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Lift-the-flap fractions and decimals
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Rosie Dickins grew up in England and Hong Kong. An avid reader, she always loved making up her own stories. After studying literature at Oxford University, art in Paris and plenty of travelling, she settled in London, where she now works for Usborne Publishing. She has written over a hundred children's books, including award-winning non-fiction.
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Ohio family reported missing in Everglades found safe
Air horn, whistles lead rescuers to family
An Ohio family of five that failed to return from an airboat excursion in the remote Florida Everglades was found safe Friday after searchers heard them blowing whistles and an air horn.
The family was spotted by a helicopter in thick vegetation, where their airboat apparently got stuck, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Jorge Pino said. The vegetation was too dense to spot the family at ground level, even from nearby.
"We weren't able to see them, we were only able to hear them," Pino said. "They are in good condition."
The family was identified as 44-year-old Scott Schreck; his 42-year-old wife, Carrie; and their three young children. They launched their airboat Thursday morning at a wildlife management area in extreme western Miami-Dade County but did not return by nightfall.
Law enforcement, fire rescue and wildlife agencies launched a massive search, using helicopters, airplanes and at least six airboats.
The area spreads over some 1,000 square miles in three South Florida counties north of Everglades National Park and is covered in tall, sharp-edged sawgrass that limits visibility.
It's also home to alligators, Florida panthers, snakes, turtles, a vast array of birds and fish. Finding a missing family in such conditions is a challenge, said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue spokesman Lt. Arnold Piedrahita Jr. The boat was painted in camouflage, making it even harder to find.
"It's like looking for a needle in a haystack," he said.
Pino said the family appeared to be in good health even after spending the night in the wilderness, which was swept by strong thunderstorms Thursday and more rain Friday. It wasn't immediately clear where the family were being taken or how they were getting out of the Everglades.
Pino said Schreck was a "savvy outdoorsman" who did the right thing by making as much noise as possible.
"If you get into that dense vegetation with an airboat, it's almost next to impossible to get out," he said.

subset: commoncrawl


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Superior Court Fee Schedule Revision Effective July 24, 2015
Substitute Senate Bill 5631, in part, increases the current surcharge on domestic cases (dissolution, legal separation, and declaration concerning the validity of marriage) to $54.00. This represents an increase of $24.00 to this surcharge, and brings the total, initial filing fee for these actions to $314.00. The surcharge increase portion of this legislation modifies RCW 36.18.016(2)(b).
As of October 1, 2010, the Clerk's Office no longer accepts personal checks.


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Benjamin Rosenbaum
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"Sentient Flora on First Avenue"
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As a postmodern materialist, I harbor a deep skepticism and unease about declaring myself either "sentient" or, indeed, any kind of unitary "entity", but post my goddamn comment anyway, all right?
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Made with vegan saffiano leather, make a statement with our red round keyring with tassels. With a touch of personalisation, this keyring adds a sophisticated edge to organising your set of keys. Spoil yourself or give as a gift!
Please note we can only monogram 2 letters on this keyring due to its size.
- Red tassels
- Gold detailing
- Vegan saffiano leather construction
Dimensions: W5cm x H5cm
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Few things are more pleasing to our ears than Splash's hilarious personalized contestant walkout songs. And few things are more surprising to Splash supervising producer/in-house lyricist Rick Austin than the growing demand for them.
Get the scoop on 39 must-see finales
"It's kind of crazy how much people love them," Austin tells TVGuide.com. "ABC had to start putting them up online [after each person's elimination]. The funny thing to us is that people might have them on their iPods, like they're actually real songs. You get people saying, 'Who wrote these theme songs? They're hilarious.' But there are also people who go, 'Who wrote these theme songs? They're terrible.' You kind of want to tweet them back and go, 'They're supposed to be terrible!'"
Like the show itself, the tunes are a cheeky, humorous riff on the contestants, more absurd than you can even imagine and short enough to keep us wanting more (the average length is 30 seconds). The most famous lyric, of course, is Brandi Chastain's opening verse: Brandi Chastain, do it again / She used to play soccer / Now she's hittin' the water. "We realized we were on to something when we started playing Brandi's on the set and you'd walk by crew members and they were singing it," Austin says. "Like, hey, these things are actually kind of catchy. We may have written songs that people actually like."
The songs were born out of necessity. Producers originally wanted to play a mainstream hit for the celebrities to walk out to — like, say, Lady Gaga for Kendra Wilkinson — but they quickly realized they couldn't stretch ABC's checkbook that much. "In order to clear those songs, we would've spent half the budget for the show," Austin says. "So we said, 'Well, we can get some lame library music to bring them on or why don't we write the song that we wanted to have to begin with?' We started throwing lyrics around making ourselves laugh in the office and we said, 'OK, this is a funny idea.'"
Fall TV Scorecard: What's canceled?
With his co-producers and online rhyming dictionaries, Austin, who has no songwriting experience, penned the lyrics, recorded himself singing them on his iPhone and then sent them to Jingle Punks, a jingle-writing company, to create the music. "They must've been horrified at my singing voice and once they got over that terror, they sent back a demo of their own in two or three days," he says. "We were like, 'Wow, how did they turn that into a real song? It sounds like something you'd hear on the radio.' They were so great and funny. The songs were never meant to be serious ... because the show doesn't take itself too seriously. This is a pool party. The songs are meant to be intentionally bad, but at the same time, you want them to be fun."
Austin never gave any of the celebrities a heads-up about the songs, not only to surprise them but to avoid getting approval on the tunes. Fortunately, everyone "loves" their song and gets the joke, he says. Unfortunately, after 11 individual songs (they had written one for Chuy Bravo before his withdrawal), four team songs and one "mystery song" for a mystery diver next week, Austin's songwriting days might be over... for now.
"When we heard that ABC was going to put them up on their Music Lounge, we were like, 'OK, now we've got to write a second verse, a second chorus and a bridge and a guitar solo,'" he says. "And of course we realized we're in the middle of producing the show and we don't have time to make these things real songs as much as we'd love to have them top the charts! One day. Season 2, we'll have full songs and remixes and 8-minute dance versions!"So how did Austin come up with each song? Find out below and listen to the final product.
Save These Shows: 12 bubble shows that deserve another chance
Keshia Knight Pulliam
Austin says: "Keshia's famous for The Cosby Show. What was big back then? New jack swing. Instead of getting 'Poison' by Bell Biv DeVoe, let's write one like it. We thought, 'Can we write one lyric and keep saying it?" We weren't sure how long the song would actually play on the show, so let's put all the punch at the beginning and keep saying it. So that's why we repeated 'Damn, girl.' Then how do you get The Cosby Show in there? This place about to blow / This ain't The Cosby Show."
Louie Anderson
Austin says: "You want to try to play around with Louie's size. It was a real challenge for him to be on the show. He's over 400 pounds. We didn't even know if he could perform any kind of dive, but he had a great attitude about his weight. He was having fun with it the entire show, so we decided, 'Let's do some old soul vibe as if it was from the '60s and make his weight a positive thing and call him Big Louie.' He ended up going off one platform higher the first time. People were rooting for him and the courage that he had."
Katherine Webb
Austin says: "[Webb's] was probably the first one we wrote and we played it very safe [with the lyric 'Whoa, what a beautiful woman']. Then we kind of got crazy with some of the other ones and looked back at Katherine's and said, 'We're just saying she's a beautiful woman and she's so much more than that.' We revised it and wrote about her being Miss Alabama and mixing diving with glamma and she doesn't look like your grandma. Then we ran out of things that rhymed with Alabama, so we stopped. We figured we'll cut away to her montage anyway, so let's stop."
Rory Bushfield
Austin says: "We were trying to figure out what kind of pop-punk song would work for Rory and action sports and extreme skiing. What do those guys listen to? We started throwing out bands like Blink-182. We tried to make a song that sounds like what those guys would listen to while they're flying down the mountain. It's fun to work in their name when possible so you know that it's actually their song written just for them. Then it was about him having no fear, letting it all hang out."
8 reasons you need to watch Splash
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Austin says: "Kareem's seems to be a lot of people's favorite. He needed a James Brown song. He's a huge jazz fan, so we said, 'Can he come out to something that sounds like Miles Davis?' And that just didn't work. When he started his career at UCLA and went to the Bucks, what was big? And it was James Brown funk. And it's a sexy duet. We needed the backup singers there singing, 'He's got the skyhook.' Kareem's known for the skyhook and that's a shot that nobody else has been able to perfect. That's the shot that made him the highest scorer in NBA history and he has a company called Skyhook. It just seemed like a natural fit."
Brandi Chastain
Austin says: "We took some liberties with Brandi's because [soccer and water] don't rhyme if you've noticed. It's probably the catchiest out of all of them. ... The other day, I witnessed a couple of the contestants sitting around discussing who had the better theme song. They decided Brandi had the best one. They were laughing how we rhymed 'soccer' with 'water' and got away with it on national television. Brandi also said to me, 'That has to be my ringtone.' So when you call Brandi Chastain, her phone is going to go, Brandi Chastain / do it again / she used to play soccer / now she's hitting the water."
Drake Bell
Austin says: "Drake is probably the fiercest competitor on the show. He's way into it. He's competing like it's the Olympics. We wanted to almost give him a theme that a boxer would come out to at a heavyweight bout. His name is Bell, so it's like he rang the first round bell. We kind of wanted to put it in the world of Drake Bell's fans. He's a real musician. He's written pop songs. He's got a pop following of a lot of girls who are fans of Drake & Josh. It sounds like one of those teen pop songs."
Nicole Eggert
Austin says: We went back and forth between the theme from Baywatch, "Eye of the Tiger" and '90s music because she was huge in the '90s. ... Her lyrics are kind of indicative of what she's been going through. She came in not really wanting to be seen in a swimsuit, she was a little bit heavier than she was in her Baywatch days and it was all about her trying to get back in shape. It was fun every week to hear that song and to see her become one of the best divers on the show. To me, the song became really unintentionally inspirational because her story is one."
Ndamukong Suh
Austin says: "We realized you can rhyme Ndamukong with Donkey Kong. I think, like, 15 years ago, 'Get it on like Donkey Kong' was a hip thing to say. We were sort of disappointed when the contestants with the better theme songs were eliminated early. Keshia had one of the better songs and she's gone after one episode and then Ndamukong left. It's like, 'I feel bad for Keshia, but I also feel bad because we don't get to hear that song anymore.'"
Louie Anderson dives "for America" and captions Splash GIFs
Kendra Wilkinson
Austin says: "Kendra needed to booty-pop to her song. She needed something that was sassy and in-your-face and had attitude. We talked about her days on Girls Next Door and her days with Hef. We started playing around with Playboy Bunny, but she's never been a Bunny. She's been such an independent spirit, so we looked for things to rhyme with 'bunny' and 'money' rhymes, so that's half your song."
Chuy Bravo
Austin says: "We were so disappointed not only because Chuy wasn't able to compete because it would've been hilarious, but also because no one got to hear our Chuy Bravo song. It sounds like the Macarena meets Miami Sound Machine. Miami Sound Machine is his favorite band and he would've gone nuts had he walked out and heard his theme. I don't know if he's ever heard it. I got to play it for him."
Team songs
Austin says: "We originally thought about doing a mash-up of both their themes, like a DJ remix, and it felt like a mess. For Drake and Katherine, and Rory and Kendra, we were able to use elements of their individual songs. Louie and Kareem, and Nicole and Brandi thought of their own team names. They thought of Team Mom, so when we heard that, right away we said, 'That's gotta be the song.' Jingle Punks ... had a great country singer and they sent me a track that sounded like a great Lynyrd Skynyrd song. We wanted it to sound like this down-home country song about good ol' American values. And of course we rhymed 'diapers' with 'divers.' ... 'Diapers' kind of sounds like 'divers.' It's like, 'What the hell? Close enough. If it's funny, let's do it.'"
Do you like the Splash theme songs? Which one is your favorite?Splash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on ABC.


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For years, the message from TV networks has been clear: They're willing to put a lot of free content online, but they don't want you to watch it on your TV. There have been numerous workarounds over the years, and the latest is PLAiR ($99, available at plair.com) -- a stick-like device designed to stream free Web video wirelessly, straight from smartphones, tablets, and Chrome browsers to your TV. It also cleverly doesn't rely on your computer to do any video processing, so as soon as you start playing the clip, you're free to shut down your laptop.
It's a neat-looking device and an intriguing concept, but it just doesn't work very well in practice. Many Web videos don't work at all, others work with distracting menu overlays, and even those that work the best often run into frustrating playback glitches. Web content on tablets and smartphones is limited to sources that PLAiR curates, which often ends up being clips rather than full episodes. PLAiR also doesn't work with high-quality subscription services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, and HBO Go, all of which work on the competing $99 Roku Streaming Stick and Roku 3.
PLAiR as a concept has some merit, and its form factor is interesting, but it needs a lot more work to earn a space on your TV's back panel.
Design: Quirky, but cheap feeling
PLAiR is a quirky-looking device. It has a familiar "USB drive"-like design, reminiscent of the Roku Streaming Stick, but its sleek teardrop shape and colorful cases gives it a neat visual flair. My review sample came in magenta, but PLAiR is also available in teal and black.
The visual appeal wanes once you get the device in your hands, though. The build quality veers toward feeling cheap, with the plastic casing giving the impression of being less than solid. In fact, when I initially pulled PLAiR out of its casing, the device's case split apart and that wasn't the last time that the plastic case didn't feel secure.
The shoddy casing isn't much of a problem if you permanently park PLAiR behind your TV, but it does put a slight damper on the device's portability. PLAiR's ultracompact design makes it easy to throw in a bag, but I'm not confident it would hold up well in long-term use for travelers.
Setup: A streaming box without a box
Popping off the black cover reveals PLAiR's HDMI plug, designed to slide right into a spare port on your TV. The only issue is that, unlike USB or MHL, HDMI ports don't provide much power, so PLAiR requires a separate power source.
The tiny micro-USB port on the side of PLAiR is what powers the device and it draws power either directly from a power outlet using the included adapter or from your TV's USB port, if it has one. The extra cable certainly spoils quite a bit of the sleekness that the "just a stick" design implies and that PLAiR tacitly encourages with its marketing materials, which rarely show the power cable. (PLAiR says it's working on an MHL-compatible model that wouldn't need a separate power cable.)
More frustrating was that PLAiR's careless construction made it tough to actually get it powered on. The problem is the micro-USB port just didn't quite align with the opening in casing, making it difficult to get the USB plug in there. It's possible that I got a bad unit and that others work fine, but again, the overall build quality isn't reassuring.
Once I got the device physically installed, setup went a lot better. The onscreen instructions are simple, and after only a little fussing it connected to both my laptop and iPad.
The only glitch I ran into was using my dual-band router, which is configured with separately-named 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. PLAiR doesn't support 5GHz networks and requires the device to be on the same wireless network, so I had to reconfigure all my devices to use the more crowded 2.4GHz network. Dual-band support would have been a nice for a device that relies so much on wireless streaming; Roku supports dual-band in both of its $99 streamers, including the Streaming Stick.
Content: Limited section, glitchy playback
Streaming from tablets and smartphones is done strictly via the PLAiR app, which offers curated content from various Web sources. At first glance it looks promising, with high-profile shows like "Conan" and "The Colbert Report", but that fades quickly once you figure out you're limited to clips, rather than full episodes.


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I've decided to start writing some of my questions down. I don't know why. These aren't even memories of her...just things I wish I knew. And frankly, I can probably get some of the answers from my dad or her siblings. None-the-less, I wish I could ask HER.
Sometimes, if I do dwell on thoughts of my mom, I'll have a dream about her that night. And then it's as if I get to spend a little more time with her. It's hard to wake up from those dreams.
(Starting November 22, 2013)
- What did your mom (Joann) do again? She was a nurse or training to be a nurse? Did she work after your mom and dad got married?
- Can you come for Thanksgiving?
- Can't you please just make the Peanut Butter Pies for me this year?
- What did you do when I (the youngest) went to preschool? What did you do with your time during the day? How did your life change?
- How did you, a night person, manage to get out of bed before all of us and make a hot breakfast every day?
- Did you buy/use red or white wheat for your whole wheat bread?
- Where is your chicken noodle soup recipe?
- How did you manage our household so well? With the exception of the "Art Room" (alternately known as the junk room), it was always pretty darn clean, plus you cooked great healthy meals, plus you clipped coupons, plus you hardly ever yelled. How did you do it?!? Why can't I be more like you?!?!?!?
- How did you handle the laundry? (I remember she would occasionally "go on-strike" if we were throwing too many clean clothes in the hamper--and then we'd have to do our own laundry for a few weeks--but generally she took care of it all. I do remember I had to fold the wash-cloths when I was very little.)
- Where did you hide the Christmas presents??? (I never found them!)
- How did you determine a Christmas budget for kid gifts?
- What was the best Christmas gift you ever got?
- What was your favorite Christmas?
- How did you keep track of kid presents and who was getting what? Did you worry about giving the kids equal numbers? Did we count our gifts like my kids do? (I do remember there were occasionally gifts that got lost and those I got for my birthday (in February) or if they were really lost, for Easter--like the brass doll cradle! :)
- Why didn't you decorate for Christmas the last few years?!?


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Half of a two-map set, this map of Saskatchewan and Manitoba is a wonderful travel map with points of interest in cities such as Winnipeg and Regina, as well as hundreds of national parks, wilderness areas, campgrounds, and ski resorts. Published in May 1979, its companion map features additional information on these lovely provinces.
Coverage Area: Saskatchewan, Manitoba


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I'm a little hesitant to post this, because as far as I'm concerned, nobody has any truly free time between Thanksgiving and Christmas…but, in the off chance that you're looking for a family project on Thanksgiving weekend, I do love the idea of making your own advent calendars.
The one shown above came from a blog called Tip Junkie, and in this post she collects 34, yes, 34, of her favorite DIY advent calendars. She's a great editor, and also has some that you can just buy (which is more my speed.)
This one comes from Martha Stewart, and is just one of 10 great ideas.
I found this one below on the Tip Junkie blog, but I like the maya*made blog so much, and there are so many other amazing ideas on it, that I had to call it out separately.


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Kids Dollhouses
What better way for your little ones to explore their imagination and creativity than with their very own beautifully-crafted wooden doll house. There's nothing quite like a doll's house to provide hours of creative play and endless fun for your kids.
In a world where new toys and fads come and go, the popularity of a doll house remains timeless; an investment your family will cherish for years to come.
We're sure you'll find something to suit your family's personal style and budget. So why not check out our current range, today.
- Sort by Default Order


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Course Library
Browse our library of planning courses
Classical Location Theory
This course traces the key theories and conceptual models that have been developed to explain why economic activities tend to locate where they do.
Hand Drawing Master Plans
This course provides an introduction to urban design sketching by teaching how to draw urban design sketches and master plans using a mix of colored and black ink. These drawing techniques can be used to create plans that are detailed and expressive enough to use both in academic and professional presentations.
Defining Neighborhoods
This course reviews the varying definitions of neighborhoods and examines methods for defining a physical basis and tangible meaning to neighborhoods based on the location of neighborhood centers, boundaries, and spatial extents.
Transportation Planning: Strategies for Working with Roadway Capacity
This course explains the menu of contemporary approaches to modifying or adding to transportation capacity. It provides examples of capacity responses to regional mobility for commuters and local accessibility for communities.
Virtual Reality for Planners 4: Refining the End User Experience
This final course of the virtual reality series discusses the big picture, looks at space planning and event setup, discusses alternatives to the full VR experience, and lists a few ways to fine tune the user's experience for maximum success.
Virtual Reality for Planners 3: Working with Unity
In this third course of the virtual reality series, we will create a VR application from scratch using Unity. We will be adding SketchUp data, VR components, materials, textures, backgrounds, sky and finally virtual reality.
Virtual Reality for Planners 2: Modeling in SketchUp
Learn how to use SketchUp to create content appropriate for a virtual reality environment. By the end of the course, viewers will be ready to learn how to prepare a final model for export into Unity.
Virtual Reality for Planners 1: Introduction
This course provides an overview of virtual reality (VR) and the elements that lead to effective urban design simulations and, ultimately, how to produce VR applications that enable users to explore urban design scenarios.
K-12 Master Facility Planning
This course shows the steps necessary to develop a successful facility master plan for K-12 education.
Parking Reform Made Easy
Reforming minimum parking requirements is one of the most effective ways to support Smart Growth. This course explains the many problems created by the parking regulation status quo before presenting a process for reform, providing examples of parking management tools, and discussing strategies for dealing with political and stakeholder issues.
AutoCAD for Site Planning
This course establishes a workflow for an illustrative site plan, including how to represent existing conditions and create detailed plans for specific areas within a larger project. Building on AutoCAD 101, learn to draw more complex plans using aerial imagery, photography, and hand-drawn sketches as the base layer.
AutoCAD 101
This course provides an introduction to AutoCAD's essential functions for first-time users and demonstrates how to create site plans, street sections, and other two-dimensional scaled diagrams.
InDesign for Planners - An Introduction
Adobe InDesign is widely recognized among design professionals as the premier document layout software, with a number of valuable applications for urban planning. This course gives you a step-by-step introduction to the basic tools of InDesign CS6.


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Article content
Eating on the go and wondering what the healthiest options are?
The City of Vancouver will announce 12 new food cart vendors sometime this month. They will be in this shortlist of 25 applicants who served samples of their offerings to a panel of judges last week. A great many of the applicants took care to offer vegetarian and gluten-free options, as well as environmentally friendly packaging choices.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
Photos: Vancouver's new food carts Back to video
SunFood editor Juanita Ng, who was part of a panel of judges involved in the taste tests, shot photos of the dishes. She also wrote about the judging experience here.
In most cases, there was a full serving presented so judges could see the actual portion size; there were also smaller, individual portions served to each judge for tasting. Both types of photos are included here, as those smaller portions often showed more of the ingredients in the dishes.
In some cases, prices were discussed during the judging process; where that is the case, they are included in the photo caption.
Click here to see photos of the 25 shortlisted vendors and to read more about the food that will be on their menus.


text: Blake Shelton will reveal details about his upcoming holiday album during a Tuesday (Aug. 7) appearance on Chelsea Lately on the E! network. He and fellow coaches Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine and Cee Lo Green have already taped segments for the new season of NBC's The Voice premiering Sept. 10. Shelton continues his tour with shows Friday (Aug. 3) at the Big Valley Jamboree in Camrose, Alberta, Canada, and Sunday at the Watershed Music Festival near George, Wash. The three-day festival in Washington begins Friday with appearances by Dwight Yoakam and Kix Brooks. Shelton's wife Miranda Lambert headlines Saturday on a bill that includes Tracy Lawrence, Sara Evans and Uncle Kracker. Shelton headlines Sunday following performances by Brantley Gilbert, Thompson Square and Thomas Rhett.


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NEA President: NCLB's 10th anniversary no cause for celebration
WASHINGTON - January 06, 2012 -
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was signed into law by former President George W. Bush 10 years ago this Sunday. NCLB changed the focus of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), from emphasizing equal access and closing achievement gaps in education, to focusing on high stakes testing, labeling, and sanctions.
NEA believes the 10th anniversary of NCLB is no cause for celebration and that drastic changes should be made before students and educators are forced to mark yet another anniversary living with this flawed law.
"I meet with thousands of educators as I travel around the country, and the concern I hear most often is the overwhelming burden NCLB presents in classrooms and schools," said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. "From high-stakes testing to narrowing of the curriculum, this law has missed the mark. Instead of creating a generation of critical thinkers, we are graduating a generation of test takers. Let's get back to the core purpose of public education and let's re-balance the federal role: ensuring every student has access to a great education that prepares them for lifelong learning and success in the 21st century."
School progress cannot accurately be measured by a snapshot of test scores from one test, given on one day in the school year. These high-stakes tests are leaving behind too many students. So as members of Congress prepare to consider reauthorization this year, we urge them to get it right this time by listening to those affected most by the law—students, teachers and parents.
NEA's priorities for ESEA reauthorization are:
- Promote innovation, high expectations, and encourage development of 21st century skills in public schools.
- End the obsession with high-stakes, poor-quality tests, by developing high-quality assessment systems that provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate what they have learned.
- Provide great educators and school leaders for every student.
- Promote public education as a shared responsibility of parents, students, educators, and policymakers.
- Provide increased funding to all states and school districts to meet the growing demand for educating U.S. students to be globally-competitive.
"The time and funds spent on complying with NCLB red tape should be used to promote teacher collaboration, identifying and addressing students' individual needs and restoring great programs that have been slashed from school offerings because of a focus on math and reading and dwindling funds," said Van Roekel. "Our students and educators have been calling out to Congress for years now to invest in classroom priorities that build the foundation for student learning."
For more information on NEA's efforts regarding ESEA reauthorization, please go to http://www.nea.org/home/NoChildLeftBehindAct.html
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The National Education Association is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing more than 3 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers.
CONTACT: Sara Robertson (202) 822-7823, email@example.com


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Before he wrote cover stories for The Atlantic, before he won a National Magazine Award, before he taught at MIT, Ta-Nehisi Coates was laid off by Time magazine. "To put it bluntly," he wrote last spring, "I was — like most freelancers — hurting. My wife had been unerringly supportive. My son was getting older. I was considering driving a cab."
Of course, it's now six years later, and Coates has had great success writing for The Atlantic, The New York Times, and other publications. But writing doesn't get easier, he maintains — it's always a process.
"It's as though you have a certain music in your head, and trying to get that music out on the page is absolute hell," he said in an interview for Atlantic Video's Creative Breakthroughs series. "But what you have to do is give yourself a day, go back, revise, over and over and over again."
This interview was filmed at the 2013 Aspen Ideas Festival.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to email@example.com.


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Changes to Charitable Deduction Remain in Play - (July 27, 2011)
Orchestras rely on private contributions for roughly 40% of the revenue
that enables them to serve their communities. As pressure intensifies on
Congress and the White House to address the debt limit, lawmakers say
everything is on the table. This week, the Gang of Six policy
negotiators announced that unspecified changes to the deductibility of
charitable contributions are potentially in play.
The League is taking a proactive role, in strategic partnerships with the broader nonprofit sector, to defend and strengthen tax incentives for charitable giving. In addition to targeted meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the League added its name to a nonprofit letter to the White House and a recent letter to Congress , urging policy leaders to support the vital work of the nonprofit sector by preserving tax incentives for contributions. For complete information, see the League's online tax policy action center.
The League is a member of the Performing Arts Alliance, a coalition of national performing arts service organizations dedicated to advocating for national policies that recognize, enhance, and foster the contributions the performing arts make to America


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- This event has passed.
Twenty One Pilots Raleigh Tickets
Twenty One Pilots has announced their upcoming world tour, "The BANDITØ", will make a stop in Raleigh, NC on June 11!
Get hooked on the sound of the world-famous electropop duo, buy concert tickets now:
June 11, 2019
|Raleigh, NC
PNC Arena
|Get Tickets
Next stop of Bandito tour – Charlotte, NC on June 12 (2019).
Common Questions
- How Much Are The Twenty One Pilots Concert Tickets?The prices vary that is why you can choose the most suitable ticket price basing on the amount of money you currently have. Currently, 21 pilots tickets start from 40 dollars.
- Are you selling tickets directly?Our company is affiliated to Ticketnetwork.com. It is the place which enables customers and sellers to get a ticket quickly, comfortably and at an affordable price.
- Can I get a refund on my tickets?You will get your refund in case an event has been canceled and no re-scheduled day has been mentioned. Customer needs to address the fulfiller who will refund your money. No refunds or exchanges except for the reason stated above.
- How are my tickets shipped?Your ticket will be sent by means of FedEx. It is tested daily and not a single case of unsuccessful delivery has been registered yet.
- Will my seats be together?You will definitely get your seats together once it has been decided on with the seller. Our staff will always explain the way your seats are situated, so to say, which zone, row or section.
- What is an E-Ticket?Those clients who buy e-tickets get them via e-mail by means of My Ticket Tracker. You need to download and print the ticket. It will contain a bar code which is the main aspect for you to visit the event.
- Why is there someone else's name on my ticket?There will be a name of the original buyer consequently the ticket bought via Ticketnetwork.com will not have your name on it. Despite the fact, it will not cause you any troubles while entering the hall. The thing is the bar code is scanned individually that is why you will have a free access.
- How can I get to the venue?To find the place of the event you need to click on the link which correlates with a city you live in. Once you have pushed the button at the corresponding place – you will get the information about your point of destination.


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Urgent Care Physician, $30K Sign On Bonus- Harrisonburg, VA
Harrisonburg, VA
Key Info
General Position Summary:
To support and direct the highest quality urgent care services available to the public while always assuring the MedExpress mission, vision and values are met. All duties and responsibilities of the Physician position are to be performed in compliance with state and federal laws and regulations governing the legal scope of medical practice.
MedExpress Core Responsibilities:
Has a contagious and positive work ethic, inspires others, and models behaviors of Genuine, Caring, Friendly.
Demonstrates effective verbal and written communication that is clear, well-organized, and demonstrates and understanding of audience needs.
Through genuine and positive communication, makes each customer feel informed, understood, and special.
An effective team player who contributes valuable ideas and feedback can be counted on to meet commitments.
Is able to keep up in the MedExpress environment by facing tasks and challenges with energy and passion.
Pursues activities with focus and drive, defines work in terms of success, and can be counted on to complete goals.
Adherence to standards of business conduct and compliance.
Posted July 2, 2020


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Introductory Welding for Artists (Mon 2 Nov – Evening)
This 3 hour introductory welding course teaches the basic skills of Mig and Arc welding, using scrap to practice and develop your technique.
Grinding and safe workshop practice will be covered.
It is essential to wear old clothes and strong footwear.
Basic materials are included.
Course cost: £50
Course date: Monday 2nd November 2020
Course times: 6pm – 9pm (3 hours)
Number of places available: 6
Tutor: Andrew Revell B.A. Fine Art, GlosCAT & WSCAD (Farnham Art College)


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Mango Florida
Are you looking for a Mural Painter in Mango Florida?
You have come to the right place! Tampa Mural Painter services all of Florida specifically Tampa and the surrounding areas like Mango Florida.
This is just one of hundreds of painting we have done in the central Florida and the Mango Florida area. This particular piece was for a company that sells aftermarket custom truck parts. It is 36′ x 16′ and painted in artist acrylics and exterior latex. The entire wall was sealed with Polagard AG.
Please take a moment to get more information on our portfolio page.
We pride ourselves on being able to take any image or idea and transform that into works of art for our clients. We have completed literally hundreds of paintings and murals for corporate, institutional, educational and residential clients in or around Mango Florida. Or works range from just a few feet to thousands of square feet (see the roof of the new amphitheater at the USF Marshall Center
Tampa Mural Painter is an industry-leading company based in Tampa, Florida and servicing Central Florida.
We specialize in providing superior services; including large scale mural painting, faux finish painting, fine art and large logo design and implementation. Founded in 1999, Tampa Mural Painter has demonstrated a commitment to delivering best-in-class customer support. In 2013 we have quickly become the "go-to" company for corporate logo design and painting. We have recently completed large scale murals for residential, huge corporate murals and logos as well as some commissioned canvases.
At Tampa Mural Painter, we stand for a lot more than just great customer service.
We have the services to back it up. Although we specialize in large scale murals, here's just a sampling of the services we provide:
•Large and Small Scale Mural Painting
•Faux Painting
•Fine Art
•Large Scale Logos
We use only the finest paints and products from Behr, Golden Artist Colors and Andek performance coatings.


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Juliet Stevenson: Jane Austen Reader
Of seven Naxos audio books in my possession, five are read by Juliet Stevenson, the actress who so brilliantly portrayed Mrs. Elton in 1996's Emma and whose comical performance as Keira Knightley's cleavage loving mother in Bend it Like Beckham is my favorite character in the film.
Juliet's vocal readings of Emma, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility are outstanding. You can hear an 8-minute interview with her about the process at this link: http://www.audiobooksonline.com/audio/Juliet_Stevenson_interview_Naxos_Audiobooks.mp3
In the interview, she mentions that her favorite Jane Austen novel is Sense and Sensibility and her least favorite is Pride and Prejudice (read by Emilia Fox, the actress who played Georgianna Darcy in the 1995 film adaptation of P&P). Juliet also enjoyed reading Emma, which she describes as delicious. "The structure is miraculous," she adds. "[Emma's] snobbery is completely unforgivable, but miraculously you are on her side."
Narrating lengthy text requires excellent story telling ability. Juliet Stevenson has it…In her interview Juliet reveals why she likes reading for audio book: "You can play anything—an old man, a girl of seventeen. It is really liberating but it is also difficult." Being able to take liberties with characterizations also attracts her to the medium. In order to be an effective reader she must know the heart and soul of the book, an experience Juliet found enriching.
Need your Jane Austen fix? Too busy driving the kids to their functions, or taking long commutes back and forth to work to read Pride and Prejudice? Too exhausted at night to tackle anything more than light reading? Have no fear. Naxos Audio Books provides a solution. You can purchase Jane's books two ways: in digital format or as an audio CD. Beautifully packaged and read by the incomparable Juliet Stevenson and Emilia Fox, you will receive hours of listening pleasure. I've discovered that Jane's novels translate beautifully into the spoken word. For those who have difficulty with her writing style, you might prefer to "read" her books in this manner.
NAX20212 The Jane Austen Collection Vol 1 (abridged)
NAX39412 AUSTEN: Emma (Unabridged)
NA309512 AUSTEN: Emma (Abridged)
NA222812 AUSTEN: Lady Susan (Unabridged)
NAX46712 AUSTEN: Mansfield Park (Unabridged)
NA306712 AUSTEN: Mansfield Park (Abridged)
NA742712 AUSTEN: Northanger Abbey (Unabridged)
NA207612 AUSTEN: Northanger Abbey (Abridged)
NA743612 AUSTEN: Persuasion (Unabridged)
NA310712 AUSTEN: Persuasion (Abridged)
NAX35612 AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice (Unabridged)
NA310412 AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice (Abridged)
NAX36112 AUSTEN: Sense and Sensibility (Unabridged)


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I thought that we were slated to get some new staff nurses. I was wrong. We are getting more kids to replace the ones we are losing. They really are kids and they have no training or experience in a health care setting. They will not be trained or orientated. They will show up to work and just have to muck in, without knowing what they are doing. No one has time to explain or teach anything. The kids from last year are still fucking a lot of things up. Goddammit I want RN's. I can't handle being a nurse for this many patients whether I have 5 carers with me or fifty of them. 90% of what is going on in a ward is way over the care assistants heads. They just don't realise it.
A nice little surprise awaited my arrival onto the ward to work a day shift recently. I'm not talking about the staffing levels. Those were as shitty as expected for the shift. We were going to have 3 staff nurses and 2 carers. But they sent our third staff nurse to cover another short ward. So we had 2 staff nurses and 2 carers. And then they sent us this agency carer who cannot speak a word of english and has been in the country a short time. No previous experience in healthcare. But she was wearing a nice pretty uniform that says "Nursing staff" on the front. No wonder the patients and the visitors are confused. I told her not to leave the cdiff mrsa patient's room without washing her hands. I told her not to share equipment between those patients and other patients on the ward. She gave me a beautiful smile and said "yes matron" to me and kept going. She did the same thing again 2 minutes later.
I think the only words the poor child knew were "yes matron" and "I happy to". Not a clue about what we were saying to her. Not a clue. Sweet girl though. I did complain to the site manager about it. Her response was "you should be grateful for having an etc set of hands". Uh, you took our trained nurse away and gave us a total novice.
Just for the record (in case any fucktwits are reading this) that girl is NOT a foreign nurse. Foreign nurses have education, qualifications and registration with the NMC. This girl was not a nurse and not registered with the NMC. She was a foreign employee, not a nurse.
So those were our staffing levels.
Back to my surprise. There was a list of "orders" orders from management that greeted me when I arrived for duty.
They wanted us to take apart a whole lot of equipment and clean it all, on the floor on our hands and knees. They wanted us to assess all these things for faults and fill in about ten forms for each item. I am talking about large items like beds, mattresses, etc. They wanted this from 2 staff nurses and three carers covering 25 patients who all require constant care. They don't want to pay domestics, but they don't want another Basildon. They don't want to hire nurses or staff nor do they want to be in the papers. I was told that threats had been made against the nursing staff if these things are not done. Look at how basildon hospital responded to complaints about the care at their hospital. They know what the situation is , but they blame the nurses.
In a letter to Mr Wood's family he wrote: "I am sorry that the standards of cleanliness were unacceptable during your father's hospital stay. All the clinical areas should be cleaned daily. There is no excuse for dirty bed linen to be left in the lavatory. The ward would like to apologise that the care they gave has left your family feeling that expected standards of care have not been met."Now I am all into cleaning and stuff. I quite enjoy the whole domestic goddess thing. But what I couldn't figure out was this: who the fuck is going to take care of the patients?
We worked out how long it would take to knock out all the things on the list. It would take 6.5 hours out of an 8 hour shift. They wanted it done on that shift. It takes about 6.5 fucking hours to get through the 8 AM drugs for a ward full of confused and acutely ill patients.
We have many, many patients all sharing two toilets and management also demanded that we spend 8 minutes exactly scrubbing out each toilet between use. Then they wanted a form filled in and signed after each and every cleaning session. How? How? At any given time we have more patients that need the toilet than there are toilets. And they get real nasty if they have to wait. Really nasty. We worked out that we would have to spend 50 minutes out of every hour just scrubbing toilets in order to do what tthe powers that be wanted. It usually takes the care assistants (with the help of a nurse when she finishes the work that only a nurse can do) until about 1PM to finish all the AM hygiene etc for the patients when there are 6 of us on duty.
So they wanted this all from us without any additional staff. When RN's don't spend enough time with patients and focusing on the things that only a nurse can do patients die. Those things are all encompassing and take more time than we have. What are these managers thinking?
Stupid us we tried to accomplish it. My vote was to send an incident form to management saying "direct patient care and patient safety comes first, this is impossible so fuck you". But the other staff nurse on duty outranks me and she is a Nerdy Nellie, always wants to please. They had threatened us with a spot inspection that shift. We had to make a go of it. It was a disaster.
So by 10 AM I am 1/3 of the way through my 0800 drug round. Half my patients are spitting their meds out on the floor or refusing to take them. Half the beds are half dismantled. The phone is ringing nonstop and we are having to drop what we are doing to answer it, otherwise the public complains that we aren't "bothering" to answer the phone. And it's at this time that one of my patients goes bad.
The drug I need to stop the "bad" is always supposed to be kept in the fridge. It wasn't there. This is happening almost every day. Pharmacy has no staff either, and they are never open when we need them. If something isn't there it is the nurse's problem. Problem was, they left us without an emergency drug and they were closed. My other staff nurse had an emergency on her side. The two care assistants were half way through bathing a patient who requires two people spending 20 minutes with her to get it all done. The other staff member couldn't understand english, although she did show concern over the fact that I was standing in the medication room in a rage.. I had to ring 7 wards to find the drug and then walk my bottom down there to get it. But I got it, and patient survived.
When I got back to the ward it was still chaos. Patients were crying because they wanted to get back into bed. But the beds were all apart waiting for the staff to check them over and copy equipment numbers that are located in hard to find places. It all was ordered to be done in the morning. And there was so much going on that there was no way we were getting back to those beds. I went to help Nellie with her poorly patient once mine was okay. My drug trolley was just parked in the middle of the ward. Patients were getting concerned that their drugs were so late and that they couldn't even crawl back into the bed to deal with the pain. I reminded Nellie that the dismantled beds were her fault and that we should have gone with my incident form idea. Ha.
Nellie's patient now had a pulse of 200 but was alert and comfortable. All other vitals were fine. The phone rang. I answered it hoping that it was the registrar (senior doctor) I had just paged about Nellie's patient. I thought for sure it would be him calling back. But it wasn't. It was Mrs. Jones daughter screaming at me because her mother phoned her to tell her that she hasn't had her morning meds yet. I told her that I was in the middle of an emergency and that I needed the phone line free NOW. I told her that I would get her mother her tablets as soon as I could. It went over her head. She kept threatening me. If the senior doc was ringing us back he wouldn't be able to get through because this woman was keeping the line engaged with "Don't you fucking tell me that you couldn't find time in the last two hours to give my mother her pills". I had to hang up on her. We have one working phone line. Then I heard a shout from Nellie and the next thing I knew I was putting the crash call out to get the cardiac arrest team to us immediately. Her patient had just crashed. We didn't get her back.
Later on in the day I had more family fun with my patients relatives. I had a patient on a drug that needs to be given at regular intervals through out the day. I managed it but one of the doses was 10 minutes late. No big deal. Two hours late would be a problem but not ten minutes. I have looked after thousands of people on this drug. Her husband decided to give me a lecture and a computer print out from the internet about that particular drug because "you nurses are obviously too stupid to know that it needs to be given on time". How he could think he understood WHY that drug was late. He didn't have a clue as to what was going on in that ward. I should have got a fucking award for getting it to her when I did. That on it's own, took a lot of manuevering. If your loved one has a drug due at 0800 so do many of the nurses other patients. Getting everyone everything on time is physically impossible. I would have to be in 15 places at once literally. If I have say, 10 patients all due a drug at 10 AM I will start at 9:30 with the first one and get to the last one at 10:30. And run past people calling for help to accomplish that. There is no other way.
It just got worse as the day progressed.
We had some fun with the doctors as well. . Some of them are just creepy. The first thing that happened was a surgeon showed up onto the ward to see one of my patients. He wasn't her main doctor but he was asked by her doctor to see her. He arrived on the ward unexpected shortly after the cardiac arrest. The aftermath of one of those things is massive. He went over to the patient and when she told them that she hasn't seen a nurse in hours he responded with "have you complained about anything-they'll be extra mean if you complain". I wasn't surprised. My patients have told me that many consultants tell their patients this. In all my years of nursing I have never seen a patient get treated extra badly because they complained. Never. Everyone gets neglected whether you are nice to the nurses or not.
About a half an hour after the cardiac arrest a relative called me. She asked me if I would give her mother a bath and wash her hair in the next hour, before visiting. I looked at the ward in disarray and remembered that I was hours behind with about 1000 crucial jobs. She wanted her mother to have an hour soak in the bath. This would require a member of staff staying with her for an hour as she cannot be left alone in there. The other 4 members of staff were doing about 20 jobs per second, other patients were crying out for help and were being ignored. The ward was a mess. No one could take the dirty linen away.The non english speaking staff member would not be able to get this woman in the bath safely as a hoist thing was required. None of us had the time to show her. I had this girl specialing a confused wanderer that was trying to get out. I told the caller that I would probably be unable to get it done today because of ward conditions. She went onto tell me how important it is for patients to have simple things like their hair washed and how nice it is to do something like that for someone. I was perplexed. How could she think that I, a registered nurse, could not understand something like that.
Ask any patient who has been in hospital unable to care for themselvs what meant the most to them while they were there. They won't say it was the doctors or nurses, nor appreciate the meds or the treatments or the labwork we did. They will tell you that the number one thing that they appreciated was a bath and a hair wash. I have known this since 1992. Of course it is a wonderful and important thing to do for patients. Things like that actually help patients heal because they feel positive when they feel that they look nice. But the other other things going on at that time were all time consuming and higher priority. It dawned on me that she didn't understand that. She thought that I simply didn't want to be bothered washing her mother's hair. She thought that nurses these days don't understand the importance of the simple things. It is a triage situation on these wards, and the public have no idea. And they are conditioned to think that nurses are uneducated slags who don't want to be bothered. I have no chance of getting the reality of the situation across to her. She has been socialised to have completely unrealistic expectations from the nurses. I told her I would try my best (and I did ) but I didn't think I would be able to. I left it at that. She wasn't happy.
I got out of there over an hour and a half late, unpaid. And not one job was completed properly. I heard later on that it got even worse.
On my way out I was greeted by a nice person, the partner of a long term patient who is bedbound and unable to care for himself following a RTA (info changed to protect confidentiality). This patient was medically stable but needed much in the way of total nursing care. He has been with us a long time and comes in frequently. We adore him and we adore the family. We know them well. The spouse handed me some chocs and says " I just wanted to say thank you for everything you have done for soandso, you nurses are amazing".
Just what had I done for so and so? I hadn't laid eyes on him in 5 hours. I spent about 2 minutes helping the care assistants wash him and had a quick look at his skin. I resited his venflon. I gave his IV meds an hour late. I ordered an airmattress. That was all. I didn't have time to spend with him and didn't do half of what I should have. I was in and out of that room at the speed of light. It makes me sick. The spouse knew this because she was there. She knew we were having a rough time and was trying to build us up. The tears were about to start so I walked away mumbling yeah thanks.
So can see if you are mean to the nurses we get upset, and if you are nice, we get upset. You are not going to win really.
What a mess. Our staffing numbers look like crap over the next few months and management is hellbent on this cleaning regime and associated paperwork. Some of the stuff they want done multiple times daily. They won't even consider bringing more domestics in or giving us someone to answer the phone. We have one shift that is set to be staffed really really well. And that means that a staff member on that shift will be sent elsewhere.
I just have one question. "How?"
I am hearing through the grapevine that frontline staff nurses are set to be scapegoated if anything goes wrong with the cleaning etc. They are all ready all over us for the cleaning forms not being filled in. It doesn't surprise me after reading this.- nurses being questioned by police. The physical layout of the ward does not allow for patients to be isolated properly, we don't have enough handwashing stations etc etc, we cannot even wash our hands properly without getting told that we are not responding to patients quick enough. Sometimes I will just turn on the water to wash my hands after finishing with one patient and the patient in the next bed will start shouting. "get over here now and get me the toilet" "I am just need to clean the commode and wash my hands and I will be right there" "Get over here now or I will wet the bed and it will be your fault". Imagine if I took the time out to fill in the form saying that I cleaned the commode during that scenario.
We are not up to date with our knowledge. Meanwhile David Cameron is running around like a twat worried about overeducated nurses not wanting to care for the patients. The problem is no nurses David, not education of nurses.
Half my shift is spent at the nurses station sorting out systems problems or running around the hospital looking for drugs anyway. Can't wait to get out of here.


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In just a few months Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:IONS) has gone from investment darling to investment dog, dropping nearly 20% since the beginning of this year.
But little has changed at Isis, suggesting the recent move lower is tied more to profit-taking and momentum than to long term opportunities stemming from the company's antisense technology. Given that backdrop, lets take a closer look at Isis and see whether the share slide is justified.
Making sense out of antisense
Gene therapy is one of the most exciting areas of biotechnology research and development. The concept is simple. Identify over- or under-active genes and develop drugs that return them to their normal levels of activity.
Across the biotech industry, few have been as prolific as Isis in coming up with disease targets and potential new treatments. That success stems from Isis' unique drug discovery platform and RNAi-targeting technologies, which allow drugs to bind with genes rather than proteins.
Despite the specificity of targeting one gene, antisense drugs' ability to accumulate in organs like the liver and kidney suggest that developing drugs that target RNA in those organs may allow antisense drugs to treat a wide variety of diseases.
As a result, Isis' pipeline is chock-full of intriguing clinical stage drugs that may eventually reach the market.
Pumped up pipeline
Isis has more than 30 ongoing trials across a variety of diseases including cardiovascular, cancerous, and inflammatory conditions. Among those programs, the closest to reaching the market are drugs for TTR amyloidosis and prostate cancer.
TTR amyloidosis is a rare disease. In healthy patients, the TTR protein helps transport vitamin A around the body. In patients where the TTR gene is mutated, mis-folded TTR proteins accumulate in tissues such as peripheral nerves or the heart. While there are over 100 mutations of the TTR gene, cases are categorized as either familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy, or FAP, and familial amyloidotic cardiomyopathy, or FAC.
Globally, estimates peg the FAP patient population at just 10,000 and the FAC patient population at about 40,000. Since the disease has a poor prognosis, there's a significant unmet need and opportunity for ISIS-TTRrx, which is currently in phase 2/3 studies.
As a result, GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) agreed to partner with Isis on ISIS-TTRrx, committing to paying Isis up to $50 million in milestone payments associated with the current phase 2b trial. Additionally, Glaxo boosted its previously planned regulatory and sales milestone payments to Isis in 2012 and agreed to pay Isis double-digit royalties on any eventual sales of ISIS-TTRrx.
In order for Glaxo and Isis to capture the market share opportunity in TTR, they will need to outmaneuver RNAi competitor Alnylam (NASDAQ:ALNY)Alnylam is also working on a promising compound, patisiran, for FAP, and that drug, which is being co-developed by Sanofi's Genzyme, is currently being studied in phase 3 trials.
Isis also has a well-heeled partner in Teva Pharmaceuticals (NYSE:TEVA) on Custirsen, a potential adjunct therapy for metastatic prostate cancer. If Custirsen succeeds in its current phase 3 trials, the drug could capture sales as a first line treatment dosed alongside docetaxel in mCRPC patients. Data from that trial is expected this year, but investors should watch Teva's other ongoing study of Custirsen as part of a treatment regimen for non small cell lung cancer too.
Fool-worthy final thoughts
The ability to commercialize antisense technology isn't science fiction. The company and its development partner Sanofi are already marketing a cholesterol battling compound, Kynamro.
So far, Kynamro sales have been small. The drug is currently only approved to treat patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, or HoFH, a small population of people with high bad cholesterol levels that are resistant to other treatment. As a result, Isis isn't even breaking out its share of royalties from Kynamro sales yet. But the drug should continue to see sales climb, especially if late stage studies in heterozygous hypercholesterolemia pan out. While there are less than 350 people in the U.S. with HoFH, there are as many as 600,000 cases of HeFH.
Given the company's substantial pipeline, there's plenty of news coming that may cause Isis shares to move up or down this year. Investors interested in antisense companies need to consider owning Isis given its leadership position, but should recognize Isis shares will continue to come with plenty of volatility.


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FACETIME- Paradoxical: <i>Bible Babel</i> explains it all
Kristin Swenson is from Minnesota. She's blonde, petite, and so young-looking, it's hard to believe she's a 44-year-old religious studies professor whose just-released Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time is getting rave reviews for its breezy style and non-dogmatic approach.
"I'm not trying to teach or interpret," says Swenson, who's in Charlottesville as a visiting fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities on a break from teaching at VCU. "I didn't want to be off putting to people of faith."
Washington Post reviewer Michael Dirda notes Swenson's readability, and her inclusion of pop culture Biblical references in The Omen, The DaVinci Code, and Madonna, as well as a Christian website that sells sex toys.
"This is not your father Abraham's guide to the Good Book," he warns in a thumbs-up review. "Given that the Bible is so often the locus of ignoble contention," he writes, "it's good to read a book that simply presents the facts."
Mostly, Swenson wants her book to be a good read with a "wow factor" on every page from people learning something they didn't know before.
She was raised in Lake Woebegone, or a place "remarkably like that," she laughs. "People are pretty laconic," she says, throwing in a Sven and Ole joke.
More stereotype-defying is that although steeped in a Lutheran tradition, she grew up with ample room for inquiry.
"I don't remember discouragement about asking questions about the book considered God's word," she says. "I've always loved paradox. The Bible does that a lot."
For instance, the commands to kill– and to not kill. "I like that it messes with us, but that seems authentic," says Swenson. "It invites debate."
In the Bible, nothing is quite as clear-cut as some insist, according to Swenson. On controversial topics such as homosexuality, abortion, or prosperity, "I'm not arguing for a particular position," she says. "I'm laying out what people use to prove their points of view–" however different those points of view might be.
She started off studying biology, but an intro to Biblical Hebrew class changed her course.
"The first word in the Bible can be translated in three different ways," she discovered. From there, she went on to study Greek and Aramaic.
"It's clear she's done the heavy lifting because she knows the original languages," says Martien Halvorson-Taylor, another visiting Foundation fellow. "She knows the scholarship, but she's not going to burden her readers with that."
The Bible may look like any other book, says Swenson, but it's not; and that's what makes it so challenging. "It's an anthology, poetry, narration, legal material, letters, apocalyptic texts," she lists. "It's several literary styles that have developed over thousands of years." Not to mention getting written in three different languages.
Although Bible Babel was just released in February, Swenson knows she's just skimmed the holy surface, and she's already working on her next project: supernatural beings in the Bible.
Can a movie option be too far off?


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This classic, century-old house overlooking Beacon Hill Park stood empty for six years while its owner, who lived next door, lovingly undertook a painstaking and extensive renovation.
Meanwhile, a visitor from thousands of kilometres away quietly yearned to live in that house. She walked by it every time she came to visit and often remarked to her Victoria friend: "Some day I'm going to live in that house."
Winnipegger Bea Cherniack finally managed to meet the owner, see inside the house, and buy her fantasy house five years ago - and since then she's been the happiest of women.
"Every time I came to Victoria to visit my friend, we'd walk though the park and I would look at this house and sigh," Cherniack said. "But it was never for sale."
The retired social worker and her husband, a mediator and lawyer in Winnipeg, still own a modern house on the banks of the Red River, but the Beacon Hill home, built in 1916 by Luney Bros., beckoned.
"I've always loved, loved old houses," said Cherniack, 62. "There's something about them that's incredibly beautiful. It's partly what appeals to me about Victoria, this core of older homes, and why my husband, Lawrie, and I wanted to retire here."
Her friend Nancy Martin, who lives near Beacon Hill, knew Cherniack wanted to live here and sent information from time to time about heritage houses when they came up for sale. "I kept walking by this place and seeing it empty," Martin said. "I wondered what was going on behind the closed blinds. It drove me crazy with curiosity."
Cherniack was coming to buy another house she'd seen on Government Street, but she spent the night with Martin first, and while sitting on the front porch, the two friends from high school spotted the owner of "her" house strolling by.
Cherniack and Martin jumped up and brazenly accosted the man, asking if he would show it to them. He agreed and when they stepped inside, their jaws dropped.
"It was perfect," said a beaming Cherniack.
"Absolutely perfect, with all the original woodwork, never painted. And all the features were amazing: the stained glass, the staircase and the built-in sideboard in the dining room. The owner had even replicated a suite in the basement [also empty] and sourced all the same wood, copied the upstairs fireplace, sourced big doors, doorknobs. It was a perfect suite in a gorgeous heritage house."
She made an offer and the deal was done.
The remarkable renovator and painstaking perfectionist was Graham Garman, who lived next door all his life in a house built by his father. Garman had bought the house in 2000 and spent the next six years repairing, rebuilding and restoring it.
"The house had belonged to only one family and I went to school with the children of the original owners," Garman said. "We used to play ball over there in the park."
When his senior neighbours died 10 years ago, he bought the house, thinking he would live there, but soon realized it was too big.
"I love old things, especially heritage houses, and I wanted to bring it back to its original state," said Garman, who worked at St. Joseph's and then Victoria General hospitals in receiving and shipping - another exacting and precise job - for 24 years.
He used those meticulous skills, including some of his demolition talents, to oversee every aspect of the work, which included gutting the old kitchen, raising its ceiling and combining it with a tiny pantry. All the new cupboards were custom made of reclaimed wood.
He also added a small bathroom on the main floor, refinished all the floors, insulated under the main floor, added storm windows and protective glass over all the stained glass, and designed a full suite in the basement.
"There was nothing there before, just an old basement with an oil tank and small bathroom for the man who did the garden," he said.
Garman also had the home designated heritage.
"Renovating an old house is a huge project and takes a lot longer than you think. It costs more, too. I haven't really added it up . I'm too scared.
"But it was a lot of fun and I used to come over every day," said Garman, who retired in 1990. At that time, he bought "an old ugly duplex nearby," tore it down and built four townhouses, which he sold.
One of the challenges on this project was discovering a support post under the front porch that had rotted away. "There wasn't very much holding the veranda up," he said with a chuckle.
When Cherniack came along and made her offer to buy the house, he had almost completed all the work.
"Countless people had wanted to look at it, but the timing was perfect with Bea, and I know she and Lawrie love the house. We have become good friends."
When Lawrie Cherniack called five years ago, to ask his wife if she had bought the Government Street house, she said: "Er . yes . I've bought a house, but not the one you think."
He was bemused at first, "but I trust her instincts. Bea has a good eye for property and I knew if she bought a different house, it would be a better one."
And he loves Victoria. "It's a really cosmopolitan city and the only warm alternative in Canada that appeals to me. I like the pedestrian nature of the place, being close to downtown, not really needing a car."
He enjoys cycling here, visiting used bookstores and, being a keen cook, revels in the local seafood.
With such culinary talent, it's small wonder the couple's favourite spot is the dining room, with its built-in sideboard, stained-glass window with brilliant grapes and oranges, and original fireplace with emerald tiles.
But Bea Cherniack raves about every room: "The whole house has such beautiful details: the special handles on the staircase for old folks; the original light fixtures, which we are slowly getting rewired; the five window seats that all lift up and are lined with cedar . and how many houses have two master bedrooms?
"When we bought the house, Graham had done everything, including putting in a basement suite. There were two of everything - fridges, stoves, dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers - all brand new. We benefited from his meticulous work. He thought of every detail."
There is very little to be done, but she would like to pave the tiny, east-facing backyard with inter-locking stones to create a cosy sitting area. They appreciate the extensive front lawn, but would like more plantings for privacy and may remove the north path to expand flower borders "in lovely large curves."
Another dream would be to add an ensuite to the master bedroom and, said Cherniack, "talk about dreams, there is also a wonderful attic with fir floors that would make an amazing space."
Two things she will never change are the verandas.
"I always, always wanted a house with a veranda, and to have one on the second storey, too, is over the top. I go up there and knit and look over the park, in a great big chair I kept for years in our garage in Winnipeg. The family kept saying get rid of it, but I said no, no, because some day ."
And though they don't both live here full time yet, they have no need for alarms, "because we have Graham. I always joke we are co-curators of this house. He's the best of neighbours, very attached to the house but never intrusive. I honour his love for it."
And an extra bonus?
"Our social life out here is very rich - because half of Winnipeg is here."
Graham Garman says restoring a heritage house is an ultra expensive undertaking. He kept detailed records during the six-year project, which began in 2000.
He jokes that he hasn't added up all the bills for redoing the 2,400 squarefoot house because he doesn't want to know what the total cost was. However, he was able to provide a few examples of his expenses.
This list doesn't include major items, such as a new furnace, appliances, the kitchen reno, new bathroom and entire new ground-floor suite. But it reflects his general maintenance bills:
New roof: $18,000
Exterior paint: $20,000
Refinishing floors and stairs: $2,600
Front porch repairs: $1,700
Back stair replacement: $728
Re-stucco the front: $2,100
New gutters and downspouts: $630
Writer Grania Litwin and photographer Frances Litman are known for their sense of style and knowledge of outstanding design. They tour homes around the south Island, talking to homeowners, interior designers, architects and artists who influence the way we live.


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Barone leads Idaho past San Jose State 64-55
Kyle Barone had 16 points and 13 rebounds and Idaho pulled away in the second half to defeat San Jose State 64-55 Thursday night.
Stephen Madison added 15 points and Mike McChristian had 10 for the Vandals (6-6, 2-0 Western Athletic), who shot 50 percent from the floor.
James Kinney led San Jose State (7-6, 2-1) with 17 points. The Spartans committed just five turnovers but shot 28 percent from the floor, including 3 for 20 on 3-point attempts.
After Idaho took a 33-30 lead into halftime, Robert Harris opened the second half with a 3-pointer that started a 13-2 Vandals run to make it 46-32. San Jose State got within 53-48 with 8:12 remaining but Idaho scored the next seven points on a pair of Barone free throws, a 3-pointer by McChristian and a layup from Denzel Douglas.


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THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web
The tenth Richmond Code Camp was held today at the J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College campus on Parham Road.
It. was. awesome!
With 40 sessions and over 400 registered, this #RichCC was arguably the best one yet! There's a lot that goes into planning an event of this magnitude. I commend the Code Camp Leadership Team for their hard work, but the team possesses a quality that will ensure many more Richmond Code Camps to come: absence of ego.
There's a bad joke about a widow who visits the funeral home before services begin. She's astonished to find the suit she provided for her late husband on the cadaver in the next coffin. Aghast, she notifies the undertaker who assures her the matter will be addressed. As she steps out of the room she hears the undertaker yell into the back room "Lou! Swap the heads on two and three!"
Over the past five years, we've "swapped heads" a few times on the leadership team. I'm honestly not sure who led the first Richmond Code Camp, my turn came up around #2 or #3. After a few turns, it pased onto another, then another. Areas of responsibility also rotate. I remember Fran La Vigne (Blog | @Tableteer) and I sitting in a Panera Bread in Short Pump Virginia selecting speakers for that first event.
There's no penalty for stepping up or down on our team. Life happens, people move, get more and less busy, change jobs, and just have other plans. Why punish people for that? Especially in a volunteer organization? The on-point person doesn't try to "edge out" previous leaders. That's because we're all pretty secure individuals. It's a great group to be part of, and I love every member of our team.
As usual I didn't get to watch an entire presentation (except my own). I caught a lot of Jessica Moss's (Blog | @JessicaMMoss) talk on Data Warehousing. As always when I hear Jessica present (or speak), I learned new stuff. Jessica is a great speaker and Richmond is fortunate to have her as part of our community.
I had to duck out to set up lunch (which was late for the first time ever in Richmond Code Camp history!). While waiting for the Pizza Dude to arrive, I had a great chat with "Robin's Mean Husband" (apologies for the inside joke in a public blog...).
I presented after lunch. No one fell asleep (yay!). I did my talk called Building Your First SSIS Package and, just like in the same presentation for SQL Saturday #46 in Raleigh NC a few weeks earlier, the keyboard stopped working in the middle of my demo. I finished using only the mouse - again - but it's definitely time to place a service call to Dell.
The coolest thing about community events is the cool people. I skipped the next session to talk with Joel Cochran (Blog | @JoelCochran) , Frank La Vigne (Blog | @Tableteer), Kevin Hazzard (Blog | @KevinHazzard), and G. Andrew Duthie (Blog | @DevHammer), TBDDEOTP (The Best Durn Developer Evangelist On The Planet). It was great to catch up with everyone and just geek out a little.
For the last session of the day, I snuck into Joel Cochran's talk on Blend. Joel loves building solutions with Blend and it shows. I was in there for 15 minutes and I picked up a ton of tricks. Joel is also my star SSIS pupil. We spent a Saturday in July working together on database design and SSIS mentoring. He has taken that ball and run with it!
For some reason, I thought it would be fun to drive to and from Boston to deliver From Zero To SSIS in cooperation with Boston SQL Training last week. The drive up was rainy bu ok. The drive back wasn't. It took me three hours to go the first 100 miles. No fun at all. Watching the Arrival Time inch forward on my Garmin all that time was no fun. I left Boston around 3:00 PM and arrived in Richmond about 12 hours later, grabbed four hours of sleep, and then rolled out for Code Camp!
Despite a rough start to the day for me personally, Richmond Code Camp X was a huge success!
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Satellite helps make transportation of dangerous waste safer
A new tracking system is making use of satellite navigation data to ensure safe roads in Europe. Developed by an Italian company in the Italian Lombardy region, the system monitors daily the displacement of 200 containers carrying industrial waste on 100 trucks.
The transportation of dangerous industrial waste from its originating source to the site where it will be treated is increasing every year. Trucks carrying the waste-filled containers typically travel through several European countries for two to three days. For security reasons, and to ensure that all the waste arrives where it is intended to, a small Italian company has developed an innovative tracking system which uses location data from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to accurately track all movements of the industrial waste throughout its journey.
"Our Advanced Tracking System (ATS) is a complete platform that integrates different technologies to provide a valid solution to the tracking of waste transportation. It will immediately note if a truck is not following the planned road, or illegally unloading some of the waste on the way," says Ivan Allevi, Project Manager for Allix, an Italian Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME).
"It is a generic transportation fleet management system which has been customised for the specific needs of waste transportation in the Italian Lombardy region, and has been developed in a way to ensure it adheres to European laws on transportation of dangerous industrial waste."
The system is now in its first operational phase. It is monitoring and controlling the movement of 200 containers on 100 trucks on a daily basis, many of which travel from Italy through Austria or Switzerland to Germany, Czech Republic and the Netherlands.
"Our ATS achieves detection accuracy of a few metres by using traditional, low-cost GPS receivers. The system receives raw satellite location data and reprocesses it, integrating this information with corrections provided by local GPS ground station systems as well as the EGNOS system," says Giorgio Soldavini, Allix Programme Manager. "The system will also be able to use the highly accurate data from Galileo once it becomes operational."
System wins prize in international competition
The Allix ATS system was awarded the Lombardy regional first prize in this year's European Satellite Navigation Competition
The system consists of a main device located on the truck which includes a GNSS receiver that operates on GPS with EGNOS overlay signals. The main device is connected via the GPRS mobile network to a central server which receives, at regular intervals, information from the main device on the exact location of the truck and any changes in the containers loaded on the truck.
Secondary devices, one on each container, operate as autonomous devices, and monitor the status of the containers, their temperature movement, etc. The secondary devices communicate to the central device all changes to the container and its contents using the cost-effective, standards-based ZigBee wireless networking solution.
When a trailer with one or more containers is jointed to the truck, the main device registers the connection which is communicated to the central server. When the trailer and therefore the containers are disconnected from the truck, a signal is sent to the central server. In this way the central server can easily compare planned with actual routes.
"Before the creation of our system, some trucks stopped and unloaded part, and sometimes all, of the waste along the way.. Now we control that the truck follows the pre-approved route and brings all waste to the agreed waste-handling facility," adds Giorgio Soldavini.
"We have customised our system to record very precisely where the truck goes. A road can run near a river and it is important to know that the truck is actually on the road and not near the river unloading waste. We use the information coming from the GPS ground stations and use raw data from the satellites to send to the central server, together with all the information from the trailer and the containers."
"By using and sending raw data it is very difficult to mess with the system and send incorrect data to the central server; one has to calculate the satellite positions, and not just the GPS location, which is not easy. In case a truck has to make a change in its planned route, for example in the presence of road works, the main device in the truck includes a PDA device which the driver can use to send a text message to the central server."
The next step will be to apply this system to all waste transportation trucks in the Lombardy region.
European Satellite Navigation Competition supported by ESA's TTPO
The European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) is supported by ESA through its Technology Transfer Programme Office (TTPO). The main mission of the TTPO is to facilitate the use of space technology and space systems for non-space applications and to demonstrate the benefit of the European space programme to European citizens. The TTPO is responsible for defining the overall approach and strategy for the transfer of space technologies including the incubation of start-up companies and their funding. For more information, please contact:
ESA's Technology Transfer Programme Office
European Space Agency ESA - ESTEC
Keplerlaan 1, 2200 AG, Noordwijk ZH
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 (0) 71 565 6208
Fax: +31 (0) 71 565 6635
Email: ttp @ esa.int
Website: http://www.esa.int/ttp


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I'm looking forward to making some goals for 2011, but I always think it doesn't hurt to reflect on the past year before doing that.
On a rating scale of 1-10, I'd give 2010 a 7.5.
Yes, I just rated a whole year.
2010 in writing was filled with highs and lows, but overall, the highs seem to dominate. It was a big writing year for me: I wrote three novels (Addicted to You, The Hometown Hero Returns, Liam's Perfect Woman), one novella for a Berkley Heat (On the Job for the Three to Tango anthology), and close to half of the second book in the Princes of the Underground series called (tentatively) Satin Rapture. I've finished up 2010 by writing a proposal for the third book in the Home to Harbor Town series for Harlequin–just finished it yesterday, in fact, and sent it to my agent.
I've been fortunate enough to get not one, but two new editors this year–the fantastic Susan Litman at Harlequin/Silhouette who I've really enjoyed working with so far and Heather Osborn, my brand new editor at Samhain. I've heard wonderful things about Heather and I'm very excited to be working with her, as well.
I was lucky enough to be able to get to four writing/reader conferences this year–Romantic Times, Lori Foster's, Nationals and my RWA local chapter's–Chicago North–Fire and Ice conference. There's no better way to feel connected to the writing community than to go to these conferences and mingle with other writers, readers, bloggers, editors and agents. RELEASE was nominated by RT Book Reviews in the Best Erotic Fiction category, and EXPLOSIVE came out this December to good reviews.
I guess I can't complain, but I usually do anyway. 🙂
Not complain, really, just wonder how I could have done things a little better. I wonder if I couldn't have been more efficient with my time. I wish I could find a way to reach more readers who might enjoy my writing. I guess why there's such a thing as New Year's resolutions, eh? No reason we can't resolve ways to make 2011 a solid 10.
How would you rate your year? What were some of your ups and downs in regard to reading and living?


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