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Mark and Jennifer Sallade
We are planners. At the Sallade home, we think and we plan. Then we think and plan some more. We have five-year plans, ten-year plans, family goals, and multiple possible future budgets, all carefully crafted to take into account any possible contingency.
So the Sallade family thought.
The family-growth aspect of our plan was (Lord willing, of course!) to have two biological children, two or three years apart, and then adopt a child. It seemed foolproof. The Lord blessed us with a beautiful, biological daughter, Anna Kate. We loved and cherished her. But three years after she was born, there we were, waiting. As so many others have experienced, we waited and prayed, waited and prayed. The Lord was not delivering according to the plan. And with every month, time was slipping away.
Hope turned to disappointment; disappointment became desperation. Friends all around us were planning, praying, and welcoming their third, fourth, and fifth children. We knew it wasn't true, but at times it felt as though the Lord was passing us by, withholding this good thing we desired. Finally, in the fall of 2011, the Lord changed our tear-filled bedside prayers. Instead of asking the Lord to give us the desire of our heart, we asked the Lord to delight our hearts in him and whatever he had in store.
Adoption became a major topic of conversation in our home. We knew the process could be lengthy, so we began gathering information. But after a preliminary meeting at a local agency, we left unsure and unsettled. One of us (Mark) was anxious about some aspects of domestic adoption, but he didn't want to disappoint the other (Jenn), whose excitement was growing by the minute. Neither of us could fit the surprisingly high cost of adoption into our budget. This obstacle felt like a door shut in our faces. The Lord was not opening the door to another biological child, and we could not afford the cover charge at the door of adoption. Many adoptive families shared testimonies of the Lord's provision through churches, grants, and fund-raisers. Our budget didn't have a line item for God simply providing, and we were uncomfortable with a plan we couldn't afford.
Then the Lord brought into our path a Chinese woman who shed some light on China's one-child policy and the country's many orphans. Our interest was piqued. An Internet search led us to a local Christian adoption agency specializing in China adoptions. In December, we walked into the agency with a list of questions. While we didn't leave with all of the answers, we gained an overwhelming desire to move forward. The road ahead would have challenges, but we remembered the many (different) challenges of welcoming a biological newborn into the world! Adopting from China's special-needs program became our heart's desire!
After praying and talking with family over Christmas, in January 2012 we submitted our application to Living Hope Adoption Agency and the paper chase began. Certified copies of our marriage license, birth certificates, background checks, fingerprints, blood work, and tax documents were just some of the papers we gathered. Friends wrote recommendations, and a social worker interviewed us four times to complete our home study. We completed online coursework and read the Chinese policy on adoption.
In those days, it continued to sting that we were still unable to conceive another biological child, yet we came to thank the Lord that this child would not come from our genes. She wouldn't be exactly who she is, if she did! Our little one never showed in Jenn's belly, but she was taking up more and more space in our hearts. Together with Anna Kate, we prayed that God would watch over our child, bring her home soon, and, most importantly, that she would know God's love. Family and friends joined us in prayer. One couple from church boldly asked the Lord to put a Christian in her life.
Thoughts of our child's birth and whereabouts were always on our minds. She had likely already been born and been abandoned in secret by her birth parents, probably in a public place where a crying baby would be noticed and taken to an orphanage. Was our child in a well-staffed city orphanage or a poor rural orphanage with many mouths and little food? All of those things that make the first year of a baby's life the hardest for her parents—selfless care, midnight feedings, constant holding, calming and comforting—were the very things our child may have been missing. We may never understand why our child's life had to begin this way, but there are a few truths we clung to. God loved our child, and he was caring for her right where she was.
We started the adoption process prepared to pay the expense ourselves, a daunting prospect for a pastor's family. So we made plans. We slashed our budget, sold big items, took on jobs, and rented out our master bedroom. God blessed our efforts, and our weak faith was strengthened to see him pour out support from many unsought sources: friends and family, anonymous donors, our church, grants, and even small amounts of fund-raising.
Saving for adoption depleted our savings for a second car, but God knew that. Friends from church gave us their old one. A neighbor's tree fell on our shed during Hurricane Sandy, but God knew that too. A brother from Calvary helped to repair it. Experiencing the Lord's provision and blessing in this way has been one of the most humbling experiences of our lives. Our faith has grown and our eyes have seen just a little more of how big our God is.
Big decisions were on the horizon. Early one morning, about a year into the process, the phone rang with a possible referral of twin boys. We felt compassion, but were unprepared for their overwhelming needs.
In November we received a call about another child, a sweet two-year-old boy. He was pictured in a bright, clean orphanage and described as happy, healthy, and friendly. We shared the news with family members who were in town for Thanksgiving and began to picture this little one around our home and in our life. All that was left was to send his file for a medical review at the local children's hospital. We expected soon to call him our son.
But it was not to be. The specialist came back with shocking news. She was certain this child would not survive the flight home, let alone the surgery he needed once he arrived. While we were thankful for a clear answer, it was heartbreaking. We grasped for the words to pray. What should we even ask? We called on the Lord to teach us how to pray and returned to that prayer we recite each Lord's Day, "Our Father, who art in heaven." Our Savior's prayer took on new meaning as we realized the best we could pray was, "Your will be done."
After we had to decline several more files, the phone rang again. Late one night in January, we poured over the file of a one-year-old boy with a repaired cleft lip and palate. Mark was smitten, but Jenn wasn't sure. We decided to sleep and talk in the morning. But thoughts of this little boy kept Jenn awake crying for the time he had spent without a family, for the surgery he went through all alone, for all of the fun baby things he had missed. The next day we spoke with our medical specialist. She was concerned that he might have a serious neurological disorder, and after much discussion and prayer we said no.
Saying no to adopting a child plays with your mind and heart. How could we say no to an orphan, a child desperately in need of a home? How did we know the Lord wasn't directing our steps in this path? The truth is, we didn't. But we prayed and trusted that when the time came, the path would be clear and God's will would be done. We were so thankful for resources like medical specialists to help us make a decision, but we knew that ultimately we needed to lift our eyes to the Lord. From him our help comes, and in his perfect timing. We braced ourselves for what could have been a very long wait.
To our surprise, only a few weeks later we received another, unexpected match—this one our first girl! Three years old, she was cute as a button with a minor special need—we could hardly believe it! We were out of town with family, so we ducked away time and again to talk and pray. After a flurry of phone calls with our medical specialist, on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013, we submitted our Letter of Intent, our official request to adopt Wang, Qi Hong—our own Rachel Elizabeth!
Our home overflowed with joy and thankfulness! But at the same time, stomachs were in knots and sleep was lost as we waited on China to approve our request to adopt Rachel. It seemed as though the Lord was giving us a precious, second daughter and our fearful, childish hearts demanded, "Ours!" So we prayed. "May we be ready for you to give or take as you see fit, and may the Good Shepherd watch over his little lamb."
Summer was a whirlwind! Our Letter of Acceptance came in record time, only twenty days. We were even able to send Rachel a care package in time for her third birthday. Subsequent papers were processed in a timely manner and we received our travel approval in July. Two weeks later, we were on a plane to China. When the Lord showed us the path, he made us move!
On July 29, we joined a dozen other families in the local Chinese Civil Affairs Office, hearts racing, palms sweating, voices shaking, and diaper bags stuffed. We had spent our morning praying and reading God's Word, nervously walking the streets around our hotel, trying to prepare ourselves to meet our Rachel that afternoon. Over the past two years, we had read an exorbitant number of books, blogs, and articles. Oh, we had planned. But how would the Lord continue to direct our steps?
We still couldn't picture exactly how God was going to graft Rachel into our family and especially how the first few hours, days, and weeks would go. Would she reject us, shut down, cry and mourn, rage and scream? Would she be fine at first, then fall apart? Would she be clingy and helpless or strong and stoic? Would the language barrier have us frustrated or would it be no big deal? Thankfully, in those moments the Lord reminded us how smoothly he had paved our way. Our faith was weak and our abilities were meager, but the Lord continued to guide us, one day at a time. We knew we could go to meet Rachel—with all of our excitement, nervousness, joy, and peace—because the Lord, our Shepherd, was with us and with her.
And the Lord most certainly blessed. We will never forget our first glimpse of Rachel. Through a partially cracked door, into a side room, there she was, hair in pigtails, eyes darting around this strange, bustling building. In the first moments of our meeting, Rachel was shy and ran back to her nanny. But at the offer of cereal, she slowly warmed up, and when the time came, she gladly left in our arms. Back at our hotel, we gave her new toys, played, took a walk, and sat down around our coffee table for our first dinner with our new daughter. Later that night, we enjoyed Face Time with Anna Kate and Grandma, who were just waking up back in Pennsylvania. As soon as Rachel saw Anna Kate, she ran off to find the photo book we had sent her. She pointed to Anna Kate's picture and said, "Jie jie!" (big sister!). It was overwhelming.
The first couple of days came with some high highs and low lows. Rachel easily sat with us, let us hold her, looked in our eyes, smiled, and laughed. She also threw major tantrums and cried, pointing to the door. But we were glad for opportunities to comfort her as she grieved a major loss—her home for the past three years, her "family" at the orphanage, her bed, her language, everything.
While in China, we took the opportunity to visit Rachel's orphanage. With Rachel on our laps, we made the two-hour trek, passing city after city of expanding high-rises. When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that Rachel had been enrolled in their preschool program. Former nannies greeted Rachel at the door to her classroom with hugs, kisses, and candy. Rachel burst into tears while the other children gathered around and gave her hugs. It was evident that she had received remarkably tender, loving care.
One special aspect of this trip was that Jenn had a chance to talk to the preschool director. After chatting a while, the director asked Jenn a stunning question: "Are you a Christian?" Shocked, Jenn answered, "Yes," and, hesitating a bit, asked the director the same question. She said yes! We hadn't even dared to pray for such a blessing, because we thought it was impossible. We were so thankful for those who were bold enough to pray for such a miracle, and especially thankful to the Lord who had been tending his little lamb all along.
But that was not the day's only surprise. The preschool director told us of a dear man at the orphanage who was a father-like friend to Rachel. Only moments later, he came running over, overflowing with broken English, telling us of his special relationship with Rachel. "There are nine hundred children at this orphanage," he said, "but she is my favorite." He recounted how he was there the day the police officer brought her to the facility. He shared stories of her daily visits to his office. When Rachel still wasn't walking at age two, he gave her calcium supplements every day until she was up and going. He laughed about her temper tantrums and told us how clever she was. "I promised myself I wouldn't cry," he told us, thanking us profusely. We couldn't hold back our tears as we thanked him—and the Lord.
Reflecting back on that day, we are overwhelmed at how well Rachel was loved and cared for. We had been praying (along with many others!) that our Good Shepherd would watch over his little lamb, Rachel. He not only watched over her, but, it seemed to us, picked her up and held her in his arms.
Isn't it a privilege to look back in our lives and see God's guiding hand? For all the details we arranged in this adoption process, the most important ones were those we could never have planned. Before adoption was even on our minds, a beautiful little girl was born in China whose parents could not care for her. While we worried about growing our family, the Lord was providing loving caretakers for Rachel, and the woman who first showed her our pictures was a Christian. For people who like to be in control, we are so glad that we were not in charge of this. The Lord supplied abundantly beyond what we ever could have asked or imagined.
We have been home now for several months, and we have had our ups and downs. She has gone from unsolicited bear hugs, sweet kisses, snuggles, and belly laughs to fussing, crying, clinging, and tantrums. Anna Kate (who was very similar at age three!) and Rachel clicked right away, falling easily into sisterly love. They tickle, tell secrets, chase, pretend, and splash in the bathtub. Giggles abound, as do sisterly squabbles. They have a connection that gives us chills. Watching Rachel find her home in our family is a joy, relief, and reminder of God's continuing hand in our lives. When we begin to worry about how Rachel's past will impact her future, we go to the Lord, knowing, "that he who began a good work in [her] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:6 NIV).
One truth we learned through all of this is that while the adoption process is unique in some ways, it is also quite ordinary. This is the wildest ride we've ever been on. Yet, in a real way, it is but a microcosm of the Christian life for every one of God's people. Proverbs 16:9 says, "The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps" (NASB). From the smallest of daily challenges to the largest of life's trials, we have to trust the Lord. He has shown us in our Good Shepherd that he is working out his will with perfection. He loves us and is trustworthy. There is nothing safer for us to pray than "Your will be done."
At long last, with much help from friends and family, we are back to "normal" life, and have begun to look again to the future. But by God's grace, we do so with new eyes. What is next for the Sallades? We do have our plans. But we trust more than ever that the Lord will direct our steps.
The authors are the pastor and pastor's wife at Calvary OPC in Glenside, Pa. New Horizons, January 2014.
|© 2020 The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Chaplains and Military Personnel


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Modular system for heavy duty bracing. The brace lengths are variable and can be used to support and align high walls and columns beyond 6 m heights.
Triplex R is designed for wall formwork, Triplex SB is used for additional structural bracing on the support frame 450 and its STB 150 extensions.
Construction began in spring 2016 on Procter & Gamble's new Beauty and Innovation Center in Mason, OH. Procter & Gamble is an international company that provides personal care and household products ranging from highend face moisturizers, to fabric softeners, to diapers. Procter & Gamble invested 300 million dollars to expand one of its largest facilities in the USA, the Mason Business Center, by adding 500,000 sq.ft. to the current 1,300,000 sq.ft.
Ground broke on the new One City Center, also known as the "Durham City Center" in Durham, North Carolina in February 2016.
The STB 450 has often proved its strength when being used vertically to support walls. For a motorway bridge north of Frankfurt it is being used horizontally for the bridge piers.
MEVA Formwork Systems: With the new Hall 10, the Stuttgart trade fair centre is expanding its exhibition space by 14,600 m² to 120,000 m².
One of the latest thrills: Float like a bird at a skydiving center, where an artificial airstream will keep you up in the air.
The contractor chose MEVA's heavy-duty wall system Imperial in combination with the STB support frame and heavy-duty Triplex braces to meet all needs for the foundations of the new Emergency Room facilities.
Three tieing methods in one system. The sytem's integrated Combi tie of using any of the following tieing methods and flexibly changing from one to another:
Heavy-duty support frame for single-sided walls beyond 12 m high. The basic unit fits on any truck. Support frame STB 300, can also be used horizontally.
Heavy-duty wall formwork. Large panel size 3.50 high, 2.50 width footprint. 100 kN/m² concrete load capacity throughout the system.
AluStarTec is a true multi-purpose formwork system comprising a light-weight aluminium panel family and a large-format panel range.
MEVA Formwork Systems, Inc.
2000 Airpark Drive
Springfield, Ohio 45502
United States of America

subset: commoncrawl


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Hi, I am interested in the distribution of return times in simple random walks on finite graphs.
Let $G$ be a connected finite graph with, with two independent random walks. If both random walks start are at time $t_0$ on the same node in the graph, how long does it take until they meet again? I have not found papers on this specific problem, but read that is can be transformed to a single random walk and the question of when the random walk returns to exactly the node where it is at $t_0$.
As such I am interested in the distribution of these return times. Generally I know how to compute the numeric values of the distribution for a given graph. But my question is whether this can be modeled through a given distribution (e.g. exponential).
Besides the PDF I am more interested in the CDF of this return time distribution.


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|Pin It
Part Number:NOTE-REC97
Item Size:3.5" x 5"
Damask Border - Christmas Response Cards
Know exactly who will be coming to your next big event by including response cards with every invitation. Chic tonal lime damask at the top is offset by red and white damask at the bottom surrounded by a triple border of alternating thick and thin lines of darker green. This response card coordinates with a matching invitation. The cost of printed cards includes an address printed on the front of the envelopes. To guarantee color matching with invitation, both pieces must be ordered at the same time. Includes white unlined envelopes.
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By Jamie Gardner
Appling Christian Academy (ACA) faced off against Faith Baptist, of Ludowici, at Eagle Field on Friday night in the first round of the Georgia Christian Athletic Association's semi-final football playoffs. The Eagles played extremely hard on both sides of the ball and in the end were the victors defeating the visiting Crusaders 62-36. With the win the ACA Eagles will now travel to Douglasville to face Kings Way Christian School on Friday, November 1, to decide which team will be crowned State Champions. The game is expected to start at 7:30 p.m.
[Full Story »]


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The Recovery Act is "Lighting Up" the streets of Philadelphia
You are here
MAYOR MICHAEL NUTTER (D-PA): We're here to announce a partnership among the city, the Department of Energy and the federal Department of Energy. And we have Congressman Fattah here representing the feds and of course PECO that will have our Streets Department technicians replace all of the city's 90,000 traffic signals with the latest in LED technology right here in Philadelphia.
KATHERINE GAJEWSKI: This program is one of the programs that we're funding with our Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, and we are able to take $3 million of this funding and match it with a $3 million rebate from our utility, PECO Energy, to put $6 million into replacing all of our LED traffic signals across the city. So we're going to be saving the city of Philadelphia money, and we're also going to be able to put the crews to work who are doing the insulation work.
TOBY RUSSELL: This project is one example of the literally thousands of energy-efficiency and renewable projects being undertaken by communities across the nation. It benefits our nation by changing the way we consume energy at the same time as creating the local green jobs that are critical to revitalizing our economy.
DOUG WILLIAMS: A little while ago, I applied, you know, to have a job with the city. And a little bit – a while later, they gave me a letter for an interview. They brought all of us on board and told us exactly what we would be hired for with this LED project.
DELAIN BEST: I was looking for, I guess, a really good job, and I got one. I don't – I don't have a problem with it at all. Every day, it's excellent for me.
MAYOR NUTTER: Recovery is coming to cities. We are making investments. We are putting people to work and so we're very, very excited and very pleased that President Obama and his administration are making investments in cities and helping all of us to work our way out of the recession.


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Plan IOV 2020 is an action plan spanning four years; adopted at the most recent IOV General Assembly held in Bergamo, Italy. The event took place in November of 2016.
Plan IOV 2020 aims to institutionalize standards and practices that will establish IOV as a professional global organization. IOVs board members are volunteers.
Plan IOV 2020 mandates the creation of five core commissions and six IOV Regions worldwide.
The five core commissions include:
- Festivals and Practices Commission;
- Science, Research, and Finance Commission;
- Communication and Publications Commission;
- IOV Youth Commission; and
- Special Projects Commission.
Commission members shall meet regularly, either in person or through online conferences. On the internet, members and visitors will be updated as regards the commission's progress of their operations. The Commission Chairs are member of the IOV Board of Directors and shall establish and provide support to their own sub-commissions—with the aim of spreading the IOV mission.
IOV has 6 regions worldwide. These regions correspond to the regions established by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). A Regional Executive Director (RED) shall be assigned to each region; and all REDs are member of the IOV Board of Directors. The REDs shall establish and provide support to their own sub-regions and national sections—with the aim of spreading the IOV mission.


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Decision : CONF 003 X.10
Progress Report on the Preparation of a Global Strategy for a Representative World Heritage List
X.1 At its seventeenth session in Cartagena, the Committee requested the World Heritage Centre and ICOMOS to continue their efforts in preparing a conceptual framework for "a global study", in order to advance in defining a concept and a methodology which could be widely accepted by the scientific community.
X.2 Consequently, the Centre and ICOMOS organized jointly at UNESCO, from 20 to 22 June 1994, a first meeting of experts representing different regions of the world and different disciplines concerned (specialists in cultural heritage, anthropologists, art and architecture historians, archaeologists, etc.) with the objective of reviewing the issues and considering all the different approaches, and especially all the work and contributions made to date, in an attempt to define a conceptual framework, a methodology and common goals.
X.3 The Vice-President of ICOMOS, Ms Joan Domicelj, presented to the Bureau at its eighteenth session the report of this meeting of experts, as well as a major outline of its recommendations to the Committee, in order to implement a Global strategy to ameliorate the representativity of the List. These recommendations have been included "in extenso" in document WHC-94/CONF.003/INF.6.
X.4 Having taken note of the Secretariat's report concerning the proposals made by the experts, and its presentation of different thematic meetings which took place in 1994 on Heritage Canals (Canada), Routes as a Part of our Cultural Heritage (Spain) and Authenticity (Japan), the Committee adopted the following three proposals concerning work to be undertaken in 1995:
1) the revision of certain criteria for the inscription of cultural properties on the World Heritage List, based on Recommendation 7 proposed by the experts (see section XIV of the Report).
2) the participation of one member of the World Heritage Centre or of ICOMOS at future regional or thematic meetings, in order to present to them the substance of the Global Strategy, place the discussions in the wider framework of current scientific thought concerning the concept of cultural heritage, and to identify potential partners for future regional meetings of a specific nature;
3) the allocation of an amount of US $ 40.000 for the organization, in cooperation with ICOMOS, and on a regional basis, of a first scientific meeting in Africa with States Parties and those that are not yet party to the Convention, which would deal with African cultural heritage and the Convention. The Committee agreed to allocate also US $ 5.000 for the preparation of this meeting. This meeting will deal with various types of cultural properties which presently are not represented on the List or inadequately so. The Committee also allocated an amount of US $ 30.000 for the organization, in collaboration with the National Commission of Philippines, ICOMOS, IUCN/ENPPA and UNESCO Regional Offices, a regional meeting on cultural landscapes of rice terraces of Asia and the Pacific.
X.5 The representative of ICOMOS stated that its cooperation with the Centre was excellent, particularly as regards the meeting of experts held in June 1994. He expressed his wish that the implementation of the Global strategy would be done jointly in 1995 by the two institutions, as this action is for ICOMOS a part of a global scientific programme which includes other themes for reflection.
X.6 At the suggestion of the German Delegation, the Committee adopted the following text as the basis for future deliberations by the Committee on the Global strategy:
"As . a follow-up of the decisions of the Committee during the previous years, several initiatives were launched to improve the implementation of the convention with regard to cul tural properties. One of these initiatives was a working group on the Global strategy, taking place in Paris in July 1994 (see working document CONF.003.INF.6.) For the cultural sites this document stresses imbalances on the List between regions of the world, types of monuments and period but this is not reflected for the natural sites in this working document. To reduce these imbalances for natural properties as well, the following measures would seem to be adequate:
1) expansion of Documents CONF.003/INF.6 and CONF. 003/6 to include an equal emphasis on natural properties;
2) adjustment of the formal and scientific criteria for the evaluation of nominated cultural and natural sites respectively, taking into consideration also the cultural landscape approach;
3) giving priority to thematic studies on the main types of ecosystems and developing strategies to implement the results without delay;
4) reconsideration of the procedure for the assessment of nominated natural' sites with special respect to the term "integrity."
To facilitate this, a specialists' meeting should be organized in the first half of 1995."
X.7 The Chair asked the opinion of the Director of the Centre if it would be possible to organize such a expert meeting. The Director responded by warmly welcoming this suggestion and noted that if the Centre had a budget of USD 20,000 put at its disposal, it could organize such a meeting. The Director also called to the Committee's attention the relevance of such a study to Mixed sites.
X.8 The Delegate of France, explained that in order to understand the concern expressed in the document prepared by the German Delegation and which met with the approval of the French Delegation, it must be recalled that the imbalance noted is partly due to the decisions taken during the sixteenth session of the Committee at Santa Fe:
- deletion of criterion (ii) for cultural properties (interaction between man and nature);
- modification of cultural criteria to allow the inscription of cultural landscapes, the recognition of which had been strongly endorsed by France.
He indicated that the "natural" part of cultural landscapes was not sufficiently taken into account and that it would be appropriate to place more emphasis on paragraph 38 of the Guidelines. He suggested that in the future ICOMOS and IUCN proceed with a joint evaluation of properties proposed for inscription as cultural landscapes.
X.9 Several other delegates, including those from the United States of America, Japan, 'Italy and Niger expressed their support for the German proposal for a expert working group on natural and mixed sites. The United States Delegate remarked on the importance of establishing computerized data bases for sites. The Delegate from Niger expressed his hope that, eventually, separate criteria for Natural and Cultural sites could be eliminated in favour of an unified set of criteria applicable for all types of World Heritage sites.
X.10 Because of time constraints items D, E and F of this agenda item could not be considered by the eighteenth session of the Committee and were postponed for consideration by the nineteenths session of the Bureau.


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19 Jan, 2012
Official 2012 Camaro ZL1 Brochure
Posted by: admin In: Main
On the heels of the first batch of production ZL1 reviews, comes the official 2012 Camaro ZL1 brochure. It features 20 pages of ZL1 eye candy and information. Even though we've known and seen most of this info already, we still can't get enough Download the PDF version of the brochure inside. View the 2012 [...]


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Yesterday would have been David Foster Wallace's 50th birthday. I'm not quite the DFW superfan I once was (I haven't even read The Pale King yet), but I still feel an enormous debt of gratitude to the man. As much as his writing gets accused of being solipsistic or self-involved (often by his old friend and rival Jon Franzen), I've always read it as an antidote to solipsism. Okay, so comparing his legacy to that of Dostoevsky is a little hyperbolic, but the two did have similar projects: both were obsessed with finding a way out of the compulsive self-abuse of everydayness and into something approaching real grace and compassion.
Some recommended DFW reading:
The famous "This is Water" speech he delivered at Kenyon University's 2005 commencement ceremony:
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.
Jon Baskin on Wallace v. Franzen:
The episode indicates what really united Wallace and Kierkegaard—not, as Franzen implies in "Farther Away," their narcissism, but rather their profound appreciation of its death grip on the modern self. Central to both was the conviction that narcissism was a matter predominantly of belief, less a defect of personality than a symptom of spiritual vacancy. It was not something that could be addressed by smart social policy, abstract argument or higher-quality news. Perhaps only organized religion had ever checked the narcissism of the contemporary person, for whom the difficulty was not to be sophisticated, cynical and "free," but to invest herself in some definite course of action. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard had introduced the "knight of faith"—his version of a modern hero—who, he said, would look from the outside "just like a tax collector." In Pale King, Wallace encourages his sophisticated modern reader to acknowledge the glory of the tax collector, a job that is "truly heroic" because "a priori incompatible with audience or applause"—that is, with narcissism.
Such a definition of heroism may seem sentimental or silly; it is nonetheless important to acknowledge that Wallace meant it.
Big Red Son, one of DFW's most darkly hilarious nonfiction essays. It also has one hell of an opening:
THE AMERICAN ACADEMY of Emergency Medicine confirms it: Each year, between one and two dozen adult US males are admitted to ERs after having castrated themselves. With kitchen tools, usually, sometimes wire cutters. In answer to the obvious question, surviving patients most often report that their sexual urges had become a source of intolerable conflict and anxiety. The desire for perfect release and the real-world impossibility of perfect, whenever-you-want-it release had together produced a tension they could no longer stand.
It is to the 30+ testosteronically afflicted males whose cases have been documented in the past two years that your correspondents wish to dedicate this article. And to those tormented souls considering autocastration in 1998, we wish to say: "Stop! Stay your hand! Hold off with those kitchen utensils and/or wire cutters!" Because we believe we may have found an alternative.
Every spring, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents awards for outstanding achievement in all aspects of mainstream cinema. These are the Academy Awards. Mainstream cinema is a major industry in the United States, and so are the Academy Awards. The AAs' notorious commercialism and hypocrisy disgust many of the millions and millions and millions of viewers who tune in during prime time to watch the presentations. It is not a coincidence that the Oscars ceremony is held during TV's Sweeps Week. We pretty much all tune in, despite the grotesquerie of watching an industry congratulate itself on its pretense that it's still an art form, of hearing people in $5,000 gowns invoke lush clichés of surprise and humility scripted by publicists, etc.—the whole cynical postmodern deal—but we all still seem to watch. To care. Even though the hypocrisy hurts, even though opening grosses and marketing strategies are now bigger news than the movies themselves, even though Cannes and Sundance have become nothing more than enterprise zones. But the truth is that there's no more real joy about it all anymore. Worse, there seems to be this enormous unspoken conspiracy where we all pretend that there's still joy. That we think it's funny when Bob Dole does a Visa ad and Gorbachev shills for Pizza Hut. That the whole mainstream celebrity culture is rushing to cash in and all the while congratulating itself on pretending not to cash in. Underneath it all, though, we know the whole thing sucks.
Your correspondents humbly offer an alternative.
A review from The Canadian Review of Books that includes a quote DFW loved (and which is often misattributed to him):
Irony, we're all coming to discover in the Age of Irony, is the song of the prisoner who's come to love his cage.
And lastly, here's a review I wrote of David Lipsky's Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, his book-length conversation with DFW.


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Start #21 Loss (4-11) 4.2 innings 7 hits 5 runs 3 walks 8 strikeouts
Once again the Giants fail to nail down the sweep, this time losing to the stink-wad puds 6-3. Once again the fallen ace, Tim Lincecum, went well past mediocre and gave his team little or no chance of winning. Once again I find myself at a loss for words at the magnitude of Tim's decline.
I am definitely keeping this short. I feel like Tim looked at the end of his ineffective, ( even with great "stuff" ) 102 pitch battle ( game score 35 ). A weak hitting team, like the puds, made him work and pushed his pitch count up ... until he coughed blood. Look for every team here out to take the same approach. Maybe we do have a conditioning problem. I don't know! It is somewhere to start.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Wilted Tim
Post author: JC Parsons
2 comments:
- M.C. O'Connor said...
This one hurt. I kept feeling like Tim had put starts like this behind him. I wasn't expecting Cy Young level, just veteran major-leaguer level, kind of like, you know, Jason Marquis. I expected a battle. Then, as you say, he wilted.
- Wed Jul 25, 05:03:00 PM PDT
Sort of a pattern if you look hard enough. Since the AS break, first game of a series, blowout Giants win. Second game, less impressive win. Third game, loss. Except we won the third against Houston, so 9 - 3 since the break. That's pretty good. First game: 5, 9, 7 and 7 runs. Second game: 3, 9, 6 and 3 runs. Third game: 3, 2(L), 3(L), 3(L). One positive note from today - Carlos Quentin was hit by a pitch again.
- Wed Jul 25, 05:29:00 PM PDT
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The story of Henry VIII, his six wives, his quest for a male heir, and his break with Rome is a much-retold one, and Mantel's twist on it is not only that she is telling it from the perspective of Cromwell but that she's taken a character who is usually cast as a conniving, power-hungry villain and made him a hero and a standard-bearer for compassionate humanism, who is aiding Henry not only in order to stabilize the Tudor dynasty and prevent another War of the Roses, but in order to strengthen Protestantism in England and bring an end to the corruption and brutality of the Catholic establishment. I was intrigued by this portrait in Wolf Hall, but also worried that Mantel was erring too far on the side of hagiography. In particular, the decision to end the novel shortly before Cromwell is called upon by Henry's increasing indifference to Anne to get rid of her by any means necessary, and chooses to do so via judicial murder and the criminalization of speech and thought, felt manipulative, and I wondered whether in the next volume in the trilogy Mantel would face up to the full ugliness of what Cromwell had done, or whether she would whitewash or excuse it (an interim reading of Mantel's previous novel, A Place of Greater Safety, in which she passes up the opportunity to ask some searching questions about the architects of the Terror in favor of focusing on their tangled family lives, didn't leave me feeling very hopeful on this front).
Bring Up the Bodies allays many of these fears. In fact what it put me most in mind of was the middle seasons of Breaking Bad, in which Walter White's allegedly virtuous justifications for cooking and dealing drugs melt away, allowing the megalomania and thirst for power that are his true motivations to shine through. Cromwell isn't quite as much of a villain, but the insouciance with which he cooks up the trial, twisting the letter of the law to allow Anne and her alleged lovers to be convicted and executed on the basis of no evidence at all without ever seeming to lose a moment's peace, shines a new light on his similarly even temper in Wolf Hall. All of a sudden, that portrait of a compassionate, principled courtier who pursued power in order to do good, and sent the king's enemies (who also happened to be his own enemies) to their deaths not out of bloodlust but simply to protect the realm, starts to seem more than a little self-serving. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are both told from a tight third person that allegedly gives us full access to Cromwell's thoughts and feelings, but the voices of the two novels are different. In Wolf Hall Cromwell responds with sorrowful equanimity to the death of Wolsey and the humiliations he suffers at the hands of aristocratic courtiers who still think like feudal lords (and is equally sorrowful as the drives Thomas More to his death), but Bring Up the Bodies puts the lie to this claim of even temper:
He remembers last year, Brereton swaggering through Whitehall, whistling like a stable boy; breaking off to say to him, "I hear the king, when he does not like the papers you bring in to him, knocks you well about the pate."It's hard to recognize this petty, seething Cromwell from Wolf Hall, and it's as if in that book he was unwilling to own his feelings and desires even to himself. But now, in Bring Up the Bodies, that he is the king's right hand and the most powerful man in the country, he can drop the pretense that he has simply been disinterestedly doing what needs to be done, and tell us what he wants: power, and revenge for the death of Wolsey. As Mantel has it, the four gentlemen accused of committing adultery with Anne (who include Brereton from the passage above) are selected out of the dozens named by the tortured musician Mark Smeaton because they participated in a skit mocking the cardinal after his death ("It is not so much, who is guilty, as whose guilt is of service to you"), while a fifth man, Thomas Wyatt, generally rumored to be Anne's lover but also a friend of Cromwell's, is protected from suspicion.
You'll be knocked, he had said to himself. Something in this man makes him feel he is a boy again, a sullen belligerent little ruffian fighting on the riverbank in Putney. He has heard it before, this rumor put about to demean him. Anyone who knows Henry knows it is impossible. He is the first gentleman of Europe, his courtesy unflawed. If he wants someone stricken, he employs a subject to do it; he would not sully his own hand. It is true they sometimes disagree. But if Henry were to touch him, he would walk away. There are princes in Europe who want him. They make him offers; he could have castles.
This is not to say that Bring Up the Bodies casts Cromwell as a pure villain, or even that there is a sense that this is, Breaking Bad-like, Mantel's ultimate goal for him. Cromwell the tireless and efficient civil servant, the reformer, the philanthropist, the mentor of industrious, intelligent young men who take up positions in court and help to spread his reform, is still present in this novel. A major subplot involves his audit of the monasteries, his discovery of corruption and depravity within their walls and his project to turn over their wealth to the country and set the monks to useful pastoral work, which surely sets the readers on his side. In a blatant contemporary reference, Mantel has Cromwell propose an infrastructure law:
England needs better roads, and bridges that don't collapse. He is preparing a bill for Parliament to give employment to men without work, to get them waged and out mending the roads, making the harbours, building walls against the Emperor or any other opportunist. We could pay them, he calculated, if we levied an income tax on the rich; we could provide shelter, doctors if they needed them, their subsistence; we would have all the fruits of their work, and their employment would keep them from becoming bawds or pickpockets or highway robbers, all of which men will do if they see no other way to eat.This is Cromwell as Barack Obama, and when the law fails, the reasons given are pure 1% dogma: "It is an outrage to the rich and enterprising, to suggest that they should pay an income tax, only to put bread in the mouths of the workshy." Less anachronistically, the novel's preoccupation with class--which is to say, Cromwell's own preoccupation with it--is used for more than just exposing Cromwell's own ambition. The higher Cromwell climbs, the more blatantly the resentment felt towards him by high-born courtiers is expressed--the novel begins with Francis Weston, another of the gentlemen who will be accused of adultery with Anne, mercilessly peppering Cromwell with cruel jibes in front of both the king and Cromwell's son Gregory, and in a later scene, Henry's brother-in-law Charles Brandon hisses that Cromwell is "only for fetching in money, when it comes to the affairs of nations you cannot deal, you are a common man of no status, and the king himself says so, you are not fit to talk to princes." This is, again, the sort of thing guaranteed to put us on Cromwell's side (especially in the latter scene, in which it is Charles, despite his harsh words, who has just committed a horrible faux pas with the emissary from the Emperor Charles V), but Mantel manages to balance the two halves of his personality, the underdog and the judicial murderer. You can see how his anger over these repeated insults, especially as he rises in Henry's esteem, feeds Cromwell's desire to cement and increase his power, which leads him not only to revenge on people like Weston, Brereton and the Boleyns, but to a general willingness to do whatever it takes to get to the top.
Of course, to an extent what Cromwell is doing is playing the same game as everyone around him, except better and with less of a starting advantage, and he is far from the only one to contemplate adding murder to his list of available plays--rumors abound that Catherine was murdered in order to free Henry to dispose of Anne without having to go back to his first wife, and Anne not-quite-jokingly talks about poisoning Catherine's daughter Mary in order to rid herself of a troublesome influence on Henry. But Cromwell is the only one who actually puts this idea into practice (not to mention doing so under the auspices of the law) and what's missing from Bring Up the Bodies, despite its delicate balancing of Cromwell's humanity and monstrousness, is the moment in which that decision is made. It is an emptiness at the core of the novel that points, I think, towards Mantel's final purpose with this trilogy. More importantly, it points towards Henry, who is, if not quite an absence in the story, then certainly less present in these two novels than feels justified given that it's his whims and desires that drive Cromwell, and all of the other characters, to such extreme actions. In Wolf Hall, Cromwell explains to his son Gregory his willingness to work against Catherine as the result of having picked his prince: "you choose him, and you know what he is. And then, when you have chosen, you say yes to him"
"But you swore," Gregory says, "that you respected the queen."It's a scene that almost demands a callback in Bring Up the Bodies, some scene in which Cromwell grasps that Henry does want him to kill Anne, and that he is--as nearly every iteration of this story ultimately concludes--a monster (it also demands some payoff for Gregory, who is one of the books' more intriguing peripheral characters; though devoted to his father, Gregory lacks the intelligence and killer instinct that make Cromwell such a successful courtier, and seems destined to the life of an idle gentleman. Cromwell seems to regard him with a mixture of love and disdain, alternating between the desire to protect him and rub his face in what's been done in order to give him the cushy life he's grown accustomed to). Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies both point out Henry's selfishness, his childishness, his need to always see himself as the good guy and the wronged party, but Cromwell himself seems to elide these--he recognizes them, but he doesn't acknowledge them or the fact that he has linked his fortunes to a sociopath, even as that connection determines his own actions. Bring Up the Bodies being the middle part of a trilogy, it seems likely that the final volume will turn its gaze to Henry and the consequences of Cromwell's choosing him as his prince, that just as Bring Up the Bodies opens up Cromwell's voice and lets us see his ambition, the next volume will open it further and let us see his feelings towards Henry (in fact the ending of Bring Up the Bodies seems to promise this: after Anne's death, one of Cromwell's associates asks "if this is what Cromwell does to the cardinal's lesser enemies, what will he do by and by to the king himself?", an obvious question that has nevertheless gone completely unacknowledged by Cromwell's internal narrative in the previous two books). But until the tone of Mantel's conclusion on this point is known, it's hard to know what her project for Cromwell, and with these books, is, and therefore hard to know how to take either Wolf Hall or Bring Up the Bodies.
"So I do. And I would respect her corpse."
"You would not work her death, would you?"
He halts. He takes his son's arm, turns him to look into his face. "Retrace our steps through this conversation." Gregory pulls away. "No, listen, Gregory. I said, you give way to the king's requests. You open the way to his desires. That is what a courtier does. Now, understand this: it is impossible that Henry should require me or any other person to harm the queen. What is he, a monster?"
One of the reasons that the story of Henry VIII is retold so often is how versatile it is. It encompasses family, politics and religion, and has so many interesting movers and shakers, that you could tell it from almost any perspective and in almost any way--tragedy, romance, soap opera, political intrigue, farce--and end up with a good story. But to me, the story is, at its heart, about women. It would be hard to come up with a better illustration of how patriarchy screws women over, of the zero-sum game they're made to play with other women, of the chutes and ladders a woman must traverse when she sets out to parlay her biology into power, of the inescapable trap that is the virgin-whore dichotomy, than the six wives of Henry VIII. You can play by Catherine's rules, tolerating disrespect and infidelity so long as you get to keep the titles of wife and queen, only to be told that you have to relinquish them, discovering that the protection you thought they offered you has disappeared. You can play by Anne's rules (or rather The Rules), playing the harlot but refusing to give up the goods except for a ring and a crown, but these won't make you any safer than your predecessor, and the power you amassed when your demands for respect were enticing and sexy will melt away as soon as these become grating. If you're unfaithful, you die; if you're faithful, you still die. If you can't bear a male heir, you die; if you do bear a male heir, you still die. And best of all, at no point during this decades-long process will anyone around you stop to consider that maybe the problem here isn't with the women, but with the man who, directly or indirectly, caused the deaths of four out of his six wives. (Actually, the real best part is the surprise twist ending, the fact that all that desperate, bloody scrambling after a male heir results only in the brief, inconsequential reign of Edward VI, while the seemingly unimportant daughter of the ignominiously dispatched Anne Boleyn becomes one of England's most famous monarchs, but most of the characters in Mantel's books will never have the historical perspective necessary to get that joke.)
For all her emphasis on Cromwell, it's pretty clear that Mantel realizes this. She uses the unequal relationship between men and women in several interesting ways, most obviously in the way that the erosion of his empathy towards women signals Cromwell's moral devolution. In Wolf Hall, Cromwell is surrounded by women, and not just the ones familiar from history. He has close relationships with his wife, his daughters, his sisters and sisters-in-law, his nieces, the wives of his friends, and even a poor widow who comes to him looking for work. He develops a a rapport, and a quiet flirtation, with Mary Boleyn, and falls half in love with Jane Seymour. In Bring Up the Bodies those women are absent--dead or married off or simply not mentioned--while the important historical figures are viewed with incomprehension and disdain. Cromwell clearly dislikes Anne, deriding her not simply for her unsavory methods--asking him to arrange for someone to compromise Mary's honor, for example, to which he sniffily replies that "That is not my aim and those are not my methods," even though we know that he has done and will do worse--but for losing her looks and the king's favor. He frequently comments that she uses "women's weapons," and it's clear that this is a further cause of his disdain for her. Mary Boleyn is absent, and Jane Seymour is treated in purely utilitarian terms, as a future conquest of the king for whom Cromwell is determined to secure a good price (Jane is another one of the novel's better peripheral characters, though she's less consistently written than Gregory; where in Wolf Hall she comes off as matter of fact and plain-spoken, in Bring Up the Bodies it is never clear whether she's simple-minded or has such an unromantic understanding of her situation and what it requires of her that she has no patience for the pretty words bandied about by everyone around her, a disconnect that can't entirely be explained by Cromwell's loss of empathy towards her). The deaths of Cromwell's wife and daughters in Wolf Hall are his defining tragedy, but over the course of that novel their memory fades, and in Bring Up the Bodies what is left of that memory is defiled. The novel opens with Cromwell flying hawks whom he has, bewilderingly, named for his dead wife, daughters, and sisters, enjoying the sight of them slaughtering their prey. Later, Mark Smeaton is locked in a storage room in Cromwell's house, where he's terrified into giving a false confession by something brushing his face in the dark. This turns out to be a pair of angel wings worn by Cromwell's youngest daughter on her last Christmas, a symbol of her beauty and innocence, which Cromwell then has destroyed. In the novel's final scene, Cromwell is so corrupted by the pageant of false accusations he's put on that he starts to wonder whether his own wife was unfaithful to him, and whether his beloved daughter was really his.
But Mantel is also concerned with the way that women determine the course of the story. When Cromwell's wife Elizabeth first hears about Henry's plan to divorce Catherine in Wolf Hall, she says that it will set all women against him: "All women everywhere in England. All women who have a daughter but no son. All women who have lost a child. All women who are forty." And yet it's Anne, not Henry, against whom the women of England set themselves. She becomes a figure of both fascination and revulsion to the women around Cromwell (when he sees her he always makes a note of what she's wearing because the women will want to know), and it is they who refuse to forgive her for Catherine's fall from grace, and who spread vicious rumors about her (and, of course, it is the women of Anne's household who first point Cromwell in the direction of adultery as a way of getting rid of her). When Jane is asked, near the end of the novel, whether she feels sorry for Anne, she replies, with her typical obliqueness, that "You cannot do what Anne Boleyn did, and live to be old." Since the accusations of adultery haven't been made public yet it seems that what Jane means by "what Anne Boleyn did" is what Cromwell's wife and the other women of England mean by it--stealing another woman's husband, playing games of power and sex with powerful men. But of course, as we know and the characters don't yet, Jane won't live to be old either. Being meek and obedient (the motto Cromwell invents for her as queen is "Bound to Obey and Serve") and producing a male heir will do for her just as surely as being intransigent and failing to produce that heir did for Catherine and Anne. There is no winning in the game of patriarchy, except for the person at the top, and yet every woman in the novel directs her scorn towards Anne and women like her, while even his injured wives refuse to think ill of Henry--Catherine's last letter to Henry ends with the affirmation that "mine eyes desire you above all things," and even in the Tower Anne insists, as Catherine did before her, that Henry has been misled by false advisers, and that in any minute he will remember his love for her and restore her to her place as queen.
Which is where the connection is made back to Cromwell, and which is Bring Up the Bodies's most brilliant touch. For all his disdain towards Anne and her weakness and her "women's weapons," Cromwell is doing exactly the same thing as she, and Catherine, and Jane, are doing--hitching his star to Henry's wagon and refusing to see that he might be discarded as easily as his predecessors were. After Anne's arrest, the Boleyns and their circle repeatedly warn Cromwell that once he's gotten rid of Anne, Henry will have no more use for him, and will allow the enemies Cromwell has made common cause with to destroy him. Inasmuch as Bring Up the Bodies allows Cromwell to react to this, it is to insist, as Anne does, on Henry's love and devotion, and on Cromwell's being irreplaceable to him. Like the wives, and despite the fate of Wolsey before him, Cromwell refuses to see that he can be replaced, and that it is in Henry's nature to tire of people, or force them to shoulder the guilt he won't recognize in himself. Patriarchy victimizes women, but it also chews up low status men, and by choosing his prince Cromwell has set himself up for the same fate as the women whose deaths he orchestrated. As I said, it's not clear to me what Mantel's ultimate project is, and there is certainly space in the story she's written so far to make Henry the trilogy's ultimate villain and Cromwell his victim--something that could be done well, even if it would cement my sense that Mantel has a tendency to like her characters more than they deserve. But there's also space to talk about the way that patriarchy corrupts its participants without absolving them of responsibility for their choices--as Anne is not absolved in Bring Up the Bodies--and that is what I hope Mantel produces.


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EA 'Embraces' SimCity Players: Releases Useless Modding Tools And Promises Supposedly Impossible 'Offline' Mode
from the maybe-we're-just-not-hated-ENOUGH dept
EA/Maxis is reviving memories of its epicly disastrous release of SimCity back in March with a couple of announcements. The first announcement is EA's awkward attempt to embrace its community like an ex-husband trying to coax a hug out of his estranged wife during supervised child visitation.
Modders, EA wants YOU to start cranking out some compelling content for SimCity. Here's EA's lead-in:
Maxis and Electronic Arts ("EA") have a long tradition of supporting the creativity of our community. We're so excited to see the new ground many of you are breaking with SimCity Modding that we wanted to do something that would make it easier for you to continue to create amazing stuff. We're putting this policy in place to ensure that our guidelines on Modding are clear and that all of our players get to enjoy SimCity their own way while also maintaining the safety and integrity of the SimCity experience. What comes next is up to you, our players. We hope the SimCity Modding community continues to grow and we're looking forward to seeing what you create.Sounds exciting. What can modders do exactly with EA's tools? Game Politics breaks it down… to a single sentence.
According to EA's guidelines the community is basically limited to cosmetic changes, such as reskins of buildings.That noise you heard was any remaining enthusiasm being sucked out of the room. Alright, what can't modders do?
1. Mods must not jeopardize the integrity of the gameplay or harm the experience of others. Mods that affect the simulation for multiplayer games and multiplayer features, such as leaderboards or trading with other players, are not allowed.
2. Mods must not infringe any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret or other intellectual property right of any third party and will not include content that is unlawful, tortious, defamatory, obscene, invasive of the privacy of another person, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful, racist or otherwise objectionable or inappropriate. SimCity has an age rating of ESRB Everyone 10+ and PEGI 7, and similar ratings from other ratings boards around the world. EA requires that Mods not include any material that would not be allowed under these ratings.
3. Mods may not modify any .com, .exe, .dll, .so or other executable files.
The terms and conditions of SimCity EULA and EA's Terms of Service are specifically incorporated into this policy by this reference. In the event that the terms of this policy are in conflict with the terms of the SimCity EULA or EA's Terms of Service, the terms of this Policy shall supersede and govern over any such conflicting terms.
To maintain the integrity of SimCity and ensure the best possible gaming experience for our players, EA reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to revoke permission to use, distribute or make Mods at any time, to disable any Mod within SimCity and to take disciplinary action against players who harm the experience of others.It's just as bad as everyone expected it would be when the first draft of the modding guidelines indicated EA's resistance to "game-changing" elements. The final wording basically states that any mod worth playing will be either a) impossible or b) forbidden. So much for "supporting the creativity of the community." And if some modder should create a particularly crafty building skin, EA retains the right to take credit for the modder's work.
Distribution of your Mod in any form constitutes a grant by you to EA of an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free, sub-licensable right to use, copy, modify and distribute that Mod (and derivatives of that Mod), and use your name if we choose to, for any purpose and through any means, and without obligation to pay you anything, obtain your approval, or give you credit. You also agree to promptly execute assignments confirming this license upon request from EA.So, there's that. EA says mod to your heart's content... but hope that your heart is very easily satisfied.
EA's not quite done abusing its community. First, it gave them crude tools and hefty limitations and invited them to repaint a couple of things. Then, three days later, it made the following announcement in order to further insult the intelligence of its customers.
Let's get right to it.FOR REAL? You mean the "offline mode" that someone not employed by EA/Maxis accomplished within a week of the game being released? The impossibility of an offline mode (at least according to PR (who claimed EA's servers performed necessary gameplay calculations) turned out to be not only a complete lie but taking the game offline (via the debug mode) actually made the game better.
I';ve wanted to say those words for quite some time, so my apologies that I didn't take the time to say Happy New Year first.
Yes, Offline is coming as a free download with Update 10 to all SimCity players. When we launch it, all of your previously downloaded content will be available to you anytime, anywhere, without the need for an internet connection. We are in the late phases of wrapping up its development and while we want to get it into your hands as soon as possible, our priority is to make sure that it's as polished as possible before we release it.
In fact, it actually improves the game in some ways. City populations are actually tracked correctly and you can edit outside of your city boundaries. Those additional edits are also saved when you reconnect.We can be fairly sure EA's "Offline Mode," despite being released nine months after the unofficial version, won't contain these improvements. It will be the same SimCity except with months of extraneous software engineering thrown in. And it looks as if EA has finally cracked the "Save to..." code.
[B]ecause your saved games in this mode are stored locally, you can save and load to your heart's content. Our team will be delivering a follow-up blog that will outline the full details in the near future so stay tuned.Fascinating. I'm really looking forward to the blog post detailing the intricacies of saving to local storage. Sure, it seems like the sort of basic thing that thousands of pieces of software have done for several decades, but I'm sure the EA/Maxis spin team has a new angle I haven't considered.
Then there's this mysterious statement which doesn't seem to cohere with the modding announcement made three days earlier.
Bringing the game Offline means big things for our wonderful community of Modders. They can now make modifications to the game and its components without compromising the integrity of the Online game.Yes, while Offline-only mods won't break the game as long as they're only used locally (another observation which ranks up there with the discovery of hard drives), those type of mods seem to be specifically forbidden by the modding ToS.
Mods must not jeopardize the integrity of the gameplay or harm the experience of others.And this:
Mods may not modify any .com, .exe, .dll, .so or other executable files.If these mods are never taken online, there's a good chance they'll never be discovered. However, the modding tools don't seem to allow for this sort of creativity. "Modifying the game and its components" seems limited to cosmetic changes. Bringing the game offline doesn't make the stunted tool set any more complete. For that matter, if modders just wanted to break the game offline, they'd been able to do so for months now.
Gamers and modders aren't going to be happy with EA's long-delayed "embrace" of its paying customers. Instead, they're going to feel like they're being talked down to by the same team that spent weeks lying about the "necessity" of an online-only game. If both the online requirements and the will-this-do modding tools are indicative of EA's future plans, more and more gamers are going to find better games (and companies) to support.
Filed Under: drm, limits, modders, modding, offline mode, restrictions, simcity
Companies: ea


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18 Crafts with Felt: Simple Craft Ideas, Felt Flowers, & More
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Latest Comments
"So cute and fun project to make with the grandchildren "
"My wreath with a few changes."
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Needle Felt Christmas Cards
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You can find a step-by-step tutorial on how to needle felt here. Otherwise, read on for how to make needle-felt Christmas cards.
- Wool Roving- Several Colors
- (Optional) Wool Felt- You can purchase some wool felt for the rectangular background to save time if you like or make your own from the wool roving
- Heavy Cardstock Paper
- Felting Needles
- Felting Mat or Large Foam Pad
- Christmas Cookie Cutters
- Pencil
- Scissors
- Choose a background color from the felt or create a rectangular shape by needle-felting.
- You can create a rectangular shape by cutting the felt with scissors or needle felt a rectangle from the wool roving. You needle felt the outline of a rectangle first and then fill it in. Then, you tuck in the excess fuzzies around the shape of the rectangle and needle felt them into the shape. You also clean up the edges by carefully needle felting them in wearing finger protectors! Again, for instructions on how to needle felt, read this.
- Cut out a piece of cardstock the same size as your felt rectangle.
- Once you have a background rectangle of felt, make the felt shapes. Roll a bit of wool roving into a ball and stuff into your Christmas cookie cutter. Possible shapes can include Christmas bells, trees, snowmen, stars or gingerbread men.
- Place your cookie cutter stuffed with wool roving on your felting mat or foam pad and needle felt within the cookie cutter until solid. Remove the shape from the cookie cutter, turn over and continue to needle felt. You might have to flip the piece several times to felt all the stray fibers.
- Repeat this process with however many shapes you want on your greeting card, in different colors of wool if preferred.
- Once finished, needle felt your shapes onto your rectangular background. You might have to trim the edges with scissors.
- You can add any additional embellishments to your design such as sequins, buttons or ribbons with hot glue.
- For a border, attach a slighter larger background in a contrasting color to the back of the rectangle and needle felt in place.
- Handwrite your Christmas greeting on the cardstock or design and print out on the computer. You can even format a document in Microsoft Word or Publisher to make a postcard, with area for mailing instructions and no additional envelope is needed! A simple "Merry Christmas" is always acceptable! Attach your cardstock to the back of your felt using glue or double-sided adhesive.
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Aug 26, 2011
@glipp, Unfortunately, all of the projects on our site are user-submitted and the original designer did not supply us with a picture for this specific project. We always include images when they are provided, as we understand how important it is to see what it is you're making! We apologize for any inconvenience. --Editor of FaveCrafts
Aug 26, 2011
Can you provide pictures of these felting projects please?
Aug 25, 2011
You REALLY need a photo!
Annie and my artif acts
Sep 02, 2010
I have to admit a picture would have helped. But I'm going to go out on the web and look for something similar... Most times if someone is going to submit a project you should ask for a picture. There have been times that I got interested in an idea based on the name and either did or didn't stay interested when I saw what the actual project looked like. It seems like an interesting idea, but with a Christmas card list of over 85 families, I won't be making something like this until spring for next year. (=
Crafter 8149665
Aug 07, 2010
A picture would have been appreciated.
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The Information Commissioner's Office - the UK public body tasked with protecting ordinary individuals from abuses by the rapidly-multiplying organisations which hold personal data - has today "published new guidance to help individuals understand how and why their personal information may be shared by organisations."
As the Financial Times noted yesterday, most of us nowadays leave a substantial electronic and paper trail which can be used in ways we might not expect. Well, not if we had our eyes shut and our fingers in our ears, anyway. Someone who is wanted by the cops and then goes to the supermarket and asks for the points on their loyalty card - and is then surprised to find the police waiting in the car park - is surely too ignorant to survive as a criminal. Likewise a crook who would continue to use his Oyster card on London public transport.
Not many people would have trouble with that sort of thing, at least not in the case of serious criminals. But obviously there has to be some kind of limit on the process. A cop with a normal warrant from a judge - fine. A spook with a secret warrant from a politician - well, maybe. But what about a repo man? Or a cop or spook with no oversight, who can track you merely because he feels like it, or because a computer has profiled you as dodgy in some way, or some lying nark of theirs has fingered you as a terrorist?
What about when you find it more expensive to get a mortgage, because you use the bus a lot and the lenders decide that bus users are more likely to default on loans? What if, in general, poor people began to find everything more expensive as a result of burgeoning databases?
What about when private detectives buy or hack databases, and search them for individuals? Uh-oh. Those guys can be working for anybody - your hateful ex-spouse, your mad bunny-boiling ex-lover, your business rivals, that guy you got in a flame war with last month. May be they are that guy. Bad news.
It's an argument that the Information Commissioner's Office has often made, referring to the danger of the "Surveillance Society" that could develop over the coming decade. Their point, essentially, is that you can't just trust big organisations of any kind to deal squarely with you - and as an individual in the UK you do have certain rights under the Data Protection Act. Essentially, anyone holding data on you ought to make sure that the info is:
• Fairly and lawfully processed
• Processed for limited purposes
• Adequate, relevant and not excessive
• Accurate and up to date
• Not kept for longer than is necessary
• Processed in line with your rights
• Secure
And of course,
• Not transferred to other countries without adequate protection
Arguably, the spooks at MI5 have busted a lot of these guidelines in recent times, when they told American spies that Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna, and Abdallah el-Janoudi had left the UK for the Gambia and that they had previously been arrested in possession of parts for a car bomb.
This was not actually true at all, and - as it turned out - definitely a case of transferring data abroad without adequate protection. The men were snatched by US agents shortly after arrival in the Gambia and readied for transport to a secret holding facility in Afghanistan.
In the event, MI5 partially redeemed themselves by getting the two British nationals among the group released before this could happen; but the other pair were held in secret jails and then Guantanamo Bay for years.
Do we anticipate an MI5 prosecution under the Data Protection Act? Perhaps not. We'll have to hope that the Information Commissioner does better with some of the other database miscreants currently on the loose.
Perhaps they can stop the transport people operating people-tracking channels, for instance? The FT quotes Transport for London as saying that "there is no bulk disclosure of data," with respect to the Oyster card, which sounds hopeful.
But then, until recently they could have said the same about the Congestion Charge numberplate-scanners.
More from the Information Commissioner here.®


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Kickoff Times Set for Iowa and Wisconsin
The homecoming matchup against Iowa is scheduled for noon on October 18
ROSEMONT, Ill. – The Big Ten announced scheduled kickoff times Tuesday for Maryland's homecoming date with Iowa on October 18and its trip to Madison to take on Wisconsin on October 25. Both games are scheduled for a noon start.
The Terps and Hawkeyes will be broadcast on ESPN/ABC or BTN, while their matchup with the Badgers will be carried on ESPN/ABC or BTN, as well. Television designations will be determined either 12 days or six days prior to the game.
Maryland will celebrate homecoming with a visit from Iowa. It will mark the first all-time matchup between the Terps and Hawkeyes. Iowa finished 8-5 last season earning a trip to the Outback Bowl.
The Terps and Badgers will also be meeting for the first time in 2014. Last season, Wisconsin finished 9-4 and received a bid to the Capital One Bowl.
Times and television information for the remainder of the Terps' 2014 schedule will be announced at a later date.


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Kagan Set to Win Confirmation Easily
Barring a big surprise, she'll sail through the Senate with 70 or more votes.
Expect the usual thunder but no lightning strikes in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings that start Monday and the subsequent full Senate debate on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.
Although sharp questioning about her judicial temperament and legal opinions on social policy is a given, Kagan would have to stumble badly to see her nomination derailed. That doesn't seem likely, given her history. A bright and supremely accomplished legal scholar and practitioner in the highest circles of the legal world, she easily navigated the confirmation process when named solicitor general by Obama last year. With her experience at the Justice Department and as dean of the Harvard Law School, Kagan is bound to demonstrate broad understanding of constitutional law, separation of powers, legal precedent and congressional intent on a broad range of issues. Her testimony will be almost academic. She'll steer clear of the big minefields, probably offering only scant and implied indications of how she would vote on the court.
Like the justice she'll replace, John Paul Stevens, Kagan will be part of the court's liberal minority. But Obama is hoping that Kagan's personal rapport with Justice Antonin Scalia and others will allow her to be a consensus builder, having influence beyond a single vote. Still, the Court's majority will remain conservative and pro-business.
Kagan's aim, like so many modern Supreme Court nominees, is for the hearings and Senate debate to be as noncontroversial as possible. No sword clashing, á la the failed Ronald Reagan nomination of Robert Bork, over the role of the judiciary and federal judges in national policy and federal overreach in the states. No full-blown abortion rights, affirmative action, gay rights or illegal immigration debate will unfold with Kagan -- even as some Republicans try to lure her on such subjects.
Helping her, in some respects, is all of the other news drawing attention away from her nomination, including the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Afghanistan military command and mission and the economy. Republicans are not gunning for a knock down debate over Kagan. Expect some to throw her own words back in her face -- she has written articles urging nominees to be more forthcoming. She'll be forthcoming only with extreme strategic care.
The biggest point of controversy is likely to involve her role in limiting military recruiting on college campuses because of the Pentagon's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. But expect Kagan to offer a carefully worded, technical defense of the position she took while at Harvard. She'll deflect criticism from Republicans questioning her support of the military by saying she supports robust military campus recruiting nationally at public and private schools. That may not be enough to persuade some Republicans. They'll say she is hedging.
She'll avoid offering her personal opinion on the Court's decision early this year that eased restrictions on corporate- and union-funded campaign advertising, for instance. She argued before the Court against lifting the restrictions, but look for her to say she was acting in capacity of the solicitor general, working in behalf of a client (the administration) and not speaking for herself. Republicans strongly support the Court's decision to lift political advertising restrictions, especially on corporations. Democrats strenuously oppose the decision and have drafted legislative proposals similar to the House-passed bill to force corporations to fully campaign expenditures, although there's little chance such a bill will be enacted soon.
She'll also be on the spot for other Court decisions, including ones that will be handed down on the same opening day of her hearings June 28, the day the court wraps up its term. Among the big decisions is a case on the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board established by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed in the wake of the Enron scandal. If the public board is struck down by the court, Democrats will call it further evidence that the Roberts Court is pursuing an activist, pro-business agenda. Another hot-button decision pending involves whether to lift a citywide handgun ban in Chicago. And yet another case Kagan will be asked about involves whether a public school can deny funds to some religious-based student groups.
Figure on a couple of days of hearings and a week of committee deliberation followed by Senate floor debate and confirmation after the July 4 recess. Democrats have a 12-to-7 majority on the committee.
There's no doubt Kagan will get the Judiciary Committee's nod, and it's even likely there be some, albeit limited, Republican support, such as from Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and possibly Orrin Hatch of Utah.
When the nomination hits the Senate floor in late July, odds are every one of the 59 Democrats and about one-third of the 41 Republicans will vote to confirm her.


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Ahh, remember how warm it was yesterday? So warm it set records in Boston (61) and Worcester (57). Well, the cold is making a comeback today.
Temperatures started in the lows 40s this morning but will fall through the 30s today with gusty northwest winds making it feel quite chilly. Tonight, lows tumble all the way down to 11! The weekend looks to stay cold, though not as windy, with highs only in the upper 20s.
But, at least there is no snow in the forecast!


text:
During the day Leisureland suggests an art gallery -- albeit one that's devoted to all things pink. There are photos by Richard Avedon, chairs by Rashid Karim, a fetishistic bust of an astro-gal by Colin Christian, and a toothy catlike creature by the British artist Mandad.
But Leisureland doesn't mean much by daylight. "It's all about parties," says Jamie Kabler, the proud homeowner.
Guests enjoy valet parking and klieg lights, and never have to search for their host -- he's on the red carpet, greeting each by name. The drink trays feature Pink Pusssies, go-go boys create a rhythm on the stage behind the pool, and sashaying past are 'drag artiste' Lady Bunny, whose bouffant hairdo shoots two feet towards the sky, or the voluptuous Amanda Lepore, whose lips are the size of sausages. "She doesn't say much," Jamie says. "I don't think she can, because her lips are so fat."
"I would have to use the word 'sensational' for his parties," says Barbara Wisbey, social columnist for Palm Springs' 'Bottom Line' magazine. "He has people at his parties form all walks of life, and he always seems to find the beautiful people."
Jamie has thrown pajama parties for 500 guests, 'Valley of the Dolls' parties, birthday parties, a coming-out party for Mamie Van Doren's Mamietage wines, and fundraising events for the Desert AIDS Project, among other good causes. The parties are often educational. "I flew a samba band in from Rio one time to teach everybody how to samba," he says. Often they get wild. "A lot of times the girls take their clothes off like the Kennedy parties of the '60s and jump in the pool," he says.
"The great thing about Leisureland is, it's safe for a lot of TV and film stars who are not 'out' but want to come and have a lot of fun -- and nobody writes about it," Jamie says.
For all its outrageousness, however, Leisureland sticks to tradition -- Palm Springs tradition. In a town known for legendary parties, the home has already become a legend five years after Jamie moved in. "That was just a plain old house on the corner," Wisbey remembers.
But Leisureland, sybaritic as it is, never comes across like Sodom and Gomorrah because the sparkling water runs freely and Jamie himself is so clear-eyed and straightforward.
A businessman who devised the Hollywood 48-Hour Miracle Diet (a "health spa in a bottle," the firm vows), Jamie ('diet guru to the stars') hugs people often, grabs their shoulders affectionately, and is quick to teach the uninitiated how to wave their hands in the air like they just don't care. "He's happy-go-lucky and wants everybody else in life to be happy-go-lucky, too," Wisbey says.
Leisureland is also all about family values. "Our family is here in Palm Springs," says Jay Jones, Jamie's friend and interior designer, who claims to be "just a Southern Baptist boy from Oklahoma."
"We make our own family," he says.
Jamie's house, an Alexander tract home in the neighborhood of Vista Las Palmas (where Jamie has headed the homeowners association), proved perfect for its intended uses. "I like clean lines, and it's a showcase for my photography collection," Jamie says.
And although Jamie and Jay have performed miracles with the house, they have left its architecture intact -- suggesting that mid-century homes really are as versatile as proponents claim. It was Jay who came up with the name for the house, which sits fortuitously enough on Leisure Way.
"Who wouldn't love Leisureland," says Joey English, a popular TV and radio host in the Coachella Valley whose own home is done up in vintage Cowboys-and-Indians. "It isn't my style. But it's Jamie's style."
Shortly after arriving in Palm Springs, Jamie decided to become part of the scene. Wisbey helped. "I get invited to everything," she says, "and I started taking Jamie around." Soon Jamie was involved with the Human Rights Campaign, the Desert AIDS Project and the AIDS Assistance Program, and joined the board of the Palm Springs Art Museum.


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Nehemiah Hears Bad News. 1* The words of Nehemiah, son of Hacaliah.
In the month Kislev of the twentieth year, I was in the citadel of Susa 2when Hanani, one of my brothers, came with other men from Judah. I asked them about the Jews, the remnant preserved after the captivity, and about Jerusalem. 3They answered me: "The survivors of the captivity there in the province are in great distress and under reproach. The wall of Jerusalem has been breached, its gates gutted by fire." 4When I heard this report, I began to weep and continued mourning for several days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven.
5* a I prayed: "LORD, God of heaven, great and awesome God, you preserve your covenant of mercy with those who love you and keep your commandments. 6b May your ears be attentive, and your eyes open, to hear the prayer that I, your servant, now offer in your presence day and night for your servants the Israelites, confessing the sins we have committed against you, I and my ancestral house included. 7c We have greatly offended you, not keeping the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances you entrusted to your servant Moses. 8d But remember the admonition which you addressed to Moses, your servant, when you said: If you prove faithless, I will scatter you among the peoples; 9but if you return to me and carefully keep my commandments, even though your outcasts have been driven to the farthest corner of the world, I will gather them from there, and bring them back to the place I have chosen as the dwelling place for my name. 10e They are your servants, your people, whom you freed by your great might and strong hand. 11f LORD, may your ears be attentive to the prayer of your servant and that of all your servants who willingly revere your name. Grant success to your servant this day, and let him find favor with this man"—for I was cupbearer to the king.*
* [1:1] The first mission of Nehemiah, from the twentieth year of Artaxerxes I, lasted from the spring (2:1) of 445 B.C. until 433 B.C. (5:14). It is recounted in 1:1–6:15; 12:27–43; 6:16–7:5; 11:1–21; in terms of chronology, these texts may usefully be read in that order. Kislev: the ninth month (November–December). Susa: the winter residence of the Persian kings, in southwest Iran.
* [1:5] Nehemiah's prayer is a communal confession of sin, characteristic of Second Temple piety; cf. Ezr 9:6–15; Neh 9:6–37; Dn 9:4–19.
* [1:11] Cupbearer to the king: an important official in the royal household.
b. [1:6] 2 Chr 6:40.
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Nrityotsav 2011
Posted by Manish Panchmatia on Monday, August 22, 2011 Labels: Bangalore, Event Report, Festival
Last Saturday, I enjoyed dance festival. Nrityotsav 2011. It was wonderful. How can I enjoy alone. All the readers of this blog "Express YourSelf !" have privilege to know more about the event.
Here are the details:
Organized by
Ninaad School Of Kathak Dance
Ninaad School Of Kathak Dance
Indiranagar Sangeetha Sabha
Purandara Bhavan
Purandara Bhavan
B/h Indiranagar Club,
8th Main Road
HAL 2nd stage,
on 20th August 2011 5:30 PM
on 20th August 2011 5:30 PM
Here is the list of all the performers.


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NC State Basketball
NC State Being Sued by N&O, WRAL, ABC11 & NY Times
According to Will Doran of the N&O, the News & Observer, WRAL, ABC11, and the New York Times have filed a lawsuit against NC State for refusing to turn over records related to Dennis Smith Jr. and the NCAA's investigation into the Men's Basketball program.
The article claims that for the past two years, the university has been "knowingly and intentionally violating the law by refusing to turn over public records." Specifically, documentation of electronic communication and phone records have been denied according to the report.
After the release of the article, a spokesperson of the university reached out to Doran last night to inform him that they had "not seen or been served with the lawsuit and would wait to comment until officials have reviewed it." The spokesperson also had this to say in a statement:
"N.C. State has released thousands of pages of documents and has acted in good faith and transparency throughout the federal and NCAA investigations," the spokesperson said. "In addition, the university was prepared to release extensive phone records, but that release has been blocked by a temporary court order." (N&O)
You can read Doran's article in full here.
NC State Basketball
NC State Makes Top-10 for Graduate Transfer Guard Justin Kier
George Mason Graduate Transfer Guard Justin Kier (6'4″/197) included NC State in his list of Final 10 schools.
George Mason transfer Justin Kier @Jkiiiiii__ Final 10 pic.twitter.com/80zNqAN3tZ
— Andrew Slater (@Andrew__Slater) April 13, 2020
Kier was granted a fifth year of eligibility after missing all but 9 games last season due to injury. He was expected to arguably be George Mason's best returning player next year, averaging 14.5 points and 6.5 rebounds, earning All-Atlantic 10 2nd Team honors.
NC State Basketball
NC State Reaches Out to UAB Transfer Makhtar Guyer
According to Rivals' Corey Evans, NC State has reached out to UAB Transfer Forward Makhtar Guyer (6'10″/210), after he announced he was transferring on Friday.
Virginia Tech has offered UAB transfer Makhtar Guyer, he tells @RivalsPortal.
Georgetown, Miami, Mississippi State, NC State and San Diego State have reached out since his transfer yesterday. @Hokie_Haven
— Corey Evans (@coreyevans_10) April 11, 2020
— Makhtar Gueye (@Thelionkilla) April 11, 2020
Guyer has one year of eligibility remaining. Last year as a Junior at UAB, Guyer averaged 6.8 points and 5.1 rebounds, starting in 27 of 31 games.
NC State Basketball
NC State Accepts Recommendation to Move Case to IARP
NC State has accepted the recommendation to move their violation's case from the NCAA's Committee on Infractions to the Independent Accountability Resolution Process.
"We've stated throughout this process that NC State will accept accountability for any shortcomings and defend ourselves aggressively where we feel it is appropriate and necessary to do so," Woodson wrote in a statement released by the school on Wednesday. "As our response to the Referral Petition demonstrates, we do not think NC State can receive an objective or fair hearing before the Committee on Infractions in this matter. We believe the only remaining option is that our case be moved to the Independent Accountability Resolution Process.
"NC State has a long history of working cooperatively with the NCAA, and we remain committed to working collaboratively through the IARP to address concerns and to resolve this matter as fairly and efficiently as possible." (WRAL)
The IARP is made up of decision makers that are investigators and legal advocates that are independent of any NCAA teams.
The difference between the traditional process, and the IARP, is that the latter's decision is final, unable to be appealed.
NC State Basketball
Vote For NC State Men's Basketball Fans in Fox College Hoops 64-Team Bracket
In the absence of the NCAA Tournament, Fox College Hoops has created a 64-team bracket to determine the best fanbase of Men's Basketball teams.
They determined 60 of the contestants based of the Men's Basketball teams with the most Twitter followers. The final four were determined by the highest rated teams not yet selected according to the NET Rankings.
You: So how does this #FOXFanVote thing work?
Us: pic.twitter.com/7hQ0olkvm3
— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) April 5, 2020
The winner of each matchup is determined by fan vote, obviously.
NC State's Men's Basketball fans were given a #8 seed in the East Bracket.
The winner of the bracket, will earn quite a gift. Fox College Hoops will place a billboard of that team in close proximity to their rival.
Go ahead and vote for NC State to beat Alabama in the 1st round right now.