text:
National Board Certification Resources
Information for Candidates and NBCTs
General Information
- National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) web site
Information about the NBPTS and the National Board Certification process, as well as resources for candidates and National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs).
- Research
Studies about the impacts of National Board Certification.
- NBPTS Education Policy and Practice Information Center
Information and resources to support advocacy and reform efforts.
- NBPTS Core Propositions
The Five Core Propositions that characterize what accomplished teachers know and are able to do.
- NBPTS Standards by Certificate
The list of 25 certificate areas and their standards.
- Become an NBPTS Assessor
Professional development opportunity for teachers that involves scoring candidate responses.
- Take One!
Classroom-based professional learning available to all educators.
- Take One! School
Information on how Take One! can operate on the school level.
- Research
Candidate Resources
- Candidate Information Page
The site for full and retake candidates, which provides background, directions, and guidance.
- Candidate Support Providers
How to locate support providers and networks.
- State and Local Candidate Support
Search for fee assistance and incentives provided in your geographic area.
NBCTs Resources
- Certification Renewal
Information about renewing Certification.
- NBPTS Candidate Support Provider Training
Information about how to become a candidate support provider.
- Creating a Network
Information about creating a network of NBCTs.
- NBPTS Advocacy Link
Resources for NBCTs who are or want to be involved in political advocacy.
- NBCTLink
NBPTS Networking site for NBCTs.


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A Guide to the UT Department of Middle Eastern Studies Records
Scope and Contents
Material documents the administration of the department and its various programs, centers, and institutes. Specific information includes Faculty Executive Committee Meeting Minutes and committee rosters, the department's 1993 evaluation by an outside entity, reports detailing the creation of the department, correspondence between the Center for Midclle Eastern Studies director and faculty of summer archeological exploration project in the Middle East (includes updates and progress reports), Center's participation and membership in national groups focusing on Middle Eastern studies.Personal and business correspondence including financial and legal papers, postcards, greeting cards, domestic material, newspaper clippings, and photographs, arranged chronologically by subject.
Return to the Table of Contents
Administrative Information
Cite as:
UT Department of Middle Eastern Studies Records, Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
Return to the Table of Contents
Detailed Description of the Collection
Return to the Table of Contents

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Several sources with knowledge of the process said GSK had started the talks ahead of a formal review process and was hoping to appoint a single media agency network. It is unclear whether the review will be confined to or extended beyond roster networks.
WPP's MediaCom handles GSK's £60 million UK media account, while Omnicom's PHD picked up the $1.4 billion (£890 million) US business in late 2010.
MediaCom lost the US account and some European markets, to Starcom Media-Vest Group, as part of two separate reviews in 2010.
WPP will hope to strengthen its relationship with GSK as its part-owned agency CHI & Partners has just won the Maxinutrition ad business. Grey picked up a global brief to create a corporate "masterbrand" campaign in December last year.
The global media review comes as GSK confirmed plans to restructure its European pharmaceuticals operation to cut costs and announced a "strategic review" of Lucozade and Ribena, after it reported a 1 per cent revenue decline in 2012.
GSK hired Sameer Singh, the former Procter & Gamble vice-president of media in Asia and China, to the new position of vice-president and head of global media in September 2012.
Singh was given a brief to spearhead a new approach to media planning, buying and strategy but, at the time, a spokesman said it would have no "immediate" implications for its media agency roster.
A GSK spokeswoman told Campaign this week: "GSK is creating the world's best fast-moving consumer healthcare company. Our approach to media planning, buying and strategy will support this."


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Sourced from the finest pine, this mountain design measures 16.5 inches by 15.5 inches. The color palette of this original design is composed of classic grey, rich shades of brown, and natural, unstained wood.
The quality of this hand crafted, statement piece is unparalleled and made to last through the generations. This sturdy piece weighs under 10 pounds and comes ready to hang with a durable sawtooth hanger on the back.
Every piece of wood has unique grain, which means each work of art I create will also be unique.


text:
by Melissa
(Seattle, Wa.)
Growing up my mother and I were very close; she let me get away with murder and gave me everything I wanted...as a child this was awesome. However, as an adult, I realize it did me a dis-service; I was not made to be responsible for myself.
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My hubby and i are the sole caregivers of my elderly father who is 85. I have 2 siblings who do sweet FA as they can't stand him. He's a misogynistic,


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Nancy Allen (I)
STARmeterTop 5000
Down 342 this week
Nancy Anne Allen was the daughter of a police lieutenant from Yonkers, New York. At a young age, she trained for a dancing career at the High School of Performing Arts, and then attended Jose Quintano's School for Young Professionals. In dozens of television commercials from the age of 15, Nancy made her first film appearance in The Last Detail (... See full bio »
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Well, it's October and although it may not feel like summer is over in some places it is coming to an end! I have mixed feelings about the end of summer. As some may know, summer is one of my least favorite seasons but it does have its perks! I figured I'd wrap up my Bee inspiration series today as a goodbye to summer! But don't worry, there are MANY amazing new themes in store for this fall/winter!!! (My favorite seasons!) As always, click the photo for credit and more information.
- Welcome to Bow. I'm Vanessa, the owner of Vanessa Reed Photography. Reed's Bow is dedicated to event inspiration for future clients. My goal with this blog is to share inspiration I find online to help clients create their perfect events.
- Burlington, Vermont wp.me/p19SvZ-cv 7 years ago
- Washington, DC at night wp.me/p19SvZ-bZ 7 years ago
Tagsbaby baby shower balloons beach bee black blue boots bouquet bridal shower brown cake candles candy centerpiece china cotton cowboy boots cream cupcake cupcakes decor dessert desserts diy dress dresses drinks e-session elopement engagement esession favor favors feather feathers flower flowers food green hair honey inspiration invitation invitations jewelry lace orange pastel pastels peacock photography pink portraits purple rainbow red rings seating shoes shower snow table tables teal TOMs umbrella valentine's day vanessa reed vanessa reed photography vintage wedding white winter yellow
- I do not claim ownership of any of the images used on this site unless otherwise stated. All images are credited within the blog post or through the image itself. If you do not wish for me to use your image, please feel free to contact me and I will remove it from the site.


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What you need:
4-5 Potatoes, boiled
1 Onion, finely chopped
5-6 Green Chillies
3 cloves Garlic
1 inch Ginger
5-6 Curry leaves
1 tsp Mustard Seeds
1 tsp Cumin Seeds
A pinch of Asafoetida
1 tsp Turmeric
11/2 cups Besan/Chickpea Flour
2 tsp Red Chilli Powder
½ tsp Sodium Bicarb
Oil for Frying
How to proceed:
1) Mash boiled potatoes, grind garlic, ginger and green chillies to a paste
2) Heat 2 tbsp Oil in a pan, add curry leaves, mustard seeds, cumin seeds and asafetida.
3) When mustard seeds start spluttering, add the paste and sauté for 30 sec
4) Now add onion and fry till it turns brown
5) Add turmeric and mashed potatoes and mix well. Add salt as desired
6) Cook covered for 5-7 mins and leave aside to cool
7) When mixture cools, make small balls and flatten them a bit
8) Make batter by adding water to besan; add red chilli powder, turmeric, soda and salt to it.
9) Heat oil in a pan. Dip the balls in batter and slide in hot oil
10) Deep fry on both sides. Fry on medium gas to cook it evenly.
11) Serve hot with some chutney and green chillies
* I served this dish with dry shengdana chutney and fried salted chillies. I also applied some sweet tamarind chutney to one pav.. its the way I like it :)


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Guitar bands, we're told, are BACK BACK BACK. There's a whole new troop of skinny, grubby faced, posh boys from London suburbs raised on Noel n' Liam n' Pete n' Carl n' the myths of Britannia and old Albion, doing scratchy indie rock and traversing the country in battered vans. It's an odious viewpoint that doesn't ring true in the slightest - the kind of skinny-jean rock that sounds best upstairs in the Star and Garter with a pint of cider and your trainers sticking to the floor doesn't need a come-back, because it's never gone away, and here's The Cribs' best of record to prove the point.
Coming in on the same wave of urchin rock as the Libs and co, The Cribs (as opposed to, say, The Others) have refused to go away, propping up the XFM playlist for the best part of a decade with a remarkably consistent string of great pop singles and strong albums. In many ways they're a textbook case of how to do British indie rock: work hard, tour hard, get your idols and influences to produce (Bobby Conn, Edwyn Collins, Alex Kapronos, Steve Albini), progress your sound but not too far, get a celeb girlfriend but not a flashy one, don't sell out, don't start being shit, when all else fails employ one of the Smiths. They should be taught in schools, if widespread 'learn how to be an indie rock n' roll band' courses wouldn't completely destroy the scene forever (it's happened to stand up comedy, it can happen to lo-fi pop).
Payola, the group's first proper retrospective, pulls together most of their singles and a good chunk of their better album tracks to create a fair representation of everything that works about The Cribs. 'Well sequenced' may seem like faint praise, but when you're putting together a collection of existing material it's one of the most effective skills you can have. The scrappy strictly bass-one guitar-drums lo-fi of 'Another Number', from their self-titled debut, is an effective opener, reminding us how charming and witty their early records were and resetting the last ten years of increasingly bigger and richer music, allowing us to rediscover that evolution over again.
From there it's a fairly straightforward journey through the last decade, covering the proper sticky-floored-indie-club-XFM-friendly 'Hey Scenesters!' and 'Men's Needs', through to the full-throated grunge of last year's 'Come On Be a No-One'. Standing out a mile is the material written with Johnny Marr on guitar, 'We Share The Same Skies' is an utter gem, Marr's gracefully spiralling riff beamed in from some point in 1986 and effectively spraying 'Johny woas 'ere' in massive letters across the whole thing. 'Cheat On Me' pulls the same trick, grafting shimmering Eighties indie to a grungey Nineties lo-fi that reeks of Pavement and Monster-era REM. Kurt Cobain would have sold his wife to get that balance, assuming he could find a buyer. The merging of American and British influences is one of the things the Cribs have always done well.
It's difficult to effectively rate greatest hits records, you have to take it as a given that the songs are all top drawer, which leaves three variables: selections, sequencing and compulsory new material. Payola aces the first two taking all the obvious tracks and adding in some of the darker corners of their discography ('City of Bugs', the incredible 'Be Safe') and creating a lovingly evolving shape for the record. There's only one new song included, alas, the closing 'Leather Jacket Love Song' which doesn't shine especially above any of the others, but then best of's bonus tracks rarely do. It's a little Cribs-by-numbers, pointing to the past rather than the future.
Cribs fans, of course, will have all of this already. There's nothing here you can't achieve with an iTunes playlist. However, grouping these songs together is a happy reminder of how consistently great The Cribs have been, and if you're a newcomer this is the best possible introduction to a band that have been keeping indie-rock very much alive and kicking for a decade and counting.
8Marc Burrows's Score


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On "Mulatto"
James A. Emanuel
This dramatic dialogue offers a tensely individualized conflict between father and son that is hardened by the vigor and scorn of the words and broadened by carefully placed, suggestive details from nature. The son's adamant voice opens the poem, but is transformed into a passive Negro feminine presence exuberantly recalled by the white father, who feels half-pleasurably nagged in his fancied return to the conception and infancy of his son. The poet, employing the past awakened in the white man, leaves him musing and moves the growing child swiftly through years of hostile rejection by his white half-brothers--implying virtual estrangement from his father, whom he no longer reminds of sexual freedom in the Negro quarter. "Niggers ain't my brother" is the rebuff so ungrammatically worded as to show the displacement of reason and truth by blind social restrictions. In the last third of the poem, the father's reminiscences of woods, stars, and exploitable black women are slightly rephrased, indistinctly merging the author's voice with the father's. At the end, "I am your son, white man!" is repeated as a challenging accusation, weaker now, yet taking precedence over the phrases enclosing it, the author-father's echoes of earlier sensuous memories. Oddly, this is the father's poem. The delicious memories, the unweakened sense of arbitrary power to take and to withhold, the expansive portents of nature, even though ironically misconstrued--all are his. The son is the catalyst, but the father glows. The author expands his profoundly racial material and so convincingly explores a white father's subconscious that the poet's own hovering irony becomes inseparable from the ambivalent remembrances of his subject.
From Langston Hughes (Twayne, 1967)
John Claborn
A Comparison of Langston Hughes's "The Mulatto" and Claude McKay's "Mulatto"
Reading McKay's traditional poetics alongside his contemporary Langston Hughes's open-form, experimental poetics brings out the specificity of the sonnet's formalizing force. Consider Hughes's "Mulatto" (1927) and McKay's earlier 1925 sonnet, "The Mulatto." Since slavery, the problem of the mulatto child disavowed by his/her white father-master has been a site of intense emotion and trauma—a problem that these two poems address head-on from the perspective of the mulatto son. Hughes's "Mulatto" embraces a hybrid form structured by interpolations, multiple voices, and polyphony—in short, the poem is "mulatto" in form as well as content. McKay's raging sonnet could not be more different: in tapping the "white" tradition of the Shakespearean sonnet's iambic pentameter, a b a b c d c d e f e f g g rhyme scheme, the poem at first seems constrained and less formally inventive than Hughes's. Although McKay's black voice singing in a borrowed white key is in a sense "mulatto," its unambiguously raging tone and the sonnet's overall worldview of warring, "unreconciled" binaries—love and hate, black and white, kill or be killed—follow a logic of synthesis that significantly differs from Hughes's jazzier mix of poetic voice.
Initially, Hughes's poem seems to break down into three voices (father, son, and an elusive third voice) that cut in and mutually interrupt each other, causing abrupt shifts in style and tone that, in the end, disarticulate voice from identity. In the opening lines, the son asserts his mulatto identity and pleads for recognition from his white father. The unnamed son's address to a generic "white man" suggests that his voice oscillates between the particular and the general, between the son as individual and the son as representative of all mulattos:
I am your son, white man!
Georgia dusk
And the turpentine woods.
One of the pillars of the temple fell.
You are my son!
Like hell! (1-6)
Instead of immediately giving us the father's response to his son's accusatory plea, the poem then shifts to an "objective," racially unmarked voice that describes the natural setting of the "Georgia dusk / And the turpentine woods" (2-3). While this three line interpolation give us terms—dusk and turpentine—that signify nature's own color-mixing of night and day, it also folds back in on the father-son dialogue and naturalizes the supposed unnaturalness of racial mixing. Some of these more descriptive lines show nature as constantly commingling: the night is full of mulattoed "Great big yellow stars" (10) and mixed smells: "The scent of pine wood stings the soft night air" (18). The fourth line's mysterious reference to a partially ruined temple—only "One of the pillars of the temple fell"—disrupts our expectations about the action's geographical location in Georgia: where are there temples in Georgia? Given Hughes's concern with ancient Africa/Egypt in "Negro" (1922) and "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921), the temple obliquely evokes these ancient ruins, thus interjecting into the poem a subtle yet trans-historical, trans-geographical twist: a collapsing of distance in space and time. This third, descriptive voice, seemingly transcendent, then hovers over the father-son dialogue throughout the rest of the poem.
As the poem unfolds, it deconstructs itself. The father's voice becomes more ambiguous, making it difficult to discern his from the son's. His initial response to and denial of his son—"You are my son! / Like hell!"—inadvertently betrays some level of recognition that begins to destabilize the father's identity. When the father asks, "What's a body but a toy?" (11), the abrupt shift to a macabre jingle about bruised black bodies suggests that another unidentified voice answers the father's question, though presumably in a way that would be satisfactory to the father:
Juicy bodies
Of nigger wenches
Blue black
Against black fences (12-15).
Perhaps as a surging up of the father's and son's mutual unconscious, a memory triggered by the "Sharp pine scent in the evening air" (22) mentioned later, these lines return the poem to the primal, traumatic rape scene of the son's conception. Yet even as the father repeats his question, implying an association of the female black body with mere toys, this voice of the unconscious interpolates another song:
A nigger night,
A nigger joy,
A little yellow
Bastard boy (23-26).
The "joy" both folds back on the night of conception—the rape of the mother-toy—and plunges forward into the mulatto "Bastard boy," thus forming a toy-joy-boy rhyming constellation. The playful tone of the songs and the toy-joy-boy rhyme suggest that the father's feelings towards his son vacillate, thus defusing any straightforward rejection, even if lines like "Git on back there in the night, / You ain't white" imply such a rejection (36-37). Unlike the speaker in McKay's poem, who sets out to murder his father, the problem for Hughes seems to involve mutual recognition, or rather a conscious recognition of an unconscious recognition—an overcoming of a repressed recognition that the white father must feel at some level. The poem's unrecognizable form, too, demands recognition from readers more familiar with conventional forms like the sonnet. Although the poem ends on an ambiguous note, leaving the son to continue his pleading, its mix of mutually haunting voices at least implies that some kind of reconciliation is possible.
In McKay's "Mulatto," the father-son forces cannot be reconciled or rescued by the identity-vertigo induced by the work of interpolation in Hughes's poem. Hughes's poem may sit more comfortably than McKay's with those who value becoming and ambiguity, fluidity, and the interconnectedness of all things which, in turn, supposedly corresponds to a socialist-democratic politics of pluralism and openness. McKay's poem, on the other hand, challenges us to rethink this melting pot ontology of becoming and its political efficacy, to think a world where reconciling might mean murdering. In its blunt acceptance of violence, the poem is Fanonian decades before Frantz Fanon, the Caribbean-born revolutionary who advocated the use of violence to overthrow colonial regimes:
Because I am the white man's son—his own,
Bearing his bastard birth-mark on my face,
I will dispute his title to his throne,
Forever fight him for my rightful place.
There is a searing hate within my soul,
A hate that only kin can feel for kin,
A hate that makes me vigorous and whole,
And spurs me on increasingly to win.
Because I am my cruel father's child,
My love of justice stirs me up to hate,
A warring Ishmaelite, unreconciled,
When falls the hour I shall not hesitate
Into my father's heart to plunge the knife
To gain the utmost freedom that is life.
While a number of words in Hughes's text are "marked" as mulatto (dusk, turpentine, yellow), for McKay, the mulatto mark is a birth-mark owned by the white father, suggesting an irremovable blemish or stain on racial purity, the manifestation of the white man's shame that the mulatto must "bear" for his entire life. At the same time, the physicality and undeniable there-ness of the "birth-mark" testifies against the white father's absurd denial of his son, allowing McKay to bypass the problem of recognition altogether (a bypass also implied in the recognizable sonnet form). Instead of mutual recognition, there is mutually violent rejection: the speaker-son first fantasizes about regicide—"I will dispute his title to his throne" (3)—before turning in the final lines to a more detailed scene of patricide. The "searing hate" (3) that burns in the son's soul also gives him a coherent identity and vitality that makes him "vigorous and whole" (5). The speaker again qualifies this hate that "spurs" by asserting its origin in a "love of justice" (8), suggesting that his acute awareness of the gap between justice and reality fuels his anger. "[L]ove of justice" also differentiates the son's hatred from his father's, an arbitrary hatred that makes him abandon and oppress his own son.
With the son's reference to himself as a "child" in the first line of the final sestet, McKay sets up an oblique revision of the Abraham-Isaac-Ishmael drama that caps off the poem. "A warring Ishmaelite, unreconciled" invokes not only the Biblical but also the Qu'ranic stories of Ishmael, the illegitimate son of Abraham and his slave, Hagar. In the Biblical version of the story, God establishes his covenant with Abraham's younger legitimate son, Isaac, and ostracizes Ishmael: "He shall be a wild man; / His hand shall be against every man, / And every man's hand against him" (Genesis 16:12). Ishmael plays a more positive role in the Qu'ran, the holy book of Islam. Indeed, Abraham and Ishmael, father and son, are equally prophets (217), charged with the task of building the Ka'bah at Mecca: "We enjoined Abraham and Ishmael to cleanse Our House for those who walk round it, who meditate in it, and who kneel and prostrate themselves" (17). If we combine this positive appraisal of Ishmael with the biblical one, then my argument that McKay substitutes Ishmael for Isaac in the final lines becomes plausible. Unlike the passive Isaac, who unknowingly awaits his execution at the hands of his father, the rebellious Ishmaelite son "shall not hesitate / into [his] father's heart to plunge the knife" (12-13). It is important to note that the moment of reversed sacrifice is suspended indefinitely: "When falls the hour," the speaker says. The sonnet does not occur within the moment of violence, but rather in the anticipatory resolve or readiness for some future violence.
Obviously, if the solution to injustice that "The Mulatto" proposes (i.e. patricide) were carried out, such a gesture would be, in the grand scheme of white-dominated capitalism, useless. Given McKay's involvement with Communism, both in his stint as assistant editor for the leftist journal The Liberator and in his grand tour of the Soviet Union in the early 1920s, there must be some other way, some alternative to father-son quarreling or to-the-death knife-fights. One such answer is hinted at in the suspended act and implicit attitude towards futurity of the line "When falls the hour." While the violence of "The Mulatto" is direct and uncompromising, such violence is also deferred and thus remains open to the coming future.
Copyright © 2007 John Claborn
Return to Langston Hughes


text:
Record-Breaking Thread
- Updated
1 Reply
I've initiated the process of purchasing this parcel of land, pretty exciting:
wow some chunk of land there trochu, best of luck in your pursuit of it
whoa, this hits too close to home. and I don't mean the fact that Boston is my backyard.
it turns out the woman whose name they released among the deceased is known to a friend of mine back in high school. so, yeah, this makes me wicked pissed now.
Definitely worth reading: https://www.facebook.com/pattonoswalt/posts/101514408005826551 Reply
I loved this.
This whole senseless act of violence has shook me to my core. I have spectated my husband steps away from where the second bomb went off a few times now and the friends I usually spectate with left the area minutes and moments before. All are safe and accounted for, thank goodness, and my husband and I are so thankful we decided to skip the trip this year. My heart is so heavy for the victims and their families and so thankful that the first responders were able to react as quickly as they did. I hope they find out who did this and soon.
welcome to hump day, boy all these new meds makes me remember the 70's with all the " home grown " goodies you could get back then. I haven't felt so wobbley like this in years , so phantic is moving a turtle speed for next few weeks to allow the body to adjust


text:
It can be difficult to keep track your personal finances. You can save yourself from negative financial situations by keeping a close watch on every aspect of everything that happens in your finances. There are many tools available to you which can make this process easier,though even when using them it is important that you know exactly what you are spending your money on.
Stay tuned to the news in order to be aware of the global market movements. Many people concentrate solely on domestic news,but this can be a mistake if you trade currencies or have significant investments. Knowing the world helps you prepare for any type of market predictions.
Don't fall for the scam that a company will repair your credit history. A lot of these companies will make general claims about their capability in repairing your history. This is not at all accurate since there is no similarity to how your credit score is affected to how another individual with credit issues. To claim that they can clear your credit completely is definitely a fraud and they are most likely committing fraud.
Avoid getting into further debt in order to improve your personal financial situation. While some debt is inescapable,like mortgages or college loans,toxic debts such as credit cards are best avoided at all costs. You will lose less money to interest and fees if you borrow less money.
It is definitely possible that your credit score while working to fix your credit. This does not mean that you have done is wrong. Your credit score will rise as you take steps to improve your record of payment for your debts.
Eating less can save a ton of money and promote better personal finances with Fixcash. You will save a lot of money by preparing meals at home.
Many spend over $20 weekly trying to win a lot of money from a local lottery drawing,but it makes more sense to put that amount into savings instead.This is a guaranteed way to ensure you do not lose any money and will improve your financial situation by increasing your savings.
By keeping track of where your money is going,you have a better chance at avoiding overdraft charges from your bank or money troubles when something comes up. You will feel more positive about your personal financial situation simply by monitoring your income and spending,instead of using the bank's computers to manage it for you.


text:
Terms and Conditions
Welcome to our website. If you continue to browse and use this website you are agreeing to comply with and be bound by the following terms and conditions of use, which together with our privacy policy govern Everyday Hero's (EH's) relationship with you in relation to this website. The term "EH" or "us" or "we" refers to the owner of the website, Everyday Hero Pty Ltd, whose registered office is at Ground Floor, 87 Wickham Terrace Spring Hill QLD 4000 Australia. The term "you" refers to the user or viewer of our website ("the site").
These terms and conditions may be modified at any time and such modification shall be effective immediately upon web posting of the modified terms and conditions. Your continued use of the Everyday Hero Website shall be deemed to be your conclusive acceptance of the modified terms and conditions.
The use of this site is subject to the following terms and conditions of use:
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Matthew B. Sperry
Matthew B. Sperry is a passionate advocate who is dedicated to protecting the rights and advancing the interests of his clients. Matthew will give you an honest evaluation of your case and identify how your case can best be fought.
Matthew has successfully defended clients who were charged with Domestic Battery, DUI, Disorderly Conduct, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, Possession of Alcohol by a Minor, and Possession of Marijuana. Matthew has successfully had charges reduced from felonies to misdemeanors and obtained supervision sentences for clients as well.
Matthew's litigation experience spans both criminal prosecution and defense across Illinois and Florida. Matthew prosecuted cases for the Pinellas County State's Attorneys Office, defended clients for the Pinellas County Public Defender's Office, and defended clients for the Kane County Public Defender's Office. While Matthew is a member of Florida Bar, at present he is not accepting cases from that jurisdiction.
In addition to being a veteran criminal attorney, Matthew is also an experienced immigration attorney and has enjoyed many successes throughout his immigration practice. In one instance, Matthew obtained status for a client who entered without inspection. Matthew used an old immigration relative petition to obtain 245I relief, thereby allowing the client to adjust status to a lawful permanent resident without leaving the United States. In another case, Matthew obtained status for a client who had worked without authorization, overstayed a visa, and used a fake social security number.
Matthew has also proven himself a worthy adversary against the Department of Homeland Security attorneys, in Removal Court. On one occasion, Matthew successfully argued to an immigration judge in Removal Court that his client was eligible to apply for cancellation of removal relief, despite the Department of Homeland Security's objection. Matthew is well versed in the eligibility requirements for immigration bonds during removal proceedings. He draws not only on his immigration experience, but also his experience as a criminal defense attorney to successfully obtain his clients' release on immigration bonds, during the pendency of removal proceedings. If there is a path to legal status, favorable termination of removal proceedings, or release from immigration custody, Matthew will zealously pursue it on your behalf.
Matthew also has demonstrated excellence in civil litigation. His successes include but are not limited to obtaining a finding of no liability for his client in an administrative vehicle seizure hearing, a judgment in favor of his client in a breach of contract case, obtaining favorable arbitration awards, and obtaining a jury verdict for his client in a personal injury case. Matthew has extensive experience in child abuse/neglect courts, where he has litigated cases initiated by the State via the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), and has experience advising clients under active investigation by DCFS.
In circumstances where going to contested trial or hearing may work against a client's interest, Matthew has also demonstrated strong negotiation skills in a variety of legal settings. Matthew is adept at listening to both his client and the opposing party to discern ways to reach an agreement with the maximum possible benefit for his client. A few examples of Matthew's negotiation experience include:
- Obtaining a reduction from a felony to a misdemeanor
- Obtaining supervision or other reduced criminal sentence
- Obtaining favorable personal injury settlements quickly without delay and without the client needing to go to trial
- Retaining custody of children in the context of a child abuse/neglect proceeding
- Parental visitation in the context of a child abuse/neglect proceeding
- Acquiring access to the house and personal belongings as well as child visitation in Order of Protection proceedings
- Negotiating forfeiture cases and the return of property seized by the State, including but not limited to negotiating the return of property seized during the commission of a felony
- Negotiating rescissions of Statutory Summary Suspensions in the context of DUI cases
Matthew's clients can expect that Matthew will thoroughly and fully inform them of what legal options are available, and that Matthew will actively pursue the best possible outcome for each individual case.
"Possession of Marijuana. Mr. Sperry represented a client who was pulled over on two separate occasions by the same police officer for having one brake light out of three out. On each occasion, Mr. Sperry's client was alleged to have possessed marijuana in the automobile. In a consolidated motion to suppress between the two cases, Mr. Sperry successfully argued that the police officer lacked probable cause to pull over his client due to the taillight being out, as the controlling law stated that an automobile shall have two functional brake lights. The Court agreed and suppressed the marijuana found in the car, resulting in DISMISSALS OF BOTH CHARGES as well as the underlying traffic tickets for having a brake light out."
Read more testimonials for Matthew Sperry >>
Read Matthew Sperry's case successes >>
Professional History:
- Assistant Kane County Public Defender
- Acting Assistant Pinellas County Public Defender
- Pinellas County Public Defender's Office - Clinical Legal Intern
- Pinellas County State Attorney's Office - Clinical Legal Intern
Bar & Court Admissions:
- State of Illinois Bar, 2006
- State of Florida Bar, 2007
- J.D., Stetson University College of Law
- Cum laude
- Law Review
- B.A. in Political Science, Illinois Wesleyan University
- Minor in Business Administration
Honors and Awards:
- Rising Star, Super Lawyers, 2012, 2018 - Present
- Elite Lawyer, 2018-Present
Articles & Publications:
- Know Your Rights: Protecting Yourself & Your Driver's License From Violations of Illinois' "Text Message Ban"


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Fans who tune in to the premiere of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. shouldn't necessarily expect to see familiar heroes like Iron Man or Thor hanging around. Instead, Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) will assemble a brand new team of agents as part of a subset of the worldwide law-enforcement organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. — Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division — which investigates strange and unknown occurrences around the globe.
Photo Gallery: 10 characters we want to see on Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — and who should play them!
Even though we may not get to see The Avengers lending a hand, that doesn't preclude other familiar faces from the Marvel Universe from popping up. With the show shying away from powers that can't be explained by science, it's hard to justify seeing characters like Captain Britain or the Skrulls — even She-Hulk is pushing it a bit. And we'd love to see someone like Dum Dum Dugan (Neal McDonough in Captain America), though that would mean likely seeing him as a Life Model Decoy, and we'd doubt they'd have more than one on the series.
TVGuide.com has come up with a list of 10 Marvel characters we'd like to show up on S.H.I.E.L.D. and which actors should play them. Did you favorites make the cut? Check out the list here and hit the comments with your thoughts!
The highly anticipated new series will debut Tuesday, Sept. 24 at 8/7c on ABC.


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2010 Toyota Camry FWD Blue 6-Speed**THE ALL NEW CASTLE SUBARU PORTAGE INDIANA **,Awards:* 2010 KBB.com 10 Most Comfortable Cars Under $30,000 * 2010 KBB.com Best Resale Value AwardsHere at Castle Subaru, we always strive to deliver a first-class car-shopping experience to Subaru drivers throughout Portage, Valparaiso, Hammond, Gary and Chesterton, IN. We make that possible by providing a stunning collection of vehicles, hassle-free financing and high-quality service and repairs. That's how we're able to serve as the one-stop shop for buying, financing and servicing Subaru cars! Feel free to stop in to 6100 US Highway 6 in Portage, IN, where we are always eager to assist you. We can discuss vehicles here in our showroom, over the phone, or through our website.2.5L I4 SMPI DOHC 4D Sedan
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Hang your pet clothes in style with elegant wooden hangers for tanks and hoodies sizes XS - XL. Buy dog wristbands for only $0.99, and your dog will be the hippest hound on the block! Wristbands are machine washable and proudly made in the USA.


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Here's a neat project from a few years ago: Nyle Steiner of sparkbangbuzz built a Simple Homemade T.E.A. Laser using some pieces of scrap aluminum and a moderately high voltage power supply. He writes:
I used to tell people "There is no such thing a true home made laser. There is always a requirement for exotic parts that can only be obtained from a laser manufacturer, and – or there is the requirement to perform exotic high vacuum, glass blowing and gas mixing processes. This would defeat much of the satisfaction of building your own laser."
When I read about TEA lasers recently though, that all changed. Here is a laser that is built from aluminum foil, a dielectric and some pieces of aluminum. It is amazing to think of a laser project where a simple 4 to 6 KV DC power supply is the most elaborate component.
Amazing, indeed! Now, where did that kV DC power supply go? [thanks, Ed!]


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"Islamic Feminism Is a Universal Discourse"
How do Islamic feminists deal with aspects of the fiqh tradition that seem to be maligned against women's rights?
Margot Badran: Women scholars (whether they embrace Islamic feminism or prefer ijtihad – independent readings of the sacred text and other religious sources) recognise the overwhelmingly misogynist nature of traditional fiqh. A fresh interpretation of the Quran is a foundational step in the reconsideration of fiqh, of building a new jurisprudence.
Some scholars like Aziza al Hibri engage more directly with jurisprudence. As for hadith, people are widely familiar with the works of Fatima Mernissi who has used the tools of classical Islamic methodology to examine hadith relating to issues of women and gender, demonstrating how many widely circulating hadith are weak or spurious and how some, which are of more solid provenance, have been read out of context.
There are a growing number of other women who are bringing to scrutiny the persistent circulation of hadith that contradict the basic principles of the Quran.
Why do women assume such central importance in Muslim/Islamist discourse generally?
Badran: A good way to get a grip on this is to place it in the context of patriarchy – patriarchal modes of thinking, behaviour and control of Muslim men, which has made patriarchy Islamic itself. Virtually, all old Muslim societies, women and their sexual purity (variously defined) have been linked with the honour of men and families, and this discourse has been associated with Islam (or "legitimised" through connecting it with Islam).
We see that this linkage of honour and women's sexual purity holds for those of other religions in the same societies, showing that this nexus transcends the terrain of any one religion. It has a grip on Muslims as on other religious groups. Because of this link of honour with women's sexual purity, women need to be controlled and those who do the controlling are men and their surrogates, in combinations of age, stage, position, class, etc (within and beyond the family).
The patriarchal system does not call for men to be controlled. If some women are not sexually pure that means that some men are also not sexually pure. Thus, cultural ideas are harnessed and often exaggerated in the service of political ideologies and practices. Women, and the children they raise, are controlled through a strict ideology of body, sex, and honour. Women and their bodies, meanwhile, serve as emblems of purity – and the politics – of the group (nation or religious group); the hijab becomes a kind of national flag and political symbol.
If we draw upon our Islamic learning, we know that mode of dress or modest dress is likewise enjoined upon men and that sexual behaviour or sexual purity is equally ordained for men. Men and women alike are enjoined to obey Islamic precepts and are exhorted to engage in taqwa or righteous behavior. When you think about it, obsession with women's bodies is itself a kind of sexual obsession – as women's obsession with men's bodies and how they were clothed would be (if it existed). But the obsession with women's bodies is a politicising mechanism, so in short, the answer to your question lies in politics and projects of control.
How can Islamic feminist insights be introduced into the centres of Islamic 'orthodoxy', most notably the madressahs? Is this happening? Do you know of any women's madressahs where some sort of Islamic feminist texts are taught?
Badran: Let me first make a comment or two on centers of Islamic learning or madressahs. The term, and the institution of the madressah varies widely over time and place. Madressah may signify some sort of generic Islamic schooling, or a more specific institutional structure. In many places madressahs or schools, run by religious teachers, no longer exist as part of the state or quasi-state system.
But becoming more widespread in recent times in the Middle East, for example, are private religious schools, which are usually not called madressahs and must conform to state educational requirements if their degrees are to be recognised.
Let me answer your question with respect to Al Azhar University as the highest center of learning in Egypt, with its various faculties and branches throughout the country. Here, yes the ideas of Islamic feminism are taught and spread – not as "Islamic feminism" per se but as part of Islamic learning embedded in various subjects. Let me give an example from Islamic jurisprudence.
The Dean of the Women's College at Al Azhar, Dr Suad Salih, is also a Professor of Comparative Fiqh. She teaches in Women's College and also controls the boards that examine candidates for PhD. She evaluates men's and women's intellectual grasp of the religious sciences, especially fiqh.
This highly qualified and respected scholar knows her fiqh and knows that there is no gender impediment, keeping women from becoming muftis or dispensers of religious rulings in answer to requests. She submitted a request to be appointed as mufti, knowing well that there is no religious impediment in the way of women becoming muftis.
In fact, women have historically functioned as muftis. The most illustrious example is that of Sayyidna Aisha, wife of the Prophet (PBUH). Dr Suad was thrust into the role of campaigning for women to be able to be officially appointed muftis. So, yes, "Islamic feminist" ideas percolate in these high halls of religious learning.
Now let me give you an example of a madressah for women and men in Indonesia, where ideas of "Islamic feminism" – again not by that name but simply under the name of religion – form part of the curriculum. Haji Husein Muhammad is a kyai (or sheikh). He teaches at Dar Al Tawhid, a pesantren (the Indonesian word for madressah) in West Java.
When we discussed Islamic feminism and the curricula in pesandrens, he gave the example of a 19th Century liberal treatise on the rights of the two spouses Uqud Al Lujain fi Banan and Huqug Al Zawjaini, written by the Indonesian scholar Muhammad Ibn Umar Nawawi, who had studied in Mecca and at Al Azhar.
That was republished with a contemporary woman-sensitive commentary, and is now taught in many pesantren, including his own Dar Al Tawhid, where there are some 600 students. Islamic feminist reading of religion is, of course, simply a celebration of the full amplitude of Islam.
How does one counter the oft-heard argument that Islamic feminism is a Western import and represents a misreading and distortion of faith as salafe saleh, the early Muslims, had understood it?
Badran: Islamic feminism, as a discourse grounded in the Quran and other religious texts, is not "Western", nor it is "Eastern". It is a universal discourse. There are many ayats in the Quran, firmly indicating that Islam is a universal religion, knowing no geographical or cultural boundaries. This is exquisitely imparted in Surat Al Nur.
"God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is as if there was a niche and within it a lamp...lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the East nor the West." (24:35)
The specific forms that Islamic feminist activism takes are locally grounded. They come from within. For example, we have run the long campaign for many years, led by some women in Egypt, using the discourse of Islamic feminism to argue that there was nothing in the religion of Islam barring women from becoming judges. This finally ended in victory this January when three women were finally appointed as judges.
In South Africa, Muslim women have been campaigning for greater access to participate in congregational prayer alongside men (that is to occupy adjacent rather than behind or an altogether separate space) and to give talks at Friday prayer prior to the khutba, and have met with successes. I can give you the example of the Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town, where women's discourse at Friday congregational prayer is now a commonplace.
Interview by Yoginder Sikand
© Islaminterfaith.org 2005
Margot Badran is a historian and a specialist of gender studies focused on the Middle East and Islamic world. She did her MA from Harvard University and DPhil from Oxford University. She acquired a diploma in Arabic and Islam from Al Azhar University, Cairo.
A Senior Fellow at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, Badran is currently a visiting fellow at ISIM (Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World) in Leiden, The Netherlands. Her books include "Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt", and "Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing". She has also penned numerous articles on feminism and Islam. Her works have been translated into Arabic, French, Italian, Dutch, German, and many other languages.
Badran has lectured on feminism and Islam in the US, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. She writes for numerous newspapers in the Middle East, for International Herald Tribune, and contributes regularly to Al Ahram Weekly.
Analysis Susan Blackburn
Indonesia - How Do Women Influence Political Islam?
Efforts to influence political Islam are made by Indonesian women both within the Islamic movement and outside it. Which is more effective is difficult to say. However it is clear, that women in Indonesia have changed their political strategies considerably over the years. By Susan Blackburn
Analysis Lily Munir
The Koran's Spirit of Gender Equality
Lily Zakiyah Munir, Head of the "Center for Pesantren and Democracy Studies", Indonesia, argues that it is not the Koran, but social convention of patriarchal cultures that women in Islamic countries are deprived of equal social status.
Analysis Halima Krausen
Can Women Be Imams?
In the face of the controversy over Amina Wadud's Friday prayer, Muslim scholar Halima Krausen argues that we should have the courage to ask our own questions, to study the matter conscientiously and to reach conclusions which make sense in our times


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Pope Benedict: Christmas Season Should Fill Our Hearts With Joy
Holy Father speaks at first general audience of 2012.
VATICAN CITY (EWTN News/CNA)—The joy of the Christmas season is the unparalleled union of God and man, said Pope Benedict XVI at the first general audience for 2012.
"Humanity's dream which began in the Garden of Eden, we want to be like God, is realized in an unexpected way, not through the greatness of man, who cannot make himself God, but through the humility of God, who came down among us in his humility, raising us to the true greatness of his being," the Pope said to the 7,000 people in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall on Jan. 4.
This is the reason why "our first reaction to the birth of Jesus should be one of joy," he said, because we now know "that God has assumed our humanity in order to make us sharers in his own divine life."
This, he explained, is what theologians refer to as the "admirabile commercium," or "wondrous exchange," that took place in Bethlehem.
Today we experience this exchange "most powerfully in the Eucharist," which invites us "to recognize our lofty dignity as God's adopted sons and daughters," he said.
The incarnation of Christ also brings great joy, as it "dissipates the shadows of the world and fills the holy night with a celestial splendor, spreading the radiance of God the Father over the faces of men, even today."
This light was foreshadowed by God's covenant with the Jewish people, where he had "spoken and intervened in history through messengers and signs."
But at his birth in Bethlehem, Jesus appeared and "came out of his inaccessible light in order to illuminate the world," the Pope said. He added, Christ has given this joy and light to the Catholic Church "to be illuminated and thereby to spread it in all its splendor."
Pope Benedict said that this challenges individual Catholics to "welcome the newborn Savior" into their hearts so that their lives can be "transformed by his gifts of joy, newness and light," and then share them with the world.
"Christmas," concluded the Pope, "means pausing to contemplate the Child, the mystery of God who became man in humility and poverty."
It also means, above all, "making that Child, who is Christ the Lord, part of ourselves," so that his feelings, thoughts and actions are "our feelings, thoughts and actions."
Therefore, to celebrate the Christmas season "is to express the joy, novelty and light which that birth brought into our lives; that we too may bring others joy, true newness and the light of God."
Pope Benedict ended the audience by singing the Our Father in Latin and imparting his blessing on the crowd.


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College of Science & Engineering
Twin Cities
These researchers have a variety of projects focusing on functional imaging of biological systems, as well as a variety of other topics in neuroengineering. One set of issues they are currently examining is how the brain is affected by several noninvasive forms of neuromodulation. Using finite-element models with realistic head models, they can predict the effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in silico. They are also exploring new work modeling the penetration of ultrasound in biological tissues. The researchers primarily use MSI resources for these complex computational models, which require significant CPU and memory resources and licensed commercial software like COMSOL and ANSYS. Other projects include high-resolution spatio-temporal bioelectromagnetic source imaging and bio-dielectric properties imaging, both of which have promising potential applications in disease prediction. The computational resources provided by MSI are invaluable in this research.


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Many of the unique demo units and prototypes seen at the annual CES show don't make it onto store shelves in the near term, if at all (for example, Lenovo's convertible U1 tablet/laptop). Then there's the Toshiba Qosmio F755, which we saw as a 15-inch glasses-free 3D prototype at CES in January, and which is now officially for sale in a single fixed-configuration model.
That's a pretty quick turnaround, although the glasses-free 3D market is starting to pick up with help from Nintendo's 3DS handheld gaming system and similar stereoscopic gadgets from Sony and others. Like the CES prototype, the final version of the $1,699 Qosmio F755 has a 15.6-inch display that uses special eye-tracking software to track the viewer's head movements via the built-in Webcam and adjust the stereoscopic image accordingly. But keep in mind that the screen's native resolution is 1080p, but for 3D content, it drops to 720p (actually 1,366x768 pixels).
As with a 3D TV, it'll take a few moments to orient your eyes, especially if you're not used to watching 3D content. But we found the eye-tracking feature allowed for a reasonable amount of freedom of movement, and the 3D effect worked from an off-axis side view. However, again because of the tracking feature, it works best for one viewer at a time.
Other drawbacks are that the 3D display doesn't work for video games or streaming-video content yet, only 3D Blu-ray and 3D video files you're able to download and play in Toshiba's custom media player application. Both Toshiba and Nvidia have told us updates for expanded compatibility are in the works, but there are no firm details or time frame right now, which is a shame, as 3D gaming would be a killer app.
Stereoscopic screen aside, the rest of the system is typical of Toshiba's Qosmio line of consistently excellent multimedia and gaming laptops. Components include an Intel Core i7 CPU, discrete Nvidia graphics, and even a rare Blu-ray-burning drive.
|Price as reviewed
|2.0GHz Intel Core i7-2630QM
|6GB, 1,333MHz DDR3
|Hard drive
|750GB 5,400rpm
|Intel QM67
|NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
|Operating system
|Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
|Dimensions (WD)
|15.3x10.5 inches
|1.5 inches
|Screen size (diagonal)
|15.6 inches
|System weight / Weight with AC adapter
|7.1 pounds / 8.7 pounds
At first glance, this is a fairly standard Qosmio laptop, although based on a slightly older design. The outer shell is a textured bright red, with a glossy black interior. It's not as outlandish as some Qosmio systems we've seen, such as those with illustrated flame graphics, but its not as subtle as the recent Qosmio X775-3DV78 laptop, which traded the gloss for a brushed metal look.
There are a few other design elements we liked better in the X775, including a more popular island-style keyboard, with widely spaced keys--the ones here are tightly packed. We'd also like to see easier-to-use flat mouse buttons, as opposed to the Toshiba house-style convex glossy plastic buttons seen here.
The chassis does allow room for a full-size number pad, and there is a row of touch-sensitive control buttons right above the keyboard, including volume controls and a button for turning the 3D view off and on (which only works for 2D-to-3D conversion).
But we've all seen Qosmio laptops before. What you're really interested in is how the 3D features work. In brief, the entire setup is just short of practical, and feels more like a proof-of-concept piece than a finished consumer product. That said, for watching 3D Blu-ray movies by yourself, it can be a good overall experience, once you get used to how the system and software work.
The box includes a single page of 3D instructions, written by someone who must either write tax code for a living or else is not a native English speaker. Little of practical value is explained, and there's even a line that reads, "This technology does not currently support Blu-ray Disc format media." Of course it does--that's the entire point of the system. The instruction sheet, while it doesn't specify, is referring to a built-in 2D-to-3D conversion function, which you'll probably never use anyway, as like all 2D-to-3D conversions, it's headache-inducing.
To get started, pop a 3D Blu-ray Disc into the tray-loading drive. The custom Toshiba 3D Blu-ray player app will launch and for most discs you'll have to choose either the 3D or 2D version from the disc menu. The Toshiba Blu-ray player app is slow, clunky, and unintuitive, but for now it's the only software that will work with the 3D screen. Its pop-up control bar obscures the onscreen Blu-ray menus, there are unexplained buttons and functions, we couldn't find anything resembling a virtual remote, and you need to juggle between the touch pad for player-specific functions and the Enter and arrow and keys for disc menu functions. In short, it's a mess. But, once you get a movie playing, it should stay out of the way.
The 3D effect isn't as crisp as you may be used to from a 3D movie theater or 3D TV with active shutter glasses. Still, from a couple of feet away, it's quite watchable. There is a subtle screen-door effect that gets more obvious the closer you get to the screen.
As with the Nintendo 3DS, it's best to find a head position that works and stay relatively still. As mentioned above, the media player works with a special app that uses the built-in Webcam to track your eye movement, but there's a shifting effect if you move your head too much, like looking at an old lenticular image. The face-tracking app can show you what the Webcam sees in a small side window, which is a cool effect, but bringing it to the forefront (or, for example, hitting one of the volume buttons, which has an onscreen indicator) kicks you out of the 3D view in the media player until you bring the player back to the forefront. We also found the 3D image also occasionally separated into its left and right side-by-side components, requiring a restart of the media player to fix.
The 1,920x,1080-pixel, 15.6-inch display looks perfectly normal when displaying 2D content, but the maximum resolution for 3D content is 1,366x768 pixels, and that view also adds a screen-door effect, as we noted earlier. The overall look of 3D content is not as crisp or sharp as on laptops with Nvidia's 3D Vision glasses, but it's better than on the 3D laptops we've seen that use the competing Tri-Def 3D technology.
|Toshiba Qosmio F755
|Average for category [Midsize]
|VGA plus HDMI
|VGA plus HDMI or DisplayPort
|Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacks
|Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacks
|3 USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0, SD card reader
|2 USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0, SD card reader, eSATA
|Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
|Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optional mobile broadband
|Optical drive
|Blu-ray rewritable drive
|DVD burner
While a Blu-ray drive is what we'd expect to find in a multimedia laptop such as this, the big surprise is that the drive records Blu-rays as well, not just DVDs. As this laptop is currently only available in a single fixed configuration, you're stuck with that potentially expensive extra, and there's no chance to upgrade the midlevel Nvidia GeForce 540M graphics.
The quad-core Intel Core i7-2630QM is an excellent, powerful CPU, and makes the F755 more than capable of handling just about any task, including the intensive work required for glasses-free 3D playback. It performed on par with other multimedia laptops with the same CPU, including the Dell XPS 17 and the Toshiba Qosmio X775, which has active-shutter 3D.


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Race in America, Race in Music: Different Trains, Same Two Tracks
It's an American pop music creation myth: that blues and folk music developed along two distinct tracks, with their own distinct traditions, divided along racial lines. The truth is, of course, far more slippery and complicated.
Perhaps it is, as improbable as it may seem, that we Americans of other persuasions should owe the Tea Party movement some measure of gratitude for keeping an important issue in the mix of political discourse. However, that issue isn't the one Tea Partiers rail about most often: it's not taxation, or health care, or the role of government in people's lives. In fact, it's an issue they aren't necessarily trying to engage, but one people can't help engaging when dissecting a Tea Party event.
In case you haven't noticed, most of the people at Tea Party get-togethers are white. Actually, damn near all of them are white. That wouldn't be an issue in and of itself in many cases; damn near all of the people in the stands at a National Hockey League game are white, and that doesn't set pundits and bloggers off looking for deeper meanings. Then again, hockey fans don't generally show up to the rink carrying Photoshopped pictures of a black man with a Hitler mustache.
The lightness of the Tea Party movement is almost unbearable for more than a few commentators (see, for example, the Countdown with Keith Olbermann "special comment" I cited in my last column, Six Years in the Life of Post-Blackness (Or Not)). It's a reasonably simple equation, but more than knotty enough to try to resolve. We're faced with an essentially lily-white opposition movement against the policies of a president who happens to be black.
Much of the rhetoric at Tea Party events, while nowhere near as virulent as the hatred spewed by segregationists against the civil rights movement in the '60s, borders nonetheless on incitements to mass mayhem.The question becomes: how much of the anti-Obama antipathy churned up at Tea Party events is simply because they disagree with his political priorities? Or, given America's long-standing history of racial divide, how much is it about the fact that a black man is their president?
Tea Partiers, for their part, will claim that it's not about race at all, then go scurrying about to trot out a black face as window dressing for the cameras. This practice, of course, is nothing new. The Republican Party has done this for years, pimping the likes of Alan Keyes in hopelessly transparent attempts to broaden its base that have consistently failed (we'll see if this year's midterm elections bring about a change of fortune there; see Rich Benjamin's 24 April Alternet article "What's Behind the Republicans Fielding 32 Black Candidates for Congress in 2010?). Nor is this phenomenon new or unique to politics; in the mid-'70s, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights produced an indictment of the TV news industry for its lack of black faces on the air, entitled "Window Dressing on the Set."
However, all the Tea Party entreaties to color-blindness have failed to convince most of the liberal-left swath of the political spectrum. First, people have jumped all over popular Tea Party catchphrases like "taking my country back", a reference to the population becoming more non-white by the day. More recently, a survey reported by Newsweek arms Tea Party critics with some empirical facts to back up their claims. ("Are Tea Partiers Racist?" by Arian Campo-Flores, 26 April 2010) The University of Washington study found Tea Partiers 25 percent more likely than others to harbor a racial grudge.
Most Tea Partiers deny any hint of racial animosity, but a goodly number of them still insist that Obama was born somewhere outside of America, not the State of Hawaii as indicated on his birth certificate. If they continue to argue that fallacy, it's legitimate to question their sincerity – not to mention their sanity – on other points where ethnicity and nationality come into question.
To be fair, it's not that the Tea Partiers invented racial discord and disconnect just the other day, and there are some voices within the movement trying to dampen down the nutjobs (see "Tea party groups battling perceptions of racism," Washington Post, 5 May 2010). In fact, this whole conversation is serving as a reminder that racial tension didn't go away from the core of the American psyche when Obama moved into the White House.
There have been other helpful reminders of said racial tension, of late. Kelefa Sanneh unpacked the long, strange trip of American whiteness in his New Yorker essay "Beyond the Pale" (12 April 2010) In an overview ranging from the Stuff White People Like blog to Nell Irvin Painter's provocative new book The History of White People (W. W. Norton), Sanneh observed that the nature of white identity has been a work-in-progress in many respects, tent-poled by both racist and populist lines of reasoning. He'll have to forgive those non-whites who, cognizant of
America's legacy of white racism and privilege, can't find it within them to muster up much sympathy.
That number would likely include Melissa Harris-Lacewell, who took up Obama's Census choice as "black", as opposed to bi-racial in her column "Black by Choice" (The Nation, 15 April 2010). In it, she saw that, white parentage aside, at the end of the day Obama's solidarity rests with black Americans going all the way back to slavery. Patricia Williams followed that up with another The Nation piece, "Not-Black by Default" (21 April 2010), picking up on Harris-Lacewell's assertion that no matter what any group calls itself, the day-to-day realities forged by the actual power that group enjoys (or not) are far weightier than whatever might be in a name.
To drive that point home with tongue only slightly in cheek, Tim Wise's widely circulated Don't Tea on Me blog post "What If the Tea Party Were Black?" supposes that if black folk tried to do what Tea Partiers do (hold rallies, walk around with guns, tell the President of the United States to suck on it, that sort of thing), they'd be considered anything but a political movement deserving of a voice in the decision-making process.
However, to the extent to which race is a defining factor in American life, it isn't confined to thoughtful articles in highbrow or left-leaning publications. It's been right here in front of us for the last 80 years or so, hiding in plain sight in the pop music charts.


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You guys know me by now. I share most of my adventures with the public either here or via social media. I have made myself a deliberate advocate of traveling for travel's sake and spending time outdoors to connect with nature. As with a lot of people these days I tend to get caught up in recording my excursions, sometimes to the detriment of the trip itself. I've found that often the act of stopping to take a quick snapshot to share on social media really disrupts the moment, it imposes on the natural flow of the experience, pulls you out of it and makes you a spectator instead of a participant. With my focus on photography I am especially guilty of this and some experiences are diminished because of it. There is something to be said for simply letting an experience happen, enjoy it, immerse yourself in it.
This would be the lost art of Being in the Moment. I recently took a day trip that was such a rich experience, for me, that I didn't want to interrupt it. I only took three pictures in 6 hours of riding and they were all at natural stopping points, natural lulls in the experience where the action didn't become an imposition. My mind and body were immersed in the experience and it was a wonderful feeling.
"If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it." – The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
AZBDR – Just the Tip
Last weekend I had been planning on a multi-day trip but things didn't come together and I settled for a Saturday morning ride to explore on the motorcycle. I woke up early before the valley started warming up with the morning sun, packed my camera equipment, loaded the bike and hit the road toward Payson and cooler temps. With a shiny new copy of the Arizona Backcountry Discovery Route (AZBDR) map in hand I figured I'd first check out Fossil Springs Road outside Strawberry, then see if I could find myself on some section of the AZBDR to see what it was like. After finding Fossil Springs Road closed (apparently it's been closed for a long time due to road conditions) I turned up 87 cruising past Clint's Well and joined the AZBDR on FSR 95 near Blue Ridge Reservoir. But not before a little detour.
When I first moved to Arizona in the mid 90s I did a decent amount of hiking and solo camping in the high country. One of the first big hikes I did was an overnight backpacking trip above the Mogollon Rim in Coconino National Forest. I had decided I wanted to hike a couple of the drainages that led to a little blob on the map called Blue Ridge Reservoir. I made it to the reservoir at it's most southern tip and I vividly remember the water was a bright, algae-thick green and the sheer canyon edges hemmed in the water so severely it looked as though you couldn't climb out. I thought to myself some 20 years ago, "this would be a great place to bring an inflatable kayak and explore."
That was my first, and last, glimpse of Blue Ridge Reservoir until last weekend.
I have been riding without the use of a GPS or my phone maps. It's helps me to get better about remembering my routes and it's also led to some cool accidental discoveries. I took the wrong road off of 87 looking for 95. I saw a sign that read "Blue Ridge Reservoir Access" and mistakenly took that for my turnoff. I kinda knew I had taken the wrong road. Even as I cruised along on the smooth, redish dirt road I knew it was wrong but went anyway just to see what I could see. The road I did turn on, FSR 751, turned out to be a very nice dirt access road to an unexpected boat ramp at the northern end of Blue Ridge Reservoir. I found myself stopped above a large parking lot busy with kayaks and canoes fanning out in all directions from the narrow boat ramp at the water's edge. I continued past the ramp and through the parking lot to a continuation of the road on the other side. This section was now more technical single-lane width, rutted and rock strewn that hugged along the edge of the wooded cliffs plunging into the reservoir. The road leads to the dam, but is gated and closed to public access, so I went back the way I came having enjoyed the detour immensely. The reservoir looks very different now, from the north end, 20 years later.
Back on pavement and a short cruise further up 87 put me at the road I was looking for. After double checking the map to make sure I was on 95 I soon found myself kicking up dust and zooming along on the KLR through the forest completely alone.
I could feel the grin on my face getting wider with every turn in the road. The scenery is spectacular through this area, something that would normally have me stopping every few minutes to haul out the gear and grab some pictures. But I just couldn't do it. I didn't want to stop moving, to break from the road, it felt like I would be interrupting something important. There are a few quick views of Clear Creek as the road descends to the narrow bridge which crosses at the confluence of two deep canyons. I considered stopping at the creek, it is absolutely gorgeous at the bottom, but there were a few small groups of people fishing there and I chose to move on.
Climbing out of the canyon, 95 cuts deep into the forest and, again, my bike and I crunched over the loose gravel road taking opportunity to open up in the few straightaways. The forest closed in a little more along this section, the roads appeared more well traveled and it was here that I finally shared the road with someone, for a short time. I quickly out-paced the SUV on the tight corners and rutted out road. Those roads are perfect for a motorcycle like the KLR.
The AZBDR route continues from 95 east on Rim Road 300 to eventually catch up with HWY 260 that runs between Payson and Heber. 300 sees a lot more weekend traffic as the main access road for all camp and recreational sites above the rim, but it still isn't a busy road and is dirt almost all the way back to 260. It's called the "Rim Road" because it literally follows the edge of the Mogollon Rim offering spectacular views of it's rugged cliffs and the verdant valley below.
I came around one corner on 300, well before really seeing any other vehicles, and spooked a small group of some of the biggest, healthiest Javalina I've ever seen in Arizona. I tapped at the brakes as they bounded out of the wash and across the road to disappear into the thick forest. Riding on the motorcycle certainly reduces the opportunities to sneak up on wildlife, so the javalina encounter was an unexpected treat.
The weather was coming in on me and I knew I had a race on my hands if I expected to make it home before a monsoon caught me on the road. I stopped at the visitors center where 300 meets 260 for a breather and to stretch my legs. I needed to clear the euphoric clouds from my head before getting into traffic. I had originally wanted to document my first foray into part of the AZBDR with some great photos to share the experience. But I realized that some experiences are better, richer, when they are savored and consumed selfishly, gluttonously alone. It might sound stupid to some, but this ride was mine and I feel good about allowing myself to be in the moment and enjoy it. For a few blurry, sun-soaked hours I was completely free.
If this was any indicator of what the rest of the AZBDR looks like, I'm in…hook, line and sinker. I'll be back for sure. Next time maybe I'll actually pull out the camera so you guys can see what it was like. Or, better yet, come with me and see for yourself!


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For the Differentiation and Characterization of Malignant Tumors
Antibodies are used to help differentiate and characterize neoplastic tumors that have been deemed malignant by H&E staining. Since poorly differentiated tumors could represent one of many cancers, several or more antibodies are usually used as a primary screening panel to help identify a particular group of cancer (e.g., carcinoma or sarcoma). Further antibody studies can help identify the specific kind of cancer (e.g., mantle cell lymphoma). The abbreviated algorithm shown above is similar to many in use, however, no one algorithm has been universally accepted, and each lab should determine which antibodies to use and how to interpret the results. The indicated antibody results shown above are typically for the type of cancer indicated, but every tumor is different and can show unique expression of various markers; very few tumor markers are expressed in every tumor of a particular type of cancer, and very few tumor markers are expressed exclusively in only one type of cancer.
CMD SchemaApp code


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LANSING (AP) -- Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has signed legislation requiring public school employees to pay more for their pensions and ending state-provided health coverage in retirement for new hires.
The Republican governor signed the overhaul of the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System on Tuesday. The GOP-led Senate and House passed the legislation this year.
Officials say the measure cuts at least $15 billion from a $45 billion liability on the system. The reductions include a $130 million contribution by the state toward retirement costs.
At the signing ceremony, Snyder also said he'll appeal an August state Court of Appeals decision that found Michigan's 3 percent payroll deduction for school employees unconstitutional.
The state has collected $508 million since 2010 from 227,000 public school employees to finance retiree health care.


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Nelson Mandela
On April 27, 1994, After Years Of Oppression Under White Minority Rule,Black And White Citizens In South Africa Had Their First Democratic Election, Selecting Nelson Mandela As The Country's First Black State President. He Was Inaugurated May 10, 1994.
Before His Presidency, Mandela Was A Leader In The African National Congress (ANC) And A Dedicated Anti-Apartheid Activist.
In 1963 He And Other Members Of The ANC Were Brought To Trial. He Was Sentenced To Life Imprisonment For Attempting To Overthrow The South African Government With Violence.
For The Next 27 Years He Spent Much Of His Time In A Cell On Robben Island. He Saw His Wife, Winnie, Only Three Times During Those 27 Years.
While In Prison, Mandela's Reputation As Civil Rights Leader Grew Even More. He Became The Symbol And Most Famous Figure in The Anti-Apartheid Struggle.
On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela Was Released From Prison. Following His Release, He Made It Clear That The ANC's Struggle Was Not Finished And Resumed The Work Of Attaining Civil Rights For The Citizens Of South Africa.
Mandela Has Received More Than 100 Awards, Most Notably, The 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.
He Was South Africa's President From May, 1994, Until June, 1999, Presiding Over The Country's Transition From Minority Rule And Apartheid.
"In Order For Black History To Live, We Must Continue To Breathe Life Into it." -- Hubert Gaddy, Jr.


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Gun permit applications spike in Granite State
Police see 70 pistol permit applications per week
Manchester police are seeing a massive spike in applications for pistol permits.
Manchester Police Captain Nick Willard said authorities see about 25 permit applications per week, but that changed in December.
"Since Dec. 14 to today, we've actually seen that number increase to 70 pistol permit applications per week," Willard said.
Newtown, Conn., saw a mass shooting on Dec. 14. At the current rate, Manchester police will process just about as many gun permit applications in 2013 as they did in the previous three years combined.
"I've noticed more women are applying for applications," Willard said. "I'm noticing that more couples, married couples with the same name and same address, are also applying for pistol permit applications, and I'm noticing that the reason for application is self-defense."
Managers at Wildlife Taxidermy and Sports said .223 caliber ammunition has sold out. They said 200 boxes sold out in one day.
"We've had quite a few runs on ammo, magazines, whatnot," said Jason Provencher, the store's floor manager. "We're selling out in days. We get stuff in, it's gone in a day."
Christian Johnsick just made the last payment on his new AR-15 rifle with a high-capacity magazine. He said he thinks the policy focus in Washington should be on people instead of guns.
"You don't take away cars from non-drunk drivers because of all the DUIs out there killing people, so why take away the guns from the good people because of the bad people?" he asked.
Managers at Wildlife Taxidermy and Sports said suppliers have no idea when they will be able to restock the items that have sold out. Manchester police said if the permit boom continues, they will have to consider dedicating more resources to make sure applications continue to be processed within the two-week window.