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June 06, 2013
By Cora Jackson-Fossett
LAWT Religion Editor
The musical genius of recording artist Kirk Franklin headlines the Sunday Best Stage at the BET Experience at L.A. Live on June 30 at 12 noon.
Entitled 'Kirk Franklin & Friends,' the concert features Grammy winners Donnie McClurkin and Karen Clark-Sheard along with her daughter, Kierra 'Kiki' Sheard of The Sheards.
In addition, rising stars Amber Bullock, Joshua Rogers and Le'Andria Johnson will perform. All three were past gospel competition winners on BET's Sunday Best TV show and recently released chart-topping albums.
The L.A. Sentinel will also participate in the BET Experience by presenting 'A Taste of the Taste of Soul' that will showcase a wide range of vendors.
"I was excited to be a part of this. It will be an inspirational morning of good music and celebration," said Franklin, who serves as host and co-executive producer of 'Sunday Best' and participates in BET's annual 'Celebration of Gospel' program.
"To me, it's a great concept that they [BET] are doing, to create a weekend of festivities for people to get a whole taste of the culture of Black entertainment," he said.
Urging the greater Los Angeles community to attend, Franklin noted, "I think that anytime we, as people of color, can get together and do something positive, that uplifts, a genre of a particular art form that we don't get to see all the time, then we should celebrate and support it because it's ours, something that belongs to us.
"When you look at a lot of art forms, they were originated by our people, for our people, to celebrate our people. Not only does it make sense, but it can also make dollars.
"It's something that will continue to show companies, sponsors and just the culture that entertainment from our people is alive and well and it's something that can be invested in."
Investing in gospel music has certainly been fruitful for Franklin, who began his professional recording career in 1992. Over the years, he's garnered multiple Dove, Stellar, and BET Awards as well as nine Grammys.
Franklin has also sold-out venues during tours with his choirs and with leading gospel artists such as Fred Hammond, Yolanda Adams, Cece Winans, Trinitee 5:7, TobyMac, Souljahz, and Mary Mary. Last year, he joined with McClurkin, Marvin Sapp, and Israel Houghton for 'The King's Men Tour' that packed concert halls across the country.
Achieving such incredible fame may lead some performers to have elevated opinions of themselves, but Franklin remains humble and focused on Christ.
"The legacy to the gospel music industry that I hope to leave is that 'he was a nice guy and he lived what he sang and wrote about. He wasn't one way in front of the people and another way when nobody was looking.' I hope that's what people see," he said.
Franklin's legacy will definitely include the tremendous catalog of songs he's written and performed that are now standards in the Black Church. Initially, his music was labeled 'Christian hip hop' or 'urban contemporary,' however Franklin discourages categorizations of his music.
"To be honest, I don't really try to even describe it. I just try to do music that talks about my love for Jesus and try to encourage people. I just do Jesus music and try to show that love and message through the music," he declared.
In the midst of his prolific songwriting and ongoing business activities, Franklin still maintains a solid relationship with his wife, Tammie, and their children, which he counts as the most impressive aspect of his career.
"What continues to be most memorable for me is how I'm blessed to be able to keep my family together in the midst of 20 years of doing music. That's a very major thing to be celebrated. A lot of marriages don't survive this business," observed Franklin, who cites his favorite scripture as Romans 8:28.
"To be able to still have a beautiful wife and kids who still call me 'Daddy' and see me as a part of their fabric, that's the most successful thing I think I've ever accomplished."
For more information and to purchase BET Experience concert tickets, visit BETExperience.com.


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LOS ANGELES, July 16 (UPI) -- Danny McBride said he was released from a North Carolina hospital after he had a roller-skating mishap while taping an episode of "Eastbound & Down."
"I busted my ass on roller skates. The roller skates won," the writer and actor told TMZ Tuesday.
The celebrity news website said he didn't suffer any serious injuries in the fall and has since been released from the hospital.

subset: commoncrawl


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EA Sports brings another sporting update to PlayStation 2, but something's different this time around.
EA Sports is famed for giving many of its leading brands very regular runouts, each one very similar to the last. Rugby can now be added to that list of titles. As always, the number of teams, players, tournaments and stadia is staggering, so you're never short of options to peruse. Whether you're playing as the mighty All Blacks or the less-than-mighty Russia, you can experience the most authentic interactive egg-chasing available on PlayStation 2. Fling yourself at your opponent's feet to make a last-ditch tackle, heave with all your might in the scrum, leap to nick possession in the line-out and fly between the posts to score the try, all thanks to the wonders of EA's new control system.
Remember also that it's not just your opposite numbers you'll have to be wary of, because a whole range of weather effects put a new spin on the game too. And just for good measure, our friends at Electronic Arts have included a multiplayer mode, allowing four players to enjoy the blood, sweat and tears simultaneously, with any two players playing on the same side, combining their quality rugby moves, hopefully to devastating effect.
1-2 Players
1-2 Player Types
See it in action


text: Trakinvest is a virtual social investing platform currently offering Virtual Exchange , Fundamental and Research analytics for Equity Markets in India,USA,China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia. Founded by a former JP Morgan principal Mr Bobby Bhatia. TrakInvest partners with institutions like Thomson Reuters and Religare to offer sponsored internships to students in emerging Asian markets.


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Sid Sidner is director of security engineering for ACI Worldwide.
ACI Worldwide is a provider of payments software to banks and merchants around the world. With more than 800 software engineers working in development centers in seven time zones, issues such as software quality and security are critical to ACI's success. As director of security engineering, its my job to ensure that our code base is bug-free and intruder resistant, while continually improving the software's overall quality. These concerns aren't new. They've been our mantra since the company was founded more than three decades ago. We decided several years ago that the best way to ensure quality and security was to introduce static source code analysis into our development processes.
Static code analysis is the process of examining and evaluating software without actually executing the code. Analyzing software when executing software is known as dynamic analysis. Static code analysis is all about moving the detection of critical security and quality problems upstream, ensuring they're identified and fixed early in the development process.
This approach yields significant productivity gains across the entire process and leads to cleaner, more stable builds, more efficient testing, and of a course, a higher quality product. Besides helping us find bugs that we've missed in unit testing, static code analysis has made all our engineers aware of security issues and helped us teach junior staff better coding techniques.
What's Involved
Static source code analysis tools are almost entirely automated. They're like compilers, but instead of generating machine-executable code, they simply find bugs and issue warnings about security vulnerabilities, logic errors, implementation defects, concurrency violations, boundary conditions, and other glitches in the code. The tools provide a list of problems, each tied to a specific location in the source code. Detailed context is usually provided to explain how the tool arrived at the conclusion.
Static analysis tools use very sophisticated process flow and data flow analysis. The quality and security issues they identify are often complex and involve obscure logic problems, which is why these tools can be so valuable.
Static source code analysis tools analyze 100% of the source code, far more than any external test tools. For organizations that must comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) or Payment Application Data Security Standard (PCI PADSS), these tools fulfill code review requirement. They also produce valuable metrics, including kilo-lines of code (KLoCs), file counts, and "churn" -- that is, the number of files that have changed between two regular builds.
Introducing static code analysis and the requisite tools into the development process isn't always painless, however. At ACI Worldwide, we found many subtle pitfalls in our efforts to roll out this approach company-wide. The tool changes the way many people work and must become a part of the organization and its culture.
For instance, static code analysis tools usually require careful integration into the project build process. For large software products, these builds are often somewhat of a black art, involving the use of Make and Ant. There are many options and dependencies. All static code analysis tools offer powerful utilities to analyze the build process and insert themselves into the right places, but some manual tuning is usually required.
5 Queries for Choosing the Right Code Analysis Tool
1. Do you need a static or dynamic analysis tool? 2. What languages and platforms does it support? 3. How flexible is the reporting component? 4. How easy is it to add or update rules? 5. Does it integrate with your IDE?
These tools also must be integrated into developers' daily work. Again, tool makers offer both command-line versions of the tools as well as plug-ins for many of the popular integrated development environments such as Eclipse and Visual Studio.
Most importantly, the tools require that the code base have a subject matter expert (SME) who can also provide the same service for the tools . That person will answer questions not just about how the tool operates but also about the issues that the tool is finding -- including identifying when the tool is generating a false positive. The SME will provide training and support to other developers, a fairly heavy workload for the first few weeks, until everyone is familiar with the static analysis tool. After that, that part of the workload should settle down to several hours a week.
Initial Analysis: Panic Time
The biggest challenges with static code analysis tools are problems in existing code. There's an old programmer's joke that says God made the world in six days because he had no installed base. This is certainly not the case for most businesses, which often have millions of lines of code.
The first time an existing codebase is analyzed, tens of thousands of issues will be found. Don't panic. Remember, these issues have been there for awhile, and the software continues to function and provide users with what they need.
At ACI Worldwide, all the issues from an initial build on existing code are immediately deferred and hidden from sight. That way developers don't get overwhelmed and can stay focused on ensuring that new problems aren't introduced into the code. At some point in the future, product planners and the senior development staff review the deferred issues, prioritize and group them, and decide when remediation can be factored into the planning for a future release. There's no perfect approach, and businesses must always make hard decisions about whether to counter a vulnerability or assume the risk.


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Harooni Rugs - Vintage 10x14 Authentic Hand-knotted Persian Signed Kashan Rug - Iran
Harooni Rugs SKU#B-81309
Rug Type: Area Rug
Pattern: Geometric
Style: Persian
Rug for Rooms: Bedroom, Dining Room, Home Office/Study Room, Living Room
Weave: Hand-Knotted
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Free Shipping- We want you to LOVE your rug. If you don't love it, just return it!!!
This Authentic Hand-knotted Persian Signed Kashan Rug - Iran rug is handcrafted by talented Persian artisans. With Iran Persian designs woven throughout, it elegantly blends shades with a silk-like pile. Ideal for promoting inviting feel, this appealingly soft rug instantly becomes a versatile masterpiece for your room. Exact dimensions of this rug are 10´ 1" x 14´ 3"
History to this Beautiful Handmade Persian Rug:
The history of Persian Carpet -a culmination of artistic magnificence- dates back to 2,500 years ago. The Iranians were among the pioneer carpet weavers of the ancient civilizations, having achieved a superlative degree of perfection through centuries of creativity and ingenuity. The skill of carpet weaving has been handed down by fathers to their sons, who built upon those skills and in turn handed them down to their offspring as a closely guarded family secret. To trace the history of Persian carpet is to follow a path of cultural growth of one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever seen.


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Oncology Lesson Plan: Cancer Identification and Treatment Science Game
In this oncology lesson plan, which is adaptable for grades 6-12, students use a free online game to play the role of an oncologist who must identify and treat cancerous tumors in patients. In addition to to furthering science and health understandings (including key vocabulary terms related to cancer and oncology), students will practice finding the main idea of a conversation and develop critical thinking skills. The Oncology Game is from our partners at Games Learning Society.
Students will:
- Compare and contrast normal human cells with cancerous cells.
- Identify the main idea of a conversation between doctor and patient during online simulations.
- Apply understandings of cancer growths to identify and treat cancer through online game play.
- Computer and internet access for BrainPOP
- Interactive whiteboard (or just an LCD projector)
- Class set of copies of the Graphic Organizer (or allow students to access it on computers and type directly into the online form)
Preparation:This game uses a free online game called Oncology. In the game, students participate in a simulation in which they play the role of a newly hired cancer specialist at a radiation therapy clinic who must identify and treat patients' cancerous tumors. Players meet with several patients, listening to their symptoms and offering responses based on notes and medical histories. For each patient, players are led to a CT scanner where they can analyze cross-sections of the body using real-life scans. They'll learn to denote areas of cancerous tissue with a marker. After marking or "contouring" treatable areas, players are then given control of multiple radiotherapy beams. They take on the task of positioning these beams in the best possible way in order to blast the cancer while avoiding healthy tissue. The Oncology game introduces students to some of the leading ways in which doctors pinpoint and treat tumors. It also provides practice in searching for the main idea of a conversation and gives players a chance to critically analyze some technical information.
Due to the sensitive nature of some of the patient outcomes, we recommend playing the game in its entirety before introducing Oncology to your students, and determine that it's appropriate for their needs. We also recommend impressing upon students the serious nature of a cancer diagnosis, and the need for doctors to communicate with patients in a compassionate, helpful manner.
Though the lesson plan below utilizes only the Cancer movie, you might also find that the Body Scans, Radioactivity, and Smoking movie topics are helpful in building students' background knowledge and helping them understand the situations they will encounter during game play.
Lesson Procedure:
- Conduct the Experiment as part of a quick demonstration, and review what students already know about cells.
- How are cancer cells different from normal cells? Pass out the Graphic Organizer or allow students to access it on computers. Provide approximately five minutes for students to compare and contrast normal body cells and cancer cells with a partner, and record their thinking on the graphic organizer. You may want to project the Vocabulary tab while students work to encourage them to use key terms.
- Play the Cancer movie for students. Provide time for students to edit and update their graphic organizers based on what they learned in the movie.
- Tell students they will have the opportunity to play a game that allows them to play the role of an oncologist. They will be responsible for identifying the cause of patients' ailments, as well as identifying cancer in the body and removing it via surgery. You can project the Oncology game for the class to see and go through the intro together, allowing students to skip the intro when they play on their own. Remind students to use reading comprehension strategies to determine the main idea of the conversation between doctor and patient, and demonstrate through an initial round of game play if needed.
- Allow approximately 20 minutes for students to play the game either independently or in pairs.
- Provide time for students to revisit their graphic organizers one final time and add any information they learned through game play.
- Conclude with a whole class discussion about the game. Talk about the differences between the cells. How could students tell which were cancerous? What strategies did they use to remove the cancer? How is the game similar to real life situations in hospitals, and how is it different? Spark a discussion about the way the doctor in the game spoke to his patients. What does it mean to have an appropriate bedside manner? If you were a doctor, how would you break the news to patients that they had cancer?
- Encourage students to extend what they learned about oncology. You may want to have students brainstorm questions for an oncologist, and invite a doctor to Skype with your students in order to answer the questions.


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About us
What we can do
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Deep Carbon Observatory
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Recent books and our bestsellers
Jacqueline Mitton's books
Simon Mitton's books
Contact us
Total Astronomy Limited
Total Astronomy was founded by Simon and Jacqueline Mitton in 2002. Our business is providing writing, consultancy, editorial and public speaking services in the astronomical and related sciences. We specialise in writing about astronomy for the general public and children. Each of us has over 25 years' experience of communicating through the media and numerous successful publications. We understand the needs of publishers. Our experience is backed up by commitment, enthusiasm and up-to-date knowledge of our subject.
Our clients include international publishers of children's and trade books, academic presses publishing popular science and reference books, and magazines.


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Tag Archive: air cargo
Cargo Compliance Forum
Accuity is holding an exclusive 1-day complimentary forum for cargo organisations on trade sanctions and export risk mitigation.
Find out more
World Cargo Symposium 2019
For more than 13 years, IATA's World Cargo Symposium (WCS) has remained the largest and most sought after air cargo event in the world.
Find out more


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Bringing Up Open Source, Part 2: The Consumer Side
Jan 21, 2009 4:00 AM PT
Part 1 of this three-part series examined startup companies offering open source software solutions on the enterprise market. Part 2 focuses on consumer-oriented products.
The expansion of open source into new markets is prompting consumers to notice alternatives to traditional computing habits. Personal computing power now puts so much opportunity into the hands of consumers that previously impossible activities are possible without exposure to proprietary software. Open source projects are finding their way into full-service business offerings at cost-saving levels for consumers and enterprise alike.
Consumers can select from a growing inventory of software in a wide variety of genres. Open source is feeding a frenzy in two key areas like never before. Game-playing aficionados are joining home entertainment fans in using more than just off-the-shelf proprietary solutions.
Game developers themselves are relying more prominently on open source components to drive their creations. Just as developers of enterprise products now must decide among marketing strategies that include open source models, so too do game makers and video service providers. Some very successful start-ups in the consumer marketplace got their businesses launched with the lower entry costs that open source provides.
"I think consumer acceptance of open source in the gaming market will be big. With any open source technology, there is always a niche. As with anything in the software realm, you are always going to have an emergence of the open source model," Scott Testa, professor of marketing at Philadelphia's St. Joseph's University, told LinuxInsider.
In this second installment of a three-part series on open source start-ups to watch, LinuxInsider spotlights three relative newcomers to the consumer sector. We spotlight independent video game maker Wolfire, digital home and connected small business environment developer Prodea Systems and video collaboration platform developer Kaltura.
Unaware Users
Perhaps more consumer education will be needed to push better awareness of open source as a viable alternative to commercial products. The open source movement was fostered in part by the creator of the Linux operating system, who started out looking for a cheaper version of Unix, noted Testa.
Some of the greatest ideas started in some of those out-of-the-way places by programmers, he explained. Testa views open source programmers by nature as artists who work outside the box trying to solve problems.
"The typical consumer doesn't understand the strength of open source. They are so inundated with brands like Microsoft and Apple. That doesn't make them bad products. The typical consumer is almost programmed to turn to products from these manufacturers. There is a preconceived notion that open source is not good or is unprofessional or is built by people who don't know what they are doing," Testa said.
Sometimes that perception of consumer-grade products may be true. Some open source products do not have as good an interface or do not offer well-defined support, he explained.
Testa is no naysayer about open source, however. As a consumer, he probably uses more open source products than proprietary ones, he said.
Birth of a Game Plan
Wolfire in many ways depicts the traditional route independent software makers used for years. The company was started in 2003 by David Rosen. A high school student at the time who had been writing code since he was 6, David created a Web site to display his shareware video game contest entries.
His twin brother, Jeff, and three friends came on board some five years later to grow the company into an open source entity. The first game to carry the company logo was "Lugaru." Its sequel, called "Overgrowth," is now being nurtured through various alpha stages vividly tracked and distributed from the Web site.
"'Lugaru' was made in a matter of months. 'Overgrowth' has a professional artist and several programmers developing the code," Jeff Rosen, cofounder and president of Wolfire, told LinuxInsider.
Open Source Intro
The Rosen brothers made the leap from shareware game writers to open source developers quickly out of necessity. A hardcore Mac OS 9 user, they found few games for that platform. To make it more marketable, the game had to attract a wider base of players.
"I support open source because it's good business. We didn't have to do anything to get the games ported to Linux. Volunteer coders did it for us," Rosen said.
He turned into what he describes as a hardcore entrepreneur after being involved in several other small startups. Thinking about seeking angel financiers down the road, he is concentrating now making headway with his "bootstrap model" for growing the businesses.
So far he has very low expenses. The only real cost for now is rent. He pays for other company needs by working out deals for future royalties on the company's games and relying on community volunteers.
Joining In
"Another cool thing we do with open source is using Google Chrome for the UI (user interface) of 'Overgrowth.' We contributed to its development from within the community," Rosen said.
Some of the functions in 'Overgrowth' performed by open standards are the inventory screen, a cool widgets display and the main menu.
"My ideal scenario is to finish 'Overgrowth' this year and enter it in the Independent Games Festival. That will open more doors for us. I want to catapult from a small indie company to a national brand," Rosen said about his plans to grow Wolfire.
He also plans to start a major open source project and will issue a call to arms for volunteers to form a support community around the project.
Joining Forces
Open source is also gathering the attention of movie-viewing consumers. Part of the drum-beating for this growing acceptance might well be the result of Prodea Systems and its success with the Digital Life Command Center platform.
The company offers an innovative approach to dealing with complex digital home and connected small-business environments. Its video platform creates a foundation for a video network in the home with a Community Engine, which allows users to share content, experiences and applications among peer subscribers.
Prodea Systems earlier this month announced a partnership with CinemaNow to bring premium digital entertainment to Prodea's platform. The partnership gives the company the ability to deliver services to the three-screen ecosystem formed by the TV, the PC and mobile devices and provide management infrastructure for transparency into the digital home environment.
What It Does
Prodea's system is based on the notion that if they build it, consumers will come. It provides users with a carrier-grade experience in a variety of services delivered to a range of fixed appliances in the home or automobile, as well as mobile lifestyle devices including smartphones, portable media players and laptops.
Part of this delivery system comes from a partnership Prodea announced in early January with Pandora Internet Radio. The arrangement brings personalized music services to the Digital Life Command Center.
Pandora is a personalized Internet radio and music discovery service available anytime and anywhere on the PC, in the home, and on mobile devices via partnerships with AT&T, Apple and Sprint. Pandora's service is based on the Music Genome Project begun in 2000. Each song in this massive collection is analyzed by more than 30 trained musicians and assessed against nearly 400 distinct musical attributes such as melody, harmony and rhythm to capture its unique musical identity.
Using this information to build playlists based on musical similarity, listeners can simply enter a favorite song or artist and instantly launch a personalized listening experience, which includes discovery of new bands, artists and songs.
Another Delivery Approach
Kaltura offers one of the first open source platforms for video creation, management, interaction and collaboration. The company publicly launched in September 2007.
Kaltura's open source platform enables any site to seamlessly and cost--effectively integrate advanced interactive rich-media functionalities, including video searching, uploading, importing, editing, annotating, remixing and sharing.
The company inked a partnership recently with the Wikimedia Foundation. This expanded Kaltura's reach to Wikipedia's 207 million visitors. Other customers integrating the platform include media companies, social networks, UGC sites, video sharing sites, major brands, non-profits, bloggers and enterprises.
How It Works
Much like a meshing of the Wiki technology with YouTube concept, Kaltura's approach includes collaboration features that allow users to create and consume rich media together. It adds a social element to the online video experience and creates enhanced monetization and advertising opportunities for authors and publishers.
The company's network gathers content from its member sites into a repository of sharable and remixable rich-media content. Publishers big and small can use the network for new syndication opportunities and gain access to third-party Web services that include DVD burning, professional video editing and advertising opportunities.
Kaltura's video platform is based on a modular combination of customizable building blocks called "Kaltura Widgets." These Widgets can be customized, skinned and combined using simple workflows to form Kaltura applications.
Bringing Up Open Source, Part 1: Enterprise Edition


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Sign up for the A Year of Slow Cooking newsletter and get the Top Ten Reader Favorite Recipes sent directly to your inbox!
10 comments:
I am POSITIVE that my kids will eat this. THANK YOU!
Looks super simple and delicious! My 9 year old asks for your pizza soup all the time! It's his favorite!
Hi Steph.....the other day while shopping at Costco I saw a bag of mini pepperoni slices.....bet they would work great in this. Thanks for a yummy (and low carb) recipe.
This looks really delicious!
Now that's my kind of chili, Steph! I like anything with pizza sauce and pepperoni. ;-)
Oh my gosh. Two of hubby's favorite things, pizza and chili! My son is also a pizza fan so I think this looks like something we're going to need to try!
this receipe sounds yummy and i love that its easy and not to many ingredients because sometimes i just cant afford to by a lot of ingredients for one meal. I notice you got quite a lot like that. thaks for posting these. : )
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ooooooh, yet another one to try! (This is what happens when I miss checking in on your blog for a while - so many yummy new things to try start piling up!)
I'm not a huge fan of traditional chilis; but, this sounds delicious! Thanks for posting this quick and easy recipe!
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comment! I will try my hardest to answer questions as they come up, but if your question gets buried, you may try me on twitter or facebook.
Happy Slow Cooking!


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The warm, breezy days of summer are not quite here, but I've found the perfect spring outfit that lends a little more cover while conveying a definite commitment to celebrating warmer weather and brighter prints!
The maxi dress has not bid us adieu just yet. Instead, revive it with a cropped leather jacket and some fashion forward wooden shades.
Rocking these wooden shades from Proof on my recent trip to California felt oh-so-appropriate! They scream surfer-chic and luckily have quite a nice sustainability story, too. With every purchase you make, you help an individual in India gain eyesight through a surgery that you help sponsor—it's the brand's do good/look good philosophy. Proof also has an end of life plan for their sunnies. When you've worn your beloved pair to its wooden core, send them into Proof and they will downcycle the materials into animal bed shavings, and give you a discount on your next pair. Sweet.
Outfit Details (*denotes an eco-fabulous piece):
-Maxi dress: Zara
-Upcycled leather jacket*: c/o The Sway, upcycled leather from fine Italian mills
-Wood sunglasses*: c/o Proof
-Sandals: K Jaques
__So, what is the verdict on my spring outfit combo? How are you bringing your maxi dress back to life this spring?


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Wounded Warriors show off softball skills at Fenway
Amputee veterans dominate Boston Marathon First Responders
BOSTON -- Kyle Earl knows the role he plays on his traveling softball team. He understands he's supposed to run really fast, put pressure on the defense with his legs and cover ground in the field. He's not trying to do too much else.
Earl is missing his right hand. It was amputated after an improvised explosive device blast in Iraq in 2006, when he was serving in the U.S. Marines as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
"For me, I mean, having one hand, you have to catch, take the glove off and be able to throw," says Earl, 27, a Michigan native with a wife and three kids at home. "Hitting -- it's the same thing. This is all I got."
He motions to his right arm, which stops short near the wrist.
Earl grabs a bat to show how he swings.
"I hold it right here," he says, grasping the bottom of the bat with his left hand and resting the higher part of the grip on his right arm.
While it takes coordination for anyone to swing a bat successfully, the recipe also requires focus, perseverance and strength to swing one the way Earl swings it.
Earl served as the designated hitter in Monday night's game between his team, the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team, and the opposition, the Boston Marathon First Responders. The game was played at Fenway Park with public-address announcers, TV cameras, an impressive crowd (admission was free, though donations to The One Fund were accepted at the door) and passionate players on both sides.
It was a feel-good atmosphere in the stands, but a walk onto the field immediately changed the tone from happy-to-be-here to losing-isn't-an-option.
This wasn't just a show of good sportsmanship filled with smiles for the 11 p.m. news.
"You either beat us 20-0 or we're going to beat you 20-0," says WWAST general manager David Van Sleet, an Army veteran who also spent 30 years with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The First Responders should've had a few practices beforehand, a theory they realized shortly after the game started. It wasn't that they didn't take their opponent seriously -- "To be on the same field as these guys is an honor itself," said Boston firefighter Phil Byrne, who was three blocks away from the first explosion April 15 -- they just never thought to organize a practice.
They were too happy to be there.
"Somebody texted me if I wanted to play in this game," Byrne said. "And I said yes before the ink was dry in his text."
The WWAST is no joke. Van Sleet put together a talented squad in March 2011, when the University of Arizona got a congressional grant to fund a disabled-veteran sports camp. The camp was part of MLB Spring Training and lasted for a week, but those who played on the WWAST wanted more than that.
When the week was over, the thought was unanimous: This can't end here.
In the time since, Van Sleet's crew has traveled to 55 cities in 25 states, playing a series of games -- typically against police departments or fire departments -- on a schedule that tends to be every other weekend.
The players are all missing a variety of limbs, ranging from one hand to a pair of legs. Many of them take college classes during the week and play on weekends. Some have jobs. Some have families. But they've all been through extensive rehabilitation and persevered.
"We have a motto," Van Sleet says. "Life without a limb is limitless. But more importantly, life goes on."
In the dugout, the players watch the game closely, cringing when a teammate drops a fly ball and jumping when the squad successfully -- and routinely -- turns a double play.
Matthew Kinsey, who plays without a right foot, has proven so talented that he was named MVP after homering in the celebrity softball game at the 2012 MLB All-Star Game in Kansas City. Joshua Wege, who plays with a pair of prosthetic legs, crushed a pitch over the fence in this year's celebrity game during All-Star Game festivities in New York and shared MVP honors with comedian Kevin James.
"I'm in awe every day watching these guys play," Earl said. "Josh over at first base, he's missing both his legs, but he can do splits. He can jump 6 to 8 inches."
And Earl, well, he can run.
In his first at-bat Monday night, he smacked a ground ball to the right side of the infield but ran so fast he forced a throwing error and ended up on second base.
"Holy cow," voiced players from the Marathon Responders' dugout.
The WWAST won the game, 28-11.
It was an impressive outing from an impressive group of people in both dugouts Monday night.
Did anybody stand out?
"Really, everybody," Earl said.


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More than 1,000 fans were waiting for The Beatles at Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport when they arrived on 8 June. They were allowed to bypass customs and immigration procedures and were swiftly taken to the President Hotel in Kowloon, where they were booked to stay on the 15th floor.
At the hotel Paul McCartney and Neil Aspinall ordered a couple of Hong Kong's 24-hour bespoke suits, a popular request among visitors to the then-British colony.
McCartney also tried to visit Kowloon, but was forced to return to the hotel after being recognised by fans. Jimmie Nicol, standing in for Ringo Starr on this early part of the world tour, felt no such restrictions and was able to wander around unbothered.
In the evening The Beatles had been expected to attend the Miss Hong Kong pageant, which was held in the hotel's Convention Hall. The long journey from Amsterdam had left them tired and jet-lagged, and they turned down the invitation, a decision which caused tears among the contestants. Eventually John Lennon – never one to shy away from female encounters – went down to the hall to greet them.
The Beatles also held a press conference at the President Hotel.
Q: Mr Nicol, how do you feel being rushed into this vast world of publicity all at once?
Jimmie Nicol: It's a most exciting experience.
John and George: Correct.
Q: According to the Newsweek article, George and Paul are supposed to have said that you people are 'just a bunch of crummy musicians.' How were you able to get to the top, then?
Paul McCartney: Who said we were?
John Lennon: You said.
George Harrison: We said.
Paul: I remember.
John: We told 'em we couldn't play.
Paul: You said we were crummy.
George: Well, I dunno.
Paul: What's that, George… What's your answer?
John: You said in the paper you couldn't play. How come you've got all that money?
George: We don't profess to be good musicians. But, whatever it is, it sells. And, you know, we don't know why.
Q: How did you pick the name 'Beatles'?
George: John picked the name Beatles. Why did you pick the name Beatles, John?
John: It's not my fault. It's just a name by any other. But why does anybody pick any name, you know, 'cause it's the one they like best.
Paul: Beatles seemed like a good name, at the time.
Q: Is it supposed to mean the crawly-crawly…
John: Well, you ought to see us at night.
George: That's the double-e, crawly-crawly.
Paul: Crawly-crawly, you see. It's a pun. Jolly good.
John: Pun, pun.
Q: Gentlemen, you've had a chance to see something of Asia's beauty.
Paul: Lovely, yes.
Q: What's your impression?
Paul: Lovely. Marvellous. Beautiful. Very good, isn't it?
John: Yeah.
Paul: Very great. Marvellous. Love it.
Q: With all this travelling about, how do you get time to rehearse?
John: We don't!
Q: You don't rehearse?
John: We do, a bit. We rehearse with Jimmie 'cause he's new.
Q: One of the reports made here was that you'd chosen Hong Kong yourselves. You've been offered several places and that you, yourselves had chosen Hong Kong. Is that true?
John: Yes.
Q: Why was that?
John: 'cause we wanted to see it.
Q: Any reports from other showbusiness personalities coming back?
John: All of them. All like it.
Paul: We heard a lot about it, anyway…
John: They all like it.
Paul: …since we were kids.
Also on this day...
- 2018: Ringo Starr live at Holland Blues Festival, Grolloo, Netherlands
- 2015: Paul McCartney live at Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 2014: Ringo Starr live at Community Arts Center, Williamsport, Pennsylvania
- 2013: Paul McCartney live at Barclays Center, New York
- 2011: Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono and George Martin celebrate five years of Love in Las Vegas
- 1968: George Harrison and Ringo Starr visit Joan Baez in California
- 1968: Paul McCartney is best man at his brother Michael's wedding
- 1967: Recording: You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
- 1966: Recording, editing: Good Day Sunshine, And Your Bird Can Sing
- 1965: Mixing: I Want To Hold Your Hand
- 1963: Live: City Hall, Newcastle
- 1961: Live: Top Ten Club, Hamburg
Want more? Visit the Beatles history section.


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Great travel photos from around the world
Michael McCarthy: If you like the great outdoors, hiking and fishing and wildlife, British Columbia is the best summer destination there is.
It's boating season and the docks of Vancouver are once again busy as boaters return to scrub the decks and discuss summer cruising plans.
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A 16-day cruise north of the Arctic Circle is truly an expedition adventure.
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No disrespect Canmore. Golden truly is a more edgy, hardcore, a seat of your pants, go for it mountain town. Not as polished or refined. Golden and Canmore...
A year spent tramping around the globe has revealed a host of amazing locations and experiences that should be added to bucket lists for 2015.
There are ski resorts where you can get in some glitzy après ski without ever setting foot on a ski slope. Not so at Castle, Fernie and Kimberley...
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text:
Recently bought my daughter a new laptop with Widows 7 installed. Now I don't play games, but she does. transpires all the game cd's she has no longer play on this version of Windows. Previous version which played them all was Vista.
Any suggestions as to how I can resolve this problem. Please any replies , can you make them detailed and very simple
Thanks in anticipation


text:
Van Cleef & Arpels creates jewelry by capturing movement and emotion
Two Butterfly Between the Finger ringWhite gold, Diamond, Sapphire
Van Cleef & Arpels revisits one of its most treasured themes in the Two Butterfly jewelry collection. These dazzling pieces combine color and asymmetry to reinterpret the grace and beauty of butterflies in flight.
Two Butterfly Between the Finger ring, yellow gold, round yellow sapphires, white gold, round and marquise-cut diamonds; diamond quality DEF, IF to VVS.
Reference : VCARA13600
Diamond(s) : 36 stones, 0.99 carats
Sapphire(s) : 34 stones, 0.88 carats
Size Range : 43 - 60
Please note that each Van Cleef & Arpels creation is handmade. As a result, carat weight and stone quantities may differ slightly from one creation to the next. Final price may vary slightly depending on the materials and size.
Final price, actual shipping costs and applicable taxes will be reflected on your order page before you are asked to confirm and place your order. For further details, please refer to our Conditions of Sale.


text:
What you're doing now, posting the same thing in different threads without it contributing anything to the thread, is a good way to get banned.
I'll delete all other occurrences.
Do it again, you're out.
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it.
- Jef Mallett
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
- Charles Darwin


text:
In a cosmic coup, astronomers have found a celestial beacon known as a pulsar in orbit with not one, but two other stars. The first-of-its-kind trio could soon be used to put Einstein's theory of gravity, or general relativity, to an unprecedented test. "It's a wonderful laboratory that nature has given us," says Paulo Freire, a radio astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, who was not involved in the work. "It's almost made to order."
A pulsar consists of a neutron star, the leftover core of a massive star that has blown up in a supernova explosion. The core's own gravity squeezes it so intensely that the atomic nuclei meld into a single sphere of neutrons. The spinning neutron star also shines out a beam of radio waves that sweeps the sky just as the light beam from a lighthouse sweeps the sea. In fact, pulsars flash so regularly that they make natural timepieces whose ticking can be as steady as that of an atomic clock.
The incredible regularity makes it possible to determine whether the pulsar is in orbit with another object, as roughly 80% of the more than 300 fast-spinning "millisecond" pulsars are known to be. As the pulsar and its companion orbit each other, the distance between the pulsar and Earth varies slightly, so that it takes more or less time for the pulses of radio waves to reach Earth. As a result, the frequency of pulsing speeds up and slows down in a telltale cycle.
But such a simple scenario couldn't explain the peculiar warbles in the frequency of pulsar PSR J0337+1715, which Scott Ransom, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia, and colleagues discovered in 2007 with the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. Training other radio telescopes on the object, Ransom and colleagues kept it under near-constant surveillance for a year and a half. Eventually, Anne Archibald, a graduate student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, figured out exactly what's going on.
The pulsar, which has 1.4 times the sun's mass and spins 366 times a second, is in a tight orbit lasting 1.6 days with a white dwarf star only 20% as massive as the sun. A second white dwarf that weighs 41% as much as the sun orbits the inner pair every 327 days, as Ransom and colleagues report online today in Nature. "We think that there are not more than 100 of these [trios] in our galaxy," Ransom says. "They really are one-in-a-billion objects."
The distinctive new system opens the way for testing a concept behind general relativity known as the equivalence principle, which relates two different conceptions of mass. An object's inertial mass quantifies how it resists pushing or pulling: It's easier to start a stroller rolling than a car because the stroller has less inertial mass. A thing's gravitational mass determines how much a gravitational field pulls on it: A barbell is heavier than a feather because it has more gravitational mass.
The simplest version of the equivalence principle says inertial mass and gravitational mass are equal. It explains why ordinary objects like baseballs and bricks fall to Earth at the same rate regardless of their mass—as legend claims Galileo showed by dropping heavier and lighter balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The strong equivalence principle takes things an important step further. According to Einstein's famous equation, E = mc2, energy equals mass. So an object or system's mass can be generated by the energy in the gravitational fields within the system itself. The strong equivalence principle states that even if one includes mass generated through such "self-gravitation," gravitational and inertial mass are still equal. The principle holds in Einstein's theory of general relativity but typically does not hold in alternative theories, says Thibault Damour, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies in Bures-sur-Yvette, France. So poking a pin in the principle would prove that general relativity is not the final word on gravity.
Researchers have already tried to test the strong equivalence principle. Since the 1970s, some have compared how the moon and Earth orbit in the gravitational field of the sun. More recently, others have analyzed the motion of pulsar–white dwarf pairs in the gravitational field of the galaxy. But those studies have been limited, Damour says. Earth's self-gravitation accounts for just a billionth of its mass. In pulsar studies, the galaxy's gravity is very weak. So the strong equivalence principle has been tested only to a precision of parts per thousand.
The new pulsar system opens the way to a much more stringent test by combining the strengths of the two previous methods. The self-gravitation of the pulsar accounts for roughly 10% of its mass, in contrast to less than 0.001% for the inner white dwarf. At the same time, both move in the gravitational field of the outer white dwarf, which is much stronger than the field of the galaxy. By tracking the system's evolution, Ransom and colleagues should be able to tell whether either the inner white dwarf or the pulsar falls faster toward the outer white dwarf and test strong equivalence about 100 times as precisely as before, Damour says.
So will strong equivalence principle be found wanting? "I would rather expect to get a better limit" on possible violations, Damour says. "But I'm open-minded. It would be great to get a violation." Freire says a violation would be "a complete revolution."
Researchers may not have to wait long, Ransom says. His team should be able to test the principle within a year.


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ZAM encountered goblins, giants and much more on a tour of Against the Shadow
With The Hobbit releasing next week, all things Tolkien are on the public consciousness. That's all well and good in my opinion as I'm a bit of a Lord of the Rings nut.
When I was given the opportunity to take a run through some of the changes coming to Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) with some of the charming devs at Turbine, I gladly accepted the chance to go romping through Middle Earth.
LOTRO Update 9: Against the Shadow features a raft of revamps to spruce up older content and make it more vital for a wider range of players. Moria has received a lot of attention, to make the leveling and adventuring experience smoother. The devs spoke of how unforgiving and bewildering Moria could be in the past, but the restructuring should make the area more enjoyable and accessible.
Scaling is another vital component in revitalizing previously released content. A number of instances, including the Barad Guldur raid, have been scaled up to 85 to make them relevant to high level players. The 12-man instance's popularity made it a reassessment priority for Turbine. Scaling the raid allows it to be visited by those who want to revisit their favorite instance while keeping it exciting.
The main crux of the update is the inclusion of three new dungeons that scale from 20 to 85 to enjoy with your fellowship. I was fortunate enough to set my hairy feet in two of them.
Initially we headed to Iorbar's Peak, a snow encrusted trail leading high up into the Misty Mountains where a stone giant named Helf has taken the egg of the giant eagle Gwaihir – whose presence at the end of the instance is a real treat.
As you enter the instance Helf greets the party with the grace and charm you would expect: he starts throwing large boulders at you. While dodging the stone giant's flying greeting cards – large circles on the ground indicate where not to be – you are engaged by cantankerous dwarves and unhappy local wildlife. The rocks do damage to the NPCs too; so timing your kiting can lead to Helf and his compatriots inadvertently helping you on your way.


text:
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text:
Carpet Cleaning Germiston, the deep cleaning people
When people think of the deep cleaning couches and seats that are old, worn and tired may forget about the simple method of deep cleaning them as they feel that mostly it's not worth it or that it's too much money and hassle to have to deal with, while many people have shown that whenfurniture is cleaned it gives everything a new look and feel. Couch cleaning with Couch Cleaning Germiston is not only and must but nowadays it is a necessity to ensure the safety and health of your family from pet hair two stains and spills. So why delay in giving your furniture a facelift that we at couch clinic Germiston are able to provide and the benefits that this will have, Couch Cleaning Germiston is known for. Also know that older couches have fabrics that are more delicate or have injured more use they are needing that extra special care to ensure that no damages are caused. All settees and couches I cleaned with a unique approach giving them that extra clean look and feel.
Couch cleaner Germiston will handle all your couch cleaning needs with care and professionalism to every step of the way avoiding that added stress that you may sometimes feel when other companies have cleaned your furniture.
With deep cleaned couches and settees you will not only feel and see the difference like never before but will also be able to sit back and enjoy just relaxing on the couches and settees and not have a worry in the world ever again after your couch has been given that mush needed uplift.
Couch Cleaning Germiston


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New Beginnings
Carrie Hefty and Kyle Hurley are pleased to announce their engagement and upcoming marriage. Carrie is the daughter of Dave and Becky Hefty of West Bend. Kyle is the son of Rick and Johnny Hurley of Emmetsburg.
Carrie graduated from West Bend-Mallard High School in 2010 and is currently enrolled in the Veterinary Technician program at Iowa Lakes Community College. Kyle graduated from Emmetsburg High School in 2010 and currently farms and raises cattle near Mallard.
The couple will exchange vows on June 1, 2013 at the Holy Family Catholic Church in Emmetsburg.


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How was this going to work?
How was this going to work?
All those Marvel superheroes, many of them with their own action franchises, packed into one epic, save-humanity-adventure.
How will the retro patriotism of Captain America mesh with the flippant cynicism of Iron Man? Could the brooding Hulk bond with the regal brawn of Thor?
How could anybody balance the inter-connection of back stories, the clash of personalities, the need for shared screen time, the utter necessity of building up a villain capable of putting fear in this fearsome foursome and then some?
But it works, because Joss Whedon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") brought his A-game to "The Avengers." It works because he never loses sight of the fragile humanity of the characters, even in their special effects brawls. It works because somebody finally got The Hulk's blend of rage, guilt and bull-in-a-chandelier-shop fun right.
Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has created S.H.I.E.L.D., his super-secret superhero agency, mainly on paper. But when his minions recover the magical cube, the Tesseract, from where Captain America buried it last summer, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and The Other (Alexis Denisof) plot Loki's vengeful conquest of the Earth. Fury has to get the band together, get them to work as a team.
"We have our orders," Captain America (Chris Evans) intones. "We should follow them."
"Following's not really my style," Tony "Iron Man" Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) quips.
"You're all about style, aren't you?" the red-white-and-blue goody-two-shoes Captain fires back.
In an ensemble piece, Downey's brilliant touch with the throwaway putdown is showcased to its best effect. He calls Thor "Point Break" (a surfer-Patrick Swayze hair joke) and "Shakespeare in the Park," and asks "Doth your mother know you weareth her drapes?"
The earnest Evans gives just enough gravitas to the Captain, who understands how their special gifts are "a terrible privilege."
Loki turns a couple of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents — the bow-and-arrow-wielding Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Professor Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) — into his flunkies, and sets about creating a means for an army of aliens to show up and enslave humanity.
Hiddleston grows into the part that seemed like a weak link in "Thor," and makes the most of this guy's megalomania and bad-guy bravado. "You are MADE to be ruled. Kneel before me," he orders one and all. "It is your natural state."
The real fun here is in the fractious nature of the superhero team — Iron Man sniping at and brawling with Thor, Iron Man's quarrels with Captain America, the "issues" between the assassins Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye, and the "Serenity Now" ethos that Bruce Banner embraces lest "The Other Guy" (The Hulk) break out and make a mess of things.
Ruffalo gives Banner/ Hulk a wonderful, almost passive "Nobody really should mess with me" pose, and he can trade wisecracks with the best of them. "That guy's brain's a bag full'a cats," he says of Loki. "You can smell crazy on him."
Whedon manages to give a staggering number of characters their "moments," from Clark Gregg, the long-suffering agent whose thankless job it is to ride herd on the superheroes, to Gwyneth Paltrow's sexy paramour/assistant to Tony Stark, Pepper Potts. She's all cut-off jeans and come-hither come-ons in their scenes together.
As you might expect from a movie with this many characters and that many zingers, "Avengers" is entirely too long and entirely too chatty. The 3-D adds nothing to it, and we lose the urgency every time we lose track of the menace and the villain.
But Whedon has managed a feat akin to last summer's "Thor," finding the fun in what should be, by any rights, an exhausted genre. "Avengers" isn't deep (yes, we really should all work together) and it doesn't reinvent the comic-book movie. But it is fun, and if it's an indicator of the season of cinema to follow, this summer is going to be epic.


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Sturgeon Bay Police Department
Welcome to the Sturgeon Bay Police Departments Website. Within you will find all sorts of new ways to keep in contact and follow the Sturgeon Bay Police Department.
Whether you want to follow us on Facebook or Twitter, we want you to keep in touch with us day or night. Be the first to know about emergency situations and Police incidents going on in our community. We hope that you will become as excited as we are about our new website and look forward to working more closely with you in partnership to make The City of Sturgeon Bay a safer place to live, work, and visit.
On behalf of the men and women of the Sturgeon Bay Police Department, I welcome you to our website. Sturgeon Bay is located in the heart of the beautiful Door County peninsula and is the county seat. It is a wonderful place to work, live, and visit.
The vision of the Sturgeon Bay Police Department is to be regarded by the community we serve and by our law enforcement peers as a progressive, proactive, and professional agency guided by strong core values. Our department core values are: Compassion, Integrity, Teamwork, Fun, Professional and Loyal. I hope you enjoy our website.
Arleigh R. Porter
Chief of Police


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Who We Are
Visit Miami's flagship art museum, and learn about modern and contemporary, international art at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). Exhibitions highlight Miami's diverse community and pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas. In addition to exploring the galleries, visitors can: enjoy waterfront dining at Verde restaurant; shop a unique selection of art books, furnishings and handmade items at the museum's gift store; and take in the spectacular views of Biscayne Bay and the elaborate hanging gardens. Designed by Pritzker Prize winning architects Herzog & de Meuron, PAMM provides an educational and civic forum for the County's residents and visitors alike.
Our Mission
Our Vision
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) evolved from the Miami Art Museum, which grew out of the Center for the Fine Arts (CFA). The CFA opened to the public in 1984 as a partnership between Metropolitan Dade County Government and the Center for the Fine Arts Association Inc., a private 501(c) (3) corporation. In 1994, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, the CFA's leadership determined to transform this County department from a space solely for temporary exhibitions into a private institution with a permanent collection dedicated to international art of the 20th and 21st centuries that reflected Greater Miami's diverse community and pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas. To embody this new mission and the community's aspiration for a major art museum on a prominent waterfront site, the CFA was renamed the Miami Art Museum of Dade County Association, Inc. (MAM).
Plans began to establish a significant educational program, build the collection, and create a new world-class facility that would affirm the region's growing stature as a global capital. MAM, in tandem with the Miami Museum of Science, led the charge to transform a derelict 30-acre waterfront site in the City of Miami into Museum Park. The City dedicated the land and funding to realize the vision of a great public park anchored by art and science museums. Through its landmark Building Better Communities program, Miami-Dade County provided the capital funds to construct major new art and science museums. MAM commissioned the Pritzker Prize-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron to design a state-of-the-art, sustainable building that expresses the museum's role as an educational and civic forum for the County's residents and visitors. In 2013, when the museum moved to its acclaimed, 200,000-square-foot facility overlooking Biscayne Bay in Museum Park, it was renamed the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County, in recognition of Mr. Pérez's generous leadership gift.


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Galit Rodan Named Tom Hanson Photojournalism Award Winner
Feb 11, 2013, 14:03 ET
TORONTO, Feb. 11, 2013 /CNW/ - The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) and The Canadian Press are pleased to announce the winner of this year's Tom Hanson Photojournalism Award is Galit Rodan, a freelance photojournalist whose work has appeared in the National Post, Toronto Star, and The Globe and Mail. Rodan will be joining The Canadian Press for a six-week internship this summer.
"As a photojournalist at the beginning of my career, winning the Tom Hanson award is an honour and a huge opportunity for me," says Rodan, who attended law school before pursuing photojournalism. "It allows me to work alongside and learn from some of the best in the business and offers the unparalleled chance to have my photos seen nationally and even internationally. I feel incredibly fortunate, nervous and excited."
The jury, which included veteran photographers and members of Tom Hanson's family, reviewed a high number of submissions from early-career photojournalists.
"She impressed the selection committee with her smart portfolio of powerful, story-telling photos," says Catherine Hanson, a jury member and the spouse of the late Tom Hanson. "Her creative eye knows what is newsworthy and her talent is evident by her impressive photos."
Rodan's submission included a range of news and feature subjects from across Canada. View Rodan's photo submissions.
"It is a great honour to be able to continue to offer this award in Tom's name, and we are very thankful for all the support that we have received," says Graeme Roy, director of news photography at The Canadian Press. "This year again we had an increase in the number of applications, and we were very pleased that we had such an amazing selection of portfolios to review and choose from. The work was truly outstanding. We've had fantastic award winners each year, and I'm totally confident that Galit will continue this history of excellence."
Rodan will be presented with the award at the 16th Annual CJF Awards on June 13 at The Fairmont Royal York in Toronto.
Selection Committee
Catherine Hanson, spouse of Tom Hanson
Heide Glorieux-Kaspar, mother of Tom Hanson
Graeme Roy, director of news photography, The Canadian Press
Frank Gunn, national photographer, The Canadian Press
Fred Chartrand, freelance photographer and former national photographer, The Canadian Press
Tony Caldwell, photographer, Ottawa Sun
Michael Benedict, board member, The Canadian Journalism Foundation
About the Tom Hanson Photojournalism Award
The Canadian Journalism Foundation and The Canadian Press teamed up in 2009 to launch a new photojournalism award in memory of Tom Hanson, an award-winning photographer who travelled around the world and across the country, shooting some of the most iconic news and sports images of the last 15 years. The Tom Hanson Photojournalism Award offers a six-week paid internship at The Canadian Press head office in Toronto for a photojournalist in the early stages of his or her career.
SOURCE: Canadian Journalism Foundation
For further information:
Wendy Kan, Program Manager
The Canadian Journalism Foundation
[email protected] or 416-955-0394 x502
Graeme Roy, Director of News Photography
The Canadian Press
[email protected] or 416-507-2167


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rich:autocomplete - is it desperately missing itemValue= ?healeyb Feb 21, 2012 9:30 AM
I'm really having problems getting rich:autocomplete to work with what I consider a typical use case.
I think part of the problem is that I can't find an example, whether in the showcase or in the practical
richfaces 2 book, where the value selected by the user is used in any way. Nowhere will you find the
value= attribute used, or the selected item used in any other way (i.e. in a value change listener).
The basic problem is that everything seems to have been thought about, except storing a reference to
what you've selected. A familiar scenario is using f:selectItems like this:
public class Team {
long id;
String name;
public Team selectedTeam;
public List<Team> teamList = new ArrayList<>();
teamList.add(new Team(1, "Liverpool"));
teamList.add(new Team(2, "Chelsea"));
teamList.add(new Team(2, "Manchester United"));
<h:selectOneMenu value="#{bean.selectedTeam}" converter="genericConverter">
<f:selectItems value="#{bean.teamList}" var="var" itemLabel="#{var.name}" itemValue="#{var}"/>
You have a List<Team>, selectItems displays the itemLabel, in this case the team name, and on
selection you store a reference to the Team object in selectedTeam. If you wanted to you could
easily store the primary key id instead. All pretty straightforward although a converter is required.
A rich:autocomplete version of the above example could look like this:
rich:autocomplete value="#{bean.selectedTeam}"
<h:outputText value="#{var.name}"/>
<a4j:ajax event="selectitem"/>
the teamSearch() method returns a List<Team> where the characters typed into autocomplete
input match in some way the team name. If I type in "Liver" we get one row returned. What is
supposed to happen is that the value of fetchValue="#{var.name}" replaces any characters typed
into the input, so "Liverpool". But fetchValue is also used for the value attribute, so we'll get a
ClassCastException trying to cast a String to a Team (selectedTeam).
If you add a converter, the getAsObject method will be called with fetchValue (the name) as the
third parameter, which is probably not what you want.
So the problem is that you want to internally reference the object by the primary key, but display
friendly text to the user, but this seems impossible with the current offering.
Just adding the itemValue attribute would solve the immediate problem, so that there's a difference
between the text displayed in the input box when you make a selection (fetchValue), and the
component value (itemValue).
Any thoughts? I've got to say this is totally unusable for me right now, unless I've missed something
really obvious.


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RX Parts & Accessories
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$2.66NGK Spark Plug - 3194
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RX Parts & AccessoriesIf you are looking to find the greatest selection of Yamaha RX parts and accessories, then you have come to the right place. We keep in stock everything that you need to make the next trip on your sled more enjoyable. Our inventory is larger than any other aftermarket snowmobile parts vendor anywhere. At Dennis Kirk, you will be able to find everything that you need to keep your RX performing its best for this winter and for many more to come.
While the Yamaha RX series of snowmobiles only lasted a few years, its legacy has changed the landscape of snowmobiles. The RX-1 was the first sled to feature four-stroke motorcycle engine technology. This made it the first performance snowmobile to feature a four-stroke. The RX-1 sparked a revolution and left the other competitors quickly trying to compete. With Dennis Kirk's aftermarket snowmobile parts, your RX will continue to defy people's expectations of what snowmobiles should be.
We know that you would rather be riding and that's why we keep all of our parts in stock and ready to ship the same day, so you get what you need faster. Dennis Kirk has been the leader in the powersports industry since 1969, so you can rest assured that we have your back when it comes to outfitting your Yamaha RX with the right snowmobile parts and accessories. With our no-hassle return policy and FREE SHIPPING on all orders over $89, you can buy with utmost confidence!


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Castleforge Partners was founded in 2010 by Brandon Hollihan and Michael Kovacs. To date Castleforge Partners has invested over £500 million of asset value throughout the UK and generated average returns in excess of underwritten expectations across numerous historic realisations. Castleforge Partners achieved final close above its target on CF Fund II in July 2016 at £235 million of discretionary equity. CFP II includes a range of institutional investors from the US, the UK and Europe.
Brandon Hollihan co-founded Castleforge Partners in July 2010. Prior to founding Castleforge Partners, Brandon worked for Westbrook Partners in London and at Morgan Stanley Real Estate ("MSRE") in New York. He has transacted over £2.0 billion of real estate asset value across the US and Western Europe across a diverse range of real estate investment types, including single asset and portfolios purchases, investments in public companies, recapitalizations, distressed developments, whole bank loans (senior and subordinated), corporate bonds and CMBS.
He has experience investing in a range of asset classes including city centre and suburban office, high street retail, shopping centres, retail outlets, hotels, industrial logistics and warehouses, multifamily and high-end residential, student housing and land.
Brandon graduated with honours from Columbia University in New York City and is a member of the Urban Land Institute and the Global Real Estate Institute.
Michael Kovacs co-founded Castleforge Partners in July 2010. Prior to founding Castleforge Partners, Michael worked at Westbrook Partners in London, where he was involved in transactions representing over £2.0 billion of asset value for Westbrook's various funds in the UK, Europe and Asia across a diverse range of real estate investment types. These transactions involved all major real estate asset classes and ranged from purchases of single assets and portfolios, to investments in public companies, recapitalization distressed developments, whole bank loans, corporate bonds and CMBS.
Prior to Westbrook Partners, Michael worked at The Blackstone Group in New York, where he was involved in mergers and acquisitions across a wide range of industry sectors.
Michael received a B.S. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated summa cum laude, and he currently serves on the University's UK Europe Leadership Committee.


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Wisconsin beats Minnesota for 10th straight time23131376
It was closer this time. Tougher. For the first time in a long time, there was suspense, at least for a while.
But in the end, the story remained the same.
In one of the oldest rivalries in college football, the Wisconsin defense was better and the Badgers offense was just good enough in a 20-7 victory on Saturday in TCF Bank Stadium.
For the No. 19 Badgers (9-2 overall, 6-1 Big Ten), it was their sixth straight victory overall and their 10th straight against No. 25 Minnesota (8-3, 4-3), meaning the Paul Bunyan Axe will stay in Madison for another year.
The loss ended Minnesota's four-game conference winning streak.
"That's two very good football teams playing against each other," Wisconsin coach Gary Andersen said. "Minnesota is very deserving of walking in here 8-2."
Defensive battle? The Gophers became just the second team to hold Wisconsin below 200 rushing yards this season (197) and held Wisconsin to 324 yards, nearly 200 below its average.
But the Wisconsin defense was better, holding Minnesota's offense scoreless, sacking quarterback Philip Nelson three times, forcing and recovering three fumbles, including one that led to a second-quarter touchdown that gave Wisconsin the lead for good.
Down 7-3 after Minnesota linebacker Aaron Hill's 39-yard interception return for a touchdown early in the second quarter, the Badgers scored the game's final 17 points, led by quarterback Joel Stave (16-of-26 passing, 127 yards and a touchdown) and running back James White (26 carries, 130 yards).
After the game, the Badgers tried to mimic chopping down the goal post in the end zone near the Gophers' locker room, prompting some pushing and shoving.
But it was the Badgers who had the last laugh for the 10th straight time.
"Ten is a solid number," said Badgers linebacker Chris Borland, who had 12 tackles and two fumble recoveries. "We were very proud of it. I think they were moving the ball early on. But we responded well and adjusted to that."
Indeed, the Badgers had a brief lead after Hill's touchdown.
"When he made that play, I felt like it was time to change the course of Wisconsin and Minnesota," Gophers defensive end Ra'Shede Hageman said.
But it wasn't to be. The Badgers hit another gear, turning Nelson's fumble into a five-play, 49-yard drive ended by White's 1-yard TD run with 2:24 left in the half.
Nelson's intentional grounding penalty forced a punt from the end zone, and the Badgers took over at the Minnesota 23 and moved to a first-and-goal at the 3 as the clocked ticked down. But again the Gophers held, with Cedrick Thompson tipping Stave's pass to Derek Watt. Jack Russell's second field goal of the day made it 13-7 at the half.
It didn't take long to learn that Minnesota's goal-line stand hadn't changed the game's momentum. The Badgers took the third-quarter kickoff and marched 83 yards in 12 plays — Stave was 6 of 6 on the drive — to go up 20-7 on his 2-yard pass to Jared Abbrederis. That ended the scoring but kept the Badgers' streak intact.
"We played hard," Minnesota coach Jerry Kill said. "Sometimes it doesn't come out the way you want it to. But I thought our guys played hard against a good football team. We had three turnovers. If you take those turnovers away, we might have a tie game."
NOTES: The Gophers did not announce it during the week, but WR Derrick Engel suffered a torn ACL in a practice last Sunday, according to a published report. The injury almost certainly spells the end of his college career for the redshirt senior. … Caleb Bok sat missed his second game with a concussion after making 20 straight starts at right guard for Minnesota. Foster Bush started in his place. … Gophers QB Philip Nelson's father played fullback for Wisconsin in the 1970s and Philip grew up in Madison a huge Badgers fan. … Wisconsin came into the game with a nine-game winning streak in this yearly battle for Paul Bunyan's axe, the longest by either team in the most-played rivalry in the Football Bowl Subdivision. … This is the first time since 2003 that the Gophers have won at least eight games in a season. … Saturday's game marked the fourth-coldest game ever between the two teams. The temperature at TCF Bank Stadium at kickoff was 18 degrees. The three coldest games were played in the 1950s. Minnesota played indoors at the Metrodome for 28 years. … Wisconsin freshman Dan Voltz got his third straight start at center in place of Dallas Lewallen, who has a knee injury. … Saturday's game was just the second sold-out Minnesota home game this season. The other came against Nebraska.


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GameBirdHunts.com is your online source for hunting & shooting news. All of our news is organized by US state to make it easy for you to quickly find the Pheasant Hunting News that is of interest to you! Click on the link below to browse your states upland hunting news or use the search box above! If you have a hunting story you would like to submit please use this link:
RAPID CITY, S.D. – Fishing regulations on some western South Dakota lakes may change in 2010. While some of the changes would be slight, others may noticeably affect what anglers can include in their daily catches.
Biologists and managers with the state Game, Fish and Parks Department have developed a framework to simplify fisheries regulations across the state. The process combines similar regulations into a single reglation.
For example, waters with different minimum-length limits of 14, 15 and 16 inches for walleyes would be grouped into a single minimum-length limit of 15 inches and continue to be as effective as the current special regulations.
According to Gene Galinat, GFP fisheries program manager in Rapid City, most walleye fisheries and some bass fisheries will have changes recommended to align with the new framework. "The new framework has given us a fresh look at some of our fisheries," Galinat said. "While most regulations would change only slightly, a few would have more substantial changes."
Most notably, changes will be recommended in the 14-inch minimum length limit for walleyes on Curlew Lake and Newell Lake. Multiple options exist within the regulatory framework, including a 15-inch, minimum-length limit, with either a four-fish or two-fish daily limit. However, GFP biologists feel those lakes fit the criteria of a more restrictive regulation allowing anglers to harvest two walleyes greater than 15 inches per day, with one of those over 20 inches.
"We have completed a number of walleye stockings at both of these waters and recently implemented the 14-inch minimum restrictions, but neither is reaching their potential," Galinat said.
Although factors such as the recent drought and other fish populations do affect walleye stockings, another influence likely suppressing those walleye fisheries is the amount of annual harvest they receive. "Hopefully, by adding a little more restriction on these fisheries, more anglers will catch and take home a walleye keeper or two" Galinat said.
Other potential changes in western South Dakota regulations would have:
* Angostura and Shadehill Reservoirs moving from a 14-inch minimum on walleyes to a 15-inch minimum.
* New Wall, Waggoner, and Newell Lakes moving from a 12-inch to a16-inch protected length limit on bass, with one bass allowed over 16 inches, to a 14- to 18-inch protected length limit, with one bass over 18 inches.
* Length limits applying to both smallmouth and largemouth bass (black bass); currently, most length limits on bass are for one species or the other.
Recommended fisheries regulation changes will be made at the Oct. 1-2 Game, Fish and Parks Commission meeting in Lemmon. Public input plays a vital role in any regulation changes, and anglers are encouraged to comment on these proposals by contacting Gene Galinat, regional fisheries manager, at the Rapid City Regional Office, 605-394-2391.
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Complete Story
Taking Care of Business
By: Mike Farrell, Multichannel News
Cable operators are suddenly finding riches by doing something they've seemed technologically designed to do from the start: take care of business.
Business services, in particular business telephony, have become a bright spot in the cable industry's finances. As the recession continues to chip away at core residential businesses — as well as such past growth drivers like digital cable, high-speed Internet and even telephony — sales to small and medium-sized business may become more important than ever.
The business category is one of the few areas where subscriber and revenue growth appears to be accelerating. The market for commercial telephony varies by geography, but the four largest MSOs — Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications and Cablevision Systems — have estimated that small and medium-sized businesses in their respective territories spend more than $30 billion annually on telecommunications services.
For the most part, incumbent telephone-service providers have largely served small-business customers with benign neglect, allowing cable companies to move in with lower prices and better service.
At the top three publicly traded cable operators — Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Charter — business-services revenue grew between 15% (Charter) and 41% (Comcast) in 2008. Meanwhile, for those same cable operators, residential high-speed Internet revenue grew between 9% and 11.5% in 2008, down from previous years.
And Comcast, which grew commercial services revenue by 47% in the fourth quarter, only had a multi-line phone product for the back half of the year, compared to a two-line phone the company previously offered.
While most cable operators have been selling high-speed Internet service to businesses for years, the difference now appears to be the telephone product. On its fourth-quarter conference call with analysts, Comcast chief operating officer Steve Burke said the business product really began to take off after July, when the largest MSO in the country began offering an eight-line phone product.
Time Warner Cable's commercial high-speed data customers rose 1.1% in 2008, from 280,000 to 283,000. Business telephony grew at a 500% clip, from 5,000 in 2007 to 30,000 in 2008.
"Business services is a real success story, with very high returns, and we are giving that group the capital they need to expand quickly," Comcast's Burke said on the February conference call. Capital expenditure for business services in 2008 was about $231 million (out of a total $5.7 billion capex budget), according to Comcast.
Wall Street analysts couldn't be happier. "Clearly there is some good traction there," said Miller Tabak media analyst David Joyce of business services. "It's just a natural extension, once they got off the learning curve for the residential service on the voice side."
Couple that with a recessionary climate that is forcing business owners to reduce costs, and the prospects for the business market look better than ever. "The economy is to a degree helping because businesses are looking at every line item, and when they can save money on telecommunications costs, they are going to do it," said Collins Stewart cable analyst Tom Eagan.
"Phone is growing because of the economic pressures," Eagan added. "I think the biggest gaps seem to be really in the phone-line costs. That's what we're seeing now; companies would rather cut their phone lines than their employees."
Cable operators have taken notice of that advantage and are driving home the price/value message in much of their marketing. "Right now, we are talking about smart ways to economize," said Time Warner Cable New York City Region Commercial Business president Ken Fitzpatrick.
TWC emphasizes the point that the cable company is a hometown business, said Fitzpatrick. "Because we are in the communities and the markets that we serve, we have the capability to sit down with businesses, understand what their needs are and put together a solution that meets those needs."
While most cable operators didn't want to tip their hand on pricing, cable business-telecom service usually is priced about 15% to 20% lower than the incumbent phone company. In one of its ad campaigns, Cablevision claims that its business double play of high-speed data and phone service is 50% lower than a similar phone company product.
Cable can generally offer a lower price because its cost base is much lower than the telcos — business services run from the same network as residential products and are more efficient than older telco plant — and because, in the past, telcos have subsidized residential services by charging business customers more.
But some telcos are beginning to step up and take notice — in New York, Fitzpatrick said, Verizon "has gotten very aggressive with their small-business offering, where they are calling out cable directly."
For example, Verizon Communications — which also offers residential video service through its FiOS TV product — is aggressively offering a voice, high-speed data and wireless package to businesses with fewer than 20 employees for between $63 and $108 per month.
Fitzpatrick agreed that the economy is making some businesses look at cable commercial services in a new light. "Everybody is looking at areas to reduce cost and improve efficiency," he said. "This is an area we can play a part in and give them a higher level of service and put some money back in their pockets."
But the extent of the economic decline will play a big role, Fitzgerald added. "It depends on how steep the decline goes and how impactful it is to businesses closing their doors."
Not everyone is playing the price card. At Cox Business, the focus is more on value. "We're not always lower in price," spokesman Todd Smith said. "We think the total value proposition is better in the long run. We think we deliver better service, we have local sales and service teams in all of our markets and we're usually competitively priced. We don't espouse to be a certain percentage below the competitor."
Smith also stressed the ability to go after larger customers — traditionally, cable has been tethered mainly to small businesses — by offering advanced-networking capabilities like Ethernet service. Now, with products like Metro Ethernet, virtual private networks and other advanced business services, Cox is able to tap into larger businesses like Rappahannock Goodwill Industries, a nonprofit in Chantilly, Va., with 323 employees.
"It's really our primary product because we don't have a large base of legacy-networking customers that they [incumbents] do," Smith said of Cox's Ethernet technology. "It's a huge opportunity for our customers to move to a more efficient networking technology. They're not getting that message from their provider."
Business customers have become the primary focus of cable companies, viewed as a prize in a war that will only become more intense. While phone companies could still match cable's pricing, cable operators' infrastructure is more efficient. And revenue growth from the sector doesn't appear to be slowing soon.
At TWC, commercial revenue was up 20% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and closed at nearly $800 million in sales for the full year. The company expects its commercial business to grow at least another 20% in 2009, twice as fast as its residential business.
Data and telephony revenue at Cablevision's Optimum Business unit was up 40% in the fourth quarter. And though Cablevision does not separate its business customers from its residential subscribers in financial filings, chief operating officer Tom Rutledge said on its fourth-quarter conference call that the MSO activated 250,000 phone lines for small businesses in the fourth quarter.
At Cablevision Lightpath, a separate unit that focuses on large business customers, operations are still growing at a rapid clip. In the fourth quarter, Lightpath's revenue grew by 16.2% to $65.2 million, and adjusted operating cash flow rose 20.6% to $22.8 million.
That trend is holding for many operators offering business telephony — Smith said Cox Business is still seeing 20% quarterly customer growth on the commercial side and recently passed the 600,000 commercial-phone-line milestone. Revenue for the unit of the privately held company was up about 16% in 2008 and is expected to climb to $1 billion by 2010.
The growth curve is widening even for those later to the commercial-phone game. Comcast only began offering a business-phone product about 18 months ago. The cable giant estimates the market for telecom services in its footprint is between $12 billion and $15 billion annually, with 5 million small businesses with less than 20 employees in its service territory. So far, the MSO has only scratched the surface in reaching its goal of capturing 20% to 25% of that business-telephony market.
"The main way that we sell now, our real goal, is to go in and deliver data, voice and video to small businesses," Burke said on Comcast's fourth-quarter call. "There are many, many weeks voice is growing faster than data, but really as a strategy, we are trying to be the entire business solution. What is happening now is when you can offer voice as well as data, it tends to accelerate the data, and the voice is obviously a brand-new revenue stream."
Burke said that Comcast is attacking the market by offering a better product at a better price.
"Very frequently, we are able to offer a better value than the existing RBOCs and traditionally, the RBOCs have targeted larger accounts and not been able to service the smaller accounts," Burke said. "And we really concentrate on the small and medium-size businesses and provide a great alternative for them."
The industry has been helped by cable's success in residential telephony. "There is such a halo effect from the residential business to the commercial business and the fact that we've got just about 4 million phone customers," Fitzpatrick said. "Those are 4 million phone lines that have solidified the fact that cable is a viable solution for your phone services."
While business telephony continues to gather steam, cable operators also see opportunities for video with business customers. Each of the larger MSOs is targeting a video product, mainly for doctor's offices, restaurants and bars and other businesses with waiting rooms. And the operators are looking for innovative ways to make video a compelling and economical business purchase.
"We're trying to design packages that are even more attractive to them [businesses]; things like packages without sports, for example, that would reduce some of their costs," Smith said. "Some waiting-room environments may not have the desire to have all the premium sports channels, but they may want some of the basics to entertain their customers.
"We're trying to do things like restaurant/bar packages, a financial-only type package, a family-type package, things like that."
Time Warner Cable also is looking at ways to target video for its business customers.
"The need for real-time news and information is probably at an all-time high," Fitzpatrick said. "And there probably is no better way to get that than cable TV."


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Streusel topping with nuts takes apple pie one step beyond the basic.
Preparation Time: 15 mins
Cooking Time: 50 mins
Yield: 8 x slices
PIE CRUST: Roll pastry on floured surface into circle 1 inch larger than 9-inch pie plate. Ease pastry into plate; trim and flute edge. Set aside.
PIE FILLING: Combine 3/4 cup Equal®, cornstarch, lemon juice, 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon salt and the nutmeg; sprinkle over apples in large bowl. Toss to coat. Spoon apples into pie crust.
STREUSEL TOPPING: combine flour, 1/2 cup Equal®, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Stir in melted margarine until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in nuts. Sprinkle over apples.
Bake in preheated 375°F oven 45 to 55 minutes or until apples are tender and crust is golden. Cool on wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Can replace 4 tablespoons of margarine/buttery spread with equal amount of butter.
NOTE: * For pie filling, the 3/4 cup Equal® Spoonful may be replaced by either 18 packets Equal® sweetener or 3/4 cup granulated sugar.
** For streusel topping, the 1/2 cup Equal® Spoonful may be replaced by 12 packets Equal® sweetener or 1/2 cup granulated sugar.
Serving suggestions are not included in the nutritional analysis.
For a flavor change, try using 2 or 3 types of apples in the filling.