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How Charley's Grilled Subs Sandwiched Its Way to Franchise Success
This story appears in the August 2011 issue of . Subscribe »
Charley Shin is lucky his family isn't good with maps. While visiting relatives in New York City in the mid-1980s, the Shin family got turned around and ended up in Philadelphia. Instead of stopping for directions, Shin, then a junior at Ohio State University, stopped for a legendary Philly cheesesteak, and an obsession took hold.
Soon after, he convinced his mother to sell her restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, and lend him her life savings to open a 450-square-foot cheesesteak shop across the street from campus.
"I really like traditional Philly cheesesteaks, but I didn't think it was going to fly in Columbus," he says, pointing out that Cheez Whiz and piles of meat warming on greasy grills were a turnoff to college students. Instead, he began experimenting with recipes and plying his friends with cooked-to-order steak topped with provolone, grilled onions, peppers and mushrooms. When he perfected his sandwich, Charley's Grilled Subs was born.
Over the next 25 years, Shin franchised and grew his concept, focusing on niches like food courts, military installations and airports. There are now more than 430 stores in 30 states and plans to open 40 to 50 more per year. We talked with Shin about the ups and downs of growing his business on its silver anniversary.
Why did it take so long for you to become profitable?
Originally, I thought once I had 20 stores open we'd be in good shape. At 30, I was still losing money. Fifty wasn't doing it. It wasn't until we were at 100 stores that we were making a little bit of money. That first 10 years was a lot of trial and error. I took the duty of franchisor seriously. If I was going to take franchisees' money--their American Dream--I felt I needed to invest it in the company, not take a profit.
How does Charley's differ from the competition?
Our product is impossible to mass-produce. We stress the fact that we are not McDonald's or Wendy's. We prepare food fresh for each customer, which means we take longer and charge more. But we're proud of what we serve. I don't know any other chain that serves USDA Choice steak.
What makes a good franchisee?
If we have franchisees with restaurant experience, that's really good. But I've found other traits that determine success. You need people willing to work hard and people who really relate to others. And they need to be humble. If you're not humble, you won't be willing to follow the system and learn.
Can you still grow?
Our concept is based on the idea of the captive audience. We'd open in regional malls and airports, but in any given market, there aren't a lot of captive audience settings, so we'd grow one unit at a time. Our future growth is going to be different. For us to reach our goal of 3,000 stores in 11 years, we have to focus much more on free-standing units.
You're very religious. Does that influence the company?
Religion is the most important part of my life. Our company culture is very straightforward--don't cheat, steal or lie. We give 10 percent of our earnings to a nonprofit set up to fund missionaries. I'm very grateful to see our franchisees living with those kinds of principles.
Did you pay your mother back?
My mother lives with our family. She's healthy and proud of me. I've never thought about it, but after all these years, she's never said anything about giving me her life savings. So many people have contributed to this business. I couldn't have done it by myself.


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It's that time of year again for all of you Bearville fans….Camp Happy Heart will be opening on July 1st! There's a banner up in Town Square. Camp Happy Heart is always a fun, competitive time for Bearville Insider members. This year there will be four teams: Team ChloeRocks, Team GreenTracks, Team MiguelSunshine and Team AbbieBright. There will also be a new quest available and other fun activities. Be sure to check it out!
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subset: commoncrawl


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Stealth bus stop
Through sensitive selection of signage, appurtenances and plantings, this Charlottesville Area Transit bus stop fits comfortably in a rural central Virginia neighborhood.
Commentator Bill Emory puts up a new photo nearly every day at billemory.com/blog.Read more on: charlottesville area transit
4 comments
I love this picture. Does anyone know who's responsibility it is to take care of things like this. Property owner or CAT?
There not a location in town that the CAT beats me to. They are too busy driving in circles to maintain the stops while the fancy fancy bus barn on Avon gets all CAT's cleaning attention. The bus stops get the rider trash- the drink cans, the chip bags, the multiple cigs butts smoked while waiting, the expectorant.
Its just not the bus stops either. Pay attention on the rural roads around here and you will notice signs covered by overgrowth everywhere. On Monticello Ave heading south, at the intersection of Carlton Ave. The view of the stop light on Monticello Ave is blocked by a walnut tree limb(s). I've seen several folks run that light because they either didn't see the light because of the tree limb OR they ignored it.
you get what you pay for


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David Simon would be happy to find out that The Wire was hyperbolic and ridiculous, and that the "American Century" is still to come. But he's not betting on it. An excerpt from Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues, forthcoming from The New Press.
Photograph by Robin Holland
Watching movie and television versions of Charles Dickens's novels, I often have imagined him back from the beyond, only this time living in America, putting his remarkable powers of observation to the dramatization of life in our inner cities. Then one day, while screening some episodes of HBO's The Wire, it hit me: Dickens was back and his name is David Simon.
What Charles Dickens learned walking the streets and alleys of Victorian London, Simon saw and heard over twelve years as a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. He turned his experiences first into a book and the NBC television series Homicide, then the HBO series The Corner. Next, with Ed Burns, a real-life cop turned teacher, he created The Wire. Simon's meticulous and brutally honest storytelling made Baltimore a metaphor for America's urban tragedy. During its five seasons, The Wire held up a mirror to an America most of us never see, where drugs, mayhem, and corruption routinely betray the promise of " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that is so ingrained in our political DNA.
For The Wire and his other work, David Simon received a MacArthur Fellowship, the no-strings-attached $500,000 grant that honors singular creativity and innovation. In the last few years, Simon also has produced Generation Kill, a brutal and realistic depiction of combat in Iraq, and Treme, a series that dissects post-Katrina New Orleans much as The Wire did Baltimore. Yet "when television history is written," one critic wrote, "little else will rival The Wire." Nor, when historians come to tell the story of America in our time, will they be able to ignore this Dickensian portrayal of America's expendable people.
[Eds.: Simon was back in the news last month weighing in on those expendable people. On March 11, Felicia (Snoop) Pearson, an actor from The Wire, was arrested on drug-related charges. Simon wrote in the Baltimore Sun that she deserved the presumption of innocence, adding, "America now jails more of its people than any country, including all totalitarian states. We pretend to a war against narcotics, but in truth, we are simply brutalizing and dehumanizing an urban underclass that we no longer need as a labor supply."]
Bill Moyers: There is a fellow in city government here in New York who's a policy wonk and a die-hard Wire fan. He was hoping I would ask you the one question on his mind: "David Simon has painted the most vivid and compelling portrait of the modern American city. Has he walked away from that story? And if he has, will he come back to it?"
David Simon: I've walked away from the Wire universe. It's had its five years. Stories have a beginning, middle, and end. If you keep stuff open-ended and you keep trying to stretch character and plot, they eventually break or bend.
Bill Moyers: What is it about the crime scene that gives you a keyhole, the best keyhole perhaps, into how American society really works?
David Simon: You see the equivocations. You see the stuff that doesn't make it into the civics books, and you also see how interconnected things are. How connected the performance of the school system is to the culture of a street corner. Or where parenting comes in. The decline of industry suddenly interacts with the paucity and sort of fraud of public education in the inner city. Because The Wire was not a story about America, it's about the America that got left behind.
Bill Moyers: I was struck by something that you said. You were wrestling with this one big existential question. You talked about drug addicts who would come out of detox and then try to steel-jaw themselves through their neighborhood. And then they'd come face-to-face with the question—which is…?
David Simon: "What am I doing here?" You know, a guy coming out of addiction at thirty, thirty-five, because it often takes to that age, he often got into addiction with a string of problems, some of which were interpersonal and personal, and some of which were systemic. These really are the excess people in America. Our economy doesn't need them—we don't need 10 or 15 percent of our population. And certainly the ones who are undereducated, who have been ill-served by the inner-city school system, who have been unprepared for the technocracy of the modern economy, we pretend to need them. We pretend to educate the kids. We pretend that we're actually including them in the American ideal, but we're not. And they're not foolish. They get it. They understand that the only viable economic base in their neighborhoods is this multibillion-dollar drug trade.
And I would think, "Man, it's just such an uphill struggle to do this with facts." When you tell a story with characters, people jump out of their seats.
Bill Moyers: I did a documentary about the South Bronx called The Fire Next Door and what I learned very early is that the drug trade is an inverted form of capitalism.
David Simon: Absolutely. In some ways it's the most destructive form of welfare that we've established, the illegal drug trade in these neighborhoods. It's basically like opening up a Bethlehem Steel in the middle of the South Bronx or in West Baltimore and saying, "You guys are all steelworkers." Just say no? That's our answer to that? And by the way, if it was chewing up white folk, it wouldn't have gone on for as long as it did.
Bill Moyers: Can fiction tell us something about inequality that journalism can't?
David Simon: I've wondered about that, because I did a lot of journalism that I thought was pretty good. As a reporter, I was trying to explain how the drug war doesn't work, and I would write these very careful and very well-researched pieces, and they would go into the ether and be gone. Whatever editorial writer was coming behind me would then write, "Let's get tough on drugs," as if I hadn't said anything. Even my own newspaper. And I would think, "Man, it's just such an uphill struggle to do this with facts." When you tell a story with characters, people jump out of their seats, and part of that's the delivery system of television.
Bill Moyers: Is it because we are tethered to the facts, we can't go where the imagination can take us?
David Simon: One of the themes of The Wire really was that statistics will always lie. Statistics can be made to say anything. You show me anything that depicts institutional progress in America: school test scores, crime stats, arrest reports, anything that a politician can run on, anything that somebody can get a promotion on, and as soon as you invent that statistical category, fifty people in that institution will be at work trying to figure out a way to make it look as if progress is actually occurring when actually no progress is. I mean, our entire economic structure fell behind the idea that these mortgage-backed securities were actually valuable, and they had absolutely no value. They were toxic. And yet they were being traded and being hurled about, because somebody could make some short-term profit. In the same way that a police commissioner or a deputy commissioner can get promoted, and a major can become a colonel, and an assistant school superintendent can become a school superintendent, if they make it look like the kids are learning and that they're solving crime. That was a front-row seat for me as a reporter, getting to figure out how once they got done with them the crime stats actually didn't represent anything.
Listen, if you could be draconian and reduce drug use by locking people up, you might have an argument. But we are the jailing-est country on the planet right now. Two million people in prison.
Bill Moyers: And you say that's driving the war on drugs, though, right?
David Simon: Stats, you know, dope on the table. "We've made so many arrests." I mean, under one administration they used to ride around Baltimore and say, "If we can make fifty-four arrests a day, we'll have an all-time record for drug arrests." Some of the arrests, it was people sitting on their stoops and, you know, loitering in a drug-free zone, meaning you were sitting on your own steps on a summer day. Anything that is a stat can be cheated, right down to journalism. And I was sort of party to that.
So I would be watching what the police department was doing, what the school system was doing, you know, looking outward. But if you looked inward you'd see that the same game is played everywhere, that nobody's actually in the business of doing what the institution's supposed to do.
Bill Moyers: Many people could see what you saw simply if we opened our eyes. And yet the drug war keeps getting crazier and crazier, from selling guns to Mexico's drug cartel to cramming more people into prison even though they haven't committed violent crimes. Why don't the policies change?
David Simon: Because there's no political capital in it. There really isn't. The fear of being called soft on crime, soft on drugs. The paranoia that's been induced. Listen, if you could be draconian and reduce drug use by locking people up, you might have an argument. But we are the jailing-est country on the planet right now. Two million people in prison. We're locking up less-violent people. More of them. The drugs are purer. They haven't closed down a single drug corner that I know of in Baltimore for any length of time. It's not working. And by the way, this is not a Republican-Democrat thing, because a lot of the most draconian stuff came out of the Clinton administration, this guy trying to maneuver to the center in order not to be perceived as leftist by a Republican Congress.
Bill Moyers: Mandatory sentences, three strikes—
David Simon: Loss of parole. And again, not merely for violent offenders, because again, the rate of violent offenders is going down. Federal prisons are full of people who got caught muling drugs and got tarred with the whole amount of the drugs. It's not what you were involved in or what you profited from. It's what they can tar you with. You know, a federal prosecutor, basically, when he decides what to charge you with and how much, he's basically the sentencing judge at that point. And that's, of course, corrupting. Again, it's a stat.
Bill Moyers: It's also clear from your work that you think the drug war has destroyed the police.
David Simon: That's the saddest thing in a way, again, because the stats mean nothing. Because a drug arrest in Baltimore means nothing. Real police work isn't being done. In my city, the arrest rates for all major felonies have declined, precipitously, over the last twenty years. From murder to rape to robbery to assault.
Because to solve those crimes requires retroactive investigation. They have to be able to do a lot of things, in terms of gathering evidence, that are substantive and meaningful police work. All you have to do to make a drug arrest is go in a guy's pocket. You don't even need probable cause anymore in Baltimore. The guy who solves a rape or a robbery or a murder, he has one arrest stat. He's going to court one day. The guy who has forty, fifty, sixty drug arrests, even though they're meaningless arrests, even though there's no place to put them in the Maryland prison system, he's going to go to court forty, fifty, sixty times. Ultimately, when it comes time to promote somebody, they look at the police computer. They'll look and they'll say, "This guy made forty arrests last month. You only made one. He's the sergeant" or "That's the lieutenant." The guys who basically play the stat game, they get promoted.
Bill Moyers: There's a scene in the third season of The Wire where the Baltimore police major Bunny Colvin, a favorite character, gives some rare straight talk on the futility of this drug war.
David Simon: I don't think we have the stomach to actually evaluate it.
Bill Moyers: What do you mean?
David Simon: Again, we would have to ask ourselves a lot of hard questions. The people most affected by this are black and brown and poor. It's the abandoned inner cores of our urban areas. As we said before, economically, we don't need those people; the American economy doesn't need them. So as long as they stay in their ghettos and they only kill each other, we're willing to pay for a police presence to keep them out of our America. And to let them fight over scraps, which is what the drug war, effectively, is. Since we basically have become a market-based culture, that's what we know, and it's what's led us to this sad dénouement. I think we're going to follow market-based logic right to the bitter end.
Bill Moyers: Which says?
David Simon: If you don't need 'em, why extend yourself? Why seriously assess what you're doing to your poorest and most vulnerable citizens? There's no profit to be had in doing anything other than marginalizing them and discarding them.
The drug war is war on the underclass now. That's all it is. It has no other meaning.
Bill Moyers: But here's the problem for journalism. When we write about inequality, we use numbers that are profound but numbing. I mean, here's something I just read: over the past twenty years, the elite 1 percent of Americans saw their share of the nation's income double, from 11.3 percent to 22.1 percent, but their tax burden shrank by about one-third. Now, those facts tell us something very important: that the rich got richer as their tax rates shrank. But it doesn't seem to start people's blood rushing.
David Simon: You start talking about a social compact between the people at the bottom of the pyramid and the people at the top, and people look at you and say, "Are you talking about sharing wealth?" Listen, capitalism is the only engine credible enough to generate mass wealth. I think it's imperfect, but we're stuck with it. And thank God we have that in the toolbox. But if you don't manage it in some way that incorporates all of society, if everybody's not benefiting on some level and you don't have a sense of shared purpose, national purpose, then it's just a pyramid scheme. Who's standing on top of whose throat?
Bill Moyers: Why do you think, David, that we tolerate such gaps between rich and poor?
David Simon: You know, I'm fascinated by it. Because a lot of the people who end up voting for that kind of laissez-faire market policy are people who get creamed by it. And I think it's almost like a casino. You're looking at the guy winning, you're looking at the guy who pulled the lever and all the bells go off, all the coins are coming out of a one-armed bandit. You're thinking, "That could be me. I'll play by those rules." But actually, those are house rules. And most of you are going to lose.
Bill Moyers: After all these years do you have the answer?
David Simon: Oh, I would decriminalize drugs in a heartbeat. I would put all the interdiction money, all the incarceration money, all the enforcement money, all of the pretrial, all the prep, all of that cash, I would hurl it as fast as I could into drug treatment and job training and jobs programs. I would rather turn these neighborhoods inward with jobs programs. Even if it was the urban equivalent of FDR's CCC—the Civilian Conservation Corps—if it was New Deal–type logic, it would be doing less damage than creating a war syndrome. The drug war is war on the underclass now. That's all it is. It has no other meaning.
Bill Moyers: There's very little the police can do.
David Simon: You talk honestly with some of the veteran and smarter detectives in Baltimore, the guys who have given their career to the drug war, including, for example, Ed Burns, who was a drug warrior for twenty years, and they'll tell you, this war's lost. This is all over but the shouting and the tragedy and the waste. And yet there isn't a political leader with the stomach to really assess it for what it is.
Bill Moyers: So whose lives are less and less necessary in America today?
David Simon: Certainly the underclass. There's a reason they are the underclass. We're in an era when you don't need as much mass labor; we are not a manufacturing base. People who built stuff, their lives had some meaning and value because the factories were open. You don't need them anymore. Unions and working people are completely abandoned by this economic culture, and, you know, that's heartbreaking to me. I've been a union member my whole life and I guess I belong to a little gilded union now. A gilded guild.
Bill Moyers: The Writers Guild.
David Simon: The Writers Guild, yes, but I was a member of the Newspaper Guild before that and I thank them for letting me earn an honest living. Without them, God knows what we would have been paid in Baltimore. But I look at what's happened with unions. Ed Burns says all the time that he wants to do a piece on the Haymarket.
Bill Moyers: The Haymarket bombing in Chicago, in 1886.
David Simon: Yes. The bombing, that critical moment when American labor was pushed so much to the starving point that they were willing to fight. And I actually think that's the only time when change is possible, when people are actually threatened to the core, and enough people are threatened to the core that they just won't take it anymore. Those are the pivotal moments in American history, I think, when something actually does happen.
In Haymarket, they were fighting for the eight-hour workday. It sounded radical at the time, but it's basically a dignity-of-life issue. You look at things like that, you look at the anti-Vietnam War effort in this country. You had to threaten middle-class kids with a draft and with military service in an unpopular war for people to rise up and demand an end to that unpopular war. I mean, it didn't happen without that. So on some level, as long as they placate enough people, as long as they throw enough scraps from the table that enough people get a little bit to eat, I just don't see a change coming.
Bill Moyers: So did this great collapse we have been experiencing confirm the reporting you had done about what happens when an economic system creates two separate realities?
David Simon: I couldn't have conceived of something as grandiose as the mortgage bubble, when you finally look at what caused that, and the sheer greed and the stupidity of that pyramid scheme. We didn't know it was as corrosive as it was. We didn't know it was rotted out that much. But we knew there was something rotten in the core. And we knew it from what we were looking at, in terms of Baltimore, and how Baltimore addressed its problems.
Bill Moyers: Politics is supposed to be about solving the situations you describe. But it's constantly creating its own reality, right?
David Simon: It's about money and it's about advancement. As a reporter, I got to see some politics. I wasn't a political reporter per se, but I got to see enough of city politics to absorb it. And Ed Burns taught in the Baltimore city school system and pulled all that through the keyhole for season four of The Wire. I got to see the war on drugs. I got to see policing as a concept. And I got to see journalism.
And when it came to explaining complicated and sophisticated systems and trying to say, "This is what's going on and if we change this or do that, or if we actually implement this policy, we can, you know…" The hard work of looking at it systemically, there was no incentive to do it and nobody did it, and that's as true in Baltimore today as when I started as a reporter, and I think it's true in America.
I am very cynical about institutions and their willingness to address themselves to reform. I am not cynical when it comes to individuals and people.
Bill Moyers: I remain indebted to those reporters who go where I can't go, who talk to people I can't reach, and come back. I'm still indebted to them. And as you say, you were spit out by the forces at work in the journalistic world. And now journalism is spitting out reporters like teeth.
David Simon: Left and right. You know, listen, I was not the last. That's true. And it's heartbreaking. And I say this with no schadenfreude just because I got a TV gig. It's heartbreaking what's happening, and I feel that the republic is actually in danger.
There is no guard now assessing anything qualitatively, no pulling back the veil behind what an official will tell you is progress, or is valid, or is legitimate as policy. Absent that, no good can come from anything. Because there is an absolute disincentive to tell the truth.
Bill Moyers: I read something you recently told The Guardian in London: "Oh, to be a state or local official in America"—without newspapers—"it's got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption."
David Simon: Well, I was being a little hyperbolic.
Bill Moyers: But it's happening.
David Simon: Yes. It absolutely is. To find out what's going on in my own city I often find myself at a bar somewhere, writing stuff down on a cocktail napkin that a police lieutenant or some schoolteacher tells me because these institutions are no longer being covered by beat reporters who are looking for the systemic. It doesn't exist anymore.
"We were doing our job, making the world safe for democracy. And all of a sudden, terra firma shifted, new technology. Who knew that the Internet was going to overwhelm us?" I would buy that if I wasn't in journalism for the years that immediately preceded the Internet. I took the third buyout from the Baltimore Sun. I was about reporter number eighty or ninety who left, in 1995, long before the Internet had had its impact. I left at a time when the Baltimore Sun was earning a 37-percent profit.
We now know this because it's in bankruptcy and the books are open. All that R&D money that was supposed to go into making newspapers more essential, more viable, more able to explain the complexities of the world went to shareholders in the Tribune Company. Or the L.A. Times Mirror Company before that. And ultimately, when the Internet did hit, they had an inferior product that was not essential enough that they could charge online for it.
I mean, the guys who are running newspapers over the last twenty or thirty years have to be singular in the manner in which they destroyed their own industry. It's even more profound than Detroit in 1973 making Chevy Vegas and Pacers and Gremlins and believing that no self-respecting American would buy a Japanese car. Except it's not analogous, in that a Nissan is a pretty good car and a Toyota is a pretty good car. The Internet, while it's great for commentary and froth, doesn't do very much first-generation reporting at all. The economic model can't sustain that kind of reporting. They had contempt for their own product, these people.
Bill Moyers: The publishers. The owners.
David Simon: You know, for twenty years, they looked upon the copy as being the stuff that went around the ads. The ads were God. And then all of a sudden the ads were not there, and the copy they had contempt for. They had actually marginalized themselves.
I was being a little flippant with The Guardian, but what I was saying was, you know, until they figure out the new model, there's going to be a wave of corruption.
Bill Moyers: Are you cynical?
David Simon: I am very cynical about institutions and their willingness to address themselves to reform. I am not cynical when it comes to individuals and people. And I think the reason The Wire is watchable, even tolerable, to viewers is that it has great affection for individuals. It's not misanthropic in any way. It has great affection for those people, particularly when they stand up on their hind legs and say, "I will not lie anymore. I am actually going to fight for what I perceive to be some shard of truth."
You know, over time, people are going to look at The Wire and think, "This was not quite as cynical as we thought it was. This was actually a little bit more journalistic than that. They were being blunt. But it was less mean than we thought it was." I think, in Baltimore, the initial response to seeing some of this on the air was, "These guys are not fair and they're mean. And they're just out to savage us." But it was a love letter to Baltimore.
Bill Moyers: You said to the students at Loyola College in Baltimore some years ago, "I want you to go and look up the word oligarchy." Well, I did just that. I took your advice. I looked it up.
David Simon: Uh-oh.
Bill Moyers: It means "government by the few." Or "a government in which a small group exercises control for corrupt and selfish purposes." Is that what you saw in Baltimore?
David Simon: I was speaking nationally, but yes. We are a country of democratic ideas and impulses, but it is strained through some very oligarchical structures. One of which could be, for example, the United States Senate. Or I look at the electoral college as being decidedly undemocratic. I don't buy into the notion that "one man, one vote" is not the most fundamental way of doing business. And, ultimately, when I look at the drug war—listen, the only reason that alcohol and cigarettes, which do far more damage than heroin and cocaine, are legal is that white people, and affluent white people at that, make money off that stuff. Philip Morris, if those guys had black and brown skin and were in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, they'd be hunted. Or maybe not anymore; maybe they'd be in control of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. That's another story.…
I look at that, and I say, "Yes, money talks." The idea that what the most people want is best for the most people, the utilitarian sense of democracy still applying in American life—I just don't see a lot of evidence for that.
There are about 749 different shows, dramas and comedies, on television right now. Seven hundred and forty-eight of them are about the America that I inhabit, that you inhabit, that most of the viewing public, I guess, inhabits.
Bill Moyers: So is this what you mean when you say The Wire is dissent?
David Simon: Yes. It is dissent. It is saying, "We no longer buy these false ideologies. And the false motifs you have of American life." I look at this and I think to myself, if only you stand up and say, "I'm not going to be lied to anymore," that's a victory on some level, that's a beginning of a dynamic. Can change happen? Yes. But things have to get a lot worse.
Bill Moyers: If I could put a lead on the body of your work—your journalism, your articles, your essays, your speeches, your books, your television series—it would be this: David Simon says America's not working for everyday people who have no power. And that's the way the people with power have designed it to work.
David Simon: Right. I mean, it would be one thing with an oligarchy if they were doing a better job of it. I would be okay with that.
Bill Moyers: Making the trains run on time.
David Simon: Right, but everything from Iraq to Wall Street to urban policy to the drug war, I look at it all and I say, "You know, these guys really couldn't do much worse." New Orleans was such a beautiful metaphor for the hollowness at the core of American will, you know? To have seen the president of the United States take the plane down and look out his window and say, "Oh my God, it must be twice as bad on the ground." Twice as bad? Really? It's failure of will and imagination and I see it across the board, and I just think, in a way, The Wire is an editorial. It's an angry op-ed, as if Frank Rich was given, you know, twelve hours of airtime to rant.
Bill Moyers: Are you, as someone [Eds: The Atlantic] said, "the angriest man in television"?
David Simon: I saw that. It doesn't really mean much. The second-angriest guy is, you know, by a kidney-shaped pool in L.A. screaming into his cell phone because his DVD points aren't enough. But I don't mind being called that. I just don't think it means anything. How can you have lived through the last ten years in American culture and not be? How can you not look at what happened on Wall Street, at this gamesmanship that was the mortgage bubble, that was just selling crap and calling it gold? Or watch a city school system suffer for twenty, twenty-five years? Isn't anger the appropriate response? What is the appropriate response? Ennui? Alienation? Buying into the great-man theory of history—that if we only elect the right guy? This stuff is systemic. This is how an empire is eaten from within.
Bill Moyers: But I don't think these good individuals you talk about—the individual who stands up and says, "I'm not going to lie anymore"—I don't think individuals know how to crack that system, how to change that system. Because, as you say, the system is self-perpetuating.
David Simon: And beautifully moneyed. I don't think we can. And so I don't think it's going to get better. Listen, I don't like talking this way. I would be happy to find out that The Wire was hyperbolic and ridiculous, and that the "American Century" is still to come. I don't believe it, but I'd love to believe it, because I live in Baltimore and I'm an American. I want to sit in my house and see the game on Saturday along with everybody else. But I just don't see a lot of evidence of it.
Bill Moyers: Do you really believe, as you said to those students at Loyola, that we're not going to make it?
David Simon: We're not going to make it as a first-rate empire. And I'm not sure that that's a bad thing in the end. Empires end, and that doesn't mean cultures end completely, and it doesn't even mean that for nation-states. If you looked at Britain in 1952 and what was being presided over by Anthony Eden and those guys, you'd have said, "Man, what's going to be left?" But Britain's still there, and they've come to terms with what they can and can't do. Americans are still sort of in an age of delusion, I think. A lot of our foreign policy represents that. And this notion that the markets were always going to go up, and that once we had invested stocks to death, we could create some new equity out of nothing.
Bill Moyers: You are a reporter, not a prophet, but sometimes what happens emerges from the way the facts were reported. You need to know what reality is, as best you can, before you can choose which way to go. Who do you think is going to tell us now what the facts are that we can agree on? Is it going to be television? Is it going to be fiction? Is it going to be journalism?
David Simon: I don't know. I mean, I think ultimately a little of it's going to come from everywhere. You know, there have been novels that I read that I thought were genuine truth-telling. And there have been journalistic endeavors that have really come close to being brilliant and blunt and honest, in a variety of formats. And there has been some film and some television. But it's not like everybody's rushing to make The Wire. I've pretty much demonstrated how not to make a hit show, you know? I make a show that gets me on Bill Moyers.
There are about 749 different shows, dramas and comedies, on television right now. Seven hundred and forty-eight of them are about the America that I inhabit, that you inhabit, that most of the viewing public, I guess, inhabits. There was only one about the other America. And it was arguing, passionately, about a place where, let's face it, the economic rules don't apply in the same way. Half of the adult black males in my city are unemployed. That's not an economic model that actually works.
This excerpt is from the forthcoming collection of Moyers interviews, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues
Copyright © 2011 Bill Moyers
Published by The New Press, Inc.
Reprinted here with permission.
Editors Recommend:
Writing the Playwright: Tony Kushner in conversation with Frederic Tuten
To contact Guernica or David Simon, please write here.


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You can thank the premature death of Luck for the quick renewals — and returns of Girls and Enlightened. (Both will return in January 2013.) "When we made the decision to pull the plug on Luck while they were in production on the second season, we did not have a backup plan," Michael Lombardo, HBO's president of programming, told reporters at Television Critics Association fall TV previews on Wednesday. "We have new shows coming up next year, but we did not have anything ready for that period." Both series will air their 10-episode second seasons with originals running through March.
HBO also came loaded with plenty of other announcements, including a film starring Larry David, a Rolling Stones documentary and the future of True Blood and Game of Thrones. Check it out:
Larry David, film star: HBO Co-President Richard Plepler revealed Wednesday that the network is doing a movie starring Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David. Few details were provided: It will be directed by Greg Mottola, it's not a Curb movie and David won't be playing the Larry David from Curb in the film. Plepler said that David has "carte blanche" to do whatever he decides. Lombardo added that David has not closed the door on another season of Curb.
Rolling on HBO: Coinciding with the band's 50th anniversary, a new documentary from Brett Morgan will feature all four current members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts, along with former members Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor.
Game of Thrones' future: While HBO's hit fantasy drama heads into its third season, author George R.R. Martin is working away on writing the sixth book. "As long as he keeps writing, we'll keep producing," Plepler said. Lombardo said he was proud of deciding to make the series because it sounded fearless and brave. "It was exceptional," he said.
Bye, bye Ball: In that same vein, True Blood will say farewell to showrunner Alan Ball at the end of the current fifth season. However, Lombardo noted that as long as it continues to perform with the consumer, "and more importantly, exciting the storytellers, I think we're there."
The Newsroom controversy: Though it's one of the most-discussed series this summer — mostly for its treatment of its female characters and an overreliance on speechifying — Plepler said they've very happy with how the season is going. "We're very proud of it," he said. "To the original voice point, there's nobody who writes as Aaron [Sorkin] writes and nobody who can resonate and create a conversation like Aaron can. There are 7 million viewers a week who are coming back to that show in a very competitive landscape who love it. There's only one Aaron Sorkin and we're very proud that he's working with us."
The return of Vincent Chase & Co.? The rumored Entourage film is still in the works, but don't hold your breath. "Doug [Ellin], as of this week, is on page 65. He's writing a film script," Lombardo said. "I've heard a very general pitch for it and I think after we take a look at the script, we'll see if there's any interest. We still have to make deals with the cast and figure out if this is something we want to do or not."
More Treme? A fourth season of the critically acclaimed series is in talks. "We'll hopefully have a decision one way or another, so we don't miss shooting around the hurricane season if we want to move forward," Lombardo said of the New Orleans-set drama.
Adaptations everywhere: Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections was "very difficult" to adapt to series, Plepler said. "Unfortunately, we can't do everything we want to do and there are constraints on the canvas." Meanwhile, Lisa Cholodenko's television adaptation of her Oscar-nominated film The Kids Are All Right is still being considered and a script has already been turned in.
Woody and Matthew are true detectives: The HBO bosses were quick to shy away from comparing new drama True Detective, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, to series like The Wire and The Sopranos. "True Detective is light years away from each of those shows," Lombardo said, calling the network's pickup of the series a "no-brainer." Similar to American Horror Story, Detective is set up as an anthology, but Lombardo noted they haven't yet discussed what future seasons will look like.
Later Luck: Just because Luck has gone off the air, don't expect the long-rumored Deadwood movies to finally come to fruition. "David [Milch] is busy at work, and not only [on] a new pilot for us, but some movies and miniseries that have caught his interest," Lombardo said.
More docs: Additionally, HBO's lineup of upcoming documentaries include Ethel (Oct. 18), an in-depth portrait of Ethel Kennedy by her daughter; Don't Divorce Me! Kids' Rules for Parents on Divorce (Sept. 20) from Rosie O'Donnell; The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia (Oct. 29); The Latino List: Volume 2 (Sept. 24); and Witness, which follows a new generation of young combat photographers abroad, coming in November.


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Jason London Can Legally Say He Never Shit His Pants In a Police Car
Dazed and Confused star Jason London can now deny the fact that he pooped himself in the back of a cop car, even though he admittedly pooped himself in the back of a cop car.
Last January, London was arrested for disorderly conduct in Arizona after allegedly punching a bouncer. According to TMZ:
On his way to the police station ... Jason uttered a homophobic slur to the cops ... saying, "Guess what fa**ot? I f***ing love this. I f***ing own you guys so hard. I'm rich and I'm a motherf***ing famous actor! F***ing look me up, bitch."
Jason continued ... "It smells like s**t in your car and your breath smells like diarrhea." According to the police report, Jason then leaned to the left and crapped in his pants. Jason then said, "I told you I'm happy as s**t."
In July, London pled guilty to the disorderly conduct charges and he was ordered to attend an alcohol treatment program.
TMZ reports on Tuesday that London has finally completed a 16-hour alcohol education course and, as a result, the disorderly conduct conviction has been wiped from his record. Basically, London intentionally shit himself, pled guilty to doing it, and now he can say it never happened. What a world! If only everyone's pants-shitting stories could be erased as easily.


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Get advice for residents and businesses following the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, including guidance on making your business COVID-secure.
Please be sure to check your junk and spam email folders if you email email@example.com as we're aware a small number of residents aren't receiving our responses.
If you find yourself struggling to pay your Council Tax, we may be able to help, email the Council Tax team or call 01795 417272.
Alternatively, you can visit our Debt Advice page for more advice.
We fully understand that people can sometimes have difficulty paying their council tax. We also understand that, with busy lives to lead, people occasionally forget to make payments, or pay them late. That's why we always try to be sensitive to a person's circumstances and make every effort to help whenever possible.
The biggest mistake people make when they fall behind with their council tax is to simply do nothing. We cannot do anything to help unless you let us know there is a problem. We will be able to advise you what you need to do and we may also be able to reschedule your payments.
We would recommend that you pay by Direct Debit, that way your payments are requested automatically by your bank, so there's no risk of missing a payment. If you would like to set up a Direct Debit instruction to pay your council tax see our ways to pay page.
The reason we send letters is to remind people that their payments are behind. This provides an opportunity to do something about it, the important thing is to act now. Don't wait until you have received another letter. If you can't pay as requested, please let us know as we might be able to help.
We will send you a reminder notice if you have missed a payment. You must pay the amount shown on the reminder within 7 days. If you don't pay within 7 days, you could be summoned to court for the balance of the year's council tax.
We will only send you two reminder notices in any one financial year. If you keep missing payments you will lose your right to pay by monthly instalments and will have to pay the balance of the year's council tax.
We will send a final notice if you have missed payments and reminder notices have previously been issued and / or if you have moved house without clearing the council tax due on your old address. The final notice will be for the balance outstanding of the year's council tax. You will need to pay the amount in full within 7 days. If you don't, you could be summoned to court.
If you do not respond to reminders or a final notice, court proceedings to recover the unpaid amount may commence. In which case, you will be sent a summons, advising you of a Hearing date. The only way to avoid the matter going to court is to pay the outstanding council tax in full. You will also have to pay additional costs.
If you do not pay, we will ask the court to grant a "liability order". This will give us the power to take further steps to recover the outstanding council tax. These could include sending enforcement agents to your home, taking the outstanding council tax straight from your pay, or making deductions from your benefits.
For further information and debt help visit Citizens Advice Bureau or StepChange debt charity if you would like money advice tips.


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"Now is the winter of our discontentIt seems that the gang that can't shoot straight -- the Obama campaign -- has now also turned tone-deaf. Last Friday, in addition to hijacking Air Force One to go on a campaign junket thinly veiled as official business (a factory tour and speechifying sandwiched between six fundraisers), they also are going to allow the peasants a pair o' seats at their table at an upcoming NY fundraiser "hosted" by Sara Jessica "Why the long Face" Parker and Anna "I'm always in Vogue" Wintour.
Made glorious summer by this sun of York..
- Duke of Gloster, Richard III, Act I Scene 1
The Romney/RNC Blitzkrieg did not waste any time jumping on this one:
It's a goodly part of the ad in playing in the background with those oh so uncomfortable numbers up close and personal.
How bad was this?
Even Juan Williams on Fox's Chris Matthews Sunday show gets it:
I won't dwell on the annoying accent and arrogance of Wintour as she recounts her good fortune at meeting women like Parker and "Mee-Shell Obah-Ma" but I truly wonder about a campaign whose dissonance includes bashing Romney as a One-Percenter while simultaneously seekign to raise funds with this bitch and Ferris Beuller's wife.
If any of you go, be sure to give us a report on the proceedings. I mean, we're all just waiting on pins and needles out here in flyover country..


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Holland America Line is a British-American cruise company headquartered in Seattle.
It became part of Carnival Corporation & plc in 1989. Between 1873 and 1989 they operated as a shipping line and passenger line between the Netherlands and North America and helped the Dutch immigrants move to North America.
The fleet is composed of 15 ships built since 1993.
Holland America itineraries are the most variegated. Holland explore the whole Mediterranean: from the Eastern side, touching Greece, Turkey, Montenegro, to the Western side, reaching Gibraltar and Cadiz. If you have problems reaching the port of Civitavecchia or Venice, we can provide you with a Trenitalia train ticket, so you can reach the port comfortably.
Holland also reaches exotic places such as the Caribbean or South America, to enjoy incredible views on fully-equipped ships: a mix of adventure and comfort.
If you dream of reaching the Far East, Holland is the company for you: leave from Singapore and travel towards Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, to get closer to far cultures and discover the charm of these magical places. Holland also offer the world tour, the trip of your life that will completely change you: up to 115 days of dream destinations with a billion of things to do. You cultural baggage will explode with all this richness.
Book with Taoticket your Holland America Line holiday and take advantage of the offers of the moment. The right choice for your vacation or the travel you've been waiting for a lifetime is just a phone-call away! Contact us at the number +390105733006 and let our operators guide you and find the solution for you in a blink!
Everything, on Holland America's ships, is well-finished. You'll be spoiled for choice when deciding where to have dinner: Italian and specialty restaurants, rich buffets offering any kind of food. With As You Wish™ program, you can decide to eat whenever you want between 5.15 PM and 9 PM, in total serenity. Decide which stateroom best suits you, there is a wide range to choose from for all tastes and budgets! From the interior cabins to the ones with a veranda with floor-to-ceiling windows, and any kind of suites. They are furnished with taste and relaxing shades, flat screen TVs, soaps and lotions and a series of optional services that will make the difference. Choose the ship and the itinerary you like the most, the options are countless! Holland offer any kind of cruises, from the 2 nights mini cruises to the world tour, according to the time you have available. By booking with Taoticket, you will be sure you got your Holland America cruise at the lowest rate on the market. On our website, you can find offers and low-cost departures all year round! Unforgettable itineraries at super convenient prices: a winning combination! Taoticket offer you all the support you need, from the moment you book, until you're home.
Contact our operators or leave a request on our website. You will be contacted immediately and will receive a personalized holiday package according to what you need.


text: After packaging craft-brewded ale in kegs during their first few years, microbrewery COAST installed new bottling equipment for filling, capping, and labeling two of their beers into 22-ounce amber glass "bomber" bottles. Last fall, owners/brewers David Merritt and Jaime Tenney quickly worked out a few kinks and started bottling two of their signature varieties — the golden-colored 32/50 Kölsch ale and the hoppy, amber-colored HopArt IPA —in 22-ounce bombers. Now, it's conveniently COAST time any time.


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Home > Test Analyst – Permanent
Don't miss out on this great opportunity to work with a large Public Sector client located in Dublin city centre.
This role will see the successful candidate working alongside a team to support multiple projects for the end client. The chosen candidate must have the ability to work independently in a fast-paced environment.
If you would like to discuss this opportunity in person or with one of our IT Resourcers please forward your CV to Vantage Resources or contact Audrey McDonnell on +353 1 295 2850 for a confidential discussion. Vantage Resources will not forward your details without prior discussion and approval.
Vantage Resources is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to creating a diverse working environment by recruiting people from different backgrounds and cultures. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for engagement and/or employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity sexual orientation, national origin, culture, disability or age. An inclusive and diverse workforce is an essential part of the development of our organisation's culture which we believe enhances both our working environment and the service we provide to our customers.
You may return to your current search results by clicking here.
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18-19 College Green
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Itty-Bitty Brownie Bites
I made some more minis this weekend. I'm talking tiny, one-bite brownies dipped and decorated with chocolate to look like little cupcakes.
They are so cute … I can't stand it. And even better… they are a breeze to make using a brownie mix…
… and some of the products in my new line with Make'n Mold.
(candy wafers, cups mold and pastry bags)
Itty-Bitty Brownie Bites
- Brownie mix (eggs, water, vegetable oil)
- Non-stick Cooking Spray
- Silicone Cups Mold
- Chocolate Fudge Candy Wafers (or another color for fun)
- Medium microwave-safe bowl
- Marshmallow White Candy Wafers
- Pink Microwave-safe Pastry Bags
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit and spray candy cup cavities generously with non-stick cooking spray.
- Prepare batter following directions for brownie mix. (I made mine with two eggs for a more cake-like brownie)
- Fill mold cavities about 2/3 full with brownie batter. You can use a piping bag to make it easier and less messy.
- Place mold on a small baking sheet for stability. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until done.
- Cool and remove by gently pushing the bottom of each cup shape so you can easily lift out the brownie.
- If you have multiple molds it will go more quickly, but if not simply clean the mold and repeat, coating with more non-stick spray each time.
- Melt 4-6 oz of chocolate fudge candy wafers in the microwave using the medium bowl. Microwave on medium-low for 30 seconds at a time stirring in between each interval until melted, fluid and smooth. Dip the tops of the brownies and place on a wax paper covered baking sheet for a few minutes to dry.
- Place some of the marshmallow white wafers in the microwave-safe pastry bag, twist the end to secure and microwave for 30 seconds at a time. Knead the wafers in between each heating until melted and smooth. Then snip off the tip and pipe loops on the top of each brownie bite.
Super cute!
And super tiny!
The perfect one bite brownie! Just be careful. I gave some to my mom and she said they were like popping grapes in your mouth… way too easy to eat.


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This year I found way too many amazingly stupid products, many more than I could find space for in my Holiday Gift Guide. THIS WEK THEY'RE ALL ON SALE!!! We're talking deep, deep discounts, 20%- 35% 67% even 82% off on some items, not that they're worth having at any price, but this week, you can buy them for less.
Whether or not you want to buy them, marvel at these wonders of our material culture, and think about what they say about the society that spawned them. While you survey this collection, remember that in 2014, roughly 150,000 species of plant and animal, went extinct in order to make space for warehouses full of these marvelous products.
Christmas may be over, but it's still wintertime. Here's some great prices on cold weather accessories:
Smoking Mittens Just because you have to stand outside to smoke, that doesn't mean you have to get frostbite. Save money and save your fingers while you commit slow suicide in exile.
Handerpants Get a few pairs of these. You may wear your smoking mittens all winter, but you'll want to change your Handerpants every day.
Bread Gloves Because… fuck, I don't know, but we have some AMAZING knitted crap to keep you warm this Winter and EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!!
Brain Hat At least it will make you look smart.
Beard Hat Wear this hat and you'll look like me, which will help me avoid arrest. I don't see an upside to that for you.
Penis Underwear which combines with:
Boob Pillow to complete the costume. Once you look like me, you'll want to get really drunk, so tuck your boob pillow into this:
Wine Flask Bra You'll need a really stupid looking sweater to cover it all up. Try these:
Crappy Christmas Sweaters Now that's what I call fashion. Here's an idea for couples who both want to look like me:
Peanut Butter and Jelly Couples Beard It keeps your neck warm, and keeps you from getting separated in a large crowd, but maybe looking like me isn't the look you're looking for.
Knitted Snuggie This will keep you warm, and no one will know who is inside. or perhaps…
Tail-light Pants Not only do they light-up after dark, they go "beep…beep…beep" whenever you step backwards.
…but maybe you've seen enough clothing. Smart phone remain popular with stupid people, here are some stupid phones for SMART SHOPPERS!!!!
Denture Phone With this phone, you can chew your own ear off, while you do the same to your friends
French Fry Phone Maybe this is for your Denture Phone to eat while you talk.
Burger Phone Because you're too busy to take time off for lunch. With this, you can eat your phone while you close the deal.
Cassette Phone This phone automatically adds hiss, attenuates high frequencies, and after 45 minutes of call time, you have to wait five minutes for it to rewind. Speaking of rewinding…
DVD Rewinder With this, you'll never have to pay a rewind fee again! …and we've got low low prices on other high high-tech items as well. like these…
Face Massager Wear this when you go down on her, and she'll think she's getting cunnilingus from C3po. It don't get any more high-tech than that, except maybe this…
i-Toungue French kiss/oral sex app for i-phone.
Chicken Foot USB Drive Why didn't the chicken cross the road? Because its foot was stuck in your computer.
Bongzilla Hi-Tech Beer Bong How many time have you thought to yourself: "I sure do love drinking beer from a funnel. I wish I could funnel this beer RIGHT NOW, but that other guy is using the funnel, and it'll be another 6 seconds before he's finished. I wish there was a way we could pour all of our beer into the funnel, and all six of us could drink from it at the same time?" Not many, I'll bet.
Future Bassoon This great new high-tech musical instrument plays like a bassoon, but it has a fretboard instead of keys, which means that nobody knows how to play it. Sure looks cool though. Speaking of looking good… SAVE BIG on these health and beauty products:
Nose Straightener Whatever is wrong with your appearance, you can be sure that no one will notice as long as you wear this.
Runny Nose Soap Dispenser Makes cleaning up as fun as rubbing snot all over your body.
Go Golfing or Go Girl Personal Pee Products If you live around here, you know why you need this. No public restrooms in town means I'll empty my golf club on your fucking lawn. …and we've got GREAT DEALS on sports equipment too!!!
Potty Putter Drop a load off of your handicap, while you drop a load.
Baseball-Mitt Chair You'll always be "Safe" when you let this chair field your balls. …and we've got unbelievable kitchen gadgets at UNBELIEVABLE PRICES!!!
Karate-Chop Plastic Knife Finally, a knife you can give to that special someone, that you know won't be used to stab you to death in your sleep. Speaking of people who want to kill you… your kids need stuff too. Like these great toys, at GREAT PRICES:
Dora the Expora Self-Lubricating Dildo Kids can explore their own budding sexuality with this educational toy.
Eye Little Pony That's exactly the expression your kid will make while trying out the Dora the Explora Dildo.
Teddy Has a Woody Kids love teddy bears. Here's some more:
Bad Taste Bears What do you want, bears with bad taste, or bears that taste bad?
Plush STDs It's never too early to teach your kids about STDs, These toys will make them seem cuddly and fun.
Hello Kitty Machine Gun This is no toy! Get your kid a REAL Hello Kitty Kalashnikov. Maybe you don't trust your kids with real firearms. Instead, try this:
Batman Squirt-Gun I'll bet your kids can figure out how to make Batman squirt.
Wolverine Inflatable Your kids will love blowing-up this inflatable bath toy.
Sponge-Bob Needs a Fix Plush Toy Who doesn't these days? If you're smart, long ago you decided that you'd rather spoil a pet than raise a child. We've got GREAT PRICES on EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO SPOIL YOUR PET!!!:
Doggie Umbrella Umbrella for human not included.
Cat Shaped Litter Box Scoop Like your cat gives a fuck. Finally, how about gifts for the writer in your life?
Butt Pen Holder The chain is completely unnecessary. Believe me, no one is ever going to steal that pen.
Cat Pencil Sharpener Is this for cat lovers, or cat haters? I don't know, but if you are really looking for a gift for me…
Badger Theremin This is an electronic musical instrument built into a taxidermied Badger. I WANT ONE!!!
…and with that, we'll stick a fork in in, and call it done for 2014.
See you next year.


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Date: 1766-1769, 1956
"Only this more. The ideas--my lodgers--are of all sorts. Some, gentlemen of the law, who pay me a great deal more than others. Divines of all sorts have been with me, and have ever disturbed me. When I first took up house, Presbyterian ministers used to make me melancholy with dreary tones. Meth...
preview | full record
— Boswell, James (1740-1795)


text:
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Part Number:IBD-57FCS-8146
Item Size:5" x 7" (folded)
Vintage Reindeer Holiday Cards
This top fold holiday card is printed on white shimmer card stock and features a light brown/tan background of snowflakes. The center of the card features the pre-printed greeting, "Merry Christmas" below a vintage reindeer. Includes white unlined envelopes.
Ideal For:Personal Cards, Holiday Greeting Cards
Delivery Time
To determine your delivery time, add the ground shipping time to your location, as shown on the map below, to the listed processing time. To speed up your delivery, you can select rush processing(details below in the form) and/or upgrade shipping to next day or second day air during the checkout process. If you have requested a proof, the processing time listed begins after you have approved your proof.
Processing Time:Approximately 2-3 business days
Ships From:North Carolina
Paper Thickness:105# White Shimmer Cover
Printing Method:Digital Press
Min. Order Quantity:10


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Explore the world as a traveller, not a tourist, on a trip packed with inclusions. VIP experiences and first-class, insider encounters.
Cosmos is for those that adore the explore without breaking the bank. Hassle-free and flexible, you dream it and we create it.
You're a lone ranger but don't want to be completely alone. We'll help plan your itinerary and set you up with our friends. Less hassles, more amazing, that's Monograms.
Get personal. This is experiential river cruising, your way. From Europe to the Galapagos and Asia, Avalon is relaxed luxury with choices as many, and individual as you.
These specialised Catholic and Christian Tours focus on fellowship and fun. Covering the globe through Poland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel and Jordan. Our destinations are sure to inspire with their historical poignancy and significance. From attending Mass at Jasna Gora Monastery with a chance to pray before the Black Madonna, to visiting a place where hope prevailed against the odds (Auschwitz) these immersive experiences will take you on a historical journey to the roots of where it all began. From receiving a Papal Blessing at the Vatican (subject to availability) or assisting Israel's Pantry Packers in assembling food parcels for Jerusalem's poorest families, these trips will have you reflecting and feeling the goosebumps in locations you've longed to see.


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Red Hat today announced the fourth release of its Enterprise Linux commercial distribution, RHEL 5.3, adding support for new hardware, some virtualization tweaks meant to keep pace with recent innovations to hypervisor technology, and all sorts of other goodies.
RHEL 5.3 offers over 150 enhancements. A number of these features made their debut in Fedora, a Red Hat-sponsored project that creates what amounts to a development release for RHEL - although Fedora contributors get annoyed when you say that.
They like to emphasize the freedom that Fedora has as a standalone software package, more or less free from Red Hat strings and encumbrances. But Red Hat uses Fedora as the foundation for RHEL and that, ultimately, is the purpose of the project. Generally speaking, there are tweaks to the Linux 2.6 kernel, device drivers, and various applications that are part of the distro.
First up in RHEL 5.3 is support for Intel's "Nehalem" Core i7 processors, the desktop processors launched last November that are implemented in a 45 nanometer process, that have a new microarchitecture and an Opteron-like interconnect called QuickPath, and that will be delivered in servers (if all goes well) sometime around the end of March.
RHEL 5.3 not only runs on these chips. It also hooks into the chips' power management features (which saves energy), and it's been tuned to take advantage of their simultaneous multithreading. The Xeon variants of Nehalem for servers will scale up to eight cores, with two virtual threads in each core. In a four socket system, that will mean an operating system and its applications will have 64 threads to play with. That's as many threads as the biggest RISC/Unix SMP box offered at the turn of the millennium, and now, you can pack it all onto one motherboard with big gobs of DDR3 main memory.
Interestingly, Red Hat said that when using the desktop versions of the Nehalem chips - which have four cores - commercial applications running atop RHEL 5.3 showed a factor of 1.7 improvement in performance. With number-crunching and bandwidth-eating workloads typically run on workstations and parallel supercomputers, the speed up on Nehalem chips compared is up by a factor of about 3.5.
RHEL 5.3 also includes OpenJDK, an open implementation of Java SE 6 development kit and runtime for Java. (It is based on the same code base as Sun Microsystems' own JDK, according to Red Hat). The company is claiming that the OpenJDK support combined with its JBoss Enterprise Application Platform yields the first enterprise-grade, fully open source Java stack. (There will be plenty of arguing about that point).
RHEL 5.3 includes support for Global File System 2, an update to GFS that was available for evaluation purposes only on RHEL 5.2. The new release also includes support for data encryption for block devices (mainly disk drives) using the Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) feature. RHEL 5.3 also has an iSCSI boot firmware table that allows the operating system to be booted from disk arrays linked to servers over an iSCSI link. The ability to have a RHEL server be an iSCSI target (meaning a server can act like a disk array to other servers using iSCSI for connectivity) has moved from a tech preview in RHEL 5.2 to production grade in RHEL 5.3. (Although this feature is also in the tech preview section of the release notes).
The SystemTap system monitoring tool has been "rebased" to level 0.7.2 of that project, which has offers a few new features and some minor enhancements, according to RedHat. These include Cluster Manager, Red Hat Package Manger, Open Fabrics Enterprise Distribution, and OpenSSL. The OFED tweaks are interesting in that they are a set of open source drivers for Ethernet and InfiniBand networks that implement the Remote Direct Memory Architecture, or RDMA, which in turn allows devices on a network to reach directly into the memory of their peers, thus reducing latencies and speeding up software performance.
A RHEL release always has some technology previews, and RHEL 5.3 is no different. These includes the ext4 file system, which is nearly ready for primetime as a kicker to the ReiserFS and ext3 file systems and a bridge to BTRFS (pronounced "ButterFS"), a future Linux file system. The ext4 file system is designed to support volumes up to 1 exabyte in size, and individual files that are as large as 16 terabytes. ext4 will be able to juggle up to 4 billion files. By comparison, the latest ext3 implementations support file sizes between 16 GB and 2 TB, depending on the block size chosen at install time, with volume sizes topping out at between 2 TB and 16 TB.
BTRFS, which might see the light of day in 2010, was launched in June 2007 and is a POSIX-compliant file system. It will support very large volumes (16 exabytes in size) and a large number of files (two to the power of 64 files, to be precise). The file system has object-level mirroring and striping, checksums on data and metadata, online file system check, incremental backup and file system mirroring, subvolumes with their own file system roots, writable snapshots, and index and file packing to conserve space, among many other features under development. Oracle did a lot of the groundwork for the BTRFS project.
The RHEL 5.3 tech previews also include eCryptfs, a stacked cryptographic file system that mounts atop file systems such as ext3, and Stateless Linux, a way to run replicated and read-only Linuxes for distributed workloads. The release also has a tech preview of the GNU GCC 4.3 compiler set (C, C++, and Fortran and their libraries).
Customers who have a support contract will get the updates to RHEL free of charge, since Red Hat does not charge for upgrades on RHEL releases. It won't be long before Oracle and CentOS kick out their clones of RHEL 5.3.
RHEL 5 was launched in March 2007 after about a six-month delay in getting it out the door because of issues concerning the integration of the Xen virtual machine hypervisor with the operating system. Xen was changing so fast then that it was difficult to get RHEL and Xen in synch. This will be less of an issue going forward, now that Red Hat owns Qumranet, which created the alternative KVM hypervisor that is part of the mainstream Linux kernel these days. With RHEL 6, you can bet KVM and not Xen will be the default hypervisor. This is already expected with the Fedora 11 development release due at the end of May, which will be the foundation for RHEL 6 as far as anyone knows. ®


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News from the world of Maths
Human reasoning is biased and illogical. At least that's what a huge body of psychological research seems to show. But now a psychological scientist from the University of Toulouse in France has come up with a new theory: that logical and probabilistic thinking is an intuitive part of decision making, only its conclusions often lose out to heuristic considerations.
This is it! Merry Christmas to all you beautiful Plus readers and listeners from the Plus team! We hope you'll have a marvellously happy 2012! And since Christmas is all about getting together with the folks, here's some family maths. You might not be able to choose them, but at least you can analyse them!
Christmas is a time of mysteries so we thought we'll give you the chance to put your favourite mystery to the experts. Pick a question in the poll on the right — after Christmas we'll answer the most popular question in articles and podcasts based on interviews with physicists and mathematicians who really know about these things.
Oh! Look! The Higgs! If only we'd known it has been hiding behind this door all along.
Apart from the Olympic Games and Alan Turing's centenary, 2012 will see another important event: the 15th birthday of Plus! To get into party mood, here are the 5 most popular Plus articles since current records began. A big thank you to the wonderful and generous people who have contributed these and all other Plus articles!
It's dark and grey this time of year, that's why we cheer ourselves up with lovely sparkly tinsel and colourful baubles. But if that isn't enough for you, here's another chance to bask in some glorious colour.
Everybody needs a little love on a cold, wet Monday morning, so here's some for you with lots of kisses from the Plus team!
Oooh! It's only 222 days until the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games! Eagerly clutching our tickets to the women's handball quarter finals we've been going around gathering some Olympic material for you. Here's what we found.


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Mountain West Report CardPosted by Brian Goodman on April 5th, 2011
Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Mountain West and Pac-10 conferences. We will be publishing a series of conference report cards over the next week for conferences that got multiple NCAA bids to recap the conference, grade the teams, and look at the future for the conference.
Conference Recap: It was a banner year for the Mountain West despite the turbulence of the offseason that will see two of the standard-bearers of the conference (Utah and BYU) leave for arguably greener pastures this summer with TCU following them out the door the following summer. The two teams leading the conference this season, BYU and San Diego State, posted a combined 66-8 record this year and were constants in the national top ten making the Sweet 16 before bowing out in tight contests. In addition to having two of the country's top teams the conference also had arguably the nation's top player in BYU's Jimmer Fredette, who led the country in scoring, regularly producing eye-popping, shake-your-head-in-disbelief moments and becoming a household name in Utah and beyond. UNLV joined the conference leaders in the NCAA Tournament, but tripped up in ugly fashion before losing head coach Lon Kruger to Oklahoma over the weekend. Colorado State and New Mexico had their hopes pinned on NCAA Tournament bids, but came up a little short. Nevertheless, this was undoubtedly the biggest collection of talent in the history of this conference and likely the high water mark. While there is not a whole lot of love lost between either followers of the conference or executives in the MWC and BYU, there is little doubt that the loss of both of the Utah schools from its ranks will leave a major hole.


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Top flight deals to Ljubljana (LJU)*
Fly to Ljubljana with KLM
Thanks to our global network, as KLM Royal Dutch Airlines we offer flights to Ljubljana, serving Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport (LJU) at the most convenient flight times from all over the world. We recognise that your time is valuable, which is why at KLM we are always committed to getting you where you need to go on time. We have been recognised for our punctuality in the past, and we intend to keep it this way, so book your next flight to Ljubljana with us today!
Top Ljubljana attractions
- Ljubljana Old Town: a historic region of the city, boasting a mix of impressive architecture, a picturesque river littered with fascinating bridges, and heaps of lovely bars, restaurants and cafes.
- Triple Bridge (Tromostovje): a group of three beautiful bridges that cross the Ljubljanica River, connecting Ljubljana's historical, medieval, town on one bank, and the modern city on the other.
- Lake Bled: a beautiful, pristine clean lake of water set in a picturesque location with a small castle on an island in the centre of the lake.
- Skyscraper (Neboticnik): a prominent thirteen-story high-rise located in the centre of the city, featuring a café, bar and observation deck.
- Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church: a beautiful Eastern Orthodox church building located in Trubar Park, built in 1936.
What's the best way to get around Ljubljana?
Ljubljana can easily be explored on foot or by rented bicycle as the city centre is quite small. If you do want to use public transport, the bus is your best option. There are 26 bus lines running every 5-30 minutes day and night to take you where you need to go.
What's the weather in Ljubljana?
Ljubljana has very cold, dry winters with temperatures frequently dropping below freezing but there being little to no rain. Summers are warm, with June being the hottest month and averaging 20°C (67°F). However, the warmer months are also the wettest months, so you will need to stay dry!
Weather in Ljubljana
Powered by: OpenWeatherMap.org
23 °CFriday14/08/2020
27 °CSaturday15/08/2020
30 °CSunday16/08/2020
29 °CMonday17/08/2020
25 °CTuesday18/08/2020
21 °CWednesday19/08/2020
29 °CThursday20/08/2020
*All amounts are in USD. Taxes and surcharges are included. No booking fee is applicable, but a payment surcharge may apply. Prices shown may vary depending on fare availability. You will see the final amount when selecting your payment method.


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If you thought the glass controller Sony employees got after five years of service was a nice gesture, wait til you see what Blizzard employees get for twenty years service.
They get one of the helmets pictured above. It's inspired by Diablo III's Archangel Imperius, with custom tweaks made by its creator, Blizzard's Vice President of Art & Cinematic Development Nick Carpenter.
It's a new award, which won't be ready to ship until next year, and there won't be many people in line to receive one; Blizzard was founded in 1991, meaning only the most veteran of veterans have stuck it out for this long.
The helmet isn't awarded in isolation; at five years' service you get a sword and a ten years you get a shield.
Blizzard Holiday Party 2012: Nick Carpenter Designs 20th Anniversary Award [Blizzplanet]


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Places to Stay
Out and about
Drinking and dining
Gelegen op de hoek op het bekende pleintje in Domburg "T Groentje"
Verkoop van o.a. parfum, verzorgingsproducten, geneesmiddelen, make-up.
Ook voor een leuk geschenk kunt u hier terecht.
At VVV Zeeland, we are committed to providing you with a pleasant, productive and personalised visit to, and search on, our website www.vvvzeeland.nl. Like most websites you visit, we make use of small snippets of code (often called cookies and trackers) which we and authorised third parties place on your computer to keep track of your Internet preferences in, and perhaps outside, our website. We and the third parties can then better match advertisements to your interests and you can share content via social media sites. Your further use of this website indicates your agreement with the above. More information here.
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Discover Zeeland with the Zeeland App. Easily find all the things to do and see in your area.


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Houstonians are no doubt appreciative of the dropping temperatures. It's only fitting then that the University of Houston complements the weather change with an evening of cool jazz. Audiences can certainly chill out with UH's Moores Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Orchestra during a concert at 7:30 p.m., Nov. 16 in Moores Opera House. Selections range from contemporary works to new twists on big band classics.
For music aficionados, concerts such as this are a perfect opportunity to experience rising jazz talents. Members of both the ensemble and orchestra rehearse diligently to improve themselves as musicians and entertain Houstonians.
"Most players who decide to play jazz at the Moores School of Music are the fearless ones," said Ryan Gabbart, MSM assistant director of jazz studies. "The best musicians are those who are unafraid to try over and over again in order to get better. These students do just that. They devote time outside of their regular schedules to research, study, practice and perform jazz at a high level."
Tickets for this performance are $10 and $5 for students and seniors. To purchase tickets, call 713-743-3313.
The concert's program is as follows.
UH Jazz Ensemble (led by Ryan Gabbart, assistant director of jazz studies)
"It's a Most Unusual Day" arranged by James Sochinski:
"Albequirky" by Dan Cavanagh:
"Just When I'm Thinkin' 'Bout You" by Rob Vuono Jr.
"Wave" arranged by Michael Philip Mossman
"Quietude" by Thad Jones
UH Jazz Orchestra (led by Noe Marmolejo, director of jazz studies)
"ABC Blues" by Bob Brookmeyer
"Black Rattle" by Dan Cavanagh
"Slings and Arrows" arranged by Rob Lussier
"Common Ground" by Neil Slater
"Bloomdido" arranged by Mike Crotty
|Moores Jazz Ensemble, Moores Jazz Orchestra in concert
|7:30 p.m., Nov. 16
|Moores Opera House, University of Houston - Entrance 16 off Cullen Boulevard
|University of Houston/Moores School of Music


text: Gourmet for the Facebook Age has finally arrived. The 1.01 digital incarnation of the shuttered magazine went live last night. It's a free iPad app that showcases archived and exclusive magazine content including recipes and kitchen tips—the archived material dates back to 1941—as well as videos, restaurant rewards, and new features from local blogs Serious Eats and Eater.


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Mark Wahlberg has taken a break from talking about "The Fighter 2" long enough to sign on for another film.
Wahlberg will star in "Broken City," the 2008 Black List script by Bryan Tucker, about "A New York private investigator [who] gets sucked into a shady mayoral election," reported Deadline. Allen Hughes, who has yet to make a film without his brother Albert, serving as co-director, will be behind the camera.
Wahlberg already has "Contraband," a remake of "Reykjavik-Rotterdam" (widely considered the greatest drug-smuggling film to come out of Iceland) in the can, awaiting a March 16, 2012, release. And he's currently filming "Ted," about a grown man's relationship with his foul-mouthed teddy bear. with "Family Guy" creator Seth McFarlane.
U.S. & World
The day's top national and international news.
Wahlberg's also been putting together the cast for a reunion with "Fighter" director David O. Russell, "The Silver Linings Playbook." It tells the story of a man fresh out of a mental institution who commits himself to getting healthy and winning back his estranged wife. Of late Russell has considered pretty much every hot young actress in Hollywood: Elizabeth Banks, Kirsten Dunst, Blake Lively, Rooney Mara, Rachel McAdams, Andrea Riseborough, Olivia Wilde, and Jennifer Lawrence. Robert De Niro is rumored to be on board, too.
And to be fair, we'd love to see a "Fighter 2," there's a lot more to that story left to be told.


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Lightning Fast, Dirt Cheap: Bitcoin Shows What Banking Could Be
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Leaving no coin, metal, or commodity unturned, retiring Rep. Ron Paul made a final push on one of his signature issues on Thursday, seeking stronger ground for the U.S. to implement a parallel currency in lieu of the U.S. dollar.August 2
When the alternative payments provider Dwolla changed its terms of service earlier this month, it made it harder for users of the digital currency Bitcoin to use Dwolla as a funding source and easier for banks to step in and benefit from the Bitcoin economy.May 18
The digital currency Bitcoin was conceived as a rebellion against the financial establishment. But it may also present business opportunities for banks that can get comfortable with the risks.January 13
It took 11 minutes, tops, after I pushed the button for the equivalent of $5 to travel across the Atlantic. For this service I paid less than a penny.
There were no banks involved. If there had been, it would have cost me at least twice the amount I was sending.
I sent the money using Bitcoin, the decentralized peer-to-peer network that's received a great deal of buzz over the past year or so. People usually think of Bitcoin as an alternative currency challenging the hegemony of government-controlled fiat money, which it is (and technically, the currency is bitcoins, with a small "b"). But Bitcoin is more than that. In addition to being a store of value, it's also a means of exchange, a payment system that can perform many of the same functions as banks and as financial services companies like Western Union, PayPal and Visa. And its efficiency as such is arguably a more important reason for bankers to pay attention to it.
The technology, powered by tens of thousands of users' computers across the globe, lets you move as much of your money as you want, to whomever on the Bitcoin network you want, whenever you want. It sends funds nearly instantaneously, and for almost nothing. Users are identified only by their Bitcoin addresses, a cryptographic string of characters (my receiving address, for example, is "1PFgAJWLJZGSaVDg2rX3XDfTcyd6CpXXXX"), and so can transact anonymously if they wish.
But there are catches. First, anyone you want to send money to or receive it from needs to be on the Bitcoin network also. Then, getting money in and out of Bitcoin is difficult, maddeningly so. Unless you're a "miner" with a ton of sophisticated computer gear, the main way to acquire bitcoins is to buy them for dollars or euros on an online exchange. The biggest is Mt. Gox, based in Japan.
"I tried once to install the software. It took forever and didn't do anything," says Robert Hughes, a senior vice president with the consulting firm Speer & Associates who's been studying Bitcoin.
Getting money to an exchange generally entails funding an account at a third-party service like Dwolla, which can then send your dollars or other government currency on to the exchange. You can cash out your bitcoins for fiat money on the exchanges, too, but sometimes the funds get held up before returning to your account.
Another disadvantage of Bitcoin is that there are few merchants that accept the digital money. Sure, you can use bitcoins to buy alpaca socks, or illicit substances, or T-shirts and baseball caps emblazoned with the Bitcoin logo. A few restaurants and bars take it. You can even donate bitcoins to WikiLeaks. (I'm not saying you should, so please don't tap my phone, Homeland Security.) But you can't spend bitcoins at Amazon or Wal-Mart or McDonald's or pay your electricity bill with them.
And Bitcoin is a risky place to store large sums of money. Fanatics will argue it's a better long-term investment than the U.S. dollar, because of the predictable and fixed supply – the algorithm that creates bitcoins is programmed to stop once there are 21 million of them – and who knows how many greenbacks the Federal Reserve will unleash upon the world if the economy keeps limping along. (There are currently about 9.8 million bitcoins in circulation, trading at $9.99 apiece. The last bitcoin is expected to be generated years from now.) But even if the devotees are right, the Bitcoin "wallets" that store the currency aren't FDIC-insured. You can keep your wallet on your computer, where security is up to you, or in the cloud – and like in the pre-FDIC banking days, you choose your cloud wallet provider based on trust.
"There is no authority or regulation that says what they must provide, how they must provide it, what to do if something goes wrong," Hughes says.
Wallets have been hacked, and as with physical cash, you can't get bitcoins back once they're gone. On top of all this, the exchange rate between bitcoins and traditional currencies has been volatile – you can see for yourself on sites like BitcoinCharts.com.
It took me months of futzing around in my spare time to acquire my first $60 or so worth of bitcoins on Monday. Yet once I had the coins, I was able to send some to a Twitter acquaintance in London, quick snap and dirt cheap. If entry and exit from the system were easier, this technology could become a more viable alternative to established financial players.
Easing Bitcoin's choke points is the business of BitInstant, a New York startup. The company's flagship service expedites the transfer of funds to and from the exchanges, for which it charges a commission. Charlie Shrem, the founder and CEO, says that in two to three months it will come out with a reloadable general-purpose prepaid debit card. Each card will come with a Bitcoin address printed on the back and a QR code, along with the MasterCard logo, on the front. Cardholders will be able to convert bitcoins held at the address to dollars stored on the card by scanning the code into a smartphone. The dollars would then be available to spend wherever MasterCard is accepted. In theory, this should make getting in and out easier, and make Bitcoin more attractive as a conduit for funds.
Erik Voorhees, BitInstant's chief marketing officer, says Bitcoin skeptics often ask, "What can I spend them on?" The card, he says, will provide "the ultimate answer…Everything."
Of course, the banking system will have to be involved here, since only insured depositories can issue cards on the MasterCard network. Shrem would not identify the two banks that will issue the BitInstant card; one will issue it in the U.S., the other internationally, he says. After some of the blogosphere reports about the card this week, BitInstant had to clarify that unlike Bitcoin addresses, the cards themselves won't be anonymous and will comply with anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer regulations. Dollars stored on the U.S. card will be FDIC-insured. Notably, BitInstant is registered as a money-services business with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Bradley Leimer, the vice president for online and mobile strategy at Mechanics Bank in Richmond, Calif., has been keeping an eye on Bitcoin. Linking it to a prepaid card, he says, is "a little bit of a game-changer," since it's "a much more mainstream way to move the value within your bitcoin collection."
However, using a MasterCard debit card as the exit means someone will still be "incurring a transaction cost at some point," Leimer says. "It doesn't necessarily lower the transaction cost to near-zero." (Shrem says BitInstant will try to minimize cardholder fees by dispensing with the middlemen usually involved with prepaid cards, i.e. "program managers" like Green Dot.)
BitInstant's existing service is the easiest way I know of to acquire bitcoins, which is to say it's the only way that's worked for me. First I placed an order for $60 worth on BitInstant's website and printed out a sheet of paper instructing me to take my cash to a Bank of America branch in the ZIP code I'd provided. The teller looked mighty confused when I read her the script ("I am making a deposit into the account detailed on the invoice"). But after a few minutes she figured out I needed to fill out a deposit slip with an account number for TrustCash, an Atlanta outfit that serves as BitInstant's go-between with the bank. I didn't have to give my name, much less show ID, throughout the whole process. TrustCash knew which order to fill because it sets a unique deposit amount for each order at each branch. Mine was $61.20 including fees.
All of that extra 2% went to TrustCash, by the way – the price of anonymity, perhaps. BitInstant would take another $3.99 plus 1% off my $60. Sounds steep, but the service speeded the process of acquiring bitcoins, which could take a week when dealing directly with one of the exchanges.
Normally, bitcoins would have shown up in my online wallet within 30 minutes of the bank deposit, except I'd goofed. When I placed the order, I'd pasted the wrong character string in the field where my Bitcoin receiving address was supposed to go. (There's a lot of copying and pasting involved in Bitcoin, unless you want to memorize phrases like "1PFgAJWLJZGSaVDg2rX3XDfTcyd6CpXXXX.")
It took me another business day to sort things out with BitInstant. It may have helped that the three guys in the company's New York office knew me. (And they are all guys. According to research by Heather Schlegel of Swift's innovation team, 95% of Bitcoin users are male, which sounds about right given the makeup of the earnest crowds at two Bitcoin-themed Meetups I attended this month, including one hosted by BitInstant.)
Dave Birch, the director of Consult Hyperion in Surrey, England, says Bitcoin "is really interesting because it informs other debates, not necessarily because of what it is itself." It's likely that Bitcoin's "technology and techniques will be part of some future means of exchange," particularly the use of cryptography to protect user privacy, Birch says.
Part of? Bitcoin's most rabid fans would beg to differ. "Bitcoin is the virtual currency of the future and will take over," one enthusiast tweeted to me this week.
It's a tantalizing thought. But I think Bitcoin can coexist with the established forms of money and payment. Competition doesn't have to mean winner-take-all.
I can envision a future where people will sometimes charge purchases to Visa to rack up rewards points and earn special offers tailored to their spending history, enjoying the fraud protection of chargebacks, and sometimes use Bitcoin (or something like it or something that evolves from it) for transactions they don't want tracked, incurring the same risks as they do with physical cash today.
Transacting off the grid should remain an option even after we phase out paper bills and metal coins. Just because the world's going digital doesn't mean we have to fulfill Orwell's prophecy of the telescreen.
The problem with Bitcoin right now is that if it were a car, it would come only in stick shift. When the automatic version arrives, though, watch out.
Marc Hochstein is the executive editor of American Banker. The views expressed are his own.


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Record Negative Producer Price Differential Slams June Milk Checks, Why and How?
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for each individual field, considering soil moisture and the rain forecast. Rainfall/soil moisture in ...
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Harvest Management of Sorghum Forages
formulated for different classes of livestock based on the fiber quality of the forage. For lactating cows ...
Meet Ashlee Balcerzak: Paving the Road to a Career in Higher Education
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One of the settings that our furniture is absolutely ideal for is your film or media room.
Our Row One and Excel chairs are perfect for this setting as they combine the feel of sitting in a theater environment with the look that lets you know exactly where you are.
These chairs also come with optional tablets so your players can take notes on the game film they are watching or the coach's instructions. Recruits will be wowed by the amazing look that our chairs provide and your existing players will love the fact that their school or team logo is branded right into the back of every seat.


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Jon Jasper overlooking the Tee Pee at the approach to the Subway through Russell Gulch in Zion National Park in southern Utah. For more photos, check out JonJasper.com
Many panoramas of Zion National Park's trails, views, canyons, and peaks. Zion National Park is known for it large exposure of the Navajo sandstone's steep red walled cliffs and world classic canyons and canyoneering routes.


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Panasonic believes that its new LED /LCD TVs push the envelope in terms of form and functionality, as it announces no less than seven new ranges.
The Japanese giant has extended its Smart Viera offering with new connected functionality, and is hoping that the likes of the new flagship WT60 series can be the centerpiece of our home.
There's nothing that will blow your mind - although the WT60 (available in 47 and 55-inch sizes) brings 2D-3D conversion, Clear Panel Pro and a new design which incorporates a camera for those awkward video calls.
Next up is the DT60, which comes in 55 and 60-inches and the ET60 which offers up 50 and 55-inch. Below that are the E60, EM60, XM6 and B6 with the last two only offering 720p and 32 inch screens but the rest full HD 1080p.
The Smart functionality includes a personalised home screen, voice control and Swipe-and Share functionality.
The Panasonic 2013 Viera LED LCD HDTVs will apparently be available in the spring of 2013 and makes its debut at CES 2013.