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Volunteer Opportunities
"Volunteers don't get paid, not because they're worthless, but because they're priceless." Sherry Anderson
As a non-profit youth soccer club with 2,300 players, much of the success of our club is attributable to great volunteers like you. Throughout each season there are various volunteer opportunities for parents and older teenagers.
For players in the Chargers Competitive Program, in order to have your $100 Volunteer Fee (per player) refunded to you, all you need to do is volunteer a minimum of 10 hours (per player) at a club prescribed activity (Labor Day Tournament, concession stand, etc.) and document those hours on the 2020-21 Volunteer Log Form.
Each time you sign up for a volunteer event, take this form with you. Fill in the Event Date, Name and your start and end times and have the Chargers staff person associated with that event sign your form confirming you met the volunteer task time & expectations. Chargers staff signatures is required for your hours to count. Once you get to 10 hours (per player), fill out the bottom of the form and send it to Leslie Kaylor at email@example.com.
Click the links below to access the various volunteer opportunities available. If you only want to volunteer at your home community fields, please make sure you click the correct link below for your fields.
- Labor Day Tournament - This is the largest club fundraiser of the year (at the home base of the Lakewood Ranch Chargers). Click on the following link to view and sign up for volunteer shifts for the 2020 Labor Day TOurnament.
- Clearwater Chargers Concession Stand - These are volunteer opportunities at one of the Clearwater Charger fields sites. Click on the following link to view and sign up for Clearwater.
- Tampa Chargers Concession Stand - These are volunteer opportunities at both Tampa Charger fields site (30th Street Fields) & Benito Middle School fields. Click on the following links to view and sign up for either Tampa stands.
CLICK HERE! for Benito Middle School Fields (10101 Cross Creek Blvd, Tampa, FL 33647)
30th Street Fields - Not available at this time.
- ** NEWLY ADDED Miscellaneous Volunteer Needs around the club - contact the person listed for each item below in interested in learning more.
- TPA Rec Program - Field set-up & breakdown for Saturday morning games at Benito Middle School. Contact Maggie Pesaresi - firstname.lastname@example.com.
- CLW Rec Program - Field set-up & breakdown for Friday night games at Sports Plex. Contact - firstname.lastname@example.com
- TPA Rec Program - Field Lining done on Fridays at Benito Middle School. Contact Mauricio Pesaresi - email@example.com.
- Rec Coaching with any of our 3 Recreational Programs
- Lakewood Ranch - Antonio Saviano - firstname.lastname@example.com
- Tampa - Maggie Pesaresi - email@example.com
- Clearwater - firstname.lastname@example.com
- TPA Rec Program - Field set-up & breakdown for Saturday morning games at Benito Middle School. Contact Maggie Pesaresi - email@example.com.
Thanks to all the help us make it possible for all of the kids!!


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Sardinia escapes
Five star resorts at their finest - our carefully selected hotels in Sardinia epitomise luxury.
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Book your hotel with British Airways and enjoy all these great benefits:

subset: commoncrawl


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Country music is all about backstory, the journey from small-town beginnings to the bright lights of Nashville—or, if you're Taylor Swift, from junior high to high school. Laura Cantrell's story doesn't fit that mold, but it's as unlikely in its own way. The daughter of a Nashville judge and a prominent lawyer, she moved to New York to study at Columbia and wound up with a job in finance and a radio show on legendary freeform station WFMU.
After years playing side gigs in the city's roots music scene, she emerged as a singer-songwriter with a voice distinctive enough to draw the attention of fellow record-spinner John Peel and eventually ended up on the stage of the Grand Old Opry. Raising a 5-year-old daughter has slowed the pace of releases somewhat, but her new album, Kitty Wells Dresses, shows she hasn't lost a step.
As you might glean from the title track, the album is devoted to songs made famous by Kitty Wells, also known as the Queen Of Country Music, a humble trailblazer who laid the groundwork for the Patsys and Lorettas that followed. Continuing on that theme, The A.V. Club met Cantrell at a diner in midtown Manhattan to discuss songs by women before her show tonight at Tin Angel.
Laura Cantrell, "Kitty Wells Dresses" (from 2011's Kitty Wells Dresses)
Laura Cantrell: I used to do a radio show on WFMU, and I'd go in the record library and notice every year there'd be a new Patsy Cline CD, or several nice box-set-type things of Loretta Lynn or Tammy Wynette. Patsy, everything she ever breathed on a microphone is out at this point. Kitty Wells made 50-plus albums, and there are maybe two or three comps. Usually they'll have a few of the core songs from the '50s and then some other weird, random stuff that's, like, "Why would anyone put that on a comp?" They just don't seem well thought through and representative of the eras of her music.
This is just a pet peeve of mine that I carried around for a long time. If you go to iTunes and look, there's tons of Kitty Wells stuff you can buy, and every one repeats three or four tracks. I just felt the percentage of what's available versus what she did is too random. I suppose I could go to—what was she on? Decca? That would be BMG. It's all Sony at this point, isn't it?—I could pitch them to do a better comp.
I guess I'd ranted about this enough that when the [Country Music] Hall Of Fame was looking for artists to do a concert in conjunction with their [Kitty Wells] exhibit, my name came up. I wrote ["Kitty Wells Dresses"] for that show [in 2008], and it got me back in touch with this material, a lot of which I had played when I was starting out, just playing songs at college. The idea of making that set of songs a record wasn't in the forefront, but I'm trying to get better about when you have an idea, exploiting it to the fullest.
Specifically celebrating Kitty was the intent, because she's such a demure, down-to-earth person. She's so uncontroversial in her presentation of herself. She's this Southern lady, she's very unpretentious; she doesn't have any of the trappings of a star or an icon about her. I think that aspect of her—her manner, and the way she and her family ran their business in a very old-school, above-board kind of way, they didn't have drama in their public presentation of their art—that was really good. It doesn't lend itself to the myth-making machine that exists around some other artists.
The A.V. Club: You couldn't make Coal Miner's Daughter about Kitty Wells.
LC: No, you couldn't. I think in some ways, she gets discounted as a pioneer because her struggles weren't apparent. I'm sure it was hard as hell to raise three kids on the road, back and forth from Nashville, in that era. That must have been a very difficult choice to make, but she didn't have it played out in public, like, say, Tammy Wynette did. There's no movie-of-the-week storyline with Kitty. I think her husband's contribution gets even more absorbed into, "Oh, they were the first. Done. Move on. Oh, Patsy Cline! Let's talk about her."
Some of it's natural, because of the generation difference, but then you realize that Kitty Wells made records through the '80s, and she toured until she was 80. She has this insane contribution that she made, where none of those later artists would have had as easy a time of it if she hadn't fully dispelled the notion that a woman artist could draw in concert, get coins in the jukebox, and sell records. The myth that that couldn't happen was totally dispelled by the time Patsy Cline came along. I'm not saying it was easy for any of those women, but that initial resistance of "the machine works this way" was disproved.
AVC: What led you to focus specifically on the way she dressed?
LC: You think about the classic girl singer, which is what she was before she became a star, just the featured singer in her husband's band—the women in that role, especially women who participated in what they called "barn dance radio," these were family shows. Nothing sexy. Nothing alluring, or adult, even. It was this hyper-feminized, ruffly sweetness.
In the late '20s and early '30s, when these shows started, there were dress codes for women. It was sort of a uniform. It made everyone the same, and you couldn't really tell the strength of the woman from the appearance. And here you have these amazing women—not just Kitty, but Martha Carson and Mother Maybelle [Carter], the Carter Sister. It was like a sorority of women who had to don the apparel of the structure in which they worked. We think of this now as not that interesting, and if you look at it at face value, you go, "Oh yeah, the gingham and polka dots—whatever." But you're really missing the point. These were great artists who made a huge contribution, and this uninteresting-to-us outfit was the garment of these important ladies.
Kitty Wells, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels"
AVC: It's a really nervy song, a rebuttal to Hank Thompson's hit, "The Wild Side Of Life."
LC: And very specific and pointed. "As I listen to the words you are saying…"—she's almost going line-by-line. It's something we don't do now. There was a period where answer songs were kind of a fad, but this would be the most potent example, and the one that had the most cultural impact. It became this sort of rallying cry for women to go, "Wait a second—don't blame us for these social ills, or the unhappiness of failed marriages. It's not our fault."
Kitty Wells was kind of the perfect person to do it, because she seems so innocuous; but in her singing style, she's very emotional, in a not-showy way. She's got this vibrato that adds a certain element of emotion to it, so it's very powerful, in that song and many others. You can imagine how it wasn't normal for a woman to stand up and speak out in song in the honky-tonk world; it would have seemed like a very frank, unusual thing.
AVC: It was fairly controversial at the time, wasn't it?
LC: It was briefly banned from the Grand Old Opry. I don't think she could sing it on the national portion for a while. I don't know if they thought their sponsors wouldn't be into promoting unrest among the ladyfolk. Obviously, it became such a big hit, it wasn't banned for long.
AVC: Did the song come to you with that history intact? Did you know what you were hearing when you first heard it?
LC: Here's the thing: I was familiar with Kitty as one of my dad's favorite singers when I was young, so I knew that song and I knew a lot of her other songs. But when I was in college, I worked at the Country Music Hall Of Fame as a tour guide, so you have to learn little factoids. That was when I digested what an important artist she was, and also what the time frame was. That was the '50s; here's Hank Williams, Hank Thompson, Lefty Frizzell, all these rising stars, and then all of a sudden there's Kitty Wells. For the next 10 years, she was the only woman who could be as dominant and as successful sales-wise. She recorded with Owen Bradley from Decca, also Patsy Cline's producer, architect of the Nashville sound, also one of the people responsible for the shift in the way they recorded in Nashville, and I remember trying to make sense of that, too. She started out being this straight honky-tonk artist, and then eventually her stuff gets kind of lush, and as countrypolitan as anyone else. So she was this person I followed as I was making sense of the greater trends in what happened.
Martha Carson, "Satisfied"
AVC: Martha Carson's one of the people you name-check in "Kitty Wells Dresses," along with Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters. "Satisfied" seems to be the song that comes up most often.
LC: That's the big one. She had a duo with her husband before they divorced, and then she went on as a solo artist; they did a lot of awesome gospel stuff that's out on Dust-to-Digital; it's probably in one of those giant gospel box sets. She was just a really great singer. She only really had that one hit, but around the Opry, she was known as this electrifying performer, and supposedly taught Elvis how to do something or another. She was very well known in Nashville.
The reason that I mention her, actually, is that when I asked Kitty's daughter about her stage clothes—about 15 years ago, before she retired—she said there was this one seamstress in Nashville who supplied all the women at the Opry. So Martha Carson, Mother Maybelle, and the Carter Sisters were all customers of this lady, which is another reason I mention them particularly. I knew that they specifically all wore the same clothes, and in the same setting, where it was, "Hey! The girls are on for one song!"
Dolly Parton, "Coat of Many Colors"
It just works so perfectly. You've got the Bible story in there; it all comes across. Her family was religious, and there's the sentiment, but it's grounded in the reality of the world. It could really be a short story, a piece of writing you don't come across very often. You can't manufacture that. It's got to happen organically. Those people who can do it, it's a pretty amazing result. It's kind of heart-rending and it makes you feel good at the same time.
Loretta Lynn, "Rated X"
I love "Rated X." It's definitely aware of gender bias and a pretty strong statement of "that's not right." She'd been so successful for the couple of years before that it made it easier to go down that road. It wasn't her first thing. It was like, "Now we expect Loretta to be a little controversial, push the envelope."
Wanda Jackson, "The Box It Came In"
AVC: Another really neatly written song. The singer's husband leaves her and takes everything but the box her wedding dress came in. Later, it's implied she buries him in it. As far as dresses go, there's also the story about how Ernest Tubb barred her from taking the stage for the first time at the Grand Old Opry because of the fringed jacket she was wearing.
LC: Wanda's another one who had to subvert the uniform. Even though she was that younger generation that could get away with more, you still get a very palpable sense from her that it was important to be somewhat conventional. Anything more you had to slip in. You couldn't just dress totally how you wanted to.
There was a style that she really became associated with, that sort of fringed sheath dress. It's not really that revealing, but when she starts moving, it makes you aware of every curve that she's got. If you've ever seen Kitty Wells play, she's not moving at all. So it's this whole next evolution of what women can do on stage.
Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, "Ramblin' Woman"
AVC: Do Hazel and Alice fit the lineage you're talking about? They're more in the vein of Appalachian mountain music.
LA: It's funny, because I think the way the industry thinks of them, they're different. Certainly they had different milieux they performed in. I would make an argument that all these people should be in the Hall Of Fame. Long-term, it's all going to be folk music. And what Hazel and Alice did was as influential, maybe to a different group of people or a different generation. If you're interested in the music overall, they fit. They're more traditional than many of their contemporaries, but they also blended that with being women running their own band in the 1960s, and they were contributing this material that was from a contemporary country woman's point of view. It was political, it was heartbreaking. It was everything.


text: Had an idea today. I really like finding copies of old laser manuals. But rarely, when one finds older surplus laser system, are the manuals included. Usually when the labs are auctioned, the paper documents go one way, and the actual equipment go another. I have found quite a few older laser manuals over the years and I would like to make them available to anybody on this forum. Some I paid for, and some were free, all are rare. Yet, I have found, and Im sure everyone will agree, that having those precious docs, make the laser operating experience oh so much better. Im not sure exactly how we could do it. Maybe create an ongoing forum post that each one of us would post to, just listing which ones we have. Or perhaps, create a central compendium of all of our uploaded/pdfd manuals, maybe on a google drive or something similar? What do yall think?


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Pugs are cute. They're so...pugnacious. And it's not just real pugs, Xbox 360 Avatar pugs are pretty cute, too. Know what's cuter than all that?
A real pug going bananas upon seeing its Xbox 360 counterpart. Sure, the scratches paw scratches might not be adorable, but c'mon, look at this and try not to tell me this isn't worth it.


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0.75A 250V 5x20mm Fast-Acting Glass Fuse (4-Pack)
Catalog №: 2701048
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Regular Price: $4.00
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Only 4021 in stock In Stock
Get it ! Order in the next and choose Two-Day shipping at checkout.
Equivalent Part Numbers: 2701048 | 270-1048 | 27-1048
- This fast-acting, 5x20mm glass fuse is rated 0.75-amp 250V to protect equipment and consumer electronics from short circuits and power surges.
- It meets the circuit-protection requirements of most household electronic equipment and is UL-listed.
- Package of four fuses.
Parts Warranty: 90 Days


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James Whitcomb Riley#88 on top 500 poets
» Click to list general statistics » OR, select a date :
Igo And Ago
We're The Twins from Aunt Marinn's,
Igo and Ago.
When Dad comes, the show begins!--
Iram, coram, dago.
read more >>
- Hits: Number of visitors who read the poem on the given date.
- Posts: Number of visitors who posted the poem to a friend (via e-mail) on the given date.
- Dates that have "0" hits may not be shown on the list.
- Dates, poems and poets that have "0" hits may not be shown on the list. Statistics are generated daily.


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IRS Tax Map was developed to create a new kind of search experience for users to find tax law information faster and more easily than traditional methods.
We are very interested in receiving your feedback concerning your experience using IRS Tax Map and how it helped to answer your tax law questions.
Your comments will help us to improve Tax Map, and help us to continue development for the public.
Please send comments to: firstname.lastname@example.com
Note: We will not respond to individual comments.


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- Obama not ruling anything out on action in Iraq
- What is going on in Iraq and why?
- Waleed Aly: Western invasion paved way for Iraq's terror crisis
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has not ruled out potential Australian military action in Iraq describing the situation there as ''disastrous''.
Speaking after a meeting with US President Barack Obama in Washington on Thursday morning, Mr Abbott said Australia ''would do what we reasonably can to protect Australian citizens, Australian interests and Australian values''.
Mr Obama also said that he would "not rule anything out" in an American response to the extremist takeover of key Iraqi cities.
Asked what would provoke a US military response, Mr Obama reiterated points he made in a recent foreign policy speech at the West Point military academy, that America would strike unilaterally if its national security was threatened, but would otherwise seek to build coalitions.
He said Australia was one of a handful of nations America knew it could always count on, not just because of shared values, but because of military capability.
''Aussies know how to fight, and I like having them in a foxhole if we're in trouble,'' Mr Obama said.
Mr Abbott's comments in the US appear to be at odds with Defence Minister David Johnston who said on Thursday that there were ''no plans'' to provide military help to Baghdad in its battle against an al-Qaeda splinter group that has cut a swathe through northern Iraq.
''Without ruling anything in, obviously, this is a very concerning situation and it does need to be taken seriously and dealt with appropriately,'' Mr Abbott told Sky News.
When pressed that he did not rule out Australian military action, Mr Abbott said he did not, but added: ''I hope it doesn't come to that''.
He said that to have ''such large chunks'' of Iraq in the hands of an ''al-Qaeda-type'' group was a humanitarian disaster and potentially a security disaster, following on from the crisis in Syria, which Mr Abbott described as ''diabolically complex''.
''It seems like the situation in other parts of the Middle East is now becoming a witches brew of difficulty,'' he said.
Labor leader Bill Shorten said he would be asking the government for a briefing on the Iraq situation.
When asked if he would support Australian military action in the country, he said: "We need to consider this, and I think it's as hypothetical at this stage, because I don't think a formal request has been made."
Mr Shorten said that Australia needed to weigh up whether the use of Australian soldiers was in the national interest. "That is the test Labor would apply."
The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, facing its direst hour since the withdrawal of Coalition forces in 2011, has reportedly asked the US to carry out drone strikes against the militant group that has overrun the country's second largest city, Mosul.
It is unclear whether Baghdad is also seeking help from other countries such as Australia that took part in the 2003 overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein.
Ms Bishop said she was ''deeply concerned'' by the ferocious assault carried out by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a group that has roots in al-Qaeda but which has been disavowed by the leadership because of its ultra-violent methods.
A spokesman for Senator Johnston later said the government had no plans to give any military or material assistance to Baghdad.
The militant group took control of western portions of Iraq in January, but the latest advance is particularly troubling because the Iraqi forces folded so quickly, with up to 30,000 troops reportedly retreating in the face of just 800 ISIL fighters.
''There's no fight in them and that is a major concern for the Iraqi government,'' said former Chief of Army Peter Leahy, now director of the National Security Institute at the University of Canberra.
This was especially so as the troops were largely well-trained and well-equipped by the US, he added.
Lowy Institute fellow and former Army officer Rodger Shanahan agreed that Australia had a moral obligation to help but added that in practice the US was in the best position to offer military assistance. He said ISIL had scored a major victory that would likely yield them more recruits.
''They've now announced themselves as a very strong militia,'' he said.
The Maliki government needed to regather its military forces and hit back swiftly to restore confidence, he said.
President Obama is facing criticism that militants from Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were emboldened by his decision not to intervene in the Syrian civil war and reports that he has refused Iraq requests for airstrikes against the militants.
He said the situation demanded an immediate response and that his national security staff was considering all options short of sending US troops.
''My team is working around the clock to identify how we can provide the most effective assistance to them. I don't rule out anything, because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria, for that matter,'' he said.
It is understood the administration is now considering air strikes but has ruled out sending US troops.
Before President Obama appeared with Mr Abbott, the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, told reporters, ''It's not like we haven't seen this problem coming for over a year. They're 100 miles from Baghdad, and what's the President doing? Taking a nap.''
He said the President should not have celebrated America's withdrawal from Iraq, but focused on ''completing our mission successfully''.


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Batman: Arkham City is a 2011 action-adventure video game developed by Rocksteady Studios. It is the sequel to the 2009 video game Batman: Arkham Asylum, based on the DC Comics superhero Batman. The game was released by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The PC and Onlive version was released on November 22, 2011.
Batman: Arkham City uses the Unreal Engine 3 game engine with PhysX. For benchmark testing of Batman: Arkham City we disabled PhysX to keep it fair and ran the game in DirectX 11 mode with 8x MSAA enabled and all the image quality features cranked up. You can see all of the exact settings in the screen captures above.
Comments are closed.


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To read Refrigerators reviews check out the Lasoo blogs for daily professional and consumer Australian product reviews.


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Another note on the Southern Reach trilogy — or something that started as a note but then turned into a critique.
A couple of years ago I wrote that the first installment of Peter Jackson's Hobbit was marred by "videogame aesthetics." Remember the dwarves running across the bridges in the goblin caves? Classic side-scroller! It's Super Thorin Brothers! [UPDATE: As Adam Roberts points out, this should surely be Super Moria Brothers.] But "all I could to was watch the dwarves bounce around from horror to horror. My hands felt empty and useless without the controller they so obviously needed. Video-game aesthetics are built around the assumption of manual activity: they work far better when you have something to do. I didn't really want to sit passively and watch Peter Jackson play with his Xbox but that's what I felt was happening to me for much of the second half of the movie."
The narrative technique of the Southern Reach trilogy — especially in the first book — is likewise derived from videogames, though not side-scrollers: instead, first-person explorers are the model, especially (it seems to me) Myst and Riven. The explorations of Area X in Annihilation very strongly reminded me of my explorations of Myst Island, with, added-on, some of the interactive elements that emerged in Riven. (Myst and Riven could be said to have elements of "strange pastoral" also.)
The biologist walks through the forest to the lighthouse — hey, there's a ruined village off to the side. Can you interact with anything there? Not really; keep going. The lighthouse is scary but unrewarding until you click on the rug and find the trap door! And then the return trip: can you find the path that lets you escape the moaning creature? If not, maybe you die, and the game restarts back at base camp?
And then in the second book: Explore the official Southern Reach facility! Walk through the spooky room with the gloves; see what's behind the locked door in your office — and search until you find the key that opens the one locked drawer in your desk. Then, if you're really clever, find the trap door — yes, another trap door, but this one in the ceiling of the storage closet! Some of this reminds me of the old text-based adventures games also: type "open the drawer" and you get "Opening the drawer reveals a strange plant, a dead mouse, and an old cellphone."
Now, I don't want to get carried away with this: text-based adventure games are a kind of interactive fiction, and interactive fiction draws on the narrative types and tropes of the novel. But there are certain kinds of actions you perform in those games, certain kinds of objects you interact with, that then make their way into videogames — and action and objects of those general kinds are what populate the Southern Reach saga.
So the story can feel at times like interactive fiction without the interaction; a point which leads me to another, one that might explain my own lack of excitement about the novel, despite its various excellences. Because so much of it seems to be translated from another medium, one perhaps better suited to the shape of the story, the Southern Reach story as a whole feels to me less like a novel than a novelization — in light of which it's interesting to note the work VanderMeer has done in other media, including games and film.
I'm not happy about what seems to me the increasing influence of videogames on film and fiction — not because I dislike videogames, but because not every artistic medium does everything equally well. Maybe we should let videogames do what they do best; and when we make movies or write novels, we could do worse than think about what those media can do that videogames can't.
UPDATE: corrections from Jeff VanderMeer:
@arrroberts @ayjay This is so weird. No, no sequels. No, not based on video games. Based on *being out in the world.* Carry on.
— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) October 23, 2014
@ayjay @arrroberts The Southern Reach is all based on the video game of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) October 23, 2014
I understand what VanderMeer is saying: that the books' descriptions of the natural world are based on his own love of an care for that world, based on "actual exploring." And I have no doubt that that's true! But I don't think that his explanation is in any way inconsistent with my thesis that the narrative technique of the novel is indebted to the first-person explorer videogame.


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Teriyaki salmon bento
I think life is too short to keep the frozen salmon in the fridge! :-) So I made a teriyaki salmon bento, which was so fast to cook, that I had too much idle time in the morning... Just be careful not to overcook the teriyaki sauce, because it may have a burnt taste. Also, optional lotus root slices will keep the fish tender and juicy for the time when you can finally devour every last bit of it ;-)
Easy: 6 steps, 16 minutes
September 14, 2015 by Paul
Vegetarian bento
Today was one of these days that my coffee needed a coffee... And I really couldn't make myself cook in the morning. So, the vegetarian bento was made! It's fast, it's simple, and it tasted great. Consider that a fancy salad for lazy days.
Easy: 2 steps, 10 minutes
August 19, 2015 by Paul


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"Stay on demolition of house where R.K. Narayan lived"
"Stay on demolition of house where R.K. Narayan lived"
I love RKN stories especially Malguddy days. It seems we, ourselves are moving here and there with the innocent child in villages of India.
Malgudi Days was something we grew up reading and watching. he was a gem and no indian library could ever be complete without his stories in there.
Mysore University to take over R.K. Narayan's bungalow
The Dark Room Man you are awesome!
Rereading: R.K. Narayan
By Charles Nicholl - The Guardian - May 14, 2011
Eminent cartoonist R K Laxman (R.K. Narayan's brother) dies at 93
MY DAYS - R.K. Nayan
तमसोमा ज्योतिर् गमय! - tamasomā jyotir gamaya


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I personally like all the changes apart from expanding the width of the solaris theme.... not nearly as neat and nice in my eyes now it stretches the entire screen but small potatos that complaint is.
dinky wrote:whatisreal looks great. but I'm having second thoughts about the layering. I've gotten used to the tables stuck on the background. looks cool though.
y'all need to update to gif avs with transparant backgrounds.
Scifi.dead-donkey.com Forum Index Site Help & Development WOW. major site update!!
spudthedestroyer wrote:Banners
Yes, i'd love to see banners.
The dead-donkey one that is on every theme can be replaced. A transparent gif of something with a logo would be nice i think, a space man or something would work well. Similarly for whatisreal theme, i used solaris' planet at the top, if anyone uses bryce and thinks they can top any image... go for it.
solaris looks great except for the dead donkey logo on the left. doesn't fit the theme at all and would rather see something custom for sci-fi.
minor problem navigating in whatisreal. it doesn't seem to list the thread pages at the top (only at the bottom). that's annoying. still gonna hang with the blue stuff for a bit though.
strictly out of curiosity: why bryce? it's just a gif or jpg, isn't it?
dinky wrote:got the original pic w/o the DD text? I think I saw it on someone's av. be a lot easier.
spudthedestroyer wrote:erm..yes, here's the original:
hagbard wrote: switched back to Solaris and - voila - there is the "View posts since last visit" in its old place ...
<insert> wrote:hagbard wrote: switched back to Solaris and - voila - there is the "View posts since last visit" in its old place ...
yep, hehe - I just did the same thing.
new is good but it needs that added
great work keeping the forums happening spud
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Microsoft may be nearly ready to release Internet Explorer 8, but if current trends are any indication, IE's reign as king of the browsers is quickly coming to an end.
IE's Falling Market Share
Statistics published Monday by tech analysis firm Net Applications show IE holding 67.55 percent of the worldwide browser market in January of 2009. That's down a full 7.92 percent from the same time one year ago. The stats show IE steadily falling almost every month in the year-long period.
Over the same time, Firefox has been gaining ground and growing its global userbase. The Mozilla browser commanded 21.53 percent of the worldwide market in January 2009, Net Applications' data shows, up 0.19 percent from the previous month and 4.55 percent from the same time in 2008.
Safari, Chrome, and Opera also all increased their market shares over the past year.
IE in the Future
It was just a few years ago that Internet Explorer held a whopping 95 percent of the worldwide browser market. Since then, of course, Firefox and the other "alternative" browsers have become more mainstream and more widely accepted, and the year-to-year rate of IE's user loss has steadily increased.
As other browsers receive more exposure, it's entirely feasible that the rates of IE's loss and the other browsers' growth will continue to increase. I'm not even going to make that assumption now, though. Even just assuming the rates stay consistent with what we saw over the past 12 months, it's safe to say IE's domination will be done within the next three years.
Using a simple mathematical analysis, I applied the same rate of change from the past year to future years. In the case of IE, the browser lost 10.4942 percent of its total share from January 2008 to January 2009. If it continued to drop at the same rate, here's what we could expect to see:
Internet Explorer Projection
-- January 2010: 60.46 percent of the worldwide browser market
-- January 2011: 54.12 percent of the worldwide browser market
-- January 2012: 48.44 percent of the worldwide browser market
Applying the same principles to Firefox, the browser gained 26.7962 percent of its total share from January 2008 to January 2009. If it continued to grow at the same rate, we could expect the following:
Firefox Projection
-- January 2010: 27.30 percent of the worldwide browser market
-- January 2011: 34.62 percent of the worldwide browser market
-- January 2012: 43.90 percent of the worldwide browser market
By 2012, then, IE and Firefox would be less than 5 percentage points apart, if this past year's trends were to continue.
The Big Picture for Browsers
Again, the simple projections above are not taking into account the probable increased rates of growth Firefox and the other browsers could see as they gain greater exposure. The prospect of Microsoft being required to include rival browsers in future versions of Windows could add to that effect in a significant way.
Microsoft's hope is that IE 8 will win back its comfortable lead in the browser game. The first release candidate of IE 8 came out last week and is said to be an "effectively complete and done" product that'll be mirrored in the final version. The browser is an enormous step up from previous IE versions, but I'd be very surprised if any of its features are unique enough to convince Firefox, Safari, or Opera users to make the leap — or, for that matter, to convince non-devoted IE users not to jump ship themselves in the future.
It seems, then, to be only a matter of time before IE loses its crown and the browser market becomes more evenly divided. Given all of the factors at play, looking ahead to January of 2012 may be a generous estimation. Unless Microsoft has some sort of miracle up its sleeve, the changing of guards may happen even sooner than we think.


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Boss Talk Asia: DFS Head Philippe Schaus
Philippe Schaus explains how duty-free store operator DFS is targeting the growing ranks of globe-trotting Chinese shoppers.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... I ... wouldn't you ... ten years ... their businesses ... retail ... business in this area of the world's an uptick to will somebody fort in which Japanese Koreans ... in some emerging market customers like Indonesians Chinese it's good for ... both the stock over the study assessed it has been the ... emerging often PLC Trevor ... as the main driving force in left recover retail ... and that his Opel also being a major influenced will all we have been doing all the stops ... so we have upgraded all stores to be matching the requirements of this highly demanding ... and spare costs Schumer said the ... co consumption study for us ... I ... well for the low consumer sweet run of a diverse depending on where they come fall what the juice was the history is ... what they all have in common is a very high desire to be piled into consumption will ... stand the Browns from Standard Court appointees ... and to ... build their own appreciation of what trickle ... we have seen PSC customers being very attractive by orchards ... which is a very important ... as an unfunded to fire ... off with a coming home and then and while vehicles themselves but also beauty has been a very important category ... and also high in spirits doing extremely well ... and then find the fashion ... has been for Chinese customers very important ... that we ... forceful men and four ... we consider this ultimate over Nestle's in U S airports major airports like JFK ... sentences school and ... especially bills Rangers ... I do mean all was apropos to upgrade airports ... the physical senses example in today this going to be one of them was exciting Mall the ... lecturer is a AFL's new world and with CFS has been very very happy ... to calm the


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Christmas Lullaby
1. Savior and King, yet He came as a babe,
as a babe to His mother named Mary.
Gently she wrapped Him in swaddling clothes,
then, in a manger bed, softly laid Jesus.
Sleep, Baby Jesus.
2. Standing nearby, giving comfort and love,
loving Mary and Jesus was Joseph.
All through the night, while the Child calmly slept,
he protected the dear Baby Jesus.
Sleep, Baby Jesus.
Angels sang joyously telling the shepherds that Jesus,
God's Son, had been born on the earth.
We now sing joyously telling all people that Jesus,
God's Son, has been born on the earth.
Sleep Baby, sleep Baby, sleep Baby Jesus.
Text: Brad Wilcox
Music: Janice Kapp Perry
Artist: Wilcox/Perry
Album: Music Published in the Church Magazines: Friend
Composition Date: 1994-12-01
More Info: Friend
Chrismas, Savior, Mary, lullaby, love, angels, rejoice, joyous


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Coca-cola workers in Brazil launch national campaign for better wages and working conditions30-04-2015
The divergent wages paid by the same company in different states and those of different companies in the same state raise concern among beverage workers. The Food Industry Workers' National Confederation of Brazil (CNTA Afins) held a meeting on April 15, 2015 along with other union organizations in Sao Paulo to discuss wage and working conditions in the Coca-cola Company in Brazil. On April 22, 2015 CNTA Afins announced the meeting's resolution containing a list of demands, such as the establishment of a wage floor equal to or higher than 1425 reais (around US$ 480), which is the highest salary payment for the beverage sector workers in Sao Paulo nowadays. The Coca-Cola Company in Brazil employs around 60 thousand direct workers and 600 thousand indirect workers.
Coca-Cola Amatil slashes wages with new employees to work for less17-09-2014
Hundreds of workers at Coca-Cola Amatil's warehouses around the country will cop a pay freeze and new hires will receive pay of 38 per cent less to do the same job under new pay deals that provide a stark warning of the pressure on wages across the economy.
2 weeks of nationwide warning strikes at Coca-Cola Germany to stop job cuts22-01-2013
Thousands of workers from Germany`s largest beverage company, Coca-Cola (CCE AG) organized by IUF affiliated NGG will be staging 2 weeks of warning strikes at about 60 sites of Coca-Cola in Germany against the company`s plan over restructuring, job cuts and more flexible working hours.
Tunisia: strike success in Coca-Cola Mégrine15-08-2011
Workers at the Coca-Cola factory in Mégrine, Tunisia, went on strike for two half days July 26 and 27 and won important improvements in the area of health and safety, as well as in remuneration.
Philippines: Rolling protests against new individual performance-based wage system that threatens job security, increases discrimination and removes wage bargaining rights08-07-2011
Variable salary issue resolution in Ghana06-07-2011
By Seth KWAKYE, Coca-Cola Accra
Variable salary issue resolution in Ghana06-07-2011
By Seth KWAKYE, Coca-Cola Accra


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A project involving Purdue University led to the launch of a Lake Michigan nearshore buoy that will provide boaters and beachgoers with more real-time data on lake conditions.
The environmental-sensing buoy, about four miles off the coast of Wilmette, Illinois, will relay information on wind speed, air and water temperature, wave height and direction, and other environmental characteristics from May to October each year.
The TIDAS 900 Wilmette buoy, launched in August, is a collaboration between Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, LimnoTech and Purdue. It was made possible with grant money awarded to Tomas Höök, an associate professor in Purdue's Department of Forestry and Natural Resources and Sea Grant's associate director of research.
The buoy is meant to help advance understanding of nearshore waters, alert the public to hazardous conditions in real time and improve weather forecasts. It is equipped with a webcam that enables people to see the conditions on the lake.
"This is a tremendous leap forward," said Ed Fenelon, a National Weather Service meteorologist with the Chicago office. Before this buoy, data near Chicago were limited to beach areas, very close to shore.
Data from a buoy launched in 2012 off the coast of Michigan City, Indiana, has led to adjustments in wave forecast models and boosted understanding of fisheries and nearshore dynamics.
Data from the Wilmette buoy will also be used to improve predictions of hazardous weather conditions and issue swim and small-water craft advisories.
"To accurately forecast the future, you have to have a detailed measurement of current conditions," Fenelon said. "This buoy will give us just that."
Current lake conditions will be updated every 10 minutes and be available at Sea Grant's Wilmette Buoy page. Photos and video footage is available at the LimnoTech Webcam Gallery. The mobile-friendly sites highlight conditions of particular interest to recreational users, such as wave height, wind speed and surface water temperature.
Along with graphs showing trends over recent periods, the information will tell boaters and kayakers when it's safe to be on the water and help anglers target specific species.
The Wilmette buoy was funded through the Great Lakes Observing System, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's greater Integrated Oceanic Observing System network.
Information collected from the buoys is also fed into NOAA's National Data Buoy Center operated by NOAA and the more localized Great Lakes Buoys. Forecasters, researchers and others can download raw historical data for Michigan City buoy ID 45170 or Wilmette buoy ID 45174 from any of these websites.


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They were too large, too sterile, and too indifferent to their surroundings. But the World Trade Center towers were also a reminder of what America could achieve. Conceived at the same time President Kennedy committed to putting Americans on the moon, they would become an affirmation of the value of thinking large.
Their demise on 9/11 has been deeply mourned, though not as grievously as the innocent lives lost that day. With their sleek lines and audacity to rise a quarter-mile into the sky, the towers did eventually win the adoration of most of New York and her visitors. Who among us has watched a pre-9/11 movie and not felt a stab upon seeing the New York skyline with the two iconic sentinels intact?
Like many things dreamed of in the 1960s – the Great Society, "Model Cities," a new civil rights law – the towers were beyond anything builders had ever contemplated. Each of the 110 stories in each structure was nearly an acre. The buildings married 200,000 tons of steel, 425,000 cubic yards of concrete, more than 43,000 windows, 198 miles of heating and cooling ducts, 12,000 miles of electric cables, and more than 100 elevators. Ten thousand people worked on the towers. The World Trade Center would take 10 years to realize, and when it opened in the early 1970s, it was so large it had its own ZIP Code.
In 1962, Minoru Yamasaki was selected as the architect. Few outside the project, however, knew at the time that the steel structure that made his vision possible was conceived by a relatively unknown Seattle-based engineering firm, Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson. The partner-in-charge was John Skilling, and the lead structural engineer was 34-year-old Leslie Robertson.
To Mr. Robertson, "the Trade Center was a matter of expanding the basic ideas of structure." It was to be much more.
Based on accepted engineering practice, skyscrapers had topped out in 1931 with the Empire State Building's 102 floors of sequentially diminishing floor space. Robertson was going to rewrite that limitation, with each tower providing more than twice the area contained in the Empire State Building.
The young engineer had already demonstrated an aptitude for solving challenging problems. He designed uniquely fortified foundations for a 5-mile-long bridge. He was among the first to use cross-bracing to build more efficiently. And he designed liquid-filled structural columns to fireproof exposed steel.
The largest concern in engineering the World Trade Center was the wind, an even greater force than the downward load of the buildings, explained Robertson in a recent interview. Unlike traditional skyscrapers that relied on a dense grid of columns and beams, Robertson's and Skilling's solution thoroughly reconfigured the towers' support. The two men designed a dense row of columns around the perimeter of each structure and another set of columns circumscribing the buildings' core. Long prefabricated floor trusses connected the two sets of columns.
In creating far more open floor space than in traditional skyscrapers, this structural configuration required the exterior walls to carry extraordinary weight. According to Robertson, this made them "even more robust than traditional skeletal walls to counter the lateral force of the wind."
To control the sense of movement inside (for the buildings needed to sway slightly to remain standing), his team, along with the 3M Corporation, devised and installed 11,000 unique viscoelastic dampers, i.e., structural shock absorbers.
The World Trade Center marked the first use of computer modeling to forecast how a structure would perform, leading to more precise design specifications of materials and construction. Robertson also used this technology to confirm the structures could withstand a hit by the largest plane of the time – a Boeing 707.
No one involved with the World Trade Center, however, was able to project what would happen to the jet fuel.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology's investigation of the collapse of the World Trade Center – the official government study – found "computing resources and software necessary to conduct these analyses did not exist in the 1960s." Still, NIST concluded that if the structures' fireproofing hadn't been blown off by the impact of the jets, the towers would likely have remained standing, just as Robertson said.
Since 9/11, some studies, including one issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Society of Structural Engineers, celebrated the buildings for having stood after impact for as long as they did, giving so many occupants time to exit. Engineers cited in the documentary series "NOVA" said, in the program "Why the Towers Fell," the search for efficiency may have produced structures that could have been more susceptible to progressive failure. Ten years after the disaster, the subject remains contentious and difficult to discuss dispassionately.
Prof. Robert Bea of the University of California, Berkeley – one of the country's leading forensic engineers who is heading the investigation of the Macondo oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico last year – describes Robertson's design as excellent. "One part of me as an engineer looks at that efficiency achieved and says, 'Well that's exactly what we should be doing.'
"However," he adds, "it has taken me my entire professional life to learn that anyone's structural system cannot, will not be perfect. Things will not perform as you expect them to. Things will not be built as you expect them to. The system has to have a level of protection called robustness that allows it to tolerate damage and defect."
According to Robert Prieto, chairman of the engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff, "Unless we are prepared to live in an engineered environment that resembles the complex of caves in Afghanistan, we will not design buildings to stop planes."
The loss of the World Trade Center ultimately came down to this: The hatred driving a handful of individuals exceeded the imagination, intelligence, and commitment that had led thousands of men and women to create two remarkable towers.
This is not much solace for the families of the thousands who perished on 9/11, or for Robertson. Many did come to him in the months that followed, looking for some kind of answer, which he knew he could not provide.
He remembers "the first was a young woman, perhaps 13 or 14 years old. Her brother was working on one of the high floors. We met in a park at the foot of Manhattan. The tears came as her body shook. And as we cried together, words were not required."
It may have been through embraces and tears shed with strangers that Robertson, too, partially came to terms with the incomprehensible. A career he thought was over continues to thrive, and Robertson, now an octogenarian, has gone on to design some of the world's tallest skyscrapers. Among them: the 101-story Shanghai World Financial Center, completed in 2008, and the Lotte Jamsil Tower in Seoul, currently under construction, which will be 123 stories.
In the 10 years since 9/11, America has been sorely tested by two wars, a severe recession, and staggering debt. And what of its ability to dream as it once did? Time will tell, but perhaps Robertson's own story of resilience offers a clue.


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Japanese scientist and robotics expert Hiroshi Ishiguro unveiled his latest android this weekend at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York, a futuristic conference focused on the technological singularity.
Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, Japan, has been known for developing lifelike androids, including a female used to sell clothing in a shop window, and "Telenoid," a robot designed to appear ageless and genderless so that people can project any face onto it -- a design he says has gone over well with the elderly in Denmark.
The "Geminoid" looks just like its creator, right down to the blinking of its eyes. It was controlled remotely from offstage, using a microphone to capture speech and a camera to track face and head movements.
Ishiguro told the audience that if he wasn't feeling up to delivering a speech, then the android could theoretically serve as his stand-in. He said that the Geminoid could serve as his body double for numerous engagements.
Robot "surrogacy" -- a human-controlled robot standing in for its controller -- is gaining popularity, recently as a way for sick or disabled children to attend school.
At the end of the talk, the android version of Ishiguro joked that it would give a much better presentation than its human inventor the next time.
Ishiguro's robots have been covered many times by major media, and received Best Humanoid Award four times in RoboCup. In 2007, Synectics Survey of Contemporary Genius selected him as one of the top 100 geniuses alive in the world today.
But Ishiguro is likely most famous for the Geminoid F -- "F" for female -- also known in Japan as the "love bot." The project's goal was to create a "seamless, humanoid robot," and it went over well with Japanese men.


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Search results
Naming of Ohio State center cements Lal's legacy
interest in soil, its degradation, and how to better protect it. His pioneering research on the restoration ... management practices," said Kress. Morley O. Stone, Ohio State's senior vice president for research, noted ... CFAES Rattan Lal Carbon Management and Sequestration Center (C-MASC). "Although it would be an exception ...
Chow Line: Kale can be a crunchy, healthy snack
nutrient-dense food that is high in antioxidants and rich in brain-healthy nutrients such as lutein, folate, and ... beta carotene. Research suggests leafy greens such as kale, spinach, and collards can help slow ... Environmental Sciences and its outreach and research arms, Ohio State University Extension and the Ohio ...
October 2020 Department Highlights
Ohio State's Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention received a $100,000 gift from ... Programs." - FST Post-Doctoral Researcher Ahmed Abdelhamid presented in the General Microbiology technical ... following students shared their research posters in the Developing Scientist Competition: Aaron Beczkiewicz, ...
2020 Agricultural Policy and Outlook Conference Day 3
multilateral to bilateral management of both trade and trade disputes? Add in a global pandemic that has ... goods, and services. The legalstatus of this deal and managing trade, remains an issue, but will it ... of Global Trade on our Businesses, Communities and Livelihoods" moderated by OSU Extension Educator ...
EPN Webinar- November 10, 2020: Cooperating for Sustainable Development
Richland Gro-Op cooperative approach to solving environmental, social, and economic challenges. Our goal is ... comfortable and healthy for the life of the building while doing its part to restore the environment and our ... Wittenberg University, and a Master of Science in management from Ohio Dominican University, his educational ...
OSU Dairy Outlook and Risk Management Miniseries
Topic: Dairy Risk Management Tools for Producers Speakers: Kenny Burdine- Livestock Marketing and ... Management, University of Kentucky & Christopher Zoller- Educator, OSU Extension, Tuscarawas County & ... dairy risk management tools. Each session will be no longer than one hour and include two speakers with ...
Three Part Webinar Series to Help Ohio Dairy Producers Mitigate Price and Income Risk
Risk Management in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics said "2020 ... management advice to producers because conditions and policy were changing at a pace that seemed like ... hourly". The good news is that there are risk management options available to dairy producers and the ...
OSU Dairy Outlook and Risk Management Miniseries
trade, • and dairy risk management tools. Each session will be no longer than one hour and include two ... will be presented November 24, 2020 and cover dairy risk management tools. These webinars are scheduled ... program prior to the mid-December deadline as well as explore other available price risk management tools. ...
OSU Dairy Outlook and Risk Management Miniseries
• milk pricing, • dairy fundamental outlook and trade, • and dairy risk management tools. Each session ... risk management tools. These webinars are scheduled to assist dairy producers to make informed ... explore other available price risk management tools. ...
2020 Agricultural Policy and Outlook Conference Day 4
Assistant Professor of Professional Practice in Agriculture Risk Management, will provide an outlook of row ... Agriculture's Economic Research Service, on the forecast for meat supply and demand over the next several ... global pandemic but discuss risk management strategies producers might consider as 2021 approaches. The ...


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Early voting extended in Orange County
Some voters face hours-long wait at polls
A judge has ordered Orange County to open early voting for four more hours.
The Florida Democratic Party filed lawsuits seeking to get four counties to offer more time for voting before Election Day.
The lawsuit filed in Orange County asked for additional time because an early voting site in that county was shut down for several hours while authorities investigated a suspicious package.
The judge has ordered that the Winter Park early voting site be opened for four hours on Sunday afternoon. Early voting hours will be from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at the Winter Park Library.
The party has a separate federal lawsuit seeking more early voting time in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Those counties were dealing with waits of up to six hours on Saturday, the last scheduled day of early voting.
Gov. Rick Scott refused requests this week from Democrats to extend early voting.


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Come on fellow Brits, a lot of stuff to talk about.
Like Brown's recent speech, very interested to know your thoughts on that.
We're also feeling the fall of American corporata. Thankfully not as much and our lower national debt has got us in a slightly better position to take steps.
Does Toryboy have a chance? Can the Polls really be that scary? Our Nick Clegg doesn't even know the State Pension.
<Mod Edit(SX):Stickified>


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Chivas USA adds skillful Cardozo in trade
The LA Galaxy and Chivas USA agreed to a trade, with Chivas USA sending Brazilian defender David Junior Lopes to the Galaxy in exchange for midfielder Paolo Cardozo. An experienced center back who has
played in South America and Europe, Lopes is in his second season in MLS.
He has been added to the Galaxy roster and is eligible for
selection for the club's game on Saturday night against the Portland Timbers at
The Home Depot Center.
A native of Maringá, Brazil, Lopes made his professional
debut with Clube Atlético Paranaense in 2002. Later that year, Lopes singed with
FC Porto of Portugal, who at the time were managed by Jose Mourinho. After a
short stint with Porto's B team, he returned to Brazil for a year, signing with
Iraty, before heading back to Europe in 2005 when he signed with NK Osijek of
the 1. HNL, which is the first division of Croatian soccer. Following two and a
half years with Osijek, Lopes moved to Russia, signing with FC Terek Grozny of
the Russian Premier League for the second half of the 2008 season. Lopes was on
the move again a few months later, signing with Cordoba FC of the Spanish second
division ahead of the start of the 2009-10 Spanish season. He spent one season
with Cordoba before heading to Romania, where he joined FC Universitatea Craiova of the
Romanian Liga I for the 2010-11 campaign.
The 29-year-old signed with Chivas USA on August 12,
2011 and made his debut for the club a day later as a second half substitute in
a 0-0 draw at Seattle. He went on to make eight appearances for the club,
starting each of the final seven games that he played in, including their final
five games of the regular season. This season, Lopes was in the 18-man squad for
two of Chivas USA's five games, but did not make a first team
Cardozo, the Galaxy's first round draft pick in the 2011
MLS SuperDraft (16th overall), appeared in 18 regular season games during his
time with the Galaxy. He made his MLS debut as a second half substitute during
the club's home opener last season, a 1-1 draw with New England. In addition to
playing in 17 regular season games for LA last year, Cardozo also played three
games in the CONCACAF Champions League and two in the U.S. Open Cup, as well as
friendlies against Real Madrid and Manchester City. Cardozo's only appearance
for the Galaxy this season came in the 3-1 home loss to New England on March 31.
He started and played 71 minutes in that game in midfield before being replaced
by Chad Barrett.


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Call 1-877-877-4494 for any questions about this RV Floor Plan.
Make your grand RV designs a reality — build your own customized Canyon Cat 26RLC on our web site!
Call RVWholesalers.com at 877-877-4494 to talk to a RV Consultant about purchasing this trailer. There is no need to pay more for a New Canyon Cat 26RLC when you can purchase the same trailer from RV Wholesalers, The Largest Palomino Dealer selling at deep discounts.


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Nova73 compact
The little big router.
A large capacity for major tasks into 7RU.
A smaller version of the Nova73 HD, it convinces with its versatile performance spectrum, absolute service-friendliness and uncomplicated operation. All this despite its modest space requirements and attractive price. Compact in every respect.
Push-button performance.
Less space, lower costs, but a broad performance spectrum nonetheless. The newly developed Nova73 compact uses the same interface cards and offers the same redundancy as theNova73HD and the mc² series, but takes up only 7 RU in the rack. No less convincing than its performance is its handling simplicity - especially in day-to-day operation. As the youngest member of the Lawo family, the Nova73 compact features cutting-edge technology and can be used either as a stand-alone router or in combination with mixing consoles from the mc² series.
Simple yet versatile.
Up to ten I/O slots can be armed with MADI, ATM or RAVENNA interface cards. Alternatively, the same slots can be assigned to two AES 3 cards. These in turn can make up to 64 AES channels directly available to the Nova73 compact. Better still, in combination with an mc² series mixing console, a Nova73 compact fully equipped with five DSP cards puts over 600 DSP channelsat your disposal.
Small but Lawo.
A high degree of redundancy is a feature of all Lawo systems and one of their great advantages. The Nova73 compact is no exception, with a redundant power supply fitted as standard and the option of adding a further redundant router module.
Flexible and secure.
For its interface technology, the Nova73 compact relies on the tried-and-tested DALLIS I/O system with its wide variety of interfaces. DALLIS offers you an extensive choice of interface cards for your breakout boxes. The sheer diversity of these interface cards guarantees flexibility, allowing the modular system to integrate not only every conceivable type of audio signal but also everything from GPIO to control data (RS-422) as well as special SDI and intercom cards.
The highlights
- 5120 x 5120 routing capacity (mono channels)
- Up to 600 fully equipped DSP channels in Broadcast Mode
- 10 slots for I/O and DSP modules (RAVENNA, MADI, ATM, AES, DSP)
- Integrated AES3 connections via D-Sub (DB-25)
- 19" / 7RU installation frame
- Redundant implementation of router and power supply
- Full card and port redundancy
- Operates as a stand-alone router or a core for mixing consoles of the mc² series
Serial individuality.
Tailor-made solutions for large audio distribution systems.
High availability and reliability, great scalability and flexibility: Networks of Lawo Nova routers enable efficient installation and operation of very large routing systems which are geographically far away from one another. By networking Lawo matrices, a nearly unlimited scalability can be achieved. Another benefit: The Nova network allows direct usage of public networks.
The most important highlights of networked Nova systems.
With Lawo you benefit from having a partner who understands your requirements to their very core. And who provides you with a comprehensive service for solutions from one source and a technology which also meets the highest of demands. That, for instance, means: thanks to networking matrixes, a nearly unlimited scalability can be achieved. Whether it is an entire radio station or temporary distribution system at a football world cup - your routing system can be adapted to your growing demands and is perfectly equipped for the tasks of the years ahead – an important point, also with regard to value retention and investment security.
Performance features
- Configurable without interruption of operation
- Integrated signal processing
- Mono routing
- Transparent transfer (Dolby-E compatible)
- Clock-synchronised switching
- 96kHz enabled
- Operating voltage 85 V to 265 V AC, 47 Hz to 63 Hz
- 19" / 7RU mounting frame
- Dual-star backplane (STAR² architecture)
- 2 slots for central modules
- 10 slots for I/O modules
- Active ventilation, temperature surveillance
- Integrated power supply 85...265 V AC / 47...63 Hz
- Active modules are hot-pluggable and accessible from the front
- Weight: 14,5 kg (incl. red. PSU)
Router 5120x5120 mono
I/O modules for RAVENNA, MADI, SDH/STM-1 and AES3 (max. AES 64 I/O)
DALLIS I/O system for decentralised structures and further interfaces
DALLIS breakout boxes for decentralized structures and additional interfaces
- Analogue Mic/Line (transformer or electronically balanced)
- Headphones (incl. VCA interface)
- RAVENNA AoIP
- 3G/HD/SD SDI (embedded audio) with SRC
- ADAT® mit SRC
- Data transfer via RS422, RS232, MIDI
- GPI (Opto-couplers, relays, VCA)
- IP-Codec
Transparent transmission (Dolby® E compatible)
- Sampling rates 48/44.1 kHz and 96/88.2 kHz
Possible clock sources: Wordclock, RAVENNA, AES3, Video, MADI or ATM/SDH
- Additional internal generator
Clock output with current system clock
Complies with AES11 Grade 2
Integrated signal processing
Integrated signal processing (DSP) with Gain/Phase, Balance, Mono Mixing and Silence Detect. Optionally also with:
- EQ (parametric or graphic)
- Dynamic units (Gate, AGC, Compressor, Limiter)
- Delay (up to 10s)
- Summing matrix (64 x 64 channels)
- Timed faders
- Signal monitoring
- Control and configuration software included
- Comprehensive control protocol Remote MNOPL (TCP/IP)
- Integrated web server and SNMP for system diagnosis
- Remote maintenance via VPN (ISDN available as option)
- Redundant router card
- Redundant I/O modules (configurable)
- Double ports (depending on module)
- Redundant link with the I/O-system DALLIS
- Phase-redundant power supply
- DSHS topology possible
RAVENNA Support.
RAVENNA brings IP to your router. Read more about the RAVENNA slot-in cards here.


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How can a textile function as a digital object? This is a central question of Infinite Weft, a project that I've been working on for a the last few months. The project is a collaboration with my mother, Diane Thorp, who has been weaving for almost 40 years – it's a chance for me to combine my usually screen-based digital practice with her extraordinary hand-woven work. It's also an exploration of mathematics, computational history, and the concept of pattern.
Most of us probably know that the loom played a part in the early days of computing – the Jacquard loom was the first machine to use punch cards, and its workings were very influential in the early design of programmable machines (In my 1980s basement this history was actually physically embodied; sitting about 10 feet away from my mother's two floor looms, on an Ikea bookself, sat a box of IBM punch cards that we mostly used to make paper airplanes out of). But how many of us know how a loom actually works? Though I have watched my mother weave many times, it didn't take long at the start of this project to realize that I had no real idea how the binary weaving patterns called 'drawdowns' ended up making a pattern in a textile.
To teach myself how this process actually happened, I built a functional software loom, where I could see the pattern manifest itself in the warp and weft (if you have Chrome you can see it in action here – better documentation is coming soon). This gave me a kind of sandbox which let me see how typical weaving patterns were constructed, and what kind of problems I could expect when I started to write my own. And run into problems, I did. My first attempts at generating patterns were sloppy and boring (at best) and the generative methods I was applying weren't very successful. Enter Ralph E. Griswold.
Ralph Griswold was a pioneering computer scientist, best known for developing the string programming language SNOBOL. He spent a decade at Bell Labs, studying non-numerical computation, and went on to become Regents' Professor at the University of Arizona. After this illustrious career in computing, he shifted his attention to the mathematics of weaving. Mr. Griswold died in 2006, but he left behind a huge archive of resources for weavers and curious learners, including academic papers on pattern generation using cellular automata.
The first successful pattern possibilities for Infinite Weft came from applying and modifying the techniques in the paper. I built a simple interface in which I could advance the automata generation by generation, and switch between a set of very simple rules (courtesy of John von Neumann). Here's what a sample pattern generated from these von Neumann automata looks like on the software loom:
And here's a sample, woven on a table loom with black & white yarn to make the pattern clear:
While these techniques produce fairly satisfactory results, the automata themselves tended to repeat after not too many generations – while you can alternate between rules, and start with different 'seed' patterns, and adjust the threading of the loom to get a variety of finished patterns, the systems themselves would inevitably repeat. What about a truly infinite weft?
As it turns out, there are some cellular automata that are non-repeating. Given any generation N, the result of the next generation, N+1, can't be predicted from the outcomes that have happened before. Could I apply such an automata to generate an infinite 'pattern'? Well, I gave it a try, and the results look promising. Here is a look at a pattern generated using Wolfram's Rule 30, a (quite possibly) universal cellular automaton:
And a similar pattern, hand-woven by my mother:
Now we get into some pretty interesting conceptual territory. In theory, a long enough stretch of this woven textile would be Turing-complete – a computable fabric. Embedded somewhere in the pattern would be instructions to solve any conceivable problem. Past the math, this system also lets us challenge what we think of as a pattern, in a fabric context (after all, this pattern has really no pattern at all).
This project is still very much a work in progress – this blog post is a peak into the process and chance to get some of my thoughts into writing. The next obvious step is to finalize work on the pattern generation, and get some large-scale textile woven from my mother's 'real loom', which is a 16-harness floor loom (for this we're going to need a computerized dobby head, which is a bit of an investment). I would also love to see other weavers outputting sections of this 'infinite' weft – please get in touch if you have a loom and would like to try weaving a section.
Source code for Infinite Weft is available in a public GitHub repository here.
And, as always, please don't hesitate to leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions.


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The Cross & the Pen: "Jesus Wept"
- Eva Marie Everson Contributing Writer
- 2004 8 Apr
Several years ago I asked the Lord to reveal His heart to me. That's a bit of a scary request, I know…but I was sincere. Several things took place immediately thereafter, including my being introduced to a four-tape film set titled "The Gospel According to Matthew." In it, actor Bruce Marchiano – who plays Jesus – showed viewers a side to the Messiah as we'd never witnessed before.
Dubbed "the smiling Jesus," Bruce's performance was widely acclaimed. Personally I didn't care what the rest of the world thought. What mattered to me was that my view of Jesus changed. Jesus…bursting into laughter. Jesus …teaching by using a few playful shenanigans to make His point. Jesus…weeping for those who could not see who He was…and is…and shall always be.
Well, I can't tell you how excited I was when Bruce Marchiano's newest book (after "Matthew" he went on to be a best-selling author), "Jesus Wept" (Howard Publishing) landed on my desk. I set up a time for us to chat about his writing, his screen work, and about…Jesus!
Wanna listen in?
Eva: There were two or three things in the movie that touched me more than the rest. The first is when you, as Jesus, looked at young Matthew and without saying any words, said, "Follow me." The second was at the end when you repeat the words, "Lo I will be with you always, even to the end of the age. ..." I actually began to weep.
Bruce: Oh, that can hurt a guy. One look at my face, huh? (Laughing)
Eva: No, no, no. That's not what I mean. (Laughing with him.)
Bruce: I'm just joking with you. ...
Eva: I know. (More laughter) Okay, the third thing was at the very, very end of the video when you are walking toward the Sea of Galilee. You turn around … wonderful music is swelling behind you. ...
Bruce: That was good music.
Eva: ... and you are laughing ... and you say something. Now, Bruce this will be the most important question I ask in this interview. ...
Bruce: (Teasing in his voice) What am I saying?
Eva: What are you saying?
Bruce: (More teasing) I never answer that question and I never will. (Bela Lugosi laughter) I'm so mean! Actually, I don't remember what I said.
Eva: Really!
Bruce: Yeah…to be honest. I've been asked that about a million times, and I really don't know what I said. I'm sorry to say, it had nothing to do with ... it wasn't spiritual. The director played a game with me. He just let the camera roll, and I was running out of space to walk so I turned around and said something like "Stop playing games with me." He was very clever because he wanted to get that second smile. But, I could feel the moment. I could feel the wind blowing ... and the joy of it all.
Eva: Well, let's talk about your latest book, "Jesus Wept."
Bruce: Mmmm ...
Eva: Bruce, I remember where I was when each one of my books was conceived or someone brought the idea to me. What birthed the concept for "Jesus Wept?"
Bruce: 9/11. It wasn't immediately thereafter ... it was toward the end of 2001. But what really spawned the whole thing was the post 9/11 judgmental rhetoric. I was horrified at people being told God is punishing us and this is what we get for allowing homosexuality. I was just horrified by what I call self-righteous ... I don't even know what you call it. If there's one thing ... you know, Jesus was really cool two thousand years ago. Are you recording this or just writing notes?
Eva: I'm recording this.
Bruce: Okay, you can write that down: Jesus was really cool two thousand years ago. The one thing that He railed about was self-righteous hypocrisy. There's nothing more self-righteous than a sinner saved by grace saying, "God is judging YOU. YOU'RE the problem and I'm not." Here's the world at its most vulnerable ... they need Jesus. Here's a gaping door to reach them because their hearts have been rendered raw and instead they get slapped with their mistakes. Completely the opposite of the heart of God. ...
Eva: Absolutely!
Bruce: And I thought: people just need to know the heart of God in these moments of human pain and struggle.
Eva: As I said earlier, for millions of people your portrayal of Jesus brought Him into a new light. I know for myself and I've heard others say that because of that we begin to see Him as one who embraced a full body of experiences and emotions. Have you ever wondered what His favorite food might have been?
Bruce: Undoubtedly ice cream and chocolate cake. No two ways about it.
Eva: (Laughing) I have a theory that along the way He stopped and said, "What I wouldn't give for a Mallomar ... sadly they haven't been invented yet. ..."
Bruce: Yeah ... yeah ... chocolate chip cookies dipped in melted ice cream. That would have been His favorite.
Eva: Absolutely His favorite. (Sobering) What is it about the character of Jesus that allows Him to weep with us?
Bruce: You know, that's really who He is. A minute ago you said something like, "God has a heart for people." And, my thought is that God is a heart for His people. If you look through history, it's God's heart bleeding for His people. That's the entire Bible in a nutshell. God doing everything He can to woo His people and His heart bleeding for their pain. The irony about it is that if there is anything unknown about Him, it's that right there.
Eva: I think so.
Bruce: If there's anything we've done through religion, it's that we've surgically removed the heart from God.
Eva: When did it occur to you that when we weep, Jesus weeps with us?
Bruce: In making "Matthew," I had to invest my life in an understanding of Him. What an actor does is he tries to understand the heart of the person he's playing. I sought His heart instead of me always telling Him about mine, which He knows about it anyway. So I began this search for what is inside of His heart. I was blown away. There was one day in particular on the set ... without going into the details ... I gained a cutting edge understanding of the compassion and His heartbreak for lost people. When I say lost, there are people who are lost eternally and those who are born again but still fumbling around.
Eva: Was this the scene, "Woe to you Bethsaida?"
Bruce: Exactly ... yeah! That's when I learned that God weeps for people's pain.
Eva: It was interesting to me when I read [in "In the Footsteps of Jesus"] about the day you shot that scene because I'd had my own experience while at the ruins of Bethsaida during my trip to Israel. I actually thought I heard someone calling His name ... but instead of Jesus, I heard "Yeshua!" It was there that I realized that in His time and by His people, He was called Yeshua. I got so excited because that was a part of Him I hadn't caught hold of yet.
Bruce: Yeah, you've got to grip those little things.
Eva: One of the things I thought of while reading "Jesus Wept," was that as He stood before the grave of Lazarus ... and weeps ... He then said, "Father, I thank you. ..."
Bruce: That's interesting because I'm working on a new book right now called "The Character of a Man." It's really a look at Jesus as a role model of masculinity. One whole chapter is on His humility. I end the chapter with that as a climatic story, that here is the Son of the Living God and in terms of who He is ... and His life ... He's sleeping in the bushes ... (laughs) ... and He continually says "Thanks." I mean, He was continually going through hell ... not just on the cross, but every day of His life ... and here He is in the middle of human tragedy in a situation where we tend to raise our fists against God and He's just thankful as a man. We look at a scripture like that and we tend to see it as Him saying "grace," but it's not. It's Him literally giving thanks.
Eva: Amen.
Bruce: It's beyond understanding. It's so shockingly breathtaking to understand ... yeah. ...
Eva: Well, Brave Soul, you address an age-old issue in "Jesus Wept." "If it hurts God when we hurt, why does He allow terrible things to happen?"
Bruce: Because there's one thing He just doesn't interfere with ... and I'm sure it comes out of His love and respect for us ... and that's human will.
Eva: Right. One of my favorite lines from your book ... and I'm paraphrasing it just a bit .... is "what a terrible price is paid for the privilege of making choices."
Bruce: Yeah, it's just beyond ... I liken it to a dad and a mom with a teenage kid. ...
Eva: (Laughing) Been there, done that. ...
Bruce: Yeah, well, I haven't (Laughs, too.), but you can sit there and beg your child to make good choices, but ultimately they make their own choices. And there's a consequence to that choice. A good parent does the same thing as God ... no controlling the choices.
Eva: The one thing He can't control is our will.
Bruce: Exactly. And, you know, there is the enemy's greatest trick ... when God gets blamed for what we do. But God won't interfere. He has that much love for us ... that much respect for us. ...
Eva: You ask a question that many Jews in Jesus' day surely asked and many Christians and Jews continue to ask today. What kind of person could this Jesus be?
Bruce: How do you nutshell that in a phrase? Jesus was human selflessness to the nth degree. Here's a man who has all the resources in the universe and He does one thing with it every day: He gives it away. That's shocking. That's such shocking, contrary to human nature behavior. What a bar raised in front of people's own self. It's a shock to the human conscience. It would be like Bill Gates giving everything away and taking a job in a car wash. People would say, "What kind of a guy would make that kind of choice." Multiply that a billion times and you've got Jesus. He's the only guy that has any rights to everything and He's the only guy who doesn't assert His rights to anything. He's so shocking! Even in the face of people spitting in His face, He smiles and says, "I love you."
Eva: It always blew my mind is that the first words recorded from the cross were, "Father forgive them."
Bruce: It's beyond comprehension.
Eva: It is! So many times I hear people say, "I'm not apologizing first." And, I think, but there hangs Jesus. ...
Bruce: And He just keeps giving. It's so contrary to human nature. It must have just baffled them.
Eva: Wow! He must have been God!
Bruce: Yeah! Baffled the people.
Eva: Bruce, will you pray for those who are weeping.
Bruce: Lord, we thank you so much; we thank you for your heart. If there's one thing people don't know it's your heart. They know your activities and all the clichés, but they don't know your heart. Lord, as much as Eva Marie and I know ... we don't even know anything. So, Lord God, we submit ourselves and others that they will know your heart, Lord God. People who are in pain ... the answer to that is your words, "come to me ... come to me." We ask you Lord that by the goodness of your Holy Spirit you will draw all men to you ... that you will use every bit of pain, Lord God, that you would draw people to you, Lord God. We lay this article at your feet, that people in pain will find it ... and that people in pain will find you. We give you our lives, Lord God, that you would be glorified. In your precious, name, Jesus. Amen.
For more information about Bruce Marchiano's ministry, click here.
Award-winning national speaker, Eva Marie Everson's work includes "Intimate Moments with God and Intimate Encounters with God" (Cook). She is the author of "Shadow of Dreams," "Summon the Shadows" and "Shadow of Light." (Barbour Fiction) She can be contacted for comments or for speaking engagement bookings at www.EvaMarieEverson.com


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Digital Extremes supplied the scripts, the rough storyboards, the environments, and the characters to 3D Brigade, whose task was to create top-notch quality, engine ready, in-game cut scene movies which included camera placements/movements, movie direction, and character/facial animations (80% of these were made using motion capture technology and the remaining are key-frame animations.) The end results were nine amazing, engine-ready scenes, amounting to a total of 15 minutes.
These incredible cut scenes were made by a team of 9 animators and led by Balazs Kalazdi, 3D Brigade's industry veteran Animation Director. Using Softimage XSI for the work and 3D Brigade's own optical motion capture studio to record the motion data, the Budapest-based art outsourcer worked closely with London, Ontario, Canada-based Digital Extremes for 5 months. The company was able to conform to Dark Sector's unique vision and help smooth the sequences integration into the game's proprietary next-gen technology, Digital Extremes' Evolution Engine.
One of the major cinematic tasks was to give personality to the characters. The third cut scene by 3D Brigade, where the game's hero, Hayden Tenno, kills an important character was so successful in this, that the style and characterization of this movie became a quality benchmark for all the other cut scenes. This movie demonstrated that 3D Brigade was able to grasp the client's creative vision and match their AAA quality requirements.
"The 3D Brigade team was fantastic to work with. They understood our vision and requirement for top quality work and they delivered," said Sheldon Carter, producer at Digital Extremes. "They went above and beyond to make sure we were happy with the end product and you can see the end result in the slick high-production look of Dark Sector."
"The task to create world-class, AAA cut scenes for one of the key titles of 2008 gave us incredible experience in the field of real time movies," said John Z. Vamosi, chairman of 3D Brigade. "For the most part, Digital Extremes gave us complete freedom regarding our work because they were very pleased with the results. Frankly, it's hard to imagine a more mutually satisfying cooperation."
A dark, gritty experience packed with fast action, incredible superpowers, and an engaging story, Dark Sector represents the next evolution of interactive action. Dark Sector thrusts players into the role of Hayden Tenno, a covert operative sent on a dangerous mission into Lasria, an Eastern European city on the brink of ruin that hides a deadly Cold War secret. In the midst of this mission, Hayden is attacked by an unknown enemy and infected by the Technocyte Virus, a brutal bio-weapon that twists its victims into mindless killing machines. Surviving this attack, Hayden finds that the Technocyte virus has granted him powerful inhuman abilities, unlike anything he has ever seen. Now, he must evolve along with his powers, survive, and become a hero. The 7 cut scenes, all integrated into and played back from within Digital Extremes' powerful Evolution Engine, tell this story with stark clarity and high-octane action.
About Digital Extremes
Founded in 1993 by industry visionary, James Schmalz, Digital Extremes ranks as one of the world's top independent development studios in the interactive entertainment industry. The Canadian based developer is best known for its co-creation of Epic Games' Unreal, the multi-million unit selling franchise which includes the award-winning PC series Unreal and Unreal Tournament as well as Xbox hit Unreal Championship. Digital Extremes recently shipped the highly acclaimed next-generation 3rd person action title, Dark Sector using its proprietary next-gen technology, the Evolution Engine. For more information, visit the company website at www.digitalextremes.com.
About 3D Brigade
Established in 2002 and located in Budapest, Hungary (EU), 3D Brigade is Eastern-Europe's leading 3D art outsourcing studio. The company is an official vendor of Electronic Arts, Disney Interactive Studios, Vivendi Universal Games, Eidos, Atari, Liquid Entertainment, Digital Extremes, Konami, and many more. 3D Brigade offers a competitively priced solution to deliver any kind of art content for digital entertainment products from concept art to 3D modeling and texturing to render movies.
3D Brigade also owns a Vicon-8 optical motion capture system equipped studio.
The company's more than 90 highly skilled, full-time artists contributed to over 60 different game titles. Some of the key projects from our past include Silent Hill: Origins for Konami, Dark Sector for Digital Extremes, Heroes of Might and Magic V for Ubisoft, The Witcher for CD Projekt RED, Sacred 2 Fallen Angel for Ascaron, F.E.A.R. - Extraction Point for Timegate Studios, and Desperados 2: Cooper's Revenge for Atari/Spellbound.
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Dear Senators McCaskill & Blunt: Fuggetaboutit!Written by Frank N. Wilner, Capitol Hill Contributing Editor
With major passenger railroad stations in Kansas City and St. Louis, what's with these two introducing legislation to place the name of Missouri's favorite son, the former haberdasher turned senator, vice president, and then president, Harry Truman, on Washington's Union Station? Their Missouri counterparts in the House have become fellow travelers in this unfortunate legislative exertion.
Isn't it enough that Truman has two Missouri court houses, hundreds of public schools across the nation, and a bar area at the National Press Club bearing his name? This is the same Truman who, in 1946, wrote the editor of the Independence Examiner newspaper, "I have no desire to have roads, bridges, or buildings named after me."
As McCaskill and Blunt are from the "Show Me" state, perhaps if one showed them the letter they might yank the bill from the legislative hopper. Think again. Washington Post columnist John Kelly reported on the letter June 14. The bill remains on the legislative calendar.
Perhaps McCaskill and Blunt assume Truman changed his mind about having buildings bear his name. After all, Truman, in 1950, responded to a negative review of his daughter Margaret's singing performance at Constitution Hall by writing Washington Post music critic Paul Hume, "Someday, I hope to meet you. When that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!" In that case, Truman changed his mind. Good move.
Or maybe McCaskill and Blunt simply want tourists from Missouri to find Truman's name on something of substance in Washington, D.C. That's understandable. Yet columnist Kelly also pointed out that the main State Department Building, in a section of town known appropriately as Foggy Bottom, bears Truman's name.
So, possibly, McCaskill and Blunt are seeking to right a slight. Where Eisenhower, who succeeded Truman in the White House, has an entire Interstate Highway System named after him, as well as the impressive Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, Truman's name adorns a dinky two-lane bowling alley in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. That surely could be seen as a slight. But, hey, ain't no tourists from Missouri going to gain entry to that fortified structure, much less wander about to find a bowling alley used by senior administration appointees whom those tourists think actually work while collecting their tax-funded paychecks.
I'll give you that Truman parked his presidential railcar at Union Station, as if it could have been garaged at the White House, instead. (Note to younger readers: Once upon a time, politicians traveled almost exclusively by railcar.) And, yes, while on so-called whistle stop political campaign jaunts, Truman was known to ride in the locomotive and blow the whistle. Still, Richard Nixon wrote in his biography that, as a boy, he wanted to grow up to be a locomotive engineer. We don't hear of California's two senators wanting to name Union Station after Nixon.
More to the point, the Senate would have—and we quote Ricky Ricardo here—some 'splainin to do should they vote in favor of "Harry S. Truman Union Station."
Democrat McCaskill should take note that her supporters in rail labor might not be too enamored, as it was Truman, in May 1946, who said to a joint session of Congress, "I request the Congress immediately to authorize the president to draft into the armed forces of the United States all [rail] workers who are on strike."
Republican Blunt should take note that his supporters in rail management might not be too enamored, as it was Senator Harry Truman who told the Senate on June 16, 1938, "Rail management can only see straight down the right-of-way as it was laid out in 1890, and all the help is of the same frame of mind. What the rails need is some young blood with imagination."
Imagine a bronze plaque informing travelers and visitors that the Harry S. Truman Union Station is named after the U.S. president who sought to draft striking workers into the Army and who considered the nation's rail chiefs quite a narrow-minded bunch. Egad. Naming the station after Truman would require some scrubbing of history. Do we do that in America?
Let's get serious for a moment. If Washington's Union Station is to receive a human name, aren't there others with a more creditable nexus?
Although a statue of A. Philip Randolph resides in the station, a more fitting honor for the man who led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, helped organize the March on Washington at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, and who is credited with pressuring President Truman to desegregate the armed forces, would be having Union Station bear Randolph's name.
And how about W. Graham Claytor Jr., a World War II naval hero, the former president of Southern Railway, secretary of the Navy and, most formidably—with regard to Union Station—the Amtrak president most responsible for earning Amtrak political support and credibility during the anti-Amtrak presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush? A bust of Claytor resides at the station, and its main concourse is named in his honor, but few would dispute his deserving the greater honor of having the station bear his name.
Enough. A poll would elicit other deserving names. While there is no shortage of reasons to revere Harry Truman, adorning Washington's Union Station with his name is not apposite.
Seeing that S. 2308 has but two sponsors other than McCaskill and Blunt; that a subsequently introduced companion measure, H.R. 4638, in the 435-member House, has but 10 vote-eligible sponsors, including eight Missouri representatives; and that no hearings are scheduled for either bill, this Missouri-lawmaker-led effort may be about nothing more than making Missouri voters, in this election year, feel good about their elected politicians. Indeed, for virtually any congressional lawmaker these days, making voters feel good about them is an arduous challenge.
"Give 'Em Hell Harry" would understand, we think. But let's let the buck—whoops, bills—stop here and rightly vanish into the dust bin of history.
Oh, by the way, Mr. Randolph's home state is Florida; and Mr. Claytor's birthplace is Roanoke, Va.—just in case someone cares to catch the ears of the senators from those states: Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Marco Rubio from Florida, and Democrats Tim Kaine and Mark Warner from Virginia.