text:
Sebastian Thrun is sitting in the passenger seat of a 2004 Volkswagen Touareg that's trying to kill him.
The car hurtles down a rutted dirt road at 35 miles per hour somewhere in the Mojave Desert, bucking and swerving, kicking up a cloud of dust. Thrun, the youngest person ever to head Stanford's famed artificial intelligence laboratory, clings to an armrest. Mike Montemerlo, a speed-coding computer programmer and postdoc, is wedged in the backseat amid a tangle of wires and cables.
No one is driving. Or more precisely, the Touareg is trying to drive itself. But despite 635 pounds of gear - roof-mounted radar, laser range finders, video cameras, a seven-processor shock-mounted computer - the car is doing a lousy job. Thrun tightens his grip on the armrest. He's built plenty of robots, but he's never entrusted his life to one of his creations. He's scared, confused, and above all furious that his algorithms are failing.
Suddenly the steering wheel spins itself hard to the left and the car speeds toward a ditch. David Stavens, a programmer who is stationed in the driver's seat in case of emergency, grabs the wheel and fights the pull of the robotic autopilot, which is insisting on a plunge into the gulley. Stavens slams his foot down on the computer-controlled brake. Thrun hits the big red button on the console that disables the vehicle's navigation computers. The SUV skids to a halt. "Hey, that was exciting," Thrun says, trying to sound upbeat.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. In 2003, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency offered $1 million to anyone who could build a self-driving vehicle capable of navigating 300 miles of desert. Dubbed the Grand Challenge, the robot-vehicle race was hyped for months. It was going to be as important as the 1997 Kasparov-Deep Blue chess match. But on race day in March 2004, the cars performed like frightened animals. One veered off the road to avoid a shadow. The largest vehicle - a 15-ton truck - mistook small bushes for enormous boulders and slowly backed away. The favorite was a CMU team that, fueled by multimillion-dollar military grants, had been working on unmanned vehicles for two decades. Its car went 7.4 miles, hit a berm, and caught fire. Not a single car finished.
Back at Stanford, Thrun logged on to check the progress of the race and couldn't believe what he was seeing. It was a humiliation for the entire field of robotics - a field Thrun was now at the center of. Only a year before, he'd been named head of Stanford's AI program. In the quiet halls of the university's Gates Computer Science Building, the suntanned 36-year-old German was a whirlwind of excitement, ideas, and brightly colored shirts. He was determined to show what intelligent machines could contribute to society. And though he had never considered building a self-driving car before, the sorry results of the first Grand Challenge inspired him to give it a try.
He assembled a first-rate team of researchers, attracted the attention of Volkswagen's Palo Alto R&D team, and charged ahead. But here in the desert, he's facing the reality that the Touareg - dubbed Stanley, a nod to Stanford - is totally inadequate. With only three months to go before the second Grand Challenge, he realizes that some basic problems remain unsolved.
Thrun gets out to kick the dirt on the side of the road and think. While the car idles, he squints at the uneven terrain ahead. This was his chance to lead the way toward his vision of the new vehicular order. But for now, all he sees is mountains, sagebrush, and sky.
It started with a black-and-white videogame in 1979. Thrun, then 12, was spending most of his free time at a local pub in Hannover, Germany. The place had one of the first coin-operated videogames in town, and 20 pfennig bought him three lives driving at high speed through a stark landscape of oil slicks and oncoming cars. It was thrilling - and much too expensive. For weeks, Thrun scrutinized the graphics and then decided that he could re-create the game on his Northstar Horizon, a primitive home computer that his father, a chemical engineer, had bought for him. He shut himself in his room and devoted his young life to coding the Northstar. It ran at 4 MHz and had only 16 Kbytes of RAM, but somehow he coaxed a driving game out of the machine.
Though he didn't study or do much homework over the next seven years, Thrun ended up graduating near the top of his high school class. He wasn't sure what was next. He figured he'd think about it during his mandatory two-year stint in the German army. But on Juneé15, 1986 - the last day to apply for university admissions - military authorities told him he wouldn't be needed that year. Two hours later, he arrived at the centralized admission headquarters in Dortmund with only 20 minutes to file his application. The woman behind the counter asked him what he wanted to study - in Germany, students declare a major before arriving on campus. He looked down the list of options: law, medicine, engineering, and computer science. Though he didn't know much about computer science, he had fond memories of programming his Northstar. "Why not?" he thought, and decided his future by checking the box next to computer science.
Within five years, he was a rising star in the field. After posting perfect scores on his final undergraduate exams, he went on to graduate school at the University of Bonn, where he wrote a paper showing for the first time how a robotic cart, in motion, could balance a pole. It revealed an instinct for creating robots that taught themselves. He went on to code a bot that mapped obstacles in a nursing home and then alerted its elderly user to dangers. He programmed robots that slithered into abandoned mines and came back hours later with detailed maps of the interior. Roboticists in the US began to take note.Carnegie Mellon offered the 31-year-old a faculty position and then gave him an endowed chair. But he still hadn't found a research area to focus all his energy and skills on.
While Thrun was settling in at CMU, the hot topic in robotics was self-driving cars. The field was led by Ernst Dickmanns, a professor of aerospace technology at the University of the Bundeswehr. He liked to point out that planes had been flying themselves since the 1970s. The public was clearly willing to accept being flown by autopilot, but nobody had tried the same on the ground. Dickmanns decided to do something about that.
With help from the German military and Daimler-Benz, he spent seven years retrofitting a boxy Mercedes van, equipping it with video cameras and a bunch of early Intel processors. On a Daimler-Benz test track in December 1986, the driverless van accelerated to 20 miles per hour and, using data supplied by the videocams, successfully stayed on a curving road. Though generally forgotten, this was the Kitty Hawk moment of autonomous driving.
It sparked a 10-year international dash to develop self-driving cars that could navigate city streets and freeways. In the US, engineers at Carnegie Mellon led the charge with funding from the Army. On both sides of the Atlantic, the approach involved a data-intensive classification approach, a so-called rule-based system. The researchers assembled a list of easily identifiable objects (solid white lines, dotted white lines, trees, boulders) and told the car what to do when it encountered them. Before long, though, two main problems emerged. First, processing power was anemic, so the vehicle's computer quickly became overwhelmed when confronted with too much data (a boulder beside a tree, for instance). The car would slow to a crawl while trying to apply all the rules. Second, the team couldn't code for every combination of conditions. The real world of streets, intersections, alleys, and highways was too complex.
In 1991, a CMU computer science PhD student named Dean Pomerleau had a critical insight. The best way to teach cars to drive, he suspected, was to have them learn from the experts: humans. He got behind the wheel of CMU's sensor-covered, self-driving Humvee, flipped on all the computers, and ran a program that tracked his reactions as he sped down a freeway in Pittsburgh. In minutes, the computers had developed algorithms that codified Pomerleau's driving decisions. He then let the Humvee take over. It calmly maneuvered itself on Pittsburgh's interstates at 55 miles per hour.
Everything worked perfectly until Pomerleau got to a bridge. The Humvee swerved dangerously, and he was forced to grab the wheel. It took him weeks of analyzing the data to figure out what had gone wrong: When he was "teaching" the car to drive, he had been on roads with grass alongside them. The computer had determined that this was among the most important factors in staying on the road: Keep the grass at a certain distance and all will be well. When the grass suddenly disappeared, the computer panicked.
It was a fundamental problem. In the mid-'90s, microchips weren't fast enough to process all the potential options, especially not at 55 miles per hour. In 1996, Dickmanns proclaimed that real-world autonomous driving could "only be realized with the increase in computer performance … With Moore's law still valid, this means a time period of more than one decade." He was right, and everyone knew it. Research funding dried up, programs shut down, and autonomous driving receded back to the future.
Eight years later, when Darpa held its first Grand Challenge, processors had in fact become 25 times faster, outpacing Moore's law. Highly accurate GPS instruments had also become widely available. Laser sensors were more reliable and less expensive. Most of the conditions Dickmanns had said were necessary had been met or exceeded. More than 100 contestants signed up, including a resurgent CMU squad. Darpa officials couldn't hide their excitement. The breakthrough moment in autonomous driving was, they thought, at hand. In truth, some of the field's biggest challenges had yet to be overcome.
Once Thrun decided to take a crack at the second Grand Challenge, he found himself consumed by the project. It was as though he were 12 again, shut up in his room, coding driving games. But this time a Northstar home computer wasn't going to cut it. He needed serious hardware and a sturdy vehicle.
That's when he got a call from Cedric Dupont, a scientist at Volkswagen's Electronics Research Laboratory, just a few miles from the Stanford campus. The Volkswagen researchers wanted in on the Grand Challenge. They'd heard that Thrun was planning to enter the event, and they offered him three Touaregs - one to race, another as a backup, and a third for spare parts. The VW lab would outfit them with steering, acceleration, and braking control systems custom-built to link to Thrun's computers. Thrun had his vehicle, and Volkswagen executives had a chance to be part of automotive history.
It was history, however, that Red Whittaker planned on writing himself. Whittaker, the imposing, bald, bombastic chief of CMU's eponymously named Red Team, had been working on self-driving vehicles since the '80s. Whittaker's approach to problem solving was to use as much technological and automotive firepower as possible. Until now, the firepower hadn't been enough. This time, he would make sure that it was.
First, he entered two vehicles in the race: a 1986 Humvee and a 1999 Hummer. Both were chosen for their ruggedness. Whittaker also stabilized the sensors on the trucks with gyroscopes to ensure more reliable data. Then he sent three men in a laser-studded, ground-scanning truck into the desert for 28 days. Their mission: create a digital map of the race area's topography. The team logged 2,000 miles and built a detailed model of the desolate sagebrush expanses of the Mojave.
That was only the beginning. The Red Team purchased high-resolution satellite imagery of the desert and, when Darpa revealed the course on race day, Whittaker had 12 analysts in a tent beside the start line scrutinize the terrain. The analysts identified boulders, fence posts, and ditches so that the two vehicles would not have to wonder whether a fence was a fence. Humans would have already coded it into the map.
The CMU team also used Pomerleau's approach. They drove their Humvees through as many different types of desert terrain as they could find in an attempt to teach the vehicles how to handle varied environments. Both SUVs boasted seven Intel M processors and 40 Gbytes of flash memory - enough to store a world road atlas. CMU had a budget of $3 million. Given enough time, manpower, and access to the course, the CMU team could prepare their vehicles for any environment and drive safely through it.
It didn't cut it. Despite that 28-day, 2,000-mile sojourn in the desert, CMU's premapping operation overlapped with only 2 percent of the actual race course. The vehicles had to rely on their desert training sessions. But even those didn't fully deliver. A robot might, for example, learn what a tumbleweed looks like at 10 am, but with the movement of the sun and changing shadows, it might mistake that same tumbleweed for a boulder later in the day.
Thrun faced these same problems. Small bumps would rattle the Touareg's sensors, causing the onboard computer to swerve away from an imagined boulder. It couldn't distinguish between sensor error, new terrain, its own shadow, and the actual state of the road. The robot just wasn't smart enough.
And then, as Thrun sat on the side of that rutted dirt road, an idea came to him. Maybe the problem was a lot simpler than everyone had been making it out to be. To date, cars had not critically assessed the data their sensors gathered. Researchers had instead devoted themselves to improving the quality of that data, either by stabilizing cameras, lasers, and radar with gyroscopes or by improving the software that interpreted the sensor data. Thrun realized that if cars were going to get smarter, they needed to appreciate how incomplete and ambiguous perception can be. They needed the algorithmic equivalent of self-awareness.
Together with Montemerlo, his lead programmer, Thrun set about recoding Stanley's brain. They asked the computer to assess each pixel of data generated by the sensors and then assign it an accuracy value based on how a human drove the car through the desert. Rather than logging the identifying characteristics of the terrain, the computer was told to observe how its interpretation of the road either conformed to or varied from the way a human drove. The robot began to discard information it had previously accepted - it realized, for instance, that the bouncing of its sensors was just turbulence and did not indicate the sudden appearance of a boulder. It started to ignore shadows and accelerated along roads it had once perceived as being crisscrossed with ditches. Stanley began to drive like a human.
Thrun decided to take the car's newfound understanding of the world a step further. Stanley was equipped with two main types of sensors: laser range finders and video cameras. The lasers were good at sensing ground within 30 meters of the car, but beyond that the data quality deteriorated. The video camera was good at looking farther away but was less accurate in the foreground. Maybe, Thrun thought, the laser's findings could inform how the computer interpreted the faraway video. If the laser identified drivable road, it could ask the video to search for similar patterns ahead. In other words, the computer could teach itself.
It worked. Stanley's vision extended far down the road now, allowing it to steer confidently at speeds of up to 45 miles per hour on dirt roads in the desert. And because of its ability to question its own data, the accuracy of Stanley's perception improved by four orders of magnitude. Before the recoding, Stanley incorrectly identified objects 12 percent of the time. After the recoding, the error rate dropped to 1 in 50,000.
It's half past 6 in the morning on October 8, 2005, outside of Primm, Nevada. Twenty-three vehicles are here for the second Grand Challenge. Festooned with corporate logos, lasers, radars, GPS transponders, and video cameras, they're parked on the edge of the gray-brown desert and ready to roll. The early morning light clashes with the garish glow of the nearby Buffalo Bill's Resort and Casino.
Red Whittaker is beaming. His 12 terrain analysts have completed their two-hour premapping of the route, and the data has been uploaded to the two CMU vehicles via a USB flash drive. The stakes are high this year: Darpa has doubled the prize money to $2 million, and Whittaker is ready to win it and erase the memory of the 2004 debacle. Last night, he pointed out to the press that Thrun had been a junior faculty member in Whittaker's robotics lab at CMU. "My DNA is all over this race," he boasted. Thrun won't be baited by Whittaker's grandstanding. He focuses on trying to calm his own frayed nerves.
The race begins quietly: One by one, the vehicles drive off into the hills. A few hours later, the critical moment is captured in grainy footage. CMU's H1 is in the middle of a dusty white desert expanse. The camera slowly approaches - the image is pixelated and overexposed. It's the view from Stanley's rooftop camera. For the past 100 miles, the Touareg has been tailgating the H1, and now it pulls close. Its lasers scan the exterior of its competitor, revealing a ghostly green outline of side panels and a giant, sensor-stabilizing gyroscope. And then the VW rotates its steering wheel and passes.
Darpa has imposed speed limits of 5 to 25 miles per hour, depending on conditions. Stanley wants to go faster. Its lasers are constantly teaching its video cameras how to identify drivable terrain, and it knows that it could accelerate more. For the rest of the race, Stanley pushes up against the speed limits as it navigates through open desert and curving mountain roads. After six hours of driving, it exits the final mountain pass ahead of every other team. When Stanley crosses the finish line, Thrun catches his first sight of an undiscovered country, a place where robots do all the driving.
The 128-mile race is a success. Four other vehicles, including both of CMU's entries, complete the course behind Stanley. The message is clear: Autonomous vehicles have arrived, and Stanley is their prophet. "This is a watershed moment - much more so than Deep Blue versus Kasparov," says Justin Rattner, Intel's R&D director. "Deep Blue was just processing power. It didn't think. Stanley thinks. We've moved away from rule-based thinking in artificial intelligence. The new paradigm is based on probabilities. It's based on statistical analysis of patterns. It is a better reflection of how our minds work."
The breakthrough comes just as carmakers are embracing a host of self-driving technologies, many of them barely recognizable as robotic. Take, for example, a new feature known as adaptive cruise control, which allows the driver to select the distance to be maintained between the vehicle and the car in front of it. On the Toyota Sienna minivan, this is simply another button on the steering wheel. What that button represents, however, is a laser that surveys the distance to the vehicle ahead of it. The minivan's computer interprets the data and then controls the acceleration and braking to keep the distance constant. The computer has, in essence, taken over part of the driving.
But even as vehicles are being produced with sensors that perceive the world, they have, until now, lacked the intelligence to comprehensively interpret what they see. Thanks to Thrun, that problem is being solved. Computers are nearly ready to take the wheel. But are humans ready to let them?
Jay Gowdy doesn't think so. A highly regarded roboticist, he has worked for nearly two decades to build self-driving cars, first with CMU and, more recently, with SAIC, a Fortune 500 defense contractor. He notes that in the US, about 43,000 people die in traffic accidents every year. Robot-driven cars would radically reduce the number of fatalities, he says, but there would still be accidents, and those deaths would be attributable to computer error. "The perception is that in the majority of accidents today, those who die are drunk, lazy, or stupid and bring it on themselves," Gowdy says. "If computers take over the driving, any deaths are likely to be perceived as the loss of people who did nothing wrong."
The resulting liability issues are a major hurdle. If a robotically driven car gets in an accident, who is to blame? If a software bug causes a car to swerve off the road, should the programmer be sued, or the manufacturer? Or is the accident victim at fault for accepting the driving decisions of the onboard computer? Would Ford or GM be to blame for selling a "faulty" product, even if, in the larger view, that product reduced traffic deaths by tens of thousands?
This morass of liability questions would need to be addressed before robot cars could be practical. And even then, Americans would have to be willing to give up control of the steering wheel.
Which is not something they're likely to do, even if it means saving 40,000 lives a year. So the challenge for carmakers will be to develop interfaces that make people feel like they're in control even when the car is really doing most of the thinking. In other words, that small adaptive cruise control button in Toyota's minivan is a Trojan horse.
"OK, we're two of two, two of two, and one of one, no U-turn, speed advisory 25, large divider, POI gas station on left."
Michael Loconte and Bill Wong are creeping through a quiet suburb just north of San Jose, California. They are driving a white Ford Taurus with a 6-inch antenna on the roof. Loconte wears a headset and mumbles coded descriptions of theésurroundings into the microphone - "two of two" means that he's in the right lane on a street with two lanes, and "POI" means point of interest. Wong scribbles with a digital pen, making landmark and street address notations on a scrolling map. "People think we're with the CIA," Loconte says. "I know it kind of looks like that."
But they aren't spies. They're field analysts working for the GPS mapping company Navteq, and they're laying the foundation for the future of driving. On this Friday afternoon, they're doing a huge commercial extension of CMU's ditch-and-fence mapping operation. Navteq has 500 such analysts driving US neighborhoods, mapping them foot by foot. Though Thrun has proven that extensive mapping isn't needed to get from A to B, maps are critical when it comes to communicating with robotic vehicles. As automotive engineers build cars with increasing autonomy, the human interface with the vehicle will migrate from the steering wheel to the map. Instead of turning a wheel, drivers will make decisions by touching destinations on an interactive display.
"We want to move up the food chain," says Bob Denaro, Navteq's VP of business development. The company sees itself moving beyond the help-me-I'm-lost gizmo business and into the center of the new driving experience. That's not to say that the steering wheel will disappear; it will just be gradually de-emphasized. We will continue to sit in the driver's seat and have the option of intervening if we choose. As Denaro notes: "A person's role in the car is changing. People will become more planners than drivers."
And why not - since the car is going to be a better driver than a human anyway. With the addition of map information, a car will know the angle of a turn that's still 300 feet away. Navteq is in the process of collecting slope information, road width, and speed limits - all things that bathe the vehicle in more data than a human could ever handle.
Denaro believes that the key to making people comfortable with the shift from driver to planner will be the same thing that made pilots comfortable accepting autopilot in the cockpit: situational awareness. If a robot simply says it wants to go left instead of right, we feel uncomfortable. But if a map showed a traffic jam to the right and the machine listed reasons for rerouting, then we would have no problem pressing the Accept Route Change icon. We feel like we are still in control.
"Autopilot in the cockpit greatly extended the pilots' skills," Denaro says. Automation in driving will do the same thing.
Sebastian Thrun is standing in front of about a hundred of his colleagues and teammates at a winery overlooking Silicon Valley. He has a glass of champagne in one hand and a microphone in the other, and everyone is in a festive mood. Darpa just gave Stanford a $2 million check for winning the desert race, and Thrun is going to use a portion of the money to endow the Stanley fellowship for graduate students in computer science.
"Some people refer to us as the Wright brothers," he says, holding up his champagne. "But I prefer to think of us as Charles Lindbergh, because he was better-looking."
Everyone laughs and toasts to that. "A year ago, people said this couldn't be done," Thrun continues. "Now everything is possible." There is more applause, and then the AI experts, programmers, and engineers take small, conservative sips of the champagne. The drive home is curvy and dark. If only the party were happening in Thrun's future - then the champagne could flow unimpeded and the cars would take everyone safely home.
How Stanley Sees the Road
The SUV's hard drives boot up, its censors come to life, and it's ready to roll. Here's how Stanley works. - J.D.
1. GPS antenna
The rooftop GPS antenna receives data that has actually traveled twice into space - once to receive an initial position that is accurate up to a meter, and a second time to make corrections. The final reading is accurate up to 1 centimeter.
2. Laser Range Finder
So-called lidar scans the terrain 30 meters ahead and to either side of the grill five times a second. The data is used to build a map of the road.
3. Video camera
The video camera scans the road beyond the lidar's range and pipes the data back to the computer. If the lasers have identified drivable ground, software looks for the same characteristics in the video data, extending Stanley's vision to 80 meters and permitting safe acceleration.
4. Odometry
To contend signals blocked by, say, a tunnel or mountain, a photo sensor in the wheel well monitors a pattern imprinted on Stanley's wheels. The data is used to determine how far Stanley has moved since the blackout. The onboard computer can then track the vehicle's position based on its last known GPS location.
Taking the Wheel
Seven ways today's cars are already robots. - Brian Lam
1. Road Condition Reporting
When a car using BMW's hazard system slips on ice, its sensors activate traction control. Meantime, wireless technology alerts other cars in the area to the hazard.
2. Adaptive Cruise Control
Luxury cars made by Audi, BMW, Infiniti, and others now use radar-guided cruise control to keep pace with the car ahead.
3. Omnidirectional Collision System
GM has built an inexpensive collision detection system that allows GPS-equipped cars to identify each other and communicate wirelessly.
4. Lane-Departure Prevention
Nissan has a prototype that uses cameras and software to detect white lines and reflective markers. If the system determines the vehicle is drifting, it will steer the car back into the proper lane.
5. Auto Parallel Park
Toyota has a technology that uses a camera to identify a curbside parking space and turns the wheel automatically to reverse you into the spot.
6. Blind-Spot Sensors
GM's GPS-based collision detectors can warn you when another car enters your blind spot.
7. Corner Speed
An experimental Honda navigation computer anticipates upcoming turns and, if necessary, slows the vehicle to match predetermined safe speeds.
Contributing editor Joshua Davis (email@example.com) is the author of The Underdog. He wrote about DVD bootlegging in issue 13.10.
credit Ian White
Stanley: The Stanford Racing Teamés autonomous vehicle is a modified Volkswagen Touareg that can scan any terrain and pick out a drivable course to a preset destination. Cup holders optional.
credit Joe Pugliese
Team Stanley: From left, Sven Strohband, Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, Hendrik Dahlkamp, Mike Montemerlo.
credit Jesse Jensen
credit Jameson Simpson


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OLYMPIA Eleven recognized and established advocacy groups for people with disabilities and those who receive community-based care have joined with the state Department of Social and Health Services to develop recommendations on how to further ensure the safety and well-being of people receiving various long-term care services.
A new subcommittee of the Adult Abuse/Neglect Response Workgroup will analyze DSHS current system and develop recommendations about specific steps the Department can take to improve its response to abuse and neglect of clients receiving services in their own homes, supported living programs, adult family homes, nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
The subcommittees formation follows a recent report, Too Little Too Late: Ending Tolerance of Abuse and Neglect, prepared by Disability Rights Washington and Columbia Legal Services. The report includes recommendations to improve the ability of DSHS to respond to allegations of abuse or neglect with more focus on ensuring that victims are protected from further harm and that support systems are in place to help them recover from any abuse or neglect they have suffered.
This is a very strong coalition of advocates and the Department is anxious to begin working with the expertise each organization brings to the group, said Jane Beyer, interim assistant secretary for the DSHS Aging and Disability Services Administration.
The report by Disability Rights Washington and Columbia Legal Services focuses on the states Supported Living Program where people with disabilities are provided services in their own homes. Weve asked this new subcommittee to recognize the needs of all vulnerable adults receiving long-term care services in community settings, she said. They all should be assured they are free from abuse and neglect.
The subcommittee will consider the recommendations of Disability Rights Washington and Columbia Legal Services, and focus on the following areas for improvement:
Timely reports and appropriate prioritization of abuse and neglect allegations and suspicions that:
Prioritize investigations of more serious allegations of abuse or neglect over less serious complaints about regulatory compliance.
More consistently educate clients support staff and other professionals regarding what to report and when to report it .
Prompt investigations to find out what happened to each alleged victim, along with identifying provider practice issues that place or leave clients at risk of abuse or neglect.
Effective corrections and deterrence of abuse or neglect and unsafe provider practices.
The DSHS Aging and Disability Services Administration, Disability Rights Washington, Columbia Legal Services, Self Advocacy in Leadership, the Washington State Developmental Disability Council, the Arc of Washington, the Community Residential Services Association, People First of Washington, the Washington Association of Area Agencies on Aging, the Washington State Long-Term Care Ombudsman, the Statewide Parent Coalitions for Developmental Disabilities and Self Advocates of Washington have agreed to support the subcommittee.
Actual subcommittee members will be determined in the near future.

subset: commoncrawl


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How To Make A Website - Algeria - 2020
It was never easier to make a website in Algeria and in this guide we will guide you step by step to make your website real without the need to pay to designers or developers.
Before we start,did you decide the domain name you are going to use? It is highly recommended to choose a domain name with the .com extension because it will be more attractive for your visitors,for example:yourwebsite.com. Remember you can always connect a second domain name with the domain extension for Algeria.
Benefits of this guide
You will get a Website with the following benefits:
- Easy to use
- Manage your Website from any computer or mobile
- No HTML or expert level required
- You have the full control of your site
- Customizable design
- Website can grow as your business grows
Make A Website Step By Step
- Go to this link to register your website domain and hosting.
- Select Basic Plan.
(If you want to get more feature you can choose the higher plans also).
- In the box "new domain",write a domain name that you wish and click on next.
- Complete your personal details and package information.
(Package extras are not required,you can decide what you want to include).
- Click the checkbox to accept Terms and click on submit.
- Click on Set Password,add your new password and click on next.
- Click on log in.
- When you see some designs,go to the bottom of the page and click Skip this step.
- Click on Start Building to go to Wordpress Admin Panel.
(If Wordpress was not installed automatically,follow this tutorial to install Wordpress easily and then continue with next step).
- Keep the browser with Wordpress Admin Panel opened and don't close it (we will use it on next steps).
Downloading Divi Theme
- Click here to download Divi Theme.
- Click on Sign Up Today on the left box.
- Complete the fields of the form.
- Click on the checkbox to accept the terms.
- Click on complete the registration.
- Go to the bottom of the page and click on Log In.
- Enter your name and password and click on member log In.
- Download Divi and remember the location of this folder.
Installing Divi theme
- Go to Wordpress Admin Panel (you have it opened from step 1).
- On the left menu go to Appurtenance.
- Go to Themes.
- Click on Add New.
- Click on complete the registration.
- Select the theme we downloaded before (divi.zip).
- Click on Install Now.
- Click on Activate.
Designing the home page
- In your Wordpress Admin Panel go to the top bar on the left go to your website name and click on Visit Website.
It will open the home page of your website.
- Go to the top bar and click on Enable Visual Builder.
- Click on Start Building.
- Select Choose a premade layout.
- Choose any layout that you want.
- Edit the text and design as you wish with the visual builder feature.
- At the bottom click on the violet button and it will be opened a bar with more option.
- At the bottom left side click on Save button.
- You can repet the previous step for all the other pages of your website.
- Go to your Wordpress Admin Panel.
- On the top bar click on Coming Soon Page
- Click on Launch your site.
- Ready,your website is online!
Now that your website is online,you can start investigating Wordpress Admin Panel where you can easily find the different options to customize your website
Also remember that any page that you want to edit,you just need to click on Enable Visual Builder at the top of the page.


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Posted by Alisa on Thursday, June 12, 2014 / Comments: (0)
Tamara Ecclestone and her husband Jay Rutland were seen celebrating their one year wedding anniversary in Monaco with their 3-month-old daughter Sophia.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images shown on the site. I do not claim credit for any of the pictures unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyrighted to their respectful owner. If an image appears on alisacelebkids that belongs to you, and you wish for it to be taken down, please E-mail me and I will promptly remove it.


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Abstract and Keywords
Since McCombs and Shaw first introduced the theory in 1972, agenda setting has emerged as one of the most influential perspectives in the study of the effects of mass media. Broadly defined, "agenda setting" refers to the ability of mass media sources to identify the most salient topics, thereby "setting the agendas" for audiences. In telling us what to think about, then, mass media sources are perceived to play an influential role in determining priorities related to policies, values, and knowledge on a given topic or issue.
Scholars have studied this phenomenon according to both object (issue) salience and attribute salience and along aggregate and individual audience responses. The audience characteristics of need for orientation, uncertainty, relevance, and involvement are advanced as moderating and predicting agenda-setting effects. When agenda-setting theory is applied to the study of messaging related to health and risk communication, scholars have reviewed and identified common themes and topics that generally include media's role in educating and informing the public about specific health conditions as well as public health priorities and administrative policies.
Agenda setting is often examined in terms of measuring mass media effects on audiences. Looking at interpersonal communication, such as that coming from medical providers, opinion leaders, or peer networks, in studies will allow research to examine the combined effects of interpersonal and mass communication. Testing possible interactions among differing sources of information along with assessment of issue and attribute salience among audiences according to an agenda-setting framework serves to document audience trends and lived experiences with regard to mass media, health, and risk communication.
Keywords: agenda-setting theory, mass media, media effects, health communication, risk communication, media advocacy
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So Joy decided to upgrade her Windows 7 computer to Windows 8, figuring how can we serve the readers if we don�t have the latest Microsoft operating system? Just so.
Well, let no good deed go unpunished. From the beginning, there were warnings that should have told us we were on dangerous ground. The built-in Windows 8 �Upgrade Assistant� said we�d have to buy extra software if we wanted to continue to play DVDs. (Wait a minute: We had no trouble playing DVDs before.) Then it informed us the Windows Media Center also would no longer be available. But we could buy extra software that would perform those functions, which we had before.
Furthermore, one of the Bluetooth utilities would be automatically uninstalled. Uh oh. This caused our Logitech wireless mouse to stop working. No mouse. How sad. Too bad.
Another message said the Intel �host controller� would have to be manually uninstalled. Joy, being pretty handy with the tech stuff, uninstalled it. But it automatically came back again. Time to call for support from the technicians at Microsoft�s AnswerDesk.com. Answer Desk is free. It turned out to be useless, but it was free.
The tech support guy said getting Windows 8 installed would involve changing the BIOS settings, which stand for Basic Input/Output System. The tech support guy advised calling HP. So we did. But Hewlett-Packard said any installation of Windows 8 would void their warranty. Wow!
So now we had a computer with no working mouse and some other missing features. Tried doing a �System Restore,� but that didn�t work. Neither did Windows image restore. We had to order recovery disks from HP. So the bottom line here is we paid Microsoft $40 for what turned out to be an unusable upgrade to Windows 8. We tried tech support again from HP, but we got a person almost impossible to understand and finally had to hang up.
We don�t recommend anyone upgrade to Windows 8, but you may have already gotten a new computer with Windows 8 on it. If so, you�re probably as confused as we were when we tried it in the store. Several readers have written us for help on how to understand the new operating system. We recommend �Essential Windows 8 Training� at Lynda.com. It�s great. One week of training is free, and in that time you could do the whole course plus any other topic that strikes your fancy. If you want a whole month of training, it�s $25.
OK, Windows 8 redux. There�s a way out of this mess.
There are many things that bug new Windows 8 users. For instance, they used to enjoy a nature scene or family photo on their screen as background �wallpaper;� now they have big colorful tiles. They can no longer close an application by clicking on an �X� in the corner, because there is no �X.� In fact, it�s hard to figure out how to close anything. And there�s no longer a �start� button or �start menu� on the desktop.
Fear not: For a small fee you can regain control. A few companies are offering software to make Windows 8 look like Windows 7. One we like is RetroUI, for $5. You get to keep any extra features of Window 8.
Windows 8 sales haven�t been doing any better than Vista did when it was introduced back in 2007. (Vista never did live up to Microsoft�s hopes, as users responded to its introduction with a number of pointed comments, like �Huh?�) Windows 7 was created to solve the problems of Vista. Someday there will be a Windows 9 to correct the problems of Windows 8.
This whole process is an extremely clever marketing plan to see how often a giant company can screw up a new product, and then charge the user for a newer new product that fixes the previous product. (Remember the Golden Rule: Never buy anything with a low serial number.)
We recently read about Kevin, a 6-year-old who was always getting sick, often going to the emergency room, where he got prescriptions for more pills. What finally made him healthy again was getting him to eat fruits and veggies. What his mother did was carve cute little animals, Charlie Brown figures and other fun stuff out of veggies and fruits. Meal time became fun and he looked forward to eating nutritiously. Fortunately for the rest of us, she made a Facebook page to show off her creations. The page, at Facebook.com/FunMeals4Kids, now has more than 1,000 �likes.�
We�ve tried many different wireless speakers for our iPad and the Android phone, but the first one we really liked is Edge Sound from CubEdge. It�s a black box shorter than a human hand and weighing just 9 ounces.
The Edge Sound speaker is $149 from cubedge.com. It filled our living room with clear music, sounding far better than our iPad or other portable speakers we�ve tried. The speaker is battery powered and can be solar charged. It includes a microphone for hands-free Skype calls. It�s not in retail stores yet but can be ordered online.
Americans watch the most online videos but haven�t been buying Internet-connected TVs. According to NPD Display Search, only about 20 percent of TVs shipped in North America connect to the Internet. Ours doesn�t either, so we bought a Google box, the �Internet Player with Google TV� from Sony, which lets us watch PBS extras, Amazon Instant Video, Netflix movies and plenty of other shows. It costs $150. If you feel like going big-time, LG sells an $1,100 model that responds to voice commands: If you want the History Channel, you just say so.


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Mariners focus on timing in first live BP
PEORIA, Ariz. -- After more than a week of having pitchers throw bullpen sessions without hitters in the box, the Mariners on Thursday began live batting practice, to predictable results.
With hitters just getting their timing down, the first few days of live BP usually result in few swings at the plate and more of a focus on tracking pitches. But some of the Mariners, particularly the younger players, took their hacks as 13 pitchers got their first live mound work.
"It's more for the pitchers," manager Lloyd McClendon said. "I tell the guys, look, sometimes tracking is just as good as swinging. Obviously when you're seeing live pitching for the first time, it can be a little tough.
"I think you see veteran guys do more tracking. The younger kids are more gung-ho, and they go after it a little more. But it's tough. There's no adrenaline. They deal with it the best they can, do some tracking, get the feet down, make sure the hands are in good position."
But some hitters did jump right in and start swinging, while others like outfielder Michael Saunders unleashed a couple of selective cuts.
"I took a few swings today," Saunders said. "That's the only way for me to know where my timing's at. I get a feel for where the pitcher is, and if he's around the zone, then I'm more comfortable taking a few hacks and seeing where I'm at. I have to start somewhere and I can adjust from there."
Several returning pitchers -- Tom Wilhelmsen, Erasmo Ramirez, Blake Beavan and Lucas Luetge -- were among Thursday's group, which also included several non-roster invitees. The rest of the staff, except for Felix Hernandez and Taijuan Walker, will throw Friday.
Hernandez and Walker are on a slightly slower schedule, and both on Thursday threw their second bullpen sessions of the spring.
"They both felt great," McClendon said.


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Description: The United Way of Douglas County fights for the health, education, and financial stability of every person in Douglas County. The mission of the United Way is to address the human service needs of Douglas County by mobilizing community resources and building partnerships.
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Subject: United Way., Community relations., County services., Local & regional
Creator: United Way of Douglas County
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Coverage: Douglas County (Kan.)
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Date: 2019
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Identifier: https://www.unitedwaydgco.org/
Collector: Lawrence Public Library
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AOL Instant Messenger is no more, but the memories will last forever
Ars readers reminisce about the heyday of instant messaging.
Cyrus Farivar - Dec 15, 2017 11:50 am UTC
Today, America Online Instant Messenger, better known by its acronym, AIM, went dark after more than two decades of faithful service.
More about this:


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Origin PC is calling the new PC enclosure they've created "the most advanced and customizable desktop case in the world." I think they might just have something here.
Origin PC calls the feature, rolling out now exclusively to the company's Genesis and Millennium lines, "Variable Mounting." The case allows for the motherboard to be inserted four different ways.
Why? Maybe you need to improve the efficiency of air flow around the supported four-way SLI Nvidia cards. Maybe you're tired of putting a new computer on your desk and realizing the cool window with all the lights inside is facing away from you, god dammit. Every f***ing time.
Anywho, the new case features swappable side panels too, as well as a dual-hinged front door, because opening a PC panel towards you is a pain in the ass. They've thought of everything.
No, seriously — everything. Here's the Millennium mid-tower system (starting at $1,629, fully customizable):
And here's the Genesis full-tower ($1,849):
See it? It's the same case, with an expansion kit on the bottom. Millennium buyers can, at any time, pick up a kit to add dual 360mm radiators or up to 24 2.5 inch storage drives to their case.
Sadly, Origin's variable mounting case isn't sold by itself — it only comes with the Millennium and Genesis systems right now. Maybe one day they'll see fit to share this technology with the world.


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It's not everyday that you get to enjoy an up close and personal conversation with a grinning baby albatross. There I was, minding my own business, tiptoeing softly down a trail on the island of Espanola in the Galapagos Islands while being careful not to step on the marine iguanas, when I met my first albatross. It had a goofy grin on its face, just like the one in the original Alice in Wonderland book illustrated by John Tenniel.
"Hello, sweetheart," I said. "Nice day if it don't rain."
"Quark?" it said, grinning. Mother albatross stood by the side of the trail, also grinning. In retrospect, I feel the blue-footed boobies and the marine iguanas on Espanola also had sort of goofy looks about them. They all shared the same amazing trait of fearlessness. None of the wildlife in the Galapagos has ever acquired a genetic fear of human beings, so they just sit and ignore you, like you aren't a threat. Or they give you a big goofy grin. Awesome!
For instance, check out the fish market in the town of Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. There you will find sea lions acting as shop assistants, and a line of pelicans standing on the counter as if ready to help you with your bags to the car. You might even find a sea lion waddling across Charles Darwin Street, the town's main thoroughfare, and not necessarily in the marked pedestrian crosswalks either.
Curiouser and curiouser, if you wander up to the top of the mountain on Santa Cruz, more than likely you'll stumble across one of the approximately 2,000 giant tortoises that call the island home. Not great conversationalists, but you don't have to move too fast to keep up with them. You may have to wait 150 years or so for them to answer, but no rush. Besides, they are always keen on photo opps.
Then there are the sea turtles, floating around like big bits of flotsam (or is it jetsam?) when not digging big holes in the sand on the beaches in which to lay eggs. Hey, did I mention the small and quick Galapagos penguins, or the stately pink flamingos, or the pelicans, or the brightly coloured tropical fish, and the vast assortment of strange bird life not found anywhere else on earth? Such as the Darwin finches, frigate birds, and the Galapagos hawks? What about the flightless cormorant, a species peculiar to the Galapagos that somehow sometime lost the ability to fly?
Yes, the Galapagos certainly are a very weird place. Located some 600 kilometres off the west coast of Ecuador, straddling the equator, the islands are found at the confluence of several currents that keep the islands cool and provide the perfect environment for their unique mix of wildlife. Volcanic in origin and never attached to any continent, wildlife only arrived here by flying, floating or swimming. Larger predators at the top of the food chain never showed up, so the fauna has devolved into a very strange genetic disposition that makes all wildlife act quite tame. Humans here are an afterthought.
Another theory has it that birds in flight were disoriented while making their regular migratory journey and ended here accidentally. Whatever the case, it's the visitor that is disoriented immediately upon stepping on shore, finding that the sea lions basking on the cement dock can't be bothered to move out of the way. Hello! Excuse me!
All of this weirdness intrigued a young Charles Darwin in 1831, who developed his world-changing Theory of Evolution after a visit here, which posits that "it is not the strongest of the species that survives, but the ones most adaptable to change." Social Darwinists in many countries in 2014 have subsequently adapted this theory to justify a hawkish "dog eat dog" mentality, but on the islands the reality is the opposite. Peace and paradise persists.
With no life threatening predators, calm covers the islands like a baby's blanket. Where else on earth can you sit down six inches away from a bluefooted booby and have a heart felt discussion about evolution? Of course, there aren't too many places on earth where you will find any blue-footed boobies, up close or not and willing to chat, but there are certainly lots of opportunities here.
With some luck, you may even witness the mating dance of the albatross, a scenario where the birds hop from one foot to another as if their trousers were on fire and then sword fight with their beaks. It's more comical than passionate, but very sincere, perhaps reminding some visitors of their own rituals in a high school prom dance.
The flora gets pretty exotic too, with four ecological zones to be explored: coastal, low or dry, transitional and humid. You'll find plants like myrtle, mangrove, saltbush, cactus, incense trees and poison apples, epiphytes, Galapagos coffee, passionflower, moss, ferns and fungus. The flora may be wilder than the fauna.
The first islands formed at least 8 million and possibly up to 90 million years ago. The youngest islands are still being formed, with the most recent volcanic action in April 2009 where lava from Fernandina Island started flowing. Every island is quite different in age, geology, flora and fauna.
The only way to see any of the islands is via boat. The archipelago consists of 18 main islands, three smaller islands, and 107 rocks and islets. Most cruises last a week and tour most of the islands. Several of the Ecaudorian tour companies offer a wide variety of services ranging from basic tourist class to high end.
Quasar Tours make good use of their majestic 50-metre wooden yacht M/Y Grace, at one time a gift from billionaire Aristotle Onassis to Princess Grace of Monaco as a wedding present. It's a veritable floating palace with highly-trained and professional staff who prepare three chef-crafted meals served on deck. Exquisite.
If you are lucky and inquire well ahead, you may end up with Quasar's world class naturalist Rafael Pesantes leading your island hikes. Raffi's expertise about wildlife is matched only by his wicked sense of humour. All shore excursions from the Grace are made by pangas (zodiacs), most of them wet landings without any docks, so be prepared to roll up your trousers.
Once ashore, rules are quite strict. Absolutely no food is permitted on land. Hikers must stay strictly on the marked paths. Washroom facilities are non-existent. All tour companies must register well in advance with the government for their shore tours and safe harbours. Animals like sea lion pups may not be touched because the odour of human beings may cause their parents to reject them. However, should the moment arise, there is nothing wrong with a quiet intellectual debate with a blue-footed booby about the true meaning of life.
Aside from shore excursions, a wealth of marine life can be encountered under the waves and off the beaches. Baby sea lions will often come and play with swimmers. Quasar schedules snorkelling sessions every day on its tours, and there are dive shops in Puerto Ayora where certified divers can rent equipment and join in group dives. Thanks to the Humboldt current, the waters around the Galapagos are quite cool, so wetsuits are recommended.
The Galapagos can be visited at any time of the year. There are two main seasons; wet and dry. The warmest is December to May when the skies are clear and the sun shines strongly. If you love to scuba, the best time to visit is between June and November because the temperatures are cooler and you will have a better chance to observe the Galapagos' famous marine life.
No matter when you go, binoculars and a good camera with a zoom lens are necessities. The bird watching is spectacular, and the chances for personal photo opps with the animals and birds are endless. You'll dine out with friends forever in the future, showing that photo of you face-to-face with a marine iguana. However, if the fragrance from the marine iguanas ever seeps into your clothes, you may never get a dinner invitation again.
If you go
Quasar Expeditions offers great four-or seven-day expeditions to the Galapagos Islands at www.quasarex.com or phone 1-888-481-7790. For more stories, photos and video clips of the author's trip to the Galapagos, log on to www.intentional-traveler.com.


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You're officially subscribed to the Teradata Blog. Check your inbox each week for our take on data science, business analytics, tech trends, and more.
Good news! Release 5 has been published to both Azure and AWS Marketplaces, bringing important new features including:
BYOL (Bring Your Own License) gives you the ability to buy portable software subscriptions directly from Teradata and then deploy on either Azure or AWS Marketplaces – rather than do the entire transaction through the Marketplaces.
Buying directly from Teradata gives you more purchase options, including:
Having BYOL is great for your flexibility because it enables self-service TCore portability between Public Cloud platforms (AWS and Azure) – which helps de-risk your deployment decision. This "Move Any Time" advantage is one of the key tenets of the Teradata Everywhere strategy.
Teradata Database Fold/Unfold on both Azure and AWS gives you the ability to double or quadruple your compute resources while keeping AMPs and storage volumes unchanged. Thus, in a matter of minutes, you can Unfold your Teradata system to increase compute capacity when needed, and then Fold to reduce compute capacity (and cost) when no longer needed.
The Azure Getting Started Guide has more information about Fold/Unfold – and the equivalent information for AWS is here.
Besides BYOL, Storage Elasticity is the big change in AWS in Release 5. Instead of fixed increments of available storage for the m4.xlarge family of instances (e.g., 5TB, 15TB, 20TB, 30TB), you can now select any storage value from 5TB to 60TB in 1TB increments – and storage may be adjusted before or afterprovisioning.
Storage Elasticity enables you to start small and grow only when needed, avoiding the requirement to specify (and pay for) a higher quantity of Elastic Block Store (EBS) storage up front when it's not being utilized.
The AWS Getting Started Guide has more information about Storage Elasticity; see "Storage Expansion".
Lastly, Release 5 includes the publication of Teradata AppCenter on AWS Marketplace. Teradata AppCenter (IntelliSphere) – not to be confused with Teradata Aster AppCenter, which is still listed on AWS Marketplace – is part of Teradata IntelliSphere, which bundles 10 ecosystem software ingredients into one convenient package that may be added to a Teradata Database subscription.
Teradata AppCenter is a self-service environment that enables the easy creation and reuse of analytics. With numerous prebuilt features, Teradata AppCenter allows your data scientists and developers to find, build, share, and deploy analytics; non-technical users can run apps, visually study results, and share insights.
See the Teradata AppCenter and Teradata IntelliSphere pages for more details.
Bottom line: there are now three different ways that you can buy and use Teradata software in the Public Cloud using standard Azure and AWS infrastructure:
*IntelliCloud on Azure will be launched later this month for US commercial Azure regions; stay tuned!
All exciting stuff – and we will continue to innovate across all our Public Cloud offers.
Let us know if you have any questions or comments about what we offer on Azure and AWS.
Our new global survey reveals how business leaders are changing the way they think about about data -- from their trust in to to the role it plays in a post-pandemic recovery.
In part 2 of this series, we will cover techniques for defining & gathering availability requirements and making sure your business continuity solution provides the most potential ROI.
Marketing is essential. It drives revenue and is a big investment for banks. But marketers cannot grow the size of the pie – only their slice of it. Read more.


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by Kyra
I have been receiving generalized anxiety disorder treatment for several months.
Some of the ways the psychologists have helped me to manage my generalized anxiety disorder symptoms are:
Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to What is anxiety.
Subscribe and get our new Stresshack ebook that takes you from OMG to OM in 15 minutes
Aug 29, 15 08:56 AM
Intestinal gas can painful and embarrassing. There are many causes for excessive intestinal gas, one of which is stress. If your gas is caused by stress, stress management activities can be used.
Aug 27, 15 09:08 PM
Is stress weight gain affecting you? Can stress make you fat? Stress and weight gain are linked in several ways. Stress increases cortisol,may reduce exercise habits and increase emotional eating.
Aug 27, 15 12:32 AM
How does stress affect health? Research shows the effects of stress on body and mind influence stress related illness.


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This weekend, I did something that I haven't done in months and months: I actually put paint to miniature. I started working on some test models for my Black Templar army, trying to figure out my paint process (step by step, including the list of paints used – what I generally call my "recipe") and trying to figure out how I want them to look. I find it's best to use some test models when you start this process.
For this paint scheme (my fledgling Black Templar army) I grabbed two generic Space Marine models from the 5th edition Assault on Black Reach starter set. These models are generally easy to find on eBay and are great for starter models as they go together very quickly and are pretty easy to paint. I primed them both black with my airbrush (using Vallejo Airbrush Surface Primer) and then dusted them from above at a 45-degree angle with a dark grey of my own mixing specifically for this project (known now as the 'special sauce'). This gives the models depth, as the lighter color of paint lands on all the raised areas and then naturally fades to black in all of the areas that the airbrush doesn't reach. This makes the model look like the shadows have been painted on, which they have been to a degree.
When I got to the iconic white shoulder pads for this army, I wanted to try a few different options. I didn't want the white to be a flat, bright white like I frequently see on Black Templar models online. I wanted the white to be either dull or dirty in some way, and this is where starting your painting experiments with several models instead of just one starts to pay off. If you have at least two models to practice on, you can split off your 'recipe' at some point and see which look you like better. If you only had one model you were testing on, you wouldn't be able to compare techniques.
At this point, I'm pretty happy with the model seen above. I still need to finish the eye lenses (traditionally red for the Black Templars) and the basing colors (mainly a mud color and some small grey rocks), but once I'm happy with all of it (and have it all written down for posterity) I'll be able to start working on the actual real models in the army and use the pictured model as an example to paint from. I'm looking forward to it.


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When the Nazis descend from the Moon in force, they'll be behind the controls of this beauty. Here's a new piece of concept art from Iron Sky, the hotly-anticipated Finnish space-Nazi movie from the makers of Trek spoof Star Wreck.
The Iron Sky crew promised to post a previously unseen piece of concept art if they reached 10,000 fans on Facebook. And this is a doozy, with its retro-futuristic World War II space technology. The filmmakers write:
A lot of thought has gone to figuring out how the Moon Nazi technology looks like. The easy solution would have been to follow the current scifi trend of holodisplays and whatnot, but frankly, it wouldn't have been that interesting or made any sense. We've done a lot of research on the Nazi UFO conspiracy theories and came up with the following guideline: 1945 technology – perfected. Also, for the Nazi UFO aficionados out there: there is an instrument from a "genuine" Nazi UFO in there – can you spot it?
We can't wait to see the actual film! [Beyond The Iron Sky]


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Back in February, Brian and I started to plan a multi-day climbing adventure in the North Cascades for the summer ahead. Two of our favored options were the Chilliwack Group area (Redoubt, Spickard, Mox, etc.) and the Thunder-Bridge-Park Creek area (Goode, Storm King, Logan, etc.). We couldn't decide. So we came up with a good solution: do both!
The first week of July had been a fun and successful five-summit romp through the Chilliwack area, which was still rather snowy in the early season conditions. Now with a month of snowmelt (particularly off the NE Buttress of Goode, which we preferred to be dry) and the a solid high pressure system having settled over the Cascades, it was time to enact our Thunder Slam.
For six days we traversed through some of the highest and most rugged and beautiful terrain in the North Cascades, carrying our full packs over two of the highest summits in the Park and scrambling up two others. We included in our itinerary one of the most spectacular camp spots in the North Cascades: on the summit of Mt. Goode, the highest point in NCNP. We occasionally hit a trail, but only briefly before we scampered back into the wilder cross-country terrain. Besides for the first few miles on either end of the trip, we did not encounter a single human being the entire time.
The following page gives maps, route overlays, photos, commentary, and the adventures of a particular tiny stuffed mountain goat. Enjoy!
- Day 1: We started at the Bridge Creek trailhead (4400 ft) on HWY 20 and followed the PCT ~10 miles to the North Fork Bridge Creek trail. Followed the North Fork trail ~5 miles to ~1.5 miles past Grizzly Creek and ascended slabs/brush/meadows to high camp (~5200 ft) below the base of the NE Buttress of Mt. Goode. 18 miles, 3800 ft elev. gain, 3000 ft elev. loss, 11:15
- Day 2: With full packs, we climbed the NE Buttress of Mt. Goode (9220 ft). Camped on summit. 2 miles, 4200 ft elev. gain, 200 ft elev. loss, 11:55
- Day 3: Descended the SW Couloir of Goode. Traversed westward, dropped packs, and climbed the standard SW basin route up Storm King (8520 ft). Then descended route, picked up packs, and descended climbers' path to the Park Creek trail. Hiked along the trail~3 miles and camped at knoll (6000 ft) just SW of Park Creek Pass. 9.3 miles, 4300 ft elev. gain, 7490 ft elev. loss, 12:00
- Day 4: With day packs, climbed the NW route (via Booker-Buckner Col) on Mt. Booker (8280 ft). Returned to camp and packed up, then followed the Thunder Creek Trail north of Park Creek Pass (6040+ ft), leaving the trail after 0.4 miles and traversing ~2 miles to Mt. Logan. Camped at 8000' on the Fremont Glacier. 10.9 miles, 7730 ft elev. gain, 5760 ft elev. loss, 12:40
- Day 5: With full packs, ascended Mt. Logan (9087 ft) via the Fremont Glacier. Due to white-out conditions, we also summited several subsummits on the way. Descended Banded Glacier and worked our way north to the Fisher Creek Trail (3600 ft). Hiked along the trail for ~5 miles to Fisher Camp (5200 ft). 10.6 miles, 3930 ft elev. gain, 6720 ft elev. loss, 12:20
- Day 6: Followed the Fisher Creek trail 2.1 miles to Easy Pass (6520+ ft), then hiked 3.6 more miles out to HWY 20 (3700 ft). Hitchhiked to car 8 miles away at Bridge Creek Trailhead. 5.6 miles, 1300 ft elev. gain, 2800 ft elev. loss, 2:55
DAY 1: Hike in to camp below Goode.
DAY 2: Climb NE Buttress of Mt. Goode, bivy on summit.
DAY 3: Descend Goode, climb Storm King, camp near Park Creek Pass.
DAY 4: Climb Mt. Booker, move to high camp on Logan.
|We shouldered day packs and headed out to climb Booker via the
Booker-Buckner col which would access the standard NW Route (class 3).
There were a few cracks leading up to the col but they were easily
bypassed on snowbridges. .
| Route overlay showing the easy (Class 2/3) Northwest Route on Booker.
|Approaching the Buckner Glacier section below the Booker-Buckner col.
| Buckner Glacier below the Booker-Buckner col.
|Heading up towards the Booker-Buckner col. Photo by Brian Walkenhauer.
|This would be a lot trickier if this snowbridge weren't here. Photo by Brian Walkenhauer.
Interesting note: Less than a week after our trip, another party was crossing this snow bridge when it collapsed between them (here's the link to their TR on CascadeClimbers.com). Fortunately, they were okay, besides the fact that one of the guys was above the 'scrhund and the other was below.....
| Summit register on Booker. Despite the easy route and great views and relative proximity to Cascade Pass, this peak is climbed about once a year.
| Mt. Buckner is just north of Booker, linked by the Booker-Buckner col. Buckner has two summits of nearly equal height. The SW Peak (left in photo) is estimated to be 2 feet higher than the 9112 ft NE Peak (right in photo). I had a pretty straight on shot in this photo, and it almost appears as if the NE Peak is higher, but this could be due to perhaps the SW Peak being a bit further from me than the NE Peak or a slight tilt of the camera. I'm tempted to haul a survey kit up here and determine more exactly the difference in height between these two summits....
| Back to the col by noon, we decided to try to climb Buckner via its South Ridge route, which Beckey describes as mostly Class 3. I was concerned that climbing Buckner would leave us without enough time to establish a high camp on Logan's Fremont Glacier, so when the ridge began to look loose and not too much fun (or safe) to climb, we quickly made the decision to forgo Buckner and head back to move camp to Logan. In this photo we are on the lower South Ridge just before we bailed.
| In this photo you can see the loose terrain and even a sling where someone has rappelled in the past. Not a promising sign....
| Another benefit of bailing on Buckner was more time to enjoy the flowers that were blooming all around. This is a photo of Indian Paintbrush.
| Wormseed Mustard
| Phlox
| Golden daisies
| A mountain goat scuffed area.
| On our traverse back to camp, we noticed these bowl-like depressions in the snow. We tried to theorize what might have caused these....ice blocks that since melted, meltwater tunnels below, Sasquatch, ....
| It was mid-afternoon by the time we got back to our camp. We packed up and began our traverse to the Fremont Glacier on Logan.
Nelson's description: "From the pass, descend the Thunder Creek Trail north for approximately 0.4 mile to a rocky flat with a small stream. Look for a climbers track leading out of the flat. Traverse northeast, crossing a broad, sandy gully at 6,900 ft approximately 1 mile from the pass. Continue traversing northeast towards the sharp, rocky point at 7760+ feet. Turn right, uphill, before reaching this peak. Ascend talus or snow to the Fremont Glacier (8000 ft), approximately 2 miles from Park Creek Pass."
|Beautiful park-like terrain on the traverse to Logan. Photo by Brian Walkenhauer.
| This photo shows the 7760+ ft rocky point on the far left. The Fremont Glacier begins just right of the point.
| We camped on a rocky outcrop at around 8000' on the Fremont Glacier on Logan. It was a beautiful spot with sweeping views of Logan on one side and Buckner, Boston, and Forbidden on the other.
| Looking up towards the summit area of Logan from the base of the Fremont Glacier (8000') where we camped on a rocky outcrop.
| Clouds moved in and out quickly, making for some nice photo opportunities.
| Lenticular clouds forming over the south summit of Logan. A sign of weather to come....
|This photo was taken at midnight. It was quite bright during the nights on our trip because of the nearly full moon. Point 8248 behind. Exposure: 30 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400.
| Another midnight photo.L ooking up towards summit area of Logan. Exposure: 30 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400.
DAY 5: Climb Mt. Logan via the Fremont Glacier and descend via the Banded Glacier.
DAY 6: Hike out via Easy Pass.
And the now-regular installment of the escapades of a tiny stuffed (becoming not so) white multi-nick-named mountain goat....


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Kaelyn Socks Fitted Black Oxford Shoes
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Photo: Instagram/giovanni_setaro
There was a time in our organizational past when hierarchies worked well enough. During the heydays of heavy industry, firms operated like machines.Their mission was to crank out products, as uniformly, efficiently, and prolifically as possible. Not just manufacturers, but also service firms like mortgage companies hewed to this model; they hammered out financial products. And what each organisation needed was a chain of command that issued the orders to start the machine and keep it chugging.
That was the way we were, starting with the Industrial Revolution and up through most or nearly all of the 20th century. In that paradigm, innovative ideas were seen as pretty much outside the machine—relegated to R&D. They weren't needed to keep things going, to preserve the status quo, to carry on business as usual. They weren't part of the core mission, what a firm saw itself as doing and producing.
All that has changed, though not in every industry and every firm.
Today, businesses have to operate like brains, not like machines. They need to be fast, flexible, and adaptive, all of which require a robust flow of ideas. Ideas, in fact, have to be appreciated as important products of business in themselves. They're what you learn in doing the job that helps you do a better job. It's an intangible though essential product.
The problem is that traditional organizational hierarchies aren't especially good at fostering fresh ideas. Hierarchies have an important role, of course. They issue the directives and make the necessary decisions. But as organizational behaviorist David Burkus has pointed out, they do this "so well that creative ideas stand little chance of being utilized unless they're being shared from the top downward."
And that's not a solid plan for constant innovation. The high commanders, almost by definition, are too far removed—from the products, processes, and customers—to harness all the valuable insights. Their brains aren't big enough to come up with all the ideas that need to be in play. Nobody's brain is big enough. That's why an organisation needs all hands (and minds) on deck.
This is a huge question, and very thoughtful people are chewing on many different pieces of it. For now, I'd like to slice off one part, having to do with hierarchies and conversations. As my friend Bill Fischer likes to say, conversations are the building blocks of innovation, the way we usually take an idea from origination to application. But hierarchy often gets in the way. That's partly because leaders aren't watching out for the effects of rank on a conversation.
An Unlikely Solution: Give them the "Stupid Stick"
Producers of weekly television dramas and comedies understand very well that hierarchy must be neutralized if they want conversations to yield exceptional ideas, if they want insights to flow among talented professionals. The scripts for those shows are usually crafted in what are called "writers rooms," often a hotel room where the writing staff hammers out ideas for episodes. Though the participants are seldom of the same rank—they might include rookie writers, midlevel writers and producers, and co-executive producers—the rule is that everyone has an equal right to contribute ideas.
Deric A. Hughes, a writer for the science fiction series Warehouse 13, told of an executive producer who announced emphatically on the first day of work, "Here, inside the writers room, I don't care about a person's rank. I just want to hear good ideas. And if you don't have any good ideas, I'll find someone else that does."
Himself one of the mid-level writers, Hughes was quick to explain in a 2010 interview with Marc Bernardin for the science fiction blog io9: "Now, of course, he didn't mean that you shouldn't respect a person's rank and history, but it should never preclude you from coming up with ideas and sharing them with the room. So when he said that, I think this immediately broke the ice and allowed everyone to relax, be themselves, and focus on coming up with great stories to tell."
One of my premises is that all ideas should be welcomed, though not every idea can or should be acted upon. To arrive at a single innovation, you generally need bursts of ideas from all directions. Conversations are a prototypical way of triggering the crossfire of ideas, but an exchange will not bear fruit if people fear that their ideas will be declared dead on arrival, swept aside as wild, or denounced as dumb. Another writer, Javier Grillo-Marxuach of ABC's Lost and ABC Family's The Middleman, drove home the point:
One of the things I absolutely believe that no writers room should be without is a stupid stick. A stupid stick is a device that, when held by the person that's pitching, shields that person from ridicule. I find that it's actually the most useful tool I've ever seen in a writers room. A lot of the time, especially in the early going, people feel very unsafe, just talking about themselves, talking about any number of things. Like they're gonna be mocked. I generally believe that the writers room has to be safe. A good stupid stick allows people to believe that they're protected.
For those of us who are not television writers, the stick is optional. The important thing is for the environment to feel safe, so that people will open up and share their ideas. When you're at a meeting, do you feel free to hold forth with the stupid stick in hand, literally or otherwise? In your conversations, are people pouring out ideas as though they were assuredly wielding the stick?
If they're not, you may have a hierarchy problem.
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Videographer Jeff Rubin has taken every one of Chris Klein's lines from the universally panned Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li and crammed them into a continuous two-minute blurt — the final result is weirdly hypnotic.
Klein played "Charlie Nash" in Street Fighter, a film that currently holds a 4% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. When his lines are chained one after the other, his dialogue becomes some sort of dollar bin poetry. Moon Bloodgood's reactions to his lines are pretty priceless as well.
[Jeff Rubin via Slashfilm]


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Kurt Nimmo
July 19, 2010
Race is a tactic used by the global elite to divide and conquer the masses and pit them against each other. A prime example of this tactic in action is the recent NAACP passage of a resolution condemning alleged and unsubstantiated racism in the Tea Party movement.
Card carrying members of the NAACP may not know it, but they are being played for chumps. They will not emerge winners from this cynical race game, the ruling elite will. For the eugenicist elite, we are all vermin regardless of skin color and ethnicity.
Over the weekend TeaParty365 co-founder David Webb, who happens to be black, went on CBS' "Face the Nation" to denounce the "selective racism" of the NAACP. He complained that NAACP President Benjamin Jealous "will not condemn the New Black Panther Party for saying that they want to kill crackers and kill cracker babies, whereas he would condemn the KKK or any element that shows up . . . and claims that they are a part of the Tea Party."
The NAACP's shrewd race game was further exposed when Breitbart released a video today demonstrating the racism of USDA official Shirley Sherrod while addressing a meeting of NAACP members. Sherrod boasts to an appreciative audience how she withheld information and help from a farmer because he was white.
Barry Obama was specifically selected to be a front man for the global elite — who have dictated the "democratic" outcome of elections in the United States for decades, as Carroll Quigley has noted — because they are determined to use race to divide and conquer the people of America. In the highly charged politically correct atmosphere of America — deliberately engineered by establishment foundations and universities — any criticism of black politicians and a black president will be immediately denounced as the worst sort of racism. The establishment knew this when they selected Barack Soetero to be an actor pretending to represent the American people (when in fact he represents the interests of Goldman Sachs, BP, and the international bankers).
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
- {openx:49}
It is a sad commentary that so many black Americans buy into the race baiting game. It is not white America that is the enemy of black Americans, but a small number of elite eugenicists and their minions who have a sordid and well-documented history of murderous hatred of back people (best illustrated by Margaret Sanger and abortion).
The NAACP was exploited by the elite to turn black Americans against the Tea Party movement on the heels of establishment Republicans taking over a large faction movement. The establishment is sincerely frightened by the prospect of a grassroots political movement returning the United States to its constitutional foundation and that is why they are manipulating the NAACP and inventing racism where none exists — except in the minds of a few marginalized (and government infiltrated) KKK members, white supremacists, and on the other side of the invented racial divide thuggish members of the Black Panthers and government bureaucrats like Shirley Sherrod.
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Inter caste love marriage problem solution in dsfd
(19 reviews)
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