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More subways by Adam Magyar. His Photos were already kicking it now he turns a slowmotion drive-by into a surreal Madame Tussauds. Great motion concept and beautiful execution.Read More
inFORM is a Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. inFORM can also interact with the physical world around it, for example moving objects on the table's surface. Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance.Read More
»Rock Paper Scissors is a game played between two computers. Like in the classic game, each computer runs its own random algorithm, choosing one of the three possible items. Connected by an ethernet cable, each computer plays its hand – the winning pc gets a point. In contrast to the human variant, the system lacks the pseudo-tactical ability to read the opponent. In this case the algorithms process leading to the decision uses the same random number generator. The process of learning or tactics are excluded and yet the viewer is tempted to pick a side. In the classic battle of black versus white pawns one instinctively chosen by preferred colour or bets are placed on the outcome of the game. In this scenario, the computer will fight to the end in the virtual ring – the viewer picks the side.«Read More
»With this project I wanted to explore the notion of the third dimension, with the desire to try to get out of the usual frame of a flat screen. For this, my work mainly consisted in exploring and experimenting a different device for displaying images, trying to give animations volume in space. The resulting machine works with the rotation of two screens placed back to back, creating a three-dimensional animated sequence that can be seen at 360 degrees. Due to the persistence of vision, the shapes that appear on the screen turn into kinetic light sculptures.«Read More
»Digital Grotesque is the first fully immersive, solid, human-scale, enclosed structure that is entirely 3D printed out of sand. This structure, measuring 16 square meters, is materialized with details at the threshold of human perception. Every aspect of this architecture is composed by custom-designed algorithms.«Read More


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Padres recall OF Jaff Decker from Triple-A Tucson and place SS Everth Cabrera on the 15-day disabled list
Cabrera was leading the National League in stolen bases
SAN FRANCISCO - The San Diego Padres today announced that they have recalled outfielder Jaff Decker from Triple-A Tucson and that shortstop Everth Cabrera has been placed on the 15-day disabled list with a left hamstring strain (retroactive to June 17). Decker will be active for the club's 12:40 p.m. game today against the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park. Executive Vice President/General Manager Josh Byrnes made the announcements.
Decker, 23, is in his second stint with the Padres this season. He was recalled for the first time in his career on June 12 and optioned June 14, but did not appear in a game. In 63 games with Tucson this season, the left-handed hitter has batted .260 (51-for-196) with 10 doubles, one triple, five home runs, 20 RBI, 36 runs scored, 37 walks and a .379 on-base percentage. Originally signed by the Padres as a supplemental-round selection (42nd overall) in the 2008 First-Year Player Draft, he has hit .264 (444-for-1683) with 93 doubles, 13 triples, 66 home runs, 284 RBI, 345 runs scored, 373 walks and a .403 on-base percentage in 487 games played over parts of six minor leagues seasons (2008-13) in the Padres organization.
Cabrera, 26, was leading the National League in stolen bases and hitting .305 (84-for-275) with 37 runs, 11 doubles, four triples, four home runs, 24 RBI, 31 stolen bases and a .382 on-base percentage in 69 games. Cabrera had appeared in Padres first 69 games of the season. In parts of five seasons with San Diego, he is hitting .254 (323-for-1270) with 168 runs, 54 doubles, 19 triples, nine home runs, 101 RBI and 112 stolen bases in 365 games. Cabrera was selected by the Padres from the Rockies in the first round of the 2008 Rule 5 Draft.

subset: commoncrawl


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Enslaved: Odyssey to the West Review
Action games often define their main character(s) in combat, their stories largely predicated on staging arenas for that to happen in. Enslaved takes the opposite approach. It begins with the story--a futuristic reinterpretation of the classic Chinese wor
Because the difference relates directly to development of the story, it only becomes evident as the game unfolds. Initially, Enslaved came across to me like most every other action adventure. As is common of its type, it introduced me to the main character I'd be playing, "Monkey," in a dramatic opening level. And taught me the basic controls as I raced to escape from a disintegrating slave ship I'd been imprisoned aboard before it crashed into the heart of the decaying, long-abandoned, ghost town of New York City.
The first sign of something different about Enslaved comes with the introduction of his companion for the rest of the game, Trip. Throughout the escape, Monkey has trailed a mysterious girl. He awakens to find that she's enslaved him with a mind-link headband, out of fear the stranger will harm her. When I first learned of this twist to the game I worried that it would fall into a pattern of contrived sections setup to play off a master-servant relationship.
It's not like that at all. The interaction between Monkey and Trip becomes a centerpiece for the game, and not by being forced into co-op moments. Yes, the game uses Trip in a number of ways--sometimes Monkey must lead her by the hand or even carry her on his back, others he leaves her safe to clear the way ahead. In places I could take advantage of Trip's support and in some I needed her help to advance. But throughout it all, I always felt like I was 100% in control of what happened through Monkey.
The actual things I was doing, though, were less rewarding in and of themselves. Monkey splits time in Enslaved between beating up a variety of robotic mechs with his staff and clamoring around the world exploring for the next route on the journey. Monkey's fighting moves with his staff look like a well-choreographed martial arts movie much of the time but that comes at a cost. The controls are loose, forgiving of button mashing in one sense, but lacking the crisp response and combo mastery of more sophisticated systems. The frantic pace of combat also goes beyond the capability of the camera system resulting in occasional moments of disorientation.
A character and combat skills development system well integrated to the game's design helped keep me involved with the action when the controls did not. Collecting glowing red tech orbs scattered around each level (for some reason there's always a handful behind Monkey at the start of each), let me upgrade Monkey's abilities to fit how I was playing over the course of the game. So early on I went with health and shield for better survivability, but later on I focused on more situational upgrades, like improving the duration of his stun attack.
The exploration part of the adventure has no such safety net and here's where the commitment to putting story first really squares off against expectations for how a game plays. Scrambling over ruined buildings, making apparently perilous leaps, poses no challenge. Every ledge and handhold Monkey can reach glows making the next move obvious. And they're the only place Monkey can go because the game won't let him jump any place that's not intended nor can he fall to his death.
Enslaved never made controlling Monkey, in combat or out, the center of my attention. The game's focus was on presenting Monkey's journey to me as its core experience. Yet I found it as difficult to set down the controller as any game I've recently played. Only as I reached the end did I fully appreciate how invested I'd become in Monkey, Trip, and their story. At no point had the game bludgeoned me with long explanations of what was going on. It let the tale play out there in front of me; I got it, and loved every minute of it.


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We carefully select new products that match our core competencies and satisfy our customers' needs.
Once a project is deemed feasible and assigned, we follow a product creation process with intermediate (customer) checks to guarantee an outcome that meets the customer requirements. This method has evolved over the last 15 years to guarantee that the first batch of a released product is as well developed as the thousandth.
The process takes 1 - 14 months from project release to production depending on the complexity of the product. Every project manager abides by this procedure so the same level of reliability and reproducibility is achieved.
Since quality assurance is built into every step, there is always early feedback and an immediate response to changes required. For instance, we utilize failure modes and effect analysis (FMEA) to identify and manage risks as early as possible. In addition, we use the Maturity Grid to track and follow up on product and production maturity issues during the creation process.
When a project moves to the next stage, a project review is conducted to evaluate the necessary product maturity.
Corné Schoenmaker
R&D Manager
'People make the difference.
We combine the strengths of individual specialists to create our innovative products...reliable, comprehensive, and on time'.


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THE "LA VINTAGE RESORT" IS INSPIREDfrom an idea of combining modern looks with an old-fashioned vintage style, displayed its style in the color toned white and earth gray in the guest rooms and around lobby areas. Stepping into the hotel lobbies, the guests will get the sense of comfort, coziness, and warm-welcomed atmospheres. Our lobbies are modestly spacious, the guests would not ever feel uneasy and crowded.
At night time, the lobby areas are ideal for hanging out and relaxing in an open-space, stylishly furnished by the comfy sets of couches, elevating your mood by the night's chilling cleared air. There are, likewise, plenty of spaces for you to enjoy your delicious dinner at the pool side surrounded by chilling air.
Conveniently, the tour counter is located right next to the reception desk. This is where our guests can get help in navigating and planning their adventures in Phuket. With multiple choices and options for activity, you would certainly find the trips that are just right for your personal style and budget.
Comfortable guest rooms with full facilities assure
you of ultimate relaxation while staying here.
An International and Thai style residence, bars and friendly staff are awaiting to serve you at Poppa Palace Hotel.
Standard RoomRoom Size: 24 Square Meters
|Located on the 2nd floor, the cozy and comfortable, standard room is nicely furnished with twin or king bed
Deluxe Garden ViewRoom Size: 30 Square Meters
Located on the 2nd floor and higher floor, is nicely furnished with twin or king bed.
Deluxe rooms offers tropical garden zone with a private balcony.
Deluxe Studio Pool SideRoom Size: 32 Square Meters
Located on the 2nd floor and higher floor, is nicely furnished with twin or king bed.
This Deluxe rooms offers pool zone with a private balcony.
Studio Pool ViewRoom Size: 32 Square Meters
The overlooking pool views, the bright airy room is defined by tastefully decorated to reflect the Thai style architecture.
Available in King and Twin sized bed variations.
Junior SuiteRoom Size: 45 Square Meters
Ideal for couples who treasure privacy. These 3 Junior Suites offers a sense of romance with amenities set to comfort your stay, with the living room overlooking sea view.
The elegant and spacious one-bedroom Junior Suite provides a living space, kitchenette, and a large private balcony off the bedroom.
Family 2 BedroomRoom Size: 64 Square Meters | for 4 persons
The elegant and spacious two-bedroom Duplex Family Room with the size of 64 sqm
offers pool, tropical garden zone or a part of sea views.
Guests can enjoy their own spacious balcony of each bedroom.
|Swimming Pool
|Swimming Pool
|Swimming Pool
|Thai Cooking Class
LA VINTAGE RESORT is conveniently located amidst all the highlighted places in Patong. Within 10 minutes walking distance to Patong Beach,
to the shopping mall, Jungceylon and to Phuket' s famous nightlife areas, Bang La Walking Street.
Distance from hotel to:


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elcome to Jamaica House located in Richmond, VA. If you are looking for authentic Jamaican food at a great price you have found the right place.
Opened in the summer of 1994, Jamaica House became home away from home for island people living in Richmond. That means on a Saturday morning when you're hankering for a plate of Ackee n' Salt fish and Fry Dumpling, or on a Friday afternoon the only thing you're hungry for is a steaming bowl Red Peas Soup, only place to satisfy those cravings in Richmond is Jamaica House.
Our main purpose then as it is now, is to provide the most authentic Jamaican fare at an affordable price. A few of our menu staples are Curry Goat, Oxtail, Jerk Chicken and Cowfoot. Some of our proudest moments are when customers travel to Jamaica and return to tell us that they couldn't wait to come back for some Oxtails! For that we are grateful yet humble.


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- Updated 7 months ago
Total Number of Dwellings and Net Additional Dwellings, BoroughMinistry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG)This spreadsheet contains: the total number of net additional dwellings from all sources, Total number of dwellings, and Average dwelling size (persons per dwelling) Net additional dwellings includes conversions, change of use, and other reasons, minus demolitions and all dwellings estimates. The net additional data is by borough since 2004/05 and total dwellings estimate is since 2001. More information can be found on the CL...
- Updated 9 months ago
Area of Designated Green Belt LandMinistry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG)Area of Designated Green Belt Land (hectares). Only london boroughs with some greenbelt land shown. A GIS of this land for all of England has now been made available by DCLG. Download the GIS Zip file (27MB) External link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/green-belt-statistics


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Hello again! This is Karin Vail from Cascade Quilts with yet another Moda Bake Shop project for you! This one is super quick and EASY, I promise! If you have a layer cake that has larger prints that you just hate to cut down into small pieces, this is a perfect pattern for that! It has nice large blocks that will show off those wonderful prints! Let's get started!
1 layer cake (Sunnyside by Kate Spain)
1 jelly roll (Sunnyside by Kate Spain)
1/3 yard of 2 different prints (each cut into four 10" squares)
3 2/3 yard Moda Bella Solid (Snow) cut into fifty 10" squares)
3/4 yard print for binding (or you can use 10 strips left from your jelly roll for a scrappy binding)
6 2/3 yards print for backing
Your layer cake will contain 42 squares. Since the base of this pattern is made from 100 HST's, you will need 50 print squares and 50 solid squares. So, from your 1/3 yard cuts of 2 different fabrics, cut four 10" squares from each, so you will now have 50 print squares.
Cut fifty 10" squares from your Bella solid yardage.
This is the backing on this finished quilt – I decided to piece it using 2 different prints – the yellow from Sunnyside and the blue from a print from Cuzco (a previous collection print also by Kate Spain for Moda)
Here is a mock-up of what it would look like using S'more Love (making it smaller). I love the contrast with this fabric line.
I love the texture of a freshly washed quilt!
approx 90"x90" quilt
Karin Vail


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Hi there! It's Melissa Mortenson from the Polkadot Chair, today I am going to share with you a tutorial for a Christmas Tree Skirt & Runner. I think this is my favorite project for Moda Bake Shop yet.
Do you have a cute little table top Christmas tree? Why not make a quick and easy tree skirt for it? Plus you will have enough fabric left in your honey bun to make this cute table runner to match!
1 Figgy Pudding Honey Bun
1 Moda White Jelly Roll
2 yds white fabric for backing
1/4″ yd. or 1 fat quarter, blue fabric for binding on tree skirt
Embroidery floss
Heat n Bond Lite
Batting (I used quilters dream cotton)
Very IMPORTANT! Before you begin to sew, if you want to make both the runner and the tree skirt make sure that you pick out all of your fabrics first! Otherwise you might run out of a color that you want.
To begin, you need 11 honey bun strips. You need to set them up in a color pattern that starts in the center and mirrors out to the edges. You want to match rows 1 & 11, 2 & 10, 3 & 9, 4 & 8, 5 & 7 and row 6 will be your center row.
You need them to match because your are going to cut them into triangles, and flip the template after each cut. (if you are confused now, don't worry just keep reading it will make sense with the photos).
Sew all rows together with 1/4″ seam. Press all seams to one side.
You need to make a template. To do this you need 1, 12×12 piece of scrapbook paper. Cut it to 9×12, find the center of the 9″ side, measure from the center down to the opposidte corners, cut. Repeat for other side. For photo instructions to make the triangle click here (NOTE: your triangle will be 9×12, NOT 6×9 like in the photos)
Next, flip the template 180 degrees. Line up the edge of the template with the cut edge of the fabric strip. Cut out your next piece.
Flip template again and repeat, until you get 9 triangles… (note your last triangle you may be a little short, don't worry still cut it, that will be the edge piece of your tree skirt).
Arrange your cut pieces into a circle, alternating patterns. (you will have 2 next to each other that are the same pattern, use this as the "seam" or opening of your tree skirt).
Sew pieces together with 1/4″ seam. Leave one seam open, this will be the openeing of your tree skirt.
Cut out center of the skirt, leaving 1″ of the red strip still showing. (if your tabletop tree has a wider trunk, cut a larger hole).
When finished with the embroidery, layer with batting and backing and quilt as desired. I just did a stitch in the ditch.
Cut 6 pieces of ribbon about 10″ long. Pin to opening of tree skirt. Sew in place before you bind it.
Sew on binding, making sure not to catch ribbon in binding.
Now onto the table runner. This runner is LONG. It is 14″x 105″. I wanted a long runner to fit my big table. If you want it shorter just elimante some of the blocks.
To begin:
From your honeybun, collect 5 strips each of 4 different color ways. I used the blues, greens, reds & browns.
Arrange how you like, and sew togther with 1/4″ seam. Press seam to one side.
1 runner and 1 tree skirt


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LANGLEY, B.C., Canada (Sept. 28, 2013) – The U.S. Men's National Team won the NORECA Continental Championship for the first time since 2007 when it defeated Canada, 25-23, 25-20, 25-14 on Saturday at Langley Events Centre.
The U.S. Men finished the tournament 4-0 and qualified for the FIVB Grand Champions Cup in November in Japan. Canada (3-1) won the silver medal and Cuba (4-1) took the bronze.
|The players and staff of the U.S. Men's Team celebrates their win.
"It feels unbelievably good," said first-year Head Coach John Speraw (Los Angeles) who won the Jim Coleman Award as the tournament's best coach. "At the end of the day, the most important tournament we play in, besides the Olympics themselves, is the NORCECA tournament. For us to come in here and win like we did is a wonderful achievement for our program."
- Official Statistics
- Media Kit
- Event Page
- Like USAV on Facebook
- Follow USAV on Twitter
- Contact: B.J. Evans
Matt Anderson (West Seneca, N.Y.) of the United States was named the tournament MVP. Setter Micah Christenson (Hawaii), who was playing in his first tournament with the senior National Team, won awards as Best Server and Best Setter.
The U.S. put three players on the Positional All-Star Team: Outside hitter Reid Priddy (Richmond, Va.), Anderson at outside hitter and Christenson at setter.
In Saturday's match, the U.S. led Canada in kills (41-31), blocks (10-6) and aces (4-2).
"The most important thing for us is we got better as the tournament went on," U.S. Team Captain Sean Rooney (Wheaton, Ill.) said.
Matt Anderson (West Seneca, N.Y.), who usually starts at outside hitter, started at opposite and led all scorers with 17 points on a match-high 14 kills and match-high three aces.
Outside hitter Reid Priddy (Richmond, Va.) and middle blocker Max Holt (Cincinnati, Ohio) each added 11 points. Priddy scored on eight kills, two blocks and one ace. Holt scored on nine attacks and two blocks.
Middle blocker David Lee (Alpine, Calif.) had eight points on five attacks and a match-high three blocks. Outside hitter Rooney totaled six points on five attacks and one block.
Christenson added two points on two blocks and was credited with 18 running sets.
Libero Erik Shoji (Honolulu) was credited with 10 digs and three excellent receptions.
Canada led the first set 21-18 when Priddy scored with a kill giving Christenson the serve. Christenson served for four straight points to give the U.S. a 23-21 lead. Canada tied the score at 23-23, but then served into the net. Anderson used a kill to give the U.S. the 25-23 win.
The U.S. Men broke a 5-5 tie in the second set on two kills and two blocks from Holt to lead 9-5. They increased the lead to 12-6. Canada didn't give up and pulled to within three point at 20-17. But the U.S. Men scored three straight points on a block and kill by Anderson and kill from Priddy to maintain the lead and went on to win 25-20.
The U.S. jumped out to a 6-2 lead in the third set and Canada never rallied.
2013 U.S. Men's National Volleyball Team
NORCECA Men's Continental Championship
Sept. 23-28 in Langley, B.C., Canada
U.S. Roster for the NORCECA Men's Continental Championship
No. - Name (Position, Height, Hometown, College)
1 - Matt Anderson (OH, 6-9, West Seneca, N.Y., Penn State)
2 - Sean Rooney (OH, 6-10, Wheaton, Ill., Pepperdine)
3 - Kyle Caldwell (S, 6-8, Newport Beach, Calif., UCLA)
4 - David Lee (MB, 6-8, Alpine, Calif., Long Beach State)
8 - Reid Priddy (OH, 6-4, Richmond, Va., Loyola Marymount)
9 - Murphy Troy (Opp, 6-8, St. Louis, Mo., Southern California)
11 - Micah Christenson (S, 6-6, Honolulu, Southern California)
14 – Jeff Menzel (OH, 6-6, Santa Barbara, Calif., UC Santa Barbara)
15 - Carson Clark (Opp, 6-6, Santa Barbara, Calif., UC Irvine)
17 - Max Holt (MB, 6-10, Cincinnati, Ohio, Penn State)
21 - Futi Tavana (MB, 6-7, Kalaheo, Hawaii, BYU)
22 - Erik Shoji (L, 6-0, Honolulu, Hawaii, Stanford)
Head Coach: John Speraw (Los Angeles)
Team Manager: Anton Willert (Berlin, Germany)
Assistant Coach: Matt Fuerbringer (Costa Mesa, Calif.)
Assistant Coach: Mike Wall (Santa Barbara, Calif.)
Consultant Coach: Andrea Becker (Martinez, Calif.)
Consultant Coach: Charlie Sullivan (Springfield, Mass.)
Athletic Trainer: Aaron Brock (Storm Lake, Iowa)
Team Doctor: Chris Lee
NORCECA Men's Continental Championships Schedule
All times PT
Sept. 23
United States def. St. Lucia, 25-12, 25-10, 25-11 (Group A)
Cuba def. Bahamas, 25-16, 25-12, 25-7 (Group B)
Canada def. Guatemala, 25-10, 25-10, 25-10 (Group C)
Sept. 24
Mexico def. Guatemala, 25-18, 25-14, 25-23 (Group C)
Cuba def. Puerto Rico, 25-17, 22-25, 25-22, 25-22 (Group B)
United States def. Dominican Republic, 25-19, 25-17, 25-9 (Group A)
Sept. 25
Puerto Rico def. Bahamas, 25-10, 25-17, 25-20 (Group B)
Dominican Republic def. St. Lucia, 25-19, 25-12, 25-23 (Group A)
Canada def. Mexico, 25-22, 25-15, 25-12 (Group C)
Sept. 26
9th-Place Final: Bahamas def. Guatemala, 25-18, 25-21, 25-23
Quarterfinals: Puerto Rico def. Mexico, 25-17, 25-17, 25-22
Quarterfinals, Cuba def. Dominican Republic, 25-21, 21-25, 23-25, 25-16, 15-12
Sept. 27
7th-Place Final: Bahamas def. St. Lucia, 25-17, 25-20, 25-20
Semifinals: United States def. Puerto Rico, 25-13, 24-26, 25-20, 25-16
Semifinals, 8 p.m.
Sept. 28
Fifth-Place Final: Mexico def. Dominican Republic, 25-23, 25-22, 26-24
Bronze-Medal: Cuba def. Puerto Rico, 27-29, 25-27, 25-20, 27-25, 15-12
Championship Finals: United States def. Canada, 25-23, 25-20, 25-14
Past Champions
1969: Cuba (USA, third)
1971: Cuba (USA, second)
1975: Cuba (USA, third)
1977: Cuba (USA, fifth)
1979: Cuba (USA, fifth)
1981: Cuba (USA, second)
1987: Cuba (USA, second)
1989: Cuba (USA, third)
1991: Cuba (USA, second)
1993: Cuba (USA, second)
1995: Cuba (USA, second)
1997: Cuba (USA, second)
2001: Cuba (USA, second)
2009: Cuba (USA, second)
2011: Cuba (USA, second)


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Open Weekend – September 3rd & 4th 2016
Come to our Open Weekend September 3rd and 4th 2016 at Imber Court! We have a full-on weekend planned for you, these are the opening times: Saturday 3rd 2pm - 8pm Sunday 4th 12pm...Read More
Select the Perfect Wedding Reception Venue
There are a lot of different things to carefully contemplate and take into consideration when selecting wedding reception venues. The rent of the venue and the size is among the most important things to...Read More
Choosing the Right Corporate Conference Venue
Deciding and finalising on a venue for hosting a conference may seem like a daunting task. Nobody wants their event to be labelled as failure or poorly organised, and choosing the right venue for...Read More
Perfect Party Venues for a Memorable Event
Organising and arranging parties is a great way to get all your friends and families under one roof. For party animals, an invitation to a party means freedom to blow some much needed steam....Read More
Before Selecting Corporate Function Venues
A positive and professional corporate culture is necessary to instil confidence and professionalism in employees. It is also considered as a must when it comes to motivating and giving a boost to the morale...Read More
The Perfect Wedding Venue In Surrey
If you are looking for a wedding venue in Surrey, we believe we can make your wedding day the most successful and memorable day of your lives. Prior to your wedding we will offer...Read More


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Many communities across the country are developing "makerspaces," environments that combine physical fabrication equipment, social communities of people working together, and educational activities for learning how to design and create works. Increasingly, maker spaces and maker technologies provide extended learning opportunities for school-aged young people. In such environments participants engage in many forms of communication where individuals and groups of people are focused on different projects simultaneously. The research conducted in this project will address an important need of those engaged in the making movement: evidence leading to a better understanding of how participants in maker spaces engage with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as they create and produce physical products of personal and social value. Specifically, this research will generate new knowledge regarding how participants: pose and solve problems; identify, organize and integrate information from different sources; integrate information of different kinds (visual, quantitative, and verbal); and share ideas, knowledge and work with others.To understand and support STEM literacies involved in making, the investigators will study a number of different informal learning sites that self-identify as maker spaces and serve different-aged participants. The project will use ethnographic and design research techniques in three cycles of qualitative research. In Cycle One, the researchers will investigate two adult-oriented maker spaces in order to generate case studies and develop theories about how more experienced adult makers use the spaces and to create case studies of adult makerspaces, and to develop methodological techniques for understanding literacy in makerspaces. In Cycle Two, the study will expand into two out-of-school time youth-oriented makerspaces, building two new case studies and initiating design-based research activities. In Cycle Three, the team will further apply their developing theories and findings, through rapid iterative design-based research, to interventions that support participants' science literacy and making practices in two maker spaces that exist in schools. Through peer-reviewed publications, briefs, conference presentations, presence on websites of local and national maker organizations, project findings will be widely shared with organizations and individuals that are engaged in broadening the base of U.S. science and mathematics professionals for an innovation economy.
The project started September 1, 2014 and ended August 30, 2017.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number #1422532.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s)


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Dr. Robert Moog's legendary synthesiser company launched its self proclaimed "grittiest" sounding synthesiser yet at NAMM 2013.
Starting in 1954 with its legendary Moog Theramin and pioneering the synthesiser world in 1964 with its first modular synth, Moog then moved on to create the game changing MiniMoog of 1970; a machine that is proclaimed to have changed the world of music forever!
So, with this legacy it is no surprise that when Moog launch a new synth, the big boys all want to try it out! At NAMM 2013 the Sub Phatty was visited by Stevie Wonder, Bernie Worrell from P-Funk & Talking Heads, Larry Dunn of supergroup Earth, Wind & Fire and jazz legend Dr. Lonnie Smith, who collectively proved just how magical this new analogue subtractive synth can be.


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An Ask the Pilot Christmas, 2014
Gift Ideas for 2014: From Patrick Smith to Kasper Hauser, Six Cool Books to Stick in Your Stocking. Plus: Memories of Holidays Aloft, and the Worst Christmas Song of All Time.
December 15, 2014
IT'S CHRISTMAS AGAIN, and if you're scrambling for some last-minute gift ideas here are a six books that I'd recommend:
At the top of the list, shamelessly and predictably enough, is my own book. Now a New York Times bestseller, Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel. Questions, Answers & Reflections is the ideal stocking-stuffer for the frequent flyer, nervous passenger or world traveler on your gift list. It's informative, thoughtful and funny; seven addictive chapters of FAQ, informational essays, rants and memoir, covering everything from the nuts-and-bolts of flying to airline customer service to the yin and yang of global travel. The perfect take-along for your next flight. He said, modestly. Click the photo and you'll be taken to the book's Amazon page. For more info and additional ordering links, including options for the U.K, Canada, Australia and India, click HERE.
My own masterpiece notwithstanding, my vote for Air Travel Book of the Year goes to Barnaby Conrad's Pan Am: An Aviation Legend. Sure the title is dry and boilerplate, and already there have been plenty — some would say too many — hardbound homages to the legacy of Pan American Airways, now defunct for 23 years. But most of those efforts weren't very good. Conrad sets the standard with this elegantly written and superbly illustrated chronicle of history's most important airline. Not to detract from his prose, but the photos and artwork are what make this volume exceptional. So many of these types of books simply try to jam in as many pictures as possible. Here, for a change, they feel carefully chosen. The double-page spread of the flight attendants in the doorway of the "Clipper Freedom" is my favorite, along with the shot of the Beatles at Idlewild, coming down the stairs of the 707. There are too many to describe, of a quality and verve that make this a fantastic book not merely for airline enthusiasts, but for any student of the history of 20th-century America. Get yourself a copy and plant it on your coffee table.
Eight years ago, the San Francisco-based comedy troupe Kasper Hauser published SkyMaul, a sendup to a concept — inflight catalog shopping — that had been screaming to be sent up for a very long time. The real SkyMall, which assumes that every American has an insatiable hunger for necktie organizers, remote-control pool toys and garden gnomes, is always just half a step from self-caricature. The KH gang gave it that nudge into full hilarity. It was hit or miss, page to page, but overall SkyMaul was one of the funniest things I'd ever read. Unfortunately it went out of print very quickly. This year, though, KH released SkyMaul 2, an almost-as-funny sequel. It's not quite as good as the original (it couldn't be), but it's more than funny enough. I mean, a bass drum pedal next to a harp seal, described as the "Handicapped-Accessible Seal Club." Bring this book with you on the plane, and your staccato laugh attacks are guaranteed to make your seat-mate hate you.
In a totally different vein, Tom McMillan's Flight 93: The Story, the Aftermath, and the Legacy of American Courage on 9/11, caught me by surprise. The story of flight 93, the United Airlines 757 that went down in rural Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the hijackers, has been told and told again, often inaccurately and distorted by emotions. Tom McMillan gives us what we've needed: a carefully researched and well-written chronicle that hews to the facts without losing intensity. I'm a bit of a 9/11 junkie and will read almost anything on the topic, and I've learned not to expect much from the caliber of the writing. Tom McMillan is a pleasant exception. He knows how to write and he tells a good story. His build-up to the attacks, delving back through the formation of the 9/11 terror cell, is nearly as engrossing as Lawrence Wright's masterful chronology in The Looming Tower, and his insights into the troubled and complex character of hijacker pilot Ziad Jarrah will leave you feeling mesmerized, hateful and conflicted. It's the passengers of flight 93, however, who are the true protagonists of this terrible saga. McMillan treats them fairly and objectively. They were heroes, and they also were ordinary Americans hoping like hell to stay alive. He's a little corny in spots, but McMillian lifts the legacy of flight 93 from the darkness of terror into the glow of a nation's perseverance and fighting spirit.
Flight 232: a Story of Disaster and Survival, by Laurence Gonzales, takes us back to the 1989 crash of a United Airlines DC-10 in Iowa. After an engine came apart, wiping out all three of the jetliner's hydraulic systems, captain Al Haynes and his crew guided the crippled jetliner to a crash-landing at Sioux City. The plane cartwheeled into a cornfield and burned, killing more than a hundred of the 296 passengers and crew. A terrible accident to be sure, but for years I never quite understood some people's fascination with it. By number of fatalities it wasn't close to the worst, and it seemed to lack the mystique, for lack of a better term, of many other crashes. Gonzales has taught me to see it differently. This wasn't just the first commercial jet crash caught on video, it was a disaster that unfolded slowly, over many minutes, in a manner closer to a Hollywood movie than to the template of most plane crashes, which happen unexpectedly with little or no warning. The suspense builds and builds, finally culminating not in some save-the-day happy ending but in a fiery catastrophe. It's the nervous flyer's worst nightmare and a hauntingly compelling drama for everybody else. Amidst it all was the fearlessness and heroics of the crew members, both the pilots and cabin attendants, most of whom survived to tell their unforgettable stories. (As did most of the passengers, which is where the book becomes bogged down. There are too many names, too many characters, and it's easy to lose track.) Unlike most lay writers who tackle a commercial aviation story, Gonazles does an outstanding job on the technical side. There are very few miscues and only once or twice did I take the cap off my highlighter. His explanation of the inner workings of a jet engine is particularly eloquent, and his retelling of the accident investigation is as nail-biting as the finest detective story. Who knew metal fatigue could be so exciting?
Lastly, one of my all-time favorite aviation books was recently reissued. That'd be Keith Lovegrove's Airline: Style at 30,000 Feet, now out from Laurence King Publishing, an imprint of Chronicle Books. I've mentioned Lovegrove's book many times in my columns and posts. It was the inspiration behind my own two-part airline identity essay, and remains the standard when it comes to anything and everything to do with airline identity, design, and culture. Indeed, the original title of the book was "Airline: Identity, Design, and Culture." I have to say I like the old title better. There's something dumbed-down about the new one. I also wish a content update had been part of the reissue. Everything stops at the year 2000 (when the first edition was published). The global airline scene has undergone huge changes since then. Come on, how can you give us a book about airline culture without a single mention of Hooters Air? Still, expertly written and elegantly illustrated, this is a must-have for even the most casual air travel aficionado.
And now…
The Annual Posting of a Perennial Favorite
SO THE HOLIDAYS ARE HERE, and according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), roughly 750 billion people are expected to fly between now and New Year's Eve, 96 percent of them connecting through Atlanta.
In fact I don't know how many people are projected to fly. I haven't been listening. In any case, it's the same basic story every year: the trade groups put out their predictions, and much is made as to whether slightly more, or slightly fewer, people will fly than the previous year. Does the total really matter to the typical traveler? All you need to know is that airports will be crowded and flights especially full. Any tips I might offer are simple common sense: leave early, and remember that TSA considers fruitcakes to be hazardous materials (no joke: the density of certain baked goods causes them to appear suspicious on the x-ray scanners).
Normally I work over the holidays. As a relative bottom-feeder on my airline's seniority list, it's an opportunity to score one of those higher-quality layovers that are normally out of reach. Other pilots want to be home with their kids or watching football, and so I've been able to spend Christmas in Egypt, the Fourth of July in Belgium, Thanksgiving in Cape Town.
That's how it works at an airline: every month you put in your preferences: where you'd like to fly, which days you'd like to be off, which insufferable captains you hope to avoid, and so on. There are separate bids at each base, for each aircraft type and for each seat – i.e. captain and first officer. The award process then begins with the most senior pilot in your category and works its way down. Each pilot's "line," as our months are called, is filled with trips until reaching a certain number of pay-hours. When it finally gets to the dregs, lower-rung pilots have their pick of the scraps.
Eventually the process reaches a point when there are no more rostered trips to give out. Those pilots left over — the bottom ten or fifteen percent — are assigned to what's called reserve. A reserve pilot has designated days off, and receives a flat minimum pay rate for the month, but his or her workdays, given out in multiple-day blocks, are a blank slate. The reserve pilot is on call, and needs to be within a stipulated number of hours from the airport — anywhere from two to twelve, usually, and it can change day to day. When somebody gets sick, or is trapped in Chicago because of a snowstorm, the reserve pilot goes to work. The phone might ring at 2 a.m., and you're on way to Sweden or Brazil — or to Omaha or Dallas. It's an unpredictable way to live. Among the challenges is learning how to pack. What to put in the suitcase when you don't know if your next destination will be warm and tropical or freezing cold? (Answer: everything.)
Looking back, holiday flying has provided me a few of those sentimental oddities a pilot files away in his mental logbook:
One of my favorite memories dates all the way back to Thanksgiving, 1993. I was captain of a Dash-8 turboprop flying from Boston to New Brunswick, Canada, and my first officer was the always cheerful and gregarious Kathy Martin. (Kathy, who also appears in my "Right Seat" essay, was one of three pilots I've known who had been flight attendants at an earlier point in their careers.) There were no meal services on our Dash-8s, but Kathy brought a cooler from home, packed with food: huge turkey sandwiches, a whole blueberry pie and tubs of mashed potatoes. We assembled the plates and containers across the folded-down jumpseat. The pie we passed to the flight attendant, who handed out slices to passengers.
Quite a contrast to Thanksgiving Day in 1999, when I was working a cargo flight to Brussels. It was custom on Thanksgiving to stock the galley with a special holiday meal, and the three of us were hungry and much looking forward to it. The trouble was, the caterers forgot to bring the food. By the time we noticed, we were only minutes from departure and they had split for the day. I thought I was going to cry when I opened the door and saw only a can of Diet Sprite and a matchbook-size packet of Tillamook cheese.
The best we could do was get one of the guys upstairs to drive out to McDonald's. He came back with three big bags of burgers and fries, tossing them up to us just as they were pulling the stairs away. Who eats fast food on Thanksgiving? Pilots in a pinch.
On New Year's Eve, 2010, I was flying over the city of Bamako, Mali, in West Africa. Fireworks explode only a few hundred feet from the ground, but enough of them together provide a unique spectacle viewable from a jetliner. At the stroke of midnight, the city erupted in a storm of tiny explosions. The sky was lit by literally tens of thousands of small incendiaries — white flashes everywhere, like the sea of flashbulbs you sometimes see at sporting events. From high above, this huge celebration made Bamako look like a war zone.
Not that I work every holiday. I've spent a number of them traveling on vacation.
And with that in mind, here's some advice:
Do not, ever, make the mistake that I once made and attempt to enjoy Christmas at a small hotel in Ghana called the Hans Cottage "Botel," located on a lagoon just outside the city of Cape Coast. They love their Christmas music at the Hans Botel, and the compound is rigged end-to-end with speakers that blare it around the clock.
Although you can count among those people able to tolerate Christmas music — in moderation, in context, and so long as it isn't Sufjan Stevens — there is one blood-curdling exception. That exception is the song, "Little Drummer Boy," which is without argument the most painful piece of music ever written. It was that way before Joan Jett or David Bowie got hold of it.
It's a traumatic enough song in any rendition. And at the Hans Cottage Botel they have chosen to make it the only — only! — song on their Christmastime tape loop. Over and over it plays, ceaselessly, day and night. I'm not sure who the artist is, but it's an especially treacly version with lots of high notes to set one's skull ringing.
"Ba-ruppa-pum-pum;ruppa-pum-pum…" as I hear it today and forever, that stammering chorus is like the thump-thump of chopper blades in the wounded mind of a Vietnam vet who Can't Forget What He Saw. There I am, pinned down at the Botel bar, jittery and covered in sweat, my nails clattering against a bottle of Star lager while the infernal Drummer Boy warbles into the buggy air.
"Barkeep!" I grab Kwame by the wrist. "For the love of god, man, can't somebody make it stop?"
Kwame just smiles. "So lovely, yes."


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The Orioles have made another roster claim, this time grabbing right-handed pitcher Todd Redmond from the Cincinnati Reds.
To make room for Redmond on the 40-man roster, the club designated outfielder Trayvon Robinson for assignment. Robinson was acquired in November when the Orioles dealt Robert Andino to Seattle. But the Orioles have signed several reserve outfielders since then -- including Chris Dickerson -- and Robinson's spot became less secure.
In addition, the club announced that catcher Luis Rodriguez, who was designated earlier this week for Russ Canzler, has cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A Norfolk. Rodriguez will be a non-roster invitee to spring training.
Redmond, 27, started one game for the Reds last season, giving up four runs in 3 1/3 innings versus the Chicago Cubs in August. Originally drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2004, he was dealt to the Atlanta Braves for Tyler Yates in 2008 and then to the Reds for Paul Janish last July.
He was a combined 8-11 with a 3.63 ERA in 26 games (25 starts) at Triple-A for Atlanta and Cincinnati last year. He is 71-61 with a career 3.58 ERA in 207 minor league games (200 starts) in eight seasons.
Robinson, 25, has played in 90 games with the Seattle Mariners in the past two seasons, batting .215 in 319 plate appearances.


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Bridgewater table scraps to be recycled
BRIDGEWATER -- Those turkey drumstick bones. That leftover lima bean casserole. The final, syrup-soaked pancake of an oversized stack.
All of it is useful. Most of it gets thrown away.
The Housatonic Resources Recovery Authority wants to compost all that wasted food. Starting in April, it will start a pilot program here to get townspeople to participate. It may be the first program of its type in the state.
"I know programs like this have worked in other parts of the country,'' said First Selectman Curtis Read. "Hopefully, it will work here. I support it.''
The move to recycle food waste is logical, said Cheryl Reedy, the authority's executive director.
"Think of when we first started recycling,'' Reedy said. "It was pretty much cans, bottles and newspapers."
"Then we added plastics,'' Reedy said. "Now, we're recycling electronic equipment. The state has started to recycle paint and mattresses. Food waste is now the low-hanging fruit.''
The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has also spoken of the need to recycle more of the state's waste.
For years the state's recycling rate has hovered around 25 percent. The DEEP's new goal is to reduce the waste stream by 58 percent by 2024 through recycling, reuse and by not using materials to begin with.
Food waste is about a quarter of municipal trash, said Jen Iannucci, the authority's assistant director. Because it contains so much moisture, it's not ideal for incinerators.
"It's harder to burn,'' she said. And the food waste that gets shipped from Connecticut to other states and is buried in landfills produces methane -- a gas that contributes to climate change.
Iannucci, who lives in Bridgewater, said the town is a good one for a pilot program because it's small and because one company -- All American Waste -- picks up most of the garbage in town.
The program will provide participants with a countertop container for food waste, and a six-month supply of bags. All American Waste will provide curbside containers.
People will separate their table scraps from other trash and put them in the counter bin. Ditto on those aging grapes or the uneaten zucchini growing its first flecks of mold in the refrigerator.
All American Waste will take this food to one of two places: New Milford Farms, a facility that's been composting food wastes since 1991, or New England Compost in Danbury. There it will tended and turned until it reverts to soil.
Currently, Iannucci said, about 120 people in town have signed up for the program. More may join after a public meeting in March.
"We think it will work,'' Reedy said. "And we think other towns will try it, as well.''
If it goes well, people will be throwing away a lot less garbage. The state will move towards its 2024 goals. And the food will replenish the soil it started from.
"It'll be going back to the landscape, the earth,'' Iannucci said.
email@example.com; 203-731-3345


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Drum Squad - Welcome To My City (Memphis)
DTV reports "Straight out of Memphis TN, Drumma Boy shoots the video to "Welcome To My City" off the Drum Squad (Welcome To My City Vol. 1 Mixtape) feat. Yung Kee, Kinfolk Thugs, J1, Miscellaneous, and the Drum Squad crew"
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
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Submitted by dougj on Sun, 2005-08-14 17:37.
One of our goals for this site is to foster a place where folks can get the latest and greatest templates covering everything from creating an effective time management strategy to jump-starting one's creativity. Besides the official D*I*Y Planner gear below, you'll find an excellent repository of contributions from our readers.
- Official D*I*Y Planner Kits, including add-on templates and packages
- Templates Directory, a directory of user-submitted templates and links
- Dynamic Templates List, a list of all the dynamic template creation applications made by Ygor.


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CBS Los Angeles: City Attorney Tells San Bernardino Residents To 'Lock Their Doors,' 'Load Their Guns' Because Of Police Downsizing
November 30, 2012- SAN BERNARDINO (CBSLA.com) — The city attorney of San Bernardino is under scrutiny for telling residents to "lock their doors and load their guns" during a city council meeting.
The official explained that because the city is bankrupt and slashing public safety budgets people will need to start protecting themselves.
City Attorney Jim Penman said he doesn't regret what he said.
"You should say what you mean and mean what you say," Penman said.
The city attorney said approximately 150 residents came to a council meeting to voice their concerns about recent crimes in the area, including the murder of an elderly woman last week.
WKRG (CBS): Family: Teen Beat Sister's Girlfriend for Being Gay
-By: Lauren Vargas
November 26, 2012- MOBILE, Alabama --Mallory Owens is recovering at USA Medical Center in Mobile from what her family is calling a brutal hate crime.
"He tried to kill her. He's lucky he didn't kill her. She's lucky to be alive," her mother Kristi Taylor said. "I didn't recognize her when I got here. It's hard to look at her like that," she cried.
LA Times: 'Innocence of Muslims' filmmaker gets a year in prison
November 7, 2012- A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced the filmmaker behind "Innocence of Muslims," the anti-Islam film that sparked rioting across the globe, to a year behind bars after the man admitted to violating the terms of his release from an earlier conviction.
Mark Basseley Youssef admitted to four violations, including lying to his probation officer and using bogus names. In exchange, prosecutors dropped four other counts, including allegations that Youssef lied in saying that his role in the film's production was limited to writing the script. Youssef was under a type of federal probation -- known as supervised release -- after being convicted in 2010 of bank and credit-card fraud, in which he was accused of causing $800,000 in losses.
The Daily Current: Buchanan: 'White America' Died Last Night
November 7, 2012- Conservative political pundit Pat Buchanan stoked controversy today by claiming that Barack Obama's reelection has 'killed White America'.
The paleoconservative nativist is no stranger to racial controversy, having previously been accused of writing books with racist and anti-semitic undertones.
But the former Nixon advisor was more explicit on the G. Gordon Liddy Show this morning. When asked for his reaction to Obama's victory, Buchanan replied brazenly:
"White America died last night. Obama's reelection killed it. Our 200 plus year history as a Western nation is over. We're a Socialist Latin American country now. Venezuela without the oil."
Stunned by his clear racisim, Liddy tried to walk his guest back from the ledge:


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Using Vim basics:
Written by : Gore
A Mini tutorial on using Vim.
Vim has a reputation for being hard and some senior members of Anti Online even say it's just hard to use and doesn't seem to work. Well, they said that about Slackware and Free BSD and I've written tutorials to help with all of them as well, so Vim can now be added to the list.
Why use Vim?
Vim is Vi Improved, it's got little changes from the original Vi.
Using it can be hard at first but when and if you get good at it, it makes editing text really easy because it loads fast, is stable as hell, and to be honest I've never seen it crash even when editing HUGE txt files.
Another reason to use it is because editing UNIX system files, well, they have to be plain text, if you opened them up in Word they would be destroyed.
And of course, Emacs and Word are NOT on any UNIX recovery disks. If you mess something up on your system bad enough, you're going to either learn to use Vim or reinstall.
To start Vim, simply open a bash shell, or if you're already in text only mode, just type "vim" at the prompt. you can have X loaded too, but Vim doesn't require a GUI to run.
After you type vim you'll see it loaded with usually some form of text saying something about what version you have or something else.
Now when you start typing it's just going to beep at you. when you first satrt vim you're in "command mode". This means Vim wants you to tell it what to do. Hit i and you'll go into insert mode. Now when you type it shows up on the screen.
I can stand for insert text and that may make it simpler for you to remember.
Now sometimes you may find yourself looking at a text file and for some reason you can get past a . in the text so when you start typing it's before the space you want it.
this is easy to get around, hit Escape, and then hit a and you'll be AFTER the cursor.
So far you've got i for insert text and a for after the cursor.
With me so far?
a = after cursor
i - insert
Now, how do you save text you've written? Well, you hit the Esc key, and type this:
That will of course write the file. If you haven't given it a name yet and you want to save it as something hit the Escape jey again, and hit this:
:w yourfile.txt
Now, you don't have to call it a .txt of course. UNIx doesn't care if you make an extention or not, it just makes it easier for people coming from Windows where .txt means more than wasted space.
So what if you want to open a file on your computer and edit it? Well, you can do two things here:
vim filename
Which will open filename in vim. Remember though that if filename doesn't exist it will create it but not save it until you tell it save.
Or, you have Vim already open and don't want to quit, you can still open a file from inside Vim.
That will open a file. You have to of course tell it which one you want opened, but it opens whatever you want it to.
Moving in Vim :
Say you're on an old old old machine and there are no arrow keys and moving the cursor looks impossible. Well, Unix has been made to work on anything, so as long as the keyboard is alright, Vim is as well.
To move right, make sure you hit escape to be sure you're in the command mode, and hit l (L) This moves right.
h will move you left.
k moves you up
j moves you down
The keys are next to each other on the keyboard so this isn't real hard to remember, it's just
l for the right
h for left
j for down
k for up
Now say you're done editing the file and want to save it. Well go back into command mode.
Now just type :w
This writes your file.
Now what if you want to save and quit Vim so you're back at the shell prompt?
That saves your text and quits Vim.
What if something was edited and it screwed up and I don't want to save??
Well, you may notice that :q isn't working because you have a text file you haven't yet written. Don't worry, just type this
That will tell Vim quit and it won't save the changes you made.


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Hawk Harrelson argued on Saturday that Moneyball was a "fraud" and tore into Billy Beane as a general manager, rhetorically asking how many playoff games those sabermetrically-oriented teams ever won. Hawk further dismissed the book and movie, saying he's neither seen or read the work, but doesn't need to because, as he puts it, it's a bunch of BS.
But on Sunday, assistant general manager Rick Hahn lauded Moneyball, saying he "enjoyed the book very much" as a learning tool. He added that it offered a good insight into how teams find market inefficiencies and run a business. Although, for Hahn, the movie had some inaccuracies, namely in how it didn't mention the A's stout pitching staff from the year.
Good thing Hawk is only an announcer and Hahn is the Assistant GM. Hopefully Hahn is the next Sox GM.


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"When justice is divorced from morality, when rights of individuals are separated from right and wrong, the only definition you have left for justice is the right for every individual to do as he pleases. And the end of that road is anarchy and barbarism." – John Piper
Let me begin by saying that this isn't a post about John Piper or even fundamentalism per se. Taking them down is too easy, and frankly, they see enough abuse from other progressives. I say that because what I want to suggest in this post might at first sound rather pedestrian, some kind of banal plea for social justice. But stick with me. I intend to do a few posts about justice, so in this one, I'm just trying to lay out the primary tension and raise some really difficult questions.
I've been thinking about justice a lot since moving to Chicago. I now live in a city that suffers some of the worst systemic oppression in the country (not that Los Angeles is much better), and I live in a neighborhood (Rogers Park) that experiences a large portion of that. I live among people who, according John Piper's understanding of justice, deserve some sort of punishment–not the justice that comes through the undoing of systemic oppression.
The understanding of justice posited above begs two important questions:
Is justice tied to morality, and if so, how?
Christians tend to think of justice in two fundamentally distinct ways: Legal and Social. Most Christians probably wouldn't disagree with Piper, i.e. we need morality or else civilization degenerates into anarchy. I also don't doubt that most Christians, including Piper, have a heart for the poor and oppressed. That varies widely in how it's embodied, but I think most Christians today know that's part of the program, and they want to participate, whether they really mean it or not. The problem is that these two categories aren't divided so neatly. It's not as if all those who suffer under systemic oppression are really saints with hearts of gold in desperate need of liberation. Many who would qualify under the Social probably also qualify under the Legal understandings of justice. So if we really want to stick to the legal/moral understanding of justice–that true justice punishes the wicked and vindicates the righteous–we have to shuffle a bit if we also want to be biblical followers of Christ and address the social. In other words, it's really tough to love a homeless drug addict with the love of Christ when you also feel pretty strongly that he should go to prison for stealing the money he needed to buy his drugs.
I know some might object to the idea that Jesus didn't have a moral understanding of justice. He did, but not in the sense of bringing punitive justice to the rule-breakers. For Jesus, the true moral breach was living in a way that did not bring liberating justice to the poor and oppressed. That is his message to the Pharisees. (See Matthew 23:23, for example.)
Here's the primary problem: Why should it make sense to us to tie justice primarily to punishment when the gospels seem to tie it to liberation?
Why is it that we're perfectly comfortable with our notion of "God's love" exceeding our wildest expectations and definitions, yet when it comes to justice, we seem to want to limit God to an exact replica of our own penal system? Why wouldn't "God's justice" be just as radical as God's love? And why wouldn't those two things be tied together?
The typical response to this sort of question is, "Oh, but they are! You see, when a parent loves a child, she disciplines that child for the things he does wrong. It is just that the child be punished for the things he does wrong."
There are two glaring problems with this.
1) We don't love our criminals. That isn't why we punish them. When we think of the people who are "going to hell," we think of the "bad guys" (probably because it's too painful to think of some atheist relative, but that's a future post.) We want the people who have done us wrong punished. We want them to suffer a bit–or a lot. Most of us have never been wronged in any serious way by a criminal, yet we still demand punishment, mostly because we sense that it will make us safer. That's what the Piper quote at the beginning is getting at. If there's not punishment, all us civilized folk are going to be forced into a state of anarchy. That might be the case for describing a practical social structure. But that has less to do with some notion of maintaining morality for the sake of morality than it does just making sure we can walk safely on our own street (and I recognize that even those points are debatable.)
2) People who make the above claim always forget the second part of it: Forgiveness. The punishment doesn't work the way the parent intends unless the child is allowed to return to the loving arms of the parent. If you've been scouring the gospels this whole time for the place where Jesus tells the adulterous woman to "Go and sin no more" (John 8:11), you need to ask yourself: If the woman did continue to sin, would Jesus not continue to welcome her back regardless of whether or not she repented? And that isn't even the whole verse:
10 Jesus stood up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Is there no one to condemn you?"
11 She said, "No one, sir." Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on, don't sin anymore." [CEB]
Jesus doesn't condemn her, and I think it would be hard to make the case that he would change his mind regardless of whether or not she followed his final instruction to her. (Of course, this is all ignoring that John 7:53-8:11 is a disputed section of the gospel anyway. Critical editions of the Greek New Testament don't have it. So if one really wanted frame Jesus as a moralist out to nab the rule-breakers of the Ancient Near East, one would need to look elsewhere.)
The extreme tension in understanding what justice is according to Jesus comes when we try to reconcile our moralist sensibilities with the fact that Jesus welcomes everyone and doesn't condemn them. That starts raising all sorts of grinding, insomnia inducing questions about murderers, sex offenders… Questions that cannot be written off or taken lightly, but questions that we'll have to cover later.
There is only one group of people Jesus says are excluded from the his kingdom. He says everyone except those who wield power against the poor and oppressed are welcome in the kingdom of God. And it isn't because there's some sort of "sin force field" keeping the power wielders out. It's that the kind of thing that the kingdom of God is is the kind of thing that they absolutely despise. Those on the outside, in the outer darkness that Jesus speaks of in Matthew, aren't weeping and gnashing their teeth because they're being horrifically tortured–it's because the kindgom of God is an absolute affront to the power they hold so dear, and they just can't stand it. They can't bear to see God's justice being handed down–not against them but for those they were against. The powerless coming to power.
It might seem like our notion of justice is a bit of a mess at this point. There's a lot I haven't addressed yet. We haven't really defined "sin." As I've alluded to, we haven't talked about justice for victims of crime, especially violent crime, about justice for victims of despots like Hitler or Stalin. We haven't talked about what forgiveness is or might look like in any of those situations. We haven't touched the Old Testament at all. Those are all very important points. What I want to do in subsequent posts is tease out the ways in which even our conceptions of what justice should be like in these situations is challenged by the nature of God as I want to suggest it. For now though, let's think about what the implications might be for the sort of justice I'm suggesting. What do we lose if we remove morality from the equation? What do we gain?


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Guidelines for Critical Film Viewing
photo of Iwo Jima flag raising
film re-enactment of the same event
Becoming a critical film viewer requires learning different skills than those of critical reading. Good films tend to efface their own techniques and appear seamless and natural. Unlike a book, you can't go back and dissect this structure. Therefore, critical film viewing requires seeing with two sets of eyes: one for watching the film, and one that is careful to analyze what happens as you watch it. Below are some questions that will help you acquire this skill.


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Re: QED (12/03/18 19:47:27)
connected few billion are actually interested in seeking information to advancing
It makes you wounder how these people actually think, even if you were to open the whole worlds information to society, it will still remain locked by habits. Another thing is that when most of the stat's are generated by children it might lead the adults to disregard the activity as an activity for children and further degenerate or delay the quality of information extracted.
So the more closed minded adults are about the activities of the youth the greater the degeneration of society
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Single protein regulates two immune pathways
Unchecked, the natural or innate immune system can run out of control – like a stuck accelerator on a car. Eventually, it will kill the host it is supposed to protect.
Much scientific attention is directed at understanding how this innate immune system is turned on, but little to how it is cooled down or regulated. That is important because the innate immune system is associated with inflammation. In turn, unchecked inflammation is associated with cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases and other chronic ailments.
A team of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine has identified a protein called NLRC5, a member of the NOD-like protein family, that is involved in the inhibition of protein complexes key to critical pathways of innate immunity called NF-κB and type I interferon signaling. A report on their work appears in the current issue of the journal Cell.
"Understanding the molecular mechanisms that hold innate immunity in check could provide clues to better treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases associated with inflammation," said Dr. Rong-Fu Wang, professor in the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, the Department of Pathology and Immunology at BCM and a senior author of the report.
Think of the innate immune system as a rushing cascade, blocked in places by chunks of rock or landscape and forced through natural cavities in a particular direction. Protein complexes such as the protein IKK complex in NF-κB pathway, and RIG-I and MDA5 as pathogen sensors in type I interferon pathways, act like these natural forces to control and direct the cascade of events that result in innate immunity.
NLRC5 interacts with two subunits of IKK to prevent their activation through blocking addition of a phosphate molecule (phosphorylation). This in turn, inhibits NF-κB activation and innate immune responses. NLCRC5 also interacts with innate immune receptors RIG-I and MDA5 to block type I interferon response.
When Wang and his colleagues "knocked down" or reduced the amount of the NLRC5 protein, both NF-κB and type 1 interferon activity increased, resulting in increased innate immune responses and antiviral immunity.
"Our findings identify NLRC5 as a key negative regulator that blocks two central components of the NF-κB and type I interferon pathways," said Wang. That makes it a key element in keeping the innate immune system running at just the right level.
Others who took part in this research include Jun Cui, Liang Zhu, Xiaojun Xia, Helen Y. Wang, Xavier Legras, Jun Hong and Jiabing Ji, all of BCM, Pingping Shen of the College of Life Science at Nanjing University in China, Shu Zheng of Zhejiang University Medical School in Hangzhou, China and Zhijian J. Chen of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
Funding for this work came from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the China Scholarship council and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.


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There has been some controversy regarding comments attributed to Cardinal Egan in an interview published in a Connecticut magazine. These comments have been interpreted by some in the worst possible light, and His Eminence has come in for some rough criticism.
In fairness to His Eminence, perhaps people should first take a look at the statement he released about this matter, explaining things in his own words, and not through the filter of a reporter.
I also have to add something more as a matter of justice, so that people understand the full story.
I worked closely and personally with the Cardinal for over five years on the child protection programs of the Archdiocese of New York. You could not have had a more supportive, committed bishop. He was absolutely dedicated to the full and vigorous implementation of the Bishops' Charter, and to the protection of children. I was not directly involved in clergy cases, but from what I saw, his handling of them in the Archdiocese was exemplary. I know from first-hand experience that his handling of cases with non-clergy offenders was absolutely appropriate.
In fact, just about the only complaints that I heard during that time about the Cardinal was that he was too rigorous — an assessment with which I utterly disagree. He was a real leader in our Archdiocese in the protection of children — we couldn't have asked for a bishop to handle it better than he did.
Without a doubt, this issue brings up strong feelings. But in public comments on the actions and character of a Bishop of our Church, may I suggest that people take a look at Catechism 2478 and think about it before commenting? That section says:
To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way: 'Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.' [quoting St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises]
Cardinal Egan was instrumental in implementing a very successful safe environment program here in the Archdiocese. He is rightly proud of that, and he certainly has nothing to apologize for what he did as our bishop for the protection of our children.


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FeedBurner Stats is our analytics offering for feeds of all kinds. The service is free with every FeedBurner feed and provides publishers with a comprehensive view of their audience.
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- More Explore More
Play Your Favorite Video Games on LOL
Disney Magical World 2
Live your dream life in Disney Magical World 2 alongside fan-favorite Disney characters! Adventure with Elsa and Olaf from Disney Frozen, dance with Disney Princesses, soar with Mickey in Magical Dream parades, and more, while snapping photos to share your memories. The magic is in your hands, so use your wand to solve a ghostly mystery along the way!
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With the Disney Infinity (2.0 Edition) Toy Box Starter Pack, you have the freedom to create stories and fun-filled adventures!
KINGDOM HEARTS - HD 1.5 ReMIX
A new collection of the first three KINGDOM HEARTS titles in gorgeous high-definition • KINGDOM HEARTS 1 FINAL MIX • KINGDOM HEARTS Re:Chain of Memories • KINGDOM HEARTS 358/2 Days (HD remastered cinematics)
Disney Planes: Fire & Rescue The Video Game
Dusty joins forces with an elite crew of fire fighting aircraft and a lively bunch of brave all-terrain vehicles known as the Smokejumpers to save the national park. Together, the fearless team battles a massive wildfire and Dusty learns what it takes to become a true hero.
Big Hero 6: Battle in the Bay
Following on the heels of their super hero debut, the Big Hero 6 team has targeted a dangerous gangster named Yama and his legion of out of control fighting robots. Take control of the stars of the film in this action packed combat game! Zoom through levels at top speed as GoGo, slice and dice as Wasabi with his Plasma blades and smash and burn as Fred in his Kaiju monster super suit!


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Lewis and Clark Expedition, Grades 9-12
Lessons, Activities & Resources Examine the First Transcontinental Journey to the Pacific Coast
Lesson Plans
The Lewis & Clark Expedition: Documenting the Uncharted Northwest
Students in grades 5-12 describe some of the challenges and successes that the Corps of Discovery experienced at various stages of its journey and explain the historical implications of the Louisiana Purchase.
Native Americans of the Lewis and Clark Trail
Students in grades 6-12 gather and present information about Native American tribes encountered by the Corps of Discovery expedition.
Teaching with Documents: The Lewis and Clark Expedition
Students in grades 9-12 investigate the Lewis & Clark Expedition using primary documents.
Additional Lesson Plans
- Lewis & Clark for Educators: Introduction (Grades 4-12)
- Lewis & Clark Lesson Plans (Grades 6-12)
Lewis & Clark
Experience westward expansion with explorers Lewis & Clark and start your own adventures!
Lewis and Clark: Into the Unknown | PBS
In this interactive, students lead the expedition into the unknown heart of North America.
Background Resources
Lewis & Clark Journal
The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Searchable full-text (almost five thousand pages) of the journals. Also included are a gallery of images, important supplemental texts, and audio files of selected passages plus Native American perspectives. Designed as a tool for scholars and an engaging website for the general public.
The Trail Route
Lewis and Clark Expedition, A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary
Explore the historic places of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. A printer friendly version with text and maps is available.
History with a tribal perspective, along trails followed by Lewis & Clark
Click on a name of a tribe or tribal group to explore culture and history.
Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America (Library
of Congress Exhibition)
The exhibition features the Library's collections of exploration material documenting the quest to connect the East and the West by means of a waterway passage. Virtual tour and animations have been recently added.
Lewis & Clark: Mapping the West
This site sets the historical stage, features online access to Lewis & Clark maps and other primary resources, and provides related activities and lesson plans.
Newberry Library: Lewis and Clark Exhibition
This website explores how the United States and Indian peoples along the expedition route, came together two hundred years ago and how they remain intertwined today.
Discovering Lewis & Clark
This comprehensive site includes essays on celestial navigation used by Lewis & Clark.
Lewis and Clark | PBS
Companion guide to the Ken Burn's film.
Lewis & Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition
Take a virtual journey with Lewis & Clark.
Printables &Videos
- American Writers: Lewis & Clark (2:26:34)
A permanent archive for educators and researchers.


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Events for October 6, 2019
Events Search and Views Navigation
12:00 pm
Taproom Open
The taproom is open to the public Wednesday – Sunday. You can buy beer by the pint, a six-pack to-go, or a keg for your party. Along with beer, the brewery serves wine, cider, soft drinks, and water. We will answer any questions about our brewhouse and unique production process. You can check our Facebook page […]Find out more »


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Ideal Solutions
- Page ID
- 1597
The concept of an ideal solution is fundamental to chemical thermodynamics and its applications, such as the use of colligative properties. An ideal solution or ideal mixture is a solution in which the enthalpy of solution (\(\Delta{H_{solution}} = 0\)) is zero; with the closer to zero the enthalpy of solution, the more "ideal" the behavior of the solution becomes. Since the enthalpy of mixing (solution) is zero, the change in Gibbs energy on mixing is determined solely by the entropy of mixing (\(\Delta{S_{solution}}\)).


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Contact Us: (773) 539-1088
For graduates of Beyond Basics Level 2. Tests accuracy and speed and eventually transitions to off leash work. Taught by instructor Jasmine Haldane.
Call of the Wild School for Dogs
3027 North Rockwell Street, Chicago, IL 60618
© 2020 Call of the Wild, All rights reserved.


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Threat of violence looms over Pakistan's elections
- A suicide bomb Monday killed 14 people at a political rally in Peshawar
- More than 70 people have been killed in pre-election violence
- Establishing an election commission has helped move vote forward
LAHORE, Pakistan — With terrorism happening almost daily, Pakistan faces a crucial test in elections this weekend that violent Taliban jihadists who seek a Muslim theocracy have vowed to ruin.
Saturday's elections will be the first peaceful transition of power from one civilian government to another in Pakistan's history after decades of military rule that ended only five years ago.
"I am an optimist and to be honest, there is no reason not to be optimistic," said Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, president of the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency, a think tank. "The election offers the one rare hope in an otherwise bleak situation."
A suicide bomb Monday killed 14 people at a political rally in Peshawar. A prosecutor investigating the death of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was murdered. Ali Haider Gilani, a candidate for office and son of former Pakistan prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, was kidnapped Thursday.
In all, more than 70 people have been killed in pre-election violence in the past six weeks. But in bustling marketplaces and college campuses across this country, Pakistan's young say they remain relentlessly hopeful.
"We will vote, we will vote, inshallah," said Zille Huma, 20, a history major at Government College University in Lahore.
Gathered with a group of women, their bright pink and blue traditional Pakistani dresses standing out against the school's dark brick courtyard, Huma said she believes her vote matters.
"We want to get rid of these politicians," she said. "We have so much unemployment in Pakistan, and that increases the terrorism day by day. We want to change Pakistan."
Mehboob said the bombings have not stopped the elections from moving forward due to the establishment of a credible election commission. Other hopeful signs for Pakistan democracy are an absence of military manipulation and no pre-election poll rigging.
"This particular phenomenon of violence, yes it will have an impact but my feeling is it will be limited," he said. "The remarkable thing is there has been almost zero interference (in the elections)."
Polls indicate that two-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League is expected to win a majority of seats. The ruling Pakistan People's Party of President Asif Ali Zardari, swept into power on a wave of sympathy after Bhutto's death but now widely accused of corruption will likely take a significant hit, media polls say.
But it is the candidacy of former cricket star Imran Khan, whose promise of a "new ideology for Pakistan" has energized young voters, makes the outcome less than certain.
"I stand with Imran Khan, not because he's a cricket star or a handsome personality but the main thing is his vision," said Awais Ahmen Malik, 20, of Lahore.
He and other voter said they intend to vote on bread-and-butter issues: corruption, the country's debilitating energy crisis and its failing economy. Pakistan is hobbled by falling private investment, high deficits and high inflation.
Nearly a quarter of Pakistan's population lives under the poverty line, according to the World Bank. And fuel and energy shortages — equaling five to 10-hour power cuts on an average day — hold back economic growth. Analysts say there has been no net job growth in the private sector in the last four years.
Gohar Ejaz, chairman of the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association, said his industry – Pakistan's largest – hasn't added a new job in five years. The major reason for that is the government has failed to improved on energy reliability, he said, as the bulbs inside the industry association's offices flickered off.
"If there is going to be one reason this government is going to lose the election in Punjab, it's energy," Ejaz said.
Ryan Crocker, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan says the United States has much to gain in a stable Pakistan.
"Pakistan is in a state of institutional failure: It's not a failed state, but you could argue it is a failing state," Crocker said. "So these elections need to be … well-run and credible."
Mehvish Ismail, a corporate lawyer in Lahore, says the violent attacks to delay or upend the elections only makes her more motivated to vote.
"Pakistan is in dire need of a change in leadership and the elections are the only way to go about it," she said. "We need to have a stable democratic government in place which can address the issues of extremism, corruption and terror."


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Download of jcommon-0.6.2.zip (jcommon-0.6.2.zip ( external link: SF.net): 577,212 bytes) will begin shortly. If not so, click link on the left.
JFreeChart is a free (LGPL) chart library for the Java(tm) platform. It supports bar charts, pie charts, line charts, time series charts, scatter plots, histograms, simple Gantt charts, Pareto charts, bubble plots, dials, thermometers and more.


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We've got lots of cool stuff going on. Barry will tell you how PBMS can store your BLOBs in the clouds, Vladimir will be explaining what makes PBXT so fast, and I will be talking about the past, the present and the future...
Even if that all doesn't interest you, be sure to just drop by to say hi. We're friendly, really! :)
The PBXT Storage Engine: Meeting Future Challenges
Paul McCullagh
3:05pm - 3:50pm Tuesday, 04/21/2009
Ballroom B
BLOB Streaming: Efficient Reliable BLOB Handling
for all Storage Engines
Barry Leslie
2:50pm - 3:35pm Thursday, 04/23/2009
Ballroom B
Making PBXT Faster
Vladimir Kolesnikov
11:15am - 11:55am Thursday, 04/23/2009
Percona Performance Conference - Rooms 203 & 204


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Is this the right time to refinance?
This is one of the biggest questions around refinancing, but luckily you can see if you might be able to save money with our Refinance calculator.
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- We also assume: closing costs are paid out of pocket and debt-to-income ratio is below 35%.
Better Real Estate referral discount program - Terms and Conditions
Finche, LLC dba BRE, Better Home Services and Better Real Estate: Affiliated Mortgage LenderDiscount, Terms & Conditions , 1.14.2019
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- "1/8th off your rate" refers to the percentage point discount from the interest rate you locked with Better Mortgage Corporation if you use a real estate agent referred to you by Better Real Estate. Use of the agent must be confirmed by Better Real Estate in a manner satisfactory to Better Mortgage Corporation in its sole discretion prior to issuance of the Closing Disclosure on the loan. The reduced rate will appear on the Closing Disclosure.
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Singapore Relaxes Death Penalty Laws, But Human Rights Groups Call for Mercy
The Singapore government announced on Monday that it will soften some of its death penalty laws, particularly those related to drug offenses, but insisted that capital punishment will stand in the country. Some human rights groups say the changes do not go far enough.
"The death penalty has been an important part of our criminal justice system for a very long time, similar to the position in a number of other countries," said Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Teo Chee Hean.
"Singaporeans understand that the death penalty has been an effective deterrent and an appropriate punishment for very serious offenses, and largely support it. As part of our penal framework, it has contributed to keeping crime and the drug situation under control," he added, revealing that a review of the death penalty system had been going on since July 2011.
Minister for Law and Foreign Affairs K. Shanmugam, who also spoke for Parliament, announced that "justice can be tempered with mercy and where appropriate, offenders should be given a second chance."
In Singapore, anyone caught dealing drugs above the stipulated thresholds is liable for capital punishment.
While the death penalty for dealing drugs still stands, it has been loosened so that local courts are given discretion in handling certain cases. For instance, drug traffickers who have only been couriers and nothing else stand the chance of avoiding the death penalty, but also need to have fully cooperated with the Central Narcotics Bureau. People with mental disabilities deemed to have been unable to understand the severity of their crimes can also be given a pass, ChannelNewsAsia.com reported.
Teo explained that it will be up to the courts if people who fall under such categories will be given the death penalty or of they will be spared and given a life sentence instead. He warned, however, that this does not mean that the government will be any less aggressive when it comes to taking down the drug business.
On the subject of murder, Shanmugam stated that the mandatory death penalty will be upheld for anyone found guilty of intentional killing.
"This change will ensure that our sentencing framework properly balances the various objectives: justice to the victim, justice to society, justice to the accused, and mercy in appropriate cases," Shanmugam said. "This is a matter of judgment and the approach being taken is not without risks, but we believe this is a step we can take."
Records show that there are currently 35 persons awaiting capital punishment in Singapore, with 28 convicted for drug offenses and seven for murder.
The Association of Criminal Lawyers of Singapore and the Law Society of Singapore have described the changes as a "milestone" in the country's legal history, and said that the government has made the right decision to give the courts more discretion.
"This change... recognizes that the measure of a society is how it treats its most unfortunate," said Subhas Anandan, president of the Association of Criminal Lawyers of Singapore and one of Singapore's most prominent defense lawyers. "Death row inmates deserve punishment, but not all deserve death. These new measures...will have a massive impact on the criminal justice system."
Others, however, have been more critical, insisting that Singapore continues to stand in opposition to human rights laws around the world due to its harsh penalties.
"There is a concern that this could lead to false hope and expectations. This is not a big bang at all, but a refinement," said Eugene Tan, a professor of law at the Singapore Management University and an independent lawmaker. "This is not Singapore sending a signal that it is soft on capital punishment."
Other activists have said the decision is a step in the right direction, and called for the government to show more mercy.
"[We] certainly did not expect this announcement to be made today. I think it is a good first step and hope it means that inmates... will be able to have their cases relooked [sic], and that they will be shown mercy," said Kirsten Han, co-founder of the anti-death penalty activist group We Believe in Second Chances.
"It's not the end of the death penalty. But it's a move in the right direction that no one really expected," said Alan Shadrake, a British author who was jailed last year for criticisms of Singapore's judiciary in his book "Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock."
Groups like Amnesty International have been especially critical of the Singapore government executing foreigners for drug offenses, instead of allowing home countries to deal with them by their rules.
"Many courts and judicial bodies around the world have ruled mandatory death sentencing as unconstitutional," the organization said in a statement. It also added that mandatory death sentences "constitute arbitrary deprivation of life and cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment."
Human rights group MARUAH also reacted to the news, with president Braema Mathi saying, "We applaud the Singapore government for taking this important first step. But this is only a small step in the right direction, as the mandatory death penalty is fundamentally troubling, and it continues to be applied to a substantial number of criminal offenses."
Mathi went on to note that the organization found it troubling that capital punishment still remains for offenses involving kidnapping and fire arms.
According to statistics published earlier this year, Singapore's crime rate dropped to 7 percent in 2011, the lowest it has ever been in 20 years.