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It seemed like a simple, relatively safe task: I needed to undo the RAID array on my PC.
As its primary boot drive, my production system used a RAID 0 array consisting of a pair of Corsair Force GT 240GB drives paired to create a single 480GB volume. All of the valuable data lived on a single 2TB, 7200RPM Western Digital RE drive. The system is based on a Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 motherboard running a Core i7 3930K CPU. Intel's RapidStore storage software manages the array in Windows.
One day, RapidStore presented me with a "SMART event" notice, indicating that the drive had generated an error from the SMART monitor built into the drive controller. SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) constantly monitors the drive for potential failure conditions, and generates an error when it detects such a condition. Unfortunately, SMART rarely provides specifics about the source of the problem; a single SMART event may turn out to be nothing at all, or it may be a crucial harbinger of imminent drive failure.
The first thing I did was fire up Acronis Backup and Restore and made a full backup image of the array. Then I went online to search for a replacement drive. I found a Crucial 512GB M4 SSD for under $400. I had to double-check the price--$399 for 512GB seemed pretty low--but it turned out to be the real deal; even on Crucial's website you can pick up this model for just $412. The drive sports full SATA 6-gbps support, and reviews show it to be a reasonable (albeit not fabulous) performer. Since my main system's input/output needs aren't especially heavy, it sounded perfect, offering slightly more storage and substantially reduced risk. I figured that, after installing the Crucial SSD, I would no longer need to run RAID.
So I ordered one, and waited nervously for a couple of days until the drive arrived.
Clone Wars
My main system is based around an LGA 2011 system, which uses a fairly recent version of Intel's ICH RAID controller. The Acronis software made backing up an image of the boot array in Windows to a secondary drive easy.
I unpacked the Crucial M4, which looked fairly unassuming.
I attached the SSD as a secondary drive and canceled the Windows message that asked me to create a volume after booting up. Then I fired up Acronis Backup and Restore, and launched the process to clone a drive. I cloned the drive "as is" (meaning that all of its partitions would be the same size), having discovered on an earlier occasion that this is the best way to guarantee proper cloning of a boot drive. I also confirmed that options to make the cloned drive bootable and to copy the NT signature were selected.
The system rebooted, and Acronis launched as a pre-Windows boot process and cloned the drive. I then set up the drive in the system BIOS to be the boot drive. After restarting the system, everything booted without any trouble.
Feeling pretty confident now, I detached the two Corsair Force GT drives, but kept RAID mode enabled. I even went so far as to blow away the RAID array, leaving the backup drive image I'd made earlier as my only security blanket.
'Boot Drive Inaccessible'
The system attempted to boot, but didn't like the boot drive, despite having just booted from the same drive a few minutes earlier.
At this point I went through a systematic process of boot-drive troubleshooting:
- I checked the BIOS to make sure that either RAID mode or AHCI was enabled. Neither would boot.
- For the sake of completeness, I tried booting with the BIOS set to IDE mode. Still no boot.
- I also tried booting from a Windows 7 Setup disk and selecting the system. The following error popped up: "This version of Windows repair is incompatible with the version of Windows installed on this system."
That last error message made no sense, as I was using a Windows Ultimate x64 setup disk to attempt to repair a Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installation.
Finally, I tried booting from my most recent Acronis Backup and Restore boot disk. When I selected the image backup file, however, Acronis asked me for my "credentials"--and my Windows login and password failed. I was stymied.
It was time for coffee and a little thinking.
I returned to my office, fired up a laptop, and searched the Acronis website. I discovered a much more recent version of Backup and Restore 11. The version number--11--was the same, but the actual software revision code had changed. I downloaded the new version and created a new Acronis boot disk.
Holding my breath, I booted the Acronis restore disk. I wasn't asked for a password this time. I checked to make sure the NT signature wasn't cloned, but created fresh. The restore went flawlessly. When I rebooted, I was greeted with a Windows screen. Life was good once again.
There was one more wrinkle, however. My Adobe apps needed to be reactivated, possibly because I'd changed the NT signature on the drive. Everything else--games, Windows itself--didn't require this extra attention. To reactivate the Adobe apps, I had to call the Adobe help line, but that call went smoothly, with no issues or roadblocks.
Lessons Learned
I learned several lessons from this experience. Admittedly, they weren't new lessons, but stuff I've had to relearn repeatedly:
- If you're planning to clone a drive, copying the NT signature as-is doesn't always work. Create a fresh one every time.
- Don't wipe your old boot drive until you're 100 percent sure that your system is booting properly off the new drive.
- Make sure that you have the latest version of your backup and restore software--particularly if your system is running newer chipsets and storage controllers.
There's still plenty left for me to learn. Setting up and breaking down RAID arrays may seem like child's play, but there's nothing quite like the terror of realizing that you've accidentally destroyed years of private photos, documents, and data during a botched hard drive migration. So play it safe--back up often, and share your PC storage best practices with other readers in the Comments section.


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The Statistical Whitening Transform
In a number of modeling scenarios, it is beneficial to transform the to-be-modeled data such that it has an identity covariance matrix, a procedure known as Statistical Whitening. When data have an identity covariance, all dimensions are statistically independent, and the variance of the data along each of the dimensions is equal to one. (To get a better idea of what an identity covariance entails, see the following post.)
Enforcing statistical independence is useful for a number of reasons. For example, in probabilistic models of data that exist in multiple dimensions, the joint distribution–which may be very complex and difficult to characterize–can factorize into a product of many simpler distributions when the dimensions are statistically independent. Forcing all dimensions to have unit variance is also useful. For instance, scaling all variables to have the same variance treats each dimension with equal importance.
In the remainder of this post we derive how to transform data such that it has an identity covariance matrix, give some examples of applying such a transformation to real data, and address some interpretations of statistical whitening in the scope of theoretical neuroscience.
Decorrelation: Transforming Data to Have a Diagonal Covariance Matrix
Let's say we have some data matrix composed of dimensions and observations ( has size ). Let's also assume that the rows of have been centered (the mean has been subracted across all observations) . The covariance of each of the dimensions with respect to the other is
Where the covariance can be estimated from the data matrix as follows:
The covariance matrix , by definition (Equation 2) is symmetric and positive semi-definite (if you don't know what that means, don't worry it's not terribly important for this discussion). Thus we can write the matrix as the product of two simpler matrices and , using a procedure known as Eigenvalue Decomposition:
The matrix is an -sized matrix, where each column is an eigenvector of , and is a diagonal matrix whose diagonal elements are eigenvalues that correspond to the eigenvectors of the -th column of . For more details on eigenvectors and eigenvalues see the following. From Equation (3), and using a little algebra, we can transform into the diagonal matrix
Now, imagine the goal is to transform the data matrix into a new data matrix
whose dimensions are uncorrelated (i.e. has a diagonal covariance ). Thus we want to determine the transformation that makes:
Here we derive the expression for using Equations (2), (4), (5), and (6):
(a la Equations (5) and (6))
(via Equation (2))
(via Equation (4))
now, because (see following link for details)
and thus
This means that we can transform into an uncorrelated (i.e. orthogonal) set of variables by premultiplying data matrix with the transpose of the the eigenvectors of data covariance matrix .
Whitening: Transforming data to have an Identity Covariance matrix
Ok, so now we have a way of transforming our data so that the dimensions are uncorrelated. However, this only gives us a diagonal covariance matrix, not an Identity covariance matrix. In order to obtain an Identity covariance, we also need to scale each dimension so that its variance is equal to one. How can we determine this transformation? We know how to transform our data so that the covariance is equal to . If we can determine the transformation that leaves , then we can apply this transformation to our decorrelated covariance to give us the desired whitening transform. We can determine this from the somewhat trivial notion that
and further that
Now, using Equation (4) along with Equation (8), we can see that
Now say that we define a variable , where is the desired whitening transform, that leaves the covariance of equal to the identity matrix. Using essentially the same set of derivation steps as above to solve for , but starting from Equation (9) we find that
Thus, the whitening transform is simply the decorrelation transform, but scaled by the inverse of the square root of the (here the inverse and square root can be performed element-wise because is a diagonal matrix).
Interpretation of the Whitening Transform
So what does the whitening transformation actually do to the data (below, blue points)? We investigate this transformation below: The first operation decorrelates the data by premultiplying the data with the eigenvector matrix , calculated from the data covariance. This decorrelation can be thought of as a rotation that reorients the data so that the principal axes of the data are aligned with the axes along which the data has the largest (orthogonal) variance. This rotation is essentially the same procedure as the oft-used Principal Components Analysis (PCA), and is shown in the middle row.
The second operation, scaling by can be thought of squeezing the data–if the variance along a dimension is larger than one–or stretching the data–if the variance along a dimension is less than one. The stretching and squeezing forms the data into a sphere about the origin (which is why whitening is also referred to as "sphering"). This scaling operation is depicted in the bottom row in the plot above.
The MATLAB to make make the plot above is here:
% INITIALIZE SOME CONSTANTS mu = [0 0]; S = [1 .9; .9 3]; % SAMPLE SOME DATAPOINTS nSamples = 1000; samples = mvnrnd(mu,S,nSamples)'; % WHITEN THE DATA POINTS... [E,D] = eig(S); % ROTATE THE DATA samplesRotated = E*samples; % TAKE D^(-1/2) D = diag(diag(D).^-.5); % SCALE DATA BY D samplesRotatedScaled = D*samplesRotated; % DISPLAY figure; subplot(311); plot(samples(1,:),samples(2,:),'b.') axis square, grid xlim([-5 5]);ylim([-5 5]); title('Original Data'); subplot(312); plot(samplesRotated(1,:),samplesRotated(2,:),'r.'), axis square, grid xlim([-5 5]);ylim([-5 5]); title('Decorrelate: Rotate by V'); subplot(313); plot(samplesRotatedScaled(1,:),samplesRotatedScaled(2,:),'ko') axis square, grid xlim([-5 5]);ylim([-5 5]); title('Whiten: scale by D^{-1/2}');
The transformation in Equation (11) and implemented above whitens the data but leaves the data aligned with principle axes of the original data. In order to observe the data in the original space, it is often customary "un-rotate" the data back into it's original space. This is done by just multiplying the whitening transform by the inverse of the rotation operation defined by the eigenvector matrix. This gives the whitening transform:
Let's take a look an example of using statistical whitening for a more complex problem: whitening patches of images sampled from natural scenes.
Example: Whitening Natural Scene Image Patches
Modeling the local spatial structure of pixels in natural scene images is important in many fields including computer vision and computational neuroscience. An interesting model of natural scenes is one that can account for interesting, high-order statistical dependencies between pixels. However, because natural scenes are generally composed of continuous objects or surfaces, a vast majority of the spatial correlations in natural image data can be explained by local pairwise dependencies. For example, observe the image below.
% LOAD AND DISPLAY A NATURAL IMAGE im = double(imread('cameraman.tif')); figure imagesc(im); colormap gray; axis image; axis off; title('Base Image')
Given one of the gray pixels in the upper portion of the image, it is very likely that all pixels within the local neighborhood will also be gray. Thus there is a large amount of correlation between pixels in local regions of natural scenes. Statistical models of local structure applied to natural scenes will be dominated by these pairwise correlations, unless they are removed by preprocessing. Whitening provides such a preprocessing procedure.
Below we create and display a dataset of local image patches of size extracted at random from the image above. Each patch is rastered out into a column vector of size . Each of these patches can be thought of as samples of the local structure of this natural scene. Below we use the whitening transformation to remove pairwise correlations between pixels in each patch and scale the variance of each pixel to be one.
On the left is the dataset of extracted image patches, along with the corresponding covariance matrix for the image patches on the right. The large local correlation within the neighborhood of each pixel is indicated by the large bright diagonal regions throughout the covariance matrix.
The MATLAB code to extract and display the patches shown above is here:
% CREATE PATCHES DATASET FROM NATURAL IMAGE rng(12345) imSize = 256; nPatches = 400; % (MAKE SURE SQUARE) patchSize = 16; patches = zeros(patchSize*patchSize,nPatches); patchIm = zeros(sqrt(nPatches)*patchSize); % PAD IMAGE FOR EDGE EFFECTS im = padarray(im,[patchSize,patchSize],'symmetric'); % EXTRACT PATCHES... for iP = 1:nPatches pix = ceil(rand(2,1)*imSize); rows = pix(1):pix(1)+patchSize-1; cols = pix(2):pix(2)+patchSize-1; tmp = im(rows,cols); patches(:,iP) = reshape(tmp,patchSize*patchSize,1); rowIdx = (ceil(iP/sqrt(nPatches)) - 1)*patchSize + ... 1:ceil(iP/sqrt(nPatches))*patchSize; colIdx = (mod(iP-1,sqrt(nPatches)))*patchSize+1:patchSize* ... ((mod(iP-1,sqrt(nPatches)))+1); patchIm(rowIdx,colIdx) = tmp; end % CENTER IMAGE PATCHES patchesCentered = bsxfun(@minus,patches,mean(patches,2)); % CALCULATE COVARIANCE MATRIX S = patchesCentered*patchesCentered'/nPatches; % DISPLAY PATCHES figure; subplot(121); imagesc(patchIm); axis image; axis off; colormap gray; title('Extracted Patches') % DISPLAY COVARIANCE subplot(122); imagesc(S); axis image; axis off; colormap gray; title('Extracted Patches Covariance')
Below we implement the whitening transformation described above to the extracted image patches and display the whitened patches that result.
On the left, we see that the whitening procedure zeros out all areas in the extracted patches that have the same value (zero is indicated by gray). The whitening procedure also boosts the areas of high-contrast (i.e. edges). The right plots the covariance matrix for the whitened patches. The covarance matrix is diagonal, indicating that pixels are now independent. In addition, all diagonal entries have the same value, indicating the that all pixels now have the same variance (i.e. 1). The MATLAB code used to whiten the image patches and create the display above is here:
%% MAIN WHITENING % DETERMINE EIGENECTORS & EIGENVALUES % OF COVARIANCE MATRIX [E,D] = eig(S); % CALCULATE D^(-1/2) d = diag(D); d = real(d.^-.5); D = diag(d); % CALCULATE WHITENING TRANSFORM W = E*D*E'; % WHITEN THE PATCHES patchesWhitened = W*patchesCentered; % DISPLAY THE WHITENED PATCHES wPatchIm = zeros(size(patchIm)); for iP = 1:nPatches rowIdx = (ceil(iP/sqrt(nPatches)) - 1)*patchSize + 1:ceil(iP/sqrt(nPatches))*patchSize; colIdx = (mod(iP-1,sqrt(nPatches)))*patchSize+1:patchSize* ... ((mod(iP-1,sqrt(nPatches)))+1); wPatchIm(rowIdx,colIdx) = reshape(patchesWhitened(:,iP),... [patchSize,patchSize]); end figure subplot(121); imagesc(wPatchIm); axis image; axis off; colormap gray; caxis([-5 5]); title('Whitened Patches') subplot(122); imagesc(cov(patchesWhitened')); axis image; axis off; colormap gray; %colorbar title('Whitened Patches Covariance');
Investigating the Whitening Matrix: implications for theoretical neuroscience
So what does the whitening matrix look like, and what does it do? Below is the whitening matrix calculated for the image patches dataset:
% DISPLAY THE WHITENING MATRIX figure; imagesc(W); axis image; colormap gray; colorbar title('The Whitening Matrix W')
Each column of is the operation that scales the variance of the corresponding pixel to be equal to one and forces that pixel independent of the others in the patch. So what exactly does such an operation look like? We can get an idea by reshaping a column of W back into the shape of the image patches. Below we show what the 86th column of W looks like when reshaped in such a way (the index 86 has no particular significance, it was chosen at random):
% DISPLAY A COLUMN OF THE WHITENING MATRIX figure; imagesc(reshape(W(:,86),16,16)), colormap gray, axis image, colorbar title('Column 86 of W')
We see that the operation is essentially an impulse centered on the 86th pixel in the image (counting pixels starting in the upper left corner, proceeding down columns). This impulse is surrounded by inhibitory weights. If we were to look at the remaining columns of , we would find that that the same center-surround operation is being replicated at every pixel location in each image patch. Essentially, the whitening transformation is performing a convolution of each image patch with a center-surround filter whose properties are estimated from the patches dataset. Similar techniques are common in computer vision edge-detection algorithms.
Implications for theoretical neuroscience
A theoretical function of the primate retina is data compression: a large number of photoreceptors pass data from the retina into a physiological bottleneck, the optic nerve, which has far fewer fibers than retinal photoreceptors. Thus removing redundant information is an important task that the retina must perform. When observing the whitened image patches above, we see that redundant information is nullified; pixels that have similar local values to one another are zeroed out. Thus, statistical whitening is a viable form of data compression
It turns out that there is a large class of ganglion cells in the retina whose spatial receptive fields exhibit…that's right center-surround activation-inhibition like the operation of the whitening matrix shown above! Thus it appears that the primate visual system may be performing data compression at the retina by means of a similar operation to statistical whitening. Above, we derived the center-surround whitening operation based on data sampled from a natural scene. Thus it is seems reasonable that the primate visual system may have evolved a similar data-compression mechanism through experience with natural scenes, either through evolution, or development.
Posted on March 30, 2013, in Data Preprocessing, Derivations, Statistics and tagged Center-surround Receptive Field, convolution, Covariance Matrix, Diagonal matrix, Eigenvalue Decomposition, Eigenvalues, Eigenvectors, Identity Covariance, identity matrix, Independence, Preprocessing, Principal Components Analysis (PCA), Retinal Ganglion Cell, Statistical Independence, Statistical Whitening. Bookmark the permalink. 7 Comments.
Hi Dustin,
Thanks for the nice writeup. I wanted to clarify one thing, in the first paragraph you write
"When data have an identity covariance, all dimensions are statistically independent, and the variance of the data along each of the dimensions is equal to one."
Isn't there a difference between statistical independence and variance along each dimension being one? I am thinking of this http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~cshalizi/uADA/13/reminders/uncorrelated-vs-independent.pdf
This was extremely helpful, and interesting. Thank you!
Good work… Thank you for the detailed explaination
Here is a discussion and comparison of five natural whitening procedures, including PCA whitening as shown above: Kessy et. al. 2015. Optimal whitening and decorrelation. http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.00809
These posts are wonderful! Thank you so much.
Adored this post, this is actually the first-time I have left a comment however ,
Ive signed in and shared it with my social media friends – all the best with the blog. http://www.atlantic-medical.com/2017/05/10-surprising-things-that-can-make-you-break-out/
They also seem to do only the uncorrelation and stretching: https://www.projectrhea.org/rhea/images/1/15/Slecture_ECE662_Whitening_and_Coloring_Transforms_S14_MH.pdf
So they do not rotate the data back… Now I'm not sure who's right

subset: commoncrawl


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Conn. bill creates bill of rights for homeless
HARTFORD -- A bill before the Connecticut General Assembly would establish a bill of rights for the state's homeless population.
The legislation spells out how each homeless person has the right to move freely in public spaces, have equal employment opportunities, receive emergency medical care, and the ability to register to vote and vote. The bill also lists their right to a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding their private property, and to receive equal treatment by government agencies.
Each municipality would be required to post a public notice listing the bill of rights.
Advocates estimate there are close to 4,500 homeless individuals in Connecticut. They say there's a need for this legislation because the homeless are often ostracized, alienated and ignored.
The Planning and Development Committee is voting Tuesday on the bill.


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9 Crabtree Court
Palm Harbor, Palm Coast, 32137
Commute to Downtown Palm Coast
Almost all errands require a car.
Minimal bike infrastructure.
9 Crabtree Court has a Walk Score of 10 out of 100. This location is a Car-Dependent neighborhood so almost all errands require a car.
This location is in the Palm Harbor neighborhood in Palm Coast.
Explore how far you can travel by car, bus, bike and foot from 9 Crabtree Court.
View all Palm Harbor apartments on a map.
9 Crabtree Court is in the Palm Harbor neighborhood. Palm Harbor is the 5th most walkable neighborhood in Palm Coast with a neighborhood Walk Score of 9.


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Team Clermont Radio's "Best Of 2011" MEGAPLAYLIST!!
We're wrapping up the year in the radio department here at Team Clermont! Right now we are hard at work on our "Album Of The Year" lists and "Best of" playlists, but we wanted to take some time to highlight our favorite tracks from this year's amazing radio roster!
We've put together a full playlist of our favorite tracks from these artists on Spotify, and have included that link below!
Check out "Best Of Team Clermont Radio 2011" on Spotify, featuring tracks by M83, Destroyer, John Vanderslice, R.E.M., The Beach Boys, Akron/Family, Telekinesis, Danger Mouse/Daniele Luppi, Julianna Barwick, LAKE, Wooden Wand, Sarah Jaffe, and many more!!
Click here to listen to Team Clermont Radio's Best of 2011 MEGAPLAYLIST!


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Sandrah Proctor Eckel
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Information fraction estimation based on the number of events within the standard treatment regimen Biom J. 2020 Jul 06. . View in PubMed
Patterns and determinants of exhaled nitric oxide trajectories in schoolchildren over a 7-year period Eur Respir J. 2020 Jul; 56(1). . View in PubMed
Biomedical REAl-Time Health Evaluation (BREATHE): toward an mHealth informatics platform JAMIA Open. 2020 Jul; 3(2):190-200. . View in PubMed
Conceptualizing Health Behaviors as Acute Mood-Altering Agents: Implications for Cancer Control Cancer Prev Res (Phila). 2020 Apr; 13(4):343-350. . View in PubMed
Compliance in controlled e-cigarette studies Nicotine Tob Res. 2020 Jan 29. . View in PubMed
Impact of different fixed flow sampling protocols on flow-independent exhaled nitric oxide parameter estimates using the Bayesian dynamic two-compartment model Physiol Rep. 2020 01; 8(1):e14336. . View in PubMed
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Understanding the importance of key risk factors in predicting chronic bronchitic symptoms using a machine learning approach BMC Med Res Methodol. 2019 03 29; 19(1):70. . View in PubMed
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Short-term effects of airport-associated ultrafine particle exposure on lung function and inflammation in adults with asthma Environ Int. 2018 09; 118:48-59. . View in PubMed
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Bayesian estimation of physiological parameters governing a dynamic two-compartment model of exhaled nitric oxide Physiol Rep. 2017 Aug; 5(15). . View in PubMed
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Particulate matter air pollution and liver cancer survival Int J Cancer. 2017 08 15; 141(4):744-749. . View in PubMed
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Global trade, local impacts: lessons from California on health impacts and environmental justice concerns for residents living near freight rail yards Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2014 Feb 10; 11(2):1914-41. . View in PubMed
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Today's Birthdays: February 02
February 02
James Joyce
1882–1941, Irish Novelist.
Perhaps the most influential and significant novelist of the 20th century, Joyce was a master of the English language, exploiting all of its resources. His novel Ulysses, which is among the great works of world literature, utilizes many radical literary techniques and forms.
Life and Works
The eldest of ten children born in a Dublin suburb, Joyce was educated at Jesuit schools—Clongowes Wood College in Clane (1888–91) and Belvedere College in Dublin (1893–99)—and then attended University College in Dublin (1899–1902). Although a brilliant student, he was only sporadically interested in the official curriculum. In 1902 he lived briefly in Paris and returned to the Continent in 1904 with Nora Barnacle, the woman who would eventually become his wife. For the next 25 years Joyce, Nora, and their children (Giorgio, b. 1905, and Lucia Anna, b. 1907) lived at various times in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris.
Joyce returned to Ireland only twice: in 1909 in a futile attempt to start a chain of motion picture theaters in Dublin, and in 1912 in an unsuccessful attempt to arrange for the publication of Dubliners, which had to be abandoned due to fears of prosecution for obscenity and libel. Although the plates were destroyed, Dubliners was finally published in England in 1914. A short volume of poetry, Chamber Music, was his first published volume; it appeared in 1907. He wrote two subsequent volumes of poetry, Pomes Pennyeach (1927) and Collected Poems (1937).
Joyce and his family spent the years of World War I in Zurich, where he finished his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It first appeared in The Egoist, a periodical edited by Harriet Shaw Weaver, and was published in book form in 1916. In 1917, Joyce contracted glaucoma; for the rest of his life he would endure pain, periods of near blindness, and many operations. At this time he also wrote his only play, the Ibsenesque Exiles (1918).
Ulysses, written between 1914 and 1921, was published in parts in The Little Review and The Egoist, but Joyce encountered the same opposition to publishing the novel in book form that he had confronted with Dubliners. It was published in Paris in 1922 by Shakespeare & Company, a bookstore owned by Sylvia Beach, an American expatriate. Its publication was banned in the United States until 1933. For many years he lived mainly on money donated by patrons, notably Harriet Shaw Weaver.
From 1922 until 1939 Joyce worked on Finnegans Wake (1939), a complex novel that attempts to connect multiple cycles of Irish and human history into the framework of a single night's events in the family of a Dublin publican. In 1931 Joyce finally married Nora. Her practical, sometimes cynical response to Joyce's work provided a needed complement to his own self-absorption. Joyce and Nora had a turbulent relationship; both were profoundly affected by the progressive insanity of their daughter. Joyce died in Zurich in 1941 after an operation for a perforated duodenal ulcer.
Technique and Vision
Joyce's career displays a consistent development. In each of his four major works there is an increase in the profundity of his vision and the complexity of his literary technique, particularly his experiments with language. Dubliners is a linked collection of 15 short stories treating the sometimes squalid, sometimes sentimental lives of various Dublin residents. The stories portray a city in moral and political paralysis, an insight that the reader is intended to achieve through a succession of revelatory moments, which Joyce called epiphanies. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is an autobiographical account of the adolescence and youth of Stephen Dedalus, who comes to realize that before he can be a true artist he must rid himself of the stultifying effects of the religion, politics, and essential bigotry of Ireland.
Ulysses recreates the events of one day in Dublin—June 16, 1904; widely known as "Bloomsday"—centering on the activities of a Jewish advertising-space salesman, Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly, and the aforementioned Stephen Dedalus, now a teacher. The fundamental design of Ulysses is based on Homer's Odyssey; each chapter in the novel parallels one in the epic and is also associated with an hour of the day, color, symbol, and part of the body. Attempting to recreate the total life of his characters—the surface life and the inner life—Joyce mingles realistic descriptions with verbal representations of his characters' most intimate and random thoughts, using techniques of interior narration.
Interspersed throughout the work are historical, literary, religious, and geographical allusions, evocative patterns of words, word games, and many-sided puns, all of which imbue the ordinary events of the novel with the copious significance of those in an epic. Despite its complexities, Ulysses is an extraordinarily satisfying book, a celebration of life unparalleled in its humor, characterization, and tragic irony. A new edition of Ulysses, edited by H. Gabler, appeared in 1986, claiming to correct more than 5,000 errors that had been discovered in previous editions; it was itself flawed, and the publisher has subsequently reissued the 1961 edition in tandem with Gabler's.
Joyce's last work, Finnegans Wake, presents the dark counterpart of "Bloomsday" of Ulysses. Framed by the dream-induced experiences of a Dublin publican, the novel recapitulates the cycles of Irish history, and in its multiple allusions almost reveals a universal consciousness. In order to present this new reality Joyce manipulated and distorted language that pushed the work to the furthest limits of comprehensibility.
Because of its complexity Finnegans Wake is perhaps more talked about than read, and despite the publication of the manuscripts and drafts of the novel in 1978, probably will never be completely understood. Other posthumous publications include part of an early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man called Stephen Hero (1944). In June, 1962, a Joyce museum, containing pictures, papers, and first editions of Joyce's books, was opened in Dublin.
Joyce's works have acquired a small army of scholars, patiently unraveling their numerous textual obscurities. Many of their articles appear in the James Joyce Quarterly. See his letters (Vol. I ed. by Stuart Gilbert, 1957; Vol. II and III ed. by Richard Ellman, 1966); biography by Richard Ellman (1959, rev. 1982); studies by A. Burgess (1968), A. W. Litz (1964, 1972), R. Ellman (1977), H. Kenner (1978, 1987), and D. Attridge (1990); see also the bibliographies by J. J. Slocum and H. Cohoon (1953, repr. 1972) and T. F. Staley (1989).
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Futuristic adhesives within grasp thanks to clingy fish
PITTSBURGH -- It's easy to ignore a remora, the little torpedo of a fish that hitchhikes on sharks, whales and turtles. But this diminutive creature is full of secrets, not least of which may be the inspiration for versatile adhesive technology of the future.
Often called suckerfish, remoras are content to make an inglorious living on the scraps, parasites and feces of larger creatures. In addition to food, the remora also gains easy transportation and protection through this relationship -- after all, who's going to mess with the guy attached to the tiger shark?
Unlike a leech, which hitches a ride with its mouth, the remora uses a non-invasive suction pad on its forehead. (The remora's relationship to the host is not considered parasitism, but commensalism.) This pad, which is actually an adapted dorsal fin, consists of overlapping ridges called lamellae. By flexing and relaxing these ridges like venetian blinds, the remora creates just enough suction to hang on while leaving its little jaws free for feasting. Best of all, the attachment seems to be passive, meaning the remora need not waste much energy to ride along.
These are just a few of the findings from a new materials research project out of Georgia Tech. One of the paper's lead researchers, Jason Nadler, explains, "If I was evolving to, say, hang from a bar by my hands, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to constantly waste energy holding myself up. The remora's suction is its natural state. It's probably using more energy to detach than anything else."
To learn more about remora adhesion, Nadler and his fellow authors at Georgia Tech busted out sorcery such as microtomography, optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopes to study the fish's lamellae. Notably, the team revealed microscopic spinules or spines on the end of each lamella. These studs are probably why a remora's suction pad is smooth when brushed one way and sandpaper-y the other.
"Spinules increase friction between the remora and its host," says physics research scientist Allison Mercer, the paper's other lead author. "But we're still learning exactly how the anatomies match up."
The spacing of spinules seems remarkably similar to the spacing of a mako shark's dermal denticles, which are the scales that make up shark skin. Still, scientists don't like to get too willy-nilly with correlations, so Mercer stressed that further study will be crucial to understanding just how these spinules interact with their environment and how we can best harness their efficiency. For instance, spinules and lamellae may play different roles for different surfaces, explaining why remoras can quickly attach (and detach) to both smooth and rough surfaces.
Nadler, who is a material research scientist, is optimistic about the implications of such research. His goal is to take what the remora has gained from evolution and improve upon it for more versatile applications than shark-riding. "Simply creating a rubber remora is the wrong way to go about it," he says. "I think we need to look more closely at the features and what the spinules are actually doing, then replicate that function."
More research is afoot, as is speculation toward potential applications. Possible uses include everything from surgical tools, wound closures, and painless bandages to military reconnaissance, robot climbing feet, and marine conservation. In fact, Mercer explained that the idea to study adhesion in remoras originally came from a whale shark scientist wishing for a better way to attach tracking devices.
Bittel serves up science for picky eaters on his website, BittelMeThis.com.


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Vaginitis refers to any inflammation or infection of the vagina. This is a common gynecological problem found in females of all ages, with one-third of females having at least 1 form of vaginitis at some time during their lives. When the walls of the vagina become inflamed, because some irritant has disturbed the balance of the vaginal area, vaginitis can happen.
Bacteria, yeast, viruses, or chemicals in creams or sprays, or even clothing can cause vaginitis. Sometimes, vaginitis happens from organisms that are passed between sexual partners. In addition, the vaginal environment is influenced by a number of different factors. These include a female's health, her personal hygiene, medicines, hormones (particularly estrogen), and the health of her sexual partner. A disturbance in any of these factors can trigger vaginitis.
The following are the most common types of vaginitis:
Candida or "yeast" infection
Bacterial vaginosis
Trichomoniasis vaginitis
Viral vaginitis
Noninfectious vaginitis
Each of these types of infection has a different cause and can present different symptoms. This makes diagnosis often complicated. In addition, more than 1 type of vaginitis may be present at the same time, with or without symptoms being present.
There are other causes of vaginal discharge that should be considered. These include gonorrhea and chlamydia. However, these organisms do not infect the vagina directly. If left untreated, gonococcal and chlamydial infections can lead to serious conditions, such as PID. PID increases a female's risk of infertility, pelvic adhesions, chronic pelvic pain, and ectopic (tubal) pregnancy. Chlamydia is 1 of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the United States. It often goes undiagnosed.
Yeast infections, as they are commonly called, are caused by 1 of the many species of fungus known as candida, which normally live in the vagina in small numbers. Candida can also be present in the mouth and digestive tract in both males and females.
Yeast is normally present and well-balanced in the vagina. Infection happens when something in a female's system upsets this normal balance. For example, an antibiotic to treat another infection may upset this balance. In this case, the antibiotic kills the bacteria that normally protects and balances the yeast in the vagina. In turn, the yeast overgrows, causing an infection. Other factors that can cause this imbalance to happen include pregnancy, which changes hormone levels. Also, diabetes, which allows too much sugar in the urine and vagina, can be a factor.
The following are the most common symptoms of a candida infection. However, each adolescent may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include:
A thick, white, cottage cheese-like vaginal discharge. It is watery and usually odorless
Itching and redness of the vulva and vagina
Pain with urination or sex
The symptoms of a vaginal candida infection may resemble other conditions or medical problems. Always talk with your health care provider for a diagnosis.
While any female can develop a yeast infection, the following females may be at an increased risk for the condition:
Females who have had a recent course of antibiotics
Females who are pregnant
Females who have diabetes that is not well-controlled
Women with HIV
Females who are using an immunosuppressant medicine
Females who are using high-estrogen contraceptives
Females who are undergoing corticosteroid therapy. This slows the immune system.
In addition to a complete medical history and physical and pelvic exam, diagnostic procedures for vaginal candida infections often include a microscopic exam of the vaginal discharge.
Yeast infections are the most commonly discussed vaginal infection. And bacterial vaginosis is actually the most common type of vaginitis in females of reproductive age. This infection is caused by bacteria, not yeast. With a bacterial vaginosis infection, certain species of normal vaginal bacteria grow out of control and trigger inflammation. The cause of bacterial vaginosis is not known.
The following are the most common symptoms of bacterial vaginosis. However, each adolescent may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include:
A milky, thin discharge at times, or a heavy, gray, and sometimes green, discharge
"Fishy" odor of discharge
The symptoms of bacterial vaginosis may resemble other conditions. Always talk with your health care provider for a diagnosis.
Trichomoniasis, trichomonas, or trich as it is commonly called, is a sexually transmitted infection. It is caused by a 1-celled parasite called Trichomonas vaginalis. This parasite passes between partners during sexual intercourse. Since most males do not present symptoms with trichomoniasis, the infection is often not diagnosed until the female develops symptoms of vaginitis.
The following are the most common symptoms of trichomoniasis. However, each adolescent may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include:
A frothy, often musty-smelling, greenish-yellow discharge
Itching or burning in and around the vagina and vulva
Swelling or redness at the opening of the vagina
Light bleeding, especially after intercourse
Burning during urination
Discomfort in the lower abdomen
Pain during intercourse
Some females with trichomoniasis have no symptoms. The symptoms of trichomoniasis may resemble other conditions or medical problems. Always talk with your health care provider for a diagnosis.
Viruses are a common cause of vaginitis, with most being spread through sexual contact. One type of virus that causes viral vaginitis is the herpes simplex virus (HSV, or simply herpes). Its primary symptom is pain in the genital area associated with lesions and sores. These sores are generally visible on the vulva, or vagina, but occasionally are inside the vagina. They can only be found during a pelvic exam. Often stress or emotional situations can be a factor in triggering an outbreak of herpes.
Another source of viral vaginitis is the human papillomavirus (HPV), a virus that is also transmitted through sexual contact. HPV is the main cause of cervical cancer in women. This virus also causes painful warts to grow on the vagina, rectum, vulva, or groin. However, visible warts are not always present. The virus is generally found by a test for HPV done with a Pap test.
Two HPV vaccines are effective in preventing infection by the particular strains of HPV that cause most cervical cancers. But they do not treat existing HPV infection or genital warts. One of the vaccines also is effective against genital warts as well as some cancers of the vulva, vagina, and anus. Both vaccines are approved for use in females between the ages of 9 and 26. One of the 2 vaccines is available for boys and men, ages 9 through 26, and protects against most genital warts. The vaccines are given as a 3-dose series.
Noninfectious vaginitis usually refers to vaginal irritation without an infection being present. Most often, this is caused by an allergic reaction to, or irritation from, vaginal sprays, douches, or spermicidal products. Noninfectious vaginitis may be also be caused by sensitivity to perfumed soaps, detergents, or fabric softeners.
The following are the most common symptoms of noninfectious vaginitis. However, each adolescent may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include:
Vaginal itching
Vaginal burning
Vaginal discharge
Pelvic pain (particularly during intercourse)
The symptoms of noninfectious vaginitis may resemble other conditions or medical problems. Always talk with your health care provider for a diagnosis.
Specific treatment for candida will be determined by your health care provider based on:
Your age, overall health, and medical history
Severity of the symptoms
Your tolerance for specific medicines, procedures, or therapies
Expectations for the course of the condition
Your opinion or preference
Treatment for candida may include:
Antifungal vaginal creams and suppositories
Vaginal tablets
Oral antifungal medicines
Specific treatment for bacterial vaginosis will be determined by your health care provider based on:
Bacterial vaginosis is caused by bacteria. It is generally treated with antibiotics.
Specific treatment for trichomoniasis will be determined by your health care provider based on:
Both partners must be treated for trichomoniasis to avoid reinfection. Treatment generally involves taking oral antibiotics. If a female has more than 1 sexual partner, each partner (and any of their other partners) should also be treated.
Specific treatment for noninfectious vaginitis will be determined by your health care provider based on:
Treatment for noninfectious vaginitis depends greatly on the cause. If the cause is a reaction to an irritant, the irritant should be avoided.
Vidant Health can connect you to health care professionals to help you understand your condition and guide you through the treatment process. Let's chat.


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Second District Judicial Nominating Commission Meeting Scheduled
June 10, 2013
Salt Lake City, UT – The 2nd District Judicial Nominating Commission has scheduled a meeting for June 19, 2013 at noon to review applications of individuals interested in filling the judicial vacancy resulting from the pending retirement of Judge Michael D. Lyon. The Commission will meet in the multi-purpose room of the district courthouse in Ogden located at 2525 Grant Avenue.
The early portion of the meeting is scheduled for public comment about issues concerning the nominating process and issues facing the Utah judiciary. The nominating commission will not accept comments regarding individual applicants.
Following the public hearing, the meeting will be closed to allow the nominating commission to select candidates for interviews. At a later date, the nominating commission will select nominees whose names will be forwarded to Governor Herbert for his consideration.


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For Wii owners bemoaning the lack of "core" targeted software coming from Nintendo, there's Wario Land: Shake It!, an unapologetically old-school 2D platformer starring the anti-Mario on a hunt for treasure. The micron thin plot is a forgettable excuse to guide the gluttonous Wario through five worlds of no-frills running, jumping, coin-collecting and butt-slamming. It's surprisingly pretty for a Wario game but its also amazingly brief.
You asked for it, you got it. Is Wario Land: Shake It! the answer to your classic gaming prayers or is merely a 16-bit era relic with a pretty polish?
Hand-drawn Visuals: The well animated oversized sprites and lush, parallax-scrolling backgrounds provided by anime studio Production I.G give Shake It! a clean and comical look. Character and enemy designs may vary in their quality, but no two stages look alike and special visual effects are used sparingly.
The Music: It's obnoxious, cheesy, gratingly catchy. And it's amazingly fitting for the game. Saccharine sweet smooth jazz, twangy country-western instrumentals and spooky ditties pepper the soundtrack, tunes that may have you bobbing your head while thinking "God, this song is annoying."
Short, But Not Shallow: The main campaign, as it were, will probably take little more than five to six hours to blow through. When Wario vanquishes the final boss, however, not an easy task, there's still plenty to do. I completed the game with just 71% of the stages unlocked, 40% of the treasure acquired and a paltry 7% of the stage missions under my belt. Expect to double (or triple) your core gameplay time to get everything.
Nothing New: Wario Land 4 for the Game Boy Advance set the bar for the series, bringing with it new gameplay mechanics and heaps of charm. Shake It! has hardly any of that, offering a rather mundane collect-a-thon without much in the way of interesting gameplay concepts. A few Wario Land staples appear later in the game, but Shake It! feels like it was plucked from the 90s in the gameplay department. The Wii remote adds little more than frustration when it doesn't respond or fires you out of a man-cannon at the wrong angle.
Boss Battles: They're either simplistic and dull or maddening in their difficulty. The uninspired boss battles, some just plain annoying for the shear amount of stuff they throw at you, illustrate just how wearisome some of the new mechanics can be.
Subwarine Stages: Shake It! deviates from standard jumping and bumping for a handful of stages, but these underwater segments are more of an annoyances than a welcome change in pace.
Wario Land: Shake It!'s 2D gameplay feels somewhat stale and sterile in comparison to what Nintendo has offered the series in the past, not unlike New Super Mario Bros. a title that was frustratingly simple, devoid of new ideas. The core mechanics are there, and they're presented with finesse, there's just a surprising lack of innovation on display.
That doesn't mean it's not enjoyable, as the allure of increasing percentages through perfected gameplay to collect every last object is still there, even if the tasks sometimes feel insurmountable and hardly worth the effort. It's just that die-hard Wario Land fans may feel like they've been there and done that. And done it better.
Wario Land: Shake It!, developed by Good-Feel and published by Nintendo was released on Sept. 22 for the Wii. Retails for $49.99. Played to completion.
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text: The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit, grant-making institution. Its Workplace, Work Force & Working Families program has funded a 15-year strategic initiative integrating empirical research on the challenges facing today's working families with effective business practices and practical public policy solutions. Its National Workplace Flexibility Initiative is a collaborative effort to make workplace flexibility a compelling national issue and a standard of the American workplace.


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Red Sox add Contreras, Lyon on Minors deals
BOSTON -- At a time when their bullpen depth is being tested, the Red Sox added two veteran right-handers via Minor League deals on Friday, both of whom had ties -- either directly or indirectly -- to the organization a decade ago.
Brandon Lyon spent part of the 2003 season as Boston's closer. After that season, he was dealt to the Arizona Diamondbacks as part of the package that brought Curt Schilling to the Red Sox.
Jose Contreras was a highly sought-after free agent in the winter leading up to that '03 season and the Red Sox battled mightily for his services, only to lose out to the Yankees. Red Sox president/CEO Larry Lucchino was so frustrated at his team losing out on Contreras at the time that he referred to the Yankees as the "Evil Empire".
Both pitchers, who are a long way from 2003, will report to Triple-A Pawtucket. The moves came on the same day the Red Sox learned they might be without reliever Andrew Bailey for the rest of the season.
"Brandon pitched for [Red Sox manager] John [Farrell] last year in Toronto and signed with the Mets. Didn't quite work out for him quite the way he wanted it to, so he became available," said Sox general manager Ben Cherington. "Obviously he was here before. We felt it made sense to sign him and watch him pitch in Triple-A. He's a guy who has a track record in the big leagues, a track record of getting good right-handed hitters out. He's pitched here before. He's pitched in big games."
"In Contreras' case, we watched him more recently," Cherington said. "We knew he had an out coming up. We saw some good signs of how he was throwing the ball more recently in [Indianapolis], so we decided he was worth a shot. Both guys are going to be in Pawtucket for a while. We'll see if an opportunity presents at some point. If it doesn't at some point in August, then if we think there's a better opportunity somewhere else, we'll work with them on that. But they both have an opportunity to show us what they can do, and hopefully they come in and help us."
Lyon pitched in 37 games for the Mets this season before being released earlier this month, going 2-2 with a 4.8 ERA. In 12 Major League seasons, Lyon is 42-47 with 79 saves and a 4.16 ERA.
The 41-year-old Contreras has pitched mainly in relief this season and that's how he would be used if he eventually emerges in Boston. He last pitched in the Major Leagues on May 27, ending a seven-game stint with the Pirates that included a 9.00 ERA.


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Review: Bold New Flavours at Bulgogi Brothers
>> Thursday, December 19, 2013
Overall comment: Delicious Korean meal, best enjoyed with loved ones :D
Halal: Pork-free
Bulgogi Brothers first opened in Gang-Nam, south of Seoul, South Korea in 2006. Featuring the concept of casual dining restaurant, this brand name is certainly no stranger to Malaysians & Asians alike. They currently have 40 outlets in South Korea, Canada, Philippines, Indonesia & even Malaysia! *wow*
As its name speaks, this restaurant is well-known for its Bulgogi ("bul" means fire, "gogi" means meat) dishes. The various types of seasoned meats are prepared & grilled by the table-side, waiting to be enjoyed by all meat-lovers.
The few types of Bulgogi that are "pride & joy" of Bulgogi Brothers are the Unyangsik Bulgogi (featured below), Gwangyangsik Bulgogi (also featured below), Seoulsik Bulgogi, Deungsim, & Galbi; all of different cuts & marination.
Here's the usual way to enjoy the pancake wraps (you can get creative as well):
2. Scoop some sauteed beef slices & place it onto the pancake
Hungry already? We're not at the peak of the post yet!
The Gwangyansik Bulgogi on the other hand is a style of the southern provinces of Korea. The thinly sliced lean beef is seasoned to order in Gwangyang sauce; a closely guarded secret of soy sauce & fruit juices, which is not too strong to retain the delicate taste of the beef (words adapted from Bulgogi Brothers).
Quite yummy...I personally prefer this to the Unyangsik Bulgogi as this is sliced beef instead of minced beef
Price: * * *
Environment: * * * 1/2
Taste: * * * 1/2
Service: * * * 1/2
Korean food - yums!
Read more...


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Friday Mini-Reviews #75: Emma Holly, J.D. Robb & C.D. Reiss
Friday, July 15, 2016 | Posted by kara-karina@Nocturnal Book Reviews
The Billionaire Bad Boys Club (The Billionaires #1)
Synopsis from Goodreads
Self-made billionaires Zane and Trey have been a club of two since they were eighteen. They've done everything together: play football, fall in love, even get smacked around by their dads. The only thing they haven't tried is seducing the same woman. Executive chef Rebecca Eilert learned early on not to trust anyone. She raised her brothers by herself-with no adult being the wiser. Her knack for cooking kept a roof over the twins' heads. Now she's damned if it won't pay their way through Harvard as well. Add in running Trey's latest restaurant, and her plate is way too full for romance. That's an attitude the bad boys intend to change. Zane and Trey have set their sights on the sexy chef. When their hearts enter the equation and they both fall for her, the committed twosome faces their hardest test of all . . .
Amazon US/UK | Amazon kindle US/UK | The Book Depository
Smoking hot read! Phew, I was fanning myself. And at the same time really sweet. I love Emma Holly and have been reading her for years. She is similar in style to Roni Loren, so if you are a fan of Roni, you'll enjoy this book. Pure guilty pleasure, except I am not feeling guilty at all. It's about two bisexual guys who have been lovers for years, falling for the same woman and not knowing it. *grinning*
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Просто жгучая книга! Я всё обмахивалась и потела, пока её читала. В то же время, это очень милая история. Я читаю этого автора уже годы, и она очень по стилю напоминает Рони Лорен, так что если вы фанат той, то белитесь за Эмму Холли смело. Эта книга о двух бисексуальных друзьях, которые были любовниками со студенческих дней, и которые, сами того не зная, влюбились в одну и ту же женщину.
bought on audio
Synopsis from Goodreads
Eve Dallas has a grisly double homicide to solve when two young lovers—both employees of the same prestigious accounting firm—are brutally killed on the same night. It doesn't leave Eve a lot of leftover time to put together a baby shower for her buddy Mavis, but that's supposedly what friends are for.
Now Mavis needs another favor. Tandy Willowby, one of the moms-to-be in Mavis's birthing class, didn't show up for the shower. A recent emigrant from London, Tandy has few friends in New York, and no family—and she was really looking forward to the party. And when Eve enters Tandy's apartment and finds a gift for Mavis's shower wrapped and ready on the table—and a packed bag for the hospital still on the floor next to it—tingling runs up and down her spine.
Normally, such a case would be turned over to Missing Persons. But Mavis wants no one else on the job but Eve—and Eve can't say no. She'll have to track Tandy down while simultaneously unearthing the deals and double-crosses hidden in the files of some of the city's richest and most secretive citizens, in a race against this particularly vicious killer. Luckily, her multimillionaire husband Roarke's expertise comes in handy with the number crunching. But as he mines the crucial data that will break the case wide open, Eve faces an all too real danger in the world of flesh and blood.
While it was hard to beat the previous book in the series, this was still a very good read which brought tears to my eyes. All these babies being born, and Eve was completely out of her element along with Roarke, which was hilarious. Give her a few murders, and she is back to her comfort zone! Nice, fast, engaging read, and at times, very touching.
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Побить качеством предыдущую книгу серии было конечно невозможно, однако Рождённая в Смерти читалась всё-равно очень хорошо, и я аж от неё прослезилась. Всё эти новорожденные, от которых Ив и Роарк оба были в ужасе, от его читатель только смеялся. Дайте им два расследования в убийства, и оба успокоятся!. Хорошая, быстрая, занимательная книга. Рекомендую!
HardBall by C.D. Reiss
Synopsis from Goodreads
Perfect ass.
Perfect arms.
Perfect swagger.
They call Dash Wallace the Diamond King.
He's the hottest commodity in baseball and in the bedroom.
When he runs the bases, every woman's eyes are glued to his stunning body and a smile that puts the night lights to shame.
I'm no queen. I'm a regular girl with a regular job. I just watch him on TV and from the bleachers, season after season.
Girls like me grab a guy like that one in a million times.
My number just came up, and he is as spectacular in bed as he is on the field.
But there's not a woman in the world who can distract Dash Wallace from the game. Not for a moment. Not even me.
Until the night I do. And everything changes.
8/10I confess C.D. Reiss had me at librarian as a main heroine. Of course I had to read it, and it was a fun, quick, steamy read. Not as emotional and complex as her many others, but it was still interesting and wonderfully written. If you enjoyed Shuttergirl, HardBall is written in the same tone.
* * *Признаюсь, что С.Д. Рейсс заинтересовала меня уже тем, то главная героиня оказалась библиотекаршей. Конечно, я должна была её прочитать! И книга эта оказалась весёлой, быстрой и жгучей. Не ожидайте сложных, надрывных эмоций других серий автора, эта история написана была больше в стиле её Shuttergirl.
Tags: 8.5/10, 8/10, cd reiss, emma holly, friday mini reviews, j.d. robb, джей ди робб, мини ревью, с.д. рейсс, эмма холли
Friday Mini-Reviews #75: Emma Holly, J.D. Robb & C.D. Reiss
kara-karina@Nocturnal Book Reviews
8.5/10|8/10|cd reiss|emma holly|friday mini reviews|j.d. robb|джей ди робб|мини ревью|с.д. рейсс|эмма холли|
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In case of zombie apocalypse
Hey, guys! I feel like I should say this just in case :)
If you'd like to sponsor a fellow book addict who sometimes can't sleep at night worrying that she won't have enough books to read if internet goes down in the event of zombie apocalypse (I'm convinced it's one of the top five ways to go for human race) you can donate through Paypal to olivesandacorns at gmail dot com or buy a book through any of the links provided with my reviews which will send me a small percentage from the sale. All proceeds will go towards my enormous TBR. I will also shelter you on the remote farm in Portugal when zombie apocalypse starts provided you survive getting there. There will be books, yay?
Thank you! Love you all
If you'd like to sponsor a fellow book addict who sometimes can't sleep at night worrying that she won't have enough books to read if internet goes down in the event of zombie apocalypse (I'm convinced it's one of the top five ways to go for human race) you can donate through Paypal to olivesandacorns at gmail dot com or buy a book through any of the links provided with my reviews which will send me a small percentage from the sale. All proceeds will go towards my enormous TBR. I will also shelter you on the remote farm in Portugal when zombie apocalypse starts provided you survive getting there. There will be books, yay?
Thank you! Love you all
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text:
Even those not fluent in French could guess the young man is using some colourful language.
As another torrent leaves his mouth, he raises his hands to stifle a nervous chuckle. He's behind the wheel of a car, about to take a driving lesson with a Belgian driving instructor. He has just been told about a "new law" that requires all Belgian drivers to be able to send a text message, correctly spelled and punctuated, while driving. The driving instructor, who has trained as an actor in the past, tells the kid, "Look, I didn't invent this." The instructor then hands over what he says is a government document detailing the new regulations. It must look authentic, because the student believes that this will, eventually, be a part of his final driving exam.
"Plenty of people will crash," the student tells the instructor. They both look out over a closed driving course dotted with orange traffic cones. And then the lesson begins.
This isn't a scene from some new Belgian surrealist film. It's from an educational video made by an organization called Responsible Young Drivers (RYD). And the point is simple: to teach young drivers about the dangers of sending text messages while driving. "Worldwide, vehicle crashes are the biggest cause of mortality of youngsters between 15 and 24 years of age," says Axel Druart, RYD's European Project Director. "We have to do something about it."
"It's weird for us," he continues. "RYD has been fighting against impaired driving (under the influence of alcohol and drugs) for years, but now, with new technologies, the statistics show that distractions cause one quarter of all vehicle crashes."
Cell phone use, Druart says, is high on the list of distractions, especially among young people who are constantly on their phones, checking messages and surfing the internet. "When those young people get in a car, they don't think, 'Oh, I'm driving. I better not check my text messages.' Their attitude is more like, 'Oh, I have a message, I better check that.'"
Statistics confirm that distracted driving is a real problem. In the US, Consumer Reports recently released a survey in which 30% of respondents (young people aged 16 to 21) admitted to texting while driving in the past month. Moreover, 71% of them said they had seen a peer do so. On the US government's Distracted Driving website, it says that more than 16% of all teens involved in fatal crashes in 2009 were reported to have been distracted. And according to a Pew survey from that same year, 40% of American teens say they have been in a car when a driver used a cell phone in a way that put them in danger.
And it's hardly just an American problem. The European Commission research on distracted driving noted: "Many young drivers admit to the largely illegal activity of texting while driving. Text messaging has a detrimental effect on safety-critical driving tasks such as lane-keeping, hazard detection, and the detection and appropriate response to traffic signs."
'Deadly weapon'
So, starting a few years ago, RYD and some of its partner organizations in Europe started working on a campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of driving while distracted, especially while text messaging. The first thing they did was start using a game called "Distract-A-Match," in which young people had to complete a series of exercises in matching shapes and colors. But, they had to do this while sending a text message. To make it even more difficult, they were then asked to do it with a special pair of goggles that emulate various levels of inebriation.
But RYD wanted to take its campaign to the next level. "We were talking to volunteers and youngsters about it," says Axel Druart, "and they said, 'Why don't you make the texting an exercise during an actual driving test?'"
Druart found a Belgian driving school willing to try it, and an instructor willing to play along. One day in late March, they set up some hidden webcams around the closed road course, and inside the instruction car. The idea was to surreptitiously film the students as they tried to text and drive.The students had no idea what was going on. "They believed it. I mean, everyone's texting anyway," says Druart. "And besides," he adds with a laugh, "anything can happen in Belgium."
The resulting video is funny, poignant and powerful. Most of the students try their hardest to send the text messages given to them by the instructor; my personal favourites are "I will get fries," (very Belgian) and "I will be late tonight." At the same time they must avoid hitting traffic cones, and even go through a slalom-type course.
The result includes plenty of braking and swerving, accompanied by swearing and tears. Mangled orange cones litter the course. "Imagine that's a child," the instructor tells one student, who is close to weeping. To keep it real, the instructor spends his time not just grabbing the wheel to avoid road hazards, but also correcting the students' spelling. "Look, you spelled school wrong," he quips in one portion of the video.
By the end, all of the students are frustrated and a bit shaken. "It's impossible!" screams one young woman. The young man I mentioned earlier tells the instructor, at the end, "People will die. If this becomes law, I'll stop driving." At the end of the session, the participants were told the law was not real. They also did not have to pay for the lesson.
The video has now been viewed on YouTube more than 1.2 million times. Axel Druart says RYD has fielded phone calls and emails about the video from across Europe, countries in Africa, Canada, Australia, and China.
When RYD shows the video to kids in schools, Druart says, it is very effective. I ask him if he thinks RYD's approach is better than some of the other videos out there, which take, a more graphic approach to the subject of texting and driving. "We wanted to remain positive," Druart tells me. "We don't want to moralize. There are no crashes in the video. No blood. But we wanted people to realize the danger by themselves, and to experience it themselves. That's why we came up with this test."
Druart says RYD was also insistent on not banning anything. "When you forbid things, people (especially young people) want to do them even more."
And RYD isn't letting up. Already, Druart says, the organization is trying to come up with an awareness campaign that goes beyond just text messaging. Smartphones and tablets, many constantly hooked into 3G connections, are the next big issues, according to Druart.
"Look at the iPad," Druart says. "We think it's portable, so we can take it anywhere. It's very easy to put it on your passenger seat, or on your lap, or even on the wheel. But you can't. You have to take responsibility."
"When you're in a car," he says, "It's like you have a weapon in your hand."
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.


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Michelle Obama helped out with NORAD's worldwide Santa tracker
A handful of kids calling to pinpoint Santa's progress on his Christmas Eve journey may have been surprised to hear Michelle Obama's voice on the other end of the line.
The first lady is vacationing with President Barack Obama and their daughters in Hawaii, but spent about a half-hour Tuesday manning the phones for the North American Aerospace Defense Command. The agency's NORAD Tracks Santa program takes calls each Christmas from children wanting to ensure their presents are on track for timely delivery.
Around the time Mrs. Obama was taking calls, NORAD's tracker showed Santa and his reindeer making their way through Europe. NORAD started tracking Santa around 7 a.m. ET Christmas Eve morning. He was making good time most of the day, according to NORAD.
Children can track Santa by phone,
. Everything more you have ever wanted to know about NORAD's Santa tracker program can be read here.


text:
Article by Dominic Rushe for The Guardian, Thursday 30 December 2010
Advancement in robotics will dominate next decade, says head of the Institute for the Future
"The robots are coming. The second decade of the 21st century will see the rise of a mechanised army that will revolutionise private and public life just as radically as the internet and social media have shaken up the past 10 years. Or so says Marina Gorbis, futurologist and head of Californian thinktank The Institute for the Future."
Read the full article here »
Image via Planetary Folklore Tumblr
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Dawn of the Age of the Robot
Posted by Martin Isaac at 8:49 AM
Labels: Robots
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Your puppy or kitten might look all sweet and innocent now, but they can turn into a slutty pooch or caddy cat before you're even expecting it. As this ad shows, once you start thinking of your adorable little animals as horny teens, it changes everything and suddenly you'll want to do anything to keep them from filling your house with offspring. The clever spot was made by the Best Friends Animal Society in Utah to promote their Fix at Four campaign, which encourages people to get their animals spayed or neutered at four months old. While that's obviously a good idea, can't we also have a squee-inducing Teen Mom series starring pets?
Keep Your Kitten or Puppy From Becoming the Town Whore[AdWeek]


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The Wolves exploded for six goals and shut out Oklahoma City on Friday, the eighth time in franchise history the team has won a game on the road by six or more markers; the franchise record for win margin on the road is eight goals, which has happened twice.
Thu., Nov. 7*
at Charlotte Checkers
Time Warner Cable Arena
6 p.m.
Sat., Nov. 9*
at Charlotte Checkers
Time Warner Cable Arena
6 p.m.
Log on to chicagowolves.com for broadcast schedule, or to watch or listen to the action live online
The Wolves exploded for six goals and shut out Oklahoma City on Friday, the eighth time in franchise history the team has won a game on the road by six or more markers; the franchise record for win margin on the road is eight goals, which has happened twice.
— TY RATTIE: Paced the team with 3 goals and shared the team lead with 4 points in two games last weekend, which included his first professional multiple-point effort (2G, A) on Friday … Also accrued a team season-best +4 plus/minus rating in Chicago's 6-0 win on Friday … Tied for first on the club with 4 goals and shares fifth overall with 5 points in 11 contests this season … Ranked second in the WHL last season with 48 goals and third in the league with 110 points in 62 matchups with the Portland Winterhawks … Also shared seventh in the WHL with 62 helpers and held third with a +56 plus/minus rating
— SHANE HARPER: Shared the team lead with 4 points in two games last week, which included matching a career-high two goals and recording a career-best three points Friday night … Tallied 3 goals, 7 points, and a +5 plus/minus rating in the last five outings … Skated in each of Chicago's last six tilts after appearing in just one of the team's first five games … Bagged 5 goals, 5 assists, and 10 points in 48 AHL matchups with the Adirondack Phantoms during the 2012-13 campaign
— KEITH AUCOIN: Dished out a team season-high 3 assists on Friday, which marked the 73rd time since the start of the 2005-06 season he has accumulated three or more points in an AHL game … Shares third on the squad with 6 points (G, 5A) in 10 tilts this year … Split last season between the NHL's New York Islanders and the AHL's Toronto Marlies … Appeared in an NHL career-high 41 games with the Islanders last year, where he posted an NHL career-best six goals and totaled 12 points … Collected 10 goals, 27 helpers, and 37 points in 34 AHL outings with Toronto
— COREY LOCKE: Posted 2 assists against Oklahoma City on Friday, which marked his third multiple-point outing of the season … Paces Chicago with 9 points (3G, 6A) in 10 games this year and has tallied points in six of his 10 tilts … Began the 2012-13 campaign with TPS Turku of the Finnish Elite League, where he collected 12 assists and 17 points in 37 tilts before moving to Germany … Accrued 7 points (G, 6A) in 16 outings with Berlin of the German League
— Chicago has bagged 17 of its 28 tallies this year in the middle frame, which is tied for second in the AHL for the most markers in a single period (W-B/Scranton, 19 in the third); the Wolves have only scored five goals in each of the first and third periods this year.
— The Wolves have surrendered four goals in their four victories, while they have allowed 40 goals in their seven defeats.
— The club has lit the lamp first in all four of its wins, while it has surrendered the opening marker in each of its seven losses.
— Goaltender JAKE ALLEN's 21-save shutout performance on Friday marked the 10th of his AHL career and the 103rd whitewash in Wolves history.
— Chicago was perfect on the penalty kill on Friday, the fifth time it has achieved the feat this season; the Wolves rank fifth in the AHL with an 86.0% efficiency rating on the penalty kill this season (49 of 57).
— Center ALEXANDRE BOLDUC dented the net twice on Friday, his sixth multiple-goal effort of his AHL career and first since Nov. 23, 2012; the 28-year-old forward has bagged three goals this year, one coming at even strength, one on the power play, and one short-handed.
— The Wolves bagged two power-play goals on Saturday, the first time this season they have tallied multiple man-advantage markers in a game; Chicago, which has scored with the man-advantage in four of its last five outings, ranks 26th in the AHL with a 12.3 power- play conversion rate (seven of 57).
Saturday, Nov. 2
(at) Oklahoma City 4, Chicago 2
— The Wolves surrendered three third-period markers after entering the frame deadlocked at one to drop a 4-2 decision to the Oklahoma City Barons at Cox Convention Center
— Forwards TY RATTIE and PAT CANNONE tallied power-play strikes for Chicago
— Goaltender JAKE ALLEN stopped 29 of 33 shots
Friday, Nov. 1
Chicago 6, (at) Oklahoma City 0
— The Wolves snapped a three-game losing streak with a 6-0 triumph over the Oklahoma City Barons at Cox Convention Center
— The forward line of SHANE HARPER (2G, A), KEITH AUCOIN (3A), and TY RATTIE (2G, A) paced the Wolves offense
— Goaltender JAKE ALLEN posted 21 saves to earn his first shutout of the season


text:
'easy and comfortable viewing'
'I really enjoy holding it for long periods of time and have reverted back to reading books on my phone, something I haven't done since using my diddy-screened iPhone 4 two years ago.'
'The new look and feel brings with it a crisper and thinner font, a greater use of colour, and a layering system that gives everything added depth. '
'The iPhone 5S fully supports 2G and 3G (DC-HSPA and HSPA+) bands just as before but this time Apple has added in a host of additional 4G bands. '
'Some might see the plastic as regressive rather than progressive - it depends how much a lick of colour does for you - but any fears that you may have that C in 5C stands for "cheap" will disappear the moment you pick up the phone.'
'With the camera app, you have a new Automatic HDR mode, which applies HDR filters to objects and scenes before image capture. .'
Bright and cheerful new colors, Solid value
It's a cheaper iPhone, not a cheap iPhone
'At just over £80, locked to Virgin Mobile, the ZTE Blade V is clearly pitched towards the very budget conscious, ideal for those that want a cheap smartphone to take to school.'
'Neat-looking metallic rear. '
'For today's standard, the Blade V's screen is pretty small at 4in. '
All the right ingredients
It's a looker - compact and stylish
We can't see why you'd choose the Xperia M over its rivals
Stylish design, Good battery life, Decent speaker quality
cheap Android phone is okay, but there are better budget phones
Good picture quality
Supports 4G, MicroSD card support, Clean user interface
Inconsistent performance, Unimaginative design
Low price, 4G connectivity, microSD card slot, runs Android 4.2
Good all-around value for the money
Cheap, compact, capable Windows Phone device
Super cheap, Large, expansive screen
Least expensive handset in the Lumia line-up
Free under contract, has long-lasting battery life
Employs some of the new LG Optimus UI enhancements
Amazing battery life, Solid build quality
Sluggish benchmark performance, Lackluster camera
Dirt cheap under contract, has 4G LTE
Competitively priced, waterproof, and has 4G LTE capabilities
ReviewGist helps you find the best products to buy by making sense of online reviews.
We are currently aggregating 376,500 reviews
covering over 29,474 products.
© 2020 ReviewGist.com. All Rights Reserved.


text:
Who's angrier about this? Traditional marriage activists, or gay rights activists who don't want to see the debate about same-sex marriage dragged down the slippery slope when they're trying to build on momentum from New York?
Nationally-known constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley said the lawsuit to be filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City will not call for plural marriages to be recognized by the state. Instead, it asks for polygamy between consenting adults like his clients, former Utahn Kody Brown and his wives, to no longer be considered a crime.
"We are only challenging the right of the state to prosecute people for their private relations and demanding equal treatment with other citizens in living their lives according to their own beliefs," Turley said in a press release. The Browns star in the TLC network show "Sister Wives." There is no word yet on whether they will appear in a press conference scheduled for Wednesday…
The complaint to be filed Wednesday, Turley said, presents seven constitutional challenges to the state's bigamy law. It is largely based on the right to privacy.
"In that sense, it is a challenge designed to benefit not just polygamists but all citizens who wish to live their lives according to their own values—even if those values run counter to those of the majority in the state," said Turley, a member of the faculty at George Washington University.
If the distinction between decriminalization and state recognition seems confusing (which it did to me at first), it helps to know that Utah's bigamy statute includes cohabiting with one person when you're legally married to another. And in fact, this guy is only legally married to one woman; the other three are, er, "sister wives." Basically, he's arguing that he doesn't care if the state recognizes them as legal spouses or not, just that he doesn't want the cops to come knocking and lock him up when they find out. In that sense, his court claim mirrors the current legal regime in most states where gay marriage is banned but gay sex is constitutionally protected.
So, no lawsuit to legalize polygamous marriage — yet. But legal precedents have a funny way of building on each other:
The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. Instead, the lawsuit builds on a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the "intimate conduct" of consenting adults. It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own "intimate conduct" so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses…
The questions surrounding whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry are significantly different from those involved in criminal prosecution of multiple marriages, Ms. Pizer noted. Same-sex couples are seeking merely to participate in the existing system of family law for married couples, she said, while "you'd have to restructure the family law system in a pretty fundamental way" to recognize polygamy.
Professor Turley called the one-thing-leads-to-another arguments "a bit of a constitutional canard," and argued that removing criminal penalties for polygamy "will take society nowhere in particular."
Ah, but they're not asking to change family law, just to take polygamy out of the penal code. The family law case will be the next lawsuit. FYI, the Supreme Court already upheld laws against polygamy — 130 years ago, rejecting a Mormon challenge based on the Free Exercise Clause. So there's precedent here if SCOTUS wants it when it eventually hears a case along these lines. Two important footnotes, though. One: The Court's language in Lawrence v. Texas, a decision authored by Anthony Kennedy, was famously broad in its implications (a point noted by Scalia in dissent at the time), so there's no telling whether that earlier precedent is still good law. And second, Lawrence itself overruled a much more recent precedent in Bowers v. Hardwick to arrive at its holding. So yeah, there's quite a fair chance that the Brown clan might pull this off.
Exit question: Speaking of people who aren't eager to watch this court/media battle play out, how excited do you think Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are right now?


text:
Lionsgate's The Hunger Games: Catching Fire continued to lead the way on Tuesday with a daily take of $4.01 million. In the process the blockbuster action-adventure sequel starring Jennifer Lawrence surpassed the $300 million domestic milestone on Tuesday. Catching Fire reached the milestone in just twelve days, which ties it with last year's The Dark Knight Rises as the third fastest film ever to reach the $300 million mark (only last year's Marvel's The Avengers and 2008's The Dark Knight reached the milestone faster). Catching Fire is the third release of 2013 to reach the $300 million milestone thus far (joining Iron Man 3 and Despicable Me 2).
With a twelve-day total of $303.71 million, Catching Fire is running 18 percent ahead of the $258.33 million twelve-day take of last year's The Hunger Games (which took 17 days to reach the $300 million mark). Catching Fire was up 18 percent over Monday's performance and down 75 percent from last Tuesday.
Disney's Frozen held steady in second place with $2.50 million. The blockbuster 3D computer animated film from Walt Disney Animation was essentially unchanged from Monday's performance. In comparison, 2010's Tangled fell 4 percent on its first Tuesday to gross $1.698 million. Frozen has grossed a very impressive $98.94 million after seven days of wide release and is set to reach the $100 million domestic milestone today. The film is currently running 37 percent ahead of the $72.17 million seven-day start of Tangled. Frozen and Catching Fire are likely to find themselves in a close race for first place over the upcoming weekend.
Open Road's Homefront was up one spot and a healthy 39 percent over Monday to take third on Tuesday with $0.701 million. The action thriller starring Jason Statham and James Franco has grossed $10.94 million through its first week or release. That is towards the lower end of expectations and places the film 18 percent behind the $13.28 million seven-day start of 2010's Faster.
Thor: The Dark World fell one spot from Monday to place in fourth with $0.655 million. The blockbuster superhero sequel from Disney and Marvel was up 23 percent over Monday and down 66 percent from last Tuesday. With a 26-day total of $187.89 million, Thor: The Dark World is currently $12.11 million away from reaching the $200 million mark.


text:
If you want to be a better investor, consider stepping away from the market "news."
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Recently I read an enlightening story in the New York Times about the Pu'er tea bubble in Yunan, China. The burgundy fermented teas fetched prices of $150 a pound at the peak, but
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Did you know that your local TV and radio stations regularly receive gift certificates as "payment" for air time? Believe it or not, retailers and restaurants are actually exchangi
Today a new rescue program called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) was announced by the Treasury and Federal Reserve to support owners of securities backed by
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The United States House of Representatives just passed a massive mortgage bailout bill that includes many changes to the Federal Housing Administration and the Government Sponsored
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