat that. The show was funny, but not in the traditional sense. The main act kept getting crickets, it was painfully funny. We enjoyed ourselves. We finished up the night playing blackjack at Colorado Belle. Wednesday, we had breakfast at the buffet again. Played another session of blackjack and then left for Harrah's. Frank wanted to pop in to say hello. We hung around there a while and then headed home. I've since spent the 13.50, but I still have two $100 crisp bills in my wallet. I plan to save them until next week for our stay at the Signature. Hopefully, they'll bring me luck at MGM. Frank broke even for the trip. It was great to go home winners. We had a good time in Laughlin. It was nice to be tourists again.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line472
__label__cc	0.579741	0.420259	Section Awards Gala Celebration Centennial Publication Centerpiece Competition 2008 ASCE National Conference D'App Memorial Cartwright Memorial YMF Events YMF Leadership YMF Photo Gallery Younger Member Awards YMF Membership Architectural Engineering Institute AEI Events Construction Institute CI Events Environmental and Water Resources Institute EWRI Events Geotechnical Institute Geo Institute Events Structural Engineering Institute SEI Events Transportation and Development Institute TDI Events Sustainability at the Section PE/EIT Review Continuing Education Made Easy Article Series Student Awards Foundation SAF Donations Report Card for America's Infrastructure Join ASCE 2017 Sustainability Conference - Engineering a Sustainable Economy: Innovating Solutions for the 21st Century Rocks Roads Ripples N'At: Pittsburgh's Civil Engineering News Blog 12 Jan 2018 8:35 AM \| ASCE Blog Editor (Administrator) By Jason Baguet and Ben Briston, Photos courtesy of Sustainable Pittsburgh On November 16, 2017, the Environmental Water Resource Institute Chapter (EWRI) of ASCE-Pittsburgh and Sustainable Pittsburgh’s Champions for Sustainability (C4S) came together for the 9th Annual Sustainability Conference. The conference was presented in partnership with the City of Pittsburgh Office of the Mayor and the American Public Works Association - Western Pennsylvania Chapter and included a series of seminars and panel discussions focused on “Engineering a Sustainable Economy”. The theme of the day was how Pittsburgh and other communities across the globe are positioning for greater resiliency through innovation and technology, from sustainable traffic infrastructure to smart stormwater systems. The all-day conference was held at the August Wilson Center, and had a line-up of engineers, public works professionals, sustainability professionals, educators, and policy makers presenting forward-thinking initiatives. In the opening segment, Tom Batroney set the stage with a historical look back at previous years of sustainability, and reminded us all of the ASCE Principles of Sustainable Development in that we have to “do the right project” and “do the project right”. Rather than sprinkle green features on conventional projects, we have to properly engage all stakeholders and have the mindset to address sustainability more holistically. The keynote speakers, John Stanton, President and CEO at the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure and Rosanna D'Antonio, Deputy Director, Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, discussed the ENVISION Rating System, which was designed to evolve with the changing concept of sustainability, and is driving change throughout the world. John comprehensively described the ENVISION system, stating that it usually is used as a free self-assessment tool and can be a cost-efficient way to guide quality assurance and control on a project level. Cities such as Kansas City and large agencies such as New York City Transit are starting to adopt ENVISION concepts as normal practice. John stated that the Pittsburgh region needed a catalyst to embrace ENVISION as well as leaders that would accept visibility and transparency of their performance to make this a reality. It was noted that the ENVISION system can also be applied to existing infrastructure, and one local opportunity to apply the system could be for a capital bridge replacement program which considers full lifecycle replacement of structures. This may be possible with the right policy partnerships as Allegheny County owns and maintains over 500 bridges. Rosanna D’Antonio followed John’s description of ENVISION with examples of how the system is being applied on the local level within the LA County Department of Public Works. The agency has started to use the system internally for all projects, but the county has submitted one project for verification by ENVISION and that project gained platinum status. D’Antonio summed it up best by saying, “In the past, our main focus was project delivery at the lowest cost. Today, with a focus on the environmental, economic, and social benefits of a project, i.e., the triple bottom line, we are using public infrastructure as a vehicle to improve the overall quality of life for the residents of Los Angeles County.” Also included during the day were two lively panel discussions, the first titled: “Sustainability and Innovation in the Pittsburgh Region.” This panel discussion included Karina Ricks, Director of the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure with the City of Pittsburgh, James Ritzman, Deputy Secretary of Planning with PennDOT, Chris Hendrickson, Director of the Traffic 21 Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and Dan Cessna, Senior Vice President with Michael Baker International. The panel discussion focused on transportation innovation and sustainability in the Pittsburgh region. One comment that registered came from Dan Cessna, who said, “We often become engulfed in maintenance contracts and it is easier to manage change than manage crises.” The second panel discussion included Michael Barnard, Project Director with Oxford Development Company, Daniel Bonk, Senior Engineer with Montauk Energy and Dhaval Bhalodia, Director of Asset Optimization with EverPower Wind Holdings. This panel focused on endeavors that local private companies are taking to build resilient cities and healthy, sustainable communities of the future. The future of smart transportation, led by Chris Hendrickson and smart water solutions, led by both Viktor Hlas, Business Team Lead with Opti Stormwater Controls and Megan Zeigler, Green Infrastructure Project Manager with Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, were also topics of discussion. A highlight from the first presentation was that smart spine traffic signals could improve travel efficiency by reducing vehicle bunching and also help address air pollution. As for smart water solutions, smart valve systems could improve green stormwater infrastructure system performance by increasing storage efficiency and reducing costly maintenance of these systems. Students from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University had the opportunity to display their research posters during breaks. Several posters were displayed ranging in topics from a Systems-level Approach for Integrated Shale Gas Produced Water Management; Sustainable Design of Carbon Nanomaterials: Decoupling the Role of Material Structure and Surface Chemistry on Electrochemical and Biological Activities; and Food-Energy-Water Nexus: Irrigation Impacts of Domestic Food Trade. The Sustainability Conference is an annual conference focused on bringing together sustainability experts in science, engineering, and public policy. Click here to find out more about the Sustainability Committee. © ASCE Pittsburgh Section. All Rights Reserved. Website by OKWhoa.com	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line476
__label__cc	0.715777	0.284223	You are here: Home / Uncategorized / Excerpt from SNOW Excerpt from SNOW February 13, 2015 By Asha King Leave a Comment Who wants a Snow excerpt on this chilly day? 😉 Setup: our intrepid hero is handcuffed to our heroine because she’s sneaky. Despite the coffee, Mike figured he’d sleep. Once again in his clothes, on top of the blankets, while Liliana curled up under the bedspread at his side, facing him by necessity as they were still locked at the wrist. She’d stripped out of her jeans again, left them cast on one of the chairs, and he’d avoided watching her while she did so as best as he could. Privacy was nearly nonexistent in a cramped hotel room to start with; cuffed together like this, what remained rapidly dissipated. Tonight the hall light was off, as he was no longer concerned she’d be trying to sneak out without him knowing. The cuff key sat on the table across the room, impossible to reach unless they both went to it together. “If I’m going to be stuck with you in a room for weeks, we should probably start talking or something,” she said at last. “It might pass the time better.” He’d almost thought she’d gone to sleep; she’d been lying there in the dark for over twenty minutes in silence, eyes closed, breathing even. “What would you like to talk about?” She shifted and the mattress dipped under her. Mike lay on his back, his free arm under his head, staring up at the ceiling where bluish light filtered between the curtains. Snow continued to pile up outside and pattered softly against the windows. “You still won’t tell me who hired you?” “Not my information to give,” he said simply. She was on her side still but watching him now. Her arm moved in the space between their bodies, slightly tugging his with it. Oddly, he appreciated the silence, or what he suspected it meant from her. Despite her willingness to run her mouth off or stubbornly argue, she paused to think, to consider, enough that he knew there was more going on in her head than was apparent at first glance. She was smarter, craftier than she let on. Sure, every time she tried to run, she was stupid to do so, but that was born from desperation. If she actually took time to plan something, his work might be cut out for him. “Then why did you take the job?” she asked after clearly debating it. That caught him off guard. What’s more, he wasn’t sure he had an answer for it. To help out Jann, sure—they’d both done one another favors over the years, and this job was personal for his friend. And because it was a well-paying gig. Seven Security did extremely well already, of course, but when a good job came up, they invariably took them to help cover expenses when business was slow. Further, this was what he was trained for, after all. Keeping a witness safe, anticipating threats—he was good at this. Enjoyed the work. But there was more too it as well. “Because you need the help I can provide, even if you don’t want it.” He could all but feel the air bristle around her at that and she gave a soft, skeptical snort at his words. “Right,” she said. “Purely altruistic motives and not financial ones.” “You realize I am not short for work,” he replied. “I pick and choose clients. I wasn’t forced to be here. My decisions are based on more than money.” “Aren’t you just Prince Charming, O’Hara.” “I’m in the unique position of being able to help you, and I’m being paid for it. There’s nothing princely about it. I realize you’re…” He had to phrase this delicately and wasn’t certain he could. “Likely used to people—men—taking an angle with you, wanting something from you.” “Excuse me?” she snapped, but he ignored her. “I have no ulterior motives. I require absolutely nothing from you but your cooperation while I keep you safe. When the police complete their investigation and get their evidence, I will turn you over to them as a material witness, they will put the Hartleys in prison, and you will go on your way.” “You don’t know anything about me.” “I know your distrust of police and authority figures likely came from your years spent in foster care and group homes. I know from your police report that you used to date Jimmy Hartley and that is why you’re scared of what he’ll do to you when he finds you. I know you expect me to either abandon you to Jimmy at some point or somehow ultimately lead to your death because I’m keeping you in one place. Correction—you don’t ‘expect’, you’re certain I will. However—” And he tilted his head so he could face her, the blue light from outside gently tracing the side of her face, making her soft curls glow. Her features were delicate but her expression strong, those eyes just as fiery as when he first saw them despite how beaten down she’d been, tracked down and handcuffed to him. Scant inches separated them and for a moment he forgot what he was saying. “However,” he continued, “those issues are yours to deal with. I’m not going anywhere. I will not let your ex-boyfriend or anyone else near you. There is nowhere safer you can be at the moment than right here.” Her lips pursed as she stared at him. Clearly she still didn’t believe a word he said. Likely wouldn’t, even after he delivered her to the police for safekeeping when the trial came up. She bent her left arm, folded it so her hand was under her pillow, dragged his arm up with her. He didn’t fight it, moving passively with her, and his fingertips brushed her forearm. Her skin was soft and warm, requiring conscious effort on his part not to deliberately touch her. “I think you believe that,” she said at last, her voice soft and quiet. Defeated. “But you’re so sure you don’t have a weakness or a blind spot, that you’re too smart to get taken by someone like him, and that’s exactly what makes you a perfect victim.” Like her. No, Liliana was far from stupid. And she’d described exactly how a smart woman would’ve ended up with Jimmy Hartley and men like him. “I’m aware of my weakness and blind spots,” he said instead. “Are you?” Her lips quirked into a grin, that saucy half-smile from her photo. The one that promised depths he immediately wanted to dive into. “I plan for them. I can’t do my job without that awareness.” “Awareness seems like a bit of a curse. Always planning, always anticipating, running a couple dozen scenarios at once, right?” His gaze was locked on hers. He simply nodded. “Must be exhausting.” “I manage.” She shifted again, the sheet slipping from her shoulder as she reached for him with her free hand. Mike tensed, steadying his breath with effort, watching while she ran her fingertips up his forearm, feather-light. Her gaze traced the trail her fingers did, staring at him with a curiosity he couldn’t entirely decipher. He focused on his breathing, on keeping his heartrate down even as his pulse leapt with her touch and his body stirred again. It could be another con, another attempt at wiggling free of her captivity, he knew. So he didn’t read much into it and tried to clamp down on any pleasant feelings her touch elicited as she traced her fingers along the dip in his calloused palm. “And what about when you deliver me as promised, and the trial goes forward, and Jimmy’s mother kills me anyway?” She lifted her gaze to meet his again, fingers curling so now her nails dragged over his palm, more of a bite than the delicate touch from before but just as maddening. “They have money. They’ll hire someone. And even if everything they have is caught in bail and lawyers, they have friends. I testify, I’m dead. Doesn’t matter what other evidence they have—they’ll do it out of spite.” There was nothing he could say to that. No reassurance he could give. Sure, she could be put in witness protection if the threat against her was found credible. She could disappear with help from the authorities far better than if she did it on her own. But that wasn’t what she was asking about and he knew it. “Exactly,” she said before he could reply. “This isn’t altruism. This isn’t about what’s best for me. It’s your job. What you’re paid for. And even if you do your little mission here perfectly and you can sleep easy at night knowing you did everything you were hired to do, that doesn’t make me safe. It’s just delaying the inevitable until a time when it’s more convenient for your conscience to have me die.” And with that she rolled over, leaving her left arm where it was by the pillow as it was still attached to his, the handcuff chain clinking softly between them. Mike stared up at the ceiling again, commanding sleep that never came, and telling himself it was just all the coffee keeping him up and nothing else. A witness hidden away in a small town. After waitress Liliana White witnessed a murder, she wanted nothing to do with helping the police or putting the target behind bars. She’s not interested in justice or being a hero; she just wants to stay alive. A brutal death waits for her if the culprits get their hands on her, and given that one of them is her ex-boyfriend, she knows precisely what he’s capable of and will avoid him at all costs. sworn to protect her. Stoic and efficient, personal security expert Michael O’Hara is cautious in all things—both work and women—and has built a reputation in the private sector as the top of his field. But though he thinks he’s seen it all, nothing has prepared him for keeping Liliana White safe. She doesn’t trust him, doesn’t trust the police, and not even a vicious contract killer known as The Huntsman on her heels is enough to convince her she needs him. But Liliana does need him. Only Mike stands between her and certain death, and despite all he does to keep his emotional distance, the longer he spends with her, the more he has to face the possibility that he just might need her too. Format: ebook & paperback Ebook Price: $2.99 PREORDER SPECIAL (later will be $3.99) Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: excerpt, midsummer About Asha King Asha King likes good-looking men and hot books, and often strives to combine the two in contemporary, paranormal, and suspenseful romantic stories. She lives in the exotic land of Alberta, Canada, where she doesn’t ride a polar bear to work but does drink vast amounts of locally brewed beer and watches hockey.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line477
__label__wiki	0.50621	0.50621	Our love of luxury brands is genetic! When I first graduated and was setting off to make my way in the world, someone once gave me this piece of advice; well more a way of scoring how you’re doing in life. To put it into context, it was in the late 1980’s in the middle of the Thatcher Government, a year or so after the birth of the YUPPIE. You remember them, ‘the young upwardly-mobile professional’ – God help us all. Anyway the advice on assessing my life was simple. The measurements of where I was up to at any given time were beautifully parsimonious; and it also seemed to be an approach that everyone in the UK was religiously following. It was simplicity itself: “He who dies with the most toys wins!” As a newly graduated 20 something, it sent a shudder through me. Not from any moral perspective, but simply because I was so far behind all of my friends who had headed into Financial Services instead of higher education. Yet here he was in front of me, drinking from a bottle of champagne that cost more than I got as a grant. And he was only two years older than me. If he’d have smiled for a second longer, we would have been totting his toys total up there and then! Yes. I’d like to order the most expensive bottle of wine in Europe! So what drives people to behave like this and was it purely an invention of Thatcher’s entrepreneurial, capitalist Britain? The simple answer is no. But we’re going to have to flesh it out a little more than that. So light up your Cuban Havana, pour yourself a large glass of something eye-wateringly expensive and read on. What we’re talking about here is Conspicuous Consumption. And it’s been around for a VERY long time. And it has a very useful evolutionary purpose, which means it won’t be disappearing anytime soon. Coined as a term back in 1899 by Thorstein Veblen, from an evolutionary psychology perspective it all started when Charles Darwin woke up screaming after a dream about a Peacock’s tail feather. In a letter to ASA Gray in April of 1860, Darwin wrote: “I remember well the time when the thought of the eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of the complaint, and now small trifling particulars of structure often make me feel uncomfortable. The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” Do my feathers look like a big problem in this? Darwin was, at the time, uncomfortable with the investment of energy made by the male Peacock into an impractical and elaborate tail. It appeared to have no significant reason for adaptation in terms of survival. In fact, it could even be considered to be a handicap, as a brightly coloured and heavy tail makes hiding and escaping from predators more than a little difficult. So, as you can imagine, this posed a big problem in terms of the Origin of Species. In 1871, after lots of deliberation and sleepless nights, Darwin published The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. It was here that he introduced the notion of sexual selection and sexual dimorphism. He put forward a theory that sexual dimorphism (physical differences between the sexes) was greater in polygamous species than in monogamous. He suggested that, in a polygamous species, secondary sexual characters will naturally become more developed in order for males to attract and have greater access to mating females. This sexual dimorphism would manifest itself in the difference in size between males and females, for those species that use combat to attract a female mate. And through differences in display by those who woo through colourful displays such as a peacock and his tail. To test and prove his theory, he even went onto to cut the eyes out of peacock’s tails as well as shortening or artificially extending tail length. This apparent biological drawback of some aspects of sexual dimorphism was addressed by evolutionary biologist Amotz Zahavi (1975) when he proposed the Handicap Principle. At first viewed with skepticism, it has become widely accepted as a Darwinian phenomenon. Zahavi suggested that as a unique trait serves as a signal of ‘fitness’ then it should be something that is difficult to copy, imitate or fake. Thus putting ‘cheaters’ in a position where it is extremely difficult to copy, as displaying the signal (remember the tail) is so costly to do and so disadvantageous that only the truly fit could ever display it. This barrier to the possession of the trait means that any form of elaborate ornamentation must therefore be regarded as an honest signal of fitness. It’s important to point out that that some species are characterisied by manifestations of heavy male investment in offspring and a far more equal division of labour between sexual partners in the raising of the young. In their study of the great skua, Catry & Furness (1997), found that the male invests heavily after breeding by foraging for food for his mate and offspring. Sticking with one partner and putting his energy into the long term relationship that helps improve the survival chances for his offspring. Not much to look at, but he’ll buy you dinner It may come as no surprise to find out that the common view is that humans sit somewhere in the middle of polygamy and monogamy – depending on all sorts of factors such as life stage, age, chances of being caught and how much Lynx has been sprayed about the room. So with that in mind, let’s hold a mirror up to ourselves shall we? Geoffrey Miller 1999 used the idea of Veblen goods, such as ostentatious forms of conspicuous consumption (luxury cars etc) was an obvious manifestation of the handicap principle – with consumption, in the form of wealth and status, being used as an indicator of fitness to potential mates. Mr Trump – ‘Fitter’ than he looks! Look back at the art of the past few centuries and you will see obesity being celebrated as a form of fitness (in terms of the handicap principle). As, in order to become obese, it was an indicator of ones ability to produce, or afford plenty of food. But like all dances, it takes two to Tango. The whole notion of sexual dimorphism and the handicap principle (and it’s link to conspicuous consumption) just would exist if there wasn’t a potential sexual mate not only on the receiving end of these ‘fitness’ indicators – but also applauding loudly throughout the millions of years that their species have evolved. There’s a study by Sundie, et al (2011) with a very intriguing title: Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous consumption as a sexual signaling system. Conducted with nearly 1,000 test subjects the research suggests that Veblen conspicuous products, such as Porsches, can serve the same function for some men (or women) that the handicapping peacock’s feathers do. The chicks will love it (little Peacock chicks that is!) Just as peacocks display and flaunt their tails before potential mates, likewise some men may flaunt flashy products to charm potential dates. It’s worth pointing out that not all men favored this strategy. It’s also probably worth noting that it was just those men who were interested in short-term sexual relationships with women who opted for this strategy. Sundie concluded that “The studies show that some men are like peacocks”. With co-author Vladas Griskevicius, adding “They’re the ones driving the bright coloured sports car,” They also suggested that women found a man who chose to purchase a flashy luxury product (such as a Porsche) more desirable than the same man who purchased a non-luxury item (such as a Honda Civic). But before we all run out and buy a Porsche – although women found the flashy guys more desirable for a date, the man with the Porsche was not preferred as a marriage partner. Women inferred from a man’s flashy spending that he was interested in uncommitted sex. Co-author Daniel Beal explains “When women considered him for a long-term relationship, owning the sports car held no advantage relative to owning an economy car. People may feel that owning flashy things makes them more attractive as a relationship partner, but in truth, many men might be sending women the wrong message.” Sundie did point out that conspicuous spending was also prevalent in women “Obviously, women also spend plenty of money on expensive things, but the anticipation of romance doesn’t trigger flashy spending as it does with some men”. Although I have argued that conspicuous consumption has its routes in mate selection from an evolutionary psychological perspective, it also worth a closing mention of how it plays a part in our quest for self actualization. O’Cass and Frost (2002) suggest that this signaling of self image through conspicuous consumption can actually be seen as a higher level need (as suggested by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). The modern consumer focused world, no doubt influenced by brands and their advertising, also plays a significant role in our ostentatious displays of consumption as a signal of status. Chao and Schor (1998). There study was an exploration of certain subgroups propensity to engage in conspicuous signaling via the purchase of cosmetics. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the most money of all? Sorry Queenie, it’s Mrs Jones… do try and keep up! They found that race, education, income and urban/rural distinction were relevant moderators. With higher educated, wealthier, white women, living in urban areas having a greater propensity for status consumption. Whatever we feel about conspicuous consumption, from mate attraction and ‘fitness’, through to heavily made up ladies been driven around in porches; it’s been with us from the dawn of time and doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. I only hope that we all get the opportunity to make our own call on how we would personally act, given the opportunity to have that kind of spending power. Remember though, money won’t make you happy. But it’s far more comfortable crying in a Bentley than it is on the back of a bus. Article Info: Category: Consumer Psychology Tags: Amotz Zahavi, Brandtrain, brandtrain.co.uk, Charles Darwin, Conspicuous Consumption, Consumer Psychology, Donald Trump, Evolutionary Psychology, Handicap Principle, Luxury Brands, Peacock, Psychology, Rob Smith brandtrain chester, Rob Smith Chester, sexual dimorphism, Thorstein Veblen, Veblen Published:Saturday, January 23rd, 2016 at 5:07 pm 4 years ago Turbulent Times or a Festival of Opportunity? 4 years ago Customer purchase decisions!.. and a simple thought 4 years ago Love your customers? – then put a label on them! 4 years ago Social norms, a nudge and a 2.8% uplift in response 4 years ago The Pepsi Paradox – proof marketing works! consumerpsycdave on Spiders, Tigers, Snakes & time to focus! eva157 on Freudian Ghostbusters, your brain – and what it really thinks about the food you eat! continuouslyconsuming on Cats, Google and the pleasure to be found in a worldwide computer meltdown Val Smith on Cats, Google and the pleasure to be found in a worldwide computer meltdown	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line490
__label__cc	0.690537	0.309463	BRBPub.com Free Records Search and Public Records Directory Your Portal to Finding Public Records Premium Public Records Search United States Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Public Criminal Background Birth & Death Marriage & Divorce Home \| Resource Center Home > Maryland > Calvert County Find Public Records Now! MD Public Records MD Background Reports MD Marriage Records MD Divorce Records MD Criminal Records MD Birth Records MD Death Records MD Vital Records MD Family Tree MD Ancestors Calvert County, MD Public Records 7th Judicial Circuit Court Prince Frederick, MD 20678 https://www.mdcourts.gov/clerks/calve Hours: 8:30AM-4:30PM EST Jurisdiction: Felony, Misdemeanor, Civil Actions over $25,000, Family, Juvenile Restricted Records: No adoption, juvenile, sealed, expunged or mental records released Court personnel will not perform name searches. Family Law/Child Support ext: 2404. 200 Duke St, Rm 2200 Multi-Service Center Prince Frederick, MD 20678 http://www.mdcourts.gov Jurisdiction: Misdemeanor, Civil Actions under $30,000, Eviction, Small Claims Restricted Records: No adoption, juvenile, sealed, expunged or medical records released Courthouse, 175 Main St Prince Frederick, MD 20678 http://registers.maryland.gov/main/ca P: 410-535-1600 ext. 2256 Jurisdiction: Probate Search by name or estate, this county or all counties at http://registers.maryland.gov/main/search.html. Calvert County, MD Vital Records Contact the Calvert County Office of the County Clerk of the Circuit Court if you would like to find vital records, such as birth, death, marriage, divorce, and real estate records. County Clerk of the Circuit Court Prince Frederick, MD 20678 https://www.courts.state.md.us/clerks Phone: 410-535-1600 ext. 2269 ext. 2264 Calvert County Vital Certificates If you would like to obtain a hard copy of a birth, death, marriage, divorce, or other vital record, you can do so by searching for and requesting a vital certificate. Vital certificates are hard copy documents, the same as those used by the United States government. Get a vital certificate. MD - Calvert County - Recorded Land Instruments MD - Calvert County - Property Tax Assessments MD - Calvert County - Circuit and District Court Dockets MD - Calvert County - Register of Wills Index MD - Calvert County - Interactive Maps Calvert Online Searches Calvert County Court Records State Public Records Maryland Public Records Adjoining Counties Calvert County Population Records Total Land Area (2000): 215.17 sq mi Population (2009): 89,212 Females: 50.7% White: 81.9% Black/African American: 14.7% Asian: 1.3% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0% Hispanic or Latino Origin: 2.7% White, Not Hispanic: 79.4% Population Change (2000-2009): 14,649 Foreign-Born Population (2000): 2.2% Language other than English spoken at home (2000): 4.2% Persons Below Poverty Level (2008): 5.6% High School Graduates (2000): 86.9% Bachelor’s Degree or Higher (2000): 22.5% Persons per Household (2000): 2.91 Housing Units (2000): 27,576 Homeownership Rate (2000): 85.2% Migration Flow to Calvert County, MD from (2007-2008): Prince George's County, MD: 778 Anne Arundel County, MD: 457 St. Mary's County, MD: 448 Charles County, MD: 398 Montgomery County, MD: 118 Virginia Beach County, VA: 38 Calvert County Records Total Earnings by Industry, in thou. dol. (2007): Construction: $166,459 Retail Trade: $96,201 Professional and Technical Services: $80,163 Healthcare: $156,161 Banking: $32,638 Accommodations and Food Services: $44,824 Manufacturing: $42,047 Farms: $-2,319 Government: $262,115 Employed (2000): 37,604 Unemployed (2000): 1,182 Unemployment Rate (2009): 5.8% Annual Payroll per Employee (2007): $41,200 Local Government Employment (2007): 3,605 Local Government Revenue (2007): $238,025 (thou. dol.) Local Government Debt (2007): $136,509 (thou. dol.) Calvert County Birth, Death Records Births (2007): 988 Per 1,000 population: 11.2 Deaths (2007): 616 Per 1,000 population: 7 Infant Deaths (2007): 4 Calvert County Criminal Records Violent Crimes (2008): 367 Murder and non-negligent manslaughter: 2 Forcible rape: 7 Robbery: 22 Aggravated Assault: 336 Property Crimes (2008): 1,874 Burglary: 433 Larceny-Theft: 1,333 Motor Vehicle Theft: 108 Calvert County Genealogy Records USGenWeb.org Rootsweb.org - Search for genealogy records for your town in Calvert County Linkpendium Calvert County Genealogy Records OnlineSearches.com - Search for Calvert County public records by town, record type, and/or state. If you would like to use this page as a resource for your county, city, state, library, or other page, please link to us! Simply copy and paste the following into your source code: <a href="http://www.brbpub.com/maryland/calvert/">Calvert Public Records</a> © 1996 – 2018 PeopleConnect, Inc. All Rights Reserved Privacy Policy None of the information offered by this site can be used for assessing or evaluating a person's eligibility for employment, housing, insurance, credit, or for any other purpose covered under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Please visit GoodHire for all your employment screening needs.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line491
__label__wiki	0.679961	0.679961	David Gravel wins Arizona Desert Shootout at Arizona Speedway QUEEN CREEK, AZ – April 6, 2019 – David Gravel’s first win of the season last month with his new Jason Johnson Racing team was sentimental for several reasons. His second win, Saturday night at Arizona Speedway, was no different. Not only did he win on his sister Victoria’s birthday, he claimed his 41st career World of Outlaws NOS® Energy Drink Sprint Car Series win in the #41 car – the number chosen by the late Jason Johnson to run. “I’ve kind of forgot about it, because if you try too hard to win a race, you know, it’s not going to come,” Gravel said about looking for win number 41. “I knew the next one was going to be 41, but it didn’t really all click. I’m glad to win on my sister’s birthday and it’s cool to be my 41st win. All of those things coming together, I guess it was meant to be.” Win 41 was no easier than win 40, though. Starting fourth in the 30-Lap Arizona Desert Shootout Feature, Gravel had his work cut out for him. He made his way by third-place Jacob Allen in a lap, but then had to contend with 2017 Rookie of the Year, Sheldon Haudenschild, and Friday night’s Feature winner Brad Sweet – the two fastest cars of the night. Sweet was a tenth of a second off setting a new track record in Qualifying, and then went on to win his Drydene Heat race. He took the early lead in the DIRTVision Fast Pass Dash, but Haudenschild showed his muscle in the closing laps, powering by Sweet on the high side for the win. Haudenschild then continued where he left off in the Dash, cruising to the lead in the Feature and pulling away from the field. His blistering pace put him in lap traffic a third of the way through the caution-free Feature, allowing Sweet and Gravel to get close enough to taste the lead. Sweet used lap traffic to his advantage the night prior, besting Ian Madsen in the game of maneuverability through slower cars. That looked to be his fortune once again, until Gravel continued to make ground on him. While Sweet reeled in Haudenschild, Gravel had Sweet locked in his visor. The two battled side by side for about four laps, swapping lanes every corner. By Lap 13, Gravel mastered the bottom of the tacky track through turns three and four, clearing Sweet down the front stretch and maintaining the position with a run on the high side of turns one and two. That run not only cleared him of the blue Kasey Kahne Racing car, it put him in striking distance of Haudenschild’s car. While Haudenschild tried to maneuver around a lap car in turns three and four, Gravel pulled the same move on him that he pulled on Sweet, claiming the lead on Lap 14 and never relinquishing it. “He (Haudenschild) didn’t hit his exit, and that just opened the door for me,” Gravel said. “Luckily, it all worked out. Whatever lane I went, I seemed to be faster.” Haudenschild concurred with Gravel’s assessment of the race, acknowledging he made a mistake. “I figured if I could just rip the cushion and make consistent laps, I’d be alright,” said Haudeschild, who ended up third. “Once I got to lappers and the guy was running the top, I really didn’t make a good move. Like David said, I lost my run off the exit.” After starting the season with four finishes in-a-row outside the top-12, the Wooster, Ohio native has found consistency. He’s finished in the top-10 in his last five races – two of which have been top-five finishes. “It’s been kind of a rocky start, but we’ve been building momentum here in these last few races,” Haudenschild said. On a more consistent run is second-place finisher, Sweet. He’s finished in the top-five in six of his last seven races – four of which have been podium finishes, and one a victory. That’s placed him as the current Series points leader – four points ahead of reigning champion Donny Schatz. “It’s always cool to lead the points, but I don’t even think we’re a tenth of the way through the season,” Grass Valley, Calif. native, Sweet said. “It’s going to be a long summer. As long as we keep getting better and standing on the podium, the points will shake out how they will at the end.” Gravel, of Watertown, Conn., became only the second driver this year to claim more than one victory – Daryn Pittman was the first winning both races at Volusia Speedway Park. With win number two out of the way, Gravel looks for more consistency with his Jason Johnson Racing team. “That first win, we struggled, got a win, the next day ran 12th,” Gravel said. “Now, this weekend (in Arizona) we went third and first. As a team, that’s what you’re looking for, is having podiums and top-fives. That’s what makes a good season.” The Greatest Show on Dirt will make its next stop Friday, April 12, and Saturday, April 13, at the historic Devil's Bowl Speedway in Mesquite, Texas. As always, you can catch all World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series action on DIRTVision.com. For tickets and more information, go to www.WorldofOutlaws.com. NOS Energy Drink Feature (30 Laps) - 1. 41-David Gravel [4][$10,000]; 2. 49-Brad Sweet [2][$5,500]; 3. 17-Sheldon Haudenschild [1][$3,200]; 4. 15-Donny Schatz [13][$2,800]; 5. 18-Ian Madsen [6][$2,500]; 6. 83-Daryn Pittman [7][$2,300]; 7. 1A-Jacob Allen [3][$2,200]; 8. 11K-Kraig Kinser [11][$2,100]; 9. 2-Carson Macedo [10][$2,050]; 10. 1S-Logan Schuchart [15][$2,000]; 11. 19-Brent Marks [8][$1,500]; 12. 5-Shane Stewart [14][$1,200]; 13. 45-Chad Kemenah [12][$1,100]; 14. 19AZ-Hunter Schuerenberg [5][$1,050]; 15. 24-Rico Abreu [19][$1,000]; 16. 7S-Jason Sides [18][$900]; 17. 33M-Mason Daniel [20][$800]; 18. 13-Mark Dobmeier [17][$800]; 19. 21-Brian Brown [9][$800]; 20. 11-Mike Kuemper [21][$800]; 21. 21P-Robbie Price [16][$800]; Lap Leaders: Sheldon Haudenschild 1-13, David Gravel 14-30; KSE Hard Charger Award: 15-Donny Schatz[+9] Qualifying - 1. 49-Brad Sweet, 12.452; 2. 18-Ian Madsen, 12.573; 3. 41-David Gravel, 12.601; 4. 2-Carson Macedo, 12.625; 5. 17-Sheldon Haudenschild, 12.644; 6. 1A-Jacob Allen, 12.685; 7. 19AZ-Hunter Schuerenberg, 12.686; 8. 19-Brent Marks, 12.704; 9. 21-Brian Brown, 12.718; 10. 83-Daryn Pittman, 12.759; 11. 11K-Kraig Kinser, 12.766; 12. 1S-Logan Schuchart, 12.767; 13. 24-Rico Abreu, 12.796; 14. 5-Shane Stewart, 12.845; 15. 7S-Jason Sides, 12.859; 16. 15-Donny Schatz, 12.859; 17. 33M-Mason Daniel, 12.875; 18. 45-Chad Kemenah, 12.962; 19. 21P-Robbie Price, 12.968; 20. 13-Mark Dobmeier, 13.104; 21. 11-Mike Kuemper, 13.573 DRYDENE Heat #1 (8 Laps) - 1. 49-Brad Sweet [1]; 2. 19AZ-Hunter Schuerenberg [3]; 3. 83-Daryn Pittman [4]; 4. 2-Carson Macedo [2]; 5. 15-Donny Schatz [6]; 6. 21P-Robbie Price [7]; 7. 24-Rico Abreu [5] DRYDENE Heat #2 (8 Laps) - 1. 18-Ian Madsen [1]; 2. 17-Sheldon Haudenschild [2]; 3. 19-Brent Marks [3]; 4. 11K-Kraig Kinser [4]; 5. 5-Shane Stewart [5]; 6. 13-Mark Dobmeier [7]; 7. 33M-Mason Daniel [6] DRYDENE Heat #3 (8 Laps) - 1. 1A-Jacob Allen [2]; 2. 41-David Gravel [1]; 3. 21-Brian Brown [3]; 4. 45-Chad Kemenah [6]; 5. 1S-Logan Schuchart [4]; 6. 7S-Jason Sides [5]; 7. 11-Mike Kuemper [7] DIRTVision Fast Pass Dash (6 Laps) - 1. 17-Sheldon Haudenschild [4]; 2. 49-Brad Sweet [1]; 3. 1A-Jacob Allen [2]; 4. 41-David Gravel [5]; 5. 19AZ-Hunter Schuerenberg [3]; 6. 18-Ian Madsen [6]	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line496
__label__cc	0.57383	0.42617	wasps, bees, and ants Find bumble bees and honey bees information at bumble bees and honey bees The family Apidae is made up of over 25,000 species of bees in 4,000 genera. (Gauld and Bolton, 1988; Michener, 2000) Adult bees are short stout insects. They are fuzzier than their relatives the wasps and the ants. They have chewing mouthparts, four wings, and straight antennae. Most of them have yellow and black stripes, but some are bright green, and some are all black. Most bees can give a painful sting. Bee larvae and pupae are never found outside their nest. Bee larvae look like grubs, with soft white bodies, no legs and brown heads. Honey bee queens are larger than other members of their colony, with workers being the smallest and male drones ranging in the middle. female larger There are thousands of species of Bees all around the world. Bees can and do live in almost kind of climate. The only places bees do not live are in places with extreme cold all year round. In Michigan there are probably nearly 200 species. palearctic Apidae species live anywhere there are flowers to feed from. Some bumble bees can tolerate very cold temperatures and live in the far north and high in the mountains. Bees are holometabulous insects. This means that they undergo complete metamorphosis, passing through egg, larval, and pupal stages before emerging as an adult. Eggs are elongate, white, gently curved, and have a soft membranous shell. In social species, eggs are not laid with any food as workers begin to feed larvae as soon as they hatch. In solitary species, eggs are laid upon or near a food source enclosed in a cell with the larvae. Larvae are soft, whitish and grublike. They grow quickly, molting about four times as they mature. The honeybee has 5 larval instars (molts). Cleptoparasitic taxa hatch from the egg with a large sclerotized head and long curved mandibles, which they use to kill the host larvae or egg. They then begin to eat the hosts’ food source, and after the first molt take on the normal grublike appearance of other bee larvae. Apidae larvae are unable to defecate as there is no connection between the midgut and hindgut. In solitary bees, after the larval food source is gone the bee will defecate, and then almost immediately pupate. Many bee larvae spin silken cocoons for themselves. Fertalized eggs develop into females while unfertalized eggs develop into males. After mating, the female stores the sperm in her spermatheca. Mating only one time will give her enough sperm for the rest of her life. As an egg pass down her oviduct, she controls whether it gets fertilized, by allowing whether or not sperm can exit the spermatheca as the egg passes. For more information, see the information on their close relatives, ants and wasps (Hymenoptera). (Michener, 2000) Development - Life Cycle Some males fly over or around flowers, literally pouncing on females in order to mate with them. Copulation lasts from a few seconds to a few minutes at most. A male will grasp the female with his legs and sometimes his mandibles in order to hold on while they copulate. Many female bees only mate once, and males compete to get at them first. Some males even dig down into the soil to encounter a virgin female as she emerges from her larval cell. Most males bees are able to mate multiple times, although Meliponini and Apini male genitalia is torn away during copulation, after which the male soon dies. Some females that regularly mate more than once are found in the genus Panurgus. (Michener, 2000; Ramel, 2005; Michener, 2000; Ramel, 2005) Most bee species are solitary nesters. The female makes a tiny bee-sized chamber for each of her offspring, lays one egg, and supplies the chamber with a ball of pollen and nectar for the baby bee to eat. Then she seals up the chamber and builds another one. Some bees, like bumble bees and honey bees, are more social and build nests or hives. In social bee species, a single queen lays the eggs, while most of her daughters don't reproduce but stay with their mother and help take care of more and more sisters (on average, 60 thousand). Some of the sisters are raised to be new queens, and they and their brothers fly away in the summer to mate and start new nests. (von Frisch, 1950) Most bees are solitary nesters. Solitary bees construct their own nests, stocking each brood cell with a ball of pollen and nectar before laying one egg, sealing the cell, and building another. Solitary bees generally dye or leave before their offspring mature. When solitary bees do not leave before their offspring mature, but continue to feed and care for them, they are called subsocial bees. A colony is made up of 2 or more adult females, regardless of their social relationship. We usually think of a colony in terms of having many workers (all sisters), which do all of the foraging, brood care, guarding, and building, and one queen who is responsible for all egg laying. This is in fact the life of many honeybees (Apis, Trigona, Melipona), and they are considered to be highly eusocial. The queen is completely dependant on her workers, and new colonies are started by social swarms, which fly as a group to a new area never leaving a queen by herself. Other bees live in much smaller colonies such as bumblebees (Bombini), sweat bees (Halictidae) and carpenter bees (Xylocopinae). Their colonies begin with a single reproductive female who carries out all tasks of nest maintenance including foraging, brood care, and egg laying. After the emergence of daughters, colonial life and a division of labor between the foundress (queen) and her daughters may arise. These colonies are called primitively eusocial colonies. Often, the queen is larger than her workers, but this is not a constant rule. Bee nests are made up of brood cells, usually with one egg laid in each cell. Most Bombus species however, lay a cluster of eggs together in a wax cell. Cells are made of wax, or dug into wood, soil, plant stems, or mortar. The most complex bee nests are made by Meliponini species, where clusters (combs) of wax brood cells are surrounded by layers of wax or resin food storage chambers, which are further surrounded by layers of wax mixed with resin or mud to protect the colony inside. Other types of colonies include 2 or more reproductive females who each provision their own egg cells. This is called communal nesting. Most species that make communal nests also have individuals who nest alone. Communal nests can be made up of many species. It is not uncommon to find both solitary bees and wasps nesting communally together. This is especially common in areas where suitable nesting habitat is difficult to find, so individuals nest together in the only suitable areas available. The largest recorded communal nest aggregation was 423,000 bees covering 1300m squared. Solitary bees tend to line their brood cells with a waterproofing material to protect developing offspring. This material can be wax, pieces of leaves and petals, or varnish-like and made from saliva. (Gauld and Bolton, 1988; Michener, 2000; Ramel, 2005; von Frisch, 1950) sperm-storing Spring or Summer Solitary female bees don't tend their babies after they close up their chamber. Bee species that form nests don't seal up the larvae, instead they feed and take care of them as they grow. Male bees never take care of offspring and do very little work. Solitary bees hatch in the summer or fall and spend the winter in their nest. They emerge in the spring or summer to reproduce and then die. Among social bees, queen bees can live for several years. The workers usually live just a few weeks or months, although some live through the winter. Male bees usually live a few months at most, and often die shortly after mating. (Michener, 2000) Many bee species (called robber bees) are parasitic upon other bee species. These bees eat the stored food meant for the host larvae, starving or even directly killing the host. Most bees forage during the day, whenever it is warm enough. Honeybees build large hives out of wax, high up in trees or cliffs. Bumblebees make smaller nests in holes underground, usually abandoned mammal burrows. Almost any kind of protected niche can be used by bees as a nesting site, such as beetle bored cavities in timber, holes in walls or hollow trees, snail shells, or under rocks. Some use abandoned bird nests, dead plant stems, or may tunnel into the mortar of houses and walls. A few bees are nocturnal, and specialize on collecting pollen from certain night blooming flowers. Perdita species collect pollen only from evening primroses and their close relatives, and members of the cucumber family are frequented by Xenoglossa. In order to see better at night, nocturnal bees tend to have larger eyes and darker coloring. (Gauld and Bolton, 1988; Michener, 2000; Ramel, 2005) sedentary Social bees communicate a lot, using chemicals, visual signals, the vibrations of their wings, and touch. They exchange information that helps them know what's going on in the hive and what they should do. infrared/heat Adult bees drink nectar and eat pollen, while larvae eat pollen, nectar, honey, and pollen or floral oils. Pollen is collected by the female parent in solitary species, or by the foundress and or workers in colonies. Females collect pollen on branched body hairs, which are later transferred to the scopa (carrying structure), generally located on the hind legs. An exception to this are the Hylaeus, which are hairless and lack scopa, instead transporting pollen in their crops. Bees normally collect dry pollen which is naturally sticky, but some bees mix pollen with regurgitated nectar to maximize its sticky qualities. In taxa that have scopa to carry the pollen, nectar is carried in the crop, and is then refined to make honey. Some bees collect floral oils instead of nectar. When a female returns to her nest she regurgitates her crop full of nectar or oil into a honey pot or preconstructed cell for storage. (Gauld and Bolton, 1988) nectarivore Foraging Behavior stores or caches food Many bees have a venomous stinger that they can use to attack creatures that threaten them or their nest. They also generally nest in places that are hard to reach, or they protect their nest by digging it out of dead wood, soil, or other material. crab spiders other web-building spiders insect-eating birds Bees are essential to the survival of many ecosystems, as without them many plants could not reproduce. Bees pollinate more plants than any other insect. They are so important, that many species of solitary bees in the family Megachile are farmed and cared for because of their importance in pollinating commercial crops. Some plants have developed clever ways to trick bees into pollinating them. Certain orchids (Ophrys) emit pheromones similar to those of female Andrea, Anthophora, Colletes, Eucera, Tetralonia, and other bees. Males smell the pheromones and are attracted to the flowers thinking that they are female bees. As the male tries to mate with the flower, he pollinates it at the same time. (Ramel, 2005; Gauld and Bolton, 1988; Ramel, 2005) Ecosystem Impact pollinates Bees sting to protect themselves. They usually aren't dangerous, but large hives might sting a person enough times to endanger them, and some people are so allergic to bee stings that they can die from just one or a few stings. bites or stings Bees are very important to the production of fruits and vegetables, and other crops such as flax, cotton, alfalfa and clover. Without bees, most crops could not be grown. The pollination industry is worth millions every year. Bees also provide wax, honey, bee pollen, propolis (used in cough syrups) and royal jelly. (Michener, 2000; Ramel, 2005) pollinates crops Varroa mites are reducing bee populations throughout Europe and the Americas. Many bees are specialists, and the destruction of habitat coupled with the introduction of foreign honeybees is negatively effecting the polination of many plant species. Most bee species however, are not in danger. Some more information... Gordons Solitary Bee Page http://www.earthlife.net/insects/solbees.html has great links to beautiful color plates of bees from the turn of the century. George Hammond (author), Animal Diversity Web. Sara Diamond (author), Animal Diversity Web. Gauld, I., B. Bolton. 1988. The Hymenoptera. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Ito, Y. 1993. Behavior and Social Evolution of Wasps. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Michener, C. 2000. The Bees of the World. Baltimore, Maryland, USA: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Ramel, G. 2005. "Gordons Solitary Bee Page" (On-line). Accessed July 05, 2005 at http://www.earthlife.net/insects/solbees.html. von Frisch, C. 1950. Bees: Their Vision, Chemical Senses, and Language. Ithica, New York: Cornell University Press. Diamond, S. 2005. "Apidae" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed January 21, 2020 at http://www.biokids.umich.edu/accounts/Apidae/	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line499
__label__wiki	0.985576	0.985576	Footymad Blues Mad McLeish's View Bruce's View: Torquay Last updated : 07 January 2006 By Brian Cartlidge The League Two side gave Blues a fright with their second half performance and Bruce complimented Leroy Roseniors side after the game at Plainmoor "I thought we were ok in the first half but in the second half give full credit to Torquay because they played well and we've got off lightly to be perfectly honest," Bruce said. "If we play like we did in the second half come the replay then we'll make it a difficult night for ourselves. We've got to go and play and take part in the game because in the second half today we just didn't. "We were waiting for something to happen and the longer the game went on then Torquay became more confident, their crowd got behind them and made it a difficult afternoon for us. "We're relieved to still be in the hat. We've got away with it today because Torquay played very well in the second half." © 2004 - 2020 www.birminghamcity-mad.co.uk Blues Messageboards	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line501
__label__wiki	0.505199	0.505199	Focus Media Group Avoiding the Building Bureaucracy Rob Ware is Managing Director of the Australian operation, which is based in South Melbourne, and he told us more about the business. His fellow director Peter Richter (founder of the Australian company and still a consultant to it) still has considerable business in Indonesia and as far afield as Japan, but the bulk of work is within this country. “We are not a huge international corporation,” Mr Ware says. D G Jones In The Business of People TSA attributes its success to its ability to attract and retain the best people. The company’s mantra is simple – good people that take ownership of their projects will deliver good outcomes. Regardless of the sector or the size of the project, the TSA team works collaboratively with clients and project teams in a way that encourages innovation and improves project outcomes. TSA’s business philosophies mirror those of its clients – the delivery of high value, outcome focused services in a cost effective and timely manner. TSA Management Fourth Generation Ethics At the beginning, T C Clarke & Son was already ranging far and wide across Queensland, as far up as Ayr, where one building completed during the period is now listed with the Queensland Heritage Register. As Geoff Clarke told us recently, “he was doing both residential and commercial work. We used to do a majority of work for banks around the countryside and did a lot of rural work.” Morris, Geoff’s father, joined Thomas prior to WWII as an apprentice and the team built numerous landmarks. T C Clarke & Son Rising to the Sporting Challenge Also administered by the Trust is the adjacent Sydney Football Stadium, currently known for reasons of naming rights as the Allianz Stadium. This 45,500-seater takes care of the needs of the city’s more rectangular sports: rugby league and union, and now soccer. Either venue can accommodate a wide variety of diverse entertainments such as concerts, although Allianz Stadium predominates in this area. Sydney Cricket Ground Moving For Change, and For the Better MoveCorp emerged on the scene nearly twenty-four years ago, the creation of Ken Tuckey, a Logistics and Intelligence expert for the Australian Navy. At the time, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) had fifteen live broadcasting studios operating twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. A project committee, planning the relocation of the television and radio company, headhunted Mr Tuckey in the hopes of avoiding downtime during the resettlement. MoveCorp Pride in the Work Just how successful can any business possibly be if it is not marketing itself? Typically, any business has a portion of its monies set aside to invest in advertising because it needs to get the word out about its product and name. Very rarely can a company survive or thrive without it. John McDonald Building Services is that rare entity. The company specialises in many areas of construction, ranging from designer homes to construction surveying, project management and supervision, interior design, decoration and urban planning. Even heritage sites are not beyond its scope. John McDonald Building Services It’s Your Home A home buyer, on the other hand, is more interested in a permanent place – somewhere they can hang many hats. Oftentimes this is a couple or a young family who has been renting their hat racks for a few years and have decided that they feel stable enough to purchase a beautiful, permanent dwelling on their own little chunk of the planet. Indigo Homes Project Management, Town Planning and Much More “We’re probably the only mainstream practice in Western Australia that combines all of the disciplines we have in one practice, principally combining our town planning, urban design and project management so openly and so clearly,” says Greg Rowe, founding Principal and Managing Director of GRA. “There might be town planning firms, and there certainly are project management firms who offer these services, but they sub-contract those disciplines. To my understanding, we are the largest firm in WA that provides both those services in one organisation. There are many benefits in providing these disciplines in one organisation.” Greg Rowe and Associates Looking After the Assets The business developed with the trend of outsourcing facilities management, which led – in cases where appropriate – to the combination of lease negotiation or lease administration. In the late 1990s, the federal government began outsourcing integrated real estate facility management contracts (the basis of the market in Australia) to a large number of private corporations—initially very large ones, and more recently smaller companies too—because of perceived advantages in efficiency in having a single solution to both matters. Five D The company began its journey into the commercial, industrial and residential construction market by first taking on a few domestic projects and one industrial project in early 2008. From there it has gone on to complete many other multi-level residential projects. “Since then, our name has become more prevalent in the market,” says James Banks who, along with Joe Grasso, is one of the two Managing Directors of Figurehead Construction. “We’ve been involved in a number of projects which have raised our profile in the market, including Iris apartments due for completion in early 2013, Errol Apartments and more recently Sanctum Brighton Apartments.” Figurehead Construction Read Magazine Online Call it ‘domotics,’ and you are likely to receive a blank stare, but refer to it as ‘smart home’ or ‘home automation,’ and you will get a nod of acknowledgement. For the past few years, consumers have heard the word ‘smart’ attached to countless products and services, from food and drink to snacks like popcorn and mobile phones, which no one seems to refer to as a ‘cellphone’ anymore. Yet what, exactly, constitutes ‘smart’? January 21, 2020, 4:33 PM AEDT Tesla rebuffs U.S. safety recall petition, says no unintended acceleration in vehicles Brazil's Ambev sets ambitious target to end plastic pollution in packaging Embraer studies turboprop to be developed through Boeing venture Key events in Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou's extradition case AerCap CEO warns against panic discounts for Boeing 737 MAX jets Business In Focus Resource In Focus Travel New Zealand Magazine Healthcare In Focus © 2020 Construction In Focus Magazine. All Rights Reserved. - Terms & Conditions - Log in -	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line510
__label__cc	0.538189	0.461811	EN NL ES Embracing: taking in or including as a part, item, or element of a more inclusive whole. The project attempts to create a diversity of social-environmental ecosystems dealing with the topic of the public (society) and the private (individual) needs in and holistic, integrated manner through the notion of what we call EMBRACING THE GREEN. In order to achieve these goals, the project presents a three-folded colonization strategy combining and interrelating the following parameters: the green -understood as the existing Sintra-Cascais Nature Reserve and new potential green spaces; a networked infrastructure of connective tissue enhancing the already existing mobility systems with the newly proposed paths joining private and public spaces through its recreational, social features; and finally the housing programme as means of delimiting new formations of ways of inhabiting. #1- EXPANSION We believe that the Sintra-Cascais Nature Reserve is the key feature for the area, working not only as an attractor of natural life and outdoor activities but also possibly as a major sustainable backbone for the development for the new Cascais urban settlement. The first strategy would be to conceive a controlled expansion of the Sintra-Cascais Nature Reserve from the west end of the study area towards the far north-east side linking both extremes through a natural green corridor that would host the TLS line service with its two stops. #2- COLONIZING THE GREEN A lense-shaped networked infrastructure will then colonize and articulate the green corridor with its immediate surroundings, through a sequence of medium to large scale green open public programmed spaces integrating the existing urban fabric and mobility structure. Thus, the new infrastructure not only merges together the Cascais Hospital on the east with the Nature Reserve on the west, but also re-structures and renews Cabreiro's urban tissue on the north bringing a cohesive link between the north and the new urbanization on the south-east -the project site. This lense-shaped networked infrastructure is in itself an integrated place-holder to be populated by the future dwelling ecosystems. The infrastructure consists of inner vehicular roads, pedestrian and cycling paths running along the periphery of each lense connecting the programme from the most private to the most public social space. This network attempts to reinforce, on one hand, the social interaction where its path converge generating open public plazas; and on the other hand, healthy life through experiencing the green qualities of the proposal via cycling and walking paths over the motored vehicles ones, enhancing a sustainable way of living. #3- POPULATING We recursively adopt the idea of embracing the green within the articulation of the whole programme of the proposal, but basically in the way the dwelling developments are conceived. The dwelling is based on a lense form where public and private spaces alternate from an inside to an outside condition and an in-between phase. The above mentioned networked infrastructure is then populated by these different lenses. In this manner, a first type of dwelling is characterized as a subsidised block of apartment with the minimum required square metres located in the core or centre of the lense and surrounded by a communal green space (green in the outside - programme in the inside). Inverting this relation -now the green is in the inside and the programme on the outside- a second type is designed. In this case, the green is enclosed by row of houses, giving the opportunity to have a more secluded, introverted while protected communal green space. Finally, an in-between state of dwelling organization emerges, where both the green and the programme are scattered in the plot creating smaller communal and social places. The concept for the houses follows, at the same time, the logic of embracing the green and a communal space. Basically the dwelling massing shares a communal space in-between units allowing social interaction and spatial continuity from the inside core of the lense to its outside. Each housing unit has a private internal green patio matching individual family needs. There is a total integration between the dwelling lenses, the networked infrastructure and the natural green corridor through the acts of EXPANSION, COLONIZING and POPULATING the GREEN, where all parts perform ecological, social, environmental and recreationally. The project guarantees a social integration featured by spatial communities enhancing a sustainable way of living. In this way, we can understand a sustainable city through its coexistence and relation of its multiple characters: balance between new and preexistence urban structures; connectivity of social, communal shared spaces; variations of dwellings according to new ways of living, all the latter stitched or joined through the Sintra-Cascais Nature Reserve. To be sustainable means to be performative, active, interactive and economic. Europan 10 MAR ad Skywaves: Selected project at Wierden Windforest: Follies aan zee Friendship Vortex Tea & Coffee Towers Parachute Pavillion Soffio · performance space Shifting performances Amsterdam Noord Park EnergieFabriek House in the vineyards Article in Latvijas Arkitectura PLAAN Vision and Utopias · exhibition Riga cultural days New Street Station Time out of scale · installation	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line511
__label__cc	0.505645	0.494355	Harlem Students Dance To An Old Irish Jig THE HUFFINGTON POST, published March 17, 2011 One To World is a non profit organization that brings Fulbright scholars and other international students to New York City public schools to introduce and explain their native cultures in order to break down prejudices and create cross-cultural understanding. The organization also serves a few private schools as well. Mar 17, 2011 \| English, Language, Lifestyle, The Huffington Post, Topics, Video \| A Beat Boxing Class For The Blind THE HUFFINGTON POST, published February 21, 2011 Top New York beatboxers Taylor McFerrin (son of Bobby McFerrin) and Chesney Snow teach blind and visually impaired students at Lavelle School for the Blind how to produce drum beats, rhythms and musical sounds using their mouth, lips, tongue and voice. Feb 21, 2011 \| English, Language, Lifestyle, Publications, The Huffington Post, Topics, Video \| Creating Urban Agriculture, One Roof At A Time THE HUFFINGTON POST, published January 18, 2011 Traditionally, farmers take it easy in the winter. But urban farmer Ben Flanner has never been so busy. He is trying to get more New York rooftops ready to grow new shingles of Sun Gold tomatoes, salad greens, and carrots before the next season begins. Jan 18, 2011 \| Business, English, Environment, Language, Lifestyle, Publications, The Huffington Post, Topics, Video \| Baking Dreams Into Real Businesses Filled with prune or cherry, Janine Frank’s round, slightly sweet Kolachi pastries could come straight from an old-school Slovakian bakery. And Sherry Rousso’s 2-inch-square vegan treats decorated with gold dust could come from a hip Williamsburg shop. Jan 13, 2011 \| Business, English, Language, Lifestyle, Publications, The Huffington Post, Topics, Video \| Story Pirates: Kids’ Imagination Rules on Stage THE HUFFINGTON POST, published December 27, 2010 On a recent Saturday afternoon, a group of improvisational comedians performed a collection of brand new stories for children at the Drama Book Shop in Midtown. The tales that the Story Pirates brought to life featured kings, ghosts, and elaborate plots. But the Story Pirates didn’t write them; the authors were kids. Dec 27, 2010 \| Business, English, Language, Publications, The Huffington Post, Video \| Fixers Collective: Brooklyn Workshop Fosters Art of Repair THE HUFFINGTON POST, published December 2, 2010 On a recent Thursday evening in a cramped room by the Gowanus canal in Brooklyn, Joe Holdner was fixing a Dutch-style chandelier made in China, David Mahfouda a black umbrella, and Alex Krupnik a metronome that stubbornly refused to tick. Dec 02, 2010 \| English, Environment, Language, Lifestyle, Publications, The Huffington Post, Topics, Video \| From Brooklyn to Butare, Rwanda; A Sweet Dream Comes True THE HUFFINGTON POST, published November 19, 2010 When Jennie Dundas and Alexis Miesen opened Blue Marble Ice Cream in 2007, they wanted it to be bigger than a humble, eco-conscious, all organic ice cream shop in Brooklyn. But they never imagined that their business would lead them halfway around the world to Rwanda, still recovering from the brutal civil war that claimed nearly one million lives. Nov 19, 2010 \| Business, English, Language, Lifestyle, Publications, The Huffington Post, Topics, Video \| Headstone Shop Owner Sells Bread to Improve the Relationship with His Daughter As we walked down Graham Avenue in East Williamsburg, we would often pass by a headstone shop that had stacks of bread in the window — certainly an odd combination. Who was behind the idea to sell bread with cemetery headstones. Corporate Lay-Off Creates a Boot-Strap Entrepreneur THE HUFFINGTON POST, published 3 November, 2010 Dana Ostomel was a casualty of the first round of layoffs at Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages in November 2007. She took a few months off, got married as planned, and thought about starting a business. Then, in February 2008 she took the plunge. Nov 03, 2010 \| Business, English, Language, Lifestyle, Publications, Technology, The Huffington Post, Topics, Video \| Laid-Off City Employee, Struggles To Get Health Care For Teenage Daughter THE HUFFINGTON POST, published July 22, 2010 “A couple of weeks ago I got discouraged,” said Special Terry, a nine-year veteran of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “My daughter said ‘I hope what happened to you doesn’t make you forget about your dreams and aspirations.’” Aug 16, 2010 \| Business, English, Language, Publications, The Huffington Post, Topics, Video \|	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line512
__label__wiki	0.881258	0.881258	Area Marketplace Dexter Statesman The Prospect-News Stories Obituaries Photos Area Marketplace Classifieds Everything Daily American Republic Involved in Stoddard County plot to kill pastor's wife Brandy Hicks gets 7 years for burglary By MICHELLE FRIEDRICH BLOOMFIELD, Mo. -- A Dexter, Mo., woman was sentenced to prison Wednesday after she pleaded guilty to burglarizing the Bloomfield home of her pastor as part of what was an alleged plot to kill the man's wife in a fire. Brandy Hicks, 35, pleaded guilty as charged to the Class C felony of second-degree burglary before Presiding Circuit Judge Robert Mayer, according to Stoddard County Prosecuting Attorney Russ Oliver. "She pled to the burglary like the agreement disclosed in the trials" of both Donald Lafferty of Quechee, Vt., and her husband, Christopher Hicks of Dexter, Oliver said. With her plea, Brandy Hicks admitted that on Jan. 13, 2013, she unlawfully entered a home, owned by Mildred Lafferty, in the 20900 block of State Highway AB at Bloomfield for the purpose of committing the crime of stealing. Hicks reportedly broke into the home to steal a bottle of cough syrup on the day after she and her husband allegedly set it on fire with Mildred Lafferty inside. "It was one of those deals where Brandy had done everything we asked of her and cooperated fully with our case," Oliver explained. "The state had to hold up our end of the bargain." Oliver said Mayer sentenced Brandy Hicks to the "agreed upon" sentence of seven years in the Missouri Department of Corrections. With Brandy Hicks' plea, Oliver said, the state dismissed the remaining felonies of attempted murder, first-degree arson and armed criminal action (ACA) Brandy Hicks was charged with. "If Donald Lafferty's case is reversed on appeal and tried again, obviously, she will participate in the trial," Oliver said. "If she doesn't, the three counts can be refiled." Lafferty, 71, was found guilty in January of the felonies of attempted murder, arson, ACA and financial exploitation of an elderly person. The Stoddard County jury convicted Lafferty of hiring the Hickses to burn his home near Bloomfield and kill his wife in January 2013. The Hickses were to receive $15,000 and another $5,000 if his wife died in the fire. The exploitation charge involving Lafferty's mother, Goldie Lafferty, was a separate incident. He was accused of defrauding his mother by taking all the money from a certificate of deposit and using it for personal bills. Lafferty was ordered to serve 15 years in prison on the attempted murder and arson charges, with those sentences to be served consecutively to each other, and to a 20-year sentence on the exploitation charge. A 10-year sentence on the ACA was ordered to be served concurrently with Lafferty's other sentences. Lafferty, whose appeal is ongoing, also was ordered to make restitution in the amount of $85,829.17 to his late mother's estate. Christopher Hicks was tried earlier this month in Stoddard County on the felonies of attempted murder, arson, ACA and second-degree burglary. After hearing three days of testimony and deliberating for about four hours, the jury acquitted Christopher Hicks on all of the charges. Respond to this story Posting a comment requires free registration: If you already have an account, follow this link to login Otherwise, follow this link to register © 2020 Butler County Publishing Co. Site Index · Contact Us · Media Partners · Back to top	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line515
__label__cc	0.712941	0.287059	Review by Mark Schwab A powerful, heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting documentary of Roger Ebert's life based on his book of the same name. Director Steve James (the brilliant "Hoop Dreams") was given total access by Ebert and his wife Chaz to his life while he struggled with massive health issues. Ebert and James had been close friends for years, ever since he (and his fellow film critic Gene Siskel) championed his modest-budgeted doc "Hoop Dreams". Their endorsement brought James (deserved) fame, jumpstarted his career and built a fine and enduring friendship. That friendship benefits all of us since Ebert obviously deeply trusts James to visualize his life in the proper context. You can rest easy Roger - James does a superb job. We begin at almost the end of Ebert's life in 2012 while he's hospitalized. Watching Roger endure the daily agony of getting his lungs suctioned is very difficult to watch at first. But with his ever-present and loving wife Chaz, you can understand why Ebert refuses to give up hope and carries onward. There are some surpises in the doc - like how his drinking problem was actually quite serious in the late 70's and that he met his wife in an A.A. meeting. This covered some familiar ground for me regarding his professional background as a newspaper journalist and television celebrity, but when it came to Roger the person, I felt like I knew him much better afterwards. Ebert passed away during the production of this doc and James handles this in a very moving way without being exploitive or macabre. His wife Chaz's description of Roger's final moments are deeply moving and should draw an appreciative tear from your eyes. If you were a fan of Roger Ebert (and I was), this is a must-see.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line520
__label__wiki	0.693102	0.693102	HomeWelcome to the BSHS Website The British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) is the main organisation in the British Isles working to bring together people with an interest in the histories of science, technology and medicine and their changing relationship with society.As you will know from the last issue of Viewpoint membership rates have increased slightly this year but we are sure that you will still find membership excellent value for money. In addition to regular issues of Viewpoint and the British Journal for the History of Science, and our active conference programme, membership benefits will shortly be expanded to include a dedicated members’ area of the BSHS website.» Learn more about the BSHS here The BSHS Policy: Statement on Equality and Diversity International Advisers Updates from the BSHS President Policy: Social Media Guidelines Website Writing and Image Guidelines BJHS BJHS Themes BSHS Monographs BSHS Translations Education Forum Archive About BSHS Membership BSHS Policies Policy: Guidance for Chairs Policy: Guidance for Speakers ConferencesForthcoming Meetings Organised or Supported by the BSHS24th International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine, 2013, Manchester2011 BSHS Annual Conference, 14-17 July 2011, University of Exeter Recent Meetings Organised by the BSHS2011 BSHS Postgraduate Conference, 4-6 January 2011, University of Manchester2010 BSHS Annual Conference, 22-25 July 2010, University of AberdeenBSHS Meeting Information and ArchivesAnnual Conference: the largest event in the BSHS calendar, the annual summer meeting was re-established in 2003 and welcomes contributors from all areas of the profession.Postgraduate Conference: an equally important Society institution, the Postgraduate Conference takes place early in the calendar year and is organised entirely by, and for, graduate students.Other Meetings: details of more specialised conference events, plus joint meetings with other societies, including the four-yearly Three Societies Meeting.Interested in organising a meeting?If you have a suggestion for a possible future conference, symposium or public lecture which you think would benefit from BSHS support, we’d like to hear it. The BSHS may be involved at a variety of levels ranging from overall organization to financial or in-kind sponsorship. See BSHS Support for Events for further details. Twitter Conference Postgraduate Conferences Three Societies Meeting Other BSHS Meetings Support for Events GrantsThe British Society for the History of Science operates the following grants schemes:Master’s Degree Bursaries: bursaries of £1,000 to support students taking taught Master’s courses in the history of science or technology. Non-members of the Society are eligible. Deadline: 30 September each year.Research Grants: small grants for specific research purposes, from £50 to £500. There are two cycles per year. Only members of the Society are eligible. Deadlines: 30 September and 31 March each year.Butler-Eyles Travel Grants: grants of up to £100 to assist with the travel costs of attending a BSHS conference. This grant is open to independent scholars and student members of the Society only. There are multiple cycles: candidates should apply by the registration deadline for the relevant conference.Special Projects Grants: grants, usually from £50 to £1500 in value, to fund ‘special projects’ which promote the general aims of the BSHS. There are two cycles per year. Only members of the Society are eligible. Deadlines: 30 September and 31 March each year.Care Grants: grants of up to £100 towards delegates’ care arrangements during the BSHS Annual Conference.The Society also supports the organisation of conferences and events, but not through these grants schemes. For more details of the… Butler-Eyles Travel Grants Carer Grants Engagement Fellowships Master’s Degree Bursaries Outreach and Engagement Project Grants Undergraduate Dissertation Archive Grants PrizesThe BSHS encourages good quality history of science by organising and judging three prestigious biennial prizes, two of which are awarded by the Society:The Singer Prize is awarded by the BSHS every two years to the author of an unpublished essay based on original research into any aspect of the history of science, technology, or medicine. The Prize is intended for younger scholars or entrants into the profession.The Dingle Prize is awarded to the best book in the history of science (broadly construed) published in English and which is accessible to a wide audience of non-specialists. The winner of the 2009 competition was Thomas Dixon, Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2008).The BSHS Slade Prize was awarded biennially between 1999 and 2009 to the writer of an essay (published or unpublished) that made the best critical study of an episode in the history of science focused on conceptual innovation or scientific methodology. Details of the winners are available here. BSHS Singer Prize BSHS Hughes Prize BSHS Pickstone Prize BSHS Ayrton Prize BSHS Great Exhibitions Prize Postgraduate Hub Leaving a Legacy to the BSHS 2003 Session Details Home/Conferences/Postgraduate Conferences/2003/2003 Session Details 2003 Session Detailsbshs-admin2017-11-10T09:52:57+00:00 Session 1: New Disciplines and Practices in the 20th century Jenny Marie, The migration of Rockefeller money to geneticists working in 1930’s Britain Ben Mayhew, John Bowlby’s model of development Nestor Herran, Reactors, isotopes and the rise of Spanish Nucleonics Sandra Mols, Why Georges Lemaitre, an astronomer, became interested in calculators and the impact of his practice of computing on calculators on his later research Session 2: The making of science and scientists in the 19th century Jim Mussell, The scientist as editor and the editor as scientist in the late nineteenth century periodical Rebekah Higgitt, Francis Baily’s 1835 ‘Account of the Reverend John Flamsteed’ Peter Skelton, Mummy why is the sky blue? Tyndall, Ruskin, and the colour of Athena’s eyes John Heard, The invention of the pure mathematician in Victorian England Emily Winterburn, William Herschel learns how to be a natural philosopher Vincent Guillin, Epistemological obstacles in the founding of French scientific psychology: Theodule Ribot and Kantiansim Session 3: Astronomy and astrology in the 17th century Kevin Killeen, Early modern microcosms and scientific mimesis Tayra Lanuza, A Spanish Dominican friar and his combination of Christian belief and traditional astrology Session 4: Natural Philosophy and Medicine in the long 18th century Raquel Delgado-Moreira, What’s Newton’s manuscript on Solomon’s temple about? Jon Bateson, The Birth of the history of medicine? Crisis and history in the early eighteenth century. Terence Banks, The metaphorical origins of modern science: figurative and mathematical languages in the early modern period. Session 5: Scientific societies and science in the 19th century Ayako Sakarai, Old and new venues of social pleasures-how the zoo replaced the promenade in late nineteenth century Frankfurt am Main Lawrence Dritsas, ‘Expedition science’ in central Africa, 1850-1870 Leigh Bregman, Dr. Andrew Smith: personal ambition, professional advantage and the institutionalisation of science in early 19th century Cape Town. Session 6: Psychology, philosophy and the nature of science Chiara Ambrosio, Iconicity, models and visual metaphors Daniel Friesner, Extramission theories of vision in children and in ancient science Session 7: Medicine in the 19th century Vanessa Heggie, Food, drink and exercise; degeneration debate in Manchester, 1898-1908 An Vleugels, Class, gender and alcohol in the making of the Habitual Drunkards Act, 1870-1879 Michael Bresalier, Collecting flu: the Local Government Board and the making of a ‘modern’ pandemic, 1888-1895 Paula Hellal, Dr Charles West: nineteenth Century perspectives on childhood aphasia Neil Pemberton, Gesticulating and speaking in late Victorian England: the oral-sign dispute and the construction of deafness Session 8: Science, trade and industry in the 19th century Dimitrios G Ierapetritis, Travellers and geographers and the mastic gum trade of the Chios island James Sumner, Adulteration and porter brewing around 1800 Anna Simmons, Chemists and consultants: the pharmaceutical trade at Apothecaries’ Hall, 1881-1904 Session 9: 20th century science, science policies and culture Jessica Reinisch, Allied health policy in occupied Germany, 1945-1949 Henrick Knudsen, Persuading the reluctant patron: state and science in Denmark, 1945-1960 Sabine Clarke, Colonial products research and the West Indies, 1940-1960 Louise Jarvis, Why be a Lamarckian? Session 10: 20th century biographies Annette Lykknes, Ellen Gleditsch — pioneer in radio chemistry Simon Olling Rebsdorf, Growing up with astronomy: Bengt Stromgren’s early years, 1908-1935 S.Turchetti, Italian academic refugees in Britain, 1930-1950 Session 11: Early modern medicine and natural philosophy Catherine Rider, Magical cures in late Medieval medicine Samuel Doble Gutierrez, The Galilean telescope: not only a single tube with two lenses Follow @BSHSNews BSHS @BSHSNews The @royalsociety Lisa Jardine Grant Scheme, which supports travel and expenses for research trips and events, is o… https://t.co/rjx3oLaOdg RT @BSECS: In case the Oxford conference just wasn't enough, we're now announcing our 2020 postgraduate/ECR conference CfP... details are h… BSHS Executive Secretary (for current mailing address please contact by email in the first instance) Web: Official BSHS Website Copyright 2017 \| The British Society for the History of Science \| All Rights Reserved. 30% discount off Royal Society Notes and Records BSHS members get an exclusive 30% off a personal subscription to Notes and Records. 20% discount off Ashgate publications BSHS members get an exclusive 20% off all Ashgate publications. Visit Ashgate	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line527
__label__cc	0.59435	0.40565	Write for the Gazette Clerk’s Office apparently revised election spending record without due notice or notation; a 'shocking, lack of oversight'. By Pepper Parr Elections are the way the public gets to choose who will lead them – who will make the critical decisions; who will determine the tax rate. Money plays a large part in how those men and women get elected. In the October municipal election a lot of money was raised, from a surprisingly low number of people. Who they were and who they donated to is of public interest. Provincial legislation requires the City Clerk to not only administer the election but also to sign the documents that declare who the winner is and receive reports on who spent what. When that data became available two Burlington residents who concern themselves with civic affairs began to pour over the campaign contribution reports that were filed with the Clerk and the document the Clerk provided to city council. That is when the two, Blair Smith and Lynn Crosby begin to find that some of the numbers just didn’t add up. Donations they knew for a fact were given were not recorded and there were numerous and quite obvious errors. When questioned by the Gazette, they explained; “We have been looking very carefully at the financial statements of all candidates for council for the Burlington 2018 election. One of the things we noticed was that the audit committee received a report from the Clerk on June 4, with an Appendix of all contributions over $100 for all candidates. We immediately saw that this list seemed much too small and could see that there was a lot missing. We then went through all the candidate financial statements posted on the City website, created our own list and then compared the two. They were not a close match. We know that errors do occur and that our analysis is only as accurate as our source data, in this case the candidates’ audited financial statements.” The two put together a letter to the City Manager, the Mayor, Council and the Clerk setting out their concerns. In their July 30th email they said: “Under the Municipal Elections Act, the duties and responsibilities of the Clerk are summarized as: (a) preparing for the election; (b) preparing for and conducting a recount in the election; (c) maintaining peace and order in connection with the election; and (d) in a regular election, preparing and submitting the report described in subsection 12.1 (2). 1996, c. 32, Sched., s. 11 (2); 2009, c. 33, Sched. 21, s. 8 (7). We believe that the Clerk is the critical steward of the most fundamental of our democratic processes, the election of our municipal representatives, and that such responsibilities should be discharged with care, diligence, lack of bias and a regard for maintaining an accurate public record. As such, we were surprised by the 2018 Municipal Election report listing Campaign Contributions that was submitted by the Clerk to the Compliance Audit Committee on June 4, 2019. A quick review of the document posted on the City website revealed that there were numerous omissions and inaccuracies. In fact, the record is both incomplete and misleading. We are unaware of any competing or undisclosed policy that informed the structure of the record as presented and would appreciate learning if such is the case. Otherwise, we note the following that we consider to be serious flaws in the record, requiring explanation and correction. 1. The total amount of contributions on the Clerk’s Report adds up to $313,588.52. On page 11, there is a line that simply says “Supplementary List”, $3,950. Adding that undocumented amount in, the total would be $317,538.52. In our review of all candidates’ financial statements, our total is $550,134. (Note our total includes a few donations that were returned, which may not be required to be included). 2. The entire list of Mayor Meed Ward’s contributions is missing. 3. Several of Ward 2 councillor candidate Roland Tanner’s contributions are missing. (Maria Adcock, $1200; Karina Gould, $200; Robert Loney, $250; Ed McMahon, $200; Jack O’Brien, $500). 4. One of Ward 2 councillor candidate Kimberly Calderbank’s contributions is missing (Mark McCrory, $400), as is one of Ward 3 candidate Gareth Williams (Collin Gibbons, $200). 5. Both of Ward 6 councillor candidate Xin-Yi Zhang’s contributions are missing as are the lone contributions of Ken White, Tayler Morin and Greg Woodruff. 6. None of the mayoral or councillor candidates’ own or spousal contributions are included. 7. Several first names are missing, even though they appear on the relevant candidate Forms. 8. Some names are transposed and therefore do not appear correctly and wouldn’t be easily found. For example, the second name should read Abdelaziz Guergachi, not the reverse. In that same entry there is another random name there also, Leila Tijini. Why? 9. In some cases there appear to be double entries which are there in error because they only appear once on all candidate forms, or cases where entries appear three times when they should appear twice. (E,g., Lynn and Chris Anstead, $200; Doug Brown, $200; Nick and Diane Leblovic, $250; Edda Manley, $300; David and Linda McKay, $200; John and Bonnie Purkis, $300; Mary Woodward $1,000; Stephen Woodward, $1,000). 10. Some names are spelled incorrectly, though we note Rick Goldring’s list of names and amounts is in some cases practically illegible. 11. Entry for Schuler should say “Michael” as first name and the amount shows $700. $200 was returned so this should say $500. 12. Looking at the candidate forms, there are errors that we would have thought should have been flagged by the Clerk to be corrected. Perhaps this is not the Clerk’s purview and it is instead up to citizens to look at the documents and raise these things instead. If so, that seems like a flawed system. In any event, such things include: no dates of contributions received are listed (as required) on any of Mike Wallace’s contributions; post office boxes being listed as addresses where Full Addresses are required; the very illegible form submitted by Rick Goldring as noted above. We believe that these errors are serious enough that the record, as presented, does not provide an accurate and true picture of the 2018 Campaign financials. As such the public record, in this instance at least, is too flawed to remain uncorrected. We would request that either you provide an explanation of why the statements presented to the Compliance Audit Committee are accurate, addressing the deficiencies noted above, or correct the record and resubmit noting publicly the reason for the resubmission.” Crosby and Smith got a response from the City Manager, Tim Commisso, almost immediately. He referred the matter to the City Clerk. The Mayor also provided a quick response supporting the need for an investigation and correction if required. The City Clerk, Angela Morgan, replied to Smith and Crosby on July 31st indicating that their concerns would be reviewed. Then, on August 6th, she made a more fulsome reply: City Clerk Angela Morgan going over the results of the 2010 election. “Lynn and Blair, thank you for your e-mail and detailed review of the candidate financial document attached to the Clerks report that was considered by the Election Compliance Audit committee on June 4. The Municipal Elections Act requires the Clerk to prepare a report for the election compliance audit committee, this report is limited to reporting on contributors who contributed more that $1200 to any one candidate or more than $5000 to all of the candidates for Council. “To prepare the report, I reviewed all of the candidates financials individually and highlighted those that had over-contributed, this information was included in individual reports to the committee which were included on the agenda for the June 4th meeting (which can be found at) https://calendar.burlington.ca/Event/Index/aaba4276-79ae-4619-9ffb-aa5c00bd7ec1. “Following that review, staff combined the lists into one large list to present to the Committee as information. This was done through copy and paste from the candidates lists and therefore, any spelling of names is identical to the spelling on the candidates paperwork. In reviewing the attached listing, I did note that the list of contributors to Mayor Meed Ward’s campaign was not included in the final list although it was reviewed by myself in preparing the report on over contributions noted above. In addition, contributors are listed multiple times on the list because they contributed to more than one campaign, so they are listed each time they were found to have contributed (i.e. if they contributed to 4 campaigns, they would be listed 4 times), in some instances, it is the same contribution amount. The list does not include the amount that an individual candidate or their spouse contributed to their own campaign as this is outside the scope of my review. “We have reposted an amended list to reflect the contributions that were missed from the original posting. This did not affect the overall conclusion in my report which indicated that 2 contributors, contributed more than $5000. “This review is a new provision in the Municipal Elections Act and as a result, this is first time this list was prepared. We are learning from this election and will be making some improvements in 2022 to ensure the report and its attachments are completed in a more user friendly manner. Thank you again for your comments.” Smith and Crosby were not satisfied with the response they were given and responded to the Clerk on August 7th: “Thank you for your response yesterday to our email of Tuesday, July 30th. It helps to explain some of the anomalies that we noted in the material presented to the Compliance Audit Committee on June 4th but, unfortunately, not all. It also raises a rather serious new issue. Angela Morgan, City Clerk 2018 We understand the duties of Clerk, as specified under the Municipal Elections Act, are only to produce a report of contributors who were in violation – and there were only two (2) by your reckoning. It is somewhat confusing then that the Appendix to the report presented to the Compliance Audit Committee was so extensive going to 11 pages and including contributors who were completely ‘out of scope’. If the intent was to provide a complete and comprehensive picture of all contributions made during the campaign, the numerous errors and omissions that we noted undermined that purpose. The list has now been changed consistent with some of the corrections and additions that we suggested were needed. However, it is still inaccurate. For example, the following errors, omissions and oversights still remain: • though Mayor Meed Ward’s entries are now included, there are still about five missing, and some of the dollar amounts are incorrect • there are still a few names transposed (these names are not transposed on the candidate forms) • there are still 8 instances of missing first names, all of which do appear on the candidate forms • the entries we noted that were missing from Kimberly Calderbank’s and Gareth William’s forms are still missing • we understand some people donated multiple times and their names should appear more than once; however, there are eight entrees that seem to be doubled in error • though the missing Roland Tanner entries have now been added, Karina Gould was incorrectly listed as Maria Gould and Robert Loney’s surname is misspelled • there are several names misspelled and contrary to your explanation, they are not misspelled on the candidate forms (again with the caveat that Rick Goldring’s form is almost illegible); we are referring to names from other candidate forms Sample of the form required to be completed. • how can one be certain the Mike Wallace contributions were donated in the proper time frame (May 1 – December 31) when he did not include any dates as required? Is this not a rather serious contravention? The corrected list is now available on the City website – https://calendar.burlington.ca/Event/Index/aaba4276-79ae-4619-9ffb-aa5c00bd7ec1 The form the Wallace auditors submitted: There are no dates shown. However, it is included as a part of the original agenda package of the June 4th meeting of the Compliance Audit Committee. As such, it gives the impression that it is the list originally presented and approved by that committee. It is not. So, the public record has been altered with no indication that such is the case and that the report that was actually approved by the Compliance Audit Committee is not the report that is presented on the City Website. We believe that this is tantamount to altering the public record after the fact and is a serious contravention of appropriate information protocols. We believe that the amended report should be resubmitted for approval. Indeed, one should never be able to unilaterally change the public record. There should always be some form of independent approval and notification process. What was the approval and notification process involved here and was Council aware? Additionally, there must be some indication that this is not the original report approved by the Committee and the reasons for the re submission and re posting. If you recall, we had requested that the report be resubmitted with the reason for the re submission clearly stated. Such has not occurred and this is unsatisfactory. You say “This review is a new provision in the Municipal Elections Act and as a result, this is first time this list was prepared. We are learning from this election and will be making some improvements in 2022 to ensure the report and its attachments are completed in a more user friendly manner.” Lynn Crosby and Blair Smith, both Burlington residents with a passion for open and transparent civic government. Crosby was trained as a para-legal; Smith served as an Assistant Deputy Minister wit the Ontario government., Our request had nothing to do with “user-friendliness” and everything to do with accuracy and data integrity. Both were lacking. We remain concerned with the apparent absence of due diligence and appropriate oversight. It is also, perhaps, a happy coincidence that your report of donation violations was accurate despite the absence of the Mayor’s donors; in part a function of the fact that Mayor Meed Ward, unlike the other candidates, would not accept donations from individuals associated with the development industry. Regardless, the original errors of accuracy and oversight now pale in comparison with the apparent ability of the Clerk’s Office to alter the public record without notice or notation. We would appreciate an adjustment to the public record clearly stating that the list, as published on the City website as part of the agenda package, is a corrected one, not the original version. Attached for comparison are the original and amended versions of the list. … Lynn Crosby and Blair Smith” As of the time of publication, we are advised that there has been no response from the City Clerk. However, the Mayor responded with clear direction, indicating that she recognized the need to maintain the integrity of the public record, that the existing record should be annotated to note that is has been amended, that all amendments should be appropriately marked and that any further corrections needed to the record should be so noted. For Crosby and Smith the fundamental issues remain. They explained; “We are concerned with the competence and integrity of the Clerk’s Office. People will probably think that we are “stirring the pot” or nit-picking but, perhaps, they don’t truly understand the role of the Municipal Clerk and its importance. Arguably, the Clerk is the most important link between the provincial bureaucracy and that of the city or town. Not the most important official or the most influential bureaucrat but the most essential and integral connection between the two levels of governance. “Amongst many other roles, the Clerk is the official records-keeper of the municipality with a duty under the Municipal Act “to record, without note or comment, all resolutions, decisions and other proceedings of the council”. So, errors in this duty are serious and have impact. The appendix that was originally submitted as part of the agenda package for the Compliance Audit Committee on June 4th was seriously flawed. The number and nature of the errors was shocking, as was the obvious lack of oversight. “The fact that the appendix was not a statutory “requirement” does not mitigate the issue. More serious, however, is the fact that the Clerk’s Office has now apparently revised the public record without due notice or notation. Quite simply, this is a completely unacceptable contravention of information practice and protocol, particularly for one entrusted with maintaining the integrity of the official record. The public record must always be historically and contemporaneously accurate. It reflects the information material that elected officials used at the time to make decisions affecting all citizens and interested parties. How else can those officials be held accountable? If allowed to present an amended record as if original then the Clerk’s Office has been permitted to ‘change history’ and give a different picture of the decision-making process than actually occurred. “If this is acceptable information policy and practice within the City of Burlington, then it needs to be changed immediately. And perhaps we need to look at what else is accepted practice that contravenes the tenets of open, transparent and accountable government.” OPINION: Salt with Pepper August 12th, 2019 \| Category: Education, Government All, Headlines, News, Private Sector [dfads params='groups=230&limit=1&orderby=random'] " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " "nbsp" Copyright © 2020 Burlington Gazette – Local News, Politics, Community - All Rights Reserved Chain-gang cake Bon Accord Happy to meet, sorry to part, happy to meet again? You can be assured that any language can be learned any anyone. Your... 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China: The Third Red Scare? How attached are you to your blog? The Spotted Pig Tonight is my official Jamberry Launch Party!!! I cant believe this day has come... I find it hard to post everyday... How Do I Rate? According to Bachelet, Castro "is in good shape and very active," American Idol Recap: The First 3 Finalists I will not post anything about diets or weight-loss. The Guardian launches open API - but they still control the ads Anne Lamott and I Could Be Best Friends. If She Knew I Were Alive. An Impressive Update for You! Groovy Says it all Magazine Contests Are Moderate Republicans Destroying the Conservative Brand? The positive side of living with anxiety	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line530
__label__wiki	0.621255	0.621255	>A Razzie for Hollywood Hollywood once again has clearly demonstrated its ingrained political prejudice in awarding a “Razzie” to President Bush as the year’s “worst actor” for his “performance” in the anti-Republican campaign polemic Fahrenheit 9/11. The Golden Raspberries or Razzies are awarded by Hollywood’s Golden Raspberry Award Foundation for the worst acting, screenwriting, songwriting, directing and films offered each year as a counterpart to the Oscars awarded for the so-called best stuff. In Bush-hater Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 Bush is cast (with adroit editing) as a moronic, uncaring President who continues to read nursery stories to kiddies at a Florida school after first learning about the 9/11 Islamic attack. According to the reviews by delighted liberal leftists, Bush “played the part” brilliantly. But now Hollywood says he was the worst actor of the year. Does that mean that he failed to come off as an uncaring dunce despite all of Spinmeister Moore’s efforts? The crazed, illogical Hollywood left, of course, wants to spin it both ways: He’s a dunce and, what’s more, he’s a lousy actor. As for the best stuff, Zogby provides some input about the audience and suggests that the country is giving Hollywood a Razzie. The Zogby Poll forecast for the 2005 Oscars presentations on TV: Only 4 in 10 Democrats would watch Only 1 in 8 Republicans would watch As Musician/Wit Oscar Levant once said: Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you’ll find the real tinsel underneath. >It’s Feelings, Stupid! The fuel for the busy engines generating the left-wing spin that corrupts public discourse today is ably described in a column by LA Talk Show Host/Writer Dennis Prager. “With the ascendancy of leftist values that has followed the decline of Judeo-Christian religion, personal feelings have supplanted universal standards. In fact, feelings are the major unifying characteristic among contemporary liberal positions…The entire edifice of moral relativism, a foundation of leftist ideology, is built on the notion of feelings deciding right and wrong.” Once you buy into this you see nothing irrational, as Prager points out, in spinning “terrorists” into “freedom fighters.” Forget about logic, right and wrong and absolute evil. Do whatever makes you feel good. It’s OK to open the downward path to Thomas Hobbes’ war of all against all. Just make sure you use plenty of spinspeak to describe it. That way everyone will feel comfy along the way. >Spinning Death at the UN Monday, February 21st, 2005 Don’t think just because the Sudanese government is conducting what some spoilsport observers are calling mass murder of the population in Darfur that it comes under the heading of genocide around the UN. Call it a plain old vanilla massacre if you like. That’s OK with the UN spindocs. Just don’t use the “G” word. It turns out to be a trigger. Under the UN’s arcane rules, it can ignore mass murder. It can ignore massacres. But call it genocide and the UN is supposed to do something about it rather than just make compassionate noises.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line536
__label__wiki	0.843495	0.843495	Open Hours:Mn - St, 8:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Call Us Today0 (800) 123-456 123, Florida, IL 60606 (727) 777-2569 All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Dunmore Physiotherapy & Healthcare © 2020. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line540
__label__wiki	0.63505	0.63505	Fishing for Firepower By Fulgistan, July 16, 2018 in Military Trade UNTIRING ARM OF THE PEOPLE, THE BUREAU FOR DEFENSE BUREAU Defense CATEGORY Revolutionary Guard Ground Force Vehicle CLOSE DATE & TIME August 01, 2018 LOCATION Bogd Gioro, Fulgistan ATM TYPE Request for Tender The Bureau for Defense invites suitable parties and manufacturers to request for tender documentation of the Kubuhe Project. The Bureau seeks to supplement the air power of the Revolutionary Guard Ground Force via the acquisition of a modern, competitive dedicated attack rotorcraft. A short list of tenderers will be assembled and contracted to construct and/or provide sample vehicles for trials. Fleur de Lys 282 NS: Fleur de Lys Capital: Centre From: DC de Aérospatiale Rémy Georges Pierre Ferré To: Bureau for Defense of the Worker’s Republic of Fulgistan It is in the name of Aérospatiale that I am answering to your demand. Aérospatiale may only propose for now, as an Attack Helicopter category, the HA30-Tigre which entered in service in An CCXVI (or 2003 when converted to the Gregorian Calendar) with multiples variables having been developed and being currently active. Aérospatiale shall be delighted, if you give follow up our offer, to adapt the Helicopter to your particular demands and conditions, along define the contracts for such occasion that shall be followed by a price negotiation depending on the number of units your Bureau shall be willing to acquire, and in alignment with the Worker’s Republic’s needs. Please find the specificities of the proposed Attack Helicopter HA30-Tigre joint, in hope you see the great potential polyvalence that such Helicopter may provide to your armed forces, from a mission to another along enjoy of our advanced Osiris System. I shall be delighted to move forward with the Bureau if that is your wish. At your full disposal, - DC de Aérospatiale Crew: Two: pilot and weapon systems officer. Empty weight: 3,060 kg (6,750 lb). Loaded weight: 5,090 kg (11,311 lb). Internal fuel capacity: 1,080 kg (2,380 lb). Maximum speed: 290 km/h with mast (mast of the Osiris system), 315 km/h without mast. Range: 800 km for full combat, 1 300 km with external tanks in the inboard stations. Armement: 1× 30 mm gun; missiles and supplementary guns to vary following the composition/mission. Edited July 16, 2018 by Fleur de Lys Adaptus 301 Adaptus NS: Adaptus Capital: Novumcastrum HoS: Caesar Augustus III HoG: Grand Consul Ceres Stolos TO: The Bureau of Defence, Fulgistan. FROM: Darius Hiero, Senior Technical Sales Director, Vickers Weapon Systems. A Vickers-Carlyle Group Company. RE: Tender for a New Offensive Rotor Based Air Support. Esteemed comrades to our western reaches. I hope this tender proposal finds you well. I am glad to be assigned as your representative from the Vickers-Carlyle Group for all things defence orientated. We have years, no decades, no actually centuries of experience in the arms trade industry, and we have been delivering the finest equipment this region has seen. And today, we bring you our submission for tender. Firstly I would like to introduce you to our traditional solution to your offensive attack aircraft requirements. Comanche MkII RAH-66.5 Core Statistics: Crew: two. Maximum speed: 175 knots (201 mph, 324 km/h). Cruise speed: 165 knots (190 mph, 306 km/h). Range: 262 nmi (302 mi, 485 km) on internal fuel (Can multiply this by 4 with external fuel tanks). 1× 20 mm XM301 three-barrel rotary cannon mounted in a Turreted Gun System (capacity: 500 rounds) Internal bays: 6× AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, or 12× AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missiles, or 24× 2.75 in (70 mm) Hydra 70 air-to-ground rockets Optional stub wings: 8× Hellfires, 16× Stingers, or 56× Hydra 70 rockets Comanche has long been a staple of the Adapton military for around the last two decades, and recently went through an upgrade cycle. Seeing the production of the Mk2 variant, with upgraded information systems, and cyber warfare support components integrated into the helicopters main weapons platforms. The Comanche's pray trick lies in it's sleek design. Weapons systems are self contained inside aircraft when in flight, unless mounted for heavy offensive capabilities. This, coupled with the radar absorbing outer armour, gives the Comanche a tiny radar signature, small enough to sneak past even the best radar system. This makes the Comanche an excellent reconnaissance aircraft, allowing for multi-role functions, in turn, saving you money in the process. This bad boy can fit so many weapons internally! You can't see it right now, but I just have to slap the roof of this thing it's so good! But we aren't done yet. Since this is Vickers, and it's 2018. We thought you'd like to have a glimpse into the future of the air support defence sector. Aethon RAH-99 Payload: 600 lb (272 kg) Max. takeoff weight: 3,150 lb (1,430 kg) Powerplant: 1 × Rolls-Royce 250, 313 kW (420 hp) Armaments: 6× AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles or 12× AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missiles or 24× 2.75 in (70 mm) Hydra 70 air-to-ground rockets Welcome to the future of light air support. The Aethon is our latest Unmanned Combat Arial Vehicle designed to fulfil the role of attack helicopters. Using a modular design, refined in the Comanche. It's weapon platforms are the same, however thanks to the lack of human pilots, the weight is drastically reduced, allowing the aircraft to deploy the same number of weapons systems, with a much smaller engine, and in turn allows for a much more efficient power plant. The other great advantage? You don't risk the lives of your pilots. They can stay very safe back at base. Deployable from ground, or sea based platforms, the Aethon is a versatile platform, that brings the future to your military. I hope this tender fits the requirements you're after. But please, don't let this small glimpse into the Vickers family fool you. If our offerings today are not quite to your level, then feel free to let me know, and we will present you a new offering. Our catalog is quite extensive! Iverica 974 NS: Iverica Capital: Intreimor HoS: Franso Deitorr HoG: Abé-Juan Quenovi OOC: Okay, this went overboard. I just wanted to see what would happen if I tried a more "legit" looking format. Do not do this, it is a terribly unnecessary thing to do for a goddamn game. By the time I realised "this is not efficient for the reader", I was already halfway through and just decided to see it through. In fairness, I'm proud that I tried to make a more business-standard RP thing, but then again, there comes a point where it becomes excessive. Might as well use it now that I've made it OOC2: I REGRET NOTHING Cristina 206 NS: Free Port of Cristina Capital: Cristina HoS: Queen Nova Maxima Korvini HoG: Adriana Monadic Luca Dagoberto, Chief of Sales of Maxan Elicotteri Siena Fleet Systems 15-A, Valdi Lane, Santi Cristo Ward, Kingdom of Cristina. July 19 - 2017 Maxan Elicotteri, a subsidiary of Siena Fleet Systems, expresses the interest in the tender put forth by the Bureau for Defense of the People's Republic of Fulgistan for the supplementation of the nation’s air power with modern attack rotorcrafts. Siena Fleet Systems is a leading global security company providing innovative systems, products and solutions to government and commercial customers worldwide, offering an extraordinary portfolio of capabilities and technologies for applications from undersea to outer space and into cyberspace. The company provides logistics solutions supporting the full lifecycle of platforms and systems for global defense and federal-civil customers, delivering innovative, technology-driven solutions and services to enable cost-effective improvements for customer mission effectiveness. Through its subsidiary Maxan Elicotteri, Siena Fleet Systems is a reputable and trusted producer of helicopters for civil and military use. We are glad for the opportunity to present In this tender proposal one of our most successful product, the HA-129 - a capable and highly modernized attack helicopter that can be used in anti-tank warfare, armed reconnaissance, ground attack and close aerial support. Following its maiden flight in 1983, a fifth prototype flew in 1986 and impressed the Mantellan armed forces to such an extent that they ordered 60. Deliveries commenced in 1990, and the helicopters remain in service, with the helicopters undergoing upgrades to reach the multirole CBT standard. Cristina and Mantella remains the only operators, with ten HA-129 deployed in the Cristina-Mantella conflicts of the last decade before the Mantellan withdrawal, with documented distinction. Twenty units of the modern CBT variant of the helicopter are currently in operation in the Reale Aeronautica di Cristina. The gunship has presented an excellent ratio capabilities/costs in comparison with others rotorcrafts around the world. We are proud to announce that Maxan’s service structure is all ready to meet any production demands to offer the Republic of Fulgistan with the best product, a reliable and capable low cost attack helicopter. Attached document to this letter presents the core specifications for the consideration of your parties. Maxan HA-129 CBT Multirole Attack Helicopter The HA-129 CBT perform operate day and night in “extreme weather conditions” and low observability characteristics. The helicopter presents flight endurance of 2,5 hours and a payload of 1,400 kg - 1,600 kg. The HA-129 CBT can be used in the anti-armour, armed reconnaissance, ground attack, escort, fire support and anti-aircraft roles. For the anti-ground mission the helicopter can employ various armaments, such as up to eight AGM-114 missiles. In the air-to-air role, the FIM-92 missile is used. The HA129 can also be equipped with 81 mm or 70 mm (2.75 in) unguided rockets; the Draco & Domini* M197 three-barrel 20 mm cannon is also installed onto a nose-mounted D&D TM-197B turret. By 2017, fourth-generation anti-tank missiles had been added to the HA-129's arsenal. *Draco & Domini (D&D) is a subsidiary of Siena Fleet Systems active in the defence sector, with factories in Cristina and 10 other countries. The Mod 56 pack howitzer, in service throughout the world, and the 76mm naval gun, adopted by many navies and installed on over 1,000 naval vessels, are among Draco & Domini's best-known weapons. A) General characteristics: Crew: 2: pilot and weapon systems officer Length: 12.28 m (40 ft 3 in) Rotor diameter: 11.90 m (39 ft 1 in) Height: 3.35 m (11 ft 0 in) Disc area: 111.22 m2 (1,197.25 ft2) Empty weight: 2,530 kg (5,575 lb) Max. takeoff weight: 4,600 kg (10,140 lb) Rotor systems: 5 blades on main rotor Powerplant: 2 × Gem 2-1004D (license built by Siena Fleet Systems) turboshafts, 664 kW (890 shp) each B) Performance Maximum speed: 278 km/h (148 knots, 170 mph) Cruise speed: 229 km/h (135 knots, 155 mph) Range: 510 km (275 nm, 320 mi) Ferry range: 1,000 km (540 nm, 620 mi) Service ceiling: 4,725 m (15,500 ft) Rate of climb: 10.2 m/s (2,025 ft/min) C) Armament Guns: 1× 20 mm (0.787 in) three-barrel Gatling-type cannon (500 rounds) in a D&D TM197B Light Turreted Gun System Rockets: 4 pods with 38× 81 mm (3.19 in) unguided rockets or 12.7 mm (.50 in) machine gun pod Missiles: 8× 45 kg class air-to-ground precision weapon or tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided anti-tank missiles 4-8× infrared homing anti-aircraft missiles	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line542
__label__wiki	0.525934	0.525934	International Agreements in Progress - EU-Japan trade agreement: a driver for closer cooperation beyond trade Negotiations on an EU-Japan trade agreement were officially launched in March 2013. Following the political agreement in principle reached in July 2017, a final accord on the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) was announced in December 2017. On 18 April 2018, the European Commission proposed to the Council of the European Union to sign and conclude the agreement. The Commission expects that the EU-Japan EPA can be signed in July 2018, and aims to have the agreement come into effect before the end of its mandate in 2019, following approval by the Council and the European Parliament. The EU-Japan EPA will establish a free trade area with a combined market of around 640 million consumers that accounts for roughly a third of the world's gross domestic product (GDP). The 2016 Trade Sustainability Impact Assessment (Trade SIA) of the agreement indicated that EU exports to Japan could rise by up to 34 %, and according to a more recent Commission estimate, European companies would save up to €1 billion in customs duties per year as a result of the EU-Japan EPA. In addition to exploiting the untapped potential of bilateral trade, the agreement is also of strategic importance, conveying a strong message of the parties' commitment to promoting a free and fair trading system based on rules, and to reject trade protectionism. [Second] edition. The 'International Agreements in Progress' briefings are updated at key stages throughout the process, from initial discussions through to ratification. To view earlier editions of this briefing, please see: PE 589.828, 7 october 2016. Ulkosuhteet Krisztina BINDER sopimusneuvottelut (EU) ulkomainen sijoitus muu kuin tullitariffista johtuva kaupan este tullineuvottelut kauppasopimus (EU) vaihtoehtoinen riidanratkaisu	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line543
__label__cc	0.744764	0.255236	May 28, 2014 \| Comments Off on Aussie Brand Aesop Heads to Downtown L.A. Aussie Brand Aesop Heads to Downtown L.A. Aesop Downtown L.A. Add another gem to the growing Downtown L.A. revival, because cool under-the-radar Aussie label Aesop has opened up shop. After opening up shop on Venice’s trendy Abbot Kinney and teasing Downtown with a pop-up, the brand debuted its permanent spot last week. The Los Angeles store follows in the footsteps of the brand’s other outposts, meaning that it’s got its own look. Aesop is known for experimental spaces (they’ve got a location in NY’s Grand Central Station made entirely of repurposed newspaper and a second spot in the city covered in past issues of the Paris Review), and the L.A. spot is decked out in cardboard. Designed in collaboration with local firm Brooks + Scarpa, the 1,000-square-foot store is covered in cardboard tubes. The brand’s sleek and straightforward packaging takes center stage against recycled paper counters and the three-spout porcelain sink that were sourced from a local salvage yard. The store carries the brand’s full range of hair products and skincare. And those sinks aren’t just for looks. The apothecary is all about experience, so feel free to get down and dirty with the different products by scrubbing up, rinsing off and repeating to your heart’s content. For those unfamiliar with the label, Aesop is built on the combination of the highest-grade plant-based ingredients combined with high-tech formulas focusing on anti-oxidants, giving your skin the best of nature and technology. Aesop is located at 862 South Broadway, in Downtown L.A. For more information, visit www.aesop.com. Images courtesy Aesop OAK NYC Brings Downtown L.A. a Dose of NY Cool Downtown L.A., Get Ready for the Roberto Cavalli Hotel and Club The Exclusive Made in L.A. Handbag Line Beloved By Hollywood’s Elite Amazon is the Latest Online Beauty Destination Tags: Aesop, beauty, Brooks + Scarpa, Downtown L.A., L.A. Stories Get it Now: Tatcha The Pearl Eye Illuminator Get it Now: NARS Orgasm Afterglow Lip Balm Get it Now: Hourglass Veil Retouching Fluid ← Get it Now: Benefit Hydrating Tinted Lip Balm Cheers! Lydia Mondavi’s Grape-Infused Beauty Line Comes to Target →	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line546
__label__wiki	0.822855	0.822855	Witness explains why he wore a wire against the mob Deep in debt and unable to pay, Michael F. Orlando Jr. had a proposal. He asked his South Philadelphia loan shark if he might earn credit - and good will - by working as a street collector. But the alleged shark, Damion Canalichio, nixed the idea. Orlando's loan wasn't his to forgive, Canalichio said. It belonged to "Stevie and Joey," shorthand that Orlando took to mean reputed mob boss Joseph Ligambi and a lieutenant, Steve Mazzone. "It's Uncle Joe's money?" Orlando asked in the 2002 conversation, recorded by the FBI. "Yeah," Canalichio said. Federal prosecutors on Friday played that tape - and a handful of others - in a bid to persuade jurors that even the smaller loans were part of a larger organized gambling, extortion and loan-shark racket controlled by Ligambi and his associates, and that the money flowed up. The testimony came on the second day of Orlando's coming out as a government cooperator at the trial for Ligambi, Canalichio and five others. It was also his first day of cross-examination, and the lawyers pounced. Under questioning from Ligambi's lawyer, Orlando conceded he was never beaten over his mounting debt, and that he never saw Canalichio or others on trial beat someone else who owed them money. He also agreed that tough talk and name-dropping is routine in South Philly, the false currency that people trade to get things done. The lawyer, Edwin Jacobs, Jr., suggested that Orlando deliberately inserted Ligambi's name into the conversation that day, when Canalichio could have been referring to someone else named Joey. "You were a cooperating witness for the government, and you knew darn well what they were trying to do was get something on tape that implicated Joe Ligambi," Jacobs asserted. Orlando denied it. "I was not instructed to use his name, Uncle Joe," he said "That's not true." Often looking toward the defendants, Orlando, 45, has portrayed himself as tortured over the decision to cooperate. Canalichio, he said, was "a dear friend." Reputed underboss Joseph "Mousie" Massimino had his utmost respect, "treated me very well" and may have intervened to keep one particularly aggressive loan shark off his back. But Orlando told jurors he felt like he had no choice after learning in 2001 that his half-brother had been wearing a wire and gathering evidence against mobsters, including when he paid off some of Orlando's debts. The defense lawyers have argued the case is built on fabrications from criminals trying to save themselves. At the time he began cooperating, Orlando owed thousands of dollars to several sharks, loaned at 30 percent interest that compounded weekly. "One of the reasons you had debt was because you're a complete gambling degenerate, isn't that right?" said Canalichio's lawyer, Maggie Gross, delivering a point Orlando didn't contest. Jacobs noted that Orlando had admitted staging a fake auto accident, running a credit scam, selling drugs and robbing a drug dealer - but that none of the proceeds went to the defendants who prosecutors contend controlled South Philadelphia crime. He parsed the plea agreement, one that Orlando signed with prosecutors after being charged in the credit scheme almost a decade ago. He faced up to 16 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, but ended up getting probation. "The bottom line is that for the bank fraud, drug dealing, the robbery, bogus auto accidents . . . The total time you did in jail is what, zero? Not a day in jail?" Jacobs asked. "I put my life at risk just wearing a wire," Orlando said. "I put my life at risk here today testifying. That's enough to do. For the rest of my life I have to look over my shoulder." "But not one day in jail, right?" Jacobs shot back. "Not one day in jail," Orlando conceded, "but maybe a bullet in my head someday." Orlando has spent nearly a decade in the witness protection program. He said he is married with children and a steady job in another state. "Can you ever come back to Philadelphia?" Assistant U.S. Attorney John Han asked. "Absolutely not," Orlando said. "What I'm doing here today will be my death sentence." His testimony is scheduled to resume Tuesday. http://mobile.philly.com/news/?wss=/philly/news/breaking/&id=176034411	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line550
__label__wiki	0.665775	0.665775	McAuliffe: Settle Medicaid or let me decide Commentary by Admin: Is McAuliffe taking a play out of Obama’s book, well sort of? Obama said if Congress would not pass the things he mentioned in his agenda, then he would go over their heads and use his power of the Executive Order to make these things law, there by circumventing the legislative branch. McAuliffe isn’t doing quite that, but is asking the Virginia General Assembly for the power to do that on Medicaid Expansion in Virginia. This Article Gives the Details: Monday, January 20, 2014 12:11 pm \| Updated: 8:01 am, Thu Jan 23, 2014. BY OLYMPIA MEOLA Gov. Terry McAuliffe wants lawmakers to give his office the authority to expand Medicaid if the panel authorized to allow expansion does not act by the end of this General Assembly session. The governor met with chairmen of the House and Senate money committees this morning to discuss what he’d like to see in the two-year state budget that former Gov. Bob McDonnell proposed just before he left office. The Medicaid authority was on his fiscal wish list, as was $5.4 million for salary sweeteners for school support staff in Northern Virginia, $240,000 for the Department of Military Affairs to buy radio equipment and $1 million for gasoline for Virginia State Police. The new head of the House Appropriations Committee had told McAuliffe not to submit formal budget amendments, but to instead discuss his ideas with the committee chairmen. After his meeting this morning, McAuliffe held a news conference to announce his requests. The governor campaigned on expanding Medicaid and pressed his case again today, asking that lawmakers give the governor the authority to accept federal funding if the Medicaid Innovation and Reform Commission fails to complete its work before the end of the 2014 regular session. “I support the MIRC and the work it is doing,” he said, adding that the members are sincere and hard working and that the reforms made so far have “improved our Medicaid system and has made it more cost effective.” “The members of the MIRC commission should be the group to make the decision to accept 100 percent federal funding for the next three years so that we can get 400,000 uninsured into the system, create up to 30,000 new jobs and bring back over $6 billion to run though the Virginia economy,” he continued. “But time is of the essence.” He says he’s eager to work with the MIRC and lawmakers in a “bipartisan way” to bring deliberations to a close by the end of this session but if not, “I hope we can work together to transfer that decision making authority to the office of the governor so that we can move forward in a timely manner.” Technorati Tags: governor,Terry McAuliffe,lawmakers,authority,Medicaid,Medicaid Expansion,Virginia,General Assembly,session,chairmen,House,Senate,money committees,Bob McDonnell,$5.4 million,Virginia State Police,House Appropriations Committee,committee chairmen,Medicaid Innovation and Reform Commission,fails,MIRC,federal funding,uninsured,economy,bipartisan,decision making authority	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line553
__label__cc	0.67868	0.32132	Sie sind hier: Startseite › Events › FENS Satellite 2016 Termin übernehmen Interneuron Synaptic Plasticity - From Mechanism to higher Brain Function A satellite event of the FENS Forum 2016, Copenhagen www.fens.org/2016 Date: July 1 (11 a.m. to 6 p.m.) University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Health Hannover Auditorium (Maps and transportation see below.) Attendance free! Please register by writing an E-Mail to: A fundamental feature of the brain is its ability to acquire and store novel information, which enables the individual organism to adapt to its changing environment. Learning and memory are dependent on the capacity of nerve cells to change the efficacy of their communication points, the synapses. These plastic changes depend on correlated neuronal activity of communicating neurons and are expressed as long-term potentiation (LTP) as well as longterm depression (LTD) of synaptic transmission. Synaptic plasticity had first been proposed and subsequently demonstrated at glutamatergic synapses in networks of excitatory principal cells. Since then, synaptic plasticity in excitatory networks has been increasingly well documented, and is widely accepted today as the main neural mechanism underlying learning and memory in the brain. In contrast, plasticity in GABAergic inhibitory interneurons (INs) was controversial for a long time and its functional contribution to higher brain function remained speculative. However, a number of recent studies demonstrated that plastic changes also take place at glutamatergic synapses onto INs. Moreover, these investigations revealed an unexpected variety in the conditions and forms of synaptic plasticity in these cells, raising the possibility that plasticity in INs could contribute to information processing in a very versatile, cell type- and synapse-specific manner. It further indicates that changes in the properties of INs will have a wide-range impact on neuronal network function and thus may underlie major brain disorders. In the satellite event 10 speakers from 4 different countries will give a state of - the-art update on the molecular mechanisms underlying plastic changes in interneurons and the role of IN synaptic plasticity on network activity, learning and memory-relevant behaviour. Welcome and opening remarks. Marlene Bartos (University Freiburg Germany): Synaptic plasticity in Parvalbumin-expressing fast-spiking interneurons of the dentate gyrus. Jörg Geiger, (Charité Berlin, Germany): Late developing plasticity of interneuron excitation in the mouse motorkortex. Imre Vida, (Charité Berlin, Germany): Differential GABAB receptor-mediated control of inhibitory interneuron types in hippocampal networks. 12:30 – 13:30 Lunch Break Desiree Loreth/ Akos Kulik, (University Freiburg Germany): Nano-scale organization and dynamics of dendritic CaV 1.2 Ca ²+ channels. Peer Wulff, (University Kiel, Germany): Structural plasticity of Parvalbumin-expressing cells in the dentate gyrus. James Poulet, (Charité Berlin, Germany): Sensorimotor transformation in the mouse forepaw system. Jozsef Csicsvari, (IST Klosterneuburg, Austria): Activity-dependent regulations of interneuron circuits. 15:30– 15:45 Coffee break Chris McBain (NIH Bethesda, USA): NMDARs on neurogliaform cells control cell and circuit maturation. Daniel Feldman (University of California, Berkeley, USA): Inhibitory circuit mechanisms for rapid homeostasis in somatosensory cortex. Dimitri Kullmann (UCL London, UK): Two forms of LTP in hippocampal interneurons. We are looking forward seeing you! If you come to Copenhagen via Kastrup Airport you can easily reach the Faculty of Health at the Panum Institute by public transportation. You can take the Metro from the airport. It takes 18 minutes to reach Nørreport station. From the airport you can also take the regional train, which brings you to the Central station in 20 minutes and from the central station you go to Nørreport station by S-train. Coming from Nørreport Station you can take the bus line 6A, 42, 42, 184, 185 and 150S to Nørre Campus. Enter the buidling via the main entrance (gree arrow saying "Hovedindgang", map below). The "Hannover auditorium" is number 22!	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line556
__label__wiki	0.931666	0.931666	PGA Championship: Spieth steps it up Sat, 15 Aug 2015 Sat, 15 Aug 2015 Kohler: Jordan Spieth stepped up his bid for golf history at the PGA Championship yesterday, firing a second-round 67 that moved him within one stroke of David Lingmerth’s clubhouse lead. Lingmerth had eight birdies, four bogeys and a double-bogey in a roller-coaster of a two-under par 70. The Swede got as low as eight-under, and his 36-hole total of seven-under 137 gave him the outright lead when he walked off the course. Lingmerth didn’t expect that to stand up, and Dustin Johnson, the overnight leader on six-under, had indeed moved to eight under through 10 holes. Australian Matt Jones was 10-under through nine holes under increasingly threatening skies. “I saw nine-under, I wish I could have done that,” Lingmerth said. “But too many bad shots.” Spieth, who started the day five off Johnson’s lead, had six birdies and one bogey in his 67 for six-under 138. After victories in the Masters and US Open, the 22-year-old Texan has a chance to join Ben Hogan and Tiger Woods as the only men to win three major championships in the same year. After teeing off on 10, Spieth birdied 11 and bogeyed 12. A birdie at 16 was followed by an improbable birdie at 18, where he holed out from a bunker. “All in all, I felt like I scored the way I played,” said Spieth, who was less than satisfied with his driver. “My ball striking into greens is pretty good. I made a couple of putts today. With a couple of chip-ins for the week and really smart course management and good speed control, we have been able to hold ourselves in there.” Spieth expected the afternoon to produce enough low scores to push him down the leaderboard. But with Rory McIlroy’s world number one ranking in his sights, he separated himself from the Northern Ireland star. McIlroy posted a second successive 71 on Friday that left him five shots off the pace in his bid for a second straight PGA Championship crown. His round was marred by a damaging double bogey at the par-four 18th, where a beautiful drive was followed by a second shot into the rough. He got back on track with his own unlikely break – an eagle at the par-five second hole where he chipped in from the front of the green. But McIlroy played the remaining holes in even par, unable to keep pace as Spieth picked up three birdies on his inward run. “I didn’t putt as well as I would have liked,” McIlroy said. “So, yeah, maybe just work on that a little bit before I tee off tomorrow and it would be great to hole a few more putts, because I feel like I’m giving myself plenty of chances.” British Open champion Zach Johnson, the third player in the “super-group” along with Spieth and McIlroy, endured another frustrating day that had him headed for an early exit. He opened with three straight birdies, but finished with four birdies and four bogeys in a 72 that left him three-over for the tournament. “It wasn’t very good,” he said. “You can kind of figure it out when you’re missing it one direction, but when you’re missing it in both directions, it’s difficult.” A hot, humid morning saw plenty of birdies on the par-72, 7,501-yard Whistling Straits course hugging the shores of Lake Michigan. Japan’s Hiroshi Iwata matched a major championship record with a nine-under par 63 – the 27th time a player has shot 63 in a major. Two players – Greg Norman and Vijay Singh – did it twice. Iwata had eight birdies and an eagle with one bogey to build a four-under total of 140 for 36 holes. South African George Coetzee powered up the leaderboard with an eight-under par 65. Coetzee, a two-time winner on the European Tour this year, had seven birdies and an eagle at the par-five 16th, where he stuck his second shot six feet from the pin and made the putt. A birdie at 17 moved him to six-under for the tournament, but he was in a fairway bunker en route to a closing bogey. “You could see there was much more birdies to be had out there,” Coetzee said. “The guys are definitely not hanging back like they did yesterday.” Former world number one Tiger Woods, however, wasn’t making any headway. The 14-time major champion was one-over through nine holes and looking set to miss the cut at a third stright major.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line561
__label__wiki	0.933048	0.933048	Dover Downs Extra -#9 1/26/18 12:18 AM 28 Jan 2018 NZDT Dover Downs Hypothetical and Tony Morgan and never looked back recording the first $18,000 Open/Handicap pace win of the New Year at Dover Downs on Thursday, Jan 25. A $25,000 selection at the November Harrisburg sale, Hypothetical continues to pay good dividends to harness racing trainer Brian Malone and his wife Carrie scoring his third win with three seconds in his last six starts since. In other races on the strong program: Corey Callahan came on driving Cash Is King to victory in 1:52.3 to win a $16,000 Winners pace.---Little Ben and Tim Tetrick came up big in one of two $14,000 Winners-Over paces to chalk up his fourth consecutive win. ---Star Messenger Morgan), who was a stablemate of Little Ben for nearly six years, until being claimed last meet by Gary Ewing, notched his fastest win 1:50.1 in another $14,000 division.--- Fashion Bythebeach won his first of 2018 scoring 1:51.1 decision in a $14,500 Winners pace with Vince Copeland handling the reins.----In second $14,500 event, Real Kid got up for Jonathan Roberts in1:53.1.---In the first of two $25,000-$30,000-$35,000 Claiming/Handicaps, Jet Airway with Corey Callahan moved out of third on the half-mile turn and battled to the front pulled away for a 1;51.2 victory.---That same winning time of 1:51.2 was good enough for Cyclone Kiwi N to post a fifth consecutive victory for driver Tim Tetrick .The winner was re-claimed last week and now lost again via a $35,000 tag.--- Tetrick won three race, Tony Morgan, Corey Callahan and Jonathan Roberts had doubles. DURING THE WEEK; Cashendash (Corey Callahan) was not one of three starters with new owners, in the $17,500 Claiming pace, Monday, Jan 22, but the 11-year-old beat a field of nine home in 1:51.2 to win by a nose. Mister Virgin entered the race with a five-race win streak, a new owner, claimed a week ago, and a new driver. Finishing fourth, he was claimed again by former owner, Ron Davis. Second finisher Letsmakeawish was claimed by Bamond Racing The other claimee was Myell's Rockstar, who finished off-the-board. -------------------------------` Trotter Lazurus (Tim Tetrick) made his first visit to Dover Downs a winning one in 1:55.1 while pacer Pass Line Bluechip (Allan Davis) wonin 1:54 for the fourth straight time in the Tuesday co-features over an off-track. Russell Foster and Tony Morgan led all drivers with three wins each; Corey Callahan, had a double. Starting from outside post 8 proved no problem for Divas Image on the way to her fourth straight $25,000 Mares Open/Handicap win on Wednesday, Jan 24. Tony Morgan moved Divas Image up to take the front and never was headed the rest of a 1:52.1 mile. A 14-times winner of $338,082 in her career, Divas Image has now won six of her last eight races.---Tim Tetrick debuted a new member of the Jim King Jr. Stable driving Shartin N to his first North American start and win, a 1:52.1 success in a $17,000 distaff pace, The Down Under-bred five-year-old crossed the Pacific with an impressive record in Australia---Tetrick racked up the first of three wins guiding Stormtracker to a new record 1:52.4 performance in a $15,000 Mares pace. The third straight for the four-year-old ---Corey Callahan had a four bagger, Tetrick won three while trainer Nick Callahan and Breakaway Stable had two wins. Marv Bachrad OHHA names Horse of the Year	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line576
__label__cc	0.610249	0.389751	THE WATCHMEN MOVIE - AN ESOTERIC SPIRITUAL MOVIE REVIEW BY SATCHIDANAND The Watchmen Movie is taken from a graphic Novel by Alan Moore who also wrote V for Vendetta and uses the same plot tricks to serve up its surprising ending. Like the Batman Movie The Dark Knight - CLICK HERE FOR MY TAKE ON THIS - It posits a parallel World where the unstoppable force meets the Immoveable Object - Vigilante Batman fights the Terrorist Joker - the ending being this is a bad bad world. There is no resolution. Whereas Energy Enhancement says that both the Vigilante and the Terrorist are formed from Trauma-Formed Negative Karmic Mass from the Dark side which can be, and for an Enlightened World, must be dissolved by the higher advanced techniques of Energy Enhancement. The Watchmen shows a world where Vigilante Super Heroes battle crooks. But it shows that the roots of their purpose and enjoyment of fighting comes from Trauma-Formed Negative Karmic Mass created during their upbringing. The Comedian "Living the American Dream" as he shotguns down innocent protestors, rapes another super hero and shoots his pregnant girl friend. These two superheroes enjoy violence - breaking arms and killing villains and then make love afterwards to Leonard Cohen. Dr Manhattan ending the Vietnam War to the "Apocalypse Now" music, the Ride of the Valkyries. Watchmen shows a world where every human being is filled with Trauma-Formed Negative Karmic Mass which must end in Nuclear Annihilation as the Vigilantes fight the Crooks so the USA fights USSR over resources in Afghanistan. The aim of the Dark side is to show that human beings come from animals, act like animals, and indeed are animals. This justifies the fact that the elite do indeed treat human beings like animals. Whereas the true nature of Humanity is Imago Viva Dei - Humanity is the Living Image of God. So, although every human is indeed born with Negative karmic mass and Energy Blockages and indeed do act in horrible ways, humanity always has the choice. And in exercising that choice can develop a Soul and become enlightened like Jesus Christ and Buddha and many thousands of Illuminated Saints over all Human History.. So, in the justification of the Dark Side we come to the real aim of this movie which is the Fascist, Nazi, Hitlerian Concept that, "The End Justifies the Means" The aim of this movie is to show that all human beings are animals. As in the the Dark Knight there can be no resolution. But in the Watchman and in V for Vendetta the solution comes from Chaos management using an ancient trick used for thousands of years - The Reichstag Fire! Hitler blames the Communists and the Jews for burning down the German Parliament, the Reichstag, and so takes power democratically by vowing undying hatred towards the perpetrators - "Something Must Be Done!" Whereas the person who burnt the Reichstag down was Hitler himself! In V for Vendetta, the Chancellor takes power by being strong against the terrorists who used Biological warfare against the British People and creates a Terror State where all opposition to him, enemies of the People, are black bagged, tortured and killed, whereas the person who created the biological disease was the Chancellor himself. In Latin there is a word for this trick, Causus Belli, or Cause for War, which shows the antiquity of this trick which has been used for thousands of years on people who have never heard of it. Who have no inkling that their Govern Mente (Govern Mente, Govern Mind, Mind Control) could lie. This trick again comes from, "The End Justifies the Means" "You can fool most of the people most of the time" .. and this is enough in any democracy! In the public record on the internet and in many history books you can read about the Lusitania, Pearl Harbour, The Gulf of Tonkin, The Two Towers and Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Lusitania was a causus belli which drew the USA into the Great War, the First World war against the Kaiser. The Germans said it was packed the gills with armaments to feed the war effort in Britain and said if it sailed it would be Sunk by U Boats. The USA said it was peaceful and contained no guns and when it sailed it was torpedoed and sunk and thus the USA entered the War against the Kaiser. A few years ago divers explored the Lusitania and found it packed to the Gills with Armaments. There are Transcripts of conversations between Roosevelt and Churchill, 12 days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour where they say they have the secret records of the Japanese saying they will attack Pearl Harbour and they are both very happy that because of this the USA can come into the war against Hitler. The creation of Communism by Marx - Engels was his handler, Ambassador Urquhart ran him, Karl Marx was given an office in the British Museum to write works designed to create problems for the Czar, and for any other country we wanted to destabilise through fanning the flames of rebellion with our Agents. Thus Anarchists, Communists, Mazzini's Young Turks, The Muslim Brotherhood, Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria starting WW1, Lawrence of Arabia - See the Movie, Saudi Arabia, Oil, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Brezinski, Soros's Colour Revolutions, Georgia, Ukraine, The Arab Spring, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran, Azerbijan, Chechnia, Caspian Sea, Russia. All normal stuff.. In the Watchman one superhero a non smoking vegetarian (Hitler was a non smoking vegetarian) sets off powerful tachyon bombs based on research with another superhero, Dr Manhattan (From the Manhattan Project which created the Atomic Bomb during the Second World war) and sets them off in every major city in the world, and blames it all on Dr Manhattan. He does this because of the theories of Satanic Jeremy Bentham, Head of British Intelligence, "M" under Prime Minister of Great Britain and Head of the British East India Company, Lord Shelburne or William Petty, who was in charge of the British Slave and Opium Trade in those days. Satanic Jeremy Bentham started the French Revolution and wrote the speeches of Robespierre from London. Satanic Jeremy Bentham's Hypothesis is, "The greatest Good for the greatest number" which allows, in this movie, 15 millions of people to be murdered to save 6 billion - a really psychopathic theory but one which all causus belli adheres to. The whole world comes together, all thoughts of war forgotten to fight Dr Manhattan and thus nuclear Armageddon is averted. The problem is that the secret is always revealed and Rorschach, another super hero, leaves his records in the hands of a newspaper, and so the secret is revealed, as it always is... We have records of every causus belli. The truth always comes out in the end. You see the levels of the movie?? In the same way nuclear bombs are being used as a stick, formed by the Dark Side's Lord Bertrand Russell, in order to frighten this world into Integration under the New World Order and as a side effect stop the Almost free electricity produced by safe Fourth Generation Nuclear Technology which could supply the whole world with almost free electricity for one billion years! Only one country has used two atomic bombs in all human history!! Fourth Generation Nuclear Technology - The IFR Reactor - burns 97% of all Uranium with only 3% waste product unlike current technology which burns only 3% of all uranium with 97% waste products. It is safe, it is high flux density, it can solve all humanities poverty. The Suppression of Fusion Power Generation by the Oligarchic Satanic, "Principle of Poverty" SIGN UP TO THE NEWSLETTER TO DOWNLOAD FREE!! THE AGAINST SATANISM SERIES OF BOOKS IN FOUR FREE!! VOLUMES AND MORE.. GET FREE ALL THE OTHER 15 FREE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT BOOKS.. THE SATANIC SUPPRESSION OF The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) FOURTH GENERATION NUCLEAR POWER PLANT UW fusion reactor HIT-SI3 clean power concept is cheaper than coal But it can't solve the Elite, "Principle of Poverty" or Austerity as it is called under carefully planned David Rockefeller funded Austrian Economics. And the constant economic depressions, as if we wanted to, humanity can not plan to have a good economy with sufficient good organic food, education, hospitals, energy, plenty.. That we cannot use the Hamilton and List "Credit" Economics where instead of the Fed Central Bank giving one Trillion Dollars to the Banksters, instead we give that money through the Nationalisation of the Federal Reserve Central Bank, taking it out of private banking Rothschild hands, for all the good things like infrastructure, irrigation, fusion power, roads, education, health, housing, etc. Whenever the American Credit System of Economics has been used, GNP rises at 10% per annum. THE HUMAN RIGHT TO WEALTH AND THE TEN THOUSAND YEARS OLD, "PRINCIPLE OF POVERTY", THE TEN WAYS OF CREATING POVERTY The only inference we can make is that if we have a bad economy then that has been planned. That we planned to use Hessian theories in our Educational System (Start Page, "Iserbyte" or goto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Thomson_Iserbyt ). That we planned to put cancer producing pesticides/bisphenol A/Glyphosate and fluoride into the water in order to sterilise humanity. That we planned to put the Salk SV40 Cancer Virus and Chemical Lobotomiser Mercury into every Vaccination. - Japan has banned Guardasil. Japan bans vaccinations for children under two. That we planned to feed humanity on GMO Frankenstein food which sterilises completely in three generations. That the World we inhabit has been planned. And the problem of Trauma-Formed Negative Karmic Mass creating more pain, fighting, war , sterilisation (Children of Men Movie where suddenly the whole World is sterilised, and after 20 years, one woman is found pregnant, and we see the effect on every member of humanity on seeing that pregnancy in front of them. The awe. The love. The sacrifices made to protect. The love we have for every child every baby who comes to us, into our families, our grandchildren, who we see...) and nuclear annihilation is not resolved. As yet there is no movie which provides a solution to the problem and this is because of pervading existentialism in the minds of all confirmed heartless eugenic intellectuals who glory in the psychopathic nature of humanity in all the movies above and in all the movies of Stanley Kubric or see http://www.energyenhancement.org/KUBRICK-2001-A-SPACE-ODDYSSEY-THE-ENERGY-ENHANCEMENT-PROCESS-ASCENDED-MASTER-AND-ASCENSION-THROUGH-THE-ANTAHKARANA-CHAKRAS-ABOVE-THE-HEAD-TO-GOD-ESOTERIC-ALCHEMIC-MOVIE-REVIEW-BY-SATCHIDANAND.html "Once you are an Existentialist there is only one question; how to commit suicide" said Camus, and so Rorschach begs to be killed by Dr Manhattan who complies leaving a bloody Rorschach Blot on the snow. Because with existentialism there is no way out of this Human nature Trauma-Formed Negative Karmic Mass problem which has been solved by all the sages and saints from time immemorial. Dr Manhatten, almost a God with his abilities to see into the future, cannot be killed, can teleport himself anywhere says, "I can fix many things, but I cannot change Human nature!" Yet successive revelations have been given sequentially to Humanity over many years... Buddha said that human nature can be changed by Meditation and the use of the Intellect. Jesus Christ came to say that Human nature can be transformed by Love, the energy of the Heart. The New revelation of Energy Enhancement says that Trauma-Formed Negative Karmic Mass can be dissolved by the Grounding of Negative Energies using the Will, using the Samyama Seven Step Process of Energy Enhancement under the Aegis of the Chakras above the Head. Human nature can be changed. "How can the leopard change his spots?" Every spot is an Energy Blockage. Remove all Energy Blockages with Energy Enhancement!! It is the destiny of every human being on this planet, It is Your Destiny, to become Enlightened. It is the destiny of this planet to become a Sacred Planet. WITH ENERGY ENHANCEMENT GET IT NOW!! THE LONE RANGER - ESOTERIC MOVIE REVIEW BY SATCHIDANAND COME AND GET EXPERIENCED! EMAIL sol@energyenhancement.org ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MEDITATION ENLIGHTENMENT AND ILLUMINATION THE INCREDIBLE MEDITATION COURSE AND MEDITATION TECHNIQUES CREATED TO PRODUCE ENLIGHTENMENT AND ILLUMINATION "ALL TRADITIONAL MEDITATIONS HAVE BEEN DESIGNED TO FAIL" - SATCHIDANAND - "BECAUSE ORIGINALLY ALL MEDITATIONS CONTAINED THE TECHNIQUES OF, "THE KUNDALINI KEY" AND OF, "ALCHEMICAL VITRIOL" TO GROUND NEGATIVE ENERGIES AND TO NATURALLY INCREASE KUNDALINI ENERGY" "NOW, ONLY ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MEDITATION TEACHES THESE TECHNIQUES WHICH SPEED UP THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROCESS" CLICK HERE FOR.. YGGDRASIL IS THE KUNDALINI KEY VITRIOL - Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultem Lapidem Translation of VITRIOL.. "Visit the Center of the Earth there you will find the Philosophers Stone, Kundalini Chakra, which transmutes all Negative Energy, All Pain, All Negative Karmic Mass, into Pure Positive Spiritual Energy. By changing the direction of that Energy along the Path of the Soul, Soul Chakra, Central Spiritual Sun, First Chakra Above the Head you will receive Enlightenment" "IF YOUR TRADITIONAL MEDITATION DOES NOT TEACH YOU ABOUT THE KUNDALINI KEY AND ALCHEMICAL VITRIOL, THEN IT HAS BEEN DESIGNED TO FAIL" FIND ALL THE INCREDIBLE MEDITATION TECHNIQUES AND MEDITATION PRACTISES REMOVED FROM TRADITIONAL MEDITATIONS AND TAUGHT IN THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT STREAMING VIDEO MEDITATION COURSE AND LIVE MEDITATION RETREATS IN BRAZIL AND INDIA THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT VIDEO MEDITATION COURSE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT - THE ULTIMATE MEDITATION COURSE!! ANCIENT EFFECTIVE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MEDITATION SECRETS ALL THE MEDITATION TECHNIQUES!! SPEED UP YOUR PROCESS!! TIME TESTED THE MOST ADVANCED MEDITATION COURSE, MEDITATION TECHNIQUES AND MEDITATION PRACTICES ON THIS PLANET, INCLUDING THE KUNDALINI KEY, THE KUNDALINI KRIYAS, ALCHEMICAL VITRIOL AND KUNDALINI YOGA IN 28 INITIATIONS!! SPEED UP THE PROCESS!! "I have experience of many forms of meditation and practices for self improvement including: Transcendental meditation (TM) 12 years, Kriya Yoga 9 years, Sushila Buddhi Dharma (SUBUD) 7 years, and more recently the Sedona Method and the Course in Miracles. The Energy Enhancement programme encapsulates and expands all of these systems, it is complete and no questions are left unanswered." JEAN - NUCLEAR ENGINEER WHY JUST SIT? - YOU NEED REAL SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE - FAST!! READ BELOW ALL THE TECHNIQUES TAKEN OUT OF TRADITIONAL MEDITATIONS AND PUT BACK BY THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MEDITATION COURSE!! - RESTORING THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT KUNDALINI KEY Phillip Chester Phillip Chester - Change manager working directly to the Managing Directors of several fortune 500 companies. "I feel that I have been given some secret knowledge, which was only given to the initiated, or hidden among a lot of unnecessary sub techniques in other disciplines." "The energy techniques given in Energy Enhancement have never been explained to me in Aikido (even Ki Aikido), Yoga or Ashtanga Yoga or on any meditation course that I have been on like Transcendental Meditation, and have only been partly taught to me previously by Taoist Master Mantak Chia and on Tantra Courses. Mantak Chia I found particularly confusing; Chi Gung I found awkward" "ENERGY ENHANCEMENT GOES MUCH FURTHER THAN ALL THE ABOVE, IN A MORE EFFECTIVE WAY THAT ANY OF THE OTHERS I HAVE EXPERIENCED..." One effect of Energy Enhancement is that I can no longer look at other disciplines like Ashtanga Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, NLP, Aikido and Ki Aikido and Mantak Chia and his Chi Gung, in the same light, because they do not contain this learning. ESPANIOL MEDITACION ENERGIA ELEVADA Pulse Aqui!! MEDITATION ENERGY ENHANCEMENT INTRODUCTION MEDITATION ENERGY ENHANCEMENT LEVEL 1 MEDITATION ENERGY ENHANCEMENT LEVEL 2 MEDITATION ENERGY ENHANCEMENT LEVEL 3 MEDITATION ENERGY ENHANCEMENT TESTIMONIALS SERVING YOU SINCE 1991 - ENQUIRIES AND BOOKINGS EMAIL sol@energyenhancement.org MEDITATION ENERGY ENHANCEMENT - THE CORE ENERGY TECHNIQUES!! THE MOST ADVANCED MEDITATION TECHNIQUES ON THIS PLANET, IN 28 INITIATIONS!! ANCIENT EFFECTIVE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT SECRETS - SPIRITUAL MOVIE LIST THE ESOTERIC MOVIE REVIEWS OF SATCHIDANAND: DIRECTORY Energy Enhancement Spiritual Movies List http://www.imdb.com/list/bOQOXQj8_KM/ "Swami Satchidanand's movie reviews are actually the best in the world" - Student of EE SPIRITUAL MOVIE LIST THE MOVIE REVIEWS OF SATCHIDANAND: DIRECTORY CLICK HERE FOR - ALL ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MOVIE REVIEWS BY SATCHIDANAND SPIDERMAN THREE AND NEGATIVE KARMIC MASS - VENOM!! THE DAN BROWN DA VINCI CODE, THE HOLY GRAIL, THE CHRIST ENERGY, THE MEROVINGIANS AND SEXUAL RITUALS CAMPBELL'S AVATAR MOVIE - BODYJUMPING, METEMPSYCHOSIS in Movies and Yoga Existentialism and Kubrick's Psychopaths, Society and Human Nature in the Films, Movies of Stanley Kubrick WATCHMEN MOVIE Energy Enhancement and the Lord of the Rings. More on the Lord of the Ring and Energy Blockages ENERGY ENHANCEMENT ENERGY CONNECTIONS, IMPLANT BLOCKAGES AND THE MATRIX The Matrix And Antahkarana Hyperdimensional Predatory Energy Blockage Forces "Blade Runner" by Ridley Scott I ROBOT ENLIGHTENMENT AND ILLUMINATION Isaac Asimov and Alex Proyas Movie Review, Analysis of I Robot George Lucas, Star Wars, the Revenge of the Sith "JUMPER" BY DOUG LIMAN EXCALIBUR BY JOHN BOORMAN REVOLVER "2005" BY GUY RITCHIE THE LORD OF THE RINGS PART TWO - THE TWO TOWERS DIRECTED BY PETER JACKSON PERFUME - THE STORY OF A MURDERER MOVIE REVIEW - "THE MAN WHO FELL" TO EARTH BY ROEG LIMITLESS - THE MOVIE OF ILLUMINATION WHAT IF A PILL COULD MAKE YOU RICH AND POWERFUL? THE MOVIE REVIEW BY SATCHIDANAND - A PURPOSE MORE PROFOUND THE LAWNMOWER MAN EVOLUTION IN VIRTUAL REALITY THANK YOU FOR SMOKING Ong Bak 2 and 3 by Director Tony Jaa - The Movie Review by Satchidanand Frankenstein (1994) - Prometheus Unbound and its Relationship to Paganism and Luciferian Satanism 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY BY KUBRICK Cloud Atlas (2012) � Movie Review - A Spiritual Esoteric Analysis by Satchidanand THE COUNSELOR (2013) BY RIDLEY SCOTT - ESOTERIC SPIRITUAL MOVIE REVIEW BY SATCHIDANAND The Wolf of Wall Street - Esoteric Movie Review by Satchidanand SATCHIDANAND ESOTERIC MOVIE REVIEW LUCY - LUCYFER, LUCIFER, SATANISM, SATANIC MEMES, THE SINGULARITY, DRUGS, TRANSHUMANISM, EUGENICS THE GROUNDED - AN ESOTERIC MOVIE REVIEW BY SATCHIDANAND http://www.energyenhancement.org/Spiritual-Movie-Reviews-Satchidanand/Index.html MAN IS A LIVING SPARK OF GOD - IT IS THAT AND ONLY THAT WHICH PREVENTS THE CONCEPT OF SLAVERY AND GENOCIDE FOR THE HUMAN HERD The issue is as follows: The essence of Christianity, and of Mosaic Judaism, is identified historically first, by Philo of Alexandria in his commentary on the first chapter of Genesis, that is, the account of Creation given by Moses. The point to be emphasized, is that man is defined in the image of God, Imago Viva Dei: not by virtue of any outward physical attributes of form, but rather by the fact that man, unlike all animals, contains that spark of creativity which places the human species apart from and above the animals in general. That spark is the crucial thing... Image of God, "Imago Dei" and Energy Blockages THE ORIGEN OF THE BANKSTERS Nicholas of Cusa, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Concept of Natural Law -Imago Dei or Image of God - and the concept of Energy Blockage Talents Confucianism and "Imago Viva Dei" in China - Liebniz, Mencius, Chu Hsi, Christ, Taoism, Buddhism See this also - OLIGARCHIES-POLICIES-FROM-THE-TIME-OF-BABYLON-AND-THEIR-HISTORICAL-TECHNIQUES-TO-ENSLAVE-THE-WORLD REMBRANDT-ILLUMINATED-SAINT.htm THE IFR REACTOR PSYCHIC CHARGE AND GENIUS - ENERGY DYNAMICS AND CREATIVITY IN THE WORK OF LIEBNIZ, RIEMANN, AND SHELLEY REMBRANDT - ILLUMINATED SAINT Spiritual Energy and Enlightenment, the Economics of Human Extinction Events and the Principle of Progress It seems that human extinction events always proceed in order to destroy the violent so that people of the Heart, who would never hurt anyone, can move onwards to wards that Initiation event of Enlightenment. And the Initiation of Enlightenment is also the Great Extinction Event. In order to become Enlightened, there must be an extinction, a destruction, a transmutation of the Ego. This is the destruction of the bad guys on the field of Kurukshetra where Arjuna with the help of his soul, Krishna, destroyed all of his Ego. "The Selfish Competitive Ego is just a collection of Energy Blockages" - Swami Satchidananda, Guru of Swami Satchidanand All the energy blockages, all the sub-personalities are removed in an extinction event which precedes the greater progress towards Spiritual Energy Intensity, Flux Density, the psychic charge of the Illuminated, Enlightened Sage. Instead, now, seeing the truth, let us take a little time for ourselves, for meditation. Not for the ordinary traditional meditation which has been so dumbed down over thousands of years, by the removal of any advanced meditational techniques which work. But for a meditation which works quickly, which has been proven to work quickly, for our evolution, in the knowledge that every new enlightened being creates energy for the speed up and production of more enlightened beings - for the evolution of the whole planet. To prevent the extinction of the whole human race!! To promote a Planet of Plenty, Love and Light!! ENERGY ENHANCEMENT IS THE MOST ADVANCED METHOD OF SPIRITUAL ACCELERATION ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MEDITATION MAKES YOU FEEL ALL SPARKLY!! Traditional forms of meditation are designed to fail!! GET IT!! GET IT NOW!! WITH ENERGYENHANCEMENT.. INCREDIBLE FREE ENERGY!! REMOVE ENERGY BLOCKAGES CLEAN KARMA CLEAN ENERGY CONNECTIONS MASTER RELATIONSHIPS - the energy enhancement kundalini key HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM BUDDHISM THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT SATANISM RITUAL SEX HUMAN SACRIFICE IMPLANT ADDICTION BLOCKAGES ELITE DIRECTORY "Twenty years have flowed away down the long river but never my life will return to me from the sea. Alas, all now tends to wither in the breast of cold hearted Satanic Wizards - Saruman - "A Mind of Metal and Wheels" - Treebeard the Ent - To investigate things, Satanists break them and their Stern Lordship is established by the Fear of Death" - Tolkien This is my Series about the Effects of the, "Dark Side" on the Last Tens of Thousands of years of Modern Society.. It is a Dark Vision, not unlike The Buddha's, "Pain, Sickness, Old Age and Death" But as we Both Say... "There is a Path" - Energy Enhancement Meditation... "It is not enough that I succeed. Everyone else must fail!" - Genghis Khan, and the Oligarchic, "Policy of Poverty". In order to keep Humanity, "Barefoot and back on the Reservation" Wealth needs to be suppressed, because it allows Roosevelt, �Necessitous Men are not Free Men� Human Economic Rights which can evolve humanity and take back power from the Dynastic Elites who have ruled this Planet for Tens of Thousands of Years. Humanity needs that Wealth which comes from the low hanging fruit of motherlodes of commodities available in Russia and also Leibnizian Economics of higher and higher flux densities only available from Fusion Power and Matter/Antimatter interactions suppressed through the suppression of science.. Professor MacKinder (Sir Halford John Mackinder PC (15 February 1861 � 6 March 1947) ) saw that a union of Russia and Europe would produce so much wealth that it could suppress the British Empire, China and the USA. Since that time the British Empire's policy has striven to separate Europe and Russia using it's tool the USA. In 1904, Mackinder identified the geopolitical nightmare that was to haunt Great Britain and later on the United States. The nightmare was that if Germany or Russia were allowed to control East Europe then this could lead to the domination of the Eurasian land mass by one of these two powers as a prelude to Mastery of the World. World Mastery Techniques.. Not only the traditional tens of thousands of years old conscious creation of religions and Secret Societies whose illogical yet mythical rituals and beliefs totally control its comparmentalised adherents. Not only the creation of Jihadi mercenaries - rent an army. Also Napoleon, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao as highly mind controlled British Agents whose instructions were to use war to destroy and create poverty in Europe, Russia and China, thus allowing the British Empire to become the most powerful block. Also World Wars I and II to essentially separate Russia and Europe and destroy Universities and create poverty in Germany, Russia and Europe. Since that time the Cold War and the Iron Curtain of sanctions prolonged the separation and poverty. Now Ukraine is a cause for furthering that separation - creating poverty in Europe and Russia - essentially continuing the 200 year policy of divide and conquer of the Babylonian dynastic families, though the Roman Empire, the Venetian Empire onwards to the British Empire and the British American Establishment. The survival of the species demands a revival of the "secret knowledge" of the Neoplatonic elite. That knowledge must not only be revived, but as we do here, must be situated within and updated by appropriate terms of modern scientific knowledge. Man is the image of god. If you go back in time and look at history, some of the most loved leaders in the past have only said this. And that is that man is the image of god, because if otherwise men would be like monkey�s and if we think of men as monkey�s, all you would do would be to kill each other and fight to survive and preserve your species and that�s what fascism and imperialism is, just like the British Empire. SATANISM, RITUAL SEX AND HUMAN SACRIFICE, BLOODLINES, SATANIC PROPAGANDA AND THE REMOVAL OF MIND CONTROL IMPLANT ADDICTION SEX AND DRUG BLOCKAGES OLIGARCHIES-POLICIES-FROM-THE-TIME-OF-BABYLON-AND-THEIR-HISTORICAL-TECHNIQUES-TO-ENSLAVE-THE- WORLD THE PURPOSE AND THE PSYCHOPATHIC PERVERSION OF THE PURPOSE - THE CAUSE OF ALL EVIL IN THE WORLD!! THE ANTAHKARANA AND EVOLUTION - it is the projected future which defines the present. THE ANTAHKARANA AND EVOLUTION - We can only be that which we are willfully committed to become. Energy Blockages Create the Matrix The Antahkarana, the Watchtowers of Dee's Enochian Keys and the Chakras above the Head - The Perverted Kundalini Key UNBLOCK THE CHAKRAS ABOVE THE HEAD UNBLOCK THE ANTAHKARANA AND THE SUPRA GALACTIC ORBIT THE NEGATIVE FIELDS OF ENERGY OF THE DARK SIDE VERSUS THE POSITIVE ENERGY FIELDS OF THE BUDDHAFIELD CREATED BY SPIRITUAL MASTERS ONLY ENERGY ENHANCEMENT GIVES THE REAL DEAL ON MEDITATION!! SEE SATCHIDANAND'S BOOK, "SACRED SYMBOLS AND SUPER ENERGY!" DETAILING ALL THE TECHNIQUES REMOVED FROM TRADITIONAL MEDITATIONS, BROUGHT BACK WITH ENERGY ENHANCEMENT.. CLICK HERE!!.. THE TECHNIQUES REMOVED FROM SUN RELIGIONS AND BROUGHT BACK BY ENERGY ENHANCEMENT - GOING WITH MY GENERAL THESIS THAT, "Traditional forms of meditation are designed to fail!!" ENERGY ENHANCEMENT THE FAST WAY TO INCREASE YOUR PSYCHIC INFRASTRUCTURE THE THREE EVOLUTIONARY TYPES IN DANTES DIVINE COMEDY Energy Blockages Create the Matrix - THE MYTH OF PROMETHEUS AND ZEUS, THE DUMMING DOWN OF SCIENCE AND MEDITATION, UPLOADING AND DOWNLOADING INTO THE BODY FROM THE CHAKRAS ABOVE THE HEAD - THE ASTRAL AND BUDDHIC PLANE THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MASTER GAME THE NEW SERIES.. THE EVOLUTION OF A NEW HUMANITY - 1. THE ENLIGHTENED SPECIES AND THE HUMAN INTRA SPECIES PARASITES 2. THE LUCIFERIAN SPECIES 3. THE SATANIC SPECIES THE SATANIC HISTORY OF THE WORLD - PART ONE - The Satanic Psychopathic Palmerton, Prime Minister of the British Empire circa 1850 - and his Three Satanic Psychopathic British Agents, Mazzini, Urquhart and Napoleon III - as a Continuation of the same Satanic Psychopathic Families from Satanic Psychopathic Babylon through the Satanic Psychopathic Roman Empire, the Satanic Psychopathic Venetian Empire to the Satanic Psychopathic British Empire to the current Satanic Psychopathic Anglo-American Establishment THE SATANIC HISTORY OF THE WORLD - PART TWO - OLIGARCHIES-POLICIES-FROM-THE-TIME-OF-BABYLON-AND-THEIR-HISTORICAL-TECHNIQUES-TO-ENSLAVE-THE-WORLD The Satanic Frankfurt School "Dums" Down Civilisation ADORNO, BENJAMIN, MARCUSE, LUKACS, BRECHT, WEILL, ECO, DERRIDA Satanism, Black Magic, Ordo Templi Orientis OTO, Aleister Crowley, Luciferianism, Wicca VAMPIRE ADDICTION IMPLANT BLOCKAGES VAMPIRE SEXUAL ADDICTION IMPLANT BLOCKAGES VAMPIRE DRUG ADDICTION IMPLANT BLOCKAGES VAMPIRE FOOD ADDICTION IMPLANT BLOCKAGES DEEPAMKARA BUDDHA - THE LAMPLIGHTER, THE GURU, THE SPIRITUAL MASTER ALEISTER CROWLEY - SEX TANTRA ADDICT, DRUG ADDICT, VICTIM OF VAMPIRE IMPLANT ADDICTION BLOCKAGES THE REAL REALITY OF THE WORLD AND THE PURPOSE OF "SPIN", HERMENEUTICS, HISTORIOGRAPHY, HEGEMONY, MYTH AND GRAMSCI'S "PHILOSOPHY OF PRAXIS" ON THE PATH OF ILLUMINATION, ENLIGHTENMENT PREDATORS, ARCHONS RULE THE WORLD FOREVER BY LEARNING HOW TO TAKE OVER A BODY - DEMONIC POSSESSION DON JUAN, CARLOS CASTANEDA AND GURDJIEFF - KUNDABUFFER AND THE PREDATORS THE FAILURE OF INTELLIGENT LOGICAL COMMENTATORS TO UNDERSTAND THE TRUE SATANIC LUCIFERIAN NATURE THE LONE RANGER - SATANIC ESOTERIC MOVIE REVIEW BY SATCHIDANAND The Satanic World has been at war against the Human species for over 10,000 years THE SATANIC INFILTRATION OF RELIGIOUS CULTS TO CREATE POVERTY AND CONTROL HUMANITY The Witchcraft of Christians Who Are Not Christians and the Satanic Infiltration of Isis, Horus, Osiris and Dionysius. Satanic Secret Agents, Aristotle; Contarini, Pomponazzi and Giorgi; Sarpi, Galileo and Kepler; Conti, Newton and Leibniz - The Satanic Corruption of Science by the Satanic, Slave Trading, Drug Running, Bankster run Venetian Empire The True History of The Satanic Venetian Empire's Secret Agent Fra. Paolo Sarpi and his Operation against Liebniz to create Worldwide Poverty by Sabotaging Scientific Development with Satanic Scientific and Economic Empiricism "EVIL IS" - TOLKIEN Traditional forms of meditation are designed to fail!! ENERGY ENHANCEMENT FIXES THAT PROBLEM!! WITH THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT KUNDALINI KEY.. THE TEACHING IS THAT KUNDALINI ENERGY SPRINGS ETERNAL FROM THE CENTER OF THE EARTH THUS THE LEGOMINISM, ALCHEMICAL VITRIOL THE STUPA REPRESENTS A HEMISPHERE OF THE EARTH THE SPIRE REPRESENTS THE ANTAHKARANA ENERGY COLUMN TO GOD CLICK HERE FOR - THE ENOCHIAN WATCHTOWER IS A PERVERTED KUNDALINI KEY THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT KUNDALINI KEY IS A LEGOMINISM - AN ANCIENT TEACHING HIDDEN IN SYMBOL OR WORD - WHICH TEACHES THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY TO MEDITATE TO BRING IN INCREDIBLE FREE KUNDALINI ENERGY TO REMOVE ENERGY BLOCKAGES TO CLEAN BAD AND EVIL KARMA TO CLEAN ENERGY CONNECTIONS TO MASTER RELATIONSHIPS Sole dominion over the earth, going to heaven, lordship over all worlds: the fruit of stream-entry excels them. — Dhp 178 The Katmandu Bodhinath Stupa where the hemisphere of the white base represents the Earth and the tower above represents the Antahkarana Kundalini Key.. - A Tower representing the Infinity of Chakras above the head where getting your Body and Mind into alignment in Meditation, with the energies from the center of the Universe through an infinity of Chakras above the head ("lordship over all worlds") through the body to the center of the Earth Chakra, Kundalini Chakra and below that ("Sole dominion over the earth, going to heaven"), using Energy Enhancement Advanced Meditation Techniques will Enlighten you (the fruit of stream-entry excels them.) A Stream Enterer is a person who aligns his body and mind with this stream of Incredible Free Energy from the Infinity of Chakras above the head where getting your Body and Mind into alignment in Meditation, with the energies from the center of the Universe through an infinity of Chakras above the head through the body to the center of the Earth Chakra, Kundalini Chakra and below that in Meditation. Dharma or Dhamma is the Conscience acquired by one who enters into the Stream of Energy from Heaven to Earth and also into the higher Chakras above the head, the Jhanas, and gradually wears away his Energy Blockages. Dharma is a non intellectual quality gained by communion with the chakras above the head - with energies higher than the intellect of the intuitional Opening of the Heart or Metta; and Will. The gaining of Spiritual Energy of Level 1 of Energy Enhancement brightens up all the faculties, usually supplying sufficient Energy to awaken the Dharma Eye of Psychic Vision. Nirvana, or Illumination follows as the good effects of that Alignment in Energy Enhancement Meditation and its consequent removal of All Energy Blockage Impurities Nibbana names the transcendent and singularly ineffable freedom that stands as the final goal of all the Buddha's teachings. You can talk about the effects below of the Quantum Leap of Enlightenment for ten thousand years but without meditating. Without accessing the energies of the Jhanas, the Samadhis of the Chakras above the head. Without purifying all the energy blockage Dark Angels within and outside your body. These talks can only show you how you are not and how all people are not, and how all the world is not enlightened. "After All That" you are ready to start The Energy Enhancement Process. Only this feedback can feed the will to attempt the process and not drop back. "After All That, Here are complete instructions on Enlightenment" - First Sutra of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali of Raja Yoga If nothing is happening in your Meditation, Whats Up!! Some people sit for 20 Years without any discernable Change. Energy Enhancement Advanced meditation Techniques Speed Up the meditative Process. What follows is the good effects of that Alignment in Energy Enhancement Meditation an its consequent removal of Energy Blockage Impurities.. In Buddhism, as in every major religion after the founder dies, there seems to be a loss of information such that the initial impulse of the religion is lost and only the partial and inessential remains. 1. It is obvious from the Kundalini Key shape of the Stupa, - in that the hemisphere is the earth and the tower the Antahkarana with all the heavens, Jhanas, or Chakras above the head - was one of the keys to the success of the original buddhist meditations. Thuparama Stupa Sri Lanka - Hemisphere Earth with Kundalini Earth Chakra and tower Antahkarana 2. It is obvious that a stream of Energy Exists from Heaven to Earth and that only when a person consciously aligns himself with that energy that he becomes a stream enterer and when he gets the access to the chakras above the head in Samadhi or Jhanas, such that he gets access to so much spiritual energy that his Dharma Eye - Psychic vision opens that he becomes a stream winner. What we have left below is what happens when a person has access to all the above information to help his practise. He becomes Good and Does Good. He activates Yama and Niyama from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. But these saintly powers of goodness only can come from one who is in tune with the energies of the Universe. For that we need the Kundalini Key symbolised by the shape of the Stupa or the Dome of the Taj Mahal (sufi) or the Dome of the Capitol in Washington (Masonic). For that we need Meditation and Samyama. For that we need Energy Blockage removal!! It is good that the student knows that he has to become good and that he has to make himself good, but without Spiritual Energy and without energy blockage removal techniques, no wonder people meditate for 20 years and never get anywhere. It is impossible to get all the good results below just by telling yourself to be good. The blockages will just laugh at you and however much you try to resist them, the temptations will always be too much and you will backslide, and you will fail. You need Energy Enhancement. Energy Enhancement gives the original techniques which form the basis of every religion on this planet and which therefore Speed Up!! the Process of meditation many times. The techniques work like they were meant to work before they were removed by those who followed the founder of every religion and the spiritual technology was lost; Everywhere!! THE BLACK CROWS HAVE REMOVED THE KUNDALINI KEY FROM BUDDHISM ENERGY ENHANCEMENT TEACHES YOU THE KUNDALINI KEY - THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN TRULY BECOME A STREAM ENTERER Krishna - Christ "When virtues decline and the evils flourish, I give myself birth to protect the good and destroy the sinners. In every age I appear for establishing righteousness." Krishna - Bhagavad Gita In every age there is a need for renewal of the original spiritual impulse in order to provide more Happy Enlightened Beings for the benefit of Humanity, for the benefit of the World, For the benefit of the Universe. Energy Enhancement is that renewal of the original spiritual impulse. Meditational Alignment with a Stream of Energy From Heaven to Earth - The Antahkarana GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE LEVEL 1 - ANTAHKARANA Chakras above the Head - The Buddhist Thirty-one Planes of Existence and Energy Blockages- JHANAS, HEAVENS, Vampire Parasitic Ghost Blockages, DEMONS, ASURAS Buddhist Stream Entry Part 1 Meditational Alignment with a Stream of Energy From Heaven to Earth - The Antahkarana Buddhist Stream Entry Part 2: Stream entry and After - Meditational Alignment with a Stream of Energy From Heaven to Earth - The Antahkarana Buddhism Stream Entry Pt 3: Meditational Alignment with a Stream of Energy From Heaven to Earth - The Antahkarana GAUTAMA BUDDHA - BUDDHIST GURU, ENLIGHTENED ILLUMINATED SPIRITUAL ASCENDED MASTER CHAKRAS EXTERNAL TO THE BODY, Vedic-Agamic Cosmology - Chakras above Sahasrara Chakra and Below Muladhara Chakra Chakras and Ida, Pingala, Sushumna and the Caduceus Chakras and the Initiations of Enlightenment Osho Book Directory http://www.energyenhancement.org/Osho/Osho-Books-Directory.html ENERGY ENHANCEMENT COURSE AT IGUASSU FALLS BRAZIL ENERGY ENHANCEMENT COURSE IN INJA OR BUY THE STREAMING VIDEO COURSE THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT LIONS ROAR AND REMEMBER THAT RELIGION IS NOT SCHOLARSHIP. You can learn the Vedas and the Bible and the Koran, and you can become really efficient, yet you will not be religious. The same work can be done by a computer in a far better way. Only one thing the computer cannot do, and that is: it cannot feel. The computer can think. Now we have machines which can think, but no machine can feel. Religion has something to do with the feeling part of your being, not with the thinking part of your being. You can study, you can become very knowledgeable, you can be burdened with great knowledge, but all this burdening slowly slowly will dry the juices of your heart. This knowledge will be like rocks, and your heart will flow no more. Your heart will be too much surrounded by rocks. It needs a little freedom to flow. It is a small stream of love. And only that small stream of love knows how to go to God. No rock can go to the ocean—only that small stream of love knows how to reach the ocean. And it needs no maps, no guidebooks. It simply knows. The knowing is intuitive. Every man simply knows how to love—there is no need to teach him. What is needed then? All that is needed is a loving atmosphere where the spirit can be imbibed. That's what happens when you go to a Master, when you enter a Sufi tekkia—a Sufi school, or a Buddhafield, or when you enter into the energy world of a Master: you are going into a magnetic field where love is flowing, where many hearts are dancing, where minds have been put aside, where feeling has become supreme. Just all that you need is a climate. The Master is a climate, an atmosphere, in which you suddenly become aware of your own potential. Not that the Master gives you something—there is no need! All that is needed has always been given to you by God. But in the presence of the Master, some chord in your heart starts responding, as if somebody is playing music and the very hearing of it and a dance arises in you. Your whole body wants to dance. You are in the grip of the music; it has touched and moved your heart. You are connected, bridged. A Master is a musician. He sings a song. He lives a song. He vibrates, pulsates a certain melody. And those who are intimate with him, those who allow themselves to be close to him, those who can be in a kind of let-go with him, those who relax with him... this is what satsang is: relaxing with a Master, dropping your tensions. There is a pool of energy; if you drop your tensions, suddenly you will become aware of your own pool too. A very famous ancient story: It happened, a small group of sheep was passing through a valley. A lioness jumped from one side to the other side, from one hillock to another hillock. And just while she was jumping, she gave birth to a child. The child fell into that small group of sheep. The child was brought up by the sheep. Naturally, the child knew from the very beginning that he was a sheep. He never became aware of his being a lion—although he was a lion! Just by forgetting, your nature does not change. He became very big, but the growth came so slowly, so slowly, that the sheep also accepted him—he was a freak child, it appeared. Something strange, eccentric, a little bit off the track, outlandish, but in every other way he was a sheep. Absolutely vegetarian he was, and walked like sheep, and lived with sheep, and talked like sheep. One day this miracle was seen by another lion. An old lion passing by looked at this miracle—he could not believe his eyes. It was impossible! The young lion was walking with the sheep and the sheep were not afraid. They were going so together, in such great friendship—he could not believe his eyes! He had never heard of such a thing. He rushed to catch hold of the lion. "What has gone... has he gone mad or something?" And the sheep escaped, and the sheep-lion also escaped, naturally—so much afraid, trembling. But the old lion became very curious, and somehow he got hold of him, took him to the river. And he was not willing to go. He was shrinking back and holding back, and he was saying, "Just leave me, please. Leave me alone! Let me go with my people." I know this story, because this is what I go on doing to you every day, and you say, "Leave me alone. Let me be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian—let me go to my people! Where are you taking me? I am just a sheep, and I am perfectly happy. Don't disturb me!" But the old lion persisted He forced the young lion to the river, and there they both looked into the river, the silent river, no ripples. It was like a mirror. And the old lion said, "Look, you are not a sheep. Look in the river!" Just the look... and do you know what happened? A great lion's roar, suddenly! This is what Zen people call 'sudden enlightenment'. It was not a gradual process. Not that he said, "Okay, I will think about it." Not that "First I will have to go to school and study how to be a lion." Not that "Sir, I am very grateful to you—let me become your disciple. And, slowly slowly, one day, in this life or in some other life, I will attain to this enlightenment. I am grateful that you have showed me the path." Nothing of this sort. Just seeing his face and seeing the old lion's face similar, a roar exploded. In a single moment! In fact, in no time, with no interval of time. Timelessly. Instantly. Immediately... the sheep disappeared and there was a young lion. This is the meaning of being with a Master. You are not what you think you are. You have been taught you are this and that. You are not these small identities, these small egos. You are vast. You are infinite. You are eternal. Tat-tvam-asi: Thou art That! Not less than that. You are gods and goddesses. But you have fallen into many traps. So it is not a question of studying. Religion has to be imbibed from someone who has arrived. It is from a Master to a disciple. It is not from the book to the student. It is from the alive Master to the alive disciple. It is a transmission of insight. The Master is not a person but only a climate, a music, a silence. If you love, you also become silent—because whatsoever you love, you become like that. Remember it! Be very cautious in loving something, because whatsoever you love, you will become that. The man who loves money, becomes money. He thinks only in terms of money and nothing else. The man who loves things, possessions, himself becomes a possession and nothing else, becomes a thing. Love something great! If you love a flower, it is better than loving money. If you love the moon, it is better than loving a house. If you love a woman, a man, a child, it is better than loving power and prestige. But if you can find a Master and fall in his love, then that is the door to the divine—because on this earth, nothing is closer to God than a Master. And 'the difference between you and the Master is not of quality: the difference is only of remembrance. Remember again the old lion and the young lion. What is the difference? There is no existential difference, no difference at all fundamentally. But there is a difference, a small difference, but that makes all the difference. The young lion has forgotten who he is. His heart has forgotten the language of a lion. He knows no more how to roar, how to shake the mountains with his roar. In the presence of the old lion, he imbibed, he recognized. Looking in the eyes of a Master, you will recognize who you are. Walking with the Master, you will recognize who you are. Just think of sitting with a Buddha... how long can you go on thinking that you are a sheep? Sooner or later the lion's roar... email sol@energyenhancement.org for details ILLUMINATION ENLIGHTENMENT TRANSMUTATE ALL TRAUMA-FORMED NEGATIVE KARMIC MASS ENERGY ENHANCEMENT EASY ANCIENT SUCCESSFUL SECRET KUNDALINI SHAKTIPAT BUDDHAFIELD Testimonial From Gary Spaid a Wealth Counselor in Vail Valley, Colorado, USA. ... I recommend you try this Energy Enhancement for yourself. They gave some inner WEALTH to me and Yoga and better relationships to Candy. Candy even wants to accompany my daily meditation sessions now!! I suggest you try the Video course or the Online Course first before you invite them to YOUR home or go to visit them wherever in the World they are. I guess Spain or India this year. You will not be disappointed. Gary Says.. I suggest you try the Video course - CLICK HERE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT COURSE REPORT DOCTOR THOMAS FLUELLEN Satchi and Devi have given so much of themselves that I do not know where to begin. So I have been give the necessary tools to use in my everyday life to further me on my spiritual quest. My knowledge has been greatly increased in the area of herbalism, homeopathy, acupressure, all of which are more effective with the EE techniques. I have been shown the necessary yoga positions to focus upon to combat poor posture and the healing of a past shoulder injury. At the end of the course I can even keep my knees on the floor in meditation for an hour at a time now, showing the unblocking work done on my Base chakra and its Kundalini energy, whereas when I started I would have thought this was impossible. I have been taught to test for pesticides in my food and understand the effect they are having on my health and the environment. I have been given methods, EE Initiation 5, to eliminate toxins when they are in my system. I have also been shown how to cook healthy energising food that will improve my life. Devi has given me Reiki l and 2 initiations, which have been beautiful experiences and I will be able to practice them with those in need. Satchi and Devi have given so much of themselves that I do not know where to begin. Their care and love has been with me throughout the past two weeks for which I am eternally grateful. They have openly shared their special gifts and knowledge, which has filtered into my life to make it more whole, which has helped me progress on my spiritual path far quicker than I expected. CIRCULATION OF THE ENERGIES GROUNDING OF NEGATIVE KARMIC MASS, NEGATIVE ENERGY, NEGATIVE EMOTIONS SPEED UP THE INTELLECT SPEED UP THE PROCESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT!! NOW.. IN VIDEO... ON DVD TRUE ART IS THE TRANSMISSION OF THE PSYCHIC CHARGE WHICH ALONE CAN PASS ON THE ENERGY OF ENLIGHTENMENT THE TOUCH OF GOD THE KISS OF THE DIVINE FROM DEVI DHYANI SACRED DANCE GET IT NOW ON DVD!! I suggest you try the STREAMING Video course sol@energyenhancement.org NOW!! for details NEW FREE DVD - SACRED DANCE "FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT" DANCES OF FUSION BY DEVI DHYANI Channeling The Soul -------------------- -------------------- "De Profundis (out of the Depths of Sorrow)" - Dead Can Dance "Summoning of the Muse" - Dead Can Dance "Masked Ball" - Jocelyn Pook "Migrations" - Jocelyn Pook "Comfortably Numb" - Pink Floyd "Set The Controls For the Heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd "Marooned" - Pink Floyd We are born in the light of God but become corrupted by the world because we need experience of the consequences of this before we, using our free will, can ourselves decide to seal that door where evil dwells and enter into purity, Enlightenment, and to work for the benefit of all beings. "De Profundis (out of the Depths of Sorrow)" and "Summoning of the Muse" by Lisa Gerrard and Dead Can Dance Like Circumradient Dawn, as the Sun of God rises we are born in Purity, Devotion and Light. Totally connected to that energy of Genius of the Muse which allows all possibilities in our life. "Masked Ball" and "Migrations" by Jocelyn Pook This music, purposely, was taken from the movie "Eyes Wide Shut" by Stanley Kubrick, which shows the corruption of the world of purity, of innocence and into which we, all of us, enter in many of our lifetimes on this planet. "COMFORTABLY NUMB" by Pink Floyd This song includes what has been voted by many people as the best guitar solo ever by any performer in the world, and was created by David Gilmour. It takes its energy from a descent into corruption and drugs into a world of happy cows chewing the cud but with no meaning or significance. Above all of this is the sun of the Soul. Shining upon all this misery, existing, and all we have to do is to get in contact with it. And yet, "When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse, out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone, and I have become comfortably numb" A person who has seen the soul, but lost it and the Guitar Solo mourns this loss, because the Soul is purpose, meaning and significance and is more important than all the kickbacks which corruption can give. "Set The Controls For the Heart of the Sun" and "Marooned" This sequence Fuses together one of the First of the performances of Pink Floyd 30 years ago, with one of the Latest and yet their meaning is the same. We need to connect with the Soul, part of ourselves which we have lost and we do it by projecting ourselves out of our time limited bodies into an immortal part of ourselves called the Soul which is part of us and which we join when we die. Meditation teaches us how to do that in life and when we have it then we are filled with happiness and light. We are Enlightened. Marooned is Alone, All One, in the Soul, in the Atman. ENERGY ENHANCEMENT COURSE REPORT - FOCUS AND INTENT Here is Paul on his Energy Enhancement course. He�s been with us for a time and has had some wonderful experiences: �After 5 weeks of developing my practice the method I now use for grounding negative energy is quick, efficient, and experientially extremely rich � I don�t think it will ever get boring because the focus of each meditation, now I�ve reached the 3rd Level, is totally unique. What I love about the way I meditate now, with the Energy Enhancement training, is that it�s so much more structured and focused - a clear intent is set out at the beginning of the meditation and by the end, it�s done! The techniques are so powerful, and I can feel the energy change as I ground the negativity from the focus of meditation. When clearing relationships I can feel atmospheres of untainted, pure energy enter me, like a huge, expansive, windswept sky. I really feel lighter! The visualization of the energy is a wonderful indicator of progress � everything in life has markers of progress through stages and cycles: seasons pass, fruit ripens, skin ages, rivers flow, wars begin and end. With other meditative techniques the markers of progress are general, such as a sense of well being, and specifically within that moment. In Vipassana meditation, sometimes you get a flow, sometimes not. In Mindfulness of Breathing and Metta Bhavana meditation, sometimes you engage, sometimes not. It is difficult to gauge where you are on the path, and therefore what challenges you now face. The Energy Enhancement teachings set out such a clear structure towards spiritual progress, with each stage having to be focused on and cleared before the next can be attempted, that I have a much clearer idea of where I am and the tasks that must be accomplished before I can move on. Along with all the indicators of the other techniques, such as bodily sensations, senses of well being and general demeanor and mood, Energy Enhancement traces particular problems to particular energetic blockages so that you can locate and solve them in a focused way. Along with that it allows you to see where you are in the evolutionary stream, and as you move through the stages you gain more energy to do more work, not only in meditation but also in life, so you remain in touch with what you must do at every stage. Now I can efficiently focus my meditation on the areas I need to work on in order to free up more energy so I can work on harder areas� and so on. It�s much quicker, and very thorough, because of that focus. Things are not left behind for the sake of speed. The course progresses very naturally from one stage to the next. There is never a sense of having no direction in meditation. I have a friend who is a practicing Buddhist, and he has come to the stage where he is fairly content with life. He asks himself �Why do I meditate?� because the techniques he is using don�t allow him enough visions and scope to really progress � they are good techniques, and give definite results, if practiced with dedication. He thought enlightenment was too quixotic a goal, perhaps. But there are initiations on the path to enlightenment � if you know them you can mark your progress � this is very important � the heart must be set upon the highest goal, but there are many signs along the way. You can read more about these in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, by Swami Satchidananda, and on the Energy Enhancement site. It�s helpful and good to know these signs and understand what they mean. The first thing to do is to remove all the energy blockages in your system so that you can increase your level of energy. Now I have done this I have enough energy to clear the negativity from all my relationships, on the way to an initiation called the mastery of relationships. Now I�m near the end of the course I feel confident I can go home and integrate all I�ve learnt into my life. Since I�ve been here I�ve worked through some difficult times, but I�ve got through them and my mood, energy and sense of well being have been given a boost rather like having an atom bomb explode in my bottom. The removal of all the negative energy in my system has put me in touch with my own flow of untrammeled energy. Removing these negative energy blockages have yielded some brilliant results, which I was not expecting. At one point, after removing a blockage in my base chakra I experienced an extended sensation of orgasm which was totally delicious! It was just a sign that my energy flow had increased and the work I had been doing was finally complete on that particular area. Energy Enhancement is truly an atom bomb, extremely powerful stuff. When I return to real life I will be in such a kick ass state, I want to go dancing and engage with existence! Yes! The clouds have parted! But seriously, it is great. What more can I say? I don�t want to oversell it, so I�ll simply say that in the end it�ll make you feel better, you�ll meet two wonderful people and have a great time. My spirits have been lifted and my mind expanded since I�ve been here, and I have a strong feeling inside that life will simply go on getting better and better for me and for everyone I know.� Energy Enhancement recommends that you start with any DVD Course practise a little and take advantage of asking questions of Satchidanand by email. Or just come on the Live Course Straight away, you get the Videos to practice in advance, For Free! Enormous benefits above the normal Meditation Course come with just a few Initiations, Meditation, Kundalini Kriyas, Alchemical VITRIOL - Grounding Negative Energies, and Contact with an ineffable source of Energy, Light and Love, the Soul! Definitely, failing to plan is planning to fail. I suggest you try the Video course - HERE ARE SOME OF SATCHIDANAND'S TEACHINGS USING THE GREAT MOVIES BELOW... CLICK HERE FOR King Kong Movie - Meditation The Ego and the Soul King Kong symbolises the Ego. As we ascend the Empire State building of the Antahkarana to the soul, then the ego must die and slip away. As it says in the Movie as a Sufi saying - And the Prophet said, 'And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead.' The beloved, beauty, is the soul, is God. This is the Sufi secret of the Troubadours and the Jesters (from Chisti)* who introduced the concept of courtly love in romantic poetry into Europe. Only the knowledge of the true self, the Soul, can overcome the selfish, competitive Ego, red in tooth and claw. Hazrat Nizamuddin Awlia Chisti (died.1325 A.D in Nizamuddin in Delhi.) represents in many ways the pinnacle of the Chisti Order of the Sufis. "The heart of a lover (True lover of God) constantly burns with the fire of love, so much so that whatever impurity which intrudes upon its sanctity is burnt to ashes". The blockages which cut us off from our souls are burnt to ashes through the practise of meditation and the higher practices of meditation called Energy Enhancement. THE KING KONG EGO, RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW APOCALYPSE NOW - THE HORROR OF THE BRANDO KURTZ SPLIT EGO AND THE TRAUMA THAT SPLITS IT CREATING DID AND MPD Well first of all, what makes a good movie? And what makes an Incredibly Profitable and Successful Movie? Because usually, the two go together, unless the bad guys against evolution successfully oppose. DON GETS HIS DVD COURSE Subject: RE: Getting back again. Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 21:28:59 +0000 Dear Satchi Yes, everything, all the DVD course and Online Course Downloads are here, all together they arrived, mighty excited i might add and all is downloaded and well. Im getting stuck straight in, its amazing, because the very first time i got the sitting position correct. I could feel the energy flowing up my spine and over my head incredible heat and a real tingling in my face and a feeling of elation i cant describe and i did this while using sound for each chakra, when i struck the heart chakra tone my chest just expanded and it felt like it was being lifted up and the whole room seemed full of energy and and and what a feeling, phew. It was heaven. I was sitting still for about an hour and it felt like only a few minutes i think i just arrived. I think i now have all the little pieces of my jigsaw, its taken a long time searching and im also seeing the numerous times when i was shown the direction but i was unable to see, There seems to be so much that i have missed and i wonder how come i was this blind for so long. I wanted to say "Thank You" For your patience, For your time and most of all for being here on the planet at this time. May Peace and Love always be your friends. Don And Anne. When I came to see Satchi at the airport for the first time I was struck by his energy but it was the second time, when he was talking to another student when meeting us off the train at Figueres that I really started to feel the Buddhafield of Energy Surrounding him. Suddenly I started yawning like the big healer guy in "The Green Mile" and then tears started from my eyes and I felt I was getting rid of a lot of Painful memories from the past. Olympia Panza 2004 "Once this stage was reached I had tremendous energy!" THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT VIDEO COURSE BY VIDEO BEFORE COMING FOR THE MOST ADVANCED AND POWERFUL COURSE IN THE WORLD, SPEED UP WITH THE SPECIAL ENERGY ENHANCEMENT VIDEO OFFER PLUS IMMEDIATE DELIVERY OF ONLINE COURSE JOIN IN OUR VISION OF ONE ENLIGHTENED HARMONIOUS WORLD. SPEED UP THE PROCESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT TRANSMUTE AND DISSOLVE ALL TRAUMA AND NEGATIVE ENERGY REMOVE Traumas due TO Addiction, Anger, Depression, Drugs, Divorce, Bereavement, Multisexual problems, Rape and Sex, Heart Disease and Cancer. With the Energy Enhancement DVD or Online Meditation Course we can learn how to Transmute Aches and Pains, Traumatic Emotional Memories and Negative Thoughts. With Energy Enhancement Ground Negative Energies and learn The Mastery of Relationships, Increase your Good Luck, Happiness and Purpose. GARY AND CANDY AT THE TAJ MAHAL Gary Says.. NOW!! for payment details THE CORE ENERGY TECHNIQUE. One year later I called to follow up and arranged to come and do the full Energy Enhancement programme for 4 weeks. I was not sure if this was wise, as I knew nothing other than what I had read on the web site and the testimonials, which I was a bit sceptical about! However, I am now adding my own because if you read this you might be a bit like me. Don't hesitate - go for it! I suggest you try the Video course DEVI DHYANI IN MEDITATION AT THE BEACH One of my Teachers, Zen Master Hogen said, We are all History Paintings. We start with a clean white sheet and then every day we apply paint. Usually our History Paintings become very messy!!! "I am a clean white sheet which is washed constantly. Everytime we meet, it is as if there is no emotional holdover from the past. Everytime, I see you clearly, as if for the first time!" Zen Master Hogen. THE TRANSMUTATION OF THE TRAUMA BODY INCREASE INTELLIGENCE THE REMOVAL OF STRESS, TRAUMA AND NEGATIVE EMOTION TRANSMUTE ALL TRAUMATIC MEMORIES TRAUMA-FORMED NEGATIVE KARMIC MASS Is created by the influence of pain on pure spiritual energy which changes it in the way that sunlight is turned into Coal or Petroleum, Oil, Black Gold, Texas Tea. Trauma-Formed Negative Karmic Mass is pure, concentrated pain which creates all the hard knots of pain and discomfort in the body which eventually, if left, turn into disease and surgical intervention. By removal of these Physical Energy Blockages we can create Health, Strength and Energy and Long Life in Energy Human Being who uses the Energy Enhancement Techniques. Trauma-Formed Negative Karmic Mass is pure concentrated pain which creates the symptoms of Manicism, Depression, Worry, Anger, and Fear in every human being. By removal of these Emotional Energy Blockages we can Remove all Negative Emotions and create the Positive Emotions of Optimism, and the Love, Energy and Will to get things done. Trauma-Formed Negative Karmic Mass is pure concentrated pain which creates a lack of Conscience and Heartlessness which are the symptoms of Psychopathy. By removal of these Spiritual Energy Blockages we can Remove psychopathy, one of the greatest diseases of humanity, which through War, Torture Chambers, Labour Camps, Re-Education Camps, Concentration Camps, Gulags and Pogrom destroyed and tortured 200 Millions of people in every country in the World throughout the 20th Century. Trauma-Formed Negative Karmic Mass is pure concentrated pain which creates a lack of Conscience and Heartlessness, Corruption and Greed which are the further symptoms of Psychopathy. By removal of these Spiritual Energy Blockages we can Remove the Corruption and Greed which caused all the Financial Bubbles where Pension Plans, Real Assets and Wealth are stolen to feed the endless Desires of the Robbers and Thieves. "We've Stolen All Your Money!!" ENERGY ENHANCEMENT L1 INITIATION 3 - THE GROUNDING OF NEGATIVE ENERGIES REMOVES ALL TRAUMA-FORMED NEGATIVE KARMIC MASS ARE YOU READY TO RECEIVE! Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Healer, Highly Evolved Elven Air Ring Bearer . Introduction - Existentialism and Kubrick's Psychopaths To my mind, no-one has brought up the similarity between existentialists and Psychopaths. An existentialist is a person cut off from their soul conscience and from their heart sympathy, living in a flat, intellectual drab wasteland devoid of meaning. And it is only the heart and the soul which give life meaning and significance, not the intellect. Why are there psychopaths? And the answer is contained in the chakra multi-processor model of the human being together with the concept of Energy Blockages which block and cut off some chakra functions like soul conscience which conquers selfish desire and heart sympathy which allows you to imagine yourself in another persons place, Gurdjieffian external consideration, whilst sometimes leaving courage and the intellect intact. NOT GLOBAL WARMING INSTEAD, GLOBAL POLLUTION!! For the future the Big Lie (A concept created by Goebbels) is that of Global Warming - THIS IS A target set up, to be shot down - The Strawman type of Argument - To confuse and disillusion - The Real Problem is that of Global Pollution The real Problem is that of POWER!! A lie designed to confuse and allow a mix of fuels to create power and to keep Coal and Petroleum as highly polluting power sources in the so-called mix whereas their pollution properties should stop them dead!! A Lie designed to move people in the direction of carbon dioxide-less yet and highly expensive (Who owns the uranium mines? Who owns the nuclear technology?) nuclear power which with IFR breeder reactors can provide 260 Terawatts per year (currently 13 Terawatts) for 100,000 years of electrical power. The system will be that powerful countries will process the nuclear fuel thus removing atomic bombs from the menu of most countries, and thus supply electrical power and its technology for the whole world. It is planned that Nuclear power will supply 50% of the electricity of Europe by 2030. Profit is the motive and the whole world held to ransom by the Uranium and technology and nuclear processing owners. As we can see that the future of this world is to become one, integrated with one President, so we can see that evolution demands that electricity is provided by Sun Power. Because of the Power and Control which oil and Nuclear power provides, the research and development of Sun Power has been very delayed - stopped!! Power Generation by steam from sunlight reflected onto water pipes in deserts has been proven. DC lossless transmission of electrical power from desert to the cities has also been cracked. Photo-voltaic cells look promising when efficiency and mass production nano-technology have been cracked together with cheap 50KW house batteries. Study Planning on the pure DC transmission scheme for Chinaaposs future power transmission from the West to the East Ying Huang; Zheng Xu Power Engineering Society General Meeting, 2004. IEEE Volume , Issue , 10-10 June 2004 Page(s):1459 - 1463 Vol.2 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/PES.2004.1373110 Summary:In the year after 2015, China's national power grid interconnection will have been completed. Most likely, there will be four synchronous power systems, that is, big East China power grids, central China power grids, South China power grids and Northwest China power grids. For the long distance (more than 1000 km) bulk power (more than 50 GW) transmission from the West to the East, if the pure DC transmission scheme is adopted, there will be more and more HVDC links feeding power to different points in the same synchronous AC network. An important issue arising in such a situation is the influence of the multiinfeed HVDC links on the security of the AC systems. This paper analyzes the transient stability of each system under various AC and DC disturbances. The recovery characteristics of the multiinfeed HVDC links are also investigated. The results show that pure DC power transmission from the West to the East of China is technically feasible The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project... 300 TIMES MORE EFFICIENT 100,000 YEARS OF ELECTRICITY WITH THE FUEL WE HAVE NOW BURNS THE NUCLEAR WASTE OF EVERY OTHER NUCLEAR PLANT � NO RESIDUE!! NO CARBON!! NO OIL COMPANIES NO COAL COMPANIES NO MIDDLE EAST INTERVENTION NO ONES HEARD ABOUT IT!! "In the decade from 1984 to 1994, scientists at Argonne National Laboratory developed an advanced technology that promised safe nuclear power unlimited by fuel supplies, with a waste product sharply reduced both in radioactive lifetime and amount. The program, called the IFR, was cancelled suddenly in 1994, before the technology could be perfected in every detail. Its story is not widely known, nor are its implications widely appreciated. It is a story well worth telling, and this series of articles does precisely that." --- excerpt from Plentiful Energy and the IFR story by Charles Till IFR story is a story of how the US government paid billions to our National Laboratories to engineer a solution to the energy and climate crisis (before it became a crisis), the solution worked!! A nuclear power plant design invented at Argonne National Lab 24 years ago has none of the drawbacks of conventional nuclear plants To control climate change, we must get rid of virtually all carbon emissions from coal. To do that, we need a way to generate power for a cost less than coal, that can generate power reliably 24x7, and that can be constructed virtually anywhere. Solar and wind don't meet the need; that is why even environmentally progressive countries such as Germany are still building coal plants. But we have a technology that can displace coal, but it is not well known. It was a billion dollar government research project...over 10 years at our top government national laboratory for energy (Argonne National Laboratory)...the largest energy research project in our history. Our government had finally done something truly visionary and great! But the project was quashed by President Clinton in 1994 because Clinton said it was unneeded and the scientists who worked on it were ordered to remain silent. One of our country's leading experts on global warming, Jim Hansen, recently re-discovered the IFR. Those who have been briefed on the IFR believe it is an essential technology we must develop to combat climate change and should be restarted immediately. This led to Hansen including restarting 4th generation nuclear power as one of his 5 top priorities for President Obama (see the bottom of page 7 in Hansen's Tell Barack Obama the Truth -- The Whole Truth). The DOE tried to restart it under GNEP, but Congress has zeroed the funding for GNEP (not for reasons relating to the IFR which nobody in Congress knows anything about). Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. California Lt. Governor John Garamendi flew in the top IFR scientists and convened a meeting of experts in the field including one Nobel prize winner (Burton Richter, former Director of SLAC). Garamendi came away impressed and convinced that this is something we must do and is working to take the next steps in California. by Steve Kirsch Until now, I have been pretty agnostic about nuclear power. In fact, in May 2006, I wrote an op-ed for the San Jose Mercury News on why we shouldn't pursue nuclear power as a solution for global warming which infuriated the pro-nuclear people. After reading Hansen's newsletter (where I first learned about the IFR) and doing months of research on the IFR listening to arguments on both sides, I've changed my opinion. And some really smart friends of mine have read the stuff below, done their research, and their minds have changed as well. In fact, I don't know anyone with an open mind who has met with the scientists who worked on the project who hasn't come away impressed. Even the harshest critics of the IFR admit that that they might be wrong. I first heard about the IFR on August 4, 2008, in an email I received from James Hansen who is one of our nation's top climate experts. The email summarized his recent trip overseas to meet with foreign leaders. The two most important things that Hansen tells foreign heads of state are (from page 5): Annual CO2 emissions, and thus percent reduction of annual emissions, is not an appropriate metric for controlling climate change. Instead, we must limit the total fossil fuel CO2 emission. Phase-out of coal emissions is the sine qua non for climate stabilization. In other words, if we don't get rid of coal plants all over the planet, we're completely hosed. The sooner we do that, the better. Getting rid of every single coal plant is the single most important thing we can do to slow down global warming. If we cannot do that, then nothing else matters. We are basically re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. We will go down with the ship. Displacing coal plants is hard because they are really cheap (since the utilities are not assessed of their pollution), they can be built anywhere where water is available (all thermal power plants, fossil or nuclear, have to be able to get rid of excess heat), and because they provide power 24x7. That's why every week to 10 days, another coal-fired power plant opens somewhere in China that is big enough to serve all the households in Dallas or San Diego. Getting rid of them is hard. Even with all the awareness about the harm of coal plants to the environment in the US, we have been unsuccessful in displacing them. Today, we still get 49% of our electric power from coal plants. If we can't displace coal plants in the US, how can we expect other countries, like China, to displace their coal plants? Fundamentally, to get rid of coal plants and have any hope at all on controlling climate change, you must to come up with a power plant capable of 24x7 operation that can be built anywhere that is just as cheap (or cheaper) to build and operate as a coal plant. If you had that, then you'd have an economic incentive for people to make the environmentally responsible choice. There would be no reason to build coal plants anymore. So if the US developed a way to generate electric power that had no CO2 emissions, was as cheap as coal, and provided 24x7 power, and could be built anywhere, and didn't require a lot of land to build, and was very safe, and didn't increase the risk from terrorism then that would be a great thing. It would mean that China would have an economic incentive to build these plants rather than coal plants. We don't have that now. Concentrated solar plants can only be economically built in certain locations. Same for wind power. And both are intermittent sources (although if you have enough wind power over enough area in the right corridor, it can be pretty reliable). Such an invention would, quite literally, save the planet from destruction. It would be the "holy grail" in the fight against global warming. It would arguably be the most important invention in history. So you'd think that if such an invention existed, everyone would know about it, wouldn't you? Well, would you believe that our top energy scientists invented a technology that does all those things and more! These plants can also get rid of the waste from existing nuclear power plants! And unlike nuclear plants where there is only a finite amount of nuclear material available (I think about 100 years), these plants make their own fuel so they will last 100,000 years. Remember Einstein's famous E=mc2? The point is that if you do it right, a little bit of matter can make a lot of energy. And would you believe the research was done more than 20 years ago in 1984 by a large group of US scientists at Argonne National Laboratory? The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) is a fourth generation nuclear design that provides a clean, inexhaustible source of power, cheap, with virtually no waste, inherently safe (if you remove the cooling, it shuts down rather than melts down), and the added benefit that it consumes the nuclear waste from other nuclear plants that we can�t figure out how to get rid of. Advantages include: It can be fueled entirely with material recovered from today's used nuclear fuel. It consumes virtually all the long-lived radioactive isotopes that worry people who are concerned about the "nuclear waste problem," reducing the needed isolation time to less than 500 years. It could provide all the energy needed for centuries (perhaps as many as 50,000 years), feeding only on the uranium that has already been mined It uses uranium resources with 100 to 300 times the efficiency of today's reactors. It does not require enrichment of uranium. It has less proliferation potential than the reprocessing method now used in several countries. It's 24x7 baseline power It can be built anywhere there is water The power is very inexpensive (some estimates are as low as 2 cents/kWh to produce) Safe from melt down because if something goes wrong, the reactor naturally shuts down rather than blows up And, of course, it emits no greenhouse gases. What's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing...that is if you look at the facts and the science rather than the words. Sadly, most people when they hear "nuclear reactor" or "breeder reactor" react negatively. "Not in my backyard," they say. But that's because of second generation nuclear technology. When people say "no nuclear," they really are referring to "second generation nuclear." Everything about the IFR and fourth generation technology is completely different. The words with negative connotations are no longer negative. Yet we have this bad habit of remembering the bad associations. We have to overcome that. For example, one scientist told me, "Breeding, however, is a dirty word these days, so the GNEP emphasis is on burning the transuranics, instead of using them to assure an expanding source of clean energy into the indefinite future." So, in other words, we are doing stupid things because "breeding" is a dirty word. "Breeding" for the IFR is the nuclear equivalent of "recycling and re-using." That's a good thing, not a bad thing. And the safe word, "burning," is actually a bad thing. So the connotations are actually reversed. We actually gave a group of our smartest scientists funding for 10 years and left them alone to come up with something brilliant so that it could be completed before we actually needed to deploy it. Talk about visionary, long-term thinking! Of course today things are different. Today, Congress is completely shortsighted. After gas is at $4/gallon, they say we need to drill for more oil. Well if that is the solution, how come we didn't do that 10 years ago so we wouldn't have a crisis? So here, in a rare instance of long term strategic investment and vision, our government did something really amazing in funding this project. And the scientists returned that trust by delivering on their promises. And then our government thanks them by pulling the plug on the project just before it was completed. When Bill Clinton cancelled the funding in 1994, he said in his State of the Union speech that he did it because the project was unnecessary, not because it didn't meet any of its objectives. In his speech, he said, "We will terminate unnecessary programs in advanced reactor development." He never asked the National Academy of Sciences to look into whether this project was unnecessary. Why not? Shouldn't you do a little objective research before you pull the plug on the biggest energy research project in history? The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) technology is arguably the single most important thing we can do to stop global warming. If it isn't the single most important thing, it's awfully close to the top. So if this is so great, how come everyone isn't all over this technology? Because nobody knew about it! How can that be? Because the DOE ordered the scientists working on the project not to talk about it. Why would the government do that? Why do you think the government would pour billions of dollars into the biggest energy research project in history and then not just cancel it, but do their best to bury it? The researchers at Argonne developed a safe and economical source of unlimited clean energy. Between that and the other renewable power technologies we wouldn't need oil, coal, gas or uranium mining/drilling anymore. We're talking about putting the most powerful corporations on the planet out of business. Not out of malice or spite, but simply because they won't be needed anymore and because what they're doing to the planet is killing us. Some people think that the fossil fuel lobbyists could tell you why our government ordered the scientists not to talk about it. It's similar to the gag order (and edits to manuscripts and reports including IPCC reports) that the administration likes to put on scientists who try to talk about global warming. Jim Hansen can tell you a few stories about that since he's experienced it first hand. In fact, Hansen himself just found out about the IFR recently. Hansen is very informed. So if he didn't know about it, it's probably not well known. And that's what I found when I asked around. According to this article that just appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Bill Gates is investing in a project at Intellectual Ventures to "create a new type of nuclear reactor that would use fuels other than enriched uranium -- including spent fuel from existing reactors." The article quoted Myhrvold as saying " The idea is to create a nuclear reactor that is simpler and cheaper than current reactors, and generates clean power without waste or proliferation problems." Well that's exactly what the IFR did. They knew about the IFR. It would be great if he could help it succeed or has ideas on how to make it even better. GE has created a commercial plant design called the S-PRISM. GE is ready and willing to build a plant (a) to demonstrate the technical feasibility of a commercial-scale operation, and (b) to narrow the existing uncertainty in the final cost. They are not proposing, yet, to plunge into mass production of S-PRISMs. We can start building a reactor vessel for around $50 million. Apparently, Al Gore doesn't know about the IFR either. Check out this video where Senator Craig (a strong advocate of the IFR in 1994 but not really known for his advocacy of good science) chastises Gore for his role in cancelling advanced nuclear research in 1994. Gore doesn't know what Craig was talking about. More recently, people associated with the IFR tried to brief Gore, but they couldn't get past Gore's defensive linemen. Cancelling the IFR was a huge mistake...One US Senator even commented how Congress will regret that decision. He said, "I assure my colleagues someday our Nation will regret and reverse this shortsighted decision. But complete or not, the concept and the work done to prove it remain genius and a great contribution to the world." "Through his work on the Integral Fast Reactor program, Dr. Till demonstrated that his technical solutions out paced the ability of the political process to appreciate them." I couldn't have said that better. And Senator Kempthorne, who also isn't exactly known for his advocacy of science, is still waiting for his colleagues in Congress to regret and reverse their decision. The good news is that DOE is trying to restart IFR with the GNEP (Global Nuclear Energy Partnership) initiative. The GNEP, if it is allowed to proceed, will involve a commercial demonstration that will establish the degree of economic competitiveness of the recycling process. General Electric thinks they can build an economically viable system and they already have a complete commercial design completed (S-PRISM). But it looks as though Congress, in a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bath water, might decide to zero the funding of GNEP due to other aspects of the GNEP program. Once again Congress shows how easily they seem to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The same Congress that brought you the Iraq war is now making sure that the best solution to the global warming never sees the light of day. Hansen was blunt in his most recent trip report when he wrote �we should not have bailed out of research on fast reactors.� Yet here we are doing it again. When are our politicians going to start listening to our scientists who are trying to solve the global warming problem? Are there any other promising technologies that have no emissions and the potential to displace coal plants and can be sited anywhere? I don't know of any other than this. But we should be looking at the ideas that are on the table now and funding the most promising 5 ideas with stable long-term funding (e.g., 10 years or more) that isn't subject to the capriciousness of Congress. That way, we'll have solutions available when we desperately need them instead of the normal short sighted approach we take which is to react to a crisis rather than take preventative steps. An energy crisis should never have occurred in the US. We should have been making huge investments in renewable research 10 to 20 years ago. In this case we got lucky and did make the investment in electric power generation and the technology is available today when we need it. What a miracle. Now we need another miracle: we need our government to restart the research at Argonne, we need the NRC to accelerate the approval of the plant designs, and we need to allow utilities to start building these plants. GE is ready and willing to build a demonstration plant. California has a ban on new nuclear plants until the waste problem is solved. But building the IFR solves the waste problem. So I hope California will be a leader in incentivizing our utilities to start building these plants here. If California needs to change the law to do that, it should. For around $50M, we can build a reactor vessel to expedite certification and licensing by the NRC. That's a small price to pay to prove we have a silver bullet to solve the global warming problem. This is too good an opportunity to pass up. I am not suggesting that the IFR is the be-all, end-all solution to the global warming problem. Some people believe other technologies (e.g., high-altitude wind, such as MakaniPower.com, solar thermal such as Ausra, the work MIT is doing on solar electrolysis and fuel cells, or enhanced geothermal (EGS)) might be a silver bullet. Maybe. Maybe not. Most experts think you need a mix of good solutions just like we have a mix of ways to generate power today. From a risk management point of view, you certainly want to cultivate and develop at least a small portfolio of silver bullets, i.e., "silver buckshot." After spending a lot of time talking to the people who built this technology, it's clear to me that the IFR deserves a place in that portfolio. The research at Argonne should be restarted now and someone should ask GE to build one; either a big utility or Congress should give DOE the money so they can have GE build a pilot S-PRISM test plant. We are running out of time. If we do not start using breeder reactors, such as the IFR, this century, then it appears we will reach "peak nuclear" this century. If we use 4th generation breeder reactors such as the IFR (whose only disadvantage seems to be perception), we can extend the usable life of our nuclear resources to 1,000 years or more (see GamePlan, p. 126) with the IFR folks estimating over 50,000 years. Also, it's not something we can decide to do later. If our objective is to get to 20% nuclear in our energy mix, that means we must build one 3GW plant per week for the next 25 years (see GamePlan, p. 149)! So unless we are absolutely 100% sure we don't need nuclear, we should start very soon, or that option will be lost forever. Mary Nichols, the highly respected chair of California's Air Resources Board has been convinced for years, and has said publicly, that nuclear would be needed and would make a comeback but only with breeder technology. While she has not yet been briefed in the IFR, she wants to learn more about it and a meeting has been set up. A number of people who have read the above had additional insightful questions, such as "how do you respond to the disadvantages listed on the wikipedia page on the IFR?" or "if this is so good, why doesn't GE have a customer for the S-PRISM?" or "how do you address the proliferation problem?" Those questions, and more, are answered here: The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project: Q&A. Here are some more interesting facts: Nuclear provides 70% of the carbon free electric power in the US even though we haven't started building a new nuclear plant in 30 years! With the used fuel plus depleted uranium that's on hand, we can power the world for centuries before having to mine new uranium. With fast reactors and eventual mining, uranium is inexhaustible There's much more energy in the depleted uranium on hand than there is in the coal still in the ground. Your typical coal plant emits well over 100 times more radioactive materials than a nuclear plant! See p. 89 of Blees' book for figures that will astound you. Some 24,000 people die prematurely in the US from the effects of soot from coal plants (see p. 99). Annual health care costs due to soot, per year: $167 billion dollars (see p. 100)! Even if you add the 56 deaths from Chernobyl, far more people have been injured or killed from hydropower, oil, and gas (see p.99 of Blees' book). With the investment of (nuclear) energy, carbon can be extracted from CO2 and hydrogen from water, to make synthetic liquid fuel. No coal involved -- unless the CO2 comes from existing coal-fired plants. Simplest, perhaps, is to make methanol (CH3OH): 2CO2 + 4H2O + energy -> 2CH3OH + 3O2. It is truly carbon-neutral, since the CO2 emitted when the fuel is burned is only equal to what was used in the first place. This would make use of the existing distribution infrastructure while a better system (batteries or boron, perhaps) evolves. While this has been known for several years, very few people seem to know about it. See http://www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/nuclearenergy.aspx. Also, the Carbon Dioxide web page provides detail about recycling CO2: http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/co2.aspx. See the section titled: CO2 is valuable, don't waste it, recycle it! So this would solve our problem of how to eliminate CO2 for transportation with complete compatibility with our existing infrastructure. Experts think it would take 15 to 20 years of work before this is viable, however. Here are two excellent videos: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_ST7oCLUCw4 ("Syntrolysis" - Idaho National Laboratory)< http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eot_JpsMIsw&feature=related> (Northern Arizona State University) We read about coal plant discharges all the time. The last time we heard about a nuclear discharge in the US was TMI. For example, On December 22, one billion gallons of coal ash sludge and contaminated water, the waste product of coal-fired power plants of the Tennessee Valley Authority, broke through a containment area into the rivers of Kingston, Tennessee. Last week a coal train operated by National Coal Corporation over turned spilling approximately 1100 tons of coal next to the New River in Scott County, Tennessee. Eight rail cars, which typically hold 120 tons of coal, were involved. And now another spill occurred in Alabama at the Tennessee Valley Authority Widows Creek coal-fired plant, releasing up to 10,000 gallons of polluted sludge. Nuclear operates without government subsidies Toshiba is building a micro reactor that is 100 times smaller than a typical nuclear plant, at 6 feet by 20 feet. It produces 200 kilowatts of energy at about 5 cents per kilowatt hour � cheaper than coal-fired power in most places in the U.S. The Japanese company will begin marketing the reactors in the United States and Europe in 2009. VCs are starting to invest in nuclear companies (see VCs have a nuclear reaction Technology, energy prices fire interest in new-era nukes). There is a LOT of misinformation that is unfortunately being spread by seemingly credible sources. For example, here are some items to consider in response to an article that recently appeared in Scientific American: -- The plutonium at WIPP is only "deadly" after a few thousand years if you go down there and live in close contact with it with it -- and maybe not even then. The problems with fast reactors have been non-fundamental. Examples: -- The Monju reactor was undamaged by the fire, and has been kept shut down for political reasons. I think it has been given the go-ahead to start up. -- The EBR-II fast reactor worked flawlessly for many years. -- The Phenix fast reactor in France has been on-line for decades. -- The Superphenix reactor was shut down for political reasons, after it finally had its problems behind it and was working well. -- The Russian BN-600 has been working well for decades -- As you well know, the IFR technology has not yet been implemented. so Lyman's claim that "it never worked" is nonsense. -- The fast-reactor waste would consist of 1 ton of fission products per GWe-year. True, "thousands of tons" if there were thousands of reactors. Easily dealt with -- harmless in less than 500 years (unlike coal waste). Comments on the IFR from one of Australia's top climatologists It's not just noted climatologist Jim Hansen and noted British environmental author Mark Lynas who think that IFRs are critical to solving the climate crisis. Below are some comments I received from Barry Brook, of Australia's top climatologists. Brook read Blees' book and wrote this review of Prescription for the Planet on his website: This list of posts also include what will eventually be a 6-part review series of the book by Tom Blees, Prescription for the Planet, which, within its 400 pages, describes IFR and some related technologies (boron-powered vehicles and plasma burners for waste recycling) that together circumscribe the most practical and innovate energy and sustainability solution I have yet encountered. It also looks carefully at how to achieve the energy revolution required on an international scale. It is, in my opinion, the most important book ever written on energy and climate solutions. That prompted Friends of the Earth Australia to write a critique of the IFR. Here is Brook's (and other's) response to the FOE critique of the IFR. Note that while Brook has several links to the FoE critique so that readers can see both sides of the issue, FoE doesn't reciprocate. FoE provides no links whatsoever to Brook's site. So much for FoE promoting an open, balanced discussion. The other thing the critics lack is a viable alternative, but they really never focus on this. They'll talk about terrorism or proliferation risks or all the reasons why the IFR isn't a perfect solution. That's not the point. The point about climate change is we have to displace coal at a minimum. If not the IFR, then what? The critics never talk about that. I wrote to Brook: this is so infuriating since IFRs are FAR FAR better than existing nuclear plants and existing nuclear plants have an INCREDIBLE safety record....far safer than any other power source. Obama's new Secretary of Energy Steve Chu points out that existing nuke plants produce 70% of the GHG-free power in America....it is even more amazing when you consider the fact that we haven't started building a new nuclear plant for 30 years! He wrote back (emphasis mine): It is infuriating, I agree, because environmental groups seem to be willing to sacrifice great opportunities to fix fundamental problems, completely, because of historical (and even then, mostly ill founded) biases, ideologies and misinformation. My primary goal is about fixing the climate change problem. I was utterly depressed when I worked through the numbers on renewables and found they didn�t stack up. But did I push that aside and pretend it was the solution anyway? No way! I got angry and felt without hope (until I found out about IFR). But I didn�t lie to myself or others in the interim (I just implied there was little hope, when pushed�). That form of disingenuous debating is what must be stamped out here, and that is why rebuttals of �propaganda� pieces like that from FoE (the most strident anties in Australia who helped kill discussion on the Gen III issue here a few years back) MUST be pursued. Even Gen III+ like the ESBWR are incredibly safe. IFRs just do it even better (good old physical laws). Anyway, I�ll get off my podium now. Then I wrote: In the FOE piece, they wrote: Also ignoring the fact that 70-80+% of greenhouse emissions arise from sectors other than electricity generation - so Kirsch's claim that IFR's could be the "holy grail in the fight against global warming" is stupid. but coal alone is responsible for 20% of global GHG emissions! See http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/coalfacts.cfm More importantly, that pew page also says: 68 percent of India�s CO2 emissions are from coal Yikes. The point is that if you can't get rid of coal, we're screwed. To which he replied: What he wrote is at best grossly disingenuous. You need to solve the electricity carbon problem to fix the vehicular fuels problem, space heating and embedded energy in building and manufactured goods, and Tom has a solution for MSW [municipal solid waste] also. About half of agricultural emissions can also be solved if you have a zero-carbon energy source. Then you just need to worry about the ruminant methane and carbon from deforestation. But the bottom line is, if you fix electricity, every else will fall into place. As you said in an earlier doc, Steve, if we don�t stop coal in places like China and India, we�re hosed, irrespective of what we might do in the US and Oz (and even if we could do with without advanced nuclear, which quite clearly we can�t: http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/12/21/renewable-energy-cannot-sustain-an-energy-intensive-society/ ). If you want more on why renewables cannot do the job, read over the comments section in these two posts: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/01/16/put-all-energy-cards-on-the-table-to-fix-climate-change-fully/ http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/01/25/prescription-for-the-planet-part-iii-renewable-atoms-and-plasma-charged-waste/ I also pointed out to him that when I ask the IFR critics in the US for their plan for how they propose to stop China and India from using coal, they don't have an answer and admit nuclear is the way to go. He asked the same question of the critics in Australia. Here's what he wrote: I had a similar set of arguments with an anti-nuclear campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation recently � he started hammering me about proliferation risks, and so I asked him what his plan was for replacing the 484 GW of coal-fired power stations already installed in China, and the further 200 or so plants in the planning or construction pipeline. Like your critic, he had no answer. Similarly a strong collection of climate action groups recently protested at the Australian Parliament House and came up with a manifesto on actions required to produce a zero-carbon Australia. But one of their �non negotiables� was a ban on all nuclear power. So I pointed out to them that they�re obviously not 100% committed to solving the climate problem fully after all [this was their ambit claim] � at least if it conflicts with other entrenched ideologies [as an alternative example, I�m not a vegetarian, but for scientific reasons I will no longer choose to eat beef or sheep if I have the option because of the climate-forcing effect of ruminant methane]. No answer. There is a critique of IFR here: I plan to post a response on my blog, since the author Jim Green linked to it from a comment. Let me know if you have anything specific to say in response to it and I�ll add it to the rejoinder I�m about to write [with acknowledgement). Anyway, please do keep me in the loop � I�ve vitally interested in pushing this forward and am getting traction. My full list of articles on IFR is here: http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power/ Comments on Mark Lynas's website in debate between Greenpeace and Blees Mark Lynas read Blees book, checked out the facts, and found out conventional "wisdom" about advanced nuclear was wrong. So he came out in favor of the IFR. He was quickly denounced by his peers (see Mark Lynas: the green heretic persecuted for his nuclear conversion). He offered Greenpeace a chance to respond on the Mark Lynas blog, and also published Blees' rebuttal to the Greenpeace comments. Here are some of the reader comments from Blees' rebuttal (since at that point readers could evaluate both sides): Regardless of what Greenpeace states on environmental grounds, they are not independent and not objective. They have no reason to want nuclear power in any form even if they want to resolve AGW issues. Thank you Tom for your article and also to Mark for posting it for us. A clear, concise and informative article which for me would seem to illustrate sensibly that nuclear power is not only viable in every way but also relatively safe. Additionally of course as Tom says we should explore and invest in renewables. What a great position it would be to not need nuclear power in the future, although like many I think we will need it. I will leave those better qualified to argue the science here but Tom�s points are well made. I await Greenpeace�s response again with baited breath! An eloquent and in-depth rebuttal, Mr. Blees. If only all solutions were as rock solid as this one� Thank you Tom for you rebuttal. Nuclear is here for the foreseeable future and in some places growing. There are also no guarantees that renewables can replace fossil fuels within the uncertain timeframe, even with the desired demand side reduction. On this basis alone I�m convinced that it would be logical to invest in testing S-PRISM. It sounds a little too good to be true and may well be just another pipe dream. But again that�s an argument for getting the testing done. We seemed to be stuck in old school debate as usual; Mark Lynas and/or Tom Blees presents an optimistic picture, while Greenpeace presents the negative one. It kind of makes it difficult to take either side seriously. Most of us readers aren�t educated enough to know which bit we should be throwing our pinch of salt on. In the meantime, nuclear is becoming smaller and more affordable Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes Toshiba Builds 100x Smaller Micro Nuclear Reactor Summary of IFR benefits anthropogenic global warming You can justify the investment on just the waste problem alone, but the IFR is far more important. Calculations from a number of respected sources indicates that renewables are insufficient to solve our energy problems. That leaves nuclear. Even NRDC admits that. But the best nuclear by far is the IFR because existing nuclear is not sustainable (we'll run out of fuel unless we use breeder reactors like the IFR) and has higher costs and risks than IFRs. The IFR is simply a better nuclear design that is currently our best option as we move forward. References on why renewables are insufficient to solve the climate crisis Energy Secretary Chu, the President of MIT, and the renewable experts at the most recent Aspen Institute Energy Forum all agree that it is not responsible to believe that you can solve the climate crisis without nuclear. Here are a few more references. http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/12/21/renewable-energy-cannot-sustain-an-energy-intensive-society/ http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/03/18/the-solar-fraud/ http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/11/climbing-mount-improbable/ http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/12/integral-fast-reactors-for-the-masses/ Australia: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25817955-601,00.html. MINING giant Rio Tinto has urged Kevin Rudd to immediately begin work on a regulatory regime allowing use of nuclear energy in Australia, arguing the viability of energy alternatives has been dramatically overstated. The company has advised the government to consider "every option" for power generation because its pledges on reducing carbon emissions and using renewable energy will expose industry and consumers to huge increases in their power bills. And it says that overly optimistic assumptions on the viability of alternatives such as wind and geothermal power, as well as so-called clean coal technologies, have created a "false optimism" which the government must challenge by commissioning new research. Some regions of Australia will not be located near good renewable energy resources or sufficient geological storage formations for CCS," the submission says. In these circumstances nuclear energy may provide the optimum clear, reliable and affordable energy option." UK: http://www.withouthotair.com is particular good. David MacKay examines five plans for the UK to move a pure renewable society. The conclusion is that renewables are not sufficient: "Any plan that doesn�t make heavy use of nuclear power or �clean coal� has to make up the energy balance using renewable power bought in from other countries." Japan: In particular, here's a description of Japan's quandry with respect to renewables: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/07/19/we-need-a-real-global-plan-for-carbon-mitigation/. Here's a statement from Japan's Federation of Electric Power (FEPC) companies on why renewables, while desirable, are not sufficient: http://www.japannuclear.com/nuclearpower/program/why.html says: Alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power are also attractive options in that they are clean and inexhaustible. And while their use will no doubt grow over the years, such resources remain hamstrung by a variety of drawbacks, from their susceptibility to the vagaries of weather and poor energy conversion rates to inferior cost efficiency. Continuous efforts will be made in research and development in order to utilize such alternative energy sources. However, until the technological hurdles obstructing them - and there are many - are overcome, nuclear power remains among the most viable means of power generation. Information on cost of nuclear reactors See The New Economics of Nuclear Power by the WNA. The dual CANDU-6 reactors at Qinshan were $2.88 billion for 1.4GWe of power and was put into operation for grid transmission on November 19, 2002 in Haiyan, Zhejiang Province. Cost of Nuclear Power: The IFR cost is estimated by GE to be about $1,500 per kW. The first two ABWR's were commissioned in Japan in 1996 and 1997. These took just over 3 years to construct and were completed on budget. Their construction costs were around $2000 per KW. The Chinese Nuclear Power Industry has won contracts to build new plants of their own design at capital costs reported to be $1500 per KW and $1300 per KW at sites in South-East and North-East China. If completed on budget these facilities will be formidable competitors to the Western Nuclear Power Industry. If the AP1000 lives up to its promises of $1000 per KW construction cost and 3 year construction time, it will provide cheaper electricity than any other Fossil Fuel based generating facility, including Australian Coal power, even with no sequestration charges. Here it is: Cost of 2 x Chinese CPR-1000 nuclear reactors cited as US$3.8 billion - that's $1,760/KW if they come in on budget: http://tr.im/uPNR . Contrast that with the $8-10,000 often cited for building these in the USA. S However, until there is competitive bidding on these reactors, it is admitted hard to assess the true cost. In California, PG&E says that nuclear is the second cheapest power (the lowest cost is hydro but hydro isn't scalable). Diablo Canyon cost $5.52B according to the New York Times for 2.2GW of power. They need $1B every 20 years. The plant will probably last 60 years. So over 60 years, that's $7.5B invested to generate 2.2GW2436560 GW of power which is less than 1 cent per kWh (.89 cents actually). But some of that power is wasted because it can't be used. And the capacity factor of one reactor is >101% and the other is 88.2%. So that increases the cost per kWh. And Diablo was very expensive due to the protestors and a costly engineering (mirror image) mistake. Even with all that, you can see the power is VERY VERY cheap. Today, modular reactors are much less expensive than Diablo Canyon. Using multiple small reactors at a site allows you to shut down a reactor if needed and still deliver plenty of power. They are also cheaper to produce (since they are produced in a factory like cars) and more reliable since these are mass manufactured rather than 1 off designs. Worldwide, nuclear power is undergoing a renaissance. There are 45 so-called generation III reactors under construction, including 12 in China, and another 388 are planned or proposed. Cost comparison of nuclear vs. coal account for all costs shows nuclear is comparable to coal today An objective look at costs of various power generation technologies can be found in Table 2 which is energy cost data from the CEC. One of the biggest problems with the American reactor program and why it stalled in the '70s and '80s, Three Mile Island notwithstanding, was that the costs were escalating. When it cost $300 million to build a reactor in 1972 and it cost $6 billion in the early '80s, something has gone terribly wrong. Part of that was the legal suits that extended the reactor certification time over to a period of decades. So part of it was the anti-nuclear movement that did that, but also a part of it was each design was different. So everything was built anew, new features were tried out, every design needed a special certificate to actually be built and then another certificate to be run. So the whole system ultimately was set up to fail and things became more and more expensive. If you can have a system where you have a standardized design with components that are built to a particular specification, if you can have components that are built in a factory and shipped to site rather than everything needed to be constructed on site, if you have modules where they're smaller such as they can be put on a rail car or on a large truck and taken to site and the many of these units put together to constitute a plant, then you can start to see that there's huge benefits in terms of efficiency, the fact that you don't need a standardized certificate for each and every new reactor, that there are economic benefits in building multiple units at a given factory. The places where this is happening is China and India right now. So although these have often been blamed as some of the worst carbon polluters, ultimately and ironically they could be the nations that lead us out of the carbon economy and into a low carbon economy based on nuclear power. AP-1000's made in China are expected to cost only around $1,000 per kW (see AP-1000 Reactor being built in China - current summary and possible problems).. From New Life for Nuclear Power by ALVIN M. WEINBERG Making a significant contribution to CO2 control would require a roughly 10-fold increase in the world's nuclear capacity. If nuclear reactors receive normal maintenance, they will "never" wear out, and this will profoundly affect the economic performance of the reactors. Time annihilates capital costs. The economic Achilles' heel of nuclear energy has been its high capital cost. In this respect, nuclear energy resembles renewable energy sources such as wind turbines, hydroelectric facilities, and photovoltaic cells, which have high capital costs but low operating expenses. If a reactor lasts beyond its amortization time, the burden of debt falls drastically. Indeed, according to one estimate, fully amortized nuclear reactors with total electricity production costs (operation and maintenance, fuel, and capital costs) below 2 cents per kilowatt hour are possible. Electricity that inexpensive would make it economically feasible to power operations such as seawater desalinization, fulfilling a dream that was common in the early days of nuclear power. http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/01/progress-energy.html says the 2 AP-1000s in florida will cost $14B. That's pretty pricey compared with the $1,000per KW claim (see http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeCostOfNuclearPower). Yoon wrote: What's been reported in Green Car Congress is misleading. Progress Energy Florida plans to build two nuclear units at their Levy County site. In the process of getting approval of the Florida Public Utility Commission, they submitted estimated project cost, which was very, very conservative -- I don't recall the numbers but they assumed high cost of money, high inflation rate, etc. And probably they doubled the capital costs that vendors were talking about. They wanted set the upper bounds so that they don't have come back to the PUC for revised cost estimates once the project was approved. As long as they carry out the project within the approved budget, they don't have to revisit the issue. The Green Car Congress assumed, based on the Florida numbers, $9448/kW which leads to 20 cents/kwhr at 14.57% fixed charge rate and O&M cost (including 2 cents/kwhr fuel cycle cost) of 8 cents/kwhr. The capital cost is probably a factor of 4 or so high and also the same for O&M. Today's total generating cost is less than 2 cents/kwhr and the fuel cycle cost is 0.55 cents/kwhr. Progrss Energy Florida has not signed a construction contract yet, so we don't know what the project cost will be. In fact, all 16 utilities who filed NRC license applications for 26 reactors have not signed contracts yet. Maybe the only exception might be NRG who is building ABWR in Texas. The capital costs for the next series of LWRs remain illusive. The estimate of $1000/kW for AP-1000 is probably too optimistic (with initial cost of $3500/kW in the U.S. About 60% of the reactors built in the last two decades or so probably is in the Southeast Asia. Typical costs there have been $2000-2500/kWe with construction period of less than four years. It behooves me why we cannot do the same in this country. Different labor rates or commodities costs do not explain it. I am concerned with the experience of the new Olkiluoto plant in Finland based on AREVA's 1600 MWe EPR. The project was to be completed this year, but the original fixed price cost has escalated by 50% with 3.5 years delay. I hope this is not a sign that will be repeated here again. Steve, I wouldn't take that Florida price at face value. After all, there was the $26B figure coming out of Ontario recently (AECL and AREVA both came up with similar bids), and it took a bit of digging for me to find out what was behind that 'blowout'. Turns out the LCOE was a mere 5c/kWh: http://wp.me/piCIJ-qx I disagree with Ralph from NRDC in his confidence that regulatory ratcheting is a thing of the past (RR was, in my reading of history, the primary thing that killed NP construction in the US) -- there is nothing enshrined in law to guarantee that, which is one thing that makes the utilities nervous, I suspect. Yoon et al: Similar experience here in Ontario. The RFP asked the vendor to assume 100% of the risk with massive contingencies, full risk coverage for the whole life of the plant, etc., etc. I was surprised that the AECL and AREVA bids came in as low as they did. The Ontario government behaved as if they were making every attempt to create an unbearable contract price. The anti-nukes were (and are) very happy. Bottom line: Keep a close watch on the AP-1000 and ESBWR. In less than 4 years the first AP1000s should be coming on line in China. Additionally, the Chinese themselves have learned extensively from both S. Korea and Japan that have bought in reactors ahead of schedule and under or at budget. So it�s not entirely new territory we�re talking about. Nuclear cost vs. solar To compare with solar, for $50K, you can buy a solar rooftop system that has 8MWh annual output. So if you assume the annual output is actually completely steady 24x7, then that is producing an average of 913watts. So you spent $54,000 for a continuous KW of energy production capacity. So rooftop solar is 36 times more expensive than nuclear per watt installed (assuming nuclear at $1,500 per kW which is the GE IFR estimate which is below the $2,000 actual cost for the first two ABWRs in japan). If the solar system works the same for 25 years, the cost per kwh of the power is $50,000/200,000= .25 per kwh. That's assuming no cost of capital for the $50K investment! So if you are an energy hog and you are getting hit paying 44 cents for a lot of your power, then solar panels actually can make sense. But in general, there are much more efficient ways to get the power than rooftop solar (see http://shearerinsanity.blogspot.com/2009/03/rooftop-solar.html). There was a study of the real costs PV systems done in the UK that found results very similar to my calculation. They looked at a number of systems and the cheapest was slightly more than 20 pence per kWh assuming a 25 lifetime. That's 33 cents/kWh which is not far from my number. They also looked at the payback time compared to grid power and found that the most efficient installation would have to run for at least 45 years to make it a better deal than grid power. And the worst installation would have to run for 296 years before it would be a better deal than grid power. It short, all of the systems are a dumb investment; you never get your money back. I see many others discovered the same thing. For example, see The economics and usefulness of domestic rooftop solar PV installations. Nuclear lasts about 60 years compared to PV solar that lasts 25 years. So it's actually 86 times cheaper to install nuclear capacity (not quite as much since you have to pay people to run your nuclear plant). Also, the nuclear capacity works 24x7. To utilize that 913W you would have to have a large, expensive and relatively short-lived (perhaps 10 years) battery to store energy when produced in excess, and to deliver power on demand when the sun isn't shining. So the system cost will be substantially higher than the figure I calculated. Or, you can use the grid for that storage/backup purpose -- but if everyone did that, well, it just wouldn't work, for obvious reasons, so grid backup cannot be part of a large-scale PV energy solution. Lang's Solar Realities paper (see Solar power realities � supply-demand, storage and costs) came to a similar conclusion about PV solar: By looking at the limit position, the paper highlights the very high costs imposed by mandating and subsidising solar power. The minimum power output, not the peak or average, is the main factor governing solar power�s economic viability. The capital cost would be 25 times more than nuclear power. The least-cost solar option would require 400 times more land area and emit 20 times more CO2 than nuclear power. Conclusions: PV solar power is uneconomic. Government mandates and subsidies hide the true cost of renewable energy but these additional costs must be carried by others If you live next door to a nuclear reactor, there are a number of radiological studies done on a hypothetical person called Fencepost Man who's supposed to have his house on the fencepost on the boundary of a nuclear power site. He would get approximately one millirem of radiation more than the general public, and that might sound like a lot but in fact the general public gets over 300 millirems of radiation each year just from natural sources. So essentially there's no difference between living next door to a nuclear power plant and living in most other places in the world. And indeed, if you live on top of a granite intrusion you'd get about twice that. So people tend to be a bit irrational about radiation and we need to have a bit of an education campaign about that too. Nuclear is one of the lowest risk forms of energy on a kWh basis In the entire 50 year history of commercial nuclear in the United States, it is estimated that one person might have died. That was due to radiation release in the Three Mile Island accident (more below). Modern reactors are designed on the principle of being inherently safe, and what that means is they have a number of design principles that are based on the laws of physics. So in order for them to melt down or explode there would have to be an extraordinary set of circumstances where you would have multiple systems failing, and in the new reactors that are being proposed, even more than that, you would have to have the laws of physics being violated, which of course is not particularly likely. Design safety of modern day reactors are orders of magnitude better than original nuclear plants. A Reactor Safety Study (RSS) was conducted in 1975 by Norman Rasmussen of MIT under NRC sponsorship. This probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) study was also known as the Rasmussen report and WASH-1400. The RSS estimated that at the time (mid 70s) a reactor meltdown may be expected about once every 20,000 years of reactor operation; that is, if there were 100 reactors, there would be a meltdown once in 200 years. Three Mile Island (TMI) was NOT a full meltdown -- only partial, and it was still a watershed regarding changing safety systems and training (and the fateful regulatory ratcheting, but that's another story). There have been 400 water-moderated commercial reactors running for 30 years. That's 12,000 reactor years, with one partial meltdown (so far) -- entirely consistent with the prediction of an average of one meltdown every 20,000 years. And nobody was hurt. (Chernobyl doesn't count -- not water-moderated & not analyzed.) http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter6.html notes the following: The authors of the two principal reports on the Three Mile Island accident1, 2 agree that even if there had been a complete meltdown in that reactor, there very probably would have been essentially no harm to human health and no environmental damage. I know of no technical reports that have claimed otherwise. Moreover, all scientific studies agree that in the great majority of meltdown accidents there would be no detectable effects on human health, immediately or in later years. According to the government estimate, a meltdown would have to occur every week or so somewhere in the United States before nuclear power would be as dangerous as coal burning. A thorough risk assessment was done on the GE-Hitachi ESBWR and found that a Three Mile Island style meltdown accident could occur once every 29 million reactor years. As you can see, a PRA puts the ESBWR about 3 orders of magnitude safer than the Gen II designs of the 1960s (and these have all been improved with later modifications). Today's LWRs (i.e., those currently being built) incorporate safety features that are far beyond our current reactors (most of which were built 30 years ago) by orders of magnitude. Newer fourth generation reactors are even better since they rely on passive safety guaranteed by the laws of physics. They tested this to prove it would work: they disabled all the safety systems on the EBR-II reactor and all the alarms went off, but the reactor just shut down on its own with no release of radiation. Chernobyl was a special type of reactor built by the Russians to breed plutonium for bombs, so it had a graphite core and it meant that if you had problems in the reactor where the water flow would stop, it would actually run out of control. No American reactor can actually do that. And Chernobyl also lacked a containment building, which was another problem because when it started a graphite fire all of the radioactive material was dispersed into the air, another disaster. That also can't happen in an American reactor. The Chernobyl nuclear reactor design would never have been approved in the US for a civilian power plant. Chernobyl was a RBMK type power plant. There are only a handful of these in the US and all of them are used for military purposes. There are no civilian RBMK power plants in the US generating commercial electricity. RBMK are considered unsafe for civilian use by the US Government. Only socialists use technology like that in populated areas. Current [obsolete] technology US Commercial Nuclear Power Plants are mostly Pressurized Water Reactors. TMI was one of these. Boiling Water Reactors comprise the rest. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/dresden.html These water reactors cannot have the kind of accident Chernobyl had. It is not physically possible. Secondly, the operators allowed the scientists to experiment on the reactor and disable many of the safety systems. That's why it's important for the US to take a lead in having other countries adopt our designs rather than build their own. If we bury our head in the sand and pretend nuclear will go away, we are making a huge mistake. We should be taking a leadership role in reactor design and operator training, worldwide. As far as Three Mile Island, the reactor was damaged but nobody was killed or injured from the radiation. Three Mile Island was a lesson where there was poor training of staff and a failed system for notifying the staff of actually what was happening. And so they made mistakes such as opening valves when they should have been shutting them and letting water in when they shouldn't have. But Three Mile Island didn't hurt anyone. There were no fatalities, there was no radioactivity of any note released into the environment. So even in that worst-case scenario for an American reactor there were essentially no problems. But of course the reactor was destroyed, it cost millions of dollars, and it set back the American nuclear program by decades really because of the effect on public opinion. That's gradually changed. The accident resulted in improved operator training and the creation of more safety systems. According to the Report of the President's Commission on The Accident At Three Mile Island (the Kemeny Commission Report): "Just how serious was the accident? Based on our investigation of the health effects of the accident, we conclude that in spite of serious damage to the plant, most of the radiation was contained and the actual release will have a negligible effect on the physical health of individuals. The major health effect of the accident was found to be mental stress.... It is entirely possible that not a single extra cancer death will result. And for all our estimates, it is practically certain that the additional number of cancer deaths will be less than 10." A study done 20 years after the Three Mile Island accident confirmed that the impacts were not significant: Based on residential proximity and travel into and out of a 5-mile area during the 10 days after the accident, scientists estimated maximum and likely whole-body gamma exposures for each individual. The estimated average likely and maximum gamma doses were 0.09 mSv or 9 mrem and 0.25 mSv or 25 mrem, respectively. The range of likely gamma exposure was estimated to be 1-170 mrem. The average annual effective dose from natural background radiation in the United States United States is estimated to be approximately 3 mSv (300 mrem) [Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR BEIR Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiations V) 1990]. These exposures were therefore considered minimal. In conclusion, the mortality surveillance of this cohort, with a total of almost 20 years of follow-up, provides no consistent evidence that radioactivity released during the TMI accident (estimated maximum and likely gamma exposure) has had a significant impact on the mortality experience of this cohort through 1998. Three Mile Island: cancer risk ambiguous said: A court-ordered study finds no "convincing evidence" of inceased cancer risk among people exposed to radiation from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. The findings are "consistent with all the medical and scientific evidence we have so far," says physicist Jacob I. Fabrikant of the University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States. Commonly referred to as UC Berkeley, Berkeley and Cal , who served on the staff of the 1979 presidential commission that investigated the accident. That panel concluded that the amount of radiation released during the mishap was a fraction of the region's normal annual background radiation from cosmic and geologic sources, and it predicted a maximum of one excess cancer death from the accident. Also, nuclear is one of the safest forms of power generation and much much safer than coal that it would replace. Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States: To compare the historical safety record of civilian nuclear energy with the historical record of other forms of electrical generation, Ball, Roberts, and Simpson, the IAEA, and the Paul Scherrer Institut found in separate studies that during the period from 1970 - 1992, there were just 39 on-the-job deaths of nuclear power plant workers, while during the same time period, there were 6,400 on-the-job deaths of coal power plant workers, 1,200 on-the-job deaths of natural gas power plant workers and members of the general public caused by natural gas power plants, and 4,000 deaths of members of the general public caused by hydroelectric power plants.[3][4][5] In particular, coal power plants are estimated to kill 24,000 Americans per year, due to lung disease[6] as well as causing 40,000 heart attacks per year[7] in the United States. According to esteemed journal Scientific American, the average coal power plant emits more than 100 times as much radiation per year than a comparatively sized nuclear power plant does, in the form of toxic coal waste known as fly ash.[8] Current Gen III LWRs ARE inherently safe � the AP1000, for instance, uses a range of systems based on the laws of physics (in addition to engineered interventions), such as gravity-induced convention in the containment dome and emergency cooling takes that are forced by pressurised nitrogen and reliant on heat-based recirculation � that�s why it�s called the �Advanced Passive 1000�. It�s just the IFR does it more efficiently thanks to the properties of liquid metal coolants and metal fuels. here's a reference from wikipedia page on nuclear_power: Overall, nuclear power produces far less waste material than fossil-fuel based power plants. Coal-burning plants are particularly noted for producing large amounts of toxic and mildly radioactive ash due to concentrating naturally occurring metals and radioactive material from the coal. Contrary to popular belief, coal power actually results in more radioactive waste being released into the environment than nuclear power. The population effective dose equivalent from radiation from coal plants is 100 times as much as nuclear plants.[74] The waste of LWR is actually incredibly safe compared to other energy technologies � about 5000 times safer than coal, for instance, based on a standard Loss of Life Expectancy (LLE) risk assessment (NOT counting climate-related damage). This is a great read: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter11.html But of course if you only have to deal with fission products and can recycle and use all the TRUs (which is true when using an IFR), the story is even better! Remarkably, it is safer to work at a nuclear power plant than in the manufacturing sector and even the real estate and financial sectors. The nuclear industry in the United States has maintained one of the best industrial safety records in the world with respect to all kinds of accidents. For 2008, the industry hit a new low of 0.13 industrial accidents per 200,000 worker-hours.[28] This is improved over 0.24 in 2005, which was still a factor of 14.6 less than the 3.5 number for all manufacturing industries.[29] Private industry has an accident rate of 1.3 per 200,000 worker hours.[30] Uranium supply See Once-through, using uranium from the oceans http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c24/page_163.shtml Some anti-nuke people say nobody will insure nuclear plants. Here's the response from Rod Adams: All nuclear plants in the US carry a required $300 million in private insurance and sign up to be part of a group insurance policy where all of the members are the owners of all of the other reactors in the country. If there is a claim against a nuclear facility that exceeds their private insurance, the members of the group kick in as much as $98 million each for a total pool of $10 Billion. The only claims ever paid out in relationship to this system have been well below the private insurance limit. The pool has never kicked in and no taxpayer funds have ever been expended. Compare that to the airline industry and the payouts that the government had to make back in 2001. Life cycle CO2 emissions for nuclear power are lower than wind or solar (from http://www.japannuclear.com/ ) On the carbon front, there is some CO2 emissions during the construction and as a result of fuel enrichment. The CO2 outputs of a nuclear plant are very, VERY low on a per kWh basis compared with other sources. It actually beats out wind and solar! - it is a little worse than hydro, since hydro has no fuel CO2 emissions over its lifecyle. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf100.html The "it produces plutonium argument" See http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/07/is-our-future-nuclear/ where the anti nuclear guy says fourth generation breeder reactors produce plutonium. Heck, every nuclear reactor produces plutonium. But the IFRs consume the plutonium and the IFR's don't require enrichment. Those are 2 key points. I particular enjoyed this comment: It is like saying car engine factories produce engine blocks and this maximizes the risk of guns. To work in that context, there would have to be a single word for any round channel in which expanding combustion gases propel a slider. He�s counting on the single word �plutonium� to mean two different things, without his audience knowing that it means two different things (a fallacy of equivocation). I doubt Noonan expects any country or group to get nuclear weapons because it has power reactors. None ever has. Power reactors, if fed 238-U, make power reactor plutonium. Much cooler, smaller, simpler, cheaper reactors make weapon-grade plutonium, as different from the other kind as is a gun barrel from an Ecotec engine block. The theoretical usability of the engine block as a multibarrel cannon represents a very long way around to a very inferior result, weapon-wise. Using power reactor plutonium for weapons is similarly believed to be a long way around to an inferior result, and so has apparently never been tried. (When the American gas industry�s Hazel O�Leary was in public office, her government published a claim to this effect, but acknowledged that the yield of the bomb that was produced may have been zero, and did not acknowledge that the supposedly power-reactor-derived plutonium was quite unlike any being made today. More at Jeremy Whitlock�s �Canadian Nuclear FAQ�.) The terrorist attack scenario argument The WWF position paper on nuclear energy which is included in Climate Solutions - WWF's Vision for 2050 references a UCS study Impacts of a Terrorist Attack at Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant which says a properly done terrorist attack could result in 44,000 short term deaths and eventually kill 518,000 people from cancer. The economic damages within 100 miles would exceed $1.1 trillion for the 95th percentile case, and could be as great as $2.1 trillion for the worst case evaluated, based on Environmental Protection Agency guidance for population relocation and cleanup. Millions of people would require permanent relocation. To put that in perspective, 9/11 is estimated to have cause nearly $2 trillion in damage. So WWF could have written a paper saying we shouldn't have buildings and airplanes because under a worst case scenario, they can combine to cause $2 trillion in damage and thousands of deaths. And Greenpeace would argue that we shouldn't have any chemical plants at all since 15,000 are a ripe target for sabatoge. They argue that a study by the Army surgeon general, conducted soon after 9/11, found that up to 2.4 million people could be killed or wounded by a terrorist attack on a single chemical plant. So chemical plants are far more dangerous than our worse case nuclear attack. Should we now shut down all chemical plants? The problem with the WWF scenario is that they never tell you what the likelihood of such an event happening really is. Studies have been done to show that containment buildings would withstand the impact of a fully fueled jet aircraft. This scenario involves essentially a hollow tube of aluminium and steel, holding a few hundred thousand litres of gasoline, colliding with a heavily reinformed concrete dome designed to contain extreme internal steam pressure. Some relevant comments re: that particular Indian Point scenario are here: http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/08/indian-point-worst-case-nuclear.html The $2 trillion figure, even if you accept their assumptions (which are highly disputable), is the 99.9th percentile. That is, this cost would be incurred once in every 1,000 plane hits to a reactor like nuclear point. Of course if you bury an IFR, the risk is virtually zero. This is an example of disingenous people taking advantage of the general populace's gross ignorance on the matter of risk and probability. There is a good discussion of this general by Bernard Cohen: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html I like this quote: "It is very difficult to predict the future of scientific developments, and few would even dare to make predictions extending beyond the next 50 years. However, based on everything we know now, one can make a strong case for the thesis that nuclear fission reactors will be providing a large fraction of our energy needs for the next million years. If that should come to pass, a history of energy production written at that remote date may well record that the worst reactor accident of all time occurred at Chernobyl, USSR, in April of 1986." ...and think this section is useful: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter6.html Truly, the possibilities are limited only by ones imagination, and as the previous WWF treatment of nuclear emissions showed, the imaginations of those folks runs way, way into fantasy land. The Worst Possible Accident One subject we have not discussed here is the "worst possible nuclear accident," because there is no such thing. In any field of endeavor, it is easy to concoct a possible accident scenario that is worse than anything that has been previously proposed, although it will be of lower probability. One can imagine a gasoline spill causing a fire that would wipe out a whole city, killing most of its inhabitants. It might require a lot of improbable circumstances combining together, like water lines being frozen to prevent effective fire fighting, a traffic jam aggravated by street construction or traffic accidents limiting access to fire fighters, some substandard gas lines which the heat from the fire caused to leak, a high wind frequently shifting to spread the fire in all directions, a strong atmospheric temperature inversion after the whole city has become engulfed in flame to keep the smoke close to the ground, a lot of bridges and tunnels closed for various reasons, eliminating escape routes, some errors in advising the public, and so forth. Each of these situations is improbable, so a combination of many of them occurring in sequence is highly improbable, but it is certainly not impossible. If anyone thinks that is the worst possible consequence of a gasoline spill, consider the possibility of the fire being spread by glowing embers to other cities which were left without protection because their firefighters were off assisting the first city; or of a disease epidemic spawned by unsanitary conditions left by the conflagration spreading over the country; or of communications foul-ups and misunderstandings caused by the fire leading to an exchange of nuclear weapon strikes. There is virtually no limit to the damage that is possible from a gasoline spill. But as the damage envisioned increases, the number of improbable circumstances required increases, so the probability for the eventuality becomes smaller and smaller. There is no such thing as the "worst possible accident," and any consideration of what terrible accidents are possible without simultaneously considering their low probability is a ridiculous exercise that can lead to completely deceptive conclusions. The same reasoning applies to nuclear reactor accidents. Situations causing any number of deaths are possible, but the greater the consequences, the lower is the probability. The worst accident the RSS considered would cause about 50,000 deaths, with a probability of one occurrence in a billion years of reactor operation. A person's risk of being a victim of such an accident is 20,000 times less than the risk of being killed by lightning, and 1,000 times less than the risk of death from an airplane crashing into his or her house.7 But this once-in-a-billion-year accident is practically the only nuclear reactor accident ever discussed in the media. When it is discussed, its probability is hardly ever mentioned, and many people, including Helen Caldicott, who wrote a book on the subject, imply that it's the consequence of an average meltdown rather than of 1 out of 100,000 meltdowns. I have frequently been told that the probability doesn't matter � the very fact that such an accident is possible makes nuclear power unacceptable. According to that way of thinking, we have shown that the use of gasoline is not acceptable, and almost any human activity can similarly be shown to be unacceptable. If probability didn't matter, we would all die tomorrow from any one of thousands of dangers we live with constantly. The "nuclear reprocessing is dangerous even if you use pyroprocessing" argument UCS in their paper "Nuclear Power in a Warming World" claims pyroprocessing is just as dangerous as PUREX. They wrote: According to a report from a 1999 workshop at the DOE�s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the transuranic elements or other actinides in spent fuel could be used to build nuclear weapons: Examination of various cycles and the opinions of weapons-design experts lead to the conclusion that there is no �proliferation-proof� nuclear power cycle. Explosive Fissionable Material (EFM) includes most of the actinides and their oxides.168 Dr. Bruce Goodwin of LLNL also maintained at the workshop that �as nuclear weapons design and engineering expertise combined with sufficient technical capability become more common in the world, it becomes possible to make nuclear weapons out of an increasing number of technically challenging explosive fissionable materials.�169 In other words, it is unwarranted to assume that terrorists could not acquire the ability to build nuclear weapons with the mixture of plutonium and other actinides produced by UREX+. A number of articles about making bombs from reprocessed material are available at http://www.gemarsh.com/archives/category/nuclear-policy/ scroll down to articles published in Physics & Society. The one titled Purex and Pyro refers to a LLL briefing that makes it clear that pyroprocessed fuel (Note that UCS concentrates on UREX+) is essentially useless for bombs. Here are a few excerpts: In his 1993 paper, J. Carson Mark wrote: �The difficulties of developing an effective design of the most straightforward type are not appreciably greater with reactor-grade plutonium than those that have to be met for the use of weapons-grade plutonium.�[4] That was based on his calculations, and on his apparent opinion that the heat problem is trivial. However, to our knowledge no weapons program, anywhere, ever, has made another attempt to produce an explosion with reactor-grade plutonium. It is extremely likely that the 1962 test demonstrated that reactor grade plutonium is lousy material for making bombs, and that no nation, given the data from that test, would want to use the stuff. While the difference in weapons potential is one of degree rather than principle, that difference is huge. The point is not that it can�t be done, but rather that a would-be proliferator has far easier routes to nuclear weapons. By the way, it has sometimes been asserted that the chemically impure plutonium produced by the pyrometallurgical process could be used to make a bomb without further separation. This has been convincingly refuted in an unpublished investigation by Livermore National Laboratory (1994),which concluded that the transuranic impurities render the material far too hot (thermally and radioactively), and with far too many spontaneous neutrons, to make it at all feasible. Anyway, it is very much easier to make a bomb with highly enriched uranium than with reactor grade plutonium. That route would surely be taken by any organization that did not have access to weapons-grade plutonium. But making a bomb from highly enriched uranium is very very hard. And you'd still have to purify it to have any chance of success, and then make a reliable weapon out of it. And if you know how to do all that, then getting the material is going to be the least of your problems. There are two scenarios here: either you think the terrorists are dumb or they are really smart. If they are dumb, they'll fail. If they are really smart, they'll know that the only way to realistically have any chance of making a bomb is to partner with a country like North Korea which already has the bombs. The scenario where they steal material, purify it, and build a bomb from scratch is unrealistic. Even highly organized countries with huge financial and scientific resources have a tough time making nuclear weapons. The easiest route for any terrorist is to partner with a rogue state who hates the United States and has nuclear weapons. The hardest route is to use the reactor waste product or pyroprocessed output. If you can do it with that, then eliminating pyroprocessing really isn't going to be much of a hurdle. In any case, the IFR certainly isn't going to make a terrorist's task any easier than it is now. The "nuclear gets huge subsidies" argument I�d done a similar number crunch in response to an argument by a commenter on my website about nuclear power being heavily subsidised. Here is my reply, and a good follow-on comment by another guy who works for a CA Many people are concerned that nuclear has received the lion�s share of government funds. In the US (for which I have figures), Federal DOE energy subsidies for solar+wind amounted to $0.026/kWh of electricity generated. Nuclear power received $0.00038/kWh of electricity generated. That is, �technosolar� got 68 times more funds per unit generation than nuclear. Of course this is only direct subsidy � it does not include tax credits, subsidies by power companies that must maintain spinning reserve for times when wind is weak, or subsidies by customers who regularly pay a few cents per kWh for Green Power. Wind in the US has also received a production credit (subtracted from taxes, not income) of 1.8 c/kWh. In the UK, between 1990-2005, total government allocations to renewables R&D (including research council projects but leaving out fuel cells & embedded generation) was about �180m while nuclear fission & fusion got about �370m- more than double. My numbers quoted for the US were subsidies for different generation sources per kWh. Using the 2004 UK electricity figures, non-hydro renewables produced 13.6 TWh of electricity and nuclear produced 73.7 TWh. Taking these as average figures over the 1990-2005 period of 16 years, that amounts to �0.00083/kWh for renewables and �0.000314/kWh for nuclear � so on that basis, renewables gets 2.6 times more funds than nuclear. This is actually a little unfair on nuclear, as over the period it has produced a lot more energy, on average, than non-hydro renewables, which were close to nothing in 1990 (whereas nuclear was 58 TWh). Further, the <http://aua.org.au/Content/Lenzenreport.aspx> new ISA analysis by Manfred Lenzen backs up the above � it puts subsidies for nuclear power as lower than any other energy technology, based on the 2007-2009 Critique�s reply: I guess that would be true if you only counted direct subsidies however you must acknowledge the indirect subsidies over the 60 or so years that nuclear power has been around as well as the technology transfer from military It would be very difficult to exactly pin down the total amount of money spent on nuclear however if you prefer the direct DOE figure then go ahead and quote this one. David Walter�s response: Setting aside for a second the �indirect subsidies� nuclear has received, the main point is that wind and solar really wouldn�t even run, at all, without these huge subsidies per kWhr they get. Period. They wouldn�t pay for the maintenance and staffing on existing plant and material. This isn�t true due to the massive revenue flow nuclear gets. Nuclear would keep on going, everywhere, basically. Now�the indirect subsidies. Yes, these are �historical� subsidies, 94% (approx) received prior* to 1974. In fact, it�s very hard to parse out. Some were in fact direct and not �indirect�. But most it was as a result of the Navy and Army nuclear program which the civilian side was a spin off. The first civilian plant at Shippingport was a former Navy nuclear reactor where they ran a variety fuels � including thorium � for R&D (all the while pumping out MWs). But how long does one �hold this �against� nuclear? Really. The subsidy was paid. Now, ever KW of power produced slowly reduces the % of that subsidy to the overall �cost� of a nuclear KW, doesn�t it? Should we NOT use nuclear because it had massive subsidies, most of which was for military nuclear propulsion programs? Today, nuclear in my opinion is important enough TO subsidize. I�m all for it. It�s a proven carbon mitigator. The subsidies have been more than worth it. The US gov�t should set aside about 10 billion USD specifically to deploy a variety of Generation IV reactors and get it over with. From George Stanford: Our gov't is subsidizing "renewables" to the tune of $30 Billion (thanks to Jan van Erp for flagging the story). See < http://snipurl.com/osy18>. Now let's do a little figgerin'. "This administration has set a goal of doubling renewable electricity generation over the next three years," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement." That can't include hydro, so the "renewable" fraction would go up to 4.8% (see figure below), adding to the grid 2.4% of its present capacity of 1,000,000 MWe, or 24,000 MWe. But that's nameplate capacity, and actual capacity is perhaps 30% of that, so the additional real capacity is more like 7,200 MWe. Thus the subsidy per kWe of real added capacity would be $30B / (7,200,000 kWe) = $4k / kWe, or $4B / GWe. That, dear friends, is roughly the total cost of building a new nuclear plant, according to some estimates (not the lowest). It would be legitimate to observe that the $30B includes something for transmission lines. It also would be legitimate to point out that most of that new transmission capacity would not be needed if the same new power came from nuclear plants near regions of high population density, instead of from the remote areas where the wind blows and the sun shines. Important: This subsidy is not seed money to bring a new technology up to economic competitiveness, which would be a proper use of public funds. It's largely for construction, with known technology -- and it will only partially cover the construction costs, at that. Let's not hear any more comments about excessive subsidies for nuclear power. The Von Hippel arguments From Robert Hargraves (posted to LA Times site): Von Hippel's article is partly right but incomplete. Yes, spent fuel can be safely stored in dry casks for decades; there is no reason to panic. Yes, France's pioneering reprocessing is not good enough. It separates the uranium and plutonium, leaving low volume radioactive waste to store, but leaves France with excess uranium and plutonium. He is wrong about the US "we don't reprocess, you don't need to either" success. Banning US reprocessing didn't stop India, China, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa, and North Korea from making nuclear weapons, and it has not impeded Iran. France, UK, India, Japan, and Russia reprocess spent fuel. Spent nuclear fuel still contains 97% of its original potential energy. Technologies such as the integral fast reactor allow spent fuel to be "deep burned" to generate electric power. The integral fast reactor can also consume the much greater, fallow stocks of depleted uranium created by uranium enrichment plants that manufacture today's US nuclear reactor fuel. Even more energy can be harvested from more plentiful thorium using the liquid fluoride thorium reactor. There is enough carbon-free nuclear power for millennia. CANDU reactor Built for under $2000 per kw in china. Can run on broad range of fuel, but doesn't fully transmute all actinides. CANDU has a good neutron economy because heavy water has lower parasitic neutron capture than light water. That's why they can operate with natural uranium. Which also means CANDU can be fueled with a lot of alternate fuels -- reconstituted LWR spent fuel (so-called DUPIC cycle), reprocessed uranium from LWR spent fuel (U-235 content is still higher than natural uranium), and even plutonium or TRU containing fuel. However, CANDU as well as any other thermal spectrum reactors cannot transmute minor actinides effectively. They convert actinides to even higher actinides than consuming them. Some are consumed but the net effect in long term radiological toxicity is insignificant. Actinides can be consumed effectively only in fast reactors. A request by GE for a 810 determination that the IFR is not sensitive nuclear technology seems to me to be the next step so discussions can be held with Russia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea. What are the easy steps that Dr. Chu can authorize? 1) Start the NRC licensing process of PRISM (using the Fuel Cycle R&D funds). This make progress transparent to all stakeholders. 2) Start the DOE Project Management requirements to get Congressional funding. (DOE Order 413.3) 3) With 1 started.... confidence come back to the system. With 2 done you use the 1992 Energy Policy Act to start PRISM. This puts the government action into doing appropriations, which seems to be a bit easier than authorization language. Miscellaneous factoids about the IFR 1. Even with LWR, the EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) is so high that you could profitably �mine� seawater for U at a decent energy return. So with conventional (~10 MtU) + phosphates (~30 MtU) we have at least 40 MtU of mineable U [probably substantially more] and another 4600 MtU in seawater. Let�s imagine we ran 10,000 GWe of LWR to supply all worldwide energy needs (including liquid fuel replacement). That�s a 27 fold increase compared to the output of LWR today. Current 370 GWe needs 65,000 tU/yr (if we weren�t using weapons Pu also). So 10,000 GWe of LWR would need 1.75 MtU. We have over 2,500 years of fuel � before we go to Th. Sea water extraction has been estimated at <$1,000/kg, which is expensive, but still about 100 times cheaper than coal, per joule. Of course it would be ludicrous to continue to use LWR beyond the next 50 years or so, but the point is that U is not going to run out even with a major expansion of LWR over the next few decades, as IFRs ramp up. Bottom line: IFRs win hands down in the sustainability, safety and waste management stakes, and pyroprocessing trounces PUREX in regards to proliferation resistance. But LWRs are still a superb clean energy generation technology and a massive rollout of these, side by side with fast reactors, is (now, after understanding the issues) fine by me. We need all the extra Pu for initial IFR loadings that we can get. There is no need to dismiss LWR to win the IFR argument, in my humble opinion. Before Al Gore became VP, he wrote a book Earth in the balance: "Ecology and the Human Spirit." On page 328, he wrote: �The research and development of alternative approaches should focus on discovering, first, how to build a passively safe design (whose safety does not depend upon the constant attention of bleary-eyed technicians) that eliminates many risks of current reactors, and second, whether there is a scientifically and politically acceptable means of disposing of � in fact, isolating, nuclear waste.� So that's exactly what the IFR provides. So it meets his criteria, but he won't endorse it and will not explain why he won't. IFRs can be used to replace the burners in a coal plant. You cannot do that with a normal LWR reactor. Even if you don't believe in global warming, you should definitely believe in the Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC). It's coming our way. Nuclear and the IFR is the best way to stop it. A kilogram of uranium contains about as much energy as two million kilograms of coal, and coal is already a concentrated form of energy. So it's an incredibly concentrated form of energy if you can harness it to its full advantage. A short IFR pitch IFR story is a story of how the US government paid billions to our National Laboratories to engineer a solution to the energy and climate crisis (before it became a crisis), the solution worked, then President Clinton cancelled the project telling the world in his State of the Union speech that this power was "unnecessary." Nuclear provides 70% of our clean energy in the US, even though we haven't built a new reactor in 30 years! Despite nuclear being the elephant in the room, the world "nuclear" appears only TWICE in Waxman-Markey. That is absurd since we have 10 times as much energy just in the Depleted Uranium waste (which is just sitting there) than we have coal in the ground. We are currently not doing anything to exploit our largest energy resource (which is also one of our cleanest). This reactor is ready to be built, GE has a design ready to built, and we are doing NOTHING. More information on the IFR 1. Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now. Opinion piece on my blog 2. Meet the Man Who Could End Global Warming Esquire Magazine named the IFR expert at GE as the Best and Brightest of 2009 3. Plentiful Energy and the IFR Story: Article by Charles Till explaining the IFR (a must read) 4. Operating and test experience with EBR-II, the IFR prototype. An excellent paper discussing the IFR. 5. DOE study: 242 experts from all over the world compared 19 different nuclear reactor designs on 27 criteria: The IFR was rated #1. The obvious conclusion is that if you are going to build new nuclear plants, this is the design to pursue. 6. "Nuclear power plants - now safer and cheaper (15 minute audio) I highly recommend this. Barry Brook traces the history of nuclear power. Today, about 440 nuclear power reactors are in use, known as Generation 2 reactors. These were designed between 1960 and 1980. Recently, Generation 3 reactors have adopted a standard design, allowing for faster approval. 45 are being built. 350 are planned. Chernobyl was a cheap design. There was no containment building. Barry Brook describes Chernobyl as an accident waiting to happen. Newer reactors are orders of magnitude safer than the older models. Generation 4 is the new excitement. Efficiency is much higher meaning uranium supplies will last so much longer. They can burn a range of isotopes of uranium and other elements producing short-lived waste." The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project: Q&A: this page compiles answers the disadvantages brought up on the wikipedia page and other issues that people bring up Tell Barack Obama the Truth -- The Whole Truth November 21, 2008 article by James Hansen on why restarting the IFR should be a priority Mark Lynas: the green heretic persecuted for his nuclear conversion article by Mark Lynas describing how Lynas was surprised to find the "Green case against nuclear power is based largely on myth and dogma" Jim Hansen's August 4, 2008 trip report: Hansen describes, for the first time, how he first heard of the IFR IFR Q&A with Congress (Stanford answers) IFR Q&A with Congress (Kirsch answers) IFR Q&A with Congress (Blees answers) Comments on the Misguided Termination of the IFR Project: a must read! The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) information page at UC Berkeley: An excellent summary of the technology and benefits PBS Frontline interview with Argonne Lab Director Charles Till Argonne Q&A: If the IFR is as good as it sounds, how come nobody is using it? Speech by Charles Till to Canadian Scientists about the IFR project Argonne Q&A about the IFR project Integral Fast Reactors: Source of Safe, Abundant, Non-Polluting Power: Article explaining the IFR by George S. Stanford, Ph.D., a scientist who worked on it. Wikipedia page on the Integral Fast Reactor Hannum, W. H., G. E. Marsh and G. S. Stanford, "Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste." Scientific American, December 2005, pp 84-91 Opinion: How a 24-year-old technology can save the planet (Dec 7, 2008): an op-ed on how the IFR could save the planet Friends of the Earth Australia critique of the IFR where Blees responds with his comments Integral Fast Reactors for the masses. Barry Brook is currently drafting a direct response. Note that 68% of India's CO2 emissions are from coal! 20% of worldwide GHG emissions are from coal. See Coal and Climate Change Facts: The Pew Center on Global Climate Change Nuking green myths, an excellent op-ed written by Barry Brook and published in The Australian How Does Obama Expect to Solve the Climate Crisis Without a Plan? Huffington Post opinion on why nuclear is the best solution to the climate crisis Climate Bill Ignores Our Biggest Clean Energy Source: Huffington Post opinion on nuclear and the IFR. Nukes: a necessary part of our future? A balanced look at the problem and the first comment sums up the situation quite nicely Kirsch Family Movie on How to Solve the Climate Crisis: This is a more entertaining version of what you've just read (3 minutes) The Truth About Energy: More generic site about nuclear power. Retirement of Dr. Charles Till: this says it all in one page. "Unfortunately, this program was canceled just 2 short years before the proof of concept. I assure my colleagues someday our Nation will regret and reverse this shortsighted decision." Knowledgeable people on IFR technology Tom Blees: Author of Prescription for the Planet. He is a writer with absolutely no ties to the nuclear industry or any other interest, financial or otherwise, in the technologies presented in his plan for a global energy revolution. He simply wants to solve the world's most intractable problems Jasmina Vujic: She's the chairperson of the Dept. of Nuclear Engineering at U.C. Berkeley, well-versed in the state of reactor design and current areas of research into commercial nuclear power. Yoon Chang: Yoon is considered to be the world's leading expert on IFR technology. He worked with Charles Till for years on the project at Argonne Labs, and took over as director when Charles retired. Eric Loewen: Eric is the lead nuclear engineer for General Electric's Generation IV reactor project. GE has already proposed to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) that they be chosen to build the prototype plant, and they've developed the design (based largely on the IFR research at Argonne) to take nuclear power to this new level. George Stanford: One of the IFR project nuclear physicists. George has not only a deep understanding of the technology but a knack for communicating that knowledge. Steve Kirsch Home Page (short version) SATANISM, RITUAL SEX AND HUMAN SACRIFICE, BLOODLINES, SATANIC PROPAGANDA DARWINISM EUGENICS AND THE REMOVAL OF IMPLANT ADDICTION SEX AND DRUG BLOCKAGES THE TEN THOUSAND YEARS OLD, "PRINCIPLE OF POVERTY", THE TEN WAYS OF CREATING POVERTY AND THE HUMAN RIGHT TO WEALTH How Satanic Lord Bertrand Russell Became an Evil Man Old Rothschild- and Rockefeller hands created Austrian Economics and the Libertarian-Communist dialectic The Nuclear Integral Fast Reactor IFR and S-PRISM EFFICIENT FOURTH GENERATION NUCLEAR DESIGN IN THIS MOVIE - SPIDERMAN THREE, SPIDERMAN GETS COATED IN A SUIT OF BLACK VENOM - TRAUMA-FORMED NEGATIVE KARMIC MASS - BLACK VENOM!! THIS CAUSES HIM TO BECOME EGOTISTICAL AND ACT IN A BAD WAY... JUST AS ALL ENERGY BLOCKAGES AFFECT YOUR LIVES SPIDERMAN GETS COATED IN A SUIT OF BLACK VENOM - NEGATIVE KARMIC MASS - VENOM!! BUT THE VENOM COMES INTO ITS OWN WHEN IT COATS A PSYCHOPATH. THE THEME OF SPIDERMAN THREE IS THAT THROUGH THE REMOVAL OF VENOM FORMED NEGATIVE KARMIC MASS WE CAN COME TO A STATE OF FORGIVENESS - A TRUE OPENING OF THE HEART... THE THEME OF THIS MOVIE IS FORGIVENESS.. SEE THE MOVIE!! THE GROUNDING OF NEGATIVE ENERGIES REMOVES ALL NEGATIVE KARMIC MASS "I have experience of many forms of meditation and practices for self improvement including: Transcendental meditation (TM) 12 years, Kriya Yoga 9 years, Sushila Buddhi Dharma (SUBUD) 7 years, and more recently the Sedona Method and the Course in Miracles. The Energy Enhancement programme encapsulates and expands all of these systems, it is complete and no questions are left unanswered." Jean, NUCLEAR ENGINEER, FROM THE SEPTEMBER 2005 GOLDEN LIGHT SURGES INTO MY BRAIN... Energy Enhancement easily transmutes all negative energy without going anywhere near the emotions and memory, FAST!! The techniques of Energy Enhancement show you how to QUICKLY AND EASILY TRANSMUTE YOUR STRESS because it works at the level of Energy which underlies AND IS THE BASIS of all problems. THE START OF THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT ENERGIES The Buddhafield of energy, in which evolutionary progress can quickly be made, and Kundalini Energy are absolutely necessary to any course of Meditation. Energy Enhancement Advanced Techniques allow EASY progress above and beyond any other course. Energy Enhancement Advanced Techniques only use ENERGY which underlies all other human functions. With Energy Enhancement it is not necessary to go anywhere near memory, negative emotions and catharsis which are the foundations of other courses. ENERGY ENHANCEMENT TRANSMUTATION IS EASY AND QUICK. IT SPEEDS UP THE PROCESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT!! THE TRANSMUTATION OF TRAUMA It teaches TOTAL Transformation and Transmutation FOUR INITIATIONS!! I suggest you try the FOUR INITIATION Video course - CLICK HERE THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT KARMA CLEARING PROCESS COME ON A MEDITATION ENERGY ENHANCEMENT APPRENTICE LEVEL 2 COURSE!! TRANSMUTE TRAUMA INCREASE INTELLIGENCE MEDITATION ENERGY ENHANCEMENT APPRENTICE LEVEL 1 WILL DRAMATICALLY DECREASE YOUR NEGATIVE AND INCREASE YOUR POSITIVE ENERGIES. ONLY MEDITATION ENERGY ENHANCEMENT APPRENTICE LEVEL 2 WILL TOTALLY REMOVE YOUR NEGATIVE ENERGY BLOCKAGES!!! THE EASY REMOVAL OF STRESS, TRAUMA AND NEGATIVE EMOTION Energy Enhancement Advanced Techniques allow progress above and beyond any other course. It teaches TOTAL Transmutation JEAN, THOMAS, AMY, SWAMI SATCHIDANAND, VANESSA FROM THE SEPTEMBER 2005 COURSE Thomas Blair SEPTEMBER ENERGY ENHANCEMENT COURSE IN SPAIN, Week 2 of 4 Having found yet another blockage in my base chakra, I couldn't help but feel rather despondent. After gritting my teeth and getting stuck in, I finally managed to remove it. This blockage in the Base Chakra was the last one there!!! The next time I sat down to meditate, I suddenly felt a tickling sensation in my pelvis above the perineum. This sensation increased in intensity, and felt like champagne bubbling up my body from below. The flow of energy around my body had risen to a new level giving me an increased ability to track down blockages and an increased confidence in myself. Wow! I suddenly remembered the writings of the inspired Poet and Meditation Master, the Persian Shakespeare, Jal Al Uddin Rumi and that always he talked of the wine of his meditation and this feeling of energy was what he was writing about a thousand years ago and I was feeling it, here and Now!! Next, I came across a particularly stubborn blockage to remove, and knew that I would have to prepare myself well during meditation. I consciously sourced as much energy from above to flow through my body, and in doing so, rather than my body being filled with golden light, I had somehow tapped into an immense source of white light. As well as feeling this increased energy stream through my body, I realised I had involuntarily suspended breathing somewhere near the top of an in breath. My body felt like a beacon of light, with more than enough energy to direct toward a blockage and watch it dissolve in an instant. Since that time I am always connected to and able to source the white light from above my head. Many times during this process I just forget to breathe as though my breathing is just naturally suspended. I am now living in the Light!! My energies are naturally far higher than when I arrived on the Energy Enhancement course just two weeks ago. I am experiencing the fruits of meditation which normally arrive, if they do, after twenty years of meditation and it has only taken me two weeks. This is the first meditation course I have been on. I have an injured knee from a few months ago in a motor cycle accident, yet the knee is now healed of its blockages and of its pain here on the Energy Enhancement Course and I am sitting in meditation for more than three hours a day, on the ground in the easy meditation posture, here in the light and working on more of my deep internal blockages. Truly, perhaps Enlightenment is next!! INTENSIVE VIDEO COURSE LEVEL ONE STREAMING VIDEO - SPECIAL OFFERS.. EMAIL sol@energyenhancement .org for details ENERGY ENHANCEMENT COURSES SPAIN TESTIMONIAL, JEAN FROM THE SEPTEMBER 2005 COURSE My name is Jean, and I am a thirty seven year old Chartered Engineer from the UK working in the Nuclear Industry. I have been working for over 12 years with many well known techniques including Transcendental meditation and Kriya Yoga, Subud, A Course in Mircles and the Sedona Method. Although I have made good progress with these techniques I now consider these to have been preliminary techniques to prepare me for Energy Enhancement. These methods that I have tried before simply don't provide for the systematic identification of Energy Blockages or contain the Advanced Techniques for the removal of the energy blockages to enlightenment that Energy Enhancement does. If you are serious about self-improvement, growth, change, enlightenment! Then the Energy Enhancement course is for you. If you are tired of all the many systems of meditation which leave questions unanswered and where the path to enlightenment is ill defined and uncertain then don't delay end the suffering as soon as possible � learn Energy Enhancement. Jean, FROM THE SEPTEMBER 2005 ENERGY ENHANCEMENT COURSE HONEY KALARIA Both Satchiji and Devi are beautiful and inspiring souls, passionately committed to helping people grow spiritually and accelerating each students progress towards enlightenment. They allow the students to grow at their own pace, whilst passing on profound knowledge and techniques in a light hearted and joyful manner. Both of them have extensive knowledge, possess strong perceptive powers and bathe people around them in the strong Buddhafield of energy that surrounds them. They have both made my stay in Argentina a delightful and a memorable one. HONEY KALARIA- FILM STAR 2005 MEDITATION ENERGY ENHANCEMENT APPRENTICE LEVEL 1. Initiation 3. The Grounding of Negative Energies. That's why you are suffering. That's why you are poor -- because you have forgotten how to live on this earth! Nobody has taught you how to live on this earth, how to love this earth. They have all taught you that this earth is ugly, that it is a punishment that you have been sent here, that you are not supposed to enjoy. If you enjoy, you will be sent again. You are supposed to be very sad, detached. You have to renounce all the joys of the earth so next time you don't have to be born, and then you will enjoy heavenly pleasures. Because these people have been talking too much about the "other world", they have destroyed this world. I teach you this earth. This very earth, the paradise. This very body the Buddha - OSHO EE INITIATION THREE IS THE CREATION OF INFINITE ENERGY, FEARLESSNESS, ABUNDANCE, AND WEALTH, FOR YOU!!!! IT IS THE SECRET OF THE ANTAHKARANA, TAOIST ALCHEMY, THE EMERALD TABLET OF HERMES TRISMEGISTUS, THE MASTER MASON AND THE ROYAL ARCH OF MASONIC LORE, THE EARTH, OSIRIS, THE CENTRAL SPIRITUAL SUN, ISIS, SIRIUS, DEMETER, AND THE ELEUSIAN RITUALS. TESTIMONIAL Our nurse was able to see what was happening with the blockage as she sent it up as she had by this time developed a most clear Psychic Vision, just like the medical sensitive Caroline Myss. She saw the blockage as a person whose negative energy power had all been stripped away by the grounding process. She eventually saw it changed into a skeleton which she was then able to totally remove and send up. When it was over she was jubilant. She knew she would never have the same problem again. And when later, we started the process of clearing all the negative energy out of all of her previous lifetimes, she saw that this blockage had been with her for sixty lifetimes and had started its work ninety lifetimes ago. As she went backwards, lifetime by lifetime she became lighter and lighter. She felt her heart center become bigger and bigger until it was the size of her chest. She felt great!! All with the techniques of Energy Enhancement ALL THE SAME THING!! HERE!!! COME FOR ENERGY ENHANCEMENT ENERGY ENHANCEMENT COURSES ARGENTINA AND SPAIN The Energy Enhancement Buddha at the SOL Center, Escala, SPAIN Testimonial By Vanessa Graham, BRIGHTON, ENGLAND ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MASTERY OF RELATIONSHIPS - 28 AUGUST 2005 I am now out in Spain training to be a yoga teacher with Energy Enhancement and later training to be an Energy Enhancement Meditation teacher. I was previously out here with Satchi and Devi two years ago when I did the first part of the Energy Enhancement course. I later completed it in Argentina this year. I had needed that gap in between to assimilate what I had learnt and put it into practice. I teach meditation and have found it very helpful with my own personal growth as well as progressing on my spiritual path, so much so that I felt it would you very useful to those on a similar path and that I would like to teach it. If you meditate long enough and hard enough you can resolve your life's problems but that can take a lifetime and I felt I could not wait that long, I wanted things to happen now. That's is why Satchi and Devi's Energy Enhancement Course appealed to me, it was all about doing, not just talking about it. Energy Enhancement is experiential, you learn by doing, it is not some others persons experience it is your own that you work on. Only by doing do you learn, you are given the necessary techniques to tackle negative thought forms in your life and you work through meditation to eliminate them. Energy Enhancement saves hours of psychoanalysis; it is not necessary to rake up the past in fine detail. You can acknowledge past events and how they affected you, recognising them intellectually is the first step but then you use the techniques taught to get rid of them. I thought I would go through with and share the Energy Enhancement processes that have occurred for me over the last few days. It is just a report of things as they are, no embellishments or make believe.... .... When I was getting the better of the energy blockage I felt the spaces in which I meditated expand. I got an explosion of energy down the right hand side of my body. The energy was bumping around in my base chakra; in fact my whole body was pulsating with the energies. It felt as though there was static electricity all along my arms making the hairs stand up on end. As the energies grew stronger I felt lighter, happier and freer. My heart opened out to send blasts of energy out which returned back to me. This was not just a quest for personal growth it was the quest for enlightenment. It is the spiritual path I am on, these Energy Enhancement techniques are just part of it. The ancient scriptures are followed and hatha yoga is practiced, it is all part and parcel of the same thing. Satchidanand said we only see these problems when we are able to deal with them and now was the time for me to deal them. There are also positive images whilst meditating and one was of a large bird soaring in the sky, floating on the thermals, being taken by the wind. That is the analogy of my quest. I want to be free to follow my souls path; I want to be that bird. Out of this I was given a message "Let the soul sing its song through my heart". http://www.energyenhancement.org/page17.htm Testimonial By Vanessa THIS ENERGY ENHANCEMENT TEACHING SHOWS THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, THE ANTAHKARANA, ROYAL ARCH OR RAINBOW BRIDGE CONNECTING ALL THE CHAKRAS AND THE CHAKRAS ABOVE THE HEAD AND THE SQUARING OF THE CIRCLE OF THE EARTH. The purpose of the Third Initiation of Energy Enhancement is Alchemical "Rectificando", the "R" in VITRIOL, from the latin which has been translated as, "The right leading of the infinite transmuted energy along the path of the soul" The secret of enlightenment, which comes from the conscious changing of direction of the energy from the Taoist Heaven to Earth, "Which droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven upon its place beneath." - Shakespeare, or which is scattered like wheat onto the earth and then grows up to the stars or Sirius.. USE THIS INFINITE ENERGY FOR YOUR OWN ENLIGHTENMENT!!! In the Masonic Royal Arch ceremony they mention the crypt. According to Masonic author David Ovason... "Symbolically speaking the crypt is the burial place. It is the earth into which the seed of wheat must be dropped to grow and to resurrect, emerging as a sprouting plant from the coffin. In Masonry the crypt is the burial place of the Master Mason, whose dross or ego has been burnt away, "die before you die", Nanak, under the Holy of Holies, the Sun or Sirius.... (See the Egyptian version of Isis who symbolises the star Sirius to your left. ABOVE HER HEAD THE HOLY GRAIL CONTAINING THE SUN) This idea of rebirth is continued even in modern times in the formal ritual of freemasonic cornerstone ceremonials (ceres) in which participants in the rituals scatter wheat upon the floor and sometimes even link this seeding with the stars". This also is the meaning of the stories, Jack and the Beanstalk and of "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair" LIKE WHEAT SPROUTING FROM THE EARTH TOWARDS THE STARS - SYMBOLISING THE ANTAHKARANA - In the Center of the Earth the negative energy is Alchemically transmuted into pure positive spiritual energy - Kundalini energy which flows upwards to the stars. USE THIS INFINITE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT ENERGY FOR YOUR OWN ENLIGHTENMENT!!! The crypt is the center of the earth, the wheat is the kundalini energy which flows from the center of the earth (The point from which a master Mason cannot err) the energy comes from heaven to earth and then changes direction so it flows outwards in all directions from the center of the earth and as it does so it must come out at right angles to the surface of the earth (Squaring the Circle, of the earth) towards Sirius, "The Star of the Tarot and Isis, see the picture, ABOVE LEFT, showing the energy of the sun connected in through the antahkarana to the crown chakra of Isis" and higher. Higher because Akhnaten revealed two suns above the head, although there are more. Also the lotus which grows upwards from the seed along the antahkarana like the spear of Saint George and the Dragon. The ego animal, dragon, bull or pig, is burnt in the center of the sun and in the fires in the center of the "H"earth. This is the secret of Zoroaster, Shiva, Demeter and the fertility rituals of Eleusis. Demeter, the Eleusian Mysteries and the Initiations of Energy Enhancement The Greek earth goddess par excellence, who brings forth the fruits of the earth, particularly the various grains. She taught mankind the art of sowing and ploughing so they could end their nomadic existence. As such, Demeter was also the goddess of planned society. She was very popular with the rural population. As a fertility goddess she is sometimes identified with Rhea and Gaia. In systematized theology, Demeter is a daughter of Cronus and Rhea and sister of Zeus by whom she became the mother of Persephone. When Persephone was abducted by Hades, lord of the underworld, Demeter wandered the earth in search of her lost child. During this time the earth brought forth no grain. Finally Zeus sent Hermes to the underworld, ordering Hades to restore Persephone to her mother. However, before she left, Hades gave her a pomegranate (a common fertility symbol). When she ate from it, she was bound to spend a third of the year with her husband in the infernal regions. Only when her daughter is with her, Demeter lets things grow (summer). The dying and blossoming of nature was thus connected with Demeter. The Statue of Liberty was created by a Mason and symbolises Isis and the Star Sirius. Isis is Liberty, Columbia, Astarte, Demeter, Ceres, Diana, Venus, and Aphrodite in her various aspects. In the Eleusinian mysteries, Demeter and Persephone were especially venerated. When she was looking for her daughter, in the shape of an old woman called Doso, she was welcomed by Celeus, the king of Eleusis (in Attica). He requested her to nurse his sons Demophon and Triptolemus �. To reward his hospitality she intended to make the boy Demophon immortal by placing him each night in the center of the hearth, to burn his mortal nature away. The spell was broken one night because Metanira, the wife of Celeus, walked in on her while she was performing this ritual. Demeter taught the other son, Triptolemus, the principles of agriculture, who, in turn, taught others this art. In Demeter's honor as a goddess of marriage, women in Athens, and other centers in Greece, celebrated the feast of Thesmophoria (from her epithet Thesmophoros, "she of the regular customs"). Throughout Classical times members of all social strata came from all parts of the Mediterranean world to be initiated in and celebrate her Mysteries at Eleusis. In ancient art, Demeter was often portrayed (sitting) as a solemn woman, often wearing a wreath of braided ears of corn or wheat. Well-known is the statue made by Knidos (mid fourth century BCE). Her usual symbolic attributes are the seeds of fruits of the earth and the torch, the latter presumably referring to her search for Persephone or the burning away of the ego in the center of the "h"earth and in the Star center of Sirius. Her sacred animals were the snake (symbol of kundalini) and the pig (a symbol of the ego). Some of her epithets include Auxesia, Deo, Chloe, and Sito. The Romans equated her with the goddess Ceres, thus Ceremony, the scattering of the wheat. TRANSMUTE TRAUMA AND ALL NEGATIVE ENERGIES AND EMOTIONS WITH ENERGY ENHANCEMENT ANCIENT SUCCESSFUL AND SPEEDY TECHNIQUES!! Free up your energies! Learn these advanced meditational techniques which show how to Transmute stress and negative energy which is held psychically inside you. Energy Enhancement Initiation Three is a Practical Guided Meditation which will put you in touch with your own earth energy connection. Philip SAYS, "ENERGY ENHANCEMENT IS THE CORE ENERGY TECHNIQUE." My feeling and expectation from before coming on the course that Energy Enhancement is THE Core Energy Technique, has been met. Energy Enhancement techniques can be applied to any of the above disciplines and it will improve them all IT ALLOWS YOU TO RAISE YOUR ENERGY LEVELS, AND AS IMPORTANTLY, SHOWS YOU HOW TO KEEP IT AND TO PROTECT IT FROM BEING SIPHONED OFF BY OTHERS. I FELT HOT IN MY SPINE, SOME OF MY BLOCKAGES WERE BURNED AND REMOVED, AND AGAIN AT THE END OF THE MEDITATION I FELT A HIGHER LEVEL OF ENERGY. Energy Enhancement Initiation Three is to expand the energy orbit to the centre of the earth, and to ground and burn up blockages. Blockages can be grounded and burned, and you do not have to relive traumas or even remember the source of traumas. I felt hot in my spine, some of my blockages were burned and removed, and again at the end of the meditation I felt a higher level of energy. ONCE THIS STAGE WAS REACHED I HAD TREMENDOUS ENERGY Energy Enhancement is the fastest way to Enlightenment.. Yoga is good but Pranayama is 10 times faster at releasing Energy Blockages whi ch stop the Enlightenment process. Pranayama is good but Meditation is 10 times faster than even that at releasing Energy Blockages which stop the Enlightenment process. Meditation is good but Samadhi is 10 times faster than even that at releasing Energy Blockages which stop the Enlightenment process. Samadhi is good but Samyama is 10 times faster than even that at releasing Energy Blockages which stop the Enlightenment process. Yoga, Pranayama, Meditation, Samadhi and Samyama are part of the Eight Limbs of Yoga in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and Samyama is talked about from over 5000 years ago in the THIRD AND FOURTH Chapter of The Yoga Sutras of PATANJALI. And Samyama IS Energy Enhancement, 10,000 times faster on the Path of Enlightenment. You cannot afford NOT to try it!! Satchidanand APPRENTICE LEVEL Two The KARMA CLEARING PROCESS - Mastery of Protection and the Mastery of Thoughtforms. The mastery of Blockages between the Base and Crown Chakras. The Mastery of the creation and dissolution of Blockages and Thoughtforms through the Advanced techniques of Taoism, Buddhist Meta, the Western Mystery Tradition and Merlin. The Jedi Knights. The White Magicians. There are Four APPRENTICE LEVELs of Energy Enhancement Teaching, each APPRENTICE LEVEL is a Meditation Course having Seven Meditational Initiations which can be taken in a Week-Long Course. Also one REIKI Initiation is AVAILABLE with each APPRENTICE LEVEL. You can become a Reiki Master with Energy Enhancement Meditation. Each APPRENTICE LEVEL is entirely independent of the others and complete in itself. You do not have to take every APPRENTICE LEVEL, but the APPRENTICE LEVELs must be taken in the order of One, Two, Three and Four. MEDITATION, SHAKTIPAT, ENERGY CIRCULATION, THE KUNDALINI KRIYAS, THE FIVE ELEMENTAL PATHS OF THE CHI OF CHINESE ALCHEMICAL TAOISM, THE GROUNDING OF NEGATIVE ENERGIES, ACCESS TO KUNDALINI ENERGY, CHECK OUT FOOD, REMOVE ENERGY BLOCKAGES, STRONG PSYCHIC PROTECTION, LEARN THE MERKABA, PYRAMID PROTECTION, POWER TOWER PROTECTION, CREATE THE ANTAHKARANA, SOUL FUSION, MONADIC INFUSION, LOGOS INFUSION!!! ENERGY ENHANCEMENT COURSE SPAIN, THIS SUMMER THE MOST ADVANCED AND PRODUCTIVE MEDITATION COURSE IN THE WORLD AS SAID IN THE TESTIMONIALS OF OUR PAST STUDENTS!!! TEACHING IN EASY STEPS... WEEK ONE LEVEL ONE - THE GAINING OF ENERGY MEDITATION, SHAKTIPAT, ENERGY CIRCULATION, THE KUNDALINI KRIYAS, THE FIVE ELEMENTAL PATHS OF THE CHI OF CHINESE ALCHEMICAL TAOISM, THE GROUNDING OF NEGATIVE ENERGIES, ACCESS TO KUNDALINI ENERGY, CHECK OUT FOOD, REMOVE ENERGY BLOCKAGES, STRONG PSYCHIC PROTECTION, LEARN THE MERKABA, PYRAMID PROTECTION, POWER TOWER PROTECTION, THE BUDDHAFIELD, CREATE THE ANTAHKARANA, SOUL FUSION, MONADIC INFUSION, LOGOS INFUSION, SIRIAN INFUSION, RAY ONE ENERGIES, THE ELIMINATION OF EVIL, THE AVATAR OF SYNTHESIS!!! EXPERIENCE MORE!!! EMAIL sol@energyenhancement.org for PRICES AND BOOKINGS SATCHI PROVED THIS TO ME IN THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES OF OUR FIRST MEDITATION, BY PUTTING MY BACK AND TOP OF THE HEAD IN THE RIGHT POSTURE. I IMMEDIATELY FELT A FLOW OF ENERGY GOING UP MY SPINE. Once this stage was reached I had tremendous energy! more?.... DEVI DHYANI - THE DANCER YOGA POSE AS THE SUN GOES DOWN Devi is pure magic. She said I just know where the point is. I can just see it, and when she treated it our client felt a terrible pain where Devi was touching her on the feet. The Pains at the back of the heart now were completely gone! Devi used the light puncture and the Techniques of Energy Enhancement to ground all the negative energy in the point on the feet. It took her five minutes and after that treatment there was no more pain in the point of the feet and the pains on either side of the abdomen had also disappeared. Where did it go to? ENERGY ENHANCEMENT IN SPAIN, THIS SUMMER The Meditation Room of the Energy Enhancement Villa - BUDDHA AND KRISHNA Bookmark this page - add it to your Favourites Now!! The Sunset is the star as we watch the Changing Colours from our favourite Cafe in L'Escala The Cafe night Scene in Central L'Escala The Ancient Roman Columns at the 3000 YEAR OLD Greek and Roman Ruins of Empuries as the Sun Goes down. Empuries, just outside of L'Escala, is the Oldest Greek and Roman site in Spain, an Ancient Trading Center which was first Founded 3000 years ago. We watch the sun go down over it and its 3 magnificent beaches as the Sun goes Down from our favourite Cafe, feeling the Energy of this Center of Energy which is Empuries. Empuries contains this Statue of Asklepius, the God of Healing whose other name is the Egyptian Priest and Alchemist, Hermes Trismegistus, here pictured standing in the Temple of Asklepius in Empuries Here is a Testimonial about our Three Level Energy Enhancement Course over One Month With MS, Human Resources Director Europe/Asia of a large Fortune 500 US Multinational Company Looking for a way to spend a productive month in beautiful surroundings with great people? Well I'm very happy to recommend Energy Enhancement run by SOL in Spain and to be specific Satchidanand and Devi Dhyani. Initially I was looking for some Yoga and meditation to mark a significant change in my life and to enhance my general health and wellbeing. By accident I came across the SOL Web site over a year ago and just noted it - made a few enquiries and did nothing other than to file it for future reference. - SEE FIFTY FULL TESTIMONIALS "EASY AND SMOOTH ENERGY ENHANCEMENT PUTS YOU IN CONTACT WITH KUNDALINI ENERGY WHICH SPEEDS UP THE PROCESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE" The inflow of Spiritual Energy or Kundalini Energy is well known in all Spiritual Circles as being expected in all genuine Courses with teachers who have advanced experience with Enlightened Masters. Yet some people just cannot get their heads around Kundalini Energy which is talked about even in the Vedas which are a sacred spiritual resource thousands of years old. Even though Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh said that all meditation and Yoga was based upon Kundalini Energy. If you are not experiencing spiritual energy in your Yoga or Meditation practise then What is UP!! ENERGY ENHANCEMENT AND KUNDALINI TANTRA "EASY AND SMOOTH ENERGY ENHANCEMENT PUTS YOU IN CONTACT WITH KUNDALINI ENERGY WHICH SPEEDS UP THE PROCESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND INTELLIGENCE" FOR PRICES THE TRUTH IS ONE, THE PATHS ARE MANY The Energy Enhancement Symbol The Energy Enhancement Symbol of the Twelve Petalled Lotus of the Heart Center with One of the Symbols of the Worlds Major Religions in Each One of the Petals. Inside the symbol is the Hexagram - The Seal of Solomon, with the Seven Chakras describing the Three Initiations on the Path of Enlightenment - Initiation 1. The Opening of the Heart. Solar Plexus to Heart Chakra. Initiation 2. The Mastery of Relationships, Abdomen to Throat Chakra. Initiation 3. Enlightenment, Base to all the Head Chakras which is taught on the Energy Enhancement Course plus many other Initiations. At the Very Center is the Heart Chakra radiating Peace and Light outwards.. like the Sun... "The day is short and the work is Great and the workers are Lazy. But the reward is Large and our Master urges us to make Haste." Writings of the Abbod of Halmyrach FOUR LEVEL STREAMING VIDEO DVDS NOW UPGRADED TO FOUR INITIATIONS ON EIGHT DVDS PLAYABLE ON YOUR DVD PLAYER OR COMPUTER! The New Improved High Energy Meditation DVD Course INITIATION ONE - MEDITATION INITIATION TWO - THE CIRCULATION OF THE ENERGIES INITIATION THREE - THE GROUNDING OF NEGATIVE ENERGIES INITIATION FOUR - THE ANTAHKARANA, SOUL FUSION!! THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT DVD COURSE IS THE ONLY COURSE IN THE WORLD WHICH CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO DO ALL THESE THINGS!! MEDITATION, SHAKTIPAT, ENERGY CIRCULATION, THE KUNDALINI KRIYAS, THE FIVE ELEMENTAL PATHS OF THE CHI OF CHINESE ALCHEMICAL TAOISM, THE GROUNDING OF NEGATIVE ENERGIES, V.I.T.R.I.O.L, THE ART CARD OF THE THOTH TAROT, ACCESS TO KUNDALINI ENERGY, CREATE THE ANTAHKARANA, SOUL FUSION, MONADIC INFUSION, LOGOS INFUSION!!! FOR DVDS - CLICK BELOW http://www.energyenhancement.org/teachingvideosDVDprice.htm DANISA FROM THE SPAIN 2003 EE MEDITATION COURSE DANISA WENT TO THAILAND AFTER THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MEDITATION COURSE IN SPAIN AND NOW IS IN JAPAN TEACHING AND PRACTISING BELLY DANCING! I've been in La Escala with Satchy and Devi for a week now, Its the longest time I've been here!! and I noticed that every day I am going deeply inside of me. When I arrived here, was very hard for me, but luckily Satchy and Devi helped me a lot and removed many of my blockages so that I can really think with my head! The first 2 days I was feeling very strange and uncomfortable inside of me. Half of myself wanted to improve and half wanted to stay like that, in a low energy level state, didn't want to grow neither change. During these days I realized how the strategies control people and how they were controlling myself. Sometimes you are confused, sometimes happy, sometimes angry, and these don't have to be like that !!! but nobody knows! I didn't know. Energy Enhancement Level 2 teaches you how to manage your emotions, it gives you a strong emotinonal IQ. I feel so happy to meet Satchy and Devi, they are high spiritual teachers that can see deeply inside you, behind the mask that everybody has. They can see your soul, your real self!! If you need help you'll get it from them. DANISA, EE MEDITATION COURSE 2003 DANISA IN JAPAN WHAT SHE SAYS NOW! Thanks for the email including my testimonial about Energy Enhancement in Spain! Its such a nice memory! I think about these moments as the best of my life. It was hard work for me but Ive never felt so happy and rewarded in my life, only when Ive been close to you both. I been thinking about you lately a lot , I miss you guys, I really do. Im very busy here in Japan, thats why I didnt write to much, but now I have internet at home, and I hope we can be more in touch. Im glad you are working hard there in Argentina and having a beautiful time. Here is good, sometimes very hard. Japan is a good experience though but very intense. I found some temples which I want to visit, but spiritual people are hard to find here. And lately I ve been feeling so many different things. I hope one day I can be a really a spiritual person and teacher like you, you are my example. I know now, how many things I have to heal, how many are not finished yet. Because Ive been through many tests, and Ive been far from you, and having some healing from you. I hope to see you soon, I love you with all my heart. I wish you the best and more Energy Enhancement APPRENTICE LEVEL 1. Initiation 6. - Psychic Protections Energy Blockages tend to move from one person to another according to the Third Law of Thermodynamics - Energy flows from areas of high concentration to low concentration. This means... 1. Positive energy flows from Saints at a high energy level into people of low levels, thus raising them up and making them higher. Another byproduct is that Blockages tend to get thrown out by this raising of energies and in the process making their blockages really upset. Thus the attributes of Kundalini Energy. A feeling of Awe and Fear or Anger. Shaking and heat and cold in the presence of the Enlightened. 2. The Blockages of the unenlightened flow into the enlightened. Negative energy flows from High concentrations to low concentrations. So, if you stick around people with these high negative energy concentrations then you will inevitably pick up these energies. "Bringing an unformed man into the presence of the wise is like throwing a dead dog into a pool of rosewater." Sufi saying. This has the effect of healing the people who come into the presence of the wise, but unless they are coming to learn, rather than being just curious, the unenlightened will soon come back to their previous state. Thus, protection is very necessary to prevent Energy Enhancement students from picking up the blockages of others, giving out too much spiritual energy or receiving too much positive energy, except when they want to.... a. The Spiral of protection. How to further increase the connection with the Universal Energy Source, and the spiral flow of Energy throughout our Energy System so that we can use this connection to further cleanse all the psychic bodies and to increase the energy from all previous Initiations. b. The Power Towers and the CIRCLE of protection How to learn higher methods of energy protection for yourself and every thing around you. Also, as your energy increases, so you will start to affect everything around you. These Energy Enhancement Protection techniques show you how to create a "ring pass not" of energy around you so that you can learn how not to waste your energy unnecessarily. So that you will not affect other people unless you want to, and you will not be so affected by the negative energies around you. It protects the people around you from unintentionally being exposed to your energy of change. With Energy Enhancement Techniques increasing your energies, you could start to affect the people around you. This shows you how to protect them from your evolutionary energy. c. PYRAMID PROTECTION Pyramids are pictorial representations of enlightenment incorporating all the chakras. It is a Traditional Protection, effectively taught on the Energy Enhancement course to raise your energy levels to the Masonic Thirty Third Degree of Jesus Christ and above to protect against attack. THE LOUVRE IN PARIS - PART OF THE DA VINCI CODE The Energy Enhancement Meditation Course APPRENTICE LEVEL 1. Initiation 7. a. The Light Body, Mercaba Meditation Protection This is a highly effective meditation to protect from attack and help break all negative ENERGY BLOCKAGES. Here in Energy Enhancement we give it away almost free!!! b. INVISIBILITY THE ZONE ALARM OF PROTECTION All protections provide a point of attack. As in computers, it is necessary to learn how to be invisible in order to prevent attacks on one. Adventure at The Taj Mahal Available Anytime Satchidanand and Devi Dhyani with Group at the Taj Mahal The Energy Enhancement Indian Adventure. The Energy Enhancement Course Plus Delhi and the Taj Mahal You can come to the Taj Mahal and Learn Energy Enhancement Now! THIS WINTER THE MOST ADVANCED AND PRODUCTIVE COURSE COURSE IN THE WORLD AS SAID IN THE TESTIMONIALS OF OUR STUDENTS!!! Energy Enhancement Energy is the Foundation which will Enable you to Speed Up the Process of Evolution, Intelligence, Emotional Stability, Energy, Kindness, Wisdom and Leadership which many courses profess to teach but which Energy Enhancement has given in abundance to the many and varied students taught by it. Whether you are a Management Corporate Executive, any sort of Alternative Practitioner, meditator, yogi or anyone who wants to evolve, - become better, smarter, more evolved, more empathic, more successful; this course will enable direct experience of superior life performance. IF YOU WANT TO IMPROVE ALL ASPECTS OF YOUR MEDITATION AND YOUR LIFE, THEN WE CAN ELIMINATE YOUR PROBLEMS WITH ENERGY ENHANCEMENT SPIRITUAL AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT - ENERGY ENHANCEMENT IS EXPERIENTIAL - GET REAL EXPERIENCE OF SPIRITUAL ENERGY THE ENLIGHTENED HAVE TALKED ABOUT FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS - NOW AVAILABLE IN THE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT BUDDHAFIELD. EVERY STUDENT HAS THEIR EXPERIENCE - JUST READ THEIR TESTIMONIALS. WE GIVE YOU THE TECHNIQUES, YOU GET YOUR EXPERIENCE, AND WE GO FROM THERE.... THE ANCIENT TECHNIQUES OF ENERGY ENHANCEMENT HAVE BEEN TAUGHT WITH GREAT SUCCESS FOR MANY YEARS SEE THE TESTIMONIALS (CLICK HERE) OF OUR STUDENTS TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE APPRENTICE COURSES OF ENERGY ENHANCEMENT.... Speed Up the Process of Evolution, Intelligence, Emotional Stability, Energy, Kindness, Wisdom and Leadership which many courses profess to teach but which Energy Enhancement has given with both hands to the many and varied students taught by it. ENERGY ENHANCEMENT DIRECTOR SATCHIDANAND SATCHIDANAND HAS PRACTISED YOGA SINCE 1967 HAS DEGREES IN ELECTRONICS, MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS, EXPERIENCE IN MANAGEMENT IN INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES, AND HAS BEEN TRAINED IN MEDITATION BY ZEN MASTER HOGEN OF JAPAN AND SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA, HIMSELF A STUDENT OF SWAMI SIVANANDA OF RISHIKESH. SAYS.. ENERGY ENHANCEMENT IS THE NEW, SAFE AND FAST WAY OF LOSING ALL PAIN AND DISEASE, SPEEDING UP YOUR EVOLUTION, INTELLIGENCE, EMOTIONAL STABILITY, WISDOM, LEADERSHIP AND THE SPEEDING UP OF THE PATH OF ENLIGHTENMENT. AFTER UNIVERSITY, ENERGY ENHANCEMENT IS THE NEXT STEP!! ENERGY ENHANCEMENT HAS HELPED MANY PEOPLE ON THIS PATH FROM THOSE IN THE GREATEST TROUBLE TO THOSE WHOSE ASPIRATION IS TO INCREASE THE SPEED OF THEIR EVOLUTION, AND TO HELP THE WORLD AND ALL THE PEOPLE IN IT. ENERGY ENHANCEMENT CAN HELP YOU!! ENERGY ENHANCEMENT- Do not expect perfection, Expect EXPERIENCE!! Come on an Energy Enhancement Course and gain real meditational experience. As well as learning how to meditate as deeply as any Monk, the Buddhafield, the Kundalini Energy of Satchidanand and Devi Dhyani, and the Advanced Techniques of Energy Enhancement make certain that you too will receive REAL MEDITATIONAL EXPERIENCE. Sick of just sitting? People meditate for years without any signs of deep meditational experience. Yet with Satchidanand and Devi Dhyani, students of Zen Master Hogen, and Swami Satchidananda, author of "The Living Gita" with whom they received many experiences of Initiation, the Buddhafield produces IMMEDIATE meditational experience in just about everyone who comes. Just read any of our testimonials and you will see that every one of our clients has been given the meditational experience that they need. From Shaktipat to the experience of Energy in all its forms and on into the Karma Clearing Process and the Grounding of Negative energies and emotions, Energy Enhancement WILL EXPERIENCE YOU! You too can receive this EXPERIENCE of deep EVOLUTIONARY energy on the path of Enlightenment!! So, what did we get? I can say that practicing the technique of Stage 4 of Level One of Energy Enhancement with Devi and Satchy gave more power to the top down approach of Meditation. I had an experience of the MAGIC!! that I so longed for in my meditation. Sitting in the flame of Kundalini and seeing my karma burn up was a POWERFUL experience. "During past meditation sessions for over two years, I have twirled like a top when my bottom came into contact with the floor. After two years the swaying finally stopped in ONE session with Energy Enhancement! I later found out that Satchi had been working on this blockage at the same time using Energy Enhancement Level 2 Techniques...." Vanessa Graham (UK) Meditation Teacher/Writer "The feeling was so strange. I was hot but felt cold at the same time. My hands, arms and legs were shaking and shivering and yet I was not cold��what a strange feeling and I felt connected...." read more Read more on our testimonials page.... THE SECRET OF THE SUFI STORY, A JOURNEY FROM STUDENT TO MASTER - THE LIONS ROAR At the time of King Mahmud, the Conqueror of Ghazna, there lived a young man by the name of Haidar Ali Jan. His father, Iskandar Khan, decided to obtain for him the patronage of the Emperor, and he sent him to study spiritual matters under the greatest sages of the time. Haidar Ali, when he had mastered the repetitions and the exercises, when he knew the recitals and the bodily postures of the Sufi schools, was taken by his father into the presence of the Emperor. "Mighty Mahmud," said Iskandar, "I have had this youth, my eldest and most intelligent son, specially trained in the ways of the Sufis, so that he might obtain a worthy position at your Majesty's court, knowing that you are the patron of learning of our epoch." Mahmud did not look up, but he merely said, "Bring him back in a year." Slightly disappointed, but nursing high hopes, Iskandar sent Ali to study the works of the great Sufis of the past, and to visit the shrines of the ancient Masters in Baghdad, so that the intervening time would not be wasted. When he brought the youth back to the court, he said, "Peacock of the Age! My son has carried out long and difficult journeys, and at the same time to his knowledge of exercises he has added a complete familiarity with the classics of the People of the Path. Pray have him examined, so that it may be shown that he could be an adornment of your Majesty's court." "Let him," said Mahmud immediately, "return after another year." During the next twelve months, Haidar Ali crossed the Oxus and visited Bokhara and Samarkand, Qasr-i-Arfin and Tashqand, Dushambe and the turbats of the Sufi saints When he returned to the court, Mahmud of Ghazna took one look at him and said, "He may care to come back after a further year." Haidar Ali made the pilgrimage to Mecca in that year. He travelled to India; and in Persia he consulted rare books and never missed an opportunity of seeking out and paying his respects to the great dervishes of the time. When he returned to Ghazna, Mahmud said to him, "Now select a teacher, if he will have you, and come back in a year." When that year was over and Iskandar Khan prepared to take his son to the court, Haidar Ali showed no interest at all in going there. He simply sat at the fret of his teacher in Herat, and nothing that his father could say would move him. "I have wasted my time, and my money, and this young man has failed the tests imposed by Mahmud the King," he lamented, and he abandoned the whole affair. Meanwhile, the day when the youth was due to present himself came and went, and then Mahmud said to his courtiers, "Prepare yourselves for a visit to Herat; there is someone there whom I have to see." As the Emperor's cavalcade was entering Herat to the flourish of trumpets, Haidar Ali's teacher took him by the hand, led him to the gate of the tekkia, and there they waited: Shortly afterwards, Mahmud and his courtier Ayaz, taking off their shoes, presented themselves at the sanctuary. "Here, Mahmud," said the Sufi sheikh, "is the man who was nothing while he was a visitor of kings, but who is now one who is visited by kings. Take him as your Sufi counsellor: for he is ready." This is the story of the studies of Hiravi, Haidar Ali Jan, the Sage of Herat. RELIGION IS A RISK, A REBELLION, AND A REBIRTH, RELIGION is not a consolation, it is not conformity, it is not convention. Religion is not part of the world—it is something of the beyond. Religion cannot be learnt: it can only be imbibed. There is no study which is going to help you to become religious. All studies lead astray. Religion is not a kind of learning. On the contrary, it is unlearning. Not that you have to know more, but that you have to come to a point where all knowing disappears, and you become innocent, and you are a child again. And again the wonder is fresh and the mystery of life is revealed to you. The knower lives in his mind. And the mind goes on pretending that it knows. And because the mind pretends that it knows, it demystifies existence. Knowledge is the most irreligious phenomenon there is in the world—because without the experience of the mysterious there is no possibility of being in contact with God. The mystery is the door. Knowledge has to be dropped so that you can open your eyes again like a child—fresh, young, full of wonder, knowing nothing, or, only knowing that you know nothing. These few things have to be understood before we can enter into this beautiful story. Why do I call religion a risk? and not only a risk but the greatest? Why? Because you have to lose yourself. There are other risks in life, but they are small risks. You have to lose your money, or you have to lose your prestige, or you have to lose your wife... or this or that. But in religion, nothing less than your totality is required—you have to lose yourself. Naturally, one shrinks back, one is frightened. It is a jump out of the ego and into the egoless abyss. It is a discontinuity with the past, with all that you have thought you are. It is a breakthrough. You lose your identity—it is a great crisis in identity. You have known yourself as this or that—a name, a form, a society, a nation—religion requires that you lose all your identity. A religious person is neither an Indian nor a Chinese, neither a Hindu nor a Mohammedan. A religious person is neither black nor. white. All these things are stupidities. Then who is a religious person? He is not a person at all, but only a presence. He drops his personality. He cannot say who he is. He cannot define himself. But in that indefinable state of consciousness, he knows who he is. This is a paradox: those who know who they are don't know; and those who are ready to risk their whole identity and come to a point where they don't know who they are, only they are the people who become capable of knowing. It is a gamble.... Very few people have that much courage. Religion is not for the cowards. For the cowards is politics. Religion is not for the inferior. For the inferior is politics. The whole political world depends on the inferiority complex. When a man feels himself to be nothing, nobody, he starts projecting himself in the world of ambition—politically he wants to become somebody, a president, a prime minister. Or, moneywise he becomes a millionaire, famous. Or he wants to become a Nobel Laureate, or something... These are the ways of ambition. And why does ambition arise in the first place at all? It arises out of the inferiority complex. You feel inferior within yourself, you feel nobody. It hurts. It is like an open wound. You want to hide it. You become occupied in ambition. You rush away from yourself as far as you can. You want to forget yourself! You want to get occupied in the world of money, power, prestige. Religion is for those who are ready to go into this nothingness of their being, who don't think that they have to be somebody. All that they want is to know who they are. They don't want to be somebody. They don't project. They simply want to enter into the innermost shrine of their being and to see what is there. If it is nothingness, then it is nothingness. Then nothingness is beautiful. Then this is our nature. Then there is no problem, it is not a wound. One need not search for any medicine for it; it needs no healing. The ambitious person runs out, afraid to encounter nothingness. The religious person rushes in to know "What is this nothingness that I am?" Risk is there. Death is there. But out of this death is resurrection, is rebirth. But if you go to the temples and the churches and the mosques, you will find a totally different kind of person praying there—he is cowardly. His God is out of fear. He is as ambitious as anybody else. He is seeking support of the God so that he can succeed in his ambition. He is not interested in God himself. He wants to exploit God too, in some way or other. He has a motivation. He is cowardly, and out of his cowardliness he has created a great religion, ritual—the priest, the church. Religion is in the hands of irreligious people. A Mahavir, a Buddha, a Mohammed, a Mansoor, a Rumi, a Kabir, a Nanak— these are not people who are afraid. These are not people who are praying out of fear! They are praying out of love, not out of fear. They are praying out of sheer joy. They are praying out of thankfulness. They are not asking for anything from God—because God has already given all that is needed. The real religious person needs to be immensely courageous to enter into his nothingness—and inside there is a great nothingness... as vast as the sky, as infinite as the sky. There is an outer sky and there is an inner sky. The worldly person moves out, the religious person moves in. To move out is very easy, because millions are moving there. You can become part of the crowd; you need not have any individual courage of your own. You can simply ride on the mob psychology. All the people are doing something—you can become part of it. Man is an imitator. If anything proves that man comes from the monkeys it is his tremendous capacity to imitate. But to go in, you are alone. Absolutely alone. Nobody can be there with you, not even a friend. Great courage is needed for this internal journey—the courage to be alone. But only those who are ready to be alone will be able to know what God is—because God is found in your innermost aloneness. God is the innermost center of your aloneness. God is not found as an object: God is found not as the sought but as the seeker. God is never found there: God is always found here. Never then: always now. God is not a goal, distant from you: God is your very consciousness, your very being, your very existence. But for that, this courage is needed—courage to be alone, courage to drop the attachment to the crowd, courage to drop ambitions, projections, courage to be a non-entity. That's why the other day I said: I am a very ordinary person, extraordinarily ordinary. And I would like you also to become extraordinarily ordinary—because in that very ordinariness, God is found. To try to be somebody, to try to be special, is the way of ambition and the way of the ego. And the ego never meets God. That's why the other day I told you that I am not perfect—or, I am perfectly imperfect. And that's what I would like you to be too. Imperfect—perfectly imperfect. Then you can relax. Then there is no way to go anywhere, and no need. Then there is no ideal to be fulfilled. Then you are not constantly trying to improve upon yourself—you simply relax. You are in a let-go. And when you are in a let-go, a prayer arises from the very ground of your being—which is not done by you. It arises as fragrance arises out of flowers, as light falls from the stars. It naturally arises! And when prayer is natural, it has tremendous beauty, tremendous power. It liberates. Be courageous. And let me repeat: the greatest courage is to be non-ambitious. Religion is not a formality; it is not a kind of behaviour; it is not a certain etiquette. You can learn the behaviour of the religious people. You can go through the whole act of being religious. You can bow down in the temple, you can pray, you can even manage tears to flow down your cheeks. And deep down you know you are not in it, It is just a put-on act. Maybe you have become very skillful in it. You have done it so long that it looks almost natural, but it is not. Your heart is not in it. You can say to your wife during the day a hundred times, "I love you." But if your heart is not in it, you know that these words are dead, that these words have no wings. And you know that moment also when you really love, and you say, "I love you. And the difference!" And the difference is immense. The words are the same; there is no way to detect any difference in the words. No phonetic analysis, no analysis of the sound, is going to find any difference. But you know: when you love, those words are no more ordinary—they are radiant, they have a luminosity, they are aflame. Your heart beats in them, they are alive. And when you arejust repeating it because it has to be repeated— because there are books in the world like Dale Carnegie's books and Napoleon Hill's books, which go on saying that even if you don't love, go on repeating—it helps. It lubricates relationship. Maybe they are right, it lubricates, but it is not the true thing. You may live a smooth life, but just to live a smooth life is worthless. One has to live a life of passion and prayer and love—not just a smooth life. One has to live a life of adventure, of exploration. Not just a smooth life! One has to live totally. One's life torch has to burn from both ends—even though it is only for one single moment, but then that single moment is eternity. When you live at the optimum, then you know what life is. And then you know the celebration of it and the benediction of it. Religion is not a formality. Avoid formalities. If you really want to be religious some day, avoid formalities. The greatest danger with formality is that if you become accustomed to formality you will never become aware that you are missing the real thing. The man who carries false coins and thinks they are real coins will not search for the real. That is going to be his misfortune. Never be formal about religion. Never be a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan—these are all formalities. Be prayerful, but not in a formal way. Let prayer arise. Wait for it. Long for it! Search for it! Imitation is borrowed. Formality is borrowed. Others teach you what to do. And religion requires a mature person, not just a person who is like a parrot. It is not a formality because it is not part of culture, civilization, society. In fact, religion is basically asocial—not anti-social but asocial. It takes you beyond society. You are caught up by the society, you are conditioned by the society. The society is your prison. It does not allow you to move out of its boundaries. It gives you enough rope so that you can have a certain feeling of freedom, but you are not free. No society allows freedom. No society exists for freedom. The name of freedom is being exploited, but no society is free. To have a free society will mean to have no society at all—then there will be pure individuals. And all that we know as society will be just a formal arrangement: like the post office and the railway department—a formal arrangement. No imposition of any inner structure. No imposition of any obedience, but a help, a nourishing help, so that everybody can become himself. Not that he has to conform to a certain mould. No society yet exists which is religious, not even the Indian society. Indians like the idea very much, and their so-called gurus go on roaming around the world and declaring to the world that India is religious—it is all nonsense. Formally they are right, but .religion has nothing to do with formality. Religion is rebellion; it is the spirit of rebellion. Rebellion of the individual. Rebellion of the soul. Search for freedom, and ultimate freedom. Great courage is, of course, needed. Guts are needed. That's why so many people think they are religious, but very few are. Only once in a while do you find a religious person. Sooner or later the lion's roar. more? .... click here yoga\Lionroar.htm RELIGION: A DIALOGUE. Demopheles. Between ourselves, my dear fellow, I don't care about the way you sometimes have of exhibiting your talent for philosophy; you make religion a subject for sarcastic remarks, and even for open ridicule. Every one thinks his religion sacred, and therefore you ought to respect it. Philalethes. That doesn't follow! I don't see why, because other people are simpletons, I should have any regard for a pack of lies. I respect truth everywhere, and so I can't respect what is opposed to it. My maxim is Vigeat veritas et pereat mundus, like the lawyers' Fiat justitia et pereat mundus. Every profession ought to have an analogous advice. Demopheles. Then I suppose doctors should say Fiant pilulae et pereat mundus,�there wouldn't be much difficulty about that! Philalethes. Heaven forbid! You must take everything cum grano salis. Demopheles. Exactly; that's why I want you to take religion cum grano salis. I want you to see that one must meet the requirements of the people according to the measure of their comprehension. Where you have masses of people of crude susceptibilities and clumsy intelligence, sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery, religion provides the only means of proclaiming and making them feel the hight import of life. For the average man takes an interest, primarily, in nothing but what will satisfy his physical needs and hankerings, and beyond this, give him a little amusement and pastime. Founders of religion and philosophers come into the world to rouse him from his stupor and point to the lofty meaning of existence; philosophers for the few, the emancipated, founders of religion for the many, for humanity at large. For, as your friend Plato has said, the multitude can't be philosophers, and you shouldn't forget that. Religion is the metaphysics of the masses; by all means let them keep it: let it therefore command external respect, for to discredit it is to take it away. Just as they have popular poetry, and the popular wisdom of proverbs, so they must have popular metaphysics too: for mankind absolutely needs an interpretation of life; and this, again, must be suited to popular comprehension. Consequently, this interpretation is always an allegorical investiture of the truth: and in practical life and in its effects on the feelings, that is to say, as a rule of action and as a comfort and consolation in suffering and death, it accomplishes perhaps just as much as the truth itself could achieve if we possessed it. Don't take offense at its unkempt, grotesque and apparently absurd form; for with your education and learning, you have no idea of the roundabout ways by which people in their crude state have to receive their knowledge of deep truths. The various religions are only various forms in which the truth, which taken by itself is above their comprehension, is grasped and realized by the masses; and truth becomes inseparable from these forms. Therefore, my dear sir, don't take it amiss if I say that to make a mockery of these forms is both shallow and unjust. Philalethes. But isn't it every bit as shallow and unjust to demand that there shall be no other system of metaphysics but this one, cut out as it is to suit the requirements and comprehension of the masses? that its doctrine shall be the limit of human speculation, the standard of all thought, so that the metaphysics of the few, the emancipated, as you call them, must be devoted only to confirming, strengthening, and explaining the metaphysics of the masses? that the highest powers of human intelligence shall remain unused and undeveloped, even be nipped in the bud, in order that their activity may not thwart the popular metaphysics? And isn't this just the very claim which religion sets up? Isn't it a little too much to have tolerance and delicate forbearance preached by what is intolerance and cruelty itself? Think of the heretical tribunals, inquisitions, religious wars, crusades, Socrates' cup of poison, Bruno's and Vanini's death in the flames! Is all this to-day quite a thing of the past? How can genuine philosophical effort, sincere search after truth, the noblest calling of the noblest men, be let and hindered more completely than by a conventional system of metaphysics enjoying a State monopoly, the principles of which are impressed into every head in earliest youth, so earnestly, so deeply, and so firmly, that, unless the mind is miraculously elastic, they remain indelible. In this way the groundwork of all healthy reason is once for all deranged; that is to say, the capacity for original thought and unbiased judgment, which is weak enough in itself, is, in regard to those subjects to which it might be applied, for ever paralyzed and ruined. Demopheles. Which means, I suppose, that people have arrived at a conviction which they won't give up in order to embrace yours instead. Philalethes. Ah! if it were only a conviction based on insight. Then one could bring arguments to bear, and the battle would be fought with equal weapons. But religions admittedly appeal, not to conviction as the result of argument, but to belief as demanded by revelation. And as the capacity for believing is strongest in childhood, special care is taken to make sure of this tender age. This has much more to do with the doctrines of belief taking root than threats and reports of miracles. If, in early childhood, certain fundamental views and doctrines are paraded with unusual solemnity, and an air of the greatest earnestness never before visible in anything else; if, at the same time, the possibility of a doubt about them be completely passed over, or touched upon only to indicate that doubt is the first step to eternal perdition, the resulting impression will be so deep that, as a rule, that is, in almost every case, doubt about them will be almost as impossible as doubt about one's own existence. Hardly one in ten thousand will have the strength of mind to ask himself seriously and earnestly�is that true? To call such as can do it strong minds, esprits forts, is a description more apt than is generally supposed. But for the ordinary mind there is nothing so absurd or revolting but what, if inculcated in that way, the strongest belief in it will strike root. If, for example, the killing of a heretic or infidel were essential to the future salvation of his soul, almost every one would make it the chief event of his life, and in dying would draw consolation and strength from the remembrance that he had succeeded. As a matter of fact, almost every Spaniard in days gone by used to look upon an auto da fe as the most pious of all acts and one most agreeable to God. A parallel to this may be found in the way in which the Thugs (a religious sect in India, suppressed a short time ago by the English, who executed numbers of them) express their sense of religion and their veneration for the goddess Kali; they take every opportunity of murdering their friends and traveling companions, with the object of getting possession of their goods, and in the serious conviction that they are thereby doing a praiseworthy action, conducive to their eternal welfare. [Footnote: Cf. Illustrations of the history and practice of the Thugs, London, 1837; also the Edinburg Review, Oct.-Jan., 1836-7.] The power of religious dogma, when inculcated early, is such as to stifle conscience, compassion, and finally every feeling of humanity. But if you want to see with your own eyes and close at hand what timely inoculation will accomplish, look at the English. Here is a nation favored before all others by nature; endowed, more than all others, with discernment, intelligence, power of judgment, strength of character; look at them, abased and made ridiculous, beyond all others, by their stupid ecclesiastical superstition, which appears amongst their other abilities like a fixed idea or monomania. For this they have to thank the circumstance that education is in the hands of the clergy, whose endeavor it is to impress all the articles of belief, at the earliest age, in a way that amounts to a kind of paralysis of the brain; this in its turn expresses itself all their life in an idiotic bigotry, which makes otherwise most sensible and intelligent people amongst them degrade themselves so that one can't make head or tail of them. If you consider how essential to such a masterpiece is inoculation in the tender age of childhood, the missionary system appears no longer only as the acme of human importunity, arrogance and impertinence, but also as an absurdity, if it doesn't confine itself to nations which are still in their infancy, like Caffirs, Hottentots, South Sea Islanders, etc. Amongst these races it is successful; but in India, the Brahmans treat the discourses of the missionaries with contemptuous smiles of approbation, or simply shrug their shoulders. And one may say generally that the proselytizing efforts of the missionaries in India, in spite of the most advantageous facilities, are, as a rule, a failure. An authentic report in the Vol. XXI. of the Asiatic Journal (1826) states that after so many years of missionary activity not more than three hundred living converts were to be found in the whole of India, where the population of the English possessions alone comes to one hundred and fifteen millions; and at the same time it is admitted that the Christian converts are distinguished for their extreme immorality. Three hundred venal and bribed souls out of so many millions! There is no evidence that things have gone better with Christianity in India since then, in spite of the fact that the missionaries are now trying, contrary to stipulation and in schools exclusively designed for secular English instruction, to work upon the children's minds as they please, in order to smuggle in Christianity; against which the Hindoos are most jealously on their guard. As I have said, childhood is the time to sow the seeds of belief, and not manhood; more especially where an earlier faith has taken root. An acquired conviction such as is feigned by adults is, as a rule, only the mask for some kind of personal interest. And it is the feeling that this is almost bound to be the case which makes a man who has changed his religion in mature years an object of contempt to most people everywhere; who thus show that they look upon religion, not as a matter of reasoned conviction, but merely as a belief inoculated in childhood, before any test can be applied. And that they are right in their view of religion is also obvious from the way in which not only the masses, who are blindly credulous, but also the clergy of every religion, who, as such, have faithfully and zealously studied its sources, foundations, dogmas and disputed points, cleave as a body to the religion of their particular country; consequently for a minister of one religion or confession to go over to another is the rarest thing in the world. The Catholic clergy, for example, are fully convinced of the truth of all the tenets of their Church, and so are the Protestant clergy of theirs, and both defend the principles of their creeds with like zeal. And yet the conviction is governed merely by the country native to each; to the South German ecclesiastic the truth of the Catholic dogma is quite obvious, to the North German, the Protestant. If then, these convictions are based on objective reasons, the reasons must be climatic, and thrive, like plants, some only here, some only there. The convictions of those who are thus locally convinced are taken on trust and believed by the masses everywhere. Demopheles. Well, no harm is done, and it doesn't make any real difference. As a fact, Protestantism is more suited to the North, Catholicism to the South. Philalethes. So it seems. Still I take a higher standpoint, and keep in view a more important object, the progress, namely, of the knowledge of truth among mankind. And from this point of view, it is a terrible thing that, wherever a man is born, certain propositions are inculcated in him in earliest youth, and he is assured that he may never have any doubts about them, under penalty of thereby forfeiting eternal salvation; propositions, I mean, which affect the foundation of all our other knowledge and accordingly determine for ever, and, if they are false, distort for ever, the point of view from which our knowledge starts; and as, further, the corollaries of these propositions touch the entire system of our intellectual attainments at every point, the whole of human knowledge is thoroughly adulterated by them. Evidence of this is afforded by every literature; the most striking by that of the Middle Age, but in a too considerable degree by that of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Look at even the first minds of all those epochs; how paralyzed they are by false fundamental positions like these; how, more especially, all insight into the true constitution and working of nature is, as it were, blocked up. During the whole of the Christian period Theism lies like a mountain on all intellectual, and chiefly on all philosophical efforts, and arrests or stunts all progress. For the scientific men of these ages God, devil, angels, demons hid the whole of nature; no inquiry was followed to the end, nothing ever thoroughly examined; everything which went beyond the most obvious casual nexus was immediately set down to those personalities. "It was at once explained by a reference to God, angels or demons," as Pomponatius expressed himself when the matter was being discussed, "and philosophers at any rate have nothing analogous." There is, to be sure, a suspicion of irony in this statement of Pomponatius, as his perfidy in other matters is known; still, he is only giving expression to the general way of thinking of his age. And if, on the other hand, any one possessed the rare quality of an elastic mind, which alone could burst the bonds, his writings and he himself with them were burnt; as happened to Bruno and Vanini. How completely an ordinary mind is paralyzed by that early preparation in metaphysics is seen in the most vivid way and on its most ridiculous side, where such a one undertakes to criticise the doctrines of an alien creed. The efforts of the ordinary man are generally found to be directed to a careful exhibition of the incongruity of its dogmas with those of his own belief: he is at great pains to show that not only do they not say, but certainly do not mean, the same thing; and with that he thinks, in his simplicity, that he has demonstrated the falsehood of the alien creed. He really never dreams of putting the question which of the two may be right; his own articles of belief he looks upon as � priori true and certain principles. Demopheles. So that's your higher point of view? I assure you there is a higher still. First live, then philosophize is a maxim of more comprehensive import than appears at first sight. The first thing to do is to control the raw and evil dispositions of the masses, so as to keep them from pushing injustice to extremes, and from committing cruel, violent and disgraceful acts. If you were to wait until they had recognized and grasped the truth, you would undoubtedly come too late; and truth, supposing that it had been found, would surpass their powers of comprehension. In any case an allegorical investiture of it, a parable or myth, is all that would be of any service to them. As Kant said, there must be a public standard of Right and Virtue; it must always flutter high overhead. It is a matter of indifference what heraldic figures are inscribed on it, so long as they signify what is meant. Such an allegorical representation of truth is always and everywhere, for humanity at large, a serviceable substitute for a truth to which it can never attain,�for a philosophy which it can never grasp; let alone the fact that it is daily changing its shape, and has in no form as yet met with general acceptance. Practical aims, then, my good Philalethes, are in every respect superior to theoretical. Philalethes. What you say is very like the ancient advice of Timaeus of Locrus, the Pythagorean, stop the mind with falsehood if you can't speed it with truth. I almost suspect that your plan is the one which is so much in vogue just now, that you want to impress upon me that The hour is nigh When we may feast in quiet. You recommend us, in fact, to take timely precautions, so that the waves of the discontented raging masses mayn't disturb us at table. But the whole point of view is as false as it is now-a-days popular and commended; and so I make haste to enter a protest against it. It is false, that state, justice, law cannot be upheld without the assistance of religion and its dogmas; and that justice and public order need religion as a necessary complement, if legislative enactments are to be carried out. It is false, were it repeated a hundred times. An effective and striking argument to the contrary is afforded by the ancients, especially the Greeks. They had nothing at all of what we understand by religion. They had no sacred documents, no dogma to be learned and its acceptance furthered by every one, its principles to be inculcated early on the young. Just as little was moral doctrine preached by the ministers of religion, nor did the priests trouble themselves about morality or about what the people did or left undone. Not at all. The duty of the priests was confined to temple-ceremonial, prayers, hymns, sacrifices, processions, lustrations and the like, the object of which was anything but the moral improvement of the individual. What was called religion consisted, more especially in the cities, in giving temples here and there to some of the gods of the greater tribes, in which the worship described was carried on as a state matter, and was consequently, in fact, an affair of police. No one, except the functionaries performing, was in any way compelled to attend, or even to believe in it. In the whole of antiquity there is no trace of any obligation to believe in any particular dogma. Merely in the case of an open denial of the existence of the gods, or any other reviling of them, a penalty was imposed, and that on account of the insult offered to the state, which served those gods; beyond this it was free to everyone to think of them what he pleased. If anyone wanted to gain the favor of those gods privately, by prayer or sacrifice, it was open to him to do so at his own expense and at his own risk; if he didn't do it, no one made any objection, least of all the state. In the case of the Romans, everyone had his own Lares and Penates at home; they were, however, in reality, only the venerated busts of ancestors. Of the immortality of the soul and a life beyond the grave, the ancients had no firm, clear or, least of all, dogmatically fixed idea, but very loose, fluctuating, indefinite and problematical notions, everyone in his own way: and the ideas about the gods were just as varying, individual and vague. There was, therefore, really no religion, in our sense of the word, amongst the ancients. But did anarchy and lawlessness prevail amongst them on that account? Is not law and civil order, rather, so much their work, that it still forms the foundation of our own? Was there not complete protection for property, even though it consisted for the most part of slaves? And did not this state of things last for more than a thousand years? So that I can't recognize, I must even protest against the practical aims and the necessity of religion in the sense indicated by you, and so popular now-a-days, that is, as an indispensable foundation of all legislative arrangements. For, if you take that point of view, the pure and sacred endeavor after truth would, to say the least, appear quixotic, and even criminal, if it ventured, in its feeling of justice, to denounce the authoritative creed as a usurper who had taken possession of the throne of truth and maintained his position by keeping up the deception. Demopheles. But religion is not opposed to truth; it itself teaches truth. And as the range of its activity is not a narrow lecture room, but the world and humanity at large, religion must conform to the requirements and comprehension of an audience so numerous and so mixed. Religion must not let truth appear in its naked form; or, to use a medical simile, it must not exhibit it pure, but must employ a mythical vehicle, a medium, as it were. You can also compare truth in this respect to certain chemical stuffs which in themselves are gaseous, but which for medicinal uses, as also for preservation or transmission, must be bound to a stable, solid base, because they would otherwise volatilize. Chlorine gas, for example, is for all purposes applied only in the form of chlorides. But if truth, pure, abstract and free from all mythical alloy, is always to remain unattainable, even by philosophers, it might be compared to fluorine, which cannot even be isolated, but must always appear in combination with other elements. Or, to take a less scientific simile, truth, which is inexpressible except by means of myth and allegory, is like water, which can be carried about only in vessels; a philosopher who insists on obtaining it pure is like a man who breaks the jug in order to get the water by itself. This is, perhaps, an exact analogy. At any rate, religion is truth allegorically and mythically expressed, and so rendered attainable and digestible by mankind in general. Mankind couldn't possibly take it pure and unmixed, just as we can't breathe pure oxygen; we require an addition of four times its bulk in nitrogen. In plain language, the profound meaning, the high aim of life, can only be unfolded and presented to the masses symbolically, because they are incapable of grasping it in its true signification. Philosophy, on the other hand, should be like the Eleusinian mysteries, for the few, the �lite. Philalethes. I understand. It comes, in short, to truth wearing the garment of falsehood. But in doing so it enters on a fatal alliance. What a dangerous weapon is put into the hands of those who are authorized to employ falsehood as the vehicle of truth! If it is as you say, I fear the damage caused by the falsehood will be greater than any advantage the truth could ever produce. Of course, if the allegory were admitted to be such, I should raise no objection; but with the admission it would rob itself of all respect, and consequently, of all utility. The allegory must, therefore, put in a claim to be true in the proper sense of the word, and maintain the claim; while, at the most, it is true only in an allegorical sense. Here lies the irreparable mischief, the permanent evil; and this is why religion has always been and always will be in conflict with the noble endeavor after pure truth. Demopheles. Oh no! that danger is guarded against. If religion mayn't exactly confess its allegorical nature, it gives sufficient indication of it. Philalethes. How so? Demopheles. In its mysteries. "Mystery," is in reality only a technical theological term for religious allegory. All religions have their mysteries. Properly speaking, a mystery is a dogma which is plainly absurd, but which, nevertheless, conceals in itself a lofty truth, and one which by itself would be completely incomprehensible to the ordinary understanding of the raw multitude. The multitude accepts it in this disguise on trust, and believes it, without being led astray by the absurdity of it, which even to its intelligence is obvious; and in this way it participates in the kernel of the matter so far as it is possible for it to do so. To explain what I mean, I may add that even in philosophy an attempt has been made to make use of a mystery. Pascal, for example, who was at once a pietist, a mathematician, and a philosopher, says in this threefold capacity: God is everywhere center and nowhere periphery. Malebranche has also the just remark: Liberty is a mystery. One could go a step further and maintain that in religions everything is mystery. For to impart truth, in the proper sense of the word, to the multitude in its raw state is absolutely impossible; all that can fall to its lot is to be enlightened by a mythological reflection of it. Naked truth is out of place before the eyes of the profane vulgar; it can only make its appearance thickly veiled. Hence, it is unreasonable to require of a religion that it shall be true in the proper sense of the word; and this, I may observe in passing, is now-a-days the absurd contention of Rationalists and Supernaturalists alike. Both start from the position that religion must be the real truth; and while the former demonstrate that it is not the truth, the latter obstinately maintain that it is; or rather, the former dress up and arrange the allegorical element in such a way, that, in the proper sense of the word, it could be true, but would be, in that case, a platitude; while the latter wish to maintain that it is true in the proper sense of the word, without any further dressing; a belief, which, as we ought to know is only to be enforced by inquisitions and the stake. As a fact, however, myth and allegory really form the proper element of religion; and under this indispensable condition, which is imposed by the intellectual limitation of the multitude, religion provides a sufficient satisfaction for those metaphysical requirements of mankind which are indestructible. It takes the place of that pure philosophical truth which is infinitely difficult and perhaps never attainable. Philalethes. Ah! just as a wooden leg takes the place of a natural one; it supplies what is lacking, barely does duty for it, claims to be regarded as a natural leg, and is more or less artfully put together. The only difference is that, whilst a natural leg as a rule preceded the wooden one, religion has everywhere got the start of philosophy. Demopheles. That may be, but still for a man who hasn't a natural leg, a wooden one is of great service. You must bear in mind that the metaphysical needs of mankind absolutely require satisfaction, because the horizon of men's thoughts must have a background and not remain unbounded. Man has, as a rule, no faculty for weighing reasons and discriminating between what is false and what is true; and besides, the labor which nature and the needs of nature impose upon him, leaves him no time for such enquiries, or for the education which they presuppose. In his case, therefore, it is no use talking of a reasoned conviction; he has to fall back on belief and authority. If a really true philosophy were to take the place of religion, nine-tenths at least of mankind would have to receive it on authority; that is to say, it too would be a matter of faith, for Plato's dictum, that the multitude can't be philosophers, will always remain true. Authority, however, is an affair of time and circumstance alone, and so it can't be bestowed on that which has only reason in its favor, it must accordingly be allowed to nothing but what has acquired it in the course of history, even if it is only an allegorical representation of truth. Truth in this form, supported by authority, appeals first of all to those elements in the human constitution which are strictly metaphysical, that is to say, to the need man feels of a theory in regard to the riddle of existence which forces itself upon his notice, a need arising from the consciousness that behind the physical in the world there is a metaphysical, something permanent as the foundation of constant change. Then it appeals to the will, to the fears and hopes of mortal beings living in constant struggle; for whom, accordingly, religion creates gods and demons whom they can cry to, appease and win over. Finally, it appeals to that moral consciousness which is undeniably present in man, lends to it that corroboration and support without which it would not easily maintain itself in the struggle against so many temptations. It is just from this side that religion affords an inexhaustible source of consolation and comfort in the innumerable trials of life, a comfort which does not leave men in death, but rather then only unfolds its full efficacy. So religion may be compared to one who takes a blind man by the hand and leads him, because he is unable to see for himself, whose concern it is to reach his destination, not to look at everything by the way. Philalethes. That is certainly the strong point of religion. If it is a fraud, it is a pious fraud; that is undeniable. But this makes priests something between deceivers and teachers of morality; they daren't teach the real truth, as you have quite rightly explained, even if they knew it, which is not the case. A true philosophy, then, can always exist, but not a true religion; true, I mean, in the proper understanding of the word, not merely in that flowery or allegorical sense which you have described; a sense in which all religions would be true, only in various degrees. It is quite in keeping with the inextricable mixture of weal and woe, honesty and deceit, good and evil, nobility and baseness, which is the average characteristic of the world everywhere, that the most important, the most lofty, the most sacred truths can make their appearance only in combination with a lie, can even borrow strength from a lie as from something that works more powerfully on mankind; and, as revelation, must be ushered in by a lie. This might, indeed, be regarded as the cachet of the moral world. However, we won't give up the hope that mankind will eventually reach a point of maturity and education at which it can on the one side produce, and on the other receive, the true philosophy. Simplex sigillum veri: the naked truth must be so simple and intelligible that it can be imparted to all in its true form, without any admixture of myth and fable, without disguising it in the form of religion. Demopheles. You've no notion how stupid most people are. Philalethes. I am only expressing a hope which I can't give up. If it were fulfilled, truth in its simple and intelligible form would of course drive religion from the place it has so long occupied as its representative, and by that very means kept open for it. The time would have come when religion would have carried out her object and completed her course: the race she had brought to years of discretion she could dismiss, and herself depart in peace: that would be the euthanasia of religion. But as long as she lives, she has two faces, one of truth, one of fraud. According as you look at one or the other, you will bear her favor or ill-will. Religion must be regarded as a necessary evil, its necessity resting on the pitiful imbecility of the great majority of mankind, incapable of grasping the truth, and therefore requiring, in its pressing need, something to take its place. Demopheles. Really, one would think that you philosophers had truth in a cupboard, and that all you had to do was to go and get it! Philalethes. Well, if we haven't got it, it is chiefly owing to the pressure put upon philosophy by religion at all times and in all places. People have tried to make the expression and communication of truth, even the contemplation and discovery of it, impossible, by putting children, in their earliest years, into the hands of priests to be manipulated; to have the lines, in which their fundamental thoughts are henceforth to run, laid down with such firmness as, in essential matters, to be fixed and determined for this whole life. When I take up the writings even of the best intellects of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, (more especially if I have been engaged in Oriental studies), I am sometimes shocked to see how they are paralyzed and hemmed in on all sides by Jewish ideas. How can anyone think out the true philosophy when he is prepared like this? Demopheles. Even if the true philosophy were to be discovered, religion wouldn't disappear from the world, as you seem to think. There can't be one system of metaphysics for everybody; that's rendered impossible by the natural differences of intellectual power between man and man, and the differences, too, which education makes. It is a necessity for the great majority of mankind to engage in that severe bodily labor which cannot be dispensed with if the ceaseless requirements of the whole race are to be satisfied. Not only does this leave the majority no time for education, for learning, for contemplation; but by virtue of the hard and fast antagonism between muscles and mind, the intelligence is blunted by so much exhausting bodily labor, and becomes heavy, clumsy, awkward, and consequently incapable of grasping any other than quite simple situations. At least nine-tenths of the human race falls under this category. But still the people require a system of metaphysics, that is, an account of the world and our existence, because such an account belongs to the most natural needs of mankind, they require a popular system; and to be popular it must combine many rare qualities. It must be easily understood, and at the same time possess, on the proper points, a certain amount of obscurity, even of impenetrability; then a correct and satisfactory system of morality must be bound up with its dogmas; above all, it must afford inexhaustible consolation in suffering and death; the consequence of all this is, that it can only be true in an allegorical and not in a real sense. Further, it must have the support of an authority which is impressive by its great age, by being universally recognized, by its documents, their tone and utterances; qualities which are so extremely difficult to combine that many a man wouldn't be so ready, if he considered the matter, to help to undermine a religion, but would reflect that what he is attacking is a people's most sacred treasure. If you want to form an opinion on religion, you should always bear in mind the character of the great multitude for which it is destined, and form a picture to yourself of its complete inferiority, moral and intellectual. It is incredible how far this inferiority goes, and how perseveringly a spark of truth will glimmer on even under the crudest covering of monstrous fable or grotesque ceremony, clinging indestructibly, like the odor of musk, to everything that has once come into contact with it. In illustration of this, consider the profound wisdom of the Upanishads, and then look at the mad idolatry in the India of to-day, with its pilgrimages, processions and festivities, or at the insane and ridiculous goings-on of the Saniassi. Still one can't deny that in all this insanity and nonsense there lies some obscure purpose which accords with, or is a reflection of the profound wisdom I mentioned. But for the brute multitude, it had to be dressed up in this form. In such a contrast as this we have the two poles of humanity, the wisdom of the individual and the bestiality of the many, both of which find their point of contact in the moral sphere. That saying from the Kurral must occur to everybody. Base people look like men, but I have never seen their exact counterpart. The man of education may, all the same, interpret religion to himself cum grano salis; the man of learning, the contemplative spirit may secretly exchange it for a philosophy. But here again one philosophy wouldn't suit everybody; by the laws of affinity every system would draw to itself that public to whose education and capacities it was most suited. So there is always an inferior metaphysical system of the schools for the educated multitude, and a higher one for the �lite. Kant's lofty doctrine, for instance, had to be degraded to the level of the schools and ruined by such men as Fries, Krug and Salat. In short, here, if anywhere, Goethe's maxim is true, One does not suit all. Pure faith in revelation and pure metaphysics are for the two extremes, and for the intermediate steps mutual modifications of both in innumerable combinations and gradations. And this is rendered necessary by the immeasurable differences which nature and education have placed between man and man. Philalethes. The view you take reminds me seriously of the mysteries of the ancients, which you mentioned just now. Their fundamental purpose seems to have been to remedy the evil arising from the differences of intellectual capacity and education. The plan was, out of the great multitude utterly impervious to unveiled truth, to select certain persons who might have it revealed to them up to a given point; out of these, again, to choose others to whom more would be revealed, as being able to grasp more; and so on up to the Epopts. These grades correspond to the little, greater and greatest mysteries. The arrangement was founded on a correct estimate of the intellectual inequality of mankind. Demopheles. To some extent the education in our lower, middle and high schools corresponds to the varying grades of initiation into the mysteries. Philalethes. In a very approximate way; and then only in so far as subjects of higher knowledge are written about exclusively in Latin. But since that has ceased to be the case, all the mysteries are profaned. Demopheles. However that may be, I wanted to remind you that you should look at religion more from the practical than from the theoretical side. Personified metaphysics may be the enemy of religion, but all the same personified morality will be its friend. Perhaps the metaphysical element in all religions is false; but the moral element in all is true. This might perhaps be presumed from the fact that they all disagree in their metaphysics, but are in accord as regards morality. Philalethes. Which is an illustration of the rule of logic that false premises may give a true conclusion. Demopheles. Let me hold you to your conclusion: let me remind you that religion has two sides. If it can't stand when looked at from its theoretical, that is, its intellectual side; on the other hand, from the moral side, it proves itself the only means of guiding, controlling and mollifying those races of animals endowed with reason, whose kinship with the ape does not exclude a kinship with the tiger. But at the same time religion is, as a rule, a sufficient satisfaction for their dull metaphysical necessities. You don't seem to me to possess a proper idea of the difference, wide as the heavens asunder, the deep gulf between your man of learning and enlightenment, accustomed to the process of thinking, and the heavy, clumsy, dull and sluggish consciousness of humanity's beasts of burden, whose thoughts have once and for all taken the direction of anxiety about their livelihood, and cannot be put in motion in any other; whose muscular strength is so exclusively brought into play that the nervous power, which makes intelligence, sinks to a very low ebb. People like that must have something tangible which they can lay hold of on the slippery and thorny pathway of their life, some sort of beautiful fable, by means of which things can be imparted to them which their crude intelligence can entertain only in picture and parable. Profound explanations and fine distinctions are thrown away upon them. If you conceive religion in this light, and recollect that its aims are above all practical, and only in a subordinate degree theoretical, it will appear to you as something worthy of the highest respect. Philalethes. A respect which will finally rest upon the principle that the end sanctifies the means. I don't feel in favor of a compromise on a basis like that. Religion may be an excellent means of training the perverse, obtuse and ill-disposed members of the biped race: in the eyes of the friend of truth every fraud, even though it be a pious one, is to be condemned. A system of deception, a pack of lies, would be a strange means of inculcating virtue. The flag to which I have taken the oath is truth; I shall remain faithful to it everywhere, and whether I succeed or not, I shall fight for light and truth! If I see religion on the wrong side� Demopheles. But you won't. Religion isn't a deception: it is true and the most important of all truths. Because its doctrines are, as I have said, of such a lofty kind that the multitude can't grasp them without an intermediary, because, I say, its light would blind the ordinary eye, it comes forward wrapt in the veil of allegory and teaches, not indeed what is exactly true in itself, but what is true in respect of the lofty meaning contained in it; and, understood in this way, religion is the truth. Philalethes. It would be all right if religion were only at liberty to be true in a merely allegorical sense. But its contention is that it is downright true in the proper sense of the word. Herein lies the deception, and it is here that the friend of truth must take up a hostile position. Demopheles. The deception is a sine qua non. If religion were to admit that it was only the allegorical meaning in its doctrine which was true, it would rob itself of all efficacy. Such rigorous treatment as this would destroy its invaluable influence on the hearts and morals of mankind. Instead of insisting on that with pedantic obstinacy, look at its great achievements in the practical sphere, its furtherance of good and kindly feelings, its guidance in conduct, the support and consolation it gives to suffering humanity in life and death. How much you ought to guard against letting theoretical cavils discredit in the eyes of the multitude, and finally wrest from it, something which is an inexhaustible source of consolation and tranquillity, something which, in its hard lot, it needs so much, even more than we do. On that score alone, religion should be free from attack. Philalethes. With that kind of argument you could have driven Luther from the field, when he attacked the sale of indulgences. How many a one got consolation from the letters of indulgence, a consolation which nothing else could give, a complete tranquillity; so that he joyfully departed with the fullest confidence in the packet of them which he held in his hand at the hour of death, convinced that they were so many cards of admission to all the nine heavens. What is the use of grounds of consolation and tranquillity which are constantly overshadowed by the Damocles-sword of illusion? The truth, my dear sir, is the only safe thing; the truth alone remains steadfast and trusty; it is the only solid consolation; it is the indestructible diamond. Demopheles. Yes, if you had truth in your pocket, ready to favor us with it on demand. All you've got are metaphysical systems, in which nothing is certain but the headaches they cost. Before you take anything away, you must have something better to put in its place. Philalethes. That's what you keep on saying. To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it. Then give up deceiving people; confess ignorance of what you don't know, and leave everyone to form his own articles of faith for himself. Perhaps they won't turn out so bad, especially as they'll rub one another's corners down, and mutually rectify mistakes. The existence of many views will at any rate lay a foundation of tolerance. Those who possess knowledge and capacity may betake themselves to the study of philosophy, or even in their own persons carry the history of philosophy a step further. Demopheles. That'll be a pretty business! A whole nation of raw metaphysicians, wrangling and eventually coming to blows with one another! Philalethes. Well, well, a few blows here and there are the sauce of life; or at any rate a very inconsiderable evil compared with such things as priestly dominion, plundering of the laity, persecution of heretics, courts of inquisition, crusades, religious wars, massacres of St. Bartholomew. These have been the result of popular metaphysics imposed from without; so I stick to the old saying that you can't get grapes from thistles, nor expect good to come from a pack of lies. Demopheles. How often must I repeat that religion is anything but a pack of lies? It is truth itself, only in a mythical, allegorical vesture. But when you spoke of your plan of everyone being his own founder of religion, I wanted to say that a particularism like this is totally opposed to human nature, and would consequently destroy all social order. Man is a metaphysical animal,�that is to say, he has paramount metaphysical necessities; accordingly, he conceives life above all in its metaphysical signification, and wishes to bring everything into line with that. Consequently, however strange it may sound in view of the uncertainty of all dogmas, agreement in the fundamentals of metaphysics is the chief thing, because a genuine and lasting bond of union is only possible among those who are of one opinion on these points. As a result of this, the main point of likeness and of contrast between nations is rather religion than government, or even language; and so the fabric of society, the State, will stand firm only when founded on a system of metaphysics which is acknowledged by all. This, of course, can only be a popular system,�that is, a religion: it becomes part and parcel of the constitution of the State, of all the public manifestations of the national life, and also of all solemn acts of individuals. This was the case in ancient India, among the Persians, Egyptians, Jews, Greeks and Romans; it is still the case in the Brahman, Buddhist and Mohammedan nations. In China there are three faiths, it is true, of which the most prevalent�Buddhism�is precisely the one which is not protected by the State; still, there is a saying in China, universally acknowledged, and of daily application, that "the three faiths are only one,"�that is to say, they agree in essentials. The Emperor confesses all three together at the same time. And Europe is the union of Christian States: Christianity is the basis of every one of the members, and the common bond of all. Hence Turkey, though geographically in Europe, is not properly to be reckoned as belonging to it. In the same way, the European princes hold their place "by the grace of God:" and the Pope is the vicegerent of God. Accordingly, as his throne was the highest, he used to wish all thrones to be regarded as held in fee from him. In the same way, too, Archbishops and Bishops, as such, possessed temporal power; and in England they still have seats and votes in the Upper House. Protestant princes, as such, are heads of their churches: in England, a few years ago, this was a girl eighteen years old. By the revolt from the Pope, the Reformation shattered the European fabric, and in a special degree dissolved the true unity of Germany by destroying its common religious faith. This union, which had practically come to an end, had, accordingly, to be restored later on by artificial and purely political means. You see, then, how closely connected a common faith is with the social order and the constitution of every State. Faith is everywhere the support of the laws and the constitution, the foundation, therefore, of the social fabric, which could hardly hold together at all if religion did not lend weight to the authority of government and the dignity of the ruler. Philalethes. Oh, yes, princes use God as a kind of bogey to frighten grown-up children to bed with, if nothing else avails: that's why they attach so much importance to the Deity. Very well. Let me, in passing, recommend our rulers to give their serious attention, regularly twice every year, to the fifteenth chapter of the First Book of Samuel, that they may be constantly reminded of what it means to prop the throne on the altar. Besides, since the stake, that ultima ration theologorum, has gone out of fashion, this method of government has lost its efficacy. For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they shine only when it is dark. A certain amount of general ignorance is the condition of all religions, the element in which alone they can exist. And as soon as astronomy, natural science, geology, history, the knowledge of countries and peoples have spread their light broadcast, and philosophy finally is permitted to say a word, every faith founded on miracles and revelation must disappear; and philosophy takes its place. In Europe the day of knowledge and science dawned towards the end of the fifteenth century with the appearance of the Renaissance Platonists: its sun rose higher in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so rich in results, and scattered the mists of the Middle Age. Church and Faith were compelled to disappear in the same proportion; and so in the eighteenth century English and French philosophers were able to take up an attitude of direct hostility; until, finally, under Frederick the Great, Kant appeared, and took away from religious belief the support it had previously enjoyed from philosophy: he emancipated the handmaid of theology, and in attacking the question with German thoroughness and patience, gave it an earnest instead of a frivolous tone. The consequence of this is that we see Christianity undermined in the nineteenth century, a serious faith in it almost completely gone; we see it fighting even for bare existence, whilst anxious princes try to set it up a little by artificial means, as a doctor uses a drug on a dying patient. In this connection there is a passage in Condorcet's "Des Progr�s de l'esprit humain" which looks as if written as a warning to our age: "the religious zeal shown by philosophers and great men was only a political devotion; and every religion which allows itself to be defended as a belief that may usefully be left to the people, can only hope for an agony more or less prolonged." In the whole course of the events which I have indicated, you may always observe that faith and knowledge are related as the two scales of a balance; when the one goes up, the other goes down. So sensitive is the balance that it indicates momentary influences. When, for instance, at the beginning of this century, those inroads of French robbers under the leadership of Bonaparte, and the enormous efforts necessary for driving them out and punishing them, had brought about a temporary neglect of science and consequently a certain decline in the general increase of knowledge, the Church immediately began to raise her head again and Faith began to show fresh signs of life; which, to be sure, in keeping with the times, was partly poetical in its nature. On the other hand, in the more than thirty years of peace which followed, leisure and prosperity furthered the building up of science and the spread of knowledge in an extraordinary degree: the consequence of which is what I have indicated, the dissolution and threatened fall of religion. Perhaps the time is approaching which has so often been prophesied, when religion will take her departure from European humanity, like a nurse which the child has outgrown: the child will now be given over to the instructions of a tutor. For there is no doubt that religious doctrines which are founded merely on authority, miracles and revelations, are only suited to the childhood of humanity. Everyone will admit that a race, the past duration of which on the earth all accounts, physical and historical, agree in placing at not more than some hundred times the life of a man of sixty, is as yet only in its first childhood. Demopheles. Instead of taking an undisguised pleasure in prophesying the downfall of Christianity, how I wish you would consider what a measureless debt of gratitude European humanity owes to it, how greatly it has benefited by the religion which, after a long interval, followed it from its old home in the East. Europe received from Christianity ideas which were quite new to it, the Knowledge, I mean, of the fundamental truth that life cannot be an end-in-itself, that the true end of our existence lies beyond it. The Greeks and Romans had placed this end altogether in our present life, so that in this sense they may certainly be called blind heathens. And, in keeping with this view of life, all their virtues can be reduced to what is serviceable to the community, to what is useful in fact. Aristotle says quite naively, Those virtues must necessarily be the greatest which are the most useful to others. So the ancients thought patriotism the highest virtue, although it is really a very doubtful one, since narrowness, prejudice, vanity and an enlightened self-interest are main elements in it. Just before the passage I quoted, Aristotle enumerates all the virtues, in order to discuss them singly. They are Justice, Courage, Temperance, Magnificence, Magnanimity, Liberality, Gentleness, Good Sense and Wisdom. How different from the Christian virtues! Plato himself, incomparably the most transcendental philosopher of pre-Christian antiquity, knows no higher virtue than Justice; and he alone recommends it unconditionally and for its own sake, whereas the rest make a happy life, vita beata, the aim of all virtue, and moral conduct the way to attain it. Christianity freed European humanity from this shallow, crude identification of itself with the hollow, uncertain existence of every day, coelumque tueri Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus. Christianity, accordingly, does not preach mere Justice, but the Love of Mankind, Compassion, Good Works, Forgiveness, Love of your Enemies, Patience, Humility, Resignation, Faith and Hope. It even went a step further, and taught that the world is of evil, and that we need deliverance. It preached despisal of the world, self-denial, chastity, giving up of one's will, that is, turning away from life and its illusory pleasures. It taught the healing power of pain: an instrument of torture is the symbol of Christianity. I am quite ready to admit that this earnest, this only correct view of life was thousands of years previously spread all over Asia in other forms, as it is still, independently of Christianity; but for European humanity it was a new and great revelation. For it is well known that the population of Europe consists of Asiatic races driven out as wanderers from their own homes, and gradually settling down in Europe; on their wanderings these races lost the original religion of their homes, and with it the right view of life: so, under a new sky, they formed religions for themselves, which were rather crude; the worship of Odin, for instance, the Druidic or the Greek religion, the metaphysical content of which was little and shallow. In the meantime the Greeks developed a special, one might almost say, an instinctive sense of beauty, belonging to them alone of all the nations who have ever existed on the earth, peculiar, fine and exact: so that their mythology took, in the mouth of their poets, and in the hands of their artists, an exceedingly beautiful and pleasing shape. On the other hand, the true and deep significance of life was lost to the Greeks and Romans. They lived on like grown-up children, till Christianity came and recalled them to the serious side of existence. Philalethes. And to see the effects one need only compare antiquity with the Middle Age; the time of Pericles, say, with the fourteenth century. You could scarcely believe you were dealing with the same kind of beings. There, the finest development of humanity, excellent institutions, wise laws, shrewdly apportioned offices, rationally ordered freedom, all the arts, including poetry and philosophy, at their best; the production of works which, after thousands of years, are unparalleled, the creations, as it were, of a higher order of beings, which we can never imitate; life embellished by the noblest fellowship, as portrayed in Xenophen's Banquet. Look on the other picture, if you can; a time at which the Church had enslaved the minds, and violence the bodies of men, that knights and priests might lay the whole weight of life upon the common beast of burden, the third estate. There, you have might as right, Feudalism and Fanaticism in close alliance, and in their train abominable ignorance and darkness of mind, a corresponding intolerance, discord of creeds, religious wars, crusades, inquisitions and persecutions; as the form of fellowship, chivalry, compounded of savagery and folly, with its pedantic system of ridiculous false pretences carried to an extreme, its degrading superstition and apish veneration for women. Gallantry is the residue of this veneration, deservedly requited as it is by feminine arrogance; it affords continual food for laughter to all Asiatics, and the Greeks would have joined in it. In the golden Middle Age the practice developed into a regular and methodical service of women; it imposed deeds of heroism, cours d'amour, bombastic Troubadour songs, etc.; although it is to be observed that these last buffooneries, which had an intellectual side, were chiefly at home in France; whereas amongst the material sluggish Germans, the knights distinguished themselves rather by drinking and stealing; they were good at boozing and filling their castles with plunder; though in the courts, to be sure, there was no lack of insipid love songs. What caused this utter transformation? Migration and Christianity. Demopheles. I am glad you reminded me of it. Migration was the source of the evil; Christianity the dam on which it broke. It was chiefly by Christianity that the raw, wild hordes which came flooding in were controlled and tamed. The savage man must first of all learn to kneel, to venerate, to obey; after that he can be civilized. This was done in Ireland by St. Patrick, in Germany by Winifred the Saxon, who was a genuine Boniface. It was migration of peoples, the last advance of Asiatic races towards Europe, followed only by the fruitless attempts of those under Attila, Zenghis Khan, and Timur, and as a comic afterpiece, by the gipsies,�it was this movement which swept away the humanity of the ancients. Christianity was precisely the principle which set itself to work against this savagery; just as later, through the whole of the Middle Age, the Church and its hierarchy were most necessary to set limits to the savage barbarism of those masters of violence, the princes and knights: it was what broke up the icefloes in that mighty deluge. Still, the chief aim of Christianity is not so much to make this life pleasant as to render us worthy of a better. It looks away over this span of time, over this fleeting dream, and seeks to lead us to eternal welfare. Its tendency is ethical in the highest sense of the word, a sense unknown in Europe till its advent; as I have shown you, by putting the morality and religion of the ancients side by side with those of Christendom. Philalethes. You are quite right as regards theory: but look at the practice! In comparison with the ages of Christianity the ancient world was unquestionably less cruel than the Middle Age, with its deaths by exquisite torture, its innumerable burnings at the stake. The ancients, further, were very enduring, laid great stress on justice, frequently sacrificed themselves for their country, showed such traces of every kind of magnanimity, and such genuine manliness, that to this day an acquaintance with their thoughts and actions is called the study of Humanity. The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives in America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place; and among the ancients there is nothing analogous to this, nothing that can be compared with it; for the slaves of the ancients, the familia, the vernae, were a contented race, and faithfully devoted to their masters' service, and as different from the miserable negroes of the sugar plantations, which are a disgrace to humanity, as their two colors are distinct. Those special moral delinquencies for which we reproach the ancients, and which are perhaps less uncommon now-a-days than appears on the surface to be the case, are trifles compared with the Christian enormities I have mentioned. Can you then, all considered, maintain that mankind has been really made morally better by Christianity? Demopheles. If the results haven't everywhere been in keeping with the purity and truth of the doctrine, it may be because the doctrine has been too noble, too elevated for mankind, that its aim has been placed too high. It was so much easier to come up to the heathen system, or to the Mohammedan. It is precisely what is noble and dignified that is most liable everywhere to misuse and fraud: abusus optimi pessimus. Those high doctrines have accordingly now and then served as a pretext for the most abominable proceedings, and for acts of unmitigated wickedness. The downfall of the institutions of the old world, as well as of its arts and sciences, is, as I have said, to be attributed to the inroad of foreign barbarians. The inevitable result of this inroad was that ignorance and savagery got the upper hand; consequently violence and knavery established their dominion, and knights and priests became a burden to mankind. It is partly, however, to be explained by the fact that the new religion made eternal and not temporal welfare the object of desire, taught that simplicity of heart was to be preferred to knowledge, and looked askance at all worldly pleasure. Now the arts and sciences subserve worldly pleasure; but in so far as they could be made serviceable to religion they were promoted, and attained a certain degree of perfection. Philalethes. In a very narrow sphere. The sciences were suspicious companions, and as such, were placed under restrictions: on the other hand, darling ignorance, that element so necessary to a system of faith, was carefully nourished. Demopheles. And yet mankind's possessions in the way of knowledge up to that period, which were preserved in the writings of the ancients, were saved from destruction by the clergy, especially by those in the monasteries. How would it have fared if Christianity hadn't come in just before the migration of peoples. Philalethes. It would really be a most useful inquiry to try and make, with the coldest impartiality, an unprejudiced, careful and accurate comparison of the advantages and disadvantages which may be put down to religion. For that, of course, a much larger knowledge of historical and psychological data than either of us command would be necessary. Academies might make it a subject for a prize essay. Demopheles. They'll take good care not to do so. Philalethes. I'm surprised to hear you say that: it's a bad look out for religion. However, there are academies which, in proposing a subject for competition, make it a secret condition that the prize is to go to the man who best interprets their own view. If we could only begin by getting a statistician to tell us how many crimes are prevented every year by religious, and how many by other motives, there would be very few of the former. If a man feels tempted to commit a crime, you may rely upon it that the first consideration which enters his head is the penalty appointed for it, and the chances that it will fall upon him: then comes, as a second consideration, the risk to his reputation. If I am not mistaken, he will ruminate by the hour on these two impediments, before he ever takes a thought of religious considerations. If he gets safely over those two first bulwarks against crime, I think religion alone will very rarely hold him back from it. Demopheles. I think that it will very often do so, especially when its influence works through the medium of custom. An atrocious act is at once felt to be repulsive. What is this but the effect of early impressions? Think, for instance, how often a man, especially if of noble birth, will make tremendous sacrifices to perform what he has promised, motived entirely by the fact that his father has often earnestly impressed upon him in his childhood that "a man of honor" or "a gentleman" or a "a cavalier" always keeps his word inviolate. Philalethes. That's no use unless there is a certain inborn honorableness. You mustn't ascribe to religion what results from innate goodness of character, by which compassion for the man who would suffer by his crime keeps a man from committing it. This is the genuine moral motive, and as such it is independent of all religions. Demopheles. But this is a motive which rarely affects the multitude unless it assumes a religious aspect. The religious aspect at any rate strengthens its power for good. Yet without any such natural foundation, religious motives alone are powerful to prevent crime. We need not be surprised at this in the case of the multitude, when we see that even people of education pass now and then under the influence, not indeed of religious motives, which are founded on something which is at least allegorically true, but of the most absurd superstition, and allow themselves to be guided by it all their life long; as, for instance, undertaking nothing on a Friday, refusing to sit down thirteen at a table, obeying chance omens, and the like. How much more likely is the multitude to be guided by such things. You can't form any adequate idea of the narrow limits of the mind in its raw state; it is a place of absolute darkness, especially when, as often happens, a bad, unjust and malicious heart is at the bottom of it. People in this condition�and they form the great bulk of humanity�must be led and controlled as well as may be, even if it be by really superstitious motives; until such time as they become susceptible to truer and better ones. As an instance of the direct working of religion, may be cited the fact, common enough, in Italy especially, of a thief restoring stolen goods, through the influence of his confessor, who says he won't absolve him if he doesn't. Think again of the case of an oath, where religion shows a most decided influence; whether it be that a man places himself expressly in the position of a purely moral being, and as such looks upon himself as solemnly appealed to, as seems to be the case in France, where the formula is simply je le jure, and also among the Quakers, whose solemn yea or nay is regarded as a substitute for the oath; or whether it be that a man really believes he is pronouncing something which may affect his eternal happiness,�a belief which is presumably only the investiture of the former feeling. At any rate, religious considerations are a means of awakening and calling out a man's moral nature. How often it happens that a man agrees to take a false oath, and then, when it comes to the point, suddenly refuses, and truth and right win the day. Philalethes. Oftener still false oaths are really taken, and truth and right trampled under foot, though all witnesses of the oath know it well! Still you are quite right to quote the oath as an undeniable example of the practical efficacy of religion. But, in spite of all you've said, I doubt whether the efficacy of religion goes much beyond this. Just think; if a public proclamation were suddenly made announcing the repeal of all the criminal laws; I fancy neither you nor I would have the courage to go home from here under the protection of religious motives. If, in the same way, all religions were declared untrue, we could, under the protection of the laws alone, go on living as before, without any special addition to our apprehensions or our measures of precaution. I will go beyond this, and say that religions have very frequently exercised a decidedly demoralizing influence. One may say generally that duties towards God and duties towards humanity are in inverse ratio. It is easy to let adulation of the Deity make amends for lack of proper behavior towards man. And so we see that in all times and in all countries the great majority of mankind find it much easier to beg their way to heaven by prayers than to deserve to go there by their actions. In every religion it soon comes to be the case that faith, ceremonies, rites and the like, are proclaimed to be more agreeable to the Divine will than moral actions; the former, especially if they are bound up with the emoluments of the clergy, gradually come to be looked upon as a substitute for the latter. Sacrifices in temples, the saying of masses, the founding of chapels, the planting of crosses by the roadside, soon come to be the most meritorious works, so that even great crimes are expiated by them, as also by penance, subjection to priestly authority, confessions, pilgrimages, donations to the temples and the clergy, the building of monasteries and the like. The consequence of all this is that the priests finally appear as middlemen in the corruption of the gods. And if matters don't go quite so far as that, where is the religion whose adherents don't consider prayers, praise and manifold acts of devotion, a substitute, at least in part, for moral conduct? Look at England, where by an audacious piece of priestcraft, the Christian Sunday, introduced by Constantine the Great as a subject for the Jewish Sabbath, is in a mendacious way identified with it, and takes its name,�and this in order that the commands of Jehovah for the Sabbath (that is, the day on which the Almighty had to rest from his six days' labor, so that it is essentially the last day of the week), might be applied to the Christian Sunday, the dies solis, the first day of the week which the sun opens in glory, the day of devotion and joy. The consequence of this fraud is that "Sabbath-breaking," or "the desecration of the Sabbath," that is, the slightest occupation, whether of business or pleasure, all games, music, sewing, worldly books, are on Sundays looked upon as great sins. Surely the ordinary man must believe that if, as his spiritual guides impress upon him, he is only constant in "a strict observance of the holy Sabbath," and is "a regular attendant at Divine Service," that is, if he only invariably idles away his time on Sundays, and doesn't fail to sit two hours in church to hear the same litany for the thousandth time and mutter it in tune with the others, he may reckon on indulgence in regard to those little peccadilloes which he occasionally allows himself. Those devils in human form, the slave owners and slave traders in the Free States of North America (they should be called the Slave States) are, as a rule, orthodox, pious Anglicans who would consider it a grave sin to work on Sundays; and having confidence in this, and their regular attendance at church, they hope for eternal happiness. The demoralizing tendency of religion is less problematical than its moral influence. How great and how certain that moral influence must be to make amends for the enormities which religions, especially the Christian and Mohammedan religions, have produced and spread over the earth! Think of the fanaticism, the endless persecutions, the religious wars, that sanguinary frenzy of which the ancients had no conception! think of the crusades, a butchery lasting two hundred years and inexcusable, its war cry "It is the will of God," its object to gain possession of the grave of one who preached love and sufferance! think of the cruel expulsion and extermination of the Moors and Jews from Spain! think of the orgies of blood, the inquisitions, the heretical tribunals, the bloody and terrible conquests of the Mohammedans in three continents, or those of Christianity in America, whose inhabitants were for the most part, and in Cuba entirely, exterminated. According to Las Cases, Christianity murdered twelve millions in forty years, of course all in majorem Dei gloriam, and for the propagation of the Gospel, and because what wasn't Christian wasn't even looked upon as human! I have, it is true, touched upon these matters before; but when in our day, we hear of Latest News from the Kingdom of God [Footnote: A missionary paper, of which the 40th annual number appeared in 1856], we shall not be weary of bringing old news to mind. And above all, don't let us forget India, the cradle of the human race, or at least of that part of it to which we belong, where first Mohammedans, and then Christians, were most cruelly infuriated against the adherents of the original faith of mankind. The destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act, still bears witness to the monotheistic fury of the Mohammedans, carried on from Marmud, the Ghaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aureng Zeb, the fratricide, whom the Portuguese Christians have zealously imitated by destruction of temples and the auto de f� of the inquisition at Goa. Don't let us forget the chosen people of God, who after they had, by Jehovah's express command, stolen from their old and trusty friends in Egypt the gold and silver vessels which had been lent to them, made a murderous and plundering inroad into "the Promised Land," with the murderer Moses at their head, to tear it from the rightful owners,�again, by the same Jehovah's express and repeated commands, showing no mercy, exterminating the inhabitants, women, children and all (Joshua, ch. 9 and 10). And all this, simply because they weren't circumcised and didn't know Jehovah, which was reason enough to justify every enormity against them; just as for the same reason, in earlier times, the infamous knavery of the patriarch Jacob and his chosen people against Hamor, King of Shalem, and his people, is reported to his glory because the people were unbelievers! (Genesis xxxiii. 18.) Truly, it is the worst side of religions that the believers of one religion have allowed themselves every sin again those of another, and with the utmost ruffianism and cruelty persecuted them; the Mohammedans against the Christians and Hindoos; the Christians against the Hindoos, Mohammedans, American natives, Negroes, Jews, heretics, and others. Perhaps I go too far in saying all religions. For the sake of truth, I must add that the fanatical enormities perpetrated in the name of religion are only to be put down to the adherents of monotheistic creeds, that is, the Jewish faith and its two branches, Christianity and Islamism. We hear of nothing of the kind in the case of Hindoos and Buddhists. Although it is a matter of common knowledge that about the fifth century of our era Buddhism was driven out by the Brahmans from its ancient home in the southernmost part of the Indian peninsula, and afterwards spread over the whole of the rest of Asia, as far as I know, we have no definite account of any crimes of violence, or wars, or cruelties, perpetrated in the course of it. That may, of course, be attributable to the obscurity which veils the history of those countries; but the exceedingly mild character of their religion, together with their unceasing inculcation of forbearance towards all living things, and the fact that Brahmanism by its caste system properly admits no proselytes, allows one to hope that their adherents may be acquitted of shedding blood on a large scale, and of cruelty in any form. Spence Hardy, in his excellent book on Eastern Monachism, praises the extraordinary tolerance of the Buddhists, and adds his assurance that the annals of Buddhism will furnish fewer instances of religious persecution than those of any other religion. As a matter of fact, it is only to monotheism that intolerance is essential; an only god is by his nature a jealous god, who can allow no other god to exist. Polytheistic gods, on the other hand, are naturally tolerant; they live and let live; their own colleagues are the chief objects of their sufferance, as being gods of the same religion. This toleration is afterwards extended to foreign gods, who are, accordingly, hospitably received, and later on admitted, in some cases, to an equality of rights; the chief example of which is shown by the fact, that the Romans willingly admitted and venerated Phrygian, Egyptian and other gods. Hence it is that monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples, and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun three thousand years, just because a jealous god had said, Thou shalt make no graven image. But to return to the chief point. You are certainly right in insisting on the strong metaphysical needs of mankind; but religion appears to me to be not so much a satisfaction as an abuse of those needs. At any rate we have seen that in regard to the furtherance of morality, its utility is, for the most part, problematical, its disadvantages, and especially the atrocities which have followed in its train, are patent to the light of day. Of course it is quite a different matter if we consider the utility of religion as a prop of thrones; for where these are held "by the grace of God," throne and altar are intimately associated; and every wise prince who loves his throne and his family will appear at the head of his people as an exemplar of true religion. Even Machiavelli, in the eighteenth chapter of his book, most earnestly recommended religion to princes. Beyond this, one may say that revealed religions stand to philosophy exactly in the relation of "sovereigns by the grace of God," to "the sovereignty of the people"; so that the two former terms of the parallel are in natural alliance. Demopheles. Oh, don't take that tone! You're going hand in hand with ochlocracy and anarchy, the arch enemy of all legislative order, all civilization and all humanity. Philalethes. You are right. It was only a sophism of mine, what the fencing master calls a feint. I retract it. But see how disputing sometimes makes an honest man unjust and malicious. Let us stop. Demopheles. I can't help regretting that, after all the trouble I've taken, I haven't altered your disposition in regard to religion. On the other hand, I can assure you that everything you have said hasn't shaken my conviction of its high value and necessity. Philalethes. I fully believe you; for, as we may read in Hudibras� A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still. My consolation is that, alike in controversies and in taking mineral waters, the after effects are the true ones. Demopheles. Well, I hope it'll be beneficial in your case. Philalethes. It might be so, if I could digest a certain Spanish proverb. Demopheles. Which is? Philalethes. Behind the cross stands the devil. Demopheles. Come, don't let us part with sarcasms. Let us rather admit that religion, like Janus, or better still, like the Brahman god of death, Yama, has two faces, and like him, one friendly, the other sullen. Each of us has kept his eye fixed on one alone. Philalethes. You are right, old fellow. by Arthur Schopenhauer, Translated by T. Bailey Saunders Philip SAYS, "ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MEDITATION IS THE CORE ENERGY TECHNIQUE." CLICK HERE FOR - ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MOVIE REVIEWS BY SATCHIDANAND REVOLVER "first version" BY GUY RITCHIE We welcome your input and appreciate your support. We thank you for your time and look forward to providing you with the Energy Enhancement tools to speed up your evolution. Meditate a little everyday...and dissolve all doubt in the fire of your eternal flame. Energy Enhancement Team	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line587
__label__cc	0.721096	0.278904	Boss Nightclub (604) 761-8664 Address 1320 Richards Street City Vancouver State/Region British Columbia Neighborhood Yaletown Hours of Operation Tues:9:00 pm - 1:00 am Fri - Sat:9:30 pm - 2:00 am Happy Hour None Boss nightclub is Located in the heart of downtown Vancouver in the trendiest and most private community in the city. We're just steps from many restaurants, hotels and shopping. Boss is one of the largest and best known nightclubs in Vancouver, British Columbia offering party-goers a clubbing experience unique to any other venue in Vancouver. With lavish visual effects, excellent resident DJs dropping heavy beats, and a classy style that is second-to-none, Boss boasts one of the largest dance floors in Vancouver with a huge stage displaying lush visuals from a massive lighting rig. Boss has seen many famous acts and hosted after parties for world Class artists including Raekwon, Russel Peters, Back Street Boys, Arrested Development, Paul Oakenfold, Quest Love, DJ Jazzy Jeff, David Usher,Shawn Desman, Danny Fernandez De la Soul, DJ Jam, Kid Capri, Startin from Scratch, Baby Yu and DJ Premier. We have also seen our share of visiting celebrities such as John Travolta,Ben Affleck, Eliza Dushku, Danny Masterson and Mila Cunis from "That 70's Show", Cuba Gooding Jr. from the movie "Jerry Maguire" and "American Gangster", Nelly Furtado, Jessika Alba, Sarah Michelle Gellar from "Buffy the Vampire slayer" and "The Grudge" Brian Mcknight, Ginuwine, K-OS, Snoop Dogg and Paulo Thiago from UFC ...just to name a few. If you want to chill-out, there’s plenty of room to sit and enjoy a drink in the rear of the club and you won’t have to worry about waiting around at the bar with plenty of professional bar-staff on hand to keep your glasses full. For those who want some privacy, Boss Nightclub also has a large reserved area for VIP. We're positive that once you've visited us for the first time, we'll be seeing you alot more! Dance Floor Live DJ Cover Charge $10 and up Dress Code 'Dressy' Food Unknown Neighborhoods > Downtown Neighborhoods > Yaletown Date Created: 12/14/2010	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line593
__label__wiki	0.554722	0.554722	SCHEDULE 2019-20 CONCERTS 2019-20 MUSIC FOR 2019-20 VACANCIES - FALL 2019 BENEFIT CONCERTS Hudson Valley Symphonic Wind Ensemble Directions to rehearsals at Sleepy Hollow High School Band Room 210 North Broadway, Sleepy Hollow, NY 10591 From the Cross Westchester Expressway Westbound (I-287): Take Exit 1/Tarrytown. Turn right onto Route 119 (White Plains Road). Bear right past the Marriott Hotel onto Benedict Ave. The 5th light is Route 9 - turn right. Travel about 1 mile on US 9 to entrance of Sleepy Hollow Middle-High School which will be on the right. Bear left at fork. Parking surrounds the school, plus one long lot that runs out to Route 448. Proceed around the building to the Auditorium Entrance located at the northeast corner of the building. After entering, proceed down the hall to the end and turn left into the music wing. The Band Room is the first door on the right - 513A. From New Jersey/Upstate New York via Tappan Zee Bridge/N.Y. State Thruway (I-87) Southbound: Take Exit 9. At the end of the ramp bear right toward Route 9 and right onto Route 9 north (South Broadway). Travel 1.6 miles on US 9 to entrance of Sleepy Hollow Middle-High School which will be on the right. Bear left at fork. Parking surrounds the school, plus one long lot that runs out to Route 448. Proceed around the building to the Auditorium Entrance located at the northeast corner of the building. After entering, proceed down the hall to the end and turn left into the music wing. The Band Room is the first door on the right - 513A. From N.Y. State Thruway (I-87) Northbound: Take last exit before Tappan Zee Bridge (Exit 9/Route 9, Tarrytown). At the end of the ramp, turn left toward Route 9 and then right onto Route 9 north (South Broadway). Travel 1.6 miles on US 9 to entrance of Sleepy Hollow Middle-High School which will be on the right. Bear left at fork. Parking surrounds the school, plus one long lot that runs out to Route 448. Proceed around the building to the Auditorium Entrance located at the northeast corner of the building. After entering, proceed down the hall to the end and turn left into the music wing. The Band Room is the first door on the right - 513A. From George Washington Bridge: Take Henry Hudson Parkway northbound. Continue on Saw Mill Parkway northbound. Take Exit 23/Eastview and make a left onto onto Saw Mill River Road (Neperan Ave.). Follow Neperan Ave. past Fordham/Marymount campus to the light at intersection of Route 9. Turn right. Travel .4 mile on US 9 to entrance of Sleepy Hollow Middle-High School which will be on the right. Bear left at fork. Parking surrounds the school, plus one long lot that runs out to Route 448. Proceed around the building to the Auditorium Entrance located at the northeast corner of the building. After entering, proceed down the hall to the end and turn left into the music wing. The Band Room is the first door on the right - 513A. From southbound Saw Mill River Parkway: Take Exit 23/Eastview. Make right onto Saw Mill River Road (Neperan Ave.) Follow Neperan Ave. past Fordham/Marymount campus to the light at intersection of Route 9. Turn right. Travel .4 mile on US 9 to entrance of Sleepy Hollow Middle-High School which will be on the right. Bear left at fork. Parking surrounds the school, plus one long lot that runs out to Route 448. Proceed around the building to the Auditorium Entrance located at the northeast corner of the building. After entering, proceed down the hall to the end and turn left into the music wing. The Band Room is the first door on the right - 513A. From northbound Saw Mill River Parkway: Take Exit 23/Eastview. Make left onto Saw Mill River Road (Neperan Ave.) Follow Neperan Ave. past Fordham/Marymount campus to the light at intersection of Route 9. Turn right. Travel .4 mile on US 9 to entrance of Sleepy Hollow Middle-High School which will be on the right. Bear left at fork. Parking surrounds the school, plus one long lot that runs out to Route 448. Proceed around the building to the Auditorium Entrance located at the northeast corner of the building. After entering, proceed down the hall to the end and turn left into the music wing. The Band Room is the first door on the right - 513A. To reach Tarrytown by train: From Grand Central Station in New York City, take the Metro-North, Hudson Line to Tarrytown. Taxi service is available from the train station to the School (about a mile).	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line595
__label__cc	0.634849	0.365151	Machas Artist Jonathan Calugi x Lulu Guinness from MACHAS on Vimeo. Less is more: Lulu Guinness x Jonathan Calugi capsule collection ‘Less is more’ is a motto that many strive to live by, but not many manage to evoke quite as successfully as Jonathan Calugi. The timing for this collaboration could not have been more perfect as Lulu Guinness’ desire to launch her first ready-to-wear line matched with Jonathan’s wish to branch his art out into the world of fashion. Lulu Guinness is a British fashion accessory designer, world-renowned for her bold, quirky and feminine aesthetic. While reading London’s ES magazine, the designer’s attention was immediately captured by Jonathan Calugi’s elegant and graphic illustrations that each week grace the pages of the magazine; Lulu felt that Jonathan’s art resonated with her vision and decided right on the spot to get in touch with him. Following an initial discussion and a meeting in London to brainstorm ideas and concepts, the collaboration blossomed into an inclusive clothing line (“I wanted to make clothes that everyone could really wear, whatever size or shape they are”, states Lulu) and a bag line released across the SS17 and AW18 collections. Lulu opted to focus on the brand’s trademark red, white and black palette, and integrated Jonathan’s single-line drawings in her unique designs, from bags to dresses to jackets and jumpers. The result is two vivacious and unconventional collections, which premiered to the public at Lulu Guinness’ Covent Garden store. It was vital for both artists that the collections upheld their ethos of elegance, style and cheerfulness while also bringing something slightly different to the table. In Lulu Guinness’ own words, “if you’re going to do something then it has to be distinctive.” See more of Jonathan’s work here.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line599
__label__wiki	0.984413	0.984413	Super Junior members set to make move into musicals Published : Apr 4, 2010 - 02:00 Updated : Apr 4, 2010 - 02:00 Music entertainment giant SM Entertainment Group announced recently the establishment of an affiliate that will focus on businesses related to the musical genre -- and they`re bringing super-sexy boy-band Super Junior along for the ride. With former comedian and singer Pyo In-bong taking the helm as co-CEO, SM Art Company -- as the affiliate is called -- will pursue businesses in organizing and creating diverse performances including musicals, as well as operating theaters, SM Entertainment officials said. "With the artists and global networking that SM Entertainment has, along with our well-organized performance producing system, SM Art Co. plans to become one of the best performance entertainment businesses in Asia," Pyo said at the press conference in Seoul on May 28. <**1>For their first project, SM Art Company will stage a Korean version of the musical "Xanadu," a Broadway musical based on the 80s` movie of the same title starring Olivia Newton John. The musical will feature two members of Super Junior, one of the country`s most popular boy bands -- Kang-in and Hee-chul -- in the role of Sonny. "Since it is our musical debut, we will do our best not to bring inconvenience to other talented actors," the singers said. "We also hope that we could bring more young people to our musical and ultimately to theater." "Xanadu" is a story about Kira, the muse of music who comes to the human world and falls in love with artist-wannabe Sonny while giving him inspiration. Kira creates a roller-skating rink where music, dance and sports can all be enjoyed. The musical is to feature some songs such as "Xanadu," "Magic," and "Suddenly" from the original movie. Pyo said since producing and creating content has become the most important thing for entertainment businesses these days, the company will not only to bring licensed musicals, but also put efforts on creating those of their own. But the CEO did not mention any specific piece or ideas on future plans. "Xanadu" is to be staged from Sept. 9 through Nov. 23 at Doosan Art Center located in Yeonji-dong, northern Seoul. For details, call (02) 745-5570. By Koh Young-aah (youngaah@heraldcorp.com)	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line607
__label__wiki	0.691092	0.691092	한국콘텐츠학회논문지 (The Journal of the Korea Contents Association) 한국콘텐츠학회 (The Korea Contents Association) 동료 조직정치지각과 동료지향 조직시민행동 및 이직의도 관계에서 정치적 기술의 조절효과 Moderating Effects of Political Skill in the Relations Perceived Co-Workers Politics-OCBC and -Turnover Intention 이은국 (제주대학교 경영학과) ; 지성호 (제주대학교 경영학과) ; 김미성 (제주대학교 경영학과) Lee, Eun-Kook ; Ji, Sung-Ho ; Kim, Mee-Sung https://doi.org/10.5392/JKCA.2015.15.09.478 본 연구는 동료 조직정치지각이 동료지향 조직시민행동과 이직의도에 미치는 영향력과 양자 관계에서 정치적 기술의 조절효과를 규명하고자 수행되었다. 연구대상은 제주지역에 소재하고 있는 공 사기업 종사자 375명으로부터 획득된 자료를 활용하였다. 분석결과, 동료 조직정치지각은 동료지향 조직시민행동에 영향력이 없는 것으로 확인되었으나, 이직의도를 촉진하는 원인이 되는 것으로 확인되었다. 또한 동료 조직정치지각과 동료지향 조직시민행동의 관계는 정치적 기술의 조절효과가 유의하지 않으나, 동료 조직정치지각과 이직의도의 관계는 정치적 기술에 의한 조절효과가 있는 것으로 확인되었다. 이러한 결과는 기존 조직정치지각 연구에서 조직정치와 조직시민행동 변인과의 일관적이지 못한 연구결과가 조직정치지각 대상에 따른 차이로 인한 것임을 의미하며, 조직정치지각 연구에 의미 있는 시사점을 제공하고 있다. 또한 동료 조직정치지각과 이직의도 관계에서 정치적 기술이 양자관계를 조절하는 것으로 확인되어 정치적 기술 관련 연구에 있어 연구범위 확대에 기여하고 있다. 동료 조직정치지각;동료지향 조직시민행동;이직의도;정치적 기술 H. Marlowe, "Socal Intelligence: Evidence for Multidimensional and Construct Independence," Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol.78, pp.52-58, 1986. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.78.1.52 L. K. Zellars L. O. Perrew, M. A. Rossi, J. B. Tepper, and R. G. Ferris, "Moderating effects of political skill, perceived control, and self-efficacy on the relationship between negative affectivity and physiological strain", Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol.29, pp.549-571, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.484 M. Abelson and B. Baysinger, "Optimal and Dysfunctional Turnover: Toward an Organizational Level Model", Academy of Management Review, Vol.9, No.2, pp.331-342, 1984. H. Mintzberg, Power in and around Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1983. C. Michael and P. Spector, "Causes of Employee Turnover: A Test of the Mobley, Griffeth, Hand, and Meglino model", Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.67, No.1, pp.52-59, 1982. L. R. Brouer, R. G. Ferris, A. W. Hochwarter, D. M. Laird, and C. D. Gilmore, The strain-related reactions to perceptions of organizational politics as a workplace stressor: Political skill as a neutralizer. In E. Vigoda-Gadot, & A. Drory (Eds.), Handbook of organizational politics (pp.187-206), Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. 2006. K. K. Ahearn, R. G Ferris, A. W. Hochwarter, C. Douglas, and P. A. Ammeter, "Leader political skill and team performance", Journal of Management, Vol.30, No.3, pp.309-327, 2004. J. B. Alge, A. G. Ballinger, S. Tangirala, and L. J. Oakley, "Information privacy in organizations: Empowering creative and extra-role performance," Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.91, No.1, pp.221-232, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.91.1.221 W. R. Allen, L. D. Madison, W. L. Porter, A. P. Renwick, and T. B. Mayers, "Organizational politics: Tactics and characteristics of its actors", California Management Review, Vol.22, pp.77-83, 1979. https://doi.org/10.2307/41164852 배성현, 김미선, "조직정치와 조직시민행동, 직무 긴장, 이직의도와 관계 및 조직지원 인식의 매개 효과", 조직과 인사관리연구, 제34권, 제2호, pp.1-30, 2010. M. R. Baron and A. D. Kenny, "The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol.51, pp.1173-1182, 1986. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.51.6.1173 N. M. Bing, H. Davison, I. Minor, M. M. Novicevic, and D. D. Frink, "The prediction of task and contextual performance by political skill: A meta-analysis and moderator test," Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol.79, No.2, pp.563-577, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2011.02.006 P. D. Bozeman, L. P. Perrewe, M. K. Kcmar, A. W. Hochwarter and A. R. 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Xu, "Dispositional antecedents and outcomes of political skill in organizations: A our-study investigation with convergence," Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol.71, No.1, pp.146-165, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2007.04.003 J. Maslyn and B. D. Fedor, "Perceptions of politics: Does measuring different foci matter?," Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.84, No.4, pp.645-653, 1998. D. J. Mayer and P. Salovey, What is emotional intelligence?, In P. Salovey & D. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Educational Implications, 3-34. New York: Basic Books, 1997. T. B. Mayes and W. R. Allen, "Toward a definition of organizational politics", Academy of Management Review, Vol.2, No.4, pp.672-678, 1977. L. B. McNeely and B. M. Meglino, "The role of dispositional and situational antecedents in prosocial organizational behavior: An examination of the intended beneficiaries of prosocial behavior", Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.79, No.6, pp.836-844, 1994. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.79.6.836 E. C. Michael and E. P. Spector, "Causes of employee turnover: a test of the Mobley Griffeth, Hand and Meglino model", Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.67, No.1, pp.53-59, 1982. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.67.1.53 W. R. Allen, L. D. Madison, W. L. Porter, A. P. Renwick, and T. B. Mayer, "Organizational politics: Tactics and characteristics of its actors", California Management Review, Vol.22, pp.77-83, 1979. https://doi.org/10.2307/41164852 W. Mobley, Employee turnover: Causes, consequences and control, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1982. C. Mottaz, "Work satisfaction among hospital nurses", Hospital and Health Services Administration, Vol.33, pp.57-74, 1988. W. D. Organ, Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome, Lexington, MA.: Lexington, 1988. C. P. Parker, R. L. Dipboye, and S. L. Jackson, "Perceptions of organizational politics: An investigation of antecedents and consequences," Journal of Management, Vol.21, No.5, pp.891-912, 1995. M. A. Pettigrew, The politics of organizational decision making, London: Tavistock, 1973. M. P. Podsakoff, M. Ahearne, and B. S. MacKenzie, "Organizational citizenship behavior and the quantity and quality of work group performance", Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.82, pp.262-270, 1997. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.82.2.262 M. P. Podsakoff, B. S. MacKenzie, Y. J. Lee, and P. N. Podsakoff, "Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies", Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.88, No.5, pp.879-903, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.5.879 W. L. Porter, W. R. Allen and L. H. Angel, The politics of upward influence in organizations. In B. M. Staw & L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior(Vol.3, pp.109-149), Greenwich, CT. JAI Press, 1981. W. L. Porter and M. R Steers, "Organizational, work, and personal factors in employee turnover and absenteeism, Psychological Bulletin," Vol.80, No.1, pp.151-176, 1973. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034829 L. M Randall, R. Cropanzano, A. C. Bormann, and A. Birjulin, "Organizational politics and organizational support as predictors of work attitudes, job performance and organizational citizenship behavior", Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol.20, No.2, pp.159-174, 1999. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1379(199903)20:2<159::AID-JOB881>3.0.CO;2-7 S. P. Robinson, Organization behavior(11th Ed), Pearson Education: Prentice Hall, 2007. H. D. Silvera, M. Martinussen, and I. T. Dahl, "The Tromso social intelligence scale, A self-report measure of social intelligence," Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, Vol.42, No.4, pp.313-319, 2001. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9450.00242 C. D. Treadway, A. W. Hochwarter, R. G. Ferris, J. C. Kacmar, C. Douglas, P. A. Ammeter, and R. Buckley, "Leader political skill and employee reactions", Leadership Quarterly, Vol.15, No.3, pp.493-513, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2004.05.004	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line608
__label__cc	0.706409	0.293591	Home / IFA / Moto X4 / News / Moto X4 wins 11 awards at IFA 2017 Moto X4 wins 11 awards at IFA 2017 Felipe Berhau September 06, 2017 IFA, Moto X4, News Pic by @myzoomit Motorola Mobility and Lenovo have won some prestigious awards for their recent products launched at IFA Berlin 2017 this week. The Moto X4 took home not one, but eleven awards, including Best of IFA (by Android Authority, 9 to 5 Google, Android Central and others). The Moto X4 was launched with a beautiful design, water resistance and an incredibly powerful camera, all at a mid-range price. It's the first Moto X device since 2015 and fans had been waiting for it, so it was a nice surprise. Lenovo also won several awards for its YOGA 920, the Lenovo Explorer and the Star Wars Challenge product launched at this event. Congratulations to both! Here's the full list of awards:	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line628
__label__wiki	0.835264	0.835264	Perth Motorplex will rumble to old school cool on Sunday, January 27 for an event known as The Nostalgias, where classic street machines, hot rods and dragsters take part in a combination race and show. Among those taking in the event will be Boris Viskovic, one of Perth’s foremost authorities on classic and modified cars. Viskovic has been the Western Australian correspondent for Street Machine Magazine for some 15 years and an avid participant in past Nostalgias with his 1967 Rambler. He has watched the nostalgia scene grow in popularity. “In the late 1980s, when I first got my car, there wasn’t really a ‘nostalgia scene’ in Perth,” he said. “For me it’s just a lot of fun. Catching up with friends and seeing a bunch of cool cars race. It’s easy to make modern cars go fast, but when you see big, old, heavy stuff go fast, it’s just so much cooler.” Viskovic’s Rambler is a rare sight on Australian roads. For over three decades he has customised and modified it to be a street car that does it all. “It’s my daily driver, I run the kids to school in it, go to the shops and race it occasionally – sometimes all in the one day!” he said. “It’s had some fairly major upgrades since 1986. A couple of paintjobs, three engines, a couple of gearboxes and diffs, the usual stuff. When it was stock it ran 17 seconds for the quarter mile, then I put a 290ci Rambler V8 in it and it was a mid-14 second car on a good day.” Then Viskovic got serious. He went to a Rambler 360 with forged rods and pistons, plus a host of other go-fast bits including a Lunati hydraulic flat tappet cam, Edelbrock alloy heads and Air-Gap intake with a Holley HP Street 750 double pumper carb. “That motor went in about eight years ago and it went straight to a low-13 second car,” he said. “I knew it had more in it, though, and it wasn’t until recently I figured out it had a valve spring issue, so I swapped in some heavier springs and it has now run a best of 12.87 @ 173.8km/h.” Viskovic is well known in Perth’s car culture for his years of service to Street Machine magazine. “I had a website which I started in 2000 or thereabouts and would cover car shows and cruises When I chucked my job in working for an IT company, I approached Street Machine. “It’s been a real buzz being able to get a lot more West Aussie content in the magazine.” The Nostalgias will see gates open from 7am. The Cranksters Swap Meet begins from 7.30am, with the show and shine from 9am before drag racing starts at 10am. The Power Parade will allows cars in the show and shine to cruise the drag strip at 1.30pm.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line629
__label__wiki	0.925047	0.925047	Posts tagged ghostbusters Top Bill Murray Moments by Vicky Hinault in Features Viewers across the UK are anxiously awaiting the February premiere of Golden Globe nominee, Hyde Park on Hudson. Hollywood A-Lister Bill Murray portrays U.S. President FDR in 1939, as his most prominent love affair with cousin Daisy unfolds amid a Royal visit to his Hyde Park estate. Murray’s presidential take reflects his eclectic range of performances, from all-time great Caddyshack to televisions screens every Saturday night as a fan favourite on Saturday Night Live. In celebration of his Golden Globe nominated performance in Hyde Park on Hudson, we give you our favourite Murray moments. Caddyshack (1980) ‘‘Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It look like a mirac…It’s in the hole! It’s in the hole!’’ Perhaps one of the most quoted lines from one of the most quoted movies of all time comes from Murray himself. Thanks to this raunchy 80s comedy, Murray will forever be known as the goofy greenskeeper with a dislike for gophers, Karl Spackler. Look out for Murray the next time you play a round, as this real life amateur golfer does his best to get it in the hole on the course. Just one of many Murray performances in a film regarded as classics, Murray shines in this ensemble comedy as the sleazy and cynical Dr. Peter Venkman. After their Columbia University research funding depletes, a trio of Parapsychology professors begin a career in spectral investigation and removal. Several of the film’s best lines come from Murray, sparking curiosity in the idea that Murray’s onscreen talent emerged via improvisation. More than 25 years later, Ghostbusters is still a blockbuster hit. Groundhog Day (1993) Pennsylvania weatherman, Phil Connors (Murray) finds himself reliving Groundhog Day over and over again while discovering the possibilities of life, love and everything in between. This light-hearted comedy shows Murray as he transitions to a more reserved style of humour. Viewers are invited to celebrate an American tradition as Murray lives life like there’s no tomorrow. Literally. Groundhog Day was named by Bravo as one of the ‘‘100 Funniest Movies.’’ Lost in Translation (2003) Murray earned his first and only Oscar and BAFTA awards (to date) in Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation. An actor playing an actor, Murray is Bob Harris, a washed up actor on the brink of a midlife crisis offered big bucks to film a whisky commercial in Tokyo. Along the way, he develops a friendship with a young newlywed (Scarlett Johansson) as they attempt to transition through life together. This film is quite significant as Murray received some of the best reviews of cinematic career. Plus, his ‘‘More Than This’’ by Roxy Music rendition never gets old. Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) Hyde Park on Hudson showcases Murray as President FDR, as he hosts the King and Queen of England at his Hyde Park estate for the first Royal visit to the States. The film takes a look at the President’s relationship with his multiple lovers, including wife Eleanor and distant cousin Daisy. Director Roger Mitchell said the film’s future was dependent on Murray agreeing to be the character of FDR. Not only did Murray play the role, he delivered a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance in a musical or comedy. You can catch all the drama and laughs in Bill Murray’s latest movie, when Hyde Park on Hudson comes to cinemas 1 February 2013 Bill Murray caddyshack film ghostbusters groundhog day hyde park on hudson lost in translation movie	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line631
__label__wiki	0.834352	0.834352	MyMp3Board.com FAQ Search Memberlist Usergroups Register Profile Log in to check your private messages Log in Bush Loses Core Supporters MyMp3Board.com Forum Index -> WARZONE-ARCHIVES HKRockChick No More Peas! Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 8:13 am Post subject: Bush Loses Core Supporters I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but this had me in tears!!!!!! WASHINGTON, July 13, 2006 President Bush appears to be losing support among a key group of voters who had hitherto stood firmly with the president even as his poll numbers among other groups fell dramatically. A new Gallup poll shows that, for the first time, Bush's approval rating has fallen below 50% among total @#%$ morons, and now stands at 44%. This represents a dramatic drop compared to a poll taken just last December, when 62% of total @#%$ morons expressed support for the president and his policies. The current poll, conducted by phone with 1,409 total @#%$ morons between May 4 and May 8, reveals that only 44% of those polled believe the president is doing a good job, while 27% believe he is doing a poor job and 29% don't understand the question. The December poll, conducted by phone with 1,530 total @#%$ morons, showed 62% approved of the president, 7% disapproved and 31% didn't understand the question. Faltering approval ratings for the president among a group once thought to be a reliable source of loyal support gives Republicans one more reason to be nervous about the upcoming mid-term elections. "If we can't depend on the support of total @#%$ morons," says Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), "then we've got a big problem. They're a key factor in our electoral strategy, and an important part of today's Republican coalition." "We've taken the total @#%$ moron vote for granted," says Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), "and now we're paying for it. We've let the Democrats control the debate lately, and they've dragged discourse back into the realm of complex, nuanced issues. So your average total @#%$ moron turns on his TV and sees his Republican Congressman arguing about Constitutional law or the complexities of state formation in the Middle East, and he tunes out. He wants to hear comforting, pandering, flattering bromides and he doesn't wan to hear a logical argument more complex than what you'd find on a bumper sticker." For Feeney, the poll is a dire warning that Republicans can ignore only at their peril. "This should send a signal that we have to regain control of the debate if we want the support of our key constituencies in the coming election and beyond. We need to bring public discourse back into the realm of stupidity and vacuity. We should be talking about homosexual illegal immigrants burning flags. We should be talking about the power of pride. We should be talking about freedom fries. These are the issues that resonate with total @#%$ morons." But some total @#%$ morons say it's too late. Bill Snarpel of Enid, Oklahoma is a total @#%$ moron who voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. But he says he won't be voting for Bush in 2008. "I don't like it that he was going to sell our ports to the Arabs. If the Arabs own the ports then that means they'll let all the Arabs in and then we'll all be riding camels and wearing towels on our heads. I don't want my children singing the Star Spangled Banner in Muslim." Total @#%$ moron Kurt Meyer of Turlock, California also says his once solid support for Bush has collapsed. "He invaded Iraq and all those soldiers died, and for what? We destroyed all their WMDs, but now their new president is making fun of us and saying he's going to build nuclear bombs and that we can't stop him. Well, nuclear bombs are even worse than WMDs, so what did we accomplish?" Laura McDonald, a total @#%$ moron from Chandler, Arizona, says she is disappointed that the president hasn't been a more forceful advocate of Christian values. "This country was founded on Christian values," she says, "but you'd never know it looking around and seeing all the Mexicans running around. I thought Bush was going to bring Jesus back into the government. Instead, Christians are being persecuted worse than ever before in history, because all these Mexicans come here and tell Christians that we have to respect their religious beliefs. So now it's illegal for children to pray in school. Soon it will be illegal for them to speak English." Not all total @#%$ morons have turned their backs on the president. Jeb Larkin of Topeka, Kansas says he still fully supports Bush. "He is doing a great job. He is a great president. He is a great decider. I have a puppy. His tail sticks straight up and you can see his butt hole." And not all Republican lawmakers are concerned about the poll. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), for one, does not find it a cause for anxiety. While he agrees that his party should not take total @#%$ morons for granted, they "really don't have anywhere else to go. They're never going to be able to understand someone like Al Gore or John Kerry or anybody intelligent and articulate who wants to talk about substantive issues Just try having a conversation with one of them about global warming. They'll say, 'Oh, but Rush says volcanoes consume more ozone than humans do.' I mean, they're morons! Total @#%$ morons!" "They've got nowhere else to go," Alexander reaffirms with a smile, and they always vote." bitwhys Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 3:56 pm Post subject: Re: Bush Loses Core Supporters MyMp3Board.com Forum Index -> WARZONE-ARCHIVES All times are GMT + 2 Hours Jump to: Select a forum MyMP3Board.com----------------BLAH, BLAH, BLAHNews / Politics / WAR-ZoneTHE FREAK ZONETHE ARCHIVESBLAH-ARCHIVESFREAK-ZONE-ARCHIVESWARZONE-ARCHIVES Template designed by Darkmonkey Designs Blocked registrations / posts: 41297 / 0	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line635
__label__wiki	0.746782	0.746782	NFL Week 8 Power Rankings Friday, October 24, 2014 Metallman No comments The NFL regular season approaches the halfway mark in Week 8 with no undefeated teams and a wide open Super Bowl betting field. While early standings don’t give much away, five teams remain at the top of this week’s power rankings, any of which could be Super Bowl champions in just over three months time. (1) Denver Broncos (5-1-0) Each week we rediscover why the Denver Broncos are the best team in the NFL. This week, QB Peyton Manning calmly made NFL history in prime time on Sunday night, throwing four TD passes to pass Brett Favre’s all-time mark, demolishing the San Francisco 49ers, 42-17, in the process. The Broncos are undefeated SU and ATS in their last three, winning by no fewer than 14 points in each, while generating an NFL-best 31.5 points per game. Denver is also third in passing yards per game and third-best against the rush, and remain strong 3/1 favorites in Super Bowl betting.. (2) Indianapolis Colts (5-2-0) In Week 8, the Colts embarassed the Cincinnati Bengals, 27-0, at Lucas Oil Stadium. QB Andrew Luck continued to silence doubters with another big day, throwing for 344 yards and two TDs, further padding his NFL-leading stats. The Colts’ defense has also been a revelation, holding opponents to just 311.1 total yards per game and 19.4 points per game while going 6-1 ATS. Oddsmakers have started to warm up to the Colts’, who have jumped to 12/1 in Super Bowl odds published at bettingsports.com, after sitting with pre-season odds as long as 22/1. (3) Dallas Cowboys (6-1-0) Running back DeMarco Murray has been the straw that stirs the drink in Big D, receiving the ball on the rush almost 80% of the time. Murray leads the NFL in rushing yards with 913 and set an NFL record in Week 8 with his seventh consecutive 100-yard game. Veteran QB Tony Romo has also enjoyed a renaissance season, tossing 12 TD passes while leading Dallas to a division lead few observers thought was possible. The result has been a big boost in the Cowboys Super Bowl odds, which have jumped from 66/1 prior to Week 1 to 9/1 today. (4) Green Bay Packers (5-2-0) Following four straight wins, SU and ATS, the Packers continue to maintain heavy 8/1 odds in Super Bowl betting at sportbooks available through bettingsports.com. The Packers won by double digits in three of those four, allowing just 18 points per game, but face an increasingly difficult schedule and currently share the lead in the NFC North with the Detroit Lions. But under QB Aaron Rodgers’ increasingly wily veteran leadership, the Packers are poised for a strong run to playoff contention. (5) Baltimore Ravens (5-2-0) Skepticism abounded this summer about the Ravens’ outlook this season. With the Cincinnati Bengals emerging as a legitimate Super Bowl contender and the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns showing steady improvement, there were some predictions of a lost season for Baltimore. The Ravens have turned that talk on its head, with five SU and ATS wins in their last six and the NFL’s stingiest defense. Combined with the strong play of QB Joe Flacco, the Ravens have seized the division lead, but still trail the favorites in Super Bowl betting, with long odds of 18/1. Posted in: Broncos,Colts,Cowboys,Football,NFL,NFL Power Rankings,Packers,Ravens,Sports	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line638
__label__cc	0.739994	0.260006	Metroparks partners with REI to encourage stewardship and recreation in the outdoors Skip the stores on Black Friday and instead #OptOutside BRIGHTON, Mich. — The Huron-Clinton Metroparks is proud to partner with REI Co-Op as a destination… Metroparks Launches Important Initiative for Giving Tuesday Fundraising Campaign All funds raised will support the new accessible playground at Kensington Metropark Maple Beach DETROIT, Mich. – Giving Tuesday is a global day of giving, and… Owls at Your Metroparks: Hoo Do You See Kevin Arnold, Southern District Interpretive Services Supervisor As the deep “hoot” of the male Great Horned Owl reverberated through the woods, the crowd caught their… Harvesting Native Seeds Leah Harrison, Natural Resources Volunteer Coordinator As everything else winds down for Fall, many plants are hard at work producing seeds to grow the next… Metroparks Offer Scholarship Opportunities for Local Schools Get Out and Learn program supports schools with hands-on field trips to local Metroparks The Huron-Clinton Metroparks is now accepting scholarship applications from local schools… Ford Motor Company Grant and Volunteers Build New Outdoor Amphitheater at Kensington Metropark If you have visited Kensington Metropark Nature Center recently you might have noticed a new outside addition on the northeast side. The Metroparks received a… Jason Smith, Wolcott Mill Metropark, Supervising Interpreter Farm and Historic Center The days are getting noticeable shorter, the average temperatures are dropping by the week,… Metroparks Offer Unique Opportunities to Celebrate Michigan Trails Week Explore Southeast Michigan with hike-bike, fitness, rustic and water trails Michigan Trails Week was held September 22 through September 29 and your Metroparks provided unique… Fall in for some family fun at your Metroparks When the temperatures begin to cool and the leaves begin to change, it’s time to create your fall bucket list. “Fall is an exciting and… Fall Bird Migration By Stephanie Kozak, Interpreter As the days grow shorter and the weather cools down, excitement for fall festivities grows and visions of cider, donuts, pumpkins,… Magical Monarchs Sara Scussell, Chris Becher and Julie Champion - Metroparks Interpreters There’s a delicate insect living right here in Michigan that makes an incredible 2,500 mile… 3rd Annual Charity Golf Classic to Support School Field Trips to Take Place at Kensington Metropark The Huron-Clinton Metroparks Foundation is proud to announce its 3rd Annual Charity Golf Classic, slated for Friday, September 27th at Kensington Metropark golf course. The… Accessibility Improvements across Huron-Clinton Metroparks Create New Opportunities for Local Community Improvements empowered by grant partners include trail redevelopment and new hand-cycle BRIGHTON, Mich. — The Huron-Clinton Metroparks Planning and Development Department is making parks more… Southeast Michigan’s Oldest Known Osprey, C09, Turns 20 Southeast Michigan’s osprey population was once in doubt. Today 50-60 nests are in the region. MILFORD, Mich. – More than 20 years ago, the future… Statement on behalf of the Huron-Clinton Metroparks Police Department – Metroparks Complete Investigation into Lake Erie Metropark Incident The Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority today released the following information and statements from Chief of Police Michael Reese and Director Amy McMillan following a thorough internal… Statement on behalf of Huron Clinton Metroparks re: Lake St. Clair Metropark Beach As with anything related to the park experience, this is an issue we take very seriously at the Metroparks. The cited report misrepresents the facts.… A Greener Metroparks This year your Huron-Clinton Metroparks have committed to working harder towards “going green.” As stewards of the environment, we know it is our duty to… Lake Erie Metropark Shoreline Project to Enhance Park for Wildlife and Visitors Large grant project will improve natural habitats and create new experiences for visitors The Huron-Clinton Metroparks will soon start work on a new collaborative restoration… Remembering Apollo 11, 50 Years Ago this Month Mike Broughton, Kensington Nature Center Interpreter It was late in the day July 20, 1969, and a little eight-year-old boy was sitting on his living… New Grants to Improve Access and Accessibility The Metroparks Planning Department has been working diligently to expand trail connectivity throughout the parks while trying to improve accessibility of the trails. Several grants received in May and June will aid in this effort. Invasive Species are Fought by Volunteers The Natural Resources Department hosts several volunteer days in the spring to target these early invasives. While there are many invasive plants on Metroparks property, we target garlic mustard and dame’s rocket in the spring because of their short life cycle. Both plants are biennials, growing a rosette the first year and blooming and going to seed the second. Garlic mustard starts growing early in the spring, flowering in early May and going to seed by mid-June. Give Me Spots on My Apples Spring is the time for wildflowers in Michigan, but it is also a time for spring invasives. Invasive plant species are one of the first plants you will see in the spring, popping up and growing leaves right as our native plants are just starting to get going. The worst spring offenders are garlic mustard and dame’s rocket. “National Pollinator Week is a time to celebrate pollinators and spread the word about what you can do to protect them,” according to pollinator.org. Metroparks Foundation Raises Funds for Field Trips The Metroparks Foundation is working to help the Metroparks fund their “Get Out and Learn” program, providing free field trips to qualifying schools in southeast Michigan. This year the foundation is hosting two events to help raise funds for the program at Kensington Metropark. On May 11, the first ever Celebrate Moms Fashion Show took place. Guests enjoyed brunch at Baker’s, special guest speakers, a silent auction and a fashion show that featured community members and Metroparks staff and families. Creating Young Environmental Stewards Thanks to a Grant from Hanover Insurance Group The fifth-grade students at Natalie Kreeger Elementary School in Fowlerville were the recipients of a special collaborative project with Metroparks Interpretive Services over this past school year. This program called Inspiring STEM Success, was funded with a $5,000 grant to the Metroparks Foundation from the Hanover Insurance Group with the goal of helping the students increase their science proficiency. The entire fifth grade class of over 200 students participated in the project. Summer Water Recreation The Huron River Watershed Council (HRWC), a long-time partner of the Huron-Clinton Metroparks, has worked hard to share information about PFAS with the public. As summer approaches and temperatures rise, water activities will increase and you may have questions about water recreation. HRWC answered many questions in their recent newsletter article, “PFAS and Recreation on the Huron River.” To read the article click here The Albino Deer at Kensington Metropark had Twin Fawns As spring emerges at the Huron-Clinton Metroparks, so do the baby animals. Be on the lookout for young turtles crossing the road, birds fledging from the nest, and fawns being hidden in the grass by their mothers. We discovered yesterday that the albino deer that calls Kensington Metropark home gave birth to a set of twin fawns. Your Metroparks will be Scanning Park Passes this Year If you’re a regular Metroparks visitor, you may have noticed that your annual pass this year has a barcode, and you may be wondering why. Here at your Huron-Clinton Metroparks, we’re committed to serving the community we call home: Southeast Michigan. That’s why we’ve implemented a new system to help us better understand who’s using the Metroparks and how we can better meet the needs of everyone across the community. Metroparks Volunteers Honored at mParks Awards The Metroparks are excited to announce that three of our regular volunteer groups were awarded mParks Volunteer Service Awards at a ceremony last night. Our nominees and staff traveled to Lansing where mParks awarded Toni Spears, CRAMBA and Beyond the Seed Greenhouse & Gardens for their committed service to the Metroparks. Shelden Trails Project Update The Shelden Trail Development Project has great momentum and we are excited to share that at the December meeting of the Huron-Clinton Metroparks Board of Commissioners, they approved the concept design provided by Applied Trail Research (ATR). B2B Trail Groundbreaking In conjunction with the Huron Waterloo Pathways Initiative, Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation, Huron River Watershed Council and the Department of Natural Resources, the Huron-Clinton Metroparks was excited to host the groundbreaking ceremony of the new segment of the Border- to-Border Trail (B2B) on Saturday, February 9 at Dexter-Huron Metropark. Why Prescribed Burns The first signs of spring seem to be different for every person you talk to. Some refer to the birds returning to the area and their sweet songs being heard again. Some refer to budding trees and the first green blades of grass. Some refer to the peeper frogs chirping at night. However, if you’re part of the Huron-Clinton Metroparks Natural Resources department, fire often marks the start of spring. The Sound of Cranes As the year progresses from winter into spring, the mood within the Metroparks moves from the quiet calm of snowy days to the hustle and bustle of the natural world’s New Year. Populations of birds that stayed all winter begin singing at dawn each day, and their chorus is joined by crowds of spring migrants and newly active frogs and toads. From the low cooing of mourning doves and tinkling call of spring peeper frogs to the boisterous honking of Canada geese, it seems everyone has something to sing about- and they do. These songs are all sung with the single purpose of reproduction. Jogging for Jakey Memorial Swings With their family home in Brighton, Brenden and his family would frequently take Jakey to Kensington Metropark to enjoy the trails and nature in the park. Brenden and Courtney determined that an accessible swing-set at Kensington Metropark, would provide many benefits to the community, while celebrating the life of Brenden’s brother. Working with the Metroparks Foundation, a location was selected within the park and a plan formulated to raise funds for the swings. Together, Brenden and Courtney organized a "Jogging for Jakey" 5K Run/Walk at Kensington, raising over $3,700 towards the swings. Several local organizations participated in the event through sponsorships and by contributing prizes. Shelden Trails Development Project: Trail Building Workshop and Training with Applied Trails Research The workshop and training is open to all skill levels; new volunteers and seasoned ones are welcome. The morning session will be indoors, focusing on trail sustainability fundamentals. In the afternoon, we will shift to the outdoors where volunteers will participate in additional hands-on training on the Stony Creek trail system. We will be pairing volunteers with what matches their skills and abilities. Impact100 Oakland County Awards $90,000 Grant to Huron-Clinton Metroparks Foundation for “Seeding a Green Future” program at Kensington Farm Center The Huron-Clinton Metroparks Foundation is pleased to announce the largest grant in the history of the foundation for $90,000 from Impact100 Oakland County for the “Seeding a Green Future” program at the Kensington Farm Center at Kensington Metropark in Milford, MI. This program will provide a mentoring initiative that will engage students and teachers in sustainable agriculture, STEM education and critical thinking skills to inspire lifelong learning and success in the natural environment. Stony Creek Metropark Shelden Trails Update #1 We are excited to announce the concept design of the Shelden Trails Development Project was approved at the December 13th Board of Commissioner meeting. Presented by Jeremy Wimpey of Applied Trails Research, the proposed concept design was based on a comprehensive assessment of the current trail system along with input from stakeholder partners as well as public comment. Pumpkins! “Cucurbita pepo” perhaps one of the most recognizable yet one of the more misunderstood fruits of our culture. We commonly refer to them as pumpkins, and most people do little more with them than make the annual trek out to the pumpkin patch to carve and decorate them for our porches for Halloween. Planning and Development Department Updates With the approval of the Dexter-Huron and Delhi Metroparks Master Plan in November 2018 by the Metroparks Board of Commissioners, the Planning and Development Department is proud to announce that the three-year process for developing master plans for all 13 Metroparks is complete. 2018 was a Busy Year for the Natural Resources Department The Natural Resources Department (NRD) at the Huron-Clinton Metroparks kept busy in 2018 working to restore and protect natural areas in all 13 Metroparks. Work is conducted year-round with the help of contractors, volunteers, government and non-profit partners to protect diverse ecosystems and meet restoration goals. Ford Fund supports Hawk and Owl Mew project at Oakwoods Metropark! The Huron-Clinton Metroparks was awarded a $7,500 grant from the Ford Motor Company Fund to construct three new raptor (hawk/owl) enclosures to replace the two existing mews and offer room for an additional injured, non-releasable bird at Oakwoods Metropark Nature Center. During the month of November, volunteers from Ford Motor Company worked alongside Metroparks staff to construct the three updated, replacement mews in a newly designed space. Ford Fund supports Hawk & Owl Mew project The Huron-Clinton Metroparks was awarded a $7500 grant from the Ford Motor Company Fund to construct three new raptor (hawk/owl) enclosures to replaces the two existing mews and offer room for an additional injured, non-releasable bird at Oakwoods Metropark Nature Center. Planning Department Updates Based on public input gathered during the Stony Creek Metropark Master Plan, the Planning Department is overseeing the consultants who will create a conceptual design for improving the Shelden and Trolley trails. Natural Resources Updates This fall, as the weather cools off and the leaves begin to change color, the Metroparks Natural Resources Department is staying busy with multiple project. We are continuing to remove invasive species from high-quality habitats, in preparation for our work next year. We are also beginning to treat Phragmites, the giant invasive reed, as this plant species begins to move its energy out of the roots and into its seed head, making the roots easier to kill. CRAMBA Supports the Shelden Trails For mountain bike riders in Southeast Michigan, one of the classic places to ride -- a favorite where many of us first learned to ride off road -- are the trails at Stony Creek Metropark. Since its inception, CRAMBA -- the Clinton River Area Mountain Bike Association -- has worked hand in hand with the Metroparks to maintain and enhance these trails, keeping them fun for everyone from mountain bikers to hikers, from trail runners to families out for a stroll. The Detroit River Hawk Watch at Lake Erie Metropark For over 35 years the Detroit River Hawk Watch has been conducted in one form or another at Lake Erie Metropark; and the boat launch in the park has been the primary site for over 20 of those years. Today, through the efforts of such organizations as the Detroit River Wildlife Refuge, the Detroit River Wildlife Refuge Alliance, the Hawk Migration Association of North America, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Huron-Clinton Metroparks the migration of raptors over the Detroit River Hawk Watch site is monitored. The information gathered is used to study the long-term trends of our raptor species; and to educate the public through programs like those presented at the annual Hawkfest celebration at the Lake Erie Metropark Marshlands Museum. Lake St. Clair Metropark Stormwater Maintenance Dear Patrons: As part of our on-going water quality efforts, the Huron-Clinton Metroparks will be inspecting and assessing it’s green infrastructure at Lake St. Clair Metropark. Specifically, the Metroparks as part of an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must conduct regular inspections and maintenance of green storm water infrastructure. During this time, you will see work relating to maintaining, inspecting and assessing the condition of the stormwater system. When work is complete the vegetation along the bioswales will be allowed to regrow and swales will be returned to their pre-inspection condition. Thank you for your patience as we work through this project. Best Hiking Trails in Metro Detroit by Channel 7 WXYZ Detroit Our parks topped the list! Thank you to everyone who voted for making Kensington Metropark #1 and Stony Creek Metropark #2 on Thursday's Top 7 list of the “Best hiking trails in metro Detroit!” History of the Shelden Trails Elizabeth Shelden made an agreement with the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority in 1959 to buy her property for $377,000 upon her death, although she both sold and donated some areas of land before this time. Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan to support Shelden Trails Development Project The Huron-Clinton Metroparks is excited to announce that the Shelden Trail Development Project at Stony Creek Metropark is now underway. The Metroparks will immediately begin the process to extend and develop the popular trail system to create a premier, natural surface, multi-use trail system. Nature Trails at Your Metroparks The Metroparks hike/bike paths provide access to beautiful scenery and often lead to fine natural vistas. So why don’t we call these “nature” trails? Simply, in the eyes of wildlife, some areas have more nature than others. Remember, Never Feed the Animals The Metroparks offers some unique opportunities to see wildlife! Viewing them up close can be a thrilling experience so you may be tempted to draw them as close as possible to yourself with food. But it is important to refrain from doing so. The top four reasons to resist that urge and keeping your distance are... Lake St. Clair Metropark Goose Management FAQ The Metroparks has had a Canada Goose management program going back over a decade. Goose populations within our park have increased steadily, negatively impacting the water quality at the park and the experience of park patrons. Our Canada Goose management program is an effort to address both of these issues by discouraging geese from living in the recreation areas of the park, and encouraging geese to move to more natural areas both inside and outside of the park. Our Metroparks have wildlife! This is great news for anyone who appreciates wildlife and the opportunity to view them. It means that when you are quietly walking the trails, if you keep your distance, you will probably be witness to a variety of wild behavior. Most of the time, this is how it works. But occasionally, encounters with wildlife can be… wild. Nesting Great Horned Owls at Lake St. Clair Metropark The large and beautiful Great Horned Owl is one of the most common and widespread owls in North America. You can see or hear them in most of the 13 Huron-Clinton Metroparks. However, have you heard the story of the Great Horned Owls in the bucket at Lake St. Clair Metropark? Shelden Trails Development Project In support of the Shelden Trails project at Stony Creek Metropark, Clinton River Area Mountain Biking Association (CRAMBA) presented the Metroparks Foundation a check for $3,000 at its annual Ay CRAMBA It's Cold Out! Fat Tire Bike/Snow Bike Festival. Metroparks Planning Department Updates On March 14, the Planning Department took part in a Disc Golf Planning Workshop hosted by Oakland County Parks and Recreation in partnership with the Metroparks and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR). The workshop was a public forum to share information about disc golf in Oakland County and to gather feedback from disc golfers and others about experiences and needs Winter Nature Notes: Maple Sugaring To me, maple sugaring is the first sweet taste of spring. Weeks before the snow melts and the first leaf buds, maple trees begin to shake off their winter dormancy. As winter ends, the cycle of night time freezing temperatures and daytime thawing temperatures triggers the maple’s sap to begin flowing. Winter Fitness at your Metroparks It’s a new year, and a great time to set personal goals, eat healthier, and plan a workout routine. Fitness is especially important! Looking for a way to get moving? Discover activities and resources for a great winter workout at your Metroparks. Wonder from Under the Pond One of the most distinguishable attractions of the Environmental Discovery Center at Indian Springs Metropark is the underwater pond dome. This acrylic dome allows visitors the opportunity to view our human-made Discovery Pond from down below. Metroparks Planning Department Since 2016, Huron-Clinton Metroparks planners have been working diligently to develop specific 10-year master plans for each park. Please visit the Planning Department page of the Metroparks website to answer a short survey and get details on upcoming public meetings! Winter Nature Notes: Snow The Metroparks is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, continuing our mission of providing excellent recreational and educational opportunities while serving as stewards of its natural resources. Lake St. Clair Metropark Playground Now Open! Our new playground is OPEN! Head out to the park to check out our newest addition. We’re so excited for you to experience our fantastic new playground features. Come see us soon to get out and play! Invasive Shrubs And Why We Control Them A Prairie Invitation There is a bench in the prairie at Indian Springs Metropark, where if you sit sideways facing east, you can see hills of green in every direction, no roads and no buildings. These hills laid down by glaciers, some 17,000 years ago, are dotted with groups of oak trees and carpeted with an array of native prairie plants. The Symphony of Spring Take a moment and think about your favorite song. Maybe it’s a classical piece. Or perhaps it’s a bit more modern. In any case, as you listen, you can certainly gain an appreciation for each instrument. Maybe it is significant, and heard throughout the song, or maybe it is so subtle that it’s almost overlooked. Metroparks Takes Important Step to Conserve Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake Metroparks Takes Important Step to Conserve Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake Ryan Colliton, HCMA Stewardship Coordinator In September of 2016, the eastern massasauga rattlesnake was listed as threatened… Importance of Leisure & Recreation for Health The holidays are over. The days are getting longer. New year’s resolutions are in full swing. Statistics show that the top two changes Americans want to make, in 2017, are to improve their overall health and improve their overall lives.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line640
__label__cc	0.693963	0.306037	Seven Hundredth Unicorn - Ruins Of Hope sludge / doom Ruins of Hope by Seven Hundredth Unicorn Bands that "don't limit themselves to tags and genres" are all well and good but they don't make my job any easier. I have to tag them, which sometimes isn't the easiest task in the world. Then again, on some occasions it's perfectly safe to push a band into a certain genre, knowing that the fans of that particular style will enjoy the album and hopefully spend a little bit of cash on it. At this moment, I'm going to address the sludge fans among us. Seventh Hundredth Unicorn are a two-piece band from Milton Keynes, UK. They claim to make "heavy rock", influenced by bands like Black Sabbath, Neurosis, Mastodon and Isis. Personally, after listening to this album a few times, I'd change "heavy" into "massive' and "rock" into "sludge" because that's exactly what you get on this debut: massive sludge metal with a thick wall of noise, pummeling drums and brutal screams. I know very little sludge doom fans who can resist that recipe. The album opens with 'Our Worlds Collide', immediately throwing in elements from doom, sludge metal, hardcore and noise rock. It sounds as if someone is screaming at you while you crawl through a thick puddle of mud, broken glass and barbed wire, a military drill with a sergeant who can't stand your ass. In that aspect, and in the category "best songtitles", 'Jesus Was My Age, When He got Nailed' is one of my favorites. Sometimes, the tempo goes up, bringing a bit of a punk attitude to the already bloody melee. Even more, there's grunge riffs to be found, and some furious blackened passages as well. Alice In Chains meets Isis meets Conan in 'Death Of Glory In The Serpent's Eye' or Rise Against meets Neurosis in 'Rule Of The Mob', or something like that. I guess you'd have a decent idea about how punishing and brutal this album is, a decent enough idea to buy this thing. So go ahead... Serge	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line649
__label__cc	0.544738	0.455262	Homage to Aliaa el Mahdi Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, woman activist who posted nude pictures of herself on her blog to protest limits on free expression has triggered an uproar in Egypt, drawing condemnations from conservatives and liberals alike. She became an internet sensation on her blog, and later on Twitter with the hash tag nudephotorevolutionary. Some liberals feared that the posting by 20-year-old university student Aliaa Magda Elmahdy would taint them in the eyes of deeply conservative Egyptians ahead of Nov. 28 parliamentary elections in which they are trying to compete with fundamentalist Islamic parties. Nudity is strongly frowned upon in Egyptian society, even as an art form. Elmahdy’s posting is almost unheard of in a country where most women in the Muslim majority wear the headscarf and even those who don’t rarely wear clothes exposing the arms or legs in public. Elmahdy wrote on her blog that the photographs, which show her standing wearing only stockings, are “screams against a society of violence, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and hypocrisy.” The blog has received 1.5 million hits since she posted the photos earlier this week. The posting comes at a time when Egypt, a nation of some 85 million people, is polarized between Islamists and liberals ahead of the elections, the first since the February ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak. Members of the most hardline Islamic movement in Egypt, the Salafis, have warned voters during their campaigns that liberals will corrupt Egypt’s morals. “This hurts the entire secular current in front of those calling themselves the people of virtue,” Sayyed el-Qimni, a prominent self-described secular figure, said referring to Islamists. “It’s is a double disaster. Because I am liberal and I believe in the right of personal freedom, I can’t interfere,” el-Qimni said Wednesday night on one of Egypt’s popular TV political talk shows, “90 Minutes.” The April 6 movement, one of the most prominent liberal activist groups that led the 18-day uprising against Mubarak, issued a statement denying claims by some on the Web that Elmahdy is a member of the group. The posting prompted furious discussions on Internet social media sites, with pages for and against her put up on Facebook. This event was closely followed by an online campaign by a group of Israeli women in support. Aptly titled, Homage to Aliaa el Mahdi, Sisters in Israel, the campaign is pictorially depicted with a bunch of nude Israeli women covering their private parts with a banner. A feminist #Jan25 revolutionary posted her nude photo on the internet to express her freedom. I’m totally taken back by her bravery!! tweeted human rights activist Ahmad Awadalla. And many believe that if correctly utilised, nudity can be a powerful tool to get things done. Dhillan Mowli, co- organiser, SlutWalk Bengaluru says, “Look at the kind of support she has drawn from other women. If nudity is projected aesthetically, it can have a stronger impact than words”. At a time when women equality and gender bias is being scrutinised closely by many, the issue needs to be tackled with maturity. Salsa dancer Lourd Vijay says, “The above average, intelligent male would love to have a confident, self sustained partner. However, it is unnecessary to make a point by baring all. It makes many people very uncomfortable and works as a pressure tactic.” Theatre artiste Nandini Rao agrees, “It’s very easy to dismiss such an act as a publicity gimmick. To avoid this, it must be followed up with a strong campaign, supported by facts. Take for instance the play Vagina Monologues. It affected people from the word go, but whoever has watched it, has praised it to no end! It was a revolution of sorts in the world of Indian theatre, which addressed an issue boldly.” Aliaa’s act too, must go beyond the realm of social media attention, to produce desired results. am with you all the way god bless.! know that there are many many people with u all the may god bless if more people had her courage the world would be a better place. do not follow what others tell you to do or say, be your self do what you want to do , its your life , live it your way . Haryhar Aliaa-el-Mahdi the great teen goddess who heals all female for love and dignity. Most people have forgotten what "natural" is INDRAJITH MAGDA'S COURAGE IS WELCOME.WE NEED TO BE BOLD TO MAKE MEANINGFUL CHANGES IN A WORLD FULL OF HYPOCRITS Please enter the letters in the picture into the right hand box Naturist Directory Web Masters	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line651
__label__cc	0.550168	0.449832	Resources for New Principals Join the National Panel of New Principals! Make a difference for yourself and your profession. When you join the panel, you become part of a prestigious national community of new principals that contributes to a dynamic knowledge base about what it’s really like to be a new principal today. You’ll gain insights into how your experience as a new principal compares to your peers and you’ll get ideas that will help you succeed in your new role. NAESP membership is required to participate as a panelist. Participating in the panel is completely free, requires a very small time commitment, and provides you with valuable benefits! Who Qualifies: Elementary and middle-level principals in their first or second year as a principal (Note: Refers to the number of years in the principalship, not the number of years at a specific school). What Panelists Do: Panelists participate in four to six online surveys each year on a relevant topic. Each survey takes less than 10 minutes to complete. What Panelists Get: The popular New Principal Connection brief which summarizes each survey’s results and highlights early career principals’ best ideas; opportunities to participate in special webinars throughout the year; a personalized National Panelist certificate. "I've really enjoyed being on the panel. There's a multiplier effect when individual principals who are new to the job share what works and the strategies that have made a difference for them - it makes us all a little smarter." "The panel provided me with a forum to freely express my thoughts, opinions, and frustrations. I enjoyed reading how my feelings were not unique. Hearing other new principals help me cope with my own feelings. Thank you." Evangelina Cantu Visit naesp.org ©2014 National Association of Elementary School Principals	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line653
__label__cc	0.718908	0.281092	Blog Projects Rapid Transition New study: How did we do that? The possibility of rapid transition 24th April 2017 10th June 2017 Andrew Simms 3 Comments A new study by the ESRC STEPS Centre at Sussex University and the New Weather Institute points to historical evidence that the sort of rapid, large scale social and economic change needed in the face of climate destabilisation has occurred before and could do so again. In the face of climate change and social inequality, changing to a greener and fairer society might feel impossible – but rapid, radical transitions may be more possible than we think, according to a new study. How did we do that? The possibility of rapid transition, by Andrew Simms and Peter Newell, published by the ESRC STEPS Centre and the New Weather Institute, shows what we can learn about rapid change through examples from history and the present day. From when modern day volcanoes ground international airlines, to the New Deal in 1930s America and today’s renewable energy revolution, the book collects 14 stories of rapid and radical change, often in the face of crisis and difficulty. Launched at a conference in Brighton with speakers including Caroline Lucas, Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales and Rob Hopkins of the Transition Network among many others, the authors argue that such change is needed now but also faces key obstacles. Much of human society is locked into a high-consumption culture, energy-intensive infrastructure, unequal power relations, and an economic system dominated by finance that fails the poorest and takes infinite growth for granted. Other barriers are more in the mind-sets and attitudes towards change. Opponents of radical change argue that it is impossible because of powerful incumbent interests, high costs, the lack of a detailed blueprint, or the unwillingness of governments or citizens to act. Others pin their hopes on a smart, technological fix to environmental problems. “History is full of examples of rapid transition in the face of new challenges. Society shows a brilliantly adaptive ability to change and still meet its needs, yet we’re constantly told that we have no alternative to a failed economic system,” says Andrew Simms, co-author of the paper. “In fact, the past suggests we have an opportunity to innovate and reveal our inner climate chameleons, changing our economy and habits to halt environmental collapse and thrive differently.” The examples in the book suggest that these barriers can be, and have been, overcome in the past – through grassroots movements, through leadership from governments, or a combination of the two. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in Iceland in 2010, halted northern European air travel overnight. Despite losing a transport link thought indispensable, businesses and individuals adapted almost immediately. In Kurdish Rojava, at the heart of the Syrian conflict, experiments with direct democracy on feminist and ecological principles show that citizens can work together even in the face of violence and economic collapse. In response to an earlier failure of private banks, the New Deal in 1930s America, invested an amount similar to that thought needed for low carbon transition today to public relief and federal works programmes. The New Deal saw a general drop in income inequality, an improvement in gender equality, a major programme of new public housing and significant environmental works. Dramatic changes have occurred within a short space of time in renewable energy capacity in countries from Costa Rica to Denmark and in food systems in Cuba. Lessons drawn from the study include: Fairness matters: to be accepted, rapid change must be seen to be fair. This is especially true if and where there is any perceived sacrifice to be made for the greater good. We’re actually good at change: New social norms can quickly take root in everything from working patterns, to transport use, attitudes surrounding prejudice, and patterns of consumption. Public leadership is needed: Initial public investment in a sector or activity can leverage larger levels of investment from other sources. There’s no one path: Rapid transitions can result from bottom up and top down approaches, but ensuring that top down approaches are equitable and inclusive is a key challenge. Inaction costs: It matters always to be clear about both the costs of inaction and the benefits of action. Pleasant surprises do happen: Change always brings with it unplanned and unexpected consequences – but it can also bring unintended benefits. Click here to download the report: How did we do that? The possibility of rapid transition, The insights in the book are drawn from a series of workshops and events held in Oxford, Manchester, Uppsala, Machynlleth, Brighton, Hay-on-Wye and Dartington during 2016 and 2017. More information on these events can be found at: www.steps-centre.org/transformations ← Money Money Money When they conspire against the public → 3 thoughts on “New study: How did we do that? The possibility of rapid transition” Pingback:Tax Research UK » A courageous transition Pingback:Humans better at rapid change than we think – Enjeux énergies et environnement EDISON BITTENCOURT 2nd January 2018 at 3:11 pm There is nothing fundamentally wrong with taking advantage of an opportunity, in this case: it is coming and cannot be avoided. Many will have to confess an agenda, and teaching according to it. Besides, the will lose their jobs in banks and financing firms. Trump , at least, is sincere ( as I believe today at 13:13 , Brasilia time)	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line654
__label__wiki	0.730393	0.730393	Hilton Family FAQ and Facts admin: “This is Paris” is the same name of her documentary that aired on MTV in 2006! Michael Siemonsen: Paris Hilton has a new man. (Lumpi) I want to find you now, we think that think for new family... Jen: This is a match that makes sense. He is involved in the financial world, much like Nicky’s husband, and... S7: Hi my SiS Paris “Although it`s too short; Life is beautiful.” Merrry Christmas Kiss U* Tue, Dec... Dawn: Paris is always happy & positive. ERW is a bitter woman & her constant virtue signalling at the expense... Jen: Paris bought herself a new twelve-thousand square ft. house with a fab waterfall & pool. In Beverly Hills.... Press-On Nail Electrify 3.4 oz EDP Spray Buy Online Amazon.com eBay.com Platinum Rush 3.4 oz EDP Spray Rose Rush 3.4 oz EDP Spray Anti Aging Brightening Face Mask Paris Hilton reflects on her past in an interview with Los Angeles Times Reported by Los Angeles Times You could easily label this the decade of the influencer, those YouTube and Instagram stars who make money by selling FaceTuned versions of themselves while hawking face creams, fashion collaborations, protein powder and how-to-improve-your-life seminars. Through their social media posts, they convince thousands or millions of fans and admirers to like what they like and want what they want. But is all that glitters on the ‘Gram and elsewhere really gold? For answers, I turn to the woman who will likely go down in history for putting the “i” in influencer, and that would be Paris Hilton, the eldest daughter of real-estate developer Richard Hilton, and his socialite wife, Kathy. I visit Hilton at her Beverly Hills home on a quiet, unassuming street last month. Despite having been robbed by the Bling Ring thieves and enduring years of public scrutiny, Hilton, I notice, has left the modern home’s bronze wrought-iron gate wide open, welcoming a revolving door of guests that include a photographer, publicist and large film crew. Although she was born into the wealthy family behind the Hilton Hotel empire, the 38-year-old became a household name about 15 years ago thanks to her role on one of TV’s first reality shows, “The Simple Life.” Seated on a metallic couch in her home theater, Hilton is wearing her signature look — one fans have come to know well: a pink velour Juicy Couture jumpsuit with Nike sneakers. Inside the room, there’s a decorative pillow with the words “In Fashion We Trust” and another one that has cherubs covered in sunglasses and tattoos. Otherwise, the space is barren. It has an emptiness to it. Perhaps that’s because Hilton only spends a handful of days per year in Los Angeles. Or maybe she’s more likely to entertain in her two-story home’s living room, which feels like the lobby of an upscale hotel complete with an image of Marilyn Monroe blowing a bubble by artist Michael Moebius; a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk; large-scale photographs of Hilton; a neon sign that reads: “Life is Beautiful”; and a lineup of colorful gnomes sticking up their middle fingers. Rest the rest of the article here. Posted: December 5th, 2019 Some of the contents on ParisHiltonSite.net are copyright and may not be duplicate in any form without prior written permission. ParisHiltonSite.net is a fansite and an opinion-oriented website. It is in no way associated with Paris Hilton or her affiliates. ParisHiltonSite.net was officially launched on January 10, 2007. © ParisHiltonSite 2007 - 2020 \| All Rights Reserved.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line657
__label__cc	0.702475	0.297525	LEED/Green Building Levelrock 2500 At upwards of 2500 psi, Levelrock 2500 by USG boasts the highest compressive strength of any product in its class. It is the perfect choice of underlayment whether you are looking for sound attenuation, fire suppression, radiant heat pipe encapsulation, or all of the above. Achieving a minimum PSI of 3500, LEVELROCK 3500 is the underlayment of choice for wood framed construction needing to meet the strength requirements of commercial flooring products. LEVELROCK 3500 is also very useful for the leveling of concrete slabs. With strengths exceeding 4500 PSI, LEVELROCK 4500 can be applied at thicknesses from 2" to featheredge (with the proper sand). It is ideal for resurfacing uneven, cratered, or sunken concrete areas, yielding a smooth, level surface in preparation for finished flooring. Levelrock Csd Early Exposure Premium poured floor underlayment for early installation over corrugated galvanized steel deck. Can be poured up to 60 days before installing a building's permanent windows and doors. At approximately 13 lbs./sq. ft. per rising inch, CSD is up to 55% lighter than 3 in. of corrugated steel deck. Streamlines trade scheduling - can be installed early in the building's construction schedule. Allows trade traffic to resume the next day (conventional poured concrete takes 7-10 days). May assist in obtaining LEED credits. Compressive strength of 3500-5000 psi with a dry density range of 119-127 lbs/cu. ft. Levelrock All Purpose Sealer LEVELROCK All Purpose Sealer seals floor underlayments to enhance the bond between floor-covering adhesive and underlayments in a one-coat application. The sealer can be applied to the underlayment as soon as it is dry enough to walk on (1-2 hours). Click on the mats for full specs. SAM-N40 Sound Attenuation Mats Sound Attenuation Mat is the product of choice when looking to increase Impact Isolation Class (IIC) and Sound Transmission Class (STC) ratings on a variety of subfloors such as plywood, OSB, pre-cast concrete, and metal pan decking. With a nominal thickness of 0.125 in. (1/8 in.) for SAM-N12, 0.25 in. (1/4 in.) for SAM-N25 and 0.4 in. (2/5 in.) for SAM-N40, these sound mats are ideal for concrete and wood substrates. SAM-N12 requires a minimum 3/4 in. thickness of LEVELROCK floor underlayment topping, while both SAM-N25 and SAM-N40 require and 1 in. minimum topping of LEVELROCK floor underlayment. We recommend using 1.5 in. LEVELROCK topping to maximize the durability and strength of the underlayment. All SAM sound attenuation mats are made from a durable polymer resin with a special moisture-managed control backing. For those interested in green building, the typical recycled content of SAM-N12, SAM-N25 and SAM-N40 sound attenuation mats (40%, of which 100% is pre-consumer/post-industrial material) can help a building achieve a LEED rating. USG's SAM products can also greatly contribute to sound isolation for commercial buildings operating in industries such as Health Care and Legal work where speech privacy and comfort of clients is paramount in day-to-day operations. For information on how LEVELROCK underlayments and Sound Attenuation Mats can help achieve a LEED rating, view USG's LEED FAQ's. Bonner Mill Industrial Park,The Sorter Building Bonner,MT Permafloors, Inc. © 2020	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line659
__label__cc	0.711079	0.288921	← MAYAN – in studio per il nuovo album! WHILE HEAVEN WEPT – festeggiano il 25° anniversario con degli show da headliner! → SEPULTURA – primo trailer del nuovo album! Pubblicato il 13 Settembre 2013 da Notturno Metal SEPULTURA – part 1 of new album trailer available now! Legendary Brazilian metal icons SEPULTURA have released the first trailer for their upcoming album »The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart« here: http://youtu.be/-7MbyGOZJts. The record is set for European release on October 25th via Nuclear Blast and can be ordered here: http://smarturl.it/tmbhahmbth-cddvd The artwork for »The Mediator Between Head And Hands Must Be The Heart« was created by Brazilian artist Alexandre Wagner (www.alwg.org). The album was recorded with renowned producer Ross Robinson (KORN, MACHINE HEAD, FEAR FACTORY), who worked with SEPULTURA on their landmark 1996 release Roots, and co-produced by Steve Evetts (THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, SYMPHONY X, INCANTATION), who previously worked on SEPULTURA’s »Roorback« (2003), the »Revolusongs« EP (2002), and »Nation« (2001). The track listing for the album is: 01. Trauma Of War 02. The Vatican 03. Impending Doom 04. Manipulation of Tragedy 05. Tsunami 06. The Bliss Of Ignorants 07. Grief 08. The Age Of The Atheist 09. Obsessed 10. Da Lama Ao Caos (Chico Science & Nação Zumbi cover) www.sepultura.com.br \| www.facebook.com/sepultura \| www.nuclearblast.de/sepultura	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line666
__label__cc	0.730851	0.269149	Wedding Survey Results WEDDING SURVEY RESULTS . . . What Causes the Most Stress Top Ways to Save Best Wedding Day Advice OVERALL RESULTS FOR WHAT MATTERS MOST: Food and Alcohol \| The Venue \| Photography RESULTS FOR WHAT CAUSES THE MOST STRESS: The Budget \| The Seating Arrangements Worrying that Everything Runs Smoothly Detailed Responses "The little details: the ribbon on the programs doesn't reeeally matter that much and neither does the seating chart. It was hard for me to remember that everyone coming to the wedding was there for us and they loved us. It's not high school prom where everyone is being catty in the bathroom. Don't sweat the small stuff!" "The last 5 pounds." "The guest list. We finally decided to keep it really small and the rule was: if we have eaten at your house or you have eaten at ours, you are invited." "Whether to invite a guest or not. In the end, it didn't dramatically change our numbers." "A lot of the more detailed decor elements - no one cared or noticed. : ) " "Photography. I really wanted to make sure we got all the great shots, so we even hired a second photographer. In the end, our original photographer came through in a big way." "I worried too much about seating charts; everyone is really social at weddings and tend to be out of their seats anyway." "The event flow. I'm a control freak and kept stressing out that the schedule wasn't going off as planned. About two hours of being late, I realized it didn't matter and I was still doing what I was supposed to be doing- marrying the man I love. Going with the flow was hard for my personality but worth it." "The chairs! Silly, I know, but I didn't want crappy chairs! Nobody commented on the chairs, so they must have been fine!" "There wasn't one thing in particular, but rather, I remember being so aware of whether everything was going right or not (during the ceremony, was the music timed right, etc.) and I wish I had just ignored that and relaxed more." "The weather. Our wedding was planned for early August in Idaho, so very, very little chance of rain, but I still worried. The venue was so beautiful and the thought of having to move the ceremony inside was tragic. In hindsight, it would not have been a big deal at all - as long as we got married!" "Table linens! I stressed for weeks over the color, pattern, texture, and material. I couldn't decide what would look best in the venue, what color napkins to go with them, how they would look at night with dimmed lighting, etc etc etc. In the end, NO ONE noticed the linens! My guests commented on how lovely the centerpieces were, and the custom signage all around the space, and the interactive guest book we had. Moral of the story: linens are NOT worth your stress!" "The decor. I DIY'd most of our ceremony and reception decor but in the end, while everything looked beautiful, no one remembers what was or was not on the tables." "Being a perfectionist, I stressed and worried about everything! However, in hindsight, nothing really matter. The day turned out beautifully and I am now married to my best friend!" "What others would think of my wedding and how it would stack up against their expectations. Between blogs, Pinterest, and other engaged friends, it was easy to lose sight of what was really important to my husband and myself and what wasn't." "The little details. My father-in-law said it best, "No is one going to remember how the table cards are going to look." And it's true. They remembered the food, the atmosphere, and the day. When it finally came down to the finish line about getting those small details (like table numbers and cocktail straws), I realized there was no point in worrying about it. I had everything else that I really wanted in place and all the rest didn't matter." RESULTS FOR TOP WAYS TO SAVE: Favors (be creative) Flowers (choose flowers in season) Alcohol (serve beer, wine and/or a signature drink for the first hour). Detailed responses: "Buying invitations from a local vendor was much less expensive than the online stores." "Had a bakery which did not focus on wedding cakes make the cake. Bought flowers from a kiosk in the mall. They had a blast designing everything and gave me extra for free." "We were able to buy the alcohol directly from the distributor and save on retail costs. Also, we used flowers that were in season, and mixed in some foliage." "My family is very large (my grandma had 12 kids!) so we had a formal, day-of ceremony and reception that included only our 40 closest family and friends. The venue we chose had a built-in sound system, so I created a playlist of all the music and we paid a total of maybe $40 for music (just b/c I had to purchase some new tunes!). I spent hours researching photographers and found the best one for our budget. I bought my dress and shoes on sale, but splurged on the sash and headpiece. I saved money on flowers by not decorating the church (which is beautiful in its own right anyway) and by purchasing fake flowers. You couldn't tell unless you were holding them that they were fake, and now I have a precious keepsake to display in our home. A week after our formal ceremony and reception, my parents held a big outdoor picnic reception that we invited our extended family and all of our friends to attend." "We picked a venue that we thought was stunning enough that we needed very little decor. The venue also allowed us to use any caterer, florist, etc. that we wanted, so we rationalized that by spending more on the venue, we could choose where to cut back. But looking back, I would never spend the amount we did on our venue again." "All of the arrangements from my wedding were used in the ceremony and in the reception." "We negotiated like crazy with the venue, and my mother and I saved money by being our own wedding planners (we are event planners anyways), but had a fellow event planner friend help to keep everything in order on the day of." "We chose our priorities-an awesome venue, open bar, and amazing photos because that's what people remember the most. We knew we wanted those to stand out so the majority of our budget went to those. The things that were less important to us-favors, accessories, cake, we're what we spent less on because they were as important to us." RESULTS FOR BEST WEDDING ADVICE "Take Time for Just the Two of You" ( "Take it all in," "Soak it all up," and "Look around-it goes so fast!") "Hire a Day-of Coordinator" "Stay off Pinterest!" ( it can lead to unrealistic expectations and cause more stress and a sense of feeling overwhelmed than actually helping.) SURVEY RESULTS BASED ON The Everygirl's Wedding Survey Results and Advice #theeverygirl For more great wedding ideas and inspirations as well as all the help you'll need with wedding planning, be sure to attend a Premier Bridal Show. WEDDING PLANNING MADE EASY! September 17, 2017 - Hilton Pasadena September 24, 2017 - DoubleTree by Hilton San Bernardino October 29, 2017 - The Hills Hotel, Laguna Hills WWW.PREMIERBRIDALSHOWS.COM Check out #Bloomingdales display at today's #PremierBridalShow at the Radisson Hotel #NewportBeach In addition to their awesome re-usable tote bags, Bloomingdales will be giving away a #VeraWang Silver picture frame! Which lucky #bride will win? A photo posted by Premier Bridal Shows (@premierbridal) on Sep 20, 2015 at 10:59am PDT	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line667
__label__cc	0.677884	0.322116	Princeton Insider Books/DVD Vintage Princeton Actor Michael Shannon at “99 Homes” Film Screening Actor Michael Shannon will make an appearance at McCarter Theatre’s screening of the film 99 Homes, which will be held at McCarter Theatre on Saturday, September 23 at 4 p.m. There will also be a Q&A with McCarter’s Bill Lockwood and Princeton Garden Theatre’s Chris Collier. General admission is $20 ($15 for McCarter subscribers or Garden Theatre members). In this timely melodrama of flipped houses and mortgaged souls set during the mortgage crisis of the late 2000s, Michael Shannon plays Rick Carver, an Orlando Florida realtor, whose specialty is not in selling properties, but seizing those occupied by foreclosed owners. It’s a harrowing morality tale, with Shannon as the Devil incarnate—a kind of reptilian Gordon Gekko. The film also features Andrew Garfield (The Social Network, Hacksaw Ridge) as a Florida handyman evicted from his home and recruited by Rick to assist in the foreclosure racket. Director Ramin Bahrani’s focus is on how the need for money, security, and status can force terrible choices on people and affect their moral decisions. For more information, visit www.mccarter.org. Get Princeton Magazine in your inbox PREVIOUS ISSUES: MAY/REUNIONS 2018 SPRING – REUNIONS 2017 FEB/MARCH 2017 FAMILY EDITION 2015	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line668
__label__wiki	0.804036	0.804036	Portland Fire Department History Fire protection started in Portland on March 29th,1768 with the appointment of five “Fire Wards." These men had Police powers and had the authority to order citizens to help at Fire scenes. As the city grew so did the fires, and the Fire Department. In 1787 Portland’s first organized Fire Company was formed and was named the “Neptune”. More companies followed: “Vigilant” in 1794, “Cataract”, “Portland”, “Extinguisher”, and later the “Alert”. Hand Engines came into service starting with the “Deluge” in 1827 and the “Hydraulion” and “Niagra” in 1830. And in 1827 the “Washington Hook and Ladder” became the City’s first Ladder Company. In 1831 the Portland Fire department was officially established by the Legislature . With increasing fires the Fire Companies became better organized leading to a numbering system starting in 1835. In November 1859 Portland’s “Machigonne 1," a First-size Amoskeag, became the first steam engine in the City. On November 21 it also became the first Engine to respond as a permanent manned piece. A second steam Engine was placed in service in 1861, the “Falmouth Steam Fire Engine 2” and assigned to Congress St. at Smith St., but do to it’s weight and mechanical problems it was out of service more often than in service. In 1862 the “Cumberland Steam Fire Engine No.3” became the next commissioned steamer for the City of Portland and stationed in the City’s West End at 176 Brackett St. The Portland Co. built the next steamer in 1864, which was placed in service on Congress St. along with Ladder 1 as the “Casco Steam Fire Engine No.5”. The Steam Engines proved very useful to the PFD with Companies requiring only 15-20 men per company as compared to the 60 needed for the Hand Tubs. Even though the Steam Engines were well built, they required mechanically skilled Engineers at the Stations 24 hours a day. July 4, 1866, the Portland was devastated by a Fire that destroyed a third of the City Mutual Aid was received from cities as far away as Boston, Massachusetts as the fire spread through the city. The next morning, 2 people were dead, 1500 buildings, including 3 Fire Houses, were destroyed and 10,000 people were left homeless. The City and the PFD rebuilt after the fire. New stations were built, Congress St. and Market in 1866, and India St. in 1867. The PFD put the Alarm Division into operation in March of 1867. New Companies were formed, Eagle Ladder Co. 2 in 1874, Hose Co. 6 in 1881, Bramhall Ladder Co. 3 in 1883, Chemical 1 in 1892, and in 1894 the PFD commissioned Engine Seven Fireboat. The Fireboat was fitted with a steam engine capable of discharging 1,800 GPM, and quartered at the Portland Pier from where it protected the City’s busy waterfront. By the late 1890’s Portland’s Fire department had become a well respected Fire Department, well known throughout the North East for its skill in battling major fires and for its high fire activity .In 1899 Portland annexed the City of Deering, with that the entire firefighting force of Deering was incorporated into the PFD. 1915 brought change to the PFD again. This time it was motorized equipment. Chief Butler began with a motorized Chief’s car followed by a Deputy Chief’s car in 1916. 1916 also brought the first motorized apparatus, Hose 8. Ladder 5 and Engine 1 in 1917, Chemical 1 in 1918, Ladder 3 in 1919, and Engine 4 in 1920. 14 years after it began the PFD became completely motorized with the purchase of Engine 6, a 1929 Mack triple combination pumper. The 1930’s through the 1960’s brought steady change for the PFD. Engine 7 Fireboat was replaced with a new “City of Portland” which had a pumping capacity of 6,000 gallons per minute (GPM). Ladder 3 became the PFD’s first steel Aerial in 1936. 1938 saw the creation of the Fire Prevention Bureau. Rescue 1 went onto service in 1943. And in 1963 Portland’s Bravest were the stars in a movie about Firefighters called “24 Hours”. The 1970’s and 1980’s were a busy time for the PFD, as was it for many Fire Departments across the Country. With fire calls up the PFD put its first Snorkel into service in 1970. Air Rescue units were added in 1973. And in 1975 the Medical Crisis Unit (Medcu) was formed as a part of the Fire Department to handle the increasing need for EMS in Portland. In 1990, the PFD added a third Medcu unit, and in 1993 the “Joseph C. Cavallaro.”, a 42 ft. Duffy, went into service as a Rescue boat for the waterfront and Portland’s Coastal Islands. In 1996 Medcu and the Portland Firefighters became one. Both were now grouped into one union, the IAFF Local 740. Paramedics were cross trained to become Firefighters. Most Firefighters are now licensed EMT's, and a group of Firefighters that are currently licensed Paramedics will be cross trained to possibly form a Paramedic Engine Company. The Portland Fire Department is approaching its 240th year of service and protection of the citizens of the City of Portland. Over those years 20 Firefighters have given their lives for the protection of others. A Look Back at the Twentieth Century As we begin the twenty first century, it is only appropriate that we highlight some of the many improvements, changes, and dedicated efforts of progress in the Portland Fire Department that occurred over the last 100 years. In March of 1899, as the twentieth century approached, the city of Deering was annexed to the city of Portland, a change that more than doubled the population and the geographical area of Portland. Overnight, the size of the Portland Fire Department nearly doubled from eleven to twenty fire companies. At that time, the Fire Chief was Melville N. Eldridge, and he was appointed the City's first Permanent Chief of Department. Chief Eldridge was well known for his organizational abilities and was well respected throughout New England as a fire service leader. Upon his appointment, he undertook a major reorganization of the entire fire department which included; renumbering the Deering fire companies, assignments to box alarms, establishing first alarm response districts, and disbanded three hose companies; Hose 10, Allen's Corner, Hose 13, Deering Center, and Hose 14, in Libbytown. Five companies remained in the centralized neighborhoods; Hose 8, Ladder 4 at Woodfords Corner, Hose 9 at Morrill's Corner, Hose 11 at East Deering, and Hose 12 on Pitt Street in the Oakdale area. Permanent Drivers were then appointed and horses were purchased. A new hose wagon was assigned to Hose 11 and a spare ladder carriage was reconditioned to replace the Deering ladder truck, which was deemed too light for fire duty, and given to the city of South Portland. The Peninsula was assigned as District-1 and the Deering area as District-2. Upgrades were also made in the District-1 area, including the purchase of Munjoy Hill's first ladder truck and the overall improvements in daily operations of the reorganized Department. These changes created a strong foundation for the Portland Fire Department to build on as 1900 arrived. The succeeding one hundred years saw the following changes, improvements, and progress made in the Portland Fire Department: 1901 - Hose 11 was relocated to Ocean Avenue to a renovated barn, improving the long runs to North Deering. 1903 - Two new firehouses opened; Engine 6 on Park Avenue and Engine 9 on Arbor Street at Morrill's Corner. Two steam engines were rebuilt and reassigned, upgrading Hose Company's 6 and 9 to Engines 6 and 9. 1906 - Hose 12, located at 51 Pitt Street in Oakdale, was disbanded. Hose Co. 8 began covering Oakdale. New quarters opened for Engine 7 Fireboat at the State Pier, and was berthed on the east side of the pier. 1908 - City Hall was destroyed by fire, including the third floor Fire Alarm Office. Four steam fire engines were purchased for Engines 1, 4, 9, and a spare engine. Two engines were rebuilt. Two new stations opened; Engine 8 at Woodfords Corner and Hose 11 on Ocean Ave. in East Deering. A reserve steam engine was reassigned to Woodfords Corner, upgrading Hose Co. 8 to Engine Co. 8. 1909 - A new Fire Alarm/Electrical Department building opened on Federal Street, improving communications. The reduction of hours for the Permanent Firefighters from one day off in fifteen to one day off in eight. 1910 - Replaced four Call Assistant Engineers with a Permanent Deputy Chief (D-1) and a District Chief (D-2). 1911 - Chief Eldridge retired after fifteen years in office. Patrick H. Flaherty appointed Chief of Department. Building inspections began and the City declared the ninth of November as the first fire prevention day. Chief Flaherty's annual report recommends replacing horse-drawn equipment with motorized apparatus. 1912 - The P.F.D. produced a silent movie showing horse-drawn apparatus leaving and returning to stations. 1914 - Chief Flaherty's term in office expired, and Almus D. Butler was appointed Chief of Department in July. 1915 - First motorized vehicle (Chandler Roadster) in service, replacing Chief Butler's horse-drawn buggy. 1916 - Second motorized vehicle (also a Chandler) went into service for District Chief Read in District-2. First motorized fire truck (American LaFrance hose & Chemical) in service as Hose 8, at Woodfords. 1917- Third Chandler car in service. Chief Butler's 1915 car was reassigned to Deputy Chief Parker, District-1. First motorized ladder truck in service (Christie tractor), attached to Ladder 5's 1887 85 ft. aerial trailer. First motorized pumper (Seagrave 750 gpm) in service at Engine 1, replacing a steam engine & hose cart. 1918 - Chemical 1 was motorized with an Indiana chemical squad truck, replacing two more horses. Permanent Firefighters joined the new International Association of Firefighters as L-133, later disbanding. 1919 - Ladder 3 on Brackett St. was motorized with a McCann/Indiana city service ladder & chemical truck. 1920 - Engine 4 on Spring St. motorized with a Seagrave 750 gpm pumper, replacing the steamer and hose cart. 1921 - Hose 6-Park Ave., Hose 9-Arbor St., and Hose 12-Peaks Island motorized (Reo hose & chemical trucks). 1922 - Ladder 4 on Arbor St. was motorized with an American LaFrance city service ladder & chemical truck. 1923 - Ladder 5 on India St. received a Seagrave tractor, replacing the Christie, and attached to the 1887 trailer. Chief Engineer Almus D. Butler retired in December after nine years in office. 1924 - Ladder 1 at the old Central Station motorized with an American LaFrance city service ladder & chemical. Oliver T. Sanborn appointed Chief of Department, and begins overseeing the building of Central Station. Old horse-drawn Ladder 1 was rebuilt, and assigned to Park Ave. as Ladder 6, quartered with Engine 6. Engine 3 was motorized, when the 1917 Christie tractor (old L-5) was attached to an old steamer (E-4) Engine 5 was motorized with an American LaFrance 750 gpm pumper, replacing a 1903 horseless engine. New Central Fire Station opened November 10th, housing Engines 1 and 5, Ladders 1 and 5, Chemical 1, and the Chief's office. The India St. station closed and the 1867 Central Station on the corner was razed. The P.F.D. Repair Division was created, and a motor mechanic was appointed to maintain all apparatus. 1925 - A warning bell now preceded a box alarm, and the first 4-digit box alarm was rung in by Fire Alarm. Hose 11 in East Deering was motorized with a 1924 Reo hose & chemical truck, built in the P.F.D. shop. A Mack chemical & squad truck went into service. The 1918 Indiana motor truck became a hose tender. Dedication of Central Fire Station was held August 4th, with throngs of citizens attending the open house. 1926 - American LaFrance 1,000 gpm pumper in service at Engine 8. Old H-8 assigned to E-6 w/350 gpm pump. 1928 - New Seagrave trailer with an 85 ft. wooden aerial went in service for Ladder 5 to replace the 1887 trailer. 1929 - Four new trucks went into service; a Seagrave 1,000 gpm pumper for E-4, a Seagrave tractor-drawn 75 ft. aerial ladder truck for L-6, a Mack 1,000 pumper for E-6, and a McCann 1,000 gpm pumper for E-2. Horse-drawn Ladder 2 on Munjoy Hill was decommissioned because of improvements to Ladders 5 and 6. Engine 4's former 1920 Seagrave pumper was reassigned to Engine 3 on Brackett Street, retiring the last pair of fire horses, and the Portland Fire Department became completely motorized. Former Governor Baxter purchased the two horses from Hose 3 for light work on his Baxter Island farm. The Training Division was established and a Drill Master assigned, trained by the Boston Fire Academy. 1931 - A new 6,000 gpm fireboat went into service replacing the old first fireboat, which was purchased in 1894. 1932 - The first Fire Officer's School was conducted in the Training Division. 1936 - First steel aerial ladder truck (Seagrave 65 ft.) in service at Ladder 3, replacing L-3's city service truck. 1938 - Hose 11-East Deering and Hose 12-Peaks Island upgraded to engine companies with 500 gpm pumpers. Ladder 6's trailer retrofitted with a 85 ft. steel aerial ladder, and L-6's 75 ft. wooden ladder placed on L-5. 1940 - A Fire Prevention Bureau was established, with a Captain appointed to head the new Division in August. 1942 - Portland Firefighters' rejoined the International Association of Firefighters Union as Local-740, I.A.F.F.. 1943 - A new fire company was established (Rescue Co. 1), phasing out the former Chemical Squad Company. 1945 - Two 65 ft. steel aerial ladder trucks purchased for Ladders 1 and 4, replacing city service ladder trucks. 1946 - A two-platoon system was created, as firefighters worked one-day on and one-day off (84 hrs. per/week). 1947 - Engine 3's Brackett Street firehouse (built in 1850) closed and Engine 3 temporarily relocated to Central. 1948 - A volunteer fire company was established on Long Island as Engine 14. 1949 - A volunteer fire company was also established on Great Diamond Island as Engine 13. 1950 - The city of Portland was upgraded to a Class A rating from the National Board of Fire Underwriters. 1951 - A new firehouse opened on Stevens Ave. in the Rosemont area, relocating Engine 3's "Quad" truck there. 1952 - A volunteer fire company was established on Cliff Island as Engine 15. 1954 - Chief Engineer Oliver T. Sanborn retired after 30 years in office. Harry Marr appointed Chief of Dept. The first engine with a cab-over roof in service (American LaFrance 750 pumper), assigned to Engine 9. 1956 - Chief Engineer Harry W. Marr retired at the end of December. 1957 - Carl P. Johnson appointed Chief of Department. New firehouse opened on Ocean Ave., East Deering for Engine 11 on the same spot as the 1902 fire barn. Fire Prevention Bureau receives 1st place National awards in its class for fire safety over the next 7 years. 1959 - A new 65 ft. all-steel fireboat with a pumping capacity of 7,000 gpm was placed in service at Engine 7. 1960 - The second ladder company at Central Station, Ladder 5, was decommissioned and covered by Ladder 1. 1961 - First 100 ft. aerial ladder truck in service, assigned to Ladder 6 on Park Ave. (Seagrave tractor-drawn). 1963 - Movie called "24 Hours" produced, showing the average day in the life of the Portland Fire Department. Received national awards for fire prevention and education efforts and activities, including the movie. A third platoon was implemented, with the reduction in work hours to a 56 hour per/week schedule. 1964 - Munjoy Station closed two days in April (E-2 decommissioned), reopening with Engine 1 relocated there. First Scott Air Packs were purchased for use, and located in the compartments on the trucks. 1965 - Chief Engineer Carl P. Johnson retired after eight years in office. Joseph R. Cremo appointed Fire Chief. 1966 - Bramhall Square Station opened. Engines 4, 6, Ladder 6, and the District 1 Chief were relocated there. Spring St., Park Ave., and Brackett St. firehouses closed. Ladder 3 relocated to Ocean Ave. with E-11. 1967 - North Deering station opened and Engine 8 & D-2 Chief relocated there, closing the Woodfords station. 1970 - New type aerial truck in service; an American LaFrance 80 ft. articulating boom snorkel truck (Ladder1). 1971 - The first woman to work in the P.F.D. was hired and assigned as a secretary in the Administrative Office. 1972 - Stevens Avenue firehouse expansion completed, and Ladder Co. 3 was relocated there with Engine Co. 3. Riverton firehouse opened, relocating Engine 9 and closing Arbor St. station. Ladder 4 relocated to E-8. 1973 - Jetport fire station opened and airport foam trucks were acquired, two from Brunswick Naval Air Station. Fire Alarm/Electrical Division Office closed, relocating to the new Public Safety building on Middle St. 1974 - A forth platoon was added when the new forty-two hour per/week work schedule was implemented. 1975 - Chief Engineer Joseph R. Cremo retired after ten years in office. Clement O. Dodd appointed Fire Chief. The Medical Crisis Unit (MEDCU) was created in a new Public Safety Department to answer EMS calls. 1976 - Rescue Co. 1 was decommissioned, and the truck taken to fires-only by an assigned engine company. The 1864 Munjoy Hill firehouse closed, then razed. Engine 1 temporarily relocated to Central Station. First new Aircraft firefighting foam truck (Walters 1,500) in service at the Portland International Jetport. Chief Engineer Clement O. Dodd retired in September. District Chief John J. Flynn was appointed Acting Chief, then he also retired at the end of December. 1977 - Joseph E. McDonough was appointed Chief of Department. New Munjoy Hill Firehouse/Community Center opened, and Engine 1 was relocated back to Munjoy Hill. 1978 - First Fire Recognition Day held in Monument Square to demonstrate firefighting techniques. Engine Co. 12's staffing on Peaks Island was transferred from the P.F.D. to the Public Safety Department. The first ladder truck with a cab-over roof went in service, assigned to Ladder 6 at Bramhall Station. 1979 - Central Station closed, and E-5 and L-1 relocated to Munjoy and Headquarters to Public Safety building. A new vocal alarm system in fire stations went into service, relegating the bells to be a back-up system. 1981 - Ladder Co. 4 on Allen Avenue in North Deering was decommissioned on January 28th. 1982 - A quint truck (combination engine/ladder) in service as Engine 8 in North Deering to replace E-8 & L-4. 1983 - A second quint truck was purchased for Engine 3 on Stevens Ave., and Ladder Co. 3 decommissioned. 1986 - Rescue Co. 1 was recommissioned and assigned with Engine Co. 4 at Bramhall Station. The civilian Public Safety Department was disbanded and MEDCU was assigned as a division of P.F.D.. 1987 - Central Station reopened after extensive repairs by members. E-5, R-1, and Headquarters moved back. The 1898 Firemen's Monument was moved from Evergreen Cemetery to Central Station's front lawn. 1988 - Computers were purchased and placed in all stations, upgrading and improving paperwork and reports. 1989 - First 4-door closed cab pumper (Engine 5) and First 4-door closed cab ladder truck (Ladder 6) in service. Chief Engineer Joseph E. McDonough retired after twelve years in office. Carleton E. Winslow, Jr. was appointed Chief of Department in July. The services of a Department Chaplain was improved with the appointment of Rev. John R. Hilbelink. 1990 - A Portland Fire Department Color Guard was organized. A third Paramedic EMS Unit went into service at Engine 8 in the North Deering section of the City. A safety officer was established to improve operations on the fire ground and at other emergencies. 1991 - Chief Engineer Carleton E. Winslow, Jr. retired at the end of the year. 1992 - Joseph E. Thomas, Jr. was appointed Chief of Department. 1993 - A Island Liaison Officer was created improving training and communications with island fire companies. 1994 - First Annual Merit Awards Ceremony was held to recognize Firefighters, Paramedics, and civilians. The Plymovent air removal systems were installed in stations to remove exhaust fumes from apparatus. 1995 - Fire companies began responding to more medical emergencies, assigning an EMT per/Company. 1996 - The MEDCU Division was integrated into the Portland Fire Department as the EMS Division. A community Liaison Officer was created to improve fire safety training and education to the community. Automatic defibrillator units (AED's) placed on engine companies to improve life-saving for heart attacks. 1997 - The annual report of the fire department was again published, after an absence of twenty one years. Standard Operating Guidelines (SOGs) was written to establish more consistent operations on the fire ground. First two women firefighters were appointed in the fire suppression division of the P.F.D. First Firefighter drill school to Cross-train MEDCU Paramedics in the EMS Division as firefighters. 1998 - A thermo-imaging camera was donated to the Department for use in assisting with rescue operations. First Paramedic Engine Company was established in August at Engine Co. 9, in the Riverton section. A Computer Aided Dispatch system (CAD-III) went into service, improving communications at Fire Alarm. 1999 - An 800 Mhz radio system went on line early in the year. New Policies and Procedures Manual went into effect, revising the 1981 Rules and Regulations book. A "Fast Team" was established to meet OSHA mandates, improving firefighter safety on the fire ground. New computers placed in all firehouses/Divisions with E-mail, internet, and new Microsoft fire programs. These improvements over the last century gives the Portland Fire Department an even stronger foundation to build on, and sets the course, as we begin the twenty-first century in the new millennium. We present members look forward to continue building on the Portland Fire Department's proud past in the twenty- first century, in protecting and caring for our great city and its citizens, as our predecessors have done, a tradition they began, and continues. "Answering the bell, ... Since1768". Firefighter Michael A. Daicy, Engine Co. 11 Portland Fire Department Historian Keith Gautreau Chief of Dept. kcahoon@portlandmaine.gov Fire Headquarters Portland Firefighters Children’s Burn Foundation Portland Professional Firefighters 1908 City Hall Fire Chief Engineers Supreme Sacrifice	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line672
__label__wiki	0.834965	0.834965	Poly[[tetra-μ2-aqua-diaqua-μ6-oxalato-barium(II)] 2,4,6-trinitrophenolate monohydrate]. Corrigendum Peng-Zhi Hong,Wen-Dong Song,Zao-He Wu Acta Crystallographica Section E , 2008, DOI: 10.1107/s1600536807067542 Abstract: In the paper by Hong, Song & Wu [Acta Cryst. (2007), E63, o2296], the scheme shows the wrong structure. The correct scheme is shown below and the compound name is corrected to "poly[[di-μ2-aqua-diaqua-hemi-μ6-oxalato-barium(II)] 2,4,6-trinitrophenolate monohydrate", {[Ba(C2O4)0.5(H2O)4]C6H2N3O7·H2O}n. Poly[diaqua(μ2-5-carboxypyridine-3-carboxylato-κ2N:O3)hemi(μ2-oxalato-κ4O1,O2:O1′,O2′)(μ4-pyridine-3,5-dicarboxylato-κ4N:O3:O3′:O5)silver(I)terbium(III)] Hai-Fu Guo,Liang Qin,Xiang-Ying Hao Abstract: In the title coordination polymer, [AgTb(C7H3NO4)(C7H4NO4)(C2O4)0.5(H2O)2]n, the TbIII ion is eight-coordinated by three O atoms from three different pydc (H2pydc = pyridine-3,5-dicarboxylic acid) ligands, one O atom from one Hpydc ligand, two O atoms from one oxalate ligand and two water molecules in a distorted square-antiprismatic geometry. The AgI ion is coordinated in an almost linear fashion by two pyridyl N atoms from one pydc and one Hpydc ligand and has weak interactions with two carboxylate O atoms. The carboxylate groups of pydc and Hpydc ligands link Tb centers, forming a one-dimensional chain. The oxalate adopts a tetradentate bis-chelating coordination mode, connecting the chains into a two-dimensional layer. These layers are further assembled via [Ag(pydc)(Hpydc)] pillars and O—H...O and C—H...O hydrogen bonds into a three-dimensional coordination framework. Poly[diaqua-μ2-oxalato-di-μ4-terephthalato-diytterbium(III)] [cached] Chun-Xiang Wang,Zhi-Feng Li Abstract: The crystal structure of the title complex, [Yb2(C8H4O4)2(C2O4)(H2O)2]n, features an extended three-dimensional framework made up of Yb3+ ions coordinated by terephthalate ligands, oxalate ligands and water molecules. The Yb3+ ion has a distorted square-antiprismatic coordination formed by one aqua ligand, two O atoms from an oxalate ligand and five O atoms belonging to four terephthalate anions. Two symmetry-independent terephthalate anions, as well as the oxalate anion, occupy special positions on inversion centers. The water molecule participates in O—H...O hydrogen bonding with both terephthalate anions. Poly[diaqua(μ-oxalato)(μ-2-oxidopyridinium-3-carboxylato)lanthanum(III)] [cached] Zhen Hu,Zhi-Bo Zhu Abstract: In the title complex, [La(C6H4NO3)(C2O4)(H2O)2]n, the LaIII ion is coordinated by eight O atoms from two 2-oxidopyridinium-3-carboxylate ligands, two oxalate ligands and two water molecules in a distorted bicapped square-antiprismatic geometry. The carboxylate groups link adjacent LaIII ions, forming two-dimensional layers that are further linked by N—H...O and O—H...O hydrogen bonds. Poly[diaqua(μ-oxalato)(μ-2-oxidopyridinium-3-carboxylato)praseodymium(III)] [cached] Yong-Jun Xu,Xiao-Xi Yang,Hong-Bin Zhao Acta Crystallographica Section E , 2009, DOI: 10.1107/s160053680900542x Abstract: In the title complex, [Pr(C6H4NO3)(C2O4)(H2O)2]n, each PrIII ion is coordinated by eight O atoms from two 2-oxynicotinate ligands, two oxalate ligands and two water molecules, displaying a distorted bicapped square-antiprismatic geometry. The carboxylate groups link adjacent praseodymium metal centres, forming layers parallel to the bc plane. The crystal packing is stabilized by intermolecular O—H...O and N—H...O hydrogen bonds. Poly[diaqua-μ2-oxalato-di-μ4-terephthalato-dilutetium(III)] Zhi-Feng Li,Chun-Xiang Wang Abstract: In the title compound, [Lu2(C8H4O4)2(C2O4)(H2O)2]n, the Lu3+ cations are each coordinated by eight O atoms of four terephthalate anions, one oxalate anion and one aqua ligand to complete a distorted square-antiprismatic geometry. They are bridged by the terephthalate ligands, generating a three-dimensional framework, which is further stabilized by the oxalate ligands. The terephthalate ions and oxalate ions are all located on centers of inversion. Poly[diaqua-μ2-oxalato-di-μ4-succinato-diyttrium(III)] Zhi-Feng Li,Chun-Xiang Wang,Ping Wang Abstract: In the title compound, [Y2(C4H4O4)2(C2O4)(H2O)2]n, the flexible succinate anion assumes a gauche conformation and bridges the eight-coordinated Y atoms, generating two-dimensional layers parallel to (010). The coordination polymer layers are linked into a three-dimensional framework by the rigid oxalate ligands. The oxalate ions are located on a center of inversion. Intermolecular O—H...O hydrogen bonds help to stabilize the crystal structure. Poly[diaqua-μ-oxalato-μ-pyrazine-2-carboxylato-lanthanum(III)] [cached] Lu Han,Qun-Hui Meng,Jian-Dong Hao,Yi-Fan Luo Abstract: In the title complex, [La(C5H3N2O2)(C2O4)(H2O)2]n, the LaIII ion is coordinated by one N and three O atoms from two pyrazine-2-carboxylate ligands, by four O atoms from two oxalate ligands and by two O atoms of two water molecules, displaying a distorted bicapped square-antiprismatic geometry. The carboxylate groups of pyrazine-2-carboxylate and oxalate ligands link the lanthanum metal centres, forming layers parallel to (10overline{1}). The layers are further connected by intermolecular O—H...O and N—H...O hydrogen-bonding interactions, forming a three-dimensional supramolecular network. Poly[diaqua-μ4-oxalato-di-μ6-phosphato-tetracobalt(II)] Wen-Yuan Wu,Li-Xin Zhai Abstract: In the structure of the title compound, [Co4(C2O4)(PO4)2(H2O)2]n, there are layers composed of the phosphate anions and two independent CoII cations. These layers are parallel to (001) and are bridged by the oxalate anions that are situated in special positions on centres of symmetry. One independent Co atom has an octahedral coordination, while the second independent Co atom is coordinated in a trigonal–bipyramidal coordination that includes the water molecule. The crystal packing is stabilized by O—H...O hydrogen bonds between the coordinated water molecules and oxalate O atoms. catena-Poly[[tetra-μ3-isonicotinato-μ3-oxalato-μ2-oxalato-disamarium(III)disilver(I)] dihydrate] [cached] Zhao-yang Li,Shan-tang Yue Abstract: In the title compound, {[AgSm(C6H4NO2)2(C2O4)]·H2O}n, the asymmetric unit contains one SmIII ion, one AgI ion, two unique isonicotinate (ina) ligands, two half oxalate (ox) ligands (one on an inversion centre, the other on a twofold axis) and one uncoordinated water molecule. The central SmIII ion is nine-coordinated by four O-donor atoms from separate bidentate bridging ox ligands and five O-donor atoms from the two ina ligands (both bidentate) and a symmetry-related ina ligand [Sm—O = 2.389 (4)–2.791 (4) ], giving a distorted monocapped square antiprismatic geometry. The AgI ion is three-coordinated in a T-shaped geometry involving two ina N-donor atoms [Ag—N = 2.181 (6) and 2.185 (5) ] and a bridging oxalate O-donor atom [Ag—O = 2.620 (4) ]. The three-dimensional heterometallic Sm—Ag coordination polymer, having a unique (3,4,6)-connected five-nodal net topology, is constructed from two-dimensional samarium–oxalate layers and pillared Ag(ina)2 subunits. Intermolecular water–carboxylate O—H...O hydrogen-bonding interactions are also present.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line674
__label__wiki	0.603962	0.603962	Organiste: The Classical Arts and Pipe Organ Connection Our mission is to heighten the awareness of the Pipe Organ and Classical Arts Communities. Organiste.net is a web arts marketing service that provides a variety of e-services to keep the pipe organ and classical arts communities connected by publicizing organ recitals, classical music concerts, and other classical arts events. Special emphasis is given to all aspects of the pipe organ community with information on artistic development and education, workshops, and articles of more general interest. Directed to a culturally-educated, diverse reading audience throughout the U.S. and the world. Services include a calendar of upcoming events of pipe organ recitals, classical concerts in Ney York, Florida, US, and the world, classical jazz and other classical arts events. To reach the public, Organiste provides email marketing and publicity services, calendar listings, media notifications, dedicated eblasts, listings of Concert Artists, Job Listings, Social Media, ePublications and newsletters. Web design and maintenance, web hosting and graphics design services are also provided to support arts organizations and artists. Florida Events Organ & Choir Season Schedules Latin Events Piano Events Chamber Music/Orchestra Master Classes/Festivals Broadway, Theatre & Dance Cultural Renaissance Caribbean, Brazilian & World Visual Arts & Architecture FREE Events! ArtsNews Concert Artists Artists Services Tomas Cotik Stephen Hamilton Mei Mei Luo Ian Maksin Marcos Daniel Flores Robin Arrigo Substitute Organists Conductors/Choirmasters Vocalists/Singers/Cantors/Vocalists Other Musicians Available Jobs & Auditions Advertise your Concert Classical Music News: News of Classical Music and arts, Jazz, Organ, Visual Arts, artists, musicians, performing groups, broadway, shows, cabaret, gardens, architecture, events → Organiste.net → Insights Lois Pope ‘returns to the stage’ in Jan McArt and Live at Lynn production of Lerner and Loewe’s classic musical Gigi Posted on Tuesday, October 1st, 6:40pm Lynn University welcomes the Palm Beach philanthropist for three performances, March 14–15 BOCA RATON, Florida, October 1, 2019—Lynn University and Jan McArt, producer and director of theatre arts program development, today announced that glamorous Palm Beach philanthropist Lois Pope, who was a singer-actress earlier in her career, is returning to the stage as one of the headliners in the upcoming production of the classic Broadway hit musical Gigi by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Pope will appear as “Aunt Alicia” in the delightful, tune-filled show that will have three performances, March 14-15, at the beautiful Keith C. and Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center, which is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this season. Book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner Music by Frederick Loewe Based on a novel by Colette “Elaine’s annual musical treat” is a collaborative concert by the Live at Lynn Series and the Lynn Philharmonia Orchestra sponsored by Elaine Johnson Wold. This showcase musical features a full cast of professional stage performers who bring this delightful show to life with a full live symphony on stage. Lerner and Loewe’s musical comedy is about a free-spirited young girl living in Paris at the turn of the 20th century and the wealthy young playboy who falls in love with her as she is transformed into a poised courtesan and includes songs Thank Heaven for Little Girls and I Remember It Well. Saturday: 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sunday: 4 p.m. Jan McArt, producer and director Terence Kirchgessner, conductor, Lynn Philharmonia Gordon Roberts, musical director Arthur Barnes, assistant musical director Rome Saladino, choreographer Location: Keith C. and Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center Tickets: Individual tickets are $70 for Box, $55 for Orchestra and $50 for Mezzanine Exclusive production sponsor: Elaine Johnson Wold Note: As produced by Edwin Lester for the Los Angeles and San Francisco Civic Light Opera Associations and by Saint Subber for Broadway. Gigi is presented by arrangement with TAMS-WITMARK www.tamswitmark.com. “Lynn University is thrilled to welcome Lois Pope back to their stage,” says McArt. “We’ve been friends since we were both at William Morris Agency in New York along with other ingénues, such as Barbara Cook, Shirley Jones, Florence Henderson, Julie Andrews, all of whom were making their mark at that same time, so this is particularly thrilling to me because I want everyone to see this beautiful woman and all she stands for in the national community of philanthropists as the very talented singing actress I knew years ago.” Pope appeared as “Laurey” in an anniversary production of Oklahoma at City Center in New York City, co-starred with Phyllis Diller in Wonderful Town in Chicago, had roles in summer productions of Plain and Fancy in both New York and Florida, and appeared with Teddy Randazzo in Alan Freed’s Mr. Rock and Roll. “People don’t realize all of the depths and levels in her, but performing is just one of Lois’ many gifts that she doesn’t talk about—like the fact that she prepared and ran in five New York Marathons. I call her ‘the Wonder Woman’ and I think this is the perfect role for her,’ says McArt. “Aunt Alicia is the ultimate courtesan, teaching Gigi to become a lady of breeding. Alicia’s reputation in her younger days for pleasing her courtiers was beyond compare. From teaching Gigi the difference between genuine gems and simulated stones to choosing the correct cigar for a gentleman, Alicia instills in Gigi that pleasing a man is an art in itself.” Widely celebrated for her philanthropy, Pope is the founder of Leaders in Furthering Education (LIFE), the Lois Pope LIFE Foundation, and the Disabled Veterans’ LIFE Memorial Foundation, which spearheaded the building of the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial in Washington D.C. She is the driving force behind the establishment of the Lois Pope LIFE Center, which is home to the world’s leading research facility for spinal cord injuries and connected to the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine; the Lois Pope Center for Retinal & Macular Degeneration Research at Bascom Palmer’s campus in Palm Beach Gardens; and the Lois Pope Pet Clinic at TrI-County Animal Rescue. She is presenting sponsor of the American Humane’s annual Hero Dog Awards and the K9Medal of Courage, and benefactor of the organization’s Red Star Rescue mobile hospitals. In addition to her work with disabled veterans, animal welfare and medical research, Pope and her foundations provide funding for numerous nonprofit organizations to support college scholarships, summer camp experiences for disadvantaged children, the performing arts and global humanitarian relief. As director and producer at Lynn University, McArt created and oversees four popular series at the university: Libby Dodson’s Live at Lynn Theater series, Live at Lynn American Songbook series, Mabel Mercer Foundation’s Cabaret at Lincoln Center Comes to Live at Lynn, and Jan McArt’s New Play Readings. How to purchase tickets to Gigi: Tickets may be purchased in person at the Lynn box office, located in the Wold at 3601 N. Military Trail, online at lynn.edu/events or by phone at +1 561-237-9000. About Lynn University Lynn University is an independent college based in Boca Raton, Florida, with approximately 3,000 students from nearly 100 countries. U.S. News & World Report has named it among the most innovative and international universities. Lynn's NCAA Division II Fighting Knights have won 25 national titles, its Conservatory of Music features a world-renowned faculty of performers and its nationally recognized Institute for Achievement and Learning empowers students with learning differences. The school's Dialogues curriculum and award-winning iPad program help Lynn graduates gain the intellectual flexibility and global experience to fulfill their potential in an ever-changing world. For more information, visit lynn.edu. About the Keith C. and Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center at Lynn University The 750-seat Keith C. and Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center at Lynn University is recognized by College Degree Search as one of the "25 Most Amazing Campus Arts Centers." It features superb acoustics, a modern lighting system and flexible spaces. The Wold hosts events, theater productions and concerts year-round and is home to the Lynn Conservatory of Music and professional Live at Lynn series. Learn more about Lynn events at lynn.edu/events. Attached Jpeg: Lois Pope Live at Lynn contact: Gary Schweikhart, PR-BS, Inc. +1 561-756-4298 gary@pr-bs.net Lynn University contact: Alyssa Valleau, Lynn University +1 561-237-7125 avalleau@lynn.edu Home \| Organ & Choir \| Jazz \| InSights \| Concert Artists \| Season Schedules \| Jobs \| Marketing \| Concert Artists Services ©2020 Organiste.net \| Please contact us or report bugs at Organiste@Organiste.net BitGossip.com,BitGossip search-me,business listing,business listing sites,business listing sites india,business listing sites usa,add business,add business free,add business listing,local business listings,local business listings online free,local business list online free,international business listing sites,international business listing sites india,international business listing sites india free,business listings for sale,free business listings,free business listings online,free online business listings sites PHP Developer, Web Developer ,Web Consultant, WordPress Developer , Freelancer, Gaurav Pathania, Gaurav	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line685
__label__wiki	0.502916	0.502916	Muting the alarm on climate change Published on: Monday, 31 March, 2014 Even with exaggerated assumptions of sensitivity, the IPCC has to down-grade alarm The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will shortly publish the second part of its latest report, on the likely impact of climate change. Government representatives are meeting with scientists in Japan to sex up—sorry, rewrite—a summary of the scientists' accounts of storms, droughts and diseases to come. But the actual report, known as AR5-WGII, is less frightening than its predecessor seven years ago. The 2007 report was riddled with errors about Himalayan glaciers, the Amazon rain forest, African agriculture, water shortages and other matters, all of which erred in the direction of alarm. This led to a critical appraisal of the report-writing process from a council of national science academies, some of whose recommendations were simply ignored. Others, however, hit home. According to leaks, this time the full report is much more cautious and vague about worsening cyclones, changes in rainfall, climate-change refugees, and the overall cost of global warming. Technology creates jobs as much as it destroys them It's a good thing we don't all have to dig the fields by hand My Times column is on technology and jobs: Bill Gates voiced a thought in a speech last week that is increasingly troubling America’s technical elite — that technology is about to make many, many people redundant. Advances in software, he said, will reduce demand for jobs, substituting robots for drivers, waiters or nurses. The last time that I was in Silicon Valley I found the tech-heads fretting about this in direct proportion to their optimism about technology. That is to say, the more excited they are that the “singularity” is near — the moment when computers become so clever at making themselves even cleverer that the process accelerates to infinity — the more worried they are that there will be mass unemployment as a result. The tyranny of experts Published on: Friday, 21 March, 2014 William Easterly's new book explores the aid industry's autocratic instincts My book review for The Times of William Easterly's new book "The Tyranny of Experts" Imagine, writes the economist William Easterly, that in 2010 more than 20,000 farmers in rural Ohio had been forced from their land by soldiers, their cows slaughtered, their harvest torched and one of their sons killed — all to make way for a British forestry project, financed and promoted by the World Bank. Imagine that when the story broke, the World Bank promised an investigation that never happened. The good news you don't hear about diseases Malaria, TB and Aids are in steady retreat My Times column is on malaria, TB and Aids -- all in steady decline, a fact that officials and journalists seem reluctant to report: There’s a tendency among public officials and journalists, when they discuss disease, to dress good news up as bad. My favourite example was a BBC website headline from 2004 when mortality from the human form of mad-cow disease, which had been falling for two years, rose from 16 to 17 cases: “Figures show rise in vCJD deaths” wailed the headline. (The incidence fell to eight the next year and zero by 2012, unreported.) Talk about grasping at straws of pessimism. Smoking (and European regulation) kills Published on: Tuesday, 04 March, 2014 E-cigarettes deserve encouragement as a lesser evil My Times column is on harm reduction, Swedish snus and e-cigarettes: Is this the end of smoking? Not if the bureaucrats can help it. Sweden’s reputation for solving policy problems, from education to banking, is all the rage. The Swedes are also ahead of the rest of Europe in tackling smoking. They have by far the fewest smokers per head of population of all EU countries. Lung cancer mortality in Swedish men over 35 is less than half the British rate.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line692
__label__wiki	0.834935	0.834935	Your Renault Kadjar Forum › Noticeboard › Forum Help & Suggestions CNN en Espaol for all the latest news and Abrachbah AbrachbahPH The state39;s unusual decision exposes the temovate online pharmacy usa insurance industrys miscalculation of the cost of climate change. A U.S. offensive against the World Trade Organization will effectively shutter the groups system for settling disputes, at a order 350mg online time its most needed. While demanding that an opponent, Pete Buttigieg, disclose his McKinsey clients, Ms. Warren provided a fuller explanation buy neotrex online biz of her compensation as a legal consultant. A press release promoting a paper suggesting there is insect-like life on Mars published by Ohio University earlier in November has since been deleted by the university. Two purchase gynokadin-gel in mexico women on Earth, Jessica Bennett and Mary Robinette Kowal, had a chat about two women astronauts in medium-sized spacesuits. Festive price of pantoprazole medicine skiers hit the slopes for the 20th annual "Santa Sunday" in snowy Maine. Especially if youre order cheapest duomox online shopping African-American, according to a new study. Markets are cool over Avivas 5.6 bln takeover of Friends Life. The scepticism over the deal is excessive says Breakingviews. Modesty is a rarity in rock 'n' roll. But for a hit-writer, producer and rock star, Jeff Lynne displays none of the super-sized ego normally associated with those jobs Celebrities have long thrown the weight of their public personas behind political candidates. But Hugh Grant has been one of the most active ahead of Britains general election. Mexicos recession is a blow to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office a year ago promising 4% GDP growth. Budget cuts arent helping, and indebted national oil company Pemex needs support. Regional unrest raises the stakes further, Anna Szymanski explains. No one is shocked when a paper mill closes anymore. The shocking thing is when one reopens. Mr. Marron began his Wall Street career as a teenager before becoming a business leader and supporter of the buy clostilbegyt legit arts. Many returned to making felodipine canada purchase calls for jihad and radicalising recruits almost the moment they left jail and later had to be locked up again. Others targeted members of the Royal Family. Boris Johnson chatted happily with workers at a fish market in the key target seat after delivering a stark warning that Jeremy Corbyn has 'betrayed' Brexit supporters. It might seem like champagne and children are incongruous, but there are ways to combine the two generic amantadine online pills for parents in the New York area who (still) want to party. Sony Corp will delay sales of the PlayStation 4 gaming console in China, originally scheduled for Jan. 11, due to "various factors", the company said in a statement on Thursday. The company, accused by the E.U. of stifling competition, is trying a tool in Ireland that would allow users to move photos and videos to Google. At many nursing homes and assisted living places, a resident's passing may be hardly noted. How buying dormidina now did eye shadow become the most sought-after item on high schoolers wish lists? Research In Motion is no more! BlackBerry is the new company name and the Z10 is the first BlackBerry 10 handset. Here's a quick overview of the new phone. Northern Ireland is once again at an intersection. Actors and directors recite standout lines from their films during the 2015 movie awards season. Tammy Hembrow has revealed urocit-k purchase payment otc she wants to have another baby. US experts assessed 17 old models - including one that brought the issue of climate change to public light - to see how accurate their temperature predictions were. 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Lift-off of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the ripped rodents is now expected to take place at1229 EST (1929 GMT) from NASA's cheapest benemid buy mastercard europe Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Georgina Le Grice order cheapest antabuse australia is no stranger to horror stories, but she never expected to find herself in one when her family's picturesque 18th-century property was falling apart, and there was no money to save it. Angie Turpin has appealed to thieves to return her Volkswagen Polo, stolen from the Moreton Bay area north of Brisbane. She even 'thanked' them and offered to reward them with a cup of tea. The fascinating pictures were captured by film student Thomas Duke, who is a massive fan of the show, which chronicles the life of Queen Elizabeth II - this season played by Olivia Colman. Adam Kay never thought he was going to be sending hundreds of people nightly into paroxysms of mirth. He was brought up to assume he would become a doctor As part of the group's latest stunt, a number of activists in gas masks, hard hats and hi-viz jackets have glued themselves to concrete blocks, on Cranbourne Street, in central London. Shocking footage has emerged of a woman holding onto a fridge while riding unrestrained in the back of a ute along a suburban road in Adelaide over the weekend. Thirteen civilians were killed in a strike on a market in a rebel-held town and eight children were among those killed by shelling near a school in a Kurdish town. Strictly Come Dancing's newest judge Motsi Mabuse, 38, has opened up about ending her 11-year marriage to be with her professional dance partner, and now husband, Evgenij Voznyvk. An expert was scheduled to speak at the Copenhagen event but was told the ambassador, Carla Sands, had vetoed his participation. Ryan Rodgers, 26, and Jenny Grimes, 25, from Kirkby, Liverpool say they used to receive 2,100 a month in financial support but the introduction of the benefit cap has left their finances decimated. The World Anti-Doping Agency today banned Russia from global sporting events after accusing Moscow of falsifying data from an anti-doping laboratory. The International Monetary Fund, in conditionally agreeing to lend the country $5.5 billion over three years, cited impressive progress under President Volodymyr Zelensky. From vintage posters to action figures, Star Wars collectibles are up for grabs in an online auction, days ahead of dicloberl order online store usa the release of the sci-fi saga's highly-anticipated ninth chapter. Three square miles of volcanic rock on the edge of the East China Sea may one day be used as an unsinkable aircraft carrier for the United States Navy in the event of war in Asia. 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Lydia Callis's larger-than-life nootropil 10mg discounted facial expressions and dramatic gestures have provided a rare moment of pleasure during the unfolding natural disaster. Metropolitan Police called to the incident at Dollis Hill galastop legit canada price Lane at the junction with Brook Road, north west London. The male driver of the BMW died at the scene and one passenger was taken to hospital. Marine scientists are warning buy no rx clamoxin NSW's rapidly dwindling drinking water supply could become undrinkable as bushfires continue. The House Intelligence Committee concluded that President Trump tried to use buy visa california the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election. When it comes to business success, few have a story quite like Patrice Motsepe, South Africa's first black billionaire. The founder of African Rainbow Minerals sits down with Eleni Giokos for a candid conversation about the value of cheap toradol 1.5mg online hard work and taking risks. American pigs are raised on a liberal diet of antibiotics, fueling the rise of resistant germs. Danish pork producers are proving theres a better way. The Linkase for iPhone 5 boasts up to a 50 percent boost in Wi-Fi signal strength thanks to a small electromagnetic waveguide extension. Does it work? See for yourself in these mobile speedtests where Wi-Fi is usually terrible. Nadya Fairweather suggests 'cross-country skiing' as a good cardio workout for small spaces. British nutritionist Shona Wilkinson advises pairing the regime with a diet that helps buy ursosan uk tesco to build stamina. Another site is about to close, joining other publications like The Hairpin and The Toast that are dead or dying, as their rowdy voices go mainstream. A Sprint contractor cheapest urocit-k purchase shopping uk 'accidentally' left hundreds of thousands of cell phone bills exposed on a cloud server that belong to ATT, Verizon and T-Mobile subscribers and shows personal data. Anthony Garcia admitted adding a sample of the bodily fluid to a sample of yoghurt while working at a grocery story in Albuquerque, New Mexico. CHRIS SUTTON If England want to have their best shot at winning Euro 2020, then they need to come to some sort of arrangement with Leicester striker Jamie Vardy. An earthquake struck north of Florence on Monday morning, sending people fleeing from their homes, damaging some buildings and causing cancellations or severe delays to trains across Italy. Mr. Parker, who was involved in multiple controversies in recent years, will become executive chairman of the sportswear company. On 26 November, in referring to a magazine's claim that Cherie Blair had attended a shooting party which included Saif Gaddafi, we suggested this was hypocritical and had outraged the families of victims of the Lockerbie bombing. We accept that Mrs Blair did not attend the shooting party and has never met Mr Gaddafi. We apologise for any embarrassment caused. Alonso won the award for a season in which he hit 53 homers to break the rookie record and lead the majors. A webcam set up on New Zealand's White Island volcano shows at least one group of tourists were inside the crater moments before it erupted and blanketed the area in a massive ash cloud. Dame Carolyn Fairbairn set big business on a collision course with Boris Johnson by warning that a No Deal Brexit would leave firms 'mired in a swamp of uncertainty'. The programmewas previously only available to staff who worked purchase generic truvada mastercard canada in crowded areas. It's now available to anyone at the Action Counters Terrorism website. Milky Lane cafe launched a Zooper Dooper cocktail for the month of December, bringing nostalgia of afternoon ice blocks to customers around Australia. In Olaf Olafssons novel The Sacrament, a nuns investigation of abuse allegations rekindles troubling memories from her own past. The school run can be a real balancing act for eltroxin tablets online mail order these children. These determined school pupils balance on a high wire 30-feet above a river from Batu Busuk village in Sumatra, Indonesia. N.B.A. players, coaches and executives took to Twitter and Facebook to support the ban of Donald Sterling by Commissioner Adam Silver. Janko Tipsarevic practiced in a drained swimming pool that was converted into a court. Now he is part of the core of another strong Davis Cup price neotrex tabletas team. Joshua was dominant against the Mexican to order online neotrex shop secure victory in Saudi Arabia with scores of 118-110, 118-110, 119-109, and the Watford-born fightercouldn't hold back in his celebrations. Tammy Hembrow turned heads on Monday as she arrived at her local gym on the Gold Coast wearing promethazine tablets online purchase tiny pink workout shorts	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line696
__label__wiki	0.51799	0.51799	About VAP SVAP on Forced Labor RBA Audit Cooperation Program VAP Audit Validation Tool Request a VAP Quote VAP Glossary and FAQs Make VAP Payment RBA Online Risk Assessment Platform Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) Risk Readiness Assessment (RRA) Responsible Minerals Initiative Responsible Labor Initiative Responsible Factory Initiative Trafficked & Forced Labor Workplace Well-Being Chemical Management Indirect Spend Diversity and Gender Factory Lead Certification Compass Awards About the RBA Board and Advisers Vendor Partner Program JOIN RBA RBA Foundation Member Service Portal RBA-Online RMI and GRI Launch Responsible Mineral Reporting Toolkit New Resource Encourages Supply Chain Disclosures for ‘Conflict Minerals’ ALEXANDRIA/AMSTERDAM, October 15, 2019 – The Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), an Initiative of the Responsible Business Alliance, and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), have launched a toolkit to advance reporting on sourcing minerals from conflict-affected and high-risk areas. The resource helps companies report on their commitments, due diligence processes and actions related to social impacts in the supply chain. It highlights the benefits of disclosure and identifies challenges and opportunities. The toolkit also encourages increased and improved reporting, referencing regulatory and stakeholder expectations, with examples of reporting practices and relevant tools. Companies face growing expectations to demonstrate how they are respecting human rights, the environment, labor rights and business ethics in their operations. This includes within mineral value chains; in particular the adverse impacts from sourcing ‘conflict minerals’ (tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold) as well as cobalt and other minerals. Governments, international organizations, investors, customers and industry stakeholders expect the private sector to drive responsible behavior and reach upstream actors like smelters, refiners and mine operators. Companies, meanwhile, are expected to identify, assess, cease, prevent and mitigate risks and disclose their actions and outcomes in accordance with globally recognized frameworks. "The RMI and GRI share a strong commitment to supporting the responsible sourcing of minerals," said Leah Butler, Vice President at the Responsible Business Alliance. "This toolkit is the result of close collaboration between our organizations, members and stakeholders, and we hope companies will use it to improve the quality of their due diligence and impact reporting." Tim Mohin, Chief Executive of GRI, added: "Leading companies are doing their part to end the conflict and human rights abuses associated with their minerals supply chains. This toolkit provides practical guidance to help companies working on these issues to disclose meaningful and comparable data. By improving transparency, our aim is to increase accountability to help combat these serious issues." The toolkit developed by GRI and the RMI presents the results of the Corporate Leadership Group, which represented 11 organizations from a range of industries. It includes information from international frameworks, such as the OECD Due Diligence Guidance, and regulatory requirements. There has been input from many stakeholders, including upstream suppliers, smelters and refiners, civil society organizations, and socially responsible investors. The RMI is one of the most widely used resources for companies from multiple industries to address minerals due diligence challenges in their supply chains, while GRI’s sustainability reporting standards, developed through robust stakeholder consultative processes, are the most widely used by companies and governments worldwide. View the Responsible Mineral Sourcing Reporting Toolkit. For additional information about the RMI-GRI project, download this overview. About RMI The Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), an Initiative of the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA), is a multi-industry initiative with more than 380 member companies. Its members contribute to the development and international uptake of a range of tools and resources focused on minerals supply chain due diligence, including independent third-party assessment programs for smelters, Minerals Reporting Templates, supply chain risk assessment tools, Country of Origin data, and guidance documents on responsible sourcing of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, and cobalt. The RMI runs regular workshops on responsible sourcing issues and contributes to policy development with civil society organizations and governments. Headquartered in Amsterdam (Netherlands) with regional offices around the world, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is the independent international organization that helps businesses, governments and other organizations understand and communicate their sustainability impacts. The GRI Standards is the world’s most widely adopted sustainability reporting framework. Jarrett Bens, Director of Communications Responsible Business Alliance jbens@responsiblebusiness.org Tom Whittles, Senior Media Relations Manager Global Reporting Initiative Phone: +31 (0) 20 531 00 28 whittles@globalreporting.org Learn about our news & events Enter your work email below. @RBAllianceOrg Founded in 2004 by a group of leading electronics companies committed to supporting the rights and well being of workers and communities worldwide affected by the global electronics supply chain. Stay up to date with RBA © 2020 Responsible Business Alliance. All Rights Reserved.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line697
__label__cc	0.700145	0.299855	April 18, 2017: Ogre Miniatures Set 1 BackerKit Closing Today! We've reached another checkpoint for Ogre Miniatures Set 1; BackerKit surveys and preorders are closing today! If you're a Kickstarter backer, this means that you need to submit your BackerKit survey to get rewards by the end of the day. If you've already submitted your survey, then you're all set! For you fans who missed the Ogre Miniatures Set 1 Kickstarter, or are just now hearing about this, preorder using this BackerKit link. It's the perfect complement to Ogre Sixth Edition, with over 40 detailed miniatures representing all the units in the base game. If you're on the fence, we have some early test shots to tantalize you. These are not final products, but are close to what you'll be seeing in the finished miniatures. (The Ogre Mark V has slight gun-angle issues, which we are addressing.) We use the term "miniature" loosely when it comes to Ogres, of course; these things are sizeable. We can't wait to get the sets out to backers and preorders later this year! Plus, you can get some cool alternate colors, like hunter-green, or even glow-in-the-dark. Make sure you preorder before midnight tonight. If you're already a backer, get that survey submitted! -- Hunter Shelburne	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line704
__label__cc	0.723572	0.276428	Consultation & Site Survey Masterplan & Construction Drawings How to Design a Garden Do I really NEED a Garden Designer? Prince Harry’s charity to have garden at Chelsea Prince Harry’s Sentebale charity is rumoured to have linked up with B&Q for a show garden at Chelsea Flower Show. Jinny Blom, his father’s’ favourite designer, will design the garden, Sentebale told Horticulture Week. See the RHS Shows and Events page for the latest on this year’s show Read more > Deadly ash tree fungus hits UK The government has finally announced a ban on importing ash trees, in a bid to stem the spread of a deadly new fungus Chalara fraxinea (C. fraxinea). Plant health authorities have inspected newly planted trees at 1,000 sites and also destroyed 100,000 trees. But it has already been found... Read more > Plant of the Month, October: Cornus sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’ Blog, Plant of the Month Cornus sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’ (dogwood) Ok, I’m admitting right up front that this plant will appear twice…… once in this month, when it’s foliage changes from green to the most gorgeous buttery yellow; and then again, when the leaves have dropped, and the naked stems are revealed…. but more of... Read more > Do I really NEED a Garden Designer? (part 2) Blog, Do I really NEED a Garden Designer? In the next of our occasional series I answer the question: Why do I need a Designer? Assuming we recognise the need for having a plan (as discussed in part one: Do I really NEED a Garden Designer?), the next question to ask is why a garden designer is... Read more > First national, and now INTERNATIONAL AWARD winner! We are thrilled to announce that Sophie has just been named as joint winner of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) International Student Landscape Design Award! This is very exciting….. and a great honour. She is the only student ever to win this title AND the SGD National... Read more > How to Design a Garden: Solving site problems and fulfilling the client brief. Example #2 Blog, How to Design a Garden So, how does a designer come up with a design? If they are doing their job properly, then it is a thorough process. It certainly isn’t about approaching the project with a design in mind and making it fit the property. First we identify problems and needs; next we... Read more > The second part of the question usually being…. ‘Can’t I just do it myself’? or perhaps ‘Why can’t the landscaper do the design too? Well, an obvious response would be to question whether you would feel the same about designing your home, or getting the builder to do it... Read more > Talk and Exhibition at RHS garden Rosemoor. The RHS kindly invited me to speak at Rosemoor, as part of their National Gardening Week. I also put on an exhibition of my work, and spoke to members of the public about what I do. It was lovely to meet so many interested people, including lots of... Read more > "It was such a pleasure to work with Sophie.....she listened to all we had to say about how we wanted our garden to work for our lifestyle" Mr and Mrs D Blog: 5 (really useful) ideas to steal from The Chelsea Flower Show Blog: Garden Visit: The Garden House, Devon (Part 3) Striking Potager on a Sloping Site Sweeping Grass Beds and a Lakeside Jetty Contemporary Curves in a Family Garden twitter @SophieDixon 2011 Society of Garden Designer’s Garden Design Student of the Year. 2012 Association of Professional Landscape Designers International Student Landscape Design Award, Joint winner. Just use our simple contact form to get the ball rolling. Tel: +44(0)1929 477 228 \| Mob: +44(0)7581 684 468 14 West St, Corfe Castle, Wareham, Dorset, BH20 5HD www.sophiedixon.com \| Landscape Design by Sophie Dixon Associates © 2020 This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.[ Accept ] [ Read More ]	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line713
__label__wiki	0.671651	0.671651	A history of STN – over thirty years! This article is adapted from chairman Mary Callaghan's speech to the 2018 Annual General Meeting. Back in 1988 there was no Talking News in Sheffield. Yes, there was one in Chesterfield, Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham – but none in Sheffield. That was to change thanks to one man – BILL CROZIER. Some of you will recognise that name – Bill presented the well - known radio programme FAMILY FAVOURITES, along with Jean Metcalf. Bill was the secretary of TNAUK – now known as TNF – Talking News Federation. This is the parent body of all Talking Newspapers in the country to which we are affiliated. Bill was amazed to find there was not a branch in the city – so, along with a Solicitor friend (who also happened to be visually impaired) ROY CHESTER (pictured with wife Barbara) – they, very appropriately, advertised in the local press for anyone interested in forming a TN in Sheffield to attend a meeting at the back of the Cathedral. A handful of people turned up. Further meetings were held at the Volunteer Bureau on Division St. This is now VAS (Voluntary Action Sheffield) in different premises and where we advertise for volunteers (and they now even audit our accounts.) A member of staff from the Bureau, Shelagh Gleeson, led the first few meetings to help us get started. At those initial meetings I got to know several volunteers who were to play a key role in STN’s development. Amongst them were Norman Bradbury (Otherwise known as Norman News, who so generously left us a legacy in is will), Ron Westwood, Elizabeth Draper (who came to the recent Tapton meal), John Bisby (later our Secretary), Pat Canwell, and a few others. We had no funds and it was a case of beg and borrow equipment. The most vital part was the copying machine which arrived on loan from TNAUK after detailed negotiations. We started from scratch and raised our own funds. Very soon we saw the advantages of linking up with SRSB (Sheffield Royal Society for the Blind) in whose building we are right now! Len Miles, who was then general Manager, was a tremendous help in those early days and became a great friend to us all. Apart from Bill, we were all new to the organisation and had to learn as we went along. We were fortunate to gather a growing band of volunteers over the coming months and soon Shelagh left us to go it alone. That was a big moment and one I shall never forget. We did ‘dry runs’, constantly changing our format and reading procedures. It was very experimental in the early days and a ‘hit and miss’ affair!! Remember though, it was not ‘high tech’ – only basic recording equipment and copying from a master cassette tape. Another important and essential figure was the Chief Editor of the Sheffield Star – Michael Corner, who was most enthusiastic and helpful. Initially, we submitted copies of our tapes which met with his approval. Matters were progressing! We now had an official title and a signature tune. We were meeting at very short intervals and by the 10th October 1988 the arrival of Sheffield Talking News became reality. By this time we had sufficient volunteers to arrange ourselves into three teams for tape productions and the vital Tuesday morning Copiers and Dispatch. All was in position, so at the end of October it was decided to ‘go for it’. We were very nervous about things going wrong but we produced a Master Tape and made 40 copies. The launch was hailed a great success!! The rest, as they say, is history. But looking through the archives (mostly old Minutes only one page long!) it is clear that, although we made progress in those early months, the majority of change was yet to come with the onset of the Digital Age. So, what milestones can we unearth? It has been great fun delving into those early days! Some of the items from long ago may well surprise some of you. In 1990 the STN Magazine carried an article about the curator of the city’s Botanical Gardens, Don Williams. He gave Talking News a copy of a suggested list of Seed Plants for the blind or partially sighted. A packet of mixed wallflowers seeds cost just 49p. In 1991 a cheque for £600 was presented to us as one of several small city charities. Holding it in the picture is Mary Callaghan our current chairman. In November 2000 we produced an STN Newsletter – one article read……. ‘So after two whole years our pink backing paper has come to an end. How many thousands of newspaper cuttings have our Editors stuck down on this paper? Our office cupboard had a stock for years but it has run out!’ Also, in 2000 we secured a National Lottery Grant of £14,000. In 2001 Dore choir gave us a donation of £70. The same year a problem was recorded - having more than 2 cassette tapes in one wallet. This had happened on several occasions when we had sent out our News, Magazine and Information tapes all in the same week. Wallets were being damaged and volunteers were suffering sore fingers when trying to prise out the tapes. (What’s new!!). Also, some letterboxes were too small to accept 3 or more tapes in one wallet. It was agreed to limit the number to 2. Again, in 2001, minutes stated ‘There are difficulties on some Monday nights with the room used for recording often being cluttered up with trolleys and clothes hangers etc.’ During that same year we took our first step into the digital age when we began using a computerised dispatch and returns system. It caused occasional problems but volunteers agreed they would not be without it. In 2002 ‘Standards’ reported that readers were still good at remembering the essential pauses and reading through the material prior to recording. However, it was also reported that we had received feedback disapproving of an article relating to ‘using cocaine in a Ladies Toilet’. It was felt that this did not fit in with or usual high standard of items. The AGM in 2002 was held under a cloud as we had just lost our Chairman, Roy Chester, and his funeral had only taken place the previous Thursday. The Election of Officers was deferred until the next monthly meeting. In 2003 the responsibilities of Trustees were clarified with a booklet from the Charity Commission. This led to us reviewing our insurance cover and raised the issue that the recording groups should ensure that they all leave together and that one person should not be left alone to put away equipment and lock up. This was clearly stated in the ‘Notes for Tape Producers’ issued in June. In the Minutes for December 2003 it states that the flask used to provide coffee at the monthly meetings, dribbles over the table and Eileen was instructed to try and obtain a suitable replacement. That replacement flask is the one we still use!! Again in 2003 the PC was upgraded to Windows XP. Also, a lot of talking could be heard over the music at the end of recordings! There was still a shortage of men on Rota A. Coughing had been coming over on the tapes and idle chatter at the end before the mics were switched off. In 2004 a trial was held using the Dolby noise reduction system. One side was recorded with the system and the other without. It was unanimously approved and was then use every week. Readers complained they were being left in the cold outside as the bell was not loud enough. By 2005 the rota consisted of four teams with 8 reserve Readers. Each team had it’s own Tape Producer. The picture shows Kevin Callaghan checking the cassette tapes on a Tuesday morning. Note the bulky-looking tape duplicators on the bench behind him! It took hours! Also, in 2005 four volunteers visited Graff Electronics for a familiarisation course on digitalisation. We subsequently purchased our first CD copier and the move away from tapes began in earnest. In 2006 the Meeting Agendas had around 10 items – now we have almost double that. By 2007 CD production was still in single figures but increasing. This was the year of the first big upheaval as we moved to temporary premises in Darnall whilst the Mappin Street building was demolished and rebuilt. It would have student accommodation above and we would have a purpose built studio and office within the building courtesy of SRSB. We owe them so much! We had to dismantle and pack everything away ready for removal. It was a major operation. Royal Mail were notified to about re-direction of the mail. Even our publicity material and letter heads were now out of date.The goodwill and extremely hard work of a few volunteers ensured that we only lost two week’s of production before everything was up and running again in our new home. We lost only a few volunteers due to the re-location. During this year the idea of having our own website was investigated and it was agreed that this should go ahead. A plan of the two rooms in the ‘new’ Mappin Street was inspected and later a site visit was arranged to measure up and see what would be needed in the way of furniture, cupboards, work surfaces etc. Air Conditioning was to be a real bonus! By 2008 we were 20 years old and struggling for Editors. A postal strike caused a disruption of our service. Towards the end of 2008 a listener survey was piloted and the resulting findings proved quite revealing, particularly about listeners’ preferences for topics on the weekly news. We planned to go for broadband when we moved back to Mappin Street. In 2009 the one-off-recordings brought in over £3000 – food for thought!!! Also in 2009 we moved into the new Mappin Street building and the first recording was made from there on 6th July. We had to dip into funds to finance the move and, I think for the first year ever, our expenditure was more than out income. We still offered a free service. The old Graff copiers were taken to the tip. By now we were reaching around 600 listeners. Probably the peak of numbers. It was costing £18 to send out Committee Minutes by surface mail and we began to compile a list of email addresses which then gradual grew and grew over the subsequent year. By 2010 we were settled in our new home and were excited to discover that we were to reach our one thousandth recording in August. We decided to celebrate with memories from the past 22 years and holding a prize draw for listeners. The 1000th edition was released with a message from David Blunkett, MP and long term subscriber of STN, and a lucky subscriber won the draw and a prize of £100. Our £4500 tape eraser failed and the recording computer gave cause for concern. Expenses lay ahead. During this year we bought 9000 CD’s, which were not re-usable, and decided to go down the road of Memory Sticks. The question of how listeners could hear them arose and boom boxes were explored. The cost would be substantial. Interesting to note that on the Contact list in 2010 (published along with the Rota) there were just 9 mobile phone numbers! By 2011 we had introduced Memory Sticks and were still receiving a steady stream of volunteers. The Bi-monthly Magazine was proving ever popular. Whilst struggling a bit with funding the gods were smiling down on us ,although not in the way we would have wished, as it meant the loss of our founder member Norman Bradbury (pictured) or ‘Norman News’ as he became known. Norman’s commitment and enthusiasm were second to none and you can find his picture in our office to this day. He was an Editor, Trustee and Archivist and a very dear friend to all who knew him. I recall him staggering into our home porch at Easter with bars of chocolate just months before he died. There were a considerable number of us at his funeral and I was privileged to speak about our loss and that of the family. The biggest shock came when Norman’s brother arrived at our house with a cheque for £55,000. Such was his love for STN. This legacy gave us the security which we still enjoy. This was 2012. This was not to be the only blow in 2012, as in the November we said goodbye to another volunteer – Gordon Sexton – our Secretary for 10 year. He died suddenly and around 25 volunteers travelled to Grenoside on a very wet and windy day to say their farewell, which was testament to the high regard in which he was held. Once again I was privileged to speak, this time about Gordon and his dedication to Talking News. How’s this for more dedication? A 90 year old reader decided, when her lift no longer came with her, that she would catch a bus in and get a taxi home rather than give up. In 2013 we were 25 years old and we celebrated with a Birthday Party / Social. It included a brief look back at our history. That year we also held a stall at the Nether Edge Farmer’s Market as we were to be one of the beneficiary Charities. We gave away some 150 helium balloons to children – with our logo on them. By 2014 the move to Memory Sticks was well underway. We held a workshop for Readers and had a healthy Bank Balance of £64,000. A Database for all volunteers was taking shape and a recruitment Evening for Editors (after an advert in the Sheffield Star) was hailed a great success. Many of those Editors are still with us today. Also, 2014 saw the setting up of the Norman Bradbury Award with SRSB. We wanted something to remember Norman by and we agreed to donate £500 each January to SRSB for use as an emergency fund for clients. Over the years it has supported many worthy causes of which we know Norman would have been proud. EG Travel to visit children in hospital or for new clothes for a job interview. In 2015 our new initiative ‘Out & About in Sheffield’ took off with an interview about ‘Snowy the Polar Bear’ in Weston Park Museum. This continues now as a regular feature on the recordings with many other interesting interviews. 2016 saw our Secretary Bev re-instate the Volunteer Newsletter and we held a Social evening at which Mike Lewington, from The Talking News Federation, came and spoke about the future of TN’s in a Technological Age. The phasing out of tapes and CD’s continued and on 7th July ’16 there were just 6 tapes and 7 CD’s remaining. The following year, 2017, saw us introducing listeners to the Talking Newspaper Services where they can hear STN’s recordings over the telephone. STN was also welcomed by the blind community on ‘Alexa’ as well as by other means. Following a visit to the ‘Star’ Offices by Bev, our Secretary, and myself -Nancy Fielder, Editor of the Sheffield Star and Telegraph, spoke at the AGM about local journalism which further strengthened our links. One of the ‘Star’ journalists helped re-write our website which is now thriving and much more up to date. Listening to the weekly recording on here is so easy. One of our readers, Phil George, became the Sheffield ‘Bus Voice’ on the experimental scheme on First Buses Route 120. If funding is extended we could see more. In October 2016 the National TN Conference was held in Wakefield and four of us attended. In December, Councillor Anne Murphy, the current Lord Mayor of Sheffield, visited our studio and recorded a Christmas message for our listeners. She reciprocated with an invitation to the Lord Mayor’s parlour which we visited in Feb. of this year. So, we reach 2018. We wrote both Data Protection and Safeguarding Policies in line with the Law and updated the Volunteer Database. Finally, in September, we held an Anniversary Dinner at Tapton Hall where around 40 of us celebrated 30 years of STN (photo by Chris Seaman, Seaman Photographer Ltd). We have now exceeded 1350 editions! We have had our ups and downs but a great deal of satisfaction along the way. We have lost old friends and gained new ones. I am proud to be part of such a welcoming and friendly Charity which I hope will go on for at least another further 30 years! I would like to end with an abridged version of a letter we received early this year, which is typical of those we receive on a regular basis. I quote……………. I am writing to inform you of the death of my mother. I want to thank you for sending the Sheffield Talking News. My Mum was so full of life and had been an avid reader, doer of crosswords, always wanting to keep informed and learn. When she lost her sight in her eighties it was devastating for us all. When SRSB enrolled her with your charity this had a major impact on her life. During her last two years she became increasingly frail and bed-bound and it was one of her few outlets. She really looked forward to receiving the news and in fact, it gave her a sense of independence in that she often told us what was happening in Sheffield, rather than the other way round. Please accept our thanks and a cheque in remembrance of my dear Mother. With enormous thanks from a grateful daughter and family. Mary Callaghan (Chair of Sheffield Talking News)	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line720
__label__wiki	0.906791	0.906791	Stillwater Current (http://www.stillwatercurrent.com/state-patrol-stillwater-area-high-school-grad-killed-crash-icy-roads-northfield/) Celebration of Life Ceremony for Paxton Harvieux is Saturday at Stillwater Junior High School By: Shawn Hogendorf \| March 3, 2014 A Celebration of Life ceremony for Paxton Harvieux will be held from 3-6 p.m. Saturday, March 8 in the Stillwater Junior High School Auditorium, 523 Marsh St. W. Harvieux, 21, was one of three Carleton College students who were killed Friday in Northfield when the vehicle they were driving in spun out on an icy highway and was broadsided by an oncoming semi truck. Harvieux was a 2011 graduate of Stillwater Area High School. He was a computer science major at Carleton College. Memorials may be directed to any TCF Bank in care of the Paxton Harvieux Memorial Fund or mailed to: Paxton Harvieux Memorial Fund c/o TCF Bank — Oak Park Heights Branch 5850 Neal Ave North Updated from: A 21-year old Stillwater man was among the three Carleton College students who were killed Friday in Northfield when the vehicle they were driving in spun out on an icy highway and was broadsided by an oncoming semi truck. Paxton M. Harvieux, 21, of Stillwater, James P. Adams, 20, of St. Paul and Michael D. Goodgame, 20, of Westport, Conn. were killed in the crash, according to the Minnesota State Patrol. The driver of the 1997 Toyota 4Runner, William Sparks, 20, of Evanston, Ill., and Conor J. Eckert, 19, of Seattle, Wash.were seriously injured. The driver of the semi truck, Danny Terry, 56, of Pioneer, Tenn., was not injured. The crash happened 2:57 p.m. Friday at the intersection of Highway 3 and County Road 47. Everyone involved in the crash was wearing a seat belt, according to the State Patrol. No alcohol was detected. Harvieux was a computer science major, Carleton College officials said in a news release. Adams was a chemistry major and Goodgame was majoring in political science. The students in the SUV were members of the Carleton College’s Ultimate Frisbee team that finished third in the country in Division 1 competition last year, according to the Star Tribune. “We offer our most heartfelt thoughts and prayers to the families and friends of James, Michael and Paxton, and we hope and pray for the full recovery of Will and Conor,” Carleton President Steven G. Poskanzer said in a statement. “The collective Carleton soul aches for the loss of these three young men. Right now, we need to focus all our love and compassion on supporting the families and friends of all these young men, along with everyone in our community who cares for them.” Harvieux, a 2011 Stillwater Area High School graduate, and former athlete, also played basketball and ran track at Carleton. Man Dies in Apparent Drowning on Lake Jane in Lake Elmo View all Police Posts → City Officials Urge Residents to Run Continuous Stream of Water to Prevent Frozen Pipes Obit: Richard 'Dick' Olsen, 78, Third Generation Olsen Construction President, Community Activist	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line728
__label__wiki	0.975154	0.975154	Thu, Mar 21, 2019 - Page 10　News List Tencent weighing bid Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) is weighing a bid for part of Temasek Holdings Pte’s stake in global retailer A.S. Watson Group, people with knowledge of the matter said. The Singapore state investment company is considering selling about a 10 percent stake in A.S. Watson for about US$3 billion, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. That is just under half of its 25 percent holding. Instagram allows shopping Facebook Inc-owned Instagram on Tuesday made a move into potentially lucrative e-commerce by adding an option to buy products shown off in posts by selected brands. A new “checkout” button for instant purchasing launched in a beta version of the app in the US with a limited number of businesses, according to the popular image-centric messaging service. Tapping the checkout button is to allow shoppers to select options, such as size or color, and then pay for items without leaving the Instagram app. Previously, people inspired to buy products featured in Instagram posts had to follow links to outside online shopping sites. Brands taking part in the checkout feature included Adidas, Burberry, Dior, H&M, Nike, Oscar de la Renta, Prada, and glasses retailer Warby Parker. Tobacco harvest to decline The country’s tobacco crop, one of its main generators of foreign exchange, is expected to decline as much as 13 percent this year, the industry marketing board said. Output might be 220 million to 240 million kilograms in the marketing season that began yesterday and ends in September, an official at the Tobacco Industry & Marketing Board said in the capital, Harare. Production last year was 252 million kilograms. The harvest would be reduced by drought and damage caused by Cyclone Idai to barns used to store the crop, the official said. Doctolib valued over US$1bn Doctor appointment booking app Doctolib has been valued at more than US$1 billion after raising new funding, adding to the surge of interest in healthcare start-ups. Founded in 2013, Doctolib operates a doctor’s appointment booking app and related management software, and has been growing services of video-based consultations and digital prescriptions. Doctolib’s 150 million euro (US$170 million) round announced yesterday was led by US-based growth equity investor General Atlantic, the start-up said in a statement. Doctolib is the latest unicorn technology start-up in a club that includes cloud storage supplier OVH Groupe SAS, vehicle-sharing app Blablacar and music streaming service Deezer SA. Google boosts AMD stock The biggest move in Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc shares in seven weeks led to some head-scratching on Wall Street. The stock on Tuesday rallied 12 percent as Alphabet Inc’s Google unveiled its videogame streaming service that would use AMD processors, even though analysts said the chipmaker’s involvement was already known. AMD chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿豐) said during a presentation at the CES trade show in January that its graphics processors would be used as part of Google’s gaming project. “We are surprised by the stock price move as we believed this was a well-known win,” RBC’s Mitch Steves wrote in a research note. 2020 Presidential Election: Envoys, foreign legislators congratulate Tsai	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line738
__label__wiki	0.989662	0.989662	Taichung schools still using banned cameras: councilor By Su Meng-chuan and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer Tue, Sep 10, 2019 - Page 2 Taichung public schools are using 1,599 security cameras made by China’s Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co almost five months after government restrictions were imposed on the use of its products, Taichung City Councilor Huang Shou-ta (黃守達) of the Democratic Progressive Party said yesterday. In April, the Executive Yuan ordered government facilities and institutions to stop using imported technology products that could compromise cybersecurity, including cameras made by Hikvision, a company with close links to the Chinese government, Huang said. After city residents expressed concern over data safety, he asked Taichung City Government agencies to provide lists of Chinese-made security cameras still in use, he said. The Taichung police said that no Chinese cameras are used at major road intersections, while the city’s transportation and construction bureaus said they have replaced all Chinese cameras with locally made ones, he said. REMOVAL ISSUES However, the Taichung Education Bureau said that an estimated 1,599 Hikivision cameras were still in use at 34 public schools, Huang said, adding: “While it is not easy to remove so many cameras, we cannot keep using products that could harm cybersecurity.” “The Education Bureau must set a schedule to replace cameras and other technology products that the Executive Yuan and the National Security Council have rejected as unacceptable,” Huang said. “Not a single product made by the companies on the blacklist should remain in use.” Foreign officials are increasingly wary of using Chinese technology products for official purposes, he said, adding that Taiwan has more reasons than most to be vigilant about the Chinese cybersecurity threat. “Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) should begin work on this issue to protect Taichung residents as soon as possible,” he said. The education bureau said that it is waiting for the Executive Yuan to promulgate the list of banned products, which is pending, and that officials estimated replacement costs for the cameras to be NT$13 million (US$416,000). Published on Taipei Times : http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2019/09/10/2003722028	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line739
__label__wiki	0.558859	0.558859	Each pet has 3 abilities it can use during a battle, but a total of 6 to choose from. They will also have a total of 3 active spell slots that show which abilities can be used during a Pet Battle. The first spell slot will already be unlocked, but the second and third will only become available once the companion has reached a certain level. Other spells will also unlock after reaching higher levels. Occasionally it's also been proposed to re-randomize all the gear. We didn't have best in slot lists back then. People weren't starting out as a fresh level 1 character with a complete list of which dungeons to run at 60 in order to gear as quickly and efficiently as possible. Now, all that data is available. If gear were re-randomized then all of those lists would become useless and thing would be close to how they were. Which is a more important part of the "vanilla experience?" the fact that item X from boss Y has exactly Z stats on it, or the voyage of discovery? Personally I think that voyage is way more important. Do you remember how many points of which stat on the ring or whatever that Darkmaster Gandling drops? I don't. Would it kill your experience if the BiS for every class were in a different dungeon so people had to actually play to figure it out rather than simply consult a spreadsheet? I don't think it would. For that matter, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to handle it intelligently so that the better gear is in later dungeons. I remember there because some weird cases where level 40ish gear was better than anything that dropped in level 60 dungeons.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line742
__label__cc	0.683726	0.316274	Some quests in my guide are marked as "SKIP" and colored in red. These quests are simply either too hard to solo or not worth the XP/time and are skipped. My guide will only list SKIPPED quests if the quest is a direct follow up after completing a quest, not one that you have to click the NPC again to get it. If you hover over the skipped quests, it will give info on why it is skipped in the guide (unless that info is already listed directly in the guide text). The World of Warcraft is going back to its roots with WoW Classic. Giving players the chance to return to the game as it was around the time of its launch, WoW Classic is set to launch worldwide on August 27. However, ahead of its imminent release, the team at Blizzard are offering a closed beta test for WoW Classic, and we’ve got all the details players need to jump in on the action. Blizzard has given us a pile of new information on World of Warcraft Classic, including the fact that it’ll finally release this August. But you won’t have to wait quite that long to start playing for yourself – the WoW Classic beta goes live tomorrow, May 15. This is a closed beta, and Blizzard says it’s pretty limited in scope, but there will be more chances to play heading into the WoW Classic release date. I made some route changes to the Horde levels 43-44 sections. I have swapped 44 Dustwallow Marsh with 44 Desolace (the entire sections). This allowed me to do Deadmire (at lvl 43 instead of 38) and then go stop at TB to turn in Deadmire + The Black Shield at the same time, then fly quickly to do the Desolace stuff. Doing 44 Desolace is now mandatory because I think its faster with the new routes. This will also make the level 53 grind much shorter. I think these were great changes. They seem to have expected some things, though, see adding pets with aquatic damage (gun and ooze) aswell as a resistant cockroach to stop us from cheesing everything with elementals. Yet, a fact their damage output is low combined with shields not checking for racial damage means this mechanic prevents a lot as you mentioned. The last boss has got an ability to remove basic shields so perhaps that was not in oblivion either… unlike the reactive damage. Also, an ability that forces swap altogether with an ability which prevents from being swapped, including critters? I can't say I like it. Four groups of Zygons attempted to make Earth more like Zygor: those who arrived in the 12th century (TV: Terror of the Zygons), those that arrived in the 16th century and plotted to invade in the 21st century (TV: The Day of the Doctor), those that arrived in 1909 (PROSE: Sting of the Zygons), and those that arrived in the late-20th century. (HOMEVID: Zygon: When Being You Just Isn't Enough) I joined twitch in 2013 with the gamer name of FuriousPaul and I streamed speedruns of the classic Castlevania games from 2013 - 2017. Lately my streams have died down quite a bit due to working on Classic WoW leveling guides every day. Although I may come on occasionally and play a random game for fun on my Twitch stream. I talk a lot about WoW speedrunning on my channel, so feel free to follow and hang out to discuss vanilla WoW if you like. Classic WoW will be my main focus for a long time. Unfortunately I will have to wait until Classic WoW comes out before I start streaming it. Bonz, Sid, and Zygor are then seen right before the Battle City finals. The three reside in a nearby cemetery and trick people into giving up their Locator Cards. However, Yami Bakura is not intimidated by their act and challenges them to a Duel in which the winner gets all the Locator Cards, and thus goes directly to the Battle City Finals. Bakura wins in just a few moves, and then banishes them to Hell (the Shadow Realm in the dub). Hey! Just came back from the game, looking to play bfa but i had no idea what to do when i logged on. It was all a bit confusing and i know nothing about the current content. So after some frustration i bought zygor again (haven't used it since cata ..) and i do currently feel more comfortable. I'm following the guides from the 'suggested' tab in zygor but i'm just really unsure if what i'm doing is even relevant. I know the end of the expansion is coming so i'd hate to waste my time. OK i will list the things it's been telling me to do. I think you are referring to the Env Bert strat I have linked. Basically I agree. But you might have noticed that I already had added min power to pet #2, in order to exclude some of the substitutes. Though, I didn’t wan’t to do the same with the Blazehaound (pet #1), because I think the strat is doable also with a suboptimal breed. But maybe you are right and I should just exclude any non-P/P breeds. You’ll get a small window inside the game with instructions for what you need to do next, every step of the way to 120. You’ll also get a waypoint arrow that points you in the right direction to go at all times. If this sounds extremely convenient, you’re right! Zygor’s leveling guide/addon has completely taken the frustration out of leveling for me, personally. No more reading comments on WoWHead about how to complete quests. No more getting stuck, frustrated and bored with leveling. And no more feeling like WoW takes too much effort.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line743
__label__wiki	0.853299	0.853299	Board index Off Topic Forums The Commons Re: Manchester, and now London K&C council held their first public meeting about Grenfell but banned the public from attending and banned the media from sitting in too. But then a judge ruled the media have to be allowed in. So they walked in, sat down, so the K&C council cunts cancelled the meeting. Going back to ane earlier convo, Saudi Arabia is the chief foreign exporter of terrorism in the UK http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40496778 And we're doing deals with em, selling em weapons, sharing security info pint vulger Sid wrote: Going back to ane earlier convo, Saudi Arabia is the chief foreign exporter of terrorism in the UK http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40496778 And accommodating their investment in football clubs plus the whole of London. Alfonso Bedoya "Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don't need badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned cabrón and ching' tu madre! Come out from that shit-hole of yours. I have to speak to you." It's amazing how victims can be treat with such contempt and there be no consequences other than, at some point, if they feel like it, they can step down from the position on the council. That's it. It's absolutely shocking. redzebs Sid wrote: It's amazing how victims can be treat with such contempt and there be no consequences other than, at some point, if they feel like it, they can step down from the position on the council. That's it. It's absolutely shocking. I'm starting to get it now I think, partly because the more tame it starts to get over here, the more people think politicians are cunts and get away with shit. Like we have our biggest party running the whole of the uk with the Tories but they couldn't agree on forming a gvt locally. But shit like that years ago, the residents told the boys and the boys told the councillors how the fuck shit was getting sorted out or else how councillors would find it hard to council from their office when their office was burnt out in three days time. Well I suppose that's the knighthood fucked. See now that's a bit violent but it's better than the shite we have now where councils are completely unanswerable to local people, so they can and do just wilfully shit on people and get away with it. They treat people with absolute contempt and do things which cause suffering and death, and they get away with it. Sid wrote: See now that's a bit violent but it's better than the shite we have now where councils are completely unanswerable to local people, so they can and do just wilfully shit on people and get away with it. They treat people with absolute contempt and do things which cause suffering and death, and they get away with it. You're the first I've met that would probably have loved the troubles mate, no bars of shops open late but no capitalism or beaurocrcy if you didn't want it and ONLY a sense of community that nobody fucked with. Well other communities but you need someone to slag in off topic or a 70s equivalent. We even had left wing ones for a while, the stickies, even the name is good. But they got binned because no one knew what socialism or capitalism was and other cunts split and became the main boys that became the IRA you know but go back and look at the originals from 69-72/73 roughly, they were clean all over Marx as well as machine guns Yeah but it's massively complicated with the religion and other stuff int it. There are places like that in the world though, without police and state, and they're fucking ace tbh. Very little crime. It's when you include the state that things get ugly. Aye where the IRA left wing for a period? I've heard a few giving it loads about marx and stuff. Their Ireland was a socalist Ireland. One bloke wasn't arsed about nationalism, wanted more of a socialist state than a united Ireland. Can anybody say more about it? So basically all the Catholics they were happy someone was fighting off the oppression from the Protestant RUC and mostly Protestant army (but Irish fought in the British army unconscripted for years or in lieu of a crime for example, loads of them that were poor same as Yorkshire and most other places wanted to see a bit of the world, do a bit of scrapping and their was no Irish Army so off to fight France, Germany in both world wars then fast forward, the odd one still would have joined, Anyway, the majority of Catholics wanted a disciplined, training paramilitary force to fight their cause against the enemy. When one night though they shot a teenage Catholic soldier who was a popular lad and the people pulled them and the IRA released a statement about their aim being a Marxist Republic Uniting North and South and they would not discriminate who they shot in the way of the cause. So their was a split, the splinter group became the Provisional IRA, probably, begrudgingly, the best terrorist organisation Western Europe has ever seen, you could look at ETA but when you've big fuckin rural bits of the Basque territory to rock about in, it's a lot harder on streets that would resemble a large Dnglish Counterpart with Secret Intelligence, a fast growing and better and better armed police and army service on the streets and when necessary conducting huge raids with top troops and hundreds of police, as well as informants that had been flipped to contend with. The left wing officials still hung about in the background but in the end even the INLA were bigger Return to “The Commons”	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line753
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In GET THE DISH, another POPSUGAR series that has become one of the most popular food shows on YouTube and Facebook, host Brandi Milloy shares a pop-culture-driven take on her culinary obsessions. Get the Dish One man's soul searching decision on whether or not he should join Facebook sets him off on an epic journey of self-discovery as he weighs the pros and cons of becoming a member of the world's largest social networking site. Along the way he talks with family, friends, total strangers and even celebrities whose lives have all been touched in one way or another by Facebook. From the long lost high school friend who uses it to stay in touch with classmates, to the pick-up artist who trolls the site to score with women, to the criminal who tracks your every movement to know when to rob your house, the best and the worst of Facebook is on display. You see, hes not just trying to figure out whether Facebook is right for him but whether or not he should let his soon-to-be 13 year old son become a member. Whether youre a fan of Facebook or not, this is one film this funny, fascinating and a must for anyone wondering what everyone is talking about. Why I'm Not On Facebook Three primary school classmates, separated after the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, meet up for a reunion through facebook at a pub only to find themselves pining for the dreams of who they might have been. Enthralled Jemma Dallender (I Spit on Your Grave 2) stars in this chilling tale from a news story that set Twitter and Facebook alight. Footage recovered by police shows what happened to three friends that bought an allegedly haunted mirror on eBay. The Mirror Desperate Facebook addict Michael Harris fakes his death online to see who of his so-called "friends" will show up at his funeral. Ryan Hansen (Veronica Mars) stars in this hilarious comedy about friendship in the age of social media. Friended to Death H&M Fashion Video brings you breaking fashion news every week! For terms and conditions, please visit hm.com/fashionvideo. Updated or not? Your choice. Visit our pages at Facebook.com/HM and YouTube.com/HM. H&M Fashion Video www.facebook.com/donrayz The best in nu-jazz, broken beat, bruk beat, dubstep future-funk, afro-latin house, neo-soul and soul-jazz classics. www.myspace.com/allmassive, www.giantstep.net/jukebox, Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Don-Ray/16634735365 Free promos at: http://soundcloud.com/don-ray MIDNIGHT MARAUDAZ NU-JAZZ PODCAST MIXED BY DON-RAY A monthly series featuring 20 of the best new music songs, from sources such as The Hype Machine, KEXP, Zane Lowe, Pitchfork, NME, and elbo.ws. As of February 2009, all songs are included with the permission of the featured artists. 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This month\'s podcast features music from Shrag, The Soft Pack, Fenech-Soler, Glass Cake, Silver Swans, MuteMath, Yeasayer, The Twang, Pictureplane, Frightened Rabbit, Exlovers, Freelance Whales, LoveLikeFire, Gift of Gab, Hannah Georgas, The Beatings, Javelin, ARMS, Fred, and Washed Out Past podcasts have included music from King Charles, Jesse Rose, Laura Veirs, Museum of Bellas Artes, The Danks, Atlas Sound, Think About Life, The Middle East, Everything Everything, Little Dragon, Surfer Blood, Ross D, Mocky, Aloud, Lake Heartbeat, Pennywise, Katsen, Skint and Demoralised, Emily Jane White, Ketch Harbour Wolves, Wild Beasts, Wallpaper., Gold Teeth, The Depreciation Guild, Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, Oddisee, Band of Skulls, The Temper Trap, Sic Alps, Slow Club, Drummer, Peasant, Restless People, Good Old War, Get Back Guinozzi!, Frida Hyvonen, The Mary Onettes, Still Life Still, Nyle, Olivia Broadfield, Toro Y Moi, Simian Mobile Disco ft. Beth Ditto, Arctic Monkeys, Speech Debelle, Johnny Foreigner, Jack Penate, Delorean, Enter Shikari, Wave Machines, The Vivians, The Cansecos, Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens, The Dodos, Rain Machine, Bibio, Stornoway, thecocknbullkid, The Rumble Strips, Terry Lynn and Johan Hugo, Bowerbirds, P-Money, Fanfarlo, Maxïmo Park, Regina Spektor, Discovery, Dear Landlord, Fool\'s Gold, Jamie T, jj, The Sounds, Rancid, Tony Lionni, Middle Class Rut, Your Twenties, Jay Reatard, O\'Spada, The Panics, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Master Shortie, Tango in the Attic, The Very Best ft. Ezra Koenig, In Case of Fire, FrankMusik, Wheels on Fire, Eels, Ebony Bones, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Malcolm Middleton, Dada Life, Foreign Born, Wheat, Yacht, Akron/Family, Basement Jaxx, Paul Dempsey, MSTRKRFT, Magistrates, Art Brut, Major Lazer, Hey Marseilles, Honey Claws, Right Away, Great Captain!, Mansion, Arkells, The Juan MacLean, Deastro, Mr. Lif, Violens, The Disciplines, Metric, Lali Puna, Mirah, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Fight Like Apes, Mumford and Sons, Handsome Furs, The Joy Formidable, Friendly Fires, Neko Case, Eternal Summers, Harlem Shakes, Passion Pit, Spinnerette, Angus and Julia Stone, Peter Bjorn and John, The Wombats, Official Secrets Act, Chew Lips, White Lies, Vetiver, The Takeover UK, Fever Ray, Phoenix, K-OS, Ellie Goulding, Tortured Soul, The Whitest Boy Alive, The Grates, Miike Snow, The Gaslight Anthem, Asa, Matt and Kim, Lo-Fi-Fnk, Charles Spearin, Coeur de pirate, David E. Sugar, The Answering Machine, Kinch, Mos Def, Bell X1, Junior Boys, Boy Eats Drum Machine, The Joy Formidable, Two Door Cinema Club, Blind Pilot, Casiokids, The Thermals, P.O.S., The Von Bondies, The Invisible, Point Juncture, WA, Wintersleep, Peter Broderick, Paper Moon, The Sunshine Underground and FC Kahuna, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, J Boogie\'s Dubtronic Science ft. The Rebirth and Aima the Dreamer, Pete and the Pirates, Marina and the Diamonds, Situationists, and Osborne. JeffMix podcasts Love dance music? We do. The KeredCast is a dance music podcast featuring the latest dance music tracks as well as guest mixes and interviews with from the world's best DJs, including John Digweed, Sharam, Axwell, Benny Benassi, Mark Knight, Peter Rauhofer, Nic Fanciulli, Chris Lake, Steve Lawler and many more. Hosted and produced by Kered, a producer and DJ based in North America. Say hello to us at keredcast.com, facebook.com/keredcast and twitter.com/keredcast. KeredCast Kramer has been active in the dance music industry for over 15 years as a DJ, producer and label owner. Based in San Francisco, his professional DJ career has spanned over 10 years and he regularly performs around the US and in Europe, Mexico and Central America. Holding nightclub residencies in San Francisco and Cancun, Mexico, Kramer has established an international reputation for his signature Tribal Progressive sound and energetic DJ sets. He is also one of the core organizers of the legendary Deep End sound camp at Burning Man. His sound has resonated around the world with guest DJ mixes on radio shows in the US, Europe and Asia. For two years he hosted his monthly “United Tribal” radio show on Friskyradio.com, featuring the top Tribal DJs from around the world. Kramer is co-founder of the Relative Velocity label and one half of the production team Methodrone. Find out more about DJ Kramer at djkramer.com and join the DJ Kramer Facebook fan page at facebook.com/djkramer.music DJ Kramer United Tribal Podcast 2.060519.live.1-2	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line760
__label__cc	0.637733	0.362267	Vince Golangco CEO @WhenInManila, TV,radio,US Navy,SDSU,AKΨ- #TipsyPigFort @spectremnl @GamingLib @genkbbq_ph @wolfgangssteakhouseph Leaders vs Followers 5 Ways to Stay Motivated to Finish What You Started Here’s to the Crazy Ones (Think Different campaign) The Rebel Within Tagdj vince golangco Today is Cam Whore Day!!! Saturday, August 7, 2010 / Vince Golangco WOW! That was an awesome show today! Thanks to everyone who kept me company! Keisha, Lyn, Carl, Regina, Sharon, Xian, Jersey, Marie, Harris, Eudora, Rhein, Leo, Red, Secretlover, Dhea, Marrie and everyone else whom I wasn’t able to list down! As mentioned, today is my self-proclaimed “Cam-Whore Day” because today was the day, in 1959, that the first picture of Earth from space was seen. So with that, you need to take pictures of yourself! Share them with me if you want and I’ll post them here if you want as well. Email me – djVinceG@Yahoo.com “Aug 7, 1959. US satellite Explorer VI transmitted the first picture of Earth from space. For the first time we had a likeness of our planet based on more than projections and conjectures.” Below is the summary of my show in case you want to check out any cool facts that I talked about. You’ve found “The G-Spot” with DJ Vince G. A radio show on Mellow 94.7 FM every every Saturday from 6-9am and Sundays 6-10am. Listing down all the stuff I talked about On Air in case you wanted to check it out. Listen online – http://Mellow947.fm Connect with me on Facebook.com/djVinceG or on Twitter.com/VinceGolangco On This Day – Aug 7 1942 U.S. forces landed at Guadalcanal, marking the start of the first major allied offensive in the Pacific during World War II. 1971 Apollo 15 returned to Earth after a manned mission to the moon. 1974 French stuntman Philippe Petit walked a tightrope strung between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center. 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore chose Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman as his running mate, making him the first Jewish candidate on a major party ticket. 2007 Barry Bonds became baseball’s career home run leader when he hit No. 756 during a home game in San Francisco, passing Hank Aaron’s mark. David Duchovny, 50, actor (“The X-Files,” “Californication”), born New York, NY, Aug 7, 1960. Charlize Theron, 35, actress (Oscar for Monster; In the Valley of Elah, Aeon Flux, The Italian Job), born Benoni, South Africa, Aug 7, 1975. Billy Joe (B.J.) Thomas, 68, singer (“Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”), born Houston, TX, Aug 7, 1942. #1 Song Today, 1999 Genie in a Bottle Christina Aguilera 1998 The Boy Is Mine Brandy & Monica 1997 I’ll Be Missing You Puff Daddy & Faith Evans featuring 112 1996 Macarena [Bayside Boys Mix] Los Del Rio 1995 Waterfalls TLC 1994 Stay (I Missed You) Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories 1993 Can’t Help Falling in Love UB40 1992 This Used to Be My Playground Madonna 1991 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams 1990 Vision of Love Mariah Carey Mr. Know it All (useless info of the day) Breasts implants can also save you from death Big breasts miraculously saved an Israeli woman from death at the hands of a Lebanese paramilitary organization. The incident occurred during a Hezbollah rocket attack. The victim got a boob job two years ago. During the war, she was wounded in the chest by shrapnel but survived because of her implants. While the patient is fine, the implant, unfortunately, did not survive. You cannot open the door of a sinking car. FICTION…. sorta When a sinking car isn’t yet completely flooded, the water pressure differential between the inside and outside of the cabin prevents the door from being opened. Only once the sinking sedan is filled to the brim — and the pressure difference stabilized — will the door latch release. Reason to party today – coz it’s happy hour somewhere in the world. Professional Speakers Day Aug 7. A day celebrating the consummate professionals who through their oratorical skills help people Space Milestone: First Picture of Earth from Space / “Cam Whore Day” “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great” – Mark Twain Thanks for listening to “The G-Spot” Hope it was good for you too… © 2020 Vince Golangco	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line761
__label__wiki	0.585789	0.585789	IPOB: The dissolution of Nigeria will be a new beginning in Africa The dissolution of Nigeria will be a new beginning in Africa By Ekwenye Samuel for Family Writers Press. Nigeria has existed as an independent entity for nearly 58 years from 1960. Nigeria is relatively big geographically, populated, blessed with so much natural resources but lacks the ability to harness those resources to develop itself. Nigeria's population and size, natural resources, excess human capital that can be translated wealth, earned it the title "giant" of Africa even though it is overrated. Reality and events happening in the self acclaimed giant of Africa has generated several discourse across several platforms both online and offline in discontent as how the once glorious country has metamorphosed to an object of caricature amongst comity of nations and today tagged "chicken" of Africa. A giant of a continent is supposed to live an exemplary life, protecting the lives and properties of it's citizens and giving solutions to their problems. Nigeria is now the giant of evil and the power house of corruption in Africa and the world, you hear about massive abduction of school girls and villagers, looting of public funds, killing of christians, massive rigging of elections even before the election schedule, massive oil spillage for decades without plans for remedy, frequent inflation in the price of daily consumable commodities despite that there are no jobs even for the graduates who now opted for menial jobs like driving motorcycles and tricyles while some are involved in many criminal activities in the society. Nigeria is a giant that is as good as a dwarf, a Giant that offers no protection to the citizens but rather, kidnapping them and using them for rituals, a giant that runs away from battle field when sent to confront terrorists, is that person a giant? Corruption in Africa first took place in Nigeria and its manifestation is what we are witnessing now, cases where animals are now stealing money from government offices and banks. recovered loots are been re-looted. The critical role Nigeria plays in Africa's development makes it pertinent for something to be done to salvage the situation. Nigeria will be better if the country is allowed to go back to it's natural state, as it where before the amalgamation took place. Believe you me that evil spreads like flames and as many other African countries are learning from Nigeria. if Nigeria is not dissolved soon, Africa will loose it's integrity and Nigeria will be worse than Somalia. Let all men of goodwill and conscience salvage the glory of humanity by obeying the clarion call to champion for a renaissance in Africa. Editor: Comr. Ogbuanya Chikezie Nnamdi	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line765
__label__wiki	0.615681	0.615681	Web Order Entry Web Entry Forms In the Beginning: A Family Affair So, how did The Portland Group (TPG) come to be? It all started back in 1930, with Irving “Speed” Rose, who had a small hardware store on Portland Street in Boston. Deciding that he wanted to expand his shop, he asked his friend Benjamin Fox, who was in the meatpacking business at the time, if he would help with financing. Not long after, Speed brought his three brothers, Harry, Al and Jack into the business, and Benjamin brought in his three sons, Dan, Perry and Paul. And that’s how TPG began. Two friends who would combine their skills and their families, to become one of New England’s leading wholesalers of plumbing, heating and air conditioning. Since the beginning, TPG has provided the best brand names and highest quality offerings from all over the world. Always on the lookout for new and leading-edge products, the group has become synonymous with innovation. Although they have a national reputation, The Portland Group has remained true to its family roots. Now in its fourth generation, with a more than 300,000 square foot warehouse, a spectacular, recently built 10,00 square foot bath and kitchen showroom in Newton, MA, called Splash, and three other wholesale locations with onsite showrooms, called Spritzo, they’re still as family oriented as ever. Says Mike Fox, “We’re first and foremost a family business. We treat our employees like family, as well as our clients.” Celebrating their 88th year in business, it must be working. previousRenovating a Bathroom with The Portland Group Our family has been in the business of plumbing, heating and AC for four generations. We’re here to help when you have an emergency, and when you don’t. info@theportlandgroup.com Billerica, MA 877.382.8153 Boston, MA 800.888.6950 Framingham, MA 800.242.0236 Haverhill, MA 800.225.0536 Medford, MA 800.242.0236 Raynham, MA 800.553.5521 West Newton, MA 800.698.0047 Worcester, MA 855.595.8326 Manchester, NH 800.775.8942 Providence, RI 800.207.2713 Saco, ME 866.796.8787 Clinton, CT 860.669.1111 Middletown, CT 860.347.2503 Vernon, CT 860.875.2545 SPLASH/SPRITZO INSTAGRAM © The Portland Group 2018	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line772
__label__cc	0.657978	0.342022	Club HOMEPAGE [url]http://www.thesmartclub.com/board[/url] [url=http://www.thesmartclub.com/board]thesmartclub - FORUM[/url] http://www.thesmartclub.com/board thesmartclub - FORUM http://www.thesmartclub.com/board/showthread.php?t=42918 http://www.thesmartclub.com/board/showthread.php?p=269302#post269302 [img]http://www.thesmartclub.com/board/images/statusicon/forum_new.gif[/img] (Not linked) [url=http://www.example.com] [img]http://www.thesmartclub.com/board/images/statusicon/forum_new.gif[/img] [/url] (Linked) -- English All content © thesmartclub ltd 2000-2016. No content may be reproduced in any format without the express consent of thesmartclub – please see the Contact Us section of our main web site at www.thesmartclub.com for further details . thesmartclub logo, thesmartclub 10th Anniversary logo, the '4site' logo and "the place for all things smart" are Trademarks of thesmartclub ltd. © 2000 to 2019	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line778
__label__cc	0.747751	0.252249	Bauer Students and Faculty Attend OpenStax Conference Bauer undergraduate students, Academic Support Assistants (ASA), volunteers and faculty members attended OpenStax Creator Fest 2019 at Rice University to learn from the open textbook publisher, open pedagogy advocates and practitioners. Textbook prices are an important consideration for students, faculty and staff. Open Educational Resources (OER) can ease the financial burden on students while offering quality content in user-friendly formats. The OpenStax Creator Fest conference offered useful information for a wide range of stakeholders who attended the four-day event. Attendees learned about the process of working with and developing Open Educational Resources as part of their research into open resources. “We have a successful Open Educational Resources Program at the University of Houston Libraries and as we move to adopt them for my class in the near future, the conference came at the right time to connect with other faculty,” Instructional Assistant Professor Emese Felvegi said. “OpenStax has been very successful in reaching half the U.S. colleges, we have definitely learned a lot from the guest speakers about what they do in the classroom.” The sessions ranged from keynotes to practical tips to creator workshops where participants created supplements for their Open Textbooks. One of the sessions most of the Bauer participants attended was led by Captain Andrew Wilhelm from The United States Military Academy discusses the Thayer method and ways to engage students in the classroom. “I wanted to take in everything about open education resources. The talk I attended by one of the pioneers of open education resources inspired and empowered me,” Finance Instructional Assistant Professor Olivia Miljanic said. “It reaffirmed my commitment to equity, inclusion, and true equal opportunity of education, financial and emotional”, she noted. “I also learned about specific resources that facilitate the development and delivery of online courses.” “OpenStax is an incredible initiative to bring innovation and resources to all students without boundaries or barriers. I hope to learn more about this altruistic movement and what kind of change it can make to open education.” – Management Information Systems sophomore and Bauer Tutoring Services Academic Support Assistant Robert McCarn “It was great to connect with other educators and glean from their own experiences designing a course, implementing lesson plans, and working with students individually. It was very refreshing to engage with a community that encourages sharing of resources, rather than competition and recognition. In this way, educators and students benefit from a collective pool of materials from diverse sources.” – Management senior, Bauer Tutoring Services Academic Support Assistant, Lois Hamburger “Open Stax showed me unique behind the scenes view of what our Professors put into lectures, homework, test reviews, and any other class materials given to us by them. It makes me appreciative of all the hard work. Going to OpenStax has also granted me a unique skill set of being able to create a class or lesson from open source materials.” – Business minor Lilliana Olmos Categories Submitted	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line786
__label__cc	0.744764	0.255236	→ The Workshops → Active Tasks → Active: Creative Text CTD - Psionic Probe Started by Kamikazee , Jan 07 2004 01:00 PM #1 Kamikazee Kamikazee sorry if this appears twice, my browser went crazy so i sent it again just to be safe, if so can an admin person delete it for me, thanx This is a 5 minute first draft so critisize please. And look Cpl. Facehugger, It isn't organic yay! RESEARCH COMPLETED: [MIND PROBE] HEAD OF RESEARCH PROJECT: [JAMIE HILLSDEN] WEIGHT:___________________ [wieght] SIZE:______________________ [size] DAMAGE TYPE:____________ N/A TYPE:_____________________ PSI POWER:___________________ N/A ACCURACY:_______________ N/A RANGE:___________________ Unknown FIRE RATE:________________ N/A OTHER:___________________ N/A (The [MIND PROBE] allows the user to read their target's mind. Requires no training.) This unusual orb-like alien device is an extremely complex arrangement of alien micro-proccessors and circuitry. After extensive research it is clear that this device is some form of alien communication device. Howver, it can also be used for a more usefull purpose. The large surface area acts like an antenna to intercept brainwaves, while the amazingly complex micro-supercomputer inside converts the waves so that they are compatible with the users brain, relaying the message directly to the user, instantly and with an accuracy of over 99%. Fortunately, due to our brains similarity to some alien races the [Mind Probe] can be used by X-Corp units in combat situattions. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of the semi pictorial alien language our scientists are as yet unable to decipher a single word. Therefore, its use is restricted to emotions intercepted from the target, such as morale, any wounds, any equipment they are carrying along with an assortment of statistics about the targets condition and rank. This is a very complex but useful piece of technology, that has great use on a battle scene, but it is not without its limits. Firstly, the user (or another user) must be in visual contact of the target and secondly, the device takes quite a bit of time to use due to its cumbursome design, size and its minimal compatability with the human mind. sorry theres no paragraphing, im too lazy. oh well, critisize away. PS There may be some bits i cant change otherwise it will not tie in with the Psi Amp and the text on human psi abilities. I like that one! i need stats for weight size etc. or shall i leave em blank 4 later? is there a tech tree for X1? #4 Breunor Breunor The tech tree will follow the one from xcom, not sure that an official list is done yet, the dependencies are being written in XML the last I read on the programmer's SF mailing list. I would take whatever stats you see in the original ufopedia, otherwise just make up what sounds appropriate for dimensions. A good reference is to compare the space items take in the backpack, compared to other items like pistols and rifles. 3D X-Net Web Viewer - Check out our models using IE and a plugin! thanks but wot i meant was is there a tech tree diagram for UFODEF that i can have to help me out a bit. it saves me replaying the game Check the xcom 1 forums, I think there was one there somewhere. #7 RustedSoul very good i enjoyed reading it but i think the line "The large surface area acts like an antenna to intercept brainwaves" needs do be buffed into somthing more scientific maybe searching for russian/KGB telepatchic research conspiracies on the net may yield more if your interested. but it's probably not needed thanks, i already have about 20 pages on it already which i used for the history info on the Psi Amp but people weren't to fond of it, but some still remains. These were basically rough ideas written in five minutes. I will definitely add more scientific stuff in. PS to whoevr made the Mind probe pics in the concept art on the xeno site, considering that it is just a sphere it lt looks great i like it. the ridges add a sense of detaial and make it feel slightly more realistic and ergonomic looking. and i will tie in the ridges into my writing later on. Heres an rtf for you. didn't change much, just said the surfece has dimples for a large surface area so it can trap more brain waves. some other stuff i dont remember. input please. X_NET_MIND_PROBE.rtf 4.31K 56 downloads #10 Kamikazee ok. i dont know wot happened to that download, it is a bit dodgy. Is anyone going to reply? im talking to myself here! ok... my grammar is not acceptable here, as it's fairly poor, so i'll just comment on suggested phrasing/"fluff" words as facehugger would say please understand that these are just suggestions that you may use at your own disgression "orb-like" > spheric "brainwaves" > psionic emissions "allows communication between different species with different brain structures" various cranial capacities basically my suggestions for this type of document are to change common words into scientific spam, i hope this helps. edit... my spelling needs some work to ( i'm my own worst critic) Edited by RustedSoul, 11 January 2004 - 09:49 AM. It would sound better but i dont want to alienate people who never played UFODEF or anybody who might understant all this theoretical science crap, eg psionic emissions, for all they know that might be a new game by sega #13 Blood Angel The research history of the [mind probe] is a particularly interesting one, for X-corps scientists anyway. After the device was retrieved from the field, and Professor Jeremy Howard confiscated it from the rookie playing with it, research could start. "What? This? It's an alien football - It's mine dude! I found it first! Give it bac- THUD" Rookie Johnson, shortly before being subdued by Professor Jeremy Howard. The device is a blue, dimpled orb the size of a football, as noted by Johnson. Closer analysis showed that the dimples contained psionic receptors, but no matter how hard we tried, none of the X-corps research team could figure out how to use it. So we put it into storage, and began to look into other research projects. That was when the breakthrough came. One of the two storage workers putting the dead-end research projects into storage that night came over all funny while putting the Psionic Probe away. His account follows. "Well, me and mike were putting the stuff that confused the eggheads into storage, and I made to throw the Alien Football to him, like a basketball pass, and I went all funny. Suddenly, I was mike, if you see what I mean. I could see myself throwing a football at me. At that point I got all confused, and I was me again. Mike didn't have a clue what happened." Peter Stone, Storage worker. The researchers picked up the trail again, and discovered a fair amount about the Psionic Probe. As most scientists know, every living thing emits brainwaves. The Psionic Probe's multiple psionic receptors pick up these brainwaves and store them within its orbic shape. The device is hollow, and the brainwaves are reflected internally. Once enough brainwaves have been accumulated within, brainwaves of the same signature (from the same individual) begin to collect in the shell of the device. Upon contact with skin from a sentient being, the brainwaves will enter the host brain through the neural system. The end result is that the host can feel certain things through the recieved brainwaves about the individual that produced them. This may include morale, pain, Limited vision, a couple of memories, and knowledge of limitations. Practically, the Psionic Probe can be used to identify an alien's race, rank, armament, state of injury, psionic skill and resistance, morale, stamina, fatigue and other information about them, simply by grasping this orb and concentrating on the target. However, the device is large, cumbersome, and sometimes difficult to use. "This thing is gnarly! I stole one out of the stores and used it to spy on Helen Parkinson for a whole week!" Rookie Brown, in his field report on the Psionic Probe, shortly before his court-martial and expulsion on charges of voyeurism. Topic merged, if there is already a thread, please use it. PSIONIC PROBE X-Net://Pegasus.Net/Alien/Equipment/Psionic Probe Final name is "Psionic Probe". No naming of individual characters inside the text, only on fluff texts, also, "confiscated from the rookie playing with it" makes X-Corps sound like a bunch of children playing in a toystore. Careful about the language employed, it is not looking professional, remember this is a scientific report, not a personal letter. This is a direct referrence to what I stated above, this is up to be removed as it won't make sense once the other part is corrected. Again, no reference of individuals. If they couldn't figure out how to use them, how did they know they were psionic receptors? that makes them sound too natural, while this is the first psionic device they can research. This part sounds like it was a story, it's a scientific report on the properties and functioning of the Psionic Probe, not the story. Also, they put it in storage? when the player hits "research", it's researched, they don't put it in storage and work on other projects, otherwise there would be research progress on other topics. Don't make them sound like actual kids, we do have fluffs that border stupidity (something some people don't agree with), but they serve the purpose of being funny, but you're integrating the stupidity of the people in the fluffs into the text, don't. The part before the fluff is telling a story, this is a report. Hmmm, I think we don't "emit" brainwaves, I could be wrong, but the emitting part makes us sound like antennas. I still don't know where did the psionic receptors came from, how did they know? also, if the orb is hollow, how does it store brainwaves? I think you're making brainwaves sound too much like radio emissions, and there is a coherency problem I'll explain later. I think you can identify the race when you have to walk up to it and use it close range and I dont think you can check vision. Don't recite the skills as if you were reading a list, in RL we don't have skills on a paper, so don't talk about them as if they were listed somewhere as part of a "character sheet". "Cumbersome"? I think the probe is light-weight and small. It does not give vision, you have to be very near to use it, and why would the rookie say in his "field" report that he was spying on someone? this fluff is not appropiate. You don't seem to have used any of the parts of the text written by Kamikazee, I suggest you take it as a base, as this text really needs to be rewritten from scratch, also, I had told you to read Psionic Amplifier and Psionic Theory, please do it, the text has to be coherent. This is the first psionic device they are ever going to find, keep that in mind, I don't know if we are going to make it a requirement for Psionic Training Facility, but we might. I think that perhaps "[...]confiscated it from a very confused Rookie attempting to break it open[...]" would work better. Playing with it does sound like children, and these are fully grown and intelligent men(at least they should be) OK. I just thought I'd inject a little bit of humour into it. Maybe not. Latest draft: This unusual orb-like alien device is an extremely complex arrangement of alien micro-processors and circuitry. After extensive research it is clear that this device is some form of alien communication device which utilizes brainwaves to relay information. The metallic outer layer has many microscopic dimples to increase the surface area, acting like an antenna to intercept as many brainwaves as possible. While the amazingly complex micro-supercomputer inside converts the waves so that they are compatible with the users brain, relaying the message directly to the users mind, instantly and with an accuracy of over 99%. In short, it picks up brainwaves and converts one format of brainwave into the user’s format, this allows communication between different species with different brain structures. Fortunately, due to our brains similarity to some alien races the [Mind Probe] can be used by [X-Corp] units in combat situations. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of the semi hieroglyphic alien language our scientists are as yet unable to decipher a single word and to learn would be near impossible. Therefore, its use is restricted to emotions intercepted from the target, such as morale, physical status, any equipment they are carrying along with an assortment of statistics about the targets condition and rank. This is a very complex but useful piece of technology, that has great use on a battle scene, but it is not without its limits. Firstly, the user must be in visual contact of the target and secondly, the device takes quite a bit of time to use due to its cumbersome design, size and its minimal compatibility with the human mind. well azrael, since you are on, i am asking for authority to steal this and digest it and absorb it into my bloodstream. I only have a few more hours tonight before i have to go to bed, and tomorrow is school You need not ask for permission, if you want to work on a text, just grab the last draft and improve it using the comments as base, and try to complete it. #20 Brick-To-Face Brick-To-Face Hi everybody. I started writing for the Psionic probe because BUGS said the task was "Waiting for asignee" but I guess there has allready been some work done on it, I didn't realize that until I was almost done. So my scientific explanation might be different, or maybe it's possible to integrate these two versions. (The psionic probe allows one intelligent organism to read the mind of another and get a sense of its skills abilities, personality and physical condition.) One of the first alien artifacts to be retrieved by X-Corps operatives was the Psionic Probe. This alien tool is concrete evidence that the alien invaders have developed psionic powers, and technology to access and supplement those powers. Fortunately human brains are similar enough to alien brains, so the probes are entirely cross-platform so to speak. Finding out the probe's function was a difficult task. The first step was to disassemble it carefully, ensuring that nothing inside was damaged. The probe consists of a metallic sphere, with some fairly simple circuitry inside of it, including an interesting compression detector. The only oddities are the small Xenium power generator, a highly sensitive psionic signal interpreter, and a low-power psionic wave emitter. The Psionic Probe's components work much like magnetic resonance imaging, except instead of interpreting signals from separate regions of the brain, it interprets the brain's overall condition. The probe's highly sensitive signal receptor which uses the outer metallic sphere as an antenna picks up brain waves, from any particular direction and retransmits them in all directions using its transponder. The high-energy waves are able to travel over .2 - .5 metres much further than natural brainwaves. Thus anyone who's brain is close to the probe will experience the world as if they were the subject being probed. The entire process lasts only 17 milliseconds, but volunteers have learned to interpret the sensation as early as on the third attempt. To select the subject and activate the probe one must give it a gentle squeeze while imagining the exact distance and direction of the organism they wish to probe. The most intricate part of the probe is the computer that interprets the users brain to obtain this information. It seems as if the aliens have done plenty of work in the field of psionics, as they have written a highly efficient algorithm to enumerate the waves dealing with coordination, something that human technology is only beginning to explore. Very little experience in psionics or understanding of psionic interaction is required, any intelligent person can learn to use the psionic probe after receiving only minutes of instruction. It is not known what purpose the psionic probe serves for the aliens. One of the theories is that targets for abductions could be selected using the probe. But aliens may have other purposes for it. This device could be used by humans to gain an advantage over others, but no great threat is presented by the device. Unusual personalities such as that of a spy could be detected using the probe, but there is no room for great profit in the utilization of this device. Nevertheless many people would give up large sums of money to get their hands on the device, since it can be used to communicate feelings as long as both parties are concentrating. "No... No, no, no. I am never dating men again." - Agent Tonida's psychiatric evaluation after volunteering to test the Psionic Probe #21 Mad [Xenocide Senior Members] Sorry, I was quite busy, and I guess I expected you to come forward with a fraft combining the two texts... Please make sure your explanation can coexist with the texts for psionic theory and psi amp. Let me seee... (The psionic probe allows one intelligent organism to read the mind of another and get a sense of its skills abilities, personality and physical condition.) What is this meant for? is it in the text? X-Net://Pegasus.net/Equipment/Psionic Probe One of the first alien artifacts to be retrieved by X-Corps operatives was the Psionic Probe. dangerous. The player may recover the probe very late in the game. This alien tool is concrete evidence that the alien invaders have developed psionic powers , and technology to access and supplement those powers. Not all Aliens do have psi powers and the last part with the developed powers and technology reads a bit odd in my... uhm... eyes. suggested rephrasing: This alien device supports our hypothesis that at least some of the alien invaders have psionic powers and developed means to access and suppllement these powers. Fortunately human brains are similar enough to alien brains, so the probes are entirely cross-platform so to speak. haha, good one. Maybe explain it a bit more. Maybe concentrate on the brainwave patterns. "Fortunatly human brain waves seem to be similar enough..." Finding out the probe's function was a difficult task. The first step was to disassemble it carefully, ensuring that nothing inside was damaged. Maybe leave that sentence out. It suggests that it is something special, but how else should one reverse engineer than by taking it apart? The probe consists of a metallic sphere, with some fairly simple circuitry inside of it, including an interesting compression detector. What the heck is an compression detector?Please expalain The only oddities are the small Xenium power generator, a highly sensitive psionic signal interpreter remember, X-Corps scientists work on this kind of technique the first time, and I'm sure htere is no label saying: "odd psionic signal interpreter" So maybe use sentences like "we ware able to determine the function of some of these parts. One seems to be sensitive to brainwaves... blablabla you get the point." , and a low-power psionic wave emitter. The Psionic Probe's components work much like magnetic resonance imaging, except instead of interpreting signals from separate regions of the brain, it interprets the brain's overall condition. The probe's highly sensitive signal receptor which uses the outer metallic sphere as an antenna picks up brain waves, from any particular direction and retransmits them in all directions using its transponder. How exactly is this working? I suggest a read of the psi amp CT. Very little experience in psionics or understanding of psionic interaction is required, any intelligent person can learn to use the psionic probe after receiving only minutes of instruction. If I'm not mistaken psi training is necessary to use the probe, isn't it? It is not known what purpose the psionic probe serves for the aliens. One of the theories is that targets for abductions could be selected using the probe. But aliens may have other purposes for it. like? I think they could use it just as we do. This device could be used by humans to gain an advantage over others, but no great threat is presented by the device. Unusual personalities such as that of a spy could be detected using the probe, but there is no room for great profit in the utilization of this device. Nevertheless many people would give up large sums of money to get their hands on the device, since it can be used to communicate feelings as long as both parties are concentrating. I think the last part is nothing of use for X-Corps. i don't think they care much about the morality issues... So maybe leave it out. Since this is the first draft I haven't made too deep changes; try to ig out the other psi texts and try to make it consitent with them. Maybe try to incorporate the old text as well. Nevertheless, good draft! Keep smiling while dying Of course I have gone mad with power! It would be completely ridiculous to go mad without power! And no, this is not a quote from the Simpson's movie, I want it on paper, that I actually wrote that quite some time before the movie came out. #22 Zombie At least in the original game, the probe can be used without any psionic training. (If you think about it, every alien race can have a probe in combat and since some races are without psi, it only stands to reason that soldiers can handle it just fine as well). Basically, all the probe does is read the stats of the unit in question and then either displays the info or transmits the data via neural waves directly into the brain of the user. The second scenario is probably the best for us as the text already incorporates this theory. As for what the aliens use it for, it is the same as what humans use it for: information on current stats, rank, etc. Though, in the original game the aliens never used it - they already knew everyones stats/locations from the very first round. Cheaters. - Zombie Edited by Zombie, 09 August 2006 - 06:34 PM. The Mr. Grognard of X-COM Zombie: Empirical data's your only man, when formulating a research plan. A soldier's death is never in vain if it makes the formula more plain. A few dozen make a better case for refining that third decimal place. They call me Zombie because I don't sleep, as I slowly struggle to climb this heap, of corpses, data points, and trials, but from the top - I'll see for miles! #23 Davo Okays, Keep hitting a brick wall every time I try to continue on with this one. Any and all help will be muchly appreciated.... Extremely rough draft but as i said.. pretty stuck... Tried to explain how the probe works... sorta Also, does the probe have a screen of some sort and an interface or does it interact directly with the mind, I assumed not because everyone (psionically skilled or not) could use one. Advanced quantum physics Idea is every body/thing sends out positive and negative waves that attracts and reject all the good and bad things in life. Psionic Probe seems to work on advanced quantum phsyics theories, Every living being is resonating their own information, desires, fears, hopes, and thoughts. The psionic mind warp thingey is not only able to pick all of these things up, it is able to filter out all other garbled “traffic” and fine tune to each persons waves. It can read and process what the being is thinking, feeling and wanting. The Psionic Probe works on what can best describe as our most advanced quantum physics theories. The mind is continually sending out signals to the world in the form of waves of your thoughts, feelings, state of mind, body and health, everything you are conscious about and most subconscious things too. The waves are created. in the central neural system and as they travel through the cerebral cortex “thought wave” is amplified, sending it outwards. These waves function on the atomic and sub atomic levels. Many “happy go lucky”theorists have theorised that for years these waves were of a positive and negative charge, each in direct relation to the thought. The Psionic Probe uses extremely minute amounts of stimulated/charged Xenium 122 (Takes one xenium to manufacture) which attracts these "thought" waves towards the centre of the charged probe. When the waves hit the outermost layer of the Psionic probe, they are absorbed into the very fibres of the alloy used to create it. The millions of nano-fibres take an impression of the waves and begin repeatedly sending the image of the wave towards the centre of the Probe. It is believed each layer reads a different aspect of the thought wave before the wave image is passed on. Several layers have been mapped with the following information being gleaned 1st Layer takes the imprint of the wave an stores it in a memory bank. Intervals that last nano-seconds separate each individual repetition of waves. The second layer of the probe reads the overall polarity of the wave, giving us a rough outline of whether the thought was of a positive nature or negative. The third layer reads the amount of charge the wave had, eg: if the thought was an extremely strong charge in with a positive polarity then one can gather from the information retrieved from the first two layers that the being is in high spirit and confidence(explains morale) The 7th layer of the probe seems to deal with the physical state of being from the creator of the neural wave. This level appears to differentiate the difference between a potentially fatal wound like that of internal bleeding and a less serious wound like that of a broken bone. Extremely accurate, this layer also seems to tell us how much more pain the subject can take. (health) The 9th and 10th level have been mapped and are believed to deal with the conscious thoughts of the subject. When the subject was wearing plain clothes, the layers picked up quite clearly that he felt minimally protected. When wearing a reinforced burn resistant kevlar jacket the layer made a distinctive distinguishment between the two objects worn and the subject felt alot more prtected. (Armour) So ya. stuck... Dont know where to go but Ive seen some CT that started really really small and have evolved soo much so waiting patiently for help, direction and ideas. AHhhh my bad... me = big boo boo. Edited by Davo, 28 March 2007 - 05:31 AM. Hey Davo! I was hoping you could maybe try to make one new draft out of yours and the old one? (Actually I think that's what everyone is waiting for here... ) Or do you still need comments on your draft? Edited by Mad, 14 April 2007 - 02:27 AM. Hahaha, i figured as much and have been chipping away at it slowly, almost done now actually, but ill post an update soon, Gimme another day or two and ill stick it up Great! Can't wait to read it Okay, a couple of things, I cant get the link to psionic theory working, it keeps coming up woth this page is unavailable... bla bla bla.... so couldnt really tie it into that. And when ever I tried to pm you mad (in the last.. hour maybe) it kept coming up with a blank page with this "Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 233472 bytes) in /data/www/xcomufo.com/www/htdocs/forums/sources/ipsclass.php(1464) : eval()'d code on line 563" at the top of it. So boo to pm'ing you and asking you to send me to the psionic theory. Otherwise, just finished work an hour or two ago and dont have to work tomorrow so i thought id try and get a bit more done. As it stands, this is what I have so far. I have tried to incorporate the ideas of kamikazze, az and brick to face... but it was never going to all work out so tried to mesh them all together and go that way. The following happened... 1)realized you do not need psi training for the psionic probe 2)its going to be hard to do without reference to the psionic theory But effectively, it could be done so that it was entirely mechanical as it did not require any psionic training. SO gave it a shot, crit away and lets see if we can make this baby somehow work, The brain is made up of billions of cells which are called neurons. These cells use electricity to send various signals through out the brain and body. The combination of millions of neurons sending signals at once produces enourmous amounts of electrical activity in the brain which we refer to as brainwaves. Our technology so far has allowed us to pick up these readings by using sensitive magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) devices and electroencephalograms(EEG). The Aliens have not only been able to go one step further in mapping this electrical activity, they have also managed to create a device which can obtain the information from a distance, using a round hand held device that we call a Psionic Probe. The probe consists of a hard metallic outer casing, with an extremely complex system of alien micro-processors and circuitory on the interior. Although we can not comprehend exactly how this piece of technology works, we have figured out what certain parts of the ciructory system do and we have a basic undestanding of how the probe works. The probe works by targetting a small portion of space and reads all electronic actvity in that area. Somehow the alien technology then distinguishes between neural activity and that of other electrical interferance. We assume that the activity is then matched against a memory bank of some sort to determine what the neural system is transmitting, before the information is then sent out once again to the subject in the form of stimulating waves. The subjects brain is stimulated by these waves in such a way that the user can see/feel these thoughts. Powered by a small Xenium reactor, the probe uses an immense amount of power when in operation. The power flows to some form of amplifier which is what seems to pick up the electrical activity. The complex circutory seems to lead to some form of memory bank which we can replicate but try as we may we cannot decipher. Here the electrical activity previously picked up seems to be filtered and the neural activity is then “mapped”. The information is then passed to what seems to be mini amplifier of sorts. The information is changed into what we believe to be some form of stimulation waves which are then amplified to the user. These waves stimulate the subjects own neural system in a way which replicates the original subjects neural activity, thus the user of the probe can obtain all kinds of information about the intended subjects thoughts, feelings and actions. One side effect from the probes use is that when the stimulating waves are sent out, they seem to travel up to half a metre away from the probe in all directions. Thus anyone who's brain is close enough to be affected by the stimulating waves can experience the intended subjects neural activity The entire process lasts only 17 milliseconds, but test subjects have learned to interpret the sensations as early as on the third attempt. This device could be used quite effectively in determening the status and wellbeing of enemy combatants, but does not seem to pose a great threat against humanity by itself. "No... No, no, no. I am never dating men again." - Agent Tonida's psychiatric evaluation after volunteering EDIT oh ya, and did a bit of research and i'm pretty sure it is all scientifically, correct. EEG are the electrodes you see hanging off peoples heads, and our brains elecro activity has been recorded and seen to have been stimulated by other forms of waves eg sound, light and vibrations Edited by Davo, 15 April 2007 - 09:19 AM. It is in completed which probably means it is an area recruits can't access. Anyhow, see below. I have included the text. The PM system should now be working. It was just a glitch. [Psionic Theory] X-Net://Pegasus.net/Alien/Research/Psionic Theory After initial encounters with several psionically-capable Alien entities, we began to realize that fanciful tales of telepathy and amazing mental feats were perhaps not as far-fetched as originally thought. Soldiers in the field have made distressing reports of Aliens being “in their head” and field commanders have begun making contingency plans should their soldiers fall inexplicably under Alien control. Fortunately, our scientists have finally pieced together a working [Psionic Theory] to bolster our understanding of this paranormal ability, and hopefully, our capacity to counter it. Under this theory, the two primary measures of psionic competence are psi potential and psi skill, the former determining the brute strength of the individual's will, the latter determining how effectively the individual can command it. Though psi potential is immutable, psi skill can be trained in dedicated facilities. [Psionic Theory] has been quite different from other research topics in at least two respects. Though most research is conducted on Alien specimens and artifacts to further our understanding of them, [Psionic Theory] instead gave us the opportunity to better appreciate and comprehend our own nature. Also, unlike other research we have conducted thus far, our understanding of psionic fields comes from an unusual amount of trial-and-error and good fortune. Our first attempts to understand psionics were utter and complete failures; our scientists just didn't know where to begin- or even how to approach such an ambiguous subject. Without additional clues, our research teams found it difficult to tease out solid details within the psionic disciplines. Fortuitously, vital hints were uncovered from observations of live, psi-proficient Alien prisoners. In two separate incidents, incarcerated Aliens briefly escaped from confinement, the first due to inadequate security measures, the other due to artifice, with both leading to significant upgrades in containment security. These breakout attempts allowed us to see and monitor the use psionics for the first time. By scrutinizing environmental and biological data gathered from Xenomorph Holding Facility logs during each incident, we pinpointed deviations in key markers and subsequently devised and launched a series of trial-and-error experiments attempting to replicate these biological and physiological alterations in volunteer test subjects. Although the majority of these tests were inconclusive, several individuals were found to exhibit an unusual affinity for psi-related tasks. By concentrating our remaining efforts on these candidates, our researchers slowly began to understand basic psionic mechanics. According to our studies, psionic fields (more popularly called "brain-waves" by base personnel) are normally a byproduct of neural networks found in sentient creatures. However, we have discovered that it is actually possible to force feedback into a neural network with a strong enough psionic field. The actual process by which one sentient creature psionically influences another is similar in principle to magnetic induction: an electrical current can be induced by the presence of a magnetic field; correspondingly, a neural impulse can be induced by the presence of a psionic field. By focusing and wielding his/her psionic field, a psionicist can subtly influence the neural chemistry of the target, causing a result ranging from no effect to total mind control. The severity of such a mental assault depends on the psionic field strength generated by the assailant and how effectively it is wielded, as well as the psionic field strength of the resisting target. As mentioned earlier, we concluded that there are two main indexes for psionic ability: psi potential and psi skill. These indexes are scored on an arbitrary scale from 0-100, with zero denoting virtually no ability and 100 denoting the most extreme cases observed. Due to the somewhat capricious nature of the scale, it may be possible to obtain scores above 100. Psi potential is an assessment of the psionic field strength of an individual. We suspect that psi potential is hereditary, but we currently lack the time and resources to confirm this hypothesis. High psi potential scores indicate a natural talent for psionics, and individuals possessing them are capable of both generating potent psionic impulses as well as shielding themselves from them. Despite the fact that psionic abilities are generally latent in human populations, psi potential appears to subtly manifest itself unconsciously when people “project” their moods. Those exhibiting such keen mental acuities can become, with training, among our most talented psionic personnel, while those with low psi potential scores will be extremely susceptible to malicious psionic intents. Psi skill, on the other hand, measures the proficiency of an individual wielding psionic powers. Unlike psi potential, psi skill can be increased through rigorous discipline and training; however, because humans have no prior experience with psionics, our base personnel are all initially rated with a psi skill of zero. Theoretically, the difference between low and high psi skill scores is akin to wielding a fuzzy blanket versus a surgical scalpel- the difference between projecting a diffuse mood to those in the vicinity and a sharp precise strike against a sole target. Thus, the ability to control psionic intent is much like focusing one’s attention, but with the relatively short attention spans humans possess, strict discipline is necessary during psionic training. Because our scientists’ makeshift research devices are not adequate for scientifically assessing and quantitating the psionic indexes of our base personnel- and even less so for screening and training them- plans for a new state-of-the-art Psionic Training Facility have been drawn up and finalized to accommodate these express purposes. Currently, our ability to use psionics as a weapon has been hindered by the abysmal ranges of human-generated psionic fields, regardless of their strength. Perhaps if psionic awareness and training regimens were enforced during the formative years immediately following birth, humans might fully harness their psionic capabilities; unfortunately for the X-Corps, we just do not have the time to raise specially selected psionically-apt children for our immediate and pressing conflict against the Aliens. We must discern a method to expand the “area of influence” covered by human psionic fields before we can wield such mental powers effectively. Using our existing inroads into [Psionic Theory], our scientists speculate that it might be possible to design a device which will amplify the range of human psionic fields. Our scientists have already begun consolidating relevant data for the blueprints of the anticipated Psionic Amplifier device. They are quite eager for the upper brass to give them the go-ahead for the project. Our scientists have also contemplated the possibility and feasibility of psionic shielding, but preliminary studies indicate a particularly steep, if not prohibitive, power requirement. Unfortunately, until we discover a manner to amplify psionic fields, such research will remain beyond our scope. Some personnel have expressed reservations about our research into this field, foreseeing privacy issues and possible discrimination against the less psionically adept. The [X-Corps High Command] is presently implementing strict regulations regarding the usage of psionics in bases. Man: "Zero?! ZERO?!! Ya stupid pencilneck! Whaddaya mean my friggin' Psi potential is ZERO?! Why, I oughtta..." Scientist: "Hey, hey, hold on a minute! I'll show you what it means..." (concentrates a moment) Scientist: "All right squaddie, go steal the commander's uniform and burn it in the mess hall. Don't interrupt my research further." Man: "...Yes, master." - taped excerpt from an inquiry regarding Private Russell Harris’ recent discharge from the X-Corps cheers zombie. trying to intergrate the idea now and? have you integrated the idea? Back to Active: Creative Text	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line796
__label__wiki	0.693987	0.693987	Senator Elisha Abbo’s Victims Fail To Appear Before Senate Panel By: adminin NEWSJuly 18, 2019 The Senate Ad hoc committee which is investigating the alleged misconduct of Senator Elisha Abbo has said that the victim slapped by the lawmaker in a viral video did not honour its invitation. The Chairman of the panel, Senator Sam Egwu, who stated this at plenary on Wednesday, said all efforts to make both the assaulted lady and the shop owner appear before the committee did not succeed. The former Governor of Ebonyi State said the embattled Senator refused to make submissions before the ad hoc panel because he said doing so would be subjudice. He also said both the Commissioner of Police in charge of FCT and the lawyers to the victims also refused to make submissions, citing the same reasons. Egwu, requested that the matter be stepped down pending the determination of the criminal case instituted against Abbo by the police. The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, who presided over the plenary, disagreed with Egwu stressing that the panel could go ahead with its work notwithstanding the court case. Lawan said what the Senate was investigating was the alleged misconduct of its member and not the criminal case against him which is already being handled by the police. Egwu, therefore, sought the permission of the leadership for appointment one-week extension to enable him to submit the report. The Senate President granted the request. « Boy Flogged For Sleeping With A Hooker And Failed To Pay Her In Delta State (Photos) \| BBNaija: Jackie Wins N1.5 Million In “Pepsi Lyrics Challenge” (See Photos) »	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line799
__label__wiki	0.839795	0.839795	Paused... Your browser does not support HTML5 Audio! 😢 01. Once Upon a Time in the West (5:25) 02. News (4:14) 03. Where Do You Think You're Going? (3:50) 04. Communiqué (5:50) 05. Lady Writer (3:46) 06. Angel of Mercy (4:37) 07. Portobello Belle (4:30) 08. Single-Handed Sailor (4:43) 09. Follow Me Home (5:51) Piers Lane Goldner String Quartet ELGAR, Dire Straits, Piers Lane, Goldner String Quartet Nr katalogowy CDA67857 CD \| CD LP-180G 45rpm \| LP Reference-Level Detail, Depth, Soundstaging, Balance, and Presence: Communiqué Has Never Sounded Better The performances on Dire Straits' Communiqué are so smooth and effortless, they were originally criticized for replicating the blueprints of the band's breakout debut. Time, however, has a way of changing perspectives and exposing the truth. More than 35 years after its original release in June 1979, Communiqué rightfully takes its place as the group's most underrated record – a nine-track set spiked with engaging storytelling, relaxed vibes, and deceiving simplicity. Mastered from the original master tapes and pressed at RTI, Mobile Fidelity's 180g 45RPM 2LP set of Communiqué elevates Dire Straits' sophomore album to an even higher plane. Recorded in the Bahamas by Muscle Shoals veterans Barry Beckett and Jerry Wexler, the songs benefit from a laidback approach that makes guitarist/vocalist Mark Knopfler and company's stellar playing seem even more fluent – particularly when experienced on this collector's 45RPM version, on which the wider grooves allow for more detail retrieval and deeper musical insight. Knopfler's mesmerizing guitar textures and composed vocals appear as if they're right in front of you, holding court amidst expansive soundstages and deep-black backgrounds. Details, imaging, and presence are on a level associated with the finest audiophile recordings. You'll be hard-pressed to find another LP with cleaner, pinpoint-accurate tones. Mobile Fidelity's LP also brings into transparent view Knopfler's seemingly perfect intricate lines as well as the simpatico accompaniment from his band mates. Whole, lively, and balanced, the bass and drums arrive with a solidity rarely heard on albums of this era. Communiqué has truly never sounded better. Of course, the audiophile sonics mean little if the artistic content is lacking. Needless to say, Dire Straits' technical perfectionism and creative elan prevail throughout. Knopfler's penchant for sketching cynical characters is further developed on moody tracks like "Where Do You Think You're Going" and "News," while Wexler's presence at the boards ensures the band keeps the rhythms extra tight. The quartet's low-key blues and swampy, Southern-styled grooves turn every song into an exercise in understated virtuosity. Refusing to give into excess, magnetic tunes such as "Lady Writer" and "Angel of Mercy" split a fine line between insinuating and insisting. The group shows off a combination of control, virtuosity, and tunefulness that harkens back to a rock n' roll's classic period while also pointing the way ahead. Need indisputable evidence of Dire Straits' compositional strengths? Cue up the closing "Follow Me Home" on this pressing and get lost amidst the peacefulness of the gentle surf and chirping crickets that frame the song. Heavenly.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line800
__label__wiki	0.907559	0.907559	上海千花网,爱上海,上海419论坛 – Powered by Ariel Swede! Category: bqybv Jordan ranks Kobe ahead of LeBron: ‘Five rings beat three’ bqybv ‘I’m out!’: PewDiePie releases last video before taking break from YouTube OSG plea to revoke ABS-CBN franchise ‘a duplicitous move’ – Lacson LATEST STORIES Indian national gunned down in Camarines Sur Former NBA star Michael Jordan. AP FILE PHOTOMichael Jordan finally weighed in on the longstanding Kobe Bryant and LeBron James debate.During his Flight Camp in California, Jordan did not hesitate in replying “No” when asked if he would rank James over Bryant in the greatest basketball players of all time list.ADVERTISEMENT Former heavyweight world champion Wladimir Klitschko retires Don’t miss out on the latest news and information. MOST READ LeBron James scores 31 points, Lakers beat Rockets Kawhi Leonard, Clippers rally to beat Pelicans End of his agony? SC rules in favor of Espinosa, orders promoter heirs to pay boxing legend Jordan, who is widely-considered as the best player in the history of hoops, offered a simple explanation to his answer.“Would I rank LeBron over Kobe in terms of best of all time? No,” Jordan told campers as captured by Bay Area Sports HQ.FEATURED STORIESSPORTSEnd of his agony? SC rules in favor of Espinosa, orders promoter heirs to pay boxing legendSPORTSRedemption is sweet for Ginebra, Scottie ThompsonSPORTSMayweather beats Pacquiao, Canelo for ‘Fighter of the Decade’“There’s something about 5 that beats 3,” he said. “Now [LeBron] may be mad at me now, but Kobe won five championships. LeBron won three.”The 32-year-old James, arguably, has been the best player for nearly the past decade. View comments Filipinos turn Taal Volcano ash, plastic trash into bricks PLAY LIST 01:40Filipinos turn Taal Volcano ash, plastic trash into bricks01:32Taal Volcano watch: Island fissures steaming, lake water receding02:14Carpio hits red carpet treatment for China Coast Guard02:56NCRPO pledges to donate P3.5 million to victims of Taal eruption00:56Heavy rain brings some relief in Australia02:37Calm moments allow Taal folks some respite So far, the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar has three NBA titles, three Finals MVP awards, four regular season MVPs among his growing list of accomplishments.Bryant, who retired after his 20th season all with the Los Angeles Lakers, has embraced heir apparent tag to Jordan. He finished third in the NBA all-time scoring list with 33,643 points and was also known for being one of the most clutch.Sports Related Videospowered by AdSparcRead Next McGregor blasts Cerrone in 40 seconds in UFC return Marcosian mode: Duterte threatens to arrest water execs ‘one night’ 787 earthquakes recorded in 24 hours due to restive Taal Volcano read more 上海夜网论坛LK上海夜网论坛VM上海楼凤FM上海楼凤NN上海陪游群九品毕业升级江苏唐人阁厦门楼凤论坛天津梧桐园成都莎莎舞推荐2019杭州半套推荐2019淮安凯元国际ktv出台淮安泻火场子爱上海sn1314红谷滩品茶全套阿坝夜网 Anglican Diocese awards outstanding women Dear Editor,The Human Rights and Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Diocese of Guyana closed the month off with a bang, as they celebrated International Women’s Day (observed on March 8, 2018) with a march and awards’ presentation on Saturday, March 31, 2018.The march began at the St George’s Cathedral and culminated at Austin House (the house of the Bishop). The awards’ presentation followed shortly after.The Commission believes it is important to speak to the commitment and contributions of women in the Diocese, and by extension Guyana; and to continue to press for the advancement of women in all spheres of life.Delivering the keynote address was Mrs. Sheran Harper, member of St. Sidwell’s Parish Church and a Worldwide Trustee of the Mothers’ Union. Mrs. Harper, in her address, highlighted the contributions of outstanding women in the Diocese, and urged others to join the movement. She noted her work, particularly with women in the hinterland areas, and called on members to be more supportive to vulnerable groups within their parishes and communities.The Commission awarded ten outstanding women for their sterling contributions to their parish and communities. These women were nominated because of their extraordinary performance and for going above and beyond their standard job requirements to ensure the comfort and happiness of parishioners and community members. Eight women were nominated and awarded for their contributions; these were Cheril Collins (St Mark’s Parish), Monica Case (St James-the-Less), Beatrice Amsterdam (Church of the Transfiguration), Yvonne Barrow (St Mark’s Parish), Lena Edmondson (St. Mark’s Parish), Thelma Spencer (Christ the King), Mrs. Wendell Roberts, and Beverly Coppin (St Aidan’s).The Bishop, the Right Reverend Charles Davidson, in his capacity as Bishop, awarded two other women for their offerings to the church. These were Rita Hunter, the first woman to be ordained deacon, and Schemel Patrick, Chairperson of the Human Rights and Social Justice Commission, for her steadfast contributions to the Commission and the advancement of human rights.Another part of the programme saw the Commission handing over its first donation to the Ministry of Social Protection, as part of a partnership with the two bodies. The Commission has committed to regularly donating much needed equipment and sanitary and food supplies to the Ministry of Social Protection’s safe houses.In an effort to respond to the needs of women and children affected by gender-based violence, the Human Rights and Social Justice Commission has launched a “We Care” Campaign in all parishes to offset this partnership. The “We Care” campaign will remain as part of the church’s caring around the year.Accepting the contributions on behalf of the Ministry of Social Protection was Manager of the Gender-Based Violence Unit, Akilah Doris. She expressed the Ministry’s gratitude and welcomed what she described as a marriage between the Diocese of Guyana and the Ministry of Social Protection. She also noted that this is the first time that a church group was contributing to the Ministry’s safe houses. Ms. Doris noted the difficulties faced by many women who find themselves in violent situations, and expressed the Ministry’s hope in building more safe houses across the country.The local Human Rights and Social Justice Commission is a product of the Provincial Commission on Human Rights and Social Justice. It is the duty of the HRSJ Commission to keep under constant review all matters relating to social justice and human rights in the Diocese of Guyana, and to make recommendations to the Bishop on the development of strategies which will assist the Church in furthering its work on these issues. The Commission believes that the church has a voice and a role to play in educating and empowering its parishioners and communities.Schemel PatrickChairperson, HumanRights and SocialJustice Commission –Diocese of Guyana read more qm之家武汉论坛上海夜网HS上海夜网LO上海夜网sh1314上海夜网论坛YB上海松江最好的酒吧上海足浴吧上海酒店直招快餐女南京所有场子都关门了吗君爵会所评论夜上海论坛QJ惠南哪里有鸡杭州大嘴猴三通杭州生活论坛西安夜生活 Huskies conclude season series with Beaverlodge FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. – Taking the ice with a short bench the task for the Beaverlodge Blades was made even tougher last night as they made the trip to Fort St. John. The Huskies meanwhile had nearly a full crew on the ice and it showed on the way to a 15-3 win.After building a 4-2 lead in the first the Huskies blew the game open in the second frame with seven goals to lead 11-2 after 40 minutes.With the game well in hand Fort St. John added another four goals while the Blades tacked on another to round out the scoring in the game.- Advertisement -Assistant coach Todd Alexander said despite the score he feels as though those in charge of the Blades organization are doing good things with the team, and credited the coaches and players for playing a clean game.“They were a little short benched tonight. It’s tough sometimes for them. Not that we wanted to rub any mud in their face by any means. It’s a good group of coaches over there and I think they’re doing good things. I know it didn’t show on the scoreboard but their discipline was a testament to that. It was a good, clean hockey game,” he said.As for his club’s performance Alexander said the opening stages of the game left a lot to be desired, but after a talk in the first intermission the problems were corrected the rest of the way.Advertisement “We were a little bit sloppy in the first period. We had a quick chat about it and made an adjustment in the second period and once we started moving the puck and playing our game a lot better it started to show,” he said.Scoring for the Huskies were Cayle Bell (3), Ryan McDonald (2), Jacob Lang (2), Michael Dupuis (2), Jared Lowen (2), Lucian Serban, Jordan Harder, Thomas Webster, and Josh Robinson.The win puts Fort St. John three points ahead of the County of Grande Prairie JDA Kings for third place, though the Kings do have two games in hand.The Huskies will wrap up the regular season next weekend with a double header Saturday and Sunday against the North Peace Navigators.Advertisement read more 上海君爵spa会所模特上海夜网论坛BO上海夜网论坛CZ上海夜网论坛IJ上海楼凤OS上海水磨千花网验证归来夜上海是哪一年的歌夜上海论坛WU广州蒲论坛武汉高端品茶会所浙江聚仙阁论坛海口万豪水疗会所美女爱上海EE高档私人楼凤会所 ‘Not even a top player and LFC still can’t get him!’ – ‘hurt’ Kopites on Depay deal Liverpool wanted to sign Memphis Depay but he will join Man United instead 1 There may be no Memphis Depay deal for Liverpool, but fans are already looking at other possible transfers.At one point it appeared as though the Reds may pip rivals Man United to the signing of the PSV winger, but it has now been announced that the 21-year-old will move to Manchester in the summer.MAN UNITED FANS LAUGH AT LIVERPOOL OVER DEPAY TRANSFERSo, no Depay, but at least some Kopites could make light of the situation, with one on Twitter insisting the Reds will fight United for Burnley striker Danny Ings… 上海ktv素场能干嘛上海千花mm自荐上海夜生活最丰富的地方上海夜网论坛SN上海楼凤JZ上海楼凤RI上海模特个人微信上海浦东新区鸡南京龙凤玫瑰园论坛夜上海论坛LL夜上海论坛UC天津唐人阁九级毕业专区新爱上海同城对对碰论坛杭州东方魅力妹子出台榆林楼凤 Lethal injections face review AD Quality Auto 360p 720p 1080p Top articles1/5READ MOREGame Center: Chargers at Kansas City Chiefs, Sunday, 10 a.m.With society’s view of cruel and unusual punishment shifting dramatically in recent decades, legal experts say the almost universal embrace of one form of execution – a lethal dose of drugs – has made the time right for an unprecedented review of how states end the lives of condemned killers. Most of the 38 states with the death penalty rely on the same three-drug combination to execute inmates, including California, where a challenge to lethal injection has put executions on hold for nearly two years. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to review Kentucky’s lethal injection method has ensured a near-moratorium on executing the more than 3,300 condemned prisoners in the United States will last until the justices rule next year. In recent years, the conservative, closely divided Supreme Court has scaled back the death penalty somewhat – barring the execution of juveniles and the mentally retarded. At the same time, the court made sure most death sentences were preserved. Legal experts say the justices could not wait any longer to weigh in on lethal injection. Lawyers for death-row inmates, armed with evidence of botched executions in states such as Ohio and Florida, have flooded courts around the country with legal challenges in the past few years. “I think the court felt absolutely compelled to step in and make some sense of this,” said Michael Laurence, director of California’s Habeas Corpus Resource Center, which represents Death Row inmates. “There is also the idea that the states need to get it right.” For all practical purposes, the Supreme Court has never addressed what it takes for states to “get it right” when it comes to executions. There is surprisingly sparse precedent on the subject, and the justices have never outlawed a form of execution. Most legal experts do not expect the Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling in the Kentucky case to end the death penalty. Instead, the consensus is the court will provide guidelines for what states must do to ensure that executions are carried out humanely, whether in the types of drugs they use or in the safeguards put in place during executions. A number of judges around the country have found serious flaws in state lethal injection methods. Last year, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose declared California’s process “broken.” Fogel is considering whether to put that legal challenge on hold while the Supreme Court reviews the Kentucky case. Legal experts predict the Supreme Court will follow the approach used several years ago when ruling that it is unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded inmates – rather than lay out a rigid protocol, the justices left it to the states and lower courts to set the standards for mental retardation in capital cases. “They are going to want to make sure executions continue,” said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor and lethal injection expert. “But at the same time, there is going to be some sort of compromise.” The challenges to lethal injection center on the argument that the combination of drugs, coupled with sloppy procedures and inadequate medical training, create an unnecessary risk that Death Row inmates will suffer painful executions. That, lawyers argue, violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. But even the handful of Supreme Court decisions touching on execution methods have not dealt with whether the mechanics of any particular method amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Legal experts say the lethal-injection issue will put the Supreme Court in uncharted territory. “There is certainly no case on point,” said Ellen Kreitzberg, a Santa Clara University law professor and death penalty expert. “There is no case where there is precedent they need to follow.” Cases tucked in old law books aren’t expected to provide much guidance. In 1878, the Supreme Court refused to block the firing-squad execution of a condemned murderer in Utah, but the ruling dealt primarily with whether the states could choose their execution method as long as it wasn’t cruel and unusual. Rather than address the pain and suffering that might result from death by gunshot, the justices simply asserted: “The punishment of shooting as a mode of executing the death penalty for the crime of murder in the first degree is not included in that category.” The Supreme Court later took the same approach in two cases involving the electric chair, including a 1947 ruling that repeated malfunctions of Louisiana’s electric chair did not subject condemned killer Willie Francis to cruel punishment. Five aborted attempts to execute Francis, the court said, were nothing that “amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in the constitutional sense.” The Supreme Court has not addressed an execution method in the past six decades, as states continued to hang, shoot, electrocute and use lethal gas to carry out death sentences until the 1990s. At that point, ironically, the threat of court fights prompted most states to shift to lethal injection. Two key legal battles in the mid-1990s are likely to be examined as the Supreme Court weighs lethal injection. In 1994, the San Francisco- based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a bitterly divided 6-5 ruling, found that Washington’s hanging method was constitutional because the state took precautions to ensure a swift and painless death. But two years later, the 9th Circuit concluded that California’s gas chamber was unconstitutional because of evidence that inmates had suffered during executions. That ruling spurred the state to switch to lethal injection. But over the past five years, as virtually all states moved to lethal injection, court battles heated up, producing conflicting rulings in different courts – and a scattershot approach to executing inmates from state to state. hmintz@mercurynews.com (408) 286-0236 160Want local news?Sign up for the Localist and stay informed Something went wrong. Please try again.subscribeCongratulations! You’re all set! Firing squads. Hanging. The electric chair. The gas chamber. None of these methods of execution tossed the nation’s capital-punishment system into as much disarray as lethal injection, the supposedly antiseptic solution to concerns about how best to put condemned killers to death. A metastasizing legal furor over lethal injection has forced the U.S. Supreme Court to examine a method of execution for the first time since 1878, effectively halting capital punishment around the country. One legal expert has dubbed it a “molasses moment” in death-penalty history. A confluence of historical, legal and social factors have pushed the showdown over lethal injection onto the high court’s docket – a paradox for an institution that never considered whether the hangman’s noose or “Old Sparky” were constitutional ways to put someone to death. read more 2019苏州站街在哪里啊?上海夜网KJ上海夜网WJ上海夜网论坛EO上海夜网论坛XD上海楼凤PF北京夜生活导航论坛杭州龙凤楼论坛爱上海CV爱上海DY爱上海SK爱上海同城论坛新地址萧山开元名都spa有特殊阿克苏夜网阿拉是哪个地方的方言 YOUNG DONEGAL MAN ACQUITTED OF RAPING GIRL IN ALLEYWAY A man has been acquitted at the Central Criminal Court of raping a woman during a night out in Donegal when they were both 18.The now 21-year-old accused had pleaded not guilty to rape of the woman in the alleyway of a Donegal town in July 2012.The Irish Times reports the two teenagers were in an alley kissing and engaging in consensual sexual behaviour when the accused allegedly raped the girl despite her protests. She was left with severe bleeding and went to the emergency room later that night.It was the defence case that the two had sex but the accused stopped immediately when the girl said “no, not here.”In interview, the accused said he he was “very, very sorry” for his actions. When he was asked by the interviewing garda what he was sorry for he replied “for drinking and for trying to have sex with her without her consent”.The jury viewed footage of the accused’s interview with gardaí during which a garda aggressively questioned and swore at the accused.The defence said the investigating garda used very crude language and phrases and spoke over the accused during his interview. The garda said in evidence that his interviewing manner was “firm but fair”.During her closing speech, prosecuting counsel Pauline Walley SC, said she “doesn’t for a moment stand over” how the garda conducted the interview but said that the evidence “was out there” regardless.The woman wept heavily as the verdict came in.Mr Justice Tony Hunt told the jury in such cases any verdict would be hurtful to someone. “I suspect that’s why I see what I see this morning,” he said, referring to the woman’s distressed state.He said all rape trials were difficult but cases where “consensual things are alleged to have turned into something else are extraordinarily difficult to probe”.He said the verdict was a finding “in the cold light of day” and not a judgement against anyone. He added that both the accused and complainant had probably suffered while waiting for the trial.During the trial the woman gave evidence she went to a night club with several friends where she ran into the accused. She knew him and had kissed him four or five times before but never had sexual intercourse with him, she said.She wanted to go outside to make a phone call and the accused offered to go with her. Once outside he said he wanted to use an ATM and led her up a back alley which had no street lights she said.She said at this point the man “put me against a wall” and started kissing her, “which was fine”. She said he then started digitally penetrating. When he tried to make her touch him she said she responded “no, not here, there’s no way this is happening here.”She said he then had sex with her against her will while holding her arms at her sides. She said she tried to make herself as rigid as possible but he was too strong for her. This lasted less than a minute and afterwards she noticed she was bleeding.“The pain was unbelievable, it was so bad,” she said. “I couldn’t scream, I was paralysed.“I was in shock, I was in so much pain. I knew I could scream all I wanted and nobody would hear me.”Asked if she consented to intercourse she replied, “I said right from the start that this wasn’t happening here. He knew fine rightly that I didn’t want that to happen.”During cross-examination Shane Costelloe SC, defending, put it to the now 22-year-old woman that she made up a story about being raped because she was embarrassed when friends asked her about a blood stain on her dress afterwards.“I put it to you that the rape allegation was a response to you being mocked,” counsel said. The woman denied this.Mr Costelloe went on to suggest that the woman wanted to later recant her statement because it was not true.“You tried to extricate yourself from the situation first by refusing to tell gardaí who raped you and second by asking gardaí if you could withdraw your statement.”The woman replied that she asked to withdraw her statement initially because she was “terrified” about how formal the situation was becoming and because she “just wanted to forget all about it”.YOUNG DONEGAL MAN ACQUITTED OF RAPING GIRL IN ALLEYWAY was last modified: February 26th, 2016 by StephenShare this:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) Tags:acquitteddonegalrape read more 上海凯悦spa会所官网上海夜网IK上海楼凤CK全国桑拿一品楼南京最有名的论坛外围女一般要多少钱啊爱上海HC爱上海OA爱盛家园花果园炮楼攻略 LETTERMACAWARD NOTES – LOCAL CHURCH OF IRELAND TO CELEBRATE 225TH ANNIVERSARY LETTERMACAWARD NOTESPadre Pio Relic Anyone wishing to pray at home with the Padre Pio Relic please contact Jean 0876385480 Mary 9546889 or Martin 0863459114Graveyard Blessings Blessings Prayers and the Rosary of both Graveyards will be held on Sunday afternoon 14th July. The Old Graveyard at 2pm and Cíle Bríde Graveyard at 3 pm. Church of Ireland Celebrate the 225th Anniversary of our Church with us: During the event 12th to 14th of July in Lettermacaward there will be an exhibition in the old Rectory. On display are old photos, historical documents and old books and records and some equipment from days gone by. Exhibition is open Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 6. Call in, look around and have a cup of tea with us. For more details check the website (www.donegalgathering.ie).Rally for life There will be an All Ireland Rally for Life on Saturday 6th July starting at 2 pm in Parnell Square Dublin City Centre. Bus leaving Glenties at 8.00 am. Contact Mc Guiness Travel for more detailsHalla Naomh Bríde Hall Activities are Bingo every Monday night at 8.30pm Jackpot € 3.625.00 on 45 numbers or less. Art every Tuesday, 11.00am – 1.00pm All new comers welcome. Children’s Irish Dancing Class Tuesday’s at 4.30pm. For further information please contact Claire on 087 6316 211 or Jackie on 086 1500 622. Bowls every Tuesday night, 8.00pm – 10.00pm Unislim Every Wednesday 11.00am -12.00pm & 7.00pm – 8.00pmLETTERMACAWARD NOTES – LOCAL CHURCH OF IRELAND TO CELEBRATE 225TH ANNIVERSARY was last modified: June 30th, 2013 by StephenShare this:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) Tags:Lettermacaward notes read more 2019德胜里鸡转到哪了419sh进不去了三十年代夜上海图片上海419论坛正确地址上海夜网DV上海夜网IY上海楼凤RI南京4毛到6毛的场子外围经纪直招广佛qm之家 DOHERTY LAUNCHES BID TO REGULATE MONEY LENDERS Sinn Féin Finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty has today introduced a Bill in the Dáil that would introduce a cap on the excessive interest rates charged by licensed money lenders.Currently there is no cap in operation with some lenders charging up to 210% APR. The Bill will be debated in the Dáil next Tuesday and Wednesday during Sinn Féin’s private members time with a vote taking place on Wednesday evening.Deputy Doherty said: “Under existing legislation there is no cap on the interest charged by licensed moneylenders. Some lenders charge an APR of up to 210%. What politician or Government Minister could support such high charges?“Families struggling with the rising cost of living, increasing taxes and charges, and loss of income are faced with no other option than to take out high cost loans just to pay week to week bills. According to an Irish League of Credit Union study 10% of households are turning to moneylenders to pay household bills.“Some lenders are getting rich on the back of hard pressed families. They can only do this because government condones excessive interest rates.“Of the 46 moneylenders currently operating with licences in the state, 29 of them have APR’s of more than 100%. Fourteen of these charge over 150%. “A 210% APR means that a €500 loan taken out by a struggling family to pay a gas or electricity bill would cost them €186 if the loan was for six months and €375 if the loan was for twelve months.“Given that a €500 loan from a credit union would cost the same family €13 and €25 respectively. There is simply no justification for this massive mark-up.“Such excessive interest rates push hard pressed families further into financial stress and poverty.“There is no moral or economic justification for the absence of a cap on interest rates charged by licensed moneylenders. The Bill I am publishing today proposes a cap of 40%. This would mean that while some lenders would be required to charge less than this, no lender could breach the 40% cap.“This would mean the €500 loan would cost the struggling family a maximum of €50 over six months or a maximum of €97 over twelve months. “This level is fairer to customers while allowing licenced lenders to operate on a sound commercial basis.“There is an urgent need for the government to introduce a cap on interest rates. There is also a need for a more wide-ranging reform of the regulation of licenced moneylenders and the policing of illegal loan sharks.”DOHERTY LAUNCHES BID TO REGULATE MONEY LENDERS was last modified: July 12th, 2012 by BrendaShare this:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) read more 90分钟水磨流程上海夜网CX上海夜网论坛RL上海楼凤FE余姚洗浴全套2018南京中心大酒店spa体验杭州新茶上市会所绥化找师专学生过夜群金丝阁论坛黑河晚上去哪玩 Hittner and Timmer Named Enterprise Bank MVC Scholar-Athletes of the Week Timmer led Drake to a pair of MVC wins by averaging 23.0 points per game on the week while shooting 58.3 percent from the floor (14-of-24), 53.3 percent from the three-point arc (8-of-15) and going perfect 10-of-10 at the free throw line. Timmer opened the week by scoring 28 points with six three-pointers, on 11 attempts, and adding four assists in the 25-point win over Illinois State. He followed that by scoring 18 points on a 6-of-9 shooting in the Bulldogs road win at Indiana State. 10 of those 18 points came in the final five minutes to help the Bulldogs preserve its second MVC road win of the season. Timmer’s 28 points marked his eighth 20-point game of the season and moved him into second-all time in career scoring at Drake with 1,677 career points. Timmer holds a 3.51 GPA in Drake’s Doctorate of Pharmacy program. ST. LOUIS, Mo. – Drake men’s basketball senior Reed Timmer (New Berlin, Wis.) and Drake women’s basketball sophomore Becca Hittner (Urbandale, Iowa) have been selected Missouri Valley Conference Scholar-Athletes of the Week, presented by Enterprise Bank and Trust Company, Commissioner Doug Elgin announced today. The two student-athletes were honored for their performances during the period of Jan. 1-7, 2018. Both Timmer and Hittner were also honored earlier this week as MVC Basketball Players of the Week. Wednesday’s honors mark the fourth time the Bulldog’s men’s and women’s basketball programs have swept the weekly award as well as Drake’s 11th and 12th honor of the 2017-18 academic year. Timmer and Hittner have each earned the honor three times this season. Redshirt freshmen and first-year junior college transfers are not eligible. In addition to the academic qualifications, student-athletes are evaluated on their athletic performance during the period. 2017-18 Drake Missouri Valley Scholar-Athletes of the WeekSept. 6 – Josh Yeager – Men’s Cross CountrySept. 13 – Kyle Brandt – Men’s Cross CountryOct. 4 – Kyla Inderski – VolleyballNov. 28 – Reed Timmer, Men’s BasketballNov. 28 – Sara Rhine, Women’s BasketballDec. 6 – Reed Timmer, Men’s BasketballDec. 6 – Sara Rhine, Women’s BasketballDec. 13 – Becca Hittner, Women’s BasketballJan. 3 – Becca Hittner, Women’s BasketballJan. 3 – Nick McGlynn, Men’s BasketballJan. 10 – Becca Hittner, Women’s BasketballJan. 10 – Reed Timmer, Men’s BasketballPrint Friendly Version Hittner averaged 19.5 points, 6.5 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 2.0 steals per game as she helped Drake go 2-0 on its first MVC road trip of the season. In the Missouri State victory, she poured in a game-high 24 points behind an efficient shooting performance of 6-of-10 from the floor, including making 3-of-6 from behind the three-point line and 9-of-10 from the free throw line. Hittner also added six rebounds, one assist and one steal in 29 minutes. She scored a game-high 15 points in the victory of SIU behind another 6-of-10 shooting performance while adding seven rebounds, three steals and a career high seven-assists. Hittner leads the Bulldogs with 15.4 points per game, the second-best mark in the MVC. Hittner currently holds a 3.94 GPA as a business studies major. To qualify for Missouri Valley Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Week laurels, student-athletes must carry a cumulative grade-point average of 3.20, completed at least one academic year at a Valley institution and must be at least a sophomore in academic standing. read more 上海419论坛NC上海千花网MF上海夜网UG上海龙凤419VX爱上海419XC爱上海GX爱上海LR贵族宝贝FX贵族宝贝PJ贵族宝贝UR EXCITING LINE-UP OF ENTERTAINMENT THIS WEEKEND AT THE EARAGAIL ARTS FESTIVAL This weekend marks the culmination of Donegal’s Earagail Arts Festival, a two week celebration of music, theatre, visual arts, film, literature, circus and carnival that took place across the northwest.This year’s festival had something for everyone, from family and outdoor events to theatre, comedy, art, workshops and music from all corners of the world.There are a number of events taking place this weekend and tickets are still available. Bookings can be made via An Grianan Theatre on 00353 74 9120777 or online at www.eaf.ie. Eduardo Niebla – Friday 25 July 8pm – €15 and €12, Regional Cultural Centre, LetterkennyIn a career spanning four decades, guitar virtuoso and composer Eduardo Niebla has been acclaimed as one of the most potent forces in flamenco music.His highly lyrical style, with explorations into Indian, Arabic and classical music, has resulted in some of the most poignantly poetic guitar playing on the world circuit.He has recorded 23 albums and has written music for films and documentaries. In what promises to be a spellbinding evening of fleet-fingered virtuosity, Eduardo Niebla and his trio will present a repertoire of stunning flamenco jazz from his latest albums at the RCC on.He will be joined by the Donegal Youth Choir and The Errigal Singers in two specially composed pieces.Lisa O’Neill – Saturday 26 July 8pm – €15 and €12, An Grianan Theatre, LetterkennyIt’s been an incredible year for Cavan’s Lisa O’Neill.With a new album Same Cloth or Not she won over fans and critics alike. Her rich aged folk voice, melancholic melodies and brilliant lyrical wit marked her a genuinely unique Irish artist.Her live shows became much talked about affairs with the audience welling up one moment, and in stitches the next.Lisa toured Ireland and mainland Europe this year with Glen Hansard, supported David Gray on his Irish tour and James Yorkston on his UK tour.Dublin Afrobeat Ensemble – Saturday 26 July 10pm – €10, The Greenroom, Letterkenny Dublin Afrobeat Ensemble is a 14 strong outer-national group of Afrobeat exponents from the four corners of the world.They are a musical crossroads made up of musicians that have washed up on our shores and share an ancestral understanding of the Underground Spiritual Game, playing a blend of free flow Afrobeat rhythms and heavy dance-floor Afro funk.The band was founded in 2012, when a group of Afro-beat enthusiasts started meeting up regularly at down-town jam sessions in Dublin.From there, they began making plans to form a new collective that would combine their various musical interests with their particular world view, a fitting finale for the closing party of EAF 2014. (The show is 18+)The Donegal Master Fiddlers EAF Closing Concert – Sunday 27 July 8pm – €15 and €12, An Grianan Theatre, LetterkennyThe Donegal Master Fiddlers gala concert is a celebration of the life and music of three of the county’s greatest living traditional fiddlers – Vincent Campbell, Dinny McLaughlin and Danny Meehan.Each Master Fiddler will be introduced in turn by a younger renowned fiddler, Vincent Campbell by Martin Mc Ginley, Danny Meehan by Aiden O’Donnell and Dinny McLaughlin by Roisin Harrigan.This feast of traditional Irish music will also feature the Campbells (Vincent, his brother Jimmy and nephew Peter), Dinny McLaughlin’s group and Fidil the new generation of Donegal fiddlers (Ciarán Ó Maonaigh, Aidan O’Donnell and Damien McGeehan).The opening performance of this incredible night of music will come from an even younger generation of musicians drawn from the Ceol na Coille School of Irish Traditional Music.Earagail Arts Festival is funded by The Arts Council of Ireland, Fáilte Ireland and Donegal County Council.EXCITING LINE-UP OF ENTERTAINMENT THIS WEEKEND AT THE EARAGAIL ARTS FESTIVAL was last modified: July 25th, 2014 by Mark ForkerShare this:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)Tags:2014EAFEaragail Arts FestivalEntertainmenteventsFeaturesnewsWeekend read more 上海419论坛OC上海后花园QW上海夜网论坛HA上海夜网论坛MR上海夜网论坛VG上海楼凤RB上海龙凤419FY娱乐地图AW爱上海OH爱上海OY Australia’s Shane Watson retires from Test cricket after latest injury Past the finishing post Munro seek win to strengthen chances in ISSA/FLOW daCosta Cup Former Boyz Opposed On FIFA Plans Sanchez sends Gunners to FA Cup final agcxx bswcy cpteh dovoh eesdx gapiv ggpug ibeop iesag kmigg knqlc lnkoh okwur phmxv qitju qjyzv qucoo tcmdb tqngx uewpi wpjc wwsok xhybc Copyright © 上海千花网,爱上海,上海419论坛 – Powered by Ariel Swede! 2020	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line801
__label__wiki	0.76115	0.76115	Music News Art Gallery Inspiration About Contact Links Music CD Releases Harmonica Electronica Our latest CD release is Harmonica Electronica, full of emotive melodies, inspired arrangements, playful beats and deep soundscapes. The direct result of a chance encounter between Mitt Gamon and Martin Walker in Spring 2014, this is the first fruit of an ongoing musical collaboration. Written over the course of a year, and released in CD format only, the eleven songs on Harmonica Electronica feature guest musicians Monti on drums, Nico Ramsden on guitar and Julie Harrington on vocals. "Soundscapes full of inventiveness and sensuality... A unique blend... Definitely worth revisiting!" Chaz Jankel (The Blockheads) "Uplifting electronica that features harmonica. Deep and textural. A weird and wonderful combination." Richard Barbieri (Japan, Porcupine Tree) "Where nostalgia meets the poetic, and harmony meets the harmonica." Gilad Atzmon (Jazz artist and author) "The God Of Gobiron and Prophesor Atmos strike up the band. Close your eyes and listen. This doesn't come around often." J.T. Blockhead "A diverse and immersive listening experience." Nasher (Frankie Goes To Hollywood) "This one, I'm sad to say, I had no hand in. Well worth checking out - Super-talented musicians, taking their time and doing something that's absolutely their own." Jack Ruston (Producer/Engineer/Mixer) The Greenwood This CD release from Martin Walker contains deeply spiritual music inspired by the mystery of ancient forests. It is gentle, subtle, and totally absorbing. "The Greenwood makes a wonderful background for any kind of meditative journey. Worth a place in any collection of CDs." Pagan Dawn Magazine Uneasy Listening Mitt Gamon's first album 'Uneasy Listening' features Ian Dury, Jennifer Maidman, Annie Whitehead and many others. Mitt plays harmonica and guitar and the album also features a guest appearance by Ian Dury on vocals. "No Mitt, it's quite loud enough, really!" Jennifer Maidman Moonhill Darker in tone yet ultimately uplifting, Martin Walker's Moonhill is inspired by the mystery and solitude of stone circles. It incorporates meditation bells, harps, flutes, voices, cello, and synthesisers. "Martin Walker's inspired arrangements instantly lift your energies. Like a warm, glittering waterfall." CPW Magazine Ancient Seas The sounds and moods of the sea has been a great source of inspiration for Martin Walker's music, and he has tried to capture its ebbs and flows, the early morning mists, and the secrets beneath the waves. "Ancient Seas currently plays on an almost continuous loop. I liked it when I first heard it, but it's grown and grown on me." Music From The Mountains Secret Trees Secret Trees is inspired by the tranquillity and magical atmosphere of the forest, the power and mystery hidden within it, and its many myths and legends. It features harp, zither, dulcimer, bells, flutes, choir, and strings. "Like a slowly turning musical kaleidoscope." Wind & Wire Magazine Intermittent Intent Featuring Monti, Jennifer Maidman, Paul Holder & Nasher. "No Thanks To The I.N.S, most lawyers and all bureaucracy" Bescending Written by Mitt Gamon, and featuring Jennifer Maidman, Monti, Johnny Turnbull and Annie Whitehead "Thanks to T and Brooke, and everyone that waited....."	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line803
__label__wiki	0.750073	0.750073	nxne NXNE Reveals 2019 Festival Village Lineup with Santigold, Cold War Kids, Killy NXNE returns to Toronto next month, and the latest wave of performers has just been announced. The Festival Village lineup has been reve... Royal Mountain Records Announces NXNE Day Party with Dizzy, Haviah Mighty, Dusted Earlier this year, Toronto's Royal Mountain Records created a fund to assist its acts in getting treatment for mental health and addictions... NXNE Adds Tinashe, Odd Future's Taco to 2018 LIneup After steadily rolling out the bulk of their 2018 lineup earlier in the month, organizers behind NXNE have made a few more key additions bef... NXNE Announces 2018 Lineup with Jazz Cartier, Azealia Banks, Big Freedia NXNE returns to Toronto again next month, and the first round of performers has just been revealed. The festival runs from June 8 to 17,... NXNE Reveals 2018 Club Land Curators Series with July Talk, K-os, Jim Cuddy After featuring guest-curated shows as part of its Club Land programming last year, NXNE has announced the return of the series for its 2018... NXNE Details Plans for 2018 Edition After bringing Kaytranada, Post Malone and more to Toronto's Port Lands last year, organizers behind North by Northeast have begun to gear u... NXNE Details Future Land Conference After detailing their Port Lands and guest-curated Club Land lineups, organizers behind Toronto's North By Northeast festival have lifted th... NXNE Reveals Guest-Curated Club Land Lineups As previously reported, the Club Land portion of North by Northeast's 2017 programming will feature a series of guest-curated shows taking p... Tyler, the Creator Drops Out of NXNE, Replaced by Kaytranada As part of NXNE's Port Lands programming this year, Tyler, the Creator was set to headline the waterfront portion of the festival alongside... Peaches to Kick Off NXNE With North by Northeast returning to Toronto next month, organizers have revealed a launch show featuring beloved Canadian pop provocateur P...	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line805
__label__wiki	0.673207	0.673207	F-R-I-E-N-D-S on Netflix The "Beginners Guide to Friends for the Netflix Generation" surely cannot be serious. I understand they're trying to push a show here, but Friends has been so outrageously bad since the moment it aired, a fact acknowledged by all but lunatics (read: women), that I cannot in good conscience allow this pap to pass. Let's look at it in a little more detail: You've probably heard a lot of older people in your life talk about sitcoms. Sadly, they were probably talking about "The Big Bang Theory," "Two and a Half Men," "2 Broke Girls" or some other lesser — though technically accurate — example of a sitcom. Hopefully you were able (or forced) to watch a real sitcom like "Cheers," "Seinfeld" or "I Love Lucy," thus not spoiling the genre for you entirely — after all, the word "sitcom" stands for "situational comedy" and those CBS shows are missing the latter ingredient. Is "sitcom" really such a dirty word to the "Netflix generation"? For that matter, it is an alien concept? Despite its numerous flaws, Big Bang Theory is solidly a sitcom, and last season beat out NCIS for the most popular show on (network) television. Say what you will about the sitcom format, they cannot pretend to be unaware of it. (Side note: I compared Friends and The Big Bang Theory years ago. And what's with lumping Friends in with Cheers or Seinfeld? Friends was -- again I stress -- utter dreck. If you want to compare it to sitcoms, stick with Home Improvement (though that too was generally a step above Chandler and the gang). Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry, and Matt LeBlanc specifically are instantly likable, a trait "Friends" took full advantage of for 10 charming seasons. Instantly likable isn't exactly the phrase that comes to mind when I think about the star of such TV gems as Top of the Heap. Also, when asked to carry his own show we saw exactly how likable he was. Other than Aniston, who is obviously ridiculously likable, none of the other Friends actors have exactly carried a movie career: Cox got some airtime in the Scream movies, Perry in The Whole Nine Yards, Kudrow in Analyze This and Schwimmer in Madagasgar. Of these, Cox and Kudrow were bit parts, Schwimmer's was a bit part and was voice acting. LeBlanc's one-note role in the Charlie's Angels movies puts him in the category with all of his costars not named Jennifer. Back when "Friends" was being made, episodes were recorded in front of a live studio audience who were all well-prepped to laugh at every punchline (and sometimes at nothing whatsoever). Yes, sometimes they were stuck watching an episode of Friends. Though it may seem a little bizarre, think of it as having your friends around while you binge-watch the series alone on your futon in the dark. It's a warm feeling, and it will soon wash over you. Just give it time. The thing about a laugh track, and you see it whenever "Seinfeld" or "Three's Company" is airing, is that when you agree with the audience on the joke it works great. It let's you know that you aren't alone, the studio audience agreed with you that it was hilarious. There were few worse feelings than watching a laugh-track sitcom and having a different emotion than the crowd: if they laughed and you didn't you wondered if you missed a joke. If you laughed and they didn't, you wondered if you were crazy. In the case of "Friends" its a 10-year run that feels like the last three seasons of "MASH": the audience is laughing at everything, nothing at all resembles a joke, and you feel less like you missed out on a joke and more like you're stuck with a crazy person on the subway who's got some sort of nervous disorder. Guess what? There are famous people on "Friends"! Brad Pitt, Reese Witherspoon, Robin Williams and more make guest appearances on the sitcom, and when they do, you're going to hear... applause. Clapping, whooping and genuine fervor can be heard and felt resonating from your TV when special guest stars arrive, as if God Himself was showing His appreciation for seeing their smiling faces. No, seriously. The author of this article, a woman man with a vagina named Ben Travers, actually thought that this was important for a beginner's guide to new viewers of Friends. Who cares that Bruce Willis was on the show? Lily Tomlin grinning for the camera while a crowd acting like the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan doesn't add to the moment: it reminds us this is a cheap staged moment that isn't going anywhere. It's also an issue where most celebs did a horrible job of acting when they were on this show. This may be one of the least impressive characters Julia Roberts ever played. And she was in America's Sweethearts. Considering how quickly fashion trends shift, "Friends" has held up relatively well over the course of 20+ years. The clothes are an odd mix of terrible and ‘90s era cute, with Chandler being the consistent Worst Dressed winner and Rachel, unsurprisingly, taking home Best Dressed To fully appreciate how dumb (and, indeed, bad) this bit about the fashion man-with-a-vagina added, let's take a look at the pictures the article threw in. On the left is what Rachel is wearing in the prime example of her best dressed. Other than the fact that her t-shirt makes every man not named Ben Travers watching want to bend her over and take her right then and there, what they put Aniston in is clearly a fashion disaster. Chandler's shirt and tie with a sweater over it isn't that outrageous, and seeing as how he's a businessman in New York there are probably a lot of times a year that such an outfit is a smart way to go around town without needing a heavy jacket. You can ignore everyone's hair except Jennifer Aniston's, who you will soon know as Rachel. Despite being created by her stylist while stoned, Aniston's 'do in Season 2 is still popular today. She has a variety of attractive,chic cuts throughout the series, so take your time to study them all and pick a favorite. (We like Season 6 — shown above — with the classic cut a close second.) More about fashion. Hey, do you know that this "Netflix generation" also lives in an era of Google Image search? They don't need to sit through 236 episodes of unfunny TV just to see a couple of haircuts. Don't expect to see any tablets or even an iPhone in "Friends," as the landmark Apple device wasn't released until 2007 (I know, that's so long ago). Cell phones do pop up in the later seasons, but their absence is hardly noticeable — this group is so close they're rarely far enough apart to need phones to communicate, and the writers never draw attention to quickly-dated technology It's definitely interesting to see how a lack of cellphones changes how a TV show works: Seinfeld is a great example of this. Just think how different The Chinese Restaurant or The Parking Garage would be in today's wired universe. Most 80s and 90s shows had such episodes, and it's fun to remember the area where you had to either wait for your late friend to show up at the crappy bar, or hope that he didn't hate you for moving on. There are different shows to see this bit of "when I was your age" nostalgia. If you liked a girl, you would make her a mixtape of all the songs that tell her how you feel. You probably do that now through coded Tweets or GarageBand. Chandler tries to do it for Monica using an old tape he found at random...and well, that’s a bad idea. Anyway, the point is that the idea behind the mixtape crosses generational barriers. Everyone has made one or made something with the same spirit behind it. You'll discover many commonalities between your life and those found on "Friends," hence the beauty of the program — this one just took a little extra explaining. They should watch an entire series to watch a single unfunny element from an unfunny episode about a mix tape? I don't think it was even that clever, let alone not being funny. Speaking of music, Hootie and the Blowfish was an incredibly popular band during the '90s. Their 1994 debut album is the 16th-best-selling album of all time, they've sold more than 21 million albums in the U.S. alone and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone over the age of 25 who doesn't still immediately sing along to "Hold My Hand," most likely imitating the distinct, baritone voice of lead singer Darius Rucker. Is that name familiar to you? You may now know the man many referred to as "Hootie" as country star Darius Rucker, but trust us — Hootie was a much bigger deal. Other bands mentioned by the Central Perk gang may not be as memorable (or important): George Michael and Wham!, for instance, brought us one unforgettable hit, but nothing else of note. Again, watch it for a single mention of Hootie and the Blowfish! (Side note: on the Friends soundtrack, Hootie and the Blowfish do a really mediocre cover of the 54-40 song "I Go Blind"). A year before "Friends" went off the air, a movie of equally bright spirits and good intentions became the surprise hit of the holiday season. "Love, Actually" was and is all around, as the Richard Curtis-directed romantic comedy has since become a Christmas classic. In its memorable opening and closing moments, the film shows families, friends, and loved ones meeting outside the security gate of the London airport. The reason this happens at the security gate rather than the boarding terminal is because "Love, Actually" was made two years after 9/11, and airport security had tightened. Prior to that fateful day, you could actually make your way all the way to the boarding ramp without a ticket for the flight. So don't freak out when any of the "Friends" make their way willy-nilly through the airport. They're just living in simpler times, as can be seen on Rachel's innocent, hopeful face in the clip below. First off, Love Actually also managed to get airport security wrong. Secondly, we're again seeing a single moment from a single episode as a reason to watch this show. Finally, if your reason to watch Friends is that "it reminds you of the time before 9/11" you're completely out of it. "Friends" lasted for 10 seasons and 236 episodes, more than 5,000 minutes in all. That's a lot of bingeing (more than 86 hours), so settle into those barcaloungers, folks. "Friends" is how TV was meant to be made, and now it can be enjoyed as was always intended — uninterrupted. Of all the many many things these 86 unfunny and uncomfortable hours are, "intended to be watched uninterrupted" is certainly not one of them. There once was a man from Quebec / who was always ... The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies recap and re... It's probably nothing (Greek meltdown edition) The Cornell Movie Project Hingis/Pennetta vs Chan/Zheng "Immigration is a serious issue that we should car... Who doesn't want to watch Eugenie Bouchard twirl? Alberta is a land of taxation that was founded to ... Untrue Patriots The truth about who the 1% is and the inevitabilit... The ghosts of record labels will watch Netflix Funnybot runs on Sony hardware Whither Target? Can they sell you a mop? Ineffective and hypocritical "consumer protection"... How horrible are the Greens? Leftwing Britons should stick to A-1 One Nation (no longer) Under CCTV Photo radar assholes coming to the land where they... Totally Unforseen Shocking Unpredictable Surprise ... Au revoire, Frederick. Post #2200 Baby! Fuck You, It's January! Your funny of the day Maybe they should have used the French "Tar-Zhay" ... A force for good leaving Alberta for Ottawa Now's the time on Small Dead Anim Third Edge of th... The Gauntlet is wrong about both Wildrose and tuit... A chat transcript about the Oilers President Monkey building bridges Cowardly Don Iveson gets Uber wrong too Alberta's tax rate and spending rate need to both ... Liberalism the mental illness Thanks, TSN	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line810
__label__cc	0.72707	0.27293	Nine West End of Season Sale up to 70% off boots, heels, handbags & more from $13 - Jan. 17th 2018 11:21 am ET Update your shoe collection with the Nine West End of Season Sale that is taking up to 70% off boots, heels, handbags and more. Plus, all new arrivals are also 30% off. Prices are as marked. Orders of $75 or more can enjoy free delivery. The most notable deal from the sale is the Lenna Over the Knee Boots. It’s on sale for just $40 and these boots are very on-trend this season. Our top picks from Nine West include: Lenna Over the Knee Boot $40 (Orig. $149) Auggy Toe Booties $40 (Orig. $119) Hollytown Cold Weather Boot $70 (Orig. $200) Freeport Booties $50 (Orig. $129) Crossbee Pointy Toe Booties $90 (Orig. $129) Olivya Satchel $62 (Orig. $89) Couldbe Tall Boots $70 (Orig. $149) …and even more deals… Lastly, don’t miss out on the GAP up to 50% off sitewide sale going on now. Best Fashion Deals Fashion Deals - Ralph Lauren, J-Crew, Banana Republic, Eddie Bauer, Sperry, Tommy Hilfiger, Lacoste, Nike, PUMA, adidas and many more Ali Smith is a fashion and lifestyle blogger and an editor at 9to5toys. She has a unique perspective on fashion and is always watching for the newest and freshest trends. Her blog and Instagram is http://alismithstyle.com/. Contact her at ali@9to5mac.com.	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line813
__label__cc	0.622441	0.377559	Massive Multiplayer Online Games MassMOG.com -- MMORPG Stuff: News, previews, screenshots & other info Things In Here... elisabethip4 insecurecook gertrudeoh69 Stats and character development is the name of the "role-playing" game, basically. With a role-playing game (RPG), you'll find games where character advancement and customization is a huge part of the experience. COUNTRYWARS NEW MMORPG Submitted by questcrest on May 14, 2009 - 3:26pm Hi, guys I find a new game, "CountryWars". It is similar like Diablo. It is a free-to-play MMORPG. The games have some features other games don’t have. e.g. #Knighthood, #Lottery System, #Monsters Derby Race, #Mercenary The game is only 417M. But with good graphic. you can download it from www.countrywars.net. here is screenshot Copy code [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen01.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen02.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen03.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen04.jpg[/IMG] Misc. Discussions CountryWars Submitted by countrywars on May 13, 2009 - 3:03pm CountryWars, a similar game like Diablo Hi, guys I find a new game, "CountryWars". It is similar like Diablo. It is a free-to-play MMORPG. The games have some features other games don’t have. e.g. #Knighthood, #Lottery System, #Monsters Derby Race, #Mercenary The game is only 417M. But with good graphic. you can download it from www.countrywars.net. here is screenshot Copy code [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen01.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen02.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen03.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen04.jpg[/IMG] CountryWars, a similar game like Diablo Submitted by firelady on May 12, 2009 - 4:55pm Hi, guys I find a new game, "CountryWars". It is similar like Diablo. It is a free-to-play MMORPG. The game have some features other games dont have. e.g. #Knighthood, #Lottery System , #Monsters Derby Race, #Mercenary The game is only 417M. but with good graphic. you can download it from www.countrywars.net. here is screenshot Copy code [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen01.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen02.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen03.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://www.cisos.de/screen04.jpg[/IMG] New mmorpg free to play Submitted by tanudutta on May 11, 2009 - 5:35pm Hi guys…… A New MMORPG game server COUNTRYWARS launched just few months ago…… Some features about this game are …. # PVP ARENA # Party with player for leveling # Dog Race # In Game chat # Questing # Guide service # Item Mall This game is based on leveling up by leeaching or questing……….in this game there are four categories of character’s archer,holy knight,warrior and mage. Link :- http://countrywars.net/ COUNTRYWARS SERVER AVAILABLE Submitted by max_blade on May 10, 2009 - 4:53pm hieee........COUNTRYWARS server is available yo play free all over the world. it is an interesting RPG which is based on leveling up of character's,mercenary's and our pet bird.Level up faster to fight for ur nation. You can check COUNTRYWARS website link which is given below. just register ur self n download client n patches n njoy playing. link : - http://countrywars.net/ CharacterPlanet.com Beta Launches. MMORPG social network and guild management site Submitted by CharacterPlanet on January 1, 2007 - 10:18pm Action-Adventure Games Free MM Online Games Real-time Strategy Games Asheron's Call Asheron's Call 2 Middle Earth Online PlanetSide ArchLord Beta Opens Up For Stress Testing Submitted by Hoza on September 27, 2006 - 3:13pm I'm waaay behind, so I'm just going to be lazy and post the press release thingaroo right here. You can get what you want from that, I'd bet. ArchLord is the game... Codemasters Online Gaming are excited to announce that we are throwing the doors open to the ArchLord BETA in preparation for the climactic end of BETA event that is scheduled to take place very soon! The planned epic stress test will offer the last opportunity for people to enter the game before the final release and will give players the opportunity to take part in this climactic, large scale PvP event planned to celebrate the end of BETA. The final location and time are still to be announced however one thing is for sure this will be one of the biggest PvP battles ever seen within any MMORPG. Taking part is easy… Go get your BETA key now at www.archlordgame.com/requestakey and then follow the instructions to create your character and then enter the BETA. From here you will then need to join one of the four guilds taking part in this epic battle. The guilds are headed up by the champions of Chantra below: Brumhart - Champion of Zylok Ziann Champion of Anchorville Evengarda Champion of tullan Gaiahon Champion of terranoa To enter the battle you will need to apply to join one of the four guilds lead by the champions above. For a full list of instructions on how to enter the event visit the ArchLord Forum for full details! Get ready to join the thousands of players who have already pledged their allegiance and entered the ArchLord BETA. Make ready your weapon and prepare to fight for your very survival…… Visit here for more information on how to join a guild Get your BETA key now at www.archlordgame.com/requestakey Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar enters alpha phase Submitted by Hoza on August 3, 2006 - 5:53pm Busting out their big bad Alpha muscles, Turbine has powered The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar into the alpha phase of development.Â Already, over 125,000 players are said to have registered to get in on the upcoming beta program, so I'm sure alpha news will make quite a lot of hearts go pitter-patter.Â Speaking of the beta, if you haven't yet signed up, here's where you'd do it.Â Â I honestly don't have anything else to say about this at the moment... maybe I'll go sign up for beta, too.Â We can all go have a big signup party on their site.Â Par-tay. Things In Here: MassMOG Home Hoza's Blog MassMOG Glossary Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming news and info. Covering both large and small MMOG game development projects. We try to give good face-time to the smaller, independent shops as well as the big gorillas of the industry. If you know of some news we aren't covering or if you'd like to contribute to our content in some way, let me know. Thank you for visiting MassMOG.com!! :)	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line815
__label__wiki	0.518525	0.518525	Ryan Hannable Tom Brady Staying ‘Open-Minded’ About Free Agency Process Tom Brady continues to do his sponsored weekly interviews with Jim Gray on Westwood One radio before playoff games, so he continues to get asked about his future. Prior to the AFC championship game, Gray asked Brady about his future once again, and the Patriots quarterback said pretty much the same...Read more Eminem Gives Shoutout to Tom Brady on New Album On Friday, Eminem released a surprise album and it included a shoutout to Tom Brady. The album is called “Music To Be Murdered By," and in the first song, “Premonition," the 47-year-old brings up his critics, while comparing himself to the Patriots quarterback. Here are the lyrics : Revival flopped...Read more Antonio Brown Reportedly Countersuing Sexual Assault Accuser Antonio Brown has responded to Britney Taylor. According to ESPN, Brown is countersuing Taylor for defamation and interference with his NFL contracts and endorsements. Taylor, Brown's former personal trainer, has accused him of sexual assault. Many people, including Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk...Read more Antonio Brown Apologizes to Robert Kraft, Patriots Antonio Brown is back mentioning Robert Kraft and the Patriots on social media, except this time it is a little different than following his release in September. Brown apologized to Kraft and the Patriots organization. He wrote: Mr.Kraft I apologize sincerely to you and your organization! All I...Read more November 18, 2019 - 8:30 am Tom Brady Hopes Colin Kaepernick Gets A Shot In NFL Over the weekend, Colin Kaepernick worked out in front of a handful of NFL scouts at a local Atlanta high school as he moved the workout the NFL planned for him at the Falcons practice facility because he wanted it to be as transparent as possible. Although it is worth noting the workout wasn't as...Read more Brady: Patriots' Strengths Are Defense And Special Teams For many years, Tom Brady and the Patriots offense has been the strength of the team. In most seasons, that unit has been able to overcome some faults of the defense to make and win Super Bowls, but things are different this season. The Patriots are now led by their defense, which is allowing a...Read more Rob Gronkowski Will Make ‘Big Announcement’ on Tuesday Rob Gronkowski will be back in the news on Tuesday. The former Patriots tight end said on his Instagram page he has a "big announcement" to make Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. There were no indications on what it might be. The last time Gronkowski did something like this he announced he was partnering...Read more Tom Brady, LeBron James Feel the Same Way on Retirement FOXBOROUGH -- Tom Brady and LeBron James are very similar, as both are the best in their respective sports. They are also pretty friendly, apparently. "We’ve been friends for a long time," Brady said Friday. "Yeah, I’ve always admired him. He’s a great athlete, player. I think he loves the sport,...Read more Tom Brady: Colin Kaepernick Has ‘Pretty Cool’ Opportunity The Patriots will be one of the teams on hand Saturday in Atlanta for Colin Kaepernick's workout. Kaepernick has been out of the league since 2016, and appearing on Westwood One Radio with Jim Gray Thursday night , Tom Brady was asked if that layoff would be hard for any quarterback to overcome?...Read more Alex Guerrero Discusses Brady, Relationship With Belichick Tom Brady's personal trainer, Alex Guerrero, joined The Greg Hill Show in studio Thursday morning as part of Christian Fauria’s “25 for 25k” event to raise money for the American Diabetes Association. Guerrero hit on a number of different topics, including his relationship with Bill Belichick and...Read more	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line819
__label__wiki	0.709318	0.709318	Support 21WIRE > Download Brave Browser Shop 21Wire About 21WIRE > 21WIRE Team TV & Radio > 21WIRE.TV Alternate Current Radio Patrick Henningsen LIVE Sunday Wire Radio Show UK Column Live Sunday Wire LIVE News for the Waking Generation Iran Files STRANGER THAN FICTION: Why Is Foundation of Vegas Shooting Survivor Sponsored By DHS Linked Firm? October 19, 2017 By Shawn Helton Leave a Comment Shawn Helton When looking at the deeply entangled mystery surrounding the Las Vegas mass shooting, there’s been no shortage of questionable details and information that just doesn’t add up. You know the old adage, truth is often stranger than fiction… ‘VEGAS QUESTIONS’ – Who is working behind the scenes concerning the High Desert Phoenix Foundation? (Photo illustration 21WIRE’s Shawn Helton) The shooting involving the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Resort and Route 91 Harvest Festival, has ushered in the brutal return of politicized mass tragedy in America. The dramatic nature of the surreal as of yet still motiveless crime, only adds to a traumatic event that is now being described as “the 9/11 of Mass Shootings.” Similarly, over this past week, a story of concerning the sudden tragic death of a Las Vegas shooting survivor sent shock waves through both mainstream media and alternative media alike. As a chorus of gripping media reports detailed the unexpected death of 28 year-old Kymberley Jo (Synder) Suchomel (left photo Daily Press) in the days after the Las Vegas mass shooting, those still in search of answers in the aftermath of the tragedy were left captivated by her tale. By now, many may already be familiar with media accounts of Suchomel’s harrowing tale of survival, who along with close friends, was said to have attended the Route 91 Harvest Festival the night of the Las Vegas shooting massacre. As the untimely circumstances of Suchomel’s death have been conflated with the unexplained events in Las Vegas, many in alternative media have hastily assumed that the young fund raiser’s death was somehow linked to her dispute of the Las Vegas mass shooting storyline via social media posts on a Facebook account associated with her. Subsequently, online interpretations of the Suchomel story have led to a digital firestorm on social media, producing a wave of speculation prior to a more complete analysis of the survivor’s tale. Despite sensationalized reportage, at this time, there’s no concrete evidence to prove a social media-based conspiracy concerning the death of Suchomel… According to the original story first published by the Daily Press, we’re told Suchomel died in her sleep as she was said to have suffered from epilepsy and had been “prone to seizures.” Additionally, Suchomel, who was reportedly taking medication for a pituitary tumor, was discovered dead by her grandmother Julie Norton at 8:30am on October 9th at her Apple Valley, California home. At this moment, an autopsy of Suchomel’s death is still pending. QUESTION: Is it possible that ‘open source investigators’ were being led into a virtual cul-de-sac and thus missing the real story? Media Tripwire? Undoubtedly, the uncanny timing of Suchomel’s death has come on the heels of a brewing controversy over the Las Vegas mass shooting. This has led to increased speculation, turbo-charging even more spurious internet-based conspiracies and allegations. These now viral stories have simultaneously been published, as anonymous survivor claims from those close to Suchomel have presented Facebook messages associated with her account. Suchomel’s claims also allude to multiple shooters involved in the Las Vegas shooting, as she allegedly planned to “organize a group of survivors,” and that “The media can suck it. They have no idea what went down!” While Suchomel’s story is compelling, you have to wonder – is there more than we’ve been told? At face value, Suchomel’s public account of the Las Vegas shooting is persuasive and does appear to question the official narrative. However, one should look at information from multiple angles in order to formulate a more full spectrum understanding of complex multilayered criminality. UPDATE – Below are two screen shots associated with a Linkedin profile under the name of Kymberley Suchomel. We at 21WIRE cannot verify if this profile is connected in anyway to the Las Vegas shooting survivor or not, but several similarities in the appearance of the individual, home location and the inclusion of an aero-space industry government contractor Aero-Zone, along with others, raises some serious questions… The inclusion of the above Linkedin profile is not necessarily an endorsement of a larger conspiracy concerning the Suchomel saga. However, the Linkedin revelations above have surfaced at or around the same time as other government contractor links have been uncovered regarding the Las Vegas shooting survivor’s charitable foundation. (see below) QUESTION:Is the Linkedin profile above a ruse, someone else – or another mysterious part of the Suchomel story? SEE ALSO: The Las Vegas Mass Shooting – More to the Story Than We’ve Been Told Although the police dispatch communication, along with eye-witness testimony reveals some startling information contradicting the official story surrounding the Las Vegas mass shooting, one must be cautious when looking at all of the available evidence of a suspicious crime – however difficult that may be. As larger outlets in alternative media such as Infowars have sensationalized this highly emotive aspect of the Las Vegas tragedy, a series of formulaic polarizing political points have become an echo chamber in its aftermath. This type of conjecture rapidly descends into wild speculation only serving to magnify emotionally driven elements of a particular story, something that could be used to deliberately steer public perception away from any potential forensic clues. It’s important to remember that during same time SITE Intelligence injected an ‘ISIS meme’ into the Las Vegas tragedy without revealing any solid evidence, Infowars quickly followed suit. This then prompted an apparent ‘official’ statement that echoed those dubious claims from the terror group ISIS. Although these claims still linger, they’ve failed to produce any real connection to ISIS. As we’ve noted numerous times here at 21WIRE, the intelligence monitoring group called SITE, has ties to both the CIA and Israeli intelligence. The group has also had ethical concerns raised over the nature of their intel gathering in the last decade and according to the group’s founder, Rita Katz – they’ve managed to release terror related material linked to ISIS prior to the group itself. ‘GEO GROUP’ – A private-for-profit corrections and detention firm formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corporation under the umbrella of The Wackenhut Corporation. (Image Source corporatewatch) Strange Bedfellows: Follow the Money What you’re about to see below, is a collection of material revealing what appears to be a rather incredible financial component connected to the High Desert Phoenix Foundation, a charitable organization co-founded by the recently deceased Las Vegas mass shooting survivor Kymberley Suchomel. The High Desert Phoenix Foundation claims to have raised funds for grieving families affected by trauma since 2008. This amazing coincidence, rather incredibly, has not been mentioned once in any of the conspiratorial claims surrounding the Suchomel story at alternative media outlets. Put another way, a survivor of a traumatic event has been a long time co-founder of a foundation that contends to have helped those who have endured a traumatic tragedy themselves. It’s a difficult question to ask – but what are the chances of this uncanny coincidence? Furthermore, new evidence uncovers details concerning the High Desert Phoenix Foundation’s high-profile sponsors, one that includes the The GEO Group, Inc (GEO). This long time financial donor, is also linked to well-known government contractor security firms. Is this also a coincidence? In recent years, controversy has enveloped the multi-billion-dollar corporation known as Geo Group. Critics of GEO Group contend that politically motivated contributions have led to an expansion of its for-profit prisons system through federal, state and government contractual agreements at the expense of public safety. Even more concerning, is that critics argue that GEO Group has fostered a dangerous work environment via it’s under staffed operations, inadequate training and apparent mistreatment of detainees and other inmates. This has led to a potentially volatile situation for communities nearby GEO Group’s facilities. QUESTION: Does this sound like a suitable donor for a charitable foundation known for helping grieving families? In 1984, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC) had been formed as a part of The Wackenhut Corporation. In 2003, WCC management bought up all stock held by its subsidiary G4S, altering its name to The GEO Group, Inc. In 2004, other divisions of the Wackenhut Corporation were purchased by Group 4 Falck, a security focused subsidiary known as G4S Wackenhut, was later renamed again as G4S Secure Solutions. Here’s a screen shot of the High Desert Phoenix Foundation’s mission statement. Notice the modest look of the website – an organization with the financial backing of the multi-billion dollar GEO Group, one of the nation’s largest for-profit prison operators… The reason why the GEO Group link is so significant, is that prior to modern America’s largest mass shooting in Las Vegas, an apparent survivor of the incident was operating a foundation that was accepting financial support from a large-scale company formerly known as The Wackenhut Corporation, a subsidiary of G4S Secure Solutions, one of the world’s largest security firms, and a Department of Homeland Security connected conglomerate tied to the suspicious Orlando shooting in the summer of 2016 – an event, that was previously the country’s largest mass shooting. If you remember, 29-year old Omar Mateen, an Afghani-American was located in Port St. Lucie, Florida, about 120 miles outside of Orlando. In 2013, Mateen was placed under a terror watch list for 10 months (interviewed two to three times by the FBI 2013-14) and had worked for G4S Secure Solutions, headquartered in Jupiter, Florida, a company which was formerly part of a CIA-linked government contractor and security firm known as The Wackenhut Corporation. G4S, as it turns out, was the very first ‘designated’ and certified Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contractor and recently secured a $234 million dollar contract with the federal cabinet department. In addition to apparently providing security solutions for “90 percent of U.S. nuclear facilities,” G4S, according to border patrol sources has also been tasked with the transportation and release of illegal immigrants inside the interior of the United States. At least one of Mateen’s roles with G4S, was to transport and provide security for prisoner youths in Florida. Here’s a screen shot from the High Desert Phoenix Foundation’s website that proudly displays their billion dollar government contract linked ‘diamond’ donor, The Geo Group… Below is a link to the first discussion about the Geo Group connection as it relates to the Las Vegas mass shooting… Boiler Room: Stranger than Fiction – New Anomalies in the Las Vegas Mass Shooting with Shawn Helton & Hesher SEE ALSO: The Las Vegas and Weinstein Cover-ups: Boiler Room EP #132 The amount of independent examination regarding the Las Vegas shooting case thus far is fairly staggering and in the wake of any multilayered event, one must proceed with caution when reviewing the available evidence, as the doorway for a ‘trial by media’ frenzy in both mainstream media and alternative media could be used to derail sincere analysis. What should the public make of the the High Desert Phoenix Foundation’s long time financial links to a high-profile government contractor? All of this comes, as the Las Vegas shooting star witness, Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos resurfaced to appear in what the public has been told will be his only media appearance to discuss this bizarre and highly questionable case. It’s also worth mentioning that Campos failed to shed any more light on the shifting timeline of events associated with the Las Vegas mass shooting. Watch Campos ‘break his silence’ in an interview that appeared on Ellen… Stay tuned for any updates to this story… 21WIRE associate editor Shawn Helton is a researcher and writer, specializing in forensic analysis of high-profile crime scene and counter terrorism investigations, and the deconstruction and analysis of the mass-media coverage surrounding those cases. He has compiled an extensive body of work covering a number of high-profile events since 2012. READ MORE DAILY SHOOTER NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Daily Shooter Files SUPPORT 21WIRE – SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV Filed Under: Featured, Shawn Helton, US News Tagged With: #vegasstrong, Active shooter drill, Daily Shooter, false flag, High Desert Phoenix Foundation, Las Vegas Mass Shooting, Las Vegas Shooting, Mandalay Bay shooting, Route 91 Harvest Festival Sunday Wire Live Episode #311 Listen to “Episode #311 – ‘Out of Babylon’ guest Sami Ramadani” on Spreaker. Surf the Web Faster, Cleaner & Without Being Tracked Mohammad Marandi: America’s Miscalculation on Iran Top Stories @21WIRE ‘War of Terror’ Inverted: Why Did US Assassinate Iran’s Anti-ISIS General? The Battle for Aleppo: HTS Opens New Front to Draw Syria and Russia Away from Idlib SUNDAY SCREENING: ‘Paying the Price: The Killing of the Children of Iraq’ (2000) Episode #311 – ‘Out of Babylon’ guest Sami Ramadani and more The Pledge: Labour’s Contrived ‘anti-Semitism Crisis’ Outlives Corbyn INTERVIEW: Robert Inlakesh on how US vs Iran fallout affects Israel-Palestine impasse What’s Really Behind America’s ‘Russia Problem’? Featured Stories Archive @21WIRE says… This pompous grifter is an embarrassment to his country… https://t.co/gjIQuBqi12 — Patrick Henningsen (@21WIRE) January 17, 2020 COPYRIGHT © 2009-2020 · 21ST CENTURY WIRE · ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WORLDWIDE · Privacy & Cookies · Brave Browser	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line822
__label__cc	0.712353	0.287647	Discussion · Young adult What Changed In American YA, 2010-2019 April 10, 2019 May 13, 2019 acquadimore The first American YA novel I had ever read was Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, at the very end of 2009. It didn’t get me into reading – I was already reading a lot by then, but mostly old adult books and some middle grade – and it didn’t get me into American YA either, because I thought it was so boring that I didn’t pick up another until 2012. I started actually reading and reviewing YA in 2015, and at the time I mostly read books published in the 2010-2013 period, because books almost always take a while to get translated. Today I want to talk about what and how much YA has changed since then, according to what I see in the age range now that I read mostly new releases. Keep of course in mind that this is the perspective of one person, and that there are far too many YA books published in a year for a blogger to read them all when they’re not even all of what they read! (I read adult SFF just as often.) The things that changed for the better. Diversity: this is the big one. Not because there weren’t diverse books before, but because they weren’t as frequent and as frequently hyped as they are today. (I hope publishing won’t think they can stop buying and hyping diverse books now.) Some examples of books I doubt would have been published in the 2010-2014 era, and if they had been, they definitely wouldn’t have gotten the hype they got in 2017-2018: Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan – a story about rape culture and being a rape survivor with a main forbidden f/f romance set in a Malaysian-inspired kingdom? I’m so glad we’re at a point now in which we can see this on the shelves and on the NYT bestseller list. For a Muse of Fire by Heidi Heilig – an ownvoices book about a bipolar Asian heroine who is also queer set in a world inspired by Southeast Asia which also talks about colonization and what it does to a country? I don’t think I would have seen it a few years ago. (However, this deserved a lot more hype than it got). The Wicker King by K. Ancrum – a tense and weird and difficult but definitely not tragic genre-bending slow-burn gay story that also ends in polyamory (m/m/f), featuring major characters of color? I don’t think I know any other tradpub story with that premise and I love that this book is relatively well-known on goodreads and twitter. A note: YA isn’t the only age range that is doing this. Adult SFF is too and in many aspects is better at it than YA SFF, which mainly-YA readers would notice if they stopped mislabeling diverse adult books as YA. Its old, glaring misogyny problems: I can’t say these have been solved, but I almost never see open slut-shaming and the actual not-like-other-girls trope anymore (but there are so many reviews calling things that aren’t the NLOG trope the NLOG trope). Which is a big progress! And sometimes I even see complex, positive female friendships, which were a rarity in the books that were popular in 2010-2013. (I can only think of Karou and Zuzana and even then they’re not together for most of the series…) Again, YA can get even better at this, but I like seeing the progress. The average quality of contemporary: while one could find quality YA SFF pretty easily (Shadow and Bone is very well-written, many people just wanted a different story, fight me; The Hunger Games is pretty good all things considered; The Raven Cycle too), finding good YA contemporary was a struggle – especially if you were reading what was really popular and got translated here. The Fault in Our Stars was cliché sicklit that tried to act like it was Not Like Other Sicklit Novels, Anna and the French Kiss was really annoying and just not that great even if you don’t care that much about fictional people cheating, and to this day the Becca Fitzpatrick contemporaries are some of the worst things I’ve ever read. And today, we have so many well-written contemporaries that I’d say it’s almost easier to find quality contemporary than SFF. To make some examples that aren’t as obvious as The Hate U Give: Love From A to Z by S.K. Ali comes out this month and it’s one of the best contemporaries I’ve ever read. It’s a novel set in Qatar that tackles Islamophobia and talks about living with multiple sclerosis while being the cutest, most adorable YA romance ever written and… read it. I hope it doesn’t become an under-the-radar book – I think it’s the kind of story that could be helpful to a lot of people. I don’t think we would have seen this kind of novel a few years ago and I’m so glad it exists. Even though diverse books that deal with contemporary issues are the ones that get more popular and get more hype from publishers, there are so many great ones that don’t! They just don’t get the hype they deserve. An example is This Is What It Feels Like by Rebecca Barrow, a story about three girls (two black, one white, and one of the black girls is queer) in a band, and the novel focuses on recovery. A hyped contemporary that isn’t an issue book but that is really good and diverse is Far From the Tree by Robin Benway, a story about three siblings reconnecting after living with different families because of adoption/foster care. The things that changed for the worse, at least a little – I think most of the changes I’ve seen in YA have been positive. Finding teenage girls that actually feel like teenage girls is more difficult, especially in fantasy. I think this has to do with the absurd standards we hold female characters to (I should make a whole post about that) and the result is that there are so many female protagonist that are bland, and… not even bland in a way you can relate to. We barely have realistic, insecure, messy teen protagonists in fantasy anymore, because they’re called weak and annoying and whiny (because teen girls need to be perfect) and we trade that for carefully constructed characters that feel completely incoherent (cruel but mostly for the aesthetic, so smart but not when the plot requires them not to be, “morally gray” but as we say here, all smoke and no meat). And I do mostly like them and root for them, but I don’t see this walking on eggshells to create a character you’re told is badass and is actually… not, that is “morally gray” only in words, that never feels like a human teen girl, a positive thing. Give me weak characters who have to come to terms with their self-esteem problems, characters who make mistakes and learn from them, and that actually do morally gray things if you’re hyping them as such. A lot of them have content I wouldn’t have wanted to read when I was 14-17, which to me didn’t seem to happen that frequently a few years ago: No, I’m not referring to sex scenes. I’d find the “most teens don’t want to read sex scenes in books” discussion funny, but the more I think about purity culture the more I just find it sad. One problem I see more and more often in YA, especially SFF, is how it seems to have forgotten how to have fun. Everything, especially in fantasy, needs to either be Important, Gritty or outright comedy. It’s just… YA takes itself a lot more seriously? Which is a good thing at times, but I’m here to have fun. (I recommend the self-indulgent just-here-for-the-aesthetic very-goth and fun book Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan if you want to know what I want more of, and this time I’m not even talking about the villain romance) A lot of YA I read now is really disturbing, and while I love that now, I’m 100% sure I wouldn’t even have been able to read that when I was the actual target audience and I have some mixed feelings about that. For example, I know I would have DNFed Wilder Girls by Rory Power a few years ago. Not just because its plant horror hits specifically the plant-related phobia at times and because there was a really upsetting (to me) scene I wasn’t warned about, but because it’s full of body horror and despair and I wouldn’t have even understood the point it was trying to make a few years ago. While I believe in trusting readers, even if they’re young, I don’t really understand why this was marketed as YA, as I think older readers will appreciate it more. And yes, it specifically talks about the horrors of girlhood in a misogynistic world, and the experiences of teenage girls, but the way it talked about felt very… adult, to me? I don’t know. It felt more like Annihilation (adult sci-fi) than like any YA book I know. What Hasn’t Changed As Much As It Should Have YA still heavily relies on trends. Be it bad Twilight copycats with a love interest whose name was some variation of the word “demon” but totally wasn’t a demon, endless vaguely futuristic novels that were dystopian only in name, books that attempt to have a Kaz Brekker-like character and fail, or the same exact novel about a girl who starts a rebellion to take down an evil empire, just set in a different world this time – finding YA books whose plot actually feels unique is still difficult, in my experience far more difficult than it is in adult SFF (where there are trends, but the books inside them don’t feel like they’re trying to emulate the book that started it). This worries me mostly because I don’t want to see publishers decide that diversity isn’t trendy anymore in two years or something. There are still very few non-American and especially non-western stories. Most stories set outside the US still have American characters. Every time this discussions comes up, someone says that if they didn’t they wouldn’t sell, because Americans “can’t relate” to them. To which I say: American books are translated worldwide, and if they weren’t basically most of the YA books people in my country can get, I wouldn’t have such a big problem with this, but since they are, it’s their responsibility to include and represent all the people they’re writing for, both as authors and as readers; Believe it or not, western Europe isn’t America-lite and white western Europeans don’t go through what the average white American is going through just because they vaguely look like us; This is even more true for non-western countries; It isn’t good for Americans to only read books about themselves or written by themselves, just like it isn’t good for white, straight people to read only about white, straight people. Reading from different perspectives isn’t only interesting, I think it’s necessary. No, the random [European Culture]-inspired fantasy book written by Americans definitely doesn’t count. I’m sure that there’s even more to say if some of you have been reading YA for a longer time and didn’t have the “I can read only what’s translated” bottleneck, but right now, this is all I can think of. What do you think has changed in YA over the years? What do you think should change? book blogger discussion posts YA books Young adult Previous Post Review: The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley Next Post Review: The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie 34 thoughts on “What Changed In American YA, 2010-2019” Interesting discussion post. I agree a lot of what was said. I don’t love YA fantasy the way I feel like everyone else does and I can’t quite put my finger on it. I think sometimes it feels like it’s trying too hard or as you said, it’s all about aesthetic, which is not really what I want in my books. It’s okay if the aesthetic is a driving factor, but everything built around the aesthetic has to make sense. I think my main problem with YA fantasy is the dissonance between what the book wants me to think it is and what it actually feels like. I’m fine with books that are basically just doing things for the aesthetics (because they can be fun!) as long as they aren’t also trying to convince me they’re not. And they often try to convince me they’re not – they’re trying too hard, as you say. Yes- you put it so much more eloquently than I did- but I think that’s exactly my issue! This is such an interesting post, Acqua! I wasn’t really reading YA that far back, I think I started in…2014? Maybe? And I almost exclusively read YA fantasy for at least one year/year and a half. I wasn’t part of the reading community so I was totally oblivious to issues like diversity and misogyny in YA books and all that. But since 2016/early 2017 I have noticed such a difference, especially when we talk about diversity and how it’s handled. I don’t know how to properly say this but of course books have more diversity now, but also more well-known authors that previously didn’t write as diverse are starting to incorporate that more in their books? I don’t have a lot of examples for that because this is more something I noticed in general being on Twitter as opposed to actually reading these authors, but it just feels that way and I think it’s important. And then of course it’s great to see so many marginalized authors get book deals where previously they might have been denied because of their marginalization. Another thing I noticed (but this might be influenced by the way I experience the reading community now vs then) is that many more readers and reviewers have an influence over what gets hyped before and after release, and it feels like those famous booktubers aren’t running things anymore (nothing against them personally, but in 2015 or so it felt like things were only getting hyped because of the personal tastes of 4-5 allocis straight white readers). I read mostly YA fantasy too, in the beginning – and I mean, if YA contemporary was like it was before We Need Diverse Books, I’d still be reading mostly fantasy. And yes, it’s much more common to find books with diverse leads even when you’re reading mostly popular authors. On the quality of that rep, there are always the same doubts, but at least they’re trying (how many of them are trying because it’s trendy and not really researching because they actually don’t care, I don’t know, as I don’t read a lot of really popular YA either). I barely follow booktube lately, but I have seen very few people say that they read a book because of them in these last few years – maybe the fact that big booktubers only really have an influence on those who are casually involved in the book community/are starting out is skewing my perception, though. I feel like what gets hyped by diverse book bloggers (for example, The Wicker King) becomes really well-known in the smaller community but not so much overall? (With some exceptions like Evelyn Hugo, which basically ended up everywhere.) Literary Lion says: I’m so glad the NLOG trope is less prominent, but I still see it here and there in some books. Usually not ones that have much hype thankfully. I also agree that YA characters have stopped feeling like teens. Especially in their dialogue. They all talk like they’re paid by the sarcastic quip in contemporary and in fantasy they may as well be in their twenties. I think a lot of the books that are being published in YA today actually feel like adult fantasy written YA-style – no wonder that on twitter people are asking publishers to bring back NA every two days. My wariness with people saying they saw the NLOG trope is that in my experience, some mistake subtext that says “this person isn’t actually that comfortable with being a girl/is genderqueer” with “this person thinks she’s special and other girls are inferior” and so I… don’t trust them. There’s something to be said about non-binary and genderqueer rep often being more subtext-only than it needs to be, but that’s another discussion. I think that’s an excellent point. I don’t mind girls who don’t want to be cast as feminine girls even regardless of their gender identity. My issue is definitely with the “and other girls are inferior” part. I read a sentence in a novel a while back that said “nothing like those overly stupid creatures known as girls”. And like damn, calm down. “And like damn, calm down.” I totally agree, I’m glad I haven’t noticed anything like that in a while, but this either needs to be dealt with or disappear from novels. Ellie @ Words of a Feather says: I’ve never really thought about these things before, but you make a lot of really good points! I really love the rise in diverse books and the reception that they’re having but I would love to see more non-western YA books! Non-western YA is the highest thing on my YA wishlist at this point, especially if it’s written by people who aren’t western themselves. And I hope we keep seeing a lot of hyped diverse books! Will Read for Booze says: What a great discussion post. In 2009, I was in college, and I was struggling finding books I enjoyed (Because Twilight had become a Thing and I didn’t enjoy it) so I read mostly adult SFF. Over the years I’ve slowly gotten back into YA for a lot of the reasons you described. Plus, at the time I’d picked up a YA again, it was because I’d gotten over the old white guy SFF books. I was delighted to see the rise of diverse unique stories in YA. It’s not without its issues, but you are 100% right. YA has come a long way since 2009. I wasn’t reading a lot of YA when Twilight was a thing (but I read some of the 2010-era YA a few years later and I wasn’t impressed) but it must have been a really difficult time for finding novels that were not low-quality paranormal romances. And I’m finding that adult SFF has come a long way since too, old white guy fantasy isn’t the face of the genre anymore. I’m glad you liked reading this! Kat @ Kat from Minas Morgul says: ON. POINT. I’ve been reading YA for a while now and can definitely agree with you in all points. Especially with what hasn’t changed. To be honest, I’m so tired of seeing American characters EVERYWHERE it’s like the US population makes up 90% of the world. But then a problem seems to be, at least for me, that a lot of books written by German authors (my home country) are just not… good? I discussed this with some friends a few weeks ago and the German bookmarket in general, but especially the YA market, is so white and not even slightly diverse and even German authors write about American characters because it sells. Anyways, I very much agree with you and am actively looking for books that are not set in America/have 100% American cast. I don’t read the very few Italian YAs because it’s so overwhelmingly straight, white and badly written that it makes me want to praise Twilight (…I almost think it would be easier to write a diverse Italian book in English and get it published there than it would be in Italy), so I get what you mean. I feel like they’re written by people who aren’t really in touch with most of what’s being written in the genre, or that are years out of date (the few Italian YAs seem convinced that dystopian is still a new thing). And yes, authors here write about Americans too, especially when it comes to contemporary, because they have the perception that’s what sells or that’s what interesting, even, and I find that really sad. okay so Italy is even more behind than Germany. Many YA books here deal with mental health which is great. unfortunately, that’s about the only important aspect ever discussed. but one of my friends who’s gay wrote a cute book about a gay boy and publishers go all “nah that’s not marketable” and I’m just ???? what??? you idiots publish the worst gay romance stuff on this planet written by cis white women?! I’m just glad we get pretty good translations from time to time. But I know why I read mostly English books… …that’s really disappointing and such rubbish The problem with translated books here, apart from the fact that they depict experiences that are never our own, is that they also often have terrible translations, because here they think that YA readers don’t care about quality. Love this post! I completely agree with more YA getting disturbing and I feel like some ideas teeter more on adult. I’ve known many teens that don’t want to read disturbing books since they’re sensitive or just want to read more fluffy books. I do think that publishing is trying to cater to the older audiences a lot with the much darker books? It makes sense, as I really like some of those disturbing books now, but when I was 16… definitely not. I feel like many books in the current YA market are being written for the 18-20+ age range but with characters that are 17 and younger (in words but not for how they act), and it just feels weird. I wish we could have actual YA with characters who feel like they’re 16 and books about people in their early twenties that aren’t just explicit romances set in college. And I’m glad you liked reading this! Yep no kidding! I wonder if we need an actual teens section (13-18) and then a young adult section (18-20’s). That difference could help I think. I’ve heard that the term young adult is used for people between 18-30 and I know that’s a huge audience of who is reading YA. I think that would be really helpful too, and the discussions I’m seeing on twitter lately make me think we’re far from being the only ones. I hope publishing will agree eventually. Me too! I never thought about that stuff until recently Okay, I love this so much and I wish I could write an essay response but I’ll spare you the trouble of having to read through that. 😀 “We barely have realistic, insecure, messy teen protagonists in fantasy anymore.” HARD yes. I’m actually drafting a post on why I want more messy protagonists in books, so this is beautiful timing! I mean, I’m not a protagonist in a fantasy story, but I would figure that the monster-fighting and the whole having-to-save-the-world deal would make you more messy and insecure, not less. And I hate it when people call the badass, admittedly-bland girls “Mary Sues,” but then when the messy ones come along they complain about them being whiny. And I love the sad, gritty YA stories but I really do miss seeing books that are light-hearted and campy and fun for the sake of being fun. And it’s interesting how adult SFF is doing a better job of this right now. But yeah, overall, I’m super happy with how diverse YA’s been getting and hopefully the publishing market will continue in that trend. I mean, I still can’t believe Wicked Fox is a thing that’s actually coming out this year! A Korean mythology-based story with Korean characters set in South Korea? Teen-me would have been screaming from rooftops. 😀 “the whole having-to-save-the-world deal would make you more messy and insecure, not less” It really would. And I feel like the responses to this are getting worse lately – I’ve seen teen girl protagonists in new YA releases get criticized in many reviews for being too insecure, confused and not competent enough after being introduced to a setting that is completely new to them (for example, a court with ongoing intrigue) and that’s… just not how being a human is like. And same, I don’t like to call any character a Mary Sue because we allow male characters to be powerful and competent even to unrealistic levels without saying anything, but at the same time, I’d like to see characters who struggle more with the whole saving-the-world thing. Overall, I think I like how YA has changed – especially in diversity, I remember than in 2015 I could count the diverse books I knew on one hand (not because there were so few, but because the ones that weren’t pretty obscure or known for terrible rep really were few). Also: Wicked Fox’s premise sounds awesome (…I remember your post about favorite magical creatures and the kumiho and I really want to read a story about that) and I can’t wait for it to come out. Oh, this is such an interesting post! I started reading some YA books in 2013, but I think 2017 was the first year that the majority of the books I read were YA and that’s because it got more diverse. One of the biggest changes I’ve noticed as well is the quality of contemporaries. I always say I don’t read a lot of YA contemporary, but I realized that’s not really true anymore. The quality of the writing + the diversity has actually made it one of my go to genres. I just read a graphic novel with a messy teen protagonist and the whole time I was thinking about how refreshing it was to see a teen girl who messes up and says stupid things and acts kind of awkward sometimes, cause that’s so real. All the yes to more female friendships, more non-western stories and actually morally gray characters, especially female ones. We really need that tiny box full of contradictions and double standards that female characters have to fit into to be considered acceptable to get bigger or… preferably crushed. (Please, do make a whole post about that. Crush some boxes.) 2017 really was the year publishing started to get it somewhat right and I love how far we’ve come from 2015 (when I started reviewing). I hated contemporary a few years ago and now I think I like just as much as YA fantasy? I certainly find books I like more easily in contemporary and contemporary fantasy than in high fantasy. And which graphic novel is it? I feel like I need that kind of content. “We really need that tiny box full of contradictions and double standards that female characters have to fit into to be considered acceptable to get bigger or… preferably crushed” this this this this I have a post I’m slowly putting together in the drafts about this, I will try to make it readable in a… reasonable amount of time Caro @ bookcheshirecat says: Such an insightful post! I really agree with a lot that you said, we still do have a long way to go, but I’m happy that we did get some really great ownvoices books at the same time! Pingback: Out Of My Comfort Zone #5 – Acquadimore Books Pingback: T10T: Rainy Day Reads – Acquadimore Books Pingback: April 2019 \| Wrap Up – Literary Lion Absolutely love this post! I completely agree that I want more non-US YA books, which I’ve been thinking a lot about lately and trying to search them out purposefully, because I like to read about other perspectives, not just the “culture clash”, but someone who truly sees the world with different values and religion, etc. Seeing a lot more queer books lately as well. Another thing I haven’t really found is good chronic illness/disability lit that is also like good overall popular books. I feel like it’s in the beginner phase that queer lit used to be in, where everything was like a “coming out” book and not like queer characters incorporated into a complete plot. I just want to see more sick characters doing great things, which “love from a to z” seems really promising as. Definitely going to look into the first three books you recommended as well, those look awesome I agree that with disability and chronic physical illness representation the market hasn’t improved the way it has for queer or even mental illness representation, with just a few exceptions. There’s so much more that can be done outside of the usual book about the illness/disability. (And not to annoyingly self-promote, but if you’re interested in books [not only YA] set outside the US, I wrote a post about non-US speculative novels: https://acquadimore.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/t10t-sff-books-set-outside-the-us/ ) Pingback: What I’ve been up to in April 💗 Internship, Classes, OWL’s & my birthday – The Bookcheshire Cat Pingback: Pride & Parties \| Bi-Weekly Update – aquapages Leave a Reply to MetalPhantasmReads Cancel reply	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line839
__label__cc	0.727915	0.272085	Category: Activities Waterfalls to Visit in Banyumas, Central Java Banyumas is one of twenty-nine districts in Jawa Tengah (Central Java) province, with Purwokerto city as the capital. Located near Mount Slamet -the biggest mountain in Jawa island- and surrounded by valleys and rivers, Banyumas has plenty of beautiful waterfalls or “curug” the locals would say. Not so many are opened for public, but here are five I would recommend you to visit: Curug Cipendok (waterfall) Curug Cipendok (waterfall), Banyumas, Java Karang Tengah village, Cilongok sub-district – ±15 kilometers west from Purwokerto The highest waterfalls in Banyumas (92 meters high). Entrance ticket: IDR 7,000. They may give us a bottled drink, but I suggest you NOT to take it because they will charge you another IDR 3,000 and the drink tastes weird. Unless you want to keep it as souvenir. Flying fox (for beginners) costs only IDR 10,000. Roasted corn ± IDR 3,000. Curug Gomblang (waterfall) Curug Gomblang (waterfall), Banyumas, Java Baseh village in Kedungbanteng sub-district – ±12 kilometers west from Purwokerto Two waterfalls with large water debit, but amazingly peaceful under. Get lost a little bit among the kauri trees (Agathis dammara), you’ll find a path down to the Logawa river that mostly covered with bush. Be careful of the thorns and look around for the possibility to find wild raspberries. It can be very slippery in rainy season. Curug Belot (waterfall) Pandak village, Baturraden sub-district – ±12 kilometers north from Purwokerto. Swim and jump from the rock with the local children. Curug Belot (waterfall), Banyumas, Java Curug Bayan (waterfall) Melung village, Baturraden sub-district – ±13 kilometers north from Purwokerto Curug Bayan (waterfall), Banyumas, Java You’ll read both curug Gedhe and curug Bayan on a sign post, but curug Gedhe is a sacred place for the locals, so it’s not recommended to visit because you can’t do much there. Relax, sit on a stone, and soak your feet in the pristine cool water of curug Bayan while viewing the surrounding, or try river tubing. There are also villas you can rent cost around IDR 350,000 – 1,500,000 per night. Entrance fee IDR 4,000. Warning: Do not swim right under the waterfall. Some people trapped and died. Curug Ceheng (waterfall) Gandatapa village, Baturraden sub-district – ±15 kilometers northeast from Purwokerto. This waterfall is located in the middle of the clove plantations and became one of the popular camping grounds in Banyumas. Access is fairly easy. There is a hall where traditional performances are held at certain times. Curug Ceheng (waterfall), Banyumas, Java The blend of curiosity and courage brings Eva to travel and explore exotic places. She believes that traveling is a journey of learning, a wide opened door into experience and wisdom. Got lost so many times made her decided to share more information on her travel blog and established an outdoor tour guide service in her hometown. Find Eva at her travel blog – Traveling and Discerning. Other articles by Eva: Rock Climber’s Paradise in Siung Beach, Yogyakarta Purwokerto in Central Java Java Travel Guide Top 10 Things to Do in Java Island, Indonesia Author GuestCategories Activities, Java, Purwokerto, WaterfallsLeave a comment on Waterfalls to Visit in Banyumas, Central Java Top 10 Outdoor Activities in Bali Bali is the place to go in Indonesia to have fun and it has all sorts to offer. There are best beaches, nightlife, shops, bars, restaurants and many more. Among tourists, the most popular type of fun in Bali come in the form of outdoor activities and adventures. If you are planning a visit to Bali and would like to enjoy yourself out there of what the best nature can offer, then look no further than right here where you can get inspiration for the top 10 outdoor activities in Bali to enjoy. Golf is a relaxing outdoor activity to try out while visiting Bali. Though it does seem out of the norm, golfing is quite popular among tourists visiting Bali. This might be due to the fantastic view that golfing offers to tourists in Bali and in fact there are many different kinds of golf course available in Bali, including a 9-hole course and an 18-hole course. There’s a spot in the mountains near Bedugul that is quite popular among golfers in Bali. White Water Rafting in Bali, Indonesia One of the most popular outdoor activities is whitewater rafting. Rafting in Bali is not just an exercise for tourists, it also provides a way to view what Bali has to offer, in terms of rice terraces, lush green scenery, rainforests, and rivers. The perfect rivers for white-water rafting activities are the Ayung and TelagaWaja rivers. There are really nice rafting activity packages, which include lunch, showers, insurance and towels if you shop around. Hiking Mount Batur Mount Batur comes up when hiking activities in Bali are discussed. This is because Mount Batur is a great place for tourists that enjoy nature and hiking. Located in the east of Bali, the sunrise is one not to be missed when hiking Mount Batur in Kintamani because it is a view of nature in its purest form. Hiking this 1700 meters active volcano, which takes about two hours, is the ultimate outdoor activity for tourists that visit Bali. Hike Volcano Mountain Batur, Bali Bali’s most popular type of outdoor activities comes in the form of bungee jumping. It’s quite a popular activity among extreme sports lovers as bungee jumping gives tourists a rush of adrenaline like no other sports. Certainly not for the faint-hearted, bungee jumping is available in many hot spots in Bali, including a cascade and a high tower. Freediving is a great way to get up close and personal with some of the best diving destinations in the world. It is a great way for underwater enthusiastic to enjoy a wide variety of marine life in the ocean. It is quite an imagination how beautiful the underwater scene is in Bali since Bali is known to be in the centre of the coral triangle, which boasts of the biggest range of marine life in the world. One of the most popular freediving spot in Bali is the best-kept secret – Amed, where you can sign up with one of the numerous freediving courses here. Diving Nusa Lembongan, Bali, Indonesia Diving is one of the favourite outdoor activities in Bali as there are many interesting dive spots in Bali. One of the most popular ones is the Barat National Park. In Barat National Park, the Pulau Menjangan is considered one of the best spot for diving in Bali. Another popular spot is located at Tulamben as you can find the wreck of the Liberty, a US Army Transport ship sunk by a Japanese submarine in 1942, here. There are also nice diving spots in Sanur, which is near Denpasar and also in Nusa Penida or Nusa Lembongan islands. Guides are provided in diving packages in Bali, as well as many other interesting deals. There are crystal-clear waters, where diving can be done and also where there are large varieties of tropical fishes and sea turtles. Canyon is an extreme sport in Bali that is considered a popular outdoor activity among tourists. In many ways, canyoning plays a huge part in helping tourists get closer to the unspoilt nature of Bali. It is a great adventure, where tourists in groups or on their own can get close to exciting streams and many kinds of plants species while canyoning in the forms of walking, caving, scrambling, jumping, sliding and abseiling. A lot of canyoning packages are available with this extreme sport, including professional river guides, equipment, towels and much more. Surfing or Kitesurfing It is well known that Bali as some of the best surfing spots in the world. The west coast of Bali is really popular among tourists for its surfing activities. Everyone, from a beginner to an expert, is welcome to surf in Bali. There are courses for surfing available on hand to help tourists, who are beginners. There is also a range of surfing clothing in Bali, so tourists do not need to over pack their luggage with surfing gears. There’s also another kind of surfing that can be enjoyed in Bali, which is known as kitesurfing. Kitesurfing activities in Bali come equipped with the same kind of facilities that are offered for surfing activities. Surfing in Kuta, Bali Trekking is a really popular outdoor activity among tourists visiting Bali. Best done in the early morning, trekking provides some of the best visual sights tourists can witness in Bali. Tropical Trekking is considered a very affordable outdoor activity and most of the packages include hiking sticks, hotel transfers, torches, breakfast, a guide and wet weather gears. Trekking can also be done in jungles, villages and rice paddies. There are naturally many trekking tours to choose from in Bali. Trekking through rice fields, Bali Snorkelling is a fun activity that many tourists in Bali enjoy. It’s a great way to get close to underwater nature surrounded by a huge range of exotic fishes and other sea creatures without the need for a lot of gears. It is one of the simplest yet fun underwater adventures in Bali, where you can find many snorkeling tours and packages that will take you out to sweets spots around Bali for the best snorkelling experience. In Bali, a range of outdoor activities is available for tourists to quench their adventure thirst. From water sports to activities on land, Bali has everything ready for tourists to enjoy. You just have to choose which activities that interest you and book your time before you land in Bali, so as not to miss out of the fun outdoor activities. Photo credits from top: Fabio Achilli, Ilse Reijs and Jan-Noud Hutten, Paul Hessels, Egor Pasko and Bonita de Boer Top 10 Best Restaurants in Bali Author Nil HajraCategories Activities, Bali, Diving, HIking, Outdoor, Surfing, Top and Best of, TrekkingLeave a comment on Top 10 Outdoor Activities in Bali Although boasting 17,000 islands, Indonesia may come to mind with lots of islands and beaches and sea, but you be surprised that it has just as many mountains. Being an archipelago that is situated at the confluence of the tectonic plates – Asian, Australian, Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, it has as many as 129 volcanoes making it the country with 13 percent of the world’s volcanoes. These volcanoes encircling the stretch of Indonesia has a name with a cool ring to it – Indonesia Ring of Fire. The volcanoes, some active (some very busy) and some not, provides a naturally stunning scenery unlike any other. Some of the mountains are situated within an immense volcanic lake or some with craters that spurt blue fire. The highest peak in Indonesia is the Puncak Jaya in Papua while the largest volcanic lake is the Lake Toba in Sumatra. Here are Top 10 Volcano Mountain in Indonesia for you to visit: Volcano Mount Bromo with Mount Semeru at the back spewing smoke. Photo by borderlys Mount Bromo, at 2329 m, is one of the most iconic mountain in Indonesia. This is due its majestic beauty, where it stands forebodingly within the Tengger caldera sea of sand while spewing off white sulphurous smoke. Mount Bromo is one of the most active volcanoes of the world and one of the frequent visited ones. Travelers from far and wide come here to view the sunrise over this mountain, where the ethereal landscape is not to be missed. -> Read our Guide to Hiking Mount Bromo Volcano Mount Ijen and its lake, Java. Photo by Richard Liblanc Ijen Crater Ijen Crater or locally known as Kawah Ijen is another popular mountain of Java after Mount Bromo. Many travelers continue to visit here after Mount Bromo and the experience is refreshingly new. Inside the crater you will see a magnificent turquoise sulphur lake that exudes flames, blue fire at night and smoky white in the day.You will also meet many sulphur collectors on your hike up and be shocked by the condition of their work consuming the harmful fumes all the time. Ijen volcano contains the world’s largest acidic volcanic lake that shines in beautiful turquoise color. By night the lake will throw off blue flames which many hikers brave the dark for. -> Read our Guide to trekking Ijen Crater Hike Mount Semeru, Java. Photo by Michael Day Mount Merbabu Mount Merbabu, the name translated as “Mountain of Ash” in Javanese, is the only volcano mountain in this list that is dormant. But even with that, it is still a volcano to be reckoned with. It lies adjacent to Mount Merapi towards the southeast at the height of 3142 m. It is a challenging hike up to the peak; there are two peaks – Syarif (3119 m) and Kenteng Songo (3142 m), forming a U-shaped valley, but with a guide, one can conquer Mount Merapi. The area of the mountain had been declared as a national park in 2004. The nearby city to stay would be either Magelang or Salatiga . Hike Mount Merbabu, Java. Photo by uncle.capung Mount Semeru Mount Semeru is the tallest mountain in Java, located at the east. It is also known as Mahameru by the locals, which means The Great Mountain, deriving from the mystical Hindu-Buddhist mountain of Meru and Sumeru, the gods. Climbing to the peak takes two hiking days, and it is relatively easy for seasoned hikers. The only challenge is the last slope up to the summit. Mount Semeru is an active volcano with constant smoke from its crater. Mount Krakatoa or Krakatau Anak Krakatau between Java and Sumatra. Photo by Paul Hessels Krakatoa or also known as Krakatau, is a volcanic island situated in the Sunda Straits between Java and Sumatra of Indonesia. The eruption of Mount Krakatoa in 1883 had been noted as one of the most violent volcanic events ever recorded. The huge explosion blast over 4,000km all the way to Australia and India. This massive explosion cause giant tsunami and the dust from it stays in the stratosphere for several years after while killing more than 35,000 people. Mount Krakatoa is still very much an active volcano and scaling it takes precaution and would require camping a night at Rakata Island, where you can enjoy the view of Krakatoa eruption at night. Else you can stay at the nearby hotels on the mainland side. Mount Kerinci Mount Kerinci is the tallest volcano in Indonesia and the highest peak in Sumatra. It is located within the Kerinci Seblat National Park that is home to the endangered species – Sumatran Tiger and Sumatran Rhinoceros. It is still a very much active volcano with constant annual activities. The climb up this mountain would take 3 days 2 nights to reach the summit, or one day less if not. There are 15 lakes surrounding this mountain with one of lake being the highest lake in Southeast Asia at 1996 m which is called Gunung Tujuh Lake (Seven Mountains Lake – there are 7 peaks surrounding this lake). The biggest lake here is the Kerinci Lake at 4200 hectares. Most visitors would come in and stay first either at Padang or Jambi , before transferring to Kerinci Sablat National Park. Mount Kerinci, Sumatra. Photo by WahyuS One of the more popular mountains in Bali, Mount Batur is an active volcano standing at 1700m, many travelers hike a do this short but can be quite tough 2 hours hike up the mountain to have a sunrise view over Bali and its surrounding islands. Getting here from Ubud might take some time but the climb and the view of the landscape and Lake Batur is all worth it in the end. It is also one of the popular activities to do when you are visiting Bali long enough to get bored of the beaches and sea and want to do some excursions. Hike Mount Batur, Bali. Photo by Kevin Poh Mount Agung, standing tall at 3142 m at East is the highest mountain in Bali. It holds a spiritual significance to the Balinese as the Mother Temple of Besakih. Legend has it that it is created by the Hindu God Pashupati when he split Mount Meru, which is the spiritual axis of the universe. This mountain can be scaled in 6-7 hours with a demanding hike. The hike itself is an adventure and many travelers find it a rewarding experience. On the way, you can visit the Pasar Agung temple, which is one of Bali’s nine directional temples. There is also the Besakih Temple, which stands dramatically on the southern slopes of Mount Agung. Agung, the Indonesian volcano by the beach in Bali. Photo by Ben Godfrey Mount Rinjani Mount Rinjani in Lombok is the second highest volcano in Indonesia at 3726 m. It is also among one of the most active volcanoes here. It ha a caldera of 50 km square with a crater lake in it called Segara Anak. Many pilgrims come yearly to this lake to make offerings to the gods and the lake. To hike this Indonesian volcano would take two days of demanding trekking but the view at the summit is all so worth it. Due to Lombok being one of the emerging travel places in Indonesia, you will find quite a number of travelers scaling this mountain with you but fret not as the beauty is for all to marvel at together. ->Read our Guide to Trekking Mount Rinjani Hike Mount Rinjani, Lombok. Photo by Blek Mount Kelimutu Mount Kelimutu is home to the famous tri-colored lakes which people travel through long tortuous roads just to get to. The lakes are in hues of blue, green and red due to its volcanic substances and it changes colors depending on season and time making it somewhat magical. These magical lakes are the reason enough to scale Mount Kelimutu for. The highest peak here is Mount Kelibara at 1713m. Mount Kelimutu is situated in Kelimutu National Park in Central Flores of Indonesia. -> Read our Guide to Mount Kelimutu National Park Bonus mountain as technically this is the hardest to scale and probably not everyone can do this as a mountain to hike, it is still notable as it is the highest peak in Indonesia. Puncak Jaya (Cartensz Pyramid) This is one of the world’s seven ultimate summit and the only mountain in Indonesia which has a glacier top. Puncak Jaya or Cartensz Pyramid is the highest point in between Himalayas and Andes, crowning it the highest island peak in the world. It lies in Lorentz National Park in Papua, Indonesia. The climb up this mountain is highly technical and tough, therefore it is well advised to get a guide and prepare yourself thoroughly for it. Conquering this mountain is part of the peak-bagging list of Seven Summits of the world. Puncak Jaya / Cartensz Pyramid Volcano Mountain in Papua. Photo by Alfindra Primaldhi Ijen Crater, East Java Trekking Mount Rinjani, Lombok Hiking Mount Bromo Puncak Jaya at Lorentz National Park Author RachelCategories HIking, Top and Best of, Trekking23 Comments on Top 10 Volcano Mountains You Must Hike Guide to Diving Wakatobi National Park, Sulawesi Wakatobi National Park, a collection of islands that may sound familiar to many but somehow seem elusive to most. It is definitely one of the Top 10 Diving sites in Indonesia, being home to more than 25 coral reefs and 900 marine species. The name itself Wakatobi is a combination of the four main islands – Wangi-wangi, Kaledupa, Tomia and Binongko. It is surrounded by the southeast Sulawesi district. It is now Wakatobi National Park and therefore actively being conserved. The untouched nature and amazing marine diversity and reefs had attracted many scuba divers from around the world. The World Wildlife Fund had also been helping out the park management to improve and publicize its biodiversity. WWF released a film about Bajo, the nomadic sea tribe that lives on stilt homes around Wakatobi whom had been touted resourceful for diving with their handmade wooden goggles. Map of Wakatobi, Sulawesi Wakatobi lies at the Southeast of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The capital is Wangi-Wangi, and the collection of islands lies in between Banda Sea, to the north and west, and Flores Sea, to the south and east. Why go Not only it is a world class diving site with incredible arrays of coral reefs and marine lives, it also have majestic pinnacles, ridges, ledges and overhanging cliffs. Diving here is an adventure itself that will be sure to wow even the most seasoned diver. Beach at Wakatobi, Sulawesi While the sea is clear blue and serene for snorkeling and swimming. The beach almost deserted and long for quiet walks and peaceful sunbathing. The sunset is unforgettable over the crystal blue sea that seems to stretch endlessly. The remoteness of the entire region itself is good enough reason to come to Wakatobi, you will be disappointed. When is the best time to go Indonesia has tropical weather and only two season of rain or dry. Come during dry season from June to September to maximize your day. Sunset at Wakatobi, Sulawesi Puncak Tomia (mountain) – you can hike up this mountain for a beautiful view of the surrounding islands. Other notable tourist attractions in Wakatobi is: Air Terjun Tirta Rimba (waterfall) Lakasa Cave (goa) Nirwana beach or Huntete beach Bukit Kolemo (hill) Catch the sunrise or sunset at Hoga which is praised for the most panoramic view. Stargazing at night – the place is perfect with dark nights for sparkling stars. Diving – explore the coral reefs and marine species like moray eels, dolphins, manta rays and sea turtles. There are many unexplored parts in the sea for divers with unbroken wall replete filled densely with hard and soft corals. You can do all sorts of adventure diving here and also night diving is notable for its beautfy for example in Marimabuk dive site. Snorkeling – the calm and clear blue sea is ideal for snorkeling, with enough coral reefs to enjoy as well. Dolphin watching – you can take the boat out to catch dolphins swimming by. Island hopping – discover the rest of the islands dotted all over Wakatobi, few notable ones are like the inhabited Ndaa Island (pulau) which has white beach sand and Tomia Island for the best snorkeling spot. Night Diving, Wakatobi, Sulawesi Most travelers will stay in Wangi-Wangi for the ease of transport as it is connected to the rest of the Wakatobi region to Kaledupa, Tomia and Binongo. Also most tourists come here to dive so they may stay in dive resorts which includes all dives and meals and transfers. Else you can choose to sleep in homestays or bungalows and if you want to splurge – luxury eco resorts. For ease of transportation, the best place to stay is in Wanci on Wangi-Wangi Island . There is no need to spend a night on the other islands as there is a speedboat or a boat that can take you to other Wakatobi regions, such as the Hoga, Kaledupa, Tomia and Binongo. Prices for accommodation here range from as low as 150,000 Rp to 380,00 Rp for most options. -> Find available hotels near Wakatobi National Park * By Flight Most frequent flights will require you to fly to Makassar (Ujung Pandang) or Kendari from major cities in Indonesia and then take a connecting flight directly to Wangi-Wangi. Alternatively, you may fly to Bau Bau (Buton Island) and then take a boat to one of the Wakatobi’s island. Now Lion Air had launched a direct flight from Jakarta to Wangi-wangi but only on certain days. Wakatobi airport is on the opposite side of the island from the city. From there you would need to get a transport to city either via taxi or ojek which you might need to wait 30 mins for and then take another 30 mins ride into town. An ojek costs about 5,000 Rp to get into city center while a taxi may cost about 250,000 Rp, remember to agree on the price before getting on. Coral Fan, Diving, Wakatobi, Sulawesi By Pelni boat / ferry You can opt for the cheaper backpacker version of travel by taking a 10 hours boat from Makassar to Wakatobi on a pelni boat, it is only once a month at the first week. There is also boat from Bau-Bau to Wangi-Wangi, everyday departing at Murhum Harbor. To move between the islands of Wakatobi, you may have to charter your own boat else you may take the public boat. There are boats everyday with about 2 hours in between frequency, check there for the detailed schedule. Where to go nearby Makassar – fly back to the city as a springboard to other places in Sulawesi. Tana Toraja – 300 km away from Makassar with at least 8-10 hours drive for ancient funeral rites and cultural village visit. Diving, Wakatobi, Sulawesi There are reported thefts around here so always be mindful of your belongings and where you are walking and your surroundings. Also, it is safer not to wander around in dark places or at night. Photo credits from top: Rachel, Jenny, ourtechclub, q phia, q phia and Craig D Togian Islands Diving, Sulawesi Makssar Travel Guide Sulawesi Travel Guide Author RachelCategories Diving, Guide, WakatobiLeave a comment on Guide to Diving Wakatobi National Park, Sulawesi	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line843
__label__wiki	0.601245	0.601245	Tag Archives: Tkhikuma Dixon Obafemi Columbus Day Weekend In The 88th Assembly District The Columbus Day weekend is almost here so why not spend it exploring and enjoying everything the cities, towns and villages of the 88th Assembly District have to offer? There are movies, music, discussions, farmer’s markets and much more going on this weekend, providing something of interest for just about everyone. The Sadie Robinson “Live Original” Tour, combining music, motivational speeches and audience participation, will stop at The Westchester County Center in White Plains at Daniela Gioseffi 7 p.m. Visit countycenter.biz for more information. The Westchester Italian Cultural Center (One Generoso Pope Place, Tuckahoe) will show “AUTHOR & ACTIVIST: THE DANIELA GIOSEFFI STORY”, a documentary about the acclaimed poet, at 7 p.m. Visit wiccny.org for more information. The After Dark Book Club will meet at the Pelham Library (530 Colonial Avenue, Pelham) to discuss “No Great Mischief” by Alistair MacLeod at 7:30 p.m. Visit pelhamlibrary.org for more information. The Scarsdale Forum will host a public forum and membership meeting at the Scarsdale Library (54 Olmstead Road, Scarsdale) at 7:30 p.m. All are invited. Visit scarsdaleforum.com for more information. Montefiore Medical Center and White Plains Hospital are combining to host a panel discussion at Bloomingdale’s (175 Bloomingdale Road, White Plains) around genetic health, the importance of a family history and breast cancer awareness from5:30-7:30 p.m. I will be moderating the discussion. Call 718-920-6786 for more information. The New Rochelle Down To Earth Farmer’s Market will take place from 8:30 a.m.- 2 p.m. at Huguenot Park/Twin Lakes. Visit http://tinyurl.com/jsbomn4 for more information. The Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum (895 Shore Road, Pelham Bay Park) will host its “First Friday Music & Trolley” program from 5:30-8:30 p.m. Queen Esther and the Jeremy Bacon Jazz Trio will perform while the trolley will make hourly trips from the #6 Pelham Bay Park subway station. The Mansion will also host its Garden Centennial Exhibition Opening from 5-6 p.m. Visit bartowpellmansionmuseum.org for more information. The Bronxville Women’s Club (135 Midland Avenue, Bronxville) will hold a reception for wood-working artist Saud Omran from 7-9 p.m. Visit bronxvillewomensclub.org for more information. The Eastchester Columbus Day Carnival and Festival will kick off at Lake Isle Country Club (660 White Plains Road, Eastchester at 7 p.m. There will be a DJ Dance Party beginning at 8 p.m. Visit eastchestercolumbusday.bandzoogle.com for more information. The Picture House (175 Wolfs Lane, Pelham) will show the Stephen King thriller “The Shining” at 9:30 p.m. as part of its Friday Night Frights Series. Visit thepicturehouse.org for more information. The Friends of the New Rochelle Library will host a major book sale at the New Rochelle Public Library (1 Library Plaza, New Rochelle) from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Visit nrpl.org for more information. The Eastchester Public Library Film series will continue at the library (11 Oakridge Place, Eastchester) with a 1:30 p.m. showing of “A League of Their Own”, starring Gina Davis and Madonna. Visit eastchesterlibrary.org for more information. WestCOP and New Rochelle C.A.P.’s will present “A Night of Champions” from 7 p.m.-midnight at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church (10 Mill Road, New Rochelle). Pastor Denise Campbell, Reuben Barajes, Tkhikuma Dixon Obafemi, Dr. Tahira Chase, Dr. Angela Campbell, Dr. Linda Williams, Angela Farrish and Judie Eisenberg will be honored. Call 914-636-3050 for more information. The New Rochelle Downtown BID Grand Market will take place from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. on the New Rochelle Library Green. Visit newrochellegrandmarket.com for more information. The Bronxville Farmer’s Market will take place from 8:30 a.m.-1 p.m. at Stone Place and Paxton Avenue, Bronxville. Visit bronxvillefarmersmarket.com for more information. The Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum (895 Shore Road, Pelham Bay Park) will host its “Fall into Fall Harvest Festival”. There will be food, music, crafts and a giant hay-bale tower. Visit bartowpellmansionmusuem.org for more information. The Great Escapery, a mobile escape and mystery company, will present “The Heist” at The Westchester County Center with shows from noon-10 p.m. Visit greatescapery.com for more information. The Fitness Expo returns to the Westchester County Center from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Visit fitnessexpo2016.com for more information. The St. Paul’s Church and National Historic Site (897 S. Columbus Avenue, Mount Vernon) will host the Bob Arthur’s Jazz Trio for a 1 p.m. concert. Visit nps.gov/sapa for more information. The Junior League of Bronxville will host “Touch A Truck” at the Immaculate Conception Church Field (53 Winter Hill Road, Tuckahoe) from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.. Climb aboard a fire Victoria Moran truck and construction truck and sit inside a helicopter. Visit jlbtouchatruck.weebly.com for more information. The Eastchester Columbus Day Carnival and Festival continues at Lake Isle Country Club (660 White Plains Road, Eastchester) from 1-11 p.m. There will be live music, a homemade meatball contest and a homemade wine contest throughout the day. Visit eastchestercolumbusday.bandzoogle.com for more information. The Walkabout Clearwater Coffeehouse will host The Gaslight Tinkers and Low Lily in a double bill at the Memorial United Methodist Church (250 Bryant Avenue, White Plains) at 7:30 p.m. Visit walkaboutclearwater.org for more information. The Scarsdale Cookbook Club will host cookbook author and vegan specialist Victoria Moran at The Scarsdale Library (54 Olmstead Road, Scarsdale) from 2-4 p.m. She will discuss eating healthy and living compassionately. Visit scarsdalelibrary.org for more information. The Eastchester Library (11 Oakridge Place, Eastchester) will host 10 Westchester-based indie authors from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. for “Indie Authors” as they discuss the trials and tribulations of self-publishing. Visit eastchesterlibrary.org for more information. Alvin & Friends Restaurant (14 Memorial Highway, New Rochelle) will host “Sunday Jazz Brunch” beginning at 11:30 a.m. There will be live music and an extensive menu. Visit alvinandfriendsrestaurant.com for more information. The Eastchester Columbus Day Carnival and Festival continues at Lake Isle Country Club (660 White Plains Road, Eastchester) from 1-11 p.m. There will be live music and a fireworks show by Grucci. Visit eastchestercolumbusday.bandzoogle.com for more information. Columbus Day fireworks in Eastchester The Eastchester Columbus Day Parade will begin at The Immaculate Conception Church (53 Winter Hill Road, Tuckahoe) at 3:30 p.m. and finish at the Lake Isle Country Club. Visit eastchestercolumbusday.bandzoogle.com for more information. The Hoff-Barthelson Music School (25 School Lane, Scarsdale) will hold a memorial concert for former faculty member Edmund Niemann at 2 p.m. Visit hbms.org for more information. Alan Schwarz, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated freelancer with The New York Times, will speak at the Scarsdale Library (54 Olmstead Road, Scarsdale) about ADHD, children, doctors and big pharma at 2 p.m. Visit scarsdalelibrary.org for more information. The Eastchester Library (11 Oakridge Place, Eastchester) will present the M&M Production of “The Last Romance”, a drama/comedy about the power of love. Visit eastchesterlibrary.org for more information. The Community Church of the Pelhams is accepting volunteers for its Westchester Habitat for Humanity project in Mount Vernon. There will be an orientation meeting and lunch at the church (448 Washington Avenue, Pelham) before heading over to the work site. Visit communitychurchofpelham.org for more information. The Humane Society of Westchester, located in New Rochelle, will join Pet Rescue in hosting Hounds on the Sound, a dog walk-a-thon and festival at 10 a.m. at Harbor Island Park (Mamaroneck Avenue and East Boston Post Road, Mamaroneck). There will be contests for best doggie costume, best tail-wagging and more. Visit humanesocietyofwestchester.org for more information. Alan Schwarz, Alistair MacLeod, Alvin & Friends Restaurant, Amy Paulin, Angela Farrish, Bloomingdale's, Bronxville Farmer's Market, Columbus Day, Daniela Gioseffi, Dr. Angela Campbell, Dr. Linda Williams, Dr. Tahira Chase, Eastchester, Grucci, Hoff-Barthelson Music School, Huguenot Park, Immaculate Conception Church, Judie Eisenberg, Lake Isle Country Club, Montefiore Medical Center, New Rochelle, New Rochelle Library, New York Times, Pastor Denise Campbell, Pelham, Queen Esther and the Jeremy Bacon Jazz Trio, Reuben Barajes, Sadie Robinson, Saud Omran, Scarsdale Cookbook Club, Scarsdale Library, The After Dark Book Club, The Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum, The Bronxville Women's Club, The Community Church of the Pelhams, The Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, The Humane Society of Westchester, The Junior League of Bronxville, The Picture House, The Scarsdale FOrum, The Shining, The Walkabout Clearwater Coffeehouse, The Westchester Italian Cultural Center, Tkhikuma Dixon Obafemi, Victoria Moran, Westchester County Center, White Plains, White Plains Hospital, White Plains Presbyterian Church, Wolfs Lane Leave a comment	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line848
__label__cc	0.599675	0.400325	Challenges in the Pap diagnosis of endocervical adenocarcinoma in situ Shuang Niu, Kyle Molberg, Joel Thibodeaux, Glorimar Rivera-Colon, Stacy Hinson, Wenxin - Zheng, Elena Lucas Introduction: Recognition of adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS) in cervical cytology is challenging. Materials and methods: We calculated the sensitivity and accuracy of Papanicolaou (Pap) tests obtained within 1 year of a histologic diagnosis of AIS from 2007 to 2016. We also correlated it with the coexistence of squamous lesions, calculated the interobserver agreement, and compared these measures with those of endocervical adenocarcinoma (ECCA). We correlated AIS detection with high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) status. Results: Of 72 patients with histologic AIS and 48 patients with ECCA, 92% and 87.5%, respectively, had abnormal Pap test results. A glandular abnormality was detected in 44.4% of the AIS and 77.1% of the ECCA cases. Complete cytohistologic concordance was reached in 8.3% of AIS and 22.9% of ECCA cases. In addition, 27.8% of AIS and 6.3% of ECCA cases were diagnosed on Pap as a high-risk squamous abnormality. Concurrent squamous lesions were present in 79.2% of patients with AIS and 29.2% of patients with ECCA. The Paps from the AIS and ECCA cases were diagnosed as pure squamous abnormalities in 47.2% and 10.4% of cases, respectively. In the AIS cases, interobserver agreement was substantial for detection of any high-risk cytologic abnormality (kappa = 0.67) and fair for detection of any glandular abnormality (kappa = 0.34). Among the 26 patients with AIS tested for hrHPV, 92% had positive results and 8% had negative results. Conclusions: The cytologic sensitivity for the detection of AIS remains low. It is directly related to the coexistence of squamous lesions. Cytology and hrHPV as stand-alone screening tests fail in the early detection of a small proportion of glandular lesions, although combined testing will improve their detection rates. Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasc.2018.12.004 Papanicolaou Test Adenocarcinoma in Situ Cervical adenocarcinoma Endocervical AIS Niu, S., Molberg, K., Thibodeaux, J., Rivera-Colon, G., Hinson, S., Zheng, W. ., & Lucas, E. (Accepted/In press). Challenges in the Pap diagnosis of endocervical adenocarcinoma in situ. Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasc.2018.12.004 Challenges in the Pap diagnosis of endocervical adenocarcinoma in situ. / Niu, Shuang; Molberg, Kyle; Thibodeaux, Joel; Rivera-Colon, Glorimar; Hinson, Stacy; Zheng, Wenxin -; Lucas, Elena. In: Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology, 01.01.2019. Niu, S, Molberg, K, Thibodeaux, J, Rivera-Colon, G, Hinson, S, Zheng, W & Lucas, E 2019, 'Challenges in the Pap diagnosis of endocervical adenocarcinoma in situ', Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasc.2018.12.004 Niu S, Molberg K, Thibodeaux J, Rivera-Colon G, Hinson S, Zheng W et al. Challenges in the Pap diagnosis of endocervical adenocarcinoma in situ. Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology. 2019 Jan 1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasc.2018.12.004 Niu, Shuang ; Molberg, Kyle ; Thibodeaux, Joel ; Rivera-Colon, Glorimar ; Hinson, Stacy ; Zheng, Wenxin - ; Lucas, Elena. / Challenges in the Pap diagnosis of endocervical adenocarcinoma in situ. In: Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology. 2019. @article{963e9653b117444598e06eef8b73c1a0, title = "Challenges in the Pap diagnosis of endocervical adenocarcinoma in situ", abstract = "Introduction: Recognition of adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS) in cervical cytology is challenging. Materials and methods: We calculated the sensitivity and accuracy of Papanicolaou (Pap) tests obtained within 1 year of a histologic diagnosis of AIS from 2007 to 2016. We also correlated it with the coexistence of squamous lesions, calculated the interobserver agreement, and compared these measures with those of endocervical adenocarcinoma (ECCA). We correlated AIS detection with high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) status. Results: Of 72 patients with histologic AIS and 48 patients with ECCA, 92{\%} and 87.5{\%}, respectively, had abnormal Pap test results. A glandular abnormality was detected in 44.4{\%} of the AIS and 77.1{\%} of the ECCA cases. Complete cytohistologic concordance was reached in 8.3{\%} of AIS and 22.9{\%} of ECCA cases. In addition, 27.8{\%} of AIS and 6.3{\%} of ECCA cases were diagnosed on Pap as a high-risk squamous abnormality. Concurrent squamous lesions were present in 79.2{\%} of patients with AIS and 29.2{\%} of patients with ECCA. The Paps from the AIS and ECCA cases were diagnosed as pure squamous abnormalities in 47.2{\%} and 10.4{\%} of cases, respectively. In the AIS cases, interobserver agreement was substantial for detection of any high-risk cytologic abnormality (kappa = 0.67) and fair for detection of any glandular abnormality (kappa = 0.34). Among the 26 patients with AIS tested for hrHPV, 92{\%} had positive results and 8{\%} had negative results. Conclusions: The cytologic sensitivity for the detection of AIS remains low. It is directly related to the coexistence of squamous lesions. Cytology and hrHPV as stand-alone screening tests fail in the early detection of a small proportion of glandular lesions, although combined testing will improve their detection rates.", keywords = "Cervical adenocarcinoma, Cytology, Endocervical AIS, Pap test, Papanicolaou test", author = "Shuang Niu and Kyle Molberg and Joel Thibodeaux and Glorimar Rivera-Colon and Stacy Hinson and Zheng, {Wenxin -} and Elena Lucas", doi = "10.1016/j.jasc.2018.12.004", journal = "Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology", T1 - Challenges in the Pap diagnosis of endocervical adenocarcinoma in situ AU - Niu, Shuang AU - Molberg, Kyle AU - Thibodeaux, Joel AU - Rivera-Colon, Glorimar AU - Hinson, Stacy AU - Zheng, Wenxin - AU - Lucas, Elena N2 - Introduction: Recognition of adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS) in cervical cytology is challenging. Materials and methods: We calculated the sensitivity and accuracy of Papanicolaou (Pap) tests obtained within 1 year of a histologic diagnosis of AIS from 2007 to 2016. We also correlated it with the coexistence of squamous lesions, calculated the interobserver agreement, and compared these measures with those of endocervical adenocarcinoma (ECCA). We correlated AIS detection with high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) status. Results: Of 72 patients with histologic AIS and 48 patients with ECCA, 92% and 87.5%, respectively, had abnormal Pap test results. A glandular abnormality was detected in 44.4% of the AIS and 77.1% of the ECCA cases. Complete cytohistologic concordance was reached in 8.3% of AIS and 22.9% of ECCA cases. In addition, 27.8% of AIS and 6.3% of ECCA cases were diagnosed on Pap as a high-risk squamous abnormality. Concurrent squamous lesions were present in 79.2% of patients with AIS and 29.2% of patients with ECCA. The Paps from the AIS and ECCA cases were diagnosed as pure squamous abnormalities in 47.2% and 10.4% of cases, respectively. In the AIS cases, interobserver agreement was substantial for detection of any high-risk cytologic abnormality (kappa = 0.67) and fair for detection of any glandular abnormality (kappa = 0.34). Among the 26 patients with AIS tested for hrHPV, 92% had positive results and 8% had negative results. Conclusions: The cytologic sensitivity for the detection of AIS remains low. It is directly related to the coexistence of squamous lesions. Cytology and hrHPV as stand-alone screening tests fail in the early detection of a small proportion of glandular lesions, although combined testing will improve their detection rates. AB - Introduction: Recognition of adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS) in cervical cytology is challenging. Materials and methods: We calculated the sensitivity and accuracy of Papanicolaou (Pap) tests obtained within 1 year of a histologic diagnosis of AIS from 2007 to 2016. We also correlated it with the coexistence of squamous lesions, calculated the interobserver agreement, and compared these measures with those of endocervical adenocarcinoma (ECCA). We correlated AIS detection with high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) status. Results: Of 72 patients with histologic AIS and 48 patients with ECCA, 92% and 87.5%, respectively, had abnormal Pap test results. A glandular abnormality was detected in 44.4% of the AIS and 77.1% of the ECCA cases. Complete cytohistologic concordance was reached in 8.3% of AIS and 22.9% of ECCA cases. In addition, 27.8% of AIS and 6.3% of ECCA cases were diagnosed on Pap as a high-risk squamous abnormality. Concurrent squamous lesions were present in 79.2% of patients with AIS and 29.2% of patients with ECCA. The Paps from the AIS and ECCA cases were diagnosed as pure squamous abnormalities in 47.2% and 10.4% of cases, respectively. In the AIS cases, interobserver agreement was substantial for detection of any high-risk cytologic abnormality (kappa = 0.67) and fair for detection of any glandular abnormality (kappa = 0.34). Among the 26 patients with AIS tested for hrHPV, 92% had positive results and 8% had negative results. Conclusions: The cytologic sensitivity for the detection of AIS remains low. It is directly related to the coexistence of squamous lesions. Cytology and hrHPV as stand-alone screening tests fail in the early detection of a small proportion of glandular lesions, although combined testing will improve their detection rates. KW - Cervical adenocarcinoma KW - Cytology KW - Endocervical AIS KW - Pap test KW - Papanicolaou test U2 - 10.1016/j.jasc.2018.12.004 DO - 10.1016/j.jasc.2018.12.004 JO - Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology JF - Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology 10.1016/j.jasc.2018.12.004	cc/2020-05/en_middle_0040.json.gz/line854

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